Faun

Once I’ve been studying a language for a while, I make a mission of finding music in that language that I really, really like – the kind you can happily listen to over and over again until you have all the lyrics memorized. For German especially, I hit the jackpot! The first song I listened to was one of Faun’s.

First off, the vibes are impeccable. I could not understand a word of this and be having a good time. On top of that, it’s like listening to a fairytale! In fact, sometimes it is. Rosenrot, for example, tells the story of Snow-White and Rose-Red. Non-fairytale story-songs, meanwhile, include Gold Und Seide, Feuer, and Federkleid! These three especially have some of my favorite uses of language as a craft, and Faun’s work collectively has become a crucial memory device for the particulars of German grammar. Vocab, too – there’s nothing like humming your way to the word you were looking for!

Alongside all of that, they also delve into Pagan traditions, like the Celtic festival Lugnasadh!

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Munchkin Loot Letter

With only 16 cards and some loot cubes, Munchkin Loot Letter is quick and compact, featuring familiar cards from Munchkin and mechanics reminiscent of Knuckle Sammich. It’s a simple “draw one, play one,” with a hand size of one, leaving you choosing between two cards each turn. Each card has a value and an effect – the goal is to be either the last player standing, or the one with the highest value card when the deck runs out!

Effects come in a few different flavors, mostly ways to eliminate other players depending on what’s in their hand. By far the most common card is the Potted Plant, a 1-value card that lets you make a guess at what someone else is holding. If you’re right, they’re out! (You cannot, however, guess Potted Plant.) The higher value cards are deliberately inconvenient, meanwhile, like the Turbonium Dragon which must be discarded if you ever have the Net Troll or Dread Gazebo in hand. For a tiny, tiny deck, it’s impressively well-balanced! You’re meant to play multiple rounds, best-of fashion, with the loot cubes to keep track of who’s winning.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

The Wide, Wild World of RPGs

I’ve spoken previously about Overly Sarcastic Productions and their gloriously chaotic educational material, and today I want to specifically recommend Detail Diatribe: TTRPGs That Aren’t D&D (And Why They Slap) The Detail Diatribe series are long-form presentations digging into the real meat of a subject, and in this case it’s nearly two hours of RPG systems, their stories and mechanics! It’s a fascinating variety and you may hear about some of the particulars from me later, once I’ve had a chance to try them.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Thud!

I would loosely describe Thud as asymmetric chess – an all-strategy game for two players, but in which each player is operating off of different rules. It’s based on a battle in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld featuring a smaller force of larger opponents, and a larger force of smaller ones.

Due to sheer size, the Trolls (the larger characters) both move more slowly and need only land adjacent to a Dwarf to capture it. Dwarves, on the other hand, zip about the map much like chess’s queens – but they can only capture if enough of them have lined up to fling the front Dwarf into the nearest opponent. Who must be directly in line with them. It’s rather challenging.

To the rules’ credit, they warn you that the Trolls are much easier to play, and the Dwarves take some getting used to. Also to their credit, the game is played in two rounds, so each player gets to play both sides – overall victory is scored not so much by who won, but by who lost less. If you fielded the Trolls’ jump-‘n-thump and their shove propulsion – their version of flinging a friend – enough to actually capture any of them, you’re doing pretty well. Presumably, it’s possible with enough practice for the Dwarves to present a serious challenge.

Ultimately, we decided this game wasn’t for us, and I hope our copy finds someone who cherishes it and enjoys the puzzle it presents.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Welcome to Gallery 200!

Gallery 200 is an art gallery in West Chicago that’s run by artists, for artists, featuring the work of local creators in all sorts of mediums! Paint, markers, felt, jewelry, dishware… to paraphrase, “you can walk through three times and always find something new.”

My experience so far has specifically been at the exhibit openings, an evening reception with snack food, several of the artists, and, this month, live music! The gallery is usually open on afternoons, Wednesday through Sunday, and I’ve just learned they offer workshops as well! It’s such a magical little corner of the world, truly, full of pretty things and lovely people.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Show Us Your Wild Side

I have to tell you, looking up whether I’d already blogged this one was substantially more difficult than I expected – apparently there’s a lot of posts with “wild” and “side” in some combination or another! Today, however, I’m specifically talking about Wild Side, a dice game that actually takes a decent amount of precision!

Rather than the behavior of the players, “Wild Side” refers to the “Wild” side of the dice, which is a crucial part of gameplay. This is, in essence, a speed matching game – all players roll at the same time, and if any players match both a Wild side and something else, the first to slap the card in the middle steals a die from the other. Multiplayer is uncomplicated by only scoring one match per roll, no matter how many are possible – excepting multiple matches with the same person – and all-Wild matches with anything, while your last die has to match with everyone. More overarchingly important, however, is that the rolling is targeted: you have a designated square of felt your dice have to land on, or you can’t benefit this turn! You can match – that is, other people can match with you – but you can’t cash in your match with anyone else. Additionally, false positives are penalized, with the gun-jumper sacrificing a die to the middle. The next person to actually match gets that die too!

All of this comes together to form a game that’s surprisingly difficult, balancing precision, speed, and perception in the struggle to steal your neighbors’ dice. As one does. The game ends when someone runs out of dice to lose, and whoever has the most wins!

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Hispanic Heritage Fest at the Zoo

Yesterday played host to Brookfield Zoo’s Hispanic Heritage Fest, an absolute blast of an event I hope they bring back in future years! Events we didn’t get to included the bilingual story times and games, and… that’s about it! There was enough in the schedule that we didn’t make it to every single item in a given category, and enough room in the schedule to hit a little bit of everything.

Events we did get to included multiple Zoo Chats featuring thematically appropriate animals, like Andean condors, llamas, and Eastern screech owls; various dance performances; and the general wandering a zoo entails, with special signage listing which Spanish-speaking countries each species heralds from! Say that five times fast. There were also community groups and vendors set up for a few hours in the East Mall, and special menu items at the nearest food sources. All in all, a lively, educational time!

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Out of Office

My friends, I am deep down the rabbit hole of garden planning and recipe research and can’t bring myself to write an in-depth post this week. Instead I will offer you a handful of the meals we’ve enjoyed: a watermelon, mint, and feta salad which needs no real recipe; a spinach mint dip, with equal parts plain yogurt and spinach and smaller parts dried mint and walnuts; and Kulajda, a Czech mushroom soup we had with poached eggs. The first two especially have been helping with our mint problem!

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Duck… Duck… Not Goose!

I’ve been using DuckDuckGo on mobile for a while now, since hearing about the feature that keeps your other apps from sharing your data with each other. Aside from that, DuckDuckGo is a browser and a search engine, without the targeted advertising of its competitors.

This is both their appeal and their business model: they don’t collect your personal information, and they don’t use it. The ads that they make money off of? Paired to be on-subject with what you’re currently searching, not some behind-the-scenes profile of who you are and everything you like. Truthfully, I’d have swapped them in as my primary on desktop a long time ago, if only switching browsers wasn’t so tedious.

Spoiler alert: it wasn’t! Once I finally plucked up the courage to transfer my digital life, I found out that DuckDuckGo has an “import bookmarks and passwords” option, which did most of the work for me! Since then, I’ve discovered that the desktop version also blocks tracking attempts, pop-ups, and most cookies, and has an omnipresent fire button with which you can wipe out all cookies, caches, browser history, and permissions, except on websites you’ve specifically and deliberately fireproofed. (The mobile version has this too!)

I’ve been further and perhaps most delighted by Duck Player, however. Privacy and self-determination are all well and good, but can they hold a candle to watching YouTube videos without the ads?! The answer is yet to be determined.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

The Great Mystery That Is Language

It’s not exactly a secret that I love languages, generically and in specifics. So I’ve been consistently delighted by K Klein, a YouTube channel all about linguistics!

Sort of like Tasting History, this is somewhere I go for specificity. Give me this very zoomed-in little niche of your science, whether the focus is on a specific language, specific feature, or specific event! K Klein covers a little bit of everything, from French’s spelling system to temporal pronouns to spelling reforms, which has given me both a deeper understanding of languages I speak, and a sort of starter platter as to the fascinating phenomena other languages offer!

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail