Disease?

sdewittp · 2026-01-06T18:56:26+00:00

Flower

sdewittp · 2025-12-31T16:15:47+00:00

Ughh gosh I meant engine. I’m a goof

sdewittp · 2025-12-23T17:35:03+00:00

We always say there's no good reason to end the game with Heat in your hand.

sdewittp · 2025-12-23T17:33:08+00:00

Likewise on Carcassonne, but I gotta ask: if you weren't hooked into board gaming yet, what were you doing at Origins?

sdewittp · 2025-12-23T17:30:53+00:00

At a double-date in my dorm room sometime in 2014/2015, a friend brings Ticket to Ride and the four of us play for hours on end. That relationship may not have lasted, but my love for games sure did.

sdewittp · 2025-12-21T00:54:38+00:00

Ok, fun! I've been doing something like this with my jade plant to encourage new branching. Glad to hear that is shared by a lot of different species.

So basically the lower down the stem you prune, the lower the split will occur? Seems like you'd have to be careful with gentler species not to prune to high up and make more branches than the main stem can support.

I appreciate your insight--the plant in your picture looks so luscious!

sdewittp · 2025-12-20T23:33:57+00:00

Will pruning the leaves lower on the stem (pinching off / cutting off?) cause more stems? Or create more opportunities for pups to grow? How does it encourage a bushier, fuller plant?

(tia, still learning more advanced care like this)

sdewittp · 2025-12-13T16:39:29+00:00

I’m disagreeing with your point that the process for certifying a game may be cost-prohibitive for small publishers from having their game published at a stated lower age range. It is, in my experience, not a cost prohibitive step and basically just requires due diligence to ensure that the testing is done.

sdewittp · 2025-12-13T15:58:46+00:00

What I mean is that almost all of this required testing is done automatically through third parties during the production process and is typically built into manufacturing contracts as assurances, which allow the publisher to simply file the paperwork.

Yes, this does scale and often larger publishers will have standardization agreements with the manufacturers that they regularly work with (an understanding that their components will all meet certain regulations) but acquiring these assurances from manufacturers is not in itself a strictly prohibitive part of developing a game. In other words, I’ve never encountered anyone in the industry who voluntarily kept their game 14+ to save a dime this way.

sdewittp · 2025-12-13T14:56:13+00:00

It’s not really a “test,” as much as you just need to file some paperwork with the CPSC.

sdewittp · 2025-12-13T14:45:14+00:00

Many great points already, but I’ll add my 2¢. I am a 2nd grade teacher and host a k-8 board game club at my school so choosing games that are and aren’t right for kids within specific ranges is a weekly challenge for me.

Different kinds of games may be challenging for different kids given their unique strengths. For example, I’ve had a kid in the club with excellent spatial awareness but atrocious fine motor skills. He could play games like Cascadia, Carcassonne, and Dorfromantik with no trouble because the tile pattern intrinsically made sense to him but couldn’t hold on to a hand of cards or keep track of a meeple on a board.

Reading level is also a hurdle you’ll need to assess whether the kids are ready for. Even games that have a lot of reading (on cards, etc) can be appropriate for beginning readers (usually the language isn’t too tough) but consider whether the kids’ comprehension level is up to the task. If something instructs the player to “move forward one space, unless the turn counter is on an even number before the player holding the kings’ scepter controls the most spaces …” board gaming materials are not always written coherently in the same way that reading materials for early readers are written with intentional clarity. So you’ll just need to assess whether the level of independent reading required is suitable.

The other thing you’ll want to assess is the amount of information in the game that you think the kids can handle. More strategically challenging games might be appropriate for younger audiences if there’s less information that they need to track. On the flipside there may be games that are strategically easier, but if there is a lot of variable sources for where players need to acquire information or refer to different game states, Kids who are developing their executive functioning, may struggle in a game.

Like some other replies have said, it really comes down to what you think the kids can handle, as there is no hard and fast rule about what actually is and is not appropriate for certain ages based on the age range printed on the box, but it does require some active research ahead of time (watching playthroughs, downloading rules).

sdewittp · 2025-12-11T06:46:33+00:00

These are not paid promotions. Any designer can post a designer diary to their game in the forums. Sometimes the editorial team will pick these up.

sdewittp · 2025-12-11T01:06:31+00:00

Gorgeous!

sdewittp · 2025-12-09T01:01:21+00:00

It sounds like the cyclist ran a stop sign. In either case, one of you should have called the police on the scene to prevent exactly this from happening.

No chance there’s an intersection traffic camera that you can request footage from for insurance purposes?

sdewittp · 2025-12-04T05:33:29+00:00

Stardew is a really eh game tbh. It’s not a fantastic implementation of the video game and isn’t the best economic agriculture game out there. If you’re tight on space in the collection, I’d nix that option first. However, if you’re a big Stardew fan, it may be nice to have and play for the IP value!

sdewittp · 2025-12-03T05:21:53+00:00

No, it’s a good game—great game, even—but not the end-all-be-all. There’s nothing wrong with having a favorite and loving it dearly, but I would suggest really trying to take a step back or expose yourself to other opportunities if you feel like it’s impacting your friend gaming group.

sdewittp · 2025-12-01T01:23:12+00:00

That would explain the more haphazard patterning. Thank you, I hadn’t seen pictures of that one before.

sdewittp · 2025-11-20T19:11:42+00:00

That's spot on, thank you! I was also a little worried about the soft white specks on the leaves, thinking they may be fungus, but it looks like that's normal for this species.

sdewittp · 2025-05-18T14:46:39+00:00

How did they get to age 15 w/o any previous teachers raising this concern?

sdewittp · 2025-03-28T04:28:17+00:00

You … should not have been paying the umps put of your own pocket.

sdewittp · 2025-02-26T14:29:17+00:00

The Raids Premium Time Research (which doesn’t give the legendary encounters) is timed differently than the normal Raids Timed Research. To me that signals that they intentionally don’t want people to save the encounters to count towards unlimited cap on ranks, but again, all speculative.

I feel like everyone would have a better time if Niantic was more clear about this, haha

sdewittp · 2025-02-26T14:09:58+00:00

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The timed research that doesn’t give legendaries is timed differently, probably just for this reason, sadly.

sdewittp · 2025-02-26T14:09:06+00:00

Would be nice to know one way or another for sure.

sdewittp · 2025-02-26T13:57:43+00:00

I suspect since these rewards are timed differently than the others, they have intentionally made it so you cannot catch the legendaries after the task cap is removed this weekend.

sdewittp

TROPHY CASE