No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games. – W.H. Auden
I adore games; I always have and I always will. And while they aren’t terribly unusual things to be fond of, there are three limiting factors which will give you a better picture of what I’m talking about before we really start.
1) I don’t really care for games played by oneself. To me, a game is a social interaction between two or more people rather than something one does to amuse oneself alone. I’ve never been a big fan of either solitaire or masturbation; they both always seemed a bit pointless to me. This isn’t to say that there’s anything wrong with either one, or that I look down on those who enjoy them, or that I didn’t engage in both at times (especially as a teenager, though far less often as the years went by and barely at all after 30); it’s just that, what I’m looking for most in both games and sex is something I can’t get from either myself or a machine.
2) I don’t care for games in which I’m not a participant. I find watching other people play games even more dreadfully tedious than I find playing them by myself. Here again there is a sexual parallel; porn and football leave me equally cold. Ditto for fight scenes in movies unless there is something else interesting about them (if, for example, there is some witty repartee or at least one of the participants has some unusual abilities). What I’m looking for most in both games and sex is something that requires direct participation.
3) I don’t care for games in which the stakes are either too low or too high. To me, a game is a safe microcosm of life, a space in which the unfathomable complexities of existence can be distilled into a set of rules which allow win or loss through solving the problems by which the game is defined. The players of a game based purely on chance (with no skill involved) are nothing more than glorified spectators; the dice roll, the pieces are moved in the only way they can be and the game ends in the same way as it would if different people were playing. On the other hand, a game in which the stakes are too high is not a game at all; it’s real life, with real consequences. No, thanks; I’ll leave that sort of thing to the professional gamblers and the Count Zaroffs of the world.
As you can see, these criteria eliminate a large fraction of what most people think of when someone says the word “game” (most prominently gambling, spectator sports and solo computer games). Of the remaining types, I like most of them – word games, thinking games, card games, board games, role-playing games, etc – and quite enjoy nearly any of them if I like the people I’m playing with. There are some games at which I’m not really competent to compete (chess, drinking games and most sports fall into that category), and others which are far too complicated for my tastes (tabletop war games come to mind). But by and large, I learn games very quickly and before too long can offer moderately-experienced players an interesting game. Of course there are some that, all things being equal, I enjoy more than others, and I’ve divided them into five categories for this discussion.
Children’s Games
Of all the field games, my favorite was hide and seek; it’s the only one I still enjoy as an adult, though unfortunately it is rarely suggested in grown-up company (though I did play it on a call once with the client and two other working girls). I always prided myself on coming up with hiding places nobody else could think of, and on being able to figure out others’ hiding places when I was “it”. As for children’s board games, when I was very small I was quite fond of Cootie and a race game called The Happy Little Train Game, but since both are games of pure chance I outgrew them quickly (though I still own both and have played them on occasion just for giggles). The only children’s board game I still enjoy for itself (rather than for its nostalgia value) is Sorry!, a Parcheesi variant in which moves are determined by special cards rather than dice.
Board Games
I’ve already described Switchboard in “My Favorite Things You May Never Have Heard Of”, but I’m sure you’ve heard of my other favorite board game: backgammon, one of the oldest (5000 years or more) games still in existence. While nearly any competent player can trounce me at chess, I have never met anyone who could consistently best me at backgammon. I discuss several more board games I enjoy in the next section below.
Thinking Games
Though I am quite fond of both Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit, neither of them occupies quite the place in my favor as good old twenty questions, a game which can be played anywhere with no special equipment at all. I suppose it’s my librarian’s zeal for classification, but I just love the process of cutting the whole universe down to one specific thing with only twenty well-chosen yes/no questions (for you information theory guys, recognize that’s only twenty bits). My friend Terrance was the all-time champ at this; I could pick anything, no matter how specific, and he would be sure to get it. In one memorable game in my late teens, he was able to arrive at “Raquel Welch’s left nipple” in only about 16 questions. Another favorite in this category is Therapy, which is similar to Trivial Pursuit in that players must answer questions to collect pegs in different categories; however, the questions are all about psychology and there is a further game mechanic in which players are asked about opinions or life-experiences and other players have to guess what the first player answered.
Card Games
I was never a particularly big fan of card games, though as I said above I like them just fine if I like the people I’m playing with. One of the few fond memories of my marriage to Jack was our friendship with another couple I met through their son, a regular library patron. Every Friday night for several years we would go to their house, have dinner and then play spades until midnight or later. It was always the wives against the husbands, and though we always beat the menfolk they never wanted to change the teams (to couple vs. couple or wife-swapping). I don’t really like cutthroat spades, but I really, really like partnership spades. The only other card game I would consider a favorite is the first collectible card game, Magic, which Frank taught me after Jack left me at the beginning of 1995 as part of a general strategy of giving me something else to think about other than my myriad problems. Unlike traditional card games, each player in Magic has his own deck constructed from cards chosen from among thousands (only hundreds when I started) of cards created by the publisher, each with rules that govern the way that card interacts with others; constructing decks is half the fun for me.
Role-Playing Games (RPGs)
Nowadays, many people think of these as games played on a computer, but it originally meant pencil, paper, rulebooks and sitting around a table with friends playing the part of a character one created within the rule structure. Jeff taught me how to play Dungeons and Dragons just after my 14th birthday, and I was hooked; I was running my own game within a year, and slowly built up so many new rules and rule changes that my version is practically a different game from the official one, now in its 4th edition. I still enjoy this game more than any other; if I could count every happy hour I spent between the ages of 15 and 30 I have absolutely no doubt the majority were those spent either playing or game-mastering D&D. Once I started dating my husband I taught him to play, and though his travel schedule has made it difficult for the past few years we still have a (technically) active game going. I have created several game worlds, two of them extremely elaborate; my story “Empathy” actually takes place in my most complex one, which (if you’re at all familiar with D&D) may give you some idea just how far I’ve gone from the usual sword and sorcery setting. It isn’t the only role-playing game I really like; Champions (in which one plays a superhero) is a lot of fun as well. But D&D was my first and greatest love in the RPG multiverse.
1) I don’t really care for games played by oneself.
Me neither but often I don’t get time and opportunity for co operative game play.
2) I don’t care for games in which I’m not a participant.
Same here, its nice to watch someone else enjoy themselves but I’d rather participate, same with sport, unless its a sport I participate in and I’m watching other competitors, in which case I’m usually studying their method, which I see is part of the sport.
3) I don’t care for games in which the stakes are either too low or too high.
Hmm I play for the pleasure of people, not entirely sure what would have to be ” too low”.
Children’s Games
British bulldogs by far, both competitive and co operative.
Board games
Just about anything which requires a certain amount of strategy.
Thinking Games
I tend to lean towards historical strategy games, lots of dice lots of calculating probabilities, trivial pursuit not really my sort of thing since I don’t take much notice of who’s who in life (unless they are involved in science or a historical event).
Card Games
Yep magic, its portable and easy lots of strategy and the games are relatively quick, fun also thinking about and making decks. However I play for the pleasure, not particularly competitive on this.
Role-Playing Games (RPGs)
Started with 2nd ed D&D (Dragonlance) moved over to white wolfs world of darkness (the live roleplay world of darkness games were really fun).
Ended up with GURPS, I like being able to switch genre’s at any time or use idea’s from any genre (Fantasy settings are still set on Ansalon, during the war of the lance, with a dash of spelljammer), however to be honest I get little time to do this either. 🙁
By “too low” I mean games in which I can’t even feel an emotional investment, such as games of pure chance. If I win at a game that requires some skill it means something, but if random chance operates in my favor I’m basically just a glorified spectator.
My problem is that playing Magic against the computer is the only way I still get to play since my office went virtual (I live in a rural part of a rural state… too bad I can’t teach cows, gators or wild boars to play). As to my other card games, those were a tough sell even when I was playing regularly.
I also have a large board-game collection, which is inevitably ignored in favor of Monopoly or Trivial Pursuit during the one or two times a year when people play board games (I have talked my Mom into 221B Baker Street, occasionally, though).
I’ve got 221B Baker Street; haven’t had the chance to play it in years, though.
Once I play through a case in that game, I never forget it, which means I’m careful not to look at the ones we haven’t played yet. Betrayal at the House on the Hill is sort of similar in that respect.
Goodness! You play D&D and Magic? Your reputation score just went up by 10 😀 Plus, I can’t imagine how many times I’ve met a guy who said that his gf/wife was great, but that he wished she would be more into RPGs with him…
I not only play, I DM. 😉 Actually, I’ve had a lot of female players; for about a year (1985-86, if memory serves) I had an all-girl game, me and three female players. I think more girls would become interested in it had they encountered boys like those I knew, who made them feel welcome; I still remember the one guy I met at the Sci-fi club at UNO my first semester there who sneered, “I hate playing D&D with women; they always want to talk to everything!”
Different strokes. I role-play with a group of (ex) Special Forces soldiers. They want to ambush everything (and know how).
These days I mostly play tournament-level bridge; Titan; Paths of Glory; and of course 18xx. I’m “jdgalt” on bridgebase.com and boardgamegeek, too.
Do you still like the most recent edition of D&D? I don’t find I like it much.
I do have fond memories though of that game. I bought my first D&D game at about age 10, from Woolies, carried it home and studied it for hours, only to find that no one would play. Some boys from school had a regular game, but they wouldn’t allow me to play. (We were still at that age).
Now, Call of Cthulhu is my favourite game. I’m just a girl who really likes CoC. I also like Deliria and Serenity.
I do play one solitary computer game when I’ve time, Trainz.
I didn’t like the second edition rules, and haven’t even LOOKED at any editions since. But my own rule changes are so profound it’s essentially a different game now.
We also customized D&D so much that we decided to switch to a system with customization built in. As for women it was not unusual for them to play although predominated by men, however I took part in a Vampire Masquerade live roleplay at a local bar, which had a great many women taking part (we had about 20 people playing at once).
By the nature of the game the emphasis was politics, negotiation, seduction and assassinations, with lots and lots suspense.
As the game also involves politics within players, players end up competing and as well as co operating against each other but not openly, competing actions called challenges were dealt with using paper scissors stone.
One thing I was always very authoritarian about in my games was: NO INTER-PLAYER COMPETITION. As I explained to new players, you’re all on the same team; the opponent is imaginary. Not even the DM is your opponent; I represent the side of fun, which is sometimes for you and sometimes against you (whichever will increase everyone’s enjoyment). When I was very inexperienced I allowed that “players opposing one another” shit, and I hated it so much that when I smelled it happening in another game where I played a thief I picked the troublemaker’s pocket, got the proof of his malice, back-stabbed him and then presented the proof to the party.
I disagree, in my experience PVP can be done well with the right players in the right setting. I played a game (White Wolf’s Exalted) where the entire story was based around one group of player characters (mine) trying to conquer a city and another group of players trying to stop us/ liberate the city from us.
I think this is more World of Darkness than D&D, the games I played and ran usually had the theme were the players may be enemies but their survival depends on working together.
Broken people forced together through circumstance to save a hostile world from itself.
The LRP didn’t need much of a story, the original prince had been killed, the rest of the game was about who was to be elected to be the new prince.
Vampire: The Masquerade?
My uncle is one of the authors (as is our neighbor Andrew and his housemate… I forget his name).
I agree with your sentiments on WATCHING other people play games. I played football and baseball all through my childhood and teenage years but I can’t watch it for shit – and never could.
Fight scenes … well the classic one was Bruce Lee vs. Jabbar … I love when Jabbar leaves his big-assed footprint in Lee’s chest!
I have this one on DVD somewhere…
I think your selling ‘solo computer games’ short. Perhaps 15 years ago solo computer games were essentially glorified solitaire/cross word puzzles (which do have merit on their own, for different reasons.) But now, they are interactive movies.
A modern game is a story in which you have control over the pacing of the plot, and in really good games (like the vampire the masquerade bloodlines game, one of the best games I have ever played) you actually get to make your own plot, within limits. Often these games have a multiplayer aspect to them, but there is a lot to be said about games that have quality because of their story.
These games are an entirely new form of entertainment, but they still fall squarely in the “game” world.
I suggest you give them a try if you like movies/books and enjoy solving puzzles. I highly recommend horror games, especially Fear, Resident Evil 4, and the Legacy of Kain series (although that last one is technically an RPG action adventure, I would classify it as horror)
When I was a kid few other children had computers or video game consoles, so I learned to love computer games and none of my peers had a clue what I was talking about. (This was back when you could still buy all text PC games in retail stores, and they still published some games on cassette tapes..)
(Bloodlines is a good game, though it does rely highly on hand eye coordination so some people aren’t going to get into it… Sometimes I’d like to recommend the Bioshock or System Shock series to people for the stories but they have the same problem, they make Doom look like a walk in the park).
Not all computer games are bad. I play “RockSmith” all the time on my PS3 … it’s a guitar game and it’s fascinating. I plug my real guitars into the PS3 and play songs and the thing keeps score for how many notes I get correctly. That’s a highly skilled game and it’s a great way to develop guitar skills.
I used to be an absolute crack addict for “AstroEmpires” … http://www.astroempires.com I was on “alpha” server and one of the top 100 players at one point. It’s more of a “text based” game – this is not like World of Warcraft. We worked in “guilds” though and we had players from the U.S., Britain, Portugal, Canada, Mexico, Denmark – all over the world really. We could communicate with each other in real time … pretty outstanding game if you ask me.
If you think I should shut down my blog, just say so! 😉 Because I use every waking hour which isn’t spent on my husband or the machinery of life working on this blog, which means almost no time for reading books and NONE for computer games.
Huh and I’ve only just found it.
Don’t worry, I’m not planning to go anywhere; I was just teasing StormDaughter. 🙂
😛 😉
Have your ever played Second Life? Basically, a lot of players have made a role-playing game, or really, various games, out of sex itself. You can be as attractive as you like, whatever gender you like, and take all sorts of risks you would not take in real life. I am fond of Second Life Gor, which has an entire world built up around it. It’s hilarious and fun to goof on John Norman’s Gor and play — iiterally, play — at BDSM at the same time. I don’t know if you’d like it or not, though. I suspect your work experience may have had a strong role play element to it, as it is.
I don’t play “Second Life” but I was looking for a “camisk” online to purchase for one of the girls I see. Those things are hot. Problem is – every Google hit I got led to a “second life” website selling … DIGITAL “camisks” for use in the online universe. That doesn’t work for me. 🙁
By the way … the camisk I’m talking about looks like this … it’s hot and any woman could wear one and look great regardless of their build. Obviously buxom women with big hips would look best though! LMAO!!
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/The_Gor_Project_1_by_mjranum_stock.jpg
The dirty secret of Second Life Gor is that its population is about two-thirds female, and about half of those women spend time designing sexy clothing for their slave avatars and selling them to the other half. They also create very elaborate dresses and such for Free Women. If it sounds like a dress-up doll game, well, some people call the ones who hang out in the cities and never do combat “tea party Gor.” Gor Evolved, which has combat and so forth, where I play, is still hella fun, though!
I’ve gotten into Second Life in the last couple of months. There’s an oldies club I go to for old time rock n’ roll music and dancing, and I recently found one for techno. I haven’t found a J-pop club yet, but I will ha ha. And yes, sex, but I also have fun in some of the M rated areas.
I am utterly uninterested in the Gorean stuff, but wish happiness to those who are.
D&D is a gateway drug. Sure, it starts out innocuously, with alignments and heavy encouragements to be ‘good’ and ‘lawful’; but once you’re hooked on RPGs, you start moving towards the harder stuff, like Runequest ™ and Palladium FRPG ™, and before you know it suddenly you’re in games like Vampire: The Requiem ™, and Call of Cthulhu ™ and seriously discussing whether or not to sacrifice someone in order to save humanity. RPGs lead to nuances, critical thinking, and all sorts of heresies.
The greatest sacrifice I ever made as a PC was when an evil king offered to spare my party if I would marry him (thus permanently shelving my character, since this was a Muslim-like society and she would be confined to a harem). There was really no other option; the party was totally outgunned and would certainly die in attempting to escape. So I surrendered a 12th-level monk without hesitation, because I knew that’s what she would do.
Blerg. I detest the D&D alignment system- all of them, every version, including pathfinder. They really aught to be labeled what they are -selfish to the exclusion of others, selfish with consideration for others, and selfless to the exclusion of the self. Labeling them good, neutral, and evil is inane and misleading, implying that moral systems are black and white and simplistic. I’ve found that it actually breeds bad players because they don’t spend time thinking about the character itself and how he/she would act in a given situation, they only think about what a character of X alignment would do. It makes all characters the same except for cosmetic differences!
Not to mention the alignment system of D&D leaves humanity at large as lawful neutral/evil.
P.S. Vampire: The Requiem is a poor substitute for The Masquerade.
So do I; the only players I ever held to it were clerics for obvious reasons. And I discarded “alignment language” and other absurdities in my very first game, started when I was 15.
Just how awful alignment is depends on how it’s played. But yeah, I don’t do alignment languages.
Yes, and too many play their alignments in a cartoonish fashion, wholly 1 or 2 dimensional. Would a lawful good paladin obey the “laws” of a lawful evil kingdom. Probably not. My lawful good characters were always bound by a higher moral code than the laws of man, and had no problem breaking someone out of jail if they were there because of a law my character thought was contrary to true justice.
The image of a paladin frozen into immobility when confronted by an evil law is the fault of the DM, who thinks this should be the main thing that happens to paladins. My feeling tends to be that Lawful/Good characters are a bit more likely to tolerate a silly or useless law, because he believes that Law is an intrinsically good thing. But he’s under no illusion that any law must be a good law, simply because it’s a law. Whereas a Chaotic/Good character may accept the very best laws, grudgingly, but he’s convinced that law itself s an intrinsically bad thing, and you should have as few of them as possible, and they should be very narrow and only do what they must do. And oh, do we need it to be permanent? Really?
I’ve evolved on the issue of alignment over the years, and the only reason I haven’t tossed it out altogether is because of the “it’s cool to be evil” crowd. To many gamers won’t be good unless there’s a rule which docks them EX if they are not.
I have a much worse punishment for playing an evil character: a life expectancy measured in minutes. If I play an evil character, I can’t hit the broadside of a barn with a sawed-off shotgun from 3 feet, I’ll never make a saving throw, and any good character I meet decides to make an example of me, no matter how inoffensively I act. Give me a Paladin, I have lost one Paladin in over 30 years of gaming, and that was an intentional sacrifice to save the party.
Your paladin sounds like my hooker. She isn’t exactly from D&D, though that’s the system I used when designing her.
Sailor, that would be an interesting character for one of my Paladins to meet. PS-I have even had GM’s insist that they roll saving throw or to hit rolls and it just doesn’t matter: If it’s save or die, or get a critical hit or become balrog fodder, my paladin always comes through.
Ooh, Vampire: The Requiem AND it’s predecessor, Vampire: The Masquerade. I played the original with my brother and his friends. We also played Shadowrun and some SW game I can’t think of the title. I didn’t play that for long. I was a fan of Earthdawn but no one else around me was.
White Wolf’s major contribution to the field of role-playing games was to make ‘role-playing’ an integral part of the game, rather than an add-on to a miniatures combat system. Now there are dozens of systems which emphasize role-playing, non-violent conflicts, and personal choice in morality/ethics.
I loved Vampire Masquerade. But I played that most necessary and thankless of individuals, the Vampire Hunter. The local clan discovered the positive aspects of a Vampire Hunter when a larger and more experienced clan came in to take over.
I noticed, at least among my group, after Buffy came out, Vampire Hunter became more popular.
The joke I heard from the vampires is that, “I’d broken more hearts than (fill in your favorite Hollywood heartthrob).”
I don’t like Scrabble much; I used to think it was a way to do cerebral callisthenics and improve my word power, but it’s actually about knowing obscure 2-letter words and filling up the gaps. And by filling the gaps you are denying your opponent any “fair chance”; you are not only trying to win, but also playing so that you “won’t lose”. Very negative.
Alignments are a guide for players who are as yet uncertain of how to deal with complex ethical/moral questions (i.e. pre-teens, teens, and young adults). I’ve noticed that older players tend to pretty much ignore the alignment systems, or play games without such rules.
V;tR may be an inferior world to V:tM (although Vampire survived the transition to NWOD better than their other games), but the system is superior, imo.
Maggie plays/has played Magic? My mind has just been blown.
Also, marry me.
Sorry, love, I’m taken. 😉
Computer games, other than card games like Cribbage–which no one in my six unit apartment complex plays–I stick to high-level strategic and operational level games like “Steel Panthers,” because I hate keeping track of all of those teeny-tiny details like remaining fuel, ammo, etc.
Table-top RPG’s I definitely believe in the original Advanced D&D with modifications, including a Piety score (based on average of Wisdom and Charisma), and Luck (based on average of Piety, IQ, and Dexterity), to make those alignments mean something, in relation to whatever god, goddess, or pantheon they worship, if any. Both of these scores can be higher than 18 or lower than 3.
Gurps is interesting, although i liked the simplicity of its predecesor “Into the Labyrinth.” And “Champions” is my all-time favorite superhero game.
As a librarian, have you heard of the game Liebrary?
One player draws a card which has the book title, summary, and first line of the book. That player (I think called the “librarian”) reads the title and summary aloud. Then all of the players except the librarian make up first lines and write them down while the librarian writes down the real first line. The librarian then mixes up the first lines and reads all of the aloud and each player (except the librarian) chooses a first line.
If your first line is chosen, you get a point. If you chose the right one, you get a point.
I’ve never heard of it, but it sounds fun.
Maggie did you ever become familiar with the Planescape setting of D&D? I’m currently playing the Game of Thrones card game and so far I’m loving it.
No, I was never interested in other people’s settings; I always did my own. Interestingly, I’m told that “Spelljammer” was similar to some things I did.
Oh, and what do you think D&D Next? I liked both 3.5 and 4E (I’m not familiar with older editions other than through games like Baldur’s Gate).
Anyways, now there is a playtest packet for D&D Next at the WOTC site. It looks nice, but I can’t help but think that it’s coming too quickly and that it will fragment the player base again.
Edit: I saw that you use your own heavily house-ruled version, so nevermind 😛
Oy vey, I could blather on forever about games. It’s been the single most integral social outlet I’ve had. I always grew up with games, and as horribly shy as I was, games became the icebreaker to speak to people I otherwise would not. I have a-name-it-and-I’ll-play-it attitude. Gambling games I just do poker, because it is the only game the house has no investment in who wins. I played dozens of board games, RPG’s (D&D, Paranoia, Shadowrun, etc.), miniature historical games, Magic (though it got too expensive so I gave it up). Vampire: The Masquerade was the best, because if you had a good group playing it became improvisational theater. I get your take on video games, but if there was *one* I would have to recommend, it would be Bioshock. The story that game tells is freakin’ awesome; it’s the one I point out to show what video games can be.
My relationship to games is complicated. Heck, my relationship to sports is complicated. You see, I like things like chess and go and jetan and shogi and 3-D chess and hnefatafl and a ton of others, but I don’t really want to actually play them that often. And while I seldom watch sports outside of the Olympics (at which time I become obsessive), and don’t try to play sports at all, I nonetheless design future space sports as a hobby.
I have had some wonderful times playing Dungeons & Dragons and heartily recommend that game. I seldom get to play anymore as my group moved out to BFM.* I only ever got to play a touch of Champions, but it was fun when I did, and I’ve used it’s character creation system to help get a handle on just how powerful my character Tomboy should be. Answer: she’s not super-powerful, she’s just more powerful than she aught to be, which is what I was after.
I’ve enjoyed Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit and even card games (though I have to be in just the right mood). Trading card games I never got into, though I can see the appeal, somewhat.
Some computer video games I’ve liked and some I have not. Today’s computer games are so sophisticated, and allow you to play both with and against others, in the room with you or thousands of Km away. They are frankly beyond an old man like me.
* Bat-Fucking Mars
Gleeglocker, as told by Brad Couch.
Kevin Crosby
Plano, TX