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Thanks for your support. The Dice Tower, episode 225.

Games that change our lives.

Yeah. Welcome to the Dice Tower, a podcast about board games and card games, but especially the people who play them.

In this episode, Jeff examines the butterfly effect. The chief expands his gaming circles,

and a new contributor looks at why we play games in the first place. Plus, Tom reviews a guide for aspiring game designers.

We debut a new contest, and we look at the games that influenced us the most.

This episode is sponsored by Clever Mojo Games, makers of the new Sunrise City board game.

Whether you're the city planner or the lobbyist, the lawyer, or the union boss, you've got a role to play in building Sunrise City.

Check it out now at kickstarter.com. And by Mirthworks, bringing board games to the web, starting with Alien Frontiers. Visit Mirthworks.com to sign up for more information and to get access to their beta version of Alien Frontiers.

I'm Eric Summerer, and here's your host, the Game Party, or would that be Party Game, nominee for 2012? It's Tom Vassel. Oh, wait a minute, so I'm now a game. You are the game party nominee for 2012.

Since your birthday just happened, you are now legally able to run for President of the United States.

Yeah, that was kind of a lame birthday.

That's like the one milestone you had left. You can now run for president.

Well, no. Well, 35. I told all the kids at school, I'm halfway to death. Yay. Well, no, it's just that, you know, my wife was in the hospital with my daughter. Yeah. And as a catch-up to all my readers, my daughter had surgery and she is fine. It's just that she is now in the hospital for purposes of therapy, physical therapy, because she can't move the left side of her body. and it doesn't look like that's going to happen for any time soon. But my wife stays with her during the week. Then during weekends, I switch and go out with her. And so we don't really see each other except in passing. And then when I'm either with all five kids or at the hospital with my daughter. So I'm very, very busy. So it was an interesting birthday. One of the girls at school said she'd make me cookies, and that still hasn't happened. But I did get a couple cakes, and I got like a thousand people saying, happy birthday on Facebook. It's almost, Facebook's such an odd thing because it just seems a little more impersonal when everyone says, thank you, happy birthday. I don't know don't know they all come out of the woodwork yeah it's kind of it's it's a little strange but i'm thankful for all the people saying happy birthday don't get me wrong but i don't did i get any gifts oh yeah my my daughter bought me a clock so there you go well anyway i'm tom vassal in case you're wondering and in case you're wondering i'm eric summer and we're talking about board games, really, really. Tom Vassel, in case you're wondering. And in case you're wondering, I'm Eric Summer.

And we're talking about board games, really, really.

So we will jump into that and talk about some board games that we have played recently. Indeed. One of the board games I want to talk about is one that we will actually be talking about a little bit later on in the episode, but I'm going to talk about my experiences with it now. Okay. Ultimate Werewolf is a version of

Werewolf by Ted Osbach.

There are many versions of

werewolf out there. I believe Asma Day makes one. DV games made one. They used to be

called Da Vinci Games. There's probably, I think the Looney Labs makes one. They did at one point. Yeah,

actually, yes, I have that copy, actually. Okay. And then you can just play it with a deck of cards. Right. But the ultimate werewolf is really true. It's by far the best version of Werewolf. There's like 40 different roles, beautiful artwork and everything. And he's just come out with a new version of it that has an expansion in it called Night Terrors, which has like five or six new characters that do stuff at night. My favorite is the boogeyman. When you play with the boogeyman, if the werewolves take too long at night to choose who dies and he kills somebody who is awake at night. So he might kill a werewolf. He might

...