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Devilish Games (Themestorm) · Pick Up and Deliver

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Welcome to pick up and deliver the podcast where I
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: pick up my audio recorder as I step off the
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: train and deliver an episode too while I walk home.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: I'm Brendan Riley. Well, good afternoon, listener. It's a lovely
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: day here in suburban Chicago. I am on my way
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: home from the train, and I thought I would have
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: a chat with you about board games. I noticed while
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: I was editing the last episode that the next episode
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: I record would have the episode number six hundred and
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: sixty six, which, to be truthful, for me, doesn't really
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: mean anything. It's not part of my cosmography. But in
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: American culture and certain Christian sects, that number has a
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: lot of significance. So I thought it would be amusing
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: to do an episode exploring games that are about demons
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: and the devil. If that's not your thing, I totally
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: understand and feel free to skip along. I'm probably going
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: to be a bit irreverend here, but I also can't
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: help but think about the idea of raising up a
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: false prophet and religious people investing energy and somebody who
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: isn't religious as part of the conversation today. Yeah, it
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: feels a little apropos to me, So there we are.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: So anyway, this is episode six hundred and sixty six.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: Six sixty six sort of famously being the number of
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: the beast, I believe in Revelation. There's some stuff about
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: that number. I've seen some disputes about whether that number
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: is actually the number that translates if you go back
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: to the original Hebrew. So that's not really my forte.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: But I thought about it a little bit, and I thought,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: I thought I would do a theme storm, a devil
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: theme storm or Devil's and Demons themestorm. I haven't known
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: one of these in a while. A theme storm is
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: a episode of the podcast in which I pick a
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: idea ark topic and I talk about a few different
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: aspects of that topic, ways of exploring it, stories related
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: to it, et cetera. And then I talk about a
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: board game and a film that would make a nice pairing,
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: or sometimes a board game in a book that would
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: make a nice pairing if you wanted to explore that
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: aspect of the theme more thoroughly. So the theme I
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: picked for today, of course, is six sixty six The
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  Speaker 1: Devil as an honorable mention I believe I just saw
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  Speaker 1: the other day on board game Geek, somebody mentioned there
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: was a Kickstarter game from like twenty fifteen twenty sixteen
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: called something like Root six sixty six. It was a
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  Speaker 1: zombie game. The person was looking for the rule book
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  Speaker 1: since the game was not anywhere online, and I don't
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  Speaker 1: know if they bought a copy and didn't have the
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: rule book, or they misplaced the rule book or something,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: and so people were trying to we're talking about whether
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: it was available. I did not see whether anyone had
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: found it, but I thought that was a funny connection
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: that I just noticed. So to start with, I will
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: mention a game that I mentioned in several of these
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: games actually turned up in my Spooky Games conversation, So
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: apologies if there's a little overlap, but I'm gonna try
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: to talk about them a different way. First, one I
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: want to talk about is Demon Worker. As I mentioned,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: Demon Worker is a hand management game in which you
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: are collecting cards and deploying them as characters, sort of
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: like a work replacement game, but instead of having worker tokens,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: you have cards, and then you're going to be using
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: those workers to accomplish different tasks related to your demonic goals.
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  Speaker 1: The art has a sort of cartoonish Japanese style to it,
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  Speaker 1: a little bit anime, but it's very much like cartoon
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  Speaker 1: animals like Kirby or things from the Nintendo or the
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: Pokemon universe, rather than something more human looking. You know,
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of like human character anime. That's not
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: what Demon Worker looks like. But it's an entertaining game,
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: very silly in theme except that and if you find
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: demons themselves not a silly not something that can be silly. Otherwise,
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: it's a cute idea for a work replacement game. But
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: I was thinking about this, the idea of like worrying
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  Speaker 1: about workers and workplaces, and there are two things that
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: I thought of that could be media that would connect
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: to it. One is less specifically about the devil, but
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: certainly about the afterlife, and this is The Good Place.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: The Good Place, of course, is a comedy about philosophy
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  Speaker 1: and about moral attitudes and such built around this idea
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  Speaker 1: of the afterlife, and a big part of the comedy
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  Speaker 1: the of this is the idea that the afterlife is
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  Speaker 1: a office. It's a workplace that you navigate and learn
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: to do well in, particularly Michael, the character of Michael,
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  Speaker 1: and a lot of the stuff we see him going through.
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  Speaker 1: It's because he works in a demonic afterlife. The other
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  Speaker 1: one I'm reminded of, and the one I wrote down here,
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  Speaker 1: is the TV series Good Omens. Good omen Ms is
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: of course, also about the fight between good and evil,
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  Speaker 1: specifically about the Antichrist and the idea that a miscarriage
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: of activities can result in skewed world events. In the
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: first season of the TV show Good Omens, or in
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  Speaker 1: the novel Good Omens, one of the characters is a
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  Speaker 1: child who was destined to be the Antichrist, but through
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: a mix up at the hospital, he goes home with
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  Speaker 1: the wrong parents. So the child who's being raised to
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: be the Antichrist isn't actually the Antichrist, so it doesn't
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: have any magical powers or anything. That's what I recall happening.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: It's been a while since I've seen it, but so
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  Speaker 1: part of the premise is when he's he haits puberty
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  Speaker 1: and he comes into his powers, there's no like demonic
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  Speaker 1: forces or evil people to influence him down the right path,
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  Speaker 1: so he just becomes like a normal teenage boy with
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  Speaker 1: terrific powers that isn't really driven for evil. So and
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  Speaker 1: then It's all about an angel and a demon who
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  Speaker 1: kind of want things to stay the way they are,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: so they work together to keep either side from winning
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: the celestial War. It's a great show that I remember
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: the book being very good as well, but I read
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: the book fifteen years ago or something. The TV show
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: I watched much more recently, and I really enjoyed it.
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  Speaker 1: I have not watched the second season, though, so maybe
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: the second season is even better. Who knows? That is good.
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  Speaker 1: Omens and Demon Worker a nice combination about work, coworkers
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: and office works. Next up, we have Deal with the Devil.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: Deal with the Devil is a relatively recent game, maybe
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: three years old from Check Games Edition CGE, and it
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: is a worker or it is a euro game in
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: which you're trying to make the most money or whatever,
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: and one of the things you can do is make
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: a deal with the Devil to get stuff. And the
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: thing is one of the players is secretly the devil,
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  Speaker 1: but you don't know which player, so you're making deals
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  Speaker 1: with other people, but one of the people you might
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: be making deals with is the Devil, and then that's
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: some how shakes out into the end of the game.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: I don't really I didn't haven't played it. It got
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: medium reviews. Some people said it was really interesting, but
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: nobody said it was great, at least that I saw,
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: and so I haven't picked up a copy. It'd be
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: a game. I'd certainly be interested in trying. If I
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: knew someone who had a copy, or if I came
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: across a copy used, I might pick it up. But
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: on the first round market it did not reach the
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: point where I felt like I really need to get it.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: But this has been a longstanding idea of the devil
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: is as a sort of shady businessman who's always offering
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  Speaker 1: you a bribe in exchange for your soul. The classic
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: story of this, of course, is Faust, which is a
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: I believe opera first, but it is literally this tale
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: of Oh no, it's a play, is a Kit Marlowe play,
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  Speaker 1: but it's the tale of a man who is unsatisfied
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: with life and so he makes a deal with the devil.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: Actually I think it's a bet with the devil. So
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: there's bets with the devil and then deals with the devil.
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  Speaker 1: Bet with the devil. We'd see something like the Devil
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  Speaker 1: went down to Georgia. That's a bet with the Devil.
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  Speaker 1: A deal with the devil is less common these days,
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  Speaker 1: but we still see it. The most recent version of
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: that I can think of was the Brendan Frasier movie.
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  Speaker 1: Thing was called Be Deviled with Elizabeth Somebody as the devil.
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  Speaker 1: That one was pretty great. I remember as a kid
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  Speaker 1: somehow I had a VHS TV recording of the third
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: Oh God movie, Oh God, You Devil, in which Elliott
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  Speaker 1: Gould makes a deal with the devil and then has
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: to sort of repents as he tries to get out
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  Speaker 1: of it. I guess those are classic films. I haven't
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: seen the original O God or O God two. I
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: think there's a second one it's probably got a subtitle,
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  Speaker 1: and then there's O God, You Devil. So if you
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: wanted to play a game about making a deal with
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: the devil and watch a movie, there are some possibilities
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: for you. A third game I want to mention is
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: ghost Stories. Again. This is one that was in my
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: Spooky Games roundup. It is one of my favorite co
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: op games. It's blisteringly hard, and usually what happens is
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: when I play it, I'll play it for a little while,
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  Speaker 1: I'll get good enough at it to be able to
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  Speaker 1: win it on normal, and then I tire of it
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  Speaker 1: and I put it away. So I've never really gotten
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: the point where I can win it on hard, or
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: where I get really good at it, or where I've
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: tried like hell mode where you can have two enemies.
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  Speaker 1: So it's interesting to think about the fact that Antoine
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  Speaker 1: Boza I remember hearing that apparently in an interview. I
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: didn't see the interview. This is like third hand, but
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: Antoine Boza talks about like he can win it most
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  Speaker 1: of the time that he plays, even with on the
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  Speaker 1: hardest levels, which is really interesting because it's a wicked
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  Speaker 1: hard game. So it suggests there's a huge amount I'm
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: not getting about the way the cards move or about
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: how to manage the risks the game creates. But the
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  Speaker 1: idea is there's a village and you are these Taoist
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  Speaker 1: monks who are protecting the village from an army of
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  Speaker 1: ghosts that are attacking it. And the ghosts are led
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  Speaker 1: by a of evil general ghost Wu Feng, and he
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: comes in one of five forms or ten forms when
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: he appears, and you have to defeat him in order
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  Speaker 1: to win the game. You can also, if you want
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  Speaker 1: to make it hard he comes twice. The first time
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: you defeat him, you're just continuing the game, which is
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: especially hard. But this idea of warriors working to protect
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: a village from this onslaught of ghosts or monsters is
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: something that we've seen in other media forms as well,
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  Speaker 1: in cinema, particularly because because Ghost Stories takes place in Japan,
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: I was reminded of the Chinese movie Mister Vampire, which
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: clearly China and Japan are different places, so apologies for
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: thinking of them in the same conversation, but particularly the
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: ghosts in Mister Vampire. The hopping ghosts look a lot
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: like the ghosts in Ghost Stories, and so it's an
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: easy connection to make. And Mister Vampire is also about
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: some evil ghosts that are haunting a village and some
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: people who are trying to protect it. If you want
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: to stretch your legs a little bit and look for
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: something a little wider that has a similar plot, you
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: could think about Army of Darkness, in which Ash goes
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: back in time and an evil army of the dead Dights,
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: which are mostly zombies, but there's like one skeleton leader.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: Zombie are attacking the castle and Ash and the other
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: humans have to fight them. Sort of related to ghost stories,
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: and it's much sillier as well. So if you wanted
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: something on the silly side, Army of Darkness would be
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: the example. If you wanted something a little more serious, Actually, no,
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: mister Vampire is also very very silly, so I guess
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: I don't have a serious example for ghost stories. Then
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: I thought it would be interesting just to reflect on
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: the idea of the number of the Beast and point
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: to a relatively recent game I think twenty twenty three
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: called Beast, which is a hidden movement game in which
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: one player is a monster that is sort of rampaging
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: through the countryside, and the other players are monster hunters
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: trying to defeat them monster. Now, this is of course
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: an age old formula. You have something like Kingdon Death Monster,
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: which is a boss battling game, or you have The Witcher,
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: which is about defeating monsters. But the Beast is particularly
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: interesting because it is a hidden movement game. It's about
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: fighting a monster in the woods that you can't see,
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: and that it's constantly killing people, and it's beastly. The
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: movie that I thought of that reflect that story pretty
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: well would be Prey, which is the most recent movie
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: from the Predator series. It's an excellent adaptation of the story.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: Takes place in sixteen hundreds colonial sixteen hundreds, like Middle America,
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: where the only white folks that are there are like
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: Canadian fur trappers, and there's all sorts of trouble happening,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: and there's a predator there and some indigenous warriors taken on.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: It's really good. So I think that would I think
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: that's an excellent movie about hunting a beast. That would
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: make a find accompaniment to the game Beast. Well, that
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: brings me to the end of my walk. If you
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: have a aspect of the six to sixty six idea
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: that you'd like to share, head over to board game
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: geek Guild three two sixty nine and pop it in there,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: or send me a direct message on board game geek
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: Wombat nine two nine is my user name there. I
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: also have an email address Brendon at Rattlebox Games, where
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: you could reach out to me directly. Well, thanks for
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: joining me on my walk today and for episode six
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: sixty six. I hope that your next walk is as
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: pleasant as mind was.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: Bye bye.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: Brought to you by rattle Box