Chris Baer

The More Things Change: Updating Archie

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I’ve always had a soft spot for Archie and the gang, for reasons I prefer not to try to understand. Back in the 1980s, I read Archie comics in digest form—the small, bound reprints of stories from the various comic series—and I’ve kept a small collection of them around to read every so often in nostalgic fits.

Recently, I decided to hunt around on eBay for more of them, the way you do when you remember suddenly that everything you once had in your childhood can be bought online, and I picked up a small lot of Archie digests from the early 2000’s. (The fact that I used cash from a recent wargame sale to fund the purchase most likely invalidates my grognard credentials, but I’ll face up to that shame another time.)

Sitting down with the new digests, though, I was struck by how the basic plots were repeated from earlier digests: Archie can’t choose between Betty and Veronica, Reggie and Archie match wits against Mr. Weatherbee, Moose punches someone in the head for being on the same planet as Midge, etc. Of course, now Jughead was phoning in orders to Pop Tate on his cell phone and Dilton was doing research for Ms. Grundy via the Internet, but it was still Archie, right down to his 1950s-era jalopy.

And then I realized that some of the stories were exactly the same. Of course, a digest is a vehicle for repurposing stories that have already appeared, so I wasn’t too shocked. But when I ran across a old gag that relied on contemporary references, I noticed that the art may have been the same (though more crisply printed), but the text was updated:

Hip and Up to the Minute!

Curiously, the 1987 panel, from Betty and Veronica Comics Digest Magazine #25, originated in the 1970’s, judging by the shows referenced. It’s unclear why the writers felt comfortable using one real show name (Six Million Dollar Man) but resorted to fake names for Happy Days and Hawaii Five-O. The 2002 digest panel, from Archie’s Double Digest #134, uses shows more in line with the publication date, all of them real.

I suppose the update was made feasible by improvements in handling the artwork, a digital cut and paste perhaps simpler than an actual paste job would have been in the ’80s.

Not all Archie gags can be so easily updated, though…

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Gravatars Enabled

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Sort of sounds like a line from a Gerry Anderson Supermarionation show: “Gravatars Enable!”

Generic GravatarMovement Point has turned on support for gravatars (Globally Recognized Avatars, though their globality relies on blog sites enabling the service). The notion behind the gravatar is to have an avatar that follows you from site to site as you leave comments, to create some semblance of continuity. People with shared interests tend to visit similar sites, so seeing a familiar comment avatar should help create a sense of community in the otherwise anonymous ether.

Gravatars are keyed to the e-mail address required for commenting at most blogs, though rest assured that said addresses are never displayed here at Movement Point. People without a gravatar account have a generic avatar, like the one above.

I like the notion of a single avatar for multiple sites and services. Establishing a “reputation” online is not as simple as establishing a persistent avatar (especially since you can change your gravatar at will), but any steps in the direction of accountability and defined identity online are good steps.

WordPress, the blog engine behind Movement Point, has one-click gravatar support, so it wasn’t hugely difficult to turn it on. Hardest part is figuring out what avatar you want to represent yourself everywhere…

Counter Culture: In the Kingdom of the Board

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Any ludological taxonomy that classifies games by physical features will contain an order, or perhaps a phylum, based on the presence of a pre-defined playing surface—a play mat, a tableaux, or, more simply, a board. Consider it Gamerus non-computericum meepleopile boardiferous. Indeed, boards give their name to this part of the gaming hobby as a whole, boardgaming, even when said games form their “boards” via tile or card placement.

For many people, particularly non-gamers, the board in a boardgame is literally a board, a thick piece of cardboard, usually with a single fold down the middle, with a paper playing surface glued or, less often, printed on top of it. The expectation when opening a boardgame is that you will find such a playing surface.

For wargamers, particularly contemporary wargamers—and wargaming is a genus within boardgaming—the opposite holds true: our boards tend to be printed directly onto heavy stock paper, not mounted to a board. (Wargamers tend to refer to boards as maps, as they most often depict terrain, either actual or abstract.)

Back in board wargaming’s first turn, though, Avalon Hill, the Standard Oil of wargaming, prided itself on producing wargames with mounted maps, only late in their existence switching to paper maps for some games. By contrast, their main competitors in the 1970’s and 1980’s, SPI and GDW, produced games almost exclusively with paper maps. Economically, paper maps are cheaper to print, lighter to ship, less bulky to package, and eliminate the tricky mounting process. As wargaming became more and more a niche market into the 1990’s, mounted wargame maps all but disappeared, showing up in the slow trickle of Advanced Squad Leader modules and not much else.

Modern printing methods and the much-debated resurgence of the wargaming hobby have seen contemporary wargamers spoiled for choice, with three types of maps available—paper, “deluxe,” and mounted:

Paper, deluxe, or mounted?

How do these three types of maps stack up?

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Game Preview: Angola

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Which is rarer? A wargame on the Angolan Civil War, or a serious wargame that plays very well with three or four players? Well, the former, probably, but rarer still is a multi-player wargame on the Angolan Civil War. And that’s where Angola comes in.

Originally published by the Ragnar Brothers in 1988, Angola, an area-move game with card-driven unit activation, covers the opening portions of the Angolan Civil War in 1975-76, with the four major factions (MPLA, FNLA, UNITA, and FAPLA) represented.

Angola Prototype Counters from MMP

Multi-Man Publishing is re-releasing Angola as part of their International Game Series line, with updated graphics courtesy of Lee Brimmicombe-Wood, a noted game designer in his own right whose graphics always strike a balance between functionality and style. MMP’s Angola is currently available for pre-order:

The game is finely balanced, and all players frequently feel as if they are simultaneously on the verge of victory or defeat thanks to an ingenious victory point system that rewards good play for both sides and allows players to absorb reversals and strike back with the right countermove.

Reports from people who have played the original indicate that Angola provides an unique experience, with lots of deception and posturing possible, making it great for multi-player (or at least for the guys I usually play against). The rules scale to accomodate between two to four players, so it’s not strictly multi-player. And given that this is a MMP game, a VASSAL module is almost certain to be released as well, providing an excellent method for conducting multi-player sessions.

Angola has been sitting on MMP’s pre-order page for a while now, so if you have any interest, get over there and pony up a pledge. This game looks to be a hidden gem.

(Image from MMP)

Be Seeing You

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Be Seeing You “Who are you?”
“The new Number Two.”
“Who is Number One?”
“You are Number Six.”

Patrick McGoohan passed away yesterday at the age of 80. He will long be remembered as No. 6, the eponymous Prisoner kidnapped and deposited in the Village after retiring from his life as a spy.

From the story concept to the unforgettable visual design, McGoohan’s The Prisoner remains a landmark television show, one of those rare series that extends the medium beyond its boundaries.

If you haven’t yet experienced the brilliance of The Prisoner, AMC provides feeds of all seventeen episodes, to promote their somewhat blasphemous re-make of the series.

He was never a number; he was always a free man.

Blogging Bowie: Winter Offensive 2009 Liveblog

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MMP LogoAs he did last year, Keith Dalton of Multi-Man Publishing will be liveblogging Winter Offensive [link dead], MMP’s annual tournament, held in bucolic Bowie, Maryland. This year’s iteration runs from Thursday, January 15 through Sunday, January 18.

Keith did a nice job last year of allowing those of us unable to attend this Advanced Squad Leader tournament to vicariously participate, covering the release of new products and the general vibe of the tourney, and I look forward to following his reports this year.

And if you can make it in person, it’s worth the trip. In addition to ASL action, there’s limited open gaming during the day (mostly from MMP’s Gamer and International lines) and extensive Euro/multi-player gaming at night. Add to that a raffle, with proceeds benefiting Lou Gehrig’s disease research, a massive pizza feast on Saturday night, and designers and developers of MMP’s upcoming releases hawking their designs, and you’ve got one of the gaming highlights of the Metro DC area every year.