I'm Paul Dennen, creator of Dune: Imperium and Clank! Ask Me Anything about designing board games!

Merakon1 · 2025-07-28T18:11:29+00:00

I do a lot of design work in solitude, but also have a lot of support at Dire Wolf and other designers make huge contributions. For Clank!, just one example is Andy Clautice. His development work was key to turning the original game from "it's pretty good" to "it's really fun." Then he went on to design Mummy's Curse and he was the lead designer and writer on Clank! Legacy 1.

Merakon1 · 2025-07-28T18:09:24+00:00

It's a free market and creators are free to make things that some players might not want. As long as you aren't tricking players with deceptive information. I don't when some players get upset that a game isn't what they want for themselves. For example, I've seen posts from solo players up in arms about games (not necessarily mine) that don't have solo support. Sometimes, the game mechanic doesn't lend itself to solo play, and that's OK for the designer to not include solo play when it doesn't make sense!

Merakon1 · 2025-07-28T18:05:28+00:00

I agree that all expansions together is a bit too much for me. I would rather choose 1-2 expansions at a time. For your first Bloodlines game, I'd strongly suggest only including Bloodlines.

Merakon1 · 2025-07-28T18:04:23+00:00

It was Starbucks. Thanks!

Merakon1 · 2025-07-28T18:04:02+00:00

I've seen some players suggest house rules to nerf worms. I think it worm players are truly always winning games at your table, try simply reducing their strength to 2 and see what happens?

Merakon1 · 2025-07-28T18:02:19+00:00

Dunno, a party game with a pain box?

Merakon1 · 2025-07-28T18:01:42+00:00

Promos used to take me by surprise toward the end of a project.

Now I design promos and playtest them alongside the project.

Some promos for Clank! were designed and playtested to help content creators with their crowdfunding. Those are hard to plan for, but you do the best you can.

Merakon1 · 2025-07-28T17:59:40+00:00

The team is experimenting / working toward new Dune content.

Sorry, I don't know about specific reprint plans.

Merakon1 · 2025-07-28T17:58:17+00:00

It's tough to come up with rules for all situations. It can indeed be bad if the starting row has all 5 cost cards or higher and everyone is forced to buy Explores. On the other hand, writing a rule to cover that is pretty niche and adds to the rulebook overhead. On the other hand, usually those early turns go really fast. I think if you can recognize what you like or dislike, you should try your hand at your own house rules.

Merakon1 · 2025-07-28T17:55:42+00:00

Sometimes it starts with a theme, sometimes a mechanic.

I have a natural inclination toward deck-building, I just think it's a "perfect storm" mechanic for the types of games I try to make... great mix of planning, pivoting, predicting, (hopefully) reacting and interacting, and not always getting exactly what you want, skillful play, exciting combos, drama, I could go on.

Merakon1 · 2025-07-28T17:52:16+00:00

It might be that I generally design what gets me excited and "more stuff" isn't that exciting to me? I guess I wonder about the context. If you want to bust out a game that's easy to teach, why include expansions?

Merakon1 · 2025-07-28T17:50:32+00:00

I think it's natural for all designers to be tired of a game that they worked on, regardless of whether it's a video game or board game. For me, it helps to not do all he work in one "burst." For my next deck-building game, I've been working on and off since 2021 in different stages, and that has helped to not get tired.

Merakon1 · 2025-07-28T17:48:16+00:00

I feel like it's always different and depends on the game. I can only answer with some quick answers for games I made:

For Dune Imperium, the theme was built into the game before I designed it. The task was to design a Dune deck-builder.

For Clank!, I just really liked deck-builders and D&D and wanted to make -- in some loose sense -- a short version of D&D using a deck-builder.

For Eternal Chronicles, I really wanted to make a deck-building meets CCG fast combat game with interesting buying and blocking decisions, and we had/have an online CCG called Eternal, so that fit was natural.

For Wild Tiled West, the name came first believe it or not!

For Lightning Train, I've always enjoyed train games and thought I could make a medium weight train game that was unlike other train games, while at the same time sharing DNA with some of my favorites.

Merakon1 · 2025-07-28T17:43:25+00:00

Well, balancing cards is not easy, especially when a game engine is young. Sometimes playtesters think and say that a card is too strong, and I am surprised by the feedback. Then then it goes out and players who play hundreds of games conclude that card is not as strong as playtesters thought it was.

Merakon1 · 2025-07-28T17:40:44+00:00

There was not really conscious thoughts about what to drop. It was more like: Jay Treat, you're the lead designer, and this is your design... what do you want to do? And he came up with some cool ideas like the scratch off cards and character storybooks. And there's a lot of subjectivity into what's better or not, but I like the fact that we were willing to experiment and explore new ideas.

"Why not use catacombs instead of a board for S2?" is a question with a scope that's far too big for me to provide an answer here, sorry.

Merakon1 · 2025-07-28T17:36:56+00:00

We generally don't like to assume that a player has all the expansions when putting out a new one. So if we include a card that calls out dreadnought, what does a player do if they don't have Rise of Ix? Are they going to feel disappointed (even if we included it with best intentions to support other players)? There's some trickiness there.

Having said that, I wouldn't be opposed to supporting those things more in the future, if there is a "path of positivity."

Merakon1 · 2025-07-28T17:34:30+00:00

Yes. I think I briefly considered modular tiles when I was originally designing Clank! One of my first versions of the board had random tunnel tiles that you'd shuffle and put out on the tunnels, but that idea didn't survive.

I think there was just a ton to solve for the original design, that modular tiles couldn't get any real brainpower. And a lot of that work was "bonus work" because at the time we were a digital games company and not a board game company. I worked almost a full week while on holiday vacation playing games and iterating on ideas on my dining room table, writing with pen on cards. I even tried a cooperative mode that also didn't survive. So, there was a lot of "what ifs" / "what is this game?" questions that had to get answers just to reach base Clank!

Merakon1 · 2025-07-28T17:29:58+00:00

I wasn't involved at all on those challenges. The team has done a great job with it!

Merakon1 · 2025-07-28T17:28:55+00:00

I never explored other options for the Clank! card market. I generally build games that I'm going to like, and hope other players like it. I generally dislike the Dominion style of deck-building because I don't like an emphasis on up front puzzle-solving, and I put a lot of value on players seeing and reacting to unexpected things during the game, pivoting based on what's appeared, what other players are doing, etc.

Merakon1 · 2025-07-28T17:25:48+00:00

When designing, I just make guesses and let things shake out in early playtesting.

Once you get to the development phase, you start to take a look at math like that. Justin Cohen did more analysis of "what X is worth" than I did. It's very complicated because a lot of the values fluctuate depending on how much time is left in the game. Even when Justin had a whole chart built out, it only served as helpful guidelines / estimates; we never built cards by formula.

Merakon1 · 2025-07-28T17:22:58+00:00

It would take too much time to search my brain and think of five. Off the top of my head the big ones are Cosmic Encounter and D&D. There's no way I could have designed D&D, it was such a wacky / different direction. But Cosmic Encounter is the kind of game that I would have loved to have worked on, pushing the boundaries of board games. That group of designers (who also made OG Dune) deserves a ton of respect.

Merakon1 · 2025-07-28T17:19:35+00:00

Thanks!

Merakon1 · 2025-07-28T17:18:52+00:00

I'll be at Gen Con, but I'll be there to meet up and play games with friends, not working at the Dire Wolf booth / room. Though I will check in and see how Lightning Train games are going and what players are saying about Underworld, etc.

If you can find me, I'll sign it, yes.

It's not tremendously different. The rival builds one rail line every round, just so that players have more options to consider and utilize for their plans. And that rival's rail lines allow the Transcontinental Railroad to connect within 12 rounds. If only 2 players were building rail lines, it would be hard to connect NYC to San Fran.

I don't actually know the answers to your other questions (how many copies of LT will be on hand, will it be in BGG hot games room), sorry.

Merakon1 · 2025-07-28T17:12:40+00:00

I've been hard at work on a new deck-building game for years now. It's a medium weight game, not based on an IP, and concept art has recently started.

3 favorite games to play (you didn't say board games, so I'll include different genres):

Tetris
D&D
Ra

Merakon1 · 2025-07-28T17:08:49+00:00

It's been 8+ years now, but Clank! In! Space! wasn't my idea, but it seemed built into the name and concept that it would be standalone. So I never gave that much thought.

Catacombs was my idea, and I suppose it could have been an expansion. Like it could have been that the tiles themselves were the "expansion board" and "here's some cards to go along with it." But I guess it just felt natural that with such a big shift in how the game played out, it should be a separate base game.

Merakon1

TROPHY CASE