Blog Archives
Carceral Draftsman
The ‘Enlightenment,’ which discovered the liberties, also invented the disciplines.
That’s the most oft-quoted line from Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, probably because it’s such an apt summation from an author who, let’s face it, preferred discursive barrel-rolls to punchy thesis statements. Liberty and discipline are the topics of Dan Bullock’s latest board game, a term I’m employing loosely but not unfavorably. The game in question is called Penitent, it’s about constructing and managing a prison in the early 19th century in the United States, and it’s either the second or fifth of Bullock’s provocations on the issue of justice, depending on how liberally we stretch the concept.
Chalice of Bananas
I promise this won’t become a food review. Although if you could see the embarrassingly touristy pictures of what I spent the past weekend eating in New Orleans, you would understand the impulse. The story of how I came to be trapped in a not-as-haunted-as-advertised hotel with sixteen game designers and wargaming wonks isn’t as exciting as it could have been. Short version: I had a flight voucher two months shy of expiration.
But the games — oh, the games.
There’s no need to cover all of them. You already know how to play Two Truths And A Lie — the key is in the title — and my brisk review of Matt Calkins’ Charioteer is that it’s too arithmetical for its own good. Instead, here are the weekend’s two standouts.
SPACE-BIFF! 