Ettin Games board game library as of June 29, 2025

 

The Forge Game Library as of June 28, 2025

 The Forge's current location is in the shopping center at Memorial and Tully.

I just saw that they've gotten a big donation of RPG books and game aids, so I'll get pictures of those soon.

Don't forget that The Forge is moving to a bigger, nicer location in October!

Go read "You Will Die In This Place"

 Jay Dragon (of Wanderhome fame - it's being reprinted by Steve Jackson Games as a sumptuous hardcover, too) posted about "You Will Die In This Place" a couple days ago on Bluesky, so I picked up the digital download; it's pay-what-you-want right now, so tip well. It's a wild TTRPG that's also a metafictional delight. 

The conceit is that Samantha Little, game designer, stumbles across design notes for a TTRPG by her friend Charlotte Avery, and puts them together. There's also an editor named KC who throws their two cents in. 

I'm not done reading it yet, but I'm gonna tell ya: I love it so far. YWDITP is swinging for the fences at several levels, and it's a compelling read. 

8th Dimension Comics & Games - Full Pictures of Game Library as of April 7, 2025

We are big fans of 8th Dimension. This is a project I had been looking to do for some time.

 

New York City's Game Cafe Chaotic Good - Full Pictures of Game Library as of March 2025

In March 2025, we visited NYC's game cafe Chaotic Good, and I took pictures of their game library. They also have a dummy BGG user set up with the library's contents.

 

Instant Pot Beef Stew Recipe

Instant Pot Beef Stew

Ingredients

Meat:

~2-3 lbs stew meat (need 2 lbs minimum), thawed

Veggies:

4-5 big potatoes (not like monster Russets, no more than the size of an adult fist)

3-4 large carrots

2-3 stalks of celery

2-3 parsnips (optional)

1 medium white onion (optional) or dried onions (easier)

Spices/Fixins:

2-3 tablespoons of olive oil

1/4 cup flour

3 tablespoons Chinese cooking wine or red wine

5 or 6 hard shakes of Worcester sauce

Several shakes of dried oregano

salt

pepper

Instructions:

1. Get out your Instant Pot (mine is an 8-quart) and a large skillet. If you have an electric kettle, start 2 quarts of water on to boil. 

2. Spread the flour on a plate. Roll some of the stew meat in the flour. Heat the skillet to medium and add a little olive oil. Using tongs, brown the meat well on at least a couple of sides. Toss the browned chunks into the empty Instant Pot. Do this until all meat is browned, and pour in any drippings from the pan.

3. Add the wine, Worcestershire sauce, and seasonings, along with enough boiling water to cover the meat. Set the Instant Pot to cook on high for 2 hours, seal it, and start it.

4. Using a cutting board, peel veggies and cut all of them into bite-size uniform-ish chunks. Go thinner on the celery, it's hardy and isn't going to get mushy very much.

5. Ten minutes before the Instant Pot finishes, start another kettle of water to boil.

6. When the Instant Pot finishes, turn it off. Either let it sit for a few minutes till it loses pressure, or vent it, as your beliefs require.

7. Dump all the veggies in. Pour in boiling water to cover - if you want more broth, fill it to the pots max pressure line. 

8. Seal the pot, set to 15 minutes on high, and turn it on.

9. Hey, now's a great time to make some egg noodles! Drain these, toss with olive oil, and cover.

10. Once the Instant Pot finishes, either let it set till the pressurization subsides, or vent it, up to you. Personally, I am usually hungry and vent it.

11. Ladle stew over egg noodles. Damn, that's good eating. The wine adds a lot of umami, it's pretty great.

My statement regarding Darkest Dungeon 1

 

"Darkest Dungeon is a video game for PC & Mac available from Red Hook Studios on Steam." 

[Series of Twitter posts of entire party wipes]

"Darkest Dungeon is a video game about how work sucks," I said on Twitter. A friend chimed in gleefully, "Yes! Exactly!" Right after that, for my first time, my entire 4-person adventuring party all went insane, and then died in short order, some from stress-induced heart attacks. Gothic horror, after all, requires teeth.

Let's start at the beginning. "Darkest Dungeon is a video game for PC & Mac available from Red Hook Studios on Steam." Also, playing Darkest Dungeon led me to start talking at my tiny adventurers. "Mortmain! Don't eat corpses you find on the ground! That's how people get tapeworms! Is that what you want, Mortmain? Tapeworms?" I've played quite a bit of Darkest Dungeon (~350+ hours) on two different difficulty levels and two different platforms (PC and Mac), and thoroughly enjoyed the gravelly-voiced narration, faux-woodcut loading screens, and gleeful delight in imbalanced encounters.  

You, the unnamed descendant, get a letter from a deceased ancestor asking you to reclaim your birthright.  You show up at your ancestor's estate and discover it overrun by horrific monsters (you also begin to suspect your ancestor is an incredible jerk).  To clear the wilds, you pick men and women of various medieval occupations who've arrived via stagecoach, and send them out in teams of 4 to explore the estate, in spite of it being overgrown and also overrun with monsters, some of whom are giant bosses. (The horrific monsters are also incredible jerks.) Once the characters are ready (or not), you send teams through the Darkest Dungeon, to see the grand epilogue.

Every character is made unique by random combinations of positive and negative quirks.  Mortmain was a kleptomaniac early riser who got rabies, then later after getting better from rabies, got Tapeworms again, then got The Worries and became Curious. He was a handful, but that typically is the character arc: if you don't die, you get weird and kind of awesome.

Part of the fun of discovery is rolling your cursor over new detrimental effects. Rabies makes you less accurate but actually increases damage. The Worries, for instance, causes the afflicted person to suffer more stress. There’s a sanitarium at the Hamlet, and it's going to stay busy.

What do adventurers get stressed about? Being in the dark. Being in the VERY dark. Wearing items that are badass in the dark but stress-inducing in the light (or vice-versa). Meeting people/things they're afraid of. Stepping on spikes. Reading forbidden knowledge. Getting shanked by a bandit. Getting vomited on by a hideous Dr. Moreau-style pig-man. Accidentally locking themselves into an iron maiden.  Having a straitjacket-clad madman proclaim their doom. Being tempted with a goblet of acid by a skeletal priest. Getting an arm caught in a giant clam. Watching someone else in the group do almost any of the above.  Experiencing lurid ultra-violence from giant bosses in set-piece fights. Forgetting to pack enough snacks. It's brilliant, and just reciting that litany makes me want to play more.

Sure, characters have hit points, just like my adventuring party of Felpurr Ninjas and Elf Lords did in Wizardry 7: Crusaders of the Dark Savant, back in 1993. But unlike in 1993, reduction to 0 hit points doesn't have a character die instantly (and then be conveniently resurrected by a Faerie Monk to fight other palette-swapped monsters). Instead, the character is reduced to "Death's Door." and from there on, any damage they take forces them to roll against their Death's Door survival chance. Succeed, and they're still alive at Death's Door (with penalties to everything, including dodging). Fail, and they are dead-dead-dead. Perma-dead. 1993 didn't have that as an option. Yes, Darkest Dungeon gleefully autosaves in the background, so there's no reloading to save your darlings. Did I mention that watching your fellow adventurers dying is stressful for the survivors? Because OF COURSE IT IS. You can bring a Jester for that.

Through it all, there's a learning curve that keeps going. As you figure out party compositions and character loadouts and provisions, as you upgrade buildings, as you buy weapons and armor, as you equip trinkets, you get dramatic feedback on your choices. Teams usually want a healer, a couple damage dealers, and some folks with damage-over-time or stunning abilities. Each character can equip 4 of 7 possible skills, so you can easily have a front-line Occultist or a back-line Musketeer (some jerk monsters shuffle party order, for fun, because of course they do). Different parties play surprisingly differently, and some characters are better suited for one or more areas (especially if they have quirks that make them better explorers). Again, the whole thing is varied and one of the highlights of the game.

There is an active modding community and multiple difficulty levels, making replays attractive. Boss fights are challenging set-pieces, but all the regular missions are random, with enough random events to keep things interesting. The stress system is brilliant, and the DLC bits can be added in one at a time or all at once (the vampire-y Crimson Court area is really hard even if you know the game well, and I am saying that generously as an enthusiast).

Darkest Dungeon doesn't mind killing characters, but most of the time, deaths are preventable and just temporary setbacks even if a party wipes completely. Even trinkets lost in combat can be recovered by a special event. Part of the joy in the game is advancing the game state in ways small and large, and getting rewarded in various ways. There are always more fools and heroes on the Stagecoach.

I just finished a playthrough on Radiant (regular) difficulty in about two weeks, and had so much fun I got in most of another run, and of course Darkest Dungeon 2 comes out later tonight. It doesn't get much better than that.

Infection: Humanity's Last Gasp - Game Review

(Note: I found this draft of a review from 2017, and it was too hilariously timely not to post.) 

WILL YOU PULL YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR ASS

THE PLANET IS DYING

OKAY JUST HUMANITY

ANYWAY GET IT TOGETHER, PEOPLE


Whoa, easy there, chief. That's no way to talk to epidemiologists. Well, maybe the feuding ones who won't make nice long enough to find the cure for a super-bug about to kill everyone on the planet.


Infection: Humanity's Last Gasp is a solitaire game by John Gibson, published by Victory Point Games as part of their Gold Banner series. I had been anticipating this game for a couple of years or so, thanks to the 7.5 rating on BGG, and was happy to get a copy in 2016. I finally got enough plays under my belt to feel like I could be coherent about it, wrote half a game review, and then promptly went on blogging hiatus.

The premise of the game is simple, and turns are short and procedural, in theory. There's a constantly mutating super-bug (not an insect, but instead a type of bacteria if you're playing easy mode, or a type  of virus in hard mode) that is going to kill all of humanity unless you can find a cure. In easy mode, you get funding every turn while governments are still worried about budgets. In hard mode, you've got some seed funding, but don't get regular income. Finding cures for the individual strains of the infection get you money in varying amounts.

The central mechanic and biggest thing to understand in Infection: Humanity's Last Gasp is that there are two pools of chits to manage. The bad Molecules are represented by round chips with letters, some with singles, some repeating (A-L in bacterial mode, D-O in viral mode), and are placed in concentric hex rings in a simulated petri dish on a two-sided (bacterial/viral) playmat.  You fight the bad Molecules (circle chits) with good Proteins, which are represented by chunky square chips with cute shapes. Each of the bad Molecules has a specific "recipe" for the cure as a specific set of proteins printed on the playmat, a die-cut sturdy cardboard production that assembles for a solid feel to a game coming from such a small box. 

Every turn, an event card is flipped up. There are good and bad effects that can improve or restrict your choices. There is also a "Mutation" section on the card. Sometimes, new Molecules are drawn from a pool, and will either replace others (which are discarded for eventual recycling to a new pool), or just jump out to menace humanity further.

Every turn, you can harvest up to 2 of 4 Proteins shown in 4 Incubator spaces on the playmat (and pay for that privilege). Once you've completed a recipe, you can apply it to kill vulnerable Molecules with 3 or more exposed hex sides. Kill all the Molecules in your petri dish? You win! Let all the Molecules be put into play, or let a death track be completely traversed, and humanity dies and you lose! The best part is, the whole thing works really well. There's a lot of back-and-forth as you eradicate strains, old ones mutate away, and new ones pop up.

There is also a deck of cards, most of which is lab equipment you can buy, some of which are employees you can hire. Managing your limited funds is a balancing act. You need equipment to use the lab's special powers (once per turn, sadly, regardless of your collection), hire employees (some of whom will not work with another of their colleagues, pandemic be damned), and develop the Proteins you need to fight individual strains (there are several machines that revolve around re-drawing or re-using Proteins, with good, thinky, implications on how you might want to handle drawing and discarding. There are several obvious strategy archetypes, but the supplies deck is shufffled and has 5 cards tossed out of game randomly, at the beginning of game setup, regardless of difficulty level.

There's an event deck, and each card has several applications. The super-bug Molecules can be shifted or replaced by new ones from the pile, making your preparations useless. (Read through the rulebook definitions carefully, as the terminology looks similar but has a big impact on gameplay if you're doing it wrong. I did it right, but a couple of the keywords seem similar but do different things.)

All of which is to say, there's quite a bit of replayability here. Beyond the random variation of how each game progresses (revealed Molecules and employees/equipment), you can test different strategies and see what the individual moving parts do.  The harder "Virus" level makes there be fewer identical bad Molecules, so the lucrative killing of duplicates in the Bacteria level can't happen. As mentioned earlier, in Virus mode you don't get the every-turn income you get in the early game in Bacteria mode. Money gets very tight, and you will have to make tougher decisions, knowing that overspending early will hobble you later. 

I should mention, there is randomness. If you only own one copy of an equipment card, you need to roll a 4-6 on 1d6 (included, natch). With two copies, the power just works. Again, you can only try to use one power per turn, so there's a lot riding on how your equipment loadout develops. There's also the doom track, which requires rolling the same d6 not to progress along (the odds get worse as the game progresses and you get farther down the track). Some event cards modify that roll, as well, so there's a narrative being generated. "Well it was a quiet night and then nothing happened and then our lab equipment was out, and then the employees were feuding and then..." The flavor text isn't usually too grim, and is sometimes just plain goofy.

Last year, during the height of the pandemic, I got out Infection: Humanity's Last Gasp, and it held up really well. The core Molecules Do Stuff/Proteins Get Grouped To Treat Molecules engine is very solid. There are only 16 Protein chips. but only 4 are put out each round for purchase, barring special event or equipment bonuses. You can usually just buy 2, and their cost depends on the order drawn. I found the whole "I need these two Proteins, some of which have multiple copies. Do I buy the 4-cost one, or let it pass and hope the next round gives me a better spread?" super satisfying. It's nice to understand the implications and play smarter. Even a little rusty, I was able to still beat Bacteria fairly reliably and Virus level some of the time.

Overall, this is a very solid solo game with a lot of replayability. If you can tolerate the whims of a single d6, there's a lot of satisfying moments and emergent gameplay.

Patreon link: Ame Art Illustrations

My friend Angela has started a Patreon for her art of cute funny animals. I have watched her draw from Twitter suggestions and her fluid style makes it easy to love. When I show my kids her drawings, they go "Awww..."; but her care in crafting and blocking out scenes gives her work charm.

Angela did a prior crowdfunding round while finishing school a ways back, and I donated. Angela went over and above on the reward she provided, and my daughters and I were delighted with the result.

Her Patreon page is at Ame Art Illustrations (Patreon link opens in new window.) Patrons backing at $10/month or higher level can request sketches. Go for it!

You can also follow her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ameartillus - She's a classic animation fan and has a lot of good analysis on more current movies, as well. #ff #art #hashtags

When the Going gets Weird, the Weird Turn Pro!

The title of this post was always followed by groans in our college gaming group, because it meant someone was about to play a "The Weird Turn Pro" card and power up some folks in SJG's long-dead Illuminati: New World Order. It's fair to say our INWO and Mythos playing kept me from being a Magic: The Gathering fan for at least a decade (I got into it later during the notoriously-underpowered Mercadian Masques block. Still loved it.) and was a huge influence on how a gaming group "should" operate.

Last week, I decided to go outside my comfort zone, and agreed to transcribe a Twitter person's podcast. She had been participating in the UK-led hashtag #BoardGameHour, which happens on Mondays, and mentioned that she was looking for someone to transcribe her podcast, and had about 30 minutes left of one episode to get done soon. I've done some short transcription work in the past for Amazon's Mechanical Turk, and it can be a lot of fun to work those aural muscles, so I jumped on the opportunity. I'm grateful I did, as I had a blast doing something interesting and stretching my skill set.

Today, Erin posted the episode I transcribed: "The Geeky Gimp Presents #6: A Podcast With Chris." It was a lot of fun to listen to, even having to jump back to get individual words clarified. I've added her site to my blogroll on the right, as well. She and Chris Preiman discuss Daredevil, comic book movies, and Star Trek. Chris is blind, and as you can imagine, has Daredevil Opinions. He and Erin are both well versed in tons of geeky subjects, and I really can't put into words how much I enjoyed listening to their conversation.

Life is busy

I'm getting in lots of games, but not getting back to blogging.,. I'm sitting on a game to review, learned a few new titles, and played the living daylights out of others.

If you know anyone who wants a copy of Glory To Rome: Black Box edition who has $150 to spend, please send them my way.

DC Deckbuilder Batman Vs. Joker/DC Deckbuilder Villains: Forever Evil

Last night Ben came over after I got the girls down. He and I played the DC Deckbuilder Batman vs. Joker Duel, and DC Deckbuilder Villains: Forever Evil.

They were great! The earliest Cryptozoic deckbuilder releases weren't very well balanced, and they keep tightening up the system across all the franchises (DC, Street Fighter, LotR/Hobbit, NHL, Naruto, etc.) The deck is small, and we triggered one end condition (a KO) once, and the other (deck runs out) once.

The Batman/Joker game adopts a mechanic they premiered in the NHL deckbuilder (it's good-ish). On your turn, you can either buy cards or "confront" your opponent. There are 3 stacked character cards for Batman and the Joker, each with a different power. Thus, what you do in the early game shapes what you have in the mid-game, and so on. Lots of cards have "During a confrontation, do X" text, in addition to buying power. This is great for giving players extra motivation to be ambitious.

There's very little deck-thinning, and many useful card combinations. We both enjoyed the first game enough to swap characters and play again (I won as Batman with a KO, then as the Joker on points). The second time was a very quick game, not sure what made the difference.

Forever Evil took longer. We got a shaky start when I defeated the Flash. Much like in the other "regular" DC deckbuilder, and the card that turned up removed the best card in both our decks. Our decks bloated up when bad cards came up, and it felt like we stalled for a couple turns.

Again, the card balance is much better. Clayface is still massively under-costed, again. There are very few ways to deal with opponents' Locations, but many of those are less powerful. The next super-hero card's attacks are just as damaging and unfair as vanilla DC Deckbuilder.

More cards seemed to have choices, making the turns a little slower but more tactically satisfying. Combos abound.

If Ben didn't already own all these and I were in acquisition mode, I'd consider picking up either or both games if I came across a decent deal or trade. We played 3 total games, including unshrinking and unboxing, in under 4 hours, but it felt like time flew by.