Life MGMT: SU&SD Newsletter #57

Quinns: Welcome to the Shut Up & Sit Down behind-the-scenes newsletter,  everybody. Once again, we cannot thank you enough for donating. Shut Up  & Sit Down is always growing, changing and trying new things, but  one constant for the last 10 years is that you folks, our audience, have  made it all possible.

You’re the best. And you specifically, the human being reading this right now? You might be the best of all.

Matt: We simply don’t have the scientific equipment to disprove it.

Quinns: It's so expensive.

Quinns: Here’s my personal tidbit on what to expect on the site in the next  month: A goofy, juicy video review of the hidden movement game Mind  MGMT, based on the comic of the same name.

I’m not yet ready to say precisely how good this game is, but I am  definitely ready to call what this game calls its “SHIFT system”  absolutely brilliant. It’s like a scientific breakthrough in the field  of Making Sure You Play the Board Game You Just Bought More Than Twice  Before Losing Interest.

In a nutshell, the SHIFT system is a pleasingly-packaged array of little  sealed expansions that each help one of the two sides in Mind MGMT, and  whoever loses each game immediately gets to crack open one of these  boxes and be presented with a dramatic new tool that they get to deploy  in the next game.

But these expansions aren’t simply additive. Rather, they’re a  selection of modules that each side gets to choose from, with sides the  keep losing getting to bring more and more toys to the next game, OR  electing to bring fewer toys so that their opponent has to bring less. So you can additionally make the game more or less complex based on how you feel that night.

If you’re not convinced, just wait for my video review to see how it works in practice. It’s just terrific.

Tom: Mind MGMT has been a joy to take a bite out of recently because it’s  brought a hell of a lot of joy into a genre I thought previously just…  wasn’t into? I’ve always found hidden movement games a bit too stressful  or a bit too long or a bit too boring and Mind MGMT is none of those  things. It’s sharp, it’s tense, it’s elastic. I can’t wait to play more.

Outside of that, I know that I’m working on a big review that  should come out the week after you see this newsletter. It’s been  stewing in a weird, bubbly notes document for a long, long time and I  don’t know if that fermentation process will yield good results! We’ll  have to see - but I’m feeling more confident in my video production  abilities than ever these days, so I think I’m in good shape to tackle  it. Wish me luck!

In actual life terms - I’ve moved to Brighton! Even though my flat  is falling apart in various ways, I’m having a lovely time emerging from  the pandemic into a place that’s endlessly friendly and welcoming. And  I’ve played so many board games with my HANDS! It’s weird adapting to  the idea that this is the default way of doing the job, after most of my  time so far being spent playing games digitally. I must say, I do  prefer it like this.

Matt: I  personally don’t think hands will ever catch on? It’s been lovely to  start easing my way back into doing things in the before-times manner,  but it feels like rebuilding has a long way to go! All of the people I  used to love to play games with have left the city or created new, tiny  humans that currently require frankly excessive levels of oversight and  care. It’s definitely time to start finding a new flavour of normal, but  still a bit unclear at this point what Normal for me might even look  like! Everyone has a different pace and flow, and solidarity with anyone  who just straight-up isn’t ready for that next step. We continue to  live within strange times!

I’d like to take a moment here though to thank all of the community  who came to hang out with us over the three AwSHUX events we ran across  the last two years - it was lovely to be able to try and make something  new in the middle of a crowd that emanated such love and patience: I  think as with everything from the last few years, we now likely need a  break from it to recoup and recover, but it’s been such a big part of my  life throughout the pandemic and it’s been lovely to hear that it  brought so many people a bit of warmth and joy.

In terms of New Things though, it turns out that two of the games  I’m reviewing at the moment and broadly enjoy are both auction games -  which I usually really don’t like that much? Who knows what the future  my hold, or what may have been done in secret to my brain.

Ava: Quinns sent me a big, big box of games a few  weeks back, and it has been very enjoyable to get back into the swing of  pulling things out of shrink, punching them out, getting confused by  rule books and then introducing things to people. It never really  stopped, but it used to be so slow, and now it’s starting to happen with  some rhythm. I’m having to recalibrate a little to account for my  excitement at putting a weird range of games in front of people. I’ve  shown a lot of people Cascadia as a solid safe bet. I’ve had to remember  just how stressful some people find games like The Crew and The Mind.  I’ve had to train my teaching mode back, after playing too much with  ‘the team’ who all grok games pretty handily for obvious reasons. And  I’ve played games that have had me baking magical cakes, going on lovely  walks and helping the dead reunite with their family.

In short. Board games! Aren’t they nice!

Elsewhere I’ve been learning a lot of video editing. I helped out  with some of the previews for the convention, and even put together a  practice segment for a review that I’m genuinely proud of? Video is  weird. There’s quite a lot of nudging things around pedantically and  stressfully and then eventually something magic happens and suddenly  it’s delightful. Filming is the opposite though. You work really, really  hard and don’t really know how well it’s gone until much later in the  process. That’s likely a skill that just needs more work. I’m really  hoping you’ll get to see some results soon, but with it being pretty  daunting having your first piece of work going out to a big audience,  I’m glad that we’re finding the perfect time and giving me plenty of  practice. But Ava-fans (Avanatics?) should keep an eye out, I reckon.

I was also pretty proud of my ‘consummate goblin: chaos  professional’ approach to AwSHUX presenting. It’s a weird and hard and  lovely thing to do, and it’s strange watching myself get good at it? I  still worry a lot, but I think I’m building reserves of confidence that I  never knew I had. It’s exciting. It was also a good con for genuinely  weird and interesting games. I’m excited to see more!

What are we video games!  🎮

Matt: It’s  SINGLE-CELL-ENTITY MONTH for what Matt’s been looking at and doing -  I’ve just finished Metroid Dread and was impressed with the extent that  they made boss fights fun, while also deeply unimpressed with the  stealth sections and the ridiculously OTT story. Wouldn’t really  recommend it. Nintendo? See me after class.

Tom: I’ve been playing two games this month that I  can barely talk about without spoilers! I started off playing the DLC  to Outer Wilds - ‘Echoes of the Eye’ - and it made me fall in love with  that game all over again. The shivers that the menu music of that game  gives me are indescribable. The DLC? Just as creative and engrossing as  the base game - a joyous excursion into a new, weird place that hit  every single emotional receptor in my brain. Incredible stuff. BUT I got  pretty sidetracked from that when I took a dive into Inscryption - a  game that I might try and talk about on a podcast, if Quinns will let  me! It’s a deckbuilder by way of an escape room, but it evolves and  changes so much from there in ways I will not spoil! Get it if you’re  curious and you won’t be disappointed.

What are we reading? 📖

Matt: After really enjoying Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky, I hopped  straight into the sequel - Children of Ruin, and found it even more  fascinating and gloopy than the original? I can’t remember the last time  I was so gently dipped into increasingly deep conceptual puddles:  they’re the kind of sci-fi books that never feel challenging, but still  leave you somehow feeling smarter for having read them. Some lovely  entities in this one, well done.

Quinns: Halloween isn’t over until I say it is,  gosh darn it, and I’m keeping the fear alive by reading the scariest  book I’ve found in years- Things We Say in the Dark by Scottish author  Kirsty Logan.

Generally, I haven’t had a lot of luck with horror books. I want to  be scared, but maybe it’s because my wife and I devour horror movies  like trick-or-treaters gobble sweets, but whenever I try one I find  myself slogging through a hundred pages of buildup to get to the next  properly scary scene (and yes, this is an open call for recommendations,  please do write in to quinns@shutupandsitdown.com with books that  scared the crap out of you).

Anyway, this has not been the case with Things We Say in the Dark! This  book gets right under my skin every time I pick it up. That’s partially  because Logan has a clear talent for horror, but I think it’s more  because most of the stories in the book are barely longer than 8 pages.  It’s perfect- you get 7 pages of frightening buildup, something  absolutely horrible happens, and then you start reading the next story  because Logan is so damn good at beginnings and endings, and then  suddenly it’s midnight and you’ve just read eight stories in a row and  now you’re scared to go to the toilet.

Ava: Oh. My. Word. I was recommended Sarah  Gailey’s River of Teeth (which thankfully I found an omnibus with the  sequel called American Hippo, so could roll straight through to the  follow up), and it was delightful in ways I didn’t expect. A bit queer  story about cowboys only the cows are hippos and the horses are hippos  and hippos are amazing. Solid, dramatic adventure fair, with a lot of  kindness but also a lot of surprising tilts into violence. And it’s all  based (loosely) on a real discussion in American politics about solving a  food supply crisis by starting to farm hippos. Alternate history fans  will have concerns that the whole thing is shifted back a century or so  for the sake of adding cowboy hats, but cowboy hat fans will be  absolutely delighted.

Significantly harder work, but also very good, was Pretending by  Holly Bourne. A book that is kind of the opposite of a romcom, exploring  sexual violence, misogyny and patriarchy in a way that is accessible,  gripping and heart-breakingly real. A difficult but worthwhile read.

What are we music!  🎵

Tom: I got into a jazzy mood earlier in the month and was utterly delighted  by Space 1.8 by Nala Sinephro - which darts between moods, modes and  instrumentation in ways that are as playful as they are… wise? My  vocabulary fails me when it comes to records like this. On the other  side of things, I was almost expecting to be delighted by Talk Memory by BADBADNOTGOOD and, predictably, was! It’s fantastic, and well worth a listen even if you’re not expecting to like it in its stark departure from their previous body of  work. I’ve also been enjoying L’etreinte Imaginaire by Auscultation and  Blue Dream by D.Tiffany as gently shuffling house tracks to work to,  and Big Room by Ulla Straus for its mesmeric, relaxing properties before  bed.

Matt: I continue to be delighted and bemused by reading  what Tom has written about music. Meanwhile, I’ve basically just been  mentally reclining into a warm pool for the last few weeks, repeatedly  listening to Pale Horse Rider by Corey Hanson. Just an absurdly gorgeous  album, beautiful stuff.

Tom: Oh! I forgot! Whilst playing some games with  'The Dads', Matt mentioned he'd been listening to Deafheaven's latest  and it's put me on a huge nostalgia spiral of their music. Goodness,  isn't Sunbather just a masterpiece. All their music is wonderful and  even their new record, with its departure from their caustic screeching,  still manages to toe that line between punch-packing and  glitter...ing... glittering. It's good, basically. Glad that Matt got  into it even if he's too much of a wuss for the good stuff ;)

What are we watching? 📺

Matt: Purely  for the sake of continuing my streak of Entity-Based Content, last  night I watched sci-fi film Life and really enjoyed it - the thumbnail  made it look like something contemplative and gentle, but in reality  it’s a delightfully gloopy little romp. Top trash, enjoyed a lot. Hugely  late to the party here, but I also just discovered Nathan For You, and  it might be the best thing I’ve seen in such a long time? Delightfully  wild, very funny.

What are we role-playing? 🧙

Ava: Look.  I’m squeezing in a new header. It probably won’t be permanent. But I  had a chance to playtest Kieron Gillen’s DIE rpg with Kieron himself  GMing, and it was such a wonderful experience that I do want to share it  with you. It’s not a game that’s going to be for everyone, but I also  suspect it will adapt pretty well to different folks. Exceptionally  meta, this is a playable take on Gillen and Stephanie Hans’ comic about  people getting sucked into the world of their role-playing game. I keep  on describing it as ‘being Jumanjied’ which is perhaps unhelpful.  Players play the players of a game, who then become characters in a  fantasy world, in our case it was a reunion of an unlikely closeted  LGBTQAI+ high school group who had had a terrible time after leaving  school and needed to work through some of that. It had some of the most  dramatic and absurd pieces of violence and wonder I’ve ever role-played,  and we all put so much heart into it that it was a genuinely cathartic  experience about discovering the importance of a found family you’d  forgotten about. Lovely, hard, beautiful stuff. I’ve absolutely no idea  if that was the game design or the GM or the group (almost certainly all  three, realistically), so I’m not really in a position to review it,  but I thought I’d like to tell some of you folks! Honestly, I was an  Amazement Knight, and I took on an army of angels with the power of  love, to the tune of Lay all your Love on me by Abba. Magical and weird.