Ludology

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

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

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. No

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 v

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 vers

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

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 lim

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 Pand