Some games night thoughts. . .

[xiphias]

It occurs to me that the game Encore probably takes only an hour or so if non-geeks play the game. But I think that it's not fair to expect geeks to finish a game in under six hours.

There's a Saturday morning cartoon called "Recess", about a bunch of elementary schoolers. It's a somwhat clever show; this past week, there was a bit in which one of the characters, Vince, realizes that his older brother, Chad, is not, in fact, cool, but is, instead, a geek.

Vince confronts his brother, who explains that he is aware he's a geek, and is comfortable with what he is. Yet Vince tries to deny the evidence:

Vince: But. . . but -- you have all those CDs!
Chad: Webber, Sondheim, Gilbert and Sullivan -- geek music.

That's basically it. Geeks, even geeks who aren't specifically music geeks or theatre geeks, can be reasonably expected to carry thousands of songs around in their heads -- and songs based on lyrics. Besides having a solid grounding in lyric-based musical theatre, most geeks -- even geeks who are totally nonmuscical -- will have a usable knowlege of at least one of the following genres: historical folk, new wave, Sixties/psychadelic, filk, general audience showtunes, childrens' music, Seventies/disco, religious/spiritual, and/or techno/Goth. Some geeks will just happen to know everything ever written by an artist or group: cheshyre knows everything that Queen and the Monkees ever wrote; many geeks know everything Weird Al ever wrote. Many geeks will have a decent knowlege of several, or even many, of those.

And if you get four geeks together, you're likely to cover at least half of those genres. You're going to have thousands of songs to choose from, on any subject.

In the game Encore, on each turn, a word is drawn from a deck of cards, and the teams go back and forth singing snippets of songs which include that word. The turn isn't over until a side can't think of a song in a minute and a half or so. If, in your group of friends, everybody only knows a couple hundred songs, and they're mostly the same couple hundred songs, then I can see that you'd only be able to go back and forth two or three times on a given word. Turns wouldn't last more than three or four minutes.

If everybody knows thousands of songs, and they're all DIFFERENT thousands of songs, every turn is going to take ten, fifteen, twenty minutes. Turns end when a side goes into brainlock and can't retrieve a song which they KNOW is in their brain somewhere, and not when the actual knowlege of songs that would fit is exhausted.

I admit that we only came up with like two songs that had the word "boa" in them, but that was late in the evening, and everyone was tired. We probably went half an hour or longer on the word "white". The word "island" kept us for about fifteen minutes. "Days of the week" ended, not because we burned through our supply of songs with days of the week in them, but because our brains cramped and stopped supplying them. I mean, there were obvious ones we didn't use: "Seven Days" by Sting, "Except for Monday" by Lorrie Morgan, and the like.

I'm actually upset at myself for forgetting "Except for Monday", because I love that song. It's about how, now that the singer has broken up with her ex, she feels so much better and happier, almost all the time. . . "except for Monday which was never good anyways, Tuesday I get a little bit sideways, Wednesday I feel better, just for spite. Thursday and Friday take too long, before I know it, Saturday's gone, but it's Sunday now and you can bet that I'm all right."

Comments

[kiya]

I would like to note that reading the last two paragraphs of this post started me at "Eight Days a Week" (The Beatles), ricocheted me into "Monday, Monday" (The Mamas and the Papas) and finally dropped me smack dab into the middle of "Friday I'm In Love" (The Cure).

I'm not sure what this demonstrates other than, possibly, your point. ;)

[jehanna.livejournal.com]

In the game Encore, on each turn, a word is drawn from a deck of cards, and the teams go back and forth singing snippets of songs which include that word. The turn isn't over until a side can't think of a song in a minute and a half or so.

Oh, man. solipsistnation would kick ass at that game.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

"Friday, I'm in Love" was the first song pulled out, and "Monday, Monday" made an appearance early on. And "Eight Days a Week" doesn't list any ACTUAL day-names.

So you can see how long a turn would take. . .

[gingicat]

We did all three of those. :)

midweek madness

[tapuz.livejournal.com]

We were with (mutual, actually) friends on the Other Side of the River a few weeks back and it came up over lunch conversation (don't remember why!) that we could get songs for all days with great ease, except Wednesday and Thursday. So, give us some data sets :-) What did you access? (We disqualified songs that go through all of the days of the week, like the potato/kugel song. )

To actually respond to the theory: So true (with the caveat that in personal experience, the musical theatre part is not a true necessity.) With that said, do you think that it is about lyrics, rhymes, word play and language feel or about having a passionate interest and pride about something that carries your identity and belonging of being part of a community (i.e. affiliated with that music) that does not necessarily correlate to a contemporary mainstream? (i won't toss Howard Gardner into the mix, but I feel that "how geeks learn" ties in somehow... and the music being especially important to geeks.)

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

...as my girlie said, I have, in fact, kicked ass at that game.

If you ever want to play again, and have a lot of time, heh, lemme know. 8)

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

When Encore first came out, a group of fans here in NYC used to play it monthly at a Games Night. We quickly decided to add a few rules, including the Energizer Bunny Rule (the word was discarded if the group concluded that there were too many songs available: words like "love," "day," "the," etc.)

Aided by some organized geeks in the group, we also created our own cards, which led to some entertaining afternoon gatherings, where perhaps a half-dozen of us would randomly gather and start coming up with words. I think we'd agreed that if we could come up with at least six songs for a word/concept, it could be included.

Re: midweek madness

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

We mainly hit Wednesday and Thursday only in "whole week songs". And "Bulbes" was disqualified, because only English songs are allowed. You allow Yiddish, and then you have to allow Hebrew, Latin, Spanish, Greek, German, and Italian, and then you'll NEVER finish the game.

But there is the first line of "She's Leaving Home" by the Beatles, which was used.

[maedbh7.livejournal.com]

I direct your attenion to the following:
Filker's Rules for Encore

Why? Because we spent 2 hours on domesticated animals. Enjoy :) -H...

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I don't know that those would have helped that much. We had so many people there that had never played before that we weren't using the "Sing off" rules, and Lis and I decided we were to tired to continue before we got to the finale. So the main things which were relevant were puns and parodies, neither of which added that much acutal time to the thing -- parodies were used, but they only added a couple seconds per use. And, of course, if someone threw out "307 Ale" and someone responded with "301 Ale," then one could just bounce it back with "307 Light" and you were back to where you started, with only twenty seconds elapsed. . .

I think the only pun that was thrown was mine. Category was "names of drinks", and I used "I'll Take Manhattan". . .

Using a stopwatch might have been a good idea though.

[jadasc.livejournal.com]

It is often the case that *lots* of people want to play it. I've been known to run a table game at Arisia.

[mittelbar.livejournal.com]

I guess that settles it. I'm not a geek. Perhaps I'm a nerd.

[jadasc.livejournal.com]

You forgot "a man of wealth and taste" for the Five Senses.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Oh, right. . . sorry. . .

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Yep. That must be it. But if it is, then you're a very, very STRANGE nerd, which is every bit as good as a geek.

[mittelbar.livejournal.com]

As good as? {spocks eyebrow}

[greenlily.livejournal.com]

Ooo! Count me in!!

(What was the other song with 'boa' in it?)