Subject: Re: MN: RE: Board Game

From: riffraff@n... (RiffRaff)
Date: Thu, 26 Nov 1998 01:46:25 -0500

>A good summary, there. We could really use something like that on the Web
>page. Or (whisper it) in the Ruleset itself. Many months ago I was
>blathering quietly about making the Ruleset (the 1.x and 2.x Rules, at
>least) into something that might feasibly packaged with a board game, so
>that new Players can actually read it from top to bottom and understand
>it easily. I fear this is quite a mammoth task, though, and probably
>not very suited to Nomicking - it'd just mean a huge, huge Multiple
>Proposal rewording virtually everything.

I'm interested in making a board game-playable version too, particularly
since I have a board... Big, antique-looking wooden lacquered board, with
brass fittings, and holes drilled for pegs... Although, I'd like to make a
much nicer one, more suited for this particular version of the game. Make
some nice, stackable wooden tokens, maybe some elegant wooden chips to
represent various Hats and objects... mmm.

--Riff

"I wouldn't be so judgemental if you weren't such a _sick freak_."
--"Goats" (www.goats.com)

---

From: Kevan Davis <kdavis@i...>
Date: Thu, 26 Nov 1998 12:07:44 +0000

RiffRaff said:-

>since I have a board...

As has come up before, we'd probably have to start pretty much from
scratch if we wanted to make a Ruleset that was decently playable in
real life, rather than through the medium of email. The game we're
playing here relies far too much on documented facts (lists of Actions
and costs, all the past Moves, etc) which would become far too much to
remember if we tried to sit down and play it face to face. Having each
Player muse through the Ruleset for ten minutes before making eir Play
is fine for email, but not for anything else.

I'm still, incidentally, working away at my Mornington Crescent card
game. It's diverged into two possible variants - one is a rather boring
"strategy card game" where you have Station, Action and Rule cards, the
first being piled in your Station Stack every time you make a move,
some Stations giving you Tokens, the second costing Tokens and having a
one-off effect, the third costing Tokens and having a permanent effect
on play until removed. Fairly interesting, a bit fiddly, but probably
the most feasible way of playing strategic Mornington Crescent in real
life. I've written a Javascript deck-shuffler to help me playtest it -
I'll maybe upload it to my Web page some time.

My other idea, though, along completely different lines, is to make a
game rather more like "Bartok". For those not in the know, Bartok is
basically a simplified Uno (or Crazy Eights, or whatever you might call
it), with the exception that the winner of each round gets to make up a
new Rule which remains in effect for the rest of the evening.

All good stuff, really, and perhaps more what Mornington Crescent
should be about. I've sketchy plans for the game to have forty Station
cards, ten on each of four Lines - you can play a Station on top of
another Station if it shares a Line, or if it has a word in common, in
its name (eg. "Green Park" on "Parsons Green"). There are also a few
Action cards ("Shunt" to maybe reverse play or force the next player to
pick up cards, "Block" to force the next person to skip eir go, "Wild"
to change to a Line of your choice, etc.), and - critically - four
copies of Mornington Crescent, the aim being to play said card as the
last card in your hand. The image of someone leaning back in their
chair, tossing the MC card onto the table and crying "Mornington
Crescent!" is rather a pleasing one.

I've still got to sit down and work it out so that each Line is fairly
balanced, though, really - a fair smattering of Stations with helpful
words in them, a few that link to a balanced number of other Lines,
and one or two that only exist on that Line. Hmm.

I'll shut up now, anyway.

Kevan

--
kdavis@i... - http://www.innotts.co.uk/~elusive/kevan - UIN: 5998366
"Red-green colour blindness can be cheaply and easily
cured using a pair of cardboard 3D-glasses."
-- Dave's Web of Lies (http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~hancockd/lies.htm)