Purple Pawn - Game News Across the Board

Discombobulation is a new card game which looks like a cross between UNO and Cranium.

The article about it by Tracy Line of the Southside Press is so gushing I couldn’t tell if it was an article or a press release. From the description, it looks like a fine, silly family game, but hardly worth writing a gush piece.

(source)

Palo Alto, TX: Man shot playing dominoes outside with his cousin. (source)

Gen Con is a major American tabletop game convention, once owned by TSR, which was bought by Wizards of the Coast, which was bought by Hasbro. The rights to the con were bought by the former director of Wizards of the Coast, Peter Adkinson.

On Jan 10, Lucasfilm announced that it was suing Gen Con.

On Feb 15, Gen Con released a press release indicating that it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Chapter 11 allows the company to restructure its organization and continue operations while it tries to find ways to pay its creditors.

Living Dice did some rooting around and found out to whom Gen Con owes its money. Top creditors are:

• Geo E Fern Co (convention services) $748,956.81
• John Jordan (loan) $542,971.03
• Hasbro Inc $431,055.00
• Lucasfilm Ltd $284,099.32
• Thomas DesBrisay (loan) $211,601.67
• Make A Wish Foundation (supposed to receive income from auction) $148,562.13
• Los Angeles Convention Ctr $148,342.50
• Westin Bonaventure Hotel $140,401.69
• The Biltmore Hotel $138,623.85
• Board of Equalization (taxes) $131,636.18
• Hidden City Games (makers of Bella Sara collectible card game about horses) $125,000.00

So Hasbro owns Wizards of the Coast and it’s owed money from Gen Con, owned by Peter Adkinson, former director of Wizards of the Coast. Furthermore, Peter Adkinson founded Hidden City Games, which is also owed money from Gen Con.

Got it.

Update: Peter Adkinson is the former (not current) director of WotC, as noted by Propagandoid in the comments. Also, see Tiger’s comment for further suggested elaboration.

Pulling Strings by Blue Panther is an abstract game where you try to move five disks into your home positions from the middle of the board.

The original game comes with English alphabet and sign language disks for specifying rows and columns on the board. New expansion packs add 1) Roman numerals and 2) Greek letters (which is odd, as a note at the end of the rules indicated that the expansions were going to be Roman numerals, and Japanese Katakana and Hiragana).

(source)

Grammaticus, by David Kinder of Alton College, is a word based card game available locally in Petersfield, Hampshire, UK.

It uses words on the cards, word types (noun, adjective) as the card suits, and plays something like rummy.

(source)

One attempt to add more skill to the game of Poker, and work around U.S. laws that ban it, is DuplicatePoker.com .

Duplicate Poker, inspired by the idea of duplicate Bridge, requires you not only to play against your opponents at the same table, but to play better than other players playing in the same seat as you with the same cards at different tables. Your wins and losses are not based on how well you fare at your table alone, but on how well you do compared to how well the other players did sitting at the other tables. This largely, but not entirely, eliminates luck from the game.

(source)

Robyn Fleming writes about the evolution of gender and stereotype D&D in the latest Cerise Magazine. She looks at what’s up with 4e D&D’s online character creation and illustrations.

According to Robyn, things are looking up, but there’s still a ways to go.

(article)

Paris Hilton, about whom their is very little to say other than that people say many things about her and that she is heir to a large fortune, is spending more time indoors playing Monopoly.

Apparently dating (rock star Benji Madden) has made her less of a socialite and more domestic. Finally.

(source)

The families of American Idol contestants are forbidden to talk to the media until the season ends. So how do they pass the time?

They go to the American Idol Ministry, set up by Leesa Bellesi, a pastor’s wife in a Lake Forest backyard. There they cheer, give support, eat barbecues and play Ping Pong and Apples to Apples.

(source)

On a flight from Washington D.C. to Portland, OR, the press challenged Barack Obama and his staff to a game of Taboo.

Obama’s team won, despite not having any good questions for the clue “cockatoo”.

After the first win the press wanted a re-match–which the staff agreed to–but Obama teasingly asked how long the game goes on for. A member of the press said, “We play until we win.” Obama paused for a moment thoughtfully, smiled, and quipped, “That sounds familiar.”

(source)