Talking Molly House & ARCS with Cole Wehrle of Wehrlegig & Leder - PAX Unplugged 2023

Cole we're here at the worldly gig Booth yes we are is this the first year that you guys have been boothing as a dedicated company or have you had worly gig booths at other cons this is the very first year you know when we were first starting uh we had a friend who had a small booth at Gen Con and we did sell him some copies of Premier so we could say that we were on the floor but we've never done it just because it's it's a lot of work and uh my brother Drew really wanted to have a booth and I said look this is like a part-time job you're volunteering for right and he was like I'm going to do it I want to do it to the nines I said I'm empowering you to do it I will help you but this is yours and he has had such a fun time putting together this whole this whole thing what kind of pressure does that put on you as you know a representative of leader games and world leue games are you like bouncing back and forth all the time it means that there is no downtime this particular con and I I think it's the kind of thing that like we will not be doing often but we've had a lot of fun so far and it means that you know as soon as I finish here I'm running across the hall to leader well we're at the Molly house demo table the Prototype looks absolutely gorgeous it's getting a lot of interest even as we were getting ready for this interview like 15 people stopped to be like what is this game um but also you're right on the heels of uh John company's massive success congratulations man thank you so much I don't know if we brought enough copies it's it's moving very fast uh shut up and sit down did a did a real number on that one a couple days ago yeah I was getting on the plane and I was about to set my phone to airplane mode and moments before that I got a text message from Drew that said shev s down just posted a video it's 50 minutes long and I said I'm my plane is taking off uh and he's like okay we'll watch it together and so he had to drive five hours alone in a car without having seen it so the whole time we just thought like oh I I wonder what it's going to be like I mean I I love any kind of Engagement with with board games right so even if it's a negative review or it doesn't like that is so secondary just to it's an engagement with something that you've worked on and cared about and one thing I like absolutely love about um about how that video is done is the it's an exceptionally good video I think it says very kind things about John company but also it is just like a master class in like long form video content the conversation around the video has been about the state of discourse of video um essays and board game feeled to be like a little footnote in this larg like how do we talk about video game about board games in the video space totally totally and also there there's important conversations that are happening around the subject matter of the game which I think is part of the intentionality right like when you make games like PX Premiere like John company like Molly house you're thinking about like you want this to start conversations about the subject matter right right right absolutely I mean these are every game is met as a player's first step in a wider world of understanding which is why you know all of our Rule books at the end of them they're basically lists of books that we want people to read and I didn't want to scare someone away with just a list of books so they're written out as like hey you should like start with this one I wanted to be like an older brother giving their sibling like a big pile of CDs right and say like hey if you like that song like check out all this other stuff um and and it's fun too because I the the their video also serves that right that that that format so I know about some of the history and inspiration for PAX Premier and I also know about some of the history and inspiration for JN company and I see the easy transition from so many games about colonialism in a kind of benign whitewash sort of way uh that it makes it a very interesting thing to capture in a very thoughtful way but I know almost nothing about this subject matter in history involved in Molly house so what was the big Inspiration Point for you so Molly house the original design was done by this a designer named Joe Kelly who I mentored for the zenobi award which is an initiative to bring uh designers from traditionally underrepresented groups into the Hobby and as that we were working on mollyos together I said look I love this theme and I I think this could be a really amazing design after the contest is done if you want to work with me on it I'm happy to help you and I and I said right at the start like you should know one um I don't know what that means like we've never published a design by another designer right uh Drew and I go very slow like I've been working on this game for two or three years and uh and also I'm very full contact developer and I I said look I might be that I work as an editor or play tester or developer or maybe we're going end up designing this thing together uh but if you want to try to feel out that experience with me I I'll I'll try to be a good partner and that has evolved into a wonderful collaboration which I actually love uh so one thing that we this is Joe's first game and so I was like look I don't want to play like the I'm a des established designer card ever right so I said you have all the executive Authority you can always say no and I want you to treat me as your like eager intern or understudy and every Monday when we or Friday when we have a meeting I'm going to try to impress you with the work that I've done but you get to say I want to include it or I don't want to include it and it's been an amazing collaboration uh so Molly house is a game about these things called Molly houses which existed in the early part of the 18th century in London which were basically Gathering what today we might call like queer communities in London it's a fascinating subject because a lot of queer history has been completely erased from the record but we actually know a lot about Molly house is because they were found out by bribed informers who basically turned over their accounts and testimonies of what was happening at the mly houses into the public record um and did this thing called The Society for the Reformation of manners which sounds like like you know out of a uh Harry Potter or something it's like it's it's like two spot on the nose I shouldn't say I should say just like a ya novel um but it it's also like I mean I love it because it's a game about community and emerging alliances and and Partnerships and play and also about the emergence of policing in the modern context so even though like I mean I think about John company to me is a game about the origins of Empire this to me is the origins of the domestic Empire like what does it mean to police the morality and ideology of like an early modern nation and it looks like Molly house right so so even though the games are very different they also have a lot of the same DNA so what do you think is like the killer mechanical feature of the game that really attracted to you it as a game design not just a theme I think it does two things really really well the first thing that it does is players are collaboratively building poker hands together so it has this inter using card mechanism where you're throwing these parties everybody's tossing out cards and only the best party is going to score but you're having to like collaboratively work to build a set so you're never building sets by yourself it's about generating Joy together the other thing I love about it is it's a hidden Trader game but it's fully opt in so sometimes in Trader games can feel very silly because you like go to a murder mystery party and you you never go to a party where you knew someone was going to be murdered so they're always like a little stilted but in this game uh it's possible that everyone around the table has turned in in and they're all informing on the Molly houses it's possible that no one has it's fully opt in and it creates this like narrative ex range that you don't usually see in Hidden Trader games and so those two elements from a game design standpoint I think are fascinating what is the discussion that you want people to have after they play this game kind of like what we were talking about colonialism and John company yeah yeah well I want people to think a lot about um their own communities where are the places in their life that they're finding joy and finding fellowship and then think about how that is both quite different and quite similar to this period right so whenever we're looking at the past I always want us to be looking for the moments of similarity but also really appreciating the moments of difference and the ways in which they can see their own life reflected in the past but also other lives that that could have been right I I had uh someone wrote me a very nasty comment uh about um being upset that we were covering queer history because it was it was it was someone else's history and I said no like look I know like you're a bigot let's say the person who wrote this comment um but your bigot doesn't stop queer history from being part of your own history like you're a person living today and your history is also Tangled Up In This history absolutely and so you there's a lot that can be gained from like stepping into someone's shoes and walking around this and like look I'm not a career person and I have learned so much from working with Joe and so much I'm just trying to immerse myself in the scholarship and the primary record yeah and there there's tons of intersectionality I think uh people can see um whatever uh oppressed uh you know communities that are formed that that there's bigotry around um even if they're not queer themselves uh so I I am ecstatic that this game is getting published and you guys publish some of the most beautiful Productions in the business but I got to talk about the leader game side of things sure what's going on with arcs at the convention are are you showing it over at leader you can see it on the table right now that's like a very late Stage production copy we don't quite have the factory copies yet but we have like the step right before that's amazing we are submitting the final FES for ARS next week or the week after the game is done uh I'm so happy with it the studio has never made anything as big we did an art audit and learned that like the game has more art than anything that we've ever done before mechanically it's like root plus o in terms of the backend complexity but at the same time it's so approachable and I think if if it's any I think it's going to be a lot of people's first leader game and I think it's going to blow their minds I'm I'm so excited for that game like I I like everyone you know I just want to get it to the table but you know like I talked to your uh colleague Nick recently uh for uh the show and one of the things I talked to him about was that you guys are so transparent about the development process way early on and I have the question about like how does that impact the the way that he develops and Designs games and is he as transparent as say you or Patrick are and I think that's one of the reasons why everyone is waiting with baited breath at at games like arcs or before it because we saw it come to fruition but you as a designer how does that impact your like Creative Vision to have comment and imp put and everyone outside of the actual design space reacting to your game in progress It's I mean it can be exhausting right right I mean I like there were a lot of days where I booted up arcs and thought Oh god there are a thousand messages in the play test and Discord that I need to read but it also it it makes you realize that games are part of a conversation Y and I you know I I think about my favorite part of my job is I work on a game I'm trying to contribute into this conversation about what games might be and including play testers and players in the process of creation is just one way to have that conversation so it absolutely transforms uh my My Method it makes all the games better um and the the biggest challenge is that you have to preserve your own voice and Sensibility as you're listening to all the feedback so like we take a lot of feedback but we also don't like listen to all of it and and I think it's it's equally important to listen to hear the feedback but not to to disagree with it right and so a lot of my time on the play testing Discord as play testers know is arguing with play testers um and and I think learning how to navigate that can be really trying and everybody at the company uh handles it differently right I think when when Patrick shares designs he is looking for something very different than when Nick shares his designs and certainly from where I share my designs right um and and I think this is also our way of kind of paying forward um our own Reliance on crowdfunding and our own uh attempt of making the game making process as communal and as sensitive to the audience as it possibly can be well you're burning the candle at both ends here by being at both booths and I could talk to you for a million years about all this stuff but there's one more topic that I wanted to talk about and you kind of already broed on it with the Zenobia Awards shout out to zenobi Awards if you're not aware of that then you should definitely look into that I'll have links uh in the comments here uh however uh just historical games in general outside of worly gig what are the historical games that you are most excited about right now that are coming out this year or early next year that people should keep their eyes on we are in a great place in historical games they've never been as good as they are right now uh I am so excited by uh Mark Herman's upcoming Civil War games that he's doing for GMT based on his waterl system they are very nerdy it's all hex en counter but they're so beautifully done but I'm also been I've been really impressed with gmts desire to build out the space they're publishing a really interesting game about uh the history of India in the medieval period I can't wait to play it they've been doing more games about politics and social things one of my most anticipated title is non-breaking spaces cron Cross Bronx Expressway oh I have to check it out it's incredible it's a game about the building of Roads through New York and gentrification it's awesome uh and then I you know I love the work that amabelle is doing Holland Spiel of course I'm I've got daa is our product her new game about the tobacco industry is on my way to my house right now and then lastly I'll just Shout Out Fort Circle votes for women one of the most beautiful Productions last year absolutely that game is one of my favorites just period uh of historical games I mean shes of Triple E was great already and then votes for women as a followup was you love to see a strong first game you I mean you love to see a strong sophomore album right I mean I always think about like the sophomore slumps real but someone who can nail their second game they're a publisher to watch yep all right well Cole thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me thank you for watching and I guess we'll uh have more discussions with Cole in the future and years to come I I can't wait for him Jack and now we're going to fill up this demo table all right sounds good all right

Channel: The Cardboard Herald

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Id: 0-1tschlDXs

Length: 14min 52sec (892 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 11 2023