Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie, and you're listening to stuff I've
Speaker 1: never told you. Today, I'm joined by someone whose voice
Speaker 1: you might recognize, the one Tracy V. Wilson, co host
Speaker 1: of the podcast Stuff You Missed in History Class. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for joining us. Tracy, thank you for
Speaker 1: having me. I'm excited to be here. I'm so excited
Speaker 1: to have you. And today we're talking about something we
Speaker 1: both really enjoy. Tabletop gaming. That's true, it's gonna be
Speaker 1: really fun and peek behind the scenes. I used to
Speaker 1: produce and edit a show that Tracy and Holly hosted
Speaker 1: previously called pop Stuff. Yes, were you? Were you our
Speaker 1: producer when we did the episode that we did about
Speaker 1: tabletop games way back then? I was. I was, so,
Speaker 1: we're like coming full sir. Cool. Yeah, we had some
Speaker 1: some shifts and who did what and I couldn't remember
Speaker 1: exactly where that fell in the timeline. Yeah, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure as the producer of the entire time of
Speaker 1: that show. It was really fun to work on too.
Speaker 1: It was it was a fun deal. It was. Today,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned, we are talking about tabletop gaming, and
Speaker 1: I think it would probably be a good thing to
Speaker 1: start with a definition. Um when we say tabletop games,
Speaker 1: what do we mean? What does that encompass? I think
Speaker 1: it encompasses everything that's meant to be played around a table,
Speaker 1: So it goes from card games to role playing games,
Speaker 1: to board games, to anything that you would get in
Speaker 1: a group and play around a table. I also know
Speaker 1: that some people have kind of a more exclusive definition
Speaker 1: than that, and they only want to include the ones
Speaker 1: that they think are real games. That sounds very similar
Speaker 1: to like the whole video game debate of like the
Speaker 1: real exactly. Yeah, it has. Sometimes you will talk to
Speaker 1: folks that they don't want to think that Clue is
Speaker 1: a tabletop game because you can just buy that at
Speaker 1: the regular toy store, and I think that's a silly argument.
Speaker 1: I agree that is very silly. We are a big
Speaker 1: tabletop game playing office here. Um we have a tabletop
Speaker 1: gaming night once a month at work and a group
Speaker 1: of us in office. As you've heard me mentioned before
Speaker 1: on the show, I think we are in a Dungeons
Speaker 1: and Dragons campaign and I'm about to dungeon master for
Speaker 1: the first time. Very nervous, very excited. Both that is,
Speaker 1: that's one of the things I'm envious about and not
Speaker 1: not working locally to the rest of you, is that
Speaker 1: that is the thing that I don't get to participate in. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: if you're ever like next time you're in town, we
Speaker 1: should move the date and make it happen. Have Tracy's
Speaker 1: sort of one shot expendable character showing up in the campaign.
Speaker 1: We can make this happen, Tracy. Um. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: one thing I wanted to note here because we are
Speaker 1: going to be looking at diversity and women in tabletop gaming,
Speaker 1: but the crew that I play with is about even
Speaker 1: in terms of male to female. In fact, I think
Speaker 1: it's more female. Generally, we do get a you know,
Speaker 1: one shot player come in sometimes it shifts the ratio,
Speaker 1: but on on average it's even. It's even. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: have three role playing games that I'm playing in right now.
Speaker 1: None of them are playing every week, once every two weeks,
Speaker 1: and the other two are usually once a month. And
Speaker 1: one of the games sometimes I'm the only woman at
Speaker 1: the table. It depends a little bit on who's available
Speaker 1: that day. One of the others is about a fifty
Speaker 1: fifty and my favorite of the games. Not to diss
Speaker 1: any of the gms running these games, but my favorite
Speaker 1: of the game has four players. Only one is a
Speaker 1: man and the guy running the campaign as a man.
Speaker 1: But the fact that the men are in the minority
Speaker 1: is a nice change of pace in that world for me. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: and I I'm pretty new to the whole thing. This
Speaker 1: This campaign I'm playing with co workers is the first
Speaker 1: time I've ever played, so I haven't experienced much outside
Speaker 1: of that. I have played online since I started this
Speaker 1: in person campaign, So that is an option that it's
Speaker 1: a thing. Yeah. My husband runs several campaigns that he
Speaker 1: does exclusively online, and he used to run a local
Speaker 1: campaign that had mostly local people but a couple of
Speaker 1: people who had moved out of state and they were
Speaker 1: looped in on Google Hangout or Skype or something similar.
Speaker 1: So that is a thing that can be done. There
Speaker 1: are whole tools to let people do that more efficiently
Speaker 1: and have you know, little figurines on the screen of
Speaker 1: where people's characters are and that kind of thing. Cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were doing it um on Google Hangouts and I
Speaker 1: must slow typer And that was my biggest problem I
Speaker 1: encountered was people would get there before me and I'd
Speaker 1: have to retype something else. Um. But if if you
Speaker 1: don't if you want to play and maybe doing it
Speaker 1: in person isn't an option that is something that you
Speaker 1: could look into. Yeah, um, what is your history Tracy
Speaker 1: and tabletop gaming? How did you get into it? Well,
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, we had some of the
Speaker 1: standard games that folks often have when their children at home,
Speaker 1: like candy Land and Shoots and Ladders and that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. But it was really my grandmother had two games.
Speaker 1: They were Monopoly and Battleship. And so my brother and
Speaker 1: my cousin and I we were the only three cousins
Speaker 1: on that side of the family, and every time we
Speaker 1: went to visit my grandmother, we would play one of
Speaker 1: those games. Although normally, for some reason, it was me
Speaker 1: and my cousin gagging up on my brother until he
Speaker 1: would get so mad he would throw the board, which
Speaker 1: is not a productive way to play a game. No,
Speaker 1: it set the stage maybe for later rivalry, but that
Speaker 1: was the real starting point. I kind of went on
Speaker 1: a journey from there that that was not so much
Speaker 1: about tormenting my brother just a little bit. Maybe sometimes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I our work game night, we've banned Monopoly, and uh,
Speaker 1: I remember distinctly as a child, I've never wont to
Speaker 1: gave Monopoly ever, and I even cheated more than once
Speaker 1: and still lost. Monopoly is one of the most maligned games,
Speaker 1: I think, and one of the interesting things about it
Speaker 1: is that it's based on a game called the Landlords Game,
Speaker 1: which was developed by a woman who was developing this
Speaker 1: game because she wanted to show the dangers of capitalism.
Speaker 1: So it actually had two different sets of rules. One
Speaker 1: set of rules was based on this proposed tax change
Speaker 1: that was going to be way more equal in the
Speaker 1: distribution of wealth, and the other was like the monopolists
Speaker 1: rules set, and those rules made meant that, you know,
Speaker 1: one person became really really rich and everybody else lost
Speaker 1: their money, and the whole idea was to show everybody
Speaker 1: that that was but you know, the danger of capitalism.
Speaker 1: But when later on first someone stole her idea and
Speaker 1: then bought her patent for a tiny amount of money,
Speaker 1: they kept only the rules for the capitalists because it's
Speaker 1: uh more fun. I guess to play that way. Her
Speaker 1: name was Lizzie McGee. There's a whole story there. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: I want to play her version of Monopoly. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: like the idea of having a version of Monopoly where
Speaker 1: the whole purpose is that everyone winds up with enough money, right,
Speaker 1: that's almost difficult for me to imagine. Um. I also
Speaker 1: got into tabletop gaming when I was pretty young, although
Speaker 1: similar to video games, which I also got into when
Speaker 1: I was young, I didn't I wouldn't have called myself
Speaker 1: a tabletop gamer until recently, even though it was something
Speaker 1: I was doing. UM, I just didn't think of it
Speaker 1: in that way. But when I was little, we had
Speaker 1: a whole board game closet and I used to semi
Speaker 1: look forward to um when the power would go out,
Speaker 1: because it meant that my whole family would gather in
Speaker 1: the living room and we would usually have a fire,
Speaker 1: candles and we would play board games. And there was
Speaker 1: something I loved about. There's no TV, no video games.
Speaker 1: This is what we're gonna do, And it was one
Speaker 1: of the rare times that we would do something together. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the coolest things about most
Speaker 1: of these games is that I only play them with
Speaker 1: people I would also just hang out with. Like, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to go play some tabletop games with people
Speaker 1: who I actively dislike. Uh, It's it's all about spending
Speaker 1: time together and actually having fun, which you're you're wanting
Speaker 1: the power to go out story reminds me of and
Speaker 1: and kind of going off of that. There are some
Speaker 1: benefits of tabletop gaming. Um, it has a couple of
Speaker 1: help benefits. It can be a therapeutic activity that is
Speaker 1: beneficial for teens or children or adults to learn how
Speaker 1: to socialize. I personally got into D and D last
Speaker 1: year as a way to help manage my c PTSD,
Speaker 1: and I also used it to help me figure out
Speaker 1: the ending of the book I was writing. And I
Speaker 1: absolutely figured out the ending right away after the first session.
Speaker 1: I think because I was playing the main character of
Speaker 1: the book and I knew what she would do right away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's awesome. I didn't ever, I didn't get into gay
Speaker 1: mean as a way to deal with my anxiety. But universally,
Speaker 1: if I show up at game night and I am
Speaker 1: just a ball of anxiety, I feel better by the end. Yeah. Sometimes,
Speaker 1: I mean, sometimes it's just that when we are in
Speaker 1: this fantasy world, there are predictable rules that govern the world,
Speaker 1: and being there is kind of comforting. And then sometimes
Speaker 1: it's more like I got to take out my aggression
Speaker 1: by lighting some evil things on fire. Yeah, that surprisingly
Speaker 1: does help release some aggression I've found. Yeah, another thing
Speaker 1: that it does is playing these games can help promote empathy.
Speaker 1: It can help kids in the development of memory and
Speaker 1: cognitive skills like problem solving. I would also say, especially
Speaker 1: in role playing games, creativity, storytelling, teamwork, improvisation, adaptability, and confidence.
Speaker 1: I can say confidence. That was a big one for
Speaker 1: me playing D and D in the beginning, because I
Speaker 1: was so nervous about it. Yeah, I guess my character
Speaker 1: does this. But it's been like a year and a
Speaker 1: half now, and my I'm very much more like she
Speaker 1: throws a bomb at that person. Yeah. Yeah, that just
Speaker 1: reminded me of hearing Temple grand In talk about UM.
Speaker 1: Temple Grandon is an animal husbandry expert who was also autistic,
Speaker 1: and she talked about one of the ways that she
Speaker 1: really learned to interact with people was that she and
Speaker 1: her family played games when she was little. UM that
Speaker 1: involved a lot of rules and a lot of taking
Speaker 1: turns and a lot of having sort of predictable actions
Speaker 1: that we're supposed to happen, and that really helped her
Speaker 1: learn ways to interact with other people. Yeah, Um, I
Speaker 1: could see that. Another thing is if you're running the game,
Speaker 1: which is sometimes called like GM gamemastering or d M.
Speaker 1: In the case of D and D dungeon master, you
Speaker 1: can add project management and organizational skills to the mix.
Speaker 1: I can say, as I'm preparing to do this right
Speaker 1: now so much, yes, and just trying to predict what
Speaker 1: a group of very different people is going to do,
Speaker 1: and then knowing in the back of my head that
Speaker 1: really I can't predict it, try my best. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: is like I feel like I'm running a project right now. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the worst UM tabletop gaming experiences I've ever
Speaker 1: had was way back in college where it was everybody's
Speaker 1: early time, Like none of us had a lot of
Speaker 1: experience either playing the game or running the game. It
Speaker 1: was a whole group of very inexperienced people, but the
Speaker 1: d M expected us to do something and we just
Speaker 1: did not do that thing, and he was completely unprepared
Speaker 1: for that eventuality, and then we all died, and then
Speaker 1: everyone was mad at everyone, and just that we just
Speaker 1: didn't play that again for a while. Yeah, I had
Speaker 1: to take a step back. We had a similar experience
Speaker 1: happened recently where UM we it was kind of like
Speaker 1: the trolley car problem. We were faced with the fact
Speaker 1: that either the entire party was going to die or
Speaker 1: we were going to fail our mission, and the town
Speaker 1: we were supposed to be saving, they were all going
Speaker 1: to die, and uh, we chose to save ourselves. And
Speaker 1: afterwards we kept kind of mentioning and passing. I can't
Speaker 1: stop thinking about that village. And it's an imaginary village,
Speaker 1: but you feel it, you get invested in it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We had a really similar thing in one of the
Speaker 1: games that I'm playing, which is based on a system
Speaker 1: called Fate, And in Fate, your characters have different aspects
Speaker 1: and you figure out what they are kind of collaboratively,
Speaker 1: and then you your actions in the game a lot
Speaker 1: of times are connected to them. And we are in
Speaker 1: this sort of post apocalyptic world where we have just
Speaker 1: had a series of we show up somewhere a bad
Speaker 1: things happening. We fix the bad thing, but at what cost.
Speaker 1: And there was one time when the options were we
Speaker 1: fail at doing this, or we burn this place down,
Speaker 1: and without hesitation, we were like, We're just gonna have
Speaker 1: to burn it down. It's the only thing that's gonna work.
Speaker 1: I think maybe, um, just in case anyone listening is
Speaker 1: unsure of what is involved in playing like D and
Speaker 1: d R role playing game. It's essentially somebody designs a
Speaker 1: game or you can find pre design games online, and
Speaker 1: then you all the players have a character that they
Speaker 1: can role play. Some people don't like the actual role
Speaker 1: playing bit, but you can act as much as you
Speaker 1: want on there. And then you're in a group and
Speaker 1: you sort of it's, I don't know, like a board game,
Speaker 1: but you're the you're the pieces moving around and talk
Speaker 1: with each other and um trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: your character would do. And you get missions save a
Speaker 1: town from a dragon that sometimes you fail and the
Speaker 1: whole town gets burned. It's kind of like when you're
Speaker 1: a kid and you are playing Make believe when with
Speaker 1: your friends, but there's a structure to kind of guide
Speaker 1: your collaborative make believe. Yes, yeah, there there's a lot
Speaker 1: of um rules, rule books. Uh, there is some you know,
Speaker 1: calculation of of health points and math involved um And
Speaker 1: that's one thing which we'll get into more later. But
Speaker 1: that's one thing that kept me from it for a
Speaker 1: while is because I thought it looked so complicated. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are there can be not necessarily, there can be
Speaker 1: many different types of dice. Yeah. Oh, Yeah. I asked
Speaker 1: for dice for my mom last year for Christmas and
Speaker 1: she got me. I must have hundreds of dice she
Speaker 1: got me way to I'm very thankful, but it kind
Speaker 1: of cracks me up every time. No shortage of dice choices. Nope.
Speaker 1: But if we go back to the possible health benefits,
Speaker 1: why talking about this matters at all? Another thing it
Speaker 1: can do is reduce stress, sort of what we're talking
Speaker 1: about before, unless you're playing something like Monopoly or I
Speaker 1: would add risk a risk was a very stressful endeavor
Speaker 1: for me and my siblings growing up. Yeah. Yeah. My
Speaker 1: husband likes to play a game called Spirit Island, and
Speaker 1: I love the idea of the game because a lot
Speaker 1: of games have this setting where it's sort of like
Speaker 1: you're the colonizers and the goal is to colonize this place,
Speaker 1: and Spirit Island is the opposite, like you are the
Speaker 1: spirits of this island and you're working with its indigenous
Speaker 1: inhabitants to drive the colonizer's away. And I'm like, I'm
Speaker 1: on board. I'm on board with that, but it's a
Speaker 1: game that has so many layers of things going on
Speaker 1: that I'm also like, this is a little more complex
Speaker 1: that I want to spend my my fun time on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's something that I think people who aren't involved
Speaker 1: in tabletop gaming might not realize that there are so
Speaker 1: many options out there for you. And I have friends
Speaker 1: who don't or haven't previously liked tabletop gaming because they're
Speaker 1: they don't like competition, they're not competitive stresses them out.
Speaker 1: But there are so many games that aren't that way.
Speaker 1: And um, we're gonna give some recommendations at the end,
Speaker 1: and one of the ones that I'm going to recommend
Speaker 1: is it's like more cooperative. Yeah, there's a whole genre
Speaker 1: of cooperative games. And if people watch Parks and Wreck
Speaker 1: and they've seen that episode about the Cones of dun
Speaker 1: Shire and they think that's what all these games are like, Like,
Speaker 1: there are games that are kind of like the Cones
Speaker 1: of Dunshire. A lot of them are way more chill
Speaker 1: and are more like an elegant but challenging, simple system. Right,
Speaker 1: I forgot about the Cones of don't dun Shire. I
Speaker 1: recently reminded of the thirty Rock version, which is like
Speaker 1: colonizers of I don't know, but it's it's sellers of Catan. Yeah. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: a two thous and three study out of the New
Speaker 1: England Journal of Medicine linked playing board games with decreased
Speaker 1: risk of Alzheimer's and dementia. And I just wanted to
Speaker 1: throw this in there in here because I thought it
Speaker 1: was so interesting. Students at Gettysburg College use clue as
Speaker 1: a way to practice creating an AI. Yeah, that's really cool.
Speaker 1: While while we were getting ready for this episode, a
Speaker 1: thing that I meant to mention earlier was that there's
Speaker 1: also a study about ma jong and older people and
Speaker 1: um like people in retirement communities and it helping both
Speaker 1: with hand eye coordination and with basically having less stress
Speaker 1: and more social activity, which I thought was really cool. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if we look at numbers, it seems that more and
Speaker 1: more people are getting into tabletop gaming. If you look
Speaker 1: at the hobby gaming market, which includes collectibles like Pokemon
Speaker 1: cards and dice, board games, role playing games, and miniatures,
Speaker 1: between sales doubled money wise, that's an increase from eight
Speaker 1: hundred million to one point four billion. And I do
Speaker 1: want to mention about miniatures here. So if you're playing
Speaker 1: something like D and D, you can get these um miniatures.
Speaker 1: They're little figurines and you can use that to represent
Speaker 1: your character to move around, and that is another area
Speaker 1: where you can be I've seen people do amazing artistic
Speaker 1: creative stuff. I have my own little miniature. I've painted it.
Speaker 1: It's not good, but I had fun doing it. I
Speaker 1: have I have my one, uh, sort of adequately painted miniature.
Speaker 1: My husband plays some games that are totally based in miniatures,
Speaker 1: so he has these whole armies of painted miniatures. He
Speaker 1: finds the painting part really relaxing, and he hasn't been
Speaker 1: playing them as much recently. And I'm like, there's a
Speaker 1: whole we have a whole shelf full of man's over here,
Speaker 1: like you're gonna play with that? They're ready to go.
Speaker 1: Um And because sort of a way I think to
Speaker 1: to see the growth of tabletop gaming is through these
Speaker 1: board game cafes and bars, which I have seen more
Speaker 1: and more of. Um. There's gin Con, which is the
Speaker 1: largest gaming convention in the United States. It's over fifty
Speaker 1: years old and attendance broke records. I've never been, Have
Speaker 1: you been, Tracy, I have not been. I have been
Speaker 1: to other conventions that have tabletop gaming, like it's a
Speaker 1: big component. But at about the same time that I
Speaker 1: had enough interest and enough different types of games that
Speaker 1: I wanted to go to an event just for that.
Speaker 1: I also had become way less enamored with giant conventions
Speaker 1: and a lot happier at smaller events. One of my favorite,
Speaker 1: not even one of my my absolute favorite vacation every
Speaker 1: year is that a bunch of friends rents a big
Speaker 1: old house out in the poke knows and we go
Speaker 1: out there for a long weekend and play a bunch
Speaker 1: of games and like hang out and it's awesome. It's
Speaker 1: like thirty five people, not thousand people, much more manageable crowdside.
Speaker 1: And then also, if you just want to read a book,
Speaker 1: nobody's gonna bother you. It's fine, right you can. You
Speaker 1: can step away more easily should you so desire. If
Speaker 1: we look at the number of female tabletop gamers, data
Speaker 1: is difficult to come by, we can safely assume that
Speaker 1: more women are playing now than previously, as more people
Speaker 1: are playing in general. At gen Con, over half the
Speaker 1: speakers were women, and that's huge considering that only one
Speaker 1: of the speakers was female. It's not enough, oh no,
Speaker 1: And I bet some of you will remember this from
Speaker 1: your social media feeds. A panel at gen Con called
Speaker 1: writing Women Friendly Comics at first had no women on
Speaker 1: the panel. Yeah. Yeah, since I know several game developers,
Speaker 1: many of them are women, and they've been doing this
Speaker 1: thing where they go and submit a bunch of panels
Speaker 1: to conventions and they don't really announce that they are
Speaker 1: submitting a whole bunch of panels that only have women
Speaker 1: and non binary people on them, just sneaking in there.
Speaker 1: And then people show up and it's a panel that
Speaker 1: is all women and non binary folks, and they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is awesome. This is a bunch of women, and
Speaker 1: they're talking about something besides being women in this space, right,
Speaker 1: because we can talk about other things. It's true, yes,
Speaker 1: but that is at least in my head, and I
Speaker 1: would guess a lot of people's heads. That's the stereotype.
Speaker 1: If you think of a tabletop gamer, it's a youngish
Speaker 1: white male. Yeah, And the conventions I have been to
Speaker 1: are like, youngish white males are the largest demographic, like
Speaker 1: not only demographic, but for sure the biggest one. And
Speaker 1: there are a few informal surveys out there that suggest
Speaker 1: people who identify as women make up only ten of
Speaker 1: board game players and that the majority of the respondents
Speaker 1: in these surveys UM are white. Yeah. I always wonder
Speaker 1: sort of what we were talking about at the beginning
Speaker 1: with video games is how people are defining what counts
Speaker 1: as a board game player, because a lot of the
Speaker 1: studies that suggest that men are overwhelmingly the people playing
Speaker 1: video games are just disregarding the games that are most
Speaker 1: popular among women. And so I kind of wonder if
Speaker 1: if these definitions are including things like party games that
Speaker 1: women might be playing more than they might be playing
Speaker 1: you know, Settlers of Ten right there, and maybe so
Speaker 1: maybe it might be a little closer. I mean, I know,
Speaker 1: as kids, games are for everyone, and then it's it's
Speaker 1: an adulthood that suddenly it seems like there is a
Speaker 1: world of specialty game stores that um have a largely
Speaker 1: often male demographic. Yeah. And while I was looking into
Speaker 1: the research for this episode there it's kind of a
Speaker 1: new area of academic study. UM. But a lot of
Speaker 1: people have been writing about it and are writing about it,
Speaker 1: and from what I read, several women said, I know
Speaker 1: that this is the stereotype, but that's not been my experience. UM.
Speaker 1: I've always had women, people of color playing in my group. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is interesting. Yeah, when it comes to the people
Speaker 1: that I personally know and hang out with. UM. But
Speaker 1: it's not just an overwhelmingly male scene. It's it's when
Speaker 1: I get into a gigantic group of people at something
Speaker 1: like a convention, and I just I don't think that's
Speaker 1: totally reflective of who's really playing games, right, And I
Speaker 1: always think in surveys like the one we're discussing, a
Speaker 1: lot of times they're self selecting who's right answer that survey,
Speaker 1: it might more likely be this type of like white, young,
Speaker 1: white male. UM. But we do have some more concrete
Speaker 1: numbers on the development side. Be selling board games in
Speaker 1: sixteen were all designed by men, and the nineteen nominees
Speaker 1: for Game of the Year awards between of those, none
Speaker 1: of them identified as women. And you, Tracy, have put
Speaker 1: me in touch with some amazing women in the space,
Speaker 1: and we're going to do a whole follow up episode
Speaker 1: on the development side of tabletop gaming. I'm very excited
Speaker 1: about that. Those are some of my favorite people. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna go ahead and say thank you. Two
Speaker 1: of them are people I talked to literally every day
Speaker 1: of my life. Yes, so excited. UM, so so we'll
Speaker 1: we'll come back to we'll follow up with that. UM.
Speaker 1: For me, when I first got into tabletop gaming, especially
Speaker 1: something like D and D, I was very intimidated by it.
Speaker 1: I remember distinctly being at dragon Con a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago, and UM, me and some new friends were
Speaker 1: discussing what kind of games we enjoyed, and when these
Speaker 1: new friends of mine, who were all men, asked if
Speaker 1: I liked tabletop games like D and D. Before before
Speaker 1: he had even finished asking the question, I was frantically
Speaker 1: shaking my head. Um. And I have looked back at
Speaker 1: that moment. I tried to get to the bottom of
Speaker 1: why I felt that way and why I felt so intimidated,
Speaker 1: And I do think it's because I thought it was
Speaker 1: something for mostly dudes who wouldn't have the patience to
Speaker 1: teach me, who wouldn't want to play with me, who
Speaker 1: might be sexist or me, and if I did play
Speaker 1: with them, and then kind of expect me to just well,
Speaker 1: this is the game, it's fun. Um. And like I said,
Speaker 1: I also thought I'd be really complicated to get into
Speaker 1: and it sort of stressed me out the thought of
Speaker 1: acting or improving even though I'm somebody who does that,
Speaker 1: like I act and I do improv. For some reason,
Speaker 1: the idea of having to do it with a group
Speaker 1: of people really made me nervous. But you don't have to.
Speaker 1: That is one thing you can do that stuff, uh
Speaker 1: to the level of your comfort, right right? Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think I had a related but slightly different response to
Speaker 1: the same, not exactly the same perception, because in my
Speaker 1: college years in early twenties, my gaming life was sort
Speaker 1: of rooted in some internalized misogyny because I had that
Speaker 1: whole idea that a lot of things that were typically
Speaker 1: feminine were bad and that there was some kind of
Speaker 1: value in being in quotation marks not like the other girls.
Speaker 1: So I was mostly hanging out with men, and I
Speaker 1: was mostly hanging out with men because I sort of
Speaker 1: felt like somehow women weren't as fun to hang out with.
Speaker 1: All of this was incorrect. I'm used out onto like
Speaker 1: some amazing friendships because of this like internal baggage, But
Speaker 1: that meant that I was mostly hanging out with guys,
Speaker 1: and I was mostly hanging out with guys who were
Speaker 1: playing a very particular style of of board gaming and
Speaker 1: and role playing games specifically, and it wasn't until I
Speaker 1: got probably into my thirties that I was like, oh wait,
Speaker 1: there is a whole world of games beyond that that
Speaker 1: is more welcoming to more types of people than what
Speaker 1: was back there before. And you know, then I also
Speaker 1: started working on my whole internal life problem, you know,
Speaker 1: on step at a time. I had a similar thing
Speaker 1: with video games where I felt like it somehow made
Speaker 1: me like I wore like a badge of honor that
Speaker 1: I was playing these video games with with all men um.
Speaker 1: But for me to get into the tabletop gaming, I
Speaker 1: do owe a lot of people, some men, some women,
Speaker 1: But it's sort of felt like it happened all at
Speaker 1: once that everybody was telling me, You've got to play
Speaker 1: this board game that I've never heard of, and you
Speaker 1: gotta play this board game that I've never heard of.
Speaker 1: I don't know if there was just some surge of
Speaker 1: popularity somewhere, but I owe a lot of friends for
Speaker 1: introducing me to all of these amazing games and and
Speaker 1: sort of to this whole world that was yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And you and I are not the only ones who
Speaker 1: have felt that tabletop games were not for us. And
Speaker 1: we'll get into some reasons why after a quick break
Speaker 1: for word from our sponsor, and we're back, Thank you sponsor.
Speaker 1: Like a lot of our media, tabletop games do not
Speaker 1: have the best track record with positive female portrayals and
Speaker 1: providing diverse characters games that have a les her amount
Speaker 1: of female characters, if any. UM. We mentioned in our
Speaker 1: episode around female action figures that Asboro gotten some hot
Speaker 1: water for leaving the female character ray out of the
Speaker 1: newest version of Star Wars Monopoly, and my favorite part
Speaker 1: of that was their response, She'll be another games. It's
Speaker 1: not a great answer, We'll put her in a future game.
Speaker 1: She's not here now. And it was they replaced her
Speaker 1: with a stormtrooper. It was a character. She's a she's
Speaker 1: a big character for those that don't know. UM. For
Speaker 1: her not to be included was a pretty big deal.
Speaker 1: Perhaps there are female characters, but they are overly sexualized
Speaker 1: or they are relegated to traditionally female less active roles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like you'll have a game that's based on cards
Speaker 1: with characters drawn on them, and for some reason the
Speaker 1: women are all teachers and secretaries. Right would that be?
Speaker 1: I can't imagine or um. I always love the critique
Speaker 1: of when armors so sexualized and clearly that's not going
Speaker 1: to help you in the fighting situation. Um, it's kind
Speaker 1: of a running joke, and yet we still continue to
Speaker 1: see it. And I will say, I got no problem.
Speaker 1: If you wanna, in a game like D and D
Speaker 1: create a sexy character, I'm I'm all for it. But
Speaker 1: if if that's like we're seeing this in the official
Speaker 1: media of the game, then that is a problem. Instruction
Speaker 1: manuals have been called out to for using he to
Speaker 1: refer to all players. And this is improving, but slowly,
Speaker 1: and we have got a long way, though, because some
Speaker 1: of the first articles written by playtesters about D and
Speaker 1: D in the seventies came with gems like this one.
Speaker 1: There will be four major groups in which women may enter.
Speaker 1: They may be fighters, magic users, thieves, and clerics. They
Speaker 1: may progress to the level of men in the area
Speaker 1: of magic and in some ways surpass men as thieves.
Speaker 1: Elvin women may arise especially to high levels, and clerics
Speaker 1: to the elves only as fighters are women clearly behind
Speaker 1: men in all cases, but even they have attributes that
Speaker 1: their male characters do not. And this article goes on
Speaker 1: to say that female characters true strength lies with the
Speaker 1: beauty part of their Christmas score. So D and D
Speaker 1: your character has these six ability scores. One of them
Speaker 1: is charisma. As far as I know, the beauty thing
Speaker 1: isn't there anymore. No. Well, and also now women don't
Speaker 1: or female characters don't innately get one less strength because
Speaker 1: they are female, right, which is a positive. But this,
Speaker 1: this beauty part of the Christmas score that is no
Speaker 1: longer with us, gave women female characters abilities such as
Speaker 1: charm men, seduction, horrid beauty, and worship. Yeah, we don't
Speaker 1: need that. No. There were also campaign settings. I mean,
Speaker 1: you can still go and buy copies of old campaign
Speaker 1: settings from earlier versions of D and D, and sometimes
Speaker 1: there are guidelines on how to adapt them to the
Speaker 1: newest rules system. And you can find some where it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: all of the characters who are all presumed to me
Speaker 1: to be male, walk into this room where there is
Speaker 1: a siren who is going to charm any but everybody,
Speaker 1: and like it's now the bad the bad guy is
Speaker 1: a woman, and the woman's power is that she's just
Speaker 1: way too sexy, and oh yeah, the newest version did
Speaker 1: come up as an example of a positive improvement when
Speaker 1: I was researching this and that it suggests that players
Speaker 1: should think outside of the binary box. Essentially, um, you
Speaker 1: can be you can create whatever character you want to create. Um,
Speaker 1: it doesn't have to be human, it could be all
Speaker 1: kinds of things. In the kickstarter for one deck dungeon
Speaker 1: and made dollars, it's starting goal was twenty dollars, so
Speaker 1: way surpast that. End of note, all of the images
Speaker 1: of playable characters were of strong, diverse women. But of
Speaker 1: course not everyone was excited about this Summer of yours
Speaker 1: on Amazon called the game sexist or labeled it as
Speaker 1: miss injury. It looks cool, yes, well, and we keep
Speaker 1: seeing that same basic thing play out where uh, something
Speaker 1: will come along that has an all female cast and
Speaker 1: it will break box office records or become a best
Speaker 1: seller or whatever, and then there will be this whole
Speaker 1: conversation of can women really dominate at the box office?
Speaker 1: Why we keep having this conversation? I know, I that
Speaker 1: is a pet peeve of mine. Back to the tabletop
Speaker 1: gaming pasco host Kristen and I went to this women
Speaker 1: in Gaming event at the Museum of Design Atlanta a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago. You can find the video online
Speaker 1: on YouTube, and it was one of my favorite. One
Speaker 1: of my favorite parts of this whole exhibit was a
Speaker 1: section on old board games and of the games that
Speaker 1: included women, so many of them were women in domestic roles.
Speaker 1: Are women trying to find a husband before the other players?
Speaker 1: That was how you won as you found a husband first.
Speaker 1: One in particular, featured all the jobs that a woman
Speaker 1: could have in this board game's mind at the time,
Speaker 1: and they were secretary, teacher, flight attendant, nurse, princess, or ballerina.
Speaker 1: All right, then, yeah, nothing wrong with any of those occupations.
Speaker 1: But I feel that women perhaps can do other types
Speaker 1: of things. I think possibly, like design games. Possibly. And
Speaker 1: we've said it time and time again on this show,
Speaker 1: but seeing yourself represented is important. That's not even just
Speaker 1: me saying it. There have been studies that show that
Speaker 1: bear that out. Um, not seeing yourself can lead to
Speaker 1: feelings of disempowerment, invisibility, or insignificance on an individual level,
Speaker 1: on a community level, and it can lead to decisions
Speaker 1: made based on who we see or don't see on
Speaker 1: a societal level, like people in power will make decisions
Speaker 1: based on perceived like representation, how they think that must
Speaker 1: be the truth in society. So if all you're seeing
Speaker 1: our white men, then you're going to make decisions based
Speaker 1: on the fact that there are way more white men
Speaker 1: than there actually are. Yeah. Yeah, And plus, think of
Speaker 1: all the cool and diverse media that we're missing out on.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of it. There is, there is. And
Speaker 1: there was this study that you found Tracy looking into
Speaker 1: gender and racial representation and when it comes to the
Speaker 1: illustrators and designers of the top two hundred board games
Speaker 1: as ranked by Board Game Geek. And it came out
Speaker 1: like this month, December twenty so it's pretty recent. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You and I had scheduled this recording and I saw it.
Speaker 1: I saw people talking about it on Twitter and said, Okay,
Speaker 1: need to bring this up for that episode. Excellent timing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And what it found is probably what you might expect.
Speaker 1: The dime designers and illustrators were overwhelmingly white men of
Speaker 1: these two hundred games, and that this was reflected in
Speaker 1: the artwork, which disproportionately is of white men. The numbers
Speaker 1: on this very depending on the source, but it also
Speaker 1: found a majority of the players were also white men.
Speaker 1: The author does acknowledge the limitation of this work and
Speaker 1: calls for more research, but it's definitely worth checking out
Speaker 1: if this is something that is at all of interest
Speaker 1: to you. Yeah, because it's one of those things that's
Speaker 1: drawing from board game geek as a resource. If you're
Speaker 1: not familiar with that. It's sort of like if you
Speaker 1: were trying to look at trends in movies based on
Speaker 1: their where they were ranked on IMDb. Um, it's like
Speaker 1: that would be sort of like a comparable thing. So
Speaker 1: there are a whole lot of movies out in the
Speaker 1: world that for whatever reason, are not up at the
Speaker 1: top of IMDb. So it gets a little bit of
Speaker 1: a skewed data set to start with, but still super interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it it references a study that came out a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago that found that board games are
Speaker 1: more likely to feature a sheep on the cover than
Speaker 1: a woman. And this study found that, at least according
Speaker 1: to to the data um the study author was looking at,
Speaker 1: that is true, aliens and barnyard animals like sheep grace
Speaker 1: the cover art of board games at a higher rate
Speaker 1: than women do. Yeah, some of those games are great, Like,
Speaker 1: no criticizing over those games as a thing, but it
Speaker 1: is a pattern a little disturbing a little bit, just
Speaker 1: a little bit. Something else I found a lot of
Speaker 1: accounts of online but have never personally run into myself
Speaker 1: is women running into a lot of misogyny when playing
Speaker 1: an RPG game like D and D. Male players over
Speaker 1: sexualizing the female character that the female player is playing.
Speaker 1: Are are maybe themselves playing a female character and then
Speaker 1: over sexualizing her or making her do stupid things things
Speaker 1: like that. UM, And I know I do know people
Speaker 1: personally who have lost friends over things like this. I've
Speaker 1: never experienced it personally, but I do know people that have. UM.
Speaker 1: There are a couple of bars in Atlanta that do
Speaker 1: D and D nights where you can drop in and play,
Speaker 1: and I've done it once, so it's more likely to
Speaker 1: be strangers that you're playing with, and I had a
Speaker 1: good time when I did it, but I generally avoid
Speaker 1: them because I do have this suspicion that I would
Speaker 1: run into something like that. Are people who will pick
Speaker 1: fights over the rules or um. Like you said, it's
Speaker 1: a fun thing, and I think with friends it's much
Speaker 1: more relaxed. But I have noticed I've gone out of
Speaker 1: my way to avoid going to them, even if I
Speaker 1: think they I want to play, and I think they
Speaker 1: could be fun, because I do have this fear that
Speaker 1: I would run into this thing that we're describing right now. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: especially since I know so many women who develop games.
Speaker 1: A lot of them go to game conventions all the
Speaker 1: time and are running games for a ton of people
Speaker 1: all the time because they're they're demonstrating their game, and
Speaker 1: so I've heard a lot of stories about that kind
Speaker 1: of you know, either comments that are inappropriate or sexualizing
Speaker 1: encounters between characters in a game when that's not really necessary.
Speaker 1: And I think because I play almost exclusively with people
Speaker 1: that I'm already ends with and want to hang out with,
Speaker 1: I don't really have that experience the thing that I
Speaker 1: do have sometimes, even though, like most of the guys
Speaker 1: I know, try really hard to be self aware and
Speaker 1: to to not just steamroll over everyone in the room,
Speaker 1: especially when I'm at a game where I'm either the
Speaker 1: only woman at the table or there's only one other
Speaker 1: woman at the table, sometimes it does feel like the
Speaker 1: guys are dominating the situation. Um and and normally if
Speaker 1: we're like, hey, guys, they're also here. We also can
Speaker 1: help make the decision of what we're gonna do against
Speaker 1: this monster. Uh, they'll be like, all right, So that's
Speaker 1: the thing. It's a process though. Yeah, and that's a
Speaker 1: good point because I have definitely encountered being talked over
Speaker 1: interrupted by dudes when I'm playing UM, and I think
Speaker 1: it is a combination of me not having the confidence
Speaker 1: to speak up as loudly as they do, but also yeah,
Speaker 1: just kind of a lack of awareness. But I think
Speaker 1: if you're playing with someone who is new, then maybe
Speaker 1: keep that in mind, especially if you're running the game,
Speaker 1: just checking in to see maybe this person just needs
Speaker 1: a little more encouragement or needs sort of as a push,
Speaker 1: because I'm a quiet person in general, and a lot
Speaker 1: of times I'm I'm happy to um let other people
Speaker 1: be the loud ones. But at the same time, if
Speaker 1: I am trying to say something, I should like to
Speaker 1: be heard, right. Several articles I read encouraged dungeon masters.
Speaker 1: So again, these folks that are running the D and
Speaker 1: D campaigns to make sure that they are putting female
Speaker 1: characters and positions of power in the game that they're designing,
Speaker 1: instead of relegating them to things like barmaid. I've also
Speaker 1: read plenty of accounts of female d M s facing
Speaker 1: constant questioning by male players, which does not surprise me
Speaker 1: at all. I've never seen it, but I believe it completely. Similarly,
Speaker 1: several women I was reading accounts about online with it.
Speaker 1: They would go into gaming stores and almost immediately would
Speaker 1: be asked if they were shopping for their boyfriend, if
Speaker 1: they need any help, the assumption that a woman couldn't
Speaker 1: possibly be there for herself. Yeah, when I lived in Nashville,
Speaker 1: there was a place that I went. There was a
Speaker 1: combination games, comics, and music store, and the first few
Speaker 1: times that I went in there, the assumption was that
Speaker 1: I was there for the music, which sometimes I was
Speaker 1: there for the music, but I was also there for
Speaker 1: the comics and the games. And I remember and went
Speaker 1: walking in. I mean, this has been well over a
Speaker 1: decade ago, so like, don't go find that place and
Speaker 1: yell at them. But I remember walking in at one
Speaker 1: point and somebody being like, the music's over there, and
Speaker 1: I was there to pick up my weekly pulls of
Speaker 1: my comic books. It's like, just not no, um, I've
Speaker 1: I've definitely experienced that in the realm of comics too,
Speaker 1: and I've spoke about on this show before. But what
Speaker 1: really bothers me is once you've sort of passed this
Speaker 1: test and proved that, oh, yes, I do read these things,
Speaker 1: then I almost always would get asked out, is this
Speaker 1: your only series comic books? Ah? Sometimes I would just
Speaker 1: start pretending like, no, this isn't for being be left alone.
Speaker 1: Another thing we have to talk about, unfortunately, is sexual harassment.
Speaker 1: In A Canadian tabletop gamer named Emily Garland posted a
Speaker 1: piece on Tumbler called tabletop Gaming has a white male
Speaker 1: terrorist problem. As you can imagine from the title, it
Speaker 1: got a lot of attention. I remember when this came out.
Speaker 1: Do you not remember it? Yeah? Well, and I remember,
Speaker 1: in a good way a lot of the men in
Speaker 1: my life passing it around amongst themselves, like, guys, this
Speaker 1: is a problem that we need to proactively be handling.
Speaker 1: So go on, Yeah, that's great, um. She wrote in
Speaker 1: this Tumbler post, white male terrorism is the white underbelly
Speaker 1: of the gaming community, meant to terrify and disrupt the
Speaker 1: lives of those who threaten the status quo by race, gender,
Speaker 1: or sexuality. And you can find the article online if
Speaker 1: you want to read it. It's pretty upsetting, but it
Speaker 1: is worth a read. She identifies three main concerns sexual harassment,
Speaker 1: exclusion of women who are vocal about marginalization and unfair treatment,
Speaker 1: and a failure of the tabletop gaming industry as a
Speaker 1: whole to speak out about things like gamer gates and
Speaker 1: she won a sexual harassment lawsuit against a gaming store
Speaker 1: that she worked in that same year. Yeah. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not a pleasant read at all. It is not um.
Speaker 1: Definitely know that going in, but it's it's worth reading,
Speaker 1: especially if you're somebody that is a part of the
Speaker 1: tabletop gaming community. I would say check it out. And
Speaker 1: something I saw in a lot of places that so
Speaker 1: often the response to all of this everything we're talking about,
Speaker 1: UM is but from people who don't want the community
Speaker 1: to change. UM, go play something else if it bothers.
Speaker 1: You don't make this fun hobby political. But it's about
Speaker 1: making this fun hobby uh and beneficial activity more inclusive
Speaker 1: and better for everybody. And in light of that, we
Speaker 1: have some recommendations and resources for you. But first one
Speaker 1: more quick break for word from our sponsor. H we're back,
Speaker 1: Thank you sponsor, and we're back with some game recommendations.
Speaker 1: I've said it before, I'll say it again. I love
Speaker 1: pandemic and this is so good. It is so good UM,
Speaker 1: and it's hard and I love it. There's like eight
Speaker 1: ways to lose, an only one way to win. And
Speaker 1: it's cooperative too, like we were staying in the beginning. Um.
Speaker 1: Some people who don't like competition, you are competing against
Speaker 1: the game. It's pretty tense. I'm not gonna like sugarcoat it.
Speaker 1: But you aren't competing against your friends, right. Your friends
Speaker 1: are working with you to try to stop the illness.
Speaker 1: One thing I love about this game is UM. A
Speaker 1: lot of times when I'll have people over and we
Speaker 1: have all this entertainment available to us, friends of mine
Speaker 1: who aren't that in two tabletop gaming in general will
Speaker 1: request that we play Pandemic. It is like a fun
Speaker 1: crowd pleaser. It has an equal number of male to
Speaker 1: female characters who aren't sexualized. They're dressed appropriately for their job. UM,
Speaker 1: and the jobs are things like scientists and quarantine specialists.
Speaker 1: It's so fun. You can play it with just two
Speaker 1: players too. That's another thing I love about it. I
Speaker 1: have lost it spectacularly. I have two by once. Um,
Speaker 1: like we were doing fine, UM, and I don't want
Speaker 1: to go too much in the mechanics here. But basically
Speaker 1: we drew one card and we went from fine too
Speaker 1: we lost. Yeah. I think this was like three turns
Speaker 1: into the game and we just had really bad luck
Speaker 1: and it was like this, this outbreak has spread and
Speaker 1: the world is over. I think. I think one of
Speaker 1: the mechanics is you have these little black cubes that
Speaker 1: represent the the illness, and if you run out of them,
Speaker 1: game over. And we ran out of them and just
Speaker 1: an amazingly short amount of time. Yeah, and I am
Speaker 1: have lost these like little tiny cubes, and I've lost
Speaker 1: one in the game. The difficulty level is such that
Speaker 1: it comes close enough that I made a note saying
Speaker 1: I am missing one of these cubes. One. So if
Speaker 1: that's what it comes down to, I want everyone to
Speaker 1: know that you have one cube that is not there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I gotta have a couple of caveats with the one
Speaker 1: that I'm going to recommend next. Because it is based
Speaker 1: on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, it's called Marrying Mr Darcy.
Speaker 1: It's a card game. Since it is based on Pride
Speaker 1: and Prejudice. All the characters are white and the goal
Speaker 1: of the game is to marry the right person. So like,
Speaker 1: let's just get that out on the table. However, it
Speaker 1: has the same sense of humor that Jane Austen's writing does,
Speaker 1: so the it's a card game, and the cards have
Speaker 1: just these very rye witty instructions of of what's going
Speaker 1: on in the game. Um, you also do not have
Speaker 1: to get married in order to win the game. It
Speaker 1: is completely possible to win the game by not getting married,
Speaker 1: and it is it's accessible to people even if they
Speaker 1: have no familiarity with Jane Austen. So when I very
Speaker 1: first moved to Massachusetts, my husband, who at that time
Speaker 1: was my boyfriend, had gone out of town and I
Speaker 1: didn't really know many people here very well yet, and
Speaker 1: this friend of his said, come over and play games
Speaker 1: with us. And I was like, I'm gonna take marrying
Speaker 1: Mr Darcy, because I thought when he said us, he
Speaker 1: meant me and my wife, but what he really meant
Speaker 1: was me and these two other dudes. So it became
Speaker 1: me and these three dudes playing a game based on
Speaker 1: pride and prejudice, and everybody had a great time. So
Speaker 1: that sounds wonderful. It was great. My friends would love
Speaker 1: that game for sure. Yeah, yeah, I mean if if
Speaker 1: I totally get why, like people might not be into
Speaker 1: the idea of playing a game where all the characters
Speaker 1: are white and the goal is to get married. Like
Speaker 1: I get like that might not be for you. But
Speaker 1: if that's for you, and it's probably really for you.
Speaker 1: I have another one that UM is a lot more
Speaker 1: diverse in its representation, and it is called The T
Speaker 1: Dragon Society Card Game, and it's based on a graphic
Speaker 1: novel by Katie O'Neill that is called The T Dragon Society,
Speaker 1: and that graphic novel is full of LGBTQ characters and
Speaker 1: characters of color. And this is another card game where
Speaker 1: your goal is to raise these little T dragons. And
Speaker 1: the dragons are adorable and the art is adorable, and
Speaker 1: the characters the more humanoid characters. One of them is
Speaker 1: not strictly human, but they are also adorable. UM. And
Speaker 1: even if you're not playing with little kids, I think
Speaker 1: the age range is ten and up. UM. If if
Speaker 1: you are into the idea of taking care of some
Speaker 1: adorable little dragons, you can be a room for like
Speaker 1: a table full of adults, and it will still be great. UM.
Speaker 1: One that my friends love UM is called Dixit, which
Speaker 1: I describe as apples apples but with to full art.
Speaker 1: And again, this is this group of friends particularly that
Speaker 1: loves it. They don't really like tabletop games in general,
Speaker 1: they don't like the competitive aspect of it, but they
Speaker 1: love this one and they love the art of it.
Speaker 1: And it's really I find it really funny because I
Speaker 1: get frustrated playing with them. I I also get frustrated
Speaker 1: playing Apple Sapples because I'm very I'm very competitive, and
Speaker 1: I I'll get angry if I can't see what you're seeing, Like,
Speaker 1: explain to me how that represents being lost, please, yeum.
Speaker 1: But they all love it, and both dixit and Apples
Speaker 1: to Apples can be really interesting to play when you
Speaker 1: when you either know everyone at the table really really
Speaker 1: well or when you don't know everyone at the table
Speaker 1: really really well, because if you know too people and
Speaker 1: you don't know everyone else, then like you might know
Speaker 1: enough about how that person thinks to to figure out
Speaker 1: what they're doing a lot more easily. Yeah, it's one
Speaker 1: of this thing. I've known this this group of friends
Speaker 1: since elementary school, and for some reason, I can't get
Speaker 1: a beat what they're seeing when they're looking at these
Speaker 1: beautifully the art is really beautiful with that it is.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful and kind of abstract. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I
Speaker 1: also love Betrayal at the House on the Hill, which
Speaker 1: is a game where your your group explores a haunted
Speaker 1: house together and about halfway through you trigger a haunt,
Speaker 1: and depending on a couple of circumstances, one of the
Speaker 1: players becomes a trader and you're sort of working against
Speaker 1: that player and then whatever demon, haunt, whatever it is
Speaker 1: that they're working with um and there's something like sixty scenarios. So, Annie,
Speaker 1: do you know about Betrayal Legacy? I do, but only
Speaker 1: a little bit. Tell me about it. I can tell
Speaker 1: you about it because I play tested that game. Did
Speaker 1: you really? I did? I am listed in the credits.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I'm so excited. I am really sided to.
Speaker 1: I had actually been like, should I talk about betrayal
Speaker 1: talk about Betrayal Legacy you and then you win and
Speaker 1: put it on the list. I'm so excited. Okay, So
Speaker 1: what Annie just said, Like, that's that's still the basic mechanics.
Speaker 1: You have a haunted house that you're exploring, and something
Speaker 1: happens that triggers a haunt, and somebody who is playing
Speaker 1: with you becomes a trader, and the betrayal legacy works
Speaker 1: the same way that other legacy games do, which is
Speaker 1: that as you play, the game itself changes, so you
Speaker 1: might have like the first time you play, this is
Speaker 1: made up. I'm not spoiling anything in the game, but
Speaker 1: like the first time you play, a particular character dies
Speaker 1: in a particular room, Well, that room might now the
Speaker 1: next time you play have something different about it because
Speaker 1: that happened in that room the last time. And so
Speaker 1: it is I think thirteen chapters. Each chapter takes place
Speaker 1: in a different year, so you're in this haunted house
Speaker 1: through time, and then once you get all through those
Speaker 1: Third Team sort of found National Games, there is a
Speaker 1: free play mode where you can play all of these
Speaker 1: other scenarios in the same game. So, because it's a
Speaker 1: horror game, it does have some you know, some of
Speaker 1: the same horror tropes that I think some people might
Speaker 1: not enjoy. Like if you're not going to enjoy a
Speaker 1: game that has a bunch of murder in it, then right, um,
Speaker 1: maybe not this one for you. But if you are
Speaker 1: into horror movies and horrors books and settings that are
Speaker 1: full of ghosts and monsters and scary things, then yeah,
Speaker 1: I highly recommend it. Yeah, I have to check out
Speaker 1: Legacy now. I've been wanting to, but now I've got to.
Speaker 1: I've go our rotation at game night here and it
Speaker 1: that is the perfect launching point for our next section,
Speaker 1: which is resources, because recently we did play Betrayal at
Speaker 1: the House on the Hill and it's kind of a
Speaker 1: rule here. And it also just kind of makes sense
Speaker 1: that if it's your game, then you're the one that's
Speaker 1: sort of explains it. Make sure it runs smoothly. It's
Speaker 1: my game, um, and people voted to play it, but
Speaker 1: I hadn't played it in a while, so I wanted
Speaker 1: to brush up on the rules. And one of the
Speaker 1: first things I did was I got online and watched
Speaker 1: the Tabletop with Will Wheaton episode on playing Betrayal at
Speaker 1: the House on the Hill to refresh my memory. And
Speaker 1: this is an online video series. I watch it on
Speaker 1: YouTube where people play tabletop games. A lot of times
Speaker 1: there are celebrities and it sounds boring, I know, but
Speaker 1: it's usually pretty entertaining and it's it's just good to
Speaker 1: see people actually playing it because reading the instructions can
Speaker 1: feel really dense, especially on a game like the trail
Speaker 1: at the House on the Hill um and seeing it
Speaker 1: kind of play out for me at least is very helpful. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I have found that very helpful for seeing how the
Speaker 1: game is played when there's not somebody experienced around to
Speaker 1: tell you how the game is played, and then it
Speaker 1: can be super entertaining. Sometimes the things that happen as
Speaker 1: they are playing are hilarious. Yeah, I seem to recall
Speaker 1: when they were playing a Ticket to the story I
Speaker 1: was gonna tell's. I guess it's well known among the
Speaker 1: tabletop but I remember it vividly as I think it's
Speaker 1: one of those like this disaster happens in the middle
Speaker 1: of the game, and then there is a slow motion
Speaker 1: replay of the disaster. We'll go check out the episode
Speaker 1: on Ticket to Ride if you want to find out
Speaker 1: what that disaster was. On top of that, there's so
Speaker 1: many things out There's so many things. There's podcast, Twitch channels,
Speaker 1: YouTube shows. You've got Becca Scott over at the Twitch
Speaker 1: channel Game the Game, Brittany Beau or Bibo over a game,
Speaker 1: wire board game Breakfast on the YouTube channel the Dice Tower.
Speaker 1: The amount of content out there on D and D
Speaker 1: alone is staggering. So there are if you're intimidated or
Speaker 1: you feel like you would just you you would feel
Speaker 1: better if you had visual examples or just hearing people
Speaker 1: talk about playing. There there's stuff for you out there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And if just watching or listening to someone's role playing
Speaker 1: campaign sounds interesting to you, there are options for that too, Yes,
Speaker 1: there are. I've thought about. I don't want to turn
Speaker 1: it into work is a thing, but I thought about
Speaker 1: recording our D n D sessions with our office campaign
Speaker 1: just because Yeah, they quite interest thought about. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: thought about pitching some kind of RPG podcast, And because
Speaker 1: I have had too much other podcast work to do,
Speaker 1: that's never been a thing that's come to fruition. I
Speaker 1: would be so into that. Um. There's also Contesta, which
Speaker 1: is a nonprofit founded in twelve to make the tabletop
Speaker 1: gaming space for marginalized folks more diverse and providing a
Speaker 1: space for them to run games. So if you're interested
Speaker 1: in running a game, you can check them out and
Speaker 1: getting involved in this at all. They have a lot
Speaker 1: of opportunities around that. So I I feel like we're
Speaker 1: about at the end of this exploration into tabletop gaming.
Speaker 1: Think so, I think so to wrap things up there,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of things going on in the world
Speaker 1: of tabletop gaming, and there are clearly areas where the
Speaker 1: industry can improve. And it makes me sad that people
Speaker 1: have been turned away from something that can be so
Speaker 1: fun and perhaps physically and mentally beneficial because they didn't
Speaker 1: feel welcome. So I'm really hoping that that will change,
Speaker 1: and that maybe maybe somebody listening to this who's been
Speaker 1: interested in it but hasn't done it for one reason
Speaker 1: or the other, maybe this episode has inspired you to
Speaker 1: go check it out. Yeah, even if you are not
Speaker 1: really into the idea of going to a gigantic convention
Speaker 1: and spending the whole weekend there, a lot of times
Speaker 1: the people that actually developed these games are working on
Speaker 1: the dealer's floor at booths like with their games to
Speaker 1: personally show you how to play, or somebody that they
Speaker 1: know really well is is going to personally show you
Speaker 1: how to game play the game. So at least doing
Speaker 1: a walk through and seeing what games are rein played
Speaker 1: and what looks fun can be really awesome. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: as we said, there are so many games out there,
Speaker 1: all kinds of games that you may be unaware of,
Speaker 1: but there are options, options, options, and we will follow
Speaker 1: up with an episode about the development aspect of gaming,
Speaker 1: so look out for that um in the meantime. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much Tracy for joining us. This has been
Speaker 1: such a lovely conversation. Thank you. I've had a really
Speaker 1: good time. Yeah, I really want to play some games.
Speaker 1: Now we got to go back to work. The alas,
Speaker 1: Where can people find you? Tracy Well, I co host
Speaker 1: Stuff You Missed in History Class with Holly Fry and
Speaker 1: so the easiest way to get me is that the
Speaker 1: Stuff you miss in History Class email, which is history
Speaker 1: podcast at how stuff Works dot com. And then we're
Speaker 1: all over social media at ms in History. I'm also
Speaker 1: personally on Twitter, but I'm often not looking at my mentions.
Speaker 1: I'm the same. So yeah, sometimes I'll see that somebody
Speaker 1: has said something like asked me a question or said
Speaker 1: something nice, and I'm like, I did not that was
Speaker 1: a week ago. Whoops. Yeah, I really have to build
Speaker 1: myself up to go on social media. I do. I
Speaker 1: don't want that to cheer you from contacting me, but
Speaker 1: it's like a once a week here we go. I
Speaker 1: spend a lot of time just scrolling to the top
Speaker 1: of the Twitter feed and being like, what's happening right now? Okay,
Speaker 1: putting this away right. You can also email this show
Speaker 1: at mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com. You
Speaker 1: can find us on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast and
Speaker 1: on Instagram at Stuff I've Never Told You. Thanks as
Speaker 1: always to our producer Andrew Howard, and thanks to you
Speaker 1: for listening to pay to Go on