The second half of June has found me spending quite a lot of time at home. The third week I was working from home so I was not distracted from a work project by my coworkers and this final week had me at home on 'vacation'. Sometimes we just need a reset.
As a result, I got a lot of work done around my house; you guessed it, I was listening to audiobooks while I did it. I quickly processed all 4 of my TBR Busterland picks and put the question to my followers on TikTok: what do I do? Roll for 2-4 more picks or do I choose another method?
Of the several hundred views, I got 4 likes and 2 responses. I have come to terms with the fact that my mutuals do not interact with my content the way I interact with their content. I hit the like button on all their videos, but they cannot be bothered to return the respect. Whatever. I'm the Hype Girl. Very few people hype me back, but they know who they are and they have my loyalty.
In any event, I did not roll for more books. What I did do however was design a second TBR game.
Voidlings and Crossbones
I'm 5 hours into designing, painting, and crafting this new game. It has gone much faster than TBR Busterland, which makes complete sense since the first game was tested for 6 months before the paint job and is the most insanely over-complicated game I've ever seen on BookTube. There is a rule sheet to reference for crying out loud because I simply cannot remember all the rules or the spaces' color meanings.
Voidlings and Crossbones is a much simpler game. I ran out of film space on my phone last night, otherwise, my hand-made, barrel-shaped d4 would have been completed already. In the divorce, I got a game called Math Noodlers. We started to play it once in all the years we had it, and it is practically brand new, but c'est la vie. The box is long gone, there's a missing blue Noodle-O, and who knows what happened to the spinner.
There are 4 stacks of cards around the track. Each has a math problem that you are to solve in the method described: draw, solve, choose an answer, or display how to come to the answer using the Noodle-O's. These cards definitely and immediately went into the trash can. The card backs match the space colors and it didn't make sense to me that the cards were Yellow, Green, Blue, and Purple while the pawns were Yellow, Green, Blue, and Red. It was also a garish kiddo cartoon busyness that hurt the eyes.
I've painted the background black and the cartoon-colored spaces with deeper tones, replacing Purple with Red. I brought Riley and Wordsworth over from TBR Busterland because I have yet to land on the correct space and roll the correct number to draw from them in the 6 months I have been playing. When there are 22 lavender spaces but 11 of each of the other colors, landing on one of them should be a common occurrence. You would be wrong. I have only landed on lavender once. Of the 20 times I rolled a d6 in the first half of the year, I've landed on green 4 times. How?!
Skulls, Skulls, Skulls
So Riley still holds the slips of paper with series titles and when I land on a green square, I will pull from her, reading the next book in that series. With his pretty little flower headband, Wordsworth still holds my outstanding reading prompts. When landing on yellow, I will draw a slip from him and if I have not completed that challenge already, I will find a book that satisfies it.
The new twins, who are as yet still unnamed, will hold Book Club Picks and a Random Reading Prompt. Our Shared Shelf, the former pet project of Emma Watson, has recommended several good books however, I find that many of them are non-fiction and not the kind of non-fiction I enjoy. I also keep up on the complete list of Reese and Jenna's recommendations and recently enjoyed the launch of Mindy's Book Studio and the various voices she chooses to highlight and promote. Unread titles will go into the blue-colored skull. I also have a list of random reading prompts gleaned from creators like Book Roast and other bloggers that I will throw into the red skull. These are prompts like Red Cover, White Cover, Dragon on the Cover, Cloud in the title, Author you Love, Blindfold pick, Features a Pirate, etc.
In the center of the board is my Catacombs of Paris Fragrant Jewels candle jar, all burned down and cleaned up. In this jar will be slips of paper with standalone books that I really want to own and have on my shelf. So how do I earn a draw from the Catacombs?
Glad you didn't ask.
4 Pawns and the 6 Rings
Lo and behold, the 6 colors of Noodle-O's match the spaces on TBR Busterland for my genre jars. I love rainbows. For many reasons. There are supposed to be 6 rings each, but I only need 4 each so the missing blue one means nothing. Red - Romance/Literary Fiction, Orange - Western/Horror, Yellow - Thriller & Suspense, Green - Sci-Fi, Blue - Fantasy, and Purple - Mystery.
When I play, I will roll my barrel d4 once for each of the 4 pawns. Rather than count '1-2-3-4', each side will be a color and I will just move to the next space of that color. As long as I start the book that gets pulled, I earn a ring that corresponds to that book's genre. Once the pawns earn each of the 6 colors, I get to draw a book. We're talking special edition books or sprayed edges, etc., books that are collector's items or more expensive than the average book I can earn using Pieces of 8 from TBR Busterland.
For example, I roll for the Red Pawn and land on Red. I pull out Blue Cover and choose The Watchers by Jon Steele. As long as I start the book, whether I DNF or finish, the Red Pawn will get a Blue Ring. If I already have a Blue Ring, but the mystery, thriller, or horror elements far outweigh the fantasy elements of the book imo, I could earn a ring for those genres instead. See? Not too hard.
All 4 pawns will make their way around the board simultaneously and will stay in play until earning their rings. I may roll twice for another pawn to achieve all 4 rolls for the month.
Same Time as TBR Busterland??
Oh, absolutely not! I'm card-carrying crazy, not certifiably insane.
I will switch month by month between my various TBR games. There is the potential that my followers (when I get the BookTube channel up and running) will have the first 3 weeks of January to pick what game I use in February. I will film/roll/etc the last week of January and upload the first of February, asking followers to pick the game for March.
Now I realize that only two games will be a boring poll. But just wait. I also have a Sorry! board, Chutes & Ladders board, and a Clue board yet...
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