baffle gab
I forgot to mention after the last game night of 2007 that some of us tried out a new (to us) game, Barnes and Noble's "Baffle Gab." It's writing game where several cards are drawn from a deck and everyone scrambles to write a story using as many of the words as they can. The rules are needlessly complicated with ways to earn bonus points. One way is to reuse some of the cards in the same story, but this is only allowed if the word isn't worth a single point; if single-point words are reused, then neither use of the word scores any points. Another unfortunate bonus is earned for using ALL the words in a single sentence, which just encourages run-ons that are still technically sentences. Further, no points are earned for card words if three of more of them are strung together.
All in all, it's not the greatest game, but it has promise. I think if the rules are reworked and/or no one cares about winning (because, why should you, really), then it could be a lot of fun. Trying this out on my non-writing friends (mostly engineers, to boot), though, quickly ran into arguments over what was a legitimate story, sentence, or utilization of card words, or how to appropriately score bonuses. Also the timer gives you an incredibly short amount of time to write. I often had to scribble to finish a single sentence, let alone more than that. Some "story."
I'll have to remember to bring it to the next NaNo gathering and we'll have to play with a tweaked set of rules. If I'm the board/card game freak of the group, I can at least try to find more games that involve writing, hey? It could be fun.
Not that Ticket to Ride isn't.
All in all, it's not the greatest game, but it has promise. I think if the rules are reworked and/or no one cares about winning (because, why should you, really), then it could be a lot of fun. Trying this out on my non-writing friends (mostly engineers, to boot), though, quickly ran into arguments over what was a legitimate story, sentence, or utilization of card words, or how to appropriately score bonuses. Also the timer gives you an incredibly short amount of time to write. I often had to scribble to finish a single sentence, let alone more than that. Some "story."
I'll have to remember to bring it to the next NaNo gathering and we'll have to play with a tweaked set of rules. If I'm the board/card game freak of the group, I can at least try to find more games that involve writing, hey? It could be fun.
Not that Ticket to Ride isn't.