This is Braeden, working on his patient, Zoe Kellar. (That's right - our new worship/youth pastor's daughter.) Just after this picture was taken, he told her, "I think you need a shot." I'm not sure what the copay is at his clinic, but it's got to be less than what Blue Shield is charging us. 
Maybe it's a little odd for a Baptist pastor to write so much about the Pope (check out my earlier posts entitled Hell-Bound Pope Sign, Anti-Christ No More, and Pope Found To Be Catholic). Perhaps it was that I dated a young lady who was pre-Vatican 2 Catholic (15+ years after Vatican 2!) Maybe it's the class I took in seminary on Roman Catholic Theology (because I liked the professor, a Dutch guy named Dr. Kiweit.) Maybe I'm just jealous of the cool hats Catholic clergy get to wear. Who knows?
Anyway, I just read a new article on Yahoo this morning about World Youth Day in Germany... Pope Benedict had some very interesting comments for the nearly 1 million folks who camped to celebrate Mass with him:
In other words, a faith based primarily on my personal choices is only as good as the quality of my personal choices. When you take into consideration my own track record:He asked them not to see religion as a "consumer product" where people choose only what they want from it and disregard rules that are sometimes difficult to observe. "Religion constructed on a 'do-it-yourself' basis cannot ultimately help us," he said. "It may be comfortable but at times of crisis we are left to ourselves."
One of my buddies in college went to Jamaica and got a T-shirt with the "it's not my job" phrase on it. And, in light of the passage I taught through Sunday morning (1 Peter 5:1-5), I've been thinking about what IS my job here at NewLife.
So, in honor of football season getting ready to start (go, Titans!), I'll use an extended football metaphor. (Those of you who hate football... sorry.)
According to the Bible, I'm the equipment manager... the water boy.
(God) is the one who gave these gifts to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God's people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ, until we come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God's Son that we will be mature and full grown in the Lord, measuring up to the full stature of Christ.UPDATE: After this article appeared, Clint Wilder e-mailed with the following comment: "I think we are also the cheerleaders. We certainly are motivators for the crowd
to cheer for God's 'team'."
For a day that started out with an interesting political discussion with a former ice dancer and was punctuated by bits of aircraft tire shredding hydraulic line, I still managed to get in a decent big of gaming.
I rode to the airport with Doug, one of Charles' groomsmen. They met when they were both competitive ice dancers. We had an meaty but generally agreeable talk about politics & religion before his flight left for Phoenix.
My flight from Providence, RI, to Orlando was uneventful, but I can't say the same for the flight(s) from Orlando to New Orleans. That's right, flights, as in plural. As in two. As in they had to turn around and land 10 minutes after we took off, due to the broken hydraulic system. Pretty disconcerting, btw, to see emergency vehicles parked by the runway when you land.
This meant I was 2.5 hours late getting into New Orleans - so William, my 16 yr old nephew was joining me there for Gulf Games, got to explore the airport.
Thanks again to Lenny Leo for picking us up and delivering us to Gulf Games Central... the Park Plaza Hotel on Canal Street. We ended up with a great room - just one floor down from the Gulf Games area. In fact, once we figured out that we could take the staircase just outside our room up to the next floor, we seldom had to wait for an elevator.
But on to the games!
We started with Maus Nach Haus, a Haba game which evidently had been pegged as a "Fluff Daddy" game from the minute someone had brought it to the table earlier in the week. Each player has six small wooden mice (about a 1/3 inch thick) which they set on the table ready to play. One player (or possibly a non-playing friend) grabs a wooden ring and spins it on the table. The players then begin merrily shooting their mice into the center of the table, attempting to be inside or under the ring when it falls. And that's it. 5-10 minutes of flicking fun with a great random element. I need to own this one. (Wiliiam beat us in the first game... and that would be his last win for a very long time.)
Continuing on the "let's play kid stuff" theme, William & I next jumped into Au Backe, which is essentially the card game version of Chicken Cha Cha Cha. Chris "Have Bass, Will Travel" Comeaux joined us and won as Allison Vander Ark gave him the game. (There's was something about buying a steak dinner and a side bet which I didn't completely understand.) Anyhoo, still fun. I already own this one and enjoy playing it with Braeden.
Next was a game on my "try it" list - the oddly named Ubongo. Evidently "Ubongo" means "speed spatial puzzle" in German, as that's what this game is all about. Players race to finish Tetris-like puzzles then grab gems from the middle using an odd scoring system. (Cindy Wood suggested a different and more straightforward system that I think would work just fine.) I managed to squeak by for the win... which never hurts my opinion of a game. Probably the only thing wrong with it is that it tops out at four players.
Another game that I had on my "try it" list was up next - the difficult to pronounce König Salomons Schatzkammer. The first thing I noticed was the much better than usual production for a Clementoni game, what with the chunky pieces & hefty molded plastic board. It's an archaelogical dig for treasures - which means it's really a set collection/move optimization game. Nothing wrong with that, but the board position changes so severely between turns (esp. with 5 players) that you can not plan ahead. It's not a bad game - I'd happily play again (and did on Sunday morning of GG) but I feel no need to own. Tim & I tied for the win in this one.
Jim Cobb & Joe Huber (along with Rio Grande Games head honcho, Jay Tummelson) then introduced William & I to Verflixxt! (The English title of the game is That's Life.) It's a simple roll'n'move/press your luck dice game that works like a charm. I understand now why it was nominated for Spiel des Jahres. I've played it 4 times now, and I like it best with 5-6 players. Joe won, just edging out Jay.
I think this is when we went to dinner (my notes are unclear on this point) and we tried to meet up with the Berg family. Unfortunately, we were given 3 different sets of directions to the Mexican place they went to (none of which worked) and so we ended up with Sbarro Pizza. Oh, well... back to the games!
I handily beat Jeannette Vander Ark at Flowerpower, a tile placing game that I particularly enjoy. (It probably doesn't hurt that I "grok" the game and win about 85% of the time.)
Then I became the "ringmaster" for the semi-cooperative Days of Wonder game, Shadows Over Camelot. Susan Rozmiarek has done a tremendous job of telling the story of the game on her website, The Game Ranch. One nit to pick, however - we played this game on Friday night, not Saturday.
William was playing Ticket To Ride: Europe while this was going on - and getting slaughtered. Thanks to whoever was involved in humbling my nephew! :-)
Next, Joe roped us into Alpfer Stafette (which doesn't appear on the Geek)... it's a VERY early Klaus Teuber design about milking cows. Really, it's a dice game with a bit of card bluffing. In it's favor, it's got cute wooden pail pieces. Otherwise, there's nothing much to see here. I won, but it was more of a pastime than a great game.
Something similar could be said about Hamstern... in English, Hamstring. This is a draw your tile & place it game that just lacked any oomph. I benefited from the patterns developing on my board being more difficult to sabotage than others, which led me to victory. Joe got hosed by bad tile draws and never had a chance. I do NOT understand why Joe rates this one an 8.
The night continued with an 8 player game of Diamant. This blisteringly fast cousin of Can't Stop is a lot of fun to play. It's on my "must find a copy" list, and I don't win it nearly often enough for my personal satisfaction.
Then we played Klunker. My first game of Klunker (back at GG3) I managed to neither lose nor gain money - and I remember feeling like I didn't understand what had happened to me. This time, some 13 Gulf Games later, I consider myself a pretty decent Klunker player with a handle on some of the tactics - and I STILL managed to break even. Ah, well. Jay won this one, barely edging out Kay. Still one of my favorite 30 minute card games...
William & I ended the night playing Run For Your Life, Candyman, which is an over-priced and over-produced Cheap*** game. It's Candyland with the ability to attack other people... and I will admit that the damage system (when you take X number of hits on a body section, you rip that part of your gingerbread man off) is kind of cute. But the game goes on some 20 minutes past the point of enjoyment... not for me. Frank "Moo" Branham won... of course.
Saturday information coming later!
This post originally appeared on the amazing website/blog, Church Marketing Sucks, which should be mandatory reading for anyone in church leadership.
Have you ever seen a "got pepsi?" T-shirt?
No.
Do you know why? Because Pepsi—and any other company and organization worth their salt—is smart enough to come up with something original. They don't "borrow" ideas from other campaigns and insert their own name. They don't make look-alike logos.
Once in a great while they may spoof another company's commercial or tag line, but usually only the very clever can pull it off.
So why does the church constantly imitate what's already been done?
This comes to you courtesy of The Nord Report... thanks for the heads up, Jeremy. Always interesting to hear the lead singer of U2 say something profound about God besides his classic sneer "My God's not short of cash, Mister." (BTW, ask Shari sometime about how she got her parents to let her go to see U2 because they were a "Christian" band.)
Here's a very cool excerpt from the book Bono: In Conversation with Michka Assayas (Riverhead Books).
Bono: I really believe we've moved out of the realm of Karma into one of Grace.
Assayas: Well, that doesn't make it clearer for me.
Bono: You see, at the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics—in physical laws—every action is met by an equal or an opposite one. It's clear to me that Karma is at the very heart of the universe. I'm absolutely sure of it. And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that "as you reap, so you will sow" stuff. Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I've done a lot of stupid stuff.
Assayas: I'd be interested to hear that.
Bono: That's between me and God. But I'd be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge. I'd be in deep s***. It doesn't excuse my mistakes, but I'm holding out for Grace. I'm holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the Cross, because I know who I am, and I hope I don't have to depend on my own religiosity.
Preach it, Bono...
Moe: Post-modern!... (another blank look from Homer & the guys)
Moe: Yeah, all right, weird for the sake of weird. (and suddenly they understand... smiles all around)
He he he... The Simpsons nail us to the wall once again.
As I posted earlier, I went to Boston (or at least nearby) in order to officiate at the wedding of Charles & Natalie Glaser. The wedding went off without a hitch, up to and including the weather turning from hot & muggy on the day of the rehearsal to comfortable & breezy the night of the ceremony. The wedding coordinators and their facility (Independence Harbor) were top-notch... some of the best I've ever worked with.
Of course, it was a blast to see Charles, who has become a good friend over the game table. We even managed to shoehorn a game of Diamant in between the rehearsal and the rehearsal dinner with the groomsmen. (Many who are gamers themselves.)
I left the rehearsal dinner earlier than planned (because the dinner started MUCH later than planned) to hang out with friends from Alan Moon's The Gathering of Friends: Dave & Jenn Bernazzani (I'm sure I've spelled this wrong - I can barely pronounce it) and Mark "Dangermouse" Edwards. We played one game (Kreta) which was notable mainly for how long it took because we kept getting distracted with odd conversations about video game systems, Dave's addiction to yard sales, and Mark & I attempting to quote sections of Finding Nemo correctly. All in all, a wonderful evening. (And I didn't even particularly enjoy Kreta - if I'm going to do an area majority game, I'd rather be playing El Grande.)
The wedding, as I said above, went very well - once everyone got there. There was an accident on the main road into Assonet which slowed traffic to a crawl. That only made the fact that there were 9 of us in the limo (groom, pastor, 5 groomsmen, 1 reader/groomsman & one of the groomsmen's dates) a bigger deal - never thought you could get claustraphobia in a stretch limo. Anyway, the wedding was beautiful, nobody muffed their lines, and I got to speak scriptural truth into it all.
Then came the dinner. I'm still not a big fan of drunken renditions of the Bunny Hop, but since I don't encounter it all that often, I can live with that. I spent most of my time at the wedding dinner/reception/dance talking with Natalie's family, particularly her mother, grandfather, and uncle. Her grandfather emigrated to Canada in the '50's from the Azores Islands (think "middle of the Atlantic Ocean") and from there to the U.S. His stories about that time were fascinating.
At 11:30 pm, I turned into a pumpkin and hightailed it back to the hotel... in order to make an EARLY flight to New Orleans the next morning. More on that later!
Whew... it's been many moons since I've blogged up here. I've got a lot to say/type/whatever, but I'm not sure I've got time to get to all of it. Which means I'll probably break it into smaller posts, which means more fun for your RSS feeder. Current situation:
Braeden's trying to look like an emerging church pastor. Next week he'll start drinking coffee and using the word "missional" a lot.
This interview was done with Tom Vasel, a fellow gaming fanatic and missionary who lives in Korea. I'm the 56th interview he's done in this series - and I'm just proud to be on the team!
The nice thing about an e-mail interview is you can carefully consider what you want to say... so what you see here is pretty much unadulterated "me". BTW, I wrote the "intro" blurb - it's a trip writing about yourself in the third person... I began to feel a bit like Bob Dole.
Those of you who aren't gamers may want to zip through gamer-ish content of the first part of the interview and get down to my comments on faith & gaming farther down. Or, you could just read the whole thing.
The actual article is on Tom's website, The Dice Tower... along with all the other interviews and tons of game reviews. Thanks to Tom for giving me permission to post it here.
The picture accompanying this review is courtesy of Ray "I've got too much time on my hands" Mulford, who decided that my deep and abiding "love" for Candyland needed to be indulged.... sigh. (See Interview #1 for my true feelings about C-Land.)
Interviews by an Optimist # 56 - Mark Jackson
Mark Jackson is the "Conductor" of Game Central Station - a quirky little gaming website that's been around for 6-7 years now. Started out of his frustration with the rules to Titan: The Arena, the tiny site on Tripod migrated to Geocities, where it garnered positive vibes from gamers everywhere (except for those annoying pop-up ads). When a cross-country move kept him for updating for a substantial length of time, Yahoo deleted the site. This last year, thanks to the generosity of the folks at Game Surplus, Game Central Station was given a new home. Slowly but surely, Mark is putting the pieces back together, as well as adding unusual new content.
Mark is also the self-appointed Keeper Of The Five & Dime Playlists (now archived on Game Central Station) as well as the head honcho behind The Apples Project (on Game Central Station as well), an attempt to compare "apples with apples" when it comes to board & card games.
Mark has been a gamer since elementary school (for those keeping score, that would be the mid-70's). Thanks to a grandmother who would play anything he bought and an aunt who kept all of the old games her sons had owned, Mark had access to an amazing variety of American mass market games: Video Village, Monopoly, Conflict, King Oil, Broadsides, Sinking of the Titanic, Dogfight, etc.
A different aunt bought him his first Avalon Hill game as junior high student (Outdoor Survival), which started a nearly 10 year obsession with AH and SPI wargames. As a charter subscriber to Games Magazine, Mark tried desperately to be the coolest gamer on his block... which led to nearly 4 years of playing D&D, primarily as a DM. (Oddly enough, the map of the D&D world was the board from AH's Outdoor Survival.)
College brought on endless Friday nights of playing Spades, Risk, and penny-a-point backgammon... and through Games Magazine, a growing awareness of games outside the mainstream outlets. It was during this time period that Mark began acquiring Ravensburger games like Hare & Tortoise, Scotland Yard, and Flying Carpet. As well, this was the heyday of MB's Gamemaster series, and these saw a huge amount of playing time with his best friend, Tim, also a gamer. Finally, as he started seminary, Mark & Tim fell in love with the Games Workshop boardgames: Fury of Dracula, Dungeonquest, and Warlock of Firetop Mountain.
It was some years later (the mid-90's) when Mark discovered "the German invasion". Primed by the red Spiel des Jahres pawns on the Ravensburger games he owned, he purchased copies of Line 1 and Manhattan in a game store in Cincinnati, OH (and paid way too much for them)... about the same time that Mayfair began releasing Modern Art and The Settlers of Catan. What had been a lifetime hobby became a major obsession.
Over the past few years, thanks to the magic of the Internet, Mark's collection has grown past 700 games, stretching the gamut from silly American fluff (for example, Small Soldiers Big Battle Game) to obscure German titles (Hui Spinne, anyone?).
Mark has had a hand in starting two gaming clubs: Game Central Station (in Nashville, TN), which is still alive & kicking, even though Mark doesn't live there anymore; and the Fresno Gamers, which meets nearly every Monday night in Mark's gameroom. (Note: the Fresno Gamers is really more of re-start, as the nucleus of the group was actually pulled together by the webmaster of Funagain Games & the Houston Gamers, Ray Mulford.)
Mark currently lives in Fresno, CA, where he is pastor of NewLife Community Church. His wife, Shari, has been beating him at Scrabble a lot lately, while his 4 year old son, Braeden, has turned out to be a wiz at Return of the Heroes. Mark is hoping that his second son, Collin, will take it easy on the old man.
Tom Vasel: Tell us a little more about Game Central Station. What does it have that other sites (i.e. BGG) on the 'net don't have?
Mark Jackson: Well, it's got my personality. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not.
Seriously, the Station pre-dates the Geek. I was (and still am) attempting to build a site that has stuff on it that is not on other gaming sites. I've tried to create pages about games I enjoy - and resources that make them more enjoyable. Titan: The Arena was the first game... I hated the sloppy presentation of the rules and wanted to pull all of the online clarifications together into one place. Filthy Rich is another game that has received no real online support from Wizards of the Coast, despite it being a very playable little game with a one-of-a-kind mechanism (using card pages as a multi-layered board). So I put together the only full page of clarifications, rulings & variants I know of.
Actually, now that I think about it, maybe I shouldn't have mentioned Filthy Rich. It's one of the pages on the schedule for me to put back up. Oops.
As the Geek grew in popularity (and Borg'd in The Gaming Dumpster), I still felt there was a place for the Station. The Geek is an amazing clearinghouse for information & pictures... and I've now hooked all my pages to the Geek pages because they offer extra information. But it isn't the quirky "hey kids, let's put on a show" place that is Game Central Station.
More recently, I did The Apples Project and the Five & Dime Playlists sections of the site - both of which are peculiar (like me) to Game Central Station. (And I'm putting the finishing touches on a project with Stephen "Balloon Cup" Glenn for a Rolling Stone magazine inspired project called The One Hundred. Just don't hold us to any kind of deadline - we've blown past 2 or 3 of 'em already, what with him opening a game store and me getting ready to be a dad for the second time.)
Tom Vasel: Can you tell us more about this "The One Hundred" project?
Mark Jackson: I'm just the editor/host for The One Hundred... Stephen Glenn is the "brains" behind the operation. He had the bright idea late last November to create a gaming list based on Rolling Stone's Top 100 lists. I just volunteered to host it on Game Central Station...
...but then we've had all the crazy stuff going on in both of our lives, and it's taking a lot longer to finish than either of us thought it would. Still, it's going to be a very interesting read when it's finished. (I don't even agree with all the results!)
Tom Vasel: You're one of the few gaming pastors I know. How does your profession affect your gaming, and vice versa?
Mark Jackson: I'll use one of those "classic stall for time" interview techniques now... "Tom, that's an interesting question." (Oh, dang - that won't work in an e-mail interview, will it?)
How does my gaming hobby affect my profession (as a pastor)? That's the easiest part of the question, so I'll take that first. I use gaming as a way to meet people and build relationships... both inside and outside the church.
It also enters into my sermon illustrations - for example, I've used game translating as a metaphor for getting to know the Bible. (In short: I can read a whole lot more German now than I could 10 years ago, even though I'd had 3 years of German classes in high school & college. Actually having to work with the German language for something I wanted changed the way I learned the language - instead of just learning it for a grade.) In the same vein, I've talked about the language of the gaming subculture (newbie, TGOO, SdJ, DSK, etc.) and compared it to the language of evangelical subculture (born again, walk the aisle, "fellowship", etc.). Both sets of words have valid usage, but they don't adequately speak to the world outside those subcultures. We (speaking both to gamers & Christians) need to use language that communicates truth, rather than using it to build walls that close others out.
As for the other part of the question, there's a difference in how my profession affects my gaming hobby and how my personal commitment of my life to Jesus Christ affects my gaming hobby.
I try very hard (not always successfully) to NOT choose my activities & actions solely based on my job as a "professional Christian." Still, I've made the choice in the past not to play some games more out of a concern for church member's opinions rather than my own personal convictions and tastes. Hopefully, I'm done with that, except where my gaming choices could cause a fellow believer to stumble in their faith. (I'm not getting to the exact details of this Romans 14 based practice in this interview. Anyone interested can contact me personally.)
OTOH, my strongly held beliefs in Jesus Christ and the authority of the Bible obviously play a role in my hobby. (If strongly held beliefs don't play a role in your whole life, then they're not strongly held beliefs.) There are certain games I choose not to play (Hellrail, Lunch Money, etc.) and other games I'm glad they re-themed (Twilight -> Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde) based on what I believe. (The most recent example of this, the new game from 2F shown at the Gathering, managed to cause a bit of a tempest in the teapot of spielfrieks when I expressed my personal non-interest in a game that casually encourages divorce, drug use, and multiple sex partners.)
I'm a little bothered about how "I"-centered the last couple of paragraphs sound. They don't fully indicate my conviction that moral choices are not subjective... but again, that's a conversation for another day.
Tom Vasel: Why do you think there are such a lack of quality Christian-themed games on the market?
Mark Jackson: 1. Theological: if "turn the other cheek" and cultivating "kindness, gentleness, etc." are key parts of your religion, then creating a game that encourages those behaviors while still featuring competition is extremely difficult. I'm surprised that there haven't been more attempts to publish cooperative games (like Knizia's LOTR) in the Christian market.
2. Lack of Originality: the majority of "Christian" games are designed by people who are not game players - rather, they are publishing houses attempting to market to the Christian subculture. That's why you end up with so many roll'n'move games or pale imitations of party games.
I think there's ample room to create meaningful games that reflect Biblical values - but it's not going to be easy to accomplish nor easy to market.
Tom Vasel: Do you think that there are games that are actually a detriment to play? Just how important is philosophy in a game?
Mark Jackson: Hey! How come I'm not getting questions like "What's the best game for 6 players who are willing to 'get fluffy'?!" :-)
OK, so Tom wants to go serious - fine by me. It's actually a very good question.
The first time I remember struggling with this is back in the golden days of D&D... yes, children, back when we oldsters had to walk uphill 5 miles in the snow both ways to the game store to buy The Village of Hommlet module, and then wait forEVER for the The Temple of Elemental Evil to come out. (Still bitter about that one, TSR.)
I grew up in church, and there was a substantial section of folks in the evangelical subculture who felt that D&D was evil and/or dangerous. While their opinions didn't stop me from playing, I did choose to run my 3 year campaign (I was the DM) as a "one God" universe... and didn't allow players to have full-out evil characters. My strong feeling at the time was that I wanted a world that I liked... a world that reflected my values. So, characters got "punished" when they were cruel or rude or unwise – and "rewarded" for altruistic behavior.
I continue to struggle with this: it's easy for me to pick out games that offend me (the aforementioned Hellrail and Lunch Money), but you're actually touching on a bigger question. For years, my response to someone trashing fantasy/magic-based games has been, well, kind of lame. It's consisted of pointing out the logical flaw in the argument: if the objection to playing D&D/Talisman/Magic: the Gathering/etc. is based on the fact that these games encourage anti-Biblical behavior, you've got a problem if you play Monopoly, which clearly "teaches" players to run each other into the ground. Like I said, it's not the world's best argument (negative arguments seldom are), but it's served me well over the years.
But the real question is: what ARE games "teaching" us? When we play Family Business, are we really learning how to "rub out" the competition, Mafia-style? When we engage in the free-wheeling backstabbing of Intrige, will that transfer over to the rest of our lives?
The answer is: it depends. Over time, I've come to believe that someone with a strong belief system can engage cultural items (movies, music, games, tv shows, magazines, etc.) with thoughtful discernment. They can think through the implications of the work/items they're interacting with and discard those assumptions/philosophies that are harmful. To continue my gaming example, I can play Family Business without choosing to actually shoot someone... or, more to the point, without taking that "every man for himself/king of the mountain" philosophy back into my work or family life. Or, frankly, even into the next game.
What concerns me is that there are lots of folks who lack:
This interview was done with Don Mayhew of the Fresno Bee - I'm pretty pleased with it, actually. I'm not misquoted and nothing I said is pulled terribly out of context. The pictures aren't terribly dorky either... how'd that happen?!
I know I'm probably violating some kind of copyright thing, but I'm going to quote the article here. The actual article is on the Fresno Bee website.
Bored with boards?
Mark Jackson makes German games accessible to English speakers.
By Don Mayhew / The Fresno Bee
(Updated Monday, July 18, 2005, 6:12 AM)
[picture caption] Mark Jackson, pastor of NewLife Community Church, is a board-game fan who takes the rules from German games and translates them into English. Jackson owns more than 700 games.
Hate is such a strong word, particularly for a pastor such as Mark Jackson of Fresno's NewLife Community Church.
But when it comes to the children's board games Chutes and Ladders and Candy Land, if what Jackson doesn't feel is hate, it's something pretty close. Disgust? Repulsion? Loathing?
"They're arbitrary," Jackson says of the two games. "They're back-and-forth games that require no strategy. They're for 3- or 4-year-olds to waste 20 to 30 minutes. They're exercises in frustration. It's, 'Here, you guys take this game and stay out of Mom and Dad's hair for 20 minutes.' "
You don't have to tell Jackson -- a father of two sons, ages 4 years and 3 months -- about the vast potential of board games to teach as well as entertain. He's such a fan that he's collected more than 700 games.
Many are from Germany, which has become a hotbed for gamers tired of the same old variations U.S. companies have foisted upon the public the past 50 years. ("Star Wars" Monopoly, anyone?) The problem is that German games, as you might expect, come with German rules.
What separates Jackson from your average gamer is that he's translated about 15 German games' rules into English. He's one of a handful of people nationwide who have made a habit of posting game translations on the Internet.
Not only did Jackson's efforts open the door for fans looking to distant shores for their board-game fix, they encouraged independent companies to reproduce a small number of foreign games in English.
Rick Thornquist, who writes board game news online for http://www.gamefest.com/ in Vancouver, British Columbia, refers to the trend as the German Invasion.
"Without people like [Jackson] and the Internet, I doubt this would have happened at all," Thornquist says. "Once people get a chance to try these games, they love them." For the most part, Jackson translates children's games. He says they have enough variety ("Some are dexterity games; others are memory games or roll-and-move games") to charm adults.
He doesn't get paid, but his passion for board games is such that he really doesn't mind. Jackson and his 4-year-old son, Braeden, don't play them every day, "but dangerously close to it."
"Gaming is tremendous as a cognitive learning tool," he says.
Jackson isn't opposed to video games, but he finds them less interesting than sitting across the table from a human opponent.
"Video games tend to isolate," he says. "You're playing through a screen, even when it's a fighting game. You're staring at that screen, interacting through that, even when the person you're playing is sitting next to you.
"When you play board games, it's there between you, but there's a definite social quality. There's a tactile quality that isn't there when you play video games."
Jackson took three years of German in school, which isn't quite enough expertise to translate rules without help from friends in other parts of North America who understand the language better than he does.
"I don't speak it well," Jackson says. "I don't write it well. But I can read it passably. I'm fine with basic translations. But if the rules are odd or colloquial, then I'm lost. It's tough trying to translate idioms. I have to get help."
He starts by typing the German rules into his computer. Then he runs them through an Internet portal that translates them into literal English. Jackson also uses a German-English dictionary.
"Then I make the literal translations -- which often are gobbledygook -- meaningful," he says. "Sometimes, Germans will run three or four or five words together to make a new word, and you have to separate the words before you can figure out what was meant by them."
Many of his free translations can be found on his Web site, http://www.theswitchingyard.com
.
Jackson grew up playing Monopoly, Clue and other traditional board games. He was a Dungeons and Dragons fanatic in high school before going off to college and realizing he no longer could devote entire weekends to his hobby.
It was about that time that sites such as http://www.gamecabinet.com/ and http://www.boardgamegeek.com began alerting gamers to strategic foreign games that could be played in an hour or two. The exchange rate in the mid-'90s was decent, so Americans could buy such games for little more than they would for, say, Trivial Pursuit.
Jackson says Games magazine also opened his eyes to the joy of foreign games.
"The children's game market in the United States is all about licenses and tradition," he says. "It's all very sequel-driven or nostalgia buying. ... The German market has a much larger appetite for new games, different games and games of higher quality."
Derk Solko of Dallas, co-creator of http://www.boardgamegeek.com, says hundreds of new games are released in Germany each year.
"The culture in Europe, particularly in Germany, is much more game-oriented," he says. "There are a lot more games. There's more passion. They're more artistic and less corporate."
Jackson says German games often have an odd sense of humor. Many are designed to keep all players in the game to very near the end -- unlike American games, Thornquist says.
"That happens a lot in Monopoly," he says. "Everybody's playing for the next four hours, and you're sitting there doing nothing. German games do not have elimination. Everybody has a good chance of winning up until the end."
German game pieces are typically wooden and hand-painted. American game pieces tend to be plastic. The tactile difference is enormous.
Chicken Cha Cha Cha is a perfect example. Jackson opens the box to his German version and produces round 2-inch-tall wooden chicken pieces that are beautifully painted and three-
dimensional. Toy giant Hasbro licensed it for the United States and sold a game "with little cardboard standups and plastic pieces," he says.
Jackson understands the economics of scale and doesn't fault Hasbro. He just wishes more people would realize there are other options.
"In Germany, a company sells 30,000 to 40,000 copies of a game and can make a profit," he says. "For Hasbro, that's a drop in the pond."
The reporter can be reached at dmayhew@fresnobee.com or (559) 441-6322.
For my birthday, I got the Looney Tunes Golden Collection (Volume One), so I've been introducing the boys to the wonderful world of Bugs Bunny & the Road Runner. (Braeden esp. likes what he calls "Wild E. Coyote.") What you're looking at is the two of them mesmerized by the antics of Daffy Duck.
I don't remember how it started, but Braeden has grown attached to our old duvet cover as an extra "covering" over his bed. Yes, he has a sheet & quilt under there, but it's important to him that the duvet cover drape over the safety rails and make a tent.
This isn't a perfect way to assess the value of a game (there's a couple in the list that I play mainly because of others rather than my own interest), but any game that's been played year after year is certainly worth a bit of your time to try!
To be continued...
"The Perfect Man" crawls hand over bloody hand up the stony face of this plot, while we in the audience do not laugh because it is not nice to laugh at those less fortunate than ourselves, and the people in this movie are less fortunate than the people in just about any other movie I can think of, simply because they are in it.Man, nothing is more fun than Roger when he's ticked off at being forced to watch Hollywood drivel.
