Balderdash
Dec. 10th, 2007 02:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackI assume it goes without saying that I'm not very good at Balderdash :) However, I was wondering about the rules.
The basic idea (varied slightly in different incarnations) is that one player picks a random word (or film title, or acronym[1]), either by drawing the next card in the pile from the published game, or by flopping a dictionary open in the freestyle version.
She announces it, and then each other player invents a definition, handed to her on a bit of paper. Then she reads them all out, and each player guesses which is correct. You get one point for guessing the correct definition, and one point for each person who guesses yours.
This has the implicit assumption that no-one will know the definition already. Typically, if you know the right definition beforehand, you get N points (where N is 1 or larger), but don't participate in the rest of the round. (One set of rules says the rest of the round is cancelled if several players do.)[2]
The question is, what's the fairest way of doing it? Should players be rewarded for knowing? It's actually barely related to the real point of the game. Giving them a bonus and moving on seems most sensible.
Another option would be that you don't get anything extra; you make up a definition anyway, and just get one extra point for voting for the right one.
Another would be that your definition is entered, and everyone who votes for an equivalent answer to the real one gets a point, but you get a point for anyone who votes for yours instead of the real one.
The things to avoid are: it being an advantage to *not* know the answer, which really seems unfair, and putting too much judgement on the caller. After all, if she doesn't know wha
[1] You know what I mean.
[2] Did someone in fact get it right?
Words are ok, you generally know or not.
Complete the silly law is ok for the opposite reason. They're all made up, so (unless by an immense stroke of luck, you actually really know the answer), you don't get any points for saying something else it's illegal to do on Tuesdays in Cardiff -- after all, there's lots of things -- you have to guess what's on the card.
But we had difficulty with people. Do you have to guess whatever's on the card, however weird? The correct answer for "John Dee" was "invented the crystal ball" and for "Christian Huygens" was "invented the pendulum clock"[3]. Do you get points for saying "British court magician/philosopher" and "Dutch physicist and astronomer"[4]?
Those are possibly less specific, but a whole lot more accurate. They (when we went over to the internet) basically the first sentences of the wikipedia entries.
But if so, how is the caller supposed to know if they're accurate or not? I guessed that John Dee supposedly invented the crystal ball, but I wouldn't done if I didn't know who he was.
[3] Leaving aside the inaccuracy of that.
[4] I wasn't *sure* of either. I knew the scientists I was thinking of existed and had similar names, but I could equally well have been confused with "Jack Dee" and "Hayden Christensen"
The basic idea (varied slightly in different incarnations) is that one player picks a random word (or film title, or acronym[1]), either by drawing the next card in the pile from the published game, or by flopping a dictionary open in the freestyle version.
She announces it, and then each other player invents a definition, handed to her on a bit of paper. Then she reads them all out, and each player guesses which is correct. You get one point for guessing the correct definition, and one point for each person who guesses yours.
This has the implicit assumption that no-one will know the definition already. Typically, if you know the right definition beforehand, you get N points (where N is 1 or larger), but don't participate in the rest of the round. (One set of rules says the rest of the round is cancelled if several players do.)[2]
The question is, what's the fairest way of doing it? Should players be rewarded for knowing? It's actually barely related to the real point of the game. Giving them a bonus and moving on seems most sensible.
Another option would be that you don't get anything extra; you make up a definition anyway, and just get one extra point for voting for the right one.
Another would be that your definition is entered, and everyone who votes for an equivalent answer to the real one gets a point, but you get a point for anyone who votes for yours instead of the real one.
The things to avoid are: it being an advantage to *not* know the answer, which really seems unfair, and putting too much judgement on the caller. After all, if she doesn't know wha
[1] You know what I mean.
[2] Did someone in fact get it right?
Words are ok, you generally know or not.
Complete the silly law is ok for the opposite reason. They're all made up, so (unless by an immense stroke of luck, you actually really know the answer), you don't get any points for saying something else it's illegal to do on Tuesdays in Cardiff -- after all, there's lots of things -- you have to guess what's on the card.
But we had difficulty with people. Do you have to guess whatever's on the card, however weird? The correct answer for "John Dee" was "invented the crystal ball" and for "Christian Huygens" was "invented the pendulum clock"[3]. Do you get points for saying "British court magician/philosopher" and "Dutch physicist and astronomer"[4]?
Those are possibly less specific, but a whole lot more accurate. They (when we went over to the internet) basically the first sentences of the wikipedia entries.
But if so, how is the caller supposed to know if they're accurate or not? I guessed that John Dee supposedly invented the crystal ball, but I wouldn't done if I didn't know who he was.
[3] Leaving aside the inaccuracy of that.
[4] I wasn't *sure* of either. I knew the scientists I was thinking of existed and had similar names, but I could equally well have been confused with "Jack Dee" and "Hayden Christensen"
no subject
Date: 2007-12-10 03:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-10 03:49 pm (UTC)I do understand the merits of the other approach. If you assume that the wrong answers are reasonably rare, then simply ruling them all out saves an awful lot of time arguing, and saves having to come up with actual fair criteria, and saves arguing about whether an answer is close enough, at the expense of a few bad luck moments equally distributed.
But it severely annoys *me*. Perhaps because I tend to know less general knowledge anyway, but be certain about some things. If the rule is simply an expediency, that's one thing, but it seems to be part of the attitude that truth doesn't really matter, *an* answer is good enough, and someone who's spent several days researching the question and has a conclusive answer, doesn't matter. Which is just unfortunately one of the things that really offends me, out of proportion...
But I know where the opposition comes from, it means every answer is open to debate, and they don't want to have to judge whether a given answer *is* correct, any more than they want to refute the ontological argument at dinner parties[2]
From one evening, we found appropriate-but-unsatisfactory answers for:
* zugzwang
* Huygens
* Dee
* the entire stupid law category[1]
[1] which is a hoot to play with nonetheless, of course.
[2] OK, I kind of enjoy refuting the ontological argument. (We once had an argument about which was the fundamental flaw in it, when we realised that any argument with more than four fundamental flaws it probably didn't matter.) But I do object to social prosetylising, which is the metaphor I was making.