After the success of Pandemic Legacy, designer Rob Daviau is back with a seafaring adventure. But is everyone ready for board games you throw away at the end?

Rob Daviau thought Cluedo was flawed. It was around the end of 2008, while Daviau was working as a designer at Hasbro, and he was brainstorming ideas which could breathe new life into the murder mystery classic. “At one point I made the comment: ‘I don’t know why they keep inviting these people over for dinner, they’re all mass murderers. Why would you keep inviting them back game after game?’”

Daviau was joking, but his boss thought there was something in his critique. What if there was a way for games to change every time they were played? They discussed ways in which decisions made in one gaming session might carry over into the next. An attempt at Cluedo: The Usual Suspects was swiftly abandoned but Daviau soon found another classic with potential: Risk – the somewhat interminable game of word conquest.



Risk Legacy was published in 2011. For the first time, decisions made during gameplay had permanent consequences. Players ripped up cards, defaced the board, and at key moments were instructed to open packets containing new rules. Long-held grudges became woven into the fabric of the game. Daviau explained: “You could point to the board and say: ‘Right here! You did this!’”



In 2012, Daviau left Hasbro after 14 years. The following year he was approached by Pandemic designer Matt Leacock about collaborating on a legacy version of the hugely popular co-operative title in which you try to cure diseases threatening humanity. Pandemic Legacy launched in October last year, won a string of awards and leapt to the top of the all-time rankings at the Board Game Geek website. It has remained there ever since.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest In Seafall, players will become seafarers as they set out to conquer a previously unexplored world. Photograph: SeaFall box art

SeaFall is Daviau’s latest project. While Pandemic Legacy attracted widespread acclaim, SeaFall will be seen by many as the true test of the legacy format – the first title based on an original concept. Set in the age of sail, players will become seafarers as they set out to conquer a previously unexplored world. Daviau knows his format can revive an existing franchise. Can it take gaming in an entirely new direction?

Legacy was never expected to go mainstream. At Hasbro, Daviau was left to his own devices when developing the concept. Even he suspected it would be a niche pursuit. “When I was working on it I would think: ‘This is really different and I think it’s pretty good,’” he said. “But it’s weird, it’s unexpected and it breaks a lot of taboos. I expected it to be very successful with a handful of people. I thought I would be known as the guy who did this weird project.”

As Daviau anticipated, not everyone was convinced. Legacy games play out over the course of a fixed number of sessions. In Pandemic Legacy, each game represents one month and the story unfolds over the course of a fictional year. Some players took to forums after the game’s release to bemoan the fact that changes to the board were permanent and games had a fixed end point.

Nevertheless, most gamers loved the concept. Russell Chapman is events supervisor at Draughts, a board game café in east London. He sees the legacy format as one of the biggest advances in game design for several years. “It’s this new level of commitment, intensity, excitement,” he said. “There’s nothing more exciting for a board gamer than to learn a new game or way to do something and you’re getting that constantly with legacy games.”

Enthusiasm among gamers was reflected in sales. Ben Hogg, marketing manager at UK games distributor Esdevium, declined to give exact figures but said: “We launch some games with 90-120 copies, see what the reaction is from the hobby games market and it will maybe just get one print run. Then we’ve got triple A releases like a new Star Wars game that will do multiple thousands. Pandemic Legacy was in the second category.”

According to Hogg, the appeal of an unfolding adventure trumped any concerns about longevity. “There was that initial apprehension about making changes and basically wrecking your board as you went through,” he said. “Those have been put to bed by Pandemic Legacy. Most people don’t go to the cinema to watch the same film twice, do they? You’re buying into an experience. It’s introducing that aspect of narrative that you get from video games.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest SeaFall game setup … legacy designers must consider all possible player choices to ensure the narrative doesn’t fall apart. Photograph: SeaFall game setup

The legacy format draws not only on video games but role-playing adventures and Netflix-fuelled demand for episodic entertainment. While at college, Daviau saw his future as a television writer. After interning with David Letterman, he moved into advertising, then game design. But the appeal of telling stories stuck with him. Pandemic creator Matt Leacock likens the legacy design process to writing a novel. “You need to have an idea of how you want it to end and a pretty good idea of where you want it to begin,” he said. “But also it’s not enough just to have an overall outline.”

Legacy designers must consider all possible player choices to ensure the narrative doesn’t fall apart. To do this, designers recruit testers so they can observe how games will unfold. Jaime Barriga was a play-tester on SeaFall and is now designing his own legacy card game. “It takes an insane amount of time,” he said. “You’ll have a situation where it’s playing great, the first few games are perfect, then four or five games in it starts to get shaky, then game six it’s broken. Then you have to go back and redo everything.”

All of this makes designing any legacy title hugely complex. In the case of SeaFall, Daviau had to create the entire concept from scratch. One awed Reddit user described Daviau as a “mad genius” for attempting the project. Asked if the design process for SeaFall would be more challenging than adapting an existing game, Leacock said: “That’s a bit of an understatement.”

Perhaps this complexity is why Daviau has been involved in every legacy project released to date. A second season of Pandemic Legacy to be released in 2017. He is currently working on Chronicles, a series in which players can chart the course of Western civilisation over the course of several linked games. Daviau, it’s fair to say, is a man with big ideas.

If SeaFall is a success, it’s almost inevitable that legacy titles from other designers will follow. While Daviau feels a sense of ownership, he is keen to see where others take the idea. But he also seeks to play down the significance of his innovation. “It’s got a lot of attention right now and probably will for another year to three,” he said. After that, he suspects gamers will be asking: “Enough of that, what’s new?”

Colby Dauch is less sure. For the studio manager at Plaid Hat Games, the publisher of SeaFall, the legacy format has been a revelation. “For a company that publishes story-centric games, it is impossible to ignore,” he said. “It’s the kind of idea that changes the way you think about what a board game can be.”

In the coming weeks, gamers will open up boxes and carefully lay out the components contained inside, ready to embark on their own SeaFall adventures. On one side of the game board they will find marked a landmass from which they will launch their bids to conquer the world. Awaiting them on the other side? Uncharted territory.