Knights of the Dinner Table reviews Happy Birthday, Robot!


Knights of the Dinner Table #168 has a very warm write-up for Happy Birthday, Robot! and small story games in general. Many thanks to contributor and fan Ashok Desai for the kind words. Here are some of them!

"Now this game is just charming. It was floated as a concept on the Internet and financed through fundraising site Kickstarter, but flew to such astounding success and gained so much support that it's now available in many places in a startlingly attractive hardback.[...]

"There's no character ownership at all, any player can write sentences about anyone in the story solong as it makes sense. The resulting tales tend to come out rather like those cheerful, thick-paged children's books found in all good nurseries, not least because you're operating under an often draconically strict word limit. That's not a criticism though. The limit is good. It makes you try harder.[...]

"All in all it makes a pretty good manual on how to introduce the very young to the wonderful world of role-playing, without any of the confusing trappings that have grown up around the hobby. Furthermore, the illustrations are cute, friendly, colourful and numerous, and the rules are easily simple enough for ten-year-olds and even younger kids[...]

"Besides, you can always subvert it to other causes if you feel the need. One enterprising Internet pundit even ran a game in the Batman universe, titled 'Happy Parole, Joker!' Funny how sinister the childlike effect of the prose can be when placed in a contrastingly adult context."

Thanks again, Ash!

Here's a fun fact: My first published game material was in another Kenzer & Company publication: Hackjournal, the official magazine of their AD&D homage Hackmaster. Small world, no?

» Knights of the Dinner Table
» Hackjournal
» Andrew Smith's Happy Parole, Joker!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

5 Graphic Design and Typography Tips for your Card Game

Image
Chris Farrell of Illuminating Games just wrote a thorough critique of card games setting their body text to be so small that they cannot be read at arm's length, let alone across the table. Here's an excerpt, but the whole thing is worth a read for any would-be card game designers out there. (Myself included.) Break out your copy of the base set of Dominion, and look at the Chapel. This has a text box roughly 3.5cm by 4.5cm. It's got a single line of text. That line of text is 1 (one) millimeter high. 1mm! For me, it's only clearly readable at half an arm's length even in the bright light of day. (...) Compare this to a more sane game like Glory to Rome, where the font size is 2-3 times as large (text is 2mm high, keywords 3mm and usually highlighted). I can generally read Glory to Rome cards across the table, and can certainly see the important keywords. To heap insult upon injury, not only does Glory to Rome have far more legible text than Dominion it also has
Read more

Low-High Dice Game

Image
A dice game inspired by the stock market (and playing lots of Martian Dice). Roll a bunch of dice and choose which sets to keep. Choose your strategy wisely! Stuff You Need Two-to-Six PLAYERS A PENCIL and PAPER to keep score Thirteen standard six-sided DICE How to Play The shortest player takes the first turn. On your turn, first roll all thirteen dice. Several dice will have matching results. These are called SETS. (A single die result is a set, too.) You must choose a set to keep. For example, your first roll results are 111124445555 . The sets are four 1 s, one 2 , three 4 s, and four 5 s. After keeping a set of dice, lock them up in a row. This is called the GOOD TRACK. For example,  you could keep the set of four 1 s, one 2 , three 4 s, or four 5 s . You decide to keep the four 1 s and line them up in your good track. After keeping a set, you may end your turn or re-roll the remaining unlocked dice. When you re-roll, immediately set aside any results that ar
Read more

The Thousand-Year Game Design Challenge

Image
UPDATE: The submission period has closed and here are the entries. If you're an entrant, continue sending pics or vids of people playing your game. The first step to a game lasting a thousand years is for people to play it today. UPDATE 2: And here's the winner! To support games designed for longevity – that can be learned, played and shared for hundreds of years – we offer this challenge to any game designers, artists and imaginative people who also share this desire. Challenge Create a game. The game can be of any theme or genre you desire, but there is one restriction: You're creating a "new classic," like Chess, Tag or card games. So, create a game to be enjoyed by generations of players for a thousand years. Prize $1,000 to the winning entrant, to be announced and awarded January 1, 2012. Entry Deadline Entries must be submitted before midnight July August 31st, 2011. ( Update ) Entry Guidelines Enter by posting a comment below with a link
Read more