We give love to the table-top games we grew up with and appreciate their role in a world before widespread video games. Audra talks about early digging on Trivial Pursuit, her meticulous Mouse Trap setup, and getting stuck being the thimble in Monopoly. Chuck and Sean take a serious look at competition, conflict, and friendship in their early table-top experiences together. And we run down the Week in Geek, check out Tom Hanks’ upcoming sci-fi web series Electric City and recognize the path paved by web series pioneer Felicia Day; get excited all over again about the long-awaited Hobbit movies and the rumor of a Gimli appearance; roll our eyes at Bill Murray’s perpetual thwarting of a Ghostbusters revival; and hear Sean’s awesome story about how Squeak’s first rock concert last week inspired her to construct — and play — her own drumset.
We should include Wil Wheaton’s show & the games he’s presented for this discussion.
For my personal experience, I always handed out a stack of 14 (instead of 7) cards when dealing with UNO. We have a Snap variation too (yes, based on the Snap game) - it happens (during a turn) when everyone knows we have matching cards and the last person to throw down gets a hard smack on the hand.
always fun pod-o-licious-ness!
Regarding the “Social Engineering” aspect of games. I would recommend “Diplomacy”.
It is a classic game based entirely on Social Engineering. Long before the internet (yes it is true), various engineers I worked with would use the IBM mainframe PROFS system to referee and participate in a weekly running version of “Diplomacy”. It added a secret dimension to our workplace as many of our water-cooler conversations would be dealings regarding the strategic alliances and intrigue in the game 
I think a GWC “Board Game” pod/video blog would be a fun thing to behold.
OB
Lol, homie, I’m not sure if any of us would survive it. 
We should totally have our own “GWC trivia” game!
There’s no shortage of personal quips over 500 (& counting) 'casts over the whole GWC network!
Come to think of it, we kinda did have a mini-GWC trivia game over Eff! last week!
Great game. And a perfect one for playing by email/ web. I’ve done it!!
If you like social engineering, you should play Eve more:)
I laughed when you guys were talking about printing Monopoly money because my dad did that when I was little. He just went and copied them, so our game had a bunch of hundreds that were Xerox white.
Sean,
If this is The Hobbit version you were referring to on the cast it scared the tar out of me when I was a kid too. In fact it still scared the tar out of me when I watched it again last year. If it wasn’t for Jr I probably would have thrown the DVD into the fire.
~Shooter Out
I’ve never seen this. Now. I have to.
Yeah that’s the one. Still gives me the heebee jeebies.
To paraphrase H.G. Wells
"Then I look about me at my fellow-hobbits; and I go in fear. "
Also, I’m not sure fire will burn that thing.
Beware you know not what you do sir! That movie is like the middle-earth version of The Ring. (pun intended after I thought about it.)
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That particular version of The Hobbit was done by Rankin Bass, which was an animation studio that did alot of cartoons in the '70s. It’s definitely old-school animation. They also did a version of Return of the King in the same art style.
Oddly, that cartoon never really scared me, though I can see how parts of it might be really creepy to a little kid. Looking back at the art now, having seen the Ralph Bakshi and live-action Peter Jackson films, much of it is totally incongruous with what Tolkien described (particularly the goblins and the elves).