Calvin's Corner - Gordon Calleja Interview

Gordon Calleja is the designer of the Kickstarter smash hit Posthuman, a game that I did not know I needed in my life until I played it - and the upcoming revenge-movie styled Vengeance, which is one of the most anticipated games of 2017.

At Essen, I sat down with Gordon to discuss his work, his process, and his upcoming projects.

Vengeance's absolutely stunning kickstarter trailer.

“The axe forgets, but the tree remembers.”

Hi Gordon, thanks for talking to me. Assuming I know about the basic gameplay of Vengeance already, please tell me more about the gangs.

For some of them, I wanted their mechanics and visual look to have their distinguishing factors, without relying too heavily on the elements and tropes of the word 'gangs'. For example, I took inspiration from the Mara Salvatoro, a Salvatorian gang who were constantly hassled by the other gangs in the region, and so as a survival mechanism turned to intense brutality.

Some of the gangs of Vengeance.

Other ones I had in mind were inspired by the Napolitan mob, which is more close to home with closer cultural ties to myself.

I did notice there was no traditional Italian mafia.

No. The Serbian Mafia I think is more interesting, with a more interesting story. In the Yugoslav wars, there were a lot of units who were protecting their own people from looting at violence – they were disenfranchised, victims of government corruption. I thought that was a lot more interesting that relying on the mafia from the movies. Similarly, biker gangs and yakuza had too much of strong, prototypical tropes.

Gordon demoing the game at Essen.

Whenever you do this much research there's always a temptation to 'show your work.' How did you balance letting the players dive deep into these gangs and their culture and ethos vs keeping it in the background.

If you want to know more about the backstories of these gangs, that's more in the solo mode.

Why did you choose to use real life mobs instead of a more far-off theme? For example, fictional gangs, or going the sci-fi/fantasy route

We wanted the player to have an emotional connection with the adversaries. It's a game about revenge. You want the player to really feel like they're going out there to get their vengeance.

When's the game supposed to be ready?

July 2017.

A view of the game’s dens, wherein lie bad guys whose butt you must kick.

How did the Kickstarter do?

Alright. Nothing compared to Posthuman, which we were totally not prepared for. Mighty Box is primarily a video game company so we were not prepared for Posthuman to explode the way it did. We have been very busy doing fulfilment and obviously we have devoted lots of time to it now, so as a result I am still working on the videogame adaptation

Vengeance looks like a very simple game, but in my experience that means tons of behind the scenes work. What mechanical kinks did you encounter during the design?

I'm a big believer in intertwining theme and mechanics. It's kind of like gears to me, every element of the story and theme fights together with the mechanics of the story. The tighter you tune the game, the more interlocked these elements become. If, for example, someone said to me 'You know, this game Vengeance is too violent, could you re-theme it to become something else?' No, I couldn't. Everything is so tightly wound together.

People sometimes say they design theme first, or they design mechanics first. That doesn't make sense to me as a designer. One informs the other, and as you design you tighten and tighten and tighten until changing one element would spiral out and change everything else.

(I point at the Act Structure portion of the board) It looks like you've really committed to the whole revenge movie thing.

Here's a story about that. One problem I had during the design was the arc of the game. Players wanted to take as much time as possible to prepare their characters during the montage sequences so that during the action sequences (where you fight the bad guys) they would be as healthy as possible. That was slowing down the game so much. I tried so many different approaches, but the testing was coming back as still not working.

So how did you fix it?

(Gordon indicates the Act Structure) With this. It forces the players to move on. The thing is; I had already used this structure during a previous version, so when I changed away from it, I discard it as 'oh we already tried that, it doesn't work.' When in fact the right answer was under my nose the whole time.

What other issues did you find when developing the game?

Perception. People keep thinking it's a dungeon crawler.

It's not though.

No.

So Rahdo (from Rahdo Runs Through) is from your neck of the woods, right? Malta. I understand everyone in the Malta game design community kind of works together on stuff.

Yes. Richard is a very, very smart game designer. He gives extremely useful feedback. You can explain an idea to him and he can instantly see three, four steps ahead and go 'oh, so changing that will require you to do this, this this this...' (Gordon draw in the air to show interconnected lines) He's very smart. He worked on Fable, he designed Brink...

Oh that was him?!?

He was also creative director on The Sims. David Chircop is from Malta as well, he did development on this game and he's been very helpful as well.

David’s latest game, Days of Ire, was commissioned by the Hungarian embassy in Malta for the 50th anniversary of the revolution.

How did you come to design the core combat system of Vengeance?

Kaja: The florist.

That took one week. Part of my design process sometimes is I just go on a little vacation and bring along my prototyping stuff. So for Vengeance, I went to an island – Sardinia. Great food, no internet, and in one week I finished the dice design. It was done. Then figuring out the rest of the game design was the challenging part.

Let's talk about Posthuman for a minute. I love Posthuman. I did not know I needed this game in my life until I had played it.

A lot of people say that to me.

Well, it’s true!

Do you have any further plans for the game?

There's an expansion being worked on now. The trouble is; I'm not one hundred percent sure what the expansion needs to be. Does it need to be more of a 'second edition' kind of thing? Because when I look back at Posthuman, I can definitely see a lot of fat that could be trimmed, that's my first instinct. Does the ending need to change? What would the expansion address?

I could do a content expansion; just more cards, more stuff. That would be easy. But I want to know if you can change the systems and change the core gameplay to be more streamlined. Faster. Maybe have another side of the board where you can have a shorter, more intense journey, but keep the sense of progression.

You mean like the short game mode?

I don't like that mode, but I put it in because of length concerns. I feel it diminishes the arc of the game because you can just grind grind grind and level up versus actually having to take risks and make a journey.

Do you know the Daybreak expansion for Battlestar Galactica?

Yes.

Have you played it?

No. Base game, a lot. Daybreak, no.

Daybreak to me is a brilliant expansion because it took a lot of what was great about BSG and said 'okay, here's WHY it's great, but the mechanical execution was all wrong. Daybreak had content, yes, like you said; more cards, more stuff, but it also had replacement systems. Like the sympathizer mechanic that lots of people hated – it just replaced it. Completely. 'Oh remember your Treachery deck from the Pegasus expansion? Throw that away; use these new cards instead.' It analyzed what was great about the game, then streamlined it down to the absolute purest form they could. I think it's one of the greatest expansions ever made.

Okay. I will have to go and play that. I can kind of see what you mean.

Still so good.

So what's next for you?

I would like to do something with a very different feel. Lighter. Shorter. Partly to challenge myself and also have a different style, thematically and visually. Maybe it might be in an established universe; Vengeance, Posthuman. I also need to work on the expansion to Posthuman, and some collaborations with other designers.

Can you talk about these collaborations?

No, not yet.

Do you know any good beaches in Malaysia? My girlfriend and I are trying to decide between Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand for our next vacation and she said no, I don't want to go to vietnam, so maybe I can come to one of your beaches and do some design there.

I'd love to show you around and let you meet the Malaysian board game community. Thanks for your time, Gordon. Would you like to hold Colin and maybe the cover of your game?

Sure.