The Isle of West

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. As per usual, I am one of your hosts, Joe Mahaffey. And with me, as usual. Good to see you, James. Well, obviously, our audience, anybody watching the video portion of this, is going to notice we have another person on the podcast today. And it's my pleasure to introduce you all and welcome to the podcast, Mr. Frank West.

 

James Engelhardt: It's James Engelhart, good to see you again, Joe. How you doing?

 

Joe Mahaffey: Owner and publisher of the City of Games, ⁓ best known for me from an alc of cast perspective. Sorry, Frank, I just talked right over your hello.

 

Frank: Hello.

 

James Engelhardt: Ha ha ha.

 

Frank: Yeah. Hey, I'm just I'm just keen to say hi to you guys. It's great to be here. So thank you so much, both of you, to having me on.

 

Joe Mahaffey: ⁓ well, we are so glad to have you here. Yeah, I don't you don't know this because you haven't probably been following our podcast for the last four years, but ⁓ we often talk about Isle of Cats as one of our gateway games. ⁓ my wife and I, ⁓ quick backstory. My wife and I got back into gaming back in 2018. We had three games that we consider part of our origin story, one of which is Wingspan, which we talk about a lot, the other one is Parks, which we talk about sometimes.

 

James Engelhardt: Absolutely.

 

Frank: Mm-hmm.

 

Joe Mahaffey: And then of course the Isle of Cats. In fact, I have a dream of playing a marathon where the ⁓ b ⁓ the cats are chasing the birds into the park. So you play all three games and get all the scores added up and and there you go. But but we do wanna ⁓ but we do appreciate having you on. So we wanna sort of talk about a little bit of our history with the City of Games, but also talk about your current ⁓ Kickstarter. So with that we'll we'll we'll kind of get underway. So James, I'll let you kick it off.

 

Frank: Yeah.

 

James Engelhardt: So I mean Joe was just giving you his ⁓ origin story of getting in getting back into games. So I've looked around but I didn't really see a game's origin story for you. So I'd like to hear maybe more about this. Did your family play games when you were coming up? ⁓ you seem like about the perfect age to pick up Catan when it first came out, right? So

 

Frank: It's it's funny really because I always tried to identify, you know, what was my actual like origin story on this. And I was a big video gamer as a young child. I grew up as, you know, the first Nintendo Segas kind of were coming out. I got to play those, and I was very lucky that I kind of grew up with the generations of consoles, and then obviously they've kind of grown into what they are today. And I still play video games a bit, but over time I kind of shifted more and more to physical kind of gaming. And I think that in part this is because you know I worked in tech, I was a programmer, I spent all my time on a computer. I I missed those days of sitting on a couch with my friends and playing games and board games started to feel that. But you know, I didn't play any modern board games as a young child. I remember like at university playing Risk with some people at university and We had four boards and we joined them up, you know, and we played like a mega game over four boards that took weeks to play. And ⁓ when I was like 14 or 15, I was playing ⁓ Magic the Gathering and I played Magic the Gathering quite a bit in my kind of like school lunch breaks for a little while. And ⁓ interestingly, when I was 16, my graphics teacher actually set me a project for three months of designing a board game. And I made an Egyptian version of Monopoly back there, and it had the

 

James Engelhardt: Awesome. Yeah.

 

Frank: Added bonus of if you had both of the ⁓ properties on the either side of the corner, you could combine your hotels into a mega hotel. So you could just keep going up and up and up, you know? But obviously, I never really played like what we would consider like the modern kind of board games for any of that time. I'd is playing Magic the Gathering when you're 15 getting into the board gaming hobby? Because I would say it wasn't for another 10, 15 years after that where I really actually started. Well,

 

James Engelhardt: Right? Yeah.

 

Frank: Probably ten years after that, I forget how old I am now, where I started actually playing what we would consider kind of like modern board games and just fell in love with them at that point.

 

James Engelhardt: Yeah. And you you talked a little bit about this. You you started doing a bunch of ⁓ a bunch of digital stuff, and you said a little bit about moving to analog, was kind of also looking for ways to spend time with friends. and so that that makes sense. So I'm wondering though, ⁓ if there was something in your experience with digital games as a player ⁓ and thinking about UX that has approached that has influenced how you're thinking about games on the table, the ones that you're doing now.

 

Joe Mahaffey: No, that's it.

 

Frank: Yeah, absolutely. I think that it it's interesting, really. So I always imagine myself designing video games. ⁓ as I was younger and I was programming, I used to play around with a lot of kind of web browser-based kind of games. So anyone who remembers back in the day where it was like, you know, a text interface on a website, you press a button, the whole website would reload and that number's gone up by four, and suddenly you've got some money to spend in the shop. So you browse to another web page which is the shop and you go through a checkout process and You know, I used to kind of make those games and I always wanted to make something grander. But the problem was is the kind of games that I wanted to make. I was, you know, a Final Fantasy kind of RPG, fantasy star online on a Dreamcast, like World of Warcraft, these big, massive adventure kind of games. And I couldn't program one of those on my own. Yay. Those kind of games require large, large teams. And as I got more and more into board games, I remember thinking to myself at the time, hey, like,

 

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Ha ha ha.

 

Frank: A lot of those systems that I feel like are interesting in the video game world, maybe there's ways to do those in a more physical, like analog system that hasn't really been explored, or at least that type of game hasn't been explored. And I remember sitting down and playing ⁓ Eclipse back in like the very early days of Eclipse and looking at that kind of big player mat in front of you and thinking, you know, this is really cool because like you can do some really complicated stuff and give people the ability to really

 

James Engelhardt: Yeah.

 

Frank: Do some interesting things with this. And that was kind of one of those final moments where I started designing the City of Kings. And if anyone who's played the City of Kings, if you look at the character sheet of your player, it's a similar size to those sheets of Eclipse, you know, and it has that same kind of level of complexity and stuff going on. And I think there was a real reason for that because that was that kind of that final point of, hey, maybe I'll try and do that game I've wanted to do for the last 15 years, but With a pen and paper rather than a mouse and keyboard.

 

Joe Mahaffey: No, that's that's that's really interesting. And I and I and ⁓ it's interesting because the way I came to Isle of Cats, ⁓ a friend of ours, ⁓ in the game store here in Pineville, North Carolina, ⁓ Grace had backed your original Kickstarter and she had it in the store and we were all playing she was teaching us how to play it because she was always just a she's a great person to teach a game. and it was the first game I think I ever encountered where you could actually win the game with negative points.

 

Frank: Okay. Mm-hmm.

 

Joe Mahaffey: And just the asymmetric ways that the the the game comes together. And I kinda wonder, you know, how did how did that come about? That you you really start out in arrears and you really have to work yourself into the positive. I mean, I think I won once with like five points.

 

James Engelhardt: Yeah.

 

Frank: Yes. It's so it it's such a fascinating thing for me. And a lot of this is about like human behavior. So I said earlier I came from like a tech background. And over the years after being a programmer, I moved into user experience. So I was a UX consultant and business analyst, and my life became about how do you think make things easier and better? You know, how do I make that purchase of a pair of socks on Amazon take two seconds less? Because if it takes two seconds less,

 

James Engelhardt: Ha ha.

 

Frank: They can make a hundred million dollars more, right? And I was employed to do that kind of stuff and really understand human behavior and how you look to something and interacted with it. And one of the things I kind of realized very early on in the days of Rada Katz was if I say to you, you've got two options. Option A is you can get five points. Option B is you can get five points. You kind of look at those two things and go, well, they're the same, right? Obviously, the consequence of what happens is. may be different, but the actual output of it is the same. But if I say to you, option A is you gain five points, and option B is you don't lose five points, now they are technically still exactly the same thing, but the way that the majority of humans approach them, they feel like two very different options. And what I kind of discovered was by playing around with gaining points and preventing the loss of points,

 

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm.

 

Frank: It allowed you to give people ⁓ more perception of choice and decisions, which makes a game more interesting, without adding complexity and rules. And I found that really fascinating. So that was kind of the core starting point that that led to those systems.

 

Joe Mahaffey: Well, I gotta tell you, ⁓ because you're always passing cards around in that game. And and and my wife is the person who takes her time in making a decision. I just want you to know that those cards have created an elongated game sometimes. But I will tell you this: my wife is very active in your Facebook community and she always appreciates that you answer her questions or her comments directly. And so I just wanted to pass along her thanks.

 

James Engelhardt: Yeah.

 

Frank: He's ⁓ great.

 

Joe Mahaffey: as well in this conversation.

 

Frank: And I I appreciate that. And honestly, like, you know, I appreciate the fact that you both of you and your family are playing the Isle of Cats and enjoying it and still are after all of these years. For me, you know, there's a lot of people who make games for different reasons. And for me, I make games because I enjoy the process of it. And I want people to get good times from it, you know, happy memories, kind of create good experiences. I'm not doing this because I want to build some giant mega company. I've got no ambitions to be anything more than just myself. I don't plan to ever hire people or grow beyond what I'm capable of doing because that's not the path I want to take. For me, it's about kind of just building something that makes me happy to be a part of and treating like I hate to use the word, but you know, customers in the way that I would want to be treated if I was the customer in that situation. So, you know.

 

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm.

 

Frank: Answering questions is the least I can do. Yeah. Yeah. If s if I'm expecting someone to give me some of their money that they've had to go and sit in some horrible room for four days working hard or however long it is to get that, then the least I can do is answer a twenty second question to help them with that decision.

 

James Engelhardt: Ha ha.

 

Joe Mahaffey: Well well, the last thing I'll say on this particular topic, at least from my family's point of view, I what I love about it is that you that the Isle of Cat ecosystem, because we've got a lot of the different pieces racing to the raft and and and the the gardens and all the different pieces that are part of the ecosystem, it is the one of the few things that when my two daughters are home and my daughters are twenties to thirties kind of age, those are the games that they'll say, Hey, let's play Isle of Cats.

 

Frank: Mm-hmm.

 

Joe Mahaffey: Or one of the other two that I mentioned at the beginning, but but it's typically well, my oldest daughter has two cats and if she had her way she'd probably rescue more. ⁓ but it's one of her favorite games. ⁓ and she has her own copy. I said we weren't gonna do the fanboy thing and I here I am just doing it. But but I I am ⁓ that's okay. Just sorry about that. ⁓ you did say that ⁓ you know, one of the things you liked was kind of getting people in the room

 

James Engelhardt: There you go. So I'll I'll Yeah, go for it.

 

Joe Mahaffey: ⁓ with your friends. And then of course I remember when the pandemic happened, you were one of the first folks in the industry that I recall that said, Hey, here's a way you can play the game via Zoom. And you put out some some PDFs that we could print and play the game. And I thought that, you know, considering there were a lot of things that were unknown at that time, that was pretty innovative. And I'm just kind of curious what sets your mind in motion that way?

 

Frank: Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. And it's really interesting because it was I I don't know if I was first. I feel like I possibly was, but I wouldn't want to claim because you never know, right? And it it doesn't really matter. But it was right at that start. So the point being is when I was making those decisions, it was something I was trying to come up with. I was trying to work it out. And the reason being was quite straightforward, really. I had just been to America.

 

James Engelhardt: Right.

 

Frank: I actually basically was on one of the last planes out of America back to the UK before everything locked down. I was at the Gamma Trade Show and it was one of those things where they're like, they're canceling planes. Like, are you actually gonna get home or not? And and panic. And the the thing with that was I got onto a plane and I was on that plane for it was like eight, nine hours of flight time. So obviously no internet, no anything else. And there was one thing going through my head at the time. I've just spent Two years of my life making a game, which I truly believe is a good game. And it's releasing in shops this week, but all of those shops are shutting down because no one can leave their house. And even if they can get those games, they can't play with people because they can't go to places. They can't interact with people outside of their house. And I spend that whole flight thinking to myself. Is this game just gonna like disappear overnight, like with all board games for the time being? And will that last two years of my life and my livelihood and everything just fall flat because of that? So I realized during that flight that obviously people wouldn't stop buying games if they could still play games. So the problem became well, if you can't play the game with people in the same room. How can you still play that game? And as someone who comes from like the streaming world of video games and watches a lot of live streams and used to do a lot of live streaming, that thought of, well, if I can live stream and get people to play the game whilst I'm kind of like teaching it and presenting it with a game in front of me and just give them a pen and paper, then maybe other people could do that as well. So literally on that flight home, I kind of came up with that kind of concept and But it's time it was funny because I got home, I was completely jet lagged, hadn't slept for 24 hours, and I was just like, I'm gonna get on a camera and start live streaming this with lots of random people all over the internet. And my partner was like, sleep first, and I was like, nope, but no. But ⁓ obviously the the immediate iteration wasn't perfect, but we were live playtesting it, right? And it was great because we built a community and over the next month or so, hundreds of people were turning up, and then that led to being able to let other people do the same thing as well. So

 

James Engelhardt: Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha.

 

Frank: It was luck, but also trying to solve a big problem which I was concerned about on that flight.

 

James Engelhardt: Well and I like this starts off in this kind of existential moment of what the hell is going to happen next. And instead of just throwing up your hands and walking away, there's th there's this well, a really unique pass that you could leverage as well, right? The knowing how to do all this streaming and having all this that experience. And then yeah, keeping the legs under the cat so that they can go out and keep chasing.

 

Frank: Mm-hmm. It it's a kind of it's a funny thing really because one of the things that I love about my approach to creating games and being a publisher is because I don't have staff and because I don't have a team and because I don't have anything else, the only factor in my decisions is me. Right. And basically, if I can afford to pay for a meal for the next week, I don't need to set a game this week, right? There's no one else's bills. I don't need to worry about salaries and all of this stuff. But What that means is I try to produce like a design and like make a game every like 12 to 18 months, but I don't have any pressure. If it takes six months or it takes two years, it doesn't matter. And what's good about that is it means that I can be confident when that game is kind of put out there, it's as good as I think it possibly can be. And it is the right game and it is the right time for that game. But the negative of it is if that game misses.

 

Joe Mahaffey: It's got

 

Frank: Then I'm gonna be in a lot of trouble because I've got nothing else for two years. So in the eye of cats situation, when I was on that plane, I was kind of like, Well, it kind of was a hit, but also everyone's about to be locked in their house. So it was it was a real concern because, you know, if it had not worked out that way, then I might not have been able to make another game at the time. And obviously that would have been for me a big disappointment. So

 

James Engelhardt: Yeah. So as a quick weird aside, ⁓ one of the like selling points about this game that I remember when it was first hitting was the the inside of the of the top of the box. That was fantastic. And I remember people putting pictures up on BoardGameGeek with their cats complying with the ⁓ command on that. So did that just like pop into your head like, ⁓ here's a thing? Or yeah.

 

Frank: It did. And I can I can tell you that no one on the planet knew that I was doing it. apart from my partner. And I had never told a single soul. And when it was being produced and obviously ⁓ on the ships and coming over, no one knew. And when the first games were going out to people, four part of me was like,

 

James Engelhardt: Awesome. Ha ha ha

 

Frank: Are people gonna think like I'm a raving lunatic and I'm gonna be like, ⁓ my god, what's wrong with this person? Or is it gonna hit right? And I don't think I've ever been more scared of like the release of a game in my life because I had no idea. And I think the thing that's kind of interesting about it as well is that it wasn't a cheap thing to do. Like every extra layer of printing in different places and different ways adds cost. And over the years, it has cost a substantial amount of money to do that. But

 

James Engelhardt: ⁓ wow. ⁓ wow. Mm-hmm.

 

Frank: It's part of what makes that game what that game is. And everyone who's a cat lover, for me, coming back to my UX days, you know, when you open the game, the first experience isn't playing the game. It's what you see when you take that lid off. You know, it's what you see before you take the lid off. And that inside the lid is an immediate connection, an opportunity, a moment before you even get to the game for someone to feel like.

 

James Engelhardt: It is.

 

Frank: Hey, this was the right game for me, you know, and and and not for everyone, but it it was such a key part that I don't think I'll ever make a smart decision like that again ever in my life, because like, how do you top that? Yeah. Yeah.

 

James Engelhardt: Yeah. Ha ha ha.

 

Joe Mahaffey: Well, I I I'm glad you brought that up because like we we've had the opportunity to interview Jamie Stegmeyer and in fact we're talking him to him again in late August, ⁓ spoiler alert, and he's in good regards as we were setting that up, by the way, Frank. but we talked to him a lot about the business side of of the publishing piece. And you know, you've been running Kickstarter campaigns for years, and I would be curious what's fundamentally different about launching a campaign today compared to your first one.

 

James Engelhardt: Ha ha ha.

 

Frank: Mm-hmm.

 

Joe Mahaffey: And some of the decisions that go into it, kinda like the inside of the box stop.

 

Frank: So this is a fascinating one because obviously I am running a campaign at the moment. And one of the things that's kind of interesting is, you know, based on my model, I run those campaigns basically every 18 months or so. So for me, there's big gaps between each one. I know there are publishers who run three or four Kickstarters a year, and maybe they don't get to see those big chunks, but every time I go in, it is different. And I feel like we are now in the ⁓ second generation of crowdfunding. I mean Arguably we're in the third, but I would say in the second. And that first generation was really that true. Like, you know, everyone's new, everyone is working this out, everyone's kind of getting there. And then over time, starting to get some people who have made a few becoming a bit more familiar and like, you know, having those big kind of miniature heavy games and that kind of whole, like, let's see what works. Let's see what different kind of types of crowdfunding exist. Whilst now we're in this generation where

 

James Engelhardt: Simon. Yeah.

 

Frank: There is a like a stable line of this is what works, this is what is acceptable, this is what can be done. And if you deviate from that line, you're taking that risk. And you can, and it can do well, but it's kind of it's more like, let's follow this model. And that's not a bad thing, because it does mean if you're new, there's ways to learn how to do it, right? You can come in and you're not going in blind. But what it also means is. Innovation, strangely, I think, is more risky now than it was at the beginning. Because if you deviate from that line, it's a chance to go overway. And if I said to you, hey, spend two years of your life making something, here's 10 steps that if you follow, you've got a chance to do well. And here's an option that may make it do better or may make it do worse. Are you going to take that option? Because it's already such a risk. And I think that. For me, that's a difficult one because I do like to still and try and do things differently and not follow that mold. But it means that there's always a lot of pressure when you're trying to push down that way because you just don't know what's going to happen. And I think every time I launch a campaign and I s I truly say this, like I know people be like, ⁓ yeah, everyone says that, but I I truly say this from the bottom of my heart. It's like every time I press that launch button, I truly don't know what's going to happen. Like until we are like half an hour into the project, I have no idea how many people are going to turn up, how they're going to react, because I don't make anything public before. I'm one of the few kind of publishers who is just like, there's no information, right? I I obviously drip feed the information about the game, but pricing, the Kickstarter page, the layouts, the videos, everything isn't there until that start. And my Goodness, am I getting too old for this? Sometimes my heart is definitely weaker than it was ten years ago. But but I also think it does allow you to push. So I don't know if that really answers your question, but that's kind of like the the change I see to an extent.

 

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah, I it It gives me some insight. I think the the fact that you kind of see it as generationally and there's a maturation in terms of how people, you know, leverage this ⁓ type of medium, I think is is pretty helpful from from my perspective. And and I think it's gonna continue to evolve because I think the you know, there's so many more ways to do the crowdfunding these days and it's you know, become more of a business in and of itself. So it's just was a just curiosity.

 

James Engelhardt: Makes sense.

 

Frank: Absolutely. I think that another side to it, which is an interesting one, and I'm always kind of hesitant to talk too deeply about this because this isn't a black and white case, right? Like it isn't like this for everyone. But I definitely feel that the community interactiveness of crowdfunding has reduced considerably over the years. And when you first launched Kickstarters, there was for the average project.

 

James Engelhardt: Hmm.

 

Frank: A lot more interaction in comments, a lot more discussion, a lot more kind of like questions or you know, arguments and people being passionate, which obviously wasn't always good. But if you went to a project and it had over a thousand backers, you would see a thousand comments on a lot of those projects. Whilst these days, you know, I saw a project that finished the other day, they had a few thousand people, and I think they had like 80 comments on there or something. And it's just a much lower amount. And you can encourage. Comments through, you know, stretch goals and social goals, but that more organic connective part, I think, is harder now. And I think part of that is because people have backed two, 300 projects. And not everyone obviously has, but we've we've moved past that first generation. Yeah, I'm I'm on there too, Jay. Don't worry. We've moved past that first generation of, hey, this is my fifth or sixth, and it's still exciting. And we've got a bigger core of.

 

James Engelhardt: Ha ha ha.

 

Frank: Hey, you know, I do this every week and I don't want to follow the comments of four hundred different projects each year.

 

Joe Mahaffey: Well, a th a thought to consider. J just real quick, James, if you don't mind, and I I will let you ask questions, I promise. ⁓ just a thought to consider is you know, I to me you're a known quantity. You know, I used to say if REM published an album, I was just gonna buy it because it was REM. And I kind of feel the same way about a Frank West game. So I don't really need to spend a lot of time looking at it like, ⁓ it's from Frank. I kind of know asymmetric style. I'm just thinking of the game.

 

James Engelhardt: So the other thing that ⁓ go ahead.

 

Frank: Mm-hmm. No, I I appreciate that. Mm-hmm.

 

Joe Mahaffey: And I'm sure that in the the pi you know, the people that have grown up with Kickstarter in the the city of games, and there are a few other publishers that I feel the same way about. ⁓ you know, like Duck Summonem is a is on a is a publisher that I feel the same way about, the the the their and their their games. But so that's just something for you to consider.

 

Frank: ⁓ no, absolutely. And like I say, I think for me, this is kind of it expands when I was talking about that kind of like second generation of crowdfunding where I think there's hundreds of publishers using crowdfunding, not just myself, where they've got a large community now who will just support their stuff because they trust what they're gonna get. And that that all comes into that kind of area. So I don't see it as a a problem or a negative. It's just it's an interesting, like big shift. that you've kind of noticed over these campaigns.

 

James Engelhardt: So the other thing that I was thinking too is you were talking about like, here are the things that you're supposed to do for a campaign, like here's your kind of checklist, do this stuff. And I feel like that checklist that set has ⁓ maybe grown out of those thousand comments per right. And instead of like, are you going to have localization? ⁓ which language is it gonna be in? ⁓ do you're gonna have schools or how about this? And so you anticipate all of that and just keep scrolling down and go, ⁓ yeah, ⁓ they will have it in French. Excellent. Okay, they will, you know, whatever it is. And I

 

Frank: Mm-hmm. Yes.

 

James Engelhardt: So I wonder about that too, that these things I'm you know, they're iterative, yeah.

 

Frank: Absolutely. I I completely agree. I think that again, we've got to a point where crowdfunding, like your creators are now they're more experienced. They know what to do. They know what questions to answer ahead. You know, you go to one of my campaigns, and one of the questions in the FAQ would be what slide sleeves will I need? You know, it's something that personally I've never looked at when I've gone to back any c crowdfunding campaign in my life. But the amount of people over the years who have said,

 

James Engelhardt: Yeah, yeah.

 

Frank: Hey, when I back projects, I go and pre order all of the sleeves at the same time. You you know to provide that information and and that all plays to it. So it's it's an interesting dynamic how crowdfunding's changed because I don't think that crowdfunding is better or worse than it was 10 years ago. I just think it is different now. You know, it's in in the same way of like, can you really say a fifth generation like?

 

James Engelhardt: Yep. Mm-hmm.

 

Frank: Nintendo console is better than a first generation Nintendo console. You can say, well, the graphics are better and the games are bigger, but that core experience that you got when you played one of those games 30 years ago compared to now, you tell me that when you sat down and played the first Mario game, you didn't have a thrill as big as what you get when you play a game these days, you know? Like that experience is still comparable.

 

James Engelhardt: Yeah. Yeah. I I like how expect expectations change up and down that scale too. Like, ⁓ my god, it's moving things on a screen. It's amazing. And now 3D models. And you know, yeah, yeah. Like at least I can moot stuff. Yeah. ⁓ so I'm gonna pivot in a little bit here. So you've got a solid collection of games that engage with Vesh and Valdora, right? This whole world universe that you've built. and so I've got kind of two questions out of this. Was this something that you were

 

Frank: Mm-hmm. Yes. Mm-hmm.

 

James Engelhardt: Building before you started like work on City of Kings? ⁓ or did the did you have the game and then we're having building a world around it to house it? ⁓ so that's that's one kind of question, right? The other one that's related to this is if you come up with a new setting, you've got great freedoms, right? You're not risk you're you don't have to ⁓ no, I don't know, Samson was this guy and he was the son of right. So you've got lots of Stuff to play with. But you also have to educate new fans, which can be tricky. People walk in and they say, Vesh, Faldora, I don't know. ⁓ so as you were putting this together, building this universe, thinking about City of Kings, did you struggle with these tensions? Did you think, I've got a great idea? This is a story that people are really gonna dig. so how did how did that kind of come about? I know that's a kind of big knot of yarn of a question, but

 

Frank: Yes. So for me, the world building has always been a part. It's something where, you know, for my whole life I thought about kind of creating worlds, designing characters, stories I want to tell. And I feel like a lot of that pulled together as I was designing that first game. I think that I I wouldn't sit down and go, hey, there was a hundred thousand words of story pre-written about exactly the City of Kings, but I would say that there was Probably that much, if not more, story written about characters and ideas and thoughts that then poured into what the City of Kings was. And for me, that was always an important part. Every game I design is set within the same world. And I think that one of the strengths that I get from that is by world and kind of within that world, I have two elements which I think are really key. One of them is I'm happy to sell the tell the story. From both the good guys and the bad guys' perspective and from other sides. So I'm not trapped into, hey, it's just this type of narrative from this side. I'm happy to explore both sides. The second one is time. And I'm happy to tell stories that were 10,000 years in the past or 5,000 years in the future. A lot of the games at the moment are more close together in timeline. They kind of span over about a 50-year range. But there is story and narrative. Like in The City of Kings, there was an art book that I released with that that talks about like. the pre-times, which were 10,000 years ago, and how a lot of this stuff kind of came to be. And I I want to explore more and more of that. Like the hardest part is having the time to obviously know which games to make and what time to kind of put into each of these. And as you said, the world is like is my joy. And for some of the community and people who have played multiple games, they enjoy that connectivity. They enjoy the fact that they can see different things. If you sit down and play Embleaf

 

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm.

 

Frank: You'll find some of the rescue cats hiding in the ⁓ woodlands on the game board. Or up in the top left of the Emberleaf board, there is this ancient set of statues, which were a prophecy. And you'll see that those statues are kind of falling apart and broken, and they represent the six characters that you play in the City of Kings. And one of my favorite parts of that is one of those statues is on the side and broken. And that character in the City of Kings is called Brutius the Broken, which, you know, I'm sure no one has probably ever noticed, but

 

James Engelhardt: That's awesome. You're hearing it now, people.

 

Frank: It just makes my heart sing. And it but the thing is, is that the the the core is when you play these games, you don't need to know, right? If you go into Emberleaf, you don't need to know any of this other stuff exists. If you go into the Isle of Cats, you don't need to know who Vesh is or any of this. You can find out he's a bad person who's coming to destroy this island, and that's enough. But I tried to find that balance between

 

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm.

 

Frank: Progressing overarching story, giving people connectivity so they can like feel familiarity, but not making it a dependence so that no one ever picks up a single game and goes, I can't understand this or play this because I haven't played the others. And interestingly, like, you know, I shouldn't probably shouldn't say this because it's not in any way confirmed or whatever. But one of the things I'm exploring at the moment is doing a sequel to The City of Kings and continuing that story. And that would be a real like you know, continuing the narrative of that game onwards. And one of the questions in my head is that game came out 10 years ago. So if I'm making a sequel, how do I handle people who haven't played the original and don't want to play the original and bringing them up to speed? And does the story need to be separate enough that it doesn't matter? Or does it come with like, you know, a single page that just says, you know, before this, this is roughly what happened, you know? And and there's lots of approaches to that. And ⁓ it's it's fascinating because it's something that is quite unique to my publishing process, I guess, and challenges that are both a joy and and sometimes more difficult, but I I love it. I really do.

 

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Well, I'm also thinking of Ryan Lockett and ⁓ Red Raven, right? He's got his world. And he has a there's a tabletop RPG that's set in that world as well. So that's a possibility for the future of Vesh and Valdoran. But yeah. But it's rare. It is rare. That is I mean, that's the two that I know of that I can think of that have continued. Sure.

 

Joe Mahaffey: Well James.

 

Frank: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And and I'm sure there are others, you know, and there might well be publishers who have got maybe one of two games out now, and that's their plan. They're going down that path and so on. And honestly, I kind of I know it's ⁓ like some people like it, some people don't. But for me, I wish more people did it. I wish more publishers did it because it creates a line of inspiration that I don't think can exist without taking that path. So for example, you know, if I sat down and said, hey, I want to make a civilization game.

 

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm.

 

Frank: Well, most people, if they make civilization games, right, we're going through humanity's civilization and we're going through all of those kind of tropes of this is what happened in the human kind of process. Well, for me, I sit there and go, Well, hey, one of my favorite races in my world is the Occul, which are these humanoid penguin warriors who live in the frozen lands, you know? So wouldn't it be really cool to do a civilization game where you're kind of sculpting everything out of ice and snow? And like, how would you even go about that? But It would lead to something that would be so different and so unexpected to what a normal kind of civilization building game is that that excites me and that feels like something I'd like to explore and I'd like to consider. So I do think that it's it adds restraints, but it also creates pathways where you end up with a fancy island of cats and you're rescuing them, you know, on a boat. So

 

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm.

 

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah, we we've talked to a number ⁓ we've talked about a number of games and we've talked to some publishers that, you know, they come out with either sequels or they come out with expansions and or they come out with, you know, variations on a theme. And in some instances they're trying to fix, you know, some of the things that they wish they had done in the original game. And I and I wonder as we move from cats into penguins, you know Well, he brought it up like the Penguin Warriors, I figured it was time. You know, if we

 

James Engelhardt: Thank you for that transition, incidentally. That was well done. It's a good, good move. Yeah.

 

Frank: Yeah.

 

Joe Mahaffey: As we move in from cats to penguins, I'm kind of curious, is there any particular mechanic that you're going to be addressing in the penguins, the Isle of Penguins that that ⁓ you wished you had done in cats?

 

Frank: Yeah, it's it it's such an interesting kind of thing to talk about for me, like that kind of that journey from cats to penguins and the differences, because I could speak for hours about how different these two games are. And yet I think that that initial kind of feeling is, well, they're quite similar, aren't they? And and one of the things I was thinking about quite a lot was, you know, I live in the UK in Bristol. You live the other side of the world to me. And if I said to you now, okay, what I want to do is we're both going to get up from our chairs, we're going to get in our cars, we're going to drive to the nearest woodland, we're going to go for a walk for 20 minutes, turn around, walk back, drive home, and then have a chat. You and I have now just done exactly the same thing, right? For like down to the T. We've got in a car, we've gone to a place, we've done the same thing, we've come back. But the experiences we've just had are going to be so different. Right. The scene who you pass on the road, what you to overtake if there's been an accident or an animal or something, what you see in that woodland, what kind of trees and the wildlife, and the whole experience is so different. That how can we say that there we've done the same thing, but we have done the same thing? And that was kind of like the starting point of what I wanted to do when I was creating the Isle of Penguins. I wanted to look at and said, Ro.

 

James Engelhardt: V

 

Frank: If I was to make the Isle of Cats again today, how would I do it without car drafting and without polyominoes? And polyominoes and car drafting is basically what Isle of Cats is, right? It's a game of two halves. You do car drafting, then you do stuff with polyominoes. So I sat down and was like, right, I want to make the same game without those things. And I want to go from there and see what would happen. So the systems are, in essence, similar, but the feeling of those systems is very different. So

 

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm.

 

Frank: Is there a particular like mechanism or mechanic that I kind of think is like I wanted to do differently? It's kind of like all of them, but at the same time, I don't want you to feel like all of them because I want you to know that if you enjoyed the Eye of Catch, you're gonna enjoy this game. So obviously I can I can go more into specifics, but hopefully that kind of gives you a a loose answer to that kind of question.

 

Joe Mahaffey: ⁓ for sure.

 

James Engelhardt: So the the question then I I have is ⁓ you had mentioned the penguins and maybe this ⁓ the penguin warriors and maybe that answers it, but I was like, Why penguins? ⁓ did you like do summer research in Antarctica? Like what was yeah.

 

Frank: Mm-hmm. No, so ⁓ penguins have always been my favorite animal, right? I I adore cats. I love cats. ⁓ I've always loved cats and they are very, very close second. But penguins have been the you know, penguins are that animal that when I was four years old and my and my family were on a long car trip and an hour afterwards stopped at a service station, I burst into tears and my parents realised I'd left my penguin plushie in the service station. And they had to turn around and drive an hour back to pick it up because they knew I wouldn't sleep that night if I didn't have my penguin. You know, penguins have been that for my life. So it was kind of I always wanted to make a penguin game, but I wanted it to be the right game. It wasn't like I was ever gonna rush. And making the sequel to the Isle of Cats, which obviously has been by far my most successful game and has been a very, very kind of well-received game.

 

James Engelhardt: Yep. Yeah. Okay.

 

Frank: It was like, well, I need to do something special. If I'm gonna make that sequel, it has to be special. So so why not use the sp the special penguin animal? So ⁓ that that was it really.

 

James Engelhardt: Yeah, that makes sense. I so I w the other thing that I keep thinking is that I wanna get that clip of ⁓ Benedict Cumberbatch ⁓ mispronouncing penguins time and time again. ⁓ it's a it's a great sequence and I keep wanting to see that as part of the like advertising stuff, but ⁓ that's just me.

 

Frank: Yeah. One of my ⁓ personal challenges with the Isle of Penguins, which is a goal I've set myself for the next 12 months, is I've discovered that I just can't type the word simultaneous. And every single time I type simultaneous, I spell it wrong. And I don't know I'm spelling it wrong. So I've now designed a simultaneous playing game where I have to write the word simultaneous about every five minutes. And I at some point I'm gonna learn how to type it properly. And honestly.

 

James Engelhardt: Ha ha.

 

Frank: I go to bed at night thinking I did it. It's like twelve times I got it wrong today. So, you know, by the end of this year, I'm gonna learn how to spell simultaneous.

 

James Engelhardt: ⁓ yeah. I sometimes mistype my last name, so that's fine. ⁓ I also used to work for a a literary journal called Prairie Schooner and trying to remember and look at the word prairie, and there's so many eyes and so many weird places, it's just so I f I I yeah, I understand. I feel your pain there. ⁓ okay. Yeah. ⁓ yeah. Yeah. ⁓

 

Frank: Yeah. ⁓

 

Joe Mahaffey: Liaison liaison is my word. 'Cause there's a lot of eyes and those as well. So we're just sharing, you know, words that

 

Frank: Yes. I'm glad we all have one, you know. Folks at home, leave a comment. What's the word that you always spell wrong? But make sure you spell it right, you know?

 

James Engelhardt: Yeah. And ⁓ yeah, and this is when we tr this is when we transition to our therapy session, so yeah.

 

Joe Mahaffey: Hundred percent.

 

Frank: Yeah.

 

Joe Mahaffey: So I'm I'm curious with the the different games that you've put out and the one you're putting out now, is there something you've learned by watching strangers play one of your games that you could have never discovered through playtesting or with friends?

 

Frank: Yeah, I think all the time, constantly. So it's it's an interesting one. So I When I was in the programming world, I used to have a general kind of standard when I was a manager and for myself as well as people who would work with me and stuff. And my theory as a programmer was if you get to the end of programming something and you've said to me it's finished, if you can't at that point tell me how you could have done it better if you started again, then you shouldn't be doing this anymore. Because I truly believe that there are some things in the world Where there is always more than one way to achieve something. And you do what is absolutely the best and is is good enough and is what people want, but you should always be able to learn from that. And every game I've put out there, there has been so many like areas of learning between just ⁓ how you describe something, what words you use versus like a rule or a term. I think that

 

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm.

 

Frank: You know, sometimes just the things that you kind of just assume are very straightforward and you can sit down with a hundred people and they can play test the game and it comes back and it's like, hey, that's good. And then you put it out there and the next nine hundred people still kind of do it differently. I think one of the interesting ones, you know, and I'll I'll say this quite clearly with ⁓ Emberleaf, which has been my ⁓ last game before the Isle of Penguins, my newest game. ⁓ Emberlef, I I think obviously I won't talk about Art of Penguins because it's not out there, but like up until like this point, I would comfortably say I think that Emberleaf is my smartest and best design of a game. I think that it's I wouldn't necessarily say which of my games is best, but in terms of the the tightness of design, I it's the one that I'm kind of the proudest of. And I think that a lot of this because is because it has this card dancing system, which is the unique mechanism that I designed for this game.

 

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm.

 

Frank: And one of the things that I've learned with ⁓ card dancing over the years is, or over the last year, is people can sit down and look at something and they can judge what it's gonna be or how it's gonna play through observation. And observation is often different to actually the the reality of you doing it. And what I've kind of found interesting is that more as Ember Leaf has grown.

 

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm.

 

Frank: And has become more popular. So Emberleaf is now my second best-selling game after the Art of Cats, which is i it's surprising to me because it's less than a year old and some of the others are very old, you know. But the thing that I find interesting is it's now spreading to more and more people, and more and more people from outside of who I imagined the original audience was gonna be. And what that means is there's more and more people coming in who aren't familiar with the concept of card dancing because obviously they've never heard of it before.

 

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm.

 

Frank: And they approach it rather than with excitement, with kind of dread and concern, because it's like, ⁓ my goodness, I there's a whole thing that I'm just really worried about. And it's actually really simple. It's actually really straightforward. And when they play that they kind of are like, ⁓ this is great. But I think so, as like as a as a true observed thing, like that, right? Is how do you when you get to a point of people who are so

 

James Engelhardt: Ha

 

Frank: Distant from your original audience who are picking something up, how do you write messaging for them without changing the messaging you've written for the first 50,000 people who kind of picked that game up? And and I still don't know the answer to that, right? I still don't know who do you write the information on the back of the box for? You know, for the Arda Penguins, if you go into a shop and pick it up, it's gonna say one thing.

 

Joe Mahaffey: No.

 

Frank: If my mum goes into a shop and picks it up, it needs to say something else for her to have a clue what it means, you know? And and that's ⁓ that's something that I keep trying to learn is just how do you get that messaging and wording right on that side?

 

James Engelhardt: So ⁓ weirdly, in my professional life, I'm I'm a poet and teacher of poetry. So thinking about when you get to the end of the poem, how would I have done it better? How will, you know, if it gets published, like well, how can I do this better hits perfectly. And also, how do I speak to which audience? And and in the fewest words possible, right? So these are these are things that resonate real strongly with. I also had been thinking about Emberleaf. So I appreciate that little ⁓ setup as well because I was. Thinking about the the card dancing, which feels like it was a way to explore building and exploring a dynamic tableau, right? So instead of putting out all your birds in Wingspan and they're just gonna sit there, they start moving around. And what you do as it moves around, that changes how the whole thing works, right? It looks brilliant. And I'm sorry I missed it early on, but it's clearly come up on my radar. As you were saying, it sort of slowly built this audience, and I'm now hearing about it a lot, and I'm thinking I'll be at Gen Con this week. Maybe I'll stop by and find it. ⁓ so I'm wondering if that's how that developed, right? You're like, ⁓ I have a tab tableaus are cool, but I'd like to see something more. ⁓ there's also the discard pile versus hand management thing, right? As it comes off the board, does it, you know? So I'm like, there's a lot of stuff that's happened there. So I'm wondering what that process was like. Was there a like eureka moment when it sort of popped into place, or ⁓ did it just again with the ancient Greeks spring fully formed from your forehead like Athena, right? ⁓ they're just, yeah, fascinated by it.

 

Frank: It's it's interesting actually because card dancing, the the core mechanism behind it is something that I have been designing around since about 2020. So I think I first came up with it just after the Art of Cats, and I've actually designed many games using that system. But the problem was that I didn't feel like any of those games were the right first game for that system, if that makes sense. Because there's

 

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm. Yep.

 

Frank: Simplers of it. There's more advanced versions of it. And I wanted one that kind of felt meaty enough and interesting enough that it engaged you and kind of gave you enough of it without being too overloaded or too simple to kind of lose the point. And the the real essence to it and the kind of that eureka moment really was it was all about timing. And I think this is one of the things that for me is such a key part of that card dancing system. It's a mechanism that allows the timing of things to be the heart of what you're doing. Because a lot of people look at it and go, Well, it's just about playing cards and sliding cards, right? So why is it not just called card sliding, right? You know, why have you kind of given it this extra name? But to me, the actual card dancing system is about. Where you place cards into that grid and then how that evolves into that sliding. And it's that two-step part, right? It's that placement of where and when, and then the movement of it sliding across. And what this allows is this really interesting timing system. So the very first game I was designing around this was my attempt at making an analog version of a real-time strategy game.

 

James Engelhardt: Uh-huh.

 

Frank: And real-time strategy games like Command and Conquer or Starcraft are one of my favorite types of video games. But they're all about timing, right? You want to build something, it takes six seconds. You want to do this, it takes nine seconds. And if you're sat playing a board game, how can you have 50 different things that all take three or four seconds or 12 seconds and make that engaging? But through this card dancing system, if you think of, well, there's four slots. Each slot requires a slide. So therefore, the fourth slot is going to take four times longer than the first slot. You can start to create this system where different things have different time requirements without ever having to mention time. You never have to explain to someone this is about time. You just force time by making a certain number of actions restrict how much time that takes. And that was really where that system kind of evolved from. And then obviously with Emberleaf, when it was kind of like, well, we're going to

 

James Engelhardt: Hmm.

 

Frank: build buildings and gather resources and move around, putting timing into some of those elements in that same kind of structure works differently to an RTS game, but obviously has some overlap as well.

 

James Engelhardt: And I like how the ⁓ there's freedom within the tableau that you can leave spaces, you can move like now I'm gonna wait for this one to do and I and I thought, ⁓ that's it it it when you started talking about the time it that kind of clicked into my research. It's like, ⁓ yeah, that makes perfect sense 'cause then I'm I'm gonna wait for another card and put this there and then yes, ⁓ then it comes off and fires off these things and yeah.

 

Frank: Yes. And as an optimization puzzle, it's so fascinating, right? Because you've got eight spaces. And when you play a card, you play it into one of those empty spaces. And when you slide your cards, everything slides and triggers. So by default, you know if you've got eight things in front of you and you do a slide, that's going to be a lot more optimal than having one thing and doing a slide because all eight things are moving and triggering. But as you play the game, you'll realize that that's not always the case, right? Sometimes it's better just to have that one thing and just keep that one thing moving.

 

James Engelhardt: Mm-hmm.

 

Frank: Because the consequence of that one action is so much more valuable than the consequence of lots of little things that you don't really need. But you then have this balance of right, well, do I do two? Do I do three? Or actually I've got these three now and it's perfect. So maybe I should, but just one more, you know, is the game gonna last long enough for that one more? And then you place one more, and then it's like, ooh, what about just one more? ⁓

 

James Engelhardt: Right. Yeah. And that's where you get high cholesterol. So there's but there's also the ⁓ but there's also the the upper and lower, right? And like which one's gonna fi because they always fire off in a particular order. So you've got to plan that ahead too. So you're like, ⁓ fuck, I've got eight thousand wood and I've got nowhere to put them and now I can't determine the food and yeah. So the optimization puzzle is the the dynamics of that is really, yeah, just super compelling.

 

Frank: Yes. ⁓ Mm-hmm.

 

Joe Mahaffey: So Frank, there's an anecdotal story in the United States that it was the Beach Boys pet sounds that inspired the Beatles to do Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band. And that makes me wonder is there a game that after you saw it or played it, it really pushed you to do something different in your game design that perhaps you wouldn't have done had you not been inspired?

 

James Engelhardt: That was a fun setup, Joe. That was really nice. I like the the classic rock thing was good.

 

Joe Mahaffey: I worked hard on that question. I worked hard on that. Well he's he's in the UK. I you know, I figured we'd we need to go there.

 

Frank: It's it's a curious one because I'm sure there's definitely been some stuff subconsciously from the board game world. But I would actually say that the majority of those moments for me come from the video game world. And whilst I don't play as many of video games now, I so I'm a firm believer that we all have different backgrounds, we all have different stories, we all have different experiences and knowledge. And that means any two people combined can create something that any other two people probably couldn't create because they have things they can pull from which are different. So for me, I really like to pull from my video game world and the video games that I interact with and look at how I can explore these in a physical world because I feel like it allows me to come up with things or try things which maybe other people aren't doing because they're not a approaching it from that side. So as I said, I'm sure there are probably board games. I mean, I've you know, I have a thousand board games and I've played many, many more than that, right? I'm I'm sure there are some where they've definitely been like, hey, I could do this or do that. But I could probably give you a list of fifty things from video games where I have directly looked at it and been like, well, right, okay, how do we do that one now? Because that's like my real passion.

 

Joe Mahaffey: Yeah, no, I I appreciate that. As somebody who just recently discovered a new way to play Ultima Two back on ⁓ fra computer from my old Apple two days, I certainly appreciate that.

 

Frank: Yeah.

 

James Engelhardt: Awesome. So ⁓ yes, sir.

 

Joe Mahaffey: James, I'll I was gonna let you jump in with your ⁓ Gen Con questions.

 

James Engelhardt: Yeah, I was gonna say. So ⁓ as I mentioned briefly a minute ago, ⁓ I'm heading off to Gen Con ⁓ this week. And are you gonna be there, Frank? Are you have you've got a what's what's your experience well yeah?

 

Frank: So unfortunately not. ⁓ I do try to go to Gen Con most years, ⁓ but I won't be there this year. And it's purely a timing thing because of the Kickstarter and the campaign. Because as I mentioned, you know, I'm a one person person and that one person company, I hate using the word company, but I'm a one person ⁓ publisher. And what that means is if I go to Gen Con, I'm offline for 24 hours travelling. And when I come back, I'm offline for 24 hours traveling.

 

James Engelhardt: All right. Ha ha ha. Huh.

 

Frank: And I just can't afford that when I have so many people asking me questions, needing support. And in the middle of kind of this period, it's just and I know the campaign's gonna end, but then we go into the pledge manager. And the actual interestingly for me, the support after a Kickstarter ends and as you launch and run the start of the pledge manager is the most critical part because it's the most convoluted part of crowdfunding, right? It's the part that if you've never done crowdfunding before.

 

James Engelhardt: Okay.

 

Frank: You have no idea why you suddenly have to go to use this other thing and fit in all of this information when you've already paid for it. And just being there and engaged during that time I feel like is a really important thing.

 

James Engelhardt: Well and this goes back to Joe talking about Dale being part of that community and getting questions and answers from you. So ⁓ yeah, I I can see why ⁓ people become dedicated to your your the stuff that you do because you're that guy. So yeah.

 

Frank: Mm-hmm.

 

Joe Mahaffey: No, that's

 

Frank: It's a ⁓ it's something I love to do and I love being this way, but I do wish I was going to Gen Con. I'm I'm not gonna run another Kickstarter around Gen Con again because it wasn't something I'd really thought about at the time and it's a shame how much impact it has.

 

James Engelhardt: ⁓ yeah. Yeah.

 

Joe Mahaffey: Well, I I'm very jealous that James is going as well. It wasn't something that I could pull off ⁓ this particular year. ⁓ but it's the first time he's going as well. So I think our goal our our goal is to try to figure out maybe how to go and maybe podcast from there at some point or just I qu I would rather almost do random ⁓ video based interviews and then come back and put together a compilation or something like that 'cause I think that would be much more interesting and and and easier to produce. I don't know. Maybe I'm just

 

James Engelhardt: Yeah. It is true.

 

Frank: ⁓ wow. If this is your ⁓ first time going to Gen Con James, then ⁓ just try and enjoy it. Like that's the thing for me. I think that you'll be amazed how many people you bump into and see who you may recognize from the industry and also just random people as well. And the interactions that you get with anybody, regardless of whether they're a someone who works in the hobby or just someone who plays board games. I think that the amount of memories I have from this kind of stuff and it and it's surreal, you know, just from when you land in that airport.

 

James Engelhardt: ⁓ yeah. Mm-hmm.

 

Frank: And you suddenly realize that ninety-five percent of the people around you are there for Gen Con. And you see those board game bags, you see all of that stuff, all the way up to when you leave and you're in security and you're waiting to go out, and you realize that every single person in front of you's got nine hundred board games in their rucksack, and going through security is gonna take six hours. I

 

James Engelhardt: Yep. I was like, ⁓ is that it's just a deck of cards? It looks like a bomb to me. Yeah. Okay.

 

Frank: Well, yeah, great example is the first time I went to Gen Con, obviously, because you have weight allowances and all of this for your suitcases, and I was doing international flying. I'd bought so many games that I was thinking to myself, what is the heaviest, most dense part of it? And I realized it was the cards. So I opened up all of the games, punched everything, put all the boxes inside boxes as much as I could, reduced it all down, and I took out every single deck of cards and I ended up making these two big stacks of cards like this from all of the games, still in their shrink.

 

James Engelhardt: Right.

 

Frank: And I put them into clean socks to keep them protected and smooth. And then made two of these bundles and put them into my rucksacks, which just looked like I was carrying two kilogram bars of cocaine on the scanners, right? Because they just saw these two big solid blocks wrapped in socks, horribly mangled in my rucksack. And boy, am I never gonna do that again because I tell you everyone in that security line was waiting for me because of the delays that caused. So ⁓

 

James Engelhardt: ⁓ yeah. Yeah. It's either C four or Coke, yep.

 

Frank: So yeah, enjoy the experience.

 

Joe Mahaffey: That's better than the time atmosphere.

 

James Engelhardt: Yeah, I have ⁓ yeah. I was telling my friend I'm just gonna wait for the wait for the game to come to me. Just wait for the game to develop and then see how it goes. Yeah.

 

Joe Mahaffey: That's better than the time I went to Mexico and had the game Bandito in my bag and it got pulled out through customs and the guy just kinda looked at it and looked at me and then kinda sniggered and then put it back in the bag.

 

James Engelhardt: Yeah.

 

Frank: Yeah.

 

Joe Mahaffey: ⁓ my gosh. Well well Frank, ⁓ we really appreciate the the opportunity to speak with you this evening for you, this afternoon for us. ⁓ this has been a lot of fun and and I've really enjoyed, you know, hearing your perspective on being a solo game designer. And I love the fact that you came out of the UXUI arena. I'm in I myself am in IT. I'm not a poet. ⁓ I do a lot with software development and and ⁓ data centers and ⁓

 

James Engelhardt: Ha ha ha.

 

Joe Mahaffey: UX UI. So it's it's always a pleasure to talk to somebody who has come to the hobby from a from a similar background. ⁓ James, do you have any final thoughts? ⁓ yeah, absolutely. ⁓ James, you have any final thoughts?

 

Frank: It's it's been a pleasure.

 

James Engelhardt: ⁓ just just a great conversation. ⁓ always I've been watching some of your videos, Frank. It's great to just sit down and chat with you. ⁓ lots of great ideas, lots of great insights. Thank you. Thank you for your time.

 

Joe Mahaffey: And I appreciate your passion ⁓ for the for the hobby. I was telling the story, I think it was on our last episode, that I remember ⁓ I got the Isle of Cats and I had a game that the board kinda got a little wonky. I don't know how, probably from overplay, and I and I wrote you a qua ⁓ a query about it from a customer service point of view and you said, Yep, we'll take care of it. And the next thing I know you sent me a whole new shrink wrapped game, which which totally blew me away. ⁓ and I made sure that that did not just become a a an unused gift that it actually kept on giving to somebody to enjoy the game and you know, the pieces were appropriate. So I just appreciate that that level of dedication.

 

Frank: ⁓ it's it's my pleasure. And yeah, as I said, like for me, obviously this is a livelihood, right? I have to be able to pay the bills and stuff, but it's about just being like creating good moments and creating good experiences. And over the years, some of the things I've heard from people, like the moments, the stories they've shared, from small things from like, you know, just being grateful they've had standard customer service of what we should expect, right? You know.

 

James Engelhardt: Yeah.

 

Frank: two big life altering moments. And some of them, you know, like just literally bring me to tears when I think about them. So I'm just so grateful that there's so many people out there who support my games and play and enjoy my games that this is this is a two way thing, right? And it's the least I can do is to help others be able to enjoy the things they've paid to be able to enjoy.

 

Joe Mahaffey: That's great. Well, everybody, that's gonna be it for us today. As per usual, I am Joe Mahaffey. I am not bored, I am bored gaming.

 

James Engelhardt: I'm James Egglehart. I hope that all your tiebreakers break your way. And thank you, Frank.

 

Joe Mahaffey: Thank you, Frank. And we'll be back in a couple of weeks after Gen Con.

 

Frank: Thank you.

 

James Engelhardt: See y'all.