When was DA/Guilds officially completed? I mean, when were you pretty much done with these products. I know that Guilds was the last expansion you made, but DA was the last one finalized, correct?
I started working on "War" in February 2007. The last change to Dark Ages cards was January 2012. I was working on the rulebook in March / April 2012. "Work" in some form continues past that point, since there is proofreading whenever the files are ready, and complaining about art to the degree that I get to, and writing previews and a secret history, and making sets of 10 for the online version, and we could keep going to today, when I'm answering this question.
I started working on Guilds in July 2010. The last change to Guilds cards was February 2011. I was working on the rulebook in November 2012. Dark Ages was going to come out afterwards and was finished later card-wise.
Were you burnt out after all those Dominion expansions you made?
I have the hardest time working on new games. It's just, maybe this won't work, what was I thinking, people will hate this and I'll feel bad. Then once a game is working it's a breeze. And I do everything ever really worth doing and that's the game. Then if I make an expansion, it turns out that in fact not only are there more things to do, but it's even easier now; you know the lay of the land, you know where the interesting space is and what kind of thing tends to work. For example with Dominion, early on a card was only going to draw cards if that was the concept; same for making $. That was harder. It turned out that to balance cards, lots of cards were going to need +2 Cards or +$2 or something. Or like, at first I didn't see how to do discard-based attacks; "Each other player discards a card" was both awful and broken. Once I had a solution it was available for more cards.
Dominion has so many expansions that it has gotten to the point of being hard to do stuff that feels new that isn't really wordy. I avoided things like doing say four versions of each concept; you know, like there are a bunch of cards that do something when you gain/buy them, but Nomad Camp is the only one that goes on your deck. I could have made a Lab version of that and a Smithy version of that and so on, but I kept it at one card. So, factor that in, a lot of simple cards are ruled out. And the cards don't want to be so wordy that normal people don't want to play with them. It's a significant issue and I have often cited it as a reason to switch to spin-offs. For Guilds I cheated and added components (and also did a really wordy mechanic, overpay). The coin tokens let me do simple things that feel new. For Adventures I cheated again, there are mats and tokens. There are also duration cards, that was another trick for getting in simple cards; there were more simple things left to do with them. With the amount of new stuff it has, Adventures just could have been a spin-off; it's certainly more of a shake-up than many Dominion clones. Probably it would have been a better move for me to make it a spin-off. I didn't think of it at the time and anyway the friendlier thing is to let you mix everything together.
Anyway uh. It was nice being done with the expansions, feeling like I could devote more time to other things, like I would have fewer game-specific responsibilities. At the same time the other things aren't always as easy. And a lot of what I do, once a game is working, is make cards and tweak them, whichever game it is. For Dominion I have more playtesters and know there's an audience for the product; both are big pluses for Dominion. The main bad thing about Dominion expansions as projects is just the difficulty of doing sufficiently simple things. And I mean, wanting to not just be the Dominion guy.
It was great working on Adventures though, just a blast from start to finish. At the very beginning it seemed hard, I tried some previously rejected ideas and it wasn't clear how much good stuff I'd manage to end up with. In the end there was too much for a normal set and it's 400 cards.
When did you start working on Adventures? How long did it take you to complete?
I started Adventures in May 2014. The last changes (actually just wording tweaks) were November 2014. I was working on the rulebook in November, except I didn't manage to write the intro paragraph until a week ago.
Even though it's not going to happen, it would have been hilarious to see on Goko the Adventures of the Adventures.
They always should have been called campaigns, I have always thought of them as campaigns, and one day they will finally be the campaigns they always were.
PS: 3 years from now will be the 10th Anniversary of Dominion. A treasure chest expansion still sounds awesome.
A treasure chest (an expansion with more cards for each existing expansion) is seeming less likely than ever. Early on for Adventures, I thought, what's easy, how can I possibly make this task seem doable, hey how about making a treasure chest expansion? And I looked at the mechanics that would tie in with each existing set and hey let's categorize them.
C - Components required, so, not great for a treasure chest, you absolutely have to include the components and really don't want to. A set could revisit a particular C area as a major theme, but not just for a couple cards.
W - Whatever; mechanics that appear all the time or just don't advertise themselves much. You'd see the connection if it was pointed out, but how great is that really. Again if there were a lot of them it could be a real revisited theme, but they don't do anything special when you just do a couple.
D - Done; special case for extra components that aren't kingdom cards and so wouldn't be treasure chest kingdom card mechanics anyway.
Intrigue - VP cards that do something (W); choose one (W)
Seaside - Duration cards; next-turn theme (W); misc tokens (C)
Alchemy - Potion (C)
Prosperity - VP tokens (C); cost $7 (W once I do it); treasures that do things (W); friendly interaction theme (W); platinum/colony (D)
Cornucopia - variety (W)
Hinterlands - when-gain/buy
Dark Ages - when-trashed; care about trash; ruins and spoils (C); shelters (D); upgrade theme (W)
Guilds - coin tokens (C); overpay
The winners are duration cards, when-gain/buy, when-trashed, care about trash, and overpay. But wait. Overpay is a subset of when-gain/buy. I felt like when-gain/buy could appear in all sets once it debuted (like W mechanics), here and there, and hey Dark Ages has Death Cart and then Guilds has overpay. When-gain/buy would feel like more Hinterlands and overpay would def. feel like more Guilds, but they don't make a treasure chest special, any set can riff on when-gain. And then when-trashed, any set could have that too, but without the context of Dark Ages they are less exciting. Caring about the trash was hard, or Dark Ages would have had more of it.
So the real winner is duration cards. That's what I could revisit without including components, that would feel like I was revisiting something, that would have good things I could do. And I did this math. And put duration cards in Adventures. And things I could do in any set, it has some of those too. So: Enjoy your treasure chest.
