Play Make Write Think

Side Quest 14: Assemblies

Due: 4/19

Tag: sq14

For some unknown reason, the National Archives includes a document entitled Cocktail Construction Chart, which was created by the US Forest Service in 1974, showing recipes for a group of cocktails represented in the style of an architectural diagram.

For this week’s sketch, think about the work you’ve completed in this class and your own learning and thinking processes — then break all that down into component parts, represented in some sort of an architectural diagram like this one. I’m less interested in the quality of the drawing itself and more in your analytical ability to break down something complicated into a series of steps and to represent that as if in such a diagram.

Creating this diagram should be a key step towards completing your portfolio reflection letter (and I will encourage you to use the diagram as a key image in that letter). If you think about what you have learned this semester about yourself as a writer and reader, how can you represent that understanding as a single diagram, and how do the various pieces of writing you have done fit into that diagram to construct your vision?

Side Quest 9/#hometasking 2

Due: 3/30

Tag: sq9

Let’s stick with TaskMaster for our Side Quest 9/second #hometasking task, even though our due date is a little later:

Feel free to check out some of the examples on Twitter: #hometasking 2
Also, I’ll have a poll posted where you can vote on the most spectacular examples of throwing a paper into a bin before this task is due. Make sure you vote over the weekend!

Edited to add: Don’t just drop a link to the video. Embed it!

Side Quest 8/Hometasking 1

Due: 3/27

Tag: sq8

Now that we’re all social distancing and trapped in our homes, we’ve decided that as a community we’re going to follow along with the Taskmaster #hometasking tasks as side quests.

Your task for this sidequest is to throw a piece of paper into a bin. Most spectacular throw wins.

Post a video or gif to your website, no longer than 1 minute. Write a brief paragraph about why your throw is spectacular. Please make a special point to comment on your peers’ throws as well. On Saturday, I’ll publish a poll to vote on which was the most spectacular throw.

 

Side Quest 6: Design analysis of Betrayal at House on the Hill or Mansions of Madness

Due: 2/23

Tag: sq6

Sometime before 2/23, you will need to check out either Mansions of Madness or Betrayal at House on the Hill from the board game lending library. I strongly recommend that you reserve the game for a specific time in advance, so you know when you and your friends show up, you'll be able to play. Information about the two games is below, but they are both supernatural horror board games where you explore a haunted mansion or its environs and attempt to solve an eldritch mystery before you and the other players go insane or are killed.

Each game should take roughly an hour to play, plus some time to set up. I've linked below to information about the games and videos that explain how to play -- it's probably a good idea to watch these in advance to minimize the time setting up, but even so do plan some additional time to figure out what you're doing. Expect either game to require a certain amount of probing in order to figure out how the game world works, the physics of the game.

After playing, write a post on your site in which you reflect on the process and analyze the sorts of decision-making the game encourages. In Everything Bad is Good For You, Steven Johnson argues that video games are very complex nonlinear narratives that make players probe the physics of the game world and make lots of strategic decisions in order to play but that board games don’t require the same sorts of skills from players. Does that hold true in your play of one of these board games? How did you engage in probing and telescoping as you played? How complex was game play

If you play with friends who are also in the class, every student should write their own reflection post. If you play with friends who are not in the class, they obviously are not required to write reflections themselves.

Mansions of Madness

Mansions of Madness is published by Fantasy Flight Games

Entry at Board Game Geek

How to Play Mansions of Madness

Betrayal at House on the Hill

How to Play Betrayal at House on the Hill

Side Quest 7: 3d Print a Game Piece

Due: Game piece submitted to Techlab to print by 3/1

Due: Post with photo and reflection by 3/6

Tag: sq7

Archeologist have recently uncovered a tiny piece of worked glass from the period of Viking raids on Northumbrian island from around AD793, a small blue and white crown that would have been a game piece for Viking board game hnefatafl (“king’s table”), "a strategic board game simulating a Viking raid. The king and 12 defenders have to escape 24 attackers arranged in groups of six surrounding the weaker side. The attackers try to capture the king, while the defenders aim to thwart them and guide him safely to one of the corners, known as 'king’s squares.'"

And not only can you see a picture of the piece, like the one up above, but you can explore a 3d interactive model of the piece. It doesn't look like they've made this model available for download, but if they had, you could download the .stl file and bring it over to the Maker Space in Cox Computing to print your own plastic reproduction of the piece.

The Metropolitan Museum currently has on display in the Egyptian room an ancient Egyptian icosahedron, a twenty-sided die like those made popular in the 20th century for Dungeons and Dragons. If the Met made all its objects available for digital download like the Smithsonian Museum does, you could download the ancient Egyptian 20-sided die and print it one to play with in your own D&D campaign.

Assignment

For this assignment, I want you to 3d print a game piece of some kind using the TechLab in Student Digital Life. (Here's a link with more information about 3d printing services at Emory.)

You can simply find the .stl file for an existing game piece, for example:

Feel free to search yourself for other small 3d printable figures that would be fun. Thingiverse has lots of items and there are plenty of other sites out there.

You can also, if you choose modify or create your own item using Tinkercad (one of the early tutorials for learning Tinkercad is to create your own 6-sided die).

Reflection

Once you've got your printed object back from the TechLab, take a picture of your model and post it to your site. Write a paragraph in which you explain why you chose the game piece that you did; how you went about finding, editing, or creating the .stl file you printed; and what challenges you faced in order to print your game piece.

Don't forget to tag your post "sq7."

Side Quest 8: A Human Document

Due: 3/22

Tag: sq8

For your eighth Side Quest, you're going to play a collaborative writing game in which you collaborate with a published novelist to write a poem.

The British artist Tom Phillips is probably best known for a project that he began in 1966 and which he has continued ever since–he set himself the challenge to buy the first book he could find at a secondhand bookstore for threepence and to alter every page using drawing, painting, collage, and cut-up techniques to create an entirely new version.

He found W.H. Mallock’s A Human Document and combined the words in the title to create A Humument. Phillips not only created new art works from each of the 367 pages but has now completed five different editions of this altered book.

You can view pretty much the complete series of pages on Tom Phillips site here. You can choose pages, view the original and then view different versions of that page.

For this week’s assignment, I want you to create your own visual poem-thing. You can find your own page to alter if you’d like, but I’ll bring in an old used book that you can take pages from too. Think of it as sort of a collaboration between yourself and the book’s original author or think of it as a game where you get to create new text but within the strict confines of the text available on the page.

Obviously, Tom Phillips has been doing this for almost 50 years and I’m not expecting you to produce work that is as polished or complex as his – nor that is necessarily as visually compelling. And it will probably feel very strange to you as you begin, but just let yourself be playful and experiment with your task. You do not need to be a professional artist to make these pages, but you probably do need to be able to relax your desire to be in control of what you produce and you probably need to turn off the self-critical voice that will tell you that you’re doing it wrong.

Alter your page using whatever methods or tools you prefer, then scan the page in color at a high resolution as a JPG or PNG file and load it to your site. You might or might not include in your post the text of your altered page.

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