Game Designer Interview: Alan R. Moon

Alan R. Moon is one of the few designers who’s managed to win the Spiel des Jahres twice – Elfenland in 1998, and the ubiquitous Ticket to Ride in 2004, which can now be found not only in hobby stores but also department stores like Target and Meijer. Alan talked to us about the success of Ticket to Ride and his 10 Days… series, as well as the upcoming expansion for Ticket to Ride, The Heart of Africa. Thanks Alan!

Let’s start off by talking about Ticket to Ride, one of the most popular modern board games around. How did you even come up with the idea to the game in the first place? It’s so clever in its simplicity, it seems like it should have been invented a long time before 2004!

Whenever I play a new game that really excites me, I almost always think, “That’s so simple, why didn’t I think of that?” I think that is the highest compliment one designer can give another, because the best ideas always seem so obvious in hindsight. I believe everyone is creative in some way. Many people just don’t have enough confidence in their own abilities, or they simply don’t take the time to recognize and use their creativity.

I’m not sure when it actually started, it might have been with SANTA FE back in 1991, but THUNDER ON THE TRACKS became the name of every railroad prototype I’ve designed in the last 20 years. Back in 2003, I was working on one of those THUNDER ON THE TRACKS prototypes. Maybe it was TOTT #23 or maybe it was #41, I have no idea. Back then I was living in Beverly, MA and one of things I enjoyed most in life was walking around the town, especially down by the shore. As I walking that particular morning, I was thinking about the playtest of TOTT#? the night before. This particular game was fairly complicated for one my designs and the playtest had been unsatisfactory at best. All of a sudden, I had an idea for another game which blossomed over the next twenty minutes. Walking along, I was already playing the game in my head. I couldn’t wait to get home and make a prototype.

The prototype I made that day was about 90% of the published version of TICKET TO RIDE. I can only remember one or two other first prototypes that were anywhere near that close to the finished product. Some of the Tickets changed and a few routes, but I don’t think any of the rules changed from the version that was in my head during that wonderful walk.

So many games come out every year now, and many designers would kill for the chance to have the kind of success you’ve had with Ticket to Ride and even with Elfenland, winning the Spiel des Jahres twice. What do you think it takes in this day and age to make a game truly successful?

People often ask me if I knew TICKET TO RIDE was going to be a success. But of course if I had known, I would have designed it years before. There are tons of very good games designed every year. Most of them don’t sell significant numbers and are all but forgotten a few months after their release. Some games are “hot” for a few months and then fade from the limelight almost as quickly. Some of them become critically acclaimed hits that last for a number of years but still don’t sell big numbers. A very few become big sellers and last for many years. There isn’t any formula for creating a game to give it a chance to make it into that last category. I think my success is as much a result of good timing and luck as it is my creativity and hard work.

The various iterations of Ticket to Ride have a ton of little new rules – ferries, tunnels, stations team play, passengers, monsters and aliens – when you make a new mechanic for the game, how do you judge its worth? How do you tell if a map needs a new mechanic at all?

I always start a new map with the intent to make it slightly different from all the previous maps, without making the game more complicated. In the EUROPE map, I tried to make the opposite of the USA map, a map with lots of single, short routes. With SWITZERLAND, I tried to make a map that was more about drawing Tickets than the other two maps. Etc. I have ideas for four or five other maps at the moment, one of which I hope will be published in 2013 as the next addition to the Map Collection. But the thing I’m most excited about is a new full game that adds something completely different. The new rules can still be explained easily and quickly, but I hope the feel of the game will be something completely new, and I hope that will be a great way to celebrate the 10th anniversary of TICKET TO RIDE.

As to how I judge whether a new mechanic works or not, I learn that answer in playtesting. If a mechanic doesn’t work, it usually doesn’t survive that first playtest. I don’t like to make my playtesters suffer so it’s not unusual for me to end an initial playtest after only ten or fifteen minutes.

The next installment in the map collection is a map of Africa. How did this map come about? How does the new region-specific mechanic work?

When Eric Hautemont told me he wanted a map of Africa, I immediately thought about deserts, jungles, mountains, and huge herds of animals crossing the seemingly endless savannas. So adding terrain types seemed like it was the perfect new mechanic for this map. That got me thinking about the colors of the routes and how red, orange, and yellow could represent deserts; how green, blue, and purple could be jungles and forests and savannas; and how black and white could represent the rest. I briefly thought about adding routes of a ninth color so that each of the three terrain types could have three colors. I also considered having four terrain types each with two route colors. When I thought about adding grey to the black and white terrain, I knew that was the right way to go, because it created lots of interesting choices when building the routes.

I had quite a few different ideas of how the terrain could effect the game. But the initial playtest with the double scoring was so fun, that the other ideas were put away for possible use in future games. Basically, when building a one, two, or three space route, you can play a Terrain Card of the matching type and double your score for that route. So a three space route would be worth 8 points instead of 4. When building a four, five, or six space route, you need to play two Terrain Cards of the matching type to double. The only restriction is that you must have as many or more Terrain Card of that type as any of your opponents. So if an opponent has three Desert Terrain Cards, you will need at least three as well to be able to play them and double your score on a Desert Route. It’s possible to win a game of AFRICA without doubling any routes, but it’s not easy unless every player is not doubling any routes.

What’s your favorite way (map, rules, etc) to play Ticket to Ride?

AFRICA is a close second, but my favorite map is still SWITZERLAND. I love drawing lots of Tickets and all of the Tickets get drawn every time I play SWITZERLAND. I’ve even started the game by drawing Tickets for several turns. Some players don’t like the Country to Country Tickets, but I love them. They work exactly how I intended them to work. I’ve played SWITZERLAND much more than any other game.

A while back, you mentioned on BoardGameGeek that a map of Japan was scrapped – any chance on that concept being revived?

JAPAN was the third or fourth map I designed, either right after EUROPE or right after SWITZERLAND. The map included rules for Godzilla and/or Rodan. The rules for the monsters changed quite a few times over the years and were finally published in the separate expansion as ALVIN & DEXTER. Days Of Wonder still has JAPAN but there are no definite plans to publish it at present.

You’ve also got a very successful series with Out of the Box Publishing, the 10 Days… games. I thought maybe you and Aaron Weissblum were through with them, but now Ravensburger is doing a version for Germany. Are there any new mechanics in the German version? Do you foresee any more installments in the series?

Last year, friend and former colleague Frank Weiss at Ravensburger contacted me and said they were interested in licensing the 10 DAYS Series. I talked to Al Waller at Out Of The Box and he was very interested. Ravensburger wanted their first game to be 10 DAYS IN GERMANY. The only new things in this game are the use of seas as regular land areas. The planes became trains and the cars became buses, and we added a special rule for Berlin, and that’s about it. The toughest part of the design was finding enough areas and regions to use. I’m very pleased with the result and I think Ravensburger and Out Of The Box are too. The game was very well received at the Spiel Fare in Essen in October. If it is a sales success, there will definitely be more maps, probably of other European countries. Out Of The Box has no plans to release 10 DAYS IN GERMANY at the moment.

10 Days… has some educational variants and ideas in the rulebook, and in fact a professor at University of Tennessee – Knoxville just received a creative teaching grant to use Ticket to Ride in the classroom. How do you view the educational usefulness of your games? Is that something you set out to include, or just a lucky happenstance?

I long ago learned that you can’t call a game educational if you want anyone to think it’s fun. So while the 10 DAYS Series is educational, I would never mention that as one of the game’s strengths. You have to let the educational part sneak up on the players.

You also recently updated Union Pacific and Airlines into the new game Airlines Europe. What were the important changes to make when you updated those games? Some players complained that the map was not tight enough (resulting in the Flight Ban promo) – do you think that is an issue, or do you think players are taking the wrong approach as to the point of the game?

Some players complained that the board in the original AIRLINES wasn’t tight enough. Same for UNION PACIFIC. So not surprisingly, it was the same for the new AIRLINES EUROPE too. It’s a case of not being able to please everyone. If I made the board really tight in any of these games, I think the number of people who enjoyed them would have been significantly less. For those who want the tight board, there are several variants that make the board to AIRLINES EUROPE quite a bit tighter, including the official FLIGHT BAN Variant from Abacus.

When I redesign a game, my objective is for the new version to be both familiar and different at the same time. I want the players who liked the original to like the new game as much or more, but I want them to have a different experience too. I always feel like I’m walking a very thin line when reworking my games, but it’s a very interesting and challenging process.

Airlines Europe was a great update of some of your older games, and we also had Capitol reworked as Skyline 3000 – do you see yourself doing this again, such as maybe reworking Elfenroads/Elfenland into a modern edition?

I’ve worked on ELFENLAND a number of times since 1998. I have a version called ELFENSEA. Amigo looked at it but decided not to publish it. Jay Tummelson wanted to publish it for Rio Grande Games but Amigo asked him not to. I will eventually work on ELFENSEA again and resubmit it to Amigo.

What have you been enjoying lately (games other than your own, books, movies, television, hobbies)?

I have about 30 games that I love, games I always enjoy playing. The top few are POKER, DESCENT: JOURNEYS IN THE DARK, TICHU, and CARCASSONNE (especially on the iPad). I like to try new games too, but it is very rare for one of them to break into my favorites. I was impressed by the Amigo card game 23 recently.

I’m a huge movie fan. I don’t own a TV but I watch some programs on my computer. I think THE GOOD WIFE is the best TV show ever, although THE WIRE is close. I’ve also been enjoying JUSTIFIED and I’m looking forward to it starting up again in January.

I have about 30 favorite authors that I read. I was really bummed when Robert Parker died last year. My favorite authors are Dan Simmons, John Sanford, James Lee Burke, Janet Evanovich, Lawrence Block, Keith Ablow, Jonathan Nasaw, and David Weber.

My big hobby is collecting non-sports cards. Most people know about baseball cards, but I don’t have any real interest in sports other than NASCAR. Non-sports cards include history, military, movies, celebrities, animals, or any other subject. I collect tobacco cards that go all the way back to the 1800s as well as gum card up to 1970. My favorite subjects of cards are lighthouses, bridges, cowboys & indians, pirates, and the circus. I have a lot of my collection in Google Picasa Albums that are open to the public.

What’s next for you in game design?

I have as many ideas as I’ve always had, probably more. But I spend most of my actual work time on new versions of TICKET TO RIDE and the 10 DAYS Series. I am hoping to sell a few prototypes of new games next year though. Like every designer I know, I dream of winning another SdJ award.