Current (and recent) designs and where they stand - revisited

I seem to have lost the patience to sit down and write blog posts about my games, which is kinda too bad because this blog is probably my best record of the history and status of all my designs -- or it was when I would post in it! Now everything's piecemeal, spread out between various Discord channels (and servers)...

About a month ago I posted about the current status of a few current/recent designs. I've actually missed several playtest sessions since then, so not a ton has happened, and yet I do feel like I have updates, and frankly I hope that by revisiting them, I'll keep the designs active in my mind. Fingers crossed that works!

Colony Collapse

My co-design with Aurore Inara from the Decision Space Discord, Colony Collapse has made great strides through the couple dozen playtests we've done since the first attempt in June. I actually think this game is pretty close to something we could call done. What do they say? 80% down, 80% to go?

The latest changes (since the last blog post) are as follows:

* No more turn order track. Aurore was pretty strongly against the turn order track for some time, but I was holding onto it for dear life! Well, at this point I have let go -- now we have a 1st player marker that passes each round, and it's not so bad. I still like the idea of investing in turn order, but it's possible there's not really enough turns to justify spending actions on it. And to be honest, some of the priority tension has been removed from the game, so it's a little less useful than I used to think it was anyway.

* Rally action - pawn on the board. "Rallying" a tile means claiming control of it as long as your position on its issue track is higher than the current controller (and non-negative). I was skeptical of this whole idea at first, but I think it actually works really well. Importantly, it has opened up the game so that it's not just all about going up the issue tracks (as it had been in earlier iterations). Now it behooves you to go up issue tracks in order to control unclaimed tiles as they come into play, but with the Develop action you can rally tiles in the display, before they come into play, and with the Dance action you can rally tiles that are in play (gaining control of unclaimed ones, or wresting control from a player who is lower on the track than you are) -- but you have to do it. And since your Rally range depends on your pawn's location, it's not trivial to claim control of tiles, even if you are ahead on their issue track... but you can do it. This dynamic makes the game, I think. before it was just a matter of getting every track bump you could get. Now that's not as necessary.

* Rondel display rather than static one. Originally, the actions that interacted with the display were like "take the up-to-Nth tile from the left," so a stronger action would give you more options by letting you "reach" deeper into the display. Now it's a little rondel instead, and you move the (shared) rondel pawn up to N spaces. One down-side to this is that later turn order players may have a hard time planning for rondel moves because it makes a big difference if someone moves the pawn before you do or not. So far that doesn't seem to be a dealbreaker, but it might be wise to give each player their own rondel pawn or something.

* No more card display. Now you just draw N cards, choose 1. It's a lot less info to track, and the stronger the action, the more options you get to choose from. It's a little less strategic, but it's smoother and simpler.

* Up-and-Down track bumps. After some disappointing feeling playtests where one player just dominated all the tracks, we experimented with a format where every bump up an issue track comes with a bump down another track. This way you can, by definition, only dominate 1/2 the tracks, and that means other players will be ahead on the other tracks, for a more dynamic game feel. This was very interesting, and we've iterated to the following: The bump + Flip action just goes up a track. The card action allows you to go up one of the indicated tracks and down the other. The Invest action lets you go down up to N times on a track to go up that many times on an adjacent track. I think this is a pretty interesting format, though I might prefer if the card action just went up one of the tracks and not down the other because it seems like a lot of the time that makes it undesirable to use.

Joan of Arc: Maid of Orleans

No change here! I'll leave this from last time for reference:

Before I got started on Colony Collapse, I had revived another of my old designs: Joan of Arc: Maid of Orleans. I finally tried a proof of concept of some dynamics I'd wanted to add a decade ago...
* Arrival Effects on the board spaces, so you have reason to move places
* Increase battle costs
* Add training track status to the goals
* Add a geographic element to the goals

Some of that seemed like a step in the right direction, but it all still needed work. unfortunately, the game got set aside at that point. Hopefully I'll remember everything the next time I get the game to the table!

Division of Labor

As I mentioned last time, the biggest issue with this game is downtime. After that first attempt at a roundless structure with Rick, I tried a few other versions or configurations. In some ways they showed promise, but in other ways they were disappointing. The most promising format that I tried might have been as follows:

At the start of your turn, there would be 1 worker pawn in play belonging to the previous player. First you would place your worker pawn at another island space, then you'd split the cubes at the opponent's pawn's space and take a turn. So you split the cubes, they choose a pile and take those cubes into their hand (and take the associated penalties), then you take your penalties and resolve one action with strength depending on how many cubes you have of that color. Finally, you discard all of your cubes of that color, whether you needed them all or not. Then the next player goes, and they'll split with you.

One immediate issue with this is that doing only 1 action per split means you get 1/2 as much done for the same amount of penalties... but that's easily fixed by ~doubling the penalty tracks 

Another issue a player brought up is that this felt less like splitting actions and more like splitting resources -- and I can see that. However, if the cubes are tight enough, then I think it could work out to be close enough.

It was a little wonky to do all that stuff in one turn... first you have to think about what cubes you might want later, then you have to make an unrelated Split decision, and your action may or may not be related to the cubes you just got in the split. The next time I play I think a better turn sequence might be to Split first, then act (maybe with the cubes you just received), then place your worker (thinking about the future). It'll be obvious which space you were just at, as there won't be cubes there, so you probably have to place elsewhere, then to cap off your turn, recharge the empty space with cubes.

I might miss doing 2 actions at a time (I usually prefer that in games), but I do kinda like the idea of your cubes building up until you use them. I'd like to play a bit more and see if it grows on me.

NEW IDEA! As I typed this, I had a thought... what if the ship movement was done by the CHOOSING player, rather than the active player, who already has several things to do during the turn? It could be that after taking the cubes (and penalties), you can Sail your ship to any space represented in your pile -- or maybe you could do it cube by cube, so if things line up right you could potentially sail a few spaces at once!

Current (and recent) designs and where they stand

I'd like to take stock in my current (and recent) active designs and see where they're at, what they need, and which I should be concentrating on. So here we go!

Colony Collapse

My most recent active design is a co-design with Aurore Inara, a friend from the Decision Space podcast Discord. Colony Collapse started out as if a sequel to Apiary -- imagine if the spacefaring bees from Apiary found a new home world to settle, and decided to rebel against their Queen in favor of a more democratic form of government... only to immediately fall victim to corruption in the form of gerrymandering to become elected mayor!

We're still taking big swings on this one. The game has been working fairly well in my opinion, with a few fiddly bits, but my co-designer and I disagree on how well certain things are working. Aurore's trying a new version that's got some significant differences and an added dynamic of a pawn moving around the board and rallying hexes to vote for you. That version did away with player influenced turn order, which is one of the major areas of disagreement we've got. I understand the first playtest of that version was weird because it was the first try with a new prototype and a new version, for example the cards weren't included in the prototype, so they just didn't use them (and Aurore didn't seem to miss them!) I like the cards in general, and it gives us another action to use (we need 6-8 actions that players will want to take each round).

We have yet to try the old version with the latest changes:
* 1st player to get to turn order track prizes doesn't get them
* Rally action (pawn moving on the board -- I'm very skeptical of this)
* Change to card display (4 card display, or you can draw N, keep 1)

I'm looking forward to trying another version (or two!) of this game

Joan of Arc: Maid of Orleans

Before I got started on Colony Collapse, I had revived another of my old designs: Joan of Arc: Maid of Orleans. I finally tried a proof of concept of some dynamics I'd wanted to add a decade ago...
* Arrival Effects on the board spaces, so you have reason to move places
* Increase battle costs
* Add training track status to the goals
* Add a geographic element to the goals

Some of that seemed like a step in the right direction, but it all still needed work. unfortunately, the game got set aside at that point. Hopefully I'll remember everything the next time I get the game to the table!

Dynasty: The Spread of Culture in Ancient China

Before I'd revived Joan of Arc, I had revived an even older design: Dynasty. This game went very quickly from prototyping and first play to actually being signed by a publisher! Since it's been signed, I'm not actively working on it at the moment -- until or unless the publisher asks me to make some kind of change to the game.

I'm pretty happy with how this game turned out, which is a relief after a full 20 years of thinking "that idea seems good" every time I thought about it :)

Division of Labor

Colony Collapse has been set aside for a couple of weeks now in favor of bringing Division of Labor back to the table. Not too long ago I had updated the building effects in this game and made a few other tweaks (no backing yourself up at an islands space, only 1 building per action, increased building costs, increased cube count per island space (though I forgot about this when I played again later). I took the game back off the shelf to show it to Shem Phillips of Garphill Games and get his opinion. He seemed to like it quite a bit, and had some great ideas for it in general.

The biggest issue is certainly downtime, especially in a 4 or 5 player game. Some other niggling complaints include arbitrary limits (such as only using 2 colors/actions per turn rather than just using all the cubes in your pile). These are all complaints that have been coming up in every iteration of the game, and I've finally gotten around to making a big change to try and address them. The other night I played a 2p game with Rick and tried a proof of concept of a version that does away with rounds in favor of a continuous flow of turns, and it showed promise! Now I want to try it again, with some tweaks and with more players to see if that's the direction I really need to go, or if the previous version feels better

That's about all the games I've been working on lately... feel free to weigh in on which is the most interesting to you in the comments. If I can get up the impetus, I ought to do a detailed update post on each of these games, with links to rules and everything. That would probably be a good idea!

What I've been playing / testing: Q1 & Q2 2026

 I feel like I haven't been posting in my blog lately, so here's what I've been playing (on BoardGameArena) and what I've been testing (on Tabletop Simulator) lately...

What I've been playing

I've discovered a lot of new games on BGA, some good, some not for me. Lately I've been pretty lucky to find a number of games I've been enjoying quite a bit on there:

Emberleaf is a cute game featuring cute, anthropomorphic animals wandering from clearing to clearing in a forest, collecting resources, building stuff, fighting off bad guys, and making promises. Your cards have come-into-play effects, activated effects, slide effects, and drop-off effects, and on your turn you either bring a card into play, or slide all your cards in play to the left. Setting up to trigger multiple slide effects can be pretty fun, and managing your cards in general is an interesting puzzle. After several plays, I think this game holds up -- it's good!

Dinogenics is a fairly standard worker placement game about running a dinosaur zoo, but it absolutely oozes with Jurassic Park theme. The more I play it, the more I like it! In this game you collect DNA cards to make a set and create a dinosaur, but you have to have the right size pen to put it in or it'll rampage - wreaking some havoc on your park. You can build stuff, including hotels to house visitors, which bring in money and points (if they survive). Some dinos are carnivores, and require an upkeep of goats, while others are omnivores or herbivores. Each dinosaur type has a special rule (T-rex's are worth a bunch of points, but require 2 goats each turn, and when they rampage, it's double bad... Brontosauruses are big points, and don't need a pen, but require 4 DNA cards to create, Ankylosauruses can co-exist in a pen with another type of dinosaur without either one rampaging, Stegosauruses earn you extra money each round, Triceratops like to be in pairs, etc. There's a pretty good variety of dinosaurs, and a lot of fun special cards you can get. I don't agree with every design choice, but man - what a fun game!

Soothsayers is interesting for a few reasons, not the least if which is that it feels like something I might have designed! It's a role selection game where you can upgrade your ability at each role. At 2p there's a real tug-of-war sort of feel as you fight back and forth for the Fate tokens (VP) for having the highest card in each suit and highest tarot in each suit as well. I've been enjoying it 2p, but it seems pretty cool multiplayer as well.

dnup is a unique sort of shedding game, where each card has 2 values, and one thing you might do is rotate your whole hand 180 degrees, switching all cards in it to the other value. You can also pick up your opponent's cards from the board, which sounds counterintuitive when your goal is to get rid of all your cards. Like Race for the Galaxy, I prefer this at 2p, where you get 2 turns in a row - it feels like you gave a lot more agency that way 

What I've been testing

I'm still plugging away at my playtests, trying to get in 2 playtest nights a week. My players' attendance had fallen off, in part because I always start so late (gotta wait until the toddler's asleep), but I think also in part due to people's availability on Thursdays -- I've recently switched to Mondays instead, and a couple of times I got some of my old players back, but it's still hit and miss.

But the struggle for players aside, I've managed to get playtests in fairly regularly. Here's what's been on the virtual table over the last few months:

Dynasty was a crazy ride. 20 years in the making... once I had an actual prototype, I played it a bunch in a short time, and then it got signed by a publisher! The only time I played Dynasty since then was irl with Corbin - the rest of my games have been on TTS.

Division of Labor had some new tweaks that I wanted to try, and strangely, for the life of me I don't remember what they were at the moment! Hope I wrote them down!

Joan of Arc - Maid of Orleans was another old design (only 1/2 as old as Dynasty) that I revived and played a couple of times. I've added a few aspects I've always wanted to try, and I was making some progress, but now it appears that game has been set aside again for another idea that came to mind...

Colony Collapse - The Decision Space podcast Discord is one I spend a lot of time in. they have a pretty healthy design subsection, and once in a while they host a little design jam (an informal challenge to create a game in a short timeframe, given some parameters such as component, thematic, or mechanical restrictions - much like the old Game Design Showdowns at BGDF). Not too long ago, they posted restrictions for a new design jam. As usual, I wasn't too interested in working on a new game for the jam... but as usual, an idea struck me, and I ended up designing a new game. This time, the idea that struck me wasn't exactly the design jam parameters, but rather a mechanism that someone (named Aurore) suggested. The mechanism sounded neat, so I asked Aurore if she wanted to work together on some game using it or something similar. In tossing ideas around for that, I joked that we could plug Aurore's gerrymandering game (another game she had been working on, potentially for a previous design jam) into this design wholesale. I had playtested the gerrymandering game, and thought it was a really neat idea, and once I made that comment, I couldn't think of anything else to do with the game we were working on, so it became another attempt at the gerrymandering game. As for theme, for some weird reason having to do with the game jam restrictions, we were thinking of bees, but there are several bee-themed games out there already. This would not normally deter me, but it got me thinking of how one might approach a common theme like that, and one way was to lean into it and create a sequel to an existing bee-themed game. So this design is tentatively called Apiary 2: Colony Collapse, and the story of the game is that the spacefaring bees from Apiary have found a new homeworld, and have decided to revolt against their queen and set up a democratic form of government... only to immediately succumb to corruption in the form of gerrymandering to get elected! I am amused by that story, though if Stonemaier isn't interested in the game, I suppose it could just be called Colony Collapse and not be about those spacefaring bees specifically.

Forbidden Art is my friend Steve's rondel game about necromancy - compel undead minions to pillage artifacts and bind demons! I like that game a lot, and have made plenty of suggestions for Steve, many of which I think have been keepers (especially a big change to how the Compel action works)

And I've had yet another new idea recently...

New ideas

The other day I saw an announcement for Wingspan Pocket, a new pocket-sized Wingspan game from Elizbeth Hargrave and Stonemaier Games. Wingspan is pretty cool, and I suspect a compact version of it would be good -- but mainly I just thought that a good title for my compact EmDo game Microcosm could have been Eminent Domain: Pocket Universe. To be clear though, I'm really happy with the title Microcosm - I have no regrets on that front at all. So I wondered... is there another compact EmDo game I could design that could appropriately be called Pocket Universe? I've said before that I was done creating EmDo content, but then again, last year I made a cooperative mode (EmDo: Coalition), so I guess you never know!

Here's what I've got so far for a compact EmDo game, inspired in part by the back-and-forth nature of 2p games I've been playing like Soothsayers, dnup, and Toy Battle:

Imagine there are 3 planets in the center of the table, between 2 players (this is a 2p game)... one Advanced, one Fertile, and one Metallic (like EmDo)

On your turn, you play a card for its effect, then put it into one of the 6 standard EmDo action stacks (maybe they're coded to a subset of the stacks, so you can choose between 2 or 3 of the stacks to put it in). Then you do one of the 6 EmDo actions with strength equal to the number of cards in that stack:

• Survey: Draw cards
• Colonize: Tuck cards from hand a certain way under one of the planets (these count as colonies). If there are enough colonies (and you have the most), gain control of the planet
• Warfare: Add ships to one of the planets (cards off the deck, tucked a certain way, counts as fighters). If there are enough fighters (and you have the most), gain control of the planet
• Produce: Add resources to one of the planets (cards off the deck tucked a certain way count as resources.. or maybe have tokens for resources. Maybe in this case, you add ONE resource, but your strength has to be high enough to do so, based on how many resources are already on there?)
• Trade: If there are enough resources on the planet, discard those resources and take control of the planet (str must exceed number of resources). Otherwise... maybe switch a card to a different zone (toggle something between Colony, Fighter, and Resource)
• Research: I dunno, maybe move stuff from planet to planet? Or gain a permanent tile thingy that helps you (req str based on tile "cost")?
• If you control 2 out of the 3 planets at the start of your turn, you win. You control a planet by having the most colonies (minimum X), the most ships (minimum Y), or if you've traded with it (see above). Once controlled, the planets can be taken away by the opponent, but it costs a little more (or you have to exceed what the controller has on it)

Maybe the planets list their minimum colonize/warfare/trade costs (Fertile is easier to take by warfare, so lower warfare cost, higher colonize cost... Metallic is the other way around, and Advanced is in the middle)? Who knows but I think it's nice if they're not so symmetric.

That's as far as I've gotten, and I haven't tested it at all (though I have made most of a TTS prototype)

How does that sound to you so far? Let me know in the comments!

The List - May 2026

I just checked in last month with The List, but I already have some updates to it!

Rather than having to read through all the same old entries to find the new info, I think I'll add a News section at the top here -- then below the fold can just be a simple list, without commentary, and the changes can be summarized at the top of the post:

News:

Signed Game news:

No news on Taiko Kiri or Usurpers (though I have seen some rules editing movement on TK in the last couple of days). The big news here is about Dynasty: the Spread of Culture in Ancient China -- a publisher played it, loved it, and signed it! 

Also, Crusaders has been signed by a new publisher, who I think will print the Amber/Crimson Knight (5/6p) expansions!

Current Active Design news:

The only game of my own I've really been working on lately was Dynasty, as well as my friends' games (Henge and Forbidden Art). Now that Dynasty is signed, I'll need something to work on...

• A new game (I have ideas about a game called Roost, where you play as a bird couple building a nest)?
• A recent project that got backburnered (Peanuts & Crackerjacks)?
• An older idea that seemed promising (Joan of Arc, Isle of Adventure, Worker-ception, or False Prophet)?

Any suggestions?

====================================================

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)

- 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

Unofficial Development Projects
Games I've unofficially helped develop

- Henge [by Rick Holzgrafe]

- Forbidden Art [by Steven Carleson]

Signed Games
In line to be published:

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

- Taiko Kiri (co-design with Steve Carleson) [signed by a publisher!]

- Dynasty [signed by a publisher!]

- Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done (BGG) [signed with a new publisher!]
- Crusaders: Divine Influence (BGG) (expansion) [signed with a new publisher!]

- Crusaders: Crimson Knight (expansion) [might come from the new publisher]
- Crusaders: Amber Knight (expansion) [might come from the new 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]

- Balloonatics [pitching to publishers]

- Politica Galactica (FKA "Revampsterdam") [pitching to publishers]

- Division of Labor (FKA "I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement") [pitching to publishers]

"Finished" Unpublished Games 
abandoned/backburnered designs that are "done":

- Eminent Domain Origins [Ready to print] [trying to find a home]

- Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory (dice game) [Ready for art] [trying to find a home]

- Worker Placement Microgame (KBGames 18 card game jam idea, July 2022)

- Press-Your-Luck Microgame (KBGames 18 card game jam entry, July 2022)

- Wizard's Tower (BGG) [Abandoned]
- Watch It Played [Abandoned]
- Now Boarding [Abandoned]
- Rolling Realms: Jaffee Realms (for Jamey Stegmaier's Rolling Realms)

- The Sixth Realm (FKA Deities & Demigods) (BGG) (Co-Design with Matthew Dunstan, heavy dev by Drake Villareal at FFG)

Current Active Designs
Games I'm actively testing or working on:

... [crickets] ...

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

- Eminent Domain: Coalition [solo mode]

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

- Joan of Arc

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

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

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

- Truck, Boat, Plane

- Peanuts & Crackerjacks

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]

- Which Witch is Which

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]

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]

Dynasty: The Spread of Culture in Ancient China

 About a month ago (maybe two by now) I said I should make an in-depth post about Dynasty. So here we go!

History

As I have said, Dynasty is at once my newest game design, and one of my oldest. I had the idea for this game a full 20 years ago (!), a game where you would gain access to resources by founding villages. Where you'd move leaders around and conquer each other's villages. Where you'd invent technologies... and in doing all this, you'd assimilate other players' culture, taking their culture chits onto your player board, and as you fill up your board with chits, you gain benefits such as upgrading villages to cities to gain access to more, and rarer, resources.

I revisited these ideas time and time again over the years, in blog posts, or in my notebook. At one point I assembled 1/2 of a physical prototype (I suppose that's still around here somewhere), but I never finished it -- my biggest hurdle was creating a large tech tree full of technologies with costs and effects. I knew what I wanted a lot of the effects to be, but actually creating the tech tree seemed like such an onerous task that I just never got up the impetus to do it.

Rebirth

A couple of months ago thoughts of Dynasty crept back into my mind again, and this time I enlisted the help of ChatGPT to just list out a bunch of (a) resources that would make sense in an ancient China setting, and (b) a list of inventions that came out of China in that era. I had some from before that I'd looked up or read about, but I figured I could use a big list to choose from, then I could figure out what game effects I wanted to use, assign them to various inventions, to finally build the tech tree that had been holding me back.

While I was at it, I asked the chat bot to map the inventions into tech areas with sensible pre-requisites. It took some doing, and a fair bit of my own editing, but the AI output was at least helpful in that it got me over the hump to create this tech tree, even if the output wasn't a nice, finished tech tree on its own.

The other things I needed to create a playable prototype were a map board and iconography. The board seemed simple -- I'd always imagined an outline of China, split arbitrarily into 8 or 10 regions, each region with a particular resource in it... the "common" resources would appear in 2 regions each, the "uncommon" resources would appear in 1 region each, and the "rare" resources would not appear in any regions, they would come from cities or technologies. I asked the chatbot to help me create a simple map of China divided into 10 regions, and hilarity ensued:

So I decided to back up a step. I told it "Let me go simpler.... let's start with a simple outline of China, as if drawn on parchment with calligraphy, black lines on parchment" (it did, see below). Then I asked it to "please draw similar black lines to divide that map into 5 regions, each one touching 2 others." Again, hilarity:

For those counting along at home, that image on the right has more than 5 regions! In fact, it has 10, which is what I was after in the first place, so I called it a win and edited it in MS Paint or GIMP to tweak some of the lines and stuff

On the next bit, the chatbot did a better job... I needed player icons, so I asked it to create 6 ancient-China appropriate icons that are simple, distinguishable from each other, and legible at a small size (say 1/4 inch circle):

Culture icons

Then I asked it for icons for the resources. There are 10 different resources, so it ended up overlapping colors on some, and in true AI fashion, it used kind of detailed art rather than simple icons. Also in true AI fashion, it gave me 11 "icons" for 10 resources, it mislabeled one of them when I asked it to add labels, and then it weirdly changed the image on one of them when I asked it to fix that -- in the end I just discarded the unnecessary one: 

First try

Mislabeled the silkworm one

Two silk! Close enough.

It did a fine job with Village and City tile images. I later added culture icons to these in GIMP for ease of scoring:

Next I wanted images for the four main actions in the game. It did a great job except with the labels, so this final version was just the 2nd try:

Now it was time to finally tackle that tech tree! AI had been pretty helpful thus far, so I was hopeful it could help me get this thing made somehow. I listed all the effects I wanted to have -- I came up with about a dozen of them -- and asked it to pair the effects with some of the inventions we'd listed previously in a way that made some kind of sense. After some back and forth and some consideration on my part, the chatbot created this 1st draft of a tech board for me:

I could tell right away that a better way to go would be to have it make the techs, and then assemble it myself in GIMP, and eventually, that's exactly what I did. Also, I added a few techs to bring the total to 16, and I assigned resource costs to each:

Later I revamped the costs, but that's not too relevant to the story

The next step for this tech tree, after some playtesting, will be to increase the costs pretty much across the board, and maybe even add more different resources to help ensure that a player won't just have everything they need in mid-game, making it interesting to keep getting access to resources, or else choosing to trade for them.

New Action Selection Mechanism

As I mentioned in my last post, nowadays games like this generally have a logistical or personal puzzle involved in the action selection, and I also like engine building in games (as I've said before, all I can do is design Eminent Domain over and over again). So, I gave it some thought and came up with an action selection mechanism that sounded good to me: 

Each of the four actions in the game will be dealt a random assortment of action cubes (color coded to the actions, of course). Each turn you'll choose an action to resolve, then you'll take a cube from that action's space in the display and add it to your player board, powering up the action associated with that cube. For example, you might do a Village action, then take a red cube from the village space and place it in the red (Leader) section of your player board, powering up your future Leader actions.

When you get to 5 cubes of a color, you get a bonus action of that type, then discard some of those cubes from your board, dropping your power level back down a bit (you actually lock one cube in first, and discard the rest, so over the course of the game that action still gets stronger in general). And when you take the last cube from an action space, you trigger a mini-scoring based on which space it was (for example if it was the Invent space, the players with the most and 2nd most Inventions get a reward), then all of the cubes are cleared out of all the action spaces and they're refilled like during setup.

I like how this is working out. In a way it's like Eminent Domain's deck learning in that each turn you do an action and get stronger at an action, but unlike EmDo, in this case it's not necessarily the same action (currently it could be, though I've considered a rule that makes it impossible to power up the same action you just took -- I'm not sure it's worth the hassle though).

First Playtest/Early Iterations

Finally, on Feb 12, 2026, after 20 long years of thinking about this game, I got it to the table for a first test! We had a shaky start as I realized I'd costed early game things kinda high, and so nobody could do much at first, but after a few turns (and an audible to removing resource costs on gaining leaders), we actually began to be able to play for real, and from that point on it went very smoothly. What a relief!

After that first game I had some obvious tweaks and changes to try the next time. Each of those early playtests led to improvements pretty quickly, and a short 3 months later I found myself playing the game with a prospective publisher!

Success!

The development timeline on this game has been very atypical for me, so I guess it stands to reason that after the unusually long 20 year idea-to-prototype phase, the prototype-to-pitching phase should be an unusually short 3 months. And to continue the "everything is unusual" nature of this game, I was super excited that the publisher reps who played the game all seemed to like it quite a bit. In fact, they wanted to play it some more on their own, and about a week later I got the best kind of response email you can get from a publisher:

We played Dynasty again and love it even more. We are interested in signing it!

And sign it they did! As of yesterday I have a contract in hand, and I'm super excited for this game to move forward. I understand these things take a long time, so I won't hold my breath, but when it gets close to time to launch the game, or a kickstarter campaign, or whenever there's official news to share, I'll be sure to post about it anywhere I can :)

The List - April 2026

It's been a few months since I checked in with The List, and I think I have some updates since then. Let's take a look at how things are going...

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)

- Yokohama: Achievements & Free Agents promo (BGG)
- Brainfreeze

Nothing new just yet... I moved The Sixth Realm down to Finished But Unpublished. 

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

Still no new development projects, at least not paid ones. I haven't been doing any consulting or development lately, but I have been helping a couple of my friends/playtesters with their games...

Unofficial Development Projects - Games I've done unofficial development on

- Henge [by Rick Holzgrafe]

- Forbidden Art [by Steven Carleson]

I've known both Rick and Steve for many, many years, and they are my most consistent and frequent playtesters. As a matter of fact, I've got a co-design with each of them currently signed by a publisher! Rick and Steve are each currently working on a rondel game, and I'm pretty fond of both of them.

Henge is a shared-pawn rondel game about building a henge and attracting druids to check it out. We've been testing it at my playtest sessions, and I really like the game it's come to be! I hope he finds a publisher that likes the game as much as I do.

Forbidden Art is a necromancy themed rondel game where you command undead minions to power up your actions -- in a way it's like Crusaders, but the minions don't automatically move around your personal rondel. In the game you pillage artifacts, and use them to bind demons, and I think it's pretty cool how it all comes together. This one's a little less finished than Henge, but in both cases I feel like I've been able to offer helpful ideas to improve the games.

Signed Games - in line to be published:
- Usurpers (FKA Apotheosis) (Co-Design with Rick Holzgrafe) [signed by a publisher!]

- Taiko Kiri (co-design with Steve Carleson) [signed by a publisher!]

Not much news about Steam Kingdom (FKA Taiko Kiri) (co-design with Steve), but the publisher has started getting some art done -- I've only seen the cover image and some tile art so far, but it looks cool! 

It's been several years since Usurpers was signed, and I've been skeptical it'll ever actually come out, but I recently saw some potential movement on the publisher's Basecamp thingy, so that made me a little hopeful again. I guess we'll see if any further progress is made on it.

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]

- Balloonatics [pitching to publishers]

- Politica Galactica (FKA "Revampsterdam") [pitching to publishers]

- Division of Labor (FKA "I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement") [pitching to publishers]

Not much progress, but I have had some pitch meetings recently that may be promising. In a few cases I met with a publisher and ran down my Pitch List, and in some of those cases it seemed to generate at least a little interest. I had a playtest of Sails and Sorcery scheduled last month with one publisher, but had to reschedule at the very last minute due to a conflict with a work meeting (should be able to have that meeting soon). And I have a different publisher wanting to try Division of Labor.

I'll note that my wife came up with a much better title for Let's Go Balloon Racing, and you can see it above: Balloonatics. In other Balloonatics news, I got Claude AI to create a web-playable version, and it works! I've tried to get it to do Keeping Up with the Joneses and Dynasty as well, with some success (still working out the kinks on those)

"Finished" But Unpublished Games - abandoned or backburnered designs that are "done":

- Crusaders: Crimson Knight (expansion) [not coming soon from Renegade :(]
- Crusaders: Amber Knight (expansion) [not coming soon from Renegade :(]

- Eminent Domain Origins [Ready to print] [trying to find a home]

- Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory (dice game) [Ready for art] [trying to find a home]

- Worker Placement Microgame (KBGames 18 card game jam idea, July 2022)

- Press-Your-Luck Microgame (KBGames 18 card game jam entry, July 2022)

- Wizard's Tower (BGG) [Abandoned]
- Watch It Played [Abandoned]
- Now Boarding [Abandoned]
- Rolling Realms: Jaffee Realms (for Jamey Stegmaier's Rolling Realms)

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

It still hurts to have Crusaders expansions and EmDo games in this category, but I'm still hopeful they'll find new homes some day. I have a lead for Crusaders, but unfortunately all my leads for EmDo have dried up.

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

- Dynasty [Risen from the dead!]

The only game of my own I've really been working on lately is simultaneously a new one and one of my oldest... Dynasty: The Spread of Culture in Ancient China is a design that's legitimately 20 years old, and I've finally gotten around to making a fully playable prototype... and I'm happy to report that it works! In fact, I rather enjoy it. I mentioned it in a recent post, but I probably ought to do an in-depth post about that  game. 

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

- Eminent Domain: Coalition [cooperative mode]

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

- Joan of Arc

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

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

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

- Truck, Boat, Plane

- Peanuts & Crackerjacks

I have moved Truck, Boat, Plane (the game I made with Corbin) and Peanuts & Crackerjacks to this category because they're not games I've really been working on, and I don't really see getting back to them anytime soon.

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]

- Which Witch is Which

I've added a new title to this category, which at this point is merely a glimmer of an idea... Which Witch is Which is a simple, maybe kid's level deduction game about a coven of witches, where players will be dealt cards showing different unique witches (some have pointy hats, some don't, some have cats, some have ravens, some have cauldrons, some have jack-o-lanterns, etc), and will have to deduce stuff, like in In the Name of the Rose, or Clue. I'm not sure how they'll go about doing that, but probably some mix of asking questions and passing cards around.

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]

Notable that Dynasty moved up to Current Active Designs!

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]