Designer's Notes Bang!

USUALLY, when I find myself involved in a family gathering, we end up playing the same old games. This is due to the fact that people lack the good will to learn new game rules, but I also noticed that few interesting games support more than 5 players.
I decided therefore to develop a simple, fast and enough “noisy” game capable of involving a wide range of players while being also intriguing to (and approachable by) even casual players. The Wild West background seems best suited for these goals: it is widely known, it is enough chaotic and it instantly renders the taste of challenge between players. Moreover, I am an above average fan of Western themes, which never hurts.
The original conception, back to October 1999, did not have roles; all players were Outlaws on their own in a shootout, with the main objective of gaining the highest rewards. After three months of stagnation, I introduced the roles and the concept of distance between players, and I managed to finish for January 2000 a prototype of the game which was surprisingly similar to the final version of the game.
Overall I can say to have been lucky: the game mechanics worked well even during the first games, the game was balanced, and even the deck composition seemed appropriate: it is not by chance that in the following two years the game went substantially unmodified before the changes aked by daVinci.
The game was originally for 2-9 players and had cards with written text stating their effects, flavor texts, about 40 markers for the life points (the brilliant idea of putting bullets on the back of unused “character” cards was provided by daVinci staff), an 8-sided die (which eventually evolved in the “draw!” mechanic) and more cards (some of them included in expansion sets). I willingly let the game “light”: luck has a certain impact on the overall game economy and this was absolutely needed to reach my original goals.

I realized I made a good work when I showed the game to members of my local Chess Club. The day after the first games, friends were exchanging SMS messages saying “BANG!” and “Avoid” (the previous name of “Missed!” cards). They also suggested the name “BANG!” for the game, while the original title was something like “Tombstone” or “Dodge City”.
After two years the interest about the game in the Chess Club was far from ending: they talked about organizing a tournament and BANG! was played more than any other game, including Chess. Even outside the Club the game was successful: one player wanted me to print a “deluxe” version of the game buying a brand new color printer cartridge and a whole pack of photographic paper (spending about $120)! At this point, advised by several sources, I finally decided to search a company willing to publish my game, and daVinci almost instantly saw the game's potential.
The work done with daVinci was hard, but I am fully satisfied with the result: the game maintained its original feeling even after the requires modifications. I feel lucky and honored to be the first author of a daVinci game, because I know the other authors and I know the love of daVinci members for good games and well-done things in general.
I just hope that players will think the same!