I added three new games to my Emergency Game Kit, and removed one:

• Added Aces and Faces, which is Quarto with a standard deck of cards
• Added Haggis, an acclaimed trick-taking game for two or three
• Replaced Chess Contradance with Safe Passage; Safe Passage is like Chess Contradance solitaire 2.0

Rules to the 75 tabletop games I take with me everywhere

The Emergency Game Kit Rulebook page is a table of contents for the rulebook I've assembled for my Emergency Game Kit. The rightmost column of the table contains links that go as directly as possible to printable versions of the rules in my anthology. In a few cases, I can't link to them; this is usually explained.

The printable rules are usually PDFs, but sometimes in the form of web pages, Word docs, etc. If rules are not in PDF form, I print them to PDF myself, and then I gather the rules PDFs into a directory in alphabetical order, using a Linux program called PDFtk to assemble them into one large ebook that I can carry with me on my ereader. I encourage you to do the same. I wish I could provide you with the latest version of my rules ebook, but remixing and redistributing the rules in that way would infringe multiple copyrights.

When I print out rules on paper for my own use, I keep them in a flexible three-ring binder inside my emergency game kit. I don't bother to print the whole rulebook at once, even though I could thanks to my big PDF ebook, but instead insert and remove individual pages as needed. This way, I can also print the longer rulesets four-up and adjust other print jobs as necessary.

I hope you enjoy this rulebook. It took a few months of effort just to gather decent, printable versions of the rules to my favorite games (and games that promise to be fun), not to mention the time put into reading and learning them.

Share and Enjoy!

I'm running a play-by-wiki matrix game starting on 1 March 2019 with the satirical PAXsims scenario War Plan Tangerine:

From the ever-prolific Tim Price comes yet another matrix game, War Plan Tangerine. In this, the government of the UK must prepare for the impending state visit of the rather unpopular President of the Generic Senior Ally.

This is, of course, a COMPLETELY FICTIONAL scenario. Any resemblance between the President of the GSA and any current world leader is ENTIRELY COINCIDENTAL.

If you've never heard of Matrix Games, now's a good time to find out about them!

One game to rule them all

Esperanto is a constructed human language created around 1887 by L.L. Zamenhof. It was designed as a universal second language to promote international peace and cooperation. As an educated person, you might know all this already. You might even speak Esperanto, like me. So when I ask, "What is the Esperanto of games?", you might think I'm asking whether there is a kind of glue or interlanguage that binds games together in a ludic synergy — or something like that.

Not quite. For the purposes of this post, I'm referring to the propaedeutic properties of Esperanto. Propaedeutic knowledge is introductory knowledge that makes it easier to study a skill or discipline. For example, children in music programs are often taught to play the recorder before learning another instrument such as piano because the recorder is relatively easy to learn and manipulate, yet all the same principles of music theory apply to it.

It's well known that Esperanto has a pronounced propaedeutic effect on learning other languages. For example, schoolchildren taught a year of Esperanto followed by three years of French consistently speak better French than if they have merely had four years of French instruction. Similar improvement has been shown even for non-Romance languages such as Russian.

Why would this be?

The preparatory teaching [of Esperanto] prepares students to become aware of the essential characteristics of languages, using the international language Esperanto as a model, a language with a clear and simple structure, almost completely regular and, thanks to its agglutinative character, detachable into combinable morphological elements; this model is easy to assimilate and develops aptitude for the study of other languages.[1]

So when I ask "What is the Esperanto of games?", I'm really asking, "Does there exist a simple, flexible, universal game that could have the same accelerated learning effect for other games that Esperanto does for other languages?" Is there one game you could learn that would immediately give you a strategic advantage in every other game you want to play? If not, what would it take to design one?

Next time, I'll propose a couple of candidate propaedeutic games and talk about someone I knew who used one of them to great strategic advantage. Meanwhile, there's a lot to talk about here, so if this topic interests you, please leave a comment with the Comments link below (and check back for responses).

Announcing the Matrix Games Wiki, meant to be a central clearinghouse for information about matrix games.

Matrix games were invented by Chris Engle and live in the space between boardgames and roleplaying games. They are a simple kind of game engine that enables you to play through scenarios not easily simulated by other games. The power and flexibility of Matrix Games come from how turns are resolved. Rather than try to make up rules for every instance, players make arguments for what they want to happen next in the game. Another player sets a "to happen" threshold for each argument, and a die roll later, you know which actions became facts in the game world and which didn’t happen at all. It might sound too simple (or too complicated) to work, but it does.

Matrix Games are a low-tech way to game events that make supercomputers twitch. As Neal Durando says in The Matrix Games Handbook,

Traditional RPG rules support physical confrontation among individuals. The argument mechanism of Matrix Games applies whether the conflict is physical, social, or intellectual. More interestingly, it is also applies regardless of the scale... You might resolve a boxing match using the same mechanism as an intercontinental war.

Matrix games have been used for murder mysteries, science fiction, horror games, literary games, wargames, and political campaigns. They are especially good for solo games. There are even serious games for education, psychotherapy, and planning.

On the Matrix Games Wiki, as on other wikis, such as Wikipedia, you can add and edit pages yourself, including new matrix game rules, links to matrix game resources, and play-by-wiki matrix games.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Operation Wifebeater: Scrabble for Supremacy, Part I

I've never been able to beat my wife Marty, but I'd love to. At Scrabble! Jesus, what do you take me for?

Marty enjoys playing Scrabble with me, and not just because she always wins. It's one of our Things. I gave her a year's worth of monthly Scrabble games with me for her birthday last year, and I still haven't caught up. That's one reason I decided to make Scrabble one of my 10×10 games this year.

Date/time: 20 January 2019, 15:45-18:15
Location: Home (Kent, WA)
Players: Marty and Ron Hale-Evans
Games played: Scrabble
Game number: 1 of 10 (see ScoreBoard)
Winner: Marty

We draw tiles to see who goes first. I draw 'L'. Marty draws 'A'. I immediately see how this is going to go. Her first word is FLYER, for 30 points. I, on the other hand, am beset throughout the game with either low-scoring words (LEARN, 5 points) or high-scoring opportunities but nowhere to put them (early case in point: ROUX).

Marty is keeping score with her vintage tile rack, which has little pegs and displays numbers in base 20 or something. Her ancient Mayan scoreboard is fun for her, but makes it hard to read, especially upside-down. The accompanying vintage board has ridges that hold the tiles in place, so our game is not disrupted when our presumptuous Pomeranian Humphrey, driven mad by lust for off-brand cheetos, bounds onto the rotating board in mid-game. My concentration, however, is frequently disrupted by my designated role of pom wrangler.

Marty mocks the delicate way I lay down my Scrabble tiles, then tells me she actually enjoys it. (Good, because you're stuck with it.)

Marty bingoes at one point with GOONIER, a word that applies poignantly to the bogus words I am nervously juggling. I waste time and gumption considering NITELIFE and NAILUSE (in conjunction with a hammer, it's what sets us apart from the animals). Halfway, I finally break into a legit triple-digit score with SLUT (double letter score and triple word score for 15 points, woot). I occasionally find myself wishing I were playing Marty at Upwords instead of Scrabble, both for momentary tactical reasons (it would be great to play particular tiles on top of ones that are already there) and because I have actually beat her at that game.

In the end, it's Marty who's the triumphant spousebeater. She scores 373 points to my 201. Marty consoles me by saying I was better at blocking her plays this time. She also recommends I learn my two-letter words and simply play as much as I can. And so I shall! With her!

At least she didn't double my score again. I resolve to score higher next time and make Marty score lower; we'll see how that works out.

Voyage to the games of an alternate Earth through a matrix of possibilities

Date/Time: 19 January 2019, 18:00-21:45
Location: Home (Kent, WA)
Players: Ron
Games played: Matrix Game (Consensus Fantasy)
Game number: 1 of 10 (see ScoreBoard)
Winner: n/a

One of the 327 or so ideas I like to spread is matrix games. Matrix games were invented by Chris Engle in 1988 and are a little like board games and a lot like roleplaying games — but more flexible and powerful. Matrix games have few rules but rich play. You might think of them as the RPG equivalent of Go in that respect. In short, players don't usually roleplay a particular character, but collaborate in saying how a game world develops. I appreciate matrix games so much, I started the Matrix Games Wiki as a central place to discuss and contribute matrix game material.

Recently, because I had an idea for my book in progress, and as part of my 10x10 game challenge (in this case, to play 10 matrix games in 2019), I spent three hours playing a solo matrix game to develop that idea for my book, Parallel Pastimes, a collection of reviews of imaginary games from a parallel world.

I intended to explore and develop my parallel world of Counter, and specifically Counter's imaginary game with the working title of The Gamer's I Ching. This book/game is modeled on the real-life Solo System (and even in a way the Matrix Game), but rather than being an artificial opponent or gamemaster, it's a player's advisor of a kind called an oracle. On Counter, players consult oracles during multiplayer game play and often take their advice on the game situation and the next move.

I'd like to give a complete report of my expedition to Counter, but I must keep some of it to myself while I continue to work on my book, so what follows is more summary or condensation than "actual play". Meanwhile, I'll just say that this entire scenario was developed on the fly with the help of the Matrix Game. It's a worthwhile writer's tool and also fun to use. Of course it's fun — it's a game.

GigaMesh gossip had it that the game that famous game critic Ludic Flâneur was about to playtest was an improved oracle designed by AI. He did not himself know where the improvements lay. He took the book to a secret game night where all the players of the evening's board game were running (or being run by?) other oracles.

Although LF went to the party to playtest his oracle-on-loan, he found himself far more intrigued by the game on which he was testing it. This was Little Lands of Opportunity, a financial game about crowdfunding competing micronations. He found it so intriguing that (just this once?) he lost all his critical integrity and became an unreliable narrator and Little Lands forever fan.

The Ludic Flâneur's review of the oracle became instead a review of Little Lands of Opportunity, about which there was nothing objectively special as a game in Counter's game-rich environment. But why?

All will be explained. Soon, soon... I hope.

Comments? Please leave them with the link at page bottom.