I don’t think someone heavily opposed to gaming would be considered a normie, they would be in their own separate extremist camp also apart from the average person.

I like Levar Burton Reads. His voice is so soothing. You can pick a story with a topic you are less interested in for nighttime listening since there are plenty to choose from.

Blizzard also has Overwatch, StarCraft, Heroes of the Storm, and Hearthstone.

I don’t really know the Activision side. I was a big Blizzard fan before learning about the Cosby room and their treatment of women in the workplace.

Microsoft lost an antitrust lawsuit a long time ago regarding making internet explorer a required part of Windows, so they had to allow other browsers in Windows for competition’s sake, but they didn’t get broken up. That might be what you are thinking of. I can’t think of anything Intel related though.

I hadn’t heard of the term until now either, but I quit playing shooters nearly 20 years ago so it’s also not a genre I’ve really kept on top of.

One of my earliest memories is spontaneously picking up the phone to call a friend, hearing a bunch of modem screeching, then hearing my boomer dad cursing up a storm in the other room because I had probably just killed his Doom session. Some of the boomers were Dooming just fine! The younger boomers were only in their early 30s when it came out, it’s not like they were too old to adopt new tech at the time.

The Warlock is pretty strong, I can understand that being frustrating at times. My group doesn’t take the game too seriously so it hasn’t been a problem for us having it be a bit unbalanced, but with people who are more strategy focused I can understand preferring the other games. I didn’t know there was an updated version of House in the Hill, I will have to read up on that!

For a game that’s not on your list, Unfathomable is one I’ve been playing a lot lately. It’s a hidden identity game where you’re on a ship and the ship’s crew and passengers are combating Lovecraftian horrors that keep climbing aboard from the depths while trying not to run out of food and fuel and sanity before you escape. You or one of your companions may turn out to be a cultist who is summoning the dark ones and attempting to sabotage the escape efforts.

I love the Betrayal games: Betrayal at House on the Hill (horror), Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate (fantasy), and Betrayal Legacy (legacy horror) for a campaign style version that is linked over multiple sessions.

For anyone who isn’t familiar with them, the players build out a map by exploring a building or city one tile at a time, collecting items and buffs along the way and triggering events. After a certain point a trigger is reached when the “haunt” stage begins. At that point, one player typically becomes a traitor with unique abilities or monsters to control and gets the traitor’s tome - a book explaining their abilities and win condition. The rest of the group gets a different book explaining what the group must do to survive and what interactions they can do to foil the traitor’s plan. There are a bunch of different haunt scenarios in the books and they are chosen based on the last tile revealed and card drawn, so you never know quite what you’ll be facing in the end.

Communities are the equivalent to subreddits. I don’t think I have seen a board gaming specific one yet, but I also haven’t tried to look for one.

I love Sentinels of the Multiverse. Every player picks a different superhero with its own unique deck and powers, the villain is a separate deck, and there is an environment that adds a bit of chaos and having so many individual components you can swap out makes for a very high replayability. I love cooperative games, too, and this being cooperative is nice if you want to include someone who is less experienced in games because nobody is going to be out to exploit them. I’ve never been much of a superheroes fan, but the game plays so well. That’s one that has gotten played over and over in my house for many years at this point. It’s also available on Steam if you want to play with someone remotely, but I do prefer playing the physical version when possible.

Beehaw is unique in not allowing users to create new communities, you’d have to convince the Beehaw admins to make it (who want fewer, broader communities with more engagement instead of tiny niche communities) or create one on the servers that do allow users to create communities. You can always create it on a different server and share it in a Beehaw community you think is relevant to get Beehaw users to subscribe though.

The dialog is painfully slow. I agree on that.

In the story there are major structures that have to be built to specifications (and plenty of minor ones early on), though for the major ones you just have to supply materials and villagers will complete them for you if you don’t feel like trying to match a huge blueprint block by block. There are other parts of the game where you have lots of leeway and get general requests for things like a certain type of kitchen or bedroom that tell you what furniture and decorations are needed to create that room, but it’s up to you to build it as large or small as you want and embellish it and you can use any type of blocks you want for the walls and flooring if you’ve got a preferred aesthetic in mind. There are also whole islands where it’s just free form build whatever you like. At the end game you can buy materials instead of gathering them yourself if you want and just build to your heart’s content. You also get some better building tools as the story progresses.

I’m getting ready to play 5e with some friends. We were supposed to start last week, but the DM had a migraine and it got postponed. I’ve only done a one shot before, so this will be my first proper ongoing campaign with progression.

I wouldn’t call this unpopular because it’s disliked, just unknown to a lot of people because I don’t think it was marketed much in the US. One of my all time favorite games is Dragon Quest Builders 2. It’s got just the right difficulty for me where it’s mostly easy with a few challenging boss fights that might take a few tries to master. It’s got a nice balance between questing, building, and farming. It’s a bit silly, but it gets to be cute and endearing. I love the graphics. You’re building in 3D with blocks like Minecraft but it’s actually pretty, Minecraft was always too ugly for me to get into it.

I only know about this game because Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest games were my boyfriend’s favorite growing up and it’s still his favorite series.