Kill Doctor Lucky, one of the first games ever published by Cheapass Games, has become one of the company's signature games. Owner/designer James Ernest later released the Craigdarroch Expansion for Kill Doctor Lucky, a larger game board based on an actual Canadian mansion.
Now, Ernest has designed Save Doctor Lucky, a prequel to the Origins Award-winning original. (A tip of the hat to George Lucas for making us all aware of what a prequel is.)
Ernest recently took some time to answer a few questions about Kill Doctor Lucky, Save Doctor Lucky, and his other plans for new Cheapass Games releases in 2000.
First, could you give us some background on Kill Doctor Lucky? (When did you develop the concept for the game? Why did you do the Craigdarroch expansion? Were you surprised when it won an Origins Award?)
I wrote Kill Doctor Lucky in 1996, when I was creating the first few games for Cheapass. I wrote about half a dozen finished games, including Lucky, before I launched the product line. Knowing that the first game had the best chance of success, I put my favorite one first. And that was Doctor Lucky.
When I wrote Lucky, I wasn't sure about doing Cheapass Games, and I thought about selling Doctor Lucky to another game company. I gave the concept to a friend who was going to GAMA that year, and he ran it by Darwin Bromley (head of Mayfair Games). Darwin said he'd love to see the game finished, and with that inspiration, I write the game in about two weeks. The Mayfair deal never worked out, so Lucky became my premiere title instead.
I did the Craigdarroch expansion after I visited the Craigdarroch castle in 1998. The tour map looked exactly like a Lucky board. That was a good expansion, but not worth the expense to keep in print. I hope I can do another this year.
The Origins award was a complete surprise, and very exciting. We won that award, and the one for Give Me The Brain, because we were newcomers. Hopefully someday I can sink into obscurity and take advantage of that
tactic again.
Now that Doctor Lucky has been killed by people all over the world, why did you decide it was time for us to save him?
Save Doctor Lucky is (hopefully) a new game from Cheapass this year. We usually don't announce things in concept phase, because there's a big chance they will never be released. For every game I release, there are three or four that die on the vine. And others, like Escape from Elba, stay in the works for two or three years before I get them working. (Remember that when you read the teasers below!)
The story goes like this: It's far in the past, long before Doctor Lucky has become the murderable old fool we all know and love. And you are all aboard the Titanic, or some other equivalent sinking ship. Doctor Lucky is now a well-respected and admired philanthropist, wandering around the ship looking for a life preserver, and even though we all still sort of don't like him, we are cynical enough to want to look good saving him.
What can you tell us about the gameplay?
The only thing I'm sure of is that the cards are divided into four Decks, which correspond to the four decks of the ship. You draw cards from the lowest Deck, and when the last card is gone from a Deck, that deck ship fills with water. (To save the embarrassment of premature death, you can still -leave- that deck, but you can't re-enter it.)
Apart from that, and the fact that to make a victory attempt you now must be in line of sight of another player, the game should play a lot like Doctor Lucky. But at this point, that's just a guess. I'd expect to rate it for 3-8 players, and play in about an hour.
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