Cain may be the “first author” of cities, but Juliet and game designer Nic Tringali dive deep into what makes the city, and the city builder, so frequent a fantasy in games and in real life. Along the way they discuss Amberspire, the hit new city-builder that goes live the day this episode releases, and design some brand-new Magic cards!
Find Amberspire on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3350750/Amberspire/
Cards designed in the episode
Topics and Tidbits
- Dwarf Fortress II
- Paper Labyrinths and the linear progress narrative of history
- Put enough people together, and a city will come out
- City as an organism, people are like amino acids
- Magic’s own Ecumenopolis, Ravnica
- City as identity, color pair as identity
- North, south, east, west, up, and down all being equal directions of “more city”
- The origin of the Metroplex: Dallas-Fort Worth
- What if we kept doing Dallas Forever
- first reference to Spufford’s Power and Profit
- The city as home to “the merchant who did not travel”
- The common synecdoche that England is London
- Fantasy cities in the mold of Disneyland
- Post-Marx by being so distant in the future
- What makes a rural city important? a City Hall
- The 3rd and 14th biggest US cities
- Midroll ad for Moontropolis!
- For card design: Capturing the Exciting, and capturing the Real
- Durability as real, as a kind of (keyword) substance
- What if permanents couldn’t leave the battlefield?
- The Chicago streets and the Paris catacombs
- Build Up, or
- Haussmann’s destruction (and renovation) of Paris
- High concept cities are the most exciting
- Fiora or Venice with the canals
- Ravnica as an ecumenopolis & 2-color guild-city
- Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities
- “The supply of women and parasols is infinite”
- Shoutouts to women
- There goes the sun
- Returning to verticality—a real factor in other places, and a fantasy in America with its access to space
- Developing a new city concept off of its iconic transit
- Classic Juliet “having fun with homophones”
- When a workhorse uncommon is a Work Goat instead
- New counter with rules text!
- Another “and me with thee hath ruin’d”
- Ruins for you, ruin-clues for me
- Check out Amberspire on Steam live today!
- The City Shapes, The City Assembles (Kostof)
- Second reference to Spufford’s Power and Profit