Lucas Wagner

Canadian waiter: Do you need the machine?
CDN customer: Yes
US customer: Umm. (Gulp) What is the machine?

US waiter: (Takes card away to back room)
CDN customer: Whoa! where are you going with my card?!

Do you follow baseball? Do you not follow baseball? It does not matter. Please listen to Phillies announcer John Kruk, with the team up by ten runs and not much happening, talking about what he learned at the Franklin Institute. You will not be sorry.

bsky.app/profile/luca...

Betrayal at Baldur's Gate Explore the city, discover its mystery, and face the traitor amongst yourselves....

BETRAYAL AT BALDUR'S GATE (boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/22...) — Some neat D&D theming on this variant of one of my favourite board games, but enjoyable even if you're not a dungeonhead. (Our group sped through this one, getting the Haunt on the first possible roll.)

Dixit Give the perfect clue so most (not all) players guess the right surreal image card.

DIXIT (boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/39...) — I love the twist on "make players guess the correct thing" in this game, where you're trying to make some but not all players choose your card. We played with an 8 player group for this one and it still felt fast-paced.

Jamaica Race around Jamaica to claim its spoils. Beware! The fastest doesn't always win!

JAMAICA (boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/28...) — A fun pirate-themed "race around the board and collect resources" game. My one knock against it was the rules being on one giant map-sized sheet, making quick reference a challenge. I'd play it again!

🎲🧵 Sunday board game review thread for August 3, 2025:

I miss rural newspapers where the headlines were nice and big.

Maybe you've been offline all day? Maybe you've wondered if "art crime reporter" was a real beat? Maybe you didn't know the US government is currently selling four very valuable artworks on a sad looking auction website? Or maybe you just want to know what experts think might affect actual bids?

Logged on and fully gilded

Pac-Man, famously, was a game that with sufficient practice you could play until a game-breaking integer overflow bug because the behavior of the enemy “ghosts” was predictable enough to reach a level that the designers considered self-evidently impossible to reach.

With Tom Lehrer's passing, I suppose this is a moment to share the story of the prank he played on the National Security Agency, and how it went undiscovered for nearly 60 years.

There were also some good ideas but bad rolls, like when our beautiful idiot barbarian rolled a 1 on an investigation check.

He did not find the briefcase's secret compartment with the important evidence. He did find the briefcase's other secret compartment with thousands of loud jellybeans

The "permissive clue-finding" part in particular guided my approach. If my players have a good idea for where to search (or who to interrogate) and roll something good, then that's on me as the DM to come up with a clue that fits in that location.

Three Clue Rule Mystery scenarios for roleplaying games have earned a reputation for turning into unmitigated disasters: The PCs will end up veering wildly off-course or failing to find a particular clue and the enti

For my D&D group, I recently wrote and ran a fun little murder mystery adventure. When putting it together, the most useful thing I read was the Three Clue Rule: thealexandrian.net/wordpress/11...

If you're a Canadian dev directly affected by these changes on Itch or Steam, I want to talk to you.

In case the alphanumeric codes are important, note that there's a typo in the alt text: the character between "H" and "77" appears to be either an O or a 0 but not a ).

YouTube video by Jimmy Kimmel Live Guest Host Alan Cumming on Attacks Against the Trans Community & Bringing Kindness Back in America

Alan Cumming used his monologue guest-hosting for Kimmel to express his righteous indignation on behalf of trans people.

Next Level Board Game Cafe Take your board games to the Next Level

I played these at the Next Level Board Game Cafe in Mountain View, USA (nextlevelboardgamecafe.com). They have a social thing every Sunday morning (and Thursday evening), and it's been nice to hang out in person with new people who I don't work with for a few hours each week.

Concept Select icons to help your team guess a secret word or phrase.

CONCEPT (boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/14...): Very fun "guess-the-thing" game, like Pictionary but with a shared, limited vocabulary. Designed for team play but we ended up just guessing as a group without tracking points. Would definitely play again.

Word Traveler Tourists use limited words to explore the world's most visited cities!

WORD TRAVELER (boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/40...): Cooperative game where you clue fellow players using limited vocabulary into following a path. We had a rough go of this one, with multiple zero-point rounds. A neat concept, but didn't really click for our group.

The Search for Planet X Plan, scan, and theorize to find a new planet at the edge of our solar system.

THE SEARCH FOR PLANET X (boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/27...): Fascinating deduction game. Felt like the four of us were doing competitive turn-based sudoku. An app is involved, but most of it is pencil and paper. I liked it!

🎲🧵 Sunday board game review thread for July 20, 2025:

Okay, here’s my pitch:

1) BC Rail should operate Squamish–Whistler–Pemberton–100 Mile House with a new fleet of Stadler FLIRTs

2) BC Ferries should add a passenger-only route from the Lower Mainland to Squamish, integrating fares and schedules with the new BC Rail service

20 years of Canada’s same-sex marriage revolution | Xtra Magazine The dream of a handful of queer couples to have their love recognized in law catalyzed a global movement

When Parliament passed the Civil Marriage Act in 2005, Canada was just the fourth country to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide.

I find my cat annoying because she spends all day screaming, yowling, and begging for a pinch of Mexican Style Four Cheese Blend, but one day no one in this home will scream, yowl, or beg for Mexican Style Four Cheese Blend and I will be sad

One thing I've heard people worry about: since the new fee is *technically* refundable (after a period of several years, though), will employers who need their employees to travel to the US for business reimburse them for this extra $250, or will they put that financial burden on the employee?

A snap from Aldus PageMaker, the DTP program for Mac, first released in 1985.

Aldus PageMaker sounds like the name of a LOOM protagonist from the Guild of Printers.

Behold, the Great Press, where the Words are set Present and Correct.