Good evening, you are listening to Three Moves Ahead, and I'm your host, Rob Zackney. With me tonight is podcast familiar and freelance writer Julian Murdoch. Julian, welcome to the show. Thank you. We're also joined by frequent guest and designer civilization for Soren Johnson. Hey, everybody. How's it going? Finally, we welcome designer Paul Sittesanti, formerly of Maxus and Wizards of the Coast, to the show. Paul, thanks for

joining us tonight. Thank you. Happy to be here. So ever since Soren started interning at

3M.A, he and Julie have been dying to talk about board games and their broader relevance,

the future of the hobby, and sort of the crossover between video games and board games.

So Julian and Soren, why don't you sort of take us in?

You know, what did you have in mind when you brought this up? So the reason Sorin pointed out right

before we started recording that like I'm always like chewing the inside of my cheek to not talk

about board games on whatever given topic, whether we're talking about air power or balance issues or whatever the topic is.

I'm always thinking about all these board game pieces.

And so first of all, just the idea of having a show where we take those gloves off, I think is useful.

But also, I think I sort of see board games as a place where the mechanics get laid bare in strategy games, where they often get buried in video games.

And so I actually find it sort of an interesting playground to talk about these kinds of ideas because the mechanics are always right in front of you because the players, the one who has to take care of them.

And Soren, I don't know what you were thinking about when you wanted to talk board games. Yeah, well, I mean, I think it's interesting that you, you know, people often do feel like they need to apologize for talking about board games when they're on a video game podcast. And that's just so strange to me because to me it's all, like there's almost no difference between a board you know, a board game and a, uh, a video game, you know, it's all, it's all part of the same continuum. I think as designers, especially, as game designers, especially, like, board games are really appealing because, yeah, you know, you get to the mechanics, you know, immediately. Um, and since, you know, these are all games that, you know, you're playing with people and you're, you're not just, it's not just, you know, like in RTS, you might be playing against someone you can't see, you can't see what their actions, their reactions are. So you're playing multiplayer, but it's kind of, you know, it's not really a very social experience. When you're sitting around a table with someone, you get sort of this immediate feedback of

like, you know, what people like, what they don't like, you know, what, you know, like, is this like a Knieetsia game where, you know, you can kind of tell you're in the middle of it because no one has spoken for five minutes, you know, or, you know, is it something more, you know, bolsterous, boisterous, like

apples to apples or something like that.

I mean, you know, the it something more, you know, bolstrous, boisterous like, you know, apples to apples or something like that? I mean, you know, the games lead to different atmospheres, you know, I mean, it's just, you know, it's something, I'm just often surprised. I do run into a lot of game designers who aren't really, you know, into board games, and that just often really surprises me. Paul, you're one of the few people I know that's been on both sides of the fence, right?

I mean, you've designed video games, you've got a board game coming out, right?

Right, yeah, I started at Wizard of the Coast for five years and so I was doing tabletop card

games and then made the switch over to video games, which was something I'd always wanted to do,

and then just recently have gone back to board games, sort of stepped away from video games

for a little while, and I have a game coming out called Penny Arcade Gammers vs. Evil

with the Penny Arcade webcomic IP, and then I'm working on three or four other designs

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