Designer Diaries - Plotz

Being a jester isn’t easy. You have to entertain the king and queen by juggling, telling stories and jokes, playing music – all on demand! And what do you do when the king and queen ask you to design a game to play, right then, on the spot?! Well, if you’re me, and the king and queen are your 9-year-old son and 7-year-old daughter dressed up in medieval costumes, you design Plotz.

I was lucky – I’d been kicking around an idea for a more complex version of this game for a few weeks (involving territory cards, dice tokens, cities, and armies that moved around). But when pressed into service that day by my tiny liege lords, my brain coughed up the simplest and most streamlined version of the game from some deep recess of my subconscious, and Plotz was born, nearly fully-formed, right there onto our living room floor.

I pulled out a pack of playing cards, grabbed some “plus-plus” pieces for tokens, and sat down with m’lord and lady to try out the idea that had just flashed into my brain. I placed nine cards in a grid face up, dealt each of us three cards, and explained that we’d try to play higher-value cards than the ones shown in order to “claim” those “territories.” Play one, draw one, try to get the most territories. That was the whole game.

And something amazing happened – it was fun! The design process had taken maybe thirty seconds, and probably less. As someone who had previously spent hours and days and weeks and months tinkering with ideas, this was a revelation. I’m aware that all that time previously spent thinking about games and brainstorming ideas was what had made this flash of inspiration possible. Still, it gave me a new appreciation of the fact that good ideas don’t necessarily take a lot of time to produce.

There were some tweaks along the way. We realized that while Aces were high, they should be treated as “1’s” in the initial layout or else the 2 card would literally be unplayable. We eventually settled on a rule that said 2’s could always be played on aces, even high ones, and really liked how it played. And we decided the Joker would be the highest card in the game when played from the hand (this game was invented by a jester, after all), but would be a wild card when played in the initial 9-card “flop” (otherwise no one could ever claim a Joker territory). But these tweaks were mostly light housekeeping – the entire foundation had already been laid in that first moment of inspiration.

Obviously there was still a lot of work necessary to turn this simple game with a deck of standard playing cards into something unique, with its own set of cards. That’s where my smart, beautiful, and talented co-founder and graphic designer extraordinaire Hannah came in. The “design brief” for the cards was basically: “What would it look like if a game tile and a playing card had a baby?” Showing admirable patience with this very abstract request, Hannah and I worked together to dream up the basic idea for the Plotz cards, and she took the idea and ran with it, eventually creating an iconic set of cards with a beautiful card back and lovely graphics for the box.

The last elements to create are the tokens – we’ve been using glass beads lately but are looking for something more sustainable – and then my jester’s brainchild is ready to share with the world! They grow up so fast!

Plotz is a simple game with lots of player interaction, some strategy, some luck, and a surprisingly high replay value. We’ve gotten a lot of fun out of it, and I hope that you and your family will enjoy it as much as we have. Until next time, may you find a magical moment of inspiration while at play that brings you joy and success.