#47 - Jeff Grisenthwaite: Board Game Are(ca)na

As fate and coincidence would have it, designer Jeff Grisenthwaite and I had actually met and played games together once and then played games at different tables of a smaller meetup just months after that. It wasn’t until our shared interest in Board Game Arena and Jeff’s great games led me to reach out before we were able to piece that together (and those games weren’t out when we’d first met or had just been released in a limited capacity). Anyway, the Wheel of Fortune timed out well, and Jeff was able to add a ton of insight into a topic that’s frequently on my mind due to how much time I spend there, and that is the aforementioned board game playing website, Board Game Arena. Several months back, Jeff wrote an article about his experience of developing his own games for the site—which is extremely cool—and this episode dives a little further into some of those thoughts. Additionally/obviously, there is some of the show’s typical antics, funky formatting, and fun discussions about playing games based on vibes, nerd beach reads, Jeff’s history of tarot reading, and more.

Based on the conversation, check out the following:

Jeff’s BGA Article (linked in previous paragraph as well)

Jeff’s Designer Page

Jeff on Bluesky

Break My Game

Protospiel Chicago

Intro (0:00)

Talking tarot and the barren days of BGA.

Cursed Soothsayers (17:44)

This is the majority of the conversation. Based on the actions/cards that Jeff selected, the conversation encompasses a lot of his blog post and more.

“BGA is weird.”