Saturday, January 21, 2006

Weekend Gaming

I include my blog URL in my signature, so whenever I send an email, there's my blog address.

Our guests on Friday night were a mother in her fifties and her twenties son. I sent my dinner invitation via email. During dinner she said that she saw the address at the bottom and though she would check it out, "and the thing that I really want to know is: who in the world would really be interested in all this?"

It was meant to be semi-rhetorical; she was curious about the appeal that this sort of thing had to niches of people interested in a certain subject. But my wife laughed and clapped her on the back and said, "right on!"

Rachel thinks I'm married to my blogging. According to her, I'm on the computer in the morning, and it's last thing I check before going to bed. A spouse just doesn't understand these things, especially one who is working on her doctorate first thing in the morning, and also the last thing before going to bed.

The son stayed after dinner to play Power Grid with Saarya, Tal, and me. As a first game, I decided to try out only Step 1, as is recommended. Unlike the 6 player games I played at BGG.con, I found it a smidgen repetitive, but not enough to make the game unenjoyable. I think that, as in a number of these games, if the game is played politely it doesn't hold a tremendous amount of tension. When played more cutthroat, the game shines. We played politely.

Saarya built early while I hung back. I thought this would be good, but with only 4 players, the good prices never went that high, anyway. Also, with only 1 step, there was less conservation required. Or something. In any case, Saarya bought early and often and sailed into an easy victory. Tal was flush with cash and could have given him more competition if she had bought more.

The next day, Tal had a friend over who was open to trying some games. We played three way China Moon (best with three) which Tal won with a complete set of yellows, the black and the blue. I had four whites and 2 reds.

Then the two of them played Set.

I am reading a trilogy by Julie E. Czerneda called the Trade Pact Universe, books I picked up and Half Priced Books in Dallas. Enjoyable stuff. The telepathy is similar to the type of mental communication I foresee in my Sarah novels.

And to those of you who don't understand why anybody would be interested in this, blah blah gobble gobble blah blah games blah blah blog blah blah gobble gobble blarg blork blarf.

Yehuda

P.S. And I played and won a 2 player PR game with Rachel in the evening. The usual substituted buildings.

1 comment:

Gerald McD said...

I enjoy Czernada's books. I've read A Thousand Words for Stranger and Survival (first book in her Species Imperative series). I expect I'll read more of her writings in the future. She is one of a great number of good science fiction writers publishing today. Although I have been a fan of SF since 1959, and most of the successful writers in those days were male, I have discovered in recent years that female writers dominate my current list of favorite SF authors -- Czerneda, Elizabeth Moon, Catherine Asaro, Sharon Lee, and C.J. Cherryh being among the best, in my opinion. In fact, female authors are also my favorites in other light fiction (mysteries) -- Janet Evanovich, Nevada Barr, J.A. Jance, and Sue Grafton, especially. On the other hand, I find it interesting that in my other primary reading category -- history -- I have no books written by women. I am not drawing any conclusions from this, just mentioning it.