tberton

Question: I finished Shay first. Is the ending slightly different if you finish Vella first? It must be, right?

Yeah, that one took me a while too.

Is Gone Home not about a happy gay relationship? Yes, there are some difficulties, but that's true of all relationships ever. Sam and Lonnie are completely in love and the ending is quite positive (within the context of the game, at least). What's not happy about that?

Interesting to see that most people completed one side and then the other. I alternated between them two or three times, completing Shay's first.

Agreed. Massive Chalice doesn't seem to have had any of the problems that Broken Age had. Also, I totally loved this game, even never having played a LucasArts adventure game before. The writing was great (although I agree about the dialogue trees being kind of stilted - especially how they would kick back to the original branch if you were nested in them), the art was beautiful and the puzzles were clever. I only got a little bit stuck at a couple points and there were times where I wish the game hadn't pre-empted me, but more often I would realize what I should be doing right as it was happening, or I would realize a solution to one puzzle while I was doing another. Multiple times I smiled upon realizing the solution to a puzzle and only once or twice did I resort to just guessing. I think that's how it should go in these games. So who's everyone's favourite character? For me, it's Spoon and the Yarn Pals. They were consistently making me laugh.

Jake doesn't play games though, so that makes sense.

I like how Breckon is listed on goty.cx, but didn't write any entries.

AFAIK, current research indicates that at least when you give money to the extremely poor, they tend to spend it on the stuff they actually need. Considering the costs, ethical issues and poorer effectiveness of means-tested or in-kind welfare programs, I think a basic income is a much better solution. "People want more money" is actually the best principle in favour of a basic income. People definitely want more money, so if you set the basic income at an appropriate level and structure your tax system properly, people will still be encouraged to work if they want to, alleviating the labour-supply problems that many people cite as a drawback of basic income programs. There's also evidence that a basic income program would have knock-on effects for other sectors, particularly health care.

I accept that most people hate it, but I really love reading board game rulebooks, especially if they're good (which, admittedly, they often aren't). However, I do it by myself, before sitting down to play. Nothing's worse than reading a rulebook while trying to explain a game at the same time. In any case, far and away the best way to learn a board or card game is to be taught by somebody who knows it really well. I suspect the same is true of video games where the learning curve is not part of the fun.

I had a dream last night that involved the French origin of Montpelier and Vermont.

On that note, do you guys just record from the Campo Santo office now? You, Sean, have mentioned several times that you record feet away from your desk, so I'm kind of confused.

In the middle of the podcast right now and I have to say that I disagree with you guys about Crims and Fast Advance not being fun to play against. I understand that seeing them all the time gets boring, but I have a lot of fun playing against Criminals for the exact reason that Quinns hates it: it accentuates the hidden information of the game. I like the fear of an Inside Job, Account Siphon or Emergency Shutdown. And, having played a lot of Criminal myself, I like trying to figure out what my opponent has in their hand. I know that if you keep drawing past 5 cards, it means you got a boatload of great events that aren't useful right now, so I'll draw you into wasting that Inside Job or I'll avoid rezzing my big ice for as long as I can. Playing against Criminals, anything can happen at any time and I love it. As for Fast Advance, the most fun games of Netrunner I've ever had were against NBN Fast Advance. Once they've got an AstroScript or two scored, it becomes super exciting. Every turn is a hail mary, running R+D to keep them from getting another agenda, forcing them to rez ice so that they're poor. I've had a couple games like that come down to the last few cards in R+D and it's incredibly tense. So I don't think it's really fair to say that HB and Shapers are how the game is meant to be played. They're one aspect sure, but the great thing about Netrunner is that there are so many options. EDIT: On the topic of Strongbox, it's almost certainly Red Herrings, but the Runner has to spend a click to steal the agenda rather than 5 credits. It just makes so much sense, given what HB does. EDIT2: Really surprised that there's not really been a mention of HB's focus on program trashing. Aggressive Secretary, Ichi and especially Rototurret all feel like quintessential HB cards. Rototurret especially is a "defines the game" card, so that Runner's always want to have a Sentry breaker installed before they install other programs.

Installed assets and upgrades.

It's especially hilarious, because like I mentioned in my earlier post, the description still calls Dota 2 a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena.

Oh god, that's awful. Where do you live? These are the covers in Canada. Nothing brilliant, but not hideous. Some of the other covers are quite nice though.

I think one of two things has happened: either the Thumbs' brains have been altered so as to forget the existence of the Idle Book Club and be oblivious to any mention of its existence or they've decided that the first rule of Idle Book Club is that nobody talks about Idle Book Club without anybody noticing.

I cannot believe that nobody's resolution was to bring back the Idle Book Club.

That's really neat, imp! And I guess it makes the "personal evolution" tagline make even more sense! All the regions are actually real places. SanSan is apparently "San Francisco San Diego" implying that basically all of California has become a megacity. ChiLo likely has the same thing going on, although nobody's really sure which cities it combines. I imagine Hokusai is a similar mixing of Japanese regions.

I'd definitely call Netrunner "fun" in the traditional sense, at least some of the time. Anytime you pull off a cool trick, like flatlining somebody or a Forced Activation Order -> Account Siphon -> Emergency Shutdown -> run remote combo, it's impossible not to come out smiling.

A few points regarding the Lords of Waterdeep discussion: First of all, the problem with Agricola's theme is not that it's boring. I would love to play a game about farming that really felt like it was about farming. instead, Agricola is really just Uwe Rosenberg making a successor to Caylus and deciding that farming was sort of a good fit for it. Like Bruce, I have problems with Waterdeep, but the theme isn't one of them. I actually think it does its theme better than just about any worker-placement game I've played (with Last Will and Lancaster being the possible exceptions). It makes sense: you're a Lord, you sent your agents out to learn about rumours which indicate quests you can complete and then recruit heroes from around the city to help you complete the quests. I don't even mind that the heroes are cubes: I'm a Lord, every fighter looks the same to me - don't tell me your life story, just go kill the Xanathar. I've played with hero-shaped meeples and it really doesn't add that much. Now, I do think Waterdeep is deeply (ha!) flawed. Basically, the quests and intrigue cards are too random. Depending on when they come out, they can either be super helpful or incredibly useless. And while I'm a fan of vindictive game mechanics, the Mandatory Quests are pretty much just Kingmaking cards when playing with more than 2 people. Also, the Lords don't feel unique enough. So I like the game, but I wish a few aspects of it would be redesigned from the ground up. Also, what's with the Knizia burns? The dude is a pretty great designer, even if his best games are behind him. And some of his game's do feel quite thematic: Battle Line does make you feel like a general making difficult decisions about where to place troops and Poison kinda feels thematic if you think of it as a game of chicken between the dumbest wizards in the world.

Yeah, we ended up using the bubble mechanic a lot. It was a good time.

I can answer this. If you're playing co-op (which you really should if you have the opportunity, because it's awesome), each player's score gets tallied at the end and the player with the most points gets a crown to wear into the next level. The crown is pretty sweet and it's really fun to lord it over your friends. But if you get hit, your crown falls off and somebody else can grab it and usurp you. It's a small, silly thing, but it's a smart way to subtly introduce competition into the game and make points relevant. Speaking of co-op, it can create some hilarious situations. For instance the level (in World 5 or 6) where you find the classic "panels that flip when you jump" that are so common in Mario games. These things are interesting but manageable in single-player, but in co-op they are absolutely nuts, because they're keyed to everyone's jumps! If Luigi jumps while Mario's on a platform, the platform flips and Mario falls to his death. Even when playing with 2 players, that level was ridiculously, hilariously difficult, with thoughtless jumps causing countless deaths. I cannot imagine how much more it insane it would be with 4 people.

Oh wow, I hadn't thought of that synergy with FAO. Of course, it doesn't work if they decide to rez the thing you forge. Still, it's sort of similar to Kit in that way: the Corp needs to take the hit now, or the power will still be active later on.

Hey Nels, what decks to you use to teach Breckon Netrunner? Basic Core decks, the decks your running now or do you have some special teaching decks made?

I am almost positive that the description said Lords Management and I'm originally wrote Lords Management as well. EDIT: Holy shit, there's a script on here that changes "M*O*B*A" (no asterisks in the original) to "Lords Management."