Hey, and welcome to episode 1 Three.
On today's episode of Meeple to Meeple, I'm turning up the amp
to 11 and placing tokens on the board with someone who knows a
thing or two about rhythm and rock'n'roll, the legendary
Jackie Fox. She's joining me today to talk
about her leap from pounding bass lines on stage to designing
board game mechanics at the table.
Her game Rock Hard 1977 doesn't just capture the spirit of a
wild era in rock history, it puts you right in the middle.
We'll chat about her time rocking on the stage, her
creative process behind bringing backstage drama and tour life
into a board game, and why the worlds of music and tabletop
gaming have more in common then you might think.
Get ready to explore the crossover of rock'n'roll
storytelling with cardboard and acrylic.
So tune your guitars, grab your meeples as Jackie teaches me how
to hit all the right notes on my tabletop.
It's bass lines to board games. Jackie, how are you?
I'm. Good.
How are you? I'm fantastic.
Thank you so much for joining me.
I'm really looking forward to this conversation so.
I am too. I was just at the World Series
of board gaming. I got to do my first
commentating on a board game. How, and it turns out it was
interesting because I'd only ever played the game once.
It was. It was raw, right?
That's what. You it was very raw.
So, So what is it like? I'm trying to imagine
commentating for a board game right?
Like. Right.
You know, we went and interviewed the finalists for it
was one of the ring matches. So that was for winning an
actual ring. And I mean, this is a certified
diamond ring. These rings are crazy nice.
And it was these four guys. I interviewed them beforehand
and. And I was doing this with Mike
Delicio from the Dice Tower, and he's asking all these questions
about the game. And I'm saying, though, where
are you from? What do you do?
What are you doing when you're done with the World Series?
So I got to know them. Yeah.
And most of my commentary, because RAW is not, you don't
really have to explain to people what's going on.
They're pulling tiles. So I was able to say who they
were, whether they had previous rings, how many final tables
they had been at. So I kind of stuck to that part.
And then and then I got saved. I just got saved, I'll say that.
I just, I can't imagine like I'm picturing like golf announcers.
So Tim places his meeple on the first square to cut his wood for
round one. Well, I think I was supposed to
do after the fact commentary for the Rock Hard final.
Yeah. But I forgot to be honest.
So hey, what was that like? Wow, just watching people
competitively play your game. So, you know, it was awesome.
They started the final at about 11:30 PM and the awards ceremony
was at 8:00 AM the following day.
So I basically went out, introduced myself, asked them if
they had any questions and said good, you guys stay up late and
rock like true rockers. I'm going to bed if you don't
want to come at 8:00 in the morning.
If you all agree you don't need to be there, I'll just go
collect this, you know, except on your behalf and you can sleep
in. But then you get your adrenaline
is so pumping when you're competing that the the guy who
won Justin showed up, collected his $250 in cash and got
congratulated by me. Wow, that's amazing.
Speaking of cash, I'm going to bounce around here.
So one of the features of your game is the actual paper money,
right? I cried when they told me they
were putting paper money in my game because they showed it to
me over. Is it like over a Google Meet or
is it? And it's like, oh, here's the
money for your game. And I looked at it and I went,
you put paper money in my game. I was just like, yeah, it looks
great. And I didn't get it until I got
my first copy and opened it up and I went, Oh my God, this is
awesome. I think that I think that's
everyone's experience when they first opened it like paper
money. Whoa.
Yeah, it's like it. It feels and looks like real
money. And it it takes people a while
to realize that instead of the dead presidents, you've got the
the numbers. But there are serial numbers on
it and a signature and it really looks like money and it feels
like money. That's, that is probably one of
the biggest selling points cuz that's such a great touch.
And I love how there's like phone numbers written on it and
lipstick kisses on it. Things that you would really see
in the, what do you call it, The nightly?
Yeah, that was the paper money was all De Vere and Maple
Foundry. I can't take credit for that,
but I can take credit for suggesting they put the lipstick
stains and the coffee stains and just making it look like grungy
money from the 70s. And then they they took that
even further. They put phone numbers on it.
So yeah, you have all kinds of little decorations on the bills.
So cool. There are a lot of little
touches in that game that various people contributed and
some of them are subtle and some of them are very in your face.
I would say that your game probably was the not the Dark
Horse of 2024. It was last year, right?
It really took us by surprise. We were like a rock'n'roll game.
OK, didn't didn't hear much about it.
There was not a lot of lead up before it was released and then
we played it and just you took our breaths away.
The experience is amazing. You know, up until I think my
game and and to some extent draft and write records, there
really had not been thematic games about the music industry,
right Lacrimosa in the classical area, which is what brought me
to de view was that game. Yes, my great selling point was
me. Mozart natural fit devere went.
Yeah, sure, why not? That's fantastic.
I think one of the one of the things when I'm, when I am
talking to people about your game, I, what I really enjoy is
that it is a worker placement where you have one worker and
that worker is you. Yeah.
So you have managed to, and I'm going to ask you to say more
about like how you did this. You've managed to really make it
immersive because you're the worker, you are doing all the
things. How did that, how did that come
about? Talk about your process.
The process was there were five people that showed up to my
house for game day and we wanted to play a strategy, you know,
something strategic that played it by players.
And it was kind of like, oh, look, in the year of the dragon,
what else is there on my shelf anyway?
It was on the year the dragon because this was pre pandemic.
And after they left, I think we found something else that
somebody had brought that played at 5 and it was not very
satisfying. And I went, you know, there's a
game missing from my shelf and it's something that is strategic
but has the fun factor of an American game.
And we'll play up to five players and like, why doesn't
that game exist? It doesn't exist.
I'm going to design and it just popped into my head that the
music industry is a natural fit for a worker placement game.
Sure. And apparently it popped into a
few people's heads around the same time.
Because I I have seen other people who said they started
their games around the same time, or at least before mine
was released, and they came up with some similar, really
similar things, worker placement with some very similar spots.
Because the music industry works in a particular way, and because
it does, and because people kind of understand it from
entertainment coverage, it makes learning a game a lot easier.
And to make it even easier to learn, I divided my game into 3
phases. Daytime.
What did I end up calling it? Night and after hours.
After hours, yeah. So it was night and late night,
which has got confusing for some people.
So I went, well, we'll make it after hours.
And because you only have to think about the actions that you
can do in the day or that you can do anytime.
Once you get better, you do start looking ahead and you do
start planning, but you can play it and you can remember it just
because you're only dealing with a certain number of actions
during each phase, right? There's room to get better, but
you can jump right in and it looks intimidating but people
pick it up after 2 rounds. They're running it themselves.
So let me let me back up because I should have asked you this
first. How did you get into modern
board gaming originally? What was the first game and do
you have a favorite? I love to be able to tell this
story right now because the the I'm going to go a little bit
backwards, but the first game I ever played at A at a modern
meet up was Escape from the Aliens in outer space.
And if you go to the BGG hot as right, at least as of the time
of this recording, I am right underneath Escape from the
Aliens in Outer Space, which is like kind of a trippy moment
because that was literally one of the managers in my game.
And Junior Evans is a combination of two people,
including a friend of mine who I met playing that game because I
was an alien and he was a human and I ate him.
And now we're friends and I just sort of love that.
That's like that's how you make friends in board gaming.
You eat somebody and then they become your lifelong friend.
Or you get eaten. Or you get eaten.
Yeah. And after you've you're done
flipping the table, I exchanged contact info and there you go.
But yeah, I grew up playing games, OK, particularly, you
know, all the board games that were available when I was
growing up, which weren't very good ones.
They were like, sorry and, and original Risk and Monopoly and
the Game of Life, which basically taught me that there
is no point in going to college. Although eventually, eventually
I realized there was a point. But that was my takeaways like
don't get married, don't have kids, don't go to college.
So I joined a rock band. Joined.
A rock band. I learned, I learned everything
there was to learn from the game of life.
And then I relearned it when I got older.
But anyway, you know, life happens.
You do, you join as one does. You join a rock band, you go out
and tour the world. You realize there's more to the
world. You go back to college and
somewhere along the way games just drop out and and then by
chance, if you're me, you see a friend post how much they'd like
to get back into D&D and I that sounds like that's going to be
fun because I did that with my now ex-husband while I was in
law school. I didn't want.
I mean, law school is pretty boring to be honest.
So I married a game producer. Not because law school was
boring, just because they're not connected.
But I was married to a video game producer so we had every
game system in existence. And then he also got me back
into gaming and largely into doing DND and Shadow Run, which
we did. I mean we did 1st edition Shadow
Run. Wow, now you're taking me back.
Yeah, and both is a second edition DND and 1st edition
Shadow Run. And I had such a good time doing
that. But then I became a lawyer and
you really don't have time to play games.
But as I was starting to think about retiring and having a
little more free time, I saw this post by my friend and I
went, yeah, this sounds fun. And I looked for a meet up close
to my house, found one that said come prepared with a level 9
character. And I was like no, I think I
need my handheld after all this time that sounds like that, I'm
not going to be able to do that. So I but I happened to see an ad
for a board game meet up that was a block away from that.
So I went, I'll just go drop into that and see what that's
like and insta hook. Nice.
I have been playing games ever since.
When when was that? Do you remember like what year
I'm? Trying to figure out.
I think it's was somewhere between 8 and 10 years ago.
OK, OK, that's cool. So you have just demonstrated
what I constantly say on the show is that board games are all
about this shared experience at the tabletop and that the board
game or the mechanics that happen in front of us.
Because I don't know if you feel this way.
I believe that in playing board games is it's really intimate
experience, right, That we share together with a common goal,
whether that's to, you know, cooperatively defeat the game or
to compete against one another. But there's a level of intimacy
that I find and I have a tendency to I can't turn off the
podcast interviewer. So if I'm playing a game with
you and I take my turn and while I'm waiting, I'm be like, so
tell me where you from and you know, how'd you how'd you and
your husband meet? Or I just I can't help it.
Yeah. One of the things that's great
though is that if you're not somebody that's comfortable with
all that, you can just show up and play and it's eases social
interactions. There are a lot of
neurodivergent people that play board games, yes.
And and part I think it's because the social experience is
so geared around a shared love of something.
Yes. That you're in a safe space,
you're not having to talk a lot about yourself and and if you're
with somebody like you, you're not having to steer the
conversation, right. So it's nice, but I'm also going
to say it's not always an intimate shared experience
because I think there are great solo games out there and that's
a great exercise for your brains.
Something I do every morning, which you may not have the
luxury of. The first thing I do when I wake
up after feeding the cats and getting dressed, but the first
thing I do just sit down on my computer and I play a light
little game. So I'll go to BGA and I'll just
warm my day up with a little ticket to ride or something
like, you know, something nice and easy.
Or I'll do the New York Times crossword puzzle.
Just something I can do by myself, kind of wake the brain
up and get it ready to be there and present and doing whatever I
need to do during the day. Right.
Yeah, No, you're absolutely right.
There are some fantastic solo board games out there.
I've talked about this a lot. I've shared my personal story
about why I don't play solo games because I played a lot of
board games that weren't because you, you know, there weren't,
there were no solo games when we were growing up.
And so I didn't have a lot of friends.
So I would play Monopoly or Risk or some of the other games you
just mentioned and I'd have to play them alone.
And that baggage hasn't left. So when I sit at a table and I
set up a board game, I have this, this block.
I just I get depressed. Well solo modes, more complex
games are a great way to learn the mechanisms and have an
easier time teaching your friends.
Which is great. But also, I was in a Gloom Haven
group and I didn't choose the group carefully enough.
Two of the guys were the type that when it wasn't their turn,
they would just start talking loudly about college football
while other people were trying to think.
So the other person in my group dropped out because couldn't
stand those two. I hung in there for a while and
finally I went, life's too short.
And I just finished the entire campaign by myself.
And that is a bit, you know, that's a lot to run.
That's a lot. But it got me into the mindset
of solo gaming and solving a puzzle on my own.
And I say I like gaming with other people more, but sometimes
I don't have the time or you just can't do it.
So I will play games on my own or I'll go online.
Derek Porter of BGG, I will curse him to this day because he
tricked me into playing Blood on the Clock Tower and I love it.
I I generally hate social deduction games, but there's so
much logical deduction in this one and plus social deduction
and there's a great community of people that play this game.
So I'm kind of hooked and it's a nice change up.
Uses a different part of my brain than, say, a Lacerda.
Very true. Yeah, I think every part of your
brain uses a a different part of your brain than Laserda.
That man thinks outside the box. Well, inside the box, but.
Both, right, Both and both. And outside the box is he puts
outside the box inside the box. Yes, yes, he does.
Well, I didn't. I didn't mean for the
conversation to go to go so heavy as a lacerda, but.
Well, that I mean, I'm people are very surprised because my
game is not particularly complex.
It's about the same complexity as wingspan or something in that
area. OK, you know, medium light, but
I prefer medium heavy games. I just I like challenging
myself. So but I'm I'm really an Omni
gamer. I think though that your game
has it's so immersive. While I agree it's it's it's
light to medium weight. Yes for sure.
I have so much fun playing it and I'm so immersed in it that
everything else just falls away and.
That was what I what I did when I sat down, it was like what
experience do I want my players to have less.
Let me not think about mechanisms and well, the theme
popped in there for because it's a natural.
Then it was like, what experience do I want my players
to have? Do I want them to have a super
puzzly try to work this out? Do I want more interaction?
And it's like, I want you to feel like you are an up and
coming musician trying to break out into the big time.
And I intended intentionally simplified the game to it's
really the basics that you needed for that experience and
then designed an expansion, which is finally going to come
out sometime next year. Oh, that's exciting, adds
another path to victory. Because the the complaint from
people who don't like the game is that it's too linear.
And it's like, yeah, this is meant to be.
If you're a strategy board gamer, you'll still enjoy
playing this game. But you can take that person
who's only willing to play light games because they're nervous
about playing strategy games. And you can say this is a
strategy game you will be able to play, and you'll pick it up
really quickly. And then I start adding in
modules. So for instance, in this game,
writing songs is probably the least exciting part of things,
which is an accurate reflection of life because sitting down and
writing a song is a lot of work. In this game, it's weirdly
represented by not being a lot of work.
You just say I'm going to write a song and you turn your dial by
1. So I wanted to blow that little
moment up into something a lot more interesting.
And so in the expansion, when you write a song, if you've got
some life experience that you haven't written about before,
you can use your experience to write a song of a particular
style. So if you've had you've hung out
backstage and had a romantic experience, you can write a
power ballad, you've been hanging out at Hoover's, you're
writing an anthem, right? You know, etc.
And when you have those song styles, then it's something that
you can go promote as a single when you take, when you hire
indie promo and you'll flip that to show that you promoted that
song and you'll move up the chart.
So there's a little area majority kind of thing going on,
or I should say area control because you want to be highest
up on the chart and if you do make it to number 1, you also
get some extra points for that. That's cool.
That's like a. 4th. Next year, you think?
Yeah. It's sometime next year.
I don't have an exact date. I've seen the artwork.
The artwork's great. There are two new characters, 2
new managers, new cards for every deck and date, and this
chart that you get to climb. So I'm excited about that.
Is there the possibility in the future?
Because the whole idea is that yes, OK, well, there you go.
There you go, folks. She said it.
No. So we're all individuals.
So we're individual musicians. Like I'm thinking, how cool
would it be that because we play different instruments to like,
yes, we, we create a band ourselves and then but we still
have our own jobs and we've got our, you know, get roadies and,
you know, promote, you know, and record a demo tape and do all
those things, but a little bit more cooperative.
Yeah, it's Rock Hard Super Group.
There you go. Listen, if the idea is there, I
have, I've got, but it's just a matter of time and and do I want
to still be in the rock hard world versus all the other games
that I want to create? But I was thinking about how I
would do that this morning and how because if you're going to
do a Co-op, it's a great opportunity to make a solo game
because co-ops play really well solo.
So how do you do that? And I was actually, I get my
most creative ideas in the shower naturally.
So I was thinking about that as I was taking a shower this
morning. How do you you create a Co-op
but make it so that it really works with one or two players as
well? Like what do you need to format?
That is important. That's important because my wife
and I are both gamers and which is another reason why I don't
play solo because I've got a partner.
So we could play a lot of games together.
And anytime we go to a board game convention or board game
cafe or whatever, it's like, how does this play at two players?
That's always the question, right?
That's what she asks right away. Yeah, too.
I mean two player and then more players is is always difficult
because two player you've got give take and it's different
than what's that third or fourth or fifth player going to do,
right. And I will say it's probably the
biggest challenge as a designer is to make something that works
at 2:00 and is also good at multiplayer or vice versa.
So the answer for Rock Hard was to put in a dummy player.
It didn't want to have to create a separate deck that you had to
manage. I just went, you know, everybody
is trying to do the same thing. You're going to have a player
and you're going to know what they want to do on the next
turn, which is, you know, kind of what you know, even with real
life players, they're not going to do something wild because
there's nothing wild to do that you're going to be able to do.
So you can see the dummy players moves coming.
They're never going to change their moves.
And it it works perfectly to simulate a third player that's
fighting for the same space as you are.
OK, that's cool. So the let's want to ask you
about the characters in the game.
So I guess my question is twofold.
Are they actually people that from the industry that you know,
are they just loosely based on people that you've encountered
in the industry? They're kind of mash ups of
people I know or types of people that I knew.
Yeah, there's a little of this, a little of that.
Except for the promo character of me, which is.
A. You.
Yeah, which I. Missed that which I missed out
on. I have every all the content.
I even have the beautiful color folded space insert for the
game. I don't have the promo of you.
I'll have to. I'll have to work on that.
We'll discuss. Mm.
Hmm. Yeah, I could.
I do have Devere dug deep. After the wildfires we had in
Los Angeles last year, Devere did something really nice.
I contacted them and said, hey, do you have any more promos
lying anywhere that I can auction off for Los Angeles Fire
relief? And they sent me about a dozen
and I still have a couple of them.
So, but they have been going for a lot of money, I will say,
which is really nice. I've been able to donate I think
like $3000 to fire relief and prevention.
And you know, knock wood. We're still just going to be
cleaning up last year's mess because it was bad.
I had to evacuate one night. And it was just like, aside from
saving my cats, that didn't really feel like cooperating,
right? You know, because they're cats I
had, I had just enough time to sit to take all my Runaways
files and throw them into the back of the car.
So they're still sitting on my coffee table and organized
because I thought, I've got to get these into better easy shape
for evacuating, right? But I was like pulling out old
solo demos and things like that and going, this is irreplaceable
stuff. Right.
That's that's difficult growing up in Louisiana.
I'm not unfamiliar with natural disasters, but I think I haven't
gone through more than my fair share of floods.
I think I might would prefer a fire.
No, you wouldn't. So the reason why I say that is
if my entire house and all my belongings are gone because they
burned up in a flood, you have to sift through all your stuff
and it's molding and it's full of mud and it's water saturated
and it's just, it's so heart wrenching that I would almost
rather, OK, disaster comes and it's gone and I have no choice
but to start over again. That was how I ended up in
Illinois. My wife and I were like, she's
like, I can't do this anymore. We've had one too many floods
and was like, we're moving far away.
So that's how we ended up in Illinois.
Yeah, well, you can't climb on the roof to get away from a
fire. That is true.
That is, that is true. Yeah, it's scary because your
brain is just there going, you're going to die, you're
going to die, right? And I'm.
Sorry you had to go through. OK, we're going dark.
We're going. Yeah.
Well, I didn't know it was going to go here, but hey.
Well, you know what? I'm I I will tell you that the
the losing my board game collection would be the least of
it because at least you'd get the joy of going and buying new
board games. That's true, but your memories
so. This is true, but come on part I
mean it. There is a certain joy in
getting a new board game and the new board game smell, Yes.
It's kind of like. New cars smell only better.
I'm going to confess. OK?
When I got my first copy of my board game, the first thing I
did was open it up and sniff it. Well, yeah, isn't that what
everyone does? Sniff board games.
Guys, make sure to comment below when this airs and tell us if
you you like to when you open a board game, do you like to
sniff? I certainly do that fresh
cardboard. And if you can, and if you can,
combine it with a good box fart. Thank you.
If you can combine it with a good box fart, a good box fart,
and then a good sniff. Oh, yeah.
Fart and sniff. Yeah, yeah.
There's a there's a special kind of magic.
So the fart isn't it? So one of the things that the
other thing I noticed about some of the components in your game
is the use of acrylic instead of cardboard.
Speaking of cardboard standees, was that a De Vere design thing?
Was that a design choice by you? Was that a cooperative decision?
I put stand in my game rather than anything else because I
wanted you to be able to see the art, you know, just the art of.
So to put you in the mind of what the 70s looked like, and
because I like seeing artwork of for characters and so I had
cardboard standees fit in plastic bases in the prototype.
And if you decided to do it in acrylic and that was such a
great, or maybe Maple Foundry did, I'm not sure who made the
decision. And it looks amazing.
And if you're buying the game, you just have to remember that
every acrylic piece in the game is covered by a little
protective film. So if you want those characters
and the bases and everything else that's acrylic to really
shine and look amazing, you gotta peel that film off.
You gotta peel the film, gotta peel the.
Film I was sitting there when they were going into the semi
final tables at the at the World Series because they they open
the boxes right there so that there's no, you know, nobody can
cheat at all. So they had to punch everything
and organize everything on the spot, which is why everything
went so late. So I was there and I'm like, I'm
the designer. I really shouldn't be touching
much. It's just like, give me all your
characters, though. I'm going to peel the acrylic
film off. Fill the film, yes.
That was what I did. So are you familiar with the
game Mystic Veil? Of course I do design days at
John Declare's house. That's amazing.
I have known that that's. I love John, about once every
couple of months he holds a game design and play testing session
at his house. That's cool.
Designers from all over Southern California go and hang out and
play games. Man, that's a dream.
So I bring it up cuz I was thinking about peeling the film.
We have all the content, including the big box.
It's one of my wife's top three, maybe top five favorite games of
all time, right? And we've had it for years.
And every time we play, she still finds cards.
She gotta peel the film off. So that's what she's doing.
When it's when it's not her turn, she's peeling the film.
You know, she just get some satisfaction from that.
There is something very, for me, relaxing about organizing board
games, about peeling off films, sleeping cards.
It's kind of like when the world gets really overwhelming.
Here's this little world that we can impose some organization on.
Yeah, I know. We're weird Board.
Gamers are board gamers, yes. I wouldn't say we're weird, I
think it's a perfectly normal and wonderful thing to do.
But we I agree, we have our little things.
Like what? Like people who don't play board
games would never understand this.
No, but I mean how many? Understand.
I I mean, I will periodically reorganize my board game shelves
and it's the same thing. It's like I get to impose order,
right? So yeah, so my wife and I are in
our professional lives. We're both archivists, so we're
always about describing and arranging records.
And in this case, I think about our board game collection
constantly. And I want to reorganize and I'm
like, but I can think of like, because there's no, because
unlike our, our work life, there are no best practices that I can
apply. There are no standards.
It's just whatever feels good to you.
And I'm like, well, I could organize them by publisher.
I could organize them by color. I can organize them by side.
Oh my God. And then my brain just kind of
goes crazy and I'm like, I need to record another episode.
For what it's worth, I went color and then what fits.
Legit. Right to maximize the space.
I think for me it's about size, it's about using the space well,
simply because. So we both have a commitment to
play every game in our collection a minimum of once
every calendar year. And that helps us.
Yeah. And we're at 81.6% of our
collection played so far this year.
So we don't, we don't have much farther to go.
To be fair, we only have 300 games, right?
With three hundreds, kind of where we keep it.
I'm impressed. My my game groups in Los Angeles
tend to be very much cult of the new.
So we have a lot of people that back Kickstarters.
There are a couple of content creators.
So between us we have a lot of new games and we tend not to go
back to old ones, which I kind of find frustrating because I
never get good at particular games.
And there are games that I very much like, would like to play
enough to get good at, but you know, in your fantasy your game
group enjoys. Exactly.
The games that you do or a pretty good overlap.
And in practice, we don't at all.
So there's this tiny little slice of the Venn diagram and we
keep trying new games to see what fits in there, you know?
And you end up, you don't want to end up where people are just
kind of like, yeah, we can play that one.
I won't veto it, But nobody's excited.
So we keep looking for that game that we're going to get excited
about. And the closest we've found, I
think, as a group is Darwin's Journey.
Good one. It's a really good.
Journey is. That's such a great game.
I lose it every time we play. I don't lose every time, but
most of the time, and that's simply because my wife is
smarter than I am. It's such a we.
In fact, I did an entire episode just dedicated on Darwin's
journey probably about two years ago because it's just such a
great, great game and great experience.
What games? So when you, I know you said
that when you decided to make a game, you were talking about the
experience. Were there any board games that
inspired you in your process of creating?
Oh yeah, Abomination era Frankenstein was a big one.
Yeah. Because I, I wanted that game.
Just when I saw the artwork and the theme on it and I went, oh,
this is dark, I have to get this.
And it's definitely it's an event game, right?
It's not the game you're going to pull down from the shelf
every week and want to play it because it does require some
setup time. It it the one valid criticism is
it does run a little long. There is now.
But those aren't the best body. Parts if you really get
desperate, you can go out into the alley and you know, or use
some animal parts. It's, I mean, it's a little
twisted, but it's, it's very God, I'm I love Gothic or.
Sure. I who doesn't.
So it was when I played that it was kind of that feeling where
you're you're doing the euro things, then you've got this
very Ameritrash excuse the expression moment where you're
trying to bring your monster to life and maybe it'll work, maybe
it won't. And I just I love these games
like that and and since then like distilled where you have a
little bit of that excitement layered over the euro.
So it's pure euro. Gamers tend to have an issue
with that. But I do want that experience.
Am I going to get my, my these parts to life?
Am I going to, do I have enough ingredients in this VAT that I'm
going to be able to distill the liquor that I want?
Yeah, You know, am I, am I going to push my luck consuming candy
to get extra actions? Am I gonna, am I going to have a
sugar crash and have to spend my next daytime action recovering?
Right. So there's a little bit of that.
What's gonna happen that I think I enjoy in the game?
Yes, that's beautiful. I would never have put those two
together, but that experience, thank you for that.
You're welcome. I was.
That's incredible. Yeah.
I never would imagine. I love it.
That's awesome. So I gotta ask, have you, do you
own or have you had a chance to play my father's work?
I wanted to play that right when it came out and we had set up a
night to play it because a friend has it and there was
always somebody who couldn't make it on the particular day,
so I have not played it. Do it, do it.
It's Halloween's approaching. It's the perfect time.
Yeah, I know. I am curious to see whether I'm
going to like it because I, I tend to have issues with games
that have a lot of story that can be randomized.
So we'll see. There might be a very specific
story that emerges, and I and I will.
Are you happy with that? There, there is so each, so
there's three boxes, right? So there's three kind of
narratives going on. So you choose one box to play,
and then each box has eight unique endings so that there's a
total of 24 different narratives that you can play through based
on the choices you make. But it's really beautifully
done. The theme is fantastic.
I'm normally not an app driven gamer.
I'm not a fan of app driven games where it's dependent upon
an app and it it had some problems in the beginning.
Thankfully as the years have gone on, they've since fixed all
that. But it's worth checking out how
you can play that solo. You can play that with two, you
can play with three, or you can. Play with.
I'm going to see if I can get that set up with the person who
has it because it was, it was very high on my list when it
came out. And it's sort of, I don't want
to say it's the desire to play has fallen by the wayside, but
this is that we have, there's so many great games that come out
every year because they, you know, there are also so many
mediocre games that come out every year.
There's just people trying to create, you know, get that
content out and not doing, honestly not doing enough play
testing when it comes down to is that when you have a great
design and you have mechanisms that work with the theme, you
still have to play test, play test, play, test.
And that is really the key to coming up with a great game.
And there's no there is no short circuit in that.
It sounds like you had a good group you could like initially
when you were creating rock hard that you could.
You had a group of play testers ready to go early on it sounds
like. Well, first play test was with
my regular, my most regular gaming group, and I'm not sure
who was more nervous them or me, but I had done, I had play
tested it over. You know, I didn't do anything
right at the beginning of this game to tell you the truth,
because you're supposed to get your play tests out early, proof
of concept, even if the game breaks down.
And I wanted to make sure that for my gaming group, I didn't
give them a game that was going to break.
So I played it over and over, just myself at every different
player account. And then when I was confident
that they were going to be able to get a whole game and put it
before them, and then they were all very surprised, I think.
So I don't think they expected that much.
And they actually had a really good time.
And then they made some suggestions.
I tweaked it. I mean, the hardest part was
that I never got to take shop when I was growing up in school
because I was a girl. You know, I'd say, I want to
take shop. And they would say, well, no,
you're a girl, you can't take shop, take chemistry, whatever.
So I don't do well making things with my hands.
And I knew I wanted certain things in the game.
So just even learning how to prototype a board.
I'm also very verbal. I'm somebody that doesn't do
well with a lot of icons. Like like one game that has come
out this year that all my friends love and that I thought
I was going to be absolutely crazy about his galactic cruise.
And I probably would be if I sat down and could really learn the
icons. But I sit down to play and I'm
just like, what does this mean? What does this mean?
I don't.
I do not learn icons easily and that has a lot of them.
So for me, my original board was all words and for people who
don't do words well, it was a hot mess and I finally was so
frustrated trying to convert that to visual language.
I think I went on to Twitter and I said I hate prototyping.
So much I'm thinking of not designing games.
And Jeff Engelstein, who is a very good game designer, offered
to help me with it just kind of out of nowhere.
And he gave me a sound like literally did it with me on a
zoom with him, just banged it out and it wasn't exactly usable
the way he did it. But I went, I see this now.
And then I went and created the board that I ultimately sold to
a publisher. So it's that we have different
board gaming language. And yes, in an ideal world, you,
you have a game that you can put both words and icons on, right?
So that people who process information visually versus
people who are more verbal can both play the game.
And there's not always room to do that, unfortunately.
So as a designer, you were talking about how many.
There's just, there's so many games coming out.
So as a designer with other game ideas that you would like to put
together, potentially publish going forward in the future,
what is your take on the sheer number of games that are coming
out every year? Do you think it's just enough?
Do you think we're over saturated?
Do you think that the industry's at risk?
Or just all the other things that are going on?
What? Do you think I don't think the
industry's at risk? I think they're, I think it's
kind of like with you look at like television, right?
You have so many possibilities. A few shows are going to float
to the top. They'll they'll somehow
breakthrough the noise. It's a little bit arbitrary.
They're they're all going to be good ones.
A lot of good ones get lost and unfortunately don't get the
backing that they probably deserve.
I think it's the same with board games right now.
Yeah, I think there is. There's a lot of content, just a
lot. Now tariffs are going to take
that down for the next next year or so.
So there weren't as many hotly anticipated titles this past
Gen. Con as there were in 2024, for
instance. And I don't know whether we'll.
Recover. I definitely noticed that.
Yeah. So it's going to take a couple
of years I think to completely recover and you're going to see
designers pivoting to less component heavy games that can
maybe be produced in the US or in Europe.
But the problem is that just production capacity for making
games does reside mostly in China.
Yes. There's not enough money in
board games to make to have it make financial sense to create
that infrastructure in the US even if we wanted to.
China is just uniquely set up to crank out certain types of
products. So for instance, I have a lot of
alcohol ink markers. And you start to see after a
while that at the lower end of the market, there is somewhere
in China, there is, there are a couple of companies that make
the shells, the actual plastic parts of the pens themselves.
There are other companies that make ink and they work together
to fill orders. So you go to one that makes the
shell and you have your brand name printed on them.
And then you order the ink from somewhere and they combine them.
And after a while you start to see these two companies get
their ink from the same place because they're the same colors.
And these two get their shells from the same place because
they're the same shape. And you start, you get a
preference on your on the lower end side and they're, and it's
kind of they're just, it's like we talk about bringing
manufacturing to the US, but we do, it's not something that
makes sense in every industry. Right, right.
Absolutely. So talking about color, so there
seems to be if you just if you look at rock hard, if you open
up the box and you even see this a little bit, if you look at the
color insert from folded space, the one color that stands out is
the color red. Yes.
Was that it? Was that a design choice by you,
or is that just a kind of? Well, we talk, I had a lot of
conversations with Devere about the color scheme because I
wanted it to be colors that are associated with the 70s.
Now to take somebody who wasn't really alive in the 70s and
explain the difference between 1972 and 1977 is a really
challenging. So we a lot of the game looks
more 1967 than 1977. I can point like I'm just
looking at the cover behind you. So let's just talk.
Pants in 1977 were actually pretty high rise.
Those low rise pants went out in the early 70s.
I noticed this, but I mean, the artist is, you know, I'm be be
shocked if she's 30 years old. She's really young.
So she's got the like, if you look at the there, there are a
lot of people with facial hair in that audience.
Facial hair was pretty much gone in the late 70s.
So it's it's we're just going to say these people were fans in
the 60s and never updated their wardrobe.
But the shirt you might kind of recognize because the shirt on
the cover is models on a shirt famously worn by Robert Plant,
who allegedly, Oh my. Gosh.
I don't know if this is true. OK, this isn't might be an urban
legend that Robert Plant stage shirts were women's shirts and
it was who that he took from whoever he had been with the
night before. That is super interesting.
So yeah, yeah, that's why so hence the reason the shirts were
never button. They're too small.
Are the things you learn when you.
Yeah, but I mean, not not even just the cover, there's like
even though all the player mats, right, the player characters are
there, they have their own color scheme.
Yes, that's true. But it seems like the color red
just kind of, if one could say is playing Rock Hard 1977, you
just feel the color red. I think because this wasn't that
wasn't my decision the the coloring on the board, although
I wanted it slightly different, but the idea was here a 70s
colors and three of the colors that were really big in the 70s
and really the 60s that I grew up with were avocado green
harvest gold. And I forget what they called
the kind of orange color. But as one of the other
publishers that had the game before De Vere said, it doesn't
really matter if it's exactly right from the 70s.
People think the 70s look like sure.
So then there is there is a modern movement.
Like you'll notice new games. Green is usually not a player
color anymore. I've been noticing that even
though green is like everybody's like their favorite player color
except for mine but. Well, I play red, so, you know,
I, I used to play, I used to play any color.
And then when the pandemic hit and we were all playing on board
game arena, it has you pick your favorite color, right.
And, and our group, we just settled into these particular
roles. So I'm the red player.
Sure, OK. And if I now if I sit down and I
play with somebody else who plays red and I, I'm always nice
and I say, OK, you just you go ahead, play red.
I'll play whatever. But I will get confused, refused
and try to move the other persons thesis.
I do this if someone is playing purple and it's not me.
I'm like. Oops.
But so some of that is for for visually impaired people with
color blindness to take the tones away.
Although the problem is that then you back into visual
acuity. So as being somewhat older where
our color contrast goes off a little bit, I sometimes have
trouble distinguishing in low light between red and orange to
red and pink. And but I never have trouble
distinguishing when it's Kitty lunchtime.
This is Peanut. Peanut helps me greatly with
game design because she'll just go on to the table and she'll
swat components off and she'll go, yeah, too many components,
you don't need that. I love it.
So I was thinking about you. So you're early on when you're
designing? She likes Billy rubs.
What cat doesn't right? Our cats love belly rubs.
So you're designing rock hard and at some point you've got a
decision to make. Do you self publish through
Kickstarter or some sort of a? That wasn't ever a decision.
I was never a decision. No, I am not an organized
person. OK.
So then based upon that, what advice would you give to someone
who is in that situation? They're designing their first
game and they're debating, Do I give up all the control to a
publisher or do I publish myself on Kickstarter?
Because that's a conversation I had a lot with Designer.
But I love that you're very definitive and I would love to
hear your thoughts about that. If you're going to do a
Kickstarter, the publishers so that you can see what goes into
the process, but you got to remember that you're going to
have a contract for your game. And so in my contract, one of
the things that was really important to me with Rock Hard
because I thought it was such an important selling point on the
game, was to have the player boards be amplifiers.
So it is literally in my contract that the player boards
must be amplifiers with not that you can turn.
That because interesting. That was, I mean, I, I don't
want to tell you too much of what is in my contract because I
think that's not fair to devere, but I will say that that you
have some control. If there is an element or an
aspect of your game that is for you the hill you're willing to
die on, you got to put in the contract and it's you.
You're not powerless. You don't just have to sign the
contract that the company puts in front of you.
You can negotiate things because really it is a partnership.
And you decide if if I want this very much to be my game and I'm
afraid then I'm going to negotiate approvals into the
contract or where I'm going to go take on the responsibilities
of running a crowdfunding campaign, overseeing
fulfillment. Maybe you don't care.
Maybe you're like, I designed this cool game here, you guys
take it, do whatever you want with it.
Like I'm kind of there with the next game that will probably get
published. Is is just really fun.
It's it's less personal to me. Hey, you guys want to make
changes, make changes. I don't have the same investment
in it being a particular way, so it tends.
Well, thank you for that. I think that that's a unique
perspective that I have not heard anyone share before.
And I'm sure I've got first time designers listening who would at
least appreciate that because I know that's a conversation I
have. You know, I, I had that
conversation with so many designers and it's like, why did
you? And then the other one is why'd
you choose Kickstarter over game found or some other guy?
Like I am not a designer. I never will be a designer
because I'm just don't, I have too many ideas and not enough.
So that's not a decision I would have to make.
When you go, the reason you, I mean, we go to conventions
because it's a lot of fun and we want to see what's out there.
But the other thing is if you're a designer, you want to go and
meet publishers, you want to talk to them because it they'll
start helping you with things and they'll look out for you and
they'll remember you. And if and every single time
you're interacting with the designer, make it a good
interaction. Don't be remembered for the
wrong reason. You know, have a smile on your
face. Understand that they're
primarily out of convention to sell.
Don't interrupt their sell their sales, but be polite.
Talk to the person you need to talk to.
Introduce yourself. Be prepared if you're not
pitching. If you are pitching, set up your
meetings in advance if you can, because you'll know that it's
somebody who's receptive to what you've got.
And there are a lot of things that you need to do in order to
do that. There's a ton of really good
advice on the Internet about how to do that.
But even if you're and not selling a particular game, just
going to meeting people. Yeah, yeah.
You know, that's, that's great. She is.
Remember I said the cat was gonna chew on something?
Sure, cords, She's chewing on the cord.
She's chewing on the cords. Yep, that's normal let.
Me see if my cat. She's wonderful, absolutely.
She will pull my she'll pull my phone onto the floor.
She, she is. She pushes water glasses onto
the floor. It's like, oh, broken glass gets
mom's attention. Spilled water, yeah.
Broken glass, yeah. That's that's the worst.
That's why we have lids on our our water cups now.
Yeah. It's like we drink sippy cups so
that the cats can't still. All of the images turned on the
stove one day. Really.
That's crazy. Yeah.
Fortunately I was sitting here and I heard the click click
click of a gas stove starting and ran out before she could
bring out the gas company. And now I've got childproof
caps. Yep.
So, but she meeting, meeting people at conventions, it's all
about those relationships. Yeah, I mean, one, one of the
things is for me, it is really important to have diversity and
board games and inclusivity. So it's when I was play testing
rock hard, I happen to notice this and it's like an
unconscious thing. So first play test, I had a play
tester of Asian descent and she immediately ran and gravitated
toward Kimmy Kim, my gay neighbor, who I brought in as
the the very casual gamer, just to see if you could pick it up.
Gamer came in and immediately went to one of the androgynous
characters. It was like you kind of want to,
when you're starting out gaming, play yourself or see yourself in
the game is really good about making their games inclusive.
And they are willing to do games on unusual themes.
So they've done, you know, circuses in early 20th century
America. They've done, they did Jerusalem
and where you're trying to get close to Jesus at the Last
Supper. Yes.
And it's like, OK, you're trying to complete Mozart's last work.
I went, they're going to get this theme and that.
Also, as it turns out, they're rockers.
So it ended up being a really perfect company.
But the thing that finally sold me on them was the player boards
and Lacrimosa. So I don't know if you've played
Lacrimosa. I have it behind me.
They are. Fantastic.
Stunning, yes, it's a stunning production and I went they will
do these amplifier player boards justice.
Yep. And they're not going to be put
off by a theme that is, you know, space or nature and all
this stuff that's kind of proven to be successful over and over
and over. They'll do interesting things.
They'll take a risk on first time designers and so it ended
up being a really good match. So they.
Got the thing? So there you go, do your do your
homework, do your research, have a good pitch and don't be known
for you said it beautifully earlier.
Don't be known for the like. It had something to do with
being negative. Every interaction that you have
with the publisher, no matter how casual, just should be a +1
for them, right? They may not remember you, but
they're somewhere in their brain.
They're going to start associating positive things with
interacting with you. And it's really important
because there there may come a time during the design process
where you are going to have an unpopular opinion that you want
to fight for. My first conversation with David
Asbury, who runs De Vere, because I was when we were
negotiating the contract and I said, can we just agree that
our, our relationship for negotiating contract things is
completely separate from our working together on the design
of the game. So because I'm coming from a
world where I negotiate and I am going to be a little bit
demanding on my own behalf because that's what I did for a
living. And then when I'm a designer, I
will work with you and be really cooperative.
And so David understood what he was getting into with me and
didn't mind when I asked for things.
And if they weren't going to do it, he just said no.
You know, it's a dialogue, right?
So as long as you are polite about it and you're trying to
find solutions, company is not going to get mad that you ask
for something. And you just have to know what
is it you must have and you're willing to walk away from the
negotiating table if you don't get it.
And I had three things that were important enough to me to be put
in the contract. They were smaller things that de
Vere does anyway and we're happy to say yes to.
And then I had a conversation with them.
I said I don't want a IR, and I actually asked for it in the
contract. And they said, well, we won't
put in the contract, but you should know we never use it.
And they didn't. And they hired Jenny to do the
artwork. They actually, we discussed art
styles they found. I sent them some artists whose
work I liked and they didn't care for it exactly.
They proposed somebody to me. I think he's got a really unique
perspective on things. But I didn't think he was right
for rock hard. So they found four other artists
and they and this had been after some back and forth and they
just said here you get to veto 2 of them.
So I vetoed 2 of them and of the two that were left they picked
Jenny and. Well, she did great work
because. She did amazing work.
Fantastic. And she's just, she's such a
nice person. I'm so honored to have created
these. These wouldn't I only had one
conversation with her, which was a funny conversation because she
doesn't really speak English. I kind of remember a few phrases
of Spanish. I remember I said to her that
was larger than life and I said Masusia, which is dirty or not
in a sexually dirty manner, but just literally dirty grungy, you
know, but I don't want to say I don't know how to say grungy.
But those were the, that's all I said to her in Spanish, but
through a translator, I said, these are our children.
There's going to be some of me in it and some of you.
And that's OK. So I did, I did BIOS for her and
a little summary that maybe somebody translated into Spanish
so she would know kind of who the characters are.
And then after she did them, I had to change those BIOS
slightly to match her artwork and that was fine too.
Well, I think you came up with a masterpiece together.
I'm thankful. I love playing every time it
hits the table. Jackie, thank you so much for
joining me. Thank you for your honesty.
Thank you for your advice and input, sharing with my
listeners, people on the socials where people can find you if
they want to talk to you more about your game or just anything
in general. You can find me on Facebook.
Jackie Fox 1976. Go figure.
And I'm on Instagram. Well, this one's going to be
harder. I think you can just search for
Jackie Fox because it's easier than remembering Foxy.
It was, it was created as a lurker account, so it never
planned on having any kind of social media presence and.
Now you're everywhere. I am everywhere but if you but I
am, look, you're going to you're going to come up with two Jackie
Foxes on socials and one's going to be an Irish reporter.
That's true. That's the other Jackie Fox.
Well, thank you once again. And guys, Please remember to hit
the like and subscribe button. And we're just going to keep
pushing forward. I've got a new series that I've
been working on that's going to be coming out here just before
Halloween. So be on the lookout for that.
And as always, be kind to one another and play more games.
Hard agree.