d_breeze

@dr_unorthadox: I've played Above and Below a handful of times and really enjoyed. I actually kickstarted it along with a couple of other people in my gaming group. There are a couple of things we found to be broken in the game though, so we removed them to balance out the game. I've played with 7-8 different people total (at different times) and they all enjoyed it. You can get pretty lucky or unlucky at times, but it's still fun.

@aquablak: I definitely recommend Terra Mystica. If you grab it and like it, I'd also recommend getting the expansion for the new races and map.Suburbia is a good one too, it's a lot more simple than Terra Mystica so it's a lighter game.

I've played Escape from the Cursed Temple. The soundtrack element isn't really too involved, you just have to make sure someone is keeping an ear open to listen from the warnings of the doors closing. Most of the time we'd just tune it out and focus on the game since it's pretty chaotic with everyone rolling dice and moving simultaneously.

I'm part of a meetup group where people just get together and play different kinds of board games. I tend to play more strategy-heavy euro-games and have been playing for a few years. I actually play more board games than video games at this point and have played a pretty wide variety. I don't play PVP (person vs person) and attacking games though because I have irrational anger...

Some personal favorites and types (forgive me if I'm repeating some descriptions, I haven't read through the entire thread):

Worker Placement/Resource Management:

• Viticulture and Tuscany: The theme of this one is that you are operating a winery. You have workers that you place out to take certain actions during different seasons in the year. Viticulture is the base game and Tuscany is the expansion (which makes the game way better!).
• Kingsport Festival: Dice-rolling and resource management. You are a cultist and use your dice to invoke horror Gods and get resources so you can construct different buildings and defeat the investigators when you encounter them.

Co-op:

• Defenders of the Realm: It plays a lot like Pandemic but it's fantasy themed and adds a dice component. Instead of eradicating viruses, you're killing minions and defeating generals.
• Smersh: This is a story-telling co-op game. There's an espionage/spy theme to the game and the story-telling comes from a book of scenarios that are read throughout.

Area Management/Expansion:

• Terra Mystica: You have different races which give you different abilities and the point is to expand your territory and (maybe) build cities by meeting certain criteria.
• Suburbia: You are building a community by buying tiles that represent different things (like parks or restaurants) and they provide something to help your community (like income, more population, or better reputation.

Tech Tree/Time Line:

• Progress: This is a tech tree game, you're "discovering" different technologies in different ages. They "feed" off of each other and can cascade through and keep building.
• Historia: This is a card playing game/time line/tech tree where you are a particular country and go through 3 ages. The cards are the action you're taking. You build up science and military so you can try to conquest and/or advance your technology.

Honorable Mention: The Game of REAL LIFE. It's like The Game of Life, but a lot less kid friendly because it's more like real life.

Kickstarter has a bunch of stuff too if anyone's interested in looking at some ideas/products people are trying to make. Most of the games in the club I go to started as kickstarters.

It's pretty even between two of them. When greeting him I call him Daddy, when I'm talking to or about him I call him Dad. So I voted "Daddy" since I'm apparently a 7 year-old girl :)

(I'm not actually 7 years old, but I am a woman if that makes a difference, which I don't necessarily think it should.)

I've only backed a handful of tabletop board games. I'm in a gaming group so we all back different things so that there's a good variety. I may start looking at other types of games too.

I don't really have a resolution, but there are things I want to work on. Last year most of my focus was on my career so I wasn't able to cultivate many relationships with people. This year I want to work on that area of my life, along with generic stuff like exercising more and eating better. I have a few hobbies I'm picking up (dancing, yoga, and hopefully hiking) and I'm being more intentional with people and building relationships.

I was unemployed from June 2013 to November 2013, then for a couple of weeks in January 2014. I was fresh out of college and after a month of looking I stopped because I decided to study for the FE exam that was in October. I went out and got a seasonal job after the exam and worked in a warehouse for ~6 weeks until I got let go. Fortunately I had passed the exam (which I'm sure helped my resume a ton) and got super lucky applying for a particular job online a couple of weeks after I had gotten let go from my job. I got an interview and was offered the job the following week. I loathe networking so I was really excited that I didn't need to in order to find my current job.

@kakamoura: Also, just so you know I'm not ignoring your response. OP has made it clear that this is not the place for the discussion we started so I'm choosing not to reply here. I'll PM you if you'd like though, I just don't like messaging people directly without them saying it's okay :-)

@hunter5024:

I can understand why it’d be hard for you to talk about it and I commend you for doing so :-) I haven’t had the same experiences as you and can’t truly understand what you’ve been through or how you feel. It’s bs that people would write off your experiences just because they may be in the minority of cases. I find things like that to be kind of ironic actually. I’m a “double minority” myself (black and female), and it is more “acceptable” for me to talk about struggles I’ve had due to those traits than for you to do the same. Just because you’re a white male doesn’t mean you can’t face discrimination (forgive me for stating the obvious =P).

I have my own number of stories about how I’ve been singled out and treated differently because of my race, but like you, I tend not to share them (though it’s likely for different reasons). There is no doubt in my mind that there are stories about white people being disadvantaged in some situations. In the end, it comes down to the individual and his/her situation. However, I feel as though the statistics can’t be written off or ignored just because there are people who have experienced different things. I think looking at the reason why is essential. Looking no further than the result without knowing or understanding the reason why it is the result leaves me unsatisfied.

I understand your last statement too about not liking people to assume that you’ve had things easy because of your skin. People assume the same about me, but in the form of affirmative action. Of course my being a black female is the reason I was admitted to a good university. The reason I’ve become as successful as I have even now that I’m pretty recently out of college has nothing to do with my merit; it was all a handout. /sarcasm May it have helped? Sure, but that’s not all it is. It’s the same with white privilege. Does it help? Sure, but that’s not all it is. And these thing don’t help everyone equally, there are other factors at play.

I hope that things are much better for you now than they have been in the past. Your experiences may seem “laughable” when compared to others, but they are yours and they make up your perspective and who you are. How they made you feel isn’t laughable and it is nothing to be taken lightly. I also have felt all of those “un” words you used at one point or another because of my race and/or gender. Getting over and recovering from past hurts can be very difficult and I wish you the best =D

@kakamoura:

I don’t know if you’ll come back, but I’d be happy to discuss this with you since it’s an issue in which I have interest. I’m not sure if I’m abiding by the rules of the thread by responding this way though, so please forgive me if I’m not. I want to address some of your points and give a different perspective and a bit of history so this will be lengthy :-)

While it’s true that the whole white privilege narrative does cause division and some people use it as a tool to do such, that is not its purpose. I don’t know what your nationality is, but in America, race is still an issue and it still impacts people’s lives. Whether it’s positive (as with white privilege) or negative (as with racism), generally speaking, people are definitely treated differently because of their race.

You are correct that America has its roots in freedom for the most part; however, even looking at those roots, blacks were not generally included in it. Most blacks were enslaved and the racism that perpetuated it carried on through generations (even after slavery was abolished) and has made it systematically more difficult for them to succeed even today.

You said “If a group is employed, less criminally active, having access to education, health-care etc etc, there's absolutely nothing wrong with it and trying to demonize it for some kind moral gymnastics does not make sense.“ I agree that it shouldn’t be demonized that people are successful. But, what is being demonized is that the system in place favors some people over others because of their race. The problem isn’t the success; the problem is how it was attained in some cases. Studies have shown that people with “white sounding” names are 50% more likely to be called back for interviews than people with “black sounding” names even if the individuals are equally qualified. Source 1 Studies have also shown that a white male with a felony record is just as, if not more likely to be called back for an interview than a black male with a clean record. Those are examples of white privilege and those are the types of occurrences about which people are talking (or screaming in some cases). Source 2

The goal of the narrative is to help people realize that being white in America has ingrained advantages because of a system that has been in place for hundreds of years that favors white people. The point isn’t to shame anyone, it is to raise awareness and foster understanding. If people see and understand it then things can change for the better in the future. I personally believe that shame should only be attributed to people for the choices they make, so there is no shame in being born any race, gender, etc. But there can be shame attributed to how you react (or don’t react) to certain situations.

Like I said earlier, I’m open to discussion on this topic, and sorry if this isn’t the intended use for this thread :-)