The only problem with system76 is the terrible-to-nonexistent tech support. I had a laptop from them that was plagued with problems and it took me nine months to get them to seriously try to resolve the issue and they ultimately failed.
I purchased a System 76 laptop at the beginning of this year and I have had many issues with it. The most vexing thing is that support has not generally been helpful, dragging out the trouble shooting and diagnosis of a hard lockup and loss of network connectivity over the course of several months.
I had much better reliability and service for my Dell that shipped with linux, but they don't seem to do that anymore. For the OP, I would recommend just getting another macbook, as it seems to meet the majority of the requirements well without depending on a small company that may or may not be able to provide adequate support.
You may be able to use an app like appbrain to easily reinstall the apps you have now. I do not know for sure, as I have not tried it, but it may be an option worth looking in to. I think there may be a way to get appbrain to selectively move apps over from the old configuration to the new one and, if properly configured, automatically install them. Again, do your own research to be sure.
The tricky part is making sure you have a copy of any data/configuration you wanted to keep.
I think I've just been disappointed by Steve Jackson Games too many times. While I think the core game of Illuminati is interesting, it has some end game issues and becomes a little bit too much about who gets the richest groups. The ability of the players to constantly stop each other just short of winning can make the game drag on far longer than I'd like it to. Many other Steve Jackson efforts are cute or funny concepts, but don't really have interplay that is interesting to me in the longer term.
I guess I'd prefer a game with more elegant and polished mechanics to cute concepts and pretty art. I also prefer the depth of the games I play to be in the strategic interplay, not the interpersonal psychology and intrigue. In Illuminati there is depth to the interplay of the player's style, but not really much going on in the way the rules work.
It's a little disingenuous to directly compare the depth of Illuminati and Ricochet Robot because I wasn't trying to compare them as equals as much as I was proposing alternatives that I'd generally rather play than Illuminati. For a better comparison, I'd usually rather play Citadels than Illuminati. They have similar in many aspects, but Citadels has a much smoother game play and the end game, while it can be intentionally delayed, isn't as tedious because the mechanics provide ways to second and third guess a players move.
Part of the attraction that other games hold for me also has to do with the fact that they tend to play in a more managable time frame. A game of Puerto Rico, Princes of Florence, Carcassonne, Ricochet Robot, etc. will have a shorter and more predictable time frame than something like Illuminati, which can take several hours, but is unpredictable. Players can be knocked out of Illuminati as well, which is something I think should be avoided in a game that long.
Of course, everything depends on your preference and your intended audience, but when I look at a new game, being made by Steve Jackson games is a red flag to me indicating that I need to do a lot more researching before deciding to sink money into it.
That's funny, I have found most Steve Jackson Games to be a little over priced and they generally don't come with all of the bits you need to play out of the box. They also don't tend to be as deep as I'd like.
I'd much rather play Carcassonne, Ricochet Robot, Tigris and Euphrates, or Through the Desert than Illuminati. I still play Illuminati from time to time, but it just doesn't have the same spark it once did.
It should also be noted that Scotland Yard is still available as a game called N.Y. Chase, but with a different map.
With those points out of the way, I think the appeal of board games depends greatly on the type of board game. There are several board categories that each appeal to a different group of people. Logic games that involve deduction like Scotland Yard probably appeal to technology geeks more than they do to the general population.
Some people play games as a way to relax, and they do not like to spend as much time thinking about things as it takes to play a deduction game. Some of those people prefer "party" games like trivia games and more social offerings.
You could try to create a Venn diagram of different demographics and the type of board games that they prefer, but I don't know that it would be that useful. It is better, in my experience, to just try to find games that the people you plan to play with like and have fun.
Here is a partial list of some broad categories of games (off the top of my head):
Party games that revolve around social interation like Cranium, Apples to Apples, most trivia games, and most board games that are mass marketed for adults in the USA.
Deduction games that involve eliminating possibilities and figuring out the answer like Scotland Yard, Master Mind, Coda, and Clue.
Induction games that involve formulating a theory based on observed evidence like Zendo and Eluesis.
Programming games where the moves are all set up and then executed like RAMBots and RoboRally (Diplomacy uses this mechanic, but it's really a different kind of game).
Abstract strategy games where the players pit their mental abilities against one another. Many of these are limited to two players and frequently have perfect information. Examples include Chess, Go, Dvonn, Zertz, Tigris and Euphrates, Blokus, and Through the Desert.
Dexterity games were players have to use physical ability to achieve an objective, like Pitchcar, Jenga, and Crokinole.
There are many other types of games, and then there are many games that incorporate several of these aspects. There are even games that I refer to as "psychological interation" games because they revolve more around how well you can judge how the other players will act in a given situation (like Citadels and Werewolf).
Many of the Euro/German/Designer games incorporate different elements to create an experience that appeals to many people for different reasons, but a lot of the preference comes down to why people want to play games. I personally like to win, so I tend to dislike games that involve too much luck. I also like to think, so I enjoy games that are "brain burners".
Some of my favorites include: Go, a classic two player abstract strategy game
Ricochet Robot, a brain burning puzzle game
Zendo, an induction game
Through the Desert, a multi player abstract strategy games similar to Go
Princes of Florence, a complex designer game that incorporates auctions and strategy in an interesting way
Carcassonne, a relativly light tile placement game that still has enough strategy to be enjoyable
Age of Steam and Power Grid, economic simulation games that require tough decisions to try to implement complex plans
However, I own a broad collection of games so I have something that is approprate and enjoyable for almost any situation. It all comes down to having fun, in the end (and winning).
I know I'm a day late to this question, so this will probably be lost, but I hope it is useful.
the board game designer's forum has a lot of information. http://www.bgdf.com/index.php
deck of boards talks about game systems and using them for design. at the bottom there are several links to places that sell bits. http://www.di.fc.ul.pt/~jpn/gv/dob.htm
The Games Journal has a lot of useful information. http://www.thegamesjournal.com/Archi ves.shtml
printable graph paper http://www.incompetech.com/beta/plainGraphP aper/
those are just some random links i had on hand. good luck. i would also encourage you to remember that there are many people that like to play games that are color blind. it's not a bad idea to run your color selections past a few color blind guys (different types) to make sure that they can play without too much difficulty. oh, and playtest playtest playtest. you can't do too much playtesting, and make sure you vary the people you playtest with.
any more than you'd want a web server to have its own filesystem.
Nice comment, but I have to disagree with you on this point. I think this is not a totally bad idea. There are any many exploits that stem from the fact that the web server provides access to the file system that the OS is running on.
If the web server only served files from it's own native file system, some of those exploits could be avoided.
If you really like FLUXX and can deal with some open ended complexity, you might consider nomic. It's basically a rules set that defines how changes can be made to the rules set and has an arbitrary victory condition (which usually gets changed quickly).
Yeah, mad props to Elonka. She gave a talk at phreaknic last year and has been in charge of the phreaknic code (a decryption challenge) for a few years now, if I recall correctly.
Anyway, she's very cool and she's scheduled to talk about encryption again this year.
Don't overlook board games. There are many good board games that provide a greater level of human interaction than computer games, which is useful for the stated object of team building.
Check out boardgamegeek.com for a comprehensive database of board and card games.
Ones that I would recommend include:
Carcassonne/Carcassonne Hunters & Gatherers
Puerto Rico
Through the Desert
Ricochet Robot
Set
Apples to Apples
Nicht die Bohne
Tastes differ, however, so a decent selection would be a good idea (and probably cheaper than one PC).
Most board games also have the added bonus of an intrinsic limit. It's a lot harder to say "just one more round".
Slashdot Mirror
The only problem with system76 is the terrible-to-nonexistent tech support. I had a laptop from them that was plagued with problems and it took me nine months to get them to seriously try to resolve the issue and they ultimately failed.
I purchased a System 76 laptop at the beginning of this year and I have had many issues with it. The most vexing thing is that support has not generally been helpful, dragging out the trouble shooting and diagnosis of a hard lockup and loss of network connectivity over the course of several months.
I had much better reliability and service for my Dell that shipped with linux, but they don't seem to do that anymore. For the OP, I would recommend just getting another macbook, as it seems to meet the majority of the requirements well without depending on a small company that may or may not be able to provide adequate support.
That would mean losing my seemingly limitless supply of folding material.
http://spencerandbrown.com/mbb/origami/buscard/
You may be able to use an app like appbrain to easily reinstall the apps you have now. I do not know for sure, as I have not tried it, but it may be an option worth looking in to. I think there may be a way to get appbrain to selectively move apps over from the old configuration to the new one and, if properly configured, automatically install them. Again, do your own research to be sure.
The tricky part is making sure you have a copy of any data/configuration you wanted to keep.
It was actually 49.7 days.
Sorry I'm late, but you might want to look into Everything.
http://www.voidtools.com/
...those rules coming from someone who doesn't capitalize anything, puts two sentences together with a comma, and pluralizes with an apostrophe.
Are you just documenting the supporting evidence that they are, in fact, a hiring manager?
Are you sure?
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=e.g.
I wish I could get people to play Set with me at work... they'll all afraid (and rightly so).
We do play a lot of Tichu, though, as well as Carcassonne, Ricochet Robot, and a bunch of other "modern" board and card games.
I ran across this crazy Go "board" a few weeks ago.
I think I've just been disappointed by Steve Jackson Games too many times. While I think the core game of Illuminati is interesting, it has some end game issues and becomes a little bit too much about who gets the richest groups. The ability of the players to constantly stop each other just short of winning can make the game drag on far longer than I'd like it to. Many other Steve Jackson efforts are cute or funny concepts, but don't really have interplay that is interesting to me in the longer term.
I guess I'd prefer a game with more elegant and polished mechanics to cute concepts and pretty art. I also prefer the depth of the games I play to be in the strategic interplay, not the interpersonal psychology and intrigue. In Illuminati there is depth to the interplay of the player's style, but not really much going on in the way the rules work.
It's a little disingenuous to directly compare the depth of Illuminati and Ricochet Robot because I wasn't trying to compare them as equals as much as I was proposing alternatives that I'd generally rather play than Illuminati. For a better comparison, I'd usually rather play Citadels than Illuminati. They have similar in many aspects, but Citadels has a much smoother game play and the end game, while it can be intentionally delayed, isn't as tedious because the mechanics provide ways to second and third guess a players move.
Part of the attraction that other games hold for me also has to do with the fact that they tend to play in a more managable time frame. A game of Puerto Rico, Princes of Florence, Carcassonne, Ricochet Robot, etc. will have a shorter and more predictable time frame than something like Illuminati, which can take several hours, but is unpredictable. Players can be knocked out of Illuminati as well, which is something I think should be avoided in a game that long.
Of course, everything depends on your preference and your intended audience, but when I look at a new game, being made by Steve Jackson games is a red flag to me indicating that I need to do a lot more researching before deciding to sink money into it.
That's funny, I have found most Steve Jackson Games to be a little over priced and they generally don't come with all of the bits you need to play out of the box. They also don't tend to be as deep as I'd like.
I'd much rather play Carcassonne, Ricochet Robot, Tigris and Euphrates, or Through the Desert than Illuminati. I still play Illuminati from time to time, but it just doesn't have the same spark it once did.
But, to each his or her own. =)
The poor man's version of Robo Rally is RAM Bots. It is played using icehouse pyramids and a chessboard.
First of all, there is a whole class of Board Game Geeks.
It should also be noted that Scotland Yard is still available as a game called N.Y. Chase, but with a different map.
With those points out of the way, I think the appeal of board games depends greatly on the type of board game. There are several board categories that each appeal to a different group of people. Logic games that involve deduction like Scotland Yard probably appeal to technology geeks more than they do to the general population.
Some people play games as a way to relax, and they do not like to spend as much time thinking about things as it takes to play a deduction game. Some of those people prefer "party" games like trivia games and more social offerings.
You could try to create a Venn diagram of different demographics and the type of board games that they prefer, but I don't know that it would be that useful. It is better, in my experience, to just try to find games that the people you plan to play with like and have fun.
Here is a partial list of some broad categories of games (off the top of my head):
Party games that revolve around social interation like Cranium, Apples to Apples, most trivia games, and most board games that are mass marketed for adults in the USA.
Deduction games that involve eliminating possibilities and figuring out the answer like Scotland Yard, Master Mind, Coda, and Clue.
Induction games that involve formulating a theory based on observed evidence like Zendo and Eluesis.
Programming games where the moves are all set up and then executed like RAMBots and RoboRally (Diplomacy uses this mechanic, but it's really a different kind of game).
Abstract strategy games where the players pit their mental abilities against one another. Many of these are limited to two players and frequently have perfect information. Examples include Chess, Go, Dvonn, Zertz, Tigris and Euphrates, Blokus, and Through the Desert.
Dexterity games were players have to use physical ability to achieve an objective, like Pitchcar, Jenga, and Crokinole.
There are many other types of games, and then there are many games that incorporate several of these aspects. There are even games that I refer to as "psychological interation" games because they revolve more around how well you can judge how the other players will act in a given situation (like Citadels and Werewolf).
Many of the Euro/German/Designer games incorporate different elements to create an experience that appeals to many people for different reasons, but a lot of the preference comes down to why people want to play games. I personally like to win, so I tend to dislike games that involve too much luck. I also like to think, so I enjoy games that are "brain burners".
Some of my favorites include:
Go, a classic two player abstract strategy game
Ricochet Robot, a brain burning puzzle game
Zendo, an induction game
Through the Desert, a multi player abstract strategy games similar to Go
Princes of Florence, a complex designer game that incorporates auctions and strategy in an interesting way
Carcassonne, a relativly light tile placement game that still has enough strategy to be enjoyable
Age of Steam and Power Grid, economic simulation games that require tough decisions to try to implement complex plans
However, I own a broad collection of games so I have something that is approprate and enjoyable for almost any situation. It all comes down to having fun, in the end (and winning).
where they fired a bunch of people and closed a lot of stores to make the bottom line look better so they could make a killing when they sold it.
The quicker play rules that can be found on board game geek tries to reform Zombies!!! into something fun.
That's exactly what my wife got me last year.
=)
I know I'm a day late to this question, so this will probably be lost, but I hope it is useful.
i ves.shtml
P aper/
the board game designer's forum has a lot of information.
http://www.bgdf.com/index.php
deck of boards talks about game systems and using them for design. at the bottom there are several links to places that sell bits.
http://www.di.fc.ul.pt/~jpn/gv/dob.htm
The Games Journal has a lot of useful information.
http://www.thegamesjournal.com/Arch
printable graph paper
http://www.incompetech.com/beta/plainGraph
those are just some random links i had on hand. good luck. i would also encourage you to remember that there are many people that like to play games that are color blind. it's not a bad idea to run your color selections past a few color blind guys (different types) to make sure that they can play without too much difficulty. oh, and playtest playtest playtest. you can't do too much playtesting, and make sure you vary the people you playtest with.
Both the movie and the theater deserve your support.
for posting my thoughts for me.
any more than you'd want a web server to have its own filesystem.
Nice comment, but I have to disagree with you on this point. I think this is not a totally bad idea. There are any many exploits that stem from the fact that the web server provides access to the file system that the OS is running on.
If the web server only served files from it's own native file system, some of those exploits could be avoided.
If you really like FLUXX and can deal with some open ended complexity, you might consider nomic. It's basically a rules set that defines how changes can be made to the rules set and has an arbitrary victory condition (which usually gets changed quickly).
Nice darko reference.
Even better because the bribe numbers are from 2004.
Yeah, mad props to Elonka. She gave a talk at phreaknic last year and has been in charge of the phreaknic code (a decryption challenge) for a few years now, if I recall correctly.
Anyway, she's very cool and she's scheduled to talk about encryption again this year.
Don't overlook board games. There are many good board games that provide a greater level of human interaction than computer games, which is useful for the stated object of team building.
Check out boardgamegeek.com for a comprehensive database of board and card games.
Ones that I would recommend include:
Tastes differ, however, so a decent selection would be a good idea (and probably cheaper than one PC).
Most board games also have the added bonus of an intrinsic limit. It's a lot harder to say "just one more round".