gaming – Mom Read It

How my Thursday afternoon Math Club became a Thursday afternoon Gaming Club (and still has math!)

Posted on August 3, 2022August 3, 2022 by Rosemary Kiladitis

I’ve been having a great time with Math Clubs at my library lately. I know, Math Club, right? Aren’t most kids supposed to run screaming from Math Club? Not the Crazy 8s Math Club. Grab a nice, cold water, have a seat, let’s talk.

Most of the kids in my library community need help with math. Math can be intimidating and frustrating for them – I know it is for me – and it can be difficult to see the fun side of it. I had the idea of running a math club where we could play numbers games and taking some of that fear out of Math, so I started researching, and found Crazy 8s, a Math Club that developed out of the Bedtime Math Foundation. I was already familiar with the Bedtime Math app, having used it to do daily math games with my Kiddo when he was little, so finding out they had a Math Club was great news! The format reminds me of Girls Who Code, in that you get kits mailed to you, with lessons, for 8 weeks worth of math club sessions for Season 1, and there’s a coach login area with extra resources. I had a call with a Crazy 8s representative and about a week later, two boxes showed up!

I run two clubs every week: one for grades K-2, one for grades 3-5, and the sessions have been wonderful. Our first week, we did glow-in-the-dark geometry: Crazy 8s provided the glow-in-the-dark sticks, the kids provided the building knowledge to make the shapes. We counted sides, we talked about shapes and how many sides different shapes have and what we call them, and the kids had a blast.

Another week, we had hacky sack darts: Crazy 8s provided the hacky sacks and a floor-sized dartboard. We added up numbers, we played “darts”, and we had four teams compete with fun challenges, all while they were doing math. We had Beach Ball math another week, where they had to count how many breaths it took for me to blow up a beach ball (and not pass out), and called out math problems as they played catch.

The verdict: Get yourselves in on Crazy 8s Math Club. I am absolutely going for another season come the Fall! The website is super user-friendly and it’s a great program to run.

My Thursday group is the Grades 3-5 Math Club. They enjoy the games, but when time was up, they lingered around, wanting more. I’d been holding onto some games to introduce in September, particularly Dungeons & Dragons, but I figured there was no time like the present. I brought out character sheets and started explaining the idea of “storytelling, but with math” to my Corona Kids, and they were intrigued. I showed them the different kinds of dice – that was pretty great; I forget that a 20-sided die is a new thing to some people! – and explained how to work percentile dice. We started creating a quick adventure where one kid, playing a dwarf, had to roll his Intelligence to see what he could read; another kid, playing a wizard, got to roll Magic Missile to stop an orc bearing down on him. They loved it, I loved it, and we decided that Thursdays would now be Dungeons and Dragons math club. Huzzah!

The joy was increased tenfold when a friend put a link up on my Facebook page with the news that Wizards of the Coast – the company that owns Dungeons and Dragons AND the Magic: The Gathering card game – is providing activity kits to educators and librarians who want to start a Dungeons and Dragons group. I filled my form out, and my kit will arrive in the Fall! Until then, I’ll use the Starter Set I have at home from when my older kids were younger, and some of the freebies available on the Dungeons & Dragons resources area.

I mentioned Magic: The Gathering, which is a great fantasy card game that I played years ago, when my family and I learned it at the Wizards of the Coast pavilion at New York Comic Con. My cards have been dormant for a while, but that changed when I discovered this great nonprofit, MagiKids by Weirdcards. MagiKids is a nonprofit that has an education curriculum built around Magic: The Gathering! You fill out a form on their website, and they may send you a massive bunch of stuff. Look at this!

That’s not even the whole thing. I received this big card box full of donated M:TG cards; unopened booster packs, deck boxes for when the kids put together their decks, and score counters. It is INCREDIBLE. I was holding onto this one until September, too, but when the kids became so excited over Dungeons and Dragons, I had to introduce them to Magic. Sure enough, they couldn’t believe their eyes. We talked a little bit about the game, I let them open the boosters (honestly, it’s just so exciting), and we talked about MagiKids’s Sort, Build, Play curriculum. For the first week, we looked through the cards, talked about the different colors and what powers, what cards, attached to those colors. We talked about the numbers on the cards and what they meant; we talked about how many types of colors they could have in their decks (I suggested two to start, but agreed that yes, you can play all the lands in your deck if you want to). This coming week, we’ll talk about building their first decks. I may take that up to two weeks, because honestly, that’s a lot.

So for now, that’s it: Wednesdays is Crazy 8s for my Kindergarteners, First, and Second graders; Thursday, my bigger kids will have their Crazy 8s club, and then we’ll alternate between D&D and M:TG every week. I think I may be more excited than they are!

Image courtesy of DND Sage Advice

gaming, geek culture, Librarianing

Free RPG Day, and what can libraries do next year?

Posted on June 28, 2022 by Rosemary Kiladitis

Earlier this year, I learned that Free RPG Day is a thing! Similar to Free Comic Book Day, gaming stores can purchase kits with free modules and giveaways to promote role-playing games. I mentioned this to our gaming committee, and we were EXCITED. It’s right in line with what we want to do, and bring gaming to our library spaces. We didn’t hear about it early enough to plan events for it, so we discussed what to do, and decided we’d continue to promote gaming in our branches and mention that Free RPG was coming up, and encourage our patrons to visit their local retailers for goodies.

SO! My teen and I hit the local gaming store in our area – shout out to Gamestoria in Astoria, Queens! – and picked up some modules. The staff is fantastic, very approachable and knowledgeable. We picked up:

Epic Encounters: Bridge of the Duerger Cult, from Steamforged Games (compatible with D&D 5e, playable for novices through experienced players). I saw this box set at GaryCon earlier this year and wanted to give them all the money. This free module gives me a chance to play, get a feel for gameplay and ease, and with luck, I’ll be able to invest in this for my library (or home. Or both.)

Dungeon Crawl Classics: Danger in the Air!, from Goodman Games. My brother-in-law introduced me to Dungeon Crawl Classics back in March, when we were at GaryCon. They put out consistently good modules (I have a few that I picked up in March), and they are great about giving free modules away at events, to promote their games. DCCs are stand-alone and world-neutral; it’s compatible with Dungeons and Dragons 5e. This is a Level 0 adventure; great for introducing new players to a D&D-type world.

Also from Goodman Games, the Teen picked up Three Wizard Conundrum, another 5e compatible module. This one is better for 3rd or 4th level players.

I was so excited for this one! Root is a roleplaying game from Magpie Games, where players play woodland creatures in a fantasy setting. I loved the Mouse Guard comics, (also an RPG!) and I am all about anything that lets me be a cute woodland creature who’s also a little badass, so this speaks to me. This year, Magpie gave out a Quickstart module for their Talon Hill story, and I cannot wait to show this to my library kids (because my 10 year old is already on board for this one). It’s an E for Everyone game, so definitely get a good look at this one.

Finally, we get to A Familiar Problem, a one-page RPG from Darrington Press, the tabletop publishing arm of Critical Role, a weekly livestreamed show that’s also a roleplaying campaign. One of the folx at Gamestoria talked this one up for me, and I am so glad. In A Familiar Problem, the players are familiars – magical creatures who assist magic users (think Hedwig in Harry Potter). Players can pick from 12 different Familiars, including Bats, Lizards, Owls, or Hawks. The point of the game is to go on your own adventure with your Familiar companions when your magic users are away, and how can you NOT talk that up? My Teen devoured Adam Jay Epstein’s series The Familiars when he was a middle grader, and immediately said, “We’re playing this, Mom.” Again, this looks like a quick, easy, fun game to bring to your younger gamers as well as your more experienced gamers. Because honestly, who doesn’t want to be a smart alecky raven who can summon a horse? (Yes, that’s absolutely going to be me.)

There was much more available, but I wanted to make sure other people had a chance to get stuff. For those of you, like us, new to Free RPG Day, let me also direct you to Level 1, an anthology of indie RPGs collected and distributed for free by 9th Level Games. There’s something for everyone in these (I’ve downloaded 2020’s and 2021’s), and am hoping to use one or two of these this summer in my branch’s RPG program.

So this is great, but how can libraries get involved? I’d love to work with Free RPG Day to buy kits to distribute at my branch! I’m waiting to hear from Free RPG Day on how we can work together in the future, but until then, here are some things I’ve been thinking of:

Keep an eye on when Free RPG Day is happening, and plan events close to the day. Follow Free RPG Day on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram; bookmark the Free RPG Day website.
Schedule some roleplaying events! I’m keeping PDFs of RPGs (including Level 1 anthologies and Free RPG Day modules) in a binder at Reference, ready for anyone who wants to try something out while at the library.
Search DriveThruRPG for freebies. There is a search feature that includes price, language, genre, and more; navigate and find games to introduce.
Promote your gaming library! If your branch or system has RPG books and resources, promote them with displays, flyers, bookmarks, or anything you want to come up with.
Get in touch with Free RPG Day and ask how libraries can work with them! The best way to show the people behind Free RPG Day that we are interested is to let them know we’re here and willing to help.

More resources for your RPG collection:

Dungeons & Dragons were superstars during the 2020 shutdown, making a lot of their gaming modules available for free. You can download the Basic Rules at the DnD website. The Basic Rules is a 180-page document that runs from Levels 1-20 and covers major classes: cleric, fighter, rogue, and wizard, with a handful of race options (dward, elf, halfing, human). It’s a quick and affordable way to get started. Visit DnD’s downloadable’s page for free adventures and character sheets. Hit Dice Cove’s webpage for more DnD-related downloadable adventures. WhatNerd has a good article on more DnD freebies.

And if you’re ready to start planning for another upcoming RPG Day, D20 is December 20th!

gaming, Librarianing, Middle Grade, Teen, Tween Reads

Tabletop Tuesdays with Nightmarium

Posted on June 16, 2022 by Rosemary Kiladitis

I’ve been behind on… well, everything, but especially on my gaming posts. Our gaming club is coming along nicely, and since I’ve sent Carcassone out to the next library on the rotation, the kids are back to playing the games we’ve got in house and the goodies I bring from my home stash. The last couple of weeks, Nightmarium has been all the rage here – and why not? It’s creating monsters that turn on one another with glee! I backed Nightmarium as a Kickstarter a few years ago, and it has been a mainstay of gaming in my own home. You don’t need to read to play, the monsters are hilariously weird, and game play moves along at a good pace. Let’s dig in.

Nightmarium: A Game About Conquering Nightmares, Ares, Igrology, et al (2014)
Ages The box says 10+; I’ve actively played this with my then 5-year-old, and easily explained to 7-10 year-olds here at the library. I’d go 7+
Play time: 20-30 minutes, depending on number of players
Number of players: 2-5

Find Nightmarium on Board Game Geek

The monsters featured in this game are a group of Night Terrors ready to haunt your dreams. The backstory is fun, organizing the monsters, by color, into four Legions of Horror. The backstory isn’t necessary for game play, but it adds to the fun. Each legion has its own color: blue stands for Necromunculi, brown for Constricti, green for Chimeridae, and red for Mansters.

Cards come in three types: feet/legs, trunks/bodies, and heads. Some cards can serve multiple functions, like this striking fella, who can be either a head or a body:

Players get two actions per turn. You can:

draw a card from the top of the deck
play a card from your hand
discard cards and redraw: one card for every two you discard

If you draw a card and play a card, that’s two actions. If you draw two cards, that’s two actions. If you draw two cards and you want to play the second card, you have to wait until it’s your turn again; playing that card would be a third action. You can discard two cards, draw one card to replace them, AND play or draw another card. That counts as two actions.

You have to assemble your monsters from the bottom up. Feet first; if you have a handful of really great heads, that’s awesome, but you have to start from the feet. There’s no hand minimum or maximum; if you don’t want to get rid of any of your cool head cards, keep them, and keep drawing until you get feet you want to play to start things off.

When you complete a monster, congrats! See those See those pictures in the upper right hand corner of most cards (not all have them)? Those are different abilities that activate once you complete a monster.

Watch out for that Devourer – you have to cut one of YOUR Creatures’ heads off, not your opponents! This can actually be a good thing, because you can add another head and reactivate powers, if you have good ones. It’s a good secret weapon to have. Creature powers are only active when the Creature is completed – not every turn, and not while under construction.

Okay, let’s talk about Legions. I don’t tend to play Legions at the library, because I modify to make things as simple and fun as possible for my younger gaming kids. Legions, like I said before, are organized by color. You don’t HAVE to create Creatures with all parts from the same Legion, though – you’ll still get your abilities when you complete one. Look:

Here’s a creature composed of parts from all different Legions (Notice the bottom in #2 can also function as the middle in #3). In #1, the Creature has only one power to activate: the Scavenger, where the player can discard any incomplete creature belonging to another player. If I’m playing against this player, and I have a 2- or 1-card Creature under construction, that player can say goodbye to it, and I have to put it in the Discard pile.

The #2 Creature has Scavenger and the Herald, which lets that player reveal two cards from the deck, face up, so all other players can see it, and play them if they can. If the player gets a pair of feet, awesome; they can play it. If the player draws a body and a head, they can only play them if they have under construction Creatures that can use those cards. Anything that the player can’t use right then and there goes in the Discard pile.

Other powers include the Weeper, which lets the player draw two cards from the deck. They don’t have to play them, they just add them, regardless of what they are.

The Mocker lets you play one card from your hand.

The Executioner lets you take another player’s top card – heads, but also anything that’s on top – if you have a monster under construction and the top card you have is a body, your opponent can take that with Executioner. Cards claimed when someone plays Executioner goes into the player’s hand, not the Discard pile.

Playing abilities does NOT count toward your actions! If the first move you make during your turn is to complete a monster, you play the abilities, and THEN play your second action. It’s pretty awesome.

Okay, so let’s talk about Legions. Like I said, I tend not to play Legions because it’s easier for younger kids to just get used to playing cards, but playing Legions can mix things up for extra fun. Match the colors of your creatures to trip up your opponents: when you finish a monster with cards from the same Legion, everyone else has to discard a card of that Legion OR discard any two cards. Look:

Here’s we’ve got a Manster and a Constricti. If you were to complete these guys on your turn, everyone else would have to discard either one red card and one brown card. If your opponents don’t have those colors? Get rid of any TWO cards per color. Have a red, but no brown? Discard a red and two other cards. Have only blue and green in your hand? Discard four.

You don’t have to complete two at a time; I just took a picture of these two together. But you catch my drift.

Okay, if you are playing Legions, you also have to be careful when you’re putting down cards. If you play a card belonging to a certain Legion, your second action cannot be to play a card from another Legion. If you put down a red pair of legs, you can’t play a blue pair of legs or put a brown body down next. (This is why I don’t play Legion with my library kids yet.)

That’s about it! First player to complete five Creatures wins the game! I play this game pretty regularly at home with my own family; it’s one of my 10-year-old’s favorite games. The library kids ask for this every Monday and Tuesday (our gaming days), too; it’s fun, you can be as silly as you want, and the opportunity for good-natured smack talk is mighty. While Board Game Geek lists it as only available via eBay, I’ve seen it available in several places online, including GameNerdz, Boarding School Games, and Target. Average price is about $20, and it’s well worth the cost. This one will become a foundation game for a lot of collections.

If you feel like testing before you buy, head over to Tabletopia and play online for free!

Happy Gaming!

gaming, Middle Grade, Teen, Tween Reads

Tabletop Tuesdays with Carcassone

Posted on May 7, 2022 by Rosemary Kiladitis

Next up, we have Carcassone. My library system’s gaming committee sent our first bin of games over, so I have 10 copies each of Carcassone and 10 of 7 Wonders. I’m still trying to work out 7 Wonders, so we played Carcassone.

I initially brought the game home to playtest with my kids, so I’d be able to figure out modifications, if necessary, for my younger kids, but this was pretty straightforward out of the box, so let’s go.

Carcassone, Z-Man Games (2000)
Ages 7+ (the box says 7+; for my library kids, I’d go 8-10+)
Play time: 45-60 minutes
Number of players: 2-5

Carcassone has been around for over 20 years; it’s won awards; it’s been translated into 22 languages; it’s got expansions. It’s considered, according to Wil Wheaton, to be “one of the four pillars of classic European-style board gaming”; Settlers of Catan, Alhambra, and Ticket to Ride forming the other 3 pillars. It’s a tile-laying game that’s surprisingly straightforward to play and teach.

The Plot: You and your fellow players are creating the French medieval city of Carcassone. To do this, you’ll turn over tiles to reveal different parts of the landscape, and you must create and claim your lands.

Medieval gerrymandering? No, it’s Carcassone! (my photo)

There are rules all players must adhere to: roads (those squiggly beige lines) must connect to other roads. Cities (the walled brown areas) must connect to other parts of the cities. Meeples (the cute little blue guys you see in the above photo) claim different areas as you build them. There are five groups of Meeples: green, red, blue, black, and yellow. Choose your color, and start building. As you play each tile, use your Meeples to claim area. Meeples placed on roads are highwaymen, for those folx who love a bad guy; claim the cities and be a knight; lay your Meeple down on the green areas to be a farmer; claim a monastery (the pointy buildings in the center of the photo) and be a monk. Each of these areas get scored differently:

Putting your meeple on a road claims that road, but you do not score points until the road is complete. It has to lead from somewhere to somewhere. Each tile your road touches is worth one point; my road above leads from one monastery to another, and touches 5 tiles, so that’s 5 points.
Putting your meeple on a city means you’re a knight protecting that city. You do not score points until the city has been completed. See my Meeple above, next to the monastery? That city touches 3 tiles; those tiles are worth 2 points each, so my Knight has 6 points. See that larger city toward the left hand side of the picture? That is a much bigger city, AND has several shields. Those shields are worth an additional 2 points per shield, so that city, which was still under construction when I took this picture, is worth 22 points: 16 points because it spreads across 8 tiles, plus 6 points for the 3 shields within.
Monasteries get 1 point for every tile enclosing them in the area – basically, monasteries get 9 points; they’re surrounded by 8 tiles, and the monastery makes 9.\
Farms are big points, because farmers are scored by the number of completed cities that touch their fields. Start Your Meeples has an excellent way to describe scoring farm points, and I highly recommend this article. Farmers get 3 points for each city.

As you complete your areas, you take your Meeples back, ready to guard (and rob) the next area of the burgeoning city. Use the scoreboard to keep track of your scores.

Okay, a couple of observations during gameplay. You will inadvertently help your opponents sometimes, depending on the tile you draw. My son and I, on our first couple of plays, initially thought we could undercut one another by placing tiles that didn’t connect to anything, to block progress. Don’t do that! After reading more blogs and watching several gameplay videos, we figured out that Carcassone is kind of cooperative, kind of not in that way. Think of it like you’re building a map. It needs to make sense at the end of the day.

Play the short game and the long game for best use of your Meeples! Can you build a 2-tile city? YES. Don’t get hung up on only building gigantic cities, because I promise you, it will bite you on the backside. Ditto for starting roads that have no end. If, toward the end of the game, you have no Meeples to place, you get no points for tiles laid! Make that 3-tile road; build that 2-tile city; get your Meeples and keep going.

Wil Wheaton calls the River Expansion a great way to get beginners used to the process of laying tiles, and he’s right. There are 12 river tiles that must be played first, and you can’t put Meeples on the river, so it’s just a nice, easy way to start the game; scoring goes as usual, and we got into the swing of things without stressing where to place Meeples by doing this. I didn’t play the Abbots part of the expansion yet, though, so if you have played it and want to share your thoughts, PLEASE do.

After a few plays at home, my son and I got into a good rhythm of gameplay, and I was easily able to show our library’s after-school coordinator and one of our children’s librarians how to play. I’m looking forward to reporting back on how the kids took to it this coming Tuesday!

All in All: A fun, creative game that guarantees you’ll never play the same game twice. Easy to explain to younger kids; I think our middle graders and middle schoolers are going to be a strong group for this game, and I feel like the few teens I get (hopefully more, by this summer!) will be into this. As popular as Carcassone is, I’ve yet to meet more than a handful of folx who’ve actually played it (kind of like me, with Settlers of Catan).

If you’d like to watch gameplay videos, I highly recommend Wil Wheaton’s Tabletop episode and Watch It Played’s Carcassone episode, both of which I’m embedding here. Both YouTube accounts are great for learning gameplay for a wealth of different games and are worth subscribing to the feeds.

gaming, Intermediate, Middle Grade, programs

Tabletop Tuesdays with Tem-Purr-A

Posted on May 7, 2022 by Rosemary Kiladitis

I started up my Tabletop Tuesdays a couple of weeks ago for the first time since the Before Times, and I was so happy with the response, I thought I’d start writing about our gaming group.

I have mostly younger kids in my library community – we don’t have a zoned high school near us, and we’re not open for Saturday or Sunday service, so my high school kids are likely hanging out in neighborhoods where their schools are. This informs my gaming choices, to be sure; the lion’s share of my kids are 0-12, with the 5-8 year-old range being the biggest attendees for our programs. So in addition to the usual suspects: Uno, Monopoly and Monopoly Jr., Candyland, and Connect 4, I introduced Tem-Purr-A, a card game that’s similar to Uno, but with more indigestion.

Tempurra, IelloGames (2011)
Ages 8+ (6+ with modifications)
Play time: 15-20 minutes
Number of players: 3-10

The Plot: It’s an eating contest! All the players are cats, passing dishes back and forth among each other, but every card you pick brings you closer to indigestion. If you get three indigestion counters, it’s all over; go get some Alka-Seltzer and relax.

The art is adorable: various cats, brandishing gloriously overflowing dishes. Separate the Indigestion cards from the other cards, shuffle, deal 5 to each player. Put one of the Indigestion cards in the remaining pile.

Images courtesy of Iello Games

Gameplay happens over several rounds. The first player chooses a dish card from their hand and puts it face-up on the table. The next player can either:

Serve a Dish: play a card with the same value (if a card has a value of 6, the player must play a card from their hand with a value of 6)
Eat a Mouthful: Draw the same number of cards as the value of the played card (if you don’t have a 6 card, draw 6 cards). At this point, if you haven’t drawn an Indigestion card, discard the stack you’ve been playing on, and start a new stack by playing a card from your hand.
If you DO draw an Indigestion card, the round is over: the person who got the Indigestion card gets an Indigestion counter; they add the cards they’ve drawn to their hand, and the deck is reshuffled, adding an additional Indigestion card to the mix. The stakes get higher with every Indigestion card revealed, because you’re adding MORE to the deck!
Play an Action Card: Rather than Serve a Dish or Eat a Mouthful, players can play an action card if they have one in their hand. Action cards let you reverse the action, throwing the game back into the previous player’s lap; pass over yourself and have the next player take an action, OR add one dish to the total of dishes to be eaten. If you have a card with a value of 3 showing, and you play a +1 card, the next player must play a card with a face value of 3 OR draw four cards.
Skip a Dish: If you don’t have a card with a face value of the card in play, but have multiple cards of another value, you can play those and Skip the Dish offered. If that 3-card is face up, and you don’t have a 3, but you have a pair of 6 cards, throw them down! Then, clear the stack and start a new pile with the second 6-card facing up, and the next player must either match with a 6-card of their own, draw 6 cards, play an action card, or skip.

Gameplay ends when someone draws their third Indigestion card.

The kids really enjoyed this game, with some modifications. I made it even simpler for my younger kids by keeping it closer to Uno rules: match the cats by number or play an action. If you can’t match, take the number of cards on the displayed card. If you play a +1, the same rules apply as the game rules. I keep the rounds short, and hope to introduce skipping dishes in the next week or two, once the kids are comfortable with game play and pace.

All in All: Super fun for kids 8+, modified for ages 7-8 made it fun for my library kids. This is one of our favorite games at home, and I have my library kids actively looking for this one on game days now.

gaming

Gaming in the Library

Posted on April 25, 2022April 25, 2022 by Rosemary Kiladitis

Hi all! I meant to have books ready to go today, but you know what it’s like the first day back after vacation…

So, bookish posts resume tomorrow, but in the interest of getting a post out today, I thought I’d talk about gaming in my library.

I love tabletop gaming. Board games, roleplaying games, card games, I love them all, and I love getting kids interested in games beyond the usual ones. In the beforetimes, I had a pretty successful weekly tabletop gaming program at my library; I used to joke that it looked like I was running an illegal gambling ring, with tables full of kids playing cards and rolling dice. Now that it looks like in-person programming is back for good, I am thrilled at the hopeful return of my gaming group.

I’ve been warming the kids up with a gradual return, putting out a handful of the usual suspects: puzzles and matching games; Candyland; Connect 4; Uno; Chess, and Checkers. Tomorrow, I’m bringing some of my own games in to jumpstart the gaming: Monsters in the Elevator, which I’ve blogged about before, was a big fave before and I’m hoping will be again. It’s cooperative, easy to learn, and has kids laughing and doing math all at once. I’m going to bring my copy of Takeout: The Card Game, because I think it’s easy enough to play and it’s fun: create a perfectly balanced takeout meal!

Photo: Big Boss Battle

Our library system’s Gaming Committee was the recipient of one of our system’s Innovation Grants, which they used to buy copies of different games that will circulate in bins between different branches. My branch received our first bin last week, while I was on vacation, so I’m getting a little bit of a late start. Our first bin has 10 copies each of 7 Wonders and Carcassone, both of which I’m trying to learn well enough to teach. News on that as it develops; I’m hoping my 18 year old Kiddo will be of some assistance on that front.

I’ve got more gaming to talk about – I want to start a Dungeons & Dragons campaign this summer, and have been reading one-page dungeon adventures while I try to get ready to do that – so I’ll be posting more about that in the future. In the meantime, if you have gaming experience, I want to hear about it! Please chime in, and thanks.

gaming, Graphic Novels, Non-Fiction, Teen, Tween Reads, Young Adult/New Adult

Jon Chad’s graphic novel history of Pinball is great for gamer historians

Posted on January 4, 2022November 20, 2021 by Rosemary Kiladitis

Pinball: A Graphic History of the Silver Ball, by Jon Chad, (Feb. 2022, First Second), $24.99, ISBN: 9781250249210

Ages 10+

Before there was Atari, there was pinball. The first pinball machine made its debut around 1930 and captivated players from the beginning: so much that banned for being a “racket that fleeces children” and drive them to petty thievery”. In 1976, champion player Roger Sharpe played the game in a Manhattan courtroom to prove that pinball was a game of skill, not chance. Graphic novelist Jon Chad ‘s (Science Comics) graphic novel Pinball is the graphic history of the game, tracing its roots back to the Court of King Louis XIV, through its scandalous era in the 1930s, and renaissance in the 1970s, all the way up to the present day. It’s like Science Comics and History Comics, all put together in great volume. Jon Chad examines not only the artwork and cultural significance of the game – gaming fans, and pinball fans in particular, know all about the collectible, incredible artwork that went into the back glass and the game floor itself – but the physics of the game, and what makes it a game of skill.

Jon Chad’s artwork is colorful, filled with movement and amazing detail. He writes with expert knowledge and a true love of the game. This is an essential purchase for nonfiction graphic collections and anyone with a gaming collection.

Read an interview with Jon Chad at ComicsBeat, visit his author webpage for more comics and teaching resources, and have your own pinball/STEM program with these PBS Kids instructions or this pizza box pinball PDF from the UK’s Science Museum Group.

Fiction, Realistic Fiction, Teen, Young Adult/New Adult

Get ready to SLAY!

Posted on July 10, 2019July 9, 2019 by Rosemary Kiladitis

Slay, by Brittney Morris, (Sept. 2019, Simon Pulse), $18.99, ISBN: 978-1534445420

Ages 12+

This is one of the most buzzed-about YA books of the year, and with excellent reason. Slay is phenomenal.

Keira Johnson is a 17-year-old high school senior, math tutor, and one of a small handful of students of color at her high school, Jefferson Academy. Keira is at her happiest, though, when she steps into her character, Emerald, in the VR game she created: Slay. Slay is at once a competitive game and celebration of black culture, with hundreds of thousands of players. Slay lets black players inhabit a world where they don’t need to be a spokesperson for their race; they don’t need to code-switch to move in a white world; they can be, together, while competing in arenas and using cards that praise and elevate notable black men and women throughout history, and touchstones – both weighty and humorous – without having to explain or defend their meaning. Keira can’t let anyone know she’s the one behind Slay, though – her boyfriend, Malcolm, thinks video games are a way to keep young black men and women distracted and off balance, and she worries that her parents wouldn’t approve. But when a Slay-er is murdered over a Slay coin dispute, Keira finds her game the target of the media, who wants to call out the game and its creator as racist, and a dangerous troll, who threatens to take Keira to court for discrimination.

Slay is just brilliant writing. Gamers will love it for the gameplay and the fast-paced gaming action. The writing is sharp, with witty moments and thought-provoking ideas, including how a game can unite a community on a worldwide basis. Told mostly through Keira’s point of view, chapters also switch up to introduce readers to people affected by Slay, including a professor in his 30s and a closeted player living in potentially unsafe circumstances. There’s a strong thread of white deafness here, too – how white friends can ask things like, “Should I get dreadlocks?”, or provoke their “black friend” into speaking for the POC community to get the “different” point of view. Keira and her sister, Steph, come from a solid family, and Keira’s boyfriend, Malcolm, who wants black men and women to rise up together, but whose more radical worldview conflicts with many of Keira’s ideals.

Breathtaking characters that live off the page and in the imagination, fast-paced dialogue and a plot that just won’t quit make Slay required reading for upper tweens, teens, and adults alike. Give Slay all the awards, please.

Slay isn’t out until September, but you can catch an excerpt here at EW’s website. Bustle has a great piece on Slay and another excerpt, if you’re dying for more. Publisher’s Weekly has an article about Black Panther‘s influence on author Brittney Morris, which comes through in a big way through the pages of Slay, and the Slay website has sample cards from the game that you’ll love.

Fantasy, Fiction, Intermediate

5-Minute Stories for Minecrafters: Extreme Stories!

Posted on November 7, 2017 by Rosemary Kiladitis

5-Minute Stories for Minecrafters: Extreme Stories from the Extreme Hills, by Greyson Mann/Illustrated by Grace Sandford, (Sept. 2017, Sky Pony Press), $7.99, ISBN: 978-1-5107-2370-2