I guess my main hobby is gaming, by which I mean playing boardgames and pen-and-paper rpgs. I am not as serious as some. My group has a sizable collection of games, of varying complexity and play-time, but there are a lot we're missing (both in terms of classics and more obscure stuff) and we often fall back to the same couple games. This is especially true of role-playing games, where me almost exclusively play D&D. I wish that weren't so, but alas.
On the other hand, over the years we have attempted to design multiple boardgames and RPGs, getting a pretty far into the process several times. I am usually the instigator of this, and I wish we did it more/actually completed some games. There was a time, over a decade ago, when we styled ourselves a business and we're legitimately trying to sell a Warhammer 40k RPG to Games Workshop. Didn't work out. So that's pretty serious, I guess.
I can't imagine starting a collection like Uno's, that a University would accept, or developing a game that I'd pitch to a company.
Speaking of obscure. One thing over the holiday was picking up a copy of Ikusa. Formerly Shogun. Formerly Samurai Swords. Familiar with it?
I really respect a lot of the model building that goes into some of those game sets. It's like little miniature versions of what I do for Halloween. I could never work in miniature, though.
Speaking of obscure. One thing over the holiday was picking up a copy of Ikusa. Formerly Shogun. Formerly Samurai Swords. Familiar with it?
I think I played Shogun once, but I might be thinking of another boardgame that involves territory control in Samurai-era Japan...
I guess my main hobby is gaming, by which I mean playing boardgames and pen-and-paper rpgs. I am not as serious as some. My group has a sizable collection of games, of varying complexity and play-time, but there are a lot we're missing (both in terms of classics and more obscure stuff) and we often fall back to the same couple games. This is especially true of role-playing games, where me almost exclusively play D&D. I wish that weren't so, but alas.I used to do a lot of gaming - board games, computer games, table-top RPGs... that SCA group I was in had an eclectic batch of interests and most of us were into gaming of some kind. Even our Star Trek club got into D&D, and our DM made little props - when we found a scroll, we had to physically unroll the thing to know what was on it (there was a paper inserted saying, "This is a scroll with ___ spell" or "This scroll is CURSED" - and there'd be a penalty attached). Pretty soon it was a case of "I don't wanna look at this scroll, YOU look at this scroll!" ;lol
Well, there's always a Play-by-Post option. I was part of a PBEM (play by email) game of Civilization (the original board game) for awhile. It was loads of fun, even though I expected to come in dead last. I was playing Crete (not the best choice for someone inexperienced or rusty) and spent most of the game in a war with Thrace (thank goodness for the secret alliance with Asia). Unfortunately the game broke up a couple of turns before the end; the GM just stopped posting and to this day I've no idea what happened.
We've got Empire Builder, British, Russian, Euro, and China Rails. Once, we played Megarails, where we tried to combine Empire Builder, Eurorails, and Russian Rails. That was a bad idea...I thought of doing something like that, but with all the games we had among us at the time (North Americ Rails, British Rails, Eurorails, Nippon Rails, Australia Rails, and Iron Dragon (like the others, but takes place in a fantasy setting; part of the rail system is underground). The idea never got beyond vague planning.
You must be thinking of the board game that came out after the computer game, as Thrace had no particular assets that were more spectacular than anyone else's (well, except for land; Crete is stuck for a turn or two before they've got enough population to send anyone across the sea).
I don't see how the original board game can be played solo, as you're constantly attacking other players, making alliances, and there's a trading round where you trade commodities and try to hit your opponents with calamities. That's how I won one game... last turn, someone else was about to win... until I put on my best poker face and slipped him a Civil Disorder card in the trading round. He couldn't recover from that, so I won.