To end the annual event, I attended the Arkham Horror LCG Card Council held live on Twitch to design a new card for Arkham Horror: The Card Game. I got to be a part of the in-person card council last at Arkham Nights 2019 held at the Fantasy Flight Headquarters in Minnesota. I helped design the card, “Shrine of the Moirai BETA”. MJ Newman mentioned during the live stream that this card is coming up in the next cycle!

The Fantasy Flight Team leveraged Twitch polls and chat to help design a new card based on Romana Kendelic’s artwork from Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game. The art is from Ian Hardaway’s Uncanny Presence card from The Sleeper Below series.

The new card will be for Arkham Horror: The Card Game and will be tagged with “BETA” until it is play-tested and released with an upcoming campaign. We spent over an hour debating the class, what makes this card playable, its name, its trait, and what the card does. The conversation + chat + and polls made the whole process enjoyable and productive.

Here’s what the “Exiled Council” came up with…

• Name: Burn After Reading
• Class: Survivor
• Level: 1
• Text: Discard or Exile a non-weakness card in your hand or play area. Discover clues equal to half that cards level rounded up. If you exile that card, remove one doom from the current agenda.
• Cost: 2
• Trait: Insight
• Icons: Will & Intellect

Fantasy Flight Games announced on Twitter that they made a print-and-play version of the card and linked to a high-resolution PDF in the game’s support area. Some changes were made.

Thanks to Fantasy Flight and especially, MJ Newman, Jeremy Zwirn, and Evan Johnson for hosting a great event! Hopefully, we will get to see each other next year!

From what I learned from the Google box, Canyon Spells is Jimmie Linville and Daniel Pingrey who have been making music since high school. Their collaboration is tight and has produced a lot of great music across many genres. Their set at Gen Con was tight, fun, and really entertaining. I have not heard a great new band in a long, long time, and this was a pleasant surprise at Gen Con, of all places. I am not sure where they are going or if they will get stuck with an identity crisis, but they have great song writing and performing chops. YouTube has many videos of their band performing A LOT, which is a sign of a great band. Bands need to perform as much as they can, book gigs, and travel to obscure gaming conventions to strengthen their craft. I hope they find their way into the mainstream. They deserve a shot.

How much time have you wasted trying to choose the best salad dressing?

Jeff also mentioned the paradox of choice. He recommended that we watch a TED Talk from Barry Schwartz on the subject of choice and try to apply it to game design. Barry does not talk about game design in his TED Talk, but his message about choice can easily apply. A game with no choice is not fun. A game with too many choices is also not fun. You need to find a balance and do not overwhelm your players with too many options. Choice is central to the art of game design. You need to decide which choices to present to players and which ones that can be removed from your game.

I recommend that you watch Barry Schwartz’s TED Talk, The Paradox of Choice, to get the full context and see how you can apply it to game design.

He was really awesome to talk to and inspired me to get writing about one of my characters, named “Dog”. Thanks for the bag of holding!

I lost… But, I got some awesome runner-up gifts and got to play an intense battle with a great player.

If you ever go to a gaming convention you will notice all of the ironic t-shirts everyone wears. For example, the overweight guy wearing a small Supperman t-shirt. Each year more and more t-shirt vendors invade the exhibit hall at Gen Con.

If you know me, you know that I just had to create a bunch of sarcastic, novelty shirts. I just can’t not do it. So in 2006 I made up a bunch of shirts. I sold a few, mostly it was a waste of time. A few survived and I gave them out to my friends for Gen Con 2006. One in particular was a shirt for The Dungeoneering Dad that read, “My other shirt is a v-neck”. Looks like TDD gave it away…

Today, I find that exact shirt on a website called “toomanytshirts.com” – a site where “a random dude from Pittsburgh” wears and photographs a different t-shirt every day.

That was a pleasant surprise to see the old shirt still making its rounds with my trademark bar code on the sleeve. I completely forgot about the two weeks I was “T-shirt Hans”.

Here are some of my other more popular (less popular) t-shirt slogans:

• Rage Against the Washing Machine

• Got Rhetorical Questions?

• I believe in God and Aliens

• 3 out of 5 dentists agree 60% of the time

• Community Chest

• I hate Slogans

• WWW.JD

• Political Statement

• I am case-Sensitive

• I’m the man from Nantucket

• Ask me about today’s specials

• I hate scallions

• My favorite font is Ironic Sans

Gen Con 2007 turned out to be one of the best. The last day of the four day convention, the squad got to meet a hero of ours — Reiner Knizia. Reiner is a German game designer that has created some of my favorite board games and continues to put out challenging, fun, and creative games several times a year. Two of my favorite board games are Lost Cities and Ingenious.