Interviews by an Optimist # 6 -

Bruno Faidutti

Bruno Faidutti is well known in the gaming world for his many game designs. He has designed over a dozen games with the most popular being Citadels, nominated for the Spiel des Jahres in 2000. Bruno is also a game enthusiast, maintaining a web site with a recommended game library and other articles concerning gaming at www.faidutti.com.

Tom Vasel: Over the past several years, your name has often been synonymous with the words "chaos" and "light". Of course, this isn't always the case, but I feel that when people think of your work, they think of games such as Citadels or Fist of Dragonstones. What causes you to design games with this high "chaotic" element?

Bruno Faidutti: Though all of my games are not so chaotic - see Babylone or China Moon, which have perfect information - it's true that many of my games can be described as chaotic; and that I enjoy designing games with this mix of interaction, luck, humor and dragons often called "chaos". In this regard, Citadels or Fist of Dragonstones are even probably not the worse ones... The main reason is probably that I design the games I like to play and that I like playing such games.

Games of pure skill are too competitive for me - when the best player wins, it feels as if the aim of the game is only to find out who's best, and that's not my idea of a game. In games of pure luck, my decisions have no real effect on the game, while one of the reasons I play games is probably that I want my decisions to have a measurable effect, which is too rarely the case in the real world. So, I like games that stand somewhere in the middle, with some skill and some luck.

The real world is a hard to stand mix between absurdity and tragedy, and is usually not really fun to look at. I play games to have a break, and that's why I like the game setting to have some fun, some humor in it.

I design games because I'm lazy. I would have loved to write long and difficult novels, but I don't have the strength to do it. Designing games is, at least for me, much easier and lighter; but this implies that I focus on light and easy games. If someday I can stand the work, time and concentration required to design a complex strategy game such as Age of Steam of Puerto Rico, I would probably use it to do something else other than designing games. That's why I mostly design light and fun games, with a balanced mix between skill and luck.

Tom Vasel: What is your favorite game that you haven't designed? And what game has had the greatest impact on your designs?

Bruno Faidutti: My favorite game I didn't design is definitely draw poker, which I rate as the most subtle game ever, even when I'm not very good at it. The game that had the most impact on my designs is definitely Cosmic Encounter, with Magic the Gathering being a good second; but Magic the Gathering was itself inspired by Cosmic Encounter. My experience in role-playing games, and especially LARPS, also inspired my overall theory of gaming; but I don't think it has made a clear impact on my board and card game designs.

Tom Vasel: Obviously some of your games receive a lot more press than others (Citadels, etc.), while many of your early games have little if any mention. What game have you designed that you think is underrated, and which game is your personal favorite?

Bruno Faidutti: I think it's normal for old games to receive little press, unless they have become classics. It's probably better for my very first design, Baston, which was not so good. On the other hand, one of my biggest commercial successes, Knightmare Chess, was my second design and still sells regularly more than ten years after being published; so maybe now it is becoming a classic. This game, though, is mostly bought and played by chess players and chess clubs, often as a joke, and receives little press in the boardgame hobby.

As for my own favorite design, it's hard to make a choice. Mystery of the Abbey is the game I'm most proud of, but this doesn't necessarily mean it's the best one. I'm proud of it, because deduction games are among the hardest ones to design, and because a chaotic deduction game is quite a challenge. I think Serge and I have really succeeded with this one; mainly because the game is really dripping with theme, something I find more and more difficult to achieve, probably due to long exposure of German games.

The gaming world seems to have decided that Citadels is my best game, and it's definitely the one that sells best. I like it, but I don't consider it so much better than my other games. It seems that Boomtown will be quite successful too. There are two of my games, which I consider generally underrated, Castle and Fist of Dragonstones. Castle was inspired by collecting card games and has many cards with different effects. This means it has a learning curve, something unusual in my games; but I think it is one of the subtlest and richest games I have ever designed. As for Fist of Dragonstones, it has a bluffing feel very similar to Citadels, and I was really surprised that it didn't have the same success. By the way, I just read the interview by Eric Hautemont, where he regrets Queen's Necklace didn't sell best - I think Fist of Dragonstones deserved it even more!

Tom Vasel: You've designed several of your games with another author. What are the advantages and disadvantages to working with another person when designing a board game?

Bruno Faidutti: I am surprised at how easy I find working on a game with another designer, especially given that designing games is, at least for me, a substitute for writing; and writing is clearly a solitary experience. I see two main advantages in working together with another designer.

The first advantage is that it's a wonderful occasion to meet - even if only by email - other people from the gaming world and to be confronted with other ideas, other trends, other ways of thinking. When you're working on a game design with someone else, it gives you a good reason to email or call someone else, instead of just saying, "Hi, how are you doing?". Designing games with someone else makes it kind of a social activity, while designing games alone can sometimes feel like brain masturbation.

The other reason is that it's very convenient, especially now with the internet and the possibility to send and print files quite easily, and that it works well. The game designer, like the book writer, is often "blocked" in front of a blank page - now a blue screen. It's difficult to ask someone else to take over a text for you, but for a game, which is something less personal, it causes fewer problems, providing you choose your co-designer with care. When a game designer is blocked and lacks an idea to push his design farther, another one can bring in a fresh look and new ideas. That's why games designed with a co-designer are often designed much faster than the ones I try to make alone. Most of the games I've designed with Alan Moon, Bruno Cathala, Serge Laget, Michael Schacht and a few others have been sold and published before we ever get an occasion to playtest them together.

Another reason I make so many designs with a co-designer might be that I am quite good at writing clear rules, which makes discussion by internet very easy. I've been told by many publishers that I am the only designer whose rules are immediately clear and often don't need to be rewritten (save for checking English grammar errors) before publication!

I have five games scheduled so far for 2005, and all of them are common designs with different designers - Alan Moon, Michael Schacht, Bruno Cathala, Serge Laget, Mike Selinker and Paul Randles.

Tom Vasel: Can you tell us some more about your upcoming games?

Bruno Faidutti: You know how it is.... I've never had many problems telling about my upcoming games, but it seems some publishers don't like it; so I won't go into details. The first one is Diamant, designed with Alan Moon, a fun and fast-paced race and risk taking game, à la Can't Stop, in an Indiana Jones setting. Then comes Hollywood, a small, tactical card game designed with Michael Schacht, which can be a real brain burner and feels probably more Schacht than Faidutti. Later there will be Treasure Island, which is a kind of follow-up to Pirate's Cove, two centuries later, with divers exploring the wrecks. This very nice family game was Paul Randles very last design and has been finalized by Mike Selinker and I, which makes it a very special collaboration. As for the two other ones, since things can still change a bit about them, better wait a few months.

Tom Vasel: What companies are producing the first three games you mentioned?

Bruno Faidutti: Schmidt, Fantasy Flight Games and Tilsit

Tom Vasel: Being from France, what do you think when you hear people constantly talk about "German" games? Is the boardgaming scene large in France, also?

Bruno Faidutti: I'm weary of nations and nationalities, no matter whether French, German or any other, and I don't feel very much French myself. (But I'm sure some American people will find this very French) I feel more European, or may be only part of the "western culture", rather than French. On the other hand, even if my game designs have been influenced by the German school in the last ten years, I don't think I completely belong to the so-called "German school" of game design. I'm still somewhere in between the German and the American styles - at least I try to be.

The boardgaming scene in France is much smaller than it is in Germany, or even in the USA, but it has been constantly growing for the last five years, with companies like Days of Wonder (technically American but in fact half French), Asmodée (who started with RPGs but focuses more and more on boardgames) or Tilsit (hard to describe because it's hard to understand), and with authors like Roberto Fraga, Sylvie Barc, Philippe des Pallières, Bruno Cathala, Serge Laget, Christophe Boelinger. Maybe France (and possibly Italy) will be for boardgames what Germany was in the nineties - we'll see. But once more, I always try to be as little French as possible, even when, for obvious technical and linguistic reasons, it is much easier for me to deal with French companies, to work with French authors, to meet French gamers. That's the reason why my website is in English as well as in French.

Tom Vasel: Let's talk briefly about your website... You have an ideal library of games there, and you spotlight a game each month. How do you decide which games go in the ideal library?

Bruno Faidutti: I started my website at the beginning of the internet, in 1993, I think. In those times, there was only one publisher with a website - Sid Sackson - and very few gaming resources on the web. At first it was a single page describing my boardgames, the LARPS I was organizing, and my university research. The space limit given by my provider was... 512 k. Step by step, I made three different pages for games, LARPS and unicorns, then I stopped playing LARPS because of lack of time and wrote a different page for each game, then half a dozen pages for each game... and it started to become popular and get a lot of visits. In those times, I was often asked what other games I would recommend, and I thought uploading a few game reviews of games I could recommend would be a good idea. The idea of an "ideal game library" comes from the "imaginary museum" of André Malraux, and I wanted to achieve something like this with games. I then added a few games, one or two every month, and now there are about 400 entries, meaning 400 games I really like, which is a lot, especially when I don't play that often. Some of them are just games that I happened to really like at a moment, but which I've not played for years. I know the ideal game library is popular in the small internet gaming world, and I try to update it regularly with both recent and older games.
It's not necessary that I play many sessions of a game to add it to the library, since in recent years there are only a dozen games, aside from my prototypes, that I've played more than two or three times. On the other hand, with all the talk on the internet, I can now play almost only games that I am already almost sure to enjoy. So the criterion is simple, if after playing a game or two I feel the experience was really rewarding, and that this was due to the game and not only to the gamers; I add it. As for the game of the month, this is something I added one or two years ago, and it's just the game I want to put some focus on at the time, and I don't always know why.

Tom Vasel: You've designed a lot of games, produced by many different companies. What advice would you give to the aspiring board game designer?

Bruno Faidutti: My first advice is - don't be paranoid. I've noticed many aspiring designers are afraid that some publisher will steal their ideas and are concerned with legal protection, patents, copyrights and the like. Don't bother with all these time and money consuming things; just make games. Almost everybody in the game business is honest, and the internet has become the best protection, if someone makes something dishonest, it will be told in all games mailing lists and forums at once, so no one has an interest in it. Also, many aspiring designers are afraid that it's difficult to get published when you are not already well known in the game circuit. Of course, contacts are a bit easier for "established" people, but the game publishing world is much more open than, say, the book publishing one. If your game is really good, it will find a publisher. If it's always rejected, it's not good enough or needs some reworking. Also, don't hope to make a living from it, unless you can live very modestly; or your wife has a very stable and
well- paid job.

Tom Vasel: When designing your games, did the ideas "just come to you", or did you sit down and methodically plan out the design of them?

Bruno Faidutti: It's an interesting question, which means it's difficult to answer it. I enjoy designing games, and I try to design a few new ones every year. This doesn't mean that it has become a kind of work; and I don't sit in front my computer saying, "I must make a game today, where do I start?". So, I can say that the original idea for a game often "just comes to me" out of nothingness. I often have ideas for games when reading books or playing other games. I read a book and feel it would be nice to have a game creating the same ambiance; or I play a game or read a review of it, and I feel like "I would not have made this that way"; or I just talk with other game designers, with wild ideas going back and forth, and I just hit on one. This means I can have too many ideas sometimes, and no ideas at all for a few months. On the other hand, once the basic idea is here, there is some actual work in making a working game out of it, but I have no fixed designing process that I methodically follow. Sometimes I work on the rules for weeks before making a first test; sometimes I immediately test a few systems by myself; sometimes I email another designer and ask him if he likes the idea and would like to work on it with me; sometimes I make a rough prototype and try to test it as soon as possible.

Tom Vasel: Can you give an example of the length of time and planning of designing a game - say like Citadels?

Bruno Faidutti: Once again, there is no rule. Some games can be designed in a couple hours (Knightmare Chess), other need two years (Mystery of the Abbey). Citadels, if I remember well, needed a few months. First was the original idea of making a mediaeval card game with a fantasy twist but not too much magic. I discussed the idea on the phone a few times with Serge Laget, but we started working in two such different directions that it ended in two games, Castle and Citadels, a few months later. If I remember well, I first had the idea of spending money to play district cards, and of some district cards earning money for some characters, and some having special powers. I hesitated for a few weeks on how the characters will be attributed - a character for the whole game, or a majority system with the different colors, or just random distribution every turn; until I read the rules of Verräter and thought the system in it would fit my games very well.

All this story is developed on my website, with one article about the relation with Castle and one about the relation with Verräter.

Tom Vasel: Bruno, thanks for your time! I always look forward to your next game and appreciate you doing this interview. Any last words for our readers?

Bruno Faidutti: Can't think of anything specific to add at the moment - just visit my website (www.faidutti.com) occasionally, and you'll see what I have to add at the moment.

Tom Vasel
"Real men play board games"
January 26th, 2005