Month: October 2021

About a year ago, I first met the Mahjongg Ladies at my favorite local pizza joint. They play every Monday, and since I frequent that place– sometimes eating lunch there three or more times in a week– I see them often. I chat with them briefly and then get on with whatever I’m doing, which is typically playing board games with a friend or two, or hanging out with Pepper.

Well, I didn’t have any board-gaming friends to join me today, so I sat down with the ladies and learned to play Mahjongg. The mechanics of the game are really quite simple, but they play “American” Mahjongg, which has about fifty different hands you need to know (some of which have multiple ways to make them). I’m pretty sure I spent most of the time staring at my cheat sheet, which is a list of all the hands, as I picked up and discarded tiles in a vain attempt to make a winning hand.

After getting walloped in three or four games, I finished with a glorious victory. The ladies were very gracious, and asked if I’d be back. Apparently this time it was free, but next time it’s for money. Yep, they play for quarters. I suppose if I get good enough, I can win pizza money off them and pay for my lunch every week…

As I wait for some design files and final playtesting on my Hexteria game, I had an idea for another board game. This one’s intended to be simpler than Hexteria, but maybe more complicated than Chronium. I’m not actually sure where it’ll eventually land on the spectrum.

Since I’ve been working on Hexteria for just over a year, I’ve accumulated a lot of little bits and pieces through aborted attempts to come up with the right game parts. As the game evolved, so did the parts list, and I figured I should keep the unused and leftover parts in a box or something. Now, when I want to prototype a new game, I can just pull from the box. So this new game is definitely cannibalizing stuff from Hexteria:

This photo is the end result of my first play-through. There are mechanics about laying the hexes to form the “board”, placing meeples (explorers) on them, and scoring points via cards. It took around 20 minutes to play and it… wasn’t awful. But it wasn’t super fun, either. If I had to describe it in a word, I’d probably say it was “interesting”. And that’s a good start, I suppose. I’ll keep playing against myself– and maybe Pepper, if she’s willing– to see what sorts of tweaks would turn “interesting” into “fun”.

Oh, and the working title is Terra Hexia, although I have it on good authority that’s a terrible title and I need to rename it…

When Zaque was serving his mission, he shared some photos of a time he and his companion were shopping in Target. He titled them The Target Chronicles and I thought they were brilliant:

Today we were literally wasting time in Kalispell between dentist and car appointments, so we went to Target and Pepper shopped for purses. Without anything in particular to shop for or buy, I posed for a few pictures.

Clearly I need some practice to get my poses a little closer to the posters. I’ll need Zaque to teach me.

Oh, and we also went to Ross– still in search of purses– and I found some obnoxious sunglasses.

Next step: Instagram influencer!

One drawback of rural life is having to drive along the same stretch of highway to get… well, anywhere. We know Highway 35 very, very well by now. In the two years we’ve lived here, I’m pretty confident we average one trip along the road per day, meaning hundreds of trips in total.

Today was what I call a “Three 35 Day”, meaning I drove the road three separate times. Seminary in the morning, lunch and a school meeting at noon, and dinner with friends in the evening.

At least it’s a pretty drive…

Almost two years ago, we went to a local brewpub for trivia night. We met some new people and had a grand time. Well, last week we were talking with some friends and agreed it would be fun to play again. This evening we headed over there and sat down at the bar, ready to show off our knowledge of completely useless facts.

In honor of Fat Bear Week, we named our team The Fat Bears (although honestly I don’t think anyone else at the bar got the joke). We went through four rounds of grueling questions, guessing on some and nailing others. In the end, we won!

Okay, sure, it looks like we came in second. But we were given the crown because PTA Bigfork was the sponsor for the event, so they weren’t allowed to win. And technically it wasn’t a crown– it was a $120 gift card for the bar. Nice! That means we can fund several more trivia nights with our friends.

Yay Fat Bears!

As everyone knows, Katmai National Park in Alaska is hosting its annual Fat Bear Week competition. This time of year, all the bears are loading up on carbs for their long winter, so they’re all hilariously huge. I don’t think they’ve announced this year’s winner, but a quick search turned up some classy fat bear photos:

Fat bears don’t just roam Alaska, though… we had one in our driveway last night! Here’s the video (it was shot at 3am so it’s pretty dark):

I suppose pretty soon, when these fatties lay down for a nap, we won’t have to worry so much about walking outside and running into one…

As I continue to refine and finalize my Hexteria game, I keep reading things that say it’s important to consider color-blind players. Roughly one man in twelve is color-blind, and one in two hundred women. Many game design guides recommend using more than just color to differentiate pieces; shapes are useful. I’m pleased that Hexteria has cool pieces which have not only unique colors, but unique (and thematic) shapes.

However, each player has a set of pieces they use as they deploy their forces in the game, and those pieces come in four colors: red, green, blue, and yellow. It’s worth noting that many (most?) board games with three or four players have pieces in these same colors. It’s sort of an unofficial “standard” across the genre. However, since color-blind people overwhelmingly have red-green blindness, it means they can’t easily distinguish those two players in a game!

Here’s an example of the meeples I’m using, in the traditional colors:

And here’s what they look like to someone who’s red-green color-blind:

Oops. How can they know which pieces belong to the red and green players?

So, knowing all this and thinking about how to make Hexteria more “accessible”, I’m planning to change the colors of the players’ pieces. Behold the purple, orange, white, and black version:

A color-blind person would see them like this:

Ah, much better! Plus, they won’t conflict with the other pieces on the board, which also happen to be red, green, blue, and yellow. Double win.

As I continue on this journey of game development, I’m learning a ton of stuff. This might seem like an insignificant thing, but I’m hoping that at some point, a color-blind player sits down to play Hexteria and thinks, “This is great!” instead of “Oh no, another game where I can’t tell which pieces are mine…”

It all started when I was walking around the yard on Thursday and noticed a strange hole in the grass. A piece of the turf was missing, and I could see a white pipe underneath:

More to the point, the pipe was cracked. That’s roughly a one-inch gap between the two pieces of PVC. I dug a bit and learned that it’s a 4-inch pipe, meaning it’s probably being used for drainage. Sure enough, a bit of investigation revealed that it’s attached to a drainpipe from one of our gutters. But… cracked? There’s no way a 4-inch pipe filled with water and froze (it rained a few days ago, but it hasn’t been below 40). After more thought, Pepper came up with the theory that the ground has settled over the past 20 years and the pipe was just pushed under immense pressure until it cracked and chucked up a little piece of the ground. But… where’s the piece of grass that’s missing?

So it’s all very mysterious, but the fact remains that I had to fix the pipe. I didn’t want to dig everything up, install another section of pipe, seal the ends, yada yada. Been there, done that. Instead, I bought some silicone tape used for wrapping pipes and started digging. As I excavated the pipe, I found a wire going right through it.

What the…?

Even better, as I kept digging I found another pipe– this one maybe an inch across– beneath everything.

We’re pretty sure that’s a sprinkler line, and I’m guessing the wire is for locating the wire from aboveground (I know they do that sort of thing with gas lines). But somehow, the wire goes straight through the drainage pipe. Maybe it popped up when the ground heaved or something? No, wait, looking more closely at the 4″ pipe, it shows signs of being sawed, rather than cracked. What’s going on here? I don’t know.

In any case, the repairs commenced. I wrapped the whole thing in duct tape, then wrapped that in silicone tape, and then applied another generous layer of duct tape. The final result looks exactly as professional as you’d expect.

Whatever. If it leaks a little bit of rainwater, it’s no big deal. I covered everything back up and called it a day.

But I’m still scratching my head about the whole thing.