Five & Dime: Wide Angle Lens (Seven Year Pix)

These graphs cover 2006 (top bar) through 2000 (bottom bar). The bar is the percentage of players reporting who played the game 5+ times in the given year. The games here first appeared on the Five & Dime lists in 2000.

Battle Cry (AH) Carcassonne (includes expansions but not stand-alone "cousins") Cartagena Citadels Lord of the Rings (includes expansions) Princes of Florence Taj Mahal Tichu Web of Power (includes China) Zertz

Five & Dime: Wide Angle Lens (Eight Year Pix)

These graphs cover 2006 (top bar) through 1999 (bottom bar). The bar is the percentage of players reporting who played the game 5+ times in the given year. The games here first appeared on the first Five & Dime list in 1999.

Apples to Apples Crokinole Loopin' Louie Lost Cities Mamma Mia (includes Sole Mio) Ra Ricochet Robot(s) Schotten-Totten/Battleline Union Pacific Zirkus Flohcati

Five & Dime: Wide Angle Lens (Nine Year Pix)

These graphs cover 2006 (top bar) through 1999 (bottom bar). The bar is the percentage of players reporting who played the game 5+ times in the given year. The games here first appeared on the first Five & Dime list in 1998, though many of them were released before that.

Acquire Bohnanza (includes expansions) Can't Stop Carabande (includes Pitchcar) El Grande Euphrat & Tigris For Sale Formula De (includes Formula De Mini) Guillotine Liar's Dice (includes Perudo) Medici Metro (includes Iron Horse) Mu & Mehr Samurai Schnappchen Jagd Settlers of Catan (includes expansions but not stand-alone "cousins") Settlers of Catan Card Game Showmanager (includes Atlantic Star) Take 6 Take It Easy Through the Desert

Super Monday

Not firing on all cylinders this morning... maybe blogging will jumpstart my brain:

• Congrats to Indy, who had a convincing win against Chicago. Esp. big kudos to Tony Dungy, who probably should have been given a Super Bowl ring from Tampa Bay for the win they got a few years back the year after firing him.
• Congrats as well to the guys at Pizza Box Football, who showed once again how nice a simulation a dice game can be. They predicted an 13 point win for Indy (33-20) - the actual score was a 12 point win (29-17).
• Congrats as well to Careerbuilder.com for making some of the few ads that I found even mildly amusing.
• OTOH, as a person who has struggled w/pornography, I am way over GoDaddy.com. Blech.
• Finally, a great idea from Kevin Hendricks over at Church Marketing Sucks: What if church Super Bowl ™ parties were officially sanctioned events? A church registers with the NFL and reports all the needed details--screen size, capacity, accurate attendance numbers after the event, etc.--and follows whatever guidelines the NFL has (no charging admission, following copyright rules, etc.). Perhaps there's a small broadcast fee the church pays (but c'mon, NFL, the church is simply boosting your numbers, don't make them pay for that priviledge), perhaps to cover administration costs or to keep this on par with what sports bars have to do. In the end everybody wins. The NFL can have its power. The TV network partner and advertisers get more viewers--and (perhaps more importantly) a count of those viewers. And the local church can go ahead and have its Super Bowl ™ party and use the communal event to connect with people.

OK, my juices are flowing now. Time to start working on my next sermon.

Of Pizza Box Shaped Games

I'm a big fan of Pizza Box Football, which comes in what looks like a personal pan pizza box for a very hungry individual. It's a great dice-based football game which uses some pretty straightforward systems to allow offense & defense to call plays & run a game in about an hour.

This is the second year they've hosted their Predict the Winner of the Big Game promotion (yep, they've read up on the bully that is the NFL)... they web-published team cards for Indy & Chicago a couple of weeks ago and invited people who owned Pizza Box Football to play with the teams and see who won.

Scores & other details were reported via their website... and this morning they issued their prediction after compiling hundreds of results:

• 67% of the games were won by Indy
• average Indy score: 28
• average Chicago score: 21
• Indianapolis won 91% of games where they scoredat least 23
• Chicago won 92% of games where they held Indianapolis below 23
• Pizza Box Football line: Indy by 7
• Score prediction: Indy 33, Chicago 20

BTW, they were right on last year.

Richard & I played Monday night, with Richard coaching Indy to a 43-28 win. Sigh. (I still have not beat Richard at Pizza Box Football. Grrr.)

Final note: the basic game is fun... but the expansion is pretty much necessary if you really want a full-bodied football experience. (More plays, actual teams to play with, etc...)

Of Parties That Were Not Meant To Be

It's Sunday morning, February 4th, and in the next couple of hours the leadership here at NewLife Community Church & I will make our final decision on closing down our Super Bowl party. Oops.. excuse me. Since the NFL has chosen to exert their legal right to the copyrighted name, I'll go O.T. Jewish and call it the Spr Bwl from now on.

Here's the deal... "mass out-of-home viewing" is bad for the NFL's Nielsen ratings. So, this year, what with a freeway Spr Bwl (Indy & Chi-town are about 200 miles apart) and nothing better to do, they decided to go after churches who were hosting Spr Bwl parties. If you want to read the whole story, you can check out the February 1st & February 2nd articles at Baptist Press.

I'll try & sum it up... the NFL prohibits (or at least chooses now to prohibit):

• showing the Spr Bwl to a large group on a screen larger than 55 inches
• charging admission to see the Spr Bwl
• showing the Spr Bwl at events that "promote a message"
• showing the Spr Bwl on multiple TV's
• using the Spr Bwl name to promote an event

Some of you are thinking... "Hey, wait a minute. I can load up in my SUV, burn a tankful of gas & go down to my local sports bar, who will require me to purchase X number of drinks and/or food while showing me the game on a screen roughly the size of Rhode Island. And if I'm sitting with my back to the big screen, there's about 50 smaller TV's perched on stands around the room. Is the enforcement of the NFL's copyright going to close down my only source for peanuts, beer & drunken hooting about how screwed up the replay system is?"

No, my friend, thanks to the NFL's selective enforcement policy, you can still go out & get plastered while watching the Spr Bwl telecast. You just can't do it at a church.

Bitter? Me? Nah. I'm just stunned at how incredibly tone deaf the NFL is being... if they're so freaked out about Nielsen ratings, then sports bars & restaurants are a bigger problem than churches.

My two cents? I think this about beating up on an institution that can't easily fight back. I think it's about being penny wise & pound foolish. I think it's about doing something that that they have every legal right to do... but many reasons not to do it. I think it's about selective enforcement of their copyright, which is probably going to end up costing them more in goodwill than they realize.

With all of that... this isn't a federal case. This isn't persecution - it's just dumb. Holding a Spr Bwl party to "challenge the injustice" isn't civil disobedience, it's grandstanding. Go home, go watch the Spr Bwl with some friends, talk about Jesus if you want to. The NFL can't take that away from you.

Too Early For Flapjacks?

This is one time where television really fails to capture the true excitement of a large squirrel predicting the weather.

This is pitiful. A thousand people freezing their butts off waiting to worship a rat. What a hype. Well, it used to mean something in this town. They used to pull the hog out, and they used to *eat* it. You're hypocrites, all of you! You have a problem with what I'm saying, Larry? Untie your tongue, and you come out here and talk, huh? Am I upsetting you, Princess?

When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope. Yet we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life. But standing here among the people of Punxsutawney and basking in the warmth of their hearths and hearts, I couldn't imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter.

Of course, Punxsutawney Phil didn't see his shadow this morning, so no long & lustrous winter for us, eh? This will make my sister very happy - she lives in Denver.

Well, There Goes That Weekend

According to YahooNews, the final Harry Potter book, "Harry Potter & the Deadly Hallows", will be released July 21st. That's a Saturday, for those of you who need to plan ahead & carve a bit of "alone time" in order to get to the end of the story. You'll also need to save up $35, as that will be the cover price for the cheapest edition.

For more Harry Potter-ish musings from me, you can check out an article I wrote some years back entitled Harry Potter, Satire & Red Herrings. (It was in response to the hub-bub caused in some conservative circles by an Onion article about Harry Potter.)

Cartoon Week Continues Here @ aka pastor guy

I found this on the GetReligion.org website... the story it's attached to isn't even the issue. The drawing is funny & sad & all-too-true... all at the same time.

What's your favorite pair? (If you're like me, you're not going to post that publicly.)

If we claim that we're free of sin, we're only fooling ourselves. A claim like that is errant nonsense. On the other hand, if we admit our sins—make a clean breast of them—he won't let us down; he'll be true to himself. He'll forgive our sins and purge us of all wrongdoing. If we claim that we've never sinned, we out-and-out contradict God—make a liar out of him. A claim like that only shows off our ignorance of God. 1 John 1:8-10 (The Message)

How The Internet Brings the World Together

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

Nickel, Dimes & Games

It's January... which is always a big gaming month for me, even with no conventions and/or gatherings (capitalized or otherwise) to attend. I'm guessing it has something to do with the weather (cold & dreary), the post-Christmas gaming glut of games that need playing, and my general difficultly in getting back into any kind of real groove at work following the holidays. So, I've played over 100 games since the Rose Parade. Sheesh. Because of and/or in spite of this, I'm posting some more quick hits about Mark & gaming & the blog:

• I picked up a nearly new copy of Tumblin' Dice at the AmVet Thrift Store last week for $5.00... it was marked $10 but it was 1/2 price day for blue-tagged items! Shari has fallen in love with this dexterity/dice game... so it may well be my first "dime" of the new year. (The first nickel is Balloon Lagoon, which Braeden got for Christmas.)
• Speaking of nickels & dimes, I am still in the process of compiling my annual Five & Dime list. If you want to know more about what in the world I'm talking about, start with my introduction from last year. If you want to submit your own 5 & 10 list for 2006, e-mail me at fluffdaddy@gmail.com. Deadline is supposed to be Wednesday, but I'll probably still be processing the responses through the weekend.
• I had a great trade recently with gamer-stu through the BGG Marketplace... I sent him the ASL module Yanks for his Starfarers of Catan set (complete with expansion & alien figures & a rulebook signed by Klaus Teuber). Only I screwed up and didn't do a decent piece count of Yanks... so I'd sent him an incomplete copy. He reacted with grace & kindness - and so I'm sending him my incomplete copy of ASL: Beyond Valor to help begin an ASL parts trading "emporium". I can not say enough nice things about gamer-stu (who's real name is Chris); he was a gentleman in every sense of the word.
• And Starfarers is already a hit at my house... with a little help from BGG, I tweaked the rules a little bit to make it playable with Braeden (my 5 1/2 year old gamer son). Since Braeden reads at a 2nd grade (or better!) level, the encounter cards weren't a problem... he takes particular glee in reading bad outcomes to his dad! We played 2 player to 15 points, using the 5/6 player expansion. Set-up was 1 spaceport/1 colony. Each player was limited to one colony per set of planets, both at start-up & during the game. Galactic Relief was 2 cards per turn. We played with open card hands (so I could help him make decisions). After all of that, he beat me 15-14, winning by dropping a final colony a couple of turns before I could take away one of his alien friends.
• I'm slowly but surely moving all my "games played" statistics onto BoardgameGeek... I've kept a detailed spreadsheet for a number of years (since July of 1998) but the computer that it lives on is ready for the computer equivlaent of a mobile home park in Florida. (It's a Mac Powerbook that doesn't even come with a built-in modem... now, that's old.) My profile name there is gamemark, if you're interested. (I'm only to the "F"'s so far... a long way to go.)
• The good part about moving all those stats... I'm getting to revise my ratings & comments on a number of games, as well as add some oddball games to the database.

Top Ten Kids Games You've Probably Never Played

Since I've already podcasted about this (on The Dice Tower) and then created a Geeklist on BGG, I'll refrain from further comment here. Just follow the links & enjoy.

Coming in March to a blog near you: my Top 50 Kids Games. (Hint: Chutes & Ladders didn't make the cut. Heck, it barely makes the cut as kindling or cat box liner.)

UPDATE: On the following Dice Tower podcast, Moritz corrected most of my German pronounciation (at least I got Bis Bald im Wald right).

Five Streams

I read a number of different blogs about the emerging church... but I've always had a great deal of trouble explaining what the heck I'm talking about to folks with more traditional church backgrounds. (Heck, I even tried to explain a bit about this on my NewLife @ Night blog with only marginal success.)

So when I read recommendations by three different bloggers (Tall Skinny Kiwi, Vintage Faith, and Reformissionary) that I trust & enjoy urging me to read Scot McKnight's Christianity Today article, "Five Streams of the Emerging Church", I virtually hot-footed over & printed myself a copy.

And now I want to recommend it to you, my faithful readers, in the strongest possible terms. Dr. McKnight manages to capture both my excitement & my fears about emerging church, clearly & thoughtfully skewering stereotypes and delineating the real nature of this movement inside the Christian church. Simply put, he does a better job of explaining "emergent" than I've ever managed to do.

Not That I Plan On Getting a Nose Ring Or Anything Like That

I just finished reading Andrew Beaujon's Body Piercing Saved My Life... wow. My atheist gamer buddy, Jonathan Degann, has often said:

When I read a newspaper article about a subject I know nothing about, I think: "hey, this is interesting; I learned something." When I read an article in the same newspaper about a subject I know a lot about, I think: "This article is filled with lies and misconceptions, and the reporter doesn't know what he's talking about."

So, when someone decides to take on a subject which I've essentially LIVED IN since I was in my mid-teens (for those of you playing along at home, that's at little more than 25 years), I'm always a bit scared that the writer will screw it up royally.

Imagine my shock when a non-Christian rock critic for Spin magazine managed to write an entire book on Christian rock & get it pretty much right. I'm still trying to scrape my jaw off the floor. He even interviews my personal Christian rock hero, Steve Taylor, and allows him (and other figures in the industry) to speak candidly about their music, their faith & the business of CCM.

And what really blows me away is that he does all of this without overdoing the whole rock critic vibe - you know, "Look at me, I'm a world-weary guy who's seen & heard it all... and if you don't fit into my narrow definition of cool, I'm going to dismiss you with pop-culture-reference-laced sarcasm." (Which is fun in small doses, but would absolutely wear you out if you had to read a whole book full of it.)

Here's a quote from late in the book:

When I started this book, [my wife] was concerned that I was going to become a Christian. That didn't happen. But I have become a fan, not just of the music, but of Christians, and of Jesus himself. To me, the message of the Gospel is love one another, look out for the less fortunate, and try to walk gently on the earth. And I love that.

And I need to say "thanks" to Andrew Beaujon for turning me onto Mute Math, a band I'd heard of but never listened to before reading about them in his book. Yowsa - I like their sound!

Hey, he's even got a blog, if you want to get a flavor of his writing & viewpoint.

This is News?

Heck, this happened to me back in 2000... thanks to my good friend, Chris Herndon, and his "evil minions."

Woman finds 37 Christmas trees near pool

ALLENTOWN, Pa. - When Carol Lopez let her Labrador retriever out for the morning the dog had an unusual number of tree trunks to attend to. Surrounding her aboveground backyard pool Lopez found 37 used Christmas trees.

"I had just woke up and boom, they're there and that's it," Lopez said Thursday.

Whoever put the trees there apparently took their time, neatly organizing and standing the trees upright.

Lopez said she called Allentown police, and an officer told her to call the city to have the trees removed. A city employee told her husband to drag the trees out of the backyard and they would be picked up free of charge, she said.

Lopez said she didn't know how someone climbed a tall wooden fence surrounding the yard, or got all the trees over it.

"People just don't have anything better to do," Lopez said. "That's someone who had time on their hands."

I think the count in front of my house was 39... and they not only laid them all over my front lawn, but also leaned them up against my garage.

How did I discover this? When, at about 3 am (after watching some late night TV) I opened the garage door to take out the trash... and all the trees fell into my garage. (Yes, I said a word that is NOT on the "Approved Word List For SBC Pastors"... and then I immediately took Chris's name in vain.)

I'm still not getting how this prank - which Chris & his gang of underage hooligans-in-training had been pulling LONG before I showed up - rates top exposure on Yahoo.

And this wasn't even as spectacular a prank as the time that they sweet-talked the church janitor into giving them a key to my office so they could move EVERYTHING in it into the foyer of the church. Yes, everything - desk, books, trash, whatever - and then set it up EXACTLY as it was in my office. Happy 30th birthday - right.

Random Gaming Thoughts

I'm not sure I'm really allowed to call these "random" - as they're all about gaming, which would indicate some kind of non-randomness - but I couldn't think of a better title for the post "on the fly", so we're stuck with it.

Or, well, you're stuck with it.

• My gaming group here in Fresno (aptly named - wait for it - The Fresno Gamers) is growing again. After some attrition over the last year or so (due to real life interfering with gaming - sigh), we've added four new folks in two months. (Want to join us? Check out our group site.)
• With new folks added, that means - oddly enough - OLD games. We've been playing some of the "classics" lately, which is just fine with me. (Any night I get to play Big City & Fast Food Franchise is primo gaming time for me - and a Battlelore scenario was just a cherry on top of that.)
• Thanks to a sale at JC Penney ($9 for Pizza Box Football as they're remaindering out the extras for Christmas), it looks like we may form a mini-league here as well. Hopefully, my streak of bad luck (I'm 0-4 against Richard) will come to end in league play... but probably not.
• I have BIG questions about the new system for moderating posts & threads at the Geek... it's one of those "in a perfect world, this would be a great idea" kind of things. However, we don't live in a perfect world, and allowing the masses to vote "thumbs up or down" smacks a bit of the Roman gladiator arenas. (Look, I think Aldie & Derk are some of the coolest guys on the planet, and I'm a longtime supporter of BoardGameGeek- I just don't like what's going on with this particular element.)
• I did a Top Ten list for The Dice Tower podcast... but managed to have such immense uploading problems (e-mail crashed, FTP sites that wouldn't work, etc.) that I didn't get it in to Tom in time. However, once the deadline was past (of course!), FTP worked just fine. (Sigh.) So, listen for the "Top Ten Kid's Games You've Probably Never Played" coming soon!

Preaching Against Someone's House?

I read this earlier this week over on MMI - Ed Stetzer is one of the most thoughtful guys out there on the whole issue of speaking capital "T" Truth into every nook & cranny of the world.

The fight goes on. Like a giant tug of war, each side is pulling hard. The battle lines: Cultural relevance versus biblical faithfulness-a classic tyranny of the “OR.” Yes, cultural relevance can be confusing. On the one hand, the church can be so focused on cultural relevance that it loses its distinctive message. Don’t think it won’t happen-it has happened to countless churches and denominations. On the other hand, it can decide that culture does not matter. That leads to a church whose message is indiscernible and obscure to those who are “outside.” Let me propose an alternative: our churches need to be biblically faithful, culturally relevant, counter culture communities.

Not everyone buys into what I’ve just said. Whole ministries exist just to tell you not to pay attention to culture. To them, a virtuous church is one that is culturally irrelevant. In their view, a mark of holiness is not just being disconnected from sin but also being disconnected from sinners and the culture they share with us every day.

Preaching against culture is like preaching against someone’s house-it is just where they live. The house has good in it and bad in it. Overall, culture can be a mess-but (to mix metaphors) it is the water in which we swim and the lens through which we see the world. And the gospel needs to come, inhabit, and change that and every culture (or house).

Man, I long for the church I pastor to be insanely relevant - not "hip"... I think turning 40 may have killed most of my desire for coolness points off. But I don't want to preach & teach just so the faithful can nod & smile & pat me on the back.

OTOH, I don't want to be so comfortable with the culture around us that we back off of what we believe... that we find ourselves longing for the approval of people "on the outside" so much that we're willing to roll over & play dead on things we know to be True.

You can read the whole article at Catalyst.

Reading By the Glow of the Computer

Stuff I've read recently (thanks to a pile of books I received for Christmas!)...

• "My Ox Is Broken!": Detours, Roadblocks, Fast Forwards and Other Great Moments from TV's The Amazing Race - An enjoyable recap of the first nine seasons of The Amazing Race, with extra stories, interviews & commentary. It was fun to catch up on the races I'd missed... and to be reminded of the races I'd enjoyed. Here's hoping Drew & Kevin are part of the Amazing Race All-Stars!
• Television Without Pity: 752 Things We Love to Hate (and Hate to Love) About TV - It's an encyclopedia of snarky commentary on television... it's sometimes rude, sometimes odd, and almost always funny. The authors are the main folks behind the Television Without Pity website, which recaps TV shows each week with varying amounts of sass, in-jokes & just plain attitude. And, well, it's the first book I devoured post-Christmas.

Just in case you think I've sold my soul to the television set, I need to also mention:

• The Gospel According to Disney: Faith, Trust, and Pixie Dust - an interesting if occasionally dry analysis of the theology & morality in the classic Disney films. To Mark Pinsky's credit, he gives both critics & defenders a fair hearing... and there's an entire chapter on the SBC boycott. (To no one's surprise, esp. mine, the Southern Baptist Convention does not come off looking good here. Remind me to post sometime about my personal feelings about the boycott and the "joys" of starting a SBC church plant when the Convention was spending their time sparring with Mickey & friends.)

And I'm currently about 1/2 way through Confessions of a Pastor: Adventures in Dropping the Pose & Getting Real with God (by Craig Groeschel), which I'm really enjoying. Of course, any book about being a pastor with chapter titles like "I can't stand a lot of Christians" and "I hate prayer meetings" has instantly got my attention.

Coming soon, I'll let you know how I feel about the treasure trove of novels I received: Showdown and Saint (by Ted Dekker), 24 Declassified: Trojan Horse (yes, from the TV series - the new season starts Sunday night!), and Hood: King Raven Trilogy Book 1 (by Stephen Lawhead).

My Personal Nickels & Dimes

The following are games I played 10+ times in 2006 (dimes) or 5-9 times (nickels).

For those of you who've been reading the blog for a year or so, you'll remember that I compile these lists some interesting (well, they're interesting if you're obsessed with games) stats each year. You can read last year's right here.

Dimes

• Akaba
• Daddy Cool
• Scene It (Disney & Movie editions)
• Sorry (primarily Pokemon Sorry)

Nickels

• Animal Olympics
• Attacktix: Star Wars
• Au Backe
• Break the Safe
• Captain Bone's Gold
• Carabande
• Chicken Cha Cha Cha
• Dancing Dice
• Das Geisterschloss
• Diamant
• Dino Math Tracks
• Dish It Up!
• Dschungelrennen
• Dungeon Dice
• Fireball Island
• Floss Geht's
• Frechdachs
• Funny Bunny
• Guess Who?
• Hallo Dachs
• Heroscape
• Hisss
• Ice Cream Immer Oben Auf!
• Industrial Waste
• Jurassic Park: The Lost World
• Kangi Cup
• Karambolage
• Kayanak
• Loopin' Louie (sessions)
• Lord of the Rings
• Lord of the Rings: Kids
• Marrakesh
• Maskenball der Kafer
• Max MauseSchreck
• Memoir '44
• Monkey Mission
• Monopoly, Jr. (lemonade edition)
• Mut zur Muecke
• Niagara
• Oh, What A Mountain
• Papua
• Pizza Box Football
• Princezzin Pimpernel
• Ra
• Return of the Heroes (w/Under the Shadow of the Dragon)
• Scrabble
• Secrets of the Deep
• Sindbad
• Tanz der Hornochsen
• Treasure Falls
• Uno (primarily My First Uno)
• Viva Topo
• Zwergen Ziehen

O, Lonely Peas

This Christmas, Shari & I got Collin the Rhinoceros Tap book & CD by Sandra Boynton... while all of the songs on the project are quite good (I especially like "Bad Babies"), the classic is "O, Lonely Peas". I reproduce the lyrics here for your New Year's enjoyment & to torment my sister, who this song was obviously written for. The picture here is from the early 70's - while Liz is not in timeout for not eating peas (at least THIS time), it does give you a pretty good idea of how effective timeout was with her.

Dinner is over.

I like what I ate.

Except for the peas,

which are still on my plate.

O, Lonely Peas,

so green, so round,

and so small.

O, Lonely Peas,

there's no one

who loves you at all.

There's no one

who loves you at all.

I can't leave my place

till the peas are all gone.

At the rate I am going,

I'll be ninety-one.

[chorus]

Perhaps by some magic,

they'll all disappear --

Abracadabra!

...The peas are still here.

[chorus]

I'm growing quite fond

of these peas of my own.

So how could I eat them?

I'd be all alone. OH!

[chorus]

Geek of the Week

Yes, campers & camperettes, one of my Christmas presents this year is being Boardgamegeek's Geek of the Week. Click on the link to enjoy and/or join the conversation.

So far, I've managed to give a not-so-brief history of my gaming past, answer esoteric questions about sermon illustrations, "heavy" games & if/when I'm doing my own podcast, and get some truly odd posts from others (yes, GROGnards, I'm talking about you.) Nick Danger has given his (rather skewed) version of how I became the "owner" of Nigglybits for six weeks - love ya, Nick - and most recently I've been talking about TX and OR.

There's more to come - I'm Geek of the Week through next Sunday morning, so don't hesitate to check it out.

Isn't there anyone out there who can tell me what Christmas is all about?

Lights, please.

"And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night. And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the lord shone round about them, and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not, for behold, I bring unto you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you this day is born in the City of Bethlehem, a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; you shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel, a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying, 'Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace, good will toward men'".

That's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.

Have a Very Merry (and Disturbing) Christmas...

...thanks to the good folks at Office Max & my "friend" & fellow gamer, Dale Yu (who obviously has way too much time on his hands.) He's titled this masterpiece Pastor Elf.

Our Librarian, Desmond R.G. Underwood- Frederick IV

Collin is "getting in touch with his feminine side". Next thing you know, he'll start "playing Cabbage Patch dolls with his inner child." (Anybody know the reference?!) Yes, we LOVE it when he does clears the shelves of books. Sigh.

Note: we do not recommend the book Collin is reading - it's kind of legalistic & a bit soul-deadening. The fact that a book is in our library does not indicate that we think everyone (heck, anyone!) should read it.

Asleep on the... Hershey Bar?

So, Shari & I were Christmas shopping on Friday and stopped into a local Christian bookstore which had a pretty massive display of Nativity sets. While I paid for our merchandise, Shari wandered over and looked through the selection.

She called me over to show me what I'm showing you here, thanks to the magic of the Internet - a S'mores Nativity. Yes, that's right, the Christ Child & his parents are rendered as marshmallows standing on graham crackers with a hunk of chocolate interposed.

I was, to say the least, stunned. I mumbled & laughed as we left the store, telling Shari that was going to blog about my "abject horror" at the sight of this. (That's me, all right: never use a simple word when you can sound like you're trying to rewrite your thesis. Sigh.) Of course, since I took a long pause as I began to say "abject" (evidently my brain was still reeling from the cinammon stick stable), Shari thought was going to "blog my a__ off" about this, which... well, you be the judge.

So, these are the thoughts running through my head:

• I'm not sure it's blasphemous... but I'm pretty sure it's in poor taste. (Taste - he he. I made a pun. A bad pun, but a pun nonetheless.)
• Why does Mary look like a badly made snowman?
• In the words of Homer Simpson, "Mmmmm... Jesus."

As an antidote, I think I'll watch A Charlie Brown Christmas again with Braeden... good grief. (I may need to watch it four or five times.)

The World's Most Famous Game & How It Got That Way

Love it or hate it, chances are pretty good that you've played Monopoly at some point in your life. (For the record, I'm in the "love it" camp.)

Either way, Larry Levy wrote a very nice review of Philip Orbanes new book, Monopoly: The World's Most Famous Game & How It Got That Way over on Boardgame News. (Larry is famous for a couple of things: he's the designer of Head to Head Golf & some very nice variants for a number of games... and he was my roommate at Gulf Games. OK, maybe the 2nd one isn't so important.) You should go read it right now... it's entitled Sleeping with the Enemy.

I'm with Larry - the second half of the book is a bit less interesting (though still fun to a Monopoly fan like me)... but the first half is worth the price of admission. (Of course, I checked it out from the library, so I definitely got my money's worth.)

What I wanted to note is an interesting comment tucked away in the chapter entitled "G.I. Gamers: 1945-1958" when Mr. Orbanes is talking about Waddingtons rebuilding the distribution network following World War 2:

Waddington rebuilt its relationships with its many licensees. The Miro company not only relaunched Monopoly but also provided production for Franz Schmidt until it could rebuild its factory in Germany. In a controversial move, Schmidt decided not to reintroduce its ill-fated Berlin edition. [Earlier in the book, Orbanes talks about the problems Schmidt had w/the Nazis threatened ban of this edition.] In its place, it designed a game whose streets bore no connection to any specific German city. This was a misstep. Without the identity of its capital city, sales were lackluster. Henceforth Monopoly would be less significant in Germany than in other European countries.

Wait a minute! I may be reading between the lines here, but is Orbanes saying that Monopoly had less effect on German games & gaming than on other countries? And if he is, does that help explain why Germany has been the center of the designer gaming universe? Hmmm...

The Dice Tower #77: Interview with WHO?!

It's a little weird to find an episode of the popular gaming podcast The Dice Tower subtitled "Interview With Mark Jackson." Even weirder is to realize that Tom & Sam waited until the very end of the podcast to feature my interview... either they were saving the best for last (yeah, right) or they were trying to put it in the last 10 minutes slot (where every bad SNL sketch gets buried).

So, with either hubris or humility, I want to add these notes to the things I said. (Hey, you'll probably want to listen to the podcast before you read the rest of this... check it out at The Dice Tower. Or don't.)

On the whole question of "how do people respond to me being a pastor AND a gamer?":

• props to Jon Pessano, the guy who uttered the immortal line, "And you call yourself a pastor!" after being hosed over in Rette sich wer kann
• my congregation doesn't seem to be bothered a bit about my gaming... in fact, we had about 20 folks for a Family Game Night a few weeks ago
• over time, the most vehement questions I've had about my gaming have been in regards to fantasy-based themes, rather than games themselves

And then, Tom brought up the Christian board game question

• I sat here for a few minutes, thinking about printing a retraction - or at least a softening - of my comment that the Christian subculture has a tendency to create junk... but given a few minutes to think & pray about my response, I think it's spot on. For every work of brilliance (the art of Thomas Blackshear or the music of Derek Webb & Andrew Peterson) there's a truckload of insipid, uninspired crapola that is unloaded on people because they think these trinkets will work as "witnessing tools." (More on that in a minute.)
• That goes double for my comment that "every subculture creates merchandise that cater to the subculture" - and I then proceeded to call Trekkies "Trek fans", which means that I am now banned from ever making the Vulcan sign & saying "Live long & prosper" again.
• Some other subcultures - Whedon-ites, comic book fanboys, American Idol watchers, atheists, Catholics, lovers of hemp & the byproduct thereof, etc... look, there's no limit. Find a group of people with shared beliefs & practices... and you'll find someone trying to make a profit of them by exploiting their beliefs.
• I checked out a couple of our local Christian bookstores on Black Friday - and browsed their game sections. With the exception of some re-themed party games (Outburst, Apples to Apples, etc.) and Carcassonne: Ark of the Covenant, it's pretty much schlock-y Bible trivia games. Sigh.
• I wandered off on one of my favorite podcast tangents: it's OK for companies to make money re-theming games. The audience for NASCAR Monopoly is not the same market as the folks who'll snap up copies of Caylus or Age of Steam.
• I also touched on the inherent problem of reconciling Christian character & mores (compassion, kindness, gentleness, unity) with the typical structure of games. I didn't do a very good job of explaining that problem in regards to race games - esp. since many of the schlock-y games you see in Christian bookstores are race games. So, let me give it another shot: there is a difference between designing a standard roll'n'move race game (roll the dice, spin the spinner, answer a question to get a bonus) and creating an innovative race game with true interaction between players. That kind of interaction almost always involves some kind of direct negative play against another player - which doesn't "feel" Christian.

In a related question, Tom asked me if a game's theme can go "too far" and therefore shouldn't be played. I'm afraid that I may have sounded more spindoctor-ish than I intended here... so, let me try again.

• Everybody has a belief system of some sort, which includes ethical & moral considerations.
• If a game (or a movie or a book or whatever) violates those beliefs, you should not - if you want to stay true to your belief system - partake of it.
• Just because something does not fit your ethical or moral schema does not mean it should be outlawed for everyone else.
• Therefore, people are going to play games I think are morally reprehensible... I am under no obligation to play them nor are they under any obligation to avoid them because of my beliefs.

I also mentioned that I don't believe that Christianity is NECESSARILY a pacifistic religion... and then I referenced the idea of a "just war." I won't go any deeper into the theological side of that, but I think it's worth reading deeply on before you dismiss the idea.

The next topic was starting a game group in your church:

• Here I waxed "pastoral" for a minute and asked people to check in with the leadership of their church. (Can you sense some frustration over my 20+ years of ministry with "surprise" events & programs?)
• I also talked about how knowing your purpose (who are you trying to reach, insiders or outsiders?) helps define where you will meet, how you will be structured & what games you might play.
• Finally, I gave my standard "don't abuse your freedom" blurb regarding board games - just because I have the freedom in Christ to play Fury of Dracula doesn't mean that the graphics & theme wouldn't really bother some of the folks in my church. So, I choose not to flaunt those kinds of games at church events... but I don't hide them in a closet, either.

I got asked about the Apples Project... and pretty much everything I said there is on the Apples Project blog, which you should be reading anyway.

But Tom took us an interesting direction when he noticed that not only do the winners not match his votes most of the time (he he he) but they don't match the CW (conventional wisdom), either. I remarked on some reasons I thought that was true:

• For those of us who are long-time players (I started playing AH wargames nearly 30 years ago & bought my first "Euro" nearly 20 years ago), the newest games don't seem quite as shiny as the old games did when we first discovered them.
• As well, with a lot of long-time gamers on the Apple Pickers list, it's more likely that OOP (out of print) games will show up that aren't well known to the general public.
• At this point, I tried to be culturally relevant by mentioning late 80's U2 ("Van Diemen's Land", anyone?) and Nirvana... I understood my point, but I'm not sure anyone else did.
• And, yes, there probably is a bit of "choose odd things just to confound the masses" - but that's more likely to go on in the nomination process rather than the voting.

The interview concluded with Tom asking me to choose between Lost Cities & Balloon Cup...

• No, Sam, Tom did not prompt me or cut out any of the interview... I'd listened to The Dice Tower's previous episode.
• They are both great games, btw... some of the best 2 player/30 minute games on the market.
• I mentioned The One Hundred blog... go check it out. Stephen Glenn (the designer of Balloon Cup) polled a group of serious gamers on their 15 favorite games - and what came out was a top 100 list that was a lot of fun.
• OK, Sam, you were right. I listened to the show again and you called it a "glorified Racko", not simply Racko. Either way, you're wrong. See, it's NOT Racko... and if it's "glorified", the best definition of the word is "canonized". He he he...

BTW, Tom originally interviewed me via e-mail last year - you can read the whole thing right here.