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At the time I started developing Empire of the Dinosaurs I was playing basically 2 games, The Decipher Star Wars CCG, and the strategy game Star Fleet Battles: Captain's Edition Basic Set. What do these two games have in common, besides super-cool space ships and aliens? A million money sucking expansions? True, but not what I was thinking of. I can sum it up in one word:
COMPLEXITY.
Star Fleet Battles is a monster of a game that comes with a phonebook, ...er, I mean rulebook. Now, don’t think I have anything against complexity. I thoroughly enjoyed every one of the marathon games we never finished. Yes it’s true; I’ve never succeeded in playing a game of SFB to completion.
Similarly, with every expansion the Star Wars CCG introduced a new set of rules, new mechanics, new keywords, new card types, new clarifications, and new ways to overwhelm and alienate new players.
Why were those games so complex? One tries to simulate every single aspect of running a starship, from the weapons and sensor systems all the way down to allocating power to the crew’s toilets. The other tries to simulate a huge sprawling space opera, from the destruction of planets down to Aunt Beru pouring Luke a glass of Blue Milk.
So my initial approach to Empire of the Dinosaurs was to create a sprawling mass of complex rules and ideas that in essence turned them into spaceships and Jedi and the whole mess felt nothing like playing with dinosaurs. I got way off track.
Dinosaurs weren’t that complicated. They weren’t stupid either. The whole “pea-sized” brain thing has been over sensationalized. They didn’t have any angst because their father was an evil overlord of the galaxy, and they didn’t have to charge their phaser banks. They weren’t war machines, or even mindless lawyer-eating rampaging monsters ala Jurassic Park. They were marvelous beautiful animals that lived and flourished in a past we can only imagine. They were not “characters” like in a movie, but they had “character” in the bewildering array of shapes and features their bodies displayed.
What helped changed my viewpoint? For one thing, the game wasn’t any fun. So duh! Something had to change. And second I came across the game Federation Commander. Basically a streamlined, sleeker version of Star Fleet Battles. Now FC is still a complicated “big” game, but nothing like SFB was. And as I read designer Steve Cole’s explanations on why they simplified things, it made a lot of sense. Third, Decipher’s game WARS became absurdly cheap and I tried it out. Again, it’s a simpler stripped down version of the Star Wars CCG and in my opinion played much better.
But the best thing was that while researching to find out what kind of dinosaur games had been made I discovered BoardGameGeek. Seeing the huge variety of game mechanics made my head spin. But it also helped me see how the wide variety of complexity levels often tied to the theme and subject mater. Another interesting thing is the concept of a “gateway”’ game. Something with simple rules that emphasizes fun above complexity. I bought Ticket to Ride and was amazed at how just a few simple rules could still generate a lot of decisions and provide some deeper strategy for the player.
So what to do? What exactly should I be going for? A heavy deep strategy game filled with rules on how the orientation of a T-Rex tooth needs to be compared to a Triceratops hit table chart and calculated against the number of ferns in the terrain hex while subtracting any Stegosaurs with their tail spike’s photon torpedoes loaded?
Or a fun filled gateway game where turning in sets of Hypsilophodons and Pachycephalosaurs lets you score points by building routes of eggs between volcanoes?
So next time I’ll go over the basic goals I came up with, …and also just how ridiculous a surf board can be!
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