17 Houses

[avram]

Phew! Games-Club-in-Exile at Stephen Tihor’s place ran past 4 AM last night. I got there too late for the New England game, But got in on a game of Labyrinth (The Card Game) that ran longer than was expected by the people who’d played it before, possibly because people spent time trying to figure out how to make their plays so as not to make life easy for the other players. Beth and I tied for victory with nine captures tiles each.

Stephen and some of his friends have been working on a game based on GDW’s Red Empire, called 17 Houses, and Steven Brust fans will know what the inspiration for the new game was. It’s a pretty good adaptation of the subject matter, with players each taking the part of one House (I was Hawk; others in play were Tsalmoth, Jhereg, Yendi, Orca, and Jhegaala), bidding on various items and the services of personages as they come up, launching attacks on each other, and combining efforts to avert crises (or failing to avert them, which is one way the Cycle can turn, causing the player to the left of the current Emperor to become the new one). Those players who’ve read the Vlad books were chuckling over the various game bits, and oohing and aahing as Blackwand and Sethra and the Lesser Sea of Chaos showed up in play. It’s still not quite a finished game, though, and it ran pretty long.

Then bigscary and I introduced kent_allard_jr to Veselka, the 24-hour Ukranian restaurant on Second Avenue. The good one, I mean. Kiev just isn’t what it used to be.

Comments

[bigscary.livejournal.com]

Third of the way into teckla.
Just as far as I am, I'm appreciating the game more, as well as mulling over both flavor and play enhancing changes (the largest flaws seem to be in the personages and heir -- heirs, by nature, should be tougher, more valuable targets than average personages. As it is, they range, barring enhancement, from the weakest to just under the toughest personages in strength, and below the lowest in value for killing (there were a total of two heir-killings in the game, one of which was the game ending assasination of the emperor). I'm thinking of some minor-fix solutions...)

[avram]

Problem is, if you use personage cards (or anything other than ordinary number cards) for heirs, it makes it much more difficult to pick an heir.

Brokedown Palace was published between Yendi and Teckla; you need to read that at some point. As well as the Paarfi books, which take place before and during the Interregnum.

[bigscary.livejournal.com]

None of you could have told me that Friday? I just finished Teckla this morning.