Have you considered giving people on discord the on notice role if they call you “Donald”?
I have not. I know most people saying it just don't know any better. I correct them and so much for that. Plus man I'm not stepping into jsh's territory there, he's having his own fun.
How much of your game designing is making lists / charts / tables of different things?
In terms of the files, there's certainly a lot of it. But in terms of like, everything you do, well there's a lot of pacing and thinking, there's all the playing. There's all the time spent making images and cutting and sleeving. But lists are significant.
When doing math in Temporum, why did you decide that cards and crown advancements would be worth $4 instead of $2 (like in Nefarious)?
I think that was really just the math. Well okay. There's an endless battle between big numbers, which give you resolution and make it easier to balance things, and small numbers, which are better in all other respects, make your game easier to play. It's always a question, how far you go one way or the other. Temporum wanted e.g. "when you draw a card, +$1," and the $ amounts scale from there. And then the $ value of a crown is based on, how long do you want the game to be.
Speaking of Nefarious, why did you decide Research would be +1 Card +$2 instead of +2 Cards?
You are asking a question about work I did in 1999, when it was not so clear that I would need a record of everything I did. I think I have a good guess though. In Nefarious you make $ based on what other people do; I put a chip / minion / agent on Research, and when you Research I get +$1. So it was good to have two actions that made you $ (three really of course, since Speculate does long-term), so you could sometimes shy away from Work. I do have the files that generated the card images back when, and the first version of Research did not have +$2, but there are no notes explaining why I changed it.
What was it like making a tier list for this? And how do you feel about *looks it up* 16/24 people figuring out your list?
It was like when you trip on a sidewalk crack, and can't imagine how you did it, and go back and purposefully try to trip on the crack, and can't do it.
I imagined I would be easy to guess, because I spew opinions at people constantly, and people are always asking for them too, like in this thread. It was easy making the list, I like making lists. I didn't feel bad because these were hated cards, or whatever; man we've been over that ground so much.
I forgot about this in my secret history, but before Rising Sun I sent you a list of 10 cards I liked and wanted to see new versions of, how did that work out? Did it have any influence on the expansion at all?
I did consider the list, and typed up a list of possible directions to do some of those things. Anything I actually tried left the list though, there's no paper trail there.
Some of your items of course made the set for other reasons, e.g. there was always going to be on-play debt, and that's a form of "pay resources for other resources." Some it's hard to say. There's "beats up the players for the whole game," but I think that was just, "what can I do with Prophecies." "Shapeshift basic cards" is there in Enlightenment; I don't know if the list factored in there or not. The one thing I'm pretty sure came from that list was the extra turn event that died.
What are your thoughts on Forts? The quick version of my scathing review is: the flavor is meh; mechanically it's all over the place; the pile is unplayable when there are no villages; Garrison is a table-flipper when you lose the split; Hill Fort is way too good and the choice it gives is stupid when you're drawing deck (wait it's with Garrison); and Stronghold sucks.
I like Forts. The flavor is solid, a nice way to have this hard-to-grasp concept the split piles wanted, of showing a progression though you aren't really progressing a thing. Tent was a great idea to get into a split pile; there's less pressure on each card to be the best thing ever, and Tent had been a good idea waiting years to get used. And I mean I think it's underrated, sometimes it's actually good to have that +$2 for a few turns in a row. Garrison is a lot of fun. Hill Fort would have been perfect for the set, going with the other choose-ones, but was too strong to do as a pile; but being in a split pile slows it down nicely and lets us have that experience. Stronghold, man, it's fine. Again, being in a split pile puts less pressure on a card to be the best thing ever, except from dz apparently. It's a cute concept and didn't use up a whole pile to get into a set.
Well done Donald X., I knew you had it in you.
