cthonctic

Very much agreed. A couple months back it would have been the token “I looked at BGG and the #1 board game there looks pretty D&D like so here we are” recommendation.

I’m happy it’s there because it is a very good game - but also highly likely to leave the article’s target audience frustrated and confused.

That’s the actually good Catan version though.

Is it also bland and old-fashioned yet still somehow popular?

We don’t have our devs on call at all. Infra / platform ops are and I think they get 750€ per on-call week (not more than one week out of four) which includes two calls or two hours of call duration whichever is reached first.

After that it’s another 70€ per call or started hour and it’s the same if an expert who is not on call is asked to help out with an issue reported to on-call (but they may not answer / decline as there’s never an expectation to be “soft on-call”)

Overall that’s an okay deal and some sorely needed extra money for the ops guys and gals. But all the same I’m happy that my devs don’t need to plan their lives around an on-call schedule.

Edit: Ah sorry, didn’t even answer all the questions in OP…

We’re in Germany and there is a cooldown time after you fielded an emergency on-call report (which is outside of regular working hours by definition) which is either 8 or 10 hours (not entirely sure since my team doesn’t do on-call as previously stated) before you are allowed to start your regular work time for the following day.
Not sure how they tally up working hours for payroll but if you wake up to a call at 3am then certainly no one expects you to be online again at 8am. If you get a call at 10pm however then you get to start working normally the next day. (unless that issue took forever to troubleshoot ofc)

On-call rotations are one entire week per person who participates (which is not mandatory) and the participants per pool must be at least four - which is why they are pooling web admins, DBAs and other ops folk together.
That seems to work okay even though every so often more specialized know-how is required than the current on-call tech possesses for the topic at hand and then they request extraordinary assistance as described above.

So, Gloomhaven and Betrayal at the House on the Hill (D&D edition). It baffles me that they didn’t mention the actual D&D board games and instead listed two TTRPG systems plus the trashy campaign module for one of them.

Then again, people who are into D&D often really only are into D&D and not willing to branch out very far so that tracks.
Kind of surprised at Gloomhaven being suggested because it has a dungeon crawl theme over a good Euro hand-management engine and most D&Ders are probably scratching their heads at that.

The Isofarian Guard is amazing if you happen to be up for a story-heavy campaign game to play either solo or with another person. I got the first printing and am exstatic, that they only charge 39€ for the new content and previous backers get all of the updated materials bundled in for free. That is exactly how you turn me into a loyal customer.

On the other hand, Board Game Tycoon decided that everything outside of the US no longer exists, so I can’t even buy the Everdell-related stuff I’d like because it simply isn’t available in the EU at all. That is how you spit into a (formerly loyal) customer’s face.

The ones that don’t fit inside a Kallax cube - you should hear my guttural growl when the smaller side is exactly 1 centimeter larger than the cube width - then it goes on top of one of the Kallaxes.

Thankfully it’s not too many games that don’t fit and I have four Kalaxes (ranging from 3x4 to 5x5) to put stuff on top of.
Still, I wish game designers and publishers tried to respect those standard measurements whenever possible.

I really like Dorfromantik as a super relaxed solo game for when I need to calm down after work. Hopefully they’ll do an expansion with more unlockables at some point.

On the whole though, everything covered by SdJ is way too light for me which is why I’ve rarely paid any attention to its nominees and awards.

No, never been. I just looked whether there are any in the wider region but looks like only bigger cities have any, so an hour by car minimum.
I don’t even have any LGS though, so a BGC would have positively surprised me.

I think I would like to visit a really nice one at some point just to try the experience. On the whole I prefer to play my own games - and to buy the games I prefer to play, needless to say - but going to a café with a nice small group and seeing what games they have could be neat.

I’ve enjoyed both On Mars and Weather Machine more than Lisboa although the latter is always lauded as Lacerda’s masterpiece. I really dig the complexity of his designs although it makes the games harder to explain to players who prefer lighter fare.

Aeon Trespass: Odyssey without a doubt. It’s expansive, complex, punishing, rich and has such an amazing narrative.
Heavy campaign games that tell a story are what I am all about and AT:O is the pinnacle of this for me at this point.

That said, I also enjoy Frosthaven quite a bit (Gloomhaven as well because the mechanics are sublime, but the story is definitely a weak point); Legacy of Dragonholt is basically a solo-RPG in a board game box; Sleeping Gods is simpler but nice; Tainted Grail, Etherfields and ISS Vanguard are very neat narratively especially when taking the edge off the resource grind; and finally I am looking forward to the second printing of Oathsworn to fulfill.
Oh, The Hunters A.D. 2114 has been very neat too and I’m looking forward to the new The Hunters A. D. 1492 whenever that is done.

So many great story campaign games and so little time .(especially when getting a group to commit)