Month: December 2023

By all accounts, you could label us a “board-game family”. Since the kids were old enough to understand Sorry, we’ve played board games. Every time we’re together, we have to clear some table space to set up a game or deal some cards or roll some dice. It’s a fun way to be together, chatting and laughing and (naturally) talking smack. So it came as no surprise that during our Christmas week together, plenty of games hit the table.

Alex and Kaitlyn received Mysterium and Flamecraft from their wish list. The former is an interesting take on the classic game of Clue (although considerably more complex), while the latter is a game of card collection using dragons. Look how excited Alex and Kaitlyn are while we play their new game!

Zack and Kyra, on the other side of the table, are demonstrating a great faux pas of board gaming: eating Cheetos and drinking soda while playing.

The kids and I played a bunch of Sheepshead, carrying on our Wisconsin-based family tradition.

Zack gave me a hundred colored dice, which were pretty cool.

With them, we played Liar’s Dice many times. It’s quick, easy, and strangely addictive. You just have to make sure no one can see your dice.

Of course King of Tokyo made an appearance. It’s an old family favorite, and I gave Zack an expansion for it.

The kids agreed to test my latest game, Utu, which was hot off the press. Kyra helped me come up with some add-ons for the game, which she insisted I call the “Dark Expansion”. I’ll be working with her ideas over the next few weeks.

Not all of the games were on the table. Zack, Kyra, and I played a few rounds of Mario Kart (in which I was absolutely demolished). Alex brought his gaming computer from home, and enjoyed a few hours on the big screen. Ollie joined him. Yes, Ollie was actually driving a race car here… not very well, but driving nonetheless.

Alex and Zack had some more rowdy video games going for a while…

We played Skull King and Endeavor and Architects of the West Kingdom and a half-dozen others. I really enjoy spending time with my kids over a gaming table, although sometimes I find that I need to hold back a little because they don’t always want to play that many games.

Yesterday Zack and I were playing Liar’s Dice (again) and he wondered aloud how we might design a game involving dice that have “powers”. This isn’t really a new concept, but he and I started trading ideas. We rapidly came up with a framework for a game, and went to work creating the rules and cards. Here’s our testing ground:

Pepper commented that normally I design games alone, so it was nice to see me collaborating. She asked Zack if he was going to continue working on it with me beyond the first ideas, and he quickly replied, “Yeah, because otherwise it’ll become a resource-management game.” We all laughed, because of course he’s right. Most of the games I design tend to lean in the direction of resource management… probably because those are the sorts of games I enjoy most. So it was a ton of fun to brainstorm with him as we refined the rules, played a few turns, identified problems, came up with solutions and new directions, and continued scribbling ideas and rules on cards.

After three or four hours, Zack and I felt pretty good about our new game, which we jokingly called Dicee (we can’t call it Dicey because that name’s already taken). We introduced it to Kyra and Pepper.

To my great surprise, Pepper actually said she enjoyed the game. It’s rare for her to enjoy any board game, especially the ones I make (they’re just not her style).

Our final game of the year was Skull King, which we played right up to the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve. Poor Kyra had planned to go to bed around nine, but we talked her into staying up to ring in the new year. Pepper was also well past her bedtime but agreed to be a good sport. This picture reminds me of a joke my parents used to tell: (kid’s voice) “But Mommy, I’m tired” … (parent’s voice) “Shut up and deal!”

I’m grateful I can have fun doing a favorite activity with my kids. And this week I was especially grateful to spend some time with Zack envisioning a new game– one unlike anything I’ve designed before. It’ll be interesting to see where it goes.

It’s sure fun to be a grandpa. Since we only see Ollie every few months, each time we do it’s a chance to see all the stuff he’s learned. He really enjoys coming to our house, because there’s a ton of space to run around, and a ton of toys to dump out.

The Fisher-Price city is a perennial favorite.

He had fun with trains and cars, blocks and stuffed animals, things he opened at Christmas and things we’ve saved from his dad’s time as a toddler.

There was a bit of snow on the ground, and Ollie learned to make a snowball.

We went to Rosa’s Pizza (of course) and he decided his pizza wasn’t complete unless it was absolutely covered in parmesan cheese.

He and I played a game I guess we’ll call “Small Ollie, Big Grandpa”. It involved a cosmetic mirror and a crazy amount of laughing and yelling.

Running around the house(s), exploring the attic, hiking, swimming in the hot tub, bouncing on beds… Ollie had a full schedule!

Grandma Pepper was a real champ. She’d get up early with him (around 7 each morning) and play so his parents could get a little extra sleep. She’d take him on walks and set up his train and read him books. I’m convinced she took several hundred pictures, and dozens of videos, of the little guy. Eventually she needed a well-earned break.

Yep, we sure had a good time with the little guy. It’ll be a few months until he turns three, but I’m hoping we can celebrate another birthday with him.

What’s Christmas without some treats around the house?

It started with the sugar cookies. We all gathered to roll out the dough and start cutting out shapes.

Never a family to do things in a traditional way, we had some pretty interesting cookies. In addition to the usual stars and angels and bells, we had cookies shaped like squirrels, sheep, dinosaurs, shamrocks, and even some custom ones like Zack’s “duckfish” (don’t ask).

Ollie was really good about quality control, frequently sampling the dough to ensure it was of the finest grade.

We popped them in the oven, and then went to work on the frosting. Normally I’ll mix up some frosting, throw food coloring into it to make four or five colors, and then take a butter knife to spread it liberally on the cookies. Not so this year. Kyra brought her cake-decorating tips, and the crew went to work.

Even Ollie tried his hand at it.

Kaitlyn made what I can only describe as the prettiest Christmas sugar cookie I’ve ever seen. It was an absolute masterpiece of a wreath. Look at her concentration!

Eventually Ollie tired of squeezing frosting through a bag, and Grandma came to the rescue with some fun.

In the end, we had boxes full of amazing cookies. Some seemed too pretty to eat… although in the end they were definitely eaten.

The Christmas cookies were epic, but Kyra and I had agreed weeks before that we were going to make bonbons. It’s been years since we’ve had them, and they’re a real treat. She, Zack, and I had a grand time making them. We had a bit of extra chocolate dip at the end, so we experimented a bit with chocolate-covered Cheetos and cashews and Starburst. They were… underwhelming.

With sugar cookies and bonbons and chips and crackers and Cheetos all week, we had no shortage of treats. I literally gained seven pounds during the kids’ visit. That’s proper Christmas eating!

For the first time, all of our kids were able to come up to Montana for Christmas. What’s more, they were all able to take off a full week from work and other responsibilities, so we had a nice long time together. It was wonderful.

Rather than write a single monumental blog post about our Christmas adventures, I think I’ll break it up into chunks. This first chunk is entitled “The Gifts”. It’s really just about our Christmas Day together.

Well, technically I’ll start with Christmas Eve. In keeping with Kaitlyn’s family tradition– now a favorite tradition of ours as well– we had a “Bethlehem Dinner” of simple foods. Our table was adorned with chicken, cheeses, fruits, vegetables, unleavened bread, and some sparkling cider. We sat on pillows and used candles and the fireplace for light. Kaitlyn did the bulk of the preparation; here she shows off the meal.

It’s a nice way to leave behind our first-world foods and modern conveniences for a little while, and reflect on the food and setting of the time of Christ’s birth in Bethlehem.

Our tree– transported all the way from Utah by Kyra– illuminated the corner of the room and the piles of presents (about a third of which were for Ollie, I think).

We still have a dearth of tree ornaments, so as we did last year, we hung a single ornament on the tree: Sefton’s little hand-painted wooden egg.

Christmas Day dawned, and we gathered at about 9am to open gifts. Ollie isn’t quite old enough yet to insist that everyone be up by 7am (although he is anyway, every day), so we had a chance to sleep in a bit.

The unwrapping commenced. Ollie didn’t usually wait for his turn, but that was okay.

There was much happiness as people revealed things they’d asked for…

… like board games they’d had on their list for a while.

Zack was shocked at this one:

But it turned out to be a jacket he’d bought for himself. And wrapped for himself.

What he didn’t expect was the Flamin’ Hot Cheetos Snuggie, a man-sized blanket you wear.

When the wrapping paper was gone and the boxes emptied, Ollie had a huge pile of toys to entertain him for the rest of the week.

Grandma helped him set up blocks and train tracks and marble slides. It seemed like she was having more fun than him!

Alex and Zack went to work on a Lego set that depicted a character in one of Alex’s favorite video games.

Pepper found a fun little child-sized backpack for Ollie, and we included a couple of half-size water bottles (vacuum lined, as all good water bottles are). He absolutely loved the pack, and wore it around all day. He’d take it off, stuff some toys into it, play for a while, then take it off again to exchange the toys. Eventually he insisted on going for a hike… after all, that’s what backpacks are for, right? We didn’t have much snow on the ground, but we sure have plenty of hiking land around our house!

Later in the day, the hot tub beckoned. Ollie insisted on bringing his new toy boat.

Although it’s always nice to receive a few things I’ve asked for, I think the most fun at any Christmas present-opening event is watching the surprise and joy of little kids as they unwrap things they don’t expect. Merry Christmas, Ollie!

Using the AI art I created a few weeks ago, I sent off my designs for Utu. Today I received the printed pieces, and I’m thrilled.

But there was work to be done. One of the things I wanted to test with this printing was a “dual-layer mat”, which is a fancy board-gaming term for a two-part chipboard mat where pieces are placed. The top layer has punch-outs where the pieces go, and the bottom layer is solid. In this way, the pieces can be placed in the punch-outs and don’t slide around if you accidentally bump the mat.

The first step was to order a leather punch kit. These are shaped metal, sort of like cookie cutters, used to punch through leather for things like belt holes. The kit I bought had a variety of pieces and shapes, which was important because I needed punch-outs of several different sizes.

Using a rubber mallet and a plastic cutting board, I pounded the punch kit pieces through the chipboard. It was pretty tedious.

Then I glued the backing onto each mat, and the result was exactly what I wanted.

Here are the pieces for the fully printed game, ready to be played!

It’s a big step up from the secondhand hex tiles and cardstock I ran through my trusty old Brother laser printer:

This project has been a ton of work, and it’s stretched me in some new creative directions. But that’s one of my goals with board game design, so I’m happy with it. Although I don’t think this will be the “final” printing of Utu, it’s a great start and a way I can introduce the game to more people and get feedback on it. Onward and upward!

This is a composite photograph of the Andromeda galaxy (M31) by a group of amateur astronomers. Beautiful.

About once a year, Donald X Vaccarino, the designer of the card game Dominion, releases a new expansion. The game first came out in 2008, and the current count of cards exceeds 6,200. And I have them all.

Yeah, it’s one of my favorite games, and for some reason every time a new expansion is released I feel compelled to buy it. A few years ago I spent some time organizing my collection, and it worked great. Everything– about 4,000 cards at the time– fit nicely in a single box. But since then, my collection has grown by about 50%, and cards were spilling out into other makeshift boxes. They weren’t organized, making it difficult to use the new expansions.

I decided to buy another box and reorganize the whole thing. Today I went to work. The first step was buying some nice thick cardstock in a myriad of colors.

Next, I built a massive set of documents with the card names on them, and printed them. Each expansion had its own color.

Then it was time to cut them. Our trusty twenty-year-old paper cutter made the job easy, although it was terribly tedious.

After about two hours, I had stacks of colorful, neatly-cut dividers.

The final step was alphabetizing the cards, inserting the dividers between them (there are ten copies of each card), and fitting the expansions into the box. It worked really well.

Now, when someone asks if I’d like to play Dominion, I can grab my box… or both boxes, depending on how serious they want to get. The kids are planning to visit for Christmas, and they all love the game, so I’m excited to pull it out.

My friend Richard wore an amazing suit to the Christmas party tonight. He even let me try it on!

Although I wore a boring grey shirt to the party, it’s worth mentioning I was the only adult in the room wearing a Santa hat. Next year I hope to have a suit like his.

Back in September, I started working on my latest board game, Utu. Since then I’ve had the opportunity to playtest it with several groups of friends and family. Their feedback has been positive and helpful, and the game’s development continues apace. It’s reached the point where I’m no longer satisfied with printed cardstock and handwritten sticky notes on the backs of old Hexteria hexes. It’s time to print this thing!

In any relatively complicated game, it’s surprising how much design is involved. I needed hexes with oceans and islands, and artwork for the player mats and action boards and decks of cards. I’m not really very good at that sort of thing, so my past game designs have been a bit hit-or-miss. For Indio, I engaged my nephew Tim to design the hexes, and he did a great job with the abstract artwork I envisioned. It was much better than the heavily-modified internet photos I’d downloaded and edited. For Onward, I just found artwork on the internet and used it, because I knew I wasn’t going to be publishing the game (hence copyright wasn’t at stake). I think the results were quite good, but it felt a little like cheating to just grab other artists’ work.

Last week I spent long hours working on designs. I came up with color schemes and drew islands and oceans and underwater creatures. I copied some Polynesian tattoo patterns for the card decks. I hadn’t yet figured out what to do about the player mats and action boards. I felt kind of stuck.

Then I struck on an idea: could I generate the artwork using AI? Specifically, could I use Stable Diffusion, which I’d installed on my computer after scoring a high-end graphics card? I’d done a few experiments with it, but until now hadn’t found an opportunity to really put it to use. I updated some software and went to work.

The results were astonishing.

With prompts like “Polynesian boats on an ocean, with islands and palm trees”, it created artwork like this in about 60 seconds:

I continued modifying the prompts, dialing in the look I was going for, and was repeatedly amazed by what the software did. How about some stormy seas?

Or a sunset scene?

The hours passed quickly. I was having a ton of fun coming up with this artwork! The power of AI art was taking me in directions I hadn’t planned. Instead of having three or four island drawings, as I’d done last week, I could create a whole set of unique island art like this:

After a full day of creating artwork (it’s a time-consuming process, and sometimes results in less-than-useful results), I had the graphics I needed. I could transform my original drawn designs into these new AI-based ones. For example, here’s how an island hex changed:

Here’s a player mat, from concept to finished art:

I could even design people, so I’d have a Polynesian chief and a princess.

AI art generation is notoriously poor at rendering people (particularly eyes and fingers, for some reason) so this took some experimentation and a lot of refinement. But the final result is a thousand times better than what I could’ve done unaided.

This morning I spent a few hours compiling the cards and hexes, doing the template layouts, and finally sending all of it to the print company. In a few weeks I should have a fully designed, fully playable version of Utu to enjoy with the kids during our Christmas gathering. Woo hoo!

I saw this little exchange on the internet somewhere…

… and it reminded me that I have to keep working at being Ollie’s Cool Grandpa.

That’s not to say Brett isn’t also his Cool Grandpa; Brett is indeed pretty cool, and I think it’s perfectly legitimate to have two Cool Grandpas. As Ollie keeps growing, he also keeps getting to be more fun and interactive. Gotta stay cool.