vision

[calescent]

Kiri's up early the next morning, restless with various low-level simmering concerns, and wanders out of her room.

Comments

[free_flowing]

"Not bad," says Loel. "I think we've covered everything."

[pyrophyte]

"Who starts?" inquires Ekador. "And in what order do we proceed?"

[liakoura]

"For no particular reason except that I am the first person to try to come up with an answer to that question I shall go first and I'm gonna arbitrarily say that we go widdershins from there."

[pyrophyte]

"Very well."

[liakoura]

Aleko starts trying to pour equal quantities of coins into each bowl.

[calendarofcrime]

Sarelle picks up the poured bowls to judge their weight, and occasionally shifts a few coins from one bowl to another.

[liakoura]

And then there are bowls to pass out.

[calescent]

"I have a grace, so as near as I can tell pouring helped randomize," reports Kiri.

[calendarofcrime]

Sarelle laughs.

[liakoura]

And the game begins, once everybody has an idea of what they have in their bowls.

Sarelle winds up winning, followed by Ekador and Aleko tied for second place (Aleko largely coasting on a good haul of initial sets and his cleverly offering a spare intelligence to the highest bidder of non-setmaking coins so as to motivate the others not only by their own point gain but by preventing others from getting it). Everyone else straggles in after that; Patience is right that she isn't very good at this game. Loel beats Kiri, who was either exactly good enough or too good at partitioning her information and handed him several things he needed.

[calendarofcrime]

"Well, that was entertaining."

[liakoura]

"Yeah. First set of Blessing Bowls: The Game Serlasts Can't Automatically Cheat At, success."

[pyrophyte]

Ekador stifles a giggle.

[salt_of_the]

"That was hard, I have no sense of strategy for this thing."

[free_flowing]

"We could try the one I made up next," Loel suggests. "Unless you think you'd be bad at that too."

[liakoura]

"I'm pretty sure I didn't understand your idea."

[free_flowing]

"All right," he says, "it's like this - we give everybody a bowl of coins, no extraordinaries, just the elemental blessings. The first person puts down a coin in the middle of the - floor," he gestures to the empty space within the loose circle of people in the room, "or table if there is one, whatever. The second person has to put down a coin that's the same element, but a different blessing. The next person has to put down a coin that's the same element as everything on the table, but not the same blessing as any of them."

He pauses for breath, then continues, "If it gets around to somebody who can't do that, then they have to take all the coins that are sitting there, and keep 'em in a shame pile next to their bowl. Then the person after them gets to pick a coin to put down and start a new chain. If somebody actually manages to finish a whole row of eight, I'm not sure what to do with the coins in that case but I think I'd like to let that player keep them in an, I dunno, glory pile, 'cause I bet that's going to be hard. We keep going until, mm, until one player runs out of coins - because then the players before them would just keep feeding their shame pile for the rest of the game if we kept going. And then whoever has the smallest shame pile wins. And if we do the glory pile thing, I guess those just count for the opposite of the shame pile - if you have a glory pile with eight coins, and a shame pile with ten, that's the same as having a shame pile with two. Make sense now?"

[liakoura]

"Yeah, I guess. Okay."

Aleko sets about distributing randomly poured blessings again.

[calendarofcrime]

Sarelle assists.

[salt_of_the]

"Do you always have to give up a coin of the right element or can you just take the pile if you'd rather?"

[free_flowing]

"Ooh," says Loel, contemplating this. "Sure, why not, you can forfeit even if you don't have to. That should make things interesting."

[calescent]

"I'm not sure when you'd want to - I guess if you think the pile's going to go around if you don't take it now and you only have one of that element?"

[free_flowing]

"Yeah. Or you only have two and don't want to risk somebody else putting down the other one before it reaches you. Or you want to make people think you're out of that element, and it's a short chain so it's worth taking one or two more shame coins to do it."

[calescent]

"Interesting strategy implications. I guess I'll just sort of fling my coins from a safe distance and Loel will pass me my allotted dose of shame?"

[free_flowing]

"Sounds good," giggles Loel.