It’s quick and enjoyable, but suffers from a poorly chosen theme in my opinion. The cards represent dragons, heroes, treasure, and other fantasy inspired notions. Now, I have no problem with fantasy themed games, but it simply doesn’t fit with Dragonheart. It just doesn’t make sense. This dragon gets treasure, but so does the sorceress, who can be killed by a troll or by a hero, who can also kill the troll. Why does the hero want to kill the sorceress? She looks pretty sweet in the game art. I think he would try and make out with the sorceress and run away from the troll. The troll doesn’t have any treasure anyway, because it was taken by the dragon.

I can already tell that this post is going to ramble a bit, so if you are one of the few folks that reads this blog for game news or reviews alone, you might want to jump out of the plane now.

I was playing a game of Dragonheart online at yucata.de with a friend, who somewhat famously doesn’t like fantasy themed games, and I mentioned my idea of how to retheme the game to something more appropriate. He loved the idea, and I’m working on the specifics of how to do it as I get the time. The specific nature of the theme change isn’t the important point I’m trying to make. The real point is that I can take the game mechanism and repurpose it into a better theme. Hang on to that thought.

I had lunch at a new Asian Restaurant that opened up a few weeks ago. The food was pretty good. I had some chicken pho that was some of the best I’ve had in Fresno. The restaurant decor was pretty strange. It was a clumsy patchwork of stuff that obviously had been pulled from elsewhere. So many businesses have gone under in this economy, I imagine it’s easy to find deals on used fixtures. I couldn’t remember what had been in this location before the Asian restaurant, but I knew I hadn’t been a customer. As far as I knew, I had never set foot in the place in my life. I got up to go to the restroom and while I walked to the back of the restaurant, it occurred to me that I had actually been there many times. I realized it had been over twenty years since I had been in this building. It was a Straw Hat Pizza when I was in college, and I used to go there with my friends fairly often because we had an apartment down the street. It didn’t dawn on me until I walked into the corridor with the restrooms. Everything else was different, but I suppose it takes a major remodel to change the location of the restrooms because of the plumbing.

The building had been repurposed. What was once a Straw Hat Pizza was now an family owned restaurant that made good pho. It hadn’t been torn down. It was still a good building. It just needed a different business. This concept rattled around in my brain for a while, and then met up with my idea for how to modify the Dragonheart theme and settled down in the back of my head. The idea wouldn’t settle down all the way; however, it wandered around in my brain, like a dog that can’t decide where to lie down. It was a restless thought.

Soon after I left the restaurant, I suddenly understood why this thought was sticking with me; I am ready to be repurposed.

The last year or so has been difficult for me. It’s becoming more challenging to deal with my depression. I am extremely dissatisfied with my job, and the thought of another year in this valley weighs on my shoulders like a Yoda that loves cake. I worry that I am too old to start a new career or move. I feel like a building that was once a children’s bookstore, then changed to a Kinko’s that was eventually bought out by FedEx, and would really like to be re-purposed as a cozy internet cafe, but would require so much renovation that it’s not worth the effort.

Honestly, I don’t think my building is so old that it can’t be renovated. I think Dragonheart is good enough for me to repurpose it with another theme. One task is more daunting than the other, but both can be broken down into short steps.

I just have to start walking.

Elder Sign is a cooperative boardgame designed by Kevin Wilson and Richard Launius of Arkham Horror fame and produced by Fantasy Flight Games. The game is recommended for 1 – 8 players ages 13 and over. I’ve only played it with four players, but I think it will scale well from two to eight. I haven’t tried the solo rules, but I rarely like solo versions of boardgames. Solitaire play defeats the purpose of boardgaming, as far as I am concerned.

My buddy Joe described this game as Arkham Horror Yahtzee. Basically, the players work together to investigate arcane mysteries in order to locate items that will prevent an other-dimensional monster from appearing and making everyone’s property value go down even more than this new normal. Each player gets a character card and a special ability, along with some spells or items that will help them investigate an area or defeat a monster. Players roll dice in order to meet the goals that are present on the card. If you succeed, you get the rewards on the location card, but if you fail, you usually lose health or sanity and the horrible elder beast gets a little closer to ruining your day.

While it is a cooperative game, I didn’t see that many opportunities for players to help each other; however, it still felt like we were working together for a common goal. It took less than 30 minutes to learn, and four of us were able to play through the game in a little over an hour.

I think it’s a great game for the Halloween season, and will see a lot of repeat play throughout the year. Pick it up at your friendly neighborhood game store, or you can pick it up from the nice folks at Funagain.com.

What really bothered me about all of this was that I felt like my kids deserved a better summer. I don’t feel obligated to provide some grand excursion every summer, but I do feel like a summer isn’t really a summer without some kind of family trip. This did not happen this summer; however, the summer was saved from total disaster by a small plastic box.

We have never been a video game family, but one day my wife brought home the new Xbox 360 with the Kinect tuner. I argued against it, but she felt it was important for various reasons that the kids have something fun this summer. I think it was a good call on her part. What I thought would divide the kids has brought them together. What I thought would be a huge waste of money ended up being a pretty good value for the amount of entertainment we’ve gotten out of it.

The Kinect is pretty amazing. Just yesterday we downloaded the new Fruit Ninja game for it, and it’s a blast. Watching my kids jump around and laugh while they slice up virtual fruit is a bargain at $9.99. The regular games are fabulous as well. My kids are five years apart, and yet they have a great time playing something like the Lego Pirates of the Caribbean game. I haven’t really played any console game since Final Fantasy VII, and I’m blown away by these new games like Gears of War. It’s crazy when I think back to the Atari games I had when I was my daughter’s age. We also use the Xbox to stream Netflix and ESPN. It’s an entertainment suite.

I still love my boardgames, but I have to admit that my wife made a good purchase.

How satisfying that the next store worthy of review is just a few miles away. The Crazy Squirrel Game Store, or the squirrel, as we are fond of calling it, is the result of a great deal of hard work and intelligent planning by its owners, Scott Martin and Jennifer Ward. In less than a year, they have managed to not only provide a good inventory of games, but have also become the center of the local gaming community. I think that’s really important. A good game store will have a copy of that game you might want, but a great game store also provides you a with place to sit down and play that game, or try out some new games and maybe make some new friends in the process.

The squirrel has a weekly calendar of events that range from tactical minis to RPGs to boardgames. I tend to go to the boardgame meetups on Thursday evenings, when I can manage it. I had a great time last week on Free RPG Day. I once brought my kids in for a bit while my wife was at a doctor’s appointment nearby. We sat and played one of the many games available in the store library. Great job Scott and Jennifer!

I found that over time the expectation that I was somehow behind in my gaming was making me anxious. I found myself choosing shorter games so that I could somehow catch up to my gaming goals for the month. I would think about how far behind I was that month, and how a game of Agricola was going to count as a single play, compared to a few games of Dominion or Lost Cities. I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with shorter games, but I don’t think that some meaningless self-imposed quantitative goal should influence my choice of game. It’s really all about the quality of the time I spend gaming that is most important.

It’s the same reason that I normally don’t do daily quests in World of Warcraft. If I have to do a repetitive task every day, then that seems like a job. I have a job. I certainly don’t need another one that doesn’t pay. I don’t need to punch a clock playing multiple games of Zombie Dice just because I need the overtime. That’s just stupid.

I have resolved to let go of these goals. I will play what I feel like when I feel like it, and not worry about it.

I know there is a boardgame based on the book, and I’ve heard good things about it. Designed by Michael Rieneck, Around the World in 80 Days was nominated for the Spiel des Jahres in 2005, but lost to Niagara. My goal is to play Around the World in 80 Days before the end of February. As far as I can tell, which means I briefly checked the Geek, it’s a racing game that utilizes card management to make your way through the events of the novel. It plays from three to six players, but as with most race games, I imagine the more players the better.

Okay, so who owns this and when do we play?