The Captain Is Dead and So Are We

Tonight Mike, Pete, Rob, Colin, and I played two rounds of The Captain Is Dead remotely via Tabletop Simulator. We've won this game in the real world several times, but have yet to beat the PC version. We were wiped out within a handful of turns in the first game, and came within one repair of the engine core in the second before we were overwhelmed by alien firepower. Close, but no cigar. 

G&G IV.V Day One: Circvs Maximvs

Were it not for the COVID-19 pandemic, I`d be over at Mike`s place for Gaming & Guinness XV right now. Instead, we`re meeting virtually for G&G IV.V, racing chariots in Tabletop Simulator. 

Gaming in the Time of Corona

Most of the lads gathered tonight via Steam and Google Hangouts to play a round of Formula De, a G&G staple. Right now, I'm in second-last place. If we can't game in person, by golly we'll use technology.

Hey! I wound up winning! But really only because Jeff, Mike, and Colin crashed out and did not finish. Still, a win is a win!

Now we're trying out crokinole.

UPDATE: Colin triumphed!

Great Moments in Bad Photography: Talk to the Hand

This might have been a nice shot of Pete had Colin not thrust his hand into the fray. However, it the resulting photo still has some kitschy charm.

A New Twist for RPG Gamemasters

Today at work I played Dungeons & Dragons with some colleagues over our lunch break--genuinely great team-building exercise, as there were at least four people there who I only infrequently work with and whom I got to know a little better.

The experience must have sparked my imagination, because on the drive home tonight a thought occurred to me. Wouldn't it be fun, I thought, if you gathered a group of friends to play one roleplaying game or another, but with a twist: instead of playing Jandalor the Barbarian or Maxi the Hacker, what if your players played themselves, but tossed into the roleplaying setting with only their own skills plus their knowledge of pop culture tropes? And, furthermore, what if the characters/players knew that they were not the originals tossed into the roleplaying world, but perfect copies, with the originals living out their lives back in the real world, a la Black Mirror? (I stipulate this because if this actually happened to us, I know we'd spend the entire scenario trying to get back to our loved ones in the real world. Copies might feel conflicted, but they'd be comforted to some extent by the knowledge that they're copies. Plus this adds an existential crisis angle to roleplay! Postmodern fun!)

In my own case, I was thinking specifically of the new Star Trek roleplaying game that I'll likely never play simply because we're all too busy at this point to cram another game into our lives. But it made me laugh to think if, for example, perfect copies of my Gaming & Guinness friends were tossed into that milieu, but with random roles assigned.

In fact, I'm going to pause right now and randomly determine (by rolling a d8) which of my friends gets assigned which roles in this kooky scenario. The setting is the U.S.S. Excalibur in the year 2266, right around the time of "The Corbomite Maneuver," the first regular episode of the original series.

Captain: Mike T
First Officer: Scott
Science Officer: Rob
Chief Engineer: Steve
Chief Medical Officer: Pete
Helm: Colin
Navigation: Island Mike
Redshirt: Jeff

All right. This is going to be inside baseball to some folks, but these results are hilarious to me. Mike has a pretty good handle on Star Trek trivia, knows the episodes, and would probably do a pretty good job of using inside knowledge to keep the crew safe. He's pretty well suited to the Captain's role in this scenario, but he can also be rather volatile in a gaming setting, and might wind up ordering crazy shenanigans just for fun; for example, I can see him saying "Let's mix things up by slingshotting around the sun and going forward in time to the Next Gen era," or "I've always wondered how powerful the weapons are supposed to be. Let's see if we can shatter a planet with torpedoes."

First Officer Scott, on the other hand, is somewhat infamous in our circle for getting heavily invested in the rules of the games we play, but sometimes, as we all must, misinterpreting them. So I can see him and Mike arguing a bit over what the group can do as opposed to what they should do.

Rob, I can see having fun throwing his hands up in the air and saying "WTF do I know about microbiology (or whatever)?" and simply ordering his staff around to do the actual science work.

Actually, that probably holds for Chief Engineer Steve, too, who (I believe) does not necessarily have the technical knowledge to maintain a 23rd century starship. But he, too, has a lot of Trek trivia knowledge, and could rely on his team to do the real work.

Poor Pete winds up as the doctor, and for some reason I see him as taking on the role with ghoulish relish, choosing to trust in his tools and hope that by this time, medicine is pretty much automated.

As the helm officer, I imagine Colin would have fun flying the ship around, since that, too, is controlled mainly by computer, with only gross inputs from humans required. This should also be true for Island Mike at the navigation station. They also get the fun job of managing weapons and shields, and I think Colin, in particular, would enjoy blowing things up with photon torpedoes.

Poor put-upon Jeff winds up as the red-shirted security officer, which is funny to me because of all of us, Jeff has gotten into the most accidents, most of them not his fault. I can just hear him saying "OH, GREAT!" when he (or rather, his copy) arrives on the Excalibur.

I, of course, would serve as gamemaster. I'd provide the initial setting, the first initial problem for the players to solve, and I'd play the roles of the other 422 Excalibur crewmembers. I'd play them as rational but compliant beings, following the orders of the senior officers if not without question, then with only reasonable resistance to truly crazy decisions by the team. But ultimately, what the players say goes.

I think playing this out would be hilarious, although the idea probably tickles me more than my hapless friends. Even so, I think the basic idea is sound, and could be fun if used for other roleplaying genres: high fantasy, superheroes (Villains & Vigilantes approaches this, but you're not supposed to have metatextual knowledge of the setting and tropes), spies, the old west, etc.

Fun to think about! 

A Night of Risk

In September 2004, I sat down with Pete, Scott and Colin for a game of Risk. I'm assuming Paul or Mike must have taken this photo. Their timing was spot on, as you can see the dice just being flung from my fingers. I probably rolled snake eyes. 

Crokinole Cowboys

Gaming & Guinness X: The Fourth Day

On the last day of G&G X, we brought out Jeff Shyluk's beautiful custom starmap for A Call to Arms: Starfleet for the second time. It remains a huge hit.

This time around Steve suggested a free-for-all, with each player, no matter were they nominally Klingon or Federation, with his own specific objectives. Pete and Colin immediately turned on me, which was only fair, as I was gunning for Scott.

Rob would make a pretty intimidating Starfleet commander.

A nine-player free-for-all made for a pretty chaotic battlefield.

Mike, Mike and Scott consider their options.

Circvs Maximvs, the chariot racing game, has evolved into the signature event at G&G, with its custom miniatures and track, home made trophy, statuary, and Mike Totman's able refereeing.

Colin was out for blood, and as a result there were casualties all over the track right out of the gate.

The valiant fallen.

Quite a spectacular way to start a race.

There were some more casualties, but the race went pretty well for me - second place, my best showing ever! Mike Parlow triumphed, while Scott finished third.

It's hard to believe that we've spent ten years doing this - that we're all a decade older, moving from our thirties into our forties (for the most part) while enjoying the fruits of deep-rooted friendships.

No matter where life leads us all, I hope we're still doing this ten, twenty, thirty years from now...perhaps even longer.

Thanks to everyone for coming out and making it special, as always. 

Gaming & Guinness X: The Third Day

Day Three of Gaming & Guinness X started off with a new marquee game, X-Wing Miniatures. Apparently the game is designed for two people, but given the right scenario it would seem to support any number of players, given a large enough table and ample patience.

Since I suggested X-Wing this year, I felt obliged to come up with a scenario. I came up with "Revenge of the Empire," in which Darth Vader and his squadron of TIE fighters hunt down the Rebels responsible for blowing up the Death Star: Luke Skywalker, Wedge Antilles, Han Solo, and those Y-Wing guys that survived (I played the Y-Wing guys).

The game moves remarkably quickly, so nine players were not a burden to pacing at all. Here Darth Vader chases down Luke and Wedge. Colin was a little too eager to command Darth's TIE Advanced, but I wasn't going to argue. He had that murderous gleam in his eyes...

The sides were pretty equally balanced, point-wise; the Rebels had more powerful ships and generally better pilots, but the Imperials had numbers - and Darth Vader.

It got pretty crowded toward the end.

You can see Mike making the motions and sound effects to match the movements of his TIE fighters.

We had to bring X-Wing to an early close to drive out to Windermere for the Mad Max: Fury Road screening, but the game came to a respectable conclusion anyway: the Imperials succeeded in killing Luke Skywalker, but having taken a few casualties of their own, declared victory and fled to hyperspace.

You can read Steve's review of Mad Max: Fury Road here. I'll post my own review after finishing up my Gaming & Guinness posts. 

Gaming & Guinness X: The Second Day

Each day of Gaming & Guinness features one or two "marquee" games with breaks for meals and smaller-scale gaming. day Two of G&G X started off with a new game, Legends of the Old West, which allows players to send gunfighters into tactical-scale skirmishes. Here, Jeff, Mike and Mike look over Steve's exquisitely designed town, Serenity Gulch.

The villains holed up in a store, forcing the lawmen to chase them inside. The results were bloody.

A bandit snipes from a hotel balcony.

Looking down main street at Mike, who sported an old-west mustache for the event.

Pete, too, came dressed for the period.

Superfight came for free in one of my LootCrates, and we tried it out between marquee games. The object of the game is to pit characters from popular culture against each other and argue about who would win in a fight. Actually, I don't see why we need a formal game for this, since we spend a lot of our time making exactly these arguments...

This year Pete handled the swag, and each of us received an awesomely comfy and personalized G&G X commemorative jacket.

Scott, Island Mike and Steve model their jackets.

Pete and Mike in their new attire.

Scott shows off his personalized jacket.

And here I am in mine.

Here's a shot of the Batcan, built especially for G&G X.

Here some of the boys down something called a Car Bomb, which is Guinness and something else in a second shot glass contained within the larger glass. Those who drink at G&G stay the night, while the teetotalers in the group (including me) handle any driving, if needed.

Colin looks somewhat bemused by his first game of Pimp. I don't blame him.

Scott brought over Red Dragon Inn, a fun high-concept game in which players pretend to be medieval adventurers settling down at a tavern for some carousing and gambling. Gamble away all your money or pass out from too much alcohol consumption and you're thrown out of the inn.

I came pretty close to triumphing in our first game, but Island Mike edged me by a beer or two.

We ended the night with Formula De, one of our perennial racing games. It was a close race throughout the game, but in the end...

...Colin emerged triumphant, taking away a Formula One keychain as a prize.

Coming up on Day Three: X-Wing and Mad Max: Fury Road! 

Gaming & Guinness X: The First Night

Ten years ago, Stephen made an impromptu suggestion that a bunch of his friends gather at his place to play board games and drink Guinness to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. That event went over so well that it's become an annual tradition, hosted by each of the gang's members in turn, introducing our own branded promotional items and customized board game accessories as the years have gone by. For example, Mike Parlow (right), created his own Gaming & Guinness Anniversary Edition of Wits & Wagers, featuring trivia from across G&Gs I-IX.

To celebrate the 10th anniversary, we reconvened at founder Steve's this year. The first night of any G&G event is typically pretty casual, as out-of-town guests may not have arrived yet and others are just leaving work. Casual games, then, are the order of the day, and we started things off with some of Steve's amusing PlayStation contests, such as Fribbage XL, above, and Drawful. Try drawing on a tiny iPhone screen and you'll imagine how well I did at that.

Cards Against Humanity (above) and Pimp are casual card games best suited for audiences with a sick sense of humour, so much so that even mentioning them probably means I'll never run for office. (Again, that is.) I don't remember who won these games, although in a sense you could argue that humanity lost.

Having Colin (far left) back for the first time since the original G&G was a highlight this year, and I'm glad he could make it, even if it did result in massive carnage at the chariot race...but that's for day four. 

101 Cult Films I Must See Before I Die

"Yup, that's an ear all right." If you're watching a movie and someone says a line like this while examining a severed ear found on a lawn, you might be watching a cult film. I say "might" because the boundaries of this genre are as fuzzy as the interior of Barbarella's spaceship; a cult film is what any reasonably well-informed pundit says it is, even though several classic movies lumped into the genre were popular mainstream hits.

The editors of 1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die have chosen 101 cult films as one of several less intimidating alternatives to their master list of over 1,000 films. Let's see how many of their cult movies I've managed to see thus far...as ever, those I've seen are listed in bold. 

Un Chien Andalou

Reefer Madness

Sullivan's Travels

Out of the Past

Sunset Boulevard

The Night of the Hunter

Rebel Without a Cause

The Blob

Plan 9 from Outer Space

Jazz on a Summer's Day

The Servant

Shock Corridor

Bande A Part

Scorpio Rising

Faster, Pussycat - Kill! Kill!

Blow-Up

Chelsea Girls

Persona

Barbarella

Les Idoles

Easy Rider

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls

El Topo

Le Boucher

The Lickerish Quartet

Performance

Harold and Maude

Two Lane Blacktop

Vampyros Lesbos

Vanishing Point

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie

The Harder They Come

Pink Flamingos

Superfly

Sisters

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul

The Night Porter

Phantom of the Paradise

Grey Gardens

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Sholay

Tommy

The Last Wave

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes

I Spit on Your Grave

The Wiz

Zoltan, Hound of Dracula

Mad Max

Life of Brian

The Warriors

The Blues Brothers

Ms. 45

Time Bandits

Basket Case

Fitzcarraldo

Wild Style

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai

This is Spinal Tap

The Toxic Avenger

Blue Velvet

The Hitcher

Manhunter

Withnail and I

Amazon Women on the Moon

Barfly

The Princess Bride

Wings of Desire

The Decline of Western Civilization, Part II: The Metal Years

Hairspray

Alice (Neco Z Alenky)

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

Heathers

Mystery Train

Frankenhooker

Barton Fink

Brain Dead

Dazed and Confused

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

Clerks

Shallow Grave

The City of Lost Children

La Haine

Showgirls

Crash

Twilight of the Ice Nymphs

The Big Lebowski

Buffalo '66

Le Diner Des Cons

Run Lola Run

Rushmore

Office Space

Battle Royale

Memento

Donnie Darko

Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Ichi the Killer

The Room

Kamikaze Girls

Napoleon Dynamite

Brick

I've seen 46 of these cult films; some of them are among my very favourite movies of all, including Blue Velvet, Buckaroo Banzai, Memento, Brain Dead, Heathers, The Blob, Sunset Boulevard, Plan 9 From Outer Space and Rebel Without a Cause. A few are on my soon-to-watch list: The Night of the Hunter, Out of the Past, Persona, Performance, Superfly, Ms. 45 and Battle Royale. Others way well fall into the "I can't believe you haven't seen..." category: Napoleon Dynamite,  Barton Fink, Manhunter, Two Lane Blacktop, Harold and Maude. I'll get to them; I have to, now that I've made this list. 

Among my friends I'm known to have a somewhat hit-or-miss track record when it comes to suggesting movies the entire group might enjoy. One of the films on this list, Sam Peckinpah's Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, probably best exemplifies that phenomenon. We got together to watch a movie at Jeff's place - "we" being Colin, Mike, Pete and Jeff and me. My friends hated it, whereas I thought it had a pretty important point to make and made it well. You can read my review here. 

In my defence, I haven't always been the one to choose a film poorly. I believe it was Dustin who decided we should see Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, another of the films on this list, and while I laughed my way through the film in delight, the rest of our little band, including Dustin, weren't nearly so entertained. 

Nerdieth Anniversary 10th Anniversary

I wasn't feeling terribly inspired when I sat down to blog today, and in desperation I wondered "What was happing at this time ten years ago?" Well, I don't have any photos from exactly ten years ago, but I do have this from ten years and a month ago, when we celebrated the Nerdieth Anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons. And yet it feels like this only happened maybe three, four years ago...