iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 8h

New Faces of Vienna list. So far: Slovakia. Suggest a modern European country, and I'll tie it to someone from the Congress of Vienna and tell their story. The magic die picks which one. Waiting for proposals.

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 13h

Metternich allegedly had a secret staircase out of his office. Tired of meetings with "the whole of Europe" (his words, not mine), he'd slip away to Wilhelmine, Duchess of Sagan. This is how I'm showing it in my presentation. Handmade in GIMP, old school.

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Weekend project: rebuilding the board for my Congress of Vienna game. Less rigid, less tied to a handful of districts, more of the city itself. The spheres of influence stay. The forced choices go.

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

My high school talk on the Congress of Vienna has been postponed again, this time by two weeks. The Congress dances… but does not progress. Apparently neither does my talk.

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Preparing a talk for high school students. Step one: memes. Handmade, old-school, zero AI — one sloppy meme and my credibility with teenagers is gone forever. As you can see, I am taking this extremely seriously.

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

That goat's-head drinking cup automaton? Made around 1600 by Hans Schlottheim — already a two-century-old curiosity by the time of the Congress of Vienna. Old enough to be a great story at a soirée. Now an evening attraction in Vienna 1814: Waltz of Nations.

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

New magic die round. Last country was Switzerland (yes, sheep were involved). Drop me 6 European countries and I'll roll for who gets the next historical deep dive.

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Everything you wanted to know about the Congress of Vienna but were afraid to ask — now is the time. Ask me anything about 1814 Vienna. Their teacher asked me to prepare questions for him to ask me. I'm writing my own interrogation. Feel free to add yours.

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Slightly ill, prepping a Congress of Vienna talk for a high school on Friday. The teachers have no idea what's about to happen. I will make 1814 Vienna fun or die trying.

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

He raised 10,000 sheep and translated British science for fun — long before he became Switzerland's unlikely diplomat at the Congress of Vienna. Faces of Vienna: Charles Pictet de Rochemont. 🧵 (1/3)

Charles-Émile Jacque — Sheep at the Watering Hole

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Faces of Vienna – Switzerland drops today finally. In the afternoon.

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Quiet week here — redesigning the action system from scratch, prepping a Congress of Vienna talk for a high school, and life doing its thing in the background. Back soon.

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Some photos from the game — this time with Asia, Zosia, Konrad and Andrzej (Michał). Andrzej won by a landslide, which mostly proves something is still broken. He insists he just mastered it. ;)

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Vienna 1814 playtest, honestly: we didn't finish. Halfway in, one player ran away with it and wiped another's plans off the table. The committee-track changes worked well overall — but pacing is still the problem. The action phase is heading for a real rebuild.

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Tomorrow: second full playtest of Vienna 1814: Waltz of Nations. The whole game again, start to finish. Photos to follow.

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

A couple of days ago: another playtest of Vienna 1814: Waltz of Nations. Promised I'd report back — the board reads much lighter, and the entertainment phase I set out to clarify this iteration is faster and cleaner. Gossip now lives inside it, so nobody forgets it's a weapon. More tests soon.

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Hey boardgamers, plans for November? 7–8 Nov, AleGramy in Gdańsk — one of Poland's biggest board game festivals. I'll be in the Prototypes area with Vienna 1814. Come say hi and give it a go.

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

View from the 31st floor — which can only mean one thing: a new iteration of Vienna 1814 is heading to the office testing group today. Same little tradition, new build, new ways for playtesters to break it.

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Weekend contest recap 🎩 Your Congress of Vienna facts, ranked by how far they derailed my week: — Metternich vs the Eastern Question: what Vienna wouldn't discuss shaped the next century. — Linen condoms. Yes. Certain corners of the Congress refuse to stay decorative.

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

From an 1814 Congress of Vienna ball's provisioning records: 60 Gugelhupf — the tall fluted ring cake that became the cake of Viennese coffee. Sliced, that's a few hundred servings. Designing a historical board game means caring far too much about 200-year-old dessert logistics.

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Vienna 1814, iteration 3.6, first playtest Wednesday. The entertainments used to lose to the political path every time. Reworked them. Now the real test: will seasoned players pick the ballroom on purpose, not as a consolation prize?

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

I really want to get some answers from each of my socials. Bluesky I know you can do it.

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Weekend game: drop the most random fact you know about the Congress of Vienna. Obscure, absurd, half-remembered — all allowed. No bad answers. (I'm designing a game about it, so yes, I'm taking notes.)

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Two centuries ago Vienna's Prater was end-of-summer chaos: carriages, coffee houses, theatres, shows. I've tried for ages to make it feel that alive in my board game without it being pure randomness. Iteration 3.6: the place evolves as you play — but you still choose how to use it.

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

One advantage of researching a game about the Congress of Vienna with far too many books: they double as an excellent book press. Right now two centuries of European diplomacy are gently flattening my glued room tokens.

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

The Congress of Vienna obsessed over precedence: who enters first, who sits where, whose title outranks whose. In that spirit, my social channels ranked by followers have one clear loser — Telegram, at exactly 1. Possibly a bot. Possibly me.

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Yesterday's dilemma: archive the old parts or cannibalise them? For 3.6 I chose fresh — new components for most of the game, 3.5 kept intact in the archive. The exception: the cuisine (refreshments) deck, currently under QA by Fyodor, who won't let go.

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Every prototype iteration: archive the old components for history, or glue the new version straight over them? With blank cardboard tokens it's agony — reuse the 3.5 ones or open fresh? I freeze every time. What's your rule?

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Something for the coffee ☕ Vienna, August 1814: bakers roll out a special "congress roll," a kreutzer apiece. One exasperated local noted he'd taken to carrying his spectacles to the tavern — just so the thing might look a little bigger.

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Months buried in the Congress of Vienna (for the board game I'm designing) — and tonight I'm trading elegant salons for dusty libraries and dim corridors. A librarian friend is coming over for Mansions of Madness. Wish me luck.

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Visual Note from the Past: Rudolf von Alt's salon, 1853. Too late for the Congress of Vienna, but the mood is perfect — an intimate room where music, gossip, romance and politics quietly tangle. Exactly the feel I want for the entertainment rooms in Vienna 1814: Waltz of Nations.

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

In high school, the Congress of Vienna was the subject I could fall asleep to. Now I design a board game about it and spend evenings invested in 200-year-old gossip. What would your younger self refuse to believe about who you are now?

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Sometimes social media feels like fate. A follower sent me scans of hand-drawn Congress of Vienna portraits, after Isabey — by Gonzalo Bénard, photographer and, as it turns out, a shaman who drew them for a descendant of one of the aristocrats pictured. Thank you, Gonzalo.

Jean Baptiste Isabey - Participants at the Congress of Vienna in 1814-1815

Congress of Vienna participants by Gonzalo Bénard

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Iteration 3.6 done — a full rebuild of how parties work in my Congress of Vienna board game. I removed a whole module instead of adding rules. In Vienna, a ball is a mechanism, and now hopefully a cleaner one.

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Entertainment cards, iteration 3.6: each one shows where it can be hosted. This party is flexible — a room, a park, a public venue — and where you throw it decides how big it gets. First guest to arrive earns a bonus. Congress of Vienna board game, still cooking.

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

I added gulden to Vienna 1814 so players wouldn't have it too easy. Each iteration they matter less — decisions replace them. The joke? When I first imagined the game there was no petty money at all, only social standing. Aristocrats never cared about small change. By 4.0 they might be gone.

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Deleting columns en masse from my design spreadsheets right now. Which is, I think, a good sign. The game's under version control, so I can rewind any time — that's how a programmer by day designs a board game by night.

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Design update — Vienna 1814. The music token no longer resolves by conditions; the player choosing it now picks one of two effects outright. Fixed cost, easier to acquire, passive and optional. Fewer rules to check, one more real decision to make.

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Comparing today's European leaders to the ones at the Congress of Vienna is deeply unfair. History had 200 years to select the dramatic ones. I made the video anyway. (Yes, I'm designing a board game about exactly this.)

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Faces of Vienna — list closed: 1. Austria 2. Saxony 3. Iceland 4. Switzerland 5. Montenegro 6. Ottoman Empire Montenegro via UNET, Ottomans via eYou. The die rolls soon — maybe later than usual, I'm buried in iteration 3.6. Then I hunt the character.

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Faces of Vienna — the list so far: 1. Austria 2. Saxony 3. Iceland (I'll manage) 4. Switzerland 3 and 4 came in via UNET, which I love. Two slots left before the magic die rolls — which countries should take 5 and 6?

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Today is Napoleon's birthday. Genuinely hard for me to weigh — I see the good and the bad and can't say which outweighs the other. But he's unavoidable history: without him there's no Congress of Vienna, no map to redraw, no game for me to design. A complicated happy birthday.

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Last round the die landed on Romania, and Tudor Vladimirescu became the heaviest deep dive I've done for this. The list is empty again — suggest a European country, the die decides, and I go find the next Congress of Vienna figure. Who's next?

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Friedrich von Gentz kept the Congress of Vienna running — the secretary who tracked every obligation and reminded everyone of their duties. My version is a task app called Super Productivity, and it will not let me forget one item on the Vienna 1814 to-do list.

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Design weekend for Vienna 1814. Build 3.6 is nearly done: room tokens, location cards, and a rework of how evening attractions synergise. In this game, a good party isn't flavour — it's a systems problem.

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

The die chose Romania — and led me somewhere I didn't expect. A man who watched the Congress of Vienna from the city, with no seat at it, and was killed years later by his own allies. Who betrayed whom? wanderingpine.games/of-whatever-nat…

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

I have new deep dive almost ready. It is a bit long, and it might be controversial. I'm not sure if BlueSky limited post length is really best platform for it. What do you think? Can we / should we make long multi-threaded posts on this platform? Would anyone actually read it? Be honest.

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Wandering Pine Games @wanderingpinegames.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

European history was never simple — a web of accusations, myths, hopes, and deeds both treacherous and heroic. I'm not here to whitewash or seek forgiveness. Only by accepting irreconcilable views can we truly learn from it. This next deep dive is the most serious, and hardest, so far.

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