The email just came out– Gamehole Con is on for Oct 21-24th! That means the Root Tournament is going to happen in 2021. Because it’s Madison and not a normal area of the state, we will probably have to sit around in masks, but just like not having the insane school closings that neighboring counties had as long as kids “wore” masks, I’ll take it.
Dates:
Housing Portal Opens – April 1st at noon CDT
Event Submissions Open – May 1st noon CDT
VIG Renewals Open – June 15th noon CDT
Main Registration Opens – July 1st noon CDT
VIG Event Registration Opens – August 15th noon CDT
General Event Registration Opens – September 1st noon CDT
Pre-registration and Event Submission Closes – October 1st
‘How to’ on making (and more importantly, maintaining) playtest cards in Figma with Google Sheets:
I use paper note cards at first, but then the changes, ohhhh, the changes start to come in and they are very difficult to manage with pieces of paper after about the 3rd playtest or so. And… tiresome.
This allows you to use google sheets to maintain rules, numbers, text, etc and you can easily export to either print or electronic. Great stuff.
MURAL!
Every couple of years I get the hankering to design a game; games that will be playtested but never finished enough to bother publishing, and that’s just fine: publishing is the shitty part. I use MURAL at work a lot to help product development and used it this time for a brainstorm and to build out the basic game space, card typology, etc.. It worked AWESOME. Highly recommend it when you first start design or ideas for anything (even a novel where you have to thread stuff through from plots to character arcs, etc.). It ain’t free though like Figma.
Also for work, Mural was my absolute best friend last Spring when we were still stuck at home. It still helps now that I’m back in the office, but was absolutely fucking critical last year.
The “Marauder” Expansion kicks out tomorrow. I’ll back it of course, but man, we have not played all that much this year– mostly due to some other very addictive games. Looks interesting for sure.
Based on twitter info from Leder games, this is going to have a two new main factions and a set of minor factions (like say Stellaris when you encounter single planet races). We’ll see if they can continue their run with this one of interesting designs for the factions. Root is hype for good reason, it’s a refreshing game of conflict among a sea of co-ops and design by the numbers point-salad games.
Ah World War 1, there is truly no end to the horrors that one can discover while plumbing it’s gory depths. It’s especially horrifying as no one except for a few Generals from the American Civil war and possibly the Prussians after the Austro and Franco Prussian wars knew or could have even imagined it would be this sort of conflict. The following short film has ghastly English dubbing, but is worth watching (it’s short). It references this horrifying battle.
And just for historical reference, the Russian army DISINTEGRATED near the end of the war, you have to imagine if the soldiers were willing to fight like this, what the scale of that really meant.
My biggest regret out of this election is not seeing the two populist candidates go at each other. Biden is weak and a waffle on all issues (abortion, crime, gay marriage) and Trump is… getting mad at tweets to drive policy. The debates were high comedy, but nothing serious: just two rich corrupt men tearing into each other about mostly non-issues (including Covid, which is both a global health issue and high political theater). This should have been Bernie Vs Trump. I was almost written in the stars that it should have been so, and yet, we were denied.
So yeah, I blame the DNC for not putting up the populist candidate again this time in the same way I was shocked that the Republican populist, bully pulpit candidate destroyed his field last time.
Let’s see how the day goes. In recompense for a political post on a gaming blog, here are some hotties.
Excellent essay on the Shimabara Rebellion– I became interested in this based on the painting by Takato Yamamoto, of which there is no complete online version to look at. Needless to say, the pieces that are out there are amazing. Where is this full art? Private collector?
There is a lot of good electronica out there, too much to consume really (and of course, a lot of crap). If you are looking for a good compilation, the AF030LP (great name hey?) from the Analogical Force label is excellent with a track from Wisp, and one from Venetian Snares. Both of those are great, but they are not even the best tracks on the record!
I don’t give a shit about football. I’d convert all the football stadiums into soccer ones or better yet, Australian Rules Football if I could. Football is boring, commercial driven and so very static (but has a good draft system, I’ll give it that).
However, in this era of let’s call it political overcorrectingness, people are offended by everything and the Washington Redskins fell to the offended mob recently. They are working on a new name. I get it, at first blush it certainly seems offensive– but then you see interviews with Indians that don’t mind the name at all and especially the logo and branding, which is frankly REALLY fucking cool. Indians interviewed like the representation of native Americans in professional sports. I think they should have it, just like the Celts, Vikings, Saxons, Trojans, Spartans, on and on.
This is so badass…
So in coming up with the name, I thought at first it was imperative to follow what has worked in the past really well: pick a TRIBE name like the ‘Noles or Fighting Illini. We all know the Comanches, the Iroquois, the Apache and the Araucanian (look them up, geez), among many others, have become LEGENDARY in their ferocity as warrior cultures and would fit perfectly as team names. We yell GERONIMO! when jumping off stuff. This is homage to great warriors and a term of endearment and great respect. Every time a kid asks “why you yelling that” and you explain it to them, it retains in our cultural memory the history of these great and terrifying people and their story and struggles against the early forces of globalization.
But which tribe do you pick? The Blackfeet were involved in the original logos, but what about all the tribes in the DC area? The Pohantan empire was there when the first settlers arrived, there’s the Mohicans, Delaware, Sioux, Cree, on and on and on. I think for this team, it’s too tough to choose just one and we need a logo and name that is more general, but also isn’t perceived as racist in our current ULTRA sensitive climate.
And aside from all that, we want a cool name and a cool logo. I found it when driving up north last week. I saw a road called Warbonnet road and there it is, simple, effective, iconic.
Who’s a 40K fan? Putin is! While Americans are trying to nullify their national identity the Russians are doing the opposite. Note that Putin did not put statues or murals of himself, nor are there any of Stalin. Many of the soldiers who fought.
