The Ascent of Board Games

Episode 16 - Halloween Special

Boo! Episode 16 is here a day early, because Halloween! To celebrate our favorite holiday, we play The Gothic Game, an extremely random game of murder and mayhem set in the Otranto Castle and Spa (try the deep-exfoliating moat!). It's a wild ride featuring dangerous snakes, bad prunes, Frank's wife Sandi, and a last-minute twist that determines the ultimate winner!
Because the game was relatively short (and also, let's be honest, maybe not the most exciting thing to listen to), we also included a discussion of some of our favorite creepy, crawly Halloweeny games, including several from Sandi's amazing collection of 1970s occult kids' games. Things mentioned this episode that you might want to check out on the interwebs:
The Kickstarter for the newly revamped version of The Gothic Game.
The tiny custom record player from Seance
The Kickstarter for Oathsworn: Into the Deepwood, which several of us are really excited about.
Jayson recreating his fate in the Gothic Game (spoilers!)
As always, we appreciate your listening and wold love to hear your comments on any or all of these sources, and especially a review on iTunes if you have the time and inclination!
Website: https://www.ascentofboardgames.com
Email: ascentofboardgames@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ascentboardgames/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ascentofgames
Discord: http://discord.ascentofboardgames.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ascentofboardgames/
Intro and outro music is "Evening Melodrama" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.
The Ascent of Board Games is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Some rights reserved.
Thank you for listening!

Episode 15 - Adventure Games (complete episode)

It's Episode 15, Adventure Games, now complete in one file. It turns out that there wasn't quite as much material left for Part 2 as I thought, and also that I accidentally uploaded Part 1 as an unnecessarily large stereo file, so it seemed best to just replace the whole thing. Apologies to those of you who have already downloaded and listened to Part 1; you can skip to 1:03:39 to pick up with the new material.
This month:
Frank and Brian tell the younglings about the Dark Times.
We discuss the glories of 1970s string art. Yes, this was really a thing.
Frank wills a game into existence retroactively.
We introduce you to The Gothic Game, a charming little murderfest that has a new edition coming out soon, and also had a musical written for it once, which...well...how very.
We talk about Kingdom Death: Monster a lot.
NOTE: This episode is somewhat more NSFW than usual, because...well, because we talk about Kingdom Death: Monster a lot. And Dungeon Degenerates. And, er, Wikipedia. 
Website: https://www.ascentofboardgames.com/
Email: ascentofboardgames@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ascentboardgames/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ascentofgames
Discord: http://discord.ascentofboardgames.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ascentofboardgames/
Intro and outro music is "Evening Melodrama" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.
The Ascent of Board Games is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Some rights reserved.
Thank you for listening!

Episode 14 - Press and/or Push Your Luck

We're continuing our second year of podcasting - can we keep this up, or are we just pushing (or is it pressing?) our luck? Either way, we don't plan on stopping, so here's an episode of us discussing games in which you have to press and/or push your luck. In this episode:
We learn that the podcast feeds off of Brian's pain.
We introduce you to Feats and Fables, the D&D actual-play podcast that Joe and Mike are part of.
We discover that John Scarne (great card magician, author, and Paul Newman's stunt hands in The Sting) also designed some pretty interesting card games - and one really simple dice game.
We talk about Roll Or Don't, a nice online implementation of the classic game Can't Stop
We learn about Dread (shown here), a tabletop RPG with a boardgame inside!
Thank you for listening! As always, reviews on iTunes are a huge help for us, especially if there's a text review along with the rating. We'd love to get your opinions on our future episodes poll. And if you'd like to interact with us, you can do so at any or all of the following:
Website: https://www.ascentofboardgames.com/
Email: ascentofboardgames@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ascentboardgames/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ascentofgames
Discord: http://discord.ascentofboardgames.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ascentofboardgames/
Intro and outro music is "Evening Melodrama" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.
The Ascent of Board Games is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Some rights reserved.
Thank you for listening!

Episode 13 - Legacy Games

It's our anniversary - we've been doing this podcast thing for a whole year! To celebrate, we're doing an episode on legacy games, and as a special treat for you (and for us!), we are joined by a very special guest - Rob Daviau, the man behind the legacy game craze (and a lot of other great games besides)! In this episode:
Rob tells us about the original inspirations behind Risk Legacy, the person who knew that Pandemic Legacy would be a trilogy before Season 1 was even published, and the brand new Machi Koro Legacy, available right now at Gen Con!
We talk about some of Rob's non-Legacy games too, such as the forthcoming Return to Dark Tower!
Joe offers such thoughtful gaming insights as "If you lose, you don't win" and "At the end, there's one winner, and that person wins."
We learn how to play Six Degrees of Frank Branham.
We discover that, thanks to Joe, we've been playing legacy games all along.
Legacy games are susceptible to spoilers, but this is a spoiler-free episode. You can find some additional short files with spoiler content for various games here, but the main episode is safe for all (except for the occasional grownup word).
Also, there are some new options on the future episodes poll - please let us know what you'd like to hear us talk about!
Thank you for listening! As always, reviews on iTunes are a huge help for us, especially if there's a text review along with the rating. And if you'd like to interact with us, you can do so at any or all of the following:
Website: https://www.ascentofboardgames.com/
Email: ascentofboardgames@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ascentboardgames/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ascentofgames
Discord: http://discord.ascentofboardgames.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ascentofboardgames/
Intro and outro music is "Evening Melodrama" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.
The Ascent of Board Games is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Some rights reserved.
Thank you for listening!

Episode 12 - Hidden Teams

Hello again, listeners! In Episode 12, we're talking about Hidden Teams games, sometimes referred to as Social Deduction games. Are you a werewolf, a cylon, a terrorist, a bad cop, The Thing From Another World, and/or Hitler? Doesn't matter to us, we're just glad you're listening. (Except for Hitler. That guy was really a jerk.) Join us as:
We learn about the Tibetan Memory Trick
Frank makes a gratuitous Kierkegaard reference
Mike uses "Zeitgeist" more or less correctly
Joe's role as resident game-hater is briefly usurped
Blood Bound undergoes a vast improvement in art (old cover vs. new cover)
Thank you for listening! As always, reviews on iTunes are a huge help for us, especially if there's a text review along with the rating. And if you'd like to interact with us, you can do so at any or all of the following:
Website: https://www.ascentofboardgames.com/
Email: ascentofboardgames@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ascentboardgames/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ascentofgames
Discord: http://discord.ascentofboardgames.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ascentofboardgames/
Intro and outro music is "Evening Melodrama" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.
The Ascent of Board Games is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Some rights reserved.
Thank you for listening!

Episode 11 - 4x Games

Okay, now I'm awake enough to write some proper show notes. Episode 11 is all about "4X" games - games in which you Explore, Expand, Exploit, and Exterminate on your way to victory. The term originated in the world of computer games, but there are enough similarities - and enough interest on our poll (which you should totally go fill out if you haven't already) that we decided to do an episode on the subject. Join us as Mike experiences a temporal crisis, Brian totally fails to make the podcast more family-friendly, and Joe recaps the biggest rule-reading failure ever.
A few relevant pictures:
The classic (?) day-glo figures from the original Nexus Ops
A look at a Star Trek Ascendancy map to supplement our cryptic verbal description
Thank you for listening! As always, reviews on iTunes are a huge help for us, especially if there's a text review along with the rating. And if you'd like to interact with us, you can do so at any or all of the following:
Website: https://www.ascentofboardgames.com/
Email: ascentofboardgames@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ascentboardgames/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ascentofgames
Discord: http://discord.ascentofboardgames.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ascentofboardgames/
Intro and outro music is "Evening Melodrama" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.
The Ascent of Board Games is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Some rights reserved.
Thank you for listening!

Episode 10 - Deduction Games

It's time for Episode 10 of The Ascent of Board Games! But what could our latest topic be? Well, here are a few clues so you can deduce what the episode is about...
Steve Allen discussing his years on What's My Line?...
...and a clip from the show in which he encounters his long-time nemesis
A great overview (with puzzles!) of the legendary Martin Gardner's column in Scientific American
A board game cover that is definitely a product of its time
A set of files to help you investigate the mysterious terrorist group called Black Vienna
And a game board that hurts Jayson's brain
As always, thank you for listening. If you enjoy what we're doing, we'd also really appreciate a review on iTunes - they are a great way for the show to grow!
If you have an opinion you'd like to share with us - and we suspect you do - please drop us a line via any (or all!) of the following methods:
Website: https://www.ascentofboardgames.com/
Email: ascentofboardgames@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ascentboardgames/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ascentofgames
Discord: http://discord.ascentofboardgames.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ascentofboardgames/
Intro and outro music is "Evening Melodrama" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.
The Ascent of Board Games is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Some rights reserved.
Thank you for listening!

Episode 9 - Dungeon Crawls

Phew - we finally made it! Many apologies for the delay in this month's episode, which was primarily due to two factors:
1. It was (and is) our longest episode to date.
2. Brian and Mike were both suffering from colds, and every time they inhaled, it sounded like Darth Vader had joined the show. (We did our best to edit all of that out - sorry if any of our death-rattles slipped through.)
We promise to be back on schedule next month!
This episode, we strap on our broadswords and delve into the torchlit world of dungeon crawl games. Among other things, we learn that the podcast's Joe quotient is rather higher than previously believed...
Some relevant links that might be of interest to you: 
Ye Olde Inn, a spectacularly comprehensive online Heroquest resource
An instructional video for Dragon Strike, which is also spectacular...in an entirely different way
An occasionally dry, but still interesting post-mortem discussion of the process of making Mansions of Madness into an app-enabled board game
As always, we really appreciate your support (and patience). If you enjoy what we're doing, we'd also really appreciate a review on iTunes - they are a great way for the show to grow!
If you have an opinion you'd like to share with us - and we suspect you do - please drop us a line via any (or all!) of the following methods:
Website: https://www.ascentofboardgames.com/
Email: ascentofboardgames@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ascentboardgames/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ascentofgames
Discord: http://discord.ascentofboardgames.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ascentofboardgames/
Intro and outro music is "Evening Melodrama" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.
The Ascent of Board Games is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Some rights reserved.
Thank you for listening!