Steve Arnott
speaker
315 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Sep 2024
last heard Sep 2024
Steve Arnott’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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It's much more fun. Yeah, like, you know, we're just not playing that game anymore. So I guess, yeah, it needs a lot more stress testing from that perspective. So there are lots of differences, and we've touched on a few. But what would you say is similar? What are the overlaps you've both experienced when designing board games and designing tabletop RPGs? What's the same?
Okay, but you'd say it's going to be as a board game opposed to be as an RPG system.
Yeah, so it's fair to say that all your RPG experience has really heavily influenced your board game design because it's very much in that framework.
Yeah, but Mark, what's similar for you? So we're wandering into a different question, which is what's the difference between board game and RPG? But let's stay on topic. So what's similar for you, Mark, when you're designing board games versus RPGs?
No, I see what you mean. I mean, for me, I'm not as fussy about RPG system. Like you say, it's more about the people I'm sharing a table with. But for me, I feel there's more pressure on a tabletop experience because there's more commitment from me, even as a player. I know I'm going to sit down, even to do a one-shot, this is going to be about four hours.
And of course, there are board games that last four hours. There's some that last like eight to 12 hours. But... A lot of board games now are like, you get ones that are between like 30 minutes and two hours, and that's generally what a lot of board games I play are.
And so that kind of takes the pressure off the experience for me, especially if it's something like Split the Horde that's like 20, 30 minutes. I'm like, okay, well, even if I don't like this, it's not a lot of my time. But for an RPG, if I'm worried that I'm not going to like something, I'm like, I've got to commit and sit there for four hours. It feels... I don't know. That's another difference.
Fair enough, fair enough. I'm going to rope us back though to that problematic question, just so we can start a flame war on the internet, about what defines the difference between an RPG and a board game. Because I've heard, it seems people have some interesting discussions about that. And some of those very obvious ones, like Dungeons and Dragons is an RPG, chess is more of like a board game.
But I've seen some people talking about different games, like There are some board games that are very narratively led, like Above and Below or Gloomhaven, HeroQuest. And I've had some people discuss that they believe that Gloomhaven or HeroQuest are RPGs, whereas I tend to think of them as board games.
What's one of those? It's going to start arguments.
There can be a social element.
Well, I was just thinking things like Sheriff of Nottingham or Cash and Guns, there's a big social element in that. Also, the werewolves, playing werewolves at Miller's Hollow, that's a hugely social, like social deduction games have a huge social element with it, where you're playing a character, but I wouldn't define that as a
We had to play and learn them so we could teach them because the games library was like 700, 800 unique titles or something. And between the team, we needed to be able to have the majority of them able to teach. So there was a lot of game playing so you can roughly teach someone a game in that time.
Well, I mean, I play a lot of RPGs, play a lot of board games, but I don't have a clear definition. That's why I was putting the question on you two. That's why.
Yeah, like a really small thing, for example, like we took a prototype to Aircon to play with people there. And there's a set collection element to one of the titles, The Way to Get Victory Points. And we realised that actually if we just made the backgrounds of those sets all the same colours, it's easier at a glance to see what you're doing.
So that changed the artwork style, which is, you know, a change to the game, but it's not like groundbreakingly different. It's just we're changing the coloured backgrounds. And actually the placement of where some of the icons were, actually, it makes more sense and things like that.
So this last year, I feel it's been loads of little tweaks because there's been lots of playtests, public playtesting.
Yeah, we're doing it Order of the Stick style. Okay. But, you know, that worked.
Well, no, no.
Yeah, absolutely.
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