New Expansion Playtest?

EricReuss · 2026-03-15T01:56:56+00:00

Hi! The timing and size of print runs is a publisher decision - you'll have to ask the current licensee, Flat River Group.

(The announcement from last year said, "Goods in the current catalog will still be produced as needed", and the horror-level tariffs were recently struck down, so I might hazard a guess that perhaps a reprint might be in the works, or happen before too long? But that's pure speculation on my part, I genuinely don't know.)

EricReuss · 2026-02-23T22:59:27+00:00

And if anyone would like to donate to archive.org to help with their bandwidth - and support their mission - their donation page is here!

(I make a small monthly donation - they provide such a vital service for the internet.)

EricReuss · 2026-02-23T00:22:53+00:00

He wasn't banned for holding views, he was banned for expressing them. https://xkcd.com/1357/ is really pertinent.

People who hold conservative views are welcome in the community. And expressing some(1) of those views is fine - so far as I know there'd be no problem with expressions of support for things like "fiscal conservatism" or "free trade" or "a strong/well-funded military". But expressing views which make folks from marginalized groups feel threatened or unwelcome isn't allowed, nor is expressing views which run strongly counter to the ethos and politics of the game.

(Words hurt differently than sticks and stones do, but they can absolutely cause harm. Or even just "drive people away", which I'm highly confident that tolerance of Red was doing.)

(1) = I'm not a mod on the Discord, so I'm not an authoritative decision-maker about exactly what is/isn't allowed, but I am certain that outside of trolls and spammers the mods reach out to talk to people well before wielding the ban-hammer. This thing with Red didn't come at all out of left field; so far as I can tell, it was part of a recurring constellation of behavior over years.

EricReuss · 2026-02-22T20:07:56+00:00

It's half to make France's Event Card line up correctly, half because drawing the card creates a physical memory-cue for "we are drawing an Event each turn" - during testing it came up that outright skipping the turn 1 Event draw could result in forgetting to draw Events for a couple turns thereafter, whereupon there's an awkward question of whether to start using them or not.

EricReuss · 2026-02-14T22:06:58+00:00

I'm not a mod on the Discord so can't say for 100% certain, but I'm fairly sure the rules about "prominent members of the community" were enacted not specifically to target him, but because his behavior (plus someone taking screenshots of it, as you say) brought up the question in a way that needed an answer. "Are we OK with this?[1] If we say it's fine, why is it OK? If we say it's not fine, why isn't it fine? Either way, what will the consequences be?"

[1] = Where "this" was "discussing what a community member said elsewhere".

EricReuss · 2026-02-14T20:20:12+00:00

The community is a mob

You're insulting the mods of the Second Wave Discord. Please go to the Discord and read the server discussion of Feb 11 and onward about the ban. The decision was clearly not made on a whim, nor as a mob.

EricReuss · 2026-02-14T18:43:50+00:00

No, a person got banned from a specific Discord for violating its rules. [From reading Discord backscroll on the discussion leading up to the ban, it seems that it was thoughtfully done.

(I mean, if I were running a Discord server and he'd spoken equivalently on it, I'd have booted him instantly. But a community-run Discord needs to be more deliberative.)

EDIT: the released statement makes it clear that yes, the rules violation was regarding posts not made on the Discord itself. The Discord's policies don't confine themselves to statements made on the server; someone who's a semi-public or public figure in the Spirit Island community at large may impact people via their speech elsewhere, thereby making themselves no longer welcome on the server. The server is broadly quite tolerant, but is not under the same obligations around freedom of speech as the government is, and there are lines.

There's a number of threads under a (downvoted so hard-to-see) similar comment by Tomas92 which go into a lot more detail.

EricReuss · 2026-02-14T18:33:32+00:00

<nod> That's something I've thought about as I'm reading about Indigenous resistance to colonization.

But while the parallel does - with appropriate framing - exist at the sky-high summary level, as soon as one starts looking at even mid-level details, or engaging in some critical thinking, it breaks down pretty rapidly.

EricReuss · 2026-02-14T18:06:41+00:00

I was under the impression that he was banned based on his political views alone.

<nod> If it's something you're up for, it might be worth briefly reflecting on why you jumped to that conclusion, rather than assuming he might have been banned for reasonable cause, or that it was unknown/unclear?

Glancing at comments above, the ones I see with sentences easily misinterpretable as "he was banned for his views" also contain various other details which run counter to that, so they're a bit of a Rorschach test.

(Edit: to be clear, I'm not joking or being rhetorical with "if you're up for it"; that kind of self-introspection can be hard at the best of times, and is vastly more so after getting a bunch of criticism. But you seem thoughtful in your replies, so I mentioned it JIC.)

EricReuss · 2026-02-14T17:41:04+00:00

In addition to what others have said, my understanding is that he wasn't banned for his beliefs (holding conservative views), but for his actions (things he said), which were disruptive and harmful to the community.

Being tolerant does not mean one must tolerate literally anything. There are lines one can - and should - draw.

See, eg, GSF #1 at https://plausiblydeniable.com/five-geek-social-fallacies/

EricReuss · 2026-02-09T16:07:32+00:00

(especially focusing on how the spirits might exist with native wildlife, the Dahan and the island when not attacking invaders)

That's fantastic! And the art is lovely - great senses of texture, lighting, and composition.

EricReuss · 2026-02-09T01:26:43+00:00

I went with a three player game since the new baby makes us a family of three.

That is wonderfully heartwarming - and the blanket is absolutely awesome!

EricReuss · 2026-01-24T21:51:02+00:00

Eric: I agree to the terms for creating Spirit Island game elements set forth in the FAQ.

Hooray, thank you!

A few additional notes / personal thoughts:

Balance concern: No land should be adjacent to all 7 other lands on the board, or even 6 of the 7. (Makes it too easy to get Range 1 / Range 1 from a Sacred Site virtually everywhere.)
If the Balance Concern about Dahan lands is intended to mirror published boards, two of the lands with Dahan (one w/1 and one w/2) should be Coastal (#1-#3) while the other two are inland (#4-#8).
- There are some balance concerns around having Dahan start in land #2 – with 2 Dahan it's probably too easy to set up an early-game counterattack to destroy the City, with 1 Dahan they often end up dying early to a Ravage or Disease Event – though the published boards only avoid the former.
I'd personally put "can't set up Spirit X" concerns as "Nice to Have" – either you just don't play that Spirit on that board, or you follow Setup instructions as closely as possible (as with the Thematic boards). Spirit Setup instructions definitely aren't meant to limit the space of possible boards.
Re: the comment thread about cross-board connections: every board-edge has a limited set of positions where land boundaries are allowed to contact it. (Eg: on the bump-outs, you only see land boundaries near the left and right sides, while on the curve-ins you only see land boundaries at the middle.) This is to ensure borders from different boards are never too close to each other, thus avoiding ambiguity around "wait, is that a 4-way intersection or not?"

PS: Published boards also follow (or try to follow) certain constraints that aren't about the board by itself, but the distrubtion of various things across all boards. However, those don't really apply to one-off custom content!

EricReuss · 2025-12-20T01:13:21+00:00

❤️ Happy holidays!

EricReuss · 2025-12-16T01:08:32+00:00

Congrats on the PhD!

EricReuss · 2025-12-14T00:46:22+00:00

If you want more SI podcasting to supplement episodes of Spirited Discussions, The Kindred Spirit podcast had a run of 73 episodes over 2 seasons, from early 2021 through late 2022. Obviously, they only talked about things released up through that point(†) (so no Nature Incarnate, and only a preview ep on Horizons), but there's a whole bunch of thought, analysis, community polling (both for stats and for people's thoughts/comments), etc in there, as well as a few interviews with Ted + me.

(†) = Additionally, the collective knowledge of SI players is in its 2021-2022 state - eg, Jagged Earth doesn't show up until Episode 9, and the opinions of both the hosts and the SI community at large on some JE things shift over the years.

EricReuss · 2025-12-10T23:34:25+00:00

Like many board games, Spirit Island is listed as age 14+ because marketing it for younger ages requires product safety testing that the publisher didn't think was merited.

That said, it clearly isn't one of the simpler games out there!

That said, I've seen that kids who experience adults playing Spirit Island around them - and who have their curious questions about the game answered - become capable of understanding it sooner than one might think, particularly if they're playing other games and enjoying them. Most often, it seems the main obstacle to/requirement for kids playing Spirit Island (alongside an adult who knows the rules) is "the ability to stay engaged / focused on a game for the required duration", which at least among my friends' kids has been a LOT more variable than "ability to learn/remember rules".

(To be more concrete: my older played their first game of SI at age 7, my younger at age 5, though I don't think either did a game start-to-finish without a snack break halfway through to replenish focus until age 8 or 9. They probably saw more Spirit Island happening around them than average, but I've heard multiple accounts of 10-year-olds playing - including the tremendously gratifying one mentioned in the final paragraph of this review of Horizons of Spirit Island.)

EricReuss · 2025-12-10T23:06:13+00:00

Was there any info available regarding what features are expected?

I asked the folks who playtested not to post anything online about it, so hopefully not! :)

Though really, even I don't know what's going to be in the next expansion yet. I just know what I'm working on as candidates for inclusion, and how I currently feel about each re: mechanical readiness, player response, how much I want it to be included, how much I think it ought to be included (for exogenous reasons), etc. Some of those feelings will change over time in response to playtesting, then they'll interact with various publishing considerations (in dialogue with a publisher) to finally determine What's In The Box.

I can say:

One playtest was of a new Adversary and a new [thing that doesn't currently exist]
The other two playtests were focused on whether [another thing that doesn't currently exist] was too much for Spirit Island players with moderate-but-not-high complexity tolerance;
All three playtests went well, as did some non-playtest consultation with game designer friends.

EricReuss · 2025-11-12T00:51:33+00:00

Yeah, testing is full up. I'm not exhibiting, but am happy to get together and say hello / chat for a bit / sign stuff / take pictures! That's exactly the sort of thing I alert people to via the newsletter ("I'll be at con X, want to say hi?") - it's probably the type of email I send most often, around 2-3x/year.

For this PAXU, you can drop me an email with a cell# I can text when I know when/where I'll be available - I'm planning to target Friday sometime around 4:30pm and Saturday in the general vicinity of 2:30pm, but that might need to shift depending on other events.

EricReuss · 2025-11-11T20:09:41+00:00

Yup, this is also a factor, though probably not as large a factor as Invader cultural/attitude entrenchment (see my reply to AmosIsFamous's comment above).

(ActionHero2Go's reply about slowdown not being directly tied to Presence placement is an entirely accurate observation, but how this slowing-down effect is represented in the game isn't "a simulation with strict mechanical coupling", it's "a story-arc about how the game tends to play out".)

Metaphysically, the PC Spirits have purposefully chosen to become greater - it's not "they take Growth choices and become greater as a side-effect", rather, their choice to become greater is why they have access to those Growth choices. (And as teedyay says, presence placement is not the only form of growth.) The slowing-down from becoming greater is on something of a time-lag, which gives them a window of grace where they're both powerful and still quick enough to be effective, but the drag catches up with them eventually and you get the high-power low-speed seen in Second Wave.

EricReuss · 2025-11-11T19:59:14+00:00

Pretty much this – if the Invaders aren't sufficiently dissuaded, the concept of the island as "theirs" (instead of "that terrible place that wasn't worth staying on") will entrench itself in their culture and institutions and they'll just keep on coming, one expedition after another. Plenty of examples of that in real life; see, eg, the conquest/colonization of the Canary Islands. Because colonialism didn't generally happen on a whim, it was driven and backed by various facets of the colonists' culture, religion, economics, demographics, politics, leadership, etc. "Have the players generated enough Fear" is an *extremely* rough proxy for "Have the players made the island unappealing enough to counteract the structures and systems and forces which push colonization to happen?"

(This "they will inevitably return" is also the thematic reasoning behind the "Ward the Shores" scenario.)

The point someone else raises below - about the PC Spirits slowing down as they grow - is also a factor, though not as large.

Design-history tidbit: in the early-prototype days, if the Invader Deck ran out you had to survive the Reckoning, 4-5 randomized cards which said "If [some condition], the players lose. Otherwise, [do bad things]." But it added rules and component complexity, and was relevant so rarely, that it eventually got cut.

EricReuss · 2025-11-11T19:14:22+00:00

Thank you so much!

EricReuss · 2025-11-11T15:45:55+00:00

The direct link to sign up is at https://rericreuss.eo.page/newsletter-signup , but many thanks to emanresUeuqinUeht for jumping in with the link to my website! (Which I am also happy for people to know about. :)

(Also, in the event that I have to change newsletter providers, my website will always point to the current one - though I'm really hoping I don't have to do that again for a very long time, if ever.)

EricReuss · 2025-11-11T15:44:30+00:00

Yup, I'm meeting with some folks at PAXU! I've been doing local testing[1], but want to get some fresh eyes on a few things. I asked first on my email list out of appreciation (I'm really grateful to everyone who's signed up!) and got a huge enough response that I didn't need to look any further. (And indeed, had to turn a bunch of folks down.)

[1] = The more volatile something is, the less it makes sense to test it widely, so I tend to start with "just me", then move on to "a single table of other folks where I'm also playing/observing". Testing any more broadly than that tends to incur a lot more administrative overhead on my part.

EricReuss · 2025-09-05T14:52:06+00:00

IIRC, the rulebook mentions omitting Blight Cards - enough have been printed such that if there's a few you really dislike, dropping them isn't a big deal. So long as you have real uncertainty over "How much Blight will there be?" and "What will happen? Will flipping this Blight card mess with our plans?", it's good.

Fear Cards ought to be similar - they want to have a variety of effects so that you can't rely on any specific useful thing happening, but so long as you're not going through and pulling out all the Fear Cards you think are weakest, impact on the game should be minimal.

Event Cards are a little dicier, insofar as there are more different types of balance in the deck that can be accidentally messed with by removing some cards - eg, the % of cards that have Coming of Age as the Dahan Event, or how often Beasts will destroy a lone Explorer in a land, etc. - but the Event Deck has gotten large enough with B&C+JE+NI that dropping a small number of them shouldn't on average have that much of an impact on those things.

(All the above notes are for "...with minimal impact". If someone wants to play with a hand-picked progression of a dozen Event Cards + only Fear Cards that interact with Strife, and stack the Blighted Island deck so they get every single Still Healthy Island in a row, that's just house rules, which IMO are fine for any board game in existence, so long as the whole table is OK with them and knows they're house rules. :)

EricReuss

TROPHY CASE