Exploration mechanics

Exploration tiles 

I'm adding an exploration mechanism to one of my games, and iterating through a few variations on it has got me thinking about how exploration works. An obvious mechanism is to have face down tiles and flip them up when you get to them. I went this route in my first game, Terra Prime, and it worked alright. In an expansion however I modified that a bit -- set all the tiles face up so you could see where the planets are, then added a face-down exploration tile to each in order to maintain the exploration feel.

Another approach

Another approach though, is drawing multiple tiles to choose from. This could represent preparedness, or luck -- the more tiles you draw to choose from, the more likely you'll find something you like. Some years ago (circa 2007) I suggested this as a variant to the dig mechanism in Thebes, as a way to balance it out a bit, and I encountered a bit of pushback from some folks. Evidently, it can feel a lot less like exploration if you get to choose what you find.

In the game I'm currently working on, making changes requested by the publisher, the actions can be better or worse depending on how invested in them you are. In the case of this new exploration action, my first attempt allowed you to draw more and more tiles the higher your action level was. This is similar to my proposed Thebes variant - the more prepared you are to dig (or in my case, the more invested you are in that action), the more likely you'll find something you'll like. this works if you consider that the tile you choose is the one that's 'actually there,' and that you got to look at several first just means you're luckier, you tend to fid better stuff on average.

I still feel that's an OK mechanism, but I can see the point of the people who think that breaks the exploration theme... when you're making a choice, it does feel less like you're literally exploring what's there. So in my latest playtest, I just had players draw 1 tile, not several to choose from. If you were more invested in the action, you could do more than 1 explore at a time. Then I made sure that no matter what tile you draw, you get something of appropriate value, even if it's not the actual thing you had hoped to find. Also, I only have 5 tiles of each type, so in the late game, when the bags are low, you can have a pretty good idea of what you'll get.

So tell me what YOU think...

Does drawing multiple tiles to choose from break the exploration theme for you? Or do you see that as a way to represent spending more time, doing a better job, being more prepared, or getting more lucky?

In my last playtest, my players and I didn't miss the ability to draw more tiles to choose from, so I am very likely to keep the "surprise me" version. I could see adding a unique card or ability to the game that can let you draw 2 tiles to choose from when exploring, and if that breaks the theme for anybody, at least it's a specific piece of content, and not part of the game's structure.

Entangled Decisions

 A while ago (gosh, I think it's been over a year now!) I was mentioning how enamored I was with a particular game mechanism. I had mentioned using it in Keeping up with the Joneses (and even kind of promised a blog post on them), and I brought it up on Twitter as well.

I've always named multi-use cards as my favorite game mechanism (the Rondel is up there as well), but lately a new challenger has arisen... I'm starting to think Entangled Decisions are making a run at my favorite mechanism.

Multi-use cards are great because of the inherent opportunity cost every time you play one. They're compact and versatile, and can do almost anything! Entangling two unrelated decisions though-that's a compact way to ratchet up tension, agony, and decision space without adding content.

Entangling decisions is where you take 2 things a player might want (or not want), and connect them such that choosing one necessarily means choosing the other. This is sort of the opposite of an opportunity cost, if you think about it. When you play a multi-use card for one effect, then by definition you are giving up access to its other effects. When you make an entangled decision, it's like playing a multi-use card and being forced to take all of its effects, like it or not.

Cascadia is a great, pure example of what I'm referring to as an entangled decision. First you pair independent tiles and tokens, then choose which tile-token pair you want. "I like THIS tile, but I want THAT token!" makes for an agonizing decision with very little design effort.

Kingdomino does this a little bit as well by having you draft a tile plus turn order, which sometimes means you're drafting this turns tile and next turn's tile. You might take a less good tile this turn in order to go first next turn to get an even better tile.

Coimbra's dice draft counts too. You might want a die because it's a 5, or you might want the die because it's green.

Concordia's cards appear to have a similar feel: you might want the card for the action, or you might want the scoring condition... though to be honest, I've always felt like those scoring conditions are a little same-y, so I don't usually feel like I'm buying a sub-par card just for the scoring condition. Also, in that game if you have a bad card, you can just choose to not play it, so you don't lose much by taking a card for the scoring condition.

In Keeping Up With The Joneses, I entangled the effect of the tile you draft with the amount you'll move on the rondel (and therefore the effect of the rondel space you'll get). If both of those things are compelling, then it should create agonizing decisions between 3 pairs of effects, while still being a fairly simple game: just choose one of these 3 options. 

What games have you played that make good use of entangling two (or more) disparate, independent decisions?

Post -Scarcity (YANGI?)

 Jamey Stegmaier sometimes posts interesting thoughts on his blog, and today he posed the question: "What Sci-Fi project would you pursue as an eccentric billionaire?"

On twitter, a few folks responded, and my personal favorite answer to that was teleportation. I've long been a fan of teleportation, I've always said it's my favorite impossible ability -- if I could choose a super power, that would be it!

Jamey described portals that you could step into in one location and out of in another (like in the video game, I guess). That's almost verbatim something I used to think about when I was young. Someone else mentioned food replicators like on Star Trek, another awesome prospect!

Like many things do, this of course made me think of a board game. Suppose there's a worker placement game, but you can only move your workers to an adjacent space each turn, and you have to feed them every round, etc. Then imagine you can invent technologies to get around that tedium and those drawbacks... first maybe something that lets you move 2 spaces, or cuts your food costs in half. Then later, teleporters (move anywhere) and food replicators (no more feeding). During the game, you spend time and effort inventing these technologies, which earn you victory points, but once invented, all players gain their benefits!

I've seen games like Antike where being the player to make a discovery is expensive, and worth VP, but then the discovery becomes cheap for other players to obtain (though they don't get the points). I'm not sure if I've seen a game where the technology is automatically useable by all players, though it wouldn't surprise me if such a game exists.

This sounds like an OK premise for a game, but really it's just a backbone. There'd have to be something for players to actually do. Also, I think there would need to be a few more inventions to make life easier.

Perhaps the theme could be creating a post-scarcity society. A utopia where people don't need to spend so much time toiling away just to pay bills and feed themselves, and can instead spend more time and attention on the arts and their loved ones. That would be a pretty upbeat theme for once.

I don't have any further thoughts about this at the moment (hey, maybe this could work into that I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement idea I had a while back), so I'll just file it away to possibly revisit later. If you have any thoughts about this game idea, please feel free to leave them in the comments!

Rolling Realms - Jaffee Realms update update

 A couple of weeks ago I posted about updating the realms I'd made for Jamey Stegmaier's roll & write game, Rolling Realms. Well, since then I have gotten ahold of the published version of Rolling Realms, and I have played my updated realms a couple of times each. Here's the news...

Crusaders

This one works well. I went with the edit I made in the footnote of the previous post: for the odd numbers, you get 1 resource per dot, for the even numbers you get 1 star for every 2 dots. One game it felt kinda easy to get 6 stars (plus a handful of resources), so I considered changing that to 3 dots per star... but I'm not convinced that's necessary yet, so I left it alone for now.

I like the way this one works, and I think it feels on par with the published realms.

Eminent Domain

After that last post, I preferred the previous version of the EmDo realm, the new one seemed more fiddly. So I reverted to that, but added stars for each row or column of planets, so you can get some stars for just getting lots of planets. This continues to be based on the thematic feel of the game, not the mechanical feel, which could be bad for players unfamiliar with the game, and it could be forcing the realm to be too complicated.

Today I played a game with this version, as well as the published Pendulum realm, and they happened to be in the same round, so I actually played them side by side. This was fortuitous, because it highlighted an observation I made to myself when reading how the Pendulum realm worked. To put it bluntly and succinctly, I don't think I could have boiled my EmDo  realm down and condensed it half as well as the Pendulum realm does! The Pendulum realm is just like my EmDo realm, if you combined Trade and Research into 1 action, and indicated what you get for Trading/Researching on the planets themselves.

...which is cool! I like the Pendulum realm. But if that published realm is so similar (and more simplified) than my EmDo realm, then I probably need to go another route with EmDo. As I mentioned, maybe evoking the deck learning rather than the thematic or strategic aspects would be better anyway. So here's the new version:

1 column per die value. the first time you use a die of that value, you get 1 resource as indicated. the 2nd time you use that same value, you get 2 of that resource. The 3rd time, you get that resource plus a star. And the 4th time you get 2 stars. In this way, it's like you get better at using any given number in that realm the more you use it.

I was wondering if that would be enough, or if I should try and add just 1 more thing somehow... like maybe awarding a star for using 1 of each die value (nah!), or something crazy like "mark off a box in this realm when you use a die value -- whenever you use that die value again (in this or any realm), get the indicated reward in addition" - then award nothing, 1 resource, 1 star or something like that. So using a number in the EmDo realm would make you better at using that number everywhere, not just in the EmDo realm. That's a neat idea, but I think I'll try the basic version first. The neat thing about Rolling Realms is that the complexity comes from the combination of realms available and the opportunity cost of using a die in one realm instead of another. So the individual realms can (and in fact really should) be very simple and straightforward.

Jaffee Realms 2021, v2.0

Please feel free to try these out and let me know what you think in the comments! I'm going for realms that evoke Crusaders and EmDo, but that fit in with the existing realms in the published game.

Deities & Demigods playtest - new deity!

 I apologize for again being a little cagey or cryptic about some of the details of Deities & Demigods getting signed. I'll just continue to use terminology and context from the Greek mythology theme, familiar to myself and anyone who happens to be following the progress of that game. At some point I'm sure I'll post about a retheme, a new title, and other publishing details.

Adding new content to an old game

Interestingly, I'm adding new content to this old design at the same time that I'm consulting on the development of an expansion to a classic game. Seems like a parallel there. I've created expansions to Terra Prime (Eminent Domain Origins), Eminent Domain (Escalation, Exotica, and Oblivion) and Crusaders (Divine Influence, Crimson/Amber Knight) as well. So I'm not a complete stranger to fitting new content into an existing game.

In Deities & Demigods, the publisher asked for a few specific things to be added to the game. Among those:

• More of a 4X feel
• More relevance to all spaces on the board (not just City and Quest spaces)
• Slightly heftier game weight (a little longer/more complicated)
• More variety in game action (an additional action you can do)
• More variety in the Favor card (game end scoring conditions) 

I believe that we can address all of that in 1 fell swoop by adding a new deity to the game. A new card in the starting deck necessarily means a longer game and another action. More different actions means a heavier and more complicated game. And since we get to choose what the deity does, we can use it to add relevance to the board spaces and give the game more of a 4X feel.

New Deity: God of Adventure

Since we'll be changing pantheons, I didn't bother actually getting a new Greek god for this role, and since my prototype components already say Hades on them, I decided to just use Hades for a stand-in here (I never did try that Hades expansion material we'd come up with, though I think Matthew may have). So... Meet "Hades," God of Adventure and Exploration!

With this new action, you can explore blank hexes, collect gems, and add features to the board. As nobody probably recalls, the game board was made up of 4 boards, each with 7 hexes, and each board had 3 features: either 2 cities and a quest space, or 2 quest spaces and a city space. This way, a random arrangement of the boards would yield 5-7 quests per game, and 5-7 cities per game (and as it happens, 5 quests meant 7 cities and vice versa). Now I have removed 1 feature from each board, leaving 1 city and 1 quest space, and I colored in the other blank hexes to represent different terrain. Each of the colors also corresponds to one of the deities, this way the stuff you find in an area could be weighted toward the type of thing one of the deities is known for.

When using this action, you choose one of your troops and they explore their hex. You get 1 gem of the color matching the hex, and then you draw some Exploration tiles to choose from; the more devotion you have to Hades, the more tiles you draw. You'll choose one of the drawn tiles to add to the board in that hex. So far the features on those tiles are new cities, new quest spaces, tunnels that connect distant hexes, monument sites where more monuments can be built (the monuments are getting a pretty big tweak as well, so they're not just fancy buildings anymore), and a "stronghold" - a space which is meant to have some kind of common enemy that you can "fight" by sacrificing troops to gain the printed effect.

The gems I keep mentioning are also color coded to match the different deities, and the plan is that when resolving a deity, you can spend up to 1 gem of that deity's favorite type (matching color) in order to resolve it as if your devotion were 1 level higher.

First playtest of this new deity

I played a 2-player game the other day with Aaron, who's played Deities & Demigods before, but not that recently. He picked up the nuances of the new content right away, but based on how the game went, we didn't see too much of it in play. For one thing, neither of us added an Ares to the deck, so movement was a little hard to come by, and that was exacerbated by more things requiring you to move around the board. Other than that, the game went fine, and I noted a number of things to change for next time.

Tweaks and changes for the next test

The biggest hurdle was a dearth of movement. Aaron suggested it might be good to add a 2nd Ares to the starting deck, since questing, city control, building, and exploration all require adding troops to the board and moving them around. This might not be bad, but I think I had a better idea -- add movement points to the Hades action, so no matter what you'll be able to move a troop before exploring. Also, even if you didn't care too much about exploring, you could utilize the extra movement to accomplish other goals. So I'm updating the Hades track to give movement points as well as gems and tile draws.

I figured that the result of this action would be an immediate benefit for the player (the gem), as well as a lasting effect on the board (the tile) - if you draw multiple tiles, you have a better chance of getting a feature that better benefits you. Some of the tiles weren't that exciting - for example a tunnel does nothing unless there are more than one in play. This felt a little disappointing when choosing between tiles, getting a poor one feels bad compared to getting a good one, feels like you didn't get a benefit. But you did... you got the gem! I guess you were getting that gem anyway, so it doesn't feel connected to the choice of tile. So I might simplify the action by removing the gem, and instead print a gem on many of the exploration tiles, so whichever one you pick, you can feel like you got something. That also means I can change the value of some of the tiles by adding or not adding a gem if I want to, for balance reasons.

For the monument sites, I might let the player actually build that monument for free, which makes it a lot more attractive to explore! And for the quests, I was just thinking of drawing a new quest tile, but instead maybe specific quests would be better.

I'll be updating these items in my prototype, and I look forward to trying the game again as soon as I get a chance!

Incremental progress and "Point Salads"

I probably have a lot to say about the term "point salad," but as this is the first time I've ever sat down to talk about it, it may be a haphazard post about some of those thoughts... maybe some day I'll gather them better and write about them in a more official capacity (or at least in a more intelligible blog post).

"Point Salad" is a term in board games that refers to... well, there's an interesting thread on BGG about the definition of the term, but for the most part I hear it used to describe a game that rewards lots of different things with points, and I usually hear it used as a pejorative, to support a straw man argument that "this game is bad because it doesn't matter what you do, you get points for everything."

Just to get this out of the way, in case you couldn't tell by the way I phrased that last sentence, I think that's about the most ridiculous argument one could make against a game. Well, assuming it's not the case (and it seldom is) that playing randomly or arbitrarily could reward you with a winning score, anyway.

Yes, in the type of game often derogatorily called a Point Salad, often times many different actions confer points... but that definitely does not mean that it doesn't matter what you do! The way I look at it is this: in any respectable point salad style game, certain combinations of actions (call them "strategic paths") will result in a larger accumulated score than others, and the better you play, the better your score will be. The fact that the game rewards incremental progress (i.e. awards points for many little things) just gives the player a way to gauge the value of one action over another, a way to compare options and make intelligent choices.

There's a corollary to this that I'd like to mention... many point salad detractors conflate what I just said with "you just do whichever thing gives you the most points each turn." That assessment is also laughably incorrect, as evidenced by the fact that in any respectable game of this type, simply doing the thing that gives you the most points each turn will not outscore strategic paths which use synergistic actions, look ahead, and maybe even engine building. This great article by Greg Aleknevicus (The Games Journal, circa 2004) explains very plainly how simply doing what's worth the most points right now can end up being very clearly a losing play (for the record, Greg's previous article is also very good).

In the BGG thread linked above, Trey Chambers (a game designer in his own right) argued that the problem with a point salad is that a player playing badly is rewarded with "a ton of points" (200 for example), which is too many. However, in the same example, he admitted that in such a game, the winner may well have 400 points. Bryan Thunkd did a pretty good job trying to explain how the actual number of the score doesn't matter, in that example the loser only got 50% of the winner's score, and it doesn't matter if that was 400-200, 40-20, or 4000-2000. I can almost see Trey's point, that he dislikes the idea of bad play being rewarded - like maybe the bad player will feel like they're "high" score implies they weren't playing badly after all.... almost. But no, I agree with Bryan whole-heartedly here... the goal of a game is to win, not to "score a ton of points." If you score 200 points and lose by a factor of 2, then you did not play well, period.

So I've argued against the down-sides people pose for point salad style games, but is there an up-side to rewarding incremental progress in that way? I think there is. And lucky for me, someone in that BGG thread brought it up as well! Phil Hendrickson said:

One thing I like about point-salad games is that all players receive positive reinforcement throughout. Even if you are not doing well compared to other players, at least your score keeps increasing. It can be a small encouragement to keep trying, hoping to achieve bigger scoring plays as you get better at the game.

Another feature that game designers can use in this style of game is to make players decide between short-term scoring opportunities and actions that score less up front but set up later big turns.

Some point-salad games do it badly, and make players feel like their choices really don't matter. Others do it well, providing an array of choices that are challenging, meaningful and delicious.

Which is a pretty succinct way to describe not one, but two good things about point salads. In addition, Tommy Occhipinti said this:

I tend to think of point salad games as being like a race. Everyone is at all times moving forward along the track (the scoring track, in this metaphor) but the more astute racers are moving faster. No matter how bad of a driver you are, your car is moving forward, even if it is barely chugging along spewing out smoke from the engine, but there is a real thrill in making the engine hum and running along at top speed, linking together multiple bonuses at once and weaving together seemingly disparate goals.

In point salad games, when they are going well, I get the closest to feeling that sense of Flow. On the other hand, no matter how poorly a point salad game goes, there is at least a sense of accomplishing something. Maybe I finished my one section that I worked for all game and got a hefty set of bonus points, or whatever it is. This series of little mini goals you set for yourself and accomplish is, for me, very pleasing.

In particular, it is more pleasing (to me) to finish a game feeling I've accomplished some goals and lost than to end the game with everything I've worked towards in a smoldering pile of ash. I (personally) relish neither being destroyed nor destroying other players.

His first paragraph is a pretty vivid analogy, explaining why it makes sense to score points for every action in a game, and his second and third paragraphs touch on some of the good reasons to utilize this type of dynamic in a game design.

I understand not everyone enjoys point salad style games, or games that reward incremental progress, and I'm not here to tell them they're wrong to not enjoy them. Hey, like what you like - you do you! But I think we'd all be better off if we could get rid of some of the lousy reasoning. You don't like math? Fine. You don't like numbers? Fine. You feel like your decisions don't matter because everything you do is worth points? Well, that's just false, and it's logical fallacy... you're pretending that the points you get for each action are equivalent (False Equivalency), like saying "what are the odds the sun won't come up tomorrow? Well, either it will, or it won't, so 50-50!" And then using that premise to say there's no difference between them (Begging The Question).

Not too long ago (circa 2018), there was a much derided talk at SHUX by Scott Westerfeld called Victory Points Suck about how game designers should stop using victory points in games. To me, this feels pretty similar to complaints about point salad from people who either don't like adding up points, or think that doing so pulls them out of the experience of the game. I liked my friend Gil Hova's reaction post to that video. The problem with the idea of removing victory points from games "to make them more exciting" is that that's just window dressing... VP are just a measure of progress toward victory, by definition. You can call them something else, or make them more or less granular, but if you're declaring a winner then you are awarding victory points in some way.

"But Seth, what about a foot race? There aren't victory points in a foot race!"

Well, ignoring the flippant "yes there is, you get 1 point for crossing the finish line first, and it's a game to 1," I'll point out that a wise man once said "victory points a measure of progress toward victory." In a foot race where you have to travel 500 meters to get to the finish line, you could consider that each meter is "1 victory point," and the game is a race to 500 points. Victory points are just a convenient way to measure that progress, but they need not be explicit!

Fun Problems podcast - Structure vs Content

Every once in a while I read an article, or listen to a podcast, and I come across something that's basically always been on my mind, only I hadn't formally thought about it, or didn't have useful vocabulary to express the ideas. A good example is this twitter thread by Jessica Price about Tropes vs Clichés:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1093196276974276608.html

Another example I just came by the other day was on a game design podcast called Fun Problems. On episode 19, Peter and A.J. discuss the difference between Structure and Content. I think they did a pretty good job defining each of those terms and explaining the difference between them:

Structure: rules that form the basis of the game, that apply every time you play, such as the turn structure or main mechanism

Content: rules that you don't need to start playing, that may or may not come up in any given game, such as cards in a deck

This isn't necessarily something I've talked about before, but that podcast resonated with me. I tend to think about the structure of a game to start with, before I get into the content. As a matter of fact, with Apotheosis I had the structure all worked out for ages, but stalled out creating content until Rick agreed to join the project!

One thing from the podcast that I didn't wholly agree with though was the idea that balance of content is completely unimportant while you're working on the structure of the game. I mean, I get the idea... until the structure is locked down, all of the content could just be considered stand-in. However, while I agree in principle with that notion, I tend to think that if the content is too unbalanced or unrealistic, it'll skew playtest results, and could run the risk of tainting your perception of the state of the game's structure.

Maybe I'm fooling myself, or making excuses for paying more attention to content before fully figuring out the structure sometimes. And as with Apotheosis, sometimes I can't even come up with content until I've got a really good handle on the structure anyway. But to the extent that I have a playable early prototype, I do tend to like my content to be at least realistic, even if not perfectly balanced.

Deities & Demigods - back on the table (... the operating table that is)

 I recently mentioned that one of my favorite designs, Deities & Demigods, has been signed by a publisher. I'm sure I'll talk more about details such as which publisher eventually, but for now I'll keep that under wraps.

Yesterday at my weekly scraped together playtest, Rick was the only player available, so we played a 2p game of Deities & Demigods so I could refamiliarize myself with the game, and to make sure he knew how to play -- he'd played it once back in April, and possibly one other time years ago.

Playtest Report

With 2 players, my notes said to put 2 neutral troops in each city, to make the City points a little harder to win. This is like a 3rd (and/or 4th) player fighting for control of the cities, and I think it's a good idea so players can't just drop 1 troop in each city and score 5 points just because their opponent never got to that side of the board. To be specific, my notes say to add 1 neutral troop for a 3p game, and 2 troops for a 2p game, and while I know I've played that way in several 3p games, I'm not sure if I'd ever actually played 2p with that rule. I think it worked out well though. It makes me wonder a little bit whether 3p ought to also have 2 troops, so you can't get 3 points for just 1 troop sometimes -- not sure (and TBH, I'm not sure that matters a lot).

I had a bit of an advantage just from experience, and in the early game I did a pretty good job of building up my engine -- I bought 3 monuments in a hurry, and did 1 quest in cycle 1, and another in cycle 2, so my minimum devotion was way up on several deities! Rick started in a more central location, and decided early to concentrate a bit on Ares so he could spread out from there... that was my downfall. I didn't do enough Ares, and besides starting next to 2 quests, I wasn't very close to much of anything else, and all that building of monuments removed my troops from the board, leaving very few in play. I never did spread out very much, though in the end I dominated 2 cities (for 5 points each) and tied the neutrals in 1 (for 3 points) - actually outscoring Rick on City points 13-11. He had 1 or 2 troops in each city, but also had 3 Ares Favor cards, so while he only had 11 points for city control, he had 15 points for those favor cards. I only had 2 Hephaestus Favor cards, also for 5vp apiece, so I only had 10 points there. Rick had a 4 point building, and all I had was monuments, which didn't help my endgame score (though gave me a lot of power on my actions). Finally, Rick did 4 quests to my 3, which gave him a 4vp lead there. In total, he outscored me by about 7 points or so, enough to pull off a solid victory.

Thoughts on upcoming changes

After the game, I briefly described the initial ideas I've got in mind to add the things to the game that the publisher is interested in -- more of a 4X feel, more relevance to the board spaces, an additional deity/action, etc. He liked the sound of what I have in mind, and would have liked to be able to do some of it that game, so that's promising at least. We'll have to see how it goes when I get the changes prototyped and implemented.

New Deity - God of Adventure

As I probably described before, my idea to add a God of Adventure (since we're going to make up our own pantheon, I'm not even going to try and pick a Greek god for this role) which allows you to sort of search a hex where you have a troop an add a feature to the board, seems like it would work, and I've now put a little more thought into it. Initially I imagined bags of tiles (one per terrain type) which you would draw from -- the higher your devotion, the more tiles you'd draw, and you'd choose 1 of the drawn tiles to place on the board. These tiles would also depict some resource or immediate benefit you'd receive. But when I sat down to try and list off board features, I was coming up pretty dry.

Then I had a revelation... looking at the board, which so far has been a good size, there are 4 mega-hex boards of 7 hexes each, and each one currently has 3 features: either 2 quests and 1 city, or 2 cities and 1 quest. The way it's laid out results in a range of 5-7 cities and 5-7 quests (totaling 12, so 5/7, 6/6, or 7/5). So far I've been pretty happy with that range, and I like the quests being face up from the beginning so that you can start to make a game plan from the outset. BUT... suppose instead there were just 1 city and 1 quest space per tile, leaving 5 blank tiles per hex (20 total blanks). Let's also say there are 5 types of terrain, color coded to the different deities. If that's the case, then for each terrain type, there could be just a few (4, maybe 5) different tiles, meaning just a few different features to add to the board. For example, in each terrain type, maybe you could find the following:

• Ruins (a city space)
• Portal (a quest space)
• Enemy Stronghold (a space where you can spend Ares points to sacrifice a troop and gain a specific benefit)
• Catacomb entrance (once 2 are in play, you can move from one to another as if adjacent)
• Monument space (perhaps monuments can only be built in specific spaces, and this would add a space to the board where someone could build a monument)

If I only need 4 of each type of tile, maybe each terrain type could lack one of those, or double up on another, just to give them a little different flavor.

Note: This could result in a range of 4-9 buildings and 4-9 quests, and they wouldn't be related to each other (9 buildings doesn't mean only 4 quests), but that's probably fine, and the likely range of these features in play will be pretty close to what I had before (I think), so the game should work about the same that way -- assuming players can (and do) utilize the God of Adventure. There may ought to be a rule that if you resolve the deity (i.e. don't pay), and you have a troop in a blank hex, you must choose that troop -- no intentionally choosing a troop in a non-empty hex just to keep the features off the board!

In addition, I had wanted the player to get some prize just for themselves, so it's always good to use this effect, even if the board feature doesn't matter to you. So in that respect I'm thinking of having 5 types of gems, again color coded to the terrain types/deities. Maybe you get 0 or 1 at level 1 devotion, 1 at L2 and L3, and 2 gems at L4 (that way even if the tiles have dwindled, L4 is still better than L3):

1. L1: 0 gems, draw 1 tile at random
2. L2: 1 gem, draw 1 tile at random
3. L3: 1 gem, draw 2 tiles, choose 1
4. L4: 2 gems, draw all tiles, choose 1

Or possibly:

1. L1: 1 gem, draw 1 tile at random
2. L2: 1 gem, draw 2 tiles, choose 1
3. L3: 1 gem, draw 3 tiles, choose 1
4. L4: 2 gems, draw all tiles, choose 1

Gems:

These gems could have 2 uses:

1. At game end, there could be a way to score points for the gems, maybe a Deity Favor condition is to collect a set of different gems
2. During the game, perhaps the gems could be spent when resolving a deity to resolve it at the next highest level. In that way, it'd be very similar to a cube bump.

So to test this out, I would need to put together the following:

• 1 starting God of Adventure card
• 8 additional God of Adventure cards (with scoring condition)
• edit player boards to include God of Adventure tracks
• edit the boards to add terrain types to 5 hexes (removing a city or quest space) - color coded with deities
• 25 new tiles (5 per terrain type with features as listed above)
• a handful of "gems" in each of 5 colors - color coded to the deities (and terrain types)

Fortunately, my prototype files already have each deity's name in a different color, and there's even a 5th track on each player board with Hades expansion material (that I never got around to trying). So some of that updating should come pretty easily.

Unfortunately, I still cannot find my physical prototype, which means I may decide to make an altogether new one sometime soon, as I like to have physical prototypes rather than just virtual ones on TTS.

New version of Favor cards and Monuments

The publisher also wanted to see more, and more unique, monuments and favor scoring conditions. Matthew will be working on some of this pretty soon, but I think the direction we're headed is this:

Favor Cards:

Currently the favor cards use the same components as the deity cards you add to the deck. This is an efficient/elegant use of cards that I'm a fan of, and it made sense to me when I built the game because the scoring conditions all go along with concentrating on for a certain deity. Do a lot of building, score a lot of Hephaestus' favor. However, there's not really a reason those have to be connected beyond elegant use of components. Matthew had an interesting idea to have a bunch of unique conditions, and deal them out (maybe draft them if you're experienced) to players, and whenever you get the chance to claim a favor card, you play one from your hand.

This sounds reasonable to me, though it means we need to come up with about 20 more scoring conditions, and ideally they'll max out at 8 or 9 points if you do a good job. I don't know how easy that part will be, but I guess we'll see!

Monuments:

Currently there are just 4 monument cards, and they are like big, fancy buildings. Their purpose is to allow you to increase minimum devotion to a deity (good in the early game), or claim a favor card from that deity (good in the late game). When the Monuments are gone (or if you don't care for the ones that remain), then you instead may choose a Building AND an Artifact, which could be viewed as a unique monument that has the effects of both that building and that artifact (though admittedly, it doesn't look that way). The publisher would like to see more, and more variety, of monuments, which I assumed meant making a bunch of additional cards on par with the existing monuments power-wise, which seemed like a lot of content to create, but this morning I had an idea that might be simpler. Maybe we could go another way with the monuments:

• Get rid of the cards altogether
• Have a monument mini above each of the devotion tracks on your player board
• Require that a monument be built on a monument space on the board (each City that starts on the board could have one, and as described above, maybe you could ad them via exploration)
• Require that the monument be built in a terrain type that matches the deity (?)
• Once built, an icon could be revealed on the player board - giving you an additional benefit (perhaps +1 to the resolution, like +1 Ares move per Ares phase for example)
• In addition to the above, you would also increase minimum devotion to that deity

Then, instead of "Building+Artifact" as an option for L4 Hephaestus, instead of building a monument, maybe you can claim (play) a favor card that matches a deity's monument where your troop is. In other words, you could move your troop to a monument to Zeus (belonging to any player), then use L4 Hephaestus to play a favor card with a Zeus icon on it (which presumably will care a little bit about how much you've been using Zeus)

An example of such a card might be:

Zeus/Ares:
Score 1 point for each Favor card you have played

Score 1 point for each city where you are at east tied for most troops

This might make you care about things like which monuments are in play, making sure you get a particular monument into play, and also about getting to specific hexes to do so.

 

Random idea for buildings (that I'm not necessarily fond of):

While coming up with the above idea for monuments, the thought crossed my mind that perhaps the buildings could also come off your board to reveal a benefit, rather than having benefits printed on the board. This way the buildings could be something of a tech tree... if you build a "coin" building, you get a coin. If you build a 2nd "coin" building, you get 2 coins Either way, your 1st "Troop" building gets you 1 troop movement. 

Then there could potentially be some kind of scoring for building different TYPES of buildings. I don't know if this is really necessary to be honest, I kinda like the buildings just saying what they're worth, and I also kinda like the desire to move to a particular city because you like the build reward printed there. But I wanted to note this down as an idea, because it could have merit.

Some good news about game pitches - one in particular!

 It's been a while since I posted much of anything at all on here, let alone anything about my games. But I did mention that I'd started pitching games to publishers, and though that hasn't gone too far yet, I may finally be making some progress in that arena!

Big multi-pitch meeting

The other day I had a meeting with a publisher who had turned down one of my games previously, and I ran through quick pitches for 8 of my games. One of them they said they'd like to give a play, and they were going to discuss a couple others to see if they'd like to try those as well. So that's promising, and it goes to show you that a rejection isn't the worst thing in the world - in this case it opened the door to making these other pitches. But that's not the headline for this blog post...

Deities & Demigods signed!?!

Another publisher I'd pitched to showed interest in 4 of my games, and wanted to play them in person, so I sent them prototype files to print out and use. Life happened, and time went by, and then there was Essen season, and I checked in every once in a while to see if they'd had a chance to try any of those games yet. Eventually, they did, and I got a nice email summary... 3 of the games they weren't interested in, but they would like to sign Deities & Demigods, if we don't mind setting it in the universe of some of their other games, and making a few changes to the game.

The other day Matthew and I had a meeting with them to discuss some of the particulars of the direction they'd like to go (make the game a little heavier, a little longer, and a little more 4X-y), and based on their email I'd already begin to think of what we could do to shape the game into what they're looking for.

So I'll be thinking about this quite a bit, maybe I'll post about it too. As soon as we figure out what to add, I'll need to update my prototype and start doing some playtesting! Fortunately, a few months ago I created a Tabletop Simulator mod for Deities & Demigods, which should help facilitate playtesting. Unfortunately, ever since then I have not been able to find my physical prototype box anywhere! I've looked everywhere I can think of two or three times each, and it's nowhere to be found! To be honest, I'm not sure when I'd really be able to get a physical playtest in anyway - but I'd still really like to find that prototype!

Changes on the Horizon for Deities & Demigods

I struggled with the Greek mythology theme for a while, and went with a somewhat bold idea when TMG was going to publish the game. In retrospect I don't know if that was such a good idea after all (still, might have worked out - I guess we'll never know!) When I started pitching the game, now that TMG is not the publisher, I'm figured I'm absolved of the problem! Someone else can figure out how to make the Greek mythology theme stand out, or what to change it to... well, the new publisher would like to port the game into the universe they're building, so the ball may be back in my court with respect to theme...

I'll be a little cagey, because I'm not sure whether the publisher would be happy about details being posted, or if they prefer to play things closer to the vest (the latter seems to be how most people do things, it seems more professional). 

The Pantheon

I can see a couple different ways to port the game over - a couple of different representations of the pantheon of deities to whom you show devotion and ask for favors. The front runner is just making up our own pantheon... something I'm told we have the freedom to do. They are building up their game world with each release, and so we have the freedom to create canon! That's going to be handy, as it should be pretty easy to find a pantheon that fits our game action if we can just make them up! The challenge I'd mentioned before of the deities being recognizable may crop up, but I bet we can take care of that with flavor (the name and image of the deity could make it clear which is the god of craftsmanship and which is the god of adventure, for example)

In addition to porting the deities to the new world, the publisher would like us to add 1 deity to the mix. Basically, they would like to see the game weight increased and more action on the board, and we can accomplish both of those things by adding a deity. The thing I'd like to watch out for is making the game go too long without the players having enough to do.

My first thought for a new deity, since they said they wanted more 4X aspects in the game, is something to do with exploration. I think the first thing I'll try will be something along the lines of a god of adventure, who allows you to "search" the hexes where your troops are and find resources (gold, devotion bumps, etc, as well as new Gem resources - see below), as well as new board features. Like, you'd draw some tiles out of a bag and choose one, get the pictured item, and then place the tile on the board to add some feature to that hex. This could be a new city added to the board, or some other special geographical feature, Matthew and I have to figure out what we could add.

A scoring condition for this new deity could be some kind of set collection of the gems I mentioned (like 1/2/3/5/8vp for 1/2/3/4/5 different gems), and maybe you can also use the gems to boost the effect of another deity (color coded to the gems) or something like that.

This sounds promising to me, and it pings just about all the things they wanted to be affected: additional deity track, additional meaning to the board spaces, more of a 4X feel, etc.

Deity Favor scoring conditions

There are currently 4 deities in the game, and each one has a scoring condition associated with it. The idea was that you could "concentrate on" one of the deities, do their thing a lot, then try and get multiple of their favor cards to reward your efforts. The publisher said they'd like to see more variety there, and they didn't like the idea of just picking one and trying to double- or triple-score it.

At first I didn't really have a good idea how to change that... I mean the deities each do 1 thing, and there aren't a ton of ways to reward having done a lot of that one thing. But Matthew had an idea that sounded decent: instead of claiming those cards from a supply, players could be dealt (or, if more experienced, maybe draft) them from a set of probably unique cards. Then, when you earn the chance to claim a favor, you just play one from your hand. If you don't like the ones left in your hand, then don't pursue Favor cards anymore. If you want to play them all, then go big into Zeus, or build some monuments or whatever!

This could work, and I'm sure there are different scoring conditions we could add once they're divorced from the actual deity cards (which was an elegant use of cards, but not strictly necessary). In particular, there could be cards that reward certain combinations of deities, and stuff like that. I think we'll need something like 5 per player to make sure there are enough.

More variety in monuments

There are currently 4 Monuments in this game, ne for each deity. They allow you to either increase minimum devotion to that deity, or claim one of that deity's favor cards. They're not trivial to get, at least not right away, and they're really strong early (or valuable late). You get them with a level 4 Hephaestus action, and if they're gone then the alternative is to get a Building AND an Artifact, which I felt covered the bases -- there's a bit of a race for the monuments if you want them, and if you don't (or are too late), then you still get good value out of an L4 Hephaestus action.

But the publisher would like to see more variety in the monuments. I suppose I can see the desire there -- getting a fancy, unique card seems "cooler" than getting 2 other, lesser cards. On the down side, I don't love the prospect of inventing a bunch of unique Monument cards that are on par with, but different than, the existing ones - especially when there's a working alternative already! Maybe this is something the publisher's internal developer can help with, because in my mind, the monuments are already doing their job exactly the right way, so I feel like I'll be coming up empty trying to figure out more different ones.

The story of the game

Hopefully without giving too much away, the story of the game (to fit the existing game world) is going to be something to the effect of the denizens of the world (us) exploring and sort of re-colonizing the ruins of their own ancestors' homeland. You see, the ancestors were driven from the land by an evil darkness that spread when the local Deities were defeated and imprisoned like genies in a lamp, so to speak. Now, a thousand years later, the Deities have been awakened, and the darkness is receding. It's time to take back the homeland! But it's been a thousand years, and everything is foreign to us. So we can explore the area, maybe fight off some remaining shadow creatures, rebuild the ruins back into cities, and maybe instead of "quests" we're closing portals to shut out the darkness once and for all.

Perhaps I'll post some more about this one as we develop it further for publication!

Rolling Realms - Jaffee Realms update

About a year and a half ago, Jamey Stegmaier created a roll & write game called Rolling Realms for people to play over zoom during the pandemic. I loved it and thought it might actually be his best design to date, and I made some realms based on games I had worked on.

For the most part, my realms were more complicated than the ones he'd made, and I haven't gone back and revisited them at all. Since then, Rolling Realms was so popular that Jamey has made a full production copy. That has inspired me to revisit the realms I had done for my games, Crusaders and Eminent Domain 

Here's what I had from before, and some new versions that are potentially more in line with the published versions of Jamey's realms:

Crusaders Realm

Here's what I had back in April 2020 for Crusaders:

Crusaders Realm - 4/2020

I liked this because it encapsulated all the major actions in the game (Crusade, Build, and Influence), and they all seemed to sort of fit. It turned out to be a bit confusing for people though, especially if they weren't familiar with the Crusaders game.

However, this version did not refer to the driving Rondcala mechanism at all. So I thought I might be able to make the realm more straightforward, utilizing the Rondcala at the heart of Crusaders. Here's an attempt at that:

Crusaders Realm - 11/2021

I don't think there was room to fully explain the idea here. I'm not sure how much space there is on the official cards vs this mock-up either, and I'm not sure if the card needs to contain the explanation or if it can be written elsewhere. Here's what I had in mind for this version:

When you assign a die to this realm, resolve the corresponding wedge. It must have at least 1 pip in it. Depending on how man pips there are, you get 1, 2, or 3 of the pictured item:

1-3 pips: 1 of the pictured item  |  4-5 pips: 2 of the pictured items  |  6+ pips: 3 of the pictured items

Then, you cross off all the pips in that wedge (remember how many there were), and draw a new pip on each of the next wedges, one at a time in clockwise order, until you've drawn that many. Thus, you add pips to the wedges in the same way you'd add tokens when you distribute them in the board game.

I have not tried this yet, but it seems straightforward to me, so long as the rules are explained.

[Edit: maybe an even simpler version is to collect 1 resource per pip for the odd numbers, and 1 star per 2 pips for the even numbers. Sure, that's potentially a bunch more resources, but so what?]

Eminent Domain Realm

Here's what I had a year and a half ago for Eminent Domain:

EmDo Realm - 4/2020

I thought this was OK, you mostly Trade for resources (which rewards 1 of each planet type), or Research for stars, and you could either just get a couple planets, or get a bunch (though there's no actual reward or incentive for that.

Here's a very similar idea that I think might read a LITTLE better:

EmDo Realm - 11/2021

In this version, you still get more resources if you have dissimilar planets, and you need similar planets to get tech. But this time the tech gets crossed out when you get it, so you can't get the same reward box twice. I also added stars for getting complete rows or columns of planets. You kind of already want to do that for other benefits, but this seemed like a fair thing to add so you can use planet flipping as a strategy.

I guess this ignores the main mechanism of Eminent Domain, but it maintains the dynamic of needing a few planets to get anything done. If this doesn't work, I'll probably do something super simple that just rewards you for having done the same action before (the first time you do an action, mark a box and get nothing or very little, 2nd time get more, 3rd time get even more).

[Edit: I wonder if the old version isn't actually a bit simpler... I like the symmetry of the Trade and Research actions in it (1/2/3 dissimilar planets for trade, 1/2/3 similar planets for research)]

What do you think?

I'm curious to know how confusing or complicated these end up being, especially in comparison to Jamey's published Rolling Realms. I haven't tried either one, but I'd love to get a wide berth of playtest data. I'd really like to see them come down to the level that the published version of Rolling Realms. So if you give these a go, please comment below with your thoughts!

[Edit: I tried them once, and they seemed OK - got a really low score though! I'd still really like to know what people think of them]

"Rolling Rails" - YANGI

What's in a name?

There's already a game called Rolling Freight, by Kevin Nunn, where you use dice to build train routes and chip cargo... which is maybe too bad, because I had an idea today for a dice game about trains!

Though to be fair, my game isn't about freight at all, just about laying track. So maybe Rolling Rails would be a better title. Surprisingly, that one doesn't seem to be taken.

Rolling Rails - a game of dice rolling and track drawing

I was watching a video about the latest game by Carcassonne designer Klaus-Jurgen Wrede: Caral, and the thought crossed my mind to make a simple dice game, maybe along the lines of Carc itself. I imagined custom dice with track on each side (Crossroads, T-intersection, Straight, Curve x2, and Turnabout). You'd start with a crossroads in the center of a grid player board, roll 4 of these dice, then use each to extend your track in one of the 4 directions. My first thought was that you'd have 8 dice, place 4 of them onto your board each turn, then pick the previous 4 dice up to roll next. That way your dice would propagate outward from the center, and the goal would be to drive them to cities at the edge of your player board. Then it occurred to me that just drawing the track on a piece of paper would make more sense.

So, we start with a player sheet grid, crossroads (or a train station?) in the center, and cities on each edge. The goal is to connect the center to a city in each direction. The cities would be worth points - fewer for the ones in the middle of the edge (they're closer, easier to get to), more points nearer the corners of the grid. For example, maybe a 9x9 grid, where the cities are worth 4/5/6/7/8 from center to corner.

Perhaps there are no turns... in real time all players roll their 4 dice, assign 1 to each track, and draw in the result. As soon as a player connects their first city, they announce "1 city!" and grab a bonus tile, scoring a few points for that accomplishment. This only happens the 1st time a player does it. At that point EACH player must discard a die and continue with only 3 dice. That part reminds me of Bananagrams, when players call "peel!" upon playing their last tile, causing all players to draw another tile.

Similarly, as soon as a player connects a 2nd city, they announce "2nd city!," grab that bonus tile, then everyone discards a 2nd die. Same for the 3rd city. After someone connects their 4th and final city, the game end is triggered... perhaps at that point remaining players get 1 or 2 final turns to connect their last city, then score their boards.

Alternate format - Bingo style

I understand a lot of players do not care for the time pressure inherent in real time play. Perhaps another format of this game could be more like Take It Easy or Karuba, where one player rolls the 4 dice, and all players mark those the way they prefer on their own player sheet. While it's possible in these types of games for everyone to do exactly the same thing, in practice players tend to differentiate pretty quickly.

This format would work with the same components, and so would be easy to try, and both formats could potentially be included in the game box. Who knows, this might work better than the real-time format, and it would require fewer dice!

Either way, this sounds to me like it could work out, and it's probably worth a try.

A shortcoming of Tabletop Simulator

I quickly mocked up a board and die for this in Tabletop Simulator to try it. With an infinite number of those dice, I was going to just leave them in play and draw 4 more dice for the next roll, however I discovered a downfall to Tabletop Simulator when it comes to using a die as a tile... pressing Q or E to rotate the die (in order to orient a 90 degree turn, for example) does not do what I wanted it to do -- instead it changes the die face! There may be a way to rotate a die without changing its face, but until or unless I figure that out, I'll have to make tiles to place on the player board or something like that.

A development gig, and a list of games I'm pitching

It's been a while since I've posted anything in my game design blog, but I've actually been doing a little bit of design/development work...

Development Gig

I got a gig working on a secret project (ooh, secrets!) - an expansion for a well known, classic Eurogame that's coming on 20 years of age. That's a fun project so far, even if I'm not always seeing eye-to-eye with the rest of the team on different aspects of it. As part of that gig, though it wasn't requested, I started thinking about how a solo mode might work, and so I tried a couple of things. My first attempt was just OK, but then I got inspired by a comment from a friend on Twitter (thanks Ariel!), and now I think I have something even better! Still could use some tweaking, and I'm not sure if it's exactly the kind of thing a solo player would be looking for, but it seems to work in general.

Re-licensing my Games

With TMG in the state it's in (effectively out of commission), I've had a few people come sniffing around, looking to republish the Eminent Domain and Crusaders lines. I'm hopeful that whoever does so will include everything:
Eminent Domain [Base game]
Eminent Domain: Escalation [expansion]
Eminent Domain: Exotica [expansion]
Eminent Domain: Oblivion [expansion]
Eminent Domain: Promos [Bonus Planets, Elusive/Exclusive Victory, Cygnus Planet (from Joel Eddy), maybe even Mars]
Eminent Domain Origins [standalone prequel]
Eminent Domain: Microcosm [standalone microgame]
Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory [standalone dice game]

Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done [Base game]
Crusaders: Divine Influence [expansion]
Crusaders: Amber Knight [expansion]
Crusaders: Crimson Knight [expansion]

Art for almost all of that new content is done and ready to go, so it would be a shame not to print them. And if a company chooses not to print, for example, Chaos Theory, then I don't know what I'll be able to do with an EmDo dice game :/

Pitching to Publishers

I've been trying to find ways to pitch some of my unpublished games to publishers. This is strange for me, because despite 12 years in the industry, I never really had to do much pitching. TMG was an avenue to get my stuff published, and that was good enough for me. Isle of Trains came out from another publisher, but that was because it was a content entry. A new publisher did sign Isle of Trains, as well as All Aboard, so maybe the expansion will finally see the light of day (6 or 7 years later)!

I've taken a zillion pitches from designers wanting TMG to publish their games, but I've only ever pitched a few games, and that was years ago. One was even signed by a European publisher, but that ended up falling through for ridiculous reasons.

This year I've made a few pitches, all online via Tabletop Simulator. One publisher showed a lot of interest in Apotheosis, but in the end they passed on it. A couple other publishers passed on that one as well, but I've got one who's still testing it with their fans to see if it's one they'd want to pick up.

Another publisher passed on Exhibit, which was a bummer, as that's probably my best unpublished design at the moment -- and I even had a cheerleader in my corner for that one (thanks Richard!). But at least now I'm passed the gate with that publisher, and they're going to look at my other games now.

I've put together this list of games (with super-brief descriptions) that I've got ready to pitch, and I'm hopeful I can just show that to publishers and they can ask me for more info on the ones they're interested in:

All For One [with David Brain]:
Thematic Euro-style Shared Piece Movement, Pickup/Deliver game about the Three Musketeers.
3-5p, ~60 mins

Alter Ego:
Cooperative Deck Learning game about vigilante heroism.
("Deck Learning" is a form of deck building as used in Eminent Domain. Could maybe use a little development polish)
2-4p, ~60 mins

Apotheosis [with Rick Holzgrafe]:
Worker Placement game where your workers level up and get better over time. Generic Fantasy (D&D) theme, since adventures level up with experience in that genre.
2-4p, ~60 mins

Deities & Demigods [with Matthew Dunstan]:
Sort of like a Deck Learning/Role Selection game where the game chooses the roles, and there's a single, common deck. Greek mythology theme: bribe gods of Olympus, then have them do favors for you.
2-4p, ~60 mins

Dice Works:
Real Time Dice Drafting game. Theme is about making inventions (originally was going to call it "Eureka!"), but it's mostly pasted on.
(This one could use a little development polish)
2-4p, ~30 mins

Exhibit: Artifacts of the Ages:
"Bluff Auction" game that's like 6 simultaneous games of Liar's Dice. Theme is collecting sets of artifacts to display in your museum.
2-4p, ~60 mins

Harvest [with Trey Chambers]:
Compact Worker Placement game about farming. Originally set in the Gullsbottom universe by TMG. Draft turn order+bonus, placement spaces change round by round, wildly diverse player powers.
(Small footprint, play time, and price point, but as satisfying as a bigger game. Could easily expand to 6 players and wouldn't take much longer to play)
2-4p, 30~60 mins

Keeping Up with the Joneses:
Rondel game about showing up your neighbors in various parts of life while trying to keep up with the Joneses down the street, who seem to be so good at everything.
(The title is an idiom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeping_up_with_the_Joneses)
2-4p, ~60 mins

Riders of the Pony Express:
Low Bid Auction, Route Planning game about delivering parcels for the Pony Express.
3-5p, ~60 mins

Sails & Sorcery [with Michael Mindes]:
Deck Learning, Area Control game with a pirate theme (including monsters, like a kraken, a ghost ship, blackbeard's ghost, etc)
("Deck Learning" is a form of deck building as used in Eminent Domain.)
2-5p, ~60 mins

Suburban Sprawl [with Matthew Dunstan]:
57-card, Sim City style dexterity game where you toss cards into play.
(Lighter and quicker than the others)
2-4p, ~20 mins

Wizard's Tower [with John Heder]:
Little abstract-ish game of placing pieces on a grid and moving them to form (or attack) towers
(An older design, lighter and more abstract than the others)
2-4p, ~30 mins

Skye Frontier - 4p playtest

 I got a chance to play a 4p game of Skye Frontier this afternoon with Rick, Aaron, and a new arrival at my playtest group, Eric. Other than some technical difficulties right at the start, I think it went fairly well...

The game only took about an hour, but I think we got enough stuff done. I audibled during the game to awarding N coins for completing an area of size N (instead of N-2), which spend the game up a little bit -- with that change I should probably add a few coins to the supply (like 18-20 coins per player rather than 15/player). Also, my current rules say that the game ends at the end of a turn when the coin supply runs out, but it seemed clear that we should finish out the round.

We used the tweaks I decided on after last week's 2-player test:

• Scrolls cost 1 of each cube (rather than 1 of any cube), and are worth 1x value (2x if in a completed area)
• Start with 1 of each cube (rather than producing in each area, which amounts to about 2 of each cube or so)

Those seemed to work OK, and seemed to have the expected effect - more people were storing tiles, and the Build action being used more.

Here are some notes from this session:

• Barrel icons should be worth something extra, since there aren't as many things that score for them. Conveniently, they have a coin icon incorporated into them, so maybe I could just make them worth 1vp at game end
• OR... one (or two) of my players suggested just removing the barrels, making fewer total icons, and making it a little bit easier to get the other icons you're after
• We used 4 each score tiles, scroll tiles, and regular tiles to explore. I had considered scaling the regular tiles by using N+1, so no matter what all players would be choosing from 2 or 3 of them every time. I think I might try that next time. As for score and scroll tiles, I might try reducing those to 3 next time
• I haven't ever used it, but technically there's a rule in the rules doc that say s you can draw a scroll tile off the deck if you don't like what you see, but I don't like that, so I'll be deleting that rule
• As mentioned above, I think I'll award N points for completing an area of size N (rather than N-2). Originally I wanted to disincentivize making a bunch of small size-2 areas, but I'm not sure that's necessary or worth the extra rule
• Also as mentioned above, I think we should play out the round after the game end triggers so players get an equal number of turns

The players all said they did enjoy the game, so maybe it's time to start looking for a re-skin or re-theme. Since I've been calling it "Skye Frontier," it's made me think of a game about airships and flying islands, with something of a steampunk vibe, but I don't have anything specific in mind. One of my players had some good, unusual ideas, which I'll list here so I can find them later:

• The scrolls suggest towns or factories that need specific resources. Could be like space colonies or factories.
• Or make it ecosystem themed - icons are prey, scrolls are predators, trading is migrating or something
• Ok this might run into appropriation issues but: volcano island culture, scrolls are temples, icons are villages and farms, trading is sacrificing to the volcano (or boats represent escaping/expeditions to another island?)
• A little more abstract could be restaurant manager themed: castle represents your restaurant, trading is delivering food, icons are food suppliers (butchers, farms, fishers, specialties like truffles), and scrolls are restaurant reviewers. "Exploring" is connecting with new suppliers, terrain could be growing regions OR cuisine styles

It was good to have a full test, to get a full table of testers, and to have a game go over decently well!

My kingdom for a playtest! Partial plays of Division of Labor and Skye Frontier

 I have been missing out on playtesting lately, as every week for the last month I have had to cancel for one reason or another. So I was very excited to get a 3-player test of not one, but two of my games last Sunday. Well, they were each only partial plays, but it was still a lot better than nothing!

Division of Labor

First up was Division of Labor, which is the working title I'm using for the I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement game. The last time I playtested anything, Rick and I gave this idea a first run, and that basically led me to believe the mechanism had some potential, but the game had all kinds of issues. I addressed some of those and was excited to give the 2nd draft a go. At this point I don't really have the endgame figured out, so Rick, Andy, and I just played 1 round and then had some discussion (also, at that point, TTS started acting funny anyway). The biggest idea that came out of that session is that while the main mechanism did work, it didn't feel much like I-Cut-You-Choose. In addition, it felt frustratingly difficult (in a bad way) to do some of the things you wanted to do.

For the next iteration, I will make some tweaks and changes, the most important of which address the above issues. It might be OK if the game doesn't FEEL like I-Cut-You-Choose... I could just stop billing it like that and it could just be a worker placement game with procedurally generated spaces or something. But I do like the idea of "I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement," enough to give it at least 1 more shot. I think a mistake that led to this failing has to do with the hasty board I made in order to test the game. I had players each splitting a bunch of cubes and placing them in a central location, and as they were used, they got distributed outward. As a result, there were basically far too many options when placing your workers - when splitting cubes it didn't fee like you were making an important split that would affect another player. 

To make the choices feel a bit more like ICYC, I will try reducing the instances of splits. Instead of each player splitting 8 cubes at the top of each round, I'll just have 1 player split 8 cubes, then the next player choose between them. Then player 3 can choose between the other pile from p1, or the 2 new piles from p2, etc. I suspect this will feel a lot more like ICYC, though it may be tricky to make geography matter, or else I could lose the Worker Placement aspect.

As for the latter issue, things being frustratingly difficult to do, I have a solution as well. In general terms, I had designed a lot of stuff in the game with restrictions, when I may have done better using incentives instead. For example, in the first draft you could only build the building indicated on the tile explored in its space. Therefore if you wanted to build a particular type of building, you were at the mercy of the Exploration draws. Perhaps better would be to allow any building to be built, but offer a bonus or discount when building the indicated type. That's similar to what I did in Crusaders, and the thought crossed my mind in this case as well - and now I think that's probably the way to go.

Skye Frontier

Since we only played a partial game of Division of Labor, we had time to try another game. A few weeks ago I started getting antsy to dig into one of my older designs, last played about 2 years ago at AZ Game Fair: Skye Frontier. Unfortunately, we had to cut that one short a few rounds in when my toddler awoke, and my players were running low on time anyway, but we did get a chance to feel out at least a few rounds of play. It went OK, though I started getting the impression that of the 4 actions in the game (Explore, Build, Produce, Trade), it seemed like most of the turns the player chose Explore. I'll note that when we had to stop, it was about when we were all running out of our starting cubes (it costs cubes to build tiles into play - we might have started with too many cubes by the way), so perhaps we would have started seeing some Build and Produce actions, maybe Trade too.

Maybe this is OK - I mean, it is a tile laying game... maybe it's OK if most turns consist of drawing and placing a tile? But to an extent, if that's all we're doing, then why bother with the other actions. The obvious response is that you could set up an engine, then start producing and trading or something like that. So maybe there's not a problem at all. I'd like to get through a whole game before committing to any thoughts on that.

TTS Prototype update

 About a year ago I posted about some of the prototypes I'd implemented on Tabletop Simulator. Man, has it been that long? Here's an update, kinda like The List, but just for TTS mods. I currently have 16 total virtual prototypes. In alphabetical order:

All For One

My oldest project that was any good. I came in on this one as a co-designer in about 2003! After waves of development, playtesting, and shelf-sitting, I recently revived this white whale again, gave it a much-needed update, and I think it's in pretty good shape... then I promptly put it back on the shelf (at least in part due to the pandemic). I finally made a TTS mod recently, and I hope to play it some more virtually soon. I've also begun pitching it to publishers.

Apotheosis

A much newer game, but still pretty old if we're talking about the initial idea (a Worker Placement game where your workers level up). I stalled out on this one until my friend Rick Holzgrafe joined the project as a co-designer, he really got this one back on track, and we worked on it heavily up until the pandemic started, and then virtually afterward. We have pitched Apotheosis to a few publishers, one of which seemed very interested in setting it in their universe, which would have been a perfect fit. We even re-skinned the prototype using their graphics/icons. In playing with them (they gave it 3 or 4 iterations), we found and made some significant improvements, but in the end they decided not to sign the game. So we re-re-skinned it back to the generic fantasy setting, and I'm continuing to pitch the latest version around.

Automatown

I came up with the idea for this worker placement game where your workers are robots, and you building an army to take over the city while getting carried away answering an interview question, and then ended up making a prototype. The game wasn't getting anywhere, and I ended up taking on a co-designer, Michael Brown, who had done some print and play testing for the game and enjoyed it. He has made some big strides with it, but I guess it's been sitting idle for a while now.

Atomic Age

This was a silly little thing I came up with for James Matthe's (may he rest in peace) Manhattan Project Dice Game design contest. I wasn't planning on entering that contest, but I got an idea in my head for a little roll & write / role selection game with the Manhattan Project trappings, so I put this together and entered it. It could use some work, and I don't think James was wanting a roll & write, so it didn't win the contest or anything (I never expected it to), but I think it's an alright little game. I made a TTS mod one day just because it didn't seem like it would be tough to do, and I played around with it solo a few times, haven't tried subjecting any playtesters to it though, other than Isaac Shalev and Andy Van Zandt, who both played it while i was working on it for the contest. 

Candyland/No Thanks mashup

Technically I have a virtual prototype for this, because I found a Candyland mod (there are several!), and just added some checkers to use as "No Thanks" chips. A couple of my players gave it a proof of concept test (we took a few turns to see how it felt), and it definitely worked. I have a few ideas for things to address if I ever decide to take this one any further.

Deities & Demigods

Another design that's been sitting around for a while now, TMG was going to publish it, and I even got a little bit of art done - but that was put on hold about the time the pandemic started. I had gone down a rabbit hole with regard to theme, because it seems like there are so many Greek Mythology games out there -- but I'm second guessing my crazy, Lion King style "Olympus on the Serengeti " idea now. I'm pitching the game with the original theme, and if a publisher picks it up, it'll be up to them how to make it stand out :)

Dice Works

Another really old design that I never did anything with. It works well as a real time dice drafting game, and since I made a mod for it earlier this year, I tried part of a game thinking TTS would be lousy for a real time dexterity-based game -- but it actually worked pretty well. The necessary combos could stand to be a little more sophisticated, but the game itself seems to work well. One challenge is that a lot of gamers just aren't into real time play, so it might be hard to find an audience.

Division of Labor

My newest project (as of mid-2021), this I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement game came together pretty quickly when I had a Twitter follower volunteer to create a TTS mod for it. I managed a first test (2p) with my friend Rick a coupe of weeks ago, we didn't play through an entire game (indeed, I'm not sure what the game end condition should even be!), and based on that I've been able to iron out some obvious details. I've got v1.1 ready to try now, but I've missed out on playtesting the last 2 weekends in a row! I hope to get this to the table soon, as there's nothing I can do with it until it gets played again.

Exhibit: Artifacts of the Ages

One of my more finished, and frankly probably one of my better designs, Exhibit is a "Bluff Auction" game that's like playing 6 simultaneous games of Liar's Dice. It was at one time, years ago, signed by a publisher, but it was retuned for reasons unrelated to the game itself, and it's just been sitting around ever since. I figured it's about time I tried again to get it published, so I made a TTS mod for it.

Isle of Trains Boardgame

Isle of Trains was published as the result of a 54-card game design contest back in 2014. The publisher had asked for an expansion, and we provided one in December 2015, they even got some art done for it, but for various reasons it never came out. More recently they asked us about expanding the game to be a board game rather than just a card game, so we started thinking along those lines and came up with a Rondel game with a circle of tiles that you move your train on (like Teotihuacan). Co-designer Dan and I had differing thoughts about the target weight of the game - I was stuck in the mindset of the publisher putting the game out (even long after it was pretty clear that wasn't going to happen), while Dan (and at least one of my main playtesters) was interested in making it a bit heavier. When I was working on it (before the pandemic hit), I had a working prototype of a light-ish version of the game, and after the pandemic I input that into TTS, and played it a couple of times. At this point I think Dan was probably right, maybe it ought to be a bit deeper.  

Keeping Up With The Joneses

The first new game I designed post-pandemic, I actually played this rondel game about 1-upping your neighbors by myself (solo playing 2 or 3 hands) quite a bit -- something I very rarely bother to do. Then I made a TTS mod for it and played with my online playtesters. This one iterated pretty quickly to a point where I think it's "almost done," with the biggest challenge being that it took longer than I had expected (and intended) to play. I got that down a bit, and adjusted my expectations, and now I think it's within tweaking range, so I've mentioned it to a couple of publishers to see if they'd be interested in a proper pitch.

Kilauea

This really old Mancala mechanism game about sacrificing people to a volcano god to avoid fiery lava being sent your way was actually relatively well received at my old game group where I used to bring my prototypes. Recently when I tried to recruit co-designers to help revive some old designs, someone showed some interest in this one, then he made some strides revising it. I took his updated files and made a TTS mod, and we had a video chat about it one time, but after that I'm afraid it kinda fell off the radar a bit.

Reading Railroad

This attempt to marry a word building game (a la Scrabble) with a connection game (a la Railroad Tycoon) was a personal favorite idea for a while, even if not a favorite design. I actually had something that worked, and was even requested at that game night I mentioned above! I entered it in a contest, and got universally poor feedback, even showing distaste that I might try to trick people into playing a genre they wouldn't want to play. After a loooong hiatus, I revived this one a while ago, made a TTS mod and played it once, and even played it IRL once as well... now I'm afraid the game might just not work the way I'd hoped :/

Riders of the Pony Express

I've seen a few attempts at a low-bid auction, but never one I thought really worked well. I tried my hand at that mechanic in this route planning game about delivering parcels across the southwest. I started this design about the time I saw a post by Gil Hova about his "4p challenge," so I decided to try that out. Let me tell you, it worked great! I made more progress in a single month on that game than I have made on maybe any game I had ever worked on before. I got the game to a point I was pretty happy with it, and then it kind of sat on the shelf for a while. Every once in a while I'd bring it to a convention and get it played, but it always ended up back on the shelf after that. Right before the pandemic, I brought it out again with my then-regular playtest group, and it went over pretty well, with the biggest challenge probably being setup hassle, and we thought of an idea to combat that, though I have yet to implement it. I did however take the time to create a TTS mod, though I haven't played with it yet.

Sails & Sorcery

Mike had an idea to mash up my deck learning card game Eminent Domain with his favorite classic eurogame El Grande, and he really impressed me with how much effort he and work he put into it, being his first real game design of this scope (he's not really a designer, though he did make Templar Intrigue, a werewolf style game). He was hesitant to let me even see the game until he was ready, because I tend to sort of take over a design, and he wanted to get it farther along first. Eventually, he did show me the game, and handed it over to me for development, and as he expected, I got right in there and rebuilt it from the ground up, trying to capture the essence of what he was trying to do. I recently made a TTS mod for it, and I've played a couple of games online. 

Skye Frontier

I heard of a game called King of Frontier, which sounded like a cross between Carcassonne and Puerto Rico, a role selection tile laying game where you could build up your little area and produce and trade resources. It sounded great, but when I got a chance to play I found it kinda lacking. Some time later, I was playing Isle of Skye, a wonderful I-Cut-You-Choose tile laying game, and it occurred to me that if you basically played King of Frontier with the tiles from Isle of Skye, it might work better... so I created a mashup of those two games. The prototype just used my copy of Isle of Skye plus a handful of cubes in 3 colors for production, and it seemed to work really well. I had gone through some iterations and thought the game was coming along, but of course, it ended up on the shelf and didn't come back down for a while. A couple of years ago I brought it to a convention in Phoenix and got a chance to play, only to find out I'd forgotten the player boards at home -- so I tried it without player boards and found that it worked just fine, if not better, without them! That was the last I'd thought of that game, until recently when I was reading some of my old posts, and decided to revive this one. It was easy to make a TTS mod, as I just found an Isle of Skye mod, and added the cubes. One of my readers has played this one a couple of times recently and given me some feedback, and it still seems to work pretty well as far as I can tell. I'd love to play it again soon, and if it does indeed work well, maybe I need to start a re-theme. Since I've been calling it Skye Frontier, I feel like something stemampunky with airships and flying islands would somehow be cool, or cloud mins like Bespin in Star Wars r something. But of course, it could be anything really - I'm open to suggestions!

Winds of Fate

An white whale design of mine, Odysseus: Winds of Fate has never fully come together for me. I've got most of the parts worked out, but somehow I just haven't been able to finish it off. I made a TTS mod a while ago for it, but I haven't gotten around to trying it, and I fear I may have lost some impetus to work on it. Maybe one of these days my interest will re-invigorate and I'll come back to it.