Lucky-the-rescued-feral-cat is rocketing around the house chasing things ranging from the other house cats, to feathered toys, to his own tail and/or shadow. His silver-blue markings make him blend in with any pattern in the house so that it starts to seem like he’s just chasing himself. And then he’ll stop and put his head down like he’s considering exactly that possibility.
And then he’s off again. I’m hoping for moths, this time. They’re a tasty, powdery treat for a cat, and worth the effort to catch them, no?
One issue I’ve mentioned recently is the ruleset for Monastery. I’ve been
working for the last few days to organize the things so that they make
sense. And we still took forty-five minutes at the beginning of our
session to figure out a couple of issues. So having Wendy go to bed
early—long day, including vaccinations—was about the only thing that
made this game playable. Still, it was a testy game and a study in
frustration.
What’s truly bizarre about the rules is that the game isn’t all that complicated. It’s on a par with Carcassonne with one expansion, or maybe two. You place a tile (some basic rules apply, e.g., a path has to connect to another path), you move your monk(s) (two places for each standing monk, can’t travel over an unconstructed tile), you score for resources. The buildings that pay out differ based on which round you’re in, and then you use the points to buy game-winning tiles, another monk, or blessings. If the situation is right, you can pray in a complete building for extra points, though you lose any more scoring or movement abilities. And yet, in nine pages of rules, it’s hard to strip out the useful bits—in the right order.
Just an example of weird rules diction: under Tile Placement, the first
sentence reads “During Placement and movement a player may place one new
tile.” Just a few problems: 1. “placement and movement”?
Aren’t we just
talking about placement?, 2. “may”? You have a choice?, 3. at the end
of the section it says that you can do a swap with tiles in the bag, but
the “may” in both sections implies that a player may keep their tiles
(though you get points docked at the end for leftover tiles), 4. and the
rules seek to clarify this point at the very end of the section?
You might imagine that I’m inhabiting some whinging geek with a tendency toward cattiness, but I really only mean to point out that there are subtle bits of misdirection and miscommunication throughout these rules. The gray circles of study buildings and the bible-like clip-art aren’t brought together graphically in the rules. Again, the effect is subtle, and I fear that you end up feeling like you’re at a magic show: “I thought the rule about the woman being sawn in half was over here…”
Still, I’m intrigued by the game. Once it clicked into place, though, I was losing and couldn’t recover. We both had our good and bad rounds, and it was clear that you sometimes had to take a bad round to set up a better round later. Another issue may be that the game doesn’t really play well with two people. So I’d give it another spin. I can imagine working through this one over a long time.
But our frustration with the rules and our difficulty finding the rhythm of the game left us both feeling edgy. It’s been a fairly hairy week at work, and I’m not looking forward to another day of accounting. So it was easy for me to snap and pick at Dana. She’s been enduring this experiment with good humor, but I keep wanting us both to relax into a sort of intellectual dance that we can both enjoy. Yet the semester’s barreling toward us, she’s having a hard time getting her work done, I’m drawing her away from her own leisure pursuits, and—as pop culture would have it—she’s just not that into it. I’ll add quickly that she is engaged by the larger project. But the way there? Toil and study. And a modicum of frustration.
You can listen to Doug Garrett and Shelley talk about Monastery here (start around 16:25). And you should check out their podcast anyway.
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