What's in an Idea

How did Yacht Club come to be? In the spring of 2006, my second child had just been born, and between diaper changes, I was itching to try a new card game layout program called nanDECK. While I had played several games that use cards to do more than one thing (well-known examples include Mille Bornes, We the People, Bohnanza, and San Juan), I had not yet authored such a game. Constraints on design help me focus, so I decided to create a multiple-use card game as a reason to also learn nanDECK. But about what?

Also at that time, I was receiving quite a lot of unsolicited mail. One of my siblings, having spent time helping my wife and me with our newborn, was probably pranking me. Anyway, among all this random mail was a coffee table style magazine about the ultra rich and their finery, especially yachts. Thumbing through, I wondered what it must be like to live that way, never worrying about mundane bills or cleaning, able to sail into international water at the slightest whim. These two thought streams merged, and Yacht Club swirled to life in my mind. Protospiel was coming in just a couple months, so I had a goal with a due date, another constraint to help me focus. During that May and June crunch, I churned out card ideas as quickly as my newborn churned out, well, let's not go there. By Protospiel (Michigan), I had a working draft that I'd played solo many times.

The first few real plays were a bit rough. I remember comments about certain events being either too powerful or utterly useless, about hulls being too hard to buy, about the size granularity of various yacht features, about the scoring value of money held at the end, about who decides how events take place, etc. I wrote notes and made tweaks. I learned nanDECK. I brought Yacht Club back to Protospiel over the next several years. But I didn't (and still don't) know much about game artwork. All the clip art, rope fonts, and gilded color schemes wouldn't draw anyone's eyes. My prototype copies sat, neatly sleeved, in a backpack that I kept in my trunk of five different automobiles.

Fast forward to 2017. My wife and I now have four children, none of whom have needed diapers for years. A work buddy invited me to play games with a few other friends. With the kids more independent, I got to go every couple of months or so. At one of these gaming events, probably around early 2018, the table talk turned to creative projects, such as art, music, and in my case, games. Something clicked. An artist with an interest in games saw an opportunity to work with a game author who needed an artist. I handed over what prototypes I had, and gave Brian my blessing to run with it. And here we are!