Welcome to Ludology, an analytical discussion of the hows and whys of the world of board games. Rather than news and reviews, Ludology explores a variety of topics about games from a wider lens, as well as discuss game history, game design and game players.
We post a new Ludology episode every other week. In these episodes, hosts Erica Bouyouris, Gil Hova, Scott Rogers, and Sen-Foong Lim deep-dive into a single topic within game design, often with a well-regarded guest from the game industry. We generally focus on tabletop game design (mainly board games and RPGs), but we often pull in experts from all forms of games, from video games to escape rooms to slot machines.
On weeks where there is no flagship Ludology episode, we will alternate between two smaller mini-sodes.
GameTek is a long-running feature from the Dice Tower podcast by Ludology co-founder Geoff Engelstein that explores the math and science behind games. GameTek Classic episodes were once broadcast on The Dice Tower podcast, while other GameTek episodes were recorded specially for Ludology.
Biography of a Board Game is a series hosted by Scott Rogers that explores the history behind classic and modern board games. It was once on The Dice Tower, but has since moved full-time to Ludology.
We aim for most Ludology episodes to be timeless, so you are welcome to explore our entire catalog. Most of it should age quite well. The podcast was started in 2011 by Geoff Engelstein and Ryan Sturm, with Mike Fitzgerald taking over for Ryan in 2015. Gil joined the show in 2017 when Mike stepped aside, and Emma joined in 2019 when Geoff ended his tenure as host. Emma left in 2021, and Erica and Sen joined us.
Have your own thoughts about our topics? We encourage you to visit us at our guild on Boardgamegeek to get involved in a continuing discussion.
You can also email us at hello@ludology.net.
Ludology is made possible through the support and donations of listeners like you.
Become a Patron of Ludology:
Make a one-time donation here. The donation will take you to "Bedbug Comics" - that's Scott's account.
Ludology is part of The Dice Tower Network, the premier board game media network.
Oct 24, 2021
Geoff explains a mathematical algorithm that can help potential roommates figure out how to split the rent, if an even split would be unfair and the roommates do not value the rooms the same way. This mechanism is just dying to be used in a game!
Oct 17, 2021
Gil and Scott are delighted to welcome Martin Wallace back to the show. Martin was first on the show on Ludology 46 - Getting Down to Brass Tacks back in 2012 with Geoff Engelstein and a very enthusiastic Ryan Sturm. In this episode, we catch up with Martin to see what he's been up to in the last 9 years.
Martin is the...
Oct 3, 2021
Scott and Gil welcome Nikki Valens, designer of Mansions of Madness: Second Edition, Eldritch Horror, Legacy of Dragonholt, Quirky Circuits, and the upcoming Artisans of Splendent Vale. We talk about making programming games like Quirky Circuits, app-driven games like Mansions of Madness, and campaign games like...
Sep 26, 2021
Geoff continues his dive into the probability of Pop-O-Matic dice, this time discussing how experiment results can be misrepresented through P-Hacking.