So, we spent the afternoon with friends playing games. Mainly, Scrabble and Parcheesi.
I did not win the Scrabble game. Once again, I came in last. However, my initial draw of letters spelled the word ‘bruised’. I had a place to play it except the wife played in the space I would have used, making it impossible to use the word. It would have been on a Double Word Score square too. Such is the game.
This was our first time playing Parcheesi. It reminds me of Sorry, but a little more complex. You have four pawns that start in a home space. They an leave this space if you roll a five on one die or numbers that add up to five on two dice. Leaving home puts you on the track that goes around the board, eventually leading to the area in the middle of the board which is your goal. The first person to get all four pawns in the center area wins.
If you land in the same space as another player, the other player must move their pawn back to their home space. Then the player who caused the return home gets to move one of their pawn ahead 20 spaces on the track. The wife did this to me twice in one turn. She landed in my space and sent my pawn ack home. Then she moved another one of her pawns forward twenty spaces, landing on a space where another one of my pawns resided, sending it back home. Then she moved her pawn forward twenty spaces.
There are ‘safe’ spaces that prevent your pawn being sent home if another player lands in the same space. Also, if you have two of your pawns in the same space, or your pawn and someone else’s on a safe space, that creates a barrier. Other players cannot move their paws forward past your barrier, so if another player has several of their pawns coming around the track behind you, you can make a barrier and stop them in their tracks. I did this to a friend of mine who was being a smart-ass and kept her from moving forward for several turns util I ended up having to move one of my pawns and breaking the barrier.
In all, I enjoyed playing Parcheesi and wouldn’t mind playing it again. The wife was kinda ‘meh’ about it.
We were playing in a local game shop. I got to browse around a bit between games and found a set of games called Unlocked. They are billed as ‘escape rooms’ you don’t have to leave home to play. Looked interesting.
Of course, there was a lot of role-playing game shtuff there too. My group has split up as the other players moved away so I’m hoping I might be able to find a local group to play with.
Of course, being around all the games made my Muse try to resurrect another project I’ve wanted to do for some time. Many moons ago, in college, my friends and I had a play-by-mail game going centered on space exploration. Each player got a home world. You had various tech levels and resources. You had to use your resources and tech level to build starships, then use the starships to explore the star systems around you. Thus, you would build a space empire, sending your ships out to other worlds, conquering them, and using their resources to keep expanding your empire. Of course, if another player came across the same world you did, and you both want its resources you could negotiate or engage in battle. As I recall, we did each tactic about half the time. Sometimes negotiation actually worked. But wen it didn’t, it was war!
My Muse wants to start another round of this game. Of course, now we have the Internet so doing play-by-mail could be significantly speeded up. And we could have a much bigger stellar map. I figure a 36 X 36 X 36 grid gives us over forty-six thousand (46,000) points to locate solar systems. Let’s say that one-third of the points have the possibility of having a solar system, that gives us a little over fifteen thousand (15,000) solar systems to work with. Players could log in to a central portal, submit their turn orders, and get the results once a process runs daily and resolves all the orders.
I certainly don’t have time right now to work on something like that. But my Muse is excited about the project. And I’m excited about the project, I just can’t do it right now. No! I have too many other projects.
If you’d like to support my efforts, why not buy me a chocolate chip cookie through my Ko-Fi page? https://ko-fi.com/jhusum