The Cthulhu Mythos: One Christian's Perspective

It still amazes me how influential some people, organizations, and events can be, and yet be obscured, disregarded, and even forgotten. For instance, it surprises me how much of an impact Eli Whitney and the cotton gin had on the economic development of the South, even though most people now would not remember Whitney at all. I am also somewhat alarmed at how crucial Nicola Tesla was to the widespread use of alternating electrical current, yet it is only now that his name is receiving the recognition. A third name that has come to my attention is Howard Phillips Lovecraft, also known as H.P. Lovecraft, whose influence in horror and science fiction has largely gone unnoticed by all but the die-hard fans of a character and mythos called Cthulhu.

Cthulhu is a character from a short story written by Lovecraft in 1926 called The Call of Cthulhu, which tells the tale of a young intellectual turned investigator who learns more about a mysterious being called Cthulhu, the cult of dangerous individuals who worship it, and the madness that strikes anyone who dares to investigate this eldritch, alien horror. As the story progresses, the protagonist, whose thoughts and words are conveyed in first-person voice, discovers stories of strange effigies, weird dreams, mysterious deaths of those who also sought to uncover Cthulhu, and of a group of sailors who escaped the ravenous attack of South Pacific cultists to wash up on a non-Euclidean nightmare of an island harboring the legendary city of R'yleh, where Cthulhu supposedly resides (unbeknownst to the group of sailors). Not to reveal much more, the story ends with an ominous warning of insanity to those who choose to follow the author's footsteps. Indeed, for its time, The Call of Cthulhu must have been jarring... for those who happened to read it.

For much of his literary career, Lovecraft toiled in semi-obscurity, all the while churning out story after story, creating a fantastic tapestry of odd alien beings, ancient space conflicts, hidden invasions onto Earth, and the insanity that can only come from beholding creatures beyond human comprehension. I must admit that my knowledge of the Cthulhu realm is spotty, but I have come to realize that Lovecraft had intentionally or somewhat inadvertently developed a striking world of fiction that came to be regarded as a mythos of Cthulhu. Even a cursory scan of Lovecraft's bibliography suggests an impressive output of fiction even tangentially related to Cthulhu. As I have found, Lovecraft, though prolific in his fiction writing, garnered little financial gain from his work and died poor.

However, just as Van Gogh's work was more widely appreciated after his death, Lovecraft's work seemed to find an audience as knowledge and discussion of Cthulhu has crept ever so slightly into the mainstream as the years have passed. Even before now, the influence of Lovecraft's blend of the horror of the unknowable and of scientific inquiry and fiction can be found in television shows like Kolchak: The Night Stalker, The X-Files, and Fringe; in horror movies that involve insanity and cosmic monstrosities; and, of course, in written fiction, as Stephen King himself has noted Lovecraft as a major influence. Furthermore, in the last several years, Cthulhu, and the intellectual property associated with that character, has steadily gained popularity in board gaming, which is one of my main hobbies. Much like the cultists in The Call of Cthulhu, Lovecraft's intellectual property is gaining social momentum, even seventy years after his death.

Cthulhu has become so prevalent in gaming that my interest was inevitably piqued regarding it. In the board gaming world, several games related to Cthulhu have garnered positive reviews and recommendations, such as Elder Sign and Mansions of Madness, but, until recently, I knew little about Lovecraft or his work. All that I had known about Cthulhu was based on what I had read about those board games. This led me to investigate what Cthulhu was (much like the hapless protagonists of Lovecraft's work), so I began at an odd point: I downloaded the card game Cthulhu Realms to my cell phone. The game was designed by Darwin Kastle, who used almost the exact same system of deck-building as in Star Realms, except that the art and terminology was changed to reflect Cthulhu. As I played this virtual card game (which is also available as a physical card game), I encountered character names, such as Dagon, Wilbur Whatley, and even The Shadow of Cthulhu. Knowing nothing of these characters, I proceeded to research on Wikipedia, which most people do, I'm sure. Then, I decided to go back to the source material: I found a free version of The Call of Cthulhu and downloaded it to my Kindle Fire tablet. Because it was a short story, it took only a couple of hours of reading to finish it. Unexpectedly, my interest has been further piqued and I am now reading The Mountains of Madness, which is another short story in the same world as Cthulhu, apparently.

As an aside, I should mention my impressions of The Call of Cthulhu as a literary work. Being an English as a Second Language instructor and a linguist, I can speak with some experience and authority about this short story, at least from a diction standpoint. In my opinion, Lovecraft's sentence constructions are outstanding with complex clauses, an extensive vocabulary, and a writing style that is both grammatically sound and lyrically pleasing. I reveled in his diction, as if I have been starved of this level of erudition for so long. Sure, some of his writing is, shall I say, outdated compared to current speech and writing patterns, but his work from a mechanical standpoint is beautiful.

Regarding the content, Lovecraft wrote the story in first-person voice, so the reader's connection with the material is immediate, as if someone were conveying a life event directly to the reader. Yet, there is a detachment that comes from Lovecraft's choice to recount tales of Cthulhu through second-hand stories shared with the protagonist. This detachment augments the mystery of the ever-increasingly horrific Cthulhu. However, though the story is told from a first-person perspective, there is a disjointed quality to the narrative in which time seemed to advance days, weeks, and even months with little more transition than a passing sentence. Conversations are also portrayed not as dialogue, but as reported speech. Because of this and the aforementioned detachment, characters are mostly name labels on victims and agents that advance the plot. Even the narrator, through whom the reader can sense and feel the curiosity and fear so inherent to current horror fiction, is a caricature, at best, who does not stand out as a living, breathing person with traits and tendencies beyond his inexorable inquisitiveness. Thus, The Call of Cthulhu is plot-driven, despite the first-person narrative.

Despite my criticism, I can understand how attractive the Cthulhu mythos is because of the mystery of the unknown and the imagined insanity of beholding an incomprehensible terror. There is something oddly exciting about imagining oneself as a paranormal investigator researching in libraries, interviewing eyewitnesses, piecing together creepy accounts, and globetrotting in pursuit of truth. Much like Mulder and Scully or the Ghostbusters or even a Van Helsing character type (which predates Cthulhu, of course), the danger and intrigue of the hunt for absolute evil is enthralling, engendering chills down one's spine and a general sense of foreboding.

As I finished The Call of Cthulhu and read more about Lovecraft, I started pondering some points that are directly relevant to Lovecraft's world in comparison to our world. One point that occurred to me was the godlessness of the Cthulhu world. In The Call of Cthulhu, Cthulhu and his minions are extraterrestial, ancient beings from another part of the galaxy, another dimension, or both, with the near-godlike ability of instilling preternatural fear into a sad cadre of sailors. These beings are uncaring, ominous creatures that disregard humanity, maybe treating them as slave fodder, at best. These beings are somewhat analogous to Satan and his demons, except that Satan is hellbent to snatch souls while the Cthulhu demi-deities are only disdainful towards humanity. Another point that I considered was the godlessness of the character and how fright and hopelessness engender an ambient sense of doom. In The Call of Cthulhu, I felt that doom in the prose with the main character inexorably descending into a kind of self-conscious madness, as if he was perfectly aware of how his grasp of reality was becoming more and more tenuous, yet he was powerless to stop it. It caused me to think about people in the world today and how existential and nihilistic they tend to be, which in turn is reflected in a selfish, "you only live once" mentality. A third point that crossed my mind was how there was no sense of victory in the prose; there is not even a false dawn, so to speak. The force and pulse of the narrative is typified by a contrast between undying curiosity and impending, undeniable defeat at the hands of insanity. In other words, Lovecraft's work is neither joyous nor hopeful, which is what the world resembles when there is no sense of God.

Considering that Lovecraft was an atheist, it is understandable that the atmosphere that he creates and the characters in the narrative are driven by a thirst for knowledge and a latent kind of righteous indignation that seems to come from the feeling that Earth is being invaded. However, these characters are equally draped with a hopeless darkness that is exacerbated by the looming danger of rabid cultists and otherworldly visages with no regard for humanity. As I read The Call of Cthulhu, I experienced all of these feelings, and this is where Lovecraft was successful; his prose envelopes the reader in the story. Though the narrative is a distant kind of first-person perspective, I am in the room with the main character, looking through his eyes, yet fully myself. I imagine that this is the appeal of Lovecraft's work, and what makes horror as popular as it is. Yet, there is a melancholy that is repulsive to me, probably because Jesus is about a faith, hope, and love that conquers the darkness, and Lovecraft's world is the opposite: faithless, hopeless, and gloomy.

I am not sure if I am a Lovecraft or Cthulhu fan, and I am not sure how a Christian can reconcile his or her faith with Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos except that his writing, which is wonderfully descriptive and eloquent, speaks into the deepest, darkest parts of our souls. His writings remind me that without God, the world is bereft of hope and purpose; without God, our demons are ultimately unknown and unknowable, yet there are "cultists" in our world that elevate those demons -- demons of consumerism, hedonism, selfishness, greed, meglomaniacal power, and so on. In Christian circles, people talk of "idols" as anything that draws us away from God. Anything can be an idol, but in Lovecraft's world the idols are extraterrestrial beings who, at best, want to subjugate humanity or, at worst, sweep humanity aside to occupy our space for their own ends. That draws me to Lovecraft's prose because it elucidates me regarding the spiritual battle that rages around us each day, yet goes on ignored with a demonically-motivated misinformation campaign that dulls unwitting souls into a lifeless sleep riddled with personal ambition and acquisition of things. We are told everyday that God is dead, that self is everything, and that we should concern ourselves with our hobbies, our careers, and the betterment of ourselves, even despite others. We live in a world in which there are other-level events happening, yet we, as humanity, disregard it and focus on our own daily lives and desires. To me, Lovecraft weaves these frailties of the self into his narrative tapestry. When I read The Call of Cthulhu, the thought that dominated my mind was the desire to share Christ with others lest we all descend into a kind of Cthulhu-lite insanity, intrigued by the curiosities in the shrouded corners of this world to the point that we are obsessed with them until we are lost forever. If anything, I believe that, quite unintentionally, Lovecraft shows us a Satanic world which should compel us to look at our world and pray that our world would never go down that path.

Rules Discussion: Movement by Ruler or Template

Recently, I've been playing a bit of the X-Wing Miniatures Game, in which players move ships from point to point using pre-measured maneuver templates. For example, if you want to move a ship one ship-length ahead (it actually works out to be two ship-lengths), you use the 1-straight maneuver template to advance the ship by placing the back of the template against the front of the ship base and then sliding the ship base to the front of the template such that the back of ship base touches the template's front. In X-Wing, during the Activation phase of each turn, players move ships in order of pilot skill, which means that the lowest pilot skill moves first. However, after all movement and actions happen, the Combat phase begins and the highest pilot skill attacks first. Basically, this reflects the concept that the lesser pilots can fly wherever they want, but the good pilots hit first.

There are numerous challenges with this mechanic. One challenge is planning ahead to ensure that your ships do not collide with each other or opposing ships; in X-Wing, if ship bases overlap, then the ship that overlapped the existing ship is unable to perform an action, such as performing a barrel roll or a target lock on an opposing ship. This can be a major gaffe during a critical time in the battle because you may need that action to increase your chances of hitting a foe's ship. Another challenge is predicting where your opponent's ships will finish their maneuvers; in X-Wing, everyone decides what their moves will be in secret, locks their moves, but then announces and executes moves in order of pilot skill. This means that you don't know where your opponent's ships will end up. In my case, I often find my ships completely out of position to target anyone (which further reflects my inexperience with this game, while seasoned players would know how best to maneuver their ships to address the most probable attack vectors). Yet another challenge is the element of stress in X-Wing. Everyone uses a maneuver dial to decide which move their ships will execute; some moves are "green" maneuvers, which clear any "stress" tokens from a ship, but some moves are "red" maneuvers, which add stress to a ship, thus limiting the maneuvers a ship can complete during the next round to only green maneuvers. Stress constraints ships to a smaller subset of possible maneuvers, which makes your future maneuver choices more predictable. You have to balance stress clearing with stress accumulation, all the while trying to execute your own strategies and NOT be predictable.

Movement by ruler or template is nothing new in gaming, but what I have found to be most challenging is conceiving where my ships will conclude their supposed maneuvers at the end of each turn while trying to anticipate where my opponent's ships will end up. Of course, knowing the maneuverability of each individual ship type helps, as well as paying attention to stress tokens on each ship, but this level of two-dimensional spatial reasoning is one that is largely absent from board games. Typically, with most Euro games, pieces serve as markers or reminders of how much of each resource you have, or whether a particular action was taken or not, or of scoring. In miniatures games, though, the pieces are the attackers, with each piece possessing one or more defining and unique attributes; moreover, the position of one piece in relation to another determines attack range, hit probability, and damage intensity. There is also a fastidiousness to moving miniatures that further signals how important position is; in X-Wing, for instance, every inch counts because moving one way or another can be the deciding factor of if a desired target is in your firing arc. Even nudging pieces accidentally can trigger tableside heart attacks as all opponents argue over where your piece should really be. To me, it's a different way of viewing the tabletop... but it's a welcome difference because I am stretched as a gamer to understand and use game pieces with attention to table position.

The telltale mechanic of any miniatures game is movement by measurement, and it's a mechanic that I urge every gamer to dive in and experience at least for a few games. There are "easy" games that introduce gamers to spatial reasoning, such as Memoir '44 and Battlelore; though movement still happens hex by hex, range and position are crucial. Games like X-Wing, Wings of Glory, and Star Trek Attack Wing ratchet up the difficulty even more because you no longer have hexes -- you have to use maneuver templates. The ultimate miniatures game experience comes from actual use of a bonafide ruler, such as in Warhammer 40k. When you're measuring range by centimeters and being off by only a tiny few millimeters can affect an entire turn, you are truly feeling the headache and thrill of tabletop positioning. Of course, in a few months, I may change my mind and grow to loathe movement by template. I mean, I may rather place workers and accumulate resources than worry about whether I nudged my A-Wing accidentally or not.

Rules Discussion: Sanctioned Cheating

I haven't written anything for Rules Discussion in a while, but I do have a topic today: sanctioned cheating, which is the concept (not necessarily a mechanic) of being allowed to "cheat" within the rules of a game. I'm not talking about deception of an opponent with misdirection or baiting tactics that prevail in miniature and/or war games; to convince your opponent that you're attacking one region when you're actually targeting another region on the board is endemic to such games. I'm also not talking about using distraction or "table talk" to fluster or confuse an opponent, though some may consider this "cheating." Instead, I'm discussing the concept of breaking or bending rules in a game as being encouraged by the rules of the game itself.

One form of sanctioned cheating is outright lying, which happens rampantly in Sheriff of Nottingham (in which you are encouraged to deceive the Sheriff to smuggle contraband into Nottingham) and the classic Balderdash (in which you try to convince others that your false definition for a word is the "real" one). I'm very much on the fence about this topic because encouraging one's children to lie (even in a game) may send a conflicting message. Lying can happen to humorous effect, and the rules allows for it in these games, so it is actually "wrong" to do it? Hmm... As a Christian, I am truly conflicted by this idea, yet games like these can be fun if it is understood that lying is only "acceptable" when sanctioned by the rules... That's really confusing!

Another form of sanctioned cheating is the one on which I'm focusing: rules that allow you to break the rules, which is complicated, so I'll focus on one game to explain: Cheating Moth, or Mogel Motte in German. This game involves a simple objective of ridding yourself of cards to win. Each player starts with a hand of eight cards. Depending on the face-up card in the discard pile, each player places the appropriate card on top of the discard pile. For example, if there is a "1" card on the pile, you can place a "5" or a "2." There are several cards that incur special conditions, such as a "mosquito" card which requires all players but the active player to slap their hands on it; the last player to do so receives one card from each player's hand. Anyway, there isn't much to say about the hand evacuation aspect of this game... except that the rules allow players to not only rid themselves of cards in the conventional way, but also in any other way they see fit! This could involve, say, dropping one card at a time on the floor, or placing them up a sleeve, or playing each card on the discard pile out of turn, all the while convincing the other players that it's one's turn.

Of course, this sounds like anarchy, but there's yet another catch: at the start of each game, one player is the "Guard Bug," whose job is to catch cheaters. For instance, if someone drops a card on the floor and the Guard Bug sees the act happen, he or she calls out the cheater, who must then receive one card from each of his or her opponents. Then, that cheater becomes the Guard Bug. The Guard Bug is the only player in Cheating Moth who cannot "cheat," which is a huge burden because he or she has to rid themselves of cards the conventional way AND keep a wary eye on all the players to not only stem the tide of cheating, but also to get rid of the Guard Bug title for themselves!

Sanctioned cheating is a dynamic that doesn't necessarily interest me as a gamer, but it's an intriguing, also mind-bending paradigm to consider. In the case of Cheating Moth, the "cheating" is sanctioned in that you have a game "layer" in which there is a basic mechanic for getting rid of cards, and then there is a kind of social layer on the game layer that allows you to circumvent the rules in the game layer. This is when sanctioned cheating works in a game: if there is an elementary game mechanic and victory conditions in place, the rules can allow for a subset of stacked rules that let players get around the game mechanic. For games with simple objectives and rules, it would be easy to place a cheating social layer on the game. However, for complex games like Twilight Struggle or Agricola, cheating would confuse everyone and throw the game into chaos; can you imagine if players could steal sheep from the central area, or even the "bank?"

In order for sanctioned cheating to work, I believe you have to have a strong and direct core of simple rules and victory conditions. If goals and rules are complex, cheating actually works toward undermining the entire game, but with Cheating Moth, you have an easy goal (i.e. get rid of cards) which is dull if played in that way, but the cheating layer (and the "Guard Bug role) adds another layer to the game that doesn't undermine the rule layer. Sanctioned cheating is a difficult topic to broach because one may have strong convictions against cheating, and yet there may be a social layer that allows for cheating in a game. To be honest, this is not really my cup of tea, and yet Cheating Moth is quite fun because you are required to be creative with how you remove cards from your hand.

What are your thoughts?

Rules Discussion: Set Collection

Set Collection is a category recognized on Board Game Geek that refers to the game mechanic of collecting sets of something to make something happen. This is not a new mechanic by any stretch of the imagination because classic card games like Gin Rummy and Poker involve collecting pairs, threes-of-a-kind, and straights (i.e. three or more cards in numeric order), but it's a mechanic that seems to get a fresh facelift with each new game released. For example, when Settlers of Catan was published in 1996, I'm sure that collecting sets of cards (i.e. resources) to build cities and gather development cards was not new, but the look and feel of the game was certainly novel. When Ticket to Ride was released in 2004, it stoked heightened interest in board gaming with its gorgeous artwork, top-notch production values, and easy-to-learn, tough-to-dominate gameplay; yet, at the heart of the game is a simple set collection dynamic in which you collect cards of like color to connect cities. Set collection is a core mechanic of many games, whether they are venerable classics or upstart new releases.

What makes set collection feel new with each game is not the mechanic itself as much as what you have to collect. For those aforementioned card games, a "set" is defined by cards of like or sequential value, and, in Poker, one set is often valued over other sets. In Settlers of Catan, what defines a set is what you intend to build; in Ticket to Ride, a set is determined by the color and length of the route connecting two desired cities. As more games are released with a set collection mechanic, gathering the requirements for fulfilling the sets is different, which makes it a time-honored mechanic that rarely fails...

Or does it? Set collection is often subject to the randomness of the deal or the flop, as well as the interference of the other player. Though the latter is a welcome attribute of many games, the former is an annoyance that can stymy even the best-laid plans. What happens if you don't draw that sixth orange card to complete a connection? What about those times in which you don't get the roll necessary to collect that last ore card? Either case is heartbreaking or irritating, though wild cards and other in-game items can help mitigate randomness at the cost of game speed, such as when you take one Locomotive card in Ticket to Ride instead of taking two cards, thus slowing down your acquisition of train cards. In any case, set collection can represent the most fun and grating aspects of gaming, sometimes simultaneously.

As a mechanic, I enjoy collecting sets, but it's not a mechanic that compels me to buy games. To be honest, I didn't buy Ticket to Ride because of the set collection mechanic; I bought it because the gameplay was easy to grasp, it was beautiful to behold, and it is as cutthroat or friendly as you and your opponents want it to be. Nonetheless, many of the more accessible games employ this mechanic. If it works, why fix it?

Rules Discussion: Multi-use Cards

Multi-use cards in games are fascinating to me because they challenge our preconceived notions of resource and hand management. To explain, multi-use cards are cards that serve more than one purpose in a game. For example, Twilight Struggle employs cards as events that are favorable to a player, events that happen despite the active player's wishes, or for influence points; as a result, a player has to weigh the consequences of playing an opponent's event just to use the influence points, or ponder whether playing a favorable event card for the event or for points is best. Many of GMT's card-driven strategy games work on this premise of using your or your opponent's events.

Another example I've experienced recently is Oh My Goods, in which cards serve as either resources, processing buildings, or as raw materials and/or goods if played face-down on a building. This dynamic introduces many uncertainties into the game, such as which resources/buildings are face-down as goods on a building (which affects the distribution of certain resources and/or buildings in the deck), or how many resources of a certain type are left in the draw pile, or what the heck does your opponent really have, even if you can see the discard pile and there's only one or two cards left in the draw pile...

A third example is a guilty pleasure game: Monopoly Deal. In this game, almost every card can be played for its primary purpose as a property or event card, or played as money to be pooled in your personal bank. By playing properties as money, they permanently become money cards and are thus removed from circulation, which in turn affects the distribution of certain property colors in the deck.

I'm sure that there are other examples of this dynamic in gaming, but multi-use cards complicate the finite nature of in-game resources and introduces some uncomfortable uncertainty into any game. No longer are cards just played straight; you have to consider that you are, say, reducing the number of a particular resource in a game, or you have to absorb the negative effect of playing an opponent's card to take advantage of a card's other purpose. Anything that monkeys with card or resource distribution in a game appeals to me, so when I find a game that features multi-use cards, my eyes widen. Sometimes, I like a bit of the unknown in a game.

Rules Discussion: Player-to-player Trading

One of the finest, most laudable aspects of any board game is the positive social dynamic that is engendered during gameplay. There's the regular chit-chat small talk, the "catching up" with occasional friends, and even the heartfelt sharing of burdens with family. Through the social dynamic of board games, we sharpen our abilities to read facial cues and semiotics, detect deeper pragmatic aspects conveyed through intonation and body language, and we even treat each other better in person than in online games, during which people can declare the most awful lies about other people in forums and chats. Yet another benefit of the positive social dynamic of face-to-face interaction in board games is player-to-player trading, through which we learn how to negotiate to achieve a mutually beneficial result -- a useful skill for children and adults.

As far as I know, player-to-player trading is not unusual in gaming. Outside of the mainstream rules, trading is allowed in Monopoly, in which people can broker deals for property, money, and/or free passes. Pit is another classic trading game in which players frantically trade commodities until one player, unbeknownst to the others, collect a complete set of a commodity. One game that I own from a favorite designer of mine is Bohnanza, by Uwe Rosenberg. In that game, players trade beans, but the difficulty lies in the requirement to plant beans each turn; if you have two fields of beans already, players have to choose which field to sacrifice to plant beans that they cannot off-load. Better than these games, however, (or at least, more highly regarded) is Settlers of Catan, in which a player's fortunes rise and fall depending partly on how well they can acquire necessary resources from others without trading away too much. In all of these games, the ability to negotiate with other players is indispensible, often leveling the playing field by giving those who are normally not board gamers a tool they can use. I have participated in numerous gaming sessions in which casual gamers or self-described non-gamers have done quite well because they were adept at talking people into giving up something useful.

Player-to-player trading in a game, quite deliberately, adds a much needed social element to many games, such as Settlers of Catan and even Monopoly, and several more (such as Chinatown, which I have yet to play, but I have watched Shut Up & Sit Down's review of it) -- that element being face-to-face interaction and negotiation with other people. Many Euro games lack this element, mostly because it is a built-in constraint for players to have to deal with the resources they have on hand instead of escaping tight squeezes by trading away that unwanted wood for some clay. However, games like Agricola and Stone Age would certainly be loosened up if player-to-player trading could be performed because food, which is essential in both games, could be acquired from a player who has a lot of it. In turn, the other player would benefit from more of a necessary building material, enabling him or her to, say, build a four-segment fence to enclose two cattle or to buy that development card. For games that openly feature trading, player-to-player trading opens up any game not only socially, but tactically, allowing players to escape nigh-impossible situations by acquiring a crucial item from a neighbor.

In my opinion, trading is one of those game-learned abilities that helps anybody beyond the confines of a game; I can imagine that children that grow up with trading games would be skilled negotiators in the future because they practiced at the family dinner table. This is also why I favor board games over video games because you are forced to bargain face-to-face with other people, which has greater application in daily life than negotiating with a screen.

Board Game Cleanup 4: Dice Masters

Much to my chagrin, it is becoming more prevalent to find a touch of sexuality in games that target children and families. As I've discussed in previous posts, some games feature only a few cards or game elements that portray women in a sexual way, while other games display such images pervasively. This reality almost always steers me away from certain games because main character females are depicted in an objectifying way that can fill any boy or man's head with inappropriate thoughts. Sadly, one of my favorite games is not exempt from this: Dice Masters. Created by Eric Lang and Mike Elliott and derived from Lang's Quarriors system, Dice Masters employs dice as characters, sidekicks, energy generators, and as determiners of whether basic actions are executed or not. In short, you choose a "team" of eight characters and/or artifacts and you duel with another player. Each character die has a character card associated with it; for example, if you want to have Captain America on your team, you choose a Captain America card (which can come in a common, uncommon, or rare version, each one with differing abilities) and allocate up to four custom Captain America dice to that card. Then, whenever you purchase a Captain America die and then draw it from a bag, that die has the in-game ability its card bestows upon it. Each die has three Levels for each character, with Level 3 being the strongest version of the character. Each die can also generate energy for purchasing and/or deploying characters.

To me, Dice Masters has many wonderful qualities: it's a customizable experience in which you choose your characters and basic actions; you get to roll dice, which is usually (but not always) fun; you can play with popular Marvel or DC characters, such as Batman, Superman, Captain America, and Iron Man; it's portable; and, (a quality that is appealing to me because I'm a bit fastidious with protecting my game items) people can bring their own collections and play against other people. There is so much to like about this game, and yet the one thing that bothers me is some of the imagery, specifically the comic book depictions of female superheroes. Let me provide some examples.

Example 1: Spider-Woman

Out of the Amazing Spider-Man Dice Masters set, Spider-Woman is one of the borderline depictions, in my opinion, but I do have an issue with the form-fitting costume in the chest area. Some people may disagree, but I think the shape alone suggests body paint and not a costume, which is not so far from nudity.


Example 2: Black Widow

Another card out of the Amazing Spider-Man set, Black Widow is a decent, low-cost character that bares just a bit too much mid-cleavage. Realistically, I would expect a superhero's suit to be armor-like and protective, but that's not the case in comics, apparently.

Example 3: Magik

From the X-Men Dice Masters set, Magik is a fine character statistically speaking, but there is a lot of bare breast in this art.







Example 4: Catwoman

From the DC Justice League Dice Masters set, Catwoman's rare card offers an intriguingly random ability, but she is also one of those characters with barely acceptable art (no pun intended). Her body shape is voluptuously depicted here, but at least her chest is somewhat obscured with the darkness of her costume. I was on the fence about this one.

As I have stated in past posts, many people may find my concerns unfounded, but I understand the struggles of the male mind, and the art in these cards do nothing to help a young boy or man NOT to objectify women or avoid those feelings that one should have for one's wife only. I believe that God has put it upon my heart to keep my family's gaming on the purer side, sexually speaking, and to protect my young boys from the rampant sexuality in today's society, even in games.

With that in mind, how do I handle questionable art in Dice Masters? Simply put, I sell the cards and dice, or I exclude the cards from my and my sons' collections because there are so many heroes to collect and use, even female ones. I've found more appropriate Black Widow and Catwoman art in other sets, and there are female superheroes that are portrayed non-sexually, such as Marvel Girl, Rogue, and even Psylocke (the art thankfully depicts her from the neck up). I'm certainly not for banning all female characters, but I do recommend being judicious with the art in the game, even if the female hero has a powerful in-game ability. This doesn't mean that there aren't characters about which I am indecisive. One example is Wonder Woman; traditionally, her costume bares a lot of leg, but she is rarely portrayed (in Dice Masters, anyway) in a way that suggests she's selling more than being a hero. I suppose there are nuances that I detect in the game that drive my conviction, such as character poses and intent.

In any case, these are my opinions based on my personal conviction as a follower of Christ. If you are an atheist or follower of another religion, your opinion may vary. However, I don't believe it can be denied that women are depicted in overly sexual ways in media today. Whatever your belief system, I recommend that every parent examine the art in a game and determine if it suits his or her family. Even male art can be inappropriately sexual or frightening or grotesque. By taking control of the art in your home, you can guide your children through the tricky waters of today's sexually liberal society and, at the same time, train them to think for themselves to better identify mental dangers... and avoid them.

Rules Discussion: Dice Manipulation

As much as anyone, I love chucking dice and seeing what happens. The thrill, the anticipation, the excitement of a good result, and the disappointment of a terrible result: dice can engender all of these feelings, sometimes sequentially, but sometimes simultaneously. Yet, I didn't used to feel this way about dice. From my childhood, I have traumatic memories of losing battles to a vastly inferior defending force in Risk, and of never landing on the three or four properties I needed to complete sets in Monopoly. Unfavorable dice rolls even dogged me when I played RPGs, as if rolling poorly was a ravenous bloodhound intent on devouring any sense of fun I could derive from gaming. Dice rolls in games conspired to filch the joy out of my gaming sessions, but I have come to discover a mechanic that is more like a game design paradigm: dice manipulation.

Dice manipulation is actually a time-honored idea, and I'm not referring to loaded dice with weighting to favor certain sides. No, I'm talking about in-game elements that allow players to change dice roll results to favor them. One way this is done is allotted roll attempts, which Yahtzee, in all its underrated glory, manifests beautifully; in that game, you can choose to reroll as many dice as you want to try to achieve a desired result. King of Tokyo, a modern classic, appropriates this approach, and is a wonderful filler game because of it. Another way to manipulate dice rolls is through bonuses or items earned in the course of play; Alien Frontiers, for example, not only employs dice as "ships," but it provides Alien Tech cards that let players change their rolls when they choose to activate or discard those cards. Castles of Burgundy provides workers that afford players opportunities to change rolls, as well. Kingsburg has a similar mechanic in which earned +1 chits can be applied to rolls. A third way dice are manipulated is team resetting, which is endemic to the Escape series of games; in those games, when all of your masks are locked into their black sides, teammates can help you out by granting you their gold "masks" or "faces."

Yet another method by which dice are manipulated does not really involve changing dice rolls as much as changing the role dice play in a game (pun intended). A brilliant exemplar of this is the Dice Masters system created by Eric Lang and WizKids. In Dice Masters, each die is either a Sidekick, a character, or a basic action die. All dice can provide energy of some kind to purchase character or basic action dice or to deploy characters, but the nice twist is that character dice, when rolled on one of three possible sides, are actually played as "characters" on the field. For example, a Captain America die has a Level 1 side, a Level 2 side, and a Level 3 side; Level 3 sides are the strongest offensively and defensively, but considering all three character sides of a six-sided die, you have a 50% chance of deploying a character, a 16.7% chance of generating two energy points, and a 33.3% chance of even generating one energy of a particular type. In addition, Sidekick dice have five energy-generating sides, but also a sixth side that serves as a "sidekick" with an Attack strength of 1 and a Defense strength of 1. In other words, the dice are THE playing pieces, as well as the determiners of the amounts of energy generated, but Dice Masters also involves re-rolls, "spinning" dice up or down levels (i.e. changing the faces of dice to match a certain Level), drawing more dice, putting more dice in the draw bag, and even removing dice from play. If anything, Dice Masters encompasses many dice manipulation principles.

I'm sure that there are more ways in which dice are manipulated or employed, such as in Panamax in which dice determine what kind of cargo is being carried and are placed on the ships themselves. I do invite comments about other examples of dice manipulation. What are your favorite ways by which dice rolls can be altered in a game? Have you encountered any unique mechanics that use dice?

Rules Discussion: Catch-up Mechanisms

Catch-up mechanisms are a somewhat polarizing concept in gaming, for it involves enabling players in last place or close to last place to catch up to the leaders. The prime example of this is in Power Grid, in which the last place player (who does bid for power plants last) purchases resources first and connects to cities first, as well. This affords those back-dwellers opportunities to "catch up" with better deals on resources, which lets them conserve money to add to their networks. It's a mechanic that defines Power Grid and (as I heard in a Long View podcast) German politics and utilities in that the lagging company is helped, while the leaders are distrusted enough to be penalized. American business is the opposite, which leads to massive oligopolies and disappearing mom-and-pop shops.

Based on my somewhat limited knowledge of board games, I can only say that there are other games that have some kind of catch-up mechanisms, though I'm not familiar with them. A possible example is Star Realms because certain cards let players draw another card, either by simply playing those cards or depending on the presence of allies. If a player plays enough "Draw one card" cards in quick succession, damage can accumulate rapidly, leading to a 30-point attack on an opponent who may have been way ahead in Authority points. However, this is not a catch-up mechanism as much as it is an example of a game that has single cards or actions that can turn the tide of a game for a player. When I talk about catch-up mechanisms, I'm talking about a general rule or mechanic that is inherent to each turn of game play, not singular events that can change the game. I suppose I could refer to those events as "game changers," but that would be employing a terribly hackneyed expression in its proper context; that just bothers me...

Anyway, catch-up mechanisms are controversial for a few reasons. One is because they can serve to hand victory to the lagging player; for some, this is a nice leveling element that offers the newbie a chance to win a game; for others, catch-up mechanisms can cheapen a game, denying a front-runner the victory mostly because he or she was in first place most of the game. Another reason is a causal effect of the first reason: because experienced players may be well aware of the presence of a catch-up mechanism, they may hang back on purpose to yield the benefits of the lower position, and then surge ahead at the end. Much like running, cycling, or auto racing, you can "draft" off your opponent as he or she faces the full brunt of wind resistance, all the while conserving energy until the final straightaway. A third reason why catch-up mechanisms are controversial is a broad one: they feel oddly un-democratic, as if the "nail that sticks up gets hammered down," as they liked to say in Japan (I speak from six years of experience living there). Who wants to feel like they are fettered by a mechanic just so that the trailing players have more opportunities to win? You're almost better off stinking for most of the game...

Personally, I haven't played enough of Power Grid to truly understand the impact of its catch-up mechanic, but I understand it enough to see its value, which is mainly that it levels the playing field for new players to keep up with experienced ones. The funny thing, though, is that experienced players would know well enough to NOT run in front until the end, which is very much like running, cycling, or auto racing. The sweetest victory would come when a front-runner can stay in front despite the catch-up mechanism, but the more plausible road to victory involves staying with the peloton (the cycling group behind the leader) until you see the finish. In this way, veterans can negate the catch-up mechanism, and instead use it as the means to surge in front, which would mean that the catch-up mechanism isn't really for catching up at all... It's just a way to "draft" behind the leader. I guess catch-up mechanisms aren't so bad, after all.

Rules Discussion: Rule-Breaking Pieces

There is something about the sanctioned breaking of rules in a game. Sure, cheating should be anathema to any board gamer worth his or her salt, and wanton disregard for rules should be the rationale for banishing any gamer to the outer reaches of society. I would even proffer that gamers who flaunt the rules in favor of "house rules" should be hung by their pinky toes in the town square (that's humor, by the way). Okay, that's a bit extreme (especially since I sometimes resort to house rules when I don't understand a game's mainstream rules AND I don't have time to research the rulings), but being given license to break the rules is an intriguing concept. What if someone told you to ignore your dice roll in Monopoly and just buy whatever property you wanted, but at double the price? What if you could attack a territory far from your own in Risk? What if you could decline the card exchange in Hearts? Such "rule-breaking" adds a spicy element to a game, confusing long-time adherents, but in a beneficial way. 

Sanctioned rule-breaking is often in the purview of house rules and game variants, though you also find it in game pieces that change the fundamental rules of a game. For example, i

n the Abbey & Mayor expansion of Carcassonne, there is a Wagon piece that not only allows a player to claim a feature, but to move the Wagon on to another attached feature upon completion of the feature the Wagon was occupying. For example, if your Wagon is on a city tile with an attached road and you complete the city, the Wagon moves onto the road after scoring. In Carcassonne, this is a hugely important rule-breaking piece for one reason: even though you complete a city, road, or cloister, if you have no more followers to place, you cannot claim any adjacent feature on the tile that finished that city, road, or cloister, even though the follower is returned to you because follower placement happens before scoring, not after scoring. If you have no followers, you cannot take advantage of the tile you just placed. With the Wagon, though, you can move it onto an attached feature, potentially scoring that feature, as well.

The Wagon is probably my favorite follower in Carcassonne (the Barn is not a follower, but it is also an awesomely powerful piece). I must admit that the Wagon is not necessarily a rule or mechanic in and of itself, but it is the only piece in Carcassonne that breaks the follower placement rule. Rule-breaking pieces or cards can be found in many other games. Another example (though a minor one) are the gates in Alhambra, which allow you to place a walled edge of one building tile against the wall edge of another building tile, yet preserve the "being able to walk to the fountain" rule of tile placement. Yet another instance is the station in Ticket to Ride: Europe, which lets you connect to a city when all other routes into that city are taken and thus blocked.

I have found that rule-breaking pieces are often found in expansions to games, as if breaking the rules of a base game is in the strict purview of expansions (though base game variants and the aforementioned house rules are also viable means by which a game's rules can be altered). In other words, we buy the base set to learn the rules of a game, and then we buy expansions when A) we are bored of the rules in the base set, and/or B) we feel oddly compelled to discover how it feels to break or tweak the rules of the base set. Both sentiments are similar, but there's a difference: while option A encapsulates that feeling we get after playing a game ten or more times (or less), option B speaks into that innate pioneering spirit to explore the unknown or test the waters. Or, it may just be the effect of our sinful natures to feel the compulsion to break rules. I hope that's not the case, though, because I really enjoy expansions...

In any case, rule-breaking pieces can enliven a once-moribund game experience and renew interest in a classic; this is how Settlers of Catan stays alive, in my opinion. Carcassonne is no different, which is why my interest in the game remains piqued after all these years; expansions have breathed life and vitality into the game. Yet, to be fair, Carcassonne's base set presents a strategic depth that people don't often realize unless it is played repeatedly; once you know the game's tile inventory, you know the frequency of certain tiles, and thus you know how to prevent your opponent from finishing key features in the game. Absent that, though, expansions do add spice to many games and are an undeniable means by which a one-hit-wonder designer (like Klaus Jurgen-Wrede, though he did create Pompeii) can stay gainfully paid with his or her one masterpiece.

Do you have any other base game or expansion pieces or cards in any game that break a base game rule or mechanic that you would like to discuss?

Rules Discussion: Varied Currency in Board Games

The concept of money and "currency" in board gaming is not a new trend. In fact, some of our classic (or, I should say, time-worn) board games are predicated on money, such as Monopoly and Life. Money is something to which people can relate readily, since we use it in our daily lives. As board games have become more varied in their themes and sophisticated in their designs, not many games employ game money, as if money was too jejune an idea to incorporate into (what some cynics may consider to be) "hoity-toity" connoisseur games (I'm being facetious, of course... if not needlessly verbose). Of course, games like Alhambra, Puerto Rico, and Power Grid use money outright, but you get what I mean...

Anyway, there are a vast majority of games that use many other countable items or points as currency to execute actions or even "buy" items. Case in point: Village (by Markus and Inka Brand) not only employs gold coins as currency, but also colored cubes, time (one unit of time can be used to perform an action), and even family members, who can (in a way) be swapped for goods and/or placement in the town Chronicle. Another fine example of varied currency is Five Tribes, which uses victory points to bid for turn order and purchase cards from the Marketplace, as well as white meeples and/or Fakir cards to purchase djinns. A third example of varied currency is Core Worlds, which uses "energy" and actions as currency.

Varied currency may include resources, as well, though I tried to avoid that inclusion for the purposes of this discussion because trading resources for in-game actions (though very much like a currency) crosses over into the realm of... well, "resource conversion." Village does straddle that dividing line in its use of colored cubes, but those cubes are odd concrete representations of abstract concepts like "knowledge" and "commerce," so I don't think of those cubes as resources. Nonetheless, the incorporation of victory points, time, actions, energy, and other abstractions as currency is a fascinating mechanic in and of itself because it's an attempt to quantify that which we don't often quantify as spendable, though we should... I mean, we do "spend" time performing actions; we do "spend" energy to exercise or perform daily functions; and, we do "spend" life points to fight evil (as in Shadows over Camelot).

Rules Discussion: The BINGO Mechanic

Thinking about mechanics as I drove to work this morning (though my car could use a healthy dose of mechanical attention), I pondered Rise of Augustus, which is basically a BINGO game, but with some agency over what you do. In Rise of Augustus, you draw four (or five?) objective cards; each card has three to six symbols on them, such as a chariot, a catapult, short swords, and so on. One person reaches into a bag and put out a pog (a large round chit) with a symbol on it and then declares what he or she drew. If you have that symbol on one of your objectives, you can deploy one of seven legions to that card by placing a meeple on the corresponding space. If the symbol is one more than one objective card, you have to choose to which card you deploy your meeple. This process repeats until the herald (the one who is pulling pogs out of the bag) pulls a wild card symbol. Then, he or she places all drawn pogs back in the bag. However, at any time when a person completes an objective by deploying enough meeples to cover all symbols space, that person shouts, "Ave, Caesar!" and removes all meeples from it, having completed the objective. Gameplay ends when one person finishes seven (I think) objectives.

Okay, I haven't played this game in a while, but the BINGO mechanic of drawing a tile or chit from a bag and declaring the number or symbol on the item is a mechanic that has a bad rap... How many of us have attended BINGO game nights and realized that there is NO strategy involved and you have NO choices to make? How many of us have played some kind of BINGO-inspired educational game and found that the game was more about, say, recognizing words or colors than actually "playing a game?" Yet, this bad rap is a bit unfair because BINGO is not a game, but a social activity that does involve letter or number recognition, tactile manipulation of cards and stamps (or pieces to cover the called spots), and you can even win prizes, depending on the event. If seen with the right perspective, BINGO does very well what it sets out to do: it engenders a fun atmosphere where people can relax, listen to an enthusiastic caller yell out numbers and letters on Ping-Pong balls pulled from a spinning wire-mesh ball, and get a little excited about winning an alarm clock... or it's an excuse to hang out with Grandma and Grandpa (which is extremely important).

The BINGO mechanic is difficult to implement in a board game because there is no inherent free will to it; you just pull tiles and hope for the best. Rise of Augustus, though, uses the BINGO mechanic, but does provide some room for players to choose to which card they deploy their legions. Also, when an objective card is completed, players can draft the objective they want from the central area (the time-honored drafting mechanic). Moreover, you only have seven legions at the start of the game, so if you have already placed your legions, you face the difficult decision of whether to shift a legion to another card or not. Admittedly, Rise of Augustus is a lightweight filler game, but it's one of the few games that adopts and adapts the BINGO mechanic and then provides players with decisions after each pog pull. If anything, the BINGO mechanic is a good randomizer besides dice and cards.

Rules Discussion: Resource Conversion

Lewis & Clark has some nifty mechanics interwoven into a fine racing game; one such mechanic is resource conversion for movement. Basically, in order to advance up river or mountain spaces, you need one or more characters that convert resources to movement, and you need characters or Native Americans to gather the resources you need. The key is to find the characters that most optimally convert resources to movement. At the start, everyone gets a mission commander, who can convert two food into two river spaces, one canoe into four river spaces, or one horse into two (?) mountain spaces. This is the bare minimal conversion rate, so you have to keep your eye out for characters who convert fewer resources into more spaces. For example, one character converts three wood into four river spaces, which cuts out the "conversion to canoe" intermediary step. Ultimately, Lewis & Clark boils down to setting up an efficient resource conversion engine.

Resource conversion is prevalent in European games. Two examples I can recall are Uwe Rosenberg games: in Le Havre, you process simple resources into things like smoked fish, steel, and coke; and in Agricola, you can convert wood, clay, or reed into food with the right occupation or major improvement. I'm not counting using resources to build final products, such as in Stone Age, in which you convert resources to huts or civilization items, or in Puerto Rico, in which you convert cargo into victory points (though it is a kind of conversion), but changing one resource into another is common to Euro games and a welcome, time-honored mechanic.

Do you have any examples of resource conversion to share?

Rules Discussion: Deck-Building

Many of my favorite games are considered deck-builders, which means that you build your decks as an integral part of the actual gameplay and then you compete with the deck that you built. Now, games that require players to compile their own cards to construct decks aren't new to gaming; Magic: The Gathering, Legend of the Five Rings, Netrunner (circa 1996), and the old Star Wars and Star Trek collectible card games were the forerunners of deck-builders. However, as time has passed, deck-builders can be differentiated into three basic types: the collectible card game (CCG), which requires a large investment to buy randomly packed decks and booster packs to acquire cards so that you can build your deck BEFORE actual gameplay; the living card game (LCG), which requires a relatively smaller investment in prepackaged decks and booster packs to acquire cards for deck construction BEFORE gameplay; and what I will simply call deck-builders, which involve playing with a shared inventory of cards and building your deck DURING (or as an integral part of) gameplay. Today, games like Dominion, Core Worlds, Eminent Domain, Thunderstone, Ascension, Star Realms, Trains, and even A Few Acres of Snow utilize the deck-builder mechanic in their gameplay, often employing an in-game card drafting method to distribute cards and more mechanics for accelerating draw, trashing/scrapping/removing cards from decks, denying opponents' their card draws, and forcing opponents' to discard cards.

In contrast to LCGs and CCGs, which requires some investment in decks, packs, or singles, deck-builders are much less expensive to play and need just one shared set of cards (and maybe some optional expansions). More importantly, deck-builders present a more level playing field because, unlike CCGs in which the most expensive cards often tip the odds in their owners' favor or LCGs which may require a complete collection to be competitive, all deck-builders require is one person to bring one set of cards and game elements. Wanna play Dominion? All you need is one friend with the game. This doesn't mean that you will win in your first or even tenth game (after all, the more experienced player of any game has greater odds of winning), but you are less likely to get blindsided by an unexpected card or hosed by an overpowered card that costs $200 on eBay to buy a playset of four. In this way, the "modern" deck-builder is more egalitarian than CCGs and LCGs, and are more welcoming to the new and inexperienced player (though you do miss out on the thrill of opening a booster pack, hoping for a prized rare card).

Any thoughts about deck-builders, CCGs, or LCGs? Feel free to offer your opinions and insights.

Rules Discussion: The Flop

A nice little mechanic in any game is the ability to draw from the discard pile. Gin Rummy is a classic example of using the discard pile as a resource, but there are numerous games that actively draw from the discard pile. A few that come to mind are 7 Wonders (which allows you to pull from the discard pile by activating the ability on certain Wonder boards), Magic (which, like it or not, set a lot of standards for modern gaming), and even Twilight Struggle (which allows it with a couple of key cards).

Now, I should differentiate the discard pile from the "flop" because the flop is there for people to draw face-up cards, but the discard pile is intended to be the landing place for played cards or cards that were discarded because of a game effect. Ticket to Ride, Core Worlds, Star Realms, many of the Cryptozoic deck-builders, and Poker are exemplars of games that employ flops for drawing.

Anyway, do you have a favorite game that involves discard pile drawing?

Rules Discussion: Player Asymmetry

Player asymmetry is the concept of having each player assume a role and/or in-game abilities that differ from other players. A prime example of player asymmetry is in Pandemic, when each player assumes a role AND has abilities or enhancement that are unique vis-a-vis other players. Twilight Struggle is another great example: one side is the USA (who is always second in each action round and has its own specific cards) and the other side is the USSR (who is always first in each action round and has its own specific cards). A third example is Memoir '44, in which both players play two sides with different game abilities (particularly in the expansions) and starting positions. Eclipse also comes to mind, as you start out as a human or an alien race with a couple of special bonuses.

Player asymmetry is broader than a rule or mechanics discussion not only because it's pervasive in gaming, but also because each player works essentially under different rules from each other. The benefit of this asymmetry is variety: you can play one of two or many different roles; you have different abilities each game; you can explore different in-game strategies and tactics each game; and, even the material differs between players, whether it's pawns of various colors or other meeples. The downside, though, is that the playing field is not necessarily level and it's difficult to compare player performances when they are fundamentally dissimilar.

Do you have any thoughts on player asymmetry?