Zendo, short takes

[cellio]

I played Zendo for the first time Sunday night (with ralphmelton, mrpeck, Dani, and Maggie). It's very reminiscent of New Eleusis, but with icehouse pieces instead of cards and a Zen facade (which isn't important). The basic idea of both games is that one person decides on a rule and everyone else makes plays, attempting to determine the rule by induction. For each play the rule-maker calls valid or invalid under the rule, until someone correctly determines what the rule is. I kind of like the twist in New Eleusis of a player being a "prophet", but I like the more visual nature of Zendo. I mean, it's hard to go wrong when you get to play with plastic bits. :-)

I had a lot of fun playing. I also learned a valuable lesson about rule construction: that the rule-maker thinks it might be too easy does not make it so. Ok, next time I will not construct a rule based on primary versus non-primary colors... oops. :-) (At one point Ralph guessed a rule that could have been correct, but for one counter-example on the table. It was, ironically, the one counter-example that had been vexing everyone throughout the game. Before I noticed it I was strongly considering declaring his rule to be correct even though it wasn't my rule, but I couldn't.)

Short takes:

Real Live Preacher's epic struggle with a raccoon: part 1, part 2, part 3.

Quote from tonight's D&D game: "does the 'mirror image' spell pass by value or by reference?" (The question, put another way, was: are the extra images of the caster sym links or copies? By reference, or sym links, as it turns out.)

"[Introverts] tend to think before talking, whereas extroverts tend to think by talking, which is why their meetings never last less than six hours." -- Caring for your Introvert, link courtesy of metahacker. I'm not sure I agree with a lot of the article, but I do like this quote -- and I've definitely been in meetings like that.

I haven't read the last couple hundred issues of Cerebus, but Dani brought home the final issue, #300, so I read it. Um, I think even if I had had the context from the current story line I would have felt that it was kind of pointless. Also a quick read, not counting the essays from the author, so nothing really lost. But it was weird.

Comments

[siderea]

"does the 'mirror image' spell pass by value or by reference?"

ROTFL! W00T! I have to quote that; may I?
–

[cellio]

Sure, feel free. (It's mine, by the way, but I felt dorky actually saying so in the entry.)

Zendo

[magid.livejournal.com]

I've never played New Eleusis; my general analogy is to Mastermind, instead. And I've never seen a rule played that was 'too easy' (though that may just be because there are some zendo-addicts in my area, who are clever with counterexamples, too).

In case you're interested, there's a zendo community on LJ, with people playing ("Zendo"), with an affiliated chat community (I don't remember if it's "Zendo_chat" or "Zendochat"...).

Re: Zendo

[cellio]

Is Mastermind the game where you secretly place five colored pegs in a row and the other player has to determine what they are? I've seen that but never played it.

Thanks for the pointer to the Zendo community.

Re: Zendo

[magid.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's Mastermind. I've always assumed that most people have played it, since in my house growing up it was one of the classics, like Scrabble, Boggle, and Monopoly.

[jducoeur]

does the 'mirror image' spell pass by value or by reference?

Okay, that qualifies as uber-geeky. I love it...

I actually found the ending of Cerebus fascinatingly strange, and the very ending oddly poignant -- it's a statement about ego and the afterlife that resonates well with me, and is painfully in-character for Cerebus.

In general, Cerebus hasn't been great since the end of Church and State (#118 or something like that), and has tended far too much towards Long Boring Bits since #150. There have been enough interesting flashes to keep me buying it, but few enough that I can't really recommend anything after Church and State. The leadup to the end -- a completely interminable and bizarrely iconoclastic examination of the book of Genesis -- was bad enough that I didn't even read most of it.

(Oh, and Zendo is great. I don't often get a chance to play it, but the few times I've done so have been excellent fun.)

Cerebus

[cellio]

it's a statement about ego and the afterlife that resonates well with me, and is painfully in-character for Cerebus.

If it's in-character, that's different. It seemed pretty un-Cerebus-like to me, but I stopped reading during Church and State and, obviously, a lot of time has passed since then.

I wonder to what extent David Sim felt an obligation to keep publishing something because he said from the beginning it would go to #300, even if he was writing crap at the time. I mean, he had to know that it wasn't very good, right? His essay in #300 implies that he knows that now, at least.

Re: Cerebus

[jducoeur]

If it's in-character, that's different.

Well, obviously it's subjective. But I took it as Cerebus being confronted with immanence, and loss of personal identity when joining with God, and being *utterly* incapable of dealing with the concept of ego death. And that *is* in character.

I mean, we're talking about someone who has been prime minister, then Pope, then prophet -- he isn't lacking for ego. But the one thing he's never possessed is any sort of inner peace that might let him deal with loss of identity.

Of course, I may be reading this completely differently than it's intended. But the fact that I can do so is part of why I like it. (There's an essay on my own personal beliefs that's been lurking in the back of my mind for weeks -- I really should just sit down and write it, because it's clearly leaking out here...)

I mean, he had to know that it wasn't very good, right? His essay in #300 implies that he knows that now, at least.

Mayyyybe. On the one hand, he sounds somewhat self-deprecatory. But then he turns right around and tries to get the readers to write to the university to petition to keep all of his notes and papers in a permanent collection indefinitely. That doesn't sound like a man who is lacking in the self-worth department.

Really, I think the problem is that he more and more wrote what he believed in -- and what he believed in has gotten steadily more pretentious, and often fairly loony. He's been trying to write Art, instead of simply telling a ripping good yarn the way he was doing for the first hundred or so issues...