At an impasse -- a peek at The List and where some of my designs are at the moment

I'm at a bit of an impasse when it comes to my game designs right now... I feel like I can't make meaningful progress on any of my current designs, and with playtest sessions being so few and far between (not to mention more of a hassle on Tabletop Simulator), I feel a reluctance to start anything new. Maybe if I take a look at my active designs and their current status, it'll help me figure out what to do next. Here are some excerpts from The List:

Finished But Unpublished Games:
- Eminent Domain Origins [Ready to print]

- Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory (dice game) [Art on pause]

These EmDo universe games may yet see the light of day, but due to some issues (that it would probably be inappropriate for me to talk about), they are on hold at the moment. Too bad, because I was really excited about the prospect of releasing the Terra Prime revamp on TMG's 10th anniversary, and the dice game has been done for a pretty long time now.

- Crusaders: Crimson Knight (expansion) [Ready to print - fix faction powers!]
- Crusaders: Amber Knight (expansion) [Ready to print]

These Crusaders 5th and 6th player expansions have been ready to go for months, but the 1st expansion (Divine Influence) has just been sitting in China, waiting to be shipped to the US and released. Crusaders continues to be talked about (thank goodness), and I hope it remains in the zeitgeist at least until Divine Influence drops, so that doesn't end up being completely wasted effort. If that works out, then it could revitalize the game, and create some demand for these 5th/6th player expansions as well as a reprint (there's already been demand for a reprint of Deluxified Crusaders).

In the meantime, I looked at the files for some reason, and noticed that we were duplicating a couple of the new factions (because Crimson and Amber Knight expansions were supposed to be identical except for player color). That didn't make sense to me, so I developed 2 more faction powers, and we just need to swap those in before going to print.

- Olympus on the Serengeti  (FKA Deities and Demigods) [Art on pause]

I was excited to have a big name artist work on this one, but due to some of the issues mentioned above, Olympus on the Serengeti is on pause now too. Also, I'm becoming skeptical of the odd theme choice, and I wonder if just leaving it "normal" Greek mythology would be better.

- Exhibit (BGG) [Unlikely to be published due to conflict] [Abandoned]
- Dice Works (BGG) [Abandoned]
- Wizard's Tower (BGG) [Abandoned]
- Isle of Trains: All Aboard (expansion) [Abandoned]
- Suburban Sprawl [Abandoned]
- Watch It Played [Abandoned]
- Now Boarding [Abandoned]

These are all basically abandoned. I did make a TTS mod for Exhibit, and played it once with my testers a few weeks ago (and again yesterday). I think it holds up, and I'm tempted to try pitching it around. It's been several years, and the person instigating that ambiguous conflict I mentioned has disappeared as far as I can tell, so that might not really even be an issue anymore (I'm skeptical that it was ever REALLY an issue, TBH).

I also made a TTS mod for Dice Works as well, and finally gave it a partial playtest yesterday. I was surprised how well it actually worked on TTS (like, physically), so maybe this one could be tested or pitched that way now. Comments from the players led to the idea of loosening up the specificity of the board spaces (like, "[ ] < 3" as opposed to "[1]", or "[ ] < [ ] < [ ]" as opposed to "[ ] = [ ] = [ ]"). The players were also concerned about the possibility of an all-out scrap strategy being sort of dominant. I don't think that's the case, but it might ruin the other player's fun, which would be a problem all its own.

Maybe for something to do I could make a TTS mod for Wizard's Tower - that might be fun to revisit.

Current Active Designs:
- Alter Ego (BGG)

After a lot of testing about this time last year, I had made a lot of progress on this one. I had made a TTS mod for it a long time ago, and had been meaning to update it with all the most recent files, but never got around to it. I guess that's something I could be working on.

- Apotheosis (Co-Design with Rick Holzgrafe)

Most of my playtesting time (such as it has been) lately has gone to updating Apotheosis. I pitched the game virtually to 2 different publishers... the first wasn't interested, but the 2nd did show interest. They have a line of games in a particular universe, and Apotheosis fits pretty perfectly into that universe, so Rick and I have (a) revamped the prototype graphics and set the game in their universe, (b) addressed some items the publisher commented on after our playtest with them, and (c) fixed a major issue that came up in our pitch. I just reached out to the publisher to set up a time to show them the game with the updates again. I'm excited about the prospect of getting a game published by another publisher, just to sort of get my name out there more, and also to see how the process goes from the designer's end with another publisher.

- All For One (BGG) (Co-Design with David Brain)

I was feeling pretty good about the latest playtestes of All For One, almost a year ago at this point. I have been wanting to make a TTS mod for it and play it online, but I have been waiting for my co-designer to do some updates to the maps and missions. He had said he was working on it, but I suspect he got sidetracked, and he didn't even reply to my last email about it.

Maybe my best bet is to go ahead and either take a stab at the board/card redesign myself, or just upload a version like my physical prototype so I can at least play!

- Riders of the Pony Express (BGG)

I'm pretty happy with the status of Riders of the Pony Express content-wise, I think one of the biggest things I wanted to do was try and make it less physically fiddly to play. I had an idea for that, but I am stalled out on trying to implement it. Maybe the thing to do is to forget about that for now, and create a TTS mod so the game can be played.

- Isle Of Trains: The Board Game (Co-Design with Dan Keltner)

I had prototyped a version of this, even made a TTS mod and played it online once or twice with my testers since the Pandemic hit. But I haven't had much opportunity to get together with Dan about it, and I was starting to shift my feeling toward what he wanted for the game -- for it to be a more complex, deeper game than what I had put together. So I kind of stalled out on it and haven't thought about it in a long time. I don't really know what I could do with this one right now.

- Keeping Up With The Joneses

My latest game project, which came together pretty quickly, has taken up the rest of my recent playtest and design time. At this point I feel like the game is stable, and I don't really see how I could make progress without more, ideally more widespread, playtesting (if you want to PnP/blind test this game, leave a comment below, or email sedjtroll@gmail and let me know!). I do have a TTS mod, so I could theoretically set up more, and more widespread, playtesting, but the logistics of playtesting online are difficult for me right now, so I don't see this happening anytime soon.

That's about it for my active designs. I guess I could take a look at some of my back-burnered designs as well:

            - Automatown [Michael Brown on board]

When Michael Brown came on board as a co-designer on Automatown, the game took some great leaps forward. However, it's been quite some time since I've heard from him, and since I played the TTS mod he'd made with my testers. I guess I'm not sure what I can do for this game at the moment.

            - Odysseus: Winds of Fate (BGG) [a designer has showed interest]

A friend showed interest in Winds of Fate, but ultimately got busy with other life events, and the pandemic hit as well, making playtesting much more difficult. So unfortunately, this game did not get revitalized as I had hoped it might.

            - Reading Railroad

For the first time in AGES, I broke out my old prototype for Reading Railroad and not only made a TTS mod for it, but even played it in person with my wife!

I was excited to revive this game, but after a couple of tests and some consideration, I kinda realized that using word-building as a mechanism just didn't seem to be that big of a deal after all. So my interest in Reading Railroad waned again, and it's back on the back burner.

            - Moctezuma's Revenge

Nobody really showed interest in Moctezuma's Revenge, which I thought was too bad because I like the theme and idea of this one a lot -- it really sounds like something that I could imagine existing. But without someone jumping in as a co-designer, I'm not sure this game will ever go anywhere. At least not anytime soon.

            - Kilauea [a designer has showed interest]

I met online with the designer who contacted me showing interest in Kilauea. He had made a new version, and I made a TTS mod for it so we could try it. We gave it a partial play, then discussed what worked and what didn't and came up with some ideas for him to try in the next iteration. Unfortunately, I haven't heard from him since then, and I haven't really thought about the game since then either.

            - Joan of Arc [a designer has showed interest]

A strong design duo showed interest in Joan of Arc, which gave me some hope that it would see some real progress, but as yet they have not gotten to it. Time is in short supply, and I know they have their own projects to work on, and I'm still hopeful they'll get to it eventually. In the meantime, I have left the game on the back burner.

            - Dynasty

One of my oldest ideas that I think is any good, I've been re-reading my old posts about Dynasty, and thinking that this might be the game I work on next. As always, it seems like it would be so easy to put together a prototype and try it out... now that I'm not doing regular playtesting anymore, it might be harder to actually get the game to the table, but I could probably make a TTS mod for it fairly easily if I just got some prototype files together for it.

I'll start a new post to describe a couple of new, or recently revived games that weren't necessarily on The List.

Dice Works and Exhibit - out of the woodwork playtesting!

Today I had a chance to playtest with 2 of my regular testers, but I didn't think my latest projects (Apotheosis and Keeping Up With The Joneses) would really benefit from another 3p test with the same people because nothing's really changed on them. So I pulled a couple of older games out of the woodwork. I had made TTS mods of them a while ago, and even played one of them a few weeks ago.

Dice Works

First we played a partial game of Dice Works, a real-time dice drafting game. I had expected the real-time nature of it to be problematic on Tabletop Simulator due to how awkward it is to do anything on that format, but truth be told, it went a lot better than I had expected. But first I wanted to try the game in a turn-based fashion, just to see how it would feel. As expected, the game dragged and the draft wasn't very interesting without the time pressure (like with my iPad game, Brainfreeze, simple decisions require time pressure to become fun). After a round of turn-based drafting, we played a few rounds in real-time, and it seemed to work fine. Rick isn't a fan of the time pressure, so I didn't force him to play through an entire game that way.

I haven't played Dice Works in YEARS, and it was fun to revisit. One of the big challenges to publication is that it's a real time game, and those tend to have a more limited audience than turn-based games. Another challenge is probably a way to get around needing 80 or more dice! I have considered using tokens to block up spaces where dice had been placed so that the dice could go back into circulation. However, thinking about it, the real cost of custom dice is in the molds -- I don't think the materials are all that expensive. So it might not be out of the question to use 80-100 dice, so long as they're standard d6s.

One question that came up was whether just placing dice into scrap as fast as you can would be dominant. I don't recall it being a problem, and I recall being happy with the scrap rates as I currently have them (you start out at 4-for-1, and get better with even advancement up the tracks), so the bigger question to me is, even if it's OK as-is balance-wise, does it ruin the fun for other players if one person is just indiscriminately scrapping dice as fast as possible? If that turns out to be the case, a couple solutions could be as follows:

* Increase the scrap rate (but again, I think I'm happy with the current rates)
* Add dice to the supply so that other players still have something to choose from, at least for a few seconds, while the scrappers are scrapping
* Make the "specific" spaces where you place dice a little more flexible. For example, instead of requiring a "1", maybe require "<2" and instead of requiring "[ ]=[ ]=[ ]" maybe require "[ ]<[ ]<[ ]"

That last comment is interesting, and I should probably give it a try just to make the boards more interesting to begin with. Adding more dice might be worth doing, at least in the first round, even if not ALL the time -- just to get things sort of jump started.

Exhibit: Artifacts of the Ages

Then we switched over to just play a game of Exhibit. With the exception of a tweak or two, that game is pretty much done as far as I'm concerned, so this was less of a playtest, and more of a chance to just play one of my games :)

It went well, Rick had played once, years ago, and adored it back then. Very little has changed since that game. Aaron played a couple of weeks ago, and also liked it. A tweak I tried was changing the value of the Art exhibit. Originally, an Art exhibit was worth 2 additional points, as opposed to a Weapon exhibit, which helps yo win a specific auction in the future, and a Tool exhibit, which lets you re-roll dice. When I shortened the game to 5 rounds, I reduced that to 1 extra point for an Art exhibit, worried that the power of the Tool and Weapon had gone down and I didn't want Art to be "too good" in comparison. But I wanted Art to be more of an option early game, so players didn't just ignore it early, and use it late, so I tried something that sounded more interesting... Treat an Art exhibit as if it had +1 tile in it. This amounted to anywhere from 2-5 points, depending on the size of the exhibit, which means I failed at my goal of incentivizing art early but not late!

I think I need to just go back to +2 points for an Art exhibit, and be OK with players not using it early and valuing it more in the late game.