First up is Gygaxian, developed in response to Brenda Brathwaite’s challenge to design a game in memory of the late Gary Gygax. It’s an inverted game of Dungeons & Dragons, with multiple Dungeon Masters (here called GGs) battling for narratorial control.

May’s Escapist game (which actually went up a week early) is myNo, a fun, fast-paced dice game I promised myself I’d work on as a break from headier designs like Gygaxian and Petrol Panic. I’ve been using a lot of dice in my designs lately. Maybe next month I’ll do something a bit different.

Over at Joystiq, my latest Off the Grid column deals with Hasbro’s limited-edition Risk: Black Ops, which is ten times hotter than the commercial re-release of the title coming this Fall. As I write this, only five copies of the game are up for auction on eBay, and each is going for over $400. That has to send a pretty strong message to Hasbro re: the demand for the game.

Two weeks ago I reviewed Zombie Fluxx for Joystiq. It’s good, but it could be better. I’m still working on exactly how it could be better. More on that topic (hopefully) soon.

This past week, I reviewed Ticket to Ride, which is quite, quite, quite good. In fact, I’m recommending it. Consider it recommended. Now play it.

Also last week, The Escapist published 9am class, my dice game about falling asleep in early morning colleges courses. They did a phenomenal job with the piece, giving it a snazzy logo and even re-designing the game board to make it look less like I just threw it together in Photoshop. I tip my game designer hat to them.

December’s going to go by awful quick. Here’s hoping I can keep up.

This piece actually marks the hopeful end to a bit of a dry period for Off the Grid. The move to France disrupted my normal flow of reviews, and I’ve spent the last week or so attempting to arrange for more review copies of games to be sent to my new address.

It’s going to be harder to review games here, in part because fewer companies are willing to ship review copies abroad. The larger problem, however, is the lack of players. It’s just me, Bonnie, and at the moment nobody else in this country that I’d feel comfortable subjecting to board games they’ve never heard of. At the moment, that limits me to games for two players. I guess I’ll have to start making French friends if I want to play anything more substantial than that.

I was concerned that the content of the piece would be lost on a lot of non-traveling gamers, but it seems a surprising number of people have been in my exact same situation. The comments I’ve received on the piece are extremely helpful, and I’ll definitely be taking their input into consideration while I write next week’s thrilling conclusion. I look forward to sharing my crazy, ass-backward solution with the world.

In travel news, we’re headed to Italy tomorrow. By train. We can take a train to Italy. How cool is that?

I passed my flight to France watching Dexter with Bonnie, replaying Metroid: Zero Mission, replaying Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, and playing the same three or four Neutral Milk Hotel songs on Jam Sessions over and over again. I was going to do some design work, but… yeah right.

Next week is a very special Off the Grid. It’s special because it’s about video games.

Truth is, even I’m a little surprised as to how hard it is to do the full-time blogging thing. For anyone out of the loop, I started as a full-time blogger for Joystiq a few weeks ago, and it’s been, well, hard! I’ll get into the swing of it soon, I’m sure. But it’s no cakewalk, I’ll tell you that.

On top of all my new coverage, I’m still doing the Off the Grid thing. This past week was Diceland, a very clever strategy game from James Ernest which uses paper dice. I like it, but even after reviewing it I know I need to go back and play more of it to build a solid, game-design-y opinion. We’ll have to revisit it later.

Scottypedia is going well so far. I’m not ready to hand out the link (although you can probably guess the URL); I’m still trying to get a certain number of starter articles set up before going public. In the longer term, I’d love to get random article excerpts appearing in the sidebar here. As if I’m starved for things to do.

It’s not exactly a runaway feedback loop, but it’s close. As I explain in my Off the Grid review, players earn points in Cheapass Games’ Enemy Chocolatier by owning neighborhoods. Once a player is earning points, he does so every round, with no guaranteed way for other players to stop him. The points end up snowballing (especially as that player continues to purchase new properties as his points steadily increase), and often the game’s outcome is apparent two-to-three rounds before it actually ends. As much as I like the game, I have to admit that it’s not fun to know you’re going to lose. There are definitely ways to hack and tweak the gameplay, but I’ve been a bit too busy to think them up myself.

I’m in Georgia this week, no doubt lying out on a floating dock, dreaming about Scottypedia (which is now technically possible thanks to my awesome hosts!). In recent news, Bonnie was on national television, and I’m starting as a full-time Joystiq blogger next Monday. We’re also moving to the city, but that’s a whole ‘nother post.

I’m going to be rolling out a whole slew of reviews of Cheapass Games for Off the Grid, and I’m wondering if it might be prudent to implement a scoring system for my reviews. Part of me wants to create a simple “yes” or “no” system, referring to whether people should or shouldn’t bother to play the games. Another part of me really detests scoring systems, and wants to subvert the whole mess with a oblique scoring system that changes its vocabulary on a weekly basis.

At the moment, I’m leaning toward the latter. So I give Give me the Brain! 3 gold stars. Shaped like brains.

» photo from ravsitar on Flickr. Thanks!

I’m a big fan of Ernest’s approach to game design. Zimmerman and Salen commissioned him to design a game for Rules of Play, and he came up with a playing-card game about magicians called Caribbean Star. Here’s what he had to say about his process:

Whereas some game designers prefer to create a game mechanic first and then adapt that mechanic to an appropriate theme, I prefer to start with a theme whenever possible. This gives me more creative ideas when trying to invent game mechanics, and it makes for a game whose mechanics seem better suited to the theme. When a storyline gets added after the game is designed, you can really tell, especially when a play that seems reasonable in the storyline is not allowed in the game.

How awesome is that? What’s more awesome is that the inverse is also true: design a game whose storyline supports the mechanics, and you can create definite “aha!” moments for players, as well as assist in the understanding of the rules. Ernest’s games have been very influential for me, as have his instructions for those games. It goes without saying that I would love to work at a place like Cheapass. If I was planning on being in Seattle for the summer, you’d better believe I’d be knocking on his door (in a friendly way, not in a stalker-y way).

More Cheapass games are enroute to me now. I’m looking forward to playing them.

The result of this dual-publication is the inevitable comparison between the two mediums. In my opinion, hypertext clearly comes out on top. The text is made stronger by its original format, and the accompanying commentary serves the text better when offered simultaneously, rather than being pushed to an endnotes section.

Arguably, however, the hypertext version is stronger because the content was originally conceived as hypertext. And Wark has already commented on my review, stating that “are supposed to be different reading experiences. The former stresses the role of the comments more while the later ‘hides’ them a bit to produce a more linear reading feel.”

Still, I do wish that Wark experimented more with the print medium, rather than intentionally working within convention. His decision though. Wark’s (hopefully) coming to Bard toward the end of the month for a small conference on games and conflict. I look forward to meeting him.

Also, the senior project is done. I plan on posting some of the material on my site in due time. I’ve already looked into installing MediaWiki, and my host doesn’t support it (yet).