This is actually a timely find for me. I was searching the web for “Richard Garfield Kickstarter”‘to find SolForge, and that search led me here.

I know this is not an “official channel”, but I was wondering how the people who you have worked with to co-create games get in touch with you officially? I couldn’t find an agent or a context for you, but I would like to speak with you about some of the very things you mention in this article. Is there an appropriate way to reach out to you?

Best,
Damien Lavizzo
Head Imaginizer
Zenion Games, Inc

Our publication rate is low currently,but I hope to add to the podcasts more soon.

Richard

What’s about the other way round?
Can any healing “effect” remove shrink and poison tokens?
For example can a healing card like the Nuclear Power Plant, Rapid Healing or even Healing Ray remove such tokens?

Thanks in advance, Stephan

As Metamorph says “receive the energy they were ourchased for” – do I have to remember the real costs I paid for the cars or do I just get the energy printed on the card back?

I assume the child starts:
1. outside Tokyo (even if dead parent was in Tokyo)
2. without any poison an shrink chips (as it is a new monster)
3. with all energy cubes from its dead parent (somehow different logic than 1. + 2.)

Is this correct?

Most of the time this is adequate for resolution. If your group gets stuck (neither player wants to commit), have the players use a power or pass in sequence – starting with the player whose turn it is. If you pass you cannot act again – unless something changes. So, I can pass on my herd culler and if you pass on your psychic probe I can not say “well then I want to use the culler.” But if you USE the psychic probe I am back in business!

Laboratory: You can peek at, and purchase the top card of the deck on your turn. You are not obligated to make a purchase if you use the laboratory.

Plot Twist: You can use this on other player’s rolls.

have two questions about the King of Tokyo rules.

1. Psychic Probe & Stretchy or Herd Culler:
Which is resolved first?
Can Psychic Probe wait until Herd Culler is used and then reroll a dice?
Can Herd Culler wait if Psychic Probe is used or not, then be activated and be sure that Psychic Probe cannot be activate afterwards?

2. I don’t know the English card name: Laboratory, 2 Energy, let you preview upcoming cards

The German translation is unclear.
Can you just preview the next card or are you forced to buy on of the 3 cards or the previewed card if you activate it?

Where can I download Podcast #5? It seems to have gone missing.

Personally I’d recommend trying Frozen Synapse, it has got some really nice squad micro management.

I wonder if you (or other people here on the forum) have other recommendations for simple strategy games? In the last couple of years I have only liked Quadradius, Spectromancer, Slay and this one, 3/4 of which are recommendations by you.

My only complaint is about a problem that seems inseparable from the genre (tower defense/rush/conquer/etc all seem to share a lot of structure) – the game snowballs pretty hard. It doesn’t have the naked “investment” snowballing mechanisms you see in many of these games, but being ahead early still means you have more units, which means you lose less units, etc.. You can either have easy victories or impossible defeats on the back of “what cards did I get early” Shorter atoms might help, or a different approach to unit elimination.

Anyways, excellent game.

The main game is very easy, expect to breeze through it. Limited mode offer some more challenge by only letting you choose from a random 20 of the 40 cards, unfortunately the challenge of this mode vary depending on theses cards, all the way from making victory impossible to giving you all the cards you would have chosen anyway. Since a lot of cards require certain other cards to be worthwhile the actual selection up for consideration is usually significantly fewer than the 20 cards presented, thus the harder challenges doesn’t require as much strategic skill as they require willingness to retry, over and over again.

In total, the difficulty gradually goes from easy to randomly screwing you without really getting to the hard but fair strategic challenge that most strategy fans would be looking for.

There are a handful of cards however that are immediately useful since they used during your buy phase or on completion of the buy phase – Secret Lab and Solar Powered would be two more examples. I will try to make this clearer in reprints…

Huge fan of the game. A coworker and I got into a bit of a quibble about card resolution during our office games day. He wanted to resolve a “Keep” card effect immediately on his turn (Dedicated News Team: +1VP for every new card purchased) and then immediately buy an additional card, giving him 1VP for the win. We took issue with this, as we always played the game where your “Keep” cards did not resolve their effect until the next turn. Could we get a final verdict on this?
Thanks,

David

My favorite method for making coop games not end up here is (as I mentioned in podcast) to severely restrict communication. Some games lend themselves very well to that, others can’t be played that way. For example, Pandemic or Forbidden Island are really unplayable without some communication (one can probably find some creative limitation). Flashpoint is playable with no communication. (some people bristle at the idea of not communicating in a cooperative game, with some justification. The ‘communication’ then is done through game moves. Also, it is incorrect to think of players playing in silence – they can still chat about stuff socially).

I was out of town in the narrow frame available for me to do the interview

Wonder if there could ever be co-op game that doesn’t have a leadership problem. Maybe if each person had hidden missions or special conditions that only they knew about. That would limit someone giving commands when it might do something completely against what the individual players object was… hmm.

Anyway, shame you weren’t interviewed on The Dice Tower for winning best family game with “King of Tokyo.” Were you busy or something? Would have loved to hear you talk about it on the show. Oh well, maybe next time?

Overall Space alert was a really cool coop game, though for my group it became pretty rapidly controlled by a few players, despite its clever design.

I’m not sure it is really that “hardcore” — you can definitely make it difficult and complex, but Space Alert seems to easy people into it.

Additionally, Space Alert does use other mechanisms to combat the oppressive leader problem such as randomness (cards flipped as enemies), hidden information (cards people can play), and reduces information (static sound track where you can not talk).

It does seem that more randomness does reduce the problem as well — Ghost Stories doesn’t seem to be as problematic as something like Pandemic or Forbidden Island which is much more formulaic.

As always some very interesting ideas. Keep it up and I can’t wait till the next one!

I really like the cosmic poker rating system and would like to see a lot more reviews with it but you may want to include the setup/play time and number of players as a general note. It has certainly put into words criteria I’m trying to use while designing a games in my free time.

Anyways, we’ve lately been playing King of Tokyo with 5 face up cards, instead of 3, and that’s more fun for us: more choice than the 3 card version…

This variant may already exist, just letting you know.
Take care,
Sjap.

Stretchy: Yes

Burrowing: Yes – this is awkward wording – it means one extra damage against Tokyo.

Rapid Healing: Yes, you can spend to save yourself.

Telepath: Yes you can use it more than once a turn.

If there are official FAQ that contradict these then I am overruled – these were the original intents, but sometimes changes get made later to make the game more consistent.

You said this expansion was “most requested”, which is not a bad source of inspiriations. But it also led to a couple mechanics which would have made the game worse. With that in mind, do you think it’s better to start with a mechanic you know will be fun and then create a justification, or to take a concept and flip through mechanics until you find a good fit?

Since you are not that involved in the new Netrunner design, lets stay on topic and ask some questions my play groups has had with King of Tokyo.

1) Rooting for the Underdog says “At the end of a turn when you have the fewest VP gain 1 VP.” Does this include at the end of other players turns?

2) Stretchy – Can a player use this power more than once in a turn?

3) Burrowing – Does “Deal 1 extra damage on Tokyo.” mean “Deal 1 extra damage while standing in Tokyo.” or “Deal 1 extra damage to any player standing in Tokyo.”?

4) Rapid healing says “Spend 2 energy at any time to heal one damage.” Does “at any time” mean even after another player has rolled a damage result that would kill you but before you take that damage?

5) Telepath – Can a player use this more than once each turn?

We’ve obviously already made rulings on each card to be able to get on with the game, but it would be nice to hear how they were intended to play.

Thanks for making great games, today I’ve spent time I’ve enjoyed thinking of three of them even though I have not gotten any actual gaming in. Also thanks for making these podcasts, the design decision stuff is gold and the hobby game designer in me really liked to hear that my design process is so close to how you think it should be done.

I very much appreciate your discussion of the decisions involved in the expansion. One of the things I’ve appreciated about Tokyo is the way you’re often rewarded for breaking with a strategy and “following the dice”; it’s clever how you’re preserving that characteristic in the new mechanics.

A bit off topic: do you know when we might hope to see “Characteristics of Games” available? (Thanks!)