KD^3C^3 - 20250817 The crowd takes up the cry
I bought my first single player board game this week. Well I bought it a week or two ago, but I recieved it this week. That's the side effect of ordering things from ebay, they don't arrive two days after you order them like with other online retailers. BUt I'm a sucker for a good deal and so I but probably an above average number of things from ebay.Although, typing that, I don't know what an average number of things to purchase from ebay is.
Ebay feels like one of the only websites to survive the 2000 dotcom bubble. I mean Amazon is still around too, but Amazon has been so thoroughly enshittified that it doesn't feel like the same website anymore. but ebay mostly feels the same. There's slightly more sponsored listings and you have to do some price checking so you're not overpaying for something but think you're getting a deal (a lot of merchants sell things at a higher-than-retail price, which feels dishonest but not exactly illegal), but if you're looking for some obscure thing, like the type of coffee mug used by Captain Janeway in the TV show Star Trek Voyager, or a smart phone that was discontinued five years ago, or a blue ray that is out of print or only ever sold in a different country, then ebay is still a good place to check. I know that because I have purchased all of those things on ebay. If there's a particularly unusual item I'll et up an email alert so I can be updated whenever one goes for sale.
Some things are still listed for auction, but just as often I see things listed with the buy it now option, or my personal favorite "Best offer" option. BUy it now does what it says on the tin, allows you to just pay a specific amount (plus shipping) and have the packahe on your doorstep in a reasonable amount of time (two days is not reasonable, we shouldn't treat it like it is). But I love Best Offer, because I can make lowball offers on things that I kind of want, but somebody else might want more. If I submit a lowball ovver (usually at least 75% of what the seller is asking) and the seller doesn't accept, that's fine! I probably wasn't going to pay for it at the price they wanted, but I hope somebody else will. Sometimes they counter offer and it's the closest thing I've ever gotten to being comfortable haggling over the price of something. It's all done digitally through a website, so I never feel pressured by a hard sale. If we can't agree on a price, no harm no foul. OF course sometimes people do accept my lowball offers and then I ave to buy the thing. Ebay very helpfully automatically processes the transaction if an offer is accepted, so I have been surprised more than once by an offer that was literally too good to be true being accepted. But when that happens it's a pleasant surprise, because I'm usually getting a pretty good deal.
The most recent thing I bought, as I mentioned at the top of this email, is a single-player oard game. I've never owned a single player board game before, and the idea has always been a little weird to me. Board games are collective activities, something you do with friends or family. But this particular one had been talked up by some people I follow online, and when I was scouring ebay, I found a good deal on it. I say it, but the board game is actually modular, so you can't just buy one box and call it a day.
I'll explain. The game is called Final Girl, and it's a single-player strategy game based on the idea that you are the final girl in a horror movie and you are trying to survive and kill the killer before they get to you. It's sold in playsets, which they call feature films, each one is based on, but legally distinct from a horror movie or genre you are probably familiar with. SO you buy the core set, which has the basic components, but isn't playable on its own, and then you add a playset with a killer, location, and final girl that you're going to play. The simplest version is called Camp Happy Trails, where you fight a masked killer murdering teens at a summer camp. You know, like that one movie. But there's other sets where you might be fighting an Alien on a space ship, or some Thing from another world in an arctic base, or some kind of Puppet Master and his puppets. What's cool is that you can mix and match these once you have a few different sets. Want to show down against a masked Killer in a space ship? You can absolutely live out your Jason X dreams.
The game itself is fun, although hard. I've played four times with the camp/killer combo and lost three of them. I do think I'm getting better, but learning the rhythms and mitigating the luck of the dice can be hard. But it's not like I win more than 25% of games I play with my friends, so I don't take it too seriously. The game isn't designed to be fair, it's designed to be fun.
I actually have it on my desk right now and writing about it is just making me want to play again. So I think I'm going to go do that.
Wait, I forgot. I bought it on ebay. Someone was selling the core set and the camp playset and the one based on the Alien movies. I basically got them for the retail costs of the playsets if I had bought them new, which was like getting the core set for free. I was an auction, which i smy least favorite way to buy stuff on ebay, but I followed my normal rules: Put in you max bid, then do not change it or look again until the auction is over. I don't wan to get into a bidding war with someone else and end up paying more than I meant to, so this method keeps me from doing that. I managed to win with my original bid and nobody even bid against me. So that was cool.
Ok, gunna go play game now.
Ebay feels like one of the only websites to survive the 2000 dotcom bubble. I mean Amazon is still around too, but Amazon has been so thoroughly enshittified that it doesn't feel like the same website anymore. but ebay mostly feels the same. There's slightly more sponsored listings and you have to do some price checking so you're not overpaying for something but think you're getting a deal (a lot of merchants sell things at a higher-than-retail price, which feels dishonest but not exactly illegal), but if you're looking for some obscure thing, like the type of coffee mug used by Captain Janeway in the TV show Star Trek Voyager, or a smart phone that was discontinued five years ago, or a blue ray that is out of print or only ever sold in a different country, then ebay is still a good place to check. I know that because I have purchased all of those things on ebay. If there's a particularly unusual item I'll et up an email alert so I can be updated whenever one goes for sale.
Some things are still listed for auction, but just as often I see things listed with the buy it now option, or my personal favorite "Best offer" option. BUy it now does what it says on the tin, allows you to just pay a specific amount (plus shipping) and have the packahe on your doorstep in a reasonable amount of time (two days is not reasonable, we shouldn't treat it like it is). But I love Best Offer, because I can make lowball offers on things that I kind of want, but somebody else might want more. If I submit a lowball ovver (usually at least 75% of what the seller is asking) and the seller doesn't accept, that's fine! I probably wasn't going to pay for it at the price they wanted, but I hope somebody else will. Sometimes they counter offer and it's the closest thing I've ever gotten to being comfortable haggling over the price of something. It's all done digitally through a website, so I never feel pressured by a hard sale. If we can't agree on a price, no harm no foul. OF course sometimes people do accept my lowball offers and then I ave to buy the thing. Ebay very helpfully automatically processes the transaction if an offer is accepted, so I have been surprised more than once by an offer that was literally too good to be true being accepted. But when that happens it's a pleasant surprise, because I'm usually getting a pretty good deal.
The most recent thing I bought, as I mentioned at the top of this email, is a single-player oard game. I've never owned a single player board game before, and the idea has always been a little weird to me. Board games are collective activities, something you do with friends or family. But this particular one had been talked up by some people I follow online, and when I was scouring ebay, I found a good deal on it. I say it, but the board game is actually modular, so you can't just buy one box and call it a day.
I'll explain. The game is called Final Girl, and it's a single-player strategy game based on the idea that you are the final girl in a horror movie and you are trying to survive and kill the killer before they get to you. It's sold in playsets, which they call feature films, each one is based on, but legally distinct from a horror movie or genre you are probably familiar with. SO you buy the core set, which has the basic components, but isn't playable on its own, and then you add a playset with a killer, location, and final girl that you're going to play. The simplest version is called Camp Happy Trails, where you fight a masked killer murdering teens at a summer camp. You know, like that one movie. But there's other sets where you might be fighting an Alien on a space ship, or some Thing from another world in an arctic base, or some kind of Puppet Master and his puppets. What's cool is that you can mix and match these once you have a few different sets. Want to show down against a masked Killer in a space ship? You can absolutely live out your Jason X dreams.
The game itself is fun, although hard. I've played four times with the camp/killer combo and lost three of them. I do think I'm getting better, but learning the rhythms and mitigating the luck of the dice can be hard. But it's not like I win more than 25% of games I play with my friends, so I don't take it too seriously. The game isn't designed to be fair, it's designed to be fun.
I actually have it on my desk right now and writing about it is just making me want to play again. So I think I'm going to go do that.
Wait, I forgot. I bought it on ebay. Someone was selling the core set and the camp playset and the one based on the Alien movies. I basically got them for the retail costs of the playsets if I had bought them new, which was like getting the core set for free. I was an auction, which i smy least favorite way to buy stuff on ebay, but I followed my normal rules: Put in you max bid, then do not change it or look again until the auction is over. I don't wan to get into a bidding war with someone else and end up paying more than I meant to, so this method keeps me from doing that. I managed to win with my original bid and nobody even bid against me. So that was cool.
Ok, gunna go play game now.