As they say, your mileage may vary, but personally I’m a fan of roleplaying PDF products. I can save money and space, more easily explore new games, unobtrusively read game books at the office (oops!), and get early access to materials later available in print. A good example is the recently released Six-Shooters & Spaceships sourcebook for Serenity. It details 26 new ships, as well as robots, guns, and other gear, and and the PDF version is available now. On the other hand, with low production costs nearly eliminating the barriers for new products, you’ll also see alot of this.

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BattleLore Boxed Set

So there was a design update for BattleLore last week that starts off in a meandering sort of way, talking about how much Jason Steinhurst loves BattleLore and how excited they are to work on the property.  This goes on for a while and then there’s this itsy-bitsy section at the bottom talking about BattleLore Heroes!  Apparently, the long-awaited expansion is under development and may release sometime in Spring of 2009.  For those who aren’t familiar with the daily heck that those of us who play BattleLore have been living through, the Heroes expansion was mentioned by Days of Wonder (you did remember that they created BattleLore, right?) roughly two years ago as an upcoming expansion for the game providing unique hero units to the various factions of the game.

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Have the best four days in gaming gotten a new owner?  Maybe.  For those who weren’t aware, Gen Con LLC has been in Chapter 11 for the past several months after falling into various debts to LucasFilm and the Make-a-Wish foundation.  In court on Friday, Gen Con requested a delay in filing of their plan and disclosure statement due to an offer to purchase the company’s assets in exchange for an amount equal to the company’s current debts.  The offer to buy the assets has come from an unknown group simply identified in the filing as Gen Con Acquisition Group and would basically leave Gen Con LLC with nothing but a corporation – no convention, no assets of any kind.  Very interesting – any guesses who makes up Gen Con Acquisition Group?

Hat Tip – LivingDice

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An Untraditional Home is a blog by Heather, a Christian mother who believes in “unschooling”:

While there is significant variation in what is meant by “unschooling”, generally speaking, unschoolers believe that the use of standard curricula and conventional grading methods, as well as other features of traditional schooling, are counterproductive to the goal of maximizing the education of each child. Instead, unschoolers typically allow children to learn through their natural life experiences, including game play, household responsibilities, and social interaction. (source)

You thought your life was devoted to games? Meet Heather. Heather is writing a series of articles about how she integrates gaming into her family’s daily life. From part 1:

Games are a big part of an unschooling lifestyle and we, despite being a non-competitive family, love games.

A long car ride or a visit to the doctors office means it is time for a game.  A quiet evening or a rainy afternoon is time for a game.  Games are what happen when we have a guest, or when someone is away from home, when we are out of movies, or when we are waiting in line.  A question, more often than not, is enough to prompt a game.  Because we don’t do traditional school the kids think of questions as games.

In part 2, she writes about the board games her family loves and how they get adapted to suit various ages and needs. They’re also devoted to video games and RPGs.

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Crazee Cube is a toy made from 3D polyominoes, similar to Blokus 3D. Only here you have to fit all the pieces back into the box. Good luck.

There are 20,000 ways to do it. And a whole lot more ways not to do it.

It’s not hard to turn this toy into a game: players take turns placing a piece into the box. The one who can’t place a piece without leaving it sticking out of the box loses. Kind of a 3D version of Batik.

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For one take on 3D Snakes and Ladders, there is Get Jack Back! from Fiesta Crafts.

In this game, you stick your magnetized pieces onto the side of the game board as you climb up, and then back down. So ladders and snakes reverse their usefulness in the second half of the game.

Another take is 3D Snakes and Ladders from Perner Productions.

In this game, there are five boards and the player pieces are marbles. Land on a snake and you roll down the boards.

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Designer Patricia Tower created this lovely chess set where the pieces are made from the five platonic solids, except for the queen which is made from a buckyball.

It was also made for a design competition.

Add numbers onto the faces, mandate a roll-off for attempted captures, and you’ve got yourself a gaaaaaaame.

(source)

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Glo Chess is a chess board with glow in the dark pieces that work using some kind of conductive Velcro technology called V30.

And something to do with batteries. And somehow, when you touch the pieces to the Velcro, they stick and light up.

It was designed by Adam Craft, a student of Arizona State University, as an entrant, and winner of, a Velcro sponsored design competition. (source)

(source)

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Wildlife Rescue is a simple ecological Yahtzee-like game from sggc Dice Maestro.

Roll the dice three times and collect matching endangered animal card. Player with the most points wins.

It’s small, portable, pretty, and reasonably priced.

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Munchkin is a card game from Steve Jackson Games, illustrated by John Kovalic of Dork Tower, that humorously simulates the RPG experience. The joke kind of wears thin after you’ve seen all the cards, and you’re left with a light take-that game of gang up on the leader.

To address this, SJG keeps releasing Munchkin expansions, from Space Munchkin to Munchkin Cthulhu. All of which inject new cards and new humor into the game.

But SJG took it further. They’ve created a line of Munchkin extras, including Munchkin bookmarks, Munchkin T-shirts, Munchkin posters, Munchkin greeting cards, and even Munchkin temporary tattoos, all of which confer additional powers on the player possessing them during the game. That makes Munchkin into something like an ARG, or alternate reality game.

It takes a humorous game like Munchkin, where winning the game is besides the point, to provide a platform for this type of outside-the-game gaming experience. Imagine players converging on the Chess Olympiad wearing Chess crowns that give them one additional move every ten turns or leather jackets that give their knights special movement abilities.

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