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Elizabeth Hargrave, award-winning designer of the board games "Wingspan" and "Mariposas," is back, this time with a unique take on a continuing, decades-long Russian domestication project. "The Fox Experiment" is on Kickstarter now, and Elizabeth took the time to talk all about it with Evan Bernstein of the "Which Game First" and "Skeptics' Guide to the Universe" podcasts!
"The Fox Experiment" Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pandasaurus/the-fox-experiment/?gclid=CjwKCAjw-L-ZBhB4EiwA76YzOTNJWhzWY_isODcPNGMZpx07kseJ0mjnI_LZFUNR6RzzOK_mUvarABoCm6wQAvD_BwE
"Which Game First": https://whichgamefirst.com/
"Skeptics' Guide to the Universe": https://www.theskepticsguide.org/
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0:00
Hello, I'm Evan with Which Game First, a board game podcast, and I am joined by a very, very special guest today, Elizabeth Hargrave game designer
0:15
Hello, Elizabeth. Hello. How are you doing today? Good. It's a lovely Sunday morning in Washington, D.C
0:22
Yes. It is a nice fall morning, so thank you so much for being with me this morning
0:30
So let's go right to it. The Fox Experiment is your latest and greatest game currently on Kickstarter
0:38
My first question for you is, what led you to design a game based on the famous Silver Fox domestication experiments
0:48
I heard about the experiment. I don't even remember where. Maybe there's, I know there's a Radio Lab episode about it
0:56
And so it may have been that. And I just started thinking about how cool it would be to have a game where you somehow can actually record the results of a die roll in a way that you incorporate it in to the next round of a game
1:15
So like breeding foxes, making a baby fox, and somehow having that baby fox be an actual card in the game that you can then
1:27
draft later. So that's something that has been sort of the core mechanic in the Fox experiment
1:36
from the very beginning because that was sort of the mechanical inspiration that went along
1:43
with like, oh my God, this actual experiment in real life is like an amazing story that
1:48
would be really fun for people to learn about. That is. And in watching some of the videos
1:55
about, that have been produced so far about how the game is played, that is definitely one of the
2:00
major features of this game is that the players are going to be breeding the foxes and effectively
2:08
creating the new next generation of cards that gets played, filling in even so much as the names
2:17
of the actual animals that gets produced. And that's a real fun feature when it comes to games
2:24
anytime the player is allowed to have that additional level of input, in a sense, into the game
2:31
So a very, very nice feature there. Now, you must. Oh, go ahead
2:36
No, no, tell me. You say, it's, you know, when people first started talking about the Fox experiment and sort of
2:41
seeing the description, they were like, oh, this is a roll and right game, but it's, it's sort of
2:46
using roll and right materials. And the fact that we have figured out how to make cards that you can write on with a
2:53
dry-race worker in the board game industry, sort of taking advantage of those materials
2:59
But the mechanics of the game, I think, will feel much more like a larger Euro game to a lot of
3:07
people, but then it has this element of dry erase in it. No, it's a nice blend, and there is a lot, certainly a lot going on in the game
3:17
For the game itself, so you've had apparently this idea for a deal
3:23
a decent amount of time, at least going from the original concept to what is now, you know, the prototype and the Kickstarter
3:29
So how long have you been working on this? It's hard to count because there were times that I just wasn't working on it at all
3:40
I think I started working on it probably in 2019, I want to say
3:47
maybe even longer ago than that. I should know, I should look that up
3:56
But, well, no, it must have been earlier. I had it at a playtesting convention at Unpub in Baltimore in early 2019
4:07
And it was half-baked, definitely not at a stage that I would have pitched it
4:12
But at the time, John Gilmore was working for Pantasaurus games, and he sort of saw it
4:17
I said, I want to work on this with you. So that's how I ended up with pandasaurus
4:23
So I must have been working on it even before then. So it's been a few years
4:29
Yeah. But with with breaks for sure. Absolutely. And what was the biggest challenge
4:35
What do you think the biggest challenge was in designing the Fox experiment
4:40
I always had a mechanic where you gathering dice based on the parents the parent foxes and then rolling them to pass the traits down to the baby foxes
4:57
And for a while I had, but figuring out the exact right way to do that was probably the hardest part
5:04
So for a while I had it that you were sort of, you know, if you rolled even, then the mother's left hand, you know, there were traits on different sides of the fox and even or odd or higher
5:16
low determined which traits passed down. And some people just found that really hard to parse
5:23
And that was just with normal D6s. And so then we went from that to like roll a bunch of D6s and add the numbers up
5:33
And that determines what your babies get. But there's just too much variance
5:40
If you're rolling a bunch of D6s, if you roll 10 D6s, you could roll a six or you could roll a 60, right
5:46
That's right. It's not too big. And so we landed on these dice with symbols on them that are basically, like, they range from one to three in value
5:58
But also it matters how you can match them up with each other
6:03
And some of them are wild. And so there's like, and now it's, it became a very interesting little mini puzzle within the game, how you solve the dice
6:16
And that just felt great. So we finally ended up in the right place
6:23
And that was mostly my co-designer, Jeff Frazier, who came up with that
6:27
Actually, he was hired as a developer by Pandosaurus. And because he came up with that dice system, I was like, your name's going on the box
6:35
No, yeah, definitely. No, it's clever because in the game, like you said, you're allowed to, you can string your dice together
6:43
And you have a half of a symbol on one die and another half on another die or the wild die, the one that links them together
6:50
It's really a great concept and not something you see regularly at all in games that involve dice
6:59
So we're definitely looking at something very special there. And again, another fun aspect for the players
7:07
I think this happens a lot in game design. It was a case where it was a new mechanic that didn't really arise because we
7:13
we were being spontaneously creative, but it came out of trying to solve a problem in the game design
7:20
And then like this cool new thing emerged from that. Sounds like science to me
7:29
Yeah, and let's talk a little bit about the relationship in a sense between board gaming and science
7:37
Now, board gaming, obviously, it's a leisure activity. The main purpose for people is to have fun. But when it
7:43
comes to science theme board gaming. Does education take over as the primary goal or at least
7:51
as being as important as people basically enjoying the game? I think it depends on the designer
7:59
and the publisher, like the games that genius games put out. I think that is sort of their philosophy
8:05
that they want them really like usable in a classroom and that they're teaching. And they need to be
8:10
fun because you're never going to teach anybody anything if they're don't want to play the game
8:16
My approach has always been that I want a good game first
8:22
And I make games about things I'm interested in and I'm interested in the natural world on science
8:27
And I want the information in the game to be not wrong
8:36
And I want it to teach people something, but kind of in passing, like I think most of my games wouldn't be as obvious as like, oh, I would
8:52
pick this to teach people in a classroom setting about this subject. But it's, but it's certainly the
9:00
case that with most of my games, you're going to play them and come away knowing something you
9:04
didn't know before about whatever the subject is. So in a way you've sort of answered what my
9:10
My follow-up question to that was going to be. And that has to do with straying from sort of the purity of science and the scientific method itself
9:20
And the amount of latitude you have to have, obviously not every board game is a science class
9:26
It's not meant to be a substitute for that level of education
9:31
But at the same time you know there are certain levels that you can be comfortable with in which you allow yourself a certain latitude to say stray from the from the science itself And I would assume that you know you have to have that sort of flexibility in order to
9:49
achieve that balance. Yeah. And it can be really hard to figure out where the right line is sometimes. Mm-hmm
9:58
You know, with the, with the wingspan birds, all of the habitat and food
10:08
information on the cards is more or less accurate, but it's very abstracted
10:13
Like there are far more than three types of habitat in the world and like whether a specific
10:19
biome fits as like a grassland biome or not. Like I just have to shove things where it can sometimes
10:28
And sometimes I do sort of fudger on the edges because I want a particular ratio of habitats
10:37
on foods in the deck. And so I'm like, oh, I can kind of make this bird a grassland bird as well as a wetland bird or not
10:46
Those sorts of things. So it's, you know, and like I said, before my sort of gut thing is that I just want them to not be wrong
10:56
I don't want someone to look at it and be like, oh, like, that is impossible that that bird would ever be in the grassland
11:02
Avoid the major faux balls. Right. But there's a lot of gray area in the middle that you can sort of wave your hands around
11:16
And at the level of a board game, you just have to because you can't simulate the complexity that's out there in the world
11:25
No. The Foxes in the Fox experiment, right? We're talking about four sort of physical traits that emerged
11:32
into foxes, but there are hundreds of genes that are contributing to those four traits
11:38
And like, you can't stimulate that. You just have to wave your hands
11:43
And now you, it has to, in the end, it has to be fun. And as long as you're driving home, sort of the, the general main concepts
11:51
right of passing on traits from generation to the next generation. That seems to satisfy the, uh, the main concept that you, that the game is trying to, uh, bring
12:02
home and I think it successfully actually does that very well. Yeah
12:06
And the other really main concept from that experiment that I wanted to make sure came through is that they were really, in the game you get to pick foxes based on the all of the traits on their cards
12:19
But in the actual experiment, they were really only picking on the personality of the foxes
12:24
And there's all this biochemical stuff with like serotonin that's happening where the, the, the, the
12:32
personality of the foxes is actually partly is directly linked to those physical traits showing up because of the biochemistry of the personality and how it how that same biochemistry affects the emergence of physical characteristics
12:49
And so the way that we sort of made a nod to that in the dice mechanics is that there are these wild dice that are we call the friendly dice
13:01
So those you want because they're adding to all of your different traits, however you decide to make them at it
13:11
So I wanted to make sure that it was clear that it was not the traits being passed down in the way that we learned in biology class in school where like you have the pea plants
13:27
I forget what the different characteristics were. They're short or tall and they get passed down
13:33
Because that's not what happened in this experiment. What they figured out is that it's way more complicated than that
13:41
And that's really cool. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. When you read more about the Silver Fox experiment, it really draws you in and the results are just are just fascinating
13:53
In science in general, experiments are often more likely to go wrong than right and
14:01
errors become apparent as these experiments unfold. Do you find that there is a parallel with that part of the scientific process and the process of game design
14:13
That's a really good question, probably. Yeah. I mean, I, one of my pieces of advice that I always give to new game designers
14:21
people that are sort of design curious, is just know that your first draft of any game will be terrible
14:29
Like if you like my advice is always just make something and get it on the table and figure out the ways in which it is terrible because then you can fix them
14:40
And that probably is very similar to like, I want to explore this scientific area
14:46
I'm just going to test some stuff out. Oh, that didn't work. Why didn't it work
14:50
How do I fix it? Yeah, there probably are a lot of parallels there
14:56
I've definitely seen them over, over my time. And I don't think you could ever find a game designer who could say my initial ideas here found their way all the way to the very end product
15:09
And they had to make very few changes along the way. So no doubt about that
15:13
Now, the Fox Experiment board game, it's in a Kickstarter campaign right now
15:17
It's been very successful so far. And there's still a few days left for people to join and back this project
15:24
A lot of the stretch goals have already been reached. Do you, there's a new stretch goal, another stretch goal in line that is on the target
15:32
Do you want to talk a little bit about that? Do you have that up in front of you? I haven't looked this morning as we were at
15:38
I was not all day yesterday. Third Fox Meeple Design Player 6
15:43
Oh, yeah. So this has actually been something that's been getting a lot of commentary on the Kickstarter
15:53
So there are a lot of different Fox Meeple. options in this game. And so the retail game, the retail version comes with adorable little
16:05
wooden meatballs. And some people are very happy with those. And then a lot of the stretch goals
16:11
have been around these really cool plastic screen printed or heat transferred player pieces that
16:20
have actual fox art on them. So some of the art from the cards they're actually putting on
16:25
little standies that are little foxes in the different player colors. So you've been working
16:31
all the way through all the different players, all the way up through six players. And it looks like we
16:40
are about to hit the last Fox Meeple goal. And I know we have been talking about a couple more
16:46
stretch goals after that. So yeah, there's definitely more to come once that one gets unlocked
16:55
And it'll be a little bit more content for the game. That is exciting
17:00
That is exciting. So happy with the success of this project so far
17:04
And I want to wrap up with one more question for you
17:09
I hear that you're designing a game about mushroom collection. Is that true
17:14
Not about mushroom collection about the fact that mushrooms and trees transfer or trade nutrients
17:25
So the micro is a little sort of symbiotic relationship between mushrooms and trees
17:33
So in the game, you're actually playing from the point of view of a Douglas fir tree
17:40
trying to get your seedlings sort of out and established in the world
17:46
And this is a passion of yours, a hobby, something you're also very much interested in
17:51
is the world of mushroom. I'm actually the president of the Mycological Association
17:58
I'm a big mushroom fan. Oh my gosh, so absolutely. Yeah, and that system is just another, like a lot of people don't know that that exists
18:10
that like mushrooms and trees interact and have their roots sort of attached to each other
18:18
Absolutely, yes. Yeah, there's a lot going on there. There's stuff going on that's like, is there agency
18:24
in some of this system. Like they're finding out that the carbon that trees put out
18:32
into the network of mushrooms, some of that gets absorbed by other trees that are also attached to the same fungal network
18:42
And they've been finding that the carbon that goes out will get somehow preferentially absorbed by the offspring
18:51
that are related to the tree that put that carbon into this network. Wow
18:55
How does that happen? They don't know. No, that's fascinating. And I know my..
19:03
How did the tree send it to their offspring? We don't know. Oh, my gosh. My co-hosts on my science podcast would be thrilled to talk to you some more about that at a future date
19:13
That would be fantastic. That's great, Elizabeth. Congratulations, again, on another successful game
19:20
I look forward also to your future games and everything else. got coming up
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