“Steam is hosting a festival for ‘digital tabletop’ games next month - The Verge” plus 2 more

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• Steam is hosting a festival for ‘digital tabletop’ games next month - The Verge
• Defensive Misplays Plague Twins as Astros Take Game 1 - FanGraphs
• Littlefield: A Rhyme About Sports During A Pandemic - WBUR

Steam is hosting a festival for ‘digital tabletop’ games next month - The Verge Posted: 30 Sep 2020 10:00 AM PDT Valve and tabletop company Auroch Digital will host an online festival next month for "games that cross between physical and digital." Called the Steam Digital Tabletop Fest, the event will be streamed live from October 21st to the 26th. The festival will showcase speakers like prolific designer Steve Jackson (creator of the GURPS roleplaying system, as well as many individual roleplaying games), Call of Cthulhu RPG designer Sandy Petersen, and Games Workshop co-founder Ian Livingstone. It will also include sessions for individual games. Plague Inc: Evolved designer James Vaughan will stream a session while discussing the difference between the game's physical and digital iterations, and sessions for Othercide and Gloomhaven — another dual-format game — are planned as well. There's also an eye-catching panel for games about Mars, in which scientists and "actual space agency staff" will talk to game creators about what their work gets right and wrong. The lineup includes Steve Jackson and the designer of 'Plague Inc.' "Digital tabletop" gaming doesn't have a particularly strict definition. Valve describes its festival as covering things like "a digital port of a physical game, a game which has produced a physical version from the digital one, a game that simulates the physical play experience, or a digital game whose aesthetics are inspired by tabletop games." More panels will be announced as the festival gets closer. This isn't Valve's first move into festivals. Last year, Game Awards founder Geoff Keighley worked with it to launch a project called The Game Festival, which lets Steam users play upcoming game demos over a short window of time. Valve reprised the festival after the coronavirus pandemic shut down March's Game Developers Conference and its associated indie developer showcases. The Digital Tabletop Fest (so far) doesn't bear much resemblance to tabletop gaming conventions like Gen Con. Interactivity — with designers and other fans — is a key part of these festivals, while Steam's lineup so far suggests it's more about panels and let's play streams. If you want to actually play tabletop games, you can turn to Zoom or other online services... but the pandemic can still make it pretty tough.

Defensive Misplays Plague Twins as Astros Take Game 1 - FanGraphs Posted: 29 Sep 2020 04:51 PM PDT Game 1 of the American League's Nos. 3/6 seed matchup between the Minnesota Twins and Houston Astros was a microcosm of what may define this year's Wild Card round, one in which a three-game series can be swung by chaos and randomness. Lady Luck had a hand in Houston's 4-1 win in Minnesota, especially in a defining three-run Houston ninth. All four of Houston's runs came after a series of tough-luck hits and poor Twins defensive execution. After pitching a clean sixth inning and beginning the seventh with a pair of outs, Twins reliever Tyler Duffey gave up a shift-beating single to Josh Reddick and an infield single to Martín Maldonado, who hit a ball that was too hot for Marwin Gonzalez to handle at third base despite coming off the bat at just 79 mph. They were followed by a George Springer single off a first-pitch breaking ball to score Reddick, but Maldonado was thrown out by 30 feet while making an ill-advised attempt to advance to third. That tied the game at one. The ninth inning was the death blow. Astros first baseman Yuli Gurriel reached into the left-handed batter's box to poke a Sergio Romo slider into the outfield for a flare single, and Carlos Correa followed with a bloop hit of his own. Romo retired the next two hitters, bringing Springer to the plate in yet another big spot. He hit a weak one-hop liner to the left of shortstop Jorge Polanco that seemed likely to end the inning, but Polanco's throw the short way to second base was off the bag and second baseman Luis Arraez was unable to handle it while holding the base, allowing Springer to reach and load the bases. None of the Houston baserunners put a ball in play in excess of 81 mph. All three runners would eventually score, first when Romo walked second baseman Jose Altuve to give Houston lead, then later when Michael Brantley waited back on the second sub-70-mph curveball thrown to him by lefty Caleb Thielbar (the first one surprised Brantley) and drove it into the gap for a two-run single. But while Houston's offense was fueled by a combination of good fortune and Minnesota mistakes, the defense presented little-to-no daylight for the Twins bats, led by an incredible relief performance by Framber Valdez, who was Houston's best pitcher during the regular season. Starter Zack Greinke had settled in after a long, 30-pitch first inning, but he was removed in favor of Valdez to start the fifth, preventing the top of the Twins lineup from seeing Greinke three times. Seven of Valdez's first eight pitches were balls as he walked Gonzalez and Arraez to lead off the fifth, giving way to the heart of the Twins order. But not only did Valdez avert disaster in that inning, but he was utterly dominant after that, retiring the next thirteen Twins in a row until Miguel Sanó delivered an ultimately meaningless single in the ninth. Valdez gave Minnesota the raspberry across five shutout innings in relief, winning the Astros Game 1 while simultaneously saving much of Houston's bullpen for the rest of the series and setting himself up to pitch early in the Divisional Round should the Astros advance. He needed only 66 pitches to carry the Astros to the finish line and allowed just four baserunners along the way, relying heavily on his trademark curveball. The Twins' loss squandered a strong outing from starter Kenta Maeda, who threw five shutout innings before he was also removed so the Astros hitters could not face him a third time. He only ran into trouble in the fourth when walks to Alex Bregman and Correa sandwiched a single through the shift by Kyle Tucker, loading the bases. But Maeda wiggled out of trouble by, for the second time in the game, getting Reddick to swing through a breaking ball that caught an awful lot of the zone. Maeda's final line: 91 pitches over five innings with two hits, three walks, and five strikeouts. While this game turned on a Minnesota defensive miscue, it also had a lynchpin moment in the first inning when, with the bases loaded, Bregman charged and barehanded a slow, infield roller off the bat of Sano, with his throw barely beating the husky Sano to the bag. Sano also missed a piped 1-0 fastball earlier in the at-bat. Quick Hits It's fair to expect the Astros to piggyback starters in tomorrow's Game 2, with Cristian Javier likely to enter the game for multiple relief innings. Most of the Astros pitchers have experience both starting and relieving because all of them piggyback in the minors. Byron Buxton has been hunting sliders all season but saw none of them today. He was tied with White Sox center fielder Luis Robert for the most home runs off of sliders during the regular season with seven. All four of the catchers on Minnesota's playoff roster saw action in Game 1. Top 100 prospect Ryan Jeffers started, Mitch Garver was given an at-bat against the lefty Valdez, Alex Avila entered as a defensive upgrade to Garver, then Willians Astudillo hit for Avila in the ninth. While only three of their hits were put in play in excess of 92 mph, all of Houston's hitters except Bregman had a knock in Game 1.

Littlefield: A Rhyme About Sports During A Pandemic - WBUR Posted: 25 Sep 2020 10:10 AM PDT The outlook isn't brilliant for the Major Leagues today. Who knows which clubs can field ten healthy fellows who can play? The rosters are depleted by the plague, which is a shame. But baseball stumbles on, as if to say "Hey, it's the same As if there were no virus and although you can't come see us. We know that, in your dreams, you would sincerely like to be us." The NBA is bubbled up, and I suppose that's fine. But how long will it be until the players start to whine, Contending that life in the bubble's brutish, empty, boring. And some may hear their teammates as they're quietly imploring The guys to lose tonight and then tomorrow night as well. "Eliminated, we will leave the bubble. We won't tell That we have missed some foul shots that we know we could have made So we could go back home, where we would certainly have stayed If we had had the choice. Of course we didn't, so we're here. But we can lose and burst the silly bubble, never fear. Because, although the idea might have seemed completely grand, I gotta tell, you, brother, I am sick of Disneyland." And meanwhile, to the north, the NHL has limbered up. It's staging what might look a little like the Stanley Cup. Although the season's truncated, and no one's there to cheer, On TV they're still selling life insurance, drugs, and beer. And that's the bottom line, I guess, for each and every game: A plague is just a plague, but business goes on all the same. Though I suppose of college football that cannot be said. I'll shed no tears on that account, and if the game were dead, I'd not be much lamenting it, or sighing, long and deep. But that's beside the point. I think that it is just asleep. The game's proponents liken it to young men off to war. I turn the sound off when they say it. I can take no more. But, happily, I'll open up my yap and I will say, "It's fine that no one's turning to the N C Double A For solace or direction or a plan to carry on." Few hearts would shatter if the N C Double A were gone. I hope you won't conclude from this that I am out of sorts. And I am not complaining I no longer write of sports. The times provide, as I have found, and so there is no dearth Of more significant concerns here and around the earth. Bill Littlefield was the host of Only A Game for its first 25 years. Now he writes novels no one has published ... yet. This segment aired on September 26, 2020.

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