The Disappointment Wing, Part Two
The crates came off the landing at last. The Keeper had promised a second hanging and then said nothing further about it for a considerable while, which is how the Keeper keeps most of its promises: quietly, late, and without drawing attention to the interval.
Five panels go up, and the wing is finished. The corridor outside is merely a corridor again.
The two earliest hang a single day apart, and the Keeper has set them side by side because the pairing is the whole argument of the room. In the first, a man admits he is disappointed by a game he waited two years for, declines to review it badly, and puts it up for sale the same afternoon. In the second — the following evening, the comments having arrived — the same man explains himself, and the explanation is a distinction the Keeper considers worth the wall space it occupies: he will not do negative reviews, and he will not stop being critical. The first is a posture adopted toward an audience. The second is a condition of the mind, lifelong, extending to film and books and music, and he has no intention whatever of curing it.
What the rest of the wall demonstrates is that formula holding under load for four more years. A hard pass. I cannot recommend this. C tier at best, and I am keeping it anyway. Verdicts delivered entire, with the reasoning shown and the knife never drawn. The Keeper observes that this is a good deal harder than it sounds, and that most of the hobby manages neither half of it.
Underneath runs the same anxious arithmetic: a small house, a finite shelf, and the question of whether a collection has room for the merely adequate. The Keeper’s shelves are infinite and extend in directions the building does not, so the question has never once been put to it. Five older panels hang among the new, unmarked as ever, and the wing is filed under candour and closed.
Exhibit Catalogue — earliest first:
- A Failing of the Cthulhu Mythos Board Games — Appendix N handed him a treasure map; these boxes hand him nothing.
- Managing Disappointment — the sequel to his favourite game of all time, listed for sale by that afternoon.
- Some Reasons Why I Bounced Off Lost Station so Quickly — he kept watching the scenario book instead of the board.
- Massive Darkness 2 - What am I doing wrong? — a genuine plea to be corrected, his level-one heroes dying five times over.
- Godforsaken Scavengers - When Art and Theme Don’t Win Me Over — one card in hand, and it may be the most you ever hold.
- 10 Things I love about Stars of Akarios: A Great Game that’s Not for Me — he dreams of a three-hour version of a game he is selling.
- Dungeons of Draggmar - Amazing Art, and Initial Frustrations — he ironed the neoprene. It still would not lie flat.
- I cannot recommend The Adventures of… — the box promises dice and cubes, and the box contains neither.
- Some Things I Like about 5 Games I Don’t Like — five games he dislikes, each paired with the thing he admires in it.
- Of Dreams & Shadows - is there room in your collection for mid-tier games? — gorgeous cards, a dull map, and a plague town that spawned exactly the right horror.
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– The Keeper
Files no complaints, holds no opinions, and has nonetheless been taking notes on yours for some time.