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Mar. 23rd, 2008 09:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miko2This morning I got up and wrote an entry for my journal. When I went to post it, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
miertam had already taken his network down, so I had no net service. Here's the post:
Generally speaking I've been pretty good about spending money this weekend. That is, I've spent a lot of money on food, but I've limited my purchases otherwise. Well, to be honest, I didn't even spend a lot of money on food yesterday, since two other people picked up the tab the two times I went out to eat, and I had breakfast in the room (instant oatmeal, breakfast bar).
The first day of the con I bought a nice green renfair style shirt that I like quite a bit, and a brass necklace. Then on Friday I didn't buy anything more. Usually I buy several tee shirts but I'm avoiding doing that this time around. Saturday when the dealer's room was about to close, I finally spent some more money, on an updated version of "The Totally Renamed Spy Game", which used to be "Before I Kill You, Mr. Bond" by Cheapass Games. These days, they don't use either the game name (threatened lawsuit) or the company name (I heard a story of how they lost the copyright on the Cheapass Games name, but honestly for their more upscale versions of games they were well aware that the company name itself was preventing them from being sold in quite a few places.)
The game was not only better made (real playing cards) but expanded quite a bit, with new cards and artwork and some new rules. One of the new rules (or at least, one that we didn't play by previously) is that you play your lair cards face down as you build your lair. They are only turned over once a spy enters them.
This makes sense from a role play standpoint -- why would an evil villain reveal to the world what he's adding to his secret lair? It's a secret until a spy enters it and discovers what's there.
Also it makes sense from a gaming standpoint -- part of the idea of the game is for players to send spies into the lairs of other players in an attempt to blow the lair up, but when you knew exactly how powerful the lair was and exactly how powerful the spied in your own hand were, you always knew that a spy played from your own hand would succeed. When the lair cards are face down, you have no idea -- you might succeed, you might fail, but in either case, you will learn the true strength of your enemy's lair, so it's worth the attempt. And since the game is all about capturing spies in your lair, anything that might cause more spies to visit your lair and be captured is a good thing. It also adds a sense of mystery and strategy to the game -- you may feel threatened by a player that has three lair cards down, but you don't know if it's a 3 point lair (three 1 point lair cards) or a mighty 12 point lair (three 4 point cards). The way we used to play you'd totally ignore the measly 3-point lair even though three cards had been played, because you knew it still wasn't much of a threat.
However, one of the fun things about how we used to play was letting everyone know that our might lair with the Cavern of Woe was being upgraded with the mighty Moist Bar. I miss the part of the game where we had fun telling everything what our lair consisted of. Since your lair isn't revealed until a spy hits it, it's often being destroyed at the same time (in which case few want to brag about their just-destroyed lair) or the player is too busy dealing with a newly captured spy to talk much about the lair. So from a purely fun standpoint, I think the face-down lair cards rule takes some fun away from the game.
They did fix another problem with the game, however -- in the old game, lairs could grow so large that they couldn't be destroyed. Now, not only can you play teams of spies from your hand to destroy a large lair, but there are also "spy" cards which are actually bombs that automatically blow up a lair no matter how big it is. And the funt thing about those is that, if you're in the habit of playing spies from someone else's hand into your lair, you can blow up your own lair by accident.
Anyway we played two games last night and it went fairly well.
I woke up this morning and everyone was snoring except for me, and that's only because I wasn't asleep. I laid in bed for almost an hour without going back to sleep, then I decided to finally get up. The con is almost over. Luckily I took Monday off too, so I have some time to rest and recover from my vacation. ^_^
And to sum up the rest of Sunday: After transporting stuff to the car and checking outinaratalamasca and I were supposed to go to lunch with skyoxford. However, getting everything else taken care of took a long time and we were still trying to get everyone together when I was told skyoxford was out at the registration desk waiting. But in the end, due to extenuating circumstances, we never went to lunch with skyoxford Eventually we had lunch in the bar with dolphinchatter, Juli sans-e, and my ex roommate Tom.
We attended one of the last panels of the day, on the subject of netsex.inaratalamasca wanted to attend, and Tom, dolphinchatter and I tagged along even though we probably woudln't have otherwise. It turned out to be a pretty good panel actually, about the benefits and risks of meeting people online and not, as the title suggested, specifically about sex.
inaratalamasca bought very nice gifts for dolphinchatter, Juli, and for me. I don't think he needed to do that but it was very nice of him.
We ate a end-of-con meal at I-Hop. There was me, Adam, Sky, Keith, Juli, Gene, Mike, and eventually Tom, and then Julie (with an e) and Mike (Julie's Mike) showed up at the end. I drove Sky back to the con, then I droveinaratalamasca up to Uwajamaya/Kinokuniya where Tom met us and inaratalamasca was very amazed. He bought a few things for his kids, then I dropped him off at the airport and came home.
I'm afraid something is wrong with my car's gearbox or maybe clutch... it's becoming very hard to shift gears. I'll have to take it in tomorrow if I can, but I don't particularly want to spend a lot of money right now, especially right after the con....
miertam had already taken his network down, so I had no net service. Here's the post:Generally speaking I've been pretty good about spending money this weekend. That is, I've spent a lot of money on food, but I've limited my purchases otherwise. Well, to be honest, I didn't even spend a lot of money on food yesterday, since two other people picked up the tab the two times I went out to eat, and I had breakfast in the room (instant oatmeal, breakfast bar).
The first day of the con I bought a nice green renfair style shirt that I like quite a bit, and a brass necklace. Then on Friday I didn't buy anything more. Usually I buy several tee shirts but I'm avoiding doing that this time around. Saturday when the dealer's room was about to close, I finally spent some more money, on an updated version of "The Totally Renamed Spy Game", which used to be "Before I Kill You, Mr. Bond" by Cheapass Games. These days, they don't use either the game name (threatened lawsuit) or the company name (I heard a story of how they lost the copyright on the Cheapass Games name, but honestly for their more upscale versions of games they were well aware that the company name itself was preventing them from being sold in quite a few places.)
The game was not only better made (real playing cards) but expanded quite a bit, with new cards and artwork and some new rules. One of the new rules (or at least, one that we didn't play by previously) is that you play your lair cards face down as you build your lair. They are only turned over once a spy enters them.
This makes sense from a role play standpoint -- why would an evil villain reveal to the world what he's adding to his secret lair? It's a secret until a spy enters it and discovers what's there.
Also it makes sense from a gaming standpoint -- part of the idea of the game is for players to send spies into the lairs of other players in an attempt to blow the lair up, but when you knew exactly how powerful the lair was and exactly how powerful the spied in your own hand were, you always knew that a spy played from your own hand would succeed. When the lair cards are face down, you have no idea -- you might succeed, you might fail, but in either case, you will learn the true strength of your enemy's lair, so it's worth the attempt. And since the game is all about capturing spies in your lair, anything that might cause more spies to visit your lair and be captured is a good thing. It also adds a sense of mystery and strategy to the game -- you may feel threatened by a player that has three lair cards down, but you don't know if it's a 3 point lair (three 1 point lair cards) or a mighty 12 point lair (three 4 point cards). The way we used to play you'd totally ignore the measly 3-point lair even though three cards had been played, because you knew it still wasn't much of a threat.
However, one of the fun things about how we used to play was letting everyone know that our might lair with the Cavern of Woe was being upgraded with the mighty Moist Bar. I miss the part of the game where we had fun telling everything what our lair consisted of. Since your lair isn't revealed until a spy hits it, it's often being destroyed at the same time (in which case few want to brag about their just-destroyed lair) or the player is too busy dealing with a newly captured spy to talk much about the lair. So from a purely fun standpoint, I think the face-down lair cards rule takes some fun away from the game.
They did fix another problem with the game, however -- in the old game, lairs could grow so large that they couldn't be destroyed. Now, not only can you play teams of spies from your hand to destroy a large lair, but there are also "spy" cards which are actually bombs that automatically blow up a lair no matter how big it is. And the funt thing about those is that, if you're in the habit of playing spies from someone else's hand into your lair, you can blow up your own lair by accident.
Anyway we played two games last night and it went fairly well.
I woke up this morning and everyone was snoring except for me, and that's only because I wasn't asleep. I laid in bed for almost an hour without going back to sleep, then I decided to finally get up. The con is almost over. Luckily I took Monday off too, so I have some time to rest and recover from my vacation. ^_^
And to sum up the rest of Sunday: After transporting stuff to the car and checking out
inaratalamasca and I were supposed to go to lunch with skyoxford. However, getting everything else taken care of took a long time and we were still trying to get everyone together when I was told skyoxford was out at the registration desk waiting. But in the end, due to extenuating circumstances, we never went to lunch with skyoxford Eventually we had lunch in the bar with dolphinchatter, Juli sans-e, and my ex roommate Tom.We attended one of the last panels of the day, on the subject of netsex.
inaratalamasca wanted to attend, and Tom, dolphinchatter and I tagged along even though we probably woudln't have otherwise. It turned out to be a pretty good panel actually, about the benefits and risks of meeting people online and not, as the title suggested, specifically about sex.inaratalamasca bought very nice gifts for dolphinchatter, Juli, and for me. I don't think he needed to do that but it was very nice of him.We ate a end-of-con meal at I-Hop. There was me, Adam, Sky, Keith, Juli, Gene, Mike, and eventually Tom, and then Julie (with an e) and Mike (Julie's Mike) showed up at the end. I drove Sky back to the con, then I drove
inaratalamasca up to Uwajamaya/Kinokuniya where Tom met us and inaratalamasca was very amazed. He bought a few things for his kids, then I dropped him off at the airport and came home.I'm afraid something is wrong with my car's gearbox or maybe clutch... it's becoming very hard to shift gears. I'll have to take it in tomorrow if I can, but I don't particularly want to spend a lot of money right now, especially right after the con....
