Jeff Vogel

Founded Spiderweb Software in 1994. Has written many games, including the Exile, Geneforge, Avadon, and Avernum series. Avernum 4: Greed and Glory out now!

[Jeff Vogel @spiderwebsoft]

Avernum 4: Greed and Glory is out! The 31 year old cult classic Avernum series is back as a unique indie RPG set in a vast underworld nation.

Fight a monster plague. Explore the depths. Be loyal or treacherous. Get rich and famous! Huge & full of fun.

https://t.co/QOdFTgNvMu

[Jeff Vogel @spiderwebsoft]

We just posted a quick update for the Geneforge 3 - Detonation Kickstarter. One week to go!

https://t.co/uHKCyNcTbH

[Jeff Vogel @spiderwebsoft]

Racial comedy more edgy than Blazing Saddles is made all the time. For example, Blazing Saddles could totally be remade by someone whose name rhymes with Shmave Shmappelle.

But the 70s and 80s were full of comedies that dissected class politics in America (Arthur and Trading Places are excellent examples) that totally couldn't be remade today, for whatever reason.

[Jeff Vogel @spiderwebsoft]

This is a fun one. For me, Blazing Saddles narrowly edges Airplane. (I did watch both with my kids and both hold up.)

My Hot Take, however, is that Animal House is incredibly worth watching as a dissection of power and the upper class in the 70s. The film is not shy about showing that the kids in Animal House are actually rich, callow assholes.

Finding out that Bluto become a senator (and, in a later Animal House short, president) is one of the most insightful bits of political commentary ever.

[Miles Commodore @miles_commodore]

Which one of these comedies would you recommend most to a 24 year old who hasn't seen any of them?

My cousin Vinny

Blazing saddles

Animal house

Airplane

[Jeff Vogel @spiderwebsoft]

My Spotify feature recommendation: A button by a song that means, "Yes, I love this song, but I have heard it WAY too many times. Never play it again. Play something like it but obscure instead." I'd call it the "The Gambler" button.

Pic related.

[Jeff Vogel @spiderwebsoft]

Last time I will relink this article, but the comments section in it has a lot of really fun stuff.

[Jeff Vogel @spiderwebsoft]

New Blog Post! A little love letter to one of my favorite board games: Clumsy, maligned, iconic old Monopoly. Which is a legit banger if you learn the rules. It's not perfect, but it's wonkiness is part of its charm. If you learn the rules.

https://t.co/eszIWNy4af

[Jeff Vogel @spiderwebsoft]

@SandyofCthulhu @Neuschwabia (For what vanishingly little it's worth, it was my adaptation of a monster adapted from Arduin Grimoire by a DM I played with in 1986 or so.)

[Jeff Vogel @spiderwebsoft]

@SandyofCthulhu @Neuschwabia Well, I mean, "dumber" is kind of depending on the context, isn't it? The doomguards function very well in MY games. My players liked them, anyway.

[Jeff Vogel @spiderwebsoft]

This screenshot depicts the Fuser system. This is a new system in our games where you mutate your character in different ways to support different builds. Some changes simply alter your stats, with bonuses and penalties. Others enable (I hope) entirely different ways to play.

[Jeff Vogel @spiderwebsoft]

Screenshot Saturday pic of Geneforge 3 - Detonation. 11 days left in the Kickstarter, with a big stretch goal getting close. The next full rewrite of an indie cult-classic RPG series going back to 1999! Backers can contribute ideas for a bunch of stuff.

https://t.co/pjZ1XlufSX

[Jeff Vogel @spiderwebsoft]

New Blog Post! A little love letter to one of my favorite board games: Clumsy, maligned, iconic old Monopoly. Which is a legit banger if you learn the rules. It's not perfect, but it's wonkiness is part of its charm. If you learn the rules.

https://t.co/eszIWNy4af

[Jeff Vogel @spiderwebsoft]

I derive delicious, unironic joy from any real world thing that could easily be a Black Mirror episode. (Or fuel a Kurt Vonnegut story.)

Though I would point out that there is absolutely nothing wrong with sharing a car ride in silence, simply enjoying the company of others.

[Sam Altman @sama]

cool use case of chatgpt work i heard last night:

connect your family calendars and explain your kids' interests.

every morning for the drive to school, have it make a podcast that talks about one kid's soccer game that afternoon, one kid's upcoming birthday, some news, etc.

[Andrew Fleischman @ASFleischman]

Polyphemus: Help help no one is killing me!

Other Cyclops: what do you mean no one is killing you?

Polyphemus: this jackass told me his name was no one please help

Other Cyclops: oh that was an easily averted misunderstanding it's murdering time

[Jeff Vogel @spiderwebsoft]

I'm having a lot of fun in the comments for this post. It's helping me avoid working on the annoying section of Geneforge 3 I'm doing today.

[Jeff Vogel @spiderwebsoft]

New Blog Post! A little love letter to one of my favorite board games: Clumsy, maligned, iconic old Monopoly. Which is a legit banger if you learn the rules. It's not perfect, but it's wonkiness is part of its charm. If you learn the rules.

https://t.co/eszIWNy4af

[Jeff Vogel @spiderwebsoft]

@roger_s_84 I am not generally interested in efforts of Monopoly to teach economics. But ... I have to admit the whole "Get ahead first and destroy everyone" thing is a great depiction of First Mover Advantage.

[Jeff Vogel @spiderwebsoft]

@georgebsocial The 15 minutes Dragon's Lair was popular were an extremely fun 15 minutes. :-)

I remember 4 followup games that did the same basic thing. (One of them using a Miyazaki movie!) They died like dogs.

[Jeff Vogel @spiderwebsoft]

@exQUIZitely It was incredibly amazing and awesome and it wqas all we could talk about.

For about 15 minutes.

Then the whole mini-genre vanished overnight. Many such cases.

See also: Guitar Hero/Rock Band.

[doomer @uncledoomer]

let me clear some things up about the odyssey

[Jeff Vogel @spiderwebsoft]

Our Kickstarter for Geneforge 3 - Detonation is halfway done, and we're really thrilled. Two stretch goals down, another coming. Thank you!

We've put up an update about how things are going and the direction the game wants to be taken in here ...

https://t.co/zmujDLpWEZ

[Jeff Vogel @spiderwebsoft]

@JunkersFW190 I am not a fan of Uno, alas.

[Jeff Vogel @spiderwebsoft]

Since Twitter discourse has taken an amusing turn into What Is Wrong With Monopoly, I have my answer.

Ideally a board game will "trend toward conclusion." That is, every move brings the players inexorably closer to the game being finished and them getting their lives back.

What makes Monopoly end? When people get monopolies, build on them, and murder the other players.

To get a monopoly, unless you are super lucky about the properties you land on, you will need to trade with other players. If the other players don't know they can trade or refuse to trade, monopolies will not form and the game will go on eternally.

This is a HUGE problem in the design and the source of everything about Monopoly's bad reputation. Its enormously popular spiritual successor, Catan, trends mercilessly toward an ending.

Once monopolies exist and people start getting unlucky, players will take enormous hits and eventually luck will determine a winner. The person with the best property set up has to get a lot less lucky.

(I also love Catan and think that people who dump on it are posers. If you're tired of Catan, that's cool, whatevs, but it's still an awesome game.)