virtual ludography part 1

A Virtual Ludography, Part 1

Games and Gaming in Second Life, a Virtual Ludography

The Start of an Ongoing, Occasional Commentary by Hotspur O'Toole

As is somewhat obvious to those that know me, I do rather like a good

board or card game in preference to many social activities, and am

generally fairly tickled to find a decent board or card game ported

into Second Life. As I gazed about Upstairs the other night, it

occurred to me that I am starting to get quite a collection together,

and maybe I should start cataloguing them.. at the very least, it may

be of some value to the casual reader who has an interest in the same

activities.

So, to proceed, I present a Virtual Ludography of the board and card

games I have discovered in Second Life, with the codicil that I cannot

cover all of them in a single piece, and that the field is ever

changing. I have found many brilliant games in SL dotted here and

there on the landscape, only to find that the designer has moved on

and is no longer around to support the game inside of Second Life.

I will start with the most accessible games, the ones that are rezzed

out on Polymath Upstairs right now.

1) CRIBBAGE: designed by "Friendly Little Games"s (aka Kisiri Mfume),

I found this for 700L on the SL Exchange. It is a very, very recent

purchase. A two player card game of some complexity with a great

visual component-- the scoring board. Cribbage boards come in a couple

of variations, depending on whom you ask. Socially, the game would

appeal to a couple of players, but isn't exactly a "crowd pleaser"

unless you enjoy playing with a lot of onlookers or have several

stations set up for a tournament or league play. At a mere 700

lindens, one could almost do something like that in SL, if one had a

mind. Cribbage does have a three, four and six hand variant, but it

would not appear as if this SL version supports anything other than

two players. I have only played with the mechanics of this

implementation yet, myself (it is rather new to me), but it seems like

everything works as advertised and the game can be played using this

set. Definitely a good purchase!

Rules of Cribbage Online at the American Cribbage Congress. Newbies

might want to try a game online HERE at Pogo, an online games website

(it's commercial, but they allow free play of Cribbage as a marketing

ploy). I admit to being an indifferent player, but hope to get better

at it.

2) ZENDO: Zendo is a logic game of guessing and counter guessing using

visual objects set up in a secret pattern by the Zen Master (or

referee, or GM, or whatever). The Master's acolytes attempt to achieve

the "Buddha nature" by guessing aspects of the secret pattern with

visual clues. A pattern can have the "Buddha nature" if it is all

green, or all large pieces, or pointed in a certain way, for instance.

Zendo makes use of a series of generic pyramidic "Icehouse" pieces

produced by Looney Labs. I had created a set of these to tinker with,

myself, but found a much nicer set of four colors inworld when Rivkin

Habsburg, creator of the En Garde system, took me to a Zendo set up

inworld (alas, I did not bookmark it, and I'm kicking myself). Since

they are freebies, I don't mind handing them out, either. The Zendo

Set you see here is one of my own design using those pieces. I added

bowls for guessing stones (green, white, black) and a quadrant for

facilitating koans or logic problems (e.g, a piece can only have the

Buddha nature if it is in the fourth quadrant...). At this stage the

set I created is incomplete. I require an object that will randomly

assign koans (logic problems written on a series of texture cards) to

the master, say, by touching it. One of the drawbacks of Zendo (as I

envision it in world) is that it is very much a game that requires you

to make some manual processes in world using EDIT tools (players must

own their OWN set of pieces to play this, that much is clear). The

game absolutely requires players skillful enough to manipulate objects

in physical game space, and adjust and tinker with them to formulate

complex problems (or koans in gamespeak). I need not mention that this

is a LOGIC game, and that in itself has a certain appeal that might

limit it to a certain kind of player or group of players. I, myself

(in RL) have played Zendo more than a few times with the same group of

people, and we great enjoy hamming up the "Master" and "Acolyte"

roles, speaking in bad casting call Oriental accents that would be

hard to replicate without voice. So it's not for everyone. On the plus

side, all this stuff is free.. and I'm providing pointers here so you

can make a set yourself, or use mine (rezzed out on Upstairs; I

believe I left it open copy). There is a freebie dispenser with

Treehosue (see below) that will give you all the Icehouse pieces.

The Zendo Home page, with many a useful variation and addition, is

located HERE. Karl Von Lauderman created a Java app that creates

random koans HERE. You can download a desktop app that (sorta, kinda)

plays Zendo in the role of the MASTER, HERE. I found the following

site that rated (and presented) dozens and dozens of existing Zendo

koans to be of great use. Oddly enough, Looney Laboratories, the

publisher of Zendo, no longer has it in print, but you can created it

easily enough with a few generic parts that they sell and are

available for free in Second Life.

3) PERUDO, aka LIAR'S DICE: is a game that involves betting, bluffing

and dice rolling. Pavig Lok has created a scripted object (in the

shape of a dice cup and not a fez, as some have suggested). To play

with a crowd, which is frankly the best way of playing this game, you

will need to give one of these objects to each player. The cup will

handle the dice rolling and presentation part (and not just with

numbers), and quite elegantly at that. You will have to keep track of

bets yourself (of course, we all know betting is illegal in Second

Life, right?). I am not sure of Pav's plans for this object (I helped

playtest, and haven't seen it for sale). I know that it works easily

enough, and is a great multiplayer game for a partying crowd. EDIT:

Pavig left a comment expressing her ultimate plans for the Perudo set

in the comments section of this post, as well as a location to get

your own copy. I strongly recommend picking up your own Perudo cup,

the game is a blast.

The Latin American variant of Liar's Dice, Perudo, has a website

dedicated to online play, Perudo.com. A rather comprehensive strategy

page is HERE. A commercial version is HERE.

4) Backgammon: I am not sure who the creator of this particular set

was, but it wasn't cheap, no matter what. I went to his/her shop in

world to pick it up and dallied about it for a while before committing

the Lindens. Would I really, really play this one that much to justify

the sale? I guess I'm a gambler, because I ended up purchasing it. As

I write this the world is down and I can't log in to check the

creator.

The set is designed for two player play (obviously) but it is not so

all encompassing as to prevent it from being a social game. I can

attest that this set plays a real, honest-to-goodness game of

backgammon from start to finish (although, I can't (right now) verify

if it handles doubling or not, which is a crucial element to the RL

game). EDIT: the designer is Blue Brock, and this backgammon set is

available on SLeX for 4499 Lindens HERE, or you can visit his store in

Bunyip HERE. I will be visiting that store in a follow up posting on

this subject, as Mr. Brock has made more than a backgammon set.

Mr. Brock's description of the set:

Wow! There is finally a backgammon game in SL! This game is for 2

players and plays just like real backgammon. Bar off all your pieces

before your opponent and you win!Backgammon 2.0 is here! Smaller

table, less prims and more stable.Has all the same rules as real

backgammon including getting sent to the bar.This game is fully

animated and runs on the table itself, not in a HUD...This game has

full sounds and animation, including dice and avatar animations.Pay

into a pot or just play for fun.With your purchase you are entitled to

upgrades to Gammon until the end of time

So there are the first four or so of JUST the Polymath collection, of

which there are more. I will publish more in this series in the near

future.

SERIES KEY:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3