Alan Calhamer (pictured above, in younger days), once was a genius graduate of Harvard University, attended law school (dropping out), thought he might end up teaching history, ended up retiring from being a letter carrier for 25 years in La Grande Park, California. Along the way, he had one great achievement. He designed the game Diplomacy. A recent article in Chicago Magazine, "All in the Game" by Edward Mclleland, tells us the rest of the Alan Calhamer's life story. I found the article very poignant, and it concludes with the question: Is a life worth one great achievement? I'm sure Alan thinks so, somehow.

His childhood friend, Gordon Leavitt, sums it up nicely: "If somebody had written a book that’s still in print 50 years later, that’d be quite an accomplishment. That’s what Allan did. He invented something that’s still being used 50 years later.”

If you like boardgames, especially Diplomacy, read this article. It's a very human story.

Make a Hot Knife using a soldering iron - More DIY How To Projects

From the latest Instructables...

Courtesy of Scott Nicholson's vlog. I think I qualify as a fan.

Boardgamegeek recently published their GIFT GUIDE FOR 2007, featuring boardgame recommendations for all ages and tastes. This list is certainly geared towards the family or euro game customer, primarily, but if that interests you, have a look

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/Board_Game_Gift_Guide_2007

I would find it useful if I were looking for an easy entre into the boardgaming hobby (say, beyond the Parcheesi, Monopoly, and Checkers).

Enjoy!

Oh, Horrors! Say it's not so!

I am a great fan of ESCAPIST MAGAZINE, a free online magazine contributed to by (mostly) electronic gaming developers and journalists, but occassionally an old-school type, some of which are acquaintences of mine. In the latest issue, Vincent Kang writes a perceptive article with the somewhat heretical title: I'D RATHER GAME THAN READ A BOOK I found the article to be of interest to video game addicts and parents of same. Like some of you, computers and internet and games take up far too much of my free time, and I begin to despair of finding time to pursue some of my lifelong passions, notably reading books. Mr. Kang addresses the tradeoff between massive multiplayer online games (such as Second Life, and Warcraft, and what have you) in a trenchant and readable fashion. His semi-heretical point is that online gaming fosters narrative thinking in a fashion not unlike reading epic ficiton:

Literature is equipment for living. The cultural critic Kenneth Burke wrote those words in his 1974 book, The Philosophy of Literary Form. In a utilitarian sense, the stories we tell each other in books, movies and videogames help shape our consciousnesses in a way a straight recitation of facts cannot. Little Red Riding Hood teaches us to not trust strangers in a way that simply saying "don't trust strangers" cannot.

Narratives are the key. The format, be it film or books or videogames, acts as a wrapper by which the substance, the story, is delivered. They help shape the story by setting the boundaries of the playing field in which the story plays itself out

In a sense, isn't a MMORPG an ongoing narrative that we interact with every second that we are logged in? I find it rather easy to take a humorous incident of from an online incident and spin an anecdote out of it. I note, from the journaling efforts of other online gamers, that most of them that bother to do so can spin a tale out of relatively few narrative threads. In that sense, isn't gaming (and online gaming in particular) beneficial towards a story telling creativity? I can't hazard a guess as to whether it would replace fiction for me personally (it certainly hasn't, I'm reading four books at once, currently), but it has an epic look and feel that appeals to the same sense of creativity within my soul.

If you have an interest in the narrative process and creativity, I suggest you look into this article (linked above) as well as the non-fiction essay collection SECOND PERSON, by MIT Press. Second Person is a book all about telling narrative storys through the medium of gamesmanship. It features some interesting contributors. A very costly read (alas, MIT Press books ain't cheap), but well worth it if you are a devotee of the genre.

Determined to waltz through the minefield, Firefight plunges ahead...

Resistance is not Futile, the game "celebrating the heroic Polish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto" (publisher description) is back on sale again today. I'm not sure if this is a mistake and an older page was put on the website in error, but it does appear as if you can order the game from Firefight.

I haven't hid my dislike for the concept of publishing a game about an event that would force one player to roleplay an exterminator. The historic event in question did occur, did involve guns and molotov cocktails and tanks and stuff, but it was no battle. Not really. The heroic (yes, I do think they were heroic) and misguided Jewish defenders did resist, and to the end-- but in game turns those events last exactly one turn. The rest of the game (according to the one playtest report I had opportunity to read, before it got pulled offline) is about hunting down the pockets of resistance and exterminating them. There's no way in hell I would play a game like this, nor would I buy stuff from this company. I respect their right to publish and fervently wish they enjoy their hard won freedom of speech that would allows them to print this game in a free society. In my opinion, the act of printing the game (given the extremely negative press the game has received) will do the hobby some injury for a few years. Too bad...