2004-01-07 RussCon Report

News

Happy new year! Feliĉan novjaron!

19 of us played 12 games, including long-lost Jeffles who has (probably) moved back to Austin, after traveling about France, Hungary, Australia, and Cthulhu knows where else. Also Marty was here (but I think played an unrecorded game), and Moloch and Omar (whom I met at Matt's recent potato latke party).

As in 2002 and 2003, we did a white elephant gift exchange during the first post-xmas RussCon, and had 14 participants (and 17 gifts!). Some of the more popular (i.e. stolen gifts) included a video documentary about American Indians, CDs by Tracy Chapman and the Cranberries, the boardgames eBay and Real Life, a small press comic book, and a medical school surgical kit. There was also a talking George Bush doll, Sherlock Holmes books and tapes, a clock, a vintage electronic game gadget, unpopular mugs, cat knickknacks, and all sorts of other things I don't remember right now. By the way, to handle the extra gifts, we randomly picked 3 people to take 2nd turns after each of the 14 players had done a pick (in randomized order), so 3 people got 2 gifts, and further stealing was triggered after the 14th player; this seemed a nice way to handle it.

Marty requested a special year-end wrapup, and the RussCon Management is always happy to oblige your requests. Ok, that's a lie, but in this case the RussCon Management obliged. In 2003, there were 70 players who played 646 recorded games. As for player ratings, I ended up being the 2003 Devil, and I extend my sympathies to Clayton. I'll also extend special congratulations to Pauline for kicking the butt of her soon-to-be-husband RussD, ha! As for games played, the evil Tichu was played the most. Further details can be found at the special 2003 wrapup page.

Our Most Assiduous Reader may notice a change of layout in the top of the RussCon Report. I was never quite happy with the look which historians and critics will later call "the 2003 RussCon look", which had the 2 big floating menus. (It's also always been a bit tricky since I often have an image at the start but its size and shape varies from week to week.) A while back Dan made some suggestions and gave me some ideas (but I absolve of him all blame for the new layout since it's actually quite different from what he was talking about, and I can already imagine him banging his head on his desk saying "No, you fool, that's not what I meant!") Basically the idea was to simplify it and de-emphasize the 2 menus (on the left are links for the current issue, on the right are links to pages outside of the current issue; I kept that basic concept but made the menus smaller and eliminated a few outside links (including the link to deepmachines where I'd made many exquisite corpses, since that site died) and also moved the weekly summary of how many people and games into the news section (on the one hand I liked it being prominent information, but on the other hand it always looked a little weird floating up by itself)... and the new layout preserves my perverse spartan desire for plain text rather than graphic images for all the links. Those who didn't like the spartan look before will still gnash their teeth at the new look, but at least the layout is (I hope) a little cleaner. (An additional minor change which I'd been planning for a while is the use of ISO 8601 date format in the title, instead of the more old fashioned style with month name...) Too bad I didn't do my planned changes to my ratings program for the new year, too! Mi maldiligentas!

Next Thursday January 15 is the classic 1925 silent film Phantom of the Opera starring Lon Chaney, with live music by Golden Arm Trio at Alamo Drafthouse downtown; I'm thinking of going to that! I've seen the film several times, but always around Halloween at UT with live organ music by Frank Speller, so it would be fun to see what Golden Arm Trio does with it. If anyone is interested, let me know soon and we can sort out if we're doing the 7:00 or 9:45 show.

On January 19, there is going to be Monday night go-playing from 6 till 10 at Thor's Hammer (12626 Research Blvd, west side of 183, just a little south of McNeil, in the same strip center that once housed SimTex)... if it works out, this would become a weekly event, kind of a supplement to the existing Tuesday night go club at Great Hall Games in Dobie Mall.

January 23 and 24 (Friday and Saturday) is a go tournament in Houston, unaffiliated with Houston Go Club. No, I don't know why it's Fri/Sat instead of Sat/Sun, but I emailed Christopher Vu who confirmed that's when it is. Curious indeed! That's all I know. For more info email him at this spam-resistant address: wasonlyyesterday ĉe yahoo punkto com. UPDATE: I just received word that this go tournament was cancelled (or more accurately, made restricted just to members at a school there).

Game Results

Carcassonne	4	Fina 3 Clayton 1 Fred -1 Tim -3
FinstereFlure	7	MarkH 6 RussW 1 Matt 1 Ben 1 MarkG 1 Jeffles -5 Whendy -5
Scrabble	2	JeffS 1 Chad -1
PuertoRico	4	Fina 3 JP 1 Fred -1 Clayton -3
Rigamarole	3	( RussW William Chad Matt ) 2 ( Jeffles MarkY MarkG Tim ) -1 ( Whendy JeffS Pauline RussD Ben ) -1
Blokus	4	RussW 3 MarkG 1 Whendy -1 Fina -3
Bluff	4	PJ 3 Clayton 1 Whendy -2 RussW -2
Vampire	4	Fina 3 Whendy 1 PJ -1 RussW -3
Tichu	2	( Fred Ben ) 1 ( Chad Tim ) -1
Alhambra	4	Matt 3 RussD 1 Pauline -1 William -3
RealLife	4	Jeffles 3 JP 1 MarkY -1 RussW -3
WhatsThatOnMyHead	4	MarkY 3 Jeffles 1 JP -2 JeffS -2

Real Life was one of the white elephant gifts (which became William's). It's a darkly whimsical and no doubt trademark-infringing take on the childhood classic game of Life, with lots of sex, drugs, and dysfunctional family stuff. JP was born rich but eventually lost it all in a stock market crash. Jeffles & I were in debt from almost the beginning despite (or perhaps because of) being middle class. MarkY became a prostitute and was eventually married. I was a lesbian with some sexual disease and then I picked up another more serious lingering disease when I was drafted when the US invaded Brazil. Eventually MarkY & I were both killed by a cougar. Jeffles was the first to die, but he had the most happiness and won. Amusing silly fun.

MarkH brought a new game Finstere Flure that I think of as being like Ghost Party but bloodier. We all have several dudes we're trying to maneuver from one end of a dungeon complex to the other, while avoiding being devoured by a monster which seems to be a shambling mound of flesh. There are columns that can be pushed around like in Sokoban or other such games, and there are pools of blood that you slide over just like oil slicks in RoboRally. ("Everybody slips on blood.") The last turn was quite deadly when many people were cramped at the exit trying to flee, just like those news stories you sometimes see about stampedes at rock concerts, when a monster runs amok killing the panicked music fans. Oh the humanity! I give it big bonus points for the art, especially the cover that is done like 1950s EC horror comics.

Finally, an in-depth report on Rigamarole, the social/party game which was mailed to me by its creators Hidden Talents (who emailed me back in November) since RussCon is a large gaming group with a glorious web presence. Since they generously mailed me a free evaluation copy of this game which lists for $29.95, I will give more of an in-depth review here than I normally do. Rigamarole is very much in the social/party vein, like Trivial Pursuit or Cranium or that sort of game, which is less commonly played at RussCon. It comes with nice components (mounted board, glass-and-sand minute timer, box of challenge cards, die, scoring stones, blindfold (!), slickly printed rules). Overall we enjoyed it as a social/party game.

Some stuff that bugged me: The box is unusually thick (due to the cards being in a single monolithic card box), much thicker than it needed to be otherwise, so there's a lot of air and cardboard inserts, under which the die was lost when I first opened the game. I would also have liked to see separate card boxes, for each type of challenge: this would have avoided the "big bulky box with a lot of air" syndrome as well as avoided the common mistake of picking a challenge card from the wrong section (due to confusion of "do I pick from in front of or behind the divider in the single big box of cards?") A more serious issue is the relatively small number of cards compared to other games of this sort. That would seem to limit the replay value, although based on the one game so far, it looks like it will take at least 5 to 10 sessions before you cycle through them. Since they are all in a single box, but sorted by category, there is some murky annoyance about having to sort the (single) set of used cards and redistribute them to the categories. Again, having separate boxes would have made that work nicer, so each category can cycle on its own and no sorting is needed. The rules seemed a little wandering/confusing and could probably have been a little better presented as we found ourselves puzzling a few times on the sequence of events and how things like the final challenge occur. (Games that are basically supposed to be simple and fast should have quick-to-read rules that are very clearly organized, instead of various separate boxes and columns of text.) But we got the rules questions sorted out ok without much pain.

So how did it play? We broke into 3 teams (initially 3, 3, and 4) (and a few more people joined teams as the game progressed). (The fact that teams can have different numbers of players underscores that this game is not about serious competition and more about social/party fun, and indeed in that spirit, we found ourselves being more lenient/generous than normal when there were questions about whether a team had accomplished a goal.) The basic idea is that typically each turn a team rolls the die to move on the track and land on one of 4 categories of challenge, and a player from a team will attempt to give clues to their teammates; if successful, stones are earned and often the card is kept. Collect one of each type of "Rite of Passage" card and the team can then advance to the final challenge to win the game. Stones can be used to buy rites of passage which your team lacks. The mechanics of rolling the die and choosing which way to move on the track are as uninteresting as any other game of this genre, so the juice of the game is in the cards themselves, and that is what ultimately determines the value of this sort of social game. Rigamarole seems pretty reasonable in this regard. A lot of the challenges are familiar "Password" or charades sorts of things, but some are more unusual and surprising (e.g. the active player is blindfolded and tries to name as many of the other players and their eye colors as they can), sometimes involving all teams (e.g. go around the table repeating an ever-lengthening phrase, dropping out if you fail; the last surviving player earns points for their team). Matt observed that it might be more fun to simply do the cards and ignore the other game mechanics of moving around the board and buying/stealing cards etc. But as a social/party game it often succeeded in getting us rowdy and laughing and having fun, and multiple players commented that it was good silly fun. I suspect it will get played again, although it is not a normal RussCon style game. It was a bit unwieldy with 11 people (not everyone being able to even sit around the table), but with 2 or 3 teams of 2 or 3 each it might go more reasonably.

Meta Game

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

Hope y'all all had a wonderful holiday season. If you're like me, you probably recently made a list of the things you're glad to leave behind in 2003, and resolutions for a better year and a better you in 2004. So this metagame, the first metagame in 2004 I'm honored to say, is about New Year's Resolutions for RussCon.

To cut to the chase: Make up a list of resolutions that can be completed during the course of the evening of RussCon, January 7, 2004. You get points for submitting a list. You get points for completing any of the resolutions. You get points for having your resolutions be performed by anyone at the event. The list(s) must be typed up and posted to the RussCon list no later than 6pm the night of the 7th to be eligible. Most metapoints wins. Here are the details:

* 1 metapoint for submitting a list of any length of RussCon NY resolutions, by posting them to the RussCon listserver by 6pm on Jan 7th. Only 1 metapoint max per player for this.

* 1 metapoint per item for successfully completing a RussCon NY resolution from the compiled list during the course of RussCon, January 7th, at Russ Williams' house. Only 1 metapoint per item no matter how many times you complete it. If the resolution list totals 20 items, then maximum score for this would therefore be 20 metapoints.

* 1 metapoint per item that you submitted to the resolution list that does get successfully completed by at least one RussCon attendee that night. This gives you 1 metapoint for each resolution for each attendee who completes it, including yourself. So if RussW had one resolution in the list that RussW, RussD, Clayton, Ben, MarkH, MarkG, and MarkY all completed, that would give him 7 metapoints (okay, plus 1 for submitting a list plus 1 for doing that resolution).

WINNER determined by highest metapoint score. Ties broken randomly by any method RussW wishes. All attendees the night of January 7th are considered to be metagame players (hah!). Meaning you could rack up a meta-score by the fact that you completed some of resolutions on the list, even if you didn't realize it. Please try to note your metapoints in the gamebook; Russ should not be forced to remember the metapoints for some of the more arcane and subtle resolutions. No whining or score changing after the points are tallied either.

The following resolutions were submitted by people:

Whendy:

To play no games of Tichu, no matter how much I'm begged.
To play more than 3 games that night.
To leave RussCon no later than 11:15 pm that night so I can be fresh for work the next morning.
To not curse, cuss or otherwise use profanity at all the whole night, whether during game play or just social chatting. (This will be so hard for everybody, right? Right? Ehhhhh---)
To bring food or drinks to share with other RussCon folks.

Dan:

To not die during RussCon.
To play no game of Moods during RussCon, no matter how much I'm begged.
To go nutso on the freako.
To play games and enjoy myself.
To be.
To have fun with the MetaGame.
To apologise profusely.

RussW:

I resolve to participate in the white elephant gift exchange.
I resolve to play a game that has no chance and no hidden information.
I resolve to play a game which comes with rules printed in a foreign language.
I resolve to say at least one sentence in a foreign language.
I resolve to play a train game.
I resolve to play Carcassonne.

Jay:

I resolve not to attend RussCon this week.

Ben:

To play at least one game of Tichu, even if no one begs me.
To not complete any resolutions on the list, including this one.

Sea Biscuit:

I resolve to lose this metagame.

MarkG:

I resolve to look at the CD covers to see if I can get an inkling of Russ's music theme for the evening.
I resolve to eat a snack
I resolve to drink a beverage (probably water)
I resolve to play a game involving cards
I resolve to play a game involving dice
I resolve to play a game involving a board
I resolve to wear clothes
I resolve to suggest playing a game I have never played before
I resolve to request green for the color of my playing pieces
I resolve to do some exercise (such as getting up from a chair or walking across the room)
I resolve to wait until I get to Russcon to decide whether or not to play Tichu
I resolve to refuse to play "What's that on my Head?" no matter how much I am begged to play.

JP:

To teach someone a game.
To play a social game.
To not participate in the metagame, no matter how much evidence is presented that I am already doing so.
To live life to it's fullest.
To not make any smartass resolutions.

Marty:

I resolve to hold my breath for at least 1 minute at Russcon.
I resolve to not turn purple while at Russcon.

William:

To win at least one game at RussCon,
To finish ahead of Whendy in at least one game,
Not to split an infinitive with the word "not,"
To bring at least one White Elephant gift to RussCon,
To arrive fashionably late to RussCon tonight,
Not to smear fecal matter all over Russ's bathroom,
To thank Russ for hosting RussCon,
And to help William win as many games as possible tonight.
I resolve to break exactly one Meta-Resolution that contains the words "fecal matter" tonight.

MarkH:

Bring food-shaped "food" to Russcon and share it with others
Bring "The One True Refreshment (tm)" in a conveniently refrigerator-shaped form factor.
Bring (fetch) a new (fresh) game (fun) to Russcon and have others play (frolic) it.
Have someone figure out what game it is before they arrive.
Convince Wendy that swearing is a socially acceptable form of communication.

RussD:

I resolve to start playing the metagame without a working understanding of the rules.
I resolve to finish playing the metagame without a working understanding of the rules and to profess no understanding if others try to make me understand.
I resolve to show up late but in time for the white elephant exchange (which is really hope is sometime about 9PM or after.)
I resolve to enjoy RussCon whether I attend or not.
I resolve to break my resolutions as soon as possible.
I resolve to make more resolutions at RussCon.
I resolve to avoid the bathroom after William has used it.

I also replied, noting an ambiguity and possible game design problem:

I noticed that the first sentence ("1 meta point per item that does get successfully completed by at least one attendee") contradicts the second sentence and example ("1 meta point for each resolution for each attendee who completes it").

Based on prior conversation, I'm guessing the first interpretation was what was intended, and I'd also suggest that interpretation since it will make reckoning the meta scores less onerous as well as avoiding making the winner be guaranteed to be whoever submits the most trivially fulfillable resolutions!

E.g. someone could (not in the spirit of things!) submit a list of 500 resolutions of the form "I will be present at RussCon at 7:00." "I will be present at RussCon at 7:01" "I will be present at RussCon at 7:02" ... which would of course reap thousands of meta points for the sleazy submitter.) Even awarding 1 point per resolution fulfilled (instead of per resolution per fulfiller) runs this risk to a large degree. (Hence my original suggestion of just getting 1 point for submitting 1 or more resolutions, period, just to get some resolutions into the pool, and that the real points should come from accomplishing resolutions, not from supplying resolutions.)

But Whendy assured me this is what she intended. So be it! I observe that if A is the number of attendees and R is the number of resolutions, this means that the 3 meta rules can earn you points that are of magnitude O(1), O(R), and O(AR) respectively, so clearly the third class of points should dominate. This was definitely a case where I made the meta game designer reckon the score instead of palming all the work onto me! And the results of her labor follow:

# pts  Whom

31     Matt C
28     William C
25     MarkG
21     Whendy (me)
21     RussW
19     Jeffles
17     Ben
17     Fina
17     JP
17     Pauline
17     RussD
17     Tim
16     MarkH
16     PJ
15     Clayton
15     JeffS
15     MarkY
13     Chad
12     FredS
10     Marty
 1     Dan
 1     Jay
 1     Sea Biscuit

You know what? I didn't have the energy to award metapoints for people doing your resolutions. It was way harder than I expected (Russ is chuckling evilly). I did tally points for what people did and if they submitted a resolution list. The resolutions were performed--or most of them, anyway. People brought good food & shared it. The white elephant game was raucous and fun with several gifts brought for that. Only one person cursed aloud. For some of the wackier resolutions, no points were awarded, which y'all knew in advance. For others of the wacky resolutions, people put their initials down on the metagame log so I gave them points. Other resolutions gave all attendees a point. Thank God there were no actual fecal matter incidents relating to this game. Note that the only metapoints awarded to non-attendees were the list submission points.

Ah, I feel vindicated! If only I had bet money with Whendy that the 3rd rule would be an intractable pain in the ass! Oh well. So anyway, Matt is the Meta Devil and will design next week's Meta Game!

Links

Lords of the Rhymes have a new mp3 up: "Black Riders"... I dig the "War Pigs" passage!

Orcs all gathered in their masses
Legolas will kick their asses
In my pipe old Toby's burning
Sauron's war machine keeps turning
Oh lord yeah

Towers are the Players is a Flash music video with Gollum rapping

Banned On Vulcan is a set of raunchy fun Star Trek songs by comic artist and musician Voltaire, including Klingon rap!

Klinginem is more Klingon rap

Bush in 30 Seconds has the finalists from moveon.org's tv ad contest, most of which seem pretty well done to me

Barney Reloaded is an embarrassingly bad Christmas movie from the White House

adage.com's 10 ads America won't see

japander.com is the site with Japanese ads by Western celebrities

Starwreck t-shirts for a Finnish sf movie

Spielboy has new content including the Spud Des Jahres 2003

Interactivies Ink has various odd games, mostly LARPish

Nemmelgeb Murr has all sorts of puzzles including vintage puzzles

The BBC National IQ Test gave me a 139

Suehiro Maruo art gallery

Mark Ryden art gallery

Deadlock is a fun comic about a dating dilemma involving game theory and Maid in Manhattan

International Standard Paper Sizes by Markus Kuhn enlightened me about A4 paper size and all that

Jersey is a curious southernmost part of the British Isles. "Until the 1960s French was still the official language of Jersey and to this day is still used by the court and legal professions."

2004-01-07 RussCon Report

News

Game Results

Ratings

Meta Game

Evening's Soundtrack

Links