Designer Diary: Flash Point: Legacy of Flame | BoardGameGeek News

by Ken Franklin

[Editor’s note: This diary was written by Kevin Rodgers and submitted by co-designer Ken Franklin. —WEM]

In December 2020, game designer Ken Franklin was having a random conversation with Tricia Sydney, then the Director of Client Experience for Indie Boards & Cards (IBC). Among other subjects, they spoke about Flash Point: Fire Rescue, Kevin Lanzing‘s well-loved classic co-operative firefighting game, and the chat veered toward the potential for a legacy version of the game. It had been considered through the years, Tricia said, but no one could crack it, and it would be an awful lot of work.

Ken is a tenacious person by nature, however, and having served decades as a doctor in the Army, then as a family doctor in Michigan, he is never afraid to take on a challenge. He asked for a chance to pitch a Flash Point legacy game to IBC, and Tricia said yes, probably with a shake of her head and the secret belief that it would never actually happen.

Ken immediately called me and Chris Leder. Together, we have designed and consulted on a number of games, with a deep enthusiasm for collaboration. The idea of doing a Flash Point legacy game excited us creatively, striking a chord due to our love of games featuring co-operation, legacy aspects, and immersive themes. Flash Point: Fire Rescue was a favorite of all of ours and our families. A legacy version? That was too amazing an idea to pass up — and incredibly, after we worked up a comprehensive pitch, IBC greenlit the project.

To properly set the stage, remember that this was a troubled period of time. Designing a massive legacy game in the middle of a pandemic was definitely not going to be easy, especially during lockdown when we were mainly on Zoom, with Chris and me in the suburbs of Chicago and Ken way over near Kalamazoo, Michigan. Regardless, we were thrilled to have the opportunity to take on the challenge.

Our first conversations were about respecting the original game and all the expansions that came after. Kevin Lanzing had created a lasting design with the original Flash Point, offering tension and drama along with incredibly approachable gameplay. We set out to honor his design, while adding narrative, plot twists, and player investment.

Early sketches of the maps for each episode

Using an overhead camera and FaceTime (and only much later getting together in person), we played the original game and all the expansions over and over to identify the best elements of Flash Point and determine what we could do with the design: What worked well, what didn’t, and where could we add even more fun?

We held some things sacred, not wanting to reinvent the wheel, but in systems like hot spots, and in some of the more complicated card-driven event activations from Tragic Events, we spotted areas that could not only be smoothed out, but in which we could inject narrative that drove the episode itself.

Additionally, we explored what we loved and did not love about legacy systems. Having played all the Pandemic Legacy games, as well as Charterstone, Zombie Kidz, and many others, we broke down what felt fun, what felt like work, and what would translate well to Flash Point. We also had an illuminating conversation with Rob Daviau, the original founder of legacy games, to discuss his thoughts and experiences and help make sure we presented the material in the best way possible.

Our meetings with the IBC team defined the expectations and parameters that we needed to follow during the design process:

• Replayability: IBC did not want this game to be a one-and-done experience. We loved this idea! A crushing downside of playing a legacy game is if the campaign ends and the game is now obsolete. Making our game backward-compatible to previous sets and allowing players to use their legacy firefighters on ANY existing Flash Point map seemed a wonderful and unique experience for fans of the franchise.

• Non-destructive gameplay: Many legacy games have you tear up cards and other components, and that can be psychologically devastating to some players. We were asked to keep this to a minimum, if not outright avoid it. Partly, this ties into the replayability of the game. We want players to enjoy themselves, and if ripping up cards could potentially hurt that, we felt fine making our legacy game a bit less destructive!

“Points of Interest” in an early version — the soot marks are from laser punchout cuts

• Cost: It was an important point for both us and IBC that the game could be priced so that everyone could play it. Legacy games can get expensive, and we all wanted families to be able to get a copy, making it easy for someone who might want to dip their toe into the legacy game genre. Early on in the process, though, affordability became our first major hurdle. The culprit? The game boards.

There was no way we would be able to produce the quantity of boards needed to tell the story we wanted while keeping the price point acceptable. After all, this was a multi-episode campaign, and you can’t have the squad putting out a fire at the same one or two locations over and over.

After some discussion (and a lot of measuring), we decided on dual spiral-bound board books. Flipping to the right pages and placing the board books together would offer a bevy of locations without the extreme cost of a ton of actual board components. After testing the concept extensively, we found it worked well and would keep the costs down while giving players an explosion of Flash Point maps to use, both during the campaign and afterward.

Next, we turned our attention to the story. What kind of story did we want to tell? We wanted to make the players feel like they were living through a season of a compelling TV show – where THEY were the stars! Our campaign would feature an overarching narrative told throughout the campaign, with smaller stories told in the individual episodes of the game. Each episode would move the bigger story forward a little bit.

In the end, about 90% of the original outline made it into the game. It made sense that you played as a rookie squad, earning experience, skills, and new equipment over the course of the story as the danger grew and you were put to the test. In Flash Point: Legacy of Flame, players create an entire roster of firefighters instead of each player sticking to one character the entire campaign because – as in the original game – you can perform crew changes and swap out who you bring in during each episode. Maybe you need a paramedic now, while later you need a ladder specialist!

One of the episode maps after much testing and revision

Once the story was set, we drew out the (rough) maps and tested them by playing the original Flash Point on them. Most maps made it through with only a handful of adjustments, but some went through wild changes. We limited some ideas that were extremely cool but would have required too much mental dexterity and would bring the action to a screeching halt. Too much choose-your-own-adventure in the middle of a session of Flash Point pulls you out of the game — and having a second adventure start immediately on the same board after you won was intriguing, but the endgame board state being so wildly unpredictable kiboshed that idea.

Next, we started focusing on how each episode would play. Each episode needed to answer “Yes” to these questions:

1. Does it FEEL like Flash Point?

2. Is there something interesting and unique to Flash Point?

3. Does it move the story and/or characters forward?

We also tried to never introduce a new game mechanism or concept without having it reappear at least one more time in a subsequent episode. In legacy games, if you learn a new rule in one game only to never use it again, or have it resurface so much later that you have forgotten how it works, you take the players out of the game. We tried to maintain a nice, steady flow in onboarding rules so that playgroups would not be overburdened or left scratching their heads.

We also wanted to make sure that even if someone had never played Flash Point before or did not have a lot of gaming experience, they could start at the beginning and learn how to play Flash Point quickly. On the flip side, those with a lot of Flash Point experience could jump right into the story. (We do, however, suggest that all players begin with the tutorial prologue episodes because you can begin to build rapport with the Chief, and that’s always a good idea!)

Always at the forefront of our conversations was the player experience. Legacy games should have a seamless flow, encompassing and switching between component storage, books, and cards. We worked to provide the player the most fun and straightforward experience possible, and this meant testing the episodes repeatedly, each time focusing on a different aspect of gameplay until we were certain we had the right game flow and had ironed out the little details, like paragraph numbers and the timing of when new components come out.

Early version of individual firefighter cards with room to change, grow, and take injuries

Here I have to put the spotlight on Chris. His talent for rules craftmanship, attention to detail, and ability to visualize the flow of the game made this process much easier. In a legacy game, it’s easy to overwhelm players or add confusion as you guide them to the next steps of the campaign, but Chris was able to lock all that down in a way that allowed us to keep moving forward at a rapid pace.

In the narrative, I was looking for moments authentic to the lives of firefighters. With that in mind, I reached out to two consultants: one a retired fire chief, and the other a firefighter and paramedic. They provided invaluable insight and information. Every step of the way we tried to use their experience gained firsthand from putting their lives on the line. What they provided gave the design process and the final result more depth and tangibility.

To prevent gameplay from getting overblown and to help with organization, we made each game of Flash Point: Legacy of Flame into a separate episode, and internally, we grouped those episodes into three acts.

Fortunately, Ken is a genius at Tabletop Simulator and was able to create playable mods for each of the episodes as we were still separated across states due to the pandemic. This made it easy to enact changes on the fly as we tested, quickly identifying what worked and what didn’t. This accelerated process made it a breeze to create a physical copy of Act 1 (with help from The Game Crafter) so that IBC could play an actual hard copy of the game to see what madness we had wrought.

Tabletop Simulator facilitated frequent testing and rapid improvements

IBC did their own internal testing and gave us solid notes. Travis Worthington, Nick Little, Sydney Engelstein, and everyone at Indie Boards & Cards have been outstanding partners in this entire process. Having been through the legacy process with Aeon’s End, Nick demonstrated a means of tracking components in spreadsheets that greatly streamlined the development process (especially across multiple decks of cards and a paragraph book).

Only after we had refined the first act did we move on to the next few episodes of Act 2. We wanted to ensure nothing got lost from one episode to the next, the upgrading process didn’t happen too quickly, and the story moved along at the right pace. We also wanted to account for what would happen if players were struggling. Should we add a catch-up mechanism? How do we add variability? One of our goals, and one of the things we like best about legacy games, is that when people talk about the game with others who have played it, their choices lead to wildly different outcomes.

This system continued, virtually testing a small number of episodes, fixing what needed it, producing the physical set of those episodes for IBC to review and critique, making necessary adjustments, looking at the big picture, and maintaining the overall flow — rinse and repeat.

Here’s something that should go without saying: The process of making a legacy game is a long one. A year ago, my kids asked me why it was taking so long, seeing how other game designs of ours had been started and already published while Flash Point: Legacy of Flame was still in development. I told them it was the difference between making an independent film and an Avengers movie; the latter has so many more moving pieces that it is impossible to rush and settle for something less than what best serves the game — and when it came to making this game, it was essentially like making over a dozen games with a continuity that ties them together.

Eventually the process was completed, the files were all handed over, and the final development began. I can’t tell you how weird it was the first couple of weeks we didn’t have regular development meetings about Flash Point. Fortunately for us, Nick and the IBC team provided regular updates and kept us in the loop during development. We were able to weigh in on different options, correct the inevitable things we missed along the way, and give insight as to why we decided to do certain things one way instead of another.

Final components

Now, in 2025, people are finally gearing up and heading into the inferno with Flash Point: Legacy of Flame. The culmination of years of work is in the hands of players, and we couldn’t be more thrilled.

Overall, I am extremely grateful that during that fateful conversation way back in 2020, Tricia and Ken randomly discussed the possibility of a Flash Point legacy game. The work we did to bring this game to life has given me the opportunity to stretch and grow as a designer, work with some wonderful people at IBC, and spend time basking in the glow of collaboration with my design partners and friends, even during a pandemic. Mostly, though, it has given us the opportunity to bring into the world a legacy experience we think players are all going to love. Have fun playing Flash Point: Legacy of Flame!

Kevin Rodgers

From left: Ken, Chris, and Kevin R.