Subject: MN: Kevan blathering about card games again

From: "Kevan Davis" <kevan@z...>
Date: Sat, 20 Mar 1999 13:29:41 -0000

>This project would help enormously with my attempt to make a physical board
>version... :)

As has come up a few times before, Mornington Nomic probably wouldn't lend
itself terribly well to a physical board game - with moves often taking ten
or twenty minutes to fully consider, and with a fair amount of miscellaneous
statistical data requiring maintenance (including fiddly things such as Game
Time and Charge), I wouldn't relish the idea of playing it over a table.

It would be interesting to try and make a playable "real life" version of
the game, though; as I've mumbled in the past (and sorry to dredge this up
again if I've mentioned it more times than I remember doing), I've tried
making two card games of it - one was a rather arcane strategy one with a
variety of Station, Action and Rule cards (play one Station per Turn,
possibly netting Tokens which you can use to play Action cards, or to put
Rule cards into play), the other a simple Uno/Bartok variant (play a Station
that shares a Line or word-in-name with the previous card).

Curiously, I approached the London Transport Museum with the latter idea a
few weeks ago(explaining it with careful vagueness), and they turned it
down, saying that they were already considering a "similar" game. Be
interesting to see what that turns out to be, if anything. I'm musing about
approaching the BBC instead, making the game far more of a Mornington
Crescent affair than a mere Tube-themed Bartok, but doubt it'd be
particularly viable.

I'd be more interested in creating a complicated strategy game, though, I
think - nothing commercial, just something to amuse ourselves with at
pilgrimages, to play with friends, possibly even to play online if the game
lends itself well enough. With a simple Web-based repository of "official"
cards (new ones being added every so often, old ones being errata'd or
removed), Players could just download and print off anything they needed.
Buy yourself a box of plastic card sleeves and some coloured cardboard (or
spare other-card-game cards), and you can put together a decent enough
little deck.

A card game is the way to go, I've quite firmly decided, anyway - I think
it's the only feasible way to get the sheer breadth of rules to the game
(which is a very critical element of the game's style - "Aha! I respond to
your Double-Strile with a Beckmann's Token Drain!"), without actually having
to include a hundred-page rulebook; instead of having to consider every
possible Action in the Action List, you just look at the few cards in your
hand. By having a huge database of cards and permitting players to put
together their own decks, an incredibly wide and interesting range of
playing styles become available ("My Morden Darkness deck could beat your
Pigeon Baguette one hands down, you know."); far more than a simple board
game could ever provide.

Still not sure if there should be a board involved, though. Although it'd be
extremely pleasing to play on one, it does have the rather nasty drawback of
players having to carry a damn great board about with them all the time. A
laminated map poster would be absolutely gorgeous, no doubt, but I think I'd
sacrifice it for the ability to just play over a table with two decks of
cards and loose change or a bit of paper to keep track of Tokens and things.

Hmm. Hmm. I'll shut up for the moment. If anyone else is at all interested
in working on something like this, it might be worth setting up a mailing
list for it. Give a nod.

Kevan

--
kevan@d...
http://members.xoom.com/asabove

------------------------------------------------------------------------
eGroup home: http://www.eGroups.com/list/l-nomic-d
Free Web-based e-mail groups by eGroups.com