#Economic Games

[techdriveplay]

The Ultimate Guide to Solo Board Games

In recent years, solo board gaming has quietly emerged from the shadows of its multiplayer counterparts, carving out a distinct and vibrant niche within the board game community. Once considered a pastime for the introverted or those struggling to find a gaming group, solo board gaming has transcended these stereotypes to become a celebrated and integral aspect of the hobby. Whether due to the…

[whovian223]

Bottoscon 2024 Retrospective

Bottoscon 2024 Retrospective @oinkgames @fanfactories @devirgames @StrongholdGames @AMIGO_GamesUS @alderac @Gamewright

Once again in November I was able to attend Bottoscon, the largest wargaming convention in the Pacific Northwest. This year, they managed to get over 150 attendees, which is amazing considering that when they began 18 years ago, they had 32 attendees. The convention is run by Rob Bottos, a prominent wargamer, and a cohort of other people who help keep the con organized and well-run, solving…

[elbiotipo]

It's fascinating to me that for our modern (at least on European-influenced societies) thinking, the classical Roman way of life is so familiar. When you read about it, the rethoric of the speeches feels modern, a society based on contracts and laws and litigation, with public works, a state bureucracy and standing army and trade economy and even spectator sports, a concept of philosophy separated from religious dogma and tradition, with even a limited understanding of a government by 'the people' and 'citizenship', even the names all sound familiar even if in completely different contexts, and no wonder since they inspired our current politics.

This all in contrast to medieval feudalism, which is completely alien to me. A society created upon family connections and oaths of fealty and serfdom with no such thing as an overarching state, not even kingdoms were any more real than a title one person holds, and all held together completely, utterly, to an extent I cannot emphasize enough, by the institution of the Church and the Christian faith. In a way we just aren't used today in our secular world. I simply cannot overstate how everything, every single thing, was permeated by faith in the Medieval worldview and the Church which took its power from it, we have an understanding of it but I think people just don't realize it.

[prokopetz]

Do you ever have a passive gripe with the way trade is represented in medieval/sci-fi/post-apocalyptic fiction? I can't shake the feeling that those are societies that have moved beyond the need for abstract currency - that such forms of trade are more a concession for the viewer to analogize trade to our world instead of offering some kind of unique barter for a world.

A medieval peasant isn't gonna want gold coins for jack because the next trade caravan is two seasons away, they'd much rather a useful tool or some extra fertilizer. Credits in science fiction universes can become worthless due to Future™️ hackers setting their bank accounts to extraordinarily high values, so extra parts for firearms and spaceships are much more useful. Caps in Fallout just make no sense in a world where food and water are few and far between!

I feel unreasonably grumpy about this and I wanted to know if you have any kind of insight to this kind of thing.

There are a couple of only partly related problems here:

1. The idea that the economies of most sci-fi and fantasy settings, as depicted, don't make any sense. This is absolutely true, because most science fiction and fantasy authors don't really think about that sort of thing – their settings only have economies to the extent that the details of those economies are relevant to the plot, which they usually aren't.

2. The idea that it doesn't make sense for currency to exist in these settings because most of them logically ought to have barter economies. The trouble with this assertion is that there's no such thing as a barter economy. Yes, you can describe what one would look like, but no civilisation which has ever actually existed has operated in this fashion. It's a made-up idea – at best, a spherical-cow approximation of how the exchange of goods and services operates in a stateless society, and at worst, complete bullshit.

Consequently, whether or not it makes sense for anything like currency to exist is going to depend on the particulars of how the setting's economy operates (i.e., all the details that that are getting glossed over in point 1, above). About the most we can say in nearly all cases is that we simply don't have enough information about a given fantasy or sci-fi setting's economic structure to know whether it makes sense to have currency or not; we can't just assume in the absence of further details that things will default to a barter economy, because – again – there's no such animal.

[tamquira]

Hey so what better way to start up my tumblr page than to post what is esentially a communism fanart? Sort of? Communism-inspired??? But also my favourite artwork I have done to this day.

[scarletfasinera]

Literally. Be vigilant I love you. Something beautiful is going to happen. True love is possible only in the next world—for new people. Tomorrow is just a whisper away. We refuse to accept that the world has to remain like this. It's the world and you're made of it, you can't be unmade now. This is somewhere to be, this is all you have but it's still something. Things can't go on like this forever; something will give, it always does. Comrades, the forsaken, the wretched, who tried to rise against the horrors of the world. She would die to return to it. One day I will return to your side. They're beautiful and true—and they will win. The future can be better than the past, if we're willing to work and fight and die for it. In dark times, should the stars also go out? I exist. I exist too.

[fruttymoment]

Yo??

[tavosketch]

"This is a man with a lot of past, but little present. And almost no future."

[cannibalhalflinggaming]

"I’m not stating anything particularly controversial when I say it’s tough to be a game designer. The tabletop RPG market is an economics nightmare; demand is low and supply is incredibly high. Demand is low because this is a niche hobby whose marketing to the public at large is, essentially, Hasbro screaming so loud that nobody else is heard. Supply is driven by the fact that, at a functional level, thanks to crowdfunding Kickstarter, itch.io, and DriveThruRPG, basically anyone can make a TTRPG and get it on sale. TTRPGs and self-published fiction are very much the same, and everyone’s looking for the solution to the fact that 90% of everything in the market is utter crap." - @levelonewonk

[andrewminyardapologist]

All for the game au where everything is exactly the same but instead of playing exy it's some kind of academic decathlon and they go just as hard. Neil absolutely bodies every math question and Kevin's undefeated in history. Aaron obviously handles everything bio. Andrew is an absolute academic weapon because of his eidetic memory but he doesn't give a single fuck about any of it so he only ever answers questions when no one else knows the answer.

Renee's incredible with religious studies and Allison WRECKS the other teams with anything art/music related. Dan is a chemistry and physics wizard and could probably be building bombs or going to space but instead she's essentially playing team jeopardy. Matt's reign is English because I ran out of subjects and I can imagine him dramatically reading Shakespeare monologues out loud in his free time.

The mafia still exists and so do the Ravens and riko was still trying to build a "perfect court" which I think makes the face tattoo thing funnier because it's just as intense but they're all nerds.

Instead of Neil fangirling over exy racquets he's really impressed by the little buzzer things you push during competitions and the elaborate, color coded flashcard system the Foxes come up with.

[thecottagecorebisexuals]

Marikata power couple ending where Catarina inherits the duchy. She's married to Maria (they legalized gay marriage in Sorcier because too many nobles wanted to make Catarina happy). Catarina isn't good at doing paperwork and logistics but Maria is so she takes care of that while Catarina helps her manage the duchy as she can. Catarina takes care of anything that requires interacting with (charming) people. Which is a lot.

Since old man Luigi isn't planning to retire (or die) soon, they have plenty of time to prepare.

"Where's keith in this scenario?" You might ask. Well, he married Geordo and now he resides in the palace as prince consort...

[goldenjuniper]

just got to eris’s boss fight and oh my god. i think i hauve covid

[whovian223]

New to Me - August 2024

New to Me #boardgames - August 2024 @roxleygames Capstone_Games @firstfishgames @devirgames @JackieFox1976

July was not a great month for new to me games, but I had a feeling that August would make up for it, with a convention going on and everything. And it did! August was great for new to me games, with seven of them played. That’s why this post is so late! However, the Cult of the New to Me was not exactly happy, even with so many games played. Why is that? Because the oldest game played was…

[charlesoberonn]

Please do not base or substantiate your political worldview on Paradox games.

[ausetkmt]

[northern-passage]

Hello! I was curious... Do the coins in TNP have designs, or are they completely smooth? :0

they do! the gold Adranian coins (which is what Clementine has) have the symbol of the king/king's house which is the swooping hawk that we'll see Duncan wearing later. that's basically the royal sigil of Adrania, and we'll see wardens, soldiers, and other high-ranking politicians or wealthy Adranian families wearing it throughout the game.

silver coins have a merchant ship on them, and bronze coins have the moon on one side, and the sun on the other side (to represent the Wolfmother's children, but to avoid directly printing the image of a god on money). Gael is different in that their gold coin actually has a whale on it, since whaling and fishing is their main source of income (versus Adrania, which in the south has decent farming and functions as a massive trade hub between/with Gael and Yulan). their silver coins have a wolf on one side, sun and moon on the other (same reason as Adranian's have it on their bronze) and then Gaelish bronze coins just have a silhouette of the southern mountain range and sea stacks.

Gael also has whale bone coins and Yulan has shell coins, but those don't get traded with Adrania. only the metal coins, and that's just because gold is gold; it doesn't change much of the value, it's only aesthetics, and the flow of coins between Gael, Adrania, and Yulan (Adrania's main international trade partner) is vital for all three countries.