Wolfgang Kramer

Wolfgang Kramer is considered one of the key innovators of modern board games. He is often credited with pioneering area-control mechanics, with his game El Grande, action-point systems, with the Mask Trilogy, and even introducing the familiar victory-point-track-going-around-the-board in Heimlich & Co. (see below)

Wolfgang Kramer was Germany's first full-time professional game-designer. For many years, Kramer and Michael Kiesling worked on games together by telephone and fax correspondence despite never having met. They are still producing games together, as of 2012, with their Essen 2012 release, The Palaces of Carrara. Kramer is now in his seventies, and Kiesling in his fifties.

Kramer has often collaborated with other authors. His collaboration with Richard Ulrich has given him two of his most notable successes, El Grande, and The Princes of Florence. Kramer has won the German "Spiel Des Jahres" prize a record five times.

There does not seem to be a common theme throughout Kramer's work, which ranges from family games, through to high-strategy titles. What is evident in his games is the sheer wealth of experience Kramer and his collaborators carry.

Abridged List of Notable Games


1995 El Grande (with Richard Ulrich)
1999 Tikal, and later Mask Trilogy games (with Michael Kiesling)
2000 The Princes of Florence (with Richard Ulrich)
2007 Colosseum (with Markus Lübke)


Interviews

Interviews by an Optimist # 73 - Wolfgang Kramer (El Grande)




See the weblinks module for more interviews.

It is said that Kramer's Heimlich & Co. was the first to use a victory point track going around the board (known among German gamers as a Kramerleiste). (See westpark-gamers.de interview.)

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