Meaningful Decisions: Doug Levandowski on Design Choices in Gothic Doctor
In our Meaningful Decisions series, we ask designers about the design choices they made while creating their games, and what lessons other designers can take away from those decisions.

In this edition, we talk with Doug Levandowski, the co-designer of Gothic Doctor, about player choice, balancing powerful cards, endgame triggers and more.

The rules for Gothic Doctor tell players to remove any action cards they want to before starting the game. Why?

Gothic Doctor is a broad enough game that it could be good for younger gamers or gamers more interested in a light experience--and with the Partial Treatments variation in the expansion, it can be good for players who want …show more content…
Altering the core elements would definitely lead to that--like if players could decide how many rounds they wanted the game to last for. That seems superficial, but in Gothic Doctor, it has big implications for things like the specialist and generalist bonuses.

Gothic Doctor ends after a set number of rounds. Did it always, or did you test other endgame triggers?

Heh, no, it wasn't always that way, and this is one of my embarrassing first-time-designer stories. Originally, the game ended when a doctor had treated 650 pounds worth of patients. (Typically in a current game, scores range from 325 to 500 pounds--so they were much longer games.) But I really liked playing to a certain value, since the theme of the game is that you're trying to make partner in a practice, and it made sense to me for the practice to be saying, "When you've made this much, then you're partner."

John found that the people he was playtesting with were saying, "This is pretty long..." but I was absolutely dead set on keeping it, so I said, "Fine, then we lower the value!" We argued and argued about it--pretty forcefully, actually--until one day, he said, "Sit down. Play it this way." And within three rounds, I was absolutely convinced how right he