Expanding your social circle

It seems to me that one thing that tends to go hand in hand with being somewhat nerdy and/or geeky is that we also tend to have a bit of an awkward relationship with socialization, at least the kind that is considered 'normal' (I'm not trying to generalize or 'speak for all nerds/geeks' when I use the word 'we' by the way). For me, at least, it's either awkward small talk that I trudge through because it's the nice thing to do (also I can't stand sitting in silence with someone - I have to be extremely comfortable with a person to do that and be okay with it) or an exclamation of enthusiasm at finding someone who shares even one of my interest one little bit and I proceed to talk their ears off about that one subject - possibly even putting them off the subject for life (it's happened).

Kickstarter: What Games I'm Backing and Why

I thought this would be a suitable follow-up to my last blog, where I confessed to having become a Kickstarter addict. I wrote a bit about things that turned me off a project, but I didn't really go into what actually turns me onto one. What makes a project actually stand out to me. More accurately, what games specifically stood out to me in such a way that I decided to back them, and for what reason. And then there's the whole aspect of why I'm backing games on Kickstarter that I haven't even played yet when there are currently published games that I would really, really like to own right now, but haven't purchased yet.

Help! I'm turning into a Kickstarter Addict!

Let me just start this by saying that I am by no means a newcomer to crowd-funding, I backed my first project back in April 2014, and for the following year and a half I only backed a handful of projects. I had a very relaxed relationship to crowd-funding as a whole, never looked for projects, they simply came to me through the fan communities that I was a part of.

Then I was introduced to the table top section of Kickstarter. It started innocently enough; someone in my gaming group shared a link to a board game campaign that was mere hours away from funding. I clicked it, was instantly wowed by the vibrant look of the game. I read through the campaign information, looked through the pledge levels and was not only pleased with the game presented, but also how decently priced it was, so I pledged and helped fund my first ever board game Kickstarter. It could have ended there, and with every single other campaign I had backed before that was how it ended - except I couldn't help but think that if this amazing looking game was on this platform - what else could be there?

Organising my boardgames: A Castle For All Seasons

Been a little while since I did one of these, so moving further down my shelf we have A Castle for All Seasons, a game I bought second hand last year before even having played it, but that has seen a lot of play time since. This game originally intends to keep game resources on the board itself, but the space allocated to each resource is not that great and I've found that it's much simpler to keep the resources off the board, as you don't risk accidentally covering up the amount of said resource is given, which makes the game ideal for my kind of organisation.

Organising my boardgames: Lords of Waterdeep

Moving on to the second sorted out game on my game shelf and one of my favourite games we have Lords of Waterdeep. Now this game originally came with an insert specifically made with organisation in mind. Every player piece had its place, same with the cards, buildings, resources and so forth. The insert even made sure the game board sat snugly inside, making sure to keep all the game components in place, however there were two issues with the original game set-up that made me abandon it. Firstly the game lid was so narrow it would not stay in place if the game didn't sit horizontally, meaning I had to tie something around the box before packing it whenever I took it somewhere, also the game had absolutely no room for an expansion, so when I added the expansion to my collection, the original game box and insert simply had to go.

Organising my boardgames: Bora Bora

Starting off my segment of showing off my organising solution for various games is probably one of my more interesting solutions. When I kicked off this thing, my intention was to mainly box up the resources that you needed in the game and not really anything that was key to the game's set-up. With Bora Bora this originally meant only a few components initially made it into a box, but then I started rethinking the system a bit to see if there wasn't one more way to tweak it. Turns out there is.

Organising my boardgames

Over a year ago I posted about how I had made my own big box solution for Catan. Since then (in fact in the past week or so) I've gotten into somewhat of an organising craze. I've been going through most of the games in my collection and figured out ways to not only keep the components separate and tidy, but also significantly reducing set-up and clean-up time needed for the games in question.

My Top Ten Favourite Legend of Zelda Games

Recently I've been watching a ton of countdown videos on people's favourite Legend of Zelda games. It's just fun to see how people's opinions differ, and how things that turned me off about a game were the exact same things that made others love it, and vice versa. I decided to try and compile my own list and see how it compares to the many, many video countdowns I've now seen. Now, I would have loved to make this into a video, but I'm afraid I'm better at writing my thoughts and opinions than I am at voicing it into a microphone. Also, I don't own any capturing devices or software, so any video would just be me talking, and that's not really interesting. The best video countdowns I came across were the ones that really showed off the gameplay of the individual games. So I'm afraid that my thoughts will just be expressed in writing here on my blog.

Doing Minecraft Survival for the First Time

I tend to be very specific when it comes to games and gaming experience. I detest gaming in first person, I don't like gaming on the computer, especially with the mouse and keyboard controls. I've tried it several times, and each time the gaming experience was more enjoyable for me when I switched over to the console version of the game instead. However, there is one game that kind of breaks most of my main rules of gaming, and I actually love it; Minecraft.

Why I think Global streaming should become reality

I've kind of already touched on this subject in a blog I wrote nearly a year and a half ago, where I lamented the use of region-locking in the entertainment industry, but now that Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix has begun arguing for a global streaming service rather than sticking to today's formula of region-releases for content, I thought it was time to write about it once again.

Like a Phoenix rising from the flames...

Hi, I'm back, and I'm breathing life back into this blog. I know it's been ages, and who knows, maybe nobody missed it when it originally died its slow and quiet death. Nobody except me, at least. I can't promise that something like it won't happen again, but I plan to try my best to keep it alive.

To explain how I plan to avoid it, I need to clear up why I ended up with this year-long absence (almost to the day it seems) in the first place. When I started blogging, I loved doing it. I wrote about the things that interested me, and it was a nice way to just air my thoughts and share my passions. Then I got the [insert sarcastic voice] brilliant idea of making weekly columns as a way to keep at it. And I enjoyed them at first, writing recommendations for my favourite fan works out there and writing about the games I was discovering, but then it kind of piled up and it began to feel like work than a hobby and I started to resent it, especially my own insistence to do weekly updates.

Another issue was how I blocked off other topics that might have interested me to write about because it didn't really fit the "theme" of my blog, which is just silly, as this is my blog, so why shouldn't I get to write about whatever I want, whether it actually fits into the geek category or not. So, no more of that, I will write about the things that interest me, and knowing myself, I will probably only stray away from the geek-side once in a blue moon anyway, so what was the problem, again?

If for any reason you read my blog back then, maybe you've noticed that I've now taken down all the old weekly recommendations posts. It's part of my plan to "take back" the blog, I've decided to start fresh and only do recommendation blogs for fan works and creators I truly feel ought to be discovered and appreciated, I haven't decided on the format yet, but I will figure it out. I also intend to rework my table top blogs, as another problem was that I was forcing myself to write about every game I was introduced to rather than the ones that actually made me want to write about them. So I will keep some pieces and rework them, removing others, and of course write new ones.

In general, I just want to get back to writing about the things I care about, avoid forcing a schedule on myself. Sure, a schedule helps with the predictability, but it also has a tendency to favour quantity over quality, and I'd much rather stick to properly written pieces than throwing something together last minute because it's [insert weekday] and it's time to post a [insert column]. So, here's to hoping that some random people out there will appreciate what I have to say. It's good to be back.

... oh, and I just noticed the date, completely not an April fools joke, just a random coincidence.

First Time Playing: Suburbia

This is a game where each player work to build a city. You construct buildings of different types trying to balance out population growth and income in order to stay afloat. Suburbia was described to me as the board game version of Sim City, which I found to be a very fitting description. The main goal is to construct the city which ends up with the largest population, but in order to get population you need to stay on top of both population and income growth as they will decrease as your city expands.

First Time Playing: Dos Rios

This is another one of the games I bought off another member of my gaming group, this one I hadn't even heard of before, but I looked it up on the web to see what kind of mechanics it had, and since it was worker placement, I decided to get it. Thankfully, when this one came up at a game night, one of the other people already knew it, so it wasn't up to me to teach them. In Dos Rios you are manipulating two rivers by building dams, so that the water will flow to areas occupied by your player pieces or houses in an attempt to get money and/or wood.

Settlers of Catan: My own big box solution

I love Settlers of Catan, and especially its many brilliant expansions. But with a game that you can mix and match bits and pieces, playing a ton of different scenarios, storage can become a bit of a hassle, especially if you want to keep your options open, but don't fancy having a major clean-up involving multiple boxes every time you play a game (or taking lots of time to set a game up). I've trialed and error'd my way, using utility boxes, labelled zip-lock bags, all of it to simplify setting up and clearing away the game, as well as making the game easier to bring along with me. And I can now proudly say that I've found a way to put the game and all its expansions into one single box (or, well... case).

First Time Playing: Witch of Salem

Not that long before Christmas, someone in my gaming group was selling off a bunch of games, so I ended up buying six of them, all of which I hadn't played before, and most of them I hadn't even heard of. Witch of Salem was one of the games I bought, and apart from hearing the title in passing, I really didn't know anything about it, except it sounded interesting. When I opened the box and looked through the components, I was convinced this had to be the first game I tried. The artwork was absolutely stunning, the theme was right up my alley, and I'm also a person who enjoys co-operative gameplay.

First Time Playing: Libertalia

I tend to have two specific modes when gaming. There's the strategy mode, where I'm choosing what actions to do and which players to target according to who is in the lead or have the potential to take it. Then there's vengeance mode. I'm not above admitting that I'm not fond of being the target of other players (but then again, who is?). If I'm in the lead or will potentially get ahead, fair enough, it's good strategy for them to do so and I cannot begrudge them that. But when I'm dead last and still get targeted, I'm not a happy camper and I will devote the rest of my game to destroying said player. The reason I mention this, is because that exact thing happened when I played Libertalia in my gaming group.

Minecraft creations: Serenity

Let me just say this right away; I've known about Minecraft for a good while now, so it's not that I wasn't aware it existed that kept me from getting into the craze. I've even come across the occasional youtuber showing off their geeky creations. But for a good while I was just under the impression that it really wasn't my kind of game. Not really because of the graphics, but because I have a thing against first person point of view in games. But seeing my two nieces playing it enthusiastically, I decided I might as well give it a proper shot, especially since it was easily available for my new ipad. So I bought it, tried it out and I actually got really into it. And now I'm ready to show off my first fandom-related creation (and hopefully there will be more to come, once I find some new inspiration).

The Actual Reason I'm Not Attending Starfury: Elementary

If my title caught your attention, you are likely to belong to one of two groups. Either you're a disgruntled Sherlock-fan looking more reasons to be outraged about this event. Maybe you read this article in the Birmingham mail, or maybe you helped fuel it, who knows? Or I caught your attention, because you're a Starfury regular, who cannot believe I'm about to throw more kindling into the fire. If you're in the first group, it's you I'm looking to address. If you're in the second, then guys, you really ought to know me better by now.

First Time Playing: Nexus Ops

My initial thought when seeing this game was that the set-up reminded me a bit of Eclipse. Of course it plays faster, is less complex and have far superior playing pieces (they glow - at least the version I played came with those pieces). And while I'm no Star Wars fan, one of the playing pieces was quickly nicknamed Jabba the Hut (guess which one). In Nexus Ops we play for dominance over space, mining resources, waging battles against one another, the whole time trying to fulfil secret missions in order to score bonus points.

First Time Playing: Flash Point Fire Rescue

This is a game that I've heard mentioned in various gaming videos online, so I was really excited to finally get to try it out when my gaming group bought the game recently. In Flash Point Fire Rescue we play as a team of firemen, each with a special ability, who together have to keep a fire in check while going through the house, rescuing the people trapped within it. If we manage to rescue enough people without the house collapsing on top of us, we win the game.