Farthing Party 2013 (last edition) wrap-up.

September 28th-29th in Montreal was the very final, last Farthing Party mini-convention, organized yearly by author Jo Walton (with a lot of help from very good friends) since the release of her novel Farthing in 2006, the first volume in the Small Changes trilogy. I have been to four Farthings in all, but most of the time, I would dash in and out on the Saturday, sometimes on the Sunday, and rush back home in Ottawa. This was the first one I was able to stay for the entire deal, from the Friday night dinner to the Sunday evening party. Since this was the last one, I had to be there for the whole thing; it was my last chance.

As usual, the panels were filled with good authors and good friends, usually being both, and the conversations during and between them was wonderful and engaging. 

Saturday:

Good Reads: this panel is a tradition at Farthing and I participated to one a few years back. Each panellist suggests a good book that all read and then discuss and. This time, Christopher Davis, Jeff Heard, Howard To and Beth Friedman talked about four books I had never heard of, though one author was familiar. Jeffrey Ford's The Drowned Life is an American (sorta) magic realism collection I probably will pick up. I might also look into his The Well-Built City trilogy. Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett's Point of Hopes from 1995 is a kind of alternate history that does not sound like something I would like. Jonathan Carroll's Sleeping in Flame sounds interesting. I know him from The Land of Laughs. James Alan Gardner's Expendable sounds like John Scalzi's Redshirts, but without any the irony and none of the meta. 

After a panel on Mad Scientists, which concluded that comics and webcomics are currently much better at doing them than novels, I had the honour of participating on a panel about Candas Jane Dorsey's Black Wine, from 1997. I met Candas the same year and place I met Jo, at Boréal 2006, and was stunned then to realize that I had actually read and owned one of her books. Even if I could not then (still can't) find the copy I had bought in 1998. I have bought both the new edition ebook and a like-new copy of the first edition, though not hardback like the one I probably loaned to someone out there. Marissa Lingen summarized the panel discussion better than I ever could:

Candas Jane Dorsey’s Black Wine. Five Rivers Press has just reprinted this hard-to-find book. [Tournevis] told of finding it when it was new and she was a college student: “I opened the book again, and the sentence was still there.” That made me smile. Hardly anybody seemed to have just bought the book in a normal way when it first came out. It’s on the cusp of at least four genres (SF, fantasy, gothic, and horror) and refuses to choose between them rather than neglecting to do so. Someone suggested that the title should be taken as a warning, not to read this on an empty stomach, to take it slow. There was strong sense that everything on this planet was distributed unevenly, like tech and supplies are on our own planet. It was compared favorably to Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn, which some panelists felt handled the subject matter in a way that was far more fetishistic than Black Wine‘s sense that people form a sense of normal that is local to their own circumstances.
 

In short, this novel is incredible! Go buy it now! 

In the afternoon, Jo, Greer Gilman and Marissa Lingen spoke about the fact that all three women have had an exceptionally productive year so far. Jo finished two and a half novels and on one day wrote 10,000 words. Greer has written more this year so far than the previous several years. Marissa has a boat load of stories and two and a half novels as well. The panel was titled Maybe It's Sunspots, and it seems like the most plausible explanation. Interestingly, that evening, Jim Hines (not present) tweeted that his novel had reached 70,000 words in record time and Nova Ren Suma (also not present) blogged about having written more than 43,000 words in two weeks. Considering how much work, though no writing, I did in the last three weeks, I guess sunspots are working for a lot of people these days.

I went out for lunch and rest and came back for the late afternoon panel on Ends of the World. Jo, Alison Sinclair, Tom Womack, PNH and Jim MacDonald talked about the classic ways in which the world tends to end, the good perennial staples of world ending in fiction, as well as the fashions in apocalypses since the Second Word War. Each also spoke of their favourite ends, with examples.

The party was good. As a thank you for all the Farthings, Jo was given a stupendous necklace made by the incredibly talented Elise Matthesen. The necklace is called Ibidem and represents Jo's way of bringing people together all in one place. Jo was touched. I was floored. What a beautiful gift.

Sunday: 

After a long and much needed sleep, the day started with the annual Joy of Reading, where a dozen or so people read excerpts from a favourite novel, poem or short story. I read a couple pages from Argleton by Suw Charman-Anderson and quite a few people wrote the information down. Fun was had by all.

Next came a panel on Mad Art, a counter point to the previous Mad panel. TMH, Jon Singer, Glenn Grant, Tim Cooper and Greer Gelman spoke mostly of mad people who made art, mad artists really, rather than mad art proper, though the art produced was often maddening. Henry Drager and Richard Dadd were mentioned at length. Glenn spoke of Burning Man, which he attends yearly. At least the Burn is a mad affair for sure. Jon Singer had been put on the panel as a mad artist of sorts and proved the point by being heard saying of a bowl he made : "The one was actually colored with 1% Europium Oxyde." Europium is kind of radioactive.

I left early for lunch and nap and returned for the Building Fantasy Worlds panel. Alec Austin, Marissa Lingen, Terry MacGarry, Jim MacDonald and Jo spoke of how they world-build, what they strive for, what they avoid and what they don't like to see in other writers. The most applauded advice came from Jim (who got it from another famous other whose name I did not write down and have forgotten 8 days later as I write this): "Do not give the reader time, distance and speed." These are too many data points for the reader to figure out what's wrong with the world you built.

Then came another perennial at Farthing, the writing process panel called You Write Funny. I always enjoy those the most. Jo, Debra Doyle, Terry MacGarry, Alison Sinclair and Lila Garrott spoke of all the quirks, rituals, necessities, tools and techniques they use to plot, put together and write their fictions. They may have changed over time, from one work to another. They of course differ broadly from one author to the other and the comparisons are what make the panel fun. Debra spoke of how much she hates writing the end. Jo spoke of the challenge of making your random berserker Visigoth a real person rather than just some random berserker Visigoth. All agreed with Jo that "The last words of a book are inevitable". Indeed.

The next panel was on the works of Patrick Rothfuss, notably the first two volumes of the King Killer Chronicle, its strengths, weaknesses, appeals and annoyances. I was not interested in this at all, but I stayed because one of the panelist was 10-year-old David To, who has recently discovered SFF, started reading it profusely only a few years ago, and met Rothfuss in person at WorldCon this year, at his first con. Farthing was his third con ever! He was adorable, insightful and held his own against Jo Alec Austin, Lila Garrott and Tili Sokolow. I was impressed.

The last panel was again a That's Another Panel!, which traditionally Jo puts together on the afternoon of the last day, on a theme that ran through the weekend's discussions. Jo, Marissa, Alec, Greer and Lila talked about stories that seem to go where they do not want it to or go where one wants to but in an unexpected way. They also discussed how story expectations differ in various cultures and between genres. They focussed on how genre expectations often prevent the readers from appreciating stories that undermine or overturn these expectations. All panelists try to use the rut of genre expectations to lead readers where they do not expect, with varying success at times. A great discussion and a fitting end to a great edition of Farthing Party.

After a good supper with good company, I went to Jo's house for the traditional Sunday night party, where the greatest cliché was realized when I joined a conversation of SFF readers that turned somehow on a conversation on children and parenting and which went back there every time we tried to steer it back on fiction and books. I left early because I was exhausted and no fun for anyone. 

I will miss Farthing Party, but I would not be surprised if, one day, Jo or one of Jo's friends in Montréal puts a Farthing-like mini-con together again, just for the fun of it, because we all love Jo. Luckily, I go to Montréal often enough to see Jo from time to time, so at least I get to have a mini-Farthing all to myself. 

Edited 18/02/2014: fixed broken link.

Live action Cat Women, in order

1. Eartha Kitt, because OF COURSE!!!! How could you not think that Kitt is the best of all the live action Cat Women? It's Eartha-effing-Kitt! She was born to be Cat Woman! She was Cat Woman! [Yes, I thought she was hot, even in old age, she was HOT!]

2. Julie Newmar, because duh! Nothing more to say.

3. Michelle Pfeiffer, wonderful renewal of the character personality traits.

4. Lee Meriweather, great actress but was only there to replace Newmar, and it showed.

6. Anne Hathaway, good actress but completely unbelievable as this character. Sorry, there is no universe where Hathaway could have pulled it off. She was not made for the part. I am still at a loss as to why she was cast.

6. Halle Berry, good actress stuck in a morass of bad movie making, there was nothing to save her from this cinematic disaster. No matter what she could have done, she could not have made it good.

Some thoughts on _We See a Different Frontier_, edited by Fábio Fernandes and Djibril al-Ayad

Electronic copy provided by the editor (thanks). I backed the project on Peerbackers.

Copyright © The Future Fire, 2013. All rights reserved.

Coming out in August, _We See a Different Frontier_ is a new collection of short stories published by the wonderful online SFF magazine The Future Fire. The collection, like the mag, aims to give voice to authors from marginalized or racialized groups, or to stories whose characters are from such groups. More specifically, the book brings together all new speculative fiction from emerging and well-known authors focussing on colonialism, especially from outside the first-world viewpoint. More interestingly, even if the language of the collection is English, particular care is taken in favouring non-Anglo-American viewpoints. The editors' goal is to compensate for Anglophone SFF's long-standing tradition of being about colonizing: space, new stars, new planets, alien lands, the so-called final frontier. The point was to upturn SFF's tendency to exoticize (and feminize) the Alien, the way historical narrative has long tended to do the same with the Orient or the Arab world.

I was particularly impressed with the editors' admission of just how hard they found the task of choosing which stories to include. They fully admit having to question their own presuppositions and (dare I say) prejudices in order to include the strongest, most provocative stories. Indeed, the stories are "all brilliant excoriations of one or another element of colonialism, imperialism, cultural appropriation or exploitation." (p. 13) Excoriation is right! They are actually elating in their damning of colonial situations whether overt or insidious. The introduction conclude: "These stories need to be heard. These stories need to be read." (p. 13) I could not agree more.

I could laud every single story in the collection, but let me turn the light on two in particular that have stayed with me and even found their way into my dreams. 

"Fleet" by Sandra McDonald is a story which is a little flawed and that ends in a little bit of a cliché. Nevertheless, it is a gripping narrative, from the point of a trans character living on the island formally known as Guam. Isa is a Bridge, the member of the community neurologically implanted with the thousands of names of the dead from the Island's history and who is responsible for performing remembrance rites. As part of a group elected for the annual trip to the island's landfill, Isa meets two men from oversees, a rarity in a world where the entire electrical grid was destroyed by massive solar flares a century prior. McDonald masterly explores the dangers and pitfalls of the Politics of Memory of future Guam.

An even more powerful exploration of Politics of Memory is found in the incredibly well-written, nearly perfect "Remembering Turinam" by N.A. Ratnayake. Here the scholar Salai walks from his world's (a future-Earth maybe) equivalent of a university the Heremitian Anushasan, formely specialized in the exploration of the abstract sciences. He goes to visit his grand-father, a former member of the same Anushasan, now living as a near hermit in his very final days. Both are Turians, a peaceful farming people whose country, the titular Turinam, was conquered two generations ago by the Rytari state, a highly bureaucratic, militaristic and ever-expanding Republic. In the decades following the conquest, the Rytari sucessfully appropriated Turian culture and eradicated their language. By assimilating the population into the Rytari language, they successfully changed the country's myths, history and cultural identity. Ratnayake is brilliant in showing the subtleties of Salai's colonized mind. More importantly, the author displays in all its tragedy the paradox of cultural survival in the face of conquest: how only those who choose assimilation can live long enough to ultimately reclaim the culture that has been willingly lost.

For these two stories and the 14 others, especially for the Critical afterword by Ekateria Sedia, go buy the book! Your world will be changed!

 Edited on 31 July 2013, 17h: corrected a story title and author. Apologies for the possible confusion.

Edited on 27 August 2013: So many typos! 

Remarks and proposed alternate rules for _9 Lives_ by @danielsolis

This post is primarily destined for Daniel Solis's benefit, but if you want to follow along, please download the Prototype B file for 9 Lives and try it out. It's very worth the effort.*

Copyright © Daniel Solis 2013. All rights reserved.

 Last night we played several rounds of 9 Lives, a game currently in development by Daniel Solis (@danielsolis). We played a few three-person games and mock-played higher-number games as well. My hopes for a five-person game were quashed when the fourth and fifth persons went to bed at 8pm and 9pm, they being 9-years-old and 14-years-old respectively. Note that all players are consummate board gamers and especially life-long card gamers.

We had several comments on the game as it exists in Prototype B form. We liked the game overall, but found some areas lacking.

Remarks on Prototype B:

 a) The cats on the cards are adorable, but the layout of the cards themselves, even in this prototype form, is difficult to play with. The cats were given nicknames within minutes (the fat, grumpy cat got named "that damn hamster" right away), which means that the cats are engaging (good sign). However, the tiny cats in the corners are so tiny, it makes it very difficult to differentiate between them when held in one's hand. Though the corner numbers are easy to see, the stars are nearly impossible to see when the cards are held in one's hand. Adjustments to make the cards easier to differentiate when in hand should be done. Keep the cats at all costs.

b) The game play following Prototype B rules is not very engaging, or rather it does not provide many opportunities for engagement between the players. As is, players basically only have to interact at the bidding stage and there is very little incentive to compete between players, this is even more true the more players there are since it becomes nearly impossible to follow each other's play beyond four players.

c) There are way too many cards in the middle, waaaaayyyyyy toooooo many. Everyone was annoyed by this. Adding one card per player at the end of every round just places too many cards in play. Everyone was annoyed by this and thought for ways to make this better from the beginning of the second round.

d) Everyone thought that the scoring phase after the bidding phase was, frankly, more than a little confusing. Everyone understood that this was meant to create opportunities for strategizing which cards to play, but were disappointed that it was basically the only time they could. They disliked this mechanic because it interrupted the flow of the game as well. Bidding -- stop for scoring-- adoption -- stop for scoring. No one liked that.

e) Everyone was looking for ways to block opponents from getting to their objectives and could not find satisfying moments to do so.

f) After a few rounds, we all started throwing possible alternative rules around. We came up with a set of rules that would keep the unique (and very innovative) mechanics of the Prototype B rules, such as the bidding and the adoption, and keep the spirit of 9 Lives, while finding ways to increase competition and especially ways of strategizing the gameplay. This is what we came up with.

Proposed adapted rules for 9 Lives:

The objective is to accumulate points scored by the number of identical cats in one's collection and the number of stars accumulated in each series of cats. 

SETUP: 

Do not remove any cards from the deck; use all 81 cards, regardless of the number of players.

Distribute five random cards to each player.

Each player should have room for a personal collection of cards.

Shuffle the remainder into a deck in the center of the play area.

Deal the three top cards from the deck to the center of the play area face-up. This is the first group of cards that are up for auction.

You also need a method of keeping score during the game. (A paper and pencil or chips are fine.)

PLAY:

A GAME of 9 Lives is comprised of 5 or 6 BOUTS, each bout being comprised of 5 ROUNDS. A game of 9 lives ends when one player reaches 50 or more points, which should take 5 or 6 bouts. [We noticed that with three to five players, the winner of a bout usually has gained 8 to 10 points, those 5 or 6 bouts to reach 50]

A ROUND is comprised of three PHASES, the bidding phase, then the adoption phase, then the betrayal phase [you can name it whatever you like; that's what we came up with]

Bidding phase: Exactly as in Prototype B

[There is no reward phase; this was found annoying and confusing]

Adoption phase: Slightly different from Prototype B. Each player takes turns starting with the player with the lowest bid and proceeding in ascending order. The taking of cards is the same as in Prototype B, but the cards are then placed FACE UP in one's collection. The goal of adoption is to collect cats to create series of two or more. A player cannot adopt a cat into her hand, only into her collection. All other non-adopted cards are moved to the centre of the table. Then, instead of ending the round at this point and turning cards over from the deck, we move on to an additional phase of play.

 @revverm troubleshooting a five-player game of 9 Lives

Betrayal phase: We also called it "last action". It could also be called the "Feral phase", the "Escape phase" or something. The player with the lowest bid has the choice to alter one of her opponents' play from the adoption phase. She can either:

• Switch a card from one opponent's collection with a card with the same number of stars from her own collection,
• OR switch a card from one opponent's collection with a card from the centre with the same number of stars, 
• OR switch it with a the top card from the deck; in this case, the card taken from the opponent's collection is discarded;
• OR does nothing.

This latter phase allows for the winner of the bidding phase to thwart one opponent's strategy or to better her own collection with an opponent's card. For instance, if Bill won the bidding phase and Jimmy has collected three same cats with 0, 1 and 4 stars each, Bill can replace the 4-star cat with a different 4-star cat, thus breaking Jimmy's series. This becomes important in the scoring of the bout.

A round ends when the betrayal phase is done and the lowest bidder then turns ONE card for the deck and places it face up with the other cards at the centre of the table.

The bout continues with four other rounds until all five cards in all players' hands have been played.

SCORING:

Each player counts the number of series of two or more cats she has gotten and gets one point per series.

Then each player counts the number of stars in each series. If two players have a suit of the same cat, the one with the most stars score that number of points and the other player scores nothing; if the number of stars is the same, neither player score points for the stars.

At the end of a bout, all played and discarded cards are shuffled back at the bottom of the deck and a new bout is set up.

ENDGAME:

As stated above, the game ends when a player has reached 50 points. With three to five players, this should take 5 to 6 bouts, for a total of about 30 minutes of play. 

______________________________________________________________

Further remarks:

a) With more players, it would most likely be necessary to bring the number of game points down if the game is to be played in about 30 minutes; for example, for 7 players, it would most likely be 40 points to win a game. 

b) Everyone agreed that the proposed altered rules would not work for 2 players, but would be ideal for 3 to 6 players. It very well may be that with the proposed adapted rules the game cannot be played with 8 or 9 players. Everyone agreed, though, that Prototype B was unplayable at more than 6 players.

c) Everyone insisted on the fact that a group of players should be given the option to decide that a game is going to be worth more or fewer points in order to adapt the gameplay to the length of time they have to play. For example, if all players agree, they should have the possibility to play for 100 points, for longer game play.

e) Lastly, we do not know if Daniel Solis will like the altered rules proposed here, but everyone involved said that they will continue to play with the altered rules regardless of what is chosen. All intend on teaching those to the younger members of our group as soon as we can. Everyone liked the new gameplay and everyone liked the bidding and adopting mechanic, a lot. I will be printing another copy of the prototype cards for the "youngings" to play with.

We all hope to see this game released one day. We all saw the potential and all want to see it succeed.

* Also, go buy Koy Pond, which is quite good! 

Squarespace Meetup, 17 June 2013

I had a great time. For such a divergeant group of people, there were a lot of convergent interests.  

The meetup took place at the Black Tomato  and the food was very good. Koodos to Cory and Casey (from the McMillan Agency upstairs and from the Dear Cast and Crew blog) for having convinced Jessica Kausen at Squarespace, the organiser, to use this venue.

I met a lot of very interesting people. Carol the real estate agent hoping to get more info to convince her web person to switch away Joomla. Bryan "Shooter' McNally, whose short "Change" recently won Best Short at Ottawa International Film Festival 72 Film Challenge 2013. It's a sweet, simple short story about clothes. Bob, the graphic artist talked about his daughter and his shows in Paris, and was a good advocate for AirBnB. Then there was Eileen and Allan from Deep Partners Brand Design who were funny. There was also Paul (I think, sorry!)  the multimedia artist and recovering animator who works at the National Gallery of Canada in the digitalization project.

Then there was also the very last group I spoke with whose names I dont remember (argh!). I only spoke with them for a few minutes before the meetup ended and the carriages turned back into pumpkins. There was the extremely talented illustrator with a History and Classics B.A. from Carleton, and the so very sweet art director who will start a blog soon, hopefully called "Social Services" (Grace? I can't remember!). 

I do hope to see many of them again (contact me!). Unfortunately, I was all out of business cards because Moo has not delivered them yet so I could not hand them out.

My son's evaluation of Neil Gaiman's (@neilhimself) _Chu's Day_

Since it does not look like Neil Gaiman's latest children's book Chu's Day is going to be translated into French any time soon, I decided to buy it in English and simply translate it on the fly as I read it to my unilingual son. 

First, my opinion: it is a delightful book, funny and bright. Chu is a great panda cub with aviator goggles and a propensity to cause havoc when he sneezes. I'm in love. 

Second, Chaton's opinion: he does not find the book funny. This has nothing to do with my translation or my reading style. It's about the train. You see, when Chu finally sneezes and "bad things happen", a train is blown off its tracks. Trains are Chaton's very favorite things in the world. We spend most of our playtime going on trains and taking subway trips. Trains are important to my son. Chu causes a train to go off tracks, therefore "il n'est pas gentil". This said, I do think Chaton likes the book; we have read it 3 times since last night. Chaton now accepts that Chu's "Oops" is an apology of sorts, but he is dead focussed on the train. He acknowledges there are other things blown away, but he wants to go back to look at the train.

Hopefully, he will see the humour and embrace the entire story as he matures in the next year. Being three is hard. 

Edited to add on 13 June 2013: Chaton admitted he liked the book last night. He said it was new and there was a train and it was about "la zournée de Tsou". The book now lives in his bedroom, where precious few books reside. Less important books stay in the living room.

Edited to add on 16 June 2013:  

@tournevis so sweet. Sorry about that train.

— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) June 12, 2013

Edited to add on 23 June 2013:  My son now loves the book. We have read it almost every night since the 12th. He spent the better part of yesterday running around the house going "Atsooooooo!!! Wooosh!" and laughing. He still remarks that the train is never going to make it to the station, but he is no longer obsessive about it. Further, last night, we read another book. YÉ!

I'd watch the hell out of this

Postée à l'origine par kylecassidy dans I'd watch the hell out of this, via mataciquola

Originally posted by kylecassidy on LiveJournal at post via mataciquola

Share it if you like it.

Clickenzee to Embiggen

Add matociquala: [LiveJournal] [Facebook] [Twitter] [Google+] [Tumblr]

Hi. My name is Tournevis and I'm a born again tabletop gamer.

Time has come for me to abmit it. I am a gamer.

I always was a gamer, but I have been off gaming since 1989. With good reasons, but with age comes maturity and (hopefully) the end of some self dilutions. This is the story of one of them.

Dice, by Jonny Watt, aka Swiss Boneson Flickr

 I stopped tabletop gaming in 1989, at the same time as I gave up drinking. I was drunk when I gamed and when I gave up the juice I gave up the dice as well. I got rid of everything. All my games, my dice. With the exception of one deck of LO-Vision regular poker cards, because these are rather difficult to find. When I met he who would become my husband, a year later, I even made him give up gaming too. Yes, he got rid of his dice set (very basic red polyhedrals he kept in a vintage Sucrets tin) and his AD&D books for me. He is a very good and patient man.

In the following years, I tried to occasionnaly play simple family board games from time to time, and it would be dreadful for me. Literally deadful: I would get anxiety attacks playing Monopoly. SkipBo would make me sweat bullets. To top it off, I discovered I was a pretty bad loser. To be perfectly honest, I probably always was a terrible loser back when I drank too, but I don't remember much of it, on accounts I was drunk most of the time. I do remember not having a lot of fun and getting into loud arguments with fellow gamers, and it's probably a sign of just how bad a loser I was.  But I had stopped gaming. I was literally off my game! It did not stop the attraction to gaming one damn bit.

So for some two decades, I resorted to watching every video game show on tv, reading gaming mags in stores, going to Toys'R'Us and pining over all those pretty boxes (I thought that family games might be less dangerous than serious games, somehow). Mostly, though, I sat at the table whenever a card game or a boardgame was played in the same building I was in and I watched, attentively, for hours, studying the strategies, enjoying the gameplay and the repartie, loving every minute of it, all the while trying not to pee my pants for fear of joinging in.

In my silly little brain, boozing and gaming were so closely associated, they had the same effect on me. And my fear of drinking was merged with a fear of gaming. 

Stupid brain. 

Fast forward to 2011. My husband (the same as above) and I adopted a marvelous little boy. We were now responsibe for the forging of this little person, for teaching him everything from talking to walking to, yes, playing. And I realized I was scared of playing. I was scared of games. This could not be. My parents had not been into games much at all when I was a child, except for the occasional Scrabble night in the 1970s to which I was certainly not invited, because of too much cigarettes and scotch, because the 70s. I cannot say that my parents taught me to play, or to game, ever. My husband's family were card players, avid ones. We still have the booklets used to keep score in the endless games of 500 and Hearts. My husband and his brother even invented a card game, some trick taking thing they call "le jeu".

But I could not place the entire onus of teaching our son play and games on his father. It would not be fair to either of them. So I discerned, for about a year.

At the beginning of 2012, I decided that I needed to set myself straight and start to teach my son gaming. He turned two and I introduced him to the wonderful things that are dice. I bought him giant foam polyhedrals, as well as a full set of 22mm polyhedrals and an assortment of d6 of the same size. He loves them. We are learning numbers on them, though they are as often used as train cars or as meal for the imaginary fish we will be cathcing from the confort of our couch-cum-sailboat.

I bought a set for myself too. Then I bought more. Then I started buying tabletop games, mostly dice games, because that's always what I loved the most back in the day. I also started watching Wil Wheaton's TableTop show on Geek and Sundry and I came to the realization that I was a born again gamer.

So I bought DIxit and all the expansions and I brought it to a friend's house we were staying in last Christmas and we played. I played. I got beat so badly it was pityful. And it was all marvelous. 

Since then, I have participated in a bunch of Kickstarters for a bunch of games, all but one dice games. And I love it. 

Last night, I played solitaire on the living room table while my son played something with another deck of cards. We had a ball.