#Food Chain Magnate

[whovian223]

Friday Night Shots - Catch Up Mechanisms

Friday Night Shots - Catch Up Mechanisms

It’s the last Friday before Christmas and all through the malls, too many creatures were stirring, so much so that I would rather carve Shem Phillips’ initials into my hand with a penknife than go shopping. I think that’s how that old Christmas poem goes. I could be a bit off. Anyway, welcome back to the bar! I’m glad you decided to get cozy and warm here, having some libations (maybe not…

[maristane]

Food Chain Magnate: Special Edition

Except for the covers, by the great Kwanchai Moriya, all characters in this video and all Employee Cards so far have been illustrated by me ✨.

A deluxe, very limited edition of one of the 40 best board games of all time, according to its rank on BoardGameGeek. My style was a great fit for what they had in mind and it's super fun to work with Lucky Duck Games and the amazing team they have assembled for this. Grab your copy while you can! This update showcases a bit of my work and process:

[patricia-taxxon]

i think the difference between modern designer board games & long standing competitive staples like chess & go is that designer board games are (affectionately) not really designed to become a lifestyle, they're usually designed so that you can be reasonably good at them and participate after only a few games, which is why chess people only play 1 game and modern board game people play 100 games. there are exceptions of course, some games like food chain magnate go in a more chess-like direction of completely eschewing quality of life anti-kingmaking or anti-knockout mechanics, but this is seen as an alternative and harsh design choice.

[thenightfolknetwork]

I am an antichrist.

The Real thing, born to a seventh virgin daughter after her soul was consumed by my father, Satan, in a ritual of fire, glory and light.

I was raised as instructed by The Book— Don't ask which Book, you don't want to know, the knowledge would melt your eardrums— to be the destroyer of the world, the prince of sins and the devourer of souls. I am the One Who Will Bring Fire to the earth, I am the One who will run the blood of innocents through the streets and boil the sea with my mere desire, I am the dark side of the moon, I am humanity's nightmare, I am—

I am 12 years old.

And I'm at school.

I just learned about ecosystems: The delicate balance of a food chain, the harmony that exists in the earth when a network of fungi extracts nitrogen from the earth and a rotting tree leaves the soil rich for next spring.

I found out about corals recently too. They are alive and an extremely complex life form for something that will never move, corals don't die as long as nothing kills them, isn't that a strange and wonderful concept?

I always wanted to be the World Destroyer.

It never occurred to me that bringing hell to earth would mean no deer or bees or coyotes.

If you increase the average sea temperature by more than two degrees, millions of corals will die. I don't know if I want to boil the sea if that's the end result.

But I am the Antichrist and I like being the Antichrist. I like to be Apotheosis, the crack in the glass, the rotten apple, the mercury in the water.

But I also like the world as it is, even if it doesn't bow down to me in fear.

What do I do?

(What do I say to my father?)

This is the problem with prophecies – they always put the subject under such a tremendous amount of pressure! I feel sure that, if your father had simply not mentioned his plans for your future, you would have grown up without these anxieties and likely gone on to fulfil your unholy purpose without a second thought, in a time frame that felt sensible and natural to you.

Instead, you've been burdened with a terrible and unreasonable amount of responsibility. No wonder you're feeling torn! This is more than any twelve year old should have to consider.

The important thing to remember is that you don't have to make a decision about this right away. You are the Antichrist and you will remain the Antichrist while you take a little while to decide the best course of action for you. The end of the world will still be there when you're ready for it.

As to the apocalypse itself, this is the other reason prophecies can be so frustrating. They are simply never specific enough to be helpful. Yes, you may be destined to end the world – but which world, exactly? And how much of that 'blood of innocents, boiling seas' stuff is literal, and how much is just a religious scribe getting carried away with himself?

In my experience, there are many, many ways a person might fulfil a prophecy without having to bring a fiery demise to this particular realm of existence. You might take a short hop over to another reality and destroy an uninhabited world, for example.

Alternatively, you might take your prophecy in a more metaphorical sense. “The world” we live in today is one that allows billionaires and business magnates destroy our environment in the name of profit. Perhaps you could fulfil your great purpose by destroying the social and political structures that make that world possible.

I understand your trepidation about bringing this up with your father. However, I really do think that you should consider it. Looking after you is his job, after all, and I'm sure he wouldn't want you struggling with these feelings alone. Reach out to him, and let him know how you feel.

You don’t have to decide this all at once. Whatever else you say to your father, you need to make it clear that you will not be embarking on any sort of apotheosis until you've at least finished your GCSEs. You are a child, and you deserve to have a proper childhood, whatever the future might hold for you.

[For more creaturely advice, check out Monstrous Agonies on your podcast platform of choice, or visit monstrousproductions.org for more info]

[captain-gillian]

Here is a nice ask right back 💜🩷

What culture shock and antics would the 126 get into if they visited Australia?

(I will answer yours later probably when I am not doing what I'm supposed to do on my prep time at work again haha)

thank you so much for the return nice ask! 💕

this is a really fun one, i think they'd be on seperate trips not all at once, so they'd have different culture shocks and experiences. i have deffs overthought all of this, but it was fun. there's some new fic ideas brewing now.

so tk & carlos are on a vacation to celebrate their anniversary, tk has always wanted to see the great barrier reef.

owen is on a vacation because tk raved about the australian beaches so much, mateo tags along with owen.

grace, judd & charlie are in victoria visiting grace's sisters who are in aus for their music and doing a trip along the great ocean road.

tommy and the girls go on a trip to australia zoo because while tommy was sick she realised life is too short and she's always wanted to see a koala in real life, so once she's better, she pulls the girls out of school to spend two weeks in australia. they also visit uluru and learn about aboriginal culture and bush tucker.

paul and asha go on their honeymoon.

marjan and nancy are chosen to go to a global conference in perth about leadership for female first responders, to represent the AFD.

as for their antics and culture shocks:

for tk, I think he would somehow end up rescuing an animal, maybe an orphan wombat joey and trying to convince carlos that he can raise it fine and they don’t need to call WIRES (a wildlife carer organisation), carlos calls anyway. as for carlos, who we know is not a great traveller, I think he'd struggle with how even the familiar stuff, like american chain stores/fast food places, and basic foods like bread are different in Australia, but he'd find how laid back it is, even in touristy areas really relaxing for his anxiety.

I think judd would be surprised by how different and challenging he finds it to drive on the opposite side of the road. at first he assumes it'll be easy, he's a really competent driver, he can drive a firetruck, how hard is it to drive a minivan on the 'wrong' side of the road. He also absolutely loses his mind at hook turns in melbourne (for good reason, who came up with those?) In the end, grace takes over for their road trip along the great ocean road, and is a total natural at driving on the left. judd sits in the back with charlie pointing out every animal they pass and playing "i spy" with her. at some point in their trip, they pass a bunnings and charlie gets really excited because that looks just like hammerbarn from bluey.

i think owen would go to bondi beach to surf, and end up in an episode of bondi rescue stealing the lifeguard's thunder by pulling off some daredevil rescue before the lifeguards get there (but not before the cameras do), then he gets a really hipster vegan smoothie from a nearby cafe and somehow ends up getting a date with a rich much younger local blonde woman who's sole heiress to a mining magnate.

meanwhile, mateo takes a day trip to the blue mountains, to see if they're really blue in real life. he comes across wild kangaroos and thinks it would be so dope to send everyone back home a selfie of him petting a kangaroo and thus becomes intimately equated with the differences between paramedicine in austin and sydney. after he's been stitched up he avoids the wildlife, opting to wander around the city near their hotel playing pokemon go when owen goes to the zoo.

paul & asha are looking forward to a really relaxing honeymoon, along the east coast, eating good food, drinking good wine, sitting by the pool reading, walking along the beach, hiking and taking in the wildlife. unfortunately, as a member of the 126, paul can't stop attracting trouble, with people having emergencies everywhere they go. on the flight there, there's bad turbulence, a few people get hurt and paul has to give minor first aid. then they get to a resturant that had amazing reviews for the australian fusion cusine, paul has been dying to try it and a woman at the next table chokes just as their first course arrives. paul has to render aid until the ambulance arrives, by the time it does his food is cold, the resturant comps their meal though. then when they're driving to a mountain to go hiking, a car crashes in front of them, they help rescue the driver with no equipment before the car is engulfed in flames. by the time help arrives and they give their details etc, it's too late in the day to start their hike. a man almost drowns in the hotel pool just as paul gets to the good part of his book, the lifeguard doesn't notice, so he has to rescue them. asha starts to joke they shouldn't leave their hotel room. that said, paul is shocked by how good all the food is in australia, and the coffee. he struggles to adjust back to american coffee when he gets home, and starts importing a specalised blend from a cafe they visited in australia who ship worldwide.

while nancy and marjan are at their conference, they're constantly next to each other, in each other's personal space and making inside jokes/laughing at things the other says, to the point everyone they meet, including hen who's there representing the afd, assumes they're dating (they aren't, yet) and asks what it's like working together and dating. marjan wants to go to rottnest island while they're in perth and get a quokka selfie for her instagram, she gets at least a dozen, and convinces nancy she needs to be in at least one quokka selfie with her. they send it to the 126 groupchat and tk assumes it's an announcement that they're finally dating. they both blush. by the end of the trip they are, infact, dating.

tommy & the twins go to queensland first, they have the best time as a family at australia zoo where they cuddle a koala and tommy is so excited to see robert irwin doing the croc feeding show. then they go to the gold coast and stay by the beach, where tommy expereinces the culture shock of how much more laid back and peaceful it is. she wants to have a really 'authentic' experience, so they have fish and chips on the beach. they're surprised that nobody else is eating on the beach, until they get attacked by a flock of seagulls. after losing half their chips and all their calamari to the gulls, they decide to have ice cream for dinner instead. the twins dare tommy to try vegemite flavoued ice cream, and not only does she like it, but she gets it with a scoop of cookies and cream. when they're learning about bush tucker on their uluru trip, tommy is the only person in the tour group willing to try witcherry grubs.

[ghostpalmtechnique]

On Friday I played Food Chain Magnate (with the updated milestones from The Ketchup Mechanism) and Keyflower with The Merchants. Yesterday, I played Voidfall, Brass Birmingham, and First rat. I will be getting at least one game in at an event this evening, as well. So at least the year is going out on a high note.

[saluteofthejugger]

i fucking love board games i set up food chain magnate while at my lovers and we didnt even have time to play it but i just imagined playing it and got so excited

[treeremovalpensacola]

More than a cheeseburger in paradise heres 3 business lessons from Jimmy Buffett

If you're in the Pensacola area, then you have probably already experienced the need for having to remove a tree or stump or getting your tree's trimmed. The cost of tree removal varies depending on a few factors, such as: - The type of tree that needs to be removed - The size of the tree - The location of the tree - The condition of the tree Pensacola Tree Removal offers competitive pricing for our tree removal services. For a full list of services Tree removal services visit Tree Services Pensacola Florida for a fast, friendly and reliable quote that you can count on. This will help not only beautify your property but also is the safest way to do it. (Photo: Viktor_Gladkov/iStock/Getty Images/Getty Images Plus) With the passing of Jimmy Buffett, I pondered his life and what it can teach us about the right and wrong way to build a business. Jimmy sings about working as little as humanly possible. Life should be about beach bumming, drinking whenever and fooling around. And yet, Mr. Buffett passed away a very wealthy man after working exceedingly hard in life. Here are three surprising business lessons from Jimmy himself: 1. Success is 1 percent inspiration Surprisingly, Jimmy Buffet had only one Top 10 song. We all know “Margaritaville”, it peaked at No. 8 in July 1977. But, he had a mind for business. Buffet saw that he could do better than most musicians if he could control his own supply chain of music, products and spin-offs. He had built up a following (called parrot heads) and he realized that they wanted more than his concerts — they wanted to live his lifestyle. 2. Selling the lifestyle Jimmy built a business empire selling food, drinks, products, merchandise and experiences all related to that “Margaritaville” lifestyle. That was his big idea (the 1 percent). The rest was hard work (99 percent perspiration). Based on the advice of business magnate Warren Buffett (no relation), he built a management team, but he could never let go of the details. He had become so diversified that only he could grasp the level of authenticity needed with every detail. He worked hard to keep it all going, but was that the best way? 3. Work/life balance The term work/life balance became popular in the 1980s as hard-charging baby boomers recognized the need to slow down to enjoy life. Recently there has been a countertrend. Today’s experts say there is no work/life balance, but rather work/life integration, where we fluidly go from work to play to work again. As an entrepreneur, I fully grasp the meaning of a blended life. But it’s not enough. I propose we cycle back to how the early entrepreneurs pursued success. My very successful grandfather would always implore us to work hard and play hard, but do them separately. I think he got it right. To enjoy your success, find time for the people who matter most, including yourself. But, like Jimmy Buffet, you have to find your own path. Your challenge Pick a business strategy that allows you to have a joyful life. At my Summer Growth Summit, we dove into the inner workings of Mariani Landscape and saw that huge success requires a huge effort. There is no way around it. The key is to keep your business streamlined enough to scale it and still have a life. Jimmy Buffett built an empire that only he could manage. Was that really the only way? Develop your vision, build your empire — but allow others to help you get there. We will miss you, Jimmy. I hope you find that lost shaker of salt! The post More than a cheeseburger in paradise, here’s 3 business lessons from Jimmy Buffett first appeared on Landscape Management.

[lunarfly-studios]

Katherine "Kit" Price

Okay so dA's being the usual buggy garbage site it is and won't let me upload this reference sheet there cause the submission page keeps crashing my browser

SO THIS BBY'S GOING HERE FIRST

I haven't organized/structured a reference sheet in YEARS but I'm actually really happy with how this one turned out, especially for one of my favorite characters to draw/write!

Kit would absolutely put "Eat the rich. Yes, that makes me a cannibal" on a t-shirt, and I appreciate that kind of energy.

She was conceived as both a counterbalance to the corrupt business and political climate present in Biker Mice From Mars while also giving the main cast a broader breadth of resources and putting them on a somewhat more even playing field with Limburger (considering I write him to be a way more calculating threat than he was in the show).

Plus it helps greatly expand the potential for slice-of-life stories as well as major conflicts if they can access for exclusive places or travel anywhere in the world without much hassle.

She's an ally that plays ball in Limburger's court while everyone else is outside throwing rocks and Maltov cocktails at the stadium if that makes sense. It definitely pays to have someone on your side who can afford a lawyer to keep your rebel vigilante tail out of prison.

She's just out here doin' her best to help as many people as possible, send aid, her imposter's syndrome is astronomical

~~~

Basic Introductory Info about her:

Full Name: Katherine Guinevere Price

Honorifics:

Lady or Marquess (On Venus)

Mx. or Ms. (on Earth; Mx. is by default, and she's very selective with Ms.)

Master/Madam (Li only. He uses them pretty interchangeably. Master is pretty general, but Madam is generally when she's getting on his nerves or when he very urgently needs to get her attention.)

Nicknames: Kit, Kitten, Kitkat, Princess, Katie

Aliases:

Kit's someone who tries very hard to keep her work and personal life separate. In the public sphere, she goes by the name Kathleen Victoria Moon.

LunarLight99 is her online gaming handle and her handle on most of her non-work-related social media platforms and personal e-mail.

K.V.Moonlight is her handle on her work-related platforms and her work e-mail.

As a fiction writer, she operates under the pen name Cordilea Rosewood.

Titles:

Chief Executive Officer and Executive Chairman of Lunarlight Enterprises

Co-Owner of LunarTech Industries (With her father, Cedar Price)

Founder of the Iridescent Youth and Wellness Rebahilitation Center

Pronouns: She/They (She is by default in narration. Both are equally acceptable in conversation)

Age: 26-27 Years Old D.O.B: June 20th, 1999

Species: Caucasian/Native American Human / First Colony (Butterfly/Moth) Venusian Kinkaeda

Occupation: Business Magnate, Entrepreneur, Philanthropist, Investor | Fiction Author (mostly just for fun, but it does bring in a small income too)

Economic Class: Billionaire

Personal Summary:

"Wha--No, no, listen. Listen to me. No one buys caviar because it actually tastes good, they buy it to announce to the world 'LOOK AT HOW MUCH MONEY I CAN AFFORD TO THROW AWAY'. And I'm just... not interested in food that doesn't taste good. I'd rather just get Chick-Fil-A and be done with it."

Katherine Price is a creative, compassionate, artistic, and charismatic young woman who achieved great success through unconventional means.

She wasn't born into great wealth, but she didn't work her way up from the bottom either. Her wealth, her position of influence and power, was granted to her as her grandmother's final gift in her will after her death six years ago. After spending her entire life a slave to circumstance, chained by her disabilities and her family's well-intentioned sheltering, she had been granted the tools to lift herself out of poverty. And since then, she made an eternal promise to be the same person for others that her grandmother was for her.

Kit is a firm believer that those with wealth, influence, and power are social leaders with responsibilities to their communities, even if the current sentiment among the wealthy elite feels otherwise, and that those who would horde their wealth like dragons and exploit and trample on the working class for their own benefit have no place in prominent positions of power.

One would think her unending empathy and compassion for the working class would lead to well-intentioned but irresponsible business decisions, but by surrounding herself with accomplished people and utilizing clever, outside-the-box thinking, she's created a business model that created success by putting her workers, consumers, and the public first, and her investors and board of directors second.

She's developed a brand and reputation for herself that's made reception towards her very mixed, in the eyes of the media, the public, and inner elite circles. Some criticize her for her practices being unreasonable, uncompromising, risky, and costly, others admire her for her unbending value in human life above the dollar. Some just can't bring themselves to argue with success, while others are envious of the media attention her controversial decisions generate for her.

Any PR is good PR, but she prefers hers to have positive outcomes. And if nothing else, she's become extremely popular with the younger generation.

Despite all the good she's done, though, Imposter's Syndrome is cruel and unforgiving. None of her success changed her being disabled; suffering Chronic Pain, being autistic, suffering from mental illness, and constantly having to guard her half-alien status from the public. She's created jobs by delegating tasks to those she deems more qualified, but no matter how many lives she's changed and improved, it's never enough. Never enough to justify her obscene wealth.

Despite all the personal freedom and free time and luxuries she has now, in many ways, she still finds herself beholden to others and what she can do for them.

Full Toyhouse Bio (WIP): https://toyhou.se/13050960.bmfm-kit

~~~~~

Katherine Price, Art (c) Me/Lunarlight/QueenFighterfly

Disclaimer: Please do not steal, repost/redistribute, use, edit or trace any of my written or visual works without my written consent.

I also do not consent to my art being taken and utilized for AI training.

I do not post my art on Instagram or Pinterest, so if you find it there, it wasn't me and was posted without my consent or knowledge.

[vivistarlight]

Food Chain Magnate is a weird game to me in particular. Normally as much as I like strategy games, I tend to overthink it and just like set my brain on fire with keeping track of too many things and making it extremely difficult for me to actually keep everything in my head or plan something long-term. And then Food Chain Magnate I feel like I can perfectly comprehend and can even plan several turns out with a little bit of room for error due to the natural variance of, ya’know, other players doing stuff. I really enjoy the game, it’s really fun. Highly recommend if you can stomach a horrible eldritch monstrosity of a game masquerading as an innocent food chain management game.

[whovian223]

Friday Night Shots - Playing with Non-Gamers?

Friday Night Shots - Playing with Non-Gamers?

It’s another clear, and cold, Friday night, but it’s warm here in the bar, isn’t it? I think I turned up the heat. Or maybe I just have a bad fever. Either way, have a seat and let me get you your favourite libation! We can start chatting after David Gray is done. That was nice. I hope you’re looking forward to a nice weekend! Maybe you’ll be playing some games with new gamers? Hey, let’s…

[scrumpyfan43]

just got the worst Food Chain Magnate map

[never-sated]

Walked into our Friendly Local Game Store (Atomic Empire) today and saw this just sitting on one of the display shelves. Obviously I had to buy it.

[ghostpalmtechnique]

On Saturday morning I drove the eight miles to the meet-up, only to discover that Herndon was having its winter festival, and there was nowhere to park. So I didn't get to game, and went home and watched The Batman instead.

Fortunately, made up for this in the evening, where I got to try Brick & Mortar (2021), which finally and fortuitously arrived on my doorstep about an hour before I had to head for my friend's home. (

This probably my second favorite new game of the year (behind only The Great Wall, which is in my top 5 of all time). It is a medium-weight economic game, although rather than winning by having the most money at the end it features the mechanism (most famously deployed in Clinic) where players must decide how much of their cash on hand to spend buying victory points at the end of each round, a decision that is here also complicated because the tiebreaker for buying and selling goods is being further behind on the VP track. (details and pictures below cut)

This falls into the same category as Keyflower and The Estates, in that the whimsical art is hiding a cutthroat game. (Below: main board/a player board, shop cards, and money cards)

This is an extremely heads-up game; you have to be paying close attention to what other players are trying to/capable of doing. When acquiring goods from the wholesale market or selling to customers, players secretly set prices and quantities (where you get early dibs if you buy more dearly or sell more cheaply.

On top of that, the amount of stock available to acquire and demand from customers is also set by the players, who each have a hand of cards that they prepare behind player screens - either face up to fill the market during supply, or face down to appear as customer demand during sales. Opponent has a monopoly on selling art? Guess nobody but them is putting any cards with art on them in the demand pile, etc.

In addition to the tight economics, there is a dash of Glory to Rome/Mottainai in this, in that each store is unique and breaks the rules in some small or not-so-small way, so you are also looking for good combos in the shops in your storefront.

The box claims that Brick & Mortar takes 1-2 hours, which is a lie. Even when you're fluent in the rules, figure 1.5-2.5 hours. And while it's technically for 2-4 players, these mechanisms are only going to shine with at least 3 and ideally the full 4. But if you have 3-4 people who will want to play a tight economic game I highly recommend this one. (Complexity-wise, this is a definite step up from, say, Smartphone, Inc. but a step down from e.g. Arkwright or Food Chain Magnate.)

[ghostpalmtechnique]

Bigger culprits are like time itself - we are at the tail end of the Golden Age of Board Games right now, and A Game of Thrones was a pretty early entry into that era. It is an extremely complex game with tons of edge cases and bespoke rules clarifications, it takes 4 hours to play in person, all of that. It is thoroughly modern in its design, for sure, but the past ten years of game design have really pushed towards simpler design philosophies and less demanding playtimes, GOTBG isn’t as much in step with the market now.

Statements that you could have made instead that I would probably have agreed with:

The golden age of Boardgamegeek has come to an end. -- It's still useful as a reference, but the community aspects have clearly gotten worse as they've moved to monetize the site.

2. The golden age of Fantasy Flight Games has ended. -- Obviously, killed by Asmodee's mismanagement.

But what you actually wrote is totally wrong. The average length and complexity of games has, if anything, increased over the past ten years. That is not to say that there aren't lots of light, fast games produced -- Cascadia, etc. are major hits -- but you are clearly looking in the wrong places (and to some extent, the for the wrong kind of game) if you think long, complicated games have gone away.

Splotter just delivered Horseless Carriage (listed playtime: 3-4 hours, average weight4.12), which follows in the tradition of similarly long/complicated games like Antiquity, Roads & Boats, and Food Chain Magnate.

Vital Lacerda/EGG just released Weather Machine (listed playtime: 1-2.5 hours (LOL, no), average weight 4.56), which is admittedly a slight step back from On Mars, but still very much in the long/complicated category.

I'm waiting for Voidfall (listed playtime 1.5-4 hours, average weight 4.45) to release later this year, which while still a Euro, does have direct conflict.

For more thematic gamers, there is e.g. Nemesis, rated #18 overall on BGG, which came out in 2018 (1.5-3 hours, average weight 3.41).

The same company made my second-favorite game, The Great Wall, in 2020 (incorrect listed time 2-3 hours (again, LOL, no), average weight 3.82).

Ark Nova, (listed time 1.5-2.5 hours, average weight 3.71) which came out in 2021 and like Terraforming Mars before it is taking everything by storm and may end up #2 behind Gloomhaven.

I could go on. At length. I haven't even mentioned 18XX, which continues to release new titles that take a full day to play and that has a community that has always dwarfed something like AGoT by two orders of magnitude.

For reference, the average weight of AGoT 2e is 3.73; most of these are more complicated.

The actual problem is the opposite; the number of games to choose from has exploded, which means there is more competition to divide the attention of the community of heavier gamers.

RIP: Board Game Geek’s Game of Thrones Play-by-Forum

Due to a discussion about setting up an online Game of Thrones Board Game match (h/t @bookworm-blackshoe & @k-simplex ), I dug up the old tools for asynchronous play that everyone used for Board Game Geek Play-by-Forum games. It was a really big and active community; over 500 games were played it looks like, they developed custom maps for easy play, custom variants of the game for balance, and all that. The most successful was the Five Kings and a Prince variant, which had a tweaked map, new house cards, and unique ‘crisis’ cards instead of just wilding attacks over and over:

I played a few games like 5 years ago or so, but more often what I did was read the games; because it was Play-by-Forum and most had a ‘No Ravens’ rule where all diplomacy had to be done publically, the entire narrative of the game is written out for you. Some roleplay, others chat about their lives as they play, etc. I still remember some of the epic plays or in particular the yelling-at-screen blunders you saw in these games. 

Something that is really cool about this is that the ‘meta’ is essentially recorded-over-time through these games. Greyjoy’s overpoweredness is apparent early on; Lannister in particular develop key strategies to mitigate this, like a first turn CP-muster on Lannisport becomes really common. “Openers” like the Greyjoy 4-Castle Riverun play or the Stark Turn-2 Eyrie Snipe become known and named, etc. The history of the game on this forum is preserved at 100% resolution in this way, which is really great.

The forum is dead now of course - the last game, #518, had its last post in March 2022, and it was essentially dead by 2021. I was reading through the last 5KaaP variant game, and its last three turns took over a year to finish as players dropped out and the hunt for replacements got more and more difficult. Everyone knows its the last game of the forum, its the only reason they pushed through - and they finished, in a really close 3-way tie finale (tiebreaker mechanics gave the win to House Baratheon). Very happy they did, it should end that way.

Why the forum died is probably obvious. Its a forum, forums overall are dying slow deaths even if this one had its heyday way later than most. Apparently the Game of Thrones Board Game had a Steam release? I didn’t know that - it has ~50 daily active players, which is not stunning but honestly the forum never had much more than that, its a fine player base and likely cannibalized some of the forum population, even if its primarily synchronous as opposed to asynchronous play. VASSAL as a board game engine exists and has a GoTBG module, maybe it has players?

Bigger culprits are like time itself - we are at the tail end of the Golden Age of Board Games right now, and A Game of Thrones was a pretty early entry into that era. It is an extremely complex game with tons of edge cases and bespoke rules clarifications, it takes 4 hours to play in person, all of that. It is thoroughly modern in its design, for sure, but the past ten years of game design have really pushed towards simpler design philosophies and less demanding playtimes, GOTBG isn’t as much in step with the market now. Additionally, communities like these have ‘anchor’ members - the people who made these mods & tools, people who served as moderators and drummed up players, etc. When a few of them leave the community becomes adrift and fades away faster, and that definitely happened here.

Meanwhile the franchise of a Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire itself has of course declined quite markedly - primarily through the organic passing of time, but less organically through the ritual suicide of the latter half of the televion show and George RR Martin’s tease-and-denial fetish when it comes to his book publishing schedule. I think those intersect too - Game of Thrones fans are nowadays normally older, and the older you are, on average, the less time you have for months-long play-by-forum overly complex board games. Apparently the default mode for the Steam version is for a game to be 6 turns long instead of 10, I think that reflects the changing demo. 

Anyway, goodbye to the Board Game Geeks Game of Thrones Play-by-Forum community. May this post serve as a stone in your cairn, and hopefully a reminder of its existence to anyone out there who was also a member and stumbles across it.

[reversedguins]