We're So Board!

Episode 42 - Four Humours (with Creator Charlie McCarron)

• We're So Board • Season 1 • Episode 42

Share episode

In this episode, we take on the role of Medieval pharmacists prescribing potions to balance the humors (black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm) of the local townsfolk.  We're talking to the creator of the game, Charlie McCarron, to understand all the love that went into the making of this game.  From the delightfully intricate scenes taking place all around town to the hidden musical scores found on all bard cards, this deception and deduction game is full of all the right fun for the spooky season!  Keep an eye out for it as it hits shelves this October.

Charlie McCarron Instagram

Game Info:
1-6 Players
45-60 Minute Playtime
Ages 10+

Board Game Geek Entry

Social Media:
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
Twitch

Rachel:

Hello and welcome. I'm Rachel.

Jake:

I'm Jake.

Rachel:

And we're so bored. The Podcast where each episode we take a close look at a tabletop game and discuss our personal experiences with said game to help answer the question, Will this cure our boredom?

Jake:

That's right, we look at the mechanics complexity and replayability in a game to determine if it's the perfect alternative to, I don't know, let's say unplugging everything in your office so you can turn your desk 180 degrees in the same spot, and then resetting up your PC, your recording and streaming your accessories, as well as all of your consoles in the heat. Because you forgot that your office gets hot when you have to wear pants.

Rachel:

Your office looks so much roomier now though it's it feels really good in there. I know. It doesn't feel cramped anymore. Yeah. Because originally Jake had it so that like his desk was in front of the wall, but not like facing the wall, if that makes sense. He had a little bit of space where his chair would fit between the wall and the desk, and he would be facing out. Like back to the wall. And what he did is he flipped it around. So now it's facing into the wall. He faces the wall.

Jake:

Yeah, now I'm in the corner. Yeah.

Rachel:

It just feels so much more roomy.

Jake:

Yeah, but I'm excited on the only thing I'm really concerned about is the sound quality. So I hope it's okay.

Rachel:

Happy spooky season, everybody. It's October and it is my favorite time of the year for sure it finally gets under 100 degrees, probably. We'll see. But yeah, we were so excited to to do some stuff for the month of October that we're actually going weekly for this month. And we have a theme all of the games that we are talking about for October is something that represents or has ideas for a good costume that you could wear for Halloween. You'll hear in this episode, what we think is a good costume for this game that we're talking about. In future episodes, you can take guesses on what you think would be a good costume based on the game we chose.

Jake:

Or you could just let us know what you think would be a good costume.

Rachel:

Oh, yeah, definitely. You have that to look forward to going weekly for the month of October. Very exciting.

Jake:

Before we get started, we want to talk about streaming. We have not been super great about this lately. But we are getting back to a regular streaming schedule every Wednesday between five and seven pacific standard time depending on whether I'm working or not really. And we are going to be streaming a bunch of different types of board games. We have some fun stuff for the month of October this month. So come check us out at twitch.tv/so Bored podcast that's sob o ar D podcast. I have not streamed in like a month that is changing very soon, very rapidly. And in fact, by the time this goes out, it will probably have already changed. I am also streaming video games. I'm going to be streaming retro games. They're going to be streaming new games I'm probably going to be streaming well because you know Wrath of the Lich King just came out.

Rachel:

Yeah, back to classic.

Jake:

So I will be streaming at twitch.tv/naughty Doc 541 That's NAU gh t Why do C 541 come check us out. We talk about a bunch of nerd stuff on both of them. That's just a good time.

Rachel:

All right. So what are we doing today?

Jake:

I think we're talking about crisis. Huh? No, no, you've changed.

Rachel:

Today is a special episode because we have our friend Charlie McCarran on here to talk about his game for humors. This is a game that I had an opportunity to play at GenCon and I met Charlie there. I thought it was super cute and really a lot of fun. So I invited him to come on the show and talk about it. It should be releasing this October very soon. Either people who have backed it on Kickstarter should be receiving it. Or if you didn't get a chance to back it. It will be available in retail. So keep an eye out for that. And without further ado, this is our interview with Charlie McCarran. How are you doing?

Charlie:

I am good. Yeah, here in Minnesota. Excellent.

Jake:

Okay, so we always ask what temperature is it in Minnesota right now?

Charlie:

It's actually a balmy like 75 or 8001 I

Rachel:

think Oh, yeah,

Jake:

man,

Charlie:

we get the extremes. It's

Rachel:

only 95 here today. Oh, it's

Jake:

just not bad actually.

Rachel:

It's actually quite cool. It's quite cool. Yeah. So Charlie is a creator, a board game creator, why don't you introduce yourself? Tell us a little bit about what you've done?

Charlie:

Sure. So I'm a game designer, among a few other things. But one of my main things I've done is the game for humors. That's how I met Rachel at GenCon. Well, you got a chance to play for humors. Other than that, I am also a film composer. I am a board game developer. And I also just started teaching board game design at University of Wisconsin Stout. So teaching the intro class for designers.

Rachel:

That is awesome. Is that

Jake:

like a major path? Is that something that you can major in?

Charlie:

Well, actually, so I should say that the major is designed for video game designers. But for their first year, we want them to learn how to make something fun just with paper and cards and dice before they get too crazy into coding, and then realize they've spent hours and hours and hours on a game that fundamentally isn't that fun. You know,

Jake:

that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense.

Rachel:

So yeah, I think the main thing that we want to talk about today is for humors. But we will come back to some of that stuff that you said already. I had an opportunity, as he said to play for humors at Gen Con, I found this to be a really cute and unique game. Tell us about it. Tell us what it is because Jake, and obviously our listeners haven't had a chance to check it out yet.

Charlie:

Yeah. So I had this idea many years ago to make a game about the humors. The four humors. In medieval times, they used to think that if your bodily fluids were imbalanced, like say you have too much black bile that would make you melancholic, kind of sad, introverted, thinking. And so there's there's four different humors black bile, yellow bile, which would make you choleric, or aggressive. If you had too much blood, you were the friendly and extroverted personality. If you had too much phlegm, you were kind of lazy and submissive. So it just like this theme that was ripe to have a game about. And so I tried, like probably seven totally different games on that theme. And then finally, one day, I just had this inspiration to make little medieval scenes with characters that had these dual personality types. And so when you're playing the game, you're placing secretly humour potions down on these characters. And so say you're placing on a noble? Well, nobles, of course, could be, you know, the aggressive leader type, or they could be the benevolent, friendly leaders. So the Knights could be aggressive or submissive to the Queen, or king. And so each of the character types has these two possibilities. And so it's a little bit of deduction of, Hey, what is this person doing? And are they trying to work with me by playing hearts, for example, like, the friendly personality? Or are they trying to backstab me by playing another aggressive personality type on these cards?

Rachel:

Yeah, that was one of the things that I found super interesting about the game, the fact that, you know, each of these characters had two components to them. And so you're you're placing are all the players are placing these things facedown, but you can start to kind of figure out what they're placing based on their behaviors. If they're placing multiple things on one scene, then it's probably not the yellow bile, if they're placing multiple things on the same one, because of the way that the hierarchy works, that you really only want to have one of those in order to gain control of the scene. So you can start to kind of figure it out. It's this deduction and like, bluffing component that normally like I'm really, really bad at bluffing games. But the fact that it had kind of this deduction built into it made it better and made it easier for me to play. I really enjoyed it.

Charlie:

Oh, thanks. Yeah, I like to think of it as a game where you can sort of bluff but you don't actually have to say anything. You do so which is just really a fun feeling of like, you can be a little clever with how you play on these scenes. And it's a game that's like kind of hard to wrap your head around until you actually start playing it. But once you see how it plays out, after around, you'll get into it pretty easily.

Jake:

I think the idea is really cool of building a game around the four humors. I mean, I really liked that concept of medieval medicine, even though we all know that the four humors was single handedly disproven by the study of phrenology. So,

Rachel:

yes, we all know that

Jake:

phrenology is the study of the shape of your head. And like the different lines and bumps can tell you if like you're a criminal, or if you have clinical depression,

Charlie:

so Oh, yeah. medically sound

Jake:

very medically. So yeah, this was this was a huge advancement for modern medicine.

Charlie:

Yeah, I think as much as it is fun to laugh at the four humors theory. It was kind of one of the first times and it actually goes back to Greek times where they were realizing that, hey, it might be actually something in my body that's causing things versus like, the gods have bestowed upon me this. Yes.

Jake:

I mean, absolutely. That is all joking aside. It is an actual advancement, showing that hey, it might be something in me instead of just blaming it on, you know, anything else. But,

Charlie:

but the fact that eating more fish will give you more phlegm to make you Yep, chill out. It's a little a little out there.

Jake:

But I also, you know, I'm interested in this bluffing game as well. I am not super great at bluffing games, because I feel like I talked too much. I say too much.

Rachel:

Like he's got easy tells, I guess, when he's the hidden trader or, you know, whatever.

Jake:

I don't have to say anything. You know, bluffing game like this. This might be better.

Charlie:

Why not? I have such a bad also bluffing face, I guess. And so I just have to pretend like I'm suspicious every time I play some game, like smiling or laughing and then I'm always suspicious, and no one knows.

Jake:

Okay, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna like, go ahead and say, Rachel was always suspicious of me in every single game with a trainer. He always accuses me. And I have literally been the trader one time.

Rachel:

I think that's false. If you have said one time, you're one time that goes back years.

Jake:

The trader when we played stuff of legends, that's right. So twice, two times in the three and a half years, we've known each other twice.

Rachel:

Hmm. And this isn't quite that, you know, it's not a hidden trader element. It's really more of your disguising what you want, what you're placing down, right, because I think we kind of described the scenes and the fact that you're placing on these things. But can you go into a little bit on like, the hierarchy and how that's determined, like who wins a scene?

Charlie:

Yeah, so there's 4 scene cards out at once or five, if you're higher player counts, but you basically decide to do one thing on your turn, play on any one of the citizens out there. And so you're kind of looking at the four different scenes and deciding which one is it worth my time to invest, putting potions on, based on where they are on the map. So you can make connections and area control type things on the map. But you're trying to win with as many potion tokens as you can really. And so I might go to the watchtower, for example, which has three nights that are all about to either kill each other or work together. And I might play something facedown on one of those nights. And then I could try to convince you like, hey, let's work together, we can make this happen. We'll both get tokens. If we work together, we'll both our tokens would win. But the problem is, if any one person were to play a yellow choleric, that's the top of the hierarchy. So a single yellow wins the scene, but if any one else plays the yellow there, so two or more, they're the aggressive type, they kill each other off. And then you would move down to the sanguine ones, which is the red blood friendly personality. And they need to have at least two of them on the card to win, which is can be somewhat hard to do. So that's when you do actually have to work together either with someone or you could try to get to have your own reds down. Say that doesn't happen. Then you would move down to the melon colics and They are the introverted personality. So they, they want no more than two black bile tokens down. And they have also a little trick associated with them. If there's only one, they get to do a sneak away move, which helps you out on the map. And then at the very bottom, are the phlegmatic, they're the ones who are just kind of waiting around to see what happens. They don't, they're the lazy ones, they'll just wait around. And if nobody else wins, then any number of the phlegmatic can win. So they're all pretty balanced in terms of which ones are going to win overall in the scenes, but it's kind of each scene is its own challenge, kind of a social puzzle that you're trying to figure out. If you're familiar with the prisoner's dilemma, that's kind of one of the main aspects where it's like, well, if we work together, we'll benefit. But if one of us, decides to backstab, that person would win, and I would lose. But if we both tried to backstab, then we both lose. That's the core element. But because you've seen has like many different character types on it, it actually makes for a much more interesting dynamics than just that simple. Dynamic. Yeah,

Rachel:

I really liked the way you kind of worked that out. And it all like makes sense. The medically like the way the yellow bile, like you put into, say, yellow phlegm versus

Charlie:

a yellow, but we had to pick a different color. Or we were like, do we pick green? That's almost too gross. Just fine with white.

Rachel:

But yeah, the way that the yellow bile works is like, you can only have one. And that makes sense, because that's the aggressive type. Right? So you made that make sense, the medically with like how this hierarchy works, which I feel like, is kind of hard to do. I guess you can go into this a little bit more. But it sounds like you started with the theme. Right? You wanted to make something based on the four humors. And then you were trying to figure out the mechanics to go with that.

Charlie:

Yeah, it was, like I said, I went through so many iterations, and they were okay, but not really capturing the theme, how I wanted it to feel. And that was the breakthrough moment when I was like, Okay, let's throw all this away. Like, what would actually happen if there was characters interacting on a place like what would happen there? I feel like it's somewhat lucked out. I mean, I've spent a lot of time on it. But it was kind of like a lightning bolt moment, in. I love that when a game can evoke a theme, purely based on the mechanics. Obviously, the art is a big part of it. But it's nice when it can, you know, something that could have been an abstract game, really. But with the way things play out, it just like, just happened to work really nicely with the humors theme.

Rachel:

Yeah, yeah, it's kind of impressive to get it all to blend together like that.

Charlie:

What happened in your game? Do you remember how things played out at GenCon?

Rachel:

I remember one specific moment where the guy next to me, he was focusing really heavily on this one scene. And a lot of the people on there had the yellow bile. Like I had figured out that because he was placing so heavily on the scene that he couldn't be placing yellow, it would make no sense at all for him to be placing yellow. And so I can't remember what the other option was, if that was White was the other option. But I was able to kind of contribute and get in on that. I think it must have been white because like, Oh, hey, if I can figure out he's doing that, and all of the white phlegm wins. And that's what he's doing. I can get in on this. And I can win too. Because that's, you know, one of the things is that whoever like the winner of the scenes are that can be shared. Like there can be multiple tokens at the locations on the map.

Charlie:

Yeah, I wonder if that was the bloody Hill. Because that one has a ton of characters, and they all are potentially aggressive. You have two nobles sitting across from each other, just kind of like spending their nights at each other. That sounds familiar. Yeah, could be could be. So basically, the other fun part was coming up with these scenes, and I was actually art directing. So I would do the little sketches for him. But thinking about like, Okay, what's the possible character combinations? And what's the story that would play out here? And that's the bloody hill the story is, hey, if the nobles would just work together and play red hearts, like they could win, probably because the knights would kill each other. But the secondary story is that okay, everyone goes aggressive, except for the knights who are just like, hey, whatever, I'm not gonna fight. I'm just gonna like, hang back. Let everyone else kill each other and win with the white, phlegmatic?

Rachel:

Yes, I really like that, like some of the other scenes that are in the game or like a dungeon. So you've got, you know, a nightmare, or I think that's what he is right? To like torture people. And then you've got, I don't know, a witch and some other people who would be like the prisoners in a dungeon kind of just hanging on the wall. And so you've got these different types of people with the different, you know, humors in them. But like the scene totally makes sense for oh, yeah, this is a dungeon. This is what you would see. And like, this is how this would work out.

Charlie:

Yeah. And then in the dungeon. There's only two aggressive personality types, the knight who's just overseeing everyone. And the witch, like you said, who could in the art, she's kind of like, waving her wand towards the night, like ready to fight?

Rachel:

I hadn't picked up on that.

Charlie:

Oh, yeah, I had so much fun making these scenes. And we actually during the Kickstarter, had our audience vote on what additional scenes Do you want to see. And we have sort of expansion material that came with the Kickstarter, which is the revolt set of cards where it's the same scene, so like the dungeon, but it's flipped on its head a little bit. So there's a different character combo. So in the revolt scene in the dungeon, the nobles had been locked up. And now this the which is like overseeing them.

Jake:

Nice. Or like that.

Rachel:

Speaking of the Kickstarter, so is this game? It's been funded already. It's already happened, right? Yes. Delivering soon to backers.

Charlie:

Yeah, it's on its way. Honestly, I think right now to Minnesota, where I am, and all over the world. So, you know, there's been some, of course, shipping problems because of COVID and everything, but we're hoping to have copies at GenCon. But our boat got stuck in the Panama Canal or something like that? I don't know. So, yeah, it's going to be in stores, hopefully in October.

Jake:

Is this game going to be available after the Kickstarter has been fulfilled? If we're gonna go to retail at all?

Charlie:

Yeah, so we have a retail version that's should be in local game stores around the US. And we're also like getting localizations around the world. So we have China Asmoday. China actually is going to be carrying it there. And all sorts of places throughout Europe are coming. But yeah, really excited to get this game out there in stores. Yeah.

Jake:

Okay. So you mentioned that you've worked on some other projects in the past, what other games have you worked on? Or other projects? Have you been involved in prior to the four humors?

Charlie:

Yeah, so one of the first big projects I worked on, I had an internship at Fantasy Flight Games, which is right here, here in Minnesota. And I got to fulfill one of my childhood dreams to work on a Star Wars game. So I worked on Star Wars Destiny. I was working one on one with the designer, Lucas lead singer, and helping tests and come up with card ideas. Basically, the most fun internship possible.

Rachel:

I can imagine.

Charlie:

Yeah, that's a good game to a wish, I think is now done with releasing expansions. But there's quite a few out there. I've not actually played any of the Destiny's games. It's a collectible card and dice game where you get a pack and it has however many cards and dye with it. That's like a big, chunky custom dye. And it was really fun seeing the inner workings of it because Lucas had, he had gone through a few different iterations before I got there. But as we were playing, he had some breakthroughs with it. And it's got this really clever system of back and forth real quick turns, but very strategic. It's not like you have a ton of phases like Battle phase, and then this and this, it's it's all fluid like chess. It feels like a chess game. Versus like some other TCGs is kind of like I take my turn then you take

Jake:

like magic. Yeah, got it. Okay. That's pretty cool. I mean, I would be interested in playing something like that. I like fast paced games. I like games that are very strategy heavy, especially if you can build your own strategy, which this sounds like you probably can. Okay,

Rachel:

I was gonna ask what kind of background do you need to go into like an internship design? And in board games, what kind of schooling and background do you have? And that? Well, I

Charlie:

had no background when I got that internship. They they may have, I don't know how many people apply for them nowadays. But I basically just had this just describe, like, what games I liked. And I think I said I like I really was into Dominion at the time. So they, they were probably like, Okay, this guy's into card games, we'll get him. On this one. There's four of us interns, and a couple of them are working on Imperial assaults, and to get the other games people were working on but like Doom, the board game, I got to help

Jake:

Imperium or just dune

Charlie:

like the video, gotcha. Dune Imperium. That would be I was listening to one of your episodes. And sounds like you guys are big fans.

Jake:

I am a huge fan of Dune Imperium.

Rachel:

But I was about to say due to variables, not Fantasy Flight. So

Jake:

that's why I was like, Wait a second. Wait, wait a minute.

Rachel:

That's really cool. You were able to just kind of apply and say, I'm interested in board games. What year year was that?

Charlie:

That would have been 2016, I think. Yeah. So quite a while ago. But yeah, I would encourage anyone who is interested to look for those opportunities. And even if, if you don't do a formal internship with a company, companies are always looking for play testers. So even if it's kind of just a glorified play testing job, like, if you're interested at all, and game development, or game design, like, definitely try to connect with any game companies in your area.

Jake:

But we are obviously interested in in game testing and design. That's something that we like.

Rachel:

Yeah, I don't know, I dream of one day designing my own board game, but I only have a very rough idea of a theme so far.

Charlie:

So are you willing to reveal it here on the podcast?

Rachel:

Oh, should I? I don't know, I guess I guess vague enough that like, if someone steals it, like, it'll probably be totally different than what I would be imagining anyway. But I really wanted to do something that is kind of based on time, like this idea of being able to reset the clock and go back and redo things kind of like a board game version of Zelda Majora's mask, but this concept that at certain times, certain things are happening, and you have like so many resets, or you know, so many things that you can do. And I don't know if it would be like, a murder mystery. And you just have to, like, get around and talk to enough people or you know, get enough evidence in a certain amount of time, or I don't know, something like that. I haven't quite worked out how that would work in a board game, because it really feels like it's meant to be a video game. Yeah, that's kind of my idea.

Charlie:

I like that. A game you should check out is tragedy looper. I hate to say that there's a game out there like that. But honestly, it is kind of like that. But honestly, it's so convoluted. And I know some people love it. And one of my friends loves it. But I'm like, I would love to see a game like tragedy Looper but not as convoluted. And so I say totally go for it. Flat out. I'm

Jake:

looking at it right now.

Charlie:

Yeah, there's, I mean, there's so much potential for any sort of like time travel the game, I want to see to make one.

Jake:

I had a dream about making a board game a while ago. And it was kind of a cross between Clank and like almost an auction, or mechanic where you are dwarfs and you're making these different artifacts that you then are auctioning for different victory points. However, the more that you search for resources, the more potential danger you have. So you've got this push your luck element of going into these mines to get resources to make artifacts. But if you continue to go and go and go in further and further and further, you have the potential to come out with nothing. Oh,

Rachel:

I like that.

Charlie:

This was all fleshed out in your dream.

Jake:

This wasn't a dream. Yeah, I told you about this. It's been a while though. Almost those about a year ago. Year and a half ago. Yeah. That's

Charlie:

cool. That's a gift. You can

Jake:

can't figure out now but like it wasn't my game. It was there. Yeah,

Rachel:

Jake is like haunted. Whenever we play a new board game. He usually dreams about it all night. If he lost he dreams about why did I lose? What do I need to do better next time? Or if he won, it's still like refining his strategy.

Jake:

What could I have done differently? Nice.

Charlie:

There is some evidence that games are one of the things that is most reliable to get people to dream about. But specifically video games, but I think there's crossover. Oh, I

Jake:

definitely believe there's crossover. Yeah.

Charlie:

That's a really good Radiolab episode about sleep that I always think back to, but they were like, we needed to figure out how to reliably get people to dream about something. And they discovered that Tetris works really well. The thing that works the best was the arcade game where you're skiing downhill. Well, yeah, and, and it's that combo of like playing a game plus, like physically moving your body on the skis. Yeah, interesting. They would wake people up during the study. And the sooner they woke them up, they would be dreaming about skiing. But if they woke them up a little bit later, they'd be dreaming about like, running down a hill, or like playing in the snow. And like things that were tangentially related. But it's just I love that example. Because it's, it's like people are their brains like working on the problem by branching out and seeing how it can solve this.

Jake:

That's interesting.

Rachel:

What is the motivation for wanting to get people to reliably dream about something? Is that supposed to be some form of advertisement?

Jake:

I'm sure you can subconsciously advocate. So that reminds me of a Futurama episode where they are beaming commercials into your dreams? Yeah.

Charlie:

Nice. Yeah, I don't I don't know that study if it was just like, maybe that's that was the study was trying to see like what people would reliably dream about? Yeah.

Rachel:

We've gotten a little off time.

Charlie:

Just a little.

Rachel:

Okay. Well, Charlie, I wanted to ask you, you had mentioned in the beginning about being like a film composer, composer. Yeah. Tell me about that

Charlie:

So I'm, I'm a music composer. By training. I went to school for that. And I write songs, and I do orchestral compositions and electronic music. And one of my main gigs has been writing music for films. So documentaries, wow. And narrative films and animations. Yeah. And video games, sometimes.

Rachel:

anything we'd recognize?

Charlie:

Probably not. No, it's mostly local projects. But the actually the one of the cooler ones that I'm working on this year, is I was asked to do a score for Make A Wish project. And the kid wanted to be in a Star Wars movie. So they assembled a team of Minnesota creators, and made this about 15 minute film that was approved by Lucasfilm, like, you know, they gave us all they gave us permission to use John Williams themes in our music. That is so cool. So yeah. So that's going to be awesome to have my name in the credits, like, in theory, right next to John Williams.

Rachel:

Yeah, nice.

Jake:

That is really, really cool, actually. Yeah.

Rachel:

Okay, so that's like your day job and the new design board games. On the side.

Charlie:

On the side. Yeah, I do development work as well. I'm working for floodgate games right now. Oh, because they're also in Minnesota. We actually have quite a few publishers here, which is very cool. But yeah, development work. For those who don't know is a little bit different than designing work. Designer work is like you come up with the game from scratch, then being a game developer is where you are taking someone else's game and polishing it, adding some tweaks, doing things to make it a little bit more final polish for the publisher. Okay,

Rachel:

so for floodgate, you said,

Charlie:

Yeah, and I can't actually say what the games are, because they're not announced yet. But that's fair.

Rachel:

Yeah, I gotcha. Okay, well, I have to keep an eye out for some floodgate stuff. Yeah. Well, that's super cool. Like you're just kind of involved in a lot of these different aspects of different media sources. So that's, that's really cool.

Jake:

That is really cool.

Charlie:

I get bored if I'm working on the same thing for too long. So I gotta keep myself creatively inspired. Just try to do a bunch of different things.

Rachel:

Does that design work? Does that help you like come up with your own ideas for games, or

Charlie:

Yeah, I think just doing the work as a developer for another company is really good because it helps you see from the perspective more of the publisher like Like, what would make a good product versus just what would make an interesting game? And I've definitely made a lot of game prototypes that are interesting games, like interesting mechanics and things. But probably no publisher would publish because they're just maybe more obscure. So I guess like over the past year, I've started thinking about like, well, what are some game ideas I've had that would maybe be more marketable, to pitch to people. So I've been working on some party games, and other simple card games, which right now, I was surprised when I was at GenCon. I would pitch all my games, and I got a lot of interest on just card games, I think a lot because of all the shipping woes, and manufacturing. And all these publishers are like, Oh, wait, maybe we should just do card games.

Rachel:

That makes sense. Yeah. Did you get anyone to pick anything up? Or?

Charlie:

Well, I have gotten some emails going. I don't think I can say really right now. But you know, I was at a speed pitching event, which is really cool. And we got to meet, like, I'd say, 15 different publishers just really rapid fire. Yeah, it's just really cool meeting publishers from all over the world to Yeah, glad I went to Gen Con. It was my first time at Gen Con ours.

Rachel:

Yeah, it was also our first time it was a crazy event. I'm really glad that I was able to find your table, though, because I had problems all weekend long finding the game tables where I was supposed to be.

Charlie:

Yeah, that's so huge in that hall, too.

Rachel:

Yeah. And I feel like they had a good design with the different like table like colors and numbers. But then nobody was using that everyone was just saying it's over here by this sign. And sometimes that sign was tiny. And like I couldn't find no. So I'm really, really glad that I was able to find your table and play your game.

Charlie:

How'd you find out about four humors to begin with, out of curiosity.

Rachel:

Honestly, I think I was just looking through stuff on the like, genuine website, like what games were available. I was just scrolling through and I said, Oh, hey, this sounds kind of interesting. You know, I go when I look it up, and all right, I'll sign up for that. I like to sign up for all kinds of like, new things I've never heard of at events like that. So that's cool. Get some exposure. Yeah.

Jake:

And I think that was during the time that I was working. So I don't think I mean, I would have come and checked it out. But I was unfortunately busy. What were you working? I was working with steeped games. They do try and try it for two. Oh, nice. Yeah, I was working with Dan over there. They asked me to come help out. And I said I'd love to. So cool. We did.

Rachel:

Yeah, it was kind of unfortunate. And having the morning slot for that takes up time from other things. But yeah,

Jake:

I was working the morning slot. So I was there from like, nine until one like that. So I was unable to come check out a lot of the games. Sure.

Charlie:

It was fun running the booth. I was with Adam's apple games, the publisher for humors. And it was just fun like seeing people stop by and try for humors and also planted a known as their big one. Which sold out. Yeah, like you went within I heard.

Rachel:

Yeah, I heard it was crazy. We had to do like

Charlie:

line control in the hall as Yeah, really. We were not expecting that.

Rachel:

I don't think I got a chance to stop by that booth. So I didn't even see it. Like I hadn't heard of planet unknown until we got there. And someone was talking about how amazing this game is. And they're selling out like crazy. And like, Whoa, what is this?

Charlie:

Yeah, so that that's been fun to see that. That one did really well on Kickstarter. And then that was a Kickstarter right before four humors. So we got a little boost from that success, too. I think.

Jake:

What was something that you saw at GenCon that you were like, oh, man, I'm really excited to play this. Huh? Something new that you had not played before.

Charlie:

I didn't get a chance to play it. But hughes and queues. I don't know that just I saw it on the table. And I was like, What is going on here? It's just a giant thing that looks like you know, paint swatches. Oh, it's just a giant rainbow. And the gameplay. I love games that are just like, you could figure out the gameplay within a couple minutes. And we'll just like seems very fun. party game style where you're trying to. I think how it works is someone picks or you get a random color assigned to you If you tell people okay, this is apple or something, and then people have to decide which of the many, many different color swatches you are thinking of by putting their token down on that oh, okay, thing. So it looks pretty cool. And I want to try that sometime.

Rachel:

I've heard of it have not had a chance to play it. But yeah, it looks cool.

Charlie:

Did you to have favorite things you saw or things you want to try.

Jake:

One of my favorite things that I saw there was not a game actually. It is a these little tins. But these little they look like beads in them little plastic beads. And they are designed for role playing tabletop games to create a more immersive environment. So if you say, you know, you walk into this room and it and it's a bakery, you open up this little tin that is labeled warm bakery, and it smells like a bakery. Oh, so it was a really cool concept for these immersive RPG tabletop games. I thought it was something that was amazing. pretty innovative. But as far as games go, I was very interested in the steam up game. It's the dim sum game. Hmm, it looks very, I mean, I actually got to try it out for a couple of minutes. And it was fun. It was kind of a set matching game with a rotating turn order. It was pretty interesting. Cool.

Rachel:

I think the thing I was most excited about, it wasn't like a new discovery at GenCon. But I really got to see more of it was familiar Tales by Plaid Hat Games. And that is a cooperative game where you are like the familiars of a wizard and your task is to raise the princess. And so you have to like you take her on like adventures and keep her safe and stuff. But you also have to make sure she like gets enough sleep and eats and things you said raise

Jake:

and I wanted to make sure that it was R A I S E not R A Z E. Yeah. Yeah. Destroy her.

Rachel:

It looks super cute, like the familiars that you're playing. And I thought that was just a really interesting concept for a game this like, oh, yeah, make sure you feed the princess like, you feed her and you're teaching her things, but also protect her from danger. I bought that at Gen Con, but we haven't had a chance to play it yet. You know, campaign games, we have to find the right people to sit down and like be dedicated to something like that. So

Jake:

we're still in the middle of a campaign game.

Charlie:

Which one?

Jake:

Ether fields

Rachel:

That one's been on hold for a while though. So I don't know if we're actually still in there.

Jake:

Put on hold for a year. Yeah.

Rachel:

I don't know. The other game that I thought was super cool. Was oath. That's by letter.

Charlie:

The same people leader games. Yep.

Rachel:

Leader. Is that how you pronounce it?

Charlie:

I've been saying letter. They're also in Minnesota. Yeah.

Rachel:

Okay, I don't think we have anything here in Arizona. But like, I

Jake:

don't really have something. I don't remember who it who it is. But we have one game designer here. Okay,

Rachel:

if you say so. But I thought that that was a really interesting concept. also kind of a campaign game. But you know, like this kind of ongoing, it just never ending kind of thing.

Charlie:

So yeah, I like that one. I've played a couple times. And yeah, it's like, their games usually take a very long time to learn and but that's just how it is. Yeah, I like the fact that both you can play multiple times. And there's kind of like a king of the hill type thing where someone players, the king for that round. And everyone else's roles can change around based on that. And it's like, the game starts out that basically the king is going to win, unless you do some stuff to prevent that happening. So yeah, like that.

Rachel:

Yeah, that's really interesting. But like the idea that at least that they sold it to me was okay, you know, even if that happens, like there's no end, you can just keep playing beyond that. Like your world might change as a result, but you don't have to stop playing.

Jake:

So it's yeah, it's not like a campaign. It's more like a legacy, I guess, where it changes each time, but not exactly changes. The gameplay function doesn't change itself, like a legacy game does. So it sounds really cool, huh?

Charlie:

Yeah. Yeah, we've got my game group has several campaigns going. We've had the last game of scythe legacy, probably for two years we haven't played and we're just like, What, oh, we came so close before pandemic and then

Jake:

we are fans of scythe. Yeah.

Rachel:

So this is the first First episode in our month long like spooky season of October. Last year, we focused on like purely spooky games. But this year, we are focusing on games that have good costume options for Halloween, which I think for humors has many but what would be your favorite? Or you like your top pick from four? humors? That would be a costume you could do for Halloween?

Charlie:

Oh, that's a good question. You could, I mean, they're the kind of the classic medieval tropes, the night the nobles, the witches, you could be a peasant and walk around barefoot. Or, or probably I would pick the bard though, because that's what I am probably personality wise. And their mix of sanguine, the friendly personality. And that's like the creative side. And then they're also the melancholic. So they're, you know, introverted. thankee. So they're a little bit of a dichotomy there, like introvert extrovert, but that's what a bard is, like the music maker. And yeah, one other facts that is kind of a fun fact about all the four humors cards. Anyone that has a barcode on it also has a little piece of music, like actual note notated music.

Rachel:

That's right. You were telling Yeah, this, like music that you wrote

Charlie:

music that I wrote. Yeah. Being a composer as like, we can't just put random notes on there. I gotta make like little melody.

Jake:

Gotta have an actual score in. Yep.

Rachel:

Yeah. So like, if you put all those cards together, does it make a song or anything like that?

Charlie:

It would make like 12 different songs. But like one of them, for example, the heathen bonfire, where all the Bards are playing like bagpipes and stuff. The notes in that one are the devils tri tone.

Rachel:

So really, yeah, that doesn't mean anything to me. What

Charlie:

does the triad tone is a musical term that's like kind of a dissonant chord. And they used to think like back in the day that it was devils music if you heard this, okay.

Jake:

There's a specific set of tones that when played together is evil, quote, unquote. Okay,

Charlie:

so. So I was like, Okay, we got to make a play on that winner. That's amazing. So many ghosts and stuff.

Rachel:

Yeah, there's so much like, hidden in this game. Like, it's, it's a really cool, you know, like, just sitting and looking back at the art and all of that, like, a lot of thought and love went into it very clearly.

Charlie:

Yeah, it's, it was my baby, making that game. I don't know if I'll ever have a chance to even put so many easter eggs in any game. But, yeah, hopefully, we'll get to even do some expansion material too, in the future and make some more fun, silly cards.

Rachel:

Although it'd be really cool. I think we're definitely looking to pick this up. Where will we be able to find it?

Charlie:

You'll be able to find it. You know, hopefully in friendly local game stores around you should be online as well. Like Adam's apple games.com. Yeah, Adam's apple games.com. Should have links to buying it when when it's available. Okay. Otherwise, also, we can probably just get your copy.

Rachel:

I mean, that's great for us, but also for our listener.

Charlie:

listeners. Yes. Where do they go? Yeah, where you Other should be able to find it through Google search four humours with an O U at the end, because to make it seem more historical.

Rachel:

Okay. Oh my gosh. So I was spelling this wrong. Like when I was taking notes and stuff was like I thought was oh, you. And then when I Googled for humors, like the medical practice, it's spelled O R. So I'm really glad you pointed that out. So I spell it correctly in our episode.

Charlie:

Sure. I mean, we knew it was going to be a little more confusing for people, but we wanted to set it aside from just people thinking that it's like a party comedy game, I guess. Make it seem a little bit more like English. Yeah, I don't know. mystical. Yeah, yep. Okay.

Rachel:

Well, this is your time to tell people how they can find you. You know where you might be? Yeah, social media, website, blog, anything like that. So go ahead and plug yourself.

Charlie:

Okay. Yeah, you can find me on most social media. My name is Charlie, McCarran MCC, ARR o n. O Instagrams. Probably the most fun to follow me on because I post pictures of my prototypes and progress and other and my bearded dragon

Rachel:

so I'll just follow you right now.

Charlie:

And other than that, I don't know, I put some of my music on YouTube and Spotify. So if you're into folk song writing, plus electronic music, sometimes video games scores. Yeah, you can find my stuff on Spotify to.

Jake:

Excellent. Awesome. We'll have to check it out because I do love video games scores. Nice.

Rachel:

So yeah, four humors is going to be out this October should be arriving at backers doorsteps any day and online for available for purchase, you know, asked about it at your friendly local game store. Check it out, I had a ton of fun with it. It is, you know, light, but very, like, still very strategic. I feel. So it was a good time.

Charlie:

I'm glad you enjoyed it. And I really appreciate you both having me on the podcast. Of course, Charlie,

Jake:

thank you for joining. I'm very excited to play it when we get it. Sounds good.

Rachel:

All right. And we will talk to you later. All right, Jake, it's time to answer the question. Would you rather play for humors or talk to Charlie than unplugging everything in your office so you can turn your desk 180 degrees, just to reset everything up for your PC recording and your streaming stuff as well as all your consoles, while wearing pants for some reason, because you're not allowed to take them off in your own house.

Jake:

Listen, I will take my pants off next time I have to do any of that stuff. But that being said, before I do this stuff, I would much rather play for humors. I have not played it yet. But I'm excited to. Yeah, it's a lot of fun, and I recommend it.

Rachel:

So there you have it. That is our interview with Charlie McCarron thank you again for coming on Charlie, and I'm looking forward to seeing your game get out into the world and having other people experience it.

Jake:

Yeah, me too. I'm excited to be one of those people. But thank you all so much for listening. As always, you can hit us up on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter at snowboard podcast. That's s OB o ARD podcast. We'd love to hear about any experiences that you've had playing this game. Or if you're excited to play it as well just let us know. You'll also be able to find pictures and short stories of other games we played recently and interact with us about all things tabletop gaming. You can also email us at We are so bored@gmail.com That's W E ar e s o b o ard@gmail.com. And make sure you subscribe so you'll get notifications when our new episodes are available. Also, if you could leave us a rating that really helps us out. It also really helps other people who may be interested in this podcast find us. You can also not do that on Spotify, instead of just a thumbs up. So that would help us a bunch and we do not have any shoutouts this time because we didn't really talk about a game that people would recognize.

Rachel:

We want to give a thanks to a n t podcast management for editing this episode. They are a professional podcast editing service and can be found at a&t Dash podcast. management.com. Thank you guys for doing that and make it sound good. I also want to thank our artist Mitchell Mims. He is accepting commissions and you could go and check him out on Instagram at MIMSCOSA RA or at his website, Mitchell mins M IC h e l m i m s.ca RR d.co.

Jake:

Once again, we are going to be streaming on Twitch again regularly. We stream board games every Wednesday, starting between five and seven Pacific Standard Time, depending on when it cut off work. We play a bunch of different types of board games and we have some good ones picked out for this month. Come check us out at twitch.tv/so board podcast. That's S O Bo AR D Podcast. I'm also on Twitch like to do retro games and other nerdy stuff. You can come check me out if that's your thing at twitch.tv/naughty Doc 541. That's NAU gh t y d OC. 541. Let's it. Thank you all so much for listening. We will see you next time,

Rachel:

which is next week because we're weekly right now.

Jake:

Bye bye. Listen, I will take my pants off next time I have to do any of that stuff.