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5076

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: January 29, 2013, 04:18:19 pm »

I know there are at least hints of this in the secret histories ("this card never changed" and "this took a long time to playtest and changed a lot"), but what cards were among the easiest/quickest to both come up with and playtest, and which ones were among the hardest/longest to both come up with and playtest? Are there whole expansions that were generally easier or harder to finish (expansion size notwithstanding)? I realize this question may not be answerable, but just in case. Thank you.

I will pick two cards from each set.

Main: Mine is a day one card where the only change was "up to +$3" rather than "copper to silver, silver to gold." It matters now but did not much with just the main set. Witch went from "$3, they gain Curse" through "$5, pay $1 to give them Curse" to what it is.

Intrigue: Masquerade is a good example of a nontrivial card that didn't change. It was carefully built to make the most of passing a card left. Secret Chamber started as "victory cards are also Copper this turn" for $4.

Seaside: Several of these were good to go - Merchant Ship, Caravan, Bazaar, Warehouse. None of these had so many versions; maybe Outpost has the record here. I'm going to say this set was the easiest.

Alchemy: Potion never changed. Vineyard just went from $4 to $P. Maybe Philosopher's Stone had the most versions; the oldest one was an action for $3, +1 buy, +$1 per 4 cards left in your deck (did not count discard).

Prosperity: Platinum never changed. The $7's all just changed in cost, plus the "may" on King's Court; Expand I think spent the most time as is. A bunch of discard attacks tried out for the Goons slot; that version may not have had multiple versions, but it feels like the most work went into that slot.

Cornucopia: Remake and Hamlet never changed. Remake got more playtesting focus. Tournament took the most work, but Horn of Plenty also has a long history, starting with "+$1 per card you played this turn" in Intrigue.

Hinterlands: Cache survived unchanged from the first month or so of Dominion, and even got to keep its name. The Margrave slot ate up the most time, depending on what you count. For a long time there was a discard attack that hit you the turn they bought it. There were multiple versions and well hooray they're gone. Margrave itself descended from another attack tried in a couple versions that didn't work out. Then Margrave itself didn't change once I had that particular card, but it was a focus of testing because of the old-Crossroads / Margrave deck.

Dark Ages: Probably this set took the most work over all. This set was last, so ideas that sounded good but hadn't worked out trickled down into it, to be worked on one last time. And it changed themes and is large. What month are the fewest children born in? February. Anyway Armory and Altar are cards that never changed. The Knights probably took the most work, although there was certainly some time spend on a bunch of these.

Attacks take the most work, both playtesting/changing and also just thinking of good ones that feel new. Very basic effects are easy to think of, but some of my initial cost guesses were way off, and sometimes the simple cards didn't start simple. Some of the easiest things I listed were Seaside's "do something basic but next turn also" and Prosperity's "do the big version of something basic." "Choose one of these basic things" wasn't hard either. Whereas "care about variety," you can quickly list the basic approaches (variety in your hand, in play, in your deck), but the cards didn't just happen.

5077

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: January 29, 2013, 03:42:30 am »

made him more of a person, making him more of a brand

These two are entirely different things.

And I mentioned both of them. And this is a post and it quotes your post.

5078

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: January 29, 2013, 12:22:01 am »

Orson Welles had it that "The enemy of art is the absence of limitations." And to me Dominion absolutely exemplifies this. Take Treasury, which as you mentioned earlier, is sort of like a permanent Duration card. Instead of writing up new rules for a new card type, you shoehorned it into the rules framework you had. And from this you get depth: it develops interesting interactions with discard attacks, it's a guaranteed target for Thrones or Graverobbers or whatever, all kinds of stuff. I think it's reasonable to say that a lot of the nuance in Dominion comes from stuff like this, and of course you've been making Dominion cards long enough to appreciate it (though maybe long enough to get sick of it).

So this isn't a criticism of course; obviously you know more about game design than I do. And obviously it's not like deckbuilders are the only game format that provides some basic structure to work from. But I'm surprised to hear that after your Dominion experience you find "limitations" to be a dirty word. Do you feel like pushing against boundaries is a major part of your design process? Or is it the sort of thing where like, your game mechanics are ultimately going to limit you no matter what you do, so you might as well carve out as big of a design space as you can?

Mark Rosewater says, man how does he put it. Restrictions breed creativity. If you need inspiration, man, order some up. One way to be inspired is to box in your possibilities and that's fine. Sometimes you get inspiration some other way; that's fine too. It can be hard staring at a blank page, and in the end you will have something very specific on it; we can view the task as entirely one of cutting down the possibilities. And if you can get part of the way there that's better than uh not getting anywhere. Anyway you know, that's all well and good although it doesn't mean you constantly need restrictions. Sometimes you've just got good ideas, you leap right to some good stuff on that page. Restrictions in this sense are a tool but not the only one. I mean you're always restricting things but that's not always the clearest way to look at it.

My games tend to work with as little as possible; they are heavily restricted in that sense. In Dominion your VP go in your deck, your money is in your deck, your actions are in your deck. The reason I went that route was simply to try the most extreme version of the idea. In Kingdom Builder you place 3 pieces on your terrain, adjacent to you if possible, gain abilities when you play by them, can't use them the turn you get them, and draw a new card at end of turn. Most of my games are low on rules and can be taught very quickly. It's a trick because there are rules on cards, but you know, the framework is minimal. If there was something I didn't need, it's not there. And I see how much I can do with what little I've got.

In some of my games there will be this real question of, can you make enough cards for this. The number of cards you can make depends on the complexity of the cards and the amount of rules you have. When you don't have many rules, the pressure is on the card text, which tends to want to be simple too. I have tackled this so many times that I know a lot of basic things you can do with almost nothing. Let's say you have points of some kind, monkey points. Well you can gain monkey points. You can make the other players lose them. You can do both at once, always satisfying. If there are lots of ways to gain them, I can make a way to increase how many you gain, and if there are lots of ways to lose them, I can make a way to avoid losing as many. There aren't a lot of things you can do with just monkey points, but you know, a game without many rules can have more card variety than you might think.

But none of this has anything to do with "should I make a purely digital card game." That restriction isn't interesting or new or anything. There is better territory to stake out. Like, when you are trying to fill that blank page, deciding not to use the letter e is not a great start. It's a restriction but it's not doing good things for you. Someone already wrote something with no e's, and man no-one needs to read it.

5079

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: January 28, 2013, 10:53:12 pm »

In other words, I'm not saying there's a reason to constrain your video game to cards.  I'm saying I see reasons to constrain your card game to being virtual.  Being virtual confers properties that are totally orthogonal to whether it's a card game or not.

But once I constrain a card game to being virtual, I'm unlikely to keep it cards. Being cards is no longer relevant.

I make physical games instead of digital ones because it's so much easier. I can make a game over a weekend by myself and try it on Tuesday. I can make changes easily. Playtesting involves - I am not making this up - playing games. If a publisher wants one it's low-risk for them, even though most games don't sell well. If a publisher doesn't I've still got something, we still have fun playing the game.

Computer games cost millions of dollars, involve teams of people. People are less interested in taking risks, more interested in repeating previous successes. Richard Garfield got interested in doing computer games, and has spent years seeing them not get made. These days there are iPad etc. games, which one guy can program, but they are still way more work than a card game.

If Nintendo says, hey Donald X., give us some ideas for a new Mario game, man, I will think of some stuff. But I'm happy making physical games. It's not so bad that I can't tweak the cards once they're published.

5080

Dominion Articles / Re: [WIP] The five engine components

« on: January 28, 2013, 10:42:15 pm »

I use "payload" for stuff like cards with a when-gain ability. Border Village has a payload, the card you gain with it; then it's just a Village.

5081

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: January 28, 2013, 08:48:11 pm »

Sorry, Donald, I don't feel like my questions are being understood.  Let me try one more time. If this doesn't work, I'll drop it.

1) If you could retroactively change, remove, and add Dominion cards at will, would you want to? For example, you could magically change the text on every printed copy of Throne Room.
2) Given that this is impossible with physical games, but possible in video games: Do you agree that this ability could be a valid reason to implement a card game exclusively as a video game? (Even if it doesn't appeal to you, personally). If not, I'm curious why not.

Being able to tweak cards later would be nice, sure. That's no reason to make a video card game. I can make Starcraft and tweak units later, or whatever; I'm not giving up the ability to tweak things by not confining myself to cards.

If I made a card game, and decided it could only be done as a digital game, then the digital game could probably be further improved by making it even less like a card game. The only reason to make it a digital card game is to also sell the physical card game, in which case the cards at some point are set in stone by what's printed (although if the digital game was first there might be a window for tweaking them) (or like I said before, you might make it cards to cash in on the recognition people have of the CCG format).

Let's say you came up with Galaxy Trucker. Only you thought of it as a computer game. Maybe the spaceships are built in 3-D. Why confine them to tiles? If 3-D is too hard, they still don't need to be 2-D tiles all the same shape. Or a given spaceship piece might vary in size/shape depending on where you put it. The physical limitations don't apply to you, and there's no reason to cling to them (same caveats as before).

5082

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: January 28, 2013, 08:03:14 pm »

You mentioned far back in the thread that you're not exactly well-recognised in the sense that people don't usually link your face (and sometimes even your name) to your games. Have you ever considered having your face show up in your games, possibly even on the cover (Copycat-style)?

I have not.

Friedemann Friese explained once that the green hair and games that start with F made him more of a person, making him more of a brand. You know, you want people to buy your games because you made them, and it helps with that. That logic seems sound; probably I should go for D and blue. What can I say, I'm lazy.

5083

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Alchemy on Goko

« on: January 28, 2013, 07:29:06 pm »

The decision that onigame mentions comes out of Possession.  When you trash a card while Possessed, it gets set aside until the end of the turn.  So when you trash Fortress, you can choose between setting it aside or putting it into your hand.  Resolving one effect means the other does not occur (due to lose track rule, I believe).  This can make a difference in cases where you might not want to have Fortress in your hand, e.g. Menagerie, Library.

Again the situation here, to get a case where you would behave differently if only the program handled it, is:

- You Possess someone.
- During that turn you draw a Fortress and a way to trash it and trash the Fortress.
- You have at least one action remaining after that.
- You have a card in hand that could make you not want the Fortress - Menagerie, Library/Jack/Watchtower.
- As it happens in this situation you really do not want the Fortress.

This seems sufficiently rare to put off.

5084

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: January 28, 2013, 07:19:23 pm »

Yes, I agree you don't have to do cards.  I didn't mean to suggest that video games *should* limit themselves to cards but, just as there is no point in limiting yourself to that, I also see no point in dismissing the design space.

I bring it up because, if Dominion were online-only, it'd be the core game we all love, but you'd be able to make all those changes you wanted and include all the cards you wanted.  Maybe Dominion makes more money and is more popular with IRL publishing, but that's sort of besides my point.  I see those online advantages as very compelling potential reasons to "simulate cards" instead of publishing IRL and I was just wondering if you agree.  And, if not, why not?

I'm not limiting myself by not doing cards - it's the opposite. Cards are strictly a limitation.

I have already made two physical games that started out with deckbuilding and lost it. I doubt if I would find deckbuilding compelling for a digital-only game. I can build something more complex and the computer can handle it.

5085

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: January 28, 2013, 06:19:15 pm »

Would you give up creative control and ownership of Dominion if someone came in with an offer?

Possibly; it would need to be a pretty fantastic offer though. Dominion is still raking in cash, and I already get to design games for a living.

5086

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: January 28, 2013, 06:05:01 pm »

This last sentence surprises me.  Do you truly see "no real point in simulating cards on a computer"?  Maybe I'm being too literal, but assuming I want to make a game that would, IRL, be a card game, I see a few benefits of doing that on a computer:

Blueblimp has it right. There's no point to limiting yourself to what cards can do if you're making a computer game. You can do it to cash in on something - you make a CCG that's digital only and you make it cards so people know it's a CCG. Players know what to expect from cards, and cards are a familiar way to display certain information. But you don't have to do cards.

Instead of cards we can consider "rules components." These are things in a game that have rules associated with them. They are typically cards for physical games, but don't have to be. For a computer game you can think of them as cards, but they aren't cards at all. For example there's no uh Medusa card in Heroes of Might and Magic III. There's a creature with associated rules, but it's not card-like. When I get a particular perk in Fallout 3, that's like a card in a tableau, but it's not doing anything to imitate a card. For a physical game you couldn't deal with making sure all your perks happened when they were supposed to. For a computer game it's no trouble.

5087

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Alchemy on Goko

« on: January 28, 2013, 05:28:14 pm »

When you put Fortress in hand, are you gaining it?  Does it visit the trash pile?

You aren't gaining it; it does visit the trash.

5088

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: January 28, 2013, 04:47:45 pm »

What Dominion card(s) we already know do you think have the most depth, i.e., it takes more games and thought to get the whole juice out?

I'm not sure I can give this a satisfying answer. Workshop gains a card. Deciding what to gain is like deciding what to buy; it's pretty deep relative to say the mess of choices Count gives you. The various Workshops and Remodels probably beat everything else in terms of how long you can spend getting better at them.

Aside from that unsatisfactory answer I would have to stare at the visual spoilers, and I don't want to end up saying, here are the cards I think you guys are mis-evaluating.

Currently Dominion has a really low variety of materials. Is mostly cards and in a small part some tokens and mats. Did you ever find a limitation there for an idea of a card? Did you thought about cards that used other materials but were not good enough to bother making those new materials (like a board, or counters)?

Well if you add components, you can have cards that interact with those components; it directly opens up possibilities for you. However this is better for spin-offs, because of the Alchemy issue - not slow-to-resolve cards, the other one, that some people don't like potions. Doing individual cards like Native Village and Embargo has the issue of, we can only include so many extra components for individual cards.

For the most part I have not ruled out cards due to needing components - I just haven't tried to think of cards that required components I wasn't going to get to have. I can think of one exception. I playtested "+1 handsize for the rest of the game" as an Alchemy card. It would have required a playmat - yes even if you personally wouldn't have needed one - and that killed it.

How important is to you that every card works with 2 and with 3+ players exactly as written, without referring explicitly to how many players there are? For instance, there are things, like changing the order, which don't make sense in 2 player games. Would you completely rule out a card for that? How likely would it be to have a card that cannot be used in 2 player games (or ruled out for any other number)? How about having different rules, or exceptions, to handle a specific amonut of players?

If a card wouldn't work in two player games I would not make it. It's okay for the card to refer to the number of players though, if it has to, although generally it wouldn't. Like, Tribute originally looked at the top card of each adjacent player. To work in two player games it just goes left. But at the time it put the card back on top. It could have ended up looking at the top card of each adjacent player and discarding them, and in two player games that would just mean their top two cards, with no special rules.

5089

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: January 28, 2013, 04:02:53 pm »

I can't really tell you much about them. One is a gamer's game and the other is a lighter family game.

Would you consider Dominion a "gamer's game" or more towards a family game? Obviously those definitions cannot be rigid, there's lot of crossover there. But can you say if this "gamer's game" is heavier or lighter than Dominion?

Dominion is a gamer's game, and it's gone over well with non-gamers, so there you go, what do these terms even mean.

The gamer's game is like at the level Race for the Galaxy would be at if it didn't have the icon issue.

5090

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: January 28, 2013, 03:28:51 pm »

Do you have any expansions planned for your other games that you can mention now (Kingdom Builder/Gauntlet of Fools/Nefarious/Monster Factory/Infiltration)?

Do you have any new games you are working on getting published or that are about to be published etc that you can mention now?

I made four total Kingdom Builder expansions. There was one large one originally, I split it into two because they wanted them smaller, and then when Kingdom Builder either got nominated for the SdJ or won it, they said they wanted more, and I made two more. I would not expect more than four but probably they will all come out eventually. The second one is possibly coming out at Nuremberg, it is on W. Eric Martin's list at least.

I made an expansion for Nefarious but I wouldn't get your hopes up there. It could happen if Ascora Games springs back to life, or if I find another publisher after the contract expires, which is in 2016.

I have not made expansions for Gauntlet of Fools, Monster Factory, or Infiltration. For Gauntlet of Fools and Monster Factory, if they're successful enough, a sequel seems more likely than an expansion.

I have two games placed with publishers that have not been announced. I was told one would come out at Nuremberg and well it has not been announced. The other one, they have been working on it and I imagine that means it will come out promptly, but that could easily mean Essen. They haven't tossed around a date so I don't really know. I can't really tell you much about them. One is a gamer's game and the other is a lighter family game.

I am always working on new games, and have older games that I want published. I can't really tell you much about these games.

5091

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Alchemy on Goko

« on: January 28, 2013, 02:45:04 pm »

Some of those bugs might end up not being fixed before release.  For example, if you trash Fortress on a turn when you're being Possessed, technically there is a choice you can make so that Fortress doesn't end up in your hand.  Since strategy-wise it is very rare that a Fortress in hand is worse than not having a Fortress in hand, currently the code just defaults to Fortress in hand.  (To do it properly would require a sequence picker.)

That is not so bad.

For Trader, it could just be, resolve Trader for the possessed player, then resolve Possession's when-would-gain, then resolve Trader for the possessing player. There's no point to being able to order the first Trader after Possession.

5092

2012 / Re: Kingdom Design Challenge Entry Form

« on: January 27, 2013, 10:50:35 pm »

You all are picking cards that are way too interesting to be left off of everyone's submissions.  This is a card that not a single person ever thought, "Yeah, this kingdom needs X!"

Feast

5093

Dominion Articles / Re: The things we do to track - IRL

« on: January 27, 2013, 04:28:18 pm »

Richard Garfield suggested this method. It's not in the rulebook because, let's not do something where we dance around the word "tap" because of a company with a bunch of lawyers.

That patent is another reason the USPTO needs a complete overhaul.  And having the patent's inventor recommend it to you it pretty shameless.

I don't follow you. The more a patent includes, the fewer situations it covers; Wizards doesn't have a patent on tapping, they just have a bunch of lawyers. The problem there is the ability people have to annoy you with lawyers, rather than any problems with the patent system (the whole way intellectual property works is messed up, patents included, this just isn't anything to do with that).

Richard suggested something that worked well that he liked. He wasn't trying to get anyone in trouble or push anything unreasonable. Richard is a class act eight ways from Sunday.

5094

Dominion Articles / Re: The things we do to track - IRL

« on: January 27, 2013, 02:47:06 pm »

Funny, my group plays them tapped, and then at the start of the second turn untaps them. Putting them out tapped helps remind you not to discard them during clean up.

Richard Garfield suggested this method. It's not in the rulebook because, let's not do something where we dance around the word "tap" because of a company with a bunch of lawyers.

5095

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Alchemy on Goko

« on: January 27, 2013, 02:43:17 pm »

I don't like the idea of cards being released before they are implemented properly, but I have no problem with Goko releasing all of Alchemy save for Possession until they get Possession dealt with.  I've already paid for Alchemy, so I'd rather start playing with the rest of the cards.  Possession is fun, but I'm really looking forward to seeing Rats interact with Apprentice, Scrying Pool, and Vineyard.  I also feel that Storeroom may have some nice synergy with Philosopher's Stone.

It seems unlikely they'll put it out without Possession. It would look worse than the delay.

They programmed Possession. It probably has some obscure things that need fixing; I mentioned some things to check but did not check them personally. I haven't seen it with AI.

5096

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Q & A with Ted Griggs (CEO) and John Smith (VP of Product) of Goko

« on: January 27, 2013, 02:40:55 pm »

Has testing of Guilds begun at Goko?

There would be no point, and the art isn't quite all in.

5097

2012 / Re: 2012 DominionStrategy.com Championships: Final Four

« on: January 26, 2013, 07:49:23 pm »

We
are the music-makers
and we
are the dreamers of dreams.

5098

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: January 26, 2013, 03:08:32 pm »

I really love Kingdom Builder. Not as much as Dominion, but it's great. But like DXV's said, it's a totally different style of game. It started as a spinoff but became its own thing.

Thanks, I am pretty pleased with it. I would have liked to have more scoring cards in the main set; I did not have the technology in time. And I would tweak the boards just slightly so that no arrangement can let you connect two buildings on turn one.

5099

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: January 26, 2013, 03:00:41 pm »

What do people call you IRL? Do you have a preference what we call you online? (e.g., you might hate being called DXV for whatever reason)

You don't have an avatar on here... so if you did, what Dominion card would you choose? Would you choose the Isotropic or Official artwork?

IRL people call me Donald X. Online, if you're talking to me, I prefer Donald X. If you're just talking about me rather than to me, DXV is fine, we'll all know who you're talking about. "That guy."

I've considered using the Nefarious cover guy as a BGG avatar. There's no Dominion card art I feel that special connection to.

5100

Rules Questions / Re: Remake/Fortress and the "Lose Track Rule"

« on: January 26, 2013, 02:19:31 pm »

It's 1 - cards sent to your hand become findable. It's right after the bit with dashes, since it doesn't apply to the when-gain business. "For handling other stuff (like Throne / Mining Village), drawn cards (and cards otherwise sent to your hand) and played cards (including via Throne etc.) would be marked 1."

Actually this doesn't work for Goko though, because it might mark a card 1 that should be 0. However the "findable" notion only needs to apply to cards being tracked, it isn't needed for "pick a card from your hand" and so that approach should still be doable.