2005-05-04 RussCon Report

News

16 of us played 11 games! Long-absent Clay reappeared (and the old skates of Fool fit him well, so he has claimed them), and long-absent KevinY (whom I ran into at go club recently and badgered into returning to RussCon), and long absent Sarah (of Tim and Sarah fame, as opposed to Frequent Flyer SarahM).

Thanks Tim and Sarah for the tasty vegan pizza (good veggies and soy cheese)!

Trail of Dead last Saturday at Emo's was good but very crowded. I danced around.

May 7 (today, as I type this) is Free Comic Book Day.

Sunday May 8 I'm seeing Get Your War On at 8pm if anyone cares to join me. Sunday is Pay-What-You-Can night!

Next Saturday May 14 is the Art Car Parade in Houston.

http://www.moveamd.com/ has info on how to encourage AMD to be a good corporate citizen and not relocate 2000 employees to the Barton Springs watershed.

Game Results

StarWarsAttacktix	2	Jeffles 1 Ben -1
UndTschuess	4	Tim 3 Clayton 1 Sarah -1 Marty -3
Barbarossa	5	Matt 4 Jeffles 1 RussW 1 SarahM -2 William -4
Tichu	2	( Clay Ben ) 1 ( TimG MarkH ) -1
RicochetRobot	2	Ben 1 TimG -1
MarcoPoloExpedition	5	MarkY 4 Matt 2 KevinY 0 Chad -2 RussW -4
ControlNut	2	( Sarah SarahM ) 1 ( Tim William ) -1
Boggle	2	MarkY 1 Ben -1
Bluff	5	Chad 4 Clayton 2 KevinY 0 RussW -3 Matt -3
ControlNut	2	( Clay Ben ) 1 ( MarkH Marty ) -1
ModernArt	4	Tim 3 TimG 1 Clayton -1 Sarah -3

Jeffles brought Star Wars Attacktix, a silly game of toy figures shooting plastic missiles at each other, or swatting each other with snapping light sabers. It looks like goofy fast fun.

We played Barbarossa again but simple went clockwise asking secretly for the letter in the nth position, or publicly asking yes/no questions until you get a "no" and then must make a public guess. This seemed to capture the fun part of the game and leave out the annoying moving around on the arbitrary track business. We had fun.

Marty brought a new Knizia game Marco Polo Expedition which feels a little bit like Cartagena with chrome. It took a long time to play but seems interesting, although I sucked.

Control Nut is some partner-based card game for 4 players. I can only dream that it will replace Tichu at RussCon!

Ratings

Rank Ratings:       
 2.3026 MarkY
 2.0794 Tim
 1.3863 Clay
 1.3863 Matt
 0.9808 Jeffles
 0.9163 Chad
 0.6931 Ben
 0.6931 Clayton
 0.0000 SarahM
 0.0000 KevinY
-0.9808 TimG
-1.0987 Sarah
-1.3863 MarkH
-2.0794 Marty
-2.2377 RussW
-2.3026 William

Win Ratings:
 2.3026 MarkY won 2 of 2
 2.0794 Tim won 2 of 3
 1.3863 Clay won 2 of 2
 1.3863 Chad won 1 of 2
 1.1632 Matt won 1 of 3
 0.6931 Ben won 3 of 5
 0.4700 Jeffles won 1 of 2
 0.4700 SarahM won 1 of 2
 0.1178 Sarah won 1 of 3
-0.4463 KevinY won 0 of 2
-0.6694 RussW won 0 of 3
-0.7985 Clayton won 0 of 3
-0.9163 William won 0 of 2
-0.9808 Marty won 0 of 2
-1.3863 MarkH won 0 of 2
-1.6740 TimG won 0 of 3

MarkY is the Devil! Tim is Vice-Devil. Clay is Vice-Vice-Devil. Chad and Matt are Co-Vice-Vice-Vice-Devils.

If you are confused how the ratings work, you could peruse the FAQ.

I used GraphViz to generate the graph image.

Meta Game

William was the Meta Devil and mailed out the following Meta Game:

What am I?

Each person will be given a card with the name of an object written on the card. The card will be attached to the back of the person's shirt so they cannot see what it says.

The object is to try to guess what is written on the card, or "what you are."

After completing a game, you may ask each and every one of the other players in the game a single "yes or no" question. The other players must answer your question truthfully and to the best of their knowledge.

First person to figure out what they are wins!
=========

Notes:

All of the items are physical objects.

You must use one of your questions to guess what you are. In other words, even if you know what you are, you can't just blurt it out and expect to win. You have to still play a game, and then ask someone in the game if you are that object.

Games are defined as RussCon games. In other words, games that are going to be (and allowed to be) recorded in The Book.

Nobody figured out their identity just from asking questions after completing games. So by the end of the evening we went into a circle taking turns asking one question around the table. Matt ended up winning (he was a school bus). (The hardest was MarkY's - he took the longest to figure his out. He was a fava bean.) Jeffles gave me a meta clue early in the evening, when he made a yield sign during Barbarossa - I was a yield sign in the Meta Game. There were also some debates about the correct answer to certain questions (as seem inevitable in games like this Meta Game or Barbarossa), e.g. are bananas usually green, and do slinkies have an external power source, did my Buddha statue represent a person or not, etc. Anyway, Matt is the Meta Devil and will design next week's Meta Game!

Links

Kill Dog looks like a game which could be interesting to try sometime! Further info at here.

Rock, Paper, Payoff: Child's Play Wins Auction House an Art Sale ... It may have been the most expensive game of rock, paper, scissors ever played. Christie's and Sotheby's played Rock, Paper, Scissors for the right to sell a $20 million art collection.

News 14 Carolina gets pwnt

The Atheist Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins explains why God is a delusion, religion is a virus, and America has slipped back into the Dark Ages.

Starship Dimensions allows science fiction fans to get an impression of the true scale of their favorite science fiction spacecraft by being able to compare ships across genres

The Time Traveler Convention - May 7, 2005

Mom's the word - article about pro baseball player Joe Valentine and his two moms, and the frustration of being in a homophobic sport