LUDIC LOG

"I don't know why you have to ruin everything."

"You say ruin? I was trying to make it better."

"Yeah, you always make things better after you've had two bottles of wine."

"You say that like I'm some kind of a...a drunk."

"Well, you were drunk. That makes you a drunk, doesn't it?"

"You know what I mean. I'm not an alcoholic. Everyone was drinking."

"Sure they were. You were just drinking twice as much, that's all."

"Look, drinking helps unleash my creativity. That's what makes these game nights so much fun, the little variants that I come up with."

"You can't be serious."

"What?"

"The little variants that you come up with are what ruin the entire experience. We started having these game nights so that we can spend some quality time with our friends, and you end up driving them away with your crazy rules."

"So you want to do it straight out of the box? That's not playing. That's consuming."

"I'm just saying that you could maybe make your rules a little less...complicated."

"They're not that complicated. They're easy to remember if you write them down..."

"People come over to play games, not do homework."

"...and use the color-coding system I came up with."

"They're absurd. No one likes them. They're too hard and they aren't any fun."

"Oh, come on. They reward people for playing smart. They reward you for knowledge."

"They reward you for knowledge. But most people don't really care that a winter assault on Moscow is what doomed Napoleon..."

"It's a commonly accepted historical fact."

"Nor do they care that there isn't a Crimea on the Risk board..."

"And that's a problem, one that my system can easily correct if everyone cooperates."

"And they especially are not interested in the six-page rules extension you made up to determine an appropriate measure of the passage of the seasons during gameplay."

"Weather has been a major factor in all military campaigns, even in the present day. That's just a fact. I'm trying to give these games a little verisimilitude. I don't know what that's a crime."

"People don't play games for verisimilitude. They play games for fun."

"Verisimilitude is fun! Realism is fun! My rule changes are fun. They make the game more entertaining."

"Give me a break. Like what you did with night baseball?"

"I thought that was great."

"Night baseball is a variant of poker, you know."

"I'm well aware of that."

"So explain to me how introducing the infield fly rule makes it better."

"There's no talking to you when you're like this."