progress!
As you may recall, I have something of an ongoing quest to amass as many unpleasantly geeky traits as possible, in order to get a head start on horrifying any teenage offspring that my distant future may hold. A selection from the current list of accomplishments:
- extensive soldering iron evangelism
- familiarity with both Palladium and TSR roleplaying game systems, including the ability to ruminate at length on the relative utility of twelve-sided die versus a d100
- computers: I like 'em!
- near-total incompetence at all team sports
- and of course, the backgrounds in videogames and comics that are de rigeur for a male of my generation
There are a few glaring omissions: I've never played a collectible card game like Magic: The Gathering; I've never been to a sci-fi convention or Renaissance Faire (although I think I deserve partial credit for attending multiple computer shows); and I have, in fact, seen a girl naked (not sure what to do about that one).
Still, I'm pleased to announce additional progress. Yesterday I received a package containing the first truly dorky board game that I've owned. And when I say truly dorky, I mean it — this isn't some Risk bullshit. Captains of football teams play Risk! No, this is a different sort of thing all together.
Jeff introduced me to the genre when he came home for Christmas, bringing the game Puerto Rico with him. I found it immediately appealing: its tendency to facilitate offensive jokes about colonialism and capacity for screwing over your fellow man made it a lot of fun. Then when I visited Jeff in California this spring we played Power Grid, which I liked even more (and which, with its economically-oriented gameplay elements, seemed like it would be enjoyable to a lot of people I know).
But Jeff convinced me that I'd be better served by starting off with a simpler game. So I bought Carcassonne, which is considered a prototypical example of this so-called German-style board game (presumably because the game revolves around divvying up real estate in France).
Some of you have probably heard of or even played it before — the only game from this genre that's better-known is Settlers of Catan, which is popular enough to have shown up on Xbox Live. But Carcassonne was new to me when Charles and I gave it a try last night. The verdict: pretty fun!
But I can already feel the hunger growing — this one won't keep me satisfied for long. I need more tiles! More complex rules! More numerous and varied bits of varnished wood to lose under the couch! Things could get ugly before it's all over.
Comments
If you ever want to play Dune or Magic Realm, just give a holler. I've actually got two copies of MR.
Awesome. Now we just need to get Jeff back into town and it'll be a party -- a relatively sad party, but a party all the same!
Seriously though, I'm up for some geeky nights of games.
The Palladium system? Really? HDC and MDC? I was always a big fan of the Rifts world that they published (also: the original TMNT system, and the Heroes Unlimited book) -- but their books always felt like they were "too much story" and "not enough playtesting." Fr'instance: the Glitter-boy OCC in Rifts? Seriously unbalanced.
Also: your Risk-disdain is pretty accurate, but have you tried going even simpler? As in, Diplomacy? Great to play if you've got six friends and an equal number of free hours... but if you don't have those, there are some really nice play-by-email systems as well.
Carcassonne will soon be joining Catan on Xbox Live Arcade, I hear. I like the actual tabletop version, though, because it's sort of like dominoes for dorks—a pleasant game involving lying down tiles while reclining, preferably with a lemonade on a slow, summer day. Also, it's easily transportable if you just dump all the pieces in a ziploc bag.
If you are truly looking to get into more hard core games, consider Shadows Over Camelot (a cooperative game about staving off nigh-inevitable doom) and Ticket to Ride (for the train lover in all of us).
son1: yup. I mostly played Rifts, which was pretty cool. I never really enjoyed playing the game much, but reading the books was fantastic (same thing happened with pretty much every other RPG I encountered -- the books were cool, but I didn't like actually playing the game). I rolled characters in TMNT and a game that I think was called Ninjas & Superspies (and maybe Heroes Unlimited, too -- can't remember). Anyway, as I recall the GM's solution to the glitter boy problem was to mostly run campaigns set in cities where the character couldn't take the armor. Also, I believe there were some elaborate rules for importing Palladium characters into Rifts (via a Rift, of course) and perhaps vice versa.
As for Diplomacy -- I've never played it, but would love to give it a try. But the folks I know who'd make the best potential targets for it have already passed through their Diplomacy phase in high school, I'm afraid.
Jason: those sound pretty cool. I remember you talking to me about Ticket to Ride, but Shadows Over Camelot I don't recall (or it sounded too complex for me to commit to memory). Do you own those? Can we give em a try sometime?
Playing the Catan demo last night turned out to be a surprisingly fun hour. I can't recall trading wool for lumber and building roads ever entertaining me before. Must have satisfied a deep need to arrange things and accumulate wealth.
I think everyone eventually settles on "get the Glitterboy out of his suit" as a solution, but it's still a lame design -- you either have this near-invincible character who can deal god-like amounts of damage, or some totally normal guy with no money to his name. But Ninjas and Superspies! The gadgets, and the martial-arts catalog! Ah, it's all coming back to me now. I should dig up those books again, the next time I go home.
Have you ever heard of/did you ever play a (non-Palladium) game called Paranoia? That's gotta be one of my all-time favorites. "Stay Alert! Trust No-one! Keep your Laser Handy!"
The Diplomacy play-by-email systems are pretty sweet. There are queue systems set up, so that you don't have to personally know six other people just to get a game -- the queues match up players, and then the games are run by online judges. Everything is done by email. The usual pace is about two moves a week, or so. It usually takes about 15-30 minutes of attention a night, two or three times a week, if you've got the time.
The Palladium books were always better for reading than playing, especially the alt-hist/post-apocalytic books. The one on England was where I first heard about the Chunnel.
Diplomacy is a great game, if for no other reason than presenting a situation in which Austria-Hungary can become the dominant power of Europe.
Paranoia is one of the best, no doubt. The interesting bit on that is that it was published the year before Terry Gilliam's Brazil, and came up with the color-coded security system (from 'Ultraviolet' to 'Infrared') almost two decades before Tom Ridge.
Well, if it's more tiles you need be sure to explore the exciting world of Carcassonne expansion packs. There's no end to the amount of money you can sink into this.
(btw, count me in for some by-email-Diplomacy. This is all you need.)
The best part about Paranoia were the game-forms that you filled out in triplicate. Beyond awesome.
You have great potential to add a side real of geeky traits if you actually learned the names of the lichens growing on the trees you have the picture of for your site.
Also I'm pretty sure we have a mutual friend that just might have some of that collectible card game that begins with an M... but you didn't hear it from me.
Oh, I might have some idea who that is, Genevieve.
As for the trees: it's actually not lichen. That's just the way the bark naturally is (including the pink highlights). Also, it's actually just one tree with several trunks, although of course that's impossible to tell from the photo.