Taking a break from being a part of the boss battles and other events at Gen Con 2025, François Jourdain, lead game designer for the Whispers from the Maze set, took time to answer questions. In the first post for this Q&A, we focused on the inspirations, the new mechanics and deck archetypes. Make sure to check out the follow-up post, where he discusses the meta and the upcoming Skybound Odyssey set, releasing Oct. 3.

You were the lead designer on Whispers from the Maze. What’s the experience like, working on these sets?

I worked on Beyond the Gates a lot. All of the design team worked on BTG, and after that, we split into different teams. I spent a little time on Trial by Frost when it was in the early stage of conception, and a few months after that, I started working full-time on WFM with Merlin. We were like colleagues. It’s easy to say I was doing it because I had the game designer title, but we were both really invested in it with different roles. I was more design-focused, and he was doing scheduling, organization, testing, things like that. I had the last call on design, but I think I had to only use it once. We also had Léa at that point, who was still in her studies, working with us. Now she’s a full game designer. It was a great team, I love them.

What kinds of games inspire your work?

Before going back to school, I designed games for myself for six years. At the beginning, it was like a hobby. I enjoyed designing when I discovered TTRPGs, and I had a universe in my head that I was developing through different media. When I discovered TTRPGs, I knew that was the medium I wanted it to be in. So I started working on that. A few months ago, I looked back at the first version again, and I died laughing because it was so terribly bad, awesomely bad. I showed it to my girlfriend and we laughed because it was really bad. But I kept going.

After that, I started designing board games, and the more I went, the more I designed, the more I felt like I was falling in love with it. That’s what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I always felt like I needed to learn more, so I got into a school and did my studies. I was very early on in the industry, meeting people and working on my projects. And I met some people and went to work on Altered.

I am a huge World of Warcraft player, and I think it’s a game that has inspired me and helped me fall in love with TTRPGs, because what I like to design the most is classes. I love class design. In other game genres, I love Magic, I love Hearthstone, I love Starcraft 2; I’m a huge RTS fan. I also love Pandemic, like cooperative games. I love working with people in games. What I love most about physical games is the social aspect to them, whether that be 1v1 or cooperative. I love working with and having people around, and it’s also the main reason that I love TTRPGs because you’re building something together, and that’s a great feeling.

Let’s talk about WFM. As an overall concept, how did you approach it? Was it the idea of the labyrinth first, or the mechanics?

When we started with Merlin, we put together a list of mechanics that we had in mind, and we both made a list rating them one to five, and we had another way of scoring them for danger or confidence, like we can’t have more than one that feels dangerous to try out in the same set. So we rated what we liked, and our view on confidence, and from that we had the list. At the top of the list was passive effects from reserve, so that was the base that we started working on. Then we approached the other design team, so lore, with Yoshi, and the art to say, “This is going to be a mechanic in Whispers. We both want this. It represents something that is more like outside of the expedition, like camping and resting.” And Yoshi had this story in mind for what was happening underneath.

We knew that passive effects couldn’t be the entire set, because there’s so many things you can do with it. But we could start there. So we went top-down from there to the labyrinth and what that could mean, and we had a bunch of different mechanics that we tried out, like “delve.” We had a mechanic where you could go on an expedition “delving,” which created a token that you then had to bring back to your reserve. You could only do that when your expedition moves forward, so you could set up tokens in one of your expeditions and then bring them back at one point for a big, like, cache of gold. But it was a bit too complicated, so we had to scratch that and it became “scout.”

I like scout because it plays with the reserve, which is a big theme of the set. It also had this flavor element to it, so that you say you’re sending scouts before your expedition to see what happens and what’s down there, is it safe to go?

How did you decide which characters would show up, and the cost for specific cards?

At the beginning of development for every set, Yoshi, our lore designer, has a huge list of characters that we can put into the set. And since they are at the maze, we had this whole concept with Icarus, the Minotaur, things like that. So that was the base. After this, it’s making sure that the characters help the narrative of the story tell something. That’s his job. We can have discussions about it, but mainly it’s Yoshi coming up with something. He sees the effects of the card, the cost, things like that, and says, “OK, that could be this.” And I’ll say, “OK, that’s fine, let’s go with that,” or sometimes I know it’s not perfect for some reason and he’ll come back with another proposition. But most of the time it’s one shot.

For the longest time, the Lernaean Hydra was the Minotaur. At some point we said “I think I want the Minotaur in Muna,” so we changed it, and it became the Lernaean Hydra. I don’t remember a specific card that we had to go back and forth on, I think it was pretty easy on that. There are some sets where we’ve had more back-and-forth, but this one was really straightforward in terms of choosing characters.

For WFM, what are some cards that you’re seeing played that you didn’t think would get much attention?

I didn’t think Evanescence would be played in almost every deck. I thought it was more of an Akesha spell, so I tried to design it like that. Same for Sap Infusion. I thought it was a good limited card, but I didn’t think it would be played in Afanas decks so much.

Sap Duende has been played a lot. I thought it was mostly a limited card, because we had trouble with that card. For the longest time, it didn’t say “Draw a card,” so it was not as good. But it was really fun, so I wanted to keep it, and it was really strong in limited. But I didn’t think it would see so much play in constructed. It doesn’t see a ton of competitive play, but there’s still some, and I see it all the time in Board Game Arena. I’m really happy about that, because it’s one of my favorite cards.

A card that I thought would see play but haven’t seen yet is Encore. To be honest, it’s quite good.

There seems to be a lot more removal in this set. How was that thought through?

That’s an interesting question, because when we started designing Whispers, the game wasn’t out yet. When it started reaching Kickstarters and started to be in the hands of players, we saw how the players took the game and the decks they made with uniques. Then we said, we need stronger answers for removal, because the ones we have in the core set are not efficient enough. We need those answers.

It was actually our pro player design team, the ones testing the game and trying to break it, that said we needed those removals.

So almost every removal that was in Whispers during development, almost every “send to reserve” became “discard.” Sometimes we even took down the mana cost to make sure each faction had good removals. Actually, for the Little Mouse, it was one of the first Muna designs. We knew we had to have an efficient sabotage in Muna, that felt like Muna. And we had a joke about the Little Mouse and the Tooth Fairy. In Beyond the Gates, we already knew that at some point there would be the Little Mouse in Muna that would be a callback to it (Ed. note: The Little Mouse is a mostly European counterpart to the Tooth Fairy in some mythologies).

Seeing how WFM is being played now, how do you feel about the removal aspects?

I think it’s great, to be honest. I’ve been License-Withdrawal’d so many times, but each time, yeah, if they didn’t have it, I win. So I think it’s OK, and you can still play around it. And as an Atsadi player, I don’t have that many boosts, so I’m like, “Haha, you can’t use it!” There’s still some way to work around it. Some of the removal might be a bit too up there, but it’s still a learning phase to play around them. Mostly, I’m really glad about it.

I wish the Muna one, Requiem, would be just a little bit stronger. It’s a great card, but it’s not as good as Duel of Grit, for example. I love Duel of Grit, it’s one of my favorite cards. Looking back on it, I thought at the time Muna was really well-served in Whispers. And we did some adjustment at the end where we took some things down a bit, and maybe we went a little bit far. I think we could’ve been a little bit more generous with Muna in the end. I think it’s still good! They have some great cards in there like Requiem and Little Mouse, two of my favorite cards in all of Altered. So I’m still happy with what we gave, but I think some of them could’ve been just a little bit higher.

Are there any archetypes that you’ve seen this set that caught you off-guard? Any that you expected to see that you haven’t?

Yeah, Teija Lyra Festival, I wasn’t expecting. I really thought Lindiwe would be higher. I’m a really bad Lindiwe player because it’s too hard for me, but I love seeing awesome players, top cut players, playing Lindiwe because it’s an awesome hero.

I feel like Auraq is not represented enough because we have an Auraq player on our team who plays like a god. Every time we make cards and give him the Lyra package, and we’re like, “OK, well, this is too strong.” Auraq has not reached her peak yet, and I think some decks exist out there that would really make her shine, because she’s really, really strong.

Was it a conscious choice to build out an Animal archetype and Artist/Song archetype for WFM?

Oh, yeah. Early on, I wanted Lyra to be nothing but Artist and Song, because my family are artists, and it’s not in every game that you can make them shine. What brought me to Lyra was the Artist, and I wanted to make a deck around them. When I had the chance, I tried to make that work. But there’s huge constraints when you’re doing a card set, limited, constructed. In the end, I couldn’t make everything I wanted to make to create a whole new archetype around it. But I think we managed to create something very good and fun. It’s not the most competitive deck to play but it’s very cool. What I love about it is that it can be played in all three Lyra heroes, and each of them has a specific strength with those artists, like boosting for the passive effect one turn early or having them get into your reserve faster with Fen, or putting them out at the top of the day because they all have zeroes. I’m really happy and proud of these designs.

Read the continued interview with François where we talk about the meta and Skybound Odyssey, and don’t miss our other exclusive Gen Con Q&A interview with Justin Parnell, Equinox sales and marketing director, Americas, discussing lessons learned in Altered’s first year.