Exploration mechanics - revisited

 A few months ago I posted some thoughts I was having about exploration mechanics, specifically for the new deity I was adding to Deities & Demigods. In the end, I decided for that game to go with the higher level action allowing you to explore more than once at a time, rather than drawing multiple tiles from which to choose (representing better preparedness, luck, or more time searching).

Back to the drawing board?

More recently I have been asked to consult on a game, and this game has a different exploration mechanism. In the first version I saw (which I understand was far from the designer's first version) had face down tiles, and player's avatars had some movement allowance, and you'd move however many spaces (skipping over face down tiles if you like), then flip up the tile you ended up on. I commented on this s it's a personal pet peeve of mine: I hate when a game asks me to make a choice without giving me any way to pick between the different options.

The latest version of the game is structurally pretty different, but still has the same exploration mechanism, and it really gets my goat! So the other day I racked my brain and posted on Twitter and a couple of Discord channels looking for various exploration mechanics people had seen and liked, hoping to find something that I felt worked better than having to randomly pick between a few different face down things every turn (even if it's only really in the early game, until the map is mostly face up).

Crowdsourcing mechanisms

Most of the replies I got were not that helpful (and I wasn't particularly specific about the game, so I expected that), but in the end I think my crowdsourcing bore fruit, as somebody mentioned the way resources get revealed in Gold West. I had never thought of that as an exploration mechanism before, but I think in this case it would really work well. 

Gold West style exploration

The way Gold West works is that you have a board full of face-down tiles, with a few of them face-up. On each player's turn, they will claim one of the face-up tiles, which confer resources (in that game it's important that you get resources every turn, so that's mandated by rule). When you claim a tile, you then turn face up each tile adjacent to that one, making more resource options available. This easily works well with an exploration theme, imagine walking through a dark dungeon or cavern, where the surrounding area (1 tile radius) is illuminated by your torch - it's just like that! So you can see what's nearby (not just where you're standing), but the information horizon is still limited. Starcraft and Warcraft do this same thing as well.

This solves all the problems I was having with the exploration in the game I'm consulting on: It allows a player to go to the tile they want (given a subset to choose from), and it maintains a feeling of exploration. In addition, it works to kind of gate the mind- and late-game tiles, because currently you're allowed to just walk past face down tiles and skip them, and that feels anticlimactic to me.

Keep this one in the back pocket

I have not yet pitched this idea to the designer, and it's possible he prefers the feel of the current mechanism better. I will admit that I might not be in line with the target audience for that particular type of thing, and some players might prefer the feeling of discovery when you flip the tile and find out what you'll get for the turn. If that's the case, I'm going to be sure to keep this mechanism in my back pocket for the next time I'm looking for an exploration mechanism in a game!

"Space" or geography in games, and a twist on engine building? (also, YANGI)

 In the last few days, I had 2 separate interactions on twitter, which I've sort of combined to form Yet Another New Game Idea (YANGI!)

"Space" or geography in games

I was discussing "space" in games with Keith Burgun, author of Clockwork Game Design, and host of a podcast with that same name (though actually, he just rebranded the podcast to a much less good title: Strategy Can Be Fun?). Keith comes from a videogame background, and I think he was mostly talking about space in open world RPGs, or maybe grid-based tactics games, but I likened it to "geography" in tabletop board games as well. I said there's something nice about geography in a tabletop game... Otherwise, it doesn't really need a tabletop!

In many worker placement games, the board is just an array of action spaces. It's convenient to see what's been taken, because there are pieces sitting on the spaces, but in most of those games the geography of the spaces is not important at all. It could be interesting (and thematically strong) if the geography of the board mattered more.

Keith suggested that if you have "space," you need enough of it to really do something with it. Like if it's just five spaces or something, that's kinda not enough, that's more like just menu options. He cited a videogame I'm not familiar with, saying it had a 5x5 grid, and that's just barely enough to feel like space. He summed up by saying

The trick to space is, create enough space that players feel like it's a space and they can do things with it, BUT ALSO make the whole thing feel meaningful and not just like a plodding chore to move around on

I agree with that last statement, but of course I got a little semantic about the size needed to "feel like space" -- the space needs to be big enough to be interesting, but not so big as to have wasted space (whether that's a 5x5 grid, or even just 5 spaces). The amount of space you need in order to feel like it's "enough" depends on how far your units can move at a time. 5x5 is nothing if you can move 8 spaces, but it's huge if you can only move 1!

So, bottom line: I wouldn't mind seeing more non-trivial geography in board games.

A Twist on Engine Building?

Separately, I saw a twitter thread from Jeff Warrender, author of You Said This Would Be Fun, and designer of Sands of Time and his new self-published Acts of the Evangelists [BGG link], listing off some of his random game ideas, just for fun. One of those sparked my interest:

Engine-builder where cards don't synergize with each other, they synergize with locations on the board. But we share a conveyance, and thus our engines don't get "fuel" at the same rate.

 

My response off the top of my head:

This could be cool... basically playing cards to your tableau that boost the effects of different locations, then vying to get the group to visit the locations you have cards in play for Stack up a couple locations with tons of effects and risk not going to them? Or play cards everywhere, ensuring you always get a decent (if not amazing) action?

I'm not sure that actually constitutes a "twist" on engine building, but in case the common perception of it is building a tableau of cards that synergize with each other," maybe relating them to a geographic game board is somewhat novel. 

YANGI

Then I started thinking of how these concepts could apply to a boardgame. For example, I could think of a few ways that geography could come into a worker placement game... 

• Making adjacency matter 
• Limiting movement, so your options are limited (like a Rondel)
• Making resolution order matter (like Caylus)

I came up with this example structure for a game that considered some of this spatial/geographic stuff, and employed Jeff's idea about engine building that incorporates the game's geography:

• Say we as players are in a group, so we travel together in a van or something. 
• There's a board with some number of towns (maybe 7-10?), each connected to 2 others (like maybe they're in a circle, and you can only drive around the circle) 
• Say each town has a main action and a sub-action (lesser version of the main action, or just a less strong action) 
• On your turn, you may move the van to an adjacent town, then you get to do the main action of that town, and the sub-action of one adjacent town

Then I thought about combining those thoughts with the idea from Jeff's twitter thread: 

Maybe one thing you can do is play cards into your personal tableau, which make certain towns better for you...

• When you get the main action of town A, also get THING
• When you get the sub-action of town A, also get LESSER THING
• When ANYONE gets the main action of town A, get THING

Stuff like that. In general, you could stack several effects up on each of a couple of towns, making those super good for you, or you could play cards to all the towns sort of evenly, so you always get some good stuff, even if nothing super-amazing.

I haven't really got a good theme for this yet, which undoubtedly means I'm stalled until I think of one, or until someone suggests one :)

And because I feel like there aren't enough bulleted lists in this post, here are some ideas for groups that travel together:

• Traveling players, like the company in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
• A band on tour
• A family or group of friends on a road trip
• A family or group at Disneyland
• Students on a field trip

A Knight in Shining Armor

Originally posted an unabridged version of this as a backer-only KS update for the Crusaders project a few days ago. Heads up... this is one of those good news/bad news sorts of things

It has been 3 years since Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done delivered to backers, and I've really enjoyed seeing positive reviews, session reports, and pictures on Instagram and Twitter of people enjoying the game!

For those of you who play games online, Crusaders has recently gone into Alpha testing on BoardGameArena.com, with a very nice implementation!

As I'm sure I've said before, I designed an expansion to the game, called Divine Influence. I may also have said that that expansion got printed over 2 years ago, and has been sitting at the manufacturer this whole time!

The Bad News

How can that be? Wouldn't TMG want to sell the product that's already been printed? Well, that brings me to the "bad news" portion of this post. I'm sad to report that the rumors you may have heard are true: TMG will not be publishing games for the foreseeable future. This has led to a number of disappointments for me, not the least of which is that Divine Influence was never released. For a while now I have been trying to find a way to make the existing copies of Divine Influence available myself, to no avail.

The Good News

But hark! I bring good news as well! I'm happy to announce that, like the eponymous (see post title) knight in shining armor, RENEGADE GAME STUDIOS has licensed the Crusaders line, as announced at their Renegade Con virtual event today (Friday, March 4th)!

If you tuned in to twitch.tv/playrenegade this afternoon, you saw a cavalcade of products announced in their G.I. Joe, Power Rangers, My Little Pony, and other lines (deckbuilding games, role playing games, and board games), you saw an unboxing of My Father's Work (a very ambitious and awesome sounding legacy-style game by T.C. Petty III), and you saw Crusaders retail, Crusaders Deluxe, and Crusaders: Divine Influence mentioned.

Renegade has the existing stock of Divine Influence (with TMG branding) available for pre-order now, and if-and-when that sells through, they'll print a Renegade version (which is the same thing, but with a Renegade logo instead of a TMG one).

They also teased more Crusaders content, which was referring to Crimson and Amber Knight (5 and 6p expansions - see below).

What's In The Box

A few years ago, the fine folks at boooored.com made a fantastic summary of what's in the Divine Influence expansion, so check that out to see what's in the Divine Influence box. I'll add that there will be only one version of the expansion, and it's compatible with both the retail and the Deluxified base game. That was TMG's plan all along, and it kept the price of the expansion way down.

If 3's Company, and 4's a Crowd, What Are 5 and 6?
[Eleven!]

And just to tease one more little thing: For those of you who enjoy Crusaders, but generally have 5 or 6 players at game night, I have also designed a 5/6p expansion, which Renegade will print a little bit later. I'm not sure when that will release, let's give them a chance to get the base game out first!

That's actually 2 separate expansion boxes, one (Crimson Knight) adds a red player color, the other (Amber Knight) adds a yellow player color. The boxes are nearly identical, so you can get one or the other to add a 5th player, or both to play with 6. Each box comes with 2 new Knight Orders as well (4 total if you get both), and they are also compatible with Divine Influence - they have all the additional stuff you'd need to play with the expansion. That's how it was set up before anyway, and the art is done, but Renegade may decide to combine them into one box or something.

Oh, and on BGA you can play with both Divine Influence and Crimson/Amber Knight if you'd like! So try them out online, then buy them to play at home with your friends!

I'm So Excited, and I Just Can't Hide It

I can't begin to tell you how happy I am, and how much of a relief it is, to see Divine Influence finally moving forward into circulation. I'm having a blast playing the Alpha implementation on BGA, and I get excited whenever I see people post about playing it on there, or signing up to be an Alpha tester just so they can play it. Now, if only I got royalties for games played online! 

Actually, my position is that the best advertising you can get for a game is people playing it, so an online implementation is only going to increase sales of the physical copies when they release later this year. So it's super-good timing that the BGA implementation will go live around the same time the game becomes available for purchase!