I am glad for the reason I have not updated in a long time. Months before, the answer involved dispassion and a dearth of activity. Now, I learned to better structure my time in the transactional analysis sense. I do not mean I live by a schedule (though there is a school of thought that suggests as much). I mean I have found new ways to spend time entertained. Specifically, I joined conquerclub.com

I may have played the board game Risk perhaps twice in my life. I know I played Axis & Allies and Diplomacy whilst in high school. I have no recollection why, on February seventh, I craved a session. I used Wikipedia to show me some sites. I chose conquerclub (popularly and henceforth abbreviated as CC) and another I have never again used. Granted, the site I disfavored offers a traditional risk map. Hasbro took CC to task and forced the site managers to replace the iconic map with extremely abstracted versions to avoid trademark infringement. This happened five months before I joined, so the community had recovered.

I cared not, the import lay in the silent contest between my opponents on a variety of other maps drawn by native artists. I have trudged through several sorts of America, its regions, its states, and some famous cities, Russia, the Mongol Empire, Europe at most stages of its history, Ancient Greece, and a dozen others. The site allots twenty-four hours for each player’s turns which may have two to eight participants. I find that delays my turns too long so I avoid games with greater than six. I generally join twelve games at a time.

Though I have yet to play on all the available maps, I felt inspired to try my hand at the board. I made sure to trawl the forum’s archives as artists continually contribute to the site. Further, many amateurs try & drop a great many more themes: the circles of hell, the human body, or pangea. The site standard tool for creating a map is Adobe Photoshop. Unfortunately, I haven’t a copy & it costs two hundred dollars. Fortunately, I bought an ancient – yet serviceable – version of Adobe Flash. (I intend to eventually craft flash movies for newgrounds.) I lowered my expectations and began. I would like to design a complex map, but I recognize that I had best cut my teeth on a simple challenge.

I forgot two connections in the Indian Ocean

The site had still another surprise for me: Mafia. Dimma Davidoff invented a game of privileged information in the year of my birth that became a popular party game. A group of people gather, knowing a faction joined that will eliminate the others – the mafia. The whole group spends a round deciding who is most likely a mafia member and ‘lynching’ that person. Then the mafia has an opportunity to kill someone while the rest cover their eyes. The game ends when the mafia outnumbers the “townies” or all the mafia are dead. Some of you may have played this before; for that I envy you.

Nonetheless, CC’s forum hosts mafia games. Almost all of them are far more complex than I described by the addition of a great many more roles with differing powers & motivations. Here is the strongest entertainment of recent months. I am involved in greatly charged conversation wherein I must keep suspicion off myself whilst identifying threats I can maneuver into the electric chair.