Weird Fox
United States
Finger Lakes
United States
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I'm posting this as a Variant and not a Session report because it doesn't contain many play-by-play details of a particular session, even though it grew out of a single session. Also because I GeekMod and I'm a stickler about this stuff, so practice what you preach, etc. But please note that I am not actually advocating that this be a formally accepted or acceptable Adult Variant of Yinsh. This is a story about children.
I hosted my nephews for a few days (ages 9 and 6: I tend to write about them a lot because they're neat kids and they also represent some of my more enthusiastic gaming opponents) so that we could take them to a concert and give their parents a little Alone Time. They LOVE some of the games in the Gipf series (Yinsh and Zertz are the current favorites and get the most requests), and they particularly love saying the names of all the games, which they frequently get wrong and find funnier than the names themselves. Blertz. Vinsh. Zarf.
So after I finished playing them in Yinsh this last time (they were on the same team), they decided to play each other while I watched. After playing a couple games by the rules where the 9 year old won each time, they sat and discussed how they would alter the game, just for fun. They came up with something that they called "Overtime."
Here's how it works: once you remove three rings from the board, the game does not end. You keep going until you remove a fourth and fifth ring, etc. Once you've removed all of your rings, you place them back on the board, only this time you are not placing them on an empty board; you get to place them based on the board/piece configuration of the game, since it's likely that your opponent still has rings out on the board.
One thing you'll notice right away is that they turned the game into an activity, because the game is absolutely impossible to win by their custom rules. There's no end game state. You never finish, because the game resets for you every time the rings get removed. Then your opponent resets when he removes his last ring. Lather, rinse, repeat. The game also ceased to have much defensive to it, as the goal was no longer to win the game and prevent your opponent from winning, but simply to cycle through your rings.
I've never been great with kids, but I got a lot better once I understood the concept of Parallel Play (i.e., with young enough children, you don't have to play *with* them for the engagement to be meaningful for them, you just have to play *near* them). There are times when gaming with a 9 and 6 year old gets a bit challenging because their reading and math abilities differ so greatly.
In the case of this game, though, it was quite nice to see them mutually agree on something that worked, something that showed a little creativity, and something that meant they could play together even after it became obvious that the 6 year old could not beat the 9 year old when playing by the rules. So rather than quit, they changed the game and added a bit of Parallel Play to it. They played this way for 45 minutes (!) and I admit to having more than a little Geeky Uncle-y pride.
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Jonathan Harrison
United States
Fisher
Illinois
South Quarter Independent Games
Firp! ding! blast!
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rarevos wrote: I've never been great with kids, but I got a lot better once I understood the concept of Parallel Play (i.e., with young enough children, you don't have to play *with* them for the engagement to be meaningful for them, you just have to play *near* them).
Never understood how true this was until I realized a couple months ago that my 20-month-old didn't (always) so much want to play with me as he wanted me to be playing on the floor when he was playing on the floor. As long as I'm building a castle out of blocks, he's supremely even if he's running around collecting his toy animals. Not that he doesn't want to play with me—but he doesn't necessarily. He just wants his playing to not always be by himself.
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Weird Fox
United States
Finger Lakes
United States
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HuginnGreiling wrote: rarevos wrote: I've never been great with kids, but I got a lot better once I understood the concept of Parallel Play (i.e., with young enough children, you don't have to play *with* them for the engagement to be meaningful for them, you just have to play *near* them). Never understood how true this was until I realized a couple months ago that my 20-month-old didn't (always) so much want to play with me as he wanted me to be playing on the floor when he was playing on the floor. As long as I'm building a castle out of blocks, he's supremely even if he's running around collecting his toy animals. Not that he doesn't want to play with me—but he doesn't necessarily. He just wants his playing to not always be by himself.
Exactly. When my neighbor's kid hands me a racecar, he's not asking me to race against his racecar. He's asking me to sit near him as he makes car noises, and we can each run our racecars over totally different terrain, even if he runs his on my legs, and I run mine on the shoulders and arms of whoever I'm sitting next to on the couch.
I don't know exactly when kids start to get into direct play with one another, but there are remnants of the parallel play preference in the 6 year old, because sometimes we'll play Botswana, & instead of actually playing, he'll just make a private zoo by himself and pit the animals against one another. But he still says "Mom, we played Botswana!" when he gives a report later on.
This has really has helped me enjoy my time with kids a lot more. This might be obvious and intuitive to some people, but man, for me it was not.
J
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Jonathan Harrison
United States
Fisher
Illinois
South Quarter Independent Games
Firp! ding! blast!
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rarevos wrote: HuginnGreiling wrote: rarevos wrote: I've never been great with kids, but I got a lot better once I understood the concept of Parallel Play (i.e., with young enough children, you don't have to play *with* them for the engagement to be meaningful for them, you just have to play *near* them). Never understood how true this was until I realized a couple months ago that my 20-month-old didn't (always) so much want to play with me as he wanted me to be playing on the floor when he was playing on the floor. As long as I'm building a castle out of blocks, he's supremely even if he's running around collecting his toy animals. Not that he doesn't want to play with me—but he doesn't necessarily. He just wants his playing to not always be by himself. Exactly. When my neighbor's kid hands me a racecar, he's not asking me to race against his racecar. He's asking me to sit near him as he makes car noises, and we can each run our racecars over totally different terrain, even if he runs his on my legs, and I run mine on the shoulders and arms of whoever I'm sitting next to on the couch. I don't know exactly when kids start to get into direct play with one another, but there are remnants of the parallel play preference in the 6 year old, because sometimes we'll play Botswana, & instead of actually playing, he'll just make a private zoo by himself and pit the animals against one another. But he still says "Mom, we played Botswana!" when he gives a report later on. This has really has helped me enjoy my time with kids a lot more. This might be obvious and intuitive to some people, but man, for me it was not. J
Huh-uh. Not for me, either. My oldest (aforementioned) gets annoyed when I try to race cars against him, or fly airplanes with him. The nearest he'll get is stacking people all over a castle after I build it. But he'd rather I simply add to the ambiance. Wish somebody had told me sooner. It was frustrating for me for a long time until I realized. I knew he wanted to play, but as far as I could tell, I could never figure out what he wanted to play—just that he wanted to play. As soon as I switched to what he was doing, he'd switch to something else. Frazzled Daddy, irritated child.
Now, I can build castles to my heart's content, my own version of Heroscape terrain building, while he plays things I'd probably (shame on me, but it's true) get impatient playing.
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David Bush
United States
Lexington
Virginia
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Uh, what happens when the token supply runs out? You're supposed to add a new token to the board with each move. This is important! I'm getting all wound up here.
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Alvin C
Australia
Adelaide
South Australia
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twixter wrote: Uh, what happens when the token supply runs out? You're supposed to add a new token to the board with each move. This is important! I'm getting all wound up here.
Seems unlikely since a row of 5 removes those pieces from the board. You may now relax! 
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David Bush
United States
Lexington
Virginia
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Tyndal wrote: twixter wrote: Uh, what happens when the token supply runs out? You're supposed to add a new token to the board with each move. This is important! I'm getting all wound up here. Seems unlikely since a row of 5 removes those pieces from the board. You may now relax! :)
If both players go long enough without forming a row of 5, the 51 tokens will run out. This contingency is explicitly mentioned in the rules. The player with more rings removed wins. But what happens in this variant?
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Russ Williams
Poland
Wrocław
Dolny Śląsk
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They keep playing - they're kids! They don't need no stinkin' rules!
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Weird Fox
United States
Finger Lakes
United States
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twixter wrote: Tyndal wrote: twixter wrote: Uh, what happens when the token supply runs out? You're supposed to add a new token to the board with each move. This is important! I'm getting all wound up here. Seems unlikely since a row of 5 removes those pieces from the board. You may now relax! If both players go long enough without forming a row of 5, the 51 tokens will run out. This contingency is explicitly mentioned in the rules. The player with more rings removed wins. But what happens in this variant?
Never came up, so no rule was created to address it.
J
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The Soot Sprite
Australia
Brisbane
Queensland
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rarevos wrote: They frequently get wrong and find funnier than the names themselves. Blertz. Vinsh. Zarf.
These sound like characters from a Terry Pratchett novel.
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