coup and secret hitler are my absolute favorites, it’s like basically all of the fun and intrigue of mafia in ~10 min so you can run multiple games in one night
i also really like kemet which has a lot of the resource management of ttrpgs and can be played with only two players (and up to five) so it doesn’t have to be a dedicated board game night game vs if you have a friend over and wanna kill some time
Mar 25, 2024
Related Recs
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it’s like a mafia type secret role style game. you need at least 5 players but i’ve played with more than the 10 that the game says is the max. it takes a few times to really understand the strategy and all the aspects of it, but if you get a group of folks playing enough then you’ll all start to get into it and soon enough you’ll be accusing each other of being fascists and having a grand ol time
Oct 24, 2024
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i love (and am good at) catan and have multiple different win strategies. for me personally, it’s got great replay value because of the flexibility in strategies. if something youre doing isn’t working, or if other players have foiled your plans, you can quickly get back up on your feet. if you have multiple ppl who feel that way about it, it can be an exciting game til the very last turn.
house rules are also a fun way to change up the game play. depending on the group or the mood, there are a lot of ways you can adjust the rules and gameplay to make either a more chill or more difficult game play experience.
and finally, the expansion packs go fucking crazy. im not huge on them- some can straight up double the time it takes to finish the game- but they do add interesting elements that provide more challenges but also more ways to win.
May 9, 2025
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or any board game turned app, really. its a good way to kill larger amounts of time and with long rounds there’s not any instant gratification. strategy games work your brain, too! i try to play a game of catan/ticket to ride/monopoly in the mornings instead of getting on reels or even PI right away. it makes me slow down and it puts my brain into gear, + i feel productive instead of gross and sluggish like i would post-reels.
Feb 23, 2025
Top Recs from @alaiyo
Mar 23, 2024
a treatise on the attention economy - checked it out on libby and got through it over the course of a work day, a lot of really interesting social and cultural explorations about how time itself is the final frontier of hypercapitalism and what decommodification of our attention and time should look like
the book starts with a story about the oldest redwood tree in oakland and how the only reason it’s still standing is bc it’s unmillable, and how being uncommercializable is essential to our survival. it ends with an exploration of alt social media platforms (mostly p2p ones) and what keeping the good parts of the social internet and rejecting the bad ones should look like
all in all a super valuable read; my only nitpick with the book is that odell isn’t just charting the attention economy but also attempting to “solve” it and relate it back to broader concepts about labor and social organizing, but her background is in the arts which leads to some really wonderful references to drive the points home while also missing some critical racial + socioeconomic analyses that one would expect (or at least really appreciate) from the book she promises to deliver in the introduction. but this does also make the book easier to read which is good because everyone should definitely engage with what she has to say
will definitely be revisiting
Mar 25, 2024
