Q&A met Mark Chaplin, auteur van o.a. Revolver

[Bartjes!]

What about saloon tokens? Each round a certain bandit is still alive, he gets a saloon token (meaning he's been drinking again). With for example 6 tokens, he’s so drunk, he falls of his horse and… and… I don’t know. I’m not a game designer

[P.T.]

What about saloon tokens? Each round a certain bandit is still alive, he gets a saloon token (meaning he's been drinking again). With for example 6 tokens, he’s so drunk, he falls of his horse and… and… I don’t know. I’m not a game designer

Except for the horse part, it sounds like you

[markchaplin]

But if I remember correctly, almost all cards have some kind of attack feature (pistols, persons, animals). What about a defense feature? for example a card with a crate on it. For once, the other player will need one more poker chip in total to kill one of your guys. The crate is then discarded because it was shot in pieces. Or you can hide behind a carriage, which is harder to pass by.

Great minds think alike! In the upcoming expansion The Tarnished Star, we have two cards that do something very similar to this called, Upturned Wagon, and Rock-strewn Vantage Point - so each player will have a different form of destructible scenery.

[markchaplin]

This is kind of like the true grit hat token which gives the character 1 extra wound... maybe you could implement a die rol to this, even is miss od is hit, if miss then discard crate, or something like that. But then again the speed would be take out of the game a bit by having to rol a die. HO!? maybe better to flip a coin or 2-sided poker chip, that would be fitting to the theme as well

I'm still tinkering with a card that makes the player flip a coin. Not everybody likes the idea here. That said, Magic: The Gathering had at least one coin-flipping card, an Efreet or Djinn, I think, and it proved quite popular.

[markchaplin]

60. How do you come up with the card titles for Revolver? Are the cards tested at first and does the name comes later or do you start with a theme/title for a card and try to fit this into the game?

It's a bit of both. There are some cards, like "The Jakes" - Railworker's Privy Hut, or Lasso, that we wanted to include from the beginning but couldn't find a cool mechanism for them to run with - I've cracked them now. I have a small treasure chest with cards inside, incomplete cards, some with just a name, others with half an idea.
No card is tested without a name. Occasionally I'll have a brainwave for what the game is capable of, and then it's a fun task coming up with a saying or name for that particular card's title.

A friend of mine suggested a Horseman's longcoat card, like one worn in many Westerns - especially Pale Rider. It was obvious from the off that the card would hide another card, maybe a gun. The finished card enables you to play a bluff, essentially the same thing.

At a shop's Revolver demonstration event, one of the players there suggested a Strongbox card, and he suggested a way for it to work. He plays Revolver quite a bit with a work colleague, and he said they both desired a card that let you save a card from your hand to play later in the game. It took some time, but eventually a version of his idea has ended up in the *Frontier* deck introduced in R#1.3.

Another card suggested in various forms by many people was a traitor card. The card took a lot of thought to get right, and created many, many rules questions in its various forms. So many! We eventually got it running smoothly, and I decided to link it to Manolito - Colty's double-crossing compadre.

So, to answer your question, more times than not, the naming of the cards drives my creative engine.

[P.T.]

But if I remember correctly, almost all cards have some kind of attack feature (pistols, persons, animals). What about a defense feature? for example a card with a crate on it. For once, the other player will need one more poker chip in total to kill one of your guys. The crate is then discarded because it was shot in pieces. Or you can hide behind a carriage, which is harder to pass by.

Great minds think alike! In the upcoming expansion The Tarnished Star, we have two cards that do something very similar to this called, Upturned Wagon, and Rock-strewn Vantage Point - so each player will have a different form of destructible scenery.

Cool! Hope you ain't going to blow up the scenery off the WGG Booth next week

[markchaplin]

Hope you ain't going to blow up the scenery off the WGG Booth next week

I'll try not to cause too much devastation!

[Seabie]

I hope this hasn't been asked before...

61: Revolver is quite a confrontational game. Do you prefer to play such games?

62: If you had the possibility, would you want to be a full time designer (I thought I read you weren't at the moment)?

Thanks for all your responses, it was a pleasure to read them!

[Dierik]

Mark, thanks for all the answers and maybe we'll see each other at SPIEL!

[Bartjes!]

If you want to meet Mark (and his co-Revolver2-designer Leigh Caple, as well as Revolver artist Chechu Nieto), visit the White Goblin Games booth (5-01) at Spiel 2012:

Official signing sessions are as follows:

THURSDAY October 18
14.00 - 15.00 Mark Chaplin (Revolver & Revolver 2 designer)

SATURDAY October 20
13.00 - 14.00: Chechu Nieto (Revolver artist)

SUNDAY October 21
12.00 - 13.00: Chechu Nieto (Revolver artist)

But I'm pretty sure both Mark and Leigh will be quite often in the WGG-booth on other dates and times as well.

Not going to Essen this year? Then watch the live stream on Boardgamegeek on Friday October 19, at 11 o'clock: Mark, Leigh and Chechu will talk about Revolver 2.

Thanks to all for asking your questions and to Mark for answering them!

[markchaplin]

61: Revolver is quite a confrontational game. Do you prefer to play such games?

Very much so. My favourite type of games involve direct confrontation. That said, I pretty much hate Chess.

62: If you had the possibility, would you want to be a full time designer (I thought I read you weren't at the moment)?

If a reasonable living could be made from making games, then, yes, I would love to do such things on a full time basis.

[Wyckyd]

57. Have you found that your game tastes have changed since you became a board game designer?

I'd have to say that they haven't changed, but that my appreciation of a game's design has increased, the inner workings, as it were. I still like games about starships, zombies, snake-people, trolls, and goblins as much as I ever did.it.

I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to answer our questions, and good luck on your future game design endeavors; I'll be waiting for a game where zombie-trolls are locked in a spaceship battle with snake-goblins.

[mazinho]

63 - if you would do a "famous people expansion" - which person or actor of movie character would tou choose for Revolver?

[markchaplin]

63 - if you would do a "famous people expansion" - which person or actor of movie character would tou choose for Revolver?

For sure, I'd have to include 'Monco' and 'El Indio' from For a Few Dollars More, and 'Blondie' from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Maybe also 'English Bob' from Unforgiven.

Some film characters from Westerns are already in the expansions - see if you can find them all!

[NielsZW]

64 Hej Mark, Still here. Cool! Did you like Essen this year? What was the best thing on the fair for you and what was the worst thing on the fair for you?