Monthly Archives: November 2020

Free Play (Week 2)

For free play week 2, me and a few other classmates played Among Us. This game is so trendy right now and has been everywhere over social media, yet this was my first time giving it a shot and I had a lot of fun playing. Of course, the first game I was an imposter and I had no idea what to do. In the very first round I used a vent in front of everybody and was called out as an imposter almost immediately, so that didn’t go very well for me. After that though, I started to build an understanding for strategy began to play better. I was only imposter once more throughout the session and ended up winning with another player.

We played in public lobbies to get more players and that was an experience in its own. I recommend turning on censor chat because some people can be straight up toxic nowadays. Other people were really nice and played the game cooperatively which was good to see. I can see why people are honestly addicted to this game. It is simple, it goes by relatively fast, and has a cheeky component of strategy and lying to other players to win the game. You never really know the truth (unless you were by the crime scene) which makes it difficult to pinpoint an imposter.

In terms of leadership, I was not one of them. leadership arises from people that have played this game a lot because they know the map and tend to know where most players were during a round. They help facilitate discussion when a body is reported. They also tend to make fantastic liars when they are imposter. This game was actually very fun and I would recommend it to others, plus, it’s free to play!

Ladies and Gentlemen

This game was my least favorite of all in class. I think it had potential to be more fun but my group seemed rather unmotivated and not many people knew the rules. However, we still managed to laugh and have fun. I played the role of a lady and I think I had more fun this way than playing a gentleman. It’s comical playing the role of the opposite sex and begging my husband (who was a woman) to buy me nice clothes and accessories. There were so many moving pieces on tabletop simulator which made it difficult to keep things organized. The gameplay itself was a little choppy due to server lag which could have been fixed by in person gameplay.

Leaders here, I figured were the women. They were the ones who picked what they wanted and tried to match themselves against other women to ensure they looked better at the ball. However, it was up to the men to acquire enough money to satisfy their lady so leadership shifted around the table at various points in the game.

When it came down to the ball, we couldn’t decide who looked better, so we concluded the game with a draw. That way everybody could feel somewhat accomplished in that they did a good job playing the game. I would need to read over the rules a bit more to ensure a better understanding and a better experience playing this game again. It wasn’t a bad game, it just wasn’t my favorite.

D&D (Weeks 1-3)

I had heard so much about this game through the years and never had a chance to play it until this class. It was great experience overall. There was so much free rein over what to do and where to go. I love the aspect of the medieval setting. When building my character, I tried giving myself traits that corresponded with who I am in real life. I focused on giving myself extra benefits in the elements of stealth and persuasion. These traits proved to serve useful when playing the game. At one point when crew was settling down in a town for a short rest, I went to a blacksmith shop and persuaded the shopkeeper to sell me weapons at a discounted price. And in battle, my extra stealth points gave me and my team an advantage when engaging targets that were unaware of our presence. At one point, our whole team almost got eliminated by goblins if it weren’t for healing potions that one member provided.

Our leaders here were, of course, our dungeon master Griff, who did a fantastic job of conducting the game and answering questions when needed, and Joe, a member of our team who had already played D&D prior to this session. Joe would command the squad and instruct us on what to do. Both Joe and Griff made the game much easier for the myself and the others who had never played before.

Despite us never reaching our goal in the game because we ran out of class time, this experience was loads of fun for me. It was something new and I really admire the free will aspect and the hundreds of different paths to take to accomplish a goal.

Free Play (Week 1)

For our first week of free play, I ended up playing Can’t Stop again with one other classmate, Boran. We had a 1v1 duel marathon of Can’t Stop. It got very competitive at times and we both enjoyed playing. It was a close race for the first half hour, but I ended winning 4 or 5 games in row after that to give myself quite the lead over my opponent. I think I may have just gotten really lucky since both Boran and I were utilizing similar strategy of trying to be the first to take the middle lanes of 6,7 and 8. Nonetheless, it was competitive throughout and we ended up cranking out games in like 4-8 minutes spans. It was a complete rapid fire pace of play since it was just the two of us.

I kind of saw myself as a leader in this game because I had already won so many games in the previous session of Can’t Stop. I felt like I knew exactly what i was doing entering the game. I also tried giving Boran advice when he went for risky plays with numbers like 2, 3, 11, and 12. Whether or not he listened to me was a different story. He may have gotten super lucky and beat me that way, or completely threw the game for himself.

Cant Stop/ Incan Gold

This was one of my favorite weeks of class. I’m fascinated by games based off chance and probability and games like Can’t Stop gave me inspiration to construct a game of chance for my final game presentation. I had never played this game before so I was determined to use my knowledge of probability and statistics to give myself a competitive edge over the other players. I ended winning a good majority of the games in fact. I quickly discovered that having the numbers 6,7, and 8 was the most powerful way of advancing up the board, since they are the most common roll combinations when throwing two dice.

This game was actually very simple to run virtually and honestly probably quicker than in person because the game would tell you automatically which lanes you could and couldn’t move up in as opposed to calculating that yourself. This game was fun and everyone in my group enjoyed it. Everyone was laughing and even routing for others when someone would go on a 10+ roll streak. The pace of play was rapid fire and we got multiple games in within our class session which I think is perk to the game. Unfortunately, we could not run Incan Gold over Tabletopia, so my group ended up playing Can’t Stop for the whole session. We had a lot of fun playing this game and I think this is one that I will show to my poker buddies back at home, since they also enjoy games that are probability based.

Fiasco (Week 2)

During the second week of Fiasco, we began with the Tilt and the most chaotic part of the game. The storyline took a turn and I was no longer the central antagonist to the plot. It was fun to see what other players came up with to mitigate the story and make things more interesting. We finally hit the conclusion and wrapped up the game where everyone’s fate besides one player was ugly and unfavorable.

Overall, the game played out well over the two weeks, however there were many downsides. Being online for this game made it difficult to keep scenes flowing and interesting. There were numerous times where the zoom call went silent and no one could find the initiative to continue the story. I think if we were in person it would be a lot easier to avoid this issue.

Fiasco contains many elements that tie to leadership. For one, a person who is constantly active in the role playing aspect and keeps the story going, I think is considered a leader in this game. This person for us was Julia. She was always enthusiastic and pushed me and the other players on the path of developing abstract stories. Not only this, but Julia also delegated leadership onto others, via the storytelling. If someone’s character ended up to be more important to the story, they could then see themselves at the new leader of game. It was interesting how roles changed drastically throughout the game.

Reflection: Free Play Week 2

This week’s game play was a free play and my group chose to play Co-opoly: The Game of Co-operatives. For the first time, we are all running out of the idea of games, so I search online and find out Co-opoly might be a fun game to play in the class. Co-opoly is a creative and interesting game that is the opposite of Monopoly. And requires teamwork, solidarity, and collaboration for everybody to win otherwise everybody loses. And all players are on the same team and work together to start a cooperative business or organization and compete against the Point Bank. The main reason I chose to play this game is it teaches us how important cooperative is.

The overall process of the game is run smoothly, and we also take some time to understand the rules. But the main thing to remember is how to build and sustain cooperation. Each player has a character sheet at the beginning and shares who we are, and once we are done, we take starting points as labeled on the sheet from the Point Bank. And we rolling the dice to move and pick corresponding card, there are four types of cards including world cards and challenge cards. The hardest part about the game is the challenge card because we always need to make tough choices and put our teamwork to the test. So the overall process is exciting and trembling. 

The Co-opoly is related to leadership since the most important thing in a group is teamwork and cooperation. And we made a decision is related to team members, not just ourselves. Because when you lose, the whole team will lose, when you win, the team also win. It also teaches me I need to make a choice carefully, the team is most important. If I played this game again, I would invite my parents to play. Since the game is also related to real life, and play together instead of competing against each other, group thinking and collaboration is most important. Overall, the game is worth playing.   

Reflection 6: Ladies & Gentlemen

This week we played Ladies & Gentlemen and when I finished the rules video, my first impression was gender is so important in this game. It is laughing gender stereotypes, that men need to making money in a very daft and flippant way, and ladies are obsessed with fashion and ladies used the money man made to buy beautiful dress, shoes, earrings. I think it is the most traditional stereotype toward gender, therefore I do not agree with this view. Because ladies can be obsessed with fashion but also be independent and make money on our own. But it is also the reality and to see how ancestors used to be, so in one way, the game would also be fun.
And we are using tabletop simulator to play Ladies & Gentlemen, we have half the people playing as ladies, and half the people playing as gentlemen. The tabletop simulator makes the process of the game became little difficult, with moving the cards simultaneously. I am being a ladies role in the game, and I think I have a far tougher but interesting job each of us runs a boutique shop, and every day we can choose what we want to put in the window. Beautiful clothes, lovely caves handbags, and other accessories rings, and servants. And I also can choose where I’d like to go shopping and purchase goods and hand cards to gentlemen. In a hope that they will but me something nice and lovely. The overall process is interesting, and ladies & gentlemen all have different roles in the game. It also related to leadership, since ladies can also be powerful and making our own money, and be independent. When we talked about leadership, not just think about men, but women also account for a big part in it. Ladies can also be the leader in a team, and gentlemen can be supportive, have an equal relationship in a team.
I would like to play this game with my cousin. He is younger than me, and I want him to take the gentlemen’s role, be supportive to ladies. And I think the game can teach him the basic values is to support ladies, but not the stereotypes. I will clarify the stereotypes at the beginning of the game.

Free Play 2

This weeks game play was a free play and my group of 4 chose to play Among Us. I actually downloaded the game as an app on my phone and found it pretty easy to use in this format. Our game play went extremely well and I think we all enjoyed ourselves. We played multiple rounds with different numbers of players each round. We had a chance to type in the chat with strangers and it kept us entertained.

The hardest part about this game was keeping it a secret when given the role of the imposter. Since we all were on the zoom call and chatted throughout the game, often I found myself almost giving away my role or having a hard time speaking when I was the imposter. I really liked that this game was easy to play and easy to learn. I did not know the rules of the game coming in to today and I learned within 5 minutes.

This game ties to leadership because you are part of a team. Whether an imposter or a crewmate you are responsible for making your team win and that requires leading your teammates to success. However, focusing on the enjoyment factor of the game, it was easy to learn and easy to play and allowed for us to chat with each other. If I were to play this game again I would invite my boyfriend to play. I think we both would have a laugh trying to keep it a secret of who is what and messaging others in the chat. Overall it was an enjoyable week!