Game stuff I wanna do soon

[prog]

Since starting to reclaim some life-space due to paring away extraneous projects and applying some long-overdue organization to what's left, I've been feeling the urge to move my game-playing life in new directions.

Here is some stuff I wanna do soon. Not really making plans yet, but I reserve the right to link back to this post later. If you're totally into any of these ideas (or wish to tell me how wrong I am), feel free to make your interest known!

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After listening to podcasts about them for years, I am hell-bent on trying one of the latter-day crop of storytelling RPGs. Finally picked up a copy of The Shab Al-Hiri Roach, and decree that it shall be the one I finally try first. I appreciate both its tone (which sounds like it plays out something like an R-rated Toon game[1]) and the fact that it has gamey framing elements like cards, scoring, and a win condition.

Role-playing games that are basically audience-free improv theater, or grown-up versions of "Let's Pretend" (and I mean that in the best possible way) do not appeal to me, and that discounts a wide swath of the otherwise really cool-sounding games I keep hearing about. Even though you can lose a game of Roach by an unlucky card draw, I still appreciate just having something to aim for.

[1] Really, I want to say "It sounds like Monty Python at its best and bleakest", but, sadly, "Monty Python" is such a loaded term, especially when we're talking about RPGs. It unavoidably invokes the image of some Cheeto-stained wretches sitting around a table barking "Bring me a shrubbery!" and giggling. No, that is not the game I am trying to describe.

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I wanna host a Race for the Galaxy tournament, maybe in the brief slice of time between classicaljunkie's spring and summer semesters (rather soon). She and I are both absolutely apeshit-bonkers for this game, and so are lots of our local friends. I think everyone I know who loves games loves this game, except for, like, misuba. (What the hell, dude.) UPDATE: ok, ok, several of you don't like Race! I still name it a overall rare phenomenon in my game-playing social circle.

I have never hosted a tournament of anything before. I've barely even played in any. I am not entirely sure what a "bye" is, that's how ignorant I am on the concept. So this is a novelty-driven desire, too. (Which I can sell for two cards, plus applicable trade-phase bonuses. HA HA HA.)

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One of the Gameshelf eps I wanna shoot this year is "The Diplomacy show", an idea I've been kicking around since the Gameshelf started. Both taskboy3000 and I now live in nice roomy houses, and I need something to kick-start my excitement about working on this show again, so now's the time.

The idea is that we shoot a complete, face-to-face game of Diplomacy, but direct and edit it like a reality show. There'll be cameras rolling continuously in the map room, and camcorders following people around during the discussion phase. Players must dress in costume appropriate to the Major Power they represent.

I recognize that this will be... logistically tricky. I've written my crew about it, and await their opinion. I've also written Wizards of the Coast asking if they'd like to get on this action.

Comments

[queue.livejournal.com]

The first thing you'll probably need to decide is whether you want to make the tournament 2-player games or 3- or 4-player games. For my Boggle tournaments, I really wanted the interaction of more people.

I did some research at the time but couldn't find any tournament-scheduling algorithms where more than 2 individuals compete in one game. For one of the tournaments, I remember writing a program that came up with a bunch of random schedules (who plays at what table in what round) and then did some kind of fitness test on them (I think it was to minimize the number of times people played the same people). That didn't seem to make people happy, so for later tournaments I just abandoned that idea and did it completely randomly at the time of the tournament (with playing cards, I believe).

I did an initial 10 rounds, and people got 1 for first place, 2 for second, etc. And then the 4 people with the lowest scores after 10 rounds went into a 4 or 5 round final. Maybe something similar would work for a Race tournament (unless you decide you want to just do 2-player games, in which case tournament scheduling is easy, and you can do a best of 3 or best of 5 between each pair (to try to downplay the effect of luck)).

I'd be happy to help in whatever way with a Race tournament, including contributing my copy to be used for the tournament.

[radiotelescope.livejournal.com]

For tournaments of four-person games, try to find Eeyore's planning documents for Icehouse tournaments. The same model should work, since it's a score-based game. Playoff round in which everybody plays N games against a rotating list; assign a round score of (total points) * (wins+1); top four players play one final game (or 3 final games, if you have time and you want to reduce the effect of luck).

[queue.livejournal.com]

This?

http://www.wunderland.com/icehouse/TourneyRules.html

Sounds fun, and it might work for a Race tournament pretty well, too.

[radiotelescope.livejournal.com]

Somewhere he has charts of how to do the play-off ("Ice-Off") round with N players, for various values of N. (So that everyone plays the same number of games, and the games quartets are as evenly distributed as possible, with no "cliques".)

[queue.livejournal.com]

Hmm, need to look for that more. I think the "restaurant style" would probably work OK depending on the exact makeup of the group, but, yes, finding good scheduling for N players playing 4-player games would be nice.