Discussion: Orienteering and Gaming

Thread seed germinated on a side comment, but I am rather curious...

Are orienteerers also gamers?

Foundation - we've generally acknowledged a correlation between people who seem to care about orienteering and education.

But I've always felt that my gaming background is individual to me, and not necessarily also correlated - until gaming came up in a log comment...

So - by way of full disclosure, I have been a lover of games for all of my life. Board games, role playing games, card games, dice games, you name it, I'm probably up for it - at least once...

I don't get time to do so as often as I might enjoy, but I'll gather with friends a few times a year still.

Examples: Risk, Diplomacy, Civilization, Cosmic Encounters, Railroad Tycoon, Go, Acquire, Wizard's Quest,Circus Maximus, AD&D, Runequest, Paranoia, Gamma World, 007, TORG, Cthulu, Euchre, Pinochle, Hearts, Spades, Skit Gubbe, Cribbage, Munchkin, Phase 10, Set, Illuminati, Nuclear War, Magic, Talisman, Cosmic Wimpout, and Settlers of Catan.

For the last, http://www.boardgamegeek.com rates it as #46, but I think that is by quality, not popularity. I'd maintain that most gamers at least know of it, but most people on the street would say "huh?" if you asked them...

So other than outing myself, do others have a history of gaming?-)

If you're gathering data, I'm of the gaming persuasion also - though I get few chances to indulge it these days. (Now if only I could blame that on excessive O-training...)

Well, I own Settlers of Catan and have periodic game nights with (mostly non-orienteering) friends. We also play Taboo, Pictionary, Guestures, Balderdash, and a few others. I'm also embarassed to admit I play Wizard 101, which is supposed to be a kid's game.

The Karpinski/Saeger/Smith group play games whenever we can, usually dinner and a game. Settlers is popular, but for real strategy and frustration we go for Ticket To Ride.
Recently have gotten PuertoRico and SanJuan.

I'm not a gamer myself. But in my current circle of local friends (~10), the two things that we reliably do together are orienteering/street scrambles and game nights. One of them is a true gamer, and he's got over 100 games in his collection, I think.

LOOOVE Puerto Rico. Take a look at Dominion Jeff. Amazing game, especially for those times you don't have at least an hour or two to devote to games.

I play Settlers of Catan and a handful of other games on a regular basis. My favorites are WizWar (don't laugh, its a great game), Titan, and 1830 (all out of print I think). A friend of mine is always bringing around more modern games, but I haven't cared for them as much, except on called Carcassone, which is quite good. I think my all time favorite, a minute to learn, a lifetime to master, is Acquire (also out of print, I believe).

I used to do alot of FRP, but don't anymore. I used to be ranked in Bridge, but Hearts is my card game of choice now. Nothing comes close, IMHO.

I've got Dominion, Carcassone, and San Juan. Would have Settlers (and Knights and Cities), but my friend left it on the subway. :(

Dominion is pretty fantastic, short and deep, but occasionally you get a bad card combination that can take forever...

I think part of Settlers' low BGG ranking has to do with replayability. A lot of the voters there play these games literally thousands of times online on BSW.

Chess and Arimaa are always good too.

You may count me as a gamer as well. Some of the above mentioned board games plus I wonder if there are other orienteers who play GO. I'm not particularly good at it but if anyone feels like playing a game on kgs don't hesitate to contact me ;-).

Before the online gaming market took over we used to play loads of board games with the buddies all the time. Now I play mostly online - does that count?

I don't game much these days, but one board game that I think orienteers would enjoy is Roborally. You guide your robot around the boards (which can be reconfigured) using cards with various movements on them. The trick is that you have to plan several steps in advance, and there are locations on the board that can move your robot or damage it. It was designed by the guy who went on to create Magic the Gathering (which I also used to play.)

Some people have too much time on their hands.

Yeah, I hate how playing games and forming social relationships makes us all so well-rounded and interesting.

Somewhat related....

If you have a Wii Fit, there's a game there called Island Cycling that is kinda like a score-o. You get a map of the island with a bunch of checkpoints on it, and you "run" on the balance board to simulate cycling around.

It's not about speed, though. It measures the total distance used to collect all of the checkpoints, so it's about route efficiency.

There are some limitations, obviously. The most annoying to me is that uncrossable features aren't mapped, so it's hard to tell exactly where you can go and where you can't.

randy: My favorites are WizWar (don't laugh, its a great game), Titan, and 1830 (all out of print I think).

Ugh--Titan: it's an interesting game, but it takes forever to play. "Shall I go on a downhill skiing trip this weekend or play Titan?" In my experience, those take a similar amount of time. I remember going to a friend's house when I was in high school and having Titan games that went all night.

I've never been an avid gamer, but I enjoy games--especially those that are fairly easy to learn--and play occassionally when time and opportunity present themselves.

The Wadd Squad loves board games. We own about 10 different versions of Trivial Pursuit for example and it is tradition to have a new game each Xmas. Our top 5 fave board games (with their respective BGG ranking) right now are Power Grid (#5), Ticket to Ride - Europe (#48), Peurto Rico (#1), Settlers of Catan (#46), and Himalaya (#277). No surprise that several of the games above are geo/map based but Power Grid and Ticket to Ride are by far our faves.

Hmmm... that jogs a memory - no one has mentioned Avalon Hill's classic "Outdoor Survival". Oh to die just a few spaces from making it off the board and surviving... I had forgotten about this one;-)

http://www.acaeum.com/ddindexes/miscpages/outsurvi...

I think a majority of games could be said to have a geo/map base...

If you like Titan, you'll love the original Civilization - that might be over in 8 hours if everyone plays fast...-)

If you like Titan, you'll love the original Civilization - that might be over in 8 hours if everyone plays fast...-)

Yes, that is a good one, tho it is difficult to find 8 other people willing to spend that much time, and games with less than at least 7 players are quite poor in my experience.

If you play Titan with people who have played alot, and about 30 dice, it seems to move along, and like a rogaine, its length is part of the appeal.

One good one that I haven't seen mentioned yet is Scotland Yard, which is one of the only board games that can actually make me nervous and raise my heart rate in anticipation of being 'caught'.

A buddy of mine designs his own board games and board designs and owns 100+ boardgames!. I mentioned this thread to him and he mentioned these games (with his comments) as popular sports theme boardgames:

Leader One (Tour de France style bike racing where energy conservation is important and tactical use of the peloton).

Race the Wind - Yacht Racing which takes into account wind and vector manuevering (haven't played this)

Snow Tails (Sled dog racing which is quite simple yet fun. Keeping your dogs balanced via card play and corner speed restrictions).

The Great Dalmuti. Easy to learn, easy to play and you can stop after any round... but you won't :)