Recently I had the privilege of talking to Travis Willse, aka TawnyFrogmouth, a name well-known to dedicated fans of Wingspan. He’s also the driving force behind the recently released fan-designed cards, not to mention several unofficial ones, which you can find via his BoardGameGeek page.
Welcome, Travis.
Hi, L.N. Thanks for your interest in the project!
I first came across the name ‘TawnyFrogmouth’ when it kept cropping up within Wingspan’s BoardGameGeek pages and quickly concluded that this person was extremely enthusiastic and very knowledgeable about the game. What was it about the game that led to you engage with it so much?
In 2019, when Wingspan was first released, I had (only) a little experience with hobbyist games, but I had a longstanding love of and fascination with birds, and that was enough to get me interested in the game. But what drew me in and has kept me so interested in the game, even six years later, is two things: Firstly, the design is just outstanding—the basic gameplay loop is satisfying, but you can tell that the designer took a great deal of care in laying out and balancing the game. Secondly, the designer’s love for and knowledge of birds shines through every part of the design in a way, more than anything else in the way that bird powers often creatively reflect the bird’s real-world behaviors.
I’ve got to ask, why ‘TawnyFrogmouth?’ I’d not heard of the birds before seeing your unofficial Frogmouth pack.
Simply the tawny frogmouth is my favorite bird—they’re expressive and charismatic, they have lots of unusual adaptations, and they’re endlessly fascinating. It’s really been a great few years to be a frogmouth enthusiast and booster. A 2021 study found frogmouths to be the most photogenic bird family, and in October the tawny frogmouth was named the Guardian’s Australian bird of the year in their biennial poll. When isolating during the early days of COVID and decided to put together a fan pack for the first time, frogmouths were an obvious choice.
I’m amazed how much the gaming community has embraced Wingspan, producing so much fan content. What was the path from the many, many fan-created cards to the final Stonemaier Games packs? How tricky was it to ensure a decent ‘balance’ between the new cards and all those already in the game and its expansions?
The promo pack project was something of an experiment, and so we aimed to keep things as organizationally simple as possible. One way we did this was to restrict our attention to packs that had been thoroughly playtested. But even after selecting the packs, the pack designers peer-reviewed all of the other packs, for balance, for consistency of wording with existing cards, and for clarity. It was an intensive process, and it took longer than I had initially expected, but that polishing really helped elevate the designs and, I hope, make the play experience smoother for players.
Do you have a favourite pack or a particular bird/bird power within them?
I don’t have a favorite pack—but I will say that it was satisfying to see different designers’ design sensibilities reflected in their packs, giving each pack a slightly different flavor. But I’ll highlight one power that I particularly like from each pack:
- Birds of the U.S.A.: Brown Thrasher (WHEN ACTIVATED: Discard 1 [card] in the tray with a “When Activated” (brown) power; you may copy its power. You may reset or refill the tray before discarding.) This power is another really satisfying marriage of gameplay and theme (“Brown thrashers aggressively defend their nests and boast repertoires of over 1,000 songs.”), and as a bonus the power fits the bird’s name, too! A few other powers in the promo packs also explore the design space of copying brown powers not on any mat, namely, the Spotless Starling (Birds of Continental Europe) and the Racket-Tailed Drongo (Additional Asian Avians).
- Birds of Canada: Rock Ptarmigan (WHEN ACTIVATED: Cache 1 [seed] or [fruit] from the birdfeeder on this bird, if available. When playing a bird, you may spend [wild] cached on this bird as any food type (except [nectar]).) I was particularly proud of how this particular power reflects the biology that inspired it (“This hardy grouse maximizes the use of nutrient-poor foods with an elongated cecum.”) The power is a less reliable than the similar spend-cached-food powers of the Coal Tit and Eurasian Nuthatch, but the ptarmigan makes the best of what food you have available, letting you spend it as any type of food when playing another bird. Well, except for nectar, which we imposed to avoid the rules question about how spending something as nectar interacts with the “spent nectar” space on the Oceania Expansion boards.
- Birds of Continental Europe: Merlin (ONCE BETWEEN TURNS: When another player tucks a [card] behind a bird with a [flocking] power, tuck 1 [card] from the deck behind this bird.) This power, like so many of Sam Gray’s designs, is really elegant. It’s dead simple but beautifully thematic (“Merlins prey on flocks of birds, often flying from behind trees to surprise them.”), and you can see the power’s value immediately when reading it. The inclusion of this bird is, by the way, a great example of filling a “gap,” a culturally significant and/or popular bird that there wasn’t room for in the expansions where it could have appeared.
- British Birds: Western Capercaillie (WHEN PLAYED: Draw 2 bonus cards. Keep 1 and give 1 to another player.) This power is familiar and simple—it’s a variation of the classic “draw 2 bonus cards, keep 1” powers of the core game—but the twist is utterly clever: You’re given a point or two more than a typical bonus card bird might offer you, but it incentivizes thinking carefully about the gamestate.
- Birds of New Zealand: Black Robin (WHEN PLAYED: Draw 2 bonus cards. Starting with you, each player gives 1 bonus card to the player to their left. Discard 1 bonus card.) I love powers that create the opportunity for everyone to make a potentially interesting decision, and powers that give you a reason to pay attention to other players’ boards, and this one does both, while still managing to be worthwhile to play.
- Additional Asian Avians: Daurian Jackdaw (WHEN PLAYED: Cache this round’s goal tile on this bird (score it as 1 cached food). Players score no goal at the end of this round; remaining rounds have 1 more turn than otherwise.) When I first shared this design, I worried a little worried about it being divisive, but many players have mentioned to me that it’s one of their favorites from the promo packs. It replicates the popular “no goal” goal in a way that I find thematically satisfying, and a great mental image besides (“Jackdaws are highly intelligent and have a reputation for pilfering coins and other small objects”).
It must have been difficult to narrow things down to just 6 packs of 25 cards each. What birds do you wish could have been in there but had to cut for whatever reason?
At least for me, whittling down the bird list is one of the hardest things about designing a pack. There are so many marvelous species, and there’s so little room. I wanted to include my Oceania Teal fan pack in the project, but I wanted the project to feature as many designers’ work as it could and so only to include one of my solo projects. Since there was some geographical overlap with the New Zealand fan pack and Asia would have otherwise been unrepresented, we ran the Additional Asian Avians fan pack instead. Even among the packs that were included, there were lots of birds I wanted to include but couldn’t for reasons of variety or habitat balance of something else. Of course, when you’re codesigning with another player, they have their own preferences about what birds they’d like to see, and the whittling process adds a layer of diplomacy and negotiation. A few that nearly made the cut but didn’t include Allen’s Hummingbird, Chuck-Will’s-Widow, Cinnamon Teal, Gunnison Grouse, Oriental Dollarbird, White-Tailed Eagle… But that’s just motivation to design more fan projects!
Will we see more similar packs, or is there a danger of too many birds ruining the game? Are there any new themes being considered beyond geography?
There’s no official word on that yet, but I’ll point out that the new retailer packaging for the promo packs describes the 6 packs released in October as “set 1”—take that as you will. There are anyway lots of clever, high-quality fan projects that I’d love to see published officially someday.
Do you have a favourite bird within all the unofficial fan expansions, your own or other people’s?
I’d be hard pressed to pick a single favorite, but I’ll mention a few particularly memorable ones:
- From my Frogmouth Fan Pack, the Short-Tailed Frogmouth (which some authorities now call the Sumatran Frogmouth) (ROUND END: If you used all 4 types of actions this round, draw 1 bonus card). It’s powerful and fun, and it incentivizes a balanced playstyle the way that other birds of the “if you used all 4 types of actions…” ROUND END template do.
- There are lots of clever and playful designs in the Big Weirdos fan project—which I organized but whose 50 cards were designed by 50 different fans of the game. Two that come to mind are the Apostlebird (GAME END: If you have exactly 12 birds on your player mat, tuck 5 [card] from the deck behind this bird—the bird’s name references the species’ tendency to assemble groups of about 12), designed by Stella and Tarrant of Meeple University, and Carol L.M. Johnson’s delightful Rhinoceros Hornbill (WHEN ACTIVATED: Gain 1 [fruit] from the birdfeeder, if available. If not available, you may make a loud “caw” to gain 1 [fruit] from the supply).
What advice would you give to fans who want to get started on designing their own bird cards or other Wingspan add-ons?
Start, and don’t worry if your first attempts are awkward or uneven—certainly mine were, as you can see for yourself if you look back at my earlier posts in the official Facebook Wingspan group. Focus on your favorite species and/or whatever mechanics from the game you find most interesting, since that’s often where inspiration will come most naturally. Design for yourself, but kill your darlings. Playtest and iterate as much as possible. There are some great resources out there, so that you don’t have to start the graphic design from scratch like I did, e.g., Nathan Buchar’s bird card dev kit.
One criticism of Wingspan (the base game, anyway) is how little interaction there is between players, but recent expansions, and more so the fan packs, include birds which increase that significantly. How much was that a deliberate goal, and do you see more interaction coming in future?
Increasing player interaction wasn’t an explicit goal of the promo pack project, but it was probably an inevitable result, since increasing player interaction is something many fan projects designers deliberately build into their designs—and it’s anyway something that players have broadly requested and are happy to see. Like you’ve pointed out there’s a trend in the game toward more (but still generally friendly) interaction, but I don’t want to speculate. I would certainly be happy to see it!
Forest Shuffle Exploration bundled together a bunch of promo cards, some of them rather frivolous, such as the Troll and Christmas Tree. Wingspan fans seem to be quite serious people, but do you think there could be a space for a bit of silliness? I could imagine a certain couple of D. Ducks, but expect that getting IP rights from Disney or Warner could be tricky; what sorts of thing would you like to have in your draw deck?
One of my favorite things about Wingspan is that the source material and inspiration for mechanics comes from the natural world, so I personally am not interested in seeing fictional birds added to the game, and like you suggest, I think that attitude is common but by no means universal among Wingspan fans. I suppose you could call that seriousness!
You’re working fairly closely with Stonemaier Games now—besides spearheading the fan packs, you’ve worked on Vantage and a few of the Wingspan expansions, not to mention leading playtesting for several more games. Can you tell us what’s involved in all that?
I’ve worn several very different hats for Stonemaier—a full accounting of all the work I’ve done with them would take this interview too far afield, but I’ll mention two that involved, satisfyingly, a good deal of collaboration with others. Developing Vantage involved playing literally hundreds of games using a web app version of the game designed expressly to playtest it, reading all 400 thousand-plus words in the game and editing for clarity and consistency, writing custom scripts to check the game text for consistency. I also wrote several hundred entries in the MOVE and DEPART storybooks, which was my favorite part of the process. (Steel-eyed fans of both games might spot any of several Wingspan Easter eggs I inserted into the game!)
Managing the promo pack project was a very different set of tasks, including leading the peer review process in which designers helped each other polish the game, write rules clarifications, and so on. I also spent a lot of hours editing and polishing the art for the packs, which was mostly taken from old public-domain (mostly 19th century) illustrations. It’s been a real delight to contribute some of my own ideas (and birds) to my favorite board game, and I’m grateful that both Stonemaier and (Wingspan designer) Elizabeth Hargrave entrusted me with their property. I hope the promo pack project meets the high standards they set for the game’s content!
Are there any hints you can give us regarding the three ‘unreleased projects’ appearing on your BGG page?
Wingspan enthusiasts who follow Stonemaier’s release calendar can almost certainly guess one, but the other two would be hard to guess without inside knowledge. I can’t say much more, but I will say that I’m particularly excited for one of them!
Besides Wingspan, what board games do you play, and what do you particularly like about them?
More than any other category I play medium to medium-heavy euro-style engine/tableau builders, especially nature- and science-inspired ones. Ark Nova, Earth, and Terraforming Mars. They’re all a good balance of tactics and strategy, and they all give you the satisfying feeling of having built something—much the same way that, e.g., building Lego does. (Incidentally, every year I officiate at the World Series of Board Gaming in Las Vegas, and last year I officiated exactly those three games plus Wingspan.) But I play and enjoy a lot of types of games. On my shelf I have everything from Sea Salt and Paper to Pax Pamir. Stonemaier’s design philosophies really resonate with me across genres, and Scythe and Viticulture are also top-10 games for me. I used to play Scrabble in a city league and probably have played more games of that than of Wingspan, but I’ve probably only played one or two dozen times in the last decade.
What else can you tell us about Travis Willse, the person outside the game industry? What do you do in your spare time, if such a thing exists? Are you a birder in real life, when you’re not teaching mathematics?
I spend a lot of time with my clever and funny 5-year-old. He’s really interested in games, too. We’ve just worked our way through the first several cases in MicroMacro Kids, and he’s surprisingly good at Set and Spot It [Dobble to us in the UK]! He hasn’t beaten me at checkers yet, but no doubt that will happen sooner than I expect. I am a birder, but a pretty average one in most respects—mostly I’m just happy to enjoy whichever birds visit my backyard.
What Wingspan fan projects are you working on now?
I’m in the process of sharing a new Wingspan fan pack, “Surprising Songbirds,” that I co-designed with BGG Wingspan forums regular @enbycass. The pack includes birds of 25 families not already represented in the game—the nature of the project means there are a lot of deep cuts, including species I’d never heard of before starting this project. I’ve been working with Will Downham (of British Birds fame) on a Birds of Europe fan pack—it predates our joint work on the promo pack project. I’m working on another solo fan project that I can’t explain here because it would spoil something significant about the next Wingspan expansion. I’ve also been working on a custom duet map based on Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve in ACT, Australia, near where I used to live.
Where can we find out more about you and your work?
For my board game-related work, my BGG designer page is a good place to start. For my academic/professional work, you can learn more on https://traviswillse.github.io/ and connect with me via LinkedIn.
Thank you, Travis Willse. It’s been a pleasure talking with you.
