I disagree. If you even think of Scrabble as a "tile laying game" as opposed to a "word game" then you're a gamer. It's the non-gamers that continue to see this as a word game.
Yeah, I like scrapple with my eggs - too bad that's very hard to find in California.
I know a number of competitive Scrabble players. Would I consider them gamers? Yes, I would consider some of them gamers. Narrowly focused ones, yes - but gamers nonetheless.
Between two players with equivalent vocabularies, the tile-laying aspect of Scrabble is definitely the difference in the long run. Even the 'recreational' club/tournament player has memorized all the two letter words. The difference in the number of words known by a championship caliber (rating 1900+) and a second tier player (rating in the 1600s) isn't all that great. It's how they play the board, maximizing their chances while not taking unnecessary risks, that puts them among the best.
Scrabble is played by a lot of non-english speaking (at least native) people, and to them I'd imagine it's a tile-playing game with a set of secret scoring conditions that need to be memorized.
My mom's bridge group once played four hands before realizing they were missing all four aces from the deck. Talk about social gaming...
They didn't notice that there were only 12 tricks in the FIRST hand?
This reminds me of my favorite Poirot story. The detective realizes the bridge players were lying because they had supposedly been playing when the murder occurred, but he noticed that the deck was missing a card. Your anecdote seems to indicate that Agatha Cristie was wrong!!!
I only say "it's just a game" when I'm losing. And don't want to cry in front of the other guys....
When I'm winning it's a total validation of my superior skills and establishes me as the alpha male with first access to all the women and the best food.
When I'm winning it's a total validation of my superior skills and establishes me as the alpha male with first access to all the women and the best food.
Close, but not quite. You can't help your feelings. Bad behavior is what distinguishes a poor sport.
You can help your feelings,though. Indeed, this is what cognitive therapy is based on. If your feelings are a result of a distortion due to a skewed or unhealty perspective, you can change them through changing your cognition to better reflect a healthy reality.
I would say that lingering bad feelings that are seriously impacting your ability to interact in a healthy way with others as a result of boardgames is an issue to be explored. It would be quite the perceptual distortion to place such a high value on the outcome of a boardgame that "real-life" was being effected in a negative way.
Feelings can be changed by changing your outlook. This is actually an important aspect of adapting to reality. Feelings can certainly be mitigated or aggravated by cognition. (One of the ways to quell panic attacks, for example, is to change the way you think about them.)
Plus, one only has to think of rather mundane examples to see that feelings can be helped. If you felt betrayed, for example, because your friend had to cancel a game night due to a death in the family, this is something that absolutley should be helped. There are issues there that are unhealthy. "I can't help feeling you screwed me over by going to the funeral," would ring hollow.
Same for more banal feelings as a result of a game. If you have a healthy view of leisure activity, momentary "bad feelings" may come and go in context, but nothing will remain once the box is closed. If they did cause bad behavior, it might mean more than simply being a "bad sport." It's probably bad cognition that you aren't paying attention to.
I believe I have the opposite problem with this game. Calculating scores is easy...figuring out how to play the damn game well is the problem. For some reason, every time I play this damn game, I lose. Badly. Very, very badly.
Two player games of titan pretty frequently end in the first 45 minutes if you have two aggressive players. Of course if you have two very conservative players, a 2 player game can go 3-4 hours.
...you've finally wrapped your head around the concept that you don't have to travel down a fixed track, but still get boggled by the idea that you can move without rolling a die first.
So, er, what's the difference between Risk and A&A?
Go read the rule book, I'll wait.
I actually know both, still pretty much the same thing to me. A non-gamer walking in, looking at the A&A board on the table, and saying, "oh, so this is like Risk" really couldn't get any closer.
This happened to me this weekend while camping. I was teaching two teenage girls how to play Jambo, and their mother commented, "so this is kind of like Monopoly?"
I was taken aback because I thought this sort of thing only happened to other people.
Hasn't happened yet, but once when I was being picked to get a rental car, the driver asked what I was doing in town. I said was visiting my brother & going to a game convention. He asked if I played games like Settlers of Catan. That question surprised me.
Well, I often say that I play games "like Settlers of Catan" (or Ticket to Ride) because it's what's most likely to give people the correct idea. And I play and love both SoC and TtR.
No fair! They're using brains against us! We removed our brains to make room for guns and explosives!
My friend once built a climate controlled shed to house his game collection (needed the room inside for an ailing relative). We used to joke that he had a separate house for his games.
Gah! I used to work in a toy shop that had a section devoted to collectible toy soldiers - you know, the stuff around 54mm or so from companies like W.Britains, King & Country etc. - and kids would come in, see the display cases and say, "It's like Warhammer but, like, historical." Ugh. It was enough to make me ponder post-birth abortions.
Gah! I used to work in a toy shop that had a section devoted to collectible toy soldiers - you know, the stuff around 54mm or so from companies like W.Britains, King & Country etc. - and kids would come in, see the display cases and say, "It's like Warhammer but, like, historical." Ugh. It was enough to make me ponder post-birth abortions.
The rest of us ponder it as well. Except, of course, we are pondering it about YOU.
So if you've spent a majority of your time playing a single game (that's NOT monopoly), then you're not a real gamer? Does your logic apply to ALL games, or do you just have a problem with Dominion?
What if you've spent more time playing Twilight Imperium than any other game in 2009? Or Agricola?
So if you've spent a majority of your time playing a single game (that's NOT monopoly), then you're not a real gamer? Does your logic apply to ALL games, or do you just have a problem with Dominion?
What if you've spent more time playing Twilight Imperium than any other game in 2009? Or Agricola?
I think what he meant is that because Dominion doesn't take very long to play then you wouldn't have racked up much time playing games and you are not a gamer.
Yes, that's what I took it to mean. Dominion takes what? 20 mins a game or so? Heck, unless I'm playing Speed Pandemic on BSW, 20 mins is about when I've finished setting up and we're entering round 1.
So if you think it's just a Carpenters song, that makes you a sad individual in two ways.
I never owned any Carpenters albums, but I'm sure I heard everything they recorded and I don't remember the Carpenters doing TtR. I heard a lot of covers of this song (not as many as Hey Jude), but I don't quite place the Carpenters. Was theirs a particularly well known cover, or is it known only to Carpenters fans?
So if you think it's just a Carpenters song, that makes you a sad individual in two ways.
I never owned any Carpenters albums, but I'm sure I heard everything they recorded and I don't remember the Carpenters doing TtR. I heard a lot of covers of this song (not as many as Hey Jude), but I don't quite place the Carpenters. Was theirs a particularly well known cover, or is it known only to Carpenters fans?
It was the title track to the album by the same name.
You Just Assume Any Boardgame Named "Civilization" Must Have Been Based Upon Sid Meier's PC Game by the Same Name (When In Fact His Computer Game Was Actually Based Upon The Boardgame That Came Before It.)
Actually I believe Sid Meier has stated that he never played the AH game. However, I bought Civ II because I thought it was based on the boardgame, which I had been given as a Christmas present as a kid (though no one except my mother wanted to play it with me, so I don't think I've ever experienced the game as it was meant to be played).
Actually I believe Sid Meier has stated that he never played the AH game.
True that he stated that. But certain witness has said that he saw the very same boardgame on the great master's shelf... Go figure...
He may have had games on his shelf he had never played. Sid Sackson did. Of course, if Meier had the game, read the rules, studied it intently, then said he never played it, that would be truthful but certainly not honest.
I am not saying Meier stole from the earlier boardgame, in fact he probably didn't. If you don't know much history, it may seem that Meier took a lot of advancement names from the boardgame, but most of those (especially neolithic ones such as pottery, agriculture, and ceremonial burial) are just standard names of civilization advancements.
Don't know where you guys get your info but there has never been any real question as to this fact. Pretty much every online account states it as fact too as have some who worked for Avalon Hill. I know there were some interviews as well. Perhaps overtime he got annoyed at that fact and was less humble about himself not really inventing it from scratch. But early interviews etc. had him saying otherwise. Google it yourself but there are dozens of sources. Here is just the first hit I found..
You Don't Understand Why Memoir '44 is NOT Considered a Wargame or You Otherwise Don't Understand the Difference Between a Wargame and a Strategy Board Game with A War-Theme Pasted On.
...As A Fan Of The Show You Buy A Copy of "Battlestar Galactica The Board Game" At Your Local Bookstore And Are Surprised To NOT Find All The Rules To The Game Printed On The Inside Of The Box Cover.
I consider myself a pretty serious gamer and I think $30 is a lot for a boardgame. I try to get all my games at thrift stores or on sale. I don't remember ever paying more than $30 for a boardgame and unless I hit the lottery I probably never will. Expensive games are what Christmas is for.
Its SO nice to see that rather than encouraging these gamers who play these kind of games we would rather point them out as 'non gamers'. "What? You havent heard of Reiner Knizia? What an idiot, your no gamer."
If people are enjoying it and having fun then so be it, they are no less gamers than we. I would certainly not tell my Grandmother she is no gamer because she does a weekly Scrabble game with her friends.
Too often people forget if you are having fun and enjoying your time then thats the point, if you as a person dont like these particular games thats great and fine dont play them, but those who do arent below us in some psuedo apartheid way.
Over all a cheap ploy to get thumbs based on a popular movement of elitism amongst gamers. "My games are games, your games are not games because we say so and they are not popular amongst us."
My definition of 'non-gamer': Someone who makes fun of other people who play games as a hobby.
Sadly, this describes my entire extended family. *sigh*
That is sad. To make fun of anyone is a sign of pretty severe insecurity. I wonder what's eating them?
Personally, I wouldn't deal with such people -- family or not -- with the exception of superficial civility, but nothing more than that. They don't deserve your friendship, which has value -- more than likely.
Its SO nice to see that rather than encouraging these gamers who play these kind of games we would rather point them out as 'non gamers'. "What? You havent heard of Reiner Knizia? What an idiot, your no gamer."
If people are enjoying it and having fun then so be it, they are no less gamers than we. I would certainly not tell my Grandmother she is no gamer because she does a weekly Scrabble game with her friends.
Too often people forget if you are having fun and enjoying your time then thats the point, if you as a person dont like these particular games thats great and fine dont play them, but those who do arent below us in some psuedo apartheid way.
Over all a cheap ploy to get thumbs based on a popular movement of elitism amongst gamers. "My games are games, your games are not games because we say so and they are not popular amongst us."
Very true. I could be wrong, but we were ALL non-gamers at one time.
... a popular movement of elitism amongst gamers. "My games are games, your games are not games because we say so...."
In this context, I would like Luftwaffe to explain his titular statement: "Real gamers play with the original Dud cards." Or, did I miss intended irony?
... a popular movement of elitism amongst gamers. "My games are games, your games are not games because we say so...."
In this context, I would like Luftwaffe to explain his titular statement: "Real gamers play with the original Dud cards." Or, did I miss intended irony?
You did...its about 3 miles back from where you came, on the left not right.
A better selection may have been something like...oh...
"What? You havent heard of Reiner Knizia? What an idiot, your no gamer." 
