Matt Calkins - From Sekigahara to Charioteer, a decade of historical game design

Matt Calkins is known among wargamers for designing Sekigahara, released in 2011, one of the most famous historical board games and a masterpiece of abstract wargaming. Matt returns this year with a new project, also released by GMT Games, called Charioteer, a strategic racing game where each player controls a chariot in the Circus Maximus of ancient Rome. This is the perfect opportunity to chat about Matt's design journey.
Podcast containing the collective review of Sekigahara: anchor.fm/homo-ludens9/episod...
Support the show on Ko-Fi: ko-fi.com/homoludens1871
Timecode:
00:00 Countdown
00:15 Intro
02:50 Part 1 - How did you get into gaming
12:00 Part 2 - Game design approach
43:11 Part 3 - Charioteer

[@pierrecuomo9207]

Vidéo très intéressante. C'est la 2ème que je découvre après celle avec Cole Wehrle, C'est très stimulant d'entendre des questions et des réponses qui nous permettent de plonger un peu plus dans les mécanismes du jeu, les choix qui les président, les influences de l'auteur ... Merci beaucoup

[@HomoLudens1871]

Avec plaisir Pierre! Content de voir que ça plaise, il y a pas mal d'interviews de concepteurs sur cette chaîne, donc il y a de quoi faire. Si tu es intéressé par la série COIN je conseille cette vidéo: kzbin.info/www/bejne/oZa4g2RrnL6qia8

[@RobertHovakimyan55]

This was wonderful. The few minutes after 30:57 were so important for me to hear. Can't wait to pick up charioteer, as Sekigahara is easily in my top 10 boardgames of all time.

[@HomoLudens1871]

Yes that bit was amazing, when we were streaming it I was thinking "I need to listen back to the interview in a few days, to be able to fully focus and get the full value of those design bit of wisdom".

[@born2bwildne744]

Wow - what an interesting person…. Thanks for giving him this stage. Now I can’t wait for busting out Charioteer with the grandkids after Christmas! My inputs to them about playing can be grounded in the creator’s design thoughtfulness and intent! You bring out such thoughtful discussion with insightful questions - both yours and attracted from your live audience. Thanks again!

[@HomoLudens1871]

Thanks a lot, Matt was a great guest, he really made my job as an interviewer easy. Very insightful, very structured and quite a fascinating character. Happy that you enjoyed the chat.

[@marcrodrigue3355]

Thank you so much Fred for bringing Matt to the screen! As a designer, Sekigahara deeply impressed me by its innovative mechanics. I always say that the old Warcraft computer game was my inspiration for the feeling I wanted for Bayonets & Tomahawks, but while working on it I always looked up to Sekigahara for its elegance. Matt, thank you for sharing with us, and I wish you the best success with your new game Charioteer!

[@marcrodrigue3355]

Et félicitations Fred pour ta nomination au "Charlies"! Bonne chance

[@HomoLudens1871]

Merci Marc, Félicitations à toi aussi. Content de pas être dans la même catégorie que B&T, je n'aurais eu aucune chance. D'ailleurs si à l'occasion tu veux passer sur la chaîne pour une interview (français ou anglais) ou une partie, fais-moi signe!

[@HomoLudens1871]

I definitely see a lineage between B&T and Sekigahara, so that doesn't surprise me. By the way, you really designed quite a unique game, congratulations!

[@marcrodrigue3355]

@@HomoLudens1871 Je fais signe :-)

[@HomoLudens1871]

envoies un mail à: akeordur "arobase" gmail "point" com !

[@browe]

Fascinating observations, Matt. It's delightful to see how outside-in, human-centric, and systems-thinking your approaches to design appear to be. Org design / user experience design... game design... not surprising at all given your perspective! 😄 Cheers.

[@HomoLudens1871]

Well said!

[@jimmarshall807]

Great conversation, fantastic to hear Matt's thoughts on designing his games, very much looking forward to his 'promotable dice' racquet sport game...which given how much I enjoy his previous designs will be picked up by me on P500 in 2023!

[@HomoLudens1871]

I am also VERY curious about that.

[@lonely_gamer_jonathan]

Thanks for bringing the busy business man to the interview. Sekigahara is my all time favorite.

[@HomoLudens1871]

My pleasure! Especially as it is also one of my favorite (even if I am very bad at it). If you ever want to participate in a video on the channel let me know 🤝

[@lonely_gamer_jonathan]

@@HomoLudens1871 Thanks for the invitation. I'm very keen on talking about historical gaming with you. Unfortunately I recently got COVID😷. I would like to wait until my voice comes back.

[@HomoLudens1871]

@@lonely_gamer_jonathan No rush at all, let's chat and see what we could do in early 2023. In the meantime I hope you have a speedy recovery. Are you on Discord?

[@wartable]

Fantastic interview. Charioteer just arrived in the mail, cannot wait to play. I wonder if Matt ever played Avalon Hill’s Circus Maximus. There is always interest in expansions!

[@HomoLudens1871]

Hopefully he will be back for a stream of Charioteer in January and we'll be able to ask him the question.

[@MarcvonMartial]

This was really good! Awesome interview and great insights. I have worked illustrating for many game designers so far, few have shown so much insights in what moves and inspires them so clearly. I really appreciate that and it really helps us illustrators to match game and graphic design :) I hope Charioteer will find a german translation one day. My daughters would really like this I guess. (edit: just noticed that UGG will do a german translation, depending on preorders)

[@HomoLudens1871]

Glad it was insightful! For the german translation I would expect a company like Spielworxx to potentially look into it.

[@burglekutt23]

A tennis/squash dice game from GMT? Expanding the horizons… I’m intrigued!

[@HomoLudens1871]

Me toon, unexpected but it definitely made me curious.

[@ArnoVdVelde]

Charioteer seems cool, but it also seem incredibly abstract. In such a sense that I feel way more that it is mechanics first before theme. Because Knizia was mentioned, in a sense this is very close to a knizia in a sense.

[@HomoLudens1871]

Still haven't played it, i guess we'll see in January when we organise the playthrough!

[@griffitaj]

Holy crap he's the founder of Appian!

[@HomoLudens1871]

And CEO