When you start a region in Dwarf Fortress, you set your computer the task of building the history of a world. You wait, and you wait, as it works through the ages. You see empires rise and fall before you in ascii art as your processor creaks and groans for whole minutes (which, of course, is a relative age, when you think about how long it takes for the average game to load), and, eventually, you’re presented with a map, and asked where you want to embark.
Well, not strictly last week, but you get the jist. I’ve played a bunch of interesting things lately.
Dota 2
Finally back to my old habit. I’ve been playing Dota for about 3 years now, racking up 827 hours in-game. I am terrible at it. Really, really bad. I love it though, and after a few months of barely playing, it feels great to be back. It’s a game that really benefits from a consistent team, though, and I wish I had the time to play with one. Still, I have an amazing group of friends who are great fun to play with, so I’m never too lonely.
Someone on Twitter recently asked “Has anyone ever been to a wedding fair? Are they awful?” and I made a few comments, but I felt like the 140 character limit wasn’t enough for the topic. I thought could write a bit about surviving (and enjoying) wedding fairs. Fairs (and trade expos too, for that matter) are big scary places full of people, usually crowded, usually noisy. It’s easy to give up all hope immediately, but chances are, there’s probably stuff in there you want, and you’re going to need to go, so you might as well try to enjoy it. Here are my tips for not going completely mad.
Hello! Just wanted to drop in this episode of a podcast that I rather like, Daft Souls. It’s a video games podcast but in this episode they kick off with a chat about board game Dead of Winter.
They start with it, so just get listening, you don’t need to skip ahead.
They touch a little on the topic of my last blog post here: while video games often provide a good story, board games provide a framework of rules and narrative moments which allow you to create your own stories.
There are plenty of games out there, like Ladies and Gentlemen, Fiasco, and even Minecraft, that aren’t about winning, whether that’s baked into the game or just clearly not the focus of it. They’re great experiences and I love them dearly. The goal in those is to create an experience, and they’re a lot of fun. Most games, though, are, on some level, about someone winning and someone losing. And I like that. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a bad loser - I’m fine with losing. I might be a bad winner - I’ll get back to you on that. I just love it when a game is close and everyone involved cares about the scoreboard and cares about making the right play. I love that moment when the chatter stops and people get serious.