27th Officially We Need a New Temporary Unofficial Event Name... Event!!

🚀🧊 BOARD GAME NIGHT XXVII – VANTAGE 🧊🚀
Five players. One planet. No shared understanding.

It started the way these nights usually do.

A table.
Some boxes.
Five people sitting down with drinks in hand, ready to learn one simple thing:

A new board game.

This time, it was Vantage — a sci-fi adventure about exploration, survival, and waking up alone on an unfamiliar planet after something has clearly gone very, very wrong.

Richard, the owner of the game, bravely volunteered to teach it.

The rest of us listened attentively.
Nodded confidently.
And immediately understood… almost nothing.

Still, spirits were high. Pieces were placed. Cards were drawn. Cryo chambers were opened. And before anyone could ask sensible questions like “What are we trying to do?” or “Why are we here?” or “Is this a tutorial or the actual game?” — the universe made its move.

Alarms sounded. Systems failed. Escape pods launched with the enthusiasm of a fire drill run by chaos itself.

One moment we were seated comfortably at a table.
The next, we were being forcibly awakened, strapped into escape pods, and jettisoned toward the surface of a planet we had never heard of… for reasons no one could clearly explain.

No mission briefing.
No shared understanding.
No reassurance that this was going well.

What followed was not heroic exploration.
It was confusion.
Polite confusion.
Persistent confusion.

The kind of confusion where everyone assumes someone else knows what’s happening.
They did not.
----
🚨🤦 WAKING UP WAS THE FIRST MISTAKE! 🤦🚨

The cryo chambers opened without warning.

Cold air spilled out. Vision blurred. Memory arrived late. Five people stood upright far sooner than anyone should after an unplanned centuries-long nap, united by a single, universal thought:

“This feels like a mistake.”

Before questions could be asked — Who are we? Why are we frozen? Is this the tutorial? — alarms erupted. Lights flashed. The ship bucked violently, and some over-eager emergency system initiated what historians would later classify as “a deeply unserious evacuation.”

Escape pods launched.

Seatbelts were fumbled. Something important was dropped immediately. Instructions were skimmed, misunderstood, or ignored outright. And within seconds, five pods screamed toward the surface of an alien planet we had absolutely no context for.

Impact.

Smoke cleared.

We emerged onto a world that was stunning, unfamiliar, and aggressively indifferent to our survival.

There was no mission briefing.
No clear objective.
No shared understanding of what success even looked like.

We explored anyway.

A flower was admired. It was lethal.
A glowing object was approached with confidence. That confidence was incorrect. Tools were collected without knowing their purpose and deployed with enthusiasm regardless.

Plans were announced loudly.
Evidence was never provided.

Somewhere between the crash landing and the final turns, it became clear:

The characters in Vantage were lost on an alien planet.
And so were we.

What followed was less survival and more natural selection.

Jason proudly investigated a mysterious alien mechanism, pushing buttons with the reckless optimism of a man who “just wanted to see what would happen.” It worked beautifully — briefly — before working too well. His final contribution to the mission was data no one knew how to read.

Richard, having taught the game to the best of his ability, confidently led his character into danger under the assumption that “this is probably fine.” It was not. He died doing exactly what the rulebook vaguely implied might be risky — proving knowledge is power, but partial knowledge is deadly.

Nathan attempted careful exploration, which somehow made things worse. He reasoned through the situation calmly, logically, and then stepped precisely where he shouldn’t have. Science applauds the method. The planet did not.

Jon P, encountering technology that clearly predated modern safety standards, attempted to optimize it. Sparks flew. Systems overloaded. He perished doing what engineers do best: improving something until it explodes.

Casey, surveying the alien landscape, made a decision that seemed harmless, sensible, and aesthetically pleasing. It turned out the planet had strong opinions about that. She died beautifully, immediately, and with zero warning.

When the dust settled, there were no survivors.
No heroes.
No understanding of what almost worked.

Just five cautionary tales scattered across an alien world that quietly went back to minding its own business.
----
🛰️🪐 SIGNAL LOST- TABLE RESET 🪐🛰️

The planet did not explode.
The universe did not apologize.
And somehow… the table survived.

What remained after the Vantage incident wasn’t clarity — it was resolve. The kind that forms when everyone agrees to keep going despite absolutely no evidence that things will improve. The cryo fog has lifted. The escape pods are scattered. The wreckage smolders gently in the background.

And yet, once again, we gather.

New games. Familiar faces. A fresh opportunity to misunderstand the rules in exciting new ways. Whatever comes next will be different — possibly safer — but no less confusing. The dice are waiting. The meeples are restless. And the table, ever hopeful, stands ready for another questionable mission.

Systems rebooting.
Confidence rebuilding.
Outcome… unclear.
----
🎲 WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW 🎲

🎉 New Survivors Welcome - Recently awakened from cryo? Excellent. Orientation will be brief, incomplete, and immediately followed by danger. Rules will be taught by the least panicked survivor at the table.
🎯 Mission Parameters (Game Selection) - The primary objective will be identified shortly after play begins. Secondary objectives may appear without warning. Tertiary objectives should be ignored for your own safety.
🎮 Recovered Equipment (Got a Favorite Game?) - If you’ve salvaged a game from the wreckage, bring it forward for evaluation. All proposals must survive initial scrutiny and at least one skeptical stare.
🎭 Environmental Suit Protocol (Dress Code) - Casual attire approved. Layers recommended. Any clothing that suggests “recently ejected from orbit” is acceptable. Helmets discouraged unless emotionally necessary.
🍇 Shared Resources (Etiquette) - Cooperate when possible. Share components. Do not hoard oxygen, cards, or snacks. Anyone declaring “I’ll be fine” will immediately not be.
⚠️ Hazard Warning - Unknown terrain. Unstable systems. Rules may evolve mid-game. If something glows, hums, or seems important — it probably is. Or it isn’t. We won’t know in time.
📜 Planetary Log (Fun Fact) - Exploration efficiency increases dramatically when at least one person actually knows what they’re doing. This condition is considered rare.
🧂 Open Comms (Table Talk) - Transmission encouraged. Speculation inevitable. Confident statements will later be revealed as incorrect. This is standard procedure.

— Your Accidentally Awakened Mission Coordinator, Filing This Report From the Crash Site

📜 SINCE OUR LAST MEETUP… 📜

🛰️ A distress signal was detected, analyzed, debated, and ultimately ignored due to uncertainty over whose turn it was to respond.
🧂 Nathan remains convinced that, with slightly different choices, the entire mission would have gone worse.
🐫The Camel Union confirmed first contact with an off-world camel variant, noting “the humps glow now, but the demands remain the same.”
🎬John P now believes survival odds would increase if Vantage were played in 3D, preferably under the supervision of James Cameron and a very patient planet.
📓 A bound volume was found among the aftermath with hundreds of empty pages. The spine identified it as The Archive of Unfinished Stories.
🌱 Casey has been witnessed separating her spring seedlings into two categories: decorative and suspicious.