Hello, Radio Land, Welcome back to Desks and Dork's, your favorite game
design and creation podcast. As always get shaped by you. We bring you
the best indie tabletop gaming. I am your dastardly dazzling DJ Graham against to
Kyle's Dork, Kyle Kyle? Are you Kyle's busy Dying? I was not
prepared for like the ASMR smooth talk opening, and I loved it. I'm
doing great, Graham. Um yeah, Desks and Dorks, that's right,
that's right, hey baby, Yeah, what kind of gaming have you been
doing this week? That is a great I actually have done a lot of
gaming. Um. One of the things that we have wanted to do this
summer is that I have a massive shelf of shame. Um like at this
point, who doesn't well at this point, it's like three calaxes of shame.
So yeah, it's a problem and a lot of it's a lot of
shame. That's like a that's like a Puritan migration to America's worth her shame
right there. Um. Any case, so I got out to Puritans.
Shout out to the Puritans. Man, you guys you were something you existed,
um and uh yeah, So I met with a bunch of my friends
last week at our local game store, and I I we crushed like a
bunch of different games that some of which I've heard of, some of which
I had never heard of, and I picked up at like thrift stores like
swat meets for like dirt cheap, and I was like, I want to
try this. Um So, I introduced Isaac Kristin, friend of the show,
to battle Ball, which is just Chef's kiss of a game. Uh,
it's like the It's like Blood Bowls, much simpler, Baby Cousin that
was produced in Hasbro in the early two thousands. For those of you who
have not bl I know you knew at Grahams. I mean, we love
Hasbro here on desks and you know, here's the thing. We do love
their stuff. I just wish they'd made some less Prinkerton involved decisions. I
think they should bring in Pinkerton's to all their major decisions. Honestly, I
don't think they've gone far enough. What would the Pinkerton run game company look
like? That would be? That's an interesting thing. Um So, Yeah,
we played battle Ball. Though absolutely love Battleball still slaps, It's still
incredible. It's as fast paced easy to learn, streamlined as I thought it
was going to be when I was a kid. M We played No,
which is like a Ravensburger trivia game, which was pretty decent. It uses
a Google Assistant to like help you out. I played Stranger Things Attack of
the mind Flare, which may be the worst licensed tie in game since to
Dragon Society. Whoa, whoa. It was awful, um and like,
I'm okay to write it briefly in like three sentences. I think I've seen
the ads for it around, But the licensed is it? Is it in
the same It's a social deduction game, so it's a social one player is
working for the mindful and trying to knock out or convert the other players.
But if I can tell you why it's bad in one sentence, they screwed
up the rules. It's impossible to win if you're the Mindflare player. Why
so in the player count that we played at, it is impossible to win
the rules because you need to give the mind Flare card to another player as
long as there's not a memory card in their hand when you do so.
There is two mind Flare cards in the deck. One of them is given
to you. The mind is given to the mind Flare player at the start
of the game, and the other one is shuffled in. So in your
twelve card deck there is one mind Flare card and three Memory cards. And
the way the rules are written, if you get the memory card, it
wipes out the mind Flare card if you're not the original Mindflare, So the
odds of you getting the mind Flare card are ad and the odds of you
getting it with a memory are really high. And then the way the rules
are written, if it was so, you can also knock out other players
by like you just pass these cards, so there's like an accident card that
like knocks the people out, which so the game ends when you get to
two players. So if there's one mind Flare and one regular person left,
you might think, oh, well, then that means the mind Flair wins
because they've done a really good job and they've knocked at it. Nope,
they just lose if there's even one person remained. Yeah, so they literally
didn't test the rules. I fully think that this was probably some social deduction
game that no one liked and it was just in like their slush pile,
Like I have a shadow rum folder on my computer of like game prototypes,
they are never going to go anywhere, and I think that they were just
like, we need to get this project done. Graphic design had must have
had the project finished in a day, because it's mostly just PNGs from the
show and they just stapled the fast this design they could do it so they
could get it out to publication in print. I love social deduction games.
I even I like Scuffed social deduction games too, like I, but this
game was it was abysmal. What else did we try? The Boss weird
little bluffing game from Blue Orange Games about being a mob hidden information, surprisingly
decent, played Wanted Richard Dead, which was this like little light asymmetric wild
West game kind of fun. And then I played Scotland Yard, which that
was my first time ever playing Scotland Yard. Will you enjoyed it? Um?
Really enjoyed it. And then we played Tobago, which was a world
Rio grand game about being archaeologists looking for treasure on the islands of Trinidad and
Tobago. How would you think of that one? It good? Was surprisingly
good? Like it was it was. I don't know if you've played that
one or not, but you like I don't think though you people so like
it's weird to describe to people. But you have these treasure cards. So
you're of these cubes, these wooden cubes that you place on the board.
Cubes, got it so far on board, right, But there are four
treasures on the board at all times, and rather than have a predetermined location
for them, the entire game is driven by these condition cards. And so
on your turn, you can either move your RV around or you can play
a condition card on any of the four treasures and that condition card. So
like, let's say, like the first condition card you play is this must
be next to the largest river on the board. Sure, yeah, right,
so you put all of the cubes of that treasure color next to the
largest river on the board, and then somebody could add to that condition later
on. Okay, so it has to be next to large river. It
can't be in a forest tile. You pull all the cubes out of the
forest tile, and you're basically whittling down where that treasure can be. And
if you're the one that digs up the treasure, you automatically get a free
you pull from the treasure deck. But everyone that has contributed a condition card
to that treasure will also get a card from the treasure deck for each condition
they've added, regardless of whether or not they were the ones to dig it
up. It's a really intriguing design. I've never played anything quite like it.
Yeah, yeah, I'm into it. I really like that in this
sort of you know, generative way to do mind sweeper essentially, how do
you take that out? It also reminds me of in an RP setting,
how you create intrigue in a no prep prep is deathway. You start without
the answer, but each step creates more and more, takes away the fog
of war, the fog of war that is hiding actually nothing. But once
you have the information, you can then create the thing, which is it's
a way to listen and do. If you have sort of your mind sweeper,
you need to somehow randomly generate it, or you need only a limited
number of scenarios that you can you can burn through. So the idea that
it's a play applied through play that's really really fun. That and the way
that you I was pumping my arm because I was like, the way you
described it is so perfect, right. It's it's mind sweeper that iterates as
you play is a really interesting way to talk about Taraego. So it might
not have been the most fun that I had that day, but it was
just so intriguing. I like, it was like, I don't know,
this is why I go to thrift stores and just buy random games that I've
ever tried, because I never know what I'm gonna find, and like every
so often I hit something like Tobago and I'm like, oh my god,
this is why I do what I do. So super cool. Grham,
what kind of gaming have you been doing before before we jump into today's topic,
Well, I have a be in my bonnet excited about something I've ever
done before because I avoided miniatures war game in my entire life because I would
look at it from afar and be like, that's insane. It's a lot
slowly walk out of the room, right um. And I've been following a
little YouTube channel called desksy Dorkey's and they're talking about kit bashing, and the
idea was so fascinated to me that I went and got myself little pliers and
a little superglue and got copies of games from my own local thrift stories include
it. I'm limited to Risk, Lord of the Rings Risk, which I'm
gonna rip apart teeny little orc stuff. I'm gonna put like rifles on them.
So I've never done this before. I'm really stoked because i want something
to do with my hands and mess around with, particularly in a space that
is so open source as it were, in that I've never really done before,
and that's I have the bare minimum tools and I'm ready to go.
So UM, our Monday Update episode, by the way, for our scripmash
game is coming out, and I'm very excited because there's some changes. I
did another one of my live records where we worked on some of the rules,
so that is going to be coming um as well as by the way,
Graham's incredible logo behind him will be on that. We'll be on that
document as well. So we changed the name to Cyclopean for some reasons that
I actually get into in the Monday one. I don't want to get into
it here. You'll have to watch the Monday video, but if you're interested
in seeing, I was gonna go run and get them, but I was
like, no, we're having in the middle of the podcast is a podcast,
and it is an audio format. I know, I know I wanted
to. That's why I didn't. I restraining myself. I'll get the free
you after the show. But we finished kit bashing our squads. Um awesome,
and so uh, Gunnery Sergeant Gunther is officially Gunther. Gunnery Sergeant Gunther,
the man with a cannon for head is officially It's officially you're ready to
go. Um. So I'm excited. I'm excited to see what you you've
got. I'm excited to play this game too. Whether or not it's good.
Who cares? That being good is not the point of this game?
Right? Exactly? Be a fun I thinking of is it good? Who
cares? What is our topic of the podcast today? So our topic of
the podcast today is a really cool one born of a conversation that you and
I had a couple episodes ago about the house rules that we add. So
we call this game breaking. This is when there is something in an existing
title, whether that's a rule, a concept, an additional thing that you
either add, change, tweak to make the game more enjoyable or to make
the game better fit the group that you're playing with. So, for example,
a couple like I have a couple of really interesting house rules that we
have done beforehand, but like Monopoly is probably the most house ruled game of
all time because nobody plays the way that it's supposed to be played right,
Like you don't you're not supposed to collect the money from the free parking spot
in Monopoly. That's a house rule that has just been adopted widely by everybody.
Or like people forget that you should oppost to auction off a business if
nobody wants to buy it, it's available to all the players. That's also
when the rules is written a Monopoly, but people don't do that. But
essentially, game breaking is when we add, change, tweak, subtract a
rule, a concept, something from the game's rules as written to make it
better and more enjoyable for us. So we're gonna be talking about some of
the cool rules, tweaks, games, stuff that we do to make our
games more enjoyable. And maybe some of you will have some of these things,
will have some new ideas, and if you'd like to know, shout
us out in the comments or whatever and tell us what your favorite game breaking
is. That would be awesome. Because I love hearing house rules. House
rules I think are like it's like part of the reason I love games so
much. So well, the Monopoly two examples are really interesting because that is
essentially game designed that people have done and have taken a folk game level.
It has spread to universality for two very simple reasons. The free parking thing
is because free parking doesn't do anything, and so at some point people are
like, that doesn't sound right, and it got adjusted and then unanimously everyone
who played it with lack of core that makes perfect sense, right, Um,
it's not even a tweak. It just it should have always been there
because people it didn't. It didn't clock in people's brains. They were already
thinking like designers. And the auction thing like that prevents the game from taking
that eight hours that it like normally does right. And but it's also gamy.
It's kind of complicated, so it makes sense that it's even though like
as a quote unquote design choice, it's the right one, it's the first
thing to leave because nobody actually wants to do it right, and because it's
complicated and you have to remember specific rules, whereas Monopoly in its like core
form is roll a dye, trade money, get things, and then repeat
for eight to twelve hours. You know, Um, so these these things
hold no mystery to me, but it very much has a path to least
resist is kind of designed. Yeah, it makes perfect sense to me that
there is no that people don't do that, and that free parking has been
transformed into an exciting thing because it would be nothing as a result, which
is very very funny. And so here's the thing though, like I know,
it just holds no mystery for you. That is the most eloquent way
I've ever heard anyone explain those two rules changes of monopoly, Like I don't
think any other human being could have done that better. Like you're just saying
whatever, it makes sense to me. I'm like, I'm sitting You're going
those a great way to describe that. I mean, you know, I
am dastardly and dazzling and That's what I'm here for. But yeah, this
is gonna be just again, these are by no means things you absolutely have
to have in your games. But these are just things that, like we
have found have made games more enjoyable. And I really like that. And
so yeah, I do a variety of things on a list which go from
like very very minor. So we could like the lightning rounds in the middle.
We could stop and discuss as we go, because the more I thought
about these, I was like, I wanted to have big things, but
I was trying to brainstorm. So some of these are like these just little
micro decisions. So why you want to go first? I have a couple
Like, so all of mine are like maybe not major tweaks, but they
are major in how they affect the rules of certain games. And so I
don't have a lighting round, I just have a light um. And I
also included, by the way, some things that I found, So these
are some of these are not rules that I have done, but there are
rules that I know other players and other people I have talked to have done
that I thought were interesting enough that I wanted to mention. Um Like,
there's one in here that I think is absolutely freaking brilliant and I love it.
Um So, so I guess I'll start, because we started off to
talking about Monopoly, I'm gonna go from kind of that world. Um So,
the like mass market games, games that everyone grew up with it in
the twentieth century. That kind of has led to that that predisposition that board
games are boring before our like designer board game world that we now find ourselves
completely immersed in. Um. Uh, So the way to fix something that
pretty much everybody's in their life is Guess who. Guess who is is pretty
boring. Um. It's this like simple logic puzzle. Um. And the
way that you make Guess who good is by not following the rules in a
traditional logic puzzle way. It's uh, it's not who has a mustache?
Who's wearing glasses? It's um who looks like Definitely, you wouldn't show up
to a second date with um who who looks like? Um? They um
are way too into serial killers? UM? Who does does your does your
person? Uh look like? Uh? They will never not wear a hat
no matter the social occasion. Um. This is this is how you play
Guess who ye Because again, my general point about most of my board games
that I enjoy from a design standpoint is ones that are good because of the
players. UM, and Guess Who has nothing to do with that. But
once you start laughing and trading jokes and descriptions with your friends, the game
itself is now secondary of the experience, which is again something you enjoyed by
our people. So, which is amazing. Yeah, I love that change.
My first change is also for a mass market game. I detest the
game Sorry, but it is one that my really good friend, her name
is Anna, who she lives in Chicago now, but she and I have
been friends since we were fourteen, and so whenever we go and whenever she
comes back to visit her family, we always have a game night. She
usually brings Sorry. It's something that she enjoys. So for those of you
who've never played the mass market game Sorry, good work. You're living a
good life. But also, the game can only start when one player has
a one or a two in order to actually get moving, And so what
happens is in the very beginning you have this really long, monotonous play pattern
of people just go and draw, Go, draw, Go, draw go,
And I've had that last as long as twenty minutes. And then when
you get into the late game, part of the enjoyment of Sorry is that
you can um land on another person's piece and go sorry and knock them off,
which is kind of part of the fun, but it's really hard to
do when you only only thing, that's the only thing. Yeah, basic,
people who love Sorry, don't they just love snotily saying sorry when they
get to do something mean, Yes, isn't that the beginning and the end
of precisely and so yes, yes, you are correct. So here's way
right, here's the change that we used, um because I wanted to start
the game off sooner, and I wanted to make it so that you had
more options, so that you could land on other people's pieces with more ease,
and you can kind of not strategize too too much, because I think
what you said with the monopoly about the auction thing is one hundred percent correct.
I think it's just too much of a game change. So all I
did was I incorporated the bank of cards from Ticket to Ride as sorry,
so rather then so you can blind draw from the top of the deck if
you would like, but we usually flip the top three or four cards in
the deck and you can choose any one of those available three cards to draw
into your hand. Instead, I did that, which honestly has made the
game infinitely more enjoyable because now it's like, oh cool, I don't have
to wait twenty minutes to get started, or it's like, oh, I
need this card so I can land exactly on your piece and so someone else
is like, well, I wasn't going to move that piece, but now
I know that you're going to land on my piece next turn because you took
the card that nails me next turn. So I'm gonna move a different piece
so it doesn't add too much strategy or too much difficulty. We've done nothing
to the rules as written. All we've done is we've said, hey,
I just want a lettle more options about how I interact with you, and
it has made the game really enjoyable. I'll be honest, it's surprising how
fast the game plays now and how much more depth there is to the experience
without making it more complicated. So have you named your variant? Sorry?
Not sorry. Oh that's so much better. I was gonna call it.
I'm really sorry, but sorry, not sorry. I don't know. I
think you should go with your first instance. Oh no, sorry, not
sorry, he's better. Sorry, not sorry, He's definitely better. Um.
Um, so my I mentioned mine on the previous podcast, but I'm
just gonna bring it up very quickly again. Which because of its popularity,
the amount of people I know who own this game, which is super fight.
Um, it's in the same sort of cards are era where you have
a hand of cards you play them down to do stuff. But you have
um noun cards and power cards, and essentially it's who could fight and you
pare them in your hands and you put them down. That's that's the whole
game. Um. But because of course the game is called super fight,
the goal is who will win in this fight? Which immediately it sucks all
the air out of the room. So in the kind of guess who fashion
each round, it's coming up with whatever the scenario is, what are what
are we looking to do? Who? Who could bake the best pie?
All of a sudden, it's not you know lot rockets and lasers and can
turn invisible, being like, oh that can beat these things? Much more
boring conversation. Who's the best at finding blueberries? Oh? Dang? And
then I'm doing these you know? Um? Who who would survive as the
longest as the only person alive on mars um. Creating new scenarios means that
the game is interesting every round. It's funny every round, and also recontextualizing
powers again in this like black and white board game space, which I find
so so exhausting, is the worst thing ever, the best thing ever things,
you know, like the obsession with tier lists, like why why would
we why would we have that? For everything? You're right right, we
gotta keep it. We gotta keep it for the brand, for the brand,
for the brand um having something that might traditionally be f t ar dtier
bad and something that's traditionally s t r A T year. It's all about
context. So finding ways to flip that context is the reason why I like,
you know, limited formats, which is why draft is exciting, and
why you can take a party game like super Fight and then completely changed the
way that it is because you're changing that context every single time. Yes,
I'd love it, I love and I love see I've heard of the guests
who won before, and you have talked to me out of the podcast about
your super Fight change. But I like, I have played super Fight once
in my life. I was like, I don't I don't every want to
play this again because all we did was bigger about who was actually gonna win.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the equivalent of fighting with your friends
about comic book characters, which again is all about who the writer is.
But isn't it more fun to talk about something that, again you've made up,
and then you get to argue for why your rockets make it easier for
your guy to go to the bottom of the ocean and fight Atlantis. Yes,
uh, like that's more fun than Superman could easily be Batman. No,
Batman could outplan him, right, Like, I that that happened.
Do you trip into those arguments just being a nerd? I don't even a
game to give me the structure to do that anyway. Exactly. I have
another mass market one that I really like, and this is not a change
that I have done, but it is a change that I've heard multiple people
play, and I want to highlight on the channel because I think it's amazing.
There is a variant of Clue called Sherlock, and it's one of the
things that I want to try as part of the content that we do here
on desks and doors. But essentially, you play a game of Clue and
next to the clue board you set up a Jenga tower, and on top
of the Jenga tower is a little lego figure who is your Sherlock, and
anytime someone guesses something wrong, you take x amount of blocks away from the
Jenga tower and everyone loses and the killer escapes. If the lego figure ever
falls off the Jenga tower, Sherlock has been killed. It is a weird
variant rule, but it's one that I've I've watched some people play and the
tension, the excitement elevates Clue, which is already a fine mass market game.
Like I don't actually I don't dislike Clue. Um. Had a conversation
but this was some people the other day and they like people were like weirdly
hating on it. I was like, I don't think it's that bad.
But the excitement that you get from having that risk of do I make this
guess? Um, it was really interesting. So that's just one I wanted
to highlight because I thought super cool. Um. So I have a couple
of questions. Sure, so in in Django, when you pull a brick,
you have to place it back off top of the tower. So how
do you move Surelock, you don't, So you don't. You don't take
the bricks and put them on top of the tower. You were only removing
bricks um from the tower. Yep. Yeah, it is a strict a
strict subtraction. Yeah. Um again I think it's cool. Also, I
love Yeah, that's interesting because sure, of course one of my all time
favorite RPGs, um the It's been a while i've played Clue, but my
memory is that you make quote unquote wrong guesses all the time because then somebody
secretly shows you a card and you write something down on your little paper.
Yes, so you know, they're not really guesses. They're more like,
uh, it's it's like go fish, yes, which it's built into it.
And unless somebody says, go fish, you pull a brick, right,
yeah, I'd play it. Yeah, exactly. I have no idea.
I have no concept of how many guesses occur within a normal game of
Clue, because the last time I played it, I was probably like nine
or something, you know, And that's the thing I don't remember either,
And I'm sitting here and going, oh man, I kind of like that
because because of the amount of Dread I played, not Jana, but the
amount of Dread that I played. I'm really good at Jenga. Same weirdly
good survivor. I'm a survivor. You're not going to give up, You're
gone, that's right. My next edition is again, so my list is
so long because some of these don't really seem like hacks, but some of
them are almost like lessons that I've learned over, you know, for for
fixing games difffferent things, um, particularly if you're playing with like a mixed
group or other things. Uh. You know, not every game is this
hyper competitive game store experience. UM. Don't be afraid to just rip out
the points and not have a winner in a game. Uh. Growing up
with my family, we did one of the the the uh bonding experiences we
did was mini golf, and we like never kept score, which is just
something that I've stuck with my entire life. I think mini golf is lightful.
I loathe real golf, but I love mini golf. And there's nothing
that really takes the the joy out of knocking the ball around and trying to
hit a windmill and doing a loop de loop with oh no, i got
one extra point and now I'm two steps behind. To ruin your experience,
Like if the game is so low stakes anyways, if it's a party game,
and if people are mad because you win or lose a party game,
just lose it. No, experience is not about the points are winning,
even though there is an arbitrary winner. If if it's an experience you're having.
If it's something that you're sharing with people, just take out the points
and don't actually have it at all. No Winner games. It's like the
little brother of a co op experience, and it's it's still giving you everything
that you want from the from what you're doing with the game. That is
a really good rules change to just in general, and it's part of the
reason I don't like semi cooperative games. I'm like, either have us all
win or have us have there be a winner, Like I hate that,
like, oh, but you're kind of working together, but you're kind of
not, because that makes the experience less good for me. I want to
know going in that I'm either we either all trying to win or we're all
just trying to have a great time. And I love the idea just stripping
an experience like semi coops off the top of your head, do you not
like because I'm trying to think, like I liked Dead of Winner when it
came out. There was a lot of debt a Winner back in the day.
Yeah, And I think that's thematic. It's the idea that like,
maybe I'm a trader, but everyone else has private goals, so they're just
like weirdos, which I think plays into that like zombie apocalypse theme, like
I don't know if you're being a weirdo because you're going to betray me,
or if because your private goal is like I just really need to build fences,
or if you're just a weirdo yeah, or if you're just a weirdo
cool. I didn't love Debta Winner, I'll be honest. If we played
it like once or twice and I was like, I really don't I didn't
enjoy it. That was one of the semi cooperative ones that I didn't like.
I'll be honest, I'm blanking on like semi cooperative ones that I haven't
enjoyed because I I literally they don't stay in my collection for longer than like
a minute, and I sure, and I keep trying them, hoping that
it'll work. But it's it's exactly what you talked about, right, It's
that I'm going in. I want to know what my experience is about and
being able to strip the rules and say this is just for the this is
fun, This is for the boys, right, your metaphorical boys, That's
what this is for. And I need that I think in some of my
games because it makes the enjoyment of those games more for me. Um.
I will say Shadows over Camelot is probably the one semi cooperative game that I
have played that I have enjoyed. That's that's funny because I don't like Shadows.
I had the best experience of that, and that's probably that's probably for
the War Stories, that's that's a table that's a table experience. I think
specifically, you know, yes, I think that's one of the ones where
I think the trader mechanic doesn't work at all, Like this is written interesting.
We'll have to we'll have to talk about that for the War Stories episode
because like, that's that's that's it. One of my favorite stories in gaming
that I've ever experienced was the game was the was the one time that I
played Shadows over Camelot. Um, So were you the trader in did you
win? I was not the trader. I did not win. Um.
I had a blast playing anyway. So um, but but we'll go over
that. Like I said, that's what I want, that's what I want
to vote, like, I want to devote a whole episode to just like
our best stories in gaming. I think would be so much fun. UM.
In any case, my last not my last one. My next one
is one that was born from this past week. I'm glad you asked me
what I was gaming because we played Scotland Yard for the first time, and
yeah, heck yeah, I really liked it. I'm gonna be completely honest.
I like being mister X. I like the um the where is he
going? What does he know? Uh? Of the experience. But one
of the things I think was really interesting for me was that so the game,
the version of this that I bought is older, it's an older copy,
UM, and so the rules have not been tweaked yet. So at
three players, I was just dunking on everyone because there's only two other investigators,
which they amended later on like for the future editions. UM. If
you play with three players, I think I forget how many Like I think
each player in the three player account can tweel controls like an extra investigator,
so there's four rather than two people looking. But because we had played the
first eight rounds without without those extra pieces, we added a fifth one.
And I don't know how good it is in terms of like the rules,
but in terms of the experience. It was interesting. We called this fifth
character the True Crime Podcaster, and so rather than have the two other people
I was playing with control this character, their moves were randomly generated because it's
not they're not a detective, it's a civilian who is interested in the mister
X story and is trying to follow along and catch them on their own,
so they don't use the tiles. So in the game, you spend a
tile to move either on the subway, the buses, or taxi, and
whenever an investigator spends one of those tiles, it goes to mister X so
that they can use it on their turns. And when mister X use a
tile, it's removed from the game. The True Crime Podcaster does not contribute
their tiles to mister X because he doesn't have an informant in the in the
True Crime Podcaster's apartment, he has won in the police department, and so
it created this like and it actually lost me the game as mister X because
there was one move I could make really early on that I was like,
oh man, this is great. Once I do this, I can just
slip around them and just skirt along the outskirts of London. And never get
caught. And the true crime podcaster barked himself right in the subway station where
I needed to go, and I was like, son of a gun And
it didn't. I didn't think it was gonna be like momentous at the time,
But looking back at that game, like if I had done that,
I could have won. And that loser, that idiot who literally spent three
turns going back and forth between two locations, wound up costs to be the
game. And I think, again, I think it was just like it's
just a nice little inclusion, just yeah, yeah, I just put it
in there. Try it one of these days, and to think give you
like Scotland yard. Um. You know, I I think I think I'm
gonna jump off that one. To to choose my next as a follow up,
which is um as. As a a role playing a game designer,
this is my default, but I encourage people of with this. This is
your not your instinct to role play when you play your board game, to
ask questions about the things, to tell little stories. Um. In legacy
games especially, it's like really really asking for it because you you want to
like write the person's name on it. Um. You know, every single
game of pandemic I've ever played. People always name the diseases. UM.
Whenever you play something that has characters that has things like feel free to be,
like what's their home life? Like, you know, you'll immediately get
more infested. You'll be laughing with your friends, You'll be creating the inside
jokes of the experience. And then when you have a podcast, you can
then tell that war story to somebody about like, oh my god, this
person was a true crime podcaster and they loved bananas, but they still lived
at home. And you know, I'll smile and nod like I know what
you're talking about. But you will have had a great time at the table,
and everyone you were there will be like, oh, man, banana
guy, he was awesome. I'll always role play in your board games.
Ask questions, invent people, give them personalities like this is your chance to
play and whatever makes sense, and like really really luxuriate in what you're doing.
So did I did I ever tell you? That's how I figured out
who I wanted to bring into role playing games. When I first started playing,
UM was Yeah. So I had a pretty big game group. A
lot of most of them have moved and gotten married and gone on with their
lives and a couple the core of us have stuck around here. Um.
But like, one of the things that we did was everyone's like, oh,
I want to play an RPG. I want to do June Dragons,
I want to do and you know, these are people that I like and
I know, but I wanted people who would be getting into the experience of
of an RPG, and I wanted to know that they were like that they
could hang right. Um. And so you know what we did. We
played Life. Oh man, we played the Game of Life. And everyone
that made fake names for their fake children and complained about their fake boss at
their fake job in the Game of Life. I was like, okay,
you're I'm gonna I'm gonna see if you want to do some some r some
rpging because I wanted them to enjoy the experience. But I think they can
look for those role players in regular games. I think it's just it's just
awesome. This is a good idea. You you chose to play the Game
of Life. I did. It's one of the mass market titles, so
they actually don't detest I actually kind of enjoy it. I think for a
lot of the same reasons you like to Kaido, it's not gonna have a
chill experience. I don't ever take it really seriously. I mostly just complained
about my fake boss. I talk about my my little plastic wife and lasting
children that live in the plastic car like it's fun. You know, it's
a it's a phenomenal point. I've never thought of Life as to Kaido.
I mean, I understand that it is all about the role play, and
that the game itself is is like barely there. But you know what,
that's the same thing with the Kaido, except it doesn't have a weird spinner.
Um, life, life is Life is the mass market to Kaido.
You're totally right, kind of like I know, I made that connection until
we talked about to Kaido earlier, like before we even started recording, and
I was like, wait a second, I like this game for the same
reason I kind of like to Kaido. So yeah, I like. I
like the idea of the role playing though with other people. Um, did
I did I say mine? I did say my mom was Scotland Yard.
That's right, I got I got side. I got sidetracked. It happens.
No, you were you were in the role plan. You wanted to
talk about how much you love life the best board game ever made? You
know it is not the best board game. It might be my favorite mass
market title. Actually, now that I think about that, I get,
oh, Connect four kind of slaps. I love Connect four. As as
part of my kit bashing adventures, I found this Connect four cannon. It
was one of the pictures I didn't send you because it wasn't heinous enough.
But essentially it's you have these these little launchers and it's a Connect four tube
with a mouth at the top, and whoever gets four in a row wins.
I guess I just looked at the box because you launch your your your
colored disk up into the mouth and it falls down. It's just one tube.
It's not a range, but it appears as though you both take turns
firing your Connect four. It's called I don't remember what it was called.
I have to look at the picture I took of it. That it's like,
I don't know, uh, Connect four extreme or Connect four cannon.
That's incredible, that's so good. But it looks like coconuts if you played
coconuts. No, I'm think I played coconuts. No. Yeah, that's
that's that's a classic like game for three rolds that I've gotten huge groups of
adults to enjoy. You have these little monkeys and you shoot coconuts with their
spring load on arms and try and land them in people's cups. Is basically
it's awesome. I'm incredible game. Yeah yeah, I mean it's everything I
love give. I'm there. So what's your what's your next hack, mister
friend? My next hack is, um, well is it's a It's gonna
be feel like a small hack, but it winds up impacting the rules of
this a lot. I love Resarcana. Resarcona might be in my top five
games of all time top ten, It's definitely my top ten because I feel
like the list changes a lot um. One of the ways that you can
play Resarcana is you can draft your deck, which is what we do every
time. But the rules is written of Resarcana has you pick your wizard after
you draft the deck. Um, you get a pick of two wizards.
We have always played that you get the wizard beforehand. Um. And that
might not seem like a big change to those of you who have not played
it, but if you like res Arcana a lot, and I I love
Resarcana. It actually in my group's playing of this version of the rules,
and I've played it both ways, so I want to make it sure that
everyone knows I have played at rules is written. I feel like I have
more control over what my strategy is going to be when I know who I
am going into it because those wizards generate different resources, they have different powers,
and that changes the value of some cards in the deck that I would
otherwise overlook because I don't know what kind of powers I'm going to have.
But like, for example, there's a character in Reserkona called the Witch.
For those of you who have not listened. Her ability is that she can
spend a little bit of resources to activate an item twice, which is very
powerful. And there are some items in the game that you will overlook because
you're like, this is bad. I can only activate this one's a turn.
But knowing that I have the Witch, I'm like, wow, I
could activate this twice. Suddenly a really garbage card becomes a really good card
in this particular deck. Um and so that's It's It feels like a very
small change, but it winds up having some big ramifications on overall strategy of
the game, and we have really enjoyed it. So, I mean it
makes sense because you're you're drafting, so like, why wouldn't you then have
a direction to go and then you're not just drafting at random. You know,
you're not falling into your normal lanes. It's it's the equivalent of forcing
a color and a draft, right if you start with your your your hero
yeah or whatever. Yeah, then then you know, okay, great,
now I need items so I can tap them twice, right, yeah,
exactly. Um, And I can see why they did it, like from
a design choice, because like, oh, you know, you know what's
in your deck, so maybe you can choose something that helps you make the
stuff that you've drafted better. But my argument is I think it's more strategic
in the inverse. So true. Yeah, that's that's my resure counter change,
which I know you would appre because you like reser Kona too, So
I like it a lot. Yeah. I hadn't played it before you turned
me onto it because honestly, it looked like everything else and I zipped right
past it. And the fact that you spoke so highly of it, I
specifically went out found myself a very cheap copy played it. Think it's great.
Yeah, because I'm always looking for something to fill in the sort of
the draft part, like, oh, I want to get a draft in.
Getting that part of the brain, the replayability, the learning the systems
mastery part, particularly when it comes to like a really well constructed card game
and so and being able to seek that out was something I was glad to
go do. That's one that I've actually played with a bunch of other Magic
players because they're like, man, like, I don't like drafting this set,
and like I have told people this before, I think RESK is the
best Magic the Gathering draft set in a month. Like, I just think
it's a great That's just a good one. All right, what's your next
rules change game? I'm excited. Yeah, I'm gonna pair a couple of
these up because they have a similar theme, which is the idea of putting
more limitations on you, particularly in a game about communication, to make things
more fun. Also because these games are both very very similar and I have
hacks for both of them that I like using, and I've talked about these
games previously on the podcast, which is the Dixit to Mysterium sort of like
Pipeline of Design. In Mysterium, you have your clue like theme of having
a ghost and trying to find a murderer, and Dixit is themeless, but
you still have these, like you know, fantasmagorical cards that you're trying to
communicate. Both essentially are clues. In Dixit, you hand a card and
you give a clue, and it's usually a word or a phrase, and
then everyone else plays down a card and then you try to hide amongst it.
Everyone's trying to get you to get their card instead. And so my
hack for Dixit is to use no words and to play an entire game using
nonverbal sounds instead of trying to think of this clever in joke where like oh
you know and I know because we went on a trip together, or oh
I know that specifically, you know, this friend of mine is a big
jazz fan, so I'm gonna say, Miles Davis is like a clue or
something. To try and do that instead, it's like people grunting and then
laughing at each other and going and then putting out a card and then all
of a sudden people's like, oh man, which one is more in my
hand right because you're trying to like puzzle this out. It keeps it fresh,
it keeps it cool and weird. And the arguments, which again is
my favorite parts of these kinds of games, is how could you've done this?
Why do you do this? This is way more or the idea of
the the serendipity in these games where people are like, oh my god,
that was the perfect card for the clue you gave. It's extra funny when
that comes up for this like noise. That's the other The other half of
this from mysterium is that it's cooperative, so the ghost is giving dreams and
then the each person gets their own card each round and they're trying to interpret
what the ghost is telling them. And a mysteria, particularly if it's like
a very good group or a gamy things, I will have a rule where
you can't actually show your card to the other psychics, and so you're all
holding your card because the idea is it can kind of fall into this sort
of muddy place where everyone places down their dreams and everyone looks at everyone else's
cards and then talk about it. But if that's a space that you've already
done and gotten to. Some people can kind of feel left behind. If
you have a very active group, a very talkie group, you're having people
say like, okay, what's your dream and you're holding it up to your
chest being like, I don't know, man, it's like a sewer and
what color is it? It's like green, but like not too green,
and that gets the talking cart. I think cooperaly really works. The best
co op games are ones where people are talking a lot and not just saying
you just look at my cards. Like depending on the group, pandemic is
you have an open hand or you don't do it because you're like, what
did you have again? Sometimes that's good, sometimes it's bad. But from
mysterium, it's this emotional experience and so that not showing your cards to their
psychics. I think it's a really good way to get that done. And
it resolves the um quarterbacking problem too that happens in a rise sometimes in cooperative
games because you can't quarterback what someone else's weird abstract dream is. And if
it's the theme too, that's awesome. That's like exactly the perfect Yeah,
oh man, all right, I love it. Okay, Graham, are
you ready what's this do? Let's do one more and then we'll we'll we'll
give the people one more more more and an honorable mention? How about that?
Yeah? Okay, UM tell you what, why don't you give your
honorable mention first? But when it falls, you have to catch as many
pieces in your mouth as possible. Uh, And whoever gets the most pieces
in your mouth actually wins the game. No, I just made that up.
Yeah, I kind of love that, though the mouth we worried I
would swallow one accidentally. But like uh, in a game with vehicles,
it is mandatory to use noises whenever moving peace. Um. Planes need plane
sounds, cars need car sounds. And if you don't do it, um,
don't lose a turn. It's give your your other players and benefit if
you fail to do it. Yeah. If it's a drinking game, you
take a drink, your your your friends get a free resource if you don't
go whenever you hit the plane. So all I've heard is that when we
play thunder Road, when all of us meet up, yeah, we're all
gonna because I have my vintage copy of thunder Road. We're all so good
vehicle sounds. Love it. U my auno mention is just getting rid of
skills um in Dungeons and Dragons. This is something I learned when I started
playing with kids, um, because kids are natural storytellers and they like it.
So I have them make a character, and a lot of them,
particularly when I played with seven and eight year olds, don't read the skill
sheet anyway, um, and so I make them justify to me why their
character should be able to use a certain skill, which gets their creativity flowing
a little bit and makes them think and problem solved. They're like, oh,
well, of course my bar would have the ability to diplomacy somebody,
but like great case in point, somebody made a character named ax Ax as
a moron, and I love ax Ax does not know anything, and they
role played in character an entire scene where they taught Ax math and a math
check came up later in the adventure and the player of Ax goes, I
would like to make a role for this, and I would like to get
some benefit for it. And I was like, you're gonna tell me that
your barbarian nos math, and she goes yes. Because remember three sessions ago
are Druid spent fifteen in real world minutes in character. They did this in
character the entire time. The whole table spent fifteen minutes trying to teach the
other girl in character what two plus two was. So I think that's a
great house role. So you're really opening up a giant can of worms that
unfortunately we can't talk about now because you're you're just cracking open the door of
what frustrates me about RPG philosophy and design, Yes, which is the idea
of rolling for confirmation, rolling for success or failure is a complete dead end.
There's nothing I hate more than rolling to unlock a chest or unlock a
door, because only one of two things happens. Either you do it and
you keep going, or you fail to do it and you're now in a
cul de sac. There's you're stuck there. And so that's why you have
ridiculous things like taking twenty, which again get around the idea of okay,
well we need quote unquote these dice. So the real answer is can you
do it or can you not? Yeah? You not? Just need is
failure exciting, but success needs to be exciting as well. If neither one
is true, don't roll things, Yeah, especially for like a rogue,
like if your rogue rolls and fails to unlock the chest. That doesn't make
any sense within the fiction. Of course, your rogue should be able to
do roguey things. Of Course the barbarian should be able to do barbarian things.
That's why you chose this character, because then you can function within the
fiction. In that case, the rules are not doing their job at all.
Right, I have minimized my rant to thirty seconds. That was impressive,
because I can see the fire in your eyes. That was impressive.
We'll have to do an RPG philosophy episode two. That's all this means,
all right, what is your what is your last one? What does your
last rules pick? Well, just I'll just go even further, which is
dropped the GM screen. Not only should you drop skills, but you should
never use a GM screen ever. Again. Uh, this applies to a
lot of things. One reminding people that that the hierarchy should be as thin
as possible. You're not in some guy Gaxian tower. The players are not
empty vessels under which the story is being poured into them. Everyone is collaborating
in this way. You can have a more antagonistic format, but the idea
of players being there it really fosters a lot of really bad culture and a
lot of bad rules philosophy. Do you really need to hide hit points behind
things? Do you really need all these rules? The idea is like,
why don't you just make your chair a little higher? Why shouldn't just the
GM sit in a hide chair. I say this knowing that there's a lot
of people out there being like, Oh, that's a really great idea.
I should do that. The gym should have the biggest chair. You need
to be down there with the people playing the game. You need to be
listening, You need to be reactive. It makes the game better, and
not just so to give the players what they want. Since but the idea
that it's a tennis match. It's a tennis match of narrative. It's a
tennis match of rules and interactions. And if you are separating yourself from the
players, then you get stagnation, which is never gonna be fun. So
get rid of that GM screen, never go back. I love it.
Here is mine. This one comes courtesy of the fourth graders that I teach.
This is the best rules hack I this is I'm not even gonna lie
to you this this game might be in contention for the Duskis for this coming
year because I loved it that much. Um, that's not a joke,
I really, it really is not. This is the concept of the desks
well, the Dusky's man, this is this will be our our fourth annual
deskis coming up. We've done the deskis for for three years now. But
what about the door keys. You're just You're just let Riley run run ship
on you again. Well, hey, listen, the best part about the
Duskies is they may have had Riley's name attached, but for the first two
years Riley couldn't make the recording session and I did a bad robot voice and
pretended to be robo Riley. Nice. It was great, a little unhinged,
but that sounds after the after dark. And I'll call it the Duskies.
Oh, the Duskies. I like that. Well, what are what
are our favorite our favorite solar based patterns? Um? So this is a
game. This again just speaks to the creativity of kids. They have managed
to break a game in a way that has made it something completely new.
So I'm cheating a little bit, um, But when we talk about game
breaking, I think this is it's game design, right and these kids have
stumbled onto my favorite version of Connect four it ever and one of my favorite
two player abstract strategy games ever. Does it have a cannon? It does?
It kind of does actually, And I'm glad we kind of you.
You helped set this up for me without realizing it. So there is a
version of Connect four. That's why we love your um. There's a version
of Connect four. It's like a teacher stem kit. It's really lame,
but it's essentially you build it with legos. It's lame. It is because
it's it's dark, strong, it is right. It's it is a slanted
piece of cardboard with the little nubs built into it, and the kids go
they put the bricks in the rows to make a Connect four board, and
it's slanted so that they don't need to hey for the lattice. Is it
like cornhole? It's not a corn holl. It's like it's like it's like
it's literally a slope with the nubs attached and you just put the bricks in
the like in the nubs to make them vertical pillars of the Connect fourboard.
But there's no horizontal ones because that would cost extra money. And it just
sits on a slope, so that gravity does the work. Lame, right.
Um. You compound this with the fact that the kit that these kids
have, because it's not in my classrooms in a different one, does not
have enough Connect four pieces for everybody. It has an off color piece,
so like there's one piece missing for both teams. So they have like a
full yellow set, a full red set, both missing one piece and they
have one off yellow set from a different game, off yellow checker from a
different game. It's about the same size as a Connect four piece. So
here's what the kids did, and this is this is my favorite version to
Connect four. They've turned Connect four into a dexterity game and an abstract strategy
game. So you have to take two steps away from the table that the
slope is on and you throw the little Connect four disc. It is corn
Hall, it is It's corn Hall Connect four. But here's here's where the
ingenuity of it lies. And this is my favorite little rules tweak. Both
sides are missing a piece, so we have one piece that is clearly not
yellow and clearly not read. And I asked them, I was like,
what is this piece? And they go, well, here's the rules mister
Ott, the first player has to throw that piece, the off color one,
and I'll go, okay, explain, elaborate more, and they go,
well, it's simple, really, that piece counts for both players,
and I was like, oh my god. So they took the first player
advantage of Connect four without realizing it and eliminated the first player advantage. They
turned their lack of a piece into an incredibly interesting thing because now there's a
piece that counts both players, which makes blocking harder, and they have made
the oh I'm guaranteed to win mathematical. This game has already been mapped out
kind of thing of Connect four harder because now it's a dexterity game that you
sort of throw and hope that your stuff slides down on it is. I
sat there, I was flabbergasted. I was like, this is the coolest
alternate version of a game that I've ever played. It was. It was
awesome, and they'd come up with it off rid like it took them a
day, I think, to come up with that. And I was like,
kids, man, kids are great. The best part is absolutely the
limitation. There's you've already pointed out, like all the things that you love
about it. The number one is of course the missing piece, because it's
creativity through limitation, through the idea that we don't have the same pieces,
and now we've introduced accidentally another element and then ask you these questions, Okay,
what is it? What can it do? Why is it here?
It's not just oh, I have to play with this, and remember that
the off color is my piece. It's an opportunity to further design, which
is wonderful. Yeah, at every step of the way, they crushed it
and I was just so impressed. So all right, this is that's hardly
a hack. If it's they just like invented a new game. Yeah,
it's absolutely like a brand new game. Yeah, it's it's a it's a
hack in that like in that Doda was a hack of like Warcraft thereesmap editor.
It's it's its own game. It is all right, my friend,
UM, I have a weird question for you. UM, really quick,
I have a weird question for you, right never line, you do your
weird question really quick. Before we do that, UM, please make sure
you go get a copy of After the Rain over IPR check back at Duskin's
Doors dot org. At this point, By the way, folks. Exciting
announcement. Fear Within is being printed um as um so like the printer is
literally going like it started last Friday, um Riley's printing everything out. And
then we're going to have a party where the two of us just meet and
hang out and staple hand stable your copies together. So those will be shipping
out soon. Once those are shipped out, and dust and doors dot org
has been um a little bit retoled. We're gonna be on those online.
So uh and if you haven't yet check out Cyclopean are open source community driven
ministers game. Um, we must have a wonderful logo from Graham. All
right, Graham far away my friend question as as a lead up into the
weird question, I thought of another Jenga alternative. Okay, so it's Jenga
except instead of bricks, you use kitcat bars and then you eat the kitcat
bars when you pull them. I love it. Yeah. H So my
weird question to you, sir as if you could eat any board game in
existence, maybe like, if you have to eat any board game in existence,
what would it be? Azul answer? I straight up, just of
the most special little little starbursts. I have literally said this multiple times to
people. I was like, these look like bougie starburst. Yeah they do.
I'm like, make these into candy. I'm like, I never understood
the Tide Pod kids until I played his bowl. I was like, I
get it. That's like, I get it. I understand. It was
like, this looks like boogie starbursts. Please make these into bougie starbursts.
I would like to eat. That's it, that's my pick. What's the
game you would most like to eat? Uh? You know, I didn't
think about it. Let's go banana Grams. That's fair. And then I
you rip it open and it's full of like, you know, more delicious
letters, and then I'm gonna eat the peel afterwards. I'm like, you
know, i'd like bananas. I love it. Um. Thank you all
so much for tuning again. Be sure to check out all the stuff we
talked about. Be sure to follow gram Against on all the socials. It's
a cool dude, we like him. But any case, how it going,
folks, and we'll see you the next one. Bye everybody, and
remember to stay boggy my friends. Zippity zap z out