Manny Vega on Design and Dragons
When I first told Wendy that I thought we should pick up a copy of Flamecraft, a board game about dragons, she was picturing something more Smaug and less Twilight Sparkle. So you can imagine her surprise when the game showed up featuring creatures both exceptionally cute and helpful.
Everyone knows Flamecraft now. Because it was a huge hit.
Beneath the charming art style, is a solid worker placement game with lots of juicy decisions.
I got a chance to catch up with Flamecraft’s designer, Manny Vega, and learn about his own design journey and what led him to design a game about cute, helpful dragons.
Let’s start off by talking a little bit about your history with board games. What games did you play early on in the hobby? Were there any that stood out from the others and really made you want to look more into board games?
I got into board games at a pretty early age playing with my dad. Not just the standards, which we all played, but we played all sorts of war games with secret U-boats and aircraft carriers, but I can't remember the names. The one I remember really pushing me into the game design world was Axis & Allies. My best friend and I spent months crafting our own versions of that game to make unique versions we could play, like WW3 with space ships, Lord of the Rings, and my favorite which was set on Earth, but played out in purgatory. Later on, when we saw Risk Godstorm I really realized how close we came to creating something mainstream just for fun. I think that really kicked off my desire to make games for a living. Shortly after that, I started my career as a video game developer which scratched the itch, but never gave me the same rush. We continued playing D&D, CCGs and tactic games when we could get together, but mostly video games took over. I don't think I have a real recent tabletop game origin story because it's just always been part of my life. I've always been playing different games with different friends at conventions, and every once in a while a mechanic sparks my attention.
What made you want to design a game about dragons?
For example, games like Uno, Werewolf and Sushi Go got me interested in social card games where people can talk to each other and be silly with adorable cards, which led me to create Sparkle*Kitty. I played Love Letter and became enamored with the idea of such a small game being able to produce so much gameplay. I've been tinkering with a game that has a minimal amount of cards for years, and it was definitely the inspiration for my latest release, Card Capers with Darrington Press. When I played Century:Golem edition I saw something really beautiful and elegant about the engine building design, and I started thinking about what would happen if all the players shared that engine. This would lead me down the path that eventually got to Flamecraft. I honestly didn't think of the game as dragons immediately, and certainly not adorable helpful dragons, that's all Sandara's wild imagination. At first I just imagined players were on a sinking ship, and they all had to work together to improve the ship, even though they knew only one of them was likely to survive/win. There wasn't much more to it than that idea, but when I saw a tiny dragon making creme brulee, everything changed. I started picturing what a town full of these helpful creatures would look like, and the gameplay just came from there.
Flamecraft really encourages you to pay attention to what other players are doing on their turns. Was that an important design consideration for you?
I wanted to make sure that players not only cared what others were doing on their turn, but also to foster a feeling of communal building of the town. My main design goal was to eliminate player ownership of anything in particular, and make it more about being the player that did the most good for the town overall that would win. I like to call it Competitive Caring. I knew that with the art style we would get a lot of attention, but that it was something friendly and adorable and the game should represent that. I am not a technical designer, I don't build out large spreadsheets with numbers and try to make all the numbers equal fun. For me, design is thematic and organic, it grows as you play the game and develop the ideas behind each choice. I have given publishers heart attacks by ditching something that was working simply because it did not make sense to me, but in the end I think players feel these choices even if they don't even notice them.
What’s on your table? What is your favorite game or games to play right now?
I have played SO MANY prototypes lately that it is really hard for me to find the time to play anything else. I can say with confidence that my friend Ammon Anderson's latest game "Gnome Hollow" is going to be on everyone's table after GenCon this year. I play games with my kids more often than anything else, and we are really enjoying Point Salad and Point City, as well as Splendor Duo, Parks and Cascadia. I'm not really into more hardcore games these days, things need to be quick and easy to learn to get them to the table. Unless they are RPGs, of which I am in 2 campaigns at the moment, which explains my lack of time over all!
A huge thanks to Manny Vega for taking time out of his busy schedule for this interview. You can follow his work at mannyvega.com.
Buy Flamecraft: https://amzn.to/3Usl0Rc (Amazon)
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