RPGless Saturday

[shannon_a]

My newest gaming blog has been posted, this one on the problems I see with popular games such as Bridge, Poker, Scrabble, and Chess. (And Puerto Rico.)

http://boredgamegeeks.blogspot.com/2005/10/five-games-i-dont-like.html

I'll admit, I was trying to create some conversation, and got more "me too"s than I expected.

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Today I opted out of RPGing for no particular reason, other than to see what happened. Rather than programming and reviewing as I often do on days free, I instead did various purely fun things. And things that needed to be done.

For lunch Kimberly & I joined Katherine and Michael for delicious Dim Sum with good company over in Oakland.

On and off I cleaned my office & sun room throughout the day, and there's now definitely some increased order. Which isn't necessarily saying a lot.

Went for a walk downtown with Kimberly in the afternoon, then out to get groceries with her in the evening. And we even played a board game (Ticket to Ride) in the afternoon, the first in many months.

Watched two more episodes of Enterprise which I continue to enjoy, though it's nothing amazing. (This was 2.6-2.7).

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As a nice side effect of doings today I made plans with Michael to get together for some two player games on Monday. I've had an increasing pile of them needing review, and the newest arrival (Dungeon Twister) looks exciting enough that I really want to get to them.

(I'm still on that 2-reviews-a-week regimen since GenCon. This week it's going to be The Hollywood! Card Game and probably a Texas Hold'em computer game that I was sent a while ago. And I'm watching the mail for more including Havoc and Barbarossa.)

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Tomorrow: finishing up that Hollywood review, back to programming my current RPGnet project which sat largely idle this week due to the trauma of the RPGnet forums upgrade, and yard work.

Comments

[dougo.livejournal.com]

It sort of seems like you're saying you don't like games where some people are much better than others. Which is partly about the games themselves (little or no luck) but mostly about the culture around the games. Maybe 50 years from now, Gipf will have a huge amount of literature written about it, and there will be codified bidding conventions for Mü. Would you dislike them, then, too? (Or maybe you already dislike them—I don't think I've seen you review them.)

Dungeon Twister is kind of neat, but I still much prefer Wiz-War.

[shannon_a]

That's a good question, but after some thought, no, I'm perfectly happy where people are at different skill levels. What I don't like is when people train to increase their skill level, because that seems to spoil the fun of the game, and for me that's what games should be: fun. When someone takes them to a different level, I start having problems.

And yes, I could see Gipf as being played out in 50 years if people put out a bunch of literature on it. I think that a lot of analytical games are prone to that. And yes, I could see Mu ruined if people start taking it too serious by codifying a bidding system. (I've never played Gipf, but I do like Mu.)

[dougo.livejournal.com]

I guess what I'm saying is that it's a little unfair to judge a game by its players. Unless you're saying that all games with little or no luck are inherently flawed because they could eventually draw these kinds of players; while there is some truth to that, I think it's more of a philosophical question than something that belongs in a review.

[shannon_a]

Well, as I said in my article, these were meta-issues, somewhat outside of the scope of the game, but still real issues in playing the game in today's world. I don't think I would discuss most of them in a review (except probably the Texas Hold'em issues I mention), but this was intended to be a more open-ended article discussing reasons that I don't like certain games, as opposed to whether they're "good" or not.

But I will also say that it's a strength if a game can avoid these meta-issues, and I think some can.