Weekly Geekly for July 5, 2024
A little late after the holiday, but filled with goodness.
The Mathematics of Hasbro’s Risk
Risk was the first war game I ever played. I remember finding my parents’ copy of the game in our hallway closet high on the top shelf. While the box cover depicted a Napoleonic era cannon that reminded me of the album cover of my Oma’s copy of the 1812 Overture, the pieces themselves were a bit odd. There were a combination of tripods and asterisks. What could these pieces possibly represent?
I read the rules to the game and I immediately wanted to play, but my parents weren’t up for a game for a little while. I was too young, and the memory too distant, to remember exactly how long it was between me discovering the game and me getting to play the game for the first time, but I do know there was a gap. I also found my parents’ copy of Facts in Five at the same time and I’ve never played that game. Thinking back on my parents’ game collection, small as it was compared to the modern table top fan, it’s clear that my love of games is due to my parents having a similar love of social recreation.
When I did finally get to play the game, I had a great time. I don’t know whether I won or lost. I’ll assume I lost because I was really young, but I do know that I said Kamchatka a lot so there must have been quite the power struggle in Asia.
While I am of the opinion that Risk is an ideal introductory war game, it’s reviews on Board Game Geek are fairly mixed and it has an overall rating of 5.6. This puts it somewhere between “average game, slightly boring” and “okay game, will play sporadically if in the right mood.” My personal rating for the game is a 7 using the Board Game Geek scale because I think it is a good game that I am usually willing to play. This is because it is a highly accessible game to the non-obsessive and casual gamer.
I understand that it isn’t a perfect game. The biggest problem the game has is that it allows for player elimination and that means less fun for those who are eliminated early. Since Risk can last a while, this can be a pretty big drawback. Another drawback is that there is a kind of inertia to the game. The game can come to a point where who the victor will be is pretty obvious, minus some pretty unlikely die rolls, and playing to the end can seem pointless at that point. Of course, if you keep these two problems in mind there are a couple of solutions. The first, and one of two implemented by Risk: Godstorm, is to limit the number of turns of play. If the game is limited to 6 turns the game speeds up and it is unlikely that any one player has been completely eliminated. You can then score territories and declare a winner. The second is to end play after one player has been eliminated and score the game then.
Regardless of whether you are as big a fan of Risk as I am, the game provides a great introduction for how to think about games strategically and tactically. This video from Numberphile that was published late last year touches upon some of what makes Risk, contrary to its rating on BGG, such a popular game with the main stream public.
Weekly Film Article Cavalcade
The Lamentations of Luke Y. Thompson
This week Luke reviews one of my guilty pleasure films as he discusses the new 4K release of UHF. If you are Gen X or a Cineaste, this film is filled with pop culture references and nods to classic films. Weird Al Yankovic understands parody and he has a love for the independent and that comes across in this picture. While Luke focuses how the humor, and cast, might intersect with modern sensibilities, I wonder whether the references behind many of the jokes will connect with Gen Z and later. While UHF is something that people learn about in FCC Technician Class Radio Certification, and while the story is universal enough to connect across time, there are a lot of era specific jokes in the movie. I’ll have to ask my daughters or Kevin how the film connects.
Sticking with Gen X experiences, Luke also reviews the new 4k release of the 1990 Flash television series. Given the connection with the modern CW show, it’s nice to see this get a new release and as Luke points out in his review, this is a pretty darn good show. It’s not perfect, and suffers from limitations due to tech and budget, but it’s a fun show.
Courtney Howard’s View from the Center Seat
Nostalgia sequels have been quite the thing of late and I am glad that they are. I didn’t really like the period of sarcastuels where film makers made fun of beloved properties of old. Though films like Starsky and Hutch or 21 Jump Street were entertaining in their own way, I would have preferred that they take the subject matter seriously and try to update what were once cutting edge stories for a new generation. Michael Mann’s update of Miami Vice was a very good film, and as I mentioned in my recommendation for Mann’s Thief it took a scene straight from a Starsky and Hutch episode, largely due to the fact that it took the material seriously.
I don’t know when the shift away from sarcastuels to actual sequels/remakes occurred, but thank God it happened. Courtney Howard reviews the most recent of these sequels with Eddie Murphy’s Beverly Hills revival Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F. She gives the film a largely positive review and unlike a lot of reviews out there, she properly contextualizes the film’s place in the franchise. The proper comparison to make for Axel F isn’t with the first film in the franchise. For all that the film is a product of its time, it is still one heck of an action film. The proper context, especially when evaluating whether this is a mere “cash grab,” is to include some comparison to Beverly Hills Cop III. Let’s just say that Beverly Hills Cop III was so bad that it almost made me hate my childhood amusement park. Parts of the movie were filmed in Santa Clara’s Great America amusement park and I would get movie flashbacks when I went to the park. Flashbacks that made my roller coaster riding experience less fun. Think about that, a movie so bad that it made going to a coaster park a mid experience. That’s a bad movie. Thankfully, Courtney Howard lets us know that Axel F is more than a money grab. It’s an actual attempt to entertain.
Glimpses from the Substackosphere and Bloggerverse
Speaking of wargames,
asks the all important question of what exactly a wargame is and how it is different from other games. I like that they cited from Dunnigan’s classic work and updated the definition to include modern developments without abandoning the core of the definition.
Boy howdy, my Weekly Geekly is filled with nostalgia this week. That continues with this week’s
newsletter by . The nostalgia focused newsletter gets extra nostalgic this week as it discusses the closure of the Living Computer Museum in Seattle. As a fan of Christian Simpson’s Retro Recipes YouTube channel, and not just because his name is also Christian, I have a special place in my heart for retrocomputing. I bought a Commodore 64 a couple of years ago and I also purchased a DIY kit that will let me and my daughters build a clone of the first Apple computer. I think what I like most about retrocomputing is that it helps you understand how modern computers work. By building an old computer, or learning basic, you get a more intimate look at how memory works and how the circuitry of computers translates into what we see on the screens. So reading about the closure of a retrocomputing museum made me a little sad, especially since it wasn’t located that far from me. gives a rundown of Perfect Dark Zero in a recent post. I’ve never played any of the Perfect Dark games, but they come highly recommended and it was interesting to read the long journey this particular entry took from development to production. I was thinking about the challenges that 3rd party D&D designers face when Hasbro releases an update or new edition, but those pale in comparison to the challenges of keeping up with advances in game systems. has yet another great rundown of the latest in the Sword & Sorcery genre over at his newsletter. There’s a lot of cool stuff in it, but I’d like to highlight his mention of the newly funding anthology Beating Hearts and Battle Axes which describes itself as “a spicy, romantic Sword & Sorcery anthology.” This naturally leads to the question of whether Sword & Sorcery as a genre is well served by “spicy” and “romantic” content. One might argue that Robert E. Howard’s tale of romance and adventure Queen of the Black Coast meets that definition. It’s certainly “spicy” as is the amateur published (in The Fantasy Fan) tale “The Gods of the North” aka “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter.”
The first real “romantic” Sword & Sorcery I remember reading is the excellent Hawk & Fisher books by Simon Green. If you ever wondered what Lord Darcy and Lizzie Bennett would act like if they were Fafhrd and Grey Mauser-esque companions, the Hawk & Fisher books are for you. While the Blue Moon books featuring Hawk & Fisher are fairly straight forward fantasy with an Austenian twist, the anthologized short stories are certainly Sword & Sorcery.
So there are spicy Sword & Sorcery tales and there are romantic Sword & Sorcery tales, but what about the combination? One might say that the Fafhrd and Grey Mauser stories have tales that qualify, but those tend to be tragic. In fact, apart from Thongor and Hawk & Fisher, most Sword & Sorcery romances are pretty tragic. The fate of Elric’s loves is similar to that of Spinal Tap drummers, or protagonists in Lovecraftian chapters in a shared authorship story. I’m intrigued, but wonder whether the stories will be Den, Gor, or something with more heart.
Role Playing Game Recommendation
Since I’ll be reviewing the first edition of Villains & Vigilantes later this week, in part because I promised
that I would do just that, I thought I’d use this space to recommend the second edition of Villains & Vigilantes which still stands decades later as one of the best superhero roleplaying games ever published. V&V, as it is lovingly called, was the second superhero role playing game to be professionally published. The first was Superhero ‘44 (revised as Superhero 2044), and I’ll post a review of that later this week as well. V&V’s first edition was quickly followed by the release of Supergame by Jay and Aimee (Hartlove) Milan.While V&V was the second superhero roleplaying game published, it was actually the first fully playable superhero game to hit the market. Jeff Dee and Jack Harmon were not only the youngest designers to ever publish and rpg, at the time, but they also produced the first “complete” superhero role playing game. It may not have had as deep a setting as Superhero 2044, and the first edition mechanics may have been convoluted, but it was very playable. That playability only increased with the second edition of the game.
While Superhero 2044 has a playable mechanical foundation, it lacked any real character design component. There are no rules for how to design superpowers in Superhero 2044 and it wasn’t until Wayne Shaw published some rules in The Chaos Lords fanzine that Superhero 2044 was a fully realized game. Though it never became a fully realized game, that didn’t stop it from influencing both Supergame and Champions. Both of these games have combat based on Superhero 2044 and Wayne Shaw is credited in early Champions rulebooks for his influence on the character building in that system.
Villains & Vigilantes first edition has a unique combat system, one that I’ll cover later this week, but it is very rough around the edges. This is probably why the game did not pick up as much steam as it deserved and was quickly displaced by Champions 1st edition (and 2nd edition) as the superhero “big dog.” To be sure, a successful launch at the Origins game convention and Aaron Allston’s advocacy of Champions in the pages of Space Gamer magazine certainly helped Champions move from a regional Bay Area game to a darn successful rpg. But Jeff Dee’s art and an easy to implement character creation system could have made V&V first edition a success if the combat system wasn’t so arcane.
Jeff and Jack quickly moved to address this issue and completely revamped the combat system in a second edition of Villains & Vigilantes. This second edition did not displace Champions as the powerhouse in the superhero genre, but it was a strong seller for Fantasy Games Unlimited and it had one of the best marketing campaigns for any role playing game of its era. Have a look at these ads from Dragon Magazine in the early 80s:
What made this ads successful, and one of the things that made me a big fan of V&V after my friend Rob introduced me to the system, was that the combined Dee’s evocative comic book art with statistics that looked vaguely familiar to people who played D&D. Even before I knew the system, I had a good idea of how to interpret the characters in the ads. When I finally did learn the system, it’s similarity to D&D made it easy to learn.
I say “similarity to D&D” because the game used a twenty-sided die, had hit points, and included a combat “to hit” table similar to the ones in the DM’s Guide. Other than that the games are actually very different. One major example of the difference is that Villains and Vigilante’s to hit rolls are “roll under” rolls and that the “to hit” tables are an interaction of attack powers vs. defense powers rather than being “level vs. armor class.”
That interaction of power vs. defense was and is one of my favorite things about the game. Seeing that having an “Android Body” makes it more likely that you are going to be hit by the electricity based “lightning power” added to the game’s verisimilitude. The game wasn’t “effects based” like Champions, but it had flavor galore and a bunch of wonderful products. That interaction of powers vs. defense though did make it more challenging to run the game when I finally decided to try it as the rpg for my gaming group.
At first, I tried to run the game by prepping my adventures narratively and picking out the villains etc., but while relying on the Game Master’s screen to calculate the numbers that the players and villains would need to roll in order to hit their opponents. The players had a good time, but I ended those first sessions a little over worked. It wasn’t hard to look at the charts in game to calculate the to hit rolls, but it did take up more time than I wanted and slowed combats down. And one thing that a superhero rpg really benefits from is a speedy and dynamic combat system.
It took me a while to come up with what I thought was an ideal solution, to calculate all the basic to hit rolls before hand. I knew what attacks and defenses my players’ characters had and I certainly knew the attacks and defenses of the villains. Why wait for “in game” to calculate the base to hit numbers for everyone? Why not do that as part of my prep? So that’s what I did and it worked fairly well, but it did require me to photocopy pages of the book and flip back and forth through the book from time to time causing wear and tear on it and leading me to buy multiple copies (that’s a good thing).
Eventually, I decided to create a spreadsheet that would allow me to quickly calculate the to hit numbers, and was easier on my eyes than looking at the printed page. I’ve included that combat calculator below. It still requires some in game math, it doesn’t include the individual bonuses that high stats will give players, but it’s a really good start. As you can see from this screen cap of it, it’s easy to use.
I imagine you could use it in game, but I prefer to do that pre-game prep. Then you have all the basic information on the character sheets for your villains or on a combat tracker. It makes the game run smoothly and, as you’ll see from a game review I’ll do soon, the 2nd edition of V&V is a very fun game to play.
Music Recommendation
Matthew Sweet first hit my radar with the anime inspired video he did for his song Girlfriend, but one of my favorite Sweet songs is Farther Down from the soundtrack of the film Can’t Hardly Wait. The song starts a little slowly, but when it hits the chorus I find it pulls my heartstrings nicely.
Another song that really pulls my heartstrings, and often makes me cry, is Yaz/Yazoo’s classic song Only You. I first heard it in the movie The Chocolate War, but it appears in Can’t Hardly Wait as well and at a good moment. I have an interesting relationship with The Chocolate War, both the book and film. I’ve always thought the film had a fantastic soundtrack, but I never connected with the film or the book as a youth. I dismissed the bullying as dated and elitist. It didn’t connect with my world experiences at all. It was only after my mom died of heroin addiction that I came to fully appreciate both works. They now stand among my favorite works of art and have helped me contextualize so many emotions.
I guess we’ll go for the Can’t Hardly Wait trifecta, the movie also features my favorite Eve 6 song Open Road Song. I remember singing this song at the top of my lungs with my, then girlfriend and now wife Jody, as we drove from Reno to Disneyland along Highway 395. It was late at night and the sky was dark. It was a truly magical drive.
Classic Film Recommendation
You didn’t think that I’d recommend three songs from a film and not recommend the movie did you? I was scanning through the various Criterion Channel selections for this month and I noticed that Can’t Hardly Wait was featured in their Great Ensemble collection. While I own the film, both on DVD and streaming, I haven’t watched it in quite some time, so I decided to hit play and see how it held up.
While Jody and I thought the film held up well, it was when our daughter History wandered over from playing Dragon Age: Inquisition to check out what mom and dad were watching that I realized how well the film worked. I also came to realize that they don’t make a lot of teen films like this anymore. Sure, you’ll get Disney+ films like The Descendants series or Prom, but the summer “teenage years are fleeting and should be appreciated” films seem to be distinctly lacking.
As much fuss as psychologists like Jon Haidt make about the damage that social media and constant phone use have done to the psyche of teenagers because of the isolation surrounding that kind of communication, I think that a lack of sympathetic mainstream stories telling them everything is going to be okay might be a bigger deal. Sure, Mean Girls came out last year, but that was a remake of a remake and a watered down one at that. Barbie kind the emotional button of this kind of film, but wasn’t a direct corollary. My daughters often sing songs from Heathers, the Musical, but once again that’s a remake. Happy Death Day and Freaky? Spins off existing films. Those that do exist, like The Fault in Our Stars are depressing rather than sympathetic. Baby Driver is the right age group, but a different tale and Scott Pilgrim was 14 years ago and the re-imagining was an animated series that lacked some of the complexity.
Where are their movies? Because they want them, at least my daughters do. It’s clear by how much they love John Hughes films and the host of other 80s to 90s teen targeted films that these films speak to them, but they can only speak to them so much. While much of being a teen is universal, at least post 1950s in the US, each generation has unique challenges and I don’t think this generation has enough people trying to tell their stories. The positive stories that say “Being a teenager is hard, but everything is going to be okay.”
Thanks for the informative and entertaining dive into V&V 2nd edition!
Thanks for the mention!
Risk definitely shows its age, and probably deserves the 5.6 rating on BGG. I put Risk in the same category as Tactics II, which I mentioned at Skeleton Code Machine recently. It's a formative game for me, and influenced how I think about games. I respect and appreciate the design, and yet there are far better alternatives available today. I'd be more likely to grab Inis, Blood Rage, or Kemet off the shelf.
If you have the time and don't mind some complexity, Imperial 2030 has the look of Risk but the players are investors rather than nations. Fascinating game!