I’m a big fan of podcasts, but I’ve never really gotten into recordings of live plays – they just don’t do it for me. However, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that there is at least one recorded play podcast that is an 11 on the awesome scale: the D&D Podcast featuring Mike Krahulik (Gabe from Penny Arcade), Jerry Holkins (Tycho from Penny Arcade), Scott Kurtz (from PvP), Wil Wheaton (do I really need to say where he’s from???) and Chris Perkins (from Wizards R&D). Utterly geeky and so totally NSFW.  

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Its no big secret that I’m obsessed with figuring out how to get more gaming squeezed into my rapidly shrinking free time, but without having to sacrifice any of my favorite game genres. The most difficult of these is clearly the miniature game – a genre that not only takes 2-4 hours to complete a single game, but also has the added time sink of model assembly and painting before you even get to the table. It is with this in mind that I have sought to increase my play time by outsourcing my painting duties to a third party. To this end, I’ve enlisted the help of PaintedFigs.com, a Sri Lankan outfit dedicated to model assembly and painting. To test the merit of this whole endeavor, I’ve requested a small test effort – a 5-man squad of Chaos Terminators for my existing Alpha Legion army. The whole process isn’t complete yet, but I wanted to share my progress to date:

• On January 29th I submitted an initial order request with a detailed example of the Alpha Legion paint scheme I use (I use a more traditional scheme than the horrifically ugly scheme promoted by Games Workshop currently) with the sergeant painted in their showcase quality and the rest in standard quality
• Later that day, I received a detailed invoice from PaintedFigs for the whole job (including minis purchase and painting): $68.15 US [note: retail price for a box of Chaos Terminators in the US is $50]
• On January 30th, I submitted payment
• On February 2nd, PaintedFigs confirmed payment
• On February 25th, I received a request for clarification concerning the assembly of the sergeant (PaintedFigs generally calls for two weeks for delivery of miniatures)
• On March 4th, I received a link to the following gallery for my approval: http://picasaweb.google.com/paintedfigs/JoshAlphaLegion#

What are my impressions thus far? At this point, I’m pretty pleased – the paint jobs look solid, but I’d like to get them in hand before I make any final declarations on quality. They certainly follow my requested color scheme and are at least tabletop quality. The timeline is a bit longer than I expected, but given my own time constraints, definitely acceptable. As for the price – its hard to beat: for about 27% over retail, I’m getting fully painted miniatures to my specification at good quality. I’ll post photos and a final review when the miniatures arrive in the states, but at this point, I’m giving this approach a tentative “thumbs up.”

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I really have nothing to add to this:

The variety of American board games can be a metaphor for how churches approach ministry differently, [Pastor John] Madvig says. “I think that too often, the church is like the makers of Monopoly: put a new face on an old, proven game and hope people will buy it again,” he explains. “Meanwhile, others are putting their creativity to work, coming up with new and exciting solutions – that no one really expected from the church!”

It ends with a pimp for BGG.

(read the rest)

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Method for playing a basketball board game – The game Spot-a-Shot.

Board game – A design patent. I don’t recognize the board, but it looks like presidents around a U.S. map.

Gaming device and method featuring chess indicia – This is a slot machine with Chess piece pictures on the wheels. I can’t figure out to whom this would appeal.

System and method for skill based games of chance – The duplicate part of duplicate poker. Leaving aside that this is another patent for something rather obvious, the company which founded Duplicate Poker is out of business and owes its affiliates half a million dollars. Maybe they can sell the patent.

Story telling game and apparatus – A card game. Each player gets a few cards, and on his or her turn, has to tell a story about the card with a beginning, middle, and end. Players get judged on creativity, interest, and time and score points.

System and method of playing a multi-game card tournament – A card game tournament where each team of players has to play poker, rummy, and bridge.

Multiplicity of dice boardless game – A dice game with 12 dice, 9 rounds, and a series of goals for each round.

Board Game – The game Kids For Chemistry.

Scent-based board game – The game P.U. Smells.

Card game – A card game/toy where you have to reconstitute an image from a fan of cards threaded around an axle:

But it’s not just parts of the image on different cards. The image is formed from little pieces of the images on other cards through careful obscuration. Kind of like the folding picture on the last page of a Mad magazine.

I didn’t understand what the “game” part is.

Hardway – I’m pretty sure this refers to the horse racing/craps game Hardway. One particularly amusing note from the patent:

In my previous non-provisional application (No. 10/051,947–filing date Jan. 22, 2002), I was unaware of the USPTO website containing search capabilities on previous patents.–Having Now searched this website, I have found some existing or expired patents that have some similar features to my game, which I previously knew nothing about.

He then goes on to list why these games are different from his.

Super royal video poker – Poker with two decks of cards with distinct backs. A super royal flush is a royal flush where all cards are from the same deck of cards, and it pays out higher than a normal royal flush. Patent also goes on about the UI for a device that plays this.

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Today is the internationally recognized roleplaying holiday, GM’s Day. You get the day off, right? And like any other good holiday, GM’s Day is an occasion for shopping and sales. Here is some of what you can find around the net:

• Expeditious Retreat Press print books for 25% off and electronic books for 40% off.
• Discounts on all PDF and many print publications from RPGObjects.
• 25% savings on all HinterWelt products.
• Not with a discount, but many GURPS books now available in electronic form.
• Coupons for Gamer’s Attic—10% off any order (code: MAR4TH10) and another $5 off any order of $25 or more (code: MAR4TH5).
• Cartoon Action Hour from Spectrum Games for 25% off.
• All Adamant Entertainment products for just $1.
• 25% savings on products from Fat Dragon Games.
• I Am Mongoose, And So Can You! discounted 25% but ePublishing 101 discounted 97%.
• Hundreds of additional games on sale at DriveThruRPG.

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