The insane things is, in his mind, it’s just smart because his time is too important to waste in meetings. But only him, nobody else is allowed, and he’d be offended if anyone did it to him.

Which is, in a nutshell, the same mental gymnastics every pro-AI in the workplace person does.

All good, thanks for the suggestion!

This is very helpful, thanks!

We mostly play Super Mario Party and tried Jamboree as well on Switch. I haven’t really played other ones even though I lived through those prior generations. So maybe I’m just an irredeemable grumpy buzzkill.

Disabling bonus stars is a good point. For the difficulty, not sure if that would work well: The problem is some of the players are inevitably casuals, so increasing the difficulty just means the very narrow part of the game that isn’t as random - the mini-games - becomes not fun for them. And the Monopoly-style turn-based board play takes sooooo long, you can’t really strategize where to go.

I really do think a Mario Party game with only mini-games so everyone plays all the time would be incredible. But again, maybe I’m just describing Warioware…

I’ve seen that, so yeah, I get it. But I’ve also see the game award bonus stars or other random finger-on-the-scale benefits to the player in the lead, which can be even more demoralizing to those that lose. I don’t think it’s Mario Kart rubber band mechanics, unfortunately.

A related question: What is the least random Mario Party? We often end up playing this when friends come over since I guess I’m the only one who feels like it’s too random for anyone to meaningfully “win.”

Not to rain on anyone’s parade or anything, I’m glad you all and others have fun with it, I just would like to see if there’s a version that’s more like it’s a game of skill than chance.

Or maybe I just want WarioWare…