Tag: games

When my daughter was young, I noticed that she got a bit upset when she lost board games — a typical response for many young children. While I think it is important for kids to learn to lose gracefully, I decided I wanted to make games more pleasant for both of us by mixing in the occasional cooperative game.

My first cooperative game purchase was Break the Safe. My daughter and I enjoyed it, although I learned that she was as unhappy when our team lost to the timer as she would have been losing to me. I’d review that game for my weekly “something wonderful” post, but Mattel stopped manufacturing it. It costs more than $50 on Amazon. While some complex games cost at least that much, Break the Safe is not that sort of game.

More recently, I purchased Forbidden Island by Gamewright, the same company that makes Sneaky Cards. Forbidden Island is inexpensive and easy to find.

The object of the game is to collect four sacred treasures from an island that begins sinking as soon as your team sets foot on it. If you start gameplay at novice level, this seems quite doable at first. Players can use their turn to work on treasure retrieval or, if needed, to shore up part of the island. In addition, each player has certain skills that help the team achieve its object. The Engineer, for instance, can shore up more of the island per turn than any other player.

The problem is that, sooner or later, a player will get an unlucky card that will increase the pace at which the waters rise. As play continues, the island floods more quickly. Losing is a very realistic possibility. And if, by chance, you find the odds aren’t as much against you as you’d like, you can always start the game at a more challenging level.

Forbidden Island moves quickly; you can easily play more than one round during the time it would take to watch a movie. Gamewright recommends the game for ages 10 and up.

If you haven’t tried a cooperative board game, I highly recommend Forbidden Island. It’s entertaining and easy to learn. And, much as I enjoy movies, there’s a lot to be set for sitting down with friends and family and playing a game.

Having read the title, you may be thinking, “She’s lost her mind. It was fine when she recommended books, music, and even a tea shop, but now she’s recommending character creators?”

Yes, I am. Before you write them off, check out these three websites.

HeroMachine

More than a decade ago, for reasons I no longer remember, I decided I wanted to create a superhero for someone. Somehow I ended up at HeroMachine, where I had so much fun that I took the time to make more than the one hero I’d originally had in mind.

HeroMachine has been around since 2001. It’s designed for non-artists who want pictures of the characters they think up. When I decided to revisit the site late last year, it had been a while since I’d played around with it. This time it felt frustrating — perhaps because it is more complex than it used to be. Go to HeroMachine 3 and start looking at standard male bodies. Adding legs alone took me far longer than it should have. In the end, I got tired of messing with the options and never completed my superhero.

In order to be certain that the problem wasn’t just me, I asked my artistic teenager to visit the site and create a hero. She completed her character (and it looked pretty good!), but she agreed that the process was clunky, and she felt that the options, at least for female characters, were too limited.

That said, HeroMachine is a true character creator, and it probably will appeal to males more than the other sites in this post. My guess is that, if you put in the time to play around with it, you can make some pretty decent characters.

Doll Divine and Azalea’s Dress up Dolls

I’m willing to bet that both of these sites have an audience that is largely young and female. That’s not to say there aren’t options males might enjoy, but most of the characters are female.

Both sites include character creators from a variety of sources, so the interfaces change from one game to the next, but all of the ones I’ve tried are easier to manage than HeroMachine. Some doll makers are exclusive to one site or the other, but there is overlap between the two sites. Both sites have different categories of characters, including animals, historical characters, characters from pop culture, and fashion dolls. Almost all of my play has been in the sci-fi/fantasy realm.

The really fun doll makers are the ones with lots of options. Given enough variations in skin tones, hair styles, and clothing choices, you can make drastically different characters. Both characters below were made on the “Sci-fi Warrior” doll maker exclusive to Azalea’s Dress up Dolls. One I deliberately created to look like Princess Leia; the other I just made up as I went along. Although the poses and body shapes aren’t variable, pretty much everything else is.

I don’t spend much time on these sites; I’ve probably created no more than 10 characters over the past three years. But I do find that playing these dress-up games from time to time is an enjoyable way to relax. Consider taking a break this week to visit one of these sites and see what you can create.

I first heard about tea duelling in 2012 at Teslacon, a steampunk convention in Wisconsin. [Note: I use the British spelling for “tea duelling.”] Major Tinker (John Naylor’s steampunk persona) is one of two men who created tea duelling. He was present at the con that year, eager to share the relatively new sport with others. I was nervous about signing up for something that I knew nothing about, so I sat in the audience, learning the rules and watching people duel. When I left the room, I vowed never to turn down the opportunity to duel again. Aside from the duels over which I have presided, I’ve kept  that promise. I also became a bit of a tea duelling evangelist, teaching it to my daughter, my friends, and, most recently, the kids in my church’s middle school youth group.

As I recall it, Major Tinker said that he and a friend were at a traveling tea museum in England and noticed a sign that read “Tea Duelling is strictly forbidden.” Of course, this raised the question: “What is tea duelling?” The two men decided the intriguing sign needed to have a real sport behind it. They came up with this:

If you are going to duel properly, you should acquaint yourself with the rules of the sport. When I give a short explanation of duelling to others, I say that the opponents dunk their biscuits in the tea to the count of five, and then each tries to be the last person to achieve a “clean nom.” A clean nom involves getting all of the biscuit into your mouth in one bite without it crumbling and landing in your tea, on the table (or floor), or on your person. Note that there is an important bit of information missing from the official rules: how much of the biscuit should be submersed in the tea. I’ve heard anything from one half of the biscuit to three-quarters of it. When I serve as Pot Mistress, I ask duellists to dunk at least three-quarters of their biscuit in their tea.

The founders came up with a selection of approved biscuits for duellists in the U.K.; in the United States, we have one official choice: Pepperidge Farm Chessmen. The cookies should be displayed face down, so that the duellists don’t pick a biscuit based on the image on it. Although I do not know of any testing that proves this, some images might “work” better than others. If neither duellist can see the images, they have equal chances of picking a “good” or “bad” biscuit.

Someone with gluten intolerance once asked me about gluten-free biscuits, and I ran the question by the founder of the American Tea Dueling Society. She suggested that gluten-free biscuits could be provided, but the duellists must always have the same kind of biscuit so that neither has an advantage over the other.

While a proper duel consists of, at a minimum, the duellists and Pot Master or Mistress, you can always informally duel with a friend. It’s also perfectly acceptable to practice alone for future duels. Rumor has it that the cookie calories don’t count when consumed during a practice session.

This week, challenge a friend to a duel over a couple of cups of tea and some biscuits!

I ran across Sneaky Cards at Mischief, a geeky toy shop in St. Paul that is something wonderful in and of itself. The blurb on the box describes the game as an interactive scavenger hunt, and the sample card instructs “Take a selfie with a total stranger. When you do: Hand them this card.” I’m an introvert, and I hate selfies, but because I like to challenge myself, I had to buy this deck of cards.

I love it.

The deck includes six different categories:

• Surprise: The easiest cards for introverts, these generally ask you to leave the card someplace where it will be found, such as in a library book or near a famous landmark.
• Connect: These cards do require interaction, such as picking a random word from the dictionary and then giving the card to the next person who says that word. I’ve failed to notice my word, although it is not all that esoteric.
• Care: The cards in this category encourage you to brighten someone’s day by doing things like leaving a generous tip or baking something for a friend.
• Grow: In this group of cards, you’ll be instructed to do things like cracking a code.
• Create: This is the category that artistic people will love best, since it requires you to do things like designing a new sneaky card.
• Engage: I consider this the most daunting group. For example, if I am to complete this deck of cards, I’m going to have to give a speech to at least three strangers in an elevator. That will stretch me more than any of the “Grow” cards will!

No matter what a card tells you to do, when you have completed the challenge, you will give that card to someone or leave it someplace to be discovered.

There are two ways you can play this game. I’m doing it the noncompetitive way: my challenge is simply to give away all of my cards. You also can play with a group of friends, each trying to be the first to get rid of his or her deck.

Whichever way you play, there is an online component that may enhance the experience, though that really depends on the people who receive your cards. Your deck has a unique number, and each card in the deck features your deck number plus a number that represents that particular card. People who get a card from you may go online and register the card so that you can track it. If you’ve participated in BookCrossing, the principle is very much the same. Only one of the six books I “released” through BookCrossing was registered online by its finder, and if he or she re-released that book, it has never turned up in the tracking system again. I’ve played 11 Sneaky Cards, and none of them have been registered yet. This doesn’t diminish my enjoyment of the game, but if that sort of thing matters to you, I wouldn’t count on much online feedback as you distribute the cards from your deck.

If you relish a good challenge, seek out a deck of Sneaky Cards and start playing!