Introducing: Nerdverse Unshuffled
tl;dr We launched a podcast!
After a long and eventful process, we’re proud to announce our very first podcast! Nerdverse Unshuffled is a geeky, newbie-friendly podcast where we discuss the language of board games. Each episode looks at a specific jargon term (or set of terms). We talk about what it means; how it’s used in modern board games; and how it can help you find and enjoy games you’ll love.
To celebrate this exciting new project, we published two episodes for November. We wanted to give our listeners an idea of what to expect in upcoming instalments and hopefully get everyone excited about what’s coming next.
Each episode aims to be around half an hour long. We cut material to make it less intimidating for you to keep up to date with current episodes. This also allows us to focus on the most important parts of each term during the episode. But that means there’s tons of bonus content to explore afterwards, once you’re familiar with the term. You can also explore the content separately if you already know the term and want to delve into more detail on the subject.
Demystifying board game terminology
Attentive readers will notice this sounds awfully like another series that appears on this site. And yes, it’s based on content from The Board Game Jargon Primer, a series of articles that also aims to make board games accessible to new gamers. We published the final instalment at the end of March 2023, but we significantly expanded and updated the content since then.
The Board Game Jargon Primer is one of our favourite things we’ve published, because it does exactly what we set out to do: Make nerdy hobbies more welcoming to a diverse range of people. As Fayyaad explains in Part 1:
Many people who come into the board gaming hobby run into one terrifying brick wall. It’s the same brick wall that everyone new to a hobby, industry sector, or niche interest comes up against at some point, usually near the outset. The brick wall is made of obscure words and jargon terms and shibboleths that people in that hobby know and use all the time. And it can be mystifying, off-putting, and downright annoying when nobody bothers to explain something everyone else seems to understand. “Oh, this game is an engine builder with deck-building elements,” they say off-handedly and you want to smack the proverbial “they” with a large fish.
In fact, we liked the series so much we decided to turn it into a book. We clarified some information, made everything more consistent, and made other improvements that a monthly publishing schedule didn’t allow us to do. The book also contains new entries, like seemingly obvious terms that have a board game specific meaning and other terms that occurred to us as we continued the editing process. At the time we publish the first episode of the podcast, work on the book is going steady. We hope to have an update on that very, very soon.
Even in book format, there was still plenty of information we couldn’t find space for. Especially as we started having conversations about the terms and games we had enjoyed that embodied the terms well or poorly. Although we could mention an example here or there, there was a lot we had to leave out. This in turn gave us the idea to turn the book into a podcast series. We felt it would be a great opportunity to explore each term in more detail. Specifically we wanted to look at how understanding each term could help you understand and enjoy even more board games.
Most importantly, we wanted to continue our conversation about some of these terms. We’ve had a great time delving into these terms more deeply, because it’s shown us how understanding each term has helped us to learn more as board gamers and gain more appreciation for this amazing hobby.
Why a podcast about the language of board games?
As a hobby, board gaming has exploded in the last couple of years — more in the past five years than ever before. More and more people are joining the hobby every year. And the industry is innovating constantly, releasing a treasury of board games each year — on Kickstarter and via hobby and gaming stores, not to mention geek or hobby conventions.
The sheer amount of creativity and effort invested in the hobby also means that people face a vast selection when choosing games to buy or play. This can often make the hobby feel intimidating and confusing. Despite this, we believe board gaming should be fun, exciting, and above all accessible to everyone. That’s why the pod focuses on giving you information to help you become part of the conversation and making better, more informed choices.
In the first episode, we discuss why we love board games and how we believe this podcast can help bring new people into the hobby, how it can help you become part of the conversation, and even help you find the games you’ll fall in love with, too. In episode two, we look more closely at “mechanics” (or “mechanisms”), the moving parts that make a board game a board game. We give a brief overview of the history of board game mechanics, looking at some games from as early as 3,500 years BCE, all the way up to modern board games.
Future episodes stick to this structure, looking at increasingly complex or specialised terminology as the series continues. We’ve already recorded several episodes, to get ahead of the production schedule and figure some things out. We can’t wait to hear your ideas, questions, and feedback.
Perhaps you’ve just discovered modern board games; perhaps you’re an experienced gamer who’s interested in exploring specific terminology. Either way, this is the pod for you!
A few small changes…
As part of the process of preparing the podcast for release, we ended up making a lot of other changes around the site, too. We created a shiny new version of the Nerdverse logo, having fixed a few things we wanted to address for a while. We also updated the site structure and added a dedicated page for the podcast. And we updated our Ko-Fi and Patreon pages to let people contribute financially to what we do.
Want to stay up to date with everything happening across the Nerdverse — including upcoming events, new articles, and everything else? You can now also sign up for our newsletter. It’s completely free and we have plenty of great content planned for that, too.
We didn’t do all this on our own, of course. We’d like to extend a special thank you to our web developer, Antoine Blackler, and Charles Ghisleni who updated the logo and designed our podcast artwork.
About our podcast cover art
We put a lot of thought into our choice of cover art for our podcast. We wanted the image to draw people’s eyes when they were scrolling past icon after icon in their podcast app. We also wanted something that was quintessentially Nerdverse. (During this process we also wrestled with many alternative names for the podcast. We may still use some for special features and bonus episodes.) After much brainstorming, we realised that what best expresses the theme of the podcast is our new podcast mascot: one happy, friendly little meeple exploring the universe of board games.
Where to find us
You will be able to listen to the podcast directly from this website, over on the shiny new Podcasts [link] page. You can also load our RSS feed into your favourite podcast app to download the latest version of the pod on a convenient device. If you already use an existing podcast service to manage your podcasts, please consider subscribing there. We’re already listed on Amazon, Google, Apple, and Spotify, among others.
Supporting the show
If you like what you’ve read, and you’d like to join the conversation, head on over to the Nerdverse Discord to let us know what you thought. Check out an episode or two and consider subscribing to receive notifications about new episodes as they’re released.If you’re financially able, consider supporting us on Patreon or Ko-Fi to access bonus features, reviews, discussions, affiliate links, and more fun downloads. You can also help us get the word out about the show by leaving us a positive review on your favourite podcast app. We look forward to hearing from you.
