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Teaching About Boardgames, part 1 · 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, I step out for a
0:08
Speaker 1: walk and deliver an episodes to you while I stroll around.
0:11
Speaker 1: I'm Brendan Riley. Well, Greetings listeners. That is a smoggy
0:24
Speaker 1: day here in suburb in Chicago. I'm looking at the
0:26
Speaker 1: sun and it is a sort of bright pink color.
0:31
Speaker 1: The sky has a haze to it today. So this
0:34
Speaker 1: will be my entire time outside is just going to
0:36
Speaker 1: be this walk. I think, woof, there's a apparently huge
0:43
Speaker 1: forest fires in Canada and that smoke is drifting its
0:46
Speaker 1: way down here and that's what's making the air smoggy. Yikes.
0:52
Speaker 1: But I wanted to get out for a walk and
0:56
Speaker 1: share with you what I've been finding. So we'll see
0:59
Speaker 1: how this goes. I may cut it short. Well, we're
1:02
Speaker 1: less than two months out from the beginning of the
1:05
Speaker 1: fall semester, yikes, so I've been really starting to think
1:08
Speaker 1: about what my fall class is. The classes are going
1:11
Speaker 1: to look like. I am teaching two brand new classes,
1:15
Speaker 1: so I do have a lot of planning to do
1:17
Speaker 1: this semester, but I'm sort of starting with the class
1:20
Speaker 1: that takes the least planning, which is going to be
1:22
Speaker 1: my board game class. I teach a class. It's one
1:27
Speaker 1: of our general education classes called Social Objects, Tabletop Games
1:32
Speaker 1: and Community. The idea is this is a multi disciplinary
1:35
Speaker 1: course where students from around the college will gather and
1:38
Speaker 1: share ideas with each other and the goal is to
1:42
Speaker 1: make a board game or make a game. That is,
1:45
Speaker 1: to make a board game. That's the outcome of the class.
1:49
Speaker 1: What we do is we explore how games shape experiences
1:54
Speaker 1: that people have and how people shape the experiences that
1:58
Speaker 1: games can create. The core tenant is of the project
2:05
Speaker 1: is to look at the nature of the way games
2:08
Speaker 1: serve as facilitators for community. The day to day groundwork
2:14
Speaker 1: of it is we play a lot of games and
2:16
Speaker 1: we make games. Generally, the arc of the course is
2:20
Speaker 1: about half and half. About half the semester we spend
2:25
Speaker 1: playing games and about half the semester we spend making games.
2:29
Speaker 1: There are a variety of different approaches that people take
2:32
Speaker 1: as they explore how games work and what they can be.
2:37
Speaker 1: And so that's kind of what the course is about.
2:42
Speaker 1: What I thought I would talk about today is how
2:45
Speaker 1: the course, how I have run the course in the
2:48
Speaker 1: past two years, and what I expect to do what
2:53
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about doing with the course for the next time,
2:56
Speaker 1: and sort of how I'm wrestling with them. It's basically
2:58
Speaker 1: a one hour self between this episode and the next.
3:03
Speaker 1: You know, when I'm walking. It takes like fifteen to
3:07
Speaker 1: thirty percent longer to record the episode than actually comes out.
3:10
Speaker 1: So if I record for twenty five minutes, you get
3:12
Speaker 1: a twenty minute episode usually, So I'm gonna spend forty
3:17
Speaker 1: five minutes or fifteen minutes meditating on what how does
3:21
Speaker 1: this work? What's this like? And we'll see where we
3:24
Speaker 1: can go. So part one of the course the students
3:29
Speaker 1: explore different kinds of games. The idea is most students
3:35
Speaker 1: and it gets that percentage gets a little smaller each time,
3:40
Speaker 1: But most students have not explored very many games beyond
3:43
Speaker 1: your sort of standard family games and classic card games. Sometimes.
3:50
Speaker 1: There are a huge variety of reasons for this, but
3:54
Speaker 1: a lot of it is economic, a lot of it
3:56
Speaker 1: is social. Like I said, games depend on community. So
3:59
Speaker 1: if you're the family is a community, either is itself
4:03
Speaker 1: a community, or participates in communities in which playing games
4:08
Speaker 1: is not a key part of the communal experience, you
4:11
Speaker 1: probably don't get mets exposure to that experience. So one
4:15
Speaker 1: of the things I like about the class is so
4:17
Speaker 1: at showing students all these different possibilities or different ways
4:21
Speaker 1: that games work. So the first half of the course
4:24
Speaker 1: is playing games, second half of the course is making games.
4:27
Speaker 1: So I start with talking about the first half of
4:29
Speaker 1: the course. What I thought I'd do is tell you
4:31
Speaker 1: how did the class run? Pretty much. I may have
4:33
Speaker 1: left some things out, but I think I have it most.
4:36
Speaker 1: I just worked off of memory. How did the course
4:39
Speaker 1: run last semester? And then what might I change for
4:42
Speaker 1: this semester? So start with we have seven different days
4:47
Speaker 1: where we play different kinds of games. As a big
4:49
Speaker 1: chunk of the class. Class is three hours long, we're
4:52
Speaker 1: usually using half or a little more than half of
4:54
Speaker 1: it to play the games. Then we talk about the
4:56
Speaker 1: game experience. So start with on the first day of class,
5:02
Speaker 1: we play some party games and some folk games. So
5:07
Speaker 1: part of the idea of these is they're a great
5:09
Speaker 1: first week game because they're easy to teach, and they
5:11
Speaker 1: play in slightly larger groups so they start to meet
5:14
Speaker 1: each other. A big part of the whole arc of
5:17
Speaker 1: the class is that you want to get students to
5:22
Speaker 1: meet people in a variety of different contexts and get
5:25
Speaker 1: to know each other throughout the course, so that when
5:28
Speaker 1: we get to play testing, they will have spent a
5:31
Speaker 1: little time with almost everybody in the class. So those
5:35
Speaker 1: those party games. In Folk Games days, we're playing things
5:39
Speaker 1: like Balderdash, We're playing things like Monikers, and then I
5:45
Speaker 1: give the students time at the end of the day
5:48
Speaker 1: to introduce a game that they are interested in that
5:52
Speaker 1: they brought. So that's the first week we play that
5:58
Speaker 1: we talk about those kinds of games, and then we
6:02
Speaker 1: start to explore that in the next week and the
6:04
Speaker 1: next week we continue the party game angle a little bit,
6:07
Speaker 1: but we also add in what I call light games.
6:09
Speaker 1: These are games that you can teach and like five
6:12
Speaker 1: to ten minutes and play still play a relatively large group.
6:16
Speaker 1: We're still trying to get students that I'm still trying
6:18
Speaker 1: to get students to think about the idea of games
6:20
Speaker 1: being pretty approachable, but starting to think a little bit
6:23
Speaker 1: more about how games can be different than other games
6:26
Speaker 1: they've played previously. So in that second the like game week,
6:30
Speaker 1: we play Points Salad, which is I think a really
6:34
Speaker 1: effective demonstration of that sort of simpler it's a simple game,
6:39
Speaker 1: but there's a lot going on, and so getting an
6:42
Speaker 1: opportunity to play that and generally we can play it.
6:44
Speaker 1: We have time for each group to play it twice,
6:46
Speaker 1: which works really nicely. So that is the second week
6:51
Speaker 1: we started talking about like games, We start talking about
6:54
Speaker 1: how games get structured, what you need to think about
6:58
Speaker 1: as you think about how to present a game. We
7:01
Speaker 1: talk about teaching games a little bit. That is the
7:04
Speaker 1: first week where I have people teaching games designated as
7:08
Speaker 1: game teachers. The way that works is pretty simple. The
7:13
Speaker 1: students are assigned the week before that they're going to
7:16
Speaker 1: be the game teacher for the next week, and so
7:18
Speaker 1: then they have to look up the rules and watch
7:21
Speaker 1: a couple how to play videos and put together a
7:25
Speaker 1: little plan for what they're going to do to teach it.
7:28
Speaker 1: And they have to post a little thing about what
7:31
Speaker 1: they are going to do, what they've done to prepare
7:35
Speaker 1: to teach the game. And then often they're in payers teaching,
7:38
Speaker 1: so if one of them feels more confident doing the
7:40
Speaker 1: actual teaching, I also ask the other players, the other
7:43
Speaker 1: students to watch the how to play video. So part
7:46
Speaker 1: of prep for class is a fifteen minute or ten
7:48
Speaker 1: minute video of how to play, so the teach should
7:51
Speaker 1: be easy, but sometimes students don't do that part. That's
7:56
Speaker 1: the second week is sort of light games. Then in
8:00
Speaker 1: the third week we do what I call strategy games,
8:03
Speaker 1: but I also introduce them to the sort of more
8:06
Speaker 1: classical language of eurogames. And this is the week where
8:10
Speaker 1: I think I still operate on the original premise that
8:13
Speaker 1: I came up with for getting to introduce them to
8:16
Speaker 1: a variety of games. But each year I wrestle with
8:19
Speaker 1: is this the right approach, And that is I have
8:22
Speaker 1: them play different games. I divide the class into three groups.
8:27
Speaker 1: One of the groups plays carcassone, one of the group's
8:29
Speaker 1: plays Seven Wonders, and one of the groups plays Dominion.
8:33
Speaker 1: Now the people who play Seven Wonders and Dominion, usually
8:37
Speaker 1: it's Dominion. They'll get to play once or twice, depending
8:40
Speaker 1: how quick they are and how quick they picked it up.
8:42
Speaker 1: There's almost always one Dominion group that is the pacer
8:46
Speaker 1: for the class, because the idea is I want everyone
8:48
Speaker 1: to get to finish their game, and one Dominion game
8:51
Speaker 1: always takes like an hour and fifteen or something hour
8:54
Speaker 1: and a half, even so that group becomes the pacer.
8:58
Speaker 1: Then the seven Wonders groups usually can get two games
9:01
Speaker 1: in by that time and one you often if there's
9:04
Speaker 1: a dominion group that plays quick, they'll be able to
9:05
Speaker 1: get a second game in as well. And then the
9:08
Speaker 1: Carczone people can usually get three games in of carcassone.
9:13
Speaker 1: So experience there is each person gets to play a
9:16
Speaker 1: different level of a different kind of game, and the
9:21
Speaker 1: experience there is each person gets to play a different
9:23
Speaker 1: kind of game, and then as a class we talk
9:27
Speaker 1: about how those different kinds of games worked and what
9:29
Speaker 1: kind of what we can understand is the experience of them.
9:35
Speaker 1: The advantage to getting to play three different games is
9:39
Speaker 1: that we introduce a bunch of different ideas into the
9:41
Speaker 1: class conversation. The disadvantage, of course, is that some students
9:46
Speaker 1: don't get to play the one that they would want, right.
9:49
Speaker 1: I think I can't always let all the students, and
9:51
Speaker 1: it varies each year. I never have too many students
9:54
Speaker 1: requesting seven Wonders, but sometimes I have too many students
9:57
Speaker 1: requesting carcassone. Carcason is the if I've sort of because
10:00
Speaker 1: I introduce it, and sort of like in difficulty or
10:03
Speaker 1: level complexity, it probably goes carcassone carcasone is the easiest
10:10
Speaker 1: one to understand, and then Dominion and then Seven Wonders.
10:15
Speaker 1: I think I think Seven Wonders is actually not that
10:18
Speaker 1: hard to understand, but it's a huge learning dump at
10:22
Speaker 1: the beginning. I think Dominion is less. You just have
10:24
Speaker 1: to understand how the cards circulate in Dominion, and then
10:27
Speaker 1: you can understand and the complexity of it emerges as
10:30
Speaker 1: you play, whereas in Seven Wonders, the entire complexity is
10:33
Speaker 1: there when you begin, and you have to understand how
10:35
Speaker 1: it works from the beginning. Dividing them up, I let
10:39
Speaker 1: them request which game they'd like to play, and I
10:42
Speaker 1: do my best to assign them to that. In this
10:45
Speaker 1: first half of the class when they're playing games, every
10:46
Speaker 1: time they play, it's assigned to game groups. And the
10:49
Speaker 1: reason for that is that I want to, over the
10:51
Speaker 1: course of the term, have them play games with all
10:54
Speaker 1: the different people. So that's that's kind of the arc.
11:02
Speaker 1: There is a part of me that would really really
11:03
Speaker 1: just like to take three weeks and play Arcison, Dominion,
11:06
Speaker 1: and Seven Wonders and have them all play all the games,
11:08
Speaker 1: because I think these games are foundational and really interesting.
11:12
Speaker 1: The reason I don't there's twofold. One, I don't I
11:15
Speaker 1: don't have enough copies of each game to do that.
11:17
Speaker 1: That's the main reason. But two, that also is a
11:20
Speaker 1: huge chunk of our class devoted to a specific slice
11:24
Speaker 1: of gaming, and there's a bunch of different other things
11:26
Speaker 1: to cover as well. So between those two things, that's
11:29
Speaker 1: where we are. Next up, we have role playing games,
11:35
Speaker 1: so at some point during it, and I don't always
11:36
Speaker 1: do them in these order. I put them in the
11:38
Speaker 1: sheet in the order I could think of them. But
11:40
Speaker 1: because we talk about tabletop games a community, I have
11:43
Speaker 1: students play a role playing game at some point. I
11:45
Speaker 1: think this is a really fun option. It's always a
11:48
Speaker 1: challenge because if you're gonna have a group of students
11:51
Speaker 1: play a role playing game together, they have to have
11:54
Speaker 1: someone to GM for them. And thus far, what I've
11:58
Speaker 1: been able to do is I just cajole students who've
12:01
Speaker 1: role played before to be the role playing gms. Now.
12:05
Speaker 1: I usually have a couple who have experience doing that
12:08
Speaker 1: and they're happy to do it, And then I have
12:10
Speaker 1: a couple who have played role playing games before but
12:14
Speaker 1: have not GMed, and then they end up learning the
12:18
Speaker 1: GM in order to do this. The game we play
12:21
Speaker 1: is called Lasers and Feelings. It's a one page RPG
12:24
Speaker 1: with a very simple rule set. Your character has two stats,
12:27
Speaker 1: lasers and feelings, and they are determined by a single number.
12:35
Speaker 1: You have a single number between two and five that
12:39
Speaker 1: indicates how good your character is at lasers and feelings.
12:43
Speaker 1: I don't remember which is which, but let's say lasers
12:45
Speaker 1: is the high numbers and feelings is the low numbers.
12:49
Speaker 1: If you have a low number, so let's say your
12:52
Speaker 1: skill is a three or a two, of your skills
12:54
Speaker 1: a two, then your character is very good at lasers
12:59
Speaker 1: because that's the high numb and not very good at feelings,
13:01
Speaker 1: which is the low number. The idea is, if you're
13:04
Speaker 1: trying to roll a laser roll, you want to roll
13:08
Speaker 1: over the number, and if you're trying to roll a
13:13
Speaker 1: feelings role, you want to try to roll under your
13:14
Speaker 1: number and then the GM Whenever they want you to
13:18
Speaker 1: do a skill test, they just decide does this feel
13:21
Speaker 1: more like lasers or more like feelings. So if you're
13:25
Speaker 1: often mechanical things, you're trying to repair a door, that's
13:30
Speaker 1: probably lasers. If you're trying to persuade a guard, that's
13:33
Speaker 1: probably feelings. So very simple dice tests and then something
13:39
Speaker 1: special happens if you hit your number right on yeah,
13:42
Speaker 1: And then it comes with a little skeleton for telling
13:45
Speaker 1: sci fi stories as sort of a firefly kind of world.
13:51
Speaker 1: This is a really interesting week because some students really
13:53
Speaker 1: really like this sort of thing. Some students have never
13:55
Speaker 1: played a game like this before and find it discomfiting.
13:58
Speaker 1: But you know, we make a save space and we
14:00
Speaker 1: talk about that and I have them read a little bit,
14:03
Speaker 1: and so having a role playing game week again, most
14:07
Speaker 1: of these things I would love to do more of,
14:09
Speaker 1: but we just don't have time. Then we have a
14:12
Speaker 1: week for cooperative games and puzzle games. In the past
14:15
Speaker 1: few years, I've used The Crew as the cooperative game
14:18
Speaker 1: and then Unlock as the puzzle game. This has been
14:22
Speaker 1: interesting to try to do because the Crew. The Crew
14:25
Speaker 1: works well, but you have to have played trick taking
14:27
Speaker 1: games before, and that is really tricky. As much as
14:32
Speaker 1: I would like to do that, it's essentially a two
14:35
Speaker 1: part lesson. You have to play a trick taking game,
14:37
Speaker 1: then you have to play the Crew. And I find
14:40
Speaker 1: the Crew is kind of like volleyball or tennis, where
14:44
Speaker 1: if one person is much better at the base game,
14:47
Speaker 1: then the other person or other people, it's just a
14:50
Speaker 1: lot less fun. And the crew is one of those
14:52
Speaker 1: things where like if a couple of people get it
14:54
Speaker 1: and a couple of people don't, it's just not fun
14:58
Speaker 1: for anybody. Really. It's probably it might be more fun
15:01
Speaker 1: for the people who don't get it, because they're as
15:03
Speaker 1: they're learning, then they're discovering and doing better at it.
15:05
Speaker 1: But if you're good at a trick taking game and
15:07
Speaker 1: you're just generally and you're playing games with someone who's
15:11
Speaker 1: absolutely not in a co op, it can be rough
15:13
Speaker 1: because you see them make mistakes and there's nothing you
15:17
Speaker 1: can do about it, and their demonstrable mistakes. It's not like, well,
15:21
Speaker 1: not always, but you know, sometimes there's like a clear
15:24
Speaker 1: thing they should do in order to help you win,
15:26
Speaker 1: and they don't do it because they don't understand. They
15:28
Speaker 1: haven't played enough trick taking games to understand the implications
15:31
Speaker 1: of how the cards are moving, and that can be
15:34
Speaker 1: really frustrating. I think, so I'm not sure I'm going
15:37
Speaker 1: to use the crew again. One suggestion from one student
15:41
Speaker 1: was to try a pandemic. I think we're far enough
15:43
Speaker 1: away from the COVID pandemic that we could play it
15:46
Speaker 1: and people won't get too twitchy about it. The idea
15:50
Speaker 1: here would be that we could play Pandemic and talk
15:53
Speaker 1: about cooperative games from that way. The other possibility would
15:57
Speaker 1: be Regicide is one. The nice thing about that is short,
16:00
Speaker 1: so I probably could play a couple rounds of it.
16:03
Speaker 1: I think Pandemic's easier to explain. Pandemic also fits closer
16:08
Speaker 1: to the board game idea of trying to make a
16:10
Speaker 1: game that involves stuff that you're moving around and thinks
16:15
Speaker 1: about theme and that sort of thing. But I don't know.
16:19
Speaker 1: Pandemic's got a lot more going on. Our game club
16:22
Speaker 1: has a whole bunch of copies of Pandemic because we
16:25
Speaker 1: have run Pandemic survival tournaments, and so we have a
16:28
Speaker 1: bunch of copies of Pandemic. So I might be able
16:31
Speaker 1: to borrow those so I would have enough sets for
16:35
Speaker 1: my class. I could also start really actively looking at
16:38
Speaker 1: thrift stores four copies of Pandemic. Fifth Pandemic plays or five,
16:45
Speaker 1: I would need seven copies to run the game, but
16:52
Speaker 1: then I also have done puzzle games on those days.
16:55
Speaker 1: The puzzle game I do is unlock. I have a
16:59
Speaker 1: bunch of the unlocked games and I will have a
17:01
Speaker 1: group of students, three or four of them do an
17:03
Speaker 1: unlocked game together, and like in the past I've done
17:06
Speaker 1: it in class, I give them an hour. An hour
17:08
Speaker 1: is not enough time. This last semester, I think it
17:12
Speaker 1: worked out. I actually did not check the copies when
17:15
Speaker 1: I got back. I probably should make sure they're all together,
17:17
Speaker 1: and I don't know how you check them because not
17:21
Speaker 1: all the numbers are. Anyway I gave them, I have
17:27
Speaker 1: a bunch of unlocks, and so over the course of
17:30
Speaker 1: a month, the students would check out and return the
17:34
Speaker 1: unlocked games and could play them that way. But I
17:40
Speaker 1: only have six of them, and so that's like two
17:45
Speaker 1: months of people taking unlock games home to do them.
17:48
Speaker 1: So I don't I don't know if that's going to
17:50
Speaker 1: be a thing I'm going to have them do in future.
17:54
Speaker 1: But I do like the idea of having them play
17:55
Speaker 1: a puzzle game. So it is the further outside of
18:00
Speaker 1: what we do in the class, but some students really
18:04
Speaker 1: really like it, so I don't know. Another week we
18:11
Speaker 1: do thematic games. We talk about games where the experience
18:16
Speaker 1: game experience is really tied to the narrative the game
18:18
Speaker 1: it's telling, and have them think about what what does
18:22
Speaker 1: it mean to make a game where we're trying to
18:24
Speaker 1: tell a story with the game, and the story is
18:26
Speaker 1: the important part, the game is sort of a little
18:28
Speaker 1: bit less. And we do that with the game burn
18:32
Speaker 1: the Fort, which is a very difficult game. It's really
18:37
Speaker 1: challenging to learn book because the rule book needs some editing,
18:41
Speaker 1: but also it is just complicated in the way that
18:45
Speaker 1: games by first time designers are. I'm not sure about
18:48
Speaker 1: whether Kleevebanale had how many other games he had designed
18:52
Speaker 1: and not published or design and published, And I don't
18:54
Speaker 1: know about, but I do know that Burned the Fort
18:58
Speaker 1: could have used some more development, but it would make
19:01
Speaker 1: it less than what it is as it is like,
19:03
Speaker 1: it is a very distinct and interesting game. It's got
19:06
Speaker 1: a lot of weird edges, but those make it interesting
19:10
Speaker 1: and the production is fantastic. The game itself looks really nice.
19:14
Speaker 1: It is lovely to behold, and it's interesting to play.
19:19
Speaker 1: Oh and it is a game about indigenous resistance to
19:22
Speaker 1: European colonization. Definitely worth checking out if you ever get
19:27
Speaker 1: a chance to play it. It's hard to get a
19:28
Speaker 1: hold of I happened too. I played it at Gen
19:31
Speaker 1: con the year it came out and got myself a copy,
19:34
Speaker 1: and then I got in contact with the designer and
19:40
Speaker 1: actually the producer, and through her, while she still had
19:44
Speaker 1: some copies, I was able to buy a couple of
19:46
Speaker 1: copies for my school directly from her and get those shipped.
19:50
Speaker 1: So our school has a classroom set. But that game
19:53
Speaker 1: is pretty hard to get. That's burned the fort that
19:58
Speaker 1: we play for thematic as a themat game, So thinking
20:00
Speaker 1: about like playing a game that tells a story and
20:05
Speaker 1: trying to understand how the story works. So those are
20:08
Speaker 1: kind of the seven game playing units. Oh and the
20:11
Speaker 1: last one are hybrid games. And this says this is
20:14
Speaker 1: the last game we play published game, and we play Libertalia.
20:18
Speaker 1: The Libertalia I like for a bunch of reasons. One
20:21
Speaker 1: you all play at the same time. Two, it's delightfully complicated,
20:25
Speaker 1: but not so hard that you can't understand it. Three's
20:29
Speaker 1: beautifully produced for its thematic and strategic. Five it plays
20:36
Speaker 1: six people. So all those things together mean it works
20:40
Speaker 1: really good as a classroom game. It's very interesting. It
20:43
Speaker 1: is on the complex end, and in terms of the difficulty,
20:45
Speaker 1: I'm asking students to endure to learn to play, but
20:48
Speaker 1: that's okay. At the end of the semester, I ask
20:52
Speaker 1: students a little bit about what they liked about the
20:55
Speaker 1: course and what they wish the course had done Differently.
20:58
Speaker 1: I get some really interesting discussion about history, and I
21:03
Speaker 1: think this does sort of suggest a little bit different
21:07
Speaker 1: approach this semester. But one thing the students said is
21:11
Speaker 1: they thought we'd learn a little bit more about the
21:13
Speaker 1: history of games, which I thought was interesting, and I
21:18
Speaker 1: felt like, I feel like a gap in the class.
21:21
Speaker 1: There's sort of two One of them is there's a
21:25
Speaker 1: gap in abstract games. We don't play any abstract games
21:29
Speaker 1: in the current model, and we don't really play games
21:33
Speaker 1: from around the world. I try a little bit, but
21:37
Speaker 1: for the most part, we don't have a ton of
21:39
Speaker 1: games from different places. Almost all the games are from
21:42
Speaker 1: Europe or America, which is not not an excellent representation
21:47
Speaker 1: of games being made by different kinds of people in
21:50
Speaker 1: different places. So one way I was thinking to tackle
21:55
Speaker 1: that was to really look at having a week where
22:01
Speaker 1: we explore traditional classic games or classic abstracts. And I
22:08
Speaker 1: thought the way I would do that would be two again,
22:11
Speaker 1: sort of split people up and have them play like
22:15
Speaker 1: two of the four classic games, and there's a variety
22:19
Speaker 1: of different games that they might play. So we have
22:23
Speaker 1: the Vietnam I think it's Vietnamese or Thaie game. Yet
22:27
Speaker 1: Nori Thie, which is a classic role and move game
22:31
Speaker 1: where you're trying to land on other people's pieces that
22:34
Speaker 1: sort of in the neighborhood of something like par Cheesy
22:37
Speaker 1: or Sorry, and it comes from Thailand, and it's interesting
22:41
Speaker 1: because you play it with these sort of sticks that
22:45
Speaker 1: you roll on either the land face down or face up,
22:50
Speaker 1: and that's really interesting. It's relatively simple and easy to learn.
22:54
Speaker 1: Yet Nori. We could play Mancala, which is a really
22:58
Speaker 1: interesting game that comes out of after It is simple
23:01
Speaker 1: and easy to understand and fun to play. We could
23:05
Speaker 1: play Perudo. It's a dice game. It later became Liar's Dice.
23:12
Speaker 1: The ideas you play dice and you're sort of guessing
23:14
Speaker 1: about how many dice at the table belong to other people.
23:19
Speaker 1: And then a fourth option would be like Mexican Train,
23:23
Speaker 1: a Domino's game. It'd be interesting to play Dominoes and
23:27
Speaker 1: talk about that a little bit. So those four. It'd
23:30
Speaker 1: be interesting to play Majong as well, but I think
23:32
Speaker 1: it'd take too long to explain, and also majong sets
23:35
Speaker 1: are expensive. I think it'd be interesting to play the
23:43
Speaker 1: one of the Norse health figure games like Tablut, but
23:46
Speaker 1: Europe is already overrepresentative in the class, so we don't
23:49
Speaker 1: need to play a Norse game as well. So also
23:51
Speaker 1: nine Men's Morris is another abstract from that time, there's
23:55
Speaker 1: a bunch of different abstract games sort of of similar weight,
23:59
Speaker 1: so playing those would be interesting. The question is how
24:02
Speaker 1: do I play all four? Because it takes a few
24:05
Speaker 1: minutes to teach each one, and usually they are two
24:09
Speaker 1: person games. Some of them play more, but some have
24:14
Speaker 1: a lot of setup to do on the day. And
24:16
Speaker 1: then the big question is just how do I get
24:20
Speaker 1: the students cycle they play two I don't know. It
24:27
Speaker 1: seems like an interesting opportunity. We'll have to figure out
24:31
Speaker 1: how to circulate that, and then combine that with a
24:34
Speaker 1: conversation about some of the history of gameplay, how do
24:38
Speaker 1: people play games around the world, what are they doing
24:41
Speaker 1: with these games, and so on. This could also be
24:44
Speaker 1: a homework option, and maybe that's the best That might
24:49
Speaker 1: be the best way to do it would be to
24:51
Speaker 1: give them homework to play one of these games. And
24:56
Speaker 1: they have to assemble it themselves and play it with
24:58
Speaker 1: a friend and report back. But that moves it outside
25:03
Speaker 1: of class, and a certain percentage of them just won't
25:05
Speaker 1: do it, and the feedback will be sparse. And doing
25:09
Speaker 1: the work in class is a big part of what
25:11
Speaker 1: makes the community part work really well. So I'm thinking
25:14
Speaker 1: I want to do that a day where we're really
25:18
Speaker 1: wrestling with these sort of classic abstract games. I would
25:21
Speaker 1: love to have more time to play complex games. The
25:24
Speaker 1: experience of having them played Puerto Rico in an earlier
25:26
Speaker 1: year was really interesting, but I don't have time for it,
25:30
Speaker 1: like it takes up the whole day. And I've learned
25:35
Speaker 1: that if I want the game, want the students to
25:37
Speaker 1: not feel super stressed and to have a good process
25:40
Speaker 1: in designing the games, I have to start that around
25:44
Speaker 1: week seven of the semester, and by like week nine,
25:50
Speaker 1: we have to be fully just play testing in class,
25:54
Speaker 1: playtesting and talking about game design. But we're not playing
25:56
Speaker 1: published games anymore. So I really get the first seven weeks.
26:00
Speaker 1: Maybe I could go into the eighth week. I get
26:03
Speaker 1: the first eight weeks to play published games. After that
26:06
Speaker 1: we're just playing prototypes. So that part is a challenge
26:12
Speaker 1: as well. You know, I also would love to spend
26:15
Speaker 1: some time with classic card games, you know, with your
26:20
Speaker 1: spades or hearts, with ladder climbing games. I don't know.
26:24
Speaker 1: I haven't played lader climbing games with classic decks of cards,
26:27
Speaker 1: but I'm sure there are that is a thing. I'm
26:29
Speaker 1: sure with games like oh Hell, or even golf. You know,
26:37
Speaker 1: there's all these different games that you can play with
26:39
Speaker 1: the regular decor cards, and so I spending a little
26:41
Speaker 1: time with students just talking about those would be fun.
26:43
Speaker 1: But again, I don't have time. If this was a
26:45
Speaker 1: fifteen week class where all we did was play games
26:47
Speaker 1: and we didn't design one, i'd have time to do
26:49
Speaker 1: all this stuff. But because we designed them as well,
26:52
Speaker 1: I don't have time for that. So that's sort of
26:57
Speaker 1: what we do and what I'd like to do in
26:59
Speaker 1: the first half of the term as I teach the class.
27:05
Speaker 1: In part two, we are going to talk about the
27:08
Speaker 1: design process and what I do with them.
27:10
Speaker 2: For that.
27:11
Speaker 1: Well, thanks for joining me on my walk today.
27:13
Speaker 2: I hope your next walk is a pleasant is mine
27:14
Speaker 2: listening bye bye.
27:37
Speaker 1: And play still play a relatively large group. For example,
27:45
Speaker 1: I think I just got my google Maps Picture for
27:48
Speaker 1: the Year, brought to you by rattle Box