Weekly Geekly Rundown for March 28, 2024
Gamers and “Go First Dice”
As someone who has played a lot of games, I am always interested in seeing how a game addresses the issue of which player goes first. Turn order and initiative systems are fundamental design choices. Having the ability to act first can give a strategic or tactical advantage to the “first mover” in achieving the game’s winning conditions. Like the first mover advantage in business, this potential is dependent on many other factors.
For example, the geek themed podcast I put together in 2007/2008 with Shawna Benson and Bill Cunningham preceded a lot of other geek culture podcasts, but it didn’t turn into a podcast empire. We were able to recruit good guests (John Rogers the creator of Leverage and other shows, Tim Minear of Firefly, Brandon Sanderson, David Goetsch a showrunner on The Big Bang Theory), but we lacked any revenue for marketing or any knowledge of marketing in general. Besides that, we weren’t the actual “first mover,” but the point remains that moving first or early can be balanced out with other factors. In the business world, those factors are resources, time, and talent. In a game, those resources are determined by the rules set and can be shifted to make things more equal for the players. For example, White is often viewed as having first move advantage in Chess. This is balanced in tournaments by the way sides are distributed in matches.
While in Chess the question of which side goes first is fixed in the rules. The player who plays White first, though, is an open question and some means must be used to determine who plays White. Answers vary based upon the level of competition, but typically involve some form of random assignment.
If we here at Geekerati were to decide who played White first in our friendly reader tournament, we might decide to use a coin flip. We might also decide to follow Reiner Knizia’s recommendation in his excellent book Dice Games Properly Explained.
“The proper way to determine who goes first, of course, is by throwing the dice. Each player throws the dice once, and the player with the highest total begins.” — Reiner Knizia, 2010
You might prefer an alternative to flipping a coin or rolling dice to determine who 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 (and I’ll be writing my own post soon about some ways you might consider). One problem with some of these solutions is that the determinations can be a game in and of itself and players end up using time they’d rather spend playing the game “merely” determining who acts first. After all, 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. It doesn’t make sense to look around the table, and in the mirror, to see who in your group has the pointiest ears in order to decide whether a player’s character or the Orcs under control of the Dungeon Master attack first. Though, it might be interesting to use this method if the opponents are Elves.
Since most gamers love collecting dice almost as much as they like playing games… Strike that, reverse it. Since most gamers like playing games almost as much as they like collecting dice, they might want to look into “Go First Dice” as their go to answer for determining who goes first in play or in combat.
Go First Dice are dice that you can roll to determine who goes first that are fair in that any roller has a likelihood of getting the highest number, but that have no possibility of two people rolling the same number which usually requires another roll after the tie. 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 GameTek mentioned quite a 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” from Maths Gear. I also purchased a set of Non-Transitive Grime Dice because I can never have enough dice in my collection.
The Lamentations of Luke Y. Thompson
has a lot of interesting stuff up on his Substack this week, but I wanted to focus on one of his film reviews. The film, The Assessment, is a 2024 dystopian science fiction thriller that stars Alicia Vikander, Elizabeth Olsen, and Himesh Patel (among others). Ever since I read Brave New World as a kid, and long before I got its explicit and implicit references to Plato, I have been a fan of dystopian fiction. It was for a long time, “my jam.” I’ve since shifted to a preference for optimistic science fiction, but just as modern kids have a subconscious longing for the mines that keeps them playing Minecraft, I have an Equilibrium sized hole in my heart that keeps pulling me towards dark visions of the future. The more I read Luke’s review though, the more I wondered if I could watch the film or whether it would make me distinctly uncomfortable. Luke provides sufficient warnings in his review that I saw no fewer than five red flags signaling that it would not be a pleasant experience. Not that every film, especially a dystopian film, needs to be pleasant. Some of the best films are those that make you uncomfortable, even when that discomfort comes from quintessentially “French” tropes. Add to that discomfort the fact that Luke’s description of the presented dystopia is reminiscent of Yorgos Lanthimo’s 2015 film The Lobster, where the narrative is personal and psychological and the ending a bit absurdist, I’m wondering when I would be in the right mood to watch the film. That kind of dystopic film requires me to be in a particular state of mind and it’s one I’m not in as frequently now that I’m older.
I’m torn. It sounds like the film has some interesting things to say about becoming a parent, especially when facing certain fears about the future of society and the effects of personal choice. It also stars Alicia Vikander, an actress I’ve been a fan of since I saw her in Seventh Son in the theater. Yes, I saw it in the theater. Yes, I thought she and Ben Barnes were a ton of fun in their roles. Yes, I’ve read many books in the series the movie is based on (called The Last Apprentice in the US). I found it incredible, as in not credible, when people argued she was the wrong choice for Lara Croft and think her Tomb Raider is the best in the franchise.
Speaking of The Last Apprentice, as fun as I thought the movie was it doesn’t do the first book justice at all. The movie makes the same mistake that I argued American Assassin made and tries to “up the stakes.” Instead of being a more child friendly, though still creepy, personal story in the vein of Steve Miner’s 1989 highly underrated film Warlock, it was closer to Breck Eisner’s Vin Diesel vehicle The Last Witch Hunter. That was fun, and I liked it, but it lacked substance.
It sounds like The Assessment isn’t fun, but that it does have substance. This one will have to wait for streaming service and a day when it’s just me in the house in need of an anti-pick me up film.
Courtney Howard’s View from the Center Seat
David Ayer is a film maker I have mixed feelings about. I thought he got a pretty darn good performance out of Keanu Reeves in Street Kings, one that foreshadowed his later portrayal of John Wick. I also liked End of Watch as a straight forward cop drama that lacked the noir depth that Street Kings had as a James Elroy adaptation. I’m not at all a fan of his Suicide Squad film. By the time that came out, I was already tired of the “Castle Defense Game as Plotline” film that seemed to be looping on repeat again and again and hit its peak with Age of Ultron. That said, I still think he got good performances out of the actors and the film had a good moodiness, even if the plot itself was lacking. Then again, I think I’m the only person in the world who liked his Netflix film Bright. but that’s probably just all the years spent playing Shadowrun talking.
His last partnership with Jason Statham, Beekeeper, had some good visceral revenge moments, but I can’t forgive the movie for the cheep and unnecessary inciting incident. The fraud was enough, no need for the suicide. That was a “fridge too far” for me, even as I like the rest.
With his latest film, Ayer combines his comic book director experience with his work with Jason Statham in adapting the first novel in comic book author Chuck Dixon’s Levon Cade series Levon’s Trade. In an age where Jack Carr’s James Reece, Lee Child’s Jack Reacher, Tony Hillerman’s Leaphorn and Chee, and C.J. Box’s Joe Pickett are being adapted to film and television, it seems natural that the creator of Batman’s Bane would get to see one of his characters brought to the screen. I’m just waiting for James Rollins’ Sigma Force novels, my daughter History’s favorite series, to be adapted. I mean, c’mon with a name like Sigma Force how can you not make a movie? It markets itself.
Anyway, back to Courtney Howard’s review of David Ayers’ latest film A Working Man (based on Levon’s Trade). Courtney starts off by letting us know that you’ve got to suspend your disbelief a bit when it comes to the setup, but that the action of the film is worth the ride. I won’t go too much into detail except to say that her largely complimentary review demonstrates that the film is filled with a lot of what Ayer does well, action and performance, even as it suffers from some of the same pratfalls of past Ayer productions in having stiff dialogue and obvious set ups. Let’s just say though that for as critical as Courtney gets at her most critical, she argues that the other 11 films in the book series should be adapted quickly. That’s high praise indeed.
Okay, that was a lot, but there’s a lot more to come. The Italian Substack
features an interesting glimpse into the small publishing past of role playing games with an article about the small print run American RPG Vikings & Valkyrs by Laurence Gillespie (1985). The discussion made me want to find a copy of this game and I now know that’s going to be a bit of a white whale quest. I will say that every time I think it was the internet that enabled people to finally acquire obscure games from countries on the other side of the world, I get reminded that like life “Geek Culture Finds a Way” to get fans connected with the product. If an Italian in the 1980s could acquire a copy of Vikings & Valkyrs, there may just be a chance for me.’s Substack has some great advice for people on the fence about whether or not they have the skill and/or knowledge to run a D&D session. The answer is a resounding, “Of course you do. Go out and run a game already!” Given how bad my early attempts at being a DM were, I can say firmly that this is the right advice. Like parenting, you’re never actually ready to DM. Also like parenting, by the time you are seriously considering it, you probably are actually ready. Sure, you’ll make mistakes, but mistakes are how we acquire wisdom. at has a bit of a hot take regarding the assumptions of OSR game play. In his “Myths of the OSR Part 1: Mudcore” essay, he argues that older adventures were more about attempts at heroism then they were about tragic Gongfarmers and Nightsoilmen being slaughtered by random horrors. Are older games “more” lethal mechanically than modern games? Sure, but the player characters were still “1st Level” and not “0-Level” and that really mattered. The games were always about heroics, even as the risk of character death was higher back in the day.
I was completely unfamiliar with “Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared” before reading about the YouTube and television series on Dr.
’s Substack. It’s a series that looks at first glance like a children’s show, only to sneak up on you and hit you in the horror receptors. I often joke that most British television that Americans enjoy isn’t from the BBC, it’s actually produced by ITV. When Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared finally migrated from YouTube to BoobTube, it aired on Channel 4, which reminded me that ITV wasn’t the only broadcast competitor to the BBC. From what I’ve been reading on Dr. King’s newsletter I’m definitely going to have to check this one out. I mean, how often do you see a muppet inspired show borrow scenes from Hellraiser? reminds us that the connection between Rush and Fantasy science fiction extends far beyond 2112 in his recent newsletter. If his Substack isn’t on your regular feed, it should be. It’s a combination of prog rock, fantasy and science fiction, role playing games, and so much more. of has an interview regarding the new Wyrd West Role Playing Game Huckleberry. The article was in depth enough to demonstrate that while there are thematic and mechanical similarities to my favorite Weird West game Deadlands, there are enough differences (i.e. a lot) to make it worth purchasing. I bought the pdf and am in the process of getting ready to run a session or two if I can drum up interest. It does have a lot of similarities to Deadlands, but they are similarities in the same way that Tunnels & Trolls has similarities to D&D. You can check out the free quick play rules here.
I love super hero role playing games. There was a time, before the digital explosion, that I could claim that I owned every super hero rpg that had been published. I do own the very first one and many that follow. My collection runs the gamut from highly complex games like Champions to abstract and indie games like With Great Power. You might think that my love of these games stems from the fact that I'm a HUGE comic book geek, and that's true, but I also love them for another reason.
It's because I find super hero games extremely easy to run on the fly and without hours or days of preparation.
This ease is due to a wide variety of reasons. First and foremost is that they are the among most accessible games for people to play. "Accessible?," you say, "but aren't Champions and Mutants and Masterminds tremendously complex when it comes to character creation?" Yes, they can be mechanically complex and that partially explains why they never caught fire in table top play in the same way that fantasy games have, but all superhero games are more accessible for new players than fantasy role playing games because they require less homework. At least, they traditionally required more homework.
When I run a fantasy role playing game set in a fantasy world, there is always a learning curve regarding the nature of the setting. If I play in an Eberron campaign I need to know certain things about the setting that are completely different than if I'm in Dark Sun, Oerth, Mystara, Westeros, or a million other worlds. For me, “setting matters.” When I run a fantasy RPG, I want it to feel like I’m running a game in that setting. That means no Tieflings or Giff in my Dragonlance game, but it also means my players can make the full anthropomorphic equivalent of the animatronics from Five Nights at Freddy’s in my Mystara game.
I think one of the reasons for the modern boom of fantasy based gaming is because the livestream play, and a lot of on table play, forgets setting and engages players using the “you’re superheroes” formula. In most superhero campaigns, all I need to say is "you will be playing a superhero team based in Los Angeles" and everyone is in a similar imaginary landscape. While I need to worry that the "magic system" of a fantasy setting fits the setting, comic books don't care about such things. Doctor Fate's cosmic scale mysticism stands side by side with John Constantine's arcane rituals, Amethyst's crystal magic, and Arion's Atlantean magic.
The stories also fall into place. How do the characters get together as a team? I'll just borrow the classic get the team together through misunderstanding and melee that made me fall in love with Marvel's The Champions or the first issue of The Avengers. This misunderstanding melee meetup provides a perfect opportunity to teach the players the rules of the game, build personalities, and introduce villains who will be used throughout the campaign.
One of the absolute best super hero games is TSR's Marvel Superheroes Adventure Game. It's simple card-driven system and game balance allow for every player in a combat to matter. Captain America is always an important contributor, and unlike in the new Defenders TV series, so is Iron Fist. The character sheets are easy to read. And my favorite part? The cards have enough information on them that by drawing about 5 from the deck, you can come up with an adventure on the fly with location, motivation, and villain determined at a quick glance.
My music recommendations have a bit of a theme. At least they do after the first “not really a music recommendation so much as a recommendation that has a musician in it.” I’ve mentioned before that while my Bavarian heritage demands, thank you Oma, that I am a fan of Bayern Munich, my Football heart also belongs to Wolverhampton Wanderers (aka Wolves). March 28th, today, is the birthday of on of the Wolverhampton greats, Steve Bull, so I thought I’d share a birthday tribute featuring fellow Wolves fan Robert Plant for your enjoyment. Like Thomas Muller is for current Bayern Munich fans, Steve Bull is for Wolves fans. One big exception, Bully played for Wolves when they were in the lowest division and was a big part of their eventual return to top tier Football. Oh, and his first goal for Wolves was against Wrexham.
Okay, on to the actual music recommendations. Those of you who have hung out here at Geekerati long enough know that I like to say that I’m pretentiously anti-pretense. In this scene from High Fidelity, I’m figuratively the guy calling John Cusack and Jack Black snobs. Speaking of which, Alex Désert who plays “Louis” is in Swingers, The Flash TV Series (original), Becker, a ton of other things I like, and is the voice of Nick Fury in The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.
Anyway, I recently had a conversation about great “party” songs and I thought I’d share my list. Naturally, any such list has to begin with Black Flag’s TV Party. It’s a song rooted in the lost laziness of youth and in the pop-culture of the early 80s. Most of the shows mentioned are meaningless to modern audiences, but they are a reminder that TV parties were once a thing. For me and my friends it was 90210 parties. For Black Flag, it was watching Dallas and That’s Incredible. It’s a great party song, celebrating a party tradition that needs revival. Netflix Party tonight! Netflix Party tonight!
If you don’t include Andrew W.K. in your list of party songs, are you even partying. I know that Andrew gets a lot of hate for how watered down his music is compared to the highly technical metal that was coming out just as his career was exploding. Essentially, he was MTV faux metal in many minds. But if you view him in the tradition of Black Flag and TV Party, he’s a perfect fit. He’s more punk that the Sex Pistols, but they were just a boy band created for a clothing line designed by Malcolm McClaren and Vivienne Westwood.
When I was an undergrad, we used to say that Steve Miller Band’s Greatest Hits Album was the greatest party album of all time. It’s filled with banger after banger, but I think every party needs Jet Airliner to play at least once before the keg is empty.
While you are cutting loose and partying, you might as well party like the world is about to end and we all know the world will end in 1999. Prince told us so, and so did Y2K fearmongers.
Kid’s today don’t seem to party as much as they did when I was younger. I look around the college campus and I see more people meeting on apps than at events. Now more than ever, young people need to fight for their right to party.
Earlier in the week, I reviewed American Assassin and said that it was enjoyable, but missed the mark on so many levels. The fight scenes lacked the beauty they needed and the plot was too big in scale. One of the films that I used as a reference for how the film should look was David Mamet’s Redbelt. It was a film that surprised me when I saw it. I knew a Mamet film would have good dialogue, but I would never have guessed he could do a film with good action. Yet that’s what he did.
Redbelt was going to be this week’s recommendation, but that was before I realized that this week was the 40th Anniversary of one of the best American martial arts films ever produced. Released in 1985, and not afraid to mirror Hong Kong martial arts films in having characters know kung fu “because reasons,” Berry Gordy combined a critique of 1980s pop music and a love of kung fu films with a paean to Blaxsploitation films in The Last Dragon.
For any fan of Hong Kong kung fu films ranging from Bruce Lee to Shaw Brothers, the plot is familiar. The head of a powerful martial arts school wants to prove his school is the best by defeating, and subjugating, the masters of every other school in the territory. He has crushed all opposition and all that stands between him and total domination of the martial arts community is the lone hero.
In Chinese Connection (it was supposed to be called Fist of Fury but The Big Boss got a title similar to that title and so it was renamed using the name intended for The Big Boss), the oppressive Japanese Karate School is brutalizing all of the Chinese Kung Fu Schools in a demonstration of why Japan has succeeded in conquering part of China. It is only Chen Zhen who stands in the way of Japan’s powerful school. In The Last Dragon, only Bruce Leroy can stand up to Sho’Nuff, the Shogun of Harlem and protect the community. Gordy takes this simple plot and adds two enriching elements. The first is a mystical component where great warriors are capable of focusing their energy to the point where their hands can emit an empowered glow. In essence, a great warrior is like Marvel’s Iron Fist and can focus energy into their hands. A true master, on the other hand, can cause their entire body to glow. They are more than a warrior, they have achieved emptiness and their entire body is a mystical weapon.
As cool as that component is, it is the critique of the music industry and the incorporation of Blaxploitation elements that adds lasting cultural value to the film. This is a fun action film, but it is also a film with some critical depth regarding how the film and music industry portray Black characters. I’m Gonna Get You Sucka makes many of the same cultural points, but it does so as a comedy. While The Last Dragon has humorous elements, and is often over the top, the sincerity of the actors, the soundtrack, and the caliber of martial arts choreography elevate it.
Speaking of over the top, as beautiful as the romantic leads Taimak and Vanity are in the movie, and they are both very beautiful (just check out Taimak stretching at the beginning of the trailer), it is Julius Carry who steals the show as Sho’Nuff. The fact is Carry often stole the show in productions he starred in. He outshined Bruce Campbell in The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. for goodness’ sake. He died in 2008, at a far too young 56 years of age, due to pancreatic cancer, but he is the driving force of this movie. Great heroes require great villains and Julius Carry’s Sho’Nuff is one of the best villains in cinematic history. His costume is simple and should be comical, but Carry’s performance makes it work. He is riveting and like Steve James of the American Ninja franchise, he is one of the B-Movie greats. They took movies that would otherwise seem silly and made them wonderful.
While Carry’s performance is the acting highlight of the show, Taimak is the martial arts highlight and it’s a great highlight. If you compare the choreography of this film to American classics like The Octagon, Enter the Ninja, American Ninja, Remo Williams, No Retreat No Surrender, or Gymkata you get angry that Taimak didn’t get more work. His acting is a bit wooden, but it’s better than the actors in more than half of the films I just mentioned. Of the stars in the above films, only Chuck Norris compares in skill and his choreography was often muted because the stunt men were often more familiar with classic Hollywood blocking than the blocking required in a martial arts film. Ernie Reyes Sr., working with Taimak, created some very engaging fights, including a fun moment with future star Ernie Reyes Jr.
Check this out!
Based on the special features interviews, it seems Taimak was not an easy actor to work with, and he did not take to it naturally, but needed lots of extra coaching.
Surprised to hear Warlock described as underrated, but I guess it may be now, as I haven't heard anyone talk about it in years. In my heyday HBO/VHS horror-watching years, it seemed like people rated it appropriately.
Cool rules nerd 😎