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I’ve been thinking about both of these things lately.
Let’s start with the meteor strikes. A current popular theory, called the “Giant Impact Hypothesis,” or more colorfully, “The Big Whack,” posits a massive strike just as Earth was formed. The object, a planetoid the size of Mars that scientists call “Theia,” hit Earth at an oblique angle. The nifty part is that our planet’s orbit actually caught debris from the collision, which coalesced into the celestial body we now call the Moon.
Fast forward about four billion years. We’re now at the end of the Cretaceous period, where a meteor 6 miles wide smashed into the Yucatán peninsula.
Now, understand, even a relatively small object hitting the earth can cause some pretty serious damage. From Wikipedia…
The impactor’s estimated size was about 10 km (6 mi) in diameter and is estimated to have released 4×10^23 joules of energy, equivalent to 100,000,000 megatons of TNT on impact. By contrast, the most powerful man-made explosive device ever detonated, the Tsar Bomba, had a yield of only 50 megatons, making the Chicxulub impact 2 million times more powerful. Even the largest known explosive volcanic eruption, which released approximately 1×10^21 joules and created the La Garita Caldera, was substantially less powerful than the Chicxulub impact…
The impact would have caused some of the largest megatsunamis in Earth’s history, reaching thousands of feet high. A cloud of super-heated dust, ash and steam would have spread from the crater, as the impactor burrowed underground in less than a second. Excavated material along with pieces of the impactor, ejected out of the atmosphere by the blast, would have been heated to incandescence upon re-entry, broiling the Earth’s surface and possibly igniting global wildfires; meanwhile, enormous shock waves spawned global earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. The emission of dust and particles could have covered the entire surface of the Earth for several years, possibly a decade, creating a harsh environment for living things to survive in. The shock production of carbon dioxide caused by the destruction of carbonate rocks would have led to a sudden greenhouse effect. Over a longer period of time, sunlight would have been blocked from reaching the surface of the earth by the dust particles in the atmosphere, cooling the surface dramatically.
This was, of course, the last hurrah of the hardy dinosaurs, who had 160 million years to call the Earth home (by comparison, Homo sapiens has been around a mere 200,000 years). The dinos who weren’t incinerated in the blast died out from the new, harsh environment they found themselves in.
It wasn’t until a few years ago that we confirmed the terrible power of a possible meteor strike. In 1993, astronomers Carolyn Shoemaker, Eugene M. Shoemaker, and David Levy discovered a comet that orbited Jupiter. This is odd, because most comets tend to orbit the Sun.
Even stranger was the fact that the comet didn’t have a single nucleus, but had split up into many small fragments. It had evidently passed too cluse to Jupiter, and the gas giant’s gravitational field had broken it apart.
Scientists crunched numbers, and found that sometime in July 1994, all the little bits of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 were going to smash into Jupiter.
Well, what was going to happen? Jupiter’s a massive planet. Some astronomers wondered what kind of threat a tiny, rinky-dink comet posed.
The answer: A lot. The first impact blast was about the size of planet Earth. The largest fragment collided with a force equal to 600 times of the world’s nuclear arsenal.
Bill Bryson, in his book A Short History of Nearly Everything, marvels in amazement that our race never had the misfortune of being wiped out by a meteor strike. He had a propensity for hysterics, but I admit there’s a part of me that is astonished every moment we’re not blown up by some cosmic rock. It’s a wonder we ever survived this far.
I feel the same way about dating.
There are rules to the way single men and women interact (I won’t go into man-man and woman-woman courtship here, not out of any disapproval, but simply because it falls outside the realm of what passes for my expertise).
Now, these rules are generalities, and I’m sure there will be plenty of exceptions.
Also, I disagree with these rules, and I’ve even come to detest them. Yet, they exist, and I think we all have to acknowledge them.
Rule #1: The man is expected to pursue the woman.
If a man in interested in a woman, society expects him to initiate contact. If a woman thinks a man is attractive, it’s unusual for her to outrightly ask him out. She has to drop hints. If he doesn’t pick these hints up, she won’t amplify the hints, or ask outright. Instead, she will assume he’s not interested.
I’ve heard of women asking men out, but it’s awfully rare. It’s rare enough that as a single guy, I cannot realistically expect a woman to ask me out. Though if I found her attractive, I certainly wouldn’t object.
Rule #2: The more interested Person A is in Person B, the less likely Person B will be interested in Person A.
The stereotype is that two people “fall madly in love,” but this is as rare as, well, a meteor strike. Instead, if one party blows it and admits his or her limerance too soon, the other will smell the ugly stench of desparation. It’s apparently unattractive.
Now look at these two rules. Look at how they interact. Note the secret here. The man has to pursue the woman… but not too hard. It’s walking on a tightrope, and it’s the reason dating is as fun to most people as drinking a nice warm jug of bleach.
So instead of the stereotype of two lovers running towards each other with open arms across a vast open cornfield, we have this strange, crab-like dance. He steps forward. She steps sideways. He steps sideways. She steps back. He steps forward. She steps forward. He steps back.
Throughout this dance, you are not allowed to say your true feelings, especially if it would risk a Rule #2 violation. You wrap everything in code words. The night after a date, you go over everything your partner said to you, the way a spy agency would go over an intercepted communique. Every look, every smile, every frown becomes a clue. Does she really like me? Is he really into me?
Naturally, these clues will contradict each other. No one is sure of anything. There’s awkward laughter and crossed legs. She will wonder why he is so nervous. He will wonder why she is so theatrical.
At the end of each date, he will ask her if she had a good time. If she did, she’ll say, “Yes, we have to do this again!” If she didn’t, she’ll say, “Yes, we have to do this again!” Men who can’t tell the difference between these two statements are in for a rough time.
How across Heaven and Earth do people actually create geniune, long-lasting romantic relationships? Looking at the way things work now, I’m just as amazed that two people ever lower their defenses as I am that humanity hasn’t been incinerated by a giant rock from outer space.
I suppose the answer is the same in both scenarios: volume. There’s a reason it’s called space. There’s so much damn room for meteors to fly around, the chances of a significantly-sized rock hitting our planet are quite small (there’s also the matter of Jupiter acting as a “cosmic vacuum cleaner” and sucking up space debris that would otherwise have our name on it, but that has no place in this analogy, so I’m ignoring it).
In much the same way, a person meets so many people in his or her lifetime, at some point, one will meet another who is simpatico. Civilization is big enough. My mom says, “Every pot has a lid.” I’m not that romantic, but I do believe in numbers. Every once in awhile, stumble out of the house and meet someone interesting. In a very small subset of these cases, that someone interesting is attractive to you. In a laughably smaller subset of that subset, that someone is actually available. And in a ridiculously miniscule subset of that subset, that other person might actually like you.
Honestly, sometimes I wonder if splitting like amoeba wouldn’t have been easier. To hell with genetic variation, at least we don’t need constant mindfucks to find our better halves.
Filed under: Romance/Meteor Strikes | 1 Comment
Catching up
Well, yeah, it’s inevitable that any part-time blogger falls off the wagon and stops updating. In my defense, things got really hairy in my life for awhile. They’re starting to come together. In no particular order…
July is always a crazy month for me, because I have to get my games ready for Dexcon and Protospiel. Dexcon was fantastic, but also busy and stressful. Since I’ve also been busy and stressed at work, I’ve been a little burned out. I’m hoping that I’m recovering from that now.
Protospiel was also great. Feedback on Prolix was overwhelmingly good, with a couple of tiny nitpicks. We also broke a four-player game of Pax Robotica, which is actually very good! I’m at the stage of testing where I still want to see things not work.
If you’re curious, players bid low and spent lots of money on bots, so that there were only two Level 6 bots available in Round 5. It was rather anticlimactic. Also, there wasn’t nearly enough carnage in the first three rounds.
I’ll be adding more bots in the 4-player game to address the first problem. For the second problem, I’m thinking of adding a modifier to the number of cubes you pull out of the bag every round, based on the number of cubes in the bag. The more cubes in the bag, the more come out.
I’m hoping to make an exciting public announcement about Prolix, but I can’t yet. For those of you who know, please don’t tell. For those who don’t, this is called a “teaser.” Isn’t it infuriating?
Finally, on a personal note… I am attempting to start dating again. Emphasis on “attempting.” There are a lot of things I’m good at, but dating isn’t one of them. However, I’m a different person that I was ten years ago, and I think that’s a big plus. You’ll see some random posts and observations about this sooner or later. Aren’t you lucky!
Filed under: Announcements, Board Games, Designing, My boring life, Pax Robotica, Prolix | Leave a Comment
I got to playtest Prolix and Pax Robotica on Saturday. It’s rare that both my games hit the table in the same day, so I was quite flattered.
Prolix tweaks
For Prolix, I was specifically testing the 5-player variant. As I discussed in my last post, I wanted to try a variant where each player crosses out one fewer Regular Scoring word than the number of times he interrupted. So if a player interrupted three times, he’d cross only two words out instead of three.
The upshot of this is that players must interrupt at least once, plus once for each zero they were forced to take, in order to maximize their score. It seems that players were frustrated by the lack of interrupt opportunities in a 5-player game, so I hoped that this would open things up.
And it did! In the last 5-player game I saw, the guy who eventually won didn’t really have a practical interrupt opportunity after Round 3. In this game, we were all paying rapt attention to the board until the last round. It felt much better.
The final scores of the game were pretty thrilling: 103, 102, 102, 101, and 96. It was quite close!
The only problem was that one of the players was new to the game, and he didn’t really grok the scoring system. I’m probably going to recommend that new players start with the 3-4 player game before going to 5 players.
So I’ll be sending a blind test copy of the game this week with this 5-player variant, plus the 2-player variant I talked about last week.
The next change I’m going to make is to change the timer length to 45 seconds. Right now, players use a 1 minute timer for everything except for the 2-player game, which uses a 30-second timer. I’d rather include only one timer with the game, and one minute is a little too long anyway. 45 seconds seems like a nice compromise.
The only problem? I don’t seem to be able to buy 45-second sand timers in any quantity less than 100. Hmm. I’m not planning to make that many blind test copies.
Pax Robotica tweaks
Pax Robotica got some much more significant tweaks. I was concerned about the relative value of the bots, so I sat down and did some math. It turns out that it’s better to buy two Level 3 bots than one Level 5 bot. I didn’t like that; I wanted the big bot to be a real hammer. Two Level 4 bots should be about equal to a Level 5 bot, and that’s not even close. It seemed that some re-juggling was in order.
I scribbled like crazy in my notebook, and came up with some better numbers. There are now only three levels of bots: 1, 3, and 6.
It’s neat, because the numbers represent three things:
- The number of Tech symbols you need to build a bot of that level.
- The amount of VP you get when you build the bot.
- The battle value of the bot.
Now, the highest bot is about even with two of the lower bot. If you do the math, selling two Level 3 bots gets a tad more VP than one Level 6 bot because they’ll be getting twice the survival points. But the Level 6 bot is cheaper to build, more likely to survive, and more likely to swing the endgame VP bonus to its side. So it’s no longer a slam-dunk decision.
In our game, we never got to build Level 6 bots, because I found I need to make the Tech deck more dynamic. I’ll probably split it into A and B cards like the Government deck, and put 3x Techs among the B cards. That’ll make tech growth much more explosive.
Bot quantities were another thing I found I needed to tweak (which didn’t surprise me, considering that the best I can do before a playtest is guess). For the next game, I’m going in with 6x Level 1 bots of each type, 5x Level 3 bots, and 2x Level 6 bots.
I’m very excited about this change, because it streamlines a lot of rough edges.
- The bot values now stand for three different things, which is much neater and easier to understand.
- It’s no longer necessary to remove double Techs revealed in the first round. That always felt kind of artificial to me.
- The Level 1 bots get less attractive by Round 3, because they’re so likely to get blown up. So I don’t think I need to have a minimum bot value in the later squares of each battlefield. Another fiddly rule gone!
The game showed a lot of rough edges of the new system, but a lot of potential too. It ended on a tiebreaker, although if the Level 6 bots had come out as they should have, I think they would have been different. I also felt that the auction was a bit more powerful than before, which was great; I’d seen players disregard the auction entirely and win on bot placement, which isn’t how I want the game to go.
Some interesting thoughts came up regarding the tiebreaker system, but I’ll save them for another post.
Filed under: Board Games, Designing, Pax Robotica, Prolix | 2 Comments
Some quick Prolix updates
I have some big news about Prolix! You see, a couple of months ago REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED so obviously, I’m very excited.
So in other news, I’m trying to tighten up the various player counts. Here’s where we stand…
The “official game” is for 3-4 players. That seems to be tight as a drum.
The solo variant, Solix, is very good.
That leaves the 2-player game and the 5-player game.
I found that the 2-player game was missing pop. If it was just me and someone else, I would turn down a 2-player game of Prolix. That’s a bad sign right there.
The problem is that an interrupt in a 2-player game isn’t really as interesting as in the other games. 2-player games are pure zero-sum games. My gain is your loss. If you’re going to interrupt the other player, why not make it a straight puzzle game?
By “puzzle game,” I mean a straight, turnless game, where both players are trying to work out their turns simultaneously. I tried a puzzle variant at Protospiel 2007, and the result really wasn’t much fun. The problem with a puzzle game is that it tends to get unbalanced very quickly. Usually, a group will have one really good player and one very crummy player. Granted, that’s the case with most games. But in a puzzle game, and especially in puzzle Prolix, that good player ran away with the game, and the crummy player never got a chance.
Clearly, puzzle Prolix wasn’t the answer for a multiplayer game. I insisted on keeping it turn-based, and I’m very happy with the decision.
But I had a thought last week. What if I made 2-player Prolix a puzzle game, and put in a strong handicap?
So I hammered out Prolix Duel, a 2-player Prolix variant. Here’s the gist of it. There are up to 9 rounds, and each player is trying to get a “mark” each round. 5 marks wins the game.
You get a mark by getting the best word each round. To start the round, you lay out the board as normal, and then both players start thinking of a word.
If a player comes up with a word, he flips the 45-second hourglass in front of him, and secretly writes his word down. The other player now has 45 seconds to come up with his own word.
When the timer runs out, both players score their words. The higher-scoring word gets the mark. In case of a tie, the player who flipped the hourglass wins.
Here’s where the handicap comes in. The player with the most marks has a handicap every round. So if I lead you by a score of 2 marks to 1, my word this round will be worth 1 point less. If I manage to get a mark this round too, my word next round will be worth 2 points less.
The handicaps are what turn this from “meh” into a something with pop. I’ve played it twice now, and both plays have been really interesting. Today’s game was my friend’s first game, and she took me to the wire. I got the first 3 marks, but she rattled off 4 straight marks. I managed to sneak the last 2 marks in to win, the last one by 1 point! It felt much more like a game than the 2-player game has ever felt. So it’s probably good enough to hand over to the blind testers, at this point.
Now, the 5-player game. This one is a tougher nut to crack. I playtested this with 5 last weekend, and it didn’t go so well. One player fired off three straight 20+ point words, and interrupted twice by the third round. His game was effectively over, but he kept seeing great words that weren’t worth interrupting with. He was frustrated, and I can’t blame him.
Granted, this is possible in a 4-player game, but much rarer. It’s more likely in the 5-player game, where someone has to wait four turns in between his own words. That’s four interrupt opportunities. It’s a lot.
This player happened to be a very experienced game player; he developed for SPI in the seventies. He gave me some thoughtful feedback, but the changes he proposed would radically alter the game, and I’m not convinced they would completely eradicate the problem without introducing a different set of problems. Stupid elegant ruleset!
My current choices are…
* In the 5-player game, each player crosses off one fewer word in his Regular Scoring column than he Interrupted with. This has a nasty implication: Players should interrupt at least once to maximize their score, plus once for each zero they were forced to take.
This will greatly increase the number of interrupts. But that’s what we want, right? I may have to note in the rulebook that the 5-player game is the most brutal version of Prolix.
What I like about this ruleset is that it’s really only one minor change from regular Prolix. If this works, I don’t want to change anything else.
* But if it doesn’t work, I may have to introduce radical changes into the 5-player game. One of the playtester’s suggestions was that if a player is interrupted once, he flips the timer for his second turn. No one can interrupt him, but he must take a -3 for his word.
I actually had something similar to this rule early on, but I wasn’t crazy about it. I want players to be continually engaged every turn. Also, it’s a big change from the base game. It’s different, but not necessarily better. So I may try it, but I’m afraid I’m skeptical.
* Perform a 5-player-ectomy. In other words, cap the game at 4 players. This would be my last resort, but I’d rather limit the game’s player count than endorse a potentially lousy game experience.
I’ll probably get to try the 5-player rules in a couple of weeks at Recess. I’ll also be sending a blind test copy of the game to Atlanta in a couple of weeks. I’m hoping to have this thing zipped up soon.
Filed under: Board Games, Designing, Prolix | 4 Comments
“Yes and…” vs. “Um, no…”
I’ve never been much into religion, partially because I don’t think the universe can be sliced up into two neat groups of Good and Evil. The idea of taking something as complex and real as a person’s life, intertwined as they all are with loves, hates, mistakes, and regrets, and somehow judging that he or she belongs in Heaven or Hell is something that sets off my bullshit detector.
Nevertheless, I do like seeing interesting dichotomies, especially ones that are more interesting and that ring more true than the old, banal Good versus Evil. One that’s been on my mind is the difference between “Yes and…” and “Um, no…”
Let’s start with “Um, no…” because it’s what a lot of people are familiar with. You see it a lot on internet forums. One person will say something, and another person replies, “Um, no…” and refutes his point. Sometimes it’s good feedback. But very often, it’s anything from arrogant, reactionary burbling to pedantic grammar corrections.
You may not be as familiar with “Yes and…” It’s one of the first rules of improv comedy. If your improv partner comes up with an idea, you never shoot it down mid-performance. You take it and you build on it. Improv is all about construction, building, and progress. Destruction, contradiction, and regression kill improv.
So if we’re doing an improv scene, and you turn into a dinosaur, “Yes and…” suggests that I not say “That’s stupid,” and immediately turn you back, let alone breaking character to ask to start again. I can turn into a dinosaur myself, or a horseshoe crab, or a mammoth, or something that builds on your scene.
From here, it’s easy to pull these actions into a bigger paradigm. “Yes and…” and “Um, no…” are metaphors for common worldviews. When you read something new, or come across something you haven’t seen before, do you reject it? Do you pull it into your life?
Now, it’s easy to infer that we as a people (and especially those of us who post persnickety comments on forums and blogs) could use a lot less “Um, no…” and a lot more “Yes, and…” For the most part, that’s true. But like any other dichotomy, it’s all about balance. “Um, no…” is a vital skill in life.
Sometimes we have to call bullshit. Your friend who insists on staying together with her abusive lover needs to say, “Um, no…” Your relative who’s starting an asinine and clearly doomed business venture with a pushy, shady partner needs to say, “Um, no…” Anyone who’s lived a little can tell you that “Yes” can be an incredibly destructive word.
My recent life changes have got me thinking a lot about this dichotomy, and where I need to be. There are some people to whom I’ve said “Yes and…” too many times, and others to whom I’ve said “Um, no…” too many times.
I’m trying to fix this. I’m going out weeknights now, seeing friends and catching up. I’m also trying to be more forthright, telling people my honest opinions, even if it’s awkward and difficult.
“Yes and…” versus “Um, no…” Where do you fit in?
Filed under: My boring life | Leave a Comment
