BGT089 - Interview: Adam Kwapiński (EN)

A special interview in English with board game designer Adam Kwapiński.

We had the opportunity to talk to Adam Kwapiński, known for titles such as Nemesis, Lords of Hellas and Frostpunk. We did the interview in an Instagram Live session and this is the recording of it. As you can see the interview is done in English. We give a short introduction in German though.

We talked with Adam about his upcoming book, game design in general, play testing, dealing with publishers and the relevance of crowd funding. We had a great time and you can get some great insights from a quite productive designer.

Enjoy the show!

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Olli

Board Games on my Mind now live on Gamefound (already 200 backers and around 70% funded)

• Introduction:
  • Why board games?
  • Your current top 3?
  • Player color?

Interview

• You’re well known for big box games such as Nemesis, Frostpunk, Lord of Hellas and Terracotta Army. And there are more big games already planned. Yet you took the time to write a book. It is called “Board Games on My Mind”. Could you describe the book with one sentence?
• It seems to be not your average “How to…” guide, but focusing more on your personal experiences. What else is to be expected from the book?
• Designing a board game seems to be quite different from writing a book. What experiences from designing a game helped you with the work on your book?
• Can you take any lessons learned from writing a book back to designing games?

• Speaking of designing games: How do approach a new project?
• How do you connect theme and mechanics in your games?
• I would argue there can be no creativity in isolation, there always is some kind of interaction with other creations out there. How do you pick those interactions and find new ideas?

• Randomness seems to be a big topic in games. How do you deal with the aspect of randomness in games?
• Modern board game design is often described as “streamlined”. This may be an important process, but sometimes games are called out for being too streamlined. How do approach this?

• An important part of every board game design is play testing. How do you deal with this?
• Besides from basic editing – What kind of “testing” did you do on your book?
• How much is a publisher involved in that process – both for games and your book?

• Speaking of publishers: You’re a freelance board game designer. What are your biggest challenges when approaching publishers with a new idea?
• Could you describe traits of a perfect publisher?
• And vice versa: Could you describe traits of a perfect board game designer?

• A lot of your games are going through crowdfunding. What impact does it have on you as a designer?
• How much are you involved in the campaigns for your games?
• What was the reason behind the decision to run a crowdfunding campaign for the book?
• What else can we expect in the campaign?

• Can you by any chance tell us something about Nemesis: Retaliation?

• As a last question: What single advice could you give new designers?

Good Bye Wo findet Ihr uns?

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Die BGT das sind:

Alex
Axel
Dennis
Dirk
Lars
Olli
Simon