Ignacy:
#ENGSCO
Did we see goals yesterday? No.
Did we see brilliant passes? Not much.
Did we see dribbling, trick shots, special effects? Not at all.
Was it one of the best matches of this year? Absolutely.

It was football we call 'box to box.’ It was football that, instead of special effects, brings passion, heart, and energy to the table. It’s running with the ball from one side of the pitch to another, it’s playing as it is your last game in life. It’s 0:0 that is so much more interesting than 1:2 Poland versus Slovakia or 1:1 Czech vs. Croatia.

Sometimes fans make fun of England, and Football is coming home slogan. After yesterday’s match between these two great teams, I must say: East or West, home is best.

Thomas:
Football’s coming home. Or is it… soccer’s coming home?

In Europe, most people don’t like the word 'soccer’. Honestly, I’m not a fan of it either. It is what Americans use when they talk about 'our beautiful sport’. But why do we, Europeans, get grumpy when it is called that way? It probably has to do with the popularity of the sport, among other reasons.

To European football fans, there is only one sport you play with your feet. And that’s football.

In the United States, there is another sport which they call Football. American Football. Europeans don’t get it; Players wear strange outfits, and most of the time, they carry the ball instead of shooting it. And the worst thing: Théir football is called 'soccer’. It feels like their sport comes in second now. Not a great feeling.

Saying things like: „I like football, but I do like soccer as well”, only makes it worse.

But where does the word soccer originate from?

It was invented in… Europe.

Modern football was invented in the 19th century in Britain. The more formal name of the sport was Association Football, to prevent confusing it with that other British sport, which was called: Rugby Football. The word soccer was old English slang based on shortening 'Assoc.’

Sorry, fellow Europeans, we invented the word ourselves.

„But our football is played with our feet all the time!” I hear you scream.

True. But I bet you never considered why the game was called football in the first place. Too obvious, right? They called it football because the game was played on foot instead of horseback. So, in that perspective, American Football is just as much a football game as our football is.

But don’t worry, I will continue calling 'our football’ football. But I won’t mind if someone calls it soccer. I’ll try to.

Now I’m going to watch England – Scotland at Wembley, London. Football’s coming home! Right? Well, the Scots know better.

Thomas Jansen is the designer of Eleven: the football manager game. Ignacy Trzewiczek is the developer of the game. They both will share their thoughts about EuroCup 2021 and also talk about the design or development of Eleven. Be with them every day during Euro! If you like football and board games, please, share the news about Eleven!

You can learn more about Eleven HERE!

I received the story script and several additional pages of rules for the game from Jakub Łapot and Przemysław Rymer. I read them and was really impressed by the new concepts. The idea of different zones where players could act, the exposure rules, and even the death of the agents! There was a ton of theme in that first draft.

I built the prototype and played it by myself to see how it all worked.

An hour later, I had my answer. None of these ideas worked—literally, nothing, not a single piece functioned as planned.

Was I devastated?

Not at all. That’s how it all starts. Every damn time.

***

It took us another few months of research to make a comprehensive list of ideas for the mechanisms of a spy game. I watched lots of movies and TV shows about spies. I read books. I read comic books. I did the same gig as always—I soaked with the theme. I had a notepad full of ideas.
What’s important for the spy theme:
– codes
– secret messages
– gadgets

I combined it all with the initial ideas from Łapot and Rymer. I was ready to build a set of rules that would work. Testing began.

***

Rymer wanted to use real code cards from the Cold War era. I was skeptical. I was afraid it would be too difficult for players to understand. But after all, it wasn’t that bad. And I admit, when I gave playtesters a real code card from the Cold War and told them it was real shit, they were ecstatic.

This is a real thing. We are receiving messages from the CIA. We need to decode them. We are spies.

I wanted players to also decipher KGB messages. That was, for sure, the task players would not be able to do. We had to come up with a supplementary idea, something that would feel like deciphering the message and yet, would be doable by a random geek who’s not working in secret intelligence. I bought Ken Russell’s books about puzzles and looked for some ideas. Few hours into reading, I had my first Soviet cipher. I used simple mathematical tasks and equations to challenge players. I tested this idea with the playtesting group a few days later. It worked awesomely. First try, the first score, touch down.

I also wanted players to look for the secret words and sentences in the intercepted messages and understand the additional meaning of what was said. This is yet another essential element of all spy movies. They always say something like: „King beats Bishop on C4,” which means that explosives are prepared, and assassination of the cardinal is in the works! Stuff like that is always a part of the spy movies! KGB agents don’t talk like that, but nobody cares—it’s the theme, it’s how it’s done in books and movies. We did the same in the game—players must intercept messages, listen to them, and then think about what was said and what each word meant. That’s silly fun, that’s us, geeks, being smarter than Soviets, that’s what being a freaking spy is all about!

***

Vienna Connection. Decoding real code cards. Deciphering secret messages. Reading between the lines. We put it all. We build the experience. We made you a spy.

Are you ready, agent?

***

More about the game: https://portalgames.pl/en/vienna-connection/

My vlog: https://www.youtube.com/c/PortalGamesStudio/videos
My Twitter: https://twitter.com/trzewik

I remember being a kid and being honestly perplexed when my school friends were complaining about Robinson Crusoe. Thick, boring book, with no dialogues. They whined. In Poland, Robinson Crusoe was mandatory reading in school. Every kid was complaining. For me, it was the novel of my life, even though my life was like ten years long at the moment. I loved it.

Years passed. High school. College. Life. I was a book worm, and geek, and a gamer. I discovered RPG, found a game company, wrote few RPG games, started a family. Robinson Crusoe was with me all the time. I read it few more times, watch all the movies about it, even designed an indie RPG game about castaways that never got published.

Then I discovered board games. I designed Witchcraft (2008), Stronghold (2009), 51st State (2010), and Pret-a-Porter (2010). Early 2011 I felt I am ready. I felt I have enough skills and knowledge about game design to do Robinson Crusoe justice and make it into the best board game I can ever design.

It was 10 years ago.

As for today, the game has nearly 100k logged plays on BGG. It sold in more than 200k copies worldwide. Released in 12 different languages all over the planet. And exactly today, on Sunday, April 11th, 2021, the new edition of the game, this full-blown fantastic Collector’s Edition, passed 2 million USD on the Gamefound platform. Quite the milestone.

And even though the design is 10 years old, I still look at it with pride and satisfaction, and I strongly believe I did Robinson Crusoe justice.

I like to think that this 10 years old Ignacy would be pretty darn proud of me right now.

It was late at night, a few minutes after midnight. We’ve just finished the fourth game in the Lost signal campaign and we were preparing for the final episode, for the fifth, closing scenario. I was busy setting it up, while most of the other players went to get something to drink and took just a few minutes’ break before the final game. Two of us stayed at the table, David and me. He was helping me with the setup, and we were talking about the game.

After these four scenarios we were both impressed how the story developed, how the astronauts’ situation has been changing for the last two days of our playtesting and how many things happened in the HUB during this time. It was a crazy roller-coaster.

David asked: 'How much will the gameplays of different groups differ?’.

That was a very good point. Let’s talk about this today.
***

The stronger story you put into the game, the more interesting and better-designed turning points and twists you want to incorporate, the less freedom you leave for the players’ choices. That’s the main difference between books and board games. A writer creates an immersive story and puts the protagonists into it, while keeping a full control over every single decision a character makes. A designer creates conditions, a framework for the immersive story to emerge, then gives it to the players. They come and act like a bull in a china shop.

Now that board game designing trends change and players’ expectations evolve, we see more and more board games drift towards story-driven experiences.

The most famous last year’s examples are surely Pandemic: Legacy and Time Stories, but of course we’ve been seeing story-driven games for years. My personal favorite of all time is Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, but we definitely should mention Tales of Arabian Nights, the upcoming This War of Mine, or my very own Robinson Crusoe (especially with the HMS Beagle campaign expansion).

The question remains legit for First Martians as well as for every other game I mentioned. Can we solve Case #1 in Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective in any different way? Can two or three groups have truly different experiences? Different paths to victory? Can we solve a Time Stories mystery in a few different ways? Can two groups of players discuss the game after they’ve finished it and tell each other two different stories?

The real question is actually different—the question is: 'Do we need to have unique experiences?’.

What would you choose if you had a choice: to have a freaking awesome story to discover but one that is pre-constructed to some degree with the main twists and plot points already fixed or to have a slightly less immersive story and experience but to have a full control over every single moment of the game and have no pre-constructed plot?
***

I put strong plot points into the campaign, I design epic events that will throw new tasks and quests at the players. They are scripted, they are the plot points, they are my huge story elements. At the same time I shuffle a ton of random shit into the event deck, hundreds of cards that will surprise the players. In Scenario #2, every group will face a sandstorm that will turn off the solar panels for the whole scenario. It’s scripted. One group, though, started this scenario with a destroyed oxygenator (a result of them playing Scenario #1), the other had a seriously sick astronaut in their HUB, the third one had a very low food supply because of a previous scenario’s pest.

The plot point remains the same, big and epic. The details, the scenery, the conditions—they differ. Two groups will, hopefully, tell a different story that took place within the framework I prepared for Scenario #2.

It’s hard. It’s like combining fire and water.
***

As always, I am super eager to hear your thoughts on the subject. Is pre-contructed immersive story good or bad? What do you think about Time Stories and its scenarios? Would it be a problem for you if you knew that a different group played exactly the same way? Is having only one way to solve a Sherlock Holmes case a problem for you? Have you ever thought about it when you played the game? Have you ever felt that playing a game with scripted events is just like reading prepared stuff?

Give me your comments. I need them. I need your feedback on the subject. Thank you.

Every once in a while we receive a prototype that blows our minds. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. We found Legacy: Testament of duke de Crecy in 2012. Tides of Time happened in 2014. Crazy Karts came to us in 2015…

***

I remember exactly the first afternoon we played the Crazy Karts prototype. It was during a whole day that we at Portal Games dedicated to playtesting the submitted prototypes. After a few games, I was tired. I was disappointed. I was one step away from leaving the office and going home. There was nothing new, nothing exciting, nothing immersive in the prototypes we played that day.

Greg put another prototype on the table. “It’s a racing game”, he said. Hundreds of little hexes printed on a small board almost made me run away. The player boards were in French. The player screens were slender and tended to fall over. What a mess.

Anyway, we played. Sixty minutes went by like a second.

***

I remember looking up from the table at the other players. I remember looking at Greg and trying to make eye contact with him. I remember the smile slowly appearing on my face.

I remember thinking: ‘Well, that was actually fun. We’ve got something here. Oh dear, we’ve got something here…’

***

There were many issues with this game. The board, full of these small hexes, looked super boring. The rules for movement were too complicated. The scoring was… well, there was scoring in the first place! I was surprised. I didn’t race to score. I raced to be the first one to drive my cart across the finish line! I didn’t want to score points…

But, below all of that, below all the mud and dirt there was a gem. There was pure fun. There was a brilliant idea of two drivers trying to steer one kart.

We contacted the designer. The work began. Time to polish this diamond.

[To learn more about Crazy Karts, please, visit the game’s dedicated website]