12-05-06 Game Night, & More Thoughts.

Greetings, Fun-Lovers!

One point: I forgot, last time, to give any examples of how luck can play a good, strategic role in games. Tigris & Euphrates, War of the Ring, Puerto Rico, Settlers of Catan, Ticket to Ride... all have elements of luck.

What's different is that the luck doesn't control the game, isn't capable of instantly invalidating a carefully laid plan.

When you draw your six tiles in Tigris & Euphrates, tiles in a color you don't need can be turned into points you do need, given the nature of bi-color monuments and external combat that cripples uninvolved leaders.

When you roll the dice for combat in War of the Ring, there are army size modifiers, leaders, and battle cards. And when you draw event cards, they have two possible uses, one of which will usually be valueable in the near future, forcing you to adapt.

When the plantations flip up randomly in Puerto Rico, everyone is subjected to that luck equally, with knowledge of what's flipped up coming before anyone picks the settler role.

In Settlers of Catan, a detailed knowledge is provided of how often each number, 2-12, will come up; and the dice for resources are rolled often enough so that it balances. And with the dynamics of trading, bad resources can be turned onto good ones, with skill.

In Ticket to Ride, the 5 face up cards will almost always have some value somewhere down the line, given how many routes one has to claim. Wilds bail one out of bad luck to a degree, too, both the card wilds and route wilds.

The bottom line is that you aren't at the mercy of the luck in the games mentioned above. The luck is a manageable part of the strategy, an element that can be controlled, usually, with skill to achieve victory. And that makes me, anyway, feel less like a monkey and more like a man with a mind.

For more thoughts on the matter, here's an article by the co-creator of The Princes of Florence that's part of the cause for my thoughts on the matter. http://www.thegamesjournal.com/articles/WhatMakesaGame.shtml

So, on Tuesday the 5th, playing Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition, I had flashbacks to the very first game night we had, almost two years ago now.

I'd just discovered boardgamegeek.com back then, as well as online stores that sold games that barely exist for purchase pysically in Vermont. It was boardgames.com (obvious search, that), since proven to be far inferior in price and selection to sites like thoughthammer.com.

Anyway, before picking up the rankings at BGG as a source of collection-building info that's likely to be worth the time, pleasure and money of many, I'd gotten the team-oriented Lord of the Rings game by noted designer Renier Knizia (Tigris & Euphrates, Modern Art, etc.). http://boardgamegeek.com/game/823. A good teamwork game, though probably bettered by Shadows Over Camelot.

Back then, I was just so gung ho with the games I'd discovered, so blown away by the fact that no one had ever heard of any of them, so amazed with the potential to eliminate the gaming drawbacks of videogames, I just thought the whole world would fall into line when I so much as gave it a whiff of them. So, I broke out the game without having read the rules, expecting we'd all figure them out quickly, and that everyone would love the learning process.

Wrong!

I spent the next week worrying that I'd killed a beautiful newborn baby. People were disgruntled. Jay himself, a big gaming and LotR fan, called the game "shit on a rotating shit stick". Not true, as Dan and I learned later, as well as my cousin Elliot from Burlington (hopefully attending the Sunday game day on the 17th). But I don't blame people for jumping to conclusions. It was all poorly planned on my part.

I believe we rescued the night by digging out the original Scene It!. Not a bastion of strategy, but good for film buffs. Jay didn't call that one anything on a rotating anything stick: he won.

So, all that was recalled for me playing Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition. Luckily, all the people there have had varying degrees of experience with the best tabletop games, so we knew what we were getting into and how to avoid rushing to judgement. Still, I'm bringing some supplemental paperwork next Tuesday when we finish at Devon's, like FAQs, gouge sheets, and a 2nd printout of the rules so more than one person can look a thing up at a time.

And on another note... Dan's right. Super Bomberman 2 is a great alternative. Quick, fast, and deep as a videogame, and a genuine pleasure for me to play again. I worried, after my sophomore year in college, that I'd never get another taste, at least not with people willing to bone up on their skills. It's a pure multi-player game... so I can't do the Resident Evil 4 thing and bring back all the good old days by sitting up all weekend in my underwear... alone. :)

One of my biggest hopes is that people will come to trust me and my knowledge of games (non-athletic, anyway) implicitly. In fact, at this point, I'd like my tombstone to read "He knew games.".

And I'd like people to be able to see(nay, feel) that, while far from perfect (I understand statistical bias, you know), the rankings at BGG give at least a 100 games, largely unknown, that will yield up greatness if given time, faith, and patience. The collected verdicts of the world's most knowledgeable tabletop gamers result in at least that. It may not be your type of depth, strategy, and meaningful descision making, but they'll at least have your respect.

That faith, the implications of the rankings, hit me instantly when I stumbled on them. And I keep thinking they'll hit others instantly. Yet they rarely do. Sometimes I scratch my head when "what looks good", or "what a friend recommends", or "what someone happens to teach me" double as reasons to use up precious and rare time, money, and space. Tick... tick... tick.

I think sometimes about how people are built, about what I've learned about evolution. before puberty (if there had to be a point), people are built to learn how to approach the world. After that point (again, if there had to be a point), people are built to take what they've learned about how to approach the world, and to stick to it. So often, even with "geeks", I'll try to talk about this totally new area, and I'll get "the look". Not "the look" that a guy gives when he's forcing himself to do something his woman wants him to do, but "the look" of someone who's having the underpinnings of their belief structure chipped away at. They sense that there's value out there that they don't have a bead on... but their life is so... full... that the pull to stick to "what they know" clamps some jaws on their cajones.

Make any sense?

When people are young, they're dynamic and creative, evolutionarily speaking, because if their culture is broken, they're capable of taking the reigns and fixing it (if big business and the government will let them), while older people stick to what they know, usually with great clinginess because if they've made it to that age, their culture is probably a workable one, and the culture doesn't need the burden of them fighting it, but the benefit of them supporting it.

So... in our culture... the young rage against their culture... but can't change it because of how titanic, monolithic, and even essential it has become... in spite of it's horrible flaws. Then, people become sullen, isolated adults, semi-conscious of the knowledge that they failed in their duty to change, and are now incapable of it.

Make sense yet?

If not... blog back! :)

-AnonAmos