$10k Gaming Table: Dice Not Included

Tired of playing on an old television box covered with discarded tablecloth? Ready to roll the dice on a table made of real wood rather than on some odd, discolored melamine surface the neighbors threw out in a rainstorm?

Well, for just shy of ten thousand dollars, The Sultan can be yours:

The Sultan gaming table, from http://www.geekchichq.com

I think every gamer, whether a role player or a wargamer—minis gamers are, of course, a different breed, just wanting as much flat surface as they can get, upon which they pile their meticulously crafted trees and mountains and crumbled building ruins—has dreamed of the ideal gaming table. When cost is no object, we conjure up tables with built-in counter trays, cat-proof covers for games in progress, and of course, drink holders, since never should a beverage have greater gravitational potential energy than easily soaked game equipment. People spend large sums on such frivolities as pool tables and ping pong tables, so why not a dedicated gaming table?

The people at Geek Chic understand that need, apparently, and seem to have thought of everything, including:

Two Dice rolling trays, lined in your choice of velvet and capped with pointed rubber to ensure randomness of throws. Rubber is removable to give you the option of using bay for storage.

At $9,650 delivered and installed, The Sultan isn’t for every gamer, or even for many, and at that price, I might opt to have a custom-built table tailored for my specific needs instead, but it’s good to have benchmarks, and to have proof that this dream, that all gamers share, can be made real.

(Image from Geek Chic)

Read at Speed: European Traffic Sign Typography

Ralf Herrmann’s Typography Weblog has been running an occasional series of articles on the typefaces used in European traffic signs.

Sign Yard 04 by mrjorgen, via a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike License

Traffic sign typefaces need to be legible under varying light conditions, from different distances, and at speed, a different set of usability standards from typefaces designed to be read on paper or a screen eighteen inches away in artifical light. As Ralf Herrmann notes in his recent article about French traffic signs:

The design of L1 and L2 are neither very good nor very bad. It’s a typical semi-geometric design similar to the traffic typefaces used in other European countries. A unique feature are the large counters of P and R. In general it is a good idea to have large counters for a typeface used for traffic signs, but a letter is also recognized by the white-space around it, so they might have overdone it a litte bit.

Blogs like Ralf Herrmann’s Typography Weblog, that aren’t afraid to delve into delightful arcana, make me smile. While I’m as guilty as the next person of putting up quick, referential posts (like the one you’re currently reading!), detailed articles that scoff at artificial word count limits are the real gems of the Internet.

(Image courtesy of mrjorgen, via a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike License.)

Serious Sandwiches

Food blog Serious Eats presents a delightful illustrated guide to America’s hoagie heritage, featuring a small but respectful mention of the Official Sandwich of Movement Point, the Philadelphia Roast Pork Sandwich, with accompanying photograph by yours truly.

DiNic's 2

The article attempts to decipher the real differences between subs, hoagies, grinders, and heroes. I don’t think I’ve seen the differences explained as other than regional dialect variations before. Just don’t read the article before lunch or you’ll get hungry.

Serious Eats did a recap of Philadelphia’s best Roast Pork earlier in the year, and their advice for John’s Roast Pork is spot on—do not order the small.

New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni made that mistake and missed out on a moment of epicurian wonder. When I visited John’s earlier this year, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what he had eaten and how it compared to the feast in front of me until I realized he got a small. Don’t get the small. Don’t order anything in a small in Philly.

Counter Culture: Plucky Behavior

Total invested time: fifty-two hours. You and your opponent have been meeting regularly for weeks, massing forces, maintaining supply lines, conducting feints and probes. The counters are stacked nine high on the front, a veritable skyline of towering units. Finally, the time for the attack arrives.

Up goes the balloon, out comes the calculator to figure the crucial odds. You reach in to examine a stack, making sure you have enough factors to turn the vital tide; and whether it’s the coffee or the lack thereof, the beer or the surplus therein, your hand shakes. And, in slow motion…

A different kind of disaster at Caporetto.

Stack tumbles stack tumbles stack. An errant jitter bugs out all that work. The front is in disarray, counters everywhere. Was the Italian 30th Rifle in 4508 or 4509? Did I have a trench line in that hex or the one over? Was Eugen close enough to influence the battle? A victory lost, indeed.

Tweezers, my friends, tweezers are the answer.

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Counter Culture: Treehugging

All used up? (Revolt in the East is an excellent, quick playing game, by the way.)

Once the counters of a wargame are punched and clipped, what does one do with the remaining tree, denuded of all its counters?

Now, before you answer, recall that we’re talking about wargamers here, people who willingly spend hours moving small pieces of cardboard from hex to hex or space to space according to rules both simple and arcane. Specifics matter to wargamers—it has to be la bonne pièce, no other will do. Completeness and accuracy in all regards are grails to wargamers.

So, the obvious answer, that one throws away the now-empty and useless counter tree, is not necessarily the correct answer, because the counter tree, whether laden or barren, is still a part of the game. On those occasions when a punched and played game is sold or bartered, can you honestly say it’s complete without including the counter trees?

Well, yes, you can, and I stopped hugging my trees a few years back, though I confess that when I sold my punched Star Fleet Battles collection about a decade ago, I included all the empty trees, some fifteen or so. And I bet the recipient appreciated them, even as he tossed them promptly into the trash.

I’ve never received an empty counter tree when I’ve purchased a punched game, so perhaps I’m an aberration in this regard. Am I the only wargamer who ever kept his trees?

Who Knows "Who"?

After forty-odd years of being on television and in popular culture, Dr. Who still requires an introduction, it seems.

The Tardis, by recurrence, via a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike license

In the July 21, 2008, issue of The New Yorker (the one with all the cover fracas, in fact), Benjamin Wallace-Wells pens an article about Garrett Lisi’s quest for a Theory of Everything, noting that the good Doctor can be a soothing respite for an introverted physicist and his partner:

The weekend I visited, Lisi and Baranyk were getting ready for a party in Reno, forty minutes away, to which they’d been invited by someone Lisi met on a ski lift, and for which they were dressing up as giant rabbits. But most nights they stayed in and cooked. They sometimes watched videotapes of the British science-fiction show “Doctor Who,” but they preferred board games.

Has the Doctor not penetrated sufficiently into public consciousness that the show can be introduced simply as Doctor Who, with the expectation that it will be understood? Or will it always require an appositive to provide needed context for those who might otherwise think some obscure medical drama were being watched?

Perhaps these are just the grumbles of a niche fan who cannot understand his favorite show being relegated to late-night PBS airings. After all, one doesn’t bother to explain Star Wars as “the American science-fiction film based loosely on Joseph Campbell’s work” or Harry Potter as “the British children’s series, loved by adults, about a boy wizard.” Or perhaps it’s just good journalism to provide explanations for anything that might be unclear to your widest possible audience. Let’s go with that.

I’ll have to make a more thorough search of The New Yorker’s archives to see how the show is mentioned, if ever before, in its pages. The online archive is less-than-full-featured, and I despair of installing the kludgy, proprietary interface for the complete DVD set (which I treasure nonetheless), but we all make sacrifices for the Doctor.

(Image courtesy of recurrence, via a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike License.)