Andy Norman, a philosophy professer at Carnegie Mellon University, led a team to create a game called Socrates Jones: Pro Philosopher to teach critical thinking skills. It's a serious yet fun exercise in learning how to spot weak arguments and challenge shaky claims.

Yet, demanding that a person follow your personally-approved-of restrictions on ( Read more... )

It’s taken me longer than I expected, but I’ve been looking into the free-to-play electronic CCGs that have been coming out in the past year, starting with Solforge.

The overall game structure is similar to Magic - hardly a surprise given that Richard Garfield was involved. You’re trying to reduce your opponent’s health to 0 by casting spells and ( Read more... )

Orbus finally got to try Trains, which he’s wanted to do for a while. I realize now, in hindsight, that I didn’t ask him what he thought of it. D’oh.

Four of us played. Final scores were 33, 32, 30, and 25 (or 26?) I was third. I bought no extra station-building cards and only one extra rail-laying card (so late I never got to use it), and I paid ( Read more... )

“Wow. Did you see the Grammies? Macklemore did a stand-up performance of ‘Same Love’ while thirty-five mixed-gender marriages were conducted.”

Oh, God, did I ever. I had to shut the show off, I was so angry.

“Angry? At love and marriage and civil rights?”

No. Angry at poseurs and hypocrites and thieves.

“What?”

Alright. Let’s take this one at ( Read more... )

We dug into something crunchier than usual this week: Euphoria. It’s a Euro-style boardgame of - let me know if this shocks you - worker placement and resource management, set in a retro-futuristic post-collapse dystopia.

The turn structure of the game is simple. Each player takes only one move per turn: either assign a free worker to some task or ( Read more... )

There was a slew of new games to be had at the first game night after the gift-getting season.

While another group broke out String Railway, three other players and I tried Love Letter, which I’d heard a lot of good talk about. It’s a quick, simple game: everyone gets dealt a one-card hand from a deck of about sixteen cards. Each card has a number ( Read more... )

Disney just released a new movie titled Frozen. It’s getting rabid praise for turning a number of societal and Hollywood princess tropes on their heads. Women in the movie are self-determined, they turn down marriage proposals, they’re loving and supportive of one another, they talk about things other than men.
( Read more... )

Gaming Friday this week was a touch weird. Being a holiday, it was slightly more crowded than usual, which means more activity, but Shaterri and I were in the mood for less excitement than usual, as we were fatigued from a cold, damp day of forest hiking. Also, our host ducked out for half the night due to a surprise invite to some wedding-related ( Read more... )

One day, the Hero came upon a burning house. A crowd of townsfolk watched from the yard.

“Help me!” cried the Homeowner from an upstairs window.

“Call 9-1-1!” said the Hero.

“We did,” said the crowd, but the fire trucks were not yet there.

“Save me!” yelled the Homeowner as smoke poured from the window.

The Hero moved toward the house, but the ( Read more... )

The company making GoldieBlox used a reworded version of the Beastie Boys song Girls in a sales ad. Upon being contacted by the band (presumably a direct or veiled legal threat, since the band has a strict policy of not licensing any of their songs for commercial purposes), the GoldieBlox company went to federal court to get a judge to declare ( Read more... )