Musings of a Virgin

This post is a little out of sequence. Its about what I did Friday night. Every other friday's are my gaming nights, when I gather with a bunch of other people to play Dungeon and Dragons (D&D). This Friday we skipped D&D due to schedule conflicts and instead played a board game called "Twilight Imperium".

Twilight Imperium is a space strategy game. Basically each player randomly chooses a race to play and we all start with X number of resources and a home planet/s (depending on our race) and from there its a game of trade and warfare to control more planets and resources and eventually domination of the universe which is of course done by wiping out all your opponents.

At its basic level this game is much like Risk or Civilization. But THE RULES!!! It took over 3 hours just to set up this game. I'll admit that much of that was simply reading the rules for the first time and none of us had played this version of the game before (3rd edition). I was initially overwhelmed by the complex rules of the game more than anyone else because I had never played any version of this game before.

Here's the thing, about 1 hour into this game I was bored. A part of me worries about that, because I have a terrible track record with strategy games, I'm simply horrible at them. Is there something in me that's deficient? Can my brain simply not process strategy and rules of diplomacy and warfare? I enjoy Risk, but that game is very simplistic which appeals to me. Its the more complex games like Axis and Allies, Civilization, and Twilight Imperium that completely stump me. Is it my lack of skill at such games the reason I suck at them?

Here's the twist. I know from experience that if that same game was converted to a fantasy setting and all the space ships were instead fantasy units like Elfs, Unicorns and Dragons and the technology tree was converted into a Spells system, it would not matter if the rules were twice as thick and complex, I would be so energized about the game. Not sure if I would be any better at the strategy part but I would definately enjoy such a game much more and to my mind that would make me better at it right?

Posted by emyln on Monday, August 08, 2005 at 5:07 PM | Permalink