cellio | Zendo, short takes

I played Zendo for the first time Sunday night (with

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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

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

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

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"...).

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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...

Zendo, short takes

no subject

no subject

Zendo

Re: Zendo

Re: Zendo

no subject

Cerebus

Re: Cerebus