Dominion > Dominion General Discussion
Interview with Donald X.
Donald X.:
--- Quote from: Doom_Shark on June 11, 2016, 01:43:25 am ---What is your favorite expansion to date?
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It's like you're asking me to pick my favorite North Korean dictator!
--- Quote from: Doom_Shark on June 11, 2016, 01:43:25 am ---Related question: What (other than promos) do you consider to be your greatest failure in dominion?
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So you mean cards, since you cite promos? Or maybe, other than the horrible mistake of having promos? The promos are not topping any lists of biggest mistakes, I will just make that clear. Yes they fill up the list of biggest promo mistakes, someone needed me to say that.
In the rules, I think the worst thing is just that reactions should be played when reacting (you can argue that this isn't in the rules, but it should also be in the rules).
In the cards, in general, I would have made both trashing and Witches a little weaker. The intention was not to almost always buy those things. Possibly the fix for Witches would be changing the way the player count determines the number of Curses, in which case that would also count as a rules thing.
In the cards, specifically, Rebuild is the worst mistake power-level-wise, Trader and Possession rules-wise. No surprises there.
Business-wise, obv. I should have rushed out a clone soon after the main game, gotten a head-start in the Dominion clone business.
For flavor paragraphs I will go with Cornucopia. Once it lost the jesters fighting to the death, it really needed another good joke.
In terms of catching other peoples' mistakes, there was not realizing that the guy saying his Intrigue cards were thinner was reporting something real that just wasn't that.
eHalcyon:
--- Quote ---Engineer: For a while there was a different Workshop: Gain a card costing up to $4, get +1 VP per empty pile. It seemed reasonable and then I had one too many games that were dominated by it. I tried a lot of replacements, man, like ten other cards, mostly very briefly. Engineer stood out. However it had the issue of being able to trash it to gain something plus another Engineer, to run out the pile. Dame Josephine suggested having it cost Debt, which fixed that problem while taking no space on the card.
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Can you elaborate how the Workshop with "+1VP per empty Supply pile" ended up dominating games? It sounds totally innocuous to me, so a story or two about those games would be really enlightening!
I'm also interested in why the version that could gain itself was an issue that needed solving, since there are other cards that can run themselves out pretty easily (e.g. Magpie, Stonemason).
No guarantees that Gathering cards will ever appear outside of Empires, but should they remain strictly tied to VP? Gathering with coin tokens seems like an obvious thing that could work. Same question for Landmarks.
Donald X.:
--- Quote from: eHalcyon on June 11, 2016, 03:11:29 am ---Can you elaborate how the Workshop with "+1VP per empty Supply pile" ended up dominating games? It sounds totally innocuous to me, so a story or two about those games would be really enlightening!
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Some players buy some, maybe eager to get copies of some cantrip everyone likes, like Caravan. The Caravans run out. Now the workshop is making +1 VP. That's attractive so people start getting more of the workshops. The people who already have them want a 2nd pile to run out and help empty the workshops. Now they make +2 VP per hit and there are ten of them in decks so players scramble for points while the workshops empty the Estates.
I had a couple early games that were stupid because of this card. Then for a while the card seemed fine. But we started to see the bad cases more and it was clear that one reason we hadn't been seeing them was because we hadn't realized how good the card was.
--- Quote from: eHalcyon on June 11, 2016, 03:11:29 am ---I'm also interested in why the version that could gain itself was an issue that needed solving, since there are other cards that can run themselves out pretty easily (e.g. Magpie, Stonemason).
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It's not "it's awful that this pile runs out," it's "it's awful that you can choose to run out this pile incidentally." What you want is Caravans. But instead of gaining a Caravan, you trash the workshop and gain a Caravan and another workshop. You're running out the workshops as this random extra thing you're allowed to do on top of what you actually wanted, which was gaining Caravans.
Some players will just automatically do this; they can do it and that's enough for them. They exercise their power. And it sucks. It's anti-fun, so the card doesn't do that.
--- Quote from: eHalcyon on June 11, 2016, 03:11:29 am ---No guarantees that Gathering cards will ever appear outside of Empires, but should they remain strictly tied to VP? Gathering with coin tokens seems like an obvious thing that could work.
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For me Gathering cards want to be things that Defiled Shrine is specifically dodging putting tokens on. So, cards that put VP tokens on their pile. "Gathering with coin tokens" runs into the problem of interacting with Trade Route, but that aside, would get a different type if it happened.
--- Quote from: eHalcyon on June 11, 2016, 03:11:29 am ---Same question for Landmarks.
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Landmarks are intentionally tied to VP.
You could just make cards that modify the rules. I considered it way back when; it's a thing I've done in many games. I didn't do it because Dominion has kingdom cards filling that rule; they change the rules plenty. Dominion doesn't need other rules-changing cards. I considered it again later and still didn't want them.
But I do have Events and now Landmarks. Events can change the rules, but only via the Event-buying mechanism, which is like buying a card without the card; it felt like a reasonable extension. Landmarks can change the rules, but only in these VP-making ways. While they are each a step towards just having randomizer cards that change the rules, they still both try hard to stay within limits, to only affect the game in a way best done via these mechanisms. In general the best way to change the rules in Dominion is still to have kingdom cards that do different things.
Witherweaver:
--- Quote from: Donald X. on June 10, 2016, 05:37:36 pm ---
--- Quote from: Chris is me on June 10, 2016, 10:24:44 am ---When you play tested Catapult how many people threw their cards across the table?
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No-one. You could be the first.
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Sign me up for projectile Dominion.
Seprix:
--- Quote from: Donald X. on June 11, 2016, 02:26:53 am ---
--- Quote from: Doom_Shark on June 11, 2016, 01:43:25 am ---What is your favorite expansion to date?
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It's like you're asking me to pick my favorite North Korean dictator!
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So none of them?
Also, real question: In what ways did you consider 'breaking dominion rules' for specific cards?
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