Session Report Up, in which I continue to spread the gospel of gaming

The latest Jerusalem Strategy Gaming Club session report is up here. Games played: Lost Cities x 2, Tikal, Cosmic Encounter, Mau, Arimaa, Settlers of Catan, Puerto Rico.

I get Tikal out after a long absence, and turn some guests on to Settlers of Catan.

The Game of Life

The New Yorker talks about The Game of Life.

You know, The Game of Life is a perfect example of a game that would work much better as a multiple-win game instead of a single win. Why should the person who gets to the end of Life first win?

The game could use victory conditions ala Careers, where everyone decides at the start what their goals are. Maybe with the option of changing them as the game goes on.

Then change the game into a fixed number of turns, and all players who meet their chosen victory conditions when the game ends win. Note that you may reach the conditions and still lose them before the game ends.

In this way, it is possible that no one wins, one person wins, multiple people win, or everyone wins. Which is a lot more like Life. And heck, why not make it a cooperative game? Shouldn't Life be a cooperative game?

Yehuda