Joan of Arc: Maid of Orleans -- bag building rondel game

A little bit of history

Orleans is a game by Reiner Stockhausen that debuted at Essen in 2014. Soon after, TMG partnered with DLP (Reiner's company) to bring the game to the US, and we had a very successful Kickstarter project for a Deluxified version of the game. TMG has gone on to make "Deluxification" something of a brand, and we have since done Kickstarter projects for Deluxified versions of Yokohama and Chimera Station, and I'm sure there will be more to come. Orleans was greeted very warmly both in Europe and in the US, and it went on to win some awards and honors including a nomination for the Kennerspiel des Jahres in 2015. In the last year or so, 2 expansions have come out (Orleans: Invasion, and Orleans: Handel & Intrigue) as the game continues to be popular.

Almost a year ago now I was put onto the idea that perhaps a follow up game to Orleans would be welcome. This follow up game could be themed around Joan of Arc, as that's the first thing many people think about when they hear the name Orleans. I was unsure if Reiner was working on such a game, or interested in one from an outside designer, so I contacted him to find out. It turned out that he was interested in a Joan of Arc themed game to follow up Orleans, but he was too busy to make one of his own by Essen 2016, so he was shelving the idea.

I hadn't put any more thought into it beyond that, but come October I met with Reiner while at Essen. That week I had an idea that I thought could fit the bill, and so I asked if a Jan of Arc follow up to Orleans was still of interest to him. He said that it was, and so I fleshed out my ideas further and wrote down a preliminary rule set.

What I've been up to

I have been busy in the last few months getting 4 different games ready to go to print, all potentially in time for GenCon (though we'll see which ones actually turn out to be GenCon releases). So while I did begin making a prototype of the Joan of Arc game, I never completed one or played it. Now that I'm about to be unencumbered by Crusaders, Eminent Domain: Oblivion, Pioneer Days, and Harvest, starting next month I will be diving head first into working on this Joan of Arc game whole hog.

Here is some teaser information (and by teaser information, I pretty much mean a full description of the game I have in mind)...

Description of the game

In Joan of Arc - Maid of Orleans you will play as a saint giving visions to Joan of Arc, encouraging her to fight certain battles and accomplish certain tasks in order to achieve your own private goals. The board will show the north of France, covered in blue tiles [er, red... see comments below] representing English-controlled areas (battles for Joan to fight). As Joan wins battles, driving the English out, the tiles are removed to reveal a red [er, blue... see comments below], French controlled board underneath.  Many of these tiles will be minor battles, easier to defeat, but not worth as much, while certain significant battles will be much harder and worth a lot more points.

The action in this game will be driven by a bag-building rondel... there will be square tiles that you will place into your bag, and you'll draw some out and place them in a circle on your personal rondel board. You'll move your pawn around this rondel, activating tiles and collecting temporary resources to be used that turn to buy better tiles for your bag, or to move Joan of Arc around the board and help her win battles. As you move over tiles, they will be discarded and replaced with new ones drawn from your bag. Of course, when your bag is empty, you will put your discards into it and continue to play. Over time, your bag will become full of better tiles, so your actions will become stronger. 

Over the course of the game, you will help train Joan of Arc to be better at different aspects of fighting, and you will have her win battles for points and powers as she drives the English out of northern France. You'll score points by training Joan, by making her win battles, and by achieving your secret goals (which are related to the things Joan of Arc does on the board).

I have some more details in mind about exactly how these mechanics work, but as I mentioned, I have only half-created a prototype so far, but I have a pretty solid structure that I envision for the game. I'm sure once I get a prototype together and get the game to the table, there will be plenty of tweaks and changes to make; such is the design process. Perhaps once I get a few playtest iterations in, I'll feel comfortable sharing the rules here.

Why I'm excited

I'm excited about this design for a couple of reasons... 

For one thing, I think the bag-building rondel mechanism will work well, and has the potential to be a good euro-style driving mechanism for the game. 

Second, I think the theme fits well with the mechanism -- Joan of Arc was famous for hearing voices and getting visions from saints, so it makes sense that players are each sharing control of a single Joan of Arc figure on the board, and each trying to get her to do certain tasks. 

And finally, with the success and popularity of Orleans, I think such a follow up game (with similar branding) has the potential to reach a lot of players, and so will get played a lot right out of the gate.

What do you think?

Let me know in the comments below what you think of a Joan of Arc bag building game. What aspects would you expect to see in such a game? Does this sound like a game you'd like to play?

Casual Q&A

You've probably seen AMA threads (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit and elsewhere, where someone will make themselves available for a day to answer whatever questions people would like to ask them. I've done one myself to promote Yokohama when it was on Kickstarter.

I'd like to do a sort of casual version of that here on my blog. So if you'd like to ask me something, leave your question in the comments below and I'll make a follow up post with answers. As this is a game design blog, it might be best to ask questions about game design, game development, games I've played, and games I'm working on... but if you have a question on something else, you could ask that too.

I hope this will give me a chance to learn a little bit about who's reading my blog: how many people read it, and what they're interested in hearing about.

Looking forward to your questions!

Defining "Deck Learning" - in case I haven't yet...

In a comment on a recent post, my friend Thomas asked exactly what I meant by "Deck Learning".
"Deck Learning" is the term I coined for Eminent Domain to set it apart from "Deck Building". I know I've talked about this before, but I don't know that I've formally defined the term. Since I use that term a lot it's probably worth a post defining it.

In a deck BUILDING game, you add cards to your deck because you want them in your deck, and that's cool and interesting because they'll come up later. In a deck LEARNING, your deck gains cards as a side effect of the actions you take. This is similar in some ways -- your deck changes over time and the new cards will come up later like in a deck building game -- but also different in a few important ways. By way of example, in EmDo you might call a Survey role simply because you want a Survey card in your deck, but MOST of the time you do it because you want the effect of the Survey role. In fact, one could argue that after a point, adding another Survey card to your deck is actually a detriment.

So the more often you call Survey, the more Survey cards you get in your deck, and therefore the better you are at surveying (you can boost Survey more and more often), so it's like your deck "learns" how to Survey.

In Eminent Domain, one of the main features is this deck learning, but the catch is that you can't do well by just being really good at one of the roles. Rather you need to manage your deck so that you can pursue some strategy, and any successful strategy needs to incorporate at least 2 and usually at least 3 of the roles in the game.

Hopefully that helps clear up any questions you have on what I mean by "deck learning", if you would like any more information, lease leave a comment below!

Worker Learning - applying deck learning concepts to a worker placement game (YANGI)

I've mentioned before that I'd like to do something more with the deck learning mechanism, and that has led to a few ideas... some of which I've pursued more than others.

A recent post in which I had a mechanical idea for "worker replacement" led to some discussion which grew into something that could incorporate some of the ideas of deck learning in a worker placement game... Yet ANOTHER New Game Idea, which I suppose I could refer to as "Worker Learning".

This new Worker Learning idea combines some aspects of deck learning with ideas I've had to use something from the online CCG Solforge, by the guys that made Ascension. Oh, and Richard Garfield.

In Solforge you have a 5 card hand, and you play exactly 2 cards per turn. When you play a card it "levels up" and gets better. After your turn you must discard your hand and draw a new one. So as you go through your deck, you are faced with decisions... not just "which card effect do I want," but also "which cards do I want upgraded for later?" This is a quintessential deck building / deck learning type of question. Furthermore, after cycling through your deck once, you will face choices like "do I play this level 2 card I've drawn to make it a level 3, or do I play another level 1 card to make it a level 2? Do I want to evenly upgrade my deck, or would I prefer fewer, more powerful cards?"

I thought that core component of Solforge was super interesting, and I've been wanting to explore it for some time now. Perhaps "worker learning" is a good way to do that. One way it could work is that you'd have some workers (maybe 8), each labeled (maybe A-G). Each worker would have a track on your player board which indicates whether they are level 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. Then you play a worker placement game, where your workers upgrade as you play them, and each worker space has a stronger effect the higher level your worker is. Like Tzolkin, Manhattan Project, or Concordia, if you want your workers back you must spend a turn recalling them. Perhaps there's some cost involved in recalling as well, maybe based on the number of workers that remain unplaced.

This way you have the option to play out all your workers before recalling (upgrading them all evenly), or recall early and then re-play upgraded workers -- upgrading them further. If the dynamics of the game are balanced properly, and the number of recalls work out to range from maybe 2 to 3 on the low end to 5 or 6 on the high end, then I think there could be some real diversity of strategy to be had.

So here we are again, another mechanics-first idea in need of a theme!

The List - January 2017

It's been 4 months or so since I revisited The List to take stock of the status of my game projects. Here's another update...

Published Games:
- Terra Prime (BGG)
- Eminent Domain (BGG)
- Eminent Domain: Escalation (BGG) (expansion)
- Eminent Domain: Exotica (BGG) (expansion)
- Eminent Domain: Microcosm (BGG)
- Isle of Trains (BGG)
- Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done (BGG) (Watch for this summer 2017)
- Isle of Trains: All Aboard (expansion)
- Eminent Domain: Oblivion (expansion) (Watch for this late 2017)

Finished But Unpublished Games:
- Exhibit (BGG link)
- Eminent Domain: the Dice Game
- Dice Works (BGG link)
- Wizard's Tower (BGG link)
- Now Boarding
- Suburban Sprawl

Current Active Designs:
- Deities and Demigods
- The Pony Express
- Odysseus: Winds of Fate (BGG)
- Alter Ego (BGG link)
- Moctezuma's Revenge

New Ideas that Haven't gone Anywhere (Yet)
- Worker Replacement game
- Joan of Arc bag building game

Old Standbys - games which have been around, 1/2 done and untouched, for years:
- 8/7 Central
- Hot & Fresh
- Dynasty
- Kilauea
- Reading Railroad
- All For One (BGG)

Old Ideas that Haven't gone Anywhere (Yet) - some of these have been getting stale as well:
- Rondel Role Selection
- Investigative/Tabloid Journalism
- Red Colony
- Clash of the Kingpins
- Time = Money
- Dating Game
- Ticket Please
- Scourge of the High Seas

Let's take a closer look at some of these:
Published games:
- Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done (BGG)
Last update I announced that Crusaders is moving forward at TMG, with Adam McIver's awesome art and graphic design (and I shared the box cover recently). At this point pretty much all the art is done except for the rulebook, and once Adam finishes a few other high priority items, he'll get back to finishing this.
- Isle of Trains: All Aboard (expansion)
The Kickstarter project for All Aboard was pushed back to the point where it conflicted with the holiday season, so we're still waiting to see that one pop up. I'm not sure what the schedule is, but as far as I know it's still going to happen.
- Eminent Domain: Oblivion (expansion)
I'm moving Oblivion up to the "Published Games" category because over the last month or so, Brian Patterson has created all the tech card art, and Ariel Seoane has put together all the graphic design for the expansion, so while the game is not out yet, it's in the process of being published! Mischa has been working on getting foreign partners to co-publish the expansion, and I wouldn't be surprised if there's an Eminent Domain Big Box in the near future.

Current Active Designs:
- Deities and Demigods
I have been playing and working on Deities & Demigods, tweaking and tightening things up. I even wrote a blog post about doing due diligence in testing player suggestions. I feel like the base game is very close to "done," but I still haven't tried the Hades expansion module.
- Moctezuma's Revenge
After a nice chat at BGGcon, I brought on Jonathan Gilmore as a co-designer to revive Moctezuma's Revenge. In getting him the files for prototyping and discussing the game again, I got it to the table a couple of times myself, and I think made a bit of progress! Revisiting an old design now that I've got more experience was interesting. Unfortunately, Jonathan has run into some life stuff which has conflicted with his co-design efforts, so he won't be working on this game after all. Now that it's revived, there's a chance I'll get back to it myself, but I kind of doubt it since I have so many higher priorities to think about.

New Ideas that Haven't gone Anywhere (Yet)
- Worker Replacement game
This is one of those "I have an idea for a mechanism, but not a game" types of things, like the Rondel Role Selection idea, and the Draft Row idea. For now I'm just recording it so that I can find it later, when I may actually get a chance to use it for something.
- Joan of Arc: Maid of Orleans bag building game
This is a high priority idea, and I think I have the game fairly well sketched out. I have even mad a first attempt at some prototype pieces. As soon as I'm done getting Harvest, Pioneer Days, Crusaders, and Oblivion ready for publication (so approx March 1) I intend to dive into this idea and create a bag building game with a Joan of Arc theme. More info on this to come!