Two rooms and a Boom has heavy ties to leadership due to the heavy deception aspects of it. The hardest part generally is trying to remember everyone’s colors and roles. The hardest part for me personally was being a role that could not speak.

During that game I had figured out who the president was, that being said I had trouble communicating it to my teammates. My leadership was therefore stunted due to them not understanding my hand gestures. Eventually I was able to explain it to them but the blue team had already caught on that we knew. Unfortunately they were one step ahead of us and we ended up losing.

I would recommend this game to any large group of friends. It doesn’t matter whether the group is close or just met. While it does get more complicated with more players it adds more characters and aspects to the game. It’s not too hard to understand for those that have trouble picking up directions. Two rooms and a boom is made for competitive and driven groups, therefore the perfect party game.

This week we do not have an assigned game to play, and our table selected CodeNames Game to play. I think the hardest part of this game is understanding the rules. None of the people at our table played this game before so we have no idea what we should do. I think it may be helpful if we read the rulebook before coming to class as we did for all the other games played in this class. Since we didn’t fully understand the rules, we came up with some kinds of house rules of our own, and that was my favorite part of the session. I enjoyed our own rule as it was simple and easy to follow, and surprisingly it didn’t make the game boring.

I think many skills are tied to this game, and two of the most important skills are memorizing and analyzing. It is necessary to remember all the hints that are given to you and analyze them every round to figure out which words are yours. I think my cousin Xun would enjoy playing this game because he is good at remembering the details and relating words to words. When he was learning English, he tried to remember words under the same categories or with similar meanings.

The only thing I disliked about this game was the complexity of the rules as I mentioned above. I think the session went very well after we figured out our own rules and started playing one or two rounds of the game. This game also helped me to learn some new words that I have never seen before, so I think it may be helpful for people who want to learn English or memorize words.

Game name: What Do You Mean
Number of players: 4-7
Time length: 2 to 4 minutes depending on players

How to play:

One person has to think of a word or a phrase without telling it to the group, like homework, or listening to music. All players have to stand in a line, and the first person has to be the person with the word in mind. The method used to pass on the word is by making actions and only the first person behind you is allowed to see your actions, BUT same actions are not allowed, which means players can’t copy the actions from the players they see. All players should start by closing their eyes to prevent any cheating tings, and tap on the person behind you when you are ready to show them your actions. For example, if I am the second person and the first person has shown me the actions, and I am ready to show my actions to the third person I can tap on his/her shoulder and then do whatever I need to do.

When the game starts, no one is allowed to say anything until the last person guesses and says a word, which means the game has ended. And depending on whether the last person guesses correctly or not, the game can be determined as win or lose.

One learning outcome players should gain after playing the game is improving their memorization skills because they need to remember the actions they see, and they are also expected to brainstorm when they see other people’s actions and think about their own. The last learning outcome is practicing critical thinking skills because players have to process the actions they see and catch the most identical things and relate them to one or more objects.

Examples

If the first person wants other players to guess “water”, then drinking water from a water fountain may be a good idea to act out.

If the word is “smart phone”, the action of calling someone or playing mobile games may be some good ideas to use.

The game we played this week is called Two Rooms & A Boom, and as many people mentioned during class, this game is very similar to the Werewolf. The hardest part of this game was to understand and remember what the roles are and what they can do. There was one thing that makes this game even harder: this game was about hiding or lying about the roles. Therefore, it is difficult to ask other players what the roles can do. For example, I forgot what “Hot Potato” can do when we were playing, so I struggled a little and then decided to ask someone what it was.

Many leadership skills were applied in this game, but the most important one was how to communicate with other people to get useful information. Players had to know how to exchange information so that they could receive the most benefits, but at the same time, they needed to keep their secrets as well. For example, the “boom” had to consider whether revealing the role to the other red teammates is a good idea because the blue spy is also on the red team. Since this game is very similar to the Werewolf, I think my friend named Kath would enjoy playing this, as I mentioned in the game reflection for the Werewolf, Kath was on the team for the Debate Competition and she likes to argue with people with logic.

We started the session with some explanations of the rules and the roles. I think it would be helpful to have a list of the roles and what they can do, so we can take a look before class and even during the game. I like to play this game because we can play a couple of rounds with different roles as the time of playing this game is not very long. The part that I dislike about this game is I have to talk to other people individually sometimes to exchange information but I may not know these people. However, I think this is one of the most interesting sessions in this class because we can play different roles in one class period.

The game we played this week was Ladies & Gentlemen, and according to the title, we know this game usually has two types of roles: ladies and gentlemen. There are different tasks to do depending on the roles, and the rules for each role are different depending on whether you choose to be a lady or a gentleman. This game is separated into three time spots: morning, afternoon, and evening. In the mornings, the ladies decide which stores they want to go to, and the gentlemen need to grab the goods they need from the market. In the afternoons, the ladies start shopping in the store they selected in the morning and decide what they want to buy, and the gentlemen need to either sell their goods or complete contracts for money. When the evenings come, everyone goes home and the ladies show the things they picked, and the gentlemen need to decide whether they want to buy them or if they have enough money to buy them.

As for leadership, some people acted as leaders on both sides and even they may not have noticed that. This game requires both sides to do actions at the same time so it is necessary to communicate during the game. Moreover, the leader can also push other people to move forward as sometimes the ladies may need a long time to decide what things they want to buy, like me in this game. I think my friend named Lily would enjoy this game when playing as a lady because she loves shopping, but she may make the whole process very slow because it can take her forever to decide what she wants.

I think the session went very well, and this is a game that can help people to ice break a little bit because the table is so long, so you have to talk to the people beside you if you need something from the other side of the table. I like being a lady and I feel very chill because all I need to do is shopping. I don’t really like how the gentlemen play because that is a little aggressive for me and I may end up with nothing valuable every day.

The game we played this week was Survive Escape From Atlantis, and the hardest part for me was to escape from the monsters, especially the Sea Serpent. The Sea Serpent can destroy the ship and kill everyone on the ship when it is on the same sea space with an occupied ship. The rules for this game were easy to understand, but I was a little confused on how to use the back of the tiles because some of them had to be used immediately, in your own turn, or outside your turn. Everyone in the group also had trouble remembering what all the cards meant, so each one of us had to take a look at the instructions every time when we flipped one tile. 

This game is tied to leadership because it teaches people how to negotiate with other people and how to change your enemies to friends. It is very important for leaders to negotiate with other people, maybe not their enemies, but they probably need to negotiate with people who do not agree with them or don’t want to listen to them. 

I think everyone would enjoy playing this game, especially if they are playing it with someone they know of. I think this game can be very intense or very relaxing depending on the players. For example, when I played it in my group my goal was not to win after three of my people were out of the game on the same ship. Therefore, I was only going after the person who took my three people out of the game for revenge, and I even helped some other players. 

This game is one of my favorite games from this class, and one of the best playing experiences from this class too. I really like how people can play this game in a very fun and chill way even though this game should be a little intense. I also like the idea that the back of the tile is also useful and it has different meanings to the game, but at the same time, these meanings are difficult to remember and to understand when I started to play. 

Tonight I attended the regular campus gaming event and picked the game Everdell to play. During this summer I found myself at a board game bar in Dayton they had this game but I didn’t have the opportunity to play it. Originally the artwork is what interested me in playing the game because I like the forest and the animals remind me of children’s books I used to read a lot growing up. If I had to envision myself in an ideal happy place, it would be a magical forest, hence why the game I designed takes place in a similar setting.
I took a look at the other games available tonight but I just kind of knew that I wanted to play Everdell, even if that meant playing it by myself. I’m not very good at figuring games out on my own so I called Grace from class and told her if she could make it to the gaming event, she should try so I wasn’t stuck figuring it out alone. I assembled the tree and by the time I got the board set out, Issac came over and asked if he could show me how to play the game and play it with me. I didn’t know many people at this event and the people I did recognize seemed very interested in the games that they had picked to play, so I wasn’t eager to recruit anyone. I am glad Issac took the initiative to come help me, and he seemed genuinely excited to play, he said this game is one of his favorites. Eventually, more people expressed interest in playing and we were able to start. Originally one of the first comments that were made was that Everdell is comparable to Wingspan in terms of complexity and I really think that was an accurate statement. I’ve played Wingspan and really enjoyed it, but I think I enjoyed this game more just because of its theme and interactive game pieces.
When playing the game I really enjoyed all the cards, understanding the cards is definitely the most complicated part of the game but I feel like I was able to comprehend them after they were explained. I tried to play high-value cards but ended up without a lot of points at the end of the game and my city only had 10 cards instead of a full 15. Even though we played the game for almost two hours, it seemed like it went by too quickly and that we should have had more time to build our cities, I guess that just means that I was having fun. I felt like I consistently had a lot of cards, and was running out of resources, so maybe I should pick a new strategy next time. At the end of the game, I definitely lost and did not have the first or second highest amount of points, but I know what I need to do next time. In the future, I feel like I would like to understand more about how this game could be played as a single-player game or just with two players, and to what extent that changes the gameplay dynamic. Overall I am so glad that I finally had the opportunity to play this game. I definitely want to play this game again and will likely get it as a Christmas gift.

I’m genuinely very glad that I had the opportunity to play this game again. The first time, my group was entirely lost and the other group members just did not seem to enjoy the concept of the game in general. I did not realize we were playing this game this week, so I showed up to class unprepared, but the game demonstration helped a lot. I think although my group was very lost the first time we played, having at least a little knowledge of how the game works was reassuring when we were trying to figure it out again. The first time I played TIME Stories, I left with more questions than answers, but I appreciated the artwork and mystery element to the game. This is definitely the most immersive game I’ve played, and because of that, I think it’s a new favorite. Playing this game feels like I’m in a video game or movie, but I like that we have choices and can come back to rooms or decide as a group how we want to go about playing the game.
Week two of this game felt a bit more intense than week one. I think I liked the exploration phase of week one better than the more calculated game play of week two. I was glad that we had some group members that really understood game play and could remember all of the choices we needed to make for the second time around playing the game. For the second week, I definitely took less of a leadership role and more so followed the members who seemed to have a plan in order. To be honest, I don’t know how people would play this game and successfully complete the mission the first time, just because I feel like there’s a maze of steps that need to be done in order to successfully complete the game, and there’s too many dead ends that can cause your team to die or run out of time. I did enjoy how the game ended for the most part, I feel like it made sense to the story, but I also felt like it was slightly uneventful. I don’t know exactly what I was expecting but it felt like it was just suddenly over.
To be honest, I don’t think most of my friends would be able to sit through an entire game of Time Stories due to the time commitment. I think I understand it enough now to where I can explain how to play, and they won’t feel too overwhelmed by the complications, but convincing them to play a 4 hour long game with me is asking a lot. I think in order to convince them, I would have to explain to them how the game works in advance, and give them a few details of the plot to gauge their interest. However, my friend Josh might enjoy the game because he enjoys video games and I feel like this game demonstrates some video game-like qualities. Josh also likes to fully commit to things he’s doing and doesn’t like giving up and also does not like losing, so I feel like he would be more likely to sit through this game than other people because of the challenge. Overall I think I would play another version of TIME Stories. I don’t know if the zombie game that follows the asylum version really sparks my interest, but some of their other plots might.

This lecture series was a treat to attend, and yes the pun was intentional. Carla talked about being unapologetically herself and coming into her true authentic self as she’s gotten older and how her acting career propelled her to come out of her shell. She advised us to take the windy path, and that life’s unexpected events help make us who we are. We don’t need to have everything “figured out,” and that we should aspire to get comfortable being uncomfortable. Say yes, adventure follows, then growth.
Then Carla transitioned into talking about her wardrobe and how she values her wardrobe and allows it to reflect her personality. Carla encouraged us to embrace who we are by the self expression of our clothes. When Carla is wearing clothes that she likes and feels comfortable in, she feels powerful and confident. Throughout her time on tv, there have been times where Carla was told how to dress or do her makeup and hair, and she’s come to realize how valuable self expression can be on your mood and performance. Despite the media’s wishes, Carla Hall has insisted on letting her hair go naturally gray, rather than dying it artificially. This was a decision she had to think about a lot, because it goes against society’s expectation that gray hair should be colored to look more youthful. Now with gray hair, Carla promotes the natural beauty of aging and being your authentic self, gray hairs and all. This was Carla’s way of taking her power back, and not letting others have too much influence over her life. She claimed that she would rather lose a job being who she is vs keep it trying to pretend to be someone else.
Some of the things Carla spoke about really resonated with me. She is also an enneagram 7, which is “the enthusiast.” This was unsurprising, as she gets very enthusiastic about everything and radiates a very positive energy. In her words, her superpower is that she loves people, and I feel like this is the same for me. I also love that Carla is very passionate about being your authentic self because this is something I frame my life around. Lastly, Carla discussed the importance of living in the moment and how when you’re overthinking things too much, you lose authenticity by being too calculated. We draw attention to ourselves when we get too embarrassed, but if we just accept our mistakes and learn to laugh at ourselves and not take things too seriously, we become more magnetic.

The results of this quiz were not especially surprising to me. I generally know what kinds of games and mechanics I like, and the game essentially told me what I already knew. That does at least mean the quiz is accurate though, which is good. My profile was “Low Conflict and Gregarious”.

My highest scores were in the categories of Social Fun and Aesthetics, which scans perfectly for me. I love tabletop games even more than things like online video games because it’s so much easier to have a connection with the people you play in person with, and there’s really no experience quite like having a group you meet up with week after week to play with. Aesthetics I value for a different reason, mostly just because I’m a big graphic design nerd, and I love games that have really strong artwork and visual design. It’s one of the reasons I love card games like Magic and Flesh and Blood so much, they always go above and beyond with their artwork and graphics. Social Manipulation comes in third, which really is just a subsection of Social Fun for me. In my opinion, one of the best ways to create variance in a game is with people: A game where people can make a lot of different decisions makes a game much more fun and replayable, and will always lead to a lot of great stories. There’s a reason social deduction games are so popular, there’s tons of room for personal creativity and narrative equity.

My love of games as social experiences also shines through in other results not shown on the main graph, like the high values in Chance and Accessibility. Accessibility is an easy one: While I do like my games to have some depth, the less time we need to spend learning the rules and reading the rulebook, the better. Ideally we should be able to mostly just jump right in to the fun part with just a bit of explanation. Accessibility also extends to being able to invite in players of all backgrounds or skill levels, everyone should be able to feel welcome playing a game. Chance goes along with what I was mentioning earlier about narrative equity and creating stories: Not only do random elements stop a game from becoming “solved” and keep it replayable, super memorable random outcomes make for great stories. My low score in cooperation is mostly just a personal taste thing: I like plenty of co-op games, but I think they’ve become a bit overdone/overexposed recently. I like my games to have some amount of competition, generally.

Finally, the other big part of my profile was “low conflict.” This should be unsurprising if you’ve been reading my reasoning for my other results: I don’t dislike competition, but having fun with a group is first and foremost why I love tabletop games. Trying to win absolutely has its place, but some people really take it too far, and it can lead to the game not being fun for the rest of everyone else. I like to try and keep things light, still trying to win as much as I can but not letting that be my entire focus of playing, even when playing in tournaments I always like talking to my opponent after the game, because that community aspect is so important to me.