Gamy

I have never been much of a fan of games. That's not to say that I haven't played them -- mostly the classics, like Monopoly and Risk, and I enjoy chess, though I'm not particularly good at it -- but I just don't think of games when I need a pasttime or a diversion. For that, I'll read a book.

Occasionally, I wonder about the people who get really into role playing games. A couple that I've known really get into it -- one spoke animatedly about having a Skype session with several team mates as they all individually maneuvered their characters across what I think was a World of Warcraft scene. The recent death of its creator brought Dungeons and Dragons back to mind after not thinking about it for years; one of my coworkers was a D&D freak, and would occasionally go to a gaming session wearing his cowled robe as a way of getting into the mood. I could not understand that, but fine, he liked it. Not for me, though.

If I were to play such a game, I think I'd prefer one where you played against a programmed intelligence, and could take a lot of time to mull over moves and actions. There might be battles, might not, but the goal wouldn't be to score crisis points or skill levels or whatever the buzzwords are, but rather to influence events, make deductions that were validated by later events, that sort of thing. Business, research, warcraft -- the venue almost wouldn't matter. Just the intellectual pleasure of the game.

Now that would be worth a cowled robe or two.