This March began an epic crossover between tabletop games and movies. Game designer Alex Dijk is joining forces with Cal and Sam from The Video Shop podcast. Together they will be creating Dice Hard, a podcast series where in each episode the trio will use movies as inspiration for tabletop games. They will discuss the themes and events of the movie, and how these can translate to the tabletop. I talked to Sam and Alex about the new podcast.
TC: Where did this idea come from?
Sam: When trying to develop our awards special on our other podcast, the Video Shop, one of the suggested awards was “best movie for a board game adaptation”. The award got cut from the episode but the idea developed into a show of its own!
TC: What do you hope to achieve with Dice Hard?
Sam: Be super entertaining and hopefully inspire people to play more games! And maybe one day develop one of these into a full game.
Alex: For me, I hope to achieve a really cool game that gets played by lots of people. I want an opportunity to make something and have people in the group modify, change and refine that idea, so that we all end up with an awesome game design.
TC: Have you worked together previously?
Alex: I have worked on a few projects with Sam before, Cal I just met when we bailed him out.
TC: What is each of your roles?
Sam: I am generally the movie buff, Cal is there to explain the games to me!
Alex: Apparently I am on as the ‘expert’.
TC: Are you going to have any special guests?
Sam: We have people lined up, and we think they’re pretty special.
Alex: Special guests, at the moment we are inviting some people we know, but we would love to build up to have very special guests.
TC: How do you choose which movies to feature?
Sam: At the moment it is movies we like, or popular movies, but at some point we would love suggestions.
Dice Hard is available right now, with episodes for Die Hard, Groundhog Day and Alien already available. Download episodes from videoshoppod.com, or find it on iTunes or YouTube.
