Talk:Food Trumps

Old forum comments

(The Ludocity website previously had integrated forums, but they fell into spam-covered decline and were shut down in 2015. The comments in this section have been automatically converted from that forum.)

Request for comments about whether this game should even exist. --benhenley (talk) 2009-05-27 20:01:12

I'd be interested to see more community discussion on this, but as things stand, I don't think Food Trumps is a pervasive enough game to merit a full page on Ludocity - it doesn't involve the environment, an unsuspecting audience, or any social or theatrical elements.

There's definitely a place for this sort of game at a pervasive gaming event - most of the pick-up-and-play Sandpit games fall into the same sort of category - but I don't think we should be blurring the purpose of the wiki by hosting them all here as full-blown games with as much authority and relevance as the fully "pervasive" ones.

I think the best direction to take this in would be to have a page of links to games that people might want to play in the background at pervasive gaming events. Whether we actually host the rules for those games (in such a way that they don't appear in any of the "games" categories) or just link to external sources (and encourage people to post their rules in a blog entry and link to them), I'm not sure. --Kevan (talk) 2009-05-28 15:49:15

I think you're probably right, but just thought I should put the rules up while they were in my head. If I was feeling stubborn I would argue that it *could* involve an unsuspecting audience...

What would you call the page - "Background games"? "Ambient games"? --benhenley (talk) 2009-05-28 16:28:54

Yeah, I think we could use a clear definition of "pervasive games" so that we're all agreed on what we're doing here, and what implications a concession of "well, it could involve an unsuspecting audience" would have (if it meant that we could also include chess or draughts or any board game, then we're probably heading in the wrong direction). I've started a thread on it.

We can call the page anything and see where it goes. I'd go for "other games" and split it up when we can see what's being put there.

And I'm now wondering if Food Trumps would be worth running with a "five pounds each, twenty minutes to buy a 'deck' of food" introduction. Would be interesting to see what sort of tactical picnic emerged. --Kevan (talk) 2009-05-28 16:34:03

What a great idea! It's Food Magic: The Gathering. --benhenley (talk) 2009-05-28 16:35:48

So do you want me to move this game somewhere? I am not ignoring the fact that it is borderline pervasive. --benhenley (talk) 2009-06-08 15:25:09

If you agree that it's not really "pervasive", then sure, I think a LiveJournal post and a new "links to some tangential games" page on the wiki would be more appropriate. I'd be interested to hear your definition of "pervasive gaming", though - we do need to settle on one, and it could well be that the best definition would include Food Trumps.

Alternatively, you could try cranking this up into a fully pervasive game. I quite like the idea of letting people tactically buy their starting food, although charging people to play a game (even if they get to eat the proceeds) might be a bit tough. --Kevan (talk) 2009-06-08 15:49:28

I can't top your definition, to be honest.

I am just not entirely sure that Food Trumps would not be pervasive under your definition - it doesn't just involve an unsuspecting audience, but unsuspecting players, and there is an element of performance when you're playing the metagame, because you have to pretend it's perfectly normal to be trading food around. And arguably, it does involve 'the environment' in the sense that the picnic is not assembled specifically to play the game.

Letting people buy the food first seems *less* pervasive to me.

But you could certainly do it with the tactical food "deck" approach - if it was at a Sandpit, you could do it so that the expenses budget for the game was just used to give each team a fiver. Or you could give them monopoly money and let them buy food from a "tuckshop" that you run... The advantage of this is that you could fix the prices to balance the game better; I suspect something like a scotch egg would be too powerful unless you nerfed it by making it more expensive. --benhenley (talk) 2009-06-11 16:34:38

I think the test is "okay, if we're defining this as 'pervasive', what else does that cover?", and "persuading some players to do silly-looking things using nearby props" would - by itself - include a great swathe of simple drinking games.

I'm not sure scotch eggs need nerfing, as they presumably lose to anything sugary. The prime tactic may be to buy mysterious, heavily-packaged foreign food, so that other players can't second-guess it from a distance. Tins of eastern-European pineapple chunks and hot dogs may not make for much of a picnic, however. --Kevan (talk) 2009-06-11 16:52:03

OK, let's make it so that they go off and buy a deck of food - then it's pervasive since they're going around the city. Are there any upcoming Sandpits where there will be a nearby park and a variety of food shops? --benhenley (talk) 2009-06-11 17:16:26