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[michaeljb]

Why did you cap the number of turns you can take via Outpost but not via Possession?

I'm not Donald X., but isn't this obvious?  Imagine having a deck of Village-Monument-Outpost-Outpost.  Possession doesn't lead to infinite turns.

I think philosophyguy is more asking "Why isn't Possession limited, like Outpost?" rather than "Why isn't Outpost unlimited, like Possession?"

[SwitchedFromStarcraft]

You've been very generous with your time in this community, especially in light of how busy you must be.  How do you decide what merits you taking the time to post here (or at BGG)?

If you were a blue dog, what breed would you be?

[Schneau]

Has competitive Dominion gone further than you originally expected, with both live and internet tournaments worldwide and a healthy community of serious players discussing and writing about Dominion here on Dominion Strategy?

Do you think Dominion's primary audience is somewhat to seriously competitive players who mainly play online, or more of the "family game" audience who will pick it up occasionally but never know what Big Money means? Does this influence the game's design, as well as its presentation both in real life as well as the official online implementation?

[sparky5856]

Have you ever considered participating in forum mafia?

[Schneau]

Have you looked at the Dominion memes thread? If so, do you have a favorite?

[thirtyseven]

Do you open double Ambassador or Ambassador/Silver?

What is your favorite beer? If you don't drink beer, favorite alcoholic drink? If you don't drink alcohol, favorite drink?

[PSGarak]

What game do you consider a guilty pleasure? That is, you think it's poorly designed or has serious flaws in some way, but you enjoy it anyways.

Can you give an example of when you had to make a game design decision due to business factors (like cards per expansion, or cost or something), and it turned out better than you expected? How about (heresy!) worse?

If there were such thing as a perfectly designed game, which player skills do you think it would emphasize, and which skills would be secondary concerns?

What is your best source of inspiration for new cards? What is your best source of feedback?

[Donald X.]

I'm just going to start answering questions, because, what, I don't need to skip a question that wasn't good enough for the front page, and this way you can post follow-up questions. Theory can pick what stuff to use based on how interesting the answer was, and no-one who doesn't look at the forums will ever be the wiser.

You've said many times before that Guilds is the last of the "standard" Dominion expansions.  Have you given any thought to what you want to do with Dominion after Guilds?

I would like to do spin-offs that have "Dominion" in the title. Not unrelated stuff like Cardcassonne, but clearly related games which nevertheless are different enough to not just be expansions.

For Dominion itself, probably there will be a promo or two, I think Jay would be interested if I handed him one now. Also probably an online-only promo that couldn't exist irl. Some kind of "treasure chest" small expansion in the future, with 1-2 cards for each existing expansion, sounds more doable than any other new Dominion expansion, but has the issue that it would appeal to a smaller audience than a more normal expansion. Also it has the issue that Jay would note this. At one point I was considering doing a Seaside expansion in place of Guilds (not having come up with Guilds yet). And Jay was like, isn't a new thing better than more of an old thing? And it was, it was better.

What lessons have you learned about the game design process in general from making Dominion?  How has it informed your subsequent games?

I've learned some stuff about interacting with publishers and playtesters and interviewers. Dominion was the direct inspiration for Kingdom Builder - Kingdom Builder started out with deckbuilding. I'm not sure it's done so much other than that. I started seriously working on games in 1995. Dominion had years of lessons learned from other games to draw on, and is full of stuff that I had already learned. For example I had been doing "attacks hurt everyone but you" since 1997. I guess I have gotten a little better at wording cards through Dominion.

What is your personal favorite Dominion card and why?

In Magic psychograph terms I am a Johnny; I like to have unique experiences in games, to be creative. A lot of my favorite Dominion cards involve exotic experiences and combos. Overall my favorite is Rats, from Dark Ages. You give your kingdom a Rat problem and then somehow this works out for you. Dark Ages is my favorite expansion, and it's because of all the various ways it gives you an exotic deck or crazy combo.

At what point during the process of making Dominion did you realize that it was not just any other board game, but one that was going to be a really special game?

It was clear immediately that it worked, that it would be a good game. For a week or two it was just that, it could go in the pile with my other good games. When I made Dominion I had a game night and a Magic night. Dominion took over the game night immediately and the Magic night within a few weeks. Then we got in more nights of Dominion because how was that enough. I made some new games a month or so later and no-one wanted to try them, they just wanted more Dominion. And more people got to play it and they would just play for however long we had. So, gradually over a couple months, it became clear that here was the game, and why wasn't I trying to get anything published. The first game of Dominion was on Oct 30 2006; I email'd RGG Jan 22 2007.

[Donald X.]

Are you still leaning towards Dominion 2 over more expansions?

Yes.

What kind of things would you want in Dominion 2 that couldn't be incorporated with the rules as they stand?

Well I would either add something significant, or change the basic game in some way. I don't really want to give anything away, so like, consider say A Few Acres of Snow or Mage Knight (I have not played these games). Why can't those games just be Dominion expansions? Man, the question doesn't even make sense; they are clearly separate games. Whereas, the various Dominion clones that could actually be Dominion expansions, which I don't like naming, those are not what I am looking to make.

Any hints or tastes of what we can expect in Guilds?

It's a small expansion (150 cards). It's the most complex expansion, and is more skill-based than the other expansions. Jay has the files and art is being made, so it's on track for getting pushed back from early spring to late spring.

[blueblimp]

Dominion is popular both in real life (as designed) and on computer (isotropic and other sites). Me, I enjoy both platforms, in different ways.

Have you considered or dabbled with designing a game specifically for computer or some other electronic doodad (iPad, etc.)?

[Donald X.]

What problems found in other games are you most happy to have avoided in Dominion?

The most ubiquitous problem of other games that Dominion solves is politics. You generally can't get rid of politics in interactive decision-based games, but you can dial it down, and Dominion does a good job of that. That's just something normal for me though, I am always looking at that, and so Dominion doesn't stand out in that way for me.

A way that Dominion does stand out is, it has a good solution to the tableau problem. You have a game where each turn you play a card, and they have abilities that do things for you. There are four players. After six turns there are 24 cards in play and it's impossible to make sure everything happens that's supposed to. Dominion solves this by hiding your abilities in a deck, so we only have to worry about a few things at a time. I am not sure if too many games are affected by this problem, but I have faced it a bunch, being fond of games where you get lots of abilities.

[Donald X.]

What is your favorite board game that you designed?

Dominion! If you mean "no really, that has a board, a real board" then Kingdom Builder. In both cases I am including expansions okay.

What is your favorite board game that you didn't design?

Magic: The Gathering, by a mile. If again it has to really have a board, then I'm not sure I have a clear favorite. I have more games by Knizia than anyone else, and like to single out Clash of Gladiators as a favorite that people don't seem to know about, although probably I played Medici more, but that doesn't count because I made an expansion for it to give it variety.

How did you decide on the theme for Dominion?

Right around then, I had been meaning to make a game with a medieval kingdom-building theme. I did not know that this theme had like, been done; I was not too up on such things. It was flavor I liked and I hadn't done it yet, or at least not in a game that worked out. My most common theme is 20's gangsters; Infiltration started out as thugs robbing a bubble gum factory (they are stealing money and valuables though, I don't know why people who hear that think they are stealing bubble gum), and I have contracts for two games that started out gangster-themed, although I rethemed one of them. I've done a bunch of time travel, D&D-ish stuff, and movie stuff. I have more exotic themes too but in general don't want to spoil them; maybe I will do those one day.

Anyway, I had been meaning to do medieval kingdom-building, it looked like a good fit here, I used that flavor, it did not have problems. I had been thinking kingdoms, but the initial batch of cards all involved a castle, so I called it Castle Builder. I moved outside the castle for the second expansion, which I therefore referred to as Abroad. That expansion in the long run got split into Seaside and Hinterlands; Seaside got its flavor from a few cards that were on the shore already, and Hinterlands took over the getting-away-from-the-castle flavor.

I might as well do the other expansions. Intrigue probably comes from, initially I thought I might do like an event deck for an expansion. In the end that seemed pointless; you get plenty of variety from changing what cards are available, and your opponents attacking is like an event already. It ended up with an event theme anyway though, via one-shots, and then when it lost that functional theme it kept the flavor. Which was intrigue, because like, what kinds of events happen in castles?

Alchemy got its theme from the idea of adding a resource, and what would it be. Prosperity gots its theme from its mechanical theme of spendy cards and treasures that do things. That makes it really on-theme, I mean you really feel like the theme matches the functionality. Cornucopia just came from a list of potential themes I made when I needed more themes. It was originally Harvest Festival; they are proper medieval things. Dark Ages was originally War; it was an obvious direction to shift to when war turned out not to be a suitable theme for Hans im Gluck. And War had come from, you know, the Crusades and stuff. Finally Guilds got its theme from a few card names. Those of you speculating as if I started with "guilds" and then tried to make a neat mechanic, no guys, as usual I started with cards and then needed a theme for them.

[Donald X.]

What is your favorite Pokemon?

Since I am regularly on the internet, I have seen names of pokemon, and have seen images of them, but I do not really have enough information to make an informed decision here. Is there one that makes copies of itself while destroying things?

[Jimmmmm]

There's Rattata, but I'm not sure it works in the same way.

[Donald X.]

How have isotropic and the online forum community affected the development of Dominion expansions?

The big isotropic thing is just, we used it for testing, and it was pretty convenient and easy to use, so we got tons of extra testing in that way. So the later expansions are all better due to having that good way to playtest them.

Intrigue was finalized when Dominion came out, so Seaside is the first time any feedback from fans could have meant anything. I am sure some things have changed due to that feedback. One thing was, it turned out people didn't like the idea of an attack that doesn't produce resources. So I stopped doing those after Sea Hag (well not counting Sir Michael). That was not something I would have known otherwise. Alchemy made it clear that I had to make sure cards weren't too slow to resolve; Wandering Minstrel is an example of a card that got tweaked specifically because of that. Alchemy also made me steer clear of things like a new resource in the future, although probably Guilds is the only place I might have done something like that. Some people don't like cards that make them not draw their good cards (such as Loan), so I pulled back on those, although that kind of thing isn't verboten, I just work more to make sure those cards are worth having.

Besides specific card changes, is there anything you would have done differently in Dominion development if you had it all to do over again?

I would probably change how reactions work, actually to make them how they originally worked, which is, you play them at special times (so, they end up in play). This would have been simpler, and better for like everything but Moat, but Moat was the main set one and so I warped them to make Moat better.

What goals do you have for yourself as a game designer (if you haven't reached them all already)?

The big one is to have a current project I can really get stuff done on; something that we enjoy playing that's far enough along that it's easy to work on. Whenever I don't have such a project, that is the big thing, I need a new one.

Mostly I just want to make games we like to play; if they turn out to be publishable then that's great. Sometimes I specifically work on games for particular companies, and sometimes I am trying to make new German family games. I will work on something skill-heavy and then want to do something light.

I guess also, I want to get as many of my existing good games published as possible, and especially, before other people think of them and get them published. My big regret as a game designer is not getting a Magic-style drafting game published ahead of 7 Wonders. I have several good ones; the first one is from 1998.

What are your favorite games to play that you did not design?

Magic: The Gathering was my favorite game for many years. I gradually stopped playing in 2006-2007 due to Dominion taking over that time.

What are your interests besides board games?

I am a big music fan. 2012 has not been a great year, but the Guided by Voices album Class Clown Spots a UFO and the Amanda Palmer album Theatre Is Evil were stand-outs.

I have written a bunch of very short stories and also some normal-length screenplays. I've written some songs but don't really play an instrument. Wait, did you say board games? I also like video games. I made the best computer game ever, Dudes of Stuff and Things (my take on Heroes of Might and Magic III, which was the best computer game ever in its day).

[Donald X.]

How often does the community come up with something that you never thought of?

I think the only real surprise has been King's Court / Masquerade / Goons. You can easily play a set of 10 that I haven't, and maybe see something I haven't, but you know, that's the nature of the game. Probably there are tons of random low-profile combos I haven't played that people have talked about, but you know, not like King's Court / Masquerade.

What's the most inventive/unusual deck you've seen work out?

Back when Trader's reaction was on a $2, Bill Barksdale built a Squire / Pawn / that-Trader / Chapel-or-something deck in one game, vs. Knights, that was immune to them and then suddenly exploded in Silver and bought Provinces.

[Donald X.]

Was Dominion always Medieval Europe themed, or did you try other/no themes at some point, like space or zombies or the stock market?

Always medieval Europe.

What do you think of the anime girls Japanese version of Dominion?

If you mean the Hobby Japan one(s), I officially endorse it, it is called Dominion and everything. Best Woodcutter ever.

Would you say that, with Guilds, you've explored all the game space available for Dominion without resorting to mechanics that would change the game inherently?

You are implying false things. In order to make more expansions, the cards necessarily get more complex, and that's the real problem with making more expansions (in addition to, then it's all I do with my life, and don't people have enough variety already, and so on, all the stuff I say over and over when people ask about why I'm not making more expansions). It's okay to change the game and there is more space to explore; it's just, you are pushed into making more and more complex things, while the audience already wants things less complex than they are.

If Dominion had been computerized from the start, are there mechanics you would have liked to have tried that would only work on a computer? (random numbers, etc)

Meh, not really. The big thing you get out of a computer is tracking; you can do more stuff like Pirate Ship and Monument without worrying about it. I did those cards anyway though. If I were really making a computer-only Dominion-like game though, it would probably end up nothing like Dominion. There's no real point in simulating cards on a computer, except you know, when there's a real-life card game you want on your computer.

Do you have any favorite wacky translations of card names or card text into other languages?

I am not up on those things. Mountebank was called Trickster at one point, and I had to rename it because the German version of Swindler was Trickster (only in German). That isn't wacky, that is just about the limit of my interaction with card names in other languages.

If you could go back and edit any Dominion cards, knowing what you do now, which would you and why?

Fortunately there is an essay about this already, which you can see in the dominionstrategy.com forums. http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=3179.msg56362#msg56362

What's your favorite color?

Green. Since no-one would ask this question without thinking of Monty Python, I will mention that my favorite Monty Python member is Cleese, although, what, most people probably pick Cleese.

[Donald X.]

As a community, we've explored quite a lot of the possibilities of cards and their combinations.  Is there anything we haven't hit upon yet that you're surprised we haven't?

Man, don't you want to find it yourself?

[Donald X.]

Similar to the above -- do you ever look at fan cards?  If so, do you have a favourite?

I don't usually look at them, because 1) I don't want people feeling like I'm taking their ideas, which probably I had years ago, not because I am amazing but because the obvious ideas are obvious and I had a big head start; and 2) the cards that aren't in sets already are usually awful, nonstop things I wouldn't do that are boring and redundant or else obviously bad for the game in some way, and if it's not obvious then I already tried them and found out the hard way. At best they are things I'm already doing; none of it is good reading.

Let's do an experiment, I will look at the first four cards of "Books of Magic," the first listed fan expansion at BGG. I am looking at the first four images sorted the default way ("hot"), skipping the big image of a card sheet.

Ghost Town: My first version of this was called Fool's Gold and was "+$2. Put this card into your hand." That turned into a card that gave you +$2 and an extra +$2 for each unused action you had when you played it, then +$1, then I made it into Diadem.

Book of the Dead: Getting something from the trash and saving a card for next turn were the two most suggested card premises ever (prior to those cards being published), followed maybe by a reaction to punish attackers. This card manages to put the card on your deck like Graverobber does, but of course is missing the crucial "provide a way to get stuff into the trash that you'll want" part.

Fairy Gold: The first version of Feast was this only with +1 Action, for $4. It was too strong and turned into the Feast you know. I eventually did a one-shot Gold that you can't buy, with Spoils.

Gravedigger: I haven't actually done giving yourself a Curse in a published card, although Death Cart gets close. I tried multiple cards that gave yourself a Curse; everyone hated them. Death Cart dodges the problem by giving you a use for the Ruins.

So, four-for-four, nothing new or interesting here. Sorry Books of Magic guy, it was just an example.

Sir Bailey made Courtyard, but he managed that because he showed me his homemade cards when I didn't have that many homemade cards of my own yet. Even so I had already done "+2 cards +1 action, put 2 cards from your hand on your deck," but abandoned it because it played so slowly. Dame Josephine similarly managed to get Counting House in relatively early on.

I will cite two favorite fan cards though.

As I said most are awful. The stand-out awful card, the epitome of awful fan cards, was one called Locusts that read "each other player discards a Gardens." First the guy of course must have meant "trashes a Gardens card from his hand" but blew it and ended up with the most useless thing ever. If he had gotten it right then it would still be crazy awful. He started with the flavor of "locusts destroy plants" and did not think of "wait you have to want to play the card though." The old Magic expansions Legends has stuff like this, where they made flavor-based stuff and just did not consider, why would anyone play this.

There has been to date exactly one card I saw where I thought, hey, cool idea. It was something like, "when you gain this put it in the discard pile of the player to your left; at end of game worth 2 VP for the player to your right." I have done hot-potato cards that did not work out and probably this would fail for the same reasons, but still, neat idea.

[Donald X.]

What is your favorite combo, or engine?

Do you still play a lot of Dominion, or has that tapered off so you can concentrate on other projects?

I'm not sure I want to try to pick out a favorite combo (he said, after staring at the visual spoilers). I generally like stuff I haven't done over stuff I have, so anything I especially liked, I've done to death and no longer enjoy as much.

I have played very little Dominion irl in the last year. It's all done, so the only times it's come up were when I had just finished something and felt like I needed to offer up something different to play at a game night. I have playtested a bunch on goko, although I haven't done that as much in the last month either, due to it crashing on Chrome.

[Donald X.]

Have you played any of the various other deckbuilder games (e.g. Ascension, Thunderstone, Legendary etc.) and if so, do you enjoy (m)any of them? Do any have mechanics that you'd have liked to use?

Suppose a new player just got the base game for Christmas, but wants to get an expansion immediately because they love the game. Which expansions would you recommend?

I have not played any of the various Dominion-based games. I have zero interest in the clones. Of the actual new games, I would try Friday or A Few Acres of Snow sometime, if it came up. The only game that has stuff I might have done, or might still do, is Mage Knight. Dominion started as a solution to a problem in a game of building fantasy heroes and going on quests, and I still feel like I'd like to make that game someday. And the way I would handle hit points is the same as Mage Knight (iirc) - you just get Curses weighing you down, so you don't have to track hit points separately.

I specifically made Intrigue to be the first expansion, and saved Prosperity for 3rd (4th because Alchemy got pushed ahead) so that you had time to get used to not having Colony before getting it. And then the sets get more complex later. So you might think I would just say, go in order, shifting Alchemy to last. However! I feel like I got better at making sets as of Seaside; the main set and Intrigue both have a greater number of uh weak / narrow cards. So I would say, get Seaside.

[Donald X.]

Adding on to other fan cards questions...Agricola Gamers Deck was designed by fans. Is there any chance of something similar happening with Dominion, perhaps using the Mini-Set Design Contest hosted by rinkworks as a starting point?

Unlikely. If there was something good enough then maybe a single promo.

The main issue is, aside from me wanting to be the guy and getting to, that I also want to ensure a certain uh level of quality. If there were a fan-made set I would have to playtest it endlessly. Man. I'm busy. And as I've noted I don't expect there will be awesome fan-made stuff to do; if there is any cool stuff it will be complex. If I had to do a complex set I would just make one myself.

You could instead hope for some other famous game designer to make a set sometime. Tom Lehmann had an idea for one although I never heard what it was. Again I would need to playtest any such set and am not keen to, but it's at least more likely than a fan set.

[Donald X.]

You've mentioned before that if you had the KC/Masquerade pin in playtesting you would have nerfed it a bit.  Can you share any other powerful combos that got destroyed in playtesting?

I don't think that's what I said - I said that if we had found it *and* it had seemed like it came up too often then I would have nerfed it. It's not clear that it's enough of a problem.

Generally when a card is too strong it's not just one combo or deck. Like, Horn of Plenty was part of degenerate decks for a while in different forms, but it was a variety of combos, not a particular one.

There was a Crossroads / Margrave deck that was too strong for a while. There was a lot of focused testing on that one, working out which cards exactly were the problem. In the end I changed Crossroads (it had been +2 actions, rather than +3 once). Margrave was also part of the problem but was more important to keep as is. Another card left that I only knew was too strong because of this deck (it was discard x coppers, gain a card costing up to $3+X).

Throne Room had problem situations with Tactician and Outpost, so that they have text specifically stopping those combos. Madman also has an anti-Throne clause although I'm not sure I ever specifically tested out Throning it.

Graverobber and Rogue have a range of costs they get back because of problematic combos from when they didn't (such as Graverobber / Madman, when Madman went to the trash).

There were things you could do with Haggler and Farmland that weren't necessarily too powerful, but were too confusing, that resulted in them being when-buy (Haggler had been, when-gain other than via Hagglers).

Talisman says "not a Victory card" because it had been too strong with Gardens etc.

[Donald X.]

Will we ever see another purpose for the "while this is in play" (on cards like Goons and Haggler) clause apart from limiting a card's power with King's Court/Throne Room (or seriously nerfing it with Procession)?

(I guess Lighthouse already is an example, but that's still limited to Duration cards, I'm looking for something more general)

Well you already have - the purpose is tracking. "While this is in play" is always in play to show off that it's doing something (or isn't in play and so isn't doing anything). "This turn" effects like Coppersmith / Bridge might not be. It's not that I want to screw over Throne/Procession + Highway or whatever, it's that Procession + Bridge makes you have to remember the Bridge effect.

It's fun to Throne a Bridge and so there's that. In general "while this is in play" is just better though.

Similarly Conspirator looks at how many action cards you played this turn, but Peddler counts the action cards in play. Peddler's approach is better; no tracking.

[Donald X.]

If you play on isotropic competitively how high do you expect your level to be?

I don't know what actual skill level corresponds to what numerical level. Also you are better at these things when you keep at them. I have not kept at it and so there's that. I imagine when I was playing a ton that I was probably a top player, but there's no reason to think I was ever at the very top.

When Captain Frisk (and Theory and RRenaud) showed up to do a little playtesting, I feel like me and the other playtesters really tried to beat them up - just, forget learning anything this game, let's show these new guys what for. And we did beat them up, although to be fair, we knew the new cards and they didn't, they were in the "can't you make Jack more powerful" phase. Frisk was playing more later and I think was winning his share then.