Thesis writing's a game, isn't it? Sure it is. It has:
- A Victory Condition. Get the thing finished, and you get to graduate. Looked at another way: Don't finish it, and you can't graduate.
- Rules. And a great many rules there are. There are actually several rulebooks, used by various competing organizations. I'm playing by the "Turabian" rulebook, with additions from the "Graduate College Style Guide" rulebook, plus of course a wide variety of house rules developed by my committee, some adopted seemingly on the fly. Not that that's actually true! I'm sure everything's all very rational. (You can't be too careful.)
- Various Phases. I'm currently in the endgame phase of a much larger game, which began with setting up (determining a topic), the early phases (secondary research), the middle game (archival research), the, um, late-middle game (writing the stupid thing), and now editing. Soon comes the final scoring (see no. 1, above).
- Pieces. Not necessarily required for a game, but there are pieces nonetheless. It'd probably be classified as a pencil-and-paper game, although it's typically done on the computer nowadays, for the most part.
- Turns. I make a move, and submit it to the referees (the committee). They then resolve my moves and return the result to me. I then make a move based on that. Repeat ad nauseam.
I'd put the playing time for this game at approximately two years. There's an advanced version of the game, as well, which I'll be getting into in a few months. That one can last much longer. In fact, some people never finish! They just leave it set up for years and years, almost but not quite forgetting about it entirely.
So, yeah, that's been my gaming activity.
Wait--not quite. There's also a "reverse prize table." I've determined that it's easier to move money halfway across the continent than it is to move games I don't play. To that end, I'm going over the shelves, looking for more dead weight. This week: My Great Battles of History collection. All kinds of games and modules and whatnot, all for sale on Boardgamegeek. They're not bad games, but I have other gaming priorities.
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