you, boardgamers know that vacation is a great time. This is the moment when we can finally play all these great games we were buying and collecting for whole year!
We have many games. We are well prepared for every occasion.

Is it raining for whole day? Everybody on vacation is pissed off except us, boardgamers! Rain, this is great! You must sit in hotel room! Now you have time to open Arkham Horror with all expansions you bought for last decade and play it for 24 hours!

Is it cold? Don’t go sightseeing, it sucks and you can got a flu! Sit at your hotel room, open suitcase and bring it to the table – Twilight Imperium, III ed. Oh, yes, I wish it is cold for whole 2 weeks. No problem at all.

Nice weather? OK, let it be nice weather. I am not big fan of nice weather, but what the hell, I ame prepared! I can go to the beach. I can go to the beach with Cash & Guns, Tichu, Hystericoach and have some fun. Of course, when on the beach, be aware of water, especially if you can’t swim, like me.

You are with kids? Give them Talisman and you don’t need to care about them for next 6 hours. Giving them Talisman is like hiring a nanny but better because it can handle up to 6 kids! What nanny can beat this?!

You are with friends who don’t know boardgames yet? Put Ticket to Ride on table and look how their eyes open with excitement and new born passion. This is huge moment. It is worth playing Ticket to Ride for the 328th time in your life.

You are with die hard geeks? Lucky bastard, make it Neuroshima Hex’s vacation! Start league, play every day, with tables, results and final price. You do drink beer, do you? If not, send you price to Portal, we will handle it.

Oh yes. Boardgames have answer for all vacation situations.

That’s why I have everything with me here on vacations. Settlers of Catan to play with kids. Twilight Struggle to play with my wife. Brawl to play tournament with my friend Widlak. Neuroshima Hex so our kids can play tournament. Prototype of Robinson and Winter so I can test it on my friends. Yes, vacations and games work great together.

But… There is one small question I had to ask.

How the hell I am supposed to pack all these games to my car?! Where to put clothes and stuff?! I need a truck!

Scania, I see a huge market for you here. I will need to rent a truck for two weeks. And my fellow geeks too. What are the prices? Any discount for BGG members?

Last weekend in Bulgaria there was a final of The Volleyball World League. Polish team beat US team 3:0. It was nice, thank you very much Americans 😉

Anyway, when I was watching the match I realised that you can learn a bit as a designer when you take a second to talk about volleyball.

You know, for almost my whole life rules of scoring in volleyball worked like that: when you serve and win the point, you score. If opponent serves and you win the point, you don’t score, you just have the right to serve. If your attack is successful now, you score. If the opponent wins, he only has the right to serve…

Official volleyball federation was founded in 1947. For 40 years people were playing like described above. If you serve, and I win, I don’t get a point. I only get the right to serve. So now I serve, but this time you win, so you don’t score but now you can serve… And it goes like that for two hours. Score? 0:0.

Watching volleyball was kinda’ boring for over 40 years.

And then somebody finally figured it out. This game is broken, he said. We have to change the rules. You need to score after every successful attack, no matter who served.

You know, it’s not easy to change the rules of a game that is played for almost 50 years. A game that was played in world championships, during olimpics, a game with officiall leagues in almost all countries all over the world.

But the Federation of Volleyball had the balls.

They had the guts to say: „Our game sucks. We can make it better.” And they changed the rules. It was 1998, 41 years after Federation was founded. They had the guts to remove rule that was making volleyball boring.

Volleyball got much more simple. It is fast, extremely engaging. It is a great sport now.

***

This is a nightmare for a designer. You design a rule. You test the game, you play a lot, you get used to this rule. Finally you’re stuck with it. You don’t ask yourself an important question:

„Does my game really need that rule?”

It is hard to ask that question. There is a risk that you could hear „No”. You would need to delete this rule. The rule you got used to. The rule you like. Exactly that rule…

So you’re stuck with it. Your game is filled with rules that don’t bring anything to the gameplay. They don’t make the game better. They don’t bring more choices. They don’t bring more emotions. They just are. They just are because you got used to them after these all those test games.

All those rules could be removed if you had the guts to ask the question.

***

I am a young designer. Yes, I was lucky to make some – I believe good – games like Stronghold or The New Era but this is just the beginning. I am aware of that. I am still in the primary school of designing. I am learning every single day. I have flaws that I need to get rid of. I know that. 

One of my flaws is putting to many rules into my games. I have difficulties with designing simple games. It’s hard for me to delete rules, to ask myself a question: „Does my game really need that rule?”

But I am working hard. I am trying to be better. I am aware of the problem and I believe this is a good beginning. I see the problem. This is always a good first step.

During the last months I was working damn hard on my Robinson Crusoe game. The game is ready. Works really great. I am proud of it and I can’t wait for you guys to see it. But it’s not going to print yet. I still have a few weeks left.

During these weeks I will ask myself the question.

In 1998 the Volleyball guys showed that they have guts. Now it is my time to act.

It was a blink. In one moment I got my new game ready. It just came to my mind and was brilliant. I was so excited. Players are shepherds and have to have the biggest flocks of sheep. Different tiles have sheep with different colors, some tiles have wolves who eat sheep. Your aim is to gather group of 4 sheep in one color. Simple, easy, great.

No orcs. No mutants and tanks.
No „Trzewiczek style”.
Spiel des Jahres jury, I am coming!

I took brushes, I took paints and started to make a prototype. I have huge range of Citadel paints, very expensive, but very good. I wanted my prototype to look great. I used Citadels. I painted 32 tiles with green paint (sweet meadows!). I drew 158 little sheep and then I painted all of them (yellow, white, blue, red). It was great, I was imagining myself coming to the office, showing the prototype to the guys and telling them that I’ve just designed a great game! It took me whole night. Nearly 5 hours of painting little sheep.

The most beautiful prototype I have ever seen.

It was very late in the night, but I was so proud of myself. It had to be a hit! I was excited. I didn’t go to sleep. I took a box of chocolate, I painted it grey, and then I drew a meadow and some sheep on the front cover. It was awesome. Spiel des Jahres jury, I am coming!

Finally I went to sleep.

I woke up the next day. I was so proud. I ate breakfast and sat at the table to play my game. The first test. I was very excited. First time in my designer life I was about to play a test game on such a beautiful prototype. So I played.

Well, not exactly. I didn’t play because it didn’t work. It didn’t work at all! I was sitting at the table and couldn’t believe that I spend whole night painting sheep without first checking if the rules make any sens.

That’s how I didn’t win Spiel des Jahres this year. And my today’s advice for you is – first test, then paint, my friends. First test, then paint…