Wes Woodbury

#108 – Wes Woodbury

Patrick Rauland: Hello, everyone. 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 with Wes Woodbury, who designed Duel of the Dragons and Legends of Novus. Wes, welcome to the show.

Wes Woodbury: Hey Patrick. Great to be here.

Introduction

Patrick: I'd like to start with a lightning round to introduce you to the guests. All right?

Wes: Let's do it.

Patrick: All right. In DnD, different dragons have– Like, different colored dragons have different personalities and different abilities, and all that stuff. If you were a dragon, what color would you be?

Wes: If I was a dragon I think I'd probably be a silver dragon, I like how– I want to be on the good side of things, I always feel good-natured, and silver goes with everything.

Patrick: Love it. You made a cool world called “Novus.” Where would you want to live in that world?

Wes: If I lived in Novus, I'd want to live in the oldest place where the most knowledge is gathered, and that's a place called “Assad” near the jungles of [inaudible].

Patrick: Awesome. I love that you had an answer for that. What's a game you play with someone every single time at a convention?

Wes: At a convention? I don't get to many conventions given my location, but one of my favorite games to play is Lords of Waterdeep.

How did you get into board games and board game design?

Patrick: Great game. First real question is, how did you get into board games and board game design?

Wes: I've been playing games since I was a young lad, like many of us game designers have. Anything from Monopoly and Risk and whatnot of the world to DnD and Magic, but over time I ended up creating my own games with my kids. As I became a parent and found the games less and less interesting, I created my own when my son was coming of age to 10-11, and he was into superheroes.

We had our own little superhero board game, and then as my daughter was getting older, she loves Star Wars, I even made my own Magic: The Gathering Star Wars decks to play with her. I just always enjoyed tweaking and making my own little games on the side.

Patrick: That's pretty exciting. Why did you decide to take–? That sounds like what I would describe as a fun hobby, why would you take that from a fun hobby and then make Kickstarters and try to sell games to thousands of people?

Wes: That idea didn't happen until about a year and a half ago. My son and I went to our local game store, and we played a game of Munchkin, which I'd never played before, but I'd seen it online. We were going to play a Magic Tournament, and it got cancelled, so we just pulled a game off their shelf. We played this game of Munchkin, and I thought, “I absolutely hate this “Take that” mechanic, but I absolutely love the fact that I could play DnD with cards. How come I'd never thought of this before?”

I tried to find a game that was playing DnD with cards in that mindset, but it didn't seem to exist. At least, for how I could find it. Knowing and having played magic for over 20 years and played DnD for many years and always loved fantasy, I figured, “Maybe this is my chance to make a real game instead of just a fun game with the kids.”

Patrick: Fantastic. We're definitely going to talk about your games and in a minute, but I'm curious, did you design these games with your kids at all? Or is it designed for them, but not with them?

Wes: The early ones I designed for them, and then we would play it together when it came to Legends of Novus I designed that more for myself, and for the community. They helped me play test a little bit in the early stages.

What type of games do you like to design?

Patrick: I have seen Legends of Novus online, and it was great. You reached out to me a month or two ago, and we set this up, and then I looked at your games, and I saw the Kickstarter page. Like, “I remember this.” Legends of Novus was a pretty big Kickstarter, and it raised something like $30,000 dollars and a whole bunch of backers. It has a very cool system, which I want to talk to, but the first thing I just wanted to point out, the first thing that interested me about your experience in game design is your first Kickstarter was Duel of the Dragons.

Your second one is Legends of Novus, and they– I don't think they could be further apart. Duel of the Dragons is a 48 card game, and that's it. Whereas Legends of Novus is massive in terms of components, it seems like there's giant player mats and there's a big map and there standees, and there's tokens, and there is a million cards and card slots. The first thing I want to ask is, what type of games do you like to design? Because these two seem completely– They seem like they're from two different designers.

Wes: The kind of games I like are always fantasy-driven. I have a passion for watching and playing and being involved in all kinds of things fantasy. It's what I know, and it's what I love. They always say, “Try to find and do something you love.” So when I was going to make my own board game, it had to be about fantasy. The reason Duel of the Dragons was so small is I listened to all kinds of podcasts, whether it was Board Game Design Lab or Flatout at the Table, or some of the other ones like Ludology.

One of the common concepts, when it came to becoming an independent game designer, was, “You've got to start small, make something that you can create start to finish, and see what the process is like.” I was starting Novus before Duel of the Dragons, but after getting into all those discussions and listening to those things, I stopped making Novus and spent six months just making Duel of the Dragons. Launching it, Kickstarting it and fulfilling it before finishing off where I'm at now with Novus.

Patrick: So, this was entirely strategic? You literally made a small game so you could test and go through the whole process so that your ultimate– I don't say “Your real game,” but the game you felt more passion for. You wanted that to be even better?

Wes: Exactly. I didn't want to jump into Kickstarter, never having created anything or used the platform, so I wanted to get a feel for it. I thought, “If I can prove that I can make a game and fulfill it, and at the same time learn things myself, it should work on both fronts. It should work with building an audience and getting trust, and at the same time, developing my skill set to create the cards and format and manufacture it and ship it.”

Patrick: So then I have to ask, what was the thing that you picked up? What was something you probably would have made a mistake on with Legends of Novus if you didn't first do a Kickstarter for your dragon game?

Wes: Shipping for sure. They preach about it all the time on all these different Facebook groups and podcasts, but you still under underestimate the impact shipping can have and behind the scenes costs. Even Duel of the Dragons was a low-funding low-backer, I think it was only 82 backers, and even that went into the red a little bit. Just knowing that I have had to watch where my costs were and make sure that the retail value and the shipping values were fair to the backers, but also fair to me.

Patrick: Great. Shipping is definitely one of the bigger things. I think for my Kickstarter campaign, I'm just going over final numbers now, and I definitely lost a little bit in shipping. Not too much, but a little bit. It's easy, and it's pretty easy to do so.

Wes: Yeah, for sure.

Since you’ve gone through Kickstarter twice, what were the differences with such a small game and such a large game?

Patrick: And then, just a second thing is most people don't have a tiny game and a giant game. By “Giant,” I mean lots of different types of components, so what is the difference when you're making a product to sell on Kickstarter? What is the difference between a tiny 48 card game and this bigger game, Legends of Novus?

Wes: Manufacturing is a big one. When I made Duel of the Dragons, I just made that through DriveThruCards. It was a US-based manufacturer, and they were shipped to me, and then I manually packaged every unit and sent it to the backers. So that's small scale, but I couldn't possibly do that with Legends of Novus. There's just too many components to even be able to base it out of the US without being a $150 dollar game.

So you have to take it, increase the number of backers that you need in order to be able to even meet the minimum order quantity overseas, and then get used to the way that they use their templates. Which some of the manufacturers have pre-made ones like Panda, but some of them you have to create all your own. The one I'm going through, I basically had to generate all my own templates, have them approve it, and then work through it that way. So there is a lot to learn in terms of how to style all the components, and how to work with an overseas manufacturer.

Patrick: Yeah, absolutely. There is a lot. There's a surprising amount of graphic design and layout that has to be done for all that. So, I do want to talk to you about Legends of Novus. Because I did see this months ago when it launched on Kickstarter, and it looks very cool. I love that it does feel like DnD, but with cards.

I want to ask you because I've had a couple of people with storytelling games on the show before, but what is it like to have a game that is RPG-like, but you have all these cards that determine your equipment and your items and your encounters, and all that stuff? What is it like to make a pseudo-storytelling game like yours?

Wes: There's so many games out there, and you see them launching every other week, there's some 50 hour plus campaign game that's Gloomhaven-like or Tainted Grail-like. I just wasn't able to compete with that market, even though I loved those genres. I also realized that there's not a lot of pick up play and put away fantasy games like this, so that's what I wanted to build. Make it like DnD in a game, but a one-setting playthrough.

So you can play with any four players you want, and you don't need the same four players every single game, and you can finish the entire game, start to finish, in anywhere from an hour to two hours. That's really what I was going for. It's been cool to be able to integrate everything I love about DnD in a one-shot game through the equipment and the creatures and the travelling the world and leveling up, and all that cool stuff.

Patrick: The world looks cool, I like to get these little standees, and they can go around the map and do various things. I'm curious who plays this game, are traditional DnD players the audience for this game? Are they like, “I'd love to do a DnD session tonight, but I don't have four hours. Let's pull out this 1-2 hour game.” Or is it people who've never played DnD before, or–? Who plays this type of game? Because it's a middle-ground.

Wes: To me, in my mind, this is a game for anybody that likes fantasy. Whether they like Magic: The Gathering or they like Gloomhaven, or they like early Dungeons and Dragons hardcore roleplaying. This game crosses the gap between all these different genres and says ‘If you want to play a fun fantasy game if you like the setting, this is a game that anybody could play,” instead of trying to cater to one specific group.

When I was marketing, I tried to reach out to DnD players and to the Gloomhaven group, to the– Just any fantasy group I could find. Even Diablo, Final Fantasy Online. Just trying to share it that way, “That if you like anything about fantasy, you would probably like this game because it's got elements of all of it.”

Why did you create an app for the game?

Patrick: Yeah, very cool. I also saw that you have an app for the game that has some of the game content.

Wes: Yeah. This was a fun exploration. I always love learning new things, so just when I started making Novus, I thought, “I want to learn anything I can and just see if it can or cannot adapt to the game.” I ended up using a free app creation tool called Mobincube, which is an online app generator.

Basically, I already had all the images for the card concepts in the jpegs, so I basically just tethered it into a free app maker that is just an app where you basically look at the cards on your phone. It doesn't enhance the game in any way, and it's more of a “I've got a ten-minute break at work, and I want to look at some of those creatures from that game I read about.” It's just a companion-reference app.

Patrick: But that's great, and I love that you did it yourself. Was that something you'd recommend for someone else?

Wes: I wouldn't recommend it unless your game is concrete, and you're just finding a way to get it up to more people or to be able to showcase things more. It is time-consuming, and once you spread yourself too thin– It's one thing to be a jack of all trades, but if you can't master your own game, that's a problem. I had already developed Novus for a year, and I felt comfortable that I could stretch myself just a little bit more with it.

What kind of research do you do?

Patrick: Awesome. What kind of research do you do before you start making a giant game like this?

Wes: My main point of research is to look at existing games on the market and to see if what I'm making has already been done, and done better, or done in a way that I don't think I can compete with. When I was making Legends of Novus, like I said, I looked at the potential of being a campaign-based game and scrapped the idea because the companies that are making campaign-based games have ten or twelve creators.

They have histories of huge minis that people love, they've got all kinds of stuff. Me, as an independent game designer, I didn't feel that was my niche. But I did research and looked up other fantasy games that are along the same idea of travelling on a map, collecting gear, defeating big creatures, and just making sure that mine had enough different things about it that it could stand on its own.

Patrick: Sure. That's cool. This is a random question that's just popped into my brain, and I know you're making your own games and launching them on Kickstarter, and you talked about how fantasy is super important to you. If you ever had a publisher who said “The mechanics of this game are great, but I want it to be sci-fi.” Would you be OK with that? Because I think a lot of game designers would, but I think you like fantasy so much that I'm questioning it.

Wes: That's the main reason that I'm doing this all on my own, is I want to be able to control where my games go start to finish. I'm kind of a control freak in that regard, and that's why I love fantasy so much, and that's what I'm trying to create. If I wanted a space adventure or alien type of game, that would be a whole different avenue. I don't think what I'm designing works with that.

What games inspire you?

Patrick: Awesome. What sort of games out there inspire you?

Wes: Basically, I spend lots of time trolling Kickstarter, and it always inspires me when I see all these different kinds of games, whether it was– I saw Ignite just a while back as a first time designer, that guy did a fantastic job. Tainted Grail, just the amount of volume that came out of that one. The DnD Kickstarters where people are just selling an adventure, and they make $10-$20,000 dollars with backers, that's inspiring because it tells me that there's other avenues that my games could go as well.

It's not about the money, it's just seeing how many people are interested in those fantasy concepts. That's what keeps me inspired. Or games like I'm designing a solo game right now, so seeing how well Hunted is doing or how well Unbroken did, I know it has some Kickstarter or other stuff behind it. But just the love behind people wanting to play solo games is inspiring.

Patrick: Yeah. So listeners, first of all, I should say I have the Mobincube. I found a link for that, and I will include that in the show notes. I did have Darren Terpstra on episode 75, and it looks like he made the game Ignite. He talked all about that and how he made that. It's fun to have a little bit of overlap of I've already talked to a few of these game designers, and I will have links for all of this in the show notes.

There's a lot of amazing stuff on Kickstarter, which is, by the way, where I find most of my guests. I go through Kickstarter, and I go, “That's a cool project. I want to talk to the person who made that.” Is there something that one of those games has made you change about your game or one of your upcoming games? Like, “I love that they did this. Now I'm going to change this thing in one of my games.”

Wes: There was a game that didn't fund on Kickstarter, but they had a small element in their game that I liked, and it was– I have to try to remember the name of the game now. The concept of the game was having a single black token at the beginning of the game that lets you change a single die roll, and I just thought “That's a little quirk that I hadn't had in my game, and some of my rolls can be very luck-based. Just having something in the game to mitigate that just a tiny bit was a neat little add-in that I learned.

Do you have a white whale of game design?

Patrick: Nice. I love it. Is there something–? One of my favorite questions is, do you have a white whale of game design? Is there a mechanism or a theme or a mechanic or story point or whatever that you've tried to get into a game, but you just haven't been able to crack it yet?

Wes: It's two points, the first white whale is trying to turn Legends of Novus into my own intellectual property that can spread in different directions. If anybody did look at the Kickstarter, they'd see that the app was a little piece of it, but having a bonus add-on of a DnD-5E adventure that anybody could download as a PnP and play was my way to dip into a different part of game design.

Then the other concept that I want to turn Novus into, already having all of this cool art, is creating a different kind of game using some of the characters and concepts into a deck builder. But the thing with deck builders is it requires so much playtesting and mechanical balancing, that's a 2-3 year project instead of a smaller scale.

Patrick: So let me follow up on that, why do you want to turn it into its own intellectual property? Why is it important to make the universe even bigger than it already is? Or, not bigger. But why is important to add more detail to this universe?

Wes: I think it's cool with the concept of being able to expand on an existing game in two different avenues, so maybe going from the world of Novus to underground or overseas or into the abyss, or wherever. Having that expansion capability is tethered into intellectual property, and then being able to cross into different game designs with that same core, with the same artist, with the same background.

People already have a comfort level with the game or the world, but can try it in a different way. Like I have a spell casting, “Wizard's school” type of game concept that I've been working on in the background. Like I said, the deck builder might be another concept, so just trying to be able to have a base of people that love Novus and want to try it in different ways.

Patrick: I've heard from some publishers that they have a consistent universe, and they share that universe across different games because I think it's easy. You've established what the universe looks like and what it feels like, and you know some of the characters, and you can reuse art, which saves a little bit of money, but it doesn't sound like that's the main reason for you. It's not about easiness, it's just for you, you absolutely love this fantasy genre, and you want to squeeze as much juice out of it as you can.

Wes: Yeah, exactly. If you look at Forgotten Realms and Dungeons and Dragons, they've got all these different campaign worlds, they've got Forgotten Realms unfair, and they've got Rovio's Curse of Straube type of things. They just were able to create these worlds and keep on expanding, and that's what I want to do in the board game field. Create a world and then keep finding different ways to expand it, but with new art and new content.

Patrick: I love it. You know what's funny about the Forgotten Realms is, to highlight your point about building a universe, I played Baulder's Gate way back in– God, like early 2000s or something. Then I recently got into the Drizzt books, and those are from the same universe.

It's fun, there's this minor character that shows up for one second in the Baldur's Gate video game, and then you get to read about him. He has a 30 book story that someone started writing years ago. It is cool to have those universes and have them overlap. So, I get it.

Wes: Yeah. The Legend of Drizzt is iconic. His [inaudible]. I've read [inaudible], I've read every book written by Salvatore, so I know exactly where you're coming from there. If you're talking about Baldur's Gate, that game is republished from 20 years ago and now is on the PS4 because it was that good.

What made you decide to do an artbook for your game?

Patrick: They're working on number three, I hear. So they're doing good stuff. Did I also see on your Kickstarter page that you also did an art book? Is that for the same reason as– Just increasing the IP?

Wes: Other things I've read about when it comes to Kickstarting and getting into game design is sometimes you can't get all your funding from a game alone, especially if people don't trust you. If you can build your funding amount through other means that aren't interested by the backers, such as an art book or such as a neoprene map, for example.

It doesn't add anything to the game, but it's giving people something that they might enjoy the most about your game. It's a new artist, the guy is 19, and he came out of awesome [inaudible], Institute of Art in Italy. He's just getting his foot into the door, so he wanted to wait to represent himself in the campaign as well, and that's what the artbook was. It was a way to get more funding towards the game to show that it had value, but also give him something to be able to sell down the road as well.

Patrick: That's very– I hadn't thought about almost giving your artist not just recognition, not just the name on the box, but a separate product that they can sell themselves at a convention or whatever. Let me talk about the art book for a second, because how much did that help? Let me rephrase, how about this? Here's a good way of figuring this out. If you had to do Legends of Novus all over again, would you still offer the artbook? Was it worth it, all the work that you put into it?

Wes: I definitely wouldn't put an art book into every game, not every game is designed for that. The main reason was if you look at the art that this young guy has created, it's absolutely stunning. I must have fallen on a lucky golden horseshoe when this guy decided to join up with the campaign because the stuff that he's put together for this game is just unreal.

He's doing it at a decent price, and he's trying to get into the market. I had no qualms about it when he brought up the idea that “Any chance we could do an art book?” I was all over that. But if that were to come up in my next board game, I'm not going to use nearly as many pieces of art, and the art is more of a humorous content. It's not justified to make an art book for that, for example. It just depends on what you're working on.

What’s the best way to market your game when self-publishing?

Patrick: Sure. No, that makes a lot of sense. I do want to ask you, you did this small project, you funded with your small project, and you fulfilled it. Your big project was funded on Kickstarter, and you're working on fulfilling it now, finishing the art and working on fulfilling it now. You must have some idea what works marketing-wise, how do you market your game? Especially when you self-publish, how do you market that game and get backers?

Wes: I found the best way to interact with people is, at least at this point in my independent game career, so to speak, is on Facebook. I find that there's so many different social media groups, there's so many posts on there. You can create your own groups, and you can join others in conversation. I find that's probably the best way.

I know some people say Reddit is huge, and Twitter is huge, and Instagram is huge, and I have accounts, and I put stuff all over there, but I find I get the most conversation and interaction on Facebook. Not even necessarily paid ads. I've done paid ads, but I only do those while the game is live on Kickstarter.

Patrick: Let me ask you because I sometimes find Facebook very useful, and sometimes it doesn't seem that useful. Are you talking game design, or are you talking about story, or are you just posting new artwork? What is the thing that resonates? What is the thing that maybe works best for you on Facebook?

Wes: What works best for me is creating groups specifically for my board games, and then as new art is available, as new mechanics or videos about what I'm doing is available, I'll put those on there and open it up to discussion about what they like or don't like about it. Not only can I share on my Facebook group, I can share those same things in other board game groups.

Whether it's The Dice Tower or Board Game Design Lab, or whether it's designers or players. Also, I can include a link to my group and people like the picture I shared or the concept I've shared, and they can immediately click and join that group and become a part of it. So just organically, it's grown over time, and Legends of Novus has over 200 members, and the game I'm working on now is about 120. I just started that one about a week and a half ago.

What one resource would you recommend?

Patrick: Fantastic. Really good advice. I want to ask you, one of my favorite questions is– You've gone through this process twice. What is a resource you'd recommend to another indie game designer?

Wes: For designing games themselves, if you're the person that's going to do the graphic design and the card layouts and all that, I absolutely recommend the Adobe Creative Suite. I know there's so many other programs out there, but the cost of that program, if you use it enough, the benefits certainly outweigh it. I use it in design, and I use it for Photoshop, I use it for after effects to make videos.

Just so many things, I found that an invaluable resource for me. As a lower-cost one-time investment thing, Tabletop Simulator is $20 to buy US. You can make any game you want on there, and you don't have to pay to upload additional ones. I've even– I'd say if there's one thing that made my game design better, it was playing and using Tabletop Simulator for my own games and helping others create theirs.

Patrick: How do you find other people to play with on Tabletop Simulator?

Wes: I don't. I don't play with people on Tabletop Simulator. I use it to create games and solo play their games or my games, and develop my games that way. I think I've only played with people twice in the past year, so it's more my independent– Instead of me printing out 200 cards and trying to see if they work, I can download jpegs of them in 10 minutes and play my game online.

Then I'm like, “If that whole concept doesn't work, I can scrap it and upload a new concept of cards in 10 minutes, instead of printing them all out again or using a sharpie or doing that.” I find that digitally, it's my way to play test.

Patrick: I should mention, your legends of Novus game has a solo mode, and it is very playable solo, which I imagine just works. It sounds like your process is a very– I don't want to say solitary, that sounds like– But it doesn't sound like you go to a ton of play test events, or it doesn't sound like you go to a play test group.

If you don't have those things then maybe doing a solo game with the option of one, I think your game is 1 to 5 players, that might be the way to do it. Because then you can test everything yourself and occasionally test with other people.

Wes: Yeah. My main avenue for playtesting is develop it solo enough or test it with select groups of friends and family to the point where the worst part of the games are worked out. Then create a Print & Play and share that with anybody that's interested, and gather feedback from there.

What was the best money you ever spent as a game designer?

Patrick: Awesome. I'm a frugal person, and I try not to spend money when I don't have to, so what is the best money you've spent? What is something that was worth every single cent that you paid for?

Wes: I did a paid preview through The Dice Tower through Mark Street, and he just did an amazing job of showing the visuals of the game at different angles, describing the game. His viewer base is so large that I just felt that was a huge bang for the buck there, so I think that cost in the vicinity of $750 dollars or something like that US, but got over 2,000 views within the time frame it was fundraising on Kickstarter. So if you look at it dollar per view, for example, then it's about 50 cents a view or less.

Patrick: Fantastic. That's interesting to think about. I hadn't thought about cents per view or cost per view. I did look at reviewers for my Kickstarter, which I did earlier this year. The Dice Tower was definitely the most expensive, but if they have the biggest audience, maybe it's worth it.

Wes: Yeah. I'm not sure exactly how many of those viewers chose to purchase Legends of Novus, or if they went through different links, but I know it gave it a lot of exposure anyway.

What does success in the board game world look like to you?

Patrick: Fantastic. My favorite question at the end of this is, what does success look like for you?

Wes: To me, it's going to be next March or April once this game, Legends of Novus, is actually on people's tables. If I start to see it on pictures on Instagram or The Dice Tower or all the different groups, if I start to see my game out there, I think that'll be the most telling sign of success. If I see a bunch of suddenly negative reviews or everybody leaving my campaigns or whatnot, that might be a concern. But I have faith that the game is going to perform well and that the visuals are going to be pretty fun to look at.

Patrick: Great. No, the artwork is great. By the way, I love your– I took a scroll through your updates, and I love seeing the new art that's being developed. It looks gorgeous.

Wes: That's so close to being done, we're at the 97% mark. He's just got six pieces left, and then off to the manufacturer. It should still be on time for the promised deadline. I know that's a big thing on Kickstarter. I've followed some games that are six months or a year or two years late, and I never want to be in that camp.

Overrated/Underrated

Patrick: I hear you. I like to end with a game called Overrated/Underrated. Have you heard about it?

Wes: I have not, but I think I understand the concept.

Patrick: Great. I'm going to give you a word or phrase, and you need to tell me if you think it is overrated or underrated and then give me like one or two sentences why. So if I said, “Fall leaves, and how they fall off the tree,” you'd be like, “Underrated because the colors are so pretty.” Something like that. Cool?

Wes: Cool.

Patrick: All right. I'm going to say quests, which is a very broad overview thing. I mean quests, almost as a storytelling device. Like they're in movies, shows, TVs and games. Are they overrated or underrated?

Wes: I think quests are underrated because they do give you a goal and something to achieve in a game, an intangible that maybe you wouldn't have had otherwise.

Patrick: Love it. Now, the new Star Wars movies has had a couple of trailers come out. I assume you've seen or heard of at least one of those, the new trailers.

Wes: I have, yes.

Patrick: Fantastic. So just from the trailers, I'm going to ask you to predict the future. New Star Wars movie, overrated or underrated?

Wes: I would say overrated. I think Disney is milking the franchise. I'll watch it, and I'll be there opening weekend, I'm sure. But I know I'm getting milked at the same time.

Patrick: Got it. OK, I think I know the answer to this one, but I'm going to ask it anyway. Artbooks for games, movies, etc. Overrated or underrated?

Wes: Underrated, in the way that they can help the person that's creating the art for your projects. If they can produce a good art book, I think that's worth supporting.

Patrick: Fantastic. Probably by the time this episode comes out, it'll be a little bit closer to Thanksgiving. So, Thanksgiving. Overrated/underrated?

Wes: I'd say it's right up where it needs to be. Neither.

Wrap Up

Patrick: Neither. All right, appropriately rated. Got it. Wes, thank you so much for being on the show.

Wes: It's been a pleasure. I love answering questions, whether it's about game design or the worlds I'm creating. You've been very engaging with me there to get through some of them, so thanks.

Patrick: Thank you. Where can people find you and your games online?

Wes: People can find me easiest on Facebook, I've got two major groups that I'm running right now. Legends of Novus, the board game group for the game that is about to be fulfilled, and then another game group that I just started, like I mentioned, a week and a half ago called Die in the Dungeon.

This is about a solo game where it's a humorous take, where you're playing as the monster trying to take down the heroes in your dungeon. I've got a lot of new photos and mechanics going on that site. Otherwise, Wes Woodbury on Facebook. That's where you'll find my name, and on Twitter as well.

Patrick: I will try to find links to all these things. I was looking at Die in the Dungeon earlier today. Are you a beholder monster? Because I think that was on the cover.

Wes: I'm not a beholder monster, but that's what you will see on Die in the Dungeon. I call it an [“Eye-rollder”] because the term “Beholder” is owned by DnD.

Patrick: So it is an [“Eye-rollder”?] There we go. Yeah, it looks cool. I'll try to find links for all that stuff.

Wes: If anybody's seen Tristan Robson's art, he's doing the art for this game. He's incredible to work with.

Patrick: Great. I have not– It's probably one of the things where I might have seen it, but I don't– The name doesn't stick out to me, but I'll keep an eye on it. So listeners, if you like this, please leave a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to this. It will help other people find the show. If you leave a review, Wes said that he would give you a quest that you have to fulfill. If you meet him in person, he'll give you a quest, and you've got to take care of it.

Also, Protospiel Denver will be– Which by the way, this is the inaugural Protospiel Denver, will be in March of 2020. I think it's the middle of March, and you can look up the dates on Tabletop.events.

I'll be attending, and again I would love to play your game. I'm a big– Some play testers need your games to be super fancy, but I do not need that. You can give me cards with chicken scratches on it as long as it's legible. I'd love to play your game if you have it. I'll try to have a link in the show notes, and you can visit the site at IndieBoardGameDesigners.com, you can follow me on Twitter and BoardGameGeek, I have the same handle. I am @BFTrick on both platforms. Until next time everyone, happy designing. Bye-bye.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.