October 11 2000 RussCon Report


Game Results
Meta Party Game Results
Evening's Soundtrack
Ratings
Links
17 of us! 17 games. 1 key lime pie. 1 shockingly shaved head. (If you've ever wanted to perform a phrenological analysis of Dave's skull, now is the time!)
RussCon Report Archives
Previous Report
Next Report
RussCon Info
Russ Zone
Ko Fight Club
currently running a full story of Battle Cry and Dr. Manhattan!

Game Results

DurchDieWueste5Fred 4 RussW 2 JP 0 Dan -2 Clay -4
Zero4Carly 3 William 1 Jeffles -1 RussD -3
BigCity3Matt 2 DaveB 0 Clayton -2
WheelOfHistory5Clay 4 Dan 2 Fred 0 RussW -2 JP -4
GreatMuseumCaper2( William Carly RussD ) 1 ( Jeffles ) -1
Vampire5Dan 4 RussW 2 Fred 0 Clay -2 JP -4
Drunter&Drueber3William 2 RussD -1 Jeffles -1
ElCaballero4PJ 3 JonathanC 1 Allen -1 Marty -3
Survive4DaveB 3 Matt 1 Carly -1 Clayton -3
Hare&Tortoise5Dan 4 Jeffles 2 William 0 RussW -2 RussD -4
Drunter&Drueber4Matt 3 JeffF 1 Allen -1 Marty -3
GreatMuseumCaper2( PJ Dan William RussW ) 1 ( Jeffles ) -1
GreatMuseumCaper2( RussW ) 1 ( Allen PJ Dan William Jeffles ) -1
Hoax5Allen 4 PJ 2 RussW 0 Jeffles -2 William -4
MerchantsOfAmsterdam3JeffF 2 Marty 0 Matt -2
Hoax4William 3 Allen -1 Matt -1 Jeffles -1
Tayu2RussW 1 PJ -1

Devil Clay started us off right with Durch die Wueste, aka pastel colored camel game. This is one of my fave games.

We played Wheel of History again, which is the first game in the 14-game New Games in Old Rome collection by Knizia. There are still a lot of games in that heavy box we haven't even played! We should play more of them.

Great Museum Caper proved popular, with 3 games played. I note with pride I was the only successful thief, and against 5 hunters, no less. Several of us agree we want to play a match-style game of it, i.e. n rounds where each of us gets to be thief once, and see which thief steals the highest number of paintings. Note this is also the first time a team game has shown up as such in the Report. A team game like this is really just a 2 player game (in this case, thief vs hunters). So, for example, in the game I won, I earned 1 devil point vs 1 opponent, and each of the bumbling sleuths earned -1 devil point vs 1 opponent. In the older system before JeffF enhanced the program, this would have been scored as me getting 5 points vs 5 opponents, and each of them earning -1 vs 5 opponents.

RussD never played Hare & Tortoise before, and I hadn't played it in about a year I think, and indeed we Russes came in last.

As per recent mailing list discussion, Dave got to play (and win) Survive!

wizardjudgeFor some impulsive reason, we played Hoax, which normally ends in about 2 minutes, and for some reason the chemistry was right and we ended up having it last for 30 or 40 minutes of cool suspense! Jeffles privately accused William fairly early, successfully knocking out William, then wrongly accused me (thus eliminating himself). Down to me, PJ, and Allen, and I hesitated to long to declare myself the Wizard at one point, clueing them in that I surely wasn't the Wizard. Eventually PJ accused me successfully, then accused Allen and was wrong. The game proved so interesting several played it again; PJ and I took the opportunity to play Tayu, where I whupped him 55 to 25.


Meta Party Game Results

Dan won last week and so was the Meta Party Devil! Here was the game he emailed out:

This week's Meta Party Game will be a variation of Sid Sackson's "No Game" described in "A Gamut of Games."

1. Prior to the start of the game, all contestants will submit a word on 3x5 card, post it note, etc. to the moderator (me).

2. The moderator will transfer all words to the playing pieces and distribute these pieces randomly one to each contestant.

3. Each playing piece represents a medal and is designed to be affixed to a person's chest (either via safety pin, tape, velcro, etc.). The playing piece clearly shows the word on the front side.

4. If you speak the word on your medal, the first player to point this out will win your medal. If you own more than one medal, ALL will be lost. For instance, if you have a medal that says "NO" and you say "NO" during the course of the evening, the first person to point this out will win all of your medals. Homonyms, partial words, do not count, so saying "KNOW" or "NOBLE" are OK.

5. At the end of the game (midnight, when you leave, I don't know), the person with the most medals wins.

Strategy:

A. It is good to come up with synonyms in this game. If "YES" is your word, get used to saying "AFFIRMATIVE", "10-4 Good Buddy", "Uh-huh", or "Si Senor" the rest of the night.

B. It is legal to entice or cajole your opponents into failure.

C. The more medals you have, the harder the game becomes.

D. Silence is golden.

This proved to be wacky fun. Early on Fred diabolically tricked me (and the whole table agreed it was diabolical, damn him!) when a discussion of computer versions of boardgames arose. Fred diabolically got me into a pro-boardgame frenzy then asked "Would you rather play a computer or table-top version," leaving me no choice but to cry "Table-top, baby!", whereupon he triumphantly claimed the first prize of the evening, my medal that bore the word "Table".

Soon after, Fred used his ESP powers to trick Dan into telling a personal anecdote of a student psychology experiment he was in which used cards... and had to hand over his "Cards" medal.

Eventually other people began winning medals; sometimes the winner would inadvertantly say one of their new words and lose their pretty prizes within moments of pinning them on. Jeffles soon hit on the strategy of talking like Tarzan, Tonto, and Frankenstein Monster.

Final result: Jeffles won with 6 medals, then Clay with 4, then Clayton, RussW, Marty, and Allen all had 1.

Jeffles is thus next week's Meta Party Devil! Who dares conceive what meta party games he may dream up for us.


Evening's Soundtrack

...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead, Madonna
The Geraldine Fibbers, What part of Get Thee Gone don't you understand?
Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here
Tit Wrench, "Ok you homos, out of the car."
Utah Saints, What Can You Do For Me

Hey you!

To my surprise this theme proved difficult. As far as I know, only PJ deduced it. Spurred on by Allen, William, and Matt, I was convinced to let him pick a "seed CD" for next week which will be in the mix; I must construct a soundtrack's theme which includes his seed CD. What did he pick? Ah, come next week and find out. Those who were privy to a conversation with PJ last week may be able to deduce what artist he picked, even if not the exact title.


Ratings

Rank ratings:
 0.6000 DaveB (2 games playd)
 0.6000 JeffF (2)
 0.4444 Dan (6)
 0.4286 Carly (3)
 0.4000 PJ (5)
 0.3333 Fred (3)
 0.3333 JonathanC (1)
 0.2308 Matt (5)
 0.1579 William (8)
 0.1304 RussW (8)
 0.0000 Allen (5)
-0.1667 Clay (3)
-0.3158 Jeffles (8)
-0.6667 JP (3)
-0.7000 RussD (4)
-0.7500 Marty (3)
-1.0000 Clayton (2)

New Win ratings:
 0.4286 Carly (3)
 0.4000 DaveB (2)
 0.3333 Dan (6)
 0.2000 JeffF (2)
 0.1667 Fred (3)
 0.1667 Clay (3)
 0.1579 William (8)
 0.1538 Matt (5)
 0.1000 PJ (5)
 0.0000 Allen (5)
-0.0870 RussW (8)
-0.2000 RussD (4)
-0.2500 JP (3)
-0.3333 JonathanC (1)
-0.3750 Marty (3)
-0.4000 Clayton (2)
-0.4211 Jeffles (8)
Carly is Devil! Dave is Vice-Devil (by tiebreaker). Dan is Vice-Vice-Devil. JeffF is Vice-Vice-Vice-Devil (by tiebreaker). Allen wins the rare and coveted Extra Average Award. For those who are interested, I've included "Raw Rank" ratings, which JeffF's new version of the program also produces. This is simply plain old devil points added up, with no normalization.
Raw Rank ratings:
      8 Dan (6)
      4 PJ (5)
      4 Fred (3)
      3 RussW (8)
      3 William (8)
      3 Matt (5)
      3 Carly (3)
      3 DaveB (2)
      3 JeffF (2)
      1 JonathanC (1)
      0 Allen (5)
     -2 Clay (3)
     -5 Clayton (2)
     -6 Jeffles (8)
     -6 Marty (3)
     -7 RussD (4)
     -8 JP (3)
Interestingly, Dan was the clear leader in Raw Rank ratings.

Links

Wordplay by John Langdon has various graphic palindromic word logos etc., with an interesting taxonomy of different sorts of "ambigrams". I've seen Scott Kim's work like this, but hadn't heard of Langdon before.

Dangerous Laboratories has various projects I wouldn't try at home.

There's another free full-moon yoga thing coming up tomorrow evening, Friday 13th at Mt. Bonnell. Info here. This is more of a stretching thing than a full-blown yoga class since the rocky ground precludes doing many poses, but it's kind of an interesting thing to do.

Some of us are fans of Alex Robinson's Box Office Poison comic books. Sadly, that series is ending, and the final issue is in stores. (I just got mine earlier this afternoon, and now that I think about it, why am I typing this Report when I could be reading the new/final Box Office Poison?) He's got a website with info about his new Cave City graphic novel. He's also written some interesting articles about comics.

Fucked Company is a sort of dead pool or anti-virtual-investment club, where people are competing to see who can pick the dot-coms that are most likely to fail.


peasant I'm the Wizard so I don't have to pay!

I'm the Wizard too!

I'm also the Wizard!

Hey, I'm the Wizard too!

Russ