Designer Diary: Carson City, or This Town Wasn't Built in a Day

I have not taken the time to transcribe, day by day, all the different stages of the creation of Carson City. This is therefore not a "diary" as other authors have written with great care and talent, but I have enough material to tell you where this game comes from, and to try to explain how and why I came to design it.

Aerial view of Carson City in 1875 by Augustus Koch (Source: The Western Nevada Historic Photo Collection)

Episode 1: In the Beginning, There Were Games

As far as my memory allows me to go back in time, I remember loving board games. I played a lot of great classics such as Monopoly, Risk, Stratego, Cluedo, Magellan, etc.

I remember one specific day when I was about ten years old, I broke my piggy bank to buy a new board game. Attracted by the nice cover, I bought Destin (called The Game of Life in English-speaking countries). After my first session, I felt very disappointed. This game, to me, was a simple "improvement" of the game of the goose: very random and quite inferior to Monopoly. I was a bit miffed that a nice-looking game could be so uninteresting. I told myself that one day, perhaps, I would try to do better...

Fortunately, as I grew older, I discovered role-playing games and wargames. Gradually, more and more good games called "German"-style games, such as The Settlers of Catan, appeared on the market. The diversity of game mechanisms also increased, especially with the advent of collectible card games, of which Magic is the common ancestor.

1989-1994: During my architectural engineering studies, I became interested in urbanism, urban development, and regional planning. In our architecture courses, we learned that the creative process is primarily based on knowledge of what has already been done on the so-called "references", i.e., the examples of the great names in the history of architecture that are part of our collective memory. In architecture, wanting to start from scratch, taking no account of what has already been done, makes little to no sense. We can try to distinguish ourselves from what exists, but it is a very conscious process, not a random one. I think that, perhaps, it is the same for game design.

During my studies, I was lucky enough to attend a seminar based on a simulation game called CLUG: The Community Land Use Game. CLUG was developed by G. Allan Feldt and published in 1972. This simulation game allows you to study the choices you have to develop and expand a city based on cost constraints (particularly travel costs), profitability of economic activities, and general profit income. (If you wish to know more about CLUG, you can visit the book listing on Amazon as the CLUG website is currently suspended.)

For four months, at a rate of one afternoon per week, six teams competed with the sole objective of increasing their small starting capital. I have fond memories of this game. I think I missed the educational value of the game a little bit, but on the other hand, I found CLUG very interesting from a gaming point of view. At the end of the seminar, our team had managed to make more money than all the other teams together.

Episode 2: The List of My Desires

Why did our team win? Because we had managed to perceive which were the best choices to make before the other teams did. I really loved that feeling of making choices (regarding the purchases of land), which meant that you had to bet on the future, and that those bets would prove rewarding or not according to how the city would develop.

It was at the end of that project that I asked myself the question: Why not try to create an adaptation of CLUG in a "real" board game? CLUG is too long, too complex, too serious...but basically building a city is a wonderful theme for a board game. Apart from Monopoly, quite a few games exploit this theme.

CLUG is too rigid a game in that it imposes inexplicable constraints. For example, the game requires you to make three secret bids for the purchase of land, every turn. Since it is secret auction, a team can unfortunately be left with nothing to buy! This doesn't work. Why three and not zero bids — or perhaps six depending on needs and resources? Why do the bids have to be secret?

I dreamt of a game in which each player is "free" to perform as many available actions he wishes (including no action at all) during a given turn, and therefore is also free to adopt a very different strategy from the other players. This was my wish list for this "dream game" of mine:

• A game in which players "really" build a city, by purchasing land before they can construct the buildings;
• A game in which mastering geography – i.e., the map of the city – is important to win;
• A game that can be quite "tight", that is, not too long (maximum 1h30);
• A game in which nobody is eliminated during the game, which keeps the suspense going until the end;
• A game in which very different paths can lead to victory;
• A game in which there is a strong level of player interaction;
• A game in which choosing actions is not a constrained process, but rather a flexible, à la carte process.

In terms of theme, I of course wanted to keep the theme of building a city on a regular "checkerboard" map (or grid map). This type of city planning has been used many times in history, so I still had plenty of examples from which to choose: Greek and Roman cities, Beijing, Kyoto, Barcelona, new cities in France, England, the United States, etc.

Episode 3: First Prototypes

This project was long in the back of my head before I actually decided to give the whole idea a go. I began to create prototypes of different games in 1996 with some friends, yet it wasn't until seven years later that I created the first prototype of a game inspired by CLUG.

In 2002, the first prototype of Carson City was born, then called "Wincity". It used the same sequence of play as CLUG, free of its overtly complex aspects. The theme was the construction of an English town during the industrial revolution.

I tried to make game rounds more flexible. The idea was that the first player would decide which action would be performed by all the players in a given turn (purchase of land, construction, equipment, or income). This worked, but I still felt it was too rigid, because in reality, action sequences are effectively repeated, making them predictable.

Out of convenience, I preserved the land purchasing mechanism of CLUG based on three hidden auctions. Tests confirmed that this much too random mechanism needed to be changed.

After some tests, the conclusion became clear: an adaptation of CLUG into a board game appeared to be feasible. It is mostly the duration of the game that scared me, but I came to realize that it is possible to build a city in a reasonable amount of time (i.e., about two hours). However, the mechanism felt very flavorless. If the theme was very convincing to me, playing still lacked "fun".

In December 2002, the second prototype was called "Chicago". (One approaches the Wild West a bit.) The action selection mechanism did not change, but I introduced the production and sale actions: ranches produce cattle, mines produce gold, and factories produce goods. Shops, banks and warehouses allow each player to store and sell his products more easily.

The mechanism of buying existing land remained based on three secret bids, to be revealed simultaneously. But to avoid having to write down their offers on a piece of paper, each player has ten pieces numbered 0-9 that he places on land he covets, and he pays the price if his bid is the highest one. Luck gets reduced in this way because players know which are the grounds coveted by the other players.

January 2003: After reflection, the theme of building a city in the Far West in the days of the gold rush feels obvious. What else could be more exciting? The prototype took the name of "Kansas City", which I must admit is not located in the Far West. (It's in the Midwest.) However, we are getting closer and closer, and I thought the name sounded really good! The name of the prototype will now remain until the publication of the game. Versions 1, 2 and 3 of "Kansas City" were created to refine the concepts and rules, without any major changes.

The first three versions of Kansas City include production and storage resources (red=livestock, yellow=gold, black=goods)

The bank stores gold produced by the mines, while the ranch produces cattle, which are mainly stored on neighboring vacant land

Episode 4: Cowboys

The game worked — yet I wanted to give players even more freedom of choice in their actions. How to achieve this? Because players should be able to play (and win) the game by either buying very little land or a lot, building in the city center or investing in the suburbs, attacking other players or remaining peaceful, etc.

That's when I discovered this fantastic game by Richard Breese: Morgenland (Aladdin's Dragons). In this game, actions are chosen by placing numbered pawns along a winding road that goes back to the Caliph's palace. The strongest pawn gets the opportunity to perform the selected action.

I loved this principle as it was exactly the kind of flexibility I wanted to give to "Kansas City". This gives an element of bluff and conflict between players that sticks very well to the Wild West theme.

May 2004: For the fourth version of "Kansas City", each player now has five numbered tokens he can spend on either buying land, building roads or buildings, or earning income to buy victory points. I extended the concept of the auction for buying land to all the actions in the game. When multiple pawns are on an action space, only the player with the highest value can perform the action. This game mechanism, which later would become the duels, were a great success amongst my playtesters. The "production" and "resource sales" actions disappeared. The game got a better flow since the buildings directly produce revenue without intervening markers for cattle/gold/merchandise that needs to be stored and sold.

The fourth version of Kansas City; all available actions are selected using cowboy pieces numbered 1 to 5

However, the game still felt too linear, too predictable. The "strongest" player who gets to perform the better actions early on in the game quickly becomes a runaway leader, so the game was too dependent on chance. There were not enough kinds of actions to play. Winning an important duel in the first round had too much influence on the outcome of the game. This was a big problem because I wanted a game in which you could make your fortune without necessarily getting into a conflict with other players. By increasing the available actions, it is easier to choose to take the risk of confrontation — or conversely to play it safe. On top of that, actions that provide income are played every turn by all the players...so it was not a choice anymore, since it is always very useful.

Spiel 2005: I discovered Caylus, the masterpiece by William Attia. Caylus is often regarded as the first "worker placement" game. I feel that this forgets too easily its predecessor, Morgenland, but Caylus, thanks to its success, really did introduce the worker placement mechanisms to a lot of people. This success encouraged me to continue in the same direction. Moreover, Caylus proved to me that worker placement games can stay manageable even if the number of different actions is increased. In fact, this observation was the key for further developments. It also allowed me to reduce the "luck" factor, namely by increasing the number of buildings available for purchase.

I adapted the board to include more action spaces, particularly for the purchase of buildings. Getting building income became an "automatic" action that didn't require the spending of a worker, i.e., a cowboy.

Episode 5: Game Time, Duels, Wealth Limitation, Victory Points and Figures

I sent "Kansas City" to different publishers. The feedback was negative. Although the theme of the game attracted attention, the game failed to convince the publishers. There were several issues to be addressed.

At this point, I would like to salute and thank the team of Z-Man Games. Not only did they send me back the prototype (which is very rare), they also sent me all their handwritten notes debriefing their tests. These notes have been very helpful to understand the qualities I needed to develop and which flaws I needed to correct in my game.

Game duration
During the release of my game, under its definitive name of Carson City, I received comments from a number of players who thought the game was actually too short. They wanted a fifth or a sixth game round. During the development of the game, I really hesitated and did a lot of tests with five game rounds, but I finally decided to limit the game to four rounds for several reasons.

First, the main reason is the balance between the possible strategies. With an added fifth turn, the construction strategy is definitely more interesting than a strategy of "using force". The benefit for players who build one or two buildings during the first or second round becomes predominant. By limiting the game to four rounds, a short-term enforcement strategy (the accumulation of revolvers and cowboys) can compete with a strategy of pure construction, and it makes the game more varied.

Furthermore, four rounds are sufficient for the city to become well-developed. With a fifth turn, the space available on the game board to expand the city can begin to shrink.

Finally, I wanted a game that can easily be played in less than 90 minutes, which is not the case with five turns.

Management of cowboys and conflict
In a conflict between two players trying to perform an action, the loser simply loses his action, but this sanction proved to be actually too harsh and made the game too "cruel". To remedy this, I gave more flexibility regarding cowboy management. Instead of playing with exactly five of them in each round, each player receives a small number of cowboys each turn (up to a maximum reserve of ten cowboys). A player is free to use his cowboys or keep them in his personal reserve. If he loses a conflict, he gets the losing cowboy back, allowing him to use it again during the next round. This rule, which forgives the loss of a conflict makes the game much less stressful and encourages risk-taking.

Furthermore, the number of cowboys in a player's personal reserve increases their fighting strength. Thus, an interesting choice must be made: either play fewer actions and stay stronger, or play more actions but also take more risks because, in this case, the cowboys are less likely to defend themselves quite well. The rule for duels was in place.

Kansas City version 4.5; available actions are now set and will not change

Tension regarding money
One of the difficulties that may be encountered in a development game like Carson City where we develop income sources that become increasingly cost-effective is that the "tension" of having little money decreases. It becomes too easy to make money over time. To keep this tension going, I set up two solutions: First, the victory points (VPs) are increasingly expensive to buy ($2/VP in the first round, $ 3/VP in the second round, etc.), which means that money loses its value during the game. Second, players have a cash limit of what they can keep for the next round.

Better use of the theme
The theme of the game was well-received by potential publishers, so why not add more possibilities? With the second version of the prototype, I included an optional rule that consists of choosing a character that gives the player special abilities throughout the entire game. I decided to integrate these characters into the base game and have players choose a new personality at the start of each round. Apart from the particular ability of each character, this choice would also determine the turn order for the current round and the cash limit that players can keep for the next one. By doing this, I was able to highlight a few emblematic figures of the Far West: the sheriff, the banker, the settler, the mercenary, etc.

Evolution of the ranch tiles through the different prototypes of the game

Episode 6: Quined Games

In 2007, I had the incredible honor to win the International Game Designer Competition of Boulogne-Billancourt (which is now called the Europa Ludi competition) with my game "Vauban", which went on to become Palais Royal (Royal Palace) in 2008, published by Hans im Glück, Rio Grande Games, and Filosofia.

At this point, Arno Quispel of Quined Games contacted me to say he wanted to test "Vauban". Since I was already negotiating with Hans im Glück to finalize the contract, I asked him (without high expectations) to test "Kansas City" and I sent him a prototype. Despite the vast amount of necessary material, implying that the game would be complex and expensive to publish, Arno offered me a publishing contract.

It was the moment to choose a new city that would give its name to the game. The problem is that Kansas City is too large a city. It lacks a link to the gold mines, and it is not located in the Far West. After an extensive research, we agreed on Carson City, a "small" city, the capital of Nevada, near mountains and gold mines, a city that epitomizes the adventurous spirit of the Wild West, since it is forever linked to the name of Kit Carson.

For the illustrations, Arno proposed to hire Alexandre Roche, who already worked with him on other projects.

Many people think that Royal Palace is my first game because it is the first of my games that found a publisher and was published in 2008. In reality, if I leave out the first prototypes of some of my clumsy game design debuts, my "first" real game is Carson City, even though it came out in 2009. It's the one that I worked on the most, the one I reviewed and corrected countless times.

It is the amazing work and talent of Alexander Roche — combined with the efforts of Arno Quispel, who always made the choice to invest in high-quality components — that led to Carson City becoming the game I have always dreamed it would become.

Thanks to gamers worldwide who have played Carson City; to those who appreciated, commented on, rated, and explained the game; and now thanks to you, contributors to the mid-2015 Kickstarter project, and to Quined Games, this adventure is not about to end, with Carson City: Big Box and the new Carson City: Horses & Heroes expansion set to debut at Spiel 2015 in October.

So to each and every one of you, thank you.