1. It’s a surprising fact that there’s never been
a strategy game based off The Godfather.
“Getting this license, and being able to
work on the first games based off one of
the most critically acclaimed (and my
favorite) trilogies of all time is at once
exhilarating and intimidating. We’ve taken
great lengths to make this game feel as
iconic as its reference material.
The designers behind The Godfather: A
New Don are Jay Cormier and Sen-Foong
Lim, the design team behind Belfort,
Orphan Black, and Junk Art. Despite
living more than 3,000 miles from each
other, they’re an amazingly tight team, and
their understanding of how to translate the
spirit of a license into a tabletop experience
is impeccable.
Here’s Jay Cormier and Sen-Foong Lim
on their experience working on
The Godfather: A New Don.
“When we were first tasked to design a
game based on the The Godfather, we were
asked to make either a dice game or an area
control game. Our first thought (after
some fanboy squealing of course) was a
dice game in which you offer dice to play-
ers, riffing off of the famous ‘made him an
offer he couldn’t refuse’ quote from the
movie. From there we figured out that
players are going to want to be the
Godfather, and so, similar to The
Sheriff of Nottingham, the role of
Godfather changes from round to
round. But unlike the Sheriff game,
players have more control over
who becomes the next Godfather!
The first prototype we made just had sets
that players were trying to collect after
offering dice to the Godfather. I think it
was one of our awesome playtesters that
said, “This should be a map.” Of course!
Instead of rolling to place tokens on an
abstract track - we converted it all into a
map of New York. So now we were making
a dice game AND an area control game!
This also informed other directions for the
game - like the need to make the game
more cutthroat (it is about The Godfather,
after all) so we added Muscle. You can now
muscle someone out of a neighborhood if
you have more Muscle than they do!
As we continued to design the game we
really wanted to mitigate as much luck as
possible - even though it is a dice game.
While players had a free re-roll, that wasn’t
enough - so we added Favors. Favors are
what you get when the Godfather accepts
the die you offered him, or whenever
THE DESIGN BEHIND
THE GODFATHER:
A NEW DON
by Nate Murray
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2. someone muscles you out of a neighbor-
hood. These favors allow you to change
values of dice in various ways. We still
weren’t happy with the fact that there were
some dice that felt wasted - so we added
Las Vegas. Now players can send their low
valued or unimpressive dice to Vegas,
in the hopes that it will pay off in a
future round.
Finally, we had to make the Godfather role
good so that players all wanted to be him,
but also not too good so that it was impos-
sible to catch up. The perfect balance was
found by not allowing the Godfather to
use the Favors (he’s the Godfather - people
should be doing favors for him!), nor can
the Godfather invest in more Muscle or
send his dice to Vegas. This means that
Nate Murray
IDW Games developer, considers watch-
ing The Godfather movies with his father
to be among his favorite memories (yes,
even part III).
when you’re the Godfather - and you’re
looking at the die that each player has
offered - you have to figure out how best to
use what you rolled and the dice offered.
If they don’t work then you have to push
your luck and start asking for other values!
In the end, we’ve found that we really
struck a nice balance between a dice game
that anyone can jump into, but also offer a
new and exciting experience for even the
most veteran of gamers.”
The game plays three to six players, and
comes with a double-sided map that you’ll
set-up based on what your player count is.
We’ve done everything we can to make the
game look as good as it plays. The aesthetic
is 1950’s New York, and we tapped Ron
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Guyatt to illustrate a beautiful map of the boroughs.
This is the territory the players are fighting over.
When you sit down at the table, you’ll take command of
one of the six crime families from The Godfather. Each
family has control of 15 custom soldier meeples,
complete with bowler hats. There’s also a matching set
of player dice and Player screen featuring the family
name and the New York skyline.
We wanted the Vegas component of the game to feel
authentic so we sourced oversized red casino dice.
Whenever I get those dice in my hand to start a round
with the Vegas roll I instinctively look for a cocktail
server. Every component was carefully selected to evoke
the feel of the era and the Godfather films. There’s
almost never been a test session that hasn’t devolved into
a constant back and forth of movie quotes and Don
Corleone impressions.
Due to the simplicity and elegance of the rules, even
non-Godfather fans can quickly get into the fun. You
claim territories by rolling sets of dice and spending
them to place your Soldiers to the map. The map is
broken into six different regions players compete for
(each region corresponds to one side of the die), with
the game ending when one region is full. That’s enough
information to get you to the table and playing. It’s
simple and fun and then there’s this layer of strategy
with Favors, Muscle, and Vegas that really makes it
shine. Capiche?
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