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[Warrior]

Not sure if this been discussed further back in the thread, but are you thinking of doing anything else for Dominion after Guilds is released? This game is enjoyed so much by my family and friends that it will be a sad day when new expansions are no longer being released. Also, how do you find Dominion plays differently when playing with 2, 3, 4, and 5+ players? Do you prefer 2 player games or multiplayer games and why? Thanks!

I would like to do a Dominion spin-off - a similar game that's different in whatever ways. It's possible I will get talked into doing another expansion someday, but I will try not to be, and it wouldn't be any time soon. The expansions, I have given this speech many times, the expansions go down in value as you do more of them; they are doing less to give you variety, they get more complex, you can only carry so much. Making expansions means not working on other projects, or expansions for those projects. OTOH it's nice to have a project you know people want.

The number of provinces per player shifts down when you go from 3 to 4, which makes games faster (in terms of number of turns), which shifts strategies. You have less ability to buy cards you want with 4-5 players; if everyone wants Fishing Villages you may find yourself opening Fishing Village / Fishing Village to get yours. Some cards change functionally with more players; Thief gains more cards, multiple Ambassador-ing opponents flood you with junk faster, etc.

I prefer 3 and then 4 and then 2 and then 5. I like the increased player interaction of 3-4 player games, and like the longer turn-wise 3-player game and reduced downtime vs. 4 players. I only play with 5 to be nice; I'm not nice enough to play with 6.

Thanks! If you invent a spin-off of Dominion, I will definitely buy it. I usually play two player on isotropic, but play 3-4 player in real life, and I can definitely tell the difference between the way strategies play out with different numbers of players.

Warrior

[^_^_^_^]

Of the games you've published so far, how would you rate them? (Categorization of rating is up to you)

[Donald X.]

Of the games you've published so far, how would you rate them? (Categorization of rating is up to you)

Instead, I'll rate the publishers by how much I want them to continue liking me.

[Morgrim7]

What is your favorite type of megaturn?

[^_^_^_^]

Of the games you've published so far, how would you rate them? (Categorization of rating is up to you)

Instead, I'll rate the publishers by how much I want them to continue liking me.

Fine. Do it your way, this is your thread we are talking in and these are your games we are talking about.

User was warned for this post.

edit:Sigh...
The post was said in my mind in a different tone than it was read. I actually meant that it is fine, you can answer that any way you like as it is your thread you made, your games we are talking about, and a site made to talk about them. I meant no harm or insult, although I see now how that was read wrong. Who knows, what I just wrote might've just came off sarcastic or something. 


I'm sorry if I came off as a prick.

[Donald X.]

What is your favorite type of megaturn?

I'm not sure I have a concrete-enough set of things to rank here. I like the stuff you do with Cornucopia - getting Menagerie to pay off multiple times in a turn, getting big Horns, winning multiple Tournaments with one Province. I like trashing Colony or Dark Ages cards to Apprentice; I like Apothecary and Golem a lot. I like playing Madman multiple times, or doing crazy things with Procession. I like emptying a pile for City in mid-turn, and did not get tired of building multiple-Goons decks when playing that campaign.

[Donald X.]

Of the games you've published so far, how would you rate them? (Categorization of rating is up to you)

Instead, I'll rate the publishers by how much I want them to continue liking me.

Fine. Do it your way, this is your thread we are talking in and these are your games we are talking about.

I'm not sure I understand you, so I'm going to guess you don't understand me.

The number of times a publisher has complained to me about me comparing one of my games to another in public, in terms of how much I like them, is nonzero. I would like to minimize that number.

Try not to be the guy that makes someone say "this is why we can't have nice things," that's my advice.

[^_^_^_^]

Oh ok. I was confused by it.

[Blueswan]

Hello Donald X,

I’m new to Dominion and board gaming in general. I want to take this opportunity to thank you for your amazing work.  Dominion is my favourite game. I love it so much that just yesterday I started teaching it to my 7-year old daughter despite the fact that she doesn’t understand english, so she has to memorize what the cards do (I’ve only used some of the simpler base set cards so far though). Despite this, she loves it. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to pursuade my game-loathing wife to play it yet.
I read through this entire thread so I’m fairly confident that I’m not repeating questions from earlier in the thread. If I missed something, I apologize.

1) According to the BGG ratings, Prosperity is the most universally loved expansion. Have you got any thoughts on why that is so? Do you think it is fair or do you think the set is overrated?

2) Is there any expansion you feel is underrated - not getting properly recognized for its qualities?

3) How did you feel about Kingdom Builder winning Spiel Des Jahres? (sorry for the blatant attempt at sports ”journalism” here).

4) Which of your games would you most recommend that one tried to introduce non-gaming friends to?

5) Do you watch the video reviews of your games (or other games for that matter) posted on BGG? If so, do you have any favourite video reviewers?

6) Idea: On the 10 year anniversary of Dominion, Rio Grande Games puts out an anniversary edition ”complete Dominion” with the base set and every expansion in one nice looking box at an affordable price. Good idea or bad idea?

7) Idea #2: On the 10 year anniversary of Dominion, Rio Grande Games wants you to compile a ”definitive Dominion” set comprising a number of ”essential” kingdom cards (could be 25, could be 50, could be 100). Do you agree to this? (don’t worry, I won’t ask you which cards you’d pick). Do you think it is a good idea or a bad idea?

Sorry for the large amount of questions. 

[DStu]

Oh ok. I was confused by it.

this is why we can't have nice things.

[Awaclus]

A lot of numbers in Dominion are 10 (starting deck size, number of kingdom piles, number of cards in action/treasure kingdom piles, number of curses in two player games, numbers like that). How much did you prefer the number 10 in these cases just because it happens to be 10?

[Tables]

Has theory given you any kind of modding power (like to pin your own threads)?

[Donald X.]

1) According to the BGG ratings, Prosperity is the most universally loved expansion. Have you got any thoughts on why that is so? Do you think it is fair or do you think the set is overrated?

I don't have any real data but can think of some things.

- The BGG ratings will be skewed towards earlier sets, because as time goes by fewer people stay on the every-expansion plan.
- Platinum/Colony are crowd-pleasers.
- The set is low attack, high non-attack interaction. It is my experience in general that, people who uh don't play Magic tend to be more uppity about losing their stuff, their precious stuff. Like, I will make a game, and it will have a card that makes other people lose stuff, and it seems fine and normal to me, nice as a thing to have that's different from other things in the game, but some people will specifically dislike it, perhaps being used to games where nothing remotely like that is possible. I am used to losing my stuff; in Magic you lose stuff constantly, it is a pillar of the game. But like I will tone down a game to having just a few ways to make people lose stuff, completely balanced as far as I am concerned, and then a publisher will say, we didn't like that one card. Anyway so. I think Dominion players in general, there are a lot of Magic players yes, but there are a lot of people who do not play Magic, and among those people I think losing stuff is less popular, and uh let's reset this sentence. I think Dominion players in general like attacks less than I do. So, Prosperity got fewer attacks specifically to make going for Colonies easier, and then it turns out people liked that. Later Dominion sets tone down attacks a little as a result. Now this may all seem silly when two of the three attacks in Prosperity are Mountebank and Goons, but still.
- The set has three themes: "spendy," treasures, and VP tokens. Spendy turns out to be pretty popular, including stuff like King's Court (yes a card some people hate), where you get these huge turns. Treasures, I dunno, I thought they would be popular but it's hard to say. They don't hurt. The VP tokens again are popular.
- The set has a secret sub-theme of, go ahead and buy everything. This falls out of the treasure theme. There are a lot of treasures and a fair number of +1 card +1 action things, plus some trash/discard-for-benefit. Add it all up and an all-Prosperity game may see you able to buy most of what's out without worrying about terminal collisions. I haven't heard people comment on this, but they do like the encouragement to buy everything in Cornucopia, so possibly this helps here.

I personally basically like the sets in inverse order of release - Dark Ages best, then Hinterlands, etc. However I think that Seaside, Prosperity, Hinterlands, Dark Ages, and Cornucopia are all so good that whatever, you can't go wrong. Alchemy is too slow and not everyone appreciates Potions, and then I was not as good at balancing the cards with the main set and Intrigue.

2) Is there any expansion you feel is underrated - not getting properly recognized for its qualities?

I most often see people recommend Seaside and Prosperity, but that's usually for people who don't have any expansions, so that's sensible, the later sets are more complex. It's kind of a hard question to answer without some hard data for me to critique. If Dark Ages isn't the most popular then it's underrated.

3) How did you feel about Kingdom Builder winning Spiel Des Jahres? (sorry for the blatant attempt at sports ”journalism” here).

It was good times. As I have said, after Dominion won there was a small amount of interest in specifically publishing Donald X. games, but man, not so much as I would have liked. It went up noticeably with Kingdom Builder. Some companies immediately contacted me as of the Kingdom Builder nomination/win, and those contacts have resulted in at least one game getting published (I don't have a date for it yet but am optimistic for this year). It's great overall to uh get this particular level of respect in your field.

4) Which of your games would you most recommend that one tried to introduce non-gaming friends to?

These kinds of questions are really better aimed at players. Make a thread in the "other board games" forum, see what you get.

5) Do you watch the video reviews of your games (or other games for that matter) posted on BGG? If so, do you have any favourite video reviewers?

I have seen some tiny number of video reviews. For the most part it's too much trouble to watch them; it takes too long and I can't listen to music at the same time. I do not have the data to rate reviewers.

6) Idea: On the 10 year anniversary of Dominion, Rio Grande Games puts out an anniversary edition ”complete Dominion” with the base set and every expansion in one nice looking box at an affordable price. Good idea or bad idea?

It sounds bad to me. It's really only a product for people who play Dominion with other people's sets and then know they like it so much they want everything. It's an unwieldy product, hard to carry, no room on a game store shelf for it. I could see doing a second "big box" product, the same size as the first one (the existing one is Dominion, Prosperity, Alchemy).

7) Idea #2: On the 10 year anniversary of Dominion, Rio Grande Games wants you to compile a ”definitive Dominion” set comprising a number of ”essential” kingdom cards (could be 25, could be 50, could be 100). Do you agree to this? (don’t worry, I won’t ask you which cards you’d pick). Do you think it is a good idea or a bad idea?

You really have to consider who your audience is for this. People who own all of the Dominion sets don't want it because they have all the cards. People who own multiple Dominion sets don't want it because it's partially redundant, and they can just buy a regular set they don't have and get no redundancy. So it's just an introductory product, and then an introductory product really wants to be introductory, it wants to have a bunch of simple stuff rather than be a best-of.

An introductory product isn't out of the question but isn't really what you were talking about. There are also rethemes, like the Japanese ones. I am not sure how well those work out, if enough people want a retheme for a particular theme, but they aren't out of the question. A retheme could be a best-of.

[Donald X.]

A lot of numbers in Dominion are 10 (starting deck size, number of kingdom piles, number of cards in action/treasure kingdom piles, number of curses in two player games, numbers like that). How much did you prefer the number 10 in these cases just because it happens to be 10?

I like round numbers when they work out; it's just for aesthetics but I think some people do think "what's this nonsense" when you have an 11 somewhere.

- Starting deck size isn't intentionally ten; it's just twice the hand size. The hand size matters in various ways and I did not experiment with different sizes, but five cards wasn't chosen for roundness and that ten wasn't either.

- The number of kingdom cards is intentionally round. I totally would have used 8 or 12 if they had been better, but did not consider 9 or 11. I played a bunch with 8 to try it out, and it might have been 8 if we needed to cut back on the total number of cards, but we didn't so it's 10. The number wants to be small since it determines how much you need to read at the start and how often you see each card, so 12 was never really in contention.

- Piles were originally 12 cards. This was based on wanting everyone to be able to get at least 2 copies of a card. The end condition was an empty pile, so really the piles were 10 cards - no-one would get to use the last copy since it ended the game, and the second-to-last copy had to sit in the pile preventing players from just buying the last copy to end the game. To cut down on cards, I changed the end condition and lowered the piles to 10 (except for VP piles which were part of the new end condition - any empty VP pile ended the game), which was thus functionally very similar to having 12 under the previous end condition. So, this particular 10 is really 12 minus 2.

- Initially I printed more Curses each time we ran out, intending Witch to stay functional for a long time; I stopped at 45 because you have to stop somewhere and it's a multiple of 9 - I print cards 9 to a page. The size of the pile had to scale to balance Witch properly, and again the total number of cards in the game was a concern. That 10 is round and again is certainly specifically not 9 or 11, but I didn't just start with 10.

Gardens was always 10. If it had been necessary for balancing, it could have been 9 or 11, though I wouldn't have done that unless I had to. Vineyards / Feodum / Silk Road are 3-4, and then Fairgrounds is 2.5 because that's what it took.

Colony was 8 VP originally, when Province was 5 VP. When Province went to 6 VP, Colony could have been 9 or 10, and I made it 9. Valerie and Dale really wanted the round number, and I eventually tested it and it was fine, so it's 10 VP.

[Donald X.]

Has theory given you any kind of modding power (like to pin your own threads)?

I have modding powers in the Bible forum. I have flirted with asking for them in the Rules forum.

[theory]

Has theory given you any kind of modding power (like to pin your own threads)?

I have modding powers in the Bible forum. I have flirted with asking for them in the Rules forum.

Done.

[ipofanes]

7) Idea #2: On the 10 year anniversary of Dominion, Rio Grande Games wants you to compile a ”definitive Dominion” set comprising a number of ”essential” kingdom cards (could be 25, could be 50, could be 100). Do you agree to this? (don’t worry, I won’t ask you which cards you’d pick). Do you think it is a good idea or a bad idea?

You really have to consider who your audience is for this. People who own all of the Dominion sets don't want it because they have all the cards. People who own multiple Dominion sets don't want it because it's partially redundant, and they can just buy a regular set they don't have and get no redundancy. So it's just an introductory product, and then an introductory product really wants to be introductory, it wants to have a bunch of simple stuff rather than be a best-of.

An introductory product isn't out of the question but isn't really what you were talking about. There are also rethemes, like the Japanese ones. I am not sure how well those work out, if enough people want a retheme for a particular theme, but they aren't out of the question. A retheme could be a best-of.

As a non-sleever, I, for one, would not mind an edition of all cards that tend to wear faster because they are bought on a regular basis, such as Minion, Scrying Pool etc.

[GendoIkari]

What are your thoughts/feelings when you see Celestial Chameleon emptying the supply in 4 turns? Are you as shocked and amazed as we are, or did you know/suspect that such a thing was possible?

[eHalcyon]

Are there any planned Promo cards to follow Guilds?

How averse are publishers to publishing promos that reference games they do not publish? I know it happens occasionally (7 Wonders has a Catan promo board). If they were ok with it, would you be interested? Maybe between two of your own games?

[Donald X.]

I have modding powers in the Bible forum. I have flirted with asking for them in the Rules forum.

Done.

Fear my wrath, question askers!

[Donald X.]

What are your thoughts/feelings when you see Celestial Chameleon emptying the supply in 4 turns? Are you as shocked and amazed as we are, or did you know/suspect that such a thing was possible?

It's cool. I wouldn't have guessed you could empty the supply on turn four. You knew Procession / Fortress, was good, but not that it could do that. I've never tried to work out such things. The game intentionally avoids having infinite combos, but it has crazy things like King's Court and Procession. I have seen people gain a pile of cards and then play them all the same turn, generally with broken cards, although you get a little of that action with just regular card-gainers.

[Donald X.]

Are there any planned Promo cards to follow Guilds?

How averse are publishers to publishing promos that reference games they do not publish? I know it happens occasionally (7 Wonders has a Catan promo board). If they were ok with it, would you be interested? Maybe between two of your own games?

Jay would like another promo, and Goko wants an online-only one (which again would only happen if it were the kind of thing that couldn't be done with cardboard). I've got something to try on Goko but have put off offering it up until more of the things that aren't done get done. I don't have anything picked out for a real-life promo.

If publishers didn't specifically ask for promos I would never do them. The promo is either good enough to be in an expansion or the main game, in which case it should be there so everyone can have it, or else it isn't, in which case why does this thing exist. To try to resolve this you can do something too wacky for the normal game, but then those things have too many rules issues to want to be promos.

So uh a cross-promotional promo would only exist if a publisher wanted it, which was the case with Walled Village. I don't mind, I like Carcassonne, although Hunters & Gatherers is the superior fixed version. I don't know if publishers wouldn't want to do a cross-promotional promo for a game that wasn't theirs; man, ask a publisher. I wouldn't be asking, I don't like promos.

[philosophyguy]

How did you decide which abilities could be stackable with TR/KC (e.g., Bridge) and which ones couldn't (Highway, Princess, and Goons being the obvious examples)?

[DStu]

How did you decide which abilities could be stackable with TR/KC (e.g., Bridge) and which ones couldn't (Highway, Princess, and Goons being the obvious examples)?

I guess Bridge would not be stackable if it would be redone today...

[SirPeebles]

The other prototypical non-stackable is Tactician.  The "if you discard a card this way" clause is there to prevent doubling the effect from Throne Room.  Of course, there is still that obscure edge case where Golem can cause multiple Tactician effects.