Quick gamey thoughts

[dmaze]

I brought games to ET. They got played. This makes me happy.

My Trans America set is missing two cards (and is awfully worn for the amount I've played it). This makes me sad.

I got to play Age of Steam. This makes me happy.

I have this vague thought of building a game database. Along with name, publisher, author, etc., it could have specs about length, complexity (number of rules) and initial difficulty (how many rules you need to get started). Civilization would have a complexity of maybe 6 but difficulty of 3ish; by the time you've explained all the rules you're through the first three turns. 1830 would have a higher difficulty, since there's the stock/companies/trains/dividend loop. ("The goal of the game is to maximize shareholder value.") I think difficulty <= complexity.

Comments

Re: Following the theme of rail games...

[dmaze]

I've heard that's supposed to be a good game, but have refrained from getting it, mostly because it'd ruin Jan's anticipation (it's one of the things he has but since it's a Christmas present he can't play yet).

DS1 was really disappointed when he looked inside the Age of Steam box, which has a big steam engine on the cover, and didn't find anything that actually looked like a train. The train tokens in Trans America are only used to keep score; 1830 and crayon rails both have auxiliary cards with trains on them. I'm not sure what a good 3-year-old-approved train game would look like.

Re: Following the theme of rail games...

[astra-nomer.livejournal.com]

DS1 loves Ticket to Ride, because it has colorful cards with pictures of various train cars, and the markers you use to claim your rails are little plastic train cars. He's too young to grok the rules yet, so we make up our own rules. Last night, his goal was to get one of each color train card, rather than trying to build rails.

Freight Train looked like fun, from what I could see on the web. But maybe I'll save that one for next year...