Mass Effect Interview Calvin – Beyond Solitaire

Beyond Solitaire interviewed Calvin Wong Tze Loon (a co-designer) posted May 5 2024 … My highlights and notes are below the video window:

Highlights:

1:35 Calvin refers to the Mass Effects board game as “my board game” … and “they finally announced my game”. He hated not being able to tell anyone about the game due to the NDA.
2:40 It is co-designed with Eric M Lang and published by Modiphius (in the UK) and BioWare (license holders of Mass Effect in the USA)
3:05 Calvin is a huge Mass Effect fan for years and years and years … and that is how he got the job of designing the board game
4:10 Modiphius asked Eric Lang to make the board game because they had acquired the license (they had been trying for years and years to get the license). Eric knew very little about Mass Effect but then remembered that he DID know someone who knew a lot about Mass Effect… and he messaged Calvin.
6:20 Mass Effect came out in about 2006 and was a pioneer for several reasons … ONE: Your choices matter. If you make a choice in that game, it often/sometimes carries forward not just in that game but in all the sequels. [Rogue Angels implements this in many ways]
7:30 Another aspect was the characters in the game. You got to identify with them. People don’t talk about the “plot” of Mass Effect … they talk about the “characters”… and the “character moments”. [Rogue Angels is very character oriented, with a 12 page back story plus special abilities, unique action cards and interactions]
7:50 The game play in the video game is a third person shooter. Your character(s) have guns but also cool abilities (like psychic abilities). [Rogue Angels definitely has plenty of this]
8:10 The video game had lots of dialog and ethical choices (often balancing the needs of the few vs the needs of the many). Which option do you take? [Rogue Angels has these too… some of the options are heart breaking / nail biters!] You can play this AS your character … what would your character do? [Rogue Angels does this too]
9:15 It’s those two things that they really wanted to bring into the board game (meaningful story related choices) [Rogue Angels definitely did]
9:30 The setting of the board game is ONE Mission. The video game has you play a bunch of missions. Calvin wanted the board game to be like a “lost mission” from the video series (one that was on the cutting room floor and never ended up being produced). The board game splits that ONE Mission into several smaller missions. The board game campaign lasts 3-5 missions (each mission is about 45 minutes). The concept is that you setup the game and play one mission. Then you can continue to the next mission and see how the choices you made affect that next mission and level up your characters (the characters get stronger) [Rogue Angels does this even more. There are more than one main Mission (but each has smaller missions within). Characters “level up” by gaining new stickers that boost their unique (and basic) action card or even add brand new action cards]
11:00 When you reach the end of the campaign (3-5 missions of 45 mins each – about 3 hours) you are DONE! Then you can replay the campaign if you like or just put it away forever. You can play it again being renegade or being paragon, or the same as before. [Rogue Angels campaign is longer and comes with 16 different unique characters so replaying can be a whole new experience, or you can replay it with the same characters and make the same/similar choices because you want to relive that game experience that you so enjoyed]
12:00 They intentionally made the missions short and intentionally made the campaign short for two reasons. One – so you could replay it in a reasonable manner (they did not want it to go on for more than a few days). There also is a Score System. You can play to get the best score.
13:10 You can play the game with your brain turned off and just go around shooting and it will be almost impossible to lose (without much trouble you can make it to the end of the campaign). However, if you want the best score, or you want to do all the side quests or you want the “best” ending, it is really really really difficult (they are proud of this). You can make the game easy or hard as you play (most challenges are totally optional).
17:30 Play testers feedback was that they did feel very heroic in the game. They wanted the players to feel heroic though! They tried various things to let players feel heroic but none of it was clicking. Example: make enemies tougher. That did NOT work. [Len: good… I dislike games that just make things hard for the sake of making it hard] The game then became boring as well as not heroic. Even worse … only the characters who were good at doing damage were getting all the kills and the characters who were more support based where not doing anything. [Rogue Angels utilizes a 4 quadrant personality system that gets around this issue] Enemies became boring, and players tended to just avoid them (go around them). This was not a goal of the game … it was supposed to be a “squad tactics” game.
18:50 Example: they tried making the enemies more dangerous. This did NOT work. The way that the game works for the enemies is that you draw a card from the event deck. The event card will tell you to activate all the “blue” enemies (for example). This system was totally NOT fun. Players could be doing great, but then two bad event cards would just ruin everything! [Len: which is why I am so very glad that Rogue Angels does NOT have event cards] Event cards can be so frustrating, with things happening out of nowhere. [Sid Meier emphasized how NOT to do when designing a game … see Team notes #112]
19:30 Example: they tried increasing player Health to compensate. But then there was no challenge. [Rogue Angels has some characters with very low shields and others with more shields, merely as one of the many aspects of the unique characters]
20:05 Solution: they cut all damage dealt by the player in half. This was based on advice from Sid Meier [interesting that I mentioned Sid Meier just two points above] Now, enemies seemed more dangerous plus cooperation and assistance between players was almost necessary! [Rogue Angels does this very well]
24:05 What about Narrative? Originally they were not going to have a separate book for flavor text. They wanted all the flavor text on the character mats and such… just little text boxes with all the text in them. That gives them 50 words (maybe up to 75). [Rogue Angels campaign book handily solves this]
25:15 The problem was that as they game was developed, things were getting VERY cluttered. Then they got into measuring everything (trying to get the game into a smaller box to fit more on a pallet at the factory, etc). Eric took the lead in much of this: the font, the font size, how big is the mini, what is the size of the map, etc. Example: the maps were going to be 9×9 [Rogue Angels maps are 8×13]. They wanted the maps to be bigger so the missions could be more complex, but if they are too big there is more play testing for them. [Rogue Angels has design criteria for the maps plus many play testers feedback] By having smaller maps they were able to have a second book with most of the story in it. However, story text still will be only about 200 words or so because in a multi player game it has to be read out loud for the other players.
27:05 When you make a choice in the game there will be a narrative pay out as a “reward” to the player for making a choice (ANY choice). Success or failure, you still get the narrative.
27:25 They also wanted the narrative to contain “hints”. Why? Because there is a certain type of player who will just skip every bit of flavor text because it doesn’t matter to them (or to the game play). Likely, those types of players won’t be playing Mass Effect because it is specifically for those who want the story! [And Rogue Angels will have one thousand pages in it’s six campaign books\!] Eric and Calvin do not like people who skip the flavor text and wanted to punish them by putting hints in the flavor text (that they would then miss out on).
28:20 Calvin appreciated the opportunity to write dialog for the characters that he has known and loved for so long (and that it was liked when he turned it in).
28:50 Question: how did you deal with the writing aspect since communication of the story was within the game play vs a straight full length story? A: The medium is the message! [phrase coined by the Canadian communication theorist Marshall McLuhan – I remember it from High School] You have to be able to write to fit where it will be. Know what is important. Winnow it down to what actually matters. Economy of words. Choice of words. Being consistent with how a character “talks” (what’s their word choice like, how do they structure their sentences, what’s their cadence).
31:00 There are five characters in the game. [There are 16 main characters in Rogue Angels plus several supplemental / complimentary characters] => Commander Shepherd, Wrex (big bruiser guy), Tali (an engineer character), Liara (scientist, archaeologist with psychic power), Garrus (sniper, ex-military). They all have their own personality quirks. Writing for them as easy in a way since their voices have been in Calvin’s head for so long. But the difficulty was to not get repetitive.
32:10 Question: working with BioWare? A: Their limitations were: Don’t break Cannon! Characters should sound like the characters in the video games. Plus they did make several reasonable requests (such as choosing a location – a made up example). Most all their requests were just fine. Except for one … they wanted something removed/changed that Calvin had worked very hard on … but their reasons were sound. He didn’t like it, but he acknowledged that they were right! Maybe he can put that feature that he had to cut out into a future game!
35:25 Question: how did you manage to work with Eric Lang across multiple times zones and have a shared vision? A: They did much via video chats as well as a prototype in tabletop simulator. The two of them are very similar. Calvin things about board games as physical things (rather than an intangible set of rules). Example: they cut features because they were annoying to implement in real life. And things had a physical aspect. Example: A token. It has a reverse side to it. That is different than a standee. A token can be face up or face down, a standee can’t. Minis … they appear cinematic plus they will sell a lot more copies if they are included! They may even emphasize the minis by have a clear area on the box cover that lets you see the minis inside the box.
39:30 They had to cut one character out of the game (Mordin) primarily for cost sake. They needed a mini for each character and six minis could be done with one mold but seven minis would require two molds (twice the cost). And molds cost tens of thousands of dollars. [Keep that in mind when you realize that Rogue Angels comes with 16 minis]. Plus, adding that one character created a significant amount of work in game design. There were more combinations of characters, more play testing needed. [Keep this in mind as well for Rogue Angels with 16 characters]. Another example of this is the number of cards in the game. If the factory produces 52 cards on one sheet, if you add another card (now 53) you might as well add another 52 cards since it will need another sheet produced. Another example is tokens. They are all on a punch board. Each punch board needs a tool to create it and each of those tools costs thousands of dollars. That is why the punch boards in some games are all the same (different printing, but the same exact layout and size of the tokens). It’s cheaper that way since one tool can be used for all the punch boards. Unique shapes need unique custom tools.
41:55 Question: how much narrative weight can rest on the components? A: A lot! All narrative weight is down to the components. The emotions involved for the players rolling dice is completely different than when being told to turn to a certain page to see the result. Also, drawing a card to get a result has a different emotion to it. Plus even the sides on a die can be standard or custom. It adds cost to use custom dice.
44:15 They knew the price point that they wanted to hit right from the very start of the game design. That put a strong ceiling on things like box size, the number of components, how long (or wide) could the maps or books be (they had to fit into the box size that was already chosen).Those limits (and criteria) actually drives the focus of the game! Example: enemies would not be minis but would be tokens (due to cost). If the enemy is a token, one thing you can do with it is “flip it over” (you can’t do that with minis). It would have been nice to have minis for all the enemies, but then that would have removed their ability to say “flip the enemy token over”. How many dice molds do we need? What if they really needed an extra type of dice? They would find a way to do it within their budget because the game would be much worse if they didn’t have that custom die.
46:10 Another example: the Event Deck. Drawing cards from a deck is much different than rolling a die for a result. The deck of cards has “memory”. If I draw “card 10”, then card 10 is not in the deck any more. Example: if you know how many “Green armies attack” cards there are [let’s say 3]… once you draw 3 “Green armies attack” cards, you know that for the rest of that event deck the Green armies won’t attack any more (unless you hit the “shuffle” card to shuffle all the cards back into the deck). [Rogue Angels utilizes dozens of two sided Enemy Behavior Cards, which I like a lot (while I basically hate event decks)] The game wants you to keep track of which event cards you have drawn to help you predict what might happen. [Rogue Angels is far more realistic yet simply implemented with the Enemy Behavior Cards – typically one is used for each mission, so there is a lot of variety, plus the behaviors of the enemies then can actually “fit” the scenario that they are in]
47:50 Dice! They are unpredictable, chaotic and random (Eric Lang likes dice). Dice in this game are how you do actions. Dice results can be “move actions”, “shoot actions” or “special action”. The first player rolls many dice and uses some of them. The second player only can use the dice that are remaining after the first player used some (so there will be less of them). The game also utilizes “exploding” dice (a certain result will let you roll it again and potentially again – and it always is good for you).
50:10 Not sure if this will be in the final game, but they wanted to have “hidden text”. That is text that you can’t easily read until you place a red piece of plastic over it. That is how they wanted the flavor text to be … so it would be right there on the page, but you need to wait till they tell you to “read” it (using the red plastic overlay). They didn’t want players to actually inadvertently start reading something until they specifically were told to! (reading is an actual choice and not something you accidentally see – this would prevent spoiling it for yourself).
53:10 They tried to not have game setup be onerous. Placing things on the map initially needs to be fairly straight forward so it is not frustrating to set up.
54:15 This is Calvin’s first game design that is going to be published. He learned a lot from Eric. Calvin might want to try something, but Eric would say, “nah, that won’t work” and explain why because he had tried that before in another game. That saved time in prototyping aspects that would not actually work.
55:40 Calvin said that there is just no good line of sight system, ever. There’s only a line of sight system that works for the game that you are making and it won’t work in other games. There will NOT be line of sight rulers :) It’s hard to make line of sight system that are intuitive and encompass that cover all the uses cases and are easy to remember. They have things that work right in the game, but play testers would always forget! Example: if the second player wanted the first player to save a certain die to pass to them, they’d agree and the first player would do their turn and typically FORGET to save that die. So they changed the rule. Instead of a player saving a die for the next player the new rule is that the next player can just take that die immediately. It accomplished the same thing, but now everyone remembers.
1:01:00 They wanted the rules to be very simple. They wanted the players to spend their time figuring out WHAT to do in certain situations. But the actual process of playing their turn should be dead simple. [Rogue Angels does this extremely well]
1:02:10 Calvin hopes he will be designing more Mass Effect boxes (games) for a very long time. Plus he is already working with others on designing two more games (not related to Mass Effect).
1:11:45 Calvin has been working on this since 2001.