No longer on top

Something strange just happened. Gloomhaven has been toppled from it's number one spot.

Gloomhaven is a fantasy-themed, campaign-based tactical skirmish game, in which players try to triumph in combat-based scenarios which scale in difficulty depending on the number of players. The game is cooperative and campaign driven, with one to four players working their way through a branching story consisting of 95 scenarios. The campaign develops in a legacy format, with stickers that are placed on the board and cards and sealed envelopes that are opened when certain criteria are met. 

- Lifted directly from Wikipedia.

I started to play Gloomhaven a few years ago. Now it is a big hefty game. Both physically and technically. The sheer amount of components makes it a challenge to bring to the table. But also the complexity of the game makes it a one of the most involving games that I have ever played.

And I love it.

The Pandemic got in the way of playing of course. With something as complex as this, not being able to get together to play put effectively a full stop on this game. Now as the world returns to normal, our original group of players is disbanded somewhat (we still meet up occasionally) but it's harder to get something like this to the table.

But that hasn't diminished my enjoyment of the game. I also splurged out on the sequel, Frosthaven.

As well as a fan made publication, the Crimson Scales.

Gloomhaven's popularity made it move straight to the number one spot on Boardgamegeek's list. A spot which it has held on to for the past 5 years. But the weighting algorithm used on the site penalises older games as it gradually de-ranks them, and this mechanism saw Gloomhaven lose the top spot to another game, Brass: Birmingham.

I can't comment on the viability of this game getting to No.1 as I haven't played it. But it certainly wouldn't get to such a high spot without a good number of people liking it. Which is the reason why it does appear on my wishlist for games I'd like to get in the future. The theme of the game is very common. The industrial nature is an ideal suggestion for avid gamers all trying to vie with each other but with a little bit of co-operation thrown it. 

But there is something else at play here.

There is a game within the game. You see the mechanism used by BGG to rank games, can lean to manipulation of the results. It's also possible to "own" a game which hasn't actually been produced. Haters tend to rank a game as a 1 to get it to drop. Lovers tend to put it as a 10 to get it to rise. But they don't always balance out. In fact the whole BGG ranking system has a number of "fudges" in it. There is an interesting report on it all.

But for me, Gloomhaven will be my number one. Although once I get round to playing Frosthaven, maybe that will join it in the top spot?

Update: Well it seems that others have also found this to be somewhat shady. The listings have now changed. Either the Brass haters have started lowering the Brass scores, or the GH lovers have upvoted Gloomhaven. Either way Gloomhaven is back in the No.1 spot.

The Geeks are Revolting

There is a stereotypical image of Dungeons & Dragons players. These social outcasts sit around a table, often placed in a basement, and create fantastical stories involving, well, Dragons, more often or not, in a Dungeon. This has been portrayed many times in popular media, usually putting them as people who you wouldn't want to be associated with.

But recent media has improved their image. And yes, back in my teens, I was exactly like this. We did meet in the basement of a friends house where we created our own stories that lasted for years. Friends came and went between the group and we spent many a weekend down dungeons, in swamps or flying between the stars, or... well just anywhere our imagination took us. It was a time that started midday on a Saturday, and a brief stop in the evening for a trip down the local chippy, before resuming into the small hours or even in the middle of the next day.

So what do these quiet, unassuming people do when they're not sitting huddled up? Do they venture out into the real world. Well, lets leave the world of LARPing alone, but consider instead the world of business.

Behind every game are a set of rules. And behind every set of rules is a publisher who made and sold them. The biggest of which, back in the day, was Gary Gygax and TSR, the creator and publishers of Dungeons and Dragons. OK, the story is a little more complicated than that, but through a series of mergers, acquisitions and the usual business shenanigans, the current owner/publisher is Wizards of the Coast, now a subsidiary of Hasbro.

And for the past few weeks there has been an uproar across the Internet as changes to the gaming system of D&D had been proposed which affected all players, and future players of the games. Way back in the depths of time (2000), WotC published the Open Game License version 1.0a to release the rights to the D&D third edition to publishers to make their own content for the games. And many did. This has allowed the game to flourish. To be used in stories, campaign, be made into Youtube shows and cartoons, and eventually up to TV series and, due for release in March, a big budget movie.

But at the start of the year, WotC threw out a bit of a storm where they wanted to revoke this license and introduce a new one. One which wanted to real in some of the money that people were making on their intellectual property with the hope of cashing in, and nobody was surprised when it all blew up in their faces. WotC initially said they wanted to prevent people from using it in blockchains, NFTs, and undesirable content. But the way they wrote the clauses had such a wide reaching impact that players and publishers alike took to the streets with torches and pitchforks to protest. A thousand memes were produced, a thousand voices in protest and people started to create their own license. How dare they withdraw their rights to the game. The initial license was supposed to be in perpetuity. But this revocation meant that people could lose their income. Could lose their jobs. Could lose their fun.

• The first change was that the new OGL was that a company who created works under the new OGL v1.1 would have to report the works they are creating to WotC, and if over $50,000 is generated, the revenue would also have to be reported.  The creators making over $750,000 on their OGL-licensed Works would then have to pay a royalty of 20-25% on the excess amount.  The royalty is higher on products sold to the trade than on Kickstarter-funded products.  Either percentage is far higher than conventional licensing royalties, and would substantially dissuade publishing of any significant quantities of OGL content by a single publisher.
• A second, more controversial, provision of OGL v1.1 grants ownership of the OGL works to their creator, but gives WotC the perpetual, irrevocable right to use their works in any way it sees fit without payment.
• A third asserts restriction was that despite granting "perpetual" rights to use the game mechanics in products created under it, is no longer in effect and will be replaced by the new license, which WotC can revise with 30-day notice.
• A fourth prevents commercial publication for virtual tabletop platforms. Hasbro purchased digital roleplaying companion D&D Beyond from Fandom last year and wanted to restrict access because this would be the focus of their forthcoming push into the digital market.
• Finally, a fifth change would have required OGL publishers to rapidly accept the new terms or cease selling all OGL products.

As you can imagine this was a storm of unimaginable consequences. Garnering thousands of signatures on petitions, the formation of other gaming licenses that publishers flocked to. It was a storm like no other.

The pressure grew too much. Hasbro caved.

Come not between a gamer and their enjoyment. For you will feel a wrath so mighty that your very bones will shatter under the thousand footfalls of the revolting geeks.

Regular updates?

I've been extremely irregular in updating this blog. Why?

Well a lot of the work I do can have serious ramifications for others. I work on sensitive data sets, servers, and with information that carries personal information. So I can't post screens shots, or even some code. But that doesn't mean that I'm not finding new things, answering questions, or even finding new things to print.

But this is supposed to be a Tech Blog. It's not very technical unless I a) blog something, and b) write something technical. So I'm going to have to bring it back to some semblance of normalcy. Which means I need to pull stuff together to post about. And at least try and increase the rate of posting. Can I make it daily? No, I don't think so. But it does at least need to be a little more regular.

So lets start with me working set of technology. It's no secret that I prefer Linux over other OSes. Now technically, MacOS is based around a Unix system. It's pretty good and reliable (well mostly) but the biggest reason why I don't go anywhere near it is that I hate the Apple ethos of gouging consumers with over priced products. They are literally ripping people off in the name of branding.

Besides which, the majority of tools that I use on a daily basis are based around Linux. I use Ubuntu as my core system at home. Even The Wife also uses Ubuntu. Why do I use it as opposed to any other flavour? Well mostly because it's in common usage, and if I come across any issues with it, then I don't have to waste time trying to figure out the problems as I can be reasonably sure that somebody else may have come across the same issue and may have blogged the answer. Fortunately any issues like that have been few and far between.

Any other OSes that I run are done via VirtualBox. I've used VB for years and it's pretty reliable. Yes there are plenty of other virtualisation services out there, but VB is what I stick by. I also have many multi-bootable flash drives that boot into many various tools and utilities. I even have a few secure drives that are multi-boot as well.

How many games did I play this year?

It's no secret that I play board games. I own quite a few of them. But how many did I play this last year? A few. Not as many as I'd hoped to. But then again, there is this whole plague thing going around, and it's only this latter half of the year that I started going out and about a bit more.

So most of these games were played via Boardgame Arena. But here's a list:

Splendor (6)	7 Wonders Duel (5)	Coup (5)	Takenoko (5)	7 Wonders: Architects (4)	Bärenpark (4)
Century: Spice Road (4)	King of Tokyo (4)	PARKS (4)	Potion Explosion (4)	7 Wonders (3)	Azul (3)
BaristaCat (3)	Jaipur (3)	Kingdomino (3)	Patchwork (3)	Ramen Fury (3)	Santorini (3)
The Spill (3)	Carcassonne (2)	Century: Golem Edition (2)	CuBirds (2)	Get on Board: New York & London (2)	Lost Cities (2)
Nidavellir (2)	Sobek: 2 Players (2)	Solar Storm (2)	Sushi Go! (2)	Via Magica (2)	Viticulture (2)
Creature Comforts (1)	Dice Hospital (1)	Dice Theme Park (1)	Escape the Dark Castle (1)	Expedition: Northwest Passage (1)	Forbidden Desert (1)
Hike! (1)	The King Is Dead (1)	Love Letter (1)	Lucky Numbers (1)	Race for the Galaxy (1)	Res Arcana (1)
Saboteur (1)	Space Base (1)	Sushi Go Party! (1)	Tapestry (1)	Ticket to Ride (1)	Wingspan (1)

Grand total: 112

Hopefully there will be a lot more games played next year.