I enjoy a number of games. Computer games, Card games, board games, role-playing games. Hmmm, or is that roll-playing games for the dice fanatic?. I also enjoy some other games such as darts and aerobee, though they could perhaps be considered sports -- at least compared to the more sedentary games.
OK, I've found a buncha games that I enjoy playing on the iPhone. You'll need to visit the app store to find them, but here are some I enjoy.
Darts are a game I've enjoyed off-and-on. Playing darts is fun, but it is boring without someone else to play with. I like the plastic boards and soft-tip darts... since making a mistake in dart-throwing at home is less likely to make a hole in the wall.
I played for years with my two sets (heavy and light) of brass barrel Harrows Gyro series darts.
After I broke my right index finger in 2009 I found that I could really not throw my old darts well any more. It is like my dart throwing and release have become totally de-calibrated. I've tried many ways of shooting, and some fine people -- Steve, Jason, Todd, Norma, and probably a few others have tried helping me get my game back. Thanks Guys! Their efforts have helped quite a bit, but the problem is that I am often essentially having random throws.
I think the major difficulty is in the release -- due ot the broken finger, the index finger/thumb just doesn't want to release as it used to. Heck, just gripping the dart seems random. The dart used to just sit in my hand, now it never seems to sit right. I tried looking at different darts, but they were all frustratingly similar.
One day I was at Bullseye Games talking to Mary, and she was telling me about her Bottlesen darts. I asked ... because so much of the dart material I have read says to stay far far away from them ... yet I respect her and she is throwing these supposedly bad darts. Incompatible with all accessories, non-standard, blah blah blah. Mary told me they are some of the finest darts made, and she enjoys throwing them. While waiting around I tried yet some more darts. Since Mary thought so highly of them, I just tried the different Bottlesen darts, instead of trying everything. After a while -- voila -- I found some darts which seem to fit my hand nicely and release well. The Bottlesen Gam darts basically have a groove for your thumb to sit in so I get repeatable positioning of the darts. This lets me get some repeatable throws, which is a big improvement! I don't know why people said to stay away from the Bottlesen darts, they are certainly well made and compatible!
I seem to throw my darts a bit heavy. Without the right tip I tend to either embed my darts in the dartboard OR break off tips in the dartboard. I have from mid-90s some "Big" cone tips that last me for near forever. I've tried newer tips, but I often break them off in less than 5 throws; it is quite frustrating. The modern "cone" tips have a much smaller cone and are weaker, they just don't work with my throwing style. Someone suggested Tufflex tips as an alternative. They do last longer than the small-cone tips. Not a lot longer -- to give you an example, when I ran out of big cone tips, I tried a bunch on the one dart which had broken the big-cone tip. That dart has gone through more small cone tips (both long and short) than I want to think about. The Tufflex tips last for a while before they break, usually a game. The 1990 era "big cone" tips on the other darts are still not broken yet, and I was playing with them in the mid 90s! Fortunately Kristen @ Bullseye has found some of the "big cone" tips for me, and I hope they are as robust as the old ones!
In other words, Frisbee and variants! This content has moved to its own web page.
Black Jack No Counting has some of the best beginner non-counting strategry I've run across. Its good because it has simple how to think about it rules, instead of just memorizing a table. Is it the bomb -- no! Is it a good point to get you started -- Yes!
Pepper Dog Soft has some of the best blackjack strategy training and playing apps available for the iPhone / iPad.
I've been interested in Go for a while. It has been an on-and-off interest. Recently a friend expressed her interest in Go. This started me thinging about it again, and inspired me enough to start looking at it again. I actually started playing some go now, instead of just reading books about it. I also found a nice front end for GNUgo on my laptop.
Mori's The Interactive Way to Go is a great introduction to play skills, patterns, and consequences. I wish I had discovered it a long time ago! Tel's Go Notes are good to look at after getting some idea of what is going on at Mori's.
Hmmm. That's not true anymore. I've basically stopped playing RPGs since 1996. Part of that is my house, another part is my work has been hell. Another part is that too many people want to play Dungeons & Dragons, which I just don't care for as a system. This is for a couple of reason. First I enjoy systems that are technical and systematic, and where a character can really die. The other reason is that D&D games are typically Monty Haul in nature, and I just don't care for it. There are some D&D games that I have enjoyed, such as Lane's RavenLoft game mentioned below, or Brett's Game with his self-created Multiverse. Brett's game may have had a bit of haul to it, but it was a fascinating environment to game in.
There is a fascination to creating a microcosm and setting it into motion, allowing internal pressures and the whims of characters to start mutating it and allowing the world to grow. Another fascination is studying the systems used to model the real world in the gaming cosm.
At the moment, I'm involved as a Player Character, a PC in three games. Well, that's not quite true. I haven't been gaming since I purchased by house in April of 1996. Things haven't worked out for me between work and life and I shed gaming as too much work. Something had to give, and unfortunately it was that. I am undoubtedly the poorer for it.
I prefer running (GMing) modern to post-apocalyptic games. I enjoy running Aftermath and similar FGU, Fantasy Games Unlimited systems, such as Daredevil's and Other Suns. Currently I'm hoping to put together a near-apocalyptic scenario using the Millenium's End system. I haven't tried running with it yet, but Millenium's End seems to present a good common area between Aftermath, and the highly realistic and deadly, but time consuming, combat of Phoenix Command
As of March, 2001, my following list of RPG links is horribly out of date. A large part of that is because I haven't done any roleplaying since the winter of 1995-1996. It is strange that I should stop roleplaying, for, like many of the other things I do, it makes me happy. Looking back now, I can see how my job was affecting my personal life very much. For some reason my job had become unsatisfying to me and left me unfulfilled. I think this is because of the changes in the scope of the project, the deadline after deadline with no rest to think about things. And, ultimately, the lack of pride in what I did at work. So, when I came home I wanted so much to do something, to achieve something to satisfy myself. But the problem is that role-playing is not deterministic, and that is part of the joy of the game. However, when you want to get something out of it, instead of enjoying it, then it becomes something that doesn't provide you with inner joy. Instead it becomes as frustrating and unsatisfying as work. I would just get very angry during gaming when things didn't go my way ... and that never happened before to me. I think I stopped gaming because of that, and because I felt that my actions were unfair to the other players in the game. Also, because of what was happening to me, I couldn't maintain a persona, a character, in the game. You have to be able to roll with the punches and not take things personally. And yet I couldn't stop doing that. So I stopped playing. And, inside me, part of my dream died.
I still think about role-playing, and I even buy the occasional game or supplement and go through it. It still feels like I just stopped gaming a short time ago, but I've come to realize that it has been 5 years. That says a lot about what kind of horrible existence that I led in that period of time, and that I am starting to recover from, if only a little bit.
Traveller is a wonderfully simple yet incredible role playing game. It is old, perhaps older than Dungeons & Dragons. Who really knows where the credit for the first popular RPG lies? Although I don't play Traveller much, I admire it greatly. The simplicity and cleanness of the rules, the wonderful background, and the diversity is just wonderful. I often use Traveller things as a meta-system to design other gaming environments.
The mechanics of Traveller are simple. 2d6, some small tables, and away you go. Yet you can add on rules for various activities with ease. It includes such diverse things as world, system, starship, character, trade, encounters, patrons, and creature generation. Sometimes it can be a bit tedious to keep track of all the rule add-ons and such that came in all the LBBs (Little Black Books), but then again, you can probably ignore them unless you want extreme detail. You can do that with Traveller too. It's based upon science and you can go as deep into the science as you want. It is all open-ended.
In some ways the simplicity of the rules made it the first StoryTelling type game. The rules are in no way tied to the setting the provided with the game; you can use the rules as a set of meta rules to go off and create your own game. Many have. However, the setting provided as the default is just wonderful The background the game is set in, the Imperium is wonderful, rich, and absolutely huge.
Links that were pulled from the new things page that are gaming related, but didn't have anyhwere to live yet.