Writing Prompt: Dice

1085831_diceI’ve been playing Elder Sign a lot lately, so this week’s prompt is about dice. Write a scene, story, or poem in which someone is literally or metaphorically taking a chance and rolling the dice. They could be playing a game like Elder Sign, Zombie Dice or Yahtzee with friends; they might be gambling at a craps table in a Vegas casino or on a street corner. Or they might be testing the whims of Fate in some other fashion: asking a person on a date, applying for a job, buying a lottery ticket, or shoplifting for fun. See where your imagination takes you, and happy writing.

New board game FTW! Unpacking Forbidden Island

My lovely postal person brought me a new toy today: my copy of the board game Forbidden Island.

Board game cards and pieces

I haven’t played this game before, but TableTop’s Wil Wheaton highly recommended it on his blog, and after reading the description and seeing pictures of the pretty cards, I decided I wanted it. (Other selling points: it’s a cooperative game, so I can play it solo, and the price was very reasonable — under $20.) Just looking all at the pretty pieces, I’m very impressed! The location cards are nice and thick so they’ll hold up well, and they’re beautifully illustrated. They aren’t quite as big as I’d expected, but that’s okay since I have limited room on my desk for game pieces. I love the treasure tokens too; the shapes and colors are fun and they’re nicely detailed. I also like that the box is designed with dividers to store the pieces handily, unlike some games I could mention.

I’ll share more of my thoughts after I’ve had some time to play with it a bit.

UPDATE: I like this game! And not just because I won my first time. :-)  I had fun, and it’s easy to learn — a definite plus. (The mechanics remind me of Pandemic, which probably helped.) All in all, I think this game is a definite win!

Elder Sign: The Koi Pond

board-game-elder-sign-koi-pondSo, I was playing the board game Elder Sign last night and it was going very, very well — I had 9 of the 11 Elder Signs I needed to win and very few tokens on the Doom track after just three hours on the game clock (12 turns). I was thinking it was going to be a pretty quick game (unlike the usual 2 to 3 hours it takes me to finish) — and then I thought something like, “This is going too well — something has to go wrong.”

Truer words have never been said.

Around this time, I made a huge, huge mistake: I tried to tackle a card called The Koi Pond. It looks deceptively easy, since you only need 4 dice to beat it, and I was playing the character of Kate (the scientist), which eliminated the Terror effect (you automatically fail if you didn’t accomplish a task and you rolled a Terror). Unfortunately, it’s very hard to roll two skulls and a Terror all in one go, and without a spell to focus an extra die, I was sunk.

Then I compounded my mistake by putting another investigator (Jenny) on the card. I was thinking that having an extra person to focus a die would make a difference — but all of my other investigators were subject to the Terror effect, which ultimately did them in.

All of them.

Yes, I made the hugely stupid mistake of thinking that throwing more investigators in the mix would help. Since my next investigator (Amanda) had cards to roll extra dice and had a couple of clues, I thought she could defeat it. She was close, but ultimately fell to the Terror effect — as did Sister Mary when I threw her on the pile in a last-ditch attempt to save Kate. A very bad thing about The Koi Pond is that it costs 2 stamina if you lose, and Kate only has 4 stamina total — so losing that card twice means no more Kate. (Ditto for Jenny, etc etc.) But in my bid to save Kate and her 3 Elder Signs, I ended up losing ALL FOUR investigators. So, I basically ended up back at square one, with all new investigators and no Elder Signs.

AUGH!!!

I have now learned my lesson about The Koi Pond. You do NOT try this card unless you’re playing Kate and she’s got both extra dice, a focusing spell, and six clues in her hand. (Sheesh!)

The game is still going, by the way — after 2 hours, I was too tired to keep playing, so it’s all still out on my desk. Current tally: I have 6 elder signs, while Narcolepsy (don’t ask me to remember the correct name) has 5 out of 9 Doom tokens. And 4 of my 7 location cards (6 regular, one Other World) have monsters on them. But one of those is The Damned Koi Pond, and you know I’m not going back there.

I’ll let you know who wins.

UPDATE: I won! And I still had 2 empty spots on the Doom track. Take that, Narcolepsy!

Spotlight

I got quite a surprise tonight when I discovered that my article on the Wil Wheaton gaming show TableTop was mentioned today on the TableTop website! I started this article back in April with the best of intentions, but it got away from me almost immediately; I’d had visions of putting detailed bio information for each guest and giving a description of each game, but as my life went haywire over the summer, I struggled just to add each new episode and link to the games. By some quirk of fate, I did some heavy additions to the article over the past week, and then I rushed tonight to add basic bio information for all the guests. Whew!!! Nothing like a little recognition to light a fire under a person. 🙂

Luckily, the series is now on hiatus until January. Maybe by then I’ll have filled out my article the way I first envisioned it.

Love and hugs to the person at Geek & Sundry who noticed my work! You made my day.