Between Seafall’s release, the massive success of Pandemic Legacy, and Legacy itself becoming a super hot mechanic, Rob Daviau is one of the biggest names in gaming right now. I caught up with Rob on Saturday morning just before his nine (NINE!) other scheduled appointments on the day.

The author (left) with Rob Daviau (not left)

So! How's Seafall doing?

Seafall is doing well. Some of the early reviews noted that the first few games were slow, especially with the prologue and game one. I kind of agree. Looking back, I think game one needed to have less prologue-esque elements so that the first two games weren’t quite so slow.

How's it doing compared to, for example, Pandemic Legacy?

Well, we didn't expect it to do as well as Pandemic because first of all, mathematically you can't have two #1 games on BoardGameGeek, and also it doesn't have the Pandemic brand attached to it.

Pandemic is kind of huge. There's like 3 new Pandemics at this show alone.

Exactly. Seafall is also more of a slow burn, longer term game. I intended for players to complete it over the space of a year, playing one game every few weeks, whereas Pandemic Legacy is meant to be binge played - maybe two sessions a night.

Like Netflix.

Like Netflix. Additionally, legacy as a mechanism is still so new. We have to break new legacy ground, figure out what works and what doesn't work.

Speaking of Pandemic Legacy. Season 2. The cat's out of the bag. It's all over the Internet. What happened there?

That was a leak. It wasn't supposed to be out yet. It's not ready to be announced. Matt (Leacock, designer of Pandemic) and I were trying to get be coy - we had an English production copy to show here at Essen, but someone, either intentionally or accidentally, put it on Twitter, and then…

What CAN you tell me about season 2?

I'm very excited and very happy. We didn't just do season one again, and we think people will be very happy with it.

It's still meant to be binged?

Yes. I'll have more to say next year.

Critical question: Red box or blue box?

I have a preference but I can't remember which one is which. Same with the season two boxes: I have a favorite but I can't recall which one is which. I have so much (Rob motions to the convention floor) going on that it all gets compressed. By the time the red box blue box thing happened we were halfway done with designing season two .

That early?

We have to. Each season takes about 15 to 16 months to design, so we had to start just in case it was a success and we wanted to do a follow-up. We can't do one every year just because it takes more than a year to design, so we have to have a long lead time on that.

You didn't expect a hit?

We weren't certain. If the game came out and people hated it... (he shrugs) we would have gone 'oh well' and moved on.

Did you have any idea what season 2 was about when you started working on it?

No idea. We knew what we had done on season 1 and we wanted to try new things, but that was it.

Do you and Matt live nearby?

No. He's in San Francisco and I live up near Boston so it's almost all video conferencing.

Holding components up to the camera, style of thing?

We also have screenshare so we can show each other a quick sketch or illustrate an idea. Although coincidentally, I have had reasons to go to San Francisco once a year since we started so I spend a day at Matt's place and we work on design. Between conventions and business and family trips and the videoconferencing we make it work.

What's next for legacy games? Will we see Twilight Imperium Legacy?

(Rob smiles) The hallmark of a legacy game is that it must be relatively simple and thematic and then you can tell a story using that foundation. Essentially it's a base game and 6 to 8 expansions which you open slowly as you progress, which creates a different narrative for any group. Twilight Imperium is just too big as a starting point.

But you are working on a big series, with Artana games: Chronicles. That moving through human history series.

Yes. We were very intrigued by that idea of a civilization building game, but the decision to split it up into a series of games was because civ games have to be abbreviated for cardboard. Instead of one six-hour game it's six one-hour games.

So game 1 in the series is the stone age.

The neolithic age specifically. So the plan is to abstract it - so you take your tribe through the neolithic age and at the end you have 6 to 8 tribes and you say okay, I really like these guys, so then they become kingdoms in the bronze age in game 2.

So how's it going?

Well, we spent most of the summer not working on it, actually. We thought it would be very difficult to design and then it was twice as hard as we thought it would be. We just got to a place where we were like ok, we're stuck, let's spend time designing other things, and we took two months off, and we're in a much better place starting over and working on it.

And the plan is to have... 6 games?

It's indefinite. We want between 4 to 7, from the bronze age to the iron age and beyond. It's the story of human civilization as it came up through western history. Greece, Rome, Europe, etc.

Why Europe?

Because I have a degree in it (or, as you could say nowadays, I have a degree in white people history) and it's a cultural story which is mine.

And most of your audience too.

Yes. While it is more interesting to get away from a history of white guys, historical and cultural touchstones for our audience are important. You can't shorthand or abstract something that your audience is unfamiliar with.

I kind of want to do a Chronicles series after we finish this one, but instead of being the western hemisphere it's the east. I was in a museum recently about Southeast Asian history and I was astonished at how much I didn't know even existed. I mean, of course it existed, but I was completely ignorant of it. Five thousand years of history and that's not even getting into India or China.

Oh yeah. There’s like five or six empires where I come from alone - and that’s only the ones I know about.

There's an interesting game to be made with Chinese history I think. There was a book I read once about the first unification of China. This one kingdom eventually took over all the others, and I was thinking there's a game there, where one big kingdom is slowly and inevitably assimilating all the others, and the small kingdoms have to form coalitions and resist - but what if one of you gives in and joins up? I think there's a very interesting game in there.

Speaking of 1vs many asymmetry, let's talk about Widow's Walk. That's just come out right?

I think so?

I just saw on twitter that Zoe Quinn (who designed a haunt) had just got her copy in the mail.

Yeah, just before I left for Essen they sent me an email asking me for my address so they could send me an early copy.

So what did you do for that game?

So since I was one of the original designers for Betrayal (at House on the Hill), they invited me to contribute to the design - this was just after Seafall. I wanted to go out and meet with them and do work on it but that didn't end up working out, but there was a huge spreadsheet with ideas for new tiles and cards and I just went in and started adding ideas.

So how much of the final product would you say is yours?

I have no idea because those guys are taking care of it. I presume my ideas ended up somewhere in the fabric of the game. I was more of an idea guy/editor than a designer on this.

Did you do any haunts?

I did one haunt. I gave them like 9 ideas and they picked one and so I developed it and they put it in the game.

Can you tell me what it's called?

Yes. It's called In The Details.

Man. You have so much stuff on your plate, how do you cope?

The joke answer is alcohol. The real answer is I'm learning to say no. It kills me.

Oh god me too.

It kills me because I fear that if I say no to things then no one will ever want to work with me again. I have to move myself out of start up mode - which I was in for a few years - and now that I actually have a revenue stream I need to learn how to manage my projects. I've hired my wife for one day a week.

Oh, what does she do?

She does playtests. She was a graphic designer at Hasbro when I was working there and even before we started dating she and I had worked really well together, so it's going pretty well. She does the graphics and the physical components for the prototypes and coordinates the playtests. She's much more organized than me, so it’s been working really well in that regard.

I know that feeling. So this is all for your company? What's it called?

Ironwall Games, but honestly that's just the name that has to go on the checks. We published Funemployed, but I’m actually trying to get away from publishing. Mattel is actually looking to pick that game up from us.

Oh that's nice. I've heard really good things about that game.

I don't dislike publishing, to be clear. Dealing with banks and shipping and pallets is fine - I just disliked the amount of time it was taking away from design.

What else are you working on?

I'm developing Ultimate Werewolf Legacy with Ted Alspach.

Oh that's going to be fun. I was there yesterday and we looked at Colony. Have you had a chance to look at the games around the con?

Yes.

Do you have a game of the convention so far?

I don't rank or review games publicly. With very few exceptions, every single person here worked really, really hard on their game. I think that if I say something about one game, other people might feel offended that I didn't talk about their game.

The one exception is if I adore a game I might push it a little, especially if it's not well known.

I suppose this is because you're an influencer in the industry now.

I don't think of myself that way but I guess that's probably true.

I was very excited for Martians: A Story of Civilization. Have you looked at that?

No.

It's by Redimp, out of Poland. What is with Poland and gaming anyway?

They're very passionate about it.

Anyway, it's a worker placement game. On Mars. With cooperative, semi co-op and competitive modes. On Mars. I don’t actually like worker placement games very much, actually, but I think that co-op worker placement will be interesting. Add Mars to the mix and I’m just sold.

I want to make a worker placement game where the workers hate you. They do everything for no pay and at 100 percent efficiency. I've worked with a lot of people and let me tell you, it does not ever work that way. Ever.

I'd play it!

(it's now 9 minutes before Rob has to go do a meet and greet and sign games at the Asmodee booth)

Future Rob shows up for his meet and greet.

Tell me about Restoration Games.

We don't really have a slate of games yet.

But the idea is to...

The idea is to restore lighter more accessible games. Not really those heavier war games by like Avalon Hill, partly because there isn't really a market for that any more.

This is you and...

Justin Jacobson. He owns the company, I’m just the chief restoration officer and design person. We want to take old games who failed or didn't do very well for reasons that were not the game’s fault. For example, the company might have gone under, or if it was a Milton Bradley game it might have had a terrible TV commercial. Or it has a really cool central idea, but the rest of the game was poor. We want to take that 10 percent of the game that was really innovative and interesting and update the game for a modern audience.

Now these are not reprints. These are updates. “What might those games look like if they came out in 2017?” New mechanics, new graphics, but keeping that one central thing which made the game special. For example, there's a game called Stop Thief from the 70s.

The TV ad for the game.

It has a really cool central idea where you move on a board and the game gives you audio cues to tell you where the thief is. It's a really good game for 1970 but it's just out of date now.

Roll and move?

It has roll and move and it has very swingy cards that you have to draw, and the board is a grid, and the audio device was very clunky. But that central idea...

So you might do an app, for example.

Yes. In a way it's also a little bit of what I did with Hasbro. “We want you to update Monopoly”, how do I do that and design ways to keep it fresh.

But obviously the core gameplay couldn't change. You had those restrictions.

We will have restrictions as well with Restoration games. It just depends on the game.

Rob, thank you for your time. Will you take a picture with Colin the Board Game Bear for us please?

Yes.

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