Richard Garfield has started a blog – Games With Garfield. So far there are two podcasts (where he is joined by fellow Wizards alumni Skaff Elias and Tyler Bielman), an intriguing outline of a methodology for reviewing games, and a description of a 52-card card game. Assuming he keeps at it, this should become a compelling stop for me as I browse the internet.

                Podcast 1 – Cooperative games

The opening “tabletop gaming news” section is a bit rough. They clearly haven’t found their voice yet. However, the stuff on cooperative games is really interesting. These are big-brained guys trying to understand what makes games tick. Pandemic is fun, but their critique of it and all cooperative games is dead on: one player can play for everyone. They discuss several ways to solve this problems … I had never thought of role-playing as a solution for this particular problem, but it does actually work. I also hadn’t really thought of time pressure as the primary way that computer games solve this problem, but again their analysis seems spot on.

Most of their conversation lives on a meta-level – the conversation is about game design, not game strategy. That said, I strongly suspect that most strategy gamers would find this stuff interesting.

                Podcast 2 – Variation in set-up

I really enjoyed this one. Hearing Richard talk about Cosmic Encounter and how his experiences with that game inspired his design of Magic is still inspirational despite the fact that I’ve heard the story several times before. Listening to these guys discuss Dominion’s family tree is also cool. The Magic and D&D stuff is awesome, but then they take on golf … and Skaff’s take on miniature golf is even awesomer.

Their discussion of the way in which variation in set-up gives games replayability sheds light nicely on the distinction between Agricola and Le Havre that I have been attempting (less articulately) to make in previous blog entries. Agricola is like Magic in that you get a random hand of cards to play with and that can send each game in a very different direction. Le Havre, on the other hand, has much less variety in the way you set things up. Sure there is some, and it’s possible that I haven’t played enough to appreciate how impactful the small differences actually are each time, but I doubt it. Le Havre seems more like Bridge – it’s not precisely identical each time you play, but the diversity / replayability pales in comparison to Magic.