by Emiliano Sciarra

The BANG! System’s Long Voyage to the Caribbean
It may seem strange to say it now, with Black Flag! about to be published by DV Games nearly a quarter of a century after the release of the first edition of BANG!, but a pirate setting was actually the very first setting I considered for the second title in the BANG! System. The oldest notes I have managed to track down date back to a game simply titled Caribbean, dated March 30, 2004, but the project itself goes back to 2003, just one year after the release of the original game.

There were several reasons for this. One of them was that, at the time, the Caribbean setting was considered overused in board games (unfortunately missing the wave generated by Disney’s blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, released in Italy in September 2003, and the films that followed).

This very first incarnation of the game already featured the concept of the Ship, which had only two characteristics: Range and Size, while the number of Broadsides allowed each turn was fixed at two. In fact, much of Black Flag! was already there: Cannons, Sail and Sailor cards, the Storm (which at the time was actually a Doldrums), and above all a brilliant Mutiny card that allowed the player who used it to switch sides for as long as it remained in front of them. This card created what I considered an extremely interesting and layered decision: if I am an English player who has mutinied, how should I play? As a Spaniard, hoping to remain one until the end of the game? Or should I continue playing as an Englishman, trusting that someone will remove the Mutiny card before the game ends? It was all very compelling, but there were at least two problems to solve: players who had the Mutiny card tended to play it on themselves at the right moment; and even by forcing it to be played on others, the best strategy was to hold onto it until the very end, when the factions had become clear, hoping there would be no time left for anyone to remove it.

Even more complicated was finding a way to remove player elimination from the game: a daunting challenge that would keep me busy until 2010, when I came up with the scoring system later used in Samurai Sword. As anyone who studies the game carefully can see, player elimination in BANG! is not merely a stylistic choice: it is a fundamental pillar of almost every game mechanic as they were designed. For example, elimination is the game’s true timer: if you remove it, when does the game end? It also serves as the game’s intrinsic scoring system: the winner is determined by who is (or is not) still in play. Finally, it acts as an indirect balancing mechanism: a player may bleed themselves dry to eliminate another, but if they succeed, they make enormous, measurable, and permanent progress toward their objective, because the eliminated player will never return to seek revenge. This mechanism works well in a harsh and unforgiving Wild West setting, but it is far too punishing in other contexts — not to mention that some players dislike it, considering it an objective flaw, even though it is in fact a deliberate design choice, with both strengths and weaknesses.

The Roles were hidden until the end, and the Pirate, like the future Ronin of Samurai Sword, doubled their score.

Whenever your Ship was sunk, you could play one of the Ship cards in your hand. These Ship cards were shuffled into the deck together with all the others, and they could also be played simply to switch to a different vessel and restore your Hull Points to their maximum, at the cost of giving up your card draw for the turn. If your Ship was sunk and you did not play a Ship card, you were automatically assigned a Pinnace as a temporary replacement: a weak vessel that was easy to sink.
The game ended when the draw deck was exhausted, and to speed this up there were Hourglass cards which caused the top 8 cards of the deck to be discarded.

From Tobago to Kyoto
Despite reservations about the setting, development did not come to a complete halt. Six months later, the game resurfaced under the name Tobago. To avoid explicitly referring to Pirates, the independent faction was represented by a Dutchman: something that did not convince me at all, because a game about the golden age of piracy has to have Pirates flying the Jolly Roger! The Ghost Ship also made its appearance, brutally sinking your current Ship before passing to the next player, but allowing you, for one turn, to command a vessel far superior to any other. The Mutiny card was still there as well, along with all the problems it brought with it.

Publishing plans changed over time, and in 2008 the game took on a different shape and a different setting. Without going into too much detail, I experimented with a new scoring system (only points earned against members of your own faction counted, meaning it was necessary to keep track of who eliminated whom) and I had already decided to separate the equivalent of the Ships from the main deck.

For a while I continued working on the project without any significant breakthroughs. The game worked, but it was still somewhat rough around the edges, and the Mutiny mechanic had not yet been solved. I shifted my focus to future expansions for BANG! and especially BANG! Duel, until a few years later the discussion finally turned to creating the next game based on the BANG! System rather than just another expansion (and “just” is a relative term: every BANG! expansion requires the same meticulous care and playtesting as a full-fledged game). At first, it seemed the new game would be inspired by Chinese martial arts, but then came the request for a version set in feudal Japan.

A simple change of theme with only a handful of mechanical tweaks would have been enough, but I don’t like repeating myself, so I took the opportunity to expand and transform the original system. I therefore took the existing foundation and spent a couple of months immersed in studying the (wonderful) culture of Japan, searching for the right ideas and sources of inspiration for the cards.

I refined the scoring system thanks to a flash of insight that came to me while I was driving alone, mulling over the problem along the winding curves of the Via Aurelia highway. I also reworked the game flow into the form it has today, adding elements that fit the concepts of honor and traditional Japanese combat, including the rule that makes players untouchable if they have no cards in hand, the various Weapons that were actually used during the period, and so on. The concept of the Ship made no sense in that setting, but other cards did: for example, the Peasant from the Rising Sun expansion is exactly what the Sailor used to be, while Quick Draw corresponds to the Cannons.

It was painstaking work, but it paid off in the end, as I had the immense satisfaction of receiving compliments and full approval from our Japanese partners. It confirmed that doing serious research when designing games can lead to the results you hope for — and sometimes even to results beyond your expectations.

Back to the Caribbean
Samurai Sword was a success (and still is), and I had already begun working on the next setting, but for various reasons the project was put on hold and only revived in 2020; and even then, to my great disappointment, it still wasn’t about pirates…

When the plans changed once again, after another three years and yet another prototype built from scratch and ultimately abandoned, I finally decided the time had come to stop hesitating and finish what I had started, bringing BANG! to the Caribbean once and for all. Codename: CaraiBANG!

The beginning was not encouraging. The rules I had developed twenty years earlier no longer fully satisfied me, and the game also needed a new scoring system because, as before, I didn’t want to simply transplant Samurai Sword onto the high seas. The real challenge was to make it explicit which side was ahead, reducing the long discussions that often arise among Samurai Sword players (which are fascinating, but not for everyone), while still avoiding the need to reveal everyone’s Role, especially the Pirate’s. After an initial phase in which it seemed the game might sink before it even left port, I came up with the idea of a “tug-of-war” between the two teams, with the Pirate acting as an additional weight on the scale. With the Roles now clearly defined, the Pirate no longer had to ask, “Who should I eliminate?” but rather, “How far can I afford to push the Treasure in one direction?” The game became a constant struggle for control of the score, without losing the tension that is characteristic of the BANG! System.

At first, the Roles were still hidden, but for the tug-of-war system to work, it had to be clear what at least one of the two Roles involved actually was: the one belonging to either the player who had been sunk or the attacker. Years of experience, especially with the original game, had shown that with experienced players, the Roles are often fairly obvious after just a couple of rounds around the table. So, my playtest group and I asked ourselves: “Why not reveal the Role of the player who was sunk? It should take about two or three rounds to sink everyone, which is roughly the same amount of time it takes players to deduce the Roles in BANG!” The insight proved to be a good one, and suddenly many pieces of the puzzle fell beautifully into place.

The original rules I had developed back in 2003 were not so bad after all when viewed from this perspective: the Ships, with the addition of Ammunition and a cost, worked very well and fit the setting perfectly, becoming almost like an extra character; and the pirate theme, enriched by the films released in the intervening years, provided wonderful ideas such as Parley, the Kraken, and Davey Jones: concepts that were not invented by the screenwriters, but which those films helped bring to the general public. The “drifting” rule (draw a card as soon as you have no cards in your hand outside your turn) was introduced to avoid punishing players too severely for attacking and then being left defenseless, while also adding a great deal of unpredictability and many memorable situations.

Two major obstacles remained: the endgame was either too slow or too predictable, and it proved impossible to balance even-numbered tables as satisfactorily as odd-numbered ones, since the sides were too asymmetrical and the dynamics were simply too different. After a couple of years of experimentation and endless discussions, I arrived at the introduction of the Corsair in place of the Pirate in games with four, six, and eight players: a fascinating Role, and one that is both challenging to play well and difficult to design. As for the ending, for about a year the most stable version had already featured the Ghost Ship haunting the players, but it was too slow because it skipped over players who had been sunk. Changing it into Davey Jones and making its effect apply even to players without a Ship dramatically shortened the game’s duration, as if by magic, while also making it consistently stable. The final piece was finally in place.

In Port
Looking back, I am very satisfied with how it’s turned out. In terms of gameplay, I see Black Flag! as sitting halfway between BANG! and Samurai Sword: the former is raw and visceral, while the latter is more refined and lends itself to highly elaborate discussions among the players. Black Flag! reduces the need for speculation by making the score immediately visible to everyone, at the cost of giving up hidden Roles until the end: and, in my opinion, that is an entirely acceptable compromise.

Above all, neither the classic strategies of the original game nor those of its Japanese-inspired successor apply here. As a result, this is, in every respect, a brand-new game with an identity entirely its own.

My only regret? Having to abandon my beloved Mutiny card. Unfortunately, it stubbornly refused to be balanced, and in the end, I had to cut it. Many people think that designing a game is all about coming up with one brilliant idea. In reality, it often means having the strength to let go of dozens of brilliant ideas that simply refuse to work in that particular context.

It is amusing to think that the second derivative title for the BANG! System was already conceived back in 2003, yet had to wait more than twenty years before setting sail. Apparently, it simply had to find the right wind.

And who knows, perhaps one day the tide will finally turn for the Mutiny card as well.