Daryl Andrews and myself are enjoying a delightful dinner at Tide and Vine in Niagara Falls, Canada. Perhaps enjoying two dinners. It remains to be seen. This episode, I accidentally stumble into a dramatic controversary in board games. I knew it happened. I had no idea it directly involved Daryl. Just to settle everyone’s mind – I am happy to report Daryl is still my buddy even after all my ignorance and insensitivity.

DTD: Did you play Perseverance?

Daryl: I have not. Well, I shouldn’t say I have not – I played the 1st 2-3 turns of it, and then unfortunately I was with a group that was like, “Oh, change game” and I was like “I’m into this…!” [laughs]

DTD: Well, it’s a neat tower defense game and it’s pretty.

Like I said, Perseverance is a tower defense game from Mindclash Games, where the players need to deal with constant attacks from dinosaurs on an alien world. The game contains Episodes One and Two in the box, increasing in complexity.

Daryl: Very pretty.

DTD: You got those dinosaurs marching in on ya? I’m curious to try… I did the Chapter One, which you could tell is like because the box says, “Chapter One, Chapter Two.” And you can tell Chapter One kind of introductory, get you into it – how does this work. So, I’m really curious about Chapter Two now.

Daryl: Yeah, that’ll be interesting. I haven’t come back to that one. I would like to.

DTD:  And I did Paradox Initiative.

Daryl: Ooooh!

DTD: Elf Creek.

Daryl: They have so many artists attached that. I haven’t played it yet.

DTD: I love the gameplay. So cool. And it’s not like the Elf Creek super-pretty thing. But it doesn’t have to be.

Elf Creek Games are known for having very pretty, over-produced components, as in Honey Buzz and Merchants of the Dark Road. In Paradox Initiative, the effort went into the artwork, with most of the prominent board game illustrators contributing work.

Daryl: OK.

DTD: Because it is about cardboard bits and cardboard board. I mean, minis and figures and little lanterns and things are just not part of that world.

Daryl: It doesn’t fit for that one.

DTD: It would not work. But it is fun.

Daryl: Yeah, I’m making a game for Elf Creek, set in the Honey Buzz world.

DTD: Oh, awesome. OK.

Daryl: It’s about beavers.

DTD: Is this the one that I saw you playing?

Daryl: No, ironically not.

I did in fact see Daryl pitching a beaver board game about log rolling. So, it appears Daryl Andrews has two beaver games in the works. Hard hitting journalism.

Waitress: All righty gentlemen, here we are.

DTD: You are too kind.

The waitress has arrived with our second round of entrees. Yes, the seafood tower was not quite adequate. Seafood chowder and lobster roll are now on the table. I am thrilled.

Waitress: Can I offer you any fresh ground pepper with that?

DTD: Oh, you can offer.

Waitress: OK, perfect.

DTD: And this iced tea was very good.

Apparently, according to Daryl, iced tea is not a predictably decent thing in his area of Canada. The Tide and Vine is the exception. Note the surprise in Daryl’s voice.

Waitress: Yes! Do you guys want another one or anything?

DTD: Yeah, I would love an iced tea.

Daryl: Can I switch over to the iced tea? I gotta try it, he raved about it. [laughs]

I am here to illuminate by example.

Waitress: OK, perfect. I’m gonna get this out of the way. I’m going to bring that pepper first. And then Ill be back with the drinks.

Let the peppering commence. Our waitress and Daryl did a magnificent dance of compliment on compliment, politely negotiating the correct amount of spice to grind upon lobster and chowder. It was sight to behold, as both had infinitely more etiquette and chivalry whille seasoning food, than I could have mustered when meeting heads of state.

DTD: So please tell me if any of the stuff you’re talking about is something I should not publish. Generally, I hardly edit these things.

Daryl: You’re good. Yeah, I mean I’m a pretty open book on my games. And the odd time I have to ask for forgiveness, but I’m OK with that.

DTD: [laughs] So Honey Buzz world, beavers. Because I saw mention of that on BGG. And I kind of… You know, I thought about the one that that you were playtesting – It had beavers, come on! What’s the chances that you’ve got more than one game with beavers?

Daryl: [laughs] Well, I’m Canadian so…

DTD: I should have gone there.

I should mention the beavers I saw were wearing red plaid.

Daryl: Right? [laughs] But yeah, this one is very much, like an “I cut you choose.” So beavers gathering and cutting things. It’s one of my favorite mechanics.

DTD: I chew, you choose.

Daryl: Oooh, I like that. We might have to work that in.

DTD: I get a cut here.

Double pun. This is why I make the big bucks.

Daryl: [laughs] Yeah, so everyone is doing competitive gathering, and building dams and building lodges. And finding little forest helpers to help you along the way as you build…

DTD: I can only imagine pretty pieces that Elk Creek would find for that.

Daryl: Yeah, potentially some really pretty stuff. So I’m excited about that. It’s one of the few games that’s kind of in the hopper, coming out over the next year or two, so. [about food] What do I start with? How was the chowder? What’s the verdict so far?

Yes, I was busy stuffing my face while Daryl was speaking. This should always be assumed.

DTD: Mild. The pepper helps. Really nice. There’s some depth in there, there’s some seafood in there that I’m not used to, that I like.

Daryl: Ooh, very mild.

DTD: I mean, a lot of times you have a chowder with this spicy Tabasco overtone, or something like that. But this is just the fish. Which is not a complaint at all.

Tabasco was first made by Edmund McIlhenny in 1868 on Avery Island, Louisiana. Oh yeah, Tabasco facts.

Daryl: No, it’s tasty so far.

DTD: It is good stuff.

Daryl: Yeah, I really like the Elf Creek crew. They’re just really fun to be around. I like their other… I’ve actually playtested a bunch of their other games.

DTD: Oh yeah. Monique’s local to me.

Daryl: Oh, awesome. She’s amazing.

DTD: I’ve really only started being friendly with them the past couple conventions, and they’re amazing.

Daryl: Yeah, yeah, they love food too. Mike [Hinson] and Brent [Dickman].

Noted. Mike and Brent are the co-founders of Elf Creek Games, and are two of the nicest guys around. I need to feed them.

Waitress: There you go gentlemen. First couple bites?

DTD: Thank you. So good.

Waitress: Perfect. Let me know if you need a little something extra after that, OK?

DTD: [laughs]

Waitress: You never know!

“Oh, wait – how about a third entree? Or full access to the kitchen for grazing?”

Daryl: Thank you. Yeah, I often go for a good meal with those guys.

DTD: That is awesome.

Daryl: One of my favorite meals, I went with them, is Joe [Wiggins]… He was with Panda production. Now he’s with table board games. But he used to, as a Panda rep…

DTD: boardgametables.com?

Surprisingly, they do a lot of very good games, not that many tables.

Daryl: Yeah. Yeah. So he’s now with them. He just switched from Panda to there. But because he was taking Elf Creek out, and he was their project manager, and I was talking to him, they said, “Come along with us.” So, I went with the Elf Creek crew.

DTD: Am I gonna say no?

Daryl: Oh yeah. I’m not complaining. I’m not saying anything. And he said, “I have a surprise. You can’t look at the website, don’t look up this restaurant. Just go with us.” It was at PAX Unplugged. We went to this place – I forget the name of it now – but we sat down, we were chatting… There was like six or eight of us, and then all of a sudden they brought what looked like a table instead of a plate. That covered the entire spread, and it was like steaks and ribs and pork chops and fries, and it was just a pile of food. And they were like, “Go at it.”

I had guessed from the description that the restaurant was probably Butcher Bar in Philidelphia. where they serve “The Trough”. Now, I don’t want to say I sought out Joe Wiggins, and begged for pictures of this event, but…

DTD: Oh man!

Daryl: It was just like basically like everything thrown together on the middle of the table, feast.

DTD: Wow it’s like an old-school crab boil, but meat.

Daryl: Yeah, but like meat and fries.

DTD: That’s amazing!

Daryl: It was amazing.

I’m sold. I want to go. Now. I think I might start going to PAX Unplugged just for this.

DTD: I’ve been to a couple Ethiopian places that’ll just cover the table…

Daryl: Get some rotis, and just reach in.

DTD: Oh so good. Yeah, grab the injera, that’s the bread.

Daryl: Injera! That’s it, that’s it.

A roti is an indian flat bread or crepe made from wheat or lentil flour. Injera is the traditional Ethiopian flatbread, made from fermented teff flour. Injera has a wonderful sour lactic flavor, not unlike sourdough bread. Traditionally, the whole meal is served on injera, and diners tear off pieces of bread to scoop up the food by hand.

DTD: I went to a restaurant with Buonocore, with Stephen and Paula, and a friend of mine. And they had an item on the menu that was called “Just Trust Us.” And you just tell them how many courses you want, and they bring them out.

Daryl: Wow.

The restaurant was Valette in Healdsburg, California. Highly recommend. The friend was my co-host for Dice Tower Now, Barry. Also recommend.

DTD: And what they did is every course they made two items, and alternated the people. And they said: “If you don’t like what’s in front of you just, you know, steal it’s in front of someone else.” And it was amazing.

Daryl: [laughs] What city was that?

DTD: Healdsburg. It’s a wine city, north of Santa Rosa.

Daryl: OK, I’ve heard of Santa Rosa.

DTD: My house is in Santa Rosa, which is just over the mountain from Napa Valley. You cross the mountain and you’re at the top of Napa Valley, which is Calistoga. And that’s a neat place, it’s a geothermal, weird, snooty Napa Valley place. Whole place is run on geothermal – it has an Old Faithful that’s like touristy and campy as anything. They have fainting goats. I mean, where’s a better place to put fainting goats than at an Old Faithful? [laughs] That was such a fun trip.

Tennessee Fainting Goats have a genetic mutation that can cause them to stiffen and fall over is started. Interestingly, people nearly always try to scare these goats when they encounter them, which leads to the goats being almost immune to our feeble attempts. They are so over it. So it is rare to see a fainting goat … actually faint.

Daryl: Old Faithful! That’s great.

DTD: Alright – So, you’ve got a Canadian Beaver game.

Two. I want the record to state Daryl Andrews has two Canadian Beaver Games.

Daryl: Yeah. Yeah, with Elf Creek. I have Sagrada Legacy coming, also.

DTD: I was going to specifically ask you about that, because that sounds very intriguing.

Daryl: Yeah, me and Adrian [Adamescu] had designed the base game, and all the expansions in the first six months.

DTD: The weird “Passion” themes. I mean. theming on a themeless dice roller.

Sagrada received three themed expansions, known as the Great Facade: Passion, Glory, and Life.

Daryl: We originally picked most of them, it’s just all one big add-on. And Floodgate [Games] had the idea of breaking them down and tweaking them, and having little ones. And we’re like, “Okay, cool.” He was like, “Yeah, we’re gonna spread that out. Start working on something different.” And then we worked on a dice version of a dice game as a joke. We worked on a card game version, we worked on a junior version. We worked on…

DTD: You have to.

Daryl: Every little thing. And I remember, we worked on… We were riffing, and Adrian’s like, “What would be crazy?” And I was like, “Legacy!” And he was like, “Well, what would that be?” And I started just like saying things out loud, and then we’re like, “That actually sounds fun! But weird.” And I remember when we pitched it to them [Floodgate], we were like, “We’ll put that last. We will go like, best to worst.”

DTD: [laughs]

Daryl: And we went through them, and he was shooting them down, shooting them down. We must have had like a half a dozen ideas. And finally we said that one [Legacy], and he goes, “Oh! Tell me more…” And we’re like, “Naaah…”

DTD: Really???

Daryl: And he was like, “No, that’s so weird, it might work!” And we’re like, “OK… Like, that’s the least developed one of our ideas, but if you want us to…” He’s like, “Yeah, that sounds great!” And they left us alone on it, and never really asked us any more questions. And we started baking it.

DTD: How long have you been working on it?

Daryl: Well, we worked on it for about a year. Went back to Ben [Harkins] – I think he kind of forgot – but was like… Off the cuff, said that sounds cool. And then, we’re like, “Hey, we did it.” And he was like…

DTD: “Did what?”

Ben Harkins is the owner of Floodgate Games, and designer of Legacy: Gears of TIme.

Daryl: Yeah, exactly. So, we show him the game, and he goes, “This is awesome. Let’s do it.” But you know, then there’s a lot of other things to juggle, and a lot of… So we were paused, Adrian and I, for a while. Until he could look at it, play it, feel it out. He then gave us notes, and that went back and forth for another year.

DTD: Just remember, every game is a legacy game if you try hard enough. That’s actually my co-host’s line – he says it all the time.

Daryl: Yeah? Well, the way we saw it was… I don’t know if you know the Sagrada Familia story at all?

DTD: Not too much the story, I know the base game.

I’m a dufus, still thinking about the games. Daryl meant the historical location.

Daryl: Okay yeah, well the actual real place, the basilica in Barcelona – when [Antoni] Gaudi was making it, he knew that it was going to take generations. He had kids living on the property, they had a school built there for the workers, because they knew it would be generations to take to build this place.

DTD: All right.

Daryl: And when he did the planning, there was times where he would leave white space, and say like, “another generation will figure that out.”

DTD: “Someone else will do that.”

Daryl: “You can do this, you gotta do this, and they’ll come up with something – they need to put their fingerprints on this, too.” And so, that was even part of our original concept, was like, “Oh, let’s leave white space in Sagrada, so that you can be creative, but you have to follow certain restrictions.” And so then, we were like, “Well, I wish we could tell the story of generations of making it nice. And that’s what Segrada Legacy is.

DTD: I like it.

Daryl: Now, you roll dice, and you get pencil crayons that match. And you are coloring in pages, and then as you turn you go through the generations.

DTD: You don’t have to match color with the die.

Daryl: Exactly. So that becomes the draft. It’s like a coloring book, legacy game, that you work through the generations of building different windows. And gaining skills and tools, so you become more specialized in certain colors. And you work your way through it. And one of the mechanics I think is super funny, is you have tools that get more and more fragile. And so, every time you use them, you might break them. So, things like that will become part of the legacy.

DTD: Please tell me you can destroy dice.

Daryl: Oh, you can destroy anything.

Any game is a legacy if you try hard enough.

DTD: Like physically, actually, destroy the dice.

Daryl: Not completely, but we do have ones where you add to a die, and so it starts to change color. So, the reverse, maybe?

DTD: That’s pretty good. Now I keep thinking about the destruction element, and people just shaking in their boots when they have to tear up a card.

Daryl: People do have polarizing opinions on that. That’s where the tools that break… You have to shred them.

DTD: My wife jumps in, and with glee, will rip that card to shreds, and if there’s a wooden piece that says “Destroy, get out of this legacy game,” then it will be destroyed.

Daryl: [laughs] Nice.

DTD: So now, I want a die just crushed into oblivion. [laughs]

Daryl: Amazing. Well, I like this as a house rule.

DTD: House rule nothing – if you say “destroy,” I’m going to take it literally.

Daryl: That works for me too.

DTD: There you go.

Brotherhood of the razed components.

Daryl: We do have a fire that comes in. People that study the history of it – there’s a pretty significant fire in the progress of the…

DTD: Yeah. Well, I don’t know if you played [The Rise of] Queensdale. It was the Brand’s legacy.

Inka and Markus Brand are two of my favorite designers.

Call me – let’s do a light lunch.

Daryl: I haven’t.

DTD: It has a fire. Like a real… No, no, no. That was Charterstone. Charterstone has a real fire.

Yup. Real fire in Charterstone. No real fire in Rise of Queensdale.

Daryl: Charterstone, yes. My favorite use of fire in a product: My buddy Matt Kindt wrote a book called, ah I’m gonna butcher the name, I think it’s “Caught Red Handed.” I’ll have to look it up. But when he showed me the book, he actually opened it up, and on a certain page he lit it on fire right in front of me.

I was like “Hey sign it for me”. He said, “Oh, I’ll do one better”, turns to a certain page, opens it up, he has like the one page, and he lights it on fire! I’m like “What are you doing!?” And then he slams it shut, puts the fire out. He goes “Here you go. Go find that page.” I opened it up, and the fire burned away, and the page behind it actually makes a different image.

DTD: Oh, that’s wild.

Daryl: And he was just like, “Yeah, whenever I would sit at signings, I always thought to myself, man I wish I could just light that thing on fire.” And he was like, “Wait, maybe I’ll just do that!”

DTD: “I’ll figure out how to do it.”

Daryl: So now if you get that book signed, he will light it on fire right in front of you.

I have since had a dinner with Matt Kindt, and he is an amazing person. Looking forward to having him light things on fire for me.

DTD: That is awesome. There’s a series of puzzle books that are really kind of intense puzzle books, that I absolutely love – Journal 29.

Daryl: I’m not familiar with them.

DTD: They kickstarted them, but they are amazing. They are just weird things, and you’ll do really strange things with these books to solve puzzle after puzzle.

Daryl: Interesting. OK. Journal 29.

DTD: Journal 29. And there was a sequel that was not called Journal 30.

It is called Journal 29 Revelation. There actually is a new third book coming, called Journal 29 Oblivion.

Daryl: It set you up.

DTD: I know, I know.

Daryl: They set that expectation.

DTD: Expectation level, man.

Daryl: So, what’s the verdict? How’s the lobster roll?

DTD: It’s very good. I don’t love it when a lobster roll is more mayonnaise than lobster, and this is lobster.

Daryl: Yes. OK – good, good. I agree. Yeah, it looks very sparing.

DTD: It’s not like super buttery either.

Daryl: Yeah, you can really taste the lobster.

DTD: ‘Cause it gets to be too much when it’s, you know, you’re just eating butter. [laughs] I am going to make such a mess.

Daryl: Yup. A glorious mess.

It’s on my business cards – A Glorious Mess.

DTD: This is amazing. I am so happy.

Daryl: Yeah, amazing food man. Thank you.

DTD: Yeah. Of course. Honestly, it’s this or more Starbucks.

Daryl: [laughs] They might be asking where you were.

Daryl and I were joking earlier that the only food conveniently attached to the convention hotel is a Starbucks. And the poor baristas working there are definitely getting to know each of us by name.

DTD: Probably. I’m gonna miss my buddy Nicolette, who always gives me my food.

Daryl: Any conventions you’re looking forward to this year?

DTD: This one was it. But it’s been a crazy year. I have bounced so many conventions, because before this I did GAMA, [Dice Tower] West. I did a Dice Tower thing – Cruise.

Daryl: How was that?

DTD: I like the Dice Tower Cruise a lot, but I don’t really have another one [to compare to]. I’ve never done a BGG Cruise, so I can’t compare across there. But I think Dice Tower does… I mean, I’m a little biased. It’s my buddies.

Daryl: That’s a good bias.

The Dice Tower Cruise really is a fantastic time. 600 or so gamers, on a lovely ship, with food available all day. Tremendous gaming library, and occasional trips into caribbean island ports. What’s not to love?

DTD: But it really does feel like a gaming convention. There’s a lovely library, a lot of games, and really friendly people to play games.

Daryl: Yup. You’ve been on a roll of a bunch of cons in a row.

DTD: And after this is Kubla and RAGE.

Daryl: OK. I don’t know RAGE, I’m not familiar with RAGE.

DTD: Oh, it’s Reno. And Jonny [JonnyPac Cantin] is actually one of the organizers. He does the prototype room there. I think I’m a special guest at RAGE Con. Ooooooo.

Reno Area Gaming Expo. Held in Sparks, Nevada in June. I had an amazing time as a special guest, and really look forward to going again.

Daryl: Mr. Big time!

DTD: No.

Daryl: Talking about KublaCon, I was a special guest at KublaCon.

KublaCon is the largest gaming convention in California, held each May in San Francisco.

DTD: Awesome, man!

Daryl: But kind of in a weird scenario. Because I was a special guest, ’cause my company Maple was a sponsor, but I actually left the company three weeks before KublaCon. So I wasn’t going to cancel them, but it was like…

DTD: Maple had a bit of a roller coaster there…

Daryl: Yeah, yeah. It was a bit of a roller coaster for sure.

DTD: I know some of the stories.

It turns out, I knew very little of the stories. More on this later.

Daryl: Yeah, I bet. I learned a lot.

DTD: I didn’t know you were associated with Maple, honestly.

Daryl: Yeah, I founded it!

I felt so bad. I knew there was drama surrounding the company, but I had never heard about Daryl’s involvement.

DTD: Wow! I had no idea. I apologize about that. I thought it was an offshoot of Kolossal.

Daryl: We were a parallel company, so originally it was – Matagot had Kolossal, Maple, Holy Grail. All these were offshoots, including Surfin’ Meeple.

DTD: So you left before the Kickstarter debacle and all that?

More on the Kickstarter debacle later, also.

Daryl: I was released about a day before that.

DTD: Wording, wording…

Daryl: That was during the Gathering [of Friends].

The Gathering of Friends is a private invite-only convention held by designer Alan Moon for his friends. And I happen to be having this very dinner with Daryl during my first attendance at The Gathering of Friends 2022.

DTD: Wow. I didn’t know it was during the Gathering, I thought it was during a different convention. Wow. Because there was a public scene.

Daryl: Yeah, that was at me.

DTD: Oh God, I’m sorry.

Other foot. In mouth.

Daryl: No, no. A little legendary, but… I lived to tell the tale.

DTD: I’ve definitely heard all that. I am sorry about all that.

Daryl: What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?

I know there has been quite a bit of walking on eggshells, and dancing around the elephant in the room, but I received permission from Daryl to tell the story. Daryl, together with the amazingly talented Peter Wocken, founded Maple Games as a child company to Matagot in March 2018. At the time, the publisher had created several smaller offshoot companies, with the goal of having them work together, share personnel, and distribute specialized tasks. Kolossal Games had proven the model and was moderately successful. Surfin’ Meeple, Holy Grail Games, and Daryl’s new company Maple followed.

One of the leaders of Matagot at the time was known to be volatile, and many other peoples’ stories concur. During the Gathering of Friends in April 2018, this person publicly, loudly, and harshly fired Daryl from Maple, to many peoples’ surprise. None the least, Daryl. The consequence of this was that the Canadian accounts at Maple, previously run by Daryl, reverted to the American accounts at Matagot.

Now, Kickstarter has a rule about how many concurrent campaigns a company can run on the crowdfunding platform. It was not enforced heavily, but it was there. When the bank accounts from Maple transferred, Kickstarter immediately saw two companies, each running campaigns from the same source. Upon investigation, Kickstarter found that Kolossal and Holy Grail also shared the same source. And on April 18, 2019, Kickstarter shut down multiple campaigns from Kolossal and Maple.

Daryl was understandably shaken by the incident; however, he remains ever the kind, amiable gentlemen, and simply says that “It was a teachable moment.” Daryl did want to point out how wonderful it was to have the support of friends and the community, especially his long time illustrator partner, Peter Wocken.

DTD: Man, you’ve been everywhere. You’ve been at the center of all of it. Man… So what things are you doing after The Gathering yourself? Are you doing more conventions, or are you laying low for a while?

Daryl: Yeah, I’m doing a few. In May I’m going to Geekway [to the West] in Saint Louis.

DTD: Everybody I talked to is going to Geekway.

Geekway has quite a strong reputation. It’s on my bucket list of conventions.

Waitress: Can I take this away, guys?

Daryl: I didn’t even think about this. I’m going to take this. Take some of this.

Waitress: May I?

DTD: [laughs]

Daryl: Is it potato salad?

Waitress: It is. I used to hate potato salad. And this potato salad, this one changed me. Can I get these out of the way for you? Keep the fork so you can have a little bite of that potato salad.

DTD: I think I might have to…

Waitress: Yeah, you might have to.

I would do anything for this waitress at this point. Even eat potato salad.

DTD: He would feel awkward if I didn’t.

Daryl: He’s doing it for me.

Waitress: Of course. Its only right. And its German style potato salad. All fancy-fancy there! You guys still doing OK?

Daryl: Yes.

DTD: Oh yeah. Ich habe das Kartoffelsalad gern.

Oh yeah. Bilingual interview, baby. This is not my first rodeo.

Daryl: You should check out Geekway some time, it’s fun.

DTD: I have so many people telling me to go. I have to.

Daryl: Some of my favorite barbecue. Oh yeah, some amazing barbecue places. I often go with Jon Gilmour, and we jokingly called the rest the “Jontourage.”

DTD: I did notice that he was kind of sitting with all the same people most of the time.

Daryl: Yeah, that’s the Jontourage.

DTD: I played a couple games with them they’re so nice.

I believe the Jontourage taught me Texas Showdown, which has become my newest trick taking obsession. The game is scheduled to be reprinted by Rio Grande, and will be called Seas of Strife.

Daryl: Nice. Yeah, he’s awesome. Crazy talented, super nice, really cares about designers. Cares about supporting different voices. I would always go down, and our tradition was picking up barbecue like every day.

DTD: This is sounding more and more attractive. This sounds wonderful.

Daryl: Yeah, we have a few places. My favorite actually is – we never published it – we did pitch it once or twice, but I made a game with one guy from the Jontourage, his name is Travis.

DTD: I played games with him.

Daryl: Oh really? Oh Cool. Travis Magrum? He usually has a tie on.

DTD: Maybe not.

Daryl: Maybe not, then. But we made a game that we call Gerry’s Barbecue. And we say Gerry because it’s all about gerrymandering. But it’s gerrymandering what you think is America’s best barbecue, so you’re constantly moving the lines. And it was strictly an exercise of us arguing about our favorite barbecue places we went in Saint Louis. And what was our favorite things – like favorite sauce, favorite side, favorite cut of meat.

DTD: That’s interesting. There’s really not gerrymandering board games, is there?

Gerrymandering is the art of splitting districts into strange shapes in order to manipulate the statistics about that area. In a region pretty evenly split between two polical parties, you can draw a few boundaries and create voting districts very heavily biased towards one side or the other. The process was named after Elbridge Gerry, vice president under James Madison.

Daryl: Not a lot. But if there are, they’re highly political. Like for obvious reasons. So, we were like, “Well maybe it’s easier to palate if you’re fighting over issues that aren’t so serious.”

DTD: Barbecue is serious.

Daryl: It’s serious. I say so serious. People care. My favorite on the game development side, was we had an obvious 5 sauces, and then we went to a really obvious “Three types of meat,” that we did. And we needed the sides to go into 2 categories. And we were really struggling for a long time: How do we make sides one side or the other? Finally, we realized it’s potato and non-potato! And then everything can fit perfectly balanced if you divide them. [laughs]

Waiter: Pardon me – sorry for the interruptions. The chef just wanted to know if you guys want dessert or anything like that, or if you’re OK.

Daryl: I mean, what’s our options?

Who are we fooling here? Everyone knows we are getting desert. The chef should have just brought something out.

Waitress: OK. So, we have a chocolate mousse. We make that with a dark lager. So that’s going to be dark chocolate mousse. And then honestly, the feature is really good if you guys like peanut butter. It’s kind of to-die for. Sorry – Not trying to oversell it, but I had it, and I really like it. It’s a peanut butter mousse, a miso mousse. And it’s coming topped with a little bit of chocolate ganache, a little sprinkle of some sesame granola, and then its going to be finished off with some vanilla crème anglaise.

DTD: That does not sound horrible.

Waitress: I know, right? If you need to deliberate, take your time and I will be back in two minutes.

Daryl: OK, give us some… Give us 2 minutes.

Waitress: [laughs] sounds good.

Daryl: What do you feel?

DTD: That peanut butter mousse does not sound bad at all.

Daryl: I mean, I would help you with that.

DTD: Because I am starting to top off.

Daryl: I was going to say, I’m pretty full, but that sounds delightful. So I’d split it.

DTD: I’m for it. That sounds like a deal.

The politeness was astounding. But we probably could have polished off two of them.

Waitress: That sounds decisive!

DTD: I think we’re gonna split the peanut butter thing.

Daryl: I mean, you sold it well.

Waitress: Can I take that away, or are you still working away on that guy?

The potato salad was quite good. I only stopped picking at it when discussion of a peanut butter mousse came up. I do have my priorities.

Daryl: No, I think we just wanted a taste.

DTD: You’re not allowed to point out more food to us.

Waitress: OK, I’ll keep my mouth shut.

Not true.

Daryl: We have to save space for this dessert. Amazing. Amazing.

DTD: (both laugh) That’s so cool. I’m having such a good time.

Daryl: Yeah, so Geekway in Saint Louis. Definitely check that out some time. Maybe not this year, but…

DTD: Rachael Blaske is telling me all the time to go to Geekway. And it’s all I hear about here. Is everybody is going to Geekway.

Rachael is one of the greatest convention friends I have. Plus she will style my hair a different way every morning of a convention. If you see me with an expertly attended coiffure, you can be assured Rachael is not far away.

Daryl: Yeah, I love Geekway. I’ve always enjoyed that. It’s a nice size. You can go for meals and get back, lots of gaming. Not much of an exhibit hall.

DTD: Well, it seems like there’s a lot of conventions that are focused on the gaming, a lot that are focused on those selling and exhibit hall, and then some that are focused on the business. I really do prefer those gaming ones.

Daryl: Yeah. I mean for personal, yes. For business for me…

DTD: Yeah, I’m not in the business [laughs] – I’m as far removed as you could get, probably.

Come back next time for the final installment of Dinner with Daryl. The dessert is devoured by wild beasts, we barely make it back into the US, and we talk toys and mass market.