A few months ago when Expeditions was in production, I found myself with around 40 “journal entry” pages from the game, and I decided to do something with them to surprise a few people who open their copies.
For this to make sense, I need to back up a little to another surprise for everyone who gets Expeditions. During the design process, artist and worldbuilder Jakub Rozalski wrote a considerable amount of lore for the game, including a series of journal entries from a previous expedition into the mysterious fictional version of Tunguska.
Some early prototypes of the game included this text, but I kept finding that playtesters skipped over the text while playing. Expeditions is designed from the ground up on theme (and as a sequel to Scythe), but it’s a Euro game at heart. When most players settle down for 90 minutes of optimization, combo creation, and engine building, they aren’t breaking the flow to read written narrative.
Late in the design process I realized there was another way to include the journal entries in the game in a thematic way that might inspire some fun community building. I proposed to Jakub that on the back of each game’s achievement sheet we feature 1 of 20 possible journal entries with an accompanying “photo”. This would be the first thing you see when you open the game–scattered to the wind, this journal entry has somehow found its way to you, and it motivates you to go on an expedition to learn more.
I’m generally wary to include a random element in a game, but I figured this was safe, as there’s absolutely no gameplay impact, and the art on the journal pages is found elsewhere in every copy of Expeditions. More importantly, I thought the journal entries might inspire people–particularly when they started to notice photos of journal pages that don’t match–to share their journal page and “build” the journal together with other Expeditions fans.
Human behavior is incredibly hard to predict, but for once, that’s exactly how it happened with absolutely no prompting from me. Alert Facebook group member Valerie C noticed the different journal pages and encouraged others to share photos of theirs. No one knew exactly how many journals there were, but eventually they realized that each journal is paired with a location tile in the game (20 total). Valerie collected all 20 journal entries on the post:
While this was happening, a few people noticed something else about their journal entries: They were signed by me. I truly don’t consider my signature a big deal, but I generally think it’s neat–and rare–to see an actual handwritten message in any ecommerce product that appears at our front door.
How did the signed pages get inside the games? This brings me back to the beginning of this post. I had around 40 journal pages from the early samples of the printed game. So I checked with Panda to see if it was even possible to include a page in random copies of the game, and they confirmed.
So I sat down and composed around 40 different brief messages (which is more difficult than you might think!), bundled them together, and handed them off to my coworker to ship to China. There was a non-zero chance the package would never arrive, but fortunately it did, and Panda slipped the special journal pages into a variety of Ironclad and standard versions of the game (most of them heading to our fulfillment centers, from which we ship to consumers and direct-order retailers).
Again, I didn’t reveal this to customers, so it was a delight for me when someone posted a photo of a signed page (well, mostly a delight–the first post happened because they couldn’t read my handwriting!). I’ve now seen a few more such posts, but definitely not 40, so I’m guessing there are still quite a few signed journal pages to be found.
I’m sharing this today because these surprises and signatures are now public information, and because I always love seeing other publishers do stuff like this. Top Shelf Gamer often includes a handwritten note in their packages, and Magic has tucked old cards into new card packs from time to time. Can you think of other examples?
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Also watch: My 6 Favorite Hidden Surprises in Tabletop Games
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17 Comments on “Surprises and Signatures”
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Hi! I found this blog entrance while exploring in bgg about the game. I like to read about the ideas and modifications you considered during the game’s development. Thanks for sharing this! However, reading this, I feel that players who care about the theme could haven’t been considered. When I first watched the game trailer, I got excited about the theme and the fact the game could tell a story. I love narrative and thematic games but also heavy eurogames. I have friends with a very euro mindset that do not care about narrative, so I understand when playtesters or players prefer to skip the narrative segments of the game. It is not their thing, or they do not care at that moment. Conversely, I think players like me would have loved to have these journal entrances. Open the game and read about the adventures of that previous expedition. So, while playing the game, we have the background about what happened in those locations. That adds a lot to the experience! Please, consider adding the journal entries in future expansions. I already read all of them, and It is a fantastic job you did there!
Thanks for giving life to another fantastic game!
I hear you, though I can say that I fully considered the theme, hence the idea of journal pages scattered to the winds for people to discover and read. :)
Oh! When I said “players who care about the theme could haven’t been considered” I was referring specifically to the third paragraph where you mention that Expeditions is a Eurogame at heart and playtesters skipped over the text while playing. I meant to say that other players would have enjoyed that background. Sorry if I overstated and didn’t explain myself well. I know you care about the game’s theme, and I appreciate that.
I loved having the journal entry as a launching point for the game. I don’t watch/read reviews for games I already have an opinion of, but they’ll overall impressions tend to find me anyway and it sounds like the most common complaint is that people wanted more narrative and I find that interesting since your data suggested that the game actually works better without it. (The other comment I hear which is sometimes presented as a complaint is that it’s too different from Scythe, but I for one am so glad this is such a different experience)
I felt like the text on the quest cards paired with the locations was perfect for giving me the same feeling I got from the encounter deck in Scythe and having that journal entry was a much cooler way to set up the theme than the often-ignored blurb included in rulebook (poor Pendulum has an entire fantasy style prologue in its rulebook, that world needs more love). If I’m teaching the game to thematic gamers I should remember to read that journal entry aloud before playing.
Yeah, I totally hear that people think they want more written narrative, but I hope they don’t overlook the sheer amount of visual narrative in the game that is paired with the names of the cards and quests–the narrative is there (I’m glad you recognize it), just not in paragraphs of text that most people would skip over while playing anyway. Fortunately, if people want written narrative, there’s quite a bit of it in the Rise of Fenris expansion for Scythe thanks to my co-designer Ryan.
I finally got back from vaca and got to open the box. I gasped, everything is just beautiful <3 I was a little sad not to get a signed captain's log, I wasn't one of the lucky ones. But I really enjoyed reading the captain's log page. I'm one of the ones who really likes the lore behind games and when I taught Scythe to others, countless times, I always made people listen to the backstories of the characters lol. It's one of my favorite parts of a game, and my gaming group likes to do a bit of RP when we play anyways, so it's extra fun!
Kendra: I’m so glad the box opening provided such a fun reaction! Hopefully the inclusion of cards for both the characters and companions opens the door for some light role playing during games of Expeditions. :)
This has totally made my day!!!
Thank you so much for mentioning me, it makes me feel super special 😊
I had a blast putting these together and honestly it speaks volumes to the communities you built through your games that it took us less than a week to find all of them!
The lore is incredible and I find myself craving more…
I think it’s Kool you did this and you’re right, by not affecting gameplay it really just became an Easter egg without too much risk. I’ve seen people complaining that they did not understand the story at first until they read these :)
Thanks again!
Thanks so much for leading this effort, Valerie!
I think the idea is really cool and love the personal messages you did (not on mine unfortunately ;) )
But I am one of the few people I think who wished there was more text in the game. That was my only comment when we finished the first game. I love a bit of background story when playing a game, especially when it has beautiful artwork, now I know why it’s not there… :(
Keep up the good work!
Thanks Rosanne! I appreciate the feedback about wanting more text. If you check out the design diary on our website (links above), you can see photos of previous prototypes that had more text in the game.
I thought the journal pages were a nice touch. I would love to someday see a book that includes all of them, maybe if you do an art book (please do an art book 😉) that could be something to include in it.
Jamey, Scythe caused me to fall in love with your designs, with the games your company publishes. It, and every Stonemaier before and after it, have felt special. This time, you made a game with a world that feels alive. I thank you all so much for your hard work in bringing this to our tabletops! I can’t wait to see what comes next!
Thanks! That’s so nice of you to say about Scythe, Expeditions, and Stonemaier Games. I think Jakub has said that he hopes to do an art book with this text and more someday (ideally when the Expeditions story comes to a close).
I noticed the nice letter upon opening the box but I would never have assumed it was a random letter out of 20! That’s a neat touch. Would you ever include a sort of ARG in a game that prompted the community to work together toward some sort of reward? Video games like Inscryption and Portal have done stuff like that and this seems like a very light form of that.
I like that idea! It’s a fun way to offer more engagement to fans that want it without making those that don’t feel like they’re missing out.
I think Stonemaier has a large enough following that it’s a pretty safe bet the ARG would be uncovered and worth the investment- especially if it could start in the pre-release marketing phase with the keys to the end of the story hidden within the game materials.
I’m not sure what ARG stands for, but I’m guessing it’s some sort of metagame with a reward? I do like that sort of thing, and I thought about it for Charterstone. It’s on my list of things to consider if the right game comes along.
AGR = Augmented Reality Game