There is one in every gathering. The friend-of-a-friend who says “Oh, I’m going to write a novel, too, when I’ve got the time.”

Sometimes they use variations “I’m going to write when I retire.” “When the kids are older.” “When this project at work is finished.” If only they’d have the time.

Well, friend-of-a-friend, since I don’t have the courage to take you by the ear and shake you, I’ll do the second best thing. I’m going to lampoon you on the Interwebz. I’m going to prove to you that you’ve got the time to write, using cold, hard math. (more…)

Ten totaly inventable* Martial Arts:
^{* That’s totally a real word.}

1. Plate-fu: the ancient art of hurling porcelain.
2. Ori-jutsu: combat paper folding.
3. Laseroka: the hidden art of network printer self defense.
4. Four Eye Style: blinding your enemies with nerd humor and cutting remarks.
5. Sokrato-ryu: the art of the damaging question.
6. Peso-Oraltos: the Greek art of putting your foot in other people’s mouths.
7. Rover Style: Irish combat bawling.
8. Cutu-ryu: the art of running with scissors.
9. Professorata: lecturing your enemies to death.
10. Gelatonto: the Italian art of freezing remarks.

Got any of your own? Add them in the comments.

So my gaming group decides to ditch me even though I set aside time for those schmucks. F them! I’m going to play our announced games anyway! I’m gonna be the god of single player gaming!

Hanabi – OMG, how can people even consider this game? It’s soo baaaaad! I had so high hopes for Hanabi and it total stinks. I played with four players and I couldn’t hold more than two sets of cards in my hands at anyone time. I had to stick the other cards between two beer cans in order to play the game. That’s so inconvenient! And I spilled beer on my cards. Now no one will want to buy this stupid game and I’m out fifteen bucks. The whole thing with the fuse tokens is ridiculous. Like anyone would ever have to use them, the game is way to easy. This game seriously needs some opposition, it just doesn’t work as a coop. (more…)

Being creative means finding the unusual in the usual. Like here:

Ever have that experience where you explain that you play boardgames and suddenly everyone looks at you like you’re that strange kid who liked to electrocute frogs in biology class?

I know I have. So has Futurewolfie of islaythedragon.com:

Let’s face it: in between the pathetically minute moments of exhilaration and victory, large chunks of our hobby are consumed by terrible, terrible things. Yes, that’s right, playing board games is like trying to swim 20 laps in a swimming pool with a brick tied to your ankles, and calling the brief gasps of air you desperately inhale whenever you can “fun”.  This hobby is just bad, and I’m about to prove it to you with generally infallible logic in 9 simple steps.

Linky: 9 reasons board games are awful @ islaythedragon

Borg the Terrible lifted his stupendous sword and cleaved the fiendish knight in half.
“Argh,” he growled!

What game uses this flavor text? If you’re anything like me the answer is: “hopefully no one I’ll ever play”. Ok, so I made it up to be bad on purpose. But that’s mostly because I don’t want to single out any specific game. That wouldn’t be fair, as some great games have some terrible flavor texts and even games with generally good flavor texts manage an epic fail now and again. So for the duration of this post I’ll only post examples of flavor texts I like and make up examples of bad one. But enough with the disclaimers.

Good flavor texts deliver one key thing which rules can’t: emotion. Rules need to be clear, concise, understandable and ordered. Flavor texts do away with all of the above. (more…)