yet more questions

[jazzfish]

I'm sure you all know the drill by now, but just in case:
1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I will respond by asking you 5 questions of a very personal nature.
3. Update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. Include this and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, ask them 5 questions.

From desfido, probably the most difficult set of questions I've been posed since I applied to Jefferson:

1) I'm sure you've been asked this before, but what would your five desert island games be (assume appropriate people to play them with are stranded with you, but not in a way which makes them useful for escape)?

In no particular order:

• Go, for depth
  
• Race for the Galaxy (plus expansions), for quick fun
  
• Sleuth, for thinkiness
  
• Traders of Genoa, for complex negotiation
  
• Britannia, for strategy and long 'experience' wargaminess (note: if I'd played Titan more, it might have taken this spot)

2) What are the five best decisions you've made in the past five years?

• Moving into my own place.
  
• Going to work for $company.previous.
  
• Going to work for $company. (Includes "leaving Blacksburg" and "moving to the DC area.")
  
• Paying more money to live in a good location (close to work, easily accessible from the Beltway).
  
• Couples counseling with uilos, which grew into individual counseling after five months.

3) What are the five worst gaming experiences you have had (in terms of an individual play, specific time playing, bad games, or any other such reasonable interpretation)?

• Avalon Hill's Assassin, the first game I ever walked away from. The rules were bad, the gameplay was worse.
  
• The seventy-minute Fluxx prelim game in 2003. I wanted to shoot the players. All of them. Even the ones that were trying to speed things up.
  
• My game-destroying crash in my very first IIT.
  
• SoulCalibur with ndkid during a party. I had stopped having fun at being beat up and unable to retaliate (knockdown's a bitch), but didn't get up and walk away, so my frustration mounted.
  
• Joe the Asshole's legendarily painful D&D game. It's funny in retrospect.

4) What are five characteristics, abilities, or tendencies which, in your opinion, most define who you are?

• I'm lazy, in the perl sense. If presented with a problem I'd much rather expend more time and effort to solve the general case, instead of working out the special circumstances for this iteration.
  
• I'm terrified of and paralyzed by the possibility of failure. Actual failure is even worse.
  
• I analyze everything. This is incredibly useful for gaming and for general problem-solving, and causes difficulty when dealing with emotions.
  
• I'm an introvert who can pretend to be an extrovert for short periods of time.
  
• I communicate. I want to be understood and to understand. Writing's a natural extension of this ability and desire.

5) Who are the five people who have had the most significant impact upon your thinking?

• My parents. I'm putting an awful lot of effort towards knocking them off this list. In particular they're largely responsible for the second and third items in #4.
  
• Ursula K. Le Guin. Directly, with her translation of the Tao te Ching. Indirectly, through a class on her writing that I took in fall '03.
  
• Len Scigaj, my first serious English prof. He gave me the Imagists and the Moderns
  
• My current boss has taught me more about tech writing, and thus about good writing in general, than I've learned from just about anyone else.
  
• I think it was Matthew Yglesias's blog where I first encountered the phrase "Taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilised society," which as much as anything gave me some amount of guidance when I was mentally flailing about in spring '04. So, he counts.

---

And from befers:
1) Did you always want to return to Northern Virginia after college, or did you end up back there by happenstance?

Hm. I've got no particular love for the DC area (I hate the traffic and the climate is only barely tolerable). When I graduated I was looking at a number of other potential places, as well. However, DC was close to B'burg, and I already had a decent social network in place (and, most importantly, uilos was there). So: partly happenstance, mostly design, and definitely not permanent.

2) I figure your username comes from the Howie Green book you quote on your LiveJournal. Why does that moniker hold so much meaning for you?

History, mostly. I started using 'jazzfish' for my online handle in summer '96, after scathach gave me a copy of the book.

3) Are there things about your time at Jefferson that you think are unique to that place/time?

I'm not sure how to answer this question. Troupe was unique, but in a way that was still unique a few years later. The BBS culture died out with the birth of the Internet; that's not place-specific, except in that if I hadn't had geek friends I'd never have gotten started. Cloak People, maybe.

4) Why did you pick Virginia Tech?

It had a good engineering program, I already knew a whole bunch of people there, and I could apply early-decision and not have to worry about it any more for the rest of senior year.

5) What one thing could you not live without?

Sweet, sweet oxygen. Only slightly less literally, physical affection from those I love.

Comments

[ndkid.livejournal.com]

Oddly, I don't specifically remember ever playing you in Soulcaliber. I do remember once playing Joe, who got so frustrated at either not being able to get up or getting bull-rushed into a ring out, that he punched me repeatedly in the shoulder.

[jazzfish]

I believe there was a party-like activity going on. I remember Big Jay being there.

Raises hand

[rbandrews]

I always did like this meme.

Incidentally, I'm surprised I'm not anywhere in the list of five worst gaming experiences. Not that I can think of anything in particular (you weren't in the six-player Tile Chess), but that it seems like I'd have annoyed the crap out of you at a gaming table some point or other.

Re: Raises hand

[jazzfish]

1) What's the best thing about living in Austin, after being near Cassie?
2) Ever thought about getting laser eye surgery?
3) What's your favorite holiday?
4) What piece of code are you proudest of?
5) Are you happy with your life?

---

Not really, actually. Any frustration I've felt with you has been pretty run-of-the-mill, same kind of thing I'd get from other people. I have vague memories of getting extremely upset at the dice in a Settlers game the first year or two that I knew you, but that's about it.

Of course, "are deals binding" remains on my list of all-time most awesome gaming experiences. :)

[rbandrews]

Also, while I'm thinking about it, would you really pick a negotiation game for a desert island?

I always thought that a good description of hell would be a negotiation game, played with the same group, over and over, for eternity. Metagaming would be pervasive, nasty, and inevitable.

I'd pick a selection of games that were either full-on competitive or fully cooperative. Maybe games where one player is the enemy of the rest would be cool.

[jazzfish]

I would, but only fairly light ones. All the reasons why I don't play Diplomacy anymore? Yeah, those, exponentially.

Traders avoids the worst of that problem by having just so bloody much going on, so that you're not sure how much any given thing is /really/ worth.

I really want to like cooperative games. I've not found one that I get along with well yet. Even Lord of the Rings has started to irritate me lately. Ghost Stories had promise, but the dice are just too frustrating.

[rbandrews]

LotR never seemed to have enough going on for me. There's no reason not to show your hand and help the group.

I think a good cooperative game requires some kind of incentive not to help the others, which you have to overcome. Terra was a good one like that.

[kittenchan.livejournal.com]

I'm very curious as to what you'd ask me if I played along with this meme.. so go ahead and interview me :)

[jazzfish]

1) What's the best thing about living in Blackstiansburg?
2) What's your favorite con? (general or specific)
3) How's your art coming?
4) Where do you want to end up?
5) Are you happy with your life?

[psilan.livejournal.com]

I'm curious about this D&D game you mention...

And a 70 minute Fluxx game? Good glory.

[uilos.livejournal.com]

Catch one of us in person at some point. Suffice to say it's the only game where I've had the DM tell us "you're all bad players and have ruined my game" and then leave the apartment in a huff.

[kdsorceress.livejournal.com]

Sleeeeuth! That's the little card game that's basically all the fun parts of clue and none of the boring walking around parts, right?

Also, interview me! Because I've totally gotten around to giving out questions from the last two times I did this meme!

~Sor

[ndkid.livejournal.com]

Indeed. If you ever come over, I'll pull it out. If I know in advance, I'll even make sure I have printed up some of my helper sheets... it is a game where you definitely want to track data, and I'm pretty pleased with the system I came up with for doing so. YMMV.

[kdsorceress.livejournal.com]

Heh, well, that if is unfortunately looking to be a big one right now (stupid finals week)

I'd love to see your sheets --I don't play it often enough to have my own system for keeping track of things quite yet, which is a shame, as it's a damn good game.

~Sor

"like clue, only fun," yes.

[jazzfish]

1) What's the best thing about living in Boston?
2) Who do you want to get back in touch with?
3) What makes you you?
4) Where do you want to end up?
5) Are you happy with your life?