May 30 2001 RussCon Report

20 of us played 18 games. It was another crowded night with lots of fun games, including 7 games previously unplayed at RussCon, surely a record if not close to it...

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Now playing: William Shakespeare's Memento.

Comicollage: daily ongoing comic jam with 7 artists and no planning ahead! There's a russ strip every Tuesday. (and a June 2 substitute strip)

News

We have received email from long-lost Doug, who everyone from the old days of RussCon will remember; he moved to Maryland a while back:

Hello Russ
God how I miss Russ Con. We have a good gaming group here in Maryland. However the constancy and quality is meager. Please say Hi to all, If you remember who I am,
Doug Mercer.

Good to hear from you! If your gaming group is of variable quality, you should start your own DougCon! Woohoo!

I get lots of mail these days it seems: Whendy was in Las Vegas and sent this trippy postcard of Cirque du Soleil performers.

Game Results

Hornochsen	6	Marty 5 Steve 3 RussW 1 Matt -1 JonathanC -3 Clayton -5
Tiddlywinks	5	Brad 4 Matt 2 JonathanB 0 Marty -2 Kara -4
Carcassonne	5	RussW 4 Bob 2 Clayton 0 JonathanC -2 Steve -4
Ubi	4	Brad 3 ChrisH 1 Kara -1 JonathanB -3
Metro	5	Ben 4 Clayton 2 Carly 0 DaveB -2 Jeffles -4
6Nimmt	7	ChrisH 6 JonathanB 4 PJ 2 Kara 0 Allen -2 Steve -4 Brad -6
Ra	5	Carly 4 Jeffles 2 JP 0 Ben -3 DaveB -3
HookOrCrook	4	Jeffles 3 Carly 1 DaveB -1 Ben -3
Zertz	2	PJ 1 Allen -1
Capital	4	Marty 3 Brady 1 Matt -1 JP -3
StephensonsRocket	4	Bob 3 RussD 1 RussW -1 JonathanC -3
Bongo	4	Jeffles 3 Carly 1 Ben -1 DaveB -3
BlindChicken	6	PJ 5 JP 3 Allen 1 Matt -1 Marty -3 Brady -5
Carcassonne	4	Steve 3 JonathanB 1 Brad -1 ChrisH -3
WebOfPower	4	Jeffles 3 Carly 1 Bob -1 Ben -3
Bluff	6	JP 5 Brady 3 Brad 1 Matt -1 Steve -3 Marty -5
Bluff	7	JP 6 Carly 4 Jeffles 2 Brad 0 Steve -2 JonathanB -4 Matt -6
TallyHo	2	JonathanC 1 RussW -1

There were 7 previously unplayed games this week:

Hornochsen: a sequel of sorts to the popular 6 Nimmt! The goal is to collect points, not avoid points. It preserves the core mechanic of playing your card on the stack with the highest value less than your card's. This went slower with sequential instead of simultaneous turns, but seems potentially worthy. I'll try it again.
Tiddlywinks: another dexterity game is played at RussCon!
Ubi: I actually own this but Brad may have been the first to convince anyone to play this geography trivia game.
Zertz: a 2 player abstract strategy game.
Capital: I know nothing about it.
Bongo: I think this was some crappy old nostalgia game from Jeffles's childhood or something.
BlindChicken: I have no idea...

carcassonne Bwa-ha-ha-ha! I played it at Great Hall again a couple days later too!

Metro was technically called Iron Horse, but we already have a game of that title (a dusty old card game); Iron Horse later became Metro (which was played a few weeks ago).

Sea Biscuit and I were beaten again by RussD in Stephensons Rocket, but I guess we can be consoled that Bob beat RussD...

I played the animals and demolished Sea Biscuit in the first half of Tally Ho, then he played the animals and demolished me even more. The bears did not go hungry this night.

I haven't been tracking it separately, but the second game of Bluff was our house variant which is proving popular, Skill Bluff (where you choose your dice rolls instead of rolling them randomly).

A reminder: please write and spell clearly when recording game results, and remember last initials for people with common names, thanks!

Meta Party Game Results

JP was the Meta Party Devil. Here is what he privately emailed me shortly before RussCon:

Russ,
I just wanted to let you know that I do have a meta-game for tonight, but it involves not emailing out the meta-game, so don't go creating one for me.
Thanks,
JP

Whendy forwarded me the following related email:

I can't tell you, but I can tell you that you are currently winning.
Bwaa-ha-ha...
I would appreciate it if you did not forward this to the list.
JP
On Wed, 30 May 2001, Wendy Wheeler wrote:
> Meta Game Person, what did you come up with for tonight? Calling lazy ol' John
> Paul Rodman...

After RussCon was over, JP emailed out the following:

Brady wins the Meta game.
Here are the rules, a recap of the action, and a post-mortum.
This is long. I will not be offended if you don't read it.
The Rules:
Meta Rule 1:
I do not have to volunteer any information about the metagame.
Exceptions: Rules 3, 4, 7
Meta Rule 2:
The last person to ask me a question about the meta game is "winning".
Exceptions: Rules 8, 9
Meta Rule 3:
Exception to Rule 1.
If anyone asks me a question about the metagame, I must tell them who is "winning".
Meta Rule 4:
Exception to Rule 1.
If anyone guesses one of the rules of the metagame, I must tell them so.
Whether a particular guess is close enough is entirely at my discretion.
Meta Rule 5:
The first person to correctly guess a particular rule gets a point.
This applies for each rule seperately.
Meta Rule 6:
There is no rule 6.
Exceptions: Rule 6
Meta Rule 7:
Exception to Rule 1.
I may give away points as I see fit.
If I do so, I must reveal this rule.
Meta Rule 8:
Exception to Rule 2.
Anyone with points is not eligable to be "winning".
Meta Rule 9:
Exception to Rule 2.
If anyone gets at least three points, the game is over.
The person(s) with the most points wins.
Meta Rule 10:
The game ends at 11:30 if it hasn't already.
Whoever is "winning", wins.
Recap of the action:
WendyWhe took an early lead by emailing the list asking what the Meta-Game was. I think I scared her away from this weeks RussCon by replying that she was winning.
I decided to count any question that I heard, not just ones that were addressed to me, and I overheard Matt asking about it, so he took the lead. He then proceeded to guess something close to Rule 2, but I wasn't paying close enough attention (he was in another game).
I was unsure whether it was Marty or Matt who had guessed, so I decided to give them both a point and reveal Rule 2. (Admittedly, this was sortof invoking Rule 7, at which point I should have revealed it. Whatever...) At this point I said Whendy was winning again, since Matt was no longer eligable.
Brady promptly asked a question and took the lead which he held 'til the game ended at 11:30. At which point I announced that he had won.
I heard rumours that PJ was asking about the game later in the night, but I didn't hear him so it didn't count.
Post Mortum:
This game was an experiment. I had hoped there would be more guessing, but I suspected something like this would happen.
If I had really wanted to make it more interesting, I could have been a more active moderator, and possibly volutarily revealed some rules. For instance, I think rules 5 and 9 might have started people guessing more intensely, since they would actually know they were supposed to. Unfortunately, I was too busy with my real games to bother.
Which brings me to my next point.
I violated the Prime Directive of Meta Game design:
Don't depend on people paying attention to the Meta Game.
I had really meant to show up early so as to allow people to guess without the distraction of games in progress, but I wasn't able to. I also could have removed the time limit, and allowed for questions in the wind down session.
I actually printed out a list of the rules, and cut them out, so I could show them to people if they guessed a rule. Since the rules included references to other rules, I had hoped that this would help get the ball rolling. But, the confusion about who had guessed, combined with my general apathy about it made me forget to do so.
Despite all this, I don't think it went too badly. There was a reasonable amount of action, even if most people didn't have a clue what was going on.

So Brady is the Meta Party Devil and will email out next week's Meta Party Game. You may recall Brady has also designed a controversial experimental Meta Game, so perhaps the trend of inexplicable meta mischief will continue!

Evening's Soundtrack

Jeremy Enigk, Return of the Frog Queen
Henry Purcell, Funeral Music for Queen Mary
Queen, A Night at the Opera
The Smiths, The Queen is Dead
Rick Wakeman, The Six Wives of Henry VIII

This is a very strange coincidence: last week's soundtrack theme was King Crimson and received that special postcard from Queen Victoria. This week's theme was queens, and that very evening I checked my mail late at RussCon and found I had received a postcard advertising King Crimson:

If this keeps up, I'll have to start making a dedicated section in the RussCon Report for postcards!

Ratings

Rank ratings:
 0.6667 PJ (3)
 0.4783 JP (5)
 0.4783 Carly (6)
 0.4000 Bob (3)
 0.3913 Jeffles (6)
 0.3333 ChrisH (3)
 0.3333 RussD (1)
 0.2308 RussW (4)
 0.0370 Brad (6)
-0.0769 Brady (3)
-0.0909 Marty (5)
-0.0909 JonathanB (5)
-0.1667 Allen (3)
-0.2308 Clayton (3)
-0.2414 Steve (6)
-0.2857 Matt (6)
-0.3529 Ben (5)
-0.3846 Kara (3)
-0.5385 JonathanC (4)
-0.6429 DaveB (4)

New Win ratings:
 0.4167 PJ (3)
 0.3478 JP (5)
 0.3333 ChrisH (3)
 0.2609 Jeffles (6)
 0.2273 Marty (5)
 0.1111 Brad (6)
 0.1000 Bob (3)
 0.0769 RussW (4)
 0.0000 Ben (5)
-0.0435 Carly (6)
-0.0690 Steve (6)
-0.1538 JonathanC (4)
-0.2143 Matt (6)
-0.2273 JonathanB (5)
-0.2308 Brady (3)
-0.2308 Clayton (3)
-0.2308 Kara (3)
-0.2500 Allen (3)
-0.2857 DaveB (4)
-0.3333 RussD (1)

PJ is the Devil! JP is Vice-Devil! Jeffles and Carly are Co-Vice-Vice-Devils (aw, that's so sweet!).

Links

If you are registered at ifilm already (or are willing to undergo their annoying registration process) be sure to view Pimento, a short silly scatalogical spoof of Memento.

Delightful flash animation about a cat and owner.

A good Stephensons Rocket FAQ, confirmed by Knizia.

It seems Alex "Box Office Poison" Robinson's new project Cave City is cancelled, alas.

God save the queen!

Russ