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4801

Other Games / Re: Recommended board games?

« on: March 17, 2014, 11:27:03 pm »

See, now I find this interesting. Specifically, what does "no it isn't just an opinion" mean (particularly "it" and "opinion", which is a word in general I've found to not be well-defined or agreed-upon)?

I was referring to blueblimp saying "but that's just my opinion man" on the topic of whether or not some entity decides what way to use words is best such that everyone else is just wrong.

In that particular case I am confident that no, that is not how language works, language prescriptivists are utterly wrong. [For example the spellchecker doesn't like that word.] However I have learned over the years that it's pointless to argue about, because people will cling to their false beliefs on that topic no matter what you throw in their faces. It's "0.999... = 1" all over again.

blueblimp said, "I understand that is just an opinion, though." My use of "opinion" was referring to his use of it. My understanding of his use of it is that he is asserting 1) that there is no proof behind his position, and 2) that other people disagree with it. ymmv, hth

4802

Rules Questions / Re: Discarding down to X cards

« on: March 17, 2014, 10:46:00 pm »

http://forum.makingfun.com/showthread.php?4230-Discarding-trashing-othering-multiple-cards

It turns out that they currently (due to the code they were given) are sending way more information than anyone ever would. They are sending card images over and over, for example. So, in terms of reducing the amount of communication, the Chapel etc. thing isn't up there (though of course it's still better from an interface perspective, and it's good when your own side of things is slowing things down).

The "hidden discards" rule is a wonky thing from the early days, when I didn't have as much control (and/or had not thought things through sufficiently). It's bad to bog a game down on things like pawing through discard piles, but it's a general rule (of game design, not specific to Dominion) that you can't do two things at once unless game components etc. struggle to let you. You always need an order. A very tiny set of cards might dodge the issue, but you quickly hit it. The cards do though provide the components necessary for discarding multiple cards while keeping the order secret. It meant Tunnel had to say "you may reveal this" and yes that's wonky too.

I think it's more natural to discard one at a time to Militia, given the phrasing; especially considering it lines up with Library etc. This could give you an infinite loop with "when you discard this, +1 card" and well that card doesn't exist. I'd rather not have a special ruling and with no special ruling and nothing in the rulebooks, "discard down to 3" sounds to me like I keep discarding until I have 3 (or fewer dammit). However you don't need to reveal the cards below the top one because somehow the rulebook says this.

Other discards are all at once; but the cards are discarded in a particular order, since, being cards, they have to be.

Yes my proposal for the online version for Militia etc. doesn't work the same way; to be correct it would need a special case for hands with both Tunnel and Watchtower. Or to be safe (in case a future card interacted with this stuff), it should do "down to" discarding one at a time but the others in a lump.

4803

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: March 17, 2014, 10:31:01 pm »

My point is that "diminishing returns" makes a point, but it's not necessarily a compelling one.  If I only desired a satisfactory amount of variety in my Dominion games, I probably would never have even bought Hinterlands.  Even small expansions (even single cards, look at Governor) can have a profound impact on the strategy space of Dominion.  The more variety, the better, and I will continue to say this even when there are thousands of kingdom cards.

There are always going to be people who would buy a 20th expansion despite owning 19. Each expansion gives you whatever new experiences, despite already having endless variety; at some level it can be like buying a 20th game when you already have 19. However for most people, a 20th game does a much better job of being a 20th game, and there is clear data that most Dominion fans do not need even 8 expansions. You can produce a big line of people who do and that won't change that.

4804

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: March 17, 2014, 08:56:57 pm »

I made a bunch of homemade Magic expansions, and at one point aggressively looked for new mechanics. They do stuff I thought of all the time; there is plenty left that they haven't done, but they keep making cards, they will gradually whittle that list down. I guess that's not as relevant as it sounds; maybe I am just as uncreative as Wizards, and someone out there could blow us away.

I have a better example. A famous game designer - a different one - had an idea for a Dominion expansion. He didn't tell me what it was. A few years later, I found out that it was covered by later expansions, especially Guilds. If I hadn't made Guilds, and he had thought that I would never think of his idea, he would have been wrong.

Two guys thought of calculus, as the saying goes. Dominion cards are easier.

4805

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: March 17, 2014, 08:12:11 pm »

This doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. You say that coming up with cards isn’t difficult. But if a card is too complex, or redundant, or uniteresting, or uses a linear mechanic, then that is a bad card. So what this boils down to is that creating good cards IS difficult. There are still fresh, simple cards left to make. Not vanilla cards, but simple ones. The easiest way to make more simple cards is to introduce a new, nonlinear mechanic, which is again difficult—but not impossible—to do.

Well it's not that complex cards are bad; there are complex cards in most of the expansions. It's just that at a certain point the expansions have too many complex cards. Now I have blown it; I have, in my effort to please expert players (he said, not actually passing on the blame), tried to make cards as well-balanced as possible even though that meant making them too complex (again I will cite those Hinterlands cards I've singled out). That's an issue, that the expert players are less happy with the simpler, weaker/stronger card that casual players would prefer.

I have already done the experiment of "this is a good place to stop, wait I have to make another one." That set is Guilds. It exists only to come out between Hinterlands and Dark Ages (though it didn't); it completely postdates Dominion being published. I picked the most promising (most likely to produce good cards easily) ideas from my list and made some cards for them. It ended up taking a couple cards from Dark Ages (Journeyman, Advisor) and a couple old ideas that I hadn't fixed up yet (Taxman, Soothsayer) (Soothsayer shouldn't have the "if," there I am seeking approval from playtesters to the end). And it worked out fine; I wasn't somehow unable to make it.

If you loved Guilds then man the idea that I should stop making expansions must seem less compelling than ever. I am certainly pleased with Guilds. It is nevertheless more complex than I would like, it strongly demonstrates the diminishing returns issue, and a spin-off would have been better. Even if there's a non-linear thing left to do, a spin-off can do a linear thing and that can be good; a spin-off automatically gets new vanilla cards, not just simple enough to live with but extremely simple and yet still compelling; and a spin-off has no diminishing returns at all.

Here is more on the diminishing returns thing. Which expansion has sold the best? 2nd best? 3rd best? Well maybe that's not fair; Intrigue has been out the longest. Which expansion sold the best in its first year? 2nd best? 3rd best? 4th best?

You can just line them up by release date (skipping the small sets, which do worse). People stop buying them eventually; foreign publishers stop publishing them. They've got enough.

I mentioned this to the Making Fun people, while explaining why I wasn't making more expansions. One of the guys immediately said, yeah he had played a thousand times with his kid, but he had Cornucopia still in shrink, and didn't see the point of buying Dark Ages until they had gotten some value out of the last few sets he'd bought.

I am going to hazard a guess that you wouldn’t make those cards anyway, not because they’re actually bad, but because they wouldn’t occur to you.

I prefer to think that I would think of enough of the simple ones, and leave it untested. You can make complex cards for forever, so sure, I might never get to whatever corner there.

I made a bunch of homemade Magic expansions, and at one point aggressively looked for new mechanics. They do stuff I thought of all the time; there is plenty left that they haven't done, but they keep making cards, they will gradually whittle that list down. I guess that's not as relevant as it sounds; maybe I am just as uncreative as Wizards, and someone out there could blow us away.

If you have tons of great ideas for innovative cards for a game with rules on cards, I bet you can make your own games. It's good times.

• It potentially opens the floodgates of fan card submissions. Maybe you already get a dozen emails a day from people submitting fan cards and this is a non-issue. I have no idea.

I don't, hooray.

• Wanting to be the guy and getting to. I think this is reasonable.

I do want to be the guy and do get to. I'm not sure we do promotion well enough for a card design contest to do much for us.

4806

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: March 17, 2014, 07:10:44 pm »

Why does Farmland gain you a card costing exactly $2 more and not up to $2 more?

In the early days, to keep down complexity, I set myself a limit: the card text had to fit in the text box, at a particular size of a particular font. None of the original cards (25-card main set, five 20-card expansions) broke this rule. You can see the original Farmland in the Outtakes article - it's New Wing, shown at the top of the Seaside section (http://dominionstrategy.com/2013/06/24/dominion-outtakes/). The VP symbol eats up a bunch of space; it just barely fit with no "up to" (and back then I didn't say "exactly," though obv. that's better for clarity).

So, it didn't say "up to" just to make the text fit given this arbitrary constraint I'd chosen. Then later there was never a point where I felt unhappy with it, so it never changed.

4807

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: March 17, 2014, 02:49:48 pm »

Yes, time certainly doesn't permit analyzing every fan card, so if done at all (which certainly isn't obvious to do!), your time is best spent looking at something that is already seen to be among the best by many people. If looking at some random cards was a waste of time that is no surprise.

It is no surprise, correct, hooray. The point to the analysis was to provide an example, that was why I did it in that post, to demonstrate that my expectation was borne out by reality.

I don't want to look at the cream of the crop either though, that will just make me not make those cards. I'm not going to say, "wow these are so good I should just sign this guy up." I would want to preserve a certain pretense of quality, and preserve a certain degree of control, and so would have to endlessly playtest those cards. As long as I am doing that it would be more fun to make them myself. The person on the planet most likely to get me to co-author an expansion offered to make an expansion, and I explained to him about how spin-offs were better (I don't know if we will ever co-author a spin-off, it's on the table anyway).

The problem with making new expansions isn't difficulty coming up with cards. It's increasing complexity, diminishing returns on variety, unpopularity of linear mechanics that would work fine in spin-offs, having better projects. See http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=73.0. It all still applies if someone else produces the ideas.

The original question was, did I look at fan cards. My answer was, I don't because 1) I don't want people to think I'm stealing their ideas, and 2) I don't expect to find cool stuff. I demonstrated #2 in that post back when. If you find an amazing fan expansion, we are back to #1.

4808

Other Games / Re: Recommended board games?

« on: March 17, 2014, 12:02:29 am »

"without much problem": 10,700,000 results
"without many problems": 7,650,000 results
"without much difficulty": 5,920,000 results
"without many difficulties": 502,000 results
So at least on the internet, "without much problem" is actually the most common form by a significant margin.

My google is not as generous to "without much problem," whether I click on your link or type it in myself.

"without much problem" -> 1,370,000
"without many problems" -> 7,650,000
"without much difficulty" -> 5,920,000
"without many difficulties" -> 502,000

However! "Without much problem" is actually shorthand for "without much of a problem."

"without much of a problem" -> 62,300,000

[I am, as you may know, a hardcore descriptivist, and no it isn't just an opinion.]

4809

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: March 16, 2014, 03:47:55 pm »

Yes, sorry, I meant it as a yes/no question!

I don't know, I would like need to look at a list of conventional wisdoms. You guys focus on 2-player, so probably you have stuff to learn about multiplayer.

Like I said, it's not like I'm the expert at this point; probably I disagree about something incorrectly. It was fun watching you guys say how awful Remake and Jack would be, but those were easy lessons and you are past that point. You could ask a top player what they think you're all wrong about.

If I did say there was something, people would just try to figure out what it was. But whoever you are, odds are you could get better, one way or another. There's this trick, here is some very broad strategy advice: thinking there's an answer helps you find the answer.

4810

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Least favorite card?

« on: March 16, 2014, 03:30:49 pm »

I'm there for you. Chapel is about how unimportant material things are. Band of Misfits is about how who you pretend to be becomes who you are. Woodcutter is one of those canvases that just has a red stripe on it.

And Harem is...?

The lesson of Harem is that if you stray from the path of righteousness, Maura Kalusky will draw you on a Dominion card.

4811

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: March 16, 2014, 01:22:14 pm »

Is there still conventional wisdom around these parts about Dominion strategy that you reject?

I'm okay with saying "yes this card we all know is bad is bad" but in general it doesn't seem like good times for me to be trying to give out strategy tips, even if at this point I'm not going to be the foremost expert. It just carries some weight if I say it. Maybe I've broken this rule over and over, but you have not tempted me to on this occasion.

4812

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Least favorite card?

« on: March 16, 2014, 03:11:30 am »

Essentially it's the ability to pre-move (online poker's implementation is the Check/Fold button and similar). I'm not sure why the box couldn't always be onscreen in a corner? But it's not particularly relevant--I don't imagine a checkbox system would ever be implemented, it was just an offhand thought. Besides, Urchin isn't a particularly bad offender--situations where you have to repeatedly decline to trash Urchin are just too rare compared to other interface annoyances.

I think wherever it was, I would find it more confusing than helpful. There are playmats on the screen for some cards, but the cards refer to them and anyway we can't not have them.

Welcome back, by the way. It's good to see you around here discussing your game again... the artist is always the best source when you're looking for meaning in the art.

I'm there for you. Chapel is about how unimportant material things are. Band of Misfits is about how who you pretend to be becomes who you are. Woodcutter is one of those canvases that just has a red stripe on it.

4813

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Goko bot strategy?

« on: March 16, 2014, 02:34:48 am »

Here's a question. They would kind of like a medium bot - better than serf bot, not as good as all the rest. The non-serf bots are all pretty close in skill, which wasn't so much intended.

So the question is, what behavior would be good for a medium bot? In what ways should it intentionally be worse, that will leave the game as enjoyable as possible for the people at that skill level? The idea being to make the bot worse without making it so much look stupid.

I'll get the ball rolling.

- Ignore PPR.
- Buy one more terminal than is reasonable.

4814

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Least favorite card?

« on: March 15, 2014, 11:31:16 pm »

What if you took a page from online poker and added a checkbox for "don't play the reaction on Card X while this box is checked"? Then if you get into a situation where you might want the reaction, you can just uncheck the box.

I don't know what you're copying from online poker. I am not seeing any benefits here so far. The box couldn't always be onscreen. Only experts would know how to call it up from offscreen.

The mod could add something to improve Urchin and people could see how they liked it. For the actual online version, it's going to be a pretty low priority for a long time. It's functioning correctly, it just wasn't a card designed with online play in mind. Oracle makes you order cards pointlessly because that was the best phrasing, but Catacombs at least goes that extra mile for online play.

4815

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: March 15, 2014, 09:05:32 pm »

Who do you play Dominion with the most ? And are there some "famous" people in the world of the Board game (game designers, or also game illustrators...) you have played with ?

In person, I've played the most with Molly, Josephine, and Destry, who you may recognize from their knights, and a later group that included Bill Barksdale, Steve Wampler, Alex Bishop, Vinay Baliga, and Zach Kessler. Online I played the most with Bill, (Sir) Michael M. Landers, John Vogel, and Anthony Rubbo, though in the early days a few other people played a bunch too, including Chris West (Sir Vander), Miikka Notkola, and P. Colin Street. I haven't played in a few weeks, but these days I mostly just play against the bots; I want to take a break for 15 minutes, guess I'll play some Dominion. In person I am playtesting other things. When I playtested the promo several months ago, Kent Bunn and Kevin White were regulars. I've played with plenty of other people, but you know, not as regularly.

I've played online lots with Anthony Rubbo (he's not so famous but has a few published games at this point, including Hey Waiter and Renaissance Man); I've played online some with Tom Lehmann (Race for the Galaxy etc.) and Wei-Hwa Huang (upcoming Roll for the Galaxy, work on Race). Richard Garfield playtested for Seaside but I didn't play with him (though I've played a bunch of my other games with him).

4816

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: March 15, 2014, 04:24:28 pm »

I suggest watching Strange Powers.  There is a lot of interesting things in there, like some of his concepts behind the albums, what they use for some of the weirder sounds, and just watching Stephin Merritt talk about stuff.  Pretty early in the documentary Claudia Gonson (I believe) says something to the effect that her typical idea of a Magnetic Fields fan was a teenage girl or a gay teenage boy.  The girl I went to see the movie with my pointed at me and laughed :/

Well some of his stuff is very show-tune-y. You could try show tunes; I like plenty of stuff there. Anyone who appreciates, say, Nothing Matters When We're Dancing, should check out Irving Berlin. Merritt himself is a big fan.

4817

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: March 15, 2014, 02:50:18 pm »

Did you see the documentary on him?  Strange Powers?  That's what put him that way for me.

I agree not much holds up to 69 Love Songs, or even Wayward Bus/Distant Plastic Trees.  I avoided getting Distortion because I really dislike noise music.  Love at the Bottom of the Sea I didn't fall in love with as much as 69 Love Songs, but damn those songs are hilarious. 

I haven't picked up the Future Bible Heroes new album yet, I'll have to do that.  Do you have both The 6th's albums? (Wasps' Nests and Hyacinths and Thistles.)  A lot of my favorite songs by him are on there, specifically on Wasps' Nests.

I've seen him once live, it was just awesome. (They were on tour for last album.)  I've never seen such a minimalistic music performance in a concert setting.  Just five people and their small collection of instruments.. nothing extra to take your focus off of them.  And he introduces each song in an awkward and funny way, as if he was just talking to one other person in a small room, or something.

I have not seen Strange Powers.

Even though 69 Love Songs is his best thing, I like plenty of things on Holiday, Get Lost, Memories of Love, Eternal Youth, Peach Blossom Fan, I, and the Tragic Treasury. I am thinking now maybe I am the bigger fan here.

I have pretty much had the experience. The House of Tomorrow EP is decent. The Gothic Archies EP released through the Hello Recording Club has just a few okay songs; it was later generally released as The New Despair. I like a couple songs on the I'm Lonely and I Love It EP. There are a few decent songs on the Eban and Charley soundtrack. The Lonely Robot EP is a dud. There are a few new good songs on the Pieces of April soundtrack. If you get the full version of the "Chinese operas," rather than the best-of Showtunes, then the best one is Peach Blossom Fan, though it has a few screechy tracks; then My Life As a Fairy Tale has a decent number of good songs; I only liked a couple tracks on Orphan of Zhao. I have some of the Tragic Treasury songs from when they were only available on books on tape; you don't need the originals, they are just shorter. Mr. Punch is a good song from a compilation (Neil Gaiman stuff); Meaning of Lice is a bad one. The best tracks on Obscurities are the unreleased ones; I already had most of the released stuff, the best being the 6ths track Yet Another Girl. I've heard his NPR song, but don't have it, I don't know if it's available anywhere. It's not any good anyway. There was a rare Gothic Archies on a compilation that wasn't any good. I can mildly appreciate his version of If I Were a Rich Man and the Future Bible Heroes take on Love Is Blue.

Anyway yes, I also have the 6ths albums. I like them fine. They are mixed, some hits and duds, but the hits are worth it. I am not actually much of a fan of Wayward Bus.

I saw the Future Bible Heroes once, with Scott Miller opening for them. I wouldn't really single out Merritt out as a live act from that one data point. For me what I look for in a concert is experiences I don't get from the records. It's cool for a while that "there's the guy, he's right there," but in the long run that's not getting me to the venue. Robyn Hitchcock stands out as a live act for me, he plays songs you won't otherwise hear (well in the days before someone was always taping everything anyway), and tells surreal stories.

4818

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: March 15, 2014, 02:16:22 pm »

My comment was not on the line of "DXV is a prejudicious jerk for not reading fan cards", but more like "even if someone, even DXV, thinks a concept is not novel because he tried something similar in a card or an outtake, it could be novel because slight differences may make it play really differently, and there is no way to really know other than playtesting". As I said before, this has nothing to do with the specific example of 4 cards, but as an idea in general.

I'm here to tell you that those concepts are not "novel because slight differences" etc. They aren't. It has everything to do with those specific 4 cards - some other cards might be novel because of slight differences. Those 4, no. I read them and everything.

Edit: Okay, so maybe you just think, why would I use particular cards as examples? To have examples, that's why. I don't expect to find cards that are novel even due to slight differences when I read fan cards; but hey, let's try an experiment, I'll look at some cards. And I looked at some. I didn't pick and choose; they were the first four in the first fan expansion on BGG. Time does not permit analyzing every fan card.

4819

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: March 15, 2014, 12:56:15 am »

So this was old, but I didn't read it all before.  Stephin Merritt is one of my favorite artists (I'm a huge Magnetic Fields fan).  I feel like it would be really cool to meet him, except that I feel I'd be struggling for something interesting to say and he'd probably think I was boring.

In the early oughts I ranked him as my 3rd favorite band. At this point I would put him lower (if I put in the work to make a thought-out list); the new stuff over the last ten years just doesn't compare to the ten years before it. Partygoing is a mild return-to-form, but still is a far cry from I. Well this is taking into account that the operas and Gothic Archies album were all older material finally released. Well so what I am saying is that Distortion, Reality, and Love at the Bottom of the Sea were all progressively more disappointing.

Anyway yes, I somehow have nothing but bad things to say as usual, but he had an amazing body of work going into the late oughts. Those of you who don't know the man, try a few things from 69 Love Songs on youtube, see what you think.

Some uh "rock stars" have endless positive interactions with fans, and some just want to be left alone. I forget what I read that made me put Merritt in the "leave me alone" camp.

Edit: sry, Realism, not Reality; must have gotten confused by the Bowie album.

4820

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: March 15, 2014, 12:31:58 am »

Without defending those cards, I don't think the analysis is fair. We could say "Procession only uses two known mechanics, Throne Room and Upgrade." or "King's Court is overpowered. I fixed it by making it cheaper but only play the action twice." So, is there nothing new about KC or Procession? I think there is. Other than being clearly OP or UP or exactly equal to an existing card, there is almost no way to know if a card is novel without playtesting it and noticing is not really adding anything new. Procession plays really differently to both TR and Upgrade.

Your Procession / King's Court arguments don't actually match any of my points about those Books of Magic cards. My post about the Books of Magic cards is about the lack of value to me in me reading them. The four examples from that set do not have ideas I had not come across previously. I'd tried multiple versions of all four concepts.

None of them were "two existing concepts but it's cool to pair them, did you think of that." None of them were "bigger version of an existing thing but maybe that has value." None of them were "novel take on an existing concept and hey why is that so bad, even if Donald X. doesn't find it fascinating." I mean look at the cards. Maybe the "+$3, trash this" one looks novel enough to you, but I played multiple versions of that in 2006.

If I had made zero Dominion cards, it would be fair to say, here are some concepts, maybe they can be whipped into shape. You'd be right; I did whip my versions into shape. They are fine raw concepts from that perspective, and it's not even embarrassing to start with an un-whipped-into-shape version. That's all in the past though; those particular card concepts aren't getting me anything now. And sure, maybe there's a pairing of two concepts that I haven't done that's cool enough to do, or maybe there's a card that would be exciting enough in a "big" version that I haven't made. That's just nothing to do with my comments on those cards.

4821

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Did something good happen?

« on: March 14, 2014, 06:11:32 pm »

It can't just be the one browser, though. It works fine for me on Chrome and has been for a while.

I have XP with Chrome, and at MakingFun they tried multiple machines with XP and Chrome and it worked fine for them.

It is some https issue; Chrome is pickier than Firefox in some way, such that Firefox works but Chrome doesn't, on particular machines. I believe most people have no problem, but obv. some do. Fixing it is obv. a high priority.

MakingFun inherited code from Goko and are trying to fix it up. I wouldn't give up on them just yet.

The lag is a bug, rather than the result of lots of traffic.

4822

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: March 14, 2014, 05:38:56 pm »

Regarding online-only promos: a version of Possession that said "the deck of the Possessed player returns to the state before the Possession turn" would be nice (it has some issues with Masq, Amb, MadMan and Spoils , but maybe they can be worked out). My point is that, in principle, Possession does no harm to the Possessed, but it surely looks like it does. If the possessed does not "lose" the turn, then it really looks like what it seems to be: a complicated more powerful version of Smugglers.

You lost me at "a version of Possession."

4823

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: March 14, 2014, 05:38:20 pm »

Not to step on Donald's toes here, but he has said many, many, many times that he doesn't look at fan cards at all.

One of the reasons he gave was to avoid something looking like a rip off of a fan card (even by coincidence). Now that all cards are out...

In fact there will probably be a physical Dominion promo this year - I finished my work on it, it's just up to when Jay decides to put it out.

4824

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: March 14, 2014, 05:36:48 pm »

Not to step on Donald's toes here, but he has said many, many, many times that he doesn't look at fan cards at all.

I've looked at fan cards, but it's something I avoid doing. Earlier in this thread I looked at the first few cards of one of the sets posted at BGG, and you can see how that went.

A world-famous game designer offered to make an expansion, and I gave him my usual speech about how spin-offs are the way to go. We may conceivably make a spin-off together someday; it's hard to say if that will happen, it would depend on us suddenly springing into action.

Anyway a fan-made expansion is real unlikely.

4825

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: March 14, 2014, 02:39:25 am »

So my "+Buy or not +Buy, that is the question" just happened to come from a card called Hamlet; it wasn't a deliberate choice to do that?

It's just Hamlet because it's a small village. Counting House references the nursery rhyme.  I was aware of Re-make/Re-model when I picked the name Remake, but you know, I just needed more words that meant that. Feodum is of course referring to the original flavor paragraph, where I used the word just to have a list of three things that were actually the same.