This is a compilation of the designer diary entries posted in the Expeditions Facebook group and on BoardGameGeek. They are listed here in chronological order, with the most recent entry at the top.
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July 9: Odds and Ends
Shipping for Expeditions is proceeding as planned; everyone in the first wave should receive their game by the end of July. You will get a shipping notice when your preorder ships. The second wave is mostly people who preordered the Ironclad Edition in the US in May or June; we’re on track to ship to you in late August.
I was looking over my notes, and I have a few random design stories to share today.
Ending the game: In a game without a set number of rounds, I think it’s important to give players a compelling reason to end the game if they’re able to do so (instead of unnecessarily dragging out the game). In Scythe, the game ends when a player places their 6th star; in Expeditions, it’s the 4th star.
But there are a few bigger difference between the two: In Scythe, the game can sometimes end abruptly if a player places multiple stars on the same turn. In Expeditions, you must Gather a “boast” benefit to place a star (exactly 1 star per boast), so it’s much more transparent when the end is nigh. The important difference is that if I place my 4th star, that doesn’t end the game in Expeditions; instead, each player (including me, at the very end) takes one final turn. In this way, all players are motivated to end the game if they can, knowing that they’ll get the final turn. Players take so many turns in Expeditions (a few dozen) that it’s how you optimize your time in Tunguska that determines who places their 4th star first, not the initial random player order.
Worker placement on cards: I discussed in some other design diaries how I really wanted players to feel like they had a crew, especially given the size of the mechs. I went through so many different purposes for the workers: bag building, worker placement on the locations, worker placement on the mech mats, workers as resources, etc.
What I ended up with is a way to use workers to significantly boost the cards you play. All cards have a core value–either 1 or more guile or power–that you get no matter what when you play a card. But if you have a specific worker to use the item, wield the meteorite, or employ the information of a quest, you get to activate the ability as well. This also let me try to pair certain types of abilities with each type of worker, applying certain subthemes to each color and leading to a lot of different combinations depending on if you focus on a few specific colors or pursue a diverse array of workers.
Also, sometimes I get excited to use a card’s ability before realizing right before playing it that I don’t have the matching worker available. I’ve found it’s sometimes helpful to place workers on cards in hand (which are conveniently kept face up to the left of your player mat), just as a reminder of what I plan to activate on upcoming turns.
Impacting the shared game state: One of my goals for most of the design process for Expeditions was to give players a way to change the shared game state. That is, in addition to you personally improving as you explore Tunguska, you’re also changing the locations themselves. Unlike Scythe, though, it didn’t feel thematically correct for players to build anything on locations or gain control of them–you’re explorers, not empire builders or conquers.
Finally I realized the twofold answer that now seems obvious in hindsight: One, all locations in the central and northern regions (14 total) start the game face down. You impact the shared game state by exploring those locations, permanently revealing them to all players. Two, the land itself is corrupted. All locations in the central and north regions have corruption tokens on them, and the corruption covers a benefit on those locations. Vanquishing corruption is good for end-game scoring, and doing so reveals powerful actions (upgrade, meld, and boast) for any player to use from then on. It’s a form of positive player interaction that has the side benefit of gating those powerful benefits so players can’t do them from the beginning of the game.
I’m near the end of my design diary topics, but if there’s anything you’re curious about that I haven’t covered, please let me know! Also, big thanks to Tim Chuon for taking the Expeditions photos you see here and elsewhere.
July 6: Tales from Production
Today I venture into the various Expeditions components I tested with Panda during the pre-production process in this video:
July 5: Working with Jakub
Spanning nearly a decade, my partnership with Jakub Rozalski on Scythe and Expeditions (both set in his 1920+ universe) is one of my longest creative collaborations. I care deeply about his success, and I’m grateful for the fruits of the partnership.
When I reached out to Jakub about the possibility of a sequel to Scythe, from the beginning I tried to understand what he wanted to see. He’s an artist, so I knew the collaboration would work best if he was really excited about the project. Some early concepts I heard from him were exploration, discovery, danger, and giant mechs. I pushed a little to make the game cooperative–I think that’s a good format for exploration games–but in the end, I think it’s good that Jakub pushed back against that idea, as Scythe’s audience is primarily competitive gamers.
Thanks to Scythe, I found that I really enjoy working with artists who visually build the world during the design process. Seeing those visuals helps me mesh theme and mechanisms while I design. Early on, Jakub’s focus was on the locations, which range from light and populated in the south to dark and possessed in the north. Here’s a video of one southern locations, timelapsed from start to finish:
Jakub lives in Poland and I’m in St. Louis, so all of our communication is over email. To augment our written correspondence, after big breakthroughs in playtesting I would often create screenshot-style videos to visually explain how the game was evolving. This ended up being a great way to keep him in the loop despite the distance.
Like any partnership, there were also some tension-filled moments. Many of them stemmed from how long the game design process took. At one point in 2022 when I realized the game would benefit from a third type of card (items), I realized that I had overstepped in requesting a new batch of illustrations. It wasn’t that Jakub was against new art; rather, I was requesting art before I was 100% sure that items belonged in the game. That was an important learning moment for me. While art can inspire mechanisms, at a certain point I need to figure out the mechanisms before requesting more art, and I was careful about that from then on.
Jakub was even flexible when I told him very late in the process that everything didn’t fit into the square box we had initially planned. I really tried to get everything to fit into Tapestry- or Wingspan-sized box (smaller boxes are more cost effective to freight ship, fulfill, and fit on game shelves), so we always try to keep box sizes to a minimum. But was simply impossible to do so once we added an insert designed to protect the mechs, hold tiles, mats, & sleeved cards, contain a removable tray to make setup easier, and have a little extra space for expansion tiles, mechs, and cards.
Also, I want to give credit to our long-term (even longer than Jakub!) graphic designer, Christine Santana. She takes the myriad prototype files and art I send her and turns them into a cohesive package. We had a little miscommunication about a few of the prototype icons from game-icons.net ending up in the final game, but fortunately they’re open-source, and we credited their designer in the rulebook (Thomas Tamblyn).
Before I close out today’s post, here’s the update I included in today’s Stonemaier newsletter:
- Schedule: Preorder shipping has begun! Our fulfillment centers have thousands of preorders to ship, so the process may take most of July. You will receive a tracking notification when your order ships.
- Preorder Price: The special preorder discount will end on July 11.
- Reviews: A number of reviews and playthroughs are now available here.
- Ready to begin an expedition? Select your mechs and characters by choosing your own adventure or using a randomizer web app! The Dized interactive tutorial is also now available for free!
- Design Diary: In addition to the various videos I’ve filmed about Expeditions, I’m also now posting written articles about the design process of Expeditions.
- Stonemaier Scores app: Track your scores from day 1 on the free scoring calculator app for all of our games! It’s available on iOS and Android.
July 1: The Rolling Realm Promo
I realized that with Expeditions starting to ship (Australia and the US have begun, followed by Europe next week, then Canada–freight shipments arriving at slightly different times to 4 different fulfillment centers) that people are not just getting the game–they’re also getting the Rolling Realms promo realm! It’s about time that I share its stories and details.
I mentioned in a recent Expeditions design diary post that I probably designed (and went to print with) the Expeditions realm too soon in the process. One sign of this is the name: The game was originally called Expedition until we added the “s” late in the process due to another game announcement for the singular name, yet the promo still bears the original name.
Also, for a good part of the design process, Expedition(s) was a rondel game: Mechs moved in a clockwise circle around the map, collecting income when they crossed home base. It was with that mechanism in mind that I designed the realm, even though I dropped the rondel mechanism in the full game.
So in the Expedition realm, you “move” a number of spaces around a circle of hexes. Depending on where you end your movement, you collect a benefit from the destination, which is indicated by outlining the hex. When you move away from a location, you fill it in, indicating that you can never end your movement there again (though it’s still a location to move through, counting against the number).
It’s been quite a while since I’ve gotten this realm to the table, so I look forward to making its liveplay debut in a few weeks!
In case you’re not familiar with Rolling Realms, it’s a living roll-and-write card game in which each round consists of the same 3 random realms for all players. The realms are based on a variety of Stonemaier games and games from other publishers.
15 Comments on “Design Diary”
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Looking forward to the inevitable expansion for Expeditions – and seeing the air molecules still left in the base box, it looks like there is room for 2 more mechs! Nice, with player board, okay… a few more hex selections (Does this mean further north? or maybe just some variations in the N,C,S regions?). Just trying to see into the future of 1922 and if the expansion will allow up to 7 players on an expanded map? Or just some more mech/player options for up to 5 players. . . Or 7 players on the same map (a very crowded map maybe)…
Thanks Paul! Indeed, we left room in the insert for 2 more mechs and their mats (that’s the only aspect of the expansion we’ve announced so far) and potentially more location tiles and cards.
Hey Jamey, I was wondering that usually there is a design diary post dedicated to the Automa system, but that seems to be missing here. Is there a reason why? I would love to know more about the automa design process. Thanks.
There’s no specific reason why. I’ll ask Automa Factory if they’d like to write one for Expeditions. :)
Thanks for doing these design diaries they are really interesting. I noticed in some of the early photos that the mech models look like the finished ones. Wondering if they were unused designs from Scythe or if Jakub just did them super early.
Paul: Those are all original designs specifically for Expeditions–we just started early because miniatures (especially metal miniatures) take a long time to create.
The opening paragraph on this page refers to the Rolling Realms Facebook group — presumably that is a typo and should instead be the Expeditions group?
It should indeed! Thank you!
Really looking forward to the game. Always enjoy these design sneak peeks. I was wondering if Panda would be down for a sneak peek behind the scenes of actually crafting Expeditions
I think that raising the board will just result in cards shooting underneath. Hopefully somebody will come up with a play mat or 3D printed dashboard with slots so that this works, but it makes me hesitant to buy. You’ve had endless feedback about this. It’s a really obvious flaw. I don’t think dual layered is helpful. I think I’ll spend the whole game fishing cards out with my fingernails and rearranging constantly.
There is a nice 3D solution on thiniverse already.
Jamey,
Seeing the hexagonal location tiles brings up a design-related question I’ve pondered in the past; however, it is not specific about your Expeditions game: Why do games with separate board pieces that are placed together rarely have interlocking parts (like a jigsaw fit)?
Yes, this does mean there are art and functional considerations needed for the concave/convex parts of the pieces, but I see these advantages:
1) The game board layout stays in place better.
2) It offers gameplay opportunities since the adjoining piece brings an attribute to the piece(s) it connects to, making the sum something new.
Is production cost the main factor?
By the way, I’m a Stonemaier Champion, and look forward to playing Expeditions.
Thanks
Great question, Tony. I think there probably are games where interlocking pieces make sense–it isn’t a matter of cost at all. I’d say it’s more about durability, aesthetics, and how the tiles fit together (are they rotated? Are there empty spaces in between them? etc).
But you’re right: For the right game, it would be neat for an element on tile A to become a part of tile B.
How about making a “dual-layer” Mech Mat with notches underneath where you can slide a card into without lifting it?
I appreciate the idea, and our solution has the same effect while being far more cost- and space-effective for you. :)