I've been playing Magic drafts semi-regularly since 2/8, when I went to a pre-release event for the new set. Since that time, I've steadily lost confidence in myself and my ability to make good decisions. I'm starting to dislike myself a lot. This is why I quit the game in the first place.
Knowing this, I kept at it to see if I could work through some of these issues; they come up in other areas of life, too. So far they seem insurmountable–I may be at my cognitive limit. That really scares me.
I do want to be clear about one point: this isn't about losing a game in a general sense. Variance is a real thing–I don't expect to win. When I review game logs after the fact to see how I can improve, I notice decisions I made that don't make sense given the information I have: I didn't notice, couldn't pay attention, or did the math wrong.
I don't think that I'm stupid (except in my darkest moments, maybe), but if I can't focus and make good decisions, what is the practical difference there?
We have reached December in Pandemic Legacy: Season One, which means we have one or two games remaining in this campaign. We started playing it in 2016.
We finished Bureau 13! The most anti-climatic ending I've seen so far. But, oh well. It was a cool game. Lots of replay-ability in it, as you can choose different character combinations. We slayed demons, removed chips off of people's necks, and killed a virtual reality AI monster. Our 13th game completed live! Farewell Bureau 13!
@RetroUnderBelly I remember finishing this one and got an ending where the character says something like, "This will make an interesting case for my files." That was it. 💀
@vga256 It was in color, yes! All the art was redone at lower resolution and in color, but all the scenes match the Mac version. It also changed the interface to remove floating windows and position all the commands at the bottom of the screen.
The other ICOM Simulation games for the platform are Shadowgate and The Uninvited, which use a similar UI but different theme and setting.
I'm going to play in a Magic Prerelease event on Thursday for the new set, "Murders at Karlov Manor." I love detective fiction and the theme pulled me in! (I laughed out loud at "Case of the Gateway Express.")
It's been years since I've played at all, so I'm a bit nervous... but I've reviewed the mechanics and I think the sealed deck format will help me avoid any drafting mistakes.
If you went to an MKM Prerelease, any advice? What surprised you about the format?
We should probably think twice before sharing personal data with sites named things like "Spoutible." I'm not giving any useful (meaning "accurate" or "true") information to "ThirsteeShare" or "AttentionSlut" or whatever.
Please don't share information you can't afford to lose with web companies. It will get out.
To summarize, a useful method for composers is to think about harmonizing each note of your melody by asking, "is this the root, third, or fifth of a major or minor chord?" This itself is limiting, so you can also extend it by treating the melody note as the 9th, 11th, 13th, b9, etc.
The video plays an example of harmonizing the note C with all options in this strategy. Listen to the different colors. 🎵
I’m now the proud owner of a Pixel 7a running GrapheneOS. Install was a breeze using their WebUSB dingus, and I have Google Play sandboxed, and using a burner Google account. I really like it so far! It’s still just a secondary phone on a cheap Mint Mobile plan, but it may replace my aging iPhone 11 at some point.
I get the impression from social media (not a great place for impressions, to be fair) that retrogaming is 10% playing old games and 90% "hey, look what I have!"
This bums me out: I really don't need a hobby that values positional goods above experiences. I understand the feeling of "now that I'm an adult I can buy all the things I missed out on when I was a kid," but it's much harder to buy the experiences you missed out on when you were a kid–especially if you don't play the games.
Twice so far this month I've wondered what it would take to apply to/register for something, only to discover when I look into it that the application deadline is the very next day. 😅
(In neither case was one day enough time to actually apply/register for the thing.)
I forgot how much body horror there is in the first part of “The Matrix,” and I wasn’t ready for it on the big screen! Still a fun watch. It had been many, many years since I last saw it, even though it was one of those DVDs that everyone owned in the 2000s.
@geffrey This is a tough one, because in a bound notebook you can't reorder the pages. This often means creating sections (buckets) for notes to go into, which means thinking up-front about how to size those sections, and you often don't have enough information to make those decisions in a meaningful way.
Some notebooks are like mini-binders where pages can be added and reorganized. Carrying multiple thin notebooks works. Using a stack of index cards and a binder clip also works.
@geffrey I suspect the inflexibility of bound notebooks means you have to think carefully about access patterns. For example, if there are bits of information that you expect to reference repeatedly, you might use sticky bookmarks, or copy the relevant information into a different section in the notebook.
We played the one-shot RPG “Alice is Missing” tonight, and wow. What an experience. I don’t think it’s for everyone, but our group had a powerfully emotional evening that I think I’ll be processing for a while. I’m grateful for it. Woof.
But the details are important, because forever is an extremely long time. Even if you stopped aging, you would eventually become so bored that living would be torture. If you continued aging but were still "technically alive," that's "worst nightmare" territory for many people.
The problem with dying isn't death itself–it's the uncertainty of death's arrival. We generally don't get to choose when or how we go. Even so, I think it's better than living forever.
