I'm a slayer, ask me how.

Board Games I Played in February

2023-03-07T02:13:27Z

February was a really fun month for gaming at the table.

We visited friends we hadn’t seen in ages and I brought along ‘Decorum’ which is quickly becoming one of my favorite game to play with people who are new to the hobby and you want to keep them engaged with some player interaction. Yes, I splurged and got the deluxe edition with the acrylic pieces because they just make this already tactile game more fun.

We continued to play ‘Three Sisters’ as our lunch break game at work for the first half of the month, but then my coworker picked up ‘Sagrada’ at Barnes & Noble so we ended the month learning to play that game. It scratches that same itch as ‘Azul’ but with even more variation and I love it’s tiny little dice. Plus, it’s one of those games that is so aesthetically pleasing, everyone else in the lunch room would stop and ask us what we were doing.

We also played a couple games of ‘TEN’ at lunch, though I think that one is a more fun with 3+ players. 2 still works but the bidding isn’t quite as tense when there is just two of you going for a card.

I had some other friends over for an evening of games where I taught them ‘Point Salad’, ‘Splitter’ and ‘Viticulture’. This was probably not the correct order to present these games – getting ‘Viticulture’ on the table after 8pm wasn’t a good idea since we all had to work the next day. But they enjoyed it and asked to play it again next time, just earlier in the evening.

Games and Stuff (my FLGS) hosted a Dice Throne Event the last weekend of the month. As I expected, I didn’t win but I had a really fun time playing with other fans of the game. It was a really great afternoon! I’m bummed I’m missing out on the ‘Unmatched’ game weekend but I will be around for April’s Root game! I can finally play Root ON THE TABLE!!

Several solo games in the mix too: I enjoyed another monthly challenge of ‘Super Dice Heroes Saga‘ which is FREE to print and play at home, you just need some six-sided dice. I got ‘Votes for Women’ and ‘So, You’ve Been Eaten’ on the table too and both were really fun solo games that I want to play again soon.

I also played ‘Mirroring of Mary King’ sort of solo – I pretended to be both players to try to learn the rules but I counted it in my stats because it was a full game! And somehow this is fitting since the plot of the game is Mary trying to fight against being taken over by her ancestor’s ghost haha.

And our online board game group continued to meet up this month – we got a game in of ‘Marvel United’ (though we didn’t not defeat Magneto…perhaps he wasn’t the best to start with haha) and ‘Quacks of Quedlinburg’ which is quickly moving up my list of games I want to own.

And, of course, I was still chugging along on Board Game Arena – 143 games this month. Last month’s obsession with ‘Castles of Burgundy’ kept on going but I have now also learned ‘7 Wonders Duel’ and have been playing that a LOT.

What did you play in February? Let me know in the comments or link me to your post!

Want to know more about any of the games mentioned above? Let me know in the comments too!

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Currently Reading: How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix

2023-02-27T04:32:33Z

Sometimes I take the risk of putting a popular book on hold and try my best to get through it in the 3-week checkout period. And how could I resist a title like this – How to Sell a Haunted House? (Plus, I read ‘The Final Girl Support Group’ last year and really enjoyed it!)

Lots of spooky vibes going blended with some family drama. Like so many good ghost stories, the protagonist is clueless at the start, convincing herself that the TV magically turned on and that the creepy puppet just fell off the shelf.

She did just have the realtor (who is also her cousin - there is some small town drama too) tell her the house is haunted and she refuses to sell it. There were...noises in the attack which appears to have been nailed shut in a very haphazard manner, as though her parents were scared to go up there.

There was already an earlier chapter that made it hard for me to fall asleep after I read it - it wouldn't have been so bad but the scary thing happened while she was asleep and it wakes her up...

Anyway, about to dive back in and see what spookiness awaits! Hopefully the story and the scares can be sustained over the 400 pages (I have about 300 left, I think). I will report back!

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RSS feed for my Wordpress blog

2023-02-10T03:11:13Z

Apparently at some point last year (or maybe 2021?) I set up a feed for my wordpress orangerful.com blog on Dreamwidth! I'm going to make an effort to continue to post and link those posts here when I can but if you're so inclined, you can get my blog feed send right to your reading page on dreamwidth!

same BS, different URL lol

https://orangerfulcom-feed.dreamwidth.org/

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Returned from the beyond or something

2023-02-09T04:31:59Z

Wow - prior to my last post/link to my website, the last time I had posted to Dreamwidth was May 2021? I can't believe it. I used to live here.

I definitely got caught up in the other social media out there. It's hard to deny the quick photo posts and tiktok videos make for easy engagement, especially when you find a niche group - mine was board game nerds. It's such a small, tight knit group on those sites that it was easy to slip in and become part of the conversation. And, of course, Discord and the real time chat. Twitter was fun...now it's just a hot mess that I peek in on.

And I have been spending a lot of time either playing board games online or on the table. I have a premium account on Board Game Arena and I average about 100 games a month, playing them asynchronously and in real time (I'm playing a real-time game of Castles of Burgundy right now, typing in between turns).

But why did I leave? I think I know why which was...guilt. I was having a hard time keeping up with posts on here. My job has become more time consuming - I was a branch manager at a small library in May 2021 and about two months later, I became the branch manager of the big library I used to work in before that promotion in 2019. And my inbox kept filling up with all of your entries and I could not find the time to read them and then I felt posting knowing that I had not read your entries, but here I was posting my own, asking you to read and respond even though I had not made that time for you.

Anyway, am I back? Maybe? I'm going to make an effort to at least post links here to my other sites and posts. But apologies in advance if I go quiet again. If you're wondering what game I'm playing or book I'm reading, I'm orangerful all over the internet haha. I'm even having fun on TikTok!

I hope you are all well and that 2023 is off to a decent start! I feel like January was a false start so let's just move forward into February!

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Solo Journaling Game - Anamnesis

2023-02-05T18:10:31Z

Thoughts on my experience playing "Anamnesis" - a solo journaling game. This is really the first one I have played start to finish! I'm hoping to make time at least once a month to get these solo games to the table, I have QUITE the backlog!

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Promo: Star Wars Book Club

2021-05-01T16:57:22Z

I'm not usually great with Book Clubs, but Star Wars books tend to be quick reads and so many of them have great audio adaptations that I'm hoping I can participate in this one more often! If you're looking for more Star Wars discussion in your life, join up!

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threw off my groove

2021-03-25T02:24:19Z

Wow, I was on a ROLL there for awhile, posting almost every day of the work week, cross-posting to here and tumblr...and then somehow all my motivation went *poof* at the start of March.

Maybe it was because it was my birthday month. My body also decided to do some weird stuff. And work is kind of getting "real" again because we are moving towards reopening (though a lot of that drama should go away soon now that the county gave us vaccines for library staff woohoo!!!)

I've been spending a lot of my time on Discord with all the groups on there, I've four VERY active servers I belong to and we have little online game nights and what not, or just chatting. And then watching streams on YouTube and Twitch.

A few of the games I Kickstarted arrived this past week and one of them was FULL of minis and I want to paint them so I've spent a few evenings just happily priming little tiny ships. Hoping to finish a few this weekend and post the final product.

Anyway, I feel like I'm not doing the best job at keeping up with posts here, so my apologies. I might need to do a unfriending, more to remove personal guilt of feeling like I should be reading people's entries and I'm just not. It's not you, it's me kind of thing.

I'm hoping to find some kind of groove again, a pattern where I can get myself to work out, do a hobby, do a bit of blogging, gaming etc. each day of the week. Oh and reading LOL I need to read all these books I have piled by my desk!!!

Hope everyone is well! I have been reading entries here and there, sorry if I didn't comment, it just felt like I needed to catch up at this point.

TTFN - BEWARE THE GROOOVE!!!!!!!!!

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Books I read in February 2021

2021-03-02T02:34:16Z

Still chipping away at Stamped from the Beginning which is a good read, but heavy, and I took a break to try some shorter stuff, just to finish something.

Lying by Sam Harris

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book was short? It was less of a book and more like a ramble? Like, if you met someone at a bar and they were just like "What is lying?" and had clearly just taken a class in ethics (or binge watched 'The Good Place'). I didn't feel like I heard anything new in this book but it is a good jumping off point for discussion.

How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less by Sarah Glidden

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was a very personal and honest story that Glidden shares with us. It centers around her coming to terms with thinking she knows it all and realizing that she doesn't. I think it is a problem a lot of us have when it comes to looking at issues in other countries and societies. She points this out at the end of the book - that it is much easier to look elsewhere and say how easy it would be to solve a problem than looking at our own country and what needs to be fixed.

This book made me realize how little I actually know about the story of Israel and Palestine. I feel the need to do some research, maybe not to try to solve the problem, which is clearly complex and layered, but to have a better grasp on what is at stake when people talk about steps forward.

The Phantom Twin by Lisa Brown

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Lisa Brown says in the end notes of the book that she was always fascinated by Freak Shows and researched them a lot as a teen and adult. In this story, she balances a story of found family and a group of people who struggle to feel like they belong all the while showing the abuse and prejudices people forced into the profession had to endure.

A good read for tweens/teens who are interested in this strange part of history, who like stories about trying to fit in and find yourself in a world where everyone thinks they already know you.

Queen's Shadow by E.K. Johnston

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The book was okay, if you like politics and listening to people talk about politics, but those politics are from a galaxy far far away, then this is the book for you!

It was interesting to hear about Padme and her handmaidens and their relationship to one and other. I really would have been happier with just a book all about Sabe though, which was what I thought we were getting when the whole slavery plot line came up.

The epilogue though. I want THAT book please.
I read this for Star Wars Book Club

What did you read this month?

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I slipped and fell and entered all of my credit card information, shipping address etc.

2021-02-24T03:17:08Z

THERE IS A STARDEW VALLEY BOARD GAME NOW!

I decided to buy myself an early birthday present.

(fun fact: most of the games I backed on Kickstarter are about to show up too LOL I'm going to be BURIED in board games and have no friends to play with because stupid covid and ARGH)

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Five POSITIVE things for a Friday

2021-02-13T01:46:40Z

My new weekly tradition - looking back on the week and picking out 5 things that amused me

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What I’m Reading Wednesday

2021-02-11T02:41:26Z

February is off to a good start with a couple of strange graphic novels!

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Tabletop Tuesday - Azul

2021-02-10T03:22:43Z

My thoughts on the beautiful game AZUL

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My Stuff Monday + Memories

2021-02-10T03:19:26Z

I keep forgetting to share my posts from orangerful.com here. I was copy+pasting the code here for awhile but I have been queuing up posts a few days in advance so I forget to come back and post them each day. ANYWAY! I'm pretty happy with this post so please read!

My Stuff Monday + Memories: Community

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movie thoughts: Bill and Ted Face the Music (2020)

2021-01-29T04:00:45Z

My movie thoughts here

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What I’m Reading Wednesday

2021-01-28T03:29:24Z

I finished reading ‘Just Mercy’ this week and it was even more heartbreaking in those final pages. I plan on watching the movie soon, I’m very curious about how it all ends because I’m betting they don’t go into the epilogue of Walter’s life after he was exonerated.

To go to a happier place, I read the second book in the Sanity and Tallulah series, Field Trip. I adored the first book in this children’s graphic novel series. Set in the far future, Sanity and Tallulah are two young girls growing up on a space station. In the first book, they have a science experiment that goes a bit too far and they end up with a giant, two-headed kitten.

The sequel did some cool stuff, like expanding on the the universe and giving us hints about why humanity is living on a space station and not everything in the galaxy is not rainbows and giant two-headed kittens.

The girls and their classmates take a literal field trip, the literal field being the surface of a planet. It is their first time on an actual planet. On their journey, they try to grasp what actual planet life would be like because growing up on a space station, you don’t have wild animals, dirt, or the sun. It is quite the concept to grasp and one that I think will make a great conversation starter with young readers about the things we all take for granted.

And apparently there is a third volume on the way of this series! I can’t wait to see what these girls get up to next.

I am also listening to Star Wars: Queen’s Shadow by E.K. Johnston. My friend created a Star Wars Book Club and while I usually don’t go for book clubs, I thought this might be fun because Star Wars books are usually quick, fun reads. I opted for the audiobook because I thought I could listen to it while making dinner. According to Libby, it’s about 8 hours long, so that is probably about 8 dinners.

One of the perks of listening to the book is that Star Wars audiobooks are full of sound effects. The first line of the book was the classic “A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away…” and then the Star Wars fanfare played. There are lots of sound effects scattered in for flavor, like the ambiance of Naboo or the clatter of droids on pavement. It’s so nerdy and I love it.

The story focuses on Padme Amidala and her handmaidens, somewhere between the events of Episode I and II. I’m already enjoying the insights into the minds of the handmaidens though it was weird to listen to all the politics about the election at the very start because who wants to hear about election politics anymore? People of Naboo trying to get Padme elected for another term by changing the planet’s laws? No. (Padme said no too).

Tonight, I’m going to start Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi. I debated reading this or Stamped by Jason Reynolds (the YA adaptation) but decided I would actually try reading an adult book again. It’s 500 pages. If I manage to finish it, it will probably the the longest book I’ve read in awhile.

So expect to hear about this book for the next few weeks. I might have to pick up another children’s graphic novel in-between chapters to take a breather from the seriousness but I am going to make it through this book.

Did you finish or start any new books this week? Are you listening to any good audiobooks? Do they have sound effects of space ships? Well, they should have, email the publisher.

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how to I ctrl+alt+delete my brain?

2021-01-27T04:27:25Z

I have a writing assignment I'm working on, like a thing I will actually get paid for doing. It's only 800 words but I have now thought TOO hard about it and need to just scrap everything and start over and get my head in a better spot. I got the job pitching an idea and using my blog posts as examples of my writing. It's an opinion piece, I can write in my own voice...but my brain keeps making me write it like a term paper and that is BORING.

Any of you professional writers have any tricks for just resetting your mind? Or should I just buy a bottle of wine and write my rough draft after a drink or two? Because right now, that is the best idea I have.

It's due February 15 but I want to get it done by next week in case I do it all wrong and the editor sends me notes back to tweak anything.

Yes, I'm being coy about all of this...I don't want to jinx it. If/when I get it done and it is published, you know I'm going to spam you with the link but right now...I'm just trying to focus.

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Tabletop Tuesday - Wingspace (physical and digital)

2021-01-26T22:49:56Z

Find out more about this BEAUTIFUL game and it's digital edition on my Wordpress blog here!

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orangerful @ 2021-01-19T20:51:00

2021-01-20T01:54:37Z

Tabletop Tuesdays – where I ramble about tabletop games, be they board games or RPGs. Can I make this a weekly thing? I don’t really know, but let’s at least try it out this week!

Recently, during the slow days leading up to the holiday, I brought some games to work for us to play to fill the quiet hours. I wanted to bring something we could play quickly during lunch break, something that could be taught in a matter of minutes and that wouldn’t take too much time to set up. So I grabbed “Stay Cool”.

The game is relatively simple – one person is answering questions while two other people ask them. There is a three minute timer and you play over three rounds. The catch? You will be asked TWO questions at the same time, one you answer verbally and the other you must spell out using a set of four dice. The egg timer slowly drops sand in front of you and is flipped after a minute by your team mates until you’ve flipped it three times.

The verbal questions are relatively easy – identify something in the group of words that doesn’t belong, put a set of numbers in descending order, spell a word backwards, name what street you live on, what’s your favorite color – things you have to take a moment to process but can answer relatively quickly. The answers you need to spell out are only four letters long and the questions are not very tricky, it’s just about rolling the dice fast enough to spell while trying to answer your verbal question.

Not too bad, you might think. But that is just the first round. Second round, it is up to the person answering the questions to also watch the timer, shouting “FLIP!” before the sand runs out or they lose the round.

And then the final round – again, the answerer (?) is in charge of the timer flips, but they can’t SEE the timer as it is hidden behind the game box.

As per usual, I found out about this game via Dicebreaker and you can watch their Let’s Play video to get a taste of the chaos this game brings.

I think the most amusing part of this game is watching people so caught up in the moment, that they fumble simple questions, like “are you wearing pants?” or “do you own a dog?” The game is translated from French and I have noticed a few translation quirks where the phrasing of the question doesn’t make sense. There were also a few questions that were a bit NSFW that I wasn’t aware of until we started playing at work – one asked who do you think of this group was most likely to have an extramarital affair!!! And another asked what color underwear you were wearing! I mean, obviously there is no way to verify either of these questions, they are there to make the person go “WHAT?!?” and then awkwardly say their friend is an adulterer just to get the point (my coworker had no problem doing this LOL).

While my coworkers thought this game was hilarious (one of them immediately bought a copy), my stepdaughter did NOT like this game at all. It was too anxiety-inducing for her taste and she couldn’t enjoy the wild ride for what it was, I think she took it too seriously. So it will depend on your friend’s personalities and who can take the pressure and make it fun.

I was awful at remembering the timer, but we had so much fun laughing together that I want to bring this game back to work for our next staff day (though I might go through some of the question cards before we start to remove any more of the more intimate questions).

Have you played ‘Stay Cool‘ ? Do you have a favorite party game? Let me know in the comments!

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music monday - mental health is less grim if you pretend it's boats

2021-01-18T16:11:21Z

Because Sea Shanties are all the rage in 2021 (well, at least the second week of it), enjoy Luke Westaway and Johnny Chiodini singing about mental health as though it was their own personal pirate ship.

If you enjoy this tune, support the artists by downloading it from pretty much anywhere digital music is sold!

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Music Recs please?

2021-01-14T03:01:10Z

last year, I slipped from my 2019 year end mix right into comfort music because 2020 and didn't really find much new music to listen to.

SO!

Please tell me some NEW ARTISTS I should be listening to or at least artists that are still making music in 2021 that I should listen to.

Making myself an epic Spotify playlist to listen to.

If you just give me an artist names, I will add the "top songs" to my mix, if you have specific songs though, please tell me those!

For frame of reference, my favorite artists are:
The Beatles
Sting
Bastille
Jukebox the Ghost
Simon and Garfunkel

But I am open to trying new things!

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today I played: Icarus

2021-01-14T02:38:48Z

(I actually played this awhile ago – first in Feb 2020 and then again in November 2020, but what is time anymore really so let’s just go with TODAY I played?)

I picked up ‘Icarus’ after watching Michael Whelan’s review on Dicebreaker:

I was very new to the world of RPGs at the time, but the idea of something that was pure storytelling really appealed to me. In addition, the fact that the game was GM-less also piqued my interest because I didn’t have any friends who could run games for me (yet) and I wasn’t brave enough yet to venture out into the real world to find them (**pats late-2019 Sam on the head**…it’s going to be awhile).

After searching online stores and finding the stock limited, I gave in to my FOMO and I bought a physical copy, only going on what Wheels had told me.

In ‘Icarus’, you use a series of prompt cards to create a civilization, piece by piece, telling the story of its rise to power, and then charting the hubris of its citizens. During the game, you create a dice tower in the center of the table and eventually that tower will fall and so will your world.

My first play-through (Feb 2020) was not very elegant. I invited over two friends and, along with my partner, we played the game. Turns out, storytelling games are not my partner’s cup of tea. He told me it “felt like work” and lost patience with it about halfway through – he kept playing but his heart wasn’t in it. My friends were also very new to the genre, but they chugged along and we eventually had our post-it notes covering the table, though I barely remember what happened to our civilization in the end. It was my first time trying to play a game like this and also my first time trying to TEACH a game like this, so I learned a lot about how to do those things but my friends probably didn’t get the best experience while I struggled to explain how it all worked.

Fast forward several months, mid-pandemic and yes I backed Icarus creator Spenser Starke’s new game Alice is Missing on Kickstarter. The Roll20 version was released and I found some people on the Hunter’s Entertainment Discord group to play with. I kept in touch with one of them and in the late Fall, I mentioned really wanting to try ‘Icarus’ again. He said he had access to a very basic online edition of the game and if I could get some people together, we could give it a go!

This play-through went a lot better! All four of us were into storytelling games, even if two had never experienced something quite on this level, and after playing Alice is Missing, I think I had a better handle on creating ideas for the story that would help move things forward and better understanding the mechanics of the game.

Hunters Entertainment published “Free Content Fridays” which included a few scenario suggestions for ‘Icarus’ in the set. We went with one that started out feeling very Dinotopia – with humans and dinosaurs coexisting in an amazing city, but as events unfolded, we revealed a darkness and betrayal hidden beneath it all, with the humans using the dinosaur blood and bones for health benefits. When a plague hit the land, and the dinosaurs became ill, everything fell into chaos and the final moments of our civilization were filled with references to Jurassic Park and the dinosaurs getting their revenge by eating up our characters!

You really have to get the right group of people together for this game. You need storytellers, you need people who understand the “yes, and” at the core of improvisation. This is not a competitive game, one to be won or lost, it is all about the journey. While you create a character for yourself, no one player really owns anything in the game, and the group collaborates and expands on each other’s ideas to create a city that you can all admire and then all mourn when the dice come tumbling down.

Honestly, it was hard to even think about picking up this game after the events of March 2020, as it felt like I was seeing the dice tower wobble in real life (there is even a card in the game with a pandemic as a prompt!) so poor Icarus sat on the shelf for awhile. But by the end of the year, I just wanted to play ALL THE THINGS and even if I didn’t actually get to open up my copy of the game since we were playing online, I was really glad I revisited it and experienced it now that I am a more confident player. I hope to play it, online or offline, and create another world to explore with my friends.

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movie thoughts: A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019)

2021-01-13T03:23:57Z

I am wondering if I would have enjoyed this movie more if I had not watched the documentary ‘Won’t You Be My Neighbor’.

While advertised as a movie being about Mr. Rogers, it really is about a cynical journalist learning to love again. Lloyd Vogel is tasked with writing a profile piece on Fred Rogers for Esquire magazine’s “Heroes” issue. Vogel, a man with a rough childhood and a lot of anger built up inside towards father figures, is not in the mood for Rogers’ brand of kindness. Based on a true story, Vogel’s time with Rogers begins to make him rethink his approach to life.

Sound kind of cheesy? Yeah, it is, but the cast pulls it all together and makes it an enjoyable way to spend an hour and a half.

Hanks’ Fred Rogers impersonation is strong but because we only see him in bits and pieces, it really doesn’t quite drive home how Rogers really was – it feels like the act that Vogel says it is. Mathew Rhys as Vogel does a great job of looking SO FREAKING TIRED ALL THE TIME. How does he do it? I don’t know, but I am ready to see this talented actor in a role where he gets to be well-rested and smile for a bit. Anyway, these two had a great dynamic and the best parts of the movie were their interactions.

This movie assumes you know and admire Fred Rogers before you start watching – I’d like to talk to someone who didn’t grow up with Mr. Rogers and know what they thought of the movie, which tries to frame itself like an episode of the show, starting out with Rogers doing his intro song and talking to us through the camera, outside the cities of Pittsburgh and New York are rendered in the same miniatures as neighborhood itself. If you have no frame of reference for the series, does any of this make sense? Does it feel avante garde? Or just confusing?

If you enjoyed this movie at all, I would HIGHLY recommend picking up ‘Won’t You Be My Neighbor’ for a more rounded view of Fred Rogers – he was a very private man, but the documentary gives you more of his story and the impact of his work on ‘Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood’ which I think is kind of glossed over in the movie beyond the adults reacting to his presence.

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Books I read in December 2020

2021-01-12T03:35:11Z

I might have been a little distracted at the start of the year and forgot to post this final 2020 reading update. I did meet my reading goal…after dropping it down to 50 from 100. But in the end, I had 52 books on my list! Here were the last bunch of reads:

Cottons: The White Carrot by Jim Pascoe

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

For a 270 page graphic novel technically written for kids, book 2 of the Cottons trilogy has a rich story with so much world building, you find yourself wanting more. I almost wish this was a actual novel, with more text so I could learn more about the Cottons and the Foxes and their societies and histories.

My only nitpick is still that I have a hard time telling some of the rabbits apart...that or there is a rabbit that has multiple names, which might be why I was confused. This is what happens when you read before bedtime I guess!

Anyway, if you like rich fantasy worlds, this is a series to pick up.

Race in American Science Fiction by Isiah Lavender III

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I had this on loan from outside my library system and ran out of time to finish it. It is good but it is DENSE and it also made me realize that I have not read a lot of science fiction. But most of the issues with SciFi books that are discussed in this are also problems in shows and films.

I picked this up because 'Pop Culture Detective' referred to it for their research on how Droids are treated in Star Wars.

Hopefully I will pick this up again another time when my brain is able to focus a bit more on the lofty thoughts and language.

Skunk and Badger by Amy Timberlake

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I didn't bother finishing this one. It wasn't engaging me and I was kind of over it. It's just ok, not bad but not great.

The Daughters of Ys by M.T. Anderson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was not familiar with the story of the Daughters of Ys, a retelling of a Celtic folktale about two sisters and their relationship to the city left to them by their father and mother and the legacy of that familial line.

This was fantastic dark fantasy, with beautiful artwork and images that stayed with me. Like with all good stories, the choices the sisters make are not as simple as they seem and as the story unfolds, you can see the flaws in both of their approaches to the kingdom.

Displacement by Kiku Hughes

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Hughes acknowledges Octavia Butler as an inspiration for this fictionalized story about traveling back in time and living through the Japanese American internment camps of the 1940s. Unfortunately, as Hughes also laments in her notes, she didn't have a lot of first hand accounts from her grandmother's experiences, so it wasn't as powerful as They Called Us Enemy by George Takei, whose first-hand account of the years in the camps as a child revealed the poor treatment of the Japanese-Americans.

I really enjoyed the last couple chapters of this book, when Kiki returns home and talks with her mother about the camps and together they begin to research the history of what it did to Japanese-Americans, how it is still happening today to other peoples in America and how they used their knowledge of history to try to fix the present. That story was far more powerful and I wish that Hughes had focused more on that real journey because you could feel the passion.

I would recommend this for younger teens who might not be aware of the Internment camps, who will be just as innocent as Kiki was about the history.

The Witch's Hand by Nathan Page

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There seems to be a trend in YA stories right now with small towns that were founded olden times and the founders had to run the witches out of town and/or killed them. And the witches come back for revenge and reveal that they did nothing wrong and the town was founded on a lie.

It's like everyone went to the same writing workshop in Salem.

ANYWAY, despite all that, this was a fun story with interesting characters. I like how it just drops the reader into the story, rather than starting from " the beginning" of the Montague Twins lives. There is a lot of story to tell here, along with a town full of mysteries to solve, plus some magic thrown in. I'm looking forward to the next book to see if the story is more original and if the characters continue to grow with each new entry.

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may I suggest - Blades in the Dark Oxboxtra actual play

2021-01-10T16:57:53Z

As I have mentioned many times, I am dabbling in the world of tabletop roleplaying games. Like many people, my main awareness of this genre of game was linked to Dungeons and Dragons, the biggest brand name of the TTRPG world. Even if you’ve never played a TTRPG, chances are you have at least heard of D&D. It has gained a lot of popularity right now because of YouTube shows, like Critical Role, celebrities playing for charities, and the somewhat tropey tv episodes.

I have been watching the Oxventure games since they started in 2017. They were my first introduction to actually seeing D&D in action in a way that I would want to play it. Light, fun, and relatively free of consequences – this is because Johnny Chiodini is a master GM and knows when and where to ignore the rules and focus on the act of collaborative storytelling.

I’m starting this off talking about D&D because the reason the Blades in the Dark play-through was so interesting to me was how much it differed from D&D in its entire approach to storytelling and mechanics.

The premise of the game is a group of criminals set in a somewhat steampunk city are called together to perform a heist. There are criminal types they pick from and they have certain skills based on their type. Instead of meticulously planning their actions prior to the heist though, when players come up against an obstacle they can flashback to the planning scene and talk about what they did to prepare for this moment. It’s like every heist movie you’ve ever seen, a smash cut from the group outside the vault to them sitting around a table the day before, building the lockpicking mechanism. It is a very smart design because it keeps the forward momentum of the story while still playing a game.

And, bonus, Johnny gets to play this time and Luke Westaway GMs! Luke does a wonderful job setting the tone, creating NPCs and keeping the consequences interesting when players want to take a risk (another cool mechanic in the game…looks, just watch so you can see it in action!)

What I’m saying is if you’ve only ever played/watched D&D, you might be surprised by the different ways a TTRPG can be played. And if you’ve watched D&D actual plays and they were not your thing, you might still want to give this Blades in the Dark video a try. It’s just 2 hours total for the single adventure and the group has come up with some memorable characters. Perfect for watching on your lunch break or as you are winding down in the evening and need some laughs…and crime.

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hellsite finally bans cheetos

2021-01-09T05:10:06Z

Me, logging on to Twitter and seeing ALL THE BANNED ACCOUNTS !!!!!

He tried to hijack the official POTUS account and his head of social media's account and then made a new one and they were just SUSPENDED! Also Rush Limbaugh was suspended.

okay, on that note, I'm going to bed, to dream of all these hate-mongering asshats being removed from social media.

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