Average Jane

Average Jane vs. Data: Solitaire Edition

When I was a child, my grandmother taught me to play Solitaire. It wasn't just to keep me quiet when the grownups were talking - we also enjoyed playing Double Solitaire together. So, I have always liked to play the game with regular cards and I decided I wanted a Solitaire app to play on my phone.

First of all, most of these apps have truly obnoxious ads between games. Seriously, the FTC needs to look into the shameless scams that have oozed into the casual gaming app industry because, damn. But I digress...

After several attempts, I found a nice, basic free Solitaire app that lets me play a straightforward game. 

The thing with Solitaire is that each game has two possible conclusions: win or lose. Actually, there's a third grey area of "gave up too soon because you didn't see a move you could have made" but it's basically binary. When you win, you take your minor dopamine hit and decide whether to play again. When you lose, you either start a new game or move on to something else.

But a digital app automatically collects information that you would never consider or care about in the analog game. This particular app tracks how many moves you made in the course of the game and when you win, it not only tells you how many moves it took you, but it also tells you the minimum number of moves you COULD have used to win with that configuration.

I DON'T WANT TO KNOW THAT. No one in the history of Solitaire has ever played the game to win using the smallest number of possible moves - and I don't intend to start now. But. My competitive brain sees that "look how slow you were" implication at the end of each win and it immediately undercuts the tiny moment of triumph. I hate that.

At a time when AI is poised to make many people's lives more miserable, this is a minor but annoying example of how you don't need to share all the data you have. Just because you can share information doesn't mean it's valuable or even useful. In this case, it's thoroughly unwelcome.

Average Jane Regretfully Declines to Play

Pokémon GO is a full-fledged phenomenon already, but from the instant I heard about it, I knew two things:

1. I really, really want to play it.
2. There is no way that I am ever downloading that app.

I'm not resisting for any of the reasons you may have seen in those snarky memes about being an adult. No, it's because I know that deep down, I still have the easily-obsessed brain of a ten-year-old.

I've come to this decision before when a game sounds far too compelling. It's why I chose never to start playing The Sims, which also sounded like it had the potential to insert itself into my life and push out other things I should be doing instead.

Make no mistake, it's not as though I haven't accidentally gotten myself into time-sucking games. Last year I played far too many hours of one of those "hidden object" game apps. I finally deleted it one day when I realized it was feeling more like an obligation than something fun to do. See also: Candy Crush.

One game I do like and play every day (for literally five minutes or less) is Neko Atsume. I appreciate its built-in limits on gameplay requirements and I like seeing the cute cats. Before I go to work, I feed the cats and switch out their goodies. If I remember, I check back to see any cats that have arrived. If I'm not too tired before I go to bed, I repeat the process and input the word of the day. I only play on my iPad at home, so there's no temptation to check in using my phone.

Limits are also why I like tabletop board games (limits and the social aspect, obviously). Even an afternoon-long game of Battlestar Galactica still comes to an end eventually, unlike many app games which are designed keep you playing and playing even when you have other obligations. 

And because I'm not playing Pokémon GO, I even found the time the write a blog post. How about that?

Just Call Average Jane "Gamer of the Morning"

A couple people in my gaming group thought it was a joke that our latest game day event was scheduled to begin at 8:00 a.m. on a Sunday. However, that proved to be a pretty convenient time after all.

Four of us met at a coffee shop this morning and moved to the empty lower level of the attached restaurant to play two games, beginning with Firefly, which I own but hadn't yet played. [Link is solely for your convenience; it's not an affiliate thing.]

This was a big table, but we needed every inch of space we could get (no pun intended). Even with four hours at our disposal, we didn't have time to get through a full game before one player had to leave for work, but it gave the newbies a chance to get in a good amount of gameplay. Our next game will go more quickly.

Once it was down to three of us, I made a quick run home to take the dog out and when I got back, we played the Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game. 

Here's what it looked like after the first turn or two. It's hard to tell from the photo, but the starfield is a big piece of black felt impregnated with multicolored glitter. Two of us played the imperial ships but the rebels won thanks in no small part to the special properties of the Millennium Falcon. Next time...

I've written quite a bit about my role playing board gaming, but I don't think I've ever talked about how it all started. 

One day back in 2009, a group of my friends who had met through blogging and Twitter got together at someone's house. I was with the women in one room with a collection of more traditional board games (Apples to Apples*, Balderdash, etc.) and the men were in the next room playing Battlestar Galactica.

As the evening progressed it became abundantly clear that the men were having a lot more fun with their game than we were with ours. We wandered in to watch a few rounds and then we asked, "Why can't we play with you guys?"

As it turned out, the men had never even considered that we might want to play their more strategy- and treachery-heavy games. (See also: the history of the feminist movement.) Ever since then, we've had co-ed RPG get-togethers that take everyone's favorite nerd pastimes into account. And it's been glorious.

*Back in the days before Cards Against Humanity made it so Apples to Apples wasn't fun anymore.

Apologies to Juice Newton for the post title. There's really no excuse.

Average Jane Does International TableTop Day

As a Twitter and Facebook follower of Wil Wheaton, I was quick to get excited when he announced that the first International TableTop Day would be March 30, 2013. I told my gaming group about it and at first we were going to plan our own event until we found out that TableTop Game & Hobby would be hosting an event in their game room. 

On Saturday, five of us met for breakfast to fortify ourselves for the long day ahead. The store had announced open play time from noon to midnight and we were pretty sure we'd be making a day of it.

We got there a little before noon, met up with our sixth player/game master and started with A Game of Thrones - A Dance With Dragons expansion. Most of us had played the game before, but it took nearly an hour to get set up and ready to play. This expansion is a six-turn game, but with six players it still took quite a few hours and much backstabbing for a winner to emerge. We had more fun than you'd think from looking at this picture.

The game room and store were full all day long, which did not disturb the shop cat in the least.

We took a brief food break between games and returned to play the classic (1985) game Warrior Knights. Only one of us had ever played before, but we got the hang of it and played a full round with only a few minor modifications to keep it from taking too long. (For example, we chose to skip a cholera epidemic that would have made us have to roll a die for every band of soldiers and mercenaries in our hands to find out who lived and who died.)

We wrapped up the game around 7:30 p.m. Some of our players left for the evening and a couple of others went in search of food while I started unpacking a brand new game of Space Cadets that one of our group had purchased at the store earlier in the day.

To get back to our complement of six players, we added two guys who had come to the store just to check things out and were hoping to be able to join a game. I hope they weren't too disappointed in how long it took to get set up and playing.

There are a lot of moving parts to Space Cadets—literally and figuratively—so we weren't able to get in a full game before midnight. Yes, midnight. However, we played enough rounds to be able to accomplish the major objectives in the game once, so at least we know how it works now.

The whole day was SO MUCH FUN! I couldn't believe I'd played games for twelve straight hours. I ended up buying Smash Up, which I had been wanting for months, on sale. The store must have gained so many new customers that day.

It was great to get to see so many friends (with the rotation and visitors, a total of eight) and get to challenge my brain all day long.

I hope this ends up being an annual thing. 

 

Average Jane Lets Her Geek Flag Fly

Today was fun in ways that brought back lots of memories of my nerdy teen years. 

I started out the day working the registration table at the Recruits Convention. Kanga had put out a call for volunteers a couple of months ago and I thought it sounded like fun.

I had the 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. shift and originally I thought I was going to have to leave after that, but it turned out that I had time to stick around and play a couple of games.

First I walked around and checked out some of the larger-scale games. I had no idea what any of them were, but there were some pretty impressive setups.

I didn't really know how I was going to get involved in a game, but then I met someone from the MOKAN Warmachine Group who was doing demos to teach people how to play. As a complete n00b, I was a little vague on the details from the get-go, but I think I understood that we were playing a more fantasy-oriented offshoot of the game.

I took a photo of the playing field while we both still had a reasonable number of combatants left.

I still had my wizard, a big bad-ass dragon thing with a cool name that I've already forgotten, and another little lizard creature who was across the field menacing the other wizard. I eventually won, but considering that my role consisted mainly of throwing dice and deciding which character was going to attack where, I don't take a lot of credit for the victory. Anyway, it was fun and I feel I could get the hang of it if I had additional opportunities to play.

After that, I happened upon a rep from AEG who was demoing a new card game called Smashup that won't be in stores until next month.

He said it would be more fun with a third player, but no one else volunteered and I was there by myself, so we played a two-person game. I also won that round, but I think it's safe to say that he let me win, especially considering that I quickly figured out how to attack him but he never really retaliated. I could see playing this one with the same friends who enjoy Munchkin. 

By the time that game wrapped up I was getting hungry, so I decided it was time to go. I'd like to attend again sometime and play more different games. I think I'd be less hesitant to jump in on games if I had a gaming buddy with me next time.

Every time I get the chance to do some tabletop gaming I really enjoy it. I need to make sure our game sessions remain frequent and varied.

There's been talk of starting some kind of campaign-oriented game at my office, which would be fun. We're trying to find a D&D dungeon master or another game master who would be interested in running one for us.

While I was eating lunch and visiting with my sister (who lives close to where the gaming convention was held), I got a text from Becca asking if I wanted to go see the TARDIS with her at Vintage Stock. Uh, yeah!

She loaned me her sonic screwdriver for the photo. I don't know why I'm holding it in the wrong hand.

While we were there, we also ran into Jeremy and Kendall.

There wasn't much to do once we'd gotten in our photo ops, so I headed home and settled in for a nice afternoon nap with the dog and a couple of the cats.

So that was my day of geeky fun. Tomorrow: unleashing the caffeine monster.

Average Jane, RPGer

Yesterday evening I hosted a role playing board game night. Kanga brought over a selection of games including Battlestar Galactica, Dune, Warrior Knights and Last Night on Earth.

We'd been having trouble getting enough players, so I'd gone into recruitment overdrive and added some new people to the group, including my cousin Travis and @february_seer_j. We ended up with eight, which would have been perfect except that most of the games work best with six or fewer players. We teamed up some of the newbies and ended up playing Battlestar Galactica.

Setup takes a while.

We had to use two tables. Next time I think I'd bring my laundry table up from the basement.

The rule booklets really come in handy.

Cylons!

I made a big pot of chili, some cornbread and an Apple Honey Bundt Cake. I'd forgotten how much a group of men can eat, so later on I heated up my last pan of enchiladas from earlier in the week and fed them that as well.

Even though my living room is small, we managed to make it work and I think everyone had fun.

Once we wrapped up the game (the humans won!), some of the group left and the remaining players broke out Last Night on Earth. My cousin played as the zombies and killed all the human players quickly and relentlessly, as zombies do.

Now that the weather is cooling down, I think we'll be having game nights more often. The next time we end up with eight or more players, we'll probably split into two groups. There are so many more games we could play—between Kanga and two of his buddies, I think we had about ten options just yesterday. Even though we especially love BSG and Dune, it would be fun to branch out.

If you're interested in joining us sometime, just let me know!

How Average Jane Spent Most of Her Sunday

I know I've previously mentioned playing Battlestar Galactica, which is another strategy-heavy board game. Well, yesterday I got together with a group of friends to play the 1979 board game Dune [click to read about the history and game play], based on the Frank Herbert novel.

We started around 1:30 p.m. with a couple of learning rounds, then proceeded into a full game that lasted until almost 8:30 p.m. Later on it was discovered that we'd missed a couple of rather important aspects of the rules and thus made things much more difficult for ourselves (and probably made the game much longer), but it was still an engrossing way to spend the afternoon and evening. I'm looking forward to playing again soon.

Until recently, I hadn't been exposed to games of this complexity. I grew up with Monopoly, Scrabble, Life, etc. and later branched out to Trivial Pursuit, Pictionary, Scattergories and other "game night" kinds of games. And sure, games like that are entertaining enough, but there's so much more depth to spending several hours playing a character or group with a unique skill set.

Do you have any strategy games you really enjoy and recommend? We also sometimes play Pandemic (but didn't get to it yesterday for obvious reasons), and Last Night on Earth is on our group's to-do list. What else are we missing out on?

Average Jane's Latest Obsession

Thanks to a link last week on J-Walk Blog, I am now thoroughly addicted to WEBoggle, an online, multi-player version of Boggle. 

Every night I find myself sitting on the couch with the iBook on my lap playing game after game after game.  One thing I've learned:  Boggle has its own vocabulary.  Every time I look at the words I missed, the list is full of words I've never heard of before (and I have a pretty decent vocabulary for most purposes).  Therefore, my scores are pretty consistently awful, yet I cannot stop playing.

I apologize in advance to anyone who clicks the WEBoggle link above and falls victim as I have.

Average Jane Loves Games

I've always loved games.  When I was growing up, we frequently played Scrabble, Monopoly, Bingo and numerous card games.  I distinctly remember our first Trivial Pursuit and Pictionary games.

Now I have an entire shelf in my dressing room piled almost to the ceiling with games.  Unfortunately, it's seldom that my friends have time to spend an afternoon or evening playing them.  I'm determined to keep trying, though, especially since I keep seeing new games I want to have:

• One of my favorite magazines, Mental Floss, has just released a trivia game.
• On her A-ha! blog, Yvonne DiVita recently mentioned Booktastic!, a game for book lovers and game lovers.  Since that perfectly describes all my friends, you can see why I'll have to buy it.

Of course, there are lots of games I already have that I'd love to have the chance to play again soon:

• Wit's End, a combination of trivia, logic and language questions, some of which are really difficult!
• Cranium, even though it makes you do embarrassing things like imitations of famous people, charades and humming.  It's all worth it for the drawing and sculpting questions.
• Any version of Trivial Pursuit.
• And, yes, I even miss Bunko.

I think I'll try one more time to gather the group for a game night.  We need an evening of brain exercise and camaraderie.

Does anyone have any other favorite game suggestions?