Gormongous

Awesome. Can we see the rig that got it there?

Yeah, the great thing about Monaco's gameplay is that nine times out of ten you can flip out, make a grab for all the cash, and get away scot free. The tenth time you get cornered and killed (with the added bonus of failing everyone, if it's multiplayer). It's a fascinating balancing act. I really can't stress enough how this game comes alive even when played with complete strangers. The hilarity of me and SecretAsianMan boring through the walls of the Casino de Monte Carlo, popping out only to grab gamblers' wallets, while Lu goes around snapping necks, cannot be overstated.

I'll be in the Idle Thumbs group chat all tonight, waiting for my drunkenness to pass. At any point, if anyone feels like a game, my body is ready.

Woo, drunk thread. I feel you, Twig. I broke up with my girlfriend of three years a while ago, wasted a few months with a girl I knew from the start had too many issues to date, and now am with another I'm not terribly into but cannot find the time to set things square. It's a long, hard road finding someone who works for you, and the meantime is loneliness and hardship. I really don't have any answers, except the assurance that things aren't always this way. A coin can only turn up heads so many times in a row, right?

I admit I don't really follow your point, then. Without the design argument, which you brought up yourself, all you're saying is games that allow Machiavellian diplomacy produce Machiavellian diplomacy, which is good. I don't disagree, but I also don't think it's the merit of a given game, even one as successful and popular as Neptune's Pride. Unless the designer take great pains to factor out player interaction, as in Euro games like Agricola, backroom dealing and betrayal form the bulk of any game with a single victor. Like you say, most games merely need to stay out of the way and let it happen on its own. The problem I have and I think malkav11 has, which you don't really address, is that only one type of player really benefits from anarchic player interaction: a hyper-competitive player. Players who don't like confrontation or who are too cautious are usually left out in the cold, but different and more regimented systems can be designed to allow them their own play style. In that light, I think it's fair to criticize Neptune's Pride for privileging one type of play and therefore one type of player.

Yeah, I was going to say Risk, but I wanted to reference a baby game for babies.

You don't know if the game is designed to produce Machiavellian diplomacy, though. None of the promotional materials on the game's website highlight Machiavellian diplomacy (I guess we're calling it that now), only features and reviews from other outlets do. Iron Helmet pitches this game as "a different kind of 4x strategy game," not Diplomacy taken to the next level. As for gameplay, Candy Land produces Machiavellian diplomacy if played by competitive people. The design is almost irrelevant. Certainly, a game can have mechanics that encourage backstabbing, like in Diplomacy. The combat rules there all but require cooperation in the short term for a game that only has one winner in the long term, so of course there will be backstabbing. But any game with social interaction and a single victor has the same, more or less. The difference between board game and Game of Thrones is the competitiveness of the players, not the design of the game. That's why I like it when a game systematizes and incentivizes diplomacy in a way that encourages non-competitive people to be more proactive and involved. I always come back to the Dune board game (less so the ugly Fantasy Flight remake) as a perfect example of this. It's an insane knife-fight in a locker, but there are strong reasons both to make alliances (shared faction powers and resources) and break alliances (lower victory conditions). It produces much more interesting and nuanced diplomacy than any game of Diplomacy, which always seems to devolve into fear-mongering among the weaker and less competitive players.

I think it's a Hi10p file anyway, it won't play on your box. That's weird with Windows, though. I have a friend guilting me into waiting until tomorrow to watch it with her. I'm not happy about this.

It's okay, my best design so far has suddenly developed I.M.A.C.S. (Inexplicable Mid-Air Combustion Syndrome) when staging. I can't tell if it's a failure in construction or piloting, since I really only test my designs so far by getting them into a flat, stable Kerbin orbit with a certain quantity of fuel left. But I'm certainly not ready to post pictures yet, like ChristophBa over in the game thread. Everything I design is a very traditional rocket, with maybe a fancier landing module. I tried building a space plane but don't really understand what they're for. You can't fly a plane into space.

I don't know, I feel like it's something of a commonplace in board game design that some designs enable aggression and others require it. It sounds like Neptune's Pride is the latter, which doesn't make it a bad game, but does make it a disappointment for people who aren't able to become Nick Breckon for the duration (or just don't enjoy becoming him, like me). Out-of-game diplomacy aside, if there's no other option except to be a warmongering jerkin order to win, I think it's fair to criticize the design, though maybe "simple and not inherently interesting" is going a bit too far. Even Imperial 2030, for all its conflict-based gameplay, has various aspects of the shareholding mechanics that enable a more passive player to profit from other players' aggression without being the target of it. To me, that's part of a robust multiplayer design, but I haven't seen much evidence of it when people talk about Neptune's Pride, which is part of why I've hesitated to join the games of it being organized.

UTW-Thora released its fansub of Rebuild 3.33 around midnight central time. I might make a day out of it tomorrow. On a side note, if anyone here would want an invite to one of the more exclusive and extensive private anime trackers out there, they could do worse than sending me a PM with their email. The luck I've had lately might be catching.

What are you talking about, troubles? Once we resolved to murder everyone in the Musée Océanographique in order to get away with the cash, it was smooth sailing. Actually, as SecretAsianMan pointed out, the most recent PA was pretty much our natural playstyle (well, the second and third panels, really):

The Redhead is her own character. The first guard who sees her "falls in love" and follows her, at least until she hides or disguises herself, so she can be used to kite guards away from access points. One of the less useful characters on her own, but I could see her being great in multi. Like I said in the networking thread, I'll be on all night. Maybe we can make something ad-hoc happen. EDIT: Oh man, that was great. We need to get four people in on a heist, stat.

It seems to me that, playing singleplayer, there are some characters who are just better, if only for being self-sufficient. I'm near the end of the Lockpicker's Story and I've completed almost every one with the Gentleman or the Hacker, except for one round with the Cleaner. I was really baffled by the Redhead's power, which seemed like a shitty alternative to the Gentleman, until I realized she could be used to lure guards away from key areas for the Lockpicker or the Pickpocket. I really want to see how the dynamic is in multiplayer, but everyone who owns the games on the forums seems to live in Europe.

Man, it's the best when Jake goes on a hysterical rant about the future of games. He's like a kinder, gentler Francis E. Dec.

Is there any way to do keyboard-and-controller co-op? I've tried unplugging my controller, setting up the game with the keyboard, and plugging the controller back in, but it just switches back over. EDIT: My Steam name is hallib@sbcglobal.net. I'll be on all night, if anyone wants to play.

Go ahead and bump someone up to my place. I got a deadline moved up and really don't need to be obsessing like I know I would.

Thanks to Dasein's gut-punch, I'm now a proud owner as well. I'll be trying some singleplayer for now, but count me in on all future heists. EDIT: I am not very good at this game. Either I play a character I feel is weak and am way too cautious, or I play a character I feel is strong and overextend myself. I badly want to see it in action with others, nevertheless.

That's probably the best option. I know you want to keep talking to them until they finally get it, but sometimes it's better to disengage, especially if they can ruin your day like this.

I'm so tempted by this. Someone push me over the edge!

I'm so sorry, Tegan. You did the right thing, though. It's not your fault that your family takes advantage of your kindness and trust to guilt and manipulate you. In a way, you're strong for keeping those feelings despite such evidence to the contrary.

Do you want to team up? I think I design pretty decent units, but I'm too anxious and impatient to fly them properly.

For all of his own little quirks, I'd still recommend anything by Clarke over the Foundation trilogy. I reread the latter a couple years back and, like most of Asimov's long-form work, it has not held up whatsoever as anything other than a vehicle for clever ideas.

Style guides! Ugh. If I have to crack open my seventh-edition Turabian to check whether parenthetical publisher information is preceded by a comma in footnote citation, I will drop dead from an aneurysm. I imagine it's not so strict with web publication? You've really got to pick your battles, regardless. Sticking to your guns over some colloquialism is almost never worth it.

A lot of the things I saw the Thumbs do in the livestream didn't work in the demo, like the daisy-chained fuel tanks and the struts between sections. Also, the node mapping was dodgy, with near-perfect burns never quite getting the projected results. It basically felt like playing an incomplete, broken version of the game I just saw streamed, which accounts for my expectations. I mean, I think I'm still going to get it, probably even before the end of April. But that's because I'm choosing to privilege the livestream over the demo.