Answers to the questions from:

I Have No Words & I Must Design

"What's key here? Goals. Opposition. Resource management. Information. Well talk about them in half a mo.

"What decisions do players make in this game?"

Players choose what cards they play when, and for what. They choose how they fly around the board.

"If you have no goal, your decisions are meaningless. Choice A is as good as Choice B; pick a card, any card. Who cares? What does it matter?

"For it to matter, for the game to be meaningful, you need something to strive toward. You need goals.

"What are the players' goals? Can the game support a variety of different goals? What facilities exist to allow players to strive toward their various goals?"

The most obvious goal is that players try to beat each other. Another goal of many players is to come up with clever and unexpected card combinations. Lastly (well, there may be more) it is often possible, given the right cards and skillful play, to cycle through several hands in one turn, thus doing far more than usual in a single turn. Longest extended turn is often a goal that players shoot for.

"A game without struggle is a game that's dead.

"What provides opposition? What makes the game a struggle? "

Players oppose each other, what better competition is there?

"Ultimately, 'managing resources' means managing game elements in pursuit of your goal. A 'resource' that has no game role has nothing to contribute to success or failure, and is ultimately void.

"What resources does the player manage? Is there enough diversity in them to require tradeoffs in making decisions? Do they make those decisions interesting? "

The primary resource that players have is life. When that is gone they are out of the game. Life is defended by cards, which can effect all aspects of the game. Any card can be used either in atttack or defense. Alternatively, half the cards have a third use, detailed on the card. That third use can often be applied differently in different situations.

"To give a player a sense that he controls his destiny, that he is playing a game, you need game tokens. The fewer the tokens, the more detailed they must be; it is no coincidence that roleplaying games, which give the player a single token, also have exceptionally detailed rules for what that token can do.

"What are the players' tokens? What are these tokens' abilities? What resources do they use? What makes them interesting? "

The playing pieces are cardstock cutout dragons. They represent a dragon's physical position relative to the other dragons in the sky. This position is often influenced by the cards, either directly, or indirectly. A card may cause a dragon to move further, or immediatly to a different place altogether. A players hand of cards may cause him to move his dragon into combat, away from combat, or even try to goad someone into attacking him.

"Given the decisions players are required to make, what information do they need? Does the game provide the information as and when needed? Will reasonable players be able to figure out what information they need, and how to find it?"

Often one can estimate what a player may have in his hand based on what they have played in reaction to other cards previously with that hand. Also, general knowledge of the deck allows rough estimation of what may be in a player's new hand.

A player skilled at counting cards will be at an advantage in this game, as well as one who can simply remember which Spells and Maneuvers have been played. Other standard card game tricks, like reading people's behavior, will also help fill in the gaps in the information available and give a skillful player the advantage.

"How can players help or hinder each other? What incentives do they have to do so? What resources can they trade?"

Players choose to attack on not to attack, whom to fly towards, and whom to expend those extra resources often required to do damage. Also, many spells can effect any player that the caster chooses. These decisions can be based on any number of factors. Who damaged you last. Who has the most life and needs knocking down. Who has the least life and would be an easy kill. Temporary alliances are made and broken. There are no motivations for these alliances however, beyond personal preservation and any relations outside of the game (which still doesn't go very far, I've seen girlfriends brutally taken down by their boyfriends), so these alliances don't last very long.

"Pageantry and detail and sense of place can greatly add to a game's emotional appeal.

"How does the game evoke the ethos and atmosphere and pageantry of its setting? What can you do to make it more colorful? "

The board itself adds the most "authenticity". It is made of organic material, and pulls into a genre appropriate carrying pouch. The design of the board itself is very classic, except that movement follows the lines, not the spaces between. Set on this simple and elegant playing field, are the brightly colored cards and dragon pieces. Play dictates that many cards are played, and are often placed face-up on the table. The life stones are also bright colors, corrisponding to the dragon pieces. They are offset nicely by the simple two color board.

"color adds to a game's appeal. And simulation is a way of providing color.

"How can elements of simulation strengthen the game?"

The board itself, the way the dragons fly on it, resembles closely the swooping flight paths of the beasts.

"Randomness can be useful. It's one way of providing variety of encounter. And what does that mean?

"It means that the same old thing all over again is fucking boring. It means that players like to encounter the unexpected. It means that the game has to allow lots of different things to happen, so there's always something a little different for the players to encounter.

"What things do the players encounter in this game? Are there enough things for them to explore and discover? What provides variety? How can we increase the variety of encounter?"

The major random factor is the cards. Everyone draws from the same pool of cards, so it is fair, but the cards themselves are very different. There is a healthy mix of plain combat cards, useful maneuvers, and unique spells. Every hand is different, and every combat is flavored by the different cards in each player's hand, the cards that they have played in the past, and their positions on the board.

"What can you do to make the player care about his position? Is there a single game token that's more important than others to the player, and what can be done to strengthen identification with it? If not, what is the overall emotional appeal of the position, and what can be done to strengthen that appeal? Who "is" the player in the game? What is his point of view?"

The game has no back story. You are controlling dragons who are fighting while flying in the sky. My original thought was that games might last less than 20 or even 10 minutes. In this case "realms" would be accumulated to represent past victories and would somehow effect play. This would have generated some attachment to one's position from game to game.

This position attachment was the biggest loss when I removed the paper and pencil system from the game. Way back when, your dragon had 3 scores, and you started out with points to distribute, and your choice of a maneuver and some spells. When a dragon won you could enhance a score, or get a new spell. Every dragon was "raised" unique, given a name, and played with the goal of enhancing it to explore a particular stategic approach to the game.

"Roleplaying is a powerful technique for a whole slew of reasons. It improves position identification; if you think like your character, you're identifying with him closely. It improves the game's color, because the players become partly responsible for maintaining the willing suspense of disbelief, the feeling that the game world is alive and colorful and consistent. And it is an excellent method of socialization.

"How can players be induced to roleplay? What sorts of roles does the system permit or encourage?"

Much of the roleplaying unfortunately went out with the paper and pencil. There isn't much left to identify with other than the color of your dragon.

"Or as another example, many tabletop roleplaying games spend far too much effort worrying about "realism" and far too little about the game's use by players. Of what use is a combat system that is extraordinarily realistic, if playing out a single combat round takes fifteen minutes, and a whole battle takes four hours? They're not spending their time socializing and talking and hamming it up; they're spending time rolling dice and looking things up on charts. What's the point in that?

"How can the game better encourage socialization? "

Removing the cumbersome paper and pencil of the old rules greatly enhances the social nature of this game. Cards and dice are fun party toys. The game can now be played with varying levels of concentration, allowing for it to become the background to a fun evening with friends.

"In fact, one of the most common game failures is anticlimax. The period of maximum tension is not the resolution, but somewhere mid-way through the game. After a while, the opposition is on the run, or the player's position is unassailable. In most cases, this is because the designer never considered the need for narrative tension.

"What can be done to make the game tense? "

This was the major improvement from the original rules. It used to be that a dragon was at its strongest at the start of a duel, when all its spells and tricks were available. They would then be used up, leaving the dragon less powerful. If each dragon used up its power, they could continue circling each other to no effect for hours.

Now once a dragons resources are spent, a new hand is drawn, bringing unknown new factors into the game. Tricks and Spells are designed in order to increase mobility as well as for manipulation. This makes it harder for a dragon to avoid confrontation and therefore stall a game.

Increased randomness, especially in the distance a dragon flies in a turn, also help avoid stalemate.