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Patrick Rauland: Hello everyone and welcome to the Indie Board Game Designers Podcast where I sit down with a different independent game designer every single week and we talk about their experience in game design and the lessons they've learned along the way. My name is Patrick Rauland, and today I'll be talking to Brian who designed Ludus Senatus. Did I pronounce that right?
Brian Compter: It's Ludus Senatus but that's close enough.
Patrick Rauland: Senatus. All right. Ludus Senatus is live on Kickstarter right now. It happens to be in the Concrete Canoe campaign along with last week's guest, Michael Cofer's game Sengoku, so you can get these games together if you like. So it's kind of cool to interview two people on the same campaign back to back. Brian, welcome to the show.
Brian Compter: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Patrick Rauland: So first of all, I just want to give Brian extra kudos. We had an appointment to record this and I totally spaced on it, so Brian not only is he cool based on all the stuff he's going to talk about in a couple minutes, but he's extra cool because he rescheduled with me even though I basically ghosted … I podcast ghosted you.
Brian Compter: That's all right. I understand. Everyone gets a little busy.
Introduction
Patrick Rauland: All right. So I know you a little bit because I did some research, but the audience doesn't, so I'd like to start with a little lightning round game. Ready?
Brian Compter: Yep. I'm ready.
Patrick Rauland: All right, great. So your game is about politics. So, what is one tiny thing that we can change in our current politics here in the US to make it better?
Brian Compter: I think probably we need to do a lot more listening, and hopefully if we listen more, we can learn to have a little bit more empathy for each other.
Patrick Rauland: Cool. All right. We'll have to talk more about that off air, but listen and empathy. Love it. Are there any games you would recommend, like are there any political games you'd recommend that show all of that complexity?
Brian Compter: Probably not and definitely not Ludus Senatus. I knew that the mechanics of this game lended itself to a political arena that's definitely the theme fits to what you're going to be doing in the game, but I wanted to stay as clear as possible from anything having to do with modern politics. So we went right to ancient Rome, and the artwork that Eduardo Garcia made for it, it's light, it's colorful, it definitely has that tongue in cheek feel and that really goes to the core of what this game is going to be.
Patrick Rauland: Nice. Have you by any chance, there's a … it's a game on Steam, I think it's also on iOS. I'm pretty sure it's called Democracy. Have you played it?
Brian Compter: I have not, no. I'll have to [crosstalk 00:02:26].
Patrick Rauland: Oh my gosh. Yeah, check it out. It's a couple of years old now but it's very complicated and you always have these decisions every turn of like, do you ban guns or do you let guns go everywhere in every store, and there are two terrible options you need to pick from. It's this really, really cool, very detailed video game, so check that out.
Patrick Rauland: And lastly, I wanted to end on a light note here. Blueberry or chocolate chip pancakes?
Brian Compter: I'm definitely in team chocolate chip pancakes.
How Did You Get Into Board Games & Board Game Design?
Patrick Rauland: Yes. All right, good. All right, so first real question. How did you get into board games and board game design?
Brian Compter: Yeah. So I've considered myself a gamer for my whole life. Even as far back as I can remember, I remember reading like Dungeons and Dragons books and my father had a whole bunch of those books and I didn't even play it, I just read them. I just read the books and that was kind of fine for me. I got into war games in high school and into college. And then after that, my wife got for Christmas just randomly put a few couple board games on her Christmas list. One of them happened to be Carcassonne and one other I can't remember. But that kind of sparked us both off into the board game world and the community and we've been having fun ever since.
Brian Compter: Board game design, I've only been designing them for the last about five years. I definitely have to say my inspiration there is my uncle, he's also into board games. We actually introduced them into board games and he caught the bug first and he designed this little card game. And I said, “Wow, if he can do that then I definitely can do something like that.” And board game design it's a creative outlet for me too. I've always done that where I have to get this kind of creative energy out of me, and board game design has really been something that I have a lot of fun ways that gets that creative energy out and I really enjoy the whole process.
Patrick Rauland: That's really cool that you introduced someone to board games, then they got into board game design and they introduced you to board game design. I love the-
Brian Compter: Yeah, it's a great feeling, yeah.
Patrick Rauland: … I love how you can give something to someone and they can give you something back.
Brian Compter: That is great. I hadn't thought about that that way, that is kind of really interesting.
What's the Favorite Game You Designed?
Patrick Rauland: Yeah. So I'm gonna say, what's the favorite game you've designed? I think this is the first published, or this will be the first published game you've had, right?
Brian Compter: That's correct. Yeah, this is my first publish game. So first signing, I really feel great about it.
Patrick Rauland: That's great. And also, congratulations. But including this game and your unpublished ones, what if the favorite one you've designed?
Brian Compter: It's going to be the next one.
Patrick Rauland: Ooh.
Brian Compter: I always feel like all my previous games are gonna inform my theories and my knowledge base going in. So the next game I design is always going to be the best one, I'm sure. And I'm going to grow as a game designer and learning and always getting better. So yeah, the next one is always going to be my favorite.
Patrick Rauland: By any chance, do you write code for a living?
Brian Compter: I do, yeah. That's my day job.
Patrick Rauland: Okay. I'm like, that is exactly what a computer programmer would say. All right, good. Yes. I also have a background in development and if I look at code from like a day ago, I'm like, “Who wrote this terrible code?”
Brian Compter: Yeah, I know.
Patrick Rauland: And game design is a little bit like that, isn't it? Right?
Brian Compter: Yeah.
Patrick Rauland: You're like, “Why would I do that?”
Brian Compter: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
How Long Do You Spend Designing Games?
Patrick Rauland: Very cool. So, how many hours a day do you design games? You've been doing this for five years. Are you like an hour a night guy or are you like eight hours on a Saturday once every two weeks or whatever?
Brian Compter: No, I'm definitely in … I do things in sprints. When I have the opportunity and the inspiration, the motivation, then I'll go do four hours or something completely straight and get something done, and then I might not touch it for a couple days, and it depends on also scheduling. I have a family and young kids and it's often difficult to get time for designing games and playing silly things, so I catch it where I can.
Patrick Rauland: I guess I'm lucky where right now I don't have a family and kids, I do at some point hope to, but I don't right now. That does give me like sometimes, “Hey, let's hang out at 7:00,” then between the hours of 5:00 and 7:00 I don't have much to do and it's nice to have like an hour here, an hour there, and I'm guessing you don't have that. Like I'm guessing for you it's like put the kids to bed and then you work on games?
Brian Compter: Exactly. My evenings don't start until 8:00 at night, sometimes later depending on their mood.
What Research Do You Do?
Patrick Rauland: So what kind of research do you do? For Ludus Senatus, there we go, trying to pronounce it right, is about politics in ancient Rome. Did you read any history books? What are some things did you do?
Brian Compter: I think it depends a lot on the game, on this specific game. Ludus Senatus really boils down to this one singular idea. I wanted to see if it was possible for a game to have some type of hidden traitor or hidden roles, hidden teams, where there were not any loyalty guards, and through some combination of chance and choice, you've got to manipulate what team you were playing for. And that's kind of what is at the heart of this game Senatus. I looked back on BGG in 2016, I posted a little research post asking the BGG hive mind in the design forums for games that kind of did something along those lines. And so I didn't even know. At the time, the idea that I had was not politics or anything, but I'm always thinking about the games, different games and sometimes ideas have odd origins. So, it depends. So some games I don't do any research at all, but it depends.
Patrick Rauland: Sure. So, I'll try to follow up with you afterwards and get that link just because it's fun for me to look back at how a game has evolved, and I kind of wished there were more design journals out there. I know for Fry Thief, I basically use the Hashtag on Twitter the entire time, and you can see a couple of early prototypes but not many. And I just wish that we can click see all … I wish I could go back and see like Spirit Island's, or Battlestar Galactica's, or Fireball Island's, or Gloomhaven's, I would love to see like early prototypes of that. So whenever guests have that, I love to share it.
Brian Compter: Yeah, that's something I like to do a lot on BGG. I have more than a few game designs that you can see right from the very first postcard kind of concoction to a more polished Game Crafter set. I didn't do it for this game though because it's only really 18 cards and it kinda came together rather quickly from it's … once I got that final inspiration to go to the ancient Rome theme, it kind of put itself together rather quickly.
Are Small Games Easier to Design?
Patrick Rauland: So this is a tangent, but let's talk about that for a second. So, both of us have designed micro games. Fry Thief was actually originally 16 cards and with stretch goes will go up to 20. But you designed an 18 card game, I have a 20 card game. Fry Thief also came together very quick. There was always lots of little polishing, and lots of tweaking, and lots of testing and modifying, but the core of the game has essentially been the same since the very first prototype where, in my case, those resources you steal them and then whoever has the most wins.
Patrick Rauland: I guess I'm curious since we've both had the same experience, you think that just with like an 18 card game or micro games like this that the game can't change that much. Whereas I've talked to other people and they're like, “Should I rip out this? Should I add an economics engine? Should I bid on first player?” And I think it's just really hard to do that with a micro game.
Brian Compter: Yeah. Oddly enough, this game started as a 20 card game because 20 was the perfect number to play at four players. And we've been able to change things a little bit with only 18 cards, and actually with the Kickstarter hopefully we'll hit our stretch goals and we'll get in to promos, and that what I'm really hoping for is then I can say it's going to be perfect at seven with the 20 cards when you add in the promos.
Brian Compter: Yeah, for this one, from the first iteration I think I iterated it twice. I took out two abilities and that was it. It really is a small space to work with so you can't really mess up, you can't really beat around the bush when you only have 18 cards. And while there is some text on the actual end product here, there's these yays and nays for voting, it's not needed because we have these symbols for thumbs up and thumbs down and everything, all the actions are symbols too, that's language independent as long as you can get the rules. There's no actual need to read anything on the cards. With that limitation, yeah, there's not a whole lot that can go wrong. I actually took out a few things from the first iteration and then the game really never changed.
Patrick Rauland: I think that's really good maybe because I think a lot of game designers have a lot of ideas and it's very easy to get like, “I can see something in this game, but I don't know what's wrong. I don't really know how to make it better.” Whereas I think with 18 card games it's, “Is it immediately fun? If not, throw it out, start a new game.” Maybe not throw it out, but like you just instantly know if it's worth pursuing or not, and you can always tweak it.
Brian Compter: Yeah. You have to have a great main concept when you only have 18 cards, and if that doesn't work, then your adding stuff or adding actions or abilities isn't really going to help.
What Haven't You Been Able to Get Into a Game Yet?
Patrick Rauland: So I'd love to ask you, you've been doing this for five years. Do you have like a white whale of game design, something that you try to figure out and you just can't get it into a game yet?
Brian Compter: Yeah. I'd love to get that nice, that middleweight euro, that unapologetically soulless Euro cube pushing game, the game that has all these combinations of different mechanisms all mushed together, things like Hansa Teutonica, Heaven & Ale, these kinds of, the theme doesn't really matter at all. It could be anything. You could slap any theme on it. But just this combination of mechanics that just somehow all fit together, it makes you wonder like, how do you come up with that? How do you make that happen? My games tend to be a little bit more focused on a singular mechanism that drives the whole game and I'm always just so impressed and inspired by games that kind of have multiple systems going on at the same time that come together to make something really great.
Patrick Rauland: I completely agree, and apparently, you and I design games in a very similar way because I have yet to make anything good that lasts more than 25 minutes. Like none of my games on average lasts more than 25 minutes.
Brian Compter: Just keep trying though, it'll happen.
Patrick Rauland: I know. And I was kind of joking, maybe with like each game, I can try to increase that by like five minutes, add a little bit more complexity. But I hear you on the euro. My favorite one is Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small. If I can make that, which is a slightly lighter weight euro, if I could do that, oh, that'd be great.
What Games Inspire You?
Patrick Rauland: Okay. So I'd love to ask what games out there inspire you? What makes you want to make more games?
Brian Compter: Yeah. One of my favorite games is Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar, the game with the gears that all move together, it's worker placement on steroids. It gives you this great planning and scheduling brain burn that I just love, plus I feel like there's so much room to explore in that game. It's a game that you can play multiple times and different strategies and just really discover different mechanisms and feedback loops that you can't see until you play multiple times. That really is something that inspires me, it kind of goes into the previous question too, the kind of a combination of systems that I'd really love to be able to design, to be able to think up that kind of complexity that is a really interesting and engaging and fun to play as well.
What One Resource Would You Recommend?
Patrick Rauland: Love it. So one of my favorite questions is what one resource would you recommend to another Indie game designer? This could be a book, a podcast and not this one, that's cheating, a book, a podcast, an app, anything really that they could access to help them be a better game designer.
Brian Compter: Sure. I would always go to my local library. It's a great resource for inspiration. You don't know what's going to inspire you, what's going to be your muse, and reading a really great book, something that you can get off the shelf for free at the library is a great resource. There's a novel games contest that was running not too long ago and you had to go through … it was all about a public domain work. So I just went to the library and checked out a couple of public works and just read them through just to see what was going to bite, what was going to cement itself in my mind that, “Hey, this could be a game.”
Patrick Rauland: So I think I saw that about public works, I think that was a couple months ago maybe when I saw the post. But when you see like a post like that, “Hey, there's a game design contest about public works,” or before the show we were talking about like the holiday on The Game Crafter, do you go out and then try to find books on that? Like are you intending to be inspired by a specific topic?
Brian Compter: I think it's probably, it was really specific for the Novel Games Contest because that was like, hey, it has to be a public work book, and that kind of went hand in hand. But other than that, just keep reading some new stuff, challenge yourself and see different things. You don't know what's going to inspire you. So, I feel it helps to put myself out there to read different things and-
Patrick Rauland: Totally.
Brian Compter: … see when inspiration is going to hit you. I don't know if that's a great answer.
Patrick Rauland: Totally. No, no, that's a great answer. So, random tangent here. I'm currently reading through the … do you know The Legend of Drizzt?
Brian Compter: Yes. Oh, of course, yeah.
Patrick Rauland: It's like a Dungeons and Dragons game. So I'm currently reading through that and there's like 500 million books in that series, and I'm thinking I probably won't be done with that series for like six to nine months just to read through them all, and that's kind of limiting. Because normally I'll read like three books in a series and that series is done, and then I read five in this series and that series is done, and I read these three … I read about two dozen books a year, so I like to read this stuff. But right now if this Drizzt series, since it's so long, I'm kind of worried that I'll only be able to think of Dragon Games, you know what I mean?
Brian Compter: Yeah. You should go to a short stories for that.
Patrick Rauland: Ah, there we go.
Brian Compter: That short stories I think are actually … well for me, they're more easily digestible and especially since I don't have a huge amount of time and if I'm doing time reading, it's time away from doing something else. So being able to one night get a whole story in one night, sitting down and reading, that's actually really good.
Patrick Rauland: Ah, it's a great idea.
Brian Compter: I tend to stay away from really long series that if it's got more than one book, I'm going to lean towards something else.
What's The Best Money You've Spent?
Patrick Rauland: Love it. So my next favorite question sort of a followup, what is the best money you've ever spent as a game designer?
Brian Compter: Right now it had to be Component.Studio, this is a from The Game Crafter and it's a kind of graphic design utility that can design the cards, boards and whatnot. Anything you can print at The Game Crafter, you can kind of design out of different elements. You import your own pictures and then it has a whole library of fonts and it's kind of almost what you see is what you get. You kind of make a script that it runs through to generate the final images, and it's all data driven on the back end, so I can maintain a design for a card, and then behind that is the actual data for the card, for all the cards in the deck. So it's designed once and then you click export or go to print and play copy and it'll generate all the files for all the cards using that design. And you can do switches and intelligence to conditionally render certain components to do card types or different kinds of weird effects. So it gets really better looking prototypes to the table faster, and I've really been enjoying it.
Brian Compter: I listened to one of your previous podcasts and one of your previous guest had mentioned the 3D printer, and the one that he recommended, the Creality Ender 3, I actually bought one myself just this year.
Patrick Rauland: What?
Brian Compter: And just now been starting to generate game tokens and other little game pieces for my board game. So it took a little while to dial it in, but once it's there, it's really cool. I'll have to show you some of the things that I've made.
Patrick Rauland: Oh, also its good news. But number one, it's awesome to hear you got a 3D printer, and number two, it's awesome to hear you got one, not because of this podcast, but you happened to get one that a guest recommended and it's a great printer. Wow, great. You're validating my guests. Thank you.
Patrick Rauland: So I've looked at Component Studio, I think because I have a background in web design and I know all the Photoshop programs, I'm a little bit hesitant to change, but I think if I had less experience with Photoshop and other graphic programs then I think I'd want to do it, or if I had cards or games with like hundreds of cards, because as you said, it is data driven, which is amazing. Like if you upload a new spreadsheet and this guy has a four then it updates the graphics and now he has a four attack instead of a three attack. Like all that stuff is done automatically, which I love. So, that is definitely the coolest part about it.
Brian Compter: Yeah. And if you are a programmer or if you want to save a little bit of money, there is another program Squib, which is a Ruby based DSL for kind of the same thing, generating our assets for board games, cards, boards, whatever you want. That is actually way more powerful than Component Studio, but it's also more complicated. You kind of have to have a programmer background to really tap into that last 20% that's going to knock your socks off, all the multi-stop gradients and all this really cool stuff. You can create better stuff in a Squib but it's going to take you a little bit longer to get your feet on the ground with that one.
How Do You Market Your Games?
Patrick Rauland: Yeah. The tagline is edit, compile, play tests, so yeah, if you don't know how to compile, you probably can't use Squib and then you should use the other one. Cool. So I'd love to ask. You are about … your first game, and we were recording this before the Kickstarter, but as the time of this is airing, it should be out. I mean, you now have a little bit of experience, how do you market your game?
Brian Compter: For me, I'm just going to the all the local conventions, local game groups, showing the game and doing my best to put it in front of as many people as possible. Really, this game it's so light and fun that it actually kind of sells itself, at least that's my hope and that's what I've been observing. It's a lot easier to get an 18 card micro-game in front of somebody than an hour and a half euro kind of game. But really, all of these local conventions I go to, one of my friends from my local design group, Jim Fitzpatrick, he is my spirit animal when it comes to gain promotion. He is amazing. He made a game called Mission to Planet Hexx. And if you see him at these conventions, he has just so much energy and charisma. He is the game designer I want to be when I grow up. He's just amazing and it's really fun to just to watch him play his trade at the convention spaces.
Patrick Rauland: That's really cool. Is there one technique that he does that you really want to emulate or is there like one marketing thing that he does?
Brian Compter: I don't know. I think there's this kind of charismatic confidence that you just want to sit down with him. I don't know how to describe it, but I know it when I see it, you know?
How Many Unpublished Games Do You Have?
Patrick Rauland: Yeah, that's really cool. All right. So, how many unpublished and half finished games do you have? Do you have like the whole drawer full like I do?
Brian Compter: Oh, I think so. So I keep a very organized on Google docs, a folder for every idea. And sometimes that can be just everything, drawings, and rules and everything like that, sometimes it's just a document with just an idea, just a one sentence, like this could be a game. But I make a folder for every single idea I have, and the last check I was at about 54. Not all of them are great, not all of them are good, so you got to selectively kind of figure out what you want to spend your time on.
Patrick Rauland: Yeah, yeah. Go ahead.
Brian Compter: Coincidentally, last year was kind of a turning point for me with designing games because that was where I kind of put a stop to kind of making new ideas and I told myself I really wanted to go back and revisit other older designs and see if I could just polish them up, try to do a little bit better job pitching and try to get them in front of different people. And sure enough, that turned into Senatus and a couple other designs which are now I'm pleased to say are going to be signed or have been signed. So I'm really looking forward. I think 2019 is my year and I think that year kind of off of making new stuff has really been paying off.
How Do You Know When to Shelve a Game?
Patrick Rauland: So, there's a great question in the board game design space of how do you know when to shelve a game? Which I think is a really good question to ask. What's really cool in your case is you unshelved game. So how did you decide to unshelve a game? And I guess with Senatus, hold on. What's the full name? Ludus Senatus, there we go. With Ludus Senatus, you shelved it at some point and you said it also hasn't changed much. So how did you unshelve it and what was the decision there?
Brian Compter: Yeah. So Ludus Senatus has kind of a background of a much larger and weirder game. I was trying to play on this whole hidden team mechanism that had some impact on what you were doing. The original theme, the original, original theme was about angels and demons fighting over the salvation of a small European town. So you could play as either the angels or the demons and nobody really knew who is who until the very end. And in order to save a particular part of the town, you have to like give up some of your salvation cards or corruption cards, whichever one you had, right? And in doing so, you could push yourself to corruption by helping out your own side too much. And that was kind of one of the main mechanics that kind of lived on in Senatus, but that idea, it was big, it was obnoxious, it had too many cards and it just kind of fell by the wayside.
Patrick Rauland: So did you look at this, you see this game on your shelf or something like that, and did you go, “Huh, I bet I can make it just this one piece,” and did you already know the new theme or?
Brian Compter: No, the theme came late. I was still fixated on angels versus demons for a while. It became, I boiled it down to 20 cards and it stayed at 20 cards for a little while, and I pitched it once, which didn't go anywhere, but that's fine. And then the one thing that set it all into motion and got me to the end zone was the Hook Box Challenge at The Game Crafter. When that launched, I thought this is it. If I can get rid of two cards, I've got a game that's for all intents and purposes, ready to go, and definitely I took a harder look at the theme. And I always do dark themes.
Brian Compter: I feel like a lot of my games have this kind of dark moody themes, and I thought, “Geez, you know, I think it might play better to judges if it had something a little bit more light, a little bit more airy,” and that's where the Roman Senate came in, because I knew politics would fit, right? Whether you're battling angels and demons, and it's kind of like a gerrymandering mechanic where you're trying to win by just enough in the right places. So I knew politics was going to fit, but I definitely wanted to stay clear of any kind of modern politics. And so the Roman Senate said, hey, was the one that came to mind that really stuck. And from there, it just came together really quickly. Two iterations from that moment, by the time I decided on Roman Senate, it was two iterations and it was done.
Patrick Rauland: That's great. How did you do in the contest?
Brian Compter: Oh, I did not make the finals. I got through the community voting portion and then it did not make the final. But it caught the eye of the eventual publisher, Concrete Canoe Games. And a couple months after the contest had wrapped up, I was ready, I was ready to throw this up on The Game Crafter and say, “You know what? It didn't work. It didn't make the finals. Just let it fly. Whatever happens, happens.” And luckily, [Dan Greco 00:26:24] got back to me and said, “Hey, I'd like to take a second look at that.” And I sent him up the copy, and within a couple of weeks after that he said he wanted to sign, and here we are, and I'm really happy to see the really fantastic artwork and everything coming in on this Kickstarter.
Patrick Rauland: So both of us, our games were inspired by the Hook Box challenge, which I think is really, really cool.
Brian Compter: Awesome.
Patrick Rauland: Yeah, yeah. So, you'll be happy to know I'm sometimes an idiot and I put the wrong deadline of when I should submit my game to The Game Crafter. I sent it a week late because I just didn't update my calendar, so I didn't actually submit my game to the contest but I still had it like basically ready for the contest. So I never even submitted but the game is still sort of … the contest gave me the constraints I needed to come up with the idea for the game. So I think-
Brian Compter: That's the trick. On my calendar, the deadline is always one day before the actual deadline.
Patrick Rauland: Good choice.
Brian Compter: On time is late. Just remember, on time is late.
What Does Success Look Like?
Patrick Rauland: There we go. So I mean, you're getting your first game published, again, congrats. What does success in the board game world look like to you now?
Brian Compter: For me it still is getting published. When some other person has taken a look at your design and is willing to take the risk on you, that I think, that's the pinnacle. That is as I would call it, the mountain. Why climb it? Because it's there. So that's my attitude. I think that's the mark of a good design is if it does get picked up and somebody has faith in you and the design that it's going to do well and it's gonna make it in the board game community.
Patrick Rauland: I like that. How about this? Do you have like a number or do you just want to keep being creative and keep signing games, but no specific … no numbers, no metrics?
Brian Compter: No, no number. I mean, it's always about the next one, remember? Yeah.
Patrick Rauland: There we go. All right, cool, cool.
Brian Compter: And the next one is always the best.
Overrated / Underrated Game
Patrick Rauland: Love it. All right. So I like to end with a silly game. This is called Overrated, Underrated. Have you heard about it?
Brian Compter: I sure have.
Patrick Rauland: Yes, you get the air horn. So basically, I'm going to give you a word or phrase and you need to tell me if it is overrated or underrated. So if I said peanut butter, you would obviously say underrated. It is the best food known to man. Something like that.
Brian Compter: Right.
Patrick Rauland: All right. Hidden traitor Games. Overrated or underrated?
Brian Compter: I'm going to go with underrated. There's nothing better than a five hour game of Battlestar Galactica which ends up with the cups being thrown.
Patrick Rauland: Yes. That is my favorite hidden role game. Love it. Cool. Gladiator, the movie. Overrated or underrated?
Brian Compter: I'm going to go with underrated. I really liked that and it was a great movie. Great flick and hey Romans, I got to love them.
Patrick Rauland: And how about like very fancy first player markers? Overrated or underrated?
Brian Compter: I see a trend coming. It's going to be underrated. I don't know why, but I just love goofy things that are really great to hold.
Patrick Rauland: Okay.
Brian Compter: For Terraforming Mars, they have the Mars rover as the first player token. You have to buy it separate, but that's just fantastic. I love that.
Patrick Rauland: That's cool. I haven't seen the Mars rover. That's fun. A friend of mine has Terraforming Mars, I'll take that for her.
Brian Compter: I think it's on the BGG store actually.
Patrick Rauland: Oh, that's great. Last one. Early morning radio shows. Overrated or underrated?
Brian Compter: All right. We're breaking the trend. It's overrated. I want silence in my morning. Silence and caffeine.
Patrick Rauland: Okay. Because early morning radio shows, they are by far the most talkative of all the radio shows.
Brian Compter: Yeah.
Patrick Rauland: There's always like [inaudible 00:29:48] people talking.
Brian Compter: I like peace and quiet in the morning.
Patrick Rauland: Love it. Well, hey Brian, thank you for being on the show.
Brian Compter: Yeah, thank you for having me. It's been great.
Wrap Up
Patrick Rauland: Where can people find you and your game online?
Brian Compter: Awesome. So, I'm on Twitter. It's @scrapyardarmory, and also I hang out a lot on The Game Crafter chat room.
Patrick Rauland: Sorry. Side question. I love that chat room, but I can't keep that open and get anything done during the day. How do you get anything done during the day when you're in that chat room?
Brian Compter: Well, it's about compiling time, and it always takes time to compile don't you know.
Patrick Rauland: There we go. So cool. I love it. So, thank you again. Listeners, if you like this podcast, please leave us a review on iTunes. If you leave a review, Brian will vote for your restaurants the next time you and your friends can't decide where to go. Sound good, Brian?
Brian Compter: Sounds great to me.
Patrick Rauland: Great. Lastly, so I've just been getting a couple of questions about Kickstarter because of Fry Thief. So, if you have questions about Kickstarter, please reach out to me. I guess I just want to share this knowledge as far as possible because I made some mistakes and I think they're easily corrected, and I just think once you go through a campaign once, you go, “Oh, I should do that better next time.” So, if you have questions, just reach out to me through the contact form on my website or follow me on Twitter @BFTrick. That's B as in Board game, F as in fun, and trick as in trick taking games. That is all I got. So until next time everyone, happy designing. Bye-bye.
