board games | Polygamer

Polygamer #90: Athena Z Peters of Adventure Pub

Posted on June 19, 2019 by Ken Gagne

Athena Z Peters is the founder and co-owner of Adventure Pub, a gaming gastropub located in the suburbs of Boston in Arlington, Massachusetts. Friends, families, and strangers can order from a full food and drink menu, borrow from a library of 400 board games, card games, and role-playing games, and even reserve event space for their Dungeons & Dragons campaign. Whether you’re looking to try a game before you buy, discover something new, revisit a favorite classic, or enjoy a good meal, Adventure Pub will accommodate all these tastes.

Prior to Adventure Pub opening its doors in December 2018, Peters worked in the video games industry, most recently as an executive producer at Turbine, where she managed such projects as Lord of the Rings Online and Batman: Underworld. In this interview, I ask Peters what prompted the career change from digital games to physical; what’s behind the emerging trend of gaming cafés; whether the popularity of Game of Thrones and the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has driven players to board games; what rare or unusual games visitors might find in the pub’s library; whether she might open an indie game studio next; and how she juggles all this with her performance group, Incantrix Productions.

Stream the audio edition of this interview below or from iTunes, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Overcast, Pandora, Pocket Casts, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, RadioPublic, or the Internet Archive. Click past the jump for links to resources mentioned in this episode.

Continue reading →

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:02:37 — 29.5MB) | Embed

Polygamer #87: Tifa Robles and The Explorers of Azullucent

Posted on March 6, 2019 by Ken Gagne

Tifa Robles is the author of The Explorers of Azullucent, a young-adult fantasy novel currently on Kickstarter. Over 16 years in the making, this book features a trio of diverse female protagonists on an epic adventure of discovery. Tifa is no stranger to writing, being a regular contributor to the board game website Tabletop-Test. Her love for gaming continues as co-host GenCon’s TableTakes show and as founder and former organizer of the Lady Planeswalker Society, a community for introducing players to Magic: The Gathering.

In this episode, Tifa and I reunite after three years since her last appearance on Polygamer. We chat about how her book has evolved over almost two decades; the advantages of going the crowdfunding, self-published route; who she turned to for help with peer reviews, art design, and crowdfunding; how a degree in creative writing informs her non-fiction writing; how a minor in biological anthropology can be essential to developing empathy; the challenges and tricks to being a writer with dyslexia; and how she juggles it all with being a mom.

Stream the audio edition of this interview below or from iTunes, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Spoke, Overcast, Pandora, Pocket Casts, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, RadioPublic, or the Internet Archive. Click past the jump for links to resources mentioned in this episode.

Continue reading →

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:05:34 — 30.9MB) | Embed

Polygamer #47: Mike Robles on fighting & board games

Posted on July 13, 2016 by Ken Gagne

Mike Robles, social media manager for mental health non-profit Take This, is an industry veteran with many prominent studios on his résumé, including Microsoft, Wizards of the Coast, and Lone Shark Games. He helped build and support the Killer Instinct community when Rare’s fighting game debuted on the Xbox One, and he’s an frequent attendee at the Evolution World Championship Series, occurring this weekend in Las Vegas. Mike is also involved in the Magic: The Gathering community, helping onboard new players through the Lady Planeswalker Society, an organization founded by his partner, Tifa Robles. Mike and Tifa recently earned their first game design credits when they contributed to Widow’s Walk, the first expansion for Betrayal at House on the Hill, the popular board game from Avalon Hill. But his crowning achievement may’ve been interviewing Stan Lee on-stage at Emerald City Comic-Con 2015.

In this episode of Polygamer, Mike and I discuss how new gamers can be introduced to complex fighting games like Killer Instinct, and whether tournaments are best held online or off; why Street Fighter V launched with such poor offline support; how Mike and Tifa came to join Anita Sarkeesian and Zoé Quinn on the roster of contributors to Widow’s Walk, and why Dead of Winter is the board game currently occupying his time; how Mike’s role as “Mr. Tifa” has evolved at the Lady Planeswalker Society while he and Tifa prepare to welcome their first child; how Mike will juggle being a stay-at-home dad while working for Take This; how to connect a gamer friend with the mental health resources they may need; and what Stan Lee is really like off-stage.

Continue reading →

Podcast: Download (Duration: 58:44 — 27.7MB) | Embed

Polygamer #13: Lorien Green of pinball documentary Shoot Again

Posted on January 14, 2015 by Ken Gagne

Lorien Green is a filmmaker, documentarian, gamer, parent, and introvert. In 2009, without any background in video production, she set out to film a documentary about the growing popularity of board games. The result, Going Cardboard, was a success, setting her on the path to her current project: a documentary about the resurgence of pinball called Shoot Again.

In this episode of Polygamer, Lorien discusses how she got into filmmaking and pinball collecting and the technical know-how needed for both; the challenges of attending conferences, shooting interviews, and conducting director Q&A as an introvert; how she juggles these pursuits with her growing addiction to indie games on Steam; and how she’s raising her two children to be the next generation of geek.

Download the audio edition of this interview below or from iTunes, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Spoke, Overcast, Pandora, Pocket Casts, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, RadioPublic, or the Internet Archive. Click past the jump for links to resources mentioned in this episode.

Continue reading →

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:14:22 — 38.1MB) | Embed