Vacation & Gaming
Jun. 19th, 2004 10:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aWell, I've been on vacation for a week. I haven't actually gone anywhere, but it's been a much needed break from work during which I've done my best to relax and generally recover my sanity.
Overall, it's been successful. I've goofed off, BBQed a few times (more portabellos and corn on the cob), bought some new games (Battle Cry, Goa, St. Petersburg), played lots of games, mostly with Kimberly (including the aforementioned St. Petersburg, and also current obssessions like Memoir '44 and San Juan), bought and read a number of comic trade paperbacks (mostly Hellblazer, but also Garth Ennis' first volume of War Stories on the strength of Kimberly & me watching Band of Brothers and playing Memoir '44), eaten things I like, slept when I wanted, and in general, took it easy. I've done a very good job of keeping my head out of work my turning off my connection to our games, and also keeping my e-mail program mostly off (something I might want to consider doing at least some evenings in the future, to keep me from touching bases with work every hour or two as has been the case in the past).
I suppose I did work a little bit, in that I wrote up a review of Smugglers of the Galaxy and part of a review of The El Grande Expansions, played games of Sunken City and Nautilus solely for review purposes, and started thinking seriously about writing a Glorantha background book for Issaries. But that was the minority of time.
And that's been the week.
Today, by nice synchronicity, my normal roleplaying group was cancelled and Lance, one of my occasional Thursday night board gamers, was inviting people over to his house for board gaming. I decided I wanted to attend, and was pleasantly surprised to learn he lives just a mile and a half or so away.
[The slowly spreading of my normal gaming group down the peninsula has been a source of increased consternation over the last couple of years, primarily because I stopped hosting last year. At this point only one of the regular gamers still lives in Berkeley, and everyone else lives south of here, meaning that my source for rides is very limited, especially since my one potential ride tends to leave late and also stay for a late game that I don't. And, about half the games nowadays are held in Union City, at KW's house; last I checked there was no good public transit way to get there, which would be a really nice alternative, but it's about time to look again. I'd be perfectly happy if he was right at BART or something, but he's several miles away.]
In any case, today instead of normal gaming I walked up to Lance's house, and met a bunch of people I didn't know, a Mark, a David, and a Patrick. They all seemed like nice folks.
We played a number of games, largely not the stuff I'd play at my board game nights, which was a nice change. We started out with Cannibal Pygmies in the Jungle of Death, or some such, an almost totally random card game, that's saved by a nice theme, and the fact that it's short [I'd rate it Style: 3 or 4 / Substance: 3 on the RPGnet scale]. Then we moved on to Coloretto, a cute little set collection game, which I'd actually brought [4/5]. This was about when David showed up, and we were able to move on to the main course, A Game of Thrones, which is a very nicely done wargame with some German game ideals for mechanics and length [5/5]. I liked it the first time we played, other than the fact that I thought you really needed to stab people in the back to win; I liked it even more this time because none of the players were backstabbers. Ironically, after the game, one of the other players who I'd allied with (Mark) told me that he'd purposefully left one of the game-winning castles totally undefended right next to me, just to see if practiced as I'd preached about morality in play; I passed the test I suppose. Finally we finished up with Vinci, another wargame, this one a sort of abstract History of the World, again built on German ideals (though this one was actually French-designed, while A Game of Thrones was America). As before, I thought it was light and enjoyable [3 or 4/4].
I felt a little bad that I sharked most of the games, especially since I explained Coloretto and Vinci (though the latter was actually Lance's game). I think I won 2 out of 3 rounds of Coloretto, then both A Game of Thrones and Vinci. Ah well, everyone seemed to have fun, and some folks got introduced to some very good games.
Ironically, I'm going to probably remember the new people I met today primarily by their role in A Game of Thrones. Mark was black Greyjoy, Patrick was red Lannister, and David was green Tyrell (while Lance played yellow Barratheon and I played white Stark).
Overall, it's been successful. I've goofed off, BBQed a few times (more portabellos and corn on the cob), bought some new games (Battle Cry, Goa, St. Petersburg), played lots of games, mostly with Kimberly (including the aforementioned St. Petersburg, and also current obssessions like Memoir '44 and San Juan), bought and read a number of comic trade paperbacks (mostly Hellblazer, but also Garth Ennis' first volume of War Stories on the strength of Kimberly & me watching Band of Brothers and playing Memoir '44), eaten things I like, slept when I wanted, and in general, took it easy. I've done a very good job of keeping my head out of work my turning off my connection to our games, and also keeping my e-mail program mostly off (something I might want to consider doing at least some evenings in the future, to keep me from touching bases with work every hour or two as has been the case in the past).
I suppose I did work a little bit, in that I wrote up a review of Smugglers of the Galaxy and part of a review of The El Grande Expansions, played games of Sunken City and Nautilus solely for review purposes, and started thinking seriously about writing a Glorantha background book for Issaries. But that was the minority of time.
And that's been the week.
Today, by nice synchronicity, my normal roleplaying group was cancelled and Lance, one of my occasional Thursday night board gamers, was inviting people over to his house for board gaming. I decided I wanted to attend, and was pleasantly surprised to learn he lives just a mile and a half or so away.
[The slowly spreading of my normal gaming group down the peninsula has been a source of increased consternation over the last couple of years, primarily because I stopped hosting last year. At this point only one of the regular gamers still lives in Berkeley, and everyone else lives south of here, meaning that my source for rides is very limited, especially since my one potential ride tends to leave late and also stay for a late game that I don't. And, about half the games nowadays are held in Union City, at KW's house; last I checked there was no good public transit way to get there, which would be a really nice alternative, but it's about time to look again. I'd be perfectly happy if he was right at BART or something, but he's several miles away.]
In any case, today instead of normal gaming I walked up to Lance's house, and met a bunch of people I didn't know, a Mark, a David, and a Patrick. They all seemed like nice folks.
We played a number of games, largely not the stuff I'd play at my board game nights, which was a nice change. We started out with Cannibal Pygmies in the Jungle of Death, or some such, an almost totally random card game, that's saved by a nice theme, and the fact that it's short [I'd rate it Style: 3 or 4 / Substance: 3 on the RPGnet scale]. Then we moved on to Coloretto, a cute little set collection game, which I'd actually brought [4/5]. This was about when David showed up, and we were able to move on to the main course, A Game of Thrones, which is a very nicely done wargame with some German game ideals for mechanics and length [5/5]. I liked it the first time we played, other than the fact that I thought you really needed to stab people in the back to win; I liked it even more this time because none of the players were backstabbers. Ironically, after the game, one of the other players who I'd allied with (Mark) told me that he'd purposefully left one of the game-winning castles totally undefended right next to me, just to see if practiced as I'd preached about morality in play; I passed the test I suppose. Finally we finished up with Vinci, another wargame, this one a sort of abstract History of the World, again built on German ideals (though this one was actually French-designed, while A Game of Thrones was America). As before, I thought it was light and enjoyable [3 or 4/4].
I felt a little bad that I sharked most of the games, especially since I explained Coloretto and Vinci (though the latter was actually Lance's game). I think I won 2 out of 3 rounds of Coloretto, then both A Game of Thrones and Vinci. Ah well, everyone seemed to have fun, and some folks got introduced to some very good games.
Ironically, I'm going to probably remember the new people I met today primarily by their role in A Game of Thrones. Mark was black Greyjoy, Patrick was red Lannister, and David was green Tyrell (while Lance played yellow Barratheon and I played white Stark).