Preview: Race to Adventure!

Last weekend was the monthly board game event at my local library, and the Grasshopper & I got to go for the first time in several months. I've been pretty excited about the forthcoming game Race to Adventure! from Evil Hat Productions. It's a pulp fiction-themed scavenger hunt that spans the globe of the late 1920s, including a stops in Antarctica, Atlantis, Brazil, Mexico, the United States, Nepal, and the United Kingdom. I haven't been in a position to back the game on Kickstarter, but I did get a hold of the guys at the Hat, and they sent me a print-and-play kit in exchange for writing up my experiences afterward.

Background, for those who don't want to watch the intro videos at the Kickstarter page: The target audience is ages 8+; the game should take 20-30 minutes to play once everybody knows what they're doing, and involves moving your piece to the various locations around the globe and carrying out certain tasks to collect stamps on their passport. The board is modular (for the non-gamers, this means that you can rearrange the board from one game to another), and in the full game all of the locations will have two sides, so that the replayability increases even more. The Grasshopper is 6-almost-7 and a budding gamer, so I figured playing Race to Adventure! might be a good test of how well the game could scale down.

I got to play 2 games during the time we were there -- a 4-player game that had two adults, the Grasshopper, and one other kid who looked to be about nine (I didn't ask), and later a 2-player game that was 2 adults. For the 4-player game, we made one modification suggested in the rules, and made rescuing the prisoner from Atlantis "show up with the lightning gun and get the stamp," removing the timed aspect of the mission.

I enjoyed the game a lot, and I think the Grasshopper did, too. (There's a possibility that he might have a couple friends over later today, and we might end up playing then if it happens. If more plays get in before the Kickstarter campaign ends, I'll try to update the post accordingly.) Both games finished with the second-place player having 7 of 9 stamps, and I think that in the 4-player game the farthest person behind had 5. (That was one of the two kids, although I don't recall which.) The game did move quickly both times, taking maybe 40 minutes for the first game and about 20 for the 2-player one.

This is definitely on my long-term acquisition list, either funding the campaign if something changes in the next week, or as a strong request for a Christmas present. Besides, how can you not love a game that has an intelligent gorilla flying a jet pack on its cover?

Sure-fire charcoal lighting: a tutorial

Pun intended, incidentally.

Last week, the News-Gazette posted a blog post about the fact that they sell end rolls and some possible uses for them. I mentioned that I use newspaper to light a charcoal grill, which was seized upon by the staffer. She's mentioning it today or tomorrow, and although I've sent her pictures, I figured I'd do a step-by-step tutorial here.

So, let's meet the tools you'll need for this:

A chimney starter, one and one-half sheets of newsprint, cooking spray, and your lighter of choice

 Use the cooking spray to liberally douse the newsprint. Crumple it, and stuff into the bottom part of the chimney starter. You don't want it so soaked that you can use it for a window, but you want it pretty well sprayed.

Pour in enough charcoal to fill the top part of the chimney starter. Although it's really better for your grill to light the coals on the ground, I have two kids and one of them doesn't know enough to be able to keep away. I've got a preference for lump charcoal when I can find it, but had briquettes on hand this weekend, so that's what you see.

Use your lighter, matches, or whatnot to light the newspaper in three or four places around the bottom of the chimney starter. Do you see those slit-like holes? (If you don't see them well above, there's a better view in the next picture.) That's what they're for. In a couple minutes, you should have something that looks kind of like this:

Now, you really shouldn't walk away while the coals are lighting, just in case the unexpected happens. How long it takes them to really get lit will depend a lot on how fresh they are -- charcoal is very absorbent, and if you store it for any length of time it will suck water out of the air. This makes it burn a bit smokier and slows down how quickly the coals light. The charcoal I had dates back to last fall, so it took about half an hour to reach this point:

The coals aren't really lit all the way yet - you want them all to have that coating of light gray you can see on the couple in the middle. It happened to take these another 20 minutes or so before they were really ready, but fresher charcoal will light faster.

There you have it. Please note, I do not take credit for coming up with this myself - the chimney starter has been around at least since the '70s. I learned the trick of spraying the newspaper with cooking spray from Alton Brown, host of Good Eats - the single best explainer of why you (should) do things in the kitchen that ever appeared on film.

Summer Vacation Predictions

It's the beginning of the Grasshopper's first real summer vacation (I don't count last year because he only spent a half-year in kindergarten), and he'll be spending most of it home with the Munchkin and me. I'm going to make the following predictions about the remaining 84 days.

There will not be:

• Building a rocket (he's too young)
• Fighting a mummy (though we might visit the one at the local museum)
• Climbing up the Eiffel Tower (it's too far away)
• Giving a monkey a shower (no zoo in town)
• Surfing tidal waves (we're pretty landlocked)
• Creating nanobots
• Locating Frankenstein's brain, 
• Finding a dodo bird (unless there's one at a museum I can't remember), or
• Painting a continent

There probably will be:

• Discovering something that doesn't exist (probably pretty often), and plenty of
• Driving his sister insane.
• (Keanu Reaves voice): Reading. Lots and lots of reading.

It's also likely to include his first visit to a gaming convention (Gen Con, no less -- day trip for an exhibit hall-only pass), plenty of board games, seeing his friends from school, and maybe -- just maybe, if the potential obstacles all get worked out -- becoming the youngest official D&D Next playtester.

As for reading: in the space of less than a week, he's wiped out most of the original sequence of Erin Hunter's Warriors books. He'll be a second-grader reading at an almost-4th grade level. Suggestions welcome.

A long overdue review: The Fiendish Primer

Many, many, many months back, J. Snyder mentioned over Twitter that she was working on an alphabet primer that used a bunch of classic D&D monsters for the various letters. Having a pair of kids, one of whom is (now) old enough to start to get into ABC books, I'd asked about whether the artwork was really kid-friendly, or if this was really being targeted at older gamers for a nostalgic feeling. She answered that she thought it was OK for kids, but I'd probably have to decide for myself.  We eventually worked out that I'd get a complimentary PDF copy in exchange for a review. This is that review.

First off, if you read through and decide you like it, you should know where to get yourself a copy. The answer is here, for the price of $1.99.

The PDF is short and two the point -- a cover page, a copyright page, 26 pages for the actual letters, and an about-the-author page. The illustrations are pretty cartoony, and there are none that I'd have a problem with showing a 3-year-old in my family. The poems to go with the letters are all pretty cute, although parents would be able to tell that Ms. Snyder isn't a full-time children's author. My issue isn't with the vocabulary, since as a PDF-only book it's not something that a kid would be reading all by themselves -- at least, not in my house. There are several words that are likely to provoke a "What does that mean?" although they could be pretty quickly answered by the parent who's reading the book to the kid.  However, the meter has uneven patches, and the rhymes between consecutive letters are sometimes more approximate than exact. The uneven meter won't stand out to a kid, but the uneven rhyming could. I think that within the realm of fair use I can quote the first four letters, especially because the purchase page shows the first two:

"A is for Aboleth, it's you he despises..
B is for Basilisk who gaze petrifies.
C is for Catoblepas who kills with a stare.
D is for Doppelganger, a double affair."

I'd say that it's at least worth a look, and Ms. Snyder has done good stuff elsewhere, so I don't have any problems with giving this a 4-star (out of 5) assessment.

very minor update

It's been called to my attention that, back in October when I was hosting the RPG Blog Carnival,I wrote up one of the entries, but didn't actually provide a link to it. I'm fixing that now. My apologies to Chris, and although I've updated the original main post, I'm giving an extra link here to make up for it.

recent writings

It's been a busy last week or so, catching up from the backlog that being sick (and having a sick wife/kid) generated. But, I've had a few things published elsewhere that are worth pointing out:

• At Chambanamoms.com, I discuss playing the Ticket to Ride games with kids. I didn't get a chance to talk there about the variant I use for playing with the Grasshopper, so here it is (as suggested by some Boardgamegeek users): Rather than dealing three tickets to everybody at the beginning of the game, and making them pick two, everybody is dealt just one destination ticket. Omit the "long" routes.As soon as a route is completed, score points for it and draw a new one.  Because it's impossible to plan for the longest route, leave the bonus card out.  Otherwise, follow normal rules for drawing and playing cards, claiming routes (and double routes), and scoring.
• At Kobold Quarterly, I've had my versions of both the Autumn and Winter Sentinel Druids for 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons get published to the website.
• I've pitched a few articles to Wizards of the Coast for D&D Insider, and have a few more to send before the month is over. Like almost everybody else who has sent them anything in the last two months, I'm still waiting to hear back. I'll say what I can, when I can.

A Night in the Lonesome October: Wrap-up

I've linked in the cover page everything I've found that was submitted. We had 9 entries for this blog carnival, which ended up focusing heavily on 4th edition D&D -- maybe because that's the community I'm plugged into, although I did my best to get the carnival advertised outside my normal venues. My thanks to everybody who participated. Maybe I'll have better luck next time.