Donald X. Vaccarino

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Dale Yu, Donald X. Vaccarino, and Valerie Putman.

Donald X. Vaccarino (also known as Donald X. or DXV) is a board game designer who created Dominion and its expansions. He also created the games Kingdom Builder, Monster Factory, Gauntlet of Fools, Temporum, Nefarious, and Greed. Donald frequents BGG Forums and the Dominion Strategy Forum, offering rules clarifications as well as input on many other Dominion related questions. He is well known for his unique language as well as his use of interesting analogies.

[edit] Rulings

Given that Donald X is the creator of the game, his word on Dominion rules is essentially considered law, equal to (and sometimes superseding) official rules. On rare occasions, usually with the introduction of a new card that complicates existing interactions, he may reverse a previous ruling. On such occasions, this wiki is usually promptly updated to reflect the change in rules.

[edit] Quotes

  • Blue Dogs - Donald referenced blue dogs in an attempt to explain the interaction between IronworksIronworks.jpg and TraderTrader.jpg. References to blue dogs became a running joke on the forums after this.
If I say, "feed the blue dog, then take it for a walk," "it" refers to the blue dog, including its blueness, but "it" does not mean "the dog you fed." We are talking about a blue dog, and I am giving you two commands concerning it. Feed it, walk it.
—Donald X., Ironworks and Trader
  • Insults - Donald used some curious insults in a post expressing his entertaining views on swearing on the Internet.
Swearing is bacon at midnight, and anyone who objects to it is a mustard-encrusted rat fancier.
  • Free Pizza - Donald often referenced free pizza in responses to various complaints about Isotropic or Goko.
If you give people free pizza for a while, they start to feel like they're owed it, and then when you say "now we are selling pizza only we don't have olives yet," they want to punish you. The lesson of course is never to give people free pizza. Make them pay from day one, and they'll gladly buy straight pepperoni, because hey, it's pizza! What were we thinking! The best move obv. would be to take isotropic down now, give people time to miss it.
  • Writing In Blood - Donald tossed out the idea of players keeping track of the score on their bellies with their own blood in a thread discussing point counters and note taking.
In all games, within game contexts, you may only do things expressly allowed by the rules. This is what it means to have rules; it is the covenant you have agreed to by agreeing to play. You can play tic-tac-toe in a van while yodeling, but putting a Z in a box is out of the question. It is not up to any rulebook to say that you can't use a memory aid; rather it is up to the rulebook to specifically allow it, or else you can't use one. It doesn't matter how much the game for you is not about this memorization, how much the memory thing seems tangential to whatever fun the game provides; you do not get to use anything other than your brain to handle that memorization, unless of course you are explicitly playing a variant. You also do not get to - and this is important - scrawl notes to yourself on your belly using your own blood. Games between players are played between players, and "players" do not by default include notebooks or pencils, even makeshift ones that are constructed from the players. Expecting all rulebooks to repeat this is nonsense, and anyway would offend people who don't like to talk about blood.
—Donald X., Keeping Score
For a while we tried a card in the ApprenticeApprentice.jpg / SalvagerSalvager.jpg family that gave you a mix of +1's of your choice for trashing a card. It was cwazy, today's word of the day. I dropped +Cards from it and it was still cwazy.


[edit] References

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