Mike Selinker's page

"Stonehenge; Easy enough to demo when you're hung over!"

Pretty much what I was aiming for. Especially since I... well, anyway, it was a great convention.

Mike

Anyhow, just curious if while Stonehenge was being designed, if this crossed the Stonehenge design crew's mind.

Not that I'm aware of. Interesting, though.

Mike

I don't think that's the logically intuitive rule, especially in a game anthology that include Bruno Faidutti's political game where tying for the lead is worse than coming in third alone. We played it (or started anyway) by the written rule (since we didn't read the example at all), which drives a strategy of placing other's guards on a Trilithon to force the leaders to tie, thus helping yourself to a share where your were way behind.

Yeah, but that is Bruno's game, not Richard B's. Trust me, I'm mad enough that the example's wrong. Don't try to get me to believe the corrected rule isn't the rule it should be. :^)

Another question: in a four-player Ghost Knights game, how exactly are the initial guards distributed? Four cards each of four colors unevenly to five trilithons? Four cards each of five colors, and place out "neutral" guards? Four of four evenly to only four trilithons?

Four cards of four colors unevenly to five trilithons.

Mike

I would like to get an image of the Stonehenge game or box for a Myspace group dedicated to Stonehenge, or any other place. Are there any basic rules for using them? Any images, say off Boardgame Geek I could download and them upload on Myspace? Or a picture of the game here?

You can use the picture of the game from our site, or take one of the box yourself. You can also use the cover image from BGG.

Mike

I had a really good week last week, as two games that I've been working on for a while came out. Both involve good friends of mine, so I figured I'd take a moment to tell you about them. If you feel like indulging me, read on.

The first, as you may know, is from Paizo's Titanic Games imprint, called Stonehenge: An Anthology Board Game. It's a project I worked on with Richard Garfield, Bruno Faidutti, Richard Borg, and James Ernest (and later Paul Peterson, Bruno Cathala and Serge Laget, Andy Looney, Klaus-Jurgen Wrede, and Paizo's own Jason Bulmahn, among more to come). It's an anthology board game, which means a bunch of game designers take the same pieces and write different games for them. It's open source, meaning that if you're a game designer or want to be one, you can write for it too. I hope you will.

Another game I'm excited about is Unspeakable Words, from Playroom Entertainment. It's a Call of Cthulhu word game, where the words you form can cost you sanity. It's just about the only word game where exercising your big vocabulary can lose you the game. This game has the distinction of being the only one I ever wrote entirely in my sleep. I was at a convention at my friend Monte Cook's house, and had the opportunity to play Arkham Horror and Scrabble on the same day. I went to sleep, and woke up with that game fully formed in my head. I made it to a pen and paper, and two hours later, I was playing it with Sue Cook, Monte's wife. It was the encouragement from Sue and Cindi Rice (both former TSR editors, by the way) that got me to work toward getting it published, and a few years later, Playroom has put it out. So if it sounds like fun to you, I hope you'll check it out.

Anyway, a good week. Thanks for listening.

Mike

The PDF creation for this game is broke. Also, this game appears to me to be more political than negotiating. Do players negotiate with each other to pull votes together?

Good call, Doc. I uploaded this for Volker, and I picked the wrong category. It's political now.

Mike

Now, can we have a category for trick-taking games?

That's a game mechanic, and I'm loath to have all the game mechanic categories up there. But maybe down the road.

The deck is a unique animal. I would love to buy a larger version of it as stand alone also.

I've been thinking about this very subject recently. No plans or anything, but it's been on my mind.

Mike

First fan-submitted Stonehenge game! Rich Hutnik is my new favorite person on the whole planet. Yay, Rich Hutnik!

Mike

What I mean is that the rule should be "When there is a tie, all tied players advance their glory." I think this is a logically intuitive rule, but it's very slightly not what the rule says, and it's definitely not what the example says.

Mike

Example 2 states that blue, white and green all advance four glory, even though green had only two guards on duty (while blue and white tied for highest with four).

Darn it. Nope, that's not correct. Green is not entitled to any points there.

Mike

You should add a link to Stonehenge Rocks here as well. Not played yet, but sounds fun as well.

Go here.

So I assume the guards at the base can be removed in the same manner as the guards on top of the trilithon?

Yes. For all purposes, they're guards just like any other.

Actually, we didn't really mean that the guards are placed anywhere differently. The word "onto" meant "at the base of" to us, though I can see how that could be confusing.

Mike

"Remove the trilithon cards from the deck, and shuffle the rest. Reshuffle the cards, again without the trilithon cards."

Whoops. Those are essentially the same sentence, just repeated.

Essentially, those are identical sentences, written one right after the other.

I don't know how that could have happened.

Mike

In Arthurian Ghost Knights, if a player plays a black card and chooses to place the guard of another player, does he or she still get to move one space on the glory track and place a sword on the altar?

No. The black card gives you a choice, but you don't get all of the benefits of playing another player's color.

during the setup guards are randomly distributed at the base of trilithons, while later guards are placed on the trilithons. Is there a distinction? If so, what purpose do the guards at the base of the trilithons serve?

There's no disctinction. They're there to make sure that each trilithon has a different value to each player. So if at the start of the game, you and an opponent have two guards at the base of one trilithon, you're a lot more likely to fight over that one.

Hope that helps.

Mike

Crushing people with rocks is fun.

That said, our office playtests had some unfortunate results, until Lisa, ever mindful of human resources issues, suggested we use the BOARD for playtesting.

Mike

The high druid: Can a player look at his own fetish and taboo stone cards before they are revealed during scoring? Do these cards represent a hidden agenda that the player knows, or are they a surprise random element in scoring?

You should look at your own fetish and taboo cards as soon as you get them. You're not supposed to be surprised by your own cards.

Magic of Stonehenge: Are discarded cards shuffled back into the draw deck at any time? If so, when? When the draw deck is exhausted or at the end of each round?

Reshuffle when the deck runs out. (This is one of those "default rules" of card games, where if it's not there, and there's no statement about what happens when you get to the end of the deck, you should reshuffle when you do.)

Pete, congratulations on being the first member of the forum to be confused by the rules. :^)

Mike

As you may have noticed, I wrote five puzzles in the Stonehenge series, and there are five games in the box. Each puzzle matches one of the games in some oblique way. What follows are the answers to all the puzzles. These are all spoilers, so if you want to solve the puzzles, don't click the spoiler buttons.

Autumnal Equinox Puzzle

Samhain Puzzle

Winter Solstice Puzzle

Imbolc Puzzle

Vernal Equinox Puzzle

Thanks for playing along!

Don't be misled by the fact that it's free—"Stonehenge Rocks" is really fun, and completely on par with the five games in the actual Stonehenge box.

Let me second this. Paul completely hit the Spinal Tap vibe, with players running around the festival not sure where they're going. Definitely check this one out.

Mike

When I heard about Dragon and Dungeon going away, I was pretty bummed out. I've been a reader since The Dragon #27, and my icon is a portrait that Stan! drew for a Dragon piece we did on fantasy movies. Dragon was where I wrote the first of my three gaming adaptations of Stonehenge (the other two being Risk Godstorm and the upcoming Stonehenge board game), and Dungeon let me turn my three favorite Shakespeare plays into D&D adventures. As our big team at WotC R&D put together 3rd Edition, I got to watch the magazines morph and grow into something new. I'd seen every transition the magazines had made, and didn't much like what the last transition would be.

But in the last nine months or so, I've gotten to see Paizo from the inside, as I've helped them launch the Titanic Games board game line. And well before this transition, Lisa and her crew were thinking about the future of Paizo. They'd launched a strong online store, and put out some solid game books and accessories. And what I saw was a company that was about to turn all the skills it gained kicking out magazines into a full-fledged entertainment company.

I've seen the Pathfinder line, and it's gorgeous. I've seen what's in Erik's fiction-packed brain regarding Planet Stories, and the gleam in his eye is the same one I had when I got to get all my favorite comics artists to work on my Marvel games. And I've had everybody at Paizo--everybody--hovering over my shoulder on the board game plans, contributing idea after idea. Stonehenge wouldn't be what it will be without Vic, Jason, Joshua, Jeremy, Sean, Jeff, Phil, Erik and the rest of the Paizo folks playtesting, critiquing and writing board game material. And I listen, because they really know what they're talking about. They've come a long way from just being a magazine company.

I've seen a lot of the things on the schedule for Paizo in the next months, and I'm here to tell you that there's a decent chance you'll like it all. Anyway, it'll be worth your time to check it out. Thanks for listening.

Mike

OK, I think I've got this right now.....

Yup. Apologies for the errors.

Mike

Should the line with 4/3/9 blanks be 3/3/9 instead?

Should the line with 7/9 blanks be 6/9 instead?
** spoiler omitted **
On the solution page the title of the "littleBeardy.jpg" image has the wrong puzzle number.
-LB

Darn it, I can't count. Yes, those two lines should be fixed:

Gary, please update these. Thanks much.

And Lurker, nice spoiler.

Mike

Mike Selinker pointed out several things that I need to fix.... which I'm doing right now. I'll post again when the puzzle is correct.

Edit: I think I've fixed the puzzle now. One line was missing, and a couple others had the wrong number of spaces.

Also, Mike is evil.

It is all fixed (thanks, Gary!), and I'm not evil, I'm just drawn that way.

Mike

I'm reduced to random guessing.

Don't guess. Once you know everything you need to know about I-V, think about what would go exactly where you're trying to put it. Think especially about the PLACE you're trying to put it.

Mike

There's an unwritten rule in crosswords that the answer to a clue doesn't appear in the clue.

That rule is written. It's called "The error that cannot be named."

Mike

There are a couple of different strategies for solving this puzzle (which was designed by the ever-so-crafty Mike Selinker, by the way).

And illustrated by the ever-so-talented Corey Macourek, and graphic designed by the ever-so-visionary Sean Glenn, and coded by the ever-so-technical Gary Teter, and coordinated by the ever-so-organized Josh Frost, and beaten within an inch of its life by the ever-so-humble Vic Wertz.

I'm glad folks enjoyed it. I'm looking forward to being pilloried at Samhain.

Mike

I looked at the six degrees image -- is it limited to just certain game companies or certain types of games?

The updated version I mentioned above seems to get a lot of companies and a lot of game types. I think they all have boards and cards, though. Shannon's done an amazing job with that thing.

Mike

Oh, and that map of game designers? Crazy.

There's an updated version here:

I can't wait to see what Stonehenge does to that chart. It'll probably become a tesseract.

Mike

the only thing i'm sure of is that i feel like the recipient of a feeblemind spell.

You know, as Freud once might have said, sometimes a "T" is just a "T."

Mike

Well, it is the T from Titanic games placed curiously...

Indeed. What did you do to cause the T to appear? And why a "T," exactly?

Mike

Perhaps treating the grouping of trilithons in the center as one unit might help.

Mike

There is no article there Mike.

How mysterious. Just like Stonehenge, I guess. Well, what I found interesting was this:

"The builders of Stonehenge left no alphabet but knew astronomy: the lintel
stones and the "heel stone" to the east of the circles form a giant sundial
in line with the summer solstice. English Heritage has done extensive
radiocarbon dating of the site, dating antlers in the surrounding ditch to
3000 B.C., many of the main stones to between 2800 and 2200 B.C., and other
parts to 1400 B.C. To some archeologists, the most amazing thing about
Stonehenge is not the construction itself but the huge span of time, more
than 1,500 years, in which it held an active place in prehistoric society."

Here was another article I found interesting. Mostly the last paragraph before the correction, really.

http://tech2.nytimes.com/mem/technology/techreview.html?res=9A06E0DC1630F93 6A15750C0A96F958260

Mike

I found this an interesting website. I'm not sure how useful it is, but it might spark some theories.

http://wwp.greenwichstar.com/solstice/stonehenge.htm

Mike

I just woke up to see Stonehenge shrouded in fog. Maybe if someone lets a mouse loose on Stonehenge, it'll shed some light on things.

Mike

Where can I post or send my solution? I think I know it.

I would be mightily impressed by that. That date and time is important, and we aren't there quite yet.

Mike

That's just cruel.

Perhaps. Well, not long from now, that puzzle will illuminate things. Stay tuned.

Mike