Joshua Kronengold

You know, we could fix this -- although admittedly, there's usually something else to do (I did a lot more gaming than usual at Concertino, at least partially because I was still nursing a cough and didn't want the temptation to sing too much).

But for a non-gamer's translation:

I went to Dexcon. On the way, I played with my phone a lot and didn't take a very straight path.

Once I got there, I ate food, and played a game involving taking chips and cards, then played a game involving taking cards where I hoped to eventually get $100 to spend at-con as a prize.

On Thursday, I spent the morning sleeping, then disgruntled, and then played a word game that pretended to be a money and stock game. Then I had more food, of the sort served in Afganistan, but usually called "persian".

That evening I played a game involving putting counters onto a board covered in cards listing actions and trying to guess what actions your opponents value most so you can make sure they don't get the ones you want first (this is called a "worker placement" game and has been the hottest design space since the first popular worker placement game, Caylus). In this case, we pretended that the workers were dwarves, which amused everyone and distracted me due to a popular song and accociated video.

On Friday, I played a game involving picking buildings out of a hand and playing them onto your board based on a die roll, then activating the buildings next to the one you just placed, and a silly unreleased two player wargame where we pretended we were ghost pirates fighting over ghost ships, where it's therefore very easy to get more crew or pieces of ships.

After lunch, I played a video game where we controlled different characters fighting with weapons. I played the character I usually play in that game--a ninja with two daggers, and due to the format and lack of practice, lost, despite using an arcade-style controller (which I always do).

I then more or less ignored the con and instead hung out, chatted, and played games with old gaming friends; Bob, Eugene (the same Eugene who volunteers for NYRSF), and Bob's13 year old daughter, who has recently gotten old and mature enough that we can hold coherent and intelligent conversations (a new development for me). We played a game where you make up products and people gamble on the one they liked best (or the person whose pitch they like best) and another game that's all about memory and educated guesses as you pretend to work in a pizza shop.

On Saturday, I'd promised to help a friend out with a game people played in costume pretending to be characters from the Night Vale radio show. So I spent the morning preparing for it (and sleeping), and the afternoon helping her run the game, with its required 12 players. The players saw the flaws in the game, but really liked it anyway, so it was a win, and I'll want to suggest fixes for the places where there are flaws (I have run many "walking around in costume" games, so I am a good person to suggest fixes for these things). In the evening, I spent most of the time playing the card game where there was a strings-attached $100 at stake, and didn't win (although one of my best friends did; I technically didn't help him, although in fact I accidentally did and he accidentally helped me). While I was waiting for the final round of not winning a hundred dollars, I taught some people a complicated, but very good rummy-like game where the correct order of cards is related to their relative placement in Germany, and scoring is all about playing long melds, ones whose cards don't overlap, and ones that eventually contain all of certain suits or every suit (or ideally, both). The game often gets compared to Ticket to Ride, which is also a network-focused rummy-like game -- but the games are really very different. Ticket is all about score optimization and avoiding getting cut off by other players -- by contrast, Thurn & Taxis has no method to cut off other players, but is instead all about route optimization, risk management, avoiding being forced to discard a route, and out-racing other players.

On sunday, I played a story-game (also a role-playing game) played in a surreal world, parts of which we made up as we went. The characters all had things that made them special and things they needed, and by the end of the game, they'd all more or less received the things they needed). Unlike a traditional RPG, while one player (the facilitator) would take on GM duties as needed and guided us through character creation and rules, when you wanted there to be doubt in what happened, you would flip a card that would say one of "Yes, and", "Yes, but", "Yes, but only if", "No, but", or "No, and" and hand it, sight unseen to another player, who would interpret the card relative to the current challenge.

Then we went home.