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Ludology 341 Accesorize Your Games
Welcome!

Welcome to Ludology, an analytical discussion of the hows and whys of the world of board games. Rather than news and reviews, Ludology explores a variety of topics about games from a wider lens, as well as discuss game history, game design and game players.

We post a new Ludology episode every other week. In these episodes, hosts Erica Bouyouris and Sen-Foong Lim deep-dive into a single topic within game design, often with a well-regarded guest from the game industry. We generally focus on tabletop game design (mainly board games and RPGs), but we often pull in experts from all forms of games, from video games to escape rooms to slot machines.

On weeks where there is no flagship Ludology episode, we will alternate between two smaller mini-sodes. Erica and Sen are happy to announce that Sarah Shipp of Shippboard Games and Stephanie Campbell of TTRPGKids will be joining us for the next year, providing additional content between our longer episodes.

Sarah’s segment, Thinking Beyond Mechanisms, is a monthly feature that dives deeper into the other aspects of games beyond the dice and cards we’re all familiar with.

Stephanie’s segment, TTRPGKids, explores how parents and teachers can use role playing games with children in the home and in the classroom.

We hope you enjoy the additional content!

Our History

We aim for most Ludology episodes to be timeless, so you are welcome to explore our entire catalog. Most of it should age quite well. The podcast was started in 2011 by Geoff Engelstein and Ryan Sturm, with Mike Fitzgerald taking over for Ryan in 2015. Gil and Scott joined the show in 2017 when Mike stepped aside, and Emma joined in 2019 when Geoff ended his tenure as host. Emma left in 2021, and Erica and Sen joined us. Since then, Scott stepped down in 2022 and Gil will be hanging up his mic in 2023, leaving Erica and Sen to carry on this amazing legacy.

Erica and Sen are working to bring new voices to Ludology and have some great things to announce as gaming expands to include even more people!

Contact Us

Have your own thoughts about our topics? We encourage you to visit us at our guild on Boardgamegeek to get involved in a continuing discussion.

You can also email us at hello@ludology.net.

Ludology is part of The Dice Tower Network, the premier board game media network.

If you have questions that you’d like answered on Ludology, let us know by filling out this Google Form; you can also leave an audio question that we can use on the show, if you wish!

Burning Questions for Ludology

Support the Show

Ludology is made possible through the support and donations of listeners like you.

We currently have 3 “First Listen” series that will go out to Patrons well in advance of the audio being released to the wider audience.
- The Memories that Made Us (monthly) – memories about gaming experiences that helped shape the people that bring modern games to life
- Tales from the Designer Toolbox (monthly) – tips and tricks from industry pros learned from both success and failure
- Ludology Live – recordings from conventions around the world
Patrons will also get extra consideration for any giveaways that we might have!

Become a Ludology Patron

You can also make a one-time or monthly donation here. The link will take you to Erica’s account. People who donate in this way will not have access to the Patreon page – sorry!
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30/05/2025
How to Find & Hire a Fulfillment Provider for your Board Game Kickstarter or Gamefound — Pine Island Games

They will be able to provide shipping rates by geography – like this shipping estimate for Sigil from Fulfillrite. Most will break down their picking fees, the cost of packaging, and postage costs.

Key Considerations

Price isn’t the most important consideration when finding your fulfillment partner.

Reputation: Reputation and surety that they will get the job done smoothly, and without undue product damage, is far more important than a dollar or two savings on picking and packing. I recommend asking around in game design and publishing forums for peoples’ experiences with your with your most competitive.

Ease of Communication: You’ll need a good relationship with your sales rep to smooth the freight delivery process, and address any hiccups that come up during fulfillment. Make sure your sales rep is responsive and can help you workshop your fulfillment options.

Technology: My favorite thing about Fulfillrite is their tech platform. They have a dashboard where I can manage inventory, upload shipping details, and best of all, it automatically ties into our Shopify storefront.

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28/05/2025
Finding Your Board Game’s Market
I haven’t queried manufacturers to find out the cost of the game at ~64 dice and 4 players, but I don’t expect it to be cheap. I know that keeping a laser focus on unit economics will be very important if we want to publish a profitable game.

Ways to Keep Costs Down

A rule of thumb is that board games retail for about 5x their landed cost. This is because games sell into distribution at about 18-20% msrp, which works out to a 50% unit margin. For reference Nut Hunt which we are now selling for $39 (we recently reduced the price from $49) had a landed cost of $9.68. The breakdown was:
- Manufacture & Component Testing – $29,415 / 4,000 = $7.35 per game
- Freight – $6,154 / 3,732 = $1.65 per game
- Customs Inspection Fees – $2,529 / 3,732 = $0.68 per game
This was for a 4,000 unit print run with most of the units shipped Stateside. The $2,529 customs inspection fee was due to our container being pulled for inspection (which is a rare occurrence).

As you can see, we are breaking the 5x rule for Nut Hunt.

Our original MSRP was $49, but the $39 price point resonates more with consumers and is in line with peers (also a family weight gateway game although a bit higher complexity & component skew than its closest comps).
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26/04/2025
Monster Hunter Wilds patch has stopped Nata from crashing your game, and your Hunter/Palico from sometimes not sounding like you expect them to

Capcom has rolled out a fresh new update to all Monster Hunter Wilds players. The patch, version 1.010.01.00, follows on from the major release of Title Update 1, which arrived earlier this April.

The main point of this new patch is to fix some of the known issues and bugs introduced with TU1, and solve a couple of other issues that have been lingering there for a while.

The new Monster Hunter Wilds patch fixes the slightly hilarious bug that caused the game to crash when you spoke to Nata and specifically requested trading with Sekka. When the bug was first identified, Capcom asked players to just fire up the BBQ and wait before trying again. That is, thankfully, no longer necessary.

With many Wilds players now firmly in the endgame, a lot of the focus has now shifted to the newly-introduced Arena Quests. As more of those quests are played, however, an unusual bug kept popping up. The bug caused the Powercharm and Armorcharm to be added to your pouch whenever you decided to bring them to the quest, but that has now been fixed.

On the topic of Arena Quests, some require you to use specific weapons the game chooses for certain fights, but crafty players managed to break that and bring their own weapons – well, no more.

Switching over to the slightly bizarre and unusual bugs, certain cutscenes – in some cases – go rogue and decide not to respect the voice pitch settings you’ve chosen for your Hunter and Palico. So, if you’ve not been skipping cutscenes, and noticed that your pals sound different, this is why – though you thankfully won’t have to worry about that anymore.

Yes, sometimes your Palico sounds different. | Image credit: Capcom

That one might only break your immersion, but one other cutscene bug actually caused a progression block involved your Palico refusing to get on the Seikret to progress the story, which has now been fixed, too.

Patch 1.010.01.00 also brings a few other crash fixes caused by your choice of weapon and gear, alongside a fix to an issue that prevented players from being able to redo the Mizutsune assignment.

As with any new patch, however, there remains a list of known issues, which Capcom has outlined in this blog post. You should check that page if you run into any issues after installing the patch. Until then, our Monster Hunter Wilds guide remains your faithful companion.

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16/04/2025