Hi all! I have a stellar interview today with Alex Roberts about two player games and her new game Star Crossed, a game that uses a block tower (like Jenga) to tell stories of forbidden romance. It’s currently on Kickstarter! Why don’t you check out her responses?
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Art by Jess Fink of a man in a long, fancy jacket and beige pants with a ruff collar sitting across the table from a purple being with a pink ponytail thing, also in fancy dress, both gazing romantically at each other while one pulls a block from the tower.
Alex Roberts, being intensely cute *and* talented.
Tell me why you care about two-player games, and how that ties into Star Crossed. What excites you about them?
For me, the joy of roleplaying games is in the connection with other players; not that we told a great story but that we told it together, not that we played cool characters but that we built this great character dynamic, or had these special shared moments with them. That’s a kind of satisfaction you can only get from this art form. So, having identified what I’m after, the challenge I get as a designer is to figure out how to generate that effect, and intensify it. Frankly, it’s a miracle that strong moments of connection ever happen at tables of five people – that’s a lot of interests, ideas, desires, and boundaries to align! It’s wonderful when everyone in a group is totally on the same wavelength, but it’s rare. With Star Crossed, I wanted a feeling of intense creative connection, as frequently and intensely as possible. I wanted to see it right from character generation.
183 Days, by Sara Williamson and James Stuart, is a huge inspiration to me because playing it was a profound act of connecting to another person. And of course I have to mention Emily Care Boss’ Breaking the Ice – also a game experience where I felt very much in tune with the other player, and it was in a gentler, less intense, and more playful way. I really fell in love with those games, which I think put me in a certain design head space. Even the >2 player games I love have a dyadic focus in some way. Avery Alder’s A Place to Fuck Each Other is for 3 players, but the scenes are always between two characters, and the GM role gets passed around. Danielle Lewon’s Kagematsu can take up to 5 players, but every scene is an intense one-on-one with the GM (and the other players do not get bored, trust me.)
Also… there’s a practical aspect to 2-player gaming. Scheduling is hard. Not everyone you know is into roleplaying. A lot of adults organize themselves into intimate dyadic relationships. It helps to have some 2-player options on your shelf!
As a designer, how do you mechanically make two-player games interesting?
It’s easy! You’ve got two people to think about. They’re going to be focused on each other by default. Helping them be present to the scene and invested in what’s happening will just take giving them something that keeps their creative energy moving without being distracting. Remember that mechanics don’t produce great ideas; the players do that. The game itself is just a hamster wheel. It enables and allows running; it doesn’t have to provide an incentive because hamsters love running. And people love being creative! I’m oversimplifying by the way; if anyone else gave an answer like this I would complicate the heck out of it.
Oh, and you can prototype mechanics so rapidly in a 2-player game because you only need to ask one person for help!
Art by Jess Fink of a fallen block tower between a blue-translucent person and a dark skinned feminine person in a lab coat.
Is there a difference between designing for romantic relationships versus platonic or familial?
I would say that designing for romantic relationships isn’t a specific enough focus! The relationships in Star Crossed are almost always romantic, but sometimes they’re entirely sexual, and sometimes they can’t fit into any category I know. They are only united by the quality of compelling impossibility. I’m designing to produce desirable relationships that can’t be. So how do you make players want a relationship to work? Fortunately for me, you start by telling them it probably can’t.
If you’re trying to give players tools to generate interesting relationships, I would say drill down and get as specific as you can, or help them do so. Family? Vague. Parent and child? Ok. Distant parent and over-achieving child? Now you’re onto something. And even that can be made so much more detailed and interesting. You could make a game where one person plays the Distant Parent, and the other the Over-achieving Child. And it would be so replayable. Hm, that’s a good idea, actually.
An image from a playtest of Star Crossed of a tower in a precarious state, with someone in the background covering their face in excitement and anticipation.
How do you playtest a game like Star Crossed, or really any two-player game, and make sure it’s not just like those two specific people getting the good play out of it?
You test with a lot of different people, in a lot of different relationships to each other. For example, it was especially important to me that some folks on the ace/aro spectrum play and have a good time. Also: it was sweet to hear couples enjoying the game, but to me, a much greater test was putting it in front of total strangers. I played it with a complete stranger myself actually, at a con. It was fun. I was relieved.
I always talk about how game mechanics feel in design, not just about how they function. What are some mechanics you see in two-player games like these, and specifically Star Crossed, make players feel?
Well, I have to call out 183 Days for using a card that prompts extended eye contact. It’s so effective! Is closeness an emotion? Being relaxed, happy, and connecting those emotions to the person you are currently with–that’s what it does. And I think Star Crossed does the connecting part too, but in a more panicked “we’re in this together” kind of way. Which is great. I ask playtesters what they felt while playing; that’s often my first question. They usually mention excitement, trepidation, nervousness, joy–even though the stories sometimes end sadly, there’s quite an emotional journey to get there. Of course, I don’t have to ask about certain things. When I see players laughing, putting their hands over their mouths, even making little squeals of excitement! That’s when I know I’m nailing it.
Art by Jess Fink of an astronaut and a satyr playing with a block tower that is positioned on top of a spaceship pod.
Today I have an interview with Brian Van Slyke on his cooperative board game Good Dog, Bad Zombie, which sounds like a heckin’ good time – and is on Kickstarter for a few more days! Check out what Brian has to say about his game below. Brian shared some cute dog pictures, and I wanted to note that backer levels at $75 or more help with donations to One Tail at a Time, which is a no-kill all-breed dog rescue in Chicago area. Yay! Note: There are more images of the game on the Kickstarter page, I just felt some of them didn’t read well here, so I used pictures of Lupin (Brian’s dog) instead.
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A Dog player sheets, with an illustration of a brown dog with a white chest, detailing the dog’s stats and abilities.
Tell me a little about Good Dog, Bad Zombie. What excites you about it?
Good Dog, Bad Zombie [GDBZ] is a cooperative board game where players have to bark, lick, and sniff their way through the apocalypse to save the hoomans they love. Think Homeward Bound meets The Walking Dead.
The game has been on-and-off development for three years, and I just love that it drips dogginess. My favorite thing that has ever been said about it (and any game I’ve ever made, really) comes from a preview from Everything Board Games: “GDBZ is an immersive dog-mind experience. Every single detail is saturated with flavor. It wouldn’t really surprise me if it was designed by an actual dog, or maybe a kindly werewolf. I mean that in a good way.”
Really, that’s what we wanted – to create a game that was wholesome and also a little terrifying all at once. I love how I’ll hear players shout, “I’m going to lick you!” and “I found a hooman!” and “Woof, woof!” totally normally. This game really gets people in the mind of a dog.
So what do you know about dogs, and what do you know about zombies? How are they applied in GDBZ?
I know that I love dogs, and I know that dogs love us. Having a dog got me through one of the toughest times of my life.
Brian & his dog Lupin. Lupin is reddish brown with floppy ears, Brian is bearded and wearing a flannel shirt.
I’d always had dogs growing up, but after I graduated college, my girlfriend (and now wife) was afraid of dogs. She’d never had them growing up. Chalk it up to either annoyance or persistence, but after ten years of me begging for us to go look for a dog at a shelter, she finally she gave in. And after three days of living with us, she and our dog became best friends. In many ways, I became the third wheel in the relationship. But I’m not complaining.
I know it’s a cliche to say that dogs are humanity’s best friend, but I think it’s really true. Dogs understand us on a fundamental level that I’m not even sure we understand ourselves. In many ways, I think a lot of us prefer the company of many dogs than many humans for that reason. And that’s why I wanted to make a game about dogs being amazing.
In terms of zombies, I’ve always found zombie lore fascinating. I’m a huge scaredy-cat (pun intended), and I can’t deal with horror movies, but I’ve always made an exception for zombie movies and shows. However, one thing that I learned from a friend of mine many years back, is that zombies are often a projection of our fear of an uprising of the working class. He’s a professor that studies culture and has given lectures on zombies (cool job!). And that’s the reason in GDBZ we made the zombies look super professional, wearing business suits and giving off vibes of riches and wealth. We thought it was a fun way to spin the traditional narrative.
Lupin lying on his back Lupin is reddish brown with floppy ears.
What kind of dogs can players play in GDBZ, and are various dogs different in any way?
When we first launched Good Dog, Bad Zombie, there were only a few dogs you could play as – Lupin (based off my dog) the boxer/ridgeback mix, Waine the Alaskan mix, Captain Woofster the Great Dane, and Miss Fuzzy Ears. However, because of the success of the campaign, we’ve unlocked four additional dogs: Angelica the Corgi, Willow the St. Bernard, Gizmo the Boston Terrier, and Bandit the Dalmatian.
And yes, every dog is different! Both in real life as well as in Good Dog, Bad Zombie. In the game, each dog has the same basic set of abilities and actions. However, every dog has their own unique and powerful ability, which are triggered by playing “Good Doggo” cards. For instance, Lupin’s “Snuggle” ability allows players to restock on Energy Cards. Captain Woofster’s “Hunt” ability allows him to remove extra zombies from the board. Willow’s “Sniff the Air” ability allows her to peek at upcoming scent cards and plan around them.
We’re super happy that each time you play Good Dog, Bad Zombie, you can take on a different mix of characters (and breeds) and tackle the game in new ways!
Lupin with a blanket over his head. Lupin is reddish brown with floppy ears.
How do these doggie mechanics make such an accurate and immersive experience?
This was hugely important to us when we were designing GDBZ. We wanted the game to drip dogginess. Not just in its name, but in its spirit, its art, its mechanics, and even in terms of what people say while playing.
So, for instance, you’ll hear people shout “I’m going to lick myself!” often through each game. Everything you do in Good Dog, Bad Zombie is based around and named after a dog-like action. This really gets players into the spirit and mood of being a dog pack. So, for instance, even though it’s not a rule, you’ll often hear players burst into random bouts of howling after they rescue a human.
This game is all about being good dogs, and the love between humans and dogs. So in Good Dog, Bad Zombie – dogs don’t inherently hate zombies. They’ll often be trying to play with a zombie or chase it. It’s not until the zombie threatens a live human that dogs become protective. That’s something that we think makes GDBZ unique – it’s fun and playful, with a dash of horror, all wrapped up into a zombie game.
An image of the game board showing “Central Bark” and some tokens.
What’s your favorite part of the gameplay and fictional structure of GDBZ?
My favorite part of the gameplay of GDBZ is the cooperative aspect! As we say in the Kickstarter page, there’s no room for the lone wolf in GDBZ. Players really have to help each other and strategize together to rescue the humans and protect their pack. If a player is too low on Energy cards and a zombie startles them, you might have to move the Feral Track up (and that’s how you lose the game!). Often it takes two dogs working together to get a human home safely to Central Bark without being eaten by a zombie. This is really a game where it requires everyone to win together.
My favorite part of the fictional structure of GDBZ is how we were able to slightly tweak traditional zombie lore. So, for instance, in this game, the only thing that zombies are afraid of are dog barks. So whenever your dog barks, it’ll send a zombie running away from you – often off of a cliff! Also, in GDBZ, humans are helpless and kind of dumb – and they won’t survive the apocalypse without the aid of the brave, smart, loving doggos. I feel like we were able to take territory that’s been well-tread, but put a new, fun, funny, doggy spin on it.
Lupin with a big bone. Lupin is reddish brown with floppy ears.
I’m going to try to make this brief, but I wanted to express something that has been sitting with me a while, and that’s about what games we play and why we play them. This stemmed from discussion of Dungeons & Dragons, but it applies to many, many games and all types of players and GMs.
Why do you play RPGs?
I want you to ask yourself this question, dig down. Ask harder. Listen to your first response and dig deeper and ask harder.
Why do you play RPGs?
Now you have an answer, I would hope, that feels right. Now look at the games you play right now.
How do those games meet your reason?
How do they question your answer – are you sure you want to do that? Can you even do that?
Do all of the mechanics support your type of play?
Do any of the mechanics reject your type of play?
Do you play around any mechanics to enjoy play?
Do you ignore sections of the rulebook to play?
What mechanics do support your play, your reason for playing?
Are the games intended to play one way, while you play the other?
What about this game makes it valuable to you?
Is that valuable thing mechanically in the game, or is it something you’ve introduced?
From here, ask yourself about the awareness you have of games around you that you aren’t playing.
Do you know about other RPGs?
Do you know how to play them?
What games allow you to play comfortably without ignoring rules, if any?
Do any of them meet your reason?
Have you tried playing other games that meet your reason, if there are any?
I ask these questions because I want to see us play with purpose, and that purpose is play, an activity that is enjoyable and entertaining (even if that enjoyment is not gathered through “fun”). There are so many RPGs that it is just super unfortunate for people to be stuck playing a game that they aren’t enjoying, that isn’t meeting their needs, that doesn’t fit their reason, that questions them in an unproductive way. I want to see people play games that hit the right spot for them.
This comes to mind because people play around rules so much, and that shouldn’t be necessary! If you play a game and it feels like work, or it feels boring, or you feel exhausted afterwards in a bad way, ask yourself these questions. Take a deep breath, and consider your options. There are hundreds of RPGs out there! Some of them are free, and plenty of them can be learned easily if you look for simplicity, while others are crunchy and mechanics-heavy in ways that some people find delicious.
If the fiction doesn’t work, ask the world for more options. If the mechanics don’t work or seem extraneous or seem too minimal, ask the world for more options. The options are there. Don’t suffer in play. It isn’t fair to you, it isn’t fair to those you play with.
Why do you play RPGs?
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I had a great interview with the creators of Potlach: A Game about East Coast Salish Economics! The researchers and creators of Potlach, The N.D.N. Players, are Jeanette Bushnell, PhD; Jonathan S. Tomhave, PhD; and Tylor Prather. We talked about the origins of the game and the meanings that are held in the cards and language of the game. Check out the interview below!
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Picture of the Potlach cards on a table – lovely artwork!
Tell me a little about Potlach: A Card Game About Coast Salish Economics. What excites you about it?
Potlach: A Card Game About Coast Salish Economics is a strategic, educational card game based on indigenous philosophies. It is designed to meet K-12 educational standards for teaching about native history, economics, culture, and government. Potlatch was developed as a community effort with local elders and language experts. The game is written in both English and Lushootseed, an indigenous language of the Salish Sea region. Game mechanics are based on sharing resources to meet other players’ needs for food, materials, technology, and knowledge.
What excites me about our game is that as you play it, you get a shift in your thinking towards valuing sharing within a community rather than accumulating as an individual. Or, as one of our early game testers wrote, “A big change in thinking from other games. I started out thinking about what I was getting and by the end it was more important the way I was sharing.”
Players at a table playing Potlach with great enthusiasm!
What was the impetus for making Potlach into a game?
The impetus to make a game based on indigenous philosophy came after a couple years of analyzing games for our podcasts. For indigenous scholars like ourselves who study systemic oppressions (and live them), analyzing and playing game after game that reproduced these oppression got tedious. One aspect in particular was individual accumulation – a concept often associated with capitalism. So, one night, Tylor said he’d always wanted to develop a board game and we started working on one that used concepts and values from indigenous economic systems rather than those from capitalism. Eventually we decided on looking at the very specific system local to us (Salish Sea region) that redistributed wealth.
The word potlatch comes from Nuu-chah-nulth who live in what is now British Columbia, Canada. The word was altered via the commerce language knows as Chinook Jargon that was used throughout Washington and British Columbia after Europeans settled in the area. Potlach is not a Lushootseed word but has become commonly used to describe events associated with wealth distribution actions.
The “above waterfall” card with the number 3 in a primary color at each corner, and the card name in English and Lushootseed. The style is really easily understood, which I love.
How do the basic mechanics work?
The deck has two types of cards – Resource Cards and House Cards.
Each player has one House Card that indicates the size of their extended family dwelling. Historically, the largest known house was Old Man House at Suquamish, WA. (Link to press release from 2014 about this dwelling.) Our House Cards are sized as having 3, 4, 5, or 6 fires that indicate the amount of resource needs for the people in the house.
Every player is dealt six resource cards of various types and sizes. Players take turns Gifting their Resources to meet the house needs of other players.
With the cards representing resources that are being given gifts, how do players understand the meaning and importance of those concepts – is it through language, symbols, or how the cards can be used, or something else?
Primarily our game is about a sharing-based economic system so what players tend to notice the most is that the play moves them to strategizing ways to insure that every players has all their needs met rather than one player accumulating more of anything.
The game can actually be played without understanding the meaning and concepts of the various cards. The cards are all color-coded and numbered to facilitate play. That said, each card has a picture and the name of the item in both English and Lushootseed (the local indigenous language).
Based on our own experiences of attending potlatches (or giveaways) in Washington, Alaska, and British Columbia we developed four types of giftable resources. Then we talked to some local elders and language experts and finalized the types of resources as: food, gathered materials, crafted technologies, and teachings.
Ideally, players will look at and read the cards while playing. We are working on a Teacher’s Guide to facilitate more teaching about local resources. With the success of the Kickstarter Campaign, we will have some funds to make a podcast with a native Lushootseed speaker so players can hear what the Lushootseed words sound like.
The “clam” card with the number 4 in red at the corner, and the card name in English and Lushootseed.
What are the important parts of the gifting and, to me, ethical caring that are demonstrated in Potlach – to you and from your world perspective?
Our game is about an economic system that very pragmatically assures that all members of society respectfully have their needs met so that they can continue being active and valued participants. From our world perspective, in which all things are interconnected and impact each other in highly complex and nuanced ways, it would be illogical to do anything else. Keeping the system in balance is the ultimate goal.
Gifting is the word we use to represent the reciprocal distribution and redistribution of available resources. The societies that have used this system are highly complex and have many ancillary systems in place.
Tell me a little about New World Magischola House Rivalry. What excites you about it?
New World Magischola House Rivalry is our first foray into board/card games design and publishing. That’s both awesome and scary! When we decided two years ago to open a wizard school live roleplay experience in the United States, we realized that to do it the way we wanted to required us to write a whole new magical world that was specific to North America and its history. We wanted to be both respectful and inclusive of the many peoples and cultures — and magical traditions — of North America, and to also honor and engage thoughtfully with our fraught history of Colonialism. While we originally set out to design a larp, we ended up writing a world, and now we have an intellectual property that exists beyond the larp, with stories that can be told in many media, including board/card games, RPGs, books, and more.
So for me, I’m excited because we are opening up the world of the Magimundi and the experience of going to wizard school in it to a lot more people than those who are able to attend our 4-day signature wizard school events. They get to experience at the table some of the fun, whimsy, and magical mayhem of Magischola by taking courses, joining clubs, and using conjures to improve their progress or hinder a rival’s. They get a feel of navigating school because you have to pass your courses with a B or better to get credit, and you earn more points for completion the higher your grade is. It’s definitely a competitive game, since only one House can take the Trophy, but there are lots of opportunities for roleplay and fun engagement with your friends around the table.
There are two other things I’m pretty excited about regarding House Rivalry:
1. The deliberate design choices to be inclusive in the playable characters. Of the original 6 PCs, 2 are people of color and also have Hispanic names: Martín Spinoza and Soledad Reyes. We also designed Jax Slager to be deliberately agender or nonbinary, and we ensured our art showed different ages and body types or sizes. It is very important to us to not fall into the same sorts of fantasy art that we often see in posters, games, and comics. This is a diverse and inclusive world, and we want everyone to imagine themselves as being part of it. We have to do that through the fiction and the artwork. Of the five House founders of New World Magischola, there are two women of color (Tituba and Marie Laveau), one white male (Étienne Brûle), one white female (Virginia Dare) and one indigenous nonbinary (Calisaylá). We paid homage to the diverse peoples who form the history of North America: indigenous peoples, people from Africa & West Indies, British, French, and Spanish. All too often people have a tendency to over-simplify our history and our fictions, rather than showing the tensions and the multiplicities within it, and we wanted to embrace that instead. The Magimundi is for everyone, even though it’s not a utopia.
2. I’m excited because this game is designed for mixed groups of gamers. All-too-often we can get into conflicts by identifying as *either* a “gamer” or a “hard-core gamer” or a “casual gamer” or a “non-gamer.” We, as a gaming community, can gatekeep in these ways, subtly asking “are you one of us?” One of the ways we do this is by designing games that are more complex and have a lot of rules to master, or that take a long time to learn. Some gamers look down on casual games as not being challenging enough, and even make fun of these games and the people who play them. It can be difficult to prove your credibility as a gamer, and some gamers don’t want to take the time to include newer gamers to their gaming groups. House Rivalry is designed as a bridge game. It’s complex enough that the more hard-core gamers have something they can do and enjoy. There are multiple strategies and different tactics to manage your resources, choose your actions, and use the variable player powers of your character and House. However, the game is easy-to-learn, and there are lots of party game elements, especially in the Clubs. What this makes House Rivalry really good for are mixed groups of gamers: the hard core and the casual and the in-between. It’s a great game to get people together and to play when you don’t have the time to teach a complicated new system, but you want some strategy. It blends luck and strategy in a way that feels satisfying to all levels of gamers. For me, getting different groups of gamers of varying abilities and credibilities around the table is a great aspect of the game, and one I’m most proud of and excited about.
MORE MAGICAL GOODNESS AFTER THE CUT:
Tasty tasty board game bits.
What were the greatest challenges mechanically for making a themed game that is appealing for mixed groups?
The greatest challenge was finding the balance between being easy-to-learn, but also having depth and strategies that are not necessarily apparent to the casual gamer. We know that frequent gamers prefer strategy and meaningful choices, which should mean that if you play well, you will win. Casual gamers are more tolerant of luck and randomness in a game; too much “swing” and a hardcore gamer will not want to play. One of the things that our developer, Mike Young, did so well was apply math to the game, figuring out the “worth” of each action, and balancing the effects of cards so that when you took a calculated risk, you got a calculated reward. Another thing is the balance of the familiar and the unfamiliar. Everyone has been to school in their lives, so they have some idea of how it works. You take classes (only so many at a time) and you study to improve your grade, or do extra work to finish the course faster. So the actions of Enroll and Study are pretty intuitive, and easy to pick up even for young players. The third action, Conjure, is when you use some resources in your hand to your advantage. This is where the hardcore gamers love to evaluate the different resources they have, and calculate the effects of them based on their turns and time. More casual gamers might choose a Conjure just because they like the art, or because they want to say “take that” to a rival. Either way, because the game is carefully balanced, the effects are going to be similar. A good player will be able to prioritize and stack these resources to greater effect, but a new player can just throw some spells and make things happen.
We also designed the game with some party mechanics that each player has choice over playing. This is done with our Clubs, which were a new addition to Dylan’s game idea. About one-third of the Clubs include roleplaying party mechanics to earn (or lose!) House Points for the RP. These include singing while in Kokopelli’s Choir, whispering while in the secret society Obsidian Circle, and starting every utterance with “Wrong!” while you’re in Debate Club. Those who love this sort of thing enroll in those clubs and have a great time with it! Others have to catch them messing up, which is fun. If these active, party mechanics are not your jam, you’re not required to enroll in those clubs, and can instead get your club requirement through another club, such as Crossed Wands Club, where you manage your time and resources in a more traditional manner.
What we wanted was to hit the “sweet spot” where the casual gamers could learn to play quickly and have fun, and the hardcore gamers could see the layers and strategize toward victory at the same time. That means the game has to be seemingly simple and surprisingly complex, accessible as you learn, and then a later epiphany of “oh! I see how this works!” after playing a few times. The game introduces casual gamers to the concept of resource management and variable player powers, but moves along quickly with a series of rounds that include chance-based mechanics such as the Magischola deck, which keeps the hardcore strategists from necessarily running away with it in a mixed group. Definitely a tough balance, but our playtesting shows that we’ve done a pretty good job! (there’s a quote on our Father Geek review that sums this up rather nicely).
The school crest. They’ve got turtles, y’all.
How did you integrate the fiction and themes into the mechanics? Did you leave anything specific out that might feature in other formats?
Ha! Yes, the Magimundi is really deep, and there was no way to include all the elements into this game. One thing we had to leave out that I wish could have had more play is the presence of the House Founders of New World Magischola. It’s one of my favorite parts of the lore, and where the inclusive nature of the world and its engagement with North America’s Colonial past comes through. Otherwise, the game is 2-5 players because there are 5 houses of New World Magischola, and you play by House. We had to name the actions taken by the players to feel like something they would do in magic school. Enroll and Study are definitely school actions, but they’re also rather mundane. The third action was originally called “Dominate” but that didn’t feel very magical, and it also felt too punitive or hyper-competitive for the feel of the game. It took us a while to come up with Conjure, but that has the magical feel of casting spells or using the magical artifacts at your disposal, which either help you along magically, or hex your rivals. There are definitely some easter eggs on the cards for those who are more familiar with the world or the larp. Things like the Wendignado card, which is a reference to the tornado that hit our location during the inaugural larp — while students were in the woods casting elemental wind spells against a wendigo. Rather than call one of the cards “Sugar Rush,” it’s called “Hot Fudge in the Dining Hall,” which was a refrain in our third run as participants discovered the chocolatey goodness was available at every meal, and began to top everything with it. We had created a lot of creatures and lore, so the wizard courses are the actual NWM curriculum, as well as the clubs. The creatures expansion are all from our book, the Compendium of North American Cryptids & Magical Creatures.
A photo from the New World Magischola larp, the inspiration behind the board game.
What motivated designing a board/card game for Magischola – why move away from roleplaying?
We realized that a lot of people loved the world we created, the lore we had built, and the creatures we’d imagined. We own this work as an intellectual property, so leveraging it into multiple media makes sense. We’re already at work on a collaborative storytelling board game, also set in the Magimundi, but with completely different play. We definitely aren’t moving away from roleplaying as a company! This game has a roleplaying element, the next one does to an even greater extent, and we have two (maybe three!) RPG scenarios coming out in 2018! The world is rich with opportunity so we wanted to have the chance to tell stories within it in a variety of ways. We also realized that we have a lot of fans who can’t attend the premium larp experiences, but want to interact with the world. It’s definitely been a challenge! We’re newcomers to the board game industry and trying to gain a foothold. But it’s a huge market, if we can successfully break in! We want others to know about the Magimundi!
Larpers at a Magischola event repping their house. 🙂
Tell me about the role of competitiveness in New World Magischola: House Rivalry. What made you choose to make a competitive game? How does it further the goals that you have for the game, and the stories you want to tell?
This is a tough one! I consulted with Ben to answer this one, to talk through my feelings about it, because it’s complicated. One of the things people wanted from their magic school experience at New World Magischola larps, was the kind of fierce competition for House Points that they had seen in the Harry Potter books and films. While neither I nor my partner Ben Morrow are very competitive people (and our larp design is based around consent, cooperation, and relationships), our players were motivated by the competitive aspect of the First House Trophy. It drove a great deal of enthusiasm, creating an external motivation for taking an interest in their magic school classes and engaging in plot that could lead to a points reward. Also, getting recognition feels good, and the adrenaline rush that can come from healthy competition also feels good.
Dylan’s initial idea for the game, long before he met Ben and me, was to capture the feel of being at magic school, and helping your House win the day. When he made his pitch to us, we knew that the competitive play for points was a motivating force for many of our players, and we thought that offering that kind of feeling through a board game would make the game feel like the magic school experience that they had read about, and had been waiting to experience for quite some time. Since the object of the game is to win the First House Trophy, this game is not the most ideal generator of stories, but it does share our world. Players can look at Jax Slager’s card and wonder about their story, and Jax does have a fairly big story waiting to be discovered in some of the other media that’s forecoming. Similarly, our magical creatures book can give players more info about the Ghost Helicoprion when they see its tooth whorl on a Conjure card. Ultimately, we wanted to entertain, and we’re hoping that our game’s content and artwork invites the curious to find out more about our magical world, and the stories within it. The *next* game, already in development, is very collaborative and storytelling-based, akin to Mice & Mystics.
What is your house, what’s your favorite spell, and why? 🙂
Now, I’m the organizer and designer! I can’t have a favorite House! But I will say that I test into Calisaylá, with Laveau close behind. Favorite spell? Hmmm. A young person at Gen Con created and cast a “Fair Wages” spell. I think that one is pretty awesome. If I could cast “Fair Wages” and “Universal Health Care” on everyone, I would. Otherwise, I really like Pàgakwàn (PAH-guh-kwahn), which is from the Algonquin, and creates a protective shield against physical attacks.
Thank you SO much to Maury for this fantastic(al) interview! I’m excited to see more from Magischola, and hope you’ll all check out the Kickstarter today! Share this interview with your friends, too, so more people can read and enjoy. <3
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Hi all! Today I have an interview with Alex Hakobian on the new game Broadsword, which is currently on Kickstarter! It looks like a fun romp and I wanted to give you all the opportunity to check it out. See Alex’s responses to my questions below!
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Illustration by Gary Chalk (originally drawn for (IINM) Lone Wolf and licensed for reuse in Broadsword)
Tell me a little about Broadsword. What excites you about it?
Broadsword is a tactical adventure game in the format of a hybrid boardgame/RPG – a “roleplaying boardgame,” if you will. It’s about a group of valiant Heroes working together to defeat the evil forces of the Abyss.
What excites me about it most is the foundation on which it was conceived and built. Although Broadsword takes evident inspiration from many sources ranging different genre, its greatest asset is its direct bloodline to the classic 1989 Milton Bradley/Games Workshop boardgame HeroQuest.
Like many youngsters in those days, I have very fond memories of the game. It was, in fact, my personal gateway drug to D&D and similar roleplaying games later in life. It was only natural that some of that deeply engrained experience bleed though into Broadsword.
What are the aspects of HeroQuest you found valuable enough and important enough to bring forward into Broadsword?
In the most basic of terms, Broadsword is my love letter to HeroQuest. As such, it was important to me that the spirit of the game stayed intact. I wanted you to come away from a session feeling like, “Wow, that was just like the original. But better!” Thankfully, this was easily done in great part because my game originally started out as an expansion on the original, but quickly grew into its own entity.
Speaking specifically, I knew I had to keep some of the key boardgamey elements. Foremost among these were the custom pictographic dice, known as Combat Dice. I felt these were the backbone to the whole thing. Remove the dice and the entire thing falls apart, severing its legacy bloodline.
Going hand in hand with that was the tactical, grid-based combat. It simply wouldn’t be itself if I were to, for example, have it use narrative, storygame or “theater of the mind” type rules.
There are a couple other, much smaller assets or concepts brought forward, but the two mentioned above are far and away the ones that carry the most weight.
Illustration by Gary Chalk (originally drawn for (IINM) Lone Wolf and licensed for reuse in Broadsword)
How are you venturing out into different genres and sources, both mechanically and flavor-wise?
I’m not sure I would qualify it as “venturing out” into different genres and sources so much as experiencing them, internalizing them, then funneling it through into the game. For example, if you hear “Fireball,” “Lightning Bolt,” or better yet, “Magic Missile,” you are going to think “classic D&D Wizard spell.” So I consider: What makes them so great? Once I believe I’m come up with the essence of the answer in mechanical terms, I can then move forward with including it in some form in the game in a way that makes sense for the system, mechanics, and flavor.
Let’s take “Fireball” as an example. The Pyromancer class has a spell called “Explosion.” The flavor text reads, “A massive fireball explodes, doing great damage.” Mechanically, that translates to: “Any figure on one square you can see takes 2 Body Points of damage. All figures in the surrounding squares each take 1 Body Point of damage. Elite monsters defend the attack normally.”
Now, when compared to other systems where PCs or monsters will have Hit Points typically reaching double digits or beyond, a paltry 2 points of damage seems like nothing. But for Broadsword, that’s really quite tremendous. Even the beefiest classes in the game only top out around 8 Body Points. And that most monsters in the game generally only have half that. Seen in that light, “Explosion” can easily completely eliminate or severely damage a crowded room of monsters.
Getting back to the question at hand, however, I extend this same process to aspects of games from other genres and systems – video games, books, what have you.
Can you tell me a little about the classes in Broadsword and how they interact with the core mechanic and the game itself?
Sure. The game starts with a dozen different classes (with more being supplemented in the near future). In order to provide niche protection to keep the core theme of each class as unsullied as possible, I came up with a system of keywords that I applied to each piece of equipment. I then took each class and sussed out which keywords would make sense for that class to be restricted from using. This process quickly gave way to the need for categorization of the classes themselves, eventually ending with 3 categories of classes.
There are 5 Fighter classes (Berserker, Hunter, Paladin, Ranger, Warrior), who have the least keyword restrictions and can use the most types of gear. Each of the Fighter classes also have their own Class Ability, a talent unique to that class. 5 Caster classes (Aeromancer, Geomancer, Hydromancer, Necromancer, Pyromancer) have the highest restrictions on usable gear. (This is, of course, balanced by the fact that Casters have lots of spells.) And 2 Hybrid classes (Cleric, Druid), who dabble in both melee combat as well as a little magic usage, but they can’t use the very best weapons and armor, nor can they cast as many spells as often as their Caster counterparts.
Your choice of class determines what gear you start with (and by extension, how many Combat Dice you can attack and defend with), what your spell list looks like, and what types of items you are restricted from using. It also provides the baseline for your Body and Mind Points – which may be modified slightly by your choice of race.
What are the experiences and discoveries you have enjoyed most about designing Broadsword?
I found that, despite there being a number of different systems interacting with each other at any one time, the game remains incredibly simple to pick up and learn. This is good, because while I did indeed want to add some granularity and “crunch” on the RPG side of things, I also wanted to keep it streamlined, with a low barrier to entry.
Running the playtests were also a lot of fun, and I don’t believe the level and quality of fun I had ever really diminished through the process, even while testing some new mechanic I wasn’t sure of. It certainly helped that my playtesters were HeroQuest junkies themselves! They quickly learned the ins and outs of the game nearly as well as I did, so it was painless to run a half-baked idea by them before putting anything down on paper and see if it was an idea worth pursuing.
Illustration by David Lewis Johnson
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Thanks all for reading, and thanks to Alex for answering my questions! I hope you all will check out the Kickstarter for Broadsword and share this around in case anyone else might enjoy it!
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In a last minute burst, I have an interview with Jeff Tidball about the project he’s currently publishing via Kickstarter, The White Box! It’s an unusual concept and when I saw it, I had to ask about it! See what Jeff has to say below.
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Tell me a little about The White Box. What excites you about it?
The White Box is very simple: It’s a book of essays and a box of components. The essays are about how to design and produce tabletop games. The components are a very generic set of pieces — dice, cubes, meeples, etc. — designed to get people started experimenting and prototyping right away.
I really, really like making games. For me, this has also become an enthusiasm for talking about the process of making games, which has lead to more and more teaching folks how to make games. The White Box is a very efficient way to spread that to a large number of people, over (what will hopefully be) a long period of time, if we can establish an evergreen place for it in retail stores.
Something I think we’ve seen more and more, in the last 10–20 years, are increasing non-formal educational opportunities for people who just want to learn to do some particular creative thing. They don’t want a degree, they just really like the idea of learning how to do a thing, and I think they also like thinking of themselves as people who could do that thing. We’ve seen an explosion of classes (in person, online, at retreats, during conventions…) about writing novels, composing screenplays, making documentaries, and — yes — designing games.
One of the non-obvious upsides of this interest in learning is that there’s a chance to do this teaching as something other than philanthropy. Am I going to get rich publishing The White Box? No. Neither is Jeremy (its author), or Gameplaywright, or Atlas Games. But it can become a self-sustaining thing. So, in addition to liking to talk and teach about gaming, I’m excited at having (with this Kickstarter’s apparent success) worked my way into a format for talking and teaching that’s financially sustainable,
What kind of components are inside The White Box, and why?
The stuff inside The White Box is a set of relatively common board game components: cubes, meeples, dice, and punchboard counters. The cubes, meeples, and dice come in a variety of colors. The base was four colors; our 1,000-backer stretch goal added a fifth color. We’ll add a sixth if we hit 100 retail backers.
The one unusual thing we’ve got in that vein of componentry is a giant wooden cube in each color. They look great in the pictures, and I’m interested in seeing what they inspire in designers.
What we *don’t* have is also interesting. Earlier versions of the parts list included blank cards, and a blank game board. We had to cut down the list to make the box more affordable, because we were really invested in the idea that The White Box should be a no-brainer purchase for someone interested in design. We really didn’t want to lose them over price. In my design experience, cards are much better created on a printer (cut a sheet of office paper into nine pieces) and then sleeved. We can’t compete with the cheapness of that (and the reusability of the sleeves), and we’d be providing something worse than that anyway. So they went.
The board was both especially expensive, and not large enough to accommodate what I thought would be relatively standard design uses. And large sheets of paper aren’t hard to come by, so again, it didn’t seem like a huge loss to lose it from the roster.
What was the biggest inspiration for The White Box and its specific components as a product, beyond seeing a need?
Jeremy Holcomb, the creator of The White Box, seems like he was most inspired by both his teaching (he’s a professor at DigiPen) and the same questions recurring in convention panels. The essays in the book are calibrated to answers those perennial questions. But I suppose those are both in the category of “seeing a need.”
I can’t speak for Jeremy as to deeper inspirations, but I have done a fair amount of teaching — formal and informal — and mentoring in the area of game design, and I’m inspired by a love of creative pursuits generally, and game design in particular. I also love the entrepreneurial endeavor of bringing a game to market, and so teaching people how to make games that can succeed in a greater marketplace games is something that I dig, and that I think is valuable.
This is such an unusual product, and sounds like a challenge to prepare for a larger audience. How have you tested The White Box?
Jeremy has literally tested the component mix by collecting samples and dumping them out on a table with friends to see what they can make. He’s also passed the book’s essays around to students and colleagues in order to garner feedback and improve their content.
For my part as a publisher, I spent a lot of time worrying about whether the marketplace had any interest in a product like this, and trying to figure out how I could test the general idea to get a deeper sense before launching a Kickstarter that might fail.
Those concerns seem ridiculous now that we’ve raised five times our funding goal halfway through the campaign, but it’s impossible to know what will succeed and what will fail beforehand, which is *nervewracking*.
My publisher’s “testing” consisted of creating a graphic that looked as much as possible like the contents we were proposing — it’s more or less the same graphic we’re using as the Kickstarter feature image — and showing it to both designers and retailers. I asked things like, “Do you need one of these?” “Would you buy one?” “How much would you pay for one?” “Could you sell this?” “How much would be too much?” That’s the process that provided as much validation as we could get (without doing it for real), and led us to a $29.95 price point, as opposed to something higher.
What benefits do you think educational game products bring, particularly The White Box? Are there skills (ability to complete tasks), or traits (behaviors and trends in ideals)?
I definitely think you can learn things from other people, whether that learning takes the form of reading their written works, listening to their lectures, or talking with them in a conversation.
But I don’t think you can get all the way to an *understanding* that way, and (obviously) learning in that way doesn’t allow you to directly product anything. (Other, maybe, than notes.) To arrive at a deeper understanding, and to produce something, you have to sit down and make. And usually, you have to make iterations. Drafts of a novel, prototypes of a game, or even individual performances (or rehearsals) of a piece of music. And of course, in a creative pursuit like game design, to produce a thing is also the goal. So you deepen your understanding in the act of making.
But then you wind up going back to learning, as you hit walls, or as you seek feedback on the last thing you made. So, I think it’s cyclic. Learn, make, learn more, make again.
Circling back to The White Box, I’ll say this: I think the best thing a teacher — be it a person, a book, or whatever — can do is to encourage the making phase. If the teacher sees the learning as an end in and of itself, I think the whole enterprise is a little sad and incomplete. So part of the crucial thing about The White Box is that *the things inside of it encourage the making*. It’s not just a book of advice; it’s also a call to action. And I think those two things are both critical to the endeavor.
The White Box teaches skills, probably, except insofar as it takes excitement and investment to begin the process of learning (to trigger the process of making), and the way the essays approach game design — with enthusiasm and love — will hopefully engender those traits necessary to invest the time to learn the skills.
— Thanks so much to Jeff for answering my questions! The White Box only has a couple more days on Kickstarter, so if you want in, check it out now!
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