They came in the mail today. 9 packages of 50 each. They’re bridge sized, so unfortunately, they won’t fill a card sleeve completely. On the other hand, they’re very attractive and sturdy, and shuffle pretty well.

I’m preparing decks of two of my games, Mock the Vote and Satori, to take to Origins tomorrow. In the dreams and prayers such as I have, you’ll be able to buy a copy of one of them there two years from now…

All right. Weekends seem to be better for most people. Since Origins is this weekend, we’re going to shoot for 1KBWC next weekend, so that’s Sunday 7/8. If you are reading this, you are almost certainly invited. Please let me know so I know how many snacks to acquire.

Now for the riddle:

Due to their use in dice, most gamers will be familiar with the 5 convex regular polyhedra: the tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, and icosahedron. The riddle: Why are these 5 the only regular polyhedra that can exist?

Simultaneous Limitation and Hint: We’re only talking about Euclidean space here.

[Edit: Comments contain a solution. It’s involved enough that a quick glance probably won’t spoil everything; just so you know.]

Several readers have expressed an interest in playing 1,000 Blank White Cards. It sounds pretty sweet to me, too, so I’ll host. If you are interested please post a comment indication when you’re available. The rest of this week isn’t very good for me; I would suggest the evenings of Sunday 7/1, Wednesday 7/4, or Thursday 7/5.

(I ordered some cards from some educational site. 50 blank cards cost $1.50 if you’re a teacher or $7.50 if you’re a magician or hustler… go figure. If they’re not here in time, we’ll use index cards. I ordered a whole frickin’ bunch because I can also use them for other games…)

I was still in high school when I first heard about Fluxx. (Yeah, that makes me feel old.) The promise seemed wonderful: All the rules are on the cards! Many of the cards you can play cards change the rules! There are cards like “War” and “Love” and “Time!” How sweet is that?

Unfortunately, the game ended up being disappointing to me. There are only about 4 types of rule changes, most of them pretty mundane (Play X, Draw X, Hand Limit X, Keeper Limit X). The Keepers have sweet, evocative names, but don’t actually do anything. Worst of all, Goals don’t really stay in place long enough that you can work towards them, so winning the game is largely a matter of lucking into drawing the right Goal at a time you can exploit it. The various Play X, for large X, and Keeper Limit and Hand Limit keep you from strategically holding anything back.

The “rules constantly change” idea, of course, is fantastically hard to successfully execute. I have a game sitting on my development shelf now, Satori, which I believe fulfills most of the promise of Fluxx, but had to abandon the changing rules entirely. (Satori is an article, or series, for another time.) I don’t think any other commercial game does any better. Apparently even programmers find “Programmer’s Nightmare” to be a nightmare indeed, and nobody else thinks it’s even worth the time.

On the other hand, the Discordian-esque parlor games Nomic and 1,000 Blank White Cards both look like they would be pretty sweet with the right group. (And more here).

Sorry about the outage Wednesday and Thursday. Evidently Dreamhost was having DNS issues and didn’t bother fixing it until the specific request was made. At least the price was right.

Anyway, thinking about Buddhism and its relationship to MMORPGs got me thinking about game design. I’m in no position to write an MMO, of course, but there’s always their smaller ancestor, the MUD. Could it be possible to make a MUD based on Buddhism?

Here’s an outline as far as I got:

• Unlike regular MUDs, your account is not tied to a single character. Characters have a lifespan of only 2 real-life weeks. After this they die of old age.
• Death per-character is permanent, but whenever your character dies you get to start another one.
• Stats are greatly simplified. There may only be three, measured from 1-5, like “Physical,” “Mental,” “Spiritual.” Characters also have an intrinsic aptitude toward a certain job, like Peasant, Soldier, Artisan, Scholar, etc.
• Stats are randomized whenever you create a character.
• Your enlightenment is a hidden statistic that, as my defiance against a strange and unknowable universe, is expressed as a single integer. However, there is no way to determine how enlightened you are unless you actually achieve Enlightenment. Unlike all other statistics, enlightenment is tied to the account, not the character.
• If your enlightenment gets high enough, your current character achieves Enlightenment. When this happens you have a choice:
• You can retire the account, contented in the knowledge that you have transcended my little MUD.
• Are your attachments a little too strong? Or do you want to help others on their way to Enlightenment? Your character can play on with a host of new powers: you can determine how enlightened other characters are and even add to their enlightenment, and you gain superior physical and mental abilities in-game. However, once your character dies, if you do not retire the account, your next character loses a fair amount of enlightenment, enough that you won’t have one again for a while…
• Enlightenment will be scaled so that there is about one Enlightened character per 200 active accounts at any one time. Assuming a reasonable active MUD of about 50 players, this means there will only be an Enlightened character active about 25% of the time at all.

Notice something missing? Yeah, it’s a big one: How do you increase Enlightenment? And I have no idea, but here are some ideas:

• It’s random, just totally random.
• It’s manipulated by administrators.
• You get it for taking certain actions in accord with your character’s job.
• You get it for taking certain actions in-game, as if solving “quests.”
• You get it for meditating, joining a monastery, or other similar actions in-game.
• It depends per character.
• It depends per account, but you don’t know what kind of account you have.

Unfortunately, it’s unlikely to get created. I had this exchange with reader Fu Leng:

Me:

F: “I’ve already beaten it.”

Me: “What? How?”

F: “By not playing.”

Touché, sir, touché.

When I had a Bridge-playing girlfriend, I tried hard not to play as partners with her. Evidently I have a reproachful glare, and I know how much worse this can be when it’s when it’s coming from someone you love. I have no desire to have a horrible fight over a lousy bid or a misplayed hand. And I’m even reasonably good at restraining my anger… consider the story of the spouse who was killed over the game…

This is as nothing, though, compared to Shadows over Camelot, though. (To recap the important point: Each player gets a Loyalty card at the beginning of the game. It’s not certain, but one player is the Traitor, who wins if everyone else loses.) Some, but not all, of the information in the game is kept secret, to give the Traitor a chance to scheme.

So, I think the game is well-designed and the mechanic is neat, but the following nightmare scenario keeps playing itself over in my mind:

Non-gaming spouse: ::plays dubiously::

Gaming spouse: “Nobody could play so badly by accident. You must be trying to defeat us all. Traitor!”

Non-gaming spouse: ::Sheepishly reveals Loyal card and begins plotting homicide::

Coming attractions: A brief look at the Buddhist MUD reader alluded to in Sunday’s comments.

Unexpectedly, I got an article written in the airport and found an Internet connection in the motel. And the delayed post feature seems to be working, so… here you go!

You may be familiar with the Buddhist principle that desire is the root of suffering. This is not to say that wanting or needing something is bad; rather, it is the desire for something which one cannot obtain, or for which the cost is too high, that leads to suffering.

This is relevant, I promise.

I play World of Warcraft (WoW). Not as much as I used to—in fact, it’s been a couple of weeks since I logged in. I play mostly because I want to see all the cool skills and spells, all the cool areas, all the cool monsters, learn all the cool tricks. But once you’re logged in, what keeps you going? It’s the steady gain of experience (or reputation, or DKP, or whatever, once you max your level) mixed with the hope of the next boss you kill being the one that drops the sweet item you were hoping for.

WoW holds so many goals in front of you. Attain level 50, then 52, then 54. Collect all 8 pieces of set A of items. Each one of these goals takes time, and effort, and by the time you’re halfway to one goal, you realize that it’s not really what you want—you really want the one after it. At level 51 you realize that the new spells you get at 52 aren’t really all that great, and you really want to be 54. Once you have 5 pieces of set A you realize that set B is what you really want. Oh, sure, you eventually reach your goal, but by the time you get there it’s not satisfying, not for long enough, because the next goal has already been set up.

(In case you were curious, the time investments scale up and the high-end game is structured such that anyone who takes time off for school or work—which does encompass most WoW players—is in no danger of ever running out of next goals.)

You see where I’m going with this. It’s not that WoW “goes against” Buddhism, which is a statement that doesn’t make all that much sense anyway. It’s just that Buddhism teaches that playing WoW is a bad idea, because it will never bring you happiness or satisfaction.

Meditate upon this.

Some final notes and thoughts:

• WoW is the example familiar to me from this genre, but the phenomenon is familiar to all MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games, EverQuest being the best-known example.) EQ and Final Fantasy XI are notorious for being even worse, while DrObviousSo will probably attest that City of Heroes mitigates some of the problems.
• This is not to say that WoW causes only suffering. It’s an exquisitely designed and balanced game, and gorgeous to look at besides. It feels immersive. You can make friends and go on adventures with them, adventures that really feel dangerous and exciting… the first 5 or 15 times, anyway. There’s exploration, economics, investigation, and research. But the siren call of progress is too powerful to ignore, and following it doesn’t lead to happiness.

Reposted with kind permission from reader DrObviousSo. The original is here. (This reader  also posts as The Hermit on the “ZoD“.)

My wife and I have a competitive conflict. GK is very, very competitive. At her best, she’s driven to win, at her worst; she’s a mean spirited, vindictive meany. At my best, I’m a cooperative, socializing team player. At worst, I’m a wishy-washy looser.

We’ve always had a hard time playing games together, and I know this really bugs her, because she comes from a family that enjoys a lot of competitive game playing. Trust me; you don’t want to play Sorry with any of them. I, however, prefer social, cooperative games like RPGs.

I’ve always like poker, however, and have finally gotten around to introducing GK to the game. I think the fact that it’s as much a social game as it is a game of chance attracts me to it. I know what attracts her. We’ve had a couple of nights playing in the last couple weeks, and it’s been a lot of fun. We’ve either been playing for single denomination chips, or the quarters we have for laundry. Tonight, we decided that the looser had to get the other one a bowl of ice cream. Don’t ask me to explain it, but this is always something we’ve pawned off on the other. I think having these little favors attached to winning will give me enough motivation to be as competitive as GK will want, and it will attach greater social meaning to the game for me.

Reader John Rhoadhouse reported that he tried The Number Game recently. Unsurprisingly, he found the early game to be very easy. For an extra challenge, he tried playing without running numbers together. This adds a lot of challenge to the early game! Exponentiation becomes very important. With this extra restriction, he got stuck at 143 (142 = 5³ + 4² + 1).

There is a neat little game out there called Slay. It plays like a board game: turn-based, little pieces that you move around. It’s not a board game, which is good, because the bookkeeping details would be prohibitive. (It’s easy to get a general idea of what’s going on, but counting the exact size of territories would be a pain.) As a multiplayer game, it’s hampered a little bit by slow play and inherently unfair starting conditions; but the game is simple enough that the AI is very respectable and it will happily fight you as long as you desire. A free demo is available; the full version is a little pricey, but the game really is surprisingly fun.

P.S. I have a guest article lined up for Thursday, so swing by anyway, to read the article and see if I managed to set up the autoposting correctly.

P.P.S. I got my first comment spam last week. I’m a teeny tiny bit honored and I’m sure that’s the best that’s ever going to come of it.

I’m in the process of looking for a new apartment and also taking a family vacation this week. Therefore: Tuesday’s article is likely to be brief and RZ will be dark Thursday and next Sunday.

The good news is that I’ll have my laptop with me over vacation and few responsibilities, so hopefully I’ll return with a few good articles. In the meantime, here are some links to tide you over.

Journal of Boardgame Design: Good articles, and I hope to see more in the future.

Gone Gaming:Lots of great stuff by several authors. If it were just one it would put me to shame. As it is, it seems to be a steady parade of good work.