At The Table with The Dice Tower - Where There's a Will There's a Way

26:29We spent the hour leading up to our event painting miniatures that could one day be used in a game at home. Every detail of the day was trending toward a positive core memory being developed. When we arrived at our long-awaited learn-to-play session, the host explained that the original host was unable to be there and they were filling in. An understandable hurdle, and we were grateful the event would still be held. They let us know that they were very knowledgeable of the system and had been running RPGs at conventions for decades. This experienced host then spent the next hour and 45 minutes going through every aspect of character creation in great detail.

27:12By the time we actually got to start rolling dice two hours later, my eight-year-old's attention span and enthusiasm were thoroughly depleted. We were able to play for a couple short encounters, but his heart just wasn't in it. Upon completion of the disappointing Keystone event, I asked if he wanted to check out the library again before the convention ended, but he chose instead to just go home. On the quiet car ride home, I asked if he wanted to come again to a convention or start a Dungeons & Dragons game at home with his new character. He simply shrugged and gave a half-hearted, maybe, which crushed my soul a little bit.

27:51What started with such promise and enthusiasm ended with a disappointment and disillusionment.

28:03That's like a tale of sorrow. It is a tale of sorrow. Of horror. I should just cry.

28:09Tom Vasel:Ah, I feel this. I absolutely feel this. Having taken my children to the local con and being so excited for them to experience it in their own way and make connections. And fortunately, that was pretty successful on my end. But it is so easy to lose that momentum. And almost every, I'm amazed that they did it this way because almost every other time I've seen a learn and play RPG or Dungeons and Dragons event, they've got the pre-gen characters. They're like, we're not going to deal with that part at all. Here you go. You're a cleric. Go. Right. clearly the person filling in saying that they've run RPGs at conventions probably haven't run.

28:52Maybe they had run RPGs but probably not at conventions from the sound of it.

28:57Tom Vasel:And certainly not with a younger audience. Like maybe these were all adults who wanted to learn how to make a character. But oh yeah, absolutely. You just jump right in. You have to get the people rolling dice as quickly as possible. They'll make their own characters later when they're already hooked. Correct. And we can cross this with board games. Same thing. Oh, yeah. Sitting through an hour of rules. The more you have set up and ready for people coming around. And board game companies, if I may, go farther and just yell at you for a moment because I'm getting tired of this. Pick four cards.

29:32No, give me four starting cards. Oh, yeah. Stop telling me to pick a card. Just give them to me. Onboarding is such a thing.

29:43Tom Vasel:I played a game recently that just didn't it went through the whole rules all these things that don't apply until after you finish the first mission when they could have just said let's set up your first mission and just go with that and then add the rules later so that little piece of publisher's perspective you have demoers who are rules lawyers or you know whatever They think that presenting it where you stack the deck is cheating and want to have an authentic experience. And I appreciate that. So to avoid that, we set up scenarios. This scenario requires these cards. There you go. For this reason.

30:30And that kind of... So it took years, though, of not just being like, no, no, no. we're just using these cards because I need people to actually get, understand the gameplay before they come up, they hit a snag. These cards will hit a snag early on that they're not ready to deal with. Well, that's cheating. I had this conversation many times with many demo artists who, their heart's in the right place. They're looking for a player to have an authentic experience. I get that. And I want the player to have an authentic experience where they learn to play the game quickly. is.

31:04Tom Vasel:Yes. So that's the difference. And don't walk away in frustration while you go through all the character creation rules. Right. So making sure that as a publisher, you have set up a scenario that all the demo writers need to follow is also very helpful in this situation. Right. Questions. Questions. Questions. All right. We got a question from Dennis. Hi, Dennis. Hi, Dennis. Where is the line when it comes to co-designer credit? Dennis says, I've had an idea for a game in my head for a while. I created a prototype with some 3D printed pieces, butcher paper board, cut out cards, and the base mechanisms.

31:45After tinkering with it on my own for a long time, I finally got the nerve to try it out with a friend. Former friend. He doesn't say that. Anyway, over the course of an evening, we made a lot of tweaks to my original idea to make it into an actual playable game. Which made me wonder, in a world of game design, how does credit actually work? At what point is your idea no longer your idea, but an amalgam of someone else's ideas? Hmm. I mean, the short answer is publisher decides, I guess. No. Or designer decides, I guess. it's it's so i always my joke is that a developer uh is the ship of theseus of the game design where you as a developer you tweak the design that was created and maybe streamline it or make it more playable and in which case you are replacing things and tweaking them and sometimes you go so far that it does look like a completely different game but you are still a developer the design was given to you by somebody else so that's kind of how we handle it a lot of times I'm not going to say for every publisher but that's a lot of the philosophy of it I have developed games and yes I've gotten to a point where it's a completely different design I have only ever called myself a developer unless the designer themselves say, no, you deserve co-design credit when I've developed a game.

33:21Tom Vasel:It's something that's been granted to you from the original designer? Yeah. There are publishers who have taken that title without the blessing of the designer. And they are not well looked on in the design community. So as a rule of thumb, that's how I typically handle it and how a lot of designers would like it to be handled. Most publishers tend to do the same thing because as a publisher, you're already getting credit. You're the publisher. Yeah. You know, you made the game physically. So, you know, that's, you know, but now every publisher is different and they're going to have different feels about it.

34:13But I think most is a rule of thumb. If the designer, the original creator of the idea who put the time and effort in and not somebody who just said, I have an idea. But actually, this person has made and played their design. They're the designer. They came up with the idea. They did the heavy lifting of getting it to a certain point. Unless they have brought somebody on and said, we are co-designing, you are a developer.

34:40Tom Vasel:Yes. I guess the question from Dennis is, at what point is their friend's input on the game enough? When he says it. When Dennis says, you know what, you have helped so much. When Dennis says you are a co-designer. This is now a partnership and not just you tweaking my idea. Yeah, I think that's right. I've seen in expansions that often a co-designer comes in because the co-designer had the idea for the expansion. They developed the expansion, but the original designer gets credit for integrating it into their original design. Sure, but that also happens with reworkings of games, too. True. I will sometimes sit there and say, well, how much input did, just an example, Elizabeth Hargrave have in FinSpan, for example?

35:30And I don't know, and I'll never know unless I go ask Elizabeth Hargrave that question. Right. It's based on her original game, and then another designer came in and did stuff. Is it just the fact that it's based on her original game that she's a co-designer?

35:45Tom Vasel:Well, she gets developer credit on that. I don't think it's a design credit. It's developed by Elizabeth Hargrave for both Wormspan and FinSpan. Okay. I apologize, and I used a poor example, but sometimes it does say both designers, and I always wonder, did the original designer really, were they involved in it? I don't know. Yeah, yeah. You don't know. Yes. It's a backroom thing. Correct. But, okay, so Final Girl. Every film is designed by different people, but the core mechanics of how to play Final Girl were designed by Evan based on the design of Hostage Negotiator, which was designed by AJ, which is why it says creators, AJ and Evan, designed by that person.

36:31Tom Vasel:That's a pretty specific example, but I like the way that's structured. Because you want to give credit to the original system, but you also want to give the impression that this module, this story was crafted by the individual designer who guided this project to fruition. Correct. I had a co-designer on my game. Which game would that be, Tom? Nothing personal. You act like I bring it up every episode. No. Anyhow. No, no. We just didn't know if it was Vicious Fishes or not. Shut up, man. No, but if I was designing a game now, I don't – anyone who playtests with me, if they gave me good ideas and stuff, I would mark them as a playtester.

37:18But if someone came up and said, what if you do such and such? And that was like, holy cow. That changes the whole game. I think I would put them in a rule book of like this mechanism inspired by Joe Smith. You know what I mean? You absolutely can do that. A special call out. I would do that. But that's not – So usually when you see special thanks to, that's what it is. So it isn't this mechanism. We're not – because even at that, the mechanisms themselves are – there aren't a lot of new mechanisms that come out ever. anymore so it's it's usually you get a general like thanks to a bunch of people special thanks to and that individual's name is what usually happens in a rule book all righty well hey if you have more questions if you have tales of horror send them to me at tom at dicetower.com but for now let's talk about some of these new games

38:22They say that every rose has its thorn But not every rose has a hula hoop

38:28Tom Vasel:Joey, what have you been playing lately? It sounds like a cozy collection I want to hear about this Yeah, so I'm trying to get into fall mentality I'm willing sweater weather to happen Just manifesting it? Okay Yes So I went with cozy games um let's see what am i going to talk about so a place for all my books was the first one it arrived right after gen con from the kickstarter at my doorstep which was really nice and so in a place for all my books you are an introvert reader who likes to stay at home and make piles of your collections and move them around. It seems really like I planned this for the discussion for today, but not really.

39:21Tom Vasel:The expansion is the will planning that you do with all those books like. So you spend time in your house, which has multiple rooms. You have kitchen, living room, bedroom. and you, so you have, you're building patterns with the books you have. There's a variety of colors or you're having a certain amount of stacks and certain amounts in specific rooms. Whatever it is, you have different qualifiers that come out over the course of the game. So it's constantly changing of how you are organizing your books, how you organize your books, whether you read them, if you're resting, if you're setting them aside, all of those things are building up your social battery, which is your currency.

40:10When you hit a certain point, you're going to spend five of your social battery to then go out into the outside world. And then the rest of it, you're going to spend to gather more books, whether you're going to the library or the bookstore, or maybe you are going to the gift shop and you're buying things that are accessories for your home that give you additional abilities and powers of coping mechanisms really and then once you've depleted you're back in your room so everybody playing every time you go out not only are you spending that five from your personal battery you're advancing the clock so that determines the game end at some point.

40:54And so playing it, it's, you know, the puzzle of maximizing your turns and getting points for stacking, because you're also getting points for those. And then of your collection, you're so you're at the end of the game, you're getting points for the things you've collected, the little projects that you've completed. There's also major projects you can complete. All of them revolved around stacking your books. The ongoing points you might get for different actions you do during the time, but all of them revolving around that puzzle piece of stacking your books and then going out in the world and maximizing your time out there to gather as much stuff into your backpack, which there's a limit to before getting back into the room.

41:39So I played it as a solo game and the solo game variant has Penelope who is generated. So she's going in. She's an extrovert. She never goes home. I absolutely made up an entire character around Penelope while I was playing because why is she collecting all these things and then never actually using them?

42:07Tom Vasel:Never doing anything. and how is she getting them back to her house so playing Penelope was a little bit of upkeep I'm going to say I can see where playing other people would change the tempo a little bit but you'd still have the same feels I appreciated Penelope actually has a robust mechanism behind her that is you're flipping cards and you're doing based on how many, how much you have done or not, how many cards are in her stack will determine how difficult. So the more stuff that more cards that she has stacked up, the more punishing her turn becomes. And then you, when you do a little project, whatever cards or books there are in color wise, you can remove those cards from her stack and put them back in her draw pile.

43:09Which was a cool mechanism of how to try to maximize. You're still maximizing your turn, but you're also having to go back and admire your work, which is the action you do to gain points in game. And also at that point, remove cards and put them back in her draw pile. you automatically lose if you ever get to a point where she can't not pull from her draw pile so it was a much more robust like she's moving around from location to location out in the world and doing things which also prevents you from going to those locations but also that mechanism of the more stuff there was a little chart on each card the more cards she has the more punishing her things become and you having to go and admire your books to get her stack back down was really fun and challenging and I liked that puzzly bit of it so I very much enjoyed it it was a rose for me cool uh the other cozy game that I played was knitting circle so you know again another collection I guess hoarding game I mean it's really thematic and I didn't mean for it to be thematic for today's discussion.

44:23Tom Vasel:People in the yarn arts do call their yarn collection a horde, so I get it. That one is a game where... A lot of similarities here where you're having to collect things and then do stuff with the result, but at this point you're doing yarn. You have a drafting phase where everybody's taking... At that point, think patchwork. So you're going around a circle. You have either on the knit side or the purl side yarn samples in different colors. And when you collect it, you have to put it on the side facing up that it is. And you collect four. So everybody's collecting and jumping over each other to collect the piece that's on the outside as it works their way in.

45:17Um, because there's a little, uh, think of it almost like a sunbeam where the chevrons of the knitting piece, uh, trail out so that you collect up to, up to four per person.

45:31Tom Vasel:Right. Then you go back and you work on your projects. You can have up to two projects and you must complete them before you can start a new project. So you have, uh, and then there are different garments you select. So you can choose a garment when you have availability and they go from socks up to long johns. So obviously the bigger the project, the more pieces of yarn. And then you're looking at scoring points based on the size of the project, whether you successfully create a color pattern. And there's a variety of color patterns to choose from. So striped versus a full set of all green, for example.

46:10and you're scoring points once you finish it or cast off and get those points from your board, but only if you can get those points from your board. So if you use a specific color pattern and you do not have a button that has that color pattern, there was really no point in using that color pattern because you don't get points for it. So you're also paying attention to that. And then you have little things that allow you to break that. Grabby paws, which are little kitten paws let you grab from the bag of chevrons and get exactly the token you need um if you don't do a pattern at all whatsoever you get an ugly button which gives you negative three points but it's still better than not completing it because any incompleted project gets you zero points at all to begin with so that is that's the game it's a set collection pattern building and it was a lovely cozy little game that I wasn't expecting, I guess, you know, having played Calico.

47:08It was a hula hoop. I enjoyed it very much. I just, they said it was in the Calico family and I don't feel like it played a Calico at all. So it was a hula hoop for me. I very much enjoyed it. It just wasn't what I expected.

47:21Tom Vasel:I've been burned before on getting knitting games for my wife and she ended up not liking Arch Ravels, and so I'm hesitant to explore this one.

47:32Yeah, thematically, I mean, I liked what they did with the theme. I don't know if it's necessarily really tied. It's tied into the theme in the sense that every single item follows through and has a purpose for what it's doing. but also how do you lean into a knitting theme like what's the narrative there uh the goal is to have the biggest horde of yarn possible and no yeah i mean i get that too i'm not i'm not sure i'm not sure if i enjoyed it and it and it was pattern building but i'm not sure if it was necessarily like i was like i feel like i'm knitting here okay what themed games did you play, Eric?

48:20Tom Vasel:Oh, well, I was a couple weeks ago, you know, I was a little down on one of the 18 escape games. I was... I don't know. I just... I bounced off of that one a few weeks ago. So I wanted to go for redemption, and I picked up two more of the 18 escape games. One is in the Endangered Rescue series. This is the second one. It's about the lemur leaf frog. These are puzzle games that use the clue entering system that that you may be familiar with for the other games in the series. But it focuses on the conservation of a particular species of frog. And it also has a narrative where you're walking through a convention that is raising money for these endangered characters.

49:05Tom Vasel:And so you're going around to different booths and you're trying to fix things up, make sure everything's ready for the fundraiser and learning about the frogs. A lot of these games have sort of information that you can use to solve the puzzles like Braille or Semaphore or something like that. And this has those, but it also has literal data about these frogs and other Costa Rican endangered species. And those are used pretty significantly in several of the puzzles in here. However, it still is a pretty straightforward puzzle game. I really did enjoy the focus of it. It gets a little heavy-handed in the conservation message, but that's sort of the point.

49:47Tom Vasel:This is very much an educational game that uses the puzzle structure to get the information across. And I think it does it very, very well. Which I think I said about the original Endangered Rescue as well. This follows along. It does a lovely job. And I felt like I was really having a good time and that I got through the adventure and didn't have too many problems at all. I don't think I looked at too many hints on this one. So this is an easier adventure, but I really liked its focus, and I thought it was a great way to learn more about these creatures. There's one puzzle where you have to make patterns based on the pictures of a bunch of different animals, and you have to first identify what the animals are and then learn how to use them in the puzzle, and that requires going through a whole lot of this information about these animals, and I feel like I learned some cool facts, like the lemur leaf frog doesn't have webbed feet.

50:37Tom Vasel:It's kind of cool. So that's Endangered Rescue 2, the lemur leaf frog. That was a rose. Really happy. I played it as well. And I had the same. If I was still a teacher, this would have been like a, okay, indoor recess. Let's do the next puzzle. Yeah. Or a private station. Like, it was, like, I very much thought the same thing. This needs to be sold at zoos and aquariums, I think. Yeah. They did a very good job of that while still being a fun little puzzle game. And, yes, on the easy, it was, they ranked their difficulties one to three, and it was a one. And so it was accurately ranked and everything like that, too, for but definitely one that younger kids could play and still work together and solve the puzzles, I felt.

51:20Tom Vasel:Yeah. Dialing up the complexity is is one of the holiday hijinks games called the New Year's Nightmare. This is, I think, the 11th in the series. This still uses 18 cards. It increases the time limit. I think this is a one and a half to two hour game because if you played the Groundhog Day scenario of this series, this follows that. This was like a breath of fresh air when I opened it up. And I'm categorizing it as a hula hoop because I liked it more than I thought I was going to. This still uses the 18 cards, but you not only have puzzles to solve, but you unlock items as you go through the game.

52:01Tom Vasel:So you will get a magnifying glass. You will get a Bunsen burner. You'll find a latex balloon. And you can interact with things on— And latex gloves. And latex gloves. All sorts of things that you can interact with elements on the cards so it feels like an escape room more than other games that have done this because you're using objects and connecting them to things. It feels like a point-and-click adventure game. And the traditional puzzles. I complained about the Tirnanog, the journey to Tirnanog, because it was too word heavy and felt like I needed to know too much vocabulary. It felt like I was playing games puzzles.

52:38Tom Vasel:The New Year's Nightmare has word puzzles as well, but it's like little sprinkles in there. And it has more hints sprinkled throughout and thematic connections to make and patterns to solve. And it's just one little sprinkle of the whole thing. and you end up doing the time travel thing with the Groundhog Day connection and visiting rooms multiple times and solving puzzles in different ways. And the whole thing comes together into a cool package. And while I did need a couple hints along the way because I got a little stumped on things, once I got that little nudge, it was like, okay, I think I see what we're doing here.

53:17Tom Vasel:I need to solve it this way and felt like I had really reached the finish line triumphantly by the end of it. But this one's a gem. If you are looking for a more complex small deck adventure game, the New Year's Nightmare is really a good one. So that's a hula hoop in a joyous fashion for me. I liked it. So I played both of these as well. Oh, good. And I agree. They are the bookends of difficulty. Oh, yes. I think in that entire series. but both show the range of what one, you can have 18 cards. Delightful in the ability of what you can do. I want to go back and play it again to see how they made it happen.

54:08Tom Vasel:Because there are items that don't work in the beginning that then do work later. And how did they, what cards, you shuffle the cards together at some point and then start dealing them again and they're different. Right. Right. Well, that was why I was saying latex balloon and latex glove. How, which is the better? When? Why? Is there, can you use both of them? Is it an either or? I want to play it again. Without giving away any spoilers. I have no idea what anyone's talking about at this point. Right. It was a good time. Yeah. It was a good time. I agree. I think there should be like almost a, someone should do a podcast or so that's just dedicated to escape room style games.

54:47There are so many. There's lots of styles. We're trying. We're trying here. Yeah, I know. That's why I'm bringing us back around. Okay. I want to hear Tom's games. Yeah. You don't even care about this game. We're going to talk about this for a long time now. Okay, fine. You can talk about your first one first. So excited. Firefighters on Duty. Real quickly, this is a remake of Project Delete, which is a game in which you go through and blow up aliens in two-minute spurts. Here, you are blowing up fire, putting out fire in two-minute spurts. Everyone has a fire truck. You get a scenario, and there's fire all over the table, just fire everywhere, and people dying in this fire.

55:28And you need to go rescue them. So in two-minute spurts, you roll dice as fast as you can, and you're moving fire trucks, and you're getting water. And there's, like, tons of little blue dice that are like water cubes that you'll use to go put out fires and then rescue people and move an ambulance in. And so if you like this two-minute spurt speed-type game, you're really going to enjoy this. I like it a lot, actually.

55:52Tom Vasel:This is a rose, but I kind of went into it knowing I was going to like it, mostly because I love Project Delete. I don't like it as much as Project Delete. I don't mind putting out fire, but shooting aliens is a little more fun in this kind of setting. And it's hard to stop everyone from dying because the fire just constantly is spreading. And you're like, oh, stop spreading, stupid fire. Stupid fire. And you run out of water so you can find a fire, you know. Hydrant? Thank you. A fire hydrant. I don't know why that word went out in my head. Fire hydrant, get water. Or go all the way back to the station and use the giant water tanks there and fill up.

56:34But then you have to drive all the way there and back again. So it's very chaotic, but it's in two-minute spurts. So in between those two minutes, first you have all the bad stuff happen. fire spreads firefighters turn into victims things like that that you have to go rescue but then you can talk about okay we're going to do this this this you ready here goes our two minutes of terror and you play through so this from our tipia games they're the people who originally made uh the project elite before cmon picked it up okay okay blood on the clock tower oh yes so well so i always said that in the right place at the right time i might play it but over the years i have been kind of not interested in it much because i consider the blood in the clock tower community to be toxics might be a strong word but it's pretty close intense intense is the is maybe it just it's right like people are like i did this script and this this and this and this and they yell and they they take over conventions and they cause problems and i'm like uh i'll just go play werewolf except everyone who played werewolf now plays blood on the clock tower which now having played it i understand because blood on the clock tower is basically a werewolf variant so to some degree uh except it uses demons instead of werewolves but i i don't know joey came to me and said there's a guy here, Ross, who wants to run a ball in a clock tower game and he'll tailor it.

58:06And I said, well, I have some specific requests here. So and so, so and so, and so and so cannot be involved or even know that it's happening. And they were like, yes. So we did it at 10 in the morning. And then I, so me and Joey were going to do it. And then I talked to Chris and he agreed to join. And then Z Garcia agreed to join too. What their thoughts on, I'm not quite sure yet. We haven't recorded our video.

58:37Tom Vasel:Okay. But there was, I think, 11 people. It kind of works really well, like between 9 and 12 people. That's a good number. And Ross did a really good job at explaining the game, which essentially is there's a demon. In our game, it was an imp and maybe one or two bad guys, and they're going to kill someone every night just like Werewolf. and then everyone else is in the town and they all have everyone has a special ability somehow some way even though my ability i was the virgin um so anytime someone accused me of that i got very offended and wanted to leave the room i was like are you kidding don't ask me about what i do But anyhow, yeah, so my special ability was if a townsperson accused me during the day, they instantly died.

59:30I don't know why. I don't know the thematic purposes, trappings behind that. But so you have this piece of paper and at night, you know, the bad guys kill people. Lots of people have powers at night. They can ask, for example, there's two people here. Is one of them bad? but also somebody could be drunk and not know it and their ability doesn't work there's we were playing a game where there was a poisoner so that you got poisoned that night your ability didn't work and you thought it did so it's kind of half werewolf half uh two rooms in a boom because the first day everyone's walking around like what are you i don't know tell me what you are and the the A good thing that people say about the game is that if you die, you're still in it.

1:00:16You lose your power. You're dead. You can't vote. You can vote once for the rest of the game. You can still vote one time. And you can still be involved. So no one's out of this at all. But when he started explaining the game, he's like, so here's all the roles. And halfway through the rules, I was like, this is the basic version. it blew my mind how complex the roles were some of them are just really odd and this was the easiest version of the game yeah but once we started playing it did click pretty strongly everything did this and that and i was really getting into it trying to figure out who the evil people were go figure it was z and a very very confused i thought nice lady next to him and she was just like i don't really know what to do liar she was a filthy liar she was a demon and she fooled me completely we also made some some boneheaded mistakes over the course of the game i think we would have done uh much better um there's some weird things about the game that i don't get there's someone we were playing with someone i think they were an angel and if you kill them during the day you all instantly lose and the first person we nominated said i'm the angel if you kill me we all lose and i was like i don't care i think that's funny and we killed her and we didn't all lose and then we're like aha we knew you weren't the angel and she said i must have been poisoned because i'm definitely the angel and she was poisoned we found out later oh so we couldn't end at the game in like five minutes but it's really interesting i really liked it it but i will say when it was done i was like cool that was a very fun experience i'll do it again someday i don't know how people do it back to back to back because i was so i left there like on such a type high type thing there was just so much going on i don't know how people played it's like six times in a row they just need more they're at those are extroverts well i am also an extrovert i think but i think though our very good experience was a lot on the person running the game who carries that definitely oversized book around and they can kind of pad the game out like they can make the bad guys do better if The bad guys are getting shredded and good guys and vice versa.

1:02:50I'm not sure how I feel about that sort of tinkering with the game.

1:02:55Tom Vasel:It's much more of a GM role than it is simply running it. It is absolutely that. And I will say in general, social deduction games are made more or less enjoyable to me by who you are playing with in general, because it is a social engagement where you are doing all this. A lot of times we're all playing kind of things. The fact that they have someone who genuinely takes on a GM type role to tweak that to and if somebody is good at that, they are redirecting the people who are making it a less enjoyable experience in my mind. Well, I was very happy with how it went because Ross, the guy who was running it, he did a little bit of story, which I was happy with, but he didn't overdo it so that we were there for hours, which I've seen some of these games last for hours.

1:03:51Our game was 90 minutes, and it felt very tight. He kept things going. He'd be like, well, now it's time to vote. He kept things moving. You need to. I think that's important. I also, as soon as the game was over, made a mental list of about 80 people who I would never play the game with. Because I feel like I was probably a little too much over the course of the game. But, you know, because I'm big and grandiose and I wanted to kill people. And so people thought I was evil. I was like, no, we got to kill people. You got to – unless you kill people, you're not going to figure out what's going on.

1:04:26But, you know, there are some people who would try to dominate the game. and I think that would not be particularly fun. There are people who are chaotic on purpose. You know what I'm talking about? People are like, ooh, let's see what happens here. I'm like, well, you're not helping the game. You're not on your own secret team. So there's a lot of people I would not play it with, and I would be very picky, I think based on the GM more than anything else. Like Ross did such a good job that I think I would only ever want to use him in the future because it's like, he's our first and I don't want to try another person.

1:05:03So it was interesting. I might do it again, but I didn't want it to be a thing. Yeah, yeah. You know, like the people who did it had all done it. They had all, except for the four Dice Tower people, the other people had done it either once or twice and there's a few people that like five or six times, but it felt those people were like, okay, and they were helping us as we talk through the roles and stuff, but nobody was trying to run the table, if that makes sense.

1:05:31Tom Vasel:Right. Yeah, yeah. My son is a huge fan of this game and actually had a party this past weekend with all of the theater kids from the high school. And he has gotten so good at all of the roles and knows the scripts so well that he is tough to play with because he knows everything. He's already like three steps ahead. If you're saying that to me, you must be this role or maybe you're this role and pretending to be this role, and he's playing 3D, 4D chess, and I don't, I barely know how to play the game, so I just sort of bumble my way through it, which sort of messes with his plan because I don't do what he expects.

1:06:07Tom Vasel:So maybe I'm the best foil for that. Maybe, but that is an issue, right? And we definitely ran into that a little bit. I'm like, wait a minute. Why are you saying this person's evil based on what they just said? That makes no sense. And they're like, well, because this, this, this, and this, this, this. And you don't even know what roles are in the game, and when someone's killed, their role isn't necessarily revealed. And that's all cool and well, but yeah, I wouldn't want to play with people who played 40 times. I would have no fun at all. You can't go into this trying to win. I mean, you have to try to win, but you can't be too upset if you don't because there's so many factors of you could be drunk, you could be poisoned, you could have had misinformation from the beginning.

1:06:46Tom Vasel:You think you were doing the right thing, but you're not. It's really the recap at the end and hearing what really happened that makes it such an entertaining game. Oh, and I mean, I was thrilled the pieces that, you know, we lost. I tried hard to win. But because at the end, you know, Z was just like, Z was like, I'm the mayor. And, you know, there's three of us and we win if there's exactly three people. And the lady next one was like, she's the one who had accused multiple people over the course game. She's like, I don't know what to do. And we're like, we think Z is evil. She's like, I'm just not sure if he's evil or not.

1:07:18I don't know what to do. And then once done, her demeanor changed like the end of the first season of The Good Place. And I was like, what on earth?

1:07:30It was very much like that. And I was like, are you kidding me? And then she was like, please don't throw me out of the convention. I'm like, come on now. Get out.

1:07:43Tom Vasel:So it sounds like you had the full experience, really. Yeah, I had a really good time, okay? I don't want to pretend that it's not, that it was bad. I enjoyed it. Will I play it again? Possibly. I feel sort of the way about it that I feel about the large. Oh, the mega games? Mega games, right? Yeah. You could talk me into doing one of those, but I would kind of want to set up for it, and I would want to know what was going on. Mm-hmm. And again, there's a lot of people out there. I'm just telling you now, you're going to be like, hey, want to play a boy on the clock? I'm probably going to say no.

1:08:18You know, you have to catch me at the right time. 10 in the morning was great, by the way.

1:08:22Tom Vasel:I'm too busy today. I can't play right now with you. Oh, I won't be that nice. Oh, okay. I might say I would never play with you. Great. That sounds pretty rude. There was a couple people coming to me like, why didn't you play with me? I was like, oh, whoops. Oopsie. But it was an interesting experience. So we'll see what happens in the future. but hey we gotta we gotta end this thing we do and we'll be seeing y 'all and talking to y 'all in the future thank you all for staying up with us and for giving Eric stupid puns we gotta close here so until next time I'm Tom Vassell I'm Julie Ahern and I'm Eric Sommer and we'll see you at the table thanks for listening at the table is produced by Tom Julie and Eric with assistance from the team at Dicetower Studios you can find us online on Facebook or on Board Game Geek in the Dicetower Guild promotional consideration has been provided by publishers in the form of review copies of games.

1:09:18Tom Vasel:Dave Culling arranged our theme based on themes by Timothy Pinkham, and our really uncomfortable seats are brought to you by Bumbusters. Until next time, from all of us at the table, have fun gaming.

1:09:36Are we a British podcast now?

1:09:38Tom Vasel:Yes. Yes. So when is the Essen Clock Tower game? No. Oh, yeah. Just looking to schedule that now. No.