Gametrodon

Author: MrBlueSky

  • The Maine Renaissance Faire

    The Maine Renaissance Faire

    Note: Normally I would link to things/people I see, but most of these folks don’t seem to have a website, so instead I’m just gonna put the full title of the performer/store/thing in italic quotes near the paragraph about them.

    I went to a Renaissance Faire for the first time recently! It was pretty neat, and for once, I’m writing about an event before it’s completed, so if anything I write today sounds neat, you can get tickets here, and drive yourself down the Acton Fairgrounds in Acton, Maine.

    First though, some photo!

    Yeah, uh. That’s the only photo I took. Sorry.

    Listen, the idea of cheese divination is one of those things I heard, and it just kinda took over my brain for a bit. Now, I did sit down to chat with the women running the both, who is a cheesemonger by trade, and learn about the history of Tyromancy, but I didn’t get a reading done. I just don’t like getting my fortune told for reasons that are neither here nor there to this blog post.

    Still, this is the sorta idea I will absolutely steal for a game at some point in the future.

    (Tyromancy by Rachel)

    Another great thing I saw, but also don’t have photos of was a performer named Sylvan Farelight, doing slight of hand. Specifically, he was running shell and pea games on a small table. There’s something about slight of hand that I find really impressive, so that was another highlight for me.

    (Sylvan Farelight)

    I then spent some time just wandering around the fairgrounds. I’ll be honest, while I can appreciate the effort that goes into a lot of this stuff, some of it isn’t for me.

    That said, I did see two gamified experiences I was very curious about. One I did get a chance to try, and one I did not.

    The one I did try was Treasure Hunt. This was a bit of a cross-faire escape room with various puzzles to solve to collect parts of various clues to solve a larger meta-puzzle.

    I will observe that while I did struggle with understanding these puzzles a bit, my friends did not, and it legitimately might have just been the result of not drinking quite enough water that day, and wearing almost all black, and doing a lot of walking and-

    Look. It might have been dehydration rather then puzzle design.

    [Treasure Hunt X]

    The second one was Adventures from the Wizards Tower! This was slightly larger system that seemed to work a bit like a combo of a stamp rally and DND. I can’t comment on the game experience at all since I didn’t play, but the presentation was incredible, and the folks running it were kind enough to talk to me a fair amount about the system, and how it works.

    One of the interesting things I do remember asking them was how they solved the meta-progression problem, since this is a game that runs across multiple Renn Faires. They explained that since they’re primarily PVE, everyone can contribute to any given challenge, even if for some challenges, some folks are going to be doing more then others, and also that sharing gear was something that had organically sprung up in the community.

    [Adventures from the Wizards Tower]

    Finally, I bought a bunch of 3D printed mini’s that I haven’t started painting yet from The Workshop of Many, and hiked back to my car.

    I do want to make 2-ish quick sidenotes on this one. First, the models I purchased were sculpts from Becca_3D. And second, the general “realistic Pokemon” aesthetic I believe is at least inspired a little bit by the work of RJ Palmer. Just a quick “credit where it’s due” thing here.

    (The Workshop of Many)

    Overall, this was a fun time, and I probably would have enjoyed it more if I had 1. brought a proper costume, and 2. it had not been a 4 hour round trip by car. But yeah, if I was closer I’d probably go again, and if you want to go, the last weekend it’s open this summer is coming right up.

  • Grump Week – Moon Colony Bloodbath

    Grump Week – Moon Colony Bloodbath

    It’s been a little bit since I’ve written about any board games. Not because I haven’t been playing any, but because I’ve mostly been playing old favorites (hello Tiger and Dragon!) or games I don’t think anyone needs me to review (hello 7 Wonders!).

    That said, a newer game has managed to sneak its head into my play sessions recently, and so it seems only fair to give it a writeup.

    Everyone please welcome Moon Colony Bloodbath! Now before we go any further, there’s one thing I want everyone to know.

    I fucking loathe this game.

    Gameplay

    Moon Colony Bloodbath is an engine builder. You start with a population of colonists, some money, and a few building cards. Then, via the power of sweat, grit, and repeatedly taking the mine action, you’ll turn this into a successful moon colony. Or at least, that’s the plan.

    Realistically, that is not actually happening. I have played several games of Moon Colony Bloodbath, and only in one was the end of the game reached, triggered by exhausting the event deck.

    No, the actual goal is to make your colony hold on just a bit longer than everyone else’s. Because despite this being an engine builder, at some point, things are going to start going wrong faster than you can make them go right.

    But first, let’s talk about building your moon colony.

    Each round you’ll flip up and resolve cards from the event deck. “Work” cards will let you take actions like building, mining, gathering food, or research. You’ll also have a hand full of building cards. Building cards are your standard engine building improvements. You take the build action to spend money to put them into play, and they buff your basic actions, or provide some other utility. Mining gets you money for buildings. Harvesting gets you food, and research draws you more cards.

    Most cards though, aren’t action work cards. Most of them are trouble cards, and these will have you pay resources to stay in the game. Maybe colonists, maybe cards, maybe food, doesn’t matter. And while more and more of these cards will be added each round, the total number of actions you can take does not.

    All of a sudden, as the small scale disasters build, you’ll eventually find yourself without any colonists. And now all those precious buildings, all those elegant engine pieces, must be scrapped to produce colonists and keep yourself in the game.

    This, then, is the latter half of the game, where we switch from the “Moon Colony” portion to the “Bloodbath” bit, as you desperately try to keep someone, anyone, alive. You need to keep literally any sort of engine functional for as long as possible before it’s fed into the unceasing maw of the event deck.

    This seems like it would set itself up to be a comedy of errors, but it isn’t. Not really. I’ll talk more about my problems with the tone later, but I’ve found the later parts of Moon Colony Bloodbath to be an exhausting slog. You know that feeling of taking your last turn in a euro game? That one where it’s not tactically logical to do anything but maximize your victory points?

    Moon Colony Bloodbath is taking that turn over and over and over until someone dies. It’s a dull math problem where your choices might not even matter if someone else is doing significantly better than you, and where you will never have enough resources to actually build back up again.

    In short: it ass.

    Now, I will admit that this opinion is not shared by my friends. One loves it, and the other thinks it’s pretty good to great. Well, at least mechanically.

    This brings me to my second big problem with the game.

    Art Direction and Aesthetic

    Despite my complaints above, I think I’d feel more generous to Moon Colony Bloodbath if it felt funnier. It doesn’t for a lot of reasons, but a big one is the art.

    The art of Moon Colony Bloodbath is bad, but not in a “technical execution” sort of way, more that it doesn’t commit to saying or doing anything. A sort of “I don’t think the art director understood what bloodbath means” sort of way. The game seems to be going for a pulpy tone, but never really commits to the bit. Nothing ever rises to the quality of shit like this.

    Or I dunno, stuff like this?

    There’s a real level of comedy you can do with these things, but it’s just not remotely present.

    Then there are the few cards that attempt to be funny… and look, they’re just bad. They’re really bad, and I hate them. One player character that’s a Rastafarian. The flavor text implies he’s giving the moon colonists weed. It’s uncomfortable, and just feels weirdly racist.

    The art direction totally fails to elevate the game in any way, and it sucks because I feel like it’s obvious how to land some of these jokes. There’s a robot that is mechanically butchering and cooking colonists, but its art looks like an ad from a 1950’s Skymall. There’s a locker full of organs, and it doesn’t even elicit a giggle.

    Like. C’mon. Stick a human leg in the pot or something, or a skull on a cutting board. Instead, though, we get this bland miserable retro-futurism Americana.

    I call this a failure of art direction, because as far as I can tell, Franz Vohwinkel (the artist who illustrated the game) has a pretty decent portfolio, especially of magic cards. He seems to be a perfectly good artist.

    But it seems like someone told him he was illustrating a euro game, and forgot to mention that it’s a euro game where everyone fucking dies.

    Anyway

    I don’t like Moon Colony Bloodbath. I find its gameplay miserable and its art static and dull. It provides neither the satisfaction of fictional buildup, or a particularly amusing black comedy.

    It is a slow, grinding, and dusty chokehold of dull math and duller choices.

    Oh! And it’s $50 fuckin bucks!

    [Editor’s note: as someone who bought and loves this game, all I have to say is “skill issue.”]

  • A Rant about Comics Part 2 – Grump Week

    Hey, so this post is a bit of a bummer. Maybe read Part 1 first, where I talk about a bunch of cool comics you should read?

    For the better part of a decade, I’ve been trying to figure out why I quietly loathe most American comics. I’ve gone through a variety of theories, ranging from reasonable to something an incel might hear and go, “Hey buddy, maybe tone that one down a bit.” I’m gonna lay them out here, and discuss why I’ve discarded each one over the years, including the most recent theory.

    Things I thought in high school

    Theory #1 – Japan is just better at comics.

    Yes, this was a thing I actually believed at one point. Look, I was probably 14. I don’t think this anymore mostly because, despite how I sound about this sort of stuff, I’m not a weeb. Nationalism doesn’t really explain it.

    Theory #2 – The disconnect between artist and writer results in garbage.

    Another high school theory, but one I still reflect on a fair amount. The comic that made me discard this was Death Note. After all, if Japan could turn out something like that via a writer/artist collab, clearly the problem didn’t arise from artists and writers having separate visions.

    Theory #3 – Endless reboots, weird numbering, and other stuff make it effectively impossible to actually READ a comic.

    It’s at this point I started looking inward, trying to figure out if perhaps the problem wasn’t with the comics themselves, but with my consumption of them. These days if I want to read something, I know where to find it, but prior to me really understanding the internet, if I wanted to read comics, I had to actually go find them.

    Like, physically in the world.

    So, my theory was that it was hard for me to ever finish a run of an American comic, given how meandering they were, as opposed to something straightforward an easy to read like One Piece, where each numbered chapter just went into the next, and that this was the cause of my dislike.

    Unlike the other theories above, I think this one actually WAS true, at least at some point. But it’s not true for me as an adult.

    Theory #4 – While both Japanese manga artists and American comic book creators work in an industry that demands too much work for too little pay, the differing ownership models is a motivating factor in quality.

    So I moved onto just blaming capitalism. It would be nice if this was the real problem… but here’s the thing: I still don’t think it is, mostly because the shit that manga artists put themselves through is not the sort of stuff you do if you “just want the money.” You gotta start by having some sort of passion for art if you’re gonna work 12 hour days for 6 days a week year in, year out, and even then, you can just fail.

    Things I’ve thought as an adult

    Theory #5 – I am an immature child, and cannot appreciate comics made for adults.

    Again, another attempt at turning inwards. “Perhaps,” I thought, “as someone raised primarily on Shonen Jump, I simply lack the maturity to read stories that aren’t intended for 14 year old boys.” Perhaps I’m just not cool enough for shit like Rick & Morty, or Game of Thrones.

    Anyway, I spent part of this weekend reading all of Something Is Killing the Children, and y’know what? Nah. Fuck you. It is not my fault that I don’t like your slaughterhouse bullshit where we have kids and their families getting butchered by shadow monsters.

    Also, I think some of it is also that we have enough awful shit in the real world like Epstein and the protestors killed by ICE that I simply don’t have the tolerance to be pulled by the heartstrings about this fictional shit. We have real organizations that should care more about children than they actually do, and allow evil things to harm them. They’re called the Florida prosecutor’s office.

    And lest you think I sample unfairly: this is the shit that’s winning the Eisner for best writer.

    So no, I don’t think it’s my lack of maturity that’s preventing me from appreciating your fine writing. I think it’s the fact that I’m tired of watching kids being shredded like tissue paper in service of a narrative that doesn’t seem to do very much.

    Theory #6 – Anything I read from Japan is good enough for someone to want to translate/localize it, while the same is not true of American comics.

    This is one I came up with earlier this year, and I was convinced that I had finally figured it out. See, any Japanese manga I read had to be popular enough to be localized, or good enough that some fan group decided to translate it.

    This, then, meant that when I read manga, I am only ever reading the cream of the crop: the finest cultural exports of soft power sampled and sifted before being passed across to me. Whereas for any given American comic I picked up, I was sifting through a pile of detritus that could just as equally be someone’s magnum opus as it could be their way of paying rent that month.

    And then I read a bunch of popular modern American comics like Absolute Batman, and DC KO, and there just wasn’t a single one I didn’t look at and find myself annoyed by.

    Theory #7 – Format differences mean that American comic book artists and writers are working with far fewer pages than Japanese manga creators, and as a result end up creating an accelerated (and poorer) product.

    This is the closest I have to a working theory, though realistically, it’s probably a combo of a few of the above. Something like Absolute Batman is working with 24 pages a month. One Piece (okay not all the time) gets 16 pages a week, meaning they get more than double the physical space to work with (admittedly on shorter deadlines).

    Surely, then, this is the reason that stuff like Jujutsu Kaisen can spend 64 pages (4 WHOLE CHAPTERS!) on a side showdown between a literal joke character and the secondary villain, whereas DC KO can’t even spend a full 10 pages on having Superman fight Darkseid.

    One Other Quick Rant

    There’s a trope in American superhero comics that I saw crop up multiple times in my binge-read over the weekend that makes the comics all feel incredibly hollow these days. I’m going to devote a small portion of this write-up to shit talking it:

    The Truth Will Save the Day!

    In short, the idea that if you can just show everyone a video of the Bad Guys doing The Bad Thing, you have won. And just.

    No.

    No it fucking won’t. It probably hasn’t had the ability to do this since 2016. Maybe earlier.

    It’s not just comic books that do this. Disclosure Day by Spielberg also has a similar ending, and The Expanse does a bunch of times as well.

    It rings hollow in our age of misinformation, and I find it harder to suspend disbelief for this trope than to suspend disbelief for the latex skin-suits and tighty whities.

    This narrative needs to die.

    In Conclusion

    A lot of popular American comics kinda suck ass. There is no magic bullet to save the world. You should read Guts County, Hilda the 13th, Nothing Doing, and Wrestleheist.

    I’m going to go jump in some freezing water, and then play Mina the Hollower.

  • A Rant About Comics (Part 1) – Grump Week

    Grump Week is almost over, but since I’m getting all this frustration and annoyance out of my system, I figured I might as well take one last rant (okay, one of two) that’s kinda been bubbling in my system over the last few days, and smack it out onto paper. Ultimately, it’s about how I just don’t like American comics all that much, but it’ll encompass a little bit more than that.

    First, though, I want to talk about some cool shit I have been reading that I like.

    The Good Stuff

    I offer these to show that I’m not intrinsically biased against American comics. To prove that I’m giving them a fair chance, and that I’m not simply allergic to the medium. Also, because all of these rule, and you should read them.

    Hilda The 13th

    It’s a webcomic about a bunch of witches who do things with computers, with a lightly serialized story, but a strong focus on each individual comic having its own punchline. Feels like something that deserves to be in the papers. If, y’know, papers still existed, and were also okay with characters being queer. Anyway, it’s great, and you should read it.

    You can start from the beginning by clicking here.

    Guts County

    A light narrative comic about Heck, a bone farmer in hell, Chainsaw Wolf, a wolfman with a chainsaw for an arm, and their various friends/frenemies/acquaintances. Definitely NSFW, but mostly because of the punchlines, and not the art. Again, incredibly funny, and you should read it.

    Here, click this link and read it.

    Nothing Doing

    This comic summarizes very accurately how I felt being told me to be enthusiastic about AI at my last job. I got laid off from that job, along a huge chunk of my coworkers, so that the company could spend more money on AI.

    Nothing Doing has its own description, one that I think is perfect so I’m just gonna repost it: It’s a slice of life comic about loving your friends, and hating your job. It is incredibly funny, and again, you should go read it.

    Also, I’m pretty sure that putting the same link in my post multiple times is gonna screw my SEO, but I’d rather write for people instead of robots, so here’s another link to the comic.

    Wrestle Heist

    Imagine all the old wrestlers teamed up to finally give Vince McMahon what he so richly deserves: an ass beating, and stealing all of his stuff. That’s pretty much the premise of Wrestle Heist, in which a bunch of wrestlers forced into retirement decide they want payback, and start doing some Oceans 11 style stuff to get it.

    For the others I’m linking to their webpages. But for this one I’m linking to the place you can buy it, and the author’s store.

    And like. If you wanted to read it for free, you’re smart. You could probably figure out. I’m not saying that’s what I did, but I’m also not-not saying that I have atoned for my sins by purchasing the trades that were available at my local comic book store, and then pre-ordering the full collection. I think there’s a comic word for that second one, but I don’t know it, and I’m afraid that if I tried to find the term, my search engine would tell me to eat rocks.

    Anyway, I’m gonna end part 1 here, because it looks like my WordPress instance is actively dying from there being too much text in the full post. More in part 2.

  • Relic Arena – Grump Week

    Relic Arena – Grump Week

    The Autochess/Autobattler genre is kind of weird. It just showed up one day as a Dota 2 mod, got immediately yoinked by Riot for Team Fight Tactics, and then… well, then we didn’t get any more huge swings at the genre, at least on PC.

    And no, I don’t count Underlords.

    That’s not to say there aren’t any. Super Auto Pets, Storybook Brawl, Once Upon a Galaxy, and parts of games like Vivid Knight all cribbed elements of the OG autochess games, but like MOBAs before it, there are a fair number of game design choices that are less “intentional” and more “the engine already does that.” The end result? When bigger companies ripped off developed games in the genre, they took a lot of things that gave those original games their character and polished them out.

    To me, the biggest one of those changes is the focus on abstract positioning. (Okay, Nexus Amina does this, but it isn’t even out yet.)

    Enter Relic Arena.

    Most modern Autobattlers focus on upgrading characters, and choose to drop the entire concept of items that was present in the earlier games. Relic Arena goes the opposite direction. Instead of upgrading characters with abilities, the “characters” are a set of bodies. They’re just blank archetypes that can be swapped between rounds if needed.

    Here, it’s all about the items. Items taken from real history, like the Aztec Sun Stone, the Mask of Agamemnon, the Titanic… and the Porcelain Throne.

    It is a toilet. It turns into a toilet monster.

    Relic Arena is on the grump week list not because I think the game itself is particularly bad, but because… well, because I find the theme off-putting. It’s doing that “educational blurbs next to a statblock” thing I’m mostly familiar with from Age of Empires.

    The thing is, if it was just the items, I think I could handle it. I wouldn’t like it, but I’d be quietly amused.

    Except… it’s not just the items. In addition to items, at the start of each match, you pick a leader. Leaders give passive build-around benefits of some sort. And the leader selection is full of famous historical people like Karl Marx, Abraham Lincoln, Alan Turing, and Harambe, the dead gorilla from 2016.

    I know what you’re wondering, and yes. I have played most of my (very few) games as Harambe. They had a free weekend celebrating his death where he was unlocked for everyone.

    I dunno. It feels like the character select screen of a RTS from 2532, once these people are so long dead they’ve just become mythical figures, and not like… people? People whose visions of the future are actually still kinda being fought over and debated?

    I think I knew I was out when I unlocked the Native American skin for the Witch class of character. My internal monologue just went “Nah man. I’m out.”

    I’m good. I don’t want no part of this, no matter how clever your system of ordered item executions is. I don’t want to hear VTuber Abraham Lincoln in the corner of my screen talking shit when I get a killing spree.

    I. Am. Good.

    Okay, actually, while we’re talking about Harambe

    Look. Gorillas in zoos is just weird. There are a lot of animals where it’s just like, sure, whatever. Put it in an aquarium, put it in a cage. It’s not great for the animal, but it’s also not like the worst thing.

    I remember seeing a gorilla in a zoo an incredibly long time ago, and it’s stuck with me. Not because of any particular outrage or anger or anything, but just the sense of looking at it on the other side of the glass, looking at the eyes, looking at how it moved, and feeling this weird sickness in my stomach. A little part of me telling me “Yeah, no. No, this wrong. This is weird.”

    We shouldn’t keep gorillas in zoos.