------------------------------------------------------------------ Playability Podcast Episode 10: Ancient World 2nd Edition (Ryan Laukat) Run time: 13 minutes, 59 seconds Episode recorded by Rebecca Strang. Playability is produced by Mike Risley. Transcript auto-generated by Temi and edited by Rebecca Strang. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Music intro: 00:00 Rebecca Strang: 00:06 Hello and welcome to Playability, where we hold conversations at the crossroads of the gameplay and accessibility. I'm your host, Rebecca Strang, and I'm joined today by Ryan Laukat of Red Raven Games. Ryan and the Red Raven crew have had a successful Kickstarter for Ancient World Second Edition and they're gearing up for a campaign for Sleeping Gods. Welcome to the show, Ryan. Ryan Laukat: 00:30 Thank you. Happy to be here. Rebecca Strang: 00:32 Glad to have you. So let's first talk a little bit about Ancient World Second Edition. I know that you guys wrapped up a successful Kickstarter for that in September and you've been working on production for that and I saw your last update for the game files and those looks great. So can you tell our listeners a little bit about Ancient World Second Edition and what's new with this addition and a little bit of the development path and the play style of the game? Ryan Laukat: 00:57 Yeah, thanks. So The Ancient World came out in 2014, so it's been, it actually seems like a lot longer than that to me, but just because our company has changed so much since the game came out, but this was a chance for us to revisit the game and you know, I had been working on expansion ideas for the game for years and things kind of came together this year and so I was excited to jump in and work on that again. So basically for those who haven't seen The Ancient World, it is a, it's sort of a quick civilization worker placement style game where it takes place in this ancient land that is overrun by these giant monsters and so every player has a different city state and you are trying to build up your, your city state to fight these titans and you're trying to attract different tribes that live in this world. Ryan Laukat: 01:50 And so you do that by building buildings and by attacking the titans and there's sort of a balance. You can sort of focus on one or the other or do sort of a mix of both of them. Yeah. And some of it, so one of the new things we decided to do with The Ancient orld is that when we sat down to play The Ancient World, again, one of the things that I noticed was that the titans, or fairly static in the first edition, so thematically, they're supposed to be attacking the land and destroying things, but they kind of just sit up in the corner and you just go and hunt them. And so we thought, okay, you know, I, for awhile I worked on ways to make the titans feel a little bit, a little bit more aggressive. And so now in the game they actually attack the players. Ryan Laukat: 02:34 There's sort of a titan that is you're threatening tighten that sits on your player board. And um, if you don't take care of it by the end of the round than it will attack you. And Yeah. And now one interesting thing in the game is there's a new resource called Ambrosia and um, you can actually use this resource to perform special actions, but you can also use it to feed the titans. And if you feed it them, then they will not attack you, so you can sort of have a pet titan kind of hanging out on your porch. Yeah. I mean it's, it's, it's fun to see players sort of decide whether to fight them or feed them. Yeah. Although they did get more hungry over time. So if you, if you like, keep feeding them, then it almost becomes a just unmanageable by the end of the game. Rebecca Strang: 03:27 Haha, kind of like real pets. Ryan Laukat: 03:29 Well, yes, like real pets. It's true. Ryan Laukat: 03:33 That definitely sounds exciting. I haven't played the first version but I did back the second one, so I'm looking forward to getting a chance to check that out. Ryan Laukat: 03:42 Oh Great. Thanks. Rebecca Strang: 03:44 Um, and then I know you're working on Sleeping Gods, which is going to be a new campaign that you're working on. So what can you tell us about that right now? Ryan Laukat: 03:52 So I, it is a game I had been working on for a very long time. So it's an open world game and I've been working on it since, uh, July 2017 at that time. It actually had a different name and it had a slightly different theme, but it's still been the same open world thing I've been trying to tackle. I mean, it's been a very difficult, uh, at least for me, it's a, it's a totally different style of game than I have designed up to this point. And so it, it almost in some ways feels like I've had to start from scratch and just come up with so many new ways to do everything in the game, you know, come up with new mechanisms and new, um, and it's, it's a, it's actually a co op game in the game. You and your crew are on this ship in the 19 twenties and you get whisked away to this other world and lost in this other world and you have to wander around and figure out how to get home. And I'm so in the game, everybody helps control the ship and the crew and you work together to survive and search, go to different islands. There's a lot of it to sail around to the different islands and uh, it's actually a campaign game. It's actually one giant long game. It's just that you can stop and save your game a little bit like the seventh continent. Rebecca Strang: 05:11 Oh cool. And I was reading a little bit about it on the page on board Game Geek and can you tell us a little about how the book, it sounded like there was travel and you're traveling across a page and you're flipping pages to keep going. Is that correct? Ryan Laukat: 05:29 Yeah, that's true. So if you've seen Near and Far it has an atlas and uh, every time you play you, you play on a different page with the atlas, but in this one you can just sort of keep going. So if you. It's actually just one giant board, it's just that the atlas keeps it smaller. So if you get to the edge of the page, you just, it tells you what page to turn to. You turn that page and you just keep going. Rebecca Strang: 05:53 That's just really cool. Ryan Laukat: 05:55 Yeah. So it's, it's really cool. It's a cool concept and it's finally starting to really come together now, but I tell you, it's been one of the challenges is that it's really hard to make the mechanisms work in that, in that setting, like, you know, make everything interesting even though you can venture any way you want to and go as far as you want to, you know. So it's, I've had to think about the, you know, the way I design games differently. Rebecca Strang: 06:26 And so as far as your design process and I know you do the art for your games as well and a lot of people when, when we see threads on Facebook groups or on Board Game Geek and we're talking about inclusive art in board games, your work comes up a lot as games that are very thoughtful with character representation. And can you talk a little bit about what goes into your design process on the game design and the art design side for you? Ryan Laukat: 06:56 Yeah. So that's encouraging to hear that. I do think games can be more inclusive and uh, so I do make an effort to try to do that because I want my games to be appealing to lots of different people and I think that's an important part of that and to be, you know, to be frank, so many games just for years, I have left so many groups of people out, so I would say that I've tried to do that also with sleeping gods. So the crew on the ship is a very diverse cast of characters from many parts of the world. One cool thing about this that's been, I feel like it stretched us a little bit, but it's also been fun, is that since this crew is from Earth, we can sort of, we sort of pick different places that everyone's from and we can come up with their history and, and uh, so that's been, that's been fun to do that. Rebecca Strang: 07:48 Awesome. And are there any other decisions you make in your design process aside from the art and character that you do with accessibility in mind? Ryan Laukat: 07:57 Um, I also want my games to be accessible to well, okay. So I personally, I like playing games with my family, that's always what I've done. That's been my favorite part of playing games, growing up, played a lot of the classics, you know, and, and uh, or, and when I say classics, you know, a lot of the mass market stuff. But, you know, the fun stuff, the fun memories were that we were sitting there together as a family. And so whenever I design games I try to make decisions about content where, you know, the whole family can experience this, these stories and these worlds together. So I think that that's definitely part of it. And then part of it is just, I personally like colorful, not as gritty settings. I mean there's some times I do like the gritty setting, but um, my games generally are more on the, uh, family friendly sort of sense of wonder side, I guess I could say. Rebecca Strang: 08:54 Yeah. And I think that definitely shows through in your work. It's very, the sense of wonder is a good term for the aesthetic that you have and it's just gorgeous. Like all, all of your work is gorgeous. So with Ancient World, what is your favorite part of that game that you think is going to be memorable for players? Ryan Laukat: 09:19 So I really like the um, I think it's the titans. I mean I like all the diverse weird creatures that sort of I came up with for the game and, and how they interact with players. I feel like this time the theme is more immersive so you know, just the fact that you can attack a titan or you can feed a titan. Also, what's interesting is the titans, they have different, they're a little bit more varied now, so like they have different attacks and so one might destroy your district or one might just make, you might lose a coin. Ryan Laukat: 09:55 And so they have a lot of different, varied things on them. But I would say also with The Ancient World, when I came up with this, my goal was to create a lush sort of mythical setting and just do tons of artwork. I would say this game has probably more unique pieces of artwork than any game I've worked on, like as so many different titans in so many different buildings. And landscapes and different paintings and this time I actually repainted all the citizens in the game, all the different players, workers, and there are a lot more detailed and they belong to different factions. So we've sort of flushed out the world quite a bit. Rebecca Strang: 10:34 Awesome. For people who missed out on the Kickstarter for that, are you doing preorders for that right now? Ryan Laukat: 10:41 We actually did do preorders for awhile and we, I'm sad to say we just closed them, but we never do anything, at least for this Kickstarter, nothing was like exclusive. And so at a later time people, if they missed out on maybe the metal coins, there'll be an opportunity to get those later. Rebecca Strang: 11:00 Great. And then same question for Sleeping Gods. What can people look forward to that's gonna draw them into that game. Ryan Laukat: 11:09 So Sleeping Gods is. When I started designing it, the number one goal was to make something that was very immersive. That's at the top of the list, immersive game. So every decision I've made in the game has been, how do I make this feel more immersive? Or how do I make players feel like they are in this setting and the all of the mechanisms make sense for the things that you're doing in the game. So, you know, sometimes I designed games with sort of a mechanical focus and we put a theme on it. And um, sometimes I design games more with uh, setting focus and I would say this is that. One other thing I'm trying to do at this game is um, so you start with a crew of characters at the start of the game, you have eight characters and these characters, you know, they have personalities and they say things in the paragraphs which is different than our past storybook games, like Near and Far and Above and Below. Most of the time the characters are playing. They don't have dialogue. I mean there is character mode in Near and Far. And so there is some of that in, in that mode. But this time we're trying to weave. The character is more into all the stories in the whole game. So it's, it's more like I'm hoping that it will feel more like reading a novel. Rebecca Strang: 12:29 That sounds pretty awesome. When are you planning to have that campaign lunch? Ryan Laukat: 12:37 You know, we're still deep in development for that game, so it probably won't be ready until, I want to say mid next year, but I, I, I hesitate to say anything at all, but I think I'm pretty safe saying that. Yeah. Rebecca Strang: 12:54 And then for people who want to stay up to date with news about Red Raven Games and your future projects, where can they find you online? Ryan Laukat: 13:04 You can, uh, follow Red Raven Games on twitter. It's @RedRavenGame. And then if you go to our website which is RedRavenGames.com, you can sign up for our newsletter and every time we do a new Kickstarter project or we release a new game, we send out a newsletter. So that's really the best way to keep up with all of all the news that we're for, for Red Raven. Rebecca Strang: 13:25 Sounds good. Well thank you so much for being on the show today and talking with us about those games. They sound excellent and I'm looking forward to both of them. Ryan Laukat: 13:33 Oh thank you. Yeah, it's been great. Rebecca Strang: 13:36 Alright, and for our listeners, if you have any questions or comments you would like to share with us, please email us at playabilitypod@Gmail.com or find us on major social media platforms @playabilitypod. Thanks again for listening and I hope this episode helps you play with a new perspective.