Foldable Tomes release

I've released the "foldables" version of Arkham Book Club, which gives you a cool foldable tome booklet to replace each tome in the core Arkham Horror game. These little babies are more fun, more atmospheric, and easier to use than the original casebook release, so be sure to check them out.

You can get them at the Arkham Investigations casebook page.

Nostalgia Games: Haunted Mansion

By far, the coolest board game I ever owned as a kid (yes, even cooler than Mousetrap), was the Haunted Mansion board game. Okay, yes, I'm a sucker for all things Haunted Mansion. But I think this one was cool even without that added bonus.

What was cool about this game was that the board had a series of gears underneath it which rotated circular parts of the game board, changing the paths you can take to the exit. In addition, attached to the circular parts were ghostly standees that hung out over the edge of the circle, which, when turned, could swing around and knock your pawn off of its place. This was particularly well-suited to the ballroom-dancing ghosts from the ride, for instance. For a kid's game, it had some pretty fun mechanics, and worked quite well with the theme. Add to that the spooky stand showing scenes from the interior of the mansion, and you have a creepy little experience. I wish I still had this one - it would probably fetch a pretty penny on eBay, but I don't think I would sell it.

The new Cthulhu Movie

Maybe this is the one, I thought to myself when I heard that a movie named Cthulhu was filmed and working its way through post production. There have been many adaptations of Lovecraft's work to film, but there has yet to be one which is faithful to the narrative (with the possible exception of this fan-created movie).

So I went to the IMDB page for it, and without even seeing the movie, I think I can safely say that it's probably not going to fare much better than its peers. Here's why:

• Unknown, first-time writers
• Unknown, first-time director
• Tagline: "Welcome home...to the end of the world." (Huh?)
• The plot summary includes the words "...with whom he has a long-awaited tryst." Since when do Lovecraft stories have romance aspects to them?
• Plot keywords are: Cthulhu, Horror, H.P. Lovecraft, Gay, and Queer. Since when do Lovecraft stories have gay romance aspects to them? (I'm hoping this was a miscategorization.)
• Two words: Tori Spelling.

Yup, it's gonna be a stinker. Why won't someone do it right? The closest I've seen is Dagon, but even that could have been much better. It's probably just as well, really, since Lovecraft's horrors are probably better left undefined.

Nostalgia Games: Which Witch?

While poking around BoardGameGeek recently, I stumbled upon some games that I had owned as a kid which I had totally forgotten about. Over the next couple of days, I'll be posting about them, just to take a little walk down nostalgia lane. (You may notice a common theme to the games I had growing up, which may help explain a few things.)

The first "blast from the past" game is Which Witch?. I had totally forgotten about this game until I saw this photo:

This was a fun little game wherein hapless visitors to a haunted house try to go through all four hazardous rooms and climb the stairs to the attic. The game was largely lame, except for the single fun mechanic where you were prompted to occasionally drop the little metal ball down the chimney. The chute split into four directions, which would send the ball down into one of the four rooms, in all likelihood triggering a trap. If your pawn was standing in the wrong place, the trap would hit it, and bad stuff happens to you. The only real reason to play the game was dropping the ball to see what happens. Would it come barreling down the stairs to the attic, knocking down the player who is about to win? Would it hit the broom, or trigger the secret door? Who knows?

Of course, it's just a random event like anything else in these simple kiddie board games, but the kinetic, visceral nature of this random event was immensely more satisfying than the notion of rolling a die. I recall spending quite a bit of time experimenting with the chimney to see if dropping the ball a particular way influence where it came out. Turns out there wasn't, but dropping the ball was fun enough that it kept me occupied for a good while.

Advanced Lingo For Games released for free

Gary Rosenzweig, a skilled Director developer and active online community member, wrote a book called Advanced Lingo for Games back in 2000. The book is now out of print, and the copyright has reverted to him, so he put Advanced Lingo for Games up on the web to read for free.

The title is a bit of a misnomer, I believe, since it seems to bring newbie Director game developers up to an advanced level, but it has a lot of examples with full source code, and includes downloadable projects for your own use. Some of the content is no longer applicable to current Director development, but it looks like it will give a hobbyist who is just starting out a step up.

Kudos to Gary for being so generous with his book!

Want some Bhut Jolokia?

The NMSU Chile Pepper Institute is going to be selling the world's hottest chile pepper, the Bhut Jolokia, at their Annual Spring Plant Sale starting on Monday at 9:30am in Gerald Thomas Hall room 265 on NMSU's Las Cruces campus. It costs $5 per plant. (For more information on the world's hottest chile, see Saga Jolokia - Searching for the new "World's Hottest Chile".)

In addition to the Bhut Jolokia, they will be selling all sorts of other chiles for $2.50 a plant, along with varieties of tomato and cilantro. So come out and support the Chile Pepper Institute and get some delicious salsa fixin's, too!

(For my Las Cruces friends, if you want me to pick up some plants for you, just drop me a line. Otherwise, for more information, call 505-646-3028.)

Clever Javascript techniques

Seven Javascript Techniques You Should Be Using Today is an interesting little article where I picked up some clever tricks I didn't know before, such as this clever little gem for using a double-bang to read and store a flag so you don't have to keep checking for DOM capability:

var w3 = !!(document.getElementById && document.createElement);

The article contains clever little blips like that and also some more design-patternsy stuff to help you constrain scope and write more efficient code. A good read.

Foldable Tomes

It figures. Only after releasing the Arkham Book Club casebook do I really get an idea for replacing the tomes in Arkham Horror with a more fun mechanic.

These foldable tomes replace the tomes in the core Arkham Horror game. When you draw a tome during play, discard the tome card and pick up the foldable tome instead. The foldable tome allows your character to pore over its mysteries for days, learning spells and unique skills peculiar to the individual tome.

The link above shows the first draft of two tomes: Ludwig Prinn's terrible De Vermis Mysteriis, and the strange and alien Dhol Chants detailing a visit to the awful Plateau of Leng. More to follow.

Arkham Book Club

I've just released a new Arkham Investigations casebook called Arkham Book Club.

The idea for this casebook is to give the tomes in Arkham Horror a stature more in line with tomes in Lovecraft's literature. In the original stories, tomes were the source of dark spells for summoning awful creatures, and the source of knowledge for scholars opposing them. This casebook adds some mystery and power to tomes, giving a unique character and story for each one, and a set of new spells and skills that can be derived from them. You can get the new expansion from the Arkham Investigations casebook page.

Here are some teasers from the expansion:

New Arkham Investigations tidbits

The last few days have seen a few new items added to the Arkham Investigations site:

• Version 1.3 of the rules set has been uploaded. This version tweaks some of the multiplayer combat rules, and clarifies some other aspects of the game. (Thanks to Thelric, maker of Strange Eons, for the suggestions.)
• A new version of the Cthulhu casebook is available which fixes some minor bugs and typos. (Kudos to Thelric for this one, too.)
• The German version of Arkham Nights: Street Locations is now available (thanks again to Stefan).