#utter ramblings

This is obviously not exhaustive nor does it apply everywhere, but here's stuff I could think of

When you fuck up:

"Sorry about that, I haven't had my coffee yet" When you make a mistake in the morning. Doesn't matter if you drink coffee, the phrase is a commonly understood ritual.

"Sorry about that, I've got Monday brain" or something similar. Making mistakes on Mondays is apparently more normal than other days. You can also use this like "It must still be Monday!" on a Tuesday or something, to stretch it out and be hilarious.

Similarly, "Sorry about that, it's been a long week!" if you fuck up toward the end of the week. This implies that you have been working very hard and thus any mistakes are a result of how dedicated you are.

Weirdly I think it might even be socially acceptable to blame your mistakes on any day of the week?? "Sorry about that, it's Wednesday" feels like it would achieve the same effect. Neurotypicals pls feel free to weigh in on this

Social phrases:

(Reasoning - I find it easy enough to talk in most settings other than work. I don't always know what you're allowed to say. You're lowkey expected to get along with your coworkers though, and sometimes even if you do your job amazingly otherwise, this can be important to keeping your job. It's pretty stupid tbh, but it is where we live.)

"Did you do anything fun this weekend?" / "Doing anything fun this weekend?" (Depending on when in the week it is) Good for when you don't know what the fuck to say to a coworker, allows for easy follow up conversation

"Do you want to see a picture of my cat/dog/a cool building I saw last week?" I believe this is more chill than simply showing the picture and expecting the person to be excited, but they may still say yes to be polite. Try and gauge their enthusiasm after you show the thing, but it might be a good way to talk about pets or ask about their pets.

"Any travel plans coming up?" people love talkin about going places even if they don't have shit to say about it. This is a good starter

This one might be unpopular but I love a weird ice breaker question. Just keep some weird questions in your pocket to break out in situations where you don't know what to say. I used to ask my coworkers stuff like "What's the weirdest dream you ever had?" and "Rate your 5 senses in order from most important to least important to you", that kind of thing. Turn into Jonathan Frakes from fact or fiction and just go nuts

Getting in trouble at work:

First off, this is a thing that happens and it does not necessarily spell disaster. A lot depends on your management, rather than you specifically. Try and be realistic when determining how much of the problem is actually your fault vs. a terrible system or terrible management. Don't be afraid to run the situation by some friends as objectively as you can. This is important so you don't beat yourself up over getting in trouble at / losing a job that fucking sucks, but is also important in case it is something you genuinely need to learn from.

Sometimes workplaces will give you vague and nebulous feedback, and expect you to improve from there. This is a death loop and should be avoided at all costs. To try and fight this if it happens, ask for so much clarification it's not even funny. Fight the fear. They will act like you should understand what you're doing wrong, if you don't understand, you need to keep asking for clarification. Ask for documentation. Ask for examples. Etc.

This isn't coming from the place of "so you have a basis in a legal battle" because I'm being realistic and most people don't have the opportunity to sue employers if they're wrongfully terminated because the employers refuse to understand how to help a neurodivergent employee. I'm trying to help avoid some wrongful terminations.

can you guys tell Faith is my favorite thing ever

do I need to talk about it more

CAN I talk about it more? Will the people allow my yapping?

please guys I need to know if it's obvious that this game has taken over my life and it is the reason I breathe

on that note if anyone wants to send in asks abt Faith to hear me yap feel free. If you want to know more lore about the protagonist in IHNFAIME (IHNMAIMS x Faith au) check out the @priest-ted askblog (I am begging for asks)

I want to read more books. I don’t read books. I am voting with my time for there to be more tumblr comments instead.

It was just over a year ago when I first found /r/boardgames and BoardGameGeek, changing my entire perception of the board game hobby and, not coincidentally, how I spend my free time.  

   Here's my super brief board game history:

Before my own "Gaming Enlightenment," my view on board games was founded on the preconceived idea that Risk and Monopoly are the best games the world had to offer, with little gems like Apples to Apples or Stratego thrown in to change the pace every now and then.  Settlers of Catan came along when I was in high school and was leaps and bounds ahead of anything else I had ever played, and in college I heard some other friends talking about a game called Munchkin.  It didn't take long before I was scouring the web for information on expansions to Munchkin, which led me to the board games subreddit where my eyes were finally opened to all the games I had been missing out on for so many years.  In the past 13 months, I've built a reasonable collection of games that includes anything from "party" games like The Resistance to strategy games like Game of Thrones: The Board Game.

(Photo credit to SU&SD)

So what does all this have to do with video games?  Well, before "real" board games entered my life, I spent nearly all of my time at home playing video games, and I had a very limited method of judging whether or not a game was "good" which basically involved seeing how long I could play a game before going back to Counter-Strike.

For me, it's very hard to half-ass a hobby, and when I picked up board gaming, that meant doing research: reading reviews, watching play-throughs, and figuring out what I actually enjoy when I play games.  Board games are not cheap, so doing your due diligence and actually understanding what you want out of a game are key if you don't have giant wads of cash to throw around.

Figuring out what mechanics or elements of a game seem "fun" to you won't just happen overnight - it took me a few months of thinking critically about WHY I did or didn't have fun after a gaming session before I started putting the pieces together - and it's always a work-in-progress.

Here is my list of Things That Make Gaming Fun For Me:

Interesting Decisions: choosing whether you want to upgrade your weapons or send your troops in to get a quick resource boost can both benefit you in different ways, but the harder it is to see which move is most favorable to you, the more interesting the game becomes.  This is by far the most important aspect in determining how much I enjoy a game

Inherent Competitive Aspects: I am a competitive person, I don't do things unless there's some form of challenge, and that can come from either head-to-head conflict with other players or built-in challenges that require teamwork and/or hard thinking

Unique/New Design: most games are built on tried and true mechanics that have worked for dozens of years, but any new elements, often regardless of execution, can have a fun factor associated with them as they provide new ways to think and approach situations

Player Input-Over-RNG: giving every player the option to choose a resource out of the same pool, rather than rolling a die to see what they gain, allows for more strategy, rewarding more creative and cunning plays (this can also be translated as skill-over-luck)

Social Interaction: don't get me wrong, I can play solo games and be content for hours and hours, but I definitely feel that the most rewarding experiences come out of games we can share with our friends, and with more human variables, each game has the potential to be vastly different

Now, I came up with this list of "things" in an analysis of board games only, but it didn't take long for me to find that these apply just as appropriately to video games.

The reason why I hadn't previously thought about video games on this wavelength is due to one key difference between the two media: boardgames cannot hide what they truly are.  The design elements in a board game are laid out to the players in a very raw, exposed form.  Players read the rulebook as soon as they cut open the shrink wrap and expose every single joint and bone that comprises the game itself - you immediately figure out what the mechanics are and what they're supposed to do.  An Enlightened board gamer can pick up the rulebook to Munchkin and immediately see all of it's flaws: it's shallow, it's entirely luck based, it has a low skill cap, and there are very few options the player can actually make.  The game wears a formal gown of silly artwork and chaos, but once you take a look at the mechanics, you see that the game is happy to remove it's gown and reveal that underneath, it's wearing less than a pregnant dancer in a rural Iowa strip club.

Video games, on the other hand, are able to spend multi-million dollar budgets to develop the means to disguise themselves in layer upon layer of thick turtlenecks and balaclava.  If you look at Bioshock infinite or The Last of Us, the producers demand extravagant visuals or cutscenes, and while the games are beautiful, players are distracted and unable to see through to the core of the game.  At least I know this is what happened to me, it's the exact reason why I bought Assassin's Creed 3 (and enjoyed it).  Looking back at all of the Assassin's Creed games I've played, I don't regret enjoying AC1, 2, and even Brotherhood, but something felt off with AC3, and I didn't realize what it was until after board games showed me the light.  And by "the light," I mean mechanics behind successful games.

You may have seen my not-so-shining review of Titanfall and felt that I was being overly critical, but I honestly believe that it's simply not a great game, and I came to that conclusion based on my method of how I rate board games.  The only criteria on my list the game does satisfy are Inherent Competitive Aspects and the emphasis on Player Input, but I'm afraid it falls short in every other category.  

In comparison, Counter Strike: Global Offensive meets my criteria by having interesting choices due to the Buying Weapons mechanic where you have to decide how to spend your limited resources, and the strategies involved in the traditional demolition game mode.  It also appeals to Inherent Competitive Aspects with matchmaking/ranked play, an emphasis on Player Input, and encouragement of Social Interaction - if you don't communicate with your team, you're bound for a good, one-way stomping, accompanied by some sophomoric phrases about your mother, I'm sure.  CS:GO does fall short in bringing anything new to the table, being that it is just an updated version of the original, but succeeding everywhere else is what keeps coming back to play more.