Ron's Info-Closet Annex
The online extension of Ron's Info-Closet.
Book links are usually to my Powell's affiliate program; game links are usually to Funagain Games, and benefit the Games to the Rescue Project.
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Ron Hale-Evans
rwhe@ludism.org
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Lately I've gotten interested in something called Constructive Living (CL). Although CL is based mainly on two schools of Japanese psychotherapeutic practice, Morita and Naikan, Constructive Living is not psychotherapy; it's more of a philosophy of life with a therapeutic aspect, such as Stoicism.
I first came into contact with CL through the bestseller Book Lust by Seattle librarian Nancy Pearl, who reviewed two books by David K. Reynolds, the founder of Constructive Living: Even in Summer the Ice Doesn't Melt (1986) and Playing Ball on Running Water (1984). When I saw a copy of the latter in a used bookstore, I snatched it up, brought it home, and misplaced it immediately. Then, a few weeks ago, Amazon recommended Handbook for Constructive Living (2002) to me. I bought it, read it, and was glad it's the first book by Reynolds that I read, because it presents a much later, fuller, and better integrated version of his philosophy.
Nevertheless, I'm enjoying my refound copy of Playing Ball on Running Water, not least because, for me, the title combines a Ludist view of life as game (playing ball) with the familiar Heraclitean saying that you can't step into the same river twice. There is yet more ludic goodness in the chapter entitled "Exercises in Living--The Ball Game", particularly exercise 8, "Play a game". Reynolds really understands the Ludist idea of game as microcosm. He writes,
Any game that requires some attention and effort to play well will do. Avoid games of pure mindless chance. Appropriate table games include chess, checkers, Scrabble, bridge, and the like... As you would expect, the quality of your play is more important than the particular game you select...
Work hard at keeping your mind on the game. Play purposefully with an overall plan and specific tactics. Notice the sorts of things that distract you from attending to the game in each moment. Do you think too far ahead and miss the immediate opportunity? Do you get disgusted with yourself for missing the last play and so lose the next few plays? Do minor physical discomforts intrude on your attention? Do you get annoyed and distracted by your opponent's habits? Are you intimidated into self-consciousness and a self-defeating attitude by your opponent's style? Notice these mental slips, then bring your mind immediately back to the play at hand...
Attend to winning well or losing well with full attention. Continue playing ball even when the ball game is over. [pp.112-113]
Many of these faults are mine both in games and in life, and they're one reason I've never mastered any game, whether Chess, Go, or Focus. And to them I'll add one more, my most grievous fault: failure to see the whole board.
It's a good thing most of my gamer friends never read my blog; they already think I take gaming too seriously. The few who do read it probably agree with everything I've said here.
By the way, a while back I questioned why if there was a book called The Inner Game of Tennis, there wasn't an Inner Game of Hearts. It turns out there's an Inner Game of Chess, at least. It's not philosophical, though.
Entered 23:11 [/games/ludism] permalink
My friend Mark Schnitzius, who by the way is a contributor to Mind Performance Hacks, plays a game I will call The New Game. The first rule is:
Try something new every day.
He continues,
I've gradually evolved rules to the game, as to what counts and what doesn't, and since these rules are my own, they only really have to make sense to me. Seeing a new movie counts, but not a new TV show. Finishing a book I've never read counts, but not starting one, or finishing one I've already read. New restaurants always count, and even new dishes at familiar restaurants. What's best is things I've always been a little leery about trying (such as the Turkish delight I tried for the first time a few weeks back). Checking out new neighborhoods or new routes to get from point A to point B also count. Newness created is as good as newness discovered, so doing any sort of creative work counts.
The New Game is a good example of the Ludist idea of a positive life game. I'll be trying it myself starting today (Halloween/Samhain) and continuing through November. If I find it fun and useful, I'll keep playing.
Of course, I'll have my own rules about what counts as novelty, and I probably won't report every day on my blog the way Mark plans to, but you may hear from me once in a while.
Yours in neophilia,
Ron
Entered 10:18 [/games/ludism] permalink
Here is the First Law of Game Systems:
Given enough time, every set of objects becomes a game system.
Let's say you're someone living 10,000 years ago. You have a stick, some stones, and the dirt on the ground. They mean nothing to you. They're just a set of objects.
One day, you idly start using the stick to dig holes in the ground, you roll the rocks around with the stick, you drop them in the holes, and so on. You are playing with them. Your set of objects is now a toy, but there are no rules associated with it, so it's just a toy.
Someone else sees you playing with the sticks, stones, and holes in the dirt, and joins you in play. Over time, the two of you make certain rules about the way you play with your toy, and possibly over generations, Mancala evolves (or simpler games, such as Morris, or what have you). Now that your set of objects has one ruleset associated with it, it is not only a toy but also a game.
The game Mancala spreads, and people develop variants. Eventually, variants evolve that are different enough from Mancala to be called different games. Now that there is more than one ruleset, your set of objects (stick, rocks, and dirt) is not only a toy and a game, but also a game system.
Thus, a game system is always a game, a game is always a toy, and a toy is always a set of objects (possibly a set with only one member). Furthermore, each stage usually evolves from the one before it.
game system: 2+ rulesets
game: 1+ rulesets
toy: 0+ rulesets
It's basically a simple Venn diagram: four concentric circles, with (sets of) objects the outermost and game systems the innermost (see above).
I suppose negative numbers of rulesets could indicate further and further departure from use as a toy, so tools (such as rotary sanders) would have small negative numbers and weapons (such as neutron bombs) would have large ones. However, not every object is a tool, and not every tool is a weapon, which breaks the diagrammatic convention. Possibly usefulness and lethality need their own axes...
Entered 21:01 [/games/game_systems] permalink
I was recently asked by my friend Mark Haggerty to name my 10 favourite games for his game design research. It was tough!
I've added two more games to the blog version of my list. Here it is in alphabetical order. I'm not going to comment on them now; perhaps I will later. All links except Ultima's point to BoardGameGeek.
Entered 12:14 [/games] permalink
Coincidentally, I am no longer living a lie
So: in my bio at the front of Mind Performance Hacks, I wrote,
You can find [Ron's] multinefarious [sic] other projects at his home page (http://ron.ludism.org), including his award-winning board games, a list of his Short-Duration Personal Saviors, and his blog.
I confess that at the time I wrote this, I had only one award-winning board game, KidSprout Jumboree, co-authored with my wife, Marty.
I did have a game that took an honourable mention in another game design contest: Epic Funhouse, also co-authored with Marty and deemed "Cleverest overall concept" by the judge of the contest. So it was kind of an award. Technically. Miss Ingeniality, I guess.
But! In August 2006, I took first place in another game design contest with my solo project, Piecepack Letterbox, so now I can exhale and cease to fear being exposed as a dreadful fraud.
Except by myself.
Sorry.
Next up: I confess to hacking a gumball machine when I was 9.
Entered 02:14 [/games] permalink
Well, I updated Blosxom and no one complained, so I guess it wasn't too awful. At ease.
Entered 00:46 [/news] permalink
As I mentioned, I enjoy a good 3D chess variant now and again. I recently commissioned a board for Dragonchess from an artist named Orion who has a specialty in 3D chess boards.
Orion has some photos of the board he made for me at his blog. Beautiful. You should see the confusing board I used to use.
If you are looking to buy a 3D chess board of some unusual size or shape, or even of usual ones (for example, 8x8x3), I cannot recommend Orion enough. He listened to my requirements, made some suggestions, emailed me some sketches (first flat ones, then a 3D mockup in Sketchup), and was generally completely accommodating throughout the entire process, while maintaining his own vision and sense of his tools and materials. He built the board well within the amount of time I would expect a project of this scope to take, and I'm not going to tell you how much he charged me for it because "surprisingly affordable" doesn't begin to cover it; "embarrassingly affordable" is more like it. I almost think he was just looking for an excuse to make something cool.
I played four games with the board on Saturday night. It's not only beautiful, but highly functional. My friends and I at Seattle Cosmic had very few problems with it. Marty's camera battery died, or I'd have some photos of the board with pieces on it (I used the Exchess pieces from my EconoSplurge set). Soon...
Oh, I haven't paid the last part of the price of the board yet: Orion requires that everyone he makes a board for play him at a game of that chess variant. Considering Orion is at the equivalent of expert level in several different 3D variants, this may prove to be the most costly part of the bargain.
Entered 00:38 [/games] permalink
I plan to update the Blosxom engine underlying this blog soon, as well as fix some of the HMTL headers and so on. This means that you may see all of my blog entries show up as new in your RSS aggregator, maybe even twice.
I hate it when that happens on other blogs, so I thought I'd at least give you a heads-up. Can't be helped; a couple of people have had trouble with the RSS feed and stuff.
Entered 19:39 [/news] permalink
Well, I was the first to respond to Matt Arnold's instantiation of the Artwork Meme, and because Matt knows I like 3D chess variants, he drew me this excellent 3D movement diagram for the Jester piece, as described in his "Beginner's Guide to Space Chess" essay. (The Jester is a kind of 3D equivalent of a Knight from regular two-dimensional Chess; it's a leaper, not a rider like a Rook or Bishop.)
There's still time to respond to my own offer of free artwork. Comments are disabled for this blog, so just email me at rwhe@ludism.org.
Entered 00:00 [/culture] permalink
Be tolerant in what you accept and conservative in what you emit.
--old Internet Engineering Task Force motto, meant to apply to Unix programming, but useful in learning how to behave on the bus and generally in life situations involving other people
Entered 10:27 [/culture/commonplace_book] permalink
Ganked from Matt Arnold.
The first five people to respond to this post will get some form of art, by me, specifically for them. I make no guarantees about quality, but your piece will be unique.
The only catch, of course, is that as with most memes, if you sign up, you have to put this in your own journal as well.
Entered 16:47 [/culture] permalink
The hard problem of objectivity
There are different kinds of "best". Which is the best "best"?
Entered 18:37 [/sophia] permalink
Would you rather be a weremermaid or a merwerewolf?
What's the difference? A weremermaid is someone who turns into a mermaid at the full moon, whereas a merwerewolf is a werewolf with the tail of a fish.
(There's no punchline; sorry.)
Entered 13:35 [/supposedly_funny] permalink
Seven Dwarves: the Next Generation
Thanks to Marty for some of this, I don't remember which. Actually, thanks to her for remarking on my second favourite Pam too. Also, for her snarky comment about my taste. Come to think of it, she's been writing most of my blog lately. Go write your own blog, Marty!
Entered 22:08 [/supposedly_funny] permalink
Marty (on being compelled to watch an episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series): Why is it you can't enjoy anything unless it sucks?
Entered 01:06 [/personal] permalink
Entered 15:23 [/personal] permalink
I had this conversation with my friend John Braley back on the Fourth of July:
Me: Why are highly-themed games more popular than abstract games and game systems?
John: Why is Spider-Man more popular than Wittgenstein?
By the way, congratulations to my friend Kevan Davis for being the first to kick me when I immediately failed to fulfill my oath to blog daily.
Entered 21:10 [/games/game_systems] permalink
Mind Performance Hacks in Boing Boing
As I write this, my book Mind Performance Hacks is ranked 104 at Amazon. That means it's very nearly in the top 100 books Amazon is selling right now. Its ranking for all of today will be a lot lower; the book started out the day around 5000. However, thanks to a positive review by David Pescovitz at Boing Boing, ("...Mind Performance Hacks is a thinking person's self-help book. Highly recommended"), it did wonderfully well this afternoon.
If you're not familiar with Boing Boing, it's probably the most widely read blog in the world. Are you trying to tell me you read my blog but not Boing Boing? Pull the other one; it's got bells on. Now pull my finger.
The review's just in time for the holiday season, too. Remember, much like Fudgie the Whale, Mind Performance Hacks makes a great gift.
Entered 22:27 [/books] permalink
To make a long story short, having won the previous piecepack game design contest with my game Piecepack Letterbox, I was entitled to design and judge the next contest. The rules have been announced, and the contest is called Good Portsmanship.
The rules state,
In the spirit of free and open source software and culture, every entry must be a translation, or "port", of an existing game to the piecepack. While this may seem like a mechanical exercise at first glance. there is plenty of room for the game designer's talents.
You can enter games until 3 December 2006, and I hope you will, unless you're Charles Manson, which seems rather unlikely.
By the way, there was some debate on the piecepack mailing list about the rules of the contest, which some people thought were rather strict. There have been several easements, and the rules are now at version 2.
Entered 08:19 [/games/game_systems] permalink
"What's going on? I'm frightened."
Whence all this activity in the Info-Closet Annex? In the spirit of nulla dies sine linea, I have vowed to make at least one blog post a day from now on. What good is my jaw-dropping brilliance if it remains locked forever in my moleskine, never to be seen by those who would benefit from it most?
You are hereby conscripted to kick my ass at rwhe@ludism.org if I fail to meet this goal. Would you please do that? Would you kick the ass of a man?
Entered 00:00 [/news] permalink
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