Starting on Star Wars Day, for one week you can enjoy artistic renditions of your favorite films and series.

The actor behind Luke Skywalker takes StarWars.com on a journey through filming the Star Wars sequel in time for the 40th anniversary of its release.

Emmy Nominee Leslye Headland to write, produce, and serve as showrunner for new untitled Star Wars series for Disney+.

These lines are impressive. Most impressive.

Luke Skywalker discovers a powerful lesson that can be valuable to your own younglings.

Continuing my project to journal all of my travel adventures, we come to an entertaining entry: The Big Island of Hawaii and the Great Luggage Chase of 2013.

The trip was well planned but poorly executed due to weather mishaps. I was supposed to fly DCA-JFK-LAX-KOA but snow dropped visibility to near zero at JFK so my plane was rerouted to Providence, RI after we took off from DCA. After several hours Delta put everyone back on a plane to JFK and rescheduled the connecting flights outbound from there. There was no way I was going to make it out to LAX in time to catch the Delta flight to Hawaii,  but as I was still a shiny Diamond Medallion back then and mattered to the airline, Delta put me on an AA flights to ensure I would get to Hawaii one way or another. The AA flight routed through PDX (Portland) and because of more weather problems our flight into Portland was delayed and I missed my Hawaii flight after all. Now I was stranded in Portland overnight, while my luggage (including my coat) was in LAX (it had remained on my original itinerary). 44 degrees Fahrenheit and I was dressed in anticipation of Hawaii with my sleeveless summer dress and flip-flops. Gah! Are you laughing yet? 

Delta put me up in a hotel for the evening and in the next morning I was back at the airport in my dirty clothes, tired, cranky, and eager to get to Hawaii. Let this vacation start already! I landed on Kona Island (also called Hawaii Island or the Big Island) and was immediately dismayed to find my luggage wasn’t due to arrive until that evening (having missed the evening flight the night before, they put it on the next evening flight available 24 hours later). This was a problem as I was going to be on the road for most of the trip, exploring. I left information with Delta on my whereabouts for that evening and hoped for the best. I hopped into my rental car and headed for Volcano National Park. Along the way, the scenery was gorgeous and for a good portion of the trip my car was the only one on the highways I traveled.

I journeyed to the end of the Chain of Craters Road, which follows along the ocean and dead ends at a lava flow that closed the road beyond.

As I approached Volcano National Park, the sun began to set.

There was a beautiful lava lake in the Halema’uma’u crater (the 2019 eruption of Mt. Kilauea drained it) and I was lucky enough to stand before it that evening and enjoy its stunning ebb and flow. My poor quality cell phone picture cannot capture its essence.

I had an intense dinner at Thai Thai in Volcano. It was the hottest Thai food I have ever had outside of Bankok and it brought on an instant headache and the feeling that my lips were on fire. I recommend the place only if you can stand the heat.

The next morning I was up at 4am with plans to visit the highest point on the island and the summit of the tallest mountain in the world – Mauna Kea. From its base, Mauna Kea is over 10,000 meters tall (Mt. Everest is just 8,850 for comparison). It was a cold journey as my luggage still had not arrived into Hawaii (Delta was frantically searching for my bags and could not locate them in the system at all) and so I had only my summer dress I wore on the flight to Hawaii and the t-shirt/shorts combo I purchased the day before. The view from the top proved more than worth the discomfort of the cold.

As I was descending from the summit, Delta called with some good news. They found my bags at KOA. They said they would hold them for me till later that evening when I arrived for my flight to HNL. And they gave me a $200 delta voucher for my trouble. That made me feel a little bit better, but it reinforced the universal travel truth: checking luggage for a weekend trip is almost always a bad idea.

It was a leisurely drive back to KOA, with more scenic shots along the way.

When I got to KOA airport, Delta had some fun news for me. My bags weren’t at the airport anymore where they were supposed to be. As a “courtesy”, Alaska had picked them up from Delta baggage and sent a courier across the island to the hotel I stayed at the night before (2.5 hours away) to hand deliver them to me. With just a few hours before my departing flight for HNL, I told Delta they needed to get ahold of the driver and advise him to race his ass back to this side of the island to the airport. I was doubtful I would ever see my luggage again, but thirty minutes before takeoff, a very tired and sweaty courier waved at me and handed me my bags. As soon as I got to Waikiki and checked into my hotel, I took a long shower and enjoyed the luxury of putting on clean clothes- a ritual I usually take for granted.

I enjoyed a couple of relaxing days taking in the sun and fruity cocktail drinks on the beaches of Waikiki before heading home to Virginia.  That trip was delayed too, because of storms in Virginia, and I ended up spending the night near LAX and coming home a day later. All in all a good trip, excluding the weather and luggage fiascos. I have since been back to the Hawaiian Islands two or three times (to Oahu and Maui) but the Big Island is definitely the most spectacular of them all.  Go to Oahu for the history and shopping, go to Maui for the food, but go to the Big Island for the rugged scenery that will take your breath away.

Black Skull Island is a quick playing 2-9 player card game from Strawberry Studio (now under the publisher Board and Dice).

I was sent a review copy of the game and it only seems to make it onto the table when we need a filler game to serve as an appetizer before a meaty Euro. The gameplay is extremely simply: each player gets 2 pirate themed character cards and selects one of them to play during a round, keeping the other one in hand. Every card is numbered from 0 to 15. All players reveal their character cards simultaneously and then the actions on the cards are executed by the players who hold them in sequential order of the the card numbers. Most actions focus either on (1) drawing booty (treasure cards or coin cards), (2) stealing or deactivating other players’ character cards, (3) stealing or swapping booty cards  from/with another player or (4) an order for all players to pass a character card to their left or right. Over successive rounds, booty cards worth 0-4 coins build up in players' hands and as soon as a player acquires their 7th booty card, the game is over. At that point, whichever player has the most coins in their booty collection wins the game.

Black Skull Island  is a lot of luck mixed with a little take-that and honestly, it all feels very random by the end, regardless of what cards you’ve played. I couldn't muster up anything but apathy for the outcome as I felt it was completely divorced from my actions.

The components consist of 109 well-constructed cards (no sleeving is necessary as the cards are coated unless you play very frequently), with cutesy artwork that I'd deem adequate but unremarkable.

That's really the best way to summarize the entire game - unremarkable. If you're into take-that filler games, there are much more compelling and entertaining options out there and likewise if you love point collection card games, there are many I'd recommend over Black Skull Island. The saving grace for this game is that it's kid friendly, so if you need an easy and accessible game to teach to your little ones and give them something to do with their friends, you could pass this their way. An inexpensive birthday gift for a tween perhaps or the kind of thing you might bring to a secret Santa exchange. Otherwise, meh.

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Publisher: Strawberry Studio
Players: 2-9
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): About 10 minutes
Game type: point collection, take-that
Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

The team at NSKN names (now Board and Dice) sent me a review copy of Teotihuacan and I’ve had the opportunity to play several times in the months since, across all player counts, including solo against the Teotibot.

Scholars tell us that Teotihuacan was, in its prime, the largest city in the Americas as well as the sixth largest city in the world. It’s only fitting that a prominent board game designer should make it the focal point of a compelling strategy game. Daniele Tascini is that designer, and in Teotihuacan, players take on the role of noble families working to build the great city and its Pyramid of the Sun while accruing wealth and glory.

Odysseas Stamoglou is the artist behind the illustrations and tile carvings in this game. A casual glance from a player like myself (who is not steeped in deep knowledge of Mesoamerican art but has visited the Teotihuacan ruins) observes that the illustrations are reminiscent of the decorations found on structures and items from the famed city. With a bit of research I was able to track down further information on the genesis of and inspiration for the artwork, as explained by Odysseas in a BoardGameGeek.com (BGG) thread:

“All the symbols, masks and murals you see in the game are original Teotihuacano art, with some minor adjustments. The temple icons as well as the various patterns you see are not just random decorations. For example, the red pyramid, associated with the pyramid of the Sun has the fire god as its symbol. The red patterns and decorations are symbols associated with the fire god (like triangles, pointed or romboid shapes, etc). So I went out of my way to make sure each visual element is thematic and as true to the theme as possible. The great pyramid symbol and the dice icons are invented, following the style of Teotihuacan with goggle eyes and headdress for the Pyramid and Maya signs for the dice. I used the mural of the Great Goddess as inspiration for the pyramid symbol.”

Clearly, Odysseas has put a lot of time and effort into his work here and it reinforces the game’s theme extremely well. The theme and the artwork are woven together beautifully. It might have been nice to include custom dice that feature thematic Mesoamerican etchings in place of ordinary pips, but that can drive up the retail price of the game, so it may have already been discussed and dismissed by the design team as too costly. I would also like to see obsidian incorporated into the theme somehow (perhaps in a future expansion?) as that was prominent in Teotihuacan art.

Components for the game include cardboard and wooden tokens, a large main board, 4 sets of dice, and beautifully made tiles (construction material feels and looks similar to dominos) used for building the pyramid. I really love the color palette used on the main and action boards. Player aids would be nice and such an obvious plus that it’s hard to understand why they were overlooked. The good news is that there has been a collaborative effort on BGG to create effective player aids; we downloaded the latest version from beonyourway (shown below; https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/177055/yet-another-teotihuacan-player-aid) and found them to be very useful.

Getting into the gameplay, Teotihuacan is predominantly a worker placement game (with set collection aspects) that features dice deployed as workers utilizing a rondel. Players begin the game with 3 worker dice each and take turns moving a worker die they control 1-3 spaces around the main board, from one action board to another, completing the desired action(s) on the action board their worker lands on and earning any associated victory points.

Most actions also allow the player to increase the numeric value of the worker die by 1 and when the die reaches 6 in value, the worker “ascends”, allowing the player to choose from a selection of valuable bonuses (including the acquisition of a 4^th worker die) and resetting the die back to 1 in value. The actions represented on the various action boards include earning resources (cocoa, stone, wood, gold), constructing the pyramid, decorating the pyramid, building houses, worshipping to advance on temples and earn discovery tiles, and securing technology.

Extra actions or bonuses may be granted to a player when they have more than one die on an action board at the time they complete the action on that board – this is usually a result of moving a die to an action board where the player previously moved a die but some discovery tile bonuses allow players to move more than one worker die at a time, which can also lead to the accumulation of multiple dice belonging to one player on an action board. It’s not exclusively take, take, take in Teotihuacan. Players must give up resources in order to complete most actions. Additionally, they must pay resources – specifically cocoa - at the end of each phase or “eclipse” of the game (payment is proportionally to the number of worker dice they control and the numeric value of those dice) as well as whenever they wish to take an action where other players currently have worker dice positioned (payment is proportional to the number of other players who have worker dice already on that action board).

Almost every game has gone down the same for me– I find creative ways to pull out far ahead of the other players in the beginning, but I usually struggle with building an engine and eventually their engines take off and they overcome me. I couldn’t even pull off a win against the Teotibot on the easiest level. I finally had a win last week by focusing heavily on the construction action board, as three of the technologies gave bonuses for that action.

There are many ways to score points in Teotihuacan and it opens up a lot of avenues for creatively driving point accrual. The many options also allow for replay experiences that feel like a different game each time. Of course, a multitude of choices can also lead to analysis paralysis and Teotihuacan can suffer from this, dragging the playing time out typically anywhere from 90 to 120 minutes on average in our house.

Strategy tip: players need to be flexible and adapt tactics each game, taking  into consideration the action board arrangement and the available technologies on the alchemy action board.

Teotihuacan is the only game in my collection with a Mesoamerican theme, one of the few incorporating a rondel, and as an added plus, it includes solo mode.  It has so much to offer including a well-researched and implemented theme, a consistent intellectual challenge across all player counts, and quality components. All of these features suggest it would be a great addition to any game library, but it’s the ever-changing gameplay created by the variable action board placement and technologies that really compelled me to give Teotihuacan a permanent home in my game collection.

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Publisher: NSKN Games (now Board and Dice)
Players: 1-4
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): 90-120 minutes
Game type: Worker Placement, Rondel, Set Collection

Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me

After I reviewed Railroad Rivals , the publisher (Forbidden Games) sent me Raccoon Tycoon to evaluate. It’s by the same designer, Glenn Drover. He’s an award winning, well known designer credited with the creation of more than 25 different board games. I’ve only ever played one other game of his (Railroad Rivals) so I’m not sure if it’s the case across all his games, but there’s definitely a similarity in creative style evident in these two games. Like Railroad Rivals, Raccoon Tycoon is a mid-weight strategy game that can be played in under 90 minutes, featuring elements of auction/bidding, set collection, and price speculation.

In Raccoon Tycoon, players take on the role of capitalists building businesses, towns, and railroads, financed by speculative production and selling of commodities. This all takes place in a land populated by adorable anthropomorphic animals -raccoons, skunks, cats, and dogs, just to name a few. One thing I wondered during play was whether we were also animals in this story. I assume so, and in that case, it would have been extra awesome if identity cards giving each player an animal persona and backstory were included in the components. Identity cards would help reinforce the theme and pull players deeper into the story. An idea for an expansion perhaps, with differing special powers granted to each persona?

Over a series of rounds, players take turns completing actions, until either all the railroads or towns are sold, which marks the last round of the game. At that point, play continues until each player finishes the current round and victory points from railroads, towns, buildings, and building bonuses are tallied to determine the winner (victory points from mission objectives are tallied at this time if playing with the Kickstarter exclusive expansion).

Drover shows restraint in the action options available to players; there are only five possible choices on a turn. Players can produce various commodities and raise commodity prices (as directed by the price/production cards in their hand), sell a self-selected quantity of a commodity to reap the financial reward, start a bidding war to buy shares in one of the railroad companies, purchase a building (a business), or purchase a new town. Sometimes the action selection is limited by one’s financial resources – if you don’t have enough money to buy anything you’re going to need to produce or sell. Other times your options are wide open (these are the moments when a bit of analysis paralysis can creep in) and you’ll need to make careful decisions to optimize your economic fortunes. Strategy tips we’ve learned along the way:

• The Auction House is a great building to purchase if it comes up early in the game. So much of Raccoon Tycoon centers on buying railroads and if you have this building, you’ll make $5 every time one is purchased. That money can really come in handy for buying towns or winning railroad auctions.
• Unless you’re worried about a competitor tying your score or you’ve got a mission card that specifies cash as a victory point condition, it’s best to focus the last few rounds on spending your cash to purchase towns and railroads (or stockpiling commodities if you’re playing with the Kickstarter exclusive expansion and commodities are tied to your mission). Money is otherwise worthless at the end of the game.
• It’s better to win auctions when it’s not your turn. Let others start auctions on their turns while you focus on winning them. This will force your competitors to use their valuable turn action to attempt a rail purchase while you gain the chance to buy one and still have your turn action available to accomplish other tasks. Of course, to do this, you’ll need to ensure you always have a pile of cash at the ready in case a railroad you need to complete a set comes up for bidding.
• Each building owned extends the owning player’s commodity stockpile limit by 1, so if you’re playing with the Kickstarter exclusive expansion and your mission card is tied to amassing commodities, focusing on building purchases (especially the warehouses which each increase the limit by 4) in tandem with stockpiling commodities will allow you to get the maximum amount of victory points.

The artwork for Raccoon Tycoon is provided by Jacoby O’Connor and Annie Stegg. It’s quite nice; there’s a Thomas Kinkade kind of feel to the railroad and town card illustrations, while the box cover art is reminiscent of folk art.

The components for Raccoon Tycoon are well made. This seems to be a hallmark of the publisher, Forbidden Games. There are thick cardboard tiles (buildings), plastic coated cards (railroad, town, price/production cards, and mission cards), wooden tokens (commodities), plastic coated paper money, a giant artsy wooden raccoon (start player token), the rule book, and the main game board.

I want to especially call attention to the plastic-coated paper money because it’s a brilliant way to provide economic resources that approach the quality and enjoyment of metal or clay coins, but at a fraction of the cost. Kudos to the design team member who made that decision. The only deficiency in the components is the lack of player aids. This is a problem with many games published today so I don’t want to beat up too much on Forbidden Games specifically, but it’s just so frustrating. They’re such a valuable item to offer players and they don’t add much to the cost of production, so I don’t understand why so many times player aids are not included. To get us through our first game, I photocopied the action choices from the bottom of page 6 in the rulebook and handed out the sheets to each player.

Lately, I’ve been playing a lot of games with people outside of my core game group. I volunteer at a local youth center playing games with teens once a month, I play with relatives who visit from out of town, and my husband and I bring games on work or personal travel to play with people we meet. There’s a strong demand in such situations for games that can be taught and learned easily but are complex enough in strategy to keep myself (or any other advanced gamers who end up in the mix) engaged. Raccoon Tycoon meets that demand. It’s fun, it’s clever, it’s adorable in its theme and artwork, and it can be played in a reasonable amount of time; a great choice for an addition to any game library.

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Publisher: Forbidden Games
Players: 1-5
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): 60-90 minutes
Game type: set collection, auction/bidding, price speculation
Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

Machi Koro  was one of the first games my husband Chris and I played together. It was released in 2012 and when we started gaming together in 2013, it was still a popular game on reviewer blogs and videos as we sought guidance in what to play and what to buy. Once Machi Koro  was in our collection, I spent every game trying my best to outthink Chris and acquire the best combination of establishment types to ensure victory. As we were enticed by other new games coming out and were drawn deeper into heavy Euros, we left Machi Koro on the shelf more frequently, with an occasional wistful comment about how we should play again.

At GenCon earlier this year, Machi Koro Legacy  was the talk of the town. Designed by Rob Daviau, JR Honeycutt, and Masao Suganuma (Masao is the original designer of Machi Koro), it promised to breathe new life into Machi Koro through a campaign style series of ten games, revealing new aspects of gameplay in each session at the table. We love legacy games, so we were sold on the idea right away.

The artwork for Machi Koro Legacy  features two of the principal artists from Machi Koro , Noboru Hotta and Jason D. Kingsley, and the signature cutesy cartoonish illustrations from the original are dominant in this legacy edition as well.

In Machi Koro Legacy, players take on the role of mayors competing to build the most attractive town on the Island of Machi Koro. During each game, every mayor is vying for the title of Best Mayor and must also work with the other mayors to build a landmark on the island. Players are given a starting assortment of establishment cards to select from for their town, and on each turn the following steps are taken:

(1) The active player rolls a die or a pair of dice, depending on the phase in the campaign.

(2) All players activate the establishment cards in their towns that match the sum of the die/dice roll and are applicable. Activating an establishment card means gaining the benefit listed on the card (usually collecting income). 

(3) The active player takes one action. Actions to select from vary widely depending on the phase of the campaign but always include purchasing new establishments from the market to add to one’s town, building a landmark in one’s town (landmarks are special buildings that change one aspect of the rules for the owning player), or contributing toward the community landmark. 

When one player has built all of their landmarks and contributed to the community landmark, they are declared the best mayor and win the game. As the legacy campaign progresses two main effects are felt. First, an overarching narrative slowly reveals itself. Second, as new legacy components are unboxed, the complexity of the game grows. The gameplay never grows in difficulty beyond a lightweight strategy game, but the new components present additional factors to consider when making decisions and also introduce more variability in the marketplace.

We decided to play through our review copy with our ten year old son, Max. We thought it would be a good fit because he’s quite adept at board games and loves Space Base, which features a similar mechanism (drafting cards+rolling dice to collect benefits based on the card numbers that match the dice rolls).  He also understands the concept of legacy games as Chris is playing through another legacy game, Zombie Kids, with him and our other children.

As we settled into our first game, I got a good look at the components. The coins are plastic, which I’ve never seen before. It’s a good middle ground between cost saving cardboard coin tokens and the more luxurious clay or metal coins some games includes. Besides the coins, the starting components include cardboard tokens for player flags and town boards, two standard d6 dice, a sticker sheet, 65 plastic coated cards, a legacy deck of plastic coated cards (which must be opened  and worked through in sequence when instructed), and six “mystery” boxes to be opened as instructed during the course of the campaign. All the components are sturdy enough to hold up to repeated play.

My son Max was enthusiastic about Machi Koro Legacy from the first turn and his enthusiasm continued to blossom as he won game after game. He quickly capitalized on the obvious strategies – buy up establishments that are statistically more likely to be activated during dice rolls, then push toward dice (vs die) rolls as soon as possible. This meant collecting a lot of establishments that activate when 7 or 8 are rolled.  My husband followed the same strategy but didn’t always remember to build his town landmarks in a timely fashion, so he only won a few games. Me, I was a tragic tale of bad strategy. I opted to corner the market on single die roll establishments during my first few games, which didn’t work out well at all. Even in future games when I shifted to a 2 dice strategy, I was unable to gain any ground as some of the legacy components unboxed that Max and Chris had quickly scooped up gave a strong advantage over the rest of the campaign. At times, I felt it was impossible for me to win and I felt frustrated that Machi Koro Legacy  doesn’t provide a good catch up mechanism or some way to balance out the power of the more powerful legacy components. Without giving away any spoilers, I want to offer this essential tip: when components are unboxed that you have to prioritize taking specific actions to earn, TAKE THOSE ACTIONS AND EARN THOSE COMPONENTS. Some of the components won’t prove to be game changers, but some will and if you let your opponents take all of them you will be at a serious disadvantage the rest of the campaign with no way to rebalance the game.

Max loved Machi Koro Legacy so much that we agreed to binge play. We ran through the entire campaign of 10 games in just one week. We didn’t face any serious analysis paralysis during gameplay, so each game took no more than 45 minutes. In the end, Max won six games, Chris won four, and I didn’t win any. The game offers a great amount of replayability - when the legacy campaign is over, players can continue to play the game using a modified set of rules and a subset of the components. Chris feels that the permanent game we are left with is a bit more interesting than the original Machi Koro  edition, so would be purchasers should consider Machi Koro Legacy  an investment in not only ten distinct game session experiences, but also a fun, kid-friendly, permanent, upgraded edition of the original game. I have to agree that Machi Koro Legacy  is one of the most kid-friendly legacy games in the board game marketplace. You absolutely want to add this to the Christmas present pile for your under 18 set, where the gift becomes not only the game, but the time you’ll spend playing it with them. And while hard core Euro gamers will likely skip over the game in pursuit of heavier strategy picks, gamers who enjoy lightweight strategy games will enjoy the easy-to-learn, quick-to-play experience that Machi Koro Legacy  offers. 

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Publisher: Pandasaurus Games
Players: 2-4
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): 30-45 min
Game type: card drafting, dice rolling
Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

I don't keep my finger on the pulse of all the independent Kickstarter campaigns running at any given time. There's just too much unique content being produced month after month for me to sift through everything. I leave that to those who write previews and reviews for a living (I am an IT Consultant for a living; I write reviews as a hobby because I'm passionate about board gaming). The only way an independent Kickstarter campaign is going to be on my radar is if the designer/publisher reaches out to me to let me know the campaign is running or if it's created a bit of buzz already in the key circles that I frequent. I definitely wasn't closely monitoring Kickstarter campaigns four years ago when the original edition of Middara  was initially funded. It was an adventurous dungeon crawl that promised to be so much more than an ordinary dungeon crawl. With options to run in campaign mode for an ongoing narrative or crawl mode for one off gameplay, it could work as a long term project for committed game groups as well as a fun game for casual players. It was a long road from its 2015 campaign to its 2019 fulfillment with a lot of unhappy backers along the way who voiced frustration at the late fulfillment of the game. In early summer 2019, a few months after delivery of the original Middara  game was completed, Succubus Publishing launched their Middara: Unintentional Malum Triology  Kickstarter campaign. This offered a reprint of the original game (retitled Middara: Unintentional Malum Act 1), expanding it to over 80 hours of content, as well as two new adventure expansions (Acts 2 and 3) and a host of other Kickstarter exclusive add-on and stretch goal content. It also promised a faster turnaround on delivery to backers. Suddenly Middara  and its designers (Clayton Helme, Brooklynn Lundberg, Brenna Moncur, and Ian Tate) were the talk of the town and my husband Chris and I had an intense discussion about backing the second campaign. We were torn - yes the game sounded really cool, but we already own one behemoth campaign dungeon crawl (I’m looking at you Gloomhaven). Did we really need another? We hemmed and hawed and let the decision hang in the air. And then then publisher decided for us, by sending us a review copy of Middara: Unintentional Malum Act 1 (M:UMA1).

As soon as the box arrived at the end of June, I poured over all the components. So much stuff! Such a huge box! The artwork (conceived and illustrated by Stephanie Gustafsson, Alex Hansen, Hector Sevilla Lujan, Rhett Mason, and Jon Troy Nickel) is absolutely beautiful. The illustrations are well drawn, well detailed, and bursting with color.
The game could have an audience in the tween set if the drawings were a little less risqué, but as marketed to older teens and adults, everything is within decency standards.

The minis are of good quality; well sculpted. I do wish that at least the starting adventurer minis came pre-painted (I always wish that because I have no painting skills or supplies) especially when M:UMA1 is priced at $150. The components are sturdy and should hold up to regular usage. We haven’t sleeved our cards yet and because of the sheer quantity of them (hundreds) they’ll likely remain unsleeved. I especially enjoy the custom dice, separated by color to indicate which dice should be used during dice rolls.

After examining all the game contents, my interest was definitely on the upswing and Chris and I  set about assembling a crew to play the game in adventure mode. It’s daunting to find others willing to commit to 80+ hours of gameplay, but soon enough we had a happy foursome. One of the players, Craig, actually owned the original edition of Middara but hadn’t found the time to assemble a group and get it on the table. Our other player was his coworker and friend Matt.
Craig showed up for our first night of gameplay with a sweet surprise – he had ordered the fancy game mats and was happy to share them with us for our adventure.

In M:UMA1  adventure mode, players begin the first game by taking on the roles of young students preparing for their Magical Aptitude and Skill Test (MAST). We spent that first evening getting to know the four starting characters (called adventurers) and deciding who would role play each one. Every adventurer has their own unique backstory, motivations, starting equipment (armor, weapons, relics, consumables, etc.), and vivid personality.  I chose Nightingale because I saw myself in her and thought I would really enjoy playing her. Chris chose Rook, Craig took Remi, and Matt selected Zeke.
M:UMA1  adventure mode breaks down the overall campaign (called the adventure) into many sessions called encounters. We typically play one or two encounters each evening we get together, with each encounter lasting anywhere from one to two hours. To start an encounter, all players gather round the table and lay out their adventurer cards and equipment. The narrative is read from the Adventure book, or alternatively listened to on the Middara app. We all really love the app. It’s available on the Apple App store or Google Play store and allows players to hear the narrative bits of the story without requiring one of them to do the reading aloud. The voice actor Succubus Publishing hired is fantastic; she is an expressive reader who brings the characters alive. While the entire adventure in M:UMA1  is narrative driven and so every encounter advances the plot at least a little bit, there are some encounters that have several pages of story so using the app is really nice. After the narration is finished, the location boards are set up for the encounter, forming the terrain, similar to any other dungeon crawl. Directions for setup are given in the Adventure book with modifications in the Diagram book. Some elements of the terrain may have their details partially hidden, such as loot tokens (which hide the exact reward until a character performs an encounter adjacent to the token) and totem tokens (which hide what they represent until an adventurer comes within line of sight of the token). The starting spaces on the board for each adventurer and the monsters (called combatants) are specified in the Adventure book. Once everything is setup, the game begins; turn order for adventurers and monsters is driven by initiative cards that were shuffled and randomly laid out in a row during setup.
During the encounter, players spend their turns moving their adventurers around the terrain, following movement rules, as they work to complete the encounter goals. Usually this involves reaching the exit token, but other goals are possible. Since players typically get rewards (gold, equipment, experience points, etc.) each time their adventurer slays a monster, most will want to prioritize battling the monsters over making a quick run for the exit token. There isn’t a lot of analysis paralysis during game play as the best options for next steps on a player’s turn are usually fairly obvious. Combatants spend their turns completing actions as specified on their description cards. Those that are designated as adventurer opponents are called intelligent combatants and have intelligent combatant cards, while the ones that players control and that fight on behalf of adventurers are called command combatants. 

Exploring the terrain and battling intelligent combatants are governed by an extensive set of rules (60+ pages!) provided in the rulebook. It took us at least three encounters before we really understood most of the basic rules and even now, we find ourselves frequently checking the summary poster we printed out as a giant player aid. There’s just too much information to memorize it all, especially when the information is subject to change due to errata. Which brings me to one of the few complaints I have about this game -the large volume of errata. You either have to remember to frequently check the long list of corrections and changes (to the 1.0 rulebook and to the text printed on various components such as equipment cards, combatant cards, etc) and update gameplay as you go along,  or dedicate a session to reviewing all the changes and corrections and marking up the components with the correct text in one sitting. We started off trying to do the former but it was so frustrating that we switched to the latter and it took me at least an hour.  For the rulebook errata, you can take a shortcut to getting the updates in place (if you don’t mind the ink and paper expense) by printing out the updated 1.08 rulebook from the Succubus website. Another note on the rules- deciding which rule set to play under has become a complicated issue that players will need to come to agreement on as Succubus has compiled and released an entirely new version of the rules (v1.1) that changes several of the fundamental aspects of the game. This was done in response to the feedback from players who have extensively played through the game using the original 1.0 rulebook with errata corrections. The major overhaul is meant to strengthen aspects of the game that felt too weak and weaken aspects that seemed overpowered, but not all players agree on the changes. Also, the 1.1 changes are still in Beta release and so they are subject to change as they continue to be finalized. Our little group likes to keep things simple, so we opted to stick to the 1.08 rule set, at least for now.
Theme is really important to me, so I was very happy to discover that Middara’s theme is well implemented across all components and the gameplay thus far in M:UMA1 . This is where the game really shines over its competitors. Its narrative is extremely detailed and offers so much depth in the characters. More so than Gloomhaven. More so than any other board game I’ve played. An experienced  screenwriter could easily adapt the storyline into a fantastic adventure film for the big screen and I’d go see it. My two year stint playing through the Pathfinder Skull and Shackles Adventure Card Game is a distant second in plot development, and even then, that game only had such a rich narrative track because we employed a user written storyline that we found on BGG (the publisher offered little in the way of quality narrative for the game). I come back to the table each week to play M:UMA1 , not just for the fun of fighting monsters and gaining rewards, but also to find out what happens next in the story. Bonus: as the plot unfolds, adventurers grow in skill and discipline and new content becomes available.
At the time of this writing, we've played through all of Chapter 1 and are partway through Chapter 2 (about 10 distinct sessions). Once we are finished with M:UMA1  in adventure mode (we estimate it will take us over a year, meeting weekly) there are plenty of scenarios and special content for us to replay M:UMA1  in crawl mode.  In fact, a large portion of the Kickstarter promo box is content exclusively for use with crawl mode and I’m excited about eventually digging into that.
Based on my experience with M:UMA1  so far, I highly recommend the game. Not only is the game worthwhile on its own merits, but the friendship building that comes from playing a year+ long adventure with others is wonderful. You can make a full afternoon or evening out of each session, sharing a meal together before sitting down to play the game. Although I was given a review copy of Act 1, I like Middara so much that I’ll be purchasing Acts 2 and 3 myself (or putting them on my Christmas list). You can pre-order the entire trilogy or any part of it on the Succubus Publishing website once the publisher reopens wave 2 pre-orders.
-------------------------------------------------
Publisher: Succubus Publishing
Players: 2-4 (We played with 4)
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): About 1 - 3 hours per encounter
Game type: narrative driven, dungeon crawl, campaign, action points, role playing, cooperative, dice rolling, grid movement
Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

Let's take a moment to talk about the series Exit: The Game, which debuted in the United States in 2016.

Designed by Inka and Marcus Brand and published by Thames and Kosmos, the games are advertised as an Escape Room in a box. In an escape room, you and a group a friends are placed into a room (you may literally be locked in, depending on the fire code of the city where you book the room). Then,  a timer is set, a story is told to you to provide context and atmosphere for your puzzling adventure, and you attempt to solve a series of puzzles, the answers to which will eventually lead you to a key or combination to escape the room - hopefully before time runs out. These rooms typically book for $30+ per person, so the promise of replicating the escape room experience out of a tiny little box for a fraction of the cost is very appealing.

But does Exit: The Game live up to its promise? It does. It absolutely does, with one caveat - some of the games have you puzzling to solve a mystery within the time limit, but you aren't trying to escape anything.

Earlier titles in the series are fairly straightforward. A paper booklet of puzzles; a set each of riddle cards (pair with the booklet to solve the puzzles), answer cards (used to validate puzzle solutions and lead you to new riddle cards),  and help cards (hints for solving the puzzles); a decoder wheel (used to input codes derived from the puzzles); a simple rulebook; and various accessories (usually constructed of cardboard or paper) provide the core of the game experience. Players need to come equipped with scissors (destruction of components is required in nearly every game), pens/pencils, rulers, and a sharp wit to finish the game and calculate their score (measured in stars). The puzzle mechanisms vary, but they will be at least somewhat familiar to players who have done escape rooms or puzzle hunts before.  Depending on the title chosen, the puzzles also vary in difficulty. There is a difficulty rating printed on each box. We found that on average, we finish every Exit title in about 75 minutes; what varies for us across difficulty ratings is how many hint cards we lean on to solve the puzzles.

As the series has progressed in maturity, Inka and Marcus have been able to deliver titles with creative new puzzle mechanisms, changes in solving methodology (such as varying whether the puzzles in the paper booklet must be completed in sequential order or not), and meta puzzles. Meta puzzles are those which you cannot solve without getting a piece of the solution from some or all of the other puzzles included. For example, a puzzle that has you solve for a sentence comprised of words derived from other puzzle solutions is a meta puzzle. A good example of a title from the Exit: The Game series with a meta puzzle is Exit: The Game  - Dead Man on the Orient Express. It includes a meta puzzle that requires players to pay close attention to the passengers, their possessions, and locations throughout the game in order to solve it successfully. That game also introduced envelopes to open as the game progressed and it’s one of the titles that doesn’t see players escaping anything; instead they are trying to issue a code at the end to transmit the identity of a killer to authorities.

By the time the series release of Exit: The Game – The Catacombs of Horror  came around, I really thought the Brands couldn’t have any new tricks up their sleeve. I was wrong. With Catacombs of Horror, they have introduced the two part adventure, giving players a longer puzzling experience in one box. You can play straight through the entire game (allot yourself at least 2 hours) or play the first half and come back to the second half another time. There are also some fantastic new twists on the puzzling mechanisms (a candle is included and must be lit to solve one of the puzzles, for example), and the components got an upgrade (I’m holding onto the adorable little skulls indefinitely). Alongside the puzzle elements, the theming in the series has gotten better and better as new titles are released. Catacombs of Horror provides a well written narrative, albeit very very dark. As we solve puzzles, we find ourselves chasing down what happened to a friend of ours who disappeared into the Catacombs of Paris. It seems he may have met a dark end after having crossed paths with some demonic forces. This title is definitely not for the kiddos, which might be its only drawback. We have clever tweens who enjoy puzzle games, and this isn’t something we can share with them.

There have been at least three more titles released in the Exit: The Game series since Catacombs of Horror  was published in 2018 and more are on the way for 2020. If you’ve previously purchased any of the series, I’d strongly recommend adding Catacombs of Horror  to your must-play list. If this is the first you’ve heard of the series, do yourself a favor, and start with one of the easier titles, such as Exit: The Game – The Sunken Treasure. Then if you have a good time, move onto Exit: The Game – The Pharoh’s Tomb, before sinking your teeth into the most difficult titles like Exit: The Game  - Dead Man on the Orient Express or this one (Exit: The Game – The Catacombs of Horror ).

-------------------------------------------------
Publisher: Thames and Kosmos
Players: 1-4 (we always play with 2)
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): About 2 and a half hours
Game type: puzzle, cooperative
Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

I will meet you there this weekend!

I'll be at TABLE F2 with the lovely keshii! There's going to be a lot of amazing and beautiful people there!

I will have Starfighter: Chapter 01, t-shirts, hot shorts, AND ALSO, some sweet extras. This will be my first con with a table.. and it is all because of you guys! Thank you so, so much! I can only hope I can meet you guys so I can thank you in person; you have my humble love and affection.

I'll see you there, sweethearts! -HamletMachine

Hey Everyone! Just want to let you all know that HamletMachine has set up Starfighter related accounts on both Twitter and Facebook. You'll now be able to get Starfighter updates on whichever site you prefer! You can get to these Starfighter related pages at any time via the icons in the upper-right hand side of this page. Feel free to drop by and say hello!

In other news, we've added a set of 1" buttons to the Starfighter Shop. You get one each of Cain, Abel, and the Starfighter Logo!

Also, I have it on good authority that a new page is on the way! -Thisbe

TCAF site!

If you're attending, stop by and say hello!

(I don't have a table number yet but I'll be sure to announce this as soon as I know! If not, I'm sure you can find where my table is in the directory!)

EDIT: OH MAN! I almost forgot— At last Yaoi-con, there was a sweet person who had lost her voice from a cold (ah, I'm not sure if I got your name) and had printed out some TCAF info so I could attend— SWEETHEART, IF YOU READ THIS, THANK YOU! I hope to see you there!) -Hamlet

THE SHOP HAS RE-OPENED!

CHAPTER 3 IS NOW AVAILABLE FOR THE FIRST TIME!

We also have new prints and Chp 2 back in stock, if you have been meaning to pick it up!

I FEEL LIKE SANTA~

I hope you all enjoy!

-Hamlet

I just wanted to add; we've got a bunch of new merchandise in production, but a lot of it isn't quite ready yet, so keep your eyes peeled over the next couple of months, because we'll be adding a bunch of new exciting items to our inventory!

*cough* body pillows *cough* *cough*

-Thisbe

Mary Pratt, believed to be the last surviving member of the Rockford Peaches, has died at age 101.

Kvůli epidemii koronaviru se vláda na čas vzdá EET, projektu, který vnímá jako klíčový pro snížení daňových úniků. Sněmovna kývla na odklad celé EET do konce letošního roku. Potvrdit to ještě musí Senát. Neprošly návrhy opozice odložit EET ještě déle, když přitom Pirát Mikuláš Ferjenčík navrhoval odklad až do stých narozenin premiéra Andreje Babiše v roce 2054.

Dopravní podniky i soukromí dopravci obnovují běžné jízdní řády. Přestože stále hromadnou dopravu využívá zlomek lidí než před zahájením karanténních opaření, poklesy o 80 nebo 90 procent proti běžnému stavu už jsou minulostí.

U dvou zaměstnanců mladoboleslavské automobilky Škoda Auto byla zjištěna nákaza covid-19. Podle zjištění Práva to však nebude mít vliv na nedávno obnovený provoz závodu.

Méně stolů a větší rozestupy. Jihomoravské restaurace v pondělí otevřou své zahrádky. Musí dodržet přísná opatření proti šíření koronaviru, přesto nemají alternativu pro špatné počasí.

Hospody a restaurace Češi prostřednictvím projektu Zachraň hospodu podpořili deseti miliony korun. Poukazy do více než 1 500 podniků si od začátku dubna, kdy byl projekt spuštěn, koupilo přes devět tisíc lidí. Stravovací zařízení budou moci od pondělí obsluhovat hosty na zahrádkách, iniciativa se tím však nezastaví.

Studio Universal na znovuotevření kin nečeká. Premiéru animovaného hitu Trollové: Světové turné pustilo na placených digitálních kanálech. Strategie se vyplatila a hollywoodský gigant zvažuje, že by kinům v budoucnu odepřel jejich exkluzivní právo promítat filmy měsíce před uvedením na jiných platformách.

There is happy news and sad news here in Brown Dog Land. The happy news is that everyone is doing great and things are going really well. The sad news is that Addy is doing great in a new home! Last night she left to move in with her dad (my ex) and will be living with him full time now. I was sad to see her go, but when I saw how happy she was to see him walk in the door to pick her up, I knew it was definitely the right decision! She is going to be a happy and spoiled only pup and I know it's going to work out great.

Well, in just a few short days I am off to Japan on what I think is a very well-deserved vacation! The dogs will be on vacation, too, on their first ever trip to a boarding facility. I put a lot of care into choosing a place for them and I am optimistic that everything will work out well in my absence. Nervous, but optimistic. It will be really good for all of us, I think, since I have never boarded them and need to lighten up and it will be a good "out in the world" experience for the browns. Cutting the cord... I will report back on how everyone does.

Last week at Doga Maizy was such a pill that this week I put in an untested rookie. Probert was up to the challenge and made a LOVELY Doga companion. He taught a wonderful class and he just might be my new Doga co-teacher.

My boyfriend brought over this poster for Probert this weekend and hung it above his crate. Probert came in from playing outside to see it for the first time, walked straight into his crate and stood there staring at it. I think he likes it!

U.S. Unemployment Reaches 14.7 Percent – Chart from Great Depression Shows Risks Ahead

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 8, 2020 ~   The data is out this morning and it’s not pretty. Nonfarm payrolls collapsed by 20.5 million jobs in April and the unemployment rate rose to 14.7 percent. The United States is now seeing the worst unemployment rates since the Great Depression. We prepared the above chart from data available at the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) archives at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Following the stock market crash of October 29, 1929, it was not until August 1931 that the unemployment rate reached 15.01 percent. We’re now at 14.7 percent unemployment from a rate of 3.5 percent just two months ago in February. Consider using the chart above to figure out just how much cash on hand you need to maintain.

-

Sports Minister Kiren Rijiju said the first priority for this would be given to those who have qualified for the Olympics.

Mondo Duplantis of Sweden and Renaud Lavillenie of France tied for the gold medal Sunday during a men's pole vault competition held in their own backyards.

Don't expect a pack of running fanatics swarming to the finish line at road races this year. But that doesn't mean that participants don't have options.

Professional and high-performance athletes in Spain were allowed to return to practice, but some were jeered for doing so during the coronavirus pandemic.

Posted by: icon_uk

It used to be the tradition around these here parts to post fan art on Thursday, comic themed, but not comic published, art by fans or professionals.

So share your commissions or interesting art you've seen. (If in doubt, check with the artist it's okay to post it and if they say no, then it's a no!)

( Just for fun )

Preventivní opatření proti nákaze covid-19 zasáhla jak firmy všech velikostí, tak živnostníky. Jenže právě osoby samostatně výdělečně činné patří podle vlády ke skupinám, které krize vyvolaná pandemií nejvíce ohrozí. Zejména pak ty, kteří mají živnost jako hlavní zdroj příjmů a nemají ji jako přivýdělek k zaměstnání. Jak je stát podpoří?

Řada lidí přijde o práci a začne hledat novou. Už teď je dobré se na to připravit a před podpisem pracovní smlouvy vědět, na co si dát pozor. Je lepší kývnout na mzdový výměr, nebo na mzdu v pracovní smlouvě? A na co dalšího si dát pozor? Na otázky odpovídá advokát Pavel Nastis.

Od 1. září 2022 nebude možné provozovat kotle na tuhá paliva, které nevyhovují přísnějším emisním normám. Včasnou výměnou kotle můžete ušetřit. Nejenže snížíte náklady za topení, ale stihnete navíc využít státní dotaci na jeho pořízení. Víte, jak na to? Otestujte své znalosti.

V době koronavirové pandemie nás bombardují ze všech stran nejrůznější informace. Informační přetížení je tak značné, že v mnohých lidech vyvolává strach a stres. Jak tomu čelit, komu věřit a jaké informace ignorovat, se v komentáři zamýšlí psycholog Jan Urban.

Ze 60 na 80 procent denního vyměřovacího základu vzroste ošetřovné pro rodiče, kteří zůstali doma s potomky v souvislosti s uzavřením škol a školek kvůli koronavirové krizi. Senát novelu schválil v úterý 28. dubna 2020. Předlohu nyní dostane k podpisu prezident Miloš Zeman. Spočítejte si orientačně na kalkulačce iDNES.cz, kolik dostanete.

Sbírají jedno ocenění za druhým. Nejvíce si ale váží ocenění zákazníků. Své mošty a přesnídávky rodinná firma vyrábí v Bílých Karpatech, v místě, kde je příroda takřka nedotčená a čistá. Takové chtějí i své produkty.

Potřeba finančního polštáře je dnes aktuálnější než kdy jindy. Jaká by měla být naše rezerva? A kam ji uložit? Zmapovali jsme aktuální nabídku spořicích účtů. Příběh klienta Poradny při finanční tísni ukazuje, jak se dá náhle dostat do dluhů, až k osobnímu bankrotu.

Česká rodinná firma SSI Group vznikla v době, kdy jsme ještě neznali mobilní telefony a podnikatelské prostředí 90. let bylo poměrně divoké. Přesto se ji Václavu Vodrážkovi společně se synem Janem a dalšími členy rodiny dařilo každý rok posouvat o něco dál. Letos tak na trhu významná bezpečnostní agentura oslaví 30 let svého působení na trhu.

In my team's morning standup[1] today, my boss asked us for our "most ridiculous / useless achievement" of the weekend. He offered as his, that he and his wife had looked at their growing stack of papers for shredding, and had a bonfire of them instead.

Another colleague offered up fitting one of those little metal keyhole covers on his front door, and I said that I'd finished the paté in the fridge no-one else was eating before it went off.

What are your tiny achievements of the week?


[1] which is of course actually conducted these days sitting down in our respective homes ...

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If you’re anything like me you are fairly desperate for good podcasts to make you forget your own thoughts exist, so today let’s share.  Here are the podcasts that are my new best friends as I walk into the kitchen … Continue reading →

(in-package #:cl-pestilence)

;;   This is _not_ a simulation. It's just a game. And any resemblance
;; to any world, real or imaginary, is entirely coincidental.

;;   You can copy/paste this post in its entirety into a Common Lisp
;; REPL and play around with it if you like. I'm documenting it where
;; possible, but it's just a small toy to poke at for the moment.

;;   I've been thinking a lot about asymmetric multiplayer games and
;; <gestures wildly to world at large> all this.
;; I'm not actively _trying_ to model it accurately, but it's probably
;; obvious what's been consuming my thoughts lately.

;;   Let's get right into this. I'll explain as I go, and tie a few things
;; together neatly at the end. I hope. Regardless, there will absolutely
;; be a repo sometime fairly soon.

;; A place can be tagged arbitrarily, and can contain occupants.
;; They also collect points.

(defclass place ()
  ((tags :initarg :tags :initform nil :accessor tags)
   (occupants :initarg :occupants :initform nil :accessor occupants)
   (points :initform 0 :accessor points)))

(defun place? (thing)
  (eq (find-class 'place) (class-of thing)))

(defun place (&key tags occupants)
  (make-instance 'place :tags tags :occupants occupants))

(defun gen-place ()
  (let ((tag (pick '(:apartment-building :house :cottage
		     :office-building :factory :store
		     :cafe :lounge :theater))))
    (place :tags (list tag))))

(defmethod details ((place place))
  (format nil "====================~%~a {~{~a~}}~%~{  ~a~^~%~}~%"
	  (first (tags place))
	  (rest (tags place))
	  (mapcar #'details (occupants place))))

(defmethod show ((place place))
  (format nil "~20@a ~5a [~{~a~}]~%"
	  (first (tags place)) (points place)
	  (mapcar #'show (occupants place))))

;; A peep goes places.
;; They have
;;  - their daily routine (a list of places to visit)
;;  - their todo (the part of their routine they still need to do;
;;                they are currently at the first place in this list)
;;  - their health (a number from 0 to 100)
;;  - a list of plagues
;; Finally, they _also_ collect points.

(defclass peep ()
  ((routine :initarg :routine :initform (list) :accessor routine)
   (todo :initarg :todo :initform nil :accessor todo)
   (health :initarg :health :initform 100 :accessor health)
   (plagues :initform nil :accessor plagues)
   (points :initform 0 :accessor points)))

(defun peep? (thing)
  (eq (find-class 'peep) (class-of thing)))

(defun peep (&key places)
  (make-instance 'peep :routine places :todo places))

(defun health->string (health)
  (cond ((>= health 90) "@")
	((>= health 80) "0")
	((>= health 70) "O")
	((>= health 50) "o")
	((>= health 30) ":")
	((>= health 1)  ".")
	(t "☠")))

(defmethod details ((peep peep))
  (format nil "[~a ~3d [~{ ~a~^ ->~}]]"
	  (health->string (health peep)) (health peep)
	  (mapcar
	   (lambda (place) (first (tags place)))
	   (routine peep))))

(defmethod show ((peep peep)) (health->string (health peep)))

;; A world is a list of places, occupied by peeps. The world we start
;; peeps in also determines their routine.

(defun gen-world (&key (num-places 20) (num-peeps 100))
  (let ((places (loop repeat num-places collect (gen-place))))
    (loop repeat num-peeps
       do (let* ((routine (loop repeat 5 collect (pick places)))
		 (peep (peep :places routine)))
	    (push peep (occupants (first routine)))))
    places))

(defmethod details ((world list))
  (format nil "~%~{~a~}~%" (mapcar #'details world)))

(defmethod show ((world list))
  (format nil "~%~{~a~}~%" (mapcar #'show world)))

(defmethod all-peeps ((world list))
  (loop for place in world append (all-peeps place)))

(defmethod all-peeps ((place place))
  (loop for o in (occupants place) if (peep? o) collect o))

;; `tick!`ing a world means moving every peep through their routine once.
;;   We `tick!` each peep, then `tick!` each place until all the peeps are
;; done. Then we reset their routines.
;; You can think of this as a turn in the game.

(defmethod tick! ((world list))
  (let ((peeps (all-peeps world)))
    (loop while peeps
       do (setf peeps
		(loop for p = (pop peeps) while p
		   for res = (tick! p)
		   if res collect res))
       do (mapc #'tick! world)
       do (format t "~a" (show world)))
    (loop for p in (all-peeps world)
       do (setf (todo p) (routine p))))
  world)

;; Don't worry about the details of how to `tick!` peeps or places yet.

;;   Ok, here's where it gets a bit darker. Although we _did_
;; foreshadow this in the definition of `peep`. And also in the title
;; of the accompanying blog post.

;; A plague is another living thing.
;; It has
;;  - a host (a peep that it's infecting)
;;  - a signature (a token representing its lineage and strain)
;;  - health (how well it's doing inside its host)
;;  - virulence (how likely it is to spread to another host)
;;  - efficiency (how efficient they are at feeding)
;;  - reproduce (a function that returns a new instance to push into a new host)
;;  - and a strategy (a function, possibly closed, that takes
;;    itself and its host peep and mutates)

;; Plagues do not collect points; they score differently.

(defclass plague ()
  ((host :initarg :host :initform nil :accessor host)
   (signature :initarg :host :initform "SIG" :accessor signature)
   (health :initarg :health :initform 10 :accessor health)
   (virulence :initarg :virulence :initform 10 :accessor virulence)
   (efficiency :initarg :efficiency :initform 0.2 :accessor efficiency)
   (reproduce
    :initarg :reproduce
    :initform
    #'plague
    :reader reproduce)
   (strategy
    :initarg :strategy
    :initform
    (lambda (plague peep)
      (feed! plague peep 30))
    :reader strategy)))

(defun plague ()
  (make-instance 'plague))

;; Plagues can `feed!` on peeps or plagues. To feed means to
;; take away some of the targets' health and add some to your own.

(defmethod feed! ((self plague) (peep peep) (amount integer))
  (decf (health peep) amount)
  (incf (health self) (* (efficiency self) amount)))

(defmethod feed! ((self plague) (plague plague) (amount integer))
  (decf (health plague) amount)
  (incf (health self) (* (efficiency self) amount)))

;; Plagues can also `infect!` peeps by `reproduce`ing into them.

(defmethod infect! ((self plague) (peep peep))
  (unless (infected-by? self peep)
    (let ((child (funcall (reproduce self))))
      (setf (host child) peep)
      (push child (plagues peep)))))

(defmethod infected-by? ((self plague) (peep peep))
  (member (signature self) (mapcar #'signature (plagues peep))
	  :test #'string=))

;;  `tick!`ing a plague causes it to weaken and also carry out its strategy.
;; This models the background effect of the immune system of its host.

(defmethod tick! ((plague plague))
  (decf (health plague) 1)
  (funcall (strategy plague) plague (host plague))
  plague)

;;  `tick!`ing a peep means moving them to their next place, and also
;; `tick!`ing any plagues they may have contracted. Also, peeps are
;; resilient; they heal a small amount each time they tick (to a
;; maximum of 100).
;;  If a peep dies, they no longer move. And their plagues probably
;; won't do well. Peeps like to go places. They score points for each
;; place they go to.

(defun dead? (thing) (>= 0 (health thing)))

(defmethod tick! ((peep peep))
  (unless (dead? peep)
    (let ((location (pop (todo peep))))
      (incf (points peep))
      (setf (occupants location) (remove peep (occupants location)))
      (push peep (occupants (or (first (todo peep)) (first (routine peep)))))
      (setf (health peep) (min 100 (+ 5 (health peep))))
      (mapc #'tick! (plagues peep))
      (unless (empty? (todo peep))
	peep))))

;; `tick!`ing a place causes it to score for each `peep` present. And it causes
;; any `plague`s on present `peep`s to try to `infect!` other nearby peeps.
;; Places also lose points for each dead peep they contain.

(defmethod tick! ((place place))
  (incf (points place) (length (occupants place)))
  (loop for peep in (all-peeps place)
     if (dead? peep)
     do (decf (points place) 2)
     else do (loop for plague in (plagues peep)
		do (loop for victim in (remove peep (all-peeps place))
		      if (>= (virulence plague) (random 100))
		      do (infect! plague victim))))
  place)

;;  So, now we've got the basic framework of the game in place. There are three
;; players in this game: places, peeps and plagues.
;;   A plague player automatically loses if they are completely cured, and
;; automatically wins if they manage to kill everyone. That's fairly simple.
;;   A place player wins if they manage to cure the plague. They automatically
;; lose if all the peeps die. Also, fairly simple.
;;   A peep player is trying to survive. If they manage to make it some numer
;; of turns before dying, then we have to score the game instead of declaring
;; an outright winner regardless of game state.

;;   A peep player's score is the total number of points plus remaining health
;; on all of their peeps, minus the number of active plagues on said peeps.
;;   A plague player's score is the total number of health of their plagues,
;; with a multiplier equal to the number of places fully infected by
;; their plague.
;;   A place player's score is the total number of points in their places.

(defun score (world)
  (list :peep (let ((score 0))
		(loop for p in (all-peeps world)
		   unless (dead? p)
		     do (incf score (+ (health p) (points p)))
		   do (decf score (length (plagues p))))
		score)
	:place (let ((score 0))
		 (loop for p in world
		    do (incf score (points p)))
		 score)
	:plague (let ((score 0))
		  (loop for victim in (all-peeps world)
		     do (loop for p in (plaguesvictim)
			   do (incf score (max 0 (health p)))))
		  (loop for target in world
		     if (every
			 (lambda (victim)
			   (not (empty? (plagues victim))))
			 (all-peeps target))
		     do (setf score (* 2  score)))
		  score)))

;;   I think that's all I've got for now. This is definitely an idea I want
;; to run with. At the moment, it's just a tiny, in-repl proof-of-concept,
;; and not particularly fun, but I'm going to try developing it further with an
;; eye towards turning it into an actual web game playable from this site.

;; As always, I'll let you know how it goes.

(defun pick (lst)
  (nth (random (length lst)) lst))

(defun empty? (lst)
  (null lst))

Jack-in-the-pulpit, another native with a great name.  And such an unusual appearance. The roots are apparently edible, but only with some serious treatment — you have to let them dry for at least six months, then roast them, then grind them to mix in with flour…otherwise, you can get severe irritation of the mouth. I’m having … Continue reading "Jack-in-the-pulpit"