Last summer, I found out that the World Boardgaming Championships were held about 15 minutes from my house. Intrigued, I stopped in to see what exactly drew 1500 people to this week long convention.

I found out that this boardgaming community is not unlike our own video gaming group. In particular, there is a small but passionate group of sports gamers. These (mostly) guys engage in games that replicate the intricacies of baseball, football, NCAA basketball, and racing. Truly, the only major difference is the medium in which the games are delivered. We push buttons; they roll dice.

One of the games demoed at the convention this year is called “Lords of Baseball,” a GM simulator that replicates the same things many of us love about Out of the Park or MLB: The Show’s franchise mode. I got to ask the developer, Max Jamelli, a few questions about the game, since I felt it would appeal to a large segment of users.

Max, can you briefly describe the game's core concept, theme, and mechanics?

Lords of Baseball is an economic, resource management game. Each person playing the game takes on the role of owner of a baseball team. It's a card driven game, which means each "owner" is given a hand of cards that allow them to do different things. There are events and operation numbers (or OPS). Owners strive to put together a strong front office, a strong farm system, and a strong manager to go along with a Major League roster of players and Minor League roster of players. There are no unique players, so you won't have to manage teams on a micro level. Each Major League team consists of 4 types of player. The Superstar (think Robinson Cano, Justin Verlander, Albert Pujols), the All-Star (think Nick Swisher, Giancarlo Staton), the Regular player and the Journeymen player. Each type of player gives the team the ability to win a certain number of games. Each owner will have a player mat that helps them keep track of their rosters.

The game is broken down into years and phases. Each year consists of up to 5 phases. Starting in the off-season, then going into the Early Season (think April-May), the Middle Season (June-July), the Late Season (August-September) and if an owner's team wins the pennant there is a post season. If no one wins the pennant, the post season is skipped. Owners will take several actions through each phase. The game is based on Tommy Lasorda's principle that no matter how good a team is they'll win 1/3 of the games they play and lose 1/3 of the games they play. Whatever a team does with the last 1/3 determines their success. Lords of Baseball simulates a 162 game schedule where 53 games are played in the Early Season, 54 games in the mid-season, and 55 in the late season. Gamers will start each phase with a 15-15 record in each phase though, so they will only decide 23, 24, and 25 games during a year. (I cover this a little here – but the video itself is based on our earliest prototype so the components of the game have changed a little)

When the season is over, there is a victory point check. Players will look over the victory point conditions and each will score points. (in testing we’ve found that winning the Championship is nice, but doesn’t always determine the overall winner of the game)

After victory points are scored, there is a retirement roll. Players roll a die and based on a chart, certain players will retire. After retirements, the off-season of year 2 begins and players can adjust their rosters and draft new players for the farm system. The game is played over a set number of years, determined by the players. The basic game is 3 years. The tournament level game is 5 years. As long as all players agree beforehand though, there is no “dead set” limit of how many years can be played.

What was the inspiration for Lords of Baseball?

Lords of Baseball is really my father’s game. Of the entire game, I would say it’s 80% his design and 20% mine. My father and I are both big baseball fans and we both enjoy sports style board games. He grew up with Strat-o-Matic Baseball. Strat-o-matic is a game that allows you to draft any player in history and build a team. You then take that team and play out a 9 inning game with another team. The one thing that Strat-o-Matic lacked was the system of player retirements and injuries. He thought it would be interesting to design a system where a player can play through an entire season quickly and have to deal with player retirements and the management of a draft and farm system to replenish the major league system. That’s what Lords of Baseball does; that we feel is a first in the sports board game genre.

The funny thing for me is how I got involved in it. I’ve always played board games and to me the people who designed board games were like rock stars. Sure they existed, but no one ever got to meet them or talk to them. It wasn’t until 2009 when I met the designer of my favorite board game at a gaming convention. I was in shock. He was just a normal, regular guy who liked board games. The year after that, one of my friends from that convention told me he had designed a tennis game. I got to play his prototype that year and enjoyed it. I told him my dad had been working on a baseball themed game and that he’d have to try it next year. (This was my way of saying my dad is tougher than your dad) After that, I had my dad send me the rules he drafted and we got started on it.

What was the development process like? How did the game go from an idea in your head to a finished published product?

My background is in multimedia production, so the first thing I was able to bring to the design process was a sense of how things should look. I sketched out what I though each component should look like in a notebook and then basically built that in Photoshop. I figured that our prototype should have a good professional look to it in case we ever got in front of a publisher. I thought that a publisher would be more inclined to really look at it if the game “looked” professional. One of the publishers we got to talk to actually told us that he’d played prototypes that were printed on a napkin, but I still think the clean look of the game helped bring people in to learn it. I found some places to print cards and Staples printed the rest for us. We had a good looking board and cards and were ready to showcase our game at the WBC (World Boardgaming Championships) convention which is held every year.

Between the two of us, my dad and I showed the game off to over 150 people that year and most of them really liked what they saw of it. We were able to show it off to four publishers, all who thought it had potential. I was very excited when I heard one of the companies was GMT Games. GMT Games had put out several similar style games and the representative (Andy Lewis) told me that they were planning on building a sports-themed line of board games. It felt like a great fit. Andy gave me some great suggestions for making the individual player boards more functional and we spent the next year revamping and testing some more. We met up with Andy again at the WBC convention this year and he was very excited with our testing results and said that we should be able to get Lords of Baseball on the P500 list by early 2013. The P500 list is a list for board game pre-orders. When a game hits 500 pre orders, it goes into production. P500 games are usually offered at a discount over MSRP, so a lot of gamers take advantage of it when it’s offered.

Is it similar in any way to board games people might have experienced before?

That really depends on what board games people have been exposed to. There is a great website – boardgamegeek.com that is a database of board games and allows gamers to network and communicate. The database has over 60,000 board games in it currently! I would tend to think that today’s video gamer is unaware of all the board games that are available. The card driven mechanic is reminiscent of conflict simulation games such as Twilight Struggle, 1960 Making of the President, and Paths of Glory. Lords of Baseball isn't a war-game, per se, but it can play like one. (War game is a genre of board game that is highly tactical and features a lot of combat. There is indirect combat in Lords of Baseball. We aren’t killing soldiers, but there are ways to “screw over” your opponents with card play that feel like a war game) We took little pieces of inspiration from other popular board games as well, but we have some unique mechanics built into Lords of Baseball as well.

What's the learning curve? How long would it take a new player to learn?

The complexity rating of this game on a 1-10 scale is probably around 7.5 so it is a fairly deep and complex game. However, we've found that throughout testing the game clicked with people after 1 phase of playing cards. With any card driven game there is a learning curve until gamers see what each card does. Lords of Baseball may be complex, but we don’t think it’s tough to learn.

Why should sports video gamers take a look at this game?

I got tired of sports video games giving me the same options all the time. I could play out a season or a single game. Sometime around 2005, I think, the MLB game that came out (MVP 2005) allowed me to start a franchise and manage things like the stadium, ticket prices, promotions, etc. I loved the flexibility that game gave me to create my own vision for what the team should be about. The only problem was that it took me months to finish the entire season and most of the time I ended up skipping games along the way.

Lords of Baseball gives players a similar experience of running an entire organization, but it also allows for some interpersonal exchanges along the way. You can trash-talk your opponent as you play a losing streak card against him and he can trash-talk right back as he plays a card that causes one of your Superstar players to get injured. It’s also not a game that is going to need to be updated every year to get enjoyment out of it. I know that one reason that I enjoyed sports video games was that every year the rosters were up to date. Since there are no actual players involved in this game, you don’t need to spend $60 every year to continue to enjoy it with your friends.

What is the current status of the game? When will it be available to buy, and where can potential customers find it?

Currently, GMT games is planning on adding Lords of Baseball to the P500 list sometime around Spring Training 2013. The P500 is a list of games that are taking pre-orders. When the number of orders hits 500, the game is produced and shipped. Customers can pre-order the game via GMT’s website, gmtgames.com under the P500 link.

Thanks Max. I, for one, look forward to this playing this game when it releases!

My experience at the WBC really expanded my horizons. I've enjoyed Strat-o-Matic in the past, but didn't realize games like "Paydirt," "March Madness," and "Formula De" really dig into their respective sports just as well.

If you like the simulation side of things, try one of these games or consider pre-ordering "Lords of Baseball". The price points for most of these games are around what we pay for annual releases, only you actually get "stuff" that you'll want to keep for more than a year.