Transcript The year is 2006. The world of warcraft is peaceful. The birds are chirping, the swamp jaguars are being hunted into extinction, the npcs are asking too much from strangers. But something is afoot. Or at least the government suspects it is. The world of warcraft might be full of terrorists. Yes, the US government was afraid terrorists were using the World of Warcraft to plan real world terrorist attacks. But let’s dive into some context first: 2006 was the height of the war on terrosim, and it’s also the year that marks a shift in how terrorists operated. Terrorism had become globa ..read more

Transcript The D&D community has a slew of insults for players who play the game incorrectly. Optimizers, min-maxers, metagamers, quarterbacks, murder hobos, and the list goes on. But isn’t D&D whatever you want to make of it? How can you play it wrong if it’s just a framework for cooperative play? The rulebook says again and again to change the rules as you see fit. So why do players argue at all? Well, what if I said D&D players weren’t at fault here, but it was the game that was misleading them. D&D is failing to keep a promise it made to its players. And the craziest part ..read more

Transcript Tarot cards and playing cards have the same origins, and the decks are almost functionally identical if you look into them. But these days, one is exclusively used for gaming, while the other is used exclusively for divination. But given the history between games and divination, this isn’t as odd as it seems. In ancient times, games of chance were born out of divination. The first dice were made out of the knucklebones of cattle, and were originally used as a fortune-telling device. Eventually, people started using these dice to play games too. The first board games came out of thi ..read more

Transcript The Hardest Puzzle Ever Solved In 1985, Lord Christopher Monckton started working on a puzzle, a puzzle that ened up being of the most difficult puzzles ever devised. He spent the next 14 years working on it. He called it the Eternity puzzle. But he wasn’t just a puzzlemaker [and viscount, and politician, and computer programmer, journalist, professional homophobe, public speaker and whatever a hereditary peer is], he was also a clever marketer. See, he offered a million pound prize for anyone who can solve it. And at the time, prize money games were popular: Who wants to be a milli ..read more

Transcript The Settlers of Catan is what is known as a gateway game. It’s often used to introduce people unfamiliar with the world of modern board games, into these sorts of games. But in 2003, the Settlers of Catan was used for something very different: as what seems to be Mormon religous propaganda. […] That was Jeremy Young, a mormon tech millionaire, who licensed and published the game. In short, it was a commercial hit. […] This game didn’t do well for a Mormon game, it just did well for a game. Especialy in 2003, those sales numbers were top tier. And it was very similar to the Catan mo ..read more

Transcript When I shop for anything, I always watch reviews. And if the reviews seem too positive, I get a little annoyed. There is a place for uncritical praise, but it’s not in reviews. I want to know why the haters hate, and why the fanboys fanboy. And when it comes to board games, that feels doubly true. Except, even though I’m always looking for negative reviews, I frequently can’t find any at all. Even Tom Vassel, who is well known for negative reviews, ultimately gives his seal of approval to about 80% of the games he reviews. But I wonder, why is that? What about board gaming makes ne ..read more

Transcript People take it for granted that games are a storytelling medium. But until quite recently, games didn’t tell stories. Before the 70’s, there weren’t really any narrative games. In 1978, games scholar, Bernard Suits, said storytelling “only belonged in the unstructured make-believe games of children”. Even into the 2000’s, game scholars denied that games even could tell stories effectively. In 2004, Raph Koster wrote “games melded with stories tend to be Frankenstein monsters. Players tend to either skip the story or skip the game.” Since then, narrative has become an essential part ..read more

Video Transcript So have you ever wondered why games of twenty questions always starts with “is it an animal, a vegetable, or a mineral?” I remember being really confused by that question. But somehow, it has always found a way to insert itself at the start of every game of 20 questions. But why? Why such a weird question? There are so many things that didn’t fall into these categories. How often would someone even choose a mineral? How many minerals can the average person even name? Well, it turns out the question isn’t as arbitrary as I thought it was. It has history going back nearly fifte ..read more

When people talk about video games, one of the biggest buzz words seems to be “immersive.” Webster defines it as “the sensation of being surrounded by a completely other reality.” everyone knows that video games are unrivaled in their ability to create immersive worlds, and their ability to engulf a player in that world. Video game worlds are far bigger and more complex than in any other media, and it often pays off in their ability to transport players. But what about board games? Can board games be immersive? There are certainly attempts to create worlds in some board games. Games like Gloom ..read more

One of my favorite parts of Gloomhaven wasn’t even originally a part the game: enhancements. Isaac came up with the idea as a stretch goal during the initial kickstarter, a goal that funded just a few days before the campaign ended. Oddly enough, the commenters on that post were largely against the idea: the “destruction” of game components was still a very new idea back then and it stirred a lot of controversy, but I think time has shown us that this is one of the very coolest part of Gloomhaven! It seems remarkable that a game makes taking coins feel so urgent at every stage, even at very hi ..read more