The List - July 2024

    I feel like it's about time for an update to The List ... I should really make an effort to check in with this more regularly, like every 3 months or so.

Published Games:

- Terra Prime (BGG)
- Eminent Domain (BGG) [new edition coming 2024 from a new publisher!]
- Eminent Domain: Escalation (BGG) (expansion) [new edition coming 2024 from a new publisher!]
- Eminent Domain: Exotica (BGG) (expansion) [new edition coming 2024 or 2025 from a new publisher!]
- Eminent Domain: Oblivion (BGG) (expansion) [new edition coming 2024 or 2025 from a new publisher!]
- Eminent Domain: Microcosm (BGG) [theoretically signed by a publisher!]
- Isle of Trains (Co-Design with Dan Keltner) (BGG)
- Isle of Trains: All Aboard (Co-Design with Dan Keltner) [New edition from Dranda Games with included expansion]
- Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done (BGG) [now available from Renegade!]
- Crusaders: Divine Influence (BGG) (expansion) [now available from Renegade!]

- Dungeon Roll: Winter Heroes (BGG)
- Gold West: Bandits promo (BGG)
- Gold West: Trading Post promo (BGG)

- The Sixth Realm (FKA Deities & Demigods) (BGG) (Co-Design with Matthew Dunstan) [Final Frontier Games]
- Yokohama: Achievements & Free Agents promo (BGG)
- Brainfreeze

Development projects - Games I've done freelance development on

- Amun-Re expansion [Alley Cat Games 20th Anniversary edition] - Heavy Development

- Harvest (BGG) [by Trey Chambers from Keymaster Games] - Heavy Development

- Holiday In Rome (add BGG link) [by Cory Andalora from Pandasaurus Games - coming soon!] - Heavy Development

- Expeditions (BGG) [by Jamey Stegmaier from Stonemaier Games] - Consultation

- Fled (BGG) [by Mark Swanson, coming 2024 from Odd Bird Games] - Consultation

- Forelords (BGG) [by Mark Swanson, coming 2025 from Odd Bird Games] - Consultation

Finished But Unpublished Games - in line to be published:
- Crusaders: Crimson Knight (expansion) [coming soon (?) from Renegade!]
- Crusaders: Amber Knight (expansion) [coming soon (?) from Renegade!]

- Eminent Domain Origins [Ready to print] [theoretically signed by a publisher!]
- Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory (dice game) [Ready for art] [theoretically signed by a publisher!]

- Apotheosis (Co-Design with Rick Holzgrafe) [signed by a publisher!]

Currently Pitching Games - "actively" looking for a publisher (though I haven't actively been doing much of anything lately!):

- Sails & Sorcery (Co-Design with Michael Mindes) [pitching to publishers]

- Riders of the Pony Express (BGG) [pitching to publishers]

- Exhibit (BGG) [pitching to publishers]

- Keeping Up with the Joneses [pitching to publishers]

- All For One (BGG) (Co-Design with David Brain) [pitching to publishers]

- Alter Ego (BGG) [pitching to publishers]

- Dice Works (BGG) [pitching to publishers]

- Suburban Sprawl [pitching to publishers]

- Let's Go Balloon Racing [pitching to publishers]

- Taiko Kiri (co-design with Steve Carleson) [pitching to publishers]

- Press-Your-Luck Microgame (KBGames 18 card game jam entry, July 2022) [pitching to publishers]

- Worker Placement Microgame (KBGames 18 card game jam idea, July 2022) [pitching to publishers]

 

"Finished" But Unpublished Games - abandoned or backburnered designs that are "done":
- Wizard's Tower (BGG) [Abandoned]
- Watch It Played [Abandoned]
- Now Boarding [Abandoned]
- Rolling Realms: Jaffee Realms (for Jamey Stegmaier's Rolling Realms)

Current Active Designs - these are the games I'm actively testing or working on:

- Eminent Domain: Coalition [solo mode]

- Division of Labor (FKA I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement)

- 18-card Point Salad (KBGames 18-card game jam entry, July 2024)

Backburnered Designs - I kid myself into thinking that I'm still working on these:

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

- Joan of Arc

- Kingdom Realms (KBGames 3-lane game jam entry, Nov 2022)

- Isle of Adventure (Co-Design with Dan Keltner)

- "Revampsterdam" [revamp of an old game, commissioned by a publisher]

Promising Recent ideas:
- Worker-ception [with David Short]

- False Prophet [Mancala/Worker Placement]

- Come And Play [Sesame Street memory/rondel game]

- Candyland Game [Candyland/No Thanks mashup]

- Press Your Luck Candyland [Candyland variant]

- Hanabi Wonders [Hanabi/7 Wonders mashup]

- Stable Genius ["Wingspan of Horses"]

- Eminent Domain: Legacy [campaign mode]

Old Standbys - games which have been around, 1/2 done and untouched, for years:
- 8/7 Central [Abandoned]
- Hot & Fresh [Abandoned]

- Odysseus: Winds of Fate (BGG) [Abandoned]

- Reading Railroad [Abandoned]

- Moctezuma's Revenge [Abandoned]

- Kilauea [a designer showed interest in co-designing, but that didn't go anywhere] [Abandoned]

- Automatown [with Michael Brown] [Abandoned]

- Dynasty [I still think this one has potential] [Abandoned]

Misc and Really Old Stuff - most of this I'll probably never get back to, but I like keeping it around just in case:
- 9-Ball
- Blockade Runner
- Roman Emperors (my version of someone else's game)
- Admirals of the Spanish Main (my version of someone else's game)

- Investigative/Tabloid Journalism
- Red Colony
- Clash of the Kingpins
- Time = Money
- Dating Game
- Ticket Please
- The Untouchables
- Day labor game based on craps

- Rondel Role Selection

- Scourge of the High Seas [deckbuilding game with 2 center rows]

Recent updates to the above

Published Games

- The Sixth Realm (FKA Deities & Demigods) (BGG) (Co-Design with Matthew Dunstan) [Final Frontier Games]

The Kickstarter for The Sixth Realm is over, so I've moved this entry to the Published Games section! It'll still be a while before people get their copies, but I look forward to seeing reports of games played when that happens.

Finished But Unpublished Games

- Apotheosis (Co-Design with Rick Holzgrafe) [signed by a publisher!]

No change to The List, but Usurpers (FKA Apotheosis) has been progressing at the publisher -- I've seen snippets of art and graphic design coming through. I believe that one will be on Kickstarter eventually, and once that finishes (assuming it's successful), I'll move this entry to the Published Games section

 

Currently Pitching Games

- Let's Go Balloon Racing [pitching to publishers]

- Taiko Kiri (co-design with Steve Carleson) [pitching to publishers]

- Press-Your-Luck Microgame (KBGames 18 card game jam entry, July 2022) [pitching to publishers]

- Worker Placement Microgame (KBGames 18 card game jam idea, July 2022) [pitching to publishers]

I've been trying a bit harder to get my games in front of publishers, with varying levels of success. These four titles are on my Pitch List now, though to be honest, I'll be surprised if I can place the 2p microgames with anyone (even if I think the PYL one is pretty solid). Goballoon Racing and Taiko Kiri on the other hand seem like strong candidates to me.

Current Active Designs

- Division of Labor (FKA I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement)

I'm still working on this one, so it's "currently active," though technically I've also added it to my Pitch List - I think it's about ready to start pitching

Backburnered Designs 

- Isle of Adventure (Co-Design with Dan Keltner)

- "Revampsterdam" [revamp of an old game, commissioned by a publisher]

I have moved a couple of games to the back burner on The List, seeing as how I haven't worked on them in quite some time

Promising Recent ideas:

- Press Your Luck Candyland [Candyland variant]

After playing some Candyland with my 6 year old, I got him to try my No Thanks/Candyland mashup which, incidentally, worked alright but had a problem at the end. As that didn't work out as well as I'd hoped, we tried another Candyland variant: Press Your Luck Candyland, which worked very well!

Asking AI for help with a theme

I'm sure some specifics could be better, but I'm pretty happy with Division of Labor currently. I think its *weakest* point might be thematic consonance, rather than some mechanical or balance failing.

As I sit on this airplane, waiting for them to fix a broken overhead bin, I decided to try asking ChatGPT to help me with the theme of this game. I briefly described the idea I'm currently using (voyagers finding new islands everywhere they roam), and I uploaded the rulebook. This is what it came up with (and it's not bad!):

Backstory:

In a time long forgotten, five great tribes set sail across uncharted seas in search of new lands to call home. These tribes, bound by ancient pacts and a shared desire for prosperity, discovered a vast archipelago filled with lush islands, each brimming with potential. As the chieftains of these tribes, players must explore these new islands, extract resources, build settlements, and develop the land to honor their ancestors and ensure their tribe's legacy.

Setting:

Players are the heads of powerful tribal families, each with their unique skills and abilities. They journey together but compete to prove who can best lead their tribe by strategically splitting and choosing resources, placing workers, and developing the newly found islands.

Key Elements:

1. Voyaging and Discovery:

   • Each round, new islands are revealed, representing the ever-expanding frontier the tribes are exploring. This keeps the game dynamic and emphasizes the ongoing adventure and discovery.

2. Tribal Leadership and Worker Placement:

   • As chieftains, players send their workers to various islands to gather resources, build structures, and train their people. The worker placement mechanism reflects the strategic allocation of the tribe's members to maximize efficiency and development.

3. Resource Management and Development:

   • The I-Cut-You-Choose mechanism ties into the theme of tribal fairness and strategic decision-making. When players split resources, they must carefully consider the needs of their tribe and the potential benefits for their rivals.

4. Cultural Heritage and Storytelling:

   • Integrate a storytelling element where each action taken on an island represents a story or legend being told within the tribe, enhancing the theme of cultural heritage and the passing down of knowledge.

Thematic Blurb:

"In 'Division of Labor: Voyagers of the New World,' you are the chieftain of a proud tribe, navigating the vast ocean to discover and develop uncharted islands. Lead your people wisely, gather resources, build thriving settlements, and train your warriors and scholars. Every decision echoes through the generations, shaping the future of your tribe. Will your name be remembered as the greatest chieftain of all?"

Game Actions and Theme Integration:

1. Recruit (Red):

   • Call upon the strength of your tribe, drawing new warriors and workers from the action bag to bolster your ranks.

2. Build (Green):

   • Erect structures that will stand the test of time, from simple huts to grand monuments, each contributing to your tribe’s growth and prosperity.

3. Extract (Blue):

   • Harvest the abundant resources of the islands, ensuring your tribe has the materials needed for survival and advancement.

4. Train (Yellow):

   • Educate and train your tribe members, advancing their skills and knowledge to better prepare them for the challenges ahead.

5. Explore (Any Color):

   • Venture into the unknown, uncovering new lands and opportunities for your tribe to exploit and develop.

Visual and Component Suggestions:

• Game Board: A beautifully illustrated map of an archipelago with lush, vibrant islands.
• Island Tiles: Each tile representing different types of islands with unique resources and opportunities.
• Action Cubes and Worker Pawns: Designed to look like tribal artifacts and members.
• Player Boards: Depicting the progress and achievements of each tribe, with spaces for buildings and tracks for training and resources.

Another game design jam (or two!), another couple of 18-card games!

 A couple of years ago, a Discord server I am in had an 18-card game design jam, and I made a couple of games for it. One of those turned out to be pretty good, I think - though I don't know how marketable a 2-player only Press-Your-Luck microgame with no theme really is.

Right now, that Discord server (KBGAMES), and another server I'm in (Decision Space) are both having an 18-card game design jam (details here, and here)! I had no intention of working on any 18-card games for either one, but wouldn't you know... ideas crept into my head, and now I've got a game for each jam!

Last time my games were all a little bit of a cheat with respect to the 18 card limit. This time, both are legit, only 18 cards, and on one case, a couple of dice.

Just like 2 years ago, I appear to have one game that seems good, and the rest are nothing to write home about. here's a quick description of my current 18-card games:

Tic-Tac-DOH!

 The bad one this time is a game where you place and move your three pieces (a square, a circle, and a triangle) on a 3x3 grid of cards in an effort to get (and hold) 3-in-a-row, and you do so by using 6 Action cards, of which only ~2 are available to you each turn (based on a 2d6 roll). So you roll, choose one of the two results (if doubles, you may choose to roll again if you wish), and resolve the action card in that slot. Then you flip the action card to the other side, changing the actions that are available a little bit. The idea here was that you would be able to see what actions are possible, but you won't necessarily have access to the ones you want most, and your opponent could potentially even have a game winning action out there, leaving you anxious to see if they roll it or not.

When you move your piece onto a space, you also get to use the effect of that space, which should give you more agency. And finally, there is a special ability for each of your pieces that's different each game. 

I played a first draft of this game a couple of times, and I think it kind of works. For next time I intend to revamp the board effects (make them more straightforward, and mostly about moving pieces around), tweak the Action cards, and try an idea my friend had about how to add +/-1 effects (like the workers in Castles of Burgundy) - print +/-1 on each of your pieces, and let you 'spend' them (by flipping the piece), with very few ways (if any) to get them back.

18-card Point Salad

There's a recent (2019) game called Point Salad that I've never actually played, but I've heard nothing but good things about. In it, each card can either be a scoring condition, or something that would help you score off of those scoring conditions. This was an inspiration to my other 18-card jam game - the one that I think has potential to be pretty good.

In my game, you and your opponent will use the old Merchants of Amsterdam/Biblios mechanism to draw 3 cards, one at a time, and assign one to KEEP, one to SCORE, and one to DISCARD. You do this simultaneously, card by card, until all three cards are assigned, then you draw 3 more and do it again. IN the first "Age," you'll do this 3 times before the deck runs out, then you'll score some points. After scoring, you'll shuffle the SCORE and DISCARD cards back together (the cards you kept stay in your tableau), and start a new Age. The 2nd age will only have 2 rounds of card distribution, then scoring, and finally the 3rd Age will only have 1 round.

When it's time to score, each player examines the cards in their own tableau and scores points based on the scoring conditions on each card in the SCORE row:

My latest thought is to reward best-of-three rounds, rather than total score, so that a player who gets a lucky draw and dominates one round will win that round, but not necessarily the whole game.

Design Contest on BGG

Soon after I had this 18-card Point Salad game, a post went up on BoardGameGeek about someone running a design/development contest for an 18-card game they'd like to use as a companion game with their urbanist book about the city design of Tokyo. That contest is kind of weird in that they have some parts of a game, so it' smore of a development contest -- though they seem open to alternate ideas as well.

It occurred to me that I could consider the card colors in my design to be the districts, and the shapes to be features (such as zoos, hotels, restaurants, etc), and then the players could be building up their proposed rail line (with a station in this Modern Tokyo neighborhood near a touristy resort, and another station near a mom & pop restaurant in a Traditional neighborhood), while the scoring row could represent the demands/desires of the public. With that mindset, I could pitch this game to that contest, and it could fit pretty well, with the possible exceptions that (a) it eschews their tile laying aspect (which they claim is OK, but might count against my game in the judging), and (b) my game is for  players, while they want a solo game. I think 1-2 players would be OK, maybe even 1-4 (I have some thoughts on doubling the deck and playing with up to 4 players, but the setup/format at each player count might have to be different) could work if they don't mind doubling the card count... but will it work solo?

Well, I have been doing some solo testing by simply dealing out cards at random for the opponent, and that works alright -- maybe that could be adapted into a proper solo mode.

So that's what I've been up to lately. Those two games, Division of Labor, and prototyping a simplified version of Keeping Up With The Joneses to see how that works.

Division of Labor 5p playtest

 I finally got a 5p test in of Division of Labor last night! It went alright. There was one brand new player, and the rules took us almost 30 mins for some reason - I sometimes think teaching a game is harder to do on TTS than IRL, but that did seem excessive. Then the play took a full 2 hours, which is on the high end of the range I expected. I'd prefer a little shorter duration, but I don't think 2h is out of the question for 5p. Also, I think that game took longer than average due to the new player, but of course, every person who plays after publication will be a new player at some point! 

I got a lot of feedback about certain aspects of the game, all of which is useful, but my goal for this test was specifically to see how 5p worked, and what changes would need to be made to accommodate the 5th player. Here are some observations I made specific to 5p:

1. Turn order compensation 

For 5p, I reduced the number of rounds from 5 to 4. This is mostly to keep the duration down, and I think it was fine, but it also means the player that goes last in round 1 (arguably the worst position) also never gets a chance to go first, which seems like a clue that turn order compensation would be in order. This came up in our last 4p game as well, and I just haven't gotten around to trying it yet. My thought is to give late turn order players (maybe just the last player) a random cube from the bag... or if that's not enough, maybe 2 cubes.

2. Penalty tracks 

Because there is 1 fewer round (and relative to 2-3p games, you get your 3rd worker 1 round later as well), you end up doing approximately 4 fewer turns, which means about 8 fewer penalty track bumps on average... Which means players won't be pushing up against game end penalties-though the early game in-game penalties are probably fine). I might want to reduce the track lengths for 5p, probably taking a space out of the middle section (between the 1st and 2nd penalties).

I seem to recall having a similar thought for 4p, so maybe the penalty track board could be two sided, with 4-5p penalty tracks on one side, and 2-3p tracks on the other that are 1 space longer. 

3. Worker spaces 

I was afraid this would be a problem... In lower player count games, there has always been enough worker spaces to go around, we've never had a player be unable to place a worker (though if enough players earn their extra worker off the training track, I think it's not impossible). In 5p, the way I had it set up, in the turn you get your 3rd worker automatically, there will be 14 worker spaces, and 15 workers (or more!). So immediately this is a problem. For the playtest we said that if you are unable to place a worker, you get a consolation prize of 1 cube of your choice. 

That allowed us to play, but it's not an ideal solution. I think I need to make sure that there are always enough spaces for all the workers in play. However, in a rare case where multiple players train their extra worker, there will be situations where this problem arises, unless I add a LOT of extra spaces (which might not be so terrible, perhaps). So, I'll think about how many spaces I'd need at an absolute maximum and consider making that available (a fortuitous side effect is that means almost always there will be some islands where the cubes accumulate and then you split like 6 cubes instead of 3). Failing that, another consolation prize option could be a free Explore action in any island you want... That's not nothing. Maybe also a random (or chosen) cube. If the consolation could be useful enough, then that might be preferable to the setup getting out of control! 

4. Letter token limit 

I had been scaling the number of each letter token because I thought "naturally there ought to be enough to go around." My last epiphany was that maybe scaling those isn't actually necessary, mostly because not every player will be going for them anyway. So lately I have been using 5 of each token no matter the player count. That's more than the 3 I had previously used for 2p games, which means there can be more of a back-and-forth fight for majority perhaps, and also that blue cubes don't become meaningless so quickly... 

My concern for 5p was that despite that revelation, 5 players might just be too many for that number of tokens. In our game last night, 2 players went heavily into the set collection (1 got a complete set, the other got shut out of one of the letters, costing them 4vp), 1 more ended up with 3 of the letters, and the last two players only got 2 letters. That result wasn't too bad really, and if it's common, then maybe 5 tokens per letter is enough after all. I'm tempted to up that a little bit though, maybe just 1 more of each token... Though I'd hate to change setup for only one player count :/ So maybe I'll leave it as 5 for now. 

Also, we upped the majority bonus a tiny bit... Instead of 1 point per majority, we got 2 points for a clear majority, and 1 point for a tie. I'm not sure if this was any better, but at least it was a little more complicated :) I do kind of like the idea of majority feeling worth going for.

Another suggestion that has come up, probably instead of a majority bonus, is to allow players to *spend* the letters for some effect. I'm not sure what effect would make sense - boosting actions, I guess. Maybe I could color code the letter tiles, so you spend the red one to boost the red action, for example, making them similar to the cubes "in hand," only they don't cancel penalties, and they are potentially worth more points. Does that mean they're better, or worse?

5. Letters "over-centralized"? 

Not related to 5p, but a concern keeps coming up (from the same people, so it may or may not be a universal concern) that the letter set collection is basically worth too much, they felt like the winner did that, and if you want to compete, you cannot ignore the set collection. I am not sure if I 100% agree that it's a problem, but I DO 100% agree that it would be bad if that were true!

Potential solutions, if it IS a problem, include:

* Nerfing the points, especially at the high end (doesn't have to be exactly triangular)

* Boosting the value of other aspects (e.g. buildings score face value rather than 1vp)

Side note on the set scoring...

Currently I'm using triangular scoring for different letters plus majority bonus for each. I also liked the multiplicative scoring (number different x number same) with a majority bonus for each as well, which was out of control when the letters scaled per player count, but is ok with a max of 5, though it *can* get up to pretty high scoring. Someone recently suggested RA monument type scoring, where you get triangular type score for variety, and then for each letter you get a flat bonus if you have at least 3 of them (so nothing for 1 or 2, except the set scoring) - that's pretty similar to the majority bonus, but I like that you don't have to count everyone else's stuff to get your score, so maybe I should try that - maybe 0/0/1/2/3vp for 1/2/3/4/5 of each type (AKA 1vp for each letter beyond your 2nd of each type).

6. Also unrelated to 5p, a suggestion came up that I don't want to forget about, so I'll include it here. It happens to be something I'd considered initially. but haven't given any further thought to yet. The suggestion was to make the Island tiles more distinct, more different from each other, perhaps by adding some kind of effect to them. For example:

• When you Split here, take a letter tile from the Choose player
• When you Split here, take a cube from the Choose player
• When you Place here, take a [red] cube from the bag into hand
• When you Choose here, you may add a cube of your choice from the bag to the island

I think this kind of thing could give the islands a bit more character

Division of Labor: My favorite mechanisms

 Jamey Stegmaier has a video series on his YouTube channel called My Favorite Mechanisms in which he makes short videos for various games he has played, highlighting mechanisms he finds interesting, clever, or fun. As I approach the finish line on my latest design, Division of Labor, I thought I might try to do a post highlighting some mechanisms in the game that I'm particularly proud of or happy with. So here we go!

I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement

The core mechanism of the game is worker placement mixed with I-Cut-You-Choose. While WP is a very common mechanism, ICYC seems a little underused, and I actually get the impression that it's a well-liked mechanism, with its popularity on the rise. But most games I can think of that use ICYC are small games where that's the whole game: from older titles like Colloretto, Zooscape, and Tussie Mussie, to new ones like The Great Split. There's a classic game called San Marco that utilized ICYC pretty well, though people say it's really only good at exactly 3 players. I did think Zooloretto did a pretty good job of building a bigger game out of the mechanism that is Coloretto - that's probably my favorite entry in the genre so far.

Division of Labor uses ICYC to drive a game that has a lot more going on, which I think came together pretty well.

"Penalty" tracks

As a key part of the ICYC mechanism, I think a "poison pill" is necessary - like the penalty you get in Zooloretto for taking an animal into your barn because you haven't got room for it in an enclosure. In Division of Labor, you are able to do 2 different colored actions per turn, but your split might have 3 or even all 4 colors of action cubes in it. Doing the same colored action too often, or taking splits with extra cubes you won't be using are ways to introduce this idea of "poison" into the game, which helps make the splitting and choosing really work well.

Note that you can mitigate the in-game penalties with a couple of the actions by gaining cubes to store on your board, covering up the penalty spaces on the tracks. However, if you do a particular action too many times, you could still end up with some negative points at the end of the game.

Overbuilding

A happy accident in Division of Labor is the dynamic born of the ability to cover up smaller buildings with larger ones of the same shape. I initially allowed this as a way to sort of increase the amount of space to build, so it wouldn't be too frustrating. But it led to a dynamic where building early for the uncovered benefit on your player board made you susceptible to being covered up, while waiting and building later in the game could potentially be better for scoring (cover up opponents' buildings, and ensure yours are in play to score at game end). That was an unintended dynamic that emerged, and one I'm pretty happy about. 

Overbuilding also makes the game feel a little more interactive than some euro-style WP games. 

Explore as a backup option

In Division of Labor, there are 4 actions color-coded to the action cubes, but anytime you're resolving an action with some cubes, instead of the action associated with those cubes' color, you may opt to Explore - drawing 1 tile per cube and choosing one to add to the island, augmenting the whole island for everyone. Doing this gives you a small benefit of your choice from what's available on the tile you added (a free level 1 building - if you haven't already built it, a free icon token - if any remain, or a free cube of a particular color). of course, the more tiles you draw to choose from, then more options you have.

Being able to Explore, which is never amazing but is also never bad - it's always a little bit good - means that you're never stuck with cubes you cannot use, and it also means you can explore with your first action in an attempt to improve your second action, making room for clever plays.

One of the building types allows you to draw additional tiles when you explore, which means you'll have a lot better odds of getting something useful, facilitating these clever plays even more.

Division of Labor v2.4 -- By Jove, I think I've got it!

 I've given this game a few tests, and made some tweaks each time, and finally have decided to add it to my pitch list. Which means I think it's "done" enough to pitch, even if I think small improvements could still be made - in this case mostly to do with thematic consonance.

Rather than paste the entire rulebook (v2.4 5-24-24) here, I'll link it, and provide a layman's summary below.

In Division of Labor, players are officers in some entity that is exploring and developing a new area - currently we're talking about a new, uninhabited planet, but perhaps it could be a newly discovered island, or some other (uninhabited) area. I'm not trying to model colonialism here!

EDIT TO ADD: maybe a better theme is this...

You and your siblings are heirs to a newspaper magnate. It may have made your father rich, but in this day and age, print media is out, and the newspaper is failing! If you are to salvage your father's legacy, you'll need to revamp the whole operation and bring it into the modern era. Which one of you will build your father's old newspaper business into a media empire?

EDIT AGAIN ON 6/14 TO ADD: I liked the novelty of the media empire theme briefly, but quickly grew tired of it. I'm working with this for the time being...

Lead a tribe of voyagers, sailing the seas with other tribes and discovering new islands everywhere you roam to explore, develop, and inhabit!

In any case, each round you reveal a new "Island," which is a worker placement space with 2 slots: one labeled "Choose" and the other labeled "Split." At the beginning of each round, you draw a random assortment of action cubes for each Island, and then players take turns placing workers. The first player to place in a space takes the "Choose" slot, while the 2nd takes the "Split" slot - immediately splitting the action cubes into 2 piles. 

Once all workers have been placed, you'll resolve the Islands from left to right - at each one, the player in the Choose slot will choose one of the available piles and use it for their turn, and the player in the Split slot will use the remaining pile for their turn. On your turn you'll do up to 2 actions based on the colors of cubes available to you, the more cubes of that color, the better.

After resolving your turn, you must advance "penalty" tracks in each color -- one advance on each track that had any cubes present in your pile, whether you used them or not. If you get too far along a penalty track, you'll suffer a penalty: that action becomes 1 cube more expensive for you. You can overcome this penalty by gaining an action cube via a certain action and placing it on your player board, covering that penalty. Those cubes can be kept for endgame points, or spent to boost future actions if you're short the cubes you need.

You keep doing that for about 5 rounds, then you count up your score. Things that are worth points are:

1. Cubes on your board (covering penalties) are worth 1 point each
2. Buildings in play are worth 1 point each (note that a higher level building can be built over the top of a lower level building of the same type -- yours or an opponent's! So if your building gets built over, it doesn't score a point anymore). Each level 3 building also has a bonus scoring condition that can be worth a chunk of points
3. Things you collect score - there are 5 icons, and you score the [number of different icons you have] x [the number of any single icon you have] (so it's good to get lots of one icon, and 1 each of the others). [EDIT: either this multiplicative scoring, or just a triangular score for different icons] There's also a 1-point majority bonus for ech icon (friendly ties)
4. There's a Training/Research track, and you advance a training marker and an Research marker on it. The training marker is not worth points (it can unlock a new worker though), but it makes way for the Research marker, which is only worth points (the Research marker cannot move past the Training marker)
5. Finally, there is a point penalty for being too high on each of the penalty tracks

And that's it, most points wins!

Division of Labor (I Cut YouChoose Worker Placement) v2.0

The Story So Far

Some time ago I posted about some ideas about, and even a first playtest of, an I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement game that I so cleverly (haha) called Division of Labor. I thought the theme was sound: in search of a new home world, we were bringing specialists of various types on colony ships, and as officers, we players would boss the specialists around, then divvy them up and send them to their next assignment. 

Mechanically, you'd place a worker where there were Specialist cubes, do some actions based on the color (type) and number of specialists present, then split the cubes into 2 piles, sending each to a different adjacent location. In this way, players would take turns sort of *choosing* a pile, then *splitting* a pile for future players. This worked, technically, as a sort of procedurally generated worker placement game, but it really didn't feel like I-Cut-You-Choose at all, which was the feel I was going for. 

At that point, I had to decide whether I wanted to pivot to a procedurally generated worker placement game, or find a way to make it feel more like I-Cut-You-Choose, or abandon the project altogether. I decided to give ICYC one more chance, and tried to identify what makes that mechanism really work in the first place. 

What makes ICYC tick?

As I mentioned before, I-Cut-You-Choose has roots in something called Fair Division. I came across a video one time about fair division of a cake between more than 2 people, which was interesting, but which is kind of irrelevant when it comes to using ICYC as a game mechanism.

You see, in Fair Division the goal is to make splits that are *as even as possible*, while in a game, you kind of want the opposite - you want as big a difference as you can get away with! In order to accomplish this, the things you're splitting need to have a few aspects to them:

* They can't be worth the same to everyone.

If you were to split some pocket change into 2 piles, it would be trivial which pile is better - you'd just take the one with more money in it! But if you're splitting something that could have a different value to you than it does to me, then it's a lot more interesting 

* I think it helps if there's a "poison pill" in the mix. 

I don't actually like things that are strictly negative, but many ICYC games have a dynamic where a certain type of thing is good *unless you get too many of them*, then it's a problem. Or an item could be bad, unless paired with another type of item. In Zooloretto, any type of animal is kind of poison if you don't have a pen to put it in, but you can spend money to discard the extra animals, thereby getting rid of the poison

Things like that seem to help give players a sense of agency over their splits, a way to try and engineer a situation wherein they can get what they want, even though they pick last.

For this to work, I think it's important to know for whom you are making the split, and you need to be able to tell what that player may want or not want. If you have no idea who you're splitting for or what they might want, then you can't really "make them an offer they can't refuse," if you know what I mean. 

For these reasons, I also think that splitting for 2 players at a time works better than trying to split for 3 or more players. Not that the latter is impossible, just that it's hard to do well, I think. 

In my original game, when you split cubes, it wasn't clear who would be choosing them, so it failed to feel like you were even doing ICYC at all. Some of my thoughts to change the game were along the lines of trying to make players split more explicitly for a particular other player. However, I never got around to trying a 2nd draft. Disheartened, I shelved the game until I had some epiphany or something.

New Blood 

Despite having shelved Division of Labor, I kept it on my mental list of things to work on next, and when I'd done what I could with Taiko Kiri, Eminent Domain: Coalition, The Great Goballoon Race, and The Sixth Realm (and stalling out on Isle of Adventure), I needed something to work on next, so my thoughts returned to Division of Labor.

I mentioned the premise in a few different online design forums, and somebody said they had a friend who was working on a similar idea for an ICYCWP game, but the main mechanism sounded a lot more straightforward than what I had originally tried to do. Rather than each worker placement trying to be both a "choose" and a "split," it would only be one or the other -- worker spaces would take 2 workers each, one would split and the other would choose.

I felt inspired by this much more explicit ICYC format. Each worker space could be seeded with cubes related to available actions, as I had originally planned, and could take 2 workers. I could see four ways it could go:

1. First worker to a space splits the cubes, second worker to the space chooses
   One problem here is that you'd never know what player you're making a split for - so that's not ideal, given my above conclusions
2. Second worker to a space splits the cubes, first worker to the space chooses
   In this scheme, the splitter would know who they're splitting for, which seems better
3. First worker to a space chooses whether to split the cubes, or choose
   I strongly suspect it'll be vanishingly rare that a player is so interested in making a particular split that they would pick "split," without even knowing who would be doing the choosing
4. Neither worker splits the cubes immediately - after all placements, first worker decides who splits and who chooses
   Unlike the last option, players splitting the cubes would at least know who they're splitting for. This sounds like the most agency for the first player into a space, but as above, I suspect that the vast majority of the time, the first worker will decide to choose rather than to split

Of all those, the second option (2nd splits, 1st chooses) makes the most sense to me. Option 4 sounds like a better deal for the 1st worker, but in practice I strongly suspect it'll be the same thing, so might as well use the simpler, more straightforward rule!

Division of Labor 2.0

So there we go... I modified my old Division of Labor prototype on Tabletop Simulator to sort of shoehorn this new format in, and gave it an initial test with Rick, and was very promising! Rejiggered a few things and had a 3 player test a week later, and it felt a lot like a real game!

At that point I still didn't really have all the values of things, I was telling players things like "this is supposed to reward you for having done a lot of building -- so if you build a lot, just assume you get an appropriate bonus." These last couple of tests went so well though, I filled in the values and we played a 3rd game a few days later and I think the structure of the game is in really good shape. I have made some more detailed changes for the next playtest, and I'm excited to get it to the table again. I'll post about the current state of Division of Labor 2.0 in a separate post, including the current rules. 

I had been inspired to combine Worker Placement and I-Cut-You-Choose in the first place because of Jamey Stegmaier's top 10 favorite game mechanisms video, wherein his top two mechanisms are, you guessed it, I-Cut-You-Choose, and Worker Placement. Now that I have a working prototype, if I can clean it up and make it good, maybe I should try and submit it to Stonemaier games. Stonemaier has some pretty clear submission guidelines for games they publish - relevant points from their website:

We’re looking for tabletop games (not RPGs) that capture our imaginations.

This is a tricky one, as I tend to be attracted more to clever mechanisms, but the story of the game is probably what captures most players' imagination. The story of Division of Labor made more sense with my original conception of it but less sense with the new version, so I could stand to revisit the story of the game and find something better 

The player count must accommodate a minimum of 2 players without a bot (we’ll add a solo variant to take it down to 1) and an upper range of at least 5, 6, or greater (without adding significantly to playing time or downtime). We’ll ignore submissions for 2-4 player games.

 My current prototype only supports 4 players, but it could easily expand to 5 or 6 -- the biggest question form e in that case being downtime - will there be too much? Will the game take too long? Is it OK if the game takes too long at high player counts?

We’re looking for event games–the featured main course at game night, not the appetizer or side salad–that play in 1-2 hours.

This is my wheelhouse, and Division of Labor seems to be in that range 

We’re looking for unique games–your game must feature something that has not been done before.

I haven't seen a combination of ICYC and WP mechanisms before, so I think Division of Labor offers a new twist on Worker Placement, and uses the underused ICYC mechanism which appears to be becoming popular 

We’re looking for games that flow well, which typically means each player’s turn is short and there are no rounds to break the flow. If your game has a number of phases (either within each player’s turn or within each round), please don’t submit it to us.

Division of Labor does have rounds, like most Worker Placement games do. To an extent I think that's part of the genre, and there's not a lot of bureaucracy between rounds, so it seems reasonable to me. Hopefully that won't disqualify it!

Hmm... I wonder if there's a way to do it without rounds, like you just place your worker, and if you place 2nd in a space, you split, the other player chooses, and then you both get your workers back -- and if you have both of your workers out and your turn comes around, you're just skipped or something. For flow-of-game purposes, I wonder if that might be worth considering

We’re looking for designers who are open to constructive feedback and who are willing to work on their game well after we accept it for publication, as our version of the development process is a collaboration.

I am definitely such a designer!

I don't see it on their list, but there's one other criteria I thought Stonemaier looked for -- maybe I heard it on a podcast or video somewhere, or maybe it's old news -- that they like to have a notable component that stands out and grabs people's attention, such as the Mech minis in Scythe, or the sculpted buildings in Tapestry. In Division of Labor, you are able to build higher level buildings on top of lower level ones of the same type. I was thinking a way to make that very clear, and maybe provide an interesting component, that perhaps the building pieces could be like those in the abstract game Gobblet. In that game you have little upside-down cups of various sizes, and you can place a bigger one over the top of a smaller one, thereby "gobbling it up." So what if the Level 1 buildings were a little sculpted mini, and the Level 2 and Level 3 buildings were similarly sculpted, but bigger, and hollow, such that they fit over the top of the smaller ones, enveloping them. That seems like it would be pretty cool!

YANGI: Mono-match game

Dobble, Spot-It, and "Mono-match" technology 

Lately I've been giving some thought to and old idea: mono-match decks/games (like Dobble/Spot-It), and specifically how one could be made that's *not* a speed recognition/reflex thing. 

In case that sounds like gibberish, Dobble (AKA Spot-It) is a game where you have 55 cards, with 8 little pictures on each one, out of a total of like 57 different pictures. The distribution is such that any two cards will match one-and-only-one picture ("mono-match"). In the game, you flip up 2 cards and race to spot the matching picture. It's pretty fun. 

But the coolest thing about that game might be the mono-match-ness of the deck. There's a good video online explaining various ways to create such a deck which guarantees exactly 1 match between any two cards: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTDKqW_GLkw

I've long been interested in the idea of using this Dobble technology (the mono-match deck) to drive a more euro-style game. So in an attempt to leverage "Dobble technology" in a game that's *not* just speed recognition like Dobble/Spot-it, I have come up with this proof-of-concept 2-player, 7-card mono-match game in which you deal 1 card to each player and the other 5 to slots on the board labeled MUSTER, MOVE, FIGHT, BUILD, SCORE. On your turn, you'd choose one of the actions to resolve in the region where your card and the card in the slot match, then swap your card for the card in the slot. You'd take turns doing that until some game end condition is met, and the player with the most points wins. 

The actions I came up with are pretty bare-bones:

MUSTER: Add meeples to the board

MOVE: Move meeples around the board

FIGHT: Force opponent's pieces to adjacent regions (maybe also get some VP?)

BUILD: Place a building token from your player board in the region, increasing the scoring value of the region, and upgrading one of your other actions

SCORE: Award points for majorities in certain regions

I made a quick mock-up of this on Tabletop Simulator, and last weekend we were able to give it a shot. I observed while Rick and Daniel played a 1st draft of the game, and that test might be among the most liberal I've ever been with rules changes on the fly! 

After their game, we had a much better idea how things felt. Here's an updated rules summary:

2-player, 7-card mono-match game v0.2

* Deal 1 card to each player and the other 5 to slots on the board labeled MUSTER, MOVE, FIGHT, BUILD, SCORE

* On your turn, choose one of them to resolve in the region where your card and the card in the slot match, then swap your card for the card in the slot

* Alternate turns until some game end condition is met (Race to a VP threshold? Play until a player's meeples are exhausted?)

MUSTER: Add 1 meeple to the active region

MOVE: Use 2 movement points. With one movement point you may move 1 meeple between the active region and an adjacent region

FIGHT: For every 2 of your meeples in the active region, you may force 1 opponent's meeple from the active region to an adjacent region (maybe also get 1 VP?)

BUILD: Place a building token from your player board into the active region, increasing the scoring value of the region, and upgrading one of your other actions. In order to build a building of level X, you must have at least X meeples in the region: 

   Muster building: For every 2 Muster buildings, muster 1 additional meeple when you MUSTER

   Move building: For every Move building, use 1 additional movement point when you MOVE

   Fight building: For every Fight building, you may force out 1 additional meeple when you FIGHT

   Build building: For every Build building, reduce the build requirement by 1 meeple

   Score building: For each Score building, score 1 additional VP per area that you score

SCORE: For each region shown on the card in the Score slot, award vp to the player with the most meeples there (ties do not count). Score the active region (matching the player's card) double.

   Each region is worth 1vp, +1vp per building in it (so everyone knows which 3 regions will score the next time anyone does a SCORE action, but your card indicates which region scores x2)

This game plays like a 2 player abstract or something, it reminds me of Onitama or something. Come to think of it, I wonder if this will turn out to just be "bad Onitama" -- I will have to keep that in mind, and try to avoid it! 

I noticed a bit of the Strategy Triangle evident in the game... "Red" moves like scoring and fighting, "Blue" moves like mustering and moving, and Green moves like building. So maybe that's something worth keeping in mind as well.

As first tests go, this game was promising enough that I expect I'll keep working on it. I don't know if I'll ever make the jump to multiplayer though... I think I'd need to go up to 13 cards with 4 symbols/regions on each (13 total regions), and that sounds a bit cumbersome to me. 

EmDo: Coalition update

 Since my last post, I've played EmDo: Coalition 4 more times, and I've been iterating on a few things. My main goal lately has been to reduce game length, because while it feels pretty good now, it still takes longer than I think it's worth.

Reducing Duration

My friend Steve had a lot of salient suggestions for reducing the games' duration. My first stab at it was to simply reduce the amount of stuff you need to do in order to finish the project. I lopped off a planet slot from each section of the sphere, and I reduced the initial resource slots from 3 per section to 2 per section. In addition to this, I made them resource-specific, because otherwise I think it's too obvious to go for [+1 Action/turn] first every time.

That worked a little, but not enough. My next attempt was to increase the frequency that you get benefits from the sphere. I divorced the technology slots from the resource slots, and where you get your pick of two role icons when you commit a particular pair of planets to the sphere, now you get the other one for committing the level 2 technology in that section. The abilities no longer require the tech, just the 2 specific resources. It occurred to me that to get the resources, you have to first flip planets, then produce, then trade... it takes a while, and it' not even engine-build-y (normally), so this seems like enough work to earn [+1 Hand Size] or [+1 Action per turn].

That's all I've done so far, the only trick I have left up my sleeve might be to use scenarios or something to jump start the players a little bit. But I'm pretty lazy, and that might be tough to design, so I'm kinda hoping I won't be need to do that *fingers crossed*

Endgame Tension

Something that's been a problem all along is that as you fill up the sphere slots with planets (for example), then Survey and Colonize become largely worthless. Similarly, as you fill up the tech slots, Research isn't really needed anymore. Near the end game you get to a point where there are a couple specific things that need to happen, and for several players, there's nothing relevant left to do. This is always disappointing; the game action needs to stay relevant the entire game!

I have two ideas to address that issue, and I'm torn as to which I think might be better for this kind of game:

Option 1. If you win, total everyone's personal Empire scores and refer to a chart to see how you did

Option 2. In order to win, require a minimum number of total Empire points (add everyone's personal Empire score for this)

One thing I like about option 1 is that players who struggle to finish the sphere in time could feel good about just accomplishing the task, and they don't have to worry about how "well" they did, while players who can consistently finish the sphere could still have a higher score to shoot for. Another thing is that you don't need to see the points as you play, which means you don't have to track people's level 2 tech buys so you know they have 2 "invisible" points.

A couple things I like about option 2 are that requiring the condition may keep players involved who prefer a pass/fail sort of game end, but are competent enough to easily complete the sphere. This can also be used as a difficulty tuning knob: for an easier game, use a smaller total score requirement; for a harder game, use a larger score requirement. In addition, this format could allow (or possibly even encourage) plays such as "you are set up to ship a lot, why don't you do that and rake in some points, while we concentrate on completing the planets and techs for the sphere". I don't know why, but that feels cooperative-y to me. On the down side, I feel like I'd want the Empire scores to be state-complete (you could walk up mid-game and count them), and having a level 2 tech in your deck complicates that... so I'd either live it not being state complete, or I'd not count the techs, which seems weird to me.

I really don't know which way to go here. But either way, I think this score reckoning will help keep the game action relevant, even as the sphere fills up. I'm open to other suggestions as well, feel free to leave them in the comments below!

Tension from Aliens

I think the alien tension is kind of OK, I don't intend to change it further - at least for now. I'll probably revisit once I get the duration down and the endgame tension fixed (see above).

Coalition Actions

In an effort to clean up the Coalition tiles, I removed "Action: RFG an alien Spy card from hand" and simply made that an action on the Spy cards themselves. So as an action, you can play a Spy from hand to get rid of it. That's the same thing, but it makes space on the Coalition tile for something more interesting - though I'm not sure what that should be.

I had made some other tweaks as well... with Basic Coalition, you can spend an action to EITHER Bolster OR Repair a card in the sphere. It then goes on to explain what BOLSTER and REPAIR mean, which is reasonable, but maybe another ability would be better (the rules could go into the rulebook). I do like a good player reference...

I tried a version where the tile let you spend an action to commit a card to the sphere. At that time you could commit for free when you obtain the card, or as an action later, as a way to allow players to use their cards for a while and then push them into the sphere. But we didn't waste actions on that, we just did it for free upon obtaining... so the latest rule is that once per turn you may commit one card to the sphere for free (does not cost an action). I think this works better, so it can probably come off the tiles as an action.  

With Improved Coalition, you can both Repair and Bolster in one action, and you can send a ship to defend a stack. I'm pretty happy with the usefulness of Improved Coalition but I'm worried that the Basic side isn't enough -- any thoughts on that would be appreciated!

EmDo: Coalition progress

A while ago I posted about some early ideas I had for a cooperative mode for Eminent Domain. Well, after iterating through half a dozen playtests, I'm happy to report that Eminent Domain: Coalition has come together pretty well!

Since I haven't said much about it yet, here are some details of the early version of the game:

Players have formed a coalition (United Empires?) and are working on some common project - building a Dyson Sphere - that requires players to commit some planets, resources, and technologies in order to complete it. So each time you flip a planet, you choose to either keep it for yourself (to use is abilities), or commit it to the project (to further the victory condition)

Similarly, if you buy a tech card, you can either keep it, or commit it to the project. And if you trade resources, you put them into resource slots in the project board (I imagine a board with slots for all of these things)

Meanwhile, some semblance of "bad guys" (hostile aliens?) antagonize the players - they can put 'curses' into the players' decks, which makes them less efficient, and whenever a curse comes up, maybe that advances a "bad stuff" track, and every so often on that track a bad thing happens, like maybe some progress on the shared project is reversed

Maybe players could use ships/warfare to get rid of these curses, or spend their actions researching them away. If you don't keep the bad guys in check, then they'll keep coming up, and the bad stuff will get worse and worse!

Perhaps the Bad Guys get a turn after each round of player turns, in which they randomly (or algorithmically) remove a card from the stacks to hurry the game timer along, and also resolve some sort of effect

Players win if the project is completed before 1-2(?) of the stacks are depleted, and lose otherwise

Maybe players gain some kind of benefit for completing quadrants or certain portions of the project

How do the Bad Guys work? Maybe there could be a "Bad Guys" deck, and you'd flip a card from it after each round of player turns (or after each player turn perhaps, so it scales?), it could indicate which card to remove from the stacks, as well as what effect or action the bad guys take. Stuff like...

• If it's a warfare card, they power up their fleet (no attack, but increase their strength)
• If it's a colonize card, then they attack the planets in the project -- VP value is their "hit points," and players can defend by discarding VP tokens that they have collected
• If it's a research card, maybe the same thing but they attack a tech card in the project
• If it's a produce/trade card, then they knock out resources that have been placed in the project
• If it's a survey card, then some other bad thing happens

In any case, you'd reference their strength track to see how hard they attack, and maybe if they don't have anything in the project to target, then players take curses to make up the difference

When curses come up in your hand, maybe the bad guys strength track increases

Also, when bad guy cards come up maybe it's like "each player takes a curse for each [Advanced planet] in their empire, so some variable attack-type cards\

As I said, those were early thoughts. When I finally made a prototype. I stayed pretty true to the original ideas, but of course some things changed and evolved since then.

Of course it was far from perfect, but I was pretty surprised at just how well the initial prototype actually worked. The biggest problem I had was that it took far too long, and even more importantly, it took too long for players to interact with the Sphere. In retrospect, this made some sense -- EmDo is more-or-less an engine building game, and in any engine building game you first build your engine, then switch over to earning VPs. And in this case, filling up the sphere was the VPs of the game, so it makes sense that the first 1/2 or more of the game players would just build up their own empires, then start to deal with the Sphere. This was lame, and worse it rendered many of the "bad guy" (hostile alien) cards mostly ineffectual for half the game. Sure, they removed cards from the stacks, but many had no effect otherwise until you started actually working on the Sphere

Dysen Sphere

The solution here was simple, but took a few iterations to figure out: make the sphere also an engine building type of thing. I had initially thought it might be good to give a reward for finishing a section of the sphere, but that takes too long. I needed a strong, globally good effect, usable by all players, that would encourage them to engage with the sphere from the get-go (or at least very early in the game). I tried a few things, and in the end (well, currently) I settled on this: in each section, I connected 2 planets into a pair. If you complete that pair, then you get a benefit: all players gain access to a role icon. There are 3 sections of the sphere, and 6 role icons, so I dealt 2 role icons to each planet pair during setup, and now when you complete that pair, you decide however you want (as a group, individually, etc) which one comes into play, and the other is removed from the game

Then I connected the level 2 tech card slot in each section with the 3 starting resource slots, and said that when you complete those, you gain an ability. My first draft was "hand size +1" on each of them, but the current version has just one hand size +1, and the other two are the Streamlining ability (each turn you may remove 1 card in had from the game), and "+1 action per turn." I worry that +1 action might be the most obvious best thing, which would be lame, so it might need a nerf or something, but for now that's what I'm going with

In order to win, you need to contribute 2/3/4 planets per section (6/9/12 total) based on player count, one level 2 tech card per section (3 total), and one total level 3 tech card, as well as 9 resources, plus whatever resource slots are on planets committed. And you lose if the aliens attack an empty stack

Coalition Tiles

Like the Fleet, Mining, and Political Influence tiles from the expansions, I added a Coalition tile to the game -- a reference tile that allows you to do a couple of specific things as actions instead of playing a card. And just like the reference tiles from the expansions, you can upgrade to Improved Coalition via research to improve those actions. The actions on this tile give you a way to remove the 'curse' type alien cards from your deck (in an inefficient way), repair damage to the sphere or bolster it against attacks, and send ships to defend the stacks - if the aliens attack a defended stack, instead of taking a card, they remove the ship defending it. 

Hostile Aliens

The antagonistic force that challenges the players is a deck of Hostile Alien cards. Every so often (originally once after each round of player turns, but more recently I've tried effectively every 3 player turns, using the old Guards mechanism from All For One for 4 players), you draw a card from the Hostile Aliens deck and resolve it:

1. Note the stack that gets attacked. Remove a card in that stack from the game (unless that stack is defended, in which case remove the defending fighter instead). If that stack was empty (defended or not), game over -- the players lose.
2. Resolve effect printed on the card -- increase the Alien Strength track, attack a certain type of planet (in the sphere and in all Empires), attack all cards in a particular section of the sphere, attack the players (giving them all some 'curse' cards), attack permanent techs/techs in the sphere, or reshuffle the discards (and then maybe draw/resolve another card or two).

Whenever the aliens attack you, you take Alien Spy cards into your discard pile. When these come up in your hand, of course they don't help you -- they have no actions or role icons. Also, whenever they are discarded from your hand, you must increase the alien strength track. So they are pretty bad, especially if you ignore them and build up a handful in your deck. Your Coalition tile allows you to remove 1 of the Spies from the game as an action, and of course a Research action can remove up to 2 of them from the game

A newer rule I added in an attempt to disincentive to leaving the sphere empty too long was that they get stronger (advance the strength track) whenever they try to attack some type of card in the sphere, and there is none. I thought maybe that way if players don't build int he sphere, the aliens will get really strong really fast

Damage to the Sphere

My original thought was that when the aliens attacked the sphere, they would do so with strength based on the strength track, they would deal more damage the stronger they were. Then the VP value of the card being attacked would be the card's "hit points" - the damage it could take before being destroyed. But that led to some problems, and things like Bolster and Repair being equivalent

I figured out a better way, so the new rule is that the VP value of a card in the sphere is its defense, and the aliens damage the card only if their strength (per the track) is greater than or equal to the card's defense. Therefore it pays to Bolster -- you might be preventing multiple damage by keeping the card's defense out of reach of the alien strength for longer. And it still pays to repair, assuming that there's some down side to having a damaged card in the sphere

On that note, originally damage meant the card could be destroyed, reversing your progress. This felt pretty harsh, so I looked for something different. Since then, damage has just been something that you need to remove in order to win. So if a card got damaged, then you couldn't win unless you repaired it by the end of the game. But I wanted players to feel pressure to repair damage sooner rather than later, or risk some bad thing happening, so the new rule I am going to try in the next playtest is this: If a damaged card gets damaged again, then something bad happens. For starters I'll try "destroy it"

I'm pretty excited about this new damage format, with reasons to bolster cards before they get damaged, and reasons to repair them if they do (note that you could leave a card damaged for a while, and it's not bad unless that card gets successfully attacked again)

TTS Prototype

That's a long, rambling summary of where this cooperative mode currently stands. I think it's very promising, but it'll take a lot of testing and data to get all the details nailed down, and I have several big comments/ideas from my playtesters that I'm still considering. I'll post again in the future when I have more news about this. In the meantime, here's a screenshot of the TTS mod for the game :)

Playtesters welcome

I'd be happy to have fans of Eminent Domain give this cooperative mode a try! Let me know if you're interested, I could share the TTS mod, and maybe I could put together print-and-play files if anyone were so inclined

Currently Active designs - Taiko Kiri, EmDo: Coalition, The Great Goballoon Race, The Sixth Realm, Isle of Adventure

 I feel like I'm overdue a blog post discussing the games I've been working on lately. Ideally, I'll revisit each of these with a dedicated post in the near future, but here are the most recent projects I've been playtesting:

Taiko Kiri

In this co-design with my friend Steve, players are rebuilding Japan during reunification. It's a tile laying game where each round you place a tile into a common grid, and then either gain resources, or spend resources to start a project. Projects are scoring opportunities who's value depends on the configuration of the shared board. 

You can have two active projects, so whenever you get a third, you must score one of them for its current value. Most of the projects can increase in value over the course of the game, so there's some juicy decisions to be made with regard to which project to take on, when to score it, and when to keep working on it.

In addition, whenever you start a project, you add buildings to the board at the corners of the tiles, creating a network. There's a global network bonus based on the size and configuration of your network.

This game strikes me as having a similar scope to something like Cascadia, or Tiny Towns. I'm excited to think the game might be that approachable, and I hope other people find it as fun as I do. My only real concern at the moment is that it seems to take kind of a long time, but maybe it's not too bad. 

EmDo: Coalition

I thought I was done with expansion content for Eminent Domain, but a few months ago I figured out a way to add a cooperative mode to the game. That seems interesting and different enough that it's worth pursuing. The way it works is that you play Eminent Domain as normal, however instead of counting influence points, there is a group project that you're working on: building is a Dyson Sphere. Anytime you flip a planet or buy a technology card, you may choose to keep it for yourself as normal, or commit it to the Sphere. The players win together if they are able to complete the Sphere in time. Meanwhile hostile aliens are hassling the players, so you must build your engine, fend off the hostile aliens, and complete the project before time runs out.

I'm happy to say that this idea seemed to work right off the bat. Of course, I had to iterate a bit to make the details work, but the general format was pretty good. Probably the biggest hurdle, which Steve helped me get over with a great suggestion, was giving players incentive to add things to the Sphere early, rather than just build up their own engines until later, then putting work in on the communal project. The answer is to make contributing to the Sphere it's own sort of communal engine - once certain groups of cards have been added, *all* players gain access to extra icons or special abilities.

The most recent change I made had to do with player scaling... In a 4-player game, with the Aliens acting as another player, I felt like there needed to be more cards in each stack, like there would be in a 5--player game (according to the Escalation setup rules). Fortunately, Rio Grande intends to put Escalation in the same box as the base game, so anyone playing the new edition would necessarily have those 5p cards to add to the stacks. However, what happens if we want to play the co-op mode with 5? Then I had a new thought: borrowing a trick from an old version of All For One, I added an Alien marker to the game. In a 4-player game, it would start with the last player in turn order. Anytime it's your turn, and you hold the Alien marker... GUARDS! You'd resolve the aliens, then pass the marker to your right, so the aliens would get one turn for every three player turns, rather than every 4 player turns. I'm not sure whether to also use it in 2p, 3p, or 5p games, but so far it's worked alright the one time I tried it at 4p!

The Great Goballoon Race

Based on a race algorithm that I originally came up with when thinking of kid's games to play with Corbin, and inspired by the recent award-winning Challengers! (which has decisions punctuated by an algorithmic resolution phase), this game is about a hot air balloon race. But the players are not racing the balloons, rather the various high fantasy denizens (elves, dwarves, etc) are racing, and they have disallowed goblins. So when it's time for the annual balloon race, the goblin clans get together and have their own contest... As chieftain of a goblin clan, your goal is to toss goblins onto the balloons that you think will win the race. However, the more goblins hanging off a balloon, the slower it moves.

I had a little trouble making this mechanism into an actual game until I got that last idea, that backing a balloon actually reduces its chances of winning, from somebody's comment on Discord. Now I think the game actually works pretty well. It's kind of swingy with wild twists of fate, but I think that's good for a game like this.

There are five balloons, and to begin each round you deal an effect card to each. Then players simultaneously choose which one balloon to toss a goblin onto. Once these are revealed, from left to right you resolve each one. Every balloon with at least one incoming goblin has its effect occur once, then the incoming goblins board the balloon. Once all incoming goblins have been resolved, race cards are dealt per my race algorithm: Flip up four cards from a deck of 10 (2 cards for each balloon). For each card that comes up, that balloon moves forward. If that balloon is at high altitude, it moves six spaces. Middle altitude, it moves four spaces. Low altitude, it only moves two spaces. Altitude is determined by the number of goblins on the balloon - 3 or more drag the balloon down from high altitude to medium, 5 or more drag it down to low altitude. This way, adding your goblins to a balloon makes it more likely you'll control that balloon in case it finishes the race, but also less likely it will finish the race first.

At the end of any round if a balloon has crossed the finish line, check to see if anybody has won. The winner is the player with the single most goblins, in total, on all balloons that have crossed the finish line at the end of any given round. If a player has the single most, they win. If not, keep playing. So far it seems at least half the games go until 2 or 3 balloons have crossed the finish line.

The Sixth Realm

Back in November when I first played the heavily developed version of Deities & Demigods, The Six Realm, I was a little worried because not only was the game a lot heavier than what I had designed originally, but it was also kind of messy. I didn't feel like it was really finished enough to be going to crowdfunding that month. 

Fortunately, they had decided to delay this game's kickstarter launch until their previous project had fully shipped, which meant there was more time. I passed on my biggest concerns and ideas to the developer, and he took most of them to heart. I recently received an updated version, the version he says went to reviewers, and it was a lot cleaner. As yet I have not played a full game of The Sixth Realm, because it's taken about 45 minutes for the rules and about 45 minutes to play the first round (of three), and I just haven't had time in my sessions to play a full game.

My original design was kind of like a deck learning game with a common deck. This version eschews the deck of cards, and instead has almost like a rondel mechanism, but the result is similar. Each turn you'll activate one of the guilds (either the active guild, or one of the adjacent guilds if you pay a resource). Each guild has its own set of actions, more or less flavored towards a particular part of the game. For example, the merchant's guild has to do with resources; resetting them, gaining new ones, etc. There are six guilds, and you'll probably be trying to specialize in some combination of them each game.

Isle of Adventure 

I've met with Dan a couple of times about Isle of Adventure, and we've spoken at length about how it could work. There are a few ways that parts of it could go, and the last time we met I think we had a good idea for something to try, now it's just a matter of getting a prototype together and trying it. Dan is working on the prototype cards, and I will be putting it all into tabletop simulator when it's ready, then I'll be able to start testing it at my regular sessions.