Bruno Cathala and Serge Laget are the designers of Shadows over Camelot and the recent Shadows over Camelot card game. They were kind enough to talk to about their design in email discussions between August and October this year.

Picture by Toshiyuki Hashitani (moonblogger), used under Creative Commons

Shannon Appelcline: How did the Shadows over Camelot board game come about?

Serge Laget: I’m a teacher, and I use cooperative gaming in my work. In the years before Shadows over Camelot was published, there were no cooperative games for adults except The Lord of the Rings by Reizer Knizia.

At first, I began to work alone on a cooperative game. I met Bruno Cathala during this time, and I proposed that he work with me on the project. The game was born by the cooperation of our two minds!

Bruno Cathala: The story begins on Christma 2002. My sister’s gift to me was The Lord of the Rings, the cooperative game designed by Reiner Knizia. In my head, i said: “Wow … exactly what I didn’t want to have.”

At the time, I didn’t like cooperative games (because I’m a competitor), I thought that cooperative games were just for children, and I was not familiar with Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings story. I had tried to read the book many times, but each time, I gave up after less than 100 pages, because the style was boring to me — as boring as the French author Honoré de Balzac!

Though I wasn’t really happy with my gift, I was fascinated by the artwork, and so I decided to give the game a chance. I played it, and even though I wasn’t familiar with the story, I began to fear the big black plastic token coming closer and closer to my character token!

And we lost … and lost again … until we were sufficiently experienced with the game to collectively be efficient in the face of its menaces. At this time, we began to win, and win again. And I began to be frustrated by the linearity of the game.

That’s the reason that I stopped playing Lord of the Rings. This led me to two conclusions:

• Cooperative games can be exciting, even for adults.
• It would be really cool to design a cooperative game in which the scenario was not linear — in which player could always choose the direction that they want to go.

Some days later, I had a phone call with my friend Serge and I explained my experiences and my conclusion to him. He replied to me: “I took the same path some weeks earlier than you, and I’ve already begun working on such a cooperative game. Would you like to join me on the project?”

Frankly speaking, it was impossible to say NO to such a gift!

Appelcline: Bruno mentioned not liking the linearity of Lord of the Rings. Was there anything else in Reiner Knizia’s take on cooperation that you decided to move away from?

Cathala: Shadows of Camelot wasn’t designed after a long and detailed analysis of Lord of the Rings. It’s just that playing it led to a desire to work on a cooperative game in a more open world. We worked on the core mechanics of our game without thinking about what had been done or not done in Lord of the Rings.

Linearity in Lord of the Rings was directly connected to the license: they had to respect the story. Imagine the reaction of Tolkien fans if this was not the case! That’s the reason we chose to work with the Knights of the Round Table: if you investigate these stories, you will discover that there is not a single legend, but a lot of different legends including more or less the same ingredients, but with significant variations.
It was the perfect background for giving players the opportunity to live their own legend — one that was different from one game session to another.

Laget: In addition, in Lord of the Rings the cooperation between players is very simple: you need this card and I have it, so I give it to you. Why would you do something different?

In our game, if a player says that he needs a card, you have to think: “Can I believe him? Do I have to give it to him ? Maybe he’s a liar… and we’ll miss this card later.” In a game for adults, we believe that cooperation between players must be more complex than me giving you what you need; that works only for children.

Appelcline: That core distrust is of course because of the traitor, which may have been the biggest innovation in Shadows. Can you say anything more about how you created and developed the traitor mechanic?

Laget: First, Bruno suggested the idea of a player who plays for himself and wins when the others lose. We quickly agreed that it was a very good idea that would bring tension and suspense to the game. But we thought it’d be really interesting if it were secret, so that an atmosphere of suspicion could settle over the game.

Then, we developed the game in this spirit: each player secretly draws his allegiance; it’s impossible to make an accusation before there are at least six Siege Engines around Camelot or at least six Swords; a lot of cards are played face down and mixed before being revealed; and a lot of cards and powers allow you to take actions without showing the cards you draw or play.

And finally one of the most important things: you don’t have to reveal your cards to the other players. Even if you can explain your cards by other methods, it’s important that you can not say “I need a fight card with a value of 4” and that you instead have to explain it; afterward, if you’re the traitor, you can say “You misunderstood me! I never said that!”

Cathala: In addition to Serge’s answer, I wanted to give some details:
As i said before, I wasn’t very interested in cooperative games at the time, but the idea of introducing a twist leading to breaks in pure cooperation was immediately intuitive to me.

One of the main reason is that most cooperative games are more or less a kind of “multiplayer solitaire”. This very often leads to ONE player making all the decisions for everybody. If you introduce a traitor, this is no longer really possible.

We also tried to fine tune the game so that there is not just one way for knights to achieve victory. Very often, knights don’t agree about the best decision to make, leading to suspicion because of the traitor possibility — even when everybody is loyal and both decisions are correct.

That’s exactly what I like in the game!

Picture by Toshiyuki Hashitani (moonblogger), used under Creative Commons

Appelcline: Thanks for the insight into traitors! One of the other elements of Shadows that I find intriguing is the incremental structure of the quests: that you just do a little bit of a quest each turn, and it takes many turns to complete it. What led to this design?

Laget: Important choices are hard to explain. I hope you will understand my intent!

Because quests are created as incremental structures, there is a lot of interaction between the players. When I decide to go on a solo quest, I need a number of turn to achieve it. But quests are races, and the evil progression is a consequence of the actions of all the players. So the fellowship of knights has to manage when they draw black cards, when they lose life points, and when they add a siege engine around Camelot.

You try to win each quest, of course, but winning a quest without black cards is not a good thing because a lot of black cards will be drawn afterward. It’s better when you win a quest and a lot of black cards are discarded.

When we go on an group quest, we have to manage the move of each player because it’s impossible to win the quest alone. Sometimes we must all come in together to try to win it very quickly, and sometimes just one player is required — not to win the quest, but just to slow the evil progression while we win some other quests. This is especially true in the case of the Quest for the Holy Grail.

Appelcline: Since the release of Shadows over Camelot, you’ve put out one major expansion for it, Merlin’s Company. How do you feel that supplement changed the cooperation (or the progression of evil)?

Cathala: We believe that an expansion has to include more than just some additional special cards.

When we began to design Merlin’s Company, we had the background of hundred of games played by us, friends, or gamers we observed during conventions. Many groups decided to play game after game with a single strategy. For example, one of these strategies was that everybody had to go immediately to Excalibur AND sacrifice one life point to finish the quest as fast as possible, without drawing any evil cards. It’s difficult, even if you’re a traitor, to refuse to do that when all the other players agree. So we tried to break that.

That’s the reason we added the travel cards: now, travel is no longer secure.
When you decide to move, you may arrive at your destination, but sometimes your travel triggers some special event … and players now have to adapt their strategies to this new unpredictable situation.

Laget: This expansion also makes the game harder to manage because players need more planning to win the quests. Moves are not as certain, so you might not reach the quest you need when you want to. And in a situation with difficult choices, the traitor has a bright future ahead of him …

Appelcline: It’s intriguing to hear about the reasons behind the design of the travel system! I believe that uncertainty is a crucial part of cooperative design, so it’s great to learn that was one of the core design considerations! Before we finish, I wanted to touch upon your one other Shadows design: the recent card game. Were there any differences in your approach to the cooperative design of this newer release?

Laget: In the card game, uncertainty is again a crucial part of the cooperative design because choices are made based on your own memory. I have seen a lot of games where the players collectively believe a fact that is completely wrong! It’s incredible that the desire to create a collective consensus urges people to invent memories!

Cathala: One other major difference between the Shadows board game and card game is directly connected to game design itself. For the board game, we started from the theme and built the game while trying to find mechanics that matched the story and the interactions that we wanted to create between that players. For the card game, the first spark was the mechanic; only afterward did we think: “Incredible! This could fit really well with our cooperative Shadows other Camelot story!”

Appelcline: You’ve now got two cooperative games and one supplement under your belt. Do you feel like you’ve learned any global lessons about the design of cooperative games?

Cathala: You’re right, we now have some experience with cooperative game design; on my side, I could also add SOS Titanic, which will be released in a few weeks. But I don’t feel that designing a cooperative game is different than designing any other kind of game. The challenge is always the same:

What do we have to do to create the interactions that we want between players in the game, and what do we have to do to create tension that will increase slowly turn after turn, reaching its maximum value just at the end of the game?

This challenge is common to all game design.

What is more specific to cooperative game design is finding some small ways to try to keep ONE player from making all the decisions for everyone else around the table (because of his experience of the game and/or his own personality). This is something that we really have to take into consideration and, again, was one of the reason for introducing the traitor into our cooperative design

Laget: Another thing specific to cooperative game design is creating situations that are convenient for discussion among players. That means that each player should have a part of the information needed to solve the problem, but no one can have all of the information. So, cooperation is inevitable.

I believe that cooperative games reveal capacities of empathy in each player. It’s interesting to note that some players are unable to listen to the opinions of others, because no choice is completely safe or sure. This makes the game better and the interactions between players better.

Shannon: Thank you for taking the time to talk about cooperative games!

Liked it? Take a second to support Shannon Appelcline on Patreon!