games day

[cellio]

Today we joined friends for a day of (board) gaming. We knew there would be between seven and eleven players, so Dani and I brought along Civilization and Seven Ages, the two games we have that work for that number of players and that we'll both play, though both of these are long games. We did, in fact, have exactly seven players, but we chose other options. (The problem is that few games work for seven and few work well for three, so either you play one game or you split into two groups and reduce to a different problem.)

We started by playing Talisman, which was probably a decent game before they published the gazillions of expansion sets. This is a board game based on fantasy role-playing; in the basic game your character progresses through the three rings of the board, until someone reaches the center and (usually) wins. (Other players can still interfere with the leader; it's not an automatic win. But the player who gets to the center certainly has advantages.) The original game had around a dozen different characters, I think, and a balanced set of encounters, magic items, spells, and special events.

The expansion sets added several game boards, new characters, and new cards (encounters, items, etc). We only played with one additional board (the dungeon), but we didn't sort out all the extra cards other than to kill one identifiable set as we encountered them (Timescape). I don't own this game and I don't know what expansions were involved, but the result was pretty weird, and it was the most unsatisfying game of Talisman I've ever played. (I was so-so on the game before today, so I don't know when I'll be willing to play again.) We all experienced a lot of thrashing; after two hours I had yet to have a fight with a monster, for instance, and I never succeeded in raising any of my stats. We saw a lot of cards of the "this card remains on the board for the rest of the game" variety, which reduced the number of spaces on which cards could be drawn, which made it harder to get monsters to fight. After about four hours we gave up. One player was having enough success that we could all believe that he would win if we were willing to play it out, so we declared him the winner.

Someone else had brought a chariot-racing game that he said can work well for three players, so we split into two groups. Four of us played Puerto Rico (one first-time player), and this, too, turned out to be a weird game. When we ran out of settlers (ending the game), we were not as advanced as we should have been, and the final scores ranged from 20 to 31. (I had 28.) Usually in a four-player game all the scores are in the 30s and 40s, at least in my limited experience. It wasn't just that people were playing the mayor too often, though there was some of that. There wasn't a lot of money in the game, which limited building, which trickled down. I'm not quite sure how that happened. It wasn't the total lack of satisfaction that Talisman was; I had fun even while realizing that it was playing oddly.

The chariot-racers were still going, so then we pulled out a game that was new to all of us, called Tsuro: The Game of the Path. This is a nifty game, and I'd like to play it more. Play is on a 6x6 board; most of the 36 positions will ultimately be occupied by tiles. Each square tile is divided into 9 sections, so there are 8 edge positions, two on each side. Each tile contains a different set of paths connecting those 8 points in some ways -- so the simplest pattern is a tic-tac-toe board, but most of them involve curves that criss-cross or connect points on adjacent sides. Paths can cross each other but not fork; there is always one unambiguous connection for each of the eight positions.

Player tokens start on the edges of the board (any edge point you want). On your turn, you play a tile adjacent to your piece and then move all affected pieces as far along their paths as you can. (So if someone else is also adjacent to the tile you play, both pieces move.) If you go off the board, you're out -- so you're trying to control your path, but as the tiles start to come together you can find yourself pushed to places you never expected to be. A game takes about 15 minutes, so this is a good "waiting around for other people" game, though I would happily play it for its own sake too. It also supports up to 8 players, which is useful.

Finally, we played a few rounds of Trans Europa, a quickie train game. It's the same game as Trans America, which we've played several times, but on a differnet map. Cities on the board are divided into five (color-coded) zones; at the beginning of each round you draw one card of each color and those are the cities you have to connect together with track. The zones in Trans Europa feel more spread-out than they do in Trans America; maybe it's just that we haven't learned the quirks of this particular map. As with Trans America, a game takes about 20 minutes.

Comments

[dagonell.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Several years back, I watch a Minister of Children run a live-action Tsuro game. Pieces of candy were placed on the blank squares and the children had to figure out how to get there. She insisted the game was period even though she didn't know the name or have any documentation. She said another MoC taught it to her. I've done enough research into children's games that it didn't feel medieval to me and I could never find out anything about it afterward until now. Thank you.
-- Dagonell

[cellio]

A lot of people in the SCA seem to confuse "exotic" with "old", unfortunately. Take a modern {game, song, story, piece of clothing, etc} and wrap it up in an {Asian, native-American, African, eastern-European, etc} vaneer, and people will become more willing to believe it's ancient just because it's different from the usual (western-European) "modern" motif.

Tsuro is nominally Chinese -- well, I'm inferring from the kanji and the Chinese dragon in the art; I didn't read the box or rules. I have no idea whether it was invented last year, last decade, or last century -- or it could be 500 years old for all I know, but I'd want to see some documentation before propegating such a claim.

[akitrom.livejournal.com]

According to Tiffany O'Brien (the WizKids line editor of Tsuro):

Tsuro: The Game of the Path is often mistaken for an English-language reprint. Because of its beautiful oriental theme, many have questioned the origin of this elegantly designed board game. Gameplay was developed by mathematician Tom McMurchie, who, after putting together a simple game that was fun and easy to play, decided to team up with WizKids.

So, not so old.

Having said that, I've found some of the worst scholarship in the SCA has to do with board games. Lots of people haul out Cathedral as if it were authentic, and contrariwise there's the infamous Complete Anachronist which claimed that current chess rules were not period. (According to http://www.chess-poster.com/english/chesmayne/brief_notes_on_the_history_of_chess_1500.htm , castling, the most recent rule of chess, was introduced in the 1540's.)

[cellio]

Thanks for the information on Tsuro.

Having said that, I've found some of the worst scholarship in the SCA has to do with board games.

Is it worse, or do we tend to be more sensitive in the areas we specialize in? (I'm asking, not challenging you.) I suspect that for every person who thinks Cathedral is period ("it must be -- it has castles!") there's someone who thinks that Korabushka is a period dance and someone who thinks "Witch of the Westmereland" is a period ballad. Though, that said, it probably is worse in fields where there are relatively few SCA experts -- if Joe Random SCAdian never runs into someone who knows about games but does run into someone who knows about dance, he'll have more of a chance to get the Korabushka clue than the chess clue, maybe.

[mikekn]

Yeah, mostly the modern game can be traced back to late period.

The website you quote mentions some varients of castling (like a two move version) in 1555 and 1561 and then goes on to say:
1600 Castling established as a single move; still regional variations.
1620 Castling; modern version of castling established in France.
1640 Castling; modern version of castling established in England.
(I should probably try and dig out what they used as a source at some point)

Aside from that, I do agree that there is some pretty bad scholarship out there (just look at Tablero de Jesus)

[herooftheage.livejournal.com]

Probably the last rule that the casual player is likely to ever care about is stalemate = draw, which is 19th century.

In general, the rules about draws have changed several times since period, with some endings (rook & bishop vs. rook) being extended at the end of the 20th century. I don't know if there have been additional changes since then.