Designer Diary: Blue Skies

Game designs come from many places. Sometimes a designer will start with a mechanism and aim to build a game around that mechanism (and perhaps many others, as well). Often a designer will start with a theme or a real-life occurrence they wish to model, then build from there. Sometimes a game component inspires a design. And sometimes, trying to design one game will lead to a completely different game design.

I have been working, on and off, for some years on an 18xx-like design focused on airlines rather than train companies that I was calling "1926". I was pulling out the design to try working on it again when I had an entirely different thought: What if I vastly simplified the game, eliminating the stock market and simplifying the method by which customers came into the game?

It quickly became apparent that I needed more airports than I was using in "1926", and the idea came to me of creating a game board for the prototype out of index cards arranged in a grid. Given that idea, thirty airports seemed a reasonable number, and I quickly found a list of the thirty busiest airports. Too many of these airports were in Florida, however, and I needed a rectangular arrangement in order to both represent the United States and make the game easy to play, so I swapped out a couple of airports in Florida for a couple in the Midwest, then started looking at the problem of how best to introduce passengers.

Part of this was easy, given the data I'd found for the airports. A deck of cards, with one card for every 10 million passengers (give or take), would make for a total of 59 cards — and cards are most readily printed in multiples of 30 or 55. Given that, in short order, I had the prototype for this new game using a few of the same bits from "1926".

The timing for this inspiration was good because Eric Brosius was hosting a house con that week, so the game quickly made it to the table. Three things became apparent on this first playing:

1. Arranging the cards in a precise 6x5 grid made it easier to count up passengers served.
2. There needed to be some uncertainty in the addition of passengers.
3. Players needed some way to change their hand of cards.

But amazingly the game worked. We played it through to conclusion on the very first playtest, and everyone had fun. One of the things Tom Lehmann always stresses in game design is what role the players are taking on; if that role is not well defined, it can take away from the play experience. Here, the role was clear: Each player is running an airline and trying to maximize the number of passengers served.

I set about making a few changes so that I could get the game back to the table again soon. To address the issue of player's hands clogging up with cards they don't want, and to try to keep an early run of luck from creating a runaway leader issue, I introduced the government assistance event. This event allows everyone to discard cards, with these discards being shuffled into the deck so that even low volume airports might see more passengers; additionally, players who were behind gained a special opportunity to place passengers where they wanted. This change helped to solve the issue of bad card luck, while keeping the leader in check; leading at the time of the event was still an advantage, but this event allowed players to pursue strategies other than "gain an early lead" much more effectively.

To add some excitement and variability to the addition of passengers, I added a draw bag with mostly regular customers — but also with 20% "special" customers, who when drawn triggered another immediate draw to the same location. This could cause a one-time bonanza for the fortunate player, but also tended to focus greater attention on those airports moving forward. The net result, when combined with the make-up of the card deck, provided sufficient variability to ensure that while the general distribution of passengers aligned with history, the specific distribution in each game differed.

The bag of passengers

These changes worked well, and the game quickly went through a lot of playtesting — but something was still missing.

I knew it needed something more, but wasn't sure just what. My inclination was to have regional bonuses, and I tried out a few different forms of these, but couldn't find the right mix. Fortunately, thanks to a business trip I was able to get together with Tom Lehmann, and he suggested the key fix: Have a few major airports be part of multiple regions so that players would naturally be inclined to compete for them. This added a needed tension to the game and helped clarify the focus of the regional bonuses.

At this point I was very happy with the game and showed it to Rio Grande Games, successfully. However, RGG's Ken Hill and Scott Tepper had one small but important request: While the government assistance event provided one opportunity to change your hand, they felt it would be beneficial to offer an additional opportunity — but at a small cost.

This led to the addition of the "Special Action". Once per game, you can add a passenger to any airport, discard your hand of cards, and refill. If this action is unused at the end of the game, you receive a three-point bonus. This addition provided players with a touch more control over the luck of the draw and worked immediately.

Then it was a matter of time and effort to convert the stack of index cards into a real game board and real components. Fortunately, due to the events of 2020, all of us were able to find time sooner than we might have otherwise. Todd Sanders and Ken Hill were great to work with on this. We tried a number of different configurations for the board before coming back to six columns of airports — which might not be an ideal way to represent the United States, but which does make for much smoother game play, affording the space needed for the game not to feel cramped.

I hope folks enjoy the game as it's been great fun for me to work on, and I sincerely wish for blue skies ahead for us all.

Joe Huber