a cautionary tale of sandglasses
I only managed to get to over to the Westin hotel at LAX on Saturday for the revamped Strategicon’s Orccon (then spent Sunday working in a distracted haze imagining all the awesomeness I was undoubtedly missing out on).
In fact, there are probably a lucky few still there as I type this, holding on for dear life for the last half-day of the con. For most of us, President’s Day is one of those holidays “celebrated” only by the post offices and the banks of the country, which just makes our normal daily routine that much more inconvenient because all of a sudden you can’t send letters or deposit money … but you still have to do all the rest of what amounts to a regular old workday.
Anyway, flash back forty-eight hours to Saturday, a day entirely devoted to gaming and geekery, which is just fine by me.
And here’s one thing I noticed: as the day wore on there was this very powerful increase in energy, such that as the sun vanished into the Pacific, the buzz at the event — and the crowds — were many times greater than it had been when I arrived. The gaming rooms were literally teeming with people, and what had been a quiet and sedate open gaming room (mostly empty) at noontime was suddenly way, way too small for the purpose by six in the evening. And the din — man, it was noisy in there.
Rather bizarrely, considering the point of the whole enterprise, I got very little gaming in, but I did participate in a Space Dealer tournament. Now, Space Dealer has generated a lot of buzz since it took so many people by surprise at last year’s Essen Game Fair in Germany, and the sheer novelty factor of a European board game with a space theme (try to fill a hand counting the number of Eurogames with space themes — I dare you) is enough in itself to cause a certain stir.
But the real element that grabs people’s attention — I’ll call it a gimmick; more on that in a sec — is the fact that this game is entirely played in realtime, using little sandglasses which are, at least in theory, one-minute timepieces. The game itself is timed to last exactly thirty minutes (a cd with “space music” and a robot voice warning you of the remaining time is included in the box, but we just used a stopwatch at the con) at the end of which, that’s it, game over.
Succinctly put, Space Dealer is a game of building commodities and then sending them out in a little space ship to your opponents’ star systems to fulfill commodity “needs” that they have. In the middle of the table is this octagonal track which doubles as a kind of track of the star system (four corners of which represent the star system of each player) and also the scoring track. On the table in front of each player is a rather interesting card strip where you place cards from your hand first to develop technologies or commodity production centers, and then to deploy those cards, from whence they are used to manufacture commodities that you send off in your little spaceship. The cards are arrayed in a row in front of you once they are activated, and most of these cards — in addition to being your manufactories — also show the “needs” of your own solar system, which the other players can see and will try to fulfill by bringing their own spaceship round and dumping off the commodities for those cards that haven’t been filled.
Once a card’s needs have been met, the player who’s done so places a scoring block in that player’s color on the card and scores a certain number of points for herself, and then a certain number of points for the player whose card’s needs have just been met (which is generally proportionately less than the player who’s brought the commodities: for example, 3 points for the commodity-bringer, 1 point for the player who’s card was just fulfilled). In this way, every time a score is made from a supply run, usually two players are receiving scores. Once that need is met, it’s out of the game and no one else can score for it, which turns Space Dealer into something of a race. The guy who won the second game (hands down I might add) beat me cleanly to nearly every need that I was on my way to fulfill, so there’s strong competition to get your commodities to those needs before someone else does, and snag those points.
For every action in this sequence you want to fulfill, one of your sandglasses is placed on the spot and, when the sand runs out, that activity can be performed. It’s very linear: you build a technology/production card with one sandglass, then you manufacture the commodity that card provides with another sandglass, then you travel one star system with one sandglass, until you finally reach the star system of the player who has a need your equipped to fulfill. Then you use another sandglass to get your empty spaceship back, and so on. Thus the realtime nature of the game.
In quintessential Germanic fashion, all the commodities are just little colored wooden cubes, and the needs printed on each card that you’re sending your spaceship out to fulfill are printed with a row of squares. You have to deliver all of the needed colors simultaneously in order to score for that particular need, and the more colors printed on that particular card, the higher the score when you fulfill that need.
It’s a rather simple game mechanic, and it’s the realtime nature with those crazy sandglasses that makes the game stand out (other than the very rare sci-fi theme). But after two plays I have very mixed opinions of the whole realtime mechanic. I found for one thing that it severely cut down on player interaction — I don’t think I’ve ever played a game that was so quiet. I don’t think I actually ever heard the player to my right speak even once during the entire 30 minutes of my second game, and from my point of view that just can’t be right. And because each player is so concerned with performing a task as quickly as possible, and racing to get those needs fulfilled soonest, it’s very hard to really stay all that aware of what the other players are doing, so I feel that there’s an enormous chance for rules to be misinterpreted or mistakes to be made (not necessarily intentionally) and go unnoticed. I would definitely say that Space Dealer needs to be played only by people who very firmly understand the rules, because once the clock is ticking, it’s just not that easy to get questions answered or to have other players even notice if you’re doing something wrong.
At the end of the day, most of Space Dealer’s unique appeal comes from the realtime aspect, and it’s this very aspect which I think is something more akin to a gimmick than a real strong mechanic. By the end of my second game, I’d kind of had my fill of the thing. Some of the other mechanics are nice in the game — I like the way each player’s table area is set up, and the way these cards are both commodity manufactories and needs at the same time, but ironically enough these other mechanics are sort of marginalized by those damned sandglasses, and I think that ultimately I just got tired of sitting and staring at the sands run through and then rush like mad to move my little cardboard spaceship around.
Some freeform thoughts from the rest of the day:
I bought a mostly unpunched copy of the legendary Magic Realm from a dealer who was — wait for this — dressed entirely and convincingly in cowboy attire. I’m not talking about Roy Rogers glitter-girl attire, I’m talking Snake Plissken in Tombstone attire. He was also a really nice guy and gave me a kick-ass deal on a game I’ve wanted for a long time. His six-shooters in his holster may have helped me to be a real nice guy too.
GMT Games is fucking awesome. They had a booth — right next to the cowboy dude — and I was drooling and reaching for various types of plastic and bills to buy, well, everything when a little voice screeched in my head that, No, begging on street corners is not an acceptable and totally justifiable price to pay for some frickin’ awesome games. I walked away having spent just 16 bucks on a now-out-of-print copy of Knizia’s Battle Line a smugger, more self-righteous geek.
My friend Tewhill and I sat at the hotel bar for over half an hour after getting fair-piss weak beer while the bartender did a runner. I swear, the bar was unattended for almost an hour while we sat there and, you know, got kinda pissed off. (I walked by there two hours later and it was still empty.) Some guys just really push their luck. I hope he chokes on a moldy peanut.
There was a way-cool homemade schematic/map of the Serenity ship with each level (printed in color and embedded in Plexiglas) stacked on the level below with struts. It was really sweet, but I couldn’t fawn all over the creator because he was GMing the crew planetside while they delivered some stolen ore or something, doubtless on their way to having River run off and the Preacher get shot and nearly die so Jayne could riffle through everyone’s luggage while Mal found himself in the unfortunate situation of having to be a penniless hero, rather than a wealthy bad guy. Or something.
I discovered the Pulp Gamer podcast (http://www.pulpgamer.com, natch) purely as a result of seeing the dude happily plugging away on his portable rig in the open gaming room. Looks like a good podcast and I’ve downloaded a couple of episodes.
Liz Rizzo was nerding it away in a huge session of Game Of Thrones, and I happily forced my way into the table, distracted her, and probably ensured that she lost soundly. Now, here’s the thing: if you go to her blog you’ll hear her speak with the most profound frankness about things like her purple friends, socially-conscious Hollywood schmooze fests, filmmaking, and, uh, a little more about her purple friend. But the open secret here is that she’s just a total geek like the rest of us. Don’t be fooled — she’s played Magic Realm more than I have. Don’t tell her I said this because I need to be really nice to her since she now has a job at a post-production house in Hollywood, and I’ll never know when I’ll need to pull a favor to get some post work done….
Finally, in the bathroom for a last whizz just before heading for home, I overheard this remark from a guy with long hair shaving at the sink: “Dude, have you ever noticed, Lars Ulrich is kind of a douchebag? But that’s okay, because he kicks ass.” Ah, the pleasures of gaming cons!
Technorati tags: Orccon, Space Dealer
[…] In my recent report on Orccon, an entire section was mysteriously excised from the final product, rather like accidentally leaving your supporting actor’s Oscar moment on the cutting room floor. […]
February 22nd, 2007 at 10:55 am