Weekly Geekerati Rundown for April 21, 2023
Geeking Out Over Interesting Items in the Pop Culture and Table Top Gaming Geekosphere. Some new. Some old.
Greetings!
I’ve got a number of interesting items to share this week ranging from interesting dice created to solve a relatively common problem in a complex but interesting way to a classic film recommendation. Check out the rundown and share via comment things you think are worth pointing out.
The Challenge of Go First Dice
As someone who has played a lot of games, one of the things I like to examine in a rules set is how it addresses the issue of which player goes first. There are almost as many ways to answer this question as there are games and My Kind of Meeple has a rundown of 140 ways that different games answer this very question. Some of these solutions can be a game in and of themselves and end up using time you’d rather spend playing the game. Who wants to spend half-an-hour debating who has read more history books, when there is a game to be played?
Besides, as much as I love playing other games, the games I play most frequently are role playing games and a lot of the alternative ways of figuring out who goes first don’t work there. That’s where “Go First Dice” come in. They are dice that you can roll to determine who goes first that are fair, but that have no possibility of two people rolling the same number. You just roll and go. Mathematician James Grime has a very good video up at the Numberphile YouTube page discussing these dice, their application, and the challenges of creating dice that work for larger and larger playing groups. James doesn’t go into the mathematics of permutations in great detail, but does mention how those are at play here.
To be fair, outside of James,
, and me, there probably aren’t a lot of people who care about the underlying math, even as the results of the problem are really cool. On a side note, at the beginning of the video you can see a game set up that uses the Einstein (monotile) that mentioned a little while back. You can buy a set of these tiles at MathArtFun. I haven’t purchased a set of the Einsteins yet, but I have purchased a set of “Go First Dice.”Are Too Many RPGs Licensed and Based on Past Intellectual Properties?
That’s the question underlying
’s interview with Fria Ligan’s CEO Tomas Harenstam. It’s an interesting interview, that I wish had been extended, that gave a good glimpse into the history of Free League Publishing and their connection with their local gaming scene. It’s a company with a longstanding connection with Drakar och Demoner (Dragons & Demons), the Swedish equivalent of Dungeons & Dragons…that was historically based on Runequest’s mechanics (Yes, you can play a Duck).
In the interview Tomas stresses how Fria Ligan has been working on licensed products since the origin of the company and he mentioned a game called Svavelvinter (Sulpher Winter) that the company published over a decade ago and how it was based on an existing book series. I’d never heard of Svavelvinter before and quickly downloaded the rules. I’ve included them here, since they offer them free on the website linked above.
Check out
's site and read the full interview.
Fostering a Gaming Community
If you live near Everett, Washington, you will want to check out Jessica Goldstein Blair’s GeekXtravaganza 3 this weekend and the next occurrence is on July 1st. GeekXtravaganza is a unique event that brings together “the best variety of uniquely geeky creators and vendors in a bazaar covering lots of fandoms and genres of geeky goodness!” Below is a description of the event.
The Vendors at the event include Game Designers, Artists, Authors, Comics Creators, Geeky T-shirts, Crafters, Makers, Pop Culture Artisans, and More! There will also be vendors selling Collectible Toys, Games, POPs, Miniatures and Other Memorabilia. Many of our vendors take commissions for personalized items.
Attendance is FREE and so is the popcorn! Doors open at 10 am. Every attendee gets 1 Free Prize Drawing Entry, with multiple drawings every hour. We also have a concession stand with lunch options, snacks, and beverages. Get a Free Photo in our CosPlay Corner.
VIP Badges are $15 (proceeds donated to No Kid Hungry for GeekX 3) and get you into the event an hour early at 9 am, plus 4 extra Prize Drawing Entries, and 1 entry to an exclusive VIP Only Prize Drawing. Sponsored by Verne & Wells: The Club for Grown-Up Geeks..
What I think is really cool about his event is that the VIP Badges raise money for charity, making this a worthwhile event indeed. Maybe even something worth trying to imitate in your own area. It builds community, helps local business, and gives to charity. What more could you ask?
Recommended Film Reviews
If you are looking for reviews of some recent films, you might want to check out the following.
Courtney Howard’s review of ‘A Tourist’s Guide to Love’ over at Variety.
Luke Y. Thompson’s reviews of Renfield and Evil Dead Rise! at Superhero Hype and The Pope’s Exorcist and Ghosted at The A.V. Club.
What I really appreciate about Courtney and Luke as reviewers is how their actual love of film comes across. They don’t limit their reviews to things they like, demands of editors and the need to pay rent prevent that, but they don’t approach reviewing genre films with a chip on their shoulder. They don’t act as if you’ve just interrupted their 150th viewing of Tokyo Story and forced them to watch panem for the puerile populous. Not that watching Tokyo Story 150 times is bad, it’s a great film, it’s the disdain for the common that irks me among some critics.
Weekly Classic Film Recommendation
I’ll be providing a review of this film next week, and comparing it to both Peyton Place and My Favorite Wife (now that’s a combination for comparison), but I recommend checking out All I Desire on Criterion Channel or your favorite streaming service. The film is leaving Criterion on April 30th, but it is an interesting entry in what Stanley Cavell called the “remarriage film.” It’s also a film that proves that those who think that the “remarriage film” is just a “screwball comedy” with a happy ending are wrong.
All I Desire was directed by Douglas Sirk and successfully walks the melodramatic tightrope between sentiment that is genuine and that which is overbearing. This is entirely due to Barbara Stanwyck, who is amazing in the film as you can see in the brief clip of her reading Browning in the trailer below. Stanwyck is one of my all-time favorite actresses and her ability to shift from anger to sorrow to laughter at the drop of a hat serves her well in this film. It’s very well shot and if you look carefully, very carefully, you can see the part of the Universal Studios tour where you drive into the King Kong experience in one of the scenes. You’ve got to look carefully, and be very familiar with the Universal lot because it looks very different today, but it’s there.
That’s it for now.
What are you geeking out about?
Slowly getting caught up with my reading and here you go adding a dozen more things for me to follow—argh! ;) Seriously great stuff here, Christian, so thanks and I'll just have to work harder at keeping up.