At least in the UK, mention "board games" to most people and they'll tend to think of either old stalwarts, like Monopoly and Chess, party games like Pictionary, childrens' games like Snakes and Ladders, or possibly some of the rash of TV/celebrity tie-ins (which latter category David Parlett describes in his "Oxford History of Board Games" as posessing a "soul destroying degree of worthlessness", and I can't say I think he's overstating his case!). While not wishing to write off all of the above, it is the case that there's a whole wealth of superb games that most people simply haven't heard of, which is a shame as quite a few folk would probably enjoy them a lot.

Though I intend adding more to this page in time to give some more details of the sort of games I mean, for now I'll simply refer you to the Boardgame Geek site, which is a goldmine of game related info. Though the term "board games" is being thrown around here, note that it often includes proprietery card games using special decks as well, just to confuse issues. I do play card games with standard packs as well, but there are more than enough quality resources on the Web and in print already so I'll not attempt to include them.

The game of Go is an ancient oriental board game originally devised in China but subsequently embraced by the Japanese and in more recent times across South East Asia. It also has quite a following in the West as well, but isn't nearly as well known as in its home territories and it's quite unusual to come across people that play it, or even know about it.

One very small piece of the global Go community is the Dundee Go Club, of which I'm a member. If you're interested in the club, or just in the game itself, we've a set of pages about it: Dundee Go Club web site.

Occasionally there is a need or want to rate players against one another. This is easy enough in a single game, or in a series where the same number of people play the same game, but it's not quite so straightforward if you have an inconstant cast of characters playing different things.

To address this I devised PLOPS (acronym of "Pete's Ludicrously Overcomplicated Points System"), which works from the principle that the more players there are in a game the harder it will be to win it (assuming a reasonable degree of parity between the players). No matter how many games you play (once you're past the initial few, to give a fair sample base) and how many people are playing, equal standards of play should give everyone a rating of 50 with points above that indicating a better than average performance and below suggesting worse.

Please feel free to use the PLOPS system yourself, or to use it as a basis for your own system.

PLOPS is designed to give a weighted score from a game based on the number of players, since assuming roughly equal parity in the players it is relatively more difficult to win a game with more players. The score given is between 0 and 100, with equal spacing between the end points and each position score, so for example in a 3 player game scores of 25, 50 and 75 would result (even spacing of 25 points between each scoring position and between first and 100 points, and last and 0 points).

The Scoring Interval for any given number n of players is as follows:

scoring interval (SI) = 100 / (n + 1)

Last place will score SI points, second to last will score 2 x SI points, and so on.

For between 2 and 6 players, simply refer to the table below:

PLOPS points for 1-6 player games

	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th
2 players	66.67	33.33
3 players	75	50	25
4 players	80	60	40	20
5 players	83.33	66.67	50	33.33	16.67
6 players	85.71	71.42	57.14	42.86	28.57	14.29

There are various rules and conditions regarding eligibility for points:

• PLOPS eligibility
1. Players are allowed one play of a game to familiarise themselves without having to play for PLOPS points, though they may elect to play for points in advance of the game if they wish
2. Players must play for PLOPS points if a clear majority of players are eligible for PLOPS points, including players submitting to voluntary participation in PLOPS where they have not played the game before. A unanimous decision by all eligible PLOPS participants prior to a game not to play for PLOPS points nullifies this rule.
3. The game is scored on total number of players, rather than number of PLOPS participants, if the two are different (for example, A, B and C play a game of Settlers', A and C familiar with the game, B not. Order of finishing is A, B, C, so A gets 75 points and C gets 25 points. B gets no points, but is now eligible for scoring on their next game of Settlers').
• Ongoing scores
1. Scores will be stated as averages to give average performance over a number of games/sessions
2. At least 5 rated games/sessions must be played before anyone else will even pretend to take your rank and running average seriously
3. If places are tied, the available points are averaged, so for example in a 4 player game, 3rd equal would get 30 points each, the average from 3rd and 4th places
4. Points Mean Prizes
5. What do Points mean?
6. (see 4.)

Despite the name including the term "Ludicrously Overcomplicated", I have tried to keep it fairly simple, and there are many tweaks that could be added: do feel free to tweak for your own use.

The most obvious would be a boost for winning a game, to accentuate the importance of a win over consistent but lower placings. In the spirit of the base assumption that the more players there are the harder it is to win, if you tweak the system that way I'd suggest that the boost be proportional to the number of players. Just adding a fixed percentage to the winner's basic PLOPS score should do this quite neatly.

The system relies upon the players being resonably comparable (or at least happy to think they are), or the base assumptions will cease to be valid and the scores will thus cease to mean much.

As it stands the system assumes a running total over as many games as are ever played, but this will probably tend to homogenise results over time. It may prove more interesting to have a running total based only on the last n games played (once everyone has played that many, of course!). Select a value for n according to preference.

We find that games are so much better with a good supply of muffins to fuel them, so there's usually one or two batches baked up in advance. I've now created a page with my favourite muffin recipes.

The ones with sticky glazes are best left to complete breaks away from the game but aside from that you can't go too far wrong with a plate of muffins.