A Conversation With: David Turczi
Kickstarter has had some amazing titles these last few months in spite of the international pandemic. One of these games is none other than Excavation Earth by Mighty Boards. We reached out to the publisher to see if we could cover the game in any way, but they decided to send us something even better: David Turczi himself! If you ask me, I couldn’t be happier with the decision.
There’s good reason behind my excitement. I consider David to be one of the most prolific and highest rising designers today. He has either been involved or has designed some of the most fascinating games in recent time. If that wasn’t enough, he is credited in, no less, than 70 unique titles including: Anachrony, Trickerion, Trismegistus and so many more. His design pedigree stretches across most game mechanics and is widely known for his versatile solo modes. Now, without further ado, lets uncover today’s fascinating interview:
Jan: Hello hello, David! I hope you don’t mind the humidity. Having an interview in the middle of a pond is definitely unconventional! However, we do have to keep our ducks in tow.
David: I'm just happy to be here to spread the good word! :)
Jan: And spread the word we shall! But before we get into it, I have to admit: I’m pretty excited for our interview! I’ve...been a fan of your work the second I played Anachrony. From that point onward I’ve seen your name attached to many amazing titles! For those readers that might not be very familiar with your work: What are some of the games and designs you’re most proud of?
David: The ones already out and available, besides Anachrony, are: Dice Settlers, Kitchen Rush (and its sequel, Rush MD), Days of Ire (and its sequel, Nights of Fire), and Petrichor (which I worked on with lead designer David Chircop). But I have lots of games in the pipeline, waiting to be delivered, or being crowdfunded nowadays, so you might have heard of Venice, Rome and Roll, Tekhenu, Tawantinsuyu, Perseverance, or Defence of Procyon III as well - and those are all me :)
Jan: Thats quite the list! Congratulations on having so many designs in the works. However, in addition to these wonderful titles, you’re also well known for excellent solo bot systems. I find it fascinating how these designs come into fruition. It’s the equivalent of designing a living and breathing pen and paper AI. How exactly were you inspired to create your first bot system?
David: I played a solo game, I found it boring, I asked myself: “Can I make it better?” So i did. People liked it, so I made it better the next time, and repeat. Experience birth'd my stride, it was entirely self taught. I don't even play any solo games, I just listen to feedback about my earlier solo designs :)
Jan: It takes some keen intuition to know how to improve a genre you don’t necessarily partake in yourself! Clearly, experience isn’t everything. The innate desire to improve upon whats there can be enough impetus to overcome any obstacle. Speaking of, when creating a solo bot system for a new title: what’s your process? How does one go about designing a challenging, thoughtful, and yet completely artificial player?
David: Play it in 2 player twice, then take notes of:
Where Do I Care About Going
What My Opponent Is Doing
Which Internal Systems of Theirs Don’t Interest Me
Measure Minimum/Maximum Points I Expect to Score
Create a Randomizer That Messes With All of the Former, While Racing Me to the Latter.
Then I add a "preview" to it, something that hints to the player what the bot will do next turn, and make sure that a counter-play exists. The more effective the counter, the better you’ll minimize the bot's score. This feature allows the player to feel like they outsmarted the bot, thus give the experience of playing a living being.
Anachrony, one of David’s earlier designs.
Jan: Fascinating, you make it sound like it’s easy! I love your approach to taking stock in the minute actions and drivers that guide our gaming. It’s the type of things you don’t think about while trying to beat Jesse…I mean your opponent. Which has me thinking: what is your criteria when deciding to collaborate on a game? Is your approach any different if it’s a new designer or a group you haven’t worked with before?
David: My criteria is "Is this a game I can contribute to?” If I have anything to add, I'm all over it. The more people I work with, the more skills and considerations I can pick up. What I learned from co-designer (A), I'll happily apply to co-designer (B)'s game.
Jan: The way I picture it is like a master craftsmen willingly venturing out to collect all sorts of tools and resources to create his magnum opus. Which is, coincidentally, an excellent segue to talk about the design process. When designing, what comes first: the chicken or the egg? Or better yet, the theme or the mechanics? What is your approach?
David: Entirely variable. I start from a vision usually. Sometimes that vision is a new mechanism (sand timer worker placement, bag building dice manipulation, dice drafting area control, etc.). Sometimes it's a theme (asymmetric two team wargame about aliens invading a human colony, Hungarian revolutionaries fighting Soviet oppression in 1956, etc.). And sometimes it's a central component (I want the shadow of the obelisk to rotate while changing the cost of the actions, etc.).
Tekhenu is a dice drafting and action selection game coming later this year also by David Turczi.
Jan: Ah, vision! How could I been so blind! In all seriousness, we sometimes forget the importance of a singular idea and how that can completely guide a project.
However, I digress. I feel I’ve overloaded you with so many questions! The main reason for our conversation today was to talk about your latest title: Excavation Earth, right? Guess I got over excited there…sorry about that. So…what’s Excavation Earth all about?
David: Thematically, it's about a group of alien archaeologists coming to the Earth after humanity has gone extinct, and digging up our leftover priceless artefacts (such as a licence plate, an inflatable Godzilla, or a Taj Mahal snowglobe) which are considered high art throughout the galaxy. Then, they use good old marketing to sell it to the eager buyers. Mechanically, it's an economic euro, using dual use cards (which you can use to either excavate artefacts based on your card's colour, or deal at markets based on your card's icon). However, the primary interaction is market manipulation - coloured meeples represent eager buyers, and you have the ability to add and remove them from the market with some limitations. All of this is driven by set collection to build your own Gallery.
Jan: Wow, that’s quite the description! It sound’s like there are a lot of moving parts here. In your dev diary you’ve described the game as “Brass-lite” which I found fascinating (which you can read here.) In addition to Brass, you mention Glory to Rome as another source of inspiration when describing multi-use cards. Which begs the question: were there any other games that you learned from or from which you drew inspiration to perfect E.E. (Excavation Earth)?
David: For E.E. these were the two main inspirations, besides the "use the draft to reduce randomness" trick of Terraforming Mars, but my design style is always seeing what's out there and wondering how can i milk it for something more, new, better?
Jan: Continuing with your dev diary, you describe each iteration of the game as an “era.” I loved this wording because of how well it tied to the theme of EE. In that same line of archaeological thinking: are there any mechanics you wish you could’ve included that, for various reasons, didn’t make the cut? And if so, might you unearth such mechanics in a future expansion once the details are worked out?
David: At one point whoever had the most traders in a market gained a player power, but it was too volatile and not fun to gain/lose. So when we wanted to spice up the end game area majority for the envoys, we pretty much reused that mechanism, but instead of giving it to the player with majority (they already get the points for it), we gave the abilities as one-offs, to players willing to remove envoys from the board, thus creating a sweet trade off between maintaining majority or getting the ability and reusing your cube.
Excavation Earth player board. (Prototype)
Jan: Glad you were able to incorporate all of your ideas in some shape or form! Now talking specifically about the game, I haven’t seen much information on how a round would go. Would you mind giving a brief example of a few turns?
David: At the beginning of the round you get 8 cards, pick two, pass the rest, repeat until everyone has picked 6, discarding the last 2. Then in turn order, play 2 cards and choose an action each, or pass. Repeat until everyone passed, then score area majorities of envoys. That's a round, do it 3 times :) Actions are moving your explorers, collecting artefacts, placing buyers and traders in a market, placing traders and envoys in a market and a corresponding command centre (or late game removing them instead to trigger an ability as mentioned above), placing a card on the surveyor forecast to get more tiles in the game and influence what the colour of the new tiles are, sell to markets (discarding artefacts, scoring money, and promoting traders to envoys), acquire or offload tiles to/from the black market (essentially off-loading what you cannot sell, or buying what you couldn't excavate).
Jan: Sounds fairly interesting! I think what I’m most excited to see is set collection being one of the central mechanics. We’re not used to seeing it be the star in a heavier euro. More so, paring it with a player based market is such an interesting take. What other elements did you build around the set collection that makes Excavation Earth a heavier title?
David: The set collection essentially replaces player goals. We could have given you a card "you get 15 points if you sample 4 different yellow artefacts". Instead, we built a "galactic bingo" grid, and said, you get points for each column and row you fill. You'll definitely pick up some artefacts at the beginning of the game, and hence setting your own objective: you’re gonna prefer the ones that share a row/column with what you already have more of, thus your game shapes your own objective.
A close-up of the main board.
Jan: During your extensive development period, how did you approach play testing? Do you remember the biggest “A-ha!” moment based on the feedback of a playtester? And if so, how much did that impact the final design?
David: Like I always do. Play until I like it, then ask someone else (Gordon in this case) what he doesn't like about it, and then work until we both do :) The biggest a-ha moment was during the final retheming of the game, when i realised the connection between the coloured meeples and the popularity bonus, that tied the whole game together, and now is essentially the central mechanism.
Jan: I’m glad that was key to the design and that you found clarity just in time! Now, my last question is actually not about Excavation Earth but on your unique international perspective within the industry. Originally from Hungary and working for a long period in the UK, what would you say is the main difference between the European and Western gaming culture? When designing a title, do you take this into consideration in any way? Are their certain themes and/or mechanics that you’ve designed that have done better in one market over the other?
David: The only difference I know is how my own perspective grew as I met more people, played more games, worked with more companies. Freshness, diversity, and hooks are just as important, or sometimes more so than "is this a good mechanism". But then again, I'm not a very observant person :D
Jan: Well, your approach to solo games would lead me to believe otherwise! Bonus question: At this moment the industry is built around a combination of Kickstarter and direct-to-retail sales. Do you see the future of the game industry move towards one option versus the other? Or can we already see a new venue making its appearance? Ultimately, what changes are necessary to accommodate for the industry's rapid expansion?
David: I see different titles doing well in either. I fought very hard to make sure Tekhenu and Tawantinsuyu are NOT Kickstarter products, because they fit the "mood" of retail sales better. With E.E. I think we managed to sneak a retail-friendly game onto KS via the standout theme and art, but if we wanted a much bigger KS bang it would have had to be all about narrative, and possibly minis. And that's fine, different courses for everyone :)
Jan: David, thank you so very much for jumping into this interview with us. Excavation Earth looks like a fantastic title and the rest of your 2020-2021 pipeline looks absolutely incredible! I’ve found our chat today to be quite an enlightening view into the mysterious minds of designers. Let’s make sure we sit down again to talk about one of your next big titles! Now, let me help you out of here. The geese are NOT friendly.
*For more information on Excavation Earth, please visit the Kickstarter and to follow David Turczi, be sure to visit his BGG Profile which he constantly keeps updated.