Board Games
Sep. 20th, 2007 11:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloMy son Mike (manfalling) is celebrating his aquisition of a vintage, secondhand boxed set of Shogun- which is a late twentieth century board game where you get to wage war all over medieval Japan. He and Joe loved it when they were kids. I got pulled in once or twice and found it slow. I guess the real joy is imagining yourself as an ancient Japanese warlord and if that doesn't float your boat there's nothing to hold your interest while your opponents agonise over their moves.
My favourite game from that era was Talisman- which is basically Dungeons and Dragons without the Dungeon Master. Or to put it another way, Dungeons and Dragons for lazy people.
I played Dungeons and Dragons too- but that's another story.
Further back- when I was a kid myself- the games we played en famille (on winter evenings) were Scrabble and Cluedo. The thing about those two- which locks them in place as classics- is that there's skill involved. I was quite a whizz at Cluedo- good at befoozling the opposition and making deductions from other players' moves. Games where it's all down to the fall of the dice soon become boring.
Ailz and I bought ourselves a Scrabble set last Christmas and gave it a bashing over the festive season. Perhaps we'll fetch it out again this winter.
There was/is a horrible game called The Game of Life, which is Snakes and Ladders reimagined (though imagination has nothing to do with it) as a turn upon the middle-class treadmill. Go to university, get a corporate job, have kids, upgrade your house, get wheeled into the crem (only without the bit about the crem). More like the Game Of Not Having A Life, really. How cruel (and borderline sinister) to have kids play at being middle-management when they could be being shoguns or super-sleuths or orc-fighting adventurers.
Do people (I mean young people- not oldies reliving their youth) still play board games- or has all the action moved into cyberspace?
manfalling) is celebrating his aquisition of a vintage, secondhand boxed set of Shogun- which is a late twentieth century board game where you get to wage war all over medieval Japan. He and Joe loved it when they were kids. I got pulled in once or twice and found it slow. I guess the real joy is imagining yourself as an ancient Japanese warlord and if that doesn't float your boat there's nothing to hold your interest while your opponents agonise over their moves.My favourite game from that era was Talisman- which is basically Dungeons and Dragons without the Dungeon Master. Or to put it another way, Dungeons and Dragons for lazy people.
I played Dungeons and Dragons too- but that's another story.
Further back- when I was a kid myself- the games we played en famille (on winter evenings) were Scrabble and Cluedo. The thing about those two- which locks them in place as classics- is that there's skill involved. I was quite a whizz at Cluedo- good at befoozling the opposition and making deductions from other players' moves. Games where it's all down to the fall of the dice soon become boring.
Ailz and I bought ourselves a Scrabble set last Christmas and gave it a bashing over the festive season. Perhaps we'll fetch it out again this winter.
There was/is a horrible game called The Game of Life, which is Snakes and Ladders reimagined (though imagination has nothing to do with it) as a turn upon the middle-class treadmill. Go to university, get a corporate job, have kids, upgrade your house, get wheeled into the crem (only without the bit about the crem). More like the Game Of Not Having A Life, really. How cruel (and borderline sinister) to have kids play at being middle-management when they could be being shoguns or super-sleuths or orc-fighting adventurers.
Do people (I mean young people- not oldies reliving their youth) still play board games- or has all the action moved into cyberspace?
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no subject
Date: 2007-09-23 04:16 pm (UTC)The attraction for me is not about wishing to be the warlord, it's just the strategy of it all. Like RISK. Shogun is very like RISK. The board sets itself up randomly, you decide which area is your best bet for domination, and then you reinforce it, all the time hoping/signalling that the other guys won't go for your area, won't place close to you, or will fall into your trap.
Then every round, every fight you choose to make or not make, they're all decisions that affect the outcome. And like with chess- part of the fun is spending time trying to figure out what moves you want to make, to where, with what long term-goals in mind, while trying to figure out what your opponent is up to.
Other games I play, and have been playing I suppose for several years now, are some of the ones already mentioned here: Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, plus Puerto Rico, Alhambra, some Munchkin, Poker of late, and various other ones we passed through as fads.
Shogun is the daddy of them all really.
Game of Life I liked, for a very similar reason to like Monopoly, and World of Warcraft, and Shogun. I don't suppose you could say Monopoly is especially exciting, at least not more so than Game of Life. But they both tap into our basic acquisitive desire. To acquire stuff. In Game of Life, it's money, kids in the car (I loved filling it up with those little pink and blue pegs/kids), and success. In Monopoly it's money and land. In Warcraft it's levels, XP, and gear. In Shogun it's cash, land, and power.
Talsiman was great for that too- you just keep on powering up your heroes on and on. Gamesmen who wanted to go for the Crown of Command early didn't seem to really get the fun part of Talisman. It's not winning, it's powering up!
Same kind of reason I loved Civilization the PC game. You just keep on applying tax/research/luxury multipliers, doubling and tripling your production and science and tech. I was never into warring with it much, since warring was a pain in the ass and slower than getting all the Wonders and racing ahead of the competition.
World of Warcraft, the epicly popular online realm, is all about just grinding through battle after battle, just to get the next awesome piece of gear. I'm ready to drop out, as the amount of effort you put in for the next gear-step is pretty disproportionate.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-26 04:32 pm (UTC)I've watched people play computer games of the World of Warcraft variety. I like the fantasy element and the idea of wandering through an enormous virtual landscape, but the actual mechanics of play- all those slow, slow battles- strike me as repetitive and dull.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-27 09:48 am (UTC)The big problem with Warcraft for me is there's no through-line. No ongoing narrative. The only ongoing narrative is your efforts to power-up yourself. So you go from area to area doing stuff, but at the end of doing that stuff, it doesn't lead anywhere. Only to better gear, and good-bye. Find a new area, start a bunch of new powering-up quests.