Week in review: Week to 13 September
Sep. 15th, 2025 09:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pedanther. Another week where I didn't do many journal entries. I don't think it's just a coincidence that it was also a week with a committee meeting; there's something about having the meeting paperwork to do that seems to block doing the journal entries. It may just be that they're both tasks that should be done as soon as possible but require a chunk of time and mental energy to do; when I do have a chunk of time, I feel like they're getting in each other's way and then I do something else instead.
. At board game club this week, we played Scape Goat and Zoo Vadis.
Scape Goat is a social deduction game where a group of criminals are trying to set up one of the group to take the fall for their actions. The gimmick is that the identity of the fall guy is chosen at random, in such a way that each player starts the game with the name of another player who they have been told is the target, but have to figure out whether they've been given the real name or if they've been given a false name (in which case they're the target and everybody else has been given their name). There's a set of tasks the group has to carry out, which provide opportunities for players to covertly signal their allegiance to each other, in the hope of identifying fellow conspirators without tipping off the target. In the first game we played, one of the other players became convinced that he was being conspired against and ratted us out to the cops, which would have won him the game if he'd actually been the fall guy but instead meant that we all lost. In the second game, we successfully set up the fall guy, with the unwitting assistance of the fall guy himself, who spent the entire game believing he was helping everyone else set a trap for me.
Zoo Vadis is a game about zoo animals jockeying and negotiating to become the star attraction at the zoo. (It's apparently an expanded remake of a game called Quo Vadis that was about political maneuvring in the Roman senate.) You have to get at least one animal from one end of the board to the other to be a candidate for star attraction, but then the winner is the candidate who's collected the most prestige points along the way. I took a while to get a grip on the movement rules and was one of the last players to get a piece to the end of the board, but I ended up in second place ahead of several players who had bypassed opportunities to earn prestige in order to get to the end of the board as soon as possible.
. There was some kind of special event at the local Parkrun this week where people were encouraged to wear brightly coloured outfits; I'm not sure exactly what the occasion was, because I arrived late and missed the pre-run announcements. (It was one of those days where I woke up early enough to get myself thoroughly sidetracked by the time I ought to have been getting ready.) We'd been told about the event a few weeks ago so we could plan outfits, and I'd put aside a brightly coloured shirt to wear, but because I was running late it slipped my mind and I went in my usual Parkrun green.
. I haven't been doing a jigsaw puzzle this week, because there was a puzzle game called Polimines going very cheap on Steam, so I bought that and have been working through that (and the larger sequel, Polimines 2) on the occasions when I would otherwise have been working on a jigsaw. It was pretty easy going at first, something that kept my eyes and hands busy without requiring too much concentration, but now I'm onto the larger puzzles with more obtuse clues that require real mental effort not just to figure out what to click on but also to avoid absent-mindedly clicking in the wrong place and having to start over.
. Still listening to The Hidden Almanac. There's currently a story arc going on where the in-universe radio station that broadcasts The Hidden Almanac has been bought out by new owners that are trying to revamp the station's image; Reverend Mord is tenaciously defending his turf, but has not been able to prevent his usual eerie underscore being replaced by upbeat bluegrass music.
. At board game club this week, we played Scape Goat and Zoo Vadis.
Scape Goat is a social deduction game where a group of criminals are trying to set up one of the group to take the fall for their actions. The gimmick is that the identity of the fall guy is chosen at random, in such a way that each player starts the game with the name of another player who they have been told is the target, but have to figure out whether they've been given the real name or if they've been given a false name (in which case they're the target and everybody else has been given their name). There's a set of tasks the group has to carry out, which provide opportunities for players to covertly signal their allegiance to each other, in the hope of identifying fellow conspirators without tipping off the target. In the first game we played, one of the other players became convinced that he was being conspired against and ratted us out to the cops, which would have won him the game if he'd actually been the fall guy but instead meant that we all lost. In the second game, we successfully set up the fall guy, with the unwitting assistance of the fall guy himself, who spent the entire game believing he was helping everyone else set a trap for me.
Zoo Vadis is a game about zoo animals jockeying and negotiating to become the star attraction at the zoo. (It's apparently an expanded remake of a game called Quo Vadis that was about political maneuvring in the Roman senate.) You have to get at least one animal from one end of the board to the other to be a candidate for star attraction, but then the winner is the candidate who's collected the most prestige points along the way. I took a while to get a grip on the movement rules and was one of the last players to get a piece to the end of the board, but I ended up in second place ahead of several players who had bypassed opportunities to earn prestige in order to get to the end of the board as soon as possible.
. There was some kind of special event at the local Parkrun this week where people were encouraged to wear brightly coloured outfits; I'm not sure exactly what the occasion was, because I arrived late and missed the pre-run announcements. (It was one of those days where I woke up early enough to get myself thoroughly sidetracked by the time I ought to have been getting ready.) We'd been told about the event a few weeks ago so we could plan outfits, and I'd put aside a brightly coloured shirt to wear, but because I was running late it slipped my mind and I went in my usual Parkrun green.
. I haven't been doing a jigsaw puzzle this week, because there was a puzzle game called Polimines going very cheap on Steam, so I bought that and have been working through that (and the larger sequel, Polimines 2) on the occasions when I would otherwise have been working on a jigsaw. It was pretty easy going at first, something that kept my eyes and hands busy without requiring too much concentration, but now I'm onto the larger puzzles with more obtuse clues that require real mental effort not just to figure out what to click on but also to avoid absent-mindedly clicking in the wrong place and having to start over.
. Still listening to The Hidden Almanac. There's currently a story arc going on where the in-universe radio station that broadcasts The Hidden Almanac has been bought out by new owners that are trying to revamp the station's image; Reverend Mord is tenaciously defending his turf, but has not been able to prevent his usual eerie underscore being replaced by upbeat bluegrass music.
