Hello, and welcome to DJs and Dorks. I am the DJ to Kyle's
Jork. We are bringing you the best in role playing design, go a
game design. As always, it's led by you. I don't know why.
I don't know what that means, but you better, you better tell
us how to do it. How's it going today, Kyle? It's so
amazing. UM. So hopefully if this is your first time to to get,
you'll realize that that this is Graham Gens. This is the lovely Graham
Gains is not rally Parks. Graham is stepping in as interim co host for
the next couple months, which is really exciting for us over here at Desks
Dorks. He's also one who suggested that beautiful theme song, which I absolutely
love. We listened to it before we hit record. Just I'm just I'm
so hyped about it. I'm doing great, Graham. Today's gonna be a
great episode. This is another an iteration on one of your ideas. And
if you're okay, I want to tell the people, like what this is?
You cool? That absolutely top five reasons we love after the Rain,
Yeah, it's a start A number five. We're tired of things being before
the rain, and finally this game does it that it's after the rain?
What's your top five? My number five reason after the rain is the best.
I really like water great, that's a solid one. Dry. So
if you have not listened to last week's episode, it's like one of the
ones that I've really really enjoyed the most. It is five games that we
hate, despise feel very negatively about. But we worked really hard to find
things that we loved about those particular titles, and so I suggested to Graham
after last week's episode that we do the reverse of that. And so today
here are going to be some games that we absolutely love. It a door
and they are things that we hate. We hate about those games. Um,
that's pretty much it is the reverse, the inverse of that episode,
if you will, So, Graham, I want to talk a little about
my methodology because you kind of came in strong with methodology last time. I
specific em for games that I went that I rated nine or ten or higher
on my list. So these are like in many cases, all five of
the games that I picked are in my top twenty games of all time.
There are there is one that is in my top five games of all time,
and then one that is a top ten game of mine but might be
in the top five at some other point. The more that I play it,
the more I enjoy it. Um So these are all like bangers in
my mind. These are all games that, like, I will drop everything
and play. If someone's like, hey, do you want to play any
of these five? Unless I am jonesing to play something else, I will
be playing one of these. So all right, so we already did an
episode about that our top five favorite board games? Are you pulling from that?
I pulled one. I pulled one. I pulled one from my top
five? Which one we're going to talk about? Then I pulled one from
my top five? Why why don't you give me your your your first game?
You want to talk about that? All right? What game do you
love that you are now going to rip apart? So I I love me
a good SIV builder. There are two SIV builders on this list that play
in wildly drastically different ways. Some people remember that I used to work for
Yellow USA back when that was still a company, and right around the time
that they acted their American department, they released their best game like Ever,
and I will I will stand on This Hill, which is Hora spelled k
O r A. It was part of this like new Yellow Expert series that
I think they killed like immediately after they released Horra, which sucks because this
game is a deeply, deeply strategic civilization style builder that uses dice rolls and
dice manipulation to determine the actions that you can make. Everybody has the exact
same action cards, but the way that you take those actions, the order
in which you take those actions, and the way that you interact with other
people matters a ton. It is one of my favorite games. I love
Hora. It's it's it's just great. It takes away the map aspect of
SIV building, but it continues to have like culture, politics, military,
and economy all be viable means with which your civilization wins the game. Now
it translates those as victory points. But again, if you're like a SID
builder family I am, I love having multiple avenues of victory that all tie
into the business of building a civilization. The art and the production value or
really stellar and what I love about it. I love asymmetric character powers and
you're playing as Greek city states and at asymmetry is really strong throughout horror.
But the one thing that I hate about this is their playtuncharacteristically positive it does,
and I are about to know why because I'm leading into it. Those
asymmetries are actually the biggest achilles heel of the game, because in playtesting they
missed that one of the characters, one of the city states, civilizations,
whatever you want to call it, is wildly overpowered, to the point that
if you are playing and even a group of equivalent skill levels, or even
somebody who is not of an equivalent skill level as the rest of the table,
if they have the sieve, they will win the game. And it's
not like it's like, oh, they have a chance to where it's a
greater chance, like if they play with even minor competence, they'll crush and
it's not close like like when we have played with this, I've played Kora
probably I want to say twenty twenty five times we have house ruled this civilization
out. It is so powerful and to the tune of like thirty forty points
beating your opponents, which in a game where you score maybe one hundred to
two hundred points, that's a lot of points to lose. By like the
gap between first and second is that high, which, as Molitis who knew
that, you know, giving someone a basically infinite money to work with would
would translate to it a broken advantage. And in a game that is that
strategically tight, it sucks. Suck suck suck suck sucks that they playtesting missed
that because it's by, it's brutal, it's a slog. So that's my,
that's my, that's my number five, we're number four. It sounds
like a very easy solution to your problem is not don't play that one?
Uh? You know, Um, when I did programming in schools, so
I had my bag full of cards and board games in the back of my
car that I would take from school to school. One of the ones that
was provided for me, UM had one character that was like, So the
game was made by clearly European country, and so the like the character who
was uh not white, was very characcatured, uh and like really uncomfortable.
And so I just threw out that card and never thought about it again.
Um, what am I allowed to ask to these kinds of problems? What
game was this? Am I allowed to ask? I have to go back
and look, okay, okay, I was gonna say, because now I'm
curious because we we were into it, and I like, yes, it
is an easy solution, right, you can get rid of this character.
But it sucks because part of the fun of this game is the different civilizations,
and I hate just eliminating how many are left, Like how do they
come into the base box. Let's see there's like, well, I'm gonna
have to go through it. So there's Corinth, Olympia, athens Arghosts,
Sparta, I think Malita's. I think that's I think there's six, so
you still have plenty of options. But again, and it's two to four.
I assume it plays two to four. Yeah, it's two to four,
which, again, like there's still plenty of options there. It just
stinks that, like we're losing what is what could have been a really interesting
economics based civilization because that's like their whole big stick is like economics. And
it's weird because so each of the six sieves has two or are focused on
like one of those three paths between warfare, politics, and economics. Right,
so there are two economic focus city states, two warfare focused city states,
and two politics focus city states, and so you kind of lose out
on that aspect of the SIV builder by eliminating it. So yeah, it's
an easy solution in terms of I can play it and it's good still,
but it does kind of make me a little sad about what I've lost or
what could have been lost potentially, so and who knows, maybe one of
these days I'll go back through a house rule it and make some changes and
stuff. But yeah, yeah, the other takeaway I have from that is
so you saw one glaring issue, and when you have a modular game,
it's very easy to pull things out for people who aren't designers. But going
a step further, if anything in any game you're playing, take it out,
move it, change it, house rule it, Like this is the
power that you have. One are the reasons I love board games more often
than video games is the how easy are to mess with. Yeah, if
you were to go out to say a thrift store and buy some weird civil
war game, you could pull it apart in glue pleases on it and make
an entirely new game. Nobody's gonna stop you. You know, there's lots
of jokes about the board game police, but like in philadesty, they're not
a thing unless, um, you know, you accidentally get a bunch of
cards too early, then they're definitely real. Um So putting putting the power
in you. If you see something in a game you don't like, Oh
I love this game, but it's so easy to mess with it. I
think that's a wonderful thing. That could be a fun episode. Two for
us to play around with is like how to mess with games, like a
whole thing of like house ruling, uh, you know, game breaking,
game Frankensteining like that, because that stuff that that's the that's like the best
part about being a designer. Sometimes it's like I like two things, let's
put them together. So what is your what is your fuh Kyle Otter sidebar
um. One of my favorite, like after hours convention games, when you're
sitting around with a bunch of people you don't really normally see in person or
their designers in creative minds is to do kind of a Dogma ninety five thing
with components, Dogma ninety five being a movement and indie film basically where you're
very very strict rules about what you're allowed to do and make the film so
basically like I throw you components and then we all go around in a circle
and we quote unquote design a game and then we teach it to people.
Somebody had a popcorn game. It was like it came in a tannin had
like popcorn dice, and so that we all took about five to ten minutes,
looked at the components, designed a game, and then taught it to
everybody in around. It was fabulous. And that's like very game jam ish
two. Yeah, which is cool. So all right, I'm sorry,
I got really excited because I want to know what your first name. I
know, it's exciting. It's an exciting time here on DJs and dorks.
So I'm gonna use your game and jump off to to choose one on my
list. So we're talking about asymmetric powers. So I'm gonna go right out
of the gate and talk about what I have decided is my favorite board game
of all time, which is Cosmic Encounter. Cosmic Encounter was made in nineteen
hundred and seventy seven, so it's decades before even the glint of what became
the the board game revolution that we all know, like post ninety and European
designers being like us, we want no conflict, you know, and like
really really making that this driving idea of design, and even Richard Goerfield was
inspired by the individual asymmetrical powers. In Cosmic Encounter, you have one alien
and then that is what informs your very very simple game that you're playing,
your very variusable word game. So what if that was the entire game and
that's you know, your police, don't get me hands up Pattins. So
Cosmic has so you said, looks like six six six. In the base
game of Cosmic there are fifty. There are fifty of these aliens. It's
amazing, and every expansion you get about fifty more. I remember when the
Twilight four came out, Twilight and Period four and there's like fifteen or twenty,
which is absurd. It was much bigger than other editions. But in
base you get like, you get fifty of these alien races. And the
idea of this oh no, you're overpowered issue of something like your CIV Builders
is not a problem because the game leans into it. So far, I've
been really really positive about Cosmic, but here's the thing. Here's here's what
I find difficult about Cosmic is it does go a little bit despite the fact
that the game itself the whisper of a strategy game, which is what I
think it's one of its boons is that implies a certain level of ability and
comfort level to play. You don't even decide who you attack. You draw
a card up top of the deck. It acides who you're going to attack,
So you don't even have any of those hurt feelings that often occur unless
you you know you're worth a comfortable group or you know, dudes on a
map. Games where it's aggressive, you're taking something away from somebody that feels
bad. A lot of the time, depending on one of three difficulties of
what you get in your alien race, there is a lot of oh god,
what does this mean? Translation? It could be very very gamy,
And my favorite way to play is getting to looking at them, choosing one
and going it away and it stays face down until you activate and use your
power. That drama is exceptional, it's not. It's like an optional rule
and absolutely should be played. But unless you have people who are kind of
playing and familiar and able to use that terminology, it's really hard. The
game itself is very easy to play, but the excitement comes into only when
you can like shake out some of the weirder and more abstract powers. The
other thing that I find difficult about Cosmic is that I've played at a number
of times and I still don't fully have to. I have to look up
the phases every single time. It's a little hard for me to teach.
There's a sequence of micro turns and order of things. Okay, now it's
this phase. Okay, now we're going to go around. And I'm fairly
certain I have it down, but I have a cheat sheet. I look
at it every time. It always slows me down a little bit. So
even though it's my favorite game, I'm always a little hesitant to pull it
out because being a evangelist for games and experiences, I want people to be
excited and interested. So the idea is that I need a couple of feet
in the door before I can pull this one out and talk about it.
The buy in is there and meeting people to be part of it. Despite
the fact that it's like deceptively simple as it is, there are a number
of extra pieces which come together, meaning that whatever it's quote unquote weight is
isn't always the most accurate way to describe the game, and it's difficulty to
teach. Yeah, that's true. That was the one thing. Having played
Cosmic Encounter, I finally played it two years ago, three years ago.
It was my first time I ever playing it, and I was struck simultaneous
about how easy it was to get some of the mechanisms and how fiddly some
of the other stuff was. It was a weird It was a weird mismatch
because I thought it was going to be the different alien powers that we're going
to do it for me in terms of like if something is gonna sink me,
it's gonna be those. But it was, like you said, it
was the phases. I was like, all right, what phase are we
in? What about how to do it? So? Yeah, I think
that's I think that's right on the money. Although Cousby Encounter is still just
a last phenomenal game, it's exceptional. It does way more right than you
expected to do, and it's messy in the right ways. A lot of
games of the past ten years, fifteen years that are messy usually I don't
find them to be messy in the right way. Ye, your your favorite
game of all time. I have plenty and plenty of issues because I find
it to be way way, way, way, way way way too fiddly.
Yeah, it feels like a Kickstarter game, and I feel like a
lot of kickstartery games like I just want them to be an app. I
want them to be a solo video game so that I can sit there and
play my you know, six for one hundred hours or whatever and not have
to worry about that stuff. But when there's a lack of what seems like
a testing, I'm like, oh, after you just all myself or I
sit there, I I'll, i'll, i'll, I'll do a bigger veil.
It's Spirit Island. Ah ah, there's always it's always the person at
the table when I play Spirit Island who owns it and loves it, And
it's mine nubbing to me because at the end of every phase, I then
sit there and then they whip their hands around and do all the ad men
because it's so automatic, and all I can think of is like, I
just wish a computer was doing that for you, bud and see. I
get it. But also I hate app driven games and I love Spirit Island,
so like it's it's like that driven game I want the app version of
it. I want a video game version of the video game. There is
I believe there is a video game version of it. If if i'm or
maybe this is the BGM version, I imagine that's exactly what I want.
Yeah, and they it might be. But it's like a hello officer,
I'm in this picture and I don't like it. High it's me. I'm
the one when it comes to Spirit Island. Um. That one didn't make
my list though, of games that I love that I don't like something about
criticize you know, it's perfect as all things that I like are no.
But I did try to organize my list in terms of, like the things
that I thought were from like more to less game breaking for me? So
like yes, so having my leadist in Horrabi one of the things that you
can get rid of. There's a reason it was the first one I wanted
to talk about. The second one is another SIV builder. I wanted to
get both my SIV builders out of the way and then we can move on
to the engine builders, right, And who are the engine builders in the
drafting game? Is Golden Age, which was an old Stronghold Games title that
is staggering to me in terms of like how much I liked it as a
game itself. I actually got turned onto this game because of somebody else that
was on like our Instagram feed was continually talking about it, and they would
not shut up about this SIV builder, And I'm like, this game looks
atrocious. I encourage you all right now if you have not to look up
the Golden Ages game. Shout out to Riley for harassing him on the Instagram,
like, I mean, yes, I wish it was Riley. I
need to convince Riley to play a game. First. I love the man
dearly, but like after after T Dragons, right after TE Dragons Society absolutely,
um. And that is my biggest thing is that the presentation of this
game is god awful. Um. The art is bad, The graphic design
is sloppy. It is like do you remember Graham when like like Ishtari and
like Rio Grand would like pump out these really pixily looking horrible games like this
back like the early two thousands. I have like two or three of them
like on my shelf right now, because they were like three dollars digital art.
No, like they just had real art that they tried to upload and
they just didn't do it in photoshop, right, So it's you know what
I'm talking about. It's that like Golden Ages is that it was and I
which sucks because every time, without fail, I bust this game out onto
the tabletop, people immediately go uh uh like like I have had people be
like, no, I'm good, I don't actually want to try this game
because of how horrendous it looks. There's a good friend of our channel's Day's
Matt ag. Shout out to Matt him Matt. He was one of the
playtesters on After the Rain, and I love Matt because Matt will try any
game once. And after we played Golden Ages, I think I don't know
if he beat me or if he got second in the first game of it
he played. He goes, I thought that was going to be atrocious,
and that was amazing. And that's my biggest scripe with Golden Ages is they
put one of the best what's up that it looks bad? It It doesn't
just look bad, it looks so bad that people don't play it like and
the and I'll be honest too. In addition to the art, the graphic
design is not great, like good graphics and good graphic design I think can
elevate a game from being really difficult to play to being much easier to play.
And suit builders, especially because of the complexity of them, I think
a strong graphic design and strong graphic directions essential. And I don't know if
you have some examples, Graham, I'm sure you could probably think of games
you're like, oh, God, like, if your graphic designer done another
pass on these icons, this could have been way better. What it does
break up for me is the idea of how important that is in general.
But also this is a thought experiment that we've come through, which is the
idea of, Okay, we love this game, but what we find in
it, well, and that's the opposite. It's it's how you process it
first, right, the idea like burst of your eyes, I know,
the playing of a of a dish. And so everybody here saw this game
and thought, in fact the opposite, This is an interesting thing to consider,
this is going to be bad, and then once they've played it,
it's actually quite enjoyable, which is not at all what we've been talking about
here. But here's the thing about in terms of a designer, here's the
other thing too. My issue is the graphic design makes it harder to play,
Like the icons that they chose make it harder to play. And that's
right. So so not only do you have like it literally is like we
put all of our money into how the game plays and none of our money
into how the game is presented. So you're hit at first with this odious
art, and then you are left with this graphic design that frankly speaking,
is a little mismatched, feels sloppy, and because it is sloppy, it
makes the game harder to play. Like some of the icons, I'm like
you, this does not inform what I'm doing at all. Like um,
Gloomhaven, for all of its many foibles, and there are some foibles in
that game, I think did a great job of having really crisp graphics,
graphics that sort of lend itself to ease of play. At least when I've
taught myself how to play it, I remember being like, Wow, this
is really helpful. It is the opposite experience of the Golden Ages, where
I'm like, I am coming back to the rule book constantly for these and
I have played it many many times, and I'm like and I want to
try to teach new people. They're like, can you just leave the rule
book with us while we're playing so the we can come back and look at
it like it. So it's the one two punch of the presentation, I
think at least for me. Yeah, I'm a sucker for clean iconography,
particularly because I always come at it from a how am I going to teach
this to people who don't understand thing? And as you move up your your
line graph of complexity, complexity and depth, you you're looking to really kind
of challenge people of certain groups. So when plenty of games are like,
oh, well, we have all these mechanics, how do we do them?
We have all these symbols for it, the ones where they have great
symbols like resarcana, I think really come out like really really speak of themselves.
Like I'm like, oh, no, you know, casual gamer.
There are a lot of symbols, but I promise you they're all going to
make sense, and after a quick demo they do, And so that does
a huge amount of work for you. Yes, iconography is the word I
could not think of to save my soul. I keep saying symbols and graphics
like iconography is the word I couldn't think of, and Rescan is a great
example. Yes, pretty picture cave brain, Oh I do, it's my
goblin brain. No, but Resurcan is a great example of that. Graham
Where Likes has a lot of complicated bits, but the graphics are so intuitive
it makes the game easier to play. I just want you to think of
the reverse of that, like sure, no, I mean that's easy to
do. I mean even games that I think are complex and do a good
job of communicating, like Race for the Galaxy. Uh, you get slammed
with pictures and uh halos or the right color and the right size and the
right shape or um scenario Confluence is one of my favorite giant, chaotic like
games of many many players. Um, but nobody ever refers to the things
of the colors of what they are. It's always I'm going to trade you
a brown for an orange for a green, right, Um, it's all
nonsense. But you're like, oh god, what is my little thing?
So as you climb up this line graph of complexity, it becomes vital because
the smallest, the smallest little thing can really really screw you up. This
is a hammer, Okay, doesn't that mean Bill, Does it mean destroy?
I don't know, Like this is you really need to play test specifically
this stuff. It's super important. Yeah, yep, all right, Oh
it's too excellent. So I'm going to jump off another thing, which I
think relates to what you're talking about about, a total lack of chronography and
a game where the components are very simple and that I love and it's kind
of the opposite of your my my cosmic things. So all the way at
the bottom of that scale, a game that I love to use and pull
people in and have a wide variety of both exciting moments, but it's not
very complex, and it's also you know, sold it insane a number of
copies. And that's Code Names. I think Code Names is phenomenal. It's
so easy. Uh, it's it's it's really fun. You have moments to
feel clever, which I think is part of that. The idea of this
line graph that I bring up, I'm going to slow down to talk about
it a little bit. It's the idea that as complexity in greases on your
X axis, depth will proportionally increase on the Y axis. This is not
always the case. The idea is that I'm looking for games that are deeper
than they are complex. And a lot of games have the idea that there's
tons of rules, but how much does it actually added in terms of your
experience? And Code Names I think is a phenomenal example of that because it's
very few rules, but if all these opportunities to be interesting and clever and
social. Here's the thing with code Names, it's it's such a simple game
to play, but I struggle through a gento every time because it's in this
rickety tower of yes and if butts over and over and over and in where
people keep come in and asking questions. The best way to learn code names
is to have a group already playing it, and you walk up and watch
people play it, because they say three three, and then somebody clicks cards
and then they explode and everyone goes yes, no, no. The idea
of me trying to describe at first what the mine field looks like, and
only one person says it, and then you have to give a clue,
but which words that you associated It's a lot of individual things. The game
is so simple, but I should be able to have a sixty seconmsplanation and
walk away. But you can't code names, despite how wonderful it is,
is so hard to teach. But the moment you get it, you get
it, it's like, oh, of course. And then even still there's
yes and butts, like you can actually click on cards from previous rounds that
it's not actually negative. There's all these little tiny things that make it very,
very very hard to teach, despite us simple. It is like staring
up the scene because I'm thinking myself, I'm like, when did I learn
how to play codenames? And I learned how to play codenames the exact way
you described, where a bunch of people at a party were already playing codenames,
and because I was like, well, the I learned code names really
easily, and I was like, oh my god, I learned it that
way. Yep. I've never thought about it. Yeah, but it is
a Russian nesting doll of ifans, statements, ifans, and butts if if
as a as a thought experiment, I try to verbally teach codenames to people
sometimes, and you will discover it's one of the hardest teachers you have.
It's it's wild. Yeah, no, you're not wrong, because I try
to teach you to a couple of friends a few years back at a party
and they're like, well, how does this work? And then how does
that change this? And then where does that go there? And I was
like, oh my god, it's so finicky and weirdly weird. Ways.
Yeah, I'm sending a theme with yours, Graham, like this is like
if things are hard to teach, here's here's my weirdly finicky I want to
just come up strong in my favorite game. And then I was like,
well, what is light? What do I like to bust out? And
I've thought about the difficulty of the teach of code names for ages because I
love it. And games with large player counts are also very useful to me
because they're malleable. But also like you have your two to four games,
you know player counts, which is very intimate, you know, and if
you have a large board game night, then maybe you split into other tables
or you don't want to do that. So okay, what large player count
games do we have? Codenames is one that has done a lot of work
for me in those settings, So I've thought about it a lot over the
years. And then see and I went almost for the opposite in the speciroom
where I just considered games that I really loved. But I think if I
went back and thought about like convention games that I have taught before or like
have demoed a lot, Like King of Tokyo is one that I demo to
metric of and I always don't I don't love King of Tokyo, but like,
but just thinking about, like what's the weird finicky bit that always derails
the demo, And it's always the powers, like the power deck and like
buying things to lead bullows. Everyone gets the this is this is Giant Monster
combat yatzi up until you start buying powers and then they're like, oh I
don't, I don't care anymore. They're like their eyes glaze over um,
which is which is weird to teach that because I'm like I almost always would
start them with a round and then I'd be like, all right, cool,
we've all done one role, let's do powers now. But just like
now I'm thinking about like all of the big games that I've taught, and
I'm like, man, there's a lot of like weirdly finicky bits that make
it a hard teach. Huh. Well, I love code names you're I'm
not bringing it up because of the teaching element. I it's it's at the
beginning to the top. You were like, okay, so in eight nine
ten. These are games that if you're in the room or you're an ear
shot and somebody says I'm playing, who wants to play? You go running
right Like that's that's kind of the emotional qualifier. I love Code Enames.
I would play. No, I do love Code Dames too. That's I
was just thinking because you were talking about the teaching and I was like,
man, there's a lot of teachable stuff. No, I got you.
I got you a through line. Man, we love we love a good
through line, and if you're a reporter, we know that you love a
good buye line. Um. On that note, it was a terrible dad
joke. I'm so sorry everyone who's listening. No, I'm not after the
rain. You haven't copped picked up a copy yet. He has half a
favorite Rage Shadow Legends. Rage Shadow Legends is my number. Actually, rag
Shadow Legend is both of my entries on the list at this pan. I
mean, there's so much to talk about. You got so much talk about
Race Shadow Legends. If you use Courton Code Dorkey. Right now you can
get thirty three re rules and fifty premium currency silver. I probably should play
Rage Shadow Legends once if I'm gonna make these jokes stick a little bit,
refuse on principle, every time a YouTube video I'm watching gets interrupted by Rage
Shadow Legends, I'm like, I'm never gonna play you for as long as
I live. The one, the one good brand integration of that that I've
seen was there's a guy named Internet Historian who got to the sponsorship by Rage
Shadow Legends, and he did like a full, like five ten minutes skit
about rage Shadow Legends that felt so unhinged and so avantcard that I was like,
if there was ever gonna be an ad that makes me play rate Shadow
Legends, it's gonna be this one. Like it involves someone giving birth,
Like I was like, what is happening right now? Anyway? Um,
My next one on this list is one that I like a lot, but
it is one that I think is a victim of its own marketing. Um,
and that's Viscounts of the West Kingdom, which is a shem Phillips title.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course, yep. Um
people love those games. They I mean, they're very popular among a certain
segment of gamers, and I am one of those games. Like I'm not
gonna let you get away with it. No, that's okay. I think
there are some people that like like the historical time period that it is said
in UM that like really early pre Norman conquest UM. Like I know personally
a couple of people who are like big history buffs like me who love that
time period. And I think there are some people that also really love Renegade
games because that's who distributes the Garfield Games product here in the US. And
there are some people that just like deck builders. Which is my biggest gripe
with this game is it market itself as a deck builder. And I don't
know if this is a gripe for you, Graham or not, but for
me, if a game is going to market itself as something, I would
like that element of the game to feel like it matters. This is the
one game where I'm like, the deck building doesn't matter at all, at
least I don't feel like it has. I have felt like it has had
zero impact on gameplay. So like the first couple times that I played this
because it's marketed as a deck builder in addition to some other things. I'm
playing it like a deck builder. I'm trying to add new heroes to my
Dack. I'm trying to add new powers to my dad. I'm like,
oh, this is gonna be and I'm getting blown out of the water every
time. And it's it's less like because in a good deck builder, you
are trying to establish some nuance and some strategy that you can continually play through,
whereas with this one, I felt like, I'm like, I need
to lean into a strategy and then beat that strategy to death at the expense
of everything else. It's a game that I feel like, you can't you
can't try to do multiple things. Okay, you have to do one thing
really well. Um, and that that is ah sure, It's it's the
uh oh god, um, the caverna versus a gricola thing. It's the
idea of like, can you can you be uh do you do your point
salad or do you have to master a single thing? And unfortunately for designs
that have the master single thing, you need to know that go it in
because you don't, you get you get smushed. And that's crazy. It
is like when I when I was first taught this game, I didn't know
that that was the thing, and I got absolutely crushed and I was like,
all right, cool, I'm going to try to relearn this. And
when I taught it to other players, um, I vividly remember teaching this
live brother and being like, listen, Colin, go for X strategy.
It's the easiest one to get if you're new, and it's like it's sort
of the the manuscript strategy, which sort of feeds itself pretty naturally. It's
simple for like, if you're new to the game to get and he blew
everyone out of the water in his first game by like since like an order
of magnitude that is huge, And so one's the being fed one thing and
then being given another and then the other one is I think this game suffers
from. It presents a lot of tactical nuance and strategic decisions, and what
it really boils down to is how well can you execute one thing at the
expense of everything else? And that sucks, like as as a when you
think you're going to be going into something that's a little more adaptable, a
little more open, a little more free form, and you have to try
to adapt your strategies on the fly. No, not really. You can
occasionally counter some people, but like, as long as you're doing your one
thing better than everybody else, you're going to crush. And I still love
Viscounts. It's still a game that I will play a lot. It's still
a game that I think is brilliantly designed. But I think it is pretending
to be something that it is not. This is not a game with a
lot of nuance. This is not a game that has a lot of different
open decision making. This is a game where if you can execute your one
game plan better than another person can execute their one game plan, you're gonna
you're gonna crush. So that's whenever smells a lot like your Tea Dragons criticism.
This marketing thing is marketing itself in a certain way. You're to my
how hard it is to teach, and for what reasons? Maybe the marketing
of it is one thing, but just I think my biggest gripe if it
is like you're talking about presentation, right, yeah, the game and what
it is, you know, I think wasted potential might be my biggest gripe
with my accounts because I think it presents itself as having a lot of different
avenues and then you really only get to do one well if you want to
have a chance of winning the game, and so you lose a lot of
nuance and you lose a lot of the strategy, which is why I play
crunchy games like that in the first place. If that makes sense, that's
probably a better way of That's probably a better way of me to put it.
But yeah, no, partially, Yeah, the marketing is also kind
of a personal I also also there's this thing of like they're like, you've
you've said you're a thing and you've you've lied to me, Kyle On,
You've lied to me? How dare you deceive me by accounts of the West
game? It does sound like Skeletor or something. So you have deceived me
for the last time by accounts of the West Kingdom? Man you like satisfied?
Just again? I'll buy this game as well, Godfield Games. If
you weren't based on the Kiwi, I'd be curious. I kind of want
to do a game review as Skeletor now sure, I mean bonus content.
We gotta fill those YouTube somehow. Oh you know what, I'm not designing
a game that there's people for cannons, but I think I think that's my
biggest scripe is like if a game offers and do once and then it turns
out as a lie, is a huge scripe of mine. Um. I
find that to be most negative game experiences I have is that unless it's a
party game, uh, it's it's it presented itself as a quote unquote strategy
game, right, the most generic room you have available. The idea is
you will be able to make these decisions. And so often than not,
you play those games and you realize there's a lot less to it than there
actually is, and that yeah, and that's it's an issue, especially also
on the issue of party games. Do you find yourself This is not even
related to this episode, but if I don't ask you no, I will
forget. Do you find yourself like hating a lot of cards against humanity clones?
Because I find myself I don't company. I mean, I'm not an
opportunity to play a lot of them, But like your playtester or body,
I will play just about anything. Once I will be pretty weary, I'll
have one foot out the door. If I look at a presentation of something
and I'm like, you know, X for bad people, Like it's pretty
clear when something is trying to go for that same off color, simple giggling
kind of experience. Right. Um. I don't play a lot of them,
you know, I walk past them in board game miles when I'm looking
at like, oh, what Target exclusives around these days? Or they get
sold to me on Amazon and I'm like, Amazon, you don't know me
at all. You need to steal my data a little harder. Um.
Uh. The last one I think I've played and I legitimately enjoyed was the
Meme one. It's like, what do you mean? Oh yeah, that
was pretty good again at like very very low level, just because like you
got the first laugh looking at the image which everybody is known. And then
my favorite part of these games, uh is the user created content so people
are come up with their own punchlines. So I'll play that kind of party
game forever because it's I could play with Grandma and you play differently, you
play with kids, you play differently, you play with your friends, and
you can make all the off color jokes you what, because it's it's valuable.
It's not the card itself, which you know, Cars against Humanity.
I hate that game. Ever I've ever talked about how much I hate that
game. I think we've alluded to it. We should do an episode of
Like, we should just do an episode of episode that we hate, like
these games we despise. Um because I was thinking about this because the last
one that I really truly enjoyed was Charity Party. Um, what's Chartie Party?
It's it's like CARGI Humanity, except instead of a prompt, you have
a graph with an X and Y axis, and so you are actually whatever
you're playing. I'm already on board. I'm already excited. Goes on that
one. And then because of that you wind up with less off color jokes
sometimes and more stuff that feels true to life. Um, like, so
how do you use the graph? So like, all right, I'm gonna
drab visual aid because I have a visual aid. So like if it's like,
what is it? Um? So like like X will be blank,
so like whatever this is will be blank. I'll be like, um,
both of you listening on not YouTube, Kyle is drawing an X Y graph,
So please thank you in your minds imagine fantasy ste bezos um and his
face is a graph. It's all right, so like this one like so
for example theodograph, it was like x's blank and it says age and the
age goes up and then this is the line. You have to tell me
what would go up with age. The only reason I remember this is because
I won this round and my card was the likelihood of buying a value pack
of Werther's Originals. It just goes up with age and like it's funny,
like and people are like, oh man, that's totally at works, Like
oh my god. So the cards are always yeah, y axis the it's
x or y, so the card is different there, the prompts vary,
the axis is very and then occasionally there will be ones where you have to
make both the X and the y axis um, which are its? O.
I would try it, I would, I would worry there would be
a lot of rounds that would fall flat because you just put in a card
and then your brain tries to work to understand a line graph and you're like,
I guess that's a joke, right, you know what? And I
had the same thought process when I tried it. But then, like every
so often someone would be like, yeah, I'm just chucking in a dead
car because I have a dead card. But it didn't fall flat way more
often than I thought it would, like like the game rose to the occasion
way more than it had any business doing, which is cool. I and
it was. It's up one of the few cards ish cards adjacent games that
I've kept because it still holds up, which is crazy. So there are
games in this in this realm that are you know that I do see a
lot of because they keep showing up on shelves or they've sold, um a
factor more than than other things, things like super Fight that's been everywhere for
a long, long long time. And the way you save games like this
is by making them more creative. The way I play super Fight particularly it
like again, I'm thinking about when I when I play with like middle schoolers
or whatever. It's not who would win? You have to start a round
and then you say what the round is? Who who would be the best
spy? Yeah? Who would you know? Um, have the best solo
in a rock concert? Um, you know who who had the best chance
of like meeting the president? Yeah, that's how you do it is you
have to add again this like layer because who who wins and fights? It's
it's boring, you know, Like I guess I have rockets, like I
said, PiZZ of yours, but if it's like who is the best spy?
All of a sudden, like everything gets recontextualized and then you get to
use the cards in a new way. So I would play. That's how
these party games could see it for me, and that sounds like something that
we should do for the How do you hack into a game episode and how
do you make the game your own? Because that's a pretty good hack for
party games. I'm not gonna liegram. I don't like that one. I'm
sorry. So what is your what is your next one? My next my
next game? Yeah? So um now I have one right in the middle.
I have my game that's like the kind of like first real hot taste
of something when it's that I love, and then code names, which is
something I pullout in the middle. Uh, the next game I'm talking about.
I love because I can teach it to people who don't know anything about
games, and I feel like it's still exciting and interesting to veterans. I
love Mysterium. M Yeah, I think Mysterium is a really interesting game because
I also love Dixit. It's funny we were talking about party games. I
don't know what you think of Dixit. Why do you think of Dixon?
I like dix Dixit is one of the few games that I I recognize how
good it is. But I have gotten rid of every copy of Dixit that
I've ever owned because it doesn't hit the table enough for my particular group.
But I do like when I played it, I was like, this game
is really well designed, and it was one that like I find myself coming
back to over and over, being like, you know, that was a
really great way of presenting a game. Mysterium. I love, by the
way like game, and I've seen the big Dixit cards were used in a
couple other contexts. It's party games, so it's you know, it's demagnosticum
and the different versions of Dixit are wildly variable based on the quality and complexity
of the art um the basics it on things very good. Dixit Journey,
I think it's by far the best. Uh it's at a print um,
but I love the art on that one specifically, and most of my other
favorite editions have the same artist on things, um. And so Mysterium understands
this. It has the same sized cards because again the component is really really
important. But all those cards are really complex, they're they're deep. Um.
There's a lot of details that is spread into it. Those are the
best dixit cards. Um. And it has a theme which is fabulous,
and it's a theme that immediately everybody understands. Clue um. You know,
we wish it was the the murder mystery logic puzzle that it's trying to be,
but there's a lot of parts about it that just like don't work at
all. But it's a it's an old assign. But you come in with
Mysterium and you're like, oh uh we need suspect, location, and weapon.
People get it immediately, that's right, right. And then I love
asymmetric um gameplay, and I also love a rule which tie everything together.
So explain that that one person is going to be a ghost that's going to
be given these uh these dreams, and everyone's like, great, let's play.
And then you go, h the ghost can never talk and people are
like what. So the dramatic nature of the knock games that people who are
your big you know, crunchy I want to go play, you know,
Terraforming Martyrs for four hours. I can get them excited about a Mysterium game.
Yeah. So I've explained everything so far that I like about the game.
That's the good parts, and there's a lot more to the game.
Uh that every time I pulled it out, I liked a little less at
a little last, a little less, a little less, a little less,
to the point where now where I'm like, oh man, how do
I just hack this thing to bits? This thing is just two or three
levels more than dixit, which is perfect, but then there's an extra thirty
percent of aside on top of it. So it's cooperative. I'm like,
dixit. Dixit as competitive, and in the cooperative nature of Mysterium, you
are guessing which card you think is applied to your clue, and people can
say yes or no, and they get little points in their little pools,
and you go through three rounds, and the end, based on however one
did, is how many cards you get and how many you flip over at
the same time, and you're going up these multiple tracks, setting it up
as a pain, breaking it down as a pain that the whole thing I
want there to be something, because I don't want it to just be and
we've all solved it, because I love games with an arc. It has
an arc, but it's arc is bad. It's just more little bits that
you have on it. People get it immediately, and then at the end
you're like, Okay, I'm going to teach it a completely different game,
and people go what And then you sit down and you explain the final round.
It's not fun to do. It's tense, and it does its job,
but I really don't like it. I want there to be a way
to just end off with a flourish where everyone high fives, because those are
the best cooperative games. Yeah, and and Mysterium does have those moments of
like the first time I played it, we got it by the skin of
its teeth and it was I mean the energy in the room was electric,
like what everyone freaking out high five and like you describe, jumping up and
down, thrilled. And then the next time we failed and it was like
all of the life had been just sucked out. So yeah, that's I
think that's a great Yeah, that's a that's a great root. No no
notes time out of ten, no notes. I've tried to play the other
versions. I got it for like ten ten bucks something whatever it's called Mysterium
Circus or whatever whatever it's all. Um. Uh didn't like it, yea,
whatever whatever it's called. Um. I wanted to be like, oh
man, it's everything that I liked about Mysterium. They hacked out the other
bits, but it sucks too much life, yeah out of it? Yeah,
I agree. I tried it at a party with some friends of mine
who have played lots of games of and I was struck by how little I
cared about Misterium Zergus. I was like, this game sucks, this awful,
like I don't know, I don't even remember what it was about it,
yeah, like Misterium Circums. Like I was like, this is a
like just a just a cold slap in the face. Like I just I
did not enjoy this as all lucky. We've only ever played at once and
I will never play it again. But and I didn't buy it either,
so not even out any money. My friend bought it. Inter was like
I love mister Human. I was like I do too. Probably be good
mission. Oh okay, for those of you're listening on your favorite podcast app
uh Kyle is mouthing words because he doesn't know how audio works. Ah well,
also too, Yeah, we gotta kid the people guessing, all right.
Last one. I think it's super funny, by the way, the
way that you structured your first two, because your core argument for your first
two is my core argument for my number one, which is of my top
five Adams of all time. I saved it for last. I love blood
Rage. It is one of my favorite games of all time. I do
and for As and of course Graham. It is a drafting It is a
drafting game because yeah, I'm at the very least consistent. There's a lot
that I love about Blood Rage. I love the theme of blood Rage.
I'm a big fan of north Smith and mythology, so the idea of playing
through Ragged Brock has always appealed to me. Say what you want about you
know Simon and Asma Day in general, but their production value on this one
is insane. I love the art, I love the miniatures. I think
it's a wonderful presentation. I enjoy that although the some of its parts is
rather complex, the individual elements of Blood Rage are relatively easy to teach.
Everyone has played a drafting game. Everyone has played a dude in the map
game. The player aids are pretty clear. There's some strong iconography. Thanks
Graham for ruining me that word exists because I use it all the time and
I don't know why for got it for this episode. So there's a lot
of good stuff about blood Rage, and it remains in my top five games
for a reason. My biggest issue with blood Rage comes into the teach of
blood Rage. Blood Rage is a deeply competitive game, and it is a
deeply competitive game that rewards repeat plays an understanding of its core tenants and its
core strategies, and even when you pull your punches on a a demo of
it, learning to play this game for the first time can be a backbreaking
experience, and it is my biggest gripe with this is with the first time
that people play this. Generally speaking, they don't just lose, they get
spiked into the center of the earth and it sucks. And I even tell
people that I go, Hey, if this is your first time playing blood
Rage, there's a lot of things that you're not gonna fully get yet,
and a lot of the systems that I find really intriguing because of the way
they interact with one another are not necessarily able to be fully understood on a
first playthrough, and as such, I'm like, you're probably gonna this the
first play is probably gonna is probably gonna be hard for you. And I
tell that to people that I'm demoing this game with, and that friends that
I've taught this game too, and it almost invariably is correct, And that
sucks because you and I, Graham, I think, are people who like
love a good game, and even if we don't win, Like the first
time I tried blood Rage, I got spiked into the center of the Earth.
I remember, I got beaten so badly. I wasn't it wasn't even
close. And I'm sitting there with a big grin on my face because my
designer brain was ticking. I could see all the wheels and I was like,
this is so cool. I can't wait to try this again and put
all the wheels together and even losing, I had a great time. And
my friend like Isaac, tried this and Isaac got spiked into the center of
the earth. Then he goes, oh, man, I can't wait to
try this again because he could see how it all comes together and wants to
try it again. But man, it takes a certain type of person to
internalize that experience, like there's something really cool here. I want to try
this a second time, and that first teach with this game is really really
hard. So so I want to ask you a question beyond so could disclosure.
Uh, blood Rage is one of my white whales. I've never played
Blood Rage because right when it came out and it took the board game world
by storm, I was in between positions at places, and I did not
have a consistent gaming group at the time, and it it took the nerd
zone by storm. Everyone's playing it was everywhere. It was the top of
everybody's best of the year's list. Um. And it it single handedly launched
Eric Lange from being a great designer into like a like a household hold name
yeah. Um, and he proceeded to make a couple of their games,
which nobody really liked. Um uh. But um, So I've never played
Blood Rage, but I understand, you know, I've seen pictures of it
a thousand times. I understand the draft date, and you know kind of
the mechanics and stuff. So my question to you is, why do you
think it's hard to teach beyond just the complexity. There's plenty of games that
are very complex and you need to kind of string along kind of betterstand the
systems and how and how you understand them, because then how are you going
to play the game at all. That's pretty common. I find that when
teaching the complex games, you need sample turns, You need to prep people
to say that you need to crash away through it. If you're playing a
four hour euro there are moments two and three hours in where multiple people are
going to say, oh, now I get it. And that's part of
it. So what makes blood Rage different from that? So it's not the
complexity of it that I think is the main issue. There's two things that
I think are then issue. So the complexity of it actually think is a
facet of its success. Because the individual steps of blood Rage, I think
are quite easy to learn. Right. I can teach you how to draft
the cards, I can teach you how to move around the map, I
can teach you of the scoring words. But because what you have realistically with
blood Rage, right, you have three games that are all really strong in
quality that are kind of stapled together. It is the interplay between those different
steps that I give the most hard bit for players to understand, right,
it is learning to be like looking at your position on the board and looking
at the cards that you have drafted, like let's say in age two,
and being like, I can't just take really good cards. I have to
take cards that help my position here on the board versus what my other players
are doing. Right, So it's not even necessarily an issue of complexity.
It's an issue of experience, like take Like doing those things takes time,
but they just do. Like there are some games where you just kind of
have to put the reps in in order to like fully understand how those systems
and the interplay between those systems works. And that's really what it is.
Like I will pull my punches in the game of blood Rage if I'm teaching
it for the first time, and even doing that, it's still I try
because like I don't want people to get like it's killed by this because like
but again and again, I have board game experience and had board game experience.
When I played it for the first time, I got I mean,
I mean I got obliterated, like objectively Jess Crush, because there were things
and systems that I wasn't predicting ways of the evaluating the board that I didn't
evaluate, parts that I probably should have taken for why position that I should
have. Um, it still sounds like complexity. It sounds like than the
sheer number of systems and how they Yeah, and maybe experience, it's that'sy
systems mastery. Yeah, systems mastery is probably the best way to put And
you're right, it's it's the complexity of the teach versus the complexity of the
experience. They're all complexity. So yeah, I guess it's that too.
I will say if you are teaching this the second point that I will make,
and this is mitigated if you are upfront about this during the teach.
But when I was first taught blood rage the importance of rage as a source
in the game. Blood though, about blood though? What about the blood
though? What about blood though? Dj andrks t shirt and it's gonna say
what about about the blood though? Right? Well, so, for those
of you who have ever played Aboard, rage is your action points. The
more rage you have, the more stuff you get to do an individual round.
And the one thing I tried to tell everybody is rage is the most
important resource in the game. You need to try to get rage early and
often. Rage is the most important resource in the game. If you remember
one thing from this teach before you start playing, rage is the most important
thing in the game. Angry and legitimately, I'm like, this is the
most important thing. And even tell like even telling people that some of them
still don't get it, and they're like, oh, man, no,
I get it now, like after the second round when they're passed and everyone
else still has like three or four more turns because they don't have enough rage,
Like, oh, calm the whole time. Yeah it was man,
this is this isn't the Zen Buddhist Apocalypse. Okay, so you know,
hacking games will be one episode. The other one will be poor game mashups,
and so to Kaido blood rage mashup. Taking a casual, fun walk
through rag Rock that, honestly, I think I'll just stop and do a
watercolor painting of the earth splitting open and hell fire bursting out. Let me
just get one gold coin. Let me just luxuriate in the hot springs while
the Horde of animated elemental wolves tear a village asunder. This is great,
Honestly, I want to I want that so bad. Now give me blood
Kido whole rage. Blood Kido is so stupid that I love it. She
had right, it's really make any sense. It doesn't make any sense.
It's really dumb. Oh helly, anybody welcome back to or play through a
blood Kido? Like, yeah, it just sounds like a Dark Souls rip
off, like one of those like setire like blood blood Kido. No,
you you're you're a You're an ninja and your wife has been fridged and you
need to go to hell. But occasionally you also do watercolor painting. It
does, so it does sound like a bad It sounds like Sechiro but like
not good. Just mhmm. Yeah, all right, so blood kind of
That's how I'm ending my episode. That's that's how I've been my portion of
this. Yeah, the teach is really easy though. So I'm gonna talk
about my last game. Um uh so I'm gonna talk about my favorite game
of all time. That's not Cosmic Together. It's not a board game.
Oh, it's not a video game. It's without qualification. This is my
favorite game of all time. Okay, regardless of quality. It's a role
playing game. It's a indie role playing game. Is a vampire huh is
a vampire the mess right? Oh you know it's funny. I almost talked
about vampire uh specifically, But I have beautiful college memories of playing and running
lots and lots and lots of Vampire because when I stopped playing D twenty for
a while, I was floating around in other systems. Shocker that I became
a designer because I was. I was driven by curiosity. So I was
playing call Cthulhu and being like, oh, d persentile, your HP never
goes up. That's I want to write a whole thing about that, specifically
about these things I learned along the way. But there was a single watership
moment in my role play career as a designers, as a runner of things,
where the skui's split open and it's before and after, and that's Fiasco.
Fiasco is my favorite game all time, of any kind. I thought
about putting video games on this list. We haven't talked about video games yet,
so I decided to like Sneak Up because I am a board game designer,
but I am an absolute passionate designer of role playing games. It's my
favorite thing in the world because it combines so many of my favorite elements of
storytelling, of immersion, of emotional connection with character. It's the reason why
I'm a writer. It's the reason why I took and then taught screenwriting for
three years. The writer's room is a is a space that I love because
of how open it is and how aggressively creative it is, and how um
you're you're you're you're killing your babies, you're striking things down, you're being
a craftsman of story. And I'm obsessed with this idea. And Fiasco took
all these things that I was already thinking about and doing unintentionally, and then
said, Okay, you know how you've complained that ninety five percent of most
role playing games like you don't need them. You're right, here's the five
that is. And then it had systems and then reworked it in a way
that I was like, Wow, this is better than seventy percent of the
writing courses I've taken in my in my um in my education, in my
higher education. For those of you who haven't played Fiasco, essentially it is
a one shot creator of a Coen Brothers movie. So you've seen Big Lebowski,
if you've seen Fargo. They are stupid if not ambitious. People being
driven together, and imagine a bunch of rubber bands being twisted in the middle,
and then you let them go, and let's act one and act two.
That everything goes and people are either very successful or absolute failures. They're
in jail or in they're a run, or they're dead. And things happen
as a result of your choices. And because you have these cards, that's
it. You write down cards, and they're they're narratively charged. Okay,
two people share the same business. We both work in same gas station.
But over here, I know where my uncle keeps his gun. Okay,
and then what is your need? Oh you're your ex girlfriend who thinks you're
a loser. For me. The reason why fiasco is so good and why
it produces incredible experiences as the table, it's because I'm already falling over myself
trying to explain how these things connect to how to complicate them. And it
says there is no gm, nobody is more important of their play, and
so everyone is donated in the middle. I'm big, I'm loud, I'm
curious. So this is an environment made for me. However, the first
time this is I'm excited for this because Fiasco is in my top five games
of all time, like gorpgs and Yeah yeah, yeah, so it's my
criticisms of it are are for basically the times in which the other people who
play it, when people like me or not in the room, if you
pick up the game by yourself and you try and play it. I was
at the first Shut Up and Sit Down convention where I was helping run the
mega games, and I ran into the shut Up and Set Sit Down Guys
with Quinn and U and Matt, and it was in the opening kind of
volunteer get to know you mixer, and I was talking about my favorite games
and I brought Fiasco and I said it is impossible to not have a good
time playing Fiasco, and I meant it, and literally everyone that around the
table said, I've had a bad experience playing Fiasco. I've had an experience
Fiasco, and both Jennif of Sound guys that I've had lots of experiences.
I'm like wow, And that opened the mind and I realized, Okay,
so if there's not somebody who's big and loud, who's taken three years of
kreen writing, who's been obsessed with stories his entire life. If you just
sit there and look at cards, the book itself doesn't do a great job
of teaching you how to play. It says, create a scene, Well
what is that? Well, I'm comfortable in that environment. I say,
okay, well we need sensory detail, we need establish why we're here,
we need to paint a picture with our words. But if you don't know
how to do that, if you've either only played Dungeon, Fungeon, oh
almost said it, Fungen Magons or other things fungon Magons, or never played
a role playing game before, the idea of creating the snowball effect, which
to me is implied, is not an implication for many people. You then,
or it's just these weak, disconnected scenes all play where you're like,
I'll have to pretend to be a person now. People aren't thinking about what
they want, they're not thinking what they drive there. Fiasco is this this
absolute magnificent swipe of design, but you have to put yourself into it.
It doesn't actually teach you how to play. And this is what's driven a
lot of my current thoughts about Okay, how am I going to design my
RPGs? They need to teach you how to play. I need to be
able to hand this off. I need to be able to walk out of
the room and understand that I've done a job communicating my idea as well.
And it's interesting you say that. So when we made After the Rain,
one of the reasons there is chapters right and perhaps where to acquire it,
so you could acquire it over an I'm indie press revolution made by a good
pause over a testentury. But no, seriously so because Fiasco was one of
the games that inspired that inspired that system, and I think it I'm not
going to tell you or I'll tell our audience. I'll tell you a later,
Graham. But there's there's a reference to I figure ie if I put
a reference to Jason morning Star, or if a reference to one of the
characters in Will Wheaton's tabletop run of Fiasco into the game as a sort of
nod, a very subtle homage to the game that had inspired that system.
But there's a reason that if you read the rules set for After the Range,
there are much clearer rules on how to establish and run a scene and
what that looks like and how a campaign could be structured. Because I missed
that in Fiasco, I had the same thing. I had the same I
don't I had the same issue. Or it's like, this is tough to
play with people who don't fully know, or fully appreciate, or fully understand.
I think it's an interesting counterpoint to this blood rage point, right.
I think it's very similar. For those of you on YouTube, perhaps you've
noticed that there is a bug sushi chef behind me, which I made for
our good friend Ryan Cohn. Shout out. He is designed a game called
The Dish where you play as bugs who are in a cookie competition. It's
amazing. Um. I hope to play task it again soon. His story
of playing Fiasco is that they played it, muddled through it, and then
immediately played it again, which is not uncommon in like board games if you
have like a really dedicated group, or if the game is short enough,
you know you're like okay, back to back, but role playing games,
particularly like one shot whatever's like the process of playing it. All of a
sudden they realized it, and for them it was a lightning bault in the
brain moment. And then the immediate played it again, which I don't think
they'd ever done before. Or since, and so the idea of creating that
space that teaches you how to play, that's your blood rage, that's your
You're gonna have a bad time and you're gonna get spiked into the center of
the earth, but in an unsatisfying narrative way, not mechanically. M's it's
pretty interesting. Yeah, you know, I think we should talk I mean,
we should truly talk about like our full the full list of the RPGs
and the systems that we like and don't like, about a bunch of our
favorite RPGs. I think that should be an episode in and of itself,
because now I'm thinking, man, there's some cool some cool things that I
like and some cool things that I really want to talk about. I think
that's a great that's a great note to end on, and also shout out
to Ryan, because Ryan Dawson, I love that, dude. I have
a weird question for you, though, Graham, before we end the show
today, I also have a weird question. But you know what you give
me your give your a weird question. I like. I like this.
This is usually because I'm the one the weird questions. But when we do
that, guys, please make sure if you haven't yet, like, share,
comment, subscribe to all the fun stuff if you're on YouTube or any
of those other social media platforms. If you enjoyed this, you can of
course subscribe to any of our podcasts where an Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora.
We are also on Geo Chevan, which I'm contractually obligated to let you
know, otherwise Briley will feel the disturbance in the force. That's his favorite.
I don't know why he loves Joe Chevan so much and he's just like
he plugs it all the time. I don't know why, but it's just
it's become of the world famous fashion line right apparently also a prevadorive podcast again,
Graham already alluded to it. But if you haven't gotten yourself a copy
back for The Rain are good friends over and you Press Revolution have those.
A huge shout out thank you to everybody who backed a Fear Within. We
are actually nearing print, which is really cool. Editing is done. Layout
is done, which means that if you back to sun Kickstarter you will be
getting your physical copies soon and then after that you can of course get a
physical copy of it over at Destined Doors dot org so and everyone who backed
to Electronic we already got their copies. So shout out to you guys.
We love you all. Thanks everybody that worked on the production team for that.
And all right, Graham gread question so on the subject of RPGs,
And of course it's summer. That's it's the summer is coming luxuriating some of
us. The sun is out and some of us have our guns out.
It's true. I'm wearing my jaw's tank top. So I'm gonna ask you,
Kyle out yeah, and you need to answer, and you need to
answer seriously. Okay, you're gonna gonna pull in tune. When are we
gonna play Oberon? What are we gonna play Oberon? What are we gonna
play? When are we gonna play Oberon? I will get is your favorite
setting of all time? When are we gonna play? Over? Ebron is
my favorite setting? Well time. Obron's my favorite fairy king of all time.
Now I'm kidding, um, where are we gonna w When are we
gonna have a midsummer Night's dream? Kyle? Oh, midsummer Night's dreaming Ebron
with war Forbes sounds amazing. Um, My guess is it's gonna be when
we link up over the summer. Um. I know we had talked about
doing a game get together with all of us, the boys, the squad
um and and Riley and Isaac and Jeremy and the you know, the people
that we love. But it's gonna be then. That's that's my plan.
I have my This is gonna be the summer of going and doing cool things.
Um. It's been a really stressful year for a lot of us over
here destin Dorks, myself included in that number, and I have decided unilaterally
that this is going to be. But I have decided to do no matter
what happens, the summer is gonna be the summer of just going and doing
the cool stuff I want to do. And so we're gonna We're gonna play
some Ebron. I'm gonna bring some Vampire books because I've never played the Vampire
games and I'm looking forward to run I play. I ran it last year
for cast gamers at the good old fashioned Save against Fear Fabulous because we more
or less found ourselves in the top level suite. So I ran a six
player game of Vampire the Masquerade at where it was like huge fireplace and chandelier
and last everyone everyone felt like they were aristocratic immortals on top of the world.
It was fabulous. But that is not my weird question. My weird
question is, Kyle, since we are now DJs and dorks, we are
upping our production values. We have both an intro hand an outro. Very
exciting for you to hear the soulful as as you consider all the wonderful things
we said. You can just like listen to that fade out of the outro.
The other thing we need in order to increase our production values is an
absolutely meaningless catch phrase, Kyle, what do you think the worst the worst
possible catch phrase you can come up with is because we're gonna use it and
we're gonna do it as our sign off. So what do we already have
a meaning full catch phrase and that we're shaped by you? Um? Because
dusty Door start off as a mark madness bracket. That's pretty meaningless. Ah,
Just that's the sound of the um. That's the most of it.
All I could think about is like dear of those old like nineteen thirties radio
shows like Wabbabooie or something like dumb. I'm talking about. Yeah, that's
it's a dumb moody too, sort of like Zippity zips out or something like
that. So what do you stick it with? Zip zip out? Yeah,
that's it my meaningless hope. Zipity zapps out day. It's fine,
okay, as if zapp sat day a Zippity's app saut day. Everybody great,
We're gonna We're gonna, We're gonna finish. We're gonna finish it after
your weird question. We're gonna fish with our catch phrases. I think the
worst catch phrase of all time might be stay Boggy my Friends. But well,
no, that's so much better. Can we do that one? I
thought that was I don't even want to do my weird question, bar,
I was gonna end episode like stay Boggy my Friends. It's like the best
eyes man, but he's like covered in vines. It's a small thing.
Oh that's pretty good. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. Um uh
no, you know, I'm gonna say my weird question for next time.
Um. I think I think we end with stay Boggy my Friends. I
think I think you got you're gonna say years. I think thank you everybody,
Thank you, everybody so much for listening to desk works. You guys
have all been awesome. I've been Kyle a lot, joined of course,
by the inimitable Ramgans and Stay Boggy my friends, Z out, Dad, everybody,