October 27 1999 RussCon Report
It was a good fun crowded Halloween RussCon, with 19 of us.
William brought spooky games: Which Witch, Superstition, and Addams Family Game. Other appropriate games were also played, including Ghost Party, Pirat, Guillotine, 666, Honey Bears (well ok, that's stretching it.)
Speaking of Halloween, let me know if you're interested in hitting Sixth Street in costume and peoplewatching a while Sunday night! Some of us may go see Phantom of the Opera, the silent film classic with live pipe organ music, on UT campus also. That's Fri & Sat, 7 & 10. Not sure when/if I'm going, but if you want to try doing dinner and that, let me know.
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Game Results:
Bluff 5 JeffF 4 William 2 Jay 0 Alfred -2 RussW -4 WhichWitch 4 William 3 Alfred 1 Tim -1 RussW -3 AddamsFamily 4 WendyWhe 3 RussW 1 William -1 Clayton -3 Pirat 4 James 3 Clayton 1 RussW -2 WendyWhe -2 Can'tStop 3 Harry 2 Allen -1 William -1 Superstition 4 Jayson 3 Tim 0 Alfred 0 JP -3 RicochetRobot 6 Tim 5 Alfred 2 William 2 James -1 Allen -3 ChrisH -5 Doolittle&Waite 6 WendyWhe 5 JP 3 RussW 1 Jayson -1 Clayton -3 KevinH -5 HoneyBears 3 ChrisH 2 William 0 Allen -2 Elfenland 5 Bob 4 Jay 2 JeffF 0 Marty -2 Jerrie -4 Vegas 4 Harry 3 James 1 Alfred -1 Tim -3 Exxtra 5 WendyWhe 4 RussW 2 KevinH -2 Jayson -2 JP -2 ZirkusFlohcati 3 Allen 2 ChrisH 0 William -2 Can'tStop 4 Mindy 3 JeffF 1 Bob -2 Jay -2 Fluxx 2 Tim 1 Alfred -1 Exxtra 4 Bob 3 William 1 Allen -1 ChrisH -3 GhostParty 4 Tim 3 JP 1 Alfred -2 Mindy -2 Tayu 2 RussW 1 Jayson -1 Auction 4 KevinH 3 WendyWhe 1 Harry -1 James -3 Pirat 4 Allen 3 Bob 1 William -1 ChrisH -3 Syzygy 4 Alfred 3 Tim 1 Mindy -1 JP -3 Fluxx 3 Bob 2 ChrisH -1 William -1 Fluxx 6 Tim 5 Alfred -1 Bob -1 William -1 Mindy -1 ChrisH -1 Fluxx 6 William 5 Tim -1 Alfred -1 Bob -1 Mindy -1 ChrisH -1 Bluff 6 Alfred 5 Mindy 3 ChrisH 1 Tim -1 Bob -3 William -5 Brawl 2 William 1 Bob -1 Tayu 3 WendyWhe 2 Jayson 0 RussW -2 Guillotine 3 RussW 2 Jayson 0 JP -2 Medici 5 Marty 4 William 2 Bob 0 Alfred -2 Allen -4 BigCheese 4 Jayson 3 RussW 1 JP -1 William -3 BigCheese 5 Alfred 4 RussW 2 William 0 JP -2 Jayson -4 666 6 RussW 5 Jayson 3 Alfred 1 JP -2 William -2 Marty -5 Brawl 2 William 1 JP -1 Brawl 2 William 1 JP -1 Brawl 2 William 1 JP -1 Brawl 2 JP 1 William -1 Brawl 2 JP 1 William -1 Brawl 2 JP 1 William -1 Brawl 2 JP 1 William -1 Brawl 2 JP 0 William 0 Brawl 2 RussW 1 Alfred -1 Brawl 2 RussW 1 Alfred -1 Brawl 2 RussW 1 Alfred -1 Brawl 2 Alfred 1 RussW -1 Brawl 2 RussW 1 William -1 Brawl 2 RussW 1 William -1 Brawl 2 RussW 1 William -1 Brawl 2 William 1 RussW -1 Brawl 2 William 1 RussW -1 Brawl 2 William 1 RussW -1 Brawl 2 William 1 RussW -1 Brawl 2 William 1 RussW -1 Brawl 2 William 0 RussW 0 Brawl 2 William 0 RussW 0 Brawl 2 JP 1 Alfred -1 Brawl 2 JP 1 Alfred -1 Brawl 2 JP 1 Alfred -1 Brawl 2 JP 1 Alfred -1 Brawl 2 Alfred 1 JP -1 Brawl 2 Alfred 1 JP -1 Brawl 2 Alfred 0 JP 0 Brawl 2 Alfred 0 JP 0 Brawl 2 Alfred 0 JP 0
This is 63 games, folks, surely a record.
Which Witch brought back happy childhood memories. We got turned to mice, dropped the ball down the chimney, and made literally no decisions.
Addams Family had a tiny amount of decision making. (But the correct choice was always obvious.)
Moving on to real games, Doolittle & Waite is a good fun game Kevin bought at Tom's game auction the night before. It's a legal game of pretrial offers to settle and negotiation, and we all liked it. Check it out.
666 is sort of Bluff Lite. You pass 3 dice under a cup to the next person, making an assertion like "They read at least 532" which the next person must challenge or raise. It was fun, but we lacked proper equipment to enable easily rerolling dice without the others seeing...
We played Deterministic Big Cheese, a homebrew variant several of us were interested in trying where the points you gain are exactly the points on the card, rather than random based on the card's value. It seemed to work quite well and a good time was had as we assigned our corporate flunkies to projects.
Brawl is the third real time game to capture my attention this year (the other 2 being Half-Life and Tekken 2... real time games seem to imply combat, I guess). It's an interesting and (obviously) very fast playing game. It takes almost as long to sort the cards afterwards as to play a game. I think we should play it multiplayer next time.
Jayson reports that after weeks of coming to RussCon, he has finally played some game for the second time.
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Evening's Soundtrack:
Spooky music for Halloween.
Cat People, Original Soundtrack
Cradle of Filth, Cruelty and the Beast
Dracula, from the production by Public Domain Theater
Radio Werewolf, Songs for the End of the World
Skinny Puppy, Last Rights
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Rank ratings: 0.6500 WendyWhe (6 games played) 0.5000 Harry (3) 0.4545 JeffF (3) 0.2500 Tim (10) 0.0755 RussW (26) 0.0571 Bob (10) 0.0417 Mindy (6) 0.0345 Jayson (9) 0.0303 Alfred (27) 0.0000 James (4) 0.0000 William (36) 0.0000 Jay (3) -0.1633 JP (26) -0.2308 Marty (3) -0.2857 Allen (7) -0.3333 KevinH (3) -0.3438 ChrisH (9) -0.4545 Clayton (3) -1.0000 Jerrie (1) New Win ratings: 0.6000 WendyWhe (6) 0.5000 Harry (3) 0.2222 Tim (10) 0.1818 JeffF (3) 0.1538 Marty (3) 0.0833 KevinH (3) 0.0571 Bob (10) 0.0000 James (4) 0.0000 Allen (7) -0.0189 RussW (26) -0.0345 Jayson (9) -0.0455 Alfred (27) -0.0633 William (36) -0.0833 Mindy (6) -0.1224 JP (26) -0.1875 ChrisH (9) -0.2500 Jerrie (1) -0.2727 Jay (3) -0.2727 Clayton (3)
Wendy is the Devil, narrowly edging out Harry in an exciting competition! Better get here before your nemesis claims the table! The crystal ball predicts Acquire played on a vintage set she recently, uh, acquired. Next in line are Tim & Jeff. William wins the coveted Dedicated Award. Even if you don't count the Brawl games, he played a lot. Still, this leads me to consider modifying the Dedicated Award... James wins the rare Extra Average Award for having both ratings be zero!
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Interesting Sites:
This one is really cool! It's a well-done site about a group of miniatures gamers with a wacked-out Victorian alternate weird history setting. Lots of links to other interesting similar sites too. There are lots of photos of really neat miniatures.
http://www.zeitcom.com/majgen/index.html
Here's info about another AI contest for a simple game like the RoShamBo (Rock-Scissors-Paper) tournament I recently entered. This tournament is for Three Card Poker. I plan to enter it and hope to see some of you there too!
http://ada.math.uga.edu/~mwatkins/TCP.html
Here's a game company that specializes in Wild West games, including a couple solo adventure books (which I've not seen or played).
Here's wacky counterculture stuff; the first site is guerilla counterculture Santa Clauses.
http://www.santarchy.com/
http://www.underbelly.demon.co.uk/decadent/
http://www.adbusters.org
Here's how to get a job at Lucas Films, for all you job searchers.
http://www.lucasfilm.com/jobs/940963486.html
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You don't talk about Fight Club.
Russ