George Interviews Jason Tagmire

Welcome everyone, today will be the first of a new monthly interview I will be hosting. The goal is to have short, fun chats with designers and artists in the Button Shy community. I figured who better to start with than my big bro over here at Button Shy, Jason Tagmire.

I'm sure many of you have chatted with him at conventions, on discord or twitter but I thought I would ask him a few questions for those who may not know him so well. 

George:  Hi J, welcome to your own Patreon. Since we’re brothers and I’m still mad at you for beating me in Mario Party 18 years ago, let’s just skip the pleasantries and jump right into the questions ok?

Jason: Are you sure you wouldn’t rather play another round of Mario Party? Can I turn myself into a COM and skip this whole interview?

George: Only if you finally let me play as Yoshi. 

Jason: That will never happen. 

George: No deal then...  Alright J you gotta answer questions then. So I know the Wallet Games weren’t Button Shy’s first product. One of your early projects was called Storyteller Cards; cards with a formulaic design to inspire creativity. Do you recall any creativity inspired from using the Storyteller Cards?

Jason: It’s funny because I put so much effort into creating the initial games and what you can play with them that I haven’t gone back to use it  as often as I suggest that others use it. Most of the games that I designed using the system are publicly available. But for me personally, it’s inspired games when I have gotten into a jam and I would just draw a few cards and looked for inspiration. Mostly when traveling, and on a flight or in a hotel and wanting to work on some design but being in a bit of an isolated bubble.

George: Has anyone ever told you that Storyteller Cards helped them get past a creative wall?

Jason: Absolutely. We would get messages from people who based entire role playing campaigns on Storyteller Fantasy characters. We’d get emails from writers and teachers that used them regularly. It’s been a while since we’ve heavily featured and promoted them so things have died down a lot, while both myself and Campbell Whyte have been busier than ever in everything else.

George: That’s great, I also use the Fantasy cards as a writing tool for my D&D campaign. Whenever I need to make a quick non player character I just draw a few cards and see if any ideas come from it.

Jason: Some of those characters have started popping up in other games of ours too. You’ll see them in Chain Mail, Ugly Gryphon Inn and more.

George: Oh wow I didn’t even know! I’ll have to keep an eye out for them. So they started out as one of your first Kickstarters. You were actually a very early adopter of Kickstarter weren’t you?

Jason: I think I ran my first campaign in 2010. At the time there were only a handful of board game projects, maybe around that time (or shortly after) Alien Frontiers blew everyone away with like $15,000 in funding. But my first project I created was Lines of Fire, a small game made of business cards and packaged in a small screenprinted foldable chocolates box. I paid for all of the cards and just needed like $350 to order the boxes. We blew past our goal, hitting something like $500. Such a different time back then, and Kickstarter was very different.

George: That’s right, the platform was an entirely new concept and game designers were just starting to see the potential. But I noticed you’ve also been a big supporter of others on Kickstarter. You’ve backed quite a few projects. What are some of your favorites?

Jason: A recent favorite is the ridiculousness that is Marvel United. It hits all of my sweet spots from a product design perspective with small focused expansions that create a modular game where I’ll never play the same game twice. It’s also pretty light, while still having enough going on, that I can play it with my son. Older favorites are weird games that may not seen the light of day otherwise. Guts of Glory and Trogdor are some examples. And going way way back are games like VivaJava: The Coffee Game and the original monster of a campaign, D-Day Dice.

George: I remember at Pax East a few years back Kickstarter has a room where they showcased some of their favorite games. The Chapman Brothers were playing Trogdor and reenacting some of the best Homestar Moments. You sent me a picture from right behind them. I just want it on the record that I’m immensely jealous.

Jason: That is what I call a “highlight of life”. It really was incredible to be a few feet away from the Strongbad puppet playing the game and simply just being Strongbad.

George: That really must have been an awesome experience. Wish I could have been there but I was hanging out with Mike Mullins and Chip Beauvais demoing wallet games. But hey, those guys are cool.

Jason: haha

George: You know, one thing that I see in the games category of Kickstarter are lots of complex, component heavy games. Not that I see an issue, I love big epic games. But you took Button Shy in a very different direction: small, minimalist, inexpensive. Part of this is because you stick to your rule of 18 cards for a wallet game. What brought you to this format?

Jason: I'm a sucker for a great ongoing product model. Something that is new and fresh, but fits a familiar mold. So whenever I was looking into any sort of creative adventure, I'd look for those common threads where whatever it was that I was going to do, I'd have the base product setup so that it could be repeated. Without having to reinvent the wheel with each product. For the wallet line it was a bit of being in the right place at the right time. We had a great local group of designers and Alex Strang was testing his game Movie Plotz, which consisted of 12 index card sized cards. We had so much fun playing it, and I had two Storyteller Cards products released at the time, so I started to research how we could package and release a game that was just 12-18 cards. Love Letter was also just hitting big so microgames were becoming a thing in the industry, and figuring out how to package them was a not-so-uncommon discussion. I researched everything and settled on the wallets because they were able to be done in different colors with screen-printing on top, allowing me to create a line of games instead of just a single game.

George: One of the exciting things about having a product line with rules such as a card limit is seeing how other designers work around it. What do you think is the most clever way a designer has gotten the most out of all 18 cards?

Jason: It had to be the first time we saw Circle The Wagons. It did something that we were touching on before that, which was having the game only use a small number of the 18 cards in each session, which ramps up the variability, but it twisted it in its head a bit. You still used all 18 cards but you flipped 3 over, creating a small set of customization but with a big impact as it determines how this game uniquely scores. We’ve worked on that in the years since with Sprawlopolis, Agropolis and more.

George: I remember the excitement around Circle The Wagons as we were testing it in the 18 card challenge. It felt like a new elevation for Button Shy games. Do you think that game, or any other for that matter, would benefit from a larger card count?

Jason: Considering it’s one of the few games we’ve never really expanded, and it’s still getting play, I think it’s just right. More cards would lend to more complexity, ultimately making it a different game. But with that in mind, we’ve been working on Circle The Dragons, which expands on the idea with some more cards, and light components.

George: This is the first I’m hearing of Circle the Dragons but I’m already excited. Will that be an expansion on circle the wagons or a standalone?

Jason: It's a standalone game that's bigger than the wallets. It's going to be part of a very special line of games packaged in VHS cases, called Button Shy Bootlegs.

George: I can’t wait to see how it turns out! Ok so I only have a few more questions. When you work on button shy you’re a game publisher but I know that you’re always thinking in terms of “how to game-ify this” if you get a few spare hours would you rather play a game or design one?

Jason: This is a tough one because it's so situational. If I had a few spare hours with the right group I'd definitely want to play. In fact, if I wasn't alone, I'd choose to play.... but then again, if I'm with the right group, I might want to go in on a design session together. Another aspect is that a few hours could be completely wasted without the spark that you need when designing. I'd probably just spend the few hours unable to decide and realize I lost that precious time.

George: That makes complete sense, you can’t just turn on creativity when the time is convenient. Do you have a current non-game interest that you would fill that time with instead?

Jason: Probably building Lego. It's calm relaxing time where you can just ignore everything and chill. At the end you have a cool creation. When building based off of instructions, it's like building a puzzle with the answers handed to you. I don't get that feeling elsewhere. And when building your own creations, it can share some of the same mindset as game design.

George: I love building Lego sets. Some of my favorite are the remakes from when I was younger, like the Pirates and Astronauts. You recently showed me your Lego City that’s at the Button Shy office. It is beginning to remind me of the city in the Lego Movie

Jason: And if my kids try to go anywhere near it, I'll turn into Lord Business.

George: Haha! I hope for their sake they stay away. So I have one more game question for you and it’s little silly. If you could make a wallet “cover game” akin to a cover song a musician would perform, what game would you cover? In other words, if you could make a wallet version of an existing game, which one would you chose?

Jason: We get to touch on little parts of games or genres, so something like Cosmic Encounter is already covered in Universal Rule. It still has that bit of negotiation and a similar tone. That's always my answer for everything, but it's been done here. So I'm going to go with Gloomhaven. At one point, Paul Peterson (designer of Smash Up) said he had the core Gloomhaven game down to something ridiculous like 3 cards. That leaves a ton of room for all the other goodies that are packed into that game. And that's the whole reason... it's so incredibly large. To see that dropped down to 18 cards would be very impressive.

George: There are hundreds of pieces to Gloomhaven. I cant imagine it being broken down to just 3 cards. Sounds like quite a feat. Ok J, my last question for you. Are you gonna fire me now that I made you do an interview?

Jason: No, but depending on how the next one goes, I might be able to twist this so you interview your eventual replacement.

So that's all I had to chat with Jason about today. It was a fun chat, and I can't wait to do another one next month. J, I hope you didn't mind having to talk to your little brother for a few minutes. (jk, we're buds) Ok everyone, until next time try to imagine a 3 card Gloomhaven. I don't think it's possible...

-george