Infrequent posts, old books, and Khronos
Jan. 21st, 2008 06:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hwangoWhen 2008 started, I saw someone fill out the LJ meme where you post the first sentence of your first post from every month. I thought it might be amusing to see what the results for my journal would be, and I discovered that I haven't been posting nearly as often as I used to. Heck, I've only got 1 post in the whole month of September. I don't know if my life got boring, or if I just got tired of telling the world about it. I like having entries to look back on for my own amusement, though, so I'm going to try to most more often again.
I've been re-reading a lot of old books lately - stuff I first read when I was much, much younger. It's sort of like a really boring mid-life crisis, as I try to revisit pieces of my childhood or something. Actually, it's more that I have this bookcase full of books I haven't touched for twenty years, and it seemed like it might be fun to read some of them again. For the most part, it's been depressing. I remember enjoying a lot of these books when I was younger, and it's sad to find that some of them are really, really awful. The only thing so far that held up sort of okay was The Belgariad, and even that was only so-so. Part of the problem is that I've soured badly on prophecy as a storytelling device, and the Belgariad has some of the most heavy-handed prophecizing I've ever seen. The scope of the conflict is also too big to be engaging - if they fail, everything everywhere will cease to exist. Uh, yeah, that sounds pretty bad, I guess. After the Belgariad turned out sort of okay I thought I'd try the Mallorean again, working under the dim hope that if I already knew it was going to be the same story told over again (but worse), it wouldn't be as much of a disappointment as it was when I read it the first time. Actually, it was worse. Much worse. I almost skipped a couple of books. Bleh. The only other thing I have to say about the revisiting childhood books experiment is that I don't know if I can ever open another Alan Dean Foster book again for as long as I live. Eek, the two of those I re-read were dreadful.
Our gaming group tried Khronos for the first time tonight. I may be unfairly biased because I did very well and won, but it seemed really cool. The rulebook is rather forbidding though - not just because the game is very complicated, but because the rulebook tells you many times that things are forbidden. "It is forbidden to build a religious or military building in the Age of Reason," and that sort of thing. It made for amusing reading. I remember that I said that other games tried to tell you in the rules that the game isn't really as complicated as it seems, and you'll get the hang of it once you try it. The rulebook for Khronos seemed to be trying to tell us something more along the lines of "Dude, this game is way too complicated for you." In spite of this, most of it really did make sense once we were playing, and I think with a little practice we'll be able to handle the Rule of Heirarchy and the rather exotic scoring system like it's second nature.
Honestly, I rather like that the game is complicated, because it's not immediately obvious what the best route to victory is. We can play several games exploring different strategies, trying to figure out what works and what doesn't. I'm looking forward to trying it again and trying to profit from the Age of Reason this time. It reminds me a lot of when we first started playing Puerto Rico, which was another one I that was really eager to play again almost immediately.
Oh, and I was getting bored with some of my old icons, and decided it was time to get myself an icon with GREAT FLAMING EYEBROWS!
I've been re-reading a lot of old books lately - stuff I first read when I was much, much younger. It's sort of like a really boring mid-life crisis, as I try to revisit pieces of my childhood or something. Actually, it's more that I have this bookcase full of books I haven't touched for twenty years, and it seemed like it might be fun to read some of them again. For the most part, it's been depressing. I remember enjoying a lot of these books when I was younger, and it's sad to find that some of them are really, really awful. The only thing so far that held up sort of okay was The Belgariad, and even that was only so-so. Part of the problem is that I've soured badly on prophecy as a storytelling device, and the Belgariad has some of the most heavy-handed prophecizing I've ever seen. The scope of the conflict is also too big to be engaging - if they fail, everything everywhere will cease to exist. Uh, yeah, that sounds pretty bad, I guess. After the Belgariad turned out sort of okay I thought I'd try the Mallorean again, working under the dim hope that if I already knew it was going to be the same story told over again (but worse), it wouldn't be as much of a disappointment as it was when I read it the first time. Actually, it was worse. Much worse. I almost skipped a couple of books. Bleh. The only other thing I have to say about the revisiting childhood books experiment is that I don't know if I can ever open another Alan Dean Foster book again for as long as I live. Eek, the two of those I re-read were dreadful.
Our gaming group tried Khronos for the first time tonight. I may be unfairly biased because I did very well and won, but it seemed really cool. The rulebook is rather forbidding though - not just because the game is very complicated, but because the rulebook tells you many times that things are forbidden. "It is forbidden to build a religious or military building in the Age of Reason," and that sort of thing. It made for amusing reading. I remember that I said that other games tried to tell you in the rules that the game isn't really as complicated as it seems, and you'll get the hang of it once you try it. The rulebook for Khronos seemed to be trying to tell us something more along the lines of "Dude, this game is way too complicated for you." In spite of this, most of it really did make sense once we were playing, and I think with a little practice we'll be able to handle the Rule of Heirarchy and the rather exotic scoring system like it's second nature.
Honestly, I rather like that the game is complicated, because it's not immediately obvious what the best route to victory is. We can play several games exploring different strategies, trying to figure out what works and what doesn't. I'm looking forward to trying it again and trying to profit from the Age of Reason this time. It reminds me a lot of when we first started playing Puerto Rico, which was another one I that was really eager to play again almost immediately.
Oh, and I was getting bored with some of my old icons, and decided it was time to get myself an icon with GREAT FLAMING EYEBROWS!
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no subject
Date: 2008-01-21 01:01 pm (UTC)I enjoyed Khronos too and I'm looking forward to playing some more. I think I would like to try getting more ownership in the Age of Reason next time. Early investment in renovating ruins might be a fairly cost effective way to benefit from other people's upgrading actions.
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2008-01-21 07:36 pm (UTC)I didn't even bother trying to reread the Mercedes Lackey Valdemar series. The telepathic ponies and hot gay men may go make some teen girl happy.
Decided to hang onto Gael Baudino's Dragonsword series for the moment. Also hanging onto C.J. Cherry's Chanur series. I'm currently rereading Robert McCammon. They Thirst went to live elsewhere, as did Usher's Passing. I'll probably keep The Wolf's Hour.
Kept the Tanya Huff Vivki Nelson series. Watched the TV show on Lifetime. (Blood Ties) Only took them 15+ years to make it into a TV series... Waiting for the DVD set.