Magazine Madness 28: Senet Issue 8

The gaming magazine is dead. After all, when was the last time that you were able to purchase a gaming magazine at your nearest newsagent? Games Workshop’s White Dwarf is of course the exception, but it has been over a decade since Dragon appeared in print. However, in more recent times, the hobby has found other means to bring the magazine format to the market. Digitally, of course, but publishers have also created their own in-house titles and sold them direct or through distribution. Another vehicle has been Kickststarter.com, which has allowed amateurs to write, create, fund, and publish titles of their own, much like the fanzines of Kickstarter’s ZineQuest. The resulting titles are not fanzines though, being longer, tackling broader subject matters, and more professional in terms of their layout and design.

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Senet—named for the Ancient Egyptian board game, Senet—is a print magazine about the craft, creativity, and community of board gaming. Bearing the tagline of “Board games are beautiful”, it is about the play and the experience of board games, it is about the creative thoughts and processes which go into each and every board game, and it is about board games as both artistry and art form. Published by Senet Magazine Limited, each issue promises previews of forthcoming, interesting titles, features which explore how and why we play, interviews with those involved in the process of creating a game, and reviews of the latest and most interesting releases.

Senet Issue 8 was published in the summer of 2022. If the editorial in the previous issue talked about the reach of boardgames, the editorial in this issue looks at how they can be more welcoming and how we can all be more accepting of newcomers to the hobby. This is a theme that will be later explored in the issue in ‘The Storyteller’, an interview with designer Nikki Valens which includes a discussion of reflecting and accepting wider cultural diversity in board games in both terms of design and play, whilst in the regular column, ‘How to Play’, the Meeple Lady gives some direct advice on being more welcoming to newcomers. The latter is the more useful and immediate of the two articles, but both are good pieces and together with the editorial show where we can be better.

‘Behold’ is the regular preview of some of the then-forthcoming board game titles. As expected, ‘Behold’ showcases its previewed titles to intriguing effect, a combination of simple write-ups with artwork and depictions of the board games. There are some interesting titles here, such as Autobahn, a game about building the German motorway network both collectively and competitively, but as public servants rather than entrepreneurs and London Necropolis Railway, which explores the city of London’s funeral railway service to Brookwood Cemetery. This is a fascinating aspect of Victorian history and culture and its attitude to death which is here presented as something that can be explored in play.

‘Points’, the regular column of readers’ letters, covers a number of different topics, but in the main, they continue the issue’s inclusivity theme, highlighting the lack of diversity in terms of boardgame designers and the difference in focus given to major designers versus minor designers. There is scope here for future issues to cover more of the latter, so we shall see whether that idea is followed up on. In ‘For Love of the Game’, Tristian Hall continues his designer’s journey towards the completion and publication of his Gloom of Kilforth. In previous issues he explored how the game became a vehicle for roleplaying and storytelling, used the mechanics to bring the game and its background to life, marketing options, and dealing with feedback and criticism about a game’s design, world-building and immersion through text and art, and the benefits of historical research, but this time, he examines the use of music in boardgames. In the main, he discusses how music can be used to enhance a game through its thematic and immersive effects. In roleplaying, this is both well known and fairly well explored, but less so when it comes to playing boardgames. Certainly, it works for roleplaying games, which are by design intended to be immersive, whereas for boardgames the degree of immersion is arguably not as deep, primarily because of the immediacy of the rules and mechanics, but also perhaps because there is a greater need to be concentrating on the rules? Of course, he ties this into the fact that there is a soundtrack for Gloom of Kilforth, and this is only a light discussion, so the subject might well benefit from a more detailed article.

Senet follows a standard format of articles and article types and Senet Issue 8 is no exception. One explores a theme found in board games, its history, and the games that showcase it to best effect, whilst another looks at a particular mechanic. In addition there are two interviews, one with a designer, the other with an artist. The theme article in the issue is science and board games. In ‘The Appliance of Science’, Matt Thrower explores the difficulties and perils of designing a science-themed boardgame. The primary peril is that of being overly or obviously educational, which can be seen in the Victorian game designs which offer a lot of scientific trivia without much in the way of game play. Fortunately, as game play has improved hand-in-hand with game design, so that modern designs such as Wingspan and Terraforming Mars can include a high degree of scientific content alongside their engaging game play. The article draws some interesting parallels between the wargame and the science-themed boardgame, especially when it comes to designs based on biology and dealing with aspects such as biodiversity and evolution, with different species competing for space. The article does not solely focus on biologically-themed board games, but it would have been useful if it had showcased more boardgames.

The mechanic discussed in the issue is that of social deduction. ‘Trust No One Suspect Everyone’ by Alexandra Sonechkina explores the relatively short history of the social deduction game, beginning with its interesting origins in the Soviet Union, at the Moscow State University, as the game, Mafia. Of course, the idea has its own origins in the children’s game, ‘Murder in the Dark’, but in boardgames, they really became popular with The Resistance, but in coming more up to date, hits some classics such as BattleStar Galactica and Ultimate One Night Werewolf. It highlights the emotional involvement of the format since it sets up players to feel at first a sense of paranoia and suspicion, and then the even stronger feelings of vindication if the mole or spy or Cylon (in the case BattleStar Galactica) is uncovered or of betrayal if we have failed to unmask him and he has been successful in undermining our efforts. The most recent iteration of the format discussed is Psychobabble, a Lovecraft-inspired game of dream deduction that does not rely upon betrayal or lies, one of the criticisms of the genre. This perhaps points to the potential in the format, which often feels achingly familiar from one design to the next.

The artist interviewed in ‘The Sky is the Limit’ is Andrew Bosley. Illustrator on designs such as Everdell, Tapestry, and Vivid Memories, there is an otherworldliness, even a sense of whimsy, to his artwork, that pulls the viewer into vistas he depicts. Unlike previous interviews with artists, ‘The Sky is the Limit’ does not delve too deeply into Bosley’s background, instead concentrating more on the various projects he has worked on and how they developed. Nevertheless, this feels a much briefer interview than in previous issues, and there is no pullout of his artwork as in previous issues. Bosley’s artwork is beguiling and makes you want to look at the games where each appears and see the world they show in play. The designer interviewed in the issue is Nikki Valens in ‘The Storyteller’. The interview discusses the designer’s shift from creating expansions for Fantasy Flight Games’ H.P. Lovecraft-themed games to creating—in line with the theme of the issueIt has almost become a cliché to something more welcoming of a diverse audience. So there is a distinct cultural difference to what they were doing before and what they are doing now, with designs like Artisans of Splendent Vales, the contrast being a fascinating read.

‘Unboxed’, Senet’s reviews includes a review of Origins: First Builders, a dice placement game, the engagingly thematic Caper: Europe, and the thoroughly strange Eyelet, which involves threading coloured shoelaces through holes in a double-sided board. Given the anticipation it was treated with in Senet Issue 7, it is no surprise that Crescent Moon is this issue’s top choice. It is an asymmetrical area-control game whose theme is the five factions and their differences of the Abbasid Caliphate. It is also a big game in that it needs four or five players and over two hours playing time. As in previous issues, the reviews section here is a good mix and the reviews are all useful and informative.

Rounding out Senet Issue 8 are the regular end columns, ‘How to Play’ and ‘Shelf of Shame’. For ‘How to Play’, Meeple Lady brings the inclusive theme of the issue to a close with extremely good advice on how to ease and welcome new players into the hobby. Throughout, she makes good points and the advice is excellent. This includes actually saying hello, avoid using boardgame jargon, treating everyone the same as you would expect to be treated, and of course, being kind. This is article that really everyone should read and the roleplaying hobby certainly deserves its own version. In ‘Shelf of Shame’, Stella Jahja and Tarrant Falcke of Meeple University pull a game of their shelf that they own, but never played. Their choice is Cuba, a design from 2007, which they find surprisingly playable, simple, but brutal. The upshot is that the team plans to explore forgotten designs from the noughties. There is an enjoyable sense of a story being told here and is one of the most interesting ‘Shelf of Shame’ entries to date.

Physically, Senet Issue 8 is very professionally presented. It looks and feels as good as previous issues of the magazine.

It has almost become a cliché to state that as with previous issues, Senet Issue 8 offers a good mix of articles, interviews, and reviews, but it does. Its articles feel more expansive than in previous issues, with ‘Trust No One Suspect Everyone’ on social deduction games and ‘The Appliance of Science’ on science-themed boardgames, in particular, standing out. With Senet Issue 8, the boardgame magazine maintains its high standard of informative and interesting articles.