Podcast Guy 0:00
Announcer, welcome to Design Thinking Games the podcast where game design meets player experience and every game is a chance to support the community. Celebrate this fifth season of the design thinking games podcast by not just talking about how games play, but diving into how they’re made, how they’re tested, and how communities keep them alive. All types of games are on the table, from table top to digital solo journaling to massive multiplayer. Come explore all forms of gaming and the design thinking behind them with your host, Tim Broadwater. Find every episode, including this one, wherever you get your podcasts or jump in at https://designthinkinggames.com now roll up your sleeves, open the play test notes and celebrate the power of play.
Tim Broadwater 0:52
Welcome everyone to season five of the design thinking games podcast. It’s been five years. It’s been crazy. It’s been a cool journey. We’ve got to interview a lot of people, and we got to talk a lot about cool, different kind of design and game stuff that’s been going on in the game industry and for player experience and the community. Some questions that I’ve been getting at different conventions or events that I’ve been attending, I’ve been kind of capturing and I thought I would speak to those specific questions. I guess question one is, what was the biggest shift or evolution between season four and season five? I think we started out kind of as a User Experience podcast, and where’s the intersection between UX and gaming? Because we thought, you know, user experience people would like gaming and a lot, that was our hypotheses. But then as we progressed through the seasons, we realized that not only was that correct, but gaming people you know were kind of just more by default, play testers, creators, marketers, kind of all in one Renaissance people, because they I don’t necessarily had to be. And so then we started to really focus on Okay, interviewing game designers. And then that kind of transmogrified into okay. We could do this. We could start designing our own kind of game. And then flash forward to season five. Season Five is, well, season four, which, if you haven’t listened to, you should definitely go back and listen to. It talks to a bunch of different game designers who just got published are funded on Kickstarter their first game. And so it’s exciting. They have a lot of tips and information about, you know, how to succeed and what to do and what they learned. So that’s very valuable. But season five of the podcast is specifically going to focus on interviewing indie game developers and designers and in context in the wild. And so a lot of these are taken at cons, specifically origins Game Fair in Columbus, Ohio, for June 2025 so it’ll be kind of a mess up of that, and we’ll be promoting a lot of other different podcasters and game designers. So yeah, those are the changes that you will see kind of in season four, between Season Four to Season Five last year, I think we maybe got one or two newsletters out. It’s something we’re really bad about, so we’re firing up the newsletter again. So please go and if you haven’t already, sign up for the design thinking game newsletter to get updates about the podcast and what conventions and stuff will be on, but more importantly, all the game updates for the bevy of games that we’re kind of getting out there, the part from the newsletter which we’ll be updating. The last thing is the thirst board game. So thirst, which spoke to a little bit we’ll be launching. It has been a whole process, and then especially in this climate with tariffs, I’m sure you’re sick of hearing that, but that’s something that we’ve had to kind of negotiate, as you may or may not know, first, the two to four player vampire board game that Michael and I have been working on is going to launch on October 1, or it’s already on Kickstarter. Pre launch, you can go follow it now. Please do. But on October 1, we’re going to try to launch it. Where we are right now is we have a voice actor and instructional designer, kind of working with a video editor for the Kickstarter. So we’re literally putting together the final pieces for the launch the last two months. And so we’ll also be like, probably pretty posting frequently on social media about the update and everything. But it’s been a journey, and it’s been a favorable one. And hey, you know we can I’ve heard from multiple people now. From multiple game designers, some of them who are going to be featured this season and the podcast is that, you know, if your Kickstarter doesn’t make it, you know, it’s a learning experience. You don’t lose your followers. You can always retry again and and I’ve know multiple people that have happened to I’m I’m not planning for that. I’m actually doing more so, but planning to succeed. So that’s the strategy. But yeah, so like I said, if you’re having on the https://thirstboardgame.com Please go there and check it out. Sign up to be notified and it launches this year. Now, on to a lot of the interviews conducted at Origins this year.
Tim Broadwater 5:45
As I walk around the outside of the greater Columbus Convention Center at origins Game Fair 2025 I notice out in front of me there’s a lot of yelling and movement. There are people in foam, swords and shields and helmets, 10 to 20 on one side, 10 to 20 on another, and they’re squaring off to buffer LARP against each other. I see a couple people in charge of it, and I asked them if they have a time to talk.
Branden Webb 6:22
All right. Well, my mundane name is Branden. Webb is what I use in the real world. And my Amtgard name, my persona name is Brill black sonan. Everybody in the LARP picks their own name and their own persona to go with it.
Elliott Hedrick 6:35
And I’m Elliott Hedrick in the mundane world or outside of the game. Inside of the game, I go by beaten Angley the black with the last of that actually being part of the belt house that I’m in as part of our part of our game is the process of becoming families within a belt. Squire at arms, Squires, Knights, that sort of thing, within the fantasy LARP that we do
Tim Broadwater 7:01
as children, families, young adults, fathers, mothers are beating each other in the background with foam swords and weapons. I ask, what is this?
Branden Webb 7:14
Amtgard. A M T G A R D Amtgard is a wide ranging fantasy LARP of a generic setting all over the United States, or chapters in every single state and in Canada. Think we still have one in Mexico.
Elliott Hedrick 7:28
I believe so in at least one over in Europe
Branden Webb 7:31
Yeah, at least one over in Europe. We had one in South Korea for a while. But when I say we’re generic, you can be from any fantasy world you like. You can be from DND, you can be from Middle Earth, you can be from Game of Thrones. You just can’t be one of the main characters, like you’re from Middle Earth, you can’t be Frodo. You can be a hobbit. You can’t be Frodo. And we’re generic in the fact that we don’t we’re not a heavy role play game, but we encourage role play so you’re not going to die. Your character is not going to die, playing our game
Elliott Hedrick 8:00
Unless you want them
Branden Webb 8:01
Unless you want them to for role play purposes, you can have that happen. Yeah. So what we what we’re mainly here to do is we promote a culture inside the game, learning skills, Arts and Sciences, teaching human service, and then we promote also fun and exercise through fighting and battle games.
Elliott Hedrick 8:18
So this is my fourth year running the Amgard room for origins, specifically, we have somebody else that runs Gen Con currently, who’s actually here doing classwork with modern technology.
Branden Webb 8:30
There’s no need for me to travel. I reach out to a con, or they reach out to me their organization’s email, which is like, literally, the silver host of pro con mail, and we discuss and negotiate. And then I probably have somebody in the household who’s local, like we have somebody does indie comic con. They live in Indiana. We have somebody who does colossal or was going to do colossal con up by the Great Lakes, and they live up there, so there’s no need for me to travel. They reach out to our our group after seeing one of these, and I just go, okay, cool. And I turn around to our group, which has like, 80 plus volunteers in the larger, larger group. I go, Hey, we have con that wants us over there, who wants to go do this con. And then we make sure that group has the resources they need and the volunteers they need to get it going, I mean. And then inside the amp card organization, we also have events like, we have an events, small events, from like 1020 people all the way up to, I think the largest one this part of the country is keep and all that. So it really depends what level you’re at.
Elliott Hedrick 9:31
I say the largest event that we have in the country is gather,
Branden Webb 9:35
either gather or Guild Wars
Elliott Hedrick 9:37
or Guild Wars. Those are down in southern the southern US, yeah, and those, those will pull four digits
Tim Broadwater 9:45
As another group of individuals come up to get on their foam weapons and armor and learn how to participate in group combat, I asked the individuals if. If they could tell me a little bit more about the different houses in Amtgard.
Branden Webb 10:04
Oh, yes. Many, many other houses that do different things. We have house fierce which supports and encourages the LGBT I can talk the LGBTQ community within amgard all over the country. He’s also part of a house called House Jedi, which is another service based household that helps run things. And then the embom I’m wearing is for a fighting company called the mystic falcons, which are other struggle organizations with our group, these fighting companies.
Elliott Hedrick 10:35
The thing for fighting comes is that we feel I’m also mystic Falcon. We field together as a unit.
Branden Webb 10:40
So when we go battle, our group stays together. Everybody who’s wearing these joins up together, and we form as a unit. And there are other ones. There’s one of the big ones in Ohio is called tempo. There’s another one called the king makers, that could just go on and on. Oh yeah. We’re not one of the largest LARPs in the country by far, but we are. We are pretty big.
Tim Broadwater 11:01
I’m familiar with LARPing as well as role playing, and I think this is called boffer LARPing. So I wanted to clarify
Branden Webb 11:10
100% you’re spot on
Elliott Hedrick 11:13
Foam weapons.
Branden Webb 11:14
Sometimes I’ll call, also called medium contact.
Elliott Hedrick 11:16
We’re not going full tilt, but we’re also not going light touch. Y
Branden Webb 11:21
eah, you don’t have hit points in this game. You’re not going to worry about somebody walking up to you with with a little foam starting like 222, now if I hit you in the arm, you can’t use that arm anymore. This level is easy, yep. Moving up from here, it gets more complex depending on what you’re doing.
Elliott Hedrick 11:37
So what we have right now is, this is just our open battlefield. Everybody has the same abilities. You get hit in the arm, you lose that arm, you get hit in your torso. You die, go respawn. You get into more of the Amgart, like at our local park days or at Amgart specific events. Yeah, we might be more into different characters and costumes. Brill here definitely does that more than I do, but that’s also when you introduce classes. You have your warriors, your Yeah, significant
Branden Webb 12:09
Like armor gets you more hits you can take are there’s archery. If you shoot arrows at people, you can throw things
Elliott Hedrick 12:15
For safety reasons we don’t have that.
Branden Webb 12:17
Yeah, your spell casters, who have little things they can throw or spells they can say. But that’s just the battlefield off the battlefield. We have all kinds of arts, like people do, weaving, sewing, storytelling, making their own arm, or brewing alcohol, cooking food, telling stories, singing, song. We actually split it off the SCA in the 80s. So and even then, we’re not like a lot of other LARPs, like, Okay, you go play IFGS International Family spaghetti society. They’re great LARP, but you make a character. That character is a paladin in Amgart, you create a persona. And our classes only go to level six, so you’ll eventually play every class you’re not locked in.
Tim Broadwater 12:57
As more people come up to the amguard station to participate. I asked what the concerns were running an event space like this at a convention,
Branden Webb 13:09
two biggest things we have we’re not babysitters under the age of 13. They need a parent in the room. That is our organization rules, and we run into that problem a lot. Not so much here anymore, because we’ve established the precedent. And then the other one, I would say, is safety. Yeah, our our household, the silver host, we’ve worked very hard to have that environment where you’re going to be safe here, you’re going to be accepted here. If something goes wrong, we’re either going to immediately handle or get you the resources you need to handle it as quick as possible. We don’t want anybody to feel unincluded. We don’t want anybody to feel unsafe. None of that is tolerated in our room.
Tim Broadwater 13:45
Everyone looks like they’re having so much fun, there’s a whole level of energy and excitement in combat when people put foam swords and shields in people’s hands, and so I wanted to ask how people could get involved.
Elliott Hedrick 13:57
We’ve got a couple different spaces you can go to. The first one I recommend is amp card.com which is still amtgard.com that has all of our basic rules, as well as a what’s called a chapter finder, which are all of the local groups are called chapters. Now, is that always up to date? No, but it’s a good place to start. From there go look that chapter up inside of Facebook, or, you know, other forms. We also have the online record keeper, also known as the orc. I want to know whoever came up with that, because they are my best friend. That is a international system. So like, let’s say that I live here in Ohio. Currently, I have 52 credits in warrior. I move out to California. I go, Yeah, my orc is Ethan Angley, the black. They go, cool. Found you. Here’s, you know, everything carries with you. You don’t have to restart every time. Yeah. And that also really helps to bring up.
Branden Webb 14:51
Look him up, you find his waiver? You find his awards? You find his attendance for every year
Elliott Hedrick 14:55
Exactly, exactly. So it’s really nice in that regard. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So those are the good places to start, as well as, and I mentioned briefly Facebook itself. There’s many Amgart communities on Facebook this, no, this is my fourth year running.
Branden Webb 15:08
This is our 17 years at Origins. Actually, technically, ran for seven, but that was covid too. So yeah. And then the guy before me ran it for close to 10 years, close to 10 years. So, oh yeah, we used to be down in the back by Hayes, and every as we’ve gotten better, they’ve moved us farther up, and here we are.
Elliott Hedrick 15:28
it’s been since covid In particular, it’s when we got c150 and then came, you know, rock up. We need bigger space, so it’s one of the best problems to have last year. And I don’t have the specific numbers with me, but I think it was our turn style attendance was about 10% of the overall con attendance.
Branden Webb 15:47
Well, considering when we, when we, when we were back down in the Hayes room, it was about 250 people for a good convention. And as we’ve moved up,
Elliott Hedrick 15:55
we saw that yesterday,
Branden Webb 15:57
yeah, that we, yeah, we had 250 people on Wednesday.
Michael Schofield 16:20
Thirst is a two to four player vampire vs vampire game of Dominion in which players become powerful, monstrous and bloodthirsty. Vampires rise from the graveyard, hungry to find that you are not the only creature of darkness in town. Fight other vampires for dominion over neighborhoods and for influence. Hunt, but hunt wisely. The first vampire to accrue an influence score of 10 wins and can finally slake their thirst. Thirst is on Kickstarter. Sign up to get notified of its launch at thirstboardgame.com Find thirst and other things we’re working on at designthinkinggames.com
Danielle Reynolds 17:19
Join me. Danielle Reynolds for game design, unboxed a podcast where I interview game designers about the games they’ve made from inspiration to publication. We will unbox the story of where the initial game idea came from, and the following journey to getting the game made and into the player’s hands every other Tuesday. But not only that, I’m taking the best parts of my podcast and turning it into bite sized videos on Instagram and Tiktok, so follow along at Game Design unboxed to learn more tips and tricks from other industry professionals.
Podcast Guy 17:58
Thank you for listening to design thinking games, your time is valuable, and it means a lot that you spend it here in season five. Stay connected on Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok and YouTube. DMS are always open, and don’t forget to visit design thinking games.com to request topics, ask questions or see what else is going on. If indie vampire board games sound like your thing. Check out thirst, where vampires and minions fight for influence in a dark city. Head to thirstboardgame.com to follow the journey and get updates when it launches on Kickstarter, October 1, until next time game on you.