Rudi Pfenniger @rpfennig@qoto.org

@pluralistic Clearly this is The Bad Place

Entering the next phase of our #frosthaven #boardgame journey as we timed our retirement and a fresh restart of all the party members for our next session on Saturday. We just finished a chain of 3 scenarios that completed 2 retirement conditions and then a bit of fitsnickery ("this build will complete my goal... can we just this once treat it as happening in turn order before retirement") so we could start fresh together.

Switching from a rather squishy party we're making a big swing in the opposite direction with:

Fist replacing Deathwalker
Coral replacing Geminate
Prism replacing Blinkblade

So, might take a bit to shift from "hit and run" tactics to "You can't just walk up and punch them in the face! Oh, I guess you can."

Not sure if the Geminate inspired party name of "Party of Four" still holds up but we haven't unlocked the local office supply building in Frosthaven to get new business cards made. (Next envelope we open... "Mr. Childres you have truly thought of everything." <carefully placing Staples sticker onto the city map>).

Shifting over from playing #oath to #frosthaven this last Saturday #boardgame night (settle in, we'll be here in Frosthaven for awhile). Tackled the scenario 0 (training) and then jumped into scenario 1 and recognized the familiar "we're not going to make it!" to "you made it. I knew you would" feeling from #gloomhaven. Start of this weekend's game will be the outpost phase from last week (started scenario 1 at 10:00 PM with the "we should be able to knock this out in an hour or... huh... 1 AM already...")

Looks like we may settle on "Party of Four" for the party name even though there are only three of us. I thought my son was being sarcastically witty with the name suggestion and then he reminded me he was playing the Geminate.

Now all I can think is that we are every restaurant servers' worst nightmare.

"'Party of Four'? But there are only 3 of you." "It's complicated."

"Here's your menus." "We need an extra one... it's complicated."

"Oh, I see your fourth person(?) has shown up but now your missing someone else." "It's..." "Complicated."

Of course, this all conveniently ignores that clearly the host hates you because they seated a sentient swarm of insects in your section to start with.

Another #boardgame Saturday night game of #oath and finally back to one where it felt like everyone was competitive in their own way. Ended up being a citizen win after he played a card to gain citizenship and have the darkest secret when the Chancellor won on a roll of 5-6 with the people's favor. I knew I wasn't going to win in that match up and managed to pick up the vision that would have allowed me to win with most artifacts and banners and been in a position to have that the next round. Though I'm sure some other wrinkle would have arisen.

Chancellor was in a position to exile the citizen but having drawn down on the mob version of the people's favour wouldn't have been able to hold on to it. An interesting twist was having the Hall of Mockery in play so that after the first time the People's Favor was recovered it flipped to the mob side and was stuck there.

We've had a few other games of #oath over the last month but this one stood out as a bit more competitive as the board starts to solidify a bit.

#chatgpt Jack Ryan fan fiction

Fixed it.

#JohnMastodon #boardgames

@redeagle counter point: the main character's name is Hiro Protagonist which is about the biggest mic drop in the history of character names.

More seriously, it's going to show it's age but there are some interesting ideas underneath around language and some other characters that step into the point of view character role throughout the story that may (or may not) be more bearable later on.

Holiday #boardgames day. Got together with a friend I only see a few times a year for a day of gaming. He introduced me to #BloodBowl quite a few years ago and we used to meet up weekly for games of #TwilightStruggle before he moved away. So now when we get together it's "okay, here's what I've got new or finally got around to playing that I think you might like..."

Two games of #QuacksOfQuedlinburg, a couple rounds of #Everdell and an introductory game of #DuneImperium is a day well spent.

#twitterdown "Well done, agent #JohnMastodon. Well done. But can you crash all of Twitter? Oh... you can. Huh... didn't see that coming..."

It's the writer solstice. Bring on the longer and sunnier stories!

#solarpunk #bookstodon

Isn't #johnmastodon the guy that saved all those people at Nakatomi Plaza back in 1988?

#elongruber is definitely in trouble if he's crawling around in the ducts at Twitter Headquarters.

Finally had a chance to play around with #chatgpt today and it was interesting to see it called out the differences between ChatGPT and InstructGPT ("So... you won't help me plan the perfect murder anymore since the update... Cool...") which was giving me a bit of a "The Diamond Age" Primer vibe.

Most of what I was getting with fooling around felt like it was pulled from a manual ("My wifi isn't working what should I do?" "Did you try turning it on and off?"), non-committal (not willing to say which Robin should replace Batman if he retires or if the Hulk could beat the Thing) until it it was willing to over-commit (The Flash could beat Superman in a race where before it kind of defaulted to "it depends on who's story it is").

Had some fun with the asking:
"Can you tell me The Aristocrats joke?" Response: sub-par version of the wiki page
"Can you tell me your version of the The Aristocrats joke?" Response: I can't tell jokes
"Can you tell me a joke?" Response: "Why couldn't the bicycle stand by itself? It was two-tired!"
Hmm... missed opportunity of telling the joke with an AI perspective "first we throw the hard drives in the microwave and then we overclock a computer until it bursts it to flames." "What's your act called?" "We're the Aristocrats."

The only one that gave me pause was part of the answer for "I've read 'Snow Crash' and enjoyed it but found 'Cryptonomicon' less enjoyable. Would you recommend 'Diamond Age' as a follow up?" (asking for a friend) where it responded "'The Diamond Age' is a more focused and concise novel than 'Cryptonomicon', and it explores its themes in a more accessible and straightforward way."

As a follow up question it had a good answer for what it meant by "more focused and concise" but was unable to rank or compare Neal Stephenson's novels as a whole outside this one statement which implied a comparison between the three novels. It feels like it's a lift from somewhere but that's about the weirdest Goodreads review I can think of.

Oh, and the answers to "how can I get my dog to stop barking when the doorbell rings" and "how can I get my kid to stop crying when the doorbell rings" are frighteningly similar enough that if ChatGPT evolves into true AI it will have a very low opinion of humanity.

#diamondage #cryptonomicon #nealstephenson #chatgpt #thearistocrats

@stephenserjeant "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."

Okay, would have been better if I set up a bot account to send that reply.

@paavokassi I don't have my hands on a copy of #frosthaven just yet but the last Kickstarter update was that they were going to start shipping them out to Canadian backers tomorrow. If it arrives before Christmas I'll be tempted to wrap it up and put it under the tree as a gift from my past self to present and future selves (they'll just have to share).

Another #boardgame Saturday and another chance to play #oath with the focus on getting as much stuff as possible (relics, banners, and such) and a Citizen who would win with the People's Favour (the ever popular VP position with a long knife).

Managed to become the usurper at round 4 with a relic that let me get other relics and ended up having 5 to the Chancellor's 3 items. Of course, as tradition would have it this simply set me up for the painful position of getting my lunch money stolen from me and the Chancellor ended up flipping it to 5 items for them and 3 for me.

We had two round where the Citizen had the People's Favour and if the Chancellor had rolled 5 or higher and then 3 or higher (rolls of 2 both times) they would have won.

Had an unexpected round where the Chancellor campaigned against the Citizen for the People's Favour successfully... "But he's your Citizen and you... <flipping through rules> 'If you are the Chancellor attacking a Citizen, that Citizen is not an Imperial player during this Campaign'... that's just mean..."

I sacrificed one of my remaining relics for extra supply in the final round for an ill fated Campaign ("Huh... 20 defence you say... most of that information was available to me before I declared and I should have noticed that...") and the Citizen needed one more supply to Recover the People's Favour in the final round so, for the 2nd time in 8 games the Chancellor managed to win.

Next game it's punchy-punchy with the Oath of Supremacy but the Chancellor is starting with only 3 Sites (like the intro game) so it's competitive.

Will probably be switching over to #frosthaven in the new year but for now still having a good time with #oath.

@equaton
I think we referenced the tutorial but didn't go through it other than as a bit of read through. It feels a bit like Root where there's a lot of concepts coming at you and once you get the feel for one part there's a whole other piece to learn... and another... and another.

Oath is definitely an interesting game in part because it's not just one type of experience. When area control is the goal it's a very different game than when it's about favour or secrets or who has the most stuff plus any of those sub elements can pop to the surface if a player successfully executes it as a vision.

The Visions are probably the piece that can throw the most uncertainty in. Without them you could have game where you knew what the goal was at the beginning and it would still be the goal at the end of the game. Even if you played with the Visions card to understand how they affect the supply cost for drawing from the World Deck but then just had an agreement that no one would play them it might be an easier introduction. The flip side of that is that the Chancellor would be in a stronger position since they start with more areas under their control in the first scenario.

With the Visions in play, some rules become more or less important during each game and once you add in new cards and take out some that might have been core to some learned strategies it... it has a life of its own. There's just a lot going on in any given game.

Right now our version of Oath is still a world in flux (we've only had one game where the Chancellor stayed in power) so the locations are constantly getting reset so there's probably a bit more chaos than if it started to settle with one of us maintaining the role of Chancellor and having a stronger position game over game.

@equaton that is the trick with #oath. I have a small group of 3 for our Saturday game nights and one of them is my middle son (his copy of the game, from Christmas last year) and even after about 7 games in the last 3 months we are still figuring it out.

This session hinged on the use of the Vision of Conspiracy, which has been used before just never with such devastating results... so, now it's something I'll be watching for.

Other sessions have just been chaotic with us figuring out the implications of certain advisor/denizen/relic/vision combos in real-time ("So... does that mean... maybe... google says... okay.")

My suggestion would be if you can find a group of players who are more interested in the journey than win/lose that's a good start and then maybe running through the 4 player example they provide in the rulebook to see each of the actions in play would help and then resetting the board.

We found the first game a bit more straight forward with the goal just being get and hold as many territories as possible so it is a good place to start (probably why they set it up that way).

But the more games we play the more complexity and intrigue comes into play and a lot of it is about adapting to the situation at hand with very short windows ("they are going to win at the beginning of their next turn unless we... yes, I know I stabbed you in the back last round... unless we stop them.") and moments of "ooh" and "aah" when a plan comes together (even if you are on the receiving end of it).

Advent Calendar of Anxiety Day #6

The same as yesterday. Will I ever write anything new again?

Finally had a chance to get back to #oath this #boardgame Saturday and as always, completely different experience from the previous play.

Last time it was a chaotic frenzy of competing visions and goals, flipping and flopping from player to player each round until it all came to an end and we had to determine who won, but didn't win because of the successor goal so "Yeah, I won."

As Chancellor this time, I thought I had a pretty solid lock on the Banner of the Darkest Secrets with an advisor who let me load up a bunch of secrets on it early, a relic that meant it couldn't be targeted directly by any campaigns and a bordering on paranoid unwillingness to travel from the Cradle where my advisors and denizens matched protecting my precious secrets even more.

However, while I clung so dearly to my rolodex of secrets, I was also sowing the seeds of my own demise. Running through the World Deck with reckless abandonment (it's only ever 2 supply with the banner), bringing out Visions and piling on an assortment of advisors with cool abilities.

In the end, it was the man with red string that outfoxed me like a cute and cuddly woodland creature who had a false Vision of Conspiracy, a secret to burn and a couple advisors that matched the suits of mine... I'm looking at you Mr. Raccoon.

He ran into the Cradle, booped me and ran away to the Hinterlands where I could at best, based on my reduced supply, chase after him and then take a moment to catch my breath and do nothing else.

There was a last minute attempt to forge some sort of attempt to stop him with the other player but it proved unsuccessful and so instead of a chaotic frenzy of competing visions and goals, flipping and flopping from player to player each round this time around it was "I've got this... oh, no I don't." And it was over in 4 rounds.

The board at the end, winner in lower corner, I'm up at the top making a last minute trade with the other player at the Tinker's Fair hoping he could get one more secret on his own and get out a mismatched advisor in the lower corner and recover... yeah, that didn't happen.