Designer Notes ItM #12 - What can a dwarf get done?
I hope you enjoyed reading blog #11, because now I want to deep dive into how I designed worker placement in Into the Mountain. I knew very early that I wanted to have worker placement in my game, but I wanted the focus to be deck-building. I'm open to saying that I found inspiration from a game I really enjoyed in 2011, Dune Imperium. In that game the two mechanics are strongly linked and intertwined. In my game I wanted a little bit more of a power curve. The dwarves in Into the Mountain have always been designed for worker placement actions, but they have significantly evolved through the design.
Early versions of worker placement in Into the Mountain
In the first three iterations (and those in between) there was a separate sheet with actions. I came to this design because that was what I knew from a lot of other games. You can see the actions in picture 1. Since the original design there were a max of 4 dwarves and all players started with 1 dwarf. I also know I wanted to involve a system for upgrading technology which quickly became the science resource. You can see the far left column has cubes, this indicated the level of actions available to the players. The columns expanded to the right, allowing more locations for higher player counts.
There was a major problem with the first iteration of the game. I was trying to make it feel more like Magic the Gathering, so players did all their actions in their turn/round. This design caused at least two issues. First, turns could take a very long time. I remember waiting for my friend to finish optimizing his turn going on 15 minutes. Second, there wasn't very much, if any, interaction. After testing Lost Ruins of Arnak, I realized that allowing alternating turns increases interaction by encouraging location blocking with worker placement.
One aspect of the worker placement where I receive a lot of positive feedback, is the mechanism for gaining additional workers. This mechanism has been in the very first iteration and I'm proud I involved it so early in the design. I short-hand explain it "the rich don't get richer". All players start with one dwarf, and can send it to recruit another dwarf from a guild. The guilds have expectations to be met like: have 3 constructs, or have 1 upgrade, or have 4 tunnels. The thing is, as soon as you recruit the first additional dwarf, the other remaining guilds increase their expectations. So you have a mini-game of deciding which order to unlock all your dwarves and it prevents a runaway game.
How the dwarves evolved
This action table was fun for players and worked well. I probably could have successfully published the game with leaving it in. One friend, Alex, tried to convince me to keep it in. After showing the game at Essen in 2023 I decided I needed to make some major changes to the design. I had tried a game which scared me that it was on the market, Endless Winter, because on paper the mechanics are very similar to Into the Mountain. After I finally tried it, I realized the feel during the game is drastically different. My game is a lot more engine-buildy and has a stronger power curve. The biggest thing I disliked with Endless Winter is the too wide set of directions and options. I realized then, that I needed to make the mechanics more interconnected. I decided to remove the separate action sheets and change the actions to the tiles in the mountain (see picture 2).
I knew I really needed to make this change (removing the action table) and I'm happy I did it. But with most changes in design, it had reprecussions. With the table gone, there were no longer actions to upgrade with science. I knew I wanted to keep the feel of progression and technology. This led me to the elegant solution of allowing players to upgrade the mines! I also needed to decide on new actions for the dwarves. I was able to make the thematic decision of dwarves simply drilling tunnels on undeveloped mountain tiles. I continue to hope that the players feel the game is thematic through the gameplay.
The design change caused another new issue. How do players upgrade the mines now? Is it a free action, so you can capitalize on your own upgrade in the same turn? Should the dwarf be sent to the mine to signify he is executing the upgrade? In order to keep interaction up, I decided to make upgrading a primary action, to allow another player to use the location before your next turn. At the same time, I'm able to lean into the area control mechanism by saying the player with the most tunnels receives a little benefit for this.
Reflection
Standing back and reflecting feels tough right now. I boiled down the history and design evolution in 6 paragraphs. But I've been working on the game for 5 years now. Holy smokes. It really is a lot of work. Find new playtesters (this was the hardest part for me for a long time), teach them the game, have them play, write notes, collect feedback, repeat this many times then make changes, and repeat that again. Now the question I've been asking myself and others is "does the game feel finished to you?"
If you want to play Into the Mountain, you should check it out on Tabletop Simulator. Thanks for reading this far, I hope you're learning more about board game design or you find them interesting. It helps me cement my design process and I want to improve my content writing. I'll see you in the next one where I break into another major mechanism present in Into the Mountain: Area control!
Cheers, -Kevin
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