GenCon the Third, Part Only

Best decision this year for GenCon was to pre-order the sack lunch from St Elmo for Thursday. Two filet mignon sliders, house cooked potato chips and a triangle brownie. Quick pickup, no long lines like at the food trucks. Ate in the shade a block up from the convention center. The horse radish sauce was the coup de grace.

Two Autographs: Heath Robinson of Infinite Black on his photo in the GenCon program, and Cherie Priest, Author Guest of Honor on her book "Four and Twenty Blackbirds".

Worst Time to Host a Game: Thursday morning. Hundreds, maybe thousands of con goers were still in the Will Call line, not a lot of gamers in the playing hall. I had no one for my 11:00 am session of Throw Down Seven.

Good Hosting: Four folks came and played Throw Down Seven on Friday afternoon at three. They were dice lovers, so were perfect for this. They had each bought a set of dice in the exhibit hall and used their own to play. They emailed me later to say they had played again at dinner.

In the Booth: Throw Down Seven from ChipsterzoneGames was for sale in the Indie Game Alliance booth.

Pricey but Convenient: The Holiday Inn Express was quite nice, with a full hot breakfast and is far from the most expensive hotel within a couple blocks of the Convention Center, but at over $200 a night, it's still much more than I'm comfortable paying for a hotel room. They handled the crowd well.

Overwhelming: The exhibit hall was huge and packed with people the entire time. Nice to be with the bustle, but would have been nice to have more elbow room.

Top Technical Innovation: Dice, physical dice, that know what they roll, and tell your software. These are way cool, though still under development: https://www.electronic-dice.com/

Gorgeous Game: "Parks" designed by Henry Audubon and will be published by Keymaster Games in October.

Sold Out! But I played them: "Klask" is a bit like miniature knock-hockey with magnet-limited sticks. And "Point Salad" is a card drafting game with vegetables on the cards. Odd, but kind of fun.

Schlock Mercenary, Weird Giraffes, and Infinite Black in the exhibit hall: Pleased to talk shop briefly with Howard Tayler in his booth and said "hey" to fellow Alabama game producers in a couple other booths.

Only Three: seminars I attended this time. The writing track was still big, but I recognized fewer of the authors. I only went to a Revisions panel there, other talks were from Panda Games and on Script Writing (in the film track).

Script Writing: Thomas DeCarlo, from Bloomington (where we spent Wednesday night pre-con, about an hour out from Indy), he does animation; Kylie Eaton, "Dispel", Writer/Director; May (somebody), Australian comedienne/actress/writer; Timothy Tray, ABBY; Dan McGuire, ABBY

Writing is solitary, directing is social.

Fit your script to time/budget: 3 locations, 2 speaking parts, 4 days to shoot -- if really going to film it

Script Notes Podcast #403 recommended (w Craig Mazin and John August)

Recommended books: Screen Play by Syd Field and Save the Cat by Blake Snyder.

Hook in the first couple pages

Write for visualization (setting or character come first)

E.g. describe a person sitting quietly reading, then describe the chaos around them

Use cards, one scene per card, can rearrange them easily

"If you watch a movie w/no sound you should get 80% of it" - Alfred Hitchcock

Outline in Word, or Final Draft

Find screenplays on line, e.g. Aliens (try https://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Aliens.html)

Costly, worth it ?: https://blcklst.com/.

Know what you're writing for: spec? Go big! short film to shoot with friends, or for demo? time/budget/locale

Accept that a script is a living document, will be interpreted, re-written, etc.

Only write what can be seen and heard -- tough to script smell, touch

Don't give direction, but help the cast/crew: "sitting alone weeping in a bathtub" and not "he felt sad"

Game Manufacturing presented by Panda Games.
Online quote system -- get an idea of costs, even if you don't go with them as manufacturer
Can Kickstart, or not.
50% of per game cost + 100% of tooling costs up front
Good to know things like what needs to maintain hidden info, e.g. matching card backs
Cards per sheet (so target that number): 54 black jack size, 62 Taro size
Chinese holidays will impact schedule
Put a blurb on the quote to indicate intent of game, gives the project some context
PPC article is a hand crafted one off (Prototype Proof of Concept?)
MPC is first game off production
Suggestion: work with an experienced graphic designer (and fulfillment partner)
Adult Hobby Market: 14+ age designation avoids some safety testing
Panda shipping is extra, does not do fulfillment
Tariff issues are unknown.
1500 game minimum, 2500-5000 is more the sweet spot.

Panda Prepping for Printing
contact@pandagm.com
Suggest to use a graphic designer or layout specialist with experience in print media
Need your own UPC # (resale ones are fine for hobby market)
Black text should be pure black
Panda has templates on their website
Use Preflight Profile in Acrobat
(I really liked the folks from Panda, they were down to earth and clearly enjoy their work of bringing new games into the world.)

Revisions Panel, Writing Seminar
John Helfers, Editor; Howard Andrew Jones, Author; Cerece Rennie Murphy, Author
Finish the first draft!
Cerece kind of stole the show, an attractive 30-something African American, she introduced herself as a children's author, then proceeded to drop sporadic F-bombs.
Check the distance between what you wrote and what you thought you wrote
Read it out loud. Try read aloud mode from MS Word. (I tried letting Word read some, not bad.)
Read it out of order. Maybe one character's POV at a time, or last section of a chapter and back by sections.
Know what each character needs from each scene, what their emotional state is.
Does the plot work?
Make sure if your character goes after some big magical item that it gets used (Ahem, HBO Game of Thrones)
Everything should serve a point (to keep readers turning pages) -- advance plot; advance character.
Good to use others to review: developmental editor, copy editor, proof reader.
Dr. McCoy Test: "I'm a doctor, not a bricklayer."
Recommended: Steve Pressfield "The War of Art"
Also: Save the Cat, same as from the Script Writing Panel

Too Big?: Once again I enjoyed GenCon, but since I wasn't focused on the sideshow that is the writing seminar I was more immersed in the larger show and it was a bit overwhelming. And crowded. But getting to play hot, pre-release games, and talk to a lot of friendly people, both ones trying to sell me something and those just doing what they love, is a good time.

Games without Dice

There's another sort of game that I like to play, one that doesn't involve dice, but where objects are also rolled on a table often covered with green felt: pool, or billiards so as not to be confused with lounging in and around a concrete depression filled with chlorinated water. That can be fun, too, but I'm referring here, in the context of Chipsterzone Games, to parlor pastimes.

I've played a fair bit of 8-ball, and also of Cut-throat over the years. Much of my 8-ball was played a good while back, during college breaks at bars on coin-operated pool tables. I was never particularly good, but perhaps understandably I got a wee better after one drink, let me get out of my head so much, I suppose. My friend, let's call him Tim (since that is his name), got worse at pool with the first drink, but better at Space Invaders, the video game. I got only worse at video games with alcohol. Ah, comraderic competition!

But even at its best my 8-ball wasn't very good. When we moved to Raleigh, NC during high school however the house my parents bought came with a full-size, heavy slate pool table in the basement. My father soon introduced me to an entirely different sort of pool game that they played at the Marine Corps Reserve Center on their lunch breaks (and I'm guessing any other time that things got slow).

They called it simply "Pocket Billiards" and the main object, rather than to shoot balls into the pockets as in most games played on a pool table, was to make "billiards" to score points. That is, players try to make a stroke in which the cue ball strikes two other balls. This is wonderfully difficult, especially at first. It becomes somewhat less difficult as the player understands how, and when, to put various kinds of English, or spin, on the cue ball. Of course English is important in 8-ball or any other game on a pool table, but it's critical in shooting billiards to control where the cue ball goes after contact with another ball, or the rail, and to avoid letting the cue drop into a pocket and scratching a batch of points.

I played a bunch of this game on my dad's table through the rest of high school and college, both alone and with family and friends, but then played it very little for a couple of decades. I've recently resurrected it at my own place of work where we have a pool table in the parlor games area adjacent to our cafeteria. Other games there include table tennis and Foosball. As I introduced it to some of my colleagues there was some confusion over the name and to prevent it being known simply as "Chip's Game", a title I hadn't earned since it's not my invention in the least, I dubbed it Billiards 321 (for reasons that the rules, below, will make obvious).

I recommend it highly for anyone who enjoys playing on a billiards table, but not so much the standard sinking of balls. My chief rival at Billiards 321 here at work has begun this year by creating a spreadsheet to track our competition. He's broken it down into weekly and monthly increments, determined to best me at some interval. His specialty is making "pots" (sinking balls into the pockets), while mine is making the billiards, so we choose differing shots from similar positions and it keeps things lively.

Without further ado, the rules:

Billiards 321

Billiard: hitting two balls with the cue ball during one shot; English (spin) can make all the difference!

Break: 
A) Set up the 3, 2 and 1 balls in their home positions as shown: 3 and 1 on the spots, 2 ball in center
B) Cue ball to one side or the other of the 1 ball, no more than a ball's width away.
C) Cue ball must hit 2 rails, including the far rail, before touching any balls, then must hit 2 balls (make a billiard) to be a good break.
D) Players take turns attempting to break until either someone makes a billiard or each player has made an attempt.
E) If the last player fails to make a good break then the first player begins regular play where the balls ended.

Play: 
A) Must make a billiard to open a turn.
B) Subsequent shots can either sink a ball or make a billiard to continue a turn.
C) Sunk balls are returned to their home position for the next shot (or as close as possible without touching any other balls)
D) If a player scratches during a turn all points accumulated on that turn are lost (A scratch in this game is when the cue ball goes into a pocket, or off the table, or the shooter fouls by hitting other balls than the cue ball with stick, hand, etc.)
E) After a scratch the next player must start from within a ball's width away from the one ball's home position and must hit the far rail prior to touching any other ball.

Scoring: 
A) A billiard is 2 points (hitting all 3 balls in one shot is 5 points)
B) Sinking a ball scores the number of points on the ball: 3 ball is 3 points, 2 ball is 2 points, 1 ball is 1 point
C) Both billiards and ball points can be scored in the same shot
     a. It is not required that the billiard completes before the ball falls in the pocket
     b. Example: a player hits both the 1 ball and 3 ball with the cue and pots both balls; that is  2 + 1 + 3 = 6 points for that shot.
D) Players accumulate their points verbally during a turn and then record them at the end of their turn, this way only unscratched points are retained.

E) A standard game is to 50 points, it is not required to hit 50 exactly

 

 Advanced: This is a billiards game, if some players tend to score too many points by shooting balls then the “billiards rule” can be added, either at the beginning of a game, or during a game if so agreed prior to start. From the point the rule is put in place no more than 2 ball shots in a row without billiards are allowed. If a player shoots 3 ball-only shots then they can keep all points but their turn ends. The sunk ball(s) are re-tabled and the next player shoots as after a miss. (The other players should verbally note when 2 ball shots have been completed without a billiard so everyone is aware that the next shot must include a billiard for the turn to continue.) 

Higher Scoring Variant: When a ball is sunk replace it with the next lowest ball that hasn’t been in play, always spot it on the farthest open home spot from the cue ball (if equidistant then farthest from the other balls). Balls continue to score their face value, wrap back to the lowest ball after the 15 has been used (e.g. back to the 1 ball). Billiards score 5, hitting all 3 balls scores 8. Play to a higher number, e.g. 200.

Have fun !!

Poker Solitaire Rubric

I've mentioned Poker Solitaire, the card game, to a few people lately (mostly when introducing them to my new polyhedral dice solitaire game, Throw Down Seven), but apparently not everyone is familiar with Poker Solitaire so I thought I'd give a run-down of it, the way I like to play.

Background

Also known as Poker Squares, Poker Solitaire is a simple but challenging game with a nice mix of strategy and chance. I learned it from a book on card games, maybe one of the Hoyle books, decades ago. It's not as simple (and mindless) as Clock (click through for someone else's YouTube video that will give you an idea of the version of Clock that I grew up with), but it also has a nice tactile feel like Clock does. This is one reason I prefer to play it with real cards though there are many online and app versions available. The other reason is that none of the digital versions that I've found use my preferred scoring rubric. (I admit we adjusted the one from the original book slightly for more appropriate scoring, e.g. at only 2 points, pairs, were almost meaningless, but I get ahead of myself....)

Poker Solitaire can be played as a win/lose (binary outcome) game, like Clock, or it can be played for score. In Poker Solitaire you try for high score, unlike in Throw Down Seven where lower scores are better. Win/lose Poker Solitaire was featured in the old western TV series Maverick, from the late 1950's and early 1960's. It was in one of the episodes with James Garner, but I don't know which one. (Please let me know if you do!) I'm not sure if they played it as Jacks or Better, or some other level. I find it harder to win at that level than Clock, which you should win about 1 out of 13 tries. I'll sometimes play the win/lose version if I'm only playing one or two rounds, but generally I prefer to play five rounds at a time.  

So How Do You Play?

Simple, if you know your poker hands. Take a standard deck of  52 cards, shuffle it. Then draw cards from the top of the deck one at a time, placing them in (an imaginary) 5 x 5 grid. Once placed a card cannot be moved. (Apparently some people allow the location of the 5 x 5 grid to shift, but I call that cheating.) Like this:

Poker Solitaire (hand in progress)

You build 10 poker hands simultaneously, 5 horizontally and 5 vertically. In the picture above you can see that the second row has a flush and the first column has a full house. I'm building toward flushes in three of the other rows and hoping for two pairs, three of a kind, etc. in the other columns. (There's a long shot of a straight in the second column, and the best I can do in the fifth column is a pair at this point. The bottom row is usually trash, though you never know.)

What about Scoring?

As I said above, I like to play 5 rounds with a goal of scoring a total of 1,000 points, or an average of 200 points per round. That's a challenging mark. Here's the scoring rubric:

Hand            Points

Pair                  3 

2 Pair             10

3 Kind            20

Straight          25

Flush             25

Full House     40

4 Kind            60

St. Flush        75

Royal Flush  100

(Didn't get at least a pair in a hand? That's zero points, sorry.)

A perfect round is 775 points (4 Royal Flushes and a Straight Flush, with the 4 of a Kinds all lined up in columns but in practice rounds over 300 are very rare while it's easy to botch a round and score under 100.)

I haven't found an app or online version that let's me set the scoring system, but if you know of one I'd like to see it!

This is a good version for two players who don't want to compete against each other, you can alternate who plays a round and try to get to 500 together. The second time the other person will get to play three rounds.

Win or Lose Version

If you don't want to keep score you can try to get a certain level of hand, or better. I usually play this as Jacks or Better, but laying out 10 hands with at least a pair of Jacks or better is tough (for me, at least). No junk row! It's much easier if you play it as Ace High or Better, or Any Pair or Better.

Have fun!