Gygax's Legacy

Joe Mahaffey: Hello and welcome back to another edition of Lay It On The Table, ⁓ the Southern Board Game podcast with the accent on Southern that if we did this actually every two weeks like we're supposed to, I'd remember that so flawlessly and fluidly, but you know, it is what it is. I am one of your hosts, Joe Mahaffey, and of course, always my partner in crime.

James Engelhardt: James Engelhardt, good to see you again Joe. That was just, that was a little stumble, that was just a little stumble. That was good. It was good. It does.

Joe Mahaffey: Good to be seen. You know, what happens? What happens? Yes. How you been, James?

James Engelhardt: I've been well, it's been a busy march. Been over to Baltimore, up to Huntington, West Virginia. You've been traveling a lot too, I know.

Joe Mahaffey: Yep, yep, but I've been going for work where it sounds like you've been going for fun.

James Engelhardt: No, those have both been work as well. ⁓ But probably more fun work than your work, because it was more like hang out with people you know, read poems, talk about games and poetry, and so, yeah. Which is... That's awesome.

Joe Mahaffey: ⁓ I thought there was a family. I hung out with people I knew and gave presentations.

James Engelhardt: Yeah, yeah, I had zero slides in my presentations. How about you?

Joe Mahaffey: At the ⁓ Uh, there was one or two, I didn't like, I, know, it's funny. We, um, we actually, the event I was at last week was at the hotel that my wife and I honeymoon dad, uh, 35 years ago.

James Engelhardt: Huh? But that was a lot more fun back then.

Joe Mahaffey: ⁓ let me think about that a bit more. A little bit more fun. All right. So let's hop into it. ⁓ you know, I'd love to tell you that I've, I've had played a lot of games here lately, but unfortunately we've been involved with a number of other things that have just sort of made it hard for us to get anything on the table, but we did endeavor to try, but before we get into that, ⁓ there's been a lot of noise lately on the tube of view.

James Engelhardt: Sure, man.

Joe Mahaffey: ⁓ what's been going on in the world of DND. And there've been a lot of different, you know, influencers, ⁓ and content creators talking about this. And of course, I like to go to the content creator. That's not there for the clicks. And, ⁓ professor Dungeon Master did a whole video on this. You're welcome to go see, but I grabbed the article that DND is finally making peace with its legacy as Gygax returns.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Yep.

Joe Mahaffey: and in this instance, we're talking about Luke guy gags, ⁓ Gary con ⁓ announced that he is coming back to wizard to work with, ⁓ wizards of the coast ⁓ more great Hawk ⁓ content. And it sounds like the dragon Lance books are coming back and it sounds like wizards of the coast has finally figured out. ⁓

James Engelhardt: Wow.

Joe Mahaffey: We've pissed off all these people that really are our core revenue. We should probably not do that anymore. ⁓ it sounds like they got a new leader installed that seems to understand that I guess. You know, I think that there is.

James Engelhardt: Uh-huh. ⁓ Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's key, it's key.

Joe Mahaffey: You know, I think D and D might very well have that defense against the dark arts problem where every so often the, the, that professor has to be replaced. Cause it seems like they've always had this up and down situation from its, you know, very beginning, but, ⁓ yeah. And you know, it's, can't talk about Apple without talking about Wozniak and jobs.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Drummers from Spinal Tap, yeah. ⁓ yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: And you can't talk about Dungeons and Dragons without Gary Gygax and Dave Larmisen.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: I don't care how many times you sell the property or, you know, whatever, ⁓ can't change the origin story, even though you might leave it out of a film and say based on Dungeons and Dragons by Hasbro.

James Engelhardt: I think the other thing that comes to mind too as we think about this is that this is a fan-driven bottom-up franchise. ⁓ Most of them are, of course, but D &D is very much you need to have these people participating and bought in and need to feel that they're heard. ⁓ I mean, I, and every time they stop doing that, it seems like they lose their way. And every time they lean back into it, I mean, it's hard. There's millions of fans, right? And it's hard to say, whose voice matters? What should we be doing? But recognizing this is a game for people to game with, and it's not just a money grab. I think that's a key position to have.

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah, but I got to tell you, I had a very fearful conversation this week. I was out in the front yard and my neighbor was walking his dog and we got to talking and he was telling me that he and his girlfriend are involved in a campaign. I said, great. And he's like, yeah. And I'm, I'm a pugilist, which tells me, you know, like a fighter, you know, I would have called it a fighter, but he called me a pugilist.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ no. Mmm. Fisticuffs, yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: And, um, that he was, you know, getting all the add-ons like, know, you would skin your character in a video. And so I was like, Oh no, I, I was not that guy. I decided that, you know, Hey man, where, you know, he was taking, he was meeting the moment where he was. So.

James Engelhardt: Sure sure, yeah yeah yeah. That's a beautiful thing. And I think this is a thing that I was hearing the other day too when I added this to our notes that, and this is also sort of fan driven content, which is that there was going to be one D and D right? Six months ago, they were calling it one D and D and everybody else is calling it 5.5. And then earlier this month at D and D, fish was like, yo, okay. it's,

Joe Mahaffey: left it there.

James Engelhardt: 5.5 that's... yeah. So, uh-huh, pugilist.

Joe Mahaffey: You know, sometimes you you you know, the vernacular wins out over everything else.

James Engelhardt: And it's a really great idea to ⁓ pay attention to what your audience is saying and doing and say, you know what? Yeah, the one D &D thing didn't stick. You know what? You all are making this happen and you all are the ones running this and buying this and playing this. So you know what? 5.5. That's where we are. Awesome.

Joe Mahaffey: 5.5 it is. Well, we'll just have to wait and see. ⁓ I did though notice. So roll 20 sent me an email letting me know that they had done a major upgrade to the strawed package, new maps, new, you know, virtualization kind of stuff. ⁓ And that they had done new character sheets.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ okay. Okay.

Joe Mahaffey: So the character sheets now inside of Rural 20 look a lot more like D &D Beyond. So they're higher quality of production value, I guess I would say. So it was just kind of interesting to see what they were doing with that. And they've done some things where ⁓ less work for the DM. If you move the character over a certain place and trigger something that's supposed to happen, kind of...

James Engelhardt: Okay. ⁓ Okay.

Joe Mahaffey: doesn't it does enough of an effect to say, okay, something's changed, which, you know, that is sort of like online, but in my book, it's a little bit of more hybrid, and I'm sure I can get called out for that in terms of hypocrisy or whatever, but

James Engelhardt: Okay. Yeah

Joe Mahaffey: It's not a video game.

James Engelhardt: It is not. No, and yeah, lots of choices to make. Fun things to do. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: So, yeah, but just thought that was kind of interesting. ⁓ And they've also kind of expanded their platform to cover more of the other ⁓ platform, other gaming systems. So you can play Daggerheart on Roll20. You can play Shadow Dark. can play, you know, all the Pathfinder, course.

James Engelhardt: Okay. ⁓ interesting. Okay.

Joe Mahaffey: So it's not a one, it's a platform to bring your game together, whether you're remote like we were, or even if you're in the same room.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. So it's a little more system agnostic and then just...

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah, I mean, I've seen DMs that'll put like a TV on the table flat, you know, and that's your map and use the Yeah, there's a there's I mean, I've got the ability to do that, too. I just haven't been able get everybody in the same room to do that. ⁓ But I'm willing to learn.

James Engelhardt: That's cool. This is fair. Yeah. Where's the lip-eye?

Joe Mahaffey: But anyway, I digress.

James Engelhardt: Nah, all good.

Joe Mahaffey: Well, anyway, so we'll just have to wait and see how that continues to unfold. ⁓ I encourage you to go check out the the professor dungeon master video on the topic. Everybody else is just click bait because everybody's covered it. Yeah. So anyway, ⁓ not a lot to report on the board game front. ⁓ After we last met, Dale and I kept the ⁓

James Engelhardt: ⁓ yeah. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: The wingspan American expansion on the table.

James Engelhardt: How'd that treat you? How's that treating you?

Joe Mahaffey: ⁓ you know, like I said, we've been playing it as a standalone game, you know, rules, ⁓ no fancy, ⁓ add ons. So would say for a two player game, which is what we play, there's plenty of cards to do.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm, right. Nectar? ⁓ Add-ons, right, yeah. Yeah, no pugilists. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: and really learn the mechanic. Now I think we could implement the other pieces and have a little bit more comprehensive ⁓ experience, which I'm sure we will get around to will be we're gonna go down to the in-laws next weekend and daughters will be with us and usually when they're like, Hey, bring wingspan. We have another game. Now bring wingspan.

James Engelhardt: Awesome. Fabulous. That's good to have a fave, I guess, you know.

Joe Mahaffey: How's it going? Well, and in her mind, it's like, I know how to play it and I've learned the rules. can just get into it. And then, um, we, you know, we were also kind of feeling the, uh, the feels of not, uh, having played a game in a bit. So we, uh, we chose Trinket Grove because it was a matter of get it on the table fast, like a of rounds really fast.

James Engelhardt: Okay Mm-hmm. Aha! Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: And we can check the box that we played a game because we, you know, use that time as sort of our decompression, you know, and so yeah, it just was a it was a good it was a good, good thing to get into this. After we've talked about both of those on the the show plenty of time, so I'm not going to get into the

James Engelhardt: ⁓ yeah, absolutely. Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: the wherefores and whys on that. No new insights came out of Trinket Trove ⁓ other than I won a couple of times.

James Engelhardt: Ha Awesome. Well done. So how's the, when you're playing the ⁓ hummingbirds now and you're working on the hummingbird ⁓ boards, how is, is that feeling a little smoother? Are you trying to, are you finding better combos off of that or how's that going?

Joe Mahaffey: Mm-hmm. I got lucky the last time I had a bird. Maybe I told you this in the last one. can't remember. I had a card that basically said, um, if this bird is in your row, do this, which will allow you to return. either retract or I didn't attract in a return card, both on the board. So every time I got cards and every time I got food or eggs, I can't remember exactly where I put them.

James Engelhardt: Okay. Well, next time. ⁓ okay. ⁓

Joe Mahaffey: ⁓ I was able to keep doing, so I kept having extra. And because I got to, in some instances, choose.

James Engelhardt: level the hummingbirds, that's awesome. Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: then I was, had two, I ended up with two bonus cards that were hummingbird adjacent and I was able to plow them up the chart. I think I ended up like with a score of like 165 or something.

James Engelhardt: That sounds amazing. Whoa, that's fabulous, okay.

Joe Mahaffey: But was all hummingbird. was hummingbirds and bonuses and eggs. I mean, it was just ridiculous. Yeah.

James Engelhardt: and just comboing off of that, ⁓ Sounds fantastic. Okay.

Joe Mahaffey: But, but that's also was the fact that we were two players just using that deck. ⁓ are you know, they were, they were, ⁓ Shuffled really well, but the odds of you getting both of those cards in your hand out on the table early enough in the game for it to be impactful. Cause I think I got it out, both of them out in the first round, maybe the first or second round. it was early in the game.

James Engelhardt: Just using Americas, yeah. Mm-hmm. ⁓ man.

Joe Mahaffey: and enough to be impactful for the majority of the game. And that's really, you know.

James Engelhardt: Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: moved us up the track.

James Engelhardt: That would unlock some things, yeah. Wow. So I've got, ⁓ speaking of cards and card driven games, ⁓ last night was game night here at the house. So we were a party of 15 ⁓ last night. So Laura and I and 13 others, we had four tables going, lots of shenanigans. It was super fun. ⁓ At my table, we played Bohemians, which was a...

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

James Engelhardt: Birthday gift, I had a birthday at the beginning of the month and so Bohemians was one of my birthday gifts for my lovely wife and you can see the Bohemians cover over there. Pardon.

Joe Mahaffey: Is that a Devere publication?

James Engelhardt: It is not, it is, it's Portal Games. So yeah, like Nazi, Czech and those folk over there in Poland. But the designer ⁓ is, I want to say he's Dutch. Jasper de Lange. So something like that. Yeah, it's, but he means 2025 release from Portal Games. There we go. Various artists that like a bunch of folk were on the.

Joe Mahaffey: portal.

James Engelhardt: on the list for this. And so it's a deck building game with a deep commitment, deep commitment to setting and theme. So you are artists in Paris in like the 1890s to 1910s.

Joe Mahaffey: Do you drink absinthe?

James Engelhardt: Hold on. Absinthe, the card. Yes, sir. Uh-huh. Oh yeah. Pardon? We did not. It was more of a beer-driven night. yeah. So Deck Builder, you're a Parisian artist, and the mechanisms are pretty... There's nothing really particularly new here.

Joe Mahaffey: There you go. Okay. Did you all drink Absinthe? Did you all drink Absinthe? No.

James Engelhardt: just the way that it's kind of combined. So you're, you know, it's a deck builders, you draw cards, arrange a tableau, as opposed to like maybe playing them down one at a time. You lay out all, you draw five, lay out at least four or lay out at least three, maybe four, that you arrange on a board in front of you. There are some, you're counting up different things, good things, bad things that happen, resolve the actions. They will let you buy upgraded cards. There are habits cards, muse cards, there's an achievement card, you only get one those per turn if you can't afford it. And then maybe sufferer hardships, that's another card that goes into your deck. ⁓ And it's a race to get ⁓ four or five achievements depending on the player count. The fun bit, so is that the name of these cards, the cards that you play form a bit of a narrative and the game encourages you to read the the day when you lay out the cards. It's like a day and it's a story. So you can have lots of different stuff that happen once you lay out, let's see. So you recount your adventures and you wake up and you roam the countryside. Then you celebrate life and freedom. And then at the end of the day, embrace the unexpected. And this is helped along by the use of absinthe perhaps or Claude or Florence. But then you also have the hardship cards. so you you had you were stumbling because of your fixation and your poor hygiene. So you have positives and negatives and you can just tell this this little story of what you did in the day. And you don't have to do it, but it's super fun. ⁓ The other thing is that you're lining up these cards in your tableau and they have these little symbols sort of two thirds or third of the way up, and you're lining up these icons. And they correspond roughly to the suits of the cards, and there's like four of them. And then you can line up those with bonuses on the player boards themselves or on the muse cards. So you're doing the usual deck builder thing of looking for combos and then trying to scoop up cards from the market that work with the engine that seems to be working with your deck.

Joe Mahaffey: So.

James Engelhardt: key tension is you also have a job, ⁓ it's like busker, ⁓ cabaret attendant, all these different things, right? ⁓ So if you play your job title into your tableau, you won't get as many inspiration points, which is what lets you buy new cards, ⁓ you will avoid picking up the hardship, which is again, poor hygiene, grief, claustrophobia, hypersexuality, syphilis. Syphilis is a hardship you can get. ⁓ And those, yeah, those tend to mess with your plans. ⁓ But that's for a future you to deal with. My favorite though is the syphilis card because if you play the syphilis card, if it shows up in your hand, you have to play it. ⁓ And it lets you go through the deck and look for another syphilis card if you give it to another player.

Joe Mahaffey: Okay

James Engelhardt: Yeah, so that's super fun. the thing that's hilarious though is that you actually come out with these stories because you do get the like, ⁓ so ⁓ my friend across the table from me had picked up a card, ⁓ one of these habits cards was go to a brothel that let her unlock a bunch of stuff. but then I got a syphilis card and then gave her syphilis. So then at one time she had go to a brothel and syphilis. And was like, yep, that's, so you, and again, you don't functionally have to play the narratives, but man, ⁓ it's fantastic for working through those stories. ⁓ There are some questionable design choices. There's these type of cards. What kind of card is this? I don't know. There's this little bitty square at the bottom that tells you and you're like, what even is that thing that I'm looking at? Or a rose? The one of the women I was playing with was like, is that a turkey? Like, yeah. So yeah. And then the muse cards. This is the ones that the roses, ⁓ the habit cards are little smoking pipes. guess it's a nod to Marcel Duchamp. I don't know. ⁓

Joe Mahaffey: The popping?

James Engelhardt: So anyway, ⁓ it can be hard to sort out what benefit is because you don't, the little icons are a little bit tiny. ⁓ And then there's ⁓ some of the orders of operations on some of the habit cards are a little light weight, which comes first. So on the other hand, you get to play, there are four characters in the game and you can play either as a painter, a sculptor, a composer, or thank you very much, a poet. So. And when I was like, anybody can play anything else, I will be playing the poet. I did not win, but you know, I got to play a poet in France around the turn of the 20th century. This is, you know, ⁓ it's a, it's an open question. so there's a, there's some interlocking systems. It's pretty, but not too many. So it's pretty solid. It's pretty approachable.

Joe Mahaffey: Where's the poet ever win?

James Engelhardt: ⁓ It says the runtime is about an hour for four players. And think you could do that easily if you know the game. ⁓ And again, you don't have to do the narration, but it's really fun. And at the end, after the game was over, we were sitting around just talking about the funny combinations of like narratives that we had about our games. So it really leans into that in a way that's quite satisfying and unexpected. But ⁓ yeah, again, it's not really breaking new ground with its combining things in some fun and interesting ways and the art is glorious.

Joe Mahaffey: Well, it sounds very interesting. mean, you know, being a big fan of Labo which of course then into rent, a modern telling of Labo ⁓ So, I mean, it's definitely ⁓ one of those things that keeps on resurfacing somewhere in our culture. Yeah, so that's awesome.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. ⁓ oui. Mm-hmm. Indeed. Exactly. It's a, it's a kind of, I mean, it's a, it's an interesting time and the, the art is really fun. And it really is fun to just like, I woke up in the morning and I wrote until I couldn't stop. And then I went out and recounted my adventures. And then I was on the street busking. By the end of the night, I laid out my opinions with friends and Claude. Yeah. So anyway, got syphilis. The end of got syphilis is pretty much the end. Yeah, that's what you should do for all of these, but yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: Thank God, syphilis. Yeah, yeah. Well, and obviously the syphilis card and the way you have to give it away is the reason I must have thought it was a Devere game because it's like, ⁓ here's the candy. You know, it's kind of thing kind of thing. Anyway.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ yeah. Rockstar. Yeah, no, it's, I it has, I think it lends itself to narrative to where Rockstar does. ⁓ but it's, it's a different era, different stuff. Although, you know, you still take an absence and getting addicted to things.

Joe Mahaffey: Mm-hmm.

James Engelhardt: The poor hygiene thing is probably 1977 too, for that matter. ⁓ Narcissism, the narcissism card certainly tracks ⁓ cholera a little less so, but you know.

Joe Mahaffey: a little Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

James Engelhardt: Right. Love in the time of. ⁓ Yeah. It's, ⁓ there's, yeah. Shunned by peers. That's another hardship you can go through. So it does lend itself to those kind of narratives. way that, ⁓ rock hard, ⁓ absolutely does. I kind of to, going to, going to reclaim that name. Cause I said rock star a couple of times. It is rock hard. 1977. ⁓

Joe Mahaffey: there. Well, that sounds like a fun game. I'll card in any 70 seconds. That's it's okay. When she comes on the show, you can talk about it then until then.

James Engelhardt: I to, yeah. Right. Here we are. Rock study is good. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: with you. So yeah, there you go.

James Engelhardt: Yeah. Yep. And I would, mean, I think it's, it's pretty, it's, it's not, I mean, it's not a heavy game by any means, but it's also one that you wouldn't want to spring on unsuspecting newcomers. ⁓ And if you want something that's kind of very medium, medium light, and if you're familiar with ⁓ deck builders, it's just getting used to the iconography and figuring out what the combos are going to look like. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: Right. Yeah, that makes sense. Like I said, it looks like a pretty game. Yeah, so I to check it out.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ it's very pretty. You would hope that a game about artists would have pretty art, right?

Joe Mahaffey: You would hope.

James Engelhardt: You would.

Joe Mahaffey: I'm not saying that there's some that don't, but I'm not not saying it.

James Engelhardt: And it's true. Indeed. So anything else new in your gaming life here?

Joe Mahaffey: No, no, I mean, haven't even none of even shown up on the doorstep. ⁓ You know, it's been just sort of a we've been so focused on this other ⁓ project that we've got going on here at the house. It's sort of just sort of been somewhat consuming. But but we will get back to it. I mean, one of the goals of doing this is because to create more space and to make it so we can entertain more, which would also allow us to play more games because we can invite people over, which you don't feel we meaning not me, but somebody else in my life doesn't feel comfortable doing that.

James Engelhardt: Well, I think ⁓ one of them, I think those of us who live around in this region, I know you've been working on outdoor spaces and that's something that you can use nine months out of the year, mostly, ⁓ potentially, and frequently 10.

Joe Mahaffey: He should have a snappy name. Yeah, well, it's yeah, yeah, for sure. But, but yeah, we're almost there. We're just waiting for a permit to get approved and then we will be under construction. Yep.

James Engelhardt: Right? Well, I was out today. So one of the games that Laura played ⁓ at game night was Trailblazers and she had a great time playing it. But it turns out when we went to the game store, I went to the game store today and it is out at the distributor level. And so they are reprinting and it'll be available again at GenCon. So instead of coming home with Trailblazers, I came home with Faea's Swamp that is. back there. think that's the one I'm looking at. Yeah. So I'm looking forward. I've been really interested in how that game works and it's a re implementation of Kaibai, ⁓ but I think a little less spiky. So I'm looking forward to trying that. I haven't even punched. I broke the shrink wrap and smelled the amazing smells of fresh ink, but ⁓ I did not, I've even had a chance to punch it yet. So I'm looking forward to that.

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah ⁓ ⁓ man, that's good tool in our house.

James Engelhardt: The... the punching and... Oh, yeah, yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: The punching, yes. And there, there, when, when my youngest was still in college and was doing, biology projects, ⁓ Dale was, no, but, ⁓ Dale would save the punch outs. So she could do like, right. Do a circle and you were, you know, use it as like a template.

James Engelhardt: punching out the bones and yeah. ⁓ yeah yeah yeah! Yep, yep. I tried to do that a couple times with Sky and with Emerson, but they're both like, meh. Like, no, you can make fun shapes, like, meh.

Joe Mahaffey: Now. I just try to get it their cycling bin before anybody sees them. Or the latest thing has been that if you put them in the bottom of the box and then put the stuff on them up, still create, it prevents it from being that shaky. You know,

James Engelhardt: That's kind of, yeah. It lifts them up, yep. Mm-hmm. Indeed. So another thing I've been thinking about, so I went and got Faea Swamp today, but a week or so ago, friends of mine were out ⁓ because these are people who like to hit. ⁓ little shops, little secondhand shops, thrift stores, all that kind of stuff. And they come across weird things every so often. And they found this game called Al Rashid, which should be right over there. Al Rashid. ⁓ There he is. Which is ⁓ Harun Al Rashid was the fifth great caliph of the Abbasid dynasty, right? And it's this ⁓

Joe Mahaffey: Mm-hmm.

James Engelhardt: it's sort of a influence area, influence game and you're moving around and doing stuff. But what is really interesting about it is that the rule book is absolutely horrifying. Now, Al Rashid's a game from like, I want to say 2011, 2012. And I keep thinking that we've come a long way since then, 2012. Yep.

Joe Mahaffey: Mm-hmm.

James Engelhardt: So there are one of the things that is terrible about this game ⁓ book is that you look through it. Flip through this. There are no illustrations of anything in this booklet. ⁓ You don't get like what the bits look like. You don't get what situations might look like. ⁓ You just don't like even just the

Joe Mahaffey: Hmm.

James Engelhardt: the pieces themselves. There's no illustration like this is, you you put out the spice markers like, what the hell is that one? It's right. One of my favorites is key details are set up. Like on page eight or 10 of the book, like you have to put these tiles out, like, okay, which one of these tiles? I don't know. I think it's going to and you get to page eight and they're like, these are the, these tiles look like this. These tiles look like that. I'm like, dude, I was setting that up seven pages ago. What are we doing? One of my favorites too is that instead of influence like how who has influence in a region they call it dominance who's who has dominance like well, that's That's awkward. Couldn't we couldn't we just do influence? So that's kind of 2012 Mm-hmm. Yep. They have palace guilds and they sometimes call them guilds and they sometimes call them palaces

Joe Mahaffey: What was this game? Okay, tracks.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ And you have three things that you can do. That's like a top, middle, bottom. And you have to do at least one. You can do two. But, and never three, the counting shall be three. Do not proceed to four, five is right out, right? ⁓ So you can do, right? ⁓ But they separate the things that you do. So first, first palace, action one, second palace, action one, third palace, instead of palace one, action one, two, three, right? So just, ⁓ yeah, you're just like, man, I just want to know what I can do in one place.

Joe Mahaffey: Right. All right.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ Then there's graphic design, is a different thing, but there are these tiles that have eight-point font on them. yeah. So it's interesting because I think it's an interesting game, but the rule set itself just gets in the way. I think it was their first game, this publisher's first game, so I hope they've learned more. And so I'm just thinking about how, well, one, there's a...

Joe Mahaffey: Right.

James Engelhardt: really bad rule set for a game called... ⁓ Return of the Heroes, where it was written as a narrative, like characters would come on, I'm one of the heroes and I'm gonna tell you how to do movement. I'm a hero, I'm gonna tell you how to do combat. But it is just a story and it doesn't really build around the games themselves. And then I was looking at ⁓ Wingspan today and thinking, it's a really, really nicely done rule book.

Joe Mahaffey: Right.

James Engelhardt: Everything is where you want it to be. There's one page that's just devoted to each of the four actions. It's clearly labeled, lots of illustrations around what the cards are supposed to be doing and how they interact and how they play through. I just think we still have bad rule books out there, but man, we've come a long way in the last 10, 15 years. And I just kind of wanted to celebrate that a little bit.

Joe Mahaffey: Well, and it's interesting you bring that up because, ⁓ well, first of all, I'll, I'll share with you sort of a couple of games from my experience. ⁓ I think the worst rule book I've ever experienced was the Santa Monica Rollbrook. It was almost like in the Santa Monica, ⁓ it's a, it's a, you're collecting cards, you're kind of laying down the streets of Santa Monica and you're trying to build a tableau and there's no certain rules and rags and such.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ no, okay.

Joe Mahaffey: Anyway, ⁓ the rule book is just horrible. At least in the first edition, maybe they've improved it. I don't know, but it's, it's just was absolutely and very everybody that reviewed it said great game. I mean, it was that, that kind of noticeable thing. I mean, it was like, only errors grammatical errors. think it was looking at this now. It's, ⁓ it's been translated into, but it's not, it's a, it's,

James Engelhardt: Hahaha Mm-hmm. Mmm.

Joe Mahaffey: It's an AEG game too, which was another surprise because it was from an established publisher. You would have thought it would have taken the time if they were going to go through the printing and the distribution, double check the book.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Because I mean, this was, this was their first outing. You know, that's, that's one thing. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: And then I think the flip side to that, you you mentioned wingspan, of course we've seen some really good, ⁓ and you asked me before we got started about obsession and obsession is extremely comprehensive. but it's extremely comprehensive. And so what we do with that book is I get the little post-it tabs. The most common thing that we always have to constantly look up, I tab it, is a way to make it a little bit more ready reference. Now, I think I've already talked about us downloading rule books and uploading them into notebook LLM or notebook LLM and using that as a, I'm just going to ask the LM.

James Engelhardt: HAHAHAHA Mm-hmm. Awesome. Yep. Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: What can I, because here's the thing, I have a question for you.

James Engelhardt: Okay.

Joe Mahaffey: If something you want to do is not explicitly covered in the rule book, does that mean you can do it or that you can't do it?

James Engelhardt: So this reminds me of rule books in the early aughts. always had a rule of you cannot trade resources. I think this is because there are a bunch of early trading games. Catan is clearly like the big example of this, right? And they're like, well, can't I just trade this across the table? And so so many of these books were like, you cannot trade resources. And they drifted away from that. You don't see that anymore, right? Nobody is saying, well, you can't trade

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah

James Engelhardt: eggs in wingspan. Nothing says you can't. Like, I need an egg. Could I give you a food for an egg in wingspan? It's not there. ⁓ So I generally think no. Right? ⁓

Joe Mahaffey: Well, something obvious like that, think I could say too. I'm trying to think of an example of.

James Engelhardt: Yeah. But that was an example that people came up with a lot. Like, I've got money, you've got stuff, can we trade them?

Joe Mahaffey: It's more like the mechanic of stacking bonuses or, you know, certain things that are just not things that we run into that are just because, know, like Dale is always about the bonuses and the end of game and all these different things. And then we'll invariably hit something that says, does this stack

James Engelhardt: ⁓ okay. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: You know, we've learned the and and or versus or, you know, kind of thing. But sometimes it's just omitted.

James Engelhardt: Right. May or must, right? Mm-hmm, that's fair. Yeah. Well, then I think this is, ⁓ so in, in researching this little bit, ⁓ I ran across a dude, who had gotten into like rewriting rule books, like, cause there were some bad ones and he was like, ⁓ I'm trying to make this a little clearer. And so people liked it and wrote another one. People liked it. And then he's like, you know, maybe I've got a thing for this. So I'll, I'll take a technical writing class. It's like, okay, this feels like I'm doing well. then decided to do a whole degree in technical writing and graphic design, some kind of hybrid thing there. ⁓ And then was horrified at his past work. It's like, no. ⁓ And so that turned into like a 92 page, I think it's his master's thesis now, ⁓ thinking through like how you build a rule book and what you shouldn't, shouldn't. But I think particularly like how you think about like, okay, yeah, stacking is a thing that we need to talk about. And I think this is a, and I've seen this elsewhere too, like you should get your rule book play tested. Like if you're doing a blind play test, you should send your rule book and then watch people respond basically to how the rule book goes, right? And as you're watching the play test, yourself, how are they, ⁓ know, what's coming up that they just sort of ⁓ over and keep moving. And like, that's a thing you need to make sure that you're marking down, right?

Joe Mahaffey: Well, it's interesting too, because I think that, ⁓ you know, think Jamie talks a lot about the rule book and some of his blog posts. And I think we talked a little bit about it when we were talking to the spirits of Christmas episode and some of the good things that he pulled out of that. ⁓ I think, you know, from my perspective, this trend of here's a rule book.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm.

Joe Mahaffey: But here's the quick start guide. I like the quick guide. What gets you on the table playing? And I don't know if you've seen these games that come with the app that you can pull out the iPhone or the Android and it walks you through the first round.

James Engelhardt: Right. Mm-hmm. Yep.

Joe Mahaffey: have kind of mixed feelings about those. ⁓ I do like the quick start guides, but this over here, this goes here, this goes here. Here are some options for your first round. You don't have to follow

James Engelhardt: Sure.

Joe Mahaffey: But it's just enough to kind of get you because usually when you've got a game, in my experience, that you're trying to teach somebody, if you can just get them through the first round, they tend to catch up.

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. got, man, I want to say that from back in the day, El Grande has something like that where it's just like step through what you're going to do and what that's going to look like. And it's sort of like watch a couple of bots play, which is interesting. that's what I like about it it gets you because the rule looks at themselves sort of a barrier, right? They're like you, somebody has to digest this. and be able to play it, right? And so you can start teaching it. On the other hand, it would be great if you just like open up and we can just start going because it'd be great to just start going. ⁓ And so there's kind of a, you have to, you know, if I'm going, getting ready for game night and prepping through four games, we're going to play one of them and not the other two or three. And that's just. time I've lost, although I think I've learned a lot about different things doing it, but still, it's ⁓ it's like, you just have to commit to that. And that's just what you're going to invest in. but not a lot of people like to do that. I understand this. and, but then, the thing that I think you miss, if you're just doing the quick start is like nuances, like edge cases, questions that are going to come up later. Like, well, what about that? I'm like, I don't know. I haven't read the rule book. We just did the quick start. ⁓ So that's one of, we might share that hesitation.

Joe Mahaffey: Well, we'll keep the, when we have a quick start, generally keep the rule book there and we're digging into it and looking for it. I'm like, you know, trying to find, you know, what's going to give us the sense of what, how do you do this? No. And then you get to the scoring and like, ⁓ hold on a minute. How do you score this again?

James Engelhardt: Sure, ⁓ yeah. Right. Mm-hmm. Yeah. But then you wonder about some of the other apparatus of the book. Like, does it have table of contents? Does it have an index? ⁓ Some sort of ⁓ glossary? ⁓ I know. Or a glossary of some sort? Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: Very rarely do I see indices. Yeah, very real. mean, I don't see a lot of money being spent on the rule book. I it's expensive to print and particularly if you do the high-glow or the matte paper and the nice fold over and it matches the box. I mean, there's a lot of expense that goes into it. I'm not, and since, but I think...

James Engelhardt: No. Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

Joe Mahaffey: At the end of the day, you want to be very crystal clear about the rules, you know, and there are some, you know, designers that will set up a forum on board game geek and they'll answer questions. You'll get, and by the way, I found a, an old forum inside of board game called the worst and best rule books from I dropped that into the show notes and checked it out. Cause I think what was funny is what caught my attention as I was

James Engelhardt: That is correct. Yep. ⁓ yeah, so many. It's really good. I really appreciate that. Huh? ⁓ yeah, I saw that earlier too, yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: Quickly scrolling them. ⁓ And it says here pretty much any game from Hortal games.

James Engelhardt: And I thought Bohemian is actually pretty good. ⁓ Rivalson, Crusoe is notoriously bad.

Joe Mahaffey: Keep in mind, this is from 2022. To stick with the Monty Python theme, they've got better.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ okay. It did.

Joe Mahaffey: So anyway, yeah.

James Engelhardt: Not dead yet. know, ⁓ Bravas and Crusoe certainly shows up on that list ⁓ a lot too, which is a Portal game. And yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: Well, just hopefully. ⁓ People will continue to the trend of, know, if you want your game to sell and be popular, you might want it to be accessible. And accessible doesn't need to be easy. Accessible just needs to be easy to understand. You know, can have rules, but yeah.

James Engelhardt: And I think that's right. And so I mentioned ⁓ Return of the Heroes, and the consensus is it's not a difficult game. It's kind of an early dungeon crawl. There were a couple of Runequests and others that out at the time, but the rule set was so opaque. I have two different reinterpreted rule sets of that. I also have a rewritten rule set for Al Rashid over here too. I worked through that and I was like, ⁓ yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: Mm-hmm.

James Engelhardt: makes a lot more sense organizing this way. And some of them, I don't know, one of the, the impulses I think in rule set design is you want to give people the flavor of the thing. And so it's, it's thematic. And so this is why you're doing the thing, but like a sentence will establish that. And instead they're doing like paragraphs and you're like, my dudes, I love you, but no. ⁓

Joe Mahaffey: Everybody wants to play the poet.

James Engelhardt: My dear brothers and games, please don't do that. Yeah. And I think, but I think it's maybe a poetry thing, they also, it's just an over explaining thing. Like, I want you to really get this. No, really dude, listen to me. This is amazing. Right. And you're like, no, your conspiracy theory is absolutely bat shit. Yeah.

Joe Mahaffey: I was just taking a full circle back to the Bohemian.

James Engelhardt: I did appreciate that.

Joe Mahaffey: Well, maybe they'll get it all sorted out with future games. We'll find it.

James Engelhardt: ⁓ you know, my hope's not through the roof, but it's clear, I think, that we've moved a long way from this. So, ⁓ El Rashid. So I'm hoping we keep an upward trajectory.

Joe Mahaffey: There you Yes. Well, that's all I got today.

James Engelhardt: That's all for me.

Joe Mahaffey: Well, in that case, ⁓ I'm Joe Mahaffey and I'm not bored or bored gaming at the moment. I got to get both of those kind of sorted out and get back on the table. ⁓ If it helps. I'm doing Morse code now at 13 words a minute. Yeah.

James Engelhardt: Yeah, man. Whew! ⁓ you're burning up the clicker. And I'm James Engelhardt, and I hope that all your tiebreakers break your way.

Joe Mahaffey: Something like that. So we will eventually get these published and we will be back in a couple of weeks. So thank you for attending this broadcast. Bye everybody.

James Engelhardt: Bye y'all.