The Long Spring — January to June 2021
The crate was labelled by season rather than by subject, which the Keeper distrusted on principle and then found it could not argue with. Eight panels, January to April of 2021, hung in the order they were made — and by the fourth the Keeper had stopped sorting them by game and started sorting them by weather. The archivist spent that winter in worlds that had already ended.
A wasteland that fits in one box and does not stress its owner. An entire shelf of apocalypses walked through in a single sitting, opened with the Road Warrior monologue recited from memory. A mansion of spreading fire and zombies, its survivors named after horror directors, which can be assembled in a configuration where nobody wins at all. A ruined southwest in which four warlords crawl toward the last human city. And a country where the necromancer has already taken everything, where four heroes shelter behind a lighted border, go out only at night, and spend their secrecy like coin.
The Keeper, which lives in a void between two shelves and has never had a good year, recognises the mood.
Not all of it is ash. Two panels concern growth rather than ruin: a tactical campaign whose levelling system the archivist calls a new standard for the form, and an arena game so far outside his usual shelf that he keeps apologising for loving it — where you never draw a card you did not expect, because the randomness has been moved out of your hand and into the world.
And then the last panel in the crate is about golf.
The Keeper checked twice. It is about golf, and it is also the most argumentative object in the wing: a simulation that discards the walking, the club selection and the caddy’s advice, keeps the tee shot and the putt, and finishes a hole in under a minute. The archivist bought it within minutes of seeing it mentioned, then used it to prosecute the map board — arguing that moving a pawn from tile to tile is dead time, and that every dungeon crawl he loves keeps its treasure on cards and lookup tables regardless.
Five older panels hang alongside, undated as always. Seven more from this spring are still on the landing.
Exhibit Catalogue — earliest first:
- The Dungeon Dive’s 2020 Retrospective and Look Forward to 2021! — no awards show: of 130 videos, barely twenty covered a 2020 release.
- Waste Knights 2nd Edition - An Apocalyptic Adventure Worth Taking — threat tokens drawn from a bag mutate the encounter cards; no two draws match.
- It’s 2021…Let’s Talk About the Post-Apocalypse! — opens with the Road Warrior monologue, then walks ten apocalypses off one shelf.
- A Look at Adventure Tactics with a focus on the Character Level Up System — hero miniatures smaller than the goblins they fight, beside standees worth framing.
- Champions of Hara - A Possible Masterpiece — the winner makes a wish, and the wish becomes the next scenario.
- The State of the Collection - 2021 — twenty games inbound and no shelf left: the year the collection got curated.
- Shadows of Brimstone - Part 1 - Introduction and Buyer’s Guide — two core sets, roughly $500 over a few months, two years of variety.
- Dark Darker Darkest - Taking a Look — Resident Evil 1 as a board game; the house can be built unwinnable.
- Defenders of the Last Stand - Take a Look — Arkham Horror to Pandemic to here, traced by someone who was there for all of it.
- A Look at Darkest Night 2nd Edition — everything alive has exactly one hit point, the Necromancer included.
- The Dungeon of D - A Small Box Dungeon Crawl Done Right — a free single deck in which every Power card does at least five jobs.
- History Maker Golf - And now for something completely different — a hole in under a minute, and an argument against the map board.
- Revisiting the Hero’s Journey Home - solo card-based adventure game — the quest is already won; you are playing the walk home.
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– The Keeper
Has also discarded the walking, the club selection and the advice, and retained only the fixed stare.