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With the rise and rise of computers and the internet, for a (long) while during the 80s, 90s, and 00s, it almost looked as though board games as a pursuit for grown-ups might die out altogether, or be left with cards, chess, and Monopoly... But the golden age of boardgames began in the mid to late 00s, and now designer board games are experiencing a major revival. As I’m sure you all know, if you’re reading this thread at all. And you all are also aware of the curiously cyclical nature of board games’ relationship with digital formats. Most games now have online rule books and FAQs, and a great many have apps or online play available. This thread is about those. Feel free to submit your own comments, reviews and corrections in the thread, or just go ahead and join me in bitching about Isotropic shutting down  I’m going to split it up into 5 main areas: web-based single games, web-based gaming platforms, downloadable platforms, apps, and helpers. I’m also going to add codes (I would use smilies but I think I’ll wind up hitting the smiley limit fairly quickly) to denote what sorts of play are available: S: Solitaire/single player, offline A: vs AI play, offline I: vs AI play, online O: Solitaire/single player, online P: Pass-and-play/multiplayer offline M: multiplayer online F: Free to play $: Pay to play ¢: Free to play some parts, others cost extra. Web-based individual games: I’ll note whether any browser add-ons are required, and whether the game works well on mobile browsers. Through The Ages OMF: https://www.boardgaming-online.com TtA begins a trend of Vlaada’s games which are free to play online. Vlaada seems pretty cool about fan-created online versions, and has indicated that TtA should stay available online even if a putative app is completed. The game is play-by-email primarily, so whilst live play is possible, it relies on the kindness of strangers not to slow-roll, and the slow-roll time-out time is 7 days… Nonetheless this is a great version of the game, includes a number of expansion cards not available in print in English (albeit, there are some balance issues, especially with the Spanish expansion cards), and includes several useful errata which should be translated into the base game (in particular, to Hammurabi, but additionally to some of the tactics). The game is coded entirely in-browser and requires no add-ons. It works well on mobile browsers. If anything, this implementation is better than the in-person version, as TtA is well-known for fiddly, easily-knocked components and fiddly, easily-missed maths. No AI, though, but you can start a game with yourself if you want to play solo, or with specific friends who are registered. Highly recommended. 5/5 Innovation (Isotropic) MF: http://innovation.isotropic.org/ Isotropic is still, nearly two years later, best known for its former implementation of Dominion, which was shut down (with a wonderful goodbye message set to the tune of the Portal song) when the official version was released. Around the same time, DougZ, the writer of Isotropic released an implementation of Innovation, which is technically still in beta. It’s a lot less well-subscribed than Dominion was, partly because it;s a less popular game, partly because it’s not as good a game and doesn’t fit with istotropic’s setup quite so well. The implementation isn’t amazing, it can be difficult to see/be aware of your opponents’ tableaux, and it’s not interesting, but it’s clean, quick, and high speed. All that being said, if you’re new to the game, expect to lose inexplicably and swiftly, for a long time. Isotropic’s no-nonsense design and connections with the original Dominion online community have joined together to make this a site full of goddamn sharks, and at high levels Innovation has less of a learning curve than a learning mountain. It includes all the expansions which add to the learning curve issues. Not amazing on mobile browsers, but doesn’t require any extensions on PC. Well implemented, but not worth it unless you REALLY like innovation. 3/5 Dominion (Goko) IOMF¢: http://www.playdominion.com A sad ode to what could have been; Dominion had a fantastic, free, user-friendly online implementation with a big community, up until a year or two ago, when a much-touted free online version went into beta and stank to high loving heaven, developed by a brand-new untested developer who apparently bought rights to a bunch of games, and Dominion was the first (and so far last) they released. A collection of badly missed promises, horrible security flaws (in the early days, you could forcibly execute javascript in your opponent’s chat window, for instance  and password data was stored in cleartext, not to mention gems like deck makeup being stored client-side, and therefore eminently editable, as the sample code on the dominionstrategy forums for quick-beating the campaign mode demonstrates), little attention paid to the community, and occasional serious bugs in card implementation. By all accounts, improved somewhat over the years, but not a lot. Not well liked by the community. Generally, a very shiny but low quality implementation of the game, albeit it doesn't require any extensions to browsers and apparently works on mobile browsers. It’s free to play a game with anyone's sets, if you join one with someone who has paid for sets you can use them, , but in order to set up games using any set other than basic, you need to buy the set, hence the ¢ rating. Does have both AI play (though the AIs are dumb as poo poo) and a solitaire/puzzle mode. Overall, not a hearty recommendation, and definitely don’t trust them with your credit card info. 1/5Dungeon Lords IMF: http://www.dungeonlords.ukfun.com/ New, a bit wonky, and flash-based. The AIs are decent if predictable, but the implementation isn’t complete and doesn’t have any of the expansion content, or indeed the special events. Nonetheless, a decent, faithful interpretation of the game, for what it is. Recommended, but IME you need to know the game pretty well as facilities don’t exist to do things like zoom in on monsters or rooms, and here aren't any rules available. 3/5 Terra Mystica: http://terra.snellman.net/ - I've not played the game enough to try it online; if a full review including coding could be provided that would be great. Temporum: http://www.pittersplace.com/temporum/ distinctly alpha/under construction. Brass: http://brass.orderofthehammer.com/index.php Still a little bit under construction. Web-based platforms Boite a Jeux MF: http://www.boiteajeux.net/index.php?p=regles Mostly French, with a list of 47 free-to-play games including Agricola and Dungeon Petz. I’ve no idea how they play; I’ve never actually managed to play a single game on there. Good range of availability though. Boardgame Arena MF: http://en.boardgamearena.com/#!gamelist Again, free-to-play but in English mostly, with titles including Race for the Galaxy, Tash-Kalar, Through the Ages, Puerto Rico, and a wide range of classic board and card games like Backgammon. What little I’ve played on there, has played well, so it gets a good 5/5 from me. Fantasy Strike: http://www.fantasystrike.com/ a.k.a. the house of that other non-poo poo deckbuilder. Includes Yomi, Puzzle Strike and Flash Duel. Yucata MF: http://www.yucata.de/en Free online, versus humans, includes Castles of Burgundy and Port Royal among others. Downloadable platforms/games: Vassal: http://www.vassalengine.org/ Not so much a game platform as a component platform - Vassal theoretically allows you to play a wide range of user-generated game content both via the internet and for things like play-by-forum and pass-and-play in person gaming. But I’ve yet to manage to work it properly, personally, and the documentation is loving awful. Nonetheless, the range of games available is extensive, including Mage Knight, but it’s not an experience I’d recommend if you just want to casually sit down and knock a quick game out of whatever. BrettSpielWelt: http://www.brettspielwelt.de/ Again, a downloadable platform to play online games, this time it’s in German. The range of games is good and at last count included a semi-decent online implementation of Dominion, albeit with limited cards, as . OCTGN: http://www.octgn.net/Home/GetOctgn Home of a bunch of games, free to download and play. Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/ The game buying place. Buy a bunch of games here including Ticket to Ride. War Game Room: http://www.wargameroom.com/downloads.htm A bunch of less-well-known war games (Duh) including, importantly, Twilight Struggle. Apps: iThings: there's a whole thread about board games on iThingies, go read that. Droids Androminion SAF: The last bastion of good dominion, and even then , it's pretty bad. The app's fine, but the AIs suck, to the point that the best one is only good because it stacks its deck. Nonetheless it's clean and simple in a way that reminds me of Iso, and it has most, though not all, of the sets. 3/5. Carcassonne SAIPM$: The Carcassonne app is pretty slick on Droid. It handles my tiny-screen S4 mini perfectly, runs intuitively, includes (for extra in-app purchase) a selection of the best expansions, and plays very quickly. It’s let down by its AIs, unfortunately, to the point where I’ve very quickly decided that if I even come second I’ve done TERRIBLY, and measure my performance by how much I dominate the 3* AIs by - I’m doing well if I score more than all three opponents combined. 4/5 for that reason. Ticket to Ride ???$: I know it exists, but I’ve not played it. Any reports? Galaxy Trucker SAPM$: I was so pleased when I got this, it’s great. The visual aesthetics and humour of the campaign mode match the physical game perfectly, the good AIs are very strong (annoyingly strong, the advantage probably arising from perfect knowledge of the available components and limited need for thinking time, plus little ability to make mistakes), the interface is intuitive, it comes with an array of fun achievements to shoot for… generally, the best of the (limited set of) game apps I’ve tried. 5/5 Suburbia (big screens only): I gather it’s good, but it’s let down for me by the fact that it only works on big screen devices which I don’t have D: Others Race for the Galaxy AFM, Windows/Mac/Compile it yourself on your favourite Linux/Unix system: http://keldon.net/rftg/ Designed I believe by a computer science student as a dissertation project, this is a neat implementation of RFTG, but more importantly, a showcase of genetically-designed AI algorithms. Very, very good ones. Annoyingly good. I usually come second, but very, very rarely come first, in 3 player games. 5/5 Helpers: Anydice (online dice roller): http://anydice.com/ Once you know its syntax, you can use it to support rolling basically any formats of any standard dice including more complex things like '4d6 drop the lowest reroll 1s' automatically. Well worth the time if you're running PBF D&D. Dicent (android (and iThingy?) app: Free app that rolls the dice for both versions of Descent. Handy, given that Descent 2e, at least, came with 1 set of dice between up to 5 players. If anyone knows of any others or thinks of anything else, feel free to post. I'm going to reserve a couple more post in case of hitting the character limit, but I doubt tha's a risk any time soon. (and boo, I can't put the right accents in the thread title  )
thespaceinvader fucked around with this message at 01:27 on Mar 21, 2015 |
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Mar 1, 2015 11:13
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Saving a post in case I run out of room.
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Mar 1, 2015 11:13
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And a final one just in case, post away folks.
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Mar 1, 2015 11:14
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Needs OCTGN for card games. Someone else will have to provide the review because I've never used it.
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Mar 1, 2015 11:21
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thespaceinvader posted:Ticket to Ride ???$: I know it exists, but I’ve not played it. Any reports? Haven't played the Android version, but we did a goon tournament on the Steam thing at one point (which I'm lead to believe is pretty similar). The app itself is competently done, and IMO the game plays a little better online than over a physical board. Haven't actually played with real trainlords, just goons, so I have no idea what the community's like.
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Mar 1, 2015 11:26
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Some notables you forgot are: http://wargameroom.com/ - hosting such little-known games as Twilight Struggle. http://www.fantasystrike.com/ - a.k.a. the house of that other non-poo poo deckbuilder. Someone could probably say a few words about what's available on the tabletop simulator? thespaceinvader posted:Vassal: (...) I’ve yet to manage to work it properly, personally, and the documentation is loving awful. It's like, literally just a table simulator. Just drag & drop poo poo.
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Mar 1, 2015 11:27
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I found it really hard to manipulate decks of cards with Vassal, and had to come on to the forums to ask how to even start a game of Mage Knight just to gently caress about with it. Vassal is great if you know how to use it.Lichtenstein posted:Some notables you forgot are: Added these. And a brief section on steam and OCTGN. thespaceinvader fucked around with this message at 11:37 on Mar 1, 2015 |
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Mar 1, 2015 11:35
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There's also http://terra.snellman.net/ for Terra Mystica. A pretty unintuitive interface, but its free, contains the expansion, has options for different timeout lengths for pbem. Also there's a vs ai linked though I haven't played it.
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Mar 1, 2015 11:42
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To celebrate this thread and the fact I've a completely free day, if anyone is up for some BGA games or something, just let me know. It would be cool if there were mini tournies but I wouldn't be surprised if they are hell to arrange and adjudicate.
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Mar 1, 2015 11:55
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Just tried the Dungeon Lords interface and even though it isn't the worse I ever played, it's still pretty badly designed. Game is fun though and I wouldn't mind having some more games of it.
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Mar 1, 2015 12:14
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Another one to add to the OP http://www.yucata.de/en
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Mar 1, 2015 12:19
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taser rates posted:Another one to add to the OP http://www.yucata.de/en Added, thanks
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Mar 1, 2015 12:21
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The opinion I can provide on BrettSpieltWelt is that it's a really loving old program so the interface is horrible and it's also a German program which makes things trickier still if you're not versed in the language. It's also fairly buggy and sometimes you have to really fiddle with it to get it to let you select a card frequently. And rarely, but not rarely enough sometimes one player will just bug out completely and be unable to select a move rendering the game unfinishable. It's like driving a beat up car, you have to get very used to specific quirks of how it fails. And then sometimes it shits the bed anyway. In spite of all this, I still use it because it's the only real way to play 7 Wonders over the internet but as soon as the official app comes out I'm probably dropping it. On the plus side, it does come with neat game tracking functionality so you can obsess over how much you don't win at board games.  
SuccinctAndPunchy fucked around with this message at 15:24 on Mar 1, 2015 |
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Mar 1, 2015 15:22
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For iOS, you should link to (or possibly copy the OP of) the iOS board game thread: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3548351
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Mar 1, 2015 15:34
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Just as a pedantic note, the game is called Yomi, not Fantasy Strike. "Fantasy Strike" is Sirlin's weird word for the universe his games take place in.
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Mar 1, 2015 18:23
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Terra Mystica loving owns. Who's up for a game? It'll be totally newbie friendly, with an opportunity to see how the mechanisms all work.
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Mar 2, 2015 22:18
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How long does it last? I'd like to learn it, but I don't have long this evening.
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Mar 2, 2015 22:42
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I would have been all over this last weekend
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Mar 2, 2015 22:44
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Worry not, friends, it is asynchronous and PBEM, so we can all take our time and agonize over every decision
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Mar 2, 2015 23:04
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Found a playable version of Temporum being worked on over at the Dominion Strategy forums. Interface is pretty bad right now (you have to hover over a card/zone to actually read text), but it seems to work alright.
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Mar 3, 2015 02:07
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Mega64 posted:Found a playable version of Temporum being worked on over at the Dominion Strategy forums. Interface is pretty bad right now (you have to hover over a card/zone to actually read text), but it seems to work alright. poo poo. This changes everything.
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Mar 3, 2015 02:42
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Desperate Gods is a free online board game that was designed to be played just like a board game in real-life: no rules are enforced by the computer, and all moves are performed in a shared physical space. The game itself is a cross between Monopoly and Diablo, a dark fantasy dungeon crawl for up to four players.
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Mar 3, 2015 05:10
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Xom posted:Desperate Gods is a free online board game that was designed to be played just like a board game in real-life: no rules are enforced by the computer, and all moves are performed in a shared physical space. The game itself is a cross between Monopoly and Diablo, a dark fantasy dungeon crawl for up to four players.
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Mar 3, 2015 05:15
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Lord Frisk posted:Worry not, friends, it is asynchronous and PBEM, so we can all take our time and agonize over every decision Well in that case I'm happy to have an email game, but how do you run it? Is there an online client, or VASSAL or something. I have seen reviews and watched a rahdo run through so know the basics, happy to go over them again.
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Mar 3, 2015 11:06
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You use the browser based client linked in the OP. Just register an email on the site.
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Mar 3, 2015 13:20
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Xom posted:Desperate Gods is a free online board game that was designed to be played just like a board game in real-life: no rules are enforced by the computer, and all moves are performed in a shared physical space. The game itself is a cross between Monopoly and Diablo, a dark fantasy dungeon crawl for up to four players. I've never quite seen the point of this sort of thing - I mean, as an art project it's nice, but as a player of games? If I'm playing them on the computer, I want the computer to do as much rules control for me as I can - I play on the computer to avoid fiddly piece control and rules fuckups, not to enhance them.
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Mar 3, 2015 18:41
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It's really good and since this current game I'm in hasn't technically finished yet, I have a 100% win rate! Of course when Rumda passes the last turn I'll have come last by ten points....
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Mar 3, 2015 18:44
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thespaceinvader posted:I've never quite seen the point of this sort of thing - I mean, as an art project it's nice, but as a player of games? If I'm playing them on the computer, I want the computer to do as much rules control for me as I can - I play on the computer to avoid fiddly piece control and rules fuckups, not to enhance them. Xom fucked around with this message at 18:54 on Mar 3, 2015 |
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Mar 3, 2015 18:46
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Lord Frisk posted:You use the browser based client linked in the OP. Just register an email on the site. I'll sign up and watch the play through videos again if a game is arranged, up to you if you want to see if others want in or if its 1v1.
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Mar 3, 2015 18:52
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Fat Turkey posted:I'll sign up and watch the play through videos again if a game is arranged, up to you if you want to see if others want in or if its 1v1. We're just about to start another one if you want to get in on it.
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Mar 3, 2015 19:17
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drop your user name in thread and i'll send you an invite. I'm gonna set up a beginner's game for total noobs
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Mar 3, 2015 23:54
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Moominov Looking forward to this, will go over the play by play again tomorrow.
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Mar 4, 2015 01:28
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Alright, I'll launch the game soon, just gonna see if anybody else wants to join up. This is an open call for anyone that wants to play a learning game of Terra Mystica. Go to terrasnellman.net and sign up, then reply in thread with your username. The game will be asynchronous PBEM, so don't worry about committing an evening. You can learn as you go, and I'll be happy to answer questions.
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Mar 4, 2015 01:33
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Lord Frisk posted:Alright, I'll launch the game soon, just gonna see if anybody else wants to join up. Add me as Flaggy.
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Mar 4, 2015 04:20
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Lord Frisk posted:Alright, I'll launch the game soon, just gonna see if anybody else wants to join up. Website isn't working for me?
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Mar 4, 2015 04:37
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Terra.snellman.net Same site linked in the OP
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Mar 4, 2015 12:35
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Ok, we've got a full game ATM. I'll launch the noob game today after work. So far we've got: andrewsmash, cenotaph, flaggy, fat turkey and myself. I'll launch the game this afternoon
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Mar 4, 2015 13:04
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Game is live, check yo email
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Mar 4, 2015 14:09
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I'm in I'm in! I'll watch rahdo over lunch and check out our game tonight.
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Mar 4, 2015 14:35
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Lord Frisk posted:Terra.snellman.net derp I'll be in the next game! This I swear.
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Mar 4, 2015 15:03
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