Apr 5, 2020
Emma and Gil welcome accomplished designer Cole Wehrle, designer of
Root,
Oath, and
Pax Pamir (Second Edition), back to the show (Cole previously
appeared on
Ludology 163 – A Pain in the Asymmetry). We discuss fairness in
games. Has it been around for as long as we think it has? What can
an “unfair” game do that other games can’t?
Cole is a staff designer at Leder Games, and co-foundedÂ
Wehrlegig Games with his
brother Drew.
SHOW NOTES
2m18s: You can watch Cole’s GDC talk here.
12m02s: Learn more about
Twilight Imperium (this is the most recent version, but there
were previous versions with slightly different rulesets)
13m52s: Learn more about Memoir
’44.
14m25s: Learn more about Scythe.
16m04s: Learn more about Blood
Rage and Sushi
Go!
19m30s: Gil remembers a bunch of Viking games in the mid-aughts.
One of the biggest was Michael Kiesling’s Vikings,
whose gameplay, while clever, did little to evoke actual
Vikings.
22m41s: The book Strike Four was
recommended to me by Dennis Goodman, who is himself a baseball historian and rules
expert, and has written
a streamlined rulebook for the sport.
24m16s: The book Cole refers to is The Games Ethic and
Imperialism (Sport in the Global Society) by J. A. Mangan.
25m14s: I’m referring to the book
The Ball is Round: A Global History of Soccer/Football, by
David Goldblatt. The exact title depends on if you buy the US or UK
version; this link is to the US version.
27m07s: Cole refers to the book
Making England Western, by Saree Makdisi.
27m33s: Thomas Arnold was
headmaster of Rugby School from 1828, and was influential in
reforming the British public school system. Tom
Brown’s School Days was written by Thomas Hughes and published
in 1857, and popularized British public schools as a literary
setting.Â
28m11s: If you’re curious, here is the
official 2019 NFL rulebook. If your eyes aren’t crossed yet,
here is
the official 2019 MLB rulebook (though note
Dennis Goodman’s streamlined take on the rules of baseball,
mentioned above). And to finish you off, here is the official ICC
web page on
all the Playing Conditions of every form of cricket (although
to be fair, they have to handle all three major forms of the game –
imagine if the NFL rulebook had to account for Canadian and Arena
Football as well!)
Side note: I also checked out the official Laws of World Rugby Union, and I
was stunned to see how clearly-written they were! They are made to
be read by a layperson, not a lawyer, and come with many video
examples of rule violations.
30m42s: This is a good time to remind you to check out
Scott Rogers’ Biography of a Board Game last week for The Game of
the Goose. It’s not technically a Victorian board game – no one
knows how old it is – but it’s the template for many Victorian
parlor games. (I wish we could say we planned these episodes to run
consecutively, but it was just a happy coincidence!)
32m08s: We’re discussing The
Landlord’s Game, by Elizabeth Magie (interestingly,
Hasbro
still does not officially acknowledge Magie’s role in the
creation of Monopoly, perhaps for
legal reasons)
32m56s: More like 150-175 years old, really. Most sports rules
began getting formally codified in the mid-19th century (though
cricket had already started getting codified in the 18th
century).
33m14s: The Eton Wall Game
is still played today. And yes, there’s video of it! Note
that Eton has a second code of football, the Eton Field
Game, which is closer to soccer, but still contains many
elements found in rugby. There’s a video of the Eton Field
Game here.
36m34s: Cole is referring to Bernie De Koven
and his book The Well-Played Game. He also refers to the games
Acquire
and Caylus.
37m23s: To Emma’s point, Prussian college professor Johann
Christian Ludwig Hellwig invented the first
wargame in 1780, but it was Kriegsspiel,
designed by Prussian nobleman George Leopold von Reisswitz in 1812
and refined by his soldier son Georg Heinrich Rudolf Johann von
Reisswitz in 1824, that introduced realism and verisimilitude into
the form. Note that these wargames were designed more for military
training than recreation.
37m43s: H.G.
Wells, who wrote many seminal science-fiction novels like
The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible
Man, and The War of the Worlds, was also a game
designer. In his books Floor Games and Little
Wars, he establishes rules for the first recreational
wargames. (Also, the idea of games solving world problems is still
alive, most notably by Jane McGonigal in her book Reality is
Broken.)
38m53s: Alexander Pope’s classic (albeit somewhat
overly-dramatically-named) poem The Rape of
the Lock. Read it here.
39m58s: Roger Caillois’ Man, Play and
Games, written in 1961, probably deserves its own episode.
42m00s: Hare and
Tortoise is, of course, the first Spiel des Jahres winner. (On
a related note, Scott’s Biography
of a Board Game about Eurogames is a really good listen on this
subject.) Cole then mentions Die Macher
and Catan.
46m20s: I did not come up with this “roll a die at the end of a
game of Chess to see who wins” thought experiment, but I can’t
remember where I read it! Maybe
Characteristics of Games?
47m29s: Relevant quote from Mike Selinker from Ludology
189 – Missing Selinker: “Frustration is a valuable, positive
thing up to a point. You’ve just got to know where the table flip
is.”
48m08s: Cole is kind enough to mention Gil’s forthcoming game
High
Rise after playing it at GDC 2019. Cole gave his talk on
defending kingmaking; Gil gave his talk on
how indirect interaction in games can be good.
52m21s: More info about
Descent, Dark
Venture, and Tomb.
59m30s: More info about Byzantine
themes.
1h04m44s: More info about Liberté.
1h06m36s: More info about The History of Rome
podcast.
1h08m58s: The
political compass of Root, as suggested by Reddit user
u/orionsbelt05.
