Rediscovering old interests

[Owliet]

I was very interested in dinosaurs as a small child. I could name all the dinosaurs, and I could talk about them all day. My favorite was the allosaurus. It didn’t seem to impact me as a younger child when I would be bullied for having a boyish interest (apparently only boys could like dinosaurs), but that changed when my peers were starting to get into thing like boy bands, clothes, makeup...I was stuck with my dinosaurs. And the bullying intensified.

Because of this At some point I lost this interest and shifted my historical interests further a field with different time periods. I also started to listen to music and wear makeup (although not on the same par as my NT peers). I’ve been told that girls with ASD are more likely to try to mimic and mask in order to fit in and try to be like others.

anyway, now that I’m getting older (and more cynical,) I seem to have decided to not care about others opinions. If I want to like dinosaurs, I will! I just wish that I hadn’t dropped (one of)my interests due to peer pressure and wanting to be perceived as “normal “ In order to fit in.

I’m happy that I’m rediscovering an old interest. Have you done the same?

 

[Misery]

For me, it was board games!

I loved them as a kid. Or at least, I loved the IDEA of them. Those older "family" games (from the 80s & 90s) were... really rather mindless in a lot of ways, and in any case I didnt have anyone that ever wanted to play them. Had a whole bunch of them... never really got to DO anything with them.

Fast forward all these years later, and I rediscover board games, and find that they've changed drastically. And while they used to pretty much all be competitive only, there are now tons of them that can be played co-op or solo. Some are even ONLY for one player.

I'm not quite sure how I found this interest again but I'm glad I did.

 

[Owliet]

For me, it was board games!

I loved them as a kid. Or at least, I loved the IDEA of them. Those older "family" games (from the 80s & 90s) were... really rather mindless in a lot of ways, and in any case I didnt have anyone that ever wanted to play them. Had a whole bunch of them... never really got to DO anything with them.

Fast forward all these years later, and I rediscover board games, and find that they've changed drastically. And while they used to pretty much all be competitive only, there are now tons of them that can be played co-op or solo. Some are even ONLY for one player.

I'm not quite sure how I found this interest again but I'm glad I did.

What board games do you play?

 

[Neonatal RRT]

I generally keep my old interests,...at 54, I have had a long list of them, but certainly more likely to focus upon my current ones. Like you, I have an interest in fossils, the creatures that roamed the Earth at each period, etc. I will view any new documentary on those topics. I love searching for fossils on beaches, digging into limestone beds, watching professional digs, going to natural history museums,...all of that.

I don't know if it is an "autism thing" or just me, but I have to keep my mind occupied with at least one special interest. I am "knowledge hungry" to a fault,...deep dives into all sorts of things.

 

[Misery]

What board games do you play?

Some favorites out of my collection:

Ghost Stories
Mage Knight
Aeon's End (the one that got me into it all, I have ALL of the expansions, and yes board games have expansions)
One Deck Dungeon
Too Many Bones (this is hard to set up. I cant lift the box.)
Nautillion
Nemo's War
Marvel Champions
The Night Cage
Final Girl (most recent one, and what I'm playing most right now. The name is based on a classic horror trope. Sure is a lot of murder in this one)
Hostage Negotiator (my personal favorite of all of them, though Final Girl might unseat it)

There are others but those are the ones that stand out the most.

I'm pretty much solo-only when it comes to this hobby, so all of these are either co-op (where I can play as multiple characters/whatever myself against the game) or solo-only.

I absolutely love doing any of these, problem is that my arm & neck dont always agree with that. Limits my time with any of them, but that's getting better... slowly...

 

[Varzar]

Some favorites out of my collection:

Ghost Stories
Mage Knight
Aeon's End (the one that got me into it all, I have ALL of the expansions, and yes board games have expansions)
One Deck Dungeon
Too Many Bones (this is hard to set up. I cant lift the box.)
Nautillion
Nemo's War
Marvel Champions
The Night Cage
Final Girl (most recent one, and what I'm playing most right now. The name is based on a classic horror trope. Sure is a lot of murder in this one)
Hostage Negotiator (my personal favorite of all of them, though Final Girl might unseat it)

There are others but those are the ones that stand out the most.

I'm pretty much solo-only when it comes to this hobby, so all of these are either co-op (where I can play as multiple characters/whatever myself against the game) or solo-only.

I absolutely love doing any of these, problem is that my arm & neck dont always agree with that. Limits my time with any of them, but that's getting better... slowly...

Have you tried Pandemic?
It's my wife and my favourite (even before Covid showed up.. )
What are your favourites for 2+player co-op?

@Owliet - Why Allosaurus? Just curious. I imagine a lot of people would go T-Rex over Allosaurus.
I liked dinos a lot when I was a kid too. I always thought Triceratops and Steggos were the most fascinating. Just the defences they evolved (plates, horns, spiked tails) to counter all the predators with big teeth seemed really neat to me.
I also got bullied a lot, but not for liking dinos. I was(am) a computer geek, and back in the 80s/90s the world hadn't become addicted to technology yet, so it wasn't cool then to know anything about them..

 

[Misery]

Have you tried Pandemic?
It's my wife and my favourite (even before Covid showed up.. )
What are your favourites for 2+player co-op?

Indeed I have! I have Pandemic as well as each of its expansions (which improve it quite a bit). It is a hard game.

I also have Pandemic: The Cure (and its one expansion), which is the one I think is the better of the two (at least for me). Take a good concept and add 5 zillion dice to it, and you have my attention... this one does that well. It sets up and plays much faster than the main game and has quite the strange "board".

As far as others that work well for 2-player co-op, there are 4 that stand out to me:

The best is probably Spirit Island... I forgot to mention that one earlier (despite it being like, my second favorite). Utterly brilliant game and it's been constantly one of BoardGameGeek's top 10 games. They seriously dont get much better than that one. It can be played in "pure" solo (where you control just one spirit) but I always play it with 2 spirits, I think that works best. Allows for wild synergies and such. There is a digital version of this one but it is currently missing the Jagged Earth expansion.

Aeon's End is also great, it's often called one of the best co-ops. Deckbuilder where you're up VS some horrid boss thing. Easy to learn but *very* hard... any victory will always be a tight one. It also has a really stupid amount of content, so getting ALL of it is incredibly expensive.

Marvel Champions is great if you like the idea of being able to construct a deck beforehand (and it helps if you like Marvel, too). There is a TON of content for this one and a lot of replayability. I always play it using two heroes. I got into this one fairly recently so I dont have a huge ton of content yet.

If you REALLY want a true challenge, go for Ghost Stories. It's the oldest of all of them that I've played (or did Pandemic come first?) but like Pandemic it's a classic. Very, very, VERY hard. A lot of people go into this one, lose 5 billion times, and declare it to be "nothing but luck". It is not. It's one of those games where you have to learn to fight back against the RNG. Even at its easiest, this one is super brutal... absolutely ruthless. Best with the White Moon expansion, however that is likely to be quite hard to find (seriously it's old). Ghost stories can be played with 1-4 players, each controlling one ninja, but it is best with all four and balanced around that (and that's always how I play it).

Lastly, I'd say, The Night Cage. It's by far the strangest out of my collection and one of only a couple of horror themed games that I own (but it doesnt have zombies or Cthulhu... actually gets creative, this one. The theme is a constantly shifting nightmare labyrinth, and you only have terrible candles to light your way). Not very well known. Oddly, you ALWAYS have exactly 4 or 5 characters active in this one (so, with 2-player co-op, you'd be controlling two each). However the rules are easy to learn and individual turns are fast... it's very easy to keep track of everything, even controlling all of them yourself. This game is very, very heavy on the "work together" aspect. While not as brutal as Ghost Stories it is still unforgiving. This one has no expansions yet and is quite recent.

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

Dinosaurs! Sad that others would try to shame you for an interest in the natural world. Those people are dull-witted. With my lack of interested in team and pro sports, I was made to feel that I was not a normal guy, but screw that.

I maintained my interest in paleontology, now concentrating on Trilobites. But, I was very fortunate to have collected at famous sites. I've been to the Drumheller Badlands in Alberta where we found a badly broken up Hadrosaur and a Gorgosaur weathering out and I found the first cervical vertebra of the Gorgosaur. Then, more recently, I visited the Kem-Kem beds in Morocco, and secured a nice Spinosaur tooth and a barb from a gigantic sawfish, Onchopristis. I also found a tooth from the pterodon, Siroccopteryx.

There is no shame in interests that enrich your life. Some people would rather be deliberately ignorant.

 

[Varzar]

Indeed I have! I have Pandemic as well as each of its expansions (which improve it quite a bit). It is a hard game.

I also have Pandemic: The Cure (and its one expansion), which is the one I think is the better of the two (at least for me). Take a good concept and add 5 zillion dice to it, and you have my attention... this one does that well. It sets up and plays much faster than the main game and has quite the strange "board".

As far as others that work well for 2-player co-op, there are 4 that stand out to me:

The best is probably Spirit Island... I forgot to mention that one earlier (despite it being like, my second favorite). Utterly brilliant game and it's been constantly one of BoardGameGeek's top 10 games. They seriously dont get much better than that one. It can be played in "pure" solo (where you control just one spirit) but I always play it with 2 spirits, I think that works best. Allows for wild synergies and such. There is a digital version of this one but it is currently missing the Jagged Earth expansion.

Aeon's End is also great, it's often called one of the best co-ops. Deckbuilder where you're up VS some horrid boss thing. Easy to learn but *very* hard... any victory will always be a tight one. It also has a really stupid amount of content, so getting ALL of it is incredibly expensive.

Marvel Champions is great if you like the idea of being able to construct a deck beforehand (and it helps if you like Marvel, too). There is a TON of content for this one and a lot of replayability. I always play it using two heroes. I got into this one fairly recently so I dont have a huge ton of content yet.

If you REALLY want a true challenge, go for Ghost Stories. It's the oldest of all of them that I've played (or did Pandemic come first?) but like Pandemic it's a classic. Very, very, VERY hard. A lot of people go into this one, lose 5 billion times, and declare it to be "nothing but luck". It is not. It's one of those games where you have to learn to fight back against the RNG. Even at its easiest, this one is super brutal... absolutely ruthless. Best with the White Moon expansion, however that is likely to be quite hard to find (seriously it's old). Ghost stories can be played with 1-4 players, each controlling one ninja, but it is best with all four and balanced around that (and that's always how I play it).

Lastly, I'd say, The Night Cage. It's by far the strangest out of my collection and one of only a couple of horror themed games that I own (but it doesnt have zombies or Cthulhu... actually gets creative, this one. The theme is a constantly shifting nightmare labyrinth, and you only have terrible candles to light your way). Not very well known. Oddly, you ALWAYS have exactly 4 or 5 characters active in this one (so, with 2-player co-op, you'd be controlling two each). However the rules are easy to learn and individual turns are fast... it's very easy to keep track of everything, even controlling all of them yourself. This game is very, very heavy on the "work together" aspect. While not as brutal as Ghost Stories it is still unforgiving. This one has no expansions yet and is quite recent.

Cool. I'll have to check out a couple of those. I do like Marvel, so maybe that would be fun. And maybe Ghost Stories too. We have Spirit Island too, but haven't really played it enough to learn it properly.
Aeon's End sounds interesting too..

We also have all the expansions for Pandemc, but not The Cure. I wasn't sure if that translation would be appealing to me. Maybe I prefer cards to dice? Not in D&D though.. lol.
We've been spending Xmas time off playing through Pandemic Legacy: Season 0.. Already played the other 2 seasons as well.

 

[Owliet]

Have you tried Pandemic?
It's my wife and my favourite (even before Covid showed up.. )
What are your favourites for 2+player co-op?

@Owliet - Why Allosaurus? Just curious. I imagine a lot of people would go T-Rex over Allosaurus.
I liked dinos a lot when I was a kid too. I always thought Triceratops and Steggos were the most fascinating. Just the defences they evolved (plates, horns, spiked tails) to counter all the predators with big teeth seemed really neat to me.
I also got bullied a lot, but not for liking dinos. I was(am) a computer geek, and back in the 80s/90s the world hadn't become addicted to technology yet, so it wasn't cool then to know anything about them..

When I was little my grandparents took me to a natural history museum that had a special dinosaur exhibit, one of the features was an allosaurus specimen And I just really liked it. Although to be fair I did like all dinosaurs with parasaurolophus being another favorite (I like the horn crest). After that, my grandfather would encourage my interest, since I seem to go very deeply into topics, and introduced me to this Allosaurus specimen called Big Al ( Who’s recently been reclassified as a subspecies of allosaurus). But what’s cool about him is that on his bones it shows the hard life he had up to when he died. Signs of healing injuries, and the infection of his toe thats thought to have killed him. I also like how they may have hunted sauropods in groups kneading to the discussion that they may have hunted in packs when necessary or were more socialized than previously thought.

This encouragement of dinosaurs may have led me to a more archaeological pathway rather than paleontology but the topic is a first love and It’s nice to resume it and it is super cool that there’s been a few paleontological finds this year (the new specimens and the perfectly preserved oviraptor egg fetus).

Stegosaurus are cool too. Another reason to like allosaurus is that it’s suggested that they preyed or scavenged on Stegosaurus due to the teeth Indentation marks on the plates of the stegosaurus .

((I’m rambling..)

I am "knowledge hungry" to a fault,...deep dives into all sorts of things.

Yes, I am like this too, if it is something that interests me I will do a deep dive into all sorts of things.

I'm pretty much solo-only when it comes to this hobby, so all of these are either co-op (where I can play as multiple characters/whatever myself against the game) or solo-only.

Ihave some board games but they require playing with other people that isn’t really possible. I used to play dnd but like with any friendships I’ve made in the last two years, they tend to crumble into dust and I haven’t played at all since. On the plus, I feel like RPG games scratch that itch at times, so it’s really not that much of a loss.

Dinosaurs! Sad that others would try to shame you for an interest in the natural world. Those people are dull-witted. With my lack of interested in team and pro sports, I was made to feel that I was not a normal guy, but screw that.

I maintained my interest in paleontology, now concentrating on Trilobites. But, I was very fortunate to have collected at famous sites. I've been to the Drumheller Badlands in Alberta where we found a badly broken up Hadrosaur and a Gorgosaur weathering out and I found the first cervical vertebra of the Gorgosaur. Then, more recently, I visited the Kem-Kem beds in Morocco, and secured a nice Spinosaur tooth and a barb from a gigantic sawfish, Onchopristis. I also found a tooth from the pterodon, Siroccopteryx.

There is no shame in interests that enrich your life. Some people would rather be deliberately ignorant.

oh, that sounds extremely exacting!

 

[VictorR]

Recently I came across this

and it reminded me of how I played the game and entered lots of tournaments as a kid, but have barely played after high school. I've since gotten back into it and am glad that there's lots of options for online play, including variants like antichess (where the objective is to lose all your pieces or have no playable pieces).

 

[Owliet]

Recently I came across this

and it reminded me of how I played the game and entered lots of tournaments as a kid, but have barely played after high school. I've since gotten back into it and am glad that there's lots of options for online play, including variants like antichess (where the objective is to lose all your pieces or have no playable pieces).

Chess is a good game. I recently got a lord of the rings chess set.