February 10, 2014 Podcast

Show open: favorite childhood games

• What was your favorite board or card game growing up?

The show opens from the Pathway Studios in Johnston Proper with the hosts welcoming listeners to a games-themed night. Each person in the packed studio names a favorite childhood board or card game — Monopoly, Sorry, Scrabble, Careers, Chutes and Ladders among them — and trades jokes about house rules like putting money on free parking. The banter includes a running gag about a host inventing a Monopoly clone called 'One guy owns everything,' and the guest inventor Chris Roloff is asked about his favorite growing up.

Chris Roloff: how a dad became a game designer

• How did you get into designing games?

Guest Chris Roloff, inventor of the card game Go Diving, is introduced to the studio. He explains that he stumbled into game design about two years ago while fiddling with his homeschooled daughter's math manipulatives — double-sided fish tokens and dice — trying to build a game around the components. He describes becoming obsessed with designing a complete game from limited pieces and no board.

BoardGameGeek, copyright, and the business of games

Roloff recounts researching the hobby on BoardGameGeek and learning that game mechanics cannot be copyrighted, which removed his fear that someone would steal an unpublished design. He notes Hasbro's patent on the Magic: The Gathering 'tap' gesture as a rare exception, and the hosts riff on patenting dice rolls and hippos eating marbles. The discussion covers small print runs, why designer games cost $30-$50, and the Games and More store at Valley West Mall.

Designer games and games as shared experience

Roloff recommends designer games like Ticket to Ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, and Fluxx, and shares a house rule for Candyland — draw three cards and choose the play order — that turns a luck-only kids' game into a thinking game. A host reflects on staying up late playing Aggravation with his grandmother as a kid and why tabletop games stick in memory in a way apps cannot duplicate. Roloff illustrates the difference with Carcassonne, which his five-year-old daughter plays and wins, versus the family playing the smartphone version alone.

Station break and Daniel Johnson welcomed back

The hosts do a station identification for the KTIA radio audience, noting the broadcast runs roughly ten to eleven with the remainder continuing on the podcast, and point listeners to livefromthepath.org and Stitcher. They welcome Daniel Johnson back to the studio after about six months away and ask what he has been up to.

Daniel Johnson retires the j j persona, launches In Search of X

Daniel Johnson explains that last July he retired his artist persona j j — a name he created at age ten or eleven — because he had outgrown it and his ideals had evolved. He is reemerging with a new project called In Search of X, built on the idea that everyone is searching for something, and hopes to be writing now, in the studio by March, and back on the road by summer. A host asks whether stepping out of the Christian-artist box changes his relationship with God, and Johnson says the old brand's impossible pedestal made honest talk about struggle impossible.

The Christian music machine and its pedestals

Johnson describes the fickleness of Christian audiences — a Christian artist who slips is finished, while a mainstream artist who mentions Jesus is celebrated — citing Lecrae, Kanye West's 'Jesus Walks,' Jay-Z, and P.O.D. Roloff adds the Phil Robertson/Duck Dynasty controversy, saying he refused to rally behind Robertson because the man is not his leader and 'the world is watching' how Christians portray Jesus to outsiders. The group lands on the Israel-demanded-a-king pattern: 'Give us Phil Robertson. Give us Bob Dylan... but not Jesus, because he confronts me.'

Follow Christ, not the Christian show

A host shares that his six-year-old daughter told him kids at school laugh at her and won't play with her for talking about Jesus, and that her boldness convicted him about his own evangelism. The group discusses the Mumford and Sons frontman and Bono distancing themselves from the 'Christian' label, and one host reframes 'taking the Lord's name in vain' as bearing God's name while living in vain. They close the stretch on extending the same grace to judgmental religious people that they give to obvious sinners, since both need the same redemption.

Go Diving: where to buy it; KTIA signs off

• When and where can listeners buy the Go Diving game?

Roloff says Go Diving will be available through facebook.com/rolloffgames and that the copy they played before the show is the only one in existence. The hosts confirm the KTIA radio broadcast is ending, direct radio listeners to livefromthepath.org and the podcast feed, and say podcast listeners will continue after the break.

The dog's-bum dice story

A host tells the story of playing a dice game with his daughters when his three-year-old took a die under the coffee table, put it in the dog's rear end, sniffed it, and announced 'that smells terrible.' He admits laughing so hard he embarrassed her and felt bad, while his six-year-old was overcome with laughter.

Dear LFTP: the Valentine's Day standoff

• How do I tell my boyfriend that Valentine's Day matters to me without making things worse?

A host reads a Dear LFTP letter from a woman living with her boyfriend of two and a half years, who calls Valentine's Day a manufactured holiday and never buys her cards or flowers, and asks how to tell him it matters without making things worse. The advice: she is giving him everything with no commitment, so he has no reason to pursue her — move out, find Jesus, then date; Roloff recommends Gary Chapman's The Five Love Languages. Secular's answer cites an NPR report on the holiday's roots in ancient Rome — the emperor Claudius executing two Valentines, Pope Gelasius folding it into Lupercalia — and suggests lowering the bar.

Dear LFTP: telling Amy the truth about Jake

• How do I tell my seven-year-old daughter the truth about her absent biological father?

A Dear LFTP letter from a mother asks how to tell her seven-year-old daughter Amy why her biological father Jake never visits, now that her adoptive father has formally adopted her. The consensus is radical honesty at her level: don't soften the blow, don't call him a jerk, but don't lie — illustrated with a story of a foster child who discovered the lie at eighteen and saw the family fall apart. Roloff cites adoption into Christ and 1 John 4:18 ('perfect love casts out fear'), and Secular advises staged, age-appropriate answers and warns Amy may search for Jake online as a teen.

Daniel heads out; Dear LFTP: Dawn texts mom daily

• Is it peculiar that my brother's girlfriend texts our mother multiple times a day?

Daniel Johnson says his goodbyes and heads to the gym while the hosts tease more about him coming up. The final Dear LFTP letter asks whether it is peculiar that the letter-writer's brother Jared's younger girlfriend Dawn texts their mother multiple times a day; the hosts call it a nonissue and tell her to stop being nosy. Secular speculates Dawn may need a mother figure or be ingratiating herself, and the hosts close out the advice segment.

Roloff's game shelf and Ameritrash vs. euro games

Roloff teases his other designs: Samson and Delilah (a card game), a Nim's Island-inspired memory game to be rethemed as Mice in the Kitchen or Three Hungry Mice, a dice-based two-player paintball game, and Legal Limit, a fishing set-collection game with secret licenses and a bribable DNR officer. He and the hosts contrast 'Ameritrash' mass-market games — Monopoly as 'Candyland for grown-ups' — with euro-style games like Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride, where players pursue their own goals and competition is incidental. The segment ends with a joke endorsement quote attributed to 'Pastor Darren Hudson' for a game box.

Games under communism? Sponsors and sign-off

• Do board games sell in communist countries?

A host asks whether board games sell in communist countries, given that games reward capitalist-style choices; Roloff notes Germany's huge tabletop scene and the agricultural themes of euro games, and they muse that entertainment is how cultures change. The show closes with sponsor thanks to Bob Eisenlauer of the Eisenlauer team and Westfield Veterinary Hospital during pet dental month, plus a tease of 'Pope style' advice next week.