Monopolopolopoly

With a little imagination, the gamer can create variants of existing games...

..providing those old games with a new lease of life.

Aaah Monopoly, the one game that probably every gamer has played at one time or another. 

In my experience, this game is first played as a child with older family members on a rainy or snowy Sunday and then put away and not tried again until the gamer's own children are old enough to be tortured. My own children fell into this pattern, we played this game as a family once and then they refused to ever play again. Apparently I wanted to win too much. 

In our house, this board game is sealed away in the dark, waiting for its time to come again when it will be brought out to spoil a lovely future afternoon for the Grandkids.

The way ahead......

For all of us, whether we're gamers or not, there's one exciting piece of technology to look forward to playing with.

As the prices have begun to come down, I've started thinking loosely about my campaign to get a 3d printer. Some current considerations... 

1. How cheap does a 3d printer have to be before I can justify having one in the house? 

2. Will there be one that will make use all of the old plastic wargames figures, kids' toys, game pieces and other assorted bits and bobs that fill up my house to allow me to make new (and of course vital) plastic wargames figures, kids toys, game pieces and other assorted bits and bobs? Or are am I going to have to buy more plastic? 

3. Can I get one to make use of the plastic bottles that I spend time seperating from paper, metal and garden material which are currently collected and sent off for recycling? If I could, I would recycle from bottles to plastic playing pieces, both saving the planet and myself money at the same time. I would also then recycle the plastic bin that the plastic bottles are currently collected from to save space in front of my home.

4. I've noticed that as I get older, I find it harder to use new technology. I understand what the newtech is supposed to do but I find that I need a younger person to actually make the kit work... something to do with planned obsolescence of older people I think. How young will a person need to be to actually make a 3d printer work? 

5. Home manufacturing proves that the future is really here. So where's my flying car?

The Delivery

The gamer has plenty of places to buy his stuff from, including the option to buy something that he's never seen from someone he's never met who works in a place that he's never going to visit....

.. and then he possibly never even plays with it! I'm lucky, I have a pretty good and reasonably local games shop so I'm not dependent on the internet. One of the few shopping experiences that really is fun! I still smuggle my booty indoors though so that I don't have to explain that I've bought even more stuff.

Inspiration!

The gamer can take inspiration from plenty of different places, including subjects studied at school...

Richard the Third and Macbeth were the two Shakespeare plays I have had the pleasure of studying. Both of these offer ideas and atmosphere for gamers, including "What If" scenarios. The inspiration behind today's strip is of course William Shakespeare's 450th birthday- can you imagine the scale of cake needed for 450 candles? Probably the size equivalent of his second best bed, famously left by Will to his wife Anne Hathaway. Would she have prefered a bed size cake instead?

I have a couple of recommendations at this point;

a) If you've not seen it, look out for the film version of Richard the Third starring Magneto Ian McKellen set in an alternative 1930s fascist England. The plot is unchanged, but the film has a great look, McKellen is terrific..

b) If you enjoy alternative history fiction, try Ruled Brittania by Harry Turtledove. Here William Shakespeare writes for the theatre in an England conquered by the Spanish Armada. 

Happy Shakespeare's birthday.

Happy Easter!

Sometimes a big imagination can be a distraction..

Aaah, the joy of setting up an easter egg hunt for young children to enjoy. In our house when the kids were young, the hunt sometimes came with maps and clues to follow. Fun for the whole family.

Have a great day.

Gaming with Dad

The dedicated gamer will find ways to involve and interest his children in his hobby....

..whether they want it or not!

The Joy of Shopping!

One of the joys in being a gamer is finding something he never realised he needed on a trip he never really wanted to go on....

.. a possible downside however is buying plenty of things that he's never going to play with!