Well, it’s been a long time. A very long time. And I apologize. I am not really sure what happened – one day I am keeping up with interviews, working on Dish every week or so. And the next, its been well over a year. I blame it on age, dementia, pandemic, schedule, aliens, but mostly ice cream. I have lost so much time to ice cream…

Mostly I need to apologize to my next interviewee, Henry Audubon, the designer of Parks, Trails, and Cosmoctopus, whom I took out to dinner back in June 2022. Yup, not a typo – I am writing this in 2024, and the interview was in June 2022, during RageCon that year. And Henry has been an amazing friend for the intervening years, only occasionally gently asking “Hey, what ever happened to that interview?” It is a testament to his amazingly good nature and wonderfully optimistic attitude that he even still speaks to me. Let’s see if this makes it better or worse…

DTD: ’cause you know it’s kind of a… guerrilla warfare interview here.

Audubon: Great.

DTD: (laughs) How was your day today? Anything exciting?

Audubon: Today, the most exciting thing was Jonny’s game jam, prototyping.

Jonny Pac is an amazing game designer and mutual friend of Henry and I. A truly fascinating character. Someone should interview him.

DTD: Oh! I totally missed it.

Audubon: It was pretty interesting. I brought the deluxe tokens for Kingswood. As a special component that we asked all the participants to use.

DTD: Right.

Audubon: And I, in addition, asked them to use both sides of the tokens. To kind of flip them to track things. And anyway, so it was interesting to see the different riffs on how the tokens could be used. But I mean, all the teams did really well. It was a difficult decision in the end, and we were all pretty impressed with what people did in an hour.

DTD: That’s pretty cool.

Audubon: Yeah, it’s a lot of fun. And Danny Devine and his son ended up with the winning game. And Dustin, the son, gave a really clear and confident pitch to us. It was really impressive, so we awarded the grand prize for that for that one.

Danny Devine is the designer behind the amazing Button Shy titles Sprawlopolis and Circle the Wagons.

DTD: That’s fantastic. This is the right way, isn’t it? Back to that skywalk that we did the other day?

Henry and I were walking out of the Nugget Casino in Sparks, Nevada, escaping RageCon for restaurants unknown. I should mention that RageCon is not a comment on the disposition of the attendees; it is an acronym for the Reno Area Gaming Expo. Any actual rage is purely coincidental.

Audubon: I think so. I think to the right here?

DTD: I think this is, yeah, to the left. ’cause those are the seminar rooms.

Audubon: Yeah. It’s a left and then a right, isn’t it?

I have always had simply mind boggling navigational skills. But not in a postive manner.

DTD:  Yeah. I taught Tram 28. Which is kind of a weird Euro. It’s a Ticket to Ride “plus”.

Audubon: I see.

DTD: And I think people really liked it – I had a little bit of a younger crowd. But they got into it!

Audubon: Isn’t Ticket to Ride just train euro minus?

DTD: It is. (laughs) And Ticket to Ride isn’t my favorite. I like it OK, but I like this one better. Mostly ’cause it has a bell.

Please no one tell Alan Moon. I am still hoping to get him to the interview table.

Audubon: Then guys, like mischief makers like Jonny, can lean over and ring it.

DTD: It’s true.

Audubon: Leave a vulnerable bell out there.

DTD: Well, it’s funny because the first time I played the game, was because Tom [Vasel] was reviewing it. And so, Tom and I were playing it. And he got mad at me if I would ring the bell too much. He wanted to only ring the bell when the rules said you could ring the bell.

In Tram 28, if you bump your street car into an opponent’s, you get to ring the bell then move the other car out of the way. I may have rung the bell every time anyone blinked. And for those completionists out there, the aforementioned play of Tram 28 occurred on September 9, 2021 At the Dice Tower Retreat. Tom won.

Audubon: Yeah.

DTD: So, I don’t know where we’re going to go. I think we’re just going to find some close Indian place.

Henry and I had discussed our shared love of Indian cuisine several times. Henry is also a vegan, and Indian food is usually an easy way to eat delicious vegan food.

Audubon: Cool. Going up?

DTD: No. Just heading down. Actually, are we on this floor of the parking garage?

Audubon: I’m not sure.

DTD: I’m not either. I think we might be.

At this point we maneuvered past some running children and exited the hotel proper.

DTD: Oh, that’s right, I’m not in the electric spots. We drove by them.

Audubon: I see, so you’ve moved your car since we parked the other day.

DTD: No, it’s where we parked the other day. We started here and then we came up and we were gonna take the electric spots, but they…

Audubon: But we are in the middle, right?

DTD: Yeah. I think we might be up a floor.

Audubon: Is there a “Find my Tesla” app?

DTD: There is. I could actually have it drive over to us.

I love my electric car, and I know it has many advanced features. However, I do not really know how to use most of them, so I am glad Henry did not call my bluff.

Audubon: Oh my gosh.

DTD: But I think we’re up a floor, so I think this is going to take us down. So, we’ll just go up one.

Audubon: We’ll just head over here.

DTD: It’s probably easier than walking all the way around. So, what do you think of RAGE Con so far?

Audubon: I enjoyed my time quite a bit. My only gripe is just that I’m a professional pedestrian (carless) and Reno is just not the most accommodating place.

I truly admire Henry’s ethics. His choice to not drive and to be vegan are an extension of his world view, and he truly does practice what he preaches.

DTD: No, it’s not built for that.

Audubon: It’s not built for that. So whether I’m here or up at Jonny’s place, in either spot I’m stuck. Versus like Philadelphia for example.

Jonny Pac very nearly lives in Reno, Nevada. Henry calls Philadelphia home.

DTD: Big cities. My son’s the same way. My son never got his license. He’s 25. But he… It’s really weird, he’s been researching into urban planning and street design and all that stuff, so he’s really interested. I think that’s [my car] up there.

Audubon: I’m very interested in walkable communities. Mixed neighborhoods.

DTD: Yeah, so is he. So, you don’t drive by choice?

Audubon: That’s right. I don’t drive by choice. I’ve tried to pick places to live that make sense for a person who doesn’t drive. Philly is very easy.

DTD: I apologize, I should have remembered where I put the car. ’cause this is not it. I thought it was right over here.

I warned you about my navigation skill. The car has great navigation ability, but as is evident, I have lost the car.

Audubon: I think there’s just a lot of urine here, not a Tesla.

DTD: [laughs] They’re close, they’re close. I can do this, let’s see. [Horn honks in the distance] That was me! Where was that?

Audubon: It kind of echoed quite a bit.

Don’t laugh. We have all been there, standing in a large parking lot trying to track down a distant ghostly honk.

DTD: [honk] See, I was right. I knew it all along.

Audubon: You were right. Never lost confidence.

DTD: Never. We went right towards it. So, Philly is really nice for foot traffic?

We have found the mystery machine and embarked on our epic journey.

Audubon: I would say so, ’cause it’s a small enough city that you can walk across it, really. As long as you’re not interested in going into deep North Philly or out into West Philly too far. It’s only really a couple miles across.

DTD: And my memories of Philly are like 35 years old at this point. So, I’m sure it’s exactly the same.

I grew up in New Jersey, so I was taught from a very young age to revile and loathe Philadelphia.

Audubon: Well, it’s interesting. There’s a bit of a clash, I think between the old school Philly, the 1980s cheese-steak-Philly, and then the more modern, youthful Philly.

DTD: [laughs] Have you been in Philly a while? I thought you said that you moved there not that long ago.

Audubon: Not that long ago. Three years ago.

I am old. Henry is young. Therefore the discrepency about “not that long ago”.

DTD: Oh cool. All right? We’ve got Haveli, which is only three miles away. That sounds nice.

Audubon: Great.

DTD: And it’s open.

Audubon: Let’s do it.

DTD: I’m all for it. I’m excited, I haven’t had Indian in a while.

Audubon: Gosh, they give you such a big display [the car].

The front dash of the Tesla is dominated by a single large iPad like monitor right in the middle.

DTD: That’s all there is. What panics me a lot of times is, I’ll be driving and I’ll look here [the dash on the drivers side]. There’s nothing. And the instant thought is, “The lights went out, the car isn’t working.”

Audubon: Right, right?

DTD: Yeah, A lot of people hate it, having everything right here. I mean, even things like, if I want to run the wipers, they’re here [on the monitor]. Alright, let’s see. Funny enough, on Sunday the parking lot is emptying out. Did you get a chance to actually play anything?

Audubon: Umm, not… I mean, I certainly had chances to play more things, but I think between my scheduled events and stuff, I was just kind of resting and decompressing, and thinking my own thoughts.

DTD: That makes sense. You were a special guest.

Technically, Henry, Jonny, and I were all special guests. But I don’t want to harp on that.

Audubon: I know. I mean, to be honest with you I don’t play tons of games. That’s not like my… That’s not my way into all this. The gaming portion of my mind is, for board games, is almost preoccupied with what I’m working on. And then when it’s time for me to just cut loose and just do some recreational gaming, I’m usually reaching for a video game or something like Say the Spire or something like that.

DTD: Oh, that stupid thing has hooked me in again! I just, I tell myself it’s time to do work, and then I turn on this Slay the Spire, and then it’s all over.

Audubon: I’ve had the same experience recently, ’cause I came back to it. And my girlfriend and I have been playing together and trying to get to Ascension 20.

DTD:  Well, I don’t want to talk about that, ’cause I’m like at Ascension 2 or something. I am really not good at it.

NB: I am still at Ascension 2, more than a year later. But I do not want to harp on that.

Audubon: That’s alright. Still fun.

DTD: Now, I think I have to be in the middle somehow. Please tell me if you see how to get out of this maze.

Audubon: I think you need to just go down the middle and keep right to exit.

DTD:  That’s probably it, because I think I was just here. Do you know anything about the Slay the Spire board game that’s coming?

Audubon: Not too much.

Slay the Spire by designers Gary Dworetsky, Anthony Giovannetti, and Casey Yano was crowdfunded by Contention Games in November 2022 for nearly $4M. As of February 2024, it has not delivered yet.

DTD: I know the company, and I know that they have the rights. And I know that the main designer on the video game is involved, at least on paper. But then, I don’t know anything else.

Audubon: That’s one of those… I kind of wonder why for something like that, like Slay the Spire is obviously taking so much inspiration from board games. And then pushing it into a space that board games couldn’t quite do, with all the triggered relics and all these things that would be such a pain to track yourself, with the life of the monsters and all this.

DTD: Sure.

Audubon: It’s like, once you’ve departed and opened up that space for yourself, that’s beyond board games, it’s slightly odd to retract.

DTD: You could almost roll-and-write it or something like that.

Audubon: Yeah, if it was like a true re-imagining of just a different game set in the Slay the Spire universe, so to speak, it would almost be a more interesting…

DTD: Well, apparently it’s a card game and it’s meant to be somewhat true to the video game. And it’s a very small company that’s doing it, that I don’t know anything about – it’s Contention Games. They have one game published called [Imperium the] Contention.

Audubon: Isn’t that a mistake, they say, to name your publishing company after your first game?

It does tend to pigeon hole the company a bit.

DTD: Well, yeah. It works so seldom.

Audubon: I think for me, another example of these video games that were inspired by board games that then got ported to board back to board games, is like the Darkest Dungeon game.

Darkest Dungeon by Mythic Games crowdfunded in November 2020 for $5.6M.

DTD: Back and forth and back and forth. Yeah.

Audubon: Yeah, it’s like again, I wish it wasn’t trying to be exactly a faithful port of the video game. I kind of just wish it was…

DTD: It’s own thing.

Audubon: Something more fresh. Right. If it’s gonna be so similar, like I’d rather just have all the stuff be automated and snappy and fast, and just… If we’re players of these games already, like we’ve gotten used to a certain pace of play, that’s only possible digitally, so…

People that have played the Slay the Spire board game describe it as a pretty faithful translation of the video game into the board game space. These same people seem to be split on whether that is a good thing or a bad thing.

DTD: Yeah, it’s just so tempting when you have a video game that is based on deck-building. It’s so tempting to just make it a deck-building game. But yeah, the big advantage that the computer games have is they record keep so much better than we do.

Audubon: Yeah, we’re boundedly rational beings, incapable of doing all that.

DTD: [laughs] Well, capable of doing a couple things at a time. And not more than a couple. So, did you play games when you were growing up, was it something that you were always into? ‘Cause you said you don’t play many games now.

Audubon: Well, I play my favorite board games now. I just don’t play a lot of different games, is really what I would say. But yeah, I’ve been playing games since I was pretty young. I’ve got two older brothers and they were both gamers and they put a NES controller in my hand when I was pretty young, and I was playing around on Super Mario and all that.

DTD: But was it plugged in, is really what the question was…

It is entirely possible that when my children were little, they held controllers with questionable connections to the console…

Audubon: Well, I think they put it, you know they put the controller in my hands when I was about two. And I don’t think I could make it over the pit at stage 1:1 of Mario. I’d keep walking into the first Goomba, walking into the pit. And I was pretty frustrated. But eventually, I caught on. Though slowly.

Goombas were originally named for a Sicilian colloquialism meaning “mate” or “fellow”. In Japanese they are called Kuribō, or “chestnut person”. Although they are based on shitake mushrooms, and in Hungarian gomba means “mushroom”.

DTD: That was still pretty nice of them.

Audubon: They also were interested in tabletop role playing games, and they introduced me to the West End Games Star Wars system. Which as a kid, I loved Star Wars. And I loved playing the D6, kind of West End games Star Wars System.

DTD: I loved those books, ’cause they were just so detailed about everything that we didn’t have a lot of detail on.

Audubon: Oh my gosh.

Star Wars: the Roleplaying Game originally came out in 1987, and was the first RPG based on the franchise.

DTD: So, I would just read the role playing books, as an extension of the universe. That was the only way I could get just more Star Wars. I don’t think I played the game very much. I think I just read this stuff all the time.

Audubon: I feel the same way. ’cause I used to bring those books to school. Like the sourcebook and different things, and just look at the stats for varying… What’re Boba Fett stats, or how much does a lightsaber cost in the black market, or whatever?

DTD: Didn’t they have the really detailed blueprint plans of the ships and things too?

Audubon: Oh, definitely.

DTD: I found that so fascinating.

Audubon: And they talked about manufacturing of the ships, and different brands.

DTD: Where they were made. And where’s the shipyard…

Audubon: Yeah, it was fascinating.

DTD: Oh yeah.

Audubon: I like the legalities of like, different restricted items in the equipment list. Just things like that. I agree that it was like an extension of the Star Wars universe, and to me when I was watching Star Wars as a kid, I had a very broad view of what was possible within Star Wars. You know just like, this is this totally expansive world, where you could go to a forest planet or forest moon where there’s teddy bears. And you can… All these things are possible. And the role playing games and those books really sold that. Just how big the universe was.

DTD: Well Star Wars, I was perfect age when Star Wars came out. It came out when I was like 9 or 10. So I just… Man, I lived for Star Wars! The funny story, I might have told you this – I apologize. But my dad worked with a whole bunch of geeks, and they all wanted to go see Star Wars. And they were too embarrassed, ’cause in ‘77 it was marketed as a children’s movie. So my dad rented me as the “token child” to take to Star Wars.

True story. I saw the original movie about 40 times.

Audubon: Wow. I used to watch Star Wars going to bed, different movies. I had the kind of Star Wars trilogy box set on VHS, that had the Leonard Maltin interviews at the start there, with George Lucas. And anyways, I knew just the minute and second mark to fast forward past Leonard Malta, and get going with the movie. And I played those tapes out just so much.

DTD: Kids get so obsessive over predictable things. Like those videos. You know exactly where everything is.

Audubon: That was an obsession for a bit.

DTD: I remember, we had a beta[max] recorder. With beta[max], the problem with it, was the tapes were an hour. So when we would tape things, if the show was longer than an hour, there was a gap of time where you switched tapes. And I can remember exactly what part of certain movies I never saw, because it wasn’t on either of my beta tapes.

So, children, you see back in a magical time known as the 1970’s there was a battle between the evil VHS and the benevolent Betamax.

Audubon: Oh wow.

DTD: So, there was one little chunk in [Monty Python and the] Holy Grail, and one little chunk in the TV cartoon of The Hobbit that I missed every time.

Audubon: It’s funny you mentioned the Holy Grail, ’cause in our household copy of Raiders of the Lost Ark, one of my older brothers accidentally recorded over a portion of it with some of the Smurfs on TV.

DTD: [laughs] Oh, that’s awesome.

Audubon: And so, there is like a three minute section of Raiders lost Ark that’s completely novel to me, ’cause I just had a Smurf interlude during my version of it.

DTD: [laughing still] I love it. Man.

Audubon: So, I was lucky to have these older brothers who were switching me on to all this cool stuff and a lot of like the fun films from the 80’s, and all. I was born in ‘87.

I, too, dear readers, was born in 1987. Or thereabouts. Give or take a few decades.

DTD: That’s like a better story than most “I have brother stories”. I was only kid, so I was… I would seek out these games and I would set them up and read them more than I would play them, but I was just fascinated with them. And actually there was a game in the 80’s called Freedom in the Galaxy, which was a blatant rip-off of Star Wars. There’s just no two ways about it. And it was a huge, complex, Avalon Hill, millions of chits, game. And I was so fascinated and enamored with this thing because Star Wars was amazing. I think I never quite broke out of that – seeking out the complex weird board games that were out there.

Audubon: Right. So, in terms of my gaming journey, kind of, I was doing a lot of tabletop stuff as a kid. Eventually, my older brothers moved out of the house, and I was starting to Gamemaster for my neighborhood crew of friends, and that went on for a long time.

DTD: Oof! That was our turn – my apologies.

Still driving, looking for the restaurant…

Audubon: I see. It’s alright. do we have a way around it?

DTD: We always have a way.

Audubon: So, I started gamemastering a lot. And that was certainly a formative experience for what would eventually become my game design practice. Which is imagining what was possible, and trying to think about player experiences, design new content. All that.

DTD: Very cool.

Audubon: But I also got into Magic [the Gathering] at a certain point, too. Which was a big part of my childhood. Before I was pretty nervous heading to my first time at summer camp, and my mom offered to get me one thing at the mall that I could bring to camp, that would make me feel better about it, you know?

DTD: [laughing] And it was Magic.

Audubon: And it was a 4th edition, kind of starter box, of Magic cards. And I brought it to camp, and I had no idea how to play. And the rulebook was incomprehensible to me.

DTD: I kind of remember being in that place. ‘Cause Magic is still one of the more complicated games.

Audubon: It’s tricky, and there’s a lot of timing and phases and weird interactions and corner cases. But, luckily, one of the… There were, some of the camp counselors knew about Magic. And they thought it was pretty cool that I had brought Magic cards, you know. It’s like, the only young camper who had Magic. So they taught me how to play, and we played a bunch of Magic together. And after that, I was really obsessed, and I started hanging out at the local hobby shop in Burlington. I grew up in Burlington, Vermont.

DTD: OK, I think you told me that. I absolutely love Vermont. I have so many good memories in Vermont.

I spent a few summers at Point Counter Point music camp in Middlebury, Vermont.

Audubon: Yeah, Vermont’s great. We were lucky in Burlington to have a hobby shop called Quarterstaff Games. And I spent so much time there. I was probably a nuisance.

DTD: Oh, we all were.

Audubon: [laughs] Yeah. At a certain point they – I was hanging out so much, they let me start doing errands around the store, and earning some packs for myself.

DTD: That’s really cool.

Audubon: So, that was kind of how I grew my Magic collection. And yeah, that was that was a lot of fun. Quarterstaff is just a fascinating place, ’cause it was made out of, and in the space of an old tavern. And it was decorated to be like a medieval Tavern, with torches on the walls.

DTD: Oh, that’s awesome. So, they embraced that name and that theme and everything. Oh, that’s so cool.

Audubon: And the other thing about the store was that it was owned, along with the comic shop downstairs, it was owned by a woman named Chris Farrell, who was an heiress to the Farrell Vending, Farrell Distribution company, which all the Pepsi products, and loads up Pepsi products and vending machines everywhere and all that, and gets Pepsi around. So anyways, point being, the stores were under no obligation to turn any profit. They were more just playthings for Chris, she was a big geek and loved card games and things.

DTD: I so love it.

Audubon: So, it was just a playful space of low stress, and just geeks hanging out just at this store that was barely a business.

DTD: I wish there were more places like that when I was a kid. There were so few game stores. I kind of missed… I mean, they blossomed up when I was already, you know, getting up there in age.

And so our intrepid adventurers, after many missed turns and failed exits, arrived at the restaurant.

DTD: Alright – Haveli. Let’s see what we got. [close car door] It’s a weird car, you don’t turn it off, you just walk away and it knows what to do.

Audubon: My times with you are the only times in a Tesla. I don’t spend much time in cars in general.

DTD: I figured. So, you’re telling me it’s your only time in Tesla? You probably say that about Hondas, too.

Tune in next time when we encounter, in no particular order, deck builders, classic euros, waiters with limited english skills, a rampant discussion of philosophy, and a light up disco floor. Plus food. Yummy food. Unidentifiable, but yummy food.