One day, while setting up a game, he began to play with a 10 games in 1 set that I got for Christmas one year. Turning the board to the checker/chess board, he takes the checkers pieces and four meeples and begins to place them on the board. (I say meeples because they weren’t chess pawns, they were four differently-colored pawn shaped pieces.)

At first, I do not pay a lot of attention as I am trying to setup the other board game. But after a few minutes I stop and notice that he is working at making up his own game.

A father can be so proud.

When we were done working together on the rules, he was quite happy with it. I will say that my part in it was quite small. I only added one rule, otherwise, I am simply clarifying the rules he made up and putting them together in some kind of order.

Slide n Stack

Required materials: Full set of checkers, checkerboard, 4 pawns – (ideally, 2 each that match the color of the checkers.) And something that can fit on a stack of checkers to mark “kings”. (Recommend odd colored checkers or double pawns or pennies)

At the start of play, arrange checkers on the last 2 rows of the checkerboard. Off the board behind the last row, place the remaining checkers and two pawns.

The rules are the same as checkers with a few additions:

When it is your turn, you may move a checker and stack it on a checker(or stack of checkers) one square away. You may also ‘stack’ a pawn on a checker (or stack of checkers) that is one square away. No move is permitted that allows a stack to be larger than 3 checkers + 1 pawn. Two pawns may not exist on a checker or stack of checkers.

Stacks of checkers move a number of squares equal to the number of checkers in their stack. A stack can only move in one direction.

Stacks of checkers with a pawn may move a number of squares equal to the number of checkers in their stack, but may move in any forward direction. For example, a stack of 2 checkers and a pawn may move diagonally right and then diagonally left on its turn.

Stacks cannot move and jump in the same turn.

Checkers added to a stack that promotes to a ‘king’ do not gain extra movement. They only gain the ability to move in any direction.

Kings with pawns on the stack can move in any direction, but they cannot move back into the square where they started.

Try it and see what you think.

These games are not in the Statis-Pro or APBA category. Each game is an abstraction that looks at the relative strengths of two teams and provides highlights of each drive.

One game, however, allows for a distribution of points to a team’s roster. It is called Coach’s Call Football and is avaiable here. QB’s have a cost, the better rating, the more costly. Skill positions have a cost. The Defense is a generic rating, but you can rater the DL and LB on a 1-5 scale. The same is true of the OL.

It wouldn’t be hard to imagine using this system to rate all the teams and recreate a season. Just may have to fiddle with it and see what turns up.

This game *is* chart-heavy. This doesn’t bother some folks, but I thought it would be fair warning for others that may not like a game with seven results charts.

The offensive dice are:
Black die: 1-2-2-3-3-3
White die: 0-0-1-2-3-4
White die: 0-1-2-3-4-5

The defensive dice are:
Red: 1-1-1-2-2-3
Green: 0-0-0-0-1-2

I’m getting killed, though I managed to hold on to the ball for the last 10 minutes of the second quarter. It’s 17 – 0. Brunell is 3 for 13 in the first half. The biggest offensive play of the game was an interception thrown by Brunell to a DB that fumbled it back to me 38 yards down field.

Still, it’s fun to play again. I remember why I love Statis-Pro Football.

It can be really challenging, but I think I made myself clear and also covered all bases.

I’ll post more about it later, especially talking about the holes I have in my squad…

The attached spreadsheet is a utility to flipping the 109 cards that are part of the Statis-Pro Football game. This utility does not generate random number for the Run# or Pass#. It shuffles the 109 card deck and allow you to ‘draw’ them one at a time. When the deck is empty, it will tell you to shuffle. When it is finished shuffling, it will draw the ‘top’ card and let you know the deck has been shuffled. Z cards will display on the right side and the card on the left will appear blank.

How it works is that it generates a list of numbers from 1 to 109 in random order. The code used for this doesn’t allow a number to be repeated. The card flipper then works down the list retrieving a card based on the next value in the list. For example, the first three values on the list could be 68,28,70. The first card to be played will be Card#68 from the card database. When I press the Flip Card button, Card#28 from the database will be retrieved and displayed. Pressing Flip Card again will retrieve card#70 from the database. After fetching the 109th card, hitting Flip Card again will cause the card to show “Shuffle Deck” message.

Column K, the shuffle column, and be unhidden by changing the font color to anything other than white. This will tell when which cards will be picked in order.

Columns L through Y contains the 109 cards. These are created from the standard 109 card deck from version 5 or 6 of the Statis-Pro-Football rules. It also includes Solitaire rules.

Cell A1 tells you how many cards you have ‘drawn’ from the deck. Cell B1 shows you which card from the card database is being displayed.

I did my best to create it in openOffice first, but I understand VBA so much better. I hope to port it over soon. I didn’t protect the code, so let me know if you can port it. Thanks to the folks at OzGrid for helping me generate the list of values from 1 to 109 non-repeating.

It is as close as I know how to make it like actually flipping cards.

Now, the good news – Six Point Football has made a reappearance. mcrawford620 from the Table Top Sports forum has coded six point using Javascript and Cake PHP. It looks great.

Second, I’m studying how teams are made to get an idea of how good a sim this is/was. BoardgameGeek has an upload of the entire 1961 NFL. Interesting.

I have been working on a few things. I’ll update the current development page soon. Really.

I stopped the football project long enough to actually play Statis-Pro Football again. I have a pretty good team with a few holes to fill in the draft. I made the questionable call of not keeping a good RB. I am afraid that will haunt me.

Anyway, I have used yould to generate most of the Lenga language. This is the last piece in creating all the crunchy bits for the backstory of this world.

I have also stumbled upon an old usenet posting of a spell description language. I have modified it, adding an element and a few actions. Using it, I am translating the OGL spells from the SRD into the magic system I have created. It’s not as straight-forward as I would like. There is a bit of fuzziness in some of the descriptions. It also takes a while. There are even a few spells that do not translate, like Air Walk.

The goal is to have something that is more or less systematic in determining difficulty and power of a spell without making the player use a lot of math to create their own. I think this has been done. In the player’s book, it will basically show a spell, a description of the effects, a mana cost and a TN. To make a spell, a player must use simple sentences to describe the effect of the spell. Conjunctions cannot be used, only one verb per sentence.

For example, the Aid spell is described in the SRD this way:

Aid grants the target a +1 morale bonus on attack rolls and saves against fear effects, plus temporary hit points equal to 1d8 + caster level (to a maximum of 1d8+10 temporary hit points at caster level 10th).

This translate to:
Give target bonus against fear.
Give target temporary LIF.

Using the rules, the GM then figures out the Mana Cost (11) and TN (24).

One rule about Magic is that it is easier and cheaper for spells to do one simple thing. If a person casts two spells instead of a combined one, the breakdown would be:

Bonus against fear spell: Cost 5, TN 20
Give temp LIF points: Cost 5, TN 18.

If someone has time to cast two spells instead of a combined one, it is 1 point cheaper and about 10% more likely to work as intended.

Other spells demonstrate this more dramatically, like Animal Messenger, which I’ll detail later.

Game Inventor Kits and other assorted goodies.

You can buy just the boxes, just the board, or an entire kit. My favorite item is a 2 lb bucket of bits. You know, if I ever win the lottery, I’m calling these guys. Even if I don’t, I’m ordering the Bucket of Bits on my next payday.

Some time ago, I mentioned a hexagonal variation of Tactique. Seeing this board gave me all sorts of ideas. This also gave me ideas for using this type of hex paper for RPGs instead of traditional hex paper. For both, I hope to explore different ideas.

Here are the PDFs of a black and white version and the colorized version. What is different from Greame’s design is that my hexes are not rotated 90 degress and the colors are different. I will also provide a hex shaped pdf soon. I realize that a hex shape is more conducive to board games.

Black and White Tri-Hexes | Color Tri-Hexes