This is a game design post about Gotlandia, my game in development about Medieval Gotland. I will go through the latest changes to the game, including my reasoning behind making the changes and the process. So mostly of interest if you have played the game or if you are a game designer yourself.
But first an announcement: Gotlandia will be at Medeltidsveckan 2026.
Medeltidsveckan is a yearly week long Medieval festival in Visby on Gotland. What would be more appropriate than to play Gotlandia there? So I signed up to host two sessions of Gotlandia at Medeltidsveckan in Visby in August. Details to be sorted out. But if you are there and are interested in boardgames, you can start getting excited!
Another opportunity to play Gotlandia will be LinCon in May.
The rest of this post will be nerdy details. Be warned.
Revised card design
After playtesting Gotlandia three times with people who had not played the game before, I had lots of feedback on the new card design. So I decided to revise the layout and do another print run in time for LinCon.
I like to have external deadlines spread out in the year ahead. I have signed up Gotlandia for the LinCon list of events, but I could easily host a couple of tables with the version I have already. It’s just a convenient milestone for me to commit to myself to have a little bit more perfect version of the game ready.
For a couple of days, as I walked the dog, I pondered the issues from the playtests and thought about what specific changes I could make to address them. Sometimes it is obvious what you need to change and how, but often feedback is vague. A player may say that something should be different and they will often also offer you their opinion on how it should be different. But the proposed change may not work for other reasons.
When I finally cracked how I wanted the changes to be, I looked at the new design and thought: Well, isn’t it obvious? What can I say, creating something simple is hard. Proven once again.
Some examples of the new design.
Return of the Tannery
Next iteration will also include four new craft cards and four new trading cards. These open new possibilities for players to explore and — as they will not always be available — provide more variability for repeat play. You want each and every craft card and trading card to be a great buy for at least one player but also not break the game.
In a long four player game, there should now be enough cards on the table that you can also pick up a couple of extra victory points in the very last generation.
The extra cards have been in-and-out over the game development as I was trying to get them right. One of the craft cards is Tannery which I had in my very first external playtest where it totally did not work. The effect for the card is much better now. I realised that a good craft card works as a subgoal for the player: “Here is one thing you can do, and here is the reward for doing it.” Reworking all the cards with that understanding helped me sharpen them all.
Extra forest and more resources
The first playtest saw neither player settle a forest in the first generation. Neither player had a Gotland card or a Forest card on their hand, the cards that let you settle a forest. These are three out of 12 cards and you draw five in your initial hand. There is about 16% chance of that happening for one player — and much less for it to happen for both players. It wasn’t game breaking. Still, it made me think what would happen if I added an extra forest to the deck. Chances would drop to 9,8% but also, you would get one more card in your deck, something I wanted for other reasons: One more card for you to decide when to bury. And one more card when shuffling. You need a good ten cards to get a good feeling of shuffling a deck. You can still aggressively thin your deck to draw only the ‘good’ cards, but it’s a little harder to do. I added an extra forest already for the next playtest and quickly decided that this is a keeper.
I also explored having players begin the game with more resources. A playtester a while ago expressed frustration that the initial resources limited the options available in the very first generation. Now, I like games that are very tight. The reward you get when you get your engine running and start piling up resources is so much the greater.
However, beginning the game with more resources could also be a way for players new to Gotlandia to enjoy a game with experienced players. Playtests so far look promising. I want to explore this further in the next round of playtesting.
New reputations
As I was upping the card count, I found room for 20 reputation cards. Ten of these are straight forward and will be what players who play Gotlandia for the first time should choose between. Like starting the game with one extra ship, five extra silver, or one extra farmstead.
Ten others grant the player a special ability during the game. The Troublemaker adds an extra pirate each generation, Long Fingered steals silver from another player on some actions, and Troll-born begins the game with their initial farmsteads in two forests in different Settings.
It has been fun to design and test all the reputations. The first version of the game didn’t have them — it was feedback from the very first external playtest that led me to come up with them. The design goal has been that they should both add theme and open for new paths to victory.
My personal favourite is Beautiful Daughters where you don’t pay silver to other players when you settle.
Regions and districts
Today, Gotland is one out of 21 regions of Sweden. Gotland is further divided into 93 geographical districts. Historically, Gotland was divided into six administrative areas called ‘Setting’. Each of these again was divided into a total of 21 ‘Thing’. These again split into parishes.
For a boardgame you need a level of abstraction and I decided early on that the 21 areas worked well for an area control game. I decided back then to call the lowest level in the game for ‘region’ and to keep the historical term ‘setting’. One playtest made me revisit this decision. ’Region’ clashes with current day terminology and ‘Setting’ means something different in English.
I asked around on different forums for guidance among native English speakers. Hard to come up with a perfect answer. The theme and historical flavour is also important for the game. In the end I decided to keep ‘Setting’ but to capitalise it and to change region to district. The decisive factor was that these words are some I can pronounce easily when I teach the game.
Thanks!
Congratulations if you made it this far! You are a true fan of Gotlandia. I hope to see you at LinCon in May or in Visby in August for another game of Gotlandia. As you can understand, the journey from a good game to a great game is long and full of detours.
Thanks again to my playtesters for valuable feedback. I hear every word you say. The game wouldn’t be half as good without you.