The Classic Misadventures in Gaming #2

By Dan Bosley
June 4, 2006 (Originally Posted on December 25, 2002)

Editor’s Note: For those of you just tuning in, check out the first part of this story in The Classic Misadventures in Gaming #1.

Finally, I manage to finish explaining how to play the game.  The explanation, what with all the interruptions, has taken 10 minutes.  Yes.  Ten Minutes.  Ten minutes to explain how to play TransAmerica.  I inwardly shake my head. 

Now I didn’t name my non-gamer friends last time.  But I will this time, to make it a bit more clear who’s saying and doing what..  The names have been changed to protect the innocent, however.  We have Bob and Carol, and Ted and Alice.  And we have my wife, Diane (whose name has not been changed).  And me.  Dan.  Whose name has also not been changed.

And just in case you’re wondering if I’m making this stuff up, I’m not.  Oh sure, I may have taken a little literary license with the exact words they said, but the gist of it is pretty darn accurate.  And I’m also NOT making up the stuff that you’re about to read.  I wish I was making it up, though.....

So now, here we are ready to embark upon Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice’s maiden voyage into TransAmerica.  If this game isn’t perfect for non-gamers, I think to myself at that point, then I don’t know what is.

Sitting around the table in clockwise order is Carol, then Alice, then Ted, then Bob, then Diane, then me.

“Who’s going to start?� Ted asks.

Before we can spend ten more minutes trying to decide that pressing issue, I quickly jump in: “I will.�

I place my starting marker somewhere near the centre of the board.

Now it’s Carol’s turn.  Carol the vacationing Medforder.  She stares at the board. And stares at the board.  There is a look of concentration on her face.  She looks at her cards.  She looks at the board again.

Bob says to Carol, “It’s your turn, you know.�

“I know!â€?  Carol says, just a little sharply.  “I know it’s my turn.  This is hard, you know.  I don’t know where to put my marker.â€?  She keeps looking at her cards and then the board again.

A minute and a half has now gone by since I put my marker down.

I venture a suggestion.  “Just put it somewhere near one of your cities, somewhere in the middle of the board is usually good.  Or put it directly onto one of your cities, if you like.â€?

“Well, yes, but where?â€?  Carol looks at me.

“Oh come on, just put it down and let’s play,� says Ted.

Finally, Carol places her starting marker not too far from mine.

And thank goodness, everyone else quickly places their starting markers.

My turn again.  I place two railway lines down, leading from my home base.

Carol’s turn again.  Now.... it’s not like there are a lot of choices at this point.  The first railway lines have to start off from her home base.  It’s not like she has an overwhelming number of choices.  How hard can it be?

Twenty seconds go by.  “Just put them down leading towards one of your cities,â€?  I offer.

She looks at me.  I am suddenly psychic and can hear her thinking “Stupid game.....â€?  She places two railway lines down.

Now it’s Alice’s turn.  Alice suddenly comes down with Carolitis.  Alice is now also staring at the board.  She however, has only a mild case of Carolitis at this stage, and places her railway lines after a (relatively) brief pause.

Everyone else places almost immediately.

And we’re back to Carol again.  And a minimum of 20 seconds goes by before she places her next rail lines.  And then Alice takes the same amount of time.

This goes on every round.  Except the time seems to be getting longer as the game goes on.  With Carol and Alice sitting between me and Ted, it is taking at least a full 1 to 2 minutes to get from my turn to Ted’s turn each and every round.

I can’t believe it is taking this long.  Neither can Ted, who is starting to hate the game because he is ready to place almost instantly every time - but he has to sit there and wait for Carol and Alice to

....p.....l.....o.....d......
.......e......v.....e.....r.....
.........s......o.....
............s.....l.....o....w.....l.....y......

through their turns.

I tell them (several times) that “This isn’t that hard a game.  Just place your tracks down quickly.  Just try to connect up your cities.  This game is meant to be fun and fast and light.  It’s not a deep-thinking game.â€? 

Finally, after my beard has grown about an inch and a half, we finish the first round.  Ted has won the first round.  But the game isn’t over yet.  We have taken over half an hour to play one round of TransAmerica.  Maybe this isn’t quite the game for non-gamers after all, I am thinking to myself.....

So I gather up the cards, and we remove all the track pieces from the board to get ready for the next round.  Yes, ever the gluttons for punishment, we do indeed head into round 2......

I shuffle up the cards and deal them out.  Only...... only......there are now 3 cards missing. 

TransAmerica has 35 cards:  7 cities for each of 5 colours.  With 6 players, there are thus 5 cards left over at the end of the deal:  one card of each colour.  And that was indeed the case, after I had dealt the cards out for Round 1. 

So now mysteriously, after gathering all the cards in and reshuffling them and dealing them out for Round 2, there are only 2 cards left over, instead of 5. 

I look on the floor.  No cards.  “Did anybody drop any cards on the floor?â€?  I ask.  We all look on the floor.  Still no cards.  “Did somebody forget to turn in all their cards?  You should only have 5 cards now.â€?  Everyone only has 5 cards.

Now I am quite puzzled by this and slightly alarmed.  The cards just can’t vanish.  I KNOW the cards were all there when we started, because there WERE 5 cards left over at the end of Round 1. 

“This doesn’t make any sense,â€?  I say.  “The cards have to be here.â€?  I look under the board, just in case they somehow got bumped underneath there.  No cards. 

“Do we really need them?â€? asks Ted.  “We can still play the game without them, can’t we?  They are just cards.  We just won’t use those cities.â€?

I just want to slap him silly upside the head when I hear him say that, but I don’t.  “They’ve got to be here,â€? I reply. “They’ve got to be here.â€?  During the first round of play, no one has left the table.  So the cards have to be in our vicinity somewhere.  They couldn’t have wandered off to the bathroom or anything, because nobody went to the bathroom during the first round.

Carol says, “Do you have them in your pocket, Bob?�

Bob looks in his shirt pocket, and lo and behold, there they are!

Now.....many things run through my mind.  Many, many things.

Why would Bob put 3 cards in his shirt pocket?  If he somehow absent-mindedly put his hand of cards there while he was playing, wouldn’t he have put all 5 cards there - not just 3?

And we had all displayed our cards at the end of Round 1 so I could check the scoring.  So he couldn’t have put the 3 cards into his shirt pocket until only a few seconds before I gathered up the cards for the Round 2 deal.  Had he forgotten that quickly that he put them there?  And why put them in his pocket at all, when he turned in his other 2 cards?

And why did Carol ask that particular question?  The only reason I could think of is that Bob must put cards in his pockets during other card games he plays and Carol knows that - how else would she even know to ask that question?

So then the inevitable question pops into my head.  Was Bob getting ready to CHEAT?!!!!  At TransAmerica?  In his very FIRST game of TransAmerica?  Was he planning on switching city-cards as the rail-lines developed to improve his chances of winning a round?  I can’t believe that.  I just can’t.  It had to be a stupid, but innocent, absent-minded act.  Surely.  It had to be.  But now the seed of doubt is sown......

I take the 3 returned cards, and reshuffle the entire deck, and redeal them out again.  This time, there are 5 cards left over.

And so we start Round 2.  Thankfully, this round goes a little bit faster.  Slightly.  Carol and Alice are still both calculating out the square root of Pi in their heads every time it’s their turn, though.  Or so the expressions on their faces would indicate.

But now a new problem has arisen.  Bob is getting bored.  Too much time is being taken between his turns.  Despite all my pleas that TransAmerica is a game that is meant to be (and should be) played quickly.

It is Carol’s turn (as usual, it seems).  And once again, she is frowning at the board.  “This game is just like Connect 4,â€? she says again.  For the life of me, I don’t see how TransAmerica resembles Connect 4 whatsoever.  Well, I guess they’re both games, but other than that....

“Oh, that’s an interesting observation,â€?  I say to Carol.  “How are they similar?â€?

And while I’m saying that, I notice something out of the corner of my eye.  Bob is doing something with his face.  I glance over at him.  And in the next split second, I experience a whole mess of emotions.......

Bob has stuffed some of the little black wooden rail-line pieces up his nose.  Into both nostrils.

I am shocked.  I don’t know how else to describe it.  I am simply shocked.  Bob is not two years old.  Bob is a grown-up 45-year old adult with a responsible job and a position of respect within the community.  Bob is not drunk.  Bob is (I believe) a rational human being.

And yet here I am looking at Bob with little black sticks hanging out of his nose. 

Ted and Bob are both laughing.  This is the funniest thing ever in the history of mankind.  At least, they seem to think so.

Maybe I’m hallucinating.  Maybe I’m imagining this.  Surely Bob wouldn’t stuff little black sticks up his nose.  I know he wouldn’t do that.  Bob likes to work with engines.  It’d be like me stuffing spark plugs up my nose at his house.

I am still too stunned to speak.  How can we play this game now?  Who wants to touch these rail lines now?  Some of the rail lines have now been to places that I never ever imagined beforehand that they would be going.  I am thankful that we are not playing El Grande.  I hate to think where the King might end up.

Good heavens, I think, I will have to boil the rail lines for several minutes to sterilize them!  Or throw this game out and buy a new copy.  Or wear gloves. 

Why is Bob doing this?  What’s the matter with him?  How dare he!  Has he no respect for games? 

And of course, it hits me.  He doesn’t.  Games don’t mean anything to him.  That is the problem.  He’s a non-gamer.  There’s a great divide between gamers and non-gamers, and I just rode smack right into it.  I can’t imagine anyone in my gaming group sticking TransAmerica rail lines up their nose.  (and Memo to all Terminal City Gamers - please don’t consider this a challenge to do so the next time we play......)

As soon as I look at Bob, he sees me glaring at him, and takes the rail lines out of his nose.  We (thankfully) set those pieces aside and don’t use them.  They have been cast out, removed from TransAmerica, shamed beyond redemption.

“Sorry, I was a bit bored,â€?  he says. 

Playing Monopoly is starting to look pretty good to me right now.  Or maybe even the Game of Life.  Or Snakes and Ladders.  Or Banging My Head Against A Rock.

We actually do finish the game of TransAmerica, believe it or not.  It takes 3 rounds.  And 90 minutes.  90 painful, long, painful, drawn-out minutes. 

“So this is what German games are like, are they?â€? Ted asks.  “I have to tell you, this wasn’t a lot of fun for me.  I thought these games of yours were supposed to be quick and fun?  To be frank, I thought this game kind of dragged.â€?

“Yes,â€?  Carol and Alice both agree.  “There was too much thinking in this game.  It’s hard to talk and think at the same time.  I think next time we should try to play something a little easier.â€?

I feel quite confident in predicting that Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice won’t be joining the Terminal City Gamers any time soon.......

Tune in next time for more fun with Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice in:  Misadventures in Gaming #3 - Barbarossa.

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