What I’m Reading Massive Update

I’ve finished a number of books but have yet to update either the “What I Recommend” or “What I Am Reading” pages, and since I have a bunch to unload, I’m just going to do it here. First, though other news. If you go over to Gamestooge and click on “About Us” you’ll see that I am now the Senior Writer over there. Also If you go over to 2old2play you’ll see that I’m a contributor writer there as well!  Now all the work I do over there is free, but hey people are reading my writing which is a start, right? Lets hope so!

Okay, this is going to be quick and dirty:

The Thin Red Line by James Jones – Buy it – By far the best war novel I’ve ever read, Jones’ portrayal of the assault on Guadalcanal by American troops during WW2 is unforgiving. Jones prose and story is so powerful its focus is not on the action but rather the people in it, exploring how humans can and do kill each other and the toll it takes on all of us. I can’t recommend this book enough to those who wish to see past the hollow glory that warfare provides… A scathing rebuttal of those who would have us believe war is noble and the greatest endeavor man has ever participated in

The Prince of the Marshes by Rory Stewart – Check it out at your local library – Mr. Stewart went to Iraq in August of 2003 as part of the temporary Coalition Provincial Authority that the United States and Allies set up in Iraq before the Iraqi elections. He served for a year there as a deputy governor of Amara then Nasiriyah in Southern Iraq.  This book’s value comes in that Stewart doesn’t pull any punches, he just reports the facts as he witnessed and what he witnessed was largely corruption, chaos, and incompetence.  Not that you should be surprised by that, like it or not, Iraq is our generations Vietnam, an ugly wound that will only be healed once all of us are gone…

A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster – Niche Book – This book would only interest you if you’re at all interested in Game Design (any type digital, analog, board, card, etc.) Koster recognized that in his field there was no authority or theory behind how games should be designed, what makes them interesting, compelling and fun to those who play them. Game Designers largely grope in the dark while making their games, at best they were operating intuitively and hoping for the best. It’s one of the reasons copying is so blatant in the industry.  Koster tries to provide a foundation for further research and theory to be built upon. Beginning with what “fun” means and how that applies to humans. Koster states that fun is merely learning and that games are a great way for us to learn. That games are serious business worthy of serious scholarly study and that as such games should begin to live up to their historical stature.

I don’t recommend getting this from Amazon as the folks there are selling it for close to $100, instead check out half.com for a better deal, well worth the read if your interested at all in the emerging field of ludology.

The Wolf of Wall Street by Jordan Belfort – Avoid – Mr. Belfort has quite an opinion of himself, despite the fact that as far as I can tell, no one really cared much about him until this book came out… Unless you were once an employee of his brokerage firm or knew the man there isn’t anything here for you to read. Full of shallow conversation, ridiculous hyperbole, and needless swearing (not to mention one unbelievable incident after another). This book will be my first experiment in making a false book, I wouldn’t want it to end up in anyone Else’s hands, I’d just feel too guilty doing that to somebody… Terrible just terrible. One more thing, I question whether Mr. Belfort actually knows the definitions of some of the words he uses… Complete narcissistic tripe.

Elric of Melnibone by Micheal Moorcock – Buy it – Moorcock is hailed as one of the creators of “new fantasy”, trying to separate himself from the epic archetypal stories as told by J.R.R Tolkien as his many imitators, this is where he got started. If you’re a player of either Warhammer or its Sci-Fi cousin 40k, these should especially interest you as Moorcock is the largest influence on the idea of chaos in the Warhammer worlds. Elric of Melnibone is the first in a 6 part series introducing us to Elric a dark anti-hero. The emperor of a nation declining into decadence and beholden to demonic forces, Elric is an albino, weak of body, philosophical and strong of mind. He sustains himself through drugs and his vampiric sword… I’ve just started these and haven’t been disappointed and excellent start to a series and definitely not in the normal vein of the genre. You can find the books in the series individually at either half.com or abebooks.

There you go all caught up on what I read, and if you think you’re going to purchase one of these please use the links above as I get a small bit of the proceeds!

Coming up next, Analog Gaming 2

Goals, the Importance of Writing Them Down, and My Own

Setting goals, writing them down, sharing them, and my own!

It’s important to have goals, to set bars for yourself, why? So that you know just where it is you’re going, and how best to plan getting there. Sure, you could go through life without setting goals, writing them down, etc… But, I have a feeling unless you have a great memory and a lot of drive, those goals, dreams, and aspirations will be forgotten.  Writing your goals down is one thing, making them public is completely different. When you write a goal down it becomes something separate from yourself, it becomes real, not just in your head, sharing those goals with others is the next step in making that goal real. Making it independent of you. When a goal is something real it hangs over you more, it creates guilt, and despite what your therapist tells you, guilt is a great motivator, it can and is a good thing (especially in this instance.) Some place you can go to make your goals public? Well your own blog, your journal, a club or organization you belong to, or if you don’t have any of those go to 43things.com.

So here are my goals, set into 3 groupings, 1 year from now, 5 years…, and 10 years… This list will grow and shrink, I’m sure as my life changes, priorities rise and fall, and I go through the business of, you know, living. But here it is now, and I’m dedicated to crossing off every single one of them, so that in 10 years time I can make a new list and begin working on it. I’ve printed this list out, signed, and dated it and it now looks at me everyday, posted on my bulletin board, a not so subtle hint to be working on crossing things off of it!

My goals, To Be Done in:

  • 1 Year:

    • Start Career in politics

    • Scuba Diving License

    • Be enrolled in graduate level program

    • Be engaged

    • Submit work(s) for publication

  • 5 years:

    • Be married

    • Have graduate degree

    • Run for office

    • Be published

    • Be Debt Free

  • 10 years:

    • Have a family

    • Own a home

    • Have a retirement plan in place

    • Be a force for good in politics

    • Continue to be published

I commit myself to reaching and overreaching on these goals I’ve set for myself.

Analog Gaming – Warhammer and Warcraft

Dark Eld Dreadlord

If you read this blog you already know I’m a gamer. I play video games, I review video games, I even write up news items about video games (saunter on over to Gamestooge and take a look). What you probably don’t know is that I enjoy more than video games, I enjoy games, period. You don’t hear much about other types of games though. When it comes to the mainstream media, they only have enough time to mis-cover and misrepresent the most ostentatious and conspicuous form of gaming, video games. This means that while even if you’ve never played a video game before you know who Mario is or what Grand Theft Auto games are about. You’ve probably never heard of Warhammer, Ticket to Ride, or GURP before, though these games and others like them have had a tremendous amount of influence on their younger sibling, the video game.

So, in an effort to educate as well as entertain I’m introducing, what I’m sure will become a sporadically updated series, Analog Gaming. In AG I’ll showcase various board, card, and table-top games (some you’ll know and others you won’t) highlighting how you play the game, its history, how long it takes, game mechanics, and then diving in to how it and variations on it have influenced more popular electronic games.

I don’t know if it’ll be successful but it sounds like fun abd it’s what I know.Grimgor Ironhide

First up, Warhammer By Games Workhops. Name sounds familiar doesn’t it? It should, it’s the primary influence for Blizzard’s popular, record shattering, series WarCraft. Warhammer is what is called in the industry a table-top fantasy war game. The basic idea is to build a customizable army using the books and rules that Games Workshop provides to write up a fantasy army, then you purchase, assemble, and paint small metal (or plastic) models, these models represent the forces of your Army. After you’ve designed and constructed your own army the next step is to wage war with it. Luckily, there are places to play all around the United States (and across the globe) though it is more fun to play against friends.  Once you have an opponent you set up your playing area (a dining table works great, for starters). You set up your armies and begin moving them around the board, each unit has it’s own characteristics and moves (remember those books I mentioned, all this information is found in them). You can’t win a war without fighting and the heart and soul of Warhammer is the rule-set that controls how units within an army interact with other friendly and unfriendly units.  These encounters are resolved by look at the two fighting units stats and then rolling across dice to see the outcome and comparing the dice to some charts to see who lives and who dies…

I know this sounds boring, and it can be, at times. Referring to books, army list sheets, and quick-reference charts doesn’t sound fun. But this is only a small part of the game and the charts are easily memorized, Games Workshop has tried very hard to make the rules as non-intrusive as possible. Leaving most of your time to beating the hell out of your friend, which is a great deal of fun. The actual game is only 1/3 of the Warhammer experience, the other 2/3 is designing and customizing your army, and then putting it together and painting it. It’s incredibly rewarding to see models you’ve put together and painted spread across a table in the middle of a game your winning.

Warcraft 2“Blah, Blah, Blah” you’re saying, “What does all this have to do with Blizzard and Warcraft?” I’m getting there just one more thing before we get to the good parts! If you are a video gamer what I described should sound really familair to you, because I’m describing the analog non-digital version of a Real-Time Strategy Game (RTS). RTSs were the direct offspring of turn-based strategy games, which were the offspring of table-top war games. The historic base war games are very complicated and very long, and their descendants on computers haven’t changed much… In 1983 Games Workshop released Warhammer moving the game into a fantasy setting and cutting out a bunch of complications, to make the game more fun, faster, and less of a headache.  In the early and mid 90’s Games Workshop was approached by a small American development team called Blizzard, the folks at Blizzard were fans of GW’s products and they wanted to make a game based on the Warhammer setting… Negotiations went back and forth and Blizzard began eal development. Then GW backed out. Blizzard though still wanted to make the game, so they tweaked it and changed it a little and released it as Warcraft: Orcs and Humans…  The rest is history, Warcraft was the first successful RTS game (alongside Command and Conquer).  If you look through early Warcraft material and that in Warhammer books you’ll see several similarities: art direction, magic spells, griffin riders, wolf riders, tech gnomes and goblins, all are in Warhammer and the models of these figures look a lot like those found in the Warcraft games.

As the Warcraft brand matured, especially with the WCIII and World of Warcraft, Blizzard has moved away from the Warhammer roots, they’ve injected a great deal of humor, and cartoonish joy into the WC which is absent from the bleak setting of Warhammer.

If you’re interested in playing Warhammer the best place to start is with the Battle for Skull Pass boxed set, which includes two small armies, and everything you and someone you know to start playing with them (they are unassembled and unpainted, part of the game is doing that too).

Sustaining the Energy for Change

If you’re looking for direction, you’fe come to the wrong place. I’ve got no clue. I’m writing this as I’m thinking it out, muddling through it. I’d say this was an attempt at dialectic but there isn’t anyone here to respond to my questions. The name doesn’t really matter, I’m throwing out ideas as they come and we’ll see what sticks..

So there’s the question. How do you do it? How do you overcome the inertia of your life when you get a brilliant idea or you recognize areas of your life that you don’t like? The idea, the revelation, is easy enough it doesn’t take any energy or persistence. Ideas come all the time to everyone, acting on them, and then sustaining them that’s the difficulty. I have journals, txt files, scraps of paper, indez cards, stick-its, all full of great ideas, and I’m not bull-shiting you either. Some of these ideas are the kind that you can build a career, life, empire out of even.  I’ve even half-assed followed some of them through, laid part of the groundwork for something great. So what though, I’m not bragging here, telling you how great and smart I am, great ideas like that come to everyone, everyone. Sit in a coffee shop or diner for a day and take notes you’d walk out with enough great ideas to last a lifetime. My ideas are shit as long as they stay on all that paper.

See, there we are back at the problem, is it fear of failure? fear of greatness? fear of standing out of the crowd? I’ve started on some of these ideas, put some time and effort it, only to see myself lose the energy to follow through, lose interest in the idea, and I’ve sat and watched everything I’d worked on cave in on itself. So why looking back on my life so far do I only see lots of foundations, some even have the beginnings of a superstructure, there are no monuments though.

I’m going around the idea in my head, over and over, and perhaps that’s the problem. I sit here thinking about an idea so much that by the time I DO something about it I’ve already become bored with the idea. You can live a thousand lives in the blink of an eye, and see the actions of all your decisions in a heartbeat. Reflecting constantly on what the consequences of your actions will be so thoroughly so that, you no longer are even intrigued by those consequences can go a long way in killing any desire to act on them.

I’m not going to advocate acting on a thought or idea without any forethought on what it entails, that’s too irreponsible. I’m going to try and stop living so much in my head though, less time thinking just what and how I should do something and just try doing it… Maybe then it’ll stay fresh enough, I can sustain it long enough to see some of the change I want to see in my life, or not. I don’t know how thise thing works 😛

So talk back to me here, am I wrong? right?… Let’s go ahead and try that dialectic thing I talked about. It worked for Socrates and look where it got him……..Oh.

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