So you’ve made a successful board game, what next? Expansions! Today we touch base with our Chief Restoration Officer Rob Daviau to find out how the new Return to Dark Tower: Expeditions expansion came to exist.
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What is outside the Four Kingdoms?
The question arose early in brainstorming what’s next for Return To Dark Tower. The Four Kingdoms can’t be the whole world? What lies beyond? Other kingdoms or wilds? Or some of each? Are they friends or foes? And why would we want to go there?
The idea sprung from there. What if the Tower was too powerful for the Four Kingdoms to handle? What if they needed help? They could send expeditions to these other lands for lost treasures or help. The concept generally came quickly — a press-your-luck sort of track where you didn’t know exactly what the expedition had found or how far you could push it before you needed to come back and take what it had. Seeing a pile of facedown rewards was enticing, like wrapped gifts.
The details, as usual, took much longer. What is the threat that is “too big”? We had an idea for “foe tags” that made foes harder. From there, it was just a little reframing to make them torments and also have some global ones as well to really make the game more difficult at the start. Each torment makes either its foe harder or the whole game harder. For example, a lesser foe torment might say “Before you Battle this foe, first place 1 skull on or adjacent to their space.” Not horrible but an extra factor to consider. Whereas a global torment might be “Heroes cannot remove corruptions at a sanctuary.” Yes, there are other ways to remove them and, yes, you can always play more carefully. But that torment is harder work around over 3-6 months. The players couldn’t just ignore all the torments; they had to find a way to remove some and work around others.
We knew we’d have four new heroes and we decided they’d be from these other lands – one each to the north, south, east and west. Our art director wrote up stories of each character and land for each for the illustrator. In doing so, he defined these lands and they quickly became canon. We now knew the vibe of each of the four expedition sites. The Brassbound League, to the south, are merchants and tinkerers, who will demand gear and potions for their services but will provide Lotus Workshops for better reinforcing. The Umberwood to the west are the home of druids, who provide Runic Menhirs that shape the terrain of the lands. The Gasping Mountains to the north have reclusive monks who often ask for warriors but give living statues to guard the four kingdoms. Finally, the Inkstain Isles to the east are home to ghostly pirates. The dark altars they provide can be a home for skulls and even use the skulls to power effects.
After that came the day-to-day work of figuring out how expeditions worked, what the rewards were, how they offset torments, how they differed from each other. For a while, gold returned to the game as an homage to the original Dark Tower. The expeditions ran the course of too hard, too easy, too complicated, not worth it, waaaaay too worth it, etc. After months of playing lots of not-quite-there versions, the final one started coming into focus.
Each expedition board has a web of paths, with rewards and payments. Moving the caravan takes moves, same as heroes. Some spaces require payment from its supplies (2 spirit or a potion, for example). Some spaces give rewards, which are put face down in the spoils section of the caravan. While there was some variation between the different expeditions, we needed one thing that really made them feel different. We came up with site tokens, which are tokens that go from the land of the expedition onto the Four Kingdom’s board. Now the giants of the Gasping Mountains can send guardian statues to help while the merchants of the Brassbound League offer to set up Lotus Workshops in the Four Kingdoms.
These different tokens really make the game feel different and each expedition has its own vibe.
Where we ended up was intuitive enough for players to grasp but had enough choices to lead to a lot of discussion. Essentially heroes can donate their moves to move the caravan and, when getting goods, can divert some of them to the caravan’s supplies. These supplies are used to pay for spots on the expedition. You don’t want a short expedition loop without a lot of goods because you waste moves with that. But you don’t want a super long expedition because its rewards might not come back in time to help you. Or maybe two you have short expedition to get some goods to help with the threat. And then send the expedition out on the same board to get more goods Or do you try for three expeditions to see if you can find all the rewards an expedition can offer? Or is that too greedy? It’s a fun puzzle to figure out each time you play.
And we didn’t even get to all the details about the new heroes, new virtues, and new gear (!) in the game. Stay tuned for more on that!
Thanks Rob!
P.S. – Here’s a look at some of the gorgeous “old world” illustration underlying the boards, from artist Garrett Kaida.
