January 1 2003 RussCon Report

Game Results

Guillotine	3	MattsFriendMatt 2 JonathanC 0 Matt -2
Metro	6	Steve 5 Jerrie 3 MarkH 1 Clayton -1 RussW -3 Whendy -5
Tichu	2	( Ben Fred ) 1 ( Dan William ) -1
Exxtra	4	MarkH 3 Ben 1 Fred -1 William -3
Cloud9	5	Fred 4 Ben 2 JP 0 William -2 MarkH -4
ZirkusFlohcati	3	JP 2 RussD 0 Jerrie -2
CarcassonneHunters	3	Steve 2 RussW 0 Clayton -2
Tichu	2	( William Ben ) 1 ( Fred MarkH ) -1
Transamerica	5	RussD 4 Clayton 1 JP 1 Steve -2 RussW -4
PuertoRico	5	Dan 4 Whendy 2 JonathanC 0 Matt -2 MattsFriendMatt -4
Bluff	6	Matt 5 RussW 2 JonathanC 2 William -1 Whendy -3 MattsFriendMatt -5
ZirkusFlohcati	6	RussW 5 JonathanC 3 William 0 MattsFriendMatt 0 Whendy -3 Matt -5
Fight	3	William 2 MattsFriendMatt 0 Matt -2
Fight	3	Matt 2 William 0 MattsFriendMatt -2
CarcassonneHunters	3	Steve 2 JP 0 RussD -2

I am forming a theory that whoever scores points first in Metro is doomed because people then decide you're winning since you're ahead on the track (even though that logic doesn't hold, since we all have the same number of stations and each station will score before the game ends) and beat up on you.

Nice to see Fight played again. It is one of the greatest of all Cheapass games, and certainly the greatest of all free games!

Meta Game

Whendy was the Meta Devil. Here is the Meta Game she mailed out:

White Elephants

Yes, the white elephant gift exchange will indeed be the meta game next week. I'm just copying exactly what we did last year (to great acclaim--except that Ben got the hideous orange butt monster). It was pretty interesting! RussW will run it again since he remembers.

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Since many of us probably got at least one less then optimal gift this holiday season, here's your chance to share the love and pass it on!

Players bring a wrapped unmarked gift. Around 9pm or so, we'll do the gift exchange. Each player will receive a random number from 1 to n. Then iterate:

Player i has the choice of stealing an unwrapped owned gift from some earlier player j<i, or taking a random wrapped unowned gift from the booty pile. Anyone who's been robbed can then take a random wrapped gift from the pile, or (more entertainingly) they can steal an unwrapped owned gift from anyone. Chain reactions of successive thefts are possible and good fun. A spiffy gift may well get stolen several times. No gift may be stolen more than 5 times. There is a simple ko rule: you cannot immediately steal back from the player who just stole from you.

The gift you bring doesn't have to be something you received over the holidays; it can be whatever. You could even buy something for the event if you're desperate. You are discouraged from bringing a complete garbage gift, because the Meta Devil is the player who brought the spiffiest gift -- which is of course the gift which was stolen the most times! In case of tie, there will be a vote among all present for which gift was spiffiest. To avoid any tainted appearance of conflict of interest and unseemly bribery and threats, try to keep donor identities anonymous until the Meta winning gift has been determined.

Our Most Assiduous Reader may notice that if the spiffiest gift happens to be unwrapped last from the pile, it will not get stolen at all, and so it will unjustly earn 0 meta points. If you want your gift unwrapped early, wrap it enticingly. Conversely, if you don't care about being Meta Devil and just want to get rid of some piece of crap, well, I think you're good to go.

butt monsters There were 9 nifty gifts, including a DVD (anime Blood: The Last Vampire, courtesy of Dan) and a CD of blues music (from Matt) and a 20-year-old TRS-80 Model 100 laptop (from moi). RussD supplied a partially eaten big box of Lonchera cookies he won in William's September 25 2002 Meta Game. And Marty supplied a blue companion to Ben's orange butt monster (which Ben has so generously left at my house for everyone to enjoy). Now the orange butt monster can finally get some lovin'! (Ironically, Marty couldn't attend but I shuffled him into the mix by proxy and he ended up being the last present picker and winning his own butt monster, which was the last gift to be chosen!)

The event itself was more lowkey than last year, and there was very little stealing this year (compared to last year when several gifts were stolen 5 times): the CD and the DVD were each stolen once, and by popular vote, the DVD was deemed the spiffiest gift. It was donated by Dan, and so Dan is the Meta Devil and gets to design next week's Meta Game!

Reminder of the new incentive to compete in the Meta Game: The Meta Devil gets full table rights, just like a regular Devil from now on, so they could stake out the dining table or the kitchen table. Of course Vice-Devils continue to get secondary dibs on the tables if no higher-ranking Devil or Meta Devil takes a table.

Ratings

New Multiplicative Rank Ratings:      
 3.2958 27.0000 Steve (4)
 2.4849 12.0000 Ben (4)
 1.4271 4.1667 JonathanC (4)
 1.3863 4.0000 JP (4)
 1.2040 3.3333 Fred (4)
 0.9163 2.5000 Dan (2)
 0.5108 1.6667 RussD (3)
-0.1823 0.8333 Jerrie (2)
-0.2231 0.8000 RussW (5)
-0.6286 0.5333 MarkH (4)
-1.0986 0.3333 Clayton (3)
-1.2685 0.2813 William (8)
-1.7918 0.1667 Matt (6)
-2.9312 0.0533 Whendy (4)
-3.4012 0.0333 MattsFriendMatt (6)

New Multiplicative Win Ratings:
 3.7658 43.2000 Steve won 3 of 4
 1.6740 5.3333 Matt won 2 of 6
 1.3218 3.7500 Fred won 2 of 4
 0.9163 2.5000 Dan won 1 of 2
 0.8755 2.4000 Ben won 2 of 4
 0.7985 2.2222 RussD won 1 of 3
 0.7985 2.2222 RussW won 1 of 5
 0.2877 1.3333 MarkH won 1 of 4
 0.2469 1.2800 JP won 1 of 4
-0.1823 0.8333 William won 2 of 8
-0.3001 0.7407 MattsFriendMatt won 1 of 6
-0.5878 0.5556 Jerrie won 0 of 2
-0.7701 0.4630 Whendy won 0 of 4
-0.8109 0.4444 Clayton won 0 of 3
-0.9933 0.3704 JonathanC won 0 of 4

Steve is the Devil! Ben, Fred, Matt are Co-Vice-Devils.

Links

More LOTR stuff: The House of Telcontar is a nifty Viggo Mortensen fan site including a page about the Charlie Rose interview. And this quiz will tell you where in Middle Earth you'd be happiest (the Shire's the place for me!) And this Straight Dope thread has LOTR as written by other authors (including 2 Chuck Palahniuk versions on October 11 & 12).

How to Write Like A Wanker

Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity In Words of Four Letters or Less

Fritz's Hit List is examples of devices that would meet the CBDTPA's definition of "digital media device" and would thereby fall under the heavy hand of CBDTPA regulation.

This cartoon is linked a couple weeks too late, but hey whatever; here's White Trash Christmas from Bob Rivers

You are an idiot!

January 1 2003 RussCon Report

News

Game Results

Meta Game

Evening's Soundtrack

Ratings

Links