Ludology

Geoff uses an interesting bag-building example to discuss how a mechanism that is designed to be fair and equitable to all colors in the bag winds up favoring a single color over time. This example has incredible significance to our hobby, and our world. You can reach out to Geoff via Twitter or email (geoff@ludology.net).

Emma and Gil welcome Banana Chan: game writer, larp/RPG designer, board game publisher, horror movie buff, and pop-up museum aficionado. We talk about writing for all kinds of games, how game mechanisms support intense experiences in larp and RPG, the effects of emancipatory bleed, and the effect of moving roleplay online. Content warning: we discuss games with intense themes, like human sacrifice. 4m29s: The Spire RPG  5m59s: The Circle is a reality show in which contestants are isolated in their homes and can only communicate with others via a text-based app. They're free to adopt any persona they wish. You can watch the first episode of the American reboot here. 6m27s: Pork roll vs. Taylor ham (two names for the same kind of processed meat) is a long-running debate in the Garden State.  7m01s: Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit, a legendary play with a classic twist. 9m03s: The RPGs This Discord Has Ghosts In It and Long Time Listener, Last Time Caller  10m06s: For those of you just joining Ludology, welcome, and we just covered safety tools in Ludology 227 - Respect the X. 11m27s: To make it clear, bleed is a general term to describe a phenomenon (occurring mainly in larp) where a character's emotions and identity start mixing into a player's emotions and identity, and vice versa. It can be extremely intense, and larps usually feature necessary wrap-up sessions where players can talk out feelings that the game brought up. Here is an article with a couple of excellent examples of bleed. Jonaya Kemper, who Banana mentions, has written about emancipatory bleed here. Read more about Kemper and her work here. 11m59s: Here's Albert Kong's tweet about emancipatory bleed. 12m21s: More info about the Baphomet larp. 17m29s: Diplomacy is a game that's long-established for challenging friendships. 18m41s: Banana's new RPG, Jiangshi: Blood in the Banquet Hall, co-designed with Sen-Foong Lim 22m44s: Warp's Edge 24m51s: Angelus Morningstar has a good write-up on cultural appropriation in board games here. (Also, when Gil says "I wish this is something more board games would do," he means "hire cultural sensitivity readers.") 29m07s: They're Onto Me. The Golden Cobra Challenge is a contest for freeform larp.  31m06s: Dads on Mowers, a module for the RPG Kids on Bikes. 31m57s: Cobwebs RPG. 32m19s: Alice is Missing RPG. 32m37s: Banana is talking about an episode of the TV series Masters of Horror. This particular episode (which Gil and Emma will never watch) is called "John Carpenter's Cigarette Burns."  33m53s: Betrayal at Mystery Mansion is a re-implementation of Betrayal at House on the Hill, but with a Scooby-Doo theme. 35m58s: As We Know It. 37m32s: Roll20 is a website that facilitates online RPG play. Discord is an online text/voice chat program for gamers. 38m48s: By "corpse," Gil is referring to the surrealist writing exercise Exquisite Corpse. 41m39s: Banana's dinner party films: The Invitation, Get Out, Coherence. She also mentions Midsommar. 42m28s: Here's the article Gil mentions that describes the benefits of experiencing a horror movie entirely from its Wikipedia page. 43m02s: Here's Avery Alder's body horror RPG, Abnormal. 44m08s: The Park Avenue Armory, one of Gil's favorite places in NYC. Banana discusses The Funhouse in Toronto, which is now closed. 46m05s: The mangaka Junji Ito. 46m58s: Battle of the Boy Bands, a game by Clio Yun-su Davis and Vicci Ho that Banana published under the Game and a Curry label. Enjoy some music from Stray Kids and BTS. 50m05s: Night Witches, by Jason Morningstar. We had Jason on in Ludology 161 What's the Story, Morning Glory? Banana also mentions his game Juggernaut. 50m52s: Avery Alder's Monsterhearts. 51m25s: Here's the moment in the video Gil was mentioning. Alex Roberts, who plays the ghost, is the designer of the award-winning RPG Star Crossed. 52m13: Gil is referring to Ludology 226 - Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo, in which Dr. Mary Flanagan discussed how psychological distance helps people better associate with a subject. 53m39s: If you're interested in Goat-2-Meeting, here are the details. 56m44s: The designers Banana mentions are: Jabari Weathers, Jonaya Kemper (mentioned above), and Fertessa Allyse.

Scott takes us through the twisted history of the classic game Twister. How did it overcome its risqué premise to become a perennial favorite? Bibliography of a Board Game: Video - Twister was created 55 years ago Video - Ren Guyer: The Man Who Invented Twister & Nerf Video - Original Twister Commercial  Video - Twister Mania for Xbox 360 review Text - Ren Guyer's story of Twister from his official website Text - Twister on Board Games Galore Fandom Wikia Text - Patent information on Twister Book - Timeless Toys: Classic Toys and the Playmakers Who Created Them, by Tim Walsh 7m46: One interesting note is that Shuffle Twister's gameplay is similar to Bez Shahriari's independently-released In a Bind, but Shahriari released her game in 2015, one year earlier. In a Bind went on to be re-implemented by French publisher Gigamic as Yogi. 9m19s: To clarify, Monkey Auto Races wasn't #1 on the BGG Hot Games; as an April Fool's joke in 2007, a bunch of BGG users gave the game a high rating, and it was actually the #1 game on BGG for one day. 

Emma and Gil moderate a roundtable on safety tools in games, with guests Kienna Shaw and Lauren Bryant-Monk (creators of the TTRPG Safety Toolkit) and John Stavropoulos (creator of the X-Card).  We discuss consent and safety in games, starting with tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs), but expanding to all sorts of games. How can safety tools help in games, and in what ways do they help? Content Warning: this episode mentions occurences of consent violations, domestic abuse, and sexual assault. SHOW NOTES 23m25s - The D&D Adventurers League is an official ongoing play, organized by D&D's publisher Wizards of the Coast. 32m29s - Kids on Bikes, by Jon Gilmour and Doug Levandowski. 33m17s - Avonelle Wing is a longtime RPG/LARP player, convention organizer, and advocate for equality and justice for games. She's one of Gil's idols. 34m11s - Kate Bullock is a TTRPG designer, advocate, writer, and president of the Indie Game Developer Network. 39m58s - Nordic LARP is a form of LARP with minimal rules and GMing, but heavy atmosphere and story. Compare it to demonstrative (boffer) LARPs, which tend to be more fantastical and have NPCs and combat rules. 43m20s - An otome game is a story-based video game that generally has the player control a female character, to try to develop a relationship with one of the game's male characters. 46m10s - Here's an especially horrifying story about an awful GM that came out of UKGE last year (BIG CONTENT WARNING for sexual assault in that link). Note that this is one story, but there are many more that never get this much coverage. The story about the public live stream that went wrong is here, and carries a similar content warning. 52m07s - You didn't think we were going to go a full episode without bringing board games into it, did you? :) 1h00m26s - Self-Promotion: you can find more info about Gil's Check-In Cards here. 1h00m57s - Twilight Imperium being a 6 hour game about galactic conquest. 1h06m58s - Psychologist Susan Silk and her friend Barry Goldman wrote about this in the LA times. They called it "Ring Theory," and in it, they discuss how you can comfort a grieving person while not burdening them with your own pain, by placing them in the "center" of the crisis and being mindful of where you are relative to others in that ring. 1h10m03s - Restorative justice is a methodology that has the victim and offender meeting (often with community members), with the expectation that the two parties will come to a consensus on what happened, how much damage was caused, and how the damage can be repaired. This gives the offender a clear path to righting the wrong, and empowers the victim in the process of seeking justice.

Geoff discusses the phenomenon of counterfeiting in game production. How prevalent it it, and how badly does it affect game publishers? Here's the ICV2 interview he mentions.

Emma and Gil welcome Dr. Mary Flanagan, designer of Monarch, Visitor in Blackwood Grove, Buffalo, Awkward Moment, and plethora of other games in a myriad of styles and platforms, from party to strategy on digital in tabletop. Dr. Flanagan is also an artist, having exhibited works (many game-related) all around the world, and teaches game design at Dartmouth, who also hosts her game design and research lab, Tiltfactor. We discuss designing games from the perspectives of fun and meaningful change. How does one make a transformative game that players actually enjoy, but that is still effective at building empathy and fighting prejudice? CONTENT WARNING: There is a brief mention of racial prejudice, and sexual assault in literary works towards the end of the episode. SHOW NOTES 0m21s: "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" is a grammatically correct sentence. This video explains it, and other lexically ambiguous sentences. 1m21s: Tiltfactor, Dr. Flanagan's game design and research lab at Dartmouth  1m57s: If you're reading this, congratulations, you're reading the show notes! 3m58s: Professor Scott Rogers covered The Game of The Goose in Biography of a Board Game 221.5. 4m27s: For more information on these French Revolution-themed versions of Game of the Goose (Jeu de la Revolution Francaise), check out page 17 of this PDF. It's also interesting to note that Robespierre attempted to install a new state religion for France during the Revolution, the Cult of the Supreme Being (Culte de l'Être suprême); it's entirely possible that its dogma was reinforced through things like board games. Perhaps it also helped with the bizarre decimal-time-based calendar that Robespierre couldn't get to stick, but that still frustrates historians to this day. 5m30s: More information about Dr. Flanagan's book, Critical Play. 6m39s: The Landlord's Game by Lizzie Magie is the game that Monopoly was based on. 7m51s: September 12: A Toy World is a game where a player is trying to kill terrorists by firing missiles at a village. But every terrorist you kill creates more terrorists, as the locals get angrier at your actions. Soon, the village is gone and you are surrounded by terrorists. There is no way to win the game through shooting. 7m56s: Paolo Pedercini also makes commentary games. (Note that this link contains adult content.) Jump to the McDonald's Videogame here.  8m13s: More info on Profit Seed. 8m33s: More info on Layoff. 9m40s: More info on Pox: Save the Puppies. 10m32s: "Designing Games to Foster Empathy," the paper Dr. Flanagan wrote with Jonathan Belman. 15m04s: More info about psychological distance. 16m16s: Gil is referring to Ludology 213.5 - The Incan Gold Experiment, run by Dr. Stephen Blessing and research assistant Elena Sakosky. (Gil refers to the game from the original European release's name, Diamant, but it was released in English as Incan Gold.) 19m51s: For a longer discussion on what "fun" means in a game, and on a deeper level, how games create meaning, check out Ludology 201 - Are We Having Fun Yet? 21m20s: More info on the party game Buffalo. 24m14s: More info on social identity complexity 26m13s: More info on the party game Awkward Moment. 31m10s: For more discussion on board games and colonialism, check out Ludology Episode 197 - Empires Up in Arms. For more information about the effects of "terra nullius" in board games, check out this article from Nancy Foasberg. 32m26s: "Failed Games: Lessons Learned from Promising but Problematic Game Prototypes in Designing for Diversity," by Dr. Flanagan, Max Seidman, and Geoff Kaufman. 34m15s: Dr. Lawrence Summers, president of Harvard University, has suggested that biological differences could explain why there were fewer women in science.  36m18s: More info about Blokus. 39m39s: More info on the strategy game Monarch. 40m04s: Dr. Flanagan's book (with co-author Helen Nissenbaum) Values at Play. 40m18s: Here are some articles on Will Wright and Chris Trottier. 45m12s: More info on This War of Mine: The Board Game and Freedom: The Underground Railroad. 49m05s: More info on Dr. Flanagan's art, including giantJoystick. 50m40s: Gabriel Orozco's Horses Running Endlessly. 51m48s: Dr. Flanagan's paper, with Sukdith Punjasthitkul and Geoff Kaufman, on "Social Loafing." 54m53s: The article in question is "The Mechanical Muse," published in The New Yorker on January 7, 2020. 56m28s: Here's an article in Wired on the paper in question, in which large collections of photos used to train image-recognition software - including one used by Google and Microsoft - were found to amplify exisiting biases.  57m15s: In 2015, Google apologized for their facial recognition software mislabeling Black people as "gorillas."  57m42s: More info about Reload: Rethinking Women and Cyberculture. 58m49s: The story here is "No Woman Born," by C.L. Moore. 1h03m31s: The show will be called "Gameplay: Video Game Culture," at the CCCB in Barcelona, Spain.  1h04m07s: "Max" is Max Seidman, game designer at Resonym and frequent collaborator with Dr. Flanagan. 1h05m41s: We've covered the lightweight interactive fiction platform Twine before on the show, most notably on Ludology 217 - What IF? 

Join Scott as he recounts the history of the game that blurred the line between a game and a toy: Mousetrap.  Bibliography of a Board Game for Mouse Trap It’s All a Game by Tristan Donovan A World Without Reality: Inside Marvin Glass’s Toy Vault by Bill Paxton Mental Floss – Mouse Trap Game Facts Chicago Tribune – Toying with Success Best Play – History of Mouse Trap: Murder, Playboys and Plagiarism Google Patents Rube Goldberg.com Smithsonian Mag – Teaching physics with a massive game of mouse trap

Today, we put Emma in the spotlight to find out what went into designing her newest game, Abandon All Artichokes, how many cards she actually designed for it, and how the game was almost derailed by an Infinite Potato Problem. SHOW NOTES 5m44s: Magic: The Gathering and the marvelous deckbuilding video game Slay the Spire. Also check out Ludology 198 - Inspired, featuring Slay the Spire's co-designer Anthony Giovannetti. 6m00s: Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing, two video games where the player starts in a remote area with very little in the way of equipment, and ends up building a small town. 7m22s: If you want to check out more deck-wreckers, try Xenon Profiteer (one of Gil's personal favorite games), or Fine Sand. 8m39s: Don't let the bean theme throw you off. Bohnanza is one of the best trading games you'll find. 9m15s: Bonnie Pang did the wonderful art for Artichokes. 9m43s: Sushi Go, by Phil Walker-Harding and also published by Gamewright, is an excellent light drafting game. It was good enough to spawn a family of light, charming drafting games.  Phil has mentioned in passing that Sushi Go took many, many tries to get right. Another example of how hard it is to make a good, light game! 11m16s: Emma mentions some other Gamewright titles that fit a similar mold: Go Nuts for Donuts and Qwixx. 15m22s: Emma casually references Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey here. 26m29s: Seth Jaffee's article on balancing game elements and "finding the unit" is still immensely valuable to game designers everywhere. 31m59s: Cardboard Edison's publisher directory is an invaluable resource to game designers looking for a publisher for their prototypes. 48m44s: The incredibly adorable Abandon All Artichokes trailer  and its accompanying how-to-play video.  49m18s: We'll post a link to the design diary in the Ludology forums as soon as it goes online! 55m16s: Emma's first episode. 56m43s: Dominion, the game that popularized deckbuilding as an in-game mechanism.

Geoff ruminates on the limitations of using AI to balance games. Why can't we use machine learning to fully balance a game experience, and finally make a game that everyone on BGG will find perfectly fair on the first play? SHOW NOTES 1m17s: For more on this subject, check out our two GameTek episodes on AlphaGo : GameTek Classic 218.5 Alpha Zero, and GameTek Classic 222.5 Alpha Zero, Part 2. 2m00s: Geoff's game The Expanse. 5m29s: The fantastic trading game Sidereal Confluence (which will soon have a new edition!) 6m18s: League of Legends has grappled for a long time with how to balance their champions for players of all skill levels. Here's their latest approach on how they're trying to do it.

Emma and Gil sit down with Chris Rowlands of Funko Games to discuss the design of IP-based games, and what it's like to design as part of a group collective. SHOW NOTES 0m00s: Playtest safely online with Gil and Emma! 4m11s: Mox Boarding House is one of the premier board game stores in Seattle. (Here's hoping they can stick around until everything is able to reopen!) 12m21s: The Frosthaven Kickstarter project. 16m45s: Personal plug: Abandon All Artichokes is Emma's newest game. 19m47s: Power Grid is the #36th ranked game on BGG. (Rankings are not absolute, objective measures of quality, of course, but still. It's a big game.) 24m01s: Beth Hawley was responsible for the amazing art in Chris' game Under My Bed. 27m18s: Disney Villainous, in which each player is a Disney villain with unique special powers, is one of their more well-known titles. 29m05s: The party game Yeah Nope. 30m52s: Funkoverse, the tactical minis game using modified Funko figurines. 32m33s: All of "Prospero Hall's" credited games on BGG. 34m04s: The games Horrified and Jaws. 38m17s: Prospero Hall's website.  43m28s: The "tracer" scene from Kevin Smith's Chasing Amy.  (Explicit language warning) 50m31s: Personal plug: Avowel is currently available on Android, and coming to iOS soon! 54m10s: The game Jurassic Park: Danger. 1h02m35s: Paper Girls and Manifest Destiny  1h03m26s: Sea of Thieves  1h03m48s: Infocom's original help guide entry to the horrible and notorious Babel Fish puzzle in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy video game, written by Douglas Adams himself, is an absolute wonder to read. Keep clicking "Next Answer." Favorite quote on step 19 of the hint: "At this point, brave men have been known to break down and cry."  1h05m11s: Building the Game, a podcast on game design. 1h06m34s: Some articles about wrestling's current audience-less format.  1h12m04s: Our episode on ludonarrative dissonance was Ludology 192 - Diabolus in Ludica. 1h14m04s: Back to the Future: Back in Time and Last Defense!