Oceans Infinity

Posted on January 12, 2026 by Quirkworthy

You and I have been witness to the greatest art heist in the planet’s history. Yup, today I want to talk about the underpinning of the current crop of Large Language Model (LLM) style AIs: the training data they scraped from across the internet, published works, and anything else they could get their digital paws on.

Compared to this, the recent Louvre break in was amateur hour, Vincenzo Peruggia was a lucky chancer, and even the stripping of artwork from across Europe to line the Nazi galleries barely warrants a footnote. Hyperbole? Kind of, but not entirely. 

On the one hand, the artwork hasn’t been removed. It’s still where it was to start with, pretending that nothing has happened. And the creators may even now be none the wiser. However, behind the scenes, a hugely consequential theft has taken place. 

Theft? Before we go any further, let me say that this is how I understand it. I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve dealt with copyright cases a number of times in my years in the industry. Fundamentally, copyright law seems simple. A human creator makes a new work, and by the process of that creation they gain the copyright in it. They don’t have to claim it, the act of creation itself grants them rights (as long as they’re human). Other entities may not use that copywritten work for their own financial gain without permission. There are a few cut outs for what is broadly called Fair Use (FU, ironically), though this applies to reviews and education rather than profit-centred endeavours. So, let’s say I want to design and publish a Star Wars game. I’d need permission from the copyright holder to do so. If I wanted to teach a course on media studies, I could reference Star Wars as Fair Use without express permission. 

On the face of it, the AI case seems pretty simple. The LLM industry collectively scraped all the art and writing and music and code and anything else they could find and used it to train software with the express purpose of competing with and replacing those creators. I don’t think that’s up for debate. This isn’t Fair Use. It’s also done without consent or license, and is therefore theft. If I sold that imaginary Star Wars game I’d end up in court. I’ve been involved in cases where exactly this sort of thing happened. 

There are three things that muddy the waters.

Firstly, tech-enabled scale. We’ve never seen so much stolen from so many individuals, and stolen so quickly. It’s so brazen, and so blatantly immoral and uncaring of the harm it does that authorities have no clue how to react. The law has simply failed to keep pace with the crime. 

Secondly, Fair Use and Legitimate Interest (LI). We’ve already mentioned the former, and that’s used to defend all manner of stuff that it doesn’t legally cover. The second is far more problematic because it has some legit uses. 

Legitimate Interest basically means that there’s a good reason why someone might need to use your data without asking permission. For example, a bank must conform to money laundering and other laws, so they need to look at your data. The GDPR has a number of clauses under which someone could claim LI. Unfortunately, the last one is a catch-all that can be used to exploit the process. Sure, you could send in a request to ask them to explain themselves, and then debate whether that was reasonable, and so on through the complaints procedure and courts. Realistically, this is almost never going to happen, or be worth the effort, because it’s massively resource consuming and by that point they’ve already used your data anyway. If we’re talking about AI, then it’s buried in the training pool and isn’t removable. So, LI is another pseudo-legal smokescreen that the AI companies can use to steal your data. 

Remember that I said this series was about me exploring and learning? Well, this third point is where we come to the core of this aspect of AI, and it leads to my first major takeaway, and it’s a pragmatic rather than an immediately emotionally satisfying one.

So where was I? Oh, yes. The AI companies have plundered what they needed to start their work and continue to harvest whatever they can get away with. A few have built models on training data that they’ve asked permission to use, though this is a minority approach and mainly seems to be a marketing exercise. Despite this, overwhelmingly, LLMs are built on data that’s being used without permission of the legal owner. It is not FU or LI under those definitions. Calling this anything other than theft is, in my opinion, either deluded or intentionally misleading. 

The third, and most important point, is that nothing material is going to be done about this. At least, not in any major way. The legal system lags too far behind, the power and resource imbalance between AI companies and creators is laughably one-sided, and the politicians are clearly leaning on the side of their oligarch peers outside the odd occasion where they need to pretend to care for votes. 

None of this should surprise anyone. It’s not new, it’s just business as usual. I don’t know if it’s because I’m older or whether anything really has changed, but it feels to me that while this abuse of power has always been the way, it’s less masked than it was in my youth. The politicians and billionaires used at least to pretend to care a little. Now the corruption and nepotism are out in the open in a way that would make the Borgias blush. 

So, yes. It’s not good. Creators large and small have had their work taken and used without permission. Stolen, in other words. And outside a few cases that perform the social function of show trials to salve the public conscience (which I predict they will fail to impress), the legal system will side with the money and power, as is tradition.

What I think this means is that there’s no real point in complaining. It’s a new paradigm we live in. Assume that anything you show in public will be stolen without repercussion. We’re back in the pre-copyright days now. Of course, the law will still be used to prosecute you if you use stuff the big boys own without permission, but the far more consequential thefts by the giant AI companies will continue unchecked.

All of this may seem a bit dystopian and gloomy, and it’s certainly not sunshine and rainbows. However, it’s not really new. People with more money than you will ever see have always had this power. The only difference is that it’s being wielded more brazenly and being used to abuse creatives. That doesn’t make it right, and being angry is a sane response. It won’t, however, make any difference. 

So, what to do? It seems to me that you’ve got 3 choices. 

  1. Take up an AK and lead the revolution against the capitalist running dogs of Big AI. Vanishingly small likelihood of success. Cannot recommend.
  2. Rail against the unfairness of it all, post online, complain to your friends, etc. This reminds me of Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. When the Vogon’s arrive, Ford tells the barman that the world is about to be destroyed. “Aren’t we supposed to lie down or put a paper bag over our heads or something,” he says. “Will that help?” That’s what getting angry feels like to me. The answer is no, by the way. It won’t help. I think that you’re far better off putting your energies into the last option. 
  3. There are sort of 2 versions of this, lurking under one umbrella. Overall, option 3 is simple: deal with it. The two possible flavours are coping by ignoring AI and coping by embracing it. You could blend your own middle ground, though purists will probably suggest that any use of AI is going to taint you. Whatever happens, in this third option you find your way to navigate the unfairness and lopsided immorality of it all. It’s never been fair or moral anyway, and this may be a useful wakeup call if you’d failed to notice previously. Whatever LLMs or subsequent AI forms do to the creative space, there will always be humans making things, and for the foreseeable future these will have a different place in the world to whatever software churns out. 

This last point is my takeaway from pondering this aspect of the current AI/LLM wave. The genie won’t be going back in the bottle, and the folk that let it out will not be held accountable for the damage they’ve done. 

One of the many lessons that decades of gaming has taught me is that you need to pick your fights. Some battles can’t be won. In this analogy, they have a million tanks and you have a pointed stick. It’s not a winnable position. Now, you don’t have to like it (you’d be strange if you did), but you stand far more chance of winning the game as a whole if you let this battle go. Reinforcing a loss is just a waste of your resources.

Realising this makes me think that the only useful way forward is to accept the shit sandwich they forced upon us, and move forward. Take your anger and channel that energy into getting better, learning more, finding your own way, because, at the end of the day, you are what you have most control over. Maybe the only thing. 

Let the AI companies do what they’re doing, just as you let the other human creators get on with their thing. It’s competition, it’s inspiration, and it’s background noise. Focus on yourself, your work, your skills and your progression. There was always someone better than you, and others who were less skilled. That hasn’t changed. Just now, some of it’s software. Learn, improve, and be the most exciting and interesting creator you can be. In a way, you should pity the poor AI. After all, for all its crass theft, and there was a lot of it, it can only copy, it cannot truly create. 

Maybe next week we should look at why this is a good thing.

Posted in Random Thoughts | Tagged | 24 Comments

Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

Posted on January 8, 2026 by Quirkworthy

It’s a cliché, but it’s also a real question I’ve been asked many times over the years, so let’s have a look. Where do I get my ideas?

The short answer is anywhere and everywhere. Though, while that’s true, I don’t think that answer will be much help. So, let me dig in a bit. See if I can be more useful. 

Before we start, this question is related in part to the idea of theme-first or mechanic-first design, and that’s another early consideration. I’ve got an article in the works on that, and it’ll be coming soon. For the moment, you can think of the theme/mechanic question as “where do you start once you’ve got an idea”, so you need the idea first. 

Inspiration can come from anywhere. This is what I’ve found in my writing, game design, and art, and is also what every other creator I’ve talked to says about their process. OK. Ideas are everywhere. Fab. If you don’t see that already, how do you make this work in practice?

There are three tricks to learn. 

Trick, the First

The first trick you’re looking for is not in finding the secret quarry from which ideas are mined, but in how you think about the world around you. Be still. Be curious. And listen. 

You can find ideas in any media you consume, and that can be an important slice of this pie. It’s far from the only piece though. You don’t find great game ideas in reviews of games alone. You don’t find inspiration for art only in galleries. You can find inspiration in news items, parent-teacher meetings, by looking up in a city to see the scars of its history etched on its façade, by listening to the other people on the bus, watching the birds in the park, and anywhere else. Observe the world around you. Soak it in. Think about how whatever is in front of you might interact with your favourite creative niche. 

Sometimes it’s something someone says. Sometimes it’s things I say myself in the middle of a conversation. Maybe I’ve just not said it as clearly before. Maybe I needed that other person to draw it out of me. Maybe I wasn’t listening to myself. I just need to recognise it when that happens. 

What would make the subject for a good game, sculpture, or aria? Could be anything, so listen. Leave part of your brain on constant watch and let it examine each thought and experience as you go through life. Actively consume instead of passively doing so. This isn’t about being in different, magical places where the inspiration lives, it’s about seeing the inspiration wherever you are. And it’s everywhere. It’s in you and around you. It’s your unique take on the world. 

Inspired ideas aren’t always or even usually a conscious thing at first. Instead, they’re often thrown up by your subconscious when you’re thinking about something else. The skill you need to develop is to recognise them when they happen, and they happen to everyone on a daily basis.

It’s sometimes easier to spot relevant ideas when you’re already focussed on the topic. Maybe this is a good place to start. As Picasso said, “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working”. I think that he’s talking about ideas only being realised if they’re worked on, but it also applies here. If you’re already in the right zone, it should be easier to spot the inspiring ideas. 

Expect inspiration to arrive when you’re not asking it to. Be aware that it could be lurking anywhere. Be busy, be open, be curious, be ready. And, when it does arrive, pounce on it. 

Trick, the Second

The second trick lies in recognising and accepting each opportunity. Having inspired ideas isn’t enough, you’ve got to realise you’ve had them. You’ve got to greet them with open arms. What I mean by this is that everyone has moments of genius, and most folk simply don’t do anything with them. They appear and melt away, undeveloped, unexplored, and unnurtured. 

I used to be afraid of latching onto the wrong idea, of missing the good and promoting the bad. Nobody wants to look foolish, that’s normal. But here you’re going to need to take a risk or two. You may decide that an idea is great, only to change your mind in a week when you start to develop it. Maybe it doesn’t work as well as you thought it would. Welcome to creativity. Everyone who ever made anything novel or interesting went down a dozen blind alleys and dead ends before they latched onto the gems you know them for. Everyone. 

Artists bin hundreds of sketches for every piece hanging in a gallery, tens of thousands of words lie discarded for every finished story. The process is wasteful, it will lead to many more duds than successes, and you need to lose your fear of this exploration. It’s not you. You aren’t a failure. You’re on the cutting edge of your own creative exploration, and that’s a scary and dangerous and thrilling and wonderful place to be. And, over time, you will get better at recognising your best ideas, and you will get better at honing and polishing them to be the best they can be. But you will always have failures along the way. Everyone does. Just promise yourself that you will learn from them and move onto your next possibility. 

One related quote that I return to frequently is supposedly from Maya Angelou: “Do what you know how to do, and when you know better, do better”. That is good moral guidance, and also solid advice for using any skill (such as your ability to spot inspired ideas). Do what you can now. By doing, you learn. Then you can do better next time. 

Trick, the Third 

The third step is getting good at capturing and nurturing these ideas when you find them. Stephen King famously says that he doesn’t use notebooks as the good ideas will stick anyway, and this obviously works for him. He uses his natural forgetfulness as a filter to winnow out the chaff. An interesting approach, though it’s not what I’d suggest. 

For me, taking notes is a core part of the process of harvesting good ideas and maturing even better ones. I write down ideas that I read or hear about, make notes of discussions I have with friends, doodle graphics I like when I see them, note new game ideas, or ideas that are inspired by them. Incidentally, more than once I’ve misunderstood a new rule in a review, or jumped to a conclusion when I’ve guessed where it was going, only to be wrong. And that misunderstanding has pointed me in a more interesting direction than the original. My notes capture all of this inspiration wherever it’s from.  

Making notes is also a great fertiliser for future ideas. Among the thousand plus notes in the app on my phone, and the dozens of notebooks filled with doodles and scrawls, lie all manner of half-baked ideas, flashes of genius, and other flashes of utter idiocy collected over decades. Far more ideas than I will ever have time to realise. Occasionally I look through them, and by doing this at random I present them to my brain in a new, different order each time. This sparks all manner of unforeseen synergies, which lead me to adding to the notes, fleshing them out a little more, or even creating entirely new ideas, generated by the combination of previous thoughts and observations. Often, these second order ideas are better than the first ones, and the process can turn mediocre notions into striking concepts. This approach has given me some of my favourite game ideas, and wouldn’t have been possible without writing them down. So, I love my notebooks. Always full of exciting thoughts. I feel sorry for Stephen that he misses out on the fun. 

The Minority

Remember I said that ideas weren’t usually a conscious thing? Well, that leaves some times when they are. What of them? 

The most obvious occasions are when someone says, “you could do a game/cartoon/opera/whatever about X”, and you realise that you could. For me, this usually happens when a client wants me to design a game based on something they’ve already worked on. Sometimes they’ll have a vague idea, other times it’s going to be fairly specific. My Mars Attacks game, for example, was done for Mantic when they’d got a license and needed a game to fit that world. Until they suggested it, the idea had never crossed my mind, but there was nothing subconscious or random here. It’s a different source for creative ideas, but it’s still inspiration. 

To Summarise 

Inspiration can be found anywhere, and happens to everyone. What you need to do is learn to harvest the ideas when they appear. This is done in three steps:

  1. Be open. Observe. 
  2. Recognise the opportunity. 
  3. Capture it.  

Naturally, there’s an implied fourth step of exploiting the inspiration you’ve had to make something, but that’s for another day. 

So, where do my ideas come from? The same pace as yours: everywhere. I’ve just had more practice capturing them.

Posted in Random Thoughts | 7 Comments

Natural Stupidity

Posted on January 5, 2026 by Quirkworthy

In the world of modern creative arts, artificial intelligence (AI) is an unavoidable topic. So, I won’t be avoiding it here. 

Across the internet and beyond, all manner of articles and videos have already discussed it, and there’s lots of intriguing takes to see. However, all of these individual presentations feel to me like they’re missing important angles. I don’t think this is malice or foolishness on the part of the presenters, simply that the topic is too big, too fluid, and too nuanced to boil down to a single article, however good it may be. So, if I want to explore the topic, it’s going to need several bites at the cherry. This discussion of AI in creative work will be the topic of my Monday posts until I run out of things to explore.

My initial thought was to make this discussion of AI a separate blog entirely. I have no idea how long it will be and I didn’t want it to drown out everything else by lumping everything together. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realised that it was central to how people are likely to view creativity going forward. Whether you like AI, you hate AI, or you haven’t decided what you think, the genie is out of the bottle. It’s going to be around, and it’s probably going to play some important role. So, I want to understand the whole picture better than I do. I also think that it deserves to be discussed properly, at length, without the polemics and lynch mobs. Very little is entirely good or bad. I suspect this is also true of AI. Putting it in a Monday slot gives it room to breathe without letting it sprawl. 

Note that I don’t have all the answers. Unlike my Thursday posts, which are the fruits of over 40 years of experience, my thoughts on the current version of AI haven’t properly coalesced. So this series is even more than usual a case of me learning alongside you. I’m sure that whatever I think I might want to discuss now, by the time you’ve had your say in the comments I’ll have a bunch more to ponder. In fact, I’m counting on it. 

Also, as I dig into this topic, I expect to refine and change my views. That’s OK. It’s expected. Necessary, in fact. At the moment, my overall view is that I don’t know. Seems to me that both fanboys and nay-sayers have failed to prove their case. But I need to look at this more. There are aspects of AI that I think on the face of it are definitely bad. There are aspects of AI that I suspect have quite good applications. But as a whole, I don’t really know, and there’s a whole bunch of unclarity in the middle, which makes AI as a topic fuzzy in my head.

Finally, critically, we need to remember that we’re very much at the start of this process. As with every other major technological change, it ain’t over till the fat lady sings. Currently, I don’t think she’s even on stage. 

Posted in Random Thoughts | Tagged | 20 Comments

What’s in a Thursday?

Posted on January 1, 2026 by Quirkworthy

As I said on Tuesday, I’m aiming to post something on both Thursdays and Mondays. Each day will have a different focus, and I’ll get to Monday on Monday, but today’s Thursday, so it’s time to talk about what goes here.

Essentially, Thursdays will be the sort of discursive article I’ve posted before, with one tweak. Over the years I’ve taken an increasingly broad view of what’s important in game design, and creativity in a wider sense. This is partly based on the idea of gesamtkunstwerk that I discussed way back when, mixed with my more recent thoughts on transmedia as a way of conceptualising projects on a meta level. I can’t remember whether I’ve talked about that, so maybe that combination needs an article of its own. 

In simple terms, this broadening of topic means that I’ll be discussing creativity in art and writing as well as game design. All, fundamentally, in the service of creating worlds and telling stories in them. Just different mediums to do it. 

In addition to the possible discussion of combining transmedia and gesamtkunstwerk as a creative philosophy, I expect to touch on topics like points systems in army builders, design vs marketing sweet spots in player counts, why it’s so hard to come up with unique games (and why that’s not terrible), plus I’ll be looking at some individual creative mechanics and techniques, and possibly take a look at some Kickstarter campaigns to see what lessons they can impart. 

And what of my own projects? At one point I thought that they’d be the focus of this blog, and now I’m thinking otherwise. They’re bound to be mentioned, but I want Quirkworthy.com to be a more discursive mix of theoretical discussions and practical advice. Maybe a project will be a useful example to demonstrate a point, and maybe not. See how we go. 

Finally, if you’ve got any thoughts on topics you’d like to see me write about, please drop a comment below. Always happy to hear suggestions.

Posted in Random Thoughts | 11 Comments

I’m Thinking I’m Back

Posted on December 30, 2025 by Quirkworthy

Difficult to know where to start after this long, so perhaps I should just plough on. I’ll probably delete this in a while anyway as it’s only really relevant for any folk who read this blog in the Old Days, before the Dark Times of the last few years.

In that time, I’ve been doing a bunch of stuff, working for various game companies, and writing articles and stories that I haven’t published. I’ve also been working on a few dozen games of my own, and generally carrying on with my usual nonsense.

There have been many times that I thought I should get back to this blog, and there’s no clear reason why I haven’t. It’s always been a good way to think out loud, to clarify my thoughts, and to occasionally entertain or even help folk. All worthwhile reasons to continue. As I said, not entirely sure why it’s been so hard to do so.

What’s different now? Again, I’m not sure I could tell you. Not succinctly. Not so I’d be sure I was right. It’s a bit of a lot of things, and maybe I’ll be clearer in my own head later and we’ll come back to it. Who knows?

For now, I just wanted to say that I’m going to be back publishing articles on Quirkworthy as of this week. Expect something on Thursdays and another on Mondays. I’m currently thinking of them almost like two separate blogs, which they almost were, but in the end it’s all circling round the same idea of how to create cool stuff, and so the threads are both here. More on each when I post the first article.

Posted in Random Thoughts | 19 Comments

A Lovely Stroll

Posted on April 27, 2021 by Quirkworthy

Today’s game is not one that should need much introduction with praise from reviewers all over the internet and a solid rating on BGG. It’s PARKS.

Just started.

The game has several things going for it from the outset. The first is its appearance. It’s a small, well presented game, with lots of colourful art from a wide variety of artists. I mentioned it a few weeks ago as an example of not wasting box space. That’s still true.

A neat package.

As always, I want to pick out a gameplay feature or two to discuss through the lens of a designer. This week it’s something that PARKS does well, and something that is, or should be, an important consideration in any design: layered goals and rewards. What does your game ask the player to do, and what do they get for their efforts? More importantly, how do these different goals interrelate?

Goals and rewards can interact with each other in terms of game resources or VP, extra actions, bonuses, and many other ways, but the most important part of the designed experience is how they layer in time.

For example, imagine we have a game with one goal of coming in first at the end of the race and that’s it. It would be better if there were several end goals, but that’s not as compelling as a game where you have a mini goal for every turn, and a medium one for each of three laps, as well as the final one. These intermediate, smaller goals are there to give texture and layers to the gameplay and keep the interest of the players throughout the duration. Distant goals feel distant emotionally. I might know that my actions are building towards a goal at the end of the game, but if I see no benefit during an hour of play then I may well lose interest before I get there.

PARKS does a very nice job of making you feel like you’ve (a) always got something you’re aiming towards and that thing is pretty close to doable now, and (b) you’re getting rewarded all the time, while always adding to your pile of VP for the end. The overall effect is to make it a game with a lot of positivity that feels like it’s being generous to you. Have some sunshine! Have some more! How about a new canteen? Trees? Mountains? Every move gains you something cool.

PARKS also avoids most of the negative elements which many games include. All of them. You never get punished for going somewhere or doing something; it’s endlessly upbeat. The worst that happens is you have to pay X to get Y, though it’s always a beneficial deal. It is as sunny a world as one in the posters for the parks you visit. Nobody in PARKS will ever get mauled by a grizzly or caught in a forest fire. In fact, you won’t even get ants in your picnic.

In a turn, I’ll usually add to my collection of tokens which I need to buy cards, or I’ll buy a card I’ve got enough for. I’m typically trying to collect X so I can buy Y. Once I’ve bought Y I need to save up to buy Z. Rinse and repeat. All those letters add up to VPs which win the game. As well as this very short-term aim, I’m sometimes buying gear which is a permanent boost (though no VPs), so I’m considering a medium timescale and a balance between utility and VPs. Which will help me most of the three on offer? And then I’ve got my secret year card. These are dealt at the start, you can’t get more, and they give you a small bonus if, at the end, you’ve collected what they ask for. They’re not a major part of the game, but it can give you a bit of an even longer goal to work towards.

Another aspect of the game which helps in this staggered goal approach is its basic structure. In PARKS you will go on four short hikes, moving along the board collecting stuff. It could just as easily have been one long hike, but by resetting and rearranging the board tiles each time, you get a frequently changing puzzle to unpick which avoids it becoming stale and gives you another timescale to play with.  

All told, the game balances these different layers of aim very well, and keeps you continually engaged, which is what we, as designers, should be trying to do. Nobody wants to play a game that bores them.

At the moment I’m looking at just this sort of thing in my own current project: Zombie Wars. In many ways it’s a very different beast, and bad things happen all the time in that. However, the core idea of having multiple levels of aim is still present. How does that notion fit into your work?

Posted in Board Gaming | Tagged | 1 Comment

I Need a Hero Too

Posted on April 20, 2021 by Quirkworthy

And I don’t think that the one I need is among the Heroes of Tenefyr.

It’s not that HoT is a terrible game. It’s not. But nor is it a great one, and I think that’s pretty much what the bar needs to be for me to keep things these days.

The options for gamers have never been as good or as plentiful as they are now. This embarrassment of riches, coupled with a lack of physical space, means that I not only can be extremely picky, but that I must be so.

HoT is OK. I enjoyed playing with the strategy of it, and there’s more in there than meets the eye at first glance. That’s good. Starting with it in Hard level was an error in the end because I think that’s its weakest setting. For me, this reduction in time simply took away most of the interesting choices as it forced a formulaic approach – you cannot afford to be anything other than perfect with that little time to improve your hand before the Boss encounter. The difference between Hard and Normal modes wasn’t so much that I had time to be sloppy in Normal mode, but I did have time to try different approaches, and that was an area of amusement denied me in the tighter timeframe.

In the end though, I think that I’ve had as much fun from HoT as I’m going to. It’s served its purpose, so I can thank it for its service and let it go.

Going back to the idea that things must be great to be kept, that’s not always going to be the case. Some things are useful for my work, others are kept because they can be played with non-gamers, or because I like the art and can’t get it in a book. I’m sure there are other reasons. However, these are all reasons which make the game great at that specific thing. In theory, I could play many games with my mum, but in practice there is a fairly narrow slice of my collection which she’d really enjoy. She plays so few, why not treat her to the cream of the crop within that narrow window? And, do so by keeping a game that I may never play with my gamer friends.

Some games are great reference examples of particular styles of design, or mechanics. While I can always read up on things like this, there are important aspects to a good design that are really only apparent in play. You have to feel them.

My collection is, therefore, a slightly eclectic and personal one, and that’s as it should be. Yours will be different, but no less personal. And that’s as it should be too.  

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Lovecraftian Limericks

Posted on April 17, 2021 by Quirkworthy

There’s a Kickstarter running at the moment for expansions to the rather splendid AuZtralia game. As I’m a fan of the core set, I’ve backed it myself, which means that I get all the usual campaign updates.

Last time they got everyone involved writing haiku. I did a few, but I’ve no idea where they’ve gone. This time it’s AuZtralia limericks they’re after. There are loads over on BGG, but just to be contrary and keep all my poetry in one place, I thought that I’d put my offerings here. In no particular order:

A frenzied old cultist called Fred
Once attempted to summon the dead
But his failure was dire
And it raised Cthulhu’s ire
So he made Fred a zed in their stead

Yes, yes, I know. Zombies aren’t a major part of the original Lovecraftian mythos, although they are the central part of Reanimator. However, they are included in later embellishments and in AuZtralia, so…

The next one is based on the rhyming and scan problem that most Old One names have. Yig is nice and easy to rhyme. He’s also a giant snake, of sorts.

There once was an Old One named Yig
Whose shape stopped him dancing a jig
But he’d slither and slide
And he’d boogie and glide
So his fan base was really quite big

And finally, a lullaby of sorts for those whose nightmares are inspired by too much unspeakable horror lurking in the shadows. 

There once was an Old One who slept
In the blackness of undersea depths
And even in dreams
He can reach us it seems
So goodnight, little prince, and good rest

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They Need a Hero!

Posted on April 13, 2021 by Quirkworthy

I’m still on the trail of simple, quick, fantasy games I can solo.

This week I’ve been trying my hand at more delving with Heroes of Tenefyr. I’m not really done with it yet, so it’s hard to come to many solid conclusions. What I mean by that is I’ve played it a bunch of times, and it’s slaughtered me each one. Granted, that will at least partly be to do with me stubbornly playing it on the hardest setting all the time, but, you know.

There is a shadow over the land…

Before we go any further, a couple of things you need to know so the following makes sense. First, you lay out all the possible dungeons and rewards (for completing them) before you start. This means that you can enter them in any order and ignore ones which don’t have monsters in you want, or rewards that help. When I say monsters you want, this is because of the second useful thing to know: each monster card you defeat is reversed and placed in your discard pile as an improvement over your basic cards. This is the deck builder part. There are five levels of dungeon, each with increasing difficulty and reward.

My overall impression so far is that it’s not as good as Unbroken, but it’s more engaging than either CtA or PG. Also, unlike Unbroken, it can be played multi-player, and that might be interesting too.

As some reviews have pointed out, the things you do within each turn is very simple, perhaps too simple. But I think that some have missed the bigger picture. This, for me, is where many of the more important and more interesting decisions lie. Sure, the draw three cards and keep or bin them turn is less than stellar. It’s like playing patience though; you don’t worry about the dealing because that’s not really the game.

The fun stuff is in managing the bigger picture: pondering which dungeon I go down and how far I push that. Which monsters do I fight, and do I just try to cherry pick the ones I want for my deck, or do I want to empty whole dungeons so I get the reward? Those reward cards can make a big difference.

Set up and ready to play. The dungeons are each represented by stacks of cards, two for each of levels 1-5. A reward for completing a dungeon is above or below it depending on which row it’s on. You can see the top monster and the reward for each dungeon, enabling lots of strategising.

The whole game is about managing your deck to give you a chance against the Boss, and there are a number of ways to improve the cards. At least, that’s what I’ve bene doing, but on the shortest timer I’m getting run out of Dodge pretty swiftly. Those Bosses all have really nasty special rules, and roar through your deck at a scary pace. That’s bad because you can only go through it once when you’re fighting all 4 cards of the Boss deck. So, on the one hand, you want more cards to give you more draws and so more time. But low value cards aren’t much help as they won’t kill the big scary stuff, and so you want to purge them, or avoid them in the first place. But you can’t take the tough monsters to add them to your deck without building up some momentum first by duffing up the smaller ones. So there are some choices to mull over.

One nice thing about HoT is that the pace is entirely down to you, and this is where the strategic options come in again. I’ve still got a bunch of approaches yet to explore, but so far I’ve tried mining the whole of the lower dungeons in order, dotting about to cherry pick the monsters I wanted to add to my deck, and focussing on a few specific rewards. Still losing. I’m not giving up though. There’s a winning strategy in there somewhere.

In fact, while I think about it, perhaps the simplicity of the basic turn is designed to give you the space to focus on the strategy more. Not to get you bogged down in the details. That would be a nice bit of design.

Anyway, I’m coming back to Heroes next week. Then I’m sure I’ll have more to say. And, I hope, I’ll have a victory or two to report.

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Proof

Posted on April 6, 2021 by Quirkworthy

There’s not a lot I feel like saying about Proving Ground other than it’s not for me. See you next week.

I was looking forward to this being a fun new series of solo games.

Hmmm. Can’t really leave it like that.

OK.

In a word, disappointing.

I like the premise, and the introductory story is one of the better ones I’ve read in a game (barring the peculiar and anachronistic use of the term klick for distance). If you do get the game, it’s worth reading this story to set the scene. Unfortunately, there are some discontinuities between this tale and the game itself which are odd and a bit unnecessary. That was strange.

Anyway, how does it play?

Basic set up with no extra modules. I’d not normally leave the dice pool in the middle; that was to get it all in the photo.

The game rather unsportingly pits you against six enemies at once in an arena battle, and each time you cut one down they are replaced. If you kill a total of eight or more before you lose all your wounds, you win. If you lose all of your wounds, you die and you lose the game too. Like I said, I’m happy with that premise.

Structurally, the game is presented as a “training” core version that teaches you the basics. Learn that first. They then have six modules that you can add in any combination, all of which add complexity, and all but one of which make life harder. Again, not a bad approach. The rules too are clearly written.

Mechanically, the core of the game is a timed Yahtzee variant, and here is where things come unstuck. It’s just not fun.

However, as always, I can pull a game design lesson from this, so the time isn’t entirely wasted.

In this case, the lesson is an old one: make your core experience engaging, and if you can’t then make it very quick. The absolute worst case combination is to have a boring experience that drags on for a long time. If you rely on the chrome to provide your entertainment then it had better become the vast majority of your playing experience.

Proving Ground makes the mistake of increasing the complexity of the dull core game with every piece of chrome it adds, while never allowing you to enjoy the challenge. The potentially interesting gameplay experience of navigating an increasingly complex resource management puzzle is utterly wasted because you have no time to think when you’re rolling.

I’ll explain that a bit more. The core mechanic is rolling a bunch of normal D6s in a timed minute. You generally want sets of the same number, and you can re-roll some dice and not others. It’s all fairly straightforward, and as far as that goes it’s OK. Not very hard, quickly reduced to a rote approach to survival. You see, as there is no round limit, the best strategy is to take as few risks as possible during each minute – there is absolutely zero incentive to do things quickly. You will attrit the enemy as a by-product of surviving, so you don’t need to pay any attention to offence per se. Playing to minimise my losses like this, I went through a dozen games without losing a single one, including against various combinations of modules. More modules made it longer, but I still won every game by just aiming to survive.

I kept hoping that each new module would add some new twist that would pick the game up, but it never happened.

Going on the trade pile.

Posted in Board Gaming | Tagged | 3 Comments