Ludology

Erica and Sen talk to Matt Gubser, modeler and comedian, about his work in the tabletop industry and the shift from traditional to digital modeling techniques.

In this special guest episode, Sen and Erica welcome Sarah Shipp to talk about how designers can raise the stakes to strengthen a game's hook, taking it from bland to bold!

Sen and Erica welcome Evan Derrick from Van Ryder Games to discuss the past, present, and future of Final Girl - a highly expandable, solo, horror boardgame co-designed by Evan and AJ Porfirio. Evan talks about the game from inception to evolution and gives us some insight into what makes it tick. 

Steph Campbell brings their segment, TTRPGKids, to Ludology. This week, they breakdown their TTRPG "Photosynthians" that they made as a resource to demonstrate how to teach science with TTRPGs and how to integrate lesson plans and other classroom basics into the game itself for designers.  The game is free and part of the classroom-ready toolkit that Steph made and is available here: https://ttrpgkids.itch.io/the-classroom-ready-ttrpg-toolkit (name your price)  

Sen and Erica welcome guest host Sarah Shipp to her segment, Thinking Beyond Mechanisms. In this installment, Sarah looks at designing games that ask players to be creative. Sarah examines some of the common pitfalls you can encounter when you ask players create content for the game and discusses how to avoid them.

Sen and Erica welcome Professor Camilla Zamboni to discuss "Roll for Learning", a book she co-edited that contains 51 microRPGs that are intended for use in K-12+ classrooms in fields as diverse as STEM, SEL, and the Humanities.  You can download the pdf of the book for free here: https://playstorypress.org/books/roll-for-learning/  

In this episode of TTRPGKids, Steph Campbell provides excellent ideas on how to use TTRPGs to teach STEM subjects in the classroom and at home.

In this Host Roundtable, Erica and Sen talk about the importance of understanding who the audience for a specific game is during the design, development, and publication process. They discuss some of the ways in which they determine who the audience is and how knowing the key characteristics and desires of the demographic can help them make a game that satisfies the core consumer by design.

On this month's installment of Thinking Beyond Mechanisms, special guest host, Sarah Shipp, dives into the mechanism of bluffing and gives her thoughts on why it's more that merely mechanical.

Sen speaks with Nick Yu while their families are on vacation together in the Berkshires - so a very smol con, indeed. They discuss an IP they are working on with the creator called Tankhead by Emerson Tung (www.emersontung.com/tankhead). The two discuss their journey in designing a series of games for potential self-publication along with a plan to document their progress in a short form monthly podcast series.