Lauren Woolsey:     00:09          Hello and welcome back to Playability where we hold conversations at the crossroads of gameplay and accessibility. I'm your host Lauren Woolsey. And today we will hear from Nikki Valens. She's probably most well known for designing Eldritch Horrors and Legacy of Dragonholt. But today I'm very excited to talk to her about her connections to Fog of Love and the upcoming expansion she designed. Welcome to the show Nikki.

Nikki Valens:       00:33          Thank you.

Lauren Woolsey:     00:33          I'm really curious how you first became connected to Fog of Love, from playing it to designing the new covers for it - which are fantastic - and now the upcoming expansion for it. So could you give me some of that backstory?

Nikki Valens:       00:47          Yeah. So when I left FFG I was looking for different opportunities of different things that I could do and Jacob the designer of the base game reached out to me to see if I would be interested in doing a collaboration with him because he had been wanting to get someone with more personal experience with queer and trans issues to kind of take a look at the base game and kind of help him make it more inclusive as an experience for all gamers. And then in the process of working on that, we talked about having an expansion that would focus on these issues more deeply. And we decided that that was something that we wanted to do. So it started as a consultation on the base game to help improve it as a game and then went into the design of the expansion.

Lauren Woolsey:     01:38          It's always good to have more stories where improvements to a game that focus on making it more accessible for some actually improve it for everyone, and that this has actually led to a brand new expansion is a great example of that. Now for our listeners who haven't played Fog of Love yet, could you go through a brief description of how the game plays? It seems like it's really innovative and unique and I think that they would benefit from hearing that from you.

Nikki Valens:       02:05          Yeah, I like to say that Fog of Love is a romantic comedy movie as a board game. So it very much relies on, if you think about whatever your favorite romantic movie, it relies on a lot of those same tropes that you'd see in that to tell its stories. So it's very romantic it's got a lot of cute scenes, it has some drama, some serious stuff to it, but it also has definitely an element of the "not real" to go along with its very real subject matter, because it kind of draws inspiration from those movies that are meant as a form of entertainment. And this is also meant as a form of entertainment. So it definitely has a number of scenes that are very not realistic but are still fun to play. But the game plays out, the two players are playing, they're playing as two characters to create at the beginning of the game who are in a romantic relationship of some kind and based on the story that you're playing various different things will happen for your characters.

Nikki Valens:       03:07          So there's a number of different stories in the base game, for instance there's like a Sunday morning date one where you kind of start is this like "oh we're just gonna go on this date and see what happens with our characters." There's one that's your high school sweethearts and it's about kind of how you progress you know into adulthood with this relationship that's already established or one that starts out as a speed dating type of situation and it's, the story just kind of progresses from there and gets more serious as it goes on. So there's all these different stories that can get told and even playing through those stories again. I think the players will bring so much into it. It's encouraged the players will create their characters and role play those characters. So as you're playing the game you're telling not just the story the game is offering you, but you're telling your own story as these two unique people who are showing up in this story.

Lauren Woolsey:     04:03          I haven't had a chance to play it yet, but I have seen it played and it really is something that you can kind of get wrapped up in as an audience member! The game that I watched ended with a big exciting run through the airport scene, and I felt like cheering for the couple so I can definitely see the romantic comedy in a box aspect. Now, the game itself seems like a cooperative game but would you characterize it like that? Can one player win and the other not?

Nikki Valens:       04:29          In a way. So, Fog of Love isn't so much about winning or losing. It's about telling that story and having the experience, the closest thing that it has to a "win condition" is these things called Destiny cards and they represent your character's ultimate motivations what you hope to gain out of this relationship, whether that's, you know, this mutual love team like relationship, or you want to be the dominant one in the relationship, or maybe you intend to break up with your partner is one of them in the later stories. So it's definitely possible for one player to fulfill their destiny and the other player to not. It's also possible that neither player fufills their destiny. Fulfilling your destiny isn't necessarily dependent on whether the relationship works out in the end. Some of them, if you break up you can still fulfill your destiny. Some of them require that you stay together as a couple to fulfill your destiny. So it's not about the winning or losing but for the players that want that "what is my win condition" type of thing, it's really the destinies is what they should be focusing on.

Lauren Woolsey:     05:38          They still have the Destiny cards to ground themselves and seeing this as a game more than an activity or a form of entertainment like you noted earlier. [Nikki: Yeah.] For the new expansion, I'm sure you're adding many new scenes and other aspects but will there also be a whole new set of Destiny cards?

Nikki Valens:       05:56          Yes. So the new expansion has specifically a focus on self discovery so the types of stories that I wanted to be able to tell were ones that focus very deeply on orientation and gender identity. And it comes with some other components that allow you to quantify those aspects of your character a bit more. But it also comes with some new destinies that are unique from the ones in the base game, as well as some alternate versions of the destinies that came in the base game that play into your character's orientation and gender in a more mechanical way to allow those to become part of the game more fully.

Nikki Valens:       06:34          The two new destinies that are being included, of course none of this is final right now but as they are currently my prototype, there is one that is Sex Friends, which is you have a sexual attraction to your partner but not necessarily a romantic attraction. So it's a slightly different take on the types of relationships that we see in the base game and then the other one that I thought was very important to focus on was Platonic Partners. And this is an intimate partnership between the two characters that does not have a romantic or a sexual component which is perhaps difficult for many people throughout their mind around. But it is a very important type of relationship to include for players who wish to play characters who are aromantic or asexual for instance. It's also just a type of relationship that doesn't, we don't get to see it much in stories. So it's an interesting new addition.

Lauren Woolsey:     07:30          Definitely, that's so important. The new mechanics that you mentioned you're adding, can we go into those a bit more?

Nikki Valens:       07:37          Yeah. So in order to focus on your character's orientation and gender identity, I've added a number of cards that help to quantify that. In the base game, your character can be of whatever gender you wish. It doesn't really have that much mechanical effect, and it's assumed that there is attraction between the two characters. In these two stories that come in this expansion, your gender identity, depending on the story it might be something that you said at the beginning as you define your character, or it might be something that changes over the course of the story as you discover what your character's gender identity is in a sort of story about a transition within, a gender transition, within the relationship. The orientations then relate to gender in that your characters might be attracted to, you know, only men or only women or they might be attracted to both men and women. They might be attracted only to non-binary people or to, you know, anyone regardless of gender.

Nikki Valens:       08:40          And then the other thing that I am focusing on right now is a split between romantic orientation and sexual orientation. For most people in real life, those two things align. So, for instance someone who is heterosexual is probably also heteroromantic. And what that means is that the people that they are romantically attracted to are the same people they are sexually attracted to. That's not necessarily true for all people. So I wanted characters to be able to have that as well. So you can have a character who is romantically attracted to someone but perhaps is asexual, or they are sexually attracted to someone but they are not romantically attracted, and that dynamic helps to tell some more unique stories. And helps to just be more inclusive of all of the different ways that people express themselves and feel about relationships and other people in general.

Lauren Woolsey:     09:41          Yeah. When we started this podcast, our original goal was to bring to light a lot of games, people, and topics with accessibility and inclusion in mind. Those are both in our mission statement. As a team, up until now a lot of our early episodes, our early conversations, focused mainly on accessibility in general, as a general concept, but inclusivity is tied to and an essential part of making games truly accessible to all players. So we turn now to the question that we ask all of our guests: What does accessibility and inclusion mean to you?

Nikki Valens:       10:18          So they're both very important aspects to game design in my opinion. For me inclusivity is representation of players within the game in such a way that they feel accepted and supported within the hobby. And [Lauren: absolutely.] accessibility is the ease of playing the game. Whether that is being able to pick up the game and learn it very easily if it's in a language that you can actually comprehend and then also your ability to play it. If you have any kind of learning disability or even like colorblindness, blindness, deafness, any other physical attributes that you might have that could be a hindrance to other games. How does that affect your ability to play this game and hopefully most games allow that anyone can play them. They're designed in such a way that anyone who has that ability to play them.

Lauren Woolsey:     11:16          When the designer of the Fog of Love base game came to you as a consultant on the cards themselves, and making sure that they were inclusive, was that the first time you had held that particular role?

Nikki Valens:       11:28          Fog of Love is the first game where my role on it was specifically to do a consultation in terms of, like, is this inclusive to people like myself. Of course many of my games have strong narrative components to them. So in the process of simply creating them and editing, you know, any of the narrative text that goes into them I've been able to do that aspect as well but it wasn't the primary role that I was meant to be on those things. But in terms of projects that didn't come from my own mind that I was able to do this for, Fog of Love is the first. So, currently nothing else.

Lauren Woolsey:     12:07          Well it seems like everyone's gonna benefit from that consultation and we can look forward to that expansion that developed from that connection. Are there other game related projects you have in progress at the moment that you can tell us about?

Nikki Valens:       12:20          There are a couple other things that I've been working on. I have a number of different ideas for some narrative games that are similar to Legacy of Dragonholt that I want to create. And I've also been working on some more mechanical based games some of which I tweet about on occasion, others are under NDA so I can't really say anything about them yet.

Lauren Woolsey:     12:43          Certainly. For our listeners who are interested in following those updates on Twitter your handle is @Valens116? [Nikki: That is correct.] And do you have a sense of the timeline for your Fog of Love expansion?

Nikki Valens:       12:57          We're hoping Q2 of 2019 so hopefully not that much longer, but creating game content and getting it printed does take time. So that is sort of a best case scenario right now.

Lauren Woolsey:     13:13          Totally understandable. Where can our listeners find your expansion once it's out and the base game if they don't yet have it?

Nikki Valens:       13:20          In the United States, the base game is available only through Wal-Mart. In other countries, you should be able to find it at your local game stores. If you go to the Fog of Love website there's actually a section on there that can help you find stores that are in your area that you can buy it from. The alternate covers that we recently made for the base game should also be available very shortly if they're not already available in your area. The expansions I believe are gonna be in the same stores as the base game. So for the United States that will be just Wal-Mart.

Lauren Woolsey:     13:53          Perfect. And as we wrap up this conversation what is your favorite part of playing Fog of Love? [Nikki: Oh...All right.] I know, it's a tough question, I got to have some tough questions.

Nikki Valens:       14:05          I've got two aspects of it that I really like. The first one is a mechanical piece of how the game functions which is the personality dimensions. So as you're playing the game and playing out these scenes when you make decisions as a character you get tokens on this colorful track called personality dimensions that are things like discipline and gentleness, sincerity and I just think it's a really cool way to quantify the aspects of a person's personality how they interact with other people that does so in such a way that's very flexible but also very full feeling. Once you have the number of tokens on there it feels like your character is very fleshed out as a person like you knew what types of decisions they'll be making.

Nikki Valens:       14:50          But I think the thing that stands out to me even more than that is just the element of emergent narrative that comes through with the game as players are creating these characters and they're playing through these different scenes that the game offers them and adding their own spin. And like telling how their personal characters are going through these scenes it becomes their story. The story players are telling and that story is completely unique to those two players and those characters, so that even if other people play that same story they're getting a completely different story out of it than, you know, a different pair of players are and it's just really cool to see that.

Lauren Woolsey:     15:29          This game is at the top of my to-play list, even higher after talking with you about it. It seems like this is a game that might bring a lot of people into the narrative-driven portion of our gaming hobby and you are expanding quite literally the reach that Fog of Love is able to have. Thank you so much for talking with me today. This was a fantastic conversation and I'm really looking forward to your expansion.

Nikki Valens:       15:52          Thank you for having me on.

Lauren Woolsey:     15:53          For more information about the Fog of Love base game and the newest expansion that we discussed in this episode, please see the "About this Episode" section on our website at playabilitypod dot com. If you have questions or comments you would like to share with us please email us at playabilitypod at gmail dot com. And you can find us on major social media platforms as @playabilitypod. Thanks again for listening, and remember to play with a new perspective.