Comparative gaming styles

[breakinglight11]

There will be BSCF at my house tonight. That is cool, although I'm not sure I'm feeling up to that much social interaction. Depending on my ability to pretend to be a human being tonight, I may have to go hide in my room. If I can manage to behave like a real person, however, perhaps I shall try to get a game of Small World going.

I heard that at WPI, when Small World is played it is considered standard practice to make diplomatic agreements with other players. At Brandeis, we tend to be geared much more toward pure strategy when we play. If the right move is not immediately obvious, everyone around the table with discuss what the most advantageous move given the situation is, regardless of what other player it may hurt, and countless times I have heard someone advise their opponent to attack they themselves because it is objectively the best move.

I find this hilarious given WPI versus Brandeis larping style. At Brandeis we are the diplomats, the ones who sit around in a circle holding hands trying to find some way to work things out, while I have found WPI larpers to be more ruthless, oriented more towards the win-condition than finding some compromise. The reversal of that situation I find very funny.

Comments

[witticaster.livejournal.com]

It's not quite a reversal, though. In that scenario we're still all working together and helping each other rather than focusing on winning. I've never seen WPIers play Small World, but I'd wager that those diplomatic agreements are less about hand holding and more about "I know I can take you if I need to, so let's gang up on the others and crush them, and then I will win." It might be called diplomacy, but it can still be purely strategic and goal-motivated.

[breakinglight11.livejournal.com]

Heh, excellent point. We're still more geared toward helping each other, and the WPI diplomacy is pretty self-serving. When you look at it that way, it's not all that different from the typical larp styles at all. :-)