Welcome again to Episode 137. The gate slam open and the crowd
erupts and chaos spills into the amphitheater of Doom.
What is he talking about? This is Legends of the Arena, a
high octane card combat team game from Toast Games that
captures the over the top thrill of Super Smash Brothers and
brings it to your tabletop for two to six players.
It's a whirlwind of combos, counters and cutting plays where
every card you draw could be your path to glory.
Go for brute force knockouts. Outsmart your foes with tactical
positioning. The question players must ask
themselves when playing is are you playing chess or poker?
The strategic decisions are very real.
Will you stack the right abilities to trigger a
game-winning chain of powers? There is no single road to
victory, only the one you carve in the heat of combat.
Today we'll dive into the mechanics of the madness and
most importantly, the story that make Legends of the Arena a
knockout hit for competitive players and confusion lovers
alike. So pay attention as we chat with
the designer Brian Toth about his journey and the journey of
this epic card game that will launched on Kickstarter last
week. Brian, thank you for joining.
How are you? Thank you.
I'm doing great. I mean, after that intro, I'm
doing fantastic. That's incredible.
Thank you. I I'm getting compliments on
those. I've been, I've been working
hard to kind of punch up my intros.
So yeah. So thank you for that and it's
so good to see you. I almost feel like I need to put
that in like a Kickstarter video or something.
Yeah, it's, it's good to see you too, PJ.
Yeah, well, I will. I'll certainly send this off to
you so that you can use this video.
But yeah, so we want to talk about your game, Legends of the
Arena, but I guess I should state for the records for those
of you who don't know. OK, so Brian reached out to me
and he had listened to the podcast, heard about some
designers on the show and was like, we'd love to be a part of
it. And I'm like, this is this is
amazing because this is exactly what we want to do.
So I am sorry that I missed getting to see your game at Gen.
Con. I know that you weren't there,
but the game was. So tell us a little bit about, I
guess let's start here. Tell me a little bit about
yourself and what was the first game that got you into this
hobby? Oh man, OK, so yeah, let's let's
let's go way back. I think probably so yeah, my
name is Brian and my brother and I Co designed legends arena
together and we've been playing games together forever.
We were both just grew up on, you know, certainly chess and
then into a plenty of video games back to board games, back
to video games. I think the first game that
really well, so yeah, it might have been really start with
Magic the Gathering, which is not necessarily a hobby game,
but kind of opened the doors to games with a higher level of art
and higher production value and like kind of a whole culture and
community around games and especially like competing with
games. And then I think, you know,
Catan certainly hit like a like a like a whirlwind in the the
early 2000s and just like totally changed how people are
playing games. But even before then there were
a lot of pretty decent like game right games actually, and some
kind of like a little bit off the beat in path US based games
when that comes to mind is attack, which is like a pretty
obscure title, but it's sort of like a risk with a little bit
more going on in terms of like the the RPS battle mechanics and
technology trees and such. And yeah, I think we're both
really kind of fortunate to grow up in a time when there was this
just like not only explosion tabletop, but this like kind of
back and forth between like tabletop ideas going to video
games and then like video games ideas coming to the tabletop.
And like it didn't really feel like there was any kind of limit
in terms of your imagination with what what you pull off.
And I think the game that sort of really the first one that we
got into like really modifying and really like trying to change
the rules and make our own thing out of it was actually Star Wars
Epic Duels, which is OK. It was a mass market release in,
I want to say like the 2010 kind of time frame, and it was
actually eventually reimplemented as unmatched,
which you might know today is like a fairly big title.
Yep, and. I think everybody knows.
Unmatched. Yeah.
But yeah, that was like, we just, we, we played so much that
game and it was designed for one V1 duels.
But when we got our friends together, we would usually want
to play with more people. And so we spent a lot of time
kind of modifying the rules to support team play to be able to
get up to like 8 people playing at once.
You know, because we play a video game like say like a
Toyota or League of Legends or something, right?
It's kind of like asymmetric hero based thing.
Just felt like a natural fit, right?
Everyone does their own abilities, everyone kind of
works together as a team and then we want to play port that
back to the board game space. And so yeah, very long winded, I
guess history there. But yeah, games have just always
been a huge part of like, how we spend time together and, like,
spend time with our friends and so.
Yeah, absolutely. I love that.
I mean, you're talking about two huge communities, Magic the
Gathering, right? There's really, there isn't
anything I can say about Magic the Gathering that hasn't
already been said. It's its own, it has its own
community even, you know, it's got a a massive footprint at
Gencon, you know, So that's, so that's pretty fantastic.
And to be plugged into that, I could definitely see, I can see
that from what I've seen of the game on your website, on your
Kickstarter, your videos, I can definitely see that influence
for sure. And then the other community is
Katan, which we recently learned about having.
You know, they celebrated their 30th anniversary this year.
And just a few weeks ago, we had the CEO of Katan on where we
learned that it's pronounced Katan, although you can
pronounce it any way you like, but that is how Klaus Toiber
pronounced it. So I promised that would do
better. It's Catan.
But so that's great. So you were, you were already
plugged into two tabletop communities, very different
communities, right? The Magic the Gathering
community versus the Catan, The, the, the, the trading hex card
game, board game experience, as it were.
And they always, they haven't always been, how should we say,
friendly to one another. You know, yeah, I think I, I was
like young enough to like not even really.
That all went over my head. They were just games, like the
games I'm having fun playing with my family, playing with my
friends. You know, I think like, you
know, looking back on it, they actually came from pretty
different places and like very different, like, like serving
very different market segments, Right.
And like that, you know, that's more clear now.
But as a kid, you just, you just kind of in the, you just, you're
like, yeah, this is cool. I like it.
You know, you don't have to even necessarily.
Yeah, which is maybe a useful thing for, you know, not getting
too caught on like existing paradigms.
Yeah. So would you say that that that
perspective influenced how you approach?
Your game design. I I think so absolutely.
So, you know, we wanted to make sure that we had a board game
experience. Like, I mean, I love Magic, it's
a great game, but the, the TCG world, the like kind of the, the
evolving meta and the sort of need to consistently stay on top
is it's a, it's a lifestyle business and it's a lifestyle
experience. And like that is it's, it's, I
mean, it's, it's a ton of fun, But at the same time,
accessibility becomes an issue just for, you know, people who
want to have a couple friends over who've never seen this
before. We're all going to sit down,
have a game night. Like that's the experience.
That's where we really wanted to prioritize like most of the
play, right? Like, I think people can play
competitively and like we've tuned it for that a bit.
But like, first and foremost, it's got to be like, all right,
everyone, you've never seen this before, explain the rules to you
in 15 minutes. We're going to play out of this
one box and we're all going to have fun with it.
And so that was kind of the mindset.
So, so tell us a little bit. I mean, I only spoke just just
the bare minimum in my introduction about the game.
So tell everyone about Legends of the Arena.
What's the game? How does it play 0?
Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah.
So this is, this is inspired by Super Smash Brothers or just
kind of, I guess, you know, fighting games in general.
They do fighting games in general.
And the core mechanic is you're picking out cards, you're doing
a little programming like 3 moves at a time and they're kind
of your basics, your punch, your shot, step back, lock.
Then every character has some of their own special stuff on top
there. You might be a barbarian, jump
in there, spin your axe around. There's a character who
manipulates time, can kind of move things backward and
forward, you know, just kind of the whole gamut of what you
might imagine there. And so, and some of the classic
archetypes are there if you play these games like a, like a
grappler is going to pull you in or a zoner who's going to stay
at a distance. But even if you don't know those
archetypes, they kind of correspond to other games.
And so, yeah, you pick out your cards, you put them face down.
Everyone does this at the same time.
And then everyone turns over the top card that they've picked and
they resolve in order of speed, which kind of lets you sort of
mostly placed simultaneously the the decision making strategy
simultaneous. And then as you get hit, you
take what we call fatigue. And as your fatigue builds up,
you get easier to push. And that's kind of how the game
ultimately ends is when by people getting knocked out.
And so usually when you're playing multiple people, every
time you get a knockout on someone else, you score a point
and the first person to a set number, usually like 2-3 or four
wins the game. And so every time you're knocked
out, you just kind of come back in just kind of keep rolling
with the punches and it's all it's sort of a race to who can
land the most knockouts first. So it's very much like arena
combat brawling with a little bit of chaos in there and a fair
bit of strategy, especially depending on, you know, how much
you know your opponent and how much they know you.
Because there's a sort of a dialogue that evolves there.
It's like, oh, I thought you're going to do that, so I did this.
But then you expected that, so you did this.
I love that. So you said that you could be
knocked out, but you're not knocked out of the game.
Oh yeah, that was big for us. We, we really didn't want player
elimination here because like, you know, it's, it's a game
night, right? You, we want everyone to be in
the game. And so, yeah, you get knocked
out, you come back in, which is kind of actually fairly faithful
to like a Smash Brothers experience where you sort of
just get to keep rolling with it.
But that is ultimately how the game does end when one person
scores enough. So is it, is it akin to having
not played a lot of video games in my youth, but a little bit?
Is it akin to like pressing the start button and just coming
back in a video game with like another?
Or do I draw a new character, a new legend, and I'm playing a
new character? Yeah, it's, it's more like the
same one just coming right back in.
Yeah. So the same like same character
even because you've played those 3 cards right, you could get
knocked on. The first one we actually have
you drop right back in. Just keep playing the cards you
already set up. So it's very immediate and like
hopefully just feels like a small speed bump because you
know someone else is already advancing their victory
condition. There's no need to like, put you
even further behind. Is there a symmetrical victory
conditions per legend that you're playing or?
Not exactly. So everyone is trying to race
towards the number of knockouts. That being said, because they
all have their own like you know style and their own kind of
moves, some of those can feel fairly asymmetrical.
Like some of them really it's like 1 big hit and that's their
whole play. They're trying to build that one
big thing. Whereas other ones it's tons of
small hits. Other ones it's more about like
a timing or kind of lining up a combo in a certain quarter.
But like, although it's not different victory conditions,
they play fairly differently to the point, you know, some of the
ones that are the more outlier ones can almost feel like
they're doing their own thing because it it looks so different
from your baseline. Right.
So it it's plays two to six players and there's team play.
Yeah, that's my favorite actually.
Yeah, how does, how does that? Work, yeah.
So the team play is usually 2V2 or 3V3 and you communicate with
your team, you talk as much as you want, you share hands, you
point at stuff. It's really about like kind of
trying to set up your big combos together.
I'm going to pull them in and then you punch them or you know,
we're both going to jump behind them and turn around and
surprise them, right. It's, it's really about that
kind of sort of team brainstorming sort of
experience. I think one thing we did that
like has has helped a lot is when one team is ready, they've
set all, all their cards, they're all ready to go.
There's actually a time where they can flip and that gives the
other team one minute to wrap up.
So it's not like a real time game because if both teams want
to think forever, that's fine. But as soon as one team's done
thinking, the other team gets a minute left.
And so that kind of gives some idea of the, the, the, the, I
guess the, the cadence or the, the pacing right where it's
like, Oh, sure, it's it there. There's a little bit of goal
there to race and kind of play from your gut and like make
moves that feel right more so than it is like analyze out and,
you know, triangulate everything perfectly.
Because honestly, even if you do that, the other team might just
zig when you thought they were going to zag.
So sure. Yeah.
So do they in the team play to the you, I assume you share
victory and you share. I'm thinking about and I believe
you mentioned it in perhaps your website, I'm thinking of two
headed giant in Magic. How you share where you share
life. Is there that kind of component
in legends or how does that work?
Yeah, it's actually exactly it. In fact, like 2 headed giant was
a huge inspiration for us. Like I don't play so much magic
anymore, but my brother and I still try and get to all the pre
releases and like play that 2 headed giant together because
it's just, it's I don't know, it's just fun kind of getting to
like talk with someone and like experience the same, you know,
things. So yeah, your team shares like a
knockout count basically. And so, you know, when your
personal legend is knocked out, you come back in, but the team,
you know, suffers A knockout, right.
And when your whole team is run out, that's, that's when you
lose. So yeah, you win together, lose
together. OK, that's so that was a really
important factor for both you and your brother in designing
your game. Yeah, because because we wanted
to support teams and high player counts, we want to make sure
everyone's in the whole time and you, you know, you win or lose
together. And then also you're you're
incentivized to talk and coordinate and trying as much as
possible to like not slide too much into that kind of someone.
See the captaining thing, like on certain type of dynamics
where one person's like you do this, you do that, you do that,
right? And we really wanted to make it
as much as possible. Like, people have their own
characters and there are incentivized to make decisions,
you know, in a reasonable time frame, right?
So instead of having one person like sit there and kind of plan
how everything is going to go, it's to your benefit to utilize
everyone on your team and their own strengths.
And they're all kind of like perspectives on the board.
So what was it like? Or I guess I should say is what
is it like to design A game with your brother?
It's I. Mean that just seems to be rife
with duels of its own. It's, it's been, it's been
amazing, like it's been like for a relationship, it's, it's
fantastic. We hang out so much more now,
like every week. So we start working on this in
2017, like like officially on this game.
Obviously the, the roots go back earlier, but that's when we're
like, we're going to make this game that we've wanted to make
and we had this really clear picture.
It's like it's going to be this, this dueling game.
It's going to work for teams. Well, it's going to work for
these higher player accounts. And that's, that's kind of all
we knew for sure, right? We didn't have a background.
I guess I had designed like one or two things before, but
nothing published, nothing really finished.
So this was the, we're like, we'll figure out how to do all
that. We know what we want to make.
And so it's, yeah, it's been great because every single week
we always meet. And like, that's been eight
years now. And I mean, there's been some
periods, right, where we made like no progress, but we'd still
meet, we'd still hang out. And we used to, before that, we
used to live like 4 minutes apart at one point and we didn't
see each other that often. And then once we started working
on this together every week, and even though we live much further
apart, we have to like, you know, do video calls a lot of
the time. We still that we still hang out
with. And so that's that's been
awesome. Obviously it's not at all
upside, right? Like sure, differences of
opinion, you know, how do you some things have to be one way
or the other? And over the years we've, I
think we've made, I would say like 5 versions of the game,
right? And four of them we throw away.
And each one of those is like tough because we got like
attached to it. And usually one person be more
attached than the other. And it's like, how do we come to
the agreement that this, this bent, this, this line this, like
this whole system we've built is never going to work as well as
we want, you know? Right.
So that is my question. Did you resolve whenever you had
big disagreements? I mean minor ones obviously, but
how did you resolve any potential conflicts during the
design process? The hardest thing has yeah, I
would say, I would say the, the most useful thing in resolving
the hardest questions has been external feedback.
Then I don't mean we set it up like, you know, who do you like
more? Like this is my idea.
This is his idea. No, no, it's like, you know, as
dispassionate as possible, right?
You take it to conventions, we take it to play testing events.
We put it down on the table and we just like watch people play
and like take notes on their behavior.
It's like, do they lean in? On the other hand, are they on
their phone when we tell them to talk to their allies and, and
work with their teammates? Are they actually doing it when
they, when they work together, do they actually land those big
combos? Like are they having fun, right?
Like the body language? Because, you know, we, we worked
on this through the pandemic. There was a lot of remote stuff,
really hard to get cues on whether people are having fun.
At the end, they'll tell you, Oh yeah, I had a good time.
But like, they're being nice often, especially when it's your
friends, right? But in person you get, you can
just watch for the, the body cues and that that is kind of
how we ultimately made those big decisions, right?
It's like, you know, look like, like nobody's.
Nobody's. Liking, I shouldn't say no one,
right, because even with a game that's kind of only okay, it
will still have some great plays.
You can always have some awesome plays, right?
And so, but if we go to convention, we play 10 games and
two of those games went really well and the others were maybe 2
went well, two went poorly, and then six were just like kind of
smiddling that that was ultimately how we'd like kind
of. And it's, it's, it's not an easy
way to make a decision, right? You kind of dedicate a whole day
to this and like, you know, you've made this whole prototype
and you've gotten really invested.
But that is how we got through, like, the hardest decisions was
like, yeah, we just have to be really honest about, like, how
we see people experiencing this. So those, those neuro
linguistical cues are huge. Being someone who is in a medium
where I do not get to physically and visually interact most times
with my guests and almost all the time with my listeners, it's
challenging because you only have their words in text.
So there's no tone. There's no.
Yeah, it's it's. I definitely, I definitely can
appreciate and identify with that.
So how easy was it? Now, I know your brother, you
and your brother have been working on this since 2017, like
you said. And so it's, yeah, 88 years,
right? How easy was it for the two of
you to be willing to be vulnerable with each other, to
accept each other's feedback? And then the follow up question
is take that a step further with play testers and opening up your
idea to hopefully constructive criticism.
That is that's a that's a good question.
I think it's something where like we keep getting better at
it even when we think we don't. We you know, it's like, Oh yeah,
that was like a good. That was like a good
breakthrough, right? We we totally were like we
really leveled with each other there.
And then it's like, that's just a start.
I mean, even even now, right like now that we're.
Trying to, you know, get the game out there and stuff.
It is sometimes so scary to share the thing you've made,
right? And it's, you know, we kind of
have to push each other. It's like, hey, you know, go
post that designer diary, right? You know, like, go, go get on
the podcast, you know, like, like things that, you know, get
you outside your comfort zone because it's like you're trying
to be honest with the thing you made, right?
You're trying, you're trying to like, but yeah, so in terms of
feedback to each other, right. And be more honest there.
I think it's been very useful to talk about the going back to the
big, you know, goal, right? It's like, is this serving that
that big goal, you know, where we had that goal, right, You
know, and then also just giving each other some space to kind of
run with ideas that don't pan out.
You know, like I, I spent years kind of doing a lot of basically
simulations, you know, to like, understand, to try and
understand some of the difficult people or places people were
getting to in the game with like, we used to have a hex
board and there would be a lot of kind of ways the pieces could
get lined up. And then you kind of got locked
into something and your play was very restricted.
And, you know, I spent a lot of time analyzing that.
And then it's like, yeah, why don't we just get rid of the
heck store entirely? And I was like, but I think I
understand it now, you know, so it's been sure, but sometimes
you just need space to be like wrong for a while, you know, and
then like, but yeah. And then with like play testers,
I think it's been really, I used to be so much more attached to
obviously the, the feedback. And now it's like, you know,
it's the feedback's going to the game.
It's it's not going to me. And like, feedback is like a
gift, right? It's like the best when a play
tester is like, you know what, I didn't like that that's like the
second best. Sometimes it's like the best
thing you could hear, right? Especially if it's early on.
And if they are able to like tell you of not what they would
fix necessarily, but like they're able to call out a
couple things that Yep, they experienced and how it made them
feel. It's like, yeah, I felt like I
didn't do anything there. I felt like I was doing the same
thing every turn or whatever. Just like little things like
that can just, you just, you have to hear them.
You have to capture them. I do a lot of notes, but however
you do it, and then just being able to like, yeah, that
sometimes it just comes down to it's like, yeah, if I hear it
like two or three times, like it's probably real.
You know, it's not even that scientific.
It's just like, yeah, if one person says it, OK, you know,
maybe they had a bad game, whatever.
But like, keep hearing that you, you got to like take it
seriously. Absolutely, yeah.
Did you find that getting feedback from play testers, did
you find having your brother as a as a partner in the design,
did you find that to be helpful rather than a hurtful?
I guess yeah, hurtful and helpful.
So I think like the the one thing that works super well,
we're in different like spots now about an hour apart.
We go to different play testing events.
So sometimes just cover more ground, right?
And especially not doing the same play testers all the time.
That is super useful. And then also just logistically
when we go to the same event together, like we're taking
breaks, we're tapping each other out, like we don't always both
need to be there. I mean, sometimes we are and
sometimes that's like helpful if it's sort of a logistically
challenging convention, maybe with the seating or with the,
the getting set up, passing out components and stuff.
So it's really great to have a second person there.
I one, one thing I'm kind of surprised about is I would say
like the games that we watch together, I think we almost
always come away with very similar conclusions, which I
think is helpful because I think we both like watch the same
playthrough and then we both can't really agree what
happened. That would make it a lot harder
to come to some decision about what to do next.
Sure. And I think we do put a lot of
trust in each other because like, when we're doing like play
separately, we'll come back with their notes, like, hey, this
thing isn't working. And I know it's also the thing
you really liked. And I wasn't trying to like bias
them or anything. I'm just reporting what
happened. And, you know, I think we both
been pretty open to like, yeah, OK, that's fair.
You know, I know I, I trust you a lot.
And you're not going to try to like, tell them like what you
think about that. That that looked pretty bad
there, didn't you know? You got to trust each other.
So where did? OK.
So it's my understanding, so you are you're in the Bay Area,
right? And I'm assuming your brother's
in the Bay Area too. I mean an hour can be anywheres
in California. These are the mountains over in
Lake Santa Cruz. Yeah.
OK. So where did you both of you
play test your games? Was it pretty much in the
Central California area or how far out did you go to pool your
play testers That's. A good question.
So like the the first, you know, the first couple years is mostly
local stuff around here. There's a fair number of
conventions. It's sort of an interesting
feature. I think almost every three day
weekend here has a convention. They're all small, but they, you
know, I think the biggest one is Kublikan and that tops out of
like 5006 thousand people, so not huge.
Yep. But it's like competing that
same weekend is fanimate, which is like a large pop culture con,
which also has board game presence.
So like just to give some idea of like how many choices you
have of where to go. And then the first time we
really took it on the road was actually Origins.
That was a really interesting experience because like really
different set of people over there.
And we came back, we made a lot of changes after that.
Yeah. And you know, since then we've
we've obviously online you, you get people from all over.
But yeah, most of our test units been around here a little bit in
like LA. And also my brother went to PAX
Unplugged and played some there as well.
And so, yeah, it's been mostly like big cons, right, or or the
smaller cons around here. Is there a community of play
testing events in the area? So an hour away from here in
Saint Louis there's Proto Steel, which is like just a three day
weekend at a gaming store where you just break.
It's all prototypes, play testers.
I think it's like $5 for the weekend or $10.
Obviously for designers, it's a little more, but is there things
like that as well in your area? And if so, how helpful was that?
Oh, yeah, I should, I should shout out to Golden Gate Game
Makers. If you're listening to this and
you're anywhere near the Bay, look them up.
It's fantastic. It's a pretty good group.
It's so there's a development group called Bringer Creative,
which is like a big force down here in the South Bay.
They've worked on all sorts of stuff like Cartographers or
River Valley Glass Works. They've had a lot of titles come
through. And so they've been really
helpful in running these meetups at this point now.
I mean, I was just that one last night.
There's at least one a week, often 2 if you're willing to
drive a bit. Some are, you know, very well
attended, maybe 30 people, Some, some are smaller, maybe 8
people. And then each of the cons has a
produce build room as well, often run by the same Golden
Gate game makers group. And so it's, it's been an
essential, right? Like for the first year or so,
we mostly were building our own thing, testing and playing it.
But the moment we took it to an event, we had just completely
step change in our development or like lightspeed or right.
You might spend weeks and weeks trying to perfect some little
card interaction. And then you go to one of these
things you're like, Yep, back to square, back to square 1.
You know, it doesn't turns out that thing didn't even matter
and there's so many big problems.
So getting real people in front of it and especially having some
of them be it's a mixer. Some people are like in the
industry, and they can tell you right off the top there, they're
like, yeah, this is going to be expensive to make.
You're not even thinking about that when you're designing a
game. But they're like, yeah, you
know, consider a different component, right?
Or they can tell you, like, have you played this game, this game,
this game? Because, and these are titles
that you've probably never heard of.
I mean, some of these folks are playing like hundreds of games a
year. So, you know, so that's great.
But then also people are just like, yeah, I like games and I
want to play test. And that's also valuable
because, you know, you see how hard it is for someone to pick
up a game if they're only experienced to game is like, I
played Sagrada twice and I, you know, we played exploring
kittens and like, how can they make the jump over to your game
and understand the rules? Absolutely.
My wife and I are both avid play testers.
Awesome. We love to play test, which is
cool because you get we're 2 for one, right.
So we both, while we both look at game design differently, when
we're play testing, we've play tested enough and after we leave
a play test session, we have a lot of conversations about the
games we play tested and just about the concept as a whole.
And we both recognize the importance of constructive
feedback. A lot of times we see play
testers who are just like, oh, that was fun and I like the art.
OK. And I'm like, that doesn't help
the designer at all. Let me tell you what I really
think. So like I have a notebook
specifically for play testing. So it's, it's, it's funny when I
walk up to a play test table, pull out my notebook, got my
pencil ready and I'm ready to take notes because I, because I
don't want to forget what I'm thinking in the moment and I
don't want to interrupt your teach of the game.
So I can tell you what I thought about this thing and how you can
make it better or why it's great or whatever.
And it's really helpful to synthesize my thoughts in such a
way that makes it constructive to you as a designer.
And I wish more play testers would, you know, think that
through because. That's how.
Games. That's how games get better.
Hats off to you. That's that's incredible.
I mean, as a designer, you appreciate any play tester, but
right, that's that's on another level.
That's, that's something else. That's yeah.
Well, as a fellow creative, you know, I know the importance of
feedback and yeah, so we want to give you good feedback.
So that is Golden Gate Game Makers.
Is that right? Yeah.
OK, so guys, if you're not listening to this podcast, you
should, Brian, should after this recording, go and tell all of
the people from Golden Gate Game Makers how great this podcast is
and maybe they'll start listening to them, particularly
this episode since we're talking about them so much.
So yeah. How?
I had a question, then I lost it.
Isn't that great? Yeah, that's how that goes.
You got to love that. So what was Who went to Origins?
Was it you or your brother? We went together.
We did. So what was that like?
Right. It's the first time taking this
thing on the road. And it's like, you know, Origins
is, I mean, it's a big deal. We've devoted several episodes
to it this summer. So, So really, what was that?
What was that like? That first sit down and bam it.
Was it was something because it was right after pandemic.
And so like we OK, we were like just excited to get out and see
people and like, you know, mingle and stuff.
Is that that was very exhilarating.
And it was the two of us on our own.
And I was away from the kids for a bit.
So that was like, you know, I had really not been away at that
point. They were like, I think my
oldest was 2 and so it was, it was just fun.
It would have been fun if nothing else happened, right?
But I think like the, I think one thing that's really cool
about origins, part of the reason we went there is because
we, we had heard from other people like it gets a really
good level of industry presence and people who are like actually
have a little bit of time to chat with you.
You know, you go to a convention, like I've not been
to Jen Con yet. I want to go.
But even like a packs unplugged where it's like folks are busy,
they're making sales like they they don't have to take out
their schedule. And we had a missed gamma and
that was like kind of the other one we were considering.
And we're like, OK, well, let's let's go to origins then.
And it was real awesome because like people who were real
industry pros con and creators would just come to the the
produce spiel room and just play your game.
Which in comparison, out here in the on where we are in the Bay
Area, there are many more designers than there are, I
guess industry professionals at these kind of events.
Whereas I could origins feel like the ratio was much more
weighted towards like people would be coming around from like
the OP or something and come play your game.
And like, that's pretty cool. And you know, they've got pretty
good feedback to give. They've seen a lot of games and
that was that really like, I think also like to having having
a period of time with nothing else to do but think about the
game. Like you'd come home every night
after the con, It'd be late. We'd be like frantically
changing these. We're like, OK, OK, this isn't
working. This isn't we got it.
We got to get this better. And there was one play test.
Actually, I will always remember this play test.
One of one of the people who's playing like was giving us
feedback and like, you know, there's some positives and some
negatives. And the positive thing they
brought up was this little kind of spin down dial thing we had
that we just we just bought like, you know, off the Internet
to just kind of work as a we weren't even thinking about
putting in the game. It was just something that was
sure you count like, yeah, they really like this style thing.
And I mean, this is coming on top of a lot of other feedback,
but that was kind of the to the point where we're like, yeah, I
think we need to change a lot about this game because the most
positive thing is that we've got a nifty component and that
component's not the centerpiece, right?
If your game is about a component and the component's
the centerpiece of the game, you're doing perfect, right?
But, but it's just like an ancillary thing you happen to
throw in there. It was like, all right, we got
to go back to drama. So.
So it was kind of bittersweet in a way, because we had tons of
fun. All these really great people,
some of them who are still, like, I still chat with about
the game, but we also came away with like, yeah, we have to,
like, fix a lot about this game. So yeah.
But that's OK. You, as you just said earlier,
you were willing to be vulnerable and take that
feedback and make your game better.
So, so kudos. How, how supportive did you find
the network of fellow designers from Origins?
And the follow up question is how supportive is the greater
design community that you've experienced nationwide,
worldwide, wherever you've been? You know, I would extend that
out beyond designers like publishers, content creators,
even manufacturers, like really, everyone's been super patient.
I feel like with, with us throughout this process, you
know, because like, man, when you're new, you have so many
questions and it's just like you, you just don't know.
It's like, wait, how do I set up an e-mail list?
How do I make a prototype? What, what do you use to cut
your paper out? You know, I'm using scissors.
It's taken forever. They're like, get a cutter, you
know, it's like, hey, should I like, should I like, you know,
get a nice version of the prototype or is paper OK?
Like what what's, what's the etiquette?
Even if I'm showing up in front of play testers, what am I
supposed to put on the table? And just all these things you,
you know, you take for granted once you once you know all them.
But when you. And so, yeah, it's been like for
designers in particular, of course, like there's always slow
times in this approach, field rooms and designs just get up
and start playing other people's games.
And it's just like, it's like you put your game away and you
go play someone else's. And that's like a really nice
thing to do, right? Because you're not, you're there
to work on your game ideally. But ultimately, I think most
designers in my experience, like myself at least, like you
probably spend about half the time playing other people's
games and half the time playing your game roughly.
You know, I mean, sometimes there's tons of people in there
who just want to play. But when it's slow, you know,
and then some of those works you stay in touch with, like, there,
there there's some folks who, like, hit something like, oh,
we're actually doing some content creation now.
Do you want us to feature your game in a little like they're
doing like a little kind of one minute video?
Sounds like that. Thank you so much.
Like, I had no idea. Like, you know, we knew him as
designers and they're like, yeah.
But they kept us in mind when they kind of like, decide to
expand out what they're working on.
Or there's some of the some local folks who've seen this
game, a local publisher, you've seen this game, you know, since
2017, right. Every few months.
And, you know, when I need to figure out how to like, who to
partner with for manufacturers, like, hey, how do I do this?
Who do I talk to? Who, you know, who's going to
like, give me a like, here's this quote.
What does this line mean? You know, what is, what is VOB
intercoms, you know, and like, right.
It's so. Yeah, it's been like, yeah, I
think it has the feeling of a much, I guess it is a small
industry, but it has a feeling of an even smaller one.
And that's been really helpful. Yeah, I have heard that from
other designers that no matter how big this hobby is or small,
depending on what side of the aisle you're on, it's definitely
a close knit supportive group amongst designers.
So I'm really encouraged to hear that and glad you had that
experience. So let's talk about the art.
Who's responsible for the art? I didn't mean that.
I didn't mean for that question to sound so oh.
No, no, he's. Responsible for that art, like I
asked it, and I'm like, that's not, wow, that sounded kind of
mean. Yeah.
So like, who's, who's the artist?
What was the inspiration for the artwork?
Yeah, 'cause it's, I don't, it's not whimsical, but it's not,
it's not like Magic the Gathering's got that full,
vibrant, very detailed art. It's not that either.
Talk to me about that. Yeah, it's it's great that you
brought Terry. That was the that was like the
hardest part of kind of in terms of like my brother and I working
together and like what we had to decide on.
It's it's certainly not where like most of the time went or
like it wasn't like the most, it wasn't like the most emotionally
draining, right. But it was just, we basically
agreed that both of us had veto power on the art.
It was something we both, it was like super important to us and
it was something that we really wanted to get right.
And we had a lot of things in mind we didn't want to end up
as. And that's not super useful,
right? Because the beautiful thing
about art is there's infinite possibilities, and just knowing
that there's a couple you don't like doesn't really solve it for
you. And.
You don't have a background? Absolutely.
Neither have a background in art, so we didn't even have like
really the language to even describe right.
So that was that was very challenging and mostly we just
sat down together and we looked through art station after art
station after Cara Deviant Art. You know, I think we probably
went over at least 200 something profiles, right?
Of just like, sure, I like this. I like where this is going.
Like is this, you know, can we do more of this?
Let's reach out, you know, and like trying to even explain even
once we found an artist who we thought the style was like
trying to explain, like what about their style?
We liked and show them a couple things that were like really
helpful for us kind of to move it forward was taking art that
was like not ours, right, but like kind of representative of
the style and then putting on the cards and showing it to
people in like a prototype form. Like does this resonate with
you? Does this kind of like like you
just did this move? Like which one of these pictures
kind of captures that? You know, it's like we're not
even tell asking people just putting it on there and then
just seeing how they if they look, you know, look past it, if
they kind of like if they're like surprised when, you know,
the rules don't match the picture, right.
But yeah, so how we got to where we ended up was actually kind of
a Street Fighter was sort of the the like specifically a Street
Fighter two. Yeah, Street Fighter two mostly
like was was the main inspiration there and like, yes,
super turbo and kind of I think that blended with like a modern
comic book style. So sort of like, you know, it's
it's got reasonably involved lines.
There is some shading, but it's not like heavily rendered.
And we I think also some inspiration were like a League
of Legends type thing like, you know, kind of like a like a
mobile look to it as well. Right, right.
But yeah, we definitely wanted something a little bit playful,
a little bit like fairly colorful and a little bit
conducive to kind of over the top action, right.
Not too realistic, not too grounded, not to like fantasy
necessarily, right. But fantastic.
So yeah, it was, it was, yeah. So it's a Christian Araba is is
an artist down in LA who did some of the pieces for us.
But one thing about the games, it's fairly art intensive.
So he wasn't able to cover everything.
And so there's a, we had, we had a studio doing some like more
pieces for us kind of based on what he had started for us, you
know, And then, yeah, it's, it's been, I mean, we're, we're
really happy with how it landed, of course.
And like, I think it does mesh pretty well with, you know,
people talk a lot about like theme and mechanics matching,
but like art is kind of the third pillar of that, right?
In your theme, mechanics and art all need to stick together.
And I've definitely experienced games where like they actually
nail 2, but not all three, right?
And so that was that was something that we we really want
to make sure we were able to pull together.
So what is it like? So you're designing a combat
card game in an area that in an era that has there's a plethora
of TCGS. You said you didn't want to
produce a TCG for obvious reasons, one that Magic the
Gathering has completely dominated, and rightfully so.
And yet there are so many just card games.
Like I've featured so many designers who are publishing
combat card games right now. What?
What is? What is?
What is the feeling you get about doing that while everyone
else is doing? Like how do you punch through
the noise? Oh yeah, for sure.
Yeah. Because it's like part of it
too, is, you know, a lot of the games I play are not combat card
games. I mean, obviously I play some of
those too, right? But there's so many.
I think one thing that's been amazing in the past, like 7-8,
even 10 years now really is the explosion of like thematic games
or they will take, it's not just like paste it on, you know,
they'll be like, we're going to do a game about birds or
mushrooms or whatever. And they just like really nail
it, you know, and it's, it's really cool to like see
designers exploring the space of like how mechanics can be
purposed for not just not just surface level, right, but like
very deeply, like, you know, food, drinks, whatever, right.
And so combat is one of the ones I think it's always been
relatively easy to make a game where your combat mechanics make
make sense as as board game mechanics, right?
Like there's a lot of good examples out there and there's a
lot to draw on. So that that's how it's kind of
nice in that you have a lot of prior to work from.
I think for us, it was always about having that team and like
multiplayer thing, because I think so many games really
nailed the one V1, which makes a lot of sense.
I think most people play these games 1V1, right?
It's like it's really easy to get two people together and it's
really easy to run a tournament that way, right.
And the void we kind of felt was that, well, how do you scale
that up to game night? Like do you always have to leave
the combat, you know, battling world when you sit down more
than three people? And so that was what we really
want to make sure because like we have so many friends who
either enjoyed these like 1V1 games a lot or they enjoyed the
video game kind of equivalence. Right.
And then right. Like, yeah, OK, you know, let's,
let's let's mix up a game night. You know, there's that you can
kind of get that feeling of like that sort of intense dual
thinking, reading your opponent's mind, you know, in in
a group setting. And I think that's kind of where
we sort of really wanted to fall.
And I think there's definitely it's a sort of thing where it's
like, we really want this thing to exist.
So like if somebody had beat us to the punch, we just want to
make a game, you know, like, OK, you know, it's like, yeah, if we
already were playing this game, like we would have never felt
the need for it. So I think that was kind of kind
of what drove us there. I think that you had mentioned
in previous emails between each other in some of your notes that
I thought were interesting and would be interesting to discuss.
At this moment, you were talking about the fine balance between
chaos and control in the simultaneous revealing of cards.
Talk about that mechanic of the simultaneous revealing and how
you managed that balance. Yeah, yeah, that is, that is
something right there. Because I feel like you have to
welcome in the chaos as soon as you've got two people putting
shorts face down. You know, you might say your
game has no luck or something, or no randomness, but you don't
need to be rolling dice to have that experience.
As long as you don't know what your opponent's doing.
There's some uncertainty there. And that is like the thing that
you sort of have to embrace a bit.
And I think you can have a lot of fun, just like good old
fashioned fun with leaning into that.
And I've started to play a lot of games where it's like you
feel like a very little control over the outcome, but everyone's
just kind of on this crazy ride. And so where we wanted the game
to fall was like maybe pulling that back a little bit just
because we did want to have in more of those kind of like
dueling, knowing your opponent kind of feelings.
And if you can make no predictions about your opponent,
it's really hard to to read them, you know, to feel like
you, you got the drop on them right.
If if it feels purely chaotic. And so it does depend a lot, of
course, on like, the table and how well everyone knows each
other and knows their characters and stuff.
But for us, what we found is like, you know, we put the three
cards face down. We tried two, we tried one, we
tried four, we tried 5, right. And we tried all kinds of
schemes where like, certain numbers would be maybe face up
in your discard so your opponent could, you know, math out a
little bit what you had left. We tried versions where people
could, there were a lot of effects that would restrict what
you could play in certain scenarios.
I almost feel like we just sort of tried everything until we
found something that felt good. We didn't have that like big
intuitive leaflets, like, ah, it's three.
I mean, 3 was one of the first thing we tried just cuz like,
it's a very manageable number and it turned out to be right.
But we didn't know that until we kind of were like, OK, 3 is
good, but what about four? It's like, no, that's not good.
Like by the time you get that fourth card, no one has any idea
what's going on. And it's, it's a mess, right?
But, but when you only play like one card and we, we try to
version that, it does feel very rock, paper, scissors.
And that can be super fun. There's, there's a lot of games
that do that. But at that point we felt like
it was a little too, a little bit too abstract.
You know, it's like one punch and if you have your block up,
you're fine. And if you tried to run away,
maybe I'd get you first, right? And like, it was just this very
staccato kind of repetition of did you do it or not?
And with the three, we left a little bit of space there to be
like, OK, maybe you got me on that first hit.
But then I was prepared for maybe messing up on my first
move. But then I I had a contingency
plan of stepping back and then then shooting up my fireball.
So it all kind of comes from the video game idea of like you,
you've got your controller, you can cue up your inputs, right?
You make some movements, but you don't really have time to know
what the opponent's moves are when you're doing yours.
And so to give that feel on the tabletop, we wanted to have kind
of spread that needle between making just one choice and
making like a whole series of things that could go off the
rails. And by the time you're halfway
through, you're already kind of holding your head because it's
it's too far gone. That's a fairpoint.
That's fair. So it says that in the
description. It talks about how you play a
legend. Can you tell us about the
characters that you play these legends?
Who are they, where they come from?
Is there a lot of lore behind the game or?
Yeah. That's fair.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a great questions.
Yeah. We we went fairly lore light.
The basic world is 1 in which anybody who's really good at
something is like maybe the the very best in their field
actually kind of gained some magical prowess from that.
So, you know, we've got like the world's best opera singer.
And it's not just that she's the best opera singer.
Like she can also use her voice to, you know, explode crystal
glass, but on like a amazing scale.
Or she can use her stage powers to kind of disappear from the
arena and appear somewhere else. And so OK, we've got kind of
people from characters from all sorts of different like areas,
even like time periods a little bit.
And sort of the arena in this world is kind of like, OK, if
you've already achieved, you're the best at whatever you're
doing, you've you've kind of gain these magical powers.
There's the only like challenge left is other people from like
totally different disciplines who also have these kind of
powers, right? And so it's sort of like a it's,
it's, it's purely like a spectator sport, you know, kind
of like a maybe like a professional wrestling
equivalent, right? Where like, you know, they're
just kind of having fun, but they're expressing themselves
through whatever they've mastered.
So what would you say to someone who's who plays your game and
they're like, well, this is just like a video game.
I can go ahead and play video game X.
Why do I need this card game? What makes it stand out?
What do you say to someone like that?
I mean, one, I would take that as a huge compliment because
like if they say it's just like video game XI mean I feel like
hitting video game notes in a board game is so hard.
Just the pacing and the tempo and the timing and the
engagement, like video games, they get a lot of that for free
because they have so much control over the the display and
the graphics, the animation, the sound.
It's a very immersive thing, you know, and if someone's like
you're bored and you can feel like a video game, I feel like,
yeah. But to address the second-half
of the question, they're like, Oh yeah.
Especially when we're playing, actually moving back a little
bit, we're playing with like younger audiences, right?
That's like one of my favorite play tests to watch is like when
like a like a 13 year old or 14 year old is playing because like
they're kind of in that place where they maybe didn't set out.
They're they're not they haven't like chosen.
They haven't like chosen like I'm a board gamer.
They're just playing games and they all get stack ranked in
their mind. Like I like this game, I like
that game, I like this game. And it's like, it's like when
when those people really engage with it, I love it.
Like it's like, this is this is great because it's like they're
comparing this directly against Fortnite or they're comparing
this directly against among us, whatever, you know, and like,
right. But yeah, so, but to the answer,
the second-half of the question, like, you know, why would I just
go play video game instead? I think a lot of that comes down
to, I mean, for the older folks, it's reflexes, right?
Like my fingers do not move that fast anymore.
Like the the level of like time and discipline it takes to be
good at a game like Super Smash Brothers or something.
It's that's gone away from me. So, you know, for for me, it's
like, yeah, that, that. And then it's also about, you
know, different skill levels, right?
Like having a bit of that leveling factor.
It's like if somebody needs to take a long time to pick out
their moves and stuff. Easy to do in a tabletop game.
And it's, it's about the social aspect as well.
Like you might sit down, play a game for, for an hour, but hang
out for two hours, you know, right.
Video game can also be social. You know, I've done plenty of
like couch stuff, couch stuff, but it's a different like
barrier to entry. And like you need to have a game
console, controllers, TV, you know, sure.
So yeah, I really, I would say like mostly I'd be, I'm super
excited if people like, feel like it hits the same notes
because it's like, yeah, that's what I want to bring to the
tabletop. What's the recommended age
group? Like how young for this game?
Yeah, the box says 14 plus and I think I've every fortune we've
tested with it like had had no problem whatsoever.
I think in general most people who have like because that age
have like played video games at all, like immediately have a
pretty good idea what's going on.
Certainly younger, younger people played it all the way
down to like 10 or so. And it just depends on it.
I don't want to say it's like a text heavy game, but relatively
speaking, you know, there, there are moves that require a couple
sentences to describe and there's like a bit of a like, I
think this oddly like mid weight game, you know, in in the sense
of like it could, there are lighter, there are lighter ways
to do this kind of game, but then you lose out on some of the
cinematics, some of the like wackier stuff.
And we wanted to learn more into that.
So yeah, I think generally speaking, it's yeah.
So for parents who have children that are preteen to early teen
years, who are maybe playing a lot of video games and they're
looking for a analog shared experience with their kids at
the table, your game seems to be compatible with that.
Parents can play this with their kids and the kids can pick up on
it because if they can reference it to what they already know.
And so that seems to be encouraging of that family
interaction. Absolutely.
But but you have to be prepared to lose like your kids are going
to be sure. I don't know how to put, I don't
know how to tell you this. Like your kids are probably way
better at this sort of game than you are.
And you know, that's OK, you know, but as long as you're
prepared for that because you know, we've tested with plenty
of families and stuff and I don't, I'm not saying I've got a
stat, but I think the kids are beating the parents like I don't
80% of the time. So as long as you're OK with
that. OK, there you go.
All right, well, that, that's all that I've got for you.
Is there anything, any other final thoughts, final ideas that
you want to share? Well, yeah, thank you so much
for for having me on. That's that's awesome.
And you know, it's been, I don't know, like, I guess, I guess I
would say to people who are like in the position of like maybe
you have some friends you play with.
Maybe it's maybe it's your brother, sister.
And you're like, you know, we could we could make our own
game. We could make something, you
know, this is better than this or, you know, we love what this
is doing, but it's we want to take it further.
You can totally do it. You know, I would say I would
encourage you to try like the sooner you get in front of
someone outside your group, the better, you know, find that
local group, find the find the Potter spiel, finds the
convention, you know, get get it out of your heads.
But at the same time, it's like, it's not, I think I forget who
said this, so I won't attempt to quote them exactly, but the
paraphrase is kind of the taste comes before your ability to
like execute. You know, like, like you can
tell something isn't quite right or you can tell something isn't
the way you want it to be before you're able to make the thing
you want. And so like you spend a while
being very frustrated by the thing you're making because
you're like, this isn't, this isn't as good.
Why isn't it good? And it's not because your taste
is wrong. It's because you're learning how
to like make that thing. And that's something I've
definitely felt, but like, you know, trust your taste, right?
Because like, that's right. That's the part that like is
coming from all your experiences at that point and is like super
valid. And then I guess to the the
other thing I want to say is, you know, to people who are out
there trying to like, maybe maybe play testing games,
looking at games, approach fields are like wondering, you
know, like sort of, you know, wonder one about maybe Legends
Arena or, you know, whatever game you see, like, you know,
definitely, definitely come say hi.
You know, like we've been talking a lot here about all the
people who've who've helped us in the industry and like, you
know, all the people we've connected with and how sometimes
those people like end up making their own relationships.
Like definitely, yeah, definitely.
Just come, come, come say hi. And like Chad, I think when I
before I was a designer, I didn't really realize how like,
you know, small the whole world was.
And now it's like, yeah, it's like if there's a game I like
and I and I see a designer, you know, I'm absolutely going to go
just like go say hi and stuff because I know like, yeah, it's,
it's the coolest thing when somebody wants to talk about
your creation with you. So.
Right, absolutely. I get that.
So, so the episode is going to
drop. At the time of recording, it
hasn't launched, but you'll notice that I did mention last
week is when it launched because I believe that's correct.
This episode drops on September 3rd.
So tell everyone where they can find Legends of the Arena where
they can find you on all the socials.
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Thanks, VJ. That's right.
Yeah. So launch date was August 26th.
You can find us on Kickstarter, look for Legends of the Arena,
and we're at Tooth Games on Instagram, Facebook, Discord.
Yeah, we got we got a bunch of them.
And so yeah, come, come drops a line and say hi, be happy to
chat with you. Yeah.
And so to be fair to all of my friends in New Orleans who are
used to Toth being spelled with an H, this is Toth.
This is Brian's family name. This is not named after the
Egyptian God Toth, who is the messenger of the gods in
Egyptian mythology. So, you know, being that I'm
from Louisiana, my Louisiana gaming friends will know that's
where I went right away. I was like, oh, Tooth Game.
Oh, that's his last name. Oh, there's no H Yeah.
That's a deep cut there. Yeah, yeah.
But yeah, not. That that is where my head went.
And I know that some of my friends will go there as well,
so clear up that. But yeah, you can definitely
find them on Instagram. So guys, make sure to hit the
like and subscribe button, please.
We're really close to our one year goal for subscribers and
we'll hit 100 hundred subscribers and then we're going
to move on to year. Two Big things coming.
Once again, Brian, thank you for joining me.
This was a great conversation. I always love to hear the first
time designer perspective, especially with everything
that's been going on globally right now.
So guys, be kind to each other and let's continue to play more
games.