Robbers' Roost: Revising Interrupt Design

As I've been evaluating my Robbers' Roost proof and rulebook, I've been thinking more critically about the design and rules of the cards, particularly as relates to the interrupts. The windups I consider pretty solid and easy to understand, while the interrupts have these giant walls of text, and understanding when they can be played is less immediately discerned. They also introduce multiple new gameplay concepts, which I should seek to simplify or remove the number introduced.

As a result, I've been working on redesigning the content of these cards, so that they are more intuitive, within BANG!'s pre-existing symbolic language. I will need to add a couple new symbols (as I had with the line of fire concept) to best adopt the language. Here are some of the reworks I'm envisioning:

You can see on the left the originals, and on the right hand side the modified cards. The right side cards have a top text area, which indicates the condition on which an interrupt can be played out of turn. The bottom area describes what happens by playing this card when the condition is met. I think this reads much better to the eye.

Unfortunately, there are ramifications to using the symbolic language. This is because the BANG! symbol does not equate to a BANG! card. With abilities contingent on a BANG! card being played, this ability is lost when leveraging the interrupt (think Slab the Killer's). There really are only 3 options here:

a. Ditch the symbols.

b. Keep the symbols and add text that clarifies these count as BANG! (adding to text clutter)

c. Modify the original intent of the cards so that they no longer are BANG! cards and so do not trigger player abilities.

I'm leaning towards c, simply for the simplicity that it adds to understanding the cards.

Along those lines, I am enjoying the work I did to align Join Arms with the Buffalo Rifle's discard card cost, as a way to circumvent distance. I personally think I should nix distance restraints on all other interrupts, and just include that as a cost for executing on the ability. This change would then remove the need for noting distance modifications for a card or other limited constaints. This balances the lack of distance constraint, while also furthering the original intent of the cards (team work), which is essential in larger games where distance is all the more problematic. It's frustrating, for instance, that it is harder to help a team mate with Toss because they have a Mustang.

Other examples of changes:

I think these are look much cleaner -- these don't show the originals, but just the modified cards. Hit Me and Bleed Out are the only cards that completely align with the prior cards. Here are some of the challenges I have with these cards:

1. Bandages: Symbology is equivalent to Tequila, but there's a problem: in the original you can't play it on yourself, while Tequila you can. This reads as give 1 player a life point, while I need "give any player but yourself 1 life point." Ways to solve for this are:

a. Add clarificatory text (creates extra text, which is a downside).

b. Create a new symbol (I should only do this where needed; the "anyone else but you" concept is not often used)

c. Change original intent to align with symbol clarity, so you can play it on yourself.

I'm inclined, once more to side with C for simplicity.

2. Confiscate: This loses the notion that you are able to put the card yourself into play upon confiscation. I'm trying to determine if that is worth it. In this case, it probably is. I'll need to add, "that player's card in play. Put it into play."

3. Hit Me is good.

4. Bleed Out: I can't tell if I'd need to note "draw!" in the bottom area or not. I feel like it's intuitive Barrel, Jail, etc. I think I'll add just rulebook explanatory text. I added the lost health symbol (which I used for Moonshine before) that I think is clear. I'm not certain about the crown symbol for royals, as royals are not a suit, they are a subset of any suit. I probably either need to scratch any suit symbol and just create a "J-A" text, or create a pan-suit symbol to mean any type that value. I'll experiment with both.

Next example of how this is evolving. Quick Draw in particularly has proven tricky. One of the problems with the original Quick Draw is the concept of "using" a card. Green cards are discarded to use their effect, which is what this was intended to block. But discarding to use is different from using in general. Would this apply to a gun card already in play (i.e. a Volcanic)? To what else? I found this "use" concept as not clear enough to really put in place. Playing a card is clearer -- it happens when a card is put in play or played from the hand and discarded, so I've made that the new condition. I recognize the conceptual difference of how this now really only hinders defensive green cards, versus offensive ones (they're already disabled until their next turn anyway), but for the gameplay clarity, I consider that sacrifice worth it.

Beyond the playing condition, there is the effect of playing it which could also use rebalancing. I think it was too weak before -- It at best discards a BANG!, or delays use of a card for a turn. In addition, I think the card contributing to a card limit while disable, if a hand card, is an extra layer of complication that is unnecessary to manage/explain. I've tried to simplify it in the 3 examples (top left is original). 

1 - Top right is the simplest -- make it a straight discard the card played. It adds a card cost for that definitive removal. This makes the hand limit issue no consideration. However, one of the challenges for this and option 3 (bottom right) is that discarding a one-time use card may seem non-intuitive, as it is already naturally being discarded. What is really going on is a discard of a card put in play or a cancellation of a one-time use card played. Cancellation and discard are similar but not equivalent concepts. The discard card symbol may not carry that concept. I may need to put "(or cancel) that card." This is my current preferred option.

2 - Top left is closest to the original. It is more powerful in not allow a BANG! alternative; the targeted card will be disabled. For that, it requires a discard card cost. Frankly, this is weak enough that it should need no discard cost. The main challenge here is disabling is a new concept, and how it interacts with hand limits needs to be accounted for. It's probably best to just through disabling in a wastebin.

3 - Bottom right is a nice halfway point. It allows a BANG! to be played to avoid the discard, but if not, it's a true discard. It still has the problem with cancellation/discard, so this might end up even wordier: "They must discard a BANG!, or that card is discarded/cancelled." The symbol here is more flavor than standing in for a word, which is less stylistically consistent.

If I encounter other challenging one's, I'll note them here. I'll be tackling this as well: the whole concept of substitution as relates to the roles and role revelation. I received some criticism here, and I think there's some validity to the criticism, at least in going against the "spirit" of the game, even though any reasonably good BANG! player can infer roles extremely easily by the time that substitution would come into effect. I also have concerns about interrupts and impacts on the hand limit.

Design: Playing Card Stats

Following up on the OO/Excel spreadsheets I created for character abilities, I have created spreadsheets for the playing cards in BANG!. This should be useful for modders, who want to think about what card types/values are used (and for balancing), as well as players of BANG!, helping them recognize card type trends and card count. As with the previous spreadsheets, I have tried to be very meticulous in my descriptions of the cards. The statistics include BANG!, Dodge City, Robbers' Roost orange module (RRO), Robbers' Roost purple module (RRP), and Robbers' Roost complete (RR). It does not cover any of the event cards, such as those is A Fistful of Cards, High Noon, and Wild West Show.

The spreadsheet contains the following information on playing cards:

• Card Names.


• Expansion included in.


• Color.


• Card Type. There are 19 types that I broken the cards into: Basic Attacks, Special Attacks (like Duel, Indians!), Defensive, Life Point Modifiers, Discard, Steal, Draw, Gun, Offensive Sight Modifiers, Defensive Sight Modifiers, Random Damage (Dynamite), Turn Skipper (Jail), Perma-Defensive (Barrel), Duel Modifier (Standoff), Special Defensive, Disabler, Special Steal, Passer, and Swapper.


• Value Trend. This tales you if cards with a specific name tend to have a certain suit, color, and/or number value. For instance, "Cat Balou" tend to be higher-valued diamonds. With some cards I note percentages where suits are heavily split. So I note BANG! are 38% clubs/45% diamonds, and Missed! are 38% clubs/54% spades. This can be useful for a modder in the following ways: (1) When adding cards to balance the new cards he introduces to BANG!, he can be given a good idea of what values he should assign; (2) When adding new cards that are a similar type to cards in BANG!, he is given a starting point for assigning a value them. For players this can be useful in considering, for instance, what cards Apache Kid is immune to.


• Values. This column provides in an itemized manner the values of cards with the same name. NOTE: BANG! and Dodge City values are not separated here. If this is desired, I can split them into another column.


• RR Values. This column provides in an itemized manner the values of cards with the same name in the RR expansion. I recognized that many modders would not want these values included in the BANG!+DC values. This would help them create their own modules. On the other hand, I wanted to include the values to (1) show how RR integrates into BANG!, and also (2) provide the resources for making modules compatible with RR. I hope the BANG! Community will aim at compatibility amongst its modding projects.


• Range. This column explains at what distance seen a card can be played. When it is played on one's self specifically, I give it a value of "N/A." When it applies to any player seen at distance 1, I give it "1." If it can reach within a distance (such as with Toss, Dive, or Push), I put "within [insert distance seen]." When it depends on the gun in play, I put down "Gun-based" (although it is of course modified by the offensive/defensive sight modifiers as well; gun-based is simply a lazy way of putting it). If it reaches all players, all players, or any player at any distance, I put down "Any."


• Impacts. This column notes whom the played card impacts. This typically involves one of the following values: self, 1 player (which could include one self), 1 other player, 1 random player (for Dynamite), all other players, other players in a line of fire (for Cannon and Artillery), and all players. Sometimes it is a combination. For the orange and purple cards the impact value is more specific: attacking player, attacker, defending player, 1 other hit player (for Gaping Wound), player whose turn it is (Confiscate, Hit Me), and player with defensive sight modifier (for Track Down).


• Activator. This column notes which agent makes the card playable: one self (like in Gatling), another (like in Missed!), or both (like in Beer: playable on your turn, or when you lose your last life point due to another player's attack).


• Activating Event. The column describes the specific event that makes this card playable. Often, this is as simple as it being one's playing phase or one being the target of a basic attack. However, this can be more complicated, such as for last chance Beers. This is especially for orange cards, which can only be played at many specific events: when another player takes a hit, when a player targets another player with a basic or special attack, when a player plays a card to avoid an attack, when a player plays any card, another player's drawing phase, and so forth.


• Extra Details. Several cards have extra details about them that are important to note. For instance, only 1 BANG! can be played during a playing phase by default. Beer have no effect if played when only 2 players remain. Jail cannot be played on the Sheriff. Some cards in both Dodge City and Robbers' Roost require discarding a card to play them (Springfield, Rag Time, Brawl, Bandage, Warpath, etc.). Wells Fargo, Stagecoach, Pay Day, and Hit Me activate Wild West Show event cards. In this column, I put in these extra details for playing cards. I also place the benefits of having a specific blue card in play here.


• Outcome of Playing. This column explains what happens when the card is played. This is often just a breakdown of the text or symbols on the cards. Some other items are noted, such as when a gun comes into play it replaces any non-duplicate gun card already in play (if a duplicate, it could not come into play in the first place). I note the initial/latent effects for the purple cards here.


• % Columns. The card data concludes with 6 columns breaking down the probability of drawing a specific card from a specific deck setup. For instance, there are 25 BANG! in the base game, so there is a 31.25% chance of drawing it from a complete 80-card base deck. These deck set ups can vary; hence, the 6 columns. However, in BANG! + Dodge City there are 29 BANG!, so there is a 24.20% chance of drawing a BANG! from a complete 120-card BANG! + Dodge City deck. Quite a difference, no? Since there are several deck setups, I created columns showing drawing probabilities for drawing a specific card in a deck setups for BANG!, BANG! + Dodge City, BANG! + Dodge City + Robbers' Roost orange module, BANG! + Dodge City + Robbers' Roost purple module, and BANG! + Dodge City + Robbers' Roost complete. The last column explains the reason for certain shifts of drawing probabilities in Robbers' Roost.

After the Card Data, I provided another tab for a little "Meta Card Data." This tab only provides 1 sources of information. First, it notes how many cards belong to specific types in the different deck setups. So in BANG!, there are 5 cards with unique names belonging to the gun card type. In BANG! + Dodge City + Robbers' Roost there are 7. Secondly, I note the probability of randomly drawing a certain type from a complete deck setup. The earlier card data probabilities only noted the chances of drawing a card with a specific name, like BANG!. This data notes the chances of drawing the type (like "basic attacks") from a complete deck. It explores the probabilities in the 5 different deck setups like before.

The hope is that this spreadsheet will enable you to both mod and play BANG! better. As with the character ability stats, I would love to get some feedback on this spreadsheet. It has taken a good chunk of time to put together, but I am sure there are typos, inconsistencies, and some poor labels. Feel free to post comments here.

Like before, I have made the spreadsheet available in both Open Office Calc and Microsoft Excel formats.

Tutorial: How to Make BANG! Character Cards (Part 2)

News (9/12/11): Added in the missing step for adding in the bullet images for 3/4 life point characters.

With the release of the BANG! Master Template (available for InDesign CS4-CS5), I have wanted to create tutorials that show how to use it. This guide will use the BANG! Master Template, and finish up on the first part of a tutorial that teaches how to make custom BANG! characters. Thus, before reading this tutorial, I recommend you first read the tutorials on how to create and balance a character ability, and how to create a character card image (the first part of this tutorial). STEP 1: Open up InDesign and load the BANG! Master Template. I am acting under the assumption that you have downloaded the BANG! Master Template and that you have not made any changes to it. If not, download the template or start with a blank template. Once you have loaded the file, it should look like this (at least in CS5). STEP 2: Prep the Template for Character Cards. Make sure the Layers window is open. You should see a list of 28 layers. You should notice which layers are visible due to the eyes being present at the boxes to the far left of the layers. Scroll to the bottom. We are going to prep this character card sheet from the bottom up, making the necessarily layers visible and unnecessary ones invisible. Let's do it in this order:

1. Turn off the "Brown" layer by clicking on the eye corresponding to that layer.
2. Turn on the "BORDERS: Character" layer by clicking on the far left box of that layer. An eye will appear, as well as the character border.
3. Turn off the "Playing" layer.
4. Turn on the "TITLES: Character" layer.
5. Turn off the "Playing C" layer.
6. Turn on the "ART: Character" layer.
7. Turn off the "Playing Card" layer.
8. Turn on the "TEXT: Character" layer.
9. Turn off the "VALUES: Playing," "Hearts," and "Playing Back" layers.
10. Turn on the "BACKS: Character" layer.

The end result (of the fronts) should be as below. STEP 3: Add Character Name(s). Using the Selection Tool (the black looking arrow in the toolbox, shortcut "V"), double-click inside one of the text boxes entitled "NAME." Then, select all of the text (shortcut CTRL+A), and type in the name of your character. NOTE: This you should have picked out earlier; I have tips for this in step 1 of the first part of this tutorial. If the name is too long for the text box, we will have to scrunch the text. In my example, where I am trying to input "Crazy Wolf" as the name, this is the case. To scrunch the text, select all of the text in the name (CTRL+A inside the textbox again). Then, notice the long horizontal toolbar across the screen, showing typing tool options. We want to adjust the "Horizontal Scale" of the text. The option for doing this is identified by the stretched out T icon. We want to change the value in the input box to the right. Its default value is 100%. Since our text is too long, we will want to lower that value. Click once in that text box, and then use the down arrow on your keypad to decrease its value until it fits snugly in the text box. For Crazy Wolf, I just had to adjust the Horizontal Scale to 97%. It is also possible that your name is too short (as in the case of a name like "Jack West"). The names for characters in BANG! are stretched to fit the width of the character art images, unlike the playing cards. To stretch the names, we will again use the Horizontal Scale. Instead of decreasing its value, we will increase the value. Select inside the input box with your cursor and then use the up arrow on your keypad to increase the value. For Jack West, I had to adjust the Horizontal Scale to 108% to fill the text box. The end results look like this. If you have more than 1 character, keep adding in names into the text boxes entitled "NAME," and adjusting the Horizontal Scales on them as needed. STEP 4: Add in Character Images. Using the Selection Tool, select one of the lavender squares undernearth one of the character cards you have named. We are now going to place in the image you created for this character card in the previous part of this tutorial. With the lavender square selected, either select from the top menu File -> Place... or use shortcut CTRL+D. A window will appear allowing you to select an image to insert. Locate the image, select it, and then click on the highlighted "Open" button. The chosen image should replace the lavender box, but maintain its dimensions. If the image does not look proportional, then select the image and then use shortcut ALT+SHIFT+CTRL+E. This should fit the content of the image proportionally to the frame. If it still looks off, then your imported image was not square. Either fiddle with it to your liking, or edit the image in Photoshop, so that it is a square. The end results show be like this. If you have more than 1 character, select on the next lavender box where you want to add a character image, and use the place function to add it in. Adjust the image as necessary. STEP 5: Add in Character Ability Text. Using the Selection Tool, double-click inside one of the text boxes with the long string "textextextext...." underneath one of the character cards you have named and provided an image for. Select all of the text in the box (CTRL+A), and delete it. Then replace it with the text for your character ability, which you might have designed in conjunction with this tutorial. Next, justify the text with the last line aligned left. Do this by selecting all of the text (CTRL+A) and then clicking on the appropriate justification icon. You should notice 8 text orientation icons available amongst the long horizontal bar displaying typing tool options. You will want to click on the one in the bottom left. Afterwards, turn off the hyphenation if that is a problem. Go to Window -> Type & Tables -> Paragraph. A window should appear. In the bottom left there is a check box for hyphenation. Make sure it is empty to disable hyphenation. If the text is too long, your options are:

1. Trim the text by getting rid of superfluous words and rephrasing statements in shorter ways.
2. Adjust the font size. Select all of the text in the textbox (CTRL+A), and then adjust the size by clicking inside the input box for font size. This is in the tool options horizontal bar for the Typing Tool. It is identified by the small T, big T icon. Its default value should be 8. Change this to 7. Directly below that input box is an input box that alters the leading in between lines. Its default value is 9. Change that to 8. If your text still doesn't fit, consider:
3. Extending the border of the text box a little further down. Click on the bottom border and extend it. If that doesn't work, perhaps:
4. Make the ability simpler so that it is not as convoluted to explain.

Add in any remaining text for other characters. STEP 6: Add your Expansion Icon. By default the wagon wheel icon is in place. Feel free to use this icon as your custom expansion symbol. If you prefer another, I have provided both a cactus icon and a bow and arrow icon. Any of these icons can be swapped out by going to the layers menu, and turning on the "Expansion" layer you like. Turn off the "Expansion" layers you do not like. You may wish to make your own. If so, follow my tutorial on making your own BANG! expansion icon. If you have the icon ready, go to the layers window and select one of the "Expansion" layers, or create a new layer just below those layers. Either way, with an appropriate layer selected, place (CTRL+D) your custom expansion icon into it. Use the already provided expansion icons as guides for where to place your custom icon. If your icon is too large, simply adjust the image frame so the it is the same size as one of the provided expansion icons. Then use shortcut CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+E to resize the custom icon proportionately to the frame. Feel free to fiddle with the image frame and resizing until you get it towards something you like. If you have more than 1 card, simply copy the custom icon (select it and use shortcut CTRL+C) and paste (CTRL+V) a new one. Then move it over to the next card and put it in the appropriate place. STEP 7: Add in Life Point Bullets. For each of your characters, you should decide whether they merit having 3 or 4 life points. Typically, very powerful abilities merit 3 life points, while weaker abilities merit 4. Once this has been decided, you can add in the life point bullets by using the "3 LP Bullets" and "4 LP Bullets" layers. First, turn on the "3 LP Bullets" layer. This should make images of 3 bullets appear on each card. We only want those images to appear on the character cards that need it. To remove the others, we need to make the individual images identifiable. Do so by clicking on the right facing arrow next to the "3 LP Bullets" label in the Layers menu. This will reveal a list of 8 elements, each entitled "Bul" with a numerical ending. The number at the end of the element describes the card that it corresponds to. The guide for the numbering is provided in the image for step 8. Turn off all elements that do not correspond to a character card that has 3 LPs. In my example, only Crazy Wolf is a 3 LP character, so I will only keep the element "Bul5" visible. Now, for the 4 LP characters if you have any. Turn on the "4 LP Bullets" label, which will make 4 bullet images appear over all of the cards. You will notice that these cover up all of the 3 bullet images that were there previously. We will need to turn off all of the elements that do not correspond to 4 LP characters. Do so in a similar manner as we did for the 3 LP images. In my example, only Jack West is a 4 LP character, so I will only keep the element "Bul6" visible. The end result is this: OPTIONAL STEP 8: Turn Off Unused Material. You may not fill up an entire card sheet with characters and that is fine. For printing purposes, you will not want superfluous images and texts being printed, and so we should make that stuff invisible. Let us start with the borders. In the layers window, look for the layer entitled "BORDERS: Character." There should be a right-faced arrow to the immediate left of the text label. Click on the arrow to have various layer elements appear. Each of the elements should be labeled "Char" with a 1 through 8 tacked on at the end. These numbers correspond to the 8 cards, as identified in this image: We will want to turn off all the elements named "Char" that correspond to the unused card numbers. So, in my example I want only "Char5" and "Char6" visible. The rest I should turn off. The result is this: A similar numbering system is present in most, but not all layers. Text elements to be disabled in all layers are easily identified, since the elements all have the default names ("NAME" or "textextext..."). Turn off all of those superfluous text elements in "TITLES: Character" and "TEXT: Character." In the "ART: Character" layer, turn off all elements with the "" value. Turn off unnecessary expansion icons in your "Expansion" layer (or custom layer). All that is left is the "BACKS: Character" layer. Scroll down to the next page. Display the layer elements for "BACKS: Character" in the Layers window. While the elements have the familiar numbering system, they correspond to the backs in an inverse way as shown below: This is needed for making sure the cards print the backs correctly on the right fronts. Just make sure the #s on the fronts you kept visible (in my example, "Char5" and "Char6" were visible) are the same ones kept visible on the backs (thus, only "CharBack 5" and "CharBack 6" should be visible). The result is: Your card sheet should now have all superfluous material removed. STEP 9: Export your Card Sheet to PDF. Now that your card sheet's design is complete, export it to PDF. Do this by selecting File -> Export... from the top menu, or by using shortcut CTRL+E. A window will appear, where you must specify a name and location for the exported file. Click save. An "Export Adobe PDF" window should appear. Make sure the radio button "All" is selected for Pages. Under the Options area, select "Visible Layers" from the Export Layers dropdown menu. Also check the "View PDF after Exporting" box. We will now need to go to the "Compression" section. Select that label from the lefthand column. Make sure that in the Color Images and Grayscale Images ections that the downsampling is specified as bicubic to 300 ppi for images above 300 ppi (pixels per inch). Then click on the blue highlighted "Export" button. When it is done exporting, the PDF file should appear. Your character card sheet is now complete and ready to be printed off. If you wish to keep the design file (recommended), go back to InDesign and save the character card sheet InDesign file under a new name. This way you will have the design file for the characters if you want to make any adjustments in the future, and you will also have a clean Template to make more cards with in the future.

Tutorial: Design an Expansion Symbol for BANG! Cards

As new BANG! modders add their own playing and character cards to the game, they will often want to place a symbol in the top right of their cards to distinguish them. The BANG! Master Template provides 3 symbols for use: a cactus, a wagon wheel, and a bow and arrow. However, if you wish to make your own expansion symbol, let me show you here.

STEP 1: Find a simple, unique western-themed symbol.

This first step is quite easy. Your task is to find a symbol that is not already used in BANG! (and hopefully other unofficial expansions). This includes:

• Buffalo (Dodge City)
• Man on Horse (Wild West Show)
• Pistol (Bullet characters)
• Ox Skull (Robbers’ Roost)
• Horseshoe (Robbers’ Roost)
• Vulture (Valley of Shadows)
• Film Camera (Directors’ Cuts)
• Cactus (already in BANG! Master Template)
• Wagon Wheel (already in BANG! Master Template)
• Bow and Arrow (already in BANG! Master Template)

What are some ideas for other symbols? Here are some suggestions: the cowboy neckerchief, a teepee, dynamite, a scalping knife, a lariat, a windmill, a tombstone, a bag of money, a paw print, and a train. For my example, I will use a paw print.

To find an image, I recommend using an image search engine (Google Image Search works just fine). Type in the name of the icon you are looking for, and then add something like “symbol” on the end.



Thus, I inputted “paw print symbol” into the textbox. Click on “Search Images.”



You are going to get tons of results. To narrow your results, and get more what you want, select “Black and White” from the list of color options in the left hand column. All expansion symbols are black and white, so this should simplify both finding an image and readying it to place on your BANG! cards.

Scroll through the results until you find something that strikes your fancy.



I settled on this image. Generally, you will want an image that has some size, at least 150 pixels+, but it doesn’t have to be too big, as the symbol is small on the card. Once you have made your selection, click on the image. A small preview image should pop up. You can either copy the preview image if it is high enough quality or click on “Full-size Image” in the right hand column. Copy the image.



STEP 2: Prepping the Image.



Open up Photoshop. Create a New Image, and it should already have the correct dimensions for the copied image set up. Paste the image.Then we are going to need to flatten the pasted image. You can do this by either right clicking on a layer in the layers window and selecting “Flatten Image,” or using the main menu, select Layer -> Flatten Image.



Now, we need to erase the white background. The BANG! expansion symbols have a white border around them, but it is not a big white square block! Select the Magic Eraser tool. Once you have it selected, let us get some of the perimeters set up. First, we want to make sure we erase anything close to white, so let us set the tolerance to “30.” Second, let’s check off both Anti-Alias and Contiguous. Now we only have to select 1 white patch to grab everything else. Feel free to click on a white area. You should now have a transparent area wherever white was before. If not, use the magic eraser on any remaining white areas.



Next, we want to make sure that there is room for a white border to go around the symbol. Often, as is the case in my paw print example, some of the black part of the symbol goes to the edge of the canvas. No good—we will need to adjust the Canvas Size. You can adjust the canvas size by selecting Image -> Canvas Size from the menu, or by using shortcut CTRL-ALT-C. Make sure that there is at least a 10 pixel buffer between the edge of your symbol and the edge of the canvas. I gave a 15 pixel buffer in my example.



We are ready to add on the white border. Right click on your current layer, and then select “Blending Options…” In the window that appears, there should be a list of checkbox options.



At the bottom is an option entitled “Stroke.” That is the one we want: check the box. There is probably a red border around the image now. We will change that soon. If you select the “Stroke” option in the left hand column, a menu of options should appear to the right. We are going to first change the color to white. Click on the color palette, and then select the color white (top left hand of the color spectrum). If this border is at all grainy, and does not hug the black part of your symbol perfectly, you need to go back to the Magic Eraser step and increase the Tolerance. Too much off-white still remains on the symbol, and so the border is wrapping the black poorly (the off-white is getting in the way).

Otherwise, move on to adjusting the size of the stroke. The exact amount will depend on the size of your image. For one like mine, I adjusted the size to 10 pixels. Click “OK.”



The image is now ready. Save the image to the folder where you store your BANG! playing card images.

STEP 3: Place Expansion Image in your Cards as your Design Program Dictates.

A Fistful of Cards: Designer's Notes

This is the next in a series of articles on the development of BANG!. The expansion "A Fistful of Cards" was developed in response to both the success of the High Noon expansion and a desire to put something special together for the 2005 edition of BANG!. DaVinci games and its international partners decided to include the BANG! community on this one, soliciting proposals for new event cards in the vein of High Noon. After over 500 proposals came in, it was up to Emiliano Sciarra (the designer of BANG!) to pick which event cards were to be a part of the expansion. He was supposed to pick at least 1 card from each country where one of DaVinci's international business partners resided.

Sciarra recalled that the process of finishing A Fistful of Cards on time was laborious. The selection process was fun. While some cards, such as Ambush, were submitted multiple times, others such as Dead Man or Vendetta quite surprised him. However, testing and writing careful text for each of the event cards (so as to avoid loopholes) was quite difficult. Sciarra believed the expansion had overall a mixed result: some cards were fun, brutal, and others unbalanced. The last card in particular was brutal, but provided the internal clock for BANG! that Sciarra had wanted.

For the full article (Italian only), visit the article at Sciarra's homepage.

Boot Hill Characters

While posting on the design of the Dodge City expansion to BANG!, I noted how some of the early characters in the draft were axed. I speculated that this probably included the Boot Hill characters. Some have asked regarding the Boot Hill characters, and I thought I would share them in more detail here. Feel free to check out the larger image above for a more close up look on the characters.

1. Judge Dread (4 LPs): At the end of his turn, if he had less than 2 cards in hand, he drew 1 card.


2. Juan Miranda (4 LPs): Each time he was hit, he could "draw!": on Hearts or Diamonds, the character who hit him had to play a Missed! card or lose 1 life point.


3. Dynamite Dick (4 LPs): He was unaffected by the Dynamite. During his turn, he could draw the Dynamite from the discard deck.


4. Dalton Gang (3 LPs): They might hold in their hand twice the normal allowed number of cards, and they began with 6 cards in hand.


5. July Ann Winslow (4 LPs): In her turn, she drew until she had up to 4 cards in her hand.


6. Heremy Baile (3 LPs): Each time a player drew a card from his hand or in play in front of Jeremy, that player had to lose 1 life point.


7. Will Penny (4 LPs): Each time he was about to lose a card from the hand or in play in front of him, he could choose which card to lose.


8. Tharley Callum (4 LPs): In her turn, she could see the cards in the hand of any one player.


9. Captain Barrett (2 LPs): At the beginning of the Sheriff's turn, he drew 2 cards from the deck.


10. Matthew Hazard (4 LPs): Instead of "draw!", he could discard a card from his hand nad use it as the result of the "draw!".

BANG! modders and character designers have reintroduced these characters intentionally and unintentionally. While making this post, I was surprised to see how similar Will Penny's and Juan Miranda's abilities were to ones I thought of for the new Jack West. Anyway, I hope these eliminated character ideas will provide you with some food for thought in character design.

High Noon: Designer's Notes

This post follows up on posts I have done on the history and design of Dodge City and BANG!. Today, I will be covering Sciarra's account of how he designed his High Noon expansion. Frequent bloggers will remember how much I hate the event card expansions to BANG!, but reading Sciarra's account of his restrictions on making an expansion softens my criticism. DaVinci games asked Sciarra to design a light expansion for BANG!, which could have "no more than 32 cards, no new characters, few new symbols, and, if possible, no text on the cards. Moreover, the expansion cards could not be shuffled together with the old ones." With these restrictions, it is no surprise that Sciarra had to develop a superstructure to the existing game mechanics for the new cards.

Sciarra toyed around with exploiting the poker symbols on the cards, but this movement slowed down the game. It is interesting to note that Death Mesa, which originally utilized card values and suits intensely, shifted to using just the colors of the suits due to the same problem. Another clever idea Sciarra came up with (captured in the image of the handwritten note above) was to have 24 different cards which corresponded to the hours of the day. While Sciarra doesn't state this, it would have been neat to have event cards that remained for the whole hour it corresponded with, and only shifted in real time. Thus, when you played BANG! could drastically affect rules. Of course, the cards would have to have been different than those which actually came out in High Noon. Eventually, Sciarra narrowed down the cards to 12, and gave each a distinct global effect. To make these cards more varied, he made them all with written text.

The cards had different inspirations, some from friends' suggestions. Sciarra noted how the High Noon card itself (the one having each player lose 1 life point at the beginning of his turn) was derived from the "Armageddon Clock Rule" utilized in Magic tournaments to stop lengthy matches. With the 12 best cards nailed down, 3000 prints were made of the small expansion, and it was sold for 2-3 euros! Sciarra noted how it was often given away free at conventions to anyone who bought BANG!. It was amazingly successful, selling out soon after, and sought obsessively for until reintroduced in The Bullet. High Noon cards received a new border in the Bullet edition.
Read the full article on the design of High Noon.

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

Design: BANG! Master Template (8.5" x 11")

News (8/23/11): I have added an IDML file to make the template compatible with InDesign CS4. Just download the IDML file and paste it in the same directory as the CS5 Master Template file. Then, open it in CS4. Unfortunately, I do not have CS4 to make it compatible with CS3. If someone has CS4 and can convert the IDML to an INX format (and e-mail it to me or post it in the forum), I would greatly appreciate it.



As I have worked at modding BANG! for over a year, I have developed tools for myself that have helped speed up my projects. Many of these I have made available to the public to help them with their own BANG! modding, such as providing fonts, borders, symbols, art packs, and so forth. One thing that I had not done was provide a good template for designing BANG! cards. While some may use and enjoy the BANG! Card Generator, I find it way too confining, and it does not produce a high enough quality for my taste. There is also a Magic Set Editor template, but I dislike it for similar reasons.

Today, I hope to provide another solution for BANG! modders, which is far more flexible and provides a higher quality result. On the flip side, I am sure that designing cards with my template will be more time consuming. I have created a master template for BANG! cards in InDesign. While I did this in CS5, you should be able to use it in CS4 (if you download the IDML file). Unfortunately, I do not have CS4 to convert it to an INX format for CS3 users. If someone else could make this available, I would greatly appreciate it.

The template is specifically designed for plaincards.com card sheets, which I believe are a good starting point for a BANG! modder. They allow 8 cards per page. I am sure you can use the template for other card sheets too, or just use it to print on heavy card stock. You will have to tell me how you have been able to utilize it. Anyway, the template comes with 28 different layers, which allow you to customize each of the 8 cards to your liking, such as is shown below.





Customization includes:

• 8 border colors (brown, blue, gun, green, character, grey from Death Mesa, and orange and purple from Robbers' Roost). These borders are numbered to correspond with the right card for easy modification.


• Character/Playing Card Titles (Sized correctly: 21 pt for Character Cards and 35 pt for Playing Cards, which are also scrunched like the official cards to about 72.5%).


• Artwork for Character/Playing Cards (Arranged appropriately for their corresponding titles).


• Text Box descriptions for Character/Playing Cards (Boxes smaller for Playing Cards, so that they do not overlap with suits and values).


• 3 Custom expansion symbols: cactus, wagon wheel, and bow and arrow (to help you sort and distinguish your custom cards).


• Layer for Playing Card symbols. These will have to be "placed" into the template, but the symbols are helpfully packaged in with the template. Look for the "Symbols" sub-folder. The symbols have been darkened and also renamed to be more intuitive for the modder (I apologize for the strange names in the old pack).


• 3/4 Life Point images for Character Cards. If you want to go beyond 3, you can easily "place" a copy of the image below the 3/4 life point image, and adjust it to get any number that you want.


• Text values for Playing Cards.


• Suits (spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs) for Playing Cards. These, like the borders, are numbered to correspond to the appropriate card.


• Character/Playing Card backs. These images are properly spaced and inverted, so that you can easily print the front side, flip the card sheet over, and print the back. The numbering of the backs to the cards will help escape any confusion.

Enclosed within the template folder is also 3 fonts used for the BANG! playing and character cards: Perdido (for the title), Palatino Linotype (for descriptions), and Microsoft Himalaya (for the text values). In the future I will update the template, so that it includes event card borders (with new colors to avoid confusion), and the event card font Playbill. I hate event cards, so I suppose that is why I did not bother to include them in the initial release. Forgive. I may also release an 18" x 12" template in the future.

In the upcoming weeks, I plan to provide some simple tutorials, which show how to utilize the template to make cards of various kinds. In the mean time, feel free to experiment with the file. I would appreciate any criticism of the template, so that I can improve it in further updates.

Download the BANG! Master Template for InDesign

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.

Tutorial: How to Create and Balance a New Character Ability

As I have been working on a tutorial series that shows how to graphically design a BANG! character card, I thought I would also provide a tutorial on how to create a balanced character ability. Often when we add a new character to a game, we think, "wouldn't it be cool if there was a character that did XYZ?" While this is often a good starting point and can lead to some very creative ideas, it doesn't often lead to balanced gameplay. Typically, such custom characters will end up being OP (like several Wild West Show characters) or too weak. In this tutorial, I will discuss first some strategies in thinking of new abilities. Then I will discuss some ways to balance that ability. Before starting this tutorial, I recommend downloading my Character Ability Stats spreadsheet, which is available both in Open Office and Excel formats. It will help you follow along and understand many of the points that I cover in this tutorial.

Part 1: Creating a New Character Ability.

Some of you may already have new character abilities in mind. When I started thinking of characters to create I thought of things that irritated me in the game, and how it would be neat if a character could surmount that problem (immunity/resistance to discards and steals, Jail immunity, ability to heal a partner). But if that hasn't worked for you, you might have "modder's block" (like "writer's block") when it comes to thinking of new characters to introduce into the game. Here are 3 quick strategies you can apply to look to create some fun and fascinating new characters. I will provide examples from the characters in the Robbers' Roost expansion to illustrate them. 1. Inverting an Existing Ability. Sometimes creating a new, useful ability can be as simple as inverting an old one. For instance, Robbers' Roost includes a character named Jack West, who is essentially an inversion of Jourdonnais' ability. When another character uses a card or ability to avoid his attack, he may "draw!" On spades, that player must use another card/ability/etc. to avoid his attack, or he takes a hit. If he does so, Jack West may make him "draw!" again. Thus, a defensive "drawing!" ability was inverted to create an offensive "drawing!" ability. BANG! already has some characters who are opposites in this sense. Consider Paul Regret and Rose Doolan, the one possessing a defensive sight modifier (permanent Mustang) with the other possessing an offensive sight modifier (permanent Scope/Appaloosa). Of course, inversions do not work every time. Imagine inverting Slab the Killer's ability to a defensive type: To successfully attack this new character, other player's would have to play 2 BANG! This would be quite burdensome for other characters to accomplish, especially if this new character was the Sheriff. The same would go with an inverse of El Gringo's ability: each time this new character hit another player, he steals a card from him! This seems like a far more powerful ability than El Gringo's (he could steal a lot of cards off of Indians!, Gatling and Howitzer; to an obscene extent in larger games). Nonetheless, it is helpful place to start. Inversions are more easy to apply with clearly defensive and offensive abilities (rather than neutral ones). The character ability stats sheet already helpfully identifies these types of characters in the "Char Type" column. 2. Looking for a Hole in an Ability Type. Several characters in BANG! can be considered as possessing abilities of a similar type. For example,Paul Regret and Rose Doolan are both given the ability type of "Sight Modification." Sid Ketchum, Elena Fuente, José Delgado, Doc Holyday, Uncle Will, Porter Rockwell, and Crazy Wolf are labeled with the ability type "Card Transmutation," since they can play a card(s) as something else/for some other effect. Sometimes these ability types are clearcut (like those above), while others possess surprising variety. Consider the "Card Drawing" abilities of Black Jack and Pixie Pete that are straight forward in comparison to Herb Hunter's, Molly Stark's, Bart Cassidy's, John Pain's and Suzy Lafayette's abilities to draw on specific events (player elimination, playing a card from her hand out of turn, when taking a hit, when others "draw!", no cards in hand). Ability types can have several members in their set that are quite complicated and specific. The character ability stats spreadsheet helpfully groups the BANG! characters' abilities under the "Ability Type" column. Why is this helpful? It should allow you to explore what options are available in an ability type. Some ability types are quite saturated with abilities, such as the card drawing type described above. Others, however, leave considerable room for exploration. You might consider what combinations (in terms of activating events, costs, outcomes, etc.) are unused in a given ability type. Robbers' Roost, for instance, created a niche for Anne Rogers in the copycatting department. BANG! had already provided characters that could copy other characters' abilities. Vera Custer copied the ability of characters in play, while Greygory Deck could copy 2 abilities from randomly selected characters from the base game that were not in play. I thought it would be neat to create a character that copied not the ability of other players, but a card possessed by another player. Having the card copied at random would not be very strategic, so I thought the card copying ability should apply to cards in play in front of other players. Thus, by looking at existing abilities (Vera Custer, Greygory Deck) I could discover other potential abilities (Anne Rogers). As another example of this in Robbers' Roost, Maggie Mae was developed by considering the card swapping ability of Flint Westwood, a character from the Wild West Show expansion. Flint could swap one card from his hand for 2 cards at random from the hand of any player of his choice. Since this card swapping ability was exclusive to the hand, I thought it would be neat to have a card swapping ability that was exclusive to cards in play. Thus, Maggie Mae may swap a card in front of her for a card in play in front of another player. These examples should give you the basic idea of exploring for holes in a given ability type. Finally, you might consider how the effect of a playing card might be sufficiently "universalized" for a character ability. Indians! is basically a Gatling that requires a BANG! to defend. Flint Dixon from Robbers' Roost universalized this ability in sense, by requiring his targets to play BANG! to defend themselves against his BANG!. Thus, playing cards can also be a fruitful ground for conceptualizing character abilities. 3. Something Completely Different: Exploring the Game Mechanics. This next strategy is a bit like the second one. Instead of probing for holes within a specific ability type, we look for unexploited areas of the game mechanics altogether. We consider what parts of the game's mechanics are used in ability types, and what ones are not. Often, an ability will provide an exception to a rule. Lil' Sure Shot from Robbers' Roost is an exception to a game mechanic like Willy the Kid is too. Typically, a player can only have 1 gun in front of them; Lil' Sure Shot does not have to follow that rule. Similarly, a player can only play 1 BANG! on a turn; Willy the Kid (as well as Doc Holyday, and in a way Lee Van Kliff) is an exception. When we discover a game mechanic which possesses no exception (or is not addressed in any way by an existing ability), we can brainstorm about abilities which now utilizes it. A card swapping ability, for instance, was not introduced until Flint Westwood in the Wild West Show expansion. Robbers' Roost also adds some new ability types not utilized before. Some are, in my opinion, very different. Consider the trap placing ability of Eva Place. Once a turn, she may place an expendable (non-blue) card from her hand in front of her, which becomes a trap. Whenever she is acted against, the card immediately activates against that player (and then is discarded). There are some more nuances to her ability, but you get the general idea. I would say that no prior BANG! character really belonged to her type. I could say likewise of Laura Billion who has a card preservation ability. Typically, BANG! rules dictate that once a card is used it is discarded. But what if this wasn't the case? With Laura Billion, the brown, green, and orange cards she uses during her turn are stored in front of her. At the end of her phase 3, she "draws!" On royals, all those cards return to her hand at the beginning of her next turn (instead of ending up in the discard pile). Some types are less radical than these. I consider both Josey Basset and Julie Bullette (from Robbers' Roost) to have "hand building" abilities (somewhat like Kit Carlson). Most hand building characters in BANG! build by having huge card limits (Big Spencer, Sean Mallory). I wanted to have hand builders that did not involve significant card limit manipulation. Take Josey Bassett: If she doesn't play any cards during phase 2, she can draw 2 extra cards. However, she still must discard down to her card limit for phase 3, so the extra cards aren't building the quantity of her hand (as with Big Spencer, Sean Mallory), but the quality of her hand. Julie Bullette may discard 1 card from her hand during her turn to draw another card, again hoping to improve the quality of her hand. Hopefully, these examples will give you some idea of how to manipulate game mechanics to create new ability types. Think of adjusting phase orders for a character, creating abilities that use the values/suits of cards instead of their names, different sacrifices, new events to trigger abilities, and so forth.

Part 2: Balancing a Character Ability.

Now that you have created a character ability, you need to weigh how balanced of an ability it is in comparison to other existing BANG! characters. This will help you adjust your initial ability, as well as weed out particularly poor ones. I have created over 100 custom BANG! characters, but I have scaled back drastically to include only the 16 most solid characters for Robbers' Roost. I imagine that you will similarly hack away at many of your characters. Let me provide some suggestions for balancing character abilities. 1. Ability Type Comparison. A good way to temper your character's ability, so that it is more in balance with the official game characters is to compare the new ability with others of its type. Through doing so, you will often discover whether or not your new character is too weak or too strong. Let me give an example from Robbers' Roost with Lil' Sure Shot. I wanted to create a character that wasn't constrained by the typical 1 gun limit. She could have 2 in play instead. This led to a character whose ability was initally, "She can have 2 guns in play, and fire with both of them within their ranges on her turn." So she could fire 2 BANG! on her turn, within the ranges of her guns. Sounds pretty cool, but there were some problems with this. First, I recognized how difficult it was to have an ability that hinged on possessing 2 guns! The moment 1 was discarded/stolen, she was without an ability. So I changed it so that the moment she played 1 gun card, she could already fire twice: once with the default Colt .45, and again with the played gun card. If another gun card was played, it would replace the default Colt .45. This was better than before, but it was clear that an existing BANG! character was far better than Lil' Sure Shot: Willy the Kid. Willy could play as many BANG! as he wanted with any gun he possessed. Lil' Sure Shot could only play 2 (with variable ranges) by playing gun cards! This seemed far off-balance. The adjustment made her stronger was to specify that once she had 2 gun cards in play, she only needed 1 BANG! to fire both weapons. This distinguished her from Willy the Kid and made her threat value constantly increase as she gained more weapons. This is the current state of Lil' Sure Shot, although she may undergo further changes. But she shows how by considering a character with a similar ability (at least in terms of its practical effect), I was able to rebalance one of my original ideas. 2. Is the Ability Continually Useful?. One common mistake when designing a new character ability is to create an ability that doesn't have much practical value. This often occurs because the ability just cannot be used too often. Consider an ability that allows you to play any Cat Balou as a Panic! While it nice to be able to steal a card instead of discard a card, there are not many Cat Balou in the deck. This means that in the base game your ability only activates on 5% (base) / 4.2% (base + Dodge City) of the cards. Compare that with Willy the Kid or Slab the Killer's abilities, whose ability activates on 31.3%/24.2% of the cards, Elena fuente's that applies to 100% of cards, or Paul Regret's, which is continuous. While you might try to make an ability more powerful the less that it can occur, I think you shouldn't try to create a character whose ability applies less than 20% of the cards (and even then I question doing so). Otherwise, the character's value will be too random from game to game. This is why I think Lucky Duke's character is the worst in the game. 3. The Sheriff Consideration. The next thing to consider with your custom character abilities is how they function as a Sheriff (with 1 extra life point). A 4 life point character might be just fine with his ability, but the moment he has 5 life points, he might become OP. This is generally why there are 3 life point characters in BANG!, and you should consider nerfing their life points likewise. They may be too weak in their 3 life point model, so you might want to tweek their ability slightly, so that it is better. 4. 2-Player and Renegade Considerations. Another thing to think about when creating a character ability is how the character fairs when only he is alone with 1 rival in the game. Typically, I try to create characters that still have value in the 2-player situation. For one, it still makes them useful in 3-player BANG!, and doesn't leave the character at the mercy of his team mates playing well. And it helps out if the character's role is a Renegade, and so destined to reach a 2-player face off if he is to win. True, there are several characters in BANG! already whose abilities are useless (Vulture Sam, Herb Hunter, Greg Digger, Tequila Joe), weakened (Vera Custer, Big Spencer), or wholly negative (Claus the Saint) in 2-player. So this may not bother you. But it is at least worthy of consideration when designing a new character ability. For instance, I have heard of many "medic" style characters who can heal other players. But does this character really have value in a 2-player setting if he is the Renegade? He will not want to heal his opponent. This does not mean you have to out right reject a medic ability. The "medic" style character in Robbers' Roost is Johnny Pope, but to balance him for 2-player scenarios he can give up a life point to transfer a life point to another player OR make a player "draw!" On reds, he steals a card from that player (equivalent of a Rag Time), and on blacks the target must discard 2 cards with missed! or lose a life point. This makes him far more valuable as a Renegade and in 2-player scenarios. 5. Playtesting. While the above "a priori" methods are helpful, it should never replace good playtesting. Martin Blasko over at bang.cz recommends playtesting each character around 50 times in different roles. That may be excessive, but you do not to see how they function with other characters and in a variety of different card-playing scenarios. Playtesting often reveals unforeseen consequences of certain abilities. One of the easiest ways to playtest characters and any cards for that matter is to write the character (name, ability, # life points), on a slip of paper. Cut out this description and have it passed out with the other character cards to test them out. If you want the card to be more "randomly" passed out, simply place all the character cards you are going to use in card sleeves. Then, place the cut-out custom card description inside one of the sleeves over one of the cards. It can now be shuffled and dealt out with the others, without others knowing it is a custom character beforehand. 6. Character Types Dealt. As a final consideration, you might weigh how adding your custom characters to the game affects the ratio between offensive, neutral, and defensive characters. If most of your characters are offensive, you might be skewing the game in favor of the Outlaws. Try to maintain this ratio as closely as possible. Neutral characters tend to be the safest best to add to the game, given that they work so well for all of the different roles. This concludes the tutorial. I hope it will help you create fascinating and balanced BANG! characters that improve BANG! gameplay both amongst your friends/family and with the wider BANG! community. I would love to see your character creations. Feel free to send some to me when you have the chance, or post them here!

History of BANG!

Edit (8/10/11): Added some information from Sciarra's designer's notes.

Emiliano Sciarra, the designer of BANG!, has started publishing online an account of the development of his famous western card game. So far, it is a pretty good read. Currently, the account (there may be multiple parts to the story, maybe not) explains how in the late 90's, Sciarra shifted from working on video games to board games, pretty much out of the blue. Despite lacking a background in board game design, he worked obsessively on such projects. In fact, in one month in 1999, he created the basis for over 20 board games!

One of his projects was to create a fast, fun, and replayable board game that could be enjoyed by a large group of players (7+), especially families. He adopted a western theme for this game because it was well known and liked (undoubtedly in Italy: the home of spaghetti westerns), and made it easy to role play as famous western characters. Originally, there were no unique roles; everyone was an Outlaw fending for himself, trying to get the greatest "rewards." This, however, felt stagnant, and so he introduced the concept of distance and the different roles. While he now wanted to have teams of outlaws and lawmen duking it out, one challenge to this shootout team game was achieving balance with an odd number of players. He introduced the idea of the Renegade to address this problem. Sciarra appears to have only worked for around two weeks on BANG! before finishing a prototype. He introduced it first to his family in January 6, 2000, and soon after to his chess club. In both places it was a hit, so much so that he was encouraged to search for a publisher. His chess club friends recommended the name "BANG!" for the game, and it stuck.


It was rejected by a U. S. game agency, but accepted by the newly established daVinci (now dV Giochi) and put at the top of their schedule for release. Sciarra explained how his work with daVinci games changed or added elements to BANG!:

• The Renegade was originally only used in odd numbered games. However, since DaVinci thought it was the most interesting role, the Renegade was included in every game instead, which gave the game uncertainty in 4/6/8 player games [such as replacing a Deputy in 4/6 player and an Outlaw in 8].


• During phase 1, 2 cards are drawn instead of 1.


• Backs of character cards were changed to track life points.


• Cards were used to make the "draw!", instead of with a coin or 8-sided die.


• Limit the deck to 110 cards, besides one-of-a-kind cards and the characters.


• Replace the text on cards with symbols.


• Several character abilities were reworked (look at the changes done to the characters shown above).

All these changes worked out well, except the symbols, which have been criticized. He noted how later editions involve the text reappearing on the cards in part. Regardless, with these changes in place the first run of BANG! included 2400 copies, which were anticipated to sell over the next 3 years. Instead, the game sold out in 3 months! That concludes the first part of Sciarra's account.

Read the full article on the development of BANG!. Some content in this article was also adapted from Sciarra's designer's notes for BANG!.

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

Design: Character Ability Stats

In an effort to help modders (those wishing to make their own custom expansions for BANG!), I have created a spreadsheet that expounds the intricacies of each character ability in the official BANG! card game and its expansions, as well as in Robbers' Roost. Such a spreadsheet should be useful for modders in both thinking of new characters and balancing the abilities that they think of by comparing them with characters in the game already.

The spreadsheet contain the following information on characters:

• Character Names.


• Expansion included in.


• Number of Life Points.


• Character Type. As with the character guides, I have broken these up into 3 general categories: offensive (i.e. Slab the Killer), neutral (i.e. Black Jack), and defensive (i.e. Elena Fuente).


• Ability Type. I have provided several hopefully helpful labels of character abilities that should allow you to sort characters together by their ability type. Thus, Rose Doolan and Paul Regret are both given the ability type of "Sight Modification." Sid Ketchum, Elena Fuente, José Delgado, Doc Holyday, Uncle Will, Porter Rockwell, and Crazy Wolf are labeled with the ability type "Card Transmutation," since they can play a card(s) as something else/for some other effect.


• Mode of Operation. This column has 2 values: optional or necessary. Generally speaking, it identifies whether the ability can be activated by the character's choice (Chuck Wengam) or if it is forced (Claus the Saint, Paul Regret).


• Activator. This column describes who brings about the ability's activation. Sometimes this is done by oneself alone (Slab the Killer when playing a BANG!), by others (when Jourdonnais has a BANG! played against him), and by both (Suzy Lafayette, when playing her last card, or by having another player discard the last card from your hand), and sometimes this does not apply (Pixie Pete when he draws his 3 cards; he didn't bring it about, it occurred from the normal course of his turn).


• Activating Time or Event. This column explains when the ability an be used, such as during a specific phase of a turn, when the target of a specific card, when "drawing!", etc. Sometimes, the ability is continuous (Sid Ketchum, Apache Kid).


• Cost. This column notes if the ability has a cost to activate it, such as discarding/playing a card(s), losing a life point (Johnny Pope), using a card out of turn from one's hand (Molly Stark), not drawing cards from the deck (Pat Brennan), giving up copied abilities (Greygory Deck), and so forth. Often, there is no cost to use the ability, and this is also noted.


• Outcome. This column observes the outcome of the ability after all else is considered. Thus after playing a brown card and discarding a BANG! during phase 2 of his turn, the outcome of Lee Van Kliff's ability is that the effect of the brown card is replicated. Some of these outcomes are complicated (Crazy Wolf, Claus the Saint), but I try to express them as best I can.

The hope is that this spreadsheet is that you will be able to group together characters with a similar ability type to a character you are considering to create. If his ability tends to be stronger than characters of his ability type, this should suggest to you that the ability needs modification.

I would love to get some feedback on this spreadsheet. It has taken a good chunk of time to put together, but I am sure there are typos, inconsistencies, and some poor labels. Feel free to post comments here.

I have made the spreadsheet available in both Open Office Calc and Microsoft Excel formats.

Design: BANG! Card Game Symbols Pack

As part of the recurring pattern of me disclosing my design files, I have enclosed today a pack of BANG! card game symbols. Not only does this include the original BANG! symbols, it also includes a few I introduced, such as the symbol referring to a dead player in Death Mesa, the line of fire symbol used in Robbers' Roost, and a few that I never ended up using such as the discard a card from your hand symbol, and the "draw!" a club symbol. I believe I have compiled all of the symbols (except the Book symbol, and distance modifiers that I will add soon) from the original BANG! card game. If there are any others missing, feel free to inform me. You can see the majority of the symbols contained in the pack in the image above. All the symbols, at the moment are in Photoshop format (.PSD), but I will probably release a .JPG format soon.

Download the BANG! Card Game Symbols Pack

Design: BANG! Custom Playing Card Art Pack

I mentioned a few days ago that I would release an art pack for custom playing cards, just as I did for the character cards. This pack consists of 201 wild west themed art files, most full color to work with the BANG! playing cards. Samples of the art in this pack are available in the picture above. I know that a few have had some trouble downloading the character art pack. I hope there are no issues with this pack; if there is, post it in the comments section and I will get on it.

Download the BANG! Custom Playing Card Art Pack

Design: BANG! Card Game Custom Character Art Pack

I wanted to keep adding to the BANG! card game modding community by offering a zip file containing 87 sketches of western characters with character borders and bullets as well. Some examples of these sketches are in the picture above. This should help you along in making your own BANG! card game characters. To modify these characters so that they look more like the BANG! card game characters, I recommend looking at the first part of my tutorial on making your own BANG! character cards. I should release another art pack this coming week for BANG! playing cards. If I collect more western characters, I will also release another character pack in the future.

Download the BANG! Card Game Custom Character Art Pack

Design: BANG! Card Game Borders (Original)

EDIT (8/2/11): I am no longer hosting the files on Adrive. The Google Docs method is working once more, and does require biweekly updates. It should work fine now. Yesterday I provided a pack containing 2.5 x 3.5 BANG! playing card borders. The sizes of those borders did not match the original BANG! cards, but were designed for making cards with a POD. The borders I have released today are designed to match the original BANG! cards. As with the other pack, I have provided borders for gun, blue, green, orange, character, grey, and brown cards. If you print with them, however, you will have to trim the cards yourself (or have someone else do the trimming) and use a corner rounder to have the cards match the size of the original BANG! cards.
Download the BANG! Card Game Border Pack (Original Size)

Design: BANG! Card Game Borders (2.5 x 3.5)

EDIT (8/2/11): I am no longer hosting the files on Adrive. The Google Docs method is working once more, and does require biweekly updates. It should work fine now.

EDIT: A character border is now included in the pack.

As I have started to chip away at making a POD version of Robbers' Roost, I thought I would also release some of my design files to the public. This way, interested persons could use them to help them make their own custom BANG! cards. It will also help me upload the necessary files to finish some of the tutorials I want to make. Today, I will be releasing BANG! card game borders for 2.5" x 3.5" cards. Note that this is not the standard size for BANG! cards. Rather, this is what would be used by a modder wanting to use a card template or POD and isn't concerned about card trimming. I will release borders that are identically sized to BANG! cards tomorrow. Both border packs include borders for:

• Gun Cards.


• Blue Cards.


• Green Cards.


• Character Cards.


• Brown Cards.


• Grey Cards. These are used in Death Mesa, and if someone wanted to add their own to the Dead Men's Deck, they could do so.


• Orange Cards. These are used in Robbers' Roost, but modders should feel free to make their own orange cards.

I am aware that there are other borders for the event card decks. I will get to adding these later. Since they are not used in Robbers' Roost or Death Mesa, getting those files up is a detour from my current project.

Download the BANG! Card Game Border Pack (2.5 x 3.5)