Road Trip

Last Friday I posted a picture of myself. I was feeling kinda boring and awful. My wife had told me earlier in the day that we were going to have wake up early to go out to Kemptville to see a specialist on some kind of brain balance strategy techniques and related treatments that we might want to use for our autism spectrum son. She’d gotten a friend to loan us the car for the day and my mother to watch the kids overnight so that we’d be able to make an earlier appointment that had just opened up.

Saturday morning my wife told me I needed to shower and picked out my clothes for me. Always good to make a nice impression when meeting a new doctor. We hit the road a little early so we could stop for breakfast.

(Sunrise Outside of Starbucks, Photo by Trisha Turner)

Me: Wow, this car seems really new for someone to lend out.

Her: Yeah, I think they must be rich.

We hit Starbucks and I didn’t mention that we might not want to eat in someone else's clean new car because it was early and I didn’t want to start a thing. I got a doughnut to go along with my triple-grande-vanilla-latte because I’d suggested we stop at Tim’s and get doughnuts and my wife had given me a look and taken us to Starbucks instead. When it turned out that Starbucks had doughnuts I couldn’t NOT get one at that point. It was a glazed old-fashioned one and they warmed it up for me and it was delicious.

My wife had ensured that I brought my tablet and book because it’s a long trip out to Kemptville. Reading and playing on my tablet and talking to my wife I didn’t notice we’d driven past Kemptville until I saw the bridge to the USA. My wife tried to tell me that Kemptville was in the USA and this was the first of her lies that I didn’t believe. Clearly we were headed to the USA for some reason she wasn’t telling me… Oh wait… this weekend is my cousin’s sixteenth annual Horror Movie Viewing Marathon (Sweet Sicksream… also it’s less of a Horror Movie Viewing Marathon now that he is married and has kids… more of a Hallowe'en Party and Fall Movie Event).

( Header my cousin posted for the Facebook Event, Photo By Alistair Da)

So, no appointment, the car was a rental, grandma’s got the kids until Sunday and we’re heading down to Rochester for the day. She’d planned it all secretly with my cousin’s wife so my presence was going to be a surprise for my cousin too.

This was mostly a “my wife got me good” post but I can’t leave you hanging so the rest is going to be me describing what we did.

First off… the road trip was lovely. I forgot how nice road trips could be when you don’t have kids complaining the entire time or trying to insinuate themselves into our conversation. I think we may have had extra conversation because my wife was trying to keep me distracted from the road signs telling me I was approaching the border. It’s odd that forcing yourself to come up with things to talk about kinda opens up the channels. Also, I’ve been enjoying reading Jenny Lawson’s new book ( http://thebloggess.com/furiously-happy/ ) and it was nice to read in a comfortable front seat of a rented car instead of a mostly metal bus bench.

We got into town and had lunch as a lovely not-so-little all-you-can-eat sushi place ( http://www.osakasushiroc.com/ ). We both ordered a shrimp tempura bento from the “not-all-you-can-eat” menu… which was good because neither of us even finished it so “all-you-can-eat” would have been less food than we got by getting a meal.

I don’t think they know what “bento” means because each meal included miso soup, a side salad, a bowl of rice, four tempura jumbo shrimp, a collection of tempura vegetables (mushroom, broccoli, eggplant, zucchini, and sweet potato… I think), four gyoza, and six pieces of sushi (crab roll… I think)... that’s like two bentos worth of food to me… maybe it’s me who doesn’t know what “bento” means.

Next we drove over to my cousin’s place and surprised him… he didn’t freak out too much but seemed glad to have extra hands around to help set up all the activities in the backyard. I think my uncle’s family have gotten burned out on surprises because my uncle is really into surprising people… like “surprise! we kept our baby secret until after it was born! again!” class surprises… so “cousin I didn’t expect to has shown up for my party” doesn’t really rate.

For the kiddo’s there were quite a few activities (it rained just a little bit but no so much as to ruin the fun).

Setting Up

Skeleton Digging: A Sandbox with plastic skeletons buried in it.

The Maze: Caution Tape Maze/Obstacle Course, Tent With Red Christmas Lights and Ghost Balloons and Dead End, Plank Bridge etc.

Monster Can Throw: Throwing Tennis Balls at Decorated Cans

Pin the Eye on the Monster

Train Rides (Not Spooky... unless Thomas the Tank engine freaks you out)

A fire

Pumpkin Bowling (Bowling with pumpkins as balls... not as pins)

(Bean Bag Toss, Photo By Trisha Turner) 

(Fireplace, Photo By Trisha Turner) 

(Front Yard, Photo By Trisha Turner) 

(Ghost Balloons, Photo By Trisha Turner) 

There was also a spooky snack food competition. From memory there were (not a complete list): 

(Vampire Coffee
Photo by Trisha Turner)

(Broken Glass Cupcakes
Photo by Trisha Turner)

Bloody Broken Glass Cupcakes

Giant Gizmo Cookie

Vampire Coffee (in edible chocolate mugs)

Chocolate Pretzel Eyeballs

Chocolate Covered Spaghetti Monsters

Mulled Apple Cider With Floating Shrunken Heads

Baked Pretzel Stakes with Garlic sauce or Silver icing.

Someone also brought a bunch a totally non-spooky assortment of fried stuffed chinese wonton things from their family restaurant. They weren’t as pretty as the bloody broken glass cupcakes or the vampire coffee but they were delicious.

(Photo by Keith Davis)

Eventually we came in from the backyard for movie watching. These things used to be an all night movie marathon but now it’s just four movies on two screens. One room had “kid friendly” movies like Adam’s Family and Monster’s University while the other had “grown up” movies. My wife and I secured the love-seat in the “grown up” movie room. We watched: Gremlins, Dark Skies, What We Do in the Shadows, and Housebound… and then it was after midnight so we went to bed.

I had eaten too much of something my gallbladder didn’t like so I woke up just before 7 am with “angry insides” but it was the kind that a couple painkillers and an rice-bag clears up so I was pretty much OK except for a slight queasiness by the time everyone else woke up. Driving home I slept almost all the way to the border.

That was pretty much it. To summarize; my wife is awesome though suspiciously good at lying to me, my cousin throws a great spooky-movie-viewing-event, and I have a new profile photo.

Ben and Trish’s 10th Wedding Day Anniversary Staycation

So… sometime about ten years ago I got married and… ten is a nice round number but… well… I’m not made of money so we couldn’t take a cruise or anything… so we got my mom to take the kids and I took some days off work and my wife and I did a bunch of the things around town we don’t tend to do because of kids and work.

Day 0: Thursday January 15th
Mom wasn’t taking the kids until AFTER school but I took the day off anyways. My wife and I walked the kid’s to school and then continued to walk to one of our favourite places for breakfast, Gabriel’s Pizza (They make excellent pizza too… we just like their breakfasts), and both had eggs benedict with fruit and hash-browned potato chunks. It was delicious… well… a little heavy on the hollandaise and spinach for my taste but still very good.

Afterwards we shopped around for a bit and then bussed home and got Subway for lunch to eat while watching Netflix… started watching The IT Crowd. Hilarious.

Later, Trish walked back to the school to pick up the kids. I stayed home and played Hearthstone (because my mom was coming to pick up the kids and I needed to be home to let her in if she showed up early… which she did… I offered to pick them up myself but, having never done so before I guess she didn’t want to risk me forgetting a kid or something I guess.)

Friday was a PD day (for those from different parts of the world a “PD” day is “Professional Development” day when the kids have the day off while the teachers and staff have training to keep current etc.) so the kids being at grandma’s all day wasn’t an issue in that regard. Anyways, once grandma showed up we all packed up in the car so she could drop Trish and I at the theater and then bring the kids back to the Aviation museum.

We saw the The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 and I really enjoyed it. I think Trish may have found it slow until the last half hour or so… she hasn’t read the books and I have so it’s entirely possibly my opinion was biased by better knowing what was going on.

After the movie we were just a little hungry so we went to the WalMart McDonald’s for dinner…( this was a mistake because I was up half the night with what I am pretty sure is some kind of indigestion induced gallbladder thing… oddly enough I was totally fine the next morning.) We also bought big boxes of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Lucky Charms so we wouldn’t have to wake up to make or bus to real breakfast the next day.

Day 1: Friday January 16th
Slept in to about nine and then ate sugar cereal while watching Netflix until it was time to leave for lunch. I realized at this point that we hadn’t taken any photo’s the previous day which I found to be an egregious faux-pas so we resolved to do better.

It wasn’t quite lunch time so we took a little detour to St Laurent Mall to visit Lush Cosmetics which is a “natural” cosmetic place… we got some bubble putty for the kids (it’s like playdough but made out of soap), the weird hair-soap Trish likes and a thing called a “bath bomb” which foams and fizzles while making the bath smell nice and presumably releasing some kind of natural stuff to make your skin feel nice.

For lunch we went to “The Loft: Board Game Lounge”. We kinda walked around in a circle because we didn’t know how the two streets with the same name lined up but it was nice enough so that’s fine.

The Loft is a pub with lots of board games and the tables have a second layer to hold stuff so it doesn’t spill on them (or to hold the board games while you are eating I guess). We got soup and sandwiches (I got tomato tortellini soup and a barbeque chicken grilled cheese sandwich. So GOOD!) and played some two player games. Namely: Jishaku for three rounds, Lost Cities for two rounds and we tried to play Labyrinth: The Card Game but foundthe “trying to get cards to line up” part extremely frustrating so stopped. The waiter/host guy at the place was very friendly and explained how to play each game and we chatted with him about the place. We definitely need to get back there for some time with a bigger group and more time to spend… maybe as neutral ground to meet up with some local “Internet friends”... they also have all the standard alcohols etc but I don’t drink so couldn’t comment on the selection. The board-game selection, however, is incredible. Also really well lit.

On the way to the next place we stopped at the new “Whole Foods”... aside from a very nice selection and lot’s of free samples we were generally underwhelmed. It might be a fancy grocery store but it’s still basically a grocery store. I picked up a new “heat bag” so that I could relieve my soreness tummy issues next time without borrowing Trish’s.

After that we had a reservation at “The Mud Oven” which is a place where you go and buy blank ceramic pieces and paint them up and they fire them. Trish painted a fox mug and I painted a salt and pepper shaker. We spent a little over 2 hours there but weren’t done by the time we were supposed to be at the next place so we scheduled another reservation for the following morning.

The next place was “The House of TARG” where I met up with my High School friend Gene and his lady friend. We got there around 5:30.

“The House of TARG” is basically a small club/concert venue/bar that distinguishes itself by having a massive collection of pinball machines and the best pierogies in town. The four of us split four large orders of twelve pierogies: traditional, mushroom, sauerkraut and kale served with seasoned sour cream, more sauerkraut, beet salad and topped with grilled onions and bacon. SOO GOOD!! Gene assured me that the beer was also good.


We played much pinball and many classic arcade games. There were a few “multi-game” machines with things like PacMan and DigDug but most arcade games cost 25 cents while the pinball machines were 1 game for 1 dollar, 3 games for 2 dollars. Off the top of my head there was a Doctor Who table that was pretty fun… the old Star Wars one and the Star Wars one with the video overlay… The Walking Dead one was cool… yeah… lot’s of fun. Didn’t get any high scores on pinball but I got one on a little racing wheel cabinet called Turbo (I assume it must reset regularly because the high score table was pretty empty). Generally we got the 3 plays for 2 Dollars and Trish and I would take turns and then whoever wasn’t taking the last turn would move on to the next machine to try.

We finished up before 8 because that was when the concert cover got charged and as much as I like folk rock… I didn’t like the idea of staying up for a concert that started after 9PM... someday maybe. We played a few more games and then headed across the road to Starbucks for something warm and non-caffeinated to keep us warm while we bussed home.

That night we were pretty drained so slept pretty well.

Day 2: Saturday January 17th
We didn’t have quite so many plans this day… breakfast was sugar cereal again and then off to The Mud Oven to finish our painting. Trish’s fox mug looks pretty good… I painted the salt shaker with a sea/sunset/lighthouse type deal and the pepper shaker with a phoenix… I am a little worried whether they are going to turn out like I imagined them but they should be cool enough either way. They will bake them in the kiln over the next week or so and we’ll pick them up next Sunday.

We decided to check out the Vietnamese restaurant that was nearby when we finished and I had a big bowl that was like a meaty vermicelli salad and Trish got a ginger/pineapple/beef thing.

After lunch we went to Tim Horton’s and got a half dozen doughnuts for dessert/snack later.

Then home for more Netflix, some napping and some reading of rulebook PDFs because we were headed over to a friend’s house for a nice big 6 player game of Fortune and Glory. Trish and I had played it once before and had spent half the game looking things up so figured we’d get ourselves set straight beforehand this time.

We had a great time for the most part and had some Gabriel’s Pizza (actually pizza this time… bacon and ham etc.) and some Soda Stream “Doctor Pepper Equivalent”. Then back home for me to spend the night sick from not eating properly. Oops.

Day 2+: Sunday January 18th
Being up all night slightly ill I distracted myself by playing video games… turns out I’m in Blizzard’s Heroes of the Storm beta and hadn’t noticed. So played that for the parts of the night when I wasn’t in too much pain or throwing up. Sunday morning I felt wrecked and slept in until 8:30 when grandma came with the kids and picked us up and took us to church.

But... all in all it was a great weekend. I wish we could figure out a way to do this kind of thing more often.

[Game Design] Skylanders Carpet Battle (Or, Benjie’s Toy War)

So, last night my daughter was at a friend's house after school so my five year old son was home... he wanted to play with daddy (requisite "but daddy isn't a toy" dad joke was made) and since we don't do "screen time" on weekdays that precluded his primary addictions for the most part… but he still wanted to “play Skylanders*” but had a vague, frenetic “pick them up and hit them into each other while yelling their names” concept of playing with the things.

In the back of my brain for some time I've been trying to come up with a game to play with the Skylanders figures… you know… kinda running in an idle process somewhere in my brain… and yesterday I just decided to wing it… these rules were modified slightly both during game play and after we finished so I’m presenting the rules as they stood after re-explaining them to his sister when she got home.

So, I present:

Skylanders Carpet Battle (Or, Benjie’s Toy War)

BIG UGLY FIRST DRAFT VERSION

Giant Figures are “Bosses” (I wanted to call them “Commanders” but the boy insisted on “Boss”)

Swap Force Figures are “Generals”

Normal Figures are “Normals”

Magic Items are “Items” … Items do thing... This was a fun creative exercise to come up with what they do based on what they look like and what they would do in game… I’ll provide a chart** of what we came up with for inspiration

From here forward I’ll use those terms… that way if you want to play this game with army men, ponies or action figures you just have to figure out which are which.

Every turn you have 5 action points.

Bosses cost 3 to move but any generals touching their base can move with them for free.

Generals cost 2 to move but any normal figures touching their base can move with them for free

Normals cost 1 to move.

A “move” is one index card length… you put the card down in front of the figure and then move the figure to the other side.

Each player chooses one Boss, Two Generals and 4 Normals to form their team and arrange them on one end of the room.

Spread out the “Magic Items” randomly around the middle of the room about halfway between the two teams.

You can pick up an item by moving your figure to touch it… items affect the figure carrying it but can be freely passed between grouped figures.

Bosses can carry 3 items, Generals can carry 2 items and Normals can carry 1 item (we decided on this rule after the boy attached all of the items to one normal which made him effectively invulnerable).

Combat:

If a figure is able to hit another figure*** the player can use an action to roll the appropriate die.

Bosses roll a d12 and require a 6 to be hit.

Generals roll a d8 and require a 5 to be hit

Normals roll a d6 and require a 4 to be hit

One hit knocks the figure prone. Two hits and the figure is removed from play. Rolling Twice the required number counts as two hits (so an 8 would eliminate a Normal and a 12 would eliminate a Boss)

If a figure starts it’s turn prone it can stand back up for 1 action.

The game is over when one team is entirely eliminated.

*(If you don’t know what Skylanders are you are a blessed person indeed… basic primer: it’s Action/Platformer except you get new characters by buying toys and then putting them on a USB “portal” that reads the toy and let’s you play with that character in the game… the toy also keeps track of experience and collected gold and levels up and can buy new skills and hats that grant stat bonuses… the salient detail here is that the boy owns about a hundred painted miniatures from the game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=801-wgK06qc )

** Magic Items to Item Conversion Chart:

The Magic Items in Skylanders have bases like the rest of the figures so they can be knocked prone to signify they are exhausted for a period.

Things that look like they make you physically tougher (or grant a defence bonus in game)	+1 Defense Require the next higher number to hit the figure (aka 5 for Normals, 6 for Generals, 7 for Bosses)
Things that look like they make you magically tougher/more nimble (or freeze of slow enemies in game)	+1 Invulnerability Requires 1 more hit to eliminate that figure Once Per Turn ( first hit knocks this Item prone instead of the figure)
Things that look like weapons (or grant a attack bonus in game)	+1 Attack Add +1 to all of your attack rolls
Things that look like they make you go faster (or grant a speed bonus in game)	Once Per Turn you may move one card length and one card width ( first use knocks this Item prone so you remember)
Things that looks like portals, gates or teleporters	Once Per Turn Teleport one figure anywhere on the floor
Things that look like treasure (or the thing that let’s you find treasure in game)	You can pick up items that are within one card length instead of having base contact.
Things that looks like they control time (or freeze time in game)	Take one extra action per turn.
Things that look like potions (or heal you in game)	Once Per Turn, If a figure is eliminated it is restored to full health ( first use knocks this Item prone so you remember)
Things that look like vehicles	Once Per Turn, when you take a move action. Roll a D12. 1-6 move normally, 7-11 move twice, 12 move three times.

***(probably need real rule for this… because we played it “dad mode” I just agree with statements like “This one has a gun so he can shoot anything two cards away” or “This one has a magic wand so he can shoot any figures in a line (line of sight)”)

An Amateur's Guide to Amateur Voting

Voting is hard guys!  People say it's easy but, be it Presidential, Mid-Term, Mayoral or even you're school's Parents Association, election time sneaks up on us and suddenly we're expected to know a whole bunch of stuff so we can make an informed decision and, for the most part, many of us won't even bother. At best, many of us just rely on popular media and campaign commercials. (Don't argue with me here... if you don't have this problem I'm probably not talking about you.)

I do not wish to (overtly) pass judgement on your mid-term results USicans. We do the same types of things in Canada... heck I'm frequently guilty of it... but maybe it would be better if we got "proactive".

Step 1: Pre-Prepare

Find out what roles you are allowed to vote for right now instead of when it's "too late".

Figure out who holds those roles, what they actually do (or should do in many cases), and when you are next going to have to vote. Collect these basic details in something simple like a Google Drive Document or text-file. I doesn't have to be fancy and you don't have to do it all right away. You've got a couple years in most cases to get this stuff together.

You can even work together on this. It's not about politics at this point, it's about knowing what's out there. Barring some heavily gerrymandered districts, you probably get to vote on the same things as your neighbours so, if there are any of those you get along with, you can share the investigatory load.

Step 2: Don't Get Surprised

For most elections you'll know the date quite a few months (or years in the case of Presidents) in advance. Put these dates in your calendar and then put another date in your calendar a month before saying "election day is next month" and then, maybe, for particularly complicated ones, you put more "it's coming" dates in earlier (like a deadline to finish Step 1).

Once you hit your "warning" day you can think about figuring out who to vote for. Go back to your list and find who is running for the roles you will be voting on. Figure out their track records (if any) and their policies and all that jazz. Then pick who you are going to vote for.

Step 3: Plan to vote

Make sure you are actually going to be able to vote when the time comes. Better yet... plan to visit an early polling station so you have two chances to screw it up instead of just one.

Bonus: Your Extra Votes

You only get one vote for each role but there are other things you can totally do that could impact how other people vote.

Extra Vote 1: Telling people who you are voting for and why. If you are famous they call this "endorsement" but normal people are allowed to do it too. Just knowing what you think might be enough to tip someone onto "your side" of the fence. Unless they hate you, I guess.

Extra Vote 2: Helping people vote. Remind people to vote, help people register and get to polling places, wear your "I voted" button with pride... Google says that only 57% of eligible voters participated in the 2012 mid-terms... that tells me that almost half of all USicans just didn't even bother. Maybe they would have if someone had just been like "Hey, are you planning to vote next month? Need a ride?"

Extra Vote 3: Giving resources. If you actually care about a given role you can totally donate or volunteer for a campaign. There is a lot of "Big Money" in politics right now but grass-roots campaigns still have an impact. Lot's of people hate "Big Money" these days so your support kinda counts double; as actual support and as saying "this guy isn't just about "Big Money"".

Extra Vote 4: Running for office. OK, probably an expensive waste of time but... If an incumbent turd is running unopposed and nobody is stepping up, maybe just run yourself (or find someone to run who you can support). You'll probably lose but every vote you get is a vote he doesn't.

Conclusion

This is all totally basic stuff that you could have figured out yourself if you thought about it. I'm just saying it now so that maybe you will think about it a little bit now and maybe actually be ready the next time you have the opportunity to participate in one of these election things.

[Game Design But Not Really] Munchkin Deck Building Game Rules

This is one of those "rough draft, write it and then post it without too much revision" posts... if later I feel like the idea has merit I'll clean it up and stuff...

I had this notion to create a alternate ruleset for existing munchkin sets that would make them deck-building games.

Starting something along the lines of:

Munchkin Game of Deck Building!

Equipment, 1 or more complete Munchkin game and any expansions you wish to include.

Find all the 100 or less gold treasure and shuffle them and deal 10 to each player and leave the remainder as a separate "junk treasure" supply. [number of players] good treasure cards are flipped to create the shop.

Deal 5 doors to each player.

These 15 cards are shuffled together to form each player's deck.


Flip over 2x[number of players] monsters (keep drawing doors till you reach 4 and then shuffle any non-monster doors back  into the supply) and place them in the centre of the table as the "visible dungeon"
Players start as the "Level 1 Human With No Class" equivalent in the Munchkin set you are playing. Players draw 5 cards from their personal deck and can play any appropriate cards.
On a turn a player flips over a door card:
- If it is a monster, last monster in the visible dungeon is discarded to a central dungeon discard pile and this new monster becomes the first.
- If it is a curse it affects the player who drew it immediately
- If it is some other card it is added to the "dungeon loot" of the most recently drawn monster

If the player drew a monster they must enter combat as normal with any of the monsters in the visible dungeon. If a different card was drawn they may still choose to look for trouble with a monster. Defeated monsters are added to the players discard pile, otherwise they are left in the visible dungeon. Treasures won in combat are drawn from the good treasure deck and any dungeon loot cards attached are also won. They add these cards to their discard pile.

When a player gains their 10th (or 20th for epic) level the game ends immediately after the cards are added to the discard pile.

If combat was successful or there was no combat the player may:
Loot the room: add a card from the dungeon supply to his discard pile
OR
Go shopping:
- player may discard cards from their hand whose value equals or exceeds the price of a treasure to buy cards from the shop (rules relating to the "1000 gold for a level" like the halfling ability apply to these transactions) or in multiples exceeding 1000 to gain levels
- player may buy the next (random) card from the junk treasure pile for 100 gold
- player may permanently discard remove from their deck monsters to claim the number of (random) treasure it is worth from the good treasure deck

(bought or gained cards are added to their discard pile)

Player discards any cards they have in play except race or class cards along with any they wish to from their hand and draws up to their current hand limit (so dwarves get extra etc.) from their own deck.

When the game ends (someone reaches level 10 or there are no more door or treasure cards) players collect all their cards and calculate the winner.

Each level is worth 1 VP
The player with the most total gold gets 1 VP
The player with the most total monster levels gets 1 VP
ties are decided by the player with the least total cards among those tied for most VP

Suggestions? Criticisms? Compliments? Accusations of Plagiarism? Links to someone who did it better? Actual Plays? Please Comment!

[Crazy Idea][Game Design] Sports 20XX

So... I'm not sure where the idea came from (if it was you, please tell me) but I decided the other day to invent a game system for simulating Sports as a tactical board game... but not like individual sports so much as ALL sports such that you could conceivably mix and match rules and mechanics and improve on them... this was meant to play on the ironic hipster geeky feigned ignorance of "sportsballs" without getting in the way of actual geeky sports fans who like to play board games.

I pinged +David Dougall and +Marc Reside and shared a Google Doc with the title "Sports 20XX" amd proceeded to brainstorm mechanics and start modeling how I see sports as a board game.

Eight pages of rambling discussion, charts, tables, diagrams and research later I think I could probably sit down and play "Sports 20XX: Ice Hockey" well enough to start figuring out the actual practical game-play... and I made this nifty Ice Rink Map along the way...

I am now, however, at the part of the process where I remember that I am not really a board game designer yet (I don't count Impulse Poker and never finished designing any of the other games I've mind-sploded about in the past) so I have a few questions for people who make and/or play games.

Does this already exist and I'm wasting my time?
Would a turn-based strategy board game based on various sports be a thing you would want to try?
How long would you want a game of Turn-Based Ice Hockey to take?
How do I get from "mind-splosion" to "designed game"?
Do you want to help me in any concrete way for no-money?

True Geeks

Someone brought up the question of "What is a true geek?" and I was having trouble, not just with answering, but with the validity of the question.

I have some cognitive dissonance on the subject. I think that geekdom should have zero barrier to entry but I also have an internal classification system that I continue to use to determine if people qualify as "geek".

So... how do I conflate the belief that there is no such thing as a “fake geek” and that there is such a thing as “non-geek”? I don't know... but I think I can explain why I am trying to.

The popular opinion seems to be that we shouldn't have to “prove” we are a geek but, by saying this, we are implying that everyone* should be considered a geek, that we shouldn't treat anyone as an outsider. The problem with this line of thought is that there are outsiders and we want to protect ourselves from them. Outsiders** mock us for our passions, consider our hobbies less valuable than their hobbies and make uncomfortable jokes at our expense. We want to protect ourselves from these abuses but, by trying to protect ourselves, we are too often doing the same thing to our own "kind".

What I think many are implying when they accuse people of being “Fake Geeks”, “Poseurs” or “Hipster Geeks” is not that they are aspiring to geekdom but that they are parodying (or adopting the trappings of) geekdom without actually being “geeks”. This means that they aren’t “safe” to share our love of trains or LARP with because, while they might like chiptunes and mario t-shirts, they don't have that spark that would let them identify with our passion. They might like the Spiderman movies but then turn around and make fun of us for reading comics. It’s a resistance to cultural appropriation not a resistance to growth.

Rather than just deciding it’s wrong to judge geekiness maybe we should attack the root of the problem. Namely that we assess geekiness using criteria that are biased towards false stereotypes. Or, more specifically, that we use these poor criteria as grounds to exclude people preemptively. We go on the offensive, by questioning their motives or quizzing their “geek chops”, causing them to feel unwelcome for reasons beyond their control. If we are on the receiving end of this judgement what we really care about is our exclusion. The question isn't really whether we need to prove we are a geek or not so much as whether we are being treated as an insider or an outsider from the outset. That said, I don’t think it’s wrong to want to feel safe but we need to find a way to go about it that doesn't generate so many false positives.

So, having convinced myself I’m allowed to ask, I’m back to the question, "What is a true geek?" Stripped down to it’s core I think it is someone passionate not about a specific thing but in a specific way. A geek is someone who has that spark. So, maybe, the way to “test” for geekiness is to share our geekiness and see if it scares a person off. If it doesn't then they are a true geek.


Footnotes:
* When I say “everyone” I don’t just mean “everyone who self-identifies as a geek” because we can’t really know, at the outset of an interaction, if a person wants to be identified as a geek. To say anyone could choose to be a geek we must treat everyone as a geek.
** Please note that geeks are humans and therefore quite capable of being selfish, stupid, arrogant, and/or judgemental and/or seeking validation, attention and/or recognition etc. This common wisdom that geeks are somehow exempt from being dicks seems likely to be used more often as an excuse than as positive reinforcement. Being a geek may or may not be a choice but not being a “dick” certainly is. Even if we self-identify as geek we can still be the unsafe outsiders that are making other geeks feel unwelcome.