My Favorite “Local” Game Stores

With the gift-giving season upon us I’m reminded (somewhat selfishly) of places we can go to find presents for the gamers in our lives. While consumers have increasingly turned to online venues for purchases, I still firmly believe our brick-and-mortar establishments have a great deal to offer. Like any gamer I have my roster of Friendly Local Game Stores (FLGS) I like to support, though in my case, they’re not as much “local” as “regional.” The nearest is a 30 minute drive, the farthest around two hours...meaning I usually make a day trip out of a visit. As a result I don’t shop at them as much as I’d like, but when I go I budget a small wad of cash to spend to support their efforts and add to my gaming library. Most were around before the pandemic; they managed to survive adapting to online orders and sidewalk pick-up, implementing careful masking and distancing protocols when allowed, cultivating a generous gaming community, and soldiering on with a staunch persistence. I try making the pilgrimage to the farthest ones once a year; the others I visit when I’m in the neighborhood. All remind me of the qualities for successful game stores and current trends in the adventure gaming hobby.

Immersive Experiences at the Spy Museum

My recent visit to the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC, might not seem to have any relevance to the adventure gaming hobby. Yet its exhibits speak to a history occasionally covered in board games and its interactive experiences evoke the feelings of immersive roleplaying game episodes. Museums today constantly change, adapting to new display philosophies and technological advancements influencing the gallery experience. They work to present the broad context of history, explain the relevance of artifacts, and tell the stories of individuals who used those items and lived that history in an attempt to establish some connection with visitors. The International Spy Museum hits all those targets, showcasing some amazing objects, demonstrating firsthand many spycraft concepts, and presenting tales of spies throughout history...all in ways that actively engage visitors.

Solo Scene: a Gentle Rain

“Calm mind brings inner strength and self-confidence.”

— Dalai Lama

Finding calm in today’s world remains challenging. Our 21st century Internet Age keeps us constantly scrambling just to keep our heads above water. The cares of our incessantly demanding world often overwhelm us, giving us scant time for ourselves to recover, let alone to relish the few, small joys in life. We all have our methods of gaining a few moments of peace, of re-centering our views, of restoring our attitudes. I keep a singing bowl on my desk next to a tiny, smirking Buddhist monk figurine, though I rarely use the bowl for stress relief. I have little time to sit near my backyard prayer flag garden; more often I pull weeds and re-string flags. I read before bed every night, making the recent choice to return to escapist fiction instead of my more personally educational non-fiction history titles. Games, especially solitaire ones, also help divert me from my anxieties...when I find the time. I recently discovered a new solo game, one specifically designed as a calming activity: a Gentle Rain by Kevin Wilson. It’s a fantastic game ideal for anyone, even non-gamers, to help find a little momentary calm in these tumultuous times.

Releasing Skirmish Kids

 “The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.”

– Carl Jung

At long last I finally released my latest game project this week. Skirmish Kids is a wargame with a low figure count, small play surface (compared to most miniature wargames), and basic core rules to which one can add a host of options to give the game more tactical depth. It includes a host of notes for using it for historical scenarios as well as a few more fantastic genres. You can find it in full-color PDF at both my Itch.io and Wargame Vault online storefronts and in print in black-and-white at Lulu and, a first for me, places like Amazon. Skirmish Kids is the culmination of a long interest in this kind of wargaming and years of tinkering to present rules and options at a level kids and newcomers to the hobby can understand and embrace.

Return to the Abbey of St. Leibowitz

 “So it was that, after the [Flame] Deluge, the Fallout, the plagues, the madness, the confusion of tongues, the rage, there began the bloodletting of the Simplification, when remnants of mankind had torn other remnants limb from limb, killing rulers, scientists, leaders, technicians, teachers, and whatever persons the leaders of the maddened mobs said deserved death for having helped to make the Earth what it had become.”

– A Canticle for Leibowitz

Time for me to read Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz again. It’s one of the books I reach for when I need a break...from my more serious non-fiction reading, from the news, from numerous stress vectors mercilessly bearing down on what’s left of my psyche. Like many, I find diversion and solace in books, an escape so we can (hopefully) find renewed strength and get up to face our toilsome, everyday challenges in reality.

Author Umberto Eco likened books in a good library to remedies a medicine cabinet:

“We understand that it is good to have many at home rather than a few: when you want to feel better, then you go to the ‘medicine closet’ and choose a book. Not a random one, but the right book for that moment.”

Exploring Vonnegut’s Lost Game

 “I admire anybody who finishes a work of art, no matter how awful it may be.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

I was intrigued when I discovered Geoff Engelstein writing online about a lost strategy game by renowned author Kurt Vonnegut. At first glance GHQ looked like a chess-type game using artillery and infantry, reflecting the author’s experience in northwest Europe during World War II. The design had a pleasingly mid-century aesthetic to it which felt practical for such a game. I enjoyed reading Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five years ago and have re-read it once or twice since; but I wouldn’t call myself a fan, though I’m aware of his cultural impact. The more I read about GHQ, though, the more I wanted to explore it as a gaming artifact: a game a then-fledgling author designed, tested, and tried marketing to a publishing company, to no avail, setting it aside, abandoned, for decades until, after his death, someone discovered it and finally released it to the world. Engelstein and the production team at Mars International have revived a lost treasure and provided historical context to better appreciate the game’s origins.

Solo Scene: Pacific War 1942

 “The enemy of our games was always Japan, and the courses were so thorough that after the start of World War II, nothing that happened in the Pacific was strange or unexpected.”

— Admiral Chester W. Nimitz

I love solitaire games of all kinds across the adventure gaming hobby. I enjoy exploring World War II history through wargames. And I’ve admired many games Worthington Publishing has released over the years, notably Tarawa 1943, Hidden Strike American Revolution, Chancellorsville 1863, and the Holdfast series of block games. So when I heard Worthington launched a Kickstarter for another series of three “travel” solitaire wargames, I figured I’d revisit one from the previous campaign. Pacific War 1942 demonstrates the compact innovations of this format that engage players in a satisfying wargame experience.