So, besides trading rock for sheep...

[dr4b]

What do you think are the most important English phrases and words when playing Settlers of Catan?

I am not just asking this randomly. I am asking this because today during my 9pm Headways class, one of my students seriously brought in a copy of Settlers of Catan, AND WE PLAYED IT DURING CLASS. Of course the catch was that we had to do everything in English (despite it being a Japanese copy of the game). It turns out the guy who brought it in had played once or twice before but I think he was a little unclear on the rules of the game, and the other guy hadn't played before at ALL, so we explained the rules to him in English for a while as well...

But, see, some phrases are actually useful ones to drill into people. Such as "I'd like to trade rock for sheep", or "Does anyone have any clay?" or "Do you have a 3-to-1 port?" whatever. So I actually AM teaching some sort of English to them -- plus we're working on vocabulary words like "production", "probability", "strategy", etc. They asked if we could play again next week -- the student who brought it in said, "I don't get to play board games at home!" and he even LEFT THE COPY OF THE GAME with me at GEOS, thus ensuring we'll play again... and so I want to make some real English lessons out of this. Vocabulary words, sentence structures, and even a way to discuss the economics and strategy of the game. I think it could be a lot of fun for all involved.

We actually didn't finish a game -- at 10:30 one of the students said "I really should go home now... my wife is not going to believe me if I tell her I stayed out all night playing board games with my GEOS class, is she?" :)

Oh yeah, after work today I went to Kawaguchi to smash buttons play Pop'n'Music. While waiting for the machine at one point, I went over to play UFO catchers. On a whim I tried one of the tray ones, wondering if my old strategies for them would work. It did. On my first try I got 3 of these "Littlebony" plushies and on my second try I got a fourth one. I'm debating figuring out a way to give them to my kids' class on Friday... like if they behave, or something. I dunno.



Sadly, though, all of the other plushies I was vaguely interested in the UFO catchers there, are now gone. As in all of the Hello Kitty stuff, and these fuzzy Pink Panthers I'd debated trying to get one of for Eri, and such. Alas. I know, I also said I wasn't going to play these stupid UFO catchers anymore, but when I see the tray ones it's sometimes just too tempting...

Comments

[gwillen.livejournal.com]

So this is embarassing, but what is Pop'n'Music exactly? My bemani experience is limited to DDR and Beatmania (and very little of the latter, which is hard to find.)

[sorakirei.livejournal.com]

Pop'n Music is part of Konami's bemani line.

For PNM, there are nine buttons in two lines. My ascii art will not turn out well but I tried...
X X X X
X X X X X
Similar to other bemani games, as the song plays lines fall from the top and you hit the right button to the music.

I've found PNM to be quite fun, but only when using an arcade style controler. The generic home version is so tiny, totally ruins the gameplay experience.

[dr4b]

it's the machine on the left here:



big colorful buttons. lots of smashy smashy. fun music. but 99% of it is in Japanese, which is why it hasn't so much caught on in the US music game scene.

[metroid23.livejournal.com]

::shakes fist:: you and your new-fangled bemani!! >:O

[sorakirei.livejournal.com]

Newfangled? I feel old because I have Dreamcast versions of Pop'n!

[metroid23.livejournal.com]

Yeah, newfangled... like... she's playing POPN Adeventure and DM/GF V4?

In terms of old, yeah, my Bemani addiction started in '99 and hasn't slowed down since. Now I have a POPN Fever cab in my living room ;P

The only thing worse than those terrible DC POPN controllers were those terrible append discs. What an awful idea :(

[sorakirei.livejournal.com]

In a way I really like the concept of an append disc in that you pay price A (something low) for the core software that is to be loaded onto the system, then pay price B (something a little higher) to get things to play in the core. That way you aren't paying for the engine over and over. Sadly this doesn't really work well in practice.

Though I really feel that avid fans of the Madden franchise would benefit financially if they didn't have the buy the same core over and over with new stat numbers. Like EA would ever let that happen. -_- $50+ times millions annually... yeah they ain't never giving up that cash cow.

[metroid23.livejournal.com]

Oh sure, I love that idea for appends... I always thought it would be cool to just get the key disc and then store them on a PS2 HDD with each append disc updating the song selection along with the available "skins" or mods. The previous implementation (see DC/PS1 popn/beatmania) is terrible though...

Since it never works that way, we get the alternative which is a "new" version with returning "classic" songs which make up half the total number of songs each time just coming back from previous mixes. So now I have a shelf full of IIDX each with the same version of V ;P

[sarahnade.livejournal.com]

"I want to build a road."
"Where's the thief?" and "Where should I put the thief?"
"I have a lot of (some resource) that I can't do anything with."
"It's your turn to roll."
"Yes! More sheep for me!"
"I can trade two (resource) for any other resource that I want."
"I should have spent less time building roads and more time building cities!"
"Trying to build the longest road is not the best strategy."

[sarahnade.livejournal.com]

Actually I need to remind myself of that last one a bit more.

I thought of one more:
"I don't have enough resources to build a road/settlement/city."

[blk]

"I have X and I want to trade it for Y" or "I want Y and I can trade X for it." (X,Y) = {# of resource, or "anything"}
"Do you have more than seven cards?"
"Give me all the [X]."
"I'm playing a [development] card."
"Aaaaah! [insult of choice] thief!"
"Baaaaaaaaa."

[dr4b]

I did "Baaaaaaa" to try to illustrate the sheep jokes, but it didn't really help.

The "Give me all the ___" is good though. So is "I'm playing a ____ card" and the trading structures. Maybe I need to go over "offer" and "trade"...

[rehana.livejournal.com]

"____ is about to win! Help me stop him/her!"
"I want to buy a road/settlement/city/card."
"You should put the robber on ____ because ____."
"I'm using my port to trade ____ for ____."

[katybeth]

"Baaaaaaaaa."

And totally tangentially, animal sounds are a fun thing to learn. Not real imitations of them, but the approximations we choose for them in English and other languages. "Meow" "Woof" "Bark" "Cockle-doodle-doo" "Neigh" are all decent approximations, but it's interesting how different they come out in other languages sometimes.

[sorakirei.livejournal.com]

Onomatopoeia, is one of my favorite linguistical things.

[blk]

Which made me go waste time on this page. :)

[talldean.livejournal.com]

I've got wood for sheep.
Do you have wood for sheep?
I pave the road with eight sheep.
I am the sheep-lord.

Actually, we just fixate on mild sheep jokes, every game.

[dr4b]

Yeah, I noticed tonight that the sheep jokes simply don't work with non-native speakers, heh.

[talldean.livejournal.com]

Don't know if this will help you, but the hardest game I've ever played was Cranium, with teams arranged so no partners shared a common culture. I wound up with a Brazilian man, my girlfriend paired with an Irish girl, and the third American paired up with a Chinese woman. This lead to frustration at first, until we learned what was universal... and what certainly wasn't. :)

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

It might not be speaking English so much as unfamiliarity with the correct version of Scotland the Brave.

[jcreed.livejournal.com]

"What the hell. You'd think 6 would come up pretty often, wouldn't you? That's why I put both my initial placements on one."
"What's with all these 10s. I don't get anything on a 10."
"Fuck, man, I'm never getting any rock at this rate"

[jacquilynne.livejournal.com]

Ha! The last game I played, four of us played an entire game, and 9 came up once. And not until very near the end of the game.

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

"Everybody loves sheep, sheep go baa!"
"Monopoly on wheat."
"I have a knight and I'm not afraid to use it. Now, how about your two wood for my rock?"
And, more seriously, lots of chance to practice the subjunctive mood: "If you traded your brick for my wheat, you could build a city and I would build a road next turn."

[klari.livejournal.com]

Ah! Now I remember how to play Settlers. :-)

[nppyinzer.livejournal.com]

"Oh no! Do I have too many cards?"

(Also, if anyone plays like I do and hides cards in various spots around the room and then pulls them out at the end, you need to know how to say "Hey, it's the guy who cheats like a dog!" I think I still have some of Hunter's clay cards in my briefcase.")

[maia-maus.livejournal.com]

Ha ha. That's great.
"I have a very fluffy road"