Interview With Doomtown’s Mark Wootton, Part 3

There are two parts of this interview before this page and if you missed them check out Part 1 and Part 2.

Landon: Was it a tough decision to move the setting a few months later in time in order to create a “brand new” Gomorra with the new characters and the new game?       

Mark: Not really. It had to be new. The main part, starting with a fresh slate, wasn’t hard. The town was pretty much obliterated. The town itself was making a fresh start after the last story. I think the second thing is that we wanted a few iconic characters to make it back for the sake of the old players and to honor the thing that was done at the end of the old game, where certain characters survived. Because they survived doesn’t mean they are still in Gomorra.

Charlie Landers gets a nod, but he left town, but we know he survived because there is a nod to Charlie on one of the cards. We wanted one or two iconic characters, but the thing that was really important for us is that we wanted to be in a position where you absolutely didn’t need to know anything about the old story to play the new game. That was critically important. There’s a new generation of players out there and what we felt is that the old players would know the back story and we could give nods to that and we could honor what had happened and they would go “cool that references that!” but we wanted anyone new to see this was a town that had an apocalypse but it’s now a new boomtown.

Landon: I don’t remember too much of the old story. I remember the events that brought it to an end, but that was about it. I think I still see it from the perspective of someone who doesn’t know that much at all about the actual story of Gomorra. I’m enjoying every little bit of story that’s coming out, and it’s interesting. I’m waiting to see if maybe some of the characters, like Wendy, that did come back around have any revelations about “why did I stay in this town?”

Mark: I think those kind of things will come out. I think the thing that I’m enjoying is that the new characters definitely seem to be resonating with people. People are into what is Sloane’s thing? People are into Abram Grothe and they are into Philip Swinford and Lucy Clover, and Allie Hensman and what she’s up to, or Jonah Essex. They are interested in Lillian Morgan and Lula. One of the things I said to our story team when we were working on this is, “I would really like very quickly for people to be as attached to the new voices from Reloaded as they were attached to those from the old game, even if they are old players. I want all the players to care as much about these characters as they do about Wendy or Max Baine, Charlie Landers or Black Jack.

Landon: Watching some of the discussions online, that is clearly the case. I have to congratulate you guys (the story team) for creating a story that is immediately drawing people in.

Mark: Thank you. I’m glad you’re enjoying it.

Landon: The organized play kits give us alternate art of some of the best cards available with Pistol Whip and Steven Wiles. Is that a design trend to help players get their hands on extras of some of these cards?

Mark: Absolutely. With the alternate art cards, one of the things we recognized with the format is that it’s very easy to get more than one playset of the cards. We’ve made the conscious choice to support and help that through the Organized Play program. We want people to do organized play. We want people in stores. We want people to see the benefit of carrying Doomtown and running an event and charging a little for it. Players realize they paid a little money, but they are coming out with more copies of Pistol Whip and Steven Wiles to use in more decks. So all of the Organized Play stuff that we are doing, we are trying to focus on cards that we believe people will want extra copies of as well as having cool, alternate art options.

We also want to give players something new with the playmats, deck tins, and we are looking at some of the bigger scale events. The store deputy event where you get the badge for six months. The badge is bragging rights. I suppose the badge is the closest thing to collectible that we’ve got. in the game. Getting one of those badges should be tough. Getting a sheriff badge is going to be even tougher. We’ve gone the same way with all of the Organized Play stuff. We’ve tried to give people things we think are useful that can go with the game like the badge and tins and mats or cards they are actually going to want to have extra copies of.

Landon: We’ve seen the article on why heavy Ghost Rock strikes aren’t a part of the game anymore among other rules changes. Were these all things you knew had to be changed going into Reloaded from the start or did they become apparent over time?

Mark: There was a very early discussion about control points and economy. We want conflict in the game (at it’s heart the emotional bargain that Doomtown makes with its players is that you are building a boomtown and moving around and getting into gunfights) and essentially, I believe that is what people expect and want from the game. First of all we said the focus really needs to be on town and secondly, you need to be able to create a point of conflict. The people moving around town and shooting each other, they need to have a reason to do that. So, there were a number of things we needed to do. First of all, a lot of the Ghost Rock is gone now from a story perspective. It’s not ALL gone, it’s still there, there are strikes out there. We’ve seen a couple in the game. We may see more. What we didn’t want was a situation where the action was heavily focused out of town because the problem with out of town is that it is inherently hard to interact with.

 

Big out of town Ghost Rock Strikes allowed you to build an economy which meant cards that cost nine Ghost Rock and 2 or 3 upkeep were eventually meaningless. In Doomtown now, you have to work to the point where you can get a 7, 8, 9 Ghost Rock card and when you do, it often has an upkeep that means if you don’t keep control of your deeds, you’ll have problems paying it. Building an economy had to be meaningful. We didn’t want an excessive amount of production on deeds in general and we certainly don’t want those to be on things that say out of town and somebody has to boot out there to stop your production. Once they are out there, they are effectively out of the game in terms of genuine interaction and getting involved with jobs and shootouts because you don’t have any adjacency. We want fewer control points that are on cards out of town.

Out of town control points are okay, but we want them to be fewer in number because, again, that’s hard for your opponent to deal with. It reduces the opportunity for conflict. By putting control points on in-town deeds we put the focus in the new Gomorra on living in and building the new town. From a story perspective, that makes sense now. It’s about the town. You build a majority of your economy in the town and the majority of that economy has control points, so if you want build an economy, you can’t just play cards that make you money, you’re actually going to have to hold on to them. In some meaningful way, you are actually going to be able to say “I’m not just building this, but I can look after it” because as soon as you do that, you create a different game dynamic. That was a very early decision.

Landon: One Question that has been burning on a lot of peoples’ minds, are we going to expect just a few more factions or should we expect new archetypes to fit into the factions we already see?

Mark: I’m not prepared to comment on that one yet.

It’s not a “no” comment. We are trying to create a situation where a keyword is not tied to a faction the way that it used to be. The Blessed and the Flock were synonymous. The Whateleys and the Hexes were pretty much synonymous. The Souix Union and the Spirits. We’re mixing up a little more than that. Certain factions just won’t do certain things – it could be that a certain character gets a flavor thing. Lillian Morgan, historically was a huckster. That was part of her old back story from the game, so we did a nod to that. It doesn’t mean that they are getting a huckster deck.

There are always drifters that we are going to put in that there will be drifters so that people can try and play unusual things like Law Dogs or Morgan Huckster decks. The factions will focus on a couple of themes and a couple of keywords and you may be able to do slightly weird out of faction things. Generally you will be focused on particular things, but those things won’t be exclusive. An example is the Sloane Hucksters we mentioned before. Fourth Ring has the focus on Hucksters, but it’s not just about hucksters, there are also the abominations. We’re trying to give factions focus and design, but we are giving them flexibility, too.

I’m not going to comment yet on whether or not we are going to do more factions or how we are going to handle all of the shamans and spirits.

Landon: When I saw that there would be four new outfits, I was trying to brainstorm what would possibly make someone want to leave the current Morgan Outfit card or even though the Law Dogs outfit is pretty simple, it’s also a very critical part of law dogs being able to use all their effects and actions. What could be awesome enough to make someone decide they don’t need the ability to build deeds so easily in Morgan, but instead take the cool, new thing that’s clearly better? Not even better, but interesting enough to build a new archetype on.

Mark: That’s the thing. We’re not shooting for better. What we’re shooting for is different.

Landon: I wouldn’t be surprised, and I would be happy to see a Morgan outfit that’s built around the mad science aspect. A lot of players have felt that mad science doesn’t feel like it’s really quite there just yet. I can see plenty of ways that Mad science could get just one little ability here or there that makes it suddenly way more entertaining.

Mark: Going back a little, I think Mad science is one of those things that we knew we had to build towards. It was not something that was going to be tournament ready out of the gate. Konstantinos just posted something about a deck that he had used in playtest using gadgets and the new harrowed dude from Double Dealin’ (Mario Crane) where he used him with the force field. I think that you will start to see gadgets picking up. As we get through the first three saddlebags and the pinebox, you will start to see gadgets becoming a lot more fun to play. I’m always wary to say they will be competitive because I think it’s always very hard to be totally sure of what the best competitive decks will be. I’m hoping that they will start becoming more competitive soon.

That’s all…

I had a good time talking to Mark Wootton, and we ended up talking about far more than I expected. I look forward to talking about Doomtown some more in the future.