Weekend of games

Games run amok this weekend. Hadn't played any tabletops in a while so it was all good.

On Saturday classicaljunkie had a birthday party and lo the games were busted out. I brought along my copies of Citadels and Shadows over Camelot and actually got to play both.

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Played Citadels first, and I won... again. Maybe my fifth win in a row. I am chronic at winning this game. I do not have a clear recollection of the last time I lost at it... maybe at J&C's foo two Decembers ago? Please play it with me some more so that I will lose. I am inviting you to BRING IT.

Oddly I have never played this game with five people and so never encountered the rule that each round starts with some number of role cards tossed out face-up as well as face-down. I have only played the game with three or seven people, I think! So that was a new, and I liked this version of the game as much as I like the others (that is, quite a bit). I'm glad that another experienced player was at the table to note the rule difference.

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Shadows over Camelot - I have been lugging this around to different game events for months without playing it, so was very happy to finally get a chance Saturday, and it ended up being the craziest game of it I've ever had. I had a Loyal role, and while I was gearing up the courage to accuse one player or another of being a traitor (one kept promising to help me with the Grail quest and then going somewhere else, while the other consciously chose to play an Evil card that caused a quest to fail) I found myself at the end of an accusation!

My jaw literally dropped at this, not just because I don't think I was acting particularly traitorous but because a lot of the table thought I was it, and I wasn't even aware of it. Apparently treachery was seen not in how I was playing the game but in my lack of interest in the other players' discussion of who the traitor might be. Interesting! Of course the traitor turned out to be classicaljunkie herself, who spent the whole game playing as quietly and passively as possible, and she ended up winning by lasting the whole game undetected for a final sword tally of 7 dark to 5 light. Very nice!

Having played Shadows a few times now, I think I understand how to play within the spirit of the can't-reveal-your-cards rule, as well as the letter of it. A couple of first-time players were sticking only to the latter so that the whole rule became meaningless, but everyone was clearly having a lot of fun so I didn't press the issue. (doctor_atomic, you would have been proud.) Still, it would have been nice if the printed rules showed how this was done, maybe with a sample player dialogue.

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Finally, there was semi-spontaneous Settlers on Sunday, at a visiting meerkitty suggestion. The Andys were over, and trolling for anyone else interested hooked pheromone. Who, after mumbling about unfamiliarity with the vanilla rules (being one of those C&K people) and having made her apologies ahead of time for not playing well, proceeded to leisurely stomp the four of us into the dirt sheep pastures.

Beware the Settlers sharks! But really any sting from the loss was soothed by some fun followup conversation about my business because boy do I love to talk about that because you know it's all I do ha ha HA ha HA ha though I am blessed that I can occasionally take breaks to engage in sinful acts of random number generation with friends. Coz that's what it's all about ultimatley.

Two cynicisms

I think that "References in Fiction" sections are a blight on Wikipedia. I guess I can't reasonably write a manifesto calling for their systematic deletion, since they actually are useful in intent. But, once a topic's list of above-the-fold media references has been exhausted, the section proceeds to overflow with utterly unencyclopedic pointers to obscure anime, video games, and webcomics. Fancruft. And I am very hesistant to delete it because I don't want to catch fancrud.

Come to think of it I have never seen a line in an article's history log that read "Deleted unencyclopedic fancruft" or something similar. And for some reason this makes me want to start doing so.

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Subscribed to nintendo_ds coz I wanna have a better handle on what-all's going on with my favorite video game system, and am reminded why I don't belong to more LJ communities. Too many posts have been sincere but foolish, mostly young people asking questions that are answerable with one word, that being either "eBay" or "Google". I don't actually say that, though, coz it would sound awfully snooty, so I just leave them be.

I normally love answering questions (and seeing questions answered well by others) but some questions are so broad and flat that you just know that the person hasn't even bothered with other of these two First Sources. The posters' evident youth makes it even less forgivable in my eyes, coz it's not like they have decades of life without Google to adapt away from.

Maybe they don't teach Google in school yet, the teachers being mostly old enough to have themselves been students pre-Web? This is my hypothesis.

Speaking of which

I think at least a few of you are in line for DS Lites, yes? They're in stores now, I am told. If so I would like to point again at my WiFi friend codes.

I am always up for Mario Kart- or Tetris-related shenanigans.