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It's a simple and fairly light game, but it has an interesting backstory, going back almost two years.
Going Off the Rails
I remember a meeting with Bryan Kinsella from WizKids and Mike Elliott (my Quarriors! co-designer) a few months after Quarriors! had proven a bonafide hit.
We were in an open gaming area, talking about future projects, and Bryan was clearly excited about something. "Quicket to Qide", he said (quipped?), then he pulled out a giant board with train tracks on it, bags of Quarriors! dice, and a bunch of cards. Conceptually, it was pretty epic — using the core dice-building mechanisms Mike and I had designed, and combining them with an economic train game.
I liked the idea in principle, but it was a bit complex for my taste. To make the scope work, the game would have to be two-plus hours long, and I wasn't crazy about playing a dice-building game for that long. Mike and I were also working on a number of other dice games, so we passed. However, the idea of a train dice game stuck with me, and I kept making notes while working while other games.
From early on, I had conceptualized a game in which you roll dice and place trains printed on the dice on a board to complete routes in order to accomplish a number of different goals. This stuck with me during the entire design period. I just didn't have time or bandwidth to pursue it.
Finding the Right Track
Fast-forward to the autumn of 2012 — Mike and I had finished work on a Quarriors! expansion (which has not yet been announced), and I was juggling some other games. One afternoon, sitting in an airport restaurant writing backstory for Kaosball, I gasped aloud. The entirety of Trains and Stations just popped into my head at that very moment!
An aside: Even though I spend a lot of time studying and researching games, most of my early design work is driven entirely by instinct. I like to let game ideas percolate subconsciously over time, and actively forget about them. This often results in bursts of pure inspiration when games I've been avoiding materialize almost fully formed.
So there I was in the airport, desperately cobbling together board game elements from my library in Adobe Indesign before having to catch my flight in less than an hour. I remember being so excited that I called Bryan Kinsella on Skype and shoved a rough PDF of my game board at him. After much discussion and some penetrating questions, I finalized the faces of the dice (which ended up going through one substantial revision).
Before I boarded the plane, I had most of the first draft of the design on my computer.
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WWSSD? (What Would Sid Sackson Do?)
The first draft of a game, at least for me, comes together quickly as it's the easiest part, assuming there's some magic in the core concept. I call it the "easy 80 percent" of the design. That remaining 20 percent, however, is a bear. It involves a lot of second-guessing, pushing and prodding, and the occasional crisis of confidence.
My vision throughout the entire Trains and Stations process was clear: I wanted a casual dice game in which routes are completed dynamically by multiple participants. I aimed for a compelling (but not painful) decision tree, encouraging both direct and indirect player interaction (with a lot of accompanying table talk).
My guidepost, from inspiration to final design handoff, was the work of Sid Sackson, one of my favourite designers and probably the godfather of modern Euro game design. I've played a ton of his games, read every interview he published, and really admire the way he was able to create functional, workmanlike game engines that allow for deep and psychological player interaction.
It sounds silly, but there were times I imagined myself in Mr. Sackson's library, facing his incredible worldly game collection, pen in hand. When things got tough, or I felt like I was losing focus, I'd think back to my two favorite classics: Can't Stop and Acquire. How did he pack so much interaction and tension into a game without special powers and such minimal, workmanlike overhead?
Every time I was tempted to add complication, or go the other way and strip too much direct interaction from the game, I repeated the mantra: WWSSD? Now, I won't pretend to know the man's mind, and we are different designers, but it was exhilarating channeling Mr. Sackson while navigating the overall streamlining of this game.
Even though Trains and Stations doesn't really share mechanisms with any of Mr. Sackson's games, my hope is that it captures a bit of his spirit: the proto-Eurogame focused entirely on interaction, discovery and subtlety. I humbly dedicate this design to his memory.
Out of Steam
Trains and Stations will debut at Spiel 2013 in late October and arrive shortly afterward in North America. I haven't gone into too much detail about rules as they should be available by the time this article goes live.
The game has inspired me to step outside my comfort zone — epic games focused on tons of component interactions — and go back to my roots for awhile, that is, classic-style games infused with modern sensibility.
I look forward to hearing about your experiences.
Eric M. Lang
(Editor's note: If you want to share your experiences in person, Lang will be demoing and talking about Trains and Stations in the Asmodee demo booth (3-K106) each day of the Spiel 2013 convention from 13:30 to 14:00. —WEM)
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