When We Last Left Our Heroes...

It's been a busy week here at Theology Of Games. We had another great interview, a couple of reviews, and news about where our money will be going over the next few months. Here's what you might have missed...

We interviewed Bryan Fischer about his fowl upcoming game, Chicken Caesar.

You can take on the role of Jack the Ripper, or the detectives chasing him, in Letters From Whitechapel. Check out our review!

Jeremiah gave us a rundown of some recent Kickstarter games. This was well-received, so if you know of a game—or designed one!—let us know and we'll post about it!

In the year 3000... We reviewed a fun new card game, Plato 3000.

And we brought you some news about Fantasy Flight's first expansion for their massively popular Netrunner game.

Who knows what we'll have going on next week! (Seriously, does anyone know, because we sure don't...) You can be sure we'll have more news, reviews, and inter-views! Have a great weekend, and thanks for reading!

Hail Caesar - an interview with Bryan Fischer

If you went to Gencon this year, there's a good chance you heard the buzz about Chicken Caesar. Or you may have been lucky enough to sit in on a demo of Nevermore Games big box game of Roman/poultry politics. More than a tasty salad, Chicken Caesar is hitting hobby stores this month and the buzz has gamers waiting with baited breath to see what the excitement is all about. So we had a little chat with Bryan Fischer, co-designer of Chicken Caesar, and co-founder of Nevermore Games about Chicken Caesar, Nevermore Games, and life in general. Take us through the story of how Nevermore Games got on the map?

My friend, Corey Phillips, and I started Nevermore back in 2010. He was the business guy and I was the creative guy. It wasn’t long though before I realized we really needed another creative guy, so we brought John Sizemore on board. I had been working on Chicken Caesar at the time and pitched it to John. We ran with it and started Nevermore’s mission: to facilitate friendships through strategic and innovative games.

For those of us who didn’t make it out to Gencon, can you give us a quick overview of Chicken Caesar?

Sure thing! In Chicken Caesar, players represent chicken families who are sending their roosters into coop politics, which of course are modeled after the Ancient Roman Government. Through deal making, breaking, bribes, and manipulation, players will compete for legacy.

There are five offices in the game where roosters have actions they have to complete. The roosters in the Aedile’s office decide the tax rate for the round, which in turn determines how upset the coop guards are (and how many will betray the coop by letting the fox in to gobble up politicians). The roosters in the Praetor’s office decide where loyal and traitor guards go. The Censor can exile people, and the Consuls can take bribes to “rewrite history” and give roosters additional accolades they never earned in life. And of course there is Caesar, who gets the all-powerful Veto token and makes lots of corn (money).

So which came first, the Chicken Caesar or Nevermore Games?

Chicken or the egg, huh? Well, both. They happened simultaneously really. I had been designing games for years and about the same time that Corey and I started Nevermore, I was also toying with Chicken Caesar. Of course, Chicken Caesar didn’t really take the shape of its current form until John came on board.

When and how did the idea for Chicken Caesar hatch? (Okay, I promise that’s the last chicken pun!)

These puns are getting pretty fowl ;)  Actually, my wife came up with the name. She was eating a Chicken Caesar wrap, and I was of course annoying her with talk of game ideas I had and she said “Why don’t you call a game Chicken Caesar?” We both had a good laugh. Little did she know I was seriously storing that one away.

What were the pros and cons (if there were any) to co-designing Chicken Caesar instead of going it alone?

For me, co-designing is the ideal situation. I don’t think any game in history has been designed entirely by one person. Whether it’s through co-authorship or not, game designers have play testers and friends, critics and spouses who influence the design process and often come up with ideas for mechanics and theme. Having people to bounce ideas off of is a huge necessity in game design.

John and I make a great design team. He’s a walking economics textbook and calculator rolled into one. It compliments my theme-centric approach to gaming and I believe that’s the greatest pro of co-designing games. Complimentary designers can take collaborative game design efforts to a new level. That being said, John and I argue a lot. That’s what happens when you spend so much time together trying to get something right. It can be stressful, but ultimately the arguing leads to better communication and therefore better game design. I guess that would be a con that turns into a pro.

What’s the one element of Chicken Caesar that makes you all giddy?

Well, mechanically it’s the Suffragium (the voting marker) that makes Chicken Caesar unique in its approach to luckless negotiation and shrewd bargaining. But really, for me, it’s that moment when a player about to be passed the Suffragium suddenly realizes… “I’m going to be deciding the fate of someone else’s rooster; I have the power, and I can be bought!” that gets me. Well into the testing of Chicken Caesar, players were discovering new ways to bribe each other and get epic revenge. Fantastic!

How do you balance being a person of faith and a big geek?

It’s funny how faith and being a geek interact sometimes. Some geeky endeavors, like science fiction, beg answers to questions of morality and truth. They present impossible and (often) unnatural circumstances where people have to make decisions often alien to us. It’s fascinating. Fantasy can often blur the lines for people of faith through use of magic and divination, but it’s not always the case. Look at Tolkien for instance. The Lord of the Rings trilogy is touted as a great Catholic work by many theologians. C.S. Lewis was much more overt. Read A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. and you’ll see how faith can only make a science fiction experience even deeper.

I find the best way to reconcile something that might be offensive to my faith is to first learn about it. If it’s a game, I’ll look at the rulebook or play it. If it’s a film, I’ll usually watch an excerpt or do some reading about the story. There have been times when, after researching something, I have still found it offensive. And the opposite has also been true.

What has been most surprising to you about the response to Chicken Caesar from the gaming community?

The fact that people know of the game! It’s been incredible. At GenCon we had the game set up in a number of places and people walked by and said “Oh yeah, it’s that Chicken Caesar game!” On top of that we met a ton of our Kickstarter backers there and sold out every demo event for the game through Saturday. John and I walked over to the Asmodee booth one morning and while chatting with a French guy working the booth, he says “Wait, you two are the Chicken Caesar guys?! Very cool!” So cool.

So, we've been following the Mars Needs Mechanics Kickstarter; beyond that, what's in the future for Nevermore Games?

We actually have quite a few things lined up for the future. We're working with some really awesome designers to bring the world an awesome, big game next Spring. We have some others in the lineup for after that, so expect plenty of games in 2013 from Nevermore.

Okay, the 1-word 5! Give us your 1-word answers to these questions. (For names we’ll allow 2 words!)

Favorite doctor? (In the BBC Series Doctor Who, please don’t tell us your dentist’s name!)  David Tennant

Who shot first, Han or Greedo? Greedo

Favorite salad?  Potato

Favorite game?  Lifeboat

Cylons or Sleestaks?  Caprica-Six ;)

If you'd like to place your pre-order for Chicken Caesar you can do so RIGHT HERE!

You can also find out more about Nevermore Games RIGHT HERE!

And of course they're on Facebook and Twitter as well!

A big thanks to Bryan for spending some time with us, and as always a big thanks to you for reading!

Mars Needs Mechanics--An Interview with Ben Rosset

Last week, game designer Ben Rosset took a few minutes to answer all the burning questions we had about himself, his new game Mars Needs Mechanics, and the meaning of life. How did you become interested in designing board games?

I always loved playing board games from a young age. In junior high school, I asked my teacher if I could design a board game about a book instead of doing a book report. She said yes, and the game was a big hit! More recently, though, I need to credit my good friend Mike Swiryn, an amazing designer. We had been hanging out and playing games quite a bit (this was about 4 years ago). Then one day, he said, “Dude, check this out. I designed a game!” And that was it. From that moment on, I knew I wanted to get into board game design. I went home that night and wrote down some rules for an idea I had, and I was on my way. I haven’t stopped since.

What sparked the vision for Mars Needs Mechanics?

My goal was to make an easy to learn Economics game where players could only indirectly control the market price of goods, and where players would have to predict the behavior of everyone else in order to be successful. That led to the “Sales Order Line,” the driving force behind Mars Needs Mechanics. It’s a unique timing mechanism for controlling the price of the game’s components (Boilers, Wire, Lenses, Piping, etc), and it's what makes the game hum. People really love it. Its something new, and it’s a very simple system.

So, the Berkeley Breathed book and subsequent Disney film Mars Needs Moms didn't come into play? Or are you tired of being asked that?

No, Mars Needs Moms didn't come into play. To be honest, I didn't even know about that film (which I hear was a flop) before I named the game Mars Needs Mechanics. However, I did know about the 1967 film Mars Needs Women. It was more a play on that than the Disney film. And yes, people ask me this question a lot, but its ok...we invited the question when we decided on the name. If anything, its helped to spark a bit of interest in the game.

How did you land at Nevermore Games?

I was a slow-comer to social media, but I must credit Twitter here! Twitter recommended that I follow Nevermore Games. That’s how I first connected with them, about 3 weeks before PrezCon in February 2012. I met Bryan and John at PrezCon, they played the game, they loved it, and a week later they called me to say they wanted to publish it.

Mars Curiosity, legit, or TV studio production?

Legit all the way. I have faith that Curiosity is really on Mars. It would be too big of a production to fake it. They’d never keep everybody quiet. I’m now following the Curiosity Rover on Twitter, but I’m also following the Sarcastic Rover, a spoof of the real thing. They’re both great.

What are the top 5 games you're playing right now, and why?

With all the time we’ve been spending with Mars Needs Mechanics, I haven’t had much time to play other games. So I’ll give you three. First, I’m playing States: After the Fall. It’s an unpublished game by Mike Swiryn, Aaron Winkler, and David Golanty. I won’t give too much away about the game, but I know it's received tremendous feedback from publishers at conventions, and I suspect it will get picked up by a publisher very soon. After that, I’ll say For Sale, by Stefan Dorra. This is a game that has been on my list to try for quite a while, and I finally did a couple weeks ago. Short, simple, and addictive, I loved it right away. Third, Agricola is always on my list. Its still my favorite Euro game, and it's hard to imagine it ever getting knocked out of my top 5!

Is Mars Needs Mechanics your first game design, or are there others we should be checking out?

Its my first design that’s being published, but stay tuned. I’m working on others, and hope to be lucky enough to have more games published soon!

Other than "42," what is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything?

Wow, this is a great interview! I’m quite confident that I will get closer to the answer to this as I get older, though I’m humble enough not to believe I’ll ever know it all. But for me, the meaning of life is to contribute as much as we can toward the increasing of peace and happiness, and as much as we can toward the cessation of suffering in the world.

Ok, the next 5 questions only require a one word response. The answer will explain it all!

Star Wars, or Trek?

Spaceballs

Favorite color?

Green

Marvel or DC?

DC (because I live there)

Aslan or Gandalf?

Aslan

Favorite pizza topping?

Artichokes

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Mars Needs Mechanics launches a Kickstarter campaign on midnight Aug. 31! As soon as we have a link, we'll post it here for you! But for now, click here if you want to check out Mars Needs Mechanics!

Our thanks goes out to Nevermore Games and Ben Rosset, you can follow them both on Twitter, @BenjaminRosset and @NevermoreGames. And of course we thank you, our readers, for your support!

An interview with Jason Kotarski, designer of The Great Heartland Hauling Co.

Jason Kotarski is a pastor in Michigan; he and his wife have a young daughter, and another on the way. His first game design recently debuted on Kickstarter, and as I type this, he’s 80% of the way to being fully funded. He took time out of his busy schedule to answer some questions from us. How did you first discover Euros?

My wife and I were out Christmas shopping one night at a local mall and we stopped to look at a kiosk that was selling games and puzzles. Her face lit-up when she spotted a little game called Settlers of Catan. She got super excited and told me it was an awesome game that she had played in college and that we had to buy it right then and there. We finally got it to the table some time later after we rounded up another couple to play with and I fell in the love with the game. I liked it because everyone played to the end and that game wasn’t focused on being mean and eliminating the other players. I had a bad experience with my brother-in-law taking the role of world dictator a little too seriously in Risk, so it was a nice change of pace to play a game that was about doing your best without dealing with direct conflict. After playing Settlers for a while, I remember I went to a local hobby shop because I thought I saw some more weird board games there. I ran into a friend from high school who worked at the shop and he convinced me to try Carcassonne and told me about a Web site called BoardGameGeek.com. Then, I Googled  “board games” and stumbled on the Dice Tower and the Board Games with Scott videos and I was hooked. I felt like I had discovered that secret clubhouse of awesome and started amassing my collection. I’ve come to see gaming as a social outlet and something interesting to bring people together. It’s also a nice option to have something other than flipping on the television as a form of entertainment. It’s good clean fun, you know?

What are your Top 5 games, and why?

This is such a tough question for me. I am one of those people who loves ideas and all kinds of different stuff so it is really hard to narrow down my favorites to 5 but I’ll do my best.

In no particular order:

• Ticket To Ride: Marklin Edition—This one is the first Ticket to Ride games I played. I love how easy it is to teach and the streamlined game-play. I played a lot of Rummy growing up so the set-collection aspect of the game felt very familiar to me while the building train routes and hidden goals felt very fresh to me. You never have enough time to do everything you want to in this game so it always leaves me wanting to play just a little more. It’s also one of the go-to games for sharing hobby games with more casual folks.

• Incan Gold—I love this game because it works with larger groups of people, is easy to teach, and it provides a very tense, engaging experience. It’s a great combination of press-your-luck and social experiment. It’s a game that allows you to learn a little something about the people you are playing with. The theme is great! Who doesn’t want to pretend they are an Indiana Jones-esque explorer for a few minutes with friends?

• Pandemic—Pandemic sort of defined the cooperative game genre and it still holds up for me. Players work together to save that world from deadly diseases that are breaking out in epic proportion around the globe. This game also introduced me to variant player powers that give each player a unique ability. There is a lot to explore in this game. I love the rewarding feeling you get when you actually manage to save the world.

• Carcassonne—This is my wife’s favorite game hands-down. We've played this more than any other game in our collection. It’s another one of those classic gateways that really leaves an impression and begs to be played again and again due to its simple rules and ever-changing play area. The expansions have really helped the game to grow with me as a gamer. We usually throw in Inns and Cathedrals along with Traders and Builders when we play this. It’s beautiful to look at, too. Great game.

•  Stone Age—I remember playing this one pretty early on and loved how it built on the civilization expansion of Settlers of Catan with newer mechanics. I love sending my little caveman workers out to hunt and gather and help feed my little tribe. Stone Age is a great game to look at when you want to take a baby step or two up from Settlers.

Tell us the genesis (no pun intended) of The Great Heartland Hauling Co.

Ha! I was actually chatting with a truck driver who was bringing food to my church for a food ministry we were doing at the time. He told me that the company that hired him to bring up the food was paying him less per mile than what it cost to operate his truck. He then told me the only reason he took the job was to get most of his expenses paid on the way up so he could cross over to the other side of the state to pick up some greens to take to Florida. The job on the way to Florida paid him twice as much so he was still able to make a profit on the trip. When he was talking, I instantly thought there was a game somewhere in his story, so I went home and made one. It turned out pretty good, so I took it to a design contest and got some great feedback that launched me into a search for a publisher that eventually landed with Dice Hate Me Games.

How did you connect with Dice Hate Me Games?

I had heard about them through their Kickstarter campaign for Carnival and was struck by design work Chris Kirkman did for the game. They got my attention with the look of their games. I didn’t end up backing the game but I checked out the Dice Hate Me booth at Origins this year, met Chris and Monkey, and we just hit it off. I showed them my game and told them that I was going to request to be released from a contract I had previously made with another company called Cambridge Games Factory after some long delays. Dice Hate Me had a pretty full release schedule but they were enthusiastic about my game and offered to help me explore some other publishing options if I ended up leaving my previous publisher. They told me that they really couldn’t take anything else on but I was convinced after meeting them that it was time for me to move on. I did decide to move on and Chris and Cherilyn ended up showing the game to some friends that told them they had to publish it so I got a phone call the day I terminated my contract with Cambridge Games Factory and Dice Hate Me offered to publish the game and get it on the fast track to publication. Now the game is on Kickstarter headed for a January 2013 release and I couldn’t be more pleased with how it’s turning out.

What’s your favorite mechanism in The Great Heartland Hauling Co.?

Heartland Hauling is essentially a game of hand management with a bare bones pick-up-and-deliver system played out on a modular playing area. I think the mechanic I like the most is the simple pick-up-and-deliver component. In the game you use gas cards, or points, to move around the Heartland to pick up wooden cubes of freight (using goods cards), to deliver them (also, using goods cards) to different locations trying to earn the most profit. It’s a very tactile experience. You move your little truck, hand in the cards, and move around little wooden cubes. I had never really played pick-up-and-deliver games before so I didn’t have much to go on besides the name of a mechanic I had heard about that seemed to fit the theme of the game. I just made it up as I went along and I think it represents the theme well and has an interesting take on a familiar mechanic (at least to train gamers) that is fleshed out in a new way.

Is this your first attempt at game design?

This is my first design, which actually kind of blows me away when I think about it. I mean, who gets to publish their first game with a great company that puts out interesting games and has such a solid reputation? It’s super exciting for me and is really driving me to continue to stretch my creative wings. I have a few others designs in the works and one game that is currently being considered by a publisher in Europe. It’s a fun way to get to contribute to the hobby I love in such a big way.

Star Trek or Star Wars?

Star Wars all the way! I mean, I dig the J.J. Abrams Trek reboot but I grew up on Star Wars. I’m pretty sure my first crush was Princess Leia so that shows you just how nerdy I really am!

Were you disappointed that Dice Hate Me decided to change the theme from your beloved Michigan to a broader “heartland” theme?

The theme didn’t really change at all, just the art and the name. The prototype, originally called Over The Road, had a darker, grittier feel to it. It looked a lot more like the game had an urban setting but that wasn’t the intent. Chris Kirkman brightened up the color pallet and gave it an Americana feel which I think goes with the new name, The Great Heartland Hauling Co., really well. I think the new art and name really captures the original inspiration for the game so I’m quite pleased. I’m just glad they didn’t want me to add aliens, or something like that, to the game. I wanted that Euro-game-meets-Middle-America feeling and I think we kinda nailed it!

How has being a pastor influenced you as a game designer—if at all.

I think that being a pastor has helped me grow as a thinker and as a person that can take an idea and bring it to life. I work a lot with communicating abstract ideas and planning concrete events in my church work, so I think the two kinds of work are similar in that way. I get to stretch my brain in all kinds of different ways as a pastor and as a game designer. And for me, the community aspects of gaming and the church are hugely important to me, so I think they fit together nicely. I’ve said this before, but the thing I love about games is the way that they bring people together in real life. I don’t think we have enough of that. Relationships are really important to me because people are really important to me. So if my games, or my church, can bring people together in meaningful ways, I believe that I am engaging in meaningful work.

Build your perfect sandwich for us.

I actually think I just had the perfect sandwich at a grilled cheese restaurant in Cleveland called Melt. The sandwich was called The Melt Pig Roast and it had Muenster cheese, chipotle pulled pork, fried sweet potatoes, and a spicy coleslaw. I’m pretty sure it changed my life.

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Many thanks to Jason for answering our questions. Head on over to Kickstarter and check out The Great Heartland Hauling Co. for yourself! And thanks for reading!