February 2006 - Posts

• Media Junkie

  I was listening to Mark Johnson's Board Games To Go podcast on the way in to work this morning, and he said something that struck a chord with me.  He mentioned that there are so many podcasts coming out that it's getting hard to listen to all of them without skipping through some of the content.  The problem, he points out, is two-fold.  First, there are a lot of new podcasts competing for attention.  And second, sometimes he just wants to listen to the radio, but this takes away from his podcast consumption. Since college, I've always been a media snob, no matter what the medium.  I grew up in a Southern Baptist family where music didn't have much value placed on it if it didn't have a Christian message (or come from a musical).  So it wasn't until late high school / early college that I discovered really great music.  At the time, Nirvana and the Foo Fighters were in full swing, and I got sucked into alternative rock.  At the same time, I was listening to The Beatles, The Who, The Stones and Led Zepplin for the first time.  It was a new experience, and I felt like there was an entire new world opened up to me.  For the past few years, my tastes have gone indie, favoring bands like The Shins, The Postal Service and Wilco. The problem is, being an indie music fan is hard work.  With the prevalence of Clear Channel in Dallas, radio no longer breaks cool new artists.  The internet is where it's at.  But combing through the reviews at Pitchfork and Metacritic, downloading new albums, loading them on the MP3 player and finding time to give them a fair listen is work.  It takes time.  My morning commute (20 minutes) used to be the time I would discover new bands. Mark's problem is now my problem.  That time I used to spend discovering new bands has been replaced with a tidal wave of gaming podcasts.  Now Tom and Joe, Mark, and several others accompany my morning commute.  Unfortunately, that means I haven't heard a decent new band in months. The problem doesn't just exist in audio, either.  In addition to this wonderful world of great boardgames, I'm also discovering comics aren't just about superheroes anymore.  A friend pointed me in the direction of Neil Gaiman's Sandman collection a few months ago, and now I've got stacks and stacks of graphic novels that compete for my media attention.  As a result, other media outlets suffer.  My Netflix DVDs go unwatched.  I used to call myself a bit of a film buff, but this year I'm ashamed to admit I've only seen one of the Academy Awards Best Picture movies.  (Crash, if you're curious - which I thought was dreadful) In addition, that copy of Civilization IV has been played exactly twice, friends have loaned me a number of Xbox games that have gone unplayed, I've read only two books cover-to-cover since the beginning of the year, and I close my newsreader at the end of the day with several hundred unread articles. I'm drowning in a sea of media. Life would be easier if I hated to read or didn't enjoy movies.  Or if I thought video games were a waste of time.  But I don't.  I love consuming media - movies, music, books, comics, video games, podcasts, RSS feeds.  I'm a media junkie.  In fact, the only media outlet I don't get a lot of enjoyment of is television.  I watch exactly one show with regularity (The WB's Gilmore Girls - partly for the wonderfully witty & reference-filled writing, partly for Lauren Graham's ass).  Aside from sports and Seinfeld reruns, television is largely background noise in my house.  (though I have found myself aimlessly channel surfing lately, which is disturbing) But despite not spending much time watching television, I still feel like there's not enough time to consume all the media I want to enjoy.  That's especially true now that I have a large extended gaming network.  I play games with my Friday night guys, I'm getting the work guys interested in playing more often, Christina and I get in some 2-player gaming on weekends, and there's always Tuesday night @ Borders / Thursday at Half Price Books.  All those nights playing games means less time reading, watching movies, etc. I suppose this is a silly topic to complain about, but Mark's podcast really got me thinking about it.  With more media outlets competing for attention, I'll have to be more selective in what I consume.  That line of reasoning has always worked for music & movies, and I suppose it will now have to extend to gaming podcasts, too. It's a good problem to have. Posted Feb 27 2006, 11:14 AM by Jeff with 4 comment(s) Filed under: Potpourri

• Site Note: Anonymous Comments Enabled

  Just a quick note:  a new version of Community Server released this week, and anonymous comments are now working.  Comment away! Posted Feb 15 2006, 06:18 PM by Jeff with no comments Filed under: Site News

• Hop Looks at D&D Miniatures

  Editor's note:  The following post is a guest post by Karl "Hop" Hoipkemeier, my uncle - the one that got me hooked on gaming as a kid.  In the coming months, guests posts will be increasing in frequency as I add the ability for multiple bloggers to the site.  Hopefully this should mean a more steady stream of content! I have probably played Star Wars Miniatures for about a year. The starter set didn’t do much for me, but after a few boosters, I was hooked. The thing is that I like building the squads almost as much as I like playing the game. It’s a lot of fun to create the theme-based squad or the historical squad and see how they fare in combat against other squads. That brings me to D&D Miniatures. Considering that I like Star Wars minis, I recently decided to try D&D minis. D&D minis is a much more frustrating experience, and it didn’t take me long to figure out why. Building squads (known as “warbands”) was the problem. In Star Wars minis (expansions aside), you have three basic factions, Separationists, Rebublic, and Fringe. While you can’t combine Separationist and Republic figs in one squad, you can use Fringe figs in a squad of either faction. That means when building a squad, you have access to about two thirds of the total mix of figures. Now, compare that to D&D minis. Instead of having two opposing factions, you have four, accounting for the combinations of good-evil and law-chaos (LG, LE, CG, CE). You will rarely have a unit that has more than one faction (roughly 10%). So, when building a warband, you have access to a third or less of your total figs. Given that I have about 75 figs, that means I have roughly 25 to choose from when making a warband of a given faction. Another problem with building warbands is that each warband needs a commander. In Star Wars minis, there is no penalty if you don’t have a commander. D&D minis rules penalize units in a warband that are not under command control, so you need a commander to field an effective warband. After purchasing a starter and eight boosters for D&D minis, I still don’t have a commander for one of my factions. About a quarter of my figs are completely unusable until I can get a commander for the faction. This brings me to one final point that applies to both Star Wars and D&D minis. In the case of D&D minis, I need a commander for one of my factions. You’d think it would be an easy thing to find a list somewhere so that I’d know which figs to look for. Wrong. WotC wants so very hard to protect their copyright on these games, including the stats of the various minis that they are prohibiting anyone from posting them on the web. I can’t find out simple information on a relatively trivial matter because of what? Is someone going to download the stats and play the game with pennies? If so, who cares? It’s frustrating for me, a player and legitimate owner of the game, that I can’t find out something simple like this to better enjoy the game. It’s just sad that WotC can’t see this. Posted Feb 15 2006, 09:32 AM by Hop with 10 comment(s) Filed under: General Gaming

• Valentine's Special: Reason #139 why my girlfriend is awesome

  Reason #139 why my girlfriend is awesome Yes, that is Memoir '44.  Christina asked to play this on Sunday.  There was no special occasion.  It wasn't my birthday.  She just decided she wanted to play it with me.  The best part?  She wants to try it again sometime.  Now that is awesome. Posted Feb 14 2006, 06:47 PM by Jeff with no comments Filed under: Potpourri

• Valentine's Special: Reason #581 why my girlfriend is awesome

  Reason #581 why my girlfriend is awesome A few mornings ago I stepped outside my apartment to head to work to find a small gift bag on my doorstep.  I stepped back inside to open it, and there was a card from Christina telling me to have a good day at work.  Also in the bag was a copy of Wyatt Earp.  (as well as some cookies, a Starbucks Doubleshot, and some other goodies)  She does little stuff for me like that all the time, and I love her for it.  The fact that the gesture was a game made it especially awesome. Posted Feb 14 2006, 05:21 PM by Jeff with no comments Filed under: Potpourri