Ludology

It's an annual Ludology tradition to invite The Podfather of Gaming, Stephen Buonocore, to the show at the start of each year to discuss trends in the industry. As always, Stephen flashes his business acumen and deep insight into what he thinks the industry is in store for in 2022.

In this re-air of a Biography of a Board Game from September 2017, Scott slices open the history of the game Operation. Note: Even though Scott has stepped away from the show, we will still be publishing classic Biography of a Board Game episodes for the time being.

During our winter break, our co-host Scott Rogers pounced on a new job opportunity that he couldn't pass up. Sadly, this means he has to step down as Ludology co-host. In this episode, we'll chat with Scott about his time at Ludology, and ask him what awaits in the future. Because Scott's job commitments have already begun, we couldn't find a time when we could all meet. So Erica, Gil, and Sen all recorded their questions in one recording session, and Scott recorded his answers in another recording session.

Erica, Gil, Scott, and Sen wrap up 2021 with a roundtable discussion on the hats we wear as game industry professionals. What are all the skills we bring to bear to make games, and how do we feel about them? This is the final Ludology episode of 2021. We're taking our annual winter break. We will be back on January 23, 2022 with the next episode of Ludology. In the meantime, there will be no Ludology, GameTek, or Biography of a Board Game episodes.  From all of us at Ludology, have the happiest of holidays, and here's to a productive 2022! SHOW NOTES 5m12s - Alien: Fate of the Nostromo 12m27s - “Spin” is Spin Master, where Erica works as an on-staff game designer. 25m54s - Route 66 28m14s - Gil should have said “at the start of the pandemic,” as we’re still in the pandemic! If you'd like to join his remote playtesting group (which he will hopefully be attending again soon), click here. 33m51s - Unity, a platform mainly used to develop video games. 38m57s - The Affinity suite. 51m38s - Here's more info about A

In this re-air of a Biography of a Board Game from July 2017, Scott takes us through the history of former Ludology co-host Mike Fitzgerald's Mystery Rummy series of games.

Gil and Sen welcome game designer, manufacturer, publisher, game cafe owner, and convention runner Kenechukwu Ogbuagu ("KC") of NIBCARD Games to the show. From his home city of Abuja, KC has built up the board gaming scene in Nigeria almost singlehandedly, recently winning the prestigious Diana Jones award for his efforts.  SHOW NOTES 12m46s: Hobby World, Spyfall, Viceroy, Cosmodrome 14m58s: KC mentions the classic board game Ludo, which was based on the Indian game Pachisi. The American games Parcheesi, Sorry, Aggravation, Headache, and Trouble were based on Ludo or Pachisi; British people may know it as Uckers, while Canadians may know it as Tock. 22m07s: NGOs are Non-Governmental Organizations. In the US, most of them tend to be non-profits.  25m58s: See the Smart People Play Chess TV trope  34m08s: Bastard Café in Denmark, one of NIBCARD Cafe’s supporters  44m20s: Designer Eric Lang will be at AB Con, the convention that KC organizes in Nigeria. 45m36s: InstantSync 46m08s: Legendary designer Reiner Knizia

Geoff discusses one of the most feared characteristics of early RPGs: the loss of a level. Why is this mechanism so hated and feared among players?

Erica and Sen chat with Shing Yin Khor, game designer, installation artist, illustrator, award-winning cartoonist, and Bunyan-ologist. Shing Yin is the designer of the game A Mending, in which players literally sew their actions into cloth, and co-designer (with Jeeyon Shim) of the game Field Guide to Memory. Shing Yin calls both games "keepsake games," as they both leave artifacts of play that tell the story of the game experience. SHOW NOTES 4m15s: Gasha/gacha machine  7m05s: We chatted with Jeeyon on Ludology 244 - Games Brought to Life. 10m04s: The Oraclebird 12m17s: Gnomes, a Dutch book written by Wil Huygen and illustrated by Rien Poortvliet. 16m21s: In games, diegesis refers to anything that fits within the narrative world. If a video game wants characters to move right on the screen, they can do it diegetically by showing objects being blown to the right, or non-diegetically by flashing an arrow on the screen pointing to the right. Examples of board games that use diegesis well are Inhuman Conditions

Scott Rogers takes us to the inception of the legacy game, and the one that started it all: Rob Daviau's Risk Legacy.  BIBLIOGRAPHY OF A BOARD GAME: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-04-03-the-legacy-of-rob-daviau-the-man-who-helped-flip-boardgames-on-their-head https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1024259/Legacy-Games-From-Risk-to https://www.polygon.com/tabletop-games/22740263/risk-legacy-sequel-shadow-forces-announcement-release-date-price https://boardgamedesignlab.com/designing-legacy-games-with-jamey-stegmaier/

Erica and Gil are delighted to welcome designer Amabel Holland of Hollandspiele, known for making games with challenging themes using an unconventional publishing model.  SHOW NOTES 0m58s: Supply Lines of the American Revolution, Table Battles, Irish Gauge, This Guilty Land, Nicea, The Vote. 7m08s: Amabel is talking about her forthcoming game Eyelet. 15m02s: This is Geoff's game Versailles 1919, co-designed with Mark Herman. 17m28s: Benedict Arnold 18m34s: The Shackleton Expedition 21m16s: The Vote 28m22s: Nicea 31m38s: Irish Gauge, Northern Pacific, Iberian Gauge 32m29s: Winsome, Rio Grande 34m23s: Chicago Express 34m55s: Meltwater, An Infamous Traffic 36m11s: RIBBIT: The Jump, Move, and Block Game, Table Battles 38m51s: New Mill 43m45s: Westphalia 48m18s: Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae 49m52s: Cheapass Games 53m46s: Tobacco misinformation campaign 54m37s: Gil was thinking of Brandolini's Law, aka the BS Asymmetry Principle. 57m55s: Horse & Musket 59m03s: Deinocheirus, Pterodactyl, Therizinosaurus

Geoff explains a mathematical algorithm that can help potential roommates figure out how to split the rent, if an even split would be unfair and the roommates do not value the rooms the same way. This mechanism is just dying to be used in a game!

Gil and Scott are delighted to welcome Martin Wallace back to the show. Martin was first on the show on Ludology 46 - Getting Down to Brass Tacks back in 2012 with Geoff Engelstein and a very enthusiastic Ryan Sturm. In this episode, we catch up with Martin to see what he's been up to in the last 9 years. Martin is the designer of many well-loved strategy games, like Brass, Age of Steam (and all its related games, like Railways of the World), London, A Study in Emerald, AuZtralia, and A Study in Emerald. Technical note: Martin's recording has some dropouts in it; unfortunately, those seemed to come straight from his microphone, so there wasn't much we could do about them. We hope you enjoy the episode anyway! SHOW NOTES 1m25s: Lords of Creation 4m31s: Gloomhaven, the North Sea Trilogy from Garphill Games, Jamey Stegmaier. 8m06s: The Exit games, and the Unlock! games 11m53s: Games Workshop, Ian Livingstone, the British Steve Jackson, the American Steve Jackson, and the Fighting Fantasy books. 16m18s: Anno

For this week, we're replaying the very first Biography of a Board Game that aired on Ludology. In it, Scott talks about the classic game that got so many fans and designers into the hobby: Risk.

Scott and Gil welcome Nikki Valens, designer of Mansions of Madness: Second Edition, Eldritch Horror, Legacy of Dragonholt, Quirky Circuits, and the upcoming Artisans of Splendent Vale. We talk about making programming games like Quirky Circuits, app-driven games like Mansions of Madness, and campaign games like Legacy of Dragonholt. SHOW NOTES 1m27s: Brown College 3m22s: Robo Rally 3m50s: Colt Express 5m53s: Magic Maze 8m18s: The Mind 12m26s: Ra, Medici 35m49s: Betrayal Legacy 42m00s: "FFG" refers to Fantasy Flight Games, where Nikki worked for several years. 43m07s: XCOM: The Board Game 52m24s: Here's a compilation video of cats riding Roombas...

Geoff continues his dive into the probability of Pop-O-Matic dice, this time discussing how experiment results can be misrepresented through P-Hacking. 

Gil and Sen are delighted to welcome Sara Thompson to discuss depictions of disability in tabletop games. Sara is the creator of the Combat Wheelchair for D&D, and of the Medicine on the Path supplement for The Witcher Pen & Paper RPG. SHOW NOTES 0m49s: Critical Role, with GM Matt Mercer.  3m35s: The D&D campaign Storm King's Thunder. 15m075s: The Greek god Hephaestus. 17m23s: Jennifer Kretchmer's Twitter. 21m35s: The thread in question, in which Sara describes Geralt as disabled and how that significantly affects his story. 25m08s: The Witcher: Baptism of Fire. 32m44s: Lauren Hissrich, showrunner of The Witcher TV show. 33m45s: A sample clip of the very silly Steve Martin film Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid. 46m46s: Amanda Leduk's book Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space. 52m19s: The Witcher: A Tome of Chaos supplement for The Witcher RPG. 53m22s: The Combat Wheelchair was featured on Critical Role episode C2E113 A Heart Grown Cold (at least, we're pretty sure it was!). It

Scott takes us through the history of Quirkle, the smash hit game from Susan McKinley Ross. 

Scott sits down with Erica, Gil, and Sen to discuss the design and making of his newest game, Alien: Fate of the Nostromo. We also discuss designing to an IP, and how to make a horror game. SHOW NOTES 0m58s: The original Alien film 1m31s: The other board game based on the film Alien. Scott is not counting board games influenced by the film without the official license, like Nemesis or The Awful Green Things From Outer Space. He’s also only counting games based specifically on the original film, so board games based on any of the sequels, like Aliens, or Alien vs. Predator, do not count. 1m38s: The “Optimus Prime Conundrum” is a term coined by the legendary and wonderful podcast Flip the Table. It describes a situation where a game breaks the IP it’s based on by allowing multiple copies of one character. This was coined in their very first episode, in which they reviewed the Transformers Adventure Game, where each player gets to play a separate version of Optimus Prime.  2m00s: The publisher Ravensburger. No

Geoff harnesses all his mathematical techniques to answer a burning question: are Pop-O-Matic dice truly random?

Geoff (making a one-off Ludology return) and Gil chat with Al Leonardi, designer of the legendary picture-book game Ace of Aces, and a legion of spinoffs using the same brilliant first-person system. SHOW NOTES 4m19s: Richthofen’s War  8m18s: If you're interested about Ace of Ace's mathematical underpinnings, and its true nature as a hex-grid game, here's Geoff's article. 9m52s: There were two Star Wars games Al worked on: Star Wars: Starfighter Battle Book, and Star Wars Lightsaber Dueling (which was based on Lost Worlds, which we discuss later in the episode). Also: Dragonriders of Pern: The Book Game, Bounty Hunter: Shootout at the Saloon, and Ace of Aces: Wingleader. 11m11s: The Immelman turn, in World War I, was a difficult maneuver that allowed a skilled pilot to turn their aircraft around quickly. In modern aerobatics, it now refers to a type of half-loop. 16m58s: "Ditto sheets," known in the UK as a "Banda machine," refers to a method of print duplication used for much of the 20th century, and v