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MagicCarrot.com interviews Creative Team Alpha

13 March 2018

MagicCarrot.com’s Glenn and Kathy spoke with Creative Team Alpha’s Jeff Bellinger and Jonathan Young, the creative geniuses behind “Killer Bunnies Quest for the Magic Carrot,” “Killer Bunnies and the Conquest of the Magic Carrot,” “Killer Bunnies and the Journey to Jupiter,” and “Killer Bunnies and the Ultimate Odyssey,” and discussed many things Killer Bunnies for over two hours.

The transcript has been lightly edited. Because the transcript is so long, a table of content is provided:

Jupiter Party, Part I

Five Year Mission

Games

Marriage

Flavored and Themed

New Mechanics

Double Metals

Customizing Killer Bunnies

Promo Cards

Card References, Part I

Designer’s Resource Center

Punctuation and Proofreading

Inspiration

Rules Clarifications

Conventions

Artwork Evolution

Card References, Part II

Advice for Aspiring Game Designers

Jupiter Party, Part II

Fan Cards

Social Media

Deadlines

1200 Cards and Counting

New Shows for New References

Jupiter Party, Part III

Jupiter Party, Part I

Kathy: I am recording this. This okay with you?

Jeff: Oh, dear.

Glenn: We have to ask for legal reasons.

Kathy: But really, we’re asking for practical reasons ’cause we want a transcript of all the really great stuff and we’re never gonna write notes fast enough to catch it all.

Jeff: Well, that makes sense to me, too, so that’s cool.

Jonathan: Jeff talks really fast.

Jeff: I do. I do. And I say a lot. So anyway, please, I apologize. This morning I’ve been up since 5:00 cooking and bak[ing] and everything else. I had everything timed out perfectly. We just put the last dish on simmer and there it is: nine o’clock.

Glenn: Oh, outstanding.

Kathy: So what are you doing for dinner on this special journey to “Jupiter” day?

Jonathan: Oh, they’re personal favorites. We don’t do carrot cake or any crazy bunny related food items.

Jeff: No that’s—oh God, no. I don’t even like carrot cake. I did a Bakewell tart, which is an almond flavored custard with toasted almonds on the top. It’s made with some rice flour rather than regular flour so I have an interesting texture. I did a double layer fudge cake with plum jam and dried plums in the center and its piped—beautifully, I might add—with a buttercream frosting. Maraschino cherries arranged in a Fibonacci sequence around the cake.

Glenn: Excellent!

Jeff: And I did an apple raisin cake with an apple cinnamon raisin cake with a brown sugar molasses drip.

Kathy: Ooh.

Jeff: I did three kinds of cookies and I did a banana cake this morning as well.

Glenn: Wow. How many people are coming over for this soiree?

Jeff: Eight. There’s one there’s one cake for every person so.

Glenn: Wow, do you have like a 5K planned afterward or something that works all those calories off?

Jeff: You know, I’ll bring it all into school it’ll be gone in five seconds. You know, that’s just the way it goes.

Glenn: Oh, okay.

Kathy: That makes sense.

Jeff: Give it to the kids. They’ll eat it. All right, let’s—Oh, and so just to set the stage, so I’m talking to Jonathan earlier and—

Jonathan: Ow. Don’t poke me.

Jeff: —We don’t know when the last time we played the whole Journey to Jupiter. This is everything including the “Other World” black onyx half booster, which was never even advertised in the original instructions, but we did a sort of an end bonus. I think we played this once.

Jonathan: Only once.

Jeff: Only once before and I’m thinking it was like eight years ago. Could be more.

Jonathan: Maybe six years.

Jeff: Oh no, no, no, it definitely—

Jonathan: Don’t question Jeff on his math.

Jeff: Uh, it’s got to be absolutely [eight] years since we all got together to play this. But we did do a full Bunny 54 Carrot game up to “Creature Feature” last November. Correct? It was November.

Jonathan: No, it was the first weekend in December.

Jeff: First weekend in December?

Jonathan: Yeah.

Jeff: Oh, you’re right. It was December second. That’s correct. It was a day after I took that meeting. So, we’re doing more Bunnies, which is nice. We’re into it.

Glenn: Excellent. Since we’re talking about numbers and how long ago —Do you know how many days or years it’s been since our last interview between Magic Carrot and CTA?

Jeff: No, but I’m sure you’ll tell us!

Glenn: It was two thousand eight hundred and eighty eight days ago, which is just under eight years.

Jeff: It’s been too long folks. But, you know, unfortunately for about five years there was no Bunny news, so—

Glenn: Yes.

Jeff: There you go. Well, we’re ready. [to Jonathan] Are you ready? I don’t want to speak for both of us. Are you ready?

Jonathan: I’m ready.

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Five Year Mission

Glenn: We will move over to the questions. I sent most these to Jeff ahead of time. So, after such a long absence, welcome back to MagicCarrot.com. It has been more than five years since we sat down, in fact almost eight years, and what have you been working on for the past five years?

Jeff: I did all that baking! You mean Bunny-wise or —?

Glenn: No, game-wise, life-wise. Anything. Both of you.

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Games

Jonathan: We have a life?

Jeff: We don’t have lives. We just have bunnies! No, I’ll hit the highlights. I’ll go first. Well, bunny-wise Playroom kind of ran aground in 2012 or 13 and you know we’re not going to get into any details. Let’s just say they didn’t do much from about 2013 through about 2016. So, about five years worth, and so we had we finished “Conquest [of the Magic Carrot]”, the first two boosters, and we were pairing up to do more boosters for “Conquest”, and we stopped there. I continued to write ideas down because that’s how I do it. I either get a card title that’s really cool and later I match it to a mechanic or something in the game to do.

Or I get something in the game to do and then I match it to a title and believe me there’s one file now. I didn’t do this during that time. I consolidated all of that material into one [Microsoft] Word document which is just a mishmash of notes, but still I know where to navigate it from.

I also believe in that time period I read the dictionary. So, and for the sole purpose of pulling out words, you know, that they call them like A+ words, or you know, A-bar words or something like that. And I just wanted to have a whole bunch of words that aren’t used in regular speech—they’re the next level—that I can incorporate into the game and I believe this you’ll see quite a few.

Jonathan: Jonathan’s rolling his eyes right now.

Jeff: It’s quite a few high-class words, you know, that I—I mean, I’d read the dictionary only to say, “Oh, I could use that in Bunnies” or “I could use that word” and I made a list and I don’t know if I’ll read the dictionary again it took me like a year and a half of free time to do it. But there’s some good words that we’re going to be adding in—for card titles mostly—that’ll have people scratching their heads and grabbing their phones to look up some words but I think it’s a good evolution.

Other game life: so, I’ve worked with IBW on a few projects. “Trap” came out but it wasn’t a big success but I’m gonna re-incorporate the mechanic and try again with another game-game. I’m working with AdMagic to put out a game called “The Perfect Pyramid” which had briefly come out with a company that went belly-up so it’s nice that it’s gonna have another—it has a brand new look and it’s got a new publisher and I really like working with Shari Shapiro at AdMagic. She’s fantastic and her line of games is phenomenal. I mean it. I’m actually— “The Perfect Pyramid” is a small project, but I’m happy to just be part of the AdMagic family.

And I’m also working with Ninja Division. Now, we’re very excited about this now. Ninja Division picked up the card game “Flip the Bird” which did not do well for Renegade and I believe it’s because—you know Renegade’s had an awful lot of new games coming out in their first year and I think they bit off a little bit more than they can chew, and they had to cut the fat, and unfortunately, “Flip the Bird” was was one of those pieces of fat. But, I met with the folks at Ninja Division and they literally jumped at the opportunity to get the rights to that game. We did change the name, though. We changed it to “Bird Brain,” because they wanted to get it out of the hobby market and felt it would do a lot more in the retail market for, you know, family gaming and would. So I very gladly worked with them and that’s going to be coming out this year.

And I also met an interesting man in Britain. Now, this is a good story. I met James Watt when I was over in Britain and it was a set up. I didn’t just meet him randomly. So James—it’s a good thing we’re recording this—James Watt’s sister was dating a guy who is the brother of a woman that one of my friends from high school is married to, and whose brother I’m accused of sleeping with, which for the record, I never did. So that was the connection and I met with him and he showed me a game prototype and I thought it was so good—I thought I had so much potential—that we set up a partnership deal and I helped polish it up a little bit for him. And Ninja Division liked it and they’re gonna put out that game. But it’s gonna be under James Watt’s company name. I’m gonna ride second saddle on that one but it’s still another it’s a good project. It’s a party game. It’s a little risque, but we think the fact that has a British twist to it will make it unique here in the States and I think it’ll be a good thing, another feather in Creative Team Alpha’s hat. Let’s see, I finished developing—

Kathy: What’s the name of that game? Can you say yet?

Jeff: I can’t say yet. It’s being discussed. Okay? So more to come.

Kathy: Okay, cool.

Jeff: It’s a big British party game, for now. Okay I’m pitching games next week at the GAMA trade show. I’m still working hard to get “Where the Buffalo Roam” to find a publisher for that. “Arch 13” is finished and that looks pretty good, and that’s another new game idea. And a party game called “Your Two Cents.” So those are the three things I’ll be pitching next week. [to Jonathan] I don’t know, do I want to do my personal life for the last…

Jonathan: No.

Jeff: He’s not. I don’t want to talk about what happened. I had a few I had a few tragedies in my personal life, so I’m gonna skip that part and hand it off to Jonathan.

Glenn: All right, Jonathan, how about you? What have you been working on in the last five years?

Kathy: Or living through.

Jonathan: Nothing. [pause] Jeff and I worked together, I think, on half of those games, if not most of them, I did the artwork for.

Jeff: Absolutely. I wouldn’t have anyone else.

Jonathan: And some of those games, like “Flip the Bird,” we started working on in…

Jeff: 2005.

Jonathan: 2005, so there there’s some card games that have been around and some board games that we’ve done, that… [to Jeff] you didn’t mention that one.

Jeff: I didn’t mention “Solar Flare.” I’m pitching “Solar Flare” next week too. Now, “Solar Flare”’s been signed with three different publishers already and every single one of them goes out of business before we can get the game out. It’s just that maybe it burns them out because it’s a flare, but we’re pitching it again and we’ll see. And Jonathan did the artwork for that.

Jonathan: Yeah, yeah. So, sometimes when I when I we do the artwork, you know, it’s we’re pitching opportunities, so some of the designs are being changed by the publisher which is completely fine. Bunnies is the one that we’re a little more invested in.

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Marriage

Jeff: Yeah, we let the folks at Ninja—they tweaked the “Bird Brains” design a little bit. We didn’t mind. Jonathan doesn’t want to say, but I’m gonna say, the biggest event for him personally in the last eight years was Jonathan got married.

Glenn: Congratulations!

Kathy: Yeah!

Jeff: He just rolled his eyes and went [raspberry]. That’s terrible. Isn’t that terrible? Should be proud.

Jonathan: We got married on our anniversary of meeting each other, so it wasn’t..

Jeff: Isn’t that romantic and cheesy?

Kathy: It’s wonderful.

Jeff: Wonderful. Awesome. Alright, well that that covers that question, I think.

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Flavored and Themed

Glenn: Yes, our next question is: with the new Killer Bunnies boosters you’re alternating between “flavored” and “themed.” Are there any essential differences between those types of boosters or is it just in the naming?

Jeff: I think the themed ones are just that. There really is a new mechanic or a new character or something that requires us, you know—giving that there’s only 55 cards in a booster. We’re keeping everything pretty much the same—and it’s amazing that we have to really balance. When there’s a theme we have to dedicate enough cards in a deck to that theme, you know, to warrant making it a theme. I mean, we don’t—I’m not gonna mention any of our competitors ’cause Jonathan and I agreed before we started this interview we’re not going to say anything negative about anybody or anything [faux coughs], but we have competitors that that just reskin their game and and that’s—you know, it’s the same cards, it’s the same functions and they just put a different title in a different art piece and we’ve never done that.

We want true mechanical themes to go through. So that’s the idea and I’ve actually mapped out up through 2022. When we got back doing Bunnies, I went for months and I dove in and I’ve done just a tremendous amount of Bunny work. It’s all ready. It’s not drawn, but it’s it’s written and it’s themed and it’s mapped out. And I think the theme decks are great because we really have to put in the cards but then the flavor decks are, you know, anything goes. I mean anything goes in the flavor decks, but I use it as a buffer so that if I need a few more cards that I couldn’t squeeze into the theme deck it’s, um you know, it’s the next deck that year. So the theme deck always comes in the spring and then the flavor deck comes, you know, late summer. And that’s the buffer.

I’ll give you an example. Next year the theme deck is called the “La-Di-Da London” deck and, you know, mostly because my travels in the UK, I’ve really come to love London as a city and “La-Di-Da” is a kind of a way of saying, you know, “uppity” over there. And one of the mechanics that were adding are the underground stations. And so we’re calling them “Bunderground.” And there’s ways for Bunnies to move around in The Bunny Circle, but we need to have twelve of them. We’ll introduce eight in the theme deck and then we’ll follow up with the last four Bunderground stations in the flavor decks of that year. Which will be, you know, that will be also good because if it’s to be continued. I mean, it’s kind of a marketing thing, but you kind of need to pick up the last four. I mean, it’s a little cheesy but the God’s honest truth is we didn’t plan it that way. It just happen to work out that way. We just didn’t have room for twelve.

Jonathan: Also, when we get back to Bunnies, last couple years, we realized when we came out with the first, you know, Booster Decks for “Quest,” we used all the colors already.

Jeff: Oh well, then yeah that’s a given, but we had already…

Jonathan: We had to come up with a new way of differentiating our decks.

Jeff: Right, but when we started, we had Chocolate.

Jonathan: Chocolate is our first flavor deck.

Jeff: And that’s the way it was gonna go: flavors.

Jonathan: We did colors and now we’re doing flavors.

Jeff: But we did colors were gonna just do flavors. And then there was some talk of doing crystals like emerald and Ruby and stuff like that. But that was too close to colors and we—yeah, we couldn’t make that work—and we figured everybody likes to eat, so flavors are good. We’ve got them. “Cake Batter”’s coming up.

Jonathan: And we’re just finishing up “Pumpkin Spice.”

Jeff: We’re just finished up “Pumpkin Spice” for this year, and “Almond Crisp” is another one. Well, hold on, I guess I could pull this up and give you the list, but go ahead ask another question while I’m trying to figure out where that is.

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New Mechanics

Glenn: Alright. For some of these new mechanics, what are some of your favorite mechanics that are coming in soon?

Jeff: Well, hold on. Just pulling up the Excel spreadsheet, but the magical, the magical Excel. I like the Bunderground stations that’s gonna be a big thing. Well, actually, we should start with this year. “Creature Feature” hasn’t been released yet, but we’ve got a new set of Zodiacs and even though they pretty much do the same thing the old Zodiacs do, they’re different. They’re the Chinese Zodiacs, so that’s kind of nice and it kind of lends towards, you know, people saying, “Oh, good. Okay, that’s good.”

Jonathan: They’re all animals.

Jeff: And they’re all animals, so hence, “Creature Feature.”

Glenn: Ah.

Jeff: And we tried to do all of the Weapons with animals and things like that. You know I’m just popping over. The weapons are: there’s a cat, there’s a bat, there’s a crab, there’s a pheasant, there’s a snake, there’s an ape, there’s salmon.

Jonathan: Falcons.

Jeff: Falcons, narcoleptic dogs, puppies, muskrats.

Jonathan: Horse.

Jeff: There’s a horse. There’s a Yeti. There’s reptiles and two thousand mockingbirds.

Kathy: Wow.

Jeff: Oh, and an Ood from “Doctor Who.” There’s a card called “Bad Mood Ood.” And that’s—that should be coming out, like next month. I think. I don’t know. I never know really when they’re coming out. But to go back to your original question, so let me go two questions back. Next year we’ve got “La-Di-Da London” and “Cake Batter.” Then we’ve got “Radioactive Robots” and “Almond Crisp.” And that’s for 2021.

Jonathan: Omigod.

Jeff: Yeah, and let’s go any further than that. We want to have another interview, and, is that right? “London,” “Cake Batter” is 2019. “Radioactive Robots” and “Almond Crisp” is 2020. Yeah, yeah. All right. But like the Bunderground Stations are a great way to move Bunnies from one place in The Bunny Circle to another and sometimes people get a lot of bunnies so we got to be able to move them around a little bit and we’ve changed all the names of the underground stations to put little funny themes on them for us. And I think it’s going to work really really well and a few more Carrots and you know we’re going to be sprinkling those in as well and a few different themed Terrible Misfortunes. The Bunderground theme we’ll also have the Oyster Cards. And the Oyster Card is a way—it’s a transport card so that you can move from one section to another to another which is really kind of neat. I’ve put a really good British twist on then on the next deck which I think will be really kind of cool. And we’re even doing one card in “Pumpkin Spice” that’s a preview of the British themed next deck. So, there you go.

Jonathan: Which one?

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Double Metals

Jeff: But you did—what’s it called? There’s a Metal Cards, but we mixed it up in the next deck we did double medals.

Jonathan: Yeah, it’s the second one. “Electrum.”

Jeff: “Electrum,” “Billon,” and “Tumbaga” are the names of alloys for copper-silver, silver-gold and gold-copper so we did one of each because they’re gonna be very very valuable. We’re never gonna do more than one of each.

Glenn: Oh, wow.

Jeff: There’s a new British pound that just was released. I’m sure it’s gorgeous. I mean as a coin it’s absolutely the most gorgeous thing. I just saw it this morning for the first time—Jonathan’s drawing of it—and it’s really quite good. Hurrah, Jonathan, yea!

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Customizing Killer Bunnies

Glenn: Yea! So with all of these new cards coming out what recommendations do you have for Killer Bunnies fans to integrate these new boosters?

Jeff: Buy them! Buy every single one!

Kathy: Well, yes. One has to have the complete set, but so one doesn’t drown in cards what’s the best way to use them so you don’t freak out your friends who don’t want to play a card game with 1,200 cards?

Jeff: Well, I’ll be honest, I’ve always done the first game with people is Blue-Yellow and there’s certain cards I’ll take out of the deck for doing demos. I’ll take out Cyber Bunny. I’ll take out Weil’s Freshness [Center]. I’ll take out the two market-closing cards. I’ll take out—

Jonathan: Asteroids.

Jeff: Asteroids. I’ll leave the nuke.

Jonathan: Ebola.

Jeff: I’ll take out Ebola, the [Miniature] Black Hole. Yeah, those are three weapons and gosh, dude, it was one there was one other, but I’ll have to check list list. But that’s basically it. And I’ll just put them through and I’ll do that once if they’re gamers, twice if they’re non-gamers. Then quite frankly, I’ll throw in Red and Violet together. I think most people can handle that, you know, and then do one or two games and after that it’s just a matter of, you know, if somebody’s willing to read the mechanics part of the bunny bits or the new decks, which isn’t the longest part of the Bunny Bits, it’s just usually one or two new mechanics then they’re ready to jump in.

But if they’re not, then you know you’re right. It can be a little intimidating because [to Jonathan] what are we on, level with—you “Pumpkin Spice” is the twentieth Bunny deck now, by the new numbering system. I don’t know if you’ve seen it online. There’s a new numbering system because we incorporated “Conquest” into “Quest.” We kind of brought it under the umbrella and and we renumbered the decks for marketing purposes because we’re not doing any more “Conquest” per se. We’re just kind of folding into “Quest” and now forward all of the mechanics from both are in. So my advice is: I actually keep “Conquest” separate and I teach people with “Conquest” and then up to Red, Violet and if they like the game, it’s an easy move over to, you know, over to “Quest.”

Kathy: Okay.

Jeff: Jonathan, tell them tell them about all the things we’ve put on the website to help people that may not have all the decks or just want to buy the new ones.

Jonathan: We have a few new things on the website: some resource pages. And one of them is a critical card section and it’s more than just cards. It goes over…

Jeff: Crucial.

Jonathan: Crucial Cards, sorry.

Jeff: Crucial Cards.

Jonathan: Crucial Cards. It goes over all the mechanics that are added in each deck, so you kind of say, “Oh, I like playing with the Zodiac. I want to add those cards,” or “I don’t like playing with the Mysterious Places. I’m not going to add those decks,” so you kind of pick and choose based on what mechanic was added in those decks on which we would want to play.

Jeff: Right, right. And you can download and print those cards now.

Jonathan: Yes, if you’re missing the deck and there are some cards of that deck that are really important to play other decks and you can just download those those specific cards.

Jeff: And the dice as well.

Jonathan: You can’t download the dice.

Jeff: You can’t download the dice, but you can get like dice-equivalent maps. Like if y’all saw Zodiac die there’s like a chart that says roll a regular d12 and here’s the equivalent of each one. So we have more resources on the on the website than we’ve ever had before for people like that. Now, clearly we like to play the whole thing. You folks like—all the big bunny fans—but we don’t want to isolate it. And one of the great decisions, I think, that Ultra Pro is making is they tell us that this year they’re putting out “Conquest” in an all-in-one box, and to me, what I told their sales team is that that’s the Holiday Gift. That’s the one you give when you just want—

Kathy: Ah.

Jeff: No one’s ever [said], “Oh, I’ve never heard of this game, here’s ‘Conquest,’ you know. Good luck with that.” And in the book it tells you to start slow, but you know no one’s gonna do that. This is gonna, you know, open up all the cards and play, which is fine because I think Blue through Violet is quite reasonable as a learning curve.

Kathy: Mm-hmm.

Jeff: And remember, that the difference is, you know, there’s money with the Coins and the Metals, but you see What’s interesting about that mechanic—and I remember us talking about this when we did “Conquest”—is we want to give our fans something different and we did. I think the exchange of money by the Coins, well, the Coins are coming out there in “Caramel Swirl,” but the the Metal cards freed up a lot of spaces for us to put in different kinds of cards. We simply didn’t have to have as much money cards in the game because we had the metal coins and if you use them—properly—the exchange rate, you know, there’s a lot of money floating around the game in this room, you know, there’s a lot of things to buy. You buy Pawns—

Kathy: Mm-hmm.

Jeff: Cabbage, Water, Radish, Milk, Defense Cards. [To Jonathan] I don’t know about you, but I like to buy a lot of Defense Cards.

Jonathan: Why are you looking at me?

Jeff: Because I offend a lot of people in the game, though I need the Defense Cards because everyone wants to kill the creators. Oh, I guess they don’t care about winning the game. But anyways, getting back. So the Metals we’ve incorporated back in. They’re definitely in the new decks, but the Metals in the “Pumpkin Spice” will be the last ones. Well, we’ve burned out that mechanic. But it’s interesting because, you know, if you’re not up on it and it’s just one more mechanic to learn, you don’t actually need to play the metals in a game of “Conquest.” They can just stare in the middle and do nothing, so it’s not crucial to the game, but it’s certainly, you know, if you say, “Well now, wait a minute, I’ve been playing this game. This is my third game. What do these metal cards do?” And you’re like, “Oh, okay,” and I’ll exchange them and there you go. Plus I personally haven’t. It’s very educational.

Jonathan: But the great thing about Bunnies is that you can completely customize your own decks and you know, your own playing experience.

Jeff: Absolutely.

Jonathan: Based on your own interest and just a quick little—my stories. I have cousins that played this throughout school. I mean, they’re graduated and started their own families now, but they had tournaments with their friends playing the game and they didn’t like the Terrible Misfortunes so they just took then out of the deck. You can do whatever you want and just have fun doing it.

Jeff: I can’t begin to tell you how many people over the years have written it they say, “Can we do this, or can we do that? Can we remove this? Can we add that? Can we—?” and my answer is always the same: Did you buy the game? Yes? I don’t care what you do with it. Burn it. I mean, use it as kindling as long as you buy another deck. No, not like that, but any way somebody wants to play it, it’s fine with me.

And then I always finish up by saying, you know, something like, “Hmmm, that’s an interesting idea. Try playing it that way, but then write back to us and let us know how it went,” because we basically—we’re gathering empirical data from people who are trying different scenarios that we maybe never tried, or, you know, never even thought of. Of course, we’re interested to hear how it goes. The majority at times they say, “Yeah, that didn’t really work and we went back to the rules,” and I’m like, “Oh, okay. That’s good,” you know. But sometimes people do come up with interesting ideas.

Kathy: So, Jonathan, what are some of your ways to customize your decks, especially if you’re looking and it’s like, “Yeah, I only really want to put eight of these, you know, 18 decks together because I have somebody who’s played the game a couple of times, but they don’t want to look at the entire thing. Which ones would you put together besides, you know, Blue through Violet?

Jonathan: You mean my personal list? I don’t have a personal list. Why, we play with everything.

Jeff: Yes, but let me jump in. I’ll answer his damn question.

Jonathan: I want to answer the question!

Jeff: You said you didn’t have one. I’m going to jump in while putting together a sentence.

Glenn: [Laughs.]

Jeff: I teach with “Conquest”. That’s my take-it-with-me kind of all-contained bunny set. But the new decks follow from “Conquest” with the Metal mechanic and everything else, and everything else. So to tell you the truth, if it was me, I think the jumping-in point for a lot of people could be “Conquest.” I don’t remember the deck numbers. I know we wrote them on the back of the [Bunny] Bits. I just don’t honestly remember.

But if you were to jump in at “Conquest,” I guess, which comes after Chocolate—we numbered it because of the the order that they were released—and you added all four “Conquest” decks, and then “Fantastic,” “Caramel Swirl,” “Creature Feature,” and “Pumpkin Spice,” that to me would be a jumping-in point which was always how “Conquest” was designed. We’d gotten up to Onyx and there it was, you know, the pyramid of fails. You know, you’d sell so many Orange, and then a few less Green and a few less [Twilight] White. Although it kind of evened out by the time people got to [Stainless] Steel, usually they finished. They went all the way, you know, but we wanted to give people a chance to jump in—a new place to jump in—and then, you know, it’s always been “Conquest.” Which is why, again, we’re real happy that’s coming out this year as an all-in-one and then adding the new boosters, I think, a good place to add them is after “Conquest.”

Glenn: That’s really good to hear because when we introduce people to Killer Bunnies, we usually introduce them to “Conquest” because those decks we have separated out, and if the “Fantastic” and “Caramel Swirl” and following decks mix really well with those, then we’ll just continue to add the decks to “Conquest” rather than the original “Quest” set, which we have in the Kickstarter version: the Deluxe Edition.

Jeff: I got questions but I want a sidetrack. First I want to give Jonathan a chance to answer that last one and then I’m gonna sidetrack.

Jonathan: I think Jeff’s answer was good. I don’t know the specific math on his answer, but you know they kind of go in clumps. The last couple decks we did all the Ranks together and Mysterious Places. So, if that’s a little too complex, you can take out last couple decks. Do that. We added the Pawns and the Zodiacs in the middle, and so it kind of got a little bit more complex. So, if you want to keep it simpler, you know, stick with earlier decks, but these new ones that were coming out with can go with anything.

Jeff: You know, I’ve seen actually I’m gonna follow up on that. There are people that take out Orange and Green. They feel the Pawn mechanic is too much and the Zodiacs don’t do enough, they say. I disagree. I think they’re a great distraction. They’re good trade. They’re good—you know a lot of people do trades and and there is a value to them especially with the double turn mechanic. I don’t want to sound snooty. I don’t want to sound La-Di-Da, but I think a lot of people don’t value the Zodiacs because they haven’t read the bits to know what they do, that you can get double turns if you have all three of one. And in the new one it’s gonna be three consecutive because they’re numbered, so if you have three consecutive Zodiacs you get the double turn. Okay, but okay, and then my side track was this: I wanted to talk about what we’re doing for promo cards every year because that wasn’t one of the questions on the list, but I want to talk about promo cards.

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Promo Cards

Jonathan: Okay.

Jeff: So Jon and I have set this up. Now again, it’s completely up to Ultra PRO, but this is what we’re pushing for. It was true last year. It’s true this year: is we want to come up with a unique Bunny and then put out seven versions of that bunny, one of each of the six colors and then one white—which as you know in Killer Bunnies—white is a wild card.

Kathy: Yeah.

Jeff: In a white bunny you can declare it any color, but it’s a—it’s kind of a fluid declaring it can be any color at any time. And then three other cards to make a series of ten promo cards for each year. So this year just for the interview, let’s talk about the cards that are coming out this year.

Kathy: Hm-mmm.

Jonathan: I’m working so far in advance that I don’t know what year I’m working on right now.

Glenn: [Laughs.]

Kathy: I’m liking the Sheldon Bunnies.

Jeff: So, we did the “Sheldon” bunnies, the Enchanted bunny was last year. This year we did—Hold on, I don’t remember. Let me—I don’t remember where’s the “Creature Feature” deck? Oh, here it is. Maybe I can find it all that? Oh well, we should talk a little bit now about Creature Feature because it’s got the Law Enforcement bunnies coming out.

Glenn: Oh, do tell.

Jeff: Oh, that’s okay. I won’t tease. All right, so it’s not here.

Jonathan: No, it wasn’t Creature Feature. It was the deck before that, wasn’t it?

Jeff: Hold on, I’m checking another. Well, okay, I’m going to take this from memory now. We did “Bunnylon Four.”

Jonathan: Yeah.

Jeff: “Bunnylon Four” is a bad Special that you give to somebody else and they have to keep it saved, but it’s got the the pink bar with the pink dot.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Jeff: Now, I’m taking this strictly from memory. We’re looking at the files. We’re at the computer right now and I just don’t know where they are. So, you would think we’d be a little bit more organized, but we’re not.

Glenn: [Laughs]

Jeff: So, yeah. “Bunnylon Four,” and it basically says you you give it to somebody they have to have four—they can’t have a Bunny Triplet to get double turns, they have to have a Bunny Quadruplet.

Glenn: Oh.

Jeff: So, it’s kind of a “screw you” move, but at any point if they have no bunnies then they get to discard that Special, so it’s not forever. We made [it] a little less powerful and then there was “The Silence”? No, it was. Who was the “Doctor Who” one with the marks? What was the name of that card?

Jonathan: That’s “The Simmers.”

Jeff: No, we didn’t call it “The Silence”?

Jonathan: That was the reference to it, but it was called, um, it was nasty.

Jeff: “Silence Is Golden,” or something like that?

Jonathan: No—

Jeff: Hang on, I’m gonna leave you with Jonathan. I’m gonna go—I’m gonna be right back.

Glenn: Okay, Jonathan—

Jeff: Oh, my.

Glenn: For last year’s promo deck, there was the Cesium Francis Lithic Myxial obidium Rixy Dixy Droxy Drexy Droxhide. What is that a reference to?

Jonathan: That one you’ll have to ask Jeff because I have to ask him every time I do it. It’s interesting and I’ll answer this with the completely unrelated reference.

Glenn: Okay.

Jonathan: When Jeff gives me the cards, he’s got all the titles figured out we’ve got to sit down and I have to ask him, “What does this mean? Do you have a reference to this?”

Jeff: I found them! I found them. I got them.

Jonathan: And sometimes he says, “I have a very specific reference that I want on this card,” and he’s got it all figured out and it’s done it’s a strange sci-fi reference or old movie reference or something like that. And then sometimes he’s like, “I don’t know. I just like the name.” That’s what I’m thinking about. What he was going through the dictionary, so he’ll just give me a card title like, “This is the fun name.” [I] was like, “What does it do?” “I don’t know,” so I have to come up and then sometimes I’ll give him the artwork and he’s like, “What is this?” and I’ll say, “Well, this is reference to that,” and he’s like, “I never knew that.”

Jeff: That was a fun one.

Jonathan: So—

Jeff: We’re gonna send you these pictures. We should send them these to put in the article. So it’s “Bunnylon Four.” And the other one’s called “Silent But Deadly” and it’s a “Doctor Who” reference. It says, “may be used once by player who has not spoken for three rounds of play to automatically eliminate any bunny in The Bunny Circle without a bunny modifier.”

Glenn: Wow.

Kathy: Oh-oh-oh!

Jeff: So, if you notice somebody going quiet, it’s a bad sign. So and then I can’t remember what the bunny was.

Jonathan: It’s not in there?

Jeff: No, it’s not. You know, when we played, we printed up a copy.

Jonathan: I know what the artwork is, but I don’t know what the title is.

Jeff: I know, it’s a Money bunny, isn’t it? You get your money? You get a dollar every turn or something? I don’t remember. Isn’t that terrible? Jonathan’ll send you a picture of the promos for this year because that’ll be fun to put—because it doesn’t come in the deck and people are going to ask, “Well, how can I get those promos?” and just be very vague—

Jonathan: Because we don’t know either.

Jeff: We don’t know either. So, yeah, we don’t know how to get those. Ultra PRO will give them away sometimes. So alright. So, no, I’m sure we’re way off track.

Jonathan: He asked a very specific question about a card reference.

Jeff: Oh, that’s really Jonathan’s department.

Jonathan: No, I was one that—

Jeff: What’s the card? Maybe I’ll remember.

Glenn: The card was the Cesium Francis lathy mix sold lik see Dixie Drac seed Rexy drock’s Hyde.

Jeff: And if you don’t know how to pronounce it, how am I supposed to—?

Kathy: [Laughs]

Jeff: That was a promo card from last year. It’s a—it’s a reference to “Red Dwarf.”

Glenn: Oh.

Jeff: And it was it was—uh—you could look that up, actually, if you just put into the—

Glenn: I tried.

Jeff: No, no, not under Cesium Francis, though. You got to put it in under, like, “Red Dwarf longest name disease” and—

Kathy: Okay!

Jeff: —it’ll give it to you. It’s hilarious because the actor pronounced it flawlessly and it’s a very funny episode. Are you guys “Red Dwarf” fans?

Glenn: We have not watched “Red Dwarf.” We do have a friend who has a British comedy party every summer and has tapes running and TVs all over his house showing various comedies.

Jeff: Oh, cool.

Glenn: But no, we haven’t sat down though those.

Jeff: Well, take a picture and send them the card in the picture and he’ll know it right off the bat, I guarantee.

Kathy: Okay.

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Card References, Part I

Jeff: Well, you know we can do a whole interview on card references and I noticed on the website—Is it the website or there’s some other website where—

Jonathan: It’s Wikipedia.

Jeff: It’s Wikipedia, that’s right, and— [It’s the Killer Bunnies Wikia!]

Jonathan: Or, uh—

Jeff: —and I was a first time in years, honestly. I was just poking around and looking at it. Great job, by the way—

Glenn: Thank you.

Jeff: —for putting that together. But all the rest, you know, seriously, if we were to sit down and do like all the references, we have to have you two over and it would be like a six hour dinner. You literally have to go through every card, but Jonathan can talk forever about different references on the card and every time he does is—this is for the record—every time we meet with people and ask, “Well, we’ve got a ton of questions,” with fans or interviews. I’m sitting there. I go through the basic references. He talks about, “Oh, but then I added this to the art—” There’s still stuff in the art that I don’t know about and I learn something every time that we do this!

Jonathan: At one point, we really scared the people at Playroom [Entertainment], because they were afraid that we were gonna slip in a reference that was probably naughty or inappropriate.

Jeff: Yeah.

Jonathan: That they wouldn’t get. And, we probably did. [Laughs]

Jeff: Right.

Jonathan: There are references to references upon references. And what’s interesting right now is that we have card games that are done but were never published, yet. We’re referencing those cards already.

Kathy: Uh-huh.

Jonathan: I’m referencing a card that I’ve already done, but the fans won’t see the original reference until later. Like I’m referencing Jupiter cards that haven’t published yet. (To Jeff) And can I tell them about the burden thing?

Jeff: Yeah, please. Go for it, yeah.

Jonathan: We’ve actually finished several—the starter deck and several boosters for our “Psychic Penguins [and the Voyage Home]” spin-off, and so I’m referencing cards from that, too. But, we don’t even know if that’s going to be published.

Jeff: We don’t have a commitment from Ultra PRO to actually publish the game, but it was included in the contract that we signed with them. We’re in hopes that they’ll publish the game, but we don’t we don’t have a commitment. They’re—they’re a little shy on commitments, which I guess in the long run is better than saying, “yes,” and then not doing it, so you know—But we hope that they’ll commit to doing “Psychic Penguins” in 2019. That’s what we hope. Yeah, but we want to emphasize that we’ve not been made any promises. No promises have been made, so no promises have been broken. But, we still don’t have a set commitment. We’d like to see it come out, but yeah.

Jonathan: We really like to have fun referencing little odd things.

Jeff: I’m sorry, you wanted little odd things?

Jonathan: Nah, I’m not saying they did. Sometimes when I see some of these fan websites and whatnot and they try to come up with the reference, like, there’s no reference there. It was just you guys.

Jeff: Yeah, sometimes they’ll—they—I’ll tell you the biggest one. Right at the beginning is Carrot 8 is the evil carrot. He’s bald and he’s doing the pinkie near his mouth.

Glenn: Oh, “Seth.”

Jeff: Everyone thought that that was a reference to Seth Green, who was in the the “Austin Powers” movie. Well, clearly it’s an Austin Powers reference.

Glenn: Yes.

Jeff: But it had nothing to do with Seth Green because Seth Green didn’t turn evil until “Goldmember,” the third movie and that Carrot was drawn long before then. I mean, he was just you know kind of a side character and not to mention the fact that I don’t like him.

Kathy: [Laughs]

Jeff: Seth, was, you know, an Egyptian reference because the god of evil, the god of—you know—the bad god was Set, S-E-T. But I felt like nobody would know what that meant as a name, so the closest name was Seth, and that’s where he got that name from.

Kathy: Ah!

Glenn: Interesting.

Jeff: But, really, and we’ve said this before, I mean, I know you folks there all the way up in Minnesota eh-uh, but if you’re ever down here [San Diego, CA], we would we could literally go through cards—I don’t even think we get it done in six hours, to tell you the truth.

Jonathan: Uh-uh. We’re up to twelve hundred cards right now.

Jeff: And that’s not even counting Jupiter. This would have to be like a big, big, big—or multiple phone conversations, like the next interview should just be card references.

Glenn: Okay, we should schedule that.

Jeff: We don’t want to get side-tracked. What’s the next question? Just winded up and point us in the direction, that’s all.

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Designer’s Resource Center

Glenn: I noticed on the website those changes you had mentioned previously. One absence was the “Designers’ Resource Center.” Is that going to be coming back or have you decided that it’s really unnecessary moving forward?

Jonathan: I read that question on your list of questions and I was surprised that I took it off. When we kind of updated the website, resources and whatnot, we did take a lot of the old pages off. Things that are no longer in print and that page was the Bunny Blanks.

Jeff: Oh, the Bunny Blanks, yes.

Jonathan: Which has been gone for a while, so I might take the Bunny Blanks information off and just repost the page with the resources on it.

Jeff: Yes, Glenn, you were the catalyst. You’re—we’re gonna get that page back on and it’s gonna be because of you.

Jonathan: We have to worry about linking everything.

Jeff: That’s cool. Yeah, okay, I didn’t know that, see? This is a good interview. [mimicking himself] “What do you mean took that off?! Damn. Put that back on!” Alright.

Glenn: Will the resources that go back up there be the new Zeta artwork? Specifically, the very outline of the card changed between the Epsilon Zeta and the Zeta Zeta cards and I was wondering if a new template was going to be put up.

Jonathan: Ah, yeah. We’ll probably have to do a new template because I think the old template has the Playroom copyright logos on it, so—

Glenn: Yes, it does.

Jeff: It has our CTA logo. Well, since Jonathan finished up “Pumpkin Spice” [Booster Deck] he’s going to put a lot more information—There will be a preview up for this year’s products. All the promo cards from last year and this year will be listed. There’s a lot of tweaks to the to the website coming. [To Jonathan] But when you have that slated for, two weeks, that you’ll be starting on that?

Jonathan: Oh, sure.

Jeff: Yeah, sure. Okay.

Glenn: Great! We have agreement and commitment.

Jeff: Pumpkin Spice is done. I told you when he’ll start. I didn’t say when he’ll finish, so—there you go. Noncommittal. Well, we’ll put something up. We will.

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Punctuation and Proofreading

Glenn: Awesome. I noticed one other change between the older published decks and what we had for the Deluxe Edition and that is exclamation points have been removed from a lot of areas. Card names, Play Immediately lost an exclamation point. Is there some hidden reference there?

Jonathan: There’s no hidden reference. The Deluxe Edition. We created what we call the “Bunny Bible.” It’s the bunny-writing—

Jeff: Bunny Writing Bible. Yeah, a little inconsistency.

Jonathan: There was an inconsistency and there was—we just had a decision. Are we going to keep it in there or are we not going to keep in in there? And we decided that the rule is “no punctuation” unless—

Jeff: Absolutely necessary.

Jonathan: Like the question mark in the questions. So there were some other things like, did we use the—did we spell out “and” or do we use the ampersand?

Jeff: Oh, I remember. Oh, gosh, this was well—We started working on [the] Deluxe [Edition] back in 2010 and it came out of 2012, so this was about eight years ago. But my memory is of us having meetings about ampersand and exclamations.

Jonathan: Exclamations.

Jeff: Commas and leading zeros and I lost a lot of those arguments. I remember—I don’t remember what they were, but I remember that I lost a lot of them, you know, and [joking] as a man, that’s really all that matters. The issues aren’t important. I’m still sore because I lost. But no, I think it was all just a matter of trying to be consistent and I know a lot of fans out there have written in and say, “Well, the back of my Bunny cards don’t look like the back of bunny—” no “—Carrot card.”

Jonathan: Oh yeah.

Jeff: So we changed the back of a Carrot cards and we changed the back of the Market cards and I think they’re better now. And my response to most fans are—because they feel like, “Well, I have—my Carrots have this back.” Okay, but these cards are played face-up. They never played facedown.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Jeff: And you know—except for the small amount of times when you gotta flip them over for a card—and so I said, you know, I don’t really think that the card backs are a big deal. As a matter of fact, when when players see the new “Conquest” re-release, they’re gonna see a new back on the card. And, I’m sure we’ll get complaints, and, to which I will say, “You know, at some point things have to change and evolve” and, you know, I hope that people are flexible with that fact. I don’t know.

Glenn: You could also say that you want them to “collect them all.”

Kathy: [Laughs.]

Jeff: No, you see—but we—I’ll say what—and I know you mean that’s just a joke. I’ll tell you one philosophy that Jonathan and I’ve always had. And that’s that we want to keep—this is one of the few things was that when I sat down originally with the guys from Playroom [Entertainment] and we decided which way we were gonna go. This is back in 2002. We absolutely did not want to make “rare” cards or—

Jonathan: Collectible cards.

Jeff: —collectible cards, or like, limited edition anything, because although we would have made far more money—we absolutely and we both agreed on this—we just said, “no.” We don’t—we want to build loyalty and when you buy a Killer Bunnies deck, you should get everything everyone else is getting. It’s just—it’s not our nature. It’s not the nature—it’s not a light-hearted nature of the game, and we didn’t do it. So then came the promo cards, right? And then, and we felt like but we had a commitment from Playroom [Entertainment] that every promo card we put out would eventually be released, and it was—in “Chocolate [Booster Deck].”

And this was for the original “Quest” and then “Fantastic” [Booster Deck], and maybe the borders were different. So, but we originally release a promo card it’ll have a black border and then when we reprint it for everyone to have, it will have a white border. And we felt like this—because of people who play the game that aren’t gamers and aren’t collectors, just say, “Oh well, I got all the cards. I’m good.” And it doesn’t matter what border. But the collectors can say, “Well, I have an original print of the—” So, it seemed to satisfy both camps.

Jonathan: Yes, but do they have the original print with a typo on it?

Jeff: Well, there are typo cards. Now, do you have a copy—Now, I’m gonna ask you this, Glenn, do you have a copy of the rare “Bingo Flamingo” card?

Glenn: Yes.

Jeff: You do? You have the double 16?

Glenn: Yes.

Jeff: I would like to go on record as saying that was completely Jonathan’s fault.

Glenn, Kathy: [Laughs]

Jeff: But, no, it really was, because that’s a design issue. But that was, he doesn’t know how to count, evidently. But completely, and then and then we had to tweak the Bunny Bits—remember?—to have something special happen because of the—yeah. We had to kind of cover our tracks, I guess. We’re—we’re putting this out there now in an interview, but it’s been enough time. Like ten years ago. I’m okay with the embarrassment level now.

Jonathan: We don’t make mistakes, we just make—

Jeff: Adaptations.

Jonathan: In this game, anyway, we make mistakes.

Jeff: We try to fix them as quickly as we can. But every once in a while, I’ll run across—I’ve signed quite a few of those “Bingo Flamingo” cards that have the misprint. I think that was the most grievous misprint. Honestly. Can you think of another one that was just horrible?

Jonathan: Well one was on the box.

Jeff: Which was what?

Jonathan: Smoothers.

Jeff: Oh, “smoother” misspelling. Yeah, that was pretty bad. It was the original Terrible Misfortune with the barbecue sauce.

Kathy: Oh, yeah.

Jeff: We misspelled “smothered” as “smoothered.” We put an extra “o” in there. I’ll take credit for that one, ’cause I wrote the text for that. Darn it.

Jonathan: And it ended up on the box!

Jeff: Oh, you’re right. Even worse, yeah.

Glenn: “Caramel Swirl” has a typo on the box, too.

Jeff: [Silence, then laughs] Oh, God. We don’t know about this.

Glenn: Well, that’s why I’m telling you now. The Zeta series cards—the listing is 1100 to 1155, but the first card is actually 1101.

Jeff: Ah.

Glenn: A fan pointed that out on the Magic Carrot Message Board.

Jonathan: Okay. Is it the invisible card?

Glenn: Well, 1100 is actually in a prior deck.

Jonathan: Jeff’s going into his garage right now, getting his deck.

Jeff: Alright. I’ve got a copy here. I didn’t hear what he said, though. I’m back. What are we looking at?

Glenn: The box for “Caramel Swirl,” says Zeta series cards 1100 to 1155. The actual first card is 1101. The 1100 card was in the prior deck. The—where did we put it?

Kathy: Fantastic?

Glenn: Fantastic.

Jonathan: He’s pointing his finger at me, even though he proofed it.

Jeff: You’re the only one who got that. I didn’t get it. I never even look at the box.

Kathy: [Laughs]

Glenn: Anyway, we didn’t want to cause a fight.

Kathy: Yeah, it’s really not a big deal.

Jeff: It’s Jonathan’s fault! It’s Jonathan’s—you’re going to have to write to Ultra PRO and Derrick and tell him what happened, because if they reprint it, we gotta fix it for the reprint. Alright, do you want to make a list of—

Jonathan: [Laughs]

Glenn: No—no, that’s quite okay.

Jeff: Well, now I’m really worried. What about “Creature Feature”? Hold on, I gotta check this now.

Glenn: Oh, no. Well, okay. While you’re checking on that and because you’re playing Jupiter today, there are Jupiter black and pink dice listed on a couple of cards and those weren’t included in the first Boosters, so [cards] like “Newport News” and “DNA Resequencing” reference those dice. How big are those dice? Are those like d27s or something?

Jeff: Oh, the black is d24. Those are commercially made. You can get those. And the pink is a d30.

Glenn: Great.

Jeff: That was an easy one. That was the easiest question so far. Okay, give us some more easy ones! [laughs]

Kathy: [Laughs]

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Inspiration

Glenn: Alright, how often do you experience things in real life and say to yourselves, “I have to make a bunny card for that,” and do you have any examples?

Jeff: The “London” deck is completely based on my musings in London, Now, I’m going to be spending my fourth summer in London and Manchester. in just a few months and I love the town. I love the UK. I’m going to Glasgow. I go to Edinburgh. I’m going up to Birmingham and Manchester. But for the most part I’m settling in and I just love London so, as I mentioned, I carry my phone with me everywhere—like everyone else—and when I see a word or I see a phrase or something I’m like, “that could make a bunny card. That could make a bunny—” and then, as I mentioned earlier in the interview, I have a big, a Word document I put together about a year ago with all my notes from everywhere so basically they’re all in the same place. So, there’s a card—a promo card, I think—it’s a—let me, let me get this straight here. Hold on. Something like—put my [diety]damn glasses back on.

Alright, there’s a promo card for 2019 called “Tickety Boo,” and nobody here [in the U.S.] knows what that means. But “tickety boo” means everything’s “A-Okay.” You know, “How you feeling?” “Tickety boo,” and so I thought that was just a charming phrase. Now it’s more Scottish than English, but that’s okay. And it was the name of a bar and we passed the bar and I was in Dundee, Scotland and there’s a bar there called “Tickety Boo’s.” I’m sure if you looked on the Internet you could find a picture of it. I think I’ve posted it on Facebook at some point in my travels. And now that’s going to be a Bunny card. So, there’s a perfect example and it’s going to be coming out next year and everybody in Britain knows what “tickety boo” means and absolutely nobody here knows.

Although I will admit that since I’ve been traveling to Britain quite a bit I’ve changed a lot of my language and the kids at school have noticed because I will say things, like you know, “throw that in the bin,” rather than “throw it in the garbage,” and and instead of, “form a line,” I will say, “form a queue,” and little things like that have kind of crept into my vernacular, so that’s a perfect example. One that I wrote down just yesterday. There was a word that I thought would just be nice. Again, I don’t know how many years it will take to incorporate it into the game, but sometimes it’s right away and sometimes it takes forever. Let’s see if I can—what was the word? It was a word. I said, “that’s a good—” Oh! “Brouhaha.” So, “brouhaha” is a cool word and a lot of people know what that means, but it’s not on the Bunny card. I would take the “tickety”—“tickety boo” is fun.

Jonathan: I’ve got a couple.

Jeff: Okay, I’m sorry. Go ahead, Jonathan.

Jonathan: To answer your question, there’s kind of a running joke that we have. We’ll be out and about, you know ’cause we’re not just [business] partners, we’re friends. So, we’ll be hanging out having fun or doing something and then we joke around. We’re very sarcastic. We’re full of puns.

Jeff: And, well, he’s more sarcastic than I am. [Laughs] That was sarcasm, honestly.

Jonathan: And, so, we’ll say something funny, and then he’ll go, “Oh, that could be a Bunny card.” And my response is, “Is everything about bunnies?” And his response is: “Yes.”

Jeff: Yes.

Jonathan: So at our last outing, we wrote down, “blue angles.”

Jeff: Blue angles?

Jonathan: Blue angles.

Jeff: Uh-huh.

Jonathan: “Wackadoodle poodle.”

Jeff: Ooh, the “Wack...” I remember the “Wackadoodle poodle!” I don’t have one that one in my notes, though.

Jonathan: Okay.

Jeff: You got to send me this list.

Jonathan: And we were at the Zoo. I’m a volunteer at the San Diego Zoo, so we visited the Zoo. It’s a great place to hang out and there’s animal called the “takin.” And so he came up with the “Attackin’ takin.”

Glenn: Oh.

Jonathan: We’re not sure if anyone’s gonna know what a takin is after I draw it, but it’s gonna be a takin somehow.

Kathy: We saw the takins in the San Diego Zoo.

Glenn: Yes, if you recall, we honeymooned in San Diego.

Jeff: I do recall. Alright. Fair enough. The answer’s, “yes.” That was a long “yes,” though.

Jonathan: That was a long, “yes.”

Jeff: That question was “tickety boo.” All right.

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Rules Clarifications

Glenn: All right, how are you guys doing on time? We’re at about an hour now. Do you have—

Jeff: Actually, we’re good on time. We’re good on time because we got pushed back for the—

Jonathan: Oh, yeah. We’ve got some people that are showing up late.

Jeff: We’ve got time. It was all scheduled to be finished before 9:00, so let’s keep going.

Glenn: Okay because we do have more questions and I have a few rule questions I wanted to throw in, as long as I had you on the phone, if Kathy can switch to the second tab on there. One of these questions—the one I’m going to ask now came up in a game and we were kind of surprised because with so many cards the sequence of things happening was kind of strange. But, with “President Ficus,” it itself is not a bunny and can’t be used to play Aggressive cards, but the rule for it says that it can be attacked in any way that a bunny can and is subject to Terrible Misfortunes. Can it be treated like a bunny in other ways and some of those ways might be add modifiers to it, like “Ancient Star Rod,” “Blanch,” “Heavenly Halo.”

Jeff: I would say I would say you can’t have a Bunny modifier because it’s not a bunny.

Glenn: Okay.

Jeff: That’s my—that was easy. I have a feeling we’re sinking in deeper, deeper waters. Okay, yeah.

Glenn: You can throw a weapon at it.

Jonathan: There are a couple of cards that you can attack like a bunny, but aren’t bunnies.

Jeff: Yeah.

Jonathan: And they’re Weapons.

Jeff: “Cyber Bunny” is not a bunny.

Glenn: Yes.

Jeff: But it can be—it—but it can be attacked with a Weapon. You couldn’t put a modifier on “Cyber Bunny.”

Jonathan: Good point. Good point.

Jeff: And sooner or later—much later in the bunny outline, past 2020, we will be adding human Relatives to the game.

Glenn: Oh.

Kathy: Really?

Jeff: We did [unintelligible] on one of the cards, but, you know, as a preview, as we often do. But there will be humans in the game and you can’t add Bunny Modifiers to them either.

Glenn: Interesting. If you can attack it with a Weapon, you cannot add a Clover or a Funky Fungus to it?

Jeff: Correct.

Glenn: Right. Okay, because I kind of would have thought if you can attack it with a Weapon you would have been able to add things that affect how Weapons affect them.

Jeff: No, no. Because it says “Bunny Modifier,” but it’s [President Ficus is] not a bunny.

Glenn: Sure, but the Weapons cards also say “attack any bunny.” They don’t say, “attack a bunny or a creature.”

Jeff: Well, that—that may be true, too.

Glenn: So, that’s why I ask.

Jeff: [Laughs] You painted me into a corner, there, Glenn! I’m going to have think happy thoughts and float out of the room. [Laughs]

Glenn: Sorry, didn’t mean to do that to you! All right, next question: if a player without a bunny has Carrots and those carrots go to the opponent with a most Dolla, if no opponent has the most Dolla—either equal amounts of Dolla or no Dolla at all—what is done to transfer those Carrots to another player?

Jeff: I know for a fact there’s a rule for that.

Jonathan: Because we had that question early on.

Jeff: You know, we had that question—that’s—I know there’s an answer. I just don’t know what it is.

Jonathan: I’ll look that up.

Jeff: You’re looking that up? Alright.

Glenn: All right, while he’s looking that up, can “Random Rotational Roaming” affect a “Holographic Bunny”?

Jeff: “Random Rotational—” Yes! I would say, “yes” to that.

Glenn: Okay.

Jeff: That’s the one with the Bun-hoppily picture?

Jonathan: Yeah.

Jeff: Right, it’s on a board that says, “Bun-hoppily.” Is that “Random Rotational Roaming”?

Glenn: Yes. Looks like a Monopoly board?

Kathy: Yeah.

Jeff: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That could affect the Hologram.

Glenn: Okay and then our last rules question before we get back to the other ones: with “Trip’s Trip”—which was one of those Chocolate cards, I believe—Are the extra cards that are allowed to be played straight from the player’s hand or can those be Top Run cards or either?

Jeff: Well, I believe—I believe the “Trip’s Trips” is in “Fantastic,” isn’t it?

Jonathan: Yeah.

Glenn: Isn’t it?

Jonathan: It was fan-based “Fantastic.”

Jeff: Okay, I think it’s in “Fantastic.” Would you? No. No, no big deal. No, the only cards that allow “out of hand play” are Rank cards. That’s that mechanic. This simply says, “if you have the ability to play the extra card—like with a Bunny Triple—you can play as many extra cards as Triples you have. So, I would say “no.” It’s basically another play, but not direct. It would have to come from your Run or—

Glenn: [accidentally cuts off Jeff] If you have Special or Very Special, can you play those from your hand?

Jeff: Well, sure. Well, remember a Very Special you can play anytime. It doesn’t count as a turn.

Glenn: Right.

Jeff: And you could play a Special out of your hand because that counts as a regular turn. You bet.

Glenn: Okay, awesome. Kathy, can we go back to the other tab? Sorry, we’re working off a Google Doc here.

Jeff: Okay. [Laughs]

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Conventions

Glenn: Will you guys be going to Gen Con in 2018?

Jeff: Nope! [Laughs] One: we haven’t been invited, and that’s always tough. We probably wouldn’t go out on our own because there wouldn’t be anything for us to do. Out of the three publishers we’re working with now, no one’s given any hint whatsoever—and that includes Ultra PRO—and that’s a shame, but we can’t make them invite us. And—and I’ll be in England, so they have to fly me in from London for the week and I don’t know that—I don’t honestly know that I—I mean, I’m miss going to Gen Con. I really really liked Gen Con. Back in the old days it was one of the—I will say this for the records. One of the things I look forward to the most all year with Gen Con, but gosh, I haven’t been to one since—I don’t know—2012?

Jonathan: It’s been a while for me. You go more often than I have.

Jeff: Yeah, yeah. Unfortunately, I think—I would say 90% “no” on Origins and Gen Con.

Glenn: Okay. We recently went to a Con that’s up here in Minnesota called, “Con of the North.” It’s a gaming con and we were pretty impressed with it. We spend a lot of time in the dealer’s room playing new games that we hadn’t heard of before. Some were quite interesting. Do you ever go to smaller cons like that?

Jeff: I think the whole “con” question would be totally based on which publishers want to, basically, invite us to go. Would we go just plain out on our own? We’re doing local cons. We’re doing a con on the 28th of April here in San Diego, but it’s local and one of my former students is running it and he asked me to do it and so we kind of volunteered. It’s really, really small. But, in general, for a bigger—like a flight kind of thing where we’d have to, you know, actually fly out and get a room and stuff like that. And I want it again say, for the records, that’s what we don’t enjoy. We love going to those things, etcetera, etcetera, but if we’re not sponsored by one of our publishers we probably don’t go.

Kathy: Okay, okay.

Jeff: Well, I wouldn’t say that. It’s just there’s so many and you know. There you go.

Kathy: Hm-hmm.

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Artwork Evolution

Glenn: All right, next question is for Jonathan.

Jonathan: Cool.

Glenn: How has your artwork changed in the new expansions compared to the original “Quest” blue deck, that I think—as I understand the story—someone else had done and you adopted the style and then continued that, but I’m wondering how you feel the artwork has evolved over, you know, the last 15 or so years?

Jonathan: Omigosh.

Jeff: I’ll be back in ten minutes.

Jonathan: What you mentioned Yeti—I didn’t draw the original three or four booster decks. When I came on board I was more of a graphic designer. I was helping Jeff do the mechanics, so producing the games. I came up with the—hold on a second. The TARDIS is winning—

Jeff: And yes, sorry, my computer occasionally makes the TARDIS-y sound. I apologize for that.

Jonathan: TARDIS-y?

Jeff: TARDISy? TARDIS-like sound? I don’t know.

Jonathan: But it was before was published by Playroom [Entertainment], I did go back and kind of take the three or four art styles that we had from the previous artists, and combine them, and then evolved with that. But it evolves and and it’s changed for a couple reasons. One is that we’ve come out with a couple new games. So, like “Jupiter” has a complete, different look. And we have to—I remember sitting down earlier in the design process saying, you know, what are these bunnies gonna look like? Because we have a little short ground bunnies and we have tall more human-like bunnies and we had to decide what type of bunnies we’re going to evolve “Jupiter.” We said that they had to have long enough legs to fly the ships. [Laughter all around.]

We—you know—the Sinister [Bunny] is very round. They’re short, very short, round bunny and that type of bunny’s not in “Jupiter.” So we kind of went with more of a humanoid type bunny and then we got into “Odyssey” we had so many different great artists work. So many different artists working in there. And one of the things that I do is I take all these different artworks and try to you know keep their distinct style, because all the artists got credit for their design, and make it look like it’s from the same product. And Kinderbunnies has different artwork. And Matthew Holiday, which is one of our—is the artist that did “Conquest.” He had a different style and so now that I’m expanding on “Conquest” and “Quest,” I’m merging his influence into the bunnies that I’m drawing now. So it’s just—and you know an artist improves on his own artwork. There’s some stuff that I look back on when I referencing art, like “Oh, can I draw that over?” So it’s just that it is an evolution as an artist and as a game, but it’s also influences from other artists that have joined our team and contributed as well.

Glenn: Are there any features that you’re particularly proud of that you’ve added over the years to the cards—any game?

Jonathan: Artistic-wise?

Glenn: Yes.

Jonathan: There’s a few of that. You mean, what’s “my favorite artwork,” or “our favorite game mechanic”?

Glenn: Well, I’m not really asking about game mechanics. I’m really asking about the artwork, because sometimes you add features. Like the artwork has become a little more photo realistic and less abstract over the years. So, I’m staring at “Trip’s Trips” right now and [Trip’s] got an entire console behind him with lots of detail. Earlier in Killer Bunnies, the[re] might be a character on a white background.

Jonathan: Yeah, we try to do that. When I look at a deck, I still try to mix up a very simple image with a very complex image and I think now that I finished—we’re almost a couple days away from finishing “Pumpkin Spice”—I don’t have a lot of simple ones. They’re all very complex.

Jeff: No, that’s not true. Like in “Pumpkin Spice,” I like the plant guy with the—

Jonathan: That was—he doesn’t have—

Jeff: —boo-boo on his fingers [“Meek Shall Inherit”]. The dart board is pretty. [“Tivy Telos”]

Jonathan: That’s true.

Jeff: I like the mix. Because some images really should be crisp, clean and less lines mean more. But I’ll tell you what. And we’re gonna send you a copy of this. I think we mentioned earlier, this “Bunnylon Four” card is brilliant. I mean it really looks like the Babylon 4 station from “Babylon 5.” That’s that’s weird to say, but it really is. And, the number of lines! But I think the most intense—one of the most intense images was the “[Menacing] Mayan Marker.” [to Jonathan] The one that cracks the cards with the lightning bolts and everything.

Jonathan: Yeah. Matt drew that.

Jeff: Matt drew that one.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Jeff: That one was unbelievable!

Jonathan: One of the “Conquest” weapons.

Jeff: Yeah, it was one of the “Conquest” weapons. In maybe the Violet deck and so few people have seen the [Conquest] Violet deck, which is amazing. There were only, like, a thousand printed, I think, maybe.

Glenn: Oh, we have one.

Jonathan: There’s some cards that we decided we were going to do more realistic: the Celebrity Bunnies were not going to be caricatures of the celebrities. We wanted them to be more realistic, you know. Mysterious Places we wanted to be more realistic than cartoonish.

Jeff: Well, I got to say something. Later, about ask me about the Mysterious Places again. Just make it quick. No, but go on.

Jonathan: But so, it’s fun. Sometimes I will come up with an idea for an artwork and then say, “What can I reference now?” There’s a card coming out in “Creature Feature.” It’s a called “Leaping Lizards,” so it’s a lizard doing hurdles.

Jeff: Okay, I want to go for the record, this is the first time I’m hearing about this. If we had this, I don’t remember. [Laughs]

Jonathan: There’s—I’m thinking, okay, so I’ve got the image. It’s great. It’s got this lizard leaping over something and he’s on a track. Up in the background, there’s like a little stadium or whatever. I think, “What else?” It’s all original. It doesn’t represent anything. And, I mean, well, if you’re at a sporting event there’s always a blimp in the air, so it’s like, well, where do we do a blimp already?

Jeff: We’ve got several blimps.

Jonathan: And I got a blimp from—

Jeff: The “Hindenbomb”?

Jonathan: No, not that one. I got a different blimp from one of the Zodiac Play Immediately cards.

Jeff: Oh, the blim—It was the blimp with the Waterworks.

Jonathan: Yeah. Jeff says, “Well, but I don’t like that. But let’s do this blimp,” but I’m like, “But this is one of our blimps.” He’s like, “It is?”

Jeff: I didn’t remember it. Yeah, you’re right. We did have that conversation. I didn’t remember “Water works.”

Jonathan: So we’re referencing cards that we don’t even remember we’re referencing now.

Kathy: [Laughs.]

Jeff: Water Works was in the Steel [Booster] deck, but yet that was four cards. It was “Water works” —

Jonathan: “Fire”—

Jeff: “Fire Walk with Me.”

Jonathan: Yeah.

Jeff: Which was a “Twin Peaks” reference and everyone’s like, “that show will never be back” and sure it will. And then we did “Earth Below Us,” which was it’s really a lyric from that song.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Jeff: And then there was one other. What was the other one? Was water, fire.

Jonathan: Air?

Jeff: Maybe there were three, then?

Glenn: No, there were four.

Jonathan: “Air Freshener”!

Jeff: “Air Freshener,” okay. And they deal completely with the Zodiac. They were in the deck—two deck after the Zodiac, so you know they’re like we were talking about the Bunderground stations where we’re kind of feeding them in a little bit. We’ve always kind of done that, but not really for commercial—not to force people to buy more because that’s a crappy move. But it was never designed that way. We ran out of room in this deck, so we’re gonna put these extra Zodiac things in this deck and keep that mechanic going. We should mention two things now. I got two things. There’s going to be another Zodiac die. So Ultra PRO has committed to making a Zodiac die. And doing a unique Zodiac die just for the Zodiacs of the Chinese Zodiac. So that’ll be coming in this deck coming up [“Creature Feature”]. I want to talk about Mysterious Places. So we’re doing more Mysterious Places—

Jonathan: Wait a minute. Let me finish this last question. I want to answer one more thing and then you vend your Zodiac.

Jeff: Okay, I’ll put—

Jonathan: One of the artwork that was really fun that—I’m probably giving away a corporate secret here. Jeff’s getting ready to hit me.

Jeff: You go too far and I have to hit the mute button. But go ahead.

Jonathan: The yellow ball with the red stripe is an influence that I had, artistically.

Jeff: Naw, you can tell this story. It’s a good story.

Jonathan: Okay. So the original—because we talked earlier that, you know, I redrew a lot with the artwork. Well, do you know that artwork was drawn by another—The first time that ball appeared was drawn by another artist.

Jeff: With Dart, right?

Jonathan: It was the Lawn Dart.

Jeff: Lawn Dart.

Jonathan: Was it Lawn Dart or was it—

Jeff: It wasn’t a yellow ball. It had flowers on it.

Jonathan: It was a blue ball with pink flowers.

Jeff: Do you have a copy of that card, the Terrible Misfortune that has the—it’s the Lawn Dart.

Kathy: Yeah, I’m pretty sure we do.

Glenn: Yeah, and I think ours has the Yellow Ball with the Red Stripe not the purple ball with pink flowers.

Jeff: There was an earlier edition of that card. Maybe it was the Delta series.

Jonathan: Yeah. It was before it went to Playroom [Entertainment]. I just looked at it. It’s like, that’s kind of cheesy, if I draw flowers on a ball.

Jeff: It was too intricate, too. You wanted it to be sharp and you want it to be clear.

Jonathan: Yes, I did that. And then we throw random things into cards on a regular basis.

Jeff: It’s just on the off-chance that we could use them later. No, we’d like to tell people everything is planned out, but I guess within that there’s planning. Like, we’ll say, “Well, let’s put a fly on the wall” or “let’s put this object here” for like, no good reason, because then later we can go back and use it so in a way it’s on purpose. I mean, we did do it on purpose, but maybe not thought it out completely.

Jonathan: Like, for example, there’s penguin throughout the whole game and that’s because we can know it’s “Psychic Penguins.” There’s the [planet] Jupiter—

Jeff: That’s true, yeah.

Jonathan: The Jupiter planet and several different images because we did “Journey to Jupiter” and I just started throwing into this little Yellow Ball with the Red Stripe, but there’s other little icons and objects that we will add to—

Jeff: For the record, the blimp is not going to have its own game. [All laugh.]

Jonathan: Yeah.

Jeff: In other words, he’s not leading into that. I’m just saying.

Jonathan: We didn’t come up with the Mysterious Places and the Yellow Ball mechanic until—

Jeff: It was much later. It wasn’t at the end. It wasn’t on the fly, but it was it was more than halfway through.

Jonathan: Yeah, so we decided, “Hey, let’s use this.”

Top

Card References, Part II

Jeff: Right. Because we always figure[d] we’re going to end it with a double booster and a big finale, and then that wasn’t the end. And, omigod, has that caused grief. We still don’t know if Ultra PRO is going to reprint [Ominious] Onyx as a double booster—in a double—in a bigger box or if they’re gonna print it as a double booster in a smaller box.

Jonathan: Yes.

Jeff: And that’s completely—it’s a commercial decision. I mean, we have nothing—we have no influence on that, but it’s just that, you know, if you’re putting all the boosters in order, to have one box that looks like cockamamie, which you know. We told them to just put both decks in the smaller format and we drew them smaller—

Jonathan: Yeah, we gave them a small box.

Jeff: We gave them a smaller box version of Onyx. I mean, you have all the cards. It’d be a little bit more expensive. It doesn’t need to be that bigger box. It would be it would have been okay if it was the last one.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Jeff: But it’s not the last one.

Jonathan: The last card in the last deck—

Jeff: Oh, “Much more.”

Jonathan: It’s called “Much More” because every time we said in the next deck is going to be—

Jeff: We do the preview.

Jonathan: This card, that card, and “much more,” and so the last card in Onyx, which was supposed to be the last deck, was called “Much More.”

Jeff: I remember that. I remember that was like a running joke because we used to print previews on the side of the box, even just card titles, to say, “coming in the next deck,” but the problem—and that was a big pain in the butt and I’m going to tell you why. We always had to have at least one image done or two because we had that two images done for the next deck to put on the sides of the boxes and it wasn’t even on the side, it was the inside of the box, and we’d lift the card titles and at some point we just felt like, you know, what our fans are gonna buy the deck. They’re not gonna read a card title and say, “Oh, this is making my decision to buy the next deck. If they like the deck they bought, they’re gonna buy another one and so we stopped doing it, but we used to do it and we know we’d always end it with “much more,” and so that’s why the last card—and it’s out of order.

Jonathan: Yeah. Because it’s the last, last card.

Jeff: Most of the time we will print cards like, the bunnies come first and the Feed the Bunnies and the Weapons, oh, no, the Carrots, and then we do the Run cards, the Special cards, the Very Special and then, I honestly don’t know the answer to this, but Jonathan knows the order of Zodiac, Money, Metal—

Jonathan: I have to look it up.

Jeff: —Play Immediately. It was basically the order in which it was introduced.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Jeff: And which priority coming first in the deck. But “Much More” was a Run card and it was last. I remember getting letters about that, but the only other card that’s out of order, by the way, I’m wondering if you spotted it, Glenn?

Glenn: From one of the recent boosters?

Jeff: It was in “Conquest.”

Jonathan: I know.

Jeff: I know you know. So there’s a card that’s out of order.

Kathy: Oh.

Jeff: And the card is called “Grand Slam.”

Glenn: Oh, about the Denny’s thing, yeah.

Jeff: It’s because we want to make it the 1000th card.

Glenn: Oh!

Kathy: Ahh.

Jeff: I think it’s in the middle of two Feed the Bunnies, that I don’t know.

Jonathan: The Feed the Bunnies were too scared.

Jeff: We would do the Feed the Bunnies, we do the Weapons, then we do the Runs in alphabetical order, the Specials in alphabetical order, and the Very Specials, but this one was out of order because we needed it to be the thousandth card. We wanted to do something special for the thousandth card.

Kathy: That’s cool.

Jeff: And we have something planned for the 2000th card. Just you wait. We’re not gonna tell you anything about it, but there’s a big, big thing coming up for that.

Kathy: Awesome.

Glenn: Here’s that.

Jeff: In that picture, though, for the thousandth card, “Grand Slam,” did you notice that there’s a box of Ziti.

Kathy: I don’t think I did.

Glenn: Pasta? We’ll pull it up here. Hold on.

Jeff: Okay. [Waits a moment, then continues.] So there’s a box of Ziti because in movies like “Casino” and all those other gangster movies a box of Ziti is slang for a thousand dollars.

Glenn: Oh.

Kathy: A-ha.

Jeff: Hey, so these are the things, you know, these are the references that you know we need like four days to tell you about.

Kathy: Uh-huh.

Jeff: That was like, I know, Jonathan was telling you earlier, “You know, sometimes Jeff gives me very specific...” and that was one of the very—

Jonathan: That was “Conquest,” so that was Matt’s one.

Jeff: Matt did that one?

Jonathan: Yeah.

Jeff: But, but that waitress—we’ve used the waitress in a few places.

Jonathan: She shows up in “[Psychic] Penguins.”

Jeff: “Penguins.” She’s the “Penguins” waitress.

Jonathan: There are some times he gives me references and I’d look at him and say, “That’s not very funny.”

Kathy: [Laughs.]

Jeff: [Sarcastically] Doesn’t happen. Oh, we should talk about that. It does not have to be funny to anyone but me. It’s “None of these references have to mean anything to anybody but me.”

Jonathan: There there’s a card that we did—

Jeff: But you put in a few that mean something to you. I wouldn’t put in “Beetlejuice.” You put in “Beetlejuice.”

Jonathan: That hasn’t come up yet.

Jeff: What deck is that in?

Jonathan: It’s the one we’re working on.

Jeff: “Pumpkin Spice”? Okay, well, he put in “Beetlejuice.” Now, I saw the movie once. I thought it was horrible and I would never do it again. I mean, unless we’re talking about the star itself, which is in the constellation of Orion, a personal favorite of mine, then no. But technically, Betelgeuse appeared on a “Perfect Pyramid” card.

Kathy: Hmmm.

Jonathan: The star.

Jeff: The star, yes. ’Cause you had to draw Orion for the Pyramid game.

Jonathan: Yes.

Jeff: Sorry, go ahead.

Glenn: We do have a copy of that, as well, just incidentally.

Kathy: Hm-hmm.

Jeff: Cool, cool. It’s gonna be re-released soon, so I’ll get you another copy.

Glenn: Oh, cool.

Kathy: Very cool. Hey, Jonathan, speaking of, you know, you’ve seen the waitress on a couple of cards, do you have kind of your own favorite, like, characters that you pull from card to card, and—

Jeff: He likes his own character, that’s on three cards now. [Everyone laughs.] I know the answer to this one: Sky Waitress, and the Hedge Clipper, that’s you. And you’re on one more, but I forgot which one it was. Do you remember?

Jonathan: Yeah.

Jeff: Okay, well, tell us which one.

Jonathan: I’m on, uh—uh, what’s the name—

Jeff: See, he doesn’t even know!

Jonathan: “Quickdraw.”

Jeff: Oh, that’s right. You’re on “Quickdraw.” That’s a good one because “Quickdraw”’s him drawing himself. Do you remember this card?

Kathy: Awesome.

Glenn: Yes.

Kathy: Yep.

Jeff: I’m sorry I interrupted. Jonathan, go ahead and tell them your favorite character.

Jonathan: So, do I have a favorite character or favorite—oh, my.

Kathy: I was just wondering like ’cause, you know, every once in a while you’ll see certain bunnies that seem to show up a lot or certain characters, the waitress is one. I mean, because sometimes they’re very specifically, you know, particular references, but sometimes they’re not references. And do you have kind of a stable of certain, you know, bunnies that you like to draw or something? From, you know, stuff like “Feed the Bunny” or something where it’s not a specific reference. Do you have kind of your own family of things that you like to put in?

Jonathan: No, not particularly. One of the cool things that Matt did. He’s one of our other artists is that—he’s from Canada—and he wanted to add beavers.

Jeff: He did a few Canadian references, yes.

Jonathan: So we didn’t understand those, but now that I’m twelve hundred cards into it, I’m drawing an image, it’s like, I just need ears. And I’ll go steal ears from a bunny drawing. You know, I did a card a few days ago. It’s like, okay, this is gonna be this reference and I just I just need it bunny to start with and so I went and stole a bunny from somewhere else and I just gave him new clothes.

Kathy: Okay.

Jonathan: But I feel like I draw bunnies in my sleep sometimes.

Jeff: You’ve gotten quicker.

Jonathan: Yeah. I’ve got more elaborate, I think, but I don’t think I have any—No, I think I look at each one as kind of a new, a new adventure, a new task.

Jeff: I will say this: Jonathan really does. I mean, don’t get the wrong impression when it comes to creating a new bunny character for a new card or for a new situation even what we’re doing the promos, he always tries to draw something new. And he challenges himself as an artist. I mean, for an artist of his advanced years—

Jonathan: [Laughs.] Call me old?

Jeff: Seasoned. I would call him seasoned, not old. I would say seasoned.

Kathy: [Laughs.]

Jeff: It’s funny because I’m in the room. I can smell paprika right now. He constantly does try to not top himself, but do something unique and different, which really is the whole theme of Killer Bunnies. We don’t reprint cards that do the same thing and just call them something different. I mean, you know, aside from the “Choose A Carrot”s and the “Feed the Bunnies,” which are the staple. We need those, but we really do pride ourselves on making each deck unique. And that comes both from the writing and the drawing—I’m gonna pay you [Jonathan] that compliment—and I don’t think either one of us could do it alone. We’re a team. I mean, that’s that’s—we push each other to do better every time. He’ll tell me what he thinks a card is weak, and I’ll be like, “Yeah, all right. Let’s swap this one then. And I’ll do the same with the art.” So—

Jonathan: There it is. You guys know the “Cylon Staple Gun” reference?

Kathy: Yes.

Glenn: Yes.

Jeff: I love the “Cylon Staple Gun.”

Jonathan: I think I heard that story. Oh, never mind.

Jeff: I think they know the card, but I don’t think they’ve heard the story.

Kathy: No, I haven’t heard the story.

Jonathan: Yeah, so this is one of the ones where Jeff came up with a really cool name and I thought, I can’t draw that.

Jeff: It wasn’t that cool. It was—the original title was “Mach One Staple Gun,” and that’s a weak rhyme, “one” and “gun.” It’s a weak rhyme, but in the notes, well, because we told the story so many times, it says, “draw a staple gun moving very fast.”

Kathy: [Laughs.]

Glenn: [Laughs.]

Jeff: And I had no idea what was coming, and, of course, you know Jon and I have been friends for, God, seventeen years now, right?

Jonathan: Yup.

Jeff: Seventeen years we’ve been friends. We met in 2001. And, so he knows what I like and what I don’t like reference-wise, and, and he drew the “Cylon Staple Gun,” and I remember just opening the file and looking at that, and I—I was blown away. I mean that is just freaking funny, you know, for us old “Battlestar Galactica” fans.

Kathy: Uh-huh.

Jeff: So, that’s a perfect example of, you know, the art basically rewrote the card.

Kathy: Hm-hmm.

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Advice for Aspiring Game Designers

Jeff: Alright, so have we gotten half-way through the questions?

Glenn: Oh, yeah. I think those are all of our game specific ones, but we did have some additional questions, like “What advice do you have for aspiring game designers?”

Jeff: Oh, dear.

Jonathan: Oh, that answer’s changed in the last couple years, too.

Jeff: It really has. You know, I will admit—

Jonathan: Don’t quit your day job.

Jeff: Yeah.

Jonathan: And don’t sell your house.

Jeff: Don’t quit your day job and don’t go into debt. And I mean this.

I had a friend. His name was Mark, and this was back in the day. And he invented something. It wasn’t even a game. He invented this little tool. I won’t give you the name because I don’t want anybody to trace down who he is, and he basically talked his parents—he was about 20 or 25 at the time—he talked his parents into getting a second mortgage on their house because he really thought that this tool would be the next big thing and that every hardware store would want to stock it, etcetera etcetera. And I remember, he asked me for my advice. I looked at it and I said, “You know, I think you’ve got steps one, two, and three look good. And then steps five, six, and seven look good. Right in the middle there’s the step that you think is going to happen. You want it to happen. You just—” And he said, “I just know it’s gonna happen.” I’m like, “But how do you know?” And it was like—it was because what I’ve often had this question from many people—and I guess I’ve called it “the miracle step,” where steps one, two, and three, then a miracle happens, and then if that miracle happens, that’s four, five, and six are already set too—and, unfortunately, it’s like stepping off the cliff and having you know confidence that you’ll be able to make it to the other side, magically, and, well, that’s not a surprise. So the story ends with he had a prototype made and he had product, you know, a mold made, and had them produced, and he went out to sell them, and they just weren’t a hit and he lost a lot of money. And, you know, there you go.

So, don’t invest your own money. Absolutely don’t invest too much of your own money. Obviously, you have to invest a little money to get a prototype made, but don’t go big-time solo. But then some people say that if you don’t take a risk, you don’t get a reward. And I gotta tell you, that’s one way to live, but I’ve never lived that way.

Jonathan: Yeah, the game market has changed a lot. When we started Killer Bunnies, there weren’t very many games being released, it was still kind of a—

Jeff: It was maybe a dozen a year that were that were in the retail arena.

Jonathan: But now—

Jeff: It’s almost a hundred a month being released, from what I’m told.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Jeff: A hundred every month, either through the Kickstarter or different companies, and there’s so much competition out there, and brick-and-mortar stores are hurting. And everything’s done on the Internet and Kickstarter now.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Jeff: It really has affected the business. It’s affects how I try to get new games out. I would never say, “no.” I would say, “If you want to invent and you want to create,” I would never discourage anyone from doing that. Absolutely. The exercise itself is a very rewarding and almost spiritual in a lot of ways because you’re in tune with yourself, you’re in tune with your creativity, and you’re producing something out of nothing, and that’s great no matter what way you slice it. However, having said that—

Jonathan: Trying to find a publisher. Trying to find a publisher that won’t go out of business.

Jeff: Yeah, yeah. A publisher who’s honest.

Jonathan: A publisher that’s honest. And a publisher that has the bandwidth. I mean, they just have so many games that they’re looking at nowadays compared to ten years ago.

Jeff: It’s true, yeah.

Jonathan: They have so many games that they want to publish, but don’t have the resources. And not just monetary resources, but I think the lot of staff, and time, and finding the right printers, and finding the right distributors to put a game out and it’s just, I think that behind the scenes is really overwhelmed with the volume of gaming that’s going on right now. Which is good, and like Jeff said, it’s that that fourth step for lack of a—

Jeff: The miracle step.

Jonathan: —Miracle step, like if you, you know, get out there work and if you find that one person that just loves your game and you find that fan base that Killer Bunnies did, then you can be a hit, but you know we’ve got a whole bunch of games that are still looking for a publisher.

Jeff: Hm-hmm.

Jonathan: And we’ve got the, you know, we’re experienced and well-known game designers, but it’s so hard to get a game out right now.

Jeff: It is. It’s very hard, but I guess I would tell somebody, “Keep your expectations low, but keep your attitude high.” I mean do do the inventing. Keep it as a personal reward, if it’s rewarding to you to do it. Absolutely continue to invent. Keep notes. Make sure you take the proper steps to protect your work, copyrights and all that kind of thing. You know, make sure you leave a footprint. Protect your work.

Jonathan: Pay your artists well.

Jeff: Pay your what?

Glenn: [Laughs]

Jeff: [Joking] What was that—that? Yes, the people you work with. This is the Bunny attitude. This is our company’s attitude from the beginning. Treat the people very very well, our fans, our publishers, each other, with the greatest respect because the work will, you know, it’s—it’s a mirror of that. And, you know, maybe Killer Bunnies could have made ten times as much money, but I don’t know another game that has better fans than our game. And granted, that then I answered their letters every day and I don’t answer the other people’s letters. And I won’t mention any of our competitors, but I will mention our fans. I get letters. I get emails. I send out a lot of promo cards. People say, “Oh my God, I can’t believe you folks, as a company, would actually take the time to,” and I always write back to say, but “Take the time? Of course we’re gonna take the time. You’re all fans! You’re our customers! Who else would we spend our time with?” Of course, we’re gonna.

I mean, it’s so easy to shine when everyone else is doing so little to respect the consumer. We’re nothing without consumers. We’re nothing without our fans. We love them. Absolutely. There isn’t anything we wouldn’t do for them, within reason, that we could. That would cost a lot of money. All it takes to get a fan for life, a kind word, a returned email, some good advice, or a, you know, a signed card. We’re in.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Jeff: That’s a small price to pay. And we know we’ve been away for a while, but we’re back and we’re hoping to up that fan base again or rediscover people that haven’t played in a while. And we’re getting a lot of those letters. We get we get letters from people, “Oh, there’s new boosters out. Hey, we didn’t take the game out for a few years, but we take it out again and we had a good time.” I’m getting a lot of that type of letter, so—

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Jupiter Party, Part II

Kathy: It is such a fabulous party game. Oh my gosh, the memories you make around the table are awesome.

Jeff: I’ve always said I don’t think anybody cares who wins. It’s really—it’s really how do you play the game, the fun you have interacting with other people. I honestly, I played Killer Bunnies three days ago and I don’t remember who won. I couldn’t care less. It could have been me. I don’t know. But I do remember the laughs. I remember what Weapons I got hit with. And that’s what we set out for. We just wanted to have people in a non-virtual universe.

Jonathan: Yeah. No oasis.

Jeff: That’s the way it is. And so we’re gearing up for a whole day of Jupiter with friends. I mean we’ve got a few friends from L.A. coming down that were influential [at] the beginning of the game. A.J. Pfeifer is joining us, who was a big help designing the later decks of “Quest.” He was with us for a few years and then “Odyssey.” He designed a lot of the mechanics for “Odyssey.”

Jonathan: He’s on an “Odyssey” card.

Jeff: He’s on an “Odyssey” card, as a matter of fact, the “AJ 205”?

Jonathan: Something like that.

Jeff: You know, it’s just fun to get together, eat. and play. And here it’s a rainy day. It’s very odd. It’s a cold, rainy day in San Diego. And of course, by “cold” we mean it can get as low as 60 degrees Fahrenheit here.

Glenn: [Sarcastically] Brrrr.

Kathy: [Laughs]

Jeff: I know! I’m serious. I might have to put on a sweater! It’s a very rare rainy day, so we’re psyched about playing because it has been so long.

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Fan Cards

Jeff: We’ve got about 15 minutes left, so if there’s any other key questions you want to ask—

Kathy: One question I’ve got is: Are you going to have any more, like, interactive stuff on your website or other ways that people can kind of get involved? Because you did have kind of a trivia question or something going on for a little bit. That was kind of fun.

Jeff: It was fun. I enjoyed doing that. I think we were doing that during “Odyssey.” The God’s honest truth is, I like when fans write in, especially with ideas. Boy, we put that first page up, and I think, well, I don’t know if we’re keeping it during the revision or not. I think we’re gonna switch the picture. I like the bunny picture or the ball.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Jeff: We might switch up the picture, but I do like the intro. We should leave it up there for another year or so because a lot of people are writing in with ideas.

Kathy: Hm-hmm.

Jeff: And that’s great. As a matter of fact, we’re not saying we’re gonna put like one fan card per deck, but I believed in this deck [Pumpkin] we are putting a fan-inspired card because it was so good. And I don’t think we’ll be doing trivia again. I’ll be honest with you. It was it was a lot of time that I just I don’t have anymore. I’ve got so many things on my plate right now. Isn’t that a shame? It would have been fun. It’s really tough to keep up.

Kathy: I get that.

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Social Media

Jonathan: And the on-line has changed a lot. There’s social media. There’s, you know, our website was originally kind of a blog style and now it’s just kind of a page style, and, you know, we’re a little old school, so we’re not up-to-date. I’m looking at Jeff.

Jeff: I’m okay with that. I think it would be done through Facebook these days.

Jonathan: The problem is that Facebook is old now, Jeff.

Jeff: Facebook is even old, but I’m sticking with it. If you folks wanted to put together something, like the boxes of Ziti question, or whatever, we would completely support that. I’m gonna “we” now. I think I speak for Jonathan and myself. We love you guys and I want to thank you. Like I said, I went onto the Wikipedia [Killer Bunnies Wikia] and I was immensely impressed with the amount of work that’s done. I know there’s a Killer Bunnies app, but the God’s honest truth is, I don’t even know who runs that. Do you?

Jonathan: I don’t think it was up the last time I looked.

Kathy: He had to take it down because he used the artwork as his entry.

Glenn: Yeah, Sinister Bunny as his logo and he got a DMCA takedown notice for it, so he just pulled the app.

Jeff: That’s a shame, because I thought that app was pretty good. I thought it had a picture of the [unintelligible] on it. So, oh well.

Kathy: If you wanted to think of an ongoing kind of thing that you could do, say, like once a month, once a week would probably be too much, but if you wanted to kind of like produce something that would get website or Facebook or hits or something, think about putting some of those reference stories and make it kind of a feature of, you know, “Hey, reference story for, you know, April, is, you know, think about all of the things in this card or whatever and it came from this, and this, and this,” and I think that would be super appealing to the fans. Just FYI for you, if you wanted to have something kind of ongoing that might not be hard.

Jeff: I think so too, but I think ultimately it’ll come down to: where would we rather spend our time?

Jonathan: I was just thinking that.

Jeff: I knew exactly what you were going to say. And should we be drawing and writing—

Kathy: [Laughs]

Jeff: —or should we, you know, be spending our time putting together that. I think that is best left to the fans.

Kathy: Okay.

Jeff: And I would support that completely, if somebody wanted to put a question up and then at the end of the week or end of the month, I would answer it or Jonathan would answer it. That would be that would be fine, but I’m gonna leave that to the hardcore fans. We got it we’re gonna spend our time—

Jonathan: Working.

Jeff: —Working. And it’s not just Bunnies. Is either two or three booster decks a year, but we’re also, like I said, in a lot of other games and getting them on [the market]. Our our plate is quite full and there’s things in the queue waiting, so—

Jonathan: The running joke in our friendship. It’s like, “Hey, you want to come over for dinner or if you want to go out for a walk, or do you want to go to a movie?” And I’m like, “Do you want me to go have fun or do you want to keep drawing?”

Kathy: [Laughs]

Jeff: And I usually say, “Keep drawing.” So, yeah.

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Deadlines

Jonathan: Now that we’re back in the swing, we have some pretty tight deadlines. Not only are we coming up with the games that—the new booster decks—we have to go back and update all the files for everything, with new copyright, the new logos. That’s a lot of work. New box designs.

Kathy: Okay.

Jonathan: Now, you know, we have different logos we have to add. They have different policies about all the little legal lines or whatnot that pick up different [unintelligible].

Jeff: That’s a lot of work.

Jonathan: That was months and months of work, of just going through hundreds of cards, and you know—

Kathy: Wow.

Jonathan: —the boxes. And that was “Kinder” and “Quest” and “Conquest” and so it that was a lot of work.

Jeff: A lot of work.

Jonathan: That was a lot of stuff that you guys don’t see, but it took us a long time.

Kathy: I can understand that. Yeah, wow.

Glenn: And I did notice all of it. I was hoping you could automate that.

Jonathan: You know, when I go to open a file, you know the Blue-Yellow “Quest” pages, we haven’t touched those files for—

Jeff: 10 years.

Jonathan: 10 years. Well, when we did—

Jeff: So, 2011.

Jonathan: Yeah, so I’ve updated my computer. I’ve updated my boss and I’ve updated my program, so it’s like I got a kind of—

Jeff: It was tough.

Glenn: Did you have some compatibility issues with [Adobe] Illustrator and getting those files re-opened?

Jonathan: No, the files were fine. It’s just that the fonts are read differently on the newer versions of the software and the new operating systems, so that was a little bit of challenge. I think the oldest files that I had not touched was the “Kinderbunnies.”

Jeff: Hmm.

Jonathan: Because we only published that once.

Jeff: Hm-hmm.

Jonathan: I think those—that was published in 2007?

Jeff: Five.

Jonathan: 2005. Yeah, so, yeah, trying to—First of all, trying to find them on my computer—[Laughter]

Jeff: He’s not as organized as I am.

Jonathan: And he’s not very organized.

Jeff: No, I’m not. Not at all.

Kathy: [Laughs]

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1200 Cards and Counting

Jonathan: Especially with “Odyssey” cards. I have, you know, we’re up to 1,200 cards now for just—

Jeff: Oh, good. I know.

Jonathan: For just the “Quest” series.

Jeff: I have not played every “Quest” card. I actually—I have not played every card in this game. Sometimes when I’m playing I’ll get a card and I’m like, “Ooh, I haven’t played that in a while.” I will go on record as saying last summer, I was in Birmingham [UK]. There’s a good story, I know we’ve got, like 6 minutes. I was in Birmingham last summer with a bunch of fans. They contacted me. I was in London. It’s only about a two-hour train ride. I took the train ride up to Birmingham, met all these people. Big Bunny fans. They had most of “Quest” and we sat down to play. The very first and only time I got the “Venus Cycle” card, and what was interesting is just a few months earlier, I had been at Newgrange with my copy of the “Venus Cycle” card because I wanted to take a picture in front of the big stone with the card. You might have seen it on Facebook.

Kathy: I think I did, yeah.

Jeff: Yeah, so I finally get it, and last year was 2017, was one of the years. You can only use the card once every eight years. So, not only do I get the card, but I got it during one of the years it can be used. I really felt like my life was full and if I died at that moment, I would be fulfilled. That’s a bit morbid, but seriously, I mean, what are the odds? I only played the whole Killer Bunnies—

Kathy: Uh-huh.

Jeff: —Yeah, maybe, maybe twice a year. I mean, I wish it could be more, but it comes down to the same thing. Do you want to take an entire Saturday in game or do you want to take an entire Saturday at work? And ninety times out of a hundred, it’s work, but there you go. So just the chances that I got to play that one card on the one in eight years that it’s good.

Kathy: Wow.

Jeff: I was so happy.

Jonathan: I would say work, you know, I’m drawing all the time, and I’ll take a night off or something like that. I’ll go do something, but I don’t always produce every single time. I might just play around and come up with ideas, but it’s like I’m always fighting those.

Jeff: Oh yeah, and my job is just a lot of different things. I mean, it’s writing. Clearly, that’s the big thing. I have to write everything. Proofreading. Obviously, not the box numbers—

Glenn: [Laughs]

Jeff: —But most things. But then I have to make calls about getting pitch meetings set up, contacting different distributors, contacting different publishers, and I have to wear many hats and certainly the business hat is the thing that probably takes up an equal amount of time to the actual writing and inventing. And then, just as Jonathan said, sometimes I’ll sit down with my yellow legal pad and I will sit and await inspiration. And some nights I get nothing. I get squat. And some nights it rolls onto the page. And, you know, you can’t punch a time clock for that. So, yeah, there’s a lot of times when work is work and there’s a lot of times when work doesn’t get you anywhere.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Jeff: So, there you go.

Kathy: Okay, awesome.

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New Shows for New References

Glenn: With all the time you spend working, then how do you find time to watch new shows for new references, and have you seen “The Orville,” as a Star Trek-like show, or “Star Trek Discovery”?

Jeff: [Sarcastically] Never heard of it.

Glenn: [Laughs.]

Jeff: I have a chip that’s in my brain and I just download the episodes now. Let me see.

Jonathan: I can answer that one.

Glenn: Okay.

Jonathan: I have a very large monitor and I draw on one side and I have Netflix playing on the other side.

Jeff: That’s true! He watches TV while he works.

Kathy: Cool!

Jeff: So that’s kinda neat.

Jonathan: And sometimes I have to watch some really strange, old movie—I’m trying to stay out of arm’s reach of Jeff right now—

Glenn: [Laughs]

Jeff: I know which one you’re telling me. You’re telling me about “Time Stalkers.”

Jonathan: There’s a couple—

Jeff: I love “Stalkers,” I love “Time Stalkers” and “The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything.”

Jonathan: Yeah, I have to watch something to get the reference. And, I’d rather be—

Jeff: They were two cool movies from the ’80s, all right. I mean, “The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything,” was good. I highly recommend it. Robert Hayes and Pam Dawber. I mean, how could you go wrong? And then “Time Stalkers” was just one of those—a lot of movies came out in the late ’80s about time travel after “Back to the Future,” and this one’s starred Lauren Hutton. And who was the lead? The guy.

Jonathan: Oh—

Jeff: He’s very famous. He’s been in a lot of things, but whatever. [According to IMDB, William Devane] It was a good movie. They’re made-for-TV movies, so you can’t expect much, but we had references for—As a matter of fact, “The Gold Watch,” was it in the “Caramel Swirl”? “Caramel Swirl” deck. The last card.

Jonathan: The golden metal.

Jeff: Yeah, yeah. Which is, it had the little view thing and it was a—

Kathy: Yeah.

Jeff: It was a watch.

Glenn: Oh, yeah. We’re looking at it right now.

Jeff: Yeah, just for fun we did a “Back to the Future” reference on, because it’s 10:04, but that wasn’t in the other movie. That’s from “The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything.”

Kathy: Hm-hmm.

Jeff: And, so if you haven’t seen it, and I know you folks were alive in the eighties, I don’t know how you, but anyway, what was the question? About “Star Trek.” No, he has to watch TV. Oh, that’s it, but so I like “The Expanse.” Did we do a reference for “The Expanse”? The phone, right? The clear phone? Wasn’t that—

Jonathan: Yeah, but it was just [unintelligible].

Jeff: [Unintelligible] I like “The Expanse.” That’s like a great new show. I’ve seen “The Orville.” Great show. It hasn’t found its feet yet. I don’t know whether it’s supposed to be funny or it’s supposed to be, like, thought-provoking. Is there supposed to be a moral? But I’m watching it. I’m looking forward to the next season. What else am I watching?

Jonathan: We kind of go back and forth on shows and some of them are not necessarily shows you can spoof off of. Like when we come up with—

Jeff: I binge watch. I’ve watched “Hell on Wheels” in like three weeks.

Jonathan: We don’t—neither one of us has cable, so we’re big streaming, like Amazon Prime.

Jeff: And Netflix, yeah.

Jonathan: But, well, there’s—there’s a lot of things that we like that just don’t translate very well. Like, in the new decks, we have Law Enforcement bunnies.

Jeff: Hmm, that’s true. And then we’re working on that.

Jonathan: There’s a lot of law enforcement shows that we watch, and we like, and are famous, but when you’re drawing the bunny, it is just a bunny in a suit.

Jeff: In other words, you have to have either have a costume or prop that someone can distinguish because you can’t do “CSI.” It’s just a bunch of guys in suits, you know. I mean, it has to be a show where there was some distinguishing factor in their costume.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Jeff: Or their setting.

Jonathan: Right. We watched—Jeff recommend it to me—we’re a big fans of “Sense8.”

Jeff: Oh, “Sense8” was good, but how the heck are we gonna do a “Sense8” reference?

Jonathan: They’re just regular people, you know, at eight different countries.

Jeff: Don’t. There’s no way to do it. And it’s a good show. It’s just sometimes you can’t translate it. You’re right.

Jonathan: The other sci-fi show that we like, was “Continuum.” Have you guys heard of that one? It’s out of Canada.

Jeff: Oh, love “Continuum.”

Glenn: Yeah, I’ve heard of it. I haven’t seen it, though.

Jonathan: It’s a good show. It runs for about three and a half seasons. The last season—it’s one of those shows that got canceled before they finished the story line. It’s a good time travel show, but it’s modern, though there weren’t that many props.

Jeff: No, the time machine itself was just a ball and not very interesting. And the gun was kinda cute, but ultimately it’s just a gun.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Jeff: Yeah, so there wasn’t much there, but I recommend it. And, to answer your last question: Star Trek Discovery. I have very strong opinions about this. We’ll finish this. I’ll try to make it quick. I think CBS has a lot of cojones to charge money for any of their shows. I’m sorry. I mean, they name the network right because that’s all you see is B.S., okay? The fact that they’re the ones doing Star Trek Discovery, they’re just the ones broadcasting it, not the ones producing it. I won’t pay to see Star Trek on television and then when I found out, and you have to pay more to see it without commercials, I was like—and I don’t want to use foul language—I was like, “frak you.” Little “Babylon 5” in there. “Frak you.”

Jonathan: That was “Battlestar Galactica.”

Jeff: Was it?

Jonathan: Not “Babylon 5.”

Glenn: Yeah.

Jeff: Alright. “Great maker, I am so confused!” Beer. I know I’m gonna buy it and I’m probably gonna buy it on blu-ray as soon as it comes out, so why would I spend money when, you know, to see one episode a week—which I had to admit, in the last five years, I’m a binge watcher—I don’t want to wait and sit through commercials. I haven’t turned on regular TV in five years. I don’t even own a regular TV. I just get it streaming or Netflix or whatever. I can’t stand it. I don’t know how I stood it years ago.

Jonathan: Just this last year I was watching Thursday Night Football, you can see on Amazon Prime—

Kathy: Mm-hmm.

Jonathan: And I’m having fun Thursday night watching football. I’m like, “There’s commercials!”

Jeff: Screw that! So, I’m gonna buy—I’ll buy Star Trek and I’ll probably watch it in about a week, you know. I mean, there’s 20 episodes. If I’m following correctly online. And if that’s true, you know, I can binge watch three a night, and I will. I hear it’s fantastic. I’m very much looking forward to it. And I know I will be a fan, I’m sure, but I’m gonna have to wait ’till it comes out and and then they’ll get my money. I just want to have something in my hand.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Jeff: Yeah, I want to have the blu-rays. I don’t mind paying. I just bought the last season of “Doctor Who.” I don’t mind paying, so I’ll wait. No big deal. I’d rather wait and have it good, than, you know, something. I think they grossly overestimated—

Jonathan: Their fan base.

Jeff: Yeah. I mean, that was ballsy, and I didn’t like the attitude that went with it. So, sorry. No sale for me. And gosh, I’ve been a fan since birth and they couldn’t get me on board, so there you go.

Kathy: Yeah, we’re right with you. That’s just crazy.

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Jupiter Party, Part III

Jeff: Well, we’ve got one last question, if you’ve got a doozy to finish up with.

Glenn: [To Kathy] Do you have a last question? You’re looking at a picture of the Jupiter board right now, Kathy. Do you want to ask a question about that?

Kathy: Yeah. Tell me about this ultimate Jupiter game.

Jeff: Go head, Jonathan.

Jonathan: [Laughs] So we did—this is going to be a long answer, sorry. When we signed up with Playroom [Entertainment], it was for three games. It was for “Killer Bunnies the “Quest” for the Magic Carrot,” which we’d already published on our own. It was for [Killer Bunnies and the] “Journey to Jupiter,” which we had prototypes out for, but I didn’t do the artwork originally, and then for [Ultimate] “Odyssey.” We had no idea what it was going to be. And so we continued with “Quest,” and we retooled “Jupiter,” and so we came up with “Jupiter.” And the time that “Jupiter” came out was a real challenge because it’s an expensive game to produce. There was lots of pieces to it, not just cards. There was a board. There were game pieces. There were multiple dice. It was a lot of a lot of pieces to go into it. It was a little bit more expensive of a game. And it came out in the mid- to late 2000s, when the economy was not doing that great. So “Jupiter” did not hit that miracle moment.

Kathy: Yeah.

Jonathan: It didn’t—we were able to get one booster deck out, but we actually finished the decks. It was built for—we have Violet, Orange, and Green done. And then we decided to come out with this half bonus deck. It’s really not. There’s nothing quite half the deck. It’s, like, 20 cards. And in the regular game you can go—you’ve played “Jupiter”—you play bunnies going after things. And there’s the Beyea Aliens that are also after you. And that bonus deck is that you can play the Alien and attack everybody else.

Jeff: But only one player gets to play the Alien, so somebody’s like, you know that, “Screw this carrot collecting thing. I just want to kill people.” Then that player gets to play the Aliens. Then if you kill ten bunnies, the game’s over and the Aliens win.

Jonathan: Yeah. So, since we’ve got it all done, we play it. We play all all five-and-a-half booster decks. All five-and-a-half decks with the full map, which takes up all of Jeff’s table. And so, we’ve only done this [once]. This is our second time playing all the way through.

Jeff: Second time through, you bet.

Jonathan: And we enjoy “Jupiter” strategically.

Jeff: I will go on record as saying “Jupiter,” by far, is my favorite bunny game, I mean, by far. I mean, the other one is a party game. “Quest” is a party game. You sit around and drink, eat, and you have a few laughs. “Jupiter” is really an intense—

Jonathan: Kind of like “Risk.”

Jeff: Yeah, you have to plot the plan and make alliances and work together, and, as far as a social interaction, it’s far superior. And it’s a shame we we never got through it. What were the names? It was “Laser Red.”

Jonathan: There was a—blue was—what was blue?

Glenn: “Deep Blue.” “Solar Yellow.”

Jonathan: “Deep Blue.”

Jeff: “Sunshine Yellow.”

Jonathan: No, not “Sunshine.”

Glenn: “Solar.”

Jonathan: “Solar Yellow.”

Jeff: “Solar Yellow.”

Jonathan: “Laser Red.”

Jeff: “Laser Red.” “Z.”

Jonathan: That’s the one we haven’t come up with yet.

Jeff: No, no, no. We must have something. Violet?

Jonathan: No. Was it “Ultra Violet”?

Jeff: “Ultra Violet.”

Jonathan: “Ultra Violet.” “Galactic Green.” “Orbital Orange.”

Jeff: “Orbital Orange.” And “Other Worlds,” with the—

Jonathan: Yeah.

Jeff: Extra cards. It was “Onyx,” (black), but we called it, the “Other World,” and there you go. Now, I—we’re both incredibly excited about today’s game. We’re very much looking forward to it. I can’t believe we haven’t played in so long.

Jonathan: Yeah, it’s kind of like playing all of “Quest.” It’s pretty intense. The hands go a little bit slower because you got so many different things to do, but everybody’s involved in each hand.

Jeff: Yeah, that’s true. You really have to pay attention, too. You have to watch what’s going on and and be part of it, because if you’re not, you’re not in the alliances, you’re not, you know.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Jeff: You’re sunk, so—And it’s dangerous out in space.

Jonathan: We’ve actually—when kind of Playroom [Entertainment] stopped publishing, for one reason or another. I’m just the artist, I don’t know those reasons, we have three-and-a-half booster decks for “Jupiter” done. We also had another three decks for “Odyssey” done.

Jeff: Yeah.

Jonathan: That have never, and we have three decks for “[Psychic] Penguins [and the Voyage Home]” done.

Jeff: Yeah, yeah, we had a lot. A lot of stuff.

Jonathan: We had the [Ice] Blue deck and two booster decks, so there’s a lot of artwork just kind of sitting around, so, being the designers of the game, we can play them.

Kathy: Yea! I’m a little jealous. I want to be in San Diego today.

Jeff: You’re always welcome here. So let us know.

Jonathan: Yeah. I don’t know if you want to be here. Like Jeff said, it’s really cold. It’s like 57 [F] right now.

Jeff: 57? Omigod. I’m not even leaving the house!

Kathy: Well, considering the fact that if I leave the house it’s 33 [F], I’m not feeling so bad for you.

Jeff: Is that a real number? What is that? What does that mean? Okay, well—

Kathy: Thank you so much. This has been great.

Jeff: Yeah, I hope you got enough.

Jonathan: [Laughs]

Glenn: I’m sure we do. It’s gonna take me forever to transcribe all of this, but thank you very much for spending your valuable time with us before your big game today.

Kathy: Yeah.

Jeff: Thank you. You guys are great. We mean what we say. If you’re ever planning on coming to San Diego, please let us know, because we’d love to get together with you, and play, and chitchat, and go over cards. And don’t worry, we have a copy of all the cards here. So there you go. And Jonathan’ll send you some of the artwork for the promos for this year, because they haven’t been released yet and they’ll be good to get along to the thing. That’ll be fun.

Glenn: Okay, thank you, Jonathan.

Jeff: If there’s anything else, contact Jonathan or me directly. If there’s anything like quick questions or anything like from the transcribing you couldn’t gather you want to clarify, we’ll be happy to do that for you. Then, you know, just no rush. Just let us know when that’s out so we can link to it and, you know, make a big deal about it. The website will probably be upgraded by that time.

Glenn: Okay.

Jeff: Yeah.

Glenn: Wonderful.

Jeff: Alright, we’re off.

Glenn: I thank very much and good luck.

Kathy: Have fun!

Jeff: See you folks. Have a good day.

Kathy: You too. Bye.

Glenn: Bye.

Jeff: Bye bye!

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