Imagine my surprise the other day when my daughters started explaining to me about wizards, elves, bearded dwarves, and LARPing. They’re big fans of Memoir ‘44 (the World War II board game), but until now, they’ve not been interested in roleplaying. So where did this sudden change of heart come from? The PBS children’s television series Fetch with Ruff Ruffman! In an episode titled “Dog of the Rings,” the animated character Fetch sends his human “fetchers” on a quest for the Majestic Wing Goblet of Infinite Awesomeness.

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I missed it the first time through, but after a second read of Adamant Entertainment’s plans for 2009, I noticed the company is working on a Star Trek game using the Traveller rule set. Actually, without a license for Star Trek, this would be a “serial-numbers-filed-off set of rules and guidelines that will allow you to play races such as the Logical Psions, face off against Swarthy Aggressors, enter careers which represent the various service devisions within the Fleet, and boldly go across the galaxy using space-warp FTL engines.” Still, isn’t this a combination we’ve been waiting for since the ’70s?

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According to a new study published in Neuron, almost winning at gambling excites the same areas of the brain as winning, so long as any sort of player action was involved (even if the action was not related to the outcome). That’s why a slot machine that gives two cherries and a banana (almost!) will have people pumping more quarters than one in which people lose dramatically.

The lead author says:

On games where there is some skill involved, like target practice, it makes sense to pay attention to near-misses. However, on gambling games where the wins are random, like slot machines or roulette, near-misses do not signal your future success. Importantly, our volunteers in this study were not regular or problem gamblers, and so these findings suggest that the brain may naturally respond to near-misses in this way.

Makes sense to me. The natural reaction to “almost” is “just a little more”. A person thinks that just a little more effort on his or her part will do it, even if the effort isn’t related. And even if the “near miss” is built into the system.

Game designers: use this information wisely.

(source)

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Steve Vigar designs wooden Chess sets with pieces made to look like famous buildings from various American cities. You choose which cities you want for black and white, currently from New York, Chicago, and San Francisco.

$2,100.

(source)

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Bally and Vanity Fair organized a pre-Oscars Hollywood Dominoes gathering on Friday. Proceeds will benefit the Art of Elysium charity.

Players included a variety of actors, actresses, and singers, including Kate Bosworth (hostess), Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher, Perrey Reeves, Angie Harmon, Helena Christensen, Jennifer Morrison, Maria Menounos, Taylor Dayne, Lady Victoria Hervey, Alicia Witt, Amoury Nolasco, Vinessa Shaw, Tichina Arnold, Zoe Saldana, Olivia Wilde, and Natalie Walker.

Demi beat Ashton, as she usually does.

(one of many galleries of attendees)

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Urban Manhunt is a non-CCG coming from Spectrum games this summer. You play a hunter legally allowed to kill terrorists “imprisoned” in the city of Chicago as a televised sport.

Spectrum Games is known for its Toon-like RPG Cartoon Action Hour based on 1980s Saturday morning cartoons.  To illustrate the concept, a bazooka attack will blow up your vehicle but only send you flying into a wall, otherwise unhurt.

Z-man Games published the game in book format. (As long as you’re checking out the least viewed pages of Z-man Games, don’t miss their RPG supplement Tome of Levity, or 48 pages of ridiculous spells to enliven any fantasy setting.)

On the flip side, Spectrum Games is now working on another addition to the serial killer gaming genre. In Slasher Flick, you play the victims trying to escape the serial killer. You control both primary and secondary characters, the latter of whom are not expected to survive. SG is inviting the public to add their comments as the game is being developed.

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Bulgarian grandmaster Kiril Georgiev is trying to set the world record for most number of simultaneous Chess games: 360.

He has to win 80% of them in order to beat the previous world record holder, Susan Polgar (326 simultaneous games) … or perhaps Andrew Martin (321) (source).

(source, image)

Update: He did it, with 6 losses, 70 ties, and 284 wins. (source)

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Players Handbook 2 for 4E D&D is scheduled for release next month. You can keep up with the latest news on Wizards’ preview page.

Subtitled Arcane, Divine, and Primal Heroes, the next edition will include eight new classes and five new races, background elements to characters, racial paragon paths, and much more.

A third Players Handbook is also in development.

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What, exactly, is Gygaxian? Other than a reference to the most-venered father of role-playing, Gary Gygax?

According to Grognardia, Gygaxian is a rich writing-style that serves to illustrate how a DM is supposed to imbue his players with a sense of wonder on the one hand, while making rulebooks somewhat difficult to navigate on the other. He calls this “High Gygaxian”. From Vault of the Drow:

The true splendor of the Vault can be appreciated only by those with infravision, or by use of the roseate lenses or a gem of seeing. The Vault is a strange anomaly, a hemispherical cyst in the crust of the earth, an incredibly huge domed fault over 6 miles long and nearly as broad. The dome overhead is a hundred feet high at the walls, arching to several thousand feet height in the center. When properly viewed, the radiation from certain unique minerals give the visual effect of a starry heaven, while near the zenith of this black stone bowl is a huge mass of tumkeoite — which in its slow decay and transformation to lacofcite sheds a lurid gleam, a ghostly plum-colored light to human eyes, but with ultravision a wholly different sight.

According to this RPG Net thread, Gygaxian refers to a certain RPG-style: DM vs players, illogically placed monsters, kill traps, arbitrary treasures.

A thread on Gleemax notes the use of puns and weirdness, such as floors, stalagmites, and chests that beat you up, homages to Lewis Carrol and King Kong, and creatures that work as meta-jokes about other creatures, such as the Gas Spore.

mr_orgue cites these, and adds the encyclopediac treasure lists and the infamous alignment system.

In the end, to me Gygaxian means: stop referring to the rules, and follow the fun.

RIP, Gary.

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As long as we’re talking about them, check out these Universal Fighting System tidibits from Fantasy Flight Games:

• UFS will be adding characters from Tekken 6. Tekken 6 is the latest in a popular video game franchise from Namco. (source)
• Want to start playing UFS risk-free? FF will send you free decks of UFS cards if you send them “a deck of a game you are no longer playing”. (source)
• Are you a retailer looking to try out UFS risk-free? FF will send you a box of starters, boosters, prize packs, and assorted paraphernalia – enough to support 16 players – free is you agree to run both a sealed and constructed deck tournament in mid-March. (source)

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