Ludology 350 Beneath The Trees

Sen and special guest host Doug Levandowski (Kids on Bikes) talk with Noxweiler Ignatius Berf (or "Nox" for short) about his work on the storytelling game, Beneath The Trees Where Nobody Sees, based on the comic series of the same name. They discuss the game and it's mechanisms, how it stays true to the comic overall, and how it diverges at times. 

Erica and Sen welcome Jordan Goddard of Indy Game Lab to talk about his company's newest product - family games that are packaged inside of Christmas ornaments. Currently on Kickstarter, Jordan discusses why he chose to create games that might only come out once a year.

This episode, Sen welcomes Pete, Felix, and Daniel from Zed9 Mystery Club (www.zed9jubensha.com) in Richmond, BC to talk all about Jubensha (a.k.a. Murder Script Games). Originally developed in Chinese-speaking countries, Jubensha have been making their way to wherever the Chinese diaspora has settled and now English speakers can partake in these immersive murder mystery role playing experiences as well! The Zed9 team explains what these games are, how they're designed, hosted, and played.

Erica and Sen welcome designers of the award-winning Endeavor: Deep Sea, Carl de Visser and Jarratt Gray, along with their publishers, Helaina and Josh Cappel (Burnt Island) and Marc Specter (Grand Gamers Guild) to talk about the past, present, and future of the game. What has changed over the years and what does the future hold for this excellent exploration system?

Sen and Erica welcome Sarah Shipp as she hosts her Thinking Beyond Mechanism series. In this episode, she discusses the permissions that games and their rules give us to break social conventions within the construct of the so-called "Magic Circle".

It's the return of Erica! Sen got to goof off most of the summer without her, but now she's back and she has a great topic to start off Q3-Q4 of 2025 - Familiarity. Erica and Sen discuss how designers and publishers may want to think about familiarity when producing games. While the saying usually goes something like "familiarity breeds contempt," Erica and Sen argue that a little familiarity goes a long way to increase a game's approachability. *Audio note* Sen's mic was acting up during recording; please excuse the subtle phasing you may hear.

Sen is back after a short hiatus, this time speaking with fellow podcaster, Kristin Vermilya, about her endeavour to document the 50+ year history of role playing games in her forthcoming audio documentary series, Out of the Dungeon.  For more information on Kristin's work, check out: https://www.kristinvermilya.com/dungeon We look forward to Erica's return in 2 weeks for a whole new season of Ludology!

Sen and Erica welcome Sarah Shipp as the host of the Thinking About Mechanisms segment. This episode, Sarah talks about social distance as one of the main differentiators between video games and tabletop games.

Once again, Sen catches a wild game designer at Origins 2024! This time, he captures Josh Derksen of Lynnvander Games and gets the chance to talk about Josh's work. In particular, Sen is interested in the campaign modes that Josh has devised for several miniature battle systems. What started out as a fan mod (Heroes of the Aturi Cluster for X-Wing) has lead Josh to design campaign modes for Star Trek Dominion and BattleTech Alpha Strike alongside the other projects Lynnvander has their hands in.

Sen met with new designer but veteran writer Nathan Long (several Warhammer novels, the screenplay for Guyver: Dark Hero, and the scripts for the Wastelands and Bardstale video games) at Origins 2024. Sen had the opportunity to play Nathan's game, Shanghai Noir prior to this so he wanted to discuss how to build narrative in games.