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That is an impressive OP. Additionally: (1) Never sit down to play a modern board game and expect to open the box and learn to play as you go, or with one unlucky person attempting to explain as they read. If nothing else, everyone should watch a "how to play video" together. Really, don't do it, it's awful. (2) It's dreadful playing games with people who don't want to play them -- no gaming is better than bad gaming. If your friends aren't even curious about your new hobby, pressuring them into playing often backfires. (3) If somebody in your life is really curious about a game you play, that is often enough to carry them through the complexity barrier and into learning and enjoying the game.
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Dec 30, 2021 00:52
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big scary monsters posted:I'm still 60,000 posts behind in the 4e thread he dies at the end
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Dec 30, 2021 19:15
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Lawlicaust posted:I’ll send this as a PM but I’d recommend in the where to buy section including a bit more info about recommended online retailers. There are a lot of pretty scammy online retailers in the space and it would be good newbies to avoid them. Miniature Market should maybe get an asterisk, since Asmodee stealth bought it
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Dec 30, 2021 21:14
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Magnetic North posted:I added some rules explanation suggestions to the OP. Thanks to homullus who mentioned the oversight. Like the rest, it's skewing towards people very new to the hobby and presumably teaching others who are even newer. Let me know if there are any errors or suggestions. The OP was really good and I didn't mean to imply those were oversights, just "other things I've thought about" and I thought anyone reading the OP might read the rest of the first page. You did a really good job.
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Dec 31, 2021 21:29
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FulsomFrank posted:If you and your group have fun playing anything good on you. I just get my back up personally about games like Wingspan and Terraforming Mars because I think they're prime examples of aggressively mediocre designs that skate by primarily on Theme™ and a dose of the cult of the new (something I'm not immune to myself, to be clear). Wingspan gets "thoughtfully mediocre" because the rest of the design is so well-considered. Card rarity on each card? Yes please. I don't care about birds at all and the total package impressed me.
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Jan 4, 2022 19:22
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Hiro Protagonist posted:Is Ascension 10th Anniversary Edition worth getting? I've never played Ascension, but I've heard it's good. That said I imagine that there may be better deckbuilders since it first came out. there were better deckbuilders before it came out (namely Dominion)
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Jan 7, 2022 19:21
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Chill la Chill posted:See that was the problem with broken loose’s game and lack of funding. Should’ve designed the giant Megazord first as a centerpiece then designed the game. and put it in a skimpy bikini
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Jan 11, 2022 19:36
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Papes posted:Horseless carriages components will be fine and not worth the endless discussion they’ll end up generating how many shades of brown and grey cubes can be on a grey grid? we will find out soon.
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Jan 19, 2022 21:42
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Bottom Liner posted:I think it's worth correcting that "first turn decisions can decide the whole game" is not the Splotter ethos. They said "if you can't lose on turn one, why have a turn one?" ok but if you can lose on turn one, then first turn decisions can decide the whole game
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Jan 20, 2022 18:55
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Bottom Liner posted:Right, but outside of first time playing with no guidance or reading the tips in the rulebook, that shouldn’t happen. I’d argue the same could be said of any number of euro games where there are obvious good and bad first turns. This only became a talking point with Splotter because their games are very sink or swim in a way MWEs are not. You can take terrible first turns in Agricola, Concordia, T&E, etc, that could also cost you the game. You can bid all your meeples of a color on a spring tile in Keyflower turn 1. It’s not a smart move, but you can do it. I was responding to your assertion that it wasn't their ethos to have game-determining decisions on turn one, which was followed by your quoting their statement that explicitly contradicts your assertion. I'm not passing judgment on their ethos, and believe Splotter makes great games. Their games are not very forgiving, and part of what makes them good, but that's definitely intentional.
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Jan 20, 2022 21:34
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Radlands is a gorgeous, shallow pool. A lot depends on who draws the cards they need from the shared deck.
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Jan 21, 2022 18:20
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it's not that there are better pure dexterity games than Crokinole, but that pure dexterity games are a shallow pool for me I prefer games with an element of randomness, such that even a highly skilled player has to react/hope semi-regularly
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Jan 25, 2022 21:58
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Dr. Lunchables posted:All you solo board gamers should go post in the war games thread because nobody ever plays hex and counter games IRL. my favorite solo game experiences have all been non-solo wargames where I played all sides myself I need to think about that some more. In some ways it scratched the same kind of itch as The Sims, where I am watching a story unfold, and where I have a medium amount of control over the story's direction, but can still be surprised. I am not sure whether wargaming non-solo games is even "gaming" but it's definitely a thing that "experience generator" games do. hmm.
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Jan 26, 2022 17:36
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Magnetic North posted:BGG is doing another daily Black History Month list of the trad gaming space. Two very interesting people have already profiled, including one I definitely should have heard of but definitely had not. Thanks for posting this early in the month. Today I learned who R. Talsorian is!
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Feb 2, 2022 18:13
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Bottom Liner posted:Res Arcana. You do one simple action a turn, and your choices get whittled down throughout the round. Adding to this, I feel that the first expansion (Lux et Tenebrae) is a strict improvement on the game, while the second expansion (Perlae Imperii) is a lateral move that accelerates the game's early turns.
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Feb 3, 2022 21:02
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!Klams posted:
Everyone I've met with AP did not have mental health issues (that I knew of) and were not choosing to be that way at the table. One friend did choose to work on it, but it was a several-years-long struggle to mitigate it. I am not defending it; it sucks the life out of some game nights, and you're not obligated to play games with people when doing so isn't fun. Anecdotally, though, people with AP are often aware they have it, aware people don't like it, and still can't act differently.
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Feb 4, 2022 17:10
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If you can't win and you can end the game faster by some mechanism, I think option 3 is "tell the players with a chance to win that you will be ending the game ASAP" and watch them duke it out with that knowledge. Doesn't work with all groups and all games, but definitely works with some.
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Feb 4, 2022 23:14
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PRADA SLUT posted:Mind MGMT expansion coming soon, likely opening orders for the original box as well. I played MIND MGMT for the first time last night and it was better and simpler than I expected. It landed for all four players, which was a nice change.
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Feb 7, 2022 05:27
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And to be clear, it's not "expansion content" per se, it's professionally-printed cards that you would otherwise PnP if you cracked the "codes" in the game and went to the website and downloaded them. Retail versions have equal access to it already too.
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Feb 8, 2022 22:15
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AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:Are there any boardgames out there that handle having a big event happen mid-game that is designed to slow all of the players down/throw a wrench in their plans/cause some damage without being overbearing and lovely? Depending on how "big" the event is in your imagination, this is anywhere from very rare to extremely common. And if you're modeling the Bronze Age Collapse, you should probably start by deciding what people are even doing before, during, and after it. Is your game about political states? Family dynasties? International trade? Cultures? It makes a difference, because while the Usual Measures of Mankind's Progress took a big hit, people were generally still farming, weaving, et cetera. The region lost kings making stone monuments to themselves and big cities centralizing trade, but people kept talking, singing, and thinking. At the very least, you could force players to pivot from the Usual Measures of Mankind's Progress to other kinds of development.
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Feb 9, 2022 19:14
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Viper915 posted:Talk to me about Radlands. My FLGS just got copies in, and I'm curious about the game. This completely flew under my radar, and the reviews I can find are hard to parse between multiple editions. SVWAG was lukewarm about it, suggesting something like rift force was a better buy. The theme is slightly more interesting to me than generic MTG-style fantasy, but does this have legs or is it a flash in the pan? Aside from adding "it has no legs, don't buy it" to those who have said so, Roxley said in the FAQ to the KS campaign that they had no plans to expand it -- which implies that it was not built with expansion in mind. So even though they acknowleged there that they could expand it, there is (for me) added mistrust about the quality of such an expansion they didn't account for in the design. Gorgeous product, fantastic components, Quite Bland game.
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Feb 15, 2022 17:33
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Mayveena posted:What I like about Stonemaier is that he uses content creators of color and that he seems to be progressive leaning at least? Yes Tapestry shipped with a balance issue but he's addressed that both in errata and in the latest expansion? Unlike video games where issues can be patched easily, it's not that way with board games. Playtesting can't catch everything, but the more a game is playtested, the more gets caught. Too many games are let out the gate with too little playtesting and there are very, very few acceptable excuses for it.
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Mar 5, 2022 23:16
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Selecta84 posted:Has anybody played Imperium: Classic and/or Imperium: Legends? I have played Imperium: Classics, once. I hope to play it again. The rulebook that comes with Classics also addresses Legends, so I know something about both. Things I like are: (1) it attempts to say something about what happens when a culture shifts to being a, well, civilization (i.e. based on cities), namely that some of the old ways hang around and some don't; (2) it attempts to differentiate these changes by culture, with some never shifting from "barbaric" to "civilized," staying barbaric or starting civilized; (3) the different cultures have different playstyles and goals; (4) variable starts increase replayability; (5) good, colorful art that varies through the cultures; and (6) ancient world! yay! Things I don't like are: (1) set up is astonishingly fiddly, such that the rules for setup may even be longer than the core gameplay rules; (2) the game itself has a lot of bookkeeping. The "real game" (per my one playthrough) is an exercise in cycling through your deck, and there are a number of different and I think inelegant ways to limit the speed with which you do so; (3) the game takes as its starting point the idea that moving toward civilization and capitalism and imperialism are "advancement" (though it does somewhat acknowledge this); (4) it's explicitly ahistorical (Olmecs v. Atlanteans? sure ok why not); and (5) because of (1) and (2), it has a less favorable teaching-to-fun ratio.
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Mar 8, 2022 18:13
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Infinitum posted:Setup for game day complete. Love a good table filler Filler games get a bad rap, that looks suitably complex
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Mar 11, 2022 20:38
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Snooze Cruise posted:Camel in Time sounds fun It's one of Madeleine L'Engle's lesser-known works, cool to see they've made a game from it.
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Mar 17, 2022 16:56
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MockingQuantum posted:It's a really disgusting situation to begin with, but the claim itself makes it even more disgusting. I'm no lawyer so I have no idea how it compares to similar suits but it reads as pretty strongly misogynistic and sex-shaming in ways that seem strange to me. Also it makes me even more mad that the statute of limitations on defamation suits in Florida is apparently 2 years, and this claim was filed one day short of two years after her Medium post, on the dot. Generally one would file late because (1) logistically, it can take some time to spin things up finding a lawyer you trust to handle your case, and more significantly, (2) you want to point to your best estimate of damages, because you don't get to go back to court after the case is resolved and say "AND FURTHERMORE, incidents XYZ also happened, costing me $$$." That means letting the clock run so you catch all of it.
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Mar 17, 2022 17:09
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MockingQuantum posted:Yeah that makes sense. I think there also may be the factor of him having "lost" a job at a cryptocurrency company in the last year after someone did a cursory search on him, and supposedly it lost him a six-figure salary and "untold additional compensation" after the coin's IPO I'm not a lawyer and haven't read the complaint, but generally, anti-SLAPP laws are aimed at frivolous lawsuits that aim to "shut people up" by being expensive annoying bullshit that people can't handle. Anti-SLAPP laws vary from state to state and don't exist everywhere (there's no federal version). They often give the target of the forward action a path to quick dismissal if they can show that the issue was a matter of public concern, skipping straight to a free speech defense of sorts. The plaintiff may have to pay a penalty for their original lovely SLAPP suit. You may recall that a judge decided that the defamation suit of fractious dipshit Zak S was subject to anti-SLAPP scrutiny, and the judge there concluded that that just because Mandy's original Facebook post was related to #MeToo didn't make it a public concern; that judge also cited cases where allegations of sexual misconduct did rise to the level of public concern, and thereby left a few bread crumbs for others to follow. So, is this new suit a SLAPP suit? That's going to be up to the judge. Also, that Zak stuff was Canada, so different cases; Canadian cases may not even be persuasive here, but the idea that sexual misconduct is public concern because/when it's somebody preying on a specific community is not crazy talk. homullus fucked around with this message at 21:42 on Mar 17, 2022 |
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Mar 17, 2022 20:24
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I feel like that might speak to the (seemingly very bad) decision to file this suit at all, but again, it's not like I really know anything about the legalities of defamation suits.
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Talisman appeals to younger gamers and to the younger gamers within some older gamers. It's slighty more "game" than a slot machine is but hey at least the game rewards your sophisticated strategic mind when you choose the Prophetess before you start trying to roll high on hundreds of d6 rolls for the next few hours. The thing that separated Rutibex from other posters talking about and recommending the game is probably "good faith."
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Mar 22, 2022 16:36
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The Eyes Have It posted:
There's Maria, which is also made much better by its inflexible player count. Edit: totally with you, though, on wishing more games just committed to the number that was the best experience.
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Mar 25, 2022 17:54
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Mayveena posted:Folks I have to do what I’m asked to do. You are to report problematic behavior. Then if I have doubts I’ll discuss it with Leperfish. I’m not tolerating trolling. I can give out limited probs, big probes go to them. If I recall, Prada was discussing the game Kingdom Death: Monster in a positive way. I believe the only discussion of Kingdom Death: Monster that Bottom Liner accepts is the negative kind. Please stay and be a voice of reason.
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Mar 26, 2022 04:37
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My experience with Hollandspiele games is that Amabel knows very well to whom her games will appeal, or that they will appeal to nobody except by virtue of being the only thing like it (and thereafter by reputation). I think a lot about The Field of the Cloth of Gold, which I suspect is not actually much of a game at all behind the curtain, but it constantly feels like an intense one.
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Mar 30, 2022 16:24
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St0rmD posted:I feel like that's just something that's going to happen in a lot of wargames. Small World is good and combats that issue somewhat by keeping the victory point counters face down, so unless you're really good at counting, you're never quite sure who exactly is winning or by how much. On the other hand, once you play it a lot you'll likely identify some of the stronger races and powers in the game and develop a metagame around that at your table, so it's not infinitely replayable. Buying the expansions extends this a bit but not indefinitely. I think Small World is not a good game and I would never recommend it to anyone older than 12 if better options were available. The hidden VP directly encourages the political campaigning of "nooo, go after THAT PERSON, they're really in the lead" which makes every game about that theatrical complaining rather than the game's actual mechanics. If you can actually see who's in the lead by seeing their VP, you have to win the game by better at Small World, rather than being better at complaining.
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Mar 31, 2022 04:42
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Frozen Peach posted:Finally got to play The Field of the Cloth of Gold tonight ( with the designer I think the giving part of the game is the most important for the feel of the game. If it were an ordinary worker placement game, you would be aware of the spaces you are leaving available to opponents, and can at least hope they don't choose certain ones. In this game, you are leaving options open and also always giving something to your opponent directly and immediately, and depending on the tiles in their hand and court, you may have an excellent idea of how much you are advancing their cause. For those born without amazing computer brains, it makes a rapid cost-benefit analysis more challenging. If you haven't played the game much, you also won't have as good a sense of how each color is really worth spending a turn on. I suspect that at a high level, with two equally-skilled players, it's going to come down to who gets coincidentally-better Secrecy draws, which, well, Ms. Holland has always been clear about how it is a simpler game. My limited experience is (1) that you want to get off the first row of the scoring track as soon as possible by any means necessary so that you get more tiles in both of the actions that prompt Secrecy draws, and (2) that playing gold when you'll score 2 is always solid, because the gold tiles all count again at endgame scoring.
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Apr 6, 2022 20:28
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) and I immediately want to order my own copy. It's amazing how every decision you make in the game feels like a bad one, but, that's the game. It's great!
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Frozen Peach posted:Personally, I will never play a game at a high level with equally skilled players. That's just not interesting to me, and I don't think most games are designed with that in mind. The vast majority of players are not in those categories, so when a game degenerates under those circumstances I don't see it as a flaw. I certainly don't design my games with that in mind. Sure, I agree. There are no games that I play at a highly-skilled level either. By "high level" I meant "macro" or "high-altitude," looking at it in a broad/overall way. I am sorry I chose a misleading phrase.
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Apr 6, 2022 23:26
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Infinitum posted:Games should be appropriately respectful to themes/religions/races/etc that they are portraying and representing, but they don't need to cater to a players victim complex. The greater the present or historical oppression, the greater the obligation to include it respectfully in the game or acknowledge it in the manual. Most games would (rightly) stick with the acknowledgement; it's low-cost and low-impact, but better than allowing its erasure. A current practice in the US in some circles is the "land acknowledgement," wherein a public speaker first memorializes the indigenous nations and communities on whose land the speech takes place, in just a sentence or two. It's not a full recitation of why we're there now and not they're not, and sometimes it can feel performative, but the first few times you hear one it's surprising and educational. They're also low-cost and obviously low-impact. There's no good reason not to keep doing them until enough other stuff changes, such that the communities in question can say unanimously "yeah, you know what, we're good, you can stop now." That BGG thread seems pretty reasonable and quite important to me. Like Infinitum, I feel games don't need to cater to players' victim complexes, but it feels healthy to me that people are at least asking whether Golem should revolve around gold, golems, and the Star of David. Feedback from people who think it crosses a line is critically important to everyone else, since they also have to decide for themselves whether it crosses a line for them.
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Apr 7, 2022 16:42
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Mayveena posted:I respectfully disagree. In order to get more people of more backgrounds/cultures/races into this white rear end hobby, it would help tremendously for them to see themselves in the game. In my opinion, part of the reason that this white rear end hobby is so white is because the publishers keep publishing white people games. So if I go to hang out with my non white people friends and suggest something like Alma Mater they are going to not want to play yet another white rear end people game. We need more representation. Period. My feeling as I said previously is that I would make a Black cooking game to get more Black people into board games without all the racist bullshit that has happened to Black people. Euro games are not the place for that again in my opinion, and we don't need to continue to fill the hobby with white rear end people games because they seem to be sanitized. Can you tell me what I said that sounds like the opposite of what you've said? PM is fine. Because I wholeheartedly agree that we need representation. We need people from the represented community talking about how they are represented, and saying whether it crosses the line for them, so that everyone else can learn from it. That means that sometimes somebody is going to have a more extreme opinion ("all games about Jews must include people hating Jews, because that's been happening to us for thousands of years").
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Apr 7, 2022 17:16
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Mayveena posted:If they veer away from those 'tried and true' themes and there's backlash, they are not going to be as enthusiastic to go back. My suspicion is that other publishers are very interested in the reception of Golem to see if they can publish games that feature stories of persecuted people. Definitely agree that the extreme opinion in that thread is the unreasonable one. I feel pretty strongly that the "right" answer is to have more Jewish gamers weigh in, though (scare quotes because it's hard to just make that happen). We are seeing this kind of debate in real time with trans representation elsewhere (cf. the in-game advertisement for Chromanticore in the video game Cyberpunk 2077). I am extremely in favor of getting off the white-rear end game train, but I'd rather not do it at Stereotype Station, and I don't trust my white-rear end self to fully appreciate on my own all the ways not-me people have been marginalized, sexualized, essentialized, and oppressed. You're in several tough spots now (on at least two websites) but really where else SHOULD somebody who is in a represented-in-a-game community talk about their concerns with representation, other than BGG? It's the place where a publisher is most likely to see those extreme opinions, but also affirming ones, and ideas for how to go forward.
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Apr 7, 2022 18:00
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Mayveena posted:The new Mombasa https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/359438/skymines why is it not called "Moonbasa" so disappointing
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Apr 8, 2022 18:51
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The Eyes Have It posted:I at least PLAY other factions once (*) before declaring the game totally unbalanced I have found that pre-game sulking offloads some of the post-game sulkpressure.
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Apr 13, 2022 18:20
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Llyranor posted:If you disagree with the criticisms in the OP, let's hear it. Don't just vaguepost, specifically list what you disagree with so that we can all see it. I agree. In the bad old days of gaming, the bad reputations of some industry figures traveled at the speed of rumor -- lightning fast across the globe, but very narrowly, and never widely reaching most people in time for them to act on the information. That's at least starting to change and the OP is a great resource for people who would act on any subset of that stuff, if only they were aware. Also, Infinitum posted:Goons should be able to talk about what they want where they want.
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Apr 21, 2022 21:25
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