jbuergel

@fiverandomsongs.com

479 Followers 307 Following

Board game designer (Fox in the Forest, Hocus, Foresight) and terrible music blogger (fiverandomsongs.com). (He/him)

A Pebble Time 2 smartwatch, still in the box.
The cover of Basehead's "Play With Toys" album.
A sign at a grocery store saying "sushi with clean ingredients prepared fresh daily"
Screenshot from Twitter user @PPathole reading: "Tech enthusiasts: my entire house is smart Tech workers: the only piece of technology in my house is a printer and I keep a gun next to it so I can shoot it if it makes a noise I don't recognize."
A picture of a Granny Smith apple. The sticker on it has a tiny ad for Abbott Elementary, with an even tinier Hulu logo.
A legal letter from the Cleveland Stadium Corporation on their letterhead. It's James N. Bailey, general counsel, responding to Dale O. Cox, Esquire. The letter states: "Dear Mr. Cox: Attached is a letter that we received on November 19, 1974. I feel that you should be aware that some asshole is signing your name to stupid letters. Very truly yours, Cleveland Stadium Corp."
A screen shot from the title page of my random campaign generator. It includes the phrase "Gazetteer of Fat Hotdog" and has a village on it labeled "Mansfork".
A picture of a frozen pizza proudly proclaiming that it's an eight cheese pizza.
A screen shot of a PDF. The image on it is a random chunk of a crudely drawn fantasy map. The typography is designed to resemble old TSR modules. The title on it is "Campaign Module K4. Gazetteer of Enthusiastic Man, by Joshua Buergel. A Campaign for new characters." There's a bunch of boilerplate "welcome to adventure" stuff below that is, frankly, just fantasy-flavored lorum ipsum.
A randomly generated map. The rivers have curves, while before they were just sharp angles. The hills, alas, still look like butts.
A randomly generated map. The artwork is exceptionally crude. But it now has crudely drawn towns, what looks like maybe a terrible donkey rendering, some strange clouds for some reason, the worst keep ever drawn, and other miscellaneous fantasy stereotypes.
A randomly generated map, using my crude graphics. It features a crude river, some crude mountains, a couple crude volcanos, some crude hills that look like butts, assorted crude forests, and in the corner, some hexes that are yellow in a crude approximation of a desert.
A randomly generated fantasy map. Most of the surface area is just water. This was not intentional.
A randomly generated fantasy hex map. It includes poorly drawn mountains, hills that look like butts, rivers that are just blue lines, and now forests that are sub-kindergarten quality.
Another map from my map generator, once again replete with hills that look like butts. It also now features extremely crude renditions of volcanos as well as hex numbers.
An ugly randomly generated map. There's a wan blue streak on it, zig-zagging in some horrible pantomime of a river. There are lots of mountain peaks and things that look like butts but are hills.
A map that consists of a few mountain ranges, some surrounding hills, and a whole lot of empty hexes. The artwork on the hexes can best be described as "extremely amateur".
A screen shot of a grocery list app, showing a package of shredded cheese in the "Personal Care" category.
A picture of a five by five hex grid. Each hex is filled with an extremely crude drawing of what might be fantasy terrain, it's hard to tell. The writer of this post would like you to know that he did those drawings, not his children. They're much better at this kind of thing than him.
A screen shot of a Discord message from "dinopanelbottest". It is of the phrase "Today is a good day I think for sending a panel" with a panel from Dinosaur Comics featuring T-Rex saying "Cramming chocolate bars into ice cream" in a dream bubble. Alas, the background of the comic is solid green instead of white, although honestly, it's kind of a pleasant green that sits nicely against T-Rex's lime green skin. I'll confess, here in the alt text, that I'm tempting to leave it as it is.
A screen shot of T-Rex, of Dinosaur Comics, rendered in text, placed in a comment on the page for qwantz.com
Picture of nine prototype cards. Two vaguely describe spells in a trick-taking game. Seven are random pseudo-Cribbage scoring rules.
Screenshot of a donation to The Trevor Project for $1100.
A photo of the game bestsellers at Powell's, with Fox in the Forest in fifth place.
A screenshot of a document. It reads: "Game End: If a player or partnership scores seven Rout points, they instantly win. Otherwise, once eight Battles have been fought, each player or partnership scores one point for each card left in their Reserve, or two points if the card is a Commander. After this bonus, the highest score wins. If there is a tie, the player or team who scored the most from their remaining Reserve wins. If that is also a tie, whoever took the last trick in the last Battle wins the tie. In the unlikely case of a tie in a 3p game where the third player who isn’t tied took the last trick and the tied players have the same size Reserve, the player who scored the most points in the last Battle wins. If that’s also a tie, try most Rout points? If that’s also a tie, damn your eyes, fight a duel to determine a winner. If you are unwilling to do so, the third player wins, for being less difficult."
A screen shot of a very crude drawing of lots of boxes and lines, an idea for a playmat for a new game.
A screen shot from Plex, showing the Istanbul (Not Constantinople) single by They Might Be Giants came out 35 years ago today
A screenshot of Plex's On This Day feature, showing Live at Ernesto's by The Slackers was released 25 years ago.
A screen shot of Plex, showing an info bubble telling me that 99% by Meat Beat Manifesto was released 35 years ago. An event that I recall, unfortunately.
A picture from the Mensa Mind Games convention with dice that have a 4 side next to a 3 side.
Screen shot of a Bandcamp notification reading "PUP just released an album" from a minute ago.
A panel 2 from Dinosaur Comics, with T-Rex saying "we can do better!"
A panel 2 from Dinosaur Comics, with T-Rex saying "We can do better!".
A screen shot of Discord. I send a message of "$qwantz" and dinopanelbot responds with a panel 2 from Dinosaur Comics and the words "Today is a good day I think for sending a panel." The panel contains T-Rex, mouth open, with the bold text COMPUTER SCIENCE WITH T-REX.
A photo of the Fanta Beetlejuice "spiced apple" soda. It features black and white stripes and a photo of the character.
A screen shot of the feedback form for Google's AI summary feature. The feedback reads: "I hope there's a person reading this, but I'm afraid that it goes nowhere. Or, hilariously, you get your idiotic "AI" to summarize the feedback, in which case the acid contempt I hold you all in is unlikely to come through. But, just in case it's a person reading this, I don't think the technological and environmental disaster that is the gen AI fad is your fault. But, you have got to stop. It's just going to keep making everything worse. You know this. Please. Stop."
A screenshot of the feedback form for Google's "AI summary". The feedback reads: "How much did you heat the earth to generate this completely worthless wad of garbage text? Does it feel good to make something worse than useless which also destroys the public Internet and wastes vast resources? Are you proud of it? Will you look back in ten years, everything having gotten worse for your efforts, and think "well, at least the C- suite made a few extra billion"? Stop working on this. You're better than this."
A picture of a Mai tai next to a chainmail dice bag.
An in-progeess photo of the boardgame 1860. It is difficult to parse the current situation. I can say that, as one of the players.
A photo of a Darigold milk container, quantity 59oz.
Achewood panel with Roast Beef thinking "oh my god that is the worst possible answer in the universe".
Screen shot of a grid of 14 new albums that came out today.
A pale yellow drink in a highball glass, the aforementioned "gin and Stonic". An Achewood sticker is partially visible on the computer under the drink. A drum set is visible in the background, a pathetic attempt by the poster to appear vaguely cool.
A picture of the Mariners/Astros game, featuring Mauricio Dubon upside-down, arm in front of his eyes, with the ball playfully sitting just away from his glove.
The board game Tin Helm set up on a bench in a cabin, at the start of the game. I am playing a Gnome Alchemist. My right knee and a few toes are visible, because I am bad at photography. No game actions have yet been taken.