Pandemic Legacy 1-01: Oh no

Last week, some friends and I played our first game of Pandemic Legacy. If you're not familiar with the game, Shut Up & Sit Down has a good review. In short, it takes Pandemic, Matt Leacock's genre-defining disease-fighting co-operative game, and combines it with Risk Legacy, Rob Daviau's re-imagining of Risk that added an ongoing campaign, permanent changes to the board and rules between games and Christmas morning excitement to the old classic. What you get is Pandemic campaign, where each game carries over into the next, modifying some things, adding others and making the players' situation better or worse as the case may be. 

I've decided to write up each of our sessions (months, in the game's fiction) as connected short stories. These will have spoilers, so if you're planning on playing the game, I'd recommend not reading after the jump. 

This episode contains spoilers for January.

Playing Pretend

I don't have any particular article ready to post tonight, so I thought I'd just write about what's on my mind. And what's on my mind is roleplaying games.

I've always thought of myself less as a devotee of a particular type of game than as a lover of all types of games. It doesn't matter if it's played with sticks or controllers or just words and actions - I'm fascinated by structured play. But obviously some areas get less attention than others. Of all the genres I've neglected, I'm most disappointed that I've never gotten heavily in roleplaying games.

Not for lack of trying, though. In high school, some friends and I bought the core Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 books and played a few adventures. It was fun, but none of us had the desire or wherewithal to be the Dungeon Master and so we never got into more extended sessions. After graduation, 4th edition came out and we tried again. That time, we ran into the same problems, compounded by newly differing schedules and living situations. Over the years, I've sporadically been involved in a couple other games, but again, nothing stuck.

The urge to play RPGs has never left me, though. The concept is inherently appealing: mixing my love of improv acting, game systems, bullshitting with friends and genre fiction. I wish I could get a group of friends together and pretend to be adventurers or cyberpunk detectives or superheroes with them. But there are so many obstacles: it's a time commitment, everybody needs to buy into the premise, somebody needs to create and direct the scenarios for the group. It's hard to get all the dice in a row and make a campaign, or even a single session, happen.

Part of the problem, though, may be that I've focused on the wrong games. D&D, or similar systems like Pathfinder, always seemed like the giants of the genre, but as I've learned more about the scene, I've realized that maybe more focused systems would be a better fit for me. D&D always felt bloated - it wanted to be everything for everyone. But a game built around a specific type of story can ignore a lot of irrelevant rules and situations, creating a smoother play experience. So maybe I should try out something like Apocalypse World or TechNoir - games that allow for more collaboration between players and the Game Master, with a focus on storytelling over precise rules. Single-session games like A Tragedy in Five Acts or Dog Eat Dog might be a more effective place to start, since they require less of a commitment.

I'll confess that this interest isn't solely from a desire to play RPGs. I have a lot of ideas for roleplaying systems I'd like to design myself. But not having played many, it's difficult to know what works and presumptuous to think that I've got solutions to all the problems of the genre. So I'd really like to expand my palate.

But mostly, I want to play pretend.

Article Recommendations

As part of my ongoing goal to post here regularly, I thought I'd do a weekly round-up of interesting articles I've read. I try to read a lot of news, opinion and just generally informative stuff online. Usually, I share it on my Facebook page, but I think it might be more effective to have everything in one place. That also allows me to write up my thoughts on each item a bit more clearly.

Since this is the first one of these posts, these won't actually be things I specifically read this week. In the future, I'll try to keep it to recent stuff, or at least pieces that I've personally read recently.

First up is actually a group of articles about masculinity:

The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men's Lives is a Killer by Mark Greene
Bosom Buddies: A Photo History of Male Affection by Brett and Kate McKay
Escape the "Act Like a Man" Box by Charlie Glickman

The first two are about how homophobia has made men afraid to touch each other casually and gently. Greene argues that because of this fear, young boys get much less physical attention from their parents and peers than girls do. They then enter adulthood understanding touch as either sexual or aggressive - sometimes, disastrously, both. The pictures in the McKay article do a really good job of showcasing how men used to be much more willing to hold hands, sit on each other's laps and hug. While I think Greene may be overselling the psychological value of touch, I think there's a lot to the argument. I'm lucky that my dad was never afraid to show affection with me or my brother - he hugged us and told us how much he loved us every day. I went to summer camp as a kid, where hugging is the default form of greeting. So I've always been pretty comfortable with physical contact with other men. Even so, those photographs are striking in how different the interaction is to what I would consider normal or comfortable.

The third article of the group is a pretty straightforward take on how corrosive the norms of masculinity are. Hopefully this isn't news to anybody, but it's worth emphasizing often. Even as a pretty gender-norm conforming type of dude, I bristle when some marketer tries to remind me that liking musicals or cooking or bracelets means I'm not a "man."

Next up, The Drone Papers by The Intercept.

This is a chilling set of articles detailing secret information about the United States' drone strike program, as revealed by a whistleblower. There's a lot of information in there - acronyms, statistics, diagrams, dates. But it's worth reading. The upshot is this: the US has become increasingly willing and able to initiate drone strikes against possible threats by order of the President. The strikes are often against targets within the borders of countries not at war with the US; they can target citizens of the US or allied countries, killing them without recourse to due process; they are imprecise, killing hundreds of non-combatants who are by default labelled as "Enemies Killed in Action" when their identities are unknown; and these strikes are an inefficient form of intelligence gathering, as they kill people who might otherwise have divulged valuable information. It's all horrifying. The knowledge that nobody cares enough to stop it horrifies all the more.

Let's keep it dreary:

The Case for Reparations by Ta-Nehisi Coates

The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Coates is the best non-fiction writer I've read in ages and these two cover stories for The Atlantic (from last summer and this summer respectively) illustrate why. With beautiful writing, he brings mounds of evidence to show that the crime of  subjugating African Americans was historically and is presently fundamental, not incidental, to the wealth of the United States. I've actually just finished Coates' recently published book, Between the World and Me, and plan on writing a longer post about it, so I won't go into more detail here. Rest assured, you should know who Ta-Nehisi Coates is, what he writes about and why it's important.

On a somewhat lighter note, Canada recently had an election and after nine long years, we've had a change of government. I'm more thankful that Stephen Harper's gone than pie-eye-excited about Justin Trudeau, but he's at least saying most of the things I want to hear. The CBC has a rundown of the new Liberal government's top early priorities and The Trudeau Metre is a good resource to make sure that the new Prime Minister fulfills his promises. Something to keep an eye on.

Seventh Inning Stretch

Tonight's ALDS Game 5 between the Blue Jays and Rangers will, forever, be reduced to one inning. It's already happening, on websites, social media, in the minds of reporters. By tomorrow, the process will be complete. It wasn't a game the Blue Jays will have won; it was the seventh inning.

Many great accomplishments will be glossed over in the process. Great pitching performances by Marcus Stroman, Aaron Sanchez and Roberto Osuna. Amazing defence from Kevin Pillar, Ryan Goins and Josh Donaldson. A sixth inning, game-tying home run from Edwin Encarnacion that looked for about twenty minutes like it would be the story of the night. Too bad for Eddie, I suppose. There was a bigger myth to be made.

You've heard the story already I'm sure. Russell Martin receives a strike from Sanchez and as he moves to toss it back, he accidentally bounces it off Shin-Soo Choo's bat. It looks like the home plate umpire calls time, but Rougned Odor scores from third anyway. Then follow eighteen-minutes of screaming, debating, bench-clearing and (shamefully) garbage throwing from Toronto's fans. Police come onto the field. Calls are made to New York. The safe call for Odor is upheld and Toronto continues the game under protest. Sanchez promptly strikes out Choo.

Then comes the bottom half and the myth is written in stone. Two groundballs and a well-charged bunt on the part of the Blue Jays. What should have been three outs for the Rangers. But Elvis Andrus misplays all three. Three outs are instead three baserunners. One comes in on a pop-up from Josh Donaldson that finds a hole in shallow right. The slide from Dalton Pompey is questionably dirty, so there's another review. Tension grows. The call is upheld for the Blue Jays – tie game again.

Then comes Jose Bautista. Nobody else you'd rather have at the plate right now and he proves why. The ball rockets off his bat and lands deep in the left field bleachers. When it flies over the fence, he flips his bat, shouts and offers the world a stare that shames anybody for ever thinking he might not be able to do this. Undoubtedly, that will go down as one of the biggest home runs in Blue Jays history.

More outs, more hits, another bench-clearing came after that. But it all felt like a formality. The Blue Jays had stared losing in the eye and they shot the notion into the bleachers. From now until forever, that game will be about a ball bouncing off a bat, three balls bouncing out of a glove and a bat smashing away all the tension in the building.

What's the Deal with Medicine Cabinets?

I was filling a prescription today and naturally began thinking about medicine cabinets. At least, this seems natural to me. They're not a piece of furniture I've ever paid much notice. I always avoid taking pills when I can. Not out of some distrust of pharmaceuticals, but out of a dislike of routine daily tasks. Any medicine, prescription or not, is another thing I have to remember in the morning – the time of day when I'd most like to forget everything. And since, unlike couches, chairs and desks, medicine cabinets never accompany me on moves, I've never had to think about they're construction or position in a house.

But today at the pharmacy, the thought struck me: why is the medicine cabinet in the bathroom? Obviously, much of what it holds is bathroom-related: shaving cream, toothpaste, q-tips. I see why those belong there. But it's not called a “shaving cream cabinet” and there's no obvious reason to me why medicine should be stored in the same place that I shower.

I'm sure other people have asked this question before. Why shouldn't medicine be stored in the kitchen or bedroom. It would be no more accessible to underage hands in either of those places. And many medications are taken in the morning, before bed or after meals. A trip to the bathroom just to take a pill seems silly.

The only thing I can think of for why we, in North America at least, store our prescriptions behind the mirror above the sink is privacy. The bathroom is where we go to do things everybody's aware of but nobody talks about in polite company. There's a certain logic that would put medication in that category. Nobody wants other people peeping at their pill bottles, wondering what they're afflicted with. I know I don't. So we we store them behind a closed door behind another closed door and open them with the fan and faucet running. All our secret, daily, bodily tasks stay confined to the same room.

But I'd love to know if other places do it differently. Are medications in Japan or Germany or South Africa stored in different rooms, in different ways or with different associated taboos? A book on the history of medicine cabinets would be fascinating.

Google is no help. All I can find there are furniture retailers and blog posts about the relative benefits of recessed shelves. Wikipedia is similarly useless, offering only the assertion that “Although a bathroom tends to be generally the smallest room is the home, it is the busiest place second only to the kitchen.” Citation needed. 

P.S. I was told that the font on the blog is too small, so I've increased it. Hopefully it makes things easier to read.

Soy You Think You Can Plant?

Way back when I started this blog, I was making a list of my favourite games. Weirdly, that list is still the same two years later, so I'm going to finish that series. Starting today, with :

#4 - Bohnanza

I love games about negotiation. Haggling over properties in Monopoly and pleading for peace treaties in Risk are what brought me into the hobby as a child. So it's no surprise that Bohnanza, the best negotiation game out there, places so high on this list.

Negotiation is a remarkably difficult game mechanic to get right. Co-operative and team-based games bypass it completely, since the rules force players to work together rather than fluidly bringing them into and out of alliances through play. That leaves competitive games, but since most have a single winner, opponents have little incentive to help each other. A good trade implies value for both sides, which makes trading a bad idea in situations where competitors want to win at all costs. Conversely, if a deal is truly equitable between participants, then nothing has changed and it may as well not have happened. Game designers seeking to encourage negotiation have to offer opportunities for deals where players benefit unequally but each individual thinks they themselves came out on top. It's not easy.

Bohnanza may as well be a blueprint for how to do it right. The game consists of a deck of cards, each representing a bean. There are about a dozen different kinds, from the commonplace Wax Bean to the unfortunate Stink Bean. Players are farmers, trying to plant, grow and sell their beans as efficiently as possible to make the more money than their rivals. The ridiculous premise hides the depth of the system underneath. Every element of Uwe Rosenberg's design pushes players toward arguing over exchange rates, undercutting prices and dangling future profits in front of each other. You've never heard of such cutthroat bean farmers.

Sometimes I Wish I Lived in New York

Not because of the shopping or the Yankees or the subway system. No, if I lived in New York I would go to see musicals all the time. Toronto has plenty of musical theatre, but rarely are the really big shows in first runs, so it can be a long time from Broadway to Mirvish.

So I satisfy myself with soundtracks for the shows that I hear about through the news. Back in June, when Fun Home swept the Tonys, I bought that album and listened to it non-stop for a week. Over the past couple days, I've been doing the same with Hamilton, a hip-hop musical about the life of the American revolutionary and politician Alexander Hamilton. It's incredible.

For a taste, check out this video. I think I may write up my thoughts more thoroughly when I've settled down a bit - I'm still in the love-at-first-listen phase right now. There's just so much energy and originality through the whole thing. Most musicals have points where they drag, especially "sing-through" musicals like Les Mis, where most of the dialogue is sung. It's just hard to explain plot, develop characters and have interesting music all at the same time. Hamilton never runs into this problem. Pretty much every song is killer, from the slam-poem overture "Alexander Hamilton" to King George acting like a jilted lover in the pop ballad"You'll Be Back" to the rap battles between Hamilton and Jefferson in "Cabinet Battle #1".

I think the reason everything works so well is that there's so much rap and hip-hop in the music. I feel like I complete idiot that I never considered how perfect rap is for a musical. Whereas other musicals struggle to have their characters sing mundane dialogue,  Hamilton just takes dialogue and fits it into a rhythm and rhyme. Everything's understandable and everything keeps moving forward. There's still plenty of melody in some of the numbers, but allowing the connecting bits between songs to be mostly rapped means they never feel out of place. It's really brilliant.