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.