Deep Space and Dragons
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Deep Space and Dragons
Episode 82: The Surprising World of the Red Stapler, is it Karl's phylactery?
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Ever wondered what happens when you blend humor, nostalgia, and the intricate world of gaming? Buckle up for a rollercoaster ride as we kick off with a light-hearted misunderstanding about Amazon, leading into Karl's passionate rant about the iconic red Swingline stapler from "Office Space." You won't believe the surprising backstory of this office essential and how a '90s movie catapulted it to fame! Plus, we dissect the quirks of the Dungeons & Dragons spell "Wish" and its often overlooked repercussions in gameplay.
We transition from staplers to the world of books and academia, where Richard shares his unique approach to a university assignment by diving into the Full Metal Panic novels. This sparks a hilarious reflection on how academic content has evolved over the years. We even recount the lengths we've gone to fabricate books for high school assignments—talk about dedication! From comparing stapler models to analyzing literary works, this segment promises a blend of nostalgia and academic satire.
Our journey continues into the realm of board games and Magic: The Gathering. We explore the intricate mechanics of "The Witcher: The Old World" and the complexities of Magic’s casual formats. Frustrations with Magic Arena's missed opportunities are aired, all while sharing our love for innovative gameplay. As we wrap up, expect some playful banter about monetizing content, featuring fan-submitted games, and the importance of self-care. So remember, drink water, get some vitamin D, and pet a cat (or a non-cat if you're allergic). This episode is a must-listen for anyone who loves humor, passion, and a dash of geeky insights!
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today presented by and funded by the carl corporation, not actually licensed by carl. We have carl and richard present, deep space and dragons. I'm richard, not the one with the money bags and I am carl I.
Speaker 2:I also don't actually have the money bags.
Speaker 1:They're in the safe wow, that's why you got the money, and I don't didn't even think about putting my money in something, I just gotta leave it on the money. And I don't Didn't even think about putting my money in something, I just gotta leave it on the porch and hope for the best.
Speaker 2:Put it on the porch. Hopefully something you want shows up.
Speaker 1:I mean, is that not how Amazon works? Is it? You just wish on the money and throw it into the wind. I thought that was how wish worked. Now wish works by allowing you to cast any level, 8th spell or lower. Or by doing a bunch of convoluted nonsense that no one's ever bothered to do.
Speaker 2:Convoluted nonsense.
Speaker 1:I've never had a party get to the point where they're casting Wish, with the side effects of losing X stats for X number of days.
Speaker 2:Right right.
Speaker 1:But when they write these things, they forget how D&D works, where any player is going to be like, and I take a month off.
Speaker 2:And I take a month off.
Speaker 1:Now I'm fully healed and during a character, so their character is not playable for a month of in-game time means you're kind of forced to like skip that month or have that player be terrible for the rest of the players to play for like 30 sessions.
Speaker 2:It's not well balanced?
Speaker 1:It is not, but.
Speaker 2:D&D quips aside, what's new in the Carlverse? I see I'm a little bit torn. You're made of paper.
Speaker 1:No, no, because that beats Rob.
Speaker 2:See, like I've actually been pretty busy this week and I have interesting stories, but you have to subscribe to the premium. No, I really want to rant about staplers.
Speaker 1:All right, so all actual stories shall be on hold for the stapler rant, because that's what the people want. We know this.
Speaker 2:OK, let's see. In 1999, the movie Office Space came out.
Speaker 1:I don't even know where to begin with this rant, but please continue, sir.
Speaker 2:I don't even know where to begin with this rant, but please continue, sir. Well, so To me the most iconic thing about Office Space is the scene at the end where they smash the photocopying machine like a baseball bat right Spoilers Also I homage that in one of my novels.
Speaker 1:I was working on my Esper Academy one but I had someone summon Excalibur to smash it.
Speaker 2:Please continue. I thought that that was the most iconic thing about the movie. But one could argue that one of the characters they have a red swing line stapler, yeah, and it gets confiscated and that is the catalyst for them ultimately destroying the photocopy machine. But Swingline did not make red staplers in 1999. The stapler was painted red by the cast and crew so it would stand out on set better and in shoots or whatever right.
Speaker 1:I love old prop logic, so in modern days we would just CGI that stapler. But like I enjoy where they just go to a garage sale, buy a rice cooker, spray paint it and then that's your robot in Star Wars.
Speaker 2:Well, okay, so I mean the stapler from the movie is a 646 stapler In 2002.
Speaker 1:I can't even imagine where you're going with things. Sometimes, for people tuning in on episode 72 as their first episode, carl isn't an office worker. That is all you may resume your story.
Speaker 2:Okay, so by 2002, there was enough demand for red staplers from Swingline that they decided to release. Collector's edition is what it says, so I need to pause you for a mini tangent.
Speaker 1:So you're about to be shocked that a movie was able to affect the world. But remember, due to our podcast, we brought back both Dokopan Kingdom, sd, gundam and many, many more things from whoever our dedicated listeners are with power, like we could just manifest things, and if we totally are the reason dokopan kingdom came back just us, who knows what else we're capable of?
Speaker 2:so be careful with our power you may continue okay, so, uh, by by 2002, swingline officially released a real red stapler. Uh, for whatever reason, they didn't do the 646, they did. They did it as the 747. Which little tidbit of history. Apparently, the swingline 747 stapler is the first stapler that had a cap that you could lift off to uh, put a sleeve of staples in. Uh, prior to that invention, which has become standard, uh, you had to have a screwdriver to open up your stapler to add staples.
Speaker 1:That makes me so unhappy.
Speaker 2:Anyways, so like firstly nerdy stuff, pop culture. The photocopy snatching machine scene is iconic but I don't think it had a tangible impact on my life in any way. Really, I've never actually found a copy machine and gotten a baseball bat and smashed it.
Speaker 1:No, you just knifed a TV. However, I need you to know something. So our music this week is being provided by 16-bit JRPG music by Bit by Bit Sound. It's like a royalty-free JRPG music pack. So there is epic orchestra going during the Stapler story and I just felt like you just needed to know that, because you can't hear that detail Right.
Speaker 2:But so, as Richard has said, I do not work in an office, but restaurants that do delivery do actually frequently use staplers to staple bag shut or staple bills to things, or whatever. What have you that is true, right and um my boss?
Speaker 1:a possible secret, sir, a possible john wick type fellow right.
Speaker 2:Um, he has been buying these real red swingline staplers, the 747, for for as long as I have been working there, at the very least.
Speaker 1:Quite possibly for as long as you've been alive.
Speaker 2:He doesn't actually care about office space, he's never seen the movie.
Speaker 1:But this 747 stapler is actually just a premium quality stapler uh, stationary, see, this is really funny for you to be the one who cares about staplers, because I'm the lit person and I don't care about tangible equipment at all. So, like you look at, like books to grammar pages, they'll be like oh, just use my spiral bound press to put a little page insignia in the back cover of my personal library book. Oh, we definitely care about craft, paper, quality, pulp, texture and staplers here. Nope, not me.
Speaker 2:Well, but so the real red. You can buy it in different colors, but real red is the one that stands out the most. And the packaging says collector's edition. I find it very amusing that even after 25 years you can still buy this collectible stapler. But I asked my boss. I was like, yeah, do you buy these because you like Office Space? Because they didn't sell these staplers in red before Office Space. And he's like, yeah, I've never seen that movie. I'm like, oh okay. Well, yeah, I buy them because they're good staplers, but I'm kind of disappointed with the quality lately.
Speaker 1:I'm like, oh okay, so I need to let you know what I just saw in my mind's eye here.
Speaker 2:I need to describe this to you.
Speaker 1:So no, because you've associated Jeff with John Wick and Jeff with Cedric. My brain pictured an 8-foot-tall, green skinned, purple-haired, cow-nosed person in a black trench coat on a rooftop, with a sniper rifle pointed at a waving flag. That is the image that went in my brain. Please continue.
Speaker 2:Sorry no.
Speaker 1:But Apology not accepted. All right, take better care of yourself.
Speaker 2:But so he has an older one of these staplers and he has a newer one that was bought within the past year at least, and I, when he said that he was disappointed with the quality. I look at them and I'm like huh. The older one, it says swing line on it, but it's like a metal emblem, a piece that's actually clipped on and then it has the cap is metal, the arm is metal, the slider inside that moves the stapler is metal, and then the base is completely metal and instead of a traditional spring it has a locking mechanism that also acts as a spring.
Speaker 1:So we have this running joke where we're not sponsored, However, Swingline.
Speaker 2:Oh, no, no, they might not like the fact that I noticed on the new stapler it still says 747, and 747 is like embossed on the end of this stapler, so you know what model number you have. I guess we're at war with.
Speaker 1:Big Stapler now.
Speaker 2:The base has a rubber foot so it doesn't slide around on your desk if you're actually using it on a desk. We don't generally use it on a desk. And then, like I said, there's the spring. So normal staplers use like a coil spring. Yes, I like to fidget with things like TV remote covers and stuff, and I fidgeted with a stapler. Enough that it's like when it pops open and then the spring flies out yeah. Enough that it's like when it pops open and then the spring flies out, yeah. Or most staplers just have the rails along the side, that kind of clip into place, yeah, and if you fidget with them too much then the clips wear down and it doesn't clip in place anymore. So, like I really appreciate the locking mechanism.
Speaker 1:A fidget-friendly stapler really appreciate the locking mechanism.
Speaker 2:I appreciate the locking mechanism that also acts as a spring without being a coil spring. But when I compared that to the new stapler, they've removed the metal plaque that says swingline and it's Swingline is just printed on there, the 747 on the front of the stapler. They switched to a cheaper font to emboss and they've made the rubber foot of the base probably about a millimeter thicker so that they could shave off a millimeter of metal for savings, I'm assuming which ironically means that when you don't have the foot on there, if you press the stapler down, then the spring lock mechanism actually malfunctions because it gets pressed down into the table and tilts.
Speaker 1:You know what's really really funny. You're the fun one of us.
Speaker 2:If you consider ranting about staplers fun.
Speaker 1:Well, that's the joke. Carl's the wacky character. Richard's the serious character. Carl's giving a TED Talk on staplers. Richard's playing with a cat.
Speaker 2:Uh, well, see, yeah, I mean, what I'm really trying to do is ascertain if there actually is a collector's market for real red staplers, and I would really like to pinpoint the production shift from the slightly higher quality to this now slightly lower quality, because that'll mean that if I have one of these staplers pre-2023, we'll say it might be worth more money now because it says it's collector's edition.
Speaker 1:Okay, now we're getting into what our audience is here for. So, to summarize your story of about staplers, your goal is you realize that these collector edition staplers kept the same model number but decreased quality. So your plan is to isolate when the decrease happened, buy up all the staplers before the decrease and then sell them back to people at a markup because they're a collector's item based on a movie.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't know how collectible they are, because just putting collector's edition on your product doesn't. Yes, it does If you sell it for 25 years. Is it actually collectible? Probably.
Speaker 1:I mean, you seem pretty into staplers and you're just a guy.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, we also have a 646 stapler On that one. The cap is plastic. It didn't have the little plaque, which didn't mean the new 747 doesn't either, but anyway. So the cap is plastic, the slider is plastic. It uses the traditional spring which obviously has flown out of said stapler. We're lucky it didn't land in a pizza. That could have been hazardous Swingline.
Speaker 1:So remember when I worked at Redacted Theater and they made sure to put metal strips in the band-aids so you could use a metal detector to find missing band-aids in the popcorn Yep.
Speaker 2:But so it's like the and then the, the 646. The rubber foot actually like curves upward so it shaves off even more metal. But it shaves off so much metal that when you open the stapler all the way it actually pushes against the rubber foot and causes it to detach from the rest of the stapler. So I mean the 646 stapler probably much cheaper, but man it is. It is definitely a less premium product it'd be so funny.
Speaker 1:So what's funny is like if we set up like an amazon, one of those like promotional links and just like links, Links yeah, yeah, to just make extra money for selling staplers at the end of our episode.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, the story doesn't really have much of a point. It was just that I noticed the thing that shocks me the most is the um, the cheaper font to emboss. Uh, because it still says 747. But it's just like, really, you just reduce the number of strokes you need because you could save like half a penny for a stapler for a collector?
Speaker 1:how many of?
Speaker 2:these collectors? How many of those collectors, staplers, do they sell?
Speaker 1:oh, like mystery cheapness, like that always breaks me. I'm gonna be, real where it's like really you need to save money. Here you went with crappier wrapping paper for the booster packs really yeah, I mean oh, but anyway, yeah, that's.
Speaker 2:I mean there's other interesting things I've done this week, but I noticed the quality difference between the two identical stapler models this week as well and I was like you know what that's? A stupid, mundane topic to talk about, excellent.
Speaker 1:And I think that's funny. It really was what's new with you, richard. So I had an assignment today to hand in, effectively, a book report. It seems weird to say in my fourth year of university Like yeah, I could call it lit analysis case study. It was a book report. Let's be real, my assignment was to read three books and then write analysis in all three books. Now that could apply to this novel I'm writing. Okay, I managed to successfully read two of those books.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:So for the third one, and it has to be a book I hadn't read before I went with a very specific loophole. I chose the Full Metal Panic novels for my third one Because I haven't read those before.
Speaker 1:I have, however, watched that animated series probably about 20 times. So it's like I finally got around to reading the novel versions of it and I just think it's really funny to be in a fourth year masterwork class and talking about the brilliance that is Full Metal Panic. So for the last four hours I've just been like this is the best piece of fiction ever, With full confidence that there's no way the prof will ever go back and read this book to realize how much trash was in fact in it or how you could not make a series about a person who brings machine guns to school as a comedy in 2024 and get away with it. Like the full fundamental concept behind this show would not work today at all. Like episode five is literally a plane hijacking and bringing it to North Korea, and I just don't feel like you could play that for laughs the way you used to.
Speaker 2:Just as a random tangent. I've probably told you this story before, but when I was in grade 12, we were reading Life of Pi and I was super far ahead of the class, so I was reading a different book and during class time we were supposed to be reading Life of Pi. A teacher comes up to me and they're like, hey, you should be reading Life of Pi. I'm like, well, I'm super far ahead, so I just felt like reading something else. And so then she's like oh well, how about you do some bonus assignments where you read a book and then you just need to do a little description of one of the characters and explain whether or not that character is quote-unquote strong? And I guess I shouldn't have the confidence that they were never going to try and fact check me, uh. But uh, the first one I did was huckleberry finn, yeah, uh.
Speaker 2:The second one I did, I believe, was called wind-up bird chronicles. I don't remember the author, but it's a Japanese author. It was a pretty weird book. The fourth one no, the third one I did I made up. I don't remember what I called it, but the author was Heinrich von Hagen and it was like a dystopian novel and the character who was supposedly I was describing. They were physically strong, but they were mentally weak, and so it was like the contrast of what kind of strength that we were actually talking about. And I hand these into her and all she ever said about it was that she would put those on her reading list, and I passed that class with 100%.
Speaker 1:See, I wouldn't be able to get away with that. For one thing, annotated bibliographies exist which would catch me instantly. Okay. But like there's a certain level of confidence I could get, because the assignment was literally how do these books start? How do they engage the reader? What can you learn about your novel and apply to it? So like the questions were legitimately useful. Right Of I'm analyzing these books in my genre while writing a book in that genre. So like it would be like yeah, I probably could have bullshitted book three, pick some book. Like there's no way my professor has read Full Metal Panic, for example. I could have told him whatever I thought it was about. But that kind of defeats the point when I'm supposed to be actually learning to make my own book better. To just cheat at the assignment would be kind of undercutting it a bit.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I mean, the stakes for my assignment were much lower because it was just bonus marks, I guess.
Speaker 1:It's kind of funny. I had an assignment where I had to give a presentation on a hypothetical publishing house and I did up the fake letterhead with the fake logo and the fake email address and phone numbers. I got weirdly into this assignment because ADHD be like that and it's like I got 100% on this assignment. But this assignment's only worth 5% of my final grade. So the difference between me doing custom letterhead, putting in a logo, putting in contact information, and making this fake email from this fake publishing house look really nice and me just doodling on a napkin was like 1% of my final grade would be the difference, because if I got a 50 on that assignment still would have given me 3 out of 5 points where?
Speaker 2:but so this book report assignment. How much of that is worth of your final grade?
Speaker 1:oh, this is like worth 20% the book report yeah, it's worth a fifth of it.
Speaker 2:Okay, you don't want to try and?
Speaker 1:read 3 entire novels and had I not had my sharing gun, I would have read three novels over the course of the term, because I knew I could read three novels in a weekend. I just did that.
Speaker 1:Sharing gun and like the only real reason I picked Full Metal Panic for the third one is I'm like, okay, if I speed read this, I have enough of this information living and rent free in my brain till I die that I won't have to re-read it. But also, I just really want to talk about Full Metal Panic to this trained doctorate of English professor because I want to justify why this is in fact, one of the best sci-fi novels ever written, despite the anime girl on the cover. Like it's just such a wacko series where our character is a doofy war nut. Oh, why is that? Oh, from his time in Iraq. You're like, wait what Look?
Speaker 2:at this wacky.
Speaker 1:Like. The show's premise is like oh, oh, look at this wacky character using a bomb to blow up a shoe locker.
Speaker 2:He thinks the bombs in and you're like, yeah, because of that time his friend died to a bomb in a shoe locker wow it's like his lipstick comedy actually, uh, never actually watched or read full metal panic I You've talked about it a lot and you've recommended it, but I just never actually.
Speaker 1:Yeah, go on JNovelClub and you should be able to sign up for your membership and get the first volume for free and you can just read it on your phone. I highly recommend it because it's good.
Speaker 1:Either start with Full Metal Panic or start with Full Metal Panic Short Stories. They have the entire first chapter of both of them for free anyway with the preview button. But yeah, no, I do recommend it because it makes me happy and I could read you 3 000 words right now about why it's well written and just glaze over the not well-written stuff, like the fact that in the early 2000s, when this was written, panty raids were a socially acceptable wacky doodle comedy thing instead of being straight up assault.
Speaker 2:Wow, I don't know how the world has changed.
Speaker 1:Probably for the better on that one. That was probably bad.
Speaker 2:That was definitely bad. That is condemnable behavior.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. But like this series puts that as that's a bad thing to do because it's bad, and then the person gets beat with a baseball bat because it was bad, so like they did the bit, it's one of those things like you're both glorifying a bit and also explaining that this is bad for comedy puts you in a gray area of how cancelled you should be.
Speaker 2:Also.
Speaker 1:SpongeBob had a Panty Raid episode. Just putting that out there. Oh really, yeah, just straight up.
Speaker 2:Hmm, yep, well, panty Raids are like the entire plot of Dr Slump.
Speaker 1:So Wait, really.
Speaker 2:Nah, well, I mean, there's definitely a lot other stuff in there too, but so I thought you said dr stone at first and my brain went through so many loops because dr slump maybe. But dr stone, I'm like wait what yeah, dr stone, definitely not, dr slump just does.
Speaker 1:That makes much more sense given when that was written Like early. Dragon Ball is a very different creature than late Dragon Ball.
Speaker 2:That is also very true.
Speaker 1:Like oh man, is that a character arc? But yeah, I also kind of sabotaged myself for the assignment Because my big project is a collection of short stories that tell a full story.
Speaker 1:And a lot of questions on this assignment were how does this book start? And then how does it keep you invested? 30 pages in, 60 pages in. But I mostly read short story collections. The short story is over 30 pages in. It's just another short story. Oh no, and then I had to do an extra book for my book report because there's Full Metal Panic and Full Metal Panic short stories are Fuma Fu and I read both books because one's a short story collection, one isn't.
Speaker 1:So they worked at answering different questions. Plus, I want to be like does the short story collection actually work if you don't read the original? And it does shockingly. And it does shockingly If you just start on the short story collection. It gives you enough information in a very clean manner in like two pages that you're good to go when they're like. This kid has caused more property damage than anyone. Yeah, he's from a war-torn country. Are you sure it's not because a large cash donation came with his enrollment? We ignore that. That pretty much gets you up to speed to the premise in like 30 seconds flat.
Speaker 1:Are you sure you're not just letting him get away with it because of the large cash donation? Don't worry about it. Walk it off.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, I mean you were saying he uses a bomb to defuse another bomb, which?
Speaker 1:is the most strategic it sounds like a bad idea. To be fair, the justification's pretty solid. So it's like imagine you see a brown paper bag on the patio to your house.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:You see this brown paper bag. It's kind of warm, it smells funky and it's wriggling a bit. Do you open it to see what's inside?
Speaker 2:Probably not. I'd probably put on gloves and carry it to the garbage.
Speaker 1:All right. So now imagine that this bag is bolted to the ground because it's a shoe locker. What's the solution? Oh, you blow up the shoe locker.
Speaker 1:I mean, I guess that's fair. That was literally like the in-book justification of the other characters, like no, that's insane. It's like, is it? But the novel handled it slightly different than the animated version. So in the novel he was like drilling into it with a scope and people got mad at him for setting up caution tape and blocking the hallway. Like is there any way you can do this quickly? He's like okay, fine. So he was peer pressured to hurry up in his defense right right and it's true.
Speaker 1:The one of the ways you defuse a bomb is by setting it off with a bomb. A controlled detonation is actually what you would do if you want to do it quickly.
Speaker 2:Huh.
Speaker 1:All right, that's what's kind of like. What I really enjoy about that series is that his fish out of water overreaction is because he's actually just legitimately qualified and justified in most things he does and mostly just gets punished via muscle memory. There's a scene where he's in an arcade playing shoot the zombies, right. So he runs out of bullets. So he grabs his sidearm with an actual handgun and shoots three times into the screen and blows it up. When he gets called out why he did that, he's like the person's like well, you're supposed to just pull the gun away from the screen and pull the trigger. He's like that's so dangerous. And you're like thinking reading this like yeah, no, any sane person, that's lunacy. But also the fact that his reflexes to pull a second weapon up has literally saved lives in the other like serious parts of the series. So you're like, yeah, no, from his point of view, that was the rational thing to do and he feels bad about it because it was 100% reflex 100% reflex.
Speaker 1:And then like tried to justify it later, being like wait, you wanted me to just point a gun at the ground and pull the trigger. That's insane. But yeah, I know this wasn't going to be our focus of the episode, but I could easily do a full episode on secondhand, full Metal Panic, which my advice is Carl should read it, don't care if the rest of our listeners or viewers do. It has some questionable anime nonsense in it.
Speaker 2:That is true. A lot of things that are fun to read sometimes contain questionable material. Things that are fun to read sometimes contain questionable material.
Speaker 1:Well, it's like it's funny because the two characters because it's at its core a romance actually have good canon. Mystery Characters have good agency. I honestly think the anime version, compared to the novels, has more trash in it.
Speaker 2:Makes sense.
Speaker 1:I've just never seen anything handle tone quite the way it does where it's so masterful. When it goes serious it goes full on serious mobile suit Gundam. We're deploying our robots in formation. We're literally in Russia fighting the KGB and doing spy things. And then you throw that same character in a rugby match later and you realize he is grossly overqualified to train this rugby team and this may in fact be a problem that he's using military boot camp strategy to train these rugby players.
Speaker 2:Yeah right.
Speaker 1:It's like what are the few series that can have a pun in it and then, 10 episodes later, have a legitimate nuclear missile crisis and you're like wait a minute when this show goes dark. It goes dark all the way. That could actually explode and kill people. There is no plot, armor and bullets actually hurt you in this show. If you get shot, you've been shot. That's bad.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, bullets killing you in anime is always the weirdest thing. I think the funniest anime trope just to go off on a mini tangent is when a character has a gun that doesn't harm people and they describe it like magic or MacGuffins are better than guns, but the gun's just worse at being a gun. So, like in Soul Eater, it's like I fire compressed chunks of my soul wavelength and it knocks, knocks people out. It's like that's less effective than a bullet for what you're trying to do. Like fairy tale is the worst for that, where a character's power is summoning swords and slashing people, but there's no blood allowed in that show, so the sword just doesn't cut people somehow. Yeah, and I'm like but your power is swords no one ever dies in this. But your power is swords no one ever dies in this show. And your power is swords. How your magical sword seems less effective than a regular one for some reason.
Speaker 1:It's like how can you blow up a mountain, but it doesn't kill people.
Speaker 2:Many tangents aside, this whole opening section has just been a tangent, because we haven't even touched on what our actual topic is.
Speaker 1:That's true. I'm still trying to kind of like suss out our actual topic.
Speaker 2:I thought it was game complexity.
Speaker 1:It was. I was just seeing if the universe went in another direction, maybe you'd get really into my Full Metal Panic rant. And this go another 30 minutes. I can dream Alright. So game complexity, because this is another rant for you. Longtime listeners will know we are talking about rock, paper, scissors based games, game engines, mechanics and we just enjoy indie game creation in this channel, be it TTRPGs, tabletop, someday video game. It's just hobby work we enjoy.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Low-key. I literally am in an anthology on 9th Level Games in their Level 1 magazine. If anyone wants to check that out and download it, Plug for a free magazine. I'm in Anywho On to the topic of complexity for games Recently and this should have been the what's New With Me, but I was just really into this Full Metal Panic essay. One of the more recent new things with me is I tried out the Witcher, the Old One's board game, and it had a lot of mechanics that were effectively more polished versions of your rock paper scissors, Dokopan-inspired game, and it led to a big question. I had to ask you how complex? Do you enjoy it? Like your board games?
Speaker 2:well. So lately I've had some board games where you go to play and setup takes a half hour 45 minutes, uh, and that's before you even get into explaining the rules. So people haven't played. And in a modern society where you can just watch a YouTube tutorial about any game to get a grasp for the rules, it's less of an issue. But there's no way to avoid that ridiculous setup time and it's difficult to create an engaging and interesting game that doesn't feel like it's been done before without getting more and more complex. But lately I've been focusing mostly on on card games, because you just need the deck of cards.
Speaker 1:So that's where I kind of pivot into this conversation a bit. So I've kind of broken down most board games into four categories day long games, two to three hour long games. So I've kind of broken down most board games into four categories Day-long games, two to three hour long games, half hour games, five minute games.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:So your day-long game is like Eldritch Horror House on the Hill Technically Risk when played incorrectly. More like the fancier Risks, like your full Lord of the Rings or Risk 2033 AD ones.
Speaker 2:Or.
Speaker 1:Axis and Allies.
Speaker 2:Axis and Allies.
Speaker 1:And these are games that that is all you're doing that day. They're more complex than D&D. So, like this Witcher game my friend had already had set up before I got there, we had an hour before the second friend arrived for me to watch a YouTube video.
Speaker 1:Read the rulebook. Look at all the parts. Where the second friend will arrive for me to watch a YouTube video. Read the rule book. Look at all the parts. It was the deluxe Kickstarter one with 3D printed miniatures instead of tokens, character tracking boards that use little wooden cubes as tokens in the board to track your levels.
Speaker 1:And this game was lux. It had PvP, player versus environment, almost AI functioning enemy battles. Oh when, like your enemy deck would be your number of life the enemy have with the number of cards in their deck, and the deck cards would flip over and, based on different conditions, other players would vote whether they wanted to attack you or charge you, and that would depend on what card effects it has. They had mechanics where, if you go exploring the map and pick up hint tokens, you can get a first turn surprise round on the enemy because you did research on them, so you can actually go and prep for a fight, but someone might kill the thing while you're prepping. And the combat system was actually so cool I almost want to make a card game based on it.
Speaker 1:So you have your deck of cards in front of you and they come in different colors, like red for sword attacks, yellow for magic, blue for da-da-da-da-da, and each card will have little nodes on the side of the card. For example, if you do a pirouette, you can combo that into a spell or another attack. So the combat system is you physically chaining cards that combo together to deal damage, to flip off cards off the top of the boss's health. But some of these cards will literally have reaction symbols where the boss will react because you hit them and do a panic charge or withdraw on its shell, and the gameplay of this is literally start your turn, go to a square on the map. Each square does something different. Choose if you want to flip over an event card to explore. If you want to buy some potions. If you want to level up your stats.
Speaker 1:If you want to track your enemy, if you want to fight the battle when you fight players or other creatures you're using this card draw system At the end of your turn it's a full deck builder where you get a new card at the end of each turn which ups your life total, and then you can swap out your bad cards for better cards.
Speaker 2:This game is a full experience, Basically any mechanic.
Speaker 1:You would need to play a Dokopon game. This had some variation of it, its core gameplay mechanic being chaining cards together, like flesh and blood cards, and building your deck. But also potions were separate cards. Items were separate cards. Killing monsters gave you trophies.
Speaker 1:Trophies had passive effects, like I killed a hag and it let me move an extra square. Your combat cards you'd have to discard to move to squares so it'd make you have less attacks on your first turn if you moved around too much on your turn. Like it was a very, very well-constructed, elegant game, but it's a day long game. Any individual piece of that game the build a deck to combat PVP, the monster hunting. The board explanation. The side gambling poker game they put in it where you do dice poker to just straight up gamble. When players PVP, there's a rule for you gambling on who wins the PVP to get gold from the bank.
Speaker 1:Like this game had mechanics on mechanics and there's like three like DLCsized expansion kits for the game that weren't even set up. Like one that just lets you play as a sorcerer instead of a witcher, which has just completely different objectives. And the reason I give this rant is this game was really cool. We did not finish a game of it, I went for a cheap win and then it didn't technically count because it turns out I can't jump witchers at schools and it's not like.
Speaker 1:The game was confusing. Most of the rules were written in the player tip cards on the board in front of you and we watched an instructional video. It just had a very large scope and the box is like 90 minutes to 2 hours and like 6 hours later like no, it wasn't so like that hours later like no, it wasn't yeah, okay. So like that game is just like a full experience of complexity.
Speaker 1:That would be like my top tier, which is what happens if you want a game that has PVP and PV in your board game.
Speaker 2:Cause, then you just have time to do both things. Right.
Speaker 1:And then like to tell down the complexity a bit. Then you get to like your risks in your monopolies, which are like your traditional grindy games but really only have a singular objective, like one game I really enjoy in the like the next year. Below is shadow hunters, okay, which is like a PvP, pve, monster hunting game where half the players are monsters, half the players, half the players are heroes, half the players are monsters, half the players are heroes, half the players are villains and you try and have to figure out who's what. So you can then like take them down and that one. Actually you play a game in half an hour to an hour.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:And then you get to like your exploding kittens type things, which is literally just the deck of cards. Is your entire game Right? So part?
Speaker 2:of why I start with this rant, though, is even your card games, though a game of Commander and Magic where you have five players of hundred card decks can still be a full experience, too. I was going to say one of the things that is also new with me that I, that I didn't go on about I have a work friend, and you have other friends.
Speaker 1:Oh, I didn't go on about. I have a work friend and you have other friends.
Speaker 2:Oh, I don't like that Well, so his name is James T Kirk.
Speaker 1:Perfect Good cover, or it's the truth. It's so hard to tell.
Speaker 2:Anyways, and he likes magic and his roommate. I don't know if he has any more recent cards, but he has casual formats. So, like Plane, chase, arc, enemy, all the dual decks, like I thought that my collection of casual formats was fairly complete. And then he just busts out the Hydras deck from the pre-release for Theros, where you, where everyone would fight this deck that had heads that you had to try and destroy before it killed you.
Speaker 1:Oh man, that is way back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and he busts out like some DCI promo schemes. He's like, yeah, we're going to play this Hydra's deck on super hardcore mode because there's going to be four heads revealed at the start and it has schemes and it goes first and the Hydra deck almost killed us all because it was just hardcore. Um, but I it was kind of interesting because the magic is already an incredibly complicated game and these casual formats, which I like, I say I, I love them, but they make it more complicated at the same time well it.
Speaker 1:It's kind of funny I rant about this a lot to my brother. Magic is the only mainstream card game to embrace multiplayer and casual formats and I don't understand it. No card games out of Japan are ever three to five player friendly and that I could give like a full like social, like a social cultural analysis on that one. But like magic isn't that well engineered of a card game but it's completely claimed that niche but they refuse to capitalize on it. Like magic arena just doesn't have four player or commander or two at a giant or any of that.
Speaker 1:And it's like you have like the worst mode, like standard and modern, or just like have like the worst mode, like standard and modern are just like well, not even modern, standard and not older than standard. I don't remember what they called it pioneer maybe are just like the most boring way to play magic is to grind against random players who are probably using an AI to tell them what moves to make. Well, the matchmaking algorithm pairs you against the same deck as yours but costs more money. Deliberately rind against random players who are probably using an AI to tell them what moves to make.
Speaker 1:While the matchmaking algorithm pairs you against the same deck as yours but costs more money, deliberately to make you want to spend money and it's just like man, the fun parts of this game are not being done by the makers.
Speaker 1:I'm also just kind of bitter at the new set for a dumb reason. Oh, so they're doing a red wall theme set. They're not going to call it that, but it is. That is one of my favorite possible things. They could be doing Right, but they stopped doing blocks. So it's like, okay, you're doing this awesome mouse, weasel, frog, squirrel set, that'll only matter for this one block. But they released so much extra crap now so I'm looking at spoilers.
Speaker 1:I'm like, oh, you printed all the planeswalkers as might as like woodland folk, like there's a liliana vest that has a squirrel artwork and I'm like, what does that come in? Not the booster packs, in the premium booster packs?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, the collector booster packs. If you want to pre-order those, I think it was for like six collector booster boxes but two thousand dollars to pre-order them.
Speaker 1:There's no way you're gonna make your money back on that right and I'm like, as sweet as it would be to roll up to carl's house with my squirrel commander's deck, me being like, look, they're all squirrels, I'm following your rule and just have lilliana, who's a squirrel for some reason, is awesome to me. I'm angry because they're introducing a bunch of cool concepts that will not be in the format long enough to ever matter, like Mouse wasn't a creature type before this set and it's not going to be a creature type after this set.
Speaker 2:Correction. It was a creature type before this set, but I believe there were only like three mice and some of them were tokens. Like the carriage makes, it's a vehicle that enters and it makes through the vehicle.
Speaker 1:But you see what I mean. Like because they've decided their multiplayer format is Commander and it's a 99 card singleton format. For some reason there's no way I could build a mouse Commander deck that feels like it's mouse enough.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, just as another tidbit. Apparently the commander format was born out of people being at Pro Tour events and then they had downtime between matches and they're like well, I really want to use my garbage cards. So I'm just going to make this singleton deck based around the theme of this one commander and then play against my friends with my garbage cards.
Speaker 1:Yeah and then they keep getting more and more expensive things that go in commander decks because magic players can't be trusted.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, I mean now that it's actually a sanctioned format.
Speaker 1:People are like turn three, I'll use my elves to oh, no, what was it? It was. There's this weasel they printed that flips over the top card of your deck and then you discard a card to pay it for free and they're like oh, if you just fill it with lands and this one card that says destroy everything, you can lock people out of the game. I'm like, wow, lock people out of the game. I'm like wow, that seems like you got your five friends together on their one day off. You've cleaned your house. You have your charcuterie board set up for a good game of magic to kill everyone. Turn three who?
Speaker 2:is this for?
Speaker 1:Why would you do that?
Speaker 2:We didn't die that quickly in the one commander match that we played, but the one guy was playing Slivers Nah. Frick was playing Slivers Nah, frickin' Slivers. Anyways, the point of the matter is that Magic is already a complicated game and then adding additional rules, it's kind of interesting because it doesn't really affect the pacing of the game that much and it didn't over-Obi with information, but it was an interesting experience with a more complex version of an already complex game.
Speaker 1:Well, the thing is too. Complexity creep is a real risk in a lot of games. You know how Magic. Originally all the text would fit below the artwork.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And now we have sagas, where there's literally three text boxes, or two-sided cards with full text on both sides, or two-sided cards that flip into a bigger two-sided card. Like they're literally running out of space on the physical card to print all the stuff it does now.
Speaker 2:Just as another side tangent. Maybe your solution is the textless cards. No, like, there's a saga which is as a textless card.
Speaker 1:I saw that too and I almost sent it to you. I almost sent you that because I saw that as well and I'm like that is just no one knows what this does off the top of their head. If they tell you they know every word in it, they're lying. I can't even get that accurate for the first chapter of Full Metal Panic. To get the first three paragraphs word for word, yeah right. But to pivot a bit away from magic, but not really.
Speaker 1:See, that's kind of Magic, weirdly enough can go through all four of those stages of complexity. Two dual decks especially the older ones, are just elves versus dwarves, for example 15 minutes take you to loot, Because you really don't. The secret thing is the more complex the game is, the longer it takes your players to read their cards.
Speaker 2:If they're good players.
Speaker 1:If they're bad players, the longer it takes for you to explain the card they just played to them, for them to take it back and do something else, then you get to more complicated, where, commander, you're like okay, we got five players, which means, in theory, everyone should be thinking about what they want to do before the turn happens. But that's not reality.
Speaker 2:Well and plus, like you draw a, and it could potentially change your entire strategy. And every card is unique.
Speaker 1:Every card is unique, you have to read everything and they're designed to last longer, with more life totals and more jank. But conversely, if you have that one asshole player who tries to end your commander game fast, it defeats the point. People play commander because they want to play their Tarrasque.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:It's literally like you're hurting the point of it to be like, okay, I killed you, turn three oh, just as another somewhat side tangent um, we played another variant of magic.
Speaker 2:We had five players, and so each of us played one of the five colors. Yeah, and then we sat in the arrangement that, like on the back of the card, it has the pentagram nice of all the five colors and the opposite. The opposite two cards are colors are enemy colors, right? Yeah? Um, so the point of the of the of this variant was you could only attack the players that were playing your enemy colors I think I've done this before uh, and then once you've defeated both of your enemies, you win the game.
Speaker 2:And one of my enemies was a red deck I was playing blue, I was playing my dual deck, tezzeret Yep, and the person playing red. They had an artifact that made red spells deal 2 extra damage. And then they had an artifact that copied red instance and sorceries, and so he killed me in one turn by playing 2 spells that just got copied twice and did 20 damage straight to my face. Yeah, seems like what Jeremy would do to you. Needless to say, he won that match, although I ended up winning the next match.
Speaker 1:But to follow that. So that's like the third most complex version of Magic. So basic Magic 1v1. Priest and Temple decks. Not that time-consuming Commander, more time-consuming Commander with a gimmick even more time-consuming. But the worst way to play magic known to man the worst way I will never do it is when someone has a bunch of cards at random and is like let's all build decks.
Speaker 2:Ooh.
Speaker 1:I keep having people suggest this Right, like oh, there's a bunch of cards, why don't we all build a deck and play that is?
Speaker 1:a 48 hour endeavor and the better you are at Like oh there's a bunch of cards, why don't we all build a deck and play? That is a 48-hour endeavor, and the better you are at magic, the slower it is. The more knowledge you have about the game, the worse this experience becomes for everybody. Right, right, like a booster draft, where you just build your deck out of opening three packs. Or even a cube draft, where you build each player builds their deck in a draft structure. That's like a step above complexity for Commander, because it's Commander but you had to build your decks first.
Speaker 1:But, just looking through random trading cards and playing games with them is the worst, and I hate it Like. I don't want to sound like a card elitist, but it's just a painful experience for me.
Speaker 2:But one of the things that I do really like about Magic is that, in terms of actual game pieces, the cards are all you need.
Speaker 1:Well, other than tokens and dice and playmats and swag, you don't really need any of the swag, but the swag's great.
Speaker 2:I mean, I suppose the way to track counters and whatnot is relevant, so like to give a little bit of shout out to, weirdly enough, the Dragon Ball Super Card game which is a magic variant.
Speaker 1:let's be honest, right, their life total is. Each player flips out eight life cards and when you get hit you lose a life card. It doesn't matter how much damage a card does to you, it just matters if it hits you and the damage strength stats. Literally for what card beats what card. Slash if you can block it, yada, yada.
Speaker 1:I love that, because this game you don't need any tokens or life pads or nothing. It's literally your cards are being used to track your cards. It's a good strategy when, like Flesh and Blood cards, you need a bunch of tokens because you're tracking life but you're also tracking plus and minusing on things and magic. You need a jar of pennies or something. They use way too many counters and they've gotten kind of obnoxious with it. Put a death touch counter on your card. Okay, satan, I'll just find my death touch counter yeah, death touch counter.
Speaker 2:Yeah, death touch counter. Shield counter.
Speaker 1:See.
Speaker 2:I was fine when all counters were plus one plus one or minus one.
Speaker 1:minus one Partly because those numbers negate each other. So you never have a mix right. You either have plus one, you're either in the negatives, or they're positives and you're just using beads. That's great or like, but then they're just starting to get like janky with it. Let's be real.
Speaker 2:But so, coming back to the games in general, I did try to find a rule book and I must've downloaded a in development version because it had a bunch of stuff where it was like, oh, and a example would go here or whatever.
Speaker 1:But trying to read through those rules, the board setup and then it's like the character tracking Right, like the deck building, combat, like exploring You're right that that game is just so massive in scope that it's a day well, it's like I personally would cut it up into chunks and play each of the chunks as it's own game where, like the thing is due to the power of and I know there's a lot of friends I have with ADHD are like this, people enjoy a complex game if that is the thing they're there to do specifically.
Speaker 1:So if you're, specifically meeting up for Eldritch Horror or the Witcher, and you are setting up your game in advance and this is the thing you're doing that day. It's worth it. That Witcher game was sick by the time we'd watched the instructional videos.
Speaker 1:Eaten our food, had our snacks, got into the game flow of the game, we felt accomplished. A complex game makes you feel smart playing it and feel satisfied winning it. Conversely, a long game that doesn't have like too much Mario Kart nonsense is also super satisfying. Actually, winning a risk game is super satisfying.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:That's why Commander is fun, because part of it is it's tedious, but Commander's cheat code is you set it up before you get there. Every person is responsible for setting themselves up, or you have a cycle of decks ready to go. So, when it comes to game complexity, though, the downside to those cool novelty games that are a full-day experience is if you're dedicating a full day to one board game, that's happening maybe once a year for that board game at most.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Like House on the Hill's pretty complicated. That would be the only thing you'd really do that day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but House on the Hill.
Speaker 2:Is a tier or two down from the witcher yeah, it's a tier or two down from the witcher. Uh, you, you don't need. Uh, it takes maybe 10 minutes to set up, like I, I house on the hill is at that level of complexity. Well, almost at that level of complexity. Well, almost at the level of complexity that I like. The second half of the game is always just so chaotic and random. The first half of the game I really love exploring the house and, like I say, it doesn't require that much setup. The second half of the game doesn't really require any extra setup, but reading through and figuring out what your scenarios are and then actually playing through the scenarios and trying to achieve your new objectives. It's cool in theory, but I've never. I have the game, but I probably have only played through like five of the scenarios. That said, if I had more players who liked the game a lot, I might play it more because it's not complex to set up.
Speaker 1:And, like another game, that kind of has the opposite problem is Catan. Catan's easy to play. I find it weirdly annoying to set up. It's like setting up Catan should not be as time-consuming as it is. But it's like, yeah, now open the book, find the map you want, set it up to match that, have some things face up and face down, move around your tiles, and I'm like this should not be complicated to set up. Can it just be one static board, please Like? Why does it? Why do we need this much energy for Catan? Come on.
Speaker 2:Oh.
Speaker 1:Risk Risks to set up. Annoyance is just simply how many troops does everyone get? Shifting those out and having people place them? It took me way too long in my life to realize dealing with people picking where they. You got to set your troops and you go around the table, one at a time, picking territories, and then place down troops, two at a time, until you're out of troops. Right, that's the bad way to do it. That's the bad way.
Speaker 1:Isn't that the official way, though. No, there's two official ways. Official way one's that way. Official way two, the good way you deal out the risk cards that are all the territories, that's where you start and then you place your troops, two at a time, on your territories. That stops people from debating, fighting, thinking, because once you see where your starting territories are, outside your will, it becomes much easier where you put your troops. You put your troops wherever your territories are closerly grouped, or all in Australia to screw over one particular person.
Speaker 2:Right right.
Speaker 1:But, like I said, I haven't played Risk in years because it's such a long game. The only versions I've played are like digitally over Zoom during lockdown when bored of being at a certain peak point.
Speaker 2:Well, there's something satisfying about playing with like physical board and games and stuff. Rules enforcement, gameplay, setup games being digital just makes sense. Coming back to Magic, once again, arena for that rules enforcement it's fantastic because you can have like 100 triggers and it'll track them all for you and it'll put them onto the stack in the right order, you can respond to them.
Speaker 1:Players worse so that's true also. Here's my biggest downside to doing things digitally, why I don't even play very many multiplayer games I call it the boring douchebag effect I find when people are playing games not in the same physical room with you, they, like most people, will disassociate and turn into their least fun selves.
Speaker 1:See, I can multitask, right so, which means, when I'm playing video games, I'm usually making small talk, chatting. When I'm playing board games, I'm absolutely making small talk, chatting, living my life, enjoying my friends. Making small talk, chatting, living my life enjoying my friends. If you play a board game with someone in their basement, they're like leaving their mic on mute, except when they're talking about the scene.
Speaker 1:And they're probably watching a show and just not fully present, which is just less fun for me. So Magic Arena the fact I don't have an opponent to trash talk takes like half the fun out of Magic. Like not being able to smirk at someone when I counterspell them defeats the entire point of it for me, really Like they become something I'm doing in between lectures because I need to keep my brain busy. So, like when it comes to games, I like a level of complexity that enables me to still small talk with people.
Speaker 1:Or it has to be like the Witcher game to actually make me need to use my full brainpower. I'm not even that good at these games, I just don't. It just takes a lot of moving pieces to keep my attention.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:So to move back into like games I actually play often though.
Speaker 2:So Free.
Speaker 1:Dragon Anti, despite being a longer game. Well, depending on what rules you use, if you play the, once one person's out, it ends. You know, the nice way, fast game. If you play the grindier, intense way, slow game. But that game is super simple. Just need a deck of cards and a box of coins. Right, but it's strategic enough. Cards and a box of coins Right, but it's strategic enough that I can get into it.
Speaker 2:Hmm, Growing up the Three Dragon Antique definitely does have a nice balance of complexity, to like gameplay functionality.
Speaker 1:It kind of became my substitute for Commander. It has very similar energy to Commander, without people needing their own decks or understanding Magic the Gathering. But I will say part of why Three Dragon Anti worked is my friends growing up weren't smart enough for poker. So if you play poker and you're like, oh, I go all in, oh, I go all in, that's not how you actually play poker, that's how you ruin poker.
Speaker 1:So, I was complaining that if you build your magic deck to create infinite shiven dragons, turn four, you've defeated the point of commander Cause if one person is too strong or too weak, it unbalances it. If someone's playing poker and they're going saying I'm go all in Cause it's fun to say, and they're saying I'm going all in because it's fun to say and they're just betting huge on every hand and they're not playing the game, they're moving it to be. The skill part of poker is evaluating risk versus reward.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:If you're not actually looking at your cards or thinking about it, you're actually ruining the game for everybody, right?
Speaker 2:Because there's no strategy anymore. Yeah, I guess people will have to fold because it's not worth the risk proposition and then they lose their. Well, they won't fold.
Speaker 1:What'll happen is they'll realize this person's an idiot and also go all in and just flip a coin to see who continues to play poker. Which then why'd you bother setting up the poker table and shuffling the cards Fair, but like moving on to like other, like intro games and things for game complexity.
Speaker 1:So for your game you're working on. Where do you fall on those four tiers? Is this a full day affair, like the inspiration of Dokopan Kingdom of we literally have to book off a three day weekend to beat it? We literally have to book off a three-day weekend to beat it. Do you want it to be not too long to set up like Risk or Monopoly, but you sit there playing it for several hours.
Speaker 2:Or do you want it to be a game you can?
Speaker 1:play a few games of, because that kind of changes where my critiques are at when we figure out where the goal is at.
Speaker 2:I mean, my goal is probably the 30 minutes to an hour mark.
Speaker 1:Because Exploding Kittens doesn't have enough depth to be worth playing more than two or three games of in one sitting.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:That is a game you play while waiting for your friends to show up for game night.
Speaker 2:Hmm, yeah, see, I am not sure whether or not the Rock Paper Scissors has the depth to be played multiple times.
Speaker 1:Well, it definitely can be restructured to do so. As we were talking about in our earlier episode, the easiest cheat code is once you have your core game mechanic cards in, adding the fun wacky other cards, that's like the go-to. Even Uno has like Uno, flip, uno, reverse Uno, bombs, uno, oops, all Bombs. Because the core mechanic of Uno isn't that interesting. It's Uno, but you can spice it up real easy or something with more depth to it, like Disney Villainous, where each character has their own objectives and objective cards is right between the Eldritch Horror level of complexity and the Mon monopoly level of complexity, probably like square in the middle.
Speaker 2:I do not like villainous, mostly because your, your objective has next to nothing to do with the other players objectives, so it's kind of like you're all playing your own game. I don't know.
Speaker 1:I don't super vibe on that one either. It's not super high up on the list of games that when they come out I'm like oh, I'm all about this I recently played it was like a Clue spy assassin game, where it was Clue but one of the players was the one trying to kill everybody.
Speaker 2:Oh.
Speaker 1:So like you had to figure out who was the actual assassin and they could set traps on the clue board for you. Oh, so it was like they like fused clue and werewolf together.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:That was sweet. I cannot for the life of me remember what it was called and then like another like game that's more. An experience which I deeply hate because it became among us, was the werewolf game, where you literally close your eyes, point out who's the werewolf and basically just talk at each other. Because those games, much like poker, are only funny if you have people who take it seriously. Because you know what usually happens to me in werewolf, I'll give a super logical argument, like because this person was this and this person was this, statistically it needs to be this person or this person.
Speaker 1:I'll be like oh, he's talking too much, kill him and I'm like well, cool, it didn't really matter if I was good or evil, you killed me because I'm Richard, which is fair, completely sensible choice, but kind of undercut that. But that one's more a party game than anything Same with Cards Against Humanity. Calling sensible choice, but kind of undercut that, but that one's more a party game than anything same with cards against humanity. Calling that a game is a bit of a stretch. It's an activity I don't like.
Speaker 2:I don't like cards against humanity or similar games. I'll play them because they can be fun as an activity with friends, but but they are definitely not I would. I would never suggest playing them, because the level of complexity in those games is too low. It's all about the social interactions and not actually about the gameplay itself. And I don't know, I'm not a huge fan of Among Us or playing Werewolf, so Cards Against Humanity kind of falls in a similar category to those ones for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Despite being a relatively simple game.
Speaker 1:Well, the thing is to quote Brennan Lee Mundle again on his Game Changer show where, like, it's like a comedy game show and he has this rant on one episode which I love, where there's not really a point system. The host is like I like that, have a point. He's like the game having points takes nothing away from it. If you win, based on arbitration, it still feels bad to lose. But if it's a skill-based game, you can think, oh, I'll try harder next time or do better. But when it's just arbitrary, you just get a feel bad, with none of the room for growth, and I'm like, yeah, that pretty much sums up my thoughts against Cards Against Humanity is there isn't enough rules for it to really be a game. Yeah. Meanwhile, ticket to Ride is like one of the most eloquently engineered tabletop games of all time, but I'm like, eh trains if you could give me a space Ticket to Ride.
Speaker 2:You're building space highways games of all time, but I'm like eh trains, if you could give me a space ticket to ride. You're building space highways.
Speaker 1:I don't know. Just something more interesting to me than trains, and I love trains as a concept, but they're not, I don't know. Man, ticket to Ride's one of those things where I'm like. The concept behind this lacks flavor, but mechanically you nailed it.
Speaker 2:Mmm, I do love Ticket to Ride. It is a very elegant game.
Speaker 1:It's worthy of the awards that it's won for being best game of the year in 2007, or whatever it was Like I pulled up a list of top 50 must-have board games as sitting at number two, losing out to Catan, which I don't think is fair. I think it's better engineered than Catan, which I don't think is fair. I think it's better engineered than Catan. It probably is.
Speaker 2:It's easier to set up and has less randomness.
Speaker 1:Right, Like it's almost 100% skill-based but has enough factors going on. It's not instant win or lose. And then you get to like Dominion the OG deck builder and it's like, yeah, a lot of these more complex games just slide Dominion into the game, like the Witcher's, just like, oh, we should probably throw Dominion in here while we're at it. What was that number three? Dominion was four. Caracone Casacone is number three, but I don't have experience with it. I do not have experience with it, do you?
Speaker 2:I've played that actual version once. But basically you reveal tiles and people take turns choosing a tile to add to the map. Take turns choosing a tile to add to the map, and then you're trying to create an enclosed territory with roads and stuff. And so then, where you place your tile, what tiles you pick, and the higher value tiles make you go lower in the turn order on the next turn. So sometimes you want to pick a lower value tile so that you can go first on the next round. That one. Carcassonne is definitely a very interesting game. It's simple to set up and complex and nuanced in the rules.
Speaker 1:So it's sitting pretty high up there like Ticket to Ride up there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean the rules are a little bit on the complex side, but the setup is pretty simple and that game is a lot of fun. The version I play more often is the discount version called King Domino, with the same basic mechanics, except for you don't have shared territory, you're just trying to build your own territory, and so then you can make choices to try and screw over other players, or you can make choices to affect where you go in turn order for the next pick, can make choices to affect where you go in turn order for the next pick, and you're just trying to get the most stars in adjacent matching territories.
Speaker 1:Basically, and then we have King of Tokyo, which feels arbitrary as hell, but I love King of Tokyo. It's not a full day game by any means. Like I've played it with you and you don't really remember it.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's. You're like each iconic, monster.
Speaker 1:And you're like rolling dice to get like energy dice and heart dice and the main mechanic is like how many dice you keep or re-roll to like punch the kaiju who's in the center and then the one who's in the center has to fight everyone to be king of the kaiju.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:That's a game that, like I was saying earlier, gets is the opposite of ticket to ride where it's like, okay, you're mechanically, and but you're so aesthetically pleasing to me, your flavor is so good, right and like to look back around like what would you say are your top three most played games? And then, what's your favorite game and is it in that list?
Speaker 2:what are my top three most played games? What uh?
Speaker 1:not counting magic. We do not need another magic lecture this episode no, no, no.
Speaker 2:Um, my most played games are games of most of the games that you can play with a deck of cards.
Speaker 1:Uh, like okay, I'm to be more specific, not using a poker deck.
Speaker 2:Most played board games or card games that are standalone games. Glad you were more specific.
Speaker 1:You made me be like this. I'm normally chill, honest. But I'm the fun one, so I say, looking at the antastics on my desk, like I'm a chill person.
Speaker 2:Honestly, I don't know.
Speaker 1:Well, I'll start with a few of mine and see how it balances for you. So that Shadowhunters game comes up a lot when I go to game nights. Exploding Kittens almost happens every time and Three Dragon Ante I've gotten to happen a few times. Munchkin's on like a weird permaban and I'm not sure why that's weird. Yeah, it's mostly like the Shadow Hunters game, exploding Kittens and usually some sort of like gimmick.
Speaker 1:Uno worked the list but none of those are really my favorite Probably my favorite board game I played recently is actually that Witcher's game, despite how intense it was. Like I would rematch that, but I'm fully cognitively aware that it's easier to teach people D&D that, but I'm fully cognitively aware that it's easier to teach people D&D well, see like I have a lot of games that I have really enjoyed Boss Monster, that one's a lot of fun, oh man yeah if I had that, that'd probably come up more although that is a game where the expansions don't necessarily make it better counterpoint.
Speaker 1:You know it'd be sick. Making a boss monster based off of something like dragon ball z or like that'd be so fun to do anime tie-ins with is like, yeah, I'm playing a katsuki boss monster, so I'm just gonna put pain at the end of this dungeon but yeah, boss monster is a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:Um, I don't know, I don't usually have that much of a varied play group, so it's like lately, the games that we've been playing lately uh are, uh the uh elf snowball showdown like elff, as in the Will Ferrell movie.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 2:It's a pretty fun and quick game. And then Pop-Tarts super amusing because it's actually like Kellogg's branded and they paid a lot of attention to detail for the card backs because they're all like pop-tart foil and like all the pop-tarts are like actual pictures of pop-tarts. That's an interesting game. And Elf and Rouse it's a German game. It means 11's down and you're just trying to build out. You start at 11 and you can go down or you can go up and you're trying to build out the arms going from the 11's to play out your hand okay.
Speaker 1:So another one that's come up fairly often at different game nights is Codenames. Codenames comes up pretty often.
Speaker 2:Codenames is a kind of fun one.
Speaker 1:And people are weirdly interested in this Timelines game I got where literally it's just a historical event or an invention. You have to guess if it comes before or after the events on the board and then you flip it over to see if you're right. It's literally just a history quiz game. But I guess people in the 30s have gotten smarter and are all about this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe.
Speaker 1:Like I'm shocked by being people like, oh yeah, history facts and I'm, like you know, considering the crowd, I vibe with that kind of makes sense. It's like wait, did the parachute become before World War Two? That's a good question game. It's funny because that game theoretically has no replay value at all if you were to go through all the events and memorize them, but no one's going to do that because then you're just studying and then I've played more chess games recently than normal, where one of my friends just demolishes me at it.
Speaker 1:It is rough.
Speaker 2:Speaking of two-player games, probably my favorite game at the moment is a game called the Fox in the Forest, and it's only two players, which is the only drawback, because it's hard to share with people.
Speaker 1:Oh, you know what game didn't make my list that I've actually forced into a lot of games my Boy Unstable Unicorns, but only the base set. Only the base set. I learned oh yeah, I have learned that using the Apocalypse expansion is just wrong. Just don't Too many reset cards Need to get rid of those. Also, one of their more complex games, so Unstable Unicorns, is their simple game and they made a more complex game called.
Speaker 1:what was it called? It's D&D themed and the name eludes me right now, but it's really fun and not too hard set up because it's mostly just cards. Once this name returns to me I'll let you know. But yeah, the game is made by T-Turtle and it like they just make cutesy games that are kind of dark, and that's just my aesthetic. Unicorn with a Happy Little Dinosaurs. Yes, that was the third one, happy Little Dinosaurs. But no, they have another game. That is a good one. What is their other one? Ah, this is going to bug me Anywho. So me Anywho. So for game complexity, I guess the question comes like do you want to be unstable? It feels like unstable unicorns. Complex is where you want to be here. To Slay was the game I couldn't remember.
Speaker 2:Oh, really I have that game.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like that game. It's fun, it's D&D themed and it's also it's like. It's like each game. They make it slightly better okay and I like that. Like here, to Slay is slightly better than Unstable Unicorns, which had some design flaws but was fundamentally fun. But I guess we should probably wrap up this episode shortly. But my questions are was this monologue about different games helpful to your game design process?
Speaker 2:well, I mean, I really do feel like uh a. I'm not sure if you've read the most recent updates to it, but I I did actually already add uh, the uh jank cards, as you put it into the rule set like I call them, the jank cards, but they're what make the game work like unstable unicorns.
Speaker 1:The jank cards include nay and the pen and pandemonium um, but uh like.
Speaker 2:So I feel like the game really probably just needs to be play tested, because I, I have all the card designs, I I uh have all the core mechanics and I really just need to get it printed and playtested, which maybe I'll just do that with some magic sleeves, because apparently I have enough magic garbage talking cards. Okay.
Speaker 1:I see him now Draw, escape, win cards, card swap, inversion, theft field shuffle. I still kind of want to leave into the Rock Paper Swordsman aesthetic. That's just where my heart's at. But yeah with that.
Speaker 1:I think we're good to go. We talked about magic. We talked about random board games. I ranted about Full Metal Panic, which had nothing to do with the episode. The stapler was far more on point. I have a game called Risk Office Warfare that I've never played. That I think would be hilarious. It's just kind of sitting there. But with that I actually have a random question queued up Ooh spicy. The question isn't what's your favorite color. The question is what is your favorite name for a color, or at least a cool color name?
Speaker 1:Oh, if it happens to be your favorite color, sweet, but it doesn't have to be.
Speaker 2:Oh man, well, I mean favorite name for a color Right.
Speaker 1:Are you a chartreuse man?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, there's so many different, different colors. I mean the first, first thought, best thought aquamarine oh, all right, all right, I like cinnabar.
Speaker 1:A cinnabar, a spicy red orange, you would? Make a pokemon reference most colors are like the original game is like palette, town and then just a bunch of colors. All of them are colors like I just think it's that's funny well the odds that I'd pick a color that wasn't a pokemon one would be something even edgier like Bloodstone Mythroll. So at least Cinnabar's a color and I didn't just go Bone Marrow or pick, like some of the sweet army painter, color names.
Speaker 2:Or go with Tuxedo Black.
Speaker 1:Like Tuxedo black has nothing on army painter color names like nothing. Let's see just like. I want to give a couple examples to wrap up. Like some of these color names are just beautiful okay, okay color names. It's like what's your favorite color? Daemon, dynamic, yellow, troll, slayer orange. Mepheste on red.
Speaker 2:Oh, woodsy brown, that's a good color necrotic flesh oh, that's not a good color angel green.
Speaker 1:why? Why is angel green, angels Angel's, not green? I call nonsense on this entire concept. Hydra turquoise amuses me because I don't think about hydras being turquoise, but I enjoy that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because hydras are green.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but if you want a turquoise hydra, that'd be the color. And with that, thank you for everyone for tuning in to Richard and Carl present deep space and dragons. We have episodes, watch them. I have books, buy them, I don't know. Just put money in an envelope and label it, carl, and see if it gets to him.
Speaker 2:I'm sure if you put in the detective work you could get it pretty close well, make sure it's Carl with a K though, because you know, I don't think there's that many Carl's with a K in Saskatchewan even.
Speaker 1:Like we've definitely doxxed you enough that if they leave envelopes of cash at places that have been mentioned, it'll eventually find its way to you if they put in enough cash envelopes.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, If someone just drops off a bag of money at every pizza store in the city, one of them will be mine.
Speaker 1:You know, annoyingly, saskatchewan has a disproportionate number of pizza stores, like that's a thing they're famous for is they have more restaurants than they should have because it's miserable outside. But thank you all for tuning in. If you want us to talk about your game on stream, send me it and I will play it and talk about it ah, yeah, that sounds like a grand old time right, I don't know.
Speaker 1:We don't really have a closing tagline, so bye self-care, bye. Honestly, self-care is a pretty great tag. Like it's not quite catchy enough. Like we need something like remember Richard and Carl. Oh, like a Sonic says, Richard and Carl say drink a bottle of water and end every episode like that oh, we should do it, Just be aggressively powerful 72 episodes in oh, we finally got our catchphrase.
Speaker 1:Hey, I have a post-reel button. I could add a catchphrase at the end that auto-plays after every episode. We have that technology. Normally you think it'd be for like an advertiser or something. No, drink a bottle of water, get some vitamin D. Pet a cat. Unless you're allergic, then pet a not-cat.