Interview of Tom Lehmann, Designer of Race for the Galaxy (and more)
Posted by Michael Mindes on October 27, 2011
Tom Lehmann is a board game designer, best know for his hit hobby game, Race for the Galaxy. I am glad that I got a chance to get these insights from Tom.
What accomplishments so far are you the most proud of?
Three things: A) I’ve been able to create some games, such as Fast Food Franchise and Time Agent, that are still played almost 20 years later; B) I’ve been able to create a game, Race for the Galaxy, that has been popular enough to pay my (modest) bills for several years; and C) I’ve been able to collaborate with several designers – Jim Hlavaty, Wei-Hwa Huang, Joe Huber, and Matt Leacock – on various games.
How did you become a published game designer? Please tell us about your first time.
I went the self-publishing route, starting Prism Games with Fast Food Franchise. I think I’m a better designer than businessman, so this didn’t ultimately work out, but it did get some of my designs out there, which was useful when I became a free-lance designer.
What do you think it takes to be creative? Where do you get flashes of brilliance from?
For me, every game starts with three things: a bit of story or theme – sometimes just a title; some graphic image (for example, the tangled web of technologies extending from the past into the present in Time Agent or building tableaus in RFTG); and some game mechanism (walls losing cards when trumpet cards are played in Jericho or the choice of whether to gain more dice or dice-modifying powers in To Court the King).
What is the single toughest problem you’ve had to face, and how did you get through it?
Not speaking German – which prevented me from collaborating fully with Bernd Brunnhofer (Hans im Glueck publisher) on a game that we both wanted to do and which I was unable to let go of, so eventually we had to halt due to creative differences that we couldn’t resolve due to the language problem. We solved this impasse by doing a different project together, Magellan (published as Pizarro & Co. in the US), where I simply turned my prototype over to Bernd and told him to do whatever he wanted with it. I’m not sure the resulting game is “mine”, but I do think that Bernd added lots of interesting ideas and, in one crucial area, really improved the game. I consider Bernd one of the most talented game developers in the business and really wish that I spoke German so we could work together... sigh.
What is the future of the board game industry?
I believe one direction is fairly clear – that the fusion between board and card games and downloadable game aps, on-line social games, etc. will continue to grow over time.
Do you think anything particular about your past helps you as a game designer?
My professional background includes economics, system modeling, decision theory, programming, and technical writing, all of which have helped me in various ways.
What are your greatest strengths?
My willingness to keep polishing and improving a game, while at the same time not being such a perfectionist that the games still do get out the door!
What is the best advice that you apply to your life? Please share some of the positive results of following that advice.
Keep in mind the difference between decisions and outcomes – sometimes a good decision doesn’t work out – you just get unlucky. Don’t beat yourself up when that happens. Sometimes, a bad decision will work out well – you just got lucky. Don’t pat yourself on the back too much when that happens.
One of the biggest problem for creative people is spreading too thin working on too many projects. How do you prioritize projects?
My design backlog is over 30 games at this point. There are some advantages to having so many games on tap, though. If you get stuck on one project, you can always switch to another one. Prioritization is simple – games that a publisher wants and I’ve committed to get top priority. Since advances are not part of game publishing industry, this is usually just a fairly short list. The games that sometimes slip are the ones that a publisher is only tentatively interested in, where I haven’t made a solid commitment to the project. Since no advance or contractual committment is involved, I will sometimes set aside some of these projects to work on other projects.
What have you been up to recently? What projects are you working on?
Recently, I’ve been helping shepherd three games through the publication process -- proof-reading, answering questions, makes rules edits, etc. One of these games, The City, has just been published by Amigo. I’ve also submitted the next expansions for Pandemic and RFTG to their respective publishers (which is just the start of the long publication process). I have two more games on my short list, then I’m excited about actually getting some free time to work on several new games.
What excites you about these new projects?
It’s always exciting seeing a game actually getting published. Sometimes, it takes 5 or more years before a game sees print. With the expansions, it is a challenge to take the game in new directions while maintaining what players enjoy about the game.
What blogs, podcasts, or other sites that you still find yourself consuming religiously?
I support my games on Boardgamegeek, so I check my designer page’s forum for rules questions regularly in order to support my published games. I check the BGG front page about once a week to stay current with what’s coming out. Other than that, I don’t regularly visit any websites.
Do you have a Twitter account, Blog, or Facebook “Like” page?
I have a personal FB page, which – for privacy reasons -- I restrict to only people I have actually met. I tried to take ownership of the Tom Lehmann FB designer page (which looks like it was auto-generated from the Wikipedia), but Facebook wouldn’t grant me its ownership. I maintain a minimal website and but don’t blog or Twitter. I prioritize answering rules questions on BGG above generic social media.
