Ludology

Sen and Erica welcome Lin Codega and Chase Carter from Rascal News to talk about the importance of independent journalism in the tabletop gaming space.  Rascal News has a few weeks left in their funding drive, so if you value the independent press, support efforts like theirs at www.rascal.news

Sen and Erica interview Rebecca Strang, a librarian and game designers who promotes gaming in libraries and is active on the Gaming Round Table of the American Library Association. Rebecca was also recently featured in "Games for a Rainy Day," a book with 54 micro-games, puzzles, and more. Why do boardgames and libraries go hand in hand? Let's find out!

In this installment of TTRPGKids, Special Guest Host Steph Campbell talks about how TTRPGs can be used in the classroom to help students gain social and emotional learning (SEL) skills.

Sen talks to Patrick Leder from Leder Games at Origins 2023 in this installment of Pros and Cons. We're almost caught up with 2023's shows and we're recording 2024's Pros and Cons episodes right now! So much more to come!

Sen interviews Matt Faulisi, marketing manager at Skybound Tabletop, at Origins 2023. The Pros and Cons series continues in 2024 and we'll be slowly releasing those over the 2024/2025 season, first to Patreon subscribers and later in the schedule. Thanks for listening!

Sen and Erica welcome Whitney Red Loraine to the podcast to talk about how her experiences as a boardgame cafe owner / operator has informed her as she transitioned to become a boardgame designer. 

To start off their second year with Ludology, Steph Campbell of TTRPGKids sets the stage for the next 12 episodes that will deal with using TTRPGs for educational purposes. They start the discussion off by talking about the various ways that TTRPGs can help students connect more with learning materials versus more traditional routes.

Sen and Erica welcome Nat Delaney-John and Cam Jasson, creators and publishers of That Sound Game - a noisy game for weird people to Ludology to talk about how they connected with their audience in order to take a different road to publication than what it typically done these days.

Erica and Sen welcome Mandi Hutchinson from Salt & Sass to talk about trends in videogames using tabletop gaming mechanisms as well as ports from the console to the tabletop.

Special Guest Host Steph Campbell gives several suggestions on how to keep a good pace for younger players through using story and shifting focus from player to player while playing TTRPGs at home or in the classroom.

Sen and Erica interview Rita Orlov, the mind behind the enchanting and challenging Postcurious line of puzzle games, or puzzletales as she calls them. Find out more about how Rita conceptualizes, designs, and tests her games and what's so intriguing about them.

Sen talks with the always awesome Omari Akil at Origins 2023. They talk about making games, making music, and making authenticity the goal for the next year. 

In her 10th installment, special guest host Sarah Shipp lends her insights into how thematic win condition not only drive play, but allow for better immersion.

TTRPG Kids' host Steph Campbell joins us once again to drop knowledge about how to set up great encounters for your children or students. Whether those encounters are in a familiar system or a new one, whether they focus on combat or puzzles or social relationships, Steph gives great advice to set your kids up for success!

In this episode, Sen and Erica speak with Laia Gonzales, one half of Wonderbow Games about their amazingly successful Kickstarter project, Kelp, and the unfortunate issues that arose because of said success. Laia talks about the illicit copies of Kelp that were being sold even before their campaign ended and the continuous struggle she experiences as she wages war against the counterfeiters.

In the last episode, Sarah Shipp discussed the concept of gates that actively and intentionally restrict player agency as a useful tool for game design. In this episode, she takes a more in depth look at gates that specifically force players to confront loss. Spoiler Alert: if you intend to play the videogames Portal or Death Stranding, you may wish to avoid this episode. The Death Stranding video that Sarah refers to can be seen here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCCfeAvlNeQ

This episode, Erica and Sen welcome David Mullich to the show. David is a game designer and educator who was involved with outlining the requirements for the Game Design Merit Badge for the Boy Scouts of America. We talk about all of the things a Scout must accomplish to earn this badge as well as David's long and storied career in making games.

Guest host Steph Campbell talks about how to include educational elements to TTRPG sessions for children in the classroom and at the dining room table in this installment of their TTRPG Kids series.

Erica and Sen welcome Asger Granerud to the podcast to talk about the design decisions behind the hit deckbuilder, Heat: Pedal to the Metal, Asger also discusses his new publishing partnership, Sidekick Games, and their mission to create generational games like their forthcoming title, Aqua.

In this episode, special guest host, Sarah Shipp, talks about how gates restrict player agency and still manage to create interesting player decisions despite these constraints.

Erica and Sen welcome the Podfather of Gaming, Stephen Buonocore. to the show for his annual update on what is currently impacting the tabletop gaming industry. Stephen talks about everything from post-lockdown fallout to AI use. Listen to see what he thinks about many of the pressing issues hobby gaming is facing. What are your thoughts? 

In this installment of Steph Campbell's TTRPGKids, they discuss how to tailor-make a system for YOUR particular child, creating something custom that both you and your little gamer will enjoy!

Dave Chalker (co-designer of Restoration Game's Thunder Road) joins Erica and Sen to talk about toys, games, and toyetic games.

In this installment of Thinking Beyond Mechanisms, Sarah Shipp discusses the concept of Decision Space and the five elements that comprise it: Logic, Strategy, Agency, Motivation, and Emotion.

Erica and Sen make some resolutions about game design and predictions about the tabletop industry to ring in the new year!

In this episode of Pros and Cons Sen meets with Kristen Mott, who talks about how she recently broke into the industry, how she designs with her children as playtesters, and how she's explored non-traditional markets for publication. Recorded at Origins Game Fair in Columbus, OH in June 2023. 

Sen chats with Jordan Goddard about the growth of his family endeavor - Indy Toy Lab, a toy and game design studio with hobby roots that's aiming it's sights at the mass market. This podcast was recorded at Origins Game Fair in June of 2023 in Columbus, OH.

In this second installment of talking to industry pros at gaming conventions, Sen chats with Tuesday Badell and Ben Begeal at Origins in Columbus, June 2023. We talk about design-centric conventions in general and the specific philosophy behind UnPub.

In the Pros and Cons series, Sen interviews industry professionals live at game conventions around the world.  In this first installment, Sen interviews Andy Kim - designer of The Spill from Smirk & Laughter Games - at Toronto's BreakoutCon in March 2023. Andy talks about The Spill, spas, and upcoming designs.

Steph brings their monthly dose of TTRPG advice to the table, this time extolling the benefits of playing roleplaying games with young children in the home or classroom. 

This week, Erica and Sen welcome writer, designer, and relucatant movie star Calvin Wong Tze Loon 黃子倫 to talk about his piece in "What Board Games Me To Me: Tales from the Tabletop," an anthology of short essays written by people from across the board game industry that was recently published by Aconyte Books. Join us as we find out more about the book and what Calvin finds so humanizing about games in their many forms. 

Erica and Sen speak with Ami Baio of Pink Tiger Games about her line of social communication games, how she makes them, and how she's able to find success outside of traditional markets for board games.

In the 7th installment of this series, Steph covers their strategies for helping children cope with spells, tracking information and more, offering practical solutions so you, too, can game with your kiddos!

Sen and Erica ask each other questions collected from our Patreon supporters about the differences between designing a board game and an RPG, what working for a mass market game company is like, how we balance games, what we did to break into the industry, and more!

In her segment, Thinking Beyond Mechanisms, Sarah Shipp talks about psychologist Steven Reiss' 16 Motivators or Human Needs in terms of game design and how considering these can help make a more engaging game.

Will Meadows from the Tantrum House channel joins Erica and Sen to talk about his recent experience at the board gaming convention to end all board gaming conventions - Spiel in Essen, Germany. Having been four times, Will is a veteran Spiel-goer and he talks about all of the sights he saw and games he played while there this year. Since Will had to go eat dinner, Erica and Sen finish he Ludological Lightning Round by asking each other the questions they intended to ask Will!

In this episode of our special series, guest host Steph Campbell discusses how to maintain the attention of younger players. They give several excellent tips and tricks to help your kiddos maintain focus at the game table. 

Sen and Erica welcome Heather O'Neill (CEO of 9th Level Games, Managing Director of UnPub, and game designer) to Ludology to chat about juggling all of her roles and the state of the tabletop industry, where many people have to combine several roles into the equivalent of a full time job. 

In this episode of Thinking Beyond Mechanisms, guest host Sarah Shipp discusses some of the terms that designers often talk about (balance, elegance, and efficiency) but turns many of them on their ear to look at them slightly askew. Sarah posits that thinking about these elements in the opposite may help struggling designers recognize their role in creating a game that meets these lofty (and often vague) goals.

Sen and Erica welcome Brian Lenz from Delano Games (www.delanogames.com) to discuss the intricacies of manufacturing board games in North America this week on Ludology.

Special guest host, Steph Campbell, discusses how they introduced their son to TTRPGs at the ripe old age of 2. 

Erica and Sen welcome Travis Severance, owner of Millennium Games - the largest game store in the United States - to the podcast. Travis brings years of retail experience to the table and lends insight into what sells games. From puzzles to pickleball and everything in between, Travis sheds light on how games and hobbies are merchandised to customers and we discuss if there's anything about game or product design that can help retailers do what they do best. Note: You'll hear a dog barking intermittently for about 10 minutes from around the 5 minute mark. Our apologies; we couldn't filter that out.

Guest host, Sarah Shipp, talks about the concept of resonance when designing games, SUCCESS (from "Made to Stick" by Chip & Dan Heath), and Sarah's own equation for resonance: Familiary + Unexpectedness  - Chaff Also, see Sarah's GDC talk on Creating Resonance with Thematic Design available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61YNkTv3xgM

Erica and Sen welcome Pam Walls, a designer who specializes in party games, to the Ludology Podcast. Pam provides excellent insight into what it takes to make large and diverse groups of people want to play a game together. Pam's latest creation, Blob Party, was a Gen Con 2023 release for Wiz Kid Games. 

In the fourth installment of TTRPG Kids, Steph talks about how to pick a setting that is engaging for the children that you're gaming with.

Sen and Erica welcome designer and Dice Tower member Roy Cannaday to the show to tell us about his experience at Gen Con 2023 that was made extra special because it was also the official launch of his first game, Last Light.

Guest host, Sarah Shipp, discusses Artistotle's Classical Unities and explores how unity of action, time, and place can be used to design a more cohesive game.

Erica and Sen discuss their comings and goings over the past few months. Sen attended Origins in June and Erica went to SDCC in July. So before they both head to Gen Con in August, they figured they should touch base and see what each other were up to!

In this episode, Steph talks about their use of safety tools and how they modified some for use with their son.

Erica and Sen welcome designer, author and game studies professor, Gordon Calleja to the show to discuss his book "Unboxed: Board Game Experience and Design" from the MIT Press (ISBN 978-0-262-54395-8). Gordon gives a chapter-by-chapter rundown of the book that will be the focus of our first Ludology Book Club event - stay tuned for further information!

Segment host Sarah Shipp returns to talk about the concept of immersion in tabletop games. Amongst others, Sarah references Gordon Calleja theories on immersion in her discussion - Gordon will be next week's guest on the main Ludology podcast.

Erica and Sen welcome Danielle Reynolds and Nick Bentley to the show to talk about how HerStory from Underdog Games was designed.

Join Steph Campbell of TTRP Kids as they delve into the difficult topic of kids wanting to do "bad" things when playing TTRPGs. How can parents and educators deal with this in a constructive way. Is the child actually being "bad" or are they just inquisitive? How can we determine this and what learning can occur from "bad" behavior? (Sound Effects from Pixabay)

Erica and Sen talk to Nicholas Yu, the designer responsible in part for games like Adventure Tactics and the recent release D&D Onslaught. Nick brings a wealth of knowledge about playing and designing tactical war games in the tabletop space. We discuss LOS, competitive wargaming, and more in this episode.

This segment features guest host Sarah Shipp of Shippboard Games. For the next year, Sarah will be taking a look at aspects of game design that go beyond the basics of rolling dice or drawing cards. In this introductory monthly mini-sode, Sarah posits that the question of theme first or mechanics first is a false dichotomy.

Sen and Erica welcome Morten Monrad Pedersen, founder of the Automa Factory, to the podcast to discuss designing solo modes for tabletop games. Morten has been involved with the solo modes for games such as Scythe, Viticulture, and Gaia Project. 

Steph Campbell of TTRPG Kids gives parents and teachers some simple, practical tips on how to adapt tabletop role playing games for use with children in the home and classroom. In this episode, Steph talks about how to work with some of the more common aspects of TTRPGs (e.g. randomization, stats, bonuses, etc.) with children as they develop skills in literacy and numeracy.

It's a celebration! To mark the 300th episode of Ludology, Erica and Sen invite some of the past hosts (including co-founders Geoff Engelstein and Ryan Sturm, Scott Rogers, and Emma Larkins) to share some of their most impactful memories about the games they loved to play, create, and share with those around them. Please keep an eye out for the giveaways mentioned in this episode by following us on www.patreon.com/Ludology. Thanks for sticking with us for 300 episodes and here's to 300 more!

Sen and Erica sit down with Matt Paquette, graphic designer behind many of the games on your shelves, to discuss how he lays out all of the information needed to play a game in a logically flowing and concise visual hierarchy, specifically talking about how good card frame design can improve end user experience.

Erica and Sen talk with Carlos Flores and Eric Zimmerman about the recently released Green Games Guide, a document chock full of sustainable goodness for those in the tabletop industry hoping to lessen their products' impact on the environment. Find out more about how you can be a part of the movement to improve gaming's sustainability as a consumer, a designer, or a publisher.

Erica and Sen talk with Carlos Flores and Eric Zimmerman about the recently released Green Games Guide, a document chock full of sustainable goodness for those in the tabletop industry hoping to lessen their products' impact on the environment. Find out more about how you can be a part of the movement to improve gaming's sustainability as a consumer, a designer, or a publisher.

Erica and Sen talk to Pauline-Fate Kong and Marie Wong (Hot Banana Games) about their Ion Award-winning game, Steam Up. They dive into the mechanisms behind this game about Dim Sum and the Chinese customs that informed them. Apologies in advance for audio quality; our guests were recording on the same device so it negatively impacted on their relative volume at times.

This episode, Erica and Sen take a walk down memory lane with the Podfather of Gaming, Stephen Buonocore, as they reminisce about his time as the founder of Stronghold Games, his current role as a retiree / podcaster, and his future aspirations as a tabletop game designer! Stephen discusses many of the changes he witnessed first hand and talks about his excitement for what the future holds.

Erica and Sen bring Daryl Andrews onto the show to discuss his role as Head of Talent at Maestro Media, pitching games to publishers in general, and the importance of relationships in the industry. 

Erica and Sen welcome Eric Lang, a self-identified Born-Again Mass Market Guy, to Ludology in order to review what the tabletop industry went through in 2022 and where he thinks it's headed in 2023. Eric brings a wealth of information to the discussion, having a quarter century of experience in the business of making games.

Erica and Sen welcome Tim Devine of Dice Up Games, designer of Color My Quest: A Colour & Cut Roleplaying Game, to Ludology to discuss designing RPGs for families as well as safety and calibration tools for children who roleplay.

Erica and Sen welcome artist Kwanchai Moriya to the show to discuss his process, his advice for new artists trying to break into the tabletop industry, his take AI Image Generators, and his New Year's Resolution for 2023.

Erica and Sen talk to Michelle Rundbacken and Yacine Merzouk, the fine purveyors of the Society of Curiosities, about their bespoke puzzle experiences that bridge the gap between the physical and the digital as well as their up-coming B&B escape experience!

Where are some of the places that game design skills come in handy? Erica and Sen talk to Nick Metzler, who has designed games for traditional publishers like Spin Master, murder mysteries in a castle for over a hundred wedding guests, and challenges on reality TV shows like Survivor!

Erica and Sen discuss how "Boop!", a new cat-themed 2-player game, became rethemed from an abstract game with the game's designer, Scott Brady. Scott tells us how the theme was integral in shaping the final product.

Sen and Erica talk with Pat Marino, designer behind Cup Head: Fast Rolling Dice Game and other titles from The Op, about translating videogames over to the hobby gaming and mass market gaming spaces.

Erica and Sen meet up with Jason Perez (Shelf Stories, cultural consultant on Puerto Rico 1897) to talk about cultural consultation, define some of the most prominent terms, and talk about how we can design better games while considering cultural impact.

Timestamp

Note

Link

00:00:50

Shelf Stories

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnaZ7055IWOdm8XCJfFRDcw 

00:01:20

Puerto Rico 1897

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/367272/puerto-rico-1897 

00:09:30

Uncle Ben dies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dre4TsXm_68 

00:09:35

Batman’s parents get shot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAyxY5hF3ZE

00:12:58

Andreas Seyfarth

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/117/andreas-seyfarth 

00:13:01

Reiner Knizia

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/2/reiner-knizia 

0015:05

Jason’s critique of Lost Ruins of  Arnak

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU7Mqg3XS4U 

00:15:15

Feast for Odin

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/177736/feast-odin 

00:15:20

Raiders of the North Sea

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/170042/raiders-north-sea 

0016:40

Puerto Rico’s Power Outage Issues

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/12/power-outages-puerto-rico-hurricane-fiona 

00:24:15

Cafe con leche

https://www.food.com/recipe/cafe-con-leche-puerto-rican-cafe-latte-114354 

00:24:34

In The Heights

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0CL-ZSuCrQ

00:29:21

“I Wish” songs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22I_Want%22_song 

00:29:49

Boriken

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/361178/boriken-taino-resistance 

00:30:01

The Taino people

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/what-became-of-the-taino-73824867/ 

00:32:06

Risk

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/181/risk 

00:33:01

Liz Davidson

(Beyond Solitaire)

https://www.youtube.com/c/BeyondSolitaire 

00:33:06

Jason Matthews (Twilight Struggle)

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/3877/jason-matthews 

00:36:43

Chip Theory Games

https://chiptheorygames.com/ 

00:37:53

Unconscious Mind

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/329500/unconscious-mind 

00:40:06

Jason’s Discussions re: the Designer Diary for Gorinto

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNMzATMGYc8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1wAgg99O0w

00:46:00

Dicetower’s Skymines vs. Mombassa Comparison 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n-vJbGqctE 

00:48:27

Ludology Episode with James Mendez Hodes “Orc-kay Computer”

https://ludology.libsyn.com/ludology-247-orc-kay-computer 

00:49:56

Root

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/237182/root 

00:50:16

Tauren and Native American Imagery

https://www.academia.edu/13052741/World_of_Warcraft_the_Tauren_and_Native_American_Imagery 

00:52:01

Owl Pizza Chef

https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-illustration-owl-chef-pizza-cute-image-white-background-funny-cartoon-vector-illustrations-picture-memes-jokes-image69033436 

00:52:16

The X-Men as :GBT Champions: From Outcasts to Elites

https://rabbitholemag.com/the-x-men-as-lgbt-champions-from-outcasts-to-elites/ 

00:55:02

Bruno Faidutti’s article on Postcolonial Catan 

https://faidutti.com/blog/blog/2017/06/02/postcolonial-catan/ 

0055:28

Cascadia

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/295947/cascadia 

0056:43

Culture Club’s “Karma Chameleon”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmcA9LIIXWw 

00:56:45

Culture Club’s “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nXGPZaTKik 

00:57:18

The Wedding Singer’s rendition of “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB3PdPMjeIY 

00:57:30

Howard Zinn’s “The People’s History of the United States”

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2767.A_People_s_History_of_the_United_States 

00:58:28

The Buggles “Video Killed the Radio Star”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8r-tXRLazs 

01:01:24

Tostones

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/16768/puerto-rican-tostones-fried-plantains/ 

01:01:33

Maduros

https://www.dulcetscintilla.com/platanos-maduros-aka-fried-sweet-plantains/ 

01:02:39

Greg Loring-Albright

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/89308/greg-loring-albright 

01:03:01

One Stop Co-op Shop

https://www.youtube.com/c/OneStopCoopShop 

Sen and Erica chat with Roberta Taylor about her games, diving deeper into Creature Comforts and the upcoming Maple Valley, specifically. They discuss cozy games and Roberta's philosophy towards design.

Roberta's BGG Page: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/12374/roberta-taylor

Geoff discusses what he calls the "Sweet Spot" in games, and how it can help your design.

Sen and Erica chat with Brian Neff, the freelance developer who currently handles the Unmatched System for Restoration Games, about the process he uses for playtesting and balancing a game with an ever-expanding roster that boasts just under 40 playable characters to date. They chat about how both quantitative and qualitative data drive the development process and how the game's loyal community has been an invaluable part of the process.

Timestamp

Note

Link

00:01:05

Restoration Games

https://restorationgames.com/ 

00:01:49

Unmatched Game System

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/295564/unmatched-game-system 

00:02:18

Bruce Lee

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/279645/unmatched-bruce-lee 

00:02:19

T-Rex

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/284778/unmatched-jurassic-park-dr-sattler-vs-t-rex 

00:04:45

Alice

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/274637/unmatched-battle-legends-volume-one 

00:04:48

Moon Knight

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/326933/unmatched-redemption-row 

00:07:00

Cerebus System

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamefamily/23550/game-cerberus-engine-heroes 

00:08:03

Star Wars Epic Duels

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3284/star-wars-epic-duels 

00:08:43

Tannhauser

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/25261/tannhauser 

00:0901

Magic: The Gathering

https://magic.wizards.com/en 

00:09:02

Yu-Gi-Oh

https://www.yugioh-card.com/en/ 

00:09:03

Hearthstone

https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us 

00:09:13

Mondo

https://mondoshop.com/ 

00:16:36

Noah

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/75911/noah-cohen 

00:16:41

Rob Daviau

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/442/rob-daviau 

00:16:46

Justin Jacobson

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/4083/justin-d-jacobson 

00:17:20

The Invisible Man

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/294484/unmatched-cobble-fog 

00:18:21

Dr. Ellie Sattler

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/284778/unmatched-jurassic-park-dr-sattler-vs-t-rex 

00:19:10

Beowulf

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/325635/unmatched-little-red-riding-hood-vs-beowulf 

00:19:51

Yennenga

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/335764/unmatched-battle-legends-volume-two 

00:21:11

Little Red Riding Hood

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/325635/unmatched-little-red-riding-hood-vs-beowulf 

00:23:57

Daredevil

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/326934/unmatched-hells-kitchen 

00:29:01

Restoration Games Discord Server

https://discord.gg/TcprtQESad

00:30:55

Medusa

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/274637/unmatched-battle-legends-volume-one 

00:30:56

Bigfoot

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/274638/unmatched-robin-hood-vs-bigfoot 

00:31:10

Sherlock

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/294484/unmatched-cobble-fog 

00:32:57

Ms. Marvel, Squirrel Girl, Cloak & Dagger

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/326936/unmatched-teen-spirit 

00:34:55

Elektra

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/326934/unmatched-hells-kitchen 

00:40:14

Bovine University

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlGC8YnfhN8 

00:41:59

Colossus

https://x-men.fandom.com/wiki/Colossus 

00:43:49

Wakka

https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Wakka 

00:44:34

Unmatched Maker

https://unmatched.cards/ 

00:46:27

When I Was A Young Warthog

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EILeWQEDtMw 

00:46:42

Slice & Dice

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.com.tann.dice&hl=en_CA&gl=US 

00:48:03

Jawn

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Jawn 

00:49:25

Willow Nightingale

https://twitter.com/willowwrestles 

00:5024

Juice Robinson

https://prowrestling.fandom.com/wiki/Juice_Robinson 

In this classic Biography of a Board Game, Scott takes a look at how the horror game Betrayal at House on the Hill came to be.

Erica and Sen talk with Spenser Starke about his game, Alice is Missing, and it's jump to the big screen. They discuss how to design cinematic narrative structure into tabletop games, calibration tools, and more!

Timestamp

Note

Link

00:01:05

Alice Is Missing

https://www.huntersentertainment.com/alice-is-missing

00:01:17

Kids on Broom

https://renegadegamestudios.com/kids-on-brooms/

00:01:20

Icarus

https://renegadegamestudios.com/icarus-a-storytelling-game-about-how-great-civilizations-fall/

00:02:51

Dread

https://dreadthegame.wordpress.com/about-dread-the-game/

00:02:53

The Quiet Year 

https://buriedwithoutceremony.com/the-quiet-year

00:06:47

Life Is Strange

https://store.steampowered.com/agecheck/app/319630/

00:06:49

Oxenfree

https://store.steampowered.com/app/388880/Oxenfree/

00:06:50

Firewatch

https://store.steampowered.com/app/383870/Firewatch/

00:08:25

Vox article

https://www.vox.com/culture/21656220/alice-is-missing-rpg-text-message

00:10:19

Hollywood Reporter article

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/alice-is-missing-movie-1235173092/

00:11:10

Papergirls Cancelled

https://deadline.com/2022/09/paper-girls-canceled-prime-video-one-season-shopped-season-2legendary-television-1235113183/

00:20:14

RPG Safety Toolkit

https://t.co/gA6hV6VKqm

00:28:39

Chapman Film School

https://www.chapman.edu/dodge/index.aspx

00:30:14

Three Act Structure

https://www.arcstudiopro.com/blog/three-act-structure-in-screenwriting

00:35:51

Joseph Campell’s Hero's Journey

https://www.arcstudiopro.com/blog/the-heros-journey

00:35:59

Dan Harmon’s Story Circle

https://www.arcstudiopro.com/blog/dan-harmons-story-circle-screenplay

00:36:15

Save The Cat

https://savethecat.com/

00:36:44

Hamlet’s Hit Points

https://gameplaywright.net/books/hamlets-hit-points/

00:40:25

L’Arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/did-a-silent-film-about-a-train-really-cause-audiences-to-stampede

00:50:59

Ten Candles

https://cavalrygames.com/ten-candles

00:53:09

Battleship

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/battleship

00:53:10

Clue

rottentomatoes.com/m/clue

00:54:16

Image Comics

https://imagecomics.com/

00:56:01

Blades in the Dark TV Show Announced

https://www.polygon.com/22652023/blades-in-the-dark-tv-show-announced

00:59:24

Game Night

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/game_night_2018

00:59:43

Dune Imperium

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/316554/dune-imperium

01:02:30

Cash Cab

https://www.bravotv.com/cash-cab

01:03:30

Powered By The Apocalypse is the best way to get started with tabletop roleplaying games

https://www.polygon.com/tabletop-games/22787981/powered-by-the-apocalypse-tabletop-rpg-explainer

01:04:26

Wingspan

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/266192/wingspan

01:04:30

Succulent

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/299372/succulent

01:04:33

Stardew Valley 

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/332290/stardew-valley-board-game

01:04:59

Scythe

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/169786/scythe

01:05:18

Tales From The Loop

https://www.loop-rpg.com/

01:06:34

Cameron Cuffe

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1949036/

01:06:50

Rupert Grint

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0342488/

Geoff takes us through the history of the color blue, namely how difficult it is to make as a dye, and considers if we should value it above all other player colors.

Erica, Gil, and Sen discuss some of the tools and processes they use at the various phases of designing a game from their varying perspectives of an in-house designer, a publisher, and freelance designer/developer.  SHOW NOTES:

00:08:31 DDS is an acronym for Detailed Design Specification

00:11:38 LucidChart browser-based flowcharting and more www.lucidchart.com

00:18:43 Canva free online graphic design tool www.canva.com

00:19:13 Tabletop Simulator is a virtual tabletop (VTT) run on Steam www.tabletopsimulator.com 

00:19:14 Tabletopia is a browser-based VTT www.tabletopia.com

00:21:26 Also known as an MVP - a “Minimum Viable Prototype”

00:21:45 Filemaker Pro is a relational database www.claris.com 

00:21:57 Nandeck is cardmaking software www.nandeck.com 

00:22:05 Component Studio is a full game design suite that is hooked up to the Game Crafter https://component.studio/

00:26:06 Adobe Creative Suite is the industry standard for the industry in terms of graphic design www.adobe.com 

00:27:54 Photopea is an online Photoshop equivalent for raster images www.photopea.com

00:28:29 GIMP is an open source Photoshop equivalent www.gimp.org

00:29:15 Inkscape is a free equivalent of Illustrator for vector images www.inkscape.org

00:29:57 The Affinity Suite is a one-time payment suite of graphic design and illustrative tools https://affinity.serif.com

00:36:46 Fiskars Rotary Cutter is Sen’s weapon of choice www.fiskars.com/en-us/crafting-and-sewing/products/rotary-cutters-mats-and-rulers 

00:37:13 Arc punches, square punches and corner punches, oh my! This is an example of a 1” arch punch: www.amazon.ca/General-Tools-Instruments-1271M-1-Inch/dp/B00004T7WH

00:41:36 Midjourney and Dall-e are prompt-based AI Art generators www.midjourney.com / https://openai.com/blog/dall-e/

00:44:58 Some great sources for icons etc. www.flaticon.com https://thenounproject.com https://game-icons.net

00:45:32 Face generating software ThisPersonDoesNotExist https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/

00:48:46 Functional Fixedness is the psychological phenomena when a person cannot see any other use for an item because their initial understanding of how it’s used is the only way they think it can be used

00:49:10 Sunk Cost Fallacy occurs when a person will not make a change, even one that is likely to be highly beneficial, due to the perceived amount of time, money, effort, etc.they have already invested in the current strategy

00:55:58 You can record your screen right from Windows https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/record-the-screen-d70508e8-25a3-4b97-b78a-a467b5372e21 and MacOS https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT208721

In this classic Biography of a Board Game, Scott takes us through the history of the game Cluedo, better known to Americans as Clue.

Erica and Sen chat with game designer Mondo Davis about how to market yourself in the game industry.

Continuing the previous GameTek Classic, Geoff returns to the subject of AI in first-person shooters. Last time, we learned that researchers had engineered an FPS AI that could beat the best humans. This time, Geoff dives into the different strategies the AI tried, how it shifted over time to prefer distinct strategies, and what we can learn from this.

Gil and Sen meet up with James Hudson of Druid City Games to discuss the pleasure of games that are big, sprawling productions.

Scott takes us through the history of Kill Dr. Lucky, a game where, instead of trying to deduce the murder of a wealthy old man, you're trying to actually do the deed.

Erica and Sen talk with Dr. Tanya Pobuda about her groundbreaking research of representation in board games, the purpose of journalism, and her work in academia.

SHOW NOTES

2m01s: Emma and Gil chatted with Dr. Mary Flanagan on Ludology 226 - Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo. 7m37s: Two seminal works in the theory behind fun and play are Johan Huizinga's Homo Ludens and Roger Caillois' Man, Play, and Games. 27m05s: Analog Game Studies provides an academic, analytic look at non-digital games. 39m12s: Leonard Anetta's research paper The "I's" Have It: A Framework for Serious Educational Game Design. 43m34s: Elizabeth Sampat's book Empathy Engines: Design Games that are Personal, Political, and Profound.

In GameTek Classic 275.5 - MENACE, Geoff discussed a simple machine that anyone can build that can learn how to play tic-tac-toe competitively. Here, Geoff continues the conversation, this time with modern researchers using a neural network to teach a machine to play a first-person shooter video game, and the tweak they needed to make to see their AI become competitive with human players.

Erica and Gil discuss Erica's time so far working at Spinmaster, making mass-market games for kids and families. How is it different from making games for the hobby market?

SHOW NOTES

0m43s: We recently chatted with Sydney Engelstein of Indie Boards & Cards in Ludology 274 - Indie 500, and with Carol Mertz of Exploding Kittens in Ludology 277 - Combustible Felines.

7m28s: The Rubiks brand of puzzles, toys, and games, centered around the world-famous Rubik's Cube. And the legendary brand of Gund plush toys.

19m04s: Kinetic Sand

33m39s: The marvelous game designer Maureen Hiron.

42m00s: Splendor, 7 Wonders, Sushi Go

56m10s: Busen Memo

In this classic GameTek, Scott tells us about the history of Agricola, which sparked new life in worker-placement games.

Sen and Gil have a talk with game reviewer and critic Daniel Thurot of the marvelous game review site Space-Biff! about his distinctive style of writing, the difference between review and criticism, and theming in games.

SHOW NOTES

4m48s: The Settlers of Zarahemla 5m26s: Roger Ebert was a movie critic; Gil remains a big fan of his writing. Also: Tom Chick (whom Dan interviewed on his own podcast), Tom Francis 14m55s: Fort 29m35s: The recent film Men 31m56s: Sen and Jay's game MIND MGMT 34m37s: Sen may be referring to The Long View Podcast  35m40s: Mike Barnes, There Will Be Games 44m06s: Frontierland is indeed a part of Disneyland (California), as well as the Magic Kingdom in Disneyworld (Florida) 49m12s: Dan's review of Heading Forward. We had publisher Amabel Holland on Ludology 262 - This Guilty Podcast. 50m27s: Pope Alexander VI, Antipopes 52m37s: Charlie Theel, Matt Thrower, Thinker Themer 53m04s: That's about 1.2x1.2x0.9 meters.

Geoff tells us about big changes in store for Tabletop Network 2022, and why he's so excited for it! This is an amazing show for game designers, and you can easily stay for BGG.CON immediately afterwards. Please consider attending!

Sen and Gil chat with game designer Carol Mertz, senior game designer at Exploding Kittens. Carol has worked on many Exploding Kittens games, like Hand To Hand Wombat, Exploding Kittens: Recipe for Disaster, and Exploding Kittens: 2-Player Version. She's also known for her own designs, especially the wildly creative HELLCOUCH, the only couch co-op that uses an actual couch.

SHOW NOTES

2m28s: We chatted with Sydney Engelstein of Indie Game Studios recently, on Ludology 274 - Indie 500. 

17m28s: But Wait There's More, Bad Medicine

25m40s: We spoke with Mike Elliot in Ludology 256 - You're Big in Japan, and with Justin Gary in Ludology 207 - Card Advantage.

39m26s: Inhuman Conditions

45m08s: Pass the Buck: A Game of Corporate Responsibility Management

48m25s: The Pixel Pop festival.

57m02s: Hellcouch, and the customizable hardware board Arduino.

Scott rassles up the tangled history of the Western-themed social deduction game Bang!

Gil and Sen sit down with game designer and chronicler Aaron A. Reed to talk about his project 50 Years of Text Games, in which he covered one important game for each year between 1971 and 2020. The project will be made into a book.

SHOW NOTES

2m21s: The Oregon Trail

3m13s: Gil mentions a bunch of games that Aaron wrote about: Adventure, Hunt the Wumpus, games made with Inform and Twine, 80 Days, Fallen London.

9m22s: Sen's childhood PET computer, Gil's childhood Panasonic computer

10m24s: The game Adventure, the company Infocom, and the rise of Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs).

14m16s: You can probably add board games like Gloomhaven to this list too!

17m28s: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy game, with the infamous Babel Fish puzzle. Here is the text of the Infocom hint guide for that puzzle. Click "Next Answer" for the next step. Each step has spoilers, obviously!

Also, Gil was wrong, it was "only" 30 steps.

18m33s: Myst

20m07s: Infocom's "feelies." Several fan sites have information on them; this is one.

20m38s: Infocom's game Suspended had a ridiculously cool cover; a plastic injection-molded face with cut-outs for the eyes. The eyes you see on the cover are printed on cardboard beneath the face. Because the images for the eyes are recessed, they will seem to follow you if you walk past the game on the shelf. 

22m54s: Robert Lafore's "Interactive Fiction"

26m46s: St. Bride's School

30m45s: The Oz Project

33m09s: The digital game Façade.

36m00s: Adventuron, Choice of Games' ChoiceScript, Inkle

37m00s: So Far, Photopia, Galatea, Trinity

42m01s: The harrowing dramatic film The Sweet Hereafter, which was an inspiration for Photopia.

44m46s: The seminal ARG The Beast, created to promote the film AI

49m47s: Here's the article Gil was talking about. Also, Porpentine's game With Those We Love Alive

52m35s: PixelBerry's interactive romances Choices, of which The Freshman is a story in the game.

56m10s: Ludology 151, where Geoff and Gil discuss what a game actually is.

57m57s: Aaron's book Subcutanean, which is different for everyone who buys it.

58m51s: Sen is likely thinking of Cain's Jawbone, a puzzle released in 1934 by Edward Mathers, under the pseudonym Torquemada.

1h01m27s: Archives of the Sky

1h03m03s: The short IF game 9:05. It's really quick; play it if you can!

1h04m10s: Star Saga One: Beyond the Boundary.

1h05m05s: Above & Below, Near & Far, Tales of the Arabian Nights

1h06m02s: Aaron's 50 Years of Text Games book

Geoff tells us about MENACE; not Phantom or Dennis, but the Matchbox Educable Noughts and Crosses Engine, which Donald Michie designed in 1961 as a relatively simple AI that would allow anyone to see how a machine could be trained to get better at a task.

Erica and Gil chat with returning guest Banana Chan and our own Sen-Foong Lim about designing their game Jiangshi: Blood in the Banquet Hall. What's it like making a game about a specific demographic, and who is this game for?

SHOW NOTES

0m54s: Banana was last on the show in Ludology 228 - The Roles We Play. 4m56s: More information about the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. 18m31s: James Mendez Hodes discussed cultural consultation with us in Ludology 247 - Orc-kay Computer. 31m25s: Jason Morningstar joined us on Ludology 161 - What's the Story, Morning Glory? 40m33s: "PBTA" refers to a game with the Apocalypse World game system, aka "Powered by the Apocalypse." 46m08s: Calvin Wong Tze Loon 黃子倫 joined us in Ludology 252 - Crazy Rich Storytelling. 53m15s: The Paranoia RPG.

Scott takes us through the history of the classic word game Scrabble.

Gil and Sen chat with game designer, developer, and polyhedral dice addict Sydney Engelstein of Indie Game Studios about how to pitch your game to a publisher, the process of designing and developing Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition, coming up with new narrative for Aeon's End, and what kinds of theater would best be adapted into a board game.

SHOW NOTES

8m28s: Obsession 19m07s: Race for the Galaxy 56m16s: Noises Off! 57m44s: Sen is making a reference to the game Thanos Rising: Avengers Infinity War. Then Sydney refers to the early Uwe Rosenberg game Mamma Mia. 58m46s: Gil is thinking that the game Sydney mentioned is Hamlet! 

Geoff chats with Mikael Le Bourhis of Asmodee Research and Game In Lab about the work they are doing studying the impact of tabletop gaming on society and life.

You can find out more information from Game In Lab here.

Erica and Sen chat with localization expert, "gaming handyman," and occasional street busker Matthew Legault of Scorpion Masqué to discuss what it takes to move a game from one language to another. 

SHOW NOTES

25m03s - Here's the bonus episode we did about the production and translation of Agricola. Scott Rogers also did a Biography of a Board Game about it.

30m36s - Guy LaFleur was a legendary ice hockey player who won 5 Stanley Cups with the Montreal Canadiens.

49m57s - Strike, Team Team, Stop Thief, and Sen's game with longtime friend and collaborator Jay Cormier, Mind MGMT, based on the comic book.

In this classic Biography of a Board Game, Scott takes us through the sweet history of the kids' game Candyland.

Gil and Erica sit with game developer and new music fan Brenna Noonan to talk about her experiences developing games with her development company Quillsilver Studios, her experiences working on the smash hit Everdell, and the intersection of music and games.

SHOW NOTES

2m59s: Everdell, Roll Player: Adventures, Dog Park 6m14s: Erica and Scott chatted with the Laukats about making games as a family in Ludology 251 - All In the Family. 10m17s: Gil and Geoff discussed ludonarrative dissonance in games in Ludology 190 - Diabolus in Ludica. 11m22s: The sequence in question from the documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse. 12m33s: Sorry, spoiler alert! Hitchcock's Psycho had a legendary twist. 18m32s: Brenna mentions the productivity apps Toggl and ClickUp. 35m35s: A good sample Colvini brainburner is Carolus Magnus. Also Samurai, Sharang's episode Ludology 230 - Design Re-Verb, High Society 36m47s: The New Complexity school of music, Brian Ferneyhough, Conlon Nancarrow and his wild player piano music. (We should also mention the more recent phenomenon of Black MIDI music, like this MIDI version of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody with 2.06 million notes.) 41m06s: Coherence, recommended by Banana Chan in Ludology 228 - The Roles We Play. 44m04s: Brenna's 3 composers she'd have over for dinner: Kaija Saariaho, Giacinto Scelsi, and Frederic Rzewski 45m13s: Gil was close! It was Charles Ives, at a performance of his music. The exact quote: "You goddamn sissy... when you hear strong masculine music like this, get up and use your ears like a man!"

Geoff runs us through the Hypergeometric and Binomial functions in a spreadsheet application like Microsoft Excel. Don't be intimidated by their names; they're actually pretty easy to use, and invaluable for game designers.

You can find Geoff's GameTek newsletter on this subject here.

Erica, Gil, and Sen have a roundtable discussion about their experiences with contracts. What are things designers should look for when negotiating their contracts?

Note that none of us are lawyers, and at no point in this episode do we give out actual legal advice. If you need legal advice, please consult an actual lawyer!

SHOW NOTES

25m46s: Here's the Meeple Syrup episode on localization, with Mike Raftopolous.

38m18s: "Spin" is SpinMaster, the game publishing company that Erica works for.

43m01s: If you're not familiar with the story of the rock band Van Halen and brown M&Ms, here it is.

In this classic Biography of a Board Game, Scott takes us through the history of the classic deduction game Scotland Yard.

Gil sits down for a one-on-one with game designer, teacher, and lecturer Marc LeBlanc to discuss some of his game design ideas, especially his 8 Kinds of Fun and the Mechanics/Dynamics/Aesthetics (MDA) framework. 

NOTE: Towards the end of the episode, Gil's mic cable started to get unhappy. Apologies for the static!

SHOW NOTES

0m50s: Looking Glass Studios, Ultima Underworld II, Thief, System Shock, Defense of the Oasis, Heroes Welcome

4m30s: Marc's 8 types of fun: Sensation, Fantasy, Narrative, Challenge, Fellowship, Discovery, Expression, and Submission.

9m31s: Wildermyth

11m28s: Nicole Lazzaro's 4 Keys to Fun, Self-Determination Theory, Quantric Foundry's Gamer Motivation Model, Jason VendenBerghe's Engines of Play

12m46s: Tim Fowers was on Ludology 165 - Fowerian Slip. Gil also mentions philosipher Roger Caillois and his book Man, Play, and Games.

23m52s: Reiner Knizia's classic auction game Ra.

31m34s: Spy Party

33m39s: Geoff discussed the Incan Gold experiment in GameTek 213.5.

36m46s: Gil's talk at Tabletop Network has been lost to tech gremlins. Fortunately, he gave the same talk online during the pandemic.

38m01s: Any mention of Caylus would make Ludology co-founder Ryan Sturm happy.

39m34s: Sharang Biswas was on Ludology 230 - Design Re-Verb. Geoff discussed his most recent game, Super Skill Pinball, on Ludology 268 - Pinball Wizard.

47m21s: 7 Wonders

51m08s: Slay the Spire

54m38s: Alan Moon's Oasis vs. Reiner Knizia's Through the Desert

56m05s: Return to Dark Tower, the Through the Ages digital adaptation, Pokemon Unite, Titan, Zach Gage's really bad chess.

1h00m02s: The Lynx web browser.

In this GameTek Classic, Geoff tells us about the strategies behind "Jeopardy" James Holzhauer's amazing run on the TV game show Jeopardy, in which he won 32 consecutive games between April and June 2019, earning $2,464,216. What does James do differently than everyone else?

Sen and Erica sit down with Matthew Dunstan and Dave Neale to discuss how they work as a team, working on a wide variety of games, working on a narrow group of games, and what it's like making a game based entirely in sound!

In this episode, Matthew mentions Postmark Games, his PNP project with Rory Muldoon.

At 37m31s, Sen mentions Piaget's Characteristics of Play.

At 44m15s, Matt mentions Ludology 265 - Hold Onto Your Hats!

In this classic Biography of a Board Game from 2017, Scott tells us the origins of the massively popular card game Uno.

Gil and Sen are delighted to welcome Geoff Engelstein back to the show to discuss the making of his hit roll-and-write game Super-Skill Pinball. What calls did he make when designing the game, and how much did it change from his original vision?

SHOW NOTES

3m29s: Take It Easy 5m38s: Limes 6m12s: Matt Wolfe joined us for Ludology 157 - Come Scale Away. Welcome To... 9m09s: Versailles 1919 25m58s: Yes, Games Magazine is thankfully still with us. Merchant of Venus 28m00s: Ares Project, the 1980 arcade game Crazy Climber 35m00s: MIND MGMT

Geoff tells us about the curious effect of endowment, and describes how both the game show Deal or No Deal and the video game Portal use it to enormous effect.

It's an annual Ludology tradition to invite The Podfather of Gaming, Stephen Buonocore, to the show at the start of each year to discuss trends in the industry. As always, Stephen flashes his business acumen and deep insight into what he thinks the industry is in store for in 2022.

In this re-air of a Biography of a Board Game from September 2017, Scott slices open the history of the game Operation.

Note: Even though Scott has stepped away from the show, we will still be publishing classic Biography of a Board Game episodes for the time being.

During our winter break, our co-host Scott Rogers pounced on a new job opportunity that he couldn't pass up. Sadly, this means he has to step down as Ludology co-host. In this episode, we'll chat with Scott about his time at Ludology, and ask him what awaits in the future.

Because Scott's job commitments have already begun, we couldn't find a time when we could all meet. So Erica, Gil, and Sen all recorded their questions in one recording session, and Scott recorded his answers in another recording session.

Erica, Gil, Scott, and Sen wrap up 2021 with a roundtable discussion on the hats we wear as game industry professionals. What are all the skills we bring to bear to make games, and how do we feel about them?

This is the final Ludology episode of 2021. We're taking our annual winter break. We will be back on January 23, 2022 with the next episode of Ludology. In the meantime, there will be no Ludology, GameTek, or Biography of a Board Game episodes. 

From all of us at Ludology, have the happiest of holidays, and here's to a productive 2022!

SHOW NOTES

5m12s - Alien: Fate of the Nostromo

12m27s - “Spin” is Spin Master, where Erica works as an on-staff game designer.

25m54s - Route 66

28m14s - Gil should have said “at the start of the pandemic,” as we’re still in the pandemic! If you'd like to join his remote playtesting group (which he will hopefully be attending again soon), click here.

33m51s - Unity, a platform mainly used to develop video games.

38m57s - The Affinity suite.

51m38s - Here's more info about Amber Seger, Weird Stories' awesome graphic designer.

54m40s - Scott’s flat cap, Gil’s HUGE hat

In this re-air of a Biography of a Board Game from July 2017, Scott takes us through the history of former Ludology co-host Mike Fitzgerald's Mystery Rummy series of games.

Gil and Sen welcome game designer, manufacturer, publisher, game cafe owner, and convention runner Kenechukwu Ogbuagu ("KC") of NIBCARD Games to the show. From his home city of Abuja, KC has built up the board gaming scene in Nigeria almost singlehandedly, recently winning the prestigious Diana Jones award for his efforts. 

SHOW NOTES

12m46s: Hobby World, Spyfall, Viceroy, Cosmodrome

14m58s: KC mentions the classic board game Ludo, which was based on the Indian game Pachisi. The American games Parcheesi, Sorry, Aggravation, Headache, and Trouble were based on Ludo or Pachisi; British people may know it as Uckers, while Canadians may know it as Tock.

22m07s: NGOs are Non-Governmental Organizations. In the US, most of them tend to be non-profits. 

25m58s: See the Smart People Play Chess TV trope 

34m08s: Bastard Café in Denmark, one of NIBCARD Cafe’s supporters 

44m20s: Designer Eric Lang will be at AB Con, the convention that KC organizes in Nigeria.

45m36s: InstantSync

46m08s: Legendary designer Reiner Knizia

46m52s: Village War

54m12s: Kuli kuli, Okpa, Akara

Geoff discusses one of the most feared characteristics of early RPGs: the loss of a level. Why is this mechanism so hated and feared among players?

Erica and Sen chat with Shing Yin Khor, game designer, installation artist, illustrator, award-winning cartoonist, and Bunyan-ologist.

Shing Yin is the designer of the game A Mending, in which players literally sew their actions into cloth, and co-designer (with Jeeyon Shim) of the game Field Guide to Memory.

Shing Yin calls both games "keepsake games," as they both leave artifacts of play that tell the story of the game experience.

SHOW NOTES

4m15s: Gasha/gacha machine 

7m05s: We chatted with Jeeyon on Ludology 244 - Games Brought to Life.

10m04s: The Oraclebird

12m17s: Gnomes, a Dutch book written by Wil Huygen and illustrated by Rien Poortvliet.

16m21s: In games, diegesis refers to anything that fits within the narrative world. If a video game wants characters to move right on the screen, they can do it diegetically by showing objects being blown to the right, or non-diegetically by flashing an arrow on the screen pointing to the right. Examples of board games that use diegesis well are Inhuman Conditions and Ca$h 'n Guns.

17m05s: Space Gnome Space

19m05s: Paul Bunyan

25m17s: We discussed audience agency with Haley E.R. Cooper and Cameron Cooper of Strange Bird Immersive in Ludology 214 - Escape from Reality. Shing Yin mentions Sleep No More as an example of immersive theater.

26m49s: Geoff and Gil wrestled with the definition of "game" in Ludology 151 - High Definition.

30m34s: The RPGs For the Queen and The Quiet Year

34m55s: We chatted with the tireless Banana Chan in Ludology 228 - The Roles We Play. The game they made with Sen is Exquisite Crime.

39m39s: A helpful visual: 41m37s: Car Wars

Scott Rogers takes us to the inception of the legacy game, and the one that started it all: Rob Daviau's Risk Legacy. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF A BOARD GAME:

• https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-04-03-the-legacy-of-rob-daviau-the-man-who-helped-flip-boardgames-on-their-head
• https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1024259/Legacy-Games-From-Risk-to
• https://www.polygon.com/tabletop-games/22740263/risk-legacy-sequel-shadow-forces-announcement-release-date-price
• https://boardgamedesignlab.com/designing-legacy-games-with-jamey-stegmaier/

Erica and Gil are delighted to welcome designer Amabel Holland of Hollandspiele, known for making games with challenging themes using an unconventional publishing model. 

SHOW NOTES

0m58s: Supply Lines of the American Revolution, Table Battles, Irish Gauge, This Guilty Land, Nicea, The Vote.

7m08s: Amabel is talking about her forthcoming game Eyelet.

15m02s: This is Geoff's game Versailles 1919, co-designed with Mark Herman.

17m28s: Benedict Arnold

18m34s: The Shackleton Expedition

21m16s: The Vote

28m22s: Nicea

31m38s: Irish Gauge, Northern Pacific, Iberian Gauge

32m29s: Winsome, Rio Grande

34m23s: Chicago Express

34m55s: Meltwater, An Infamous Traffic

36m11s: RIBBIT: The Jump, Move, and Block Game, Table Battles

38m51s: New Mill

43m45s: Westphalia

48m18s: Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae

49m52s: Cheapass Games

53m46s: Tobacco misinformation campaign

54m37s: Gil was thinking of Brandolini's Law, aka the BS Asymmetry Principle.

57m55s: Horse & Musket

59m03s: Deinocheirus, Pterodactyl, Therizinosaurus

Geoff explains a mathematical algorithm that can help potential roommates figure out how to split the rent, if an even split would be unfair and the roommates do not value the rooms the same way. This mechanism is just dying to be used in a game!

Gil and Scott are delighted to welcome Martin Wallace back to the show. Martin was first on the show on Ludology 46 - Getting Down to Brass Tacks back in 2012 with Geoff Engelstein and a very enthusiastic Ryan Sturm. In this episode, we catch up with Martin to see what he's been up to in the last 9 years.

Martin is the designer of many well-loved strategy games, like Brass, Age of Steam (and all its related games, like Railways of the World), London, A Study in Emerald, AuZtralia, and A Study in Emerald.

Technical note: Martin's recording has some dropouts in it; unfortunately, those seemed to come straight from his microphone, so there wasn't much we could do about them. We hope you enjoy the episode anyway!

SHOW NOTES

1m25s: Lords of Creation

4m31s: Gloomhaven, the North Sea Trilogy from Garphill Games, Jamey Stegmaier.

8m06s: The Exit games, and the Unlock! games

11m53s: Games Workshop, Ian Livingstone, the British Steve Jackson, the American Steve Jackson, and the Fighting Fantasy books.

16m18s: Anno 1800

20m08s: Catan, Dune Imperium

23m55s: Age of Industry

25m18s: "Canal holidays"

27m28s: The World Transplant Games

32m46s: A Study in Emerald

34m18s: Gil regrets not pushing back on this point a bit harder; he doesn’t think turning indigenous people into monsters is as effective a technique as Martin does. For a good perspective, check out Dan Thurot’s post about this on his excellent blog Space-Biff.

35m53s: Terry Pratchett and Discworld

38m41s: Martin is referring to the events of May 68 in France. 

43m53s: Imperium Legends, De Vulgari Eloquentia

45m28s: Ankh: Gods of Egypt, Medina, and “zugzwang” 

48m40s: Our favorite Star Wars clones: Starcrash, Battle Beyond the Stars, and a special shout-out to Fugitive Alien.

49m10s: Carcassonne

53m03s: Discworld: Ankh-Morpork, Doctor Who: The Card Game

55m13s: Disclaimer: Many of us on Ludology are pretty down on the HP series these days, due to the bigoted views of its author. 

56m59s: The video game Stellaris, the fantasy series His Dark Materials, and the fantasy collection The Silmarillion.

1h00m05s: Rocketmen

1h00m57s: The humble pasty

1h03m32s: Hobo code

For this week, we're replaying the very first Biography of a Board Game that aired on Ludology. In it, Scott talks about the classic game that got so many fans and designers into the hobby: Risk.

Scott and Gil welcome Nikki Valens, designer of Mansions of Madness: Second Edition, Eldritch Horror, Legacy of Dragonholt, Quirky Circuits, and the upcoming Artisans of Splendent Vale. We talk about making programming games like Quirky Circuits, app-driven games like Mansions of Madness, and campaign games like Legacy of Dragonholt.

SHOW NOTES

1m27s: Brown College

3m22s: Robo Rally

3m50s: Colt Express

5m53s: Magic Maze

8m18s: The Mind

12m26s: Ra, Medici

35m49s: Betrayal Legacy

42m00s: "FFG" refers to Fantasy Flight Games, where Nikki worked for several years.

43m07s: XCOM: The Board Game

52m24s: Here's a compilation video of cats riding Roombas...

Geoff continues his dive into the probability of Pop-O-Matic dice, this time discussing how experiment results can be misrepresented through P-Hacking. 

Gil and Sen are delighted to welcome Sara Thompson to discuss depictions of disability in tabletop games. Sara is the creator of the Combat Wheelchair for D&D, and of the Medicine on the Path supplement for The Witcher Pen & Paper RPG.

SHOW NOTES

0m49s: Critical Role, with GM Matt Mercer. 

3m35s: The D&D campaign Storm King's Thunder.

15m075s: The Greek god Hephaestus.

17m23s: Jennifer Kretchmer's Twitter.

21m35s: The thread in question, in which Sara describes Geralt as disabled and how that significantly affects his story.

25m08s: The Witcher: Baptism of Fire.

32m44s: Lauren Hissrich, showrunner of The Witcher TV show.

33m45s: A sample clip of the very silly Steve Martin film Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid.

46m46s: Amanda Leduk's book Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space.

52m19s: The Witcher: A Tome of Chaos supplement for The Witcher RPG.

53m22s: The Combat Wheelchair was featured on Critical Role episode C2E113 A Heart Grown Cold (at least, we're pretty sure it was!). It was used by NPC Dagen Underthorn. Also, Critter Hug is a show with Critical Role participants Matthew Mercer and Mica Burton interviewing people in the tabletop community. Here's the episode with Sara; you might recognize a couple other friendly faces in the same episode!

Scott takes us through the history of Quirkle, the smash hit game from Susan McKinley Ross. 

Scott sits down with Erica, Gil, and Sen to discuss the design and making of his newest game, Alien: Fate of the Nostromo. We also discuss designing to an IP, and how to make a horror game.

SHOW NOTES

0m58s: The original Alien film

1m31s: The other board game based on the film Alien. Scott is not counting board games influenced by the film without the official license, like Nemesis or The Awful Green Things From Outer Space. He’s also only counting games based specifically on the original film, so board games based on any of the sequels, like Aliens, or Alien vs. Predator, do not count.

1m38s: The “Optimus Prime Conundrum” is a term coined by the legendary and wonderful podcast Flip the Table. It describes a situation where a game breaks the IP it’s based on by allowing multiple copies of one character. This was coined in their very first episode, in which they reviewed the Transformers Adventure Game, where each player gets to play a separate version of Optimus Prime. 

2m00s: The publisher Ravensburger. Note that Scott pronounces it “Ray-vensburger”, while the other hosts pronounce it “Rah-vensburger”.

3m34s: The films Elf, Home Alone, and Gremlins, and the animated series Gargoyles.

8h25m: The Topps Alien trading card set.

11m15s: The Betrayal games.

14m11s: Back to the Future: Dice through Time.

16m06s: The film Ten Little Indians, also known as And Then There Were None. There have been several versions of this film, all based on an Agatha Christie novel.

28m59s: Scott is correct in that Alien is the first film to provide a genuine “cat scare” - that is, a jump scare that turns out to just be a harmless cat. The so-called “cat scare,” in which the source of a jump scare turns out to be something ordinary, appeared 35 years before Alien. TV Tropes credits it to producer Val Lewton, in his 1942 film Cat People.  However, despite the film’s name, the source of the scare was a bus, not a cat. Note that one month after Alien’s wide release in the US, The Amityville Horror came out; it also featured a cat-powered “cat scare.” Perhaps between these two films, the cliche was solidified. 

34m15s: The Horrified games: Horrified and Horrified: American Monsters. A short checklists of cryptids: Bigfoot, Mothman, Windigo, and the Jersey Devil. 

36m39s: Camp Grizzly

37m17s: Clue/Cluedo, 1313 Dead End Drive

39m19s: Dread

39m51s: Kingdom: Death Monster

41m03s: Peter Jackson's "splatstick" film Braindead (released in North America as Dead Alive)

42m49s: Dixit, Weird Stories, Unspeakable Words

44m03s: Final Girl

45m05s: Mansions of Madness

47m47s: Geoff's book Achievement Relocked, Ico, Death Stranding, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, Aerith from Final Fantasy VII

49m15s: Nyctophobia, Ten Candles, Vampire Hunter, Waldschattenspiel/Shadows in the Forest

51m39s: Apocrypha, the World of Darkness series of games (including Vampire: The Masquerade)

53m33s: Erica’s news: Disney Sidekicks, Rat Queens: To the Slaughter

54m29s: Sen’s news: Avatar Legends RPG

55m16s: Gil's news: GameTek on the global shipping snarl, Weird Stories

Geoff harnesses all his mathematical techniques to answer a burning question: are Pop-O-Matic dice truly random?

Geoff (making a one-off Ludology return) and Gil chat with Al Leonardi, designer of the legendary picture-book game Ace of Aces, and a legion of spinoffs using the same brilliant first-person system.

SHOW NOTES

4m19s: Richthofen’s War 

8m18s: If you're interested about Ace of Ace's mathematical underpinnings, and its true nature as a hex-grid game, here's Geoff's article.

9m52s: There were two Star Wars games Al worked on: Star Wars: Starfighter Battle Book, and Star Wars Lightsaber Dueling (which was based on Lost Worlds, which we discuss later in the episode). Also: Dragonriders of Pern: The Book Game, Bounty Hunter: Shootout at the Saloon, and Ace of Aces: Wingleader.

11m11s: The Immelman turn, in World War I, was a difficult maneuver that allowed a skilled pilot to turn their aircraft around quickly. In modern aerobatics, it now refers to a type of half-loop.

16m58s: "Ditto sheets," known in the UK as a "Banda machine," refers to a method of print duplication used for much of the 20th century, and very popular in American schools at the time. People of a certain age will recall paper quizzes with a distinctive blue ink on the paper.

22m16s: Two more aerial maneuvers: the wingover, and the snap roll.

25m32s: Lost Worlds

27m48s: The Society for Creative Anachronism.

39m15s: TransAmerica, Ticket To Ride

Scott takes us through the history of Afrikan tähti ("Star of Africa"), a legendary Finnish game first released in 1949. 

• Foreigners in Finland article
• One version of the game
• Another version of the game
• An interview with the publisher

Related Ludology episodes:

• Ludology 197 - Empires Up in Arms (discussing colonialism in board games with Mikael Jakobsson and Rick Eberhardt of the MIT Game Lab)
• Ludology 247 - Orc-Kay Computer (discussing cultural appropriation in games with cultural consultant James Mendez Hodes)

Erica and Scott welcome game design legend Mike Elliott, creator of innumerable Magic: the Gathering and Pokémon cards, designer of Thunderstone, and co-designer of Quarriors and the Dice Masters series. And of course, of DuelMaster and Charm Angel, which were both huge hits in Japan. Mike also runs the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design Hall of Fame, commemorating the work of legendary tabletop game designers.

SHOW NOTES

1m22s: NeoPets, Hecatomb, The Harry Potter Trading Card Game.

1m41s: Game designer and friend of the show Eric Lang. Gil and Geoff chatted with Eric in Ludology 175 - Auld Lang Design. , Also, Wiz Kids is a publisher that should not be confused with Hasbro-owned D&D and Magic: the Gathering publisher Wizards of the Coast (aka WOTC, often referred to as "WHAT-see"). Wiz Kids and WOTC are two unrelated companies, although Wiz Kids publishes some D&D-related products under license from WOTC.

3m24s: Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson are the credited designers behind the first version of D&D. Richard Garfield designed Magic: The Gathering, King of Tokyo, and Robo Rally. Jordan Weisman founded legendary RPG publisher FASA before starting WizKids. Reiner Knizia has designed hundreds of games, including Tigris & Euphrates, Medici, Ra, and Lost Cities. Vlaada Chvatl designed Through the Ages and Galaxy Trucker.

3m58s: Uwe Rosenberg designed Agricola, Le Havre, A Feast for Odin, and Bohnanza. Bruno Cathala designed 5 Tribes, Kingdomino, and 7 Wonders Duel. Maureen Hiron has been in the industry for decades, with games like 7 Ate 9, Cosmic Cows, and Qwitch.

4m31s: The Strong Museum of Play, in Rochester, New York, is a museum dedicated to play, toys, and games. If you're ever in Rochester, make an appointment with their archivist to look at Sid Sackson's meticulously-kept diaries; they are amazing. GAMA is the Game Manufacturer's Association, a trade organization of tabletop game publishers and retailers. GAMA runs the industry convention GAMA Expo (formerly the GAMA Trade Show), and the public convention Origins.

5m26s: Little Wars, by novelist H.G. Wells (author of War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, and The Island of Doctor Moreau), was a rulebook for playing with toy soldiers. That sort of formalized ruleset for a wargame was rather novel in 1913. Note the cringeworthy full title: Little Wars: a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books.

7m39s: Here's the website Mike mentions. Note that Mike is in the middle of the photograph on the front page, in the black short-sleeved shirt.

8m31s: Here's the Biography of a Board Game for Pass-out.

9m43s: And here's the Biography of a Board Game for Quarriors.

10m22s: Del Mar, California.

15m44s: Hearthstone

21m34s: If you want to know more about the intersection of gaming and improv, check out our episode of Improv for Gamers author Karen Twelves, Ludology 237 - Improv-ing Games.

28m22s: Halo ActionClix, Star Wars PocketModel TCG, DC HeroClix: Batman (Alpha)

34m00s: The Dice Masters family of games.

35m04s: Duel Masters Trading Card Game, from WOTC and Takara Tomy (both of which are part of Hasbro), part of the Duel Masters franchise.

38m44s: Battle Spirits: Trading Card Game

45m27s: More information about Target halting sales of trading cards, including Pokémon.

46m01s: Thunderstone, published by Alderac Entertainment Group. Alderac is usually abbreviated as AEG, but is unrelated to the massive sports/music promoter Anschutz Entertainment Group, which is also abbreviated as AEG. Alderac is run by John Zinzer.

47m25s: Kingdom of Loathing  

50m45s: Card Jitsu was originally part of Disney's MMO Club Penguin, which has since been replaced by Club Penguin Island.

54m08s: Quarriors

58m25s: Yahtzee: Doctor Who edition, and its TARDIS dice cup.

1h00m26s: The Quacks of Quedlinburg, The Mind

1h05m17s: AR games, or Augmented Reality games, utilize technology like phones or tablets to augment real-world locations with computer-generated enhancements. The most successful AR game at the moment is Pokémon Go.

1h07m53s: Mark Rosewater is the head designer for Magic: The Gathering.

1h15m15s: The film American Pie.

In this special GameTek, Geoff and Gil sit down with Justin Bergeron of ARC Global Logistics to discuss the global shipping snarl that's delaying so many board games (among other goods). How is it affecting the industry, what's behind it, and how long could it possibly last?

You can reach Justin via email.

Here's the web site for ARC Global's parent company, Logimark Group.

Gil and Sen are delighted to have RPG/story game designer Avery Alder on the show to talk about her games that show how communities deal with upheaval and change. We also discuss the change that RPGs saw in the past 20 years, going from the expectation of custom, bespoke systems for each game to the consensual adoption of systems like Powered by the Apocalypse and Forged in the Dark.

SHOW NOTES

02m39s: The Forge is no longer active, but you can read its archives here. Also, My Life With Master.

04m24s: The RPG Top Secret.

07m52s: Jiangshi.

10m36s: Here's Avery's talk at NYU's practice convention. Also, Dream Askew, and Apocalypse World.

14m09s: Dungeon World (note that its designer Adam Koebel has behaved problematically in the past, showing issues with consent in games - content warning for mention of sexual assault in link), Monster of the Week (and the Adventure Zone podcast), Avery's game Monsterhearts (now implemented as Monsterhearts 2), and the Powered by the Apocalypse system.

15m17s: Blades in the Dark, the Forged in the Dark system, and Scum & Villainy

16m36s: Dream Apart, Sleepaway, and the Belonging Outside Belonging system.

29m34s: Volley Boys, based on the anime Haikyu!!

39m19s: The Quiet Year

44m34s: Bohnanza

50m09s: Dramatic structures, including the 3-Act Structure, and the Hero's Journey

57m13s: The minis game Hordes, and its Legion of Everblight expansion.

1h07m13s: Geoff and Gil discussed hard vs. soft incentives in Ludology 185 - Soft Boiled. Also, Snow Tails.

Scott shambles through the history of the beer-and-pretzels game Zombies!!! He runs us through its various iterations, tells us what made it stand out from other games at the time, and discloses the personal impact the game and its designers had on him.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF A BOARD GAME

• (Audio) An interview with Todd Breitenstein 
• The Zombies!!! 20th anniversary Kickstarter
• (Text) Another interview with Todd Breitenstein on the digital version of the game

Todd passed away in 2013 from cancer. 

Erica, Gil, Scott, and Sen have a roundtable discussion about player counts. We go through each of the common player counts, as well as a few uncommon counts, and discuss what's special about designing for them.

SHOW NOTES

0m39s: Our thoughts about and general strategies for designing games at different player counts.

5m42s: 2-player games

9m20s: We chatted with Matt Wolfe about decision scales on Ludology 157 - Come Scale Away.

13m08s: Inhuman Conditions

13m59s: Belfort

16m24s: Alien: Fate of the Nostromo

19m41s: Pandemic

22m06s: Tokaido, High Rise

24m20s: Scott Pilgrim Miniatures the World

24m38s: 3p games

26m44s: The three-body problem.

27m38s: Here's Cole Wehrle's talk on kingmaking in games, and how it can be a good thing.

28m16s: Churchill

28m37s: Basari, which was adapted into Edel, Stein, and Reich in 2003 and modified to try to better handle a higher player count. Also, a note on ties with 3-players: it's impossible to tie on a vote with 3 voters (or any number of odd voters), as long as you are limited to two choices to vote for. Once you have at least 3 choices to vote for, the possibility space gets far more complicated (see the three-body problem above).

30m52s: Rayguns & Rocketships

32m25s: 9-5-2 is known by various names. Here are the rules to Sergeant Major, which is a very similar game; rule changes for 9-5-2 are further down the page.

Also: Carolus Magnus, Bargain Hunter, End of the Triumvirate (Gil was wrong, it can play 2 players), Three Kingdoms Redux

32m58s: 4p games

38m24s: Stuffed Fables, Between Two Cities

39m14s: Tichu

40m03s: 5p games.

Also, a note: Eagle-eared listeners will notice that you don't hear much from Scott from now until the end of the episode. He had to leave our recording session early, so we quickly recorded his bits for the end of the episode. And that's how the sausage gets made!

41m10s: 7 Wonders

44m16s: Alhambra, Alhambra: The Vizier's Favor, Catan: 5-6 Player Extension

47m36s: 6p games

50m44s: Godfather: A New Don. The "other Godfather game" Sen is hinting at is The Godfather: Corleone's Empire by friend of the show Eric Lang.

54m43s: Floor Plan, Welcome To..., Take It Easy, Time's Up, Karuba

56m11s: Werewolf, Two Rooms and a Boom

57m11s: The Unlock! series of games, Cranium

1h00m59s: Terra Mystica

1h01m23s: Arkham Horror

1h02m02s: 1p games. If you want to know more about designing solo versions of games, check out Ludology 154 - Leave Me Alone! (with Morten Monrad Pedersen), Ludology 234 - Playing With Time (with Dávid Turczi), and Ludology 248 - Solo-liloquy (with Carla Kopp).

1h05m12s: Onirim

1h06m38s: Chainsaw Warrior. Sen also mentions Ian Livingstone, who created the Fighting Fantasy series of interactive books with Steve Jackson (that is, the British Steve Jackson who co-founded Games Workshop, not the American Steve Jackson who designed Ogre, GURPS, Illuminati, and Munchkin. To muddy the picture further, the latter Steve Jackson authored three Fighting Fantasy books himself!).

1h07m33s: Kingdom Rush: Rift in Time

1h10m03s: 0p games, starting with So, You've Been Eaten. (Note that the BGG header only shows it as a 1-2 player game; technical limitations prevent it from properly showing as a 0-2 player game.)

1h11m34s: Strat-o-matic Baseball

1h13m30s: In Ludology 142 - Slots of Fun, Geoff and Mike chatted with slot machine designer Jeremy Hornik.

1h15m19s: Another link to Alien: Fate of the Nostromo.

1h15m43s: Sen's project: Avatar: Last Airbender RPG, Tiny Frontiers: Mecha and Monsters (referred to as "Mechs vs. Kaiju"), Coded Chronicles (Jay and Sen have already designed games with the Scooby Doo and The Shining licenses for this series), Dungeon & Dragons: Rock Paper Wizard

1h16m34s: Erica's projects: Rat Queens: To the Slaughter, Disney Sidekicks

1h17m37s: Gil's projects: Networks Broken Token insert, shipping issues, con season coming up

Geoff discusses the knitting community, how some knitters make the leap from hobby into entrepreneurship, and how research has shown the one thing that many of these self-employed knitters have in common. What can board gamers learn from this?

Erica and Scott welcome graphic designer, production superhero, and prototype craft wizard Lindsay Daviau to the show. We talk about her experience at Hasbro making (among many other things) fake games for fake stores. We also bring up her favorite games that she worked on, and her job at Restoration Games (with her husband Rob, who you may have heard of), where she works on games like Unmatched, Fireball Island, Stop Thief, and the soon-to-come Return to Dark Tower.

SHOW NOTES

04m10s: This is Don Norman's legendary book, Design of Everyday Things. It frequently comes up in this show, although despite what Scott says, we have never done a dedicated episode on it. We did discuss it a lot with game designer and graphic designer Daniel Solis on Ludology 204 - The Eyes Have It.

05m09s: The prestigious Rhode Island School of Design (RISD, pronounced "RIHS-dee"). 

12m57s: For those of you outside the US, the functional metric equivalent to 11"x17" paper is A3.

16m12s: The most recent Pandemic Legacy game is Pandemic Legacy: Season 0.

16m56s: Laser cutters emit toxic fumes; please only ever use them with proper ventilation! 

17m48s: The Brother ScanNCut.

18m34s: Gil's tip for making quick tokens: get a bunch of circle labels, and a bunch of poker chips! 1" diameter labels work well for standard poker chips, 0.5" diameter labels work well for mini poker chips. Once you set up to print to the circle template, you can make a bunch of tokens very quickly. And to replace them, simply print new labels and stick them above the old labels. It's great for early prototypes where the shape of the token is not hugely important!

21m08s: Heroscape

42m09s: The web suggestion form Lindsay mentions is right on Restoration's front page!

45m24s: The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror

46m41s: Pillars of the Earth is both a well-known book by Ken Follett and a solid worker-placement board game with a polarizing turn order mechanism.

49m00s: This cake discussion actually came relatively early in the interview. It was a bit too much of a tangent to include in the main episode, but we've put it here as a bonus. Enjoy!

53m24s: For more on edible board games, check out Ludology 210 - The Way to a Gamer's Heart, in which we chat with Jenn Sandercock about her cookbook/rulebook where she gives recipes and instructions for several edible games.

Scott rampages through the history of Richard Garfield's hit game King of Tokyo. How was this game made, and what did its standalone sequel King of New York add to it?

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF A BOARD GAME

• https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamepodcastepisode/76209/podcast-20-king-tokyo
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afu516A828k
• https://www.iello.com/co.uk/news/monster-of-the-week-game-is-over-all-about-king-of-verse
• https://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/116703/interview-richard-garfield-designer-magic-gatherin
• https://meepletown.com/2012/09/game-designer-interview-richard-garfield/

Gil and Sen welcome Calvin Wong Tze Loon 黃子倫 to the show to discuss narrative in games. How can we improve a game's narrative through its mechanisms, its components, and even its box size?

SHOW NOTES

0m46s: Calvin played P.T. Goh in the film Crazy Rich Asians. Also, info on Twilight Imperium's expansion Prophecy of Kings that Calvin did some writing for, and forthcoming RPG Embers of the Imperium.

3m16s: "Mayfair" in UK-based editions of Monopoly is equivalent to "Boardwalk" in US-based editions of the game. 

7m39s: Android: Netrunner

10m18s: The fan organization NISEI, currently supporting organized Netrunner play, releasing new cards, and keeping the game alive.

11m28s: Here's what Gil wrote about flavor text on Twitter.

14m44s: Pasaraya Supermarket Manager. Gil also regrets not bringing up diegesis in games (making the components, graphic design, and form of a game match its narrative) like in Inhuman Conditions.

19m22s: The Tiny Epic series of games.

23m31s: Gil accidentally gave out the name of the game series with this puzzle, so we bleeped it out!

26m04s: Crisis

28m13s: Ryan and Geoff discussed the magic circle in Ludology 79.

28m22s: The story game Fiasco, and the strategy game Barrage.

32m47s: Memoir '44

35m26s: Millennium Blades, Falsche FuFFziger, Descent: Legends of the Dark

41m17s: Here's the essay Crimes Against Mimesis. Also, here's Gil's talk on merging theme and mechanism.

49m45s: The Rick Riordan Presents line of books. The book Gil mentioned is Sal and Gabi Break the Universe, by Carlos Hernandez. 

53m40s: More info about the Prison Architect: Cardboard County Penitentiary board game.

55m32s: An Infamous Traffic

1h00m51s: Hollandspiele, This Guilty Land

1h02m07s: Hub Games

1h04m12s: The Typing of the Dead, Unspeakable Words

1h07m51s: Half-Life Alyx

1h09m51s: The wonderful Crystal Dax!

1h11m31s: Calvin's Twitter.

Geoff muses on the combination of two of his favorite topics: loss aversion and the lottery. Why do more people buy lottery tickets when the odds of winning are lower? How does that affect the payout? And what is the effect of a lottery win on a person's life?

Erica and Scott welcome Ryan and Malorie Laukat, the couple behind Red Raven Games. Ryan is known as the designer and illustrator for games like Eight Minute Empire, Above and Below, Near and Far, Islebound, Empires of the Void, Artifacts Inc., Megaland, and the forthcoming Now or Never. They are also the subject of an upcoming documentary, Crafting Arzium. 

Ryan is often seen as the sole force behind Red Raven Games, but Malorie and the whole Laukat family do a lot of work behind the scenes. We talk about the challenges and opportunities of making games as a family, how to maintain a work/life balance, and how to get your kids to playtest your latest game.

SHOW NOTES

27m32s: Tales of the Arabian Nights 38m59s: We discussed the different markets you can sell your game in on Ludology 246 - Cornering the Market. 51m14s: You can hear the Laukats' original music in their Sleeping Gods Kickstarter trailer. 1h07m24s: Here's the Red Raven website, their Twitter, their Facebook, and their Instagram.

Scott takes us through the history of El Grande, from its beginnings as a game about the Trojan War to its influence on the current board game scene.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF A BOARD GAME

• https://opinionatedgamers.com/2015/07/27/sdj-re-reviews-18-el-grande/
• https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/82783/interviews-optimist-73-wolfgang-kramer-el-grande
• https://www.mechanics-and-meeples.com/2014/09/08/el-grande-the-art-of-majority-control/
• https://brettspielbox.de/interview-mit-wolfgang-kramer-teil-2/
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTKYuVmOooQ

On a special milestone episode of Ludology, Gil Hova and Scott Rogers say goodbye to our beloved Emma Larkins, as she departs as a co-host after 50 amazing episodes. Geoff Engelstein drops by to check in on us. And we're also joined by new co-hosts Erica Bouyouris and Sen-Foong Lim!

SHOW NOTES

05m02s: Emma has earned quite a few awards for her game Abandon All Artichokes: the Golden Geek Light Game of the Year, the American Tabletop Award for Early Gamers, and yes, the Parent's Choice Silver Award.

07m25s: Here are Emma's favorite episodes:

• Ludology 247 - Orc-kay Computer with James Mendez Hodes
• Ludology 244 - Games Brought to Life with Jeeyon Shim (her Kickstarter for her new game The Shape of Shadows that Emma mentioned will be running for another week)
• Ludology 240 - Are You Receiving Me? with Adrienne Smith (a slight correction: Adrienne has won IFAF gold medals in international competitions, but has yet to win the Super Bowl)
• Ludology 233 - A Sporting Chance with Omari Akil
• Ludology 231 - STEAM Engine with Chidi Paige
• Ludology 228 - The Roles We Play with Banana Chan
• Ludology 214 - Escape From Reality with Hayley E.R. Cooper and Cameron Cooper of Strange Bird Immersive
• Ludology 212 - Inventing Play with Kim Vandenbrouke
• Ludology 203 - Winging It with Elizabeth Hargrave
• Ludology 209 - The 6 Zones of Play, a roundtable episode with Emma, Gil, and Scott.

15m06s: The two books Geoff mentions are Achievement Relocked: Loss Aversion and Game Design, and Game Production: Prototyping and Producing Your Board Game.

16m30s: More information about the Zenobia Award.

19m56s: Here's the most recent episode we did with Sen, Ludology 236 - Role With It.

20m38s: More information about the Meeple Syrup Show.

21m59s: "Jay" is Sen's longtime co-designer Jay Cormier. Jay joined Mike and Geoff in Ludology 134 - There's No "I" In Team. "Jessey" is game designer, developer, and Meeple Syrup co-host Jessey Wright. "Helaina" is Helaina Cappel, who runs publishing companies Burnt Island Games and Kids' Table Board Gaming. 

26m13s: "Daryl" is prolific game designer and former Meeple Syrup host Daryl Andrews. (The shout you hear in the background is one of Sen's sons playing Magic.)

31m41s: Here's Emma's streaming co-host Javion Smith.

32m10s: Here's Emma's list of games:

• Board Games
  • 7 Summits
  • One Deck Dungeon
  • War Chest
  • The Duke
  • Dune: Imperium
• Video Games
  • Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes
  • Roundguard
  • Pawnbarian
  • Return of the Obra Dinn
  • Outside In
  • What the Golf?

41m06s: Renys is very much a Maine thing.

43m20s: Sue Grafton wrote the "alphabet mystery series" of detective novels featuring investigator Kinsey Millhone, starting with A is for Alibi and ending with Y is for Yesterday. She sadly never got to the last letter, passing away in 2017. Her daughter said since Grafton never finished what was to be the final book in the series, Z is for Zero, and they did not wish to hire a ghostwriter, "as far as we in the family are concerned, the alphabet now ends at Y."

44m59s: Emma’s pen of choice, the Pilot Precise V5 Rollerball Extra Fine.

46m18s: Sen recommends jetpens.com for all your writing needs.

47m13s: Here's what we're all working on!

• Sen
  • My Singing Monsters: The Board Game
• Erica
  • Rat Queens: To the Slaughter
• Scott
  • Alien: Fate of the Nostromo
• Gil
  • The Rival Networks
  • Weird Stories (which now has a cover!)
  • High Rise: Ultraplastic
• Geoff
  • Triumvir
  • Super-Skill Pinball: Ramp it Up
  • Nova League 
• Emma
  • Abandon All Artichokes on Tabletopia
  • Tea & Me

50m03s: Emma's Twitter, Twitch, and web site.

Geoff parachutes into the world of battle royale games like Fortnite, and how they eclipsed MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) games like Heroes of the Storm. Is there something special about battle royales that we can study as general lessons in game designs?

Emma and Gil welcome returning guest Eric Zimmerman, who last appeared on the show on Episode 79 to discuss the magic circle in gaming.

This time, Eric discusses his idea of the 21st century being a "ludic century," and what makes games especially important today. We also discuss how games' powers can be used for evil, if tabletop games can become more environmentally sustainable, and see if there can be an equivalent to farmers' markets or slow food in tabletop game.

SHOW NOTES

1m26s: Eric's previous tabletop games: Quantum, The Metagame (with Colleen Macklin and John Sharp). He also mentions Gamelab, Diner Dash, Sissyfight, Dear Reader, NYU Game Center (where Gil and Geoff are also adjuncts), and Rules of Play.

Eric also mentions his large-scale art installation games that he's done with his partner Nathalie Pozzi. Here are a few of them: Interference, Starry Heavens, and Waiting Rooms.

5m34s: Here is Eric's original Ludic Century essay/manifesto, published in 2013.

16m27s: More info about Bernie De Koven and his influential book The Well-Played Game.

18m13s: More info about the slimy practice of gerrymandering. Eric also mentions the board game El Grande.

21m45s: More info about systemic racism.

24m17s: More info about Ultimate, also known as Ultimate Frisbee.

25m53s: One thing to note here is that impartial referees in sports are a relatively recent development. In the mid-19th century, both baseball and association football (soccer) originally had each team bring their own umpire, who would attempt to agree on calls. Back then, umpires did not make calls proactively; players had to appeal to the umpire in order to get a decision. 

This changed as teams got more competitive and team-based umpires failed to be impartial. Both sports brought in a neutral referee who could resolve disputes between the umpires; baseball in 1857, soccer in 1881. Eventually, the team-based umpires were dropped entirely, with soccer keeping the single referee (though they eventually added two linesmen to help make calls) and baseball renaming the referee back to "umpire" and adding three additional umpires to handle calls at each base.

(Sources: Strike Four: The Evolution of Baseball, Richard Hershberger, and The Ball is Round: A Global History of Soccer, David Goldblatt.)

30m52s: Jane McGonigal's book Reality is Broken.

36m34s: The influential behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner.

48m32s: Cheapass Games has made many of their older "envelope" games available as print-and-play downloads.

49m00s: The gone-and-gladly-forgotten CD longbox.

50m15s: The Zoomable game RATS: High Tea at Sea by Eric and Josh DeBonis. 

55m42s: More information about the environmental concerns around cryptocurrency.

1h03m10s: Slow Food is an organization related to the slow movement that pushes back against the fast pace of modern life.

1h09m35s: The game Gil mentions is Avatar Stalker, from the folks at Project Avatar. He also mentions The Nest, which was first mentioned on the show by Hayley Cooper of Strange Bird Immersive on Ludology 214 - Escape from Reality.

1h12m27s: Eric mentions the artists Alex Katz and Kara Walker.

1h15m55s: Eric’s website, the NYU Game Center, and Eric's partner Nathalie Pozzi.

Scott takes us through the history of the bizarre drinking game Pass-Out, which is arguably a direct predecessor to the modern risqué adult party game. 

(Note: We at Ludology do not condone binge drinking, especially when prompted by a game. If a game tells you that you have to drink, but you feel that you need to stop drinking, you should stop playing the game.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF A BOARD GAME

https://punchdrink.com/articles/house-rules-pass-out-board-game-1960s-drinking-game/ https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1345&dat=19910806&id=G1pYAAAAIBAJ&sjid=DvoDAAAAIBAJ&pg=7002,621780&hl=en https://boardgames.com/designer/frank-bresee#google_vignette

Emma and Gil sit down with Carla Kopp of Weird Giraffe Games and Galactic Raptor Games to discuss designing solo modes for games, the merits of "bots" in solo games, and how these bots tend to be named "Steve."

SHOW NOTES

2m00s: Carla's first published game Super Hack Override.

4m53s: We spoke with Morten Monrad Pedersen on Ludology 154 - Leave Me Alone! about using Automa to make solo versions of games.

7m02s: Sarah Reed is a game designer, disability advocate, and all-around excellent person. 

11m00s: The Cat Lady implementation for iOS and Android.

18m20s: Just a quick reminder that we’re talking about the digital implementation of the game Cat Lady, as opposed to Carla’s tabletop AIs. AI difficulty levels are more common in apps than they are in tabletop games. 

19m45s: The Splendor digital implementation is sadly no longer available.

20m34s: Gil mentions the solo mode that comes in the tabletop version of It’s a Wonderful World. Emma mentions the solo mode from the Galaxy Trucker app.

21m13s: Calico

21m47s: Gil forgets to mention that Friedemann Friese included an “achievement sheet” in Copycat.

23m49s: Race for the Galaxy. We chatted with Theresa Duringer, CEO of Temple Gates, who developed the app, in Ludology 177 - AI AI, Captain! 

24m26s: We're talking about the COIN (Counterinsurgencies) series of games, which have asymmetry built into them. Usually, each faction has a bot that allows many or all factions to be present in the game, even at a low player count. We talked to Volko Ruhnke, who began the series, in Ludology 178 - COIN Operated.

24m56s: The virtual gaming platform Tabletop Simulator.

26m54s: The three-body problem.

27m19s: Power Grid: The Robots

28m33s: Dune: Imperium, Smartphone Inc.

29m21s: Gil's second published game Battle Merchants.

31m24s: The Networks

33m10s: The underrated but absolutely amazing Fantasy Realms. 

34m49s: Seven Wonders and Alhambra. We discussed desicion scales in games with Matt Wolfe in Ludology 157 - Come Scale Away.

35m36s: Abandon All Artichokes

36m51s: Skull, Space Dealer

37m33s: Weird Giraffe's upcoming games: Sara Perry's Gift of Tulips, and Fertessa Alysse's Wicked & Wise.

40m12s: Tokaido

48m02s: Carla's company with Dan Letzring, Galactic Raptor. Dan also runs Letiman Games.

51m45s: Bunny Kingdom, Root. We interviewed Root's designer, Cole Wehrle, most recently on Ludology 222 - Johnny Fairplay.

53m07s: Charterstone, Feudum

55m48s: The free cardmaking program nanDECK.

56m59s: The often-linked conditions of Narcolepsy and Cataplexy.

1h05m58s: "Tony" here is designer, podcast host, and excellent person Tony Miller.

1h09m09s: Carla’s website, Discord, and Twitter.

Geoff talks about how games benefit when designers use familiar terms to describe familiar concepts. He also dives into the term "mana," tracing it back to its indigenous origins, and explains how it became a popular gaming term to track how much magic a character can expend.

Emma and Gil sit down with James Mendez Hodes to discuss his work as a cultural consultant, and the series of "orcticles" he wrote describing how the depiction of orcs in fantasy games can bring up problematic real-world stereotypes.

CONTENT WARNING: This episode includes many references to racism and a section discussing sexual assault.

SHOW NOTES

01m55s: Orcus, a god of the underworld.

04m29s: J.R.R. Tolkien's Urak-hai, the strongest kind of Orc in Middle Earth.

27m49s: The Marathi people from India. We also get into the thorny, complicated, and vitally-important subject of intersectionality.

32m57s: Here is the Adam Ruins Everything episode on the "model minority" myth.

34m30s: Gil meant the "domino theory," a Cold War idea that suggested that one country that became communist would inevitably make its neighbors, and those neighbors, communist as well.

38m04s: More information about James Baldwin's writings on race.

45m19s: We had John talking safety tools on Ludology 227 - Respect the X.

53m03s: Edward Said’s Orientalism is an important analysis of how a group of colonizing nations perceive the nations they colonize.

57m56s: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story 

1h06m28s: Here is the comic Gil and Mendez are talking about, as well as the Sam Sykes tweet that inspired it.

1h11m43s: Here's another link to Jiangsi: Blood in the Banquet Hall (which seems to come up every episode!). We spoke with Banana in Ludology 228 - The Roles We Play, and Sen most recently in Ludology 236 - Role With It. Of course, you will hear a lot more from Sen soon on this very show!

We also mention the RPG Agon.

1h14m43s: Blaise Pascal first expressed the sentiment in his 16th Letter from his lettres provinciales: "Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte." Mark Twain wrote out a similar thought two centuries later: "I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead."

1h19m08s: More information about Maria Dahvana Headley's modern-day vernacular translation of Beowulf. Also, Eric Zimmerman's plea to keep games away from art, because in his words, "enshrining something as art is death."

1h22m47s: Mendez' website, Twitter, and Patreon.

Scott describes the history of Quarriors!, which became the base system for both the Marvel and DC Dice Masters games, among other licenses. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF A BOARD GAME

• Tabletop Gaming Magazine issue 3 “The Making of Marvel Dice Masters” by Owen Duffy
• https://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/30410/designer-diary-dice-masters-no-catchy-title-just-b
• https://thegaminggang.com/game-news/table-top-gaming/the-gaming-gang-extra-77-interview-with-game-designer-mike-elliott/
• http://www.ludology.net/ - episode 13
• https://v1.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/134033-Marvel-Dice-Masters-Meets-Incredible-Response-Sells-Out-Rapidly

Emma, Gil, and Scott have a roundtable discussion in which they discuss the three sales channels, or markets, your board game can be available in: hobby, specialty, and mass. What are the differences between them, and how can a game move from one to another?

SHOW NOTES

0m48s: Erica and Sen are joining the show! You can watch them in the Meeple Syrup Show. Some of Sen's games: Junk Art, Akotiri, and Jiangshi: Blood in the Banquet Hall. Some of Erica's games: Bosk, Roar: King of the Pride, Kodama 3D, Scott Pilgrim Miniatures The World, Steven Universe: Beach-A-Palooza, and the forthcoming Rat Queens. Here's Sen's appearance on Ludology 236 - Role With It.

2m11s: The hobby "classics": Catan, Carcassonne. The new hotness as of this recording: Bonfire, Carnegie (which is so hot, it's not even out yet...). 

2m55s: More info about PSI, the sales agent Gil (and many other publishers) use to sell their games to publishers.

4m11s: Yep.

4m36s: Wingspan, Terraforming Mars, Codenames

11m15s: Phoenix Games and Mox Boarding House in Seattle. Emma also mentions Century: Spice Road, Exploding Kittens, Just One, and her game Abandon All Artichokes.

16m49s: Gloomhaven: JOTL, Pan Am

17m46s: Yes, Gil's told this anecdote before. He's talking about Avowel, the mobile version of his game Wordsy.

27m00s: Wingspan was written up in both the New York Times and Smithsonian Magazine, among others.

33m17s: We had Kim Vandenbrouke on in Ludology 212 - Inventing Play.

40m03s: Yes, Gil made the same point in the last episode. Still relevant!

41m37s: Not sure why Gil brought up Root but completely forgot about Fort, from the same publisher! It's a better example.

44m24s: The idea of affordances and signifiers from a design standpoint was popularized by Donald Norman in his book The Design of Everyday Things. This subject came up when we chatted with game designer and graphic designer Daniel Solis in Ludology 204 - The Eyes Have It.

45m11s: Kingdom Builder

47m39s: Seven Wonders

50m01s: The story of Lizzie Magie, Charles Darrow, and the way The Landlord's Game eventually became Monopoly is worth knowing about. You can read about it here.

55m51s: Verrater and Muerter. 

59m12s: Emma and Gil gushed about their Quivers a bit more than they expected to! 

1h01m27s: Red Raven made their game Megaland exclusive to Target when it was released in 2018. The Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game also had components exclusive to Target.

1h04m23s: Scott is referring to the mechanism in each game in the Betrayal family of games, in which the game assigns one player to turn against the other players in one of dozens of wildly different scenarios.

1h08m31s: We discussed complexity in Ludology 238 - Unraveling Complexity.

1h11m33s: Gil likes to occasionally return to this lukewarm review of Catan from 1998, complaining about game length, runaway leader, and balance issues. The more things change...

1h12m13s: Here's Emma's talk for the Tabletop Mentorship Program about playtesting!

1h13m48s: More info about the AEG Pitch Project. Also, more info about Scott's forthcoming game Alien: Fate of the Nostromo.

Geoff looks at a recent study that attempted to find a correlation between participants' actions in a game and how they would score in a survey of leadership skills. How can a game tell us whether a person is more or less likely to prefer to lead a group?

Emma and Gil welcome Emerson Matsuuchi back to the show to discuss his experience designing the Century game series, and what it's like designing 3 "mixable" games.

SHOW NOTES

0m37s: We last heard Emerson as a guest on Ludology 106 - Hide and Seek.

1m01s: In addition to the Century series, Emerson has designed Reef and Foundations of Rome.

1m45s: When there's no pandemic raging around the world, Gil runs a playtest group in New York City. Emma and Emerson were both members before they moved away. 

4m31s: Ah, the classic sitcom misunderstanding. 

8m12s: A list of cards currently banned in Magic: The Gathering tournament play.

11m17s: Bruges

13m03s: Dominion: Second Edition

14m11s: You can watch Emma appear on Table Takes on Gen Con's Twitch channel.

26m56s: The Betrayal family of games.

29m14s: An API (application programming interface) is a software interface that allows programmers to allow various computer programs and other devices to talk to each other. 

31m27s: In writing, "pantsing" means writing by the seat of your pants - in other words, not "plotting," or planning out your story in advance.

40m58s: Wingspan

46m24s: More information about Jones Theory, which suggests that gamers can optimize their collection by only collecting the "best" game of each genre or type.

47m40s: ZineQuest, a Kickstarter initiative for creators to launch small RPGs in zines, ran for the month of February. We discussed it with Jeeyon Shim in Ludology 244 - Games Brought to Life.

48m32s: Source code control, or version control, is a way for computer programmers to store all iterations of their code, so they can easily switch between older and newer versions of their programs, and integrate revisions to code with other people on their team. As Emma mentions, some code-savvy board game designers use version control systems like Git to track different versions of their games.

49m47s: We mention legendary board game designers Reiner Knizia and Uwe Rosenberg, and their games Medici, Medici: The Card Game, Caverna, Agricola

52m39s: Emerson mentions Runewars, Star Wars: Legion, Wings of War, and Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game. For a detailed history of these games, check out Biography of a Board Game 210.5 - Wings of War.

56m26s: Tom Lehman is dividing his expansions for Race for the Galaxy into several different arcs, which are not meant to be mixed.

57m54s: Eric Lang's tweet that Emerson mentions.

1h00m48s: Emerson's website, Twitter, and Facebook.

Scott delves into the history of the first big board game success on Kickstarter: Tory Niemann's Alien Frontiers.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF A BOARD GAME

TEXT:

• https://v1.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/tabletop/features/11916-How-One-Project-Shaped-Gaming-s-Use-of-Crowdfunding
• https://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/5209/interview-tory-niemann
• http://dicehateme.com/2010/08/alien-frontiers-a-new-world-for-game-publishing/
• https://blog.tabletopia.com/tory-niemann-dont-underestimate-the-glossy-vibrant-dice/
• https://thegaminggang.com/thoughts-on-gaming/the-final-frontier-10-questions-with-tory-niemann-designer-of-alien-frontiers/

AUDIO:

• https://therewillbe.games/podcasts/8102-planet-of-dice

Emma and Gil chat with Jeeyon Shim, game designer, nature fan, and mushroom enthusiast. Jeeyon's games are about connecting with one's environment, and we discuss what it's like to make games like this. We also discuss playtesting (or not playtesting) indie games, the conception of "nature" and its connection with humanity, and how cute our pets are.

SHOW NOTES

1m53s: The IGDN is the Indie Game Developer Network, an organization supporting indie tabletop designers. They offer mentorships and convention scholarships; one of these is to Metatopia, a tabletop game design convention in New Jersey.

4m25s: Jeeyon's games Dear Poppy, First Lesson, Your Dead Friend

8m30s: Daniel Kwan, half of the Asians Represent podcast.

12m09s: Avery Alder's Belonging Outside Belonging and D. Vincent Baker and Meguey Baker's Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) are both tabletop RPG "engines" that can be used to make other games. Belonging Outside Belonging first appeared in Dream Askew, and PbtA first appeared in Apocalypse World.

13m36s: Here, have some sample ecosystem maps.

31m56s: The genus Lactarius, aka Candy cap mushrooms.

34m32s: We had Kienna Shaw, Lauren Bryant-Monk, and John Stavropoulos on Ludology 227 - Respect the X discussing safety tools in games.

39m55s: Matthew Gravelyn is a tabletop game designer. Jeeyon mentions her game Pin Feathers (part of a diptych with its second half, Cloud Studies).

41m05s: Pontifuse was part of the Cheapass game collection Chief Herman's Next Big Thing.

41m31s: We've already mentioned Avery Alder's Belonging Outside Belonging. Variations On Your Body is a collection of 4 solo LARPs  and one essay about learning to accept oneself. 

43m50s: Jeeyon's game Crimson.

47m09s: Avery Alder's game from Variations that Emma is referring to is "Teen Witch."

57m27s: We chatted with toy inventor Kim Vandenbrouke in Ludology 212 - Inventing Play.

1h09m10s: "Itch" is itch.io, a popular sales platform for digital and tabletop indie games.

1h11m33s: Pseudohydnum gelatinosum, aka cat's tongue mushrooms.

1h19m12s: "Rubenesque" refers to the work of Flemish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens, who was known for painting plus-sized women. 

1h21m51s: More info about Zine Quest, from Kickstarter.

1h25m57s: More info about Lucian Kahn's Zine Quest anthology Hibernation Games, which includes one of Jeeyon's games.

1h30m00s: Jeeyon's Twitter and Patreon.

Geoff considers a classic problem: how do two parties in two different locations agree on a random number result, like a die roll? We cover the clever solution wargamers worked out, as well as an ultra-modern approach.

Emma and Gil chat with Sam Rosenthal and Stephen Bell of The Game Band, known for their bizarre cosmic horror sports sim Blaseball. We discuss the unique feedback loop between Blaseball's fans and its creators, the benefits of apophenia, and how baseball was uniquely suited for this treatment at this moment in history.

SHOW NOTES

7m00s: The score bug that Gil is referring to is the graphic that appears overlaid on most sports broadcast, showing the game's score and other vital stats. Gil also refers to external chest protectors that baseball umpires used to wear, an icon of baseball from decades past.

7m59s: The Blaseball wiki.

10m00s: The music that Stephen refers to is literal fan-made music. Fan canon says that the team the Seattle Garages are actually a rock band forced to play Blaseball. Fans have actually recorded and released these albums.

19m05s: Here's Cat Manning's excellent Blaseball primer. It's a good way to get a sense of the lore of the game.

22m11s: We chatted with game designer and wide receiver Adrienne Smith in Ludology 240 - Are You Receiving Me?

26m15s: Apophenia is the tendency to make connections between disconnected things. Game designers can use it to make meaningful experiences and memorable stories, but other people can use it for very bad things.

27m42s: Kayfabe is a wrestling term that denotes the acceptance of the fictionalization of staged events. In other words, a wrestling announcer working in kayfabe will treat a match as if it is a genuinely-contested sporting event with an uncertain outcome, not a scripted match in which all participants know the winner ahead of time.

Kayfabe is very much another example of a magic circle. You can hear Geoff Engelstein and Ryan Sturm discuss the magic circle with game designer Eric Zimmerman in Ludology 79 - The Magic Circle.

29m34s: SIBR is the Society for Internet Blaseball Research. Their name is a reference to SABR, the Society for American Baseball Research. (In real-world Major League Baseball, SABR is the organization that devised "sabermetrics," the advanced statistics that powered the Moneyball movement.)

SIBR has written several academic papers analyzing the effects various aspects of Blaseball.

32m54s: Taskmaster continues to be one of Gil's favorite shows.

35m44s: Uncharted is a series of video games about uncovering historical mysteries around the world, and killing a lot of bad guys in the process.

44m02s: More info on Twitch Plays Pokémon. Also, Our Place, a MUD.

48m17s: More info on the John Cage composition As Slow As Possible (Gil misstated the title as "As Long As Possible"). You can watch a video of one of the note changes here.

Also, Gil should have mentioned the 10,000 Year Clock, a Jeff Bezos-funded clock that is being built within a Texas mountain that will be designed to run 10,000 years without any human intervention. This is not the kind of scale humans are used to thinking in, which is what makes these projects so strange and intriguing.

53m04s: Welcome to Night Vale is highly recommended for anyone intrigued by the idea of comic cosmic horror. For example...

"The City Council announces the opening of a new dog park at the corner of Earl and Sommerset near the Ralph’s.

They would like to remind everyone that dogs are not allowed in the dog park. People are not allowed in the dog park. It is possible you will see hooded figures in the dog park. Do not approach them. Do not approach the dog park. The fence is electrified and highly dangerous. Try not to look at the dog park, and especially do not look for any period of time at the hooded figures. The dog park will not harm you."

55m51s: Baseball has several "unwritten rules" of decorum. One of them is that bunting to break up a no-hitter tends to be frowned upon. It happens every few years; in 2019, a minor-league team broke up a combined no-hitter in the 9th inning with a bunt, which resulted in a benches-clearing altercation. 

1h00m42s: Here is the Blaseball Discord server.

1h05m40s: Gil is referring to Marcel Duchamp's readymade sculpture Fountain (although there are rumblings that the piece was actually made by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven). Afterwards, Gil refers to the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Chain of Command, in which a Cardassian tortures Jean-Luc Picard by inflicting pain if Picard does not claim he sees five lights when in fact there are only four in front of him (which itself is a reference from a scene in 1984).

1h06m57s: "The Commissioner Is Doing A Great Job" is a common Blaseball meme. The Coffee Cup was the most recent season of Blaseball before this recording, which was a knockout tournament of nontraditional Blaseball teams instead of a "traditional" season (whatever that means).

1h08m03s: Twitter links: The Game Band, Blaseball, Sam Rosenthal, and Stephen Bell. Here is Blaseball's Patreon.

1h10m16s: Guess which blaseball team Gil follows?

Scott delves into the history of two games released by entrepreneur Edwin Lowe: Bingo and Yahtzee. Both became enormous successes, and are now a part of our cultural fabric. How did they get there? 

Emma, Gil, and Scott discuss winning in games. What defines winning in a game, and what are the different ways games can handle it?

Also, Emma shares a Big Announcement with us.

SHOW NOTES

2m44s: Type 1 - One winner, everyone else loses: Catan, Terra Mystica, Terraforming Mars

3m47s: Type 1a - Conditional win: Dune, Red November, Mission Catastrophe, Glory to Rome

6m48s: Vast, COIN (Counter-Insurgency) games

6m56s: Type 2 - One loser, everyone else wins: Jenga, Cockroach Poker, Kackel Dackel (which Gil mispronounced, and which was published in the US as Doggie Doo), Don't Wake Daddy, Bimbado/Packesel/The Last Straw (the game mentioned about loading a donkey), Pie Face, Perfection. The balloon game Scott describes is likely Bumm Bumm Ballon, known in the US as Boom Boom Balloon.

8m40s: Gil is using the term "atom" here as defined in the book Characteristics of Games, defined as "satisfying chunks of play shorter than a full game."

9m09s: Type 3 - Co-op games: Pandemic, Lord of the Rings, the Forbidden games, Quirky Circuits

10m15s: CO2

12m05s: We discuss meaning in games, beyond simple "fun," in Ludology 201 - Are We Having Fun Yet?

12m30s: This War of Mine

12m43s: Type 4 - Semi-coop games: Hellapagos, We're Doomed

13m52s: Coup, Werewolf/Mafia

14m41s: The Resistance, Werewolf, Codenames

15m17s: Type 4a - "Variable Coopability" (thanks Emma!) - Dead of Winter, Who Goes There

15m42s: Geoff discussed this in GameTek Classic 129 - Semi Coop Tournaments.

17m06s: Type 5 - Individual wins/losses

18m38s: Fog of Love. You can hear more from Fog of Love designer Jacob Jaskov in Ludology 194 - Lifting the Fog.

19m52s: The Crossroads mechanism forces players to make choices related to the narrative of the game, and delivers consequences based on those choices. Note that Gil is using "Crossroads" casually here, as only Plaid Hat Games can officially release Crossroads games.

20m46s: Emma's storytelling game ...and then we died.

21m08s: Type 6 - Improvement/Personal Best: Scrabble, Bupkis

23m14s: The Board Game Stats app, Fantasy Realms

24m02s: Cribbage

24m42s: More info about the Donkey Kong high score competition. The board game Take it Easy.

29m00s: Bennett Foddy's GDC talk Making It Matter, where he discusses how eSports can emulate real sports. Also, Gil's communication tool for board games, Check-In Cards.

32m13s: Geoff and Mike discussed legacy games with Matt Leacock in Ludology 121 - Pandemonium.

33m16s: Type 7 - Personal Experience. The chess-themed TV drama The Queen's Gambit.

43m55s: King Me, Cole Wehrle's GDC talk on kingmaking. Also, Cole's game Root. Cole is a friend of the show and has been on a couple of times, most recently on Ludology 222 - Johnny Fairplay.

48m06s: T.I.M.E Stories

54m28s: Another shout-out for Characteristics of Games. Here's Gil's Game Design 101 talk.

57m56s: The board games Dungeonquest and Kingdom Death: Monster. The video games Super Meat Boy and Dark Souls.

59m37s: The video game Hades.

1h03m52s: Check out Errol Elumir's 13 Rules for Escape Room Puzzle Design.

1h05m44s: Scott's book Level Up! The Guide to Great Video Game Design.

1h06m54s: Betrayal: Legacy

1h07m54s: The video game Among Us, and the board games Nemesis and Zombicide.

1h10m23s: You can hear more about player psychographic profiles in Ludology 165 - Fowerian Slip.

Geoff takes us through what he (and many other people) feel is a flaw in the rules of basketball, and a possible solution that was first implemented by a new league in 2018. The Elam Ending is designed to eliminate the incentive for teams trailing on the scoreboard to constantly, intentionally foul the leading team, making for a more consistent and fun game to watch.

This GameTek Classic was recorded in 2018; since then, the NBA used the Elam Ending for the 2020 All-Star Game, although they added 24 points (in honor of Kobe Bryant) and played the entire fourth quarter without a clock. The trailing team won.

Read an interview with Nick Elam. 

Watch a couple of examples of the Elam Ending in action: the end of the 2019 Basketball Tournament semifinals, and the end of the aforementioned 2020 NBA All-Star Game.

We continue our annual tradition of bringing board game industry veteran Stephen Buonocore, now retired from Stronghold Games/Indie Game Studios and focusing on media and podcasting. We explore the bizarre, catastrophic year of 2020, and consider what's in store for us in 2021.

Note that this episode was recorded on Monday, November 30, 2020; we occasionally say "this year" to mean 2020 instead of 2021.

SHOW NOTES

6m24s: "Travis" is Travis Worthington, CEO of Indie Game Studios.

9m00s: Back the Comeback is a movement to keep comic and game stores alive during the pandemic.

13m26s: Gravitation Games (who did not release their first game on Kickstarter), Chris Solis' Solis Game Studio, and NewMill Industries.

18m58s: More info about the idea of flight-to-quality.

22m04s: You can hear more from Luke Crane and Anya Combs on Ludology 223 - Kick Out the Jams.

27m41s: You can play Codenames online here.

29m13s: Tim Hutchings' 1000 Year Old Vampire, Travis Hill's zine games, Jeeyon Shim's games about nature and survival.

32m47s: Our socially-distanced Gen Con 2020 live show, Gil's blog post about online conventions. 

33m46s: Gil's thoughts here were really driven by Jeff Tidball's blog post here.

40m13s: Castle Tricon

42m01s: Board Games Insider

43m06s: Some board game Twitch streamers: The Brothers Murph, Ruel Gaviola, Board Game Blitz

46m17s: Our Family Plays Games, Before You Play

1h04m59s: Stephen's Facebook, website, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.

Emma and Gil welcome Adrienne Smith, designer of the card game Blitz Champz and wide receiver for the Boston Renegades women's gridiron football team. We discuss the intersection of mass market, kids, and sports game design, the state of women's football in modern America, and serial entrepreneurship.

This episode was recorded on November 16, 2020. A couple of weeks later, Vanderbilt brought their varsity women's soccer goalie, Sarah Fuller, onto their men's football team as a kicker.

Note: This will be the last Ludology episode of 2020! We are taking our annual winter break, during which time there will be no episodes of Ludology, Biography of a Board Game, or GameTek. We will return on January 10, 2021 with our annual "State of the Industry" episode with the Podfather, Stephen Buonocore.

SHOW NOTES

2m05s: Wondering how you can throw a spiral?

3m18s: Adrienne played for the New York Sharks. Here's the web page for the IFAF.

3m56s: More information about Jen Welter, the first female coach in the NFL.

5m14s: Gil wrote a Twitter thread about the history of women in football after the news about Sarah Fuller broke.

5m46s: Women's old-school football pants, versus MC Hammer's pants.

8m03s: The Women's Football Alliance, and the Women's National Football Conference

10m17s: More info about Ultimate, originally called Ultimate Frisbee.

10m42s: More info about Ultimate Hall of Famer Molly Goodwin.

14m00s: Adrienne is correct! The periodic table of the elements was first envisioned by Dmitri Mendeleev. Said he, "I saw in a dream a table where all elements fell into place as required. Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper, only in one place did a correction later seem necessary."

21m56s: You can hear more from our interview with graphic/game designer Daniel Solis on Ludology 204 - The Eyes Have It.

25m23s: Here's a closer look at Adrienne's "Passing TD" card.

27m26s: You can hear more from our interview with mass market toy/game designer Kim Vandenbrouke on Ludology 212 - Inventing Play.

29m47s: Here's a clip of the amazing Kyler Murray "Hail Mary" pass that somehow landed in D'Andre Hopkins' arms. This happened the day before we recorded. (I do not recommend Bills fans clicking on that link.)

34m28s: Adrienne is talking about New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick, winner of 6 Super Bowls. 

42m46s: More info about Gotham Girls' Roller Derby, the NYC-based roller derby organization. (There are other fantastic roller derby organizations around the world, like the world #1-ranked Rose City Rollers in Portland, OR, and the world #2-ranked Victorian Roller Derby League in Melbourne, Australia, all run by the Women's Flat Track Derby Association.)

44m17s: You can hear more about Omari Akhil's views on the intersection of sports and games in Ludology 233 - A Sporting Chance. 

55m26s: The legendary arcade game Galaga.

58m37s: It may not have been a tornado that hit NYC on November 15, but it seems to have come very close to one.

1h07m49s: More info about Title IX, passed in the US in 1972, which prohibits discrimination in education based on sex. The upshot of this is that for most sports, if a school wanted to field a men's team in a given sport, they had to field a women's team as well. 

1h09m03s: Pop Warner Football is a US organization for youth football, roughly equivalent to Little League baseball. It's named for legendary coach Pop Warner. Also, more information about Utah Girls Tackle Football.

1h10m51s: If you want to know more about minorities in the middle ages, a great place to start is People of Color in European Art History.

1h13m48s: Here's Adrienne's Instagram page.

Scott takes us through the history of Dark Tower, the legendary electronically-enhanced board game, and its modern spiritual successor, Return to Dark Tower. The story's twists and turns include every designer's worst nightmare: a huge company stealing a designer's idea and making it their own.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF A BOARD GAME

Wilderness Campaign, the Apple II game that helped inspire Dark Tower: https://www.mobygames.com/game/wilderness-campaign

Fan page with all sorts of info: https://well-of-souls.com/tower/index.html

Ruling on Burten v. Milton Bradley Co.: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/592/1021/1816724/

An article on the game's original release: https://www.nytimes.com/1981/09/23/business/new-bradley-game-tests-fickle-market.html

Dark Tower commercial with Orson Welles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3HVCwPp7j0

Emma and Gil welcome Kathryn Hymes and Hakan Seyalıoğlu to the show to discuss the impact of language on play, and how to design games that revolve around the building, modification, and demise of a language.

SHOW NOTES

2m52s: Here's the Kickstarter for Thorny's new game Xenolanguage.

6m45s: Among Us is a social deduction digital game that, after a quiet two years on the market, suddenly blew up on Twitch and is now extremely popular. US congressional representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made headlines when she played the game live on Twitch with several popular streamers (and fellow representative Ilhan Omar, who turned out to be very good at the game). 

9m09s: Myst

9m36s: Here's our episode on the Incan Gold experiment, run by Dr. Stephen Blessing of the University of Tampa.

15m43s: Dialect (Watch a playthrough with Hakan here)

20m33s: The earliest instance that the OED has found of the singular "they" is from 1375.

38m47s: Gil, Geoff, and Scott dug deep into party game design in Ludology 190 - The Life of the Party.

45m15s: Sign

49m47s: More info about the fascinating instrument known as the theremin.

52m54s: The instrument called the ondes Martenot (Gil apologies profusely to all French listeners for his poor pronunciation skills!). You can see its inner workings discussed here (video in French with English subtitles). You can hear it as one of the instruments in this absolutely wild Edgard Varése composition.

55m18s: More info on Code Talkers and how they helped transmit encoded messages in wartime.

56m01s: Here's a thread with Magic fans playing the translation game on Jace.

56m35s: Kathryn's GDC talk on artifacts of play.

58m07s: A Fake Artist Goes to New York

58m48s: Fall of Magic

59m15s: Qwixx

1h08m18s: A Buzzfeed article (forgive me) on how red Solo cups are viewed outside the US as a uniquely American symbol. 

1h08m38s: Thorny Games on the web and Instagram. Also, you can find Kathryn and Hakan on Twitter.

Geoff discusses the difference between deductive and inductive reasoning, and its impact in board games and beyond.

In this episode, Geoff discusses the games Clue/Cluedo, Mastermind, and Zendo. He also discusses dark matter, WIMPs, and Einstein's theory of relativity.

Emma, Gil, and Scott discuss the idea of complexity in a board game. We explore 6 types of complexity, and discuss their effects on the games we play and design.

SHOW NOTES

0m51s: Pete Seeger was an American folk singer, known for songs like "If I Had a Hammer," "Turn, Turn, Turn," and "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?"

2m04s: Our list of complexities:

• Spatial complexity
• Arithmetical complexity
• Zone complexity
• Planning complexity
• Rules/mechanism complexity
• Component complexity

2m45s: Barenpark, New York Zoo

3m44s: The SAT is a standardized test in the United States that is a major factor in a college's admission of a prospective student.

4m16s: Number 9

4m32s: Bosk

5m31s: Photosynthesis

6m30s: Treasure Island, Escape from the Aliens in Outer Space, Specter Ops, Tigris & Euphrates

7m14s: Checking the rules, an Internal Conflict in Tigris & Euphrates happens when a Leader is moved to a Kingdom where there is already a Leader of the same color belonging to another player.

8m00s: Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game. Check out Scott's Biography of a Board Game on the Flight Path family of games, including X-Wing and Wings of War.

8m25s: The Warhammer family of games is absolutely massive. The flagship game, Warhammer 40,000, is in its 9th edition. 

10m18s: The Funkoverse Strategy Game. We chatted with Chris Rowlands, one of its designers, in Ludology 224: Putting the Fun in Funko.

11m01s: Heroclix, Heroscape

13m23s: Set

15m17s: Power Grid, Russian Railroads, and Gil's own The Networks

16m26s: The term "Goumbaud's Law" was coined by Jesse Schell in his book The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses.

21m12s: Sticheln (the pronunciation of which Gil has completely butchered) was recently re-released by Capstone Games as Stick 'Em. Smartphone Inc.

22m46s: Sushi Go, Disney: The Haunted Mansion – Call of the Spirits Game

25m38s: Search for Planet X, Zendo (Kory Heath's design diary for Zendo remains a fantastic look at how hard it is to design a seemingly simple game.)

26m40s: Mastermind

28m12s: Here's a description of the XYZ Wing solve technique for Sudoku.

28m33s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg21M2zwG9Q (explicit language warning)

28m59s: Hey, That's My Fish, graph theory, and the Traveling Salesman problem.

29m33s: Scott first proposed the 6 Zones of Play in Ludology 209 - The 6 Zones of Play.

32m28s: Formula D

33m27s: Seafall, the Betrayal family of games.

41m21s: Ra

43m53s: A Feast for Odin

44m22s: A Few Acres of Snow

46m45s: Nielsen Media Research is best known for its Nielsen TV ratings, that offer the TV industry in the United States metrics into the number of viewers a TV show enjoys.

48m06s: Advanced Squad Leader, The Campaign for North Africa

50m13s: We discussed the futility of 1:1 models with Volko Ruhnke in Ludology 178 - COIN Operated. Gil also brings up the "Map-territory relation" problem.

50m29s: Food Chain Magnate, Feudum, Cloudspire, Kanban

54m48s: Two designers who work in complex games: Vital Lacerda and Dávid Turczi. You can hear our chat with Dávid about complex games in Ludology 234 - Playing with Time.

55m34s: Brass: Lancashire

57m27s: Fresco

1h00m20s: Gil discussed his doomed auction mechanism most recently in Ludology 235 - Rise to the Challenge.

1h01m45s: Samurai, Steel Driver, For Sale. Here's Samurai's scoring system:

• If one player has the most figures of 2 or 3 of the types of figures, they win.
• If no one has won in the previous step, only players who have the most of a single type of figure can win. All other players are eliminated.
• The remaining players set aside the figures they have of which they have the most of a certain type. The player with the most remaining figures wins.
• In case of a tie, the tied players re-collect all their figures and count their total number of figures. Highest total wins, all remaining ties are shared.

1h02m30s: Nomic, Fluxx

1h09m23s: Descent: Journeys in the Dark

1h10m45s: Geoff and Gil discussed "tight coupling" in Ludology 172 - Odd Coupling.

1h12m04s: Carcassonne (the type Gil was thinking of is Monk)

1h13m25s: The Betrayal family of games (again)

1h14m46s: GameTrayz

1h16m20s: Mike Selinker uttered this now-legendary quote in Ludology 189 - The Missing Selinker.

1h17m47s: Gil's announcements: BGG@Home, Weird Stories pregen settings, High Rise pre-orders opening soon, Rival Networks

1h20m02s: Battling Tops, and the legendary BGG Battling Tops tournament.

1h20m22s: Tabletopia

1h20m44s: Emma, Gil, and Scott recorded Ludology 215 - Table Topics live at BGG.CON 2019.

1h21m06s: Scott's announcements: Treats, Xeno Command, Comic Book Crisis, The Pitch Project.

1h24m06s: Emma's announcements: Game Maker's Guild panel, Dutch and Hungarian versions of Abandon All Artichokes.

1h25m26s: Our contact info: Emma (Twitter, Instagram, Web), Gil (Twitter, Facebook, Web), Scott (Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook)

Scott goes over the history of Which Witch, a game that's been adapted into many other games, including The Real Ghostbusters Game and the Scooby-doo! Haunted House 3D Board Game.

If you're interested in learning more about Marvin Glass and Associates, Scott recommends that you read A World Without Reality: Inside Marvin Glass's Toy Vault. We also discussed him in Ludology 212 - Inventing Play with Kim Vandenbrouke.  

Emma and Gil welcome Karen Twelves, whose straddling of the worlds of gaming and improv led her to write the book Improv for Gamers. What can gaming and improv learn from each other?

Content warning: this episode contains brief references to non-consensual touching and racism.

SHOW NOTES

01m16s: AD&D is Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, the form of D&D most prominent in the 80s and 90s.

02m43s: A kinesthetic learner is one who learns through physical activity. We discussed kinesthetic learning and games (among other things) with Chidi Paige in Ludology 231 - STEAM Engine.

03m35s: Whose Line Is It Anyway? was a British radio show that became a British television show that became an American television show. In the show, four improvisers run through several short-form improv games.

08m25s: The Harold is a structure used in long-form improv. 

09m31s: Del Close was a fundamental figure in the world of improv, creating many techniques and co-writing the book Truth in Comedy. Note that Gil misattributed the name of the Harold to Close. While Close helped develop and publicize the technique, improv actor and musician Bill Mathleu is credited with naming it.

12m33s: Kingmaker is an Adventure Path for the RPG Pathfinder.

12m48s: Most recently, we discussed failure in games with Sen-Foong Lim in our previous episode, Ludology 236 - Roll With It.

15m32s: LEEROY JENKINS (note explicit language in link)

31m00s: The story RPG Fiasco. We had designer Jason Morningstar on Ludology 161 - What's the Story, Morning Glory?

40m55s: The board games Karen mentions are Splendor, Forbidden Island, Forbidden Desert, and Pandemic.

50m58s: Alex Roberts, designer of Star Crossed and For the Queen.

52m50s: The TV show Taskmaster. Wouldn’t Alex Horne be a great Ludology guest?

58m30s: “No one in the world ever gets what they want and that is beautiful/Everyone dies twisted inside and that is beautiful”

1h01m03s: Burning Wheel, Pathfinder, Fiasco, Monsterhearts

1h02m22s: Archipelago

1h12m03s: Then She Fell, Sleep No More

1h12m57s: Gil is referring to Ludology 214 - Escape From Reality, with Hayley E.R. Cooper and Cameron Cooper.

1h13m32s: Palace Games in San Francisco. Their in-person experience is temporarily closed for the pandemic, but like many escape rooms, they are currently running virtual games.

1h15m11s: Here's Karen's current ongoing Thing & Thing Twitter thread.

1h18m18s: Karen’s Twitter, Instagram, and Tiktok. Here are her websites: improvforgamers.com, karentwelves.com, and dtwelves.com.

Geoff compares the design process of the video game Diabolo to… the invention of calculus? Yes, there are surprising similarities, and seeing how the two dovetail leads to a stronger appreciation of both game design and mathematics.

Emma and Gil welcome Sen-Foong Lim back to the show to discuss the differences—and similarities—between board games and roleplaying games. We go through the perspectives of playing them, designing them, and examining the culture of play between both.

Sen originally appeared on Ludology 134: There's No "I" in Team with frequent co-designer Jay Cormier.

SHOW NOTES

0m41s: Board games Sen has designed or co-designed: Junk Art, Belfort, D&D: Rock Paper Wizard. RPGs Sen has designed, co-designed, or written for: Jiang-Shi: Blood in the Banquet Hall, Kids on Bikes, The Curse of the House of Rookwood, North Sea Epilogues

3m39s: If the comparison between RPG and improv intrigues you, wait till you hear Ludology 237...

4m47s: An example of a crunchy old-school RPG: Traveller

5m10s: Chainmail was the game that D&D evolved from.

5m20s: While Gil agrees with Sen that encumbrance as implemented by a game like D&D tends to bog down gameplay, a nice counter-example is Torchbearer, a dungeon-crawling TTRPG in which encumbrance is a central mechanism.

7m44s: You can see one Emma's chats with Peter Adkison (who founded Wizards of the Coast and owns Gen Con) here.

11m34s: Sen is currently watching Black Sails.

12m31s: RPGs where your character is likely to die: Fiasco, Paranoia

17m55s: The RPG Masks: A New Generation.

19m14s: Gil and Sen's friend and beloved loudmouth Errol Elumir.

19m40s: This is literally Errol's first rule of escape room puzzle design.

20m36s: Critical Role (with GM Matt Mercer) is the most popular of the vibrant active play scene.

21m46s: The party game Cranium.

22m25s: Save Against Fear, a convention about gaming in therapy.

23m01s: Roll20 is an online platform for playing RPGs, as is Role. Tabletop Simulator can handle crunchy RPGs like D&D as well.

28m21s: Formula D (née Formula Dé)

30m00s: We had Mike Selinker on the show for Ludology 189: Missing Selinker.

31m13s: Sen's favorite D&D module, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks

31m30s: Star Frontiers

33m05s: You can hear more from Jiang-Shi co-designer Banana Chan on Ludology 228: The Roles We Play.

35m51s: Emma's storytelling games ...And Then We Died (...And Then We Held Hands is a different game)

45m02s: "Jay" is Jay Cormier, Sen's frequent collaborator. "Jesse" is game designer Jesse Wright.

45m30s: Jay and Sen's tabletop escape game Scooby Doo: Escape from the Haunted Mansion.

47m20s: The TV show Bob's Burgers.

48m50s: Itch is an online platform for digital games, but has a lot of downloadable PDFs for tabletop games. DriveThruRPG offers PDFs and PODs of many RPGs. 50m12s: RPGs that Emma mentions: Burning Wheel, Paranoia, FATE Core System, Ryuutama, Over the Edge.

51m58s: For more about safety tools in RPGs, check out Ludology 227: Respect the X.

53m04s: You can access all these tools via the TTRPG Safety Kit.

56m05s: Gil's board game safety tool Check-In Cards.

1h07m06s: Board games that allow for relaxed conversation: Sagrada, Lotus.

1h08m27s: More about the semiotic function.

1h09m57s: Sen mentions psychologist Lev Vygotsky.

1h10m30s: Emma is a Mythic-tier Magic player!

1h11m55s: More info about the D&D Adventurers League.

1h14m13s: Jay and Graeme's game In the Hall of the Mountain King. Jay also created the Fail Faster playtesting notebook.

1h19m31s: Sen's web series, the Meeple Syrup Show, with Jessey Wright and Erica Hayes-Bouyouris. 

1h20m59s: Sen's licensed games: Batman: The Animated Series - Rogues Gallery, Legend of Korra: Pro-Bending Arena, and the Scooby Doo and D&D games mentioned above.

1h22m01s: The manga and anime My Hero Academia.

1h23m08s: Follow Sen on Twitter!

In the spirit of Halloween, Scott takes us through the spooky history of the Ouija board: its origins, the legal battles behind the curtain, and how a scientific phenomenon makes it all work. 

Bibliography of a Board Game https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-strange-and-mysterious-history-of-the-ouija-board-5860627/

https://www.vox.com/2016/10/29/13301590/how-ouija-boards-work-debunked-ideomotor-effect

https://www.baltimoremagazine.com/section/artsentertainment/the-dark-and-fascinating-history-of-the-ouija-board-baltimore-origins

https://www.williamfuld.com/ouija_articles_03281886.html

http://www.mtv.com/news/2940671/horror-movies-ouija-boards/

https://robertmurch.com/

https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2017/1/haunted-hotel-is-now-home-to-the-worlds-largest-ouija-board-459555

Today, we are continuing our series of exploring the design decisions behind our own games! Emma and Scott sit down with Gil to talk about his game High Rise; about how it started life as an auction game, and the twisty route it took to publication.

SHOW NOTES

1m23s - Gil discussed the Wag auction in his Networks design diary on BGG.

2m45s - Gil's game Battle Merchants.

3m31s - A "MacGuffin" is an object in a film that the characters all want, but the actual nature of the object is irrelevant (like the briefcase in Pulp Fiction). All that matters from the perspective of the film is that the characters want it. Looney Labs has since published an actual game with this term, Get the MacGuffin.

4m03s - Gil's game The Networks.

6m24s - Games with auctions as an element in the game: Princes of Florence, Goa

6m54s - Knizia games that are built entirely around their auctions: Ra, Modern Art, Medici, High Society

8m18s - The digital board game Sumer (Gil credited Josh Raab with the game design, but neglected to mention co-designers Geoffrey Suthers, Misha Favorov, and Sig Gunnarsson).

8m51s - The legendary video game M.U.L.E. - not a commercial success, but since regarded as seminal and influential. For a while, "M.U.L.E. as a board game" was a game designer's grail, but that's since been handled by board games Wealth of Nations, Planet Steam, and of course, M.U.L.E. The Board Game.

14m41s - Gil is talking about Roger Caillois, and his book Man, Play, and Games. Play is usually associated with having no real-world implications, but Caillois knew to draw in gambling as a counter-example.

19m04s - High Rise's look would not have nearly been so amazing without the graphic design of Heiko Günther and the illustrations of Kwanchai Moriya.

20m36s - Rocco is also designer of the game Ninja Dice.

23m04s - You can follow the High Rise Kickstarter here; it goes live on October 6.

24m54s - Bryn Smith runs Doomsday Robots, a board game publishing company.

27m02s - Expancity, Manhattan. The Manhattan kaiju "expansion" Gil was thinking of turned out to be a variant designed by Brian Bankler and Eric Moore.

27m56s - The amazing Daniel Newman, who is quite an excellent game designer himself (he made Dead Man's Cabal), and who is designing the High Rise plastic buildings.

28m11s - Not to mention, Elastoplast is a brand of bandages.

28m59s - The High Rise design diary.

30m28s - Gil's online playtest group, Remote Playtesting.

32m24s - Two rondel games, both by Mac Gerdts: Navegador, and Imperial.

33m57s - Time track games similar to High Rise: Tokaido, Glen More, Francis Drake, and Kraftwagen.

34m28s - Ryan Courtney, designer of Pipeline

36m29s - Eric Lang's tweet about turn angst. You can hear more directly from Eric in Ludology 175 - Auld Lang Design.

38m33s - Food Chain Magnate.

45m33s - Geoff and Gil discussed ludonarrative dissonance in Ludology 190 - Diabolus in Ludica. A positive example of ludonarrative dissonance: Unspeakable Words.

46m55s - Cloudspire.

50m28s - Emma is referring to Ludology 209 - The 6 Zones of Play.

51m51s - Bohnanza

51m58s - Here's an example of Magic Card flicking. It's even worse when the cards are sleeved.

55m36s - Uno, The Mystery Rummy series of games.

59m33s - The Sears Tower in Chicago is now called the Willis Tower.

1h02m57s - The preview page for the High Rise Kickstarter campaign.

Having previously discussed relatively new advances in AI that allows computers to beat humans at games like Chess and Go, Geoff moves on to games in which AI will have a much harder time being competitive. What is it about these games that makes it so difficult to make a good automated opponent?

1m00s: Geoff introduced AlphaZero and AlphaGo in GameTek Classic 218.5. 1m34s: Codenames 3m18s: IBM's Watson 4m09s: Mysterium

Emma and Gil welcome game designer, developer, solo mode designer, and self-described "grump" Dávid Turczi to the show. We discuss the design of complex games with many interlocking systems, how to play with time in games, and the six (plus one) things Dávid looks for in a strategy board game.

SHOW NOTES

1m18s - Battlestar Galactica 2m03s - Dávid's game [redacted] (yes, that's the name of the game) 2m34s - Trickerion, published by Mindclash Games 3m01s - Dávid's game Anachrony 4m36s - Dávid's games Kitchen Rush and Dice Settlers 8m32s - Splendor, Century: Spice Road, Gizmos 9m05s - Azul 11m40s - Dice Settlers' expansion is Dice Settlers: Western Sea 14m17s - For some outstanding Martin Wallace loan mechanisms, check out Age of Steam, Brass, and London. 15m24s - Agricola 15m43s - The "Taschini method" refers to Daniele Tascini, co-designer of Tzolk'in, Teotihuacan, and The Voyages of Marco Polo. 20m22s - The Gallerist, Cloudspire 21m15s - Vital Lacerda is the designer of The Gallerist, Vinhos, and Kanban 21m43s - Mac Gerts is the designer of Concordia, Navegador, and other clever rondel games. 22m00s - Dávid's new game Perseverance 22m48s - Arkwright 24m00s - Dávid's new game Tekhenu 27m39s - Dávid's new games Tawantinsuyu and Rome & Roll 32m05s - Viticulture 35m13s - Dávid is referring to scoring using a triangular sequence, which many board games adopt as a gentler alternative to the harsh slope of exponential scoring.  37m13s - Black Angel 38m05s - Dávid's criteria for games he likes, 1/6: Narrative integration, or the fiction/action rule. 38m39s - Dávid's criteria for games he likes, 2/6: Elegance, or depth/rules ratio. 39m07s - Dávid's criteria for games he likes, 3/6: Strategic curve. 39m19s - Orléans 39m52s - Dávid's criteria for games he likes, 4/6: Replayability. 40m30s - Dávid's criteria for games he likes, 5/6: Achievement. 43m00s - Dávid's criteria for games he likes, 6/6: Interaction. 44m27s - Terra Mystica 48m12s - David's criteria for games he likes, 7/6: Uniqueness 55m38s - Tapestry 55m48s - David's solo modes - Teotihuacan, Keyper, Cerebria. If you want to hear more about designing solo modes for games, check out our episode with Morten Monrad Pedersen, Ludology 154 - Leave Me Alone! 1h01m49s - Trismegistus 1h03m36s - A Feast for Odin 1h05m32s - Petrichor 1h06m16s - John Brieger is an excellent developer. Heiko Günther is the best graphic designer (Gil may be a bit biased here, though) 1h09m11s - High Rise (Gil is blushing right now!) 1h09m30s - Glen More, Kraftwagen (Dávid named a seminal German electronic band instead), Tokaido, Tzolk'in 1h10m08s - Tutenkhamen 1h15m33s - Budapest: Days of Ire 1h17m43s - Excavation Earth 1h18m35s - Pocket Dragon 1h19m34s - Steal This Game! 1h20m40s - David Mortimer - Cousins' War, Ming Voyages 1h23m49s - Dávid's BGG profile 1h24m16s - Imperium: Classics and Imperium: Legends

Scott covers the "beautiful game" of Subbuteo, the tabletop association football flicking game, as well as its predecessor Newfooty.

Bibliography of a Boardgame 

http://www.peter-upton.co.uk/ https://fistf.com/history-of-the-game/ http://www.gamingcorner.nl/subbuteo-timeline.htm

Emma and Gil welcome game designer and publisher Omari Akil to the show to discuss the plight of the sports-themed board game. What kinds of unique challenges do we face when designing one of these games?

Omari's game Hoop Godz will be on Kickstarter soon.

SHOW NOTES

1m21s: Board Game Brothas, Tabletop Backer Party, Pathways Fellowship 4m55s: Gil was 5 years off - Mike's game is Baseball Highlights: 2045. 12m09s: Football Strategy 12m47s: Gil would like to shout out Arthur Franz IV's self-published game Breakaway Football as a game with a really nice mix of play deciding versus output randomness. 15m32s: Gil will defend the term "soccer," seriously. It's a perfectly good way to refer to association football! 16m06s: Strat-O-Matic Baseball, released in 1962. 17m41s: Dino Dunk 18m07s: Crokinole 18m25s: Nok Hockey, Air Hockey, Electric Football. We also neglected to mention the flicking game family Subbuteo, which represents all sorts of sports. 22m43s: Gil eventually gets to his curling thoughts at 39m22s. 25m48s: Madden is EA's long-running NFL gridiron football video game sim (named for legendary player, coach, and broadcaster John Madden). 28m58s: Ultimate is a competitive sport using a throwable disc (like a Frisbee) instead of a ball. 29m50s: In 2017, Geek and Sundry launched a "T-Sports" league for competitive tabletop games (strangely, announcing it on April 1, and then having to explain that it was real). Sadly, it did not go far. 30m57s: Bennett Foddy's talk "Making it Matter: Lessons from Real Sports". Foddy is known for making punishingly-hard digital games like QWOP and Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy. 38m36s: Omari is referring to the common sports term GOAT, an acronym of Greatest Of All Time. 41m28s: Hystericoach 43m16s: Bottom of the Ninth 45m09s: Blaseball. RPG designer Meguey Baker's thread on it. 46m56s: Omari wrote more about how his lived experience affected the design of Rap Godz. 48m24s: More info about how Omari and YouTuber (and all-around excellent person) Danny Plays Gamez raised $80,000 for BLM:  56m25s: Paula Deming's channel, Things Get Dicey, is absolutely amazing to behold. Top-notch writing, performing, and filming. 57m11s: For those of you who don't have the honor of consuming Capri Sun in the part of the world where you live, it's a (vaguely) fruit-flavored beverage.  1h01m16s: The GIF Omari is referring to, featuring young Brazilian skater Rayssa Leal. The GIF Gil is referring to, linked to from famous skater Tony Hawk. 

Geoff ponders a tricky question: how come we get iconic characters from video games, like Mario or Pac-Man, but none from board games?

In the past few years, Ludology has recorded a live episode at Gen Con. We weren't going to let a global pandemic stop us this year! 

Recorded as part of Gen Con Online 2020, Emma, Gil, and Scott streamed this recording live on Twitch. We had an excellent turnout in the chat, and everyone seemed to really enjoy this new twist on Ludology Live!

You can watch unedited video of this chat here.

It's possible we may return to this format in the future! Stay tuned…

SHOW NOTES

1m54s: We mention Gil's Twitch channel several times in this episode. 2m13s: Of course, this note to turn it tickets doesn't apply to people listening to the podcast. Don't let that note trigger any vague feelings of guilt! Also, for reference, we began recording at 5 pm EDT. 3m29s: "This much on the timeline" - at this point, Gil is holding up his finger and thumb with a few centimeters of space in between. 4m46s: Scott is holding up a Gamemaster DVD at this point. 5m40s: You can watch the Gen Con Gamemaster panel here. 6m01s: The shot in question (no Gil to be found, sadly). 7m16s: Alas, neither the Instagram Live nor Table Takes interviews are archived anywhere. :( 8m36s: Remote Playtesting (#rpt) is the playtest group that Gil helps to run. You can see and buy the t-shirt with Aaron Wilson's logo here. 8m54s: Aaron's new publishing company with Ian Zang, Gravitation Games. 9m55s: Here's Scott's quarantine playlist. 10m10s: Abandon All Artichokes 11m43s: High Rise is almost sold out! And Rival Networks pre-orders are still going strong. 12m02s: Check-In Cards. 12m37s: Here's the video for Animal Crossing Fiasco. More info for one of Gil's favorite games, De Vulgari Eloquentia. 14m38s: draw.io, a collaboration tool that Emma really likes. 14m56s: Here's a tweet that sums up Emma's game Unravel quite well. Emma also mentions the Our Innermost Thoughts Kickstarter project by Travis Hill. 18m27s: More info on the Tabletop Mentorship Program. 18m42s: Glenn Cotter's Fickle. 22m01s: Gil presented a lot of these thoughts in this blog post. 25m47s: The "G" Gil is trying to point to would be a fraction of a millimeter large in most screens. 26m21s: There will be another Virtual Gaming Con in November. 32m59s: GenCan't has been an online alternative to Gen Con for several years now. 36m21s: Here is an example of BuonoCardboard making the rounds. 39m27s: Scott's 50th episode of Biography of a Board Game just dropped, and it's wonderful! He covers the history of his own game, Rayguns and Rocketships.  40m24s: We at Ludology were all touched by Marcel Claxton's thoughtful analysis of Ludology's recent direction and its significance in the current age.  43m21s: Jason Morningstar appeared in Ludology 161 - What's The Story Morning Glory? 50m32s: There aren't many board games about falling in love, but quite a few digital and RPGs! (Gil would also like to suggest wargames and games coming out of that historical/political sphere as the board game parallel to documentaries.) 59m34s: For those who may not have heard of it, the MacArthur Fellows Program is awarded to 20-30 Americans every year who show "extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction." Between the high criteria for being named and the generous amount of money received ($625,000), it's nicknamed the "Genius Grant." 1h03m49s: Emma mentions a few tools here: Tabletop Simulator, Tabletopia, Trello, and Slack. 1h06m25s: At this point, Scott holds up a Playstation controller. 1h14m57s: This Discord Has Ghosts In It. 1h17m57s: Scott's links: his blog, his Patreon, his Twitter, and his Instagram. 1h18m54s: Emma's links: her website, her Twitter, and her Instagram. 1h19m28s: Gil's links: his company website, his personal website, his Twitter, and his Twitch.

This is the 50th Biography of a Board Game episode! To celebrate, Scott takes us through the history of his first board game, Rayguns and Rocketships.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF A BOARD GAME

0m36s: Video game publisher THQ 0m51s: God of War, Pac Man World, Soul Blade 1m37s: The Star Wars Album 1m43s: The legendary filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, and Republic Pictures, responsible for many well-remembered serials 5m17s: More info on Hodgkin's lymphoma 8m22s: More info on the new Gamemaster film

Emma and Gil welcome game designer, educator, and birder Chidi Paige to discuss how games and play benefit education, how she designed her bird-themed game Birdwiser, and how competitive birdwatching has affected her as a person.

SHOW NOTES

0m22s: From educationcloset.com: "STEAM Education is an approach to learning that uses Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts, and Mathematics as access points for guiding student inquiry, dialogue, and critical thinking." It is an evolution of the older STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) approach in that it adds the arts. 1m29s: The Newark Museum in Newark, NJ. Fun fact: back when Chidi was working at the museum, Gil was a block away working at audible.com. Small world! 1m36s: Columbia University in New York, NY. 2m45s: Wonderstar Foundation has no web presence yet. Hopefully soon! 7m11s: ClassCraft 7m36s: Labster 8m01s: Chidi is referring to polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for DNA replication, and to CRISPR for genome editing. 13m43s: Explorer's Program at the Newark Museum 23m06s: Our episode with Dr. Mary Flanagan was Ludology 226 - Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo 23m43s: You can hear more from Elizabeth Hargrave on Ludology 203 - Winging It. 25m31s: The Big Year on IMDB. 27m29s: Sadly, we could not find the video that Emma mentioned! 30m40s: Chidi's web site for Birdwiser. 32m00s: Whot and Uno are variations on the public domain game Crazy Eights. 33m18s: Birdwiser’s illustrations are by Emily Willoughby, with graphics by Kristine Mathieson of Tropikality Designs 36m26s: Sibley and Peterson are two of the best-known bird guides out there. 38m43s: We discussed Emma's Infinite Potato Problem in Ludology 225 - A Study in Emma-rald. 41m09s: The site Chidi is referring to is Upwork, originally called oDesk. 42m29s: Gil is talking about his word game Wordsy. 42m45s: "Complexity Budget," an idea Richard Garfield popularized. 47m09s: More info about certifying your garden for wildlife. 50m01s: More info about the World Series of Birding. 1h00m05s: The scientists Chidi mentions are Eric Kandel and Richard Axel.

Geoff muses on the difference between explicitly calling out the way a game system works, versus letting players implicitly discover how the players discover how the system works. Is one clearly better than the other?

Tell us how you feel in the Ludology forums!

Here's more information about Geoff's game Versailles 1919.

Emma and Gil invite award-winning game designer, teacher, and not-scholar Sharang Biswas to the show to discuss verbs in games. What actions do we actually perform when we play a game, what actions do they represent, and how does that impact the game experience?

You can find Sharang on Twitter or on the web. Here is his itch.io store.

CONTENT WARNING: This episode contains references to sex and sexuality.

Show Notes

2h31m: Sharang teaches at The International Center of Photography (Bard College), and at Fordham University. 3m05s: We had Dr. Mary Flanagan on the show for Ludology 226 - Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo 3m26s: Playcrafting is an organization that holds game design events, mainly for digital games, in New York City, San Francisco, and Boston. 5m04s: Anna Anthropy is an influential game designer, and current designer-in-residence at DePaul College in Chicago. 5m15s: Ian Bogost's Persuasive Games. 10m08s: Android: Netrunner 11m33s: We discussed ludonarrative dissonance, especially in board games, in Ludology 190 - Diabolus in Ludica. 12m05s: The uselessness of 1:1 scale maps came up in our conversation with Volko Ruhnke for Ludology 178 - COIN-Operated. 12m29s: If you haven't heard us discuss at length what a "game" is, check out Ludology 151 - High Definition. 12m35s: More information about the word autotelic, which is extremely useful when discussing games and play. 13m35s: Frank Lanz is a game designer and director of the NYU Game Center. 16m35s: Great Western Trail, Food Chain Magnate 17m10s: Ryan and Geoff discussed the magic circle with game designer and professor Eric Zimmerman in Ludology 79 - The Magic Circle. 17m29s: You can find more about Honey & Hot Wax, edited by Sharang and Lucian Kahn, here. 18m25s: The phrase "turtles all the way down" is one of Gil's favorites. 20m54s: Hungry Hungry Hippos, Mouse Trap, Pretty Pretty Princess, Electronic Dream Phone 21m30s: MegaCity Oceania 21m54s: Mountains of Madness 23m10s: Pandemic Legacy: Season One 24m11s: Sharang's game with Max Seidman, Mad Science Foundation 26m35s: The RPG Sign. 28m10s: More information about the larp Sarabande. 29m42s: Geoff and Gil discussed "soft incentives" in Ludology 185 - Soft Boiled. 30m38s: Jiangshi, an RPG about Chinese immigrants juggling running a haunted restaurant, by Banana Chan and Sen-Foong Lim. We had Banana on the show a few weeks ago, for Ludology 228 - The Roles We Play. 31m10s: Some of the discussion about "Press F To Pay Respects" in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. 31m31s: Untitled Goose Game 35m53s: Sharang compares Chaos in the Old World to Assault of the Giants. Chaos was designed by the incomparable Eric Lang, who we had on the show for Ludology 175 - Auld Lang Design. 37m13s: Sagrada 38m19s: DC Comics Deck-Building Game 40m00s: John Cage's 4'33", which instructs the performer to play no notes for the duration of the piece. 40m27s: Positive examples of ludonarrative dissonance: Typing of the Dead, Unspeakable Words 40m58s: Brenda Romero's well-known art game Train. 41m16s: Sharang's game Feast, inspired by Felix Gonzalez-Torres' original art piece Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.). 41m45s: The RPG With Great Power…  42m31s: Team Fun's interview with Sharang, featuring the phrase "Jump, Decapitate, Kill." 43m44s: Journalist, larp designer, and game writer Lizzie Stark. 45m00s: The 2001 video game Black & White. 45m17s: French literary critic Roland Barthes proposed the idea of the Death of the Author in a 1967 essay, suggesting that critics don't need to understand an author to contextualize their work. 45m24s: The Effing Foundation for Sex Positivity. 47m16s: Thumb Wars (or thumb wrestling) 51m45s: The games A Guide to Casting Phantoms In The Revolution, and Can You Hear Me?  52m34s: Sharang's game Several Miles from Heaven. 53m36s: The Jenga-implementing RPGs Dread and Star Crossed, and the apocalyptic RPG Ten Candles. 54m45s: Metatopia is a game designer convention based in the northeastern US that specializes in tests of board games, TTRPG, and larp. 56m41s: Sharang's solo food-based RPG Verdure. 57m52s: We had Jenn Sandercock on in Ludology 210 - The Way to a Gamer's Heart to discuss her edible games.  58m41s: The 200-word RPG Stardust. 1h00m00s: The bizarre Hellcouch (taking the idea of the "couch co-op to the next level), amd Mattie Brice's empathy machine. 1h00m45s: Marina Abramović's seminal performance art piece Rhythm 0, in which she allowed visitors to do whatever they wanted to her body for 6 hours. Visitors were gentle at first, but became more cruel as the piece went on, several times aiming a loaded gun in her head. The most powerful part of the performance emerged at the end; once the 6 hours ended, Abramović stood up and approached the audience, who promptly left, unable to face her as a person who had regained her bodily autonomy. 1h06m08s: Alex Roberts' Pop! is part of Sharang's project Honey and Hot Wax, co-edited by Lucian Kahn. 1h06m37s: Emma's degree is in Product Design. 1h08m45s: Sharang has written a couple of articles for Killscreen. 1h10m38s: Wingspan. We had the pleasure of chatting with designer Elizabeth Hargrave for Ludology 203 - Winging It. 1h12m15s: The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire was a horrifying tragedy in which 146 sweatshop workers in New York City were killed by a fire. The workers were locked into their working space, so they could not exit on foot; many leapt to their deaths. The fire resulted in legislation that improved factory safety standards and strengthened union powers.  1h14m42s: Clio Yun-Su Davis' RPG Pass the Sugar Please was run by theater company Intramersive. 1h16m44s: Sharang is referencing Kat Jones' game Glitzy Nails. 1h17m43s: The RPG Flatpack 1h19m34s: The productivity games Habitica, SuperBetter, Chore Wars, and Zombies Run. 1h20m58s: Sharang's game A Shroud for the Seneschal.

Scott takes us through the rise, fall, and rise again of the game Vinci, which designer Philippe Keyaerts and publisher Days of Wonder re-implemented as Small World.

Bibliography of a board game

Emma, Gil, and Scott go back to a topic that Ryan and Geoff discussed earlier in the show's history: Deckbuilding! With all that's changed (including Emma having designed a deckbuilder), what has changed, and what have we learned?

0m41s: The episode that Ryan and Geoff did was Ludology 119 - Deck the Halls. 0m46s: Dominion (which did come out in 2008) 2m39s: StarCraft: The Board Game, which is generally believed to be the first game with an in-game deckbuilding component (if we assume that Magic: The Gathering's deckbuilding component is technically not "in-game," but is part of the metagame). 5m12s: Trains, and A Few Acres of Snow 6m26s: Smash Up 14m45s: Concordia, Aquatica 17m13s: Ascension, Thunderstone, Nightfall 22m26s: Eschaton, Copycat 30m08s: Aeon's End, Thunderstone Quest, Big Book of Madness, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle 31m39s: Puzzle Strike 32m36s: The Quacks of Quedlinburg 33m19s: I think we have the name to Scott's next game... :) 34m03s: Black Friday 34m47s: Quarriors (and its themed re-implementation, Dice Masters) 36m58s: Rattlebones  37m40s: Dice Forge (which Gil mistakenly called Dice Vault) 38m25s: According to designer Stephen Glenn, Rattlebones had been in the works since 2009.  40m05s: Blank White Dice (which Emma called Blank Dice) 41m07s: Abandon All Artichokes, Xenon Profiteer, Fine Sand 44m18s: Mystic Vale, Edge of Darkness 46m21s: The game Scott was thinking of is Dead Reckoning 46m36s: Slay the Spire 48m09s: Gil is using the definition of "atom" from the book Characteristics of Games: "The smallest complete unit of play, in the sense that the players feel they've 'really played' some of the game." 49m51s: The bits in question 50m05s: VENOM Assault 51m27s: Monster Train 54m17s: Self-promotion time!

• Gil
  • High Rise
  • The Rival Networks (Gil was totally wrong, but the rulebook is with the graphic designer now, so it's close to done!)
  • Gil's Twitch channel
  • Gil's games at Gen Con
  • Gil's remote playtest group
  • Gil's upcoming storytelling game Weird Stories (watch a playthrough here)
  • Check-In Cards
• Emma
  • The Seattle Tabletop Game Designers group on Facebook
  • Abandon All Artichokes
    • The What's Eric Playing review
    • Top 10 Games on our Radar
    • The Abandon All Artichokes design diary
  • Ludology Live at Gen Con Online
• Scott
  • Comic Book Crisis
  • Gamemaster film