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 record...
Jan 23, 2022•23 min
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 o...
Dec 12, 2021•1 hr 1 min
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.
Dec 05, 2021•6 min
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 game...
Nov 28, 2021•58 min
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?
Nov 21, 2021•6 min
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 ...
Nov 14, 2021•56 min
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-w...
Nov 07, 2021•15 min
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 21m16...
Oct 31, 2021•1 hr 1 min
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!
Oct 24, 2021•5 min
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...
Oct 17, 2021•1 hr 6 min
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 .
Oct 10, 2021•7 min
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: "FF...
Oct 03, 2021•55 min
Geoff continues his dive into the probability of Pop-O-Matic dice, this time discussing how experiment results can be misrepresented through P-Hacking.
Sep 26, 2021•9 min
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 disabl...
Sep 19, 2021•1 hr
Scott takes us through the history of Quirkle, the smash hit game from Susan McKinley Ross.
Sep 12, 2021•6 min
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 fil...
Sep 05, 2021•58 min
Geoff harnesses all his mathematical techniques to answer a burning question: are Pop-O-Matic dice truly random?
Aug 29, 2021•7 min
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 (w...
Aug 22, 2021•41 min
Scott takes us through the history of Afrikan tähti ("Star of Africa"), a legendary Finnish game first released in 1949. Foreigners in Finland article One version of the game Another version of the game An interview with the publisher Related Ludology episodes: Ludology 197 - Empires Up in Arms (discussing colonialism in board games with Mikael Jakobsson and Rick Eberhardt of the MIT Game Lab) Ludology 247 - Orc-Kay Computer (discussing cultural appropriation in games with cultural consultant Ja...
Aug 15, 2021•7 min
Erica and Scott welcome game design legend Mike Elliott, creator of innumerable Magic: the Gathering and Pokémon cards, designer of Thunderstone, and co-designer of Quarriors and the Dice Masters series. And of course, of DuelMaster and Charm Angel, which were both huge hits in Japan. Mike also runs the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design Hall of Fame, commemorating the work of legendary tabletop game designers. SHOW NOTES 1m22s: NeoPets , Hecatomb , The Harry Potter Trading Card Game ...
Aug 08, 2021•1 hr 17 min
In this special GameTek, Geoff and Gil sit down with Justin Bergeron of ARC Global Logistics to discuss the global shipping snarl that's delaying so many board games (among other goods). How is it affecting the industry, what's behind it, and how long could it possibly last? You can reach Justin via email . Here's the web site for ARC Global's parent company, Logimark Group .
Aug 01, 2021•40 min
Gil and Sen are delighted to have RPG/story game designer Avery Alder on the show to talk about her games that show how communities deal with upheaval and change. We also discuss the change that RPGs saw in the past 20 years, going from the expectation of custom, bespoke systems for each game to the consensual adoption of systems like Powered by the Apocalypse and Forged in the Dark. SHOW NOTES 02m39s: The Forge is no longer active, but you can read its archives here . Also, My Life With Master ...
Jul 25, 2021•1 hr 14 min
Scott shambles through the history of the beer-and-pretzels game Zombies!!! He runs us through its various iterations, tells us what made it stand out from other games at the time, and discloses the personal impact the game and its designers had on him. BIBLIOGRAPHY OF A BOARD GAME (Audio) An interview with Todd Breitenstein The Zombies!!! 20th anniversary Kickstarter (Text) Another interview with Todd Breitenstein on the digital version of the game Todd passed away in 2013 from cancer....
Jul 18, 2021•12 min
Erica, Gil, Scott, and Sen have a roundtable discussion about player counts. We go through each of the common player counts, as well as a few uncommon counts, and discuss what's special about designing for them. SHOW NOTES 0m39s: Our thoughts about and general strategies for designing games at different player counts. 5m42s: 2-player games 9m20s: We chatted with Matt Wolfe about decision scales on Ludology 157 - Come Scale Away . 13m08s: Inhuman Conditions 13m59s: Belfort 16m24s: Alien: Fate of ...
Jul 11, 2021•1 hr 21 min
Geoff discusses the knitting community, how some knitters make the leap from hobby into entrepreneurship, and how research has shown the one thing that many of these self-employed knitters have in common. What can board gamers learn from this?
Jul 04, 2021•6 min
Erica and Scott welcome graphic designer, production superhero, and prototype craft wizard Lindsay Daviau to the show. We talk about her experience at Hasbro making (among many other things) fake games for fake stores. We also bring up her favorite games that she worked on, and her job at Restoration Games (with her husband Rob, who you may have heard of), where she works on games like Unmatched , Fireball Island , Stop Thief , and the soon-to-come Return to Dark Tower . SHOW NOTES 04m10s: This ...
Jun 27, 2021•54 min
Scott rampages through the history of Richard Garfield's hit game King of Tokyo. How was this game made, and what did its standalone sequel King of New York add to it? BIBLIOGRAPHY OF A BOARD GAME https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamepodcastepisode/76209/podcast-20-king-tokyo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afu516A828k https://www.iello.com/co.uk/news/monster-of-the-week-game-is-over-all-about-king-of-verse https://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/116703/interview-richard-garfield-designer-magic-gatheri...
Jun 20, 2021•13 min
Gil and Sen welcome Calvin Wong Tze Loon 黃子倫 to the show to discuss narrative in games. How can we improve a game's narrative through its mechanisms, its components, and even its box size? SHOW NOTES 0m46s: Calvin played P.T. Goh in the film Crazy Rich Asians . Also, info on Twilight Imperium's expansion Prophecy of Kings that Calvin did some writing for, and forthcoming RPG Embers of the Imperium . 3m16s: "Mayfair" in UK-based editions of Monopoly is equivalent to "Boardwalk" in US-based editio...
Jun 13, 2021•1 hr 13 min
Geoff muses on the combination of two of his favorite topics: loss aversion and the lottery. Why do more people buy lottery tickets when the odds of winning are lower? How does that affect the payout? And what is the effect of a lottery win on a person's life?
Jun 06, 2021•6 min
Erica and Scott welcome Ryan and Malorie Laukat, the couple behind Red Raven Games. Ryan is known as the designer and illustrator for games like Eight Minute Empire , Above and Below , Near and Far , Islebound , Empires of the Void , Artifacts Inc. , Megaland , and the forthcoming Now or Never . They are also the subject of an upcoming documentary, Crafting Arzium . Ryan is often seen as the sole force behind Red Raven Games, but Malorie and the whole Laukat family do a lot of work behind the sc...
May 30, 2021•1 hr 10 min
