Careful what you wish for! Mahjong is the opposite: you're always playing or setting up the next round, there's no down time, you can't stop paying attention even for a moment or you might miss an important tile, and you can't even skip a round for a comfort break.

Also it seems to be complex enough there is no mental space or time left to talk about anything other than the tiles. Exhausting!

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AngryData 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

I didn't get that impression playing ai for 2 years. At first it was overwhelming like that but casual play after awhile seemed to leave plenty of room for conversation at even an accelerated pace. If it was like a super serious tournament I could see people trying to account for every visible tile and what it could mean though and not really talking so much.

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toast0 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> Also it seems to be complex enough there is no mental space or time left to talk about anything other than the tiles. Exhausting!

I have been lead to belive that community Mahjong is an excellent time for catching up, but then again, I've never gone and don't know how to play.

	▲	grues-dinner 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		I've only played at home and everyone announces the tiles (so an interruption every 5 seconds) so maybe that's the problem. Maybe if you're good enough at it you can do the game on autopilot while chatting? I'm always slowest even to stack the tiles at the start and that's without distractions!