Games Workshop (the company that made Blood Bowl) has apparently convinced Amazon to take down the book Spots the Space Marine: Defense of the Fiddler because they've got a common law trademark on the term 'space marine'. Now, I don't know enough about trademark law to know if they actually have a case or not. What I do know is Amazon believed them enough to stop selling the book. And I firmly believe that they shouldn't have a case. Patent/copyright/trademark/ip laws are absurd and the whole system needs to be reworked. It's absurd that someone could even think that the idea of a 'space marine' in science fiction is something that should be limited to one company. And even if it wasn't absurd Games Workshop didn't invent the idea of a marine in space!
I read a law blog (Popehat) that calls out frivolous lawsuits and their post on this situation asks for gamers and/or science fiction lovers to yell at Games Workshop and/or spread the word on the story. I only play the one Games Workshop game and I've already paid the full cost of that program already so there'd be no substance behind any threat to boycott them (though my biggest problem is with the system that lets them do this) but I can certainly try to spread the word.
Oh, and it turns out Kobo hasn't taken down the nice lady's book, so I also bought it. I like science fiction; maybe I'll like this book. I certainly would never have been exposed to it if Games Workshop hadn't been so mean.
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 06, 2013
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Hunger Games: Training Days
At the end of 2010 I was at a local book store trying to spend a gift certificate when a board game caught my eye. It was a board game based off of a book trilogy (the third book had just come out) and was marked down 75% off. A quick look at the game didn't get my hopes up that it was going to be very good and I'd never heard of the book series. I decided to get the first book and then later pick up the other two books and the game if I liked the first one.
It turned out that the first book, Hunger Games, is awesome. Possibly my favourite book of all-time, though we know how hard it can be to compare things across years and years. At any rate, it's really good. I eventually went back for the second two books (sadly only in hardcover when I got them) and the game. The game was gone, however. Oh well...
I was out at 401 last month and saw they actually had a copy of it. I snapped it up and gave it to my sister for Christmas since I knew she liked the books as well. The board game, sadly, was a bit of a disappointment.
Now, without spoiling the book too much (seriously, go read it if you haven't) the basic idea is every year they hold a 'hunger games' where 12 districts each appoint a teenage boy and a teenage girl to enter the games. The 24 kids get put into an arena of sorts and battle to the death. Last kid alive wins food and stuff for their district. There's all sorts of crazy things that can go on in a death arena...
A board game based on that premise seems like it could have a lot of potential. I envision a dungeon that gets built as you're playing the game with players linking up randomly to fight. It would be an elimination game, of course, with different characters and stats. I'm thinking it could have a Scotland Yard style mechanic so you don't really know if you're following along behind someone else or not... There may be some clever way to have the game track that sort of stuff but it could work with a GM character who oversees the arena while the players compete to see who will win. (Maybe give the GM some 'cylon leader' style goals?)
Unfortunately the board game doesn't have anything at all to do with the arena. There is no battle to the death. The key is in the last part of the name... 'Training Days'. The game simulates being one of the kids and training to get ready for the arena instead of the arena itself. So you do weight lifting and archery and junk like that instead of actually fighting each other. The theme was rather disappointing after the expectations I had.
As far as the gameplay goes it's a hidden auction system. Each round you flip up a card for every player and then you bid face down tiles to try to win the cards. You have a 1, a 3, and a 6 to spend each round. On top of your tiles you have a character with stats that you get to add to the card check. So someone with a high agility would be better at the archery challenge and someone with high strength would be better at lifting weights. The challenges are all vaguely related to the book and all of the characters are from the book too so it is still flavourful... Just no killing.
It has some interesting gameplay as you try to figure out who cares about which card and how much you need to invest in a specific card in order to win it. But it has a random game end condition and there's not really any long term planning. There are obviously correct plays every turn and you just need to figure out who is going to deviate from the script to try to steal a card cheaply.
Overall I'm happy I played the game once but I don't have any real desire to play it again. I am intrigued by the prospect of working out a system to play out the actual arena deathmatch though...
It turned out that the first book, Hunger Games, is awesome. Possibly my favourite book of all-time, though we know how hard it can be to compare things across years and years. At any rate, it's really good. I eventually went back for the second two books (sadly only in hardcover when I got them) and the game. The game was gone, however. Oh well...
I was out at 401 last month and saw they actually had a copy of it. I snapped it up and gave it to my sister for Christmas since I knew she liked the books as well. The board game, sadly, was a bit of a disappointment.
Now, without spoiling the book too much (seriously, go read it if you haven't) the basic idea is every year they hold a 'hunger games' where 12 districts each appoint a teenage boy and a teenage girl to enter the games. The 24 kids get put into an arena of sorts and battle to the death. Last kid alive wins food and stuff for their district. There's all sorts of crazy things that can go on in a death arena...
A board game based on that premise seems like it could have a lot of potential. I envision a dungeon that gets built as you're playing the game with players linking up randomly to fight. It would be an elimination game, of course, with different characters and stats. I'm thinking it could have a Scotland Yard style mechanic so you don't really know if you're following along behind someone else or not... There may be some clever way to have the game track that sort of stuff but it could work with a GM character who oversees the arena while the players compete to see who will win. (Maybe give the GM some 'cylon leader' style goals?)
Unfortunately the board game doesn't have anything at all to do with the arena. There is no battle to the death. The key is in the last part of the name... 'Training Days'. The game simulates being one of the kids and training to get ready for the arena instead of the arena itself. So you do weight lifting and archery and junk like that instead of actually fighting each other. The theme was rather disappointing after the expectations I had.
As far as the gameplay goes it's a hidden auction system. Each round you flip up a card for every player and then you bid face down tiles to try to win the cards. You have a 1, a 3, and a 6 to spend each round. On top of your tiles you have a character with stats that you get to add to the card check. So someone with a high agility would be better at the archery challenge and someone with high strength would be better at lifting weights. The challenges are all vaguely related to the book and all of the characters are from the book too so it is still flavourful... Just no killing.
It has some interesting gameplay as you try to figure out who cares about which card and how much you need to invest in a specific card in order to win it. But it has a random game end condition and there's not really any long term planning. There are obviously correct plays every turn and you just need to figure out who is going to deviate from the script to try to steal a card cheaply.
Overall I'm happy I played the game once but I don't have any real desire to play it again. I am intrigued by the prospect of working out a system to play out the actual arena deathmatch though...
Monday, November 21, 2011
The Art of War
If you're like me you've thought about what your life would be like if you were born in another time. Clearly they didn't have VBA scripts to write in 500 BC, after all, so I'd have to have some other way to make a living. Would I be a farmer? A miscellaneous grunt in some army? Would I die of malnutrition at a young age? Would, as my name suggests, I be the page for some gallant knight? (With my luck I'd probably be the guy in charge of knocking the coconuts against each other.)
I just finished reading Sun Tzu's The Art of War (yay free books on the Kobo!) and I now know what I should be if I'm transplanted way back in time... A military strategist! I'm sure it's just a result of playing so many board and video wargames but the themes discussed in the book just made complete sense. Information is powerful. Spreading misinformation is really powerful. Make sure you have a food plan. Be nice with the people you conquered. Letting a dragon get into the volcano means you lose. High ground is awesome. Flooding the enemy out is hard. Setting stuff on fire is scary. Your boss can set the overall goals but you have complete control of what your men do. There is such thing as acceptable losses.
Ok, that dragon part is just from Titan and not from the book.
The book actually reminded me a lot of the game Romance of the Three Kingdoms III for the SNES. I didn't own the game, but I rented it probably a dozen times. An interesting aspect of that game was that you had individual saved games (which would generally be saved over by the time I re-rented it) but you also had an overall metagame where you could build leaders and they carried over between games. So each time I would rent the game I'd add more and more people to this overall pool of dudes who would show up randomly in games. I like the idea that some guy who rented the game could have Nick Page show up to his empire and ask for a job.
In the game you started from an individual city and built up an army under a few leaders who had their own strengths and weaknesses. You had to keep the people of your city happy while at the same time making them pay you taxes in gold and food. Then you could go out invading in a series of tactical battles. One of the coolest parts was one of your leaders could challenge another leader to a single combat duel in combat as his action instead of making a normal attack. If they declined then their army lost some morale and might run away. If they accepted then maybe one of you would die. Often you'd just wound them and the enemy side would lose all the units under his control. Then at the end of the fight you could try to recruit him (and his units) to join your team.
Maybe you let him keep his units and fight the next battle with him... And then maybe he switches loyalties and goes back to the other team! Alternatively you could send a leader off as a spy to join another empire... if you ended up in a fight with that empire, and they were using your leader... He could switch sides! Very 'Art of War'esque.
Friday, November 04, 2011
Ready Player One
A little while ago I went downtown to play boardgames with Duncan and Sara. While waiting in line at Hero Burger Duncan told me about a book he saw about a treasure hunt where you had to play Joust at some point. It sounded interesting but faded from my mind in short order. I was in the middle of reading the 5th book in the Game of Thrones after which I had Whipping Girl to read. And then I got to Final Fantasy III and stopped reading on the bus while I played that.
Tuesday I finished off Whipping Girl and had run out of stuff to read on my Kobo. So I went on a minor shopping spree in the Kobo store. I downloaded a bunch of old books that are free (Sherlock Holmes, Alice in Wonderland, The Art of War, Around the World in 80 Days, Moby Dick) and bought a book I'd heard good things about: World War Z. I did a google search for 'novel with Joust' and a couple entries down the list was an article about Ernest Cline playing Joust and talking about his novel Ready Player One. So I bought it, too.
Wednesday I started reading it and Thursday night I'd finished it off. I don't actually know how long it is (one of the 'features' of using an e-reader is every book looks to be the same size) but the book definitely had a hold of me and wouldn't let me do anything else except keep reading. It's got the perfect treasure hunt themes going on. Some puzzles I worked out before the characters, some I worked out incorrectly, and others I just had to keep reading to find out what was going on.
The basic idea to the book is it's the future and people can jack into a virtual reality MMO. The rich dude who coded the MMO dies and leaves his vast fortune to whoever can solve his treasure hunt within the MMO. He hid all the clues and puzzles in stuff he really liked from his youth which just happened to be the 80s. So a lot of the book is constant nostalgic throwbacks to movies, games, television, and music from the 80s.
I'm a big fan of the 80s so if that's all it was I'd probably still enjoy reading it. But the hunt and the story surrounding it are also gripping. It reminded me a lot of the first Hunger Games book with a lot of reveling in the 80s thrown in.
At the end the author mentions how he hopes people will want to explore some of these games and movies from the 80s as a result of reading the book. So today I went searching for Zork which is a game I've never had a chance to play. It turns out the publisher actually released the first three Zork games for free, so I downloaded the first one and have already gotten stuck. Boo!
At any rate, you need to go read this book. Go!
Tuesday I finished off Whipping Girl and had run out of stuff to read on my Kobo. So I went on a minor shopping spree in the Kobo store. I downloaded a bunch of old books that are free (Sherlock Holmes, Alice in Wonderland, The Art of War, Around the World in 80 Days, Moby Dick) and bought a book I'd heard good things about: World War Z. I did a google search for 'novel with Joust' and a couple entries down the list was an article about Ernest Cline playing Joust and talking about his novel Ready Player One. So I bought it, too.
Wednesday I started reading it and Thursday night I'd finished it off. I don't actually know how long it is (one of the 'features' of using an e-reader is every book looks to be the same size) but the book definitely had a hold of me and wouldn't let me do anything else except keep reading. It's got the perfect treasure hunt themes going on. Some puzzles I worked out before the characters, some I worked out incorrectly, and others I just had to keep reading to find out what was going on.The basic idea to the book is it's the future and people can jack into a virtual reality MMO. The rich dude who coded the MMO dies and leaves his vast fortune to whoever can solve his treasure hunt within the MMO. He hid all the clues and puzzles in stuff he really liked from his youth which just happened to be the 80s. So a lot of the book is constant nostalgic throwbacks to movies, games, television, and music from the 80s.
I'm a big fan of the 80s so if that's all it was I'd probably still enjoy reading it. But the hunt and the story surrounding it are also gripping. It reminded me a lot of the first Hunger Games book with a lot of reveling in the 80s thrown in.
At the end the author mentions how he hopes people will want to explore some of these games and movies from the 80s as a result of reading the book. So today I went searching for Zork which is a game I've never had a chance to play. It turns out the publisher actually released the first three Zork games for free, so I downloaded the first one and have already gotten stuck. Boo!
At any rate, you need to go read this book. Go!
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Blockbuster Redux
I got up 'this morning' at 4:30pm, played a couple games of League of Legends, and then headed out to the Blockbuster on Lawrence to see if they had anything interesting to pick up. It turned out to be about a 35 minute walk away so it was decent exercise on top of finding lots of good deals. I also noticed that I appeared to be walking through a Jewish neighbourhood (look at me, reading the names of schools!) and was reminded of a conversation on Facebook about getting Coke made with sugar instead of glucose/fructose and decided to hit the Metro beside the Blockbuster as well. They ended up having both Coke with sugar and packets of Kool-Aid so that part of the trip was a resounding success. (The cashier was a little quizzical when she saw the stack of 60 Kool-Aid packets...)
Blockbuster was a big success too. For some reason it turns out that Blockbuster also sold books. I think they're all books that had been turned into movies (or vice versa) but they had a couple I'd been thinking about reading. Still 30% off! So I now have The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire. I also got the second season of The Mentalist (I guess I should find the first one now?). For movies I got Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children to fit into my marathon, Zombieland because Andrew keeps telling me I have to watch it, Braveheart because it's awesome, Independance Day on Blu-Ray in case I get my desktop fixed for July 4th, and the sweetest find of all time (or at least of today) Ocean's 11. The first one, with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr.
I also got a game, Dead Rising 2. Now, the original Dead Rising is the game I came closest to getting every achievement for. (I even killed the 53,594 zombies in one playthrough.) My roommate Mark's 360 red-ringed on him before I got the last couple and I never got around to finishing off the last 6 achievements I needed. But the game was awesome and I've wanted to play the sequel. So cheap price plus 30% off? How can I go wrong? The only real problem is I now have 3 new 360 games I want to play that aren't Final Fantasy games.
Blockbuster was a big success too. For some reason it turns out that Blockbuster also sold books. I think they're all books that had been turned into movies (or vice versa) but they had a couple I'd been thinking about reading. Still 30% off! So I now have The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire. I also got the second season of The Mentalist (I guess I should find the first one now?). For movies I got Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children to fit into my marathon, Zombieland because Andrew keeps telling me I have to watch it, Braveheart because it's awesome, Independance Day on Blu-Ray in case I get my desktop fixed for July 4th, and the sweetest find of all time (or at least of today) Ocean's 11. The first one, with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr.
I also got a game, Dead Rising 2. Now, the original Dead Rising is the game I came closest to getting every achievement for. (I even killed the 53,594 zombies in one playthrough.) My roommate Mark's 360 red-ringed on him before I got the last couple and I never got around to finishing off the last 6 achievements I needed. But the game was awesome and I've wanted to play the sequel. So cheap price plus 30% off? How can I go wrong? The only real problem is I now have 3 new 360 games I want to play that aren't Final Fantasy games.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Gift Certificates
I'm not a big gifty person in general and gift certificates in particular are a little weird. On the one hand I get to get whatever I want, but on the other hand it feels even more impersonal. At any rate, I got a gift card to a book store and decided to buy some things not so much that I wanted but that I thought I might have gotten as gifts. Things people might think I want! Normally this wouldn't be very relevant here but some of it is at least tangentially gaming related and I wanted my mother to see what I got. Might as well put it here!
First up I actually wanted to get the next book in a series of mystery books I've been reading. I have the first 12 and figured someone might know that (they're on my bookshelf) and pick out #13. Well, it turned out they had books 1-12 along with 14, 15, and 16 of the series but no #13. Oh well. I wandered around the mystery section a bit and saw a book with dice on it. It was from a series but it looks like the books are all unrelated so who knows!
Then I headed over to the gaming section. I lent out my Backgammon for Blood book or lost it and can't find it and wanted to look for a replacement. Turns out they didn't have any backgammon books that I could find. But they did have a little book of celtic enigmas. 117 pages of puzzles and brain twisters attributed to celts? That sounds like something I might like!
I wandered a bit more and saw a big display with a board game marked 75% off. Probably terrible, but I gave it a look. Turned out it was a game based on a book series. The game didn't look very good but the premise sounded interesting. So I picked up the first book in the series and figure I can always go back and get the other two and the board game too if it ends up great. (The Hunger Games is the book. It's published by Scholastic so it may be a kids book, but we'll see.)
I was turning to leave when the ultimate book caught my eye. The second I saw it I knew my mother would have bought it if she'd seen it. "The World's Greatest Treasure Hunt. Quest for the Golden Eagle. A $1 Million Treasure is hidden SOMEWHERE in the world. All you have to do is FIND IT." I had Treasure Quest as a video game when I was in high school which purported to be a treasure hunt with a million dollar prize. According to Wikipedia there was some controversy over awarding that prize but I never came close. I was a failure at hunting for treasure in a video game. But maybe in book form I can pull it off? As an added bonus the book's writer is donating a lot of the proceeds from the books to breast cancer research, so it's win win. As I understand the book is a year old so it's either super hard or already solved and I'll have to do some searching on the topic to see but it should be interesting to say the least. I can remember reading a treasure hunt book my parent's had which had to do with cat puppets and tracing lines through their eyes or something. It was fun reading that despite the fact it had been solved years earlier.
At any rate, if it turns out the hunt is still on then I may try to harass other people into joining in on the hunt. If I can't find the Golden Eagle myself then maybe someone can help!
First up I actually wanted to get the next book in a series of mystery books I've been reading. I have the first 12 and figured someone might know that (they're on my bookshelf) and pick out #13. Well, it turned out they had books 1-12 along with 14, 15, and 16 of the series but no #13. Oh well. I wandered around the mystery section a bit and saw a book with dice on it. It was from a series but it looks like the books are all unrelated so who knows!
Then I headed over to the gaming section. I lent out my Backgammon for Blood book or lost it and can't find it and wanted to look for a replacement. Turns out they didn't have any backgammon books that I could find. But they did have a little book of celtic enigmas. 117 pages of puzzles and brain twisters attributed to celts? That sounds like something I might like!
I wandered a bit more and saw a big display with a board game marked 75% off. Probably terrible, but I gave it a look. Turned out it was a game based on a book series. The game didn't look very good but the premise sounded interesting. So I picked up the first book in the series and figure I can always go back and get the other two and the board game too if it ends up great. (The Hunger Games is the book. It's published by Scholastic so it may be a kids book, but we'll see.)
I was turning to leave when the ultimate book caught my eye. The second I saw it I knew my mother would have bought it if she'd seen it. "The World's Greatest Treasure Hunt. Quest for the Golden Eagle. A $1 Million Treasure is hidden SOMEWHERE in the world. All you have to do is FIND IT." I had Treasure Quest as a video game when I was in high school which purported to be a treasure hunt with a million dollar prize. According to Wikipedia there was some controversy over awarding that prize but I never came close. I was a failure at hunting for treasure in a video game. But maybe in book form I can pull it off? As an added bonus the book's writer is donating a lot of the proceeds from the books to breast cancer research, so it's win win. As I understand the book is a year old so it's either super hard or already solved and I'll have to do some searching on the topic to see but it should be interesting to say the least. I can remember reading a treasure hunt book my parent's had which had to do with cat puppets and tracing lines through their eyes or something. It was fun reading that despite the fact it had been solved years earlier.
At any rate, if it turns out the hunt is still on then I may try to harass other people into joining in on the hunt. If I can't find the Golden Eagle myself then maybe someone can help!
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