Weekly Geekly Rundown for August 18, 2023
Racing Marbles, Solo Gaming, and Plague
Formula 1 with Marbles? Why not?
One of the things that happens when you are willing “to geek out about anything” is that you come across some interesting combinations of things you geek out about on a regular basis. Ever since our twins, History and Mystery (not their real names), were born, my wife and I have been active Formula 1 fans. If you’re asking, “Why?!” Let’s just say that one of the wonderful things about Formula 1 is that races take place all over the world and that means that races broadcast LIVE at pretty much any time and when you are awake for the constant stream of feeding that is twins with “out of synch” feeding schedules you are looking for something, anything, to watch. Since the Formula 1 schedule includes practice, qualifying, and a race, that’s three days of really entertaining content at 3 am (depending on location).
Let’s just say that hearing soothing British commentators while under the fog and graininess of sleep deprivation is a blessing, for you and for the kids you want to go back to sleep. Sure, not every race takes place at remote times, but enough do that my wife and I became huge fans. We still watch and keep track today, though we don’t religiously watch practice and “qualie” like we used to.
Combine my love of Formula 1 with my love of board games, yes I own several racing board games, as well as the YouTube algorithm and what do you get? You get directed to Marbula One, a pretty awesome series created in the Netherlands by Jelle’s Marble Runs that imagines a world of racing marbles. The creative team takes the endeavor very seriously and the commentary is fantastic. If only we’d known about it when the twins were younger, we would have had something to watch when Formula 1 wasn’t on. Check it out, it’s really cool.
Weekly Luke Y Thompson and Courtney Howard Film Article Cavalcade
I know that a lot of people are experiencing cinema superhero fatigue, but I’m not one of those people. Maybe it’s because I grew up watching The New Adventures of Lois and Clark, Knight Rider, The Flash, and a host of other super and pseudo-super shows as a kid. Maybe it’s because I have been a comic book fan my entire life, reading everything from Ambush Bug and Superman to Slapstick. Maybe it’s because super hero role playing games are my favorite genre of the medium. Whatever it is, I’m not anywhere near superhero fatigue. By the looks of it, neither are either of my regularly hosted critics.
Luke Y Thompson compares the new Blue Beetle film to the classic tv series The Greatest American Hero and finds that it measures up nicely.
Courtney Howard says the Blue Beetle film is best when it is original and heartfelt, which is a lot of the time.
I’ve long been a fan of Blue Beetle in all his incarnations. I think that Keith Giffen (who wrote some of the best Ted Kord stories) and John Rogers (Leverage, The Core) created a pretty special character when they co-created Jaime Reyes with Cully Hamner. He was a great mix of the old and new. I had been furious with DC for what Brad Meltzer had done to my beloved Ted Kord, but all that rage evaporated with the new version of the character. If the new movie captures half the magic of the character in the books, and by these reviews it looks like it captures more than half, it will be worth seeing.
Oh, and check out Luke’s review of Cinderella that he wrote for Geekerati earlier this week too.
Cinderella Barbenheimer – The Princess Doll as WMD
It seems odd that as a young boy I would have been excited to see Cinderella, except for one thing – I implicitly trusted Disney. The company's obvious intent to become something kids give automatic love to had evdiently worked, in large part because my parents also both approved of it, which was the real miracle. My father, like many Boomers, thought D…
Classic Roleplaying Game Recommendation
In fact, it would be fair to say that many of my first gaming experiences were running "solo" runs of characters through The Keep on the Borderlands. These sessions amounted to me rolling up 5 or 6 D&D characters, covering up the DM map of the Caves of Chaos to hide parts of the map my characters couldn't see, and resolving the mechanics as much as possible.
I had a good time playing this way, though it was nowhere near as fun as playing with friends, and the temptation to "cheat" was surprisingly small. This is likely due to two or three factors. First, I wasn't very personally vested in the personality of any given character. They were ciphers to me. They were about as real as your average RTS "trooper." Second, playing a dungeon solo made the game essentially a logic puzzle with a relatively simple solution -- only the "mechanics" made things difficult. Third, there was very little reward for cheating and the emotional reward for succeeding without cheating outweighed the reward for cheating. Besides, the punishment for failure was making more characters who could then be run through the adventure. It was a fun solitary activity for someone who had friends, but very few who played role playing games.
While I enjoyed running these solitary adventures, there did seem to be something lacking. They were logic puzzles without an "antagonist." In a normal logic puzzle it's your mind against that of the puzzle's creator (with only one solution), but in these solitary runs there were many possible solutions and there didn't feel like there were any "stakes" to the playing. Given enough time using modules written for groups as solo endeavors, I would have likely stopped gaming altogether.
Then I met Mark. He and his family had come to Reno from Chicago and he and I shared a lot of interests. One of these interests was role playing games. We became fast friends, but friends who began to compete with each other regarding who could find the next cool thing. Mark was the first to discover Michael Moorcock. I was the first to discover the Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks -- which looked to be the ultimate solution to the solo game experience. (Point of fact, I still highly recommend them.) Then Mark discovered something "better." He discovered the Tunnels and Trolls role playing game which supported both group and solo play, and had some very well designed solo adventures. The humor in the game appealed to our middle school minds -- I still find it appealing -- and the adventures were more "adult" than those in the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, which made them perfect young boys amped up on teenage hormones.
These solo adventures did vary in quality, but there were a couple that stand out as some of the greatest modules ever written -- City of Terrors, Arena of Khazan, Overkill, and Sewers of Oblivion provided me with hours and hours of enjoyment. What was more, when I played Arena of Khazan it felt like I was playing against someone -- someone with a cruel and darkly humorous mind. The author, Ken St. Andre, killed scores of my characters as I attempted to explore the stories he drafted for players like me. I loved every minute of it. Often "losing" in a Ken St. Andre, or Michael Stackpole, written adventure was more fun than "winning." They were great fun and they are very much responsible for my love of the gaming hobby, as they embody one of the things that the hobby is about -- creating communities across distances.
I had always wanted to game in a "face to face" experience with Ken St. Andre as my game master. I had imagined the dozens of devious devices he would use to bring about my characters' demise. Then at the 2010 Gen Con, I finally got the chance when Ken set up a quick pick up game on the floor of the Exhibit hall while he was taking a break from his hard work at the Flying Buffalo booth.
My friend Eric and I, along with a couple of other eager players, sat down with Ken for a brief and fun filled adventure. Typical of a St. Andre adventure, the plot was straightforward and to the point. A wizard had summoned a group of "heroes" from Earth's famous GenCon to help him reacquire the source of his magic. We had only our wits to guide us as we ventured into a goblin lair to help this mysterious magic man acquire an item of great power. Personally, I question how eager we were to help a man we knew nothing about, but as gamers we were used to making snap decisions based on Fantasy tropes "in character." Why not do them ourselves.
Our group did quite well for some time, carefully navigating a couple of Ken's tempting traps. It looked like we all were going to actually live through the adventure. Then came the final puzzle. Ah yes, the final puzzle. It was so obvious, but I knew better than to assume the obvious. Ken had killed me -- in his printed modules -- for assuming the obvious in the past. There had to be some trick, and so our party numbers quickly dwindled as we engaged the puzzle. Eric's character died, a young player's character died, my character died. Then someone assumed the obvious and solved the puzzle.
It was great fun, with a great group of players -- for the most part. There was one player who had the common gamer "I want to be the best and will use the rules however I can to maximize potential for success" attitude. Didn't he know that he was playing Tunnels and Trolls? This game is about whimsy and fun, not about "success." He took things far too seriously, and play suffered briefly for his sternness -- only briefly. By the end, I think he was actually catching on.
Some day I'll do a statistical analysis to show how the rules of T&T actually discourage power gaming, but that is for another time. Let's just say that playing in a Ken St. Andre written/run game is like adventuring in an L. Sprague DeCamp "Enchanter" Story and not like adventuring in a world of Tolkien, Moorcock, or Howard. Fun and humor are the first rules, winning and "drama" are for other writers.
My brief experience with Ken was everything I hoped that it would be and it recaptured the joy that the solo adventures had brought me as a young man. I was simultaneously experiencing fun and nostalgia at the same time, quite like that a fan would experience when his/her childhood baseball team wins the World Series. I both enjoyed the moment, and the memories it brought to mind.
It's rare that we get to thank those who have created the games, movies, books, or shows that we have enjoyed in a personal way. We are often limited to the formal "signing" booth or some other constructed moment that may or may not be remembered by the creator. I'd like to take this time to thank Ken for a great time, both at GenCon and during my childhood.
I also highly recommend playing a few sessions of Tunnels & Trolls. It’s a very different experience from most RPG play.
Classic Music Recommendation
Caravan is a jazz classic that heavily features the drums. I watched this rendition by Greyson Nekrutman recently and it’s been on my regular rotation of listens since. It’s a great song and Greyson’s technique is fun to watch.
Classic Film Recommendation
I’ve been delaying this recommendation for weeks as one film or another came up in my viewing queue pushing this recommendation to the side, but at last the time has come. Roger Corman is primarily known for two things. First, providing the training ground for some of the greatest film makers of their generation. Coppola, Scorsese, Howard, and many more cut their teeth working on Roger Corman projects. Second, making cheap exploitation films with a high fun component but of relatively low cinematic quality.
While many of Corman’s films are far more fun than they deserve to be given the production quality (I’m looking at you Battle Beyond the Stars), there is a string of films that mark a huge exception. Corman did a run of movies inspired by the writings of Edgar Allan Poe. With screenplays by the very talented Richard Matheson, whose short story Duel was the inspiration for Stephen Spielberg’s first film, and starring the always excellent Vincent Price, Roger Corman’s Poe movies stand apart from his other films as something truly special. Masque of the Red Death is not only a well written and well acted film that touches on a number of horror themes, it is also a beautifully shot film. While the influence of The Seventh Seal is obvious, the combination of that influence with a rich use of color makes for powerful imagery.
I love your Tunnels & Trolls experiences - thanks for sharing!
You have marble F1, I raise you the M-1 aka Medieval MMA.