Descent from PA
So, the other day ladyarkham and I were talking about how long it had been since we'd seen our Ohio/Pennsylvania people. "We've got Labor Day off coming up in a week or so," she said. "Why don't we see what they're doing?" It was short notice, long distance, and extremely unlikely to work out...
... but it did, rather magnificently. The five of us got to spend several days relaxing, talking, and launching periodic forays into the dungeons of the board game Descent.
(Descent: think Dungeons & Dragons, but simplified and without all that tedious "roleplay." Pfft. It's a lot of fun, and settles one of my pet peeves in games, that being-
Well, all right, I'm coming into this story in the middle, aren't I?
So, sometimes, when I play boardgames, people get this idea that I'm going to win, and that they all need to cooperate to prevent this from happening. This is, on occasion, an accurate idea, in which case, more power to them. Other times, it's a pretty desperately inaccurate one.
One example, here: the other day, ladyarkham's parents and I were playing a friendly game of the Settlers of Catan. Each player controls a very simple settlement on a large, fertile island, and scores points based on what they build there: towns, cities, roads, armies, etc. First one to ten points wins; it's possible to make jumps of a couple points, but you almost never get more than two or three in the course of a couple turns.
After maybe a half hour of playing, her dad looked over at my holdings and shook his head. "I think," he said in a serious, concerned tone of voice, "that irked_indeed is about to beat us." He was, at the time, sitting around six or seven points, as was ladyarkham.
I had... well, I had four points that turn. And the following one. And maybe the one after that.
So there's a point where this becomes a bit silly. What makes Descent a particularly fun game for me, then, is that one of the players takes on the role of the evil Overlord. His job is to use the nastiest combination of traps, monsters, and general orneriness he can put together to kill everyone else (the dungeon-crawling Heroes) as often as he can. They can cooperate. They can plan. They can openly scheme. The game is balanced to give him a fair shot at killing them all anyway.
It's kind of satisfying.)
Anyway. We also stopped by a fair for deliciously unhealthy food, devoured shocking quantities of cake and juice, and generally had time to catch up and geek out. It's good to be with good people.
(Also, I now own the coolest Exalted shrinky dinky in the world.)
Since then, I've been settling into teaching again, holding a bachelor party for my Weird Friend John (never mind that his wedding was over a month ago), and playing Echo Bazaar.
(So, to play Echo Bazaar, you need either an account with either Twitter or Facebook.
Facebook is creepy. Twitter is at least just text- and EB seems like fun (and like folks are going to be talking about it, so.) So I have an account there, now.
What I don't have is any real intent to use said account. I like LiveJournal primarily because it gives space for people to actually talk about things, in sentences and paragraphs and pages if need be. Given that Twitter's primary innovation seems to be not having that... don't expect much there. Subject to change and all that- "not effective" isn't in the same level of bizarre intrusiveness as its alternatives.
By "much" I mean "anything," really.)
Life is good.
... but it did, rather magnificently. The five of us got to spend several days relaxing, talking, and launching periodic forays into the dungeons of the board game Descent.
(Descent: think Dungeons & Dragons, but simplified and without all that tedious "roleplay." Pfft. It's a lot of fun, and settles one of my pet peeves in games, that being-
Well, all right, I'm coming into this story in the middle, aren't I?
So, sometimes, when I play boardgames, people get this idea that I'm going to win, and that they all need to cooperate to prevent this from happening. This is, on occasion, an accurate idea, in which case, more power to them. Other times, it's a pretty desperately inaccurate one.
One example, here: the other day, ladyarkham's parents and I were playing a friendly game of the Settlers of Catan. Each player controls a very simple settlement on a large, fertile island, and scores points based on what they build there: towns, cities, roads, armies, etc. First one to ten points wins; it's possible to make jumps of a couple points, but you almost never get more than two or three in the course of a couple turns.
After maybe a half hour of playing, her dad looked over at my holdings and shook his head. "I think," he said in a serious, concerned tone of voice, "that irked_indeed is about to beat us." He was, at the time, sitting around six or seven points, as was ladyarkham.
I had... well, I had four points that turn. And the following one. And maybe the one after that.
So there's a point where this becomes a bit silly. What makes Descent a particularly fun game for me, then, is that one of the players takes on the role of the evil Overlord. His job is to use the nastiest combination of traps, monsters, and general orneriness he can put together to kill everyone else (the dungeon-crawling Heroes) as often as he can. They can cooperate. They can plan. They can openly scheme. The game is balanced to give him a fair shot at killing them all anyway.
It's kind of satisfying.)
Anyway. We also stopped by a fair for deliciously unhealthy food, devoured shocking quantities of cake and juice, and generally had time to catch up and geek out. It's good to be with good people.
(Also, I now own the coolest Exalted shrinky dinky in the world.)
Since then, I've been settling into teaching again, holding a bachelor party for my Weird Friend John (never mind that his wedding was over a month ago), and playing Echo Bazaar.
(So, to play Echo Bazaar, you need either an account with either Twitter or Facebook.
Facebook is creepy. Twitter is at least just text- and EB seems like fun (and like folks are going to be talking about it, so.) So I have an account there, now.
What I don't have is any real intent to use said account. I like LiveJournal primarily because it gives space for people to actually talk about things, in sentences and paragraphs and pages if need be. Given that Twitter's primary innovation seems to be not having that... don't expect much there. Subject to change and all that- "not effective" isn't in the same level of bizarre intrusiveness as its alternatives.
By "much" I mean "anything," really.)
Life is good.