In the last few years, gaming behemoth Wizards of the Coast has expanded its “Dungeons and Dragons” product line with several board games. Last year’s “Lords of Waterdeep” drew critical praise and awards for its drafting and questing mechanics. Recently, Wizards released “Scoundrels of Skullport”, the first expansion for “Waterdeep.” How was the original game created? And how challenging was it to expand upon it? We talked to game designer Rodney Thompson.

“Waterdeep” was originally an unofficial side project of game designers Rodney Thompson and Peter Lee. Thompson said, ” ‘Lords of Waterdeep’ began with a discussion between Peter Lee and myself. I had an idea for how to add some more interaction to standard worker placement mechanics, and Peter had the idea for what would eventually become quests. The next week, I was taking a train from Seattle to Chicago when I started to put those two ideas together. When I got back to Seattle after my trip, I cooked up a prototype and we sat down to play.”

That was just the start for building “Waterdeep”. “We continued to iterate on the game over and over again for a couple of months until we finally decided that it was in good enough shape to pitch to our boss, at which point it became a real project,” said Thompson. After months of testing and iterating, the final game was finished and released.

Read the full article at MTV Geek.