Jul. 22nd, 2013 11:32 am
Consumer magic
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muckefuckGame Night was okay. The new guys who made it a bit more interesting last month weren't there which meant that the haunted house game I played with them was absent as well. It was good that I passed on the Cards Against Humanity pre-game; apparently my pal neglected to ask his roommate for permission to use his deck and when he showed up he was well pissed off.
In any case, I insisted on playing something geekier than Catchphrase, so we banished most of the attendees to the bedroom so we could have the coffee table for Munchkin Cthulhu. A cute game, but not without its flaws. Keeping track of other players' boni so you know when to intervene in their combats is a job of work, something that cries out for an app. There is an official app--one of the players had it loaded on his phone--but all it keeps track of is your own character's advancement (something the rest of us were able to do with a ten-sided die), plus give you a "boon".
The whole idea of someone paying a fee to gain an advantage in an off-line game didn't sit well with a couple of us. I can see how it must seem perfectly normal to someone raised on MMORPGs rather than tabletop games and how it's a predictable outgrowth of the kind of crazy secondary market for cards spawn by Magic the Gathering and its imitators (not to mention capitalism in general). But when it reaches the point where you can buy t-shirts which confer a bonus to play when destroyed during a game session the cynicism in the face of antiquated notions of good sportsmanship is too much to bear.
I came close to winning but got hosed on a technicality--my fault for not reading the rules ahead of time, but I just wanted to get playing. After that, we called everyone back in for an all-inclusive game of Catchphrase which went better than expected, although the huge differences in background and ability are still an issue. At one point I got The scarlet letter and said, "It's by Nathaniel Hawthorne. You read it in high school." One of my teammates got it in two (first guessing Seven gables) and from some of the reactions you would've thought we'd used witchcraft. Same as when I got Gone with the wind from the clue of "Four words, a book and a movie" and someone blowing.
In any case, I insisted on playing something geekier than Catchphrase, so we banished most of the attendees to the bedroom so we could have the coffee table for Munchkin Cthulhu. A cute game, but not without its flaws. Keeping track of other players' boni so you know when to intervene in their combats is a job of work, something that cries out for an app. There is an official app--one of the players had it loaded on his phone--but all it keeps track of is your own character's advancement (something the rest of us were able to do with a ten-sided die), plus give you a "boon".
The whole idea of someone paying a fee to gain an advantage in an off-line game didn't sit well with a couple of us. I can see how it must seem perfectly normal to someone raised on MMORPGs rather than tabletop games and how it's a predictable outgrowth of the kind of crazy secondary market for cards spawn by Magic the Gathering and its imitators (not to mention capitalism in general). But when it reaches the point where you can buy t-shirts which confer a bonus to play when destroyed during a game session the cynicism in the face of antiquated notions of good sportsmanship is too much to bear.
I came close to winning but got hosed on a technicality--my fault for not reading the rules ahead of time, but I just wanted to get playing. After that, we called everyone back in for an all-inclusive game of Catchphrase which went better than expected, although the huge differences in background and ability are still an issue. At one point I got The scarlet letter and said, "It's by Nathaniel Hawthorne. You read it in high school." One of my teammates got it in two (first guessing Seven gables) and from some of the reactions you would've thought we'd used witchcraft. Same as when I got Gone with the wind from the clue of "Four words, a book and a movie" and someone blowing.