Board Games 5E: I thought I was having fun but it was my brain tricking me

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Board Games 5E: I thought I was having fun but it was my brain tricking me

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Magnetic North: Dec 15, 2008; Beware the Forest's Mushrooms

Bottom Liner posted:

How is Plueblo at 2 and 3?

I have never played it but BGG says it's recommended at 2, best at 3 or 4.

# ? Aug 4, 2022 23:50

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# ? May 29, 2024 09:17

PRADA SLUT: Mar 14, 2006; Inexperienced,
heartless,
but even so

iceyman posted:

Recently acquired Nemesis and now with a few games under my belt, I'm still not sure what to make of it. It's dripping with theme. Components are excellent. But it feels more like an experience generator rather than a serious game. The capricious lethal nature of it has reared its head often which has lead to frustrating sudden ends. We've played strictly coop and I just don't see how semi-coop wouldn't devolve into a huge mess in short order. Is there really some form of strategy to be had here or are you just waiting for the perfect combo of dice rolls and ship layout to luck into a win? There are also a few mechanics that I feel are a tad over-baked. There's perhaps one too many Intruder types (Breeders and Creepers seem really unnecessary). I do enjoy the first ~10 turns of the game with the focus on scavenging and discovery and avoiding the one Intruder or two.

This has lead to an interesting internal debate with myself. Is a good horror board game even possible? Games typically demand interesting choices and balance. Horror is the opposite and revolves around disempowerment and the unknown.

I love horror as a genre, but most board games run into "horror skinning" of otherwise typical games (e.g., a Frankenstein-skinned worker placement of Abomination), or the cartoony horror of Zombicide and Fury of Dracula or any of the piles of games from the Cthulhu mythos.

Betrayal at House on the Hill is like a campy, "friends go into a mysterious house and you won't believe what happens next" theme, but the mechanics are rather dated. Though, still might be okay for a group who wants to play a game but not really play a game.

Vampire the Masquerade Chapters (not out yet) is modern urban narrative horror, more like Gloomhaven with a story book.

Some of Etherfields is a Suspiria-like, surreal, fever-dream horror.

Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective Jack the Ripper Box has a handful of cases where you read and solve cases with actual (extraordinarily graphic) testimony of the murders in London.

And the game that goons get upset when you talk about revolves around facing grotesque, Berserk-like monsters. Also a pure example of facing disempowerment and the unknown.

So, horror exists, but "true horror" is significantly less popular than "horror-themed".

e: actually, I'm interested if anyone knows of any other horror games, but like horror as a "gameplay", instead of just a theme slapped onto something

PRADA SLUT fucked around with this message at 03:41 on Aug 5, 2022

# ? Aug 5, 2022 02:16

hoiyes: May 17, 2007

Mall/City of Horror's gameplay mimics the 'let's work together' but also 'mercilessly turn on each other' the second it's expedient theme present in zombie horror movies and other 'people are the real evil' movies.

# ? Aug 5, 2022 05:12

!Klams: Dec 25, 2005; Squid Squad

PRADA SLUT posted:

e: actually, I'm interested if anyone knows of any other horror games, but like horror as a "gameplay", instead of just a theme slapped onto something

Nyctophobia comes to mind. Never played it, so no idea how well it achieved its objective, but interesting to read about as a concept

# ? Aug 5, 2022 08:12

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

PRADA SLUT posted:

e: actually, I'm interested if anyone knows of any other horror games, but like horror as a "gameplay", instead of just a theme slapped onto something

There's Sea Evil and Psycho Raiders as horror modeling.

# ? Aug 5, 2022 14:59

Radioactive Toy: Sep 14, 2005; Nothing has ever happened here, nothing.

I'm strangely eagerly awaiting impressions about Twilight Inscription from GenCon.

# ? Aug 6, 2022 18:59

girl dick energy: Sep 30, 2009; You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?

PRADA SLUT posted:

And the game that goons get upset when you talk about revolves around facing grotesque, Berserk-like monsters.

Something something titty minis.

# ? Aug 6, 2022 19:17

Bottom Liner: Feb 15, 2006; a specific vein of lasagna

Sure am glad people complained about our IK to get her removed and drove her away from the thread. Great job assholes and mods that went along with it.

# ? Aug 6, 2022 19:53

silvergoose: Mar 18, 2006; IT IS SAID THE TEARS OF THE BWEENIX CAN HEAL ALL WOUNDS

I missed that and am now extremely pissed off, when did that happen

# ? Aug 6, 2022 19:54

jesus WEP: Oct 17, 2004

Bottom Liner posted:

Sure am glad people complained about our IK to get her removed and drove her away from the thread. Great job assholes and mods that went along with it.

wtf

# ? Aug 6, 2022 19:57

armorer: Aug 6, 2012; I like metal.

Wait what?

# ? Aug 6, 2022 20:44

Jedit: Dec 10, 2011; Proudly supporting vanilla legends 1994-2014

Bottom Liner posted:

Sure am glad people complained about our IK to get her removed and drove her away from the thread. Great job assholes and mods that went along with it.

Was it the same assholes who drove her off the Discord?

# ? Aug 6, 2022 20:48

FirstAidKite: Nov 8, 2009

Bottom Liner posted:

Sure am glad people complained about our IK to get her removed and drove her away from the thread. Great job assholes and mods that went along with it.

What

e:

Jedit posted:

Was it the same assholes who drove her off the Discord?

wait what, when did this happen? What happened to Mayveena?

FirstAidKite fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Aug 6, 2022

# ? Aug 6, 2022 22:05

CitizenKeen: Nov 13, 2003; easygoing pedant

What the gently caress?

# ? Aug 6, 2022 22:46

Stickman: Feb 1, 2004

loving hell

# ? Aug 6, 2022 23:01

MonsieurChoc: Oct 12, 2013; Every species can smell its own extinction.

I have no clue what's going on.

# ? Aug 6, 2022 23:25

Kiranamos: Sep 27, 2007; _{STATUS: SCOTT IS AN IDIOT}

I�m posting in support or opposition to whatever is going on

# ? Aug 6, 2022 23:32

Magnetic North: Dec 15, 2008; Beware the Forest's Mushrooms

Bottom Liner posted:

Sure am glad people complained about our IK to get her removed and drove her away from the thread. Great job assholes and mods that went along with it.

silvergoose posted:

I missed that and am now extremely pissed off, when did that happen

It was about three weeks ago to my knowledge.

I was just gonna post that but I guess I'm gonna chatter about my thoughts on mods now because I realized I had more than a few thoughts:

Regarding this specifically: When we got an IK, I was very pleased with the choice, but I was afraid the mods were going to hang her out to dry. It only took five months. I have not bothered to complain because the mods clearly got what they want: no probes or complaints from the board game thread. The fact that is because thread has few posts doesn't appear to matter. Now, I don't wish to overstate the point: the thread slowness is partially because it's summer and people (even goons) are probably making plans etc. Still, based on what I heard people saying on Discord, people have been repelled from the thread by unregulated lovely behavior, or by the people complaining about the unregulated lovely behavior. I'm not passing judgement on either. Frankly, I was hoping to just play more games to add content to the thread to try and get it going in the right direction, but my personal life has been extremely busy for a few months now. My time is limited and some of that time is spent playing Netrunner so it goes into another thread. (That game owns, btw, ignore the few tiny bits of drama in the last month.)

Oh well. We got an IK only several threadshitting incidents that the thread had not really seen outside of one or two users for the seven years I followed the previous thread. This means if you want a scientific approach to making a change here, you all could try to make the thread uninhabitable again and maybe that will elicit a response. Or complain to an admin, I guess. I don't know if either will work, but I leave it to each goon to decide how they want to respond.

After finally experiencing a thread with an active IK but without active mods: First off, did you know reports apparently don't go to IKs? That was news to me. So that means an IK must be directly reading and patrolling the thread, which means time zones matter more, etc, and it felt like things were happening when one party of another were asleep. Due to this, I think IKs should be able to give out 24 hour probes instead of just 6ers. That way regardless of it it takes a few hours to see the message or if time zones are an issue, the probed user is likely to notice the mod.

Thinking about 6ers reminded me of something: somewhere, like 10-12 years ago, Slowbeef (former Let's Play mod if you aren't aware) was talking about someone complaining about getting a 6 hour probe in LP. (It might have been on a podcast?) He was practically crying laughing at how over-dramatic it was. To apply this to the current situation, we can likely surmise that whoever complained could only have received a 6er because that is all an IK can do. That means that someone looked at this and immediately thought "Oh yes this is a serious offense, please accept our apologies, senator" instead of the more classic SA response of "It's six hours, nerd, get over it."

Does anyone know when Trad Games was elevated to the front page out of the Games category? I wonder if that means it attracts more attention which means more mods are needed. It's hard to tell from the outside the current traffic except by currently browsing, which is 1/7th what Games gets at time of writing, though they have twice as many mods too.

# ? Aug 6, 2022 23:45

CitizenKeen: Nov 13, 2003; easygoing pedant

If Mayveena was removed as an IK, I�m wondering why the mods felt a decision about something needed to be made, made that decision, and enacted that decision, all without talking to the thread. That feels shady and underhanded.

# ? Aug 7, 2022 00:06

Jedit: Dec 10, 2011; Proudly supporting vanilla legends 1994-2014

FirstAidKite posted:

wait what, when did this happen? What happened to Mayveena?

Mayveena left the Trad Games discord several months ago after getting dogpiled - I forget the exact details of what and why, but it definitely wasn't a reasonable response.

E: removing possible imported drama.

Jedit fucked around with this message at 00:27 on Aug 7, 2022

# ? Aug 7, 2022 00:25

Fate Accomplice: Nov 30, 2006

Radioactive Toy posted:

I'm strangely eagerly awaiting impressions about Twilight Inscription from GenCon.

Suddenly Susan and I did a ticketed play session with the designer and managed to each score one of the ~150 copies they surprise sold at gencon.

It�s excellent, easily the game of a ~lackluster gencon for new and heavier releases.

Fate Accomplice fucked around with this message at 02:53 on Aug 7, 2022

# ? Aug 7, 2022 02:51

TheDiceMustRoll: Jul 23, 2018

Thanks to all who shouted out re: Dungeon Degenerates. That game is good. Blown away there are literally no duplicate cards, dude must have hosed his wrist doing all this poo poo.

# ? Aug 7, 2022 03:12

Crackbone: May 23, 2003; Vlaada is my co-pilot.

Wait what? How did Mayveena get �driven out� of this thread?

# ? Aug 7, 2022 03:48

FirstAidKite: Nov 8, 2009

Magnetic North posted:

It was about three weeks ago to my knowledge.

I was just gonna post that but I guess I'm gonna chatter about my thoughts on mods now because I realized I had more than a few thoughts:

Regarding this specifically: When we got an IK, I was very pleased with the choice, but I was afraid the mods were going to hang her out to dry. It only took five months. I have not bothered to complain because the mods clearly got what they want: no probes or complaints from the board game thread. The fact that is because thread has few posts doesn't appear to matter. Now, I don't wish to overstate the point: the thread slowness is partially because it's summer and people (even goons) are probably making plans etc. Still, based on what I heard people saying on Discord, people have been repelled from the thread by unregulated lovely behavior, or by the people complaining about the unregulated lovely behavior. I'm not passing judgement on either. Frankly, I was hoping to just play more games to add content to the thread to try and get it going in the right direction, but my personal life has been extremely busy for a few months now. My time is limited and some of that time is spent playing Netrunner so it goes into another thread. (That game owns, btw, ignore the few tiny bits of drama in the last month.)

Oh well. We got an IK only several threadshitting incidents that the thread had not really seen outside of one or two users for the seven years I followed the previous thread. This means if you want a scientific approach to making a change here, you all could try to make the thread uninhabitable again and maybe that will elicit a response. Or complain to an admin, I guess. I don't know if either will work, but I leave it to each goon to decide how they want to respond.

After finally experiencing a thread with an active IK but without active mods: First off, did you know reports apparently don't go to IKs? That was news to me. So that means an IK must be directly reading and patrolling the thread, which means time zones matter more, etc, and it felt like things were happening when one party of another were asleep. Due to this, I think IKs should be able to give out 24 hour probes instead of just 6ers. That way regardless of it it takes a few hours to see the message or if time zones are an issue, the probed user is likely to notice the mod.

Thinking about 6ers reminded me of something: somewhere, like 10-12 years ago, Slowbeef (former Let's Play mod if you aren't aware) was talking about someone complaining about getting a 6 hour probe in LP. (It might have been on a podcast?) He was practically crying laughing at how over-dramatic it was. To apply this to the current situation, we can likely surmise that whoever complained could only have received a 6er because that is all an IK can do. That means that someone looked at this and immediately thought "Oh yes this is a serious offense, please accept our apologies, senator" instead of the more classic SA response of "It's six hours, nerd, get over it."

Does anyone know when Trad Games was elevated to the front page out of the Games category? I wonder if that means it attracts more attention which means more mods are needed. It's hard to tell from the outside the current traffic except by currently browsing, which is 1/7th what Games gets at time of writing, though they have twice as many mods too.

So just to make sure I'm understanding this right, is this an accurate summary of what happened?

Some problems in this thread
Underwhelming mod response to said problems
Request for IK
Mayveena is made IK
Problems in thread go down because an IK is there as a deterrent
Lack of problems in thread
Someone?? tells one of the mods they don't think an IK is necessary anymore
Mayveena steps down

Is that about right or have I completely misunderstood your post?

# ? Aug 7, 2022 07:11

Magnetic North: Dec 15, 2008; Beware the Forest's Mushrooms

FirstAidKite posted:

Is that about right or have I completely misunderstood your post?

Mayveena getting un-IK'd was not voluntary as far as I understand it.

But whatever, I personally don't want to derail the thread with this, but I truly welcome you all to derail the poo poo out of this thread to complain about how poo poo the moderation team are if you want to.

# ? Aug 7, 2022 08:13

FirstAidKite: Nov 8, 2009

I wouldn't mind at least seeing a post from whoever made the decision, if only to explain exactly what happened.

# ? Aug 7, 2022 08:40

Tekopo: Oct 24, 2008; When you see it, you'll shit yourself.

Played Stone's Unyielding Defiance yesterday in Spirit Island and drat, what a fun Spirit. It felt quite strong to allow the enemies to blight but having tools in the innate powers to just more or less ignore the blight, and to strike back just as hard. It's an interesting twist on a defensive spirit, but I felt a lot more active (and less reliant on dahans to actually do damage). I also liked that all growth options allowed me to put down presence: my progress through the tracks felt slow but inevitable. You do need a bit of foreplanning with Stone, though, since you don't have any double presence growth options and most of your powers are slow and only really have an affect the turn after you use them. Overall, really enjoyed the spirits, and so far two of my favourite spirits (Stone and Volcano) have come from Jagged Earth, which has some stellar designs in terms of Spirits IMO.

# ? Aug 7, 2022 11:59

Llyranor: Jun 24, 2013

Spirit Island rules.

Mods drool.

# ? Aug 7, 2022 13:04

Mr. Maltose: Feb 16, 2011; The Guffless Girlverine

Yeah it�s not really a derail to talk about how this thread apparently no longer has an IK despite no one actually bothering to tell the thread there is no longer an IK.

# ? Aug 7, 2022 13:34

djfooboo: Oct 16, 2004

Radioactive Toy posted:

I'm strangely eagerly awaiting impressions about Twilight Inscription from GenCon.

I have two friends whom opinions I trust that said it was the game of the con for them and they aren�t roll and write apologists.

# ? Aug 7, 2022 14:02

armorer: Aug 6, 2012; I like metal.

Mr. Maltose posted:

Yeah it’s not really a derail to talk about how this thread apparently no longer has an IK despite no one actually bothering to tell the thread there is no longer an IK.

And that the decision pushed away a respected individual not only in this thread but in the broader board gaming world.

# ? Aug 7, 2022 15:03

Fat Samurai: Feb 16, 2011; To go quickly is foolish. To go slowly is prudent. Not to go; that is wisdom.

I have just finished the Baker Street Irregulars. Great game and leaps and bounds better than the first box. Even if the last puzzle reeked of "guess the word" of early Sierra adventure games.

I do have a doubt with the last case: In the envelope at the end of the book there is a telegram from Lestrade to Sherlock. on it, there is a circled R. Going to Lestrade, the section first ask whether you have circled an R, which I'm pretty sure is impossible to do following the rules. If you follow that prompt, Lestrade hints at a case that has been going on for years that Sherlock is following.

Am I missing something? Is it just an Easter egg?

# ? Aug 7, 2022 18:23

PopZeus: Aug 11, 2010

Mayveena is cool and good and rad and whoever de-IK�d her sucks.

# ? Aug 7, 2022 18:36

Magnetic North: Dec 15, 2008; Beware the Forest's Mushrooms

Fat Samurai posted:

I have just finished the Baker Street Irregulars. Great game and leaps and bounds better than the first box. Even if the last puzzle reeked of "guess the word" of early Sierra adventure games.

I do have a doubt with the last case: In the envelope at the end of the book removed spoilers for safety removed spoilers for safety removed spoilers for safety removed spoilers for safety removed spoilers for safety removed spoilers for safety removed spoilers for safety removed spoilers for safety removed spoilers for safety removed spoilers for safety removed spoilers for safety

Am I missing something? Is it just an Easter egg?

I'll PM you about that potential spoiler stuff.

I'm happy to hear you enjoyed it and agree that it is a massive improvement over the first box. Indeed, some stuff around the end broke some weird new ground (which is all I'll say to avoid spoiling anything) but we loved it basically from beginning to end with maybe two minor hiccups.

# ? Aug 7, 2022 18:39

jesus WEP: Oct 17, 2004

PopZeus posted:

Mayveena is cool and good and rad and whoever de-IK�d her sucks.

# ? Aug 7, 2022 19:00

Fat Samurai: Feb 16, 2011; To go quickly is foolish. To go slowly is prudent. Not to go; that is wisdom.

Magnetic North posted:

I'll PM you about that potential spoiler stuff.

I'm happy to hear you enjoyed it and agree that it is a massive improvement over the first box. Indeed, some stuff around the end broke some weird new ground (which is all I'll say to avoid spoiling anything) but we loved it basically from beginning to end with maybe two minor hiccups.

Thanks!

Yeah, the way the last cases work are great, and each one introduced something new and interesting.

# ? Aug 7, 2022 20:16

armorer: Aug 6, 2012; I like metal.

PopZeus posted:

Mayveena is cool and good and rad and whoever de-IK�d her sucks.

Honestly I don't really care if we have an IK or not. I do care if we have Mayveena in the thread or not though, and it sucks that this all went down seemingly behind the scenes.

# ? Aug 7, 2022 20:27