Experience almost 20 years of killing Doctor Lucky
Kickstarter seems to be breathing new life into yet another classic board-game, with the successful funding of the 19.5anniversary edition of Kill Doctor Lucky. Originally designed and released by James Ernest and his company Cheapass Games back in 1996, the project has blown through the initial funding goal, and shown that players still seem very interested in taking a swing a Doctor Lucky. The new deluxe edition comes with a core rules overhaul, new art, and even alternate game modes.
In Kill Doctor Lucky 2-8 players sneak around a large mansion attempting to kill the Doctor without anyone else seeing them do it. If the Doctor enters a room of the mansion occupied by a player, and no one else has line of sight, then that player can try to make the fatal blow using a variety of weapon cards. However, getting the old man alone often isn’t enough, as other players can discard luck cards to help the Doctor slip away. We sat down with Ernest to learn more about what Cheapass Games plans to do moving forward, and his reaction to finally returning to his companies’ first published game.
Same Room Gaming: What effect do you believe the lack of availability has had on fans both new and old of Kill Doctor Lucky over the years? Was this in anyway intentional?
James Ernest: I recently saw the Paizo edition of KDL listed at Amazon for $399. I have no idea if anyone will buy it at that price, but clearly someone thinks it is worth that much.
Has this affected the fans? I doubt it. Was it intentional? I can only speak for myself, but no. As far as I know the original black and white edition of Kill Doctor Lucky was in print continuously until Paizo took over the deluxe edition in 2006. Paizo made two versions, with a gap in between, and I believe that was because they had trouble finding a source for the parts.
SRG: Your Kickstarter has already accumulated more than double your original funding goal. Was this amount of support a surprise? Or was this campaign designed to expect a certain degree of over-funding?
JE: With Kickstarter, there is a stated goal, and there is a real goal. To be honest, halfway through the campaign we still haven’t raised the amount required to actually produce this game. If we don’t hit that “real” goal, we will have to make up the difference from our pocket. Which is fine, because I am pretty sure Doctor Lucky will do well in retail stores.
If we do “over-fund,” we can use the extra money to make the core game better, and also to produce other games, as we’ve done many times in the past. These side games become part of the campaign, and they help us grow our product line without doing a separate Kickstarter for every new project.
SRG: What were some of the main factors that resulted in Cheapass Games going into a virtual “hiberation” from 2007-2011? What brought it back?
JE: In 2005 Cheapass Games had grown too large. I had six full-time employees, I was renting an office and warehouse space, and I had a lot of titles in print. We were grossing more money than ever, but netting less. So I needed to figure out how to grow the bottom line, or shrink the business until we were more profitable. Shrinking meant taking a break from new products, letting some staff go, and taking some time to sell down the existing inventory.
About the same time I got an interesting job offer from Microsoft, so I shuttered the business more or less completely in 2007, and it stayed closed until about 2011, when I started posting free games again at cheapass.com. During the interval I licensed some of the biggest titles to other publishers, and those are mostly coming back home now that I’m printing games again.
What really brought us back was Kickstarter. I can’t print games as cheaply as I used to; small printers have all gone away, or been swallowed up by bigger ones, and digital prepress has made color printing no more expensive than black and white. Instead, the main costs are paper and shipping, so deluxe games seem to make more sense now than super-cheap ones.
Kickstarter lets us print deluxe games without a lot of operating capitol, and I can still release free versions at cheapass.com.
SRG: How does it feel returning to refine and republish Kill Doctor Lucky nearly 20 years after it was first published?
JE: I’ve been anxious to do a new edition for years. We set the target date as the 20th anniversary, but because of various timing issues we decided to go a little early (hence the 19.5th anniversary edition). I have not been completely satisfied with any of the previous editions, and the rules overhaul (and new art) are looking really good.
Kill Doctor Lucky has always been our flagship title and it certainly feels great to have it back in the house again.
The Kickstarter campaign is still ongoing with additional information available from the Cheapass Games official website
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