No Plot, Only Lore

Board game expansions - a fun way to spice up your favorite board game, or just a cult of commercial cardboard?

Lost Civilizations

One of my least favorite tropes. 

What is a lost civilization? Not just Atlantis. Think of Eberron's giant ruins of Xen'drik, Skyrim's Dwemer, or Dark Souls' pile of forgotten kingdoms.

Why are they useful in fantasy?

• Instantly adds history and depth
• Allows the GM/author to worldbuild without explaining everything
• Great excuse for dungeons, relics, and magic that no one understands

Storytelling functions:

• Symbol of hubris
• Cautionary tale
• Blank canvas for player projection

What do survivors remember? Oral traditions? Sacred ruins? Cursed bloodlines?

Are they really gone?

• Sleeper gods or AI still running background processes
• Interdimensional echoes (like Shadow of the Colossus meets Echo Night)
• The civilization lives on… just not physically (digital ghosts, psychic imprints, inherited trauma)

D&D examples: The Netherese Empire, the Sulat League (fiendish magic-scientists), or the ruins in Chult—each has different “flavor” of forgotten-ness

What happens when modern civilizations try to revive or claim these ruins?

• Colonial critique: Who has the right to explore or excavate the past?
• Techno-magic horror: The past isn’t just misunderstood—it’s wrong
• Factions and relics: Everyone wants the magic battery that powers a floating city. Nobody knows how to stop it once it wakes up

Fun Hooks:

• A city that grew up inside a dead god’s ribcage (lol)
• A forgotten language that causes madness when spoken aloud
• A vault that only opens if you betray someone you love

My big problems:

The Murder Game. Until Tag was introduced, there was never a game where one player had to go out of their way to murder another player in order to win and survive. In every other game, murder was an *option* and the consequence of loss was always death, but it was possible to win without killing a person yourself. The “System” outsourced most of the actual violence. Tag fundamentally changed this and by doing so changed the dynamic and the social contract of the show entirely. There was no longer a plausible separation between winning and murder. The staff did the murder. The consequence for losing was death and your life was equally on the line. Not so in Tag. 

The fucking baby. One of the fundamental rules of the Squid Game event is that everyone is there by choice. It’s one of the themes that was hammered on in the first season, and it mirrored the capitalist rat race beautifully. Everyone was doing this of their own free will, and the second season even introduced voting between rounds to ensure that people were kept in the games by the Will of the People. But the baby didn’t consent and couldn’t consent to being involved in the games. The baby was an unwilling participant, and making the baby a ‘player’ undermined any trust the real players may have had that the games were in any way fair. 

Now, the games are _not_ fair. They never were. They rely on financial coercion, the illusion of fairness, random chance, positional chance, and the exploitation of personal relationships. But it maintains a facade. All of that breaks down with the baby.

And I kinda get where they were going with this. I get that it’s illustrative of the unfairness of the institutions Squid Game is trying to criticize. The rules were never fair, the people running the games never cared about fairness at all, the whole thing is spectacle. But it also fundamentally undermines the premise of the games in a way that would be ruinous for anything other than a shadowy international rich-man’s dog fight. 

So, we’ve both finally seen all of Squid Game. 

Season 1 was a masterpiece that didn’t need a sequel.

Season 2 started strong, but there was some strange decision-making. Best character in the series was introduced, though (Cho Hyun-ju)

Season 3 undid all of my goodwill for seasons 1 and 2. 

Let’s get into it. 

General Issues:

Repetition

Lack of Innovation, even in the new games

Focus on time between games, but not in like, an interesting way?

More luck, less strategy (this was an issue I had with season 1, too, with the bridge)

Less morality, more preaching, no evolution of themes.

In which we put characters from beloved children's stories into stories that uh... Aren't so child-friendly...

How much realism is too much? This week, we discuss the trend of gritty reboots and the concept of "HBO-ification" as seen in shows like The Wheel of Time and Andor. We lay out our dark, grounded plans for classic IPs, including turning Zorro into a Punisher-style vigilante and making Inspector Gadget a violent cyberpunk monster. Join us to find out how to make Narnia and Space Above and Beyond dark, serious television.

Josh and Kris dissect the trend of gritty TV reboots and the "HBOification" of classic IPs. We criticize Amazon's The Wheel of Time for killing wives and ditching character depth (like Perrin's blacksmith/axe dichotomy). Then, we pitch dark, adult TV series for beloved franchises: a post-apocalyptic dragon show based on Reign of Fire, a politically charged modern Zorro fighting ICE, a cyberpunk Inspector Gadget gone mad from his augments, and a Battlestar Galactica-style Space Above and Beyond/Starship Troopers reboot.

Josh and Kris dissect the Chosen One trope in media, from the TTRPG mechanics of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG's Drama Points to the huge distortions in The Wheel of Time's pattern. We dive into the best (and worst) uses of the trope in Star Wars (Was Anakin really the Chosen One?) and Harry Potter (He's just a guy!). Plus, a deep-dive into how Buffy's secondary characters are systemically made essential.

Josh and Kris roll the dice to create bizarre, twisted versions of classic folklore characters! Hear our takes on a "gross" Selkie that violently tears its way out of its seal form, the melancholic, depressed Santa Claus (inspired by Neil Gaiman) who hates his job, a queer-coded, sequined Baba Yaga with chicken-feet leggings, and Anansi the trickster god as a charmingly fat, retired, domestic dad (like a mystical Nobody). Plus, a detour into the real-life history of the Pied Piper of Hamelin!

Josh and Kris talk about their favorite apocalypses, from Fallout-style nuclear war (and the haunting film The Road) to the underrated movie The Book of Eli and terrible ones like Waterworld and After Earth. The conversation shifts to the ultimate TTRPG challenge: finishing a campaign. They discuss why most D&D groups never finish a multi-year story, the shift from collaborative world-building to "being entertained," and the influence of actual-play shows like Critical Role and D20 on modern player expectations and "doing bits."