Source
r/TheOrville•
OneMario

An Alternative to Poker

Other

It occurred to me that, as closely as the show mirrors The Next Generation in tone and style, the bridge crew might have their own version of poker night. I also think, though, that playing poker is a little too on-the-nose, so I tried to find a more Orville-style alternative.

Now poker isn't just a game, it also has dramatic potential with its use of bluffing and tense stand-offs. We know the ship has board games, so you could just replace poker with Monopoly, but you would lose the essence of what makes poker an interesting part of the story for little more than a visual joke. So what we need is a game that can handle a medium-to-large group, involves bluffing and negotiation, but is also just a little bit funny.

I believe the crew should play a regular game of Cosmic Encounter.

Now it's true that the show could just make up its own game, like 3d chess, Dabo, or BSG's Pyramid. That would create a licensing opportunity and add a little futuristic/alien flavor, but those games rarely work very well. Cosmic Encounter is obscure enough that it would seem alien to most viewers, good enough to be plausibly played hundreds of years from now, and it has a space/sci-fi theme built in. Plus the game is both family-friendly and can be played by the viewers at home, which I think helps maintain the mood and vision of the show as a whole.

There might be better games that I haven't considered, so feel free to post your alternative suggestions below. I'd be interested to know what others think.

Posted Nov 14, 2017, 6:54 PM UTC

1720
Zalicus•

For this crew? Twister.

22
CaptainGreezyY'all can suck ass, and I'm a spaceman!•

AD&D 12th Edition

17
john_duneWoof•

The scene opens, Mercer, Grayson, Malloy, Bortus, LaMarr and Isaac are in a room. They're sitting at a large table, each player has a tablet with a character sheet, and there's a digital display, Malloy has a DM shield in front of him

Malloy: Alright Bortus the Bard, it's your turn
Bortus: I roll to see if i can use the ability....Inspire Greatness. I begin to sing
Grayson stiffles a giggle
Bortus: BE QUIET!
Isaac: This is absolutely fascinating. Do you play roles you feel like you can compensate for your deficiencies as biological beings?
...

I think this would be pretty awesome.

18
Palaeolithic_RaccoonI see this as an ideal opportunity to study human behavior•

But they already showed customized LARPing on their holodeck.

I know I wouldn't want to have to fuss with dice, and trying to make descriptions of areas if I had the option of a computer to help me conceptualize settings, NPCs, and perhaps even character (PC) driven story arcs, and playing through it as a sort of super step up from VR.

The last group I played with, we were all in our 20s (and that was 20 years ago). We met regularly for about two and a half years, running three long term games consecutively - AD&D 2nd: Undermountain; Earthdawn 1st edition; and Werewolf: the Apocalypse 2nd ed. They all wound up being broody, dark, character-driven, and with combat limited to "when needed for story purposes/when it makes sense". Even the AD&D DM didn't use random encounter tables, because all that dice rolling just bogs down the story. "Munchkinism" (min-maxing) was strongly discouraged in favour of building a person, and there really was no "monty haul" type set ups, like video games tend to have - I feel they kind of boiled down rpgs to their bare, mathematical minimum, and imposed a kind of formula. We played it more like collective storytelling.

Anyway, I'd have given my eyeteeth if we could have had an easy-to-programme holoroom type deal.

And I did try VR recently, at a local arcade. Wow, it can make you change your perspective of yourself, it's really weird. Which would be PERFECT for "tabletop" RPG/collective storytelling.

Of course, they more or less did this in TNG, though they were limited in imagination, just kind of playing through public-domain novels.

2
john_duneWoof•

BE QUIET! I WILL SING!

On a serious note. I agree. But if Seth has shown anything this is a contemporary story with gadgets, not so much a technobabble super future story. Plus I think the use of a modern day trope to explain things or show the crew bonding would make the show more... Human. I mean, the same argument could be made for TNG and the poker scenes. It serves to connect the audience with the show more.

3
Palaeolithic_RaccoonI see this as an ideal opportunity to study human behavior•

Along the same lines, they could just play cards as a matter of tradition, as a way of saying "some things really do never change". Poker is generally chosen because it's been popular for a long time, and probably will remain so.

Though I seem to recall a euchre craze back in the 1980s, seems like the only game I ever played. Once spent three days in a Toronto coffee shop playing it. It was pretty popular .. so if he really wants to nod to that generation, they should play euchre.

TNG and poker? Well, my grandparents liked to play poker ...

My grandma called it "her bridge club". I was astonishingly old before I discovered that you can't play bridge with more than 4 people, nor is it played with coloured plastic discs. :P

2
deadpool809•

UNO.

13
Maxwyfe•

Every Navy vessel I've been on has had groups who play cutthroat uchre or spades.

8
Neo_Techni•

They should play the polar opposite.

Go fish.

7
citizenofgaia•

Don't they have Scrabble and Monopoly? (and one other?).

3
Neo_Techni•

You can be the thimble.

2
OneMarioOP•

I didn't take that to be an exhaustive list. That line was an inspiration for me, but frankly the games he mentioned weren't very good. So I partly wanted to improve upon their selection.

1
Overthinks_Questions•

I think Catan would work really well.

3
Sk8rToon•

I had the same thought. Mostly because they would have to explain why half the group giggles when a wood for sheep trade is made. (Been done though. I think Big Bang covered that)

3
GroovyGrove•

In case anyone is curious, like I was:

Game Website

Amazon

2
ethenlau88•

They need more karaoke - that’ll be their thing.

2
adamantmuse•

Cards Against Humanity. Also Dungeons and Dragons. Not necessarily because I think they would actually play these, but because it would be hilarious.

2
marowak13•

Magic or Yugioh

1
FriendsOfDeSoto•

If Ed grew up in Boxford, they should make forty-fives (45's) the card game for the senior staff. It's big in the Merrimack Valley region of Massachusetts (which includes Boxford).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forty-fives

I can't imagine the game would be on McFarlane's radar though, since he grew up in Connecticut. Scott Grimes might know it since he was raised in the area (Lowell/Dracut).

1
FriendsOfDeSoto•

Having said all of that, The Orville needs to carve it's own path. They can't have an analog for everything TNG does.

One good thing about 45's is that it's something that they should play in the mess hall over drinks, not something you play around a poker table. It doesn't involve chips, just a deck of cards and something on which to keep score. It's not quiet and strategic like high stakes poker. It's single player or team-based. It can be a little boisterous, especially with the drinks flowing.

1