Todd Sanders is a game designer that has been in my collection for some time. I have written reviews of his previous pulpy work: Pulp Detective, Pulp Invasion. I will soon have his latest title reviewed as well: Pulp Romance. Mr. Sanders is not just a designer of the Pulp series of games, he also has eclectic designs such as Mr. Cabbagehead’s Garden; he has done a lot of graphic design and other work for Alban Viard and his various games, not just limited to the Clinic Deluxe series.
Mr. Sanders is a bit of a board game design specialist—his designs are almost entirely single player affairs. He does a lot of print-n-play designs, game aids, and other helpful items. He is also an editor and publisher of some of the most interesting and original takes on poetry, classic fairy tales, and science fiction I have ever encountered. He does woodworking and furniture design in his spare time. He is a multi-talented and personable man.
With Pulp Romance out, I wanted to sit down and ask him a few questions…
Q1: I remember when I first saw Pulp Invasion. I fell in love instantly! It is my understanding that you or someone you know had managed to acquire the rights to a hoard of actual pulp-era artwork from magazines and more. How did this happen? Did you have ideas for how to use this right away, or did those come later?
A1: We work with a company called Steeger Properties. They own the rights to the majority of pulps published mid-century. Their web site allows you to browse covers by year. It was an organic process, downloading images I thought would work and building those into the narrative of the game. Then, filling in the holes with other images or adjusting names/places/planets etc. to fit what I had access to. After that, I made a list of all images used (they name all the files by magazine/month/year) and the publisher—Alban Viard—negotiated a bulk license. We’ve used Steeger for all three pulp games: Detective, Invasion, and now Romance.
Q2: The Pulp Detective theme is an amazing one. Pulp Invasion is equally inspired. Pulp Romance, I have to admit, is not a theme I think I would have thought of. Having played your game, I can see it is a very good idea and one that fits gaming (especially solo gaming) quite well. Was it the art or something else that inspired that direction or was this something you wanted to do and the artwork just happened to fit? With each of the Pulp games, how hard was it to figure out what mechanics would work best with each theme?
A2: Well, in discussions with Alban Viard, after we did Pulp Detective, we spoke about the other genres out there and whether we could use them for further games in the series. Next up will be, I hope, Pulp Western. Some people have asked about Pulp Horror but I don’t have access to a large cache of artwork I can license. For each of the games I began by trying to match the genre to possible standard mechanics:
- Pulp Detective: solving the game within a time limit, having plug and play villains, detectives and cases to provide a good mix for replay, gathering clues.
- Pulp Invasion: a sort of rogue-like boss battle, I suppose, mixed with the bag builder mechanic acting as an exploratory phase.
- Pulp Romance: a quest involving adjacent relationships in a tableau grid while rivals act as an automata working actively against you.
- Pulp Western will involve the solo player going up against a gang of foes, each with their own automata rules to keep things interesting and add a bit of fog of war. Pulp Western will be a war game without a hex map, armies, or dice rolls (nomographs for the win!). Think of a lone sheriff going up against a gang of outlaws and their boss.
Q3: With each game, you have released the initial (base) game along with the first expansion. Then, several expansions come along, and things are all capped off with the slipcase, and the puzzle board. This pattern is not only inspired, but one that keeps me looking forward to each new release, excited to get the slipcase and board, but sad to see the end of the saga. How did this publishing cycle come about? Is the puzzle board something you find yourself thinking about as the initial game and expansion are created, or is this something that comes into your mind later?
A3: While a number of people have asked if I design the expansions as reactions to how people find the games, much of the expansion mechanics are thought of while doing the base game. Adding in small seeds (as was very much the case in Pulp Invasion) that can be integrated and reverse engineered as you add the expansions, but making sure nothing is hampered or lessened by only having the base game if you choose to just play the base game. Also, all expansions are designed to be played separately or combined, so there are no logic errors or rule breaking.
The puzzle board was something Alban Viard found his printer could do, and it made a lot of sense thematically for Pulp Detective. An added benefit of the puzzle board is that it easily fits in a small box, thereby saving on shipping costs and making game storage easier as well. The slipcase was a fun add-on as sort of a call back to the kind of slip case boxes that book trilogies often come in. And it keeps everything looking neat on a shelf. There is a lot of back and forth with the printer though to get the dimensions just right. So, with the puzzle board and slipcase working well for Pulp Detective it was an easy decision to continue with Pulp Invasion.
Q4: I am currently working on designs for a role-playing game that has custom dice and a board game that may have custom dice. I know how expensive that process is. Each of the Pulp games has had nice, heavy, fully custom dice with great symbology! Despite this, the costs for the games are not unreasonable. Well done! When you are working on the ideas for these dice, what is the process? What is the most important thing to you when designing them? Do you do all the graphic work yourself, or is some of that farmed out?
A4: I do all the graphic work, yes, and provide the printer with vector files for their manufacturing process. The dice are designed to provide maximum readability for players (as much as you can have in 16mm). The dice serve specific functions as needed for the games.
In Pulp Detective they provide a random/luck base element using a Yahtzee mechanic. In Pulp Invasion, they are used as ability trackers and let players mix and match depending on what Captains they use to best customize the game for personal preferences, while saving the cost of printing up a set of punchboards. Pulp Romance uses dice as initial randomizers to provide an extra automaton gesture at the start of the game, trying to build in replayability.
Q5: Do you have any more games that you want to do in the Pulp series? Perhaps revisit one of the old ones and add something (e.g., more aliens or villains; more utility cards; other things that would not require a change to the rules or to the puzzle board)? Do you have enough remaining Pulp artwork to continue in this area? How about your non-Pulp games – would you want to revisit the garden and do more in the world of Mr. Cabbagehead? Or are you thinking more of some new and original games? What sort of games would you like to delve into?
A5: Pulp Western will be next, yes if we can manage to continue. And I do think I’ll be able to draw on Steeger for enough artwork for what I’ll need for the game. Western Pulps are probably the most image problematic—1940/50s sensibilities vs. what we in the modern age consider socially correct, but I am already gathering a library of images to work with that will match what I require. Beyond that is, I suppose, Pulp Horror, but there is much less visually there to work with. I do have the generic mechanical game designed for Pulp Western and I know how it all works. It will be a case of slotting the images into the mechanics and building the narrative experience out for the Western genre.
I would love to continue with Mr. Cabbagehead, yes, and have ideas for further neighbors. Each of the Pulp games being a base + trilogy of expansions feels like a complete experience for me. We managed with Pulp Invasion to sneak in a mini 4th expansion which didn’t affect the puzzle board or slipcase, so that was an ok extra bit of design fun. I do have new games in the pipeline and am in talks with some publishers. I do also have an extensive back catalog of PnP games which publishers sometimes come to me about, and I am happy to work with them to flesh those games out and build them into a richer experience.
Q6: As a fan of your games and your books, I would be remiss if I did not ask if more fairy tales are on the horizon? Also, is there anything else you want to share: favorite games or game designer? Favorite mechanic? Area in one of your games where you think you could have done better? Area in one of your games where you think you truly nailed it? Anything else you want us to know about?
A6: My publishing imprint, Air and Nothingness Press, publishes around 4 anthologies a year. 2026 will be my 29th year as a publisher. While there are no immediate plans for more fairy tale anthologies I’d like to do a collection of stories about Hades and Persephone similar to the anthology of Orpheus and Eurydice stories I did a few years ago. 2026 will see a couple of hard SF anthologies and a book involving a new “tall tales” type heroine. I am also working on a personal book project involving my Shadows Upon Lassidar series of games, but I need to have some solid blocks of time for the writing of that.
- Favorite designers currently—Stefan Feld, Uwe Rosenberg, Amabel Holland
- Favorite games—Thebes, Hero’s Journey Home, Parks (and a ton of others)
- I’d like to be better at—mitigating the luck factor in some of my games and trying to design a 4-player game, which, to me, seems immensely complicated.
- I am really good at—Designing solo 9 and 18 card games that are graphically complex enough to turn 18 physical cards into orders of magnitude greater virtual cards that have mutli-use hardwired into them so you do not need extra stand alone dice or pieces to play them. Check out Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling for more about that.
- Hopes—I hope 2026 brings a few more of my games to the publishing scene. I am also hoping to do a few more anthologies in the summer/autumn if budget allows.
In Conclusion
Todd Sanders is a multi-faceted, multi-talented, personable, humble, and beautiful human being. The board game community is truly lucky to have him. I would like to thank him for his time and his willingness to entertain my questions.
The Pulp series (Detective, Invasion, and Romance, so far) are fun games! In my reviews, I have indicated that Pulp Romance is the best game of the series, suggesting that Mr. Sanders is getting better with each game. His games are quirky, unique, and immersive in ways that so many other game designers I am sure wish they could pull off. The Pulp series is far from his only work in board games, so go check out his other games as well.
But he exists well beyond our hobby! I have several of the books his Air and Nothingness Press has published, and they are all fantastic! Go and check these out as soon as you can.
Go to BoardGameGeek and talk with him. Check out his games and have fun! Read his published books and be amazed. Do all of these things, not just because they are fun and engaging, but because it will be generations before we get another board game designer and publisher quite like him.
Assuming we ever do.
