INTERVIEW: Alf Seegert Takes the Road to Canterbury

Alf Seegert and friend playing Road to Canterbury

I don't recall when I first heard about The Road to Canterbury, but I knew I had to have it. I'm a huge fans of Middle English literature in general and Chaucer in particular, and was a member of the New Chaucer Society for a time. There's something in the strange beauty of the language, at once alien and familiar, that makes Middle English remarkably appealing. The Canterbury Tales in particular pulse with life and meaning, capturing a huge range of styles and emotions from highly cultivated to utterly base. (If the language is a real obstacle for you, just pick up a decent translation, such as David Wright's from Oxford World Classics rather than the newer one from Burton Raffel. It's worth taking the time to learn the original language, but if it's between a translation and nothing, then read a translation.)

Regular readers of SOP will know that I've covered the game several times since I first learned about it, but I like to have a number of plays before I commit to a final review. Short version: it's very good! A longer version will have to wait until it gets to the table at least one or two more times.

Recently, I got a chance to sit down with designer Alf Seegert (and by "sit down" I mean that we were both sitting at our computers at opposite ends of the country doing an email interview) to talk about his career and his latest game.

Alf's first two games, Bridge Troll (Z-Man games, $25) and Trollhalla (Z-Man Games, $50), each made the Games 100, and his newest game, The Road to Canterbury (Eagle Games, $60) is heading for the list as well., Seegert, a professor of English at the University of Utah, started designing game 10 years ago, and five of his early designs were finalists at the annual Hippodice board game design competition in Bochum, Germany: The Vapors of Delphi (2nd place, 2004), Bridge Troll (end-round finalist, 2005 -- later published by Z-Man Games), Ziggurat (end-round finalist, 2005), Mont-Saint Michel (end-round "Recommended Title," 2007), and TEMBO (3rd place, 2008 -- later published by Z-Man Games as Trollhalla). With Road to Canterbury, Seegert finally gets to merge his love of literature with his love of gaming, offering a unique take on Chaucer’s famous tales of garrulous pilgrims on their way to Canterbury.

Give us a bit of your gamer biography. What genres and styles have appealed to you throughout your life?

I didn’t become completely captivated by games until I was a teenager, when fantasy role-playing systems like Dungeons & Dragons and Tunnels & Trolls became a safe-haven for me. I loved Milton Bradley's electronic board game Dark Tower and in ninth grade I programmed a version of it into the high school mainframe computer (I used little monochrome ASCII characters to represent each player, the Tombs, the Bazaar, etc.). But except for an occasional session of the fantasy game Talisman, I didn't play many board games again until I hit thirty. I was spending a lot of time by myself playing computer games--and my girlfriend (now my wife) wanted me to play games with her instead. We did some research and stumbled on The Settlers of Catan, which proved a potent gateway drug into the brave new world (well, new to us) of Eurogames. Once we introduced Catan to our friends, Saturday nights quickly became a regular and much-anticipated “game night” event, which has continued now for over ten years.

What prompted you to make the leap from player to designer?

After encountering the brave new world of Eurogames, it wasn’t long before I felt compelled to take themes that interested me and make board games out of them. Sometimes it worked. Before long, I had several prototypes based on everything from geology to archaeoastronomy to ancient mythology to fairy tales. I sent some of my better designs to the Hippodice board game design competition in Bochum, Germany where several became finalists. With help from my fellow designers in the Board Game Designers Guild of Utah (www.bgdg.info), eventually I was able to interest major publishers in my designs and I’m on my way to my fourth published game as we speak.

Tell us a bit about your first published games, Bridge Troll and Trollhalla. How would characterize them, and what let to their development and publication? Also: what's with the troll thing?

I had encountered a sculpture in downtown Salt Lake City showing a Navajo woman leading sheep across a narrow bridge. I thought to myself how fun (and silly) it would be to put one of those wild-haired Scandinavian “Troll Dolls” beneath it, in homage to the fairy tale of “The Three Billy Goats Gruff.” Somehow the idea of actually playing one of these trolls became very appealing to me. In Bridge Troll you get to play as a troll who eats and extorts the travelers who try to cross your bridge. In Trollhalla I took these trolls out to sea where they became Viking-like marauders out to pillage and plunder islands full of pigs and peasants, nervous monks, and panicked princesses. Although these are both Eurostyle board games, they feel a bit like role-playing games to me because the players actually get to play the monsters. Part of my fascination with trolls was instilled in me during childhood by my Danish mother, who was convinced that scary trolls lived beneath the bridge in her hometown. Trolls are big in Scandinavia!

What elements of The Canterbury Tales made you think they might make a good theme for a game? Were you concerned that some might be bothered by the religious satire?

I grew up on British comedies like Monty Python and Black Adder, and I see both of them as inspired by Chaucer’s irreverence six hundred years on. In The Canterbury Tales, a company of medieval pilgrims journeys together from the Tabard Inn at the outskirts of London to the shrine of Thomas Becket at Canterbury, entertaining each other with stories along the way. Some of these tales are incredibly bawdy (and very funny). Many challenge existing social hierarchies and expose the hypocrisy of those who supposedly represent God and the church. Satire is a useful tool for cultural critique, and Chaucer was a Christian genuinely disturbed by religious corruption—and he found humor a better (and safer) vehicle for critique than direct denunciation. I thought it would be fun to make a humorous and “Chaucerian” game inspired by Chaucer’s own work. In The Road to Canterbury you play a greedy pardoner, and to succeed in filling your coin purse, you need to pardon pilgrims’ sins for quick cash. But to keep yourself in business you also have to tempt pilgrims to commit these very sins in the first place! You will bring along a special supply of bogus relics like “The Miraculous Moustache of Saint Wilgefortis” (a female, I might add) to help the pilgrim drive away unwanted sins and the like. So far, it appears that the theme of my game is sufficiently absurd that it draws more laughter than ire, even from the religiously inclined.

How does the theme mesh with the mechanics of play?

The game combines hand management, area control, and press-your luck mechanics: you must always make tough choices on whether to tempt a pilgrim to sin or to collect coins by pardoning sins in play. The catch is that the value of pardoned sins increases geometrically as the Sin cards accumulate, so you are “tempted” to let them really pile up—although doing so risks another player beating you to the punch! You can also cleverly play Relic cards to add some chaos to the game and deviously foil your opponents’ plans. I’ve put together a little Flash tutorial to help new players get a grip on how it all works at www.theroadtocanterbury.com

How did you choose the art and develop the aesthetic elements of the game?

A few years ago I stumbled upon Hieronymus Bosch’s tabletop painting The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things. Bosch’s deranged and demonic imagery and the rondel-style circle in the middle of the tabletop made me think that his painting might serve well as a game board, so I attempted a “posthumous collaboration.” It seems to have worked very well! Players say they love Bosch’s art on the board and on the Sin Cards, which give close-up images of Bosch’s representation of each individual “Deadly Sin.” I am a professor of English, so it was only natural to bring in seven pilgrims from The Canterbury Tales to create an unnatural Bosch-Chaucer hybrid. Each pilgrim has their own “favorite sin”: the Knight suffers from Pride, the Miller from Wrath, the Monk from Gluttony, etc., and for these illustrations Gryphon Games secured images from the early 15th Century Ellesmere Manuscript of The Canterbury Tales. The game’s “fine art” approach made it a suitable successor to Gryphon’s recent game Pastiche.

I understand you've achieved some measure of fame as a bad writer. What is the worst sentence you've ever written?

Well, my “claims to fame” in fiction writing are indeed all bad fiction entries in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, where the goal is to compose the worst opening sentence to a novel. I have scored several “Dishonorable Mentions” so far. My most efficient example is this one:

“The Zinfandel poured pinkly from the bottle, like a stream of urine seven hours after eating a bowl of borscht.”

And here is my best attempt to write an entire story in the self-enclosing style of Borges in a single sentence:

“Wet leaves stuck to the spinning wagon wheels like feathers to a freshly tarred heretic, reminding those who watched them of the endless movement of the leafy earth--or so they would have, if only those fifteenth-century onlookers had believed that the earth actually rotated, which they didn't, which is why it was heretical to say that it did--and which is the reason why the wagon held a freshly tarred heretic in the first place.”

Oil Springs of Catan and Ethical Gaming

Catan: Oil Springs is an impressive, free-to-download variant to the Mother of all Eurogames. Settlers on the island of Catan have struck oil. This new resource can be used like gold, or added to other resources to upgrade a City to a Metropolis. Its use, however, comes with a price: for every five oil used, an environmental disaster strikes. Based on the roll of the dice, this could be the removal of coastal settlements or the pollution of tiles so they no longer produce resources.

I won't pretend to agree with its anti-oil politics, but I have to give the designers credit for turning out an intelligent variant for Settles of Catan. The scenario is the work of Erik Assadourian and Ty Hansen, and was developed as part of Transforming Cultures Project of the Worldwatch Institute. Clearly, it was created with an agenda, despite protests to the contrary:

While taking on issues of pollution and climate change, we strongly wish to emphasize that we do not see this as a polarizing political effort, but simply as a way to draw attention to the tradeoffs inherently embedded in the usage of natural resources such as oil. The use of oil has brought with it great benefits, and it is not our intention to condemn its use in a general sense. However, science has shown that its overuse is now having a destabilizing effect on our climate, and responsible use has become more important than ever before. Our intention with this scenario is to draw attention to these challenges in a way that is both educational and enjoyable.

Given the design of the game, this claim is just silly. Using oil wipes out settlements and turns the landscape into a wasteland, which kind of makes it a "polarizing political effort" even for those of us who support common sense solutions to sustainability. I have no problem with that, mind you. If you have a case to make, make it boldly. Just don't pretend you're not creating a fairly obvious piece of anthropogenic global warming propaganda.

Those issues aside, I like it, with minor reservations. The new rules radically change the dynamics, forcing people to interact at a different level to make decisions about exploitation of oil. I'm not sure how much life it will have, since its agit-prop origins give it the grim, "eat your peas" tone of a lecture. The balance of the game is a bit off. Environmental catastrophe is an inevitable byproduct of using oil. This is only slightly mitigated by the ability of players to "sequester" oil, which involves shutting down oil production. (Do this three times and you gain 1 victory point.)

Thus, the game functions more like a social experiment, as players try to convince others not to pull the oil trigger even though it could mean victory. Since the point of playing is to win, this isn't really a reasonable approach from a perspective of pure gamesmanship. Opting out of a game-winning strategy in the interest of burnishing your environmental credibility in front of three-to-five other people shifts the focus from "game" to "social statement."

The issue of ethics and moral decision making in gaming is a deep and fascinating subject that has played an increasing role in computer and video game design over the past few years, but hasn't really made an impact on conventional gaming. This is largely because board games lack the character and narrative elements that make moral choices possible. With Oil Springs, some of that ethical decision making comes to Catan, but not quite as effectively. Video and computer games almost always provide a balanced approach to moral decisions: good or evil choices produce different results without stopping the game cold. There's less of that balance in Oil Springs. Evil has a name, and it is Oil. Every disaster roll produces a disaster. Catastrophe is inevitable. This changes the gaming dynamic from "dialog" to "lecture," with a pre-ordained outcome.

You can print out all the rules and pieces for free. Attach them to card stock or cardboard for better play. 

Boardcrafting: For the Catan Fan Who Has Everything

Tile-shifting can be moderately annoying when playing Catan, so a San Francisco craftsman is creating wooden tile sets and frames for the basic, 4th edition game, 4-player version. These handsome, laser-cut tiles can be bought in a variety of configurations from the Boardcrafting Kickstarter page, which has already attracted enough support to get the project off the ground. 

H/T Kevin Schlabach

The Road to Canterbury Arrives

To my house does The Road the Canterbury wend. As a lover of all things Chaucer and Middle English, I've been following Alf Seegert's The Road to Canterbury since I heard about it earlier this year. Alf was kind enough to have an advance copy of the game sent along, and it looks terrific. The art is derived from Hieronymous Bosch's famous Table Top of the Seven Deadly Sins and Last Four Things, as well as medieval illuminated manuscripts. Components are very well made and solid, although cards are a little small.

The gameplay, as my daughter remarked, is "EEEEEVIL." We did one full trial playthrough and enjoyed the mechanics, even though we made a rules mistake that we didn't catch till half-way through.

The game has you playing as The Pardoner, the cynical and corrupt churchman from The Canterbury Tales.  The Pardoner peddles forged indulgences and counterfeit relics in order to fleece the pilgrims. In this role, you draw a combination of Sin, Pardon, and Relic cards, which are played to various pilgrims from the tales. Sins are pardoned in sets, earning influence (known in the game as "corruption") as well as coin for the Pardoner. It's a pretty unique mechanic, and we need to run it through a few more test plays to see what we think, but first impressions are positive. As the daughter said at the end of the first test game, "It's still evil, but fun."

Settlers of Catan: The Novel

Yep, it's for real. I remember reading about it when it was published in Germany a few years back. Now it's set for an English-language translation and publication on November 15th. Let's let Amazon explain the rest:

Wind howls through the village. Swords clash. Voices call desperately for help. It's the year 850, and the people of the small coastal village Elasund are feeling bitter. Hostile nations are attacking, taking everything and even murdering women and children and cattle. The village Council consults the runes and determines the clan's future: Candamir and his followers will build ships and head west to find a new home, leaving Osmund and his loyal ones in the north. After much effort, the settlers arrive in legendary Catan. But instead of their dream of island tranquility, fraternal strife threatens the entire community from the beginning... In this vivid depiction inspired by the wildly popular Settlers of Catan role playing game, Rebecca Gable takes readers on a journey that will feel at once familiar and fascinating to Catan’s many fans.

Struggle for Catan: Tutorial

There's a new interactive tutorial available to give you a taste of Struggle for Catan. Check it out.

Days of Wonder: Memoir '44 Out of Beta & Small World Underground

When I loaded up Days of Wonder's new online version of Memoir '44, I could swear my copy said it was still in beta, and mentioned that in my announcement. It has, in fact, been out of beta since late June, and is humming along quite nicely.Thanks to Christine Goutaland for correcting me.

Also, we got a chance over the weekend to play a warm-up game of Small World Underground, and we're liking it a lot. The new races are clever, the powers are dastardly, and the integration of places and relics puts a nice spin on the play. One caveat, however: don't use this one to introduce new players to Small World. The new additions add a little the learning curve and might put off novices.

Legend of the Five Rings Gets Board

It's been years since I've played Legend of the Five Rings, but in all my many game purges, the original Wizards of the Coast collectible card game version of L5R is one I've kept. It's a great CCG with a lush setting and solid mechanics. It's good to see that AEG (the original developers of the game) are still publishing and expanding the game line.

Debuting in August at Gen Con is a new L5R board game by Fréderic Moyersoen (designer of Sabateur). Called NINJA, Legend of the Scorpion Clan, the game "features fast play, hidden movement, limited information, bluff and guile." The game is for 2-4 players, and comes with more than two dozen 28mm miniature figures, four pads of secret maps, 58 playing cards, and a full-color map. Here's the official line:

The game centers around one very dangerous night at a castle in the provinces of the Lion Clan. Honorable Lion samurai stand vigilant watch around the castle, protecting it from harm. The Scorpion Clan sends one well trained ninja to infiltrate the castle for nefarious purposes… it may be to assassinate an imperial guest under the Lion’s protection, or poison the well, or steal the daimyo’s war plans for the coming season. Whatever the goal, the ninja has vowed to accomplish it, or die trying. Worse yet for the Lion Clan, the ninja has an accomplice: a traitor among the ranks of the Lion samurai whose true loyalty lies with the Scorpion. 

New Arrivals: Godzilla, Catan & Pixies

Godzilla: Kaiju World Wars (ToyBiz, $70) unexpectedly arrived last week, landing with a mighty thud on the porch as the UPS guy ran for his life shouting "Aaaaiiiii! Gojira! Run!" I unboxed it, marveled at the lovely figures, marveled further at the hideous gameboard, and then sat down with the manual.

And there I was still sitting, an hour later, trying to search my mind for a game with worse documentation. I haven't tackled the gameplay yet, although I finally figured out that it's a pretty straightforward combat/destruction game, with Godzilla and three other monsters taking turns stomping the city and each other. The mechanics appear to have some potential, but I'll obviously need to dig more deeply before I can deliver a verdict.

The manual, however, is a disgrace. It's not merely that the gameplay, the pieces, and even the purpose of the game are poorly explained; it's that all of this is printed in teeny tiny print and without any color. The black-and-white illustrations are so dark that you can't actually tell what they're depicting. Thus, I'm not really sure what all the little chits are supposed to represent. I've heard that this was a cost-cutting measure, but if so it was the worst possible decision.

I'm a big kaiju (rubber monster suit) fan, so I was really looking forward to this one. I intend to give it every chance to overcome the poor initial impression it made.

The Rivals For Catan (Mayfair, $20) is a rebooting of Catan: The Card Game, which I haven't played in ages. I've been able to play the basic game twice, and enjoyed it both times. I want to get about 6 more plays done before I review it, but thus far it's proving to be a quick, enjoyable slice of Catan. It seems to be better balanced than the original, and it was certainly easier to pick up and play with a novice gamer. Stay tuned for a full review

Pixy Cubes (BlueOrange, $16) is another clever offering from BlueOrange games. Think of it as a cube-based tangram. The game comes with 16 dice-sized cubes, with each face depicting a different pattern. These cubes must be assembled to match certain patterns depicted on a set of cards. It has a couple of options for competitive play, but it works just fine as a solo game.

On the videogame front, everyone in the house has been spending a lot of time with this guy:

Small World Underground

Designer Phillipe Keyaerts and Days of Wonder are taking Small World subterranean. Small World Underground features new races, new powers, and a whole new underground map. Keyaerts has this to say about the new Small World:

Thoughts of changing the landscape of Small World have been in my head for quite some time. A land filled with Mountains seems to require running water, and so now we have Underground rivers. There is a double impact of the river: being difficult to cross, it can protect your regions... but you can also navigate the river to cross the board quickly. Mountains also begat Volcano regions that can't be conquered, which of course leads us to a race (Flames) that can exploit them!

Another important idea I had in mind were legendary artifacts which can be transferred from generation to generation. While previously powers were specific to a race, now we have new strong powers but that can be claimed by different races. Some of those artifacts didn't need to move on the board so they became magical places which opened up my mind to even more ideas on how they could be used.

Even when a game is finished and published, it's not easy to stop working on the design. I'm really happy to have the opportunity to look back at some ideas and explore the Small World universe even more deeply with Small World Underground.

SWU is now available for preorder. You can check out the official website for photos and rules.

Spiel des Jahres: Nominees for 2011

"Spiel des Jahres" is German for "Game of the Year," and it's the most prestigious award in board gaming. A select group of German game critics puts forth various nominees in several different categories, and the winners (and even the nominees) can always expect a considerable spike in sales.

The Game of Year nominees are:

• Qwirkle (an old MindWare title that was just released in Germany this year: it's on sale for 57% off at Amazon)
• Forbidden Island (Matt Leacock's family friendly version of Pandemic)
• Asara (Rio Grande Games)

A new category called "Kennerspiel des Jahres" was introduced this year for more complex games. Those nominees are:

• 7 Wonders (Asmodee)
• Strasbourg (Pegasus Spiele)
• Lancaster (Queen Games)

A third category, "Kinderspiel des Jahres," nominates children's games. This year, the nominees are

• Das ist der Wyrm drin (Zoch)
• Magician's Kitchen (Playroom)
• Monster-Falle (Kosmos)

I believe only four of these games are easily available in the US right now. Those are:

Ticket to Ride and Bohnanza Are Now Apps

The headline pretty well says it all.  Ticket to Ride is iPad only. Here's a 5 minute video walk through from Days of Wonder.


Bohnanza, a port of the classic bean-planting card game, is available in regular and HD flavors. I've spent some time with the Bohnanza app and it plays fairly well, albeit a bit slowly.

Both of these are classic Eurogames, now available in handy portal formats for a fraction of their original price. With Tikal released last month and Puerto Rico on the way, the Spring is shaping up to be a very good season for mobile Eurogames.

The Rivals For Catan: The Card Editor

I haven't had a chance to play The Rivals for Catan, but I just noticed that Mayfair has a custom card creator for the game. Here's how they describe it:

Here you have the possibility to create your very own playing card within minutes. The “Harald” card serves as a template. Just insert a picture, choose a name, and create a short text for your very own hero card. After that, all you have to do is save your work as a JPG or PDF file, print it, and glue it to the original “Harald” card.

Z-Man Updates

The new Z-Man newsletter is online in PDF, and it has details on 3 upcoming games: the tile-laying game Mondo, an area-control game called Palenque, and the Discworld-inspired Guards! Guards! I've been really enjoying the Z-Man stuff I've seen lately, and I'm particularly eager to get my hands on Troyes. Check out the newsletter for more details.

Updates on The Road to Canterbury

Game designer Alf Seegert sent me a couple of links about the progress of his upcoming game, The Road to Canterbury (Gryphon Games), which I previewed last month.

First up is a long and interesting designer diary written by Alf in in which he explains the origin and evolution of his concept and the way he turned his love for the writing of Geoffrey Chaucer into a game.

The game also now has a Kickstarter Campaign, which is an intriguing new trend to fund and support projects during their development. If the game reaches the $10,000 threshold for support and pre-sales, then publication is guaranteed. As of this writing, they're already past the $7,000 mark with 42 days to go. A $45 "investment" gets you free copy of the game. (It functions like a pre-order.) Higher donations come with nifty bonuses. Check out the Kickstarter site for more details.

Alf and I have exchanged a few emails as we discussed his concerns that people with religious sensibilities might be offended by the game. (I'm a Catholic catechist and lecturer, and I begin work on my Masters in Theology this summer.) The game focuses on Chaucer's character of the Pardoner, a corrupt churchman who sold indulgences and preyed on people's sins. The game places each player in the role of the Pardoner, attempting to get people to commit sins and then profiting from them. These are deadly sins, however, so push too far, and a player could simply die.

Chaucer is one of my great passions, as is medieval Catholicism. The game is true to its period and sources, and if it seems to play lightly with the serious matter of sin and clerical corruption, it also shows the deadly effects of both. In a society that tends to dismiss the very notion of sin, that's a valuable thing. Chaucer himself remained a pious Catholic until his death, and at the end of his life made an "apology" disavowing and repenting for his more bawdy works. (Though this, too, may have been his idea of a joke. Sometimes it's hard to tell with Chaucer.) His satirical work was meant to be medicinal, much like In Praise of Folly by Erasmus. (Erasmus was shocked to learn that his biting satire on Church corruption was thoroughly enjoyed by its main target, Pope Leo X: the man who turned the selling of pardons into an art form.)

I'm looking forward to Road to Canterbury. I think it looks fun and I like the subject matter, but I also think it may be a useful teaching tool.

Troyes from Z-Man Games

Designers: Sebastien Dujardin, Xavier Georges, Alain Orban
Publisher: Z-Man
Players: 2-4
Ages: 12+
Time: 90 min.
Price: $55
Publication Date: April 2011

Z-Man will be publishing the US version of Troyes (published in Europe by Pearl Games) this month.

Medieval games always get my attention, but I'm looking forward to this one because of Troyes (pronounced "Trwah") and its important place in history. The Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul, which forms the major theme of this game, is one of the masterpieces of Gothic design. Begun in 1200 (which is the starting point for the game) it remains incomplete to this day. The city also has links to the founding of the Knights of the Temple of King Solomon, better known as the Knights Templar. Their founder, Hughes de Payens, was born nearby in the 11th century, and St. Bernard of Clairvaux created their rule and officially organized the group at the Council of Troyes in 1128-29.

Troyes is also important because of its connection Chrétien de Troyes, one of the greatest poets of the Middle Ages and the man responsible for a large chunk of the Arthurian legend, particularly the grail lore. The story of Sir Percival, the Fisher King, the bleeding lance (identified with the Spear of Longinus), and the holy grail (actually a serving dish, not a cup) all spring from Chrétien's Perceval, le Conte du Graal. (There's no reference to the grail prior this story, not even in the form of a grail-shaped beacon from Castle Anthrax.)

Chrétien, Pope Urban IV, Hughes de Payens, Henry I, and other historical figures all feature in the game, which spans 400 years. Here's the official description:

Troyes is a strategy game in which you represent a rich family from the Champagne region of France, using your influence to recruit and supervise individuals from the three prominent domains: military (associated with the color red in every aspect of the game), religious (white), and civil (yellow).

Each domain offers different benefi ts: The military permits you to fight with greater effi cacy against invasions. The clergy focuses on completion of the cathedral, and education of the peasants and the military. The peasants toil to fill your coffers. The citizens of the city provide a work force, represented by dice. You use the work force in different ways: to perform various activities supervised by your tradesmen, to build the cathedral, to grapple with unfortunate events, or even to recruit new citizens. 

Each of these actions requires utilization of one group of 1 to 3 dice. In your actions, always regard the goals of the famous character that inspires your family. This individual is one of several very influential people whose principles have helped make the city what it is today! In fact, if you can figure out whose principles the other families follow, you can maximize your own fame, because each family will be scrutinized by all of these famous figures. The player who has garnered the most fame, in the form of victory points, will win the game!

Rules (PDF)
Card Explanations (PDF)

Alan Moon on Airlines Europe

W. Eric Martin has done a terrific piece on Alan Moon and Airlines Europe, the upcoming redesign of Moon's first game, Airlines.

"It's sort of fun to work on an existing game and try to improve it," says Moon, who started work on what became Airlines Europe in 2007. "The design has been around so long and been through so many different versions. I'd do something, then change something else. The prototype went back and forth between a railroad and airline game a number of times."

It will be fascinating to see how Moon redesigns one of his earliest efforts after 20 years of experience, including certified hits like Ticket to Ride and Union Pacific (particularly since Union Pacific and Airlines are based on the same fundamental design). These are primarily stock trading games, with players scoring points for any stock they have in play.

Airlines Europe is due this year from Rio Grande Games.

Mo Rocca Does Gen-Con

With appearances by Scott Nicholson! Bob Carty! And more! It's actually a really good segment on Eurogaming, from Sunday Morning on CBS. (Let it preload or it may stop and start.)

The Road to Canterbury

Designer: Alf Seegert
Publisher: FRED/Gryphon
Players: 2-3
Ages: 10+
Time: 45-60 minutes
Due: Summer 2011

One of my useless skills is the ability to read and recite Middle English, the language of Chaucer (The Canterbury Tales) and Langland (Piers Plowman). It's an ability that serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever other than giving me pleasure, and those are the things that tend to make life worthwhile.

I am an unapologetic medievalist. Civilization started to go pear-shaped with the Renaissance and really went to Hell in a handbasket (or perhaps Sheol in a sackbut?) with the Enlightenment. Medieval literature, art, history, and theology are fascinating to me. So, naturally, I was thrilled to see all of them converging with my love of gaming in Alf Seegert's upcoming game The Road to Canterbury.

Seegert is the designer of Trollhalla and Bridge Troll (both from Z-Man Games) as well as an English professor at the University of Utah. When I read Seegert's discussion of the game in his interview with Dice Hate Me, I wrote to him asking for details. 

"It might sound weird considering that it's based on Chaucer and I'm a literature professor," he replied, "but it's not too heavy on narrative--it's a more Euro-style design with different cards (Pilgrim, Sin, Pardon, and Relic cards--with art largely drawn from the Ellesmere Manuscript of the Canterbury Tales) that all interact together with a main gameboard that tracks the progress of the journey to Canterbury and shows which sin is currently denounced by the Parson, and which Pilgrims are currently available to tempt with sins and then pardon for ready cash. The board is itself based on Hieronymus Bosch's 16th c. tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins."

Bosch: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Last Four Things

Here's the official description of The Road to Canterbury.

Greed, Pride, Gluttony, Wrath, Luxury, Idleness, and Envy—the infamous “Seven Deadly Sins.” For the faithful, they instill horror. For you, on the other hand, they present a wonderful business opportunity! In The Road to Canterbury, you play a medieval pardoner who sells certificates delivering sinners from the eternal penalties brought on by these Seven Deadly Sins. You make your money by peddling these counterfeit pardons to Pilgrims traveling the road to Canterbury. Perhaps you can persuade the Knight that his pride must be forgiven? Surely the Friar’s greed will net you a few coins? The Miller’s wrath and the Monk’s gluttony are on full public display and demand pardoning! The Wife of Bath regales herself in luxury, the Man-of-Law languishes in idleness, and that Prioress has envy written all over her broad forehead. And the naughty stories these Pilgrims tell each other are so full of iniquity they would make a barkeep blush! Pardoning such wickedness should be easy money, right?

Not quite. For you to succeed as a pardoner, you’ll need to do more than just sell forged pardons for quick cash. To keep your services in demand, you will actually need to lead these Pilgrims into temptation yourself! Perhaps some phony relics might help? There is also one big catch. The Seven Deadly Sins live up to their name: each sin that a Pilgrim commits brings Death one step nearer, and a dead Pilgrim pays no pardoners!

So much to forgive, so little time. Will you be able to outwit your opponents by pardoning more of these Pilgrims’ sins before they die or finish their pilgrimage to Canterbury?

Chaucer in the Ellesmere Manuscript

The game is due from FRED/Gryphon this summer, and Seegert is working with the publisher to finalize the art for the board and cards. I'm guessing the "Last Four Things" part of the painting, with Bosch's typically vivid depiction of the torments of Hell, will probably not appear in a game intended for family play. The Ellesmere Manuscript, which is the other artistic inspiration for the game, is the most famous and elaborate illuminated manuscript of The Canterbury Tales, with illustrations of the pilgrims and Chaucer himself. 

(Pointless Digression: As an added bonus for conspiracy theorists, the Ellesmere Manuscript was owned by John de Vere, the 12th Earl of Oxford, who wound up at the wrong end of the headsman's ax for his loyalty to the House of Lancaster in the Wars of the Roses. He was the ancestor of Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford and the man some people believe wrote the works of William Shakespeare, despite the inconvenient fact of his being dead when Macbeth, The Tempest, and Henry VIII were actually written. However, I think these connections prove incontrovertibly that Geoffrey Chaucer actually wrote the complete works of William Shakespeare! Alas. the whole Oxford/Shakespeare debate is about to go massively mainstream thanks to a big-budget movie from crap-auteur Roland Emmerich.) (These rambling asides are bonus content, and are added free of charge.)

I'll write some more about The Road to Canterbury as it gets closer to completion.

Other games by Alf Seegert:

h/t: Dice Hate Me

The Walled City of Carcassonne

Atlas Obscura did a brief entry today on "La Cite Mediavale de Carcassonne", the restored medieval walled city that inspired the popular game series. It's a concise overview of the famous French city, so for those who want some more information on the real thing, point your browser at a couple of official French cultural & tourism sites for maps, history, interactive tours, and more. (English versions are available for both of these sites.) Its famous concentric walls and blue roofs will be familiar to fans of the game.