Hi domergamer, and welcome to the forums!
There's just one thing that I can think of which may be of interest, but I'm not 100% sure about it (I am sure others here will correct me if I'm wrong though). This is that the design of the world-famous meeple, as introduced by Carcassonne, was a bit of an after-thought and was designed in a single evening by Bernd Brunnhofer of Hans im Glück.
Good luck with the project. Please post your report here afterwards for us all to enjoy!
Kettlefish: Your interview was helpful!
Here's the write-up as I've drafted it. This is not the final version. It'll be appearing on The Opinionated Gamers on Friday.
The first ideas for Carcassonne came to Klaus-Jürgen Wrede when he was touring the south of France on vacation in the late 1990s. He was tracing the history of the crusade against the Cathars for a novel he was writing, and his travels took him through a region covered with castles and walled cities. He fell in love with the landscape, everything from the countryside to one of the huge fortressed cities, Carcassonne.
His trip gave him an idea for a game where the players imitate the growing of cities and castles. The first prototype was completed soon after he returned from vacation, but it was more complex than he had hoped: he wanted the game to have simple, intuitive rules while still featuring a strategic touch. He started reducing the game to its essentials, experimenting with different iterations. He painted the first tiles by hand with watercolors. The first prototype was ready by early 2000.
Wrede -- who was, at the time, a completely unknown game designer -- sent the rules and some photographs for Carcassonne (plus similar materials for a couple of other games) to Hans im Glück. They landed on the desk of Dirk Geilenkeuser, who saw potential in Carcassonne. The publisher asked for the prototype of the game, and HiG agreed to publish it in May 2000. The game then entered development, with HiG hurrying to have it ready by October.
Doris Matthäus did the game’s artwork, but it was Bernd Brunnhofer (founder of of Hans im Glück and designer of St. Petersburg) that gave the game its most iconic feature: the meeple. Wooden figurines representing people weren’t new to boardgaming, but Carcassonne was the first game to use the shape of the modern meeple. One account of the history of meeples attributes the word itself to gamer Alison Hansel, who used the term when playing Carcassonne as a portmanteau of “my people.”
The game went viral shortly after its release. It won the Spiel des Jahres in 2001, a strong year that featured nominees or recommendations from Reiner Knizia, Alan Moon, and Uwe Rosenberg, among others. After the relative complexity of Tikal and Torres, the jury veered towards a lighter game, praising the simple yet tactical gameplay of Carcassonne. The game won the Deutscher Spiele Preis that year, and it received a nomination for the Gamers’ Choice Award (which would become the International Gamers Award), ultimately losing to The Princes of Florence.
Carcassonne and its expansions have sold more than ten million copies, making it the third bestselling SdJ winner (behind Rummikub and Catan, respectively). It has received dozens of expansions and mini-expansions, as well as a few spin off games: too many to recount here. There are also several fan expansions. I asked Klaus-Jürgen Wrede what his favorite expansion was, and he said it was the dragon from The Princess and the Dragon.
Wrede has gone on to design other games, most notably The Downfall of Pompeii (2004), Mesopotamia (2005), and Rapa Nui (2011). The book he was researching when he visited the south of France was released this year: it is called "Das Geheimnis des Genter Altars" (“The Secrets of the Ghent Altarpiece”).
Carcassonne -- and its many, many expansions and spinoffs -- is still in print today. The game has been released in more than 27 languages. Carcassonne received a fresh coat of paint late last year, with minor changes occurring to the cover and the tile artwork.
The game received an iOS edition in 2010, and to date there have been more than 3.2 million online games played.