Ludology

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 http://www.sporttischfussball.at/index-Dateien/Page2918.htm https://www.newstalk.com/news/6-things-you-probably-never-knew-about-subbuteo-724933 http://www.mumimuseum.com/english/focus06.html https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/soccer/subbuteo-alive-and-flicking-with-the-single-greatest-game-ever-invented-1.3217077 https://qprreport.proboards.com/thread/5203 https://100objectskent.co.uk/object/subuteo-prototype/#&gid=1&pid=1 http://subbuteo.online/subbuteo-streakers-are-a-real-thing-as-a-limited-edition-accessory

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

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 Text: Meepletown interviews designer Keyaerts. Text: Boardtime interviews designer Keyaerts (the site is Polish, but the interview is in English). Text: Related Small World products from publisher Days of Wonder. Text: Tabletop Gaming magazine September 2019 - How We Made Small World (paywall) Text: Tabletop Gaming magazine #10 Jun/Jul 2017 - First Turn: Phillipe Keyaerts