Shannon Appelcline: The Expansion Game, Part One: The History

What was the first gaming expansion? I’m sure that if you looked back to the 1930s and 1940s you could find some amateur Monopoly supplements.  Likewise, I wouldn’t be surprised if amateur Diplomacy supplements appeared in the 1960s. For professional publications, it’s obvious that things got going even later. You can find some linked games as early as 1973, when GDW began their “Europa” series. SPI’s North Africa Quad of four games similarly appeared in 1976. However, the surge of true gaming expansions appeared in 1977, when SPI put out its two supplements for War of the Ring and Avalon Hill supplemented their Win, Lose & Show game.

I’m sure there’s a few scattered earlier expansions that one could dredge up, and I welcome your comments on them, but I think that 1977 is a pretty good starting point for when gaming expansions became a professional business.

And, as part of an overall look at expansions in gaming, I’m going to tell you why.

Dungeons, Dragons, Americans, and Germans: 1974-1977

I’m pretty confident in saying that you can trace the emergence of gaming expansions as a business model to Dungeons & Dragons, which was released to the public in 1974. The publisher, TSR, started out following in the footsteps of hobbyist game publishers that had come before them—like Avalon Hill and SPI. They thus didn’t see a business in gaming expansions and instead figured that they’d keep pumping out new roleplaying games of all sorts, starting with Boot Hill and Empire of the Petal Throne the next year.

However, Dungeons & Dragons—and really the whole new roleplaying medium—was quite different than those board games that came before. These new games were infinitely expandable, and thus publisher Gary Gygax couldn’t help but tread on some new ground as well. In 1975, while the company was producing its second and third roleplaying games, it also put out two expansions for Dungeons & Dragons—books of character classes, monsters, and treasures called Greyhawk and Blackmoor.

Though TSR did publish these two gaming expansions before any other hobbyist gamers were really considering the possibility, what happened next made it obvious that the whole idea of expansions was still very alien to them. In 1976 TSR was approached by a man named Bob Bledsaw who wanted to license Dungeons & Dragons so that he could produce adventures and other expansions for the game. He was literally laughed out of the meeting. TSR didn’t understand why anyone would want to buy expansions instead of new games. Bledsaw, meanwhile, got the last laugh, by starting up Judges Guild, which became the top producer of roleplaying supplements for the next five years.

And thus we move from 1976 into 1977, by which time we find Judges Guild, Wee Warriors, Games Workshop, and Metro Detroit Gamers all producing expansions for Dungeons & Dragons.  I find this evolutionary tale interesting because it explains why gaming expansions are such a uniquely American phenomenon. In the 1970s, the same companies who were producing hobbyist board games in America (and England) were also taking the first stabs at roleplaying games, and thus it’s very natural that the idea of expansions leaped the species gap, as it were. As a result we saw those aforementioned expansions from Avalon Hill and SPI in 1977. Other American games like Eon’s Cosmic Encounter (1977) and Metagaming’s Melee (1977) were centered on the idea of expansions from the start.

Expansions & The World: 1977-Present

The American idea of expansions stayed American (or at least Anglo-American, including Britain) as time passed. Companies like Steve Jackson Games carried the banner of expansions through the 1980s with games like Car Wars and Illuminati. Games Workshop similarly built games like Talisman and HeroQuest upon an expansion model. Today most American producers of hobbyist games—such as Atlas Games, Fantasy Flight Games, and Steve Jackson Games—produce as many expansions for their games as new games, if not more.

Understanding the American origin of expansions also explains why they took so long to to gain traction in Germany. We think of SdJ winners as being heavily supplemented, but in truth that’s a pretty modern phenomenon. As far as I can tell, from Hare & Tortoise (1979) to Manhattan (1994), not a single SdJ game received a supplement. Then a little game called The Settlers of Catan (1995) came along. It apparently received expansions not due to any financial motive, but rather because Klaus Teuber hadn’t gotten to publish the whole game he envisioned; The Seafarers of Catan (1997) was intended mainly as the balancing final piece of the game, but its success showed future winners the way to milk an SdJ victory.

Since 1995, most SdJ winners have enjoyed expansions (though sadly not 1999’s Tikal or 2000’s Torres), while since 2001, when Carcassonne won, they’ve gone crazy. In the 21st century most SdJ winners receive yearly expansions until the franchise is entirely dead. Besides 2001’s Carcassonne, 2003’s Alhambra, and 2006’s Thurn and Taxis are all members of the one-a-year club.

It took a while for the idea of expansions to catch on for Germany, and they still haven’t been used much beyond the SdJ winners (which I find somewhat remarkable), but for those games, the publishers are clearly gung ho.

However, in the last couple of years, an alternative to the expansions has appeared in Germany. Ticket to Ride (2004) has joined the one-a-year-club, but it’s been mainly supplemented with alternative games like Ticket to Ride: Europe and Ticket to Ride: Märklin. They’ve only fallen back to true expansions in the last couple of years with releases like Switzerland and Nordic Countries. Unlike the standalone games, these newer releases depend on you having an original game. This all might be the German answer to the American expansion model: more expensive standalone games for a few years while the SdJ market is hot, and cheaper expansions afterward. Certainly, 2007’s Zooloretto seems to be taking the same path with the recent announcement of their standalone Aquaretto.

Though Germany found its own, apparently accidental, path to gaming expansions, elsewhere in the world gaming expansions seem to correlate pretty well with penetration of the roleplaying industry. The hobbyist industry in England has largely been controlled by Games Workshop, which started out as a Dungeons & Dragons licensee, and that’s why the country has been so very expansion friendly. France is another country that had some notable roleplaying influence in the 1980s and 1990s, thanks to companies like Oriflam and Jeux descartes. Thus it shouldn’t be surprising that we now see French expansions though releases like Eurogames’ Formula Dé and Asmodée’s Dungeon Twister series. Even more notable is the expansion model shown off by Days of Wonder’s two military combat games, BattleLore ... and Memoir ‘44.

And the expansions for Memoir ‘44 are going to be the topic of my discussion when I return to the question of expansions in four weeks. I’ll see you then!

Around the Corner

My next column falls on Valentine’s Day, and thus my wife has agreed to write a guest column on what non-gamers like. Then I’ll be back here two weeks later to talk about expansions some more, and some of the unique new models that I think really work.

Meanwhile, you can as always find my other writing on board games scattered around the net. Last week I wrote a column on game design and The Tragedy of the Commons for Skotos. Meanwhile my reviews of the last couple of weeks have been of a couple of brand new games (to the American market): Freya’s Folly and Lascaux.

© 2008 Shannon Appelcline

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Ticket to Ride : Nordic is a stand-alone game, not an expansion. Posted by Håkan König on Jan 31, 2008 at 02:34 AM | #

Often during the design process, interesting variants and secondary mechanics need to be trimmed in order to be sleek enough to attract the attention of a publisher.  Expansions are a great way to put some of these back into the game, unless they are recycled later in another game. Train games, as we have seen, are perfect for expansions and/or related stand-alone games, as one can always keep the basic rules while varying the maps for a different experience.  Trans-America did this as well with Trans-Europa. Posted by Jeff Allers on Jan 31, 2008 at 05:00 AM | #

The first expansion I know of was the Stock Exchange expansion for Monopoly, which was produced by Parker Brothers - in 1936. However, I’m not aware of any other professionally-produced expansions until at least the mid-1960s - Avalon Hill produced expansions for various games, but I’m not sure if any of them were actually that early. Certainly none were earlier. Posted by Dan Blum on Jan 31, 2008 at 09:59 AM | #

And of course as soon as I hit Submit I remembered the Confrontation Expansion Kit, produced by Gamescience in 1967. Posted by Dan Blum on Jan 31, 2008 at 10:01 AM | #

”...they still haven’t been used much beyond the SdJ winners...” Is that true? In the late 1990s, small give-away expansions were popular as Essen specials or follow-ups; good examples being Isfahan (expansion for Samarkand), Grand Canyon (for Canyon) and Der Spiel mit der Schlange (for Sternenhimmel).  In addition, Michael Schacht has done expansions for just about every game he’s done (some, such as for California and Hansa, distributed by the publisher; some self-produced).  And Bohnanza may have more expansions and follow-ons than any other game short of Age of Steam… Posted by Joe Huber on Jan 31, 2008 at 10:06 AM | #

It’s not strictly true that none of the SdJ winners prior to Settlers had any kind of expansion, either. Scotland Yard has a spin-off game, although admittedly it was released many years later. Cafe International also has a spin-off game. Dampfross had a professionally-published spin-off/expansion, Dampfross 2, with different maps (we won’t count the vast number of maps produced by David Watts). Finally, Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective has had four expansions published. Posted by Dan Blum on Jan 31, 2008 at 10:12 AM | #

Yes, there are often SdJ spinoffs, although the gap between the original game and the new one can be pretty large.  Another example is the Auf Achse Card Game, which appeared 8 years after the SdJ winner. And while it’s strictly true that Tikal didn’t have any expansions, the gaming world rightly considered Java and Mexica to be the logical continuations of the series.  Why bother with an expansion when fans of the original will happily buy a brand new game? I usually think of Cosmic Encounter as the first game to really focus on expansions.  RPGs seem like a different animal and I have a hard time equating the many different D&D volumes with the moons expansion for Cosmic.  Still, it may not be a coincidence that Eon’s strategy occurred right after the birth of roleplaying. Posted by Larry Levy on Jan 31, 2008 at 10:39 AM | #

Remember that quiz show trivia games like Jeopardy and Password put out nearly endless quantities of new editions.  Of course, these games were consumable and always needed new questions to feed the mill. Posted by Jonathan Degann on Jan 31, 2008 at 12:03 PM | #

Dan Blum beat me to the Monopoly Stock exchange information.  :^) Posted by Nathan Morse on Jan 31, 2008 at 01:31 PM | #

I wonder how this all relates to miniature wargames? Miniatures have been around a long time I think, and I’m pretty sure that D&D was actually originally an outgrowth of that branch of hobby games rather than boardgames, which to me explains to some degree its amenability to expansions (I’m not that knowledgeable on the history of minis, maybe someone can help me out here). Posted by Chris Farrell on Jan 31, 2008 at 01:40 PM | #

Miniatures wargames were definitely around, and D&D is a straight outgrowth of them, via intermediary Chainmail. However, the miniature producers and the miniature rules producers were largely segregated. Though the miniatures producers might keep putting out new casts, the rules producers would produce one rulebook, then go on to the next set of rules. But perhaps the knowledge that miniatures kept coming out did influence the idea of producing other supplements. Posted by Shannon Appelcline on Jan 31, 2008 at 02:48 PM | #

The two SPI LoTR games were not strictly expansions. Mostly they were small wargames set in the same world. As to Germany, what has caught on is the promo expansion. A rather large percentage of games get some kind of tiny 1-2 card expansion in a magazine or as a convention promo. AH did a lot of small expansions in The General (sorry, these were not Expansions, they were Variants.) Posted by Frank Branham on Jan 31, 2008 at 04:54 PM | #

My experiences were more in line with what Chris Farrel said.  For expansions the genesis I saw lies not with RPGs but miniatures games from the early and mid 70’s that constantly underwent either revision or issued an expansion done to introduce new vehicle stats. The name sometimes changed between revisions, but fans of the system followed the authors work. (much like the games of JD Webster today). (and by the way experience points didn’t begin with D&D or Chainmail either, but with earlier air combat games in which after shooting down 5 planes you were an ace with die modifiers. Similar ‘expereince’ rules were used to raise crew/troop ranks from green to experienced to veteran/elite.) What makes following early miniatures rules so difficult is they were extremely regional.  Aside from mail order in fanzines, companies didn’t distribute past their immediate area of regional cons and hobby shops. The expansion books were even more limited in distribution (often being little more than photocopies). One of these days I’m going crash the basements and raid the collections of these old school miniaturists/grognards in my area and get a bunch of these missing games uploaded to the geek (the geeklist I made was so sparse: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/18123 ) As for boardgames Battleline (whose transition from miniatures games to boardgames was indicative of the process) was another early adopter driven by adding vehicle stats. The air force expansion Dauntless is listed on BGG as 1977, but I think their were others not listed (although I could be remembering stats giving articles in magazines which by the way is another early source of expansion material). I thought of confrontation too.  Another example from Gamescience is MiG Killers Expansion Kit (1977). Good topic Shannon! Posted by Ray Petersen on Jan 31, 2008 at 05:11 PM | #

A few other examples from board wargaming - the Blitzkrieg Module System and the 1914 Revision Kit, both published in 1969. These are especially interesting since neither was published by Avalon Hill, who published the original games (to be sure, Jim Dunnigan, who worked on both, was the designer of 1914). However, I think more important for the trend was Panzer Leader, the sequel to the extremely popular Panzerblitz, which came out in 1974. That was probably the first widely-purchased expansion/spin-off game. Avalon Hill of course got into expansions in a fairly big way with Squad Leader a few years later. Posted by Dan Blum on Feb 1, 2008 at 09:42 AM | #

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