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Topics - Kuildeous

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Other Games / The cake is apparently not a lie

« on: August 04, 2015, 11:21:56 pm »

http://www.polygon.com/2015/8/4/9095469/the-portal-board-game-is-not-a-lie-comes-with-a-copy-of-portal-2

Reading about it doesn't inspire a whole lot in me, but how many games are far more exciting than how they sound? I would definitely demo this game.

It's funny that it comes with a copy of Portal 2. Most people who are intrigued by this board game already have played both games. But I suppose it's a good way to get that minority who checks out the board game without the video game. And if I ever do buy it, I'd give away my key to one of my third-world friends.

General Discussion / Upgrading to Windows 10?

« on: July 22, 2015, 11:47:01 am »

Who is upgrading to Windows 10? I'm uncertain if I should. On the one hand, it's free. I mean, if I'm going to have to update my OS anyway, might as well do it for free. But then I don't want to risk another ME or Vista. Thought I'd see what these guys are thinking.

Inb4 "Never because my Mac/Linux/whatev doesn't run Windows." Yeah, yeah, we get it.

General Discussion / Need ideas for Hitchhiker's theme

« on: July 17, 2015, 08:47:20 am »

Since my wife turns 42 this weekend I want to get a cake with a Hitchhiker's theme. I wanted the cake to have the little green guy with its tongue sticking out, but copyright law prohibits the bakers from reproducing that image, so I need something more accessible. Keeping in mind that she's not an avid fan, I'm not going to have a particularly obscure reference like a mattress in a swamp. I may consider either a towel or an extended thumb.

Any other Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy concepts that could go on a cake?

General Discussion / Punctuation matters

« on: July 06, 2015, 12:04:56 pm »

Here's a case where understanding punctuation got someone out of a ticket (eventually).

http://www.kshb.com/news/how-understanding-basic-punctuation-got-an-ohio-woman-out-of-a-parking-ticket

When I saw the sign, I thought this was going to be a case about the Oxford comma. Nope, it's a legit court case, and I interpreted the sign the same way she did. Use your damned commas, people.

Other Games / The Doom that Came for the Guy Responsible for the Doom that Came for Kickstarts

« on: June 22, 2015, 12:31:01 pm »

Well, the FTC is pursuing the Doomed game's creator.

http://www.gizmag.com/ftc-kickstarter-crowdfunding-fraud/38008/

I haven't been overly impressed by Cryptozoaic's games, but I am still astounded by its generosity in getting this game published for the backers.

General Discussion / The I-Am-Not-A-Lawyer thread

« on: June 22, 2015, 09:34:17 am »

The name of the topic is a little ironic considering some of the forum members, but I stick by the title. It might be a good place for someone to unload some thoughts and see what others think. The caveat of course is that nothing here is legally binding when advice is given, even if given by a lawyer.

My own IANAL plea is asking about GoFundMe.com. I have a friend who is in financial dire straits. Recent rains have undermined his house's foundation and caused some serious engineering problems. It is one reason why I will not buy a house overlooking a creek. So far the estimate is looking to be $92k. His insurance won't cover it, citing something about how it was just normal erosion or some such. He'll send me the official paperwork to look over. All I know is that he has consulted a lawyer and was told that it'll be nigh impossible to get the insurance to pay. This seems to imply some fault with the original appraiser, but I leave that to him and his lawyer to work out.

I'd like to start up a GoFundMe campaign. I've seen it used successfully for a friend of mine who had a lot of out-of-pocket expenses with his sudden open-heart surgery. I'd like to know about how people have used it and what sort of expectations to put on such a campaign.

Ideally, I'd love to raise the $92k it would take to fix the house. That is very unlikely, and even a partial amount would not be enough to fix the house (if I raise $10k, he still wouldn't be able to raise the $82k to fix it). So I would like a secondary outcome, which is to pay his fees for whichever option he has to undergo. I know short-selling the house might be an option. He might be looking at possible foreclosure. This is something else that he and his lawyer will have to work out in terms of the best course of action.

So how should I frame this GoFundMe campaign? Start off with trying to raise money for the fix with the stipulation that if the money cannot be raised, then it would be used instead to offset his legal fees and penalties with the bank? Or maybe I should just frame it as a cushion for the inevitable loss he has to take in the house with a dream goal of $92k that would spare him the need to foreclose/short-sell? I really feel out of my depth here.

Other Games / Evaluating common games mathematically

« on: May 14, 2015, 02:27:53 pm »

Seriously, I wish they didn't use the dumb headline of how to win any popular game. Knowing the popular spaces in chess will not give you a win, but I'm sure it can help out.

Sadly I'm not in a spot to watch the videos right now. I hope to do that later.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/05/08/how-to-win-any-popular-game-according-to-data-scientists/?hpid=z4

Happy to see our old friend, XKCD's Tic-Tac-Toe graphic. Good times.

Other Games / Board games that bored gamers

« on: April 28, 2015, 11:04:25 am »

http://www.npr.org/blogs/npr-history-dept/2015/03/26/395507051/board-games-that-bored-gamers

And nope, Monopoly is not on the list. These games are even more banal (some may find that unbelievable). And I've not heard of a single one.

Other Games / Anyone use Tabletop Simulator on Steam?

« on: March 28, 2015, 07:01:39 pm »

My friend got a 4-pack of Tabletop Simulator, and I was the lucky fourth person to get it. It's viewable at http://store.steampowered.com/app/286160/

It looks interesting, but the games selection seems limited. It looks like I need to purchase other games? Not sure exactly how this works. My friend gets incredibly busy, so I'm not even sure when we'll get a chance to play online.

General Discussion / Facebook browsing on Android

« on: March 26, 2015, 11:50:54 am »

I have the Facebook app on my Android, but I haven't updated it in a long time. The reason is that I hear about how messaging in FB is changed to IMs, which I don't want. I want just plain ole messaging. I haven't seen an updated app to determine how silly my concerns are. So for now I have old, antiquated app.

One thing that bugs me about browsing FB on my phone is that Nested conversations are not nested on my phone. So some guy may reply to a comment 3 hours ago, but it shows up new, shortly after the most recent comments. So if I see someone post, "I disagree," I have no idea what he's disagreeing with. The original post? A comment supporting my belief? A comment opposite my belief? Which is it?

Anyone with an updated FB app for Android: Can you view nested conversations as properly nested?

General Discussion / On the Job: f.ds edition

« on: March 11, 2015, 01:40:56 pm »

I find myself unloading aggravating or head-shaking work moments in the random thread. I know that a lot of f.ds people work some sort of job. I was going to call this The Office: F.ds, but why not open it to all vocations? I'm sure a waiter has something he really wants to get off his chest (probably about me).

My chuckle today is brought to you by "Reply All is a horrible way to volunteer." We're doing a fundraising, and we have 35 people to pull the volunteers from. The coordinator put together a lovely sign-up sheet with shifts for when we're selling tickets or collecting money or setting up. The coordinator sent the sign-up sheet to everyone and asked us to reply all with our name on the form. Already I can see where some people got dropped because somebody else replied to an older message (which was probably the most recent at the time). I do not envy the coordinator the task of compiling all the results after hoping that it would just sort itself out.

Other Games / Exploding Kittens

« on: January 20, 2015, 08:57:50 pm »

I love the Oatmeal, but I doubt I'll fund this Kickstarter:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/elanlee/exploding-kittens

I'm not sure just how much strategy is in this game. In fact, I swear I read sarcasm into the claim that there is strategy. And knowing the Oatmeal, it probably was sarcasm.

Still, it may be an amusing novelty to have for fans of the Oatmeal. At least the KS page is fun to read.

Other Games / Tragedy Looper first time

« on: November 26, 2014, 08:51:32 am »

Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to play Tragedy Looper a few times. I really like the concept, and the game play was fun. I can see stories unfolding from the game play.

The gist of the game is that something bad happens, and the Protagonist players have to stop that bad thing from happening. The Mastermind player knows the conditions that will cause the Protagonists to lose and wants to ensure that they do lose. When the Protagonists lose, everything resets, and the Protagonists use their newfound knowledge to prevent that tragedy from happening again. Unfortunately for the Protagonists, there is usually more than one way to lose. They have so many loops to cycle through. If they can make it through one loop without losing then they win.

How does this work? There are four locations and several characters. Each character has a role hidden from the Protagonist. Those roles have abilities that happen based on specific triggers or are activated by the Mastermind. One example is that the Key Person is someone who causes the Protagonists to lose if he/she dies. The Conspiracy Theorist is someone who can increase a nearby person's Paranoia levels. These roles may or may not be in play in any given scenario.

A Loop lasts several days where all players play cards on the different characters and resolve their actions. Then character abilities can be used. Protagonists can use abilities too by unlocking them with Goodwill. Basically, the character is befriended by the Protagonists, and they can do things. For example, the Police Officer can tell the Protagonist who caused an Incident.

After abilities, there might be an Incident. Incidents are preprogrammed problems that is caused by the same person. That only happens when the Paranoia level is high, so the Mastermind can trigger it (possibly leading to the defeat of the Protagonists), or the Protagonists can increase Paranoia to force the Incident to happen and learn more about it.

If the day goes by without the Protagonists lose, then they play on to the next day until enough days pass that they win (or they end up losing).

It's a deductive game. The Mastermind wants to cause a loss, but if he reveals his roles too early, then the Protagonists can thwart him in future Loops. If someone dies in a room full of people, then who killed him? The Mastermind would do well to obfuscate the clues. The Protagonists, knowing that there's a murderer, might try to isolate people so that the victim is alone with the murderer (or Killer; yes, the two terms are separate here). This doesn't necessarily result in a loss, as the person who was killed might not be key to the scenario.

This leads to my conclusion that time travelers are dicks. In one game, we ended up getting two people killed on purpose for the express purpose of hoping that one of their deaths will give us a clue in a future Loop. It was horrifying and funny.

Fun game, though I know some people for whom this is not their cup of tea. But I also like Mystery of the Abbey, and I feel this game requires more deductive reasoning than Mystery.

General Discussion / TV shows

« on: September 26, 2014, 11:11:38 am »

Fall is the time for America to premiere their new shows. I haven't watched Gotham yet, but it's on my list. I'm a little wary about it. The reason that Smallville did so well (at first) was because it was a story of a youth coming to terms with his new powers. Bruce Wayne has no such powers to cope with. I had heard that the show is really focused on Gordon, which may make it more interesting, but I don't know if it'll stand out from other cop shows…unless they take a Dick Tracy bent, which could be kind of awesome.

The shows I did see so far are Forever and Scorpion. Forever just bugged me. The very first scene annoyed me as they clearly were going with a Sherlock vibe with him approaching a random stranger and astounding her with his cold-reading techniques where he reveals parts of her personal life. Naturally, he continues to do this even though it's been overdone already. Furthermore, the show assumes some really dumb police if it's standard procedure to allow the medical examiner to examine the body of the person that he's accused of killing. Sure, Mr. ME, feel free to handle the only evidence we have to suspect you; I'm sure nothing bad can come from this. Granted, that kind of stupidity permeates all manner of crime shows, but then again there's a reason I generally don't watch those crime shows. I have a limited number of times I can suspend disbelief, and I have to reserve those for the shows I do watch, like Agents of SHIELD. I was amused that he figured out what the poison was by injecting himself with it, but he came to the correct conclusion awfully quickly. I'm sure there are plenty of poisons that can kill nearly instantaneously.

Scorpion is a bit more interesting. It falls into the socially-awkward-geek trope, much like Big Bang Theory. In fact, it's about four nerds who team up with a pretty girl who keeps them grounded in reality while not fully understanding any of the genius stuff they do. It's not as egregious as BBT, but naturally they had to make one of the geniuses cripplingly OCD. They also added an adorable child element, but at least it ties into the group fairly well. One interesting thing about the pilot is that it featured nary a single death or gunshot. I'm sure that'll change later on, but it was interesting to see a drama without a bad guy. They also played up the genius trope by having the psychologist figure out where the data center would store the server for a specific client based on a photograph of the manager but then taunt us by him identifying the correct server by reading the label (though he still relied on psychology to get to the right area).

I'll give Scorpion another try. I'm not sure about Forever. The pilot got a little bit more interesting at the end, but I don't know if I can endure another sociopathic genius, despite the Highlander similarities. I'm more lenient about Scorpion since they aren't quite so bad with the annoying genius angle, but that depends on the focus group. I can see the executives in season 2 saying, "You know what audiences love? An annoying genius who repeats a catch phrase!" This show has the potential of being interesting and an even greater potential of being monumentally stupid. I hope it reaches the first potential and not the second.

Nothing else recording right now. I forgot about the new shows until this week, so I already missed some. Not a whole lot sounds that interesting to me except for Gotham. I recorded the other two on a whim. Also, I have Google Fiber and can record a shitload of shows, so why not?

General Discussion / Character help

« on: September 09, 2014, 04:01:19 pm »

I'm working on different voices for five characters I'm playing in an upcoming production of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It's a minimalist show with six actors playing about 16 roles. I'd like to keep my five characters distinct from each other. I figure I might find some inspiration. The roles I have are:

An arrogant surgeon - I initially thought of Brian Blessed, but I think I'll model off of Michael Gambon from the Cook, the Thief, his Wife, and her Lover.

A gentleman - I'm kind of going off of your typical Victorian gentleman. Pretty much anything you'd expect to find in a Jane Austen story, but I welcome any specific examples.

The inspector - Avoiding Young Frankenstein's take, but I may go with Captain Darling from Blackadder Goes Forth. Mostly without the comedy, but he does have a few dryly humorous lines.

A personal enquiries agent (private dick) - Not sure who to model off of. I see him as mostly proper, but he's not afraid to get his hands dirty, so he's rougher around the edges. Still up in the air.

Hyde persona #2 - This story has four Hyde personalities. Mine is more fun-loving. I don't use this voice a lot, but when it happens, he's confident and in control. Also up in the air.

Any thoughts?

Other Games / XCom board game

« on: August 05, 2014, 01:47:09 pm »

I am excited yet wary about this game: http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4972

Board games based on video games have not always translated well (see the BGG entry for the 2004 version of XCom).

But the description of this game looks promising. While it's based on the basics of XCom, it looks like it may focus on its own rules while capturing the feel of the video game. It has a very Pandemic feel with its different roles, but it looks like it's more involved. If I recall, in Pandemic you can perform any of the tasks, but some roles will do a task better than others. I get the impression that your role has very specific tasks that are yours and yours alone. The squad leader wouldn't do any tasks related to the satellites or getting funding from the countries (if that's a thing). He pounds aliens.

Actually, I suspect that a better analogy might be Space Cadets, but I never played it.

I'll be at GenCon, so I'll try to get a demo in. The FF booth is notoriously packed anyway, and this will make it even worse.

I got my eye on you, XCom.

General Discussion / Random Responses

« on: July 16, 2014, 01:59:52 pm »

I don't know why I came up with this idea. It might not even be a good idea. But I figure it's worth a shot; maybe it'll die a pitiful death.

The Rules

Generate two random numbers using die tags. The first number is bounded by the number of pages available in the Random Stuff thread. The second is bounded by the number of posts you have per page. As of the writing of this, I roll a 1d174 and 1d25. Though there are 175 pages in Random Stuff, there are not necessarily 25 posts on the last page, so I will skip the last page. Besides, the fun of this is necroing older threads (unnecessarily so), so let the newer stuff just kind of simmer in there.

So I would generate the number as:

This dice roll may have been tampered with!
Rolled 1d174 : 9, total 9

This dice roll may have been tampered with!
Rolled 1d25 : 18, total 18

Multiply the first number by the upper bound of the second number and then add the second number. For example, if my first number is 21 and my second number is 20, then I would take 21*25+20 to get 545.

Go to the following webpage with "9999" replaced by your result. This takes you to the page containing the reply, but you have to scroll down to the reply (this can be replaced with better instructions if someone figures out how to get to a specific reply):
http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=5727.9999

Or if you want a simpler method, you could take ashersky's advice and just look for the page number of the first rolled number and then scroll down as far as the second number tells you. But you won't have a cool URL that doesn't work if you use this method.

Click to quote the message but do not write your reply there. Instead, copy the quote and paste it here. Remove all previous quotes unless the quote is the entire message.

Then respond to just that message, no matter the context. Be as creative as you like. You can treat it seriously or humorously. Some possible examples:
* Write a Dear Abby response to the message
* Respond to the message as if it were the most grievous insult
* Write a form letter thanking the poster for his interest

Generate your numbers first and then follow up with your response.

Other Games / Good "strategy" games

« on: July 03, 2014, 09:59:15 am »

I overheard a conversation at work about trying to learn more about students. On question they may ask others is what games they like to play. Then they rattled off Clue, Monopoly, and Battleship. You know, games that really make you think and apply strategy. I quietly wept in my cube.

General Discussion / Mailing list vs forum

« on: July 02, 2014, 02:56:13 pm »

This is kind of a strange topic to bring up on a forum, but I suspect there is enough experience with online discussions here that I can hopefully get some dialogue.

In the '90s, I spent a lot of time using mailing lists. Mailing lists became such a common way of disseminating information that I was on over 50 Yahoo Groups plus miscellaneous listservs.

I've had the admins of two Yahoo Groups choose to switch to a forum format instead. Where I might expect spirited discussions that have 5-20 replies in a day in the list, I would find a ghost town in the forum, sometimes with no new post in several days.

I lamented the drop in discussions, and I'm trying to figure out why. One benefit of the mailing list is that you get all your responses in one location, assuming you only register one e-mail address. With a forum, you have to go out to the site. I have a core group of forums I check daily (such as this one), but there are a lot of forums that I don't check. I'm sure the same is true for many others, which would explain why I see conversations die out.

Of course, there is the matter that a forum seems more accessible to people. This forum right here has the people it has because it is very convenient for the type of people who come here. I wonder what would have happened if it started as a Dominion mailing list? I don't see it being quite as popular. At the very least, we wouldn't have a General thread or ongoing games.

And maybe it's a matter of some topics work really well as lists and some work really well with forums. Maybe what I'm seeing in the decline of conversation in those two Yahoo Groups the inevitable result of switching to a format that is not as accessible for that particular topic and/or members.

Other Games / DC

« on: May 20, 2014, 11:09:33 am »

So I finally got to try the DC deckbuilding game. Man, I'm so glad it wasn’t me who spent money on this game. Oh, it was fun and surprisingly thematic, but I don't see me playing this a whole lot.

Basically, it's an Ascension clone. You have five cards in the middle you can buy. On a bright note, where Ascension has two currencies to track, DC only has one currency, Power. The super-villain is a nice touch. It's a sixth card worth extra VPs and costs a lot. When one is defeated, another one arrives, and it immediately does something to screw with the players. You don't know what's coming so you can't really plan for it.

I trounced the others. For one, I was given Aquaman, who has the ability to top-deck any card gained or bought that costs 5 or less. With amazing shuffle luck, I had 5 in my opening hand and could afford to defeat (buy) Scarecrow. I went for him because he is the Witch of DC. Imagine a Dominion game where the first player on his first turn top-decks a Witch. That's worth a rage-quit right there.

To make matters worse, even when other players got 5 Power, it's not like they could get back at me by buying their own Scarecrow. Another Scarecrow eventually did show up in the middle, and I would have loved to buy that one to hold a monopoly, but someone did manage to get it—after I played mine several times. So I wasn't in danger of getting swamped in Weaknesses (Curses).

One player got Bizarro, which allowed her to change Curses into Estates when scoring. That's a nice feature.

I've only played it once, so if someone loves this game, feel free to correct my initial and only impression. I think it's worth playing a few times, but I wouldn't be interested in owning this and taking up valuable shelf space in my small home. Much like Marvel's Legendary, I'm glad that I know someone else who owns it so I can get my fix in if I ever get a hankering while saving my money and shelf space for other games.

General Discussion / Bulwer-Lytton

« on: April 11, 2014, 03:30:06 pm »

I've been a fan of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for many years, and so I thought it would be amusing if the august and highly intellectual—though not pompously so—denizens of f.ds share their own tales of woe, laughter, and Dominion (or Innovation or Mafia or whatever game strikes your whimsical fancy) in a thread devoted wholly to the writing style of a dark and stormy night.

Other Games / Mr. Card Game

« on: March 17, 2014, 12:15:01 am »

By any chance, anyone here seen Mr. Card Game yet? http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/130764/mr-card-game

It has an average rating of 7.66 at this moment, but it's hard to say if that's because the game is good or because of fanboys for Kingdom of Loathing (and KoL truly does kick ass and does deserve fanboys). I was disappointed with Order of the Stick, so I wouldn't want a repeat with Mr. Card Game.

General Discussion / ClickDragType

« on: February 15, 2014, 11:08:04 am »

I found this game a few years back and had a lot of fun with it:
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/336881

When I played it, there were 10 puzzles. It looks like there are 15 now, so I'll have to go through this one anew. While I still remember the earlier puzzles, I don't 100% remember them, so that'll be fun too.

General Discussion / Math: How does it work?

« on: January 25, 2014, 06:51:29 pm »

I have to shake my head sometimes. I saw someone post on Facebook that there is a 40% chance of snowstorms. Sure enough there are snowstorms that day. He wondered lamentedly why couldn't he have such great luck with the lottery.

I'm going to tell him that the snowstorm just needed a 13+ for its saving throw. That should remind him that 40% is not that unlikely.

Other Games / Smallworld 2 sale

« on: December 12, 2013, 10:52:23 am »

You can buy Smallworld through Steam for 20% off:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/235620/

I'm tempted, but I think I'll hold off. The reviews aren't all that great. I may wait for a better sale.