#Seafall

[kresnikcest]

speaking of sibling honorifics getting lost in localisation there is an interesting detail in X2 where obviously they just removed both Ludger and Fractured Milla's usages of 兄さん and 姉さん (sadge)

but for some reason the English localisation just has Julius addressing Ludger as his brother where he doesn't do that in the original JP, a bit like an endearment?

like at the start of the game when nightmare!Julius ("You alone must make the decision, brother"), when he starts the letter in Chapter 15 ("Ludger, my brother... Bakur now holds the Key of Kresnik"), and in the final J-Code sidequest ("But you saved me, brother")

also the scene where Julius explains the Hymn of Proof like "Here's my brother, I guess it works", though tbh I think both versions of the scene are very sweet, in JP it's something along the lines of "The person I really wanted to see is here" and in the manga Ludger gets to tell Julius he feels the same

also also the fight against Julius in Chapter 15, "If that's the case, let me be your big brother one last time" isn't in the JP (なら……もう少しだけ付きあおう) but it sure makes me cry

but i also find it a little bit funny

[sileisce]

two ocs, moonpuff/star and seafall. after moonstar's deputy is killed she dooms her clan to a cruel leader all to save seafall, her secret lover from another clan. seafall is angry that moonstar betrayed her clan as they would've been together in starclan. but seafall cannot turn her back on the cat that sacrificed everything to try and save her, so in the afterlife stays with her in exile (a purgatory of sorts?) until the day meteorclan is saved and moonstar is forgiven

[mauannacreates]

OC questionnaire tag:

Hey @wyked-ao3, thanks for the tag! Ok, so initially, it's supposed to be I'm supposed to answer with one OCs, but instead, I'm going to answer this with Lucie and Valerie's perspectives and see how it goes. Perhaps a Dual/Multi OC questionnaire could happen with this, while we also see the potential relationship these two characters could have...? 🙃

Before I begin, I'll tag: @rinatthemin , @phynewrites , @bookish-karina and I'll also put this as an open tag, for whoever is interested in doing this too!

Now, on the questions below the cut!

What is your opinion of mythology?

Lucie: "They're scary...! I mean, haven't you heard of those stories where the Spirit Dragon apparently goes and wrecks the whole world...?"

Valerie: "Err, no?" But she lets out a laugh as she goes and "You should really say that to my brother, he will state every single reason on why that is wrong." She goes and shakes her head, as a light-hearted smile curves her face. "Not interested in it, maybe to the point I hear it on the occasion, by him saying stuff about the powers of light and dark are supposed to join with Spirit and what not, but for him to say that it's real...!? I mean, come on Braedon...!"

L: "For it to be real..." She starts to tremble. "That's the last thing I hope would happen."

Do you get sea sick?

Valerie: "Oh wow... You're making me think of something. Like Uncle Maggie used to always take me out to practice rowing when we were younger. Even when there were times where my uncle had duties with the throne and those sorts of things, he would always take me out on practicing how to row at least once a week." She goes and taps the side of her chair as her left ear droops down, "But nowadays, he hasn't really been doing it as much anymore."

Lucie: How lucky...! I never went on a boat. Well, except a few times, but I don't really remember feeling sick or anything... So I guess no?

If you could live anywhere, where would you pick?

Lucie: I'd go to where Pyrocast is! I think they also called it Volcanica or the fire castle! For some reason, I can't help but want to go there. And, I mean, I nearly did...!" She glances away from the "But, I don't think I'll be able to go back there again..." Valerie stares towards Lucie as her brow raise and the corner of her mouth tenses. She swings her arm outwards.

Valerie: Well, I can't complain about Pyrocast, and Blazica as a whole, they have lots of cool things like steam trains and snow and fireworks...! But I mean, come on, if it is anywhere I could go, I would definitely not go and reside at Seafall! I mean, it's nice there but the Queen there has a BIG attitude problem. Like yeah, I may have paraded around, and it look like I was nearly going to eat the fishes while also causing a bit of an explosion at the Queen's place, but..."

L: "You would do that in front of a Queen...!?"

V: "Hey...! Don't judge! She has a problem!" Valerie lets out a low breath, when she gives a smile, "I would love to see how Gustinflew is like, but I also heard that the ruler of Aeromount doesn't really like when the boats are on their shores, and apparently confiscates those boats. So, it's a shame. Maybe Alalingamor would be a close second. Yeah, it either gets extremely hot or cold depending on the day, but you have all of those festivals at night, you've got great guests, and what more can you ask for?

The next questions are:

What is the best memory you can think of?

What is your thoughts on libraries?

If I give you an unlimited travel pass to go somewhere, where would you go? (This can be on a boat, train, horse, any thing you can imagine.)

BONUS: If the chicken and the egg were to somehow co-exist, which would come first?

[yourolleda1]

Ep. 7 - A Feast For The Living

The party is back in Seafall. It is a mix of joy and sadness as those who survived reflect on what happened at Vardent Hollow. 

Follow us on Instagram @Yourolleda1 

Dungeon master is @applejellyboy 

Demeclees played by @professorepicproductions 

This episode features music by @arcaneanthems Scott Buckley, epidemic sound, CO.AG music on YouTube, and other non-copywrite music. 

[talenlee]

Game Pile: The Initiative

The Initiative is a puzzle box and a legacy game and a kid’s story book and a toybox of indulgent pieces and a sleek puzzle all pulled into a cooperative game in a lovely snug box by Corey Konieczka. You don’t need to worry about spoilers, I’m not going to talk much about the story of the game. If you want to avoid even the potential imposition of spoilers then uh, you can go elsewhere, but that’s…? Weird?

Anyway, hey, I like this board game!

Heart of the system here is that The Initiative is a cooperative action selection board game. Players take on the roles of spies infiltrating a facility to try and deduce a secret code, on a board that changes over the course of several missions with things like movable walls and seeded stacks of files.

Each turn, players choose who plays first, cards from their hands onto a stack of actions, then does that. You can’t play a card onto a stack if that card has a lower value than the card on top of that stack, which means that at first, a stack has infinite potential actions and eventually it becomes limited so only six or three cards from the deck can take that action any more.

Fortunately, the game has a built in mechanism to get you out of this: one of the four actions is ‘regroup’ which lets you take all the cards in one of those stacks and clear it out. You can’t regroup the regroup action, which means this game has a lovely mechanical feel, of watching some things fill up, then reset, then fill up, then reset, and then – chances are – the deck is empty and you now have a new, final phase of the game of urgent timing as you try to solve things before the game fails on you.

To keep players from being able to too perfectly coordinate your actions, you’re required to take your turns one after another, and you’re not allowed to tell people what exists in your hands. Players also have special abilities that let them turn garbage cards into some effect, good or bad, and there are traps in the files to keep the game from being a purely methodical process of sorting out paperwork.

That’s a properly good little game, and I like it a lot. And then there’s a layer above it! Because the game that you’re playing is a game being played by the player characters in this game, who are working out a mystery that’s caused by their playing the game itself. The Initiative is the game around that other game (called The Key) and it comes with a comic book narrative that plays out based on how well or poorly you perform at the game, adding secrets and ciphers and more complexity to the game as you play through it.

It’s a slick game in the mould of a legacy game but instead of requiring everyone stay involved every step of the way, the game is built cooperatively, so players can push and pull against one another and the difficulty of the game scales to a changing group. None of which is to say that The Initiative is an entirely pure, smooth play experience, especially the first time, out of the box. Perhaps I’ve been spoiled by looking at the box inserts for games like Fog of Love and Seafall, but for a game that relies on keeping a number of pieces isolated and sorted, the actual experience of opening the box is intimidating and untidy. There’s a lack of flow when you get a handful of plastic pieces you have to cap onto a rack, and then sort all the files into little boxes. It’s the thing that slowed my starting the game the most – opening the box up and seeing a big pile of things I then needed to sort out.

And it was me on this one; I played The Initiative solo. I know this changes a big part of the mechanics: Not knowing if someone has the best card for the task and being able to take my time making choices for myself certainly dispels some of the tension in the game. It is a bit sad, though: because I know that the game of knowing you have something perfect for a moment and being able to act on that is a really exciting feeling. It’s a feeling that The Mind presents as literally the only game mechanic it has, and in that game it’s really cool to watch it work.

This is one area in which the kind of game The Initiative is works against my ability to play it. The system for actions needs to be very clear and clean to get people engaging with it; but when there’s an unambiguous ‘good’ and ‘best’ choices that you’re not certain about, it can create the feeling of a player being anxious or tense about whether or not they’re doing the right thing by asking to act. A player making the best faith effort can result in feeling bummed about a turn.

Consider this; the players all know they really want to do a Gather action. There’s a 5 on the stack of Gather actions. Player A has a 7, and player B has an 8. Player B is pretty confident they’re not the best to act on this, but Player A assumes that means they have a 7 too, or worse, a 6, and these players can’t be specific about what they have. If A reads B wrong, and B plays the 8, then A’s 7 is now bad because it’s been blocked from what they want to do. This is a tiny moment of frustration and the more mature you are the more easily you can handle it, but part of playing the game is about being able to revel in these free play experiences, and sometimes, you just need a few of these sour moments to make the whole experience feel bad.

I’m not basing this on play! I’m basing this on examining the mechanics and considering the players available to me! I’ve even spoken about it with one of those players, and it’s a really interesting way to consider what this game gives you as a possible experience. Optimal play is exciting and enjoyable, but even modest mistakes feels quite sour by comparison.

Communication rules are always a wobbly space because communication is itself wobbly. What if I start putting coded messages in the things I say, like using six-letter words only, or holding out the right number of fingers as I play – not so that I’m telling people, but so I’m leaking information and they’re encouraged to learn from what I say and how I say it. Is that against the spirit of the rules? Is it within the spirit of the rules of a game about communication and puzzles and codes?

The rules don’t say!

And that’s okay because the rules say you shouldn’t communicate specifically about what’s in your hand and you have to work out, from there, what that means and how okay with wiggling around that you are. Honestly if a player was doing that, I’d be kind of impressed, but I’d also ask them to shake it up for the next game, to make sure that it wasn’t just the normal way to play now.

All of which is an experience I haven’t had with The Initiative. I played it solo, like I said.

It’s a charming game, I liked it a lot, and I also think it’s a game that asks questions about managing loads of information. In a more ideal world, I think that The Initiative would open a box with small containers where your first play of the game just followed linearly, with all the extra boxes and extra pieces set aside waiting for them to be unlocked. But that’s really hard to do and is an example of the ways that games are material objects made by an industry for distributing products.

I wonder what a version of this game that didn’t use plastics, that could push that extra step into being as paper and card as possible looked like.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[bandofchimeras]

I feel discouraged lately, but maybe a bit more sober. the emotional wreckage around my family of origin...they cannot be my foundation. no scene or social group will automatically replace that. not even a friend group. nothing can.

while I am glad my family is still here and alive, talking to them feels like suffocating to death. they're not even being particularly /mean/ they just can't level. they cannot have a real talk. they live in a rotting honey bubble of nostalgia.

it makes me want to crawl out of my skin. and yes I'm an adult and no they don't have power over me anymore. yes I ought to build my own life.

and yet the world is not a kind place that parts ways for you. every inch you fight for, lose it again.

I did a lot without guidance. and fucked up. I've been a rager and an ideologue and cruel and inconsiderate and ashamed and controlling and desperate and greedy as often as I've been kind or loving or noble.

now I'm here authoring my own story feeling ill prepared and anxious at how badly and how many times it is possible to fuck up more. at how many directions there are to go. holding onto any relationship with anyone that's longer than a year or two old as proof I'm not evil, not unlovable and disposable or narcissistic, I am normal! I am not marred by irreparable loss!

unfortunately not sure that's true anymore. The way I've lived up til now has me fucked up.

any attempt at making emotional boundaries goes awry. people abruptly give up on me. I'm mean and hard edged to anyone who doesn't have the exact same values, judgmental and suspicious. flighty. I find myself lovable as an abstraction, an idea, not a sweaty meaty lump of confusion and desire as everyone is under all our image polishing.

That's just it. everyone's life fucks them up down here. and there's too much pressure, trying to create some beautiful new future before it's time, give it all away like an already dead seafall whale drifting to the bottom of the ocean, some martyr who can't even say "stop. I'm uncomfortable with that." or "please, I'd like you to stay."

if there's any light in the despair of looking honestly at myself it's in finding acceptance. I'm twenty eight and have done, seen, experienced and known very little yet. I've made a public fool of myself for years to both respectable society and anyone with streetsmarts. I live in a cloud of doubt and confusion and my cognitive clarity has lessened like glasses scratched from wear. I am on edge from sensing constant disrespect, my debt is significant and my health declining. most days I struggle to walk, get out of bed, and eat.

yet in my soul is something beautiful that refuses to give up entirely.

as my dreams did I place their corpses into rotboxes and plant a few new seeds.

Something else will happen no matter how many times you surrender to your own failure. die and rot and grow again.

To be constantly resetting and never feeling a sense of true maturity, longevity, is this grief in a world that kills and kills and kills children again and again. yet in every new child new generation there is a fierce firey little hope, a persistence. An insistence on the future honed against stones of endless numbing oppression. Endurance.

If I've got nothing else I'll build that first. And bet my story will simply be a slow one.

I'm not dead yet. And I'm okay with being dead. I'd rather be most days. But because I'm not dead yet I'll find another way to live every day.

[fatedheavylion]

She always looks so sad but she's fine, she just looks like that

Also sometimes she's sad that's what getting mauled gets you

[sigurdulfrsson]

Played our first proper game of Seafall last night. Really enjoyed this game, and how the world is shaped by your decision. Hopefully it continues to be exciting over the 15 games.

[aoifereal2]

I'm enjoying seafall but my gf got betrayal legacy for her birthday and I want to play it so bad but we're waiting until after the seafall campaign is done. Other players hurry up and explore the end of the world challenge 2023

[captainhoers]

this series has gotten very weird

[geekandsundry]

https://geekandsundry.com/5-games-you-should-play-by-award-winning-designer-rob-daviau/

Game the Game is Geek & Sundry’s tabletop board game show that airs every Wednesday starting at 4PM PT on Twitch and Alpha. Join host Becca Scott as she breaks out some of the best board games the industry has to offer, with new guests each week! This week, she’s playing Mountains of...

[kresnikcest]

oo when you're not busy I'd *love* to hear your thoughts on non-talkative Ludger 👀

I still have deadlines BUT

tbh I’d recommend this fic for smol not very talkative Ludger (it is shipfic after a time skip HOWEVER if you don’t read past the scene break then it’s a perfectly heartwarming gen fic that I really recommend for being like one of the three fics that acknowledges Claudia’s death)

I’d also recommend this fic for Fractured Ludger talking but Prime Ludger not and Julius getting POV on that

Anyway some 3am thoughts not in order:

Julius initially doesn’t really worry that much that Ludger doesn’t talk, bc the kid’s shy and suffering from amnesia from watching his mom get killed and pre-pasta Julius is just glad he’s not that annoying to deal with

Marvin can’t really say if Ludger talked much before his amnesia because he never really saw Claudia to avoid someone following them, so it’s up in the air whether or not Ludger was always this quiet or if it’s bc of the amnesia

Julius just figures that Ludger seems fine enough for a kid his age and the teachers just gently encourage him to open up a bit to other classmates. This doesn’t really work despite Julius’ best efforts...

Post-pasta Julius does start worrying bc “oh no what if I’ve traumatised this kid irreparably it’s all my fault” but Ludger does get more comfortable talking to Julius at least, and some of the neighbours, but mostly Julius because. *gestures to Ludger’s minimal friendships*

[aims projector] maybe a tiny bit of selectively mute Ludger where he gets quiet under stress or with strangers and Julius is exceedingly normal about Ludger depending on him for help

(Kijara Seafalls affinity choices could have NOT had Julius’ affinity go up if Ludger can’t figure out how to save Elle..)

Otherwise Ludger is sometimes as chatty as Fractured Ch15 Ludger is, but most of the time though he’s more calm and quiet and doesn’t need to be that open.

To what extent Fractured Ludger was wish fulfilment for Julius and what extent he was an accurate representation of Ludger... well 😋 I think Julius just likes feeling special...

Ultimately Ludger just doesn’t really. feel the need to talk that much. Julius gets him just fine and Ludger has mastered the ability to glare in disapproval when Julius overfeeds Rollo.

Anyway this one was actually your HC if I recall correctly but 10/10 Ludger knowing Elympion sign language and sometimes signing even when he talks and he and Elle get to bond over that bc Victor taught Elle to sign too (though he never explained why...)

Elle doesn’t realise that Ludger and Victor do little signing quirks that are alike. Julius does though.

After the game starts Ludger gets even less talkative because he’s in a very stressful situation and Julius isn’t there to help, but Jude’s very kind and Elle also helps interpret for him so it works out

Stealing from my seraph headcanons but since Muzet is a spirit she’s just a little bit telepathic/empathic and so she understands Ludger pretty well and they get along for that (even though Ludger does find it a bit creepy that he can’t lie to her... but Muzet is Muzet so she just finds it funny)

Ludger eventually feels comfortable enough to talk more to the party besides Elle, but conversely he ends up clamming up with Julius and it’s partially out of sheer spite and frustration but. Well Julius is Julius so he just self-deprecates under the assumption that ofc Ludger doesn’t really need him and feels more at ease with his new friends and he’s just lost that privilege (<<< absurd statement)

Some Fractured Ludgers are just that much chattier, like the way Milla’s personality isn’t the same. Julius gets used to it but he’s always grateful to go back to Prime Ludger no matter what. Still, all Ludgers are Ludger to him, so he notices the differences

Victor has definitely got a much better handle on talking since he’s older, and he’s very at ease with Elle anyway. Knowing everything Ludger doesn’t also helps his confidence. The murder does too.

I’m torn between Ludger going nonverbal during Chapter 15 or saying more words in a conversation than the party have ever heard from him and both options are devastating

Prime Ludger teaches Prime Elle to sign, even though he knows she’ll never need it to talk to him, not the same way Victor maybe have wanted. Elle still mirrors his quirks in gestures and it breaks his heart.

Bad End Best End no matter what Ludger finds some words to ask Julius what he wants for dinner and assure him that he was doing what Julius did for him and tell Julius he’ll do anything to have some time left with him I love this game

[mygamingstuff]

Mais boardgames essa semana vai ser intensa! #boardgames #seafall #meeplemaniac (em Curitiba, Brazil) https://www.instagram.com/p/B74znDVFFaw/?igshid=1ov15okgc0eia

[mauannacreates]

Storyteller Saturday! Question about your setting; you mention 4 elemental worlds (fire, earth, water, air? or different elements?) and that anthro animal/people are the main denizens, can you give a rough outline of worldbuilding and cosmology please? :)

Hey! Thanks for another great question @north-wyrm!

So this one I had to think about quite a bit, because I am sure that I had wrote quite a bit on this, where it is more based on the Solstice and the New Years festival for the main four lands. but I can't currently find it in my archives. But I will probably do a bit more of an update to it, since it has been some time since I have wrote about the other lands (Besides Blazica and the two mighty protagonists that lives in that area.)

Blazica <- It's a place where most people would like to live in! Despite the place having hot summers, it has such nice and cold winters to the point where snow starts to fall throughout the land. It's a place where there are quite a bit of castles and architecture around the place. The richer parts like Pyrocast has more of castles and there's lots of shops with people bustling around, buying or working in places. And around, they have ferries, steam trains and use lots of coal to get to and from places. The poorer countries seems to be more smoked or has lots more garbage around and may not be as nice. But the holidays there are the time where most people would be able to get food for a low price, watch the fireworks and be able to have a good time.

Gustinflew <- Has lots of mountains, and is very hard to access if you don't have wings. They are pretty strict in a way where they don't like much foreigners accessing their land, and if you bring a boat and they notice, usually it ends up vanishing, as it isn't part of the Oceanci territory (However, the Gustinflew and Oceanci leaders are close to each other and do offer flights via Phoenixes directly to and from those places.) It's a hard place to access, yet they have such nice rivers and greenery around, that most would like to visit, yet many won't really know how to. The place in winter also has auroras around, which it's located at the higher part of the Gaia, so it's a place where many would want to visit. There is also a calm and relaxed atmosphere that comes along with that place and the ruler there tries his best to make sure that there are no problems with the areas and make sure there's some equilibrium with the place.

Oceanci <- This place has lots of beaches, streams and rivers. Since most of the people there are either nymphs, mermaids or fishes, there's lots of areas where they could hang around and hang out under the stones around the water and find a way to be able to get to about anywhere in the place and beyond. The main castle area, Seafall Cove is where they have the transportations to Gustinflew, Aeromount Ridge, and there's also a city hanging around there with white stone paths, a big city area with shops, rides and a place to explore around the big statue of the Queen of Seafall, Nerida and it's a place to admire the glamor of her statue and the simplicity that comes along with it. The caves where the Queen is at is more water based and has a little community living there and is a place that the other civilians tend to stay around, since Nerida welcomes them there.

Lander'n <- I've been thinking about quite a bit, and I think there's a certain section of the place which is just pure grass and greenery! It's the most beautiful place you can imagine with lots of logs, nature, flowers, and the things that makes forests wild and unpredictable. However, there's another part of it, where it is a bigger part of the continent, where it's just desert. Scorching mornings, freezing night times, and the daybreak or sunset is the best time to go out, although depending on the animals there, they may prefer to be outside at night. And in the desert areas, I find that they use a system where water can somehow flow through the main castle that the Sultan Terra has built with lots of her allies and friends and make sure that the people who visit around those parts wouldn't die because of the lack of water, even if they can survive longer without water than other places, it's something that helps keep their place flowing.

I will mention that those areas aren't the only areas that exist. It is the main continents to keep the world working, but there are a lot of other little islands and countries too. Like where one of the character's live is just in the offsets of Blazica, there's a little Island called Evergreen, where it's pretty scrappy around there, however the people around the area are nice and homely. But as of the past few years, it has become a bit more of a place where people wouldn't want to go and visit due to the influx of wolves and foxes.

Cosmology:

I haven't decided whether it is on a cosmos sort of way or a place that is a bit higher up, but there is also another place called Cloudy Palace, and this place is not accessed through travelling or usual means of travelling a ferry, flying up or walking that way. I guess that's why it's a bit hard to describe that it's in the Gaia (which is what I call the earth) but not exactly in a place where you are struggling for air like when you're in the cosmos.

I will have to admit, there are a lot of stars rising up in the sky, with the typical sun, planets, asteroids, stars and black holes around here. I haven't really considered about changing anything about the solar system to tell you the truth, however I know that I have power types that I have created which at least with the current Duality, seems to reference space in some way.

[yourolleda1]

Raising the Banners: Ep. #3

The party is back in Seafall and preps for their mission to recover the Driftwood Crown from Vardent Hollow. 

Follow us on Instagram @Yourolleda1 

Dungeon master is @applejellyboy 

Demeclees played by @professorepicproductions 

This episode features music by @arcaneanthems and other non-copywrite music including CO.AG music on YouTube

[talenlee]

For Love Of Novelty

There’s this idea in board game discourse of ‘the cult of the new.’ I’m sure it exists elsewhere, but I can see it very much in the culture of spaces like BoardgameGeek, and I always like making fun of that site, so I shall do so. The idea is that new things get more attention and are considered more worthy than old things, and this is true even if the old things aren’t actually all that old. At the time of writing, the oldest game in the BoardgameGeek top 10 is War of the Ring: Second Edition, which is from 2011. While sure, 2011 is 13 years ago, it is pretty interesting that this is a hobby with important representatives from the 1960s, 1920s, 1880s, and then we get into things like Chess and everything gets weird.

And it isn’t just that these older games like Uno and Scrabble aren’t considered part of the ranking system on BoardgameGeek, that the site is categorically unrelated. They absolutely are, and you can see their place in the rating system that they have. It’s a funny thing that I’ve spoken about called the tail of spite, and a smarter scientist than I have written about it.

With Cancon behind me, I have been thinking about this vision of new things. Board games are a fascinating media space where I think it’s reasonable to say unless you have a position in the distribution and transport side of the industry, people do not appreciate the scope or scale of the available products. In 2023, more board games released than I could reasonably play in my lifetime. I don’t want to, of course – a lot of them are games that just don’t interest me, and some of them are just continuations of existing games. Even if I just looked at every game that released in 2023, BoardgameGeek tells me that’s something in the order of fifty thousand games to then sift through.

Working CanCon is an interesting balance point because it’s also the home of the Good Games ding-and-dent pit. It’s a huge collection of games in varying stages of damage, priced down to clear out the warehouse of a big game company in the country. It’s a place I want, so bad, to spend a lot of money, because my brain reacts to heavy discounts with that poor-person brain problem of ‘well, I’m wasting money by not taking advantage of the deals.’ Despite this deep love of the discounts — And we’re talking about some ridiculous discounts, like Seafall for $5 AUD — in 2023 and 2024, I didn’t buy myself anything in those pits. I did use the pit to get some presents this year, but that was very pointedly getting things for other people. The thing that keeps me constrained in this way is the material needs to transport goods from CanCon (in Canberra) to my home (four hours away) in a small vehicle. I did get some gifts this year, and Fox got some stuff from her wishlist, but what I mostly did was see a lot of cool game ideas that may or may not be well-executed across a host of interesting themes.

God, I love checking out the Pit.

I don’t have much time to spend in the Pit, really. I do little five minute walks when I’m taking break every hour from my time at the booth. And in the Pit, I find games all the time, games I’ve never heard of, and games that look interesting. They’re often heavily discounted, and in many cases they’re really good when I get them home. That’s how I found Purrlock Holmes, a game I wholly love, and Ghosts Love Candy, which I also think is great. The economic system of success or failure doesn’t necessarily produce good games.

One of my favourite examples of this is the game Wise Guys, which I have a copy of, which is, literally, the same game as Sons Of Anarchy. The license ran out, the company redid the game with different images and a different flavour. The game is 100% the same, and it seems that, based on the sales of Sons of Anarchy, Wise Guys got heavily produced and warehoused. But Sons of Anarchy sold amazingly well, and Wise Guys has been in stacks for years – regularly, marked down to the $30 to $5 range, just trying to move units of it.

It’s the same game! It’s even newer than Sons of Anarchy! But somehow, when this game gets judged on identical merits, this one is considered a bit of a meh game and the other is a big best seller.

The success or failure of a game doesn’t really relate to its actual quality, it seems. It’s just pretty much rolling dice and on the one hand that’s pretty cool, it means that board games (and its cousin the TTRPG) space are this vibrant ecosystem full of so many different choices where you might find your absolute favourite thing at exactly your right vibe, it does have the unfortunate asterisk that there are still some big trends that are driven by capitalism. There are train games that sell to Train Game people and that means that anything Train Game Like that tries to explore similar but not the same space eventually gets pushed by publishers into being Another Train Game. If you make board games, you pretty much have to make it modestly on services like Print on Demand tools, release it as a print-and-play, or hope against hope that kickstarter catches fire for you, and kickstarter,

well, Kickstarter brings its own novelty problems.

Kickstarter is a space with biases. Kickstarter will generally favour game projects that have a specific look and vibe. Kickstarter also likes things like stretch goals and of course, lots of plastic. Famously, kickstarter is a place to make game projects into big projects, where a game that might have been great as a $40 experience that lasts an hour instead needs to bloat up into a campaign and miniatures project just to make enough money to justify the creation of that core game.

And these problems

aren’t new.

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