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- [00:02]
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- [01:05]
Dan Casey
Greetings adventurers and welcome back to Question Answers, the show where we talk to all manner of awesome people from around 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 mellifluous 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. Fol Please welcome Tim Clare. Tim, thank you so much for being here.
- [01:31]
Tim Clare
Hi. It's really nice to be here. Thank you for having me.
- [01:34]
Dan Casey
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 is a student of history, this feels like it 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?
- [02:01]
Tim Clare
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 wooden pieces. These games like Catch the Hat and Mittenacht Party, which had like a Glow in the dark, Ghost that's chasing posh guests round a fancy dress party. All these games like that had loads of theme even back then. You know, they were full of theme, they were full of colorful 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 was a. 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. Actually pretty great. Like, you know, you'd go around and your. 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 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.
- [03:59]
Dan Casey
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 what it's like opening a treasure chest. And I definitely felt that way as a kid. And I'm. 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 are. 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 and 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.
- [05:04]
Tim Clare
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 mythologizing 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 full and normal. Now I don't think anyone that knew me, I don't think I was fooling anyone. I don't think anyone who knew me was like, oh, Tim wasn't a nerd.
- [05:37]
Dan Casey
He was really, really pulling it off right now.
- [05:39]
Tim Clare
Yeah. Wow, what a cool. Who's that cool sports loving gu. I don't think, I don't think I 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 really. 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, 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 story 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 war. 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 that came with all its history and drama, I was kind of like this. Something has changed since I last sat down and played Mittersnak Party.
- [07:45]
Dan Casey
That's incredible that 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. They're 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 itch. 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 the things I love about it. And I think, you know, I. 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 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?
- [09:29]
Tim Clare
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've 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 collected up and I Had no one to play them with. And I realized I was really early into. 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, oh, this. 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, right, 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 and 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. 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 cropping 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, you know, when you stare at a word for a while and it stops looking like a real world. I stared at those board game boxes a lot, and I was suddenly like, what, what, what is a game?
- [12:09]
Dan Casey
What are these?
- [12:10]
Tim Clare
You know?
- [12:12]
Dan Casey
Yeah, I. 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?
- [12:49]
Tim Clare
Like, the first thing I panicked about was, you know, you start looking stuff up and you get quite excited as you get into research projects and then you go, hang on, like maybe games are just meant to be played. Like 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 a. One of the early color litho printing presses. He'd spent all his money on, on investing in a secondhand 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 gonna, he was gonna make, you know, start a business. He was an entrepreneur, but really working on a shoestring. 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 with his new press. And then unfortunately, Abraham Lincoln at the time was clean shaven and he had this letter from a young girl who said, why don't you grow a beard? I think you 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 to, I've got one last chance to make some money out of 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, you know, hundred and sixty years and a game that is still about today, right. So you see these stories, the way chance intersects with these weird games. 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.
- [15:08]
Dan Casey
I, I really love that story in particular because it's so, 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 museum of rare antiquity. But, yeah, those, 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 that has more structure and order and a bit of chance for, you know, a little bit of chaos. Get to sprinkle that in there. Was that. Was that one of the. Was that, like, the craziest thing you discovered while researching this book? Or what was. What was a favorite factoid or like a favorite discovery you made while digging into some of the history here?
- [15:57]
Tim Clare
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, 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 he realized the entire population of England, every man, woman, child, baby, was only 4.8 million people. So that was a. We were producing 11 cards for every human being in the UK every year. This is before modern factories, before printing press. So you imagine, like, the labor that goes into that. And this was being repeated all over Europe, so there was a craze for playing cards. I really cannot emphasize 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 bale 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.
- [17:38]
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- [18:50]
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- [19:22]
Tim Clare
In cases of manslaughter, they wanted to punish it as a capital crime where you'd be executed. But unlike murder, it wasn't necessarily clear who struck the killing blow. You know, where there was manslaughter with multiple assailants, they didn't want to kill everyone involved. So maybe there'd been a big bar fight, five people had been involved and one person had died, a constable had died, 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 two D6 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 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 neighbor. 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.
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Dan Casey
That is. That's 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 gonna. I'm gonna 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.
- [21:13]
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- [21:13]
Tim Clare
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, theatric, 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 Wirthelspiel. The Frankenberg dice game.
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Tim Clare
And that has been recreated biannually 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 of that. So sometimes that was like a baron who did it because he wanted to be horrible. Right. Of course, 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 kind of medieval evil barons, like they were just doing evil Baron stuff.
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Dan Casey
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?
- [22:47]
Tim Clare
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. The D6 goes back to like the ruins in Mohenjo Daro 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 don't to be soppy about it, but I genuinely feel a kind of reverence and a feeling. Not maybe saying it's kind of sacred is an exaggeration especially because you know when you're doing a TTRPG often there's quite a lot of bathos and goofy stuff going on. Right. So you can't feel too solemn.
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Dan Casey
Yeah.
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Tim Clare
But this feeling that I'm participating in a tradition that all humans, we're all connected by that and I find that rather comforting and kind of beautiful. I think the other thing is just remembering that for all science and mathematics and dice by the way have been fundamental in developing the science of probability and how you calculate the likelihood of something. But I hopefully bring a little bit of. Is encouraged me to have a little bit of humility because I, I realize I'm. I'm a rationalist until I pick up a die 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've begged it. I. I've imagined that it's. I've gone, I've looked away a book 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 8,000 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 the chance one in 23 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 skara Brae, you know, up in Orkney in Neolithic times.
- [25:52]
Dan Casey
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 twenties in a row. And yes, that must have been a purely. Just an un. The ecstatic feeling of that third 20 hitting. I can only imagine. That's incredible. Yeah. 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?
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Tim Clare
Yeah. So the funny. 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? That's not. 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 that, 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 the speech and language therapist and the psychologist 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.
- [28:57]
Dan Casey
Autistic score. That's awesome.
- [28:59]
Tim Clare
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 wanted 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 Werewolf Blonde, the Clock Tower, that kind of thing. No, I read a report and my own interviews with people confirmed 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 of the things 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.
- [30:11]
Dan Casey
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 enabled 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?
- [31:04]
Tim Clare
Thank you. That's a really great question and I'm going to answer. I know people normally say thank you, that's a great question. They're about to pivot to talk 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, unethical one, which is that board games are a human, they're our 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 tabletop games are for and other people don't. It really now, within individual games, like you take the mancala games, for example, and go around Africa and there's some of those that tended around Africa and Eurasia and the step and all those places, some tended to be more played by women, some tend 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, one study like, described 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 you, when can you point to a time in history where 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 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 gonna 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.
- [33:43]
Dan Casey
And I think that there was this perception in the past of board gaming, tabletop 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 to 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 or 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 it's this time where it feels like, like so much about play and creativity and the making of games has been democratized and open to a wider populace in a way that I find frankly pretty exciting.
- [34:46]
Tim Clare
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 one, I think things have changed. And two, is worth being vulnerable. And it takes some, it takes some courage, but it's worth being vulnerable because that's how you can. People will surprise you. People who you never thought would be into it will be, will say, I love, 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 gonna. I'm not gonna try and recruit you. Don't worry, I'm not coming for you. But if you ever want to sit down at 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 again with strangers, and we're laughing, and I've got that connection that I never knew would happen.
- [36:35]
Dan Casey
Yeah, it's. You have to crack open that, like, cynical candy shell to find, like, the earnest nougat 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?
- [37:13]
Tim Clare
Yeah, 100%. I would say that I'm sort of 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, going, don't make the mistakes I made, but at the same time, I hope what 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 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 its downsides because the brain never gives with both hands. But 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. 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 papadon. Like, I really don't have any. But I love stories, and it turns out that 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 wr. And you think, well, look, I know I can do better than that. I'm that type 2 inspiration, right? People just hearing go, 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.
- [39:37]
Dan Casey
I appreciate that. I feel like it's not spite, but, like, spite 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 do 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?
- [40:16]
Tim Clare
My best conditions. And I think it really is different. 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, it's a we, it's, it's, that's a weird performative thing. You're a human being who's doing some writing and you'll never, you're never going to feel like a real author. I've never met an author who, I've never met an author that I've liked who really thinks that they're an author. Okay, so like, I think if you do, you're probably doomed. But for me, I 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, just using that kind of like short time of 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. And that just allows me to stay on track and I feel a little bit better about myself.
- [42:15]
Dan Casey
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. And 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.
- [42:58]
Tim Clare
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 know.
- [43:15]
Dan Casey
You should.
- [43:15]
Tim Clare
You should write. Because unless people are actually, someone's given you a contract, they've said, here's a watch of money. Write this thing I want you to. And you say, okay. Okay, fair enough. Then you're gonna 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 owe 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'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 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. They started cheating on the book that they were supposed to be writing with a kind of. 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 these 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 that book ends up connecting with so many people because you can just. The joy like wafts off it like pheromones. Like people, it burns their 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 oomph of somebody who means it.
- [45:21]
Dan Casey
Yeah, well, I mean, obviously, I think across the board clearly comes from that place of passion for you. I'm wondering if, you know, sort of tying this back in. In the context of death of a death, sorry, 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 and as you move forward?
- [45:55]
Tim Clare
But, yeah, but it, yeah, but it's as a lesson. It sucks. Like there's a problem is 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 traveling to them. Even if it's just. Just because some historical thing happened there and you're gonna do. They call it footstepping in like some journalists, they, you know, going to the place and like drinking 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 how is speaking with authority. Right. And I can only. And you can't. I. Well, 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, 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, I'll just do this on vibes. I'll just have some opinions. I like, I like this topic. I've got opinions about this topic and it always just ends up coming out not great. And of course there'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 it's. 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. You can pour so much time into the research.
- [47:57]
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- [49:57]
Tim Clare
Go to your happy price Priceline and into the into like laying the foundation. And actually unfortunately that is not wasted time. I wish I could say you don't need to do that. You 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 non fiction that.
- [50:18]
Dan Casey
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 spice 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?
- [51:01]
Tim Clare
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 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 actually so it's. 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 in in the Old west. Or it could be a 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 you then explore in another system. 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. 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 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 in. 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. Everyone's got a piece of the puzzle, and you're playing out and 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 is the oracle. But they don't get to set out the choices. One of you gets to set the choices, but they don't get to make the decisions and they can't see the consequences. And one of you gets to choose, but you didn't get to decide the consequences or the things you're choosing between. 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 over a single session. A really lived in community with decades or hundreds of years of backstory.
- [55:17]
Dan Casey
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.
- [55:50]
Tim Clare
Awesome. It's called Kingdom.
- [55:52]
Dan Casey
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?
- [56:10]
Tim Clare
So I've got a bit of a reputation for this actually. So this is my game that I'm. I'm now known for being a kind of a zealot for. And it's a game called Jiraku. It's set in the Sengoku period of Japan. So kind of warring states just before the Edo period when you got various daimyo fighting over who's gonna. 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 he'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 and essentially it is an area control game that is 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 0 to 6, you get some action points and you can move your samurai around these areas across Japan and you can 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, I get it out everywhere because it doesn't feel nasty, like because you've got a limited pool of 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.
- [57:57]
Dan Casey
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?
- [58:20]
Tim Clare
Yeah, so I've got a website called timclairpoet.co.uk 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.
- [58:46]
Dan Casey
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 answers right here on Geek and sponsor 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.
- [59:17]
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Tim Clare
The evil team must stalk the streets at night, hunting down members of the good team one by one.
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Tim Clare
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Dan Casey
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Tim Clare
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Dan Casey
I didn't like hearing my name in.
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Tim Clare
The same sentence as demon. That was very upsetting for me.
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Tim Clare
How are there so many evil players in this game?
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Dan Casey
You'll be the werewolf, then. Yeah. And Megs.
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Tim Clare
Wizards Montgomery Archibald Barker at your bloody service.
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Tim Clare
Declan Buchanan, PI he has quite a large pair of antlers growing out of his forehead.
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Tim Clare
I. I think the Queen doesn't like you very much.
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Dan Casey
You say there's sludge? Yeah.
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Tim Clare
Sludge. Yeah. I'm the sludge love. Sludge boy. No. Again, I'm not that sludge boy.
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Realm's Advertiser
Grant Howard.
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Dan Casey
Isaac Newton didn't study in f ing Putney, did he?
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Tim Clare
Who's Isaac?
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Oh, my God. And Sharmini Bundell.
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Tim Clare
There's a magic community.
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Tim Clare
Yay. I'm in a magic community.
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