Shannon Appelcline: Interview with Mike Fitzgerald

Mike Fitzgerald’s game design career got started with the publication of Wyvern, an early CCG. However, he’s best known for the Mystery Rummy card games. After a 5-year hiatus the newest game, Bonnie and Clyde, was published by Rio Grande Games last month. The following interview helps to commemorate this new release; it covers the whole Mystery Rummy series, from Jack the Ripper, up to the present.

The Mike Fitzgerald Interview

Shannon Appelcline: What got you thinking about turning Rummy into a more strategic game in the first place?

Mike Fitzgerald: When I was a kid I used to spend the summers playing rummy with my sister and cousin. We played 500 rummy for hours at a time and loved it. As an adult when I thought of what kind of game I would like to design (this was after my trading card game Wyvern was a hit and the company said they would do anything I wanted) a more strategic version of rummy was the first thing that came to mind.

SA: What made you decide on a mystery theme?

MF: I have been a fan of mysteries all my life and read them constantly. I always thought that rummy would simulate gathering evidence to solve a mystery since you are collecting cards and then trying to make sense out of them. With Mystery Rummy I try to add a little theme that fits the particular story and give the player some things to “figure out”.

SA: I do often get that sense of collecting evidence when playing the games; I think that just the naming of the cards adds considerably to the theming.

You said that you wanted to make Mystery Rummy a more strategic version of Rummy. That definitely comes across in the games. The gavel cards, the shut-out rules, and the individual themes for the games all tend to add to the strategy. However, there’s one aspect of Mystery Rummy that always felt a little less strategic to me: in regular Rummy you can meld cards in two ways, by sequence or by set, while in Mystery Rummy you only have sets.

What led you to make that change, and what effect do you think it has on Mystery Rummy’s gameplay?

MF: I decided to replace the ability to make runs with the added depth of all the ways to get the sets into your hands. This gives a different kind of strategy and was very helpful in adding actions to flesh out each of the themes. In regular rummy the strategy is centered on the ability to discard well and to set up a hand that can benefit in as many ways as possible from drawing certain cards. Mystery Rummy allows you to center a strategy on completing a set by using deduction and a sequence of actions in the gavel cards.

SA: Let’s talk some about the individual games. The first in the series was Jack the Ripper, which you’ve previously said is your favorite in the series. It’s definitely the most intricate, with several interrelated gavel cards, the mystery of who Jack actually is, and a shut-out condition (the Ripper escaping) that tied to several of the other cards played.

What made you decide to simplify the later games, especially when you enjoyed the first so much?

MF: I find that when I design a game the game finds its own level of complexity. I am not a fan of rules and complications just for the sake of more rules and complications. As I work on a game it tells me where it wants and needs to go. I knew that Jack the Ripper was a difficult game to learn so i did want to make some Mystery Rummies with an easier entry point for new players. I also found that in the other games adding the depth of Jack would have been forced. The Ripper story fits the extra complications of the two games going on at once so well. I think each of the games is at a slightly different level. Wyatt Earp and certainly Bonnie and Clyde have a lot going on in them and have intricacies. Jekyll and Hyde was made to be the simplest introduction to the series and I do think that game fits the theme very well. I am not a fan of complicated games. My favorite games are simple in rules and give you interesting choices and challenges in play.  I also like a good amount of luck and randomness in games. The managing of this luck (like a hand of cards) is what makes the games interesting to me.

SA: Where other people say “randomness”, I like to say “risk/reward”. If a game allows for good selection and management of luck, I don’t find it “lucky” at all ... just something that requires different skills.

You mentioned Wyatt Earp, which I think is a particularly interesting Mystery Rummy game because it wasn’t actually published as part of the series. I know you’ve written elsewhere that you decided that the theming didn’t fit in with the Mystery Rummy name ... but how in the world did Wyatt Earp end up over at Alea?

MF: When I realized it should not be in the series I called my friend Richard Borg and asked him if he would like to help develop the game and see if we could get it placed with a publisher. Richard has a good relationship with Stefan Brueck of Alea and after we finished the game he showed it to Stefan and it got published with Alea.

SA: So let’s talk about your brand-new Mystery Rummy, Bonnie and Clyde. When I first heard rumors of the game, it was to be a 2004 publication by U.S. Games, but it ended up coming out from Rio Grande Games in 2009. That’s surely a long time to sit on a game. Did it get revised at all between those those two dates?

MF: No real revisions. I kept playtesting it for many years with different groups. I did change the number of cards in one of the sets so they all matched and we did not need to show a point value on the cards. This made the game easier to learn and play. The more I played this one over the years the more it grew on me. I like the ways to deduce what players are holding based on what they do with cards under the board and it is really fun to set up big plays that get you lots of double points and capture Bonnie and or Clyde.

SA: So it would have featured a game board, even if produced by U.S. Games?

MF: No. It was laying out 10 location cards at that point. The board was a design decision which I recommended to Rio Grande.

SA: Now that Bonnie and Clyde has finally been published, are there more Mystery Rummy games in the pipeline, or has the line come to an end due to U.S. Games bowing out?

MF: A lot depends on how well Bonnie and Clyde sells but I do expect the line will continue.

SA: How about the older games? Most of them have dropped out of print in the last few years, with only Jekyll & Hyde still listed in the U.S. Games catalog. Is there any plans for U.S. Games or someone else to reprint them?

MF: US Games is reprinting Jack the Ripper in English and Pegasus Spiele has just released Jack the Ripper in German. I do expect they will all be reprinted eventually.

SA: That’s great to hear! Anything else you’d like to say before we finish up?

MF: Just how happy I am that people are still enjoying these games. I made them because I liked playing them where most of my other design work (like trading card games) was to design games that would sell. And thank you for taking the time for the interview.

Around The Corner

I’m apparently not the only fan of Mystery Rummy. On Tuesday Fraser McHarg published his own discussion of the newest game and how it compares to the rest of the line.

As usual, a couple of reviews over the last fwe weeks. This week I reviewed Giants the new big-box release from Matagot (distributed in the US by Asmodee) while last week I touched up my review of Through the Ages to account for recent printings with even nicer components.

That’s it for now!

Comments: