Dominion

A little context for this episode, the original conversation was recorded on Friday, December 29th of 2023, so all references to next year mean 2024. Enjoy! Welcome to Replayable, where we go into depth on our favorite tabletop games that keep us coming back again and again. I'm the start player Todd, and today I'm joined by Greg and Paul.

For our 20th episode, we will be discussing the granddaddy of deck building games, Dominion. It was originally released in 2008 by Rio Grande Games and was designed by Donald X. Vaccarino, who is also joining us on the show today. Welcome! You know, you have been interviewed a lot, but I apologize in advance if I ask questions that you've already answered a hundred times. Just drop it. Just get on with the question. They're way more entertaining.

Yeah, you mentioned that obviously you played games as a kid and you had a D&D phase and you even made a few games back then. What was it about game design that appealed to you in your youth? In my youth, what appealed to me about game design? I mean, I have no memory of these times. You don't just have trouble pulling memories from your brain. They're actually gone. Right.

And so it's going to be hard to guess the motivations of young Donald X. But the games that I made as a kid were, I think, 100% some existing game and I'd messed with it. Right. And then I think that holds true the entire time until 1994. And in 1994, I played Magic. And at the same time, I'd read a book about game theory, which is largely unrelated to games, called Prisoner's Dilemma by William Poundstone.

And so I was first of all, I mean, I was very interested in like, well, I should make a collectible card game. And then I was like, well, you know, I should just make games with rules on cards that interact. And you know, Magic didn't debut that concept, but really... Refined it? No, that isn't how I would put it. You did a lot of it. Magic did a lot of it and had to figure stuff out for doing a lot of it that other games didn't.

And it's amazing how far they failed to advance, you know, looking at recent sets and how bad the templates are for some of these things that they've had so many years to try to figure out how do you phrase things in the best way. And you know, they've refined it and refined it over the years. But anyway, you know, Magic really did a ton of it. That was my introduction to it.

And I'd done a tiny bit of it, but I hadn't, you know, seen the potential of having, you know, all these cards with rules that will interact and give you unique experiences every game. And yeah, at the same time, I'd read this book. And so I thought I will make a Game Theory game, which I did. It was Pirates Dilemma. And it was impossible for normal players.

You would deal out eight cards every turn into a two by two dilemma grid, and each slot has one card for me and one card for you. And one of us picks the row and one of us picks the column. And the intersection tells us which two cards are doing and you know, one's yours. Right. And this seemed like a fairly straightforward implementation of Game Theory into a game.

And it was cool, but you do have to read eight cards every turn, which is just so does not fly. Right. But yeah, that was a key step. And you know, then just in the in the late 90s, I just cranked them out. I made dozens of games, but my motivation, sorry, I'm not asking your question. I was just like, well, what do I tangentially related to this topic? You know, what made me want to make games? What was the thing?

I mean, I wanted to make video games. I guess what made me want to make games was liking games. And then I, you know, I played video games. I like to say I remember when video games came out. It was something. Right. I never played Pong, but I did play Pac-Man on its first run through the arcades. And yeah, Donkey Kong when that was all Mario had to his name. And yeah, it was like these were fun. I wanted to make those.

At some point down the line, I probably got into, you know, my particular abilities as they relate to game design. In the case of Dominion, which is an extreme example, you know, the premise of Dominion was that everything would be in this deck of cards.

I love that. Building a deck of cards and we'll just put everything in it. I'll not have any other thing. And the whole point to that wasn't, you know, this will work the best. It was, you know, let's just take it to the extreme and see what we get. Right. And that was, you know, very satisfying. Like I can do it all. I can put your, your victory points into the deck and I can put your economy into the deck and I can put what you do into the deck. So I'm into that stuff.

But I would say the main thing really is just that I liked games. Right. Okay. So I made them and that's not just limited to games. Right. I mean, I, you know, I like music and I've written some songs, but I don't really play an instrument and I like fiction and I've written a bunch of stories.

I was going to say, like, you just if I'm into it, I do some. Yeah, I wrote some screenplays. Oh, you read about that somewhere. I did. Yeah. At this point, I turned two of them into novellas and I think those are way more like the those are way more likely to do something because I've managed to like submit stories to places, but I haven't managed to ever send screenplays out. All right. I don't know the screenplays just feel so hopeless.

Well, what themes did you explore? I said, what themes did you explore? You don't have to tell me the whole plot lines, but what these were you gravity? Yeah. The premise of the first one was not the story premise, but the premise for me was to pack in every good idea I'd had, but in screenplay form. Right. And I think you see this with, you know, an analysis of bands, songwriters, where it's like, you know, their first album is every good idea they had in song form.

And their second album is, you know, everything that didn't fit on the first album. And they have to actually start to, you know, learn what they're doing and come up with new stuff. It's the first the first screenplay. It was just what cool stuff do I have and can I mash it all together into a screenplay?

And I totally did. And so the second one was like, what do I have left? And man, I had a lot left. And I worked it into a more normal, more conventional thing. A problem with my screenplays, except for the funny one, was that they all they're all about, you know, people coming to realizations. And while there may be famous movies that do that, I always think of wall and up while we end up where they've got whatever cool premise.

And then at some point, there's just a big chase. And I never had the big chase. And so it always seemed like, you know, who's really going to make these but yeah, the first one was it was very arty. It was surreal, you know, had lots of cool ideas. And the second one was like a more conventional story. And everyone had wanted me to write the funny one, even though there had been jokes in the first two, but they wanted, you know, the airplane style comedy. So I wrote that one, you know, you've probably read the dominion blurbs. Yes, I wrote those. Okay. Oh, man, they are so much work.

I got to write one for rising sun. I'm so dreading it. You're type 15. It's this try to come up with jokes for this narrow topic. And I always always like, Oh, look to my look at my screen, that screenplay. Does it have any jokes I could use it right one, the hinterlens blurb starts with a joke from my, my airplane style comedy. Nice.

It was, you know, in the in the screenplay, it was like, well, it's a big city out there and we're little people. I mean, little ones there to the city, and so on. And so yeah, that translates into the hinterlens blurb. Someday, maybe I'll get these novellas published. Well, someone listening to the pod will be interested in them. Yeah, who knows?

Well, and the reason I'm asking about the screenplays right is because after that you go through Spirit Warriors and Spirit Warriors to how important is having narrative in a game for you. I would say in the murky past, it started off being something I zero considered, except, I mean, I had games that had narratives in them. Spirit Warriors did have hero building and questing. I mean, there was an underlying.

It had stories in it, and it tried a little to make it so that they weren't entirely scripted because things can interact. Right. Right. And I'm still interested in that. I'd still like to make Spirit Warriors to, you know, it made it onto my desk, maybe three months ago and is piles of cards sitting there is instead I worked on other projects. You know, I've got a game where you explicitly tell stories. Maybe I can talk about this game because man, it has been shown around. Let's do it.

This game, it's called movie draft. I tend to not put a lot of effort into these placeholder names. Right. You think, you know, it won't be published with that name anyway, but then Kingdom Builder just got published as Kingdom Builder. Didn't Dominion originally have a name like Castle Builder or something like that? It was Castle Builder. Yeah. Yeah.

At the very beginning, it was like, yeah, I didn't know I wasn't hooked into the community. I didn't know there were a million Build a Medieval Kingdom games. And I was like, I'd like to make a Build a Medieval Kingdom game. And in the beginning, it was all stuff around a castle. So it was Castle Builder. Right. And then I made some more cards like the second expansion was called Abroad because it was like, well, we can't stay in the castle forever.

Dominion is a poor name for it because it makes you think it's going to be like risk. And I think there is a risk product with Dominion in the title even. Yes. But you know, that's what happened. Now it's Dominion. It's like Raiders of the Lost Ark. Right. Right. They're robbing a boat. What's going on here. But once you have had the experience, it's just that game. So it is still bad to name your thing Raiders of the Lost Ark. But in the long run, it can work out.

Well, or you just rename it Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark and then it's all good. So, so movie draft, it was from 2003. At the time, there was no drafting. You drafted in Magic. There are no drafting games. My first drafting game was from 1998. And I was very bitter about not getting to be the drafting game guy, which is all on me for not trying to get my games published earlier.

But you know, at the moment that Seven Wonders was announced, Greed, which I made in 2003 also, was at one publisher not getting played. And I switched it to another publisher that didn't play it. And by the time Greed was actually published, there was already a wave of games derivative of Seven Wonders. But you know, I was ahead of all that. I had drafting games. And so the premise of movie draft was to be a minimalist drafting game.

Well, you just you draft some cards and score and we deal out audiences at the beginning and the audiences have what they would like to see, which gives you a way to calculate a score from your cards. And we draft cards. So your cards are, you know, scenes and roles and special things about a movie and you draft 12 cards and you play eight of them, just telling you the whole story.

And then we reveal all of our cards. And you know, you win an audience if you have the highest score for it and whoever wins the most audiences win. But there's a creative step to the game, which isn't scored, where you tell the story of your movie based on your cards, right? You've got these pieces on the table and you just you explain how they all hang together. Well, it's the story of a writer and at the beginning.

I love that there's, you know, there's this scene and you you work it all together. However you do, right? Obviously, you can add stuff that isn't on the cards to tell the story. Right. You know, and then and then we score and you know, you you aren't scored for your creativity, which I thought was key, you know, because it's so problematic. Right. Yeah. Movie draft was my most popular unpublished game for years, you know, prior to Dominion and then after Dominion was published.

It's a minimalist drafting game and I feel like that time has passed. There are other minimalist drafting games and there are lots of drafting games. I don't know. At some, you know, sometimes I think maybe I will fix it up somehow, give it some twist that makes it publishable. Right. That is the story of movie draft. But anyway, you were asking how important narrative was for me, Gabe.

So I think Dominion, the narrative part or the theme has evolved over time where you can think of it like a shortcut to understanding what a card is based on its name. Does that make sense? Yeah, there's a lot of that. And that's very, it's a very helpful thing to do when your game is so simple. The most thematic expansion is Nocturne and it gets its thematicness in part due to complexity.

And so you have like Leprechaun and you could read the card and guess that it was called Leprechaun, which is like the dream, right? This card is so thematic. And in general, there's so many Dominion cards where there's nothing. There's no way we could have any clue what this card was called just from what it does. Right.

So it's a huge thing that you say, okay, I'm going to make all these things with plus one card plus two actions be villages and then that will tie them together. And it helps you learn the game like, oh, this is a village. It's going to do that. It's a very good trick to do in these situations. You know, I had a playtester friend, Steve, he would always say the story of his turn. He would be like, I go to a village and there's a farm there. And, you know, as he played through all the cards.

I don't think there's so much of that really. There's people who are into theme in the early days of Dominion. I didn't worry so much about it. And there are a lot of cards that are less resonant and there are cards that don't hang together. Like Smithy, for example, is draw three cards. But these days, Smithy would be gain a card costing up to four something something because, you know, I established that, you know, there would be this connection between cards and, you know, Smithy defies it.

Right. This plus three cards would more likely be either some kind of traveling. I try to get in on those like thunder has one called Pilgrim. I mean, it's it's so ubiquitous that it's hard to really tie it down. But I try to tie it down a little. I would think like library or something. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes they're like learning based and sometimes they're traveling based. And those are the two things that are a mild common thread among Smithy's.

It's very good to have resonant cards when you can, where you feel like like in the main set there was thief and it steals treasures and you feel like this is a thief. It's stealing treasures. And I think that really does improve your game. Yes, it was difficult to do with Dominion until I was stuck with a certain level of complexity. That is the very simple cards just have no hope there. Right. Yeah.

You mean naming them as like a shot in the dark. What I always said for the simple cards, there's no hope. And I hope of resonance, like whatever I call the card, like in the main set, for example, has the festival. Right. Plus two actions plus two coins plus one by I always celebrate when I get that card.

Right. Like plus one by tries to be commerce related, but isn't always the most basic things in the game is very difficult to stick to a particular flavor for them because there's only so much of each flavor. And at some point, you know, you're naming the card after whatever special about it, not after the base resources it gives. Right. Right. Nothing is named after that gives you plus two coins.

It gives you plus two coins and it does something. And that's what it's named after. So like festival, it doesn't have anything. It's just vanilla. It could have had a huge number of names and we just be used to it being called that whatever it was, there was no way to make it resonant.

Right. So yeah, you need a you need a more complex card and then you can potentially hang stuff on it. And so the later expansions are more thematic also due to this due to being allowed more complexity and also just due to me caring more about it than I did at the beginning.

So, you know, a bunch of early cards, they just they used to have some name and not a lot of work went into it. And for the new expansion, I worked on the names, I tried to have some cards that fit a name where I started with the name so that that name would be in the expansion and thought what could that card do that would feel at all appropriate.

Okay. But, you know, also at some point it was like, you know, oh, here, here are the cards I would really like to rename to get something better if I can find it. And there's still there's still always going to be cards where that's impossible, where I came up with some, you know, genius simple thing that all I can do is name it and you know people will accept it.

Like I know I know it's okay. I don't I don't really need to stress out about it so much. Right. So in your breakfast interview that you had with Corio right dice tower dish, one of the things you mentioned was that game design is a struggle between complexity and anything else you want. And you're now saying the later expansions have a lot of complexity in them and that makes them more thematic. How do you balance those two things? No, I mean, is it good enough?

Well, I care the most about gameplay. And, you know, you can only maximize one variable. This is what it comes down to. It's a basic rule of life that can be helpful in different circumstances. So what I mean is, for example, you can find the tallest mountain or you can find the mountain with the longest name, but you can't find the tallest mountain with the longest name, you can come up with a new metric that combines mountain height and mountain name length into one metric and maximize that. But now you're you're not actually maximizing either height or length of name, it may fail at both.

And people will see immediately some things like you'll say, you know, which is taller, the tallest mountain in the United States or the tallest mountain in California. And it'll be very clear. Right. Well, it's either a tie, right, the tall mountain in the United States, because California is a subset. But there it's very easy to tweak that just slightly now people not see it at all. But it's just true endlessly. And so which is more fun, the most fun card or the most balanced card, for example, right? Like when you're balancing the card, you're either breaking

even on how fun it is, you're making it less fun. That's not intuitive. But you're you're faced with this constantly. And so yeah, I always try to side with gameplay. I want the best gameplay. I mean, you have to it has to be ultimately fun. You want you the most fun game. And in some cases, that's going to mean having something be less balanced. But you know, I always want the best gameplay. And I care more about that than flavor than I do what I can for flavor. I don't know where this was going.

So in other lines, like how did that result in the second edition changes? I mean, the second edition changes were 100% about gameplay. Okay, well, there's a suite of changes that we're talking about. Because like when the second editions first came out, like all the cards had really horrible layout. And that was fixed, for example. But in terms of, you know, I took out cards and I added new cards, the main beauty of that was taking out the bad cards. Right?

Use the past tense previously when you said the word thief, because that card's gone now. Yeah, and thief in its day felt like an important card. But yeah, the idea was to take out the bad cards. And of course, adding good cards would be good, too. And it was you know, it was an issue because we needed people to not be mad about it. And it's this weird thing where there are situations where, you know, you don't want to be the reason we can't have nice things.

People are sometimes in this area where, you know, in adventures, my big regret about the adventures expansion is that warriors can kill other warriors. And at the time when we were playtesting the set, I was the only one who didn't like it. Everyone was like, oh, it's so thematic. It's great warriors can kill warriors. And it turns out lots of people hate it. It sucks. Because I mean, you have to have all this knowledge of demeaning to know what I'm talking about. But take it from me, you don't want warriors to kill warriors.

And you don't want to invest in something and have someone take it away. Yeah, you put a lot of work into your warrior because you had to upgrade it from a page to a treasure hunter to a warrior. And it was several shuffles in when you lose the warrior, all that's gone. And it's fine that some things can get rid of your warrior that that can be a risk some games. But because warrior can do it, it's in every game with warrior, right?

And I would like to fix that. And it would be easy, we could just change the warrior card, give it a different attack, stick it in the expansion. And you know, we just can't do this because there'd be people really upset about it. And it's just such a bummer, right? And so in the case of the second edition, I mean, we replaced these cards, and there were certainly people who were aghast that the cards were going out of print. But of course, they had them. And we published the new cards separately. So you could just buy those.

We weren't making you buy the whole expansion to get everything. Okay. And you know, they were not intended to stay in print, because in the long run, everyone's gonna have the new cards by buying the new version of the expansion, right? I think they did get reprinted at least once because you know, no, there was more demand for those. Oh, wow. Yeah, I brought those second edition upgrades all the way through Hinterlands.

Excellent. The Hinterlands ones are just amazing. Hinterlands just shaped up so well. I understand the trepidation about removing cards or changing cards. Do you have data from online statistics that help you make your case?

Well, I talked with a bunch of people about which cards should go, you know, which were the cards that people thought were not just weak, but you know, that they didn't like. And of course, I have a lot of data on cards being confusing or having other problems besides power level. People are especially sad when the powerful cards go. Right. And mostly weak cards have gone, but some powerful cards like Mount of Bank have, and you know, there were really good reasons. Right.

The gameplay is way better and I tried to give them something back for the people who had missed any particular card, right? Any card where it was like, no, somebody's going to wish this still existed. I've tried to make the new, better version, you know, more publishable version. I've lost track of the question. I still haven't finished talking about that narrative arc thing from way back in the conversation. Let's tap it now before you forget.

I don't even remember how you phrased the question. I said how important is having narrative in a game for you? Right. And then we, I know one path was the whole, yeah, Steve saying, I go to my village. And yeah, I don't, I don't feel like I have much narrative in that sense. The story that I'm part of is the story of the game sans flavor, right? If we blank out all the names and art, there is a story there, right? That's a different story. Right.

The story of building up and the twists and turns that happened during the game, because surprising things happened. I made, you know, I gambled in some way and lost at some point and somebody else got lucky in some sense. These have been, you know, exciting moments in the plot on our way to in the big dramatic arc of just we build up and then we start to get bogged down and then it's over or whichever variation of that as we talked about earlier.

But the card flavor isn't doing that for me so much. It's nice. When you're designing the cards, do you ever have a sense of let's see how people can have fun just exploiting them and creating these obnoxious combinations? I mean, it may not have to be something that gets fixed because there are so many cards and the likelihood that crazy power combinations occur is really unlikely unless I'm seeking that experience out.

Well, it depends on lots of things. It's great if there's a really exotic game state that's very rare. We'll have a blast with that. And there have been a number of times in playtesting when a card is produced in exotic game state and it was just a bummer that the card did it absolutely every game it was in and that it wasn't something, it wasn't rare enough.

And it was like this is fun once and then you'd never play with this card again. Whereas if it was a combo, you know, it could be there. It could be in the game. It depends on the nature of the combo because there are a few combos that are over the line in terms of what they do to the game. Like, you know, this game is trivial and dull because of this combo. And that hasn't necessarily even killed the card. Obviously, I don't know everything that's going to come up in advance.

But I know some stuff. And so, for example, you know, one of the worst combos is Lurker Hunting Grounds where Lurker trashes an action from the supplier or gains an action from the trash. And Hunting Grounds gives you a duchy or three of states when it's trashed. So you can lurk it from the supply and just gain your duchy. And Lurker is very good at ending the game because you can just trash cards with supply. So you can empty three piles.

And so we can just very quickly empty the Hunting Grounds and the duchies and then probably the Lurkers. And that's the game. And, you know, this isn't great that this combo exists. And it didn't kill Lurker, which came out after Hunting Grounds, even though it's an earlier expansion. But does it even matter? Lurker was super cool. Right. Lurker did all these fun things. I love Lurker. But, you know, it was allowed to live despite that because, well, you need to have that in Hunting Grounds.

And I think there's another one that's about as bad. But most of the combos like this aren't as extreme. Like, I want it to still feel like there's some game, like there's still something, you know, where I tried to make better decisions than you. Right. Yeah. In general, it's great if there's these extreme things that can happen. And there are cards, like you were asking about it from a design perspective, like I'm trying to make these cards.

I'm certainly trying to make cards that will interact in novel ways. And then we see in playtesting, you know, what happens? What experiences do we get? And I really like having the really exotic experiences. But yeah, if there's some three card combo that breaks the game, it's probably not so bad. And I mean, it's probably not so bad even for the people who play online who can play so many more games. Right.

Well, I've even noticed like in the current digital implementation on Steam, I can actually, as paid DLC, I could actually get those first edition cards if I really had to have them. Yes. Which is interesting. We were stuck with that because we wanted to give the cards to the people who bought them on some old platform, Goko, right?

Slash making fun slash fun sockets. Anyway, that's two different entities with those names. Yeah, we wanted to give all the cards to the people who bought them there. And so that meant the first edition cards. I would mostly like people to not have them. They'll have more fun. But I agree with the Lurker hunting ground combo, like the fact that it exists. It doesn't break the game unless those two cards happen to be in your game. Yeah, it's a two card combo and it's those specific two cards.

And so that's not very common. But it's for online players. It's common enough that like everyone has had that game. That game is, like I said, no good, which is really what it boils down to. It's not just exotic. It's like, well, this is it. You buy Lurker, you buy Lurker, I buy Lurker, you buy Lurker, I Lurker, I Lurker, I Lurker, I buy Lurker. There also are exotic game states where you are super screwed in a bad way that I need to try to avoid.

And you know, like Masquerade got errata. There was a there was a combo and we had not found this where it was King's Court, Masquerade, Militia. And so Masquerade makes everyone pass a card to the player to their left. And so you empty your hand by playing your deck. And at the end of it, and you've militia them, so they only have three cards. And at the end of it, you King's Court a Masquerade and you have no cards left to draw.

And so you draw nothing and they pass you a card from their hand and you trash it because Masquerade also let you trash a card. You pass them nothing and they pass you a card and you trash it and they pass you their last card and you trash it. And so they have no hand every turn and you gradually trash all the cards in their deck. Right.

And and this was very easy to fix with errata to Masquerade that says you only pass cards between the people who have any militias and Masquerade are still rude. But don't lock you out. Right. And this was a level of problem where I decided, OK, I'm actually going to errata this card. It's like it's a change that affects almost no games. Right. People always have cards in hand. Why does it why would it even check for that?

It only affects the case where you are going to have this awful experience. And that combo. I mean, it was King's Court Masquerade and then any militia because there's multiple cards that fill that role. So it was somewhat rare, but still seemed worth fixing because of because it was just, you know, you don't get to play. Got it. So what are your thoughts about layering a campaign on top of Dominion? Say first play with these 10 cards and then wait.

OK, so right. I'll answer all the questions. The narrative arc thing that the importance of that for me has gone up over the years. And I would say, especially even now, like as of this last game with its unique, this upcoming mysterious game with its unique narrative to it that makes me think, boy, I really want to get that into more games. And it's not clear like what options there are even for a strategy game, you know, where how much can you program these ebbs and flows?

Right. Different situations. There's all these ways we can have different experiences because of surprising things happening. I don't know what I'm saying here. My whole career has been about giving you new experiences. Right. It's that every game is trying to be something that you could play 100 times and keep seeing new things. Right. The opposite of games before that. Like, you know, obviously, like magic endlessly gives you new experiences.

And that's where I got the idea. But, you know, there's game after game. You know, like I was a big fan of Ryan or Cronizia, but a typical Ryan or Cronizia game. You play it and you've had the experience. It's going to be that experience every time. They're very homogenous. And it goes beyond that. Right. Like he has all these different bidding games that are based on this formula where, you know, Medici and Ra are very similar, but they're different.

And these are the ways. And then there's modern art. It's very similar, but it's different in this way. And if those were my games, that would just be one game. The bidding would vary all that. But so I'm very big on that. But yeah, it's never been focused on narrative. It's always just been focused on. It's super fun to have these games that are different every time. And I mean, I'm playtesting them too. I've got to enjoy playing the game a hundred times. Right.

So I'm trying to make these games with all this variety, but it was never, you know, that's all just like, we'll see different things come up that hadn't come up before. You know, it'll be a different interaction and exotic game state or whatever. But it was never thought of. I never framed it in terms of narrative, in terms of a story being told by the game. I mean, like if you did that, I've only considered that recently. Yeah.

I mean, if you did that with Dominion, you could say here are the 10 cards you use for the first game and then you could have an event, right? That carries over to the second game. Then you have a second set of 10 cards. Oh, you want to talk about the campaign thing now? Yeah. Let's I mean, well, basically, I'm just trying to I'm trying to get more storytelling out of the wonderful framework that is Dominion.

I don't know. I've there were things called campaigns in some of the online versions of Dominion, digital versions, and the new Steam one has big plans to do that. It's just there are still days away from releasing the initial version officially as opposed to as a beta. So it's been waiting. But the way these things used to work is, you know, they were just they didn't have anything that carried over. They were lots of games of Dominion and there would be unique twists to how things worked.

In some of them, there would be a rule that changed the game or sometimes it would just be your starting deck is different in some way. And that is how they worked. And I imagine that's the plan for the future, too. And I put in all that work. I mean, I picked out all the sets of cards and what the rules would be and stuff for all those campaigns.

I think that leads into a question I've always had, which is about the promo cards. Like, are you also designing the promo cards and you think this would be a great card, but it doesn't fit in an expansion or do they come about a different way? Well, promo cards suck. If the card was worth printing, it should be in an expansion. And if it's not worth printing, it shouldn't be a promo. And at first, you think there'll be an exception for wacky cards like this is too wacky to go in an expansion.

And they're not great to have as promos because there's no rule book or anything. These days, everyone can just look up the card on their phone. So you can say, OK, maybe it's not so bad to have the wacky card that the promo. But really, the the promos exist because there's people who want them. You know, the Finnish publisher says, oh, we'd like a promo. The anniversary of something, something Finland. And, you know, we try to be friendly. And so there's Sanna Vonto. Oh, you're kidding.

Yeah, you know, we had a promo waiting for the next time somebody wanted one and Spielbach said, can we have a promo? And so we could just say yes. And so that's Marchland. And it's coming out in January or something. OK, I don't think I finished the previous batch of questions. We had talked about campaigns and adding narrative to the game. And you said that was in store for the digital version.

I didn't really I didn't really answer that question, though. Like, so, yeah, you were thinking of campaigns in terms of I always think of the the Heroes of Might and Magic campaigns. Here's Might and Magic 2. Yeah. Like you had a choice you could make at some point during the campaign and you get this alliance with the elves, which means now random groups of elves on the map will join you from that point on.

So there's actually something some little bit like they didn't do much. They didn't put a lot of effort into this, but there's some little bit to which it's not just play a series of games. Right. Or with the with Pandemic Legacy, where there's some change that happens, not just like these changes to the board, but you know, you make a decision and some card is different now.

And it's not going to be so different, but something or just something as simple as starting with a new card in your deck instead of just copper in the States. Well, I mean, I think that totally did the trick of spicing up those games right to make the campaigns fun. But there was no overall there was no like based on how things go because how things go is just you win the game or you don't.

And we could say you could have something like an achievement in there, right, where it's without this card. Now we're going to do something different next game. And we never did anything like that. So there was no there was no connection. You could just play all of the campaign levels independently. And it's right. They were all related, but they didn't exactly hang together.

It's like there's the seaside campaign. And for one set of levels, there are a bunch of levels where you got to take two turns at the start of the game before anyone else got going as a special twist. And then there were levels where, you know, I've picked out the cards. This is this is the board. And then maybe, oh, you know, your opponent starts with this card in their deck or whatever it is, or you start with this card. And some of those were extreme.

But yeah, the levels are all independent. It's come up a few times doing some kind of campaign thing, not with online domain, but with real life dominion. And I haven't really put any work into it. And I guess it doesn't it's not really hooking me. Right. It's just like I'm getting plenty out of dominion. Right. Well, if you ever decide to do it, you know, I mean, you know, legacy. Yes. I mean, I don't like I absolutely hate tearing up cards. So no, but

and it's like I feel like what you get out of it, I'm giving you every game anyway. Right. Like, OK, you can get this sensation of you tore up your card, you put a sticker on the board. It's different. And we did that. We're living in the world of our consequences, which you don't get out of playing a game of dominion. But it's a part of what you're getting out of it is this variety that I'm giving you tons of. Yeah, absolutely.

You're having new experiences every game. And so, yeah, I don't need to make you rip up cards to do that. You can just do it. I'm not ripping up my first edition cards either. Just. I don't know what to tell you. I unsleeved mine. They're gone. They are no longer Donald. For a while, for a while, I unsleeved Alchemy, but finally I sleeved it again. Oh, you made it back into your good graces. It didn't exactly. I mean, I it's the black sheep. I always say, I mean, there were good reasons.

It was a lesson in, you know, not being pushed around. Right. It was your development. Right. Like the thing you released with the least amount of play testing. Yeah, it was just handsome. Gluck wanted to be putting out small expansions. And I think what they would have liked was like three cards or something, something really cheap that could be at the counter of the store or something. I don't know exactly, but I was too aware that people would own whatever random mix of things.

And it had to be that that mix worked, you know, that you had a good number of, for example, villages, whatever it was, whatever expansions you had. And so I wasn't willing to go below 12 cards. And it turns out, of course, after the fact that people really prefer the bigger expansions anyway. And so at this point, Alchemy is the only small expansion. We just sell cornucopia and guilds in one box.

But yeah, they wanted it right away before the next expansion that was getting polished up and ready to put out, which was prosperity. And which is fantastic. Yeah, that's my favorite. Well, prosperity got so much better with the second edition. It had a lot of dead treasures, but it was always a very popular set. But anyway, yeah, why am I telling you this Alchemy story? I can tell it though.

I needed this set right away that was like 12 cards and Alchemy, which was planned to be the last expansion, you know, of the expansions that I made before I had a publisher. You know, half of it was the potion stuff. So I could just break that off. People always imagine a large Alchemy as having way more potion stuff, but that was not the case. It had just that much. And I got a month to work on it and there it is. And for all these years, there's this lesson of game design.

It's tangential. There's this lesson that when people complain about something, it doesn't matter if they're wrong. They're still not having fun. It's not enough that you can say, well, I've done the math and you're wrong. Right. They're not having fun. That argument doesn't work. This is what Greg thinks about Quacks of Quedlinburg, by the way. I'm unfamiliar with this entity.

Oh, it's a bag builder where you are randomly drawing a chip out from your bag and you're setting it down and you're advancing along a track and based on the combos you're exploiting, you're going to get further along the track that round. And Greg, I'm not trying to embarrass him. I will just say he's had some phenomenally bad luck where statistics say he should be winning by far because he has... Competing. I just want competing. I don't need winning.

Anyway, so kind of what you're saying that the math says that players are wrong, but yet they're not having fun. Yeah. So, wait, what were you talking about? That was tangential. I knew that, but it seemed like it was relevant to what we were talking about somehow. Oh, it's alchemy. Right. So a key thing in alchemy was it has to be... It could be that this is the only potion card on the table. Right. The only one is this one.

It has to be that it's worth getting despite that and that you'd like to be buying potion and have there be several options, but when there's just one option, it has to work. And so I focused on that. That was clear. And I tried to make it so that it worked and people still don't like it. And they're right. Right. They don't like it. It wasn't good enough to just have the cards be good enough, which they aren't all, but some of them are. Right.

But the big thing, like I've always cited over the years, people want more. They want me to make alchemy into a big set. But it's the least popular thing. Like anything else I do would be better, would have more people happy than to do this. People always compare things against nothing, but you have to compare it against whatever else. Right. Yes. Opportunity cost of time. Yeah. But when I re-sleeved it and played with it some more, I think it's clear that potions just aren't a good mechanic.

That everyone who doesn't like potions is totally right. At the very beginning of Damien, it was like, oh, and I'll have multiple resources. And I thought, well, one resource will be better. And I did one resource. And so alchemy was an obvious thing to try. I will add a second resource and see how that goes. And it just sets you up for the hands where you have two in a potion and the card costs three in a potion. And it's just basically bad times.

So this was all just me bad mouthing alchemy, which is for sale. Go buy it. Have the fun of it. I don't react when they come up in an online game when I'm playing on the Steam app, which I do like every day. There's alchemy card is fine. If it's bad, I won't buy it. If it's good, maybe I will. Maybe I'll get the potion. They're playing fine for me. But I recognize it was a poor mechanic. A lesson in interactions with publishers, which is tricky, right?

Because you really want the publisher to be happy. The big thing that I will push about Dominion, it's a secret, though I've said it before. The secret beauty of Dominion is that I used to make all these tableau building games. I mean, I still make tableau building games. It was a big thing I used to do. And you play an ability like in Evolution, a very significant game for me in my development as a game designer that I'm not remotely shopping around.

But every turn you're playing a body part or something. So turn one, it's a four player game. We play simultaneously. This was something I learned in the 90s. It was due to, I always cite Bruce. Bruce would come over to play games and he'd be waiting for his turn. And he'd reach over to the bookshelf and take a book off and start reading it. And when you design the game, that's just heartbreaking.

You have to do something to keep people always involved. I started making all these simultaneous games. And Dominion is my most famous game, my most high profile game. And my second most high profile is Kingdom Builder. And they both have turns. You take turns and you're waiting for your turn. I initially referred to Kingdom Builder as the downtime game. In most of my games, the players all do things at the same time.

There's different tricks you can do to try to solve this. And Dominion uses the best trick I came up with, which is all the complexity of your tableau is hidden away in your deck. So it's not out there baffling you and having things that you miss. Got it. And that's the subset of that. Yeah, it lets you make a way more complex game state that you can handle. Got it. Okay. I have two last questions for you. One of them is selfish.

Well, that's fine. Just ask all the questions you've got. If you only have two, you know, I'll answer two. Well, the first one, I was actually going to get over to it talking about magic and it has that phenomenon called power creep. What are you talking about? Yeah, there's no, there's nothing analogous in Dominion. You don't think so? No, not remotely. Magic. There's no reason for it. It would just be bad.

In magic, there's a reason for it. You know, they talk about what do they call it? Asher staircase or something. That's right. They want it to be that each set looks more powerful, but isn't. And so what they do is you say there's like 10 areas of mechanics or something. And at any given time, most of them are going up, but one of them shot back down.

And so they keep raising the power level on different things while other things are going lower so that it always seems like things are getting better. That was their ultimate solution to this problem. I don't know how well they're implementing it. But in magic, you know, you want to sell the new expansion and you're building your decks and you can just play with the old cards.

And so what do you do? And so there's this temptation and while you make the new cards better, then maybe you'll sell them. And of course, the other thing you can do is say, we're not going to let you play with your old cards anymore. But people know they can play with their old cards when they're not in a tournament or something. Right. So there's this incentive to make the sets get more and more powerful.

But this ultimately wrecks the game. And they knew that the goal was to make the power level flatter. But along the way, they drastically improved the power of creatures versus, you know, the early days. But in Dominion, it's just not remotely like that. You're buying a new expansion because you want to have these new experiences. You're not trying to make your deck better. There's no such thing. Right. Right.

We all play with the same cards. So it's not like you're getting some competitive advantage because you bought this expansion. You're just getting the joy of the expansion. The new expansion, you know, the cards all want to be about as good so that when you deal out 10 cards, there's real question of what strategy you should pursue. It's good to have cards that are situationally better or worse. And lots of cards are trying to manage that.

But, yeah, basically, you want the same power level year after year. Whatever was the good power level, and there's no incentive to make them stronger. It's not going to be like, oh, let's buy this expansion because it has the powerful cards. What does that mean that you want the games to be faster? It would be that, right? Faster, more chaotic, more thematic, whatever is driving a particular player.

You've mentioned that there's been a complexity creep. Maybe that's a better way of looking at it is that you have cards now that are more thematic and more complex, doing more things at once. Yeah, I mean, it's you have no options there. You know, the rules have to go somewhere. They have to go in the rule book or go on the cards. People prefer them to be on the cards. Magic has such insane complexity creep and so much less justification for it.

Because you could do so many extremely simple things with a magic card. Oh, I just played Doctor Who Magic this weekend. Yeah, talk about complexity. Yeah, it's so over the top these days. There's all the places that a card is, and you can move cards between the places. And this is a big source of what cards do. Like we'll move a card from in play to somebody's hand and that's on summon, or we'll move it from in play onto their deck.

And that's time ev and so on. There's all the different ways we can disrupt the basic flow of a card. And then there's the combat stuff. There's the basic things that interact with combat. And then there's all the stats on every card that we can mess with. You know, a crazy number of stats. And Dominion has cost and types. It's very limited as to what there is to mess with. And of course, I put out way fewer cards too, right?

They're putting out, I feel like this number is going to sound improbable. Like it couldn't be correct. You know, I remember the days when they put out three expansions a year, and I think they're up to 30. And I think that's one chart you can find online and 30 sounds like I'm just saying 30. Like that's not the number. It's going to be five, right? It's not going to be 30. But this is counting everything. It's counting like secret layer products or whatever, I think.

But you can find this chart online that shows the progression over time of how many expansions per year. And it explodes within the last couple of years. After it went digital, yeah. And yeah, you know, there will be one to be an expansion next year and it will fit in a box. Plus the promos. When you buy it, you get all the cards. But anyway, Powercreep, it's just not a thing. Complexity creep is totally a thing and every expansion is desperately trying to find ways.

It can be simple despite needing to have new cards. And the new expansion is really going to nail that. It's got a surprising number of very simple cards in it. Looking forward to it. Yeah, absolutely. Well, you guys haven't even played Plunder. Plunder is such a blast too. I've played a couple of the dailies that had cards from it. So it is on my list of things to pick up.

That's a great sticking point of the Steam implementation is those daily challenges that draw from all of the expansions, even ones you don't own digitally. You still get exposed to them. So you're like, hey, I want to play with that card. Well, then. The daily is fantastic. It is really sad when you lose it and then feel like you need to play it again. You can if you buy the expansion. No, I thought you could just keep playing it again that day until you beat it.

Oh, yeah. No, you get one shot at it. I guess I didn't know because, you know, I have them. Right. I didn't pay for them or anything. Well, now you're just flexing. Some of my friends got them too. Yeah, I'll be your friend. So how is the accessibility of community influenced your game design? Because like you started out contacting people via phone and then email.

And now, you know, here we are on Discord and dedicated websites and you've seen an explosion of accessibility to your players just over the course of your career. How has that influenced you? Yeah, that's not true. So, yeah, the community has changed a lot. The initial community was on BoardGameGeek. Right. And somebody made a site, Dominion Strategy, and all the Dominion talk moved over there.

And it's basically dead now. These days, all the talk is mostly at the Discord with the runner up being the Reddit. And there's a tiny amount of traffic on Dominion Strategy and BoardGameGeek. Basically none on BoardGameGeek. And I don't check the German forums very often, usually just when a new expansion is being previewed, I go look to see what they're saying about it. There are German forums too. OK. I feel like I've had all this accessibility the whole time.

Right away, there were all the people talking on BoardGameGeek. And it's important not to be affected by the loud voices that you want to know what everyone thinks. And lots of people are satisfied they're not saying anything. Like you want to ask some players what they think. And that will give you a better idea of what people think in general than just listening to the people who are ranting.

But the people ranting, they've certainly had an effect over the years. You get an idea as to what people love and hate. And typically anything that somebody loves, somebody hates, they're always paired. There's people who are like, yes, I want the attack that makes my opponent suffer. And people are like, we don't play with those cards. We just want to build our kingdoms in peace. It's a rarity to find a card that's really so much on the side of hate, minus the love.

Like probably the most hated card is Possession. And there are a lot of people who love Possession. And Possession was a huge mistake. The big thing is just that it's so rules-wise broken. And in the end, I had to give up on it. Modern expansions just do not consider that maybe Possession will be in the game. Oh, I see what you're saying. Right. It's hopeless. But yeah, there's still people who adore Possession. It's taken out of context. That sounds really bad. But yes.

The least liked card is going to be something no one cares about. It's going to be one of these cards that was very weak and it wasn't very interesting that left with the second editions. There it's going to be, yeah, no one hated that card or loved it or whatever. So am I hearing that there will eventually be an alchemy second edition? Well, you know, that's not something I could ever answer because a second edition can't come out until we sell out of the first edition.

And if people know there's a second edition coming, I know a few people will snatch up the first edition to make sure they've got it. But in general, people will wait. And so if there's a second edition of something coming, if it's public, it will never happen. Got it. Yeah. There are so many projects I could be working on, whether Dominion or other games and the alchemy is still low on the list.

All right. I'll get ready to wrap this up here. Do you have any other follow ups to questions we've had? Well, your whole thing, it's at the beginning, you were all, we're all going to be talking about narrative. That's what we're interested in. That's what I was trying to get to. And we covered a lot of it. And yeah, these days I care more about that. Like I want to make sure, like for years now.

I mean, when I say years, certainly for 20 years, I've been paying attention to this thing, like having the game be climatic. Like I don't want it to just be like the game lasts 10 turns and then it's over. And who has the most point? I want it to feel I want to be the game last 10 turns and then it's over. But it feels like we got to a climax, but the end was big. Right. And this isn't tricky. So I've done it a lot. And I have two or three games coming next year.

And one of them has this very conventional arc to it. And, you know, it builds up in exactly that way. And then you have your big finishes. And so it gets this climax thing very easily. And like I said, one of the other ones is very, it has a very unique story to it. I feel. So can we at least have estimated release dates on these? I just don't know how to get another one of those that isn't that.

What are all the stories I can tell with the ebb and flow of a game that I can really dictate and have play well? I don't. It's all down to art. Right. These two games, I think, I think Rio Grande has announced the names of these games in some newsletter or something. So I just tell you the one is called Pacific and the other one is called Moon Colony Bloodbath. Wow. Polar opposites there. Right. And art is being done on both of them.

They'll come out next year. There's no way to know how unhappy we'll get about the art. At what point will be like we have somebody else finish this art. They're both they're both being done by a single person. Oh, wow. I think that's typical. Yeah. It hasn't ever been true of Dominion. But but for lots of games, there's this very nice style. It's been calling about that art that it's going for that googie architecture thing. Right.

Pacific is this information has not been has not been publicized. Moon Colony Bloodbath is Franz Volenkel doing the art and Pacific, it's Marcel Andre Casasola Merkel. And so his stuff is very argued. Yeah, it is. And yeah, that stuff is all amazing. So my mind still wants to say more about narrative. I don't know what there's to say. I've gotten more interested in this. And, you know, the new domain expansion, you know, March or April. Rising Sun.

That one's also waiting on art, but it's lots of artists. And, you know, if somebody doesn't come through, they just get replaced. You know, I should start to say April at this point, because like the art isn't in. Right. And if the art was in now, I think it could be March. I guess it's not going to be March. But the new the new doing expansion also has a narrative arc thing in one of its mechanics. Oh, now I'm really looking forward to a really, a really different, really different thing.

And that is, of course, completely, completely unknown to the world. So now someone will will listen to this podcast and report it on Discord and strategy and and. But there you go. I'm part of the conversation. It has a unique narrative arc and mechanics. So if that had already come out, we could be talking about that. We may have to have a follow up conversation. And that was and that was the whole idea to it was really that the narrative arc thing would be the cool thing.

You know, so I would try to come up with this mechanic that did it. But over the course of my career, it hasn't hasn't loomed so large. Yeah. Well, I'm with you, Donald. I don't tend to get into the theme of a game that much. And the story for me is what's happening at the table. The exciting moments of drawing the right card or rolling the the results you need. Yeah, I like good themes that I value gameplay more. Exactly. They go up against each other. Right.

You use complexity to communicate theme. And I don't want to because those stories are the stories we tell between friends are always about those amazing moments of, you know, what happened in gameplay, not how it related to the theme. So well put Greg. Excellent. You're going to you can end the podcast with that. I think I'm going to. So, Donald, thank you so much for joining us today. I really enjoyed the conversation.

It's been great. Good. Good again to talk with you, Donald. Sorry, I didn't talk so much, but good getting to know you. Yeah, I didn't let you guys talk very much. That's great. People are here to listen to you. Absolutely. All right. Have a great day and a happy new year. Goodbye. That was a good conversation we had with Donald X Vaccarino. I loved it. Let's move on to the prompts. It's just the two of us. It's just Paul and I talking about Dominion.

The first one, weighting complexity. So on BGG scale of one to five, how would you rate the complexity or weight of Dominion? OK, well, it really depends on which expansions you're playing with. True. As you said, there are over 15. I think there are 14 and 50 is coming. Yeah, expansions plus all the promos. So, you know, when I think about weight, I've been playing Dominion for a long time.

So the base game, I would rate a two and then I think adventures raised up to a three and then Menagerie raise it up to a four. Maybe. Yeah. Depending on a lot of things, it could be anywhere from two to four in my mind. I agree. I had the same thing like base game framework is pretty simple. And I'd say that's like a two. And even within the base game, the card selection, for the most part, keeps it at that level.

But based on the card interaction, you can really ratchet it up with those expansions. And I can see it getting up to a three. I don't know if I'd give it a four, but I haven't played a lot of Menagerie like focused on it. So I think that's one of the other weird things that comes into play. I mean, I'll talk about it later, but Menagerie includes the ways. Right. Cards, which just completely change the game and give you so many options every single turn.

So then strategy. How much opportunity do you think there is for strategy and long term planning? Yeah. So I think with all the expansions, it's increased same as the complexity. And so I rate the strategy and dominion at a four. Wow. OK. Primarily because there's so much path dependency. The choices you make at the beginning of the game predominantly determine who's going to win, in my opinion. Right.

Yeah. It's like trying to determine what's the best synergy between the ten types of cards that you have in front of you, as far as the extra cards that you can purchase. You kind of just pick the path from the get go and have at it. Right. You don't do a lot of changing horses in midstream. If you're playing with experienced people a lot of the time of the game, like let's say a game takes 20 minutes, I think you spend like three to five minutes on your first turn.

Just thinking about what cards you want to start with and what trajectory you want to take. I agree. So I had it down as a three there for strategy, but I could see that being. Yeah, I think with the base game, like back when I played a lot with cornucopia and prosperity, it was a three. But I think it's gotten it's gotten more complex and that means it requires more strategy, in my opinion. Right. So what about luck? I mean, it is a deck builder, so there's you can't get around it.

Yeah, I have to put luck right in the middle of the three. You know, once once everybody's proficient at the game, top decking will decide the winner sometimes. Right. Nothing you can do about it. Yeah, I had it down as a two, but I could see a three. I had it down as a two because you can mitigate the luck quite a bit with a lot of the cards, right?

Whether they're giving you extra draws or yeah, if if you got a shark playing with minnows, you know, that shark's going to win nine times out of ten. I'm numb. I gave it more luck just assuming that everybody's on the same level. Got it. Yep. That makes sense. So then theme. This is going to be a fun one. How much do we think the theme has been integrated with the game again, one through five? You know, Donald changed my opinion. He used the word resonance.

And I totally agree with him that the resonance of the cards title and picture is more and more matching the effect of the card as the game has grown. Right. And with the later expansions, I would rate theme of four. I love the themes of the later expansions. Yeah, I think as the game gets more complex, right, he's able to create that resonance between the theme of the card and what it does.

Whereas before you're like, OK, I need to think of something that allows you to do an extra draw and an extra buy. OK, so I'm going to call that. Yeah. If we're just talking about like the base game and intrigue, then my rating would totally change. I agree. Well, an intrigue was more focused on one shots. If we're looking at the base game, I would say themes like a two. Yeah, I think so, too. So what's your favorite player count? What's the game best played at?

Yeah, so I really like it at four or less. If I have to pick a single player count, I think three is my favorite. Really? OK, and that's just because I don't like the downtime that can happen sometimes in the game. But I love the multiplayer chaos when it's just head to head. It's still good, but I want to have at least a third person. So I think balancing downtime and having more than two people puts me at three.

That's interesting, because I actually preferred it, too. So what is it about the dynamic of the third player that you really like? I think two player dominion is a full out race where you are just trying to get as many points as possible. And you can really calculate the best move every time, whereas once you add the third player, you know, I think Donald mentioned this.

You can get into this Mexican standoff where everybody's constantly improving their deck, trying to wait to pull the trigger and surprise, you know, three supply piles right out before we could buy any provinces. So I guess that's a good point with higher player counts, a likelihood that you exhaust three piles gets a lot greater, especially if there's a clear preferred set of cards out of the ones that are available that everyone is going for.

I didn't even touch on that, that more players buying more cards means, you know, the original design was there's always 10 cards of each pile. And that's never changed. But really, I prefer at least three players because I think it makes the game a lot more dynamic. I think you may have changed my mind on that. I play a lot at two just because that's what I have more readily available.

But I do like the idea that it's more dynamic and that other ending game condition is, you know, it's more likely to happen with three than two, probably even more at four. But yeah, I understand what I also highly recommend the game at four as well. OK, so then your least favorite player account is six. The downtime is just crazy. Six is nuts, right? Yeah. And you know, like Adventures has enough components for six players. I just shake my head. I never want to do that.

But that's not even an option with just the base game, right? You have to have. I don't think so. I think originally it was it was four only, right? So then actual playing time. You know, ideally it's 20 minutes, but I've had games. So the last game I played before taking a 10 year hiatus from Dominion was an hour long game. What? And all I remember is I think there are three of us and we we all had three or four pirate ships.

And so what would happen is if you dared to buy a silver or, God forbid, a gold, the likelihood that it was going to be stolen by the pirates was so high that basically our decks were nothing but copper like copper. It just took forever. Oh, man. Yikes. Yeah. I mean, there's other reasons I stopped playing, but that was the very last game I ever played between like 2012 and 2022. That is crazy. Yeah, I like to say that probably it should be around 10 minutes per player.

I mean, that would be the 30 minutes that the base game says it would take 40 minutes for four. But then again, I have had games get down to under 20, like two player games, especially prosperity games. Right. Right. That's just glittering prizes to use the old Diablo cheat code. I mean, I used to love playing prosperity. It turns the game into a race. And yeah, you could finish a four player game at 20 minutes easy.

I remember certain card sets. Yeah. So then which edition is the best? Have you spent any time comparing first edition to second edition Dominion? You know, I looked it over in preparation for the interview and based on Donald's comments, I love all the changes made for second edition, especially the card color changes and basically how they folded in all the design advancements that they've made over the last 10 years back to the original set.

I love the second edition. Right. Yeah, I agree. The improved cards are great. And there's part of me that has some nostalgia for the original game, the one that won the two big awards in Germany. And I'm glad that I have those cards. But I think if you were buying the game today and you came in on the second edition, I mean, it's fantastic the way it is now.

But yeah, I think it gives you more decisions because in the original game is released, there's several sets that you can randomly put into your supply piles that you would just say, oh, these are the only three cards I should ever buy and then just ignore the other seven. Yes. Whereas now with the new second edition, that's not always true. Right. So then expansions and we've been talking about them along the way. We're not going to talk about all of them. But do you have a favorite?

I can talk about this more later, but I took a long hiatus from the game. I just I never knew that it had grown up. Right. Because I felt like I had outgrown the game. I moved on. But looking back, especially after talking to Donald, I've been playing it a lot online and adventures just blew me away. For me, a breathe new life into the game with its events, its travelers, duration cards, improved duration cards and even the the reserve.

And then the other thing that blew me away again was Menagerie, which came out a few years later. Right. And the introduction of ways and exile just adds so many decisions, which when I left Dominion, I kind of moved on to heavier games. Right. And now Dominion is a heavier game if you play with those two expansions. Right. Gosh, could you imagine showing up to game night with 16 boxes of Dominion?

That is the crux of the problem. You know, it's so easy to play online, but it's become not that easy to play face to face. Right. Didn't you read somewhere that there were like 400 unique cards over 400? I think it's over 500 now. If you count all the the treasures and everything else. Right. If you're talking about the action cards, right. So you've got one card of each type that's there is a randomizer.

Yeah. If there's like 400 supply cards, you know, you put it in your app, it's like you have an app right in your mind that you're like, okay, how am I going to sort these cards so I can find them and put them into these 10 piles? Yeah. You know, we touched, I think, on Magic the Gathering a lot during our conversation and it has the same problem really. And that's why Magic the Gathering publishers want everybody to play online now.

Oh, wow. Okay. Everything's digital. The digital play space allows them to do all these things that would just be ridiculous to try with physical cards. Wow. For expansions, my favorite is Prosperity. I mean, like if I could only pick one, that would be the one that I would choose to have with it.

Even if Adventures increases the complexity. I just love the race. Like I want it to be fast. I want it to be big purchases. I like big dramatic moves and you being able to do that in a small amount of time where you haven't wrecked the evening. If it didn't work out, you could just re-deal and go again. Yeah. I think that's when it shines. That's what my answer used to be.

And then you grew up, but I guess I haven't yet. No, I mean, then I took a second look at the expansions that have come out since Guilds. Okay. And that's when I realized, oh, wow, there's a lot happening with Dominion now. There is. Absolutely. All right. So now this will be a fun one. Most recognizable comparisons. The highest ranking game that reminds you the most of Dominion.

This is a very personal answer. Well, good. Because back in the day, Dominion was just such a hot game that everybody wanted to play all the time. And I would compare it to Catan because it kind of pushed Catan out of the way in the circles I played with. And I think that they have a very important similarity, and that is their huge path dependency. I mean, Catan and Dominion are all about your initial choices.

Especially Catan, where you put your starting settlements is going to just define how your game goes. Oh, my gosh. And the same way the first three cards you buy in Dominion are almost certainly going to define how your game goes. So that's why I picked Catan. OK, I put down Clank Legacy Acquisitions, Incorporated, or to a lesser extent would be Clank, a deck building adventure.

And the reason why I really like the Clank world is that it took the deck building mechanism and then added more storytelling on top of it and did it in a meaningful way. And so for me, that was the highest ranking game that reminds me of Dominion. OK, the only time I played Clank was with you, and I honestly didn't remember that it had deck building in it. I was so focused on the movement and the goal achieving.

Yes, as you are going through the dungeon, trying to get to the Dragon's Treasure and then escaping, you are picking up cards along the way in Dominion style. Right. Yeah, I didn't make that connection. Thank you. Yeah. So the less recognizable comparison. This is also a story based answer, but my pick is Millennium Blades. Yes. And that's because a lot of people used to say that Dominion was like Magic the Gathering in a single box. But, you know, talking to Donald, that's totally not true.

But what is Magic the Gathering in a single box is Millennium Blades. Millennium Blades is the 1990s and early 2000s collectible card game experience packaged up into a 60 minute game. Deck construction is a separate phase from card play, so it's really nothing like Dominion. But I think it emphasizes that Dominion is very different from every game that came before it. Yes. And you were a professional Magic player, weren't you? Yes, back in the 90s and the early 2000s.

So Millennium Blades has got to also hold a bit of... Oh my God, I love it so much. Yeah. It takes me back. Exactly. It's got to pluck on the heartstrings there and take you back to that time. 100%. To have it all in one box is pretty cool. So I stuck with deck building and more pure deck building as opposed to games that incorporate it these days. And one of the other common themes, aside from the fantasy theme, is sci-fi.

And so I went with Core Worlds, which is a great blend of deck building as well as strategizing and manipulating your fleet strength through deck building. Heck yeah. You know, I went back and looked at what happened when I stopped playing Dominion and basically what took its place. And it was Core Worlds. There you go. Awesome game. I like Millennium Blades is a good pick too. Thank you. All right. House Rules. How would you improve this game?

I don't know if it's in the rule book, but I am very forgiving when determining the 10 supply card piles. I am more than happy to let people veto certain cards or make substitutions if they think it's going to make the game better. I don't know. I just I have so much trauma from Pirate Ship that I would never want to play it again. Right? And let's not waste the time. So I totally agree with that. I add down something similar. Crafting card sets that support a fun narrative. Right.

So if it makes sense and you're going to pull cards from multiple expansions because you're trying to create almost a storyline and see how you do, absolutely go for it. Oh, that sounds like a lot of fun, actually. I'd like to try that. We just have to find time. Yeah, that's the rub. It is. If Dominion is being played at game night, then what do you want to play afterwards or before?

Because you know, Dominion can be a digest Steve after a main event. What's the double feature game that goes along with it? I mean, right now it's just more Dominion. I just want to play it again and again and again. If we're going to go to the trouble of forklifting in all the cards, I just I want it to be the feature game that night and the only game that night. That's fair. Or we're going to have a night of just sleeping.

I agree. This is one of those few games where I think once you get playing, you want to keep playing it again and again. If I was going to pair it up with something, I would probably just go with one of the previous two games I mentioned, like Core Worlds or Clank Legacy. But I really enjoy playing Dominion. And once you get into that mindset, it's almost like let's just churn and see what the next game is going to be.

Yeah. So what feature of the game still stands out to you? For me, this is going to be a rhetorical question, but maybe you have a different. Yeah, I mean, it's it's the originator of deck construction. That's it. Yeah. What else is there? Deck building while you're playing. Right. It started at all. And I really enjoyed the conversation we have with Donald when he was talking about, you know, everything was going to be in your deck.

And it came out as a result of that aesthetic, like, OK, your equipment's going to be in deck, your cards, your victory points, everything's going to be in your deck. Even the rules are going to be in the deck. Even the rules are going to be in the deck. Yeah, it's just fantastic. What feature of the game now disappoints? What feature may not have aged as well? It was not good from the get go. The attack cards. I mean, sometimes they're neat and sometimes they're fitting.

But when they extend the game to the point where it's no longer fun, that's the one thing I hate about Dominion. Right. I know. That's a good point. I didn't think about that one like the witch and the curse on the original one. And then I like the witch and the curse, but I don't think there's any attack cards in the original that make it painful to play. But intrigue first edition seaside first edition, they have cards that can just make the game no longer fun.

Okay, I would agree that those would not have aged as well. But they're not in the second edition boxes. So, hooray. People weren't playing with them. So got rid of them, which is another interesting side effect. I guess I don't know. For example, like I play it online on Steam. It's free to play there. The base game. And then all of the expansions are being released as DLC that you pay for.

But there's a daily challenge that's going to draw cards. That's how they tease you into wanting to play the expansions as they let you play one game each day that has cards drawn from all of it. I wonder if they're tracking like which cards people are playing with or which expansions. Right. Well, they certainly do with the website Dominion.Games. Okay. Which is what I've been using to experience all the new expansions. Well, new to me expansions. Right.

It's a bit like those Coca-Cola has those freestyle soda machines. Have you seen those where you get to mix your own flavor? Oh, where you punch in what flavor you want, right? You pick what the base drink is and you punch what additional flavor. And I'm thinking that's just in market data collection. So if you find out that, gee, Diet Cherry Coke is going like gangbusters in Atlanta, then that's what you're going to sell into Atlanta.

I mean, people are just telling you what they want. I never thought of it that way. That's awesome. And you have to have an internet connection on the machine to be able to have it in your store. So, yeah. I didn't know that. Wow. Thank you. Learn something about. I thought it was, you know, give customers whatever they want at the press of a button, but it's also feedback. So, yeah.

Yeah. So I wonder if they're doing that with Dominion as well to get insight. Same thing with Dominion. Exactly. Did this game replace a previous one? Emphatic, no. Emphatic, no. OK. By the way, I had it no with an exclamation point too, because like it created a new genre. It didn't replace it. Exactly.

Has it since been replaced? And if so, by what? Yeah. Yes and no. I mean, like we've talked about, I stopped playing around the time of Cornucopia and Dark Ages and moved on to deck builders like Core Worlds and Innovation, right? Which isn't really a deck builder, but it's what I moved on to. And nowadays, you know, I think we've talked about this before. Some of our favorite games are deck builder worker placement games, which is a new genre combination, really.

Right. But I am really thankful that you invited me to be part of this episode because it has forced me to learn a lot about what Dominion is today. Right. And so for anybody like me who feels like they outgrew basic Dominion, I strongly recommend giving it another try with adventures and menagerie. Excellent.

I'm glad we came back to it as well. For me, and I had something very similar. We had stopped playing Dominion and we had moved on to games that weren't pure deck builders any longer, but had deck building as a component. You know, we've done our three top hits between Great Western Trail, Dune Imperium and Lost Ruins of Arnak. All of them are of that style that have deck building as a single component within a larger framework.

And all three of those have done very well with our group. Yes. And you now have what, New Zealand? We got to try that. That's right. Sheep herding. So soundtrack, what music would you want to listen to while playing Dominion? I didn't have an answer for this, so I went to the internet and apparently there is a genre called fantasy medieval tavern music. And that's what I would want to listen to. Oh my gosh. Yes. Drop the mic. That's perfect. Medieval fantasy tavern music. Sign me up. Right.

All right. Rating. So on BGG scale of one to ten, how would you rate Dominion now? Averaging all the expansions and being as I'm only reintroducing myself to it for about a month now. It's about a seven, but I think it could go higher if I keep playing. Nice. You're a stricter rater of games than I am. I had it down as an eight.

I mean, I'm not championing at the bit to bring it out to the table, but I'm always delighted to play it. And for me, that's a good sign of a game. So I had it down as an eight, which means, I'll ask question, is it replayable and how soon would I want to revisit the game? I'll say that I love the digital implementation on Steam and I've been playing those daily challenges. So I'm playing it daily. How about you?

Right. If we're talking about digital implementations, it's highly replayable. I can play almost every day. But face to face, you know, we touched on this before. As much as I've renewed my enjoyment of the game, there's still a lot of other games I'd rather play with the group that we have. And while I think Dominion could fit with our group, using the later expansions, it requires a significant investment to first own them and second, bring them to game night.

I almost would want to do it once just for the meme of showing up with 15 or 16 boxes. Maybe, maybe it would actually, you know, require the investment of pre-planning four or five supply sets. Now you're talking. And only bringing those. Yes. That's how we would have to do it. Especially with your recommendation before of making the supply stacks into a story. I think that'd be a lot of fun.

We talked about this during our conversation with Donald is like, I think there's a campaign there somewhere between the events and the ways and things like that. You could come up with a story that you could thread. I haven't figured out the mechanisms of what carries over from one game to the next. If you were going to make it cohesive like that, but at least in the theme of the cards, you could. Yes, I agree.

All right. So any other final comments after this amazing show we've had where we've had an opportunity to talk to Donald X. Paccarino and it's been great. And I'm so happy that you requested my time for this one. All right. Well, thanks for being available and enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you for listening to replayable. Support for our podcast comes from listeners like you. You can find us online at replayable.fm on Twitter as replayable FM and on Instagram as replayable FM.

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