The Inspiration and Creation of Clan Feud

My first sketch of the Clan Feud game board

Clan Feud is my first game design - and the catalyst to me becoming a board game designer. Like most hobby board game enthusiasts, I have always loved playing games, and I dabbled with writing some of my own rules growing up (add-ons or re-skins of existing games). Then I got heavily into RPGs during COVID, and dungeon-mastered a couple of bespoke Dungeons and Dragons campaigns for my friends. Players never do what you expect - in fact they showed nefarious glee in thwarting all of my best-laid plans - and went forging off on their own encounters, which of course then had to be improvised on the fly. These experiences really gave me confidence in myself and my creative abilities, and made me think that perhaps I could embark on a creative endeavour one day.

When I was a kid I wanted to be an author - writing a book has been a lifetime dream of mine. And over the years, I associated it with one topic in particular: a historical fiction novel about feuding Scottish clans. I am a Scotsman, from Aberdeen in the North-East of the country. My mother's maiden name is Gordon - the name of the historically most powerful clan in that region (not that I am in any way related to the noble members of the family). Years ago, as I read through the Wikipedia history of the Gordon clan whilst at university, the struggles and fighting amongst Scotland's clans leapt out at me as fascinating, exciting, thrilling, and worthy of a story to be told.

So I had the seed of an idea in my mind - a theme. Fast forward years later, and I had not touched that idea or done anything with it. But I had been playing a lot of board games - working my way through the top rated games as ranked on the Board Game Geek website. Making my own game did not even cross my mind for the longest time - I knew nothing about actual game design, I just liked to play games.

The tipping point came in October 2024, as I travelled alone from Aberdeen to Chicago, to run the Chicago marathon. I knew I would have a lot of time on my hands - I would be in the city for a week, and I wanted to rest before the race and wasn't going to be up for strenuous activity afterwards. So I took a pad of paper in my hand luggage and started to make notes, in the plane and in my hotel room. As I travelled around Chicago seeing the most trafficked tourist sites I thought more about the game. How could I convert the bloody feuding between the various Scottish clans into a condensed and playable board game?

I guess I had been almost subconsciously ruminating on the idea for a while beforehand, and immediately settled on the idea of a player board combined with an overall game board - Risk meets Euro games. Or more specifically, War of the Ring second edition (my absolute favourite board game) meets Brass Birmingham and Castles of Burgundy. Clan Feud ended up being a mongrel amalgamation of all three really. I was also inspired by probably my favourite video game - Crusader Kings III; I wanted to add individual player rulers and have politics, court intrigues and assassinations. But in the end all that was too much, and I instead went with a wider focus, with conflict spanning the whole of Scotland.

My first sketch of the Clan Feud player board

I have included two photographs of my original sketches for Clan Feud - showing my original hand-drawn map of Scotland with territories roughly marked out. This very high-level initial drawing actually did not end up changing too much in the "final" design that I am currently working with - certainly you can see a lot of similarities. The player board has evolved, but its essence is still the same from this initial drawing from Chicago. I had a lot of ideas in the beginning; but over time and playtesting I refined the gameplay and experience. Right from the outset the three phases were established, but the loan feature for example did not last long (heavily inspired by Brass Birmingham no doubt!).

When I arrived back in Aberdeen after my trip to Chicago (the marathon had not gone completely as planned, a new PB scuppered by cramp at 30 km but I at least did manage to finish in under 3 hours), I immediately set about creating a prototype out of paper and card - and raided seemingly all of the boxes on my shelves of board games for components. The original prototypes were not pretty, and did not last long either - I refined and improved after every playtest. And the game continued - and continues - to evolve; but its origins stem from a boyish fascination with his family name and local history, playing DnD online with my friends during lockdown, and having free time whilst running a marathon in another continent!