Yes, there are other games

Yes, another big gap in time.  I have months on and months off, but always keep my text files of odd notes, which is as close to regular long-term blog as I have ever managed to accomplish.  I don't know if these notes are of any interest to anyone, but there should be lots of specific tips about mod items along the way.  But here we are in 2020, Coronavirus lockdown, perfect time to be living in alternate worlds and ignoring the real one...

 

June 2020

Gaming goes through phases.  I started reading D&D books & references again, and all the modules at dragonsfoot & other sites I am discovering along the way.  Added some more tables to my table roller JS page, even turned that into a database that can generate the JS files.  But it's still pretty laborious copying/importing a few hundred rows of tables, and any decent set of random rolls (like "What's in My Pocket" from an issue of & Magazine) is going to run 10 or 15 tables deep.

Then, with the pandemic, I spend the weekends mostly boardgaming with my girlfriend Anne.  So nice to have someone who can appreciate strategy and the (normally) social aspects of a good game.  So, I have been recreating some historical boardgames from images on boardgamegeek and ebay -- rather a fun process, actually -- and getting new smaller card games from B&N, and testing print & play games from rpgnow and pnparcade.  So many ingenious things out there, but every time I sit down to sketch out my own things, even a simple set of dungeon geomorphs, I zone out.  Meanwhile, Doug has been retired for 3 years now and keeps talking about games, and has a few things prototyped, but I don't envy anyone trying to do their own physical game sets in the current economic climate.

Some silly old games along the way:
- Calling All Cars (1937), not really a game, just spin randomly to see which car moves (or all cars)
  - I added a spinner option of 6: choose which car.
- Little House on the Prairie: for my gf, actually not totally dull:
  - try to get all 4 family tokens to the center.
  - interesting bit: after moving yours, you play a card saying what the other player gets to do.
  - works best with d8
- Colombo
  - the ink on the cards was all runny, and rolling the dice to get to the cards seemed pointless
  - also, having 10+ cards out on the lawn and expected to remember what's were really sucked

Actual games:
- Lover Letter
  - it totally works with less than 30 cards
- Clue
  - still a bit of a classic, it does work with two players
- Quixx
  - fun little "roll and write" game
- Rolling America
  - turns out that having numbers in matching states be +/-1 is really irritating
- Arboretum
  - okay, playing the cards in weird disconnected paths was less fun than expected
- Fluxx (fantasy)
  - a fun mix of cards where the cards can alter the rules
  - turns out it's hard to reach a goal with even two specific cards when the cards, goals and rules keep changing ;-)
- Monopoly Deals
  - reasonably fun
- Murder is in the Cards
  - haven't tried yet
- Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice (P&P)
  - different theme, trying to marry off the ladies
  - works more or less, kept getting confused with which numbers apply to which situation

Back on Minecraft, I phased out the visits to AspiriaMC a bit, and started revisiting older worlds, only to be hooked on my old Technic Veetech world again.  It is just such a huge, dimension-crossing stage to play on.

Of course, I got obsessed with trying to build viable economies in my settlements, and wrote more pages of tables (this time using playing cards) to say what the new settlers' jobs, wealth and items would be.  I ended up setting up a pair of dispensers in a "Settler Sign-In" office, one full of tools (and a magic item for "special") and one full of wealth items (including one dirt dud).  One button click and I get the two things picked for me.  I suppose we could also just set up a dispenser fed by a double chest & hopper full of random stuff so the new NPCs could get maybe 3 clicks and have to start their in-game life with something like pickaxe, half an emerald and a pomegranate.  ;-)

All very silly.  I have been listening to Mobius do the Refugee to Regent Challenge on youtube in the background.  So much fussy stuff.  I really should just keep visiting towns, building what I feel like building, and just having fun with it.

Still, a little random kick can come in handy from time to time.  Like reminding me not to build the same 20 or 30 things in every town.  Maybe one town will have a School of Dartcraft where every item must be shown and made, or a factory for holy hand grenades.  That would be an amibitious change of pace, things I would not normally have thought of myself.

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