Storm watch

[altivo]

We've got it. Strong gusty winds all afternoon, with temperatures hovering around 78F, but skies just hazy. Now we have the ominous calm with the same hazy skies. And the tornado watch that covered Wisconsin this afternoon has been extended down to us, though the radar looks pretty clear. Since we'll shut down the computers and network if thunderstorms materialize, I'll post this now.

Mention by a friend of the special "anniversary edition" of the Diplomacy board game caused me to wonder what had happened to my set. I had the standard cheap plastic and cardboard setup from the 1980s, plus the computer version for the TRS-80 model III. At one time I played the game over Compuserve and that's when these were acquired. Friends played it a lot when I was an undergraduate, but they were so proficient and quick that I gave up on trying to play with them.

Found both computer and paper editions of the game out in the barn under a heavy layer of dust, but they are intact and cleaned up well. The computer diskette was AWOL (probably in one of several boxes of old floppies in the garage) but I found both the disk image and a TRS-80 emulator for Linux on the web. Got it running after some wheel-spinning and was reminded how crappy the maps were on a Model III display. Went back looking again and sure enough, the 1984 MS-DOS version is also online. Pretty much the same as the TRS-80 edition, but the DOS version has rather more detailed color maps. The resolution is only 640x480 but it beats the TRS-80's 128x48! And it runs in DOSBox without issues. The computer edition is a good move adjudicator and can also play (rather robotically of course) any countries for whom a real player is not available.

Though I've never cared for video games, I used to enjoy board games and card games at one time. Diplomacy takes many hours to complete, and requires seven players for a full game, so opportunities are few and far between.

Comments

[hrrunka]

Way back I didn't much enjoy board games, or at least not the ones much more complicated than Cluedo. As kids we played Monopoly, but I don't think I've ever seen a game of that concluded. Diplomacy and Risk were others I could never get in to, and the time they took to play had at least something to do with that. However, recently (OK, a few years ago) I've started gaming evenings with friends nearby, and we play a whole bunch of different games. Just occasionally one lasts two evenings, but we don't play those often. Most of them come to a definite conclusion inside an hour or two, and with some we get two games into an evening.

[altivo]

I think you have mentioned Settlers of Catan several times. How many players? How long does it run?

I have a couple of games based on literary works. One is an old Avalon Hill version of The Adventures of Robin Hood, but it's so complex that I've never even tried to get people to play it. Another is based on the Lord of the Rings. We've tried that one a couple of times, but again, the rules are so messy that it's hardly worth trying. This is probably why I found D&D unappealing too.

There's a board game from the 60s here called Regatta that used to be more to my liking. It's a yacht race where you set out a course on a map, and each player can choose a strategy. Requires some knowledge of sailing, but odds are rigorously even and the only chance element is wind direction and speed, which changes at intervals. On each turn you choose which point of sailing you will use, and move in that direction by the distance that the wind would allow. Changing direction costs some headway, as in real life, and if you drop sail you drift. The difficulty with that one is finding players who know a bit of sailing. ;p

[hrrunka]

I've only played Settlers a couple of times, but it was done in an evening, so I'd say less than two hours per game. There's a definite end point.

One game we play variants of quite often is Carcassonne. It's a tile-placement game, so duration is limited by the number of tiles in the bag, and again it fits an evening, even with some of the more complicated extensions available. The rules of both aren't that complicated, though it probably helps to play a game first with someone who's familiar with the rules.

They both work best with three or four players, I think, though there's at least one Carcassonne variant (one I've never played) designed for exactly two players.

[altivo]

Carcassonne I've seen and actually have the base kit on my Amazon wish list. That one has stuck in my mind for an odd reason.

An artist friend of many years, now deceased alas, had a pair of watercolors in his last show that I saw. They depicted the walls at Carcassonne in the dusk, with silhouetted figures along the battlements. I wanted them, but held back at the time because I knew he could probably sell them for full price and would have offered me a discount. The images have haunted me for nearly 15 years. Consequently, every time I hear the name those paintings come to mind again. Fortunately, I have two other watercolors that he did, but I will forever regret that I didn't buy those.

[hrrunka]

...so, by way of research, it being my evening to choose, we played Settlers this evening. It'd been quite a while, so we all made basic mistakes. I'd forgotten how much effect the random element can have. There's a two-dice roll at the beginning of each player's turn, and that can have quite dramatic effects, particularly later in the game. The game ran a bit over 90 minutes with three players.

[altivo]

Thanks for the independent research. I hope you enjoyed the game. :)

When my enormous (not) tax return comes, I'll probably order both Catan and Carcassonne for further examination. I've meant to do that for some time now.