Gathering of One, Day Three

Thesis writing's a game, isn't it? Sure it is. It has:

1. 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.
2. 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.)
3. 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).
4. 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.
5. 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.

Gathering of One, Day 2

(For Day 1, go here.)

Day Two of the 2007 Gathering of One found me back at MetaGames. My usual favorite Friday gaming activity consists of hanging out and slinging the bull. I did that, of course, but also got in a couple of games of 24/7, the latest from Sunriver, which Metagames carries through some kind of arrangement with Funagain. (It involves some six-degrees of game retail separation; it's complicated.) I'd previously played 24/7 with three others; I was curious how it'd do as a two-player.

I played Carl, the manager, twice and won both times. It's a fun game, especially when I win, but it seems like a game where seating order is paramount; it's very, very easy to tee up a big score for the other guy.

If you're not familiar with the game, there are forty tiles, numbered 1-10 (four of each; three, chosen randomly, start the game out of play). One random tile starts in the middle. You have a hand of tiles in front of you. On your turn, you take a tile from your hand and place it on the board diagonally or orthogonally adjacent to any other tile. The idea is to make consecutive runs of the same tile, or tiles in sequential order, or rows that sum to 24 or 7. (Essentially.) There are lots of ways to do that, though; for most of the game it's hard to play "safety shots," to use a pool term. There are many games that I sometimes call "nim-like" where the idea is to "pass" in effective or creative ways, until the other guy is forced into zugzwang and has to give you good stuff. These games can be pretty good, but they're fragile and depend on people being knowledgeable about the board situation, and at least a way to minimize the luck of the draw. (Which is why the One True Way to play Knizia's Samurai is by drawing your tiles face-up.)

In 24/7, you're looking for tactical opportunities, rather than long-term planning, since it's so easy to screw up other players' plans. And you can be shafted by the tiles, as well. It seems like there should be some kind of way to eliminate much of the luck of the draw. Say by giving everyone an identical "starting hand," from which they choose their first six, and choose a replacement every turn? I'll have to try that.

What I like about the game: It's fast, it's easy, and encourages good table talk. It leads to good times at the table, even if the game mechanics aren't quite All That. It's not one I'd pull off the table all the time, but as a light game, it's pretty good.