vpjarponen.bsky.social
Interdisciplinary philosophy in the academia by day, tabletop game design by night
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You can find the details over at
http://tabletop.even...
and sign up to join the fun yourself!
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Thanks Adam, that two-halves aspect of the game indeed gets mentioned quite often as one of the favorite things about the game.
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Thank you, Ben, for continuing to make this amazing show for the benefit of our hobby. Every single interview is a fascinating look at a person, their corner of the world and always a little our shared world as well, and of course games.
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To learn more about Order & Opportunity or to pre-order the game, you can go to the P500 page here: www.gmtgames.com/p-1027-order...
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I’m extremely grateful to @aigar.bsky.social for gifting me table space at Essen 2024. I got Arabella the “18xx roll and write” game from his company - I know @candidrum.bsky.social did too. I look forward to trying it with the family. Hashtag SleeperHitEssen2024? boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/36...
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Thanks James! Will you be in Essen this year? As posted in another message, I will after all get to demo O&O in Essen 2024, booth 3-Q111, hosted by Aigar of 2d6 Games.
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Well, the game has a standard GMT size map of 34 x 20 inches, so about 90 by 60 cm, plus 4 rather small player mats.
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I’ve no table space I can use. Once upon a time UGG had a large booth and plenty of table space in Essen but not anymore.
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I look forward to this. The label for the city of Kiel appears to be missing on the map, not that it probably matters, functionally. Greetings from Kiel by the way!
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Two games of Root, both times I came in last as the Keepers vs the Alliance and the Hundreds defeated by 11 and 15 points (!), respectively - I don‘t see how the Keepers could ever win, ideas? Also, playtesting Order & Opportunity (GMT Games P500).
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Many thanks for the write up, guys. Honored to be featured in the illustrious BBW Series!
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There‘s an old Ludology episode on hard and soft incentives. Games typically focus on min-maxing the hard stuff (resources, VPs), while in real life we perhaps often act from soft incentives (be the good guy even if it means I forego a tasty hard reward).
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An excellent point about goal-orientation. In design I‘ve had my struggles with trying to incentivise outcomes that historical may not have been intended at all. Often this boils down to in history agency being distributed (multiple agents) but in games focused and pinpointed on the single player.
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Your notion of witnessing is interesting. Our game dev culture seems very aesthetically orientated - sometimes at the expense of failing to include captivating incentive structures/problem spaces, I feel. A symptom of a broader aesthetical, epistemological, phenomenological cultural orientation?
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In my work I like to think about what particular incentive structures popular in games (say min-maxing; area control) might tell us about our design culture(s), where might these ideas come from historically, and what alternatives might there be.
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In my own analog designs I have tended to think of games as representing *incentive structures* for players to excercise their agency with. Laying down these structures is a way of „simulating“ history. I feel this is analogous to your problem space concept - and we both nod to C Thi Nguyen here.
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I do find this useful in that it encourages us to think about the „procedural rhetorics“ through which different games shape our experience as they represent history as problem spaces. How does your framework relate to Bogost‘s notion? Are there critical contrasts?
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What’s the Sharks (?) card game you were talking about?
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I enjoyed this episode quite a bit. Given my main gaming buddy is my daughter, I‘m thinking how well does Turncoats work as a 2-player game? How language dependent is it? It would seem not very much at all.
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Perfection! Me and my main gaming buddy (my daughter) are hyped already. I translated the box back for her and she was very intrigued. It’ll be the PnP files for us as we‘re in Europe.
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Absolutely fascinating! The back of the box text makes me think of this modern classic philosophical debate from the 60s: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indeter... A weird question: can I try decipher this game with my non-English speaking kids? Or is deciphering the rules „indirectly“ English dependent?
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Some ideas for future episodes: in what way might or might not „Euro game“, „wargame“, or „CDG“, or „worker placement“ be rigid designators — or: using philosophy of language to (dis)solve questions about the sense and reference of terms of genre and mechanics in boardgames.