Games Evening

[jack]

I went to games evening. It was fun. I met several old friends I haven't seen for a while (particularly Neil, but also Tom and others) and met new nice people. Ian swears he's seen me there before, but I don't *think* I've ever been.

We played a pattern-matching game which I was awful at. Visualise, where you have a score of dice with pictures/glyphs on and have to form phrases from them. I started badly but ended ok, with even a couple of puns.

And Apples to Apples. Last time I was hopeless, but here I got the highest score or nearly highest score, partly by ruthless psychological tactics such as physics arguments, blatant flirtation, and reverse psychology.

I have become a loud person. I used to be painfully shy. I remember at a ?MO event spending literally minutes trying to make myself speak to someone I didn't know. Now I talk a lot. But it's overcompensating, too much sarcasm and innuendo, and not enough interest, and not enough talking *to* other people. Can I change *again*?

Magic: The Gathering. I spied on several people's magic game. I'm always intrigued by it, but I think I don't want to wate time now learning. But it's still funny. And there actually *is* a "wrath of god" card: when Cryponomicon proposed cards like "ex-USSR nuclear arsenal" and "Yahweh" I thought it was *joking*. OTOH MD *did* explode a nuke in a roleplaying campaign, to not much effect, though if we'd been a bit more secretive about it it might well have been a marvellous kamikaze run.

Comments

[mair_in_grenderich]

not enough talking *to* other people.

sure you don't mean listening?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Sort of. That could be good too. But what I think I meant was that of what I said more should be remarks directed to someone, either maybe to tell them something, or particularly to encourage them to talk, as opposed to making general remarks than are self contained.

[mdavison.livejournal.com]

Hey: I'll have you know that would have WORKED if a certian treasonous party member hadn't ratted me out to the enemy!

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I wondered if you were reading :) I thought I did make that clear. I can't even remember who said what now (sorry if it was me) but obviously we decided we'd rather live and take our chances.

[atreic.livejournal.com]

I went through exactly the same becoming loud, perhaps a few years earlier than you. But I'm not very good at self observation - I would guess that I stayed a loud person, so maybe that doesn't give you much hope :)

Magic doesn't take very long to learn to play at all. It's just that cambridge people get carried away with the twiddly bits - imagine if you saw someone trick shuffling a deck of cards by riff shuffling, making them fly in the air etc etc etc, it would be wrong to conclude you could never shuffle cards - the actual mechanics of randomising cards is quite easy. You'd just have to do it in a more boring less interesting way the first few times.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

"I went through exactly the same becoming loud, perhaps a few years earlier than you. But I'm not very good at self observation - I would guess that I stayed a loud person, so maybe that doesn't give you much hope :)"

Perhaps. Though, in my limited experience of talking to a group of people including you, you don't seem too loud, or loud to the exclusion of other people, which I worried I could become. But maybe everyone's just too harsh on themselves.

"It's just that cambridge people get carried away with the twiddly bits"

Mmm. Yes. I do know the basic rules. But if you're playing someone and every card is primarily a special effect you feel you should have some idea of what they are. A bit like moving from knowing what a knight is to knowing what a fork is, perhaps? Or I should just call them all sad geeks :)

PS. Modulo my bike working I will probably drop in to the castle this evening and then maybe go off to games later.