Trollhalla game creators spur thriving community

Board game designer Alf Seegert has a thing for trolls.

He's pretty sure it grew out of a childhood experience watching "The Muppet Show" episode featuring troll-like Viking pigs plundering villages while singing the Village People's "In the Navy."

"That image just stuck in my 10-year-old brain. It's still one of my favorite clips," he says. You can see it on his website, www.alfseegert.com.

So, when he grew up and began designing board games, trolls came to mind. His first published game, Bridge Troll, came out in 2009 with Z-Man Games, and features trolls that hide under bridges and capture unwary (the fatter, the better) travelers and their treasures. But the goal of the game is not to avoid these trolls, but to be them.

Now comes his second game with Z-Man Games, called Trollhalla, again illustrated by Ryan Laukat. In this one trolls who are tired of living under moldering bridges have decided on a career change and have taken to the seas, where they find lots of treasure-laden islands to pillage. Once again, you get to be the trolls.

"I think it's more fun being the bad guys," says Seegert. He admits it's something that probably grows out of his day-job — assistant professor/lecturer in the department of English at the University of Utah. He has always been intrigued by the way novelists create characters to do the things they would never do themselves. It's what literature is all about, he says.

In Trollhalla, trolls join forces (and this time there is a female troll. "We got a lot of complaints about the fact that Bridge Troll didn't have female trolls," says Laukat). Being trolls, they don't work together perfectly; there's always the desire to out-pillage the shipmates. But there are plenty of opportunities to collect crunchy livestock, nervous monks, panicked princesses, piles of gold and casks of grog. The trolls must beware of billy goats, who can knock treasure right out of the boat. Weather plays a factor in the voyages; storms can change directions; winds can flip boats upside-down; sunny days add bonuses.

The rules are actually very simple, which makes it a great family game, says Seegert. But there are lots of things going on. "There's no way to do just one thing. There are lots of ways to score, a need to pay attention to what other trolls are doing."

His chief aim, he says, was for "simplexity — simple rules, but lots of outcomes. That's what drives games like chess."