Hey guys, welcome to episode 101.
That's right, it's me. You could see me.
We are now recording. Thank you for liking and
subscribing. Hey, now I get to say it for the
first time. Like and subscribe our YouTube
channel as we've moved into the next 100 episodes.
We appreciate, appreciate all of you.
And as a thank you, I've got a very special guest on today.
I've got Carla Kopp, the founder of Weird Draft Games, and we're
going to talk about a game that she's got coming to Kickstarter
soon, Reef and Ruins. It's a game that is kind of been
play testing. She sent me a prototype and
we've been talking about it. So, Carla, how are you?
Hey, I am super tired, but that's fine.
I'm getting ready for a Kickstarter.
I'm moving, I'm dealing with life in general.
But you know, that's me. Aren't we all?
Yes, absolutely. Moving and a Kickstarter, that
is crazy. And it's crazy.
That's a lot. That's a whole lot.
If I've learned anything from our previous guests is that
launching a Kickstarter, whether it's your first or your 100th,
it's very daunting. Yeah, I've mostly gotten it down
at this point, like I think this is 15 or 16 or something in
there, but everything is always changing.
Like this industry is weird where you know, like, you think
you got it down, but like a new month comes out and you're like,
oh, there's pirates. So now there's strikes
everywhere. Now I have no idea With this new
thing. It's never boring, at least,
right? I I would really like it if at
one point in time there's like a week that goes by where I'm
like, yeah, I just got this. That would be great.
That would be awesome, right? It's interesting you bring that
up because we just were experiencing just a week or so
ago, there was a dock strike here in the United States.
That was resolved quickly, thankfully.
So hopefully it won't impact the shipping of your game in the
future and all the ones that are coming out.
So, so let's begin here. I just, I just learned this
today. I was reading this about you and
I did not realize you're the founder of Weird Giraffe Games.
I mean, I do all the things here I am weird draft games.
That is fantastic weird draft games, which is home to one of
my favorite games. That's Big Easy busking as a as
a native of Louisiana, originally from Baton Rouge, so
I can't claim New Orleans, but I absolutely love that game.
So thank you to you and your team.
Well, thank you. Yeah, like, Biggie Zbusking is
one of my favorites. It's actually like one of our
least popular titles, mainly because it dropped in retail in
April 2020. Yeah, like the worst time for a
game to come out. Worst.
Yep.
So tell us a little bit about how you started weird draft
games and the mission of the company.
So I started weird draft games because I was I go to
conventions. I was at a convention called
Dragon Con in Atlanta. Atlanta, yeah.
Yeah. And I would just go on like
panel to panel and there was this one panel about how to
design A game. And I went in there and there
was like this little 9 year old kid that just kept asking
questions. And I just got like really
inspired because I was like, you know, what if a nine year old
child can do this, maybe I can't too.
And then we had a four hour trip home where everyone was stuck in
a car with me and I forced them to design A game.
It ended up being the first game that I kick started called super
Hack over right. And from there, I was just
pretty much addicted to both game design and the community.
Like, I really enjoyed, like how open the community was.
Like I was able to join it and make a bunch of really cool
friends. It was like back in the day when
Twitter was like actually really amazing.
And you could just, like, find all these people, just talk game
design and, you know, then go to conventions and be with, you
know, your 100 or 200 best friends.
You have an interesting, just reading your website is an
interesting mission statement. You talk a lot about diversity.
You even have a section, we have photographs of people that may
be no longer or with weird giraffe but have been integral
in the journey. Talk a little bit about that.
I think that's something that makes your company unique.
Well. There's a lot of things I've
learned in this industry, like by going to conventions and like
being at the booth is that like a lot of people don't know that
there's like more people behind the games than there actually
are. Sure.
And I think being able to see that is really important,
especially for diverse people. But when I first started going
to conventions as a board game designer, I remember going into
my first unpub room and I walked in and I was nervous and I was
the only lady there. And I ended up just walking back
out and hiding in the bathroom for like 5 minutes to give
myself like a pep talk before like I went back in because it
was just very intimidating. Sure.
And I really don't want other people to have that same
experience. And one way we can make it so
that other people don't have that experience is just to like
put diverse people on covers, put them like behind the scenes
of it. Like I work with a lot of
diverse designers and editors, illustrators, graphic designers.
I try to like go through all the people, like play testers too,
like making sure like they see the game, experience it or like
even design it. And so it comes from that
perspective perspective because like getting the different
perspectives gets more people like that either interest in
games or to know like they belong to.
Awesome, so let's dive in. So just for everyone, reef and
ruins right here. It doesn't get more diverse than
otters and hydras, so. So give us an overview of reef
and ruins for us, please. So it's in my wicked wise
universe, wicked and wise, it's about Dragons and mice playing a
card game, a trick taking game, actually.
And so there's also hydras out in the wild, as you all know.
And hydras are in the water. So they can't really play card
games as well, but they can play dice games.
So that's part of where the story comes from.
And for any of you that like are really good at Latin, you'd know
that the name for Otter is Anhydra Anhydra because like
historically they've been friends throughout the years,
correct? So otters and hydras are coming
together to play this little rolling right game.
I think the game is a little bit different because there's three
different sheets that interact. So it's kind of like twilight
inscription with the four sheets, except it's way more
accessible. I do like that inscription but
like it could be a lot the 1st or like.
Oh yeah. Times, you know, whatever, but
here I tried to go for like something that was like a lot
more accessible, like OK, you can like bring your spouse in or
like your friends that don't play games as much, but you can
still play with it's like regular gamers too, because it's
like still like crunchy and has all the combos and such.
So it's, it's interesting, my wife and I played it a couple
times. I think the, the first time we
played it, it was a bit of a struggle because there's so many
options, right? You, you roll the three dice
which represent the three heads of the hydro, which I love, by
the way. So you could do this or you
could do this or you could do this.
There's so many options. And we were like really
confused. Then we sat down with the rules
a little bit more and was like, OK, wait a minute.
And then unfortunately, I, and I know you said it in the in the
rule book that you had, that you put the lore in the back of the
book because not everyone will earns well through lore.
We do. So it started to make sense.
Get that ingrained. Like I'm working on the rule
book because like, well, in the past, I always go like lore
heavy and then people are like, what are things?
And so like, I stripped out all the lore and then like, I want
to like put it back in, but like, in a like regular way and
not a like my brain way because my brain's all themes.
Right, okay, I get that. Nope.
You've got a balance theme into mechanics.
Absolutely. But like you said, so there's
three sheets. Walk us through the three sheets
and how they work together. The first sheet are the ship
ruins, and each of the ship ruins, there's six of them.
They're represented by the six different sites.
I'm actually trying to get them. They're not in order in my box
because why would they? But anyway, so yeah, we have
like the ship ruins sheet and there's like 123.
So each of the ship ruins needs to be unlocked by one of the
dice. And then they each have a little
puzzle. Like the first one needs to have
things that are the same, the second one needs to have things
that are different, etc. So there's 6 little puzzles that
you do to play into these. You have to use one of the dice.
So if you have like a 123, you could go into the one room and
put the two and the three dice. You can't put them together
because they're not the same. So you could pick a 2 here and a
three there. So that's how the ship ruins
work. They get, if you do the things
that you're supposed to, you can get coins and based on how well
you like finish them up, you'll get more coins.
And then you write your coins here and then the next sheet are
these enchantments. And if you put these beside each
other in the right way, because I'm on a camera and it's
backwards for. Me.
That's right. So each of the enchantments
lines up with a ruin and the enchantments are super easy.
They go from 7:00 to 12:00. So you have to add numbers
together, but you add them together and you get a little
bonus because otters are magical, as are hydras.
They. Are they are magical I mean.
Haven't you ever seen them juggle?
Absolutely. I want to say before you go
forward, it's really important to listeners and your backers,
future backers of the game, it's important to put these sheets in
the right order because we didn't.
So that was part of the problem. The first time we were playing
is like, wait a minute, what? There's dotted lines that
indicate how they connect. So that's really important to
note. So put them in the right order.
Sure, absolutely. So the enchantments, the
enchantments are multipliers, right?
Yeah, so some of them are multipliers where you can
multiply the ship ruined score by up to five, which is a lot.
You don't automatically get up to five.
You have to like work your way and spend some time and along
the way you can get things like shells and pearls and like extra
dice. The shells are modifiers.
You always get 2 shells at a time because they're mollusks.
And then you can use them one at a time because you are an
intelligent hydra and you could choose to only use half.
I have like all these stories. First off, my one of my graphic
designers made these shells because before I had them as
fish and I was like, I don't have two hands, one for each
fish. And she's like, don't do that.
They could be, Molluscan said. It's more, you know, it just
makes sense and I'm like, thank you ma'am for telling me about
how my game works better. But now they're shells makes
more sense. It does, actually.
It makes a lot of sense. I work with intelligent people
that are good. And it's interesting because the
rules say that when you do an enchantment, you automatically
get 2 shells that you can use and the shells you use for ±1 on
a die roll, right? So we were playing this like,
man, that is overpowering. And trust me, it's not, It's
not. You're going to have.
You'll be fine. Well, one thing in my games is
like, I want people to feel cool.
Like I want you to have those cool moves.
I don't want you to just to have 1A turn.
Or. Not one a turn because that
would be everything 1A game. I want you to feel like you're
empowered to do the things you want to do and maybe the dice
don't roll in your favor, but like you gather a bunch of
shells and then you do the things anyway.
Maybe use all up but like you won't be like pushed into like
getting nothing. There's always going to be
something to do. And there is, there is, there's
so much going on. And it, I think that was the
challenge. It's, it's realizing, OK, so you
roll 3 dice, you've got these three numbers, but some of them
have to be used in combination, IE the enchantments, even in the
ruins, because you have to use one to unlock a ruin like you
said. And then you can put that number
in that same ruin, following the rules within the ruins.
I'm looking down because I have all three sheets in front of me
so I can reference them. And it was like, OK, it starts
to click. It's I think the, I think the
word everyone's using is combo. Tastic.
There's combo. Tastic, Yeah.
Yep, there's a lot going on. So then I guess we should talk
about the third sheet. Yes.
So there's reefs. Yeah.
Reef and ruins the reef there's different ones like this is one
set that is a more polyaminal 1 and there's also this one which
is like more of a spatial puzzle kind of thing.
With this one, you are just, you start in the center and you can
go outward to whatever numbers and then you can go next to
anything that you've already done.
So once you take 1, you can go next to the free space that
you've already gotten or the one that you did before.
And what you're trying to do in this one is to make columns and
rows that are filled in and also get these little special green
ones because they give you pearls and pearls are magical
also. And they give you little bonuses
down here. And they can just be straight
points. They could be like numbers that
you could put back into the reef or into the ruins, and they
could be enchantments, things like that.
So this is one way where the combos come in, because you
could go here, fill in a row, get an enchantment, go into the
enchantment, get another Pearl, come back here and go back and
forth. Yes, that happened to me once.
And I'm like OK, And then I'm like oh wait, but I still have
another Pearl, but wait, I have more.
It is important to note that in the reef, when you roll,
whatever number you roll that you're going to use has to be
orthogonally adjacent to a number, either the free space or
a number that you previously shaded in in that reef.
Isn't that correct? Yes.
Yes, no diagonals in corals and reefs.
I mean, if you've been in coral reefs like you will get, you
know you will get hurt if you do not go.
That's true. So thematically, all right, so
you've got you've got the Otter that's leading you along and
there's this adorable little Otter that you have on the on
the kind of the round marker. And then the hydras are the
three heads are represented by the three dice.
The ruins make a lot of sense and the fact that they're
enchanting them. So how does the reef fit into
the theme here? So you can envision the reef is
like a coral reef where like if you go the wrong way, like
you'll get hurt by the coral, and where the otters are kind of
directing from the hydras on how to get the pearls.
And so like you have to do what the otters say, but if you do,
you can get the pearls that are located in the reef.
Very cool. And so talking about the
inspiration to your game, you said that it was in the same
world as one of your previous games.
Was that like, did you know you wanted to do that from the
beginning or did that come later?
That came later, actually. So one of the things that the
pandemic did is it kind of messed up my brain and I only
make games about birds. It's fine.
And so originally this was called Sandpiper Villa and it
was about Sandpipers having condos on the beach.
Because I had this little idea in my head where the dice are
different sized birds. And if you can envision birds
advertising like the bigger the sign like either the more birds
you need or the bigger birds. Sure.
So. Like a size 12 sign, Like you
could get 2 size six birds to hold that up, or like a size 5,
four and three bird. OK.
And that was, it was like the thing that was going on in my
head at the time. And then I realized, well, I
realized a while ago, like I made a game about Ravens, a game
about flamingos, a game about firebirds, about water birds.
Like I have too many bird games. Actually, one of my consultants
was like, hey, you should make a, a Kickstarter That's like,
here's these 12 bird games that my, you know, crazy brain came
up with when I was like locked in my house.
I've not done that yet. So I was trying to like see like
where in my universes things fit in and it was a whole like 3
dice thing where it was like, oh, there's three dice and
there's usually 3 heads to the hydra.
There can actually be four or five, but typical amount for
Hydras is 3. So I started with that.
And it also is very like logical and the wicked and wise
universe. It has wicked and wise, which is
like a trick taking game, which is very for the people that are
very trick taking and take it seriously.
It's about like counting cards and like playing the right one,
like giving up this so you can take that trick and that sort of
thing. And there's also logic and lore,
which is it actually says it in the name logic.
It's a two player logic game where you have to like figure
about the clues to put your cards in a row.
So I thought this like one, it fit in thematically with like
and the Hydra and also with the logic.
And then I read about the otters, the otters Latin name,
and it was just like, oh, that's obvious now.
That that's fantastic. So what?
So where did you go from? Or was it always design wise a
rolling right? Or was it a dice rolling and a
move? Or how was it early on before it
became hydrants? It was always rolling right.
OK. Yeah, and it always had.
I do have a.
But I think I'm holding that one behind.
That was my first one I designed.
It's super simple and it's actually involves other players.
And I think that might either be like a Kickstarter like stretch
goal or just like another expansiony thing.
And I say like expansiony thing because I designed this very
specifically for the three sheets where there's ruins and
enchantments and reefs. And like in this one, you can
sub out the reefs for whatever. But like I have other ship
Bruins and other enchantments. So like you can just put them
all together and choose one of each of the types and then you
have like a very modular game. So I want to ask you about how
you approach game design, right? I'm kind of zooming out for just
a minute. Big picture, you mentioned you
had a lot of bird themed games. Do you try to fit the theme?
Into a mechanic? Or do you try to find a mechanic
that fits your theme? How do you approach designing a
game in general Well. So I've been doing this a lot.
So I have done like the whole gambit of things.
Umm, generally I get like a thematic like thing with the
like birds holding up the science and stuff.
And then I figure out how that works out.
But I have done mechanics first design where I have like a list
of mechanics that like I just really like.
Like I really want to do like a nice split.
You choose game. But like every time I try to put
that in, I ended up taking it out because it's wrong.
Like, but it's fine. I'll eventually make my I split.
I've also done like weird things where like I'll get a color
palette and like design A game around a color palette or very
like like components themed like one of my games roaring right.
I actually a manufacturer was emailing about custom dice and I
was like, well, I really just wanted an excuse to make custom
dice. So what can like what game would
fit in this? And I do just like two or three
dice in a bag and like a tiny, tiny game.
And then it kind of, it went larger than that.
But like, that's where it started.
It was like, what's the fewest amount of dice that I can use to
make a game? And at that point it was six.
I'm getting smaller apparently, because this one has 3/3.
So yeah, it's can be anything. Just like one of the things I
really like is doing the name first because I'm also really
bad at names. But I've come up with some,
like, really good names where it's like, OK, well, that's just
the game. Like Poly Laminos.
Yeah, the names are really silly and like Flamingo Flamingo.
It's about flamingos finding friends.
They're mingling. Nice, nice.
The one thing that is like sometimes bad about the name,
like I have puffins love muffins and I've been working on that
for a while. But like my spouse is always
like, I absolutely hate that because you know, you think of
puffins love muffins and you think of like a game for six
year olds and that is a heavy euro.
And it's like, well, puffins love muffins.
So they make them to trade them for souvenirs at the local
souvenir shop, and then they take the souvenirs home to
organize them on their shelf. And that works for my brain, but
it's a bit too cutesy and also heavy at the same time for it to
be a game that I've released yet.
So we're working up to it. You're working on it, you're
working up to it. I love.
It you to look at a game and like just because like this one
has a like axolotl, like headed Hydra and it's cute, doesn't
mean that it's for babies like people.
Can like. Cute things that are colorful
and they're not just for six year olds, right?
Because those sorts of things appeal to like women a lot more.
Like, women love colors. Like, generally it's kind of
cool to see at conventions where, like, my booth is
typically pretty rainbow and you could, like, see who is
attracted to the colors. But yeah, like, that's another
way to make the games, like, more diverse and open for other
people. It's just like, let's make them
colorful and pretty to look at, but they don't have to be like,
the colors mean, like, for children and like, it's shades
of brown. That's a euro.
This is a great sideway because the next question I wanted to
ask you was about the art, specifically of Reef and Ruins.
Who did the art, the concept but Walker through the specific art
for Reef and Ruins? So I had one of my illustrator
or graphic designers was working with me.
I had made my prototype in PowerPoint because I'm an
engineer. I know how to use PowerPoint
really well. And so she went through and made
it a little bit more pretty. But then one of my other, I work
with like a number of illustrators and graphic
designers and John Merchant was like, oh, I saw you posting
about this and I would love to do all the artwork.
I have all these ideas and I was like, great, cool.
So he just came up with this concept.
Originally all the hydras had different kinds of heads and I
was like they're all axolotl heads for this.
Right, right. Because that's cute.
But yeah, he has worked with me for at least 5:00 or so years.
And I really like working with him because, like, he gets me.
Like, I'll just tell him what I want and he'll come back with
like, some crazy, like, rainbow thing.
And I'm like, yes, perfect. Because normally I need to like,
beg artists and stuff to be like, oh, more bright, more
colors. Like, it's fine to use your
colors. OK.
I just I want colors. That's Don't be afraid of color.
Yeah, cuz like, well, on one hand, if anyone is color blind
or anything using like bright different colors is really
helpful. But it's also helpful if people
like don't have enough light or just like to differentiate
things like because it it just takes you out of the fun if
you're like, is that like dark blue or is that black?
Like when you're thinking thoughts like that you're not
having fun and I would rather you just have fun.
So I try to take out all those things and yeah, just if you
focus on accessibility for like all different kinds of things
and everyone will just have more fun of the overall.
So I want to talk about the components to reef and ruins.
It connects to design and art, and it also talks about color
because I love it. I think it's great.
Have you finalized the dice and the pencils for this game?
I'm. Not yet.
Usually for Kickstarter stuff, I see how well the Kickstarter
does because right now, well, the dice I sent out were like
some swirly dice. But like, if it does really
well, maybe they'll be glitter. Maybe they'll be like brighter
colors or bigger, you know? So you.
Can do with dice if you want to spend lots of money.
The pencils that you sent to me are this, these different hues
of blue and aquamarine. There's a white one, but I just
dropped it on the floor on accident.
But then even the dice, they're in a plastic bag, so you can't
see them, but they're beautiful blue.
They do have a shimmer, almost like the deep ocean.
So I thought that was really cool and unique, even in the
components that you're handling, convey artistically and visually
the overall theme and design of the game.
And I thought that was brilliant.
Thank you. Oh yeah.
Thank you. I'm hoping that's intentional.
Like I definitely like try to make you like immersed in the
experience. Like why have dice that don't
match when they could and why why not?
Like one of the things that didn't match that much was this
little Otter because I had one of my friends make it.
But like usually for meatballs, I have them like a well, I have
like a mock up on the Kickstarter what where it'll be
brown and have like little markings and stuff.
But I like green. So This is why they're green
right now. But you even mentioned that it
hadn't been finalized. You had like a little, yeah.
Yeah, like nothing is finalized until it's finalized.
Wait, if anyone comes up with like more things or like, Oh
yeah, like pencils need to be like this size for this reason
or you know, whatever, there's gonna be lots of Kickstarter
comments. And I make sure sure incorporate
all of that because like I have my own people that I play test
with and I have my own ideas. But like other people, like know
more about things and then I take that into consideration
too. How much?
I'm sorry, how much play testing
have you done for reef and ruins?
This game came together rather quickly, so it's I made it last
September, so like a year ago, but I have been like carrying it
around the country. This is actually really easy to
carry because I sure it's three dice and pencils and paper.
So like I just, I've gone to at least 10 conventions, maybe more
than that. It's like, what is my life?
I know that I've been to, I've taken this to two design
retreats, which is like a week thing where we play test the
whole week. So yeah, a lot.
I also play it with like my local group where as much as I
can get them to play the same game repeatedly.
So yeah, like a year's worth of like maybe once a week, maybe
more than that depending on like the conference, because like
people will see me like at a conference playing it and
they'll be like, well, rolling, right?
I want to play too. So we'll be like, OK, we'll play
again, maybe with like some minor change or something.
It's also really easy to do rolling rights at conferences
because normally if you're at a hotel, there's a.
Right. And you can always find pencils.
Yep, I love that. Everywhere.
I love them if you want. To change it I just bring my
computer and print out a new one and in like an hour I have
another version. That's awesome.
So it's coming to Kickstarter October 15th, correct?
Yes. Yes, that's a Tuesday.
Mm Hmm. Yep.
So tell us, tell us about the details, where can people find
you, follow you and get all your other products as well as reef
and ruins? So I have a website
aweirddraftgames.com. The Kickstarter will be on
Kickstarter. You could search roof and ruins.
I believe the address for it will be like the QikLink will be
weird draft games.com/R where you could just put that in and
it'll go straight to either the Kickstarter page or if you
listen to this in like months from now.
For a year from now, probably just straight to the website
page where you can buy it. That's why quick links are so
fun. I can just change where they go
depending. Absolutely.
But I'm also sometimes on footer and blue sky and Facebook as
weird draft games or weird giraffes.
But I have a discord at weirddraftgames.com/discord
where we talk about mental health things, game stuff, and
memes. Those are like the three big
topics. That is one of some that is
weird giraffegames.com and you'll find a Kickstarter reef
and ruins October 15th. It's Tuesday.
So that's that's exciting. Is there anything else that you,
any closing remarks that you want to share with our
listeners, our viewers, Sorry, our viewers now, Carla.
Also with the Kickstarter will be Wicked and Wise Reflections
which is an expansion, the Wicked and Wise and the Wicked
and Wise Deluxe which will be like more fancy and stuff if you
are a fan of either of those or just fans of trick taking games.
But yeah, thanks everyone for listening.
I guess like my final things are I try to make like little cutesy
things more accessible in addition to like just gaming in
general, like making sure that things are colorblind friendly,
have really pretty artwork to try to get people interested in
the game. And the rules would definitely
be better because I mean, that's like the Kickstarter process as
well. But yeah, if you ever have any
questions on game design or just want to talk about games, feel
free to reach out to me either on Discord or e-mail.
My e-mail is carla@weirddraftgames.com.
So thanks for listening to me rant about adders and hydras and
stuff. Well, honestly, thank you for I
have a passion for play testing games.
I love seeing games before they're finalized and my wife
and I are huge play testers. So we really enjoyed this was a
great experience. The first run was rough, but
then we figured it out. So so thanks.
Thanks for trusting us. Thanks for coming on the show
and starting us on the journey of our next 100 episodes live in
video. This is great guys.
Thanks again. But don't forget to like
subscribe. I'm pointing.
I've never had to do that before, so I don't even know if
I'm pointing. So Gareth will do some editing
and we'll just point. I'm going to point and there
will be something for you to like and subscribe.
So thanks again everyone.