Eccentric Flower talk:201012/Mall Exposure 50 Millirems

Jette:

I can't play Trivial Pursuit anymore. First of all, most of the questions are about moronic pop culture that no one over 20 would know anyway. Second of all, I've been in too many games where someone was mocked for not knowing an answer. ("How can you not get that? It's SO easy!!") It can become a mean game really fast, and I'm trying to be less mean. My sister gave me the latest whiz-bang with-video TP game last year and it's still in the closet in its original wrappings; I hate to give away something she gave me but we'll never play it.

We have become old cranks about games generally, which sucks because I theoretically like them. We no longer go to Game Night parties after an event where the people running the game refused to explain how it worked beforehand ("you'll pick it up in no time!") and everyone generally ignored us, although honestly that was more the people there and less the Game Night concept itself. He doesn't like Scrabble, and the only version of Monopoly we have in the house is the New Orleans version, which he refuses to play. Chip did have a Risk party last year, but that was a rare occasion.

He does have a beautiful cribbage set and once in awhile we sit down and play, although I had never played before and always need a tutorial.

We had an Apples to Apples set at my previous job, which was a nice office diversion, but my boss was so shittily cutthroat about winning that it became no fun to play.

I think the point here is that my experience is that so many group games bring out the bad side of humanity -- ugly competitiveness, making fun of people who can't play as well as you do -- and that lessens the allure of these games for me. Hardly anyone ever acts like that when they play games in Jane Austen novels.

-- 20:06, 14 December 2010 (GMT)

Columbina:

Yeah, and I don't claim I'm not sometimes part of the problem, as noted above, so I try to be very careful about how and where I play games.

I adore cribbage but, like Master Mind, I find it is best played on the computer because I hate pegging and I often miss something when scoring hands, so I like for the computer to do all the scut work for me.

-- 20:35, 14 December 2010 (GMT)

Harmony:

On the computer? Are you mad? The entire point of cribbage is that you have to stay sober enough to peg! (Cribbage is a game by drunk people for drunk people, I am convinced, and I try never to play it except under the influence of some gin.)

-- 21:36, 14 December 2010 (GMT)

Iain:

An all-hardwood, admittedly-gorgeous, collector's Rubik's Cube. Now think about that for a moment: There may actually be a person, somewhere in the world, who buys a Rubik's Cube as a display object. If this does not make you a little nervous, you probably already had some trouble dealing with the mindset in the preceding three paragraphs.

Honestly? ... Kind of curious about that one. And I can imagine possibly displaying it -- if I were a tchotcke displaying sort, which mostly I'm not -- just for the sheer double-take value.

I can't find anyone willing to play it with me and I will tell you why: It is about geography. Americans hate geography. (The game was also extremely quirky, which puts people off. Some questions are "red herrings" - they refer to fictitious locations etc and do not have proper answers. The game is haunted by Caesar's ghost. Santa Claus is on the map. The player whose birthday is closest to March 15 goes first. Et cetera.)

Hey, next time I'm in greater Bostonia! I would probably lose terribly, but I'd put up a good fight at first! (And then it would look like a Bears game, but still.)

-- 22:05, 14 December 2010 (GMT)

Bunny42:

Have you ever played Catch Phrase? It's definitely a party game, involving two teams of players. You have an electronic game box that gives a question. You and your team answer the question as quickly as possible, then pass off the box to the other team. The player holding the box when time runs out loses that round, and the other team scores a point. As those types of games go, this one is really fun.

The best answer I ever heard was from a Swedish guy, ESL, whose clue he had to make somebody say was Lollapalooza. Oh, yeah, that's how it works! Not questions, words. Since he'd never heard of it, Wolfie broke the word down into three segments. First was LOL, from online. The third part was making a big L signal on his forehead, and his team said loser. Then he went for something related to MAC, and damned if his team didn't put it all together and solve it! Remarkable.

(I was amused to note that, although I'd never heard of the music festival, no one else in the group knew that was an actual, you know, word. From who knows how long ago. So if I'd been trying to define it, I'd have been out of luck with my string of adjectives.)

Silly game, but fun with the right group.

-- 22:14, 14 December 2010 (GMT)

Platypus:

Ken and I are surprisingly well-matched in Scrabble. I have a larger vocabulary and can spell better, but he's hardly deficient in those areas, and he's a very strategic player -- he can, with simple everyday words, line them up right and get ridiculous numbers of points. If I waste turns fishing for letters to make some obscure, fun word, I will lose miserably, so I've adopted some of his strategy, and I'm a better player now too. We still have some one-sided games, and they're probably 60/40 in his favor, but I do have fun.

I like Apples to Apples or Catch Phrase as random party games because I cannot imagine caring who wins, but we rarely see enough people to make it worth playing anymore. I was just complaining to Ken that his brother's girlfriend, who has contributed lots of family members to our more recent gatherings, is not the game-playing type. They play pool and drink and watch tv. I get bored. Our other pizza-n-games friends had babies and eventually moved away, so that was the end of that.

I still try to find two-player games that Ken and I can play. We've enjoyed Lost Cities, Caesar and Cleopatra, Fluxx, and such, and I've gotten over my tendency to be overly competitive. The only trivial-pursuit style game I've liked is the sadly out of print Bethump'd With Words. We're well-matched there, too, despite my useless English degree.

I'm thinking of going to the one remaining gaming store in San Diego and looking for something new (probably one of the German-developed two-players). I do miss the days when we had Game Keeper and Wizards of the Coast all over the place. And I miss having people to play games with. As soon as I see "3+" players, I have to move on.

-- 22:44, 14 December 2010 (GMT)

Mel:

I read something somewhere lately about what a phenomenon Settlers of Catan has become. I have to say I didn't even know what it was, really, although I had heard the name.

I am hopeless at Scrabble, very good at Trivial Pursuit, and quite enjoy Monopoly for some reason, but nobody will ever play it with me. (I have a set squirreled away in the closet somewhere, but it does no good.) I didn't have the patience to bother with a Rubik's Cube, but I have to admit that the wooden one intrigues me, oddly.

-- 06:02, 15 December 2010 (GMT)

Danima:

Waaaaaay too much to respond to, here. Each of these items should probably have some research and a link or two behind them.

a) There is a truly excellent party-trivia game which involves two rounds of guessing: first, everyone takes a stab at writing down the answer (all answers are numbers/years/other sortable), then answers are arranged in order on a payout track and players place their bets. Answers near the median pay less but are most likely, in general, to be correct. The owner of a betted-upon answer collects the original bet.

b) Re. Cosmic Encounter: Richard Garfield (of M:tG infamy) has, in his golden years, said that his ideal, as-yet-nonexistent game could be described as "Cosmic Poker" -- rules and limited rulebreaking, easy to join and leave in progress, plus a few other criteria. Which, by train of thought, makes me wonder: what do you think of poker?

3) Ah, Diplomacy. I've been meaning to write a "best of games, worst of games" entry on that one for a few years now (the only one of those I completed was, of course, for M:tG). I used to play in the PBEM hobby a little in college, and I'd pay a nominal fee to watch a public-press-only game involving you and ProfRobert and whoever else dared to step into that arena. I might even play. I'm surprised, though, that this makes your list of playable games -- I'd think it would hit all the wrong interpersonal notes WITH CLANGING OF ANVILS.

4) Really, you've shut your mind on Go? I'd been thinking of asking if you played or would like to learn. I play with a few friends on dragongoserver.net, which is a "turn-based" server -- I usually make a move per day or so, and it's a nice way to maintain contact with people when there isn't anything to *say*, exactly. A small-board game is a logic puzzle, a large-board game can be like a conversation, especially if you have the right handicap between the players. I teach it with a gentle learning curve and without snoberdery or any pretense to Asia Cred. I DARE YOU.

-- 18:07, 15 December 2010 (GMT)

Columbina:

Dan:

a) This sounds a great deal like the party game where a weirdish word is selected by one player from the dictionary. She writes its real definition on a piece of paper; meanwhile everyone else is (anonymously) writing down their own made-up definition of the word. Then all the definitions are exposed, including the real one, and everyone votes on which definition they think is the real one. A vote for the real one garners the voter one point for superior knowledge; a vote for a fake one garners the writer one point for superior bullshit. After a set number of rounds (usually once everyone has had a chance to be the word-picker), the highest point score wins.

b) Poker at competitive levels (which I do watch on television once every blue moon or so) strikes me as all about bluffing - which is fascinating to watch, but feels to me like it makes the cards sort of unnecessary; like someone invented a much better game to replace the game of "you are dealt these cards which you cannot control, so suck it up."

You may deduce, correctly, that with rare exceptions I am not fond of games which have a high element of chance - because they leave very little for the players to actually do.

3) [Hey, did you notice your indexing changed schemas halfway along?] The problem with playing Diplomacy by mail/email is that it takes years - and I mean that literally.

That said, I would love to play a game of Diplomacy with Robert. I think it would be fun for witnesses too. Now if we can just find five other victims ....

4) My pat answer here is "I lost faith in Go when I couldn't find a single set of rules anywhere which didn't make me insane" - and while there is some truth in that, it's not entirely honest.

The complaint on rules stems mostly from either a) use of Japanese terms without giving reasonable English equivalents or b) digressing over and over about differences between various basic/competitive rule sets I don't care about. The problem is, while I don't insist that the rules of a good game must fit into four paragraphs, a more complex game requires an investment in the culture. I am willing to invest sometimes but not always. I could give you huge details, chapter and verse, on rule subtleties in some of the computer games I play - places where I have chosen to make that sort of time and conceptual investment. But in general I don't do mythology TV shows and I don't do mythology board games, and if I have to know what a "positional superko" is to play Go well, then I don't care to play it.

BUT - as I say - that is partially a lie. The raw truth is, I don't understand how to play Go well; the strategy eludes me. I am bad at reckoning things like, "Well, if I do this, I will take this much territory now, but will lose the entire top left of the board later." I don't look ahead well or do long-term strategy (I am more tactical than strategic), just as I am incapable of playing bridge or trick-taking games because I have, despite years of attempts, never gotten the hang of looking at my cards and being able to make a reasonable guess about how many hands I might be able to win.

So what we learn here is that my ideal game does not involve very much chance, but also does not involve having to look more than one or two turns into the future. It must not involve resource management heavily; and it must not involve a need to concentrate on multiple fronts simultaneously (is that what made you think Diplomacy would push the wrong buttons for me)?

-- 19:36, 15 December 2010 (GMT)

Joy:

This entry made me laugh out loud, several times.

Board games are alive and well in the under-5 set. Candy Land is adored (I rig it so Larkin will win quickly, because ohmygod boring, and also the newer board isn't as yummy looking to me as the one from my era), and I might get her a Monopoly version when she is a little older because she loves math even at not-quite-four. I'm not sure I can take the tedium of Shoots and Ladders.

I, for the record, detest Monopoly after having played it one single time with my father, for about five hours. But I do remember Uno, and Parchesi, and Backgammon, and Master Mind, and Clue fondly. One summer my friend Laurie Ingrahm and I did the same exact thing every single day for weeks: play handball on the street outside her house (safer than you'd think since the street and house were inside an actual fort on a coast guard base; play a few rounds of Clue and also another game with a red handset like an old cell phone where you had to try to catch a thief; have lunch; then retire to the basement and play Pong).

We play Apples to Apples occasionally, but are more likely to pick up a deck of cards and play gin rummy.

-- 00:46, 16 December 2010 (GMT)

Joy:

Also, I had a travel Backgammon set for years as a young teen (13 or so), and now cannot for the life of me remember how to play it.

-- 00:47, 16 December 2010 (GMT)

Mel:

I'm like Joy: I've played backgammon but it was years ago and I've totally forgotten how.

-- 03:33, 16 December 2010 (GMT)

Danima:

Joy - when the under-5 set eases into over-5, there's a couple of great new(ish) games I can recommend: "Hey, That's My Fish" and "The Amazeing [sic] Labyrinth". Both come highly recommended by a couple of first-graders *and* their parents.

-- 17:19, 16 December 2010 (GMT)

Danima:

i) Ah, you mean the game marketed as "Balderdash"? Something like, except there isn't a bluffing incentive, and it's less likely to degenerate into a "reward the funniest fake answer" game. Annnnnnd I remembered the name of the game I was thinking of: "Wits and Wagers." The odds track is the real innovation, but you could add your own verifiable, sortable questions at will.

ii) Some assigned reading: http://playthisthing.com/randomness-blight-or-bane

Having posted that, I agree that poker is at a far end of the "do I have something to do?" spectrum. I was thinking of it more for the social aspect -- easy to join and leave, potential for a lot of conversation around the table...

gamma) [that's what you get from a hurried commenter and a small comment-entry box] If you have an automated email judge enforcing deadlines (and heartlessly shaming the delinquents), a real, complete game with weekly deadlines shouldn't take more than a year, maybe 18 months if it gets hairy. You can run a public-press-only game faster than that, and they're more entertaining for observers anyway. I'd play vs. you and Robert -- now you just need four more.

My surprise, though, that you would ever consider playing this game comes from the fact that it relies so heavily on duplicity, misdirection, and all-around abuse of communication. It can lead to hurt feelings, or at least the pretense thereof for purposes manipulative. It can bear far too much resemblence to an internecine fandom fight. In short, it seems like the classic example of Things To Which You Are Opposed. Hence, puzzlement.

delta) The conflict between Chinese and Japanese rules rarely makes more than a point of difference. Any other rule-sets that you see out there are relatively recent attempts to try to reconcile those two rules or deal with rare, pathological cases.

There's a lighter sub-game of Go (the "capture game", in which you play just to the first capture) that contains quite a lot of the fun and feel of Go and no rules ambiguities at all. Anyone who posts here who had half an interest could learn it. Even you. *challenge reissued*

-- 18:12, 16 December 2010 (GMT)

Columbina:

That page was extremely interesting, Dan, although it doesn't break my thesis - because I haven't argued against all aleatoric aspects of games; I just want a small, well-bounded dosage to add spice - which is essentially the same thing he's saying.

(In SimCity, to cite one example, the paths your Sims take are indeed random, but collectively they can be predicted. The large-scale random events which could seriously throw your plans into a cocked hat - which SimCity tellingly calls "disasters" - I always disable before playing. Because to do all that and then have a tornado destroy it all would not, to me, be interesting; it would be annoying.)

Perfectly-symmetric games like Twixt, though, are not always dull. They are dull only if both players already know the perfect strategy. That's a very important qualifier, because most people don't (including me). Kensington falls into that category. It is possible to play it perfectly and strategically and always win, but I never met anyone who did, again including myself.

Diplomacy, which has no aleatoric element, replaces that with the vagaries of human interaction. The negotiation/discussion phases are more important than the actual moves. That's one of the things I like about it.

Also, since I mention that: I don't mind deceptive, manipulative fights if everyone can assume it is a frivolous exercise and shake hands at the end and go home happy. That's why I warned to be careful who you play it with. The problem with internecine internet fights, and the reason they do not amuse me, is that I cannot be unconvinced that various parties to the fights are taking them 100% seriously and actually do believe they have received some mortal slight, when what they are really doing is making tempests in teapots. If I were convinced everyone involved in the average fandom fight was just taking the piss, then it might be amusing to me.

-- 19:48, 16 December 2010 (GMT)