Dodge City: Designer's Notes

Emiliano Sciarra has provided some commentary on the development of his excellent Dodge City expansion to BANG! He noted that he recognized BANG!'s great ability to include expansions even in the prototype stages of his game. Many of his friends suggested original cards and characters, and the prototype deck became quite large. Many of these cards were cut out of the published version of BANG! to keep deck size smaller, but several were reintroduced into or modified for Dodge City. Sciarra was particularly happy to reintroduce characters like Apache Kid, although he admitted that many fun characters were cut out due to balancing issues and available text space on the cards. This probably included many of the "Boot Hill" characters below.



When it came to the playing cards, Sciarra wanted to introduce many cards with unique effects. The publisher, however, wanted to stick with the original game symbols as much as possible and not have many references to the manual, and so many of these ideas were tossed aside. Eventually, they settled the matter by adding 1 new game mechanic (the green cards) and 1 fresh symbol ( the discard a card to play this card symbol). Sciarra was sad to not include the "Buntline Special," a weapon with range 1 which requires two Missed! cards to avoid its shot. Ironically, something like the Buntline Special appears in the form of the James Dougall in the Robbers' Roost expansion.

Dodge City also expanded the max amount of players to 8, something Sciarra had planned for BANG! from the beginning. Having a second Renegade was decided through playtesting. The 3-player rules were designed by Silvano Sorrentino, and Sciarra believes they are a good compromise given the sacrifice of the hidden roles.

Read the full article on the design of Dodge City.

Found this article interesting? Read the history of the development of BANG!, High Noon, and A Fistful of Cards.