Critical Role & Sagas of Sundry - The Secret History of Board Games (w/ Tim Clare)

Episode Date: June 11, 2025

How is Abraham Lincoln’s beard responsible for modern board gaming? Did Swedish prisons really make inmates roll death saves? What is it about board games that sink their hooks into us? This week on Quests N' Answers, Dan Casey sits down with author Tim Clare to answer all of these questions and more, which are explored at length in his new book Across the Board: How Board Games Make Us Human   Learn more about Across the Board: How Board Games Make Us Human: http://bit.ly/403G7Nh   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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the gaming world. I'm Dan Casey, and today we have a very special guest joining me right here in the Conversation Dungeon. He's an author, a stand-up poet, and you may have heard his malefluous tones on the Death of a Thousand Cuts podcast. His new book, Across the Board, How Games Make Us Human, is available now wherever fine books are sold. Folks, please welcome Tim Clare. Tim, thank you so much for being here. Hi, it's really nice to be here. Thank you for having me. Yeah, so I'm very excited to talk to you about this book as someone who's a big fan of both tabletop and board gaming and someone who's a student of history, this feels like you could not be further up my alley. But I always like to start things with our guests by taking it back in

their personal history. So I want to start here and I want to understand where did your, what's your earliest memory of board gaming or tabletop gaming? When's the first time you recall it being a fixture in your life? So like my dad was and still is really into board games. You know, I played a game with him, this afternoon, a game that I had to review. So it's never ended. But where that started for him was, so his mum, my grandma was German. And so they had, my dad was a languages teacher and he'd go across with the school for like language exchanges to Germany. And he'd come back with these amazing like Ravensburger games, these sort of beautifully illustrated, sumptuous wood. Wood

pieces. These games like Catch the Hat and Mitternacht party, which had like a glow-in-the-dark ghost that's chasing posh guests round a fancy dress party. All these games that had loads of theme, even back then, you know, they were full of theme, they were full of colourful artwork. There were games that, you know, were kind of in themselves kind of role-playing games, right? You know, you were imagining yourself in the role of characters, maybe you were a detective, chasing burglars or whatever and then there'd be some dice and you'd be moving around.

So those were the games that I grew up playing. I was also kind of like, I loved video games as well and at the time, you know, the board game market tried to do crossover so there was like the Pac-Man board game which was actually pretty great. Like you know, you'd go around

and your Pac-Man could like swallow the power pills on the board. Yeah, it was kind of nice and there was like a Donkey Kong board game. game as well, I remember having. So all of those things where that's where I started was, was playing these games that just were colorful and had stories and that you wanted to touch, you know, like they were like toys, they had tactile pieces, they were a full sensory embodied experience. Yeah, no, and I also, I can definitely relate to that. It's part of the fun

is always just opening a new board game and seeing what's inside. It's like opening a treasure chest. And I definitely felt that way as a kid. And it's so cool to hear that your dad had this passion for it because you grew up with way cooler games than I did. I was definitely firmly in that Milton Bradley Parker Brothers camp that I feel like there's at least one present in most living rooms across the world. But those are definitely a fair sight cooler than, you know, monopoly or sorry or something like that. But I feel like that's, but that is the way in for many people. And I feel like it takes a special game to sort of, they either stop playing at some point and just occasionally revisit those classics or they find something that really sucks them in deeper. You know, for a lot of people, it's a game like Catan.

Other people, it might be a game like D&D. Do you have a game? Was there a game for you that was like, oh, I really, this game in particular is like sinking its hooks into my brain in a way I can't quite express? Saw me sort of gasp there and go in a kind of Proustian reverie back in time. that's exactly what was happening when you said that. Like, I, like, in my own sense of self-mythologising, my own history, I imagine that I went for a bunch of years after hitting university in a kind of, like, full nerd denial, right?

That I imagined that I wasn't, I was leaving all that behind and I was becoming fooling normal. Now, I don't think anyone that knew me would, I don't think I was fooling anyone. I don't think anyone who knew me was like, oh, Tim wasn't a nerd. He was really... really pulling it off right now. Yeah, wow. What a cool, who's that cool sports loving guy?

I don't think I've fooled anyone, but I think I was definitely, I went through a period of sort of not being super comfortable with just embracing these things that I loved, right? And then, you know, probably only about 10 years ago, I remember picking up Twilight struggle, which is like, again, like not, even a kind of the genre of game that I would most often play now or would have played growing up,

this very sort of dry-looking Cold War game, two-player, lots of tokens all over this map and numbers. But I just thought this game sounds fascinating, and then I picked it up, and I remember, again, this is another still of me playing with my dad, but I took it, when I went to visit my parents, we opened it on the table, And my mum came in and she said, you guys have been standing for an hour. You know, your chairs are just beneath you. And we were like generals in the sort of situation room. We're poised over the table.

Absolutely. I remember being so anxious. I was like, I've got to. And it's one of those beautiful games again. It's a great piece of satire because it sucks you into the completely twisted logic of your characters, right? where you end up going, oh, maybe I should, maybe if I start a coup in Venezuela, I can distract them from Southeast Asia.

And in your head, you're like, I'm doing this to stop global thermonuclear. What? I'm doing this for world peace. I need to destabilize the world to reduce the chance of global nuclear war. It's mad. And yet it has a kind of like Dr. Strangelove like logic to it.

And I think in that moment, I came with all its history. and drama. I was kind of like this, something has changed since I last sat down and played Mittasnack party. That's incredible.

I love that and what you said about not realizing you'd been standing for an hour. That resonates so deeply. We eventually, my friend group and I, we played a lot of the Fantasy Flight games,

their Game of Thrones board gamers. We came to call it Game of Game of Thrones. Because it was just like, if you knew risk, if you knew all these games, it was just a perfect, way in, but just that much more addictive. And when we'd have a climactic combat, we made it a house rule, please rise. You have to stand for something this important. You can't just be sitting down. Your entire kingdom is at stake. How are you going to sit down for this? So I definitely appreciate that. I can really, yeah, there's just some of those games where it just, it scratches an it. It makes you think new sentences and forges neural pathways that you would never come across on your own unless you're reading foreign policy documents for some reason. So that's, that's just one of things I love about.

about it. And I think, you know, I think a fitting segue to talking about your book across the board, how games make us human, because they activate something in us in a way that I think other things don't. You can have all these shared experiences. You can play video games with other people. You don't have to play them with other people. You can go see a movie, but that's a passive experience. Watching TV is a passive experience. Playing a board game forces you and other people, unless you're playing solo to sit down and have this communal experience, this shared experience together in a way that I just find is increasingly rare in modern life and something that I really appreciate about sort of board gaming, tabletop gaming in general. So I'm curious for you, what was the genesis

of the idea for this book? What made you sit down and say, I really want to chronicle sort of the evolution of these games and think about how they affect us? My answer is going to sound like super common because I think a lot of people did this but I want to say mine's a little bit different as well because so many people started writing a book when lockdown hit right and they were like I got loads of time on my hands I didn't have a lot of time on my hands because I had a young child who suddenly was out of nursery needed looking after but I remember this moment this key moment where I went into my office and I looked around and I had all these piles of board games that I've I'd collect it up.

And I had no one to play them with. And I realized it was really early into lockdown. I realized I felt this rising panic. And it wasn't oddly, sort of, it wasn't about being in danger. It wasn't about many conventional things that people were worried about. It was like, I'm,

oh, I'm not going to be able to play my games. And I realized like that felt like something I'd been severed from something really important. And up until then, it'd been such a part of my life. You know, it was just the ocean in which I swam, right? that I didn't at any point go, I'm kind of spending a lot of time doing this.

This must be something I love. You know, this is something that I as a human being. I'm devoting my time. I'm spending, you know, anyone who plays games or role-playing games or it knows how much admin there is getting a group of adults together, making your schedules mesh. And I'm like, putting all this effort in. It must matter.

Why does it matter? And I was looking at all these inert boxes. I'm feeling like, I'm not feeling that magic from them, just looking at them. I need the people. And so for me, it was about going, what's going on here? Why do I care so much? And why is this even a thing?

You know, maybe it sounds a bit crazed when you put it like that. But why should we have this tradition that goes back literally millennia that appears all around the world of like throwing an object with different marked sides and then moving a piece along a track? Why has that been invented independently in multiple civilizations? It's not a technology that does anything. It doesn't confer some survival advantage. It's not obvious.

And yet it keeps propping up everywhere. And then when it does, it spreads like wildfire through civilizations. And that, I think I wanted to solve the question in myself, which was, why do I care? But I also just wanted to sort of, you know when you think about it. You know when you stare at a word for a while and it stops looking like a real world? I stared at those ballgame boxes a lot and I was suddenly like, what? What is a game? What are these?

You know? Yeah, I love the idea that there's this like primal evolutionary drive towards meeples and dice. And it is this like, I get it. I understand like conceptually, I'm sure it goes deeper than that, but like this need for communal play coming together for entertainment. and avocation. I'm curious for you, how did the, when you were researching this book, how was, how did this sort of what you started with, you know, looking at these games and wondering, why, why am I so connected to these?

Why, why do they matter? How did the project evolve sort of from concept to completion where the book is today? Like the first thing I panicked about was, you know, you start looking stuff up and you get quite excited as you get into a little research pod projects. And then you go, hang on, like maybe games are just meant to be played. Maybe, you know, it's just me describing what monopoly is going to be interesting to people. And the answer, of course, is no, that isn't in itself interesting. So I started looking for stories.

And I was digging around to look at the points where games intersect with real people's lives. You know, like you mentioned Milton Bradley earlier. This is a guy who in kind of 1860 was a young man who bought himself one of the early other litho printing presses. He'd spent all his money on investing in a second-hand one. He was going to try and came from a poor family. He'd gone to a kind of trade college to learn the craft of printing. And he was going to start a business. He was an entrepreneur, but he really working on a shoe string. And then he had the unfortunate, he was offered the chance to do the official portrait of Abraham Lincoln.

And he printed tens of thousands of copies of this thing, this new press. And then, unfortunately, Abraham Lincoln at the time was clean-shaven. And he had this letter from a young girl. He said, why don't you grow a beard? I think you'd look really nice. And he did. And suddenly Milton Bradley, all his stock became worthless.

He had to burn it. And it looked like he was going to go broke. And then, like, his last throw-of-the-dice, pun intended, was he's like, I've got one last chance to make some money out. this and he came up with the idea for a game called The Game of Life. And that started a business. Milton Bradley still exists today as a subsidiary of Hasbro. But that started a business that survived 160 years and a game that is still about today, right? So you see these stories, the way chance intersects with these weird games that

And as soon as I found that, I was like, oh, this is what I need to tell, like, how these games intersect with human beings. I really love that story in particular because it's so fascinating to think is nowadays, like, getting Abraham Lincoln's rookie card would just skyrocket in value. I'm curious. I'm so, I wonder if any of those, I'm sure some have survived somewhere in someone's private collection or a museum of rare antiquity. But, yeah, those stories, like that we would not have the game of life without. this series of entrepreneurial misfires in a way that is just you could not possibly script this. It's just the entropy of the universe leading us to this chaotic moment that gave us something it has more structure and order and a bit of chance for a little bit of chaos.

I've got to sprinkle that in there. Was that one of the, was that like the craziest thing you discovered while researching this book? Or what was a favorite factoid or like a favorite discovery you made while digging into some of the history here? I think I've got two answers to that one is related to cards one is related to dice like on the cards point of view i was reading like in 1680 in england uh we were producing in the 1680s we were producing a million decks of cards a year that was the level of which doesn't sound that much by modern standards until you look at the census and you realize the entire population of england every man woman child baby was only 4.8 million people so that was a we were producing a level

seven cards for every human being in the UK every year. This is before modern factories, before printing press. So you imagine like the labour that goes into that. And this was being repeated all over Europe. So there was a craze for playing cards. I really cannot emphasise how popular they were. And we know that they were played at all levels because we see the different types of cards

from the different qualities of cards on set. And again, like, we can only infer this from, you know, shipping manifests as well where you see that, you know, because they mention, you know, cards being sold by the bail of cards. And you're like, oh, wow, like these are doing numbers. So that, to me, is just like that sheer size of what was going on and the sheer ubiquity of cards is amazing to me. The other one is how I just would like, ended up,

I stumbled across a report on the history of the use of dice games in the Swedish judicial system, you know, about a hundred years after that, where basically... Greetings adventurers. Spring has sprung here in Los Angeles, and that means it's a brief period where it's only 75 degrees instead of 95 degrees. I'll take it. And that means I've been outside a lot more, walking around, occasionally galloping after a toddler hopped up on juice boxes traveling a bit. You know the vibe. And after doing some spring cleaning, my wardrobe, I got to say, looking a little bit sad. I want clothes that can keep up with me and my son,

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with multiple assailants, they didn't want to kill everyone involved. So maybe they'd been a big bar fight. Five people have been involved. and one person had died, a constable had died, and then the other four people they want to try them. In Sweden, it was enshrined in law that the people would have to, they'd get 2D6 each,

and they had a roll-off, and the person who rolled lowest would die. And the weird thing is, like, the results are, because you'd have two officers of the law there while the game was happening. We've got the, we've got, like, how the results played out. And a surprising number of them, the first round ends in a draw. So you can imagine like the tension.

And there's one example, for example, of a husband and wife who are made to have a dice off to decide who'd be executed for the murder of a neighbour. So this is like this intense use of dice games to decide who gets to live or die was just, it was seen as humane. And that just, it's mad to me and fascinating. And it was just something I stumbled across. That is an insane fact. That is one of those things where I conceptually, I can understand. You said, because it's seen as humane. I'm like, okay, well, it's like how with like firing squads,

they would only give one person the real bullet. So that way it would help dispel the feeling of culpability. But this is, yeah, I mean, I'm going to think about death saves and dungeons and dragons in a whole new light now, just knowing that it could be a very, real thing there. That's why. Like it wasn't always, it wasn't, it was, that was the official rationale. It wasn't always, sometimes the like, fat, the act, the actuality, the cruel theatricality was the precise point. There's the, famously the, there was a dice game in, in Germany where

a bunch of rebelling peasants were made to have a roll off against each other. The Frankenberger Verthelschpiel, the Frankenberg dice game. And that has been recreated bi-annually in kind of like a big larp ever since. It's still happening. I think there's one happening this year, actually. Some of the people who do the reenactment

are the direct descendants of the survivors. Wow. So sometimes that was like a baron who did it because he wanted to be horrible, right? Of course. In the Swedish system, their idea was this is like, this is Providence deciding who's going to live or die. Sometimes they did it because they were just like,

horrible barons in the kind of idea when we think of medieval evil barons. Like they were just doing evil baron stuff. I never really think of a baron doing something positive. So this tracks with what I would imagine a baron would be doing. Duke might get away with it, but baron definitely not. When you were writing this book, has looking back at the history of some of these games and seeing how Games of Chance were used in sort of unorthodox contexts,

like you just mentioned, has that made you reconsider or think differently about the modern board gaming landscape? Yeah, absolutely. I think one thing is just a sense of connection with the past, a sense that these games, as well as connecting us with the people around the table, we are in sync with a human instinct, you know, to roll knuckle bones to roll. I mean, cubic dice, by the way, are really old. The D6 goes back to like the ruins in Mahanjadara.

kind of like really old. So the cubic D6 is of considerable antiquity in itself. But just this idea that we're kind of like in sync with a human instinct that is older than every major world religion, older than the existence of a written alphabet, you know, this is properly, properly a ritual that we've done over and over and over. And I think that there's kind of, I don't want to be soppy about it, but I genuinely feel a kind of reverence and a feeling, maybe saying it's kind of sacred is an exaggeration, especially because, you know, when you're doing a TTRP, often there's quite a lot of bathos and goofy stuff going on, right? So you can't feel too solemn. Yeah. But this feeling that I'm participating in a tradition that all humans were all connected by that.

And I found that rather comforting and kind of beautiful, I think. The other thing is just remembering that for all our science and mathematics and dice, by the way, a bit of fundamental in developing the science of probability and how you calculate the likelihood of something. But I hopefully bring a little bit of, is encouraging me to have a little bit of humility because I realize I'm, I'm a rationalist until I pick up a dye and I go to roll it and then all these little superstitions

start kicking off I've shouted at a die I've scolded it I begged it I've imagined that it's I've gone I've looked away because I think

well my previous roles have been bad this is dice is just being misbehaving tonight I'm not lucky I know all those things don't I know a dice doesn't remember previous results but anyone who's

you know if you've rolled three once in my D&D career I've rolled three 20s in a row and that's a one in eight thousand chance of that happening and the experience of that last 20 hitting is psychedelic

in its intensity I know that's just as likely as any other sequence of numbers I know it's just one in the chance one in 20 three times that they don't it's not cumulative But that's not the experience of it. My experience is just as powerful as I imagine, you know, a kind of shaman casting the knuckle bones by firelight on Scarabray, you know, up in Orkney in Neolithic times.

Yeah, it's like you said, the dice don't remember, but there's a little voice inside that says, but what if they do? And in that case, what if I just take this precaution? because it could lead me to roll three 20s in a row. And yes, that must have been purely just the ecstatic feeling of that third 20 hitting, I can only imagine. That's incredible. Yeah, I just, I love, you know, we're talking a bit about sort of these really primal human emotions that these games can conjure in us.

And I really appreciate sort of the subtitle of your book there, How Games Make Us Human. And if we can, I'd like to just bring up, you wrote a really fascinating and compelling piece in The Guardian about how you were diagnosed as autistic during the writing of this book. And I'm curious, did getting that formal diagnosis inform your authorial point of view in a different way than when you started? Yeah. So the funny thing about it was I went to get that diagnosis, not because I thought I was going to be diagnosed, but because I've been speaking to some neurodivergent gamers. Quite a few. I was kind of aware. that we are overrepresented in the community.

What do I want to say? I don't even mean overrepresented. I mean, we're richly represented in the sample, to use scientific terms, right? Like, I think I read a paper recently that said, if you take, did a survey of TTRPG gamers and the rate of autism was five times that of the general population, right? So something clearly attracts us.

but my position was I'm speaking to all these wonderful people telling me all about the intersection between their neurodivergence and how games are important for them and I kind of knew that there was a kind of I didn't have that great awareness of what autism really was even

except kind of what having watched media and movies and so I thought wouldn't it be good if I went and got an assessment went for the full diagnostic thing two days with a speech and language therapist with a psychologist and what they're going to come back to me and say is that you're not artistic,

you're just a nerd, right? You're just geeky. That's cool. You've got some enthusiasms, but you're not autistic. And then I'd be able to say in the book, look, I just want to be clear for people who don't know. There's a difference between just being kind of like an enthusiast and nerd and being autistic. They're not the same thing. You're kind of like to just dispel some stereotypes. And then when I spoke to the people, to the autistic people I was interviewing, I'd be able to do so with some authority and respect. And I'd say, I know the process you've been through. I know more about the condition.

It didn't turn out like that. And it was like a big sort of shock to me when I got all my report back. And I was like scoring in all the top percentiles for sensory sensitivity. And their speech and language therapist and the psychologist are conferred. And they wrote this report. And the psychologist actually said, you are the most fabulously autistic person I've ever assessed. Which, you know, I felt, of course, like, I'd won autism.

Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, awesome. Yeah. But so for me, to answer your question, though, I think what it inflected for me is how important games have been as a space where I can just, like, throw myself into stuff I love, right? And discover new things I love. Also, like, weirdly, I just want to say this is a sort of side note

because people assume, and I assumed, autistic people wouldn't really be into, say, social deduction games, like Weirwolf, Blonde the Clock Tower, that kind of thing. No, I read a report and my own interviews with people confirm this, but also my own experience of loving social deduction games. Loads of autistic people report loving games where you bluff, you lie, you take on a character.

And one other thing one autistic person said to me was, it lets me practice social interactions, and reading people's faces, trying to read deception in a safe context. And I really, aside from all the things that are fun about those games anyway, they're actually like a really great sandbox and training ground for just practicing socialization, right? Well, that was one of the things I really loved in your piece. There was a line you wrote, for me, games function as an accessibility tool that

enable me to connect with people. And that's something that I mean, I feel that as well, because I'm someone. who can be shy in everyday life. But if you put me at a gaming table with total strangers, within a couple of minutes, we're all going to be chummy and having a good time unless we're launching a coup in Venezuela to distract me from Southeast Asia. But I really appreciate that because, you know, we talk a lot about the importance of play and sort of the communal aspect of board gaming.

But also they, we, you know, we want to welcome everyone to the table that should be welcoming to everyone, the opportunity for everyone to play. So I'm curious for you in sort of, going through this and writing this and talking to all these people, why is it important to you to cultivate and pursue that sense of community through gaming? Thank you. That's a really great question. And I'm going to answer it. I know people normally say, thank you. That's a great question. They're about to pivot to talking about what they want instead of, I am going to answer it directly. It's a fantastic question. I think one of the basic reasons it's important is just a kind of like

moral and ethical one, which is that board games are a human, there are birthright as humans. And whenever a scene in any kind of game has been dominated by sort of a narrow contingent of the population, that's a historic and historical aberration. One thing I would say, just if you look at the historical record, is that people of all ages, all genders, all ethnicities play board games. Like, there's no one group that tables at games are four and other people don't. Now, within individual games, like you take the Mancala games, for example,

and go around Africa, and there's some of those that tended, well, round Africa and Eurasia and the step and all those places, some tended to be more played by women, some tended to be more played by men, some tended to be mixed. That's true, but generally when we're talking about games, it's everyone.

and games provide this, you know, one study, like describe them as a kind of Creole space, right? This idea of like people with maybe don't have a shared language can come together and find a cultural bridge in the form of games. I just do not think there is anything we need more right now. But, you know, I say right now as if we're in a particular moment, I think all through history, right? When can you point to a time in history where I am I thought, you know, humans could do with something that brings us together and helps us understand one another more and shows us kind of like each other in a good light and encourages dialogue and mutual respect and says, we can sit, we can all get together around the table and here as nowhere else we are equals. Games offer that. And to exclude anyone from that is, you know, I think it's like a moral outrage really. But also, it just, why wouldn't you want more people to play with, you know? And the more diverse, the pool of gamers, the more exciting and creative and variegated, the games that we get to play are going to be, from kind of simple party games all the way

through to kind of heavy, gnarly, all weekend kind of brain busters. And I love all those games and everything in between. And I think that there was this perception in the past of board games. table top gaming, war gaming, being this sort of walled garden, this closed off space that unless you had this specialized knowledge or was invited in, that it was inaccessible. But I think nowadays, thanks to just the proliferation of people who grew up playing games, people who are more comfortable wearing their passion on their sleeve, and also just more gaming, more friendly local gaming stores, keywords being friendly. I think that it feels more like, hey, gates open, come on in. We just want more people to play with. And there's so many types of games, TCGs, TTRPGs, board games, miniatures, whatever you want, whatever your heart's delight.

If you don't have it yet, if it doesn't exist, it's probably going to be on a platform like Kickstarter in a matter of weeks. And that to me is just very cool. That's this time where it feels like so much about play and creativity and the making of games has been democratized and open to a wider populace in the way. that I find, frankly... The war is over and both sides lost. Kingdoms were reduced to cinders, an army scattered like bones in the dust. Now the survivors claw to what's left

of a broken world, praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight. But in the shadow dark, the darkness always wins. This is old-school adventuring at its most cruel. Your torch ticks down in real time. and when that flame dies, something else rises to finish the job.

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and self-improvement. Let's get started. Pretty exciting. Yeah, and I just want to add on the end a sort of slight, look, I understand what it's like to have a hobby where maybe if you're in the generation that I am, you grew up not always being surrounded by people who understood, not always, you know, media portraying kind of like geeks and nerds as a kind of natural fodder to be picked on and mocked and a kind of butt of jokes.

I understand that you kind of like you develop a defensiveness. People ask what you're doing and you don't mention what you're doing. You become kind of cagey around your hobbies if you're not careful because you've been used to having it rejected or people go, what? And you learn to be quiet about it. And what I would say is that one, I think things have changed and two is worth being vulnerable. And it takes some courage, but it's worth being vulnerable because that's how you can, people will surprise you.

people who never thought would be into it will be, will say, I love that game, I play it all the time or they'll have no knowledge, but if you're clear, like, look, I'm not going to, I'm not going to try and recruit you. Don't worry, I'm not coming for you. But if you ever want to sit down on the table and learn something simple, I'm more than happy to onboard you with something, you know, you can tell me the kind of thing you like,

and I'm really happy to be your kind of like elder bringing you into the community and see if you like anything. that will take you to such happy, exciting places. And some of the best games I've played in my life have been ones where I've had that moment of like going, you know, just having a little card game in my pocket and having it to whip out and say, well, we can play a game now if you like. And suddenly find myself playing a game with strangers and we're laughing. And have I got that connection that I never knew would happen. Yeah, it's, you have to crack open that like cynical candy shell to find like the earnest Nuget Center inside that everyone

has there. And like, once you get in there, it's, it's incredible how much people do open up when they're, when they let those defenses down a little bit and let themselves be open to having fun. So yeah, I really appreciate that. I love that perspective. I want to talk as well, we have a lot of people in our audience who are creatives in and of themselves, which is a perfect segue because you host a podcast, Death of a Thousand Cuts, that is all about creative writing. And something that I would love to know is, is it challenging for you to take your own advice sometimes. Yeah, 100%. I would say that I'm so awful at that. And the only defense I can really hold up is that I'm open about it. I'm open at being bad about it. And sometimes

I'm presenting myself less as a kind of shining bellwether who's leading people all into the glorious future and more kind of like a Marley's ghost of creative writing, appearing before people go and don't make the mistakes I made. But at the same time, I hope what I can offer is the fact that despite being, suffering a lot from perfectionism, which doesn't necessarily end up in my work at the end, but this feeling of like, I've got to make this good, people that are watching me, and procrastination from anxiety, which now I know, you know, is slightly, you know, is coming out of having a very, very particular mind that I've been blessed with, right, that has its upsides and downsides because the brain never gives with both hands. Now, because of that, if I can do it,

I'm like six books deep now, right? Six published books in nonfiction, two fantasy novels, and a collection of poetry, right? If I can do that with, you know, if you look at my basic stat block, there's nothing in there that suggests this is going to be a writer build, right? This is not someone who, you know, we're often told that writers need to have thick skin, and you need to be a bit entrepreneurial. I don't have any of that. I'm incredibly emotionally frail. I'm psychically.

I'm as kind of brittle as a popagon. Like I really don't have any, but I love stories. And it turns out that's actually been enough, right? Yeah. I love stories. I'm excited by them. It turns out that's been enough,

despite everything. And I think hopefully, you know, like, there's two types of inspiration, right? Like you might see someone in a talent show do something amazing, you know, yo-yo tricks and dancing. And you go, wow, what an incredible devotion to their art.

I'm inspired by them. I'd like to be like them. And then you see someone on there who does something dreadful. They do a card trick. It goes all wrong. And you think, well, look, I know I can do better than that. I'm that type two inspiration, right? People are just hearing, well, I know I'm not as bad as him.

And he's doing all right. So I hope I can be kind of like an inspiration in that way. I appreciate that. I feel like it's not spite, but like spike can be a powerful motivator or just the desire to say like, well, if they can do it, I probably can too. I feel like with any creative pursuit, but particularly writing, it's like 50% having the passion to do it and 50% showing up to actually do the thing you want to do. I feel you about that feeling of perfectionism or just everything needing to be just in its right place, maybe being an obstacle in your way. Do you have rituals when it comes to writing? Like, does anything, do you have to, the conditions have to be right?

Do you put on music? Do you just need to be in complete silence? Are there specific things that you do when you sit down to write? My best conditions, and I think it really is different for everyone. And I think that's something I'd always emphasize because otherwise you can hear these fail-safe routines that writers do. And you can't, you can't replicate it. And you think, well, there must be something wrong with me. I'm not a writer.

And I think it's always a mistake to kind of climb inside the writer, clown suit and pull up the zip and start imagining that you, that identity is what makes you, because you're just waiting to feel legitimate. And it's a weird, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's doing some writing. And you, you, you, you're never, you're never going to feel like a real author. I've never met an author who, who, I've never met an author that I've liked who really thinks that they're an okay, okay? So like, um, I think if you do, you're probably doomed. But for me, I'm like, like, I'm like, like, I'm like, I do really well in silence, which is not in abundance in my house,

but like if I can get a writing session sort of late at night when the house is completely still, that can be really good. Just like, I think having done some movement as well beforehand, like really helps, like getting the body moving to whatever extent you can, getting the blood flowing. I think one, it helps me stay awake. I've got an 18-month-old, so I don't get a lot of sleep. And also the other thing that helps with me,

because I'm sort of autistic ADHD is just using timers. It's just using that kind of like short timer, the kind of Pomodoro thing. Not to put, maybe it puts pressure on me. I don't really know what it's doing, but it's also just saying like after 25 minutes, you can get up,

you can have a shake, and then you can sit back down. That is useful to me to focus. And I think it helps me feel that, it helps me whenever I want to look away or look at my phone to go, no, just wait for the bell. It's going to be coming really soon. That just allows me to stay on track and I feel a little bit better about myself. That reminds me of something a therapist once said to me, which was make yourself an offer you can't refuse when you're trying to deal with sort of avoidant behaviors. In this case, it was like, okay, set a timer and write for 20 minutes. And if it, if it sucks, then you've only spent 20 minutes doing this thing, but then you have the entire rest of the day to do anything else you want. But more often than not, you want to keep doing. the thing that you were avoiding, in this case, writing, or whatever creative pursuit might be

sort of just feels like it's on the edge of your vision that you just can't quite sit down to conceptualize or are avoiding because you don't want to deal with it. So yeah, I can definitely appreciate those being. Just wait for the bell. Don't give in to looking at your phone. Just the bell will ring. Do it for yourself as well. I can't emphasize enough how many people, when they talk about their writing, they sound like they're tap dancing to sort of stay the hand of a firing squad. You know, that it's this desperate kind of, I've got to perform, I've got to make other people like this, I've got to, no, you should, you should write because unless people are actually, someone's given you a contract, they've said, here's a wadge of money, write this thing,

I want you to, and you say, okay, okay, fair enough, then you're going to, like, they're paying the piper, they get to call the tune. If you're writing for yourself at this point, whatever your aspirations are down the line. You don't know anybody anything. Like you you should write if you want to just have a bunch of kind of like ninja monkeys jump out from a bush, you do it. You get to do that. That is one of the few pleasures of you being the boss, right? And you don't be a bad boss to yourself thinking that that's going to get you to do it. The thing that is going to start drawing you into your writing is a sense of mischief and play, right? As soon as you're going, I've had this idea, I can't wait to see what happens in this scene.

You're not going to need to sort of make a rod for your back and continually tell yourself off because you want to know the answers. You'll want to know what happens on the next page. And I think that that sense of mischief, that sense of the number of authors I've interviewed whose big breakthrough book came when they started cheating on the book that they were supposed to be writing

with a kind of like later suckers. kind of book that I thought, this is too self-indulgent. This is too my comfort book for anyone to ever be into this. And they're secretly writing it on the sly, and it's like got all this romance, and it's got all this like sword fights on like a burning airship in the gondola underneath. And they're going like, no one wants. This is for me. And then, of course, that book ends up connecting with so many people,

because you can just the joy, like waths off it, like pheromones. Like people, it burns their arms. eyebrows off when they open the book because it's so written with sincerity and joy. And I think, you know, you're going to go back for a second pass. You're going to get to edit your book. I'm not saying your first draft will be amazing. But what you can't edit into a book is sincerity, joy and just that kind of the umph of somebody who means it. Yeah. Well, I mean, obviously, I think across the board clearly comes from that place of passion for you. I'm wondering, you know, sort of tying this back in in the context of death of a thousand cuts.

Is there something that you learned from writing across the board that you'll take with you as you move forward in your writing career? Is there something that during the process of either researching or writing or now that it's complete that you can take with you as you move forward? But yeah, but it's as a lesson, it sucks. Like I thought I really didn't know there's a problem. It's like, you're saying that. And I'm like, yeah, but I wish I didn't know this.

And that is just that basically there's a more or less like one-to-one relationship between the amount of effort you do in terms of research, in terms of chasing down people and saying, will you speak for me for this book, in terms of going to places, actually travelling to them. Even if it's just because some historical thing happened there and you're going to do, they call it footstepping in like some journalists. you know, going to the place and like drinking it in,

even if the thing happened 100 years ago, right? There's something about doing that that just makes my writing better, that makes my writing better, even though, you know, maybe I could have done it on Google Maps, maybe I could have just guessed. For me, at least,

like I have to, what makes it good, is speaking with authority, right? And I can only, and you can't, other people, I'm sure can, because they're more talented than me or just have the kind of gift of the gap. But for me, I can't fake that. And so I have to do the work.

And every time I start panicking, I haven't read enough words, my tendency is to try and rush and kind of like tap out some stuff and make it a bit of a screed. You know, I'll just go, I'll just do this on vibes. I'll just have some opinions. I like this topic. I've got opinions about this topic. And it always just ends up coming out not great.

And of course, that'll always be bits in your book where you reflect on what you've learned and you say some personal opinions. or you're drawing from your own personal life so you don't really need to research that because you've lived it, that was the research. But for me, it's just, there's no way around that and doing the work is also the kind of joy of it

because I meet so many people, God, I get to like speak to experts. So that for me is it, is like, there's so, you can pour so much time into the research. The world of sun. The Hedgehog has been thrust into a not-so-dark, not-so-stormy, hard-boiled detective story that probably nobody saw coming. Follow Sonic and the Intrepid Chaotic's Detective Agency as they take on their biggest case yet.

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every Wednesday with bonus episodes out every Thursday on Patreon. And every Monday you can listen to our True Crime Rundown, where we go over the top true crime headlines of the week. So come and join us wherever you listen to your podcasts. And into the, into like slaying the foundation. And actually, unfortunately, that is not wasted time. I wish I could say, you don't need to do that. That's delaying.

You just get on with it. And unfortunately, no, like it actually is essential and fundamental. to writing a good book, whether fiction or nonfiction. That all tracks for me. I mean, the more time and effort you put into it, especially in the pursuit of speaking from that place of authority, especially if that's something that helps you connect to the words you're putting on paper, I think that's essential and something that I really appreciate.

So, yeah, that's great. As we wind down, I want to shift focus to, we always like to leave our listeners and our audience with some recommendations that they can take forward with them to perhaps spike. up their next game night. So I'd like to start with, you know, we talk a lot about tabletop role-playing games on this podcast in particular. Is there a favorite TTRPG that you think people are sleeping on or that you wish more people would give a shot to? It's a great question, and it's always tricky for me to pick one that I think people are actually are definitely

sleeping on versus one that just, I don't know, maybe could, is, it is, it is, it is Despite being reasonably well known, I think could do with some more love. And so my pick, I'd like to pick Kingdom by Ben Robbins, which I don't know if you've encountered it, but it's basically... So it's weird because you are not necessarily... You are constructing over time an entire kingdom or city state, or it could be a kind of like a town in the old west, or it could be a border garrison between warring states in China or in a fantasy world.

Really, it's setting agnostic. And in fact, you can use it to create the, to generate the setting for something that you then explore in another system. And the game takes place over a series of key moments in that kingdom or city or, country's life. And the players, you'll play as different key voices in that place. So one of you will be, and that role, by the way, can shift and will probably shift over the course of the game. So one of you will be the kind of leader. And the leader gets to basically choose when the big decision comes up. There'll be a conflict. You'll be presented with a conflict. When that happens, they'll get to choose what you do, which of two paths you take.

Another person will be like the voice of the people and they'll be coming and saying, my lord, if you do this, then, you know, this is how the people are going to react. And another person gets to come and they're the one who actually decides what the two choices are. They set the terms of it, right? So you've got power that's instantiated. no one's no one's got total control right and there's a system with coins where you can switch role but as soon as somebody's because one character might actually switch between those roles you know a leader might be deposed and then come back as part of a kind of rebellion

movement saying this is what people are demanding or they might you know they might come come back as a as a mentor figure later on when because you can skip you know the the increments of time and it can be months or they can be generations you know you can follow somewhere from a little outpost town to kind of a science fiction place right so it's got this lovely feel of nobody has quite got control of what's going on uh everyone's got a piece of the puzzle and you're playing out acting out these scenes where you have these discussions where you hit upon what's going to be, what the options are, what the consequences are going to be. So one of you use the Oracle, but they don't get to set out the choices. What do you get to set the choices, but they don't get to make the decisions, and they can't see the consequences.

And what are you gets to choose? But you didn't get to decide the consequences or the things you're choosing between. And of course, you're encouraged for all of those things to have an upside and a downside, to have friction. So it's this lovely game of, and it just naturally, it's this lovely system that is structured that gives you this safe scaffolding upon which you can develop really rich histories, whether those histories are a few months or whether they're generations. And I think it's great if you're looking for, you know, like you're doing like a West Marches setting or whether you're doing whatever.

You can pick a kind of setting and develop a, over a single session, a really lived in community with decades or hundreds of years of backstory. That sounds amazing. And I love the idea of almost using this as like a session zero, session one storytelling tool that you can graft onto almost any other campaign or system you want to play in. It reminds me in a way of there was this mobile game that I loved. This seems like the multiplayer version of that. It was called Thrones, where you would be a monarch and you're constantly trying to balance the needs of the church, the people, and the crown. And this sounds like it does that, but over the span of a much wider period of time,

I'm definitely going to pick this up. You said it was kingdom? Awesome. It's called kingdom. Yeah. Kingdom. Fantastic. All right. Well, I'm going to pick that up. Now, my next question for you, it's game night. You've been tasked with choosing any game you want. And no matter how complex the rules, people will play it in this hypothetical scenario. What is your choice and why? So I've got a bit of a reputation for this, actually. So this is my game that I'm now known for being a kind of zealot for. And it's a game called Juraku.

It's set in the Sengoku period of Japan, so kind of warring states just before the Edo period, when you've got various daimyo fighting over who's going to – well, they're fighting over who's going to be the leader, but none of them want to say I'm actually, all we're doing is saying, we just want to take the emperor into our protective custody from these barbarians, right? But it's going to be in our protective custody

and we'll also make the decisions for the emperor as well, right? So there's this area, and essentially it is an area control game that's played out through trick-taking. You get your hand of cards, you play them each turn, and each time you play a card, The number on the card, they're numbered like zero to six.

You get some action points and you can move your samurai around these areas across Japan. And you could also move your daimyo. And then at the end of each of the three turns, you do an area control. You tot up points. And it plays in under an hour. And it's fantastic. It plays really well, really enjoyable. And I just get it out everywhere because it's,

It doesn't feel nasty, like, because you've got a limited polar samurai when they die, you get them back into your hand. Next turn, you can put them somewhere else. So it's got this lovely ebb and flow. It's really thematic, plays in under an hour, not, doesn't play like anything else. And the decisions you're making feel gripping from the start to the end. You could not have recommended a game that would be more up my alley. I specifically studied Japanese history in college.

So this is exactly how I want to spend. My next hour, whenever I can get my hands on it. Yeah, I'm definitely going to check that out. Well, Tim, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate you taking the time. Where can people find you and your book online if, in fact, you want to be found? Yeah, so I've got a website called timclarepoet.com.com. That's from years ago when I thought that my main thing was going to be poetry.

It wasn't, although I'm still, I still love poetry. But if people want to go onto my website, they can find that there. They can also look up my podcast. Just Google, Death of a Thousand Cuts. That's me talking about creative writing. I talk to writers. I talk to readers and I just talk about all things writing. Both of those places are great places to find me.

Fantastic. And you can find across the board how games make us human, wherever fine books are sold. And as for me, you can find me here each and every week. We'll be back with a brand new question and answers right here on Geekin Sundry's YouTube channel and wherever you find your podcasts.

So thank you again to everyone for listening. In the meantime, folks, tell us, what games are you playing this week? what are you most excited to introduce to your table? Let us know and we'll see you next time. Bye bye. Welcome to Mick Unplugged, the number one podcast for self-improvement and modern leadership. I'm Mick Hunt, your host, and I'm here to challenge your why and fuel your because. This is where leaders, entrepreneurs, and go-getters come to level up.

Each week, I bring you unfiltered conversations, game-changing strategies, and the kind of motivation that transforms lives and legacy. I've learned from legends like Les Brown, Damon John, and Robert Irvine. And now, I'm bringing their lessons, along with mine, straight to you. From modern leadership tips to creating unstoppable momentum, this is the podcast that redefines what's possible. Hit play, subscribe, and join the millions who've made Mick Unplugged their go-to source for growth and greatness, because your next breakthrough is just one episode away. This is Mick Uplug, the voice and face of modern leadership entrepreneur and self-improvement. Let's get started.

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