Risk Assessment

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I’m sure you’re all familiar with the game of Risk. I am probably not imagining things if I hear stifled groans from your direction, although I probably am, as I know that my readership extends as far as Australia, and I can scarcely hear what happens in the next room from me. Anyway, Risk. It is a game that is perhaps best known for being intolerably boring and for taking three weeks to complete. This is an exaggeration. I managed to complete a game in only one and a half weeks the other day.

Indeed, the dullness of the game provokes a challenge among popular games designers like myself. Well, I call myself a popular games designer, I should confess it would be an exaggeration to call me popular. Or a designer. Or even to say that I have anything to do with games. This may shine through as I attempt to explain my game.

The challenge of course is the infamous quest to create the most boring derivative of Risk. Again, you may be questioning just how infamous this quest is. I just made it up. I’m really failing at my new year’s resolution not to exaggerate the truth at all. That wasn’t my new year’s resolution. However, it is not hard to imagine that this is a real challenge, with Risk being modified to be associated with everything from Star Wars to Narnia.

So I thought, as a not-very-popular un-games anti-designer, I should try out this challenge, and, Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to present to you Risk: Assessment. Enjoy…

The object of Risk: Assessment is to be the first to establish stable democratic governments in far-flung places that are constantly loyal to one’s own regime, while also keeping the fickle public in an appropriately war-like mood, and ensuring that no-one can sue the leadership of your army for malpractice and placing your citizens in unduly harmful situations.

To set up the game, each player chooses a ‘home’ country to start with. All of the other countries are declared to be backward-thinking tribespeople. Use the black backward-thinking-tribespeople counters to represent this. Each turn has multiple stages, beginning with the reinforcement stage.

Count up each country with your people in, and add on your public relations^TM score. Divide the result by five. This is the number of reinforcements you will receive. Then calculate the amount of money that your government is willing to spend on the military using the Patent Risk: Assessment Money Calculatron, and work out how many sets of equipment you have. If you have fewer sets of equipment than you have reinforcements, write an open letter to the member of your government in charge of the defence budget complaining about this, then give the excess reinforcements to the local chapter of the UN Peacekeeping Force.

Secondly, you move into the attack stage. Choose a nation to attack, and a nation to attack from. If the nation you are attacking is populated by backward-thinking tribespeople, pick a like-minded candidate for leadership from an especially backward region of the nation, and promise them that you will make them Emperor For Life if they help you. Then give all your equipment to this person and their crack team. When you finally realise that he has been playing the ends against the middle, invade the country using your advanced military capabilities.

If, however, you are attacking a ‘home’ country, immediately announce your actions to the United Nations Security Council. If you own the most nations overall at this point, you can choose to ignore anything that United Nations Security Council says. If not, your actions result in immediate expulsion from the United Nations, meaning you can ignore anything that the United Nations Security Council says. Either way, a large portion of your budget must now be taken up by ambitious yet ultimately flawed projects like space lasers and remote-controlled dolphins. You are now prevented from actually attacking the country by your government, who approves of removing their evil ideology from the face of the game board, but wants to fight them in a more psychological way. From now on, every time your opponent attacks a nation populated by backward-thinking tribespeople, you must attempt to do so too, resulting in a disastrous stalemate for both sides.

Then move into stage 3, the stage of the game that the whole game is named for, although not for any particular reason, just because it sounded catchy. It’s the risk assessment stage. Anyway, count the number of troops that you have. For each one of these, spend fifteen minutes writing down all the possible things that could happen to them during a war zone. These things include tripping over the body of a dead civilian, being crushed by a tree that fell as a result of a drunk soldier driving a tank into it, or being shot. Also write down whose fault it would be if these things were to occur, and evaluate the likelihood of them happening. Then use the Patent Risk: Assessment Risk Assessor to work out what accidents have befallen your troops this turn. If you have successfully insured against the accidents, continue to the next turn. Else, spend twenty minutes fighting large, costly legal battles against the families of the injured.

The next stage is the education-of-backward-thinking-tribespeople stage. For each country originally owned by backwards-thinking tribespeople, spend lots of money attempting to create some sort of structured military, government and economy. Don’t forget to fill the tribespeople with lots of propaganda against your enemies. Deduct the sum from your budget using the Patent Risk: Assessment Calculatice.

Stage 5 sees you work out your public relations score for the next turn. Take the number of battles that you have won this turn, and add on the number of feel-good success stories that you have taken part in. Subtract the number of legal battles you have taken part in. For each public recruitment campaign, add fifteen, then divide the whole thing by the number of turns you have taken.

During the final stage, take a card for each battle you have won. Do nothing with these cards. They constitute a health risk to your troops.

So, having seen that brief outline of the rules, who wants in? And I’m going to write to all the big retailers immediately, so don’t think about stealing the idea…

The Twilight of Modern Fiction

Twilight. Urgh.

Well, I’m sure it won’t have escaped your notice that I may not have actually been carrying out my New Year’s resolution very well.  Well, you may not have noticed any difference in posting schedules at all, actually, but I have been trying to post every week.  I’ve had exams, actually, which is why I’ve been struggling to get on, although that is, of course, no excuse.  However, I did manage to scroll past such horrors as these.  Yes.  Twilight fanfic.  Although then again, what with that hot yet oh so sensitive Edward Cullen, and the exciting, dark idea of vampires, is it any wonder why people are so desperate to write their own versions?

“So, I’m here at the  Booker prize awards ceremony, and with me is young new writer, Ms. Mary Sue Watson.  Ms. Watson, how does it feel to have recieved such a prestigious nomination?”

“Well, to tell you the truth, I’m amazed.  But then I think it’s only a testament to how much we should all be appreciating Edward, and how much he deserves to win.”

“Hmm, yes.  But then critics have attacked your books by saying that they are merely the deluded imaginings of a teenage girl locked in a fantasy world, with no bearing on real life at all.  What would you say to them?”

“Well, that is clearly complete nonsense.  The main character in the book has a completely different name to mine – she’s called Margery.  How much more different can you get?  Plus her birthday is a whole three days after mine.  And she’s short and podgy.  Do I look like I’m short and podgy to you?”

“Ah, well…  Let’s just skip to the next question.  What would it mean for you to win this award?”

“Well, I think the real honour must go to Edward.”

“But isn’t Edward an imaginary char-  Let’s not go there.  Your book, ah, builds on a lot of Stephanie Meyer‘s work.  What do you think the impact of, say, Twilight has been on the world?”

“Well, I think her books really have a lot to say about modern culture.  In fact, just as, for example, Jane Austen‘s ‘Pride and Prejudice‘ really created the meme of  the tall, dark stranger, so Meyer has created today’s romantic ideal  in the form of a dark person who must be controlled, yet ultimately is something beautiful out of something that should normally be feared.  That Cullen is essentially a baseless, empty character with very little substance very easily allows girls to attach their own ideal men into his place.  In fact, it also allows them to project some of his traits onto those that they see around them.  This accessibility has really affected a generation of girls.  Anyway, what was the question?”

“What impact do you think Twilight has had on the world?”

“Well, Edward is really good looking…”

“Thank you for letting us interview you, and we wish you all the best, especially if you should ever grow out of your childish obsession and contribute something useful to society.  Maybe become a video games designer.  Anyway, back to you in the studio.”

On a completely unrelated note, did anyone else see The King’s Speech?  I’d thoroughly recommend it.  Watch out for Timothy Spall playing the part of Winston Churchill.  Oh, and, while preparing for this post, I enjoyed this.  I hope you will too.

Pick a book, any book

 

Dan Brown. Because I couldn't find a more suitable image. (Also, thanks to Wikipedia Commons)

 

I’m writing this now because I’m bored with tidying my room, and I need a break.  I would be writing this with one of my ‘nice’ pens, but as one of them has broken, one has run out of ink, and the third has managed to escape from my clutches to what I can only assume is a life of discomfort, squalor and illegality, I am left writing on my ASUS EeePC.  While chewing on a very tasty old-fashioned blackberry sweet thing.  You know, like a pear drop, but blackberry-flavoured.  So it’s really a blackberry drop.  And very nice too, although I prefer the raspberry ones.  You know, like blackberry drops, but raspberry flavored.  You could call them raspberry drops if you liked, but I’d much rather get on with the point of this post.  If I can remember what it was meant to be before I started waffling on about raspberry and blackberry drops.

I try to consider myself a bit of an expert on books.  I’m not that good at writing them, and, if I’m honest, I haven’t read as many as I’d have liked, but I’m sure I’ll remedy this one day…

But in the meantime, I will still consider myself an expert.  Books isn’t the same as Literature.  Literature is old and boring, and rather pointless.  It’s often written by people with too many ‘K’s, ‘V’s or ‘S’s in their names.  It often has a point, or makes a commentary on socio-political ideals.  I’ve no idea what one of those actually looks like, or if commentators on them are as funny as the commentator on Come Dine with Me, but I suspect, rather regretfully, that this isn’t the case.

I was wandering the streets of York recently (yes, the original York in England (original England) as opposed to the ‘New’ ones all over the bloomin’ place) and I realised that, although I am perfectly alright to stroll into a bookshop and  find the perfect book for me, most people, sadly, may find this sort of thing a struggle.  And then I realised that I was in a perfect place, what with me having a blog and all, to teach you people in the ways of buying good books.

The first thing you need to do when you pick up a book is look at the title.  Obviously this guide applies only to prose – non-fiction works are *ahem* a closed book to me – although once you have studied this, there may be some other types of text that you may be able to attempt to put into this category.

So once you have your title, think long and hard about it.  Are there any words that you have never heard of?  Do you think this is because you don’t read dictionaries in your spare time, or because you don’t think there is a dictionary in the known universe that contains this word?  If it is the latter, then you have probably picked up a Fantasy book.  Refer to the notes on Fantasy later on in this guide.  Alternatively, does the title contain words like ‘code’, ‘conspiracy’, and/or any letter of the Greek alphabet?  By the sounds of it, you’ve found a Dan Brown Anti-Novel.  Put it back where you found it and run and tell the nearest shop owner.  Unless you’re in WHSmiths, in which case you deserve it.

Also, look for any heading/sub-heading combinations.  For example, if, in yellow outlines at the top of the book, you find the words ‘STAR WARS’, then congratulations, you’ve probably found either a Book Of The Movie or Fanfic.  Books Of The Movie are okay, and can be treated if the condition in brought to light soon enough.  Fanfic, on the other hand, is extremely contagious and can also kill extremely quickly.  I’d advise you buy the book, and then, for the good of humanity, hunt the author down and shoot him.  Unless you want to make him/her suffer, in which case tie him/her to a chair and provide in-depth feedback on why the book is so bad, going through the book word by word.  That will serve the author right.  You may be lucky enough to find the author’s brain, although this doesn’t happen very often.  In this case, eat it, and move in to the author’s house.  With luck, no-one will notice any difference in the quality or style of the books.

Secondly, look at the cover.  The two most important things to watch out for are men with bubbles over their heads and/or robots (Sci-fi) and dragons, swords or tunics (Fantasy).  Sci-fi is okay.  Just make sure you’ve quit before you start going to conventions.  That’s the point where it starts to get unbearable.  Fantasy is much the same.  However, there are two main types of Fantasy.  There is High Fantasy, which is intensely unoriginal and has all been done before.  And there is Original Fantasy, which is intensely unoriginal and has all been done before but is more modern.  If you are offered the choice, go for the former.  Original Fantasy usually manifests itself as books for children – often girls – where the main characters do something exciting like meeting fairies – or maybe even faeries – and usually don’t even have to leave the comfort of their twenty-first century life.  Beautiful.  Also trite.  Avoid like the plague.

Otherwise, look at what the cover picture actually is.  A bright, cheerful cartoon?  Usually children’s trash, although this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  Dark brooding photo of the author?  Sounds like Literature to me.  Hand in at the nearest tip.  Competent drawing of a character?  This is probably High Fantasy, although be wary if there are no actual dragons/swords on the spine or back of the book.  Landscape drawing?  This is probably a Competent Writer, so watch out for these.  If there are any silhouettes, then grab it quick before someone else has a chance.

Thirdly, check the blurb.  Anything about the book being told in an original way?  Been done before.  A thousand times.  And it won’t be any better this time.  There’s a reason why stories are told in the same way.  A brief synopsis of the plot is what you’re looking for.  Many blurbs are made up of two paragraphs, a synopsis and an appraisal of the author.  If there is any mention of the author in the first paragraph, throw the book away.  Quotes from the book can be a good thing, not least because it will usually be more fun skimming the book looking for the quote than actually reading the thing.

Fourthly, and I can’t believe I didn’t put this in earlier, although I can’t be bothered to change that, comes the author.  If you have trouble distinguishing the author from the book title, then you’ve found either FanFic or High Fantasy.  If you have heard of the author, ask yourself where.  Was it on any kind of book of the week?  You’ve probably found either a Dan Brown Anti-Novel, or a Danielle Brownetta Anti-Novel.  The former is for men, the latter is for women.  For both the answer is clear:  Stop shopping in WHSmiths.  If you think you heard the author do a short piece on Radio Four, then you might have got yourself a Competent Writer.  Buy.  Immediately.

Finally, check out the awards and reviews.  Blue Peter award?  Good work!  It’s probably by Michael Morpurgo, in which case it is the very essence of a Competent Writer’s book, albeit probably for younger kids.  Anything classy?  This is probably Literature, which should usually be avoided.  The third option is a recommendation from a book club.  In which case it is some sort of Anti-Novel, and, as before, it is your own fault.  Unless, I suppose, you’re in Waterstones, in which case I’ll forgive you as it can be confusing to some people.  Just make sure you haven’t strayed to near to the police tape and/or cardboard cut-out of the author/book cover/main character.  Reviews can come from lots of different people.  As a general rule, named people are better than newspapers, although Sci-fi/Fantasy magazines are also quite good.  Try things like ‘Orbit’ or ‘Fear’, or something that sounds overly archaic.  The very worst thing to find is a set of stars.  This is a big sign that you’ve found an Anti-Novel, although, to be honest, if you haven’t realised that it is an Anti-Novel by now, then you may need help.  Either that or you’ve been using this guide backwards.

A Related Article

• Giving away Dan Brown (economist.com)