Welcome back to a dinner interview with Henry Audubon, designer of Parks and Cosmoctopus. We met up on the last day of Rage Con 2022, in beautiful Sparks, Nevada. Yes, I know – 2022. Not a typo. This interview is much delayed. I am a horrible person. I have even exceeded the jurisprudence statute of limitations for the phrase “better late than never”. But I had such a good time during this interview, and have remained friends with Henry to this day.

And so, our protagonists enter Haveli Indian Restaurant, ready to have our taste buds titillated beyond imagining.

Host: Hello.

DTD: Hi.

Host: How many, sir?

DTD: Two. Oh wow, we got the whole place. We got a dance floor!

The restaurant’s most prominant feature was, in fact, a giant disco era light up dance floor decorated with flowers and umbrellas. I knew this was the right place.

Audubon: Oh my gosh. That’s true.

DTD: Oh, thanks very much.

Audubon: Thank you.

DTD: This, I gotta take pictures of this. This is awesome. I do take pictures and kind of fill out the…

I took so many pictures of the dance floor.

Audubon: Is this good?

DTD: I’m good with whatever. Wow, I can even get a picture of you with the dance floor. [laughs]

Audubon: [laugh]

DTD: That is awesome. Thank you so much.

Host: When you are ready to order, please call over.

DTD: Oh wow. “Urged”. “Stable” Yeah, if you want the bill, if you want to call them over, the waiter. I think more places should have that.

There was also an electronic device on the table with buttons labeled call, waiter, bill, staple, urged, and cancel. I really, really wanted to press the “urged” button. Although I also liked the idea of calling for emergency water mid-meal.

Audubon: It is nice.

DTD: What are you feeling?

Audubon: Should we just go for a few different bowls?

DTD: I think so. I like everything.

Audubon: Great. Me too. So as long as it’s vegan, I’m happy to go forward.

DTD: I am with you, 100%.

I have always said, if I decided to eat vegetarian, I would be very happy eating tons of Indian food.

Audubon: So, it has this vegan symbol [in the menu], so anything with that can be made vegan.

DTD: That is awesome.

Audubon: That’s the whole right column here, it looks like, so…

DTD: Okra!

I love okra.

Audubon: Yeah, yeah.

DTD: The mixed veggies sounds good.

I love veggies.

Audubon: Aloo gobi.

DTD: I love it.

I love aloo gobi.

Audubon: Let’s do some aloo gobi.

DTD: Absolutely. Do you like chana masala, too?

Audubon: I do like chana masala.

I love chana masala. But you probably guessed that already.

DTD: Do you think they can do samosa? Do you go for samosa?

Audubon: I would go for it if they can do it vegan, absolutely.

DTD: I’m all for that. I wonder if they marked… No, they have it on other pages too, I think. Or at least they have the reminder. Oh, biryani – Do you want to do a vegetable biryani? It’s got the vegan symbol.

Audubon: Uhm, sure. That’s like a…?

DTD: A rice mix, usually rice and cashews and raisins.

I love… Oh, forget it. Just assume I love every dish we talk about. You won’t be far off.

Audubon: Great. Yeah, I’ll try it.

DTD: Those are awesome. The Indian Place I always went to, that was by me when I was working, was owned by a family. And you could tell that the mom would go out to the farmers market, you know, a couple times a week. And whatever vegetable was on sale, she would buy all of it. And you’d have a dish in the buffet. Like, I’d walk in one day, it’s like – this one is all parsnips. And you always kind of hoped that she was there on Mushroom Day. ’cause the Mushroom Masala was so good. But it was the strangest pick. You know, just make a masala out of whatever happened to be there. All carrot masala – it’s like “Yes!” [laughs]

Shout out to Punjabi Dhaba in Dixon, CA.

Audubon: I do a lot of my own cooking and don’t eat out a whole lot, but when I moved up to Philly, I found one of my favorite Indian restaurants. Which was a little vegetarian buffet spot that’s very unassuming and run by this really, really sweet Sikh family.

DTD: Oh lovely.

Audubon: And they were just so kind and warm and you come in and they would greet you. And it was just a great vibe in there. And then sadly, it was lost to the pandemic in lock down. The business shut down, and it’s really, really sad. ’cause they had just opened when I arrived in town. And I just felt like “I wanna support this new business. And I like this here.”

DTD: Oh man. Oh yeah. We have a Sikh festival by me in Northern California. And it’s incredible. The whole town kind of shuts down, everybody goes out in the streets, and everybody in the street just hands you food. So, you just walk the street, and it’s just lined with people, with… They have pickup trucks with plastic liners filled with ice and water and soda. They have everybody’s… grandmother is cooking something, and people just shove food into your hands. It’s amazing. I need to go to that again. I think it’s every November. Cool – So maybe samosa, and then you like the aloo gobi.

The Yuba City Sikh Festival occurs on the first Sunday in November every year, and is touted as the largest Sikh festival outside of India.

Audubon: Yeah.

DTD: And then a biryani. Do you want one more on that? That’s starting to get to be…

Audubon: I feel like we’ve got to be good at this point.

DTD: I mean, I can eat a lot of food.

Audubon: [laughs] Well, I trust you.

Henry should not have trusted me.

DTD: I think we’re… that sounds very, very nice.

Audubon: Yeah, I agree.

DTD: Wow, so how long have you been vegan?

Audubon: I’ve been vegan for about 10 years.

DTD: Wow. Very cool.

Audubon: Yeah, and I was various forms of vegetarian or pescatarian or this or that, since I was about 5.

DTD: Really! Your decision or your parents’?

Audubon: Well, it was one of those things where my older brother became vegetarian, and then my mom started cooking vegetarian food.

DTD: So that’s what was around.

Audubon: That was what was around. And then, as soon as I kind of realized what was going on, I was keen to follow. ’cause I think I was curious why he was vegetarian, as a kid. And I didn’t understand some of that, what was going on behind the scenes with food. It was a bit of a mix, like a conscious choice, but also the family was shifting in that direction

DTD: I think that actually makes it a lot easier – that comfort level. I have quite a few relatives that were… The kids were raised vegan, and some like decided not to do it when they’re older, and some stuck with it when they got older. And I’ve always found that interesting. So many people are so focused on what they ate when they were younger – we are kind of creatures of habit, to a certain extent.

Audubon: Right.

DTD: Whereas I think I seek out every weird thing in the universe, so I haven’t been a creature of habit in a while. Unless constant change is a habit. Awesome, oh, we’re supposed to call him! Are we ready to call him?

Audubon: Let’s do it!

We called the waiter with the fancy electronic panel. Don’t worry, it wasn’t urgent.

DTD: Okay, cool. Hey! Can we get aloo gobi, vegan. And the vegetable biryani, vegan.

Audubon: And the chana masala, vegan as well.

DTD: Yes! That sounds great.

Audubon: And can the samosas be vegan or no?

The waiter had a prolonged discussion with other members of the staff. It was quite the debate, back and forth. We were ready for a long explaination of why they could or couldn’t do samosas. They certainly were formulating quite the convincing and educated response.

Waiter: Yes.

DTD: Okay, that as well. Thank you!

Waiter: Aloo gobi. Chicken biryani. Chana masala. Samosa.

Audubon: Vegetable biryani, right?

DTD: Vegetable biryani. Vegan.

Audubon: Vegan, yeah, everything vegan. The whole meal.

DTD: Do you want anything to drink besides water?

Audubon: I think I’m good with water for now.

Waiter: Garlic naan, plain naan, butter naan?

DTD: Probably plain.

Audubon: Yeah, some plain naan.

DTD: No butter.

I thought the “all vegan” comment might have stressed this point.

Waiter: Only one or two?

Both: Two!

DTD: Thanks very much. [laughs] This this decoration is over the top. This is so funny.

Audubon: Yeah, it’s a cool aesthetic.

The whole restaurant was done in vibrant colors, encircling the over the top disco floor. Really very hard to describe. Also, we were the only ones there.

DTD: So, how did you start designing games? I’ve talked to a lot of designers, who talk about, “the games I played when I was young… I change a rule here and change a rule there, and then started playing with that.”

Audubon: Well, I think looking back to the earliest roots of it, the tabletop gamemastering, for one. Of like creating new stuff, customizing games, reworking things, making homebrew content, having empathy for players. Which I think is a really important skill for game designers in the board game space, too.

DTD: Yeah, and that’s a huge thing that at least I learned in gamemastering. I remember in D&D, there were gamemasters who felt it was a competition between the gamemaster and the players. And there were ones who cheated behind the screen, so that you had a better time. So, I love the term “empathy for the player.” That’s such a perfect way to put it.

Audubon: I try to keep the players’ well-being in mind. And when it came to role playing…

The first of the dishes arrived. The smell was just intoxicating. We may have ordered too much food. In theory.

Audubon: Thank you very much.

DTD: Paratha!

Audubon: I was always trying to come up with a story that would…

DTD: [interrupting] Do we eat off these?

So many Indian restaurants have a display plate when you sit down, then a more utilitarian plate to actually eat off of. I did not want to commit a faux pas.

Audubon: [laughs] I think so.

DTD: Sorry, I interrupted you.

Audubon: It’s okay. I always just try to come up with a story that my friends would like. It was all just about impressing my friends, ultimately. [laughs] Coming up with something that they would think is amusing.

DTD: [laughs] Yeah, of course.

Audubon: Then the other side of that was the Magic. I mean, Magic is so fascinating, because of the creative act of deckbuilding, and the way that you can engage with the game away from the game. I think allowed for Magic cards to…

DTD: Oh, like the prep time separated from the game time, you mean?

Audubon: Yeah, it’s like away from playing, you’ve got this whole kind of metagame of Magic, of building your deck, you know. And figuring out what… When it does come time to play, what style will I be using? And that customization, and all the creative choices you get to make in assembling a deck of 60 or more cards, I think is some is also some precursor to just, kind of, choices and creativity you need to get into game design. So I think that was helpful for me.

DTD: That was cool. I know a lot of hardcore Magic people kind of poopoo on deck builders, ’cause they feel like it’s the preparatory phase for playing Magic, and then they never get to play.

Audubon: Oh, interesting. Well, but some deck builders are being designed by former professional magic players. Like Justin Gary – Stoneblade [Entertainment] and Ascension. And then Darwin Kastle and Rob Doherty from… Now Wise Wizard Games, doing Star Realms and all that.

DTD: Those are the early ones, yeah?

Audubon: Yeah, those are all Magic players as well.

DTD: Well even Donald Vaccarino. He was very very into Magic before Dominion came out. Although he told me that [the design of] Dominion had nothing to do with Magic. That it, it was a very separate thought process for him.

Dominion is unquestionably the most influencial early deck building game. I was lucky enough to interview Donald X a while back. He gave lots of details about how Dominion and deck building came about.

Audubon: [laughs] yeah.

DTD: Snark noted. [laughs] No, I know, yeah.

Audubon: The other thing I would say is that I used to go visit my dad. My parents separated when I was 5, and I moved up to Vermont with my mom, and my dad stayed behind and ran his business in Ohio. And I’d go to visit him a few times a year though, and I used to just hanging out in his office and just kind of distract the employees, and just do whatever.

DTD: That’s what you do!

I certainly remember visiting my father at his work and disrupting all of the other nerds in the computer room.

Audubon: And I used to do some really, really primitive game designing while I was waiting around.

DTD: It’s not primitive… It’s, it’s exploratory. It’s learning.

Audubon: Right. Right. He had a Xerox machine.

DTD: Mhmm, best toy in the world.

Audubon: And I just remember drawing on paper, like button layouts as though it was an arcade console. And then xeroxing copies of it. And then modifying those different copies, like adding extra symbols and extra buttons to almost make different characters, and then I would sit down at an office table with one of these printouts in front of me, and I would tap on the buttons. And something was happening in my head as I was doing that.

DTD: That’s awesome.

Audubon: It was pretend. Pretend game design, yeah.

DTD: Well, when I was young… I don’t know if you’ve seen Space Ghost? But in the cartoon, the character had these wristbands with buttons on them, and I would make paper things, and I’d play with the buttons, and all that.

I know everyone kind of remembers the new Space Ghost talk show, but I’m talking about the original TV show from the 1960’s. I am not quite that old, but I watched reruns in the 1970’s.

Audubon: But I’ll just jump forward a little bit and just say…

DTD: Nah, we can stick at 5 years old, that’s fine.

Audubon: [laughs] Arrested development. I’m just a perpetual 5-year-old.

DTD: That’s kind of where I am.

Audubon: I think that’s where I am, too. Actually, it’s funny because, I really try to access those portions of my mind that still have a bit of childhood in them. And I try to get in touch with that inner 7-year-old or that inner 11-year-old that is still buried deep within me somewhere. But when I’m doing work on different projects nowadays, I try to imagine if this… If the game would excite me at earlier stages in my life.

DTD: At that age?

Audubon: I try and think, “Would I have liked this? Would this have gotten me excited?” Anyway, so, that’s just a little exercise I go through occasionally. In college was when I got into strategy board games. I left Vermont after graduating high school to go to Kent State in Ohio. My stepmom worked there, and I got free tuition.

Go Flash!

DTD: Thank you.

Even more bowls of delicious spiced grain and veg had just come to the table. Everything looked so good.

Audubon: Thank you. I couldn’t… I couldn’t turn down free tuition, you know.

DTD: I kind of did the same for Graduate School.

Audubon: So, I had to pick a game to head off to college with, and I grabbed Settlers of Catan on the recommendation of some people at Quarterstaff [games]. And that turned out to be a big hit in my dorm. So then I ended up picking up Carcassonne and Puerto Rico. And then it was Power Grid and then it was Pandemic.

Can’t go wrong with that collection of classics.

DTD: Oh, of course!

Audubon: I just got into the whole thing.

DTD: Father, son, and the Holy Ghost of board games there.

Audubon: Yeah, and so at a certain point I really wanted to have a go.

DTD: As in you wanted to make something?

Audubon: As in design. Yeah, I was thinking I could – “Maybe I can do something like this like?”

DTD: That’s cool.

Audubon: And seeing the names on the boxes, and just getting clear about the fact that like there are people making these. And you know there’s such a thing as a “game designer”, who’s spinning out these board games.

In order, Klaus Teuber, Klaus-Jürgen Wrede, Andreas Seyfarth, Friedemann Friese, Matt Leacock. I interviewed the last two!

DTD: That really was a revelation to me, that there was a person or maybe two, making these games. It never occurred to me growing up, you know I had tons of mass market board games and weird Avalon Hill stuff, but it never occurred to me someone went through and made that.

Audubon: You know who was the first person who really showed me that that was how it works, was Scott Nicholson. Board Games with Scott YouTube channel from back in the day.

Scott Nicholson is a professor of game design at Wilfrid Laurier University in Brantford, Ontario. His YouTube channel ran from 2005 to 2010.

DTD: Yeah.

Audubon: He talked about his game that he had designed that was based off of the “Tulip Bubble” at some point in history. I forget when.

Tulipmania 1637, published from JKLM Games in 2009.

DTD: Yeah, I’m just watching a YouTube series about it. I think it’s fascinating stuff. The big economic bubble in Holland.

Audubon: Right.

DTD: Over speculation, tulip speculation.

Audubon: Yeah, yeah, so Scott had made a game about that, and he released some videos talking about how it worked, how he came up with the game, and how then he pitched it. And he worked with the publisher, and how the publisher then worked with the manufacturer to make it, and then it went out into distribution. And then, just the whole chain of events, of which I had no clue as to how this whole industry was structured at all.

DTD: It’s structured? [laugh]

Audubon: [scoffs] Well, loosely. So, that was exciting to realize, that this was a thing people could do – just make games.

DTD: Yep.

Audubon: So, I really started trying harder in college to design strategy board games, but ultimately I still wanted to pursue an academic path. That was really my focus.

DTD: And you told me earlier that you had, like a major and a path through college that was in that same world, in that same realm.

Audubon: Yeah, well, I studied mathematics and philosophy. I did a double major. And I didn’t know it at the time, but that turned out to be a perfect combo for game design in my opinion.

DTD: I was going to say, I’ve only recently started to think about the psychology of board game design, through Geoff Engelstein’s stuff, but you were right there.

Geoff Engelstein is a game designer and academic who has written several books on game design and publishing over the years. He also started the podcast Ludology, which delves into game design. I may have interviewed him.

Audubon: Yeah, so, I eventually, you know I wanted to pursue an academic path, and so I started up grad school. And I made it about a year into it.

DTD: It’s unpleasant [laughs].

Brothers from the trenches of graduate school.

Audubon: The issue for me, I was going in… I wanted to get into logic, and logic is an interdisciplinary discipline that… Logic classes can be taught in computer science departments, and philosophy departments, and math departments. So you know you choose what kind of program you want to go to for it, and I started in a Mathematics graduate program, and I got about a year in, and realized just how much the other students in my cohort were really passionate about mathematics. On a level that was a little deeper than my own passion for it.

DTD: I get it.

Audubon: I like math quite a bit, and I think there are certain pockets of math that are tremendously fascinating to me, but yeah – they just had the real broad passion for mathematics that… I just felt like I wasn’t doing the right thing with my life. I just had this this realization of like, “Wow these people are more passionate about it than me, and…”

DTD: You have no idea how much I understand what you’re talking about. Someone explained to me that that Graduate School, when you got to that level, you were there, not because it was pleasant. You were there because there was not feasibly anything else you could imagine doing. So, it was a passion thing.

I really like mathematics. I really enjoy it a lot. Unfortunately, I am just not that good at it.

Waiter: Aloo Gobi?

DTD: We’ll just have them around, yeah?

Audubon: We are sharing.

DTD: Thank you.

Waiter: Veggie Biryani.

DTD: Thank you. Wow.

The waiter did some expert level Tetris to fit yet another bowl onto our small table.

Audubon: That’s great.

DTD: Thank you very much. This looks wonderful.

The naan arrived, and had a suspicious shiny liquid on its surface. Given the difficulty we had earlier describing “vegan”, Henry was understandably nervous.

Audubon: And is that is that butter on the naan?

Waiter: Plain naan.

Audubon: But is it butter?

Waiter: It’s only simple.

Audubon: Only what?

Waiter: Only simple.

Third base.

Audubon: What is that? What is simple?

DTD: What is the liquid?

At this point a discussion occurred between the waiter and the cooks in the kitchen that dwarfed the earlier debate. They talked back and forth for a good 5 minutes, debating the very nature of liquids and breads. I am not sure what conclusion they came to, but the indicated the naan was vegan. Just not convincingly.

DTD: I didn’t even see, it was kind of shiny. Maybe there’s ghee on it or something.

Audubon: That is what I’m concerned about.

DTD: Is it ghee?

Waiter: It’s only oil. No butter.

Audubon: Only oil, I see.

DTD: Thank you very much.

Audubon: Thank you. We’re supposed to have some rice, right? The biryani, but are we supposed to have any plain rice as well?

DTD: I don’t know. Sometimes when you order biryani, they just figure that’s the rice.

Audubon:  That is the rice? I see. OK, cool, that’s fine with me.

DTD: I’ve always just been a real fan of biriyanis. And then they’re always bigger than I anticipate.

The electronic device on the table must also have been a spy level listening apparatus, because the waiter practically lept out with plain rice. Or maybe he was afraid we would question him about liquids again.

Waiter: Rice.

DTD: Oh! [laughs]

Audubon: Thank you.

DTD: Thank you. So much food! Looks wonderful. And raita, thank you. [To Henry] I assume you didn’t want the raita?

Raita is a yogurt sauce that I absolutely adore. Definitely not vegan. I was secretly glad it was all mine.

Audubon: Yeah, it’s okay though.

DTD: Rice?

Audubon: Yeah, please. It’s good.

DTD: I am a freak for the raita, so I’m gonna break with you there. So, you were pursuing logic in college.

Audubon: Yeah, that’s right.

DTD: It was math and philosophy, but math was really the focus.

Audubon: I just decided to approach… Like I said, logic is very interdisciplinary, and there’s just… There’s no logic departments really, or there are very few, and so you need to choose another discipline and then kind of make your way in.

DTD: It seems like it’s got a different definition, depending which different… which thing you’re in. Because I mean, logic in terms of philosophy is different than like Boolean logic or linear logic or things like that in computer science.

From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Linear logic is a refinement of classical and intuitionistic logic. Instead of emphasizing truth, as in classical logic, or proof, as in intuitionistic logic, linear logic emphasizes the role of formulas as resources.

Audubon: But I, see… When I was first learning logic, I was learning about it in the philosophy department, taught by a philosophy professor. But the class was interdisciplinary, so had some comp sci students in there, we had math students, all together. And we were all learning symbolic logic, and metalogic, and different things like that. So, when I was learning it, and the way I’ve come to think about it, it’s like there is not really a hard distinction, but it’s more of like a porous boundary in terms of what areas of logic you might be interested in. If you’re more computer science oriented, you’ll have certain dispositions in that regard. But I always looked at it as just hugely foundational and interdisciplinary, and that that part of it excited me.

DTD: Huh.

Audubon: Yeah, so… Let’s see… In college I was trying to do that, started to realize in grad school that maybe other people were more passionate about it than I was, and so I started to feel like I wasn’t doing quite the right thing with my life at that point.

DTD: Yup.

Audubon: I also had this feeling, just learning more about the history of logic and everything, I really got the impression like the 1930s was the right time to be a logician. It’s kind of the perfect time with, you know, [Kurt] Gödel’s results being, you know discovered. And [Alan] Turing‘s work.

DTD: Yeah…

I was fascinated, even though most of the logicians discussion was going over my head.

Audubon: And just [John] von Neumann, and just early computational work that was going on. And so, I was just feeling like I’m doing something that is at the wrong time in history. Like, the best time to be a logician was the 1930s. Like, what is it that is the best thing to be doing now?

DTD: Wow.

Brilliant riposte by Corey Thompson.

Audubon: And to me, this modern revolution in board games is like, “Well, what better time is there to be a board game designer than right now?”

DTD: Yeah. We definitely had a bloom.

Audubon: Yeah, welI, I wanted to do something that was culturally resonant, and was important, and was of the moment. Whereas I felt like if I did logic, even though I’m fascinated with some of these, like arcane matters, it’s like… Nobody is going to care really [laughs] Except for maybe you, Corey.

[both laugh]

We laughed, but I had shared a room with Henry at Dice Tower East, and we talked about logic and philosophy for hours. I really, really enjoyed it.

DTD: I’m fascinated! You are right at the edge of what I know about philosophy and logic. So, I’m following the words and I’m assembling the thought processes in my mind, but I can’t expound on it. So, we need a good logic philosophy board game now. “A disproves B, and therefore…”

Audubon: I know. That would be great if you could have some sort of logical deduction…

DTD: My favorite along those lines…

Audubon: yeah?

DTD: Is actually Battle Line, or Schotten Totten.

Schotten Totten and Battle Line are essentially the same game, as is its predecessor East-West. Schotten Totten was published originally by Schmidt Spiele in 1999, then later by Iello. Battle line was published by GMT Games in 2000.

Audubon: Reiner Knizia?

DTD: Schotten Totten, Battle Line, Reiner Knizia. Because the best part of that game to me, is… Yeah, you’re building cards on either side, and whoever has the better cards wins. But you can win if you prove that your cards will be better no matter what the other player does. And that thought process, the deduction thought process, is what I love about that game.

Audubon: That’s fascinating. Sorry, jumping back for a second – you just triggered a memory. Which is that I used to be…

DTD: I live off of nothing but tangents.

Squirrel!

Audubon: Another game designer that I learned about very early on was Mark Rosewater for Magic [the Gathering]. And I had his book Magic the Puzzling, which had a lot of little board state puzzles of Magic, equivalent to chess puzzles or something – “win in two” or something. But what was interesting, is some of them were about creating the most amount of damage say, but keeping it finite, and not going into an infinite loop, and just being like…

DTD: Which was possible.

Audubon: Which was possible, but it’s an interesting question, of what is the largest finite amount of damage that a combo can achieve without going infinite. I would venture to guess that that’s an undetermined question, ’cause it’s hugely complex in the space of all magic cards.

DTD: I think it’s way too variable ’cause magic cards keep changing so much.

Audubon: Yeah, I’m sure the answer needs boundaries.

DTD: And there’s so many cards that you’d have to consider in there.

Audubon: But I thought it would be really interesting to make a game where we include a bunch of really, really broken cards, and you’re trying to assemble a very powerful engine for yourself out of these broken cards, but if your opponent can prove that you can go infinite.

DTD: You bust!

Audubon: Then you bust, and you’ve gone too far.

DTD: I love that idea.

Audubon: To create something that’s huge, hugely finite.

DTD: You need to do it with a Carl Chudyk game.

Carl Chudyk is one of my favorite designers, because his games are all so delightfully broken and insane. His most famous designs are Red7, Glory to Rome, and Innovation.

Audubon: Oh?

DTD: Those are card games that can get those crazy combos.

Next time, awash in the glory of Indian food, we discuss the creation of Parks, the demand for Trails, and the addled fever dream that became Cospoctopus. But not before Henry casually asks me, “So, what do you think of large numbers…” Really. Spoiler: I love them.