87 – Victory Points and Player Agency with Tom Lehmann

This week I have the honor of hosting Tom Lehmann, one of the best game designers in history. I wanted to talk to him for quite a while and am very happy that I now have the chance to do so. He has been designing many many games over the last 20 years. What makes his games special and unique for me personally is how he always manages to keep player turns short but also diverse at the same time. Often you don’t have the entirety of all possible options available during each of your turns, which makes them feel very different. This is especially true for some of his most-known games like Race for the Galaxy, Roll for the Galaxy, and Res Arcana. Another thing that these games have in common is that they are using victory points in clever ways to determine the winner of the game. And that is actually the topic we are going to talk about today. But he also designed many games without Victory Points like Pandemic Expansions.

In this episode, we talked about the advantages and disadvantages of victory points and how to apply them in games.

Here is a link to his newest game using victory points: Dice Realms