Designer Diary: Treasure of the Dwarves | BoardGameGeek News

by bruno faidutti

From One Publisher to Another

Those who know me a bit know that I’ve been disappointed with a recent game of mine, Dreadful Circus. The publisher, Portal Games, changed the setting of the game, something I can understand, but also and more critically modified most of the scoring systems and the game balance. I didn’t like the result.

I really like Portal; I’ve known Merry and Ignacy for quite long, and I didn’t want to fall out with them. We discussed in a calm and friendly manner how to find a solution. They had wrongs since they did all these groundless changes, but they also had excuses, especially the Covid period that made playtesting difficult. I had wrongs since I was not careful enough and didn’t jump in in time to take the development back in hand.

Anyway, we agreed that I would get back the rights for the game at the end of 2022, and I started to look for another publisher for my “dwarven chest game”. Having been frustrated by the Dreadful Circus experience, I didn’t look for a big publisher but rather for someone who would agree at once to publish my game as I had designed it. None of my games has been tested, fine-tuned, and tinkered with more than this one, and I hold it to be my masterwork – in the original sense, not necessarily my best design but certainly the one in which I have invested all my style and experience.

Around that same time, Trollfest, designed with Camille Mathieu, was released. I had really enjoyed working with the small team at Trick or Treat Studios and was really pleased with the result. Trick or Treat was one of the first companies I submitted this game to, and I am extremely pleased they liked it and wanted to do it, even when I know quite well they will probably sell less than big, established publishers. For Trollfest, we worked through an online forum where most of the people involved in the publication took part, including the designer, and I now think this is the simple, flexible, and efficient process most publishers should use.

Mechanisms, Components, Setting

Game designers are regularly asked whether their designs usually start from a setting or from a mechanism idea. I usually answer that it depends and add that the initial spark can also be a component.

Treasure of the Dwarves started from a mechanism idea: the “no coming back” auction system. In 2017, I had started working with Eric Lang on a relatively heavy board game in which magicians were answering other players’ adjudications with sets of cards placed in a small envelope. The game was challenging, but far too long and too slow. We gave up, but I had kept in mind the idea of secret offers presented in envelopes.

Playtesting two versions of “Wizardopolis”

In 2018 or 2019, I bought a set of papier mâché boxes of various shapes and sizes in a Parisian department store, thinking I might use them in future prototypes. They stayed on my desk for quite a long time and inspired a few games, including Maracas, later published by Blue Orange. Remembering the “Wizardopolis” envelope auction system, I thought that small boxes might be easier to manipulate, though they could contain only tokens, no cards.


Tokens, of course, meant coins, maybe gems, and various items. Who is known to keep coins, gems, and other treasures in chests? Dragons, maybe, but most of all dwarves. The concept is nothing new, but it fits the system. I tried to find something more original, but all of my and my playtester friends’ ideas were either less fun or less consistent, and often both. Better consistency and efficiency than originality at all costs.

In this case, the order of appearance was mechanism, component, and finally setting, after which was only design and fine tuning — but that lasted for years.

An early prototype in my old flat (top), and a late one in my new flat. Other game designers featured in the pictures are Camille Mathieu (Trollfest, TROLLympics), Hervé Marly (Skull, The Werewolves of Miller’s Hollow), and Ghislain Masson (Not Alone, Badass Force)

As you can see in the picture above, there were no screens in my prototypes. Each player has two boxes: a big one (the chest) and a smaller one (the box). This set-up is more convenient and thematically more consistent; dwarves use wooden chests, not cloth screens. Unfortunately boxes, like any unusual component, are relatively expensive. That’s why the bigger chests have been replaced by screens in the published game.

I saw a copy of Time Capsules played at my ludopathic gathering in 2024, and I would not be surprised to learn that its designers also started from the same kind of tiny boxes. Anyway, I plan to buy and play this game one of these days.

Bluffing, Auctions, and Combos

I’ve been told that I am one of the boardgame designers whose style is the easiest to spot when playing a new game. This can be taken both as a compliment — I have a style — and as a reproach: I can’t get out of it.

While computers create new and sometimes unexpected ways of gaming, I try to design social games, games that allow, or even require, that you get several people around a wooden table, if possible with a few beers. Games that cannot satisfactorily be played online are either games in which players are laughing at each other, or games in which players are silently looking in each other’s eyes. The best ones, or at least the ones I prefer, are both: fun and tense. If you like this style, you won’t be disappointed with Treasure of the Dwarves, a game of auction, bluffing, combos, and deceit that works well with 3 to 8 players – okay, maybe with 5 to 8. It’s less fun but still very tense at 3 or 4.

A 3D rendering of the final components

Dwarves are not heroes, but a calculating folk with a great idea of the value of money. Some are tricky and treacherous and pretty bad lots; some are not but are decent enough people, if you don’t expect too much.

—J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

Treasure of the Dwarves is an auction game with an original bidding system. Every round, one or two players auction a magical item card. Each player must make an offer for one of the available cards by placing one or more coins or gems in a small chest.

Treasure of the Dwarves is a bluffing game. The seller looks at the content of the chests in any order, but cannot go back to a box they have already seen. Doing so would go against the dwarven etiquette rules, which are even stricter than the Japanese ones, and no one wants to do hara-kiri with a battleaxe. A clever dwarf, and dwarves are usually clever, can sometimes get an item at a good price with a mediocre offer, hoping it will be looked at last.

Treasure of the Dwarves is a combo game, in which players accumulate resources in gems, coins, and cards, using the cards to build their own scoring systems during the game. This “scoring-rules building” feels a bit like a game I really like, Fantasy Realms.

Treasure of the Dwarves is a mean and highly interactive game, with many opportunities for deceit and take-that. One can both manipulate opponents and sometimes sabotage their treasures.

Treasure of the Dwarves is therefore both a tactical and a strategy game. It is tactical when trying to make the right bid for the right card. It is strategic when planning one’s final scoring.

“I thought dwarfs loved gold,” said Angua.

“They just say that to get it into bed.”

—Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay

The eight dwarves and their chests

I don’t think there’s a single board game that I have more playtested, developed, fine-tuned than this one. It is certainly the most representative of my design style, my idea of what a board game should be.

Over five years, I have played it hundreds of times, carefully balancing and rebalancing the scorings for coins, gems, and cards. Several playtesters added their grain of salt to it, especially Vincent Pessel, who is very good at spotting small imbalances and rules issues, and Croc, who had the idea of two simultaneous auctions. This is what makes possible a fast and fun eight-player game, something relatively rare with non-party games.

The Art

Two artists, Roland MacDonald and Donald Crank, have contributed to the art in Treasure of the Dwarves. The cover art, which could have featured in an illustrated edition of Tolkien, gives the traditional image of the dwarven society.

The many magic items are more surprising. One can imagine that they are very old and show traces of the distant cultural influence of some other underground people, maybe the lizard men living near the underground lakes and rivers. At least one of the dwarves on the box above looks definitely suspicious. After all, what do we really know of the origins of dwarven culture? In German traditions, dwarves live in hollow mountains, but are also linked with rivers and springs.

Should the game title instead be “Treasure of the Dwarfs”?

“No reviewer (that I have seen), although all have carefully used the correct dwarfs themselves, has commented on the fact (which I only became conscious of through reviews) that I use throughout the ‘incorrect’ plural dwarves. I am afraid it is just a piece of private bad grammar, rather shocking in a philologist; but I shall have to go on with it. Perhaps my dwarf – since he and the gnome are only translations into approximate equivalents of creatures with different names and rather different functions in their own world – may be allowed a peculiar plural. The real ‘historical’ plural of dwarf (like teeth of tooth) is dwarrows, anyway: rather a nice word, but a bit too archaic. Still I rather wish I had used the word dwarrow.”

—Letter from J.R.R. Tolkien, 1938

Dwarves and Magical Items

Treasure of the Dwarves is not really, or not seriously, about mythology, and the magical items in it have names that suggest their in-game abilities. For some time, however, I toyed with the idea of using items from the Norse and German mythologies in which dwarves are described as small but powerful underground creatures specialized in crafting and guarding magic stuff. The English word “dwarf” comes from the old Norse “dverg”.

To learn more about the cultural history of these creatures, I recommend Claude Lecouteux’s The Hidden History of Elves & Dwarfs, even when its approach is old fashioned, as well as, in a more specifically British context, Francis Young’s recent book, Twilight of the Godlings, in which I’ve found this marvelous explanation, by Sir Walter Scott, of the origins of dwarfs and of their affinities for caves and metals – dwarves are basically Baltic pygmy refugees:

There seems reason to conclude that these duergar [dwarves] were originally nothing else than the diminutive natives of the Lappish, Lettish, and Finnish nations, who, flying before the conquering weapons of the Asae [Asians], sought the most retired regions of the north, and there endeavoured to hide themselves from their eastern invaders. They were a little diminutive race, but possessed of some skill probably in mining or smelting minerals, with which the country abounds; perhaps also they might, from their acquaintance with the changes of the clouds, or meteorological phenomena, be judges of weather, and so enjoy another title to supernatural skill. At any rate, it has been plausibly supposed, that these poor people, who sought caverns and hiding-places from the persecution of the Asae, were in some respects compensated for inferiority in strength and stature, by the art and power with which the superstition of the enemy invested them. These oppressed, yet dreaded fugitives, obtained, naturally enough, the character of the German spirits called Kobold, from which the English Goblin and the Scottish Bogle, by some inversion and alteration of pronunciation, are evidently derived.

—Sir Walter Scott, Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, 1830

There’s definitely a book waiting to be written about euhemerism gone mad.

I soon abandoned the idea of precise mythological references, of magical artifacts drawn from myths or literature. Doing so would have given to the game a serious feel that didn’t fit with its spirit. Also, and this is probably the most important, I wanted to give to most items names that would refer to their in-game effects, not names that referred vaguely to vaguely known stories. Anyway, I did some research, here it is…

The “prose Edda”, written at the beginning of the XIIIth century, tells how Loki cut and stole the wonderful hair of Sif, Thor’s wife. Thor got angry and requested Loki get that hair back, which he could do only with the help of the dwarven goldsmith in their underground lair of Svartheim. Loki first went to three dwarf brothers, the sons of the great dwarven smith Ivaldi. They made shining golden hair for Sif, but didn’t stop there. They kept on working and forged Gungnir, a spear that could not be blocked by any, and Skíðblaðnir, a ship that could be folded and kept in its owner’s pocket.

Loki then went to see two other dwarven craftsmen, Brokkr and Eitri, and bet them his head that they could not make three nicer magical items than those. They took the bet and forged three other items: Gullin-Börsti, a magic golden pig that glows in the dark; Draupnir, a golden ring or armband that copies itself every nine days; and Mjölnir, a short-handled hammer that breaks everything it touches. The gods judged that Loki had lost his bet, and Frey kept the pig and the ship, Odin kept the spear and the ring, and Thor, as everyone knows, took the hammer. Of course, Loki found a way out of this so that he could keep playing nasty tricks to fellow gods.

Art by Arthur Rackham for The Ring of the Nibelung, 1910

Other stories in the Edda relay that the dwarves created Gleipnir, the leash, soft as silk and solid as iron, that was used to hold the mighty wolf Fenris. Gleipnir is made from the sound of a cat’s footfall, the beard of a woman, the roots of a mountain, the sinews of a bear, the breath of a fish, and the spittle of a bird. The dwarves also forged Huliðshjálmr, the helmet of invisibility; Thrymgyöll, the iron gate of the underworld; Brisingamen, Freya’s amber torque; as well as Járngreipr, the iron gloves that Thor needs to wield Mjölnir, due to its too short handle – one more of Loki’s nasty tricks.

The “poetic Edda” tells how the two dwarves Dvalinn and Durinn forged the golden hilt sword Tyrfing. It never misses, never rust, and cuts through stone and iron as easily as through cloth, but once taken out of its sheath, it cannot be put back until it has killed a man and caused three great evils. The same is true of another dwarven sword, Dáinsleif, which had been offered to King Hörni and drawn at least once, when his daughter had been kidnapped.

Art by Arthur Rackham for The Ring of the Nibelung, 1910

The German song of the Nibelung, written a few decades later, is, in some ways, the continuation of this story, with less magic stuff but with a dragon, Fafnir. The dragon is killed by Sigfried with a single blow of the magic sword Gram, or Nothung, or Balmung which as been forged, or at least reforged, by dwarves.

The Niebelung, the original owners of the Rhine treasure, are often described as dwarves, and the treasure is now guarded by a dwarf, Alberich. Among the items in the treasure are an invisibility cloak, which Siegfried uses to replace Brünnhild’s husband Gunther during her wedding night, and a magic rod that gives absolute power over everything but in which no one seems to be really interested. In later versions, such as Wagner’s Ring der Nibelungen, these become Tarnhelm, the helmet of shapeshifting, and the eponymous Ring, carrying both great power and a terrible curse.

The Rhine maidens after Alberich and the dwarves have stolen the rhinegold. German collectible card, 1905.

These, of course, inspired J.R.R. Tolkien. In The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, dwarves didn’t create the Ring, but they forged other powerful artefacts such as Narsil, the sword of Elendil, the dragon-helm of Dor-lòmin, and the Mithril shirt that was offered to Bilbo. They didn’t do only metal since they also created the Arkenstone which glows in the dark, the magical music instruments played by Thorin and his companions after seizing Erebor. In The Silmarillion, one of the three silmarils is set on the Nauglàmir, the necklace of the dwarves.

The dwarves of yore made mighty spells,

While hammers fell like ringing bells

In places deep, where dark things sleep,

In hollow halls beneath the fells.

On silver necklaces they strung

The light of stars, on crowns they hung

The dragon-fire, from twisted wire

The melody of harps they wrung.

—J.R.R Tolkien, The Hobbit

While dwarves from the Nordic and Germanic legends were, even in the etymological sense, autochtonous, Tolkiens’s ones, the twelve dwarves looking for their lost kingdom, are also somewhat Jewish, so I could even have added the Ark of the Covenant and some more, but it would have started to get messy.

The idea that dwarves don’t use magic or even avoid it, which has become popular in fantasy role-playing games, comes from a literary and historical misinterpretation. In mythology, and even in Tolkien’s books, when dwarves are impervious to magic, it’s because they are very good at it, not because they are inherently non-magical. Opposing an elven magic made of spells and a dwarven magic embodied in objects is also a very recent idea. Ancient texts don’t even make a clear difference between dwarves and elves.

Adding these mythical and literary references in the game, in a tongue in cheek way, could have been an opportunity to state once more that cultural references are not to be ignored, but also not to be taken too seriously. Unfortunately, the magical properties of these “authentic” items didn’t always fit well with my game mechanisms and, anyway, the references wouldn’t have meant anything for players who didn’t know the items beforehand. I thought it more important to give every card a name that could suggest its effect on the game than to add a few erudite winks.

Also, in most of these stories, while dwarves forge, cast, or mold magical artifacts, they don’t keep or trade them; swords and jewels usually end up in the hands of gods, or sometimes of petty humans. Nevertheless, a game about dwarves and treasures is necessarily a bit about the Edda, a bit about the Niebelung, a bit about Tolkien, a bit about good old D&D – and better mix them all, like Terry Pratchett did in literature.

Dwarfs have thousands of words for “gold” but will use any of them in an emergency, such as when they see some gold that doesn’t belong to them.

—Terry Pratchett, Soul Music

The only two direct references I made on the cards are the Grail, because while no one knows what the grail is, everyone knows about it, and the Eye of Zoltar. The latter was added during the latest revision of the game, and I wanted to call it an eye because its effect was similar to that of the Colored Eye and another eye that I eventually removed. Of course, I could have named it the Eye of Odin, but it would have felt a bit serious and pretentious.

I went for the Eye of Zoltar, from Jasper Fforde’s eponymous novel. I had just read The Great Troll War, the next book in The Last Dragonslayer series, and could not resist quoting it. I urge you all to read the whole funny and clever series. Yes, it’s fantasy for teenage girls, a crowded genre, but it’s also much more than that.

A magnificent pink ruby the size of a gooses’e egg. It belonged to a wizard I admire greatly. You may find me…the eye of Zoltar.

—Jasper Fforde, The Eye of Zoltar

Dwarves and Dragons

Several of my games feature dragons, including Dragon’s Gold (which got a new edition from Samaruc Games in 2024), Fist of Dragonstones and, more recently, Dragons.

The reason for this, of course, is that I am often inspired by the generic medieval fantasy setting in which I wallowed as a teenager and which I still enjoy. I could not bring living dragons into Treasure of the Dwarves, where there is no violent fight, but most if not all of the coins, gems, and shining or magical items traded must have belonged to a dragon at some time. They certainly have great value for dwarves, especially since old tales say that the first dragon, Fafnir, was originally a dwarf, gradually changed into an ugly monster by his fear and avarice.

The Crown Jewels

Far from the Germanic or Nordic forests, the dwarves seriously considered sailing to Japan to get regalia. Having decided, for game balance reasons, that there would be three or four different crown jewels of the King under the mountain, I had to decide what exactly they were. In France, and I think in most western countries, the first regalia we think of are those of the British crown. Unfortunately, the list is vague and there are, anyway, way more than three.

This left me with two official sets of three items. Those from the Japanese emperor, which have never been shown to the public, are a sword, a mirror, and a curved and mysterious jade stone. Those from the Austrian emperor, which can be seen in Wien in the Schatzkammer Museum, are a crown, an orb, and a scepter.

I was first tempted to call my cards mirror, sword, and jewel because I believe, for more political than aesthetic reasons, that we should always try to mix cultural references in the most ironic and messy way possible. (Or should I write the most ironic and messy possible way?) My Japanese friends would have enjoyed the wink.

The problem was the mirror since it was obvious to me that only a card copying another card’s effect could be called a mirror. And anyway, these three items already feature in another game of mine, Warehouse 51, so I went for the less known Austro-Hungarian jewels, crown, orb, and scepter, which I had discovered when writing my PhD about unicorns. (Believe it or not, the scepter is made of unicorn horn.) And since Austrian is in the Germanic world, it fits better with the Nibelungen and all that stuff, never mind mixing and irony.

Going Farther

Thirty years ago, I often, usually in vain, suggested that publishers add a few blank cards in my games so that players could try to add their own stuff. After all, that’s how I started enjoying game design, by adding alien powers and card effects to Cosmic Encounter. I don’t insist on this now because if one likes and plays a game enough to want to add their own card effects, one also likes and plays it enough to buy card sleeves, and some sleeves have opaque backs that allow one to personalize any game. That’s how I recently added homemade cards to my copy of The Vale of Eternity.

Anyway, it’s relatively easy to do this with Treasure of the Dwarves, and you can email me your best ideas. Be wary, however, not to break the game’s balance. Some cards can be better than other ones; that’s what makes auctions meaningful, but not too much, or not always, or not for everyone. Be careful also with the global balance between the three main ways to score: coins, gems, and cards.

It Is Here

The above diary is, except maybe for the English grammar corrections that Eric Martin will make to it, the blogpost I wrote about Treasure of the Dwarves in February 2025.

My willingness to push what is my favorite — and probably my last — big box design is the reason why I asked Eric Martin whether I could also post this on BGG. It is also one of the reasons I missed the Cannes Festival des Jeux, which I used to attend every year, to instead travel to Louisville, Kentucky for GAMA Expo, where my friends at Trick or Treat were, for the first time, showing both Treasure of the Dwarves and TROLLympics, a fun card and dice game designed with my friend Camille Mathieu that’s kind of a follow-up to Trollfest, which I write about in French and English on my blog.

With the Trick or Treat team at GAMA Expo

I played my first games of Treasure of the Dwarves with the final components. I especially like the gems, which are bigger and nicer than the ones in my prototype, but I regret there’s no scoring sheet. We’ll design one and we will upload it soon on BGG.

The game was very well received, even when it was a bit strange to be pushing a big box game, something I don’t do often these days, and when the talk at the fair was about the likely market turn toward smaller and cheaper games, mostly due to the political situation in the U.S. Social anxiety makes people want to play games to escape reality — that’s the whole point of gaming — but it also makes people want to save some money and go for cheaper games. Most of my future games will be cheap small boxes, but the game I am most proud of, the one I really want to succeed is this one big box, is Treasure of the Dwarves.

Bruno Faidutti

Demoing the game at GAMA Expo