Many of the -ess leftovers are on their way out now.
You could very easily say “She’s heir to the company fortune” and people wouldn’t correct it, and it’s become respectful to refer to a woman as an “actor” instead of actress.
God and Goddess are still very separated, and England is interesting for seeing Moon deities as female and Sun as male (mostly from the Greek/Roman) but also having “The Man In The Moon” 
Takes on a whole new dimension when the moon has a gender
Herein lays the difference between gender and sex. You can have gender without having sex in many other languages. Just like when I was in Uni, but for many very different reasons…
I think BGG done themselves a bit of a bubu. Current top 100 starts like this:
Oopsie. When you check any game right now it says 0 ratings…
Expansions are fine. My own ratings are still fine but I am sure that some poor dev is freaking out right now.
This happened a while ago as well, so I assume it’s the same problem as before and will get fixed.
Incidentally, for any wondering: this is the natural order of games in the BGG database. Die Macher was the first game added to the database. Ra was the 12th.
The Hotness is still working though. What a pity. (I have it collapsed, but its existence still irks me a little.)
Much like a hot pan, hotness means “do not touch” in my book. If if you insist on doing so, caution is recommended.
That’s a wise approach. To both. Pans and “Hotness lists”, that is.
Have we had a „good“ debate about luck and luck mitigation in games? It comes to mind after I still haven‘t guessed which game @Whistle_Pig referred to the other day (I may have missed in in the respective thread), with playing another game of Rallyman GT and my on-going game of Hardback… and more.
@yashima keep citing me whenever the phrase “Reverse Kondo” is used. It seems that I now have to lead by example 
It’s difficult. “I can’t believe I’m selling this” was uttered a few times. But yeah, as a player I don’t need this many games.
I had a bewildering exchange with a customer today… who was arguing that Monopoly was a well-designed game.
“I mean, no, it’s not,” says I, “but it can be fun despite the incredibly poor design.”
“NO!” he insisted, “You fail to understand that it serves the purpose for which it is designed, which is to teach about the evils of property ownerships and monopolies!”
“But it’s a game,” I responded, eyebrow raised. “If it isn’t fun, it has failed at the fundamental element of being a game.”
“But it succeeds at what it is trying to do!” he countered.
“But if I designed a car with no wheels and claimed it was a lesson in rampant consumerism and the futility of transportation, we would both agree that it’s not a good car, right?”
At which point he got huffy and claimed it was, like, his opinion, man, and I didn’t have to agree with him.
Why do people think “the right to have an opinion” is the same as “the right to be wrong”?
Anyway. I’m not saying people can’t have fun playing Monopoly. I had fun with it when I was a kid. But it isn’t a well-designed game.
I think in its day The Landlord’s Game was considered well-designed, because an acceptable purpose of games was to educate and instruct rather than to entertain – see for example all those “progress through life” games which as games are entirely null because there’s no decision-making at all.
Fun exchange, but I wouldn’t call it bewildering. You both had valid points to make, and just got caught up in the overlap between them. Perhaps, for him, “fun” is not an essential characteristic of games, but rather something people bring to the table. In that sense, Monopoly can be fun (as you acknowledge), so your assertion that it fails as a design rings hollow to him.
I mean, I also think it is a bad design, I’m just playing devil’s advocate.
I think historical wargaming definitely has a subculture/subgenre focused on games-as-history-lessons, used more as a lens for understanding military history than a vehicle to deliver smiles (though, you cannot account for what people find “fun”)
But not whistle?
I think Monopoly could benefit from a re-edition. I don’t know, some themes to make it more approachable? Or using its logo on McDonald’s? They have to move with the times once and for all.
Sarcastic mode off…
I think the only commendable mechanic in Monopoly is the chance of being in jail to avoid trouble for three rounds. And it is completely random. Plus if it happens to you too early, you’re screwed. Sort of.
About a year ago my partner was working with a mental health support company, and often she would work in the Youth House, where teenagers with life threatening conditions could be supervised while recovering. Sometimes, for hours on end, they had games of Monopoly. I still cringe at the thought. And my partner is still scarred from having to play so much Monopoly…
How is that a commendable mechanic though? I think we agree that late-game jail is actually a blessing because it can save you money, but I’m not sure that’s intended or desirable from a game design perspective.
I feel like Monopoly taught me the opposite things. The people who had the most property obviously had the most fun (while nobody else did) so it turned us into full-on villains and glorified cut-throat capitalism. I was the youngest amongst my siblings (by a lot) so I didn’t get the strategy - but I did understand that when you’re the banker you can sometimes give yourself an extra hundo or two…
I think I would be somewhat bewildered by some random guy trying to convince me monopoly is good. It’s so universally reviled by the hobby that hating it has become a kind of shibboleth.
From the ‘monopoly as educational game’ theory, perhaps jail as penalty for those who lack property and a boon for the wealthy who just want to stay safe while others fall into their traps teaches us about systemic inequality?
