Gaming
29 Dec 2005 
around evening time 
Matt Winckler
Today I played tennis with Eric again. And once again, I squandered a 2-game lead and he came back to beat me. Soundly. One of these days I’m going to learn how to serve properly and stop giving away points on double faults, and then he will be in trouble. Not today, though.
This evening, I played an excellent game of Nomic with the age-old comrades, Daniel and Luke. (Who are also currently engaged in building what is possibly the world’s largest slingshot, constructed out of an old circle tower, with each “arm” more than 17 feet long. The thing is powered by 10 bands of 3/8″ surgical tubing on each arm. The “pouch” is an old tire cut in half. I hope to see it functioning on Saturday, and if I do, I will be sure to bring back pictures.) It was the first time I’d played it into an advanced state - I played on Sunday with Gary and Geoff, but the game ended very early on. Tonight’s game started about 1615, broke for dinner at 1800, resumed about 1845, and continued on until 2100, thus spanning four hours. It was an interesting game, though I agree with Daniel in that it probably would have been better to have other games present on the table to give ideas for more ways to score points (and open the possibility of using other game boards and pieces).
I have decided I am very fond of Nomic. Some of the rule changes tonight were very interesting, to say the least. There was the lottery I set up, which quickly grew to be a fairly large pot. And then we introduced a rule stating that if a player exceeded the specified number of points required to win (at that time, 100), then the player in second place at the time would be the winner. And so the lottery quickly became a dangerous thing, because winning it could easily push one over the 100-point limit.
At some point the 100 points was amended to 200 points. And then a rule was set in place to define a winner as anybody with more than +200 or less than -200 points. However, this was trumped by the above rule already in place saying that exceeding the point limit resulted in a loss, because that rule had a lower ordinance number. And then I made a critical mistake - I thought I saw a loophole to win, because buying a lottery ticket costs 5 points. If I could make the +/- 200 points rule take precedence over the “exceed point limit” rule, then I could simply buy a hojillion lottery cards, get down below -200 points, and thereby win the game. So I proposed to transmute the +/- 200 points rule, thus making it take precedence. This passed. However, I had forgotten about another rule I’d proposed earlier: that one cannot spend points on actions unless one has the necessary number of positive points! And so my dastardly plot failed. And moreover, I’d just made it much easier for Luke to win, since at that time he had a commanding lead in points, and wouldn’t have to worry about exceeding the 200-point limit anymore.
I was concerned about this for a full circuit of turns, until I saw the solution. I proposed an amendment to the “exceeding point limit” rule to state that it took precedence over the +/- 200 point rule, then proposed to transmute the former to an immutable state, thus taking precedence over the latter. It worked (Daniel was as far behind Luke as I was, and neither of us wanted him to win, so simple majority ruled), and bought more time.
And ultimately, I suppose, that is what saved the game. Luke got to 196 points, with me in second place. The hour was late, so he decided to take his chances and roll the die to get 4 points. (He’d put a rule into place earlier saying that a player had a chance to roll a second die, and could subtract the value of the second from the value of the first in determining points.) It didn’t come off, though; he rolled a 5 (which was doubled, per another rule), thus giving him 106 points. A 6 on the second roll would have saved him, but it came up a 1, and I therefore won the game.
I think it would be much better if all players were already very familiar with the rules and had creative ideas for changing the game ahead of time, but even so, I found the game to be extremely entertaining. It’s a lot of fun trying to think outside the box and come up with rules that will allow you to win, while convincing a majority that the rule will somehow benefit them also.
On other game fronts, I am nearly done with the game I am inventing. Soon I will be seeking playtesters, since I expect that this game will require a lot of testing to balance it out. Right now I think I’d describe it as a cross between “Clue: The Museum Caper”, an RPG, the old computer game “Commandos”, and the also-old computer game “System Shock 2″. I’m looking forward to finishing and starting to play it. I’ll probably play it for a goodly amount of time at home before releasing it to y’all, and I’ll post instructions later if you want to be a playtester. I’m still actively considering self-publishing the game and trying to sell it to small hobby/game shops, but I’m not sure I’ll go to the trouble. We’ll see how well it plays. Another important part is that I still need a name. My only idea so far is “Operative”, but I’m not very fond of that. Better suggestions are welcome, though I’m unsure of how useful they will be before you actually have the game in hand. If you have a title you’ve always thought would be perfect for a game and wouldn’t mind passing it along (such as my “Polyvinyl Films” for a movie producer or “No Time for Grits” for a movie title), by all means feel free.