Protospiel Milwaukee 2019 Recap

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So, it's been over a month now since Protospiel Milwaukee.  I usually get these out the next week, but this spring has been super busy (both my older sons were in a performance of The Wizard of Oz that took up a ton of everyone's time in April).  As usual, I had a great time and played some great games.  There were a number of friends that couldn't make it, which was bittersweet.  I missed seeing them, but on the other hand it meant I got to meet a bunch of other great designers and play their games.

In all, I played 10 games (well, one was just a brainstorming session) by 12 different designers.  I had 4 of my games played: Beard Snacks twice, 8 Seconds twice, Race to the Moons once, and MiniSkull Quests for part of a game.  I played other designers' games for about 12.75 hours and had my games played for about 5.5 hours (plus rules and feedback on both sides).

Here's a recap of the weekend up in Milwaukee.  As usual, I'll include the designer, who I played with, and also three ratings, from 1-5.  The first is how close to finished I felt the game was.  A 1 means it was a super early prototype and a 5 means it was very close to publication ready.  The second is how fun the game was in its current state.  A 1 means it needs a lot of work and wasn't really playable or much fun at all.  A 5 means I had a great time playing and would love to play again.  Finally, the third number is the potential the game has of becoming a really great game.  A 1 means I wasn't a huge fan of the game (luckily there weren't any of those) and a 5 means I thought the game was pretty awesome.

So a rating of 2-2-5 would mean that it was a pretty early prototype, wasn't a whole lot of fun yet, but had quite a bit of potential to be a pretty good game.

Friday, April 5, 2019

Title: Beard Snacks
By: George Jaros
Played with: JT Smith, Maxine Ekl, Keegan Whitia
Game Time: 1 hr

Beard Snacks is one of my newest games and it's been playing great so far.  This game played very well, again in just about an hour.  Feedback was overall pretty good.  All mechanics work great; there's just a bit of a mismatch between the theme and depth - the theme suggests a lighter game than it is, even though it's not very complex.  Talk quickly turned to who might be interested in publishing a game like this.  That made me feel great since this is only the second Protospiel the game has been played at!

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Title: Roll Player Adventures

By: Keith Matejka

Played with: Rob Huber

Game Time: 1:15 hrs

Prototype Rating: 3-5-5

This is a game that I've been super excited about and was thrilled to be able to play a prototype.  We only played the intro adventure/story.  Keith was mainly testing out how easy it was for new players to learn the game through the tutorial, which adds information and mechanics as you go.  Even in a very basic adventure the story was interesting and fun.  We could really see how a larger adventure would offer a TON of options for different story arcs, ways to develop characters, and plenty of choices.  One of the cooler mechanics was how you can use various items at different locations to find out what they do, even combining two items together to see what happens when you use both at the same time.  The dice mechanic for resolving encounters felt thematic in a Roll Player way, too (encounters had some similarities to how bombs are disabled in FUSE).  I really can't wait for this one to be finished.  It's going to be a HUGE hit!  There's still lots of story to write, but the fact that the game uses everything from Roll Player in some way, even letting you use characters created in Roll Player for your adventures, is really, really awesome.

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Title: Mechanations

By: Brennan Aldridge

Brainstormed with: Brennan Aldridge, Rob Huber, Andrew Nerger

Game Time: 1 hr

Prototype Rating: 3-n/a-5

This was just a brainstorming session to talk about some of the changes to the game in the months since I played it at Protospiel Chicago and some ways to do scoring so that some scoring is secret and hidden, but some is public and earned incrementally throughout the game.  I really like where this game is headed and can't wait for the chance to actually play it again.

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Title: Afternova

By: Andrew Nerger and Jeff Chin

Played with: Andrew Nerger, Brennan Aldridge, Maxine Ekl, Rob Huber

Game Time: 1 hr

Prototype Rating: 3-2-3

Afternova is a game being designed by the same team that designed Crypt (one of my favorite games of this year so far).  Unfortunately this one didn't quite work for me.  Fortunately the version I played was a new variant that they were testing out.  The game is about collecting resources from various planets.  You'll bid on mercenaries that will help you with upcoming jobs, then have to complete those jobs by cooperating with other players at the table.  There were some interesting mechanics, but I didn't feel that they worked particularly well together.  Hopefully later updates resolved some of the issues (they're still working on the game - I've seen updates on Facebook).
  

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Title: Dogs v. Cats (or Dogs & Cats or Dogs or Cats)

By: Maxine Ekl

Played with: Maxine Ekl, Rob Huber, Brennan Aldridge, Andrew Nerger

Game Time: 1 hr

Prototype Rating: 3-3-5

I played this first at Protospiel Milwaukee and loved it there.  It's a very unique type of trick-taking game where there are multiple tricks open at the same time.  It's a pretty novel mechanic that I really like.  However this version of the game added a bit too much and just served to complicate things.  I liked it better when it was simpler.  The good thing is, I played it later in the weekend again with the complicated animal rescue mechanic removed and it played much better.  Note: this isn't a picture of the game I played since I forgot to take a picture, but at least it looks like I played one game with Stephen Dast over the weekend!

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Title: Icelandic Salesman

By: Randy Ekl

Played with: Randy Ekl, Rod Currie, Andrew Nerger

Game Time: 1:30 hrs

Prototype Rating: 3-3-3

Icelandic Salesman was a pick-up and deliver game about buying and selling goods in Iceland while trying to avoid bad weather.  Each round more and more of the roadways between the towns would get snow and eventually ice, preventing movement.  The game was interesting, though not exceptionally groundbreaking.  The mechanic for adding snow to the routes was a bit fiddly, but we talked about some really great solutions.  I'm curious to see how this game continues to grow and evolve.

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Title: In the Loop

By: Rattlebox Games (Rob Huber and Brendan Riley)

Played with: Rob Huber, Brendan Riley, Andrew Nerger

Game Time: 1:15 hrs

Prototype Rating: 3-2-3

In the Loop is loosely thematically about Chicago's el-trains (the elevated train system that runs throughout Chicago's downtown).  It's a puzzly tile drafting game where you score points by drafting tiles that allow you to connect tracks matched by color.  The game didn't really do much for me though.  I felt the drafting aspects of the game (sometimes you have the option of swapping out tiles, sometimes you don't, etc.) were unnecessarily complicated, while the luck of being able to draft tiles that actually fit into the patterns emerging on the board made the game more about luck than strategy or puzzle solving.  I like the idea of this game, but it seems very far along in its development process so I think it would take a major reworking to iron out the flaws.  I loved the theme though!

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Saturday, April 6, 2019

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Saturday morning has kind of become my time to run a playtest of Race to the Moons since it's a longer game.  So while I was waiting for enough people to play I took some photos of some of the other games that were out and about.  I don't have names or details (unless they were captured in the pictures), but there were some really interesting looking games.  I only wish I had time to play them all!

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Title: Race to the Moons

By: George Jaros

Played with: Stan Kordonskiy, Jason Brooks, Howard Beatty

Game Time: 2:20 hrs

The first time I played Race to the Moons at a Protospiel it took 3.5 hours.  Ideally I'd love it if the game was 20-25 minutes per player, so I've been working on streamlining the game and making it play faster for almost three years now.  I'm happy to say that this play was the smoothest at a Protospiel so far.  I was testing out a number of changes that had been suggested by my local game group and they were all pretty much positive.  But the game still dragged a bit and was missing some of the spark that I knew it could have.  We talked for quite a while after the game about ways it could be streamlined even further with the fun bits enhanced (and some ways to take out some thorny parts).  The good news is that I finally finished making all the changes I wanted to implement last week and playtested it.  The changes discussed at Protospiel Milwaukee made the last play the fastest and most streamlined yet!  That's why I LOVE Protospiel!

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Title: Legacies

By: Jason Brooks

Played with: Jeff Benson, Alex Hinners

Game Time: 3 hrs

Prototype Rating: 4-4-5

Legacies is quite the monster of a game.  It's a game (not a legacy game though) that spans three hundred years.  The idea is that each player is a character that wants to leave a legacy.  Over the course of three centuries (rounds) players will use a series of successors to work on building their character's fame, money, and more through investing, creating heirlooms, and building relationships.  Mechanically and thematically the game is great.  I did feel that there was a mismatch between some of the mechanical and thematic aspects though.  For example, you gained money by having your own heirlooms, but fame by having other characters' heirlooms.  Thematically I felt it should be the other way around (I want my own items to become famous, but I can earn money by having other famous people's stuff).  Overall though I loved the game and think it has a bright future.  I can really see this having an incredible aesthetic presentation that will look amazing on the table.

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Title: 8 Seconds

By: George Jaros

Played with: Nyles Breecher, Andrew Nerger, Jeff Chin, Jason Brooks, Keith Matejka

Game Time: 1 hr

I thought 8 Seconds was a finished game last year.  Then I played it at Protospiel Chicago and got a great idea after some discussion.  That only changed the game for the better, but I thought it was done again.  And again I was wrong!  Feedback I got from this playtest was that the game felt slow for the theme, the Golden Buckles were just more of the same and didn't really add anything to the game, and rolling poorly was boring.  We talked about a few options for how to change some of that, but didn't really come up with any great solutions.  But it really got me thinking about the game.  In the 5 weeks since I've tried a few changes to the Golden Buckles.  I've added cattle brand symbols to the bulls and tried adding a set collection aspect to them.  That didn't work out the way I had hoped, because I made the Golden Buckles a bit too difficult to acquire.  Now I have a new, simpler way to gain Golden Buckles, while still using the set collection aspect of the cattle brands (I'll hopefully test that out next week).  I also thought of a way to have rolling clowns actually help you out in the game (you'll earn some money for helping out the clowns, plus learn some tricks that can help you on future turns).  However the biggest change is a new speed variant that I've been working on!  It removes the betting element, but players play simultaneously, rolling dice frantically trying to ride as many bulls as they can in 8 minutes.  It's been working out wonderfully!  I don't want it to replace the main game, but it does add a way to play that people have been asking for for a long time!

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Title: Junkyard Robots

By: Nyles Breecher

Played with: Andrew Nerger, Jeff Chin, Jason Brooks

Game Time: 45 minutes

Prototype Rating: 3-5-4

This game about building robots and drafting dice was a lot of fun.  It needed a bit of balancing, but drafting, rolling, and distributing handfuls of d20 dice was a ton of fun.  Most of what needed to be changed here was some balancing with the robot abilities and costs and some graphic design on the board to make the die values that correspond with different actions easier to read.  I had a lot of fun with this one and can't wait to see how it grows.

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Sunday, April 7, 2019

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This is Jordan Sorenson's Bella Notte.  I didn't get a chance to play, but
watched the feedback after a play.  The game has incredible
table presence and everyone really seemed to love it.  I hope
I get a chance to play it someday!

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Title: Unnamed Game (Chingles?)

By: Patrick Rauland

Played with: Patrick Rauland, Jordan Sorenson

Game Time: 45 minutes

Prototype Rating: 1-5-5

This was a super early prototype that Patrick was actually tweaking and making components for on the fly.  We actually played this twice, once with the initial rules and then again after coming up with the idea for having both public and private goals.  There is still a lot that needs to be worked out about the ultimate goal and how scoring works, but the mechanics worked great!  It's designed to feel like a fantasy themed pub game, where each player is a different race with their own coins that they use as markers on the grid.  By taking different actions players will manipulate their pieces on the board (and sometimes their opponent's pieces) in an attempt to match certain patterns.  It's similar to Task-Kalar if you're familiar with that, kind of like a simplified mashup of Tash-Kalar and CoinAge, two games that I really like.  Be sure to keep your eye on this one!

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Title: Beard Snacks w/ Beard Bling expansion

By: George Jaros

Played with: Courtney Falk, Patrick Rauland, Jordan Sorenson

Game Time: 1:15 hrs - incomplete

I tried out Beard Snacks with the Beard Bling expansion I had been wanting to test.  This was the first time I played with the expansion components.  Overall the base game played well again, but the expansion content didn't really add enough.  We liked the hidden goal cards, especially the ones that provided longer term guidance, not so much the ones that were short term end game goals.  The beard enders seemed like they'd just prolong the game too much.  And the Beard Bling was fun, but didn't fee like it added much.  Rather it added more fluff to the deck, making it harder to get your food for having snacks and meals.  There were a few action cards that we really liked though, so I think I'm going to put those into the game with maybe 1-2 more of each type of food card.  Then I'll move the bling to the non-morsel space cards and use those as the Beard Bling set collection element.

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Title: Dogs or Cats (or Dogs v. Cats or Dogs & Cats)

By: Maxine Ekl

Played with: Frank Dillon, Heather Newton, Rod Currie, Justin Williams

Game Time: 45 minutes

Prototype Rating: 3-5-5

This is the same game I played earlier in the weekend and it got a ton better in just a few days!  I enjoyed this play immensely, even more than when I played at Protospiel Madison.  The clunky animal rescue mechanic was gone, play was streamlined a bit, and some fun wild cards (the 1s in each suit) really changed things up a bit and added to the player interaction.  The name keeps changing, as does exactly how the scoring works, but I think the gameplay is very solid right now and there are several very workable ways for scoring the game.  This is really going to be a hit someday!

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Title: Tower of Babel

By: Eric Jome

Played with: Maxine Ekl, Randy Ekl, Dusty Oakley

Game Time: 30 minutes

Prototype Rating: 1-4-4

This game didn't exist on Friday.  One of the cool things about Protospiel is that The Game Crafter usually provides a table full of sample bits and blank cards and tokens.  These 1x1x2 purple blocks were some of the components that were piled on the table this time.  One of the other cool things about Protospiel is that games are not only refined, but sometimes invented completely over the weekend.  Such was the case with Tower of Babel.  I saw Eric Jome playing with these blocks most of Friday and Saturday.  By Sunday he had come up with a cooperative dexterity game (which is especially funny since he usually hates both cooperative games and dexterity games).  But Tower of Babel plays quickly, has interesting decisions, and was quite fun!  Players take turns adding a block to the tower (no two blocks can line up perfectly) and then, optionally, adding a meeple to the tower (or removing or moving a meeple).  The game ends after the last block is placed and then each meeple scores points for how many units above the table it is.  We had a lot of fun and I was sad that I had to leave for home after only two plays. 

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So that's it for Protospiel Milwaukee 2019!  As usual, I played a ton of really fun games, met some awesome people, hung out with some old friends, and had a blast.  Also, as usual, I didn't play all the games I wanted to, didn't get to meet everyone I wanted to, and didn't get to hang out with all my old friends.  But it was still a blast, and there's always the next one!  I can't wait to see everyone at Protospiel Chicago in September!

(Not pictured: A partial play of MiniSkull Quests on Saturday night with Andrew Nerger, Jeffery Chin, and Nyles Breecher and a game of 8 Seconds on Sunday with Heather and Will Newton.)

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Movie Reviews: Captain Marvel, Green Book, Juliet, Naked, Colette, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald, Aquaman, Ralph Breaks The Internet, Mary Poppins Returns, Like Father

See all of my movie reviews.

Captain Marvel - It's not the toxic male mob intent on trashing this movie because it features strong women characters (some of color, no less) that gets me. It's the well-meaning but clueless regular men (and women) who don't get that a female superhero movie doesn't have to a) be exactly like a male superhero movie or b) feature a woman who has to listen to, love, or get saved or supported by a man.

"Vers" is a Kree, a humanoid with a past that she remembers in glimpses in her dreams. She is fighting as an elite Kree warrior against the "terrorist" shape-shifting Krulls, and told by her mentor and the world's AI that they gave her her special powers (shooting energy blasts from her hands and other things, that other Krees don't have) and will take it away if she can't control it. During a mission she is kidnapped by Krulls and crash lands in 1990s Earth, where she discovers many secrets about the past and the war she is fighting. Eventually she turns into Captain Marvel; this is late in the movie but not a big spoiler.

The naysayers who say that Brie Larson doesn't exhibit enough emotion didn't watch the movie. Okay, maybe she doesn't play CM as a vulnerable helpless naif, or make us feel her struggles too much, but she exhibits fear, doubt, confusion, happiness, joy, anger, and everything in between. She's just freakin' strong and powerful, she's generally in control, and she's angry. Captain Marvel has nothing to prove after being lied to and finally regurgitating the lies. She spent six years in a civilization that treats men and women equally and she doesn't know anything about being a second class citizen. She is a powerhouse and a warrior. And so, in a more human way, is her female friend Lashana Lynch, a pilot who skillfully flies a rescue mission and shoots down enemy ships.

The naysayers who claim that CM doesn't learn or grow also didn't watch the movie. Okay, the turning points were sometimes a tad rushed, but it's a Marvel movie; for crying out loud. Compared to other Marvel movies, this was Shakespeare. Everything about her confusion, her gradual uncovering of the truth, and her turning points are well presented in the movie and make sense. (How she got her powers - and lived - doesn't make sense, but then neither do any of the other Marvel superhero origin stories.)

One way to analyze if the movie works is to ask if the movie would still be good if the sexes were swapped. The answer is hell yes. But it's far better to have women as the lead characters, because so few movies like this do. It's high time that girls had some uncompromising, independent, unsexualized, strong role models.

Everyone involved in this movie did a great job. It has the most real character development and character relations I've seen in a Marvel movie since Iron Man. Within the context of Marvel, the plot flows seamlessly into the rest of the MCU (without the hanging threads that Wonder Woman left in the DCU, for example). CM is a real superhero, like Superman. A fun watch. Ben Mandelsohn also bring fun to most scenes he is in as one of the Skrulls.

Green Book - Based on a true story of a low-class Italian bouncer who drives a black, fancy piano virtuoso across the deep south in 1962. Mahershala Ali plays the somewhat ridiculous Doctor Donald Shirley who is invited as guest of honor in places where he is typically not allowed to sleep or eat. Viggo Mortensen is nearly unrecognizable as his driver, who starts off as a crude racist but ends up ... well, you'll have to see.

The story is okay, the acting and everything else is good. The movie creates a relatively safe space to encounter racism, with only a little violence and general racism. It's more a road movie and a culture class of refined vs uncouth. I don't know that the movie deserved an Oscar for best picture, but it was solid enough, if a tad predictable in some places.

The ending scene is unbelievable as Hollywood movies tend to be.

Juliet, Naked - A very good romantic comedy. Duncan (Chris O'Dowd) is a fanatic blogger who obsessively tracks information about one musician, Tucker Crowe (Ethan Hawke), who disappeared many years ago. Duncan is more interested in his hobby than his girlfriend, Annie (Rose Byrne), who ends up in contact with Tucker behind Duncan's back.

Like in many romantic comedies, it's hard to figure out how the girl ended up with the guy in the first place. Not that Duncan is horrible, but he's not a great match for Annie. The scenery is a small pretty, port town in England crossed with some scenes in London hospitals and studios. The movie is mostly laid back.

It's sweet and calm, with an original screenplay that goes in a familiar rom-com direction with some original, unexpected confrontations along the way. Well worth a watch.

Colette - Keira Knightley plays the eponymous writer in a now-familiar story of a woman writing under her man's name, who takes the credit, until she has had enough of that, thank you.

Keira is a firehouse in some movies (Pirates of the Caribbean, Begin Again) and out of place in others (Pride and Prejudice, The Imitation Game). Here she is closer to the latter, unfortunately, unable to give the role the kind of gravitas that would make a more interesting picture. Her character is too straightforward. The plot is too straightforward. Colette's lesbian encounters were not scandalous at the time, because no one knew about them, and they are not scandalous to us today, so that part of the plot doesn't really add much substance to the movie.

It's not bad, and it doesn't drag, but it wasn't very memorable.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald - Actually a good movie. The critics somewhat miss the mark here. They didn't like that this was an interim chapter of a movie that sets up the next one(s). In this regard, it's something like HP 5 or 6, but without the tournament or shock ending. Basically, if there had been a shock ending, the critics would have been mollified. The problem is that we're not invested in the characters, so that kind of an ending wasn't really possible.

Queenie, Jacob, Newt, and Tina, as well as a host of other characters, all congregate in Paris (and some other places) to chase after the smarmy Grindelwald, who is assembling an army to attack muggles, and the reborn Credence who has some kind of part to play. Dumbledore is also involved in some short scenes that don't give us much information.

They abandoned sense regarding Queenie's character and reduced her to a plot point "good witch turns bad" using the flimsiest of plot elements: they shoehorned Jacob back into the movie as another plot element. That part was kind of a mess, which I bet JKR could have done much better in book form than it ended up being on screen. As for Newt and Tina, yeah, it's a little hard to figure out why Newt is the hero handing this mission, instead of a pack of competent, trained aurors, but whatever. I also give "whatevers" to a few of the other random plot elements.

It's still pretty fun, pretty magical, mostly makes sense, is well-paced, has some clever and thrilling moments, and takes its time doing world-building ...something which other directors could learn from (*cough* new Star Wars *cough* all comic book movies *cough*). I'm not saying I'm going to run out and see it again in the theater, but I'll happily watch it again when I re-watch the whole FBaWTFT series.

Aquaman - Actually ... meh. Lots of men with irrelevant supporting women. That's par for the course, mostly, but the men are not interesting. They yell, pose, and fight. The spectacle and effects are pretty and overwhelming sometimes, but it all comes to a lot of posing and fighting, and nothing interesting in the way of plot or characters.

Queen of Atlantis runs away, or gets washed away, and meets a human who runs a lighthouse. They have a baby, Aquaman, who grows up (in too-little screen time) who goes to claim his crown in the sea. To do this he has to find a magic trident, while being pursued by a human in a magic suit who is upset that Aquaman didn't save his criminal father from dying, as well as the current lord of Atlantis who wants to kill all the humans for dumping garbage in the ocean.

On the one hand, it's nice when the bad guys have reasonable motivations (taken too far). On the other hand, do we really want to be rooting FOR dumping in the ocean? Or oppression of black people around the world (Black Panther)? Or overpopulation (Avengers Infinity War)?

Visually beautiful, frenetic, and kind of insane is the best that can be said about it. It's like Thor underwater, with a laser light show. Not on my list of great comic movies.

Ralph Breaks the Internet - Ralph and Princess Vanellope are video game characters, as you know from the last outing of this franchise. They get sucked into the Internet, and try to find a (real world physical) component to fix Vanellope's arcade game (and then the money to buy the component), and then they get into fights and races with hot gaming chicks and computer viruses.

It mostly makes sense if you don't think about any of it too hard (take one small aspect of a real world concept, pretend that it makes sense for a video game character to deal with or manifest, repeat ad nauseum). It's entertaining. It tries hard to have relatable characters, but they are just flat pixels on which to give a few life lessons and say jokes. The room full of hip Disney princesses was fun, but I couldn't help feeling that even this scene could have been better. Actually, just following a bunch of updated, feminist Disney princesses, free from the constraints of their movie plots, would make a great movie.

It tries hard, but ultimately it's just okay.

Mary Poppins Returns - Emily Blunt makes a nice Mary Poppins. She lacks (deliberately) some of the warmth and sentimentality that Julie Andrews had in the original, but makes up for it with a no-nonsense strictness and charm that gives her a more otherworldly, appealing magical quality. Lin-Manuel Miranda is good as the sidekick with an accent almost as bad as Van Dyke's was.

In this story, The Banks children are grown up with children of their own. They are facing financial problems that will cause them to have to leave their house. If only that lost bank deed with the proper signature would turn up to save the day. In the meantime, where is light-heartedness and fun to be found any more?

It's hard to judge this kind of thing as an adult with grown children. The original Mary Poppins was not one of my favorites: I loved the songs, but the movie was mysterious and dragged on on occasion (what the heck was that whole plot about women's votes? (I asked as a child)). This movie was at least as good, with inventive animated sequences and songs that pay homage to the original without duplicating it or being too "modern". On the other hand, maybe modern songs would have been a better idea for modern kids, like in The Greatest Showman?

I liked it.

Like Father - Kristen Bell and Kelsey Grammer play their charming selves in this so-so romantic comedy without the romance; is there a genre for parent-child relationship movies?

Rachel (Kristen) is an overworking always-on-the-phone bride who is left at the altar by her fiance for bringing her phone with her to the altar. Her estranged father (Kelsey) who left when she was five showed up to the wedding and then again a few nights later. They get drunk and end up on the cruise she was supposed to have gone on with her ex-fiance. They fight, they try to bond, they fight, they bond.

It's all predictable, down to the expected karaoke scene, the just-when-it-looks-like-everything-is-going-well-they-fight fight, and the last minute change of heart. Kristen and Kelsey carry the movie with their talents, and the usual assortment of nice location shots and the not-too-odd irrelevant cruise guests along for backdrop. No surprises makes it a little dull, but there is nothing very wrong with the movie and there are some laughs.