Episode 71.2 - Role-Playing Games, Part 2

We're back, and so is Brian's voice! And we simply have to tell you about a bunch MORE role-playing games that have interesting mechanics.  We talk about games where characters don't trust each other, or perhaps do but shouldn't. We give a lot of love to Bully Pulpit Games and Rowan, Rook, & Decard, because they do consistently great work. We talk about a bunch of great GMless, no-prep games, and you can see several of them being played by our friends at Third Floor Wars: Zhenya's Wonder Tales Desperation (Brian's in this one!) The Zone We talk about an extraordinarily important and influential RPG that isn't actually very good, and a new RPG that's extremely cool, but we can't tell you why. Have you ever wanted to play a character whose body and mind are being colonized by a swarm of sentient, psionic bees? Have we got the game for you! Sex moves? Sex moves! What great TTRPG mechanics did we overlook that you want to tell us about? What do you want to hear us talk about now that we've finished our TTRPG digression? Come visit our Discord server to chat with us and other like-minded game nerds! As always, thank you for listening. Please consider writing us an iTunes review if you like what you hear! We'd also love to have you visit our website and let us know what kinds of games we should discuss next. You're also more than welcome to comment on the episode page, or our Discord, or our Facebook page, or tag @ascentofboardgames on Bluesky. Whatever way you prefer to share your opinions with us, we'd love to hear them.  As always, we appreciate your listening - stay safe out there, and happy gaming! Website: https://www.ascentofboardgames.com Email: [email protected] Discord: https://discord.gg/tdH3QAn  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ascentboardgames/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ascentofboardgames.bsky.social Discord: http://discord.ascentofboardgames.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ascentofboardgames/ And, very occasionally, Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/ascentofboardgames Intro and outro music is "Evening Melodrama" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under a Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. The Ascent of Board Games is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Some rights reserved. Thank you for listening!

I know, I know, we said we weren't going to do the Ascent of Role-Playing Games thing. And we're not! But there ARE a bunch of role-playing games that have some interesting mechanics, and we're going to be talking about those this month and next. (If you don't like it, join our Discord server so you can vote against it the next time we run a poll!) Brian's voice is absolutely shot to hell after weeks of coughing - apologies for making you hear it. "I don't know how we played this game before spreadsheets." Frank insists on telling us about a staggeringly bad TTRPG. We talk about games with weird dice, cards as dice, Jenga as dice, and no dice at all. Joe wins Vampire. An inexplicable (but not undeserved) shout-out to the great state of Wyoming. What great TTRPG mechanics  (before the mid-2000s) did we overlook that you want to tell us about? What must we not overlook in Part 2? Come visit our Discord server to chat with us and other like-minded game nerds! As always, thank you for listening. Please consider writing us an iTunes review if you like what you hear! We'd also love to have you visit our website and let us know what kinds of games we should discuss next. You're also more than welcome to comment on the episode page, or our Discord, or our Facebook page, or tag @ascentofboardgames on Bluesky. Whatever way you prefer to share your opinions with us, we'd love to hear them.  As always, we appreciate your listening - stay safe out there, and happy gaming! Website: https://www.ascentofboardgames.com Email: [email protected] Discord: https://discord.gg/tdH3QAn  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ascentboardgames/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ascentofboardgames.bsky.social Discord: http://discord.ascentofboardgames.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ascentofboardgames/ And, very occasionally, Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/ascentofboardgames Intro and outro music is "Evening Melodrama" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under a Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. The Ascent of Board Games is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Some rights reserved. Thank you for listening!

That's right, folks, it's episode 70! Do I hear 75? No? Episode 70, going once, going twice...sold to the discerning podcast listener! IS Jayson actually Agent 47? Probably not. Forget we said anything. Frank calling out Reiner Knizia within 4 minutes of the episode start "What is fish?" Help us, Jane Austen!  Is this the first Eurogame?  What happens when you take the auctions out of a game that's all about auctions?  What is a Dutch Auction, and should anyone be offended by the term? Frank continues to be our resident board game hipster Are we wrong in our opinions on auction games? Are there some that we overlooked that you want to tell us about? Come visit our newly-revived Discord server to chat with us and other like-minded game nerds! As always, thank you for listening. Please consider writing us an iTunes review if you like what you hear! We'd also love to have you visit our website and let us know what kinds of games we should discuss next. You're also more than welcome to comment on the episode page, or our Discord, or our Facebook page, or tag @ascentofboardgames on Bluesky. Whatever way you prefer to share your opinions with us, we'd love to hear them.  As always, we appreciate your listening - stay safe out there, and happy gaming! Website: https://www.ascentofboardgames.com Email: [email protected] Discord: https://discord.gg/tdH3QAn  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ascentboardgames/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ascentofboardgames.bsky.social Discord: http://discord.ascentofboardgames.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ascentofboardgames/ And, occasionally, Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/ascentofboardgames Intro and outro music is "Evening Melodrama" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under a Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. The Ascent of Board Games is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Some rights reserved. Thank you for listening!

This is episode 69. We're discussing sex games. We're sorry. (Except Joe...Joe isn't sorry at all.) Sandi has joined us to try to provide a little bit of maturity to the topic; we'll let you decide if she succeeded. This is an adults-only episode (and we mean it this time), but we won't be offended if you decide to give this one a miss. Just come back next month, please? I promise we won't do it again. We find a series of weird connections between sex games and big wargaming companies - Columbia Games, Avalon Hill, and Victory Games - not to mention well-known designers like Sid Sackson and Wolfgang Kramer, and even Nolan Bushnell from Atari. Mike asks, "Is there anything more sexy than puns?" Young Mike learns about the irrepressible dynamo that was Dr. Ruth. A Brief Debate Upon the Merits of Identifying Breasts by Means of Nipple Shape An article about Lacerunner, which is not a game about sex and is not likely to ever be released, but sounds really interesting regardless. Come visit our newly-revived Discord server to chat with us and some other like-minded game nerds! As always, thank you for listening. Please consider writing us an iTunes review if you like what you hear! We'd also love to have you visit our website and let us know what kinds of games we should discuss next. You're also more than welcome to comment on the episode page, or our Discord, or our Facebook page, or tag @ascentofboardgames on Bluesky. Whatever way you prefer to share your opinions with us, we'd love to hear them.  As always, we appreciate your listening - stay safe out there, and happy gaming! Website: https://www.ascentofboardgames.com Email: [email protected] Discord: https://discord.gg/tdH3QAn  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ascentboardgames/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ascentofboardgames.bsky.social Discord: http://discord.ascentofboardgames.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ascentofboardgames/ And, occasionally, Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/ascentofboardgames Intro and outro music is "Evening Melodrama" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under a Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. Additional music this episode by HYPERTUNES. The Ascent of Board Games is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Some rights reserved. Thank you for listening!

Well, we made it to 2025, technically. What new board games are coming out to give us hope for the future? Frank describes one of his choices as "big...sprawling...French..." Joe is unhappy with Mike's love/hate relationship with Tales of the Arabian Nights Has Joe made The Ultimate Crowdfunding Mistake? Will Frank go 3-for-3 on Fantasy Name: Dramatic Subtitle? The delightful Deep Regrets teaser trailer that sold Jayson on the game Are we wrong in some way? (Almost certainly.) Do you want to tell us what the correct choices would have been? Come visit our newly-revived Discord server to chat with us and some other like-minded game nerds! As always, thank you for listening. Please consider writing us an iTunes review if you like what you hear! We'd also love to have you visit our website and let us know what kinds of games we should discuss next. You're also more than welcome to comment on the episode page, or our Discord, or our Facebook page, or tag @ascentofboardgames on Bluesky. Whatever way you prefer to share your opinions with us, we'd love to hear them.  As always, we appreciate your listening - stay safe out there, and happy gaming! Website: https://www.ascentofboardgames.com Email: [email protected] Discord: https://discord.gg/tdH3QAn  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ascentboardgames/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ascentofboardgames.bsky.social Discord: http://discord.ascentofboardgames.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ascentofboardgames/ And, occasionally, Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/ascentofboardgames Intro and outro music is "Evening Melodrama" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under a Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. The Ascent of Board Games is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Some rights reserved. Thank you for listening!

The end of the year draws nigh, so of course we have to do a year-end countdown. All five of us - even the near-mythical Jayson - have prepared a list of our five favorite games from The Year That Was - enjoy! We argue about what a game's name means because of a (missing?) apostrophe Frank teaches Jayson the lore of the Mothman All of Frank's choices are, for once, board games! The same cannot be said for Joe. We are definitely NOT starting The Ascent of Role-Playing Games, but here are some TTRPGs that we like and you might want to check out: Nimble Daggerheart HEDGE (Kickstarter ends Tuesday!) Also, we're bringing our Discord server back, and there's been more activity in the last week that we've seen in a long time! Come along and chat with us and some other like-minded game nerds! As always, thank you for listening. Please consider writing us an iTunes review if you like what you hear! We'd also love to have you visit our website and let us know what kinds of games we should discuss next. You're also more than welcome to comment on the episode page, or our Discord, or our Facebook page, or tag @ascentofboardgames on Bluesky. Whatever way you prefer to share your opinions with us, we'd love to hear them.  As always, we appreciate your listening - stay safe out there, and happy gaming! Website: https://www.ascentofboardgames.com Email: [email protected] Discord: https://discord.gg/tdH3QAn  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ascentboardgames/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ascentofboardgames.bsky.social Discord: http://discord.ascentofboardgames.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ascentofboardgames/ And, occasionally, Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/ascentofboardgames Intro and outro music is "Evening Melodrama" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under a Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. The Ascent of Board Games is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Some rights reserved. Thank you for listening!

Happy post-Halloween! Now that everyone's hopped up on sugar (and/or in a sugar crash coma), let's finish our discussion of party games! Come along as we discuss: Mike's greatest weakness - a limited knowledge of Campbell's Soup varieties! What game company was founded because of a flooded salmon boat? "They're Belgian, but that's French enough." (We're sorry.) A mercifully brief digression into Marcel Proust's 7-volume À la recherche du temps perdu. And a few video/picture links we mention along the way: A well-shot, well-edited game of Skull: https://boardgamegeek.com/image/2432884/concept Polygon plays Wavelength: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pS-XT-5R26Q As always, thank you for listening. We return you now to our monthly begging for an iTunes review. We'd also love to have you visit our website and let us know what kinds of games we should discuss next. You're also more than welcome to comment on the episode page, or our Facebook page, or tag @ascentofboardgames on Bluesky. Whatever way you prefer to share your opinions with us, we'd love to hear them.  As always, we appreciate your listening - stay safe out there, and happy gaming! Website: https://www.ascentofboardgames.com Email: [email protected] Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ascentboardgames/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ascentofboardgames.bsky.social Discord: http://discord.ascentofboardgames.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ascentofboardgames/ And, occasionally, Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/ascentofboardgames Intro and outro music is "Evening Melodrama" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under a Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. The Ascent of Board Games is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Some rights reserved. Thank you for listening!

Hi folks! We're back this month to talk about party games, though the last week or so hasn't been as much fun as we'd like. Between scheduling issues and hurricane-induced power outages, this episode was a bit rushed; as a result, it's ended up a bit on the short side, so we hope you'll forgive us. Also, instead of begging for an iTunes review this month, we'd like to ask that you donate what you can to the American Red Cross or another reputable charity providing relief to those battered by Hurricane Helene. All of us are doing fine, but there are a lot of people out there that need help. Meanwhile, in brighter news: Did Burt Reynolds invent Pictionary? Well, kind of... The very worst game component to have in your airline luggage Why were so many classic games published by a chemical manufacturer, or a game company owned by a cereal company? QOTD: "There are probably some rules" - Michael Hanft, September 2024 As always, thank you for listening. We'd love to have you visit our website and let us know what kinds of games we should discuss next. You're also more than welcome to comment on the episode page, or our Facebook page, or tag @ascentofboardgames on Bluesky. Whatever way you prefer to share your opinions with us, we'd love to hear them.  As always, we appreciate your listening - stay safe out there, and happy gaming! Website: https://www.ascentofboardgames.com Email: [email protected] Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ascentboardgames/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ascentofboardgames.bsky.social Discord: http://discord.ascentofboardgames.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ascentofboardgames/ And, occasionally, Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/ascentofboardgames Intro and outro music is "Evening Melodrama" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under a Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. The Ascent of Board Games is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Some rights reserved. Thank you for listening!

Remember way back in Episode 33, when we talked about two-player games but excluded fighting and war games because there were too many? Now is when we finally talk about the fighty ones! Join us as: Brian's tongue stops working. We talk about chess - good chess channels on YouTube, weird chess games on forums, and absolutely bonkers chess games on the computer. We look back at an early first-person shooter - in book form. We haggle about the intricacies of the Avalon Hill game complexity scale. And we generally correct each other, talk smack, and otherwise have fun. As always, thank you for listening. If you have the time to give us an iTunes review, please do - it really helps us grow! We'd also love to have you visit our website and let us know what kinds of games we should discuss next. You're also more than welcome to comment on the episode page, or our Facebook page, or tag @ascentofboardgames on Bluesky. Whatever way you prefer to share your opinions with us, we'd love to hear them.  As always, we appreciate your listening - stay safe out there, and happy gaming! Website: https://www.ascentofboardgames.com Email: [email protected] Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ascentboardgames/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ascentofboardgames.bsky.social Discord: http://discord.ascentofboardgames.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ascentofboardgames/ And, occasionally, Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/ascentofboardgames Intro and outro music is "Evening Melodrama" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under a Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. The Ascent of Board Games is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Some rights reserved. Thank you for listening!

It's time for another deep dive - this time into the collected works of Czech game guru Vlaada Chvátil (whose name we hope we pronounced mostly right most of the time, but no promises). Join us as: We examine some of the...questionable design choices of Vlaada's first board game. We talk about the metallic composition of these famously flimsy early miniatures. We learn that Frank likes Talisman, and Mike dislikes that. Brian gratuitously quotes Walt Whitman. We talk about excellent digital versions of two of Vlaada's early classics. We fail to adequately convey the sheer madness of Bunny Bunny Moose Moose. And we mention the very clever twist that makes Codenames: Duet stand out. As always, thank you for listening. If you have the time to give us an iTunes review, please do - it really helps us grow! We'd also love to have you visit our website and let us know what kinds of games we should discuss next. You're also more than welcome to comment on the episode page, or our Facebook page, or tag @ascentofboardgames on Bluesky. Whatever way you prefer to share your opinions with us, we'd love to hear them.  As always, we appreciate your listening - stay safe out there, and happy gaming! Website: https://www.ascentofboardgames.com Email: [email protected] Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ascentboardgames/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ascentofboardgames.bsky.social Discord: http://discord.ascentofboardgames.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ascentofboardgames/ And, occasionally, Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/ascentofboardgames Intro and outro music is "Evening Melodrama" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under a Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. The Ascent of Board Games is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Some rights reserved. Thank you for listening!