The Board Game Faith Newsletter, Issue 23
Hello, Board Game Faithful!
Kevin: I wore a coat today! Amazing. It might stick, or NC USA might veer into a weird October month. It’s like Mother Nature is playing a solo game in October and WE ARE THE BOARD PIECES. So in preparation for enjoying our firepit in the backyard I had a cord of wood delivered, and spent a few days stacking it! (Note the totally unused treehouse.)
Daniel: This fall is our first in a college town with a major football program (American football, not what the rest of the world calls football), and it’s been a delight to see how much the community celebrates the weekly (or biweekly) spectacle of play. Every Saturday or two, the entire downtown is flooded with folks who drive in to cheer on the home team. While no one in our family is a huge football fan, it’s still exciting to see so much life and energy and passion centered around a game.
Behind the Episodes
Kevin: YouTube Shorts and shortform media are all the rage, and I have mixed feelings. We get more views with Shorts and Reels, but does it translate to longterm viewers and engagement? Sigh. I feel old. Let us know your thoughts!
Daniel: I’m really grateful to Kevin for his ability to pick out excerpts from our podcast videos for the Shorts. They make me laugh, at least, and we hope you enjoy them too. As he said, please let us know!
Coming Up
Daniel: Our next episode to be released features our conversation with Liz Davidson, a great board game podcaster and content creator. Plus, she’s also an advocate for the benefits of solo gaming. We discuss her many endeavors in the episode, as well as her atheism and what that it means for her in terms of purpose and value in gaming. We hope you’ll tune in for the great conversation!
Kevin: We’re talking to Shem Phillips of Garphill Games next month! I can’t wait.
Games We're All About Right Now
Kevin: I splurged on yet another stupid epic dudes on a map game – Lords of Ragnarok, mostly because of the great art and it’s an Adam Kwapiński game (Nemesis, Frostpunk). And it’s pretty awesome, even if it’s getting a lot of online hate. You get to build the map up with armies, monsters, and monuments, until it all crashes into the epic timer that is Ragnarok! It’s great.
Daniel: My wife Kristen ordered Village Rails from our friendly local game store recently, and we’ve been enjoying it ever since it came in a couple weeks ago. It’s puzzly, quick, and highly tactical. Plus a fan-made solo variant on BoardGameGeek turns it into a great one-player experience as well.
Spirituality
Kevin: If you’re looking for a daily prayer source, I’m enjoying Lectio 365. It does some great things with scriptures, breathing, prayers, and themes. It’s pretty simple and straightforward, and even has a narration button if you’d rather just listen.
Daniel: This Sunday we’re talking about prayer in my church. Prayer can be a difficult subject for some: when we pray hard for something and God doesn’t seem to answer, we can feel betrayed or abandoned or let down. I have experienced such moments in my own life more than once. And while I don’t have any easy answers, I think it can be comforting to those of us in the Christian tradition that Jesus apparently experienced those kind of feelings as well (most notably on the cross in Mark 15:34, “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”). If Jesus could feel forsaken and yet was assured of God’s love in the end, my hope is that the rest of us can be too.
Media We're Digging Right Now
Kevin: I love the Holly Gibney character that Stephen King has created, and I picked up the audio version of his latest novel with her. I’m really digging Coheed and Cambria, which is just the kind of nutty anthem hard rock that I listened to for much of my adolescence.
Daniel: There’s nothing especially deep about it, but we really enjoyed Netflix’s live-action adaptation of One Piece. It’s kind of like The Princess Bride, Robin Williams’ Popeye, and Pirates of the Caribbean all smushed up with an anime. If that sounds like something you’d enjoy, check it out!
Thank You!
Thanks so much for being a part of the BGF community. We are grateful for each of you and the ways you make the world more awesome. And if you haven’t had a chance to tell us a little about yourself yet, we would love it if you could fill out this form please!