Jan. 12th, 2010

Training

Jan. 12th, 2010 04:42 pm
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Back in Dallas, where it is about as cold as in Boston, but without snow. I already miss not having to drive anywhere or buy groceries. Current small projects include continuing to fiddle with a misbehaving fountain pen, a bit of technology that really was never as good as the thing it replaced or the thing that replaced it, but which is unavoidable if you're someone like me who very much likes inks. (Particular ink love goes out to Noodler's.)

Toward the end of the Boston trip, Dad and I got bored and pulled out an old Avalon Hill game from the 1960s. (This usually happens about once a vacation.) This time, it was "C&O/B&O - The Game of Railroading." It took about an hour to set up, and about three turns to decide we'd rather stop playing. This, too, is not atypical. The thing about Avalon Hill games from that period is that they're rendered obsolete by computers, chiefly because they are more interested in being accurate simulations than what we would today recognize as a game. The player is not obeying game theory or trying to best a score or another player; the player is a mechanism for moving certain pieces of paper at certain times in an orderly and prescribed way so as to accurately portray the routes real trains were taking at the time. High moments of tension were ones in which Dad or I would say "well, this train is going to have to move to a siding so that this other train can pass, as mandated by law, and conveniently this will allow both to remain on schedule."

In conclusion: I love "Railroad Tycoon 3" why has no one gotten me "Sid Meyer's Railroads!" is it the exclamation point I will put up with the exclamation point

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