Green Room - Week 21 - Day 5

[clauderainsrm]

There are some serious events happening over the next couple of weeks: Game of Thrones is ending, End Game is closing out a cycle of Marvel movies that have been happening for over a decade. And of course, our Literary Prize Fight is coming to a close with fight scenes that rival both of those events: https://therealljidol.dreamwidth.org/1063125.html

We might not have the big budget explosions happening on screen, but we've got the "Man, that's good!" explosions happening in your brain when you read what the Top 4 have submitted. Well, that and the explosive charges I've set around your house - but those are just for fun!

and of course, tonight is both Survivor AND the Amazing Race! So life is pretty fully right now.

Well, if life can be defined as "things I'm watching on a screen", which, I'm pretty sure that's the definition.

I just started Barry as well...

What sort of screen-filled life are YOU enjoying right now? Or are you doing that fake "actually going outside" thing?

Comments

[sonreir]

I really liked what everyone submitted this week! I feel like we're all in good company.

How do you like Barry, Gary? (There's a heck of a sentence for you...)

"Screen-filled life", um.

This week is full of teaching and trying to convince people that they want to hire me. Not so many screens. :)

[halfshellvenus]

But at least you're on top of trying to get the new job, so that's good. :)

[sonreir]

So far it's been a lot of applications and not much traction, but we'll see! :)

[clauderainsrm]

I just finished the first episode this morning. :)

So - it has a lot of promise :D

[sonreir]

Ah, yay! I watched the first season, will probably get around to Season 2 at some point. (I feel like I live in the only house in the country where we pay for HBO but don't watch GoT...)

It gets, uh, dark. But you're probably expecting that! :D

[bleodswean]

We've given up on netflix and amazon. I'm trying to convince menfolk to play video games. Apparently, I'm some sort of Sega Genesis dinosaur because all the cool kids aren't playing multi-player games anymore. Huh.

[sonreir]

Really? My friends and I play stuff together. Not very often, because our schedules are hectic, but semi-frequently.

Guess I'm not cool! :)

[bleodswean]

I'm not cool, either.

What games are you playing together, if you don't mind me asking. I'm really wanting to do this. Right now we're playing cards. LOL.

[sonreir]

I don't mind; I'm pretty happy to talk about stuff. :)

We play both board games and some video games. (I have a PS4 and multiple controllers, so that makes local play pretty easy.)

On the board game front: we tend to like stuff that's easy to learn and easy to play, but requires at least some strategy. Sushi Go is a good one; so's Love Letter. (Both are inexpensive card-based games.) For more complicated stuff, where it's not as easy to learn, there's Mysterium (solving a Victorian murder mystery -- a ghost tries to lead you to who killed them; based on your writing you might really enjoy it, tho it's a bit spend-y...), and I'm personally really fond of Dominion (deck-building game where you are trying to own as much land as you can). I'm probably a bit 'out there' in my taste, though, because I like stuff that's more cooperative or at least "you have to be nice to your neighbor" than directly competitive. 7 Wonders is also really good for that.

On the videogame front, um. We still play a lot of Borderlands 2 (I picked it up at Gamestop several years post-release and found that it was pretty good), and there's also Love In A Dangerous Spacetime and Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes (one of my friends calls this the "marriage killer", though, because it requires REALLY EXCELLENT COMMUNICATION between all parties involved). We also tend to play stuff like The Witness cooperatively, because it's a really complicated puzzle game, and more minds to solve the puzzles helps a lot.

Oh, and there's always the Jackbox games! They're good party games, if you have four or more people they work well (everyone needs a mobile phone or tablet though, or a laptop, because of how they work...everyone logs into the central server using a code for the game room, and prompts and stuff are displayed on your phone so no one can see them on the TV before it's time to reveal how people answered). We like Quiplash (it's a fill-in-the-blank game where you want to make the funniest answer possible -- that explanation probably sounds really dry, but it's fun!).

Not sure if that was quite what you're looking for, but, yeah.

Oh, I also have a Super Nintendo emulator (one of the official ones; can't remember what they're called) that has Mario Kart preloaded on it and came with two controllers. We play a lot of that too. :)

[bleodswean]

Thanks! Most of this is G(r)eek to me, but I have heard of Borderlands! The guy at Gamestop referred to what I'm after as "duo couch." And he's the one who told me it's a rare bird these days. We also don't have internet speed that would allow us to do any sort of online gaming.

[sonreir]

Yeah, what you're looking for also gets referred to as "couch co-op" or "local co-op".

Kotaku has a good list of stuff I probably forgot about: https://kotaku.com/the-best-couch-co-op-games-1822149661 :)

[sonreir]

I'll add, um, it's not TOTALLY uncommon, but it's definitely not as common as it used to be when I was in high school (about fifteen years ago). You can still find stuff, and there's good stuff out there! It's making a comeback. :D

[hwango]

Dominion is great - I have all of the expansions (though some are certainly better than others). I've kind of drifted from 7 Wonders (we played it a lot when it first came out), but I will say it's pretty much the only game I want to play with 5-6 other people. It has the best solution I've ever seen for how to handle a game with that many players and not have it be incredibly tedious while you wait for your turn to finally come around again.

I often get frustrated with co-op games. I worry about not contributing enough and/or making a mistake that makes us lose. I don't want us to take everyone's turn by committee. I don't want someone to take charge and tell everyone else what they should do. And yet, it's also frustrating to watch someone else doom us all with their bad decisions, and it's very hard to keep quiet when that happens. It's very hard for me to find a co-op experience that dodges all of those problems...though I would try Spirit Island if given the chance, just because the theme is so great (you are nature spirits defending the island against invading colonists).

I do prefer games that feature you trying to build something better than everyone else, rather than actively trying to hurt everyone else. Like, Attack cards are my least-favorite part of Dominion. I also like a really weird theme. Have you heard of Xenon Profiteer? It's a deck-building and dismantling game, where most of the cards in your deck are cards for Xenon, Krypton, Oxygen, and Nitrogen, and you're trying to distill out the Xenon. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/176530/xenon-profiteer

(edited because I somehow managed to type Argon instead of Krypton)

[sonreir]

Ah, I'm jealous! I don't own any of the expansions. :)

7 Wonders is GREAT for large groups, and I like the Leaders expansion and whatnot that they've put together!

I can understand the frustration with co-op. I have some Thoughts about Pandemic, for instance. :) Mostly I just hate games where you can utterly screw the other players for no good reason. I prefer more of a friendly competition where you have to trade with people, etc, to make everything work. Catan is a good example of this -- you can't be a jerk to everyone, because if you are, no one will trade with you and odds are good that you'll lose the game (unless you somehow manage to get ALL THE RIGHT RESOURCE TILES, but I've never seen that happen).

I have not heard of Xenon Profiteer! I'll have to check it out. :)

You've probably heard of it already, but if you like "I build stuff, I don't destroy stuff", Race for the Galaxy (and Roll for the Galaxy) are both great. I'm super-fond of Race, just 'cos it's really fun once you've got the basic rules down, and the two-player as well as the 3-4 player games work very differently but are each delightful in their own way. :)

[hwango]

I have played hundreds of games of Race for the Galaxy. = ) There's a PC version against an AI, which for a while there I played several times a day, and I play it fairly often in real life with a friend. It's actually been a few years since I got to play it with 3+ people. Roll is also great - that one I usually end up playing with 3-4 people. I find Roll is much easier for people to learn, since there's less iconography to learn.

As to just screwing with people...yeah, I'm not a fan. My friends and I have a running joke about games in which you can be wronged by a player and then declare "all of my future actions are against you," and just have your own private conflict, which pretty much guarantees neither of you will win. Those tend not to be my favorite games.

Did you see my comment on another thread about Wingspan? Wingspan is amazing. It's beautiful, has no aggression, and is really fun. https://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/4444007/wingspan
https://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/4458013/wingspan

[hwango]

I'm waiting until Tuesday to watch Endgame, since that's cheap movie day at the theater, and I can go to a matinee to avoid crowds. I have no interest in any of the other things you mentioned.

On other hand, I will totally be watching Season 2 of She-Ra when it becomes available Friday night.