Stay ConnectedWelcome to Ludology, an analytical discussion of the how’s and why’s of the world of board games. Rather than news and reviews, Ludology explores a variety of topics about games from a wider lens, and discusses game history, game design and game players.
Ludology is part of The Dice Tower Network, the premier board game media network.
Copyright: © Geoff Engelstein, Sen-Foong Lim, and Erica Bouyouris
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
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
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
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
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:
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:
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!
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