Interviews by an Optimist #100 - Andrew Parks

Andrew Parks entered the world of game design in late 2003 with the release of Ideology: The War of Ideas (Z-Man Games). He has also designed Camelot Legends (Z-Man Games), co-designed Parthenon: Rise of the Aegean (Siren Bridge Publishing, Z-Man Games), and co-designed The Nightmare Before Christmas TCG (NECA). In 2005, he formed Quixotic Games LLC, a game design studio devoted to developing games for a
variety of publishers.

Andrew believes strongly that no game designer can exist without great playtesters. The Quixotic Games team consists of 16 dedicated developers who work with him on several projects at the same time. At the moment, Quixotic Games is developing six commissioned games simultaneously, all for release within the next two years.

Tom Vasel: Andrew, what was your first game design like?

Andrew Parks: My first game design (unpublished) was a Tolkien-based card game entitled “Ring of Doom.” It was a 2-player non-collectible card game where each player attempted to create Factions and move around a board formed by a series of Region Cards. Many of the elements would eventually be simplified and brought over into Camelot Legends. The essential idea was to create a game with CCG-like card complexity but in a non-collectible format.

It had 100 different cards, most of which were Characters from the books. There were elements from both the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in there, so you could have all kinds of fun scenarios such as Bilbo taking the Ring to Mount Doom, or Legolas helping to shoot down Smaug. We even had a couple of games where Gandalf became the Ringbearer and got corrupted by its power!

I had made the game just for fun, but suddenly got it in my head that I should try to show it to someone. Iron Crown Enterprises held the exclusive Tolkien gaming license, so I decided to “roll the dice” and try to contact them. Lucky for me, the people at Iron Crown Enterprises were about the nicest people in the world, and they invited me down to show them the prototype.

I drove down to Charlottesville, Virginia to show the ICE guys the game. They were simply extraordinary in their level of encouragement. I had 2 copies of the prototype with me, and soon the room was full of people playing or watching the game. When I drove home that night, I was extremely excited, but even then I could not begin to imagine how lasting the friendships were that I had made that day.

Coleman Charlton, one of the owners and the lead game designer at ICE, became a mentor to me after that trip, and he has since helped me out in countless ways, including playtesting most of the games I have worked on. Jason Hawkins, one of the art directors at ICE, has become a very close friend of mine and we have worked together on many projects, most notably as co-designers of Parthenon (Jason is one of the two owners of Siren Bridge Publishing). Donald Dennis (who had invited me to come down and show the game to the ICE crew) is also now a good friend of mine, and it was his idea a couple years later that I revise one of my prototypes (The Venture Card Game) to create Camelot Legends. I also had the opportunity to befriend Pete Fenlon, the president of ICE, who has since been kind enough to offer his skills and advice with several games I’ve worked on, including Parthenon; he and Coleman later started Castle Hill Studios, the software company that developed the Catan Online game, and are also members of Mayfair Games.

Needless to say, that trip down to Charlottesville was a turning point in my life, and I will never forget the kindness which the ICE crew showed me on that day.

Tom Vasel: How long did it take to get a game finally published? What did it feel like to know that a game of yours would finally be “real”?

Andrew Parks: Five years after my first game pitch, my first game was published thanks to Zev Shlasinger of Z-Man Games taking a chance with “Ideology: The War of Ideas”, which came out towards the end of 2003. Zev and I now work regularly together on projects, and I owe him a lot for giving me my first break.

It was a great feeling, as you can imagine, seeing the game on the shelf and going to stores and conventions to do demos. It was a little surreal too, because the game was released internationally, and I immediately starting coming across reviews and articles about the game on the internet that I couldn’t translate! Having people discuss your game halfway across the globe is exciting, but a bit terrifying too. :-)

Tom Vasel: Your games appear to greatly revolve around theme. Just how important is theme to a game design?

Andrew Parks: For my designs, I always start with the theme and build the mechanics around it. That can sometimes get me into trouble, of course, as it can often be challenging during the design process to recognize and strip away certain thematic elements that seem fun at first blush but that are detracting from the game’s core mechanics. Removing those elements is always painful, but always seems to make the game play more smoothly in the end.

I do enjoy playing pure abstract games, though. We’ve become big fans of Blokus around here, for example. However, my own design preference is to build a game where the theme is central.

The two starting concerns with any design for me are that the theme be immersive, and that the game have a high level of replayability. I want players (including myself) to “feel” the struggles of the game, and to have to adapt their strategies to the unique circumstances of that particular game session.

It’s also an important goal for me to have each game session create its own unique “storyline.” For me, the most fun games are those where the players feel like characters in a story, even though the game isn’t necessarily a role-playing game. That is the purpose of the Diplomacy phase in Ideology, for example, and for the Archon mechanic in Parthenon. Watching players engage in passionate debates over the value of Ore at Foreign Lands or whether they should declare war against Capitalism is always very exciting to me.

Creating unique character combinations is very appealing to me as well. As a student of English Literature, I am fascinated with the intrigue created by certain combinations of characters facing challenges together. This is a main feature of Camelot Legends, and also with The Nightmare Before Christmas TCG. Our most enjoyable gaming moments usually occur when an unlikely group of characters gets together and accomplishes a goal in a very unexpected but satisfying way!

Tom Vasel: As the designer of The Nightmare Before Christmas TCG, what are the benefits and difficulties of working on a collectible card game?

Andrew Parks: When Zev and I first started working on the design of the Nightmare game for NECA, we knew it had to have a different feel to it than many other TCG’s, because the movie is not a “conflict-centered” piece. This challenge led to an opening up of creative options. Because one of the central themes of the movie is about “making Christmas,” we decided to work on a game about building rather than destroying (although there is plenty of room for attacking your opponent too, especially if you center your deck around Oogie Boogie!)

Creating a building game that would still be interactive brought us to a natural source of inspiration: eurogames. We therefore included elements such as The Pumpkin King mechanic, a role card that revolves around the table and allows one new player each round to make a decision that has the potential to benefit everyone. Yet, in order to really be a TCG, there had to be the attack option too, so we allowed players to build their decks to taste, keeping them as attack-oriented as they preferred. Fortunately, the Pumpkin King mechanic keeps the game interactive in the euro sense, even if neither player is playing a particularly aggressive strategy.

One of the great benefits of working on a TCG is having so much room to explore. Because you are designing a lot of cards, you can devise all sorts of interesting strategies and see how players combine them for greater effect. I have to say I have had more fun working on this game than any other so far. Because Nightmare works on a VP system (Scare Points in this case), we had fun coming up with all sorts of ways for players to earn their Scare Points (and to attack their opponent’s Scare Points).

One of the main challenges of working on a TCG is being able to foresee combination-driven problems. Sure, you can mathematically balance each individual card, but some of them in combination can create very difficult situations. For example, you have to avoid combinations that can lead to success without in-game strategy, or which shut down an opponent too strongly, or which simply go on for so long that your opponent is bored to tears watching you play.

Fortunately, many of our playtesters are heavy TCG players, including two players who have played games of this nature on a championship circuit level. Because of this, we came up with a lot of decks that were “broken” during playtesting, and used them as an opportunity to modify the system itself, mending it so that such abuses could be avoided even with combinations we had not yet discovered. That is one of the reasons, for example, that we limit each player to playing only 3 Surprises (the “interrupt” type cards in Nightmare) each round, and to limit the play of each individual Surprise to once per round per player.

We are encouraged by the fact that there haven’t been any broken card combinations or card errata required with the Premiere set that was released over the Fall, but as we work on the Christmas Town Expansion (due out in April), the challenge grows as the universe of cards steadily increases. It’s a fun challenge, though, and one that we are enjoying pursuing!

Tom Vasel: Why pick a movie that is several years old instead of a newer, “hot” license?

Andrew Parks: Interestingly enough, The Nightmare Before Christmas has a wider fan base now than when the movie first released 12 years ago. There is an entire community of fans devoted to the film, discussing it on a daily basis and collecting merchandise based on the movie. NECA owns the merchandising rights to many popular film licenses, and has newly started its Game Division, and they wanted their first TCG to reflect one of their core licenses, The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Zev Shlasinger was asked to design the game for NECA, and he invited me to help out as co-designer. I am a huge fan of the film, and my knee jerk response to him was “In a New York minute!” :-)

It is now 18 months after that initial conversation, and as we prepare to send the first expansion set off to press, I can honestly tell you I’m having as much fun with the game now as I did when we first started concept work on the initial design.

Tom Vasel: Tell us about a typical design day in your life…

Andrew Parks: I usually begin each day by responding to emailed questions and comments, and then responding to several different Forums (including those at Boardgamegeek and elsewhere) to see if players have any questions or comments about the games I have worked on. This usually takes from 1-3 hours, based upon how new some of the games are (the newer games tend to demand a bit more attention).

I then head over to the Quixotic Games private forums to update the developers and playtesters on recent developments on the various projects we are working on. Usually there is one key project that is generating a lot of discussion at any given moment, and there can be some lengthy discussions if certain cards or other game mechanics are being troublesome.

Afterwards, I usually begin work on that day’s big job. In some cases, this may be creating new components for an upcoming prototype, or updating a big chunk of components after a major playtest. It also might involve preparing files for press if we are close to the end of a project, or perhaps revising a press submission in accordance with a
request from the printer. These sorts of jobs will take many hours (sometimes 8-10 based upon the difficulty of the project and the time crunch involved).

Much of the day is also spent communicating with developers and playtesters, including working on scheduling for both major and minor playtests. I also have lengthy telephone conversations with some of the other developers about really intricate problems we may be having with a prototype (sometimes the Forums are not fast enough to effect a major
change to a game in progress).

During the week, we often hold small playtests in the evening here at my house or elsewhere. On the weekends we hold our major playtests, which take up most of the day and are usually held in a large area so that several game sessions can take place at the same time. These major playtests often end in lengthy feedback sessions so that our gameplay experiences can be discussed while they are still fresh in our minds.

By the end of the day, I usually do a quick sweep of the Forums once again, answer any emails I may have missed, and then call it a day!

Tom Vasel: You obviously spend a great deal of time on the internet. How critical is this for a game designer?

Andrew Parks: I think it’s very important for a number of reasons. The first reason is to provide customer service. If a designer is on hand to directly answer questions and to address overall concerns with his or her game, customers will understand how important their needs are to both the publisher and the designer. It is my personal goal to respond to every question within 24 hours. This gives players a “real time” ability to get the answers they need as quickly as possible.

The second reason to stay in touch with the internet is that it’s extremely helpful to read all of the comments that are being made about your games, both positive and negative. I read every comment very carefully, and I have found that critical comments and articles are very beneficial when working on future designs. For example, if several players point out something which bothers them about a game, I will keep this issue strongly in mind when working on future games. This way, if we notice a similar situation arise during the development of a future project, we will be able to compare the situation to what has
been a concern of players with another game.

The third reason is that it is very rewarding to keep in touch with players on a regular basis. There is no greater joy for a game designer than to know that there are real people out there playing and enjoying your games! It helps keep everything in perspective, and helps to remind you why you’re working so many hours for so little pay! ;-)

Tom Vasel: What would be your advice to an aspiring game designer?

Andrew Parks: The first rule is to never give up. This is not an easy industry to break into, especially if you don’t have the means to self-publish your own games. You have to design games because you love to design them, and if your first several designs don’t get published, take satisfaction in the artistic achievement itself. It will be the only thing that carries you through to the next design.

The second rule is to find playtesters who are mean, ruthless, and willing to say anything. If your playtesters only find trivial things wrong with your game the first few times it’s played, then go find some more playtesters to help out. Most games need major work after their first few sessions, and you need people who are willing to help you break the game apart to find its major flaws.

The third rule is to take criticism well. You have the final say on your game, so be willing to entertain any suggestion that is thrown out at you. Sometimes a playtester will say the same thing repeatedly and you will disagree each time… and then you will finally make the change after experiencing for yourself what they were experiencing! Even the most crazy suggestions can break your game out of a tough problem.
The fourth rule is to spend a lot of time making a nice looking prototype. No matter how great your game is; if you want a publisher to take a serious look at it, it’s got to look great too. Invest money on good software (Photoshop and Quark XPress are my favorites) and a good color laser printer (hp color LaserJets have really come down in price), and be willing to print at high end output places too, especially for larger components.

The fifth rule is to be willing to do grunt work. Playtest for other designers and other publishers whenever you can. If a publisher takes an interest in your game design, be willing to help out in every capacity you can to get the game to the printer. Help out with graphic design, talking to artists, coming up with promotions, whatever you can. Your game stands a much better chance of hitting shelves if you’re willing to do the hardest work yourself.

Tom Vasel: What about someone designing a CCG?

Andrew Parks: I would definitely recommend drawing upon European mechanics to add to the game’s strategy, especially if the game’s theme does not encourage a straight “battle” scenario. Playing with a victory point system allows players to create multiple paths to victory, and also allows for overall deck creativity and variety.

Playtesting is pivotal to the success of any game, but for a CCG, it is even more vital. You need to enlist as many serious CCG players as you can to help out. Late in the process, when you know that your “theme decks” are generally working well, you need to encourage your playtesters to make decks that are meant to win at any cost with no regard to theme. The worst thing that can happen to a theme-driven CCG is to have all “theme decks” get crushed by two or three different abusive deck types.

Balancing deck power is very challenging. If one or two decks emerge as dominant choices among your playtesters, you should do what you can to weaken those strategies and to strengthen others. You need to make sure that there are a dozen or more top level strategies in the game when it releases so that one deck type does not dominate the tournament scene. There should also be dozens of other deck types that are fun and competitive, even if they are not “top level.”

The most important thing (as with all games) is the “fun level”. CCG’s demand the greatest amount of replay value, and a game that is mathematically sound may still fail utterly as a CCG. Make sure the game is fun and that your group keeps wanting to play it. One of the most exciting parts about playtesting Nightmare was that, after we finished playtesting for 8-10 hours on a Saturday, the playtesters of their own accord would then end the night by playing the multiplayer version of the game! Seeing them do this (and wanting to join in also!) after a full day of rigorous testing made me feel that we had succeeded in making a game that was fun! :-)

Tom Vasel: Tell us some of the process of your designing a typical game. How long from idea to finished product?

Andrew Parks: Each game has a different process depending on upon the nature of the project. For example, if it’s a game I’m pitching, there can be a very long interval of time between the initial idea and the game being published. For a commissioned game, things move much more quickly and can therefore be very challenging.

Here is an outline of the major steps that seem to be common to both types of games:

1) Concept work: This is one of the most exciting parts of the process. You sit down and hash out different ideas, play games with a similar theme or genre to stir up creativity, and discuss the game with your developers on a daily basis. Long breaks (sometimes even a month or two) are often required during this part of the process in order to give your mind a breather.

Personally, I don’t like to write things down during this process (which may take anywhere from a month to an entire year). When something’s written down, I feel tied to it, and I prefer to keep things roaming around freely during the initial concept work.

2) Initial prototype: The first time I write anything down is usually when I’m working on the initial prototype. Most of the time the rules are not very firm yet, and I let the prototype help flesh out the initial set of rules. The first prototype will usually have some images and some basic graphic design to help create a sense of mood. This takes a bit of time (usually from 2 weeks to a month), but it’s really a part of the concept work. When you actually print out cards or other components, you get to start seeing how the components will interact with one another and you can then make immediate mathematical adjustments.

3) First play: This is the most vital and grueling part of working on a game in my opinion. During the first play of the game, all those wonderful concepts that have been floating around in space come crashing to the ground for their first taste of reality. Most of the time, the first play grinds to a halt without finishing because things just aren’t working the way they’re supposed to be working! :-)

You need to have great developers to help out at this stage. Many arguments and ideas will blast around the table until a few solutions are reached. The first play will usually include about 2 hours of actual playing and about 4-6 hours of heavy discussion.

4) Development: After the enormous set of early revisions, we move on to the second play, which is only slightly less grueling. Many of the solutions from the first playtest usually create their own set of new problems. But in general, we will actually finish the second play. We will then move on to new revisions, new versions, and new plays, and
this initial development process will continue on a steady basis for about 3 months.

5) Full playtesting: Once the game is generally working with the core group of developers, we will then move on to full scale playtesting with as many different groups as we can find. This process can take anywhere from a few months to an entire year, depending upon the luxury of time which you have to create the game.

We have often been blessed by meeting an entire group of experienced playtesters who are willing to approach the game on their own and work independently. For example, with Camelot Legends, we had a lot of help from the folks at Romancing Cathay, who had an entire team of seasoned playtesters with their own unique way of looking at the game. With Parthenon, Coleman Charlton and Pete Fenlon from Mayfair played the game with their groups and provided outstanding solutions to many of the problems we were facing. With Nightmare Before Christmas, Alan Ernstein from Hangman Games got his entire playtesting crew on board, who helped us out in immeasurable ways with the game’s development. You simply can’t ask for better help than that!

6) Graphic Design: Once the playtesting has entered the tweaking stages (which can go on for months), the focus will often move to art and graphic design. Sometimes the graphic design from the prototype will be able to be implemented for the final version (as with Nightmare Before Christmas), but most of the time the graphic design will need to be worked over heavily, if not revised entirely. I have helped out in some capacity with graphic design on several of the projects I’ve worked on, with the main exception being Parthenon, which was handled almost exclusively by the talented Jessica Ney-Grimm. The graphic design process usually takes from 1 - 6 months, depending on the complexity of the game. The developers of course take advantage of this time to playtest and tweak as much as they can.

7) Art: The art process usually runs concurrently with the graphic design process, and may begin a bit beforehand. Jason Hawkins was the art director for Parthenon, and he secured the talents of Stephen Walsh, who provided all the atmosphere and mood for a game that you could possibly ask for.

Ed Beard, Jr. led an entire team of industry artists to work on Camelot Legends, and the results were simply breathtaking. Ed is another one of those folks to whom I am in great debt. He personally gathered, organized, and directed a team of 26 artists to make Camelot Legends come to life. I am still as much in awe of their work now as I was when I first saw the individual paintings. Ed’s talents both as an artist and as an art director were directly responsible for the success of that product. The man is truly a marvel.

8) Press Preparation and Communication: This is definitely the most strenuous part of the process. Taking all the pieces of the puzzle and getting them ready for the printer (usually while under a strict deadline) requires many days of preparation, often with little sleep.
Then, after the printer receives the files, the “fun” really begins, as there is frequent communication (and miscommunication) back and forth about incompatible file types, unreadable fonts, and so on. The back and forth communications with the printer can often stretch on for weeks before the printer is ready to create proofs. Anyone who’s been a part of this process can confidently tell you it is a great strain on your sanity. :-)

9) Advance Copies / Full Release: Once you have approved the printer proofs (which can sometimes take a couple of tries), there is often a long wait before you see an actual copy of the game, especially if it’s being printed overseas. But once you finally get an advance copy into your hands and crack it open, it is easily one of the best feelings in the world.

As I mentioned above, the entire game design process from concept work to full release can vary greatly in length. To give you an idea, here is a breakdown of the four games I’ve worked on, starting with initial concept and ending with full release:

1) Ideology: September 2001 - December 2003

2) Camelot Legends: July 2001 - September 2004

3) Parthenon: September 2003 - September 2005 (not including the original corporate training game, Greek Islands, which we started working on in June 1999!)

4) Nightmare Before Christmas TCG: October 2004 - September 2005

Tom Vasel: What are your favorite games that you haven’t designed?

Andrew Parks: I don’t have an ordered top 10 list, but there are a lot of games that I enjoy playing all the time. If I had to put a particular game at the top of the list, it would have to be War of the Ring (Fantasy Flight / Nexus). I am not a master of this game by any means, but whenever I find someone willing to immerse themselves in a four hour game, this is the one I ask them to play! 

Here is a list of my favorites in chronological order by publication. When putting together this list, I was surprised by the number of Tolkien-themed games; I must be a fanatic.

- Acquire (the legendary game that we enjoy playing often)

- Circus Maximus (the original Avalon Hill game from 1979, a great simulation game)

- Dragonmaster (a very elegant trick-taking game from 1981 that was ahead of its time)

- The Fellowship of the Ring (the ICE version from 1982, a campaign length boardgame with a ton of flavor)

- Talisman, 2nd edition (the classic version we still play from time to time)

- Star Wars CCG (my favorite CCG)

- The Settlers of Catan (the great classic of our time)

- Risk 2210 (the most strategic and satisfying version of Risk)

- Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation (the ultimate 2 player game)

- Puerto Rico (no explanation required!)

- Citadels (fast, light, great with just about any number of players)

- San Juan (a beautifully designed game, with tons of replay value)

- War of the Ring (Fantasy Flight / Nexus - as mentioned above)

I recently played Caylus, and I was really blown away. This will probably hit my “favorites” list, as soon as I pick up my copy.

Tom Vasel: In your biography, you mentioned people in the industry who “helped you along the way”. Can you elaborate?

Andrew Parks: Zev Shlasinger of Z-Man Games is certainly at the top of the list, as he took the biggest chance with me and published my first game (Ideology). He then went on to publish Camelot Legends and co-publish Parthenon, and invited me to join him in co-designing the Nightmare Before Christmas TCG for NECA. We are of course working on tons of new stuff too.

Jason Hawkins of Siren Bridge Publishing is also at the top of the list. He has invited me to work with him on several projects, including the Greek Islands corporate team-building game, and later with its boardgame successor, Parthenon. We continue to work together on all sorts of new projects too.

I have already mentioned several others in the interview, including Coleman Charlton and Pete Fenlon (ICE, Mayfair), and Donald Dennis (ICE, Second Rat Games). Each of these folks has helped out numerous times over the years through sage advice, as well as game development. Alan Ernstein of Hangman Games has also been a great source of advice about the industry, and he has also been a major part of developing the Nightmare Before Christmas.

Some other notables to whom I am in great debt include:

Ed Beard Jr. - I already mentioned Ed above as the Art Director and one of the lead artists for Camelot Legends, but his history with the game extends much further than that. Ed pushed hard for the Camelot Legends project and strongly encouraged me to pursue publishing it. He is the one who introduced me to Zev, and was central in making sure the project got off the ground by enlisting the aid of the talented artists who made the game shine.

Tom Slizewski - Tom Slizewski, the former editor-in-chief of Inquest Magazine, is another guy who helped me out quite a lot. He played Camelot Legends long before it was published and recommended it highly. He also played an early version of Ideology and mentioned the game to Zev, who later contacted me to find out about the game. Ironically, I hadn’t made Ideology with the intention of having it published (it was
more an exercise in understanding the force of ideology upon our world in light of recent global events). But Tom’s mention of it to Zev led to it being my first published game.

Peter Corless - Peter Corless of Green Knight Publishing was a huge help in the early development of Camelot Legends. His knowledge of Arthuriana is vast, and he was a great help in helping choose Characters and Events for the game, and he was invaluable throughout the playtesting process. We knew our game would capture the true feeling of the legends with Peter on board.

Frank Coker - Frank Coker of Siren Bridge Publishing funded the Parthenon project and was instrumental in the game’s development. He’s also one of the most encouraging and fun guys I’ve ever met, which means a lot when you’re working on something as complex as Parthenon. :-)

Decipher - The folks at Decipher allowed me to help out with playtesting The Lord of the Rings TCG, and I got to know a lot of them really well, including Chuck Kallenbach, Tim Ellington, Kevin Reitzel, Dan Bojonowski and many others. They knew of my game design aspirations, and were always very encouraging. I learned a lot throughout the entire process of working with them on The Lord of the Rings.

Tom Vasel: Can you tell us a little about choosing the artwork for a game? The art for Camelot Legends plays such a huge part to it, and it’s obvious a lot of work went into it.

Andrew Parks: I don’t know the full scope of the process, because Ed Beard Jr. handled the massive task of art direction. But I can tell you that Ed’s job required a tremendous amount of organization and the rare ability to successfully communicate a common theme to 25 other artists. I was amazed by the skill and receptiveness of the artists who worked on the project, and by Ed’s ability to shepherd the entire process.

For my small part in the art process, I was asked to write a paragraph or two about each of the different characters to be used as a guideline for the artists. When I saw the finished paintings (and sometimes I was even fortunate enough to get glimpses of preliminary sketch work too), I was astounded by the artists’ ability to incorporate nearly every word in the descriptions into their paintings, and yet add new elements which took the character interpretations to even greater places. One of my favorite examples of this is Raven Mimura’s piece for “Sir Dagonet”. The inane style of chivalry embodied by this Character is captured with consummate skill by Mr. Mimura. The addition of the wooden spoon instead of a weapon in his hand is the artist’s invention, and is the icing on the cake for me. :-)

Tom Vasel: Do you think this kind of emphasis on artwork should be put into every game?

Andrew Parks: I think that it depends on the individual game itself. Games that are very theme-oriented definitely benefit from having elaborate artwork (or miniatures, etc.) to reflect that theme.

But with other styles of games, it is not necessary or even desirable. For example, I think San Juan is one of the best card games ever made, and the simple yet evocative artwork is perfectly suited for the game. I think a more elaborate art style would have detracted from the game’s simplicity and elegance.

Tom Vasel: Talking about designing a CCG, how does determining rarity work?

Andrew Parks: The determination of rarity has evolved quite a lot over the years, and when we sat down to determine rarities for Nightmare, we tried to take the best from what our favorite CCG’s had done.

One of the classic errors that used to be made in the early CCG days was to make the Rare cards the best cards in the game, on the basis that rarity would keep those cards from dominating the play environment. The problem with this is that it rewarded players with the money (and the will) to buy lots and lots of packs, and really made it impossible for casual players to be competitive. From a marketing perspective, this may sound like a “good” idea on paper, but it ruins the tournament environment (i.e. new players have no incentive to participate) and ultimately hurts the game’s sales. And from a non-marketing perspective, it’s simply not fair.

However, you still need to have “chaser” cards as your Rare cards, because there is something exciting about finding a particular card that you really want in your deck. With a licensed game, you can often make main Characters from the movie/book into your Rare cards, even while keeping those cards balanced, and you know that fans of the license will be very eager to get their hands on those cards. Of course, the downside to this is that if casual players can’t get the main Characters, they won’t want to play the game. So, a common solution to this in other games (and one we eagerly adopted) is to make Common/Uncommon versions of the Main Characters as well as Rare versions of those same Characters. And this works best if the Common versions are easier to play in most decks (and just as cost efficient as the Rare versions). The Rare Versions can be more “powerful”, but must not be more cost efficient (i.e. it has to be more expensive and/or more difficult to play the more powerful versions of the cards).

Another common concern with rarity involves making sure that Common/Uncommon cards don’t rely on particular Rare cards to become playable. For example, in the Nightmare TCG, there is an obscure Character from the movie named “Reaper” whom we made into a Rare Card (mostly because he looked really cool!). Because of this, we had to make sure that any support cards for Reaper would also be Rare. If we had made a Common support card for Reaper, then you would have players acquiring 12 versions of a card that had absolutely no use to them if they had not already collected the Reaper card.

From a player’s perspective, we also made sure that some of the game’s most fun strategies were easily accessible to new players. During playtesting, there were certain card combinations that were popular simply because they were so fun to play. One example of this from Nightmare is the “Corpse Family” (Corpse Dad, Corpse Mom and Corpse Kid), who generate Pumpkin Points whenever you play them together. We knew that new players would have a lot of fun with the Corpse family, and so we made sure that all three of the Characters were Common or Uncommon.

One other fun method we sometimes used for Nightmare was to take a multi-card strategy and break the cards up into different Rarities (assuming the strategy could still be played without the Rare card). This allowed new players to play with fun strategies in the game, and then to enhance those strategies when they achieved the Rare card. One example of this in Nightmare is with the Vampires. Whenever you play a Vampire into your town, all of the Vampires grow in power. We made three of the Vampires Uncommon (thus allowing you to have fun with the strategy), and made the fourth Vampire Rare so that your strategy would really soar when you achieved this card.

There are lots of other considerations when determining card rarity also, but these are the ones that we focused on the most when we made these determinations for Nightmare.

Tom Vasel: What CCGs have “done it right”, in your opinion?

Andrew Parks: My favorite CCG of all time is the classic Star Wars CCG. Although the rarety system used for the premiere set was abysmal (I think I opened two entire boxes of boosters before I got my first main Character), the game system itself is a thing of beauty. I played this game for many years, enjoying the expansions and meeting many great people at tournaments and conventions.

Magic: The Gathering is the game that captivated us first, though, and we played the game like nobody’s business for two solid years. We stopped playing Magic in 1996 because so many new CCG’s had come out at that time, and because the rules for Magic had gotten a bit clunky by that time (50% of our playtime was spent arguing over rules interpretations). However, I have heard the rules have been overhauled several times since then, and so I look forward to playing some of the new editions that have come out recently.

We also played Marvel: Overpower for quite some time. This game was fast and fun, although it suffered from a tremendous amount of rules changes and FAQ’s. Even so, we played with house multiplayer rules and played the game with up to 6 players at a time with very little downtime. A great game that was very different from other CCGs.

We also really enjoyed The Middle Earth: The Wizards CCG, another masterpiece of game design that allowed you to become fully immersed in the world of Tolkien. I wish I had spent more time playing this, but at the time I had spent all of my money on the Star Wars CCG. Middle Earth is a great game which still has a large following.

Another favorite of ours is The Lord of the Rings TCG by Decipher, which we helped playtest for a couple of years. This is very different from the Middle Earth CCG as it was designed to be a fast, tournament-style game. It’s still a very enjoyable game, though, and we had a lot of fun helping out with the playtesting.

I have only played the Starter Decks for Upper Deck’s new VS. system, but I really enjoyed it and I can see why it’s so popular. One of our playtesters is a championship player for VS., and by watching him play at the tournament level I can appreciate the subtle intricacy of the system.

My daughter gets me to play the Pokemon TCG every once in a while too, and I think it’s a lot of fun as a light diversion. We only play the Starter Decks, so I’m sure the constructed version is more involved. But even the Starter Decks have enough there for us to have a good time.

Tom Vasel: What might we see from you in the future?

Andrew Parks: We are working on several projects at the moment, and several of them should be out within the next couple of years. The three products that should be out over the course of the next year or so include:

1) Christmas Town Expansion: The first expansion for the Nightmare Before Christmas TCG by NECA is at the printers and should be available by the end of April.

2) Ideology: The War of Ideas - 2nd Edition: We are working on a 2nd Edition of Ideology for Z-Man Games that will provide better components, a host of variant rules for different types of play groups, and some re-balanced versions of the Ideologies (as well as the original versions of those Ideologies for groups who wish to play them unchanged).

3) The Elemental Wars - This is a large format wargame with Euro elements that we are in heavy development with for Z-Man Games. The premise is that each player represents a kingdom that worships an Elemental God on the eve of a great conflict among the Elemental powers. Players will mobilize armies and wield great powers in their quest to crush their opponents and achieve supremacy.

Tom Vasel: Andrew, thanks for taking the time to answer these questions! Do you have any final thought for our readers?

Andrew Parks: Thanks so much for inviting me to participate in your interview series, Tom. I hope that many of your readers find the information in our discussion helpful, especially those seeking to get their first games published.

I also wanted to thank the board game community for their continued support of the game industry. To paraphrase a speech I once heard from Reiner Knizia, playing games is vital to our society because it brings people together. I don’t think I could ever sum it up better than that. :-)

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