tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-198843522024-03-12T12:04:23.882-07:00CumbersomeMaximum birds, minimum stones.
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A game design blog by Seth Jaffee, Head of Development at TMG.Seth Jaffeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12449603052617321357noreply@blogger.comBlogger843125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19884352.post-40315721815610666292024-03-04T21:58:00.001-07:002024-03-04T22:02:36.652-07:00EmDo: Coalition update<p> 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.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Reducing Duration</h3><p>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.</p><p>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].</p><p>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 <i>need</i> to do that *fingers crossed*</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Endgame Tension</h3><p>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!</p><p>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:</p><p>Option 1. <i>If you win,</i> total everyone's personal Empire scores and refer to a chart to see how you did</p><p>Option 2. <i>In order to win,</i> require a minimum number of total Empire points (add everyone's personal Empire score for this)</p><p>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.</p><p>A couple things I like about option 2 are that <i>requiring</i> 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.</p><p>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!</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Tension from Aliens</h3><p>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).</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Coalition Actions</h3><p>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.</p><p>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...</p><p>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. </p><p>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!</p>Seth Jaffeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12449603052617321357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19884352.post-4978248509331627752024-02-01T22:23:00.005-07:002024-03-04T14:36:06.492-07:00EmDo: Coalition progress<p>A while ago I <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2023/11/eminent-domain-modus-operandi.html">posted</a> 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!</p><p>Since I haven't said much about it yet, here are some details of the early version of the game:</p><p></p><blockquote><p>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)</p><p>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)</p><p>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</p><p>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!</p><p>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</p><p>Players win if the project is completed before 1-2(?) of the stacks are depleted, and lose otherwise</p><p>Maybe players gain some kind of benefit for completing quadrants or certain portions of the project</p><p>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...</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>If it's a warfare card, they power up their fleet (no attack, but increase their strength)</li><li>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</li><li>If it's a research card, maybe the same thing but they attack a tech card in the project</li><li>If it's a produce/trade card, then they knock out resources that have been placed in the project</li><li>If it's a survey card, then some other bad thing happens</li></ul><p></p><p>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</p><p>When curses come up in your hand, maybe the bad guys strength track increases</p><p>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\</p></blockquote><p>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.</p><p>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</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Dysen Sphere</h3><p>The solution here was simple, but took a few iterations to figure out: make the sphere <i>also</i> 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</p><p>Then I connected the level 2 tech card slot in each section with the 3 starting resource slots, and said that when you complete <i>those</i>, 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</p><p>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</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Coalition Tiles</h3><p>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. </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Hostile Aliens</h3><p>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:</p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>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.</li><li>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).</li></ol><p></p><p>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</p><p>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<br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Damage to the Sphere</h3><p>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</p><p>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</p><p>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 <i>again</i>, then something bad happens. For starters I'll try "destroy it"</p><p>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 <i>again</i>)</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">TTS Prototype</h3><p>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 :)</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhSluI4yLZovTyaIIPC-sgLPKi1RwnM7XiqUzlCx0031ywcRc9q_d3rxss5eYUl1ZszVmxOZEbtZ1qyLfGjJ31XCMbcMV3n6Egl96F3jR7uwGmir2lUU0HTVmdpMvJpsT2ZzH6jgwechXV4tbd1tPaJo5R5noiEtLEUbP8r3V4w5cy1dpq6u27BCA" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="973" data-original-width="1354" height="461" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhSluI4yLZovTyaIIPC-sgLPKi1RwnM7XiqUzlCx0031ywcRc9q_d3rxss5eYUl1ZszVmxOZEbtZ1qyLfGjJ31XCMbcMV3n6Egl96F3jR7uwGmir2lUU0HTVmdpMvJpsT2ZzH6jgwechXV4tbd1tPaJo5R5noiEtLEUbP8r3V4w5cy1dpq6u27BCA=w640-h461" width="640" /></a></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><br /></h3><h3 style="text-align: left;">Playtesters welcome</h3><p></p><p>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<br /></p><p></p>Seth Jaffeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12449603052617321357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19884352.post-65758018753343081792024-01-20T23:25:00.007-07:002024-01-20T23:25:58.847-07:00Currently Active designs - Taiko Kiri, EmDo: Coalition, The Great Goballoon Race, The Sixth Realm, Isle of Adventure<p> 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:</p><p><br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Taiko Kiri</h3><p>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. </p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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. </p><p><br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">EmDo: Coalition</h3><p>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 Emmet 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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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... <i>GUARDS! </i>You'd resolve the aliens, then pass the marker to your <i>right, </i>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!</p><p><br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">The Great Goballoon Race</h3><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p><br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">The Sixth Realm</h3><p>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 <i>finished</i> enough to be going to crowdfunding that month. </p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p><br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Isle of Adventure </h3><p>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.</p>Seth Jaffeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12449603052617321357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19884352.post-20609638203275035282023-12-09T11:43:00.003-07:002023-12-09T11:43:54.991-07:002022-2023: A playtesting retrospective<p>It seems like every couple of years I post a <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2020/01/2018-2019-playtesting-retrospective.html">playtesting </a><a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2022/01/2020-2021-playtesting-retrospective.html">retrospective</a>, taking a look at what I've been doing over the last 2 years. It's about that time again, so let's see what got played and what projects I worked on in 2022 and 2023:</p><h3>2022</h3><p><b>January</b></p><p>I kicked off the year with what looks like one final test of the Amun-Re Afterlife expansion module (for Alley Cat's 20th anniversary edition) - in particular looking at a dummy for 2 player (I believe that was to do with the offering each round, to ensure players didn't walk away with 2 rewards for just $1)</p><p>Other than that, and a couple of cancelled playtests for lack of players, I spent the rest of January testing the new additions to Deities & Demigods. The publisher had wanted the game to be heavier and more "4X"-y, so I had added a new deity (was using Hades for a stand-in): a god of exploration. In particular I was testing some generic Enemy tokens that you could encounter and dispatch in some way -- the details are fuzzy, but my notes say they were not necessary, so they didn't make the cut</p><p><b>February</b></p><p>Not much testing at all in February... it looks like my only session was spent on a play of a game I was doing a consultation on - a time track version of "Frostbite," which is what eventually became Expeditions, by Jamey Stegmaier</p><p><b>March</b></p><p>Looks like March was another light month, with some sessions skipped for one reason or another. We played Rick's game Starlight (which we'd played a bit last year), as well as a new version of "Frostbite," this time featuring deck building instead of a time track</p><p><b>April</b></p><p>April was much better, it appears I got back to more regular sessions, beginning with 2 more plays of the Frostbite</p><p>Beyond that, there were 3 plays of <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/KeepingUp">Keeping Up With The Joneses</a> (including one in person!), trying to find a better version of the Social aspect (maybe one that was more interactive). Also tried a "strategic Joneses" variant, where the Joneses marker moved according to player choice rather than at random</p><p><b>May</b></p><p>In May I played one more game of <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/KeepingUp">Keeping Up With The Joneses</a>, and decided that the "strategic Joneses idea was OK, but not better than random</p><p>Then I moved on to a brand new game, a <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2022/05/3-new-ideas-1-new-game-part-3-micro.html">Worker Placement Microgame</a> that I prototyped on scraps of paper at my friend Mohan's house. I quickly iterated through a couple of drafts with three plays of the game in May, and more to come in the following months</p><p><b>June</b></p><p>Quite a few plays in June, including 6 more plays of the Worker Placement Microgame (v 2.0, v2.1, and v2.2), 1 more play of <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/KeepingUp">Keeping Up With The Joneses</a>, 1 play of Keith Burgun's new card game Spellstorm (a follow up to Dragon Bridge, with deck building), as well as another brand new idea... a trick taking game where the card you played moves your piece on a grid... it crashed and burned pretty hard</p><p><b>July</b></p><p>A decent number of plays this month, partly because some of the games are short and got played back to back... two more plays of <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/KeepingUp">Keeping Up With The Joneses</a>, I'd finally found what I think is the final format for the Social track (every couple of steps it lets you activate one of the adjacent tracks), followed by another brand new one: a <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2022/07/one-18-card-game-design-jam-three.html">Push-your-Luck Microgame</a> - an idea which came together quickly and seemed to work very well right off the bat! I have 6 recorded TTS plays of the PYL Microgame in July, but there might have even been a few more than that, because I remember playing it in person as well</p><p>In addition to those games, I had another brand new idea that kinda crashed and burned pretty hard: I tried to make a lane combat microgame, which used a Rock/paper/Scissors mechanic in it. That did not work</p><p>We tried the first draft of another of Rick's games (called Tanglewood), which was an enjoyable area majority game with entangled decisions, and then finally ended the month with initial plays of a couple of games for a development gig I'd gotten with Pandasaurus Games: a prototype called Trailblazers (later re-themed and called Holiday in Rome)</p><p><b>August</b></p><p>In August I played an updated version of that Spellstorm game, by Keith Burgun, but the rest of that month was dedicated to 5 plays of Holiday In Rome. I spent 2 of those plays experimenting with a whole new format, which turned out to be "just OK," and not clearly better than the original format, so I set that new format idea aside and concentrated on the <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2022/08/low-hanging-fruit.html">low hanging fruit</a> of the original design</p><p><b>September</b></p><p>In seven more games of Holiday in Rome, I went through 2nd and 3rd pass development changes, and zeroed in on final tweaks</p><p>Another play of Tanglewood rounded out the month, along with another consultation playtest - a game called Fled</p><p><b>October</b></p><p>Another two plays of Fled and I would complete my consultation work on that project, then I played another iteration of Spellstorm, <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/BluffAuction">Exhibit: Artifacts of the Ages</a> (just to play an old design of mine), and a new idea for a 3-lane card game for an informal game design jam. This idea worked alright for a 1st attempt, but it wasn't great</p><p>The rest of the month was spent on Holiday In Rome (8 more tests - some finer details, and player powers)</p><p><b>November</b></p><p>We started off November with a 2nd draft of that 3-lane card game, which I think is the last time I ever played that one. Later in the month I had a different idea for a different lane based game, inspired by <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/305682/rolling-realms">Rolling Realms</a> and <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/256513/animal-kingdoms">Animal Kingdoms</a>, and I tried it 8 times over the course of the month</p><p>There was another development project (a game called Olroc, but think the name will change before it comes out), Daniel's 3-lane game, an interactive "flip & write" by Daniel called Shipdoku, and my Push-Your-Luck Microgame peppered in among5 more plays of Holiday In Rome (more player powers and last minute items)</p><p><b>December</b></p><div>To finish off the year we played with another game of Shipdoku, revisited <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Sails%26Sorcery">Sails & Sorcery</a> just for fun, and then dove into another development project: a reprint (and revamp) of <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/200058/harvest">Harvest</a>. First, I played the original 2017 TMG release of Harvest to familiarize my playtesters and to discuss issues the publisher noted about it. The next 4 games we started in on the new version from the designer (Trey Chambers), and helped iterate through several versions of that.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Oh, man... 2022 was a pretty big year for me! It saw me start to finally get Seth Jaffee Development up and running, taking on 3 consultation jobs and a heavy development project. In addition, I came up with several new game ideas (at least one of which was actually good, maybe two!), worked on one of my own games (KUWtJ) quite a bit, and effectively co-designed a TMG favorite of mine for a new publisher. </div><div><h3><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;">Now let's take a look at 2023:</span></span></h3><h3>2023</h3><p><b>January</b></p><p>The beginning of the year was spent mostly on 7 plays of <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/395623/harvest">Harvest 2.0</a>, though we also played 2 games of a new design by Rick: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarab_of_Ra">Scarab of Ra</a> (a tabletop game reminiscent of an old Mac shareware game that he made in 1987(!) )</p><p><b>February</b></p><p>This month, among 5 more plays of Harvest 2.0, I started a new commissioned project... a publisher had signed the old Knizia title Merchants of Amsterdam, and they wanted it to be updated a bit. I had played the original game *years* ago, so in February I managed to get a TTS mod together for it (with the help of a photo of some of the cards from Rick!) and try the game out with my testers -- Rick and I hadn't played in over a decade, and the others had never played at all. Then we tried again with a "big new idea" I had for it, as a sort of proof of concept, and started to identify other ways to improve or update the game.</p><p><b>March</b></p><p>March was almost entirely taken up with 10 plays of "Revampsterdam" (my amusing code name for the Merchants of Amsterdam update), iterating on various rules and dynamics each time, honing in on something I considered good</p><p>In addition, we played a new design from Aaron, which was an interesting game where you were forced into interaction with each neighbor</p><p><b>April</b></p><p>April saw 1 more play of Aaron's game, and 7 more plays of Revampsterdam, iterating on a few details of the round structure and events</p><p><b>May</b></p><p>May was a weird month... we played two of Rick's games (Starlight with a new expansion module for God powers, and Ultimus Libre, a sort of deck building game. We only played 2 games of Revampsterdam, and one of those was to show another team of developers that the publisher usually uses, and who are evidently working on the game now</p><p>We also played a game of All For One, just for fun</p><p><b>June</b></p><p>Speaking of weird months... in June we didn't have any regular playtest sessions at all. however, I had a couple of unusual ones: </p><p>First was a brainstorming session with Rick and Daniel, where we each talked about something we'd been thinking about or stuck on (Rick's was "trick taking as a mechanism," Daniel's was a sort of CCG/Eurogame mashup, and mine was I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement)</p><p>Then later in the month I toyed around with some of the kid's game stuff I'd <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2021/01/come-and-play-everythings-ok.html">considered before</a>: a memory/rondel game, and the race mechanism that would later become the <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2023/07/lets-go-balloon-racing.html">Balloon Race</a> game). We tried each of the mechanisms, brainstormed a bit, even tried combining the two into one game</p><p><b>July</b></p><p>Late last month, Vincent was born, so all playtesting went on hiatus for the month of July. Fortunately, this time there was no "living int he hospital for 6 weeks" like when Corbin was born, so come mid-August I was able to start getting back into the swing of things, though regular twice-a-week playtesting wouldn't begin again until October or so</p><p><b>August</b></p><p>Playtesting was minimal in August, due to the new baby, but I did manage one play of Revampsterdam, and one play of a new game that my friend Steve came up with (and which I have since come in as a co-designer on). At the time it didn't have a title or setting, but we're now leaning towards a Japan theme circa late 1500s, with the title <b>Taiko Kiri</b>. In Taiko Kiri, you rebuild a war-torn Japan by placing tiles to *either* collect resources *or* spend them on projects, which score based on the configuration of the communal board</p><p>In addition to those couple of plays, I had a few meetings with a publisher who was interested in not one, not two, but *three* of my games! I played Keeping Up With the Joneses, Sails & Sorcery, and All For One with the publisher's rep, and the last 2 of those made it past that first hurdle, the rep wanted to play them with the team!</p><p><b>September</b></p><p>Unfortunately, after playing with the publisher team in September, they decided to pass on both of those games. *Sigh* oh well, just getting those pitch meetings feels like progress</p><p>To round out the month, I played Taiko Kiri once more with Steve, and I got Goballoon Racing (what became of that kid's racing mechanism from before) to the table 3 times</p><p><b>October</b></p><p>October was filled with games of Goballoon Racing (x3), and Taiko Kiri (x6). They both made great strides in that time</p><p>We also had another sort of brainstorming session to talk about an RPG idea Aaron had, and to discuss some of the comments I received from that publisher on All For One, including what a "modernized pickup/deliver" mechanism might be</p><p><b>November</b></p><p>November brought two more games of Taiko Kiri, and I think the game is settling into that "seems close to done" situation, where sometimes games sit for a long time, until they're either pitched around, or a breakthrough is made otherwise</p><p>It also brought two more chat/brainstorm sessions, one with Rick about Taiko Kiri, which yielded at least one idea that ended up being a keeper, and the other was about an idea I had for a cooperative mode for Eminent Domain</p><p>Speaking of... I put together a prototype and started testing EmDo: Coalition, and got 3 plays in, quickly zeroing in on a solid format</p><p>Another interesting thing that happened in November was that I finally got a "near final" version of The Sixth Realm from the publisher, and it's pretty much unrecognizable! It's much heavier and more involved, and in both games we played of it, it took us almost an hour to go through the rules, and another hour to get through the first (of 3) rounds of play. I sent a bunch of feedback to the developer, and it sounds like they took some of my suggestions to heart, so that's good. </p><p><b>December</b></p><p>I'm posting this in early December, and so far I've just had 1 game of Eminent Domain: Coalition. That game is getting to a really good place, and I was really antsy to test it again with the latest changes on Thursday, but unfortunately, my players weren't around. Hopefully we can play it tomorrow, and I'd also like to get Taiko Kiri back to the table this month</p><p>I'm told that the deadline for The Sixth Realm is fast approaching, and that they've been tweaking and playing that feverishly at the publisher, and I hope to get to play the latest update to that as well this month</p><p>And one more thing that's on the horizon, and which may be ready to try this month, is an Isle of Trains follow up that I'm working on with Dan called <b>Isle of Advanture</b></p><p>That's a lot of stuff to want to test this month, and with the holidays, everyone's schedule is screwey, but sometimes that means more opportunistic time for playtesting :)</p></div>Seth Jaffeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12449603052617321357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19884352.post-69288125818967172872023-12-01T19:38:00.001-07:002024-01-20T16:01:00.657-07:00Heavy is the game that holds the crown... Strategic weight vs Logistical weight<p>There are some games of a particular type that I sometimes refer to as "ducks-in-a-row" games, where the fun is in logistically executing actions rather than actually planning the actions themselves. Often in those types of games the strategic depth is low, so it's fairly easy to decide what you'd like to do... but actually getting it done is far from trivial. That can be a fun, puzzle-y challenge. While in other games, it might be easy to execute what you want to do, but coming up with what's a good thing to do is less clear</p><p>So maybe it's reasonable to split "heavy" games into 2 categories -- let's call them "logistically heavy" and "strategically heavy." For example, Ark Nova is strongly in the "logistically heavy" group, while </p><p>Are there any games you can think of that are both logistically heavy AND strategically heavy?</p><p>The thing I'm thinking about isn't long term vs short term (strategic vs tactical), and when I say "logistically heavy," I don't mean planning... perhaps I should try again. The thing I've got in mind is (to throw a few more terms in the mix) Decision Cognition vs Compliance Cognition, as we talked about them on <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/p/the-argument-hour-with-seth-and-tc.html">The Argument Hour</a>... if you happened to catch that podcast.</p><p>Ark Nova has a lot of stuff that feels more like Compliance Cognition: </p><p></p><blockquote>I want to play this animal, so I will use my Animal action - no problem. I need an enclosure - it says I need size 4, oh and it says it needs to be by water. So I have to build that. Ok, what else do I need? A partner zoo in Asia? Ok, so I'll use an Association action to get that. Oh, I also need to upgrade my Animal action first? Ok, how do I do that? Oh, I need ANOTHER partner zoo, or I can get 3 more hat icons to do it... oh, or if I can find a way to get 2 Shields, then I can get it that way (as long as someone else doesn't do it first)...</blockquote><p></p><p><br /></p><p>In more general terms, this boils down to something like: <i>"I want to do this? Ok, now I need to do these 5 other things first."</i></p><p>Some players play a game like that and think <i>"I just want to decide to do the thing, then do the thing!"</i></p><p>This is what I mean by games that are logistically heavy. In order to do the thing, you need to do several other things, and each of those things might have a couple of steps or pre-requisites as well</p><p>But deciding which thing you want to do in the first place in Ark Nova isn't terribly complex -- it's pretty straightforward in fact. It's not the 'what' that's tricky, but the 'how', so it's not strategically heavy. The weight of the game comes primarily from the logistics -- from getting your ducks in a row</p><p>... As opposed to games where the what is challenging, but the how is not. I think these tend to be called "lighter" by folks</p><p>I think there's compliance cognition (which isn't quite the above, but is similar), there's logistics, and there's the strategic decision. At the highest level, you make your strategic decision, the move that's going to (hopefully) advance you toward winning. The next level down is logistics -- what has to happen in order to enact your plan, decided above? Below that there's a layer of rules that you need to navigate in order to achieve each logistical step.</p><p>In the simplest case, you decide what you want to do (decision), then you just do it (logistics), and you're allowed to (rules)</p><p>In a more complicated case, you decide what you want to do (decision), there are prerequisites and steps you have to take in order to do it (logistics), and then there are compliance considerations about what you're allowed to do (rules)</p>Seth Jaffeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12449603052617321357noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19884352.post-67655478255614263532023-11-28T01:34:00.002-07:002023-11-28T01:34:38.009-07:00The List - November 2023<p> I know I just posted about<span> </span><b style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/TheList">The List</a></b><span> a month ago, but I've already got some updates to it!</span></p><p><b>Published Games</b>:</p><span>- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/TP">Terra Prime</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/22485/terra-prime">BGG</a>)</span><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/EmDo">Eminent Domain</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/68425/eminent-domain">BGG</a>) [new edition coming 2024 from a new publisher!]</span><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Escalation">Eminent Domain: Escalation</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/136313/eminent-domain-escalation">BGG</a>) (expansi</span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span>on)</span><span> [new edition coming 2024 from a new publisher!]</span></span><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Exotica">Eminent Domain: Exotica</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://bgg.cc/boardgameexpansion/163639/eminent-domain-exotica">BGG</a>)</span> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(expansion)</span></span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> [new edition coming 2024 or 2025 from a new publisher!]</span><br />- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Oblivion">Eminent Domain: Oblivion</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/232135/eminent-domain-oblivion">BGG</a>) (expansion)</span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> [new edition coming 2024 or 2025 from a new publisher!]</span><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/MicroCiv">Eminent Domain: Microcosm</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span>(<a href="http://bgg.cc/boardgame/163640/eminent-domain-microcosm">BGG</a>)</span><span> [theoretically signed by a publisher!]</span></span><br />- <u>Isle of Trains</u><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(Co-Design with Dan Keltner)</span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://bgg.cc/boardgame/154906/isle-trains">BGG</a>)<br /></span><span><span>- <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/355224/isle-trains-all-aboard">Isle of Trains: All Aboard</a></span><span> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(Co-Design with Dan Keltner)</span><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[New edition from Dranda Games with included expansion]</span><br /></span>- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/KnightsTemplar">Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done</a><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> <span>(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/170624/crusaders-thy-will-be-done">BGG</a>) </span><span>[<a href="https://renegadegamestudios.com/crusaders-thy-will-be-done/">now available from Renegade!</a>]</span></span><br />- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2018/07/crusaders-exansion-prototype-pdf-and.html">Crusaders: Divine Influence</a><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> (<a href="https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/289240/crusaders-divine-influence">BGG</a>) (expansion) [<a href="https://renegadegamestudios.com/crusaders-thy-will-be-done-divine-influence-expansion/">now available from Renegade!</a>]</span></span><div><span>- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2013/11/dungeon-roll-winter-promo-tmg-goes.html">Dungeon Roll: Winter Heroes</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/150233/dungeon-roll-winter-heroes-pack">BGG</a>)</span><br />- Gold West: Bandits promo <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/188355/gold-west-bandits-promo">BGG</a>)</span><br />- Gold West: Trading Post promo <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/213216/gold-west-trading-post-promo">BGG</a>)</span><br />- Yokohama: Achievements & Free Agents promo <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/232352/yokohama-achievements-free-agents-promo">BGG</a>)</span><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/BF">Brainfreeze</a></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><b>Development projects</b><span> - Games I've done freelance development on</span></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><span>- </span><a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/354568/amun-re-20th-anniversary-edition">Amun-Re expansion</a><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Alley Cat Games 20th Anniversary edition]</span></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">- </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">Heavy Development</span></div><div><span>- <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/395623/harvest">Harvest</a><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/395623/harvest">BGG</a>) </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[by Trey Chambers from Keymaster Games]</span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">- Heavy Development</span></div><div><span><span><div><span>- Holiday In Rome</span><span style="font-size: medium;"> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(add BGG link) [by Cory Andalora from Pandasaurus Games - coming soon!] - </span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">Heavy Development</span></div><div><span><span><span><b>-</b> <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/379078/expeditions">Expeditions</a></span><span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> <span>(<a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/379078/expeditions">BGG</a>) [by Jamey Stegmaier from Stonemaier Games]</span></span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">-</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">Consultation</span></span></span></span></div><div><span><span><span><span>- Fled <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/382444/fled">BGG</a>)</span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> [by Mark Swanson, coming 2024 from Odd Bird Games]</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> - Consultation</span></div><div><span><span><span><span>- Forelords <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/401038/forelords">BGG</a>) [by Mark Swanson, coming 2025 from Odd Bird Games]</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> - Consultation</span></span></span></span></span></div></span></span></div><br /><b>Finished But Unpublished Games</b> - in line to be published:<br />- Crusaders: Crimson Knight<span style="font-size: xx-small;"> (expansion) [coming soon (?) from Renegade!]</span><br />- Crusaders: Amber Knight<span style="font-size: xx-small;"> (expansion) [coming soon (?) from Renegade!]</span></span></div><div><span>- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/TP">Eminent Domain Origins</a><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Ready to print] [theoretically signed by a publisher!]</span><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/EmDice">Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(dice game) [Ready for art] </span></span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[theoretically signed by a publisher!]</span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">- </span><a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/WorkerLearning" style="font-size: medium;">Apotheosis</a><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(Co-Design with Rick Holzgrafe)</span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">[signed by a publisher!]</span></div><div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Currently Pitching Games</b> - "actively" looking for a publisher (though I haven't <i>actively</i> been doing much of anything lately!):</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>- </span><a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Sails%26Sorcery">Sails & Sorcery</a><span> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(</span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">Co-Design </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">with Michael Mindes)</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">[pitching to publishers]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>- </span><a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Pony%20Express">Riders of the Pony Express</a><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/187583/riders-pony-express">BGG</a>)</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">[pitching to publishers]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/BluffAuction">Exhibit</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/119770/exhibit-artifacts-of-the-ages">BGG</a>) </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[pitching to publishers]</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><span>- </span><a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/KeepingUp">Keeping Up with the Joneses</a></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">[pitching to publishers]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">-</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/A41">All For One</a><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/20941">BGG</a>) (Co-Design with David Brain)</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">[pitching to publishers]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>- </span><a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/AlterEgo">Alter Ego</a><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/119772/alter-ego">BGG</a>)</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">[pitching to publishers]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><span>- </span><a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/DiceWerx">Dice Works</a><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/119773/dice-works">BGG</a>)</span></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">[pitching to publishers]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><span><span>- </span><a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/citybuilding">Suburban Sprawl</a></span></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">[pitching to publishers]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"> </span></div></span></span></div></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>"Finished" But Unpublished Games</b> - abandoned or backburnered designs that are "done":<br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/WT">Wizard's Tower</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/29446">BGG</a>)</span> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Abandoned]</span><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/WatchItPlayed">Watch It Played</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Abandoned]</span><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/NowBoarding">Now Boarding</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Abandoned]</span><br />- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2020/04/free-roll-writes-for-quarantine-time.html">Rolling Realms</a>: <a href="https://t.co/C6ssLvsIrW">Jaffee Realms</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(for Jamey Stegmaier's Rolling Realms)</span></span></div><div><span>- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2022/07/one-18-card-game-design-jam-three.html">Press-Your-Luck Microgame</a><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(KBGames 18 card game jam entry, July 2022)</span></div><div>- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2022/05/3-new-ideas-1-new-game-part-3-micro.html">Worker Placement Microgame</a><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span><div><br /></div><div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Current Active Designs</b> - these are the games I'm actively testing or working on:</span></div><div>- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2023/10/lets-go-balloon-racing-status-report.html">Let's Go Balloon Racing</a></div><div>- Taiko Kiri <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(co-design with Steve Carleson)</span></div><div>- "Revampsterdam" <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[revamp of an old game, commissioned by a publisher]</span></div><div>- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2023/10/isle-of-trains-follow-up-isle-of.html">Isle of Adventure</a><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(Co-Design with Dan Keltner)</span></div><div>- Eminent Domain: Coalition <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[solo mode]</span></div><div><span>- The Sixth Realm (FKA </span><a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Deities%26Demigods">Deities & Demigods</a><span>)</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/401182/sixth-realm">BGG</a>)</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(Co-Design with Matthew Dunstan)</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[coming soon from Final Frontier Games]</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Backburnered Designs</b> - I kid myself into thinking that I'm still working on these:</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- Isle Of Trains: The Board Game </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;">(Co-Design with Dan Keltner)</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/JoanOfArc">Joan of Arc</a></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2020/12/yangi-x2-and-old-game-off-back-burner.html">I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement</a></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><span><span><span>- Kingdom Realms</span><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(</span></span></span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span>KBGames 3-lane game jam entry, Nov 2022</span><span>)</span></span><br /></span><br /><b>Promising Recent ideas</b>:<br />- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Worker-ception">Worker-ception</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[with David Short]</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2020/12/yangi-x2-and-old-game-off-back-burner.html">False Prophet</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Mancala/Worker Placement]</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- </span><a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2021/01/come-and-play-everythings-ok.html" style="font-family: inherit;">Come And Play</a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;">[Sesame Street memory/rondel game]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/candyland">Candyland Game</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Candyland/No Thanks mashup]</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><span><span><b>-</b> <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2023/01/competitive-hanabi.html">Hanabi Wonders</a></span><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Hanabi/7 Wonders mashup]</span></span></span></span></div><div>- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2023/10/horsing-around.html">Stable Genius</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">["Wingspan of Horses"]</span></div><div><div><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: medium;">- Eminent Domain: Legacy </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[campaign mode]</span></span></div><div><br /></div></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Old Standbys</b> - games which have been around, 1/2 done and untouched, for years:<br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/87c">8/7 Central</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Abandoned]</span><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/HF">Hot & Fresh</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Abandoned]</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Odysseus">Odysseus: Winds of Fate</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/170623/odysseus-winds-fate">BGG</a>)</span></span> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Abandoned]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/CJ">Reading Railroad</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Abandoned]</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Moctezuma">Moctezuma's Revenge</a></span> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Abandoned]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Kilauea">Kilauea</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[a designer showed interest in co-designing, but that didn't go anywhere]</span></span> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Abandoned]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Automatown">Automatown</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[with Michael Brown]</span></span> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Abandoned]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><span>- </span><a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Dynasty">Dynasty</a><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[I still think this one has potential]</span></span></span> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Abandoned]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Misc and Really Old Stuff</b> - most of this I'll probably never get back to, but I like keeping it around just in case:<br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/9-ball">9-Ball</a><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/BR">Blockade Runner</a><br />- Roman Emperors<span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(my version of someone else's game)</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">- Admirals of the Spanish Main </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;">(my version of someone else's game)</span></span></div><div><span><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Tabloid">Investigative/Tabloid Journalism</a><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Mars">Red Colony</a><br />- Clash of the Kingpins<br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/A%3D%24">Time = Money</a><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/DatingGame">Dating Game</a><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Airlines">Ticket Please</a><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Untouchables">The Untouchables</a><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2010/03/board-game-inspired-by-craps.html">Day labor game based on craps</a></span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2013/12/rondel-role-selection-theme-emerges.html">Rondel Role Selection</a></span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">- Scourge of the High Seas <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[deckbuilding game with 2 center rows]</span></span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><h3 style="font-family: inherit;">Recent updates to the above</h3><div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><b style="font-family: inherit;">Finished But Unpublished Games</b></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span><span style="font-family: inherit;">- Crusaders: Crimson Knight<span style="font-size: xx-small;"> (expansion) [coming soon (?) from Renegade!]</span><br />- Crusaders: Amber Knight<span style="font-size: xx-small;"> (expansion) [coming soon (?) from Renegade!]</span></span></span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;">Renegade hasn't sold through the initial print run of Crusaders yet, it seems it hasn't performed as well as they'd hoped, so it seems the 5th and 6th player expansion stuff has been put on hold, so I've updated their status accordingly. it's disappointing, but understandable.</div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div><div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><b style="font-family: inherit;">Current Active Designs</b></div><div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">- </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Taiko Kiri</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;">(co-design with Steve Carleson)</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">This is the game my friend (and now co-designer) Steve made, inspired by Tri-ominoes. We've decided to go with a Japanese theme: </span>the game takes place during the rule of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, perhaps the most famous figure in Japanese history, and is centered on Kyoto, which was then the capital of the shogunate. Players are prominent members of the bakufu, the central administrative branch of the shogunate during Hideyoshi’s rule. They are tasked with revitalizing the city and its environs, with the player who does the best job gaining Kampaku Hideyoshi’s favor.</div><div><br /></div><div>- Eminent Domain: Coalition <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[solo mode]</span></div><div>I figured out a way to play Eminent Domain cooperatively, and I put together a prototype to try it out. I've played twice so far, and I think it's a solid beginning. I even have ideas to address the biggest problems with the game so far. I'll be posting about the progress on this game sometime soon.</div><div><br /></div><div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span><span style="font-family: inherit;">- The Sixth Realm (FKA </span><a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Deities%26Demigods" style="font-family: inherit;">Deities & Demigods</a><span style="font-family: inherit;">) </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/401182/sixth-realm">BGG</a>)</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;">(Co-Design with Matthew Dunstan)</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;">[coming soon from Final Frontier Games]</span></span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;">This heavily developed version of Deities & Demigods was originally slated for crowdfunding this month, but the publisher has decided to wait a few months until their previous crowdfunded game has been delivered. So this one should hit kickstarter in January or February 2024.</div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: inherit;">I got a chance to play the latest version a couple of times, and I've been communicating with the developer about some last minute tweaks and changes, so I've moved it to "Currently Active" status.</div></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><b style="font-family: inherit;">Promising Recent ideas</b><span style="font-family: inherit;">:</span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><div>- Eminent Domain: Legacy <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[campaign mode]</span></div><div>Some years ago I had an idea for an "Eminent Domain Legacy" tournament format, where each round your starting deck is different based on its end configuration in the previous game. It's not enough by itself, but I think that could be the core of a campaign mode for Eminent Domain, and since that's being reprinted next year by Rio Grande Games, now's as good a time as any to explore the idea further.</div></div></div></div></div></span></div></div></div></div>Seth Jaffeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12449603052617321357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19884352.post-27726072678365321822023-11-21T04:07:00.000-07:002023-11-21T04:07:35.359-07:00Eminent Domain: Modus Operandi?<p><br /></p><p>Eminent Domain has been in a restful slumber for some time now, ever since Oblivion came out in 2018. Soon after that, TMG started a slow and painful demise, and along with it, any chance for further sales or content for Eminent Domain.</p><p>So, it's been a while, but last <a href="https://sh1.sendinblue.com/adz3nfi3r9pfe.html?t=1674058332">January's Rio Grande Games newsletter</a> contained this little tidbit:</p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #3c4858; font-family: Arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"></span></p><blockquote>° We have also begun planning our new games for later in 2023. These include three rail games: Prussian Railroads, Wabash Cannonball, and Balkan Railways; Pacific from Donald X Vaccarino; and <b>a new production of an old favorite Eminent Domain</b>.</blockquote><p></p><p>We're almost one year out from that newsletter, but I'm happy to report that I've seen some of the new artwork for the boxes and the cards, and it looks pretty great!</p><p>I had thought that after the <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/68425/eminent-domain">base game</a>, <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/136313/eminent-domain-escalation">Escalation</a>, <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/163639/eminent-domain-exotica">Exotica</a>, <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/232135/eminent-domain-oblivion">Oblivion</a>, the standalone <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/163640/eminent-domain-microcosm">Microcosm</a> microgame, the <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/86780/eminent-domain-bonus-planets">Bonus Planets</a> promo, <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/EmDice">Chaos Theory</a> (an unreleased EmDo dice game), and the Terra Prime reboot as <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/TP">Eminent Domain Origins</a> (an EmDo prequel), that the well had run dry. I did not have any plans to further expand Eminent Domain.</p><p>However, in the wake of TMG, as I tried to find a new home for my titles, it seemed any publisher that showed interest in picking up the line wanted to do a Big Box version, or add some content to freshen up this decade-old game. And I get it -- it's nice to reach a new audience who never had the pleasure of playing EmDo the first time around, but it's also nice to offer something of interest to fans of the game who may be willing to buy it again (but not if it's the same thing they already have). new art alone is not really enough to entice those people, but even just a little bit of new content might be!</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">EmDo Solo</h4><p>So, what to include? Again, the well had run dry... I am pretty happy with the amount of actual content that's been added to the game in the three expansions. I don't know that I'd be interested in creating more tech cards, or trying to shoehorn in another new mechanism (like Exotica's Asteroids, or Oblivion's Politics role). Well, I'm not much into solo play, but nowadays more and more players are. It so happens that prolific solo mode designer David Turczi is a fan of Eminent Domain.. maybe having him create a solo mode would be a nice chunk of new content for the game. Well, good news: he's working on it!</p><p>However, a solo mode might be better placed in the same box as the base game, so that people wanting to buy the game to play solo don't need to buy both the game and an expansion box. Then again, maybe keeping the base game box more affordable, and keeping the solo mode separate would serve a bigger proportion of the audience. Ultimately that'll be up to Rio Grande Games. </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">EmDo: Legacy</h3><p>Some years ago (2014) I ran an "EmDo Legacy" tournament at Strategicon in L.A. -- here's a description of how it went from a blog post back then:</p><p><span style="background-color: #fff3db; color: #29303b; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="background-color: #fff3db; color: #29303b; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Round 1 was a normal game of EmDo - players started with the basic starting decks.</span><br style="background-color: #fff3db; color: #29303b; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: #fff3db; color: #29303b; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: #fff3db; color: #29303b; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">After Round 1, I recorded the contents of each player's decks - the number of each standard role card.</span><br style="background-color: #fff3db; color: #29303b; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: #fff3db; color: #29303b; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: #fff3db; color: #29303b; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">For round 2, You started with 1 fewer card in your deck for whichever Role card(s) you had the fewest of at the end of round 1, and you started with 1 more card in your deck for whichever role card(s) you had the most of at the end of round 1.</span><br style="background-color: #fff3db; color: #29303b; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: #fff3db; color: #29303b; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: #fff3db; color: #29303b; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">After round 2 we did the same thing again, but didn't count any card that you started with 0 of... i.e. if you started with 0 Warfare after round 1, then after round 2 you look at the card you had the fewest of BESIDES Warfare.</span><br style="background-color: #fff3db; color: #29303b; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: #fff3db; color: #29303b; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: #fff3db; color: #29303b; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">There were some really interesting starting decks in the final round!</span></blockquote><span style="background-color: #fff3db; color: #29303b; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"></span><p></p><p>I never tried that again, but I've always thought that format had some potential. When a couple of prospective publishers mentioned wanting to add a sort of campaign mode to freshen up the game, this Legacy format immediately came to mind. I am not sure what else could be added, but I did discuss it with someone who did a TON of playtesting for the expansions back in the day, and he had some really good ideas as well.</p><p>So who knows, perhaps the materials needed for a campaign mode could be placed into a 3rd box</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">EmDo: Coalition</h3><p>Another potential mode that could be added to the game would be a cooperative mode. Orleans: Trade and Intrigue did that - added a cooperative mode in an otherwise competitive game - and it went over pretty well as I recall. I'm not the biggest player of cooperative games (though there are some I enjoy), but I put a little thought into what a cooperative EmDo might look like, and I stumbled onto something that I think might be the key to make it work!</p><p>Imagine that the players have formed a coalition (like a galactic United Nations or something -- United Empires?), and are working together to complete an ambitious project - perhaps a Dyson Sphere:</p><p></p><blockquote>A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure that encompasses a star and captures a large percentage of its solar power output. The concept is a thought experiment that attempts to imagine how a spacefaring civilization would meet its energy requirements once those requirements exceed what can be generated from the home planet's resources alone.</blockquote><p></p><p>The goal of the game would be to complete the project before the game ends (when one (some?) stack runs out). The key mechanism is that whenever you flip a planet, or buy a tech card, you will choose whether to keep it for yourself (like normal) - powering up your engine, or to commit it to the project, placing the card in a slot on a Project board, representing progress toward victory.</p><p>In the meantime of course, there would be a deck of "bad stuff" cards that would come up after each round of player turns, representing some antagonistic force (hostile aliens, or space pirates). Players would need to defend against this force, lest they get "curse" style cards in their deck, or lose progress toward winning.</p><p><br />I'm actually pretty excited about this co-op mode, and I'm anxious to get a prototype together and give it a try, maybe this Thursday!</p>Seth Jaffeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12449603052617321357noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19884352.post-30177231784884305252023-10-14T23:48:00.004-07:002023-10-14T23:48:29.654-07:00The List - Oct 2023<p> Once again it's time to revisit<span> </span><b style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/TheList">The List</a></b><span>! Let's see if anything's changed since last <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2023/08/the-list-august-2023.html">August</a></span></p><p><b>Published Games</b>:</p><span>- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/TP">Terra Prime</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/22485/terra-prime">BGG</a>)</span><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/EmDo">Eminent Domain</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/68425/eminent-domain">BGG</a>) [new edition coming 2024 from a new publisher!]</span><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Escalation">Eminent Domain: Escalation</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/136313/eminent-domain-escalation">BGG</a>) (expansi</span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span>on)</span><span> [new edition coming 2024 from a new publisher!]</span></span><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Exotica">Eminent Domain: Exotica</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://bgg.cc/boardgameexpansion/163639/eminent-domain-exotica">BGG</a>)</span> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(expansion)</span></span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> [new edition coming 2024 or 2025 from a new publisher!]</span><br />- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Oblivion">Eminent Domain: Oblivion</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/232135/eminent-domain-oblivion">BGG</a>) (expansion)</span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> [new edition coming 2024 or 2025 from a new publisher!]</span><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/MicroCiv">Eminent Domain: Microcosm</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span>(<a href="http://bgg.cc/boardgame/163640/eminent-domain-microcosm">BGG</a>)</span><span> [theoretically signed by a publisher!]</span></span><br />- <u>Isle of Trains</u><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(Co-Design with Dan Keltner)</span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://bgg.cc/boardgame/154906/isle-trains">BGG</a>)<br /></span><span><span>- <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/355224/isle-trains-all-aboard">Isle of Trains: All Aboard</a></span><span> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(Co-Design with Dan Keltner)</span><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[New edition from Dranda Games with included expansion]</span><br /></span>- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/KnightsTemplar">Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done</a><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> <span>(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/170624/crusaders-thy-will-be-done">BGG</a>) </span><span>[<a href="https://renegadegamestudios.com/crusaders-thy-will-be-done/">now available from Renegade!</a>]</span></span><br />- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2018/07/crusaders-exansion-prototype-pdf-and.html">Crusaders: Divine Influence</a><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> (<a href="https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/289240/crusaders-divine-influence">BGG</a>) (expansion) [<a href="https://renegadegamestudios.com/crusaders-thy-will-be-done-divine-influence-expansion/">now available from Renegade!</a>]</span></span><div><span>- Crusaders: Crimson Knight<span style="font-size: xx-small;"> (expansion) [coming soon (?) from Renegade!]</span><br />- Crusaders: Amber Knight<span style="font-size: xx-small;"> (expansion) [coming soon (?) from Renegade!]</span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span>- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2013/11/dungeon-roll-winter-promo-tmg-goes.html">Dungeon Roll: Winter Heroes</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/150233/dungeon-roll-winter-heroes-pack">BGG</a>)</span><br />- Gold West: Bandits promo <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/188355/gold-west-bandits-promo">BGG</a>)</span><br />- Gold West: Trading Post promo <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/213216/gold-west-trading-post-promo">BGG</a>)</span><br />- Yokohama: Achievements & Free Agents promo <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/232352/yokohama-achievements-free-agents-promo">BGG</a>)</span><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/BF">Brainfreeze</a></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><b>Development projects</b><span> - Games I've done freelance development on</span></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><span>- </span><a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/354568/amun-re-20th-anniversary-edition">Amun-Re expansion</a><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Alley Cat Games 20th Anniversary edition]</span></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">- </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">Heavy Development</span></div><div><span>- <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/395623/harvest">Harvest</a><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/395623/harvest">BGG</a>) </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[by Trey Chambers from Keymaster Games]</span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">- Heavy Development</span></div><div><span><span><div><span>- Holiday In Rome</span><span style="font-size: medium;"> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(add BGG link) [by Cory Andalora from Pandasaurus Games - coming soon!] - </span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">Heavy Development</span></div><div><span><span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>-</b> <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/379078/expeditions">Expeditions</a></span><span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> <span>(<a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/379078/expeditions">BGG</a>) [by Jamey Stegmaier from Stonemaier Games]</span></span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">-</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">Consultation</span></span></span></span></div><div><span><span><span><span>- Fled <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/382444/fled">BGG</a>)</span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> [by Mark Swanson, coming 2024 from Odd Bird Games]</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> - Consultation</span></div><div><span><span><span><span>- Forelords <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/401038/forelords">BGG</a>) [by Mark Swanson, coming 2025 from Odd Bird Games]</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> - Consultation</span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></span></div></span></span></div><br /><b>Finished But Unpublished Games</b> - in line to be published:<br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/TP">Eminent Domain Origins</a><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Ready to print] [theoretically signed by a publisher!]</span><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/EmDice">Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(dice game) [Ready for art] </span></span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[theoretically signed by a publisher!]</span></div><div><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: medium;">- The Sixth Realm (FKA </span><a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Deities%26Demigods" style="font-size: medium;">Deities & Demigods</a><span style="font-size: medium;">) </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/401182/sixth-realm">BGG</a>)</span><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(Co-Design with Matthew Dunstan)</span><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[coming soon from Final Frontier Games]</span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">- </span><a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/WorkerLearning" style="font-size: medium;">Apotheosis</a><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(Co-Design with Rick Holzgrafe)</span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">[signed by a publisher!]</span></div><div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Currently Pitching Games</b> - "actively" looking for a publisher (though I haven't <i>actively</i> been doing much of anything lately!):</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>- </span><a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Sails%26Sorcery">Sails & Sorcery</a><span> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(</span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">Co-Design </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">with Michael Mindes)</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">[pitching to publishers]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>- </span><a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Pony%20Express">Riders of the Pony Express</a><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/187583/riders-pony-express">BGG</a>)</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">[pitching to publishers]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/BluffAuction">Exhibit</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/119770/exhibit-artifacts-of-the-ages">BGG</a>) </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[pitching to publishers]</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><span>- </span><a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/KeepingUp">Keeping Up with the Joneses</a></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">[pitching to publishers]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">-</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/A41">All For One</a><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/20941">BGG</a>) (Co-Design with David Brain)</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">[pitching to publishers]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>- </span><a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/AlterEgo">Alter Ego</a><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/119772/alter-ego">BGG</a>)</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">[pitching to publishers]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><span>- </span><a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/DiceWerx">Dice Works</a><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/119773/dice-works">BGG</a>)</span></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">[pitching to publishers]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><span><span>- </span><a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/citybuilding">Suburban Sprawl</a></span></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">[pitching to publishers]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"> </span></div></span></span></div></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>"Finished" But Unpublished Games</b> - abandoned or backburnered designs that are "done":<br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/WT">Wizard's Tower</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/29446">BGG</a>)</span> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Abandoned]</span><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/WatchItPlayed">Watch It Played</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Abandoned]</span><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/NowBoarding">Now Boarding</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Abandoned]</span><br />- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2020/04/free-roll-writes-for-quarantine-time.html">Rolling Realms</a>: <a href="https://t.co/C6ssLvsIrW">Jaffee Realms</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(for Jamey Stegmaier's Rolling Realms)</span></span></div><div><span>- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2022/07/one-18-card-game-design-jam-three.html">Press-Your-Luck Microgame</a><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(KBGames 18 card game jam entry, July 2022)</span></div><div>- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2022/05/3-new-ideas-1-new-game-part-3-micro.html">Worker Placement Microgame</a><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span><div><br /></div><div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Current Active Designs</b> - these are the games I'm actively testing or working on:</span></div><div>- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2023/10/lets-go-balloon-racing-status-report.html">Let's Go Balloon Racing</a></div><div>- Tri-inspired <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(co-design with Steve Carleson)</span></div><div>- "Revampsterdam" <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[revamp of an old game, commissioned by a publisher]</span></div><div>- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2023/10/isle-of-trains-follow-up-isle-of.html">Isle of Adventure</a><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(Co-Design with Dan Keltner)</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Backburnered Designs</b> - I kid myself into thinking that I'm still working on these:</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- Isle Of Trains: The Board Game </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;">(Co-Design with Dan Keltner)</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/JoanOfArc">Joan of Arc</a></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2020/12/yangi-x2-and-old-game-off-back-burner.html">I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement</a></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><span><span><span>- Kingdom Realms</span><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(</span></span></span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span>KBGames 3-lane game jam entry, Nov 2022</span><span>)</span></span><br /></span><br /><b>Promising Recent ideas</b>:<br />- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Worker-ception">Worker-ception</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[with David Short]</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2020/12/yangi-x2-and-old-game-off-back-burner.html">False Prophet</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Mancala/Worker Placement]</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- </span><a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2021/01/come-and-play-everythings-ok.html" style="font-family: inherit;">Come And Play</a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;">[Sesame Street memory/rondel game]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/candyland">Candyland Game</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Candyland/No Thanks mashup]</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>-</b> <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2023/01/competitive-hanabi.html">Hanabi Wonders</a></span><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Hanabi/7 Wonders mashup]</span></span></span></span></div><div>- My First Ark Nova <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Simpler version of Ark Nova]</span></div><div><div>- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2023/10/horsing-around.html">Stable Genius</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">["Wingspan of Horses"]</span></div><div><br /></div></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span><b>Old Standbys</b> - games which have been around, 1/2 done and untouched, for years:<br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/87c">8/7 Central</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Abandoned]</span><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/HF">Hot & Fresh</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Abandoned]</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Odysseus">Odysseus: Winds of Fate</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/170623/odysseus-winds-fate">BGG</a>)</span></span> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Abandoned]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/CJ">Reading Railroad</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Abandoned]</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Moctezuma">Moctezuma's Revenge</a></span> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Abandoned]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Kilauea">Kilauea</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[a designer showed interest in co-designing, but that didn't go anywhere]</span></span> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Abandoned]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Automatown">Automatown</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[with Michael Brown]</span></span> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Abandoned]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><span>- </span><a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Dynasty">Dynasty</a><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[I still think this one has potential]</span></span></span> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Abandoned]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Misc and Really Old Stuff</b> - most of this I'll probably never get back to, but I like keeping it around just in case:<br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/9-ball">9-Ball</a><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/BR">Blockade Runner</a><br />- Roman Emperors<span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(my version of someone else's game)</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">- Admirals of the Spanish Main </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;">(my version of someone else's game)</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Tabloid">Investigative/Tabloid Journalism</a><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Mars">Red Colony</a><br />- Clash of the Kingpins<br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/A%3D%24">Time = Money</a><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/DatingGame">Dating Game</a><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Airlines">Ticket Please</a><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Untouchables">The Untouchables</a><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2010/03/board-game-inspired-by-craps.html">Day labor game based on craps</a></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2013/12/rondel-role-selection-theme-emerges.html">Rondel Role Selection</a></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- Scourge of the High Seas <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[deckbuilding game with 2 center rows]</span></span></div><div><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: left;">Recent updates to the above</h3><div><p><b>Published Games<br /></b><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/355224/isle-trains-all-aboard">Isle of Trains: All Aboard</a></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;">(Co-Design with Dan Keltner)</span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;">[New edition from Dranda Games with included expansion]<br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Isle of Trains: All Aboard had a strong Kickstarter project, and is currently delivering to backers. I haven't got my copies just yet, but I have seen a number of positive reviews and posts about it, which is great!</span></p></div><div><div><b style="font-family: inherit;">Development projects</b></div><div><span><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/395623/harvest">Harvest</a><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/395623/harvest">BGG</a>) </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[by Trey Chambers from Keymaster Games]</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">- Heavy Development</span></div><div><span><span><div><span>The new version of Harvest from Keymaster games had a strong Kickstarter recently, and will now move into production</span></div><div><span><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><b>-</b> <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/379078/expeditions">Expeditions</a></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> <span>(<a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/379078/expeditions">BGG</a>) [by Jamey Stegmaier from Stonemaier Games]</span></span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">-</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">Consultation</span></span></div><div><span><span><span><span>Expeditions has been released. It was over a year and a half ago that I did some consulting for an earlier iteration of the game, hopefully my comments were helpful, though it looks like the final game changed significantly since then</span></span></span></span></div><div><span><span><span><span><br /></span></span></span></span></div><div><span><span><span><span>- Fled <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/382444/fled">BGG</a>)</span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> [by Mark Swanson, coming 2024 from Odd Bird Games]</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> - Consultation</span></div><div><span><span><span><span>- Forelords <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/401038/forelords">BGG</a>) [by Mark Swanson, coming 2025 from Odd Bird Games]</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> - Consultation</span></span></span></span></span></div><div><span><span>I did some consulting on these two games for Mark Swanson of Odd Bird Games, and I see that I'm listed as Developer on their BGG entries. I don't know when they'll be coming out, but they're listed on BGG as 2024 and 2025 releases respectively</span></span></div></span></span></div><br /><b>Finished But Unpublished Games</b></span></div><div><span><span style="font-family: inherit;">- The Sixth Realm (FKA </span><a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Deities%26Demigods" style="font-family: inherit;">Deities & Demigods</a><span style="font-family: inherit;">) </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/401182/sixth-realm">BGG</a>)</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;">(Co-Design with Matthew Dunstan)</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;">[coming soon from Final Frontier Games]</span></span></div><div>The publisher has done significant development on Deities & Demigods, and I believe it will be coming to Kickstarter by the end of the year under the title The Sixth Realm. I've seen a little of the artwork for the game, and it looks awesome!</div><div> </div><div><div><b style="font-family: inherit;">Currently Pitching Games</b></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>- </span><a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Sails%26Sorcery">Sails & Sorcery</a><span> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(</span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">Co-Design </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">with Michael Mindes)</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">[pitching to publishers]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">-</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/A41">All For One</a><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/20941">BGG</a>) (Co-Design with David Brain)</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">[pitching to publishers]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">A publisher expressed some interest in both of these titles, I'm waiting to hear if they will decide to sign either of them (fingers crossed!)</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"> </span></div></span></span></span></span></div><div><b style="font-family: inherit;">Current Active Designs</b></div><div><div>- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2023/10/lets-go-balloon-racing-status-report.html">Let's Go Balloon Racing</a></div><div>This started as an idea for a mechanism for a kid's game to play with Corbin, and has grown into a legit game with a quirky theme. I'm trying to keep it light, quick, and accessible </div><div><br /></div><div>- Tri-inspired <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(co-design with Steve Carleson)</span></div><div>My friend Steve had an idea for a game, which he described when he was in town visiting recently. I discussed it with him and had a lot of suggestions even then, and after he went home and made a prototype, I played it and had even more (or more specific) suggestions... I really feel like it's got potential as a popular game product. He accepted my offer to co-design the game with him, so now it's on the list!</div><div><br /></div><div>- "Revampsterdam" <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[revamp of an old game, commissioned by a publisher]</span></div><div>I was engaged as a Developer to revamp an old game that a publisher had signed, and ended up designing a whole new game using the main mechanism and the aspects of the original that the publisher was most interested in. Currently another developer has started to work on it as well, because my draft might have been a bit too "big" for the publisher's brand</div><div><br /></div><div>- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2023/10/isle-of-trains-follow-up-isle-of.html">Isle of Adventure</a><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(Co-Design with Dan Keltner)</span></div><div>Dranda Games, the new publisher of Isle of Trains, said they'd be interested in a sequel multi-use card game with positive player interaction, so I did some brainstorming, and I think I've got a good start on a game similar to IoT, where you recruit and equip adventurers and explore a dungeon rather than build and load train cars to fulfill contracts. So far it sounds promising, we'll see how well that holds up as I get a prototype together</div><div><br /></div><div><b style="font-family: inherit;">Promising Recent ideas</b><span style="font-family: inherit;">:</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- </span><a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2023/10/horsing-around.html" style="font-family: inherit;">Stable Genius</a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;">["Wingspan of Horses"]</span></div></div></div></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">Back in February, I had a bunch of thoughts about a horse management game, initially spurred by the pun title Stable Genius. I actually used AI chatbot ChatGPT as a sounding board to talk through ideas for this one, and when it came down to it, the approach that interested me the most was a more serious game, for which that title wouldn't be appropriate. I don't know if I'll ever get back to this one, or if I really think it'd be that good to begin with, but we'll see</span></div></span></div></div></div></div>Seth Jaffeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12449603052617321357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19884352.post-68834754138126364592023-10-13T21:59:00.003-07:002023-10-13T21:59:23.533-07:00Horsing around<h3 style="text-align: left;">Stable Genius</h3><p>About 5 years ago, the then-president of the United States had his mental acuity challenged in the media, and in contesting those allegations, he said, in public, on Twitter: "Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been <b>mental stability and being, like, really smart</b>.... I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star... to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius....and <b>a very stable genius</b> at that!"</p><p>Pretty much ever since then, I thought it would be funny to see a horse management game or something entitled Stable Genius. Years passed, and I still haven't seen any such parody game, and recently I had some thoughts about how a game like that might go. Here are some ideas...</p><p>1. A horse training game, where the you're trying to get the best trained horse in the stable: the Stable Genius </p><p>2. I can imagine a Euro-style game where you manage a stable, assigning horses to things like races (for money), dressage (for points), farming (for food), breeding (for more horses), or sale. You could upgrade or expand your stable to maintain more horses, speculate on horses (buy low, sell high), breed horses to sell, race, or show, and in the end, the best manager could be labeled a Stable Genius</p><p>3. A twist on the above, same thing but add a Mental Acuity track - which would range from "stable" to "unhinged," and would trend downwards (toward "unhinged") over time. Perhaps you would suffer in-game penalties if you drop below a certain threshold, and at game end maybe you gain a bonus for being ahead of other players on the Acuity track. Or like corruption or unrest in some other games, maybe the least stable player straight up loses the game! There could be Mental Acuity challenges which you could earn: cards with in-game conditions on them which, once satisfied, move you up the track. Or maybe even better, literal mental acuity challenges, such as riddles, logic problems, or word puzzles, which you would need to solve to gain those advances.</p><p>At that point I took a step back and realized that if I were really to base a game on a pun/meme title that refers to some politician 5 years ago, I'd really have to lean into it, make it look like a parody, not some game that tries to take itself seriously...</p><p>4. As if out of Orwell's Animal Farm, you are a horse angling to be crowned ruler of the ranch, and you'll have to use all your acumen and political machinations to defeat your opponents - for the role will only be won by a true Stable Genius!</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Wingspan of Horses</h3><p>To be honest, the idea that interests me the most is number 2 above, and I don't think it's worth shoehorning in that pun title. But it could be a fun code-name until I come up with a better title. I like the sounds of Equestria, but that appears to be the name of some place in My Little Pony lore, so I'm not sure if it's OK to use. So maybe just Equestrian or something. Lean into the realistic aspects of managing a stable, and maybe I can design, as my playtester put it, the "Wingspan of horses."</p><p><i>Side note... when I heard "Wingspan of horses," all I could think of was Pegasus. My response was "wingspan of horses? What is that - about 35 hands?"</i></p><p>So here are some details I thought of about a potential game about horse management. You may be amused to hear that as a sounding board, I "talked this through" with ChatGPT (the AI chat bot you may have heard about), and it actually proved very helpful!</p><p>There are a lot of details that could go into a game about race horses specifically. Pedigree is a huge deal, and while a race horse can earn money by winning races, my understanding is that the real money is in studding out your champion horse. That could be a game all in itself, but I was attracted to the idea of managing a stable of horses, and having to decide what to do with each horse every round. Do you send this horse to the track to earn money? Or should you breed it instead, so you'll have more horses to work with later? Should you train this horse for Dressage to earn some victory points? or put it to work on the farm to produce food to help keep your other horses fed? Should you expand your stable to hold more horses? Or keep your stable small, requiring less food and other resources to maintain?</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Breeding</h3><p>One idea I had - and I think this isn't really accurate to how horse breeding works, but maybe it's acceptable artistic license - was that your horses start out generic, and if you send them to a race, then they "become a race horse" - they are now "better at racing" (whatever that means), and if you breed them, you have a better chance of getting a new horse that's "better at racing." That's the artistic license part - I'm pretty sure the breeding is just based on genetics, I don't think you can pass down training to an offspring. but maybe one can say that you sent the horse to race because you noticed it was good for that, so *hand wave.* Anyway, I liked the idea of having to choose between racing your champion race horse, or breeding it.</p><p>Another, different idea I had was that maybe you don't have to choose to breed a horse over doing something else (because I didn't want players having to just breed their horses all the time and not do anything else with them). Instead, maybe you have a number of "Stallions" (which you could increase), which just means you get that many new horses each round to assign to races, shows, farms, sale, etc. Maybe the current configuration of your horses influences whether you get foals of a particular type - for example, maybe you roll a special die for each stallion, and the resulting face shows you what type of horse you get... brown (generic), green (good at racing), purple (good at dressage), yellow (good at farming). Maybe you have a yellow die with 1 each of those faces, plus 2 more yellow faces - so 50% likely to be good at farming, and then similarly a green die, a purple die, and a brown die. Then for each Stallion in your stable, you roll a die, and you get to choose the color of each based on where your horses are assigned.</p><div>Both of those sound kind of reasonable to me, depending on how the rest of the game works.</div><h3 style="text-align: left;">Lifespan</h3><p>Another aspect is that a horse's useful life is only so long, and it's even shorter for a race horse. So maybe your horses only last a few rounds (like 3), then you have to sell them off or something. And maybe a race horse only lasts 2 rounds instead, representing their shorter useful lifespan due to injury and like, wear and tear. </p><p>If a horse is past its useful lifespan, maybe you automatically sell it for some minimal amount of money, but based on the Input Randomness card mentioned above, maybe you could choose to sell a horse that's on its last legs for more money (and points?) rather than race it or work it.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Input Randomness</h3><p>In order to make it a game, and dynamically change player incentives, I thought there could be an Input Randomness card drawn each round. it could indicate things in the game that are variable, such as:<br />* Price at which you can buy a new horse<br />* Price at which you can sell your horses<br />* Available races and contests where you can send your horses</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Races, Dressage, Selling, Farm work</h3><div>... sadly, I started writing this post back in February, and I had stopped writing at this point. Having only come back to it now, *8 months* later, and I'm not sure I remember all the details I had in mind at that time. This is why it pays to finish posts or note taking right away!</div><div><br /></div><div>I know I had been considering that you would assign your horses to the following things each round:</div><div><br /></div><div><div>* Racing, where you earn points and money from winning races to supplement income</div><div><br /></div><div>* Selling, where you can sell your horses for money rather than keep, feed, and use them - see Input Randomness above</div><div><br /></div><div>* Dressage, where you earn big points for winning First in Show</div><div><br /></div><div>* Farm work, where you produce food to help feed your horses (vs having fewer horses to feed, or buying food for them)</div></div><div><br /></div><div>So each turn you would gain some income and new horses, assign your horses to various jobs, resolve things, and finally feed and age your horses.</div><div><br /></div><div>That's about all I have at the moment. It kinda sounds like a euro-style resource management game to me... what do you think?</div>Seth Jaffeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12449603052617321357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19884352.post-12867115230520135232023-10-11T14:52:00.003-07:002023-10-11T14:53:08.006-07:00Isle of Trains follow-up: Isle of Adventure?<p>Dranda Games, the new publisher for Isle of Trains, told me that they had a great Essen, and that people loved their new edition of <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/355224/isle-trains-all-aboard">Isle of Trains: All Aboard</a> - which is great news!</p><p>I asked the Dranda guys if they'd be interested in Dana and I revisiting our ideas for an Isle of Trains boardgame, one version of which was a fairly simple rondel game, but they said they'd be more interested in another small-box card game, with multi-use cards, the had similar positive player interaction (like the IoT load thing)</p><p>They even floated some ideas they'd had:</p><p><i>* Isle of New York - building skyscrapers with lots of cards then selling them for a profit</i></p><p><i>* Isle of London - building the subway (I think Isle of New York would be a better start and London would be a good sequel)</i></p><p><i>* Isle of Taxis - picking up passengers. Like a Crazy Taxi card game 😂</i></p><p><i>* Isle of Dragons - don't know what to do with that but fantasy games sell well!</i></p><p>I know Dan had made a pirate hunting game based on the IoT mechanism called Queen Anne's Revenge, which got honorable mention in the Hippodice game design contest, and even had publisher interest I believe, but I don't know what ever became of it. I suggested to Dan that perhaps we could distill that down to a small-box card Isle of Pirates card game, which could be doable.</p><p>Then I had a new idea that sounded interesting to me. After a days brainstorming, this is what I have so far, and the Dranda guys like the sound of it:</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Isle of Adventure</h3><p>Play as a party leader, recruiting and equipping adventurers to delve the local dungeon looking for treasure!</p><p>Each card in your hand could be an adventurer (Warrior, Mage, Cleric, Thief), or equipment (Bolt, Scroll, Potion, Pick?), or can be used as coin to hire new adventurers or train them up.</p><p>A dungeon is laid out on the table, built of face down tiles. Players will move their parties through the dungeon, racing to loot it of valuable treasure! On your turn you will do 2 of the following actions:</p><p>* Draw a card (search the room? Go to town?)</p><p>* Recruit an adventurer to join your party</p><p>* Train an adventurer (they level up)</p><p>* Equip an adventurer (yours or an opponent's)</p><p>* Delve into the dungeon (facing its challenges)</p><p>When equipping an adventurer, you tuck the proper equipment card under them. If you equip your own adventurer, you get nothing but the equipment. If you equip an opponent's adventurer, you get paid in cards, gold (virtual cards to spend), and actions:</p><p>* Party Leader: Delve/Explore the Dungeon</p><p>* Warrior: Recruit/Train</p><p>* Mage: Gain and cast spells, giving you ongoing abilities</p><p>* Cleric: Heal damage from party members</p><p>* Thief: Equip</p><p>Your party leader would have a green "Fleet of foot" value - this is the capacity of your party, and also helps you move in the dungeon. Each adventurer would have a number of red foot icons (never to exceed your leader's green foot value) - the bigger the party, the slower they move through the dungeon. When you Delve (explore), you will be able to move through face up tiles, and flip up a face down tile using your remaining green foot icons - and discarding cards to gain feet for the turn. When you flip up a tile, you get a chance to pay the required equipment (and maybe take the required wounds) in order to gain the benefit printed on the tile.</p><p>(Wounds reduce the effectiveness of your adventurers - they won't be able to take new equipment until they are healed by a cleric)</p><p>Some tiles have Boss Encounters on them -- chances to gain lots of treasure if you have the right assortment of equipment</p><p>That's all I have so far, but it sounds promising to me, and slightly more than a straight re-skin if the spells and the dungeon tiles work out well.</p>Seth Jaffeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12449603052617321357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19884352.post-42307615284191822023-10-11T14:35:00.003-07:002023-10-11T14:54:51.743-07:00Let's Go Balloon Racing - status report<p>After testing this game a few times now on Tabletop Simulator, I'm happy to report that I think it's actually working quite well!</p><p>The race algorithm makes for some dramatic swings of fate, and after a few tweaks I think I've honed in on some details to make the game work as intended. Here's a current rundown of the rules:</p><p><br /></p><p>Let's Go Balloon Racing!</p><p>SETUP<br />1. Lay out balloon cards (or balloon board, perhaps)<br />2. Deal 1 Effect card to each balloon<br />3. Deal 1 Stowaway card to each player<br /></p><p>GAME ROUND<br />1. Players simultaneously choose a balloon, then place their player cube under that balloon<br />2. From left to right, activate the effect on each balloon that has at least 1 player cube under it, then move the player cube onto the balloon card (adjust the balloon's altitude if necessary) <br />3. Shuffle and deal 4 Movement cards. For each movement card, move the indicated balloon:<br />High altitude (0-2 cubes): 6 spaces<br />Mid altitude (3-4 cubes): 4 spaces<br />Low altitude (5+ cubes): 2 spaces<br />4. Shuffle all Effect cards and deal a new one to each balloon</p><p>RACE END / GAME END<br />At the end of each round, if any balloon has crossed the finish line, do the following:<br />1. Any player with a Stowaway card matching that balloon reveals their card and adds 1 of their player cubes to that balloon<br />2. Count all player cubes on all balloons that have crossed the finish line - if any player has a clear plurality, then they win the game. If there is a tie, then the game continues. Check for a winner again the next time any balloon crosses the finish line.</p><p>Balloons that have crossed the finish line are "locked in" -- they no longer get effect cards, and cannot be the target of effects</p><div><br /></div><div>I have tried to keep the Effect cards such that play can be simultaneous, and the effects won't create any decisions or turn order issues when resolving. Currently some of the effect cards will situationally have no effect at times, and as my friend Mohan put it, I'd rather they all have an effect every time, so there ay be room for improvement there.</div><div><br /></div><div>The next thing I intend to try are "Alone bonuses" -- either structurally, or per card, there could be an additional or augmented effect if you are the only player to play on a balloon. Since this would avoid turn order issues, these affects could target particular cubes, or allow for moving cubes from balloon to balloon, which I'd like to see more of.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's not terribly thematic, but for the next test I think I'll try a standard Alone bonus of "move 1 of your cubes from this balloon to any other balloon, or from any other balloon to this balloon" and just see how it goes.<br /><br />As for the Effect cards, here's what I've got at the moment:</div><div>BURST OF WIND: Move all balloons in MID altitude 2 spaces</div><div>GUST OF WIND: Move all balloons in LOW altitude 3 spaces</div><div>CUT THE ROPE: Return 1 cube at random from this balloon to its owner</div><div>GRAPPLING HOOK: Move the nearest balloon(s) in each direction to this space</div><div>HEAD WIND: Move all balloons in the lead (1st place) BACKWARD 3 spaces</div><div>TAIL WIND: Move all balloons in the rear (last place) FORWARD 3 spaces</div><div>UPDRAFT: This balloon moves as if it were 1 level HIGHER this round</div><div>STICK TOGETHER: Add 1 more cube to this balloon</div><div>SHOTGUN APPROACH: Add 1 cube to all other balloons in this o adjacent spaces (do not trigger effects)</div><div>PICK UP THE PACE (x5): Add this card to the movement deck (there's one of these for each color)</div><div><br /></div><div>I had 2 others, but I think I am going to cut them because I don't think I like the dynamic they bring to the game:<br />KAMAKAZI: Discard all cubes on this balloon (including cubes placed this turn)</div><div>SUICIDE MISSION: Each opponent discards 1 cube from each balloon in this and adjacent spaces. Discard the cube you placed this turn.</div><div><br /></div><div>With the exception of those cuts, I'm pretty happy with the other effects, except sometimes they end up being null -- for example, Burst of Wind and Gust of Wind in the first turn of the game are pretty useless, as none of the balloons probably have enough cubes on them to drag them down into the lower altitudes. Mohan suggested perhaps replacing those with "all balloons with the most cubes on them..." and "all balloons with the fewest cubes on them..." for example. that way they'd always have <i>some</i> effect.</div><div><br /></div><div>I'm interested in more ideas for effect cards, if you have some, put them in the comments!</div>Seth Jaffeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12449603052617321357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19884352.post-51558451442734300242023-08-06T13:56:00.001-07:002023-08-06T13:56:12.476-07:00The List - August 2023<p> Once again it's time to revisit<span> </span><b style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/TheList">The List</a></b><span>! Let's see if anything's changed since last November</span></p><p><b>Published Games</b>:</p><span>- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/TP">Terra Prime</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/22485/terra-prime">BGG</a>)</span><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/EmDo">Eminent Domain</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/68425/eminent-domain">BGG</a>) [new edition coming 2023 from a new publisher!]</span><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Escalation">Eminent Domain: Escalation</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/136313/eminent-domain-escalation">BGG</a>) (expansi</span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span>on)</span><span> [new edition coming 2023 from a new publisher!]</span></span><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Exotica">Eminent Domain: Exotica</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://bgg.cc/boardgameexpansion/163639/eminent-domain-exotica">BGG</a>)</span> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(expansion)</span></span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> [new edition coming 2023 from a new publisher!]</span><br />- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Oblivion">Eminent Domain: Oblivion</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/232135/eminent-domain-oblivion">BGG</a>) (expansion)</span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> [new edition coming 2023 from a new publisher!]</span><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/MicroCiv">Eminent Domain: Microcosm</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span>(<a href="http://bgg.cc/boardgame/163640/eminent-domain-microcosm">BGG</a>)</span><span> [theoretically signed by a publisher!]</span></span><br />- <u>Isle of Trains</u><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(Co-Design with Dan Keltner)</span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://bgg.cc/boardgame/154906/isle-trains">BGG</a>) [new edition coming 2022/2023 from Dranda Games!]<br /></span><span><span>- <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/355224/isle-trains-all-aboard">Isle of Trains: All Aboard</a></span><span> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(Co-Design with Dan Keltner)</span><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[New edition from Dranda Games with included expansion]</span><br /></span>- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/KnightsTemplar">Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done</a><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> <span>(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/170624/crusaders-thy-will-be-done">BGG</a>) </span><span>[<a href="https://renegadegamestudios.com/crusaders-thy-will-be-done/">now available from Renegade!</a>]</span></span><br />- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2018/07/crusaders-exansion-prototype-pdf-and.html">Crusaders: Divine Influence</a><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> (<a href="https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/289240/crusaders-divine-influence">BGG</a>) (expansion) [<a href="https://renegadegamestudios.com/crusaders-thy-will-be-done-divine-influence-expansion/">no available from Renegade!</a>]</span></span><div><span>- Crusaders: Crimson Knight<span style="font-size: xx-small;"> (expansion) [coming soon (?) from Renegade!]</span><br />- Crusaders: Amber Knight<span style="font-size: xx-small;"> (expansion) [coming soon (?) from Renegade!]</span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span>- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2013/11/dungeon-roll-winter-promo-tmg-goes.html">Dungeon Roll: Winter Heroes</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/150233/dungeon-roll-winter-heroes-pack">BGG</a>)</span><br />- Gold West: Bandits promo <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/188355/gold-west-bandits-promo">BGG</a>)</span><br />- Gold West: Trading Post promo <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/213216/gold-west-trading-post-promo">BGG</a>)</span><br />- Yokohama: Achievements & Free Agents promo <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/232352/yokohama-achievements-free-agents-promo">BGG</a>)</span><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/BF">Brainfreeze</a></span></div><div><span><br /></span></div><div><span><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b style="font-size: medium;">Development projects</b><span style="font-size: medium;"> - Games I've done freelance development on</span></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>I've started doing some freelance development. As games I've worked on come out, I'll add them here</i></span></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><span>- </span><a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/354568/amun-re-20th-anniversary-edition" style="font-size: medium;">Amun-Re expansion</a><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[with Alley Cat Games 20th Anniversary edition]</span></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">- </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">Heavy Development</span></div><div><span>- <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/395623/harvest">Harvest</a><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/395623/harvest">BGG</a>) </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[by Trey Chambers from Keymaster Games - coming soon!]</span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">- Heavy Development</span></div><div><span><span><div><span>- Holiday In Rome</span><span style="font-size: medium;"> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(add BGG link) [by Cory Andalora from Pandasaurus Games - coming soon!] - </span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">Heavy Development</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: medium;">- <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/379078/expeditions">Expeditions</a></span><span style="font-size: medium;"> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(BGG) [by Jamey Stegmaier from Stonemaier Games] - Consultation</span></span></span></span></div><div style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></span></div></span></span></div><br /><b>Finished But Unpublished Games</b> - in line to be published:<br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/TP">Eminent Domain Origins</a><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Ready to print] [theoretically signed by a publisher!]</span><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/EmDice">Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(dice game) [Ready for art] </span></span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[theoretically signed by a publisher!]</span></div><div>- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Deities%26Demigods">Deities & Demigods</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(Co-Design with Matthew Dunstan)</span> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[signed by a publisher!]</span></div><div><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span><span style="font-size: small;">- </span><a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/WorkerLearning" style="font-size: medium;">Apotheosis</a><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(Co-Design with Rick Holzgrafe)</span></span><span> </span><span>[signed by a publisher!]</span></span></div><div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Currently Pitching Games</b> - "actively" looking for a publisher (though I haven't <i>actively</i> been doing much of anything lately!):</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">- </span><a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Sails%26Sorcery">Sails & Sorcery</a><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[with Michael Mindes]</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">[pitching to publishers]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">- </span><a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Pony%20Express">Riders of the Pony Express</a><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/187583/riders-pony-express">BGG</a>)</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">[pitching to publishers]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/BluffAuction">Exhibit</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/119770/exhibit-artifacts-of-the-ages">BGG</a>) </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[pitching to publishers]</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><span>- </span><a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/KeepingUp">Keeping Up with the Joneses</a></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">[pitching to publishers]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">-</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/A41">All For One</a><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/20941">BGG</a>) (Co-Design with David Brain)</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">[pitching to publishers]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>- </span><a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/AlterEgo">Alter Ego</a><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/119772/alter-ego">BGG</a>)</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><span>- </span><a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/DiceWerx">Dice Works</a><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/119773/dice-works">BGG</a>)</span></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><span><span>- </span><a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/citybuilding">Suburban Sprawl</a></span></span></span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"> </span></div></span></span></div></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>"Finished" But Unpublished Games</b> - abandoned or backburnered designs that are "done":<br /><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/WT">Wizard's Tower</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/29446">BGG</a>)</span> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Abandoned]</span><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/WatchItPlayed">Watch It Played</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Abandoned]</span><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/NowBoarding">Now Boarding</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Abandoned]</span><br />- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2020/04/free-roll-writes-for-quarantine-time.html">Rolling Realms</a>: <a href="https://t.co/C6ssLvsIrW">Jaffee Realms</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(for Jamey Stegmaier's Rolling Realms)</span></span><div><br /></div><div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Current Active Designs</b> - these are the games I'm actively testing or working on:</span></div><div><span>- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2022/05/3-new-ideas-1-new-game-part-3-micro.html">Worker Placement Microgame</a></span></div><div><span><span>- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2022/07/one-18-card-game-design-jam-three.html">Press-Your-Luck Microgame</a><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(KBGames 18 card game jam entry, July 2022)</span></span></div><div><span><span><span>- Kingdom Realms</span><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(</span></span></span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span>KBGames 3-lane game jam entry, Nov 2022</span><span>)</span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Backburnered Designs</b> - I kid myself into thinking that I'm still working on these:</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- Isle Of Trains: The Board Game </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;">(Co-Design with Dan Keltner)</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/JoanOfArc">Joan of Arc</a></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2020/12/yangi-x2-and-old-game-off-back-burner.html">I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement</a><br /></span><br /><b>Promising Recent ideas</b>:<br />- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Worker-ception">Worker-ception</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[with David Short]</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2020/12/yangi-x2-and-old-game-off-back-burner.html">False Prophet</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Mancala/Worker Placement]</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- </span><a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2021/01/come-and-play-everythings-ok.html" style="font-family: inherit;">Come And Play</a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;">[Sesame Street memory/rondel game]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/candyland">Candyland Game</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Candyland/No Thanks mashup]</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: medium;">- </span><a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2023/07/lets-go-balloon-racing.html" style="font-size: medium;">Goballoon Racing</a><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[auto-battler attempt]</span></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: medium;">- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2023/01/competitive-hanabi.html">Hanabi Wonders</a></span><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Hanabi/7 Wonders mashup]</span></span></span></span></div><div>- My First Ark Nova <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Simpler version of Ark Nova]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span><b>Old Standbys</b> - games which have been around, 1/2 done and untouched, for years:<br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/87c">8/7 Central</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Abandoned]</span><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/HF">Hot & Fresh</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Abandoned]</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Odysseus">Odysseus: Winds of Fate</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/170623/odysseus-winds-fate">BGG</a>)</span></span> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Abandoned]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/CJ">Reading Railroad</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Abandoned]</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Moctezuma">Moctezuma's Revenge</a></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Kilauea">Kilauea</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[a designer showed interest in co-designing, but that didn't go anywhere]</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Automatown">Automatown</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[with Michael Brown]</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><span>- </span><a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Dynasty">Dynasty</a><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[I still think this one has potential]</span></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Misc and Really Old Stuff</b> - most of this I'll probably never get back to, but I like keeping it around just in case:<br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/9-ball">9-Ball</a><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/BR">Blockade Runner</a><br />- Roman Emperors<span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(my version of someone else's game)</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">- Admirals of the Spanish Main </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;">(my version of someone else's game)</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Tabloid">Investigative/Tabloid Journalism</a><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Mars">Red Colony</a><br />- Clash of the Kingpins<br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/A%3D%24">Time = Money</a><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/DatingGame">Dating Game</a><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Airlines">Ticket Please</a><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Untouchables">The Untouchables</a><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2010/03/board-game-inspired-by-craps.html">Day labor game based on craps</a></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2013/12/rondel-role-selection-theme-emerges.html">Rondel Role Selection</a></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- Scourge of the High Seas <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[deckbuilding game with 2 center rows]</span></span></div><div><br /></div></span></div></div></div></div>Seth Jaffeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12449603052617321357noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19884352.post-7306965723065171322023-07-27T14:46:00.003-07:002023-07-27T14:46:19.680-07:00Goballoon Racing - some thoughts on card play possibilities <p>After posting about this new, <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2023/07/lets-go-balloon-racing.html">updated idea</a> using that simple race mechanism I'd <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2021/01/come-and-play-everythings-ok.html">mentioned before</a>, I had a few different ideas about how to do card play. here are some of them, stream of consciousness style:</p><p>1. Maybe just make a few (3-4) different effects, and give everyone a deck of 15-20 cards, each card with one of the effects paired with one of the racers/balloons. You'd draw a small hand, and then your options would be to jump on those particular airships, and get those particular effects. So if you want majority on a particular ship (and you had a card fort hat in hand), then you wouldn't get much control over the effect. On the other hand, if you want a particular effect from one of your cards, then you might not get influence on the ship you want...</p><p><br /></p><p>2. Maybe instead of a hand of cards and individual decks, just have 1 deck, and deal out a display of cards. On your turn, play one of the cards from the display (then refill it). This removes simultaneous play -- is that a good thing or a bad thing?</p><p><br /></p><p>3. Maybe separate the racer from the effect on the cards, and just deal cards with effects into 5 slots - one slot per racer (like in Keeping Up With The Joneses). On your turn, you'd choose a card to resolve the effect, and you'd get a gobbo on the ship who's slot that card is in. And in this case, probably don't refill the display until the end of the round, so you can't all pick the same balloon to jump on.</p><p><br /></p><p>4. Is this an interesting twist? Leave the card effects in play, and the next time that ship gets jumped on, the new effect <i>and all old effects</i> will resolve (a la Wingspan or Deus).</p><p><br /></p><p>I could see any of these formats working, no way to know what would be best, so I'm soliciting opinions in the comments: Which of these ideas sounds best to you, or can you suggest a different format you think would work better?</p><p><br /></p><p>The goal, I think, is to have a quick playing, fun game... not too time consuming, not too thinky, not too AP provoking. Is simultaneous play better fort hat purpose? Or is it better to take turns? Let me know what you think!</p>Seth Jaffeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12449603052617321357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19884352.post-37000070299445833592023-07-25T14:30:00.000-07:002023-07-25T14:30:04.099-07:00Let's Go Balloon Racing!<p>I previously had <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2021/01/come-and-play-everythings-ok.html">an idea for a sort of race game</a> <span style="font-size: x-small;">(see bottom of post)</span>. Well, more like a race <i>mechanism</i>, which I thought could be used as the central resolution mechanic in some simple game.</p><p>In addition, I have been playing a lot of the new, KdJ winning game: <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/359970/challengers">Challengers!</a> Which is pretty cool... it's got an auto-battle feel, as you start with a standard deck, then iteratively draft a couple of cards into it (remove anything you'd like), then resolve a match vs an opponent via a simple algorithm, then you get to draft a couple more cards and do it again.</p><p>When thinking about other types of resolution mechanics that could be used in a similar way, I remembered this race resolution mechanic I'd had. I spent some time thinking about (and trying various versions of) how players could iteratively race the characters a little bit, then bet on the outcome, then race some more - not unlike a simple version of <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/153938/camel">Camel Up</a>, or <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/215311/downforce">Downforce</a>. That was certainly simple, but came with some challenges -- some of the same ones I remember seeing in Downforce when I played that, and some new ones as well:</p><p>1. "Betting" has some baggage, and might not really be appropriate for a kid's game, which I had in mind as I began this idea</p><p>2. There's no real reason not to just pick the obvious winner (Downforce felt this way at times)</p><p>3. Everyone has the same information and agency to affect the outcome (that is to say: no agency), so everyone's just guessing based on the same information</p><p>To combat the first issue, I decided that instead of placing bets, you would just put a player marker behind one of the racers - which one are you supporting/rooting for? Then, when one of the racers wins, the player with the most markers on it would win the game</p><p>To combat the second issue, I tried giving players 2 different picks each round - that way, they could pick the obvious winner and one other racer, or if they wanted to gamble or if it wasn't clear who would win), then they could do that. Then of course if the 1st place racer had a tie for majority, you'd look at the next racer(s) as well, etc. That kind of worked, except for problem number 3... no asymmetric information, and no real agency over the outcome means you're still just arbitrarily guessing which racer might win.</p><p>The 3rd issue was going to be the most important one to address, and I wasn't sure how to go about it. My first thought was that you'd maybe have a small hand of cards that would have some effect on the game, and would back a specific racer -- so you might want to play a card to back the winner, or you might want to play a card with an effect you like, even if it doesn't back the racer you want - something like that. Nothing was sounding very good yet though.</p><p>When mentioning this idea online, someone suggested something that sounded like it would turn this whole idea into an actual game: whenever someone backs a racer, make it somehow <i>hinder</i> that racer! You back the racer that you want to win, but doing so makes it less likely for that racer to win.</p><p>With that agonizing decision point in mind, I gave it another go, and this is what I came up with:</p><p><br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Goballoon Racing <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(could use a title!)</span></h3><p>Fantasy NPC races are having their annual hot air balloon race! Each year people come from far and wide to watch this breathtaking event, as these airships navigate through a dangerous canyon, fighting for first place. No goblins allowed!</p><p><br /></p><p>Your goblin clan has made its own version of this race -- as the racers navigate the course, each goblin clan tries to win their own victory... by jumping aboard, grappling, or otherwise grabbing on to the airships! The clan with the most gobbos on the winning airship will earn the Goballoon Cup. In case of tie, consider the next place airship(s) as well, etc.</p><p><br /></p><p>So you win the Goballoon Cup by piling onto the winning airship, BUT, a balloon with extra weight dangling from it will not move as fast, so by backing a racer, you are necessarily slowing it down. Every round each racer moves some number of spaces around the track, less 1 per hanger-on. This is determined by shuffling a deck of 2 cards per racer, and then revealing 4 cards from it. Those airships move as indicated on the cards, the rest move a minimum amount based on the WIND. WIND is a value that can go up or down over the course of the game, and it's the minimum amount an airship will move. In this way, the racers move a handful of spaces unhindered, but then slow down to a crawl with a bunch the goblins hanging from them (but could still win that way). Or maybe the leaders get so bogged down by gobbos that the stragglers sail past them in the late game!</p><p><br /></p><p>So you do a round of racing, then everyone backs a racer by simultaneously playing a card, then another round of racing, etc</p><p><br /></p><p>Max movement would be based somehow on number of likely rounds, and so number of hangers-on that racers would likely get. There could be a max, I suppose. Only so much room to get a grappling hook on there...</p><p><br /></p><p>Rather than simply "picking a winner" (and hindering that racer), I think the players choices should have some other impact on the game. For example:</p><p>* Modify the WIND value (the amount a racer moves at a minimum, or if their card doesn't come up)</p><p>* Move racers in this row/altitude extra (assumes an up-and-down sort of path, where any given balloon might be at any given altitude, irrespective of their position in the race)</p><p>* Maybe move gobbos around somehow (cut their rope, throw their hook to the next balloon, etc)</p><p> </p><p>So maybe you have a deck of cards and draw a hand, and to "bid" you play a card on a particular balloon, and it has an effect on that balloon, or that row, or whatever it says</p><p>I'm amused at the image if the balloons all having little dragons powering them, with a pilot pulling it's tail to make it breath fire 🙂</p><p><br /></p><p>Maybe each balloon (fantasy race) is different, ones got some kind of magical flame, another is burning sticks, one has a dragon whelp, one then pilot IS a dragon... Something like that. Then the areas you're trying to control with most gobbos could matter somehow</p><p><br /></p><p>MAYBE rather than it being a straight up race, the racers could be trying to escape a pursuer, which could justify jumping aboard the leading airship. That could get dark...</p><p>*A flock of Rocs fleeing a dragon, jump on the one you think is most likely to escape (this process sure to bring about the demise if some innocent, unsuspecting Rocs)*</p><p><br /></p><p>Side note: I like the idea of picking a racer to sort of sabotage them (because you're leading majority on a relacer that's ahead of it)</p><p>Maybe it would make sense if, when a certain threshold is reached, a random goblin falls off to the next airship in line or something. That could lead to people jumping onto an overcrowded racer to try and take majority (hoping the majority leader is the one who loses a gobbo) </p><p><br /></p><p>Anyone have a feeling about one of the posited themes, or another, better idea for a sort of race between NPCs, where player's units jump onto the racers in an attempt to have the most in the winning racers?</p><p><br /></p><p>I suppose it could be like "all racers to cross a certain threshold" rather than just the winner - like anyone who makes it to X is safe, everyone else gets caught by the bag bad chasing them</p><p><br /></p><p>More effect ideas:</p><p>* Move this racer ahead 2 spaces (you'll be hindering it by a space each time, so this helps a little of you play it on the racer you actually want to win)</p><p>* Move this racer back 1 space (mostly for sabotage purposes)</p><p>* Increase wind speed ("wind speed" is the minimum amount that every racer moves, or maybe just the racers who's cards don't come up in the resolution - this could be good if you don't control the leading racers)</p><p>* Decrease wind speed (good if you control leaders)</p><p>* Move all racers at this altitude 2 spaces (where racers could be at different altitudes, but the same altitude as some other racers - like maybe there are 3 altitudes on the track, and you gonuo and down as a matter of course, you don't decide what altitude to be at)</p>Seth Jaffeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12449603052617321357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19884352.post-33906179472383262582023-01-23T00:26:00.002-07:002023-01-24T18:06:18.959-07:00Competitive Hanabi<p> At a convention in California about 8 years ago (OrcCon 2015), I played in a <a href="https://bgg.cc/boardgame/98778/hanabi">Hanabi</a> tournament format they called Hanabi Race with my friend Andrew and someone else who I don't even remember (sorry, person) -- it was a neat format, you played Hanabi in real time, and you could start over if you wanted, but you only had like 15 minutes or so, and when the time was up, your current score was your score for the round... Why would you start over? Because maybe you accidentally discarded such that you shut off a color early, and you wanted to do better, or because your opening draw had no 1's at all, stuff like that. A referee watched the game, and you were penalized for making "cheating" type errors. It was a fun way to do a Hanabi tournament!</p><p>BUT... that's not really what this post is about. Rather, it's about using the Hanabi mechanism, but in a non-cooperative game. Hanabi is one of my favorite cooperative games, and its novel mechanism of holding cards backwards and giving clues to each other to deduce the contents of your hand paved the way for several imitators, including <a href="https://bgg.cc/boardgame/142267/bomb-squad">Bomb Squad</a>, by my friends Dan and David, which I helped develop and publish with TMG, as well as a Knizia game called <a href="https://bgg.cc/boardgame/163930/abracadawhat">Abracada-What?</a> and maybe some others.</p><p><br /></p><p>A designer I know, Isaac Shalev, once had a design for a <i>competitive</i> game that used the Hanabi mechanism - It was about solving mysteries, a la Sherlock Holmes. I'm not sure if anything ever became of that design or not.</p><p>At one time I had my own thoughts about a competitive game using Hanabi's main mechanism. It's one of the rare ideas I didn't write down, either here in this blog, or elsewhere, which means now (maybe a decade later) I recall <i>having</i> the idea, and I recall thinking it was cool or promising, but I don't recall any of the specifics! I know that the cards in your hand were buildings that you would play, and I'm pretty sure you got resources by giving clues to your opponents about their cards in hand. but really, that's about all I remember...</p><p>The other day I saw an ad for the upcoming 7 Wonders expansion, and it said "a new experience in the 7 Wonders universe," which made me think "you know, if I ever made that competitive Hanabi city-building game, maybe it could be in the 7 Wonders universe!" Which made a lot of sense to me - the cards could basically be 7 Wonders cards, but instead of drafting them, you play this clue-giving, deduction game to get them into play.</p><p>So, I set about <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2021/04/thoughts-on-mashups-also-candyland-no.html">mashing up</a> two of <a href="https://bgg.cc/boardgamedesigner/9714/antoine-bauza">Antoine Bauza</a>'s greatest hits: <a href="https://bgg.cc/boardgame/98778/hanabi">Hanabi</a> and 7 Wonders. Here's what I've got so far, now to figure out a way to prototype and test this (I don't know how well Tabletop Simulator will work for a Hanabi mechanism!):<br /><br /><br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Hanabi Wonders</h3>7 Wonders style buildings, each with a cost in 7W resources (wood, stone, clay, ore, glass, paper, cloth)<br /><br />7W cards come in 6 colors... Shuffle 2 starting cards in each color, and deal 3 face up to each player - assign 1 "under construction," and the other 2 "completed"<br /><br />Deal X cards (based on player count?) FACE DOWN to each player - DO NOT LOOK at your cards, hold them so all other players can see them<br /><br /><b>On your turn:</b><br />1. Give a clue<br />2. Play a card<br />3. Draw a card<br /><br />1. <u>Give a clue</u><br />Choose an opponent and one of the following conditions, then point out all cards in that opponent's hand that meet that condition. Once you e done so, gain the associated benefit:<br />A. Name a resource - point out all cards that have that resource in their cost<br />Benefit: collect 1 resource of the named type for each card you pointed out<br />NOTE: you have a storage limit of [6?] resources<br /><br />B. Name a number - point out all cards that cost that number of resources (total)<br />Benefit: move 1 resource of your choice from your supply to your under construction cards for each card you pointed out (if you complete a card, discard those resources and move the card to the "completed" area)<br /><br />C. Name a color - point out all cards of that color<br />Benefit: activate 1 of your completed card of the chosen color for each card you pointed out<br /><br />2. <u>Play a card</u><br />EITHER<br />A. Play a card face up in front of you, it is now "under construction"<br />OR <br />B. Discard a card and choose:<br />* Collect any 1btesoice found in its cost<br />* Activate 1 (all?) Of your completed cards of that color<br /><br />3. <u>Draw a card</u><br />Draw a new card from the deck to replace the old one in your hand. Remember, DO NOT LOOK at it. When the deck is out, the round is almost over... After everyone has had equal turns, the round ends.<br /><br /><b>End of Round / End of Game:</b><br />Maybe certain buildings activate (like red ones, or ALL buildings?), then a new round begins with Era II cards, which cost more than the Era I cards, but you get a discount for having certain other buildings in play (maybe simply 1-2 basic resource discount per building of that color you have in play?)<br /><br />After round 2, the same thing happens using the Era III cards, which cost more still, and have strong effects, and/or game end scoring based on some condition (like Guilds from 7W)<br /><br /><br />After the end of round 3, the game is over - total your victory points to determine the winner<br /><br /><b>Card effects when activated:</b><br />Red:<br />All red (and maybe some other) cards have military icons. When activated, gain 1/2/3 vp for each neighbor with fewer icons than you<p>Blue:<br />Gain 1/3/5 vp</p><p>Yellow:<br />Trade 1/2/3 resources for coins. Coins are wild resources (maybe glass/cloth/paper costs 2/trade for 2) and are worth a point at game end</p><p>Green:<br />Draw 1/2/3 science tiles at random, keep 1 (science tiles have 1 of 3 science icons, score sets like 7W)</p><p>Brown:<br />Provide 1/2 basic resources (wood/stone/clay/ore) of the pictured type (no brown cards in age III)</p><p>Gray:<br />Provide 1/2 advanced resources (glass/paper/cloth) of the pictured type (no gray cards in age III)</p><p><br /></p><p>EDIT:<br />Idea to keep players from just giving the same clue to the same person back-to-back:</p><p>Give each player 3 tiles, one each for Color, Number, and Resource. When given any clue, refresh any face down tiles and turn face down the one corresponding to the new clue. You may not be given a clue in the face down category.</p><p> Also, on your turn, refresh all of your tiles.</p><div><p></p></div>Seth Jaffeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12449603052617321357noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19884352.post-30957414126073826722022-12-14T23:43:00.003-07:002022-12-14T23:43:45.972-07:00Kingdom Realms (3-Lane Game Jam): details<p>In a recent post I mentioned three new game ideas. In this post I'll flesh out one of them...</p><h3>3 Lane Game Jam - Kingdom Realms</h3><p></p><blockquote><p>Man, that title sounds like it was created by an AI ChatBot, doesn't it? </p><p>Kingdom Realms was my submission to a little 2-week game jam. Here's the description of the jam criteria, though it was made clear they were more like suggestions:</p><blockquote><p>Games where there are 3 areas in which you can play cards, and you have to "win" two of the areas in some sense. Of course, if your game needs 4 or 5 lanes, that's okay too, but try and keep the "win 2/3" (or 3/5) lanes idea in there somehow if you can. There's no limitation on the number of cards or other components</p></blockquote><p>Taking inspiration from Animal Kingdoms and Rolling Realms, I made a game where you turn up 3 Realm cards, each with a rule governing play in that lane, and a win condition, governing who wins that lane. Then you deal some cards into a supply, and take turns drafting a card and placing it in one of the realms on your side. In the end, I added effects that occur upon playing the cards as well. Once you get through the deck, you check each Realm's win condition and see who wins 2 out of 3.</p><p>To be honest, I'm much less thrilled with this game than I have been with some of my other games, but it does seem to work alright. I generally think I'm not very into lane combat games, <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2022/07/may-riftforce-be-with-you-also-custom.html">Riftforce being an exception</a>.</p></blockquote><p></p><p><b>Tabletop Simulator:</b></p><p>Here's the TTS workshop mod for the game, if anyone's interested in trying it out: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2890010667</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Kingdom Realms (version submitted to 3-lane game jam) </h3><p><b>COMPONENTS:</b></p><p>30 playing cards (6 each of rank 3, 4, 5, 6, & 7)<br /></p><p>14 Realm cards (see file)<b>SETUP:</b></p><p>Shuffle Realm cards and deal 3 face up (creating 3 lanes)</p><p>Shuffle playing cards and deal out 5 face up</p><p>Randomly select a start player</p><p><b>ROUNDS OF PLAY:</b></p><p>1. Take turns drafting the face up cards, one at a time (you'll get 2 total each round), and assigning them to two DIFFERENT lanes</p><p>(If you have no legal play, add the drafted card to your hand for tiebreak)</p><p>2. Resolve the card's effect (see below)</p><p>3. When there is only 1 card left, the start player takes it and keeps it in hand (for tiebreak)</p><p>4. Deal out 5 more cards face up, start player changes hands</p><p><b>GAME END:</b></p><p>Once all cards have been played, the game is over</p><p>Resolve each Realm... Win 2 Realms to win the game</p><p>If there is a tie, the player with the highest total value of cards in hand is the winner</p><p><b>CARD EFFECTS:</b></p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>3: You may play this card face down. If you do, turn another card here face down. Face down cards have value = 1</li><li>4: You may swap this card with the most recent card an opponent played here</li><li>5: You may re-play a card from here in a different realm (face-down cards stay face down and have no effect)</li><li>6: If possible, turn a face-down card here face up</li><li>7: No effect</li></ul><div>And here are the current Realms:</div><div>You must play cards in ascending order - Most cards wins</div><div>You must play cards in descending order - Most cards wins</div><div>Alternate color (black/red), you may not play the same color as the last card played here by any player - Most cards wins</div><div>To paly a card here, you must turn one of your face-up cards in another realm face down (face down cards have value 1) - Most cards wins</div><div><br /></div><div>You must play cards in ascending order - Largest total value wins</div><div>Only RED cards can be played here - Largest total value wins</div><div>Only BLACK cards can be played here - Largest total value wins</div><div>Only ODD cards can be played here - Largest total value wins</div><div>Only EVEN cards can be played here - Largest total value wins</div><div>Alternate color (black/red), you may not play the same color as the last card played here by any player - Largest total value wins</div><div>Card effects do not trigger in this realm - Largest total value wins</div><div>Alternate color (black/red), you may not play the same color as the last card YOU played here - Largest total value wins</div><div>Alternate parity (odd/even), you may not play the same parity as the last card YOU played here - Largest total value wins</div><div>To paly a card here, you must turn one of your face-up cards in another realm face down (face down cards have value 1) - Largest total value wins</div><div><br /></div><div>For each card you have here, add 1 to the value or number of cards in each other realm - Lowest total value wins</div><div>You must match either SUIT or VALUE of the last card played here by any player - Last player to play here wins</div><p></p>Seth Jaffeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12449603052617321357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19884352.post-44832812731582463052022-12-14T00:04:00.000-07:002022-12-14T00:04:02.681-07:00Kid's car racing game: details<p> In a recent post I mentioned three new game ideas. In this post I'll flesh out one of them...</p><h3>Kid's Car Race</h3><p></p><blockquote><p>My 4.5 year old son <i>LOOOVES</i> vehicles. No idea why, I'm not a "car guy" by any means, but he's just fascinated by cars, trucks, tractor-trailers, vehicle transports, excavators, etc, etc, etc. He especially likes sporty cars (with spoilers), and he "oohs" and "ahhs" every time we see a Camero in traffic.</p><p>I thought this might be a good way to get him interested in playing games with me. We have a copy of <a href="https://bgg.cc/boardgame/4209/monza">Monza</a>, and he plays that (he tolerates it, doesn't get as excited about it as I thought he might), and he understands the rules - including a house rule we use.</p><p>I recently saw a new game called <a href="https://bgg.cc/boardgame/366013/heat-pedal-metal">HEAT: Pedal to the Metal</a>, and started looking into it a little bit to see if I thought my son could handle a simplified version of that game (I don't really think so).</p><p>What he <i>has</i> been excited to play lately is <a href="https://bgg.cc/boardgame/16398/war">War</a>. He <i>loves</i> playing War, and he tolerates Monza... so I thought maybe I could make a game similar to Monza that used cards like War. In the end I came up with something that is NOT like War at all.</p><p>In this ide, you use the cars, board, and Dice from Monza, but instead of rolling the dice to move forward on the board, you play a card (value 1-3), and move that number of spaces. Then, whatever color you land on, you look at the dice and move 1 more space forward for each die showing that same color, then you reroll those dice. </p><p>I tried playing 2-handed solo a few times, and it seems to work alright! So I tried to get my son to play it with me... no luck (at least not yet)</p></blockquote><p>So here are the rules to the game -- you could try it if you have a copy of Monza and a deck of cards or two handy: </p><p></p><p><b>COMPONENTS:</b></p><p>12 cards (4 each value 1, 2, 3) [use more for more players, or for 2 laps]<br />1 game board (see Monza)<br />6 color pip dice (see Monza)</p><p><b>SETUP:</b></p><p>1. Put the cars on the starting space of the racetrack<br />2. Deal 3 cards face up (could be face down instead) to each player<br />3. Roll all 6 dice<br />4. Youngest player goes first </p><p><b>GAME PLAY:</b></p><p>On your turn, play a card and move that number of spaces (per Monza rules). </p><p>Then, check the color of the space you land on. For each die showing that color, move 1 space farther (in that same lane, stop at tire spaces). </p><p>Finally, reroll those dice and draw a replacement card (when the deck runs out, just don't draw - or reshuffle or something)</p>Seth Jaffeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12449603052617321357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19884352.post-6661946467034124872022-12-13T23:59:00.001-07:002022-12-13T23:59:30.937-07:00Card+Dice drafting: details<p> In a recent post I mentioned three new game ideas. In this post I'll flesh out one of them...</p><h3>Card + Dice drafting</h3><p></p><blockquote><p>This second idea hasn't got a title, it was inspired by a conversation which was initially about how to do an autobattler in a tabletop game. Someone suggested a dice drafting game with an autobattler sort of flavor, and that got me thinking <i>"what if you drafted a die and played a card to a programmed row, then you rolled the dice and resolved the first card on your row vs the opponent, or the top card of a deck or something"</i></p><p>From there I quickly formulated a game structure - no theme or anything, so I'm probably <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2017/01/again-with-mechanics-first-i-more-and.html">stuck until I figure out a theme</a>. I'll post the details in a fresh post, but it's got entangled decisions, cards+dice drafting, and programmed card play.</p></blockquote><p></p><p>Here are the quick rules I came up with:</p><p><b>Components:</b></p><p>Cards in 4 colors<br />d6 dice in 4 colors<br />Victory point tokens?<br />Re-roll tokens?<br />"+1" tokens?</p><p><b>Setup:</b></p><p>1. Shuffle cards and deal out 1 per player in a draft row</p><p>2. Mix dice in a draw bag and draw 1 out to pair with each card in the draft row</p><p>3. Deal 1 die at random from the bag, and 1 card face up, to each player, followed by 1 card face down to each player (you may look at your face down cards). Roll your die and place your cards ina queue, face up 1st, face down 2nd</p><p><b>Rounds of play:</b></p><p>1. Determine turn order: Compare each player's face up card's value, plus the total pips on their dice of that color. Take turns in order from highest total to lowest. In the case of a tie, play RPS or something</p><p>2. On your turn, you may activate your current card's effects (e.g. a Yellow card might say "[Red]: For every 3 pips, score 1 vp"), then draft a card/die pair. The card goes face down into your card queue, and the die goes into your supply</p><p>3. Discard your face up card, then turn the next queued card face up</p><p>4. Roll all of your dice and pass the turn to the next player</p><p>...</p><p>Maybe in addition to going early in turn order, you get something that amounts to VP, or a set collection type of thing. Or maybe the cards themselves have a set collection icon on them</p><p>Game end should trigger at some point, maybe when players have about 8-10 dice. Maybe just when the dice/cards run out, or maybe when someone reaches some threshold of progress</p><p>The different colors could have different flavors of effect - like maybe red gets points, yellow gets re-rolls, blue gets progress on some track (maybe a race track which triggers game end and gives bonuses for position), green gets some +1 token to be used on a future roll, or a token which lets you use an off-colored die, or something like that</p><p>Of course, I haven't tried this yet, but it seems pretty simple to prototype, maybe I'll make a TTS mod and subject my playtesters to it.</p>Seth Jaffeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12449603052617321357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19884352.post-74412614181799521552022-12-13T23:55:00.005-07:002022-12-14T00:03:38.818-07:00Yangi x3! 3-Lane game jam, Card/Dice drafting, and a Kid's car race<p>I've been doing some freelance development lately, so not much I feel right talking about on my blog.. but I have had a few ideas of my own as well... I'll make a separate, more in-depth post about each, but here are my 3 latest game ideas (since the recent <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2022/07/one-18-card-game-design-jam-three.html">18 card game jam</a>):</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">1. 3 Lane Game Jam - Kingdom Realms</h3><p>Man, that title sounds like it was created by an AI ChatBot, doesn't it? </p><p>Kingdom Realms was my submission to a little 2-week game jam. Here's the description of the jam criteria, though it was made clear they were more like suggestions:</p><blockquote><p>Games where there are 3 areas in which you can play cards, and you have to "win" two of the areas in some sense. Of course, if your game needs 4 or 5 lanes, that's okay too, but try and keep the "win 2/3" (or 3/5) lanes idea in there somehow if you can. There's no limitation on the number of cards or other components</p></blockquote><p>Taking inspiration from Animal Kingdoms and Rolling Realms, I made a game where you turn up 3 Realm cards, each with a rule governing play in that lane, and a win condition, governing who wins that lane. Then you deal some cards into a supply, and take turns drafting a card and placing it in one of the realms on your side. In the end, I added effects that occur upon playing the cards as well. Once you get through the deck, you check each Realm's win condition and see who wins 2 out of 3.</p><p>To be honest, I'm much less thrilled with this game than I have been with some of my other games, but it does seem to work alright. I generally think I'm not very into lane combat games, <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2022/07/may-riftforce-be-with-you-also-custom.html">Riftforce being an exception</a>.</p><h3>2. Card + Dice drafting</h3><p>This second idea hasn't got a title, it was inspired by a conversation which was initially about how to do an autobattler in a tabletop game. Someone suggested a dice drafting game with an autobattler sort of flavor, and that got me thinking <i>"what if you drafted a die and played a card to a programmed row, then you rolled the dice and resolved the first card on your row vs the opponent, or the top card of a deck or something"</i></p><p>From there I quickly formulated a game structure - no theme or anything, so I'm probably <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2017/01/again-with-mechanics-first-i-more-and.html">stuck until I figure out a theme</a>. I'll post the details in a fresh post, but it's got entangled decisions, cards+dice drafting, and programmed card play.</p><h3>3. Kid's car race</h3><p>My 4.5 year old son <i>LOOOVES</i> vehicles. No idea why, I'm not a "car guy" by any means, but he's just fascinated by cars, trucks, tractor-trailers, vehicle transports, excavators, etc, etc, etc. He especially likes sporty cars (with spoilers), and he "oohs" and "ahhs" every time we see a Camero in traffic.</p><p>I thought this might be a good way to get him interested in playing games with me. We have a copy of <a href="https://bgg.cc/boardgame/4209/monza">Monza</a>, and he plays that (he tolerates it, doesn't get as excited about it as I thought he might), and he understands the rules - including a house rule we use.</p><p>I recently saw a new game called <a href="https://bgg.cc/boardgame/366013/heat-pedal-metal">HEAT: Pedal to the Metal</a>, and started looking into it a little bit to see if I thought my son could handle a simplified version of that game (I don't really think so).</p><p>What he <i>has</i> been excited to play lately is <a href="https://bgg.cc/boardgame/16398/war">War</a>. He <i>loves</i> playing War, and he tolerates Monza... so I thought maybe I could make a game similar to Monza that used cards like War. In the end I came up with something that is NOT like War at all.</p><p>In this ide, you use the cars, board, and Dice from Monza, but instead of rolling the dice to move forward on the board, you play a card (value 1-3), and move that number of spaces. Then, whatever color you land on, you look at the dice and move 1 more space forward for each die showing that same color, then you reroll those dice. </p><p>I tried playing 2-handed solo a few times, and it seems to work alright! So I tried to get my son to play it with me... no luck (at least not yet)</p>Seth Jaffeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12449603052617321357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19884352.post-68035193621776093142022-11-26T01:03:00.001-07:002022-11-26T01:03:16.135-07:00The List - November 2022<p>It's been a while, and I've got some updates to make, so it's time to revisit<span> </span><b style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/TheList">The List</a></b><span>, again! </span> </p><p><b>Published Games</b>:</p><span>- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/TP">Terra Prime</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/22485/terra-prime">BGG</a>)</span><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/EmDo">Eminent Domain</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/68425/eminent-domain">BGG</a>) [new edition coming 2023 from a new publisher!]</span><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Escalation">Eminent Domain: Escalation</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/136313/eminent-domain-escalation">BGG</a>) (expansi</span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span>on)</span><span> [new edition coming 2023 from a new publisher!]</span></span><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Exotica">Eminent Domain: Exotica</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://bgg.cc/boardgameexpansion/163639/eminent-domain-exotica">BGG</a>)</span> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(expansion)</span></span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> [new edition coming 2023 from a new publisher!]</span><br />- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Oblivion">Eminent Domain: Oblivion</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/232135/eminent-domain-oblivion">BGG</a>) (expansion)</span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> [new edition coming 2023 from a new publisher!]</span><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/MicroCiv">Eminent Domain: Microcosm</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span>(<a href="http://bgg.cc/boardgame/163640/eminent-domain-microcosm">BGG</a>)</span><span> [theoretically signed by a publisher!]</span></span><br />- <u>Isle of Trains</u><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(Co-Design with Dan Keltner)</span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://bgg.cc/boardgame/154906/isle-trains">BGG</a>) [new edition coming 2022/2023 from Dranda Games!]<br /></span><span><span>- <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/355224/isle-trains-all-aboard">Isle of Trains: All Aboard</a></span><span> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(Co-Design with Dan Keltner)</span><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[New edition from Dranda Games with included expansion]</span><br /></span>- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/KnightsTemplar">Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done</a><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> <span>(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/170624/crusaders-thy-will-be-done">BGG</a>) </span><span>[<a href="https://renegadegamestudios.com/crusaders-thy-will-be-done/">now available from Renegade!</a>]</span></span><br />- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2018/07/crusaders-exansion-prototype-pdf-and.html">Crusaders: Divine Influence</a><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> (<a href="https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/289240/crusaders-divine-influence">BGG</a>) (expansion) [<a href="https://renegadegamestudios.com/crusaders-thy-will-be-done-divine-influence-expansion/">no available from Renegade!</a>]</span></span><div><span>- Crusaders: Crimson Knight<span style="font-size: xx-small;"> (expansion) [coming soon (2023?) from Renegade!]</span><br />- Crusaders: Amber Knight<span style="font-size: xx-small;"> (expansion) [coming soon (2023?) from Renegade!]</span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span>- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2013/11/dungeon-roll-winter-promo-tmg-goes.html">Dungeon Roll: Winter Heroes</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/150233/dungeon-roll-winter-heroes-pack">BGG</a>)</span><br />- Gold West: Bandits promo <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/188355/gold-west-bandits-promo">BGG</a>)</span><br />- Gold West: Trading Post promo <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/213216/gold-west-trading-post-promo">BGG</a>)</span><br />- Yokohama: Achievements & Free Agents promo <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/232352/yokohama-achievements-free-agents-promo">BGG</a>)</span><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/BF">Brainfreeze</a></span></div><div><span><br /></span></div><div><span><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b style="font-size: medium;">Development projects</b><span style="font-size: medium;"> - Games I've done freelance development on</span></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>I've started doing some freelance development. As games I've worked on come out, I'll add them here</i></span></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: medium;">- </span><a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/354568/amun-re-20th-anniversary-edition" style="font-size: medium;">Amun-Re expansion</a><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[with Alley Cat Games 20th Anniversary edition]</span></span></span></div><br /><b>Finished But Unpublished Games</b> - in line to be published:<br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/TP">Eminent Domain Origins</a><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Ready to print] [theoretically signed by a publisher!]</span><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/EmDice">Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(dice game) [Ready for art] </span></span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[theoretically signed by a publisher!]</span></div><div>- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Deities%26Demigods">Deities & Demigods</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(Co-Design with Matthew Dunstan)</span> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[signed by a publisher!]</span></div><div><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span><span style="font-size: small;">- </span><a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/WorkerLearning" style="font-size: medium;">Apotheosis</a><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(Co-Design with Rick Holzgrafe)</span></span><span> </span><span>[signed by a publisher!]</span></span></div><div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Currently Pitching Games</b> - "actively" looking for a publisher (though I haven't <i>actively</i> been doing much of anything lately!):</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Sails%26Sorcery">Sails & Sorcery</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[with Michael Mindes]</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">[pitching to publishers]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Pony%20Express">Riders of the Pony Express</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/187583/riders-pony-express">BGG</a>)</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">[pitching to publishers]</span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/BluffAuction">Exhibit</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/119770/exhibit-artifacts-of-the-ages">BGG</a>) [pitching to publishers]</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: medium;">- </span><a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/KeepingUp" style="font-size: medium;">Keeping Up with the Joneses</a></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">[pitching to publishers]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/A41">All For One</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/20941">BGG</a>) (Co-Design with David Brain)</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">[pitching to publishers]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: medium;">- </span><a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/AlterEgo" style="font-size: medium;">Alter Ego</a><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/119772/alter-ego">BGG</a>)</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: medium;">- </span><a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/DiceWerx" style="font-size: medium;">Dice Works</a><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/119773/dice-works">BGG</a>)</span></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: medium;">- </span><a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/citybuilding" style="font-size: medium;">Suburban Sprawl</a></span></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">- <a href="https://bgg.cc/boardgame/200058/harvest">Harvest</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/20941">BGG</a>) (Co-Design with Trey Chambers)</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">[pitching to publishers]</span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"> </span></div></span></span></div></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>"Finished" But Unpublished Games</b> - abandoned or backburnered designs that are "done":<br /><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/WT">Wizard's Tower</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/29446">BGG</a>)</span> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Abandoned]</span><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/WatchItPlayed">Watch It Played</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Abandoned]</span><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/NowBoarding">Now Boarding</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Abandoned]</span><br />- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2020/04/free-roll-writes-for-quarantine-time.html">Rolling Realms</a>: <a href="https://t.co/C6ssLvsIrW">Jaffee Realms</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(for Jamey Stegmaier's Rolling Realms)</span></span><div><br /></div><div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Current Active Designs</b> - these are the games I'm actively testing or working on:</span></div><div><span>- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2022/05/3-new-ideas-1-new-game-part-3-micro.html">Worker Placement Microgame</a></span></div><div><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: medium;">- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2022/07/one-18-card-game-design-jam-three.html">Press-Your-Luck Microgame</a> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(KBGames 18 card game jam entry, July 2022)</span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: medium;">- Kingdom Realms </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(</span></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">KBGames 3-lane game jam entry, Nov 2022</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">)</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Backburnered Designs</b> - I kid myself into thinking that I'm still working on these:</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- Isle Of Trains: The Board Game </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;">(Co-Design with Dan Keltner)</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/JoanOfArc">Joan of Arc</a></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2020/12/yangi-x2-and-old-game-off-back-burner.html">I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement</a><br /></span><br /><b>Promising Recent ideas</b>:<br />- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Worker-ception">Worker-ception</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[with David Short]</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2020/12/yangi-x2-and-old-game-off-back-burner.html">False Prophet</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Mancala/Worker Placement]</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- </span><a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2021/01/come-and-play-everythings-ok.html" style="font-family: inherit;">Come And Play</a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;">[Sesame Street memory/rondel game]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/candyland">Candyland Game</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Candyland/No Thanks mashup]</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span><b>Old Standbys</b> - games which have been around, 1/2 done and untouched, for years:<br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/87c">8/7 Central</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Abandoned]</span><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/HF">Hot & Fresh</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Abandoned]</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Odysseus">Odysseus: Winds of Fate</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/170623/odysseus-winds-fate">BGG</a>)</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/CJ">Reading Railroad</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Abandoned]</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Moctezuma">Moctezuma's Revenge</a></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Kilauea">Kilauea</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[a designer showed interest in co-designing, but that didn't go anywhere]</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Automatown">Automatown</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[with Michael Brown]</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: medium;">- </span><a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Dynasty" style="font-size: medium;">Dynasty</a><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[I still think this one has potential]</span></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Misc and Really Old Stuff</b> - most of this I'll probably never get back to, but I like keeping it around just in case:<br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/9-ball">9-Ball</a><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/BR">Blockade Runner</a><br />- Roman Emperors<span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(my version of someone else's game)</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">- Admirals of the Spanish Main </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;">(my version of someone else's game)</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Tabloid">Investigative/Tabloid Journalism</a><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Mars">Red Colony</a><br />- Clash of the Kingpins<br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/A%3D%24">Time = Money</a><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/DatingGame">Dating Game</a><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Airlines">Ticket Please</a><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Untouchables">The Untouchables</a><br />- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2010/03/board-game-inspired-by-craps.html">Day labor game based on craps</a></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- <a href="http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2013/12/rondel-role-selection-theme-emerges.html">Rondel Role Selection</a></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">-Scourge of the High Seas <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[deckbuilding game with 2 center rows]</span></span></div><div><br /></div></span></div></div></div></div>Seth Jaffeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12449603052617321357noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19884352.post-56991060631837311912022-10-23T12:56:00.004-07:002022-10-23T12:56:34.941-07:00Wayback Machine: The League Of Gamemakers<p> Some 7 years ago, I joined up with a California based group of game designers called the League of Game Makers, and <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200508080842/http://www.leagueofgamemakers.com/author/sethjaffee/">I posted some stuff on their site</a>. There were a lot of creative folk in that group, including Mark Major, designer of Chimera Station (which I developed for TMG, and is now available - at least in beta - on boardgamearena.com), and Luke Laurie, designer of The Manhattan Project: Energy Empire (a personal favorite), and several other titles since. </p><p>I just checked, and it appears their website has gone the way of the dodo, but thanks to the archival prowess of <a href="https://web.archive.org/">The Wayback Machine Internet Archive</a>, I was able to dig up those posts I had made, only some of which had been cross posted to this blog in the past.</p><p>So if you're looking for something game-design-y to read, feel free to <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200508080842/http://www.leagueofgamemakers.com/author/sethjaffee/">peruse these articles</a>. I had a lot to say about game design back then, and some of it even sounded kinda smart!</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Seth Jaffeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12449603052617321357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19884352.post-25835335872310925972022-08-23T16:42:00.002-07:002022-08-23T16:42:05.374-07:00Low Hanging Fruit<p>I find that when developing a game, there is usually some low hanging fruit - some obvious tweaks and changes that would likely improve the game. That seems like a good place to start, before diving deep into a development project, before stripping a game to studs and rebuilding it, might as well try the obvious tweaks and pick off that low hanging fruit!</p><p>I suppose that's a product of experience, where a designer who hasn't encountered certain situations or design problems makes relatively common "mistakes," and another designer or a developer who <i>has</i> seen that situation before immediately notices it.</p><p>I've started looking into taking freelance development jobs, and as an example, on one of them there happens to be a lot of this low hanging fruit. So before I really get in there and start messing around under the hood, I'm starting with some of the more obvious stuff, like false or uninteresting decisions (decisions made without proper context), unreliable abilities, unnecessary layers of randomness, and obvious card imbalances.</p><p>When you design, or develop, what kinds of low hanging fruit have you come across?</p>Seth Jaffeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12449603052617321357noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19884352.post-22260966516895511392022-07-23T19:22:00.014-07:002022-12-13T23:03:28.851-07:00May The Riftforce Be With You (also: custom guild ideas)<h3 style="text-align: left;"> Riftforce</h3><p><a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/291859/riftforce">Riftforce</a> is a recent lane combat game (like <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/760/battle-line">Battle Line</a> or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SolForge">SolForge</a> or something) that I've been playing a lot on BoardGameArena lately. I haven't played a whole lot of this type of game in the past, and frankly, the ones I have played didn't excite me that much for on reason or another. I kinda liked SolForge I guess, but that was about it.</p><p>But Riftforce... Riftforce is pretty awesome. You start out by drafting a team of 4 different Guilds which will make up your deck. Each guild (or suit) will have 9 cards (4x 5's, 3x 6's, and 2x 7's), and each guild has an effect - how much damage it deals, or in what way, when activated.</p><p>On your turn you simply choose from 3 options...</p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Play: Put up to 3 cards (matching guild or value) into play in the same lane, or each in an adjacent lane</li><li>Activate: Discard a card from your hand to activate up to 3 cards matching that card's guild or value</li><li>Check & Draw: Collect points from any lane where you have unopposed cards, then refill your hand to 7 (you can't do this if you already have 7 cards)</li></ol><p></p><p>Activating a card allows it to do its thing - dealing some amount of damage to an opposing card and using whatever its guild effect might be. Cards can take their value in damage before they're discarded.</p><p>You score 1 point for each opposing card you kill, and 1 point for each lane you control when you Check & Draw, and it's a race to 12 points.</p><p>And that's it. The rules are simple, but the game play is varied and interesting, <i>especially</i> due to the way you draft your guilds for the game. There are 10 total guilds in the base game, and each player plays with 4 of them per game. During setup, each player is dealt 1 guild at random, then drafts 3 more from a supply of 7 (the last one isn't used). Since each guild has an ability or effect, they can combo together in interesting ways. Removing 1 guild and being dealt one at random go a long way toward keeping you from always leaning on the same guilds.</p><p>To be honest though, since you use 4 guilds per game, and some of the guild effects are kinda similar, it doesn't necessarily feel like you're playing a wholly different game each time. but there's an expansion coming soon (is it out yet?) that adds 8 more guilds, which I'm sure will help, I look forward to those being added to BGA.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Base Game Guilds</h3><p>Here are the 10 guilds in the base game:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Crystal: Deal 4 damage to the 1st opposing card at this rift. When killed, opponent gets 2 points instead of 1</li><li>Fire: Deal 3 damage to the 1st opposing card at this rift. Deal 1 damage to the ally directly behind this card<br /></li><li>Water: Deal 2 damage to the 1st opposing card at this rift. Then move to an adjacent lane and deal 1 damage to the 1st opposing card at that rift</li><li>Air: Move to any other rift, then deal 1 damage to the 1st opposing card at this rift and each adjacent rift</li><li>Earth: Deal 1 damage to the <i>each</i> opposing card at this rift when this comes into play. Deal 2 damage to the 1st opposing card at this rift</li><li>Plant: Deal 2 damage to the 1st opposing card at an adjacent rift, then move it to this rift</li><li>Thunderbolt: Deal 2 damage to <i>any </i>opposing card at this rift. If it dies, deal 2 more damage to any opposing card at this rift.</li><li>Light: Deal 2 damage to the 1st opposing card at this rift. Heal 1 damage from any ally</li><li>Ice: If the last opposing card at this rift is damaged, deal 4 damage to it. Otherwise deal 1 damage to it</li><li>Shadow: Move to any other rift, then deal 1 damage to the 1st opposing card at this rift. If it dies, score an additional point</li></ul><p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Expansion Guilds</h3><p>Here's what's to come in the expansion:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Beast: Move this beast to an adjacent location. If there is damage on that beast, put 3 damage on the first enemy in that location. Otherwise, deal 2 damage on him.</li><li>Lava: Deal 2 damage each to the first enemy in the adjacent locations. Put 1 damage each on this lava and all allies in front of this lava.</li><li>Love: When playing this love remove all damage from an ally in that location. Deal 2 damage to the first enemy in this location.</li><li>Magnet: Deal 2 damage to the last enemy in this location. Move this enemy and magnet to an adjacent location.</li><li>Acid: Deal 3 damage to the first enemy in this location. Deal 1 damage to the second enemy in this location. If the acid destroys an enemy, you will not receive a Riftforce.</li><li>Sand: Move this sand to any other location. Deal 1 damage to each enemy in this location. Remove 1 damage from this sand.</li><li>Music: Deal 2 damage to the first enemy in this location. If that enemy is destroyed by the music, play it on your side of the Rift at an adjacent location.</li><li>Magic: Deal 2 damage to the first enemy in this location. If you have less than 7 elementals in hand, draw 1 elemental.</li></ul><p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Custom Guilds</h3><p>I see that someone has posted a <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2736989/fan-made-riftforce-expansion-15-new-guilds">fan expansion on BGG</a> with 15 custom guilds in it. Here are some of my own ideas for guilds (some might be similar to the ones on the fan expansion, I wrote them down before seeing that):</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>When activating and there's no card opposing, +1 Riftforce</li><li>When activating and there's no card opposing, opponent loses 1 Riftforce</li><li>Choose an enemy (any card?) at this location with damage on it and return that card to its owner's hand </li><li>Do 2 damage to the first enemy in this location, then shift 1 damage from one opposing card to another</li><li>When activated, get 1 Riftforce and discard this card. Opponent does not gain Riftforce for this</li><li>Deal 2 damage to the first enemy in this location. After you Check & Draw, deal 1 damage to the first enemy in this location.</li><li>Deal 2 damage to the first enemy in this location. Before you Check & Draw, each of ~this move 1 opposing card from their lane to an adjacent lane</li><li>Deal 2 damage to the first enemy in this location. If they die, draw a card</li><li>Deal 2 damage to the first enemy in this location. If they die, activate any one other card in play</li><li>Deal 2 damage to the first enemy in this location. You may put a card into play at this location</li><li>Move all damage on opposing cards in this lane onto one card</li><li>Move up to 2 damage from allies in any lane to any enemies in that same lane</li><li>Heal up to 2 damage from any card(s) in play. For each, deal 1 damage to any card opposing the healed card</li><li>cards that don't have to come into play adjacent to each other or something... "After coming into play, move this to any lane"</li><li>would it be useful enough to have a Trap sort of effect: "Opponent's cards at this Rift cannot move" (trap water, air, shadow, and I think one or 2 of the expansion ones)</li><li>Destroy the first enemy at this location. You may not activate any other cards this turn. [meaning they must activate alone] </li><li>Deal 2 damage to the first enemy in this location. When ~this comes into play, heal 1 damage on any ally</li></ul><div style="text-align: left;">And a few ideas from my friend David: </div><div style="text-align: left;"><ul><li>Deal 1 damage on the first enemy at this location. Add 1 card from your hand to any location. This new card comes with 1 damage on it</li><li>When you play this card, it comes with 2 damage on it. [When activated] Discard this card with no effect, add two cards to two different rifts</li><li>If this is the first ally at this location, deal 3 damage to the first enemy at this location. Otherwise, deal 1 damage to any enemy at this location</li></ul></div><div>It might be nice to see some guilds with non-standard card distributions - an all-5s guild that's weak, but easy to activate. A guild with some 9s (instead of 7s?), which can only activate each other, but are very hard to kill. I saw that the fan expansion linked above had some of that in it.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Edited to add:</i><br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Deal 2 damage to the first enemy in this location. Move an ally from this location to any other location. deal 2 damage to any ally in that location and 1 damage to that ally</li><li>Deal 1 damage to each enemy at this location</li><li>Deal 1 damage to the first enemy in this location. Activate another [~this] that has not been activated this turn</li><li>Tank: deal 1 damage to first enemy here and move to the front of the rift. For each damage dealt to this Tank, heal 1 damage from a non-Tank ally</li><li>Deal 1 damage to the first enemy in this location for each [~this] here. Only the frontmost [~this] in the location may activate </li></ul></div><div>This game lends itself well to making custom guilds, and it would be easy to play them... if I had the game and played in real life! Playing only on BGA, I will have to be content thinking up fun guild powers and never playing with them. Hopefully the expansion will be implemented soon (though the base game is only in Beta, so it might be a while)</div><div><br /></div><div>Have you thought of your own guilds? Post them in a comment below! </div>Seth Jaffeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12449603052617321357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19884352.post-13577168875374533922022-07-22T21:58:00.003-07:002022-07-22T21:58:56.481-07:00ONE 18-card game design jam, THREE microgames!<h3 style="text-align: left;">18-card game jam</h3><p>In the KBGames Community discord they just did an 18 card game design jam -- which is an exercise to think about designing a game under certain constraints - much like we used to do with the <a href="https://www.bgdf.com/forums/game-design/game-design-showdown">Game Design Showdown</a> at BGDF.com back in the day. The only restraint on this jam was to use 18 cards and nothing else, but it was made clear that this restriction was more like a guideline, and not a hard and fast rule...</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Worker Placement Microgame</h3><p>I've posted recently about the progress I've made on a <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2022/07/micro-worker-placement-game-progress.html">Micro Worker Placement</a> game, inspired by an offhand comment I read on Twitter. I haven't really played that game again since that last update (I'm still keen to see how it plays after whittling it down to 16 cards in the deck), but I know that the game works, and isn't terrible, but I'm not sure whether I can claim it's really very <i>fun</i>, though I enjoy it.</p><p>I figured I might submit that Micro Worker Placement game to the jam... is that cheating? I came up with it before the jam started, but I didn't spend any more time on it than would have been allotted. The current version only uses 17 "real" cards, but it does use 8 more to track things, so it really comes in at 25 cards, which is over the limit by almost 40%. Maybe that's fine, but the point of the jam is to come up with a new idea. I wasn't particularly interested in making another 18 card game, but lo and behold, an idea came to me...</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">PYL Microgame</h3><p>Inspired perhaps by all the <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/328479/living-forest">Living Forest</a> I'd been playing on BGA (that's a good game, by the way, and recently won the <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/Kennerspiel_des_Jahres">Kennespiel des Jahres</a>!), I thought maybe I could make an 18 card Push Your Luck game with that blackjack mechanism like in <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/328479/living-forest">Living Forest</a> or <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/168679/flip-city">Flip City</a>.</p><p>So I did that. Of the 18 cards, 2 are for tracking your gems and points (you need 8 tokens, 4 per player, to track those things on these cards), 1 is a double sided "objective" card, and the remaining 15 make up the deck. There are 5 cards each of red, blue, and gold colored cards, and each card has a gem, and some number of letters on it. Originally each card's gem matched the card color, but then I decided to mix it up a bit, so for example, 3 of the 5 red cards have red gems, but 1 has a blue gem and one has a gold gem.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEieodXJratVWjWeouj80I2j_zvyGM9TjCXRuzg_GiI8ZzDx5WzUdshiJPkvwW-gjBYEp3D_bqCOmkBfDNssaenJL2nUG6wjmaRioNMELTyT7R-3EFGxbXWAi15B98pY_gX6kotRb7NffqXBPMEKOsjqb2XGFZUBoOaYF_BAEFYM_5cPUDsX61A" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="701" data-original-width="1468" height="153" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEieodXJratVWjWeouj80I2j_zvyGM9TjCXRuzg_GiI8ZzDx5WzUdshiJPkvwW-gjBYEp3D_bqCOmkBfDNssaenJL2nUG6wjmaRioNMELTyT7R-3EFGxbXWAi15B98pY_gX6kotRb7NffqXBPMEKOsjqb2XGFZUBoOaYF_BAEFYM_5cPUDsX61A" width="320" /></a></div><br />On your turn, you start flipping cards off the deck until you chose to stop, or until you "bust" by getting 6 or more of the same letter (A, B, or C). You are allowed to pay a gold gem to veto a card as its drawn (set it aside by the deck), then either stop drawing or draw again (up to you). This could be used to keep from busting, or to keep a particular color from scoring (see below).<p></p><p>After you stop, you collect gems: all gems of 1 color if you busted, two colors if you didn't. Then you get the opportunity to use the objective card to pay some gems for a star (stars are victory points in the game, it's a race to get 9 of them): 2 red + 1 gold on one side, 2 blue + 1 gold on the other, after using the card, you flip it over. Finally, you discard the cards and check to see if any colors score. </p><p>The discard pile is kept organized - sorted by card color, and splayed so you can see the information on each card. This information allows you to make informed push-your-luck decisions. After each turn, if there are 4 (or all 5) cards of a color in the discard pile, then that color will score. It's possible more than one color will score at a time!</p><p>When you score a color, the player with the most gems of that color gets a star, and loses some gems of that color. The colors have a rock-paper-scissors relationship for breaking ties - for example, if tied for red gems, then the player with the most blue gems wins the point for red. Originally the rule was that you lose <i>one</i> gem when scoring a color, but once you started to get a big lead in a color, it felt pretty easy to keep it, and losing just 1 gem didn't close the gap very much. I'm torn between upping that to <i>2</i> gems lost, and something even more impactful, like <i>1/2</i> your gems (round up), or even <i>all </i>your gems. For my next test I'll try losing 2 gems and see if that feels like enough. Maybe losing 1 gem is fine after all.</p><p>I have to say, this game has just worked ever since the first playtest. The only tweak I made was to up the bust threshold to 6. I started with 5, but that led to a lot of turns where you only draw 2-3 cards and they weren't very interesting. 6 is much more dynamic!</p><p>Not only does this game <i>work</i> - that is to say it's a fully functional game - but I think it might actually be pretty <i>good</i>. As I've played more and more games I've found there's definitely some subtlety to it - when to stop not just to avoid busting, but to control which colors score, when to hit into a probable bust, when to spend gems to veto a card, and even when and whether to use the objective card.</p><p>I figured this might be a better candidate to submit to the 18 card jam, partly because I came up with it in the week between when the jam was announced and when it actually began (so that's closer, right?), and partly because it's 18 cards instead of 25... however it does require 8 tokens to track gems and stars. Still, that's less cheat-y, isn't it?</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Lane Combat Microgame - Rift Paper Scissors</h3><p>Another game I've been playing a lot of (and enjoying!) on BoardGameArena lately is <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/291859/riftforce">Riftforce</a>. To be honest, I've never been a big fan of lane combat games, I haven't even played very many of them. I liked SolForge I guess, but I don't recall playing any others I really enjoyed much.</p><p>But Riftforce is very cool. You start by drafting a team of 4 guilds, and they encourage different teams by (a) removing 1 team from the draft each game, and (b) dealing you a random guild to start off with - so you can't be sure to get your favorite team. Though truth be told, a lot of the combinations don't feel terribly different from each other, and in any given game I feel like I effectively ignore one of the guilds in my deck, so I'm not sure the games feel <i>all that</i> different to me. I look forward to playing with the expansion some day, which adds a bunch more guilds... and I even had a little fun thinking up custom guilds, something this game lends itself to easily for anyone so inclined. Maybe I'll make a new blog post to share those. But I digress...</p><p>Since I was thinking of 18 card games for this game jam, my mind ran through a few main mechanisms to see if anything jumped out at me as a way to do them in a small deck game. So of course, my mind quickly jumped to the idea of a small deck lane combat game, like a mini-version of Riftforce. Since I didn't have the componentry to track damage on all the cards like in Riftforce, I thought maybe I could use a Rock Paper Scissors relationship to resolve little combats.</p><p>A long time ago, after <a href="https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2010/12/new-horizons-beautiful-new-frozen-brain.html">Brainfreeze became an iPad app</a>, I had some thoughts about a follow up game - specifically for digital implementation - in which you would have cavalry, archers, and footmen cards in a deck, and you would place them in different lanes (probably 3), or else send them to train, which would occupy the card for a few seconds, then level it up. Every so often (maybe every second for example), the computer would "resolve" each lane, comparing the bottommost cards and removing the loser - where a level 2 card would beat a level 1 card, but if both cards are the same level, then there'd be a rock-paper-scissors relationship to determine who wins (in the case of a tie, like two level 1 archers against each other, maybe they're both removed). If you had cards on a lane when it resolved and the opponent did not, then you would get a point. Come to think of it, that decade old idea had some similarities with Riftforce!</p><p>So in my lane combat microgame (affectionately known as Rift Paper Scissors, due to the RPS combat resolution and the Riftforce inspiration), I figured there could be 3 battlefields, and you would have a small hand of cards that are either Rock, Paper, or Scissors. On your turn you would play 2 cards of the same type (rock, rock), play any 1 card and activate it, or discard a card to activate 2 cards of that type on the board. Activating a card meant attacking an opponent's card in the same lane. A 4th option you had on your turn was to resolve 1 lane and refill your hand. When resolving a lane, which was represented by a face don card from the deck, the player with the most cards in it would score it, which would give you some kind of effect, as well as some stars (vp). When there were no longer enough cards to refill the lanes, the game would be over, and the player with the most stars would win.</p><p>This first draft of the game did not work <i>at all</i> - it was far to common that you simply had the right card to dominate any card your opponent played ("you played Scissors there? I'll play Rock there and activate it"). And the effects I chose for winning a lane didn't even make sense - I had put "draw a card," but by definition you'd be filling your hand when you score it, so that wasn't great.</p><p>I made a 2nd attempt, expanding the cards to a sort of 6-way RPS... I gave each card a letter (A-F), and each letter had 1 letter it was really good against (deal 2 damage), one letter it was terrible against (deal 0 damage), and 4 letters it was evenly matched with (deal 1 damage). The 1st damage on a card would turn it sideways, the 2nd damage would remove it from the game. </p><p>When I made the prototype for this, I started from the file that had red borders for rock, blue for paper, and yellow for scissors, so I ended up with 3 copies of each card, one with each colored border. I figured maybe the way to go was again, like Riftforce, to say you could play or activate 2 cards of the same <i>letter, </i>or the same <i>color</i>, or play 1 card and activate it. In general, this felt a little better with respect to game flow - the cards started to build up in play, but there was still something very wrong with the format..</p><p>In discussing this with a friend, Mohan suggested drawing 3 cards and simultaneously playing all 3 of them, 1 to each lane. That sounds potentially promising, so I might try something like that next. Perhaps after 3 rounds of placing the cards in their respective lanes, each lane could resolve by comparing the front-most cards head-to-head over and over (like my old iPad game idea), until only 1 side has cards remaining, and that side wins the lane.</p><p>With only 18 cards, at that point I think you'd have to shuffle everything up and begin again, maybe keep doing that until someone has won X lanes? Most of these ideas would work better with a larger deck, but with a larger deck, I might as well just play Riftforce!</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">ANYWAY... back to the game jam</h3><p>The lane combat idea seemed like the best candidate to submit to the game jam, since I thought of it during the actual timeframe of the jam, and because it conforms to the actual rules of the jam (18 cards, nothing else), BUT I haven't been able to get it working, so I went ahead and submitted the Push-Your-Luck game instead.</p><p>So that's what I've been thinking about the last few weeks!</p>Seth Jaffeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12449603052617321357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19884352.post-85873754859242955072022-07-08T22:08:00.002-07:002022-07-08T22:08:34.659-07:00Micro Worker Placement game progress, and the "Strategy Triangle"<p>I <a href=" https://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2022/05/3-new-ideas-1-new-game-part-3-micro.html">recently posted</a> about a micro worker placement game that had come together pretty quickly from idea to 1st prototype. I mentioned a lot of brainstorms in that post to improve the game. Since then, I have played 8 more times, iterating and making tweaks after each game.</p><p>Since joining the Keith Burgun Games Community Discord, I have not only played a lot of <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/286031/dragon-bridge">Dragon</a> <a href="https://boardgamearena.com/gamepanel?game=dragonbridge">Bridge</a>, but also participated in a lot of great game design-y chats, some of which centered around a concept known as the <a href="http://keithburgun.net/designing-strategy-rushdown-economy-and-defense/">Strategy Triangle</a>. That link is to a long post from Keith's describing the Strategy Triangle as he sees it. <a href="https://youtu.be/pGr4YBBPvLw?t=257">Here's a video</a> of him talking about it which might be a little more succinct (the video is really long, but it should be queued up to his description).</p><p>I like the idea of this triangle, but it seems clear that no 2 people really agree on some of the details. A course grained reading of it, or my interpretation at least, is this:</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li> An extreme "red" strategy spends all of its resources on direct progress</li><li>An extreme "blue" strategy spends some of its resources more efficiently countering or slowing the opponent's direct progress, leaving some resources to invest, allowing for more progress later</li><li>An extreme "green" strategy invests ALL of its resources, allowing for even more future progress</li></ul><p></p><p>Given that, generally speaking... </p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Blue has an advantage over red, as they hold off the red strategy with efficient defense long enough for their investment to come online </li><li>Green has an advantage over blue, as any "efficient defense" is wasted, and green has invested more resources than blue, giving green a resource advantage for buying progress later</li><li>Red has an advantage over green, as unhindered, they could bring the game to an end before green sees a return on its investment</li></ul><div>In discussing this, I drew a crude graph to show advantage over time:</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL5_xttQel20SU6mXiP8aXURC4bQOJ0SSy1eK9VDRwmhS--amUh9WQ5V9cb0mHO1pTsy4P8YIOmXiqpUeulrTItq8GEa9PcbVucGyPyJ2bFnFa4yPiP-MC7MMwesrVdUnMWCNRskyxw-Wqs_tpCltPe93q0l9xktxUttnGQYLh1R_XDsNS-Ms/s521/Advantage%20over%20Time%20graph.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="214" data-original-width="521" height="262" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL5_xttQel20SU6mXiP8aXURC4bQOJ0SSy1eK9VDRwmhS--amUh9WQ5V9cb0mHO1pTsy4P8YIOmXiqpUeulrTItq8GEa9PcbVucGyPyJ2bFnFa4yPiP-MC7MMwesrVdUnMWCNRskyxw-Wqs_tpCltPe93q0l9xktxUttnGQYLh1R_XDsNS-Ms/w640-h262/Advantage%20over%20Time%20graph.png" width="640" /></a></div>In any given matchup, you could look at this graph and see which strategy has an advantage at any given time (which line is higher). But more importantly, the area under the curve would be cumulative advantage, so depending on when the game ends, you could look at the area under the curve for each strategy and see which had more cumulative advantage, that would be the winner. </div><div><br /></div><div>Said another way, if you're playing an aggressive "red" strategy, you'd better end the game quickly, before your opponent's cumulative advantage overtakes yours! By the nature of the colors as descried above, in red vs blue that is probably going to be rare, while in red vs green that is probably going to be common.</div><p></p><p>I decided to try and use this micro worker placement game to sort of express that triangle fairly directly. I called one resource Red gems, one Blue gems, and one Gold gems (instead of green). As I alluded to in the previous post, I added an effect on each resource tracker that you would resolve whenever you collect more of that resource (when you collect some red gems, first resolve your current red ability, then collect the gems). </p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>I tried to make the red effects kind of "rushy:" collect extra red, buy a star, take an additional turn after this one, get an additional star for free, and when you overshoot the top of the track, get 1 star and then reset to 2 red</li><li>I tried to make the blue effects directly hinder red: opponent discards red gems, steal a red gem from the opponent, and when you overshoot the top of the track, get 2 stars and then reset to 0 blue</li><li>Gold, being the "econ" strategy, does not give discrete effects when you collect gold. Instead, having gold means you have some number of Green gems - effectively Gold/2, only instead of doing math, you could just look at your tracker card and see how many green gems it currently shows. Several of the buildings give additional red or blue gems for each green gem you possess. When you overshoot the top of the gold track, you don't get any stars, but you get 3 each of red and blue gems, triggering your current red and blue effects</li></ul><p></p><p>Also as alluded to in the previous post, I did add a countdown tracker (a "dragon"), which gives you an additional star if you score a star using the resource (red or blue) matching the color currently face up on the countdown tracker. The countdown ticks down any time:</p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>You place a worker of matching color</li><li>You place in a building of matching color</li><li>It pays out a bonus star</li><li>The deck gets shuffled (every 7 turns)</li></ol><div>The game started with a deck of 18 cards, but in one update I added two, going to 20. Either way, there were 7 turns before a reshuffle, with each player adding 1 card from the supply to the board, and then using another card from the display as a worker to place into one of the available buildings. In my latest update, I cut some cards and combined some others to bring the deck down to 16 cards, which will mean 5 turns before a reshuffle. I haven't tested that yet, but I suspect it'll be OK.</div><div><br /></div><div>So far it seems like this game is shaping up for something that's just 16 cards (plus 9 more for trackers)!</div><div><br /></div><div>Here are the current cards as of 7/7/22:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjCG7S6UlcnuLuI5_eVo6tjuvH-UthLU2TVrGAWw7cqIKGcDnaLbyqs4TeUWMFUmL5-cln7CFm0O8QxGcxu0UCkHrJsEkzsJ-GO7hkXYY2pHYZng_LFar1PBKy1gN39HXupeaDCfWotI11uezYqehwYWb1TXS30ctagqcYjizwn_vinG2Psb8/s3112/MWP%20v2%20TTS%20-%20FRONT%20v2.3.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="728" data-original-width="3112" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjCG7S6UlcnuLuI5_eVo6tjuvH-UthLU2TVrGAWw7cqIKGcDnaLbyqs4TeUWMFUmL5-cln7CFm0O8QxGcxu0UCkHrJsEkzsJ-GO7hkXYY2pHYZng_LFar1PBKy1gN39HXupeaDCfWotI11uezYqehwYWb1TXS30ctagqcYjizwn_vinG2Psb8/w640-h150/MWP%20v2%20TTS%20-%20FRONT%20v2.3.png" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">(fronts - ignore the crossed out ones)</div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXySvtkuIielU255nl0Gn5F4V8aR1NeZ1nx7mzHRcuF913QTS5ywTQ79DoIB9rjeqI_TN0P5xZR3RhVfcYMup9n15CCKOkd6YMpOXO3NqLIVJAu7-KGOJeUbHLTelC9D_hZzsDu2WuwuvcOqyW5ekKWTFPHrsCFhO8Verb7NWumz3rxAPj18A/s3112/MWP%20v2%20TTS%20-%20BACK%20v2.3.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="728" data-original-width="3112" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXySvtkuIielU255nl0Gn5F4V8aR1NeZ1nx7mzHRcuF913QTS5ywTQ79DoIB9rjeqI_TN0P5xZR3RhVfcYMup9n15CCKOkd6YMpOXO3NqLIVJAu7-KGOJeUbHLTelC9D_hZzsDu2WuwuvcOqyW5ekKWTFPHrsCFhO8Verb7NWumz3rxAPj18A/w640-h150/MWP%20v2%20TTS%20-%20BACK%20v2.3.png" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">(backs)</div><br /><div>These files are set up for Tabletop Simulator more than for print and play, but you're welcome to print them out and give it a try (I'm sorry it's not easier to do so!)</div><div><br /></div><div>At this point, I think the game works pretty much as intended. If you start gaining one color of gem, you have incentive to get that color some more (your action of that color will be improved, and you'd be closer to scoring a star by overshooting, or by the building that rewards you for having 4 or 7 like gems). If I see you gaining gems of a certain color, I can play against that by getting gems of the color that has an advantage against that - if you take red gems early, I can take blue gems. If I take blue gems, you can start taking gold gem, etc.<br /><br />I think I've tuned the effects such that, for the most part, if someone were to bull-headedly go for red gems all game, and their opponent were to go for blue, the blue player would likely win, and similarly, bull-headed, extreme green would beat extreme blue, and extreme red would beat extreme gold. The game could probably use some more tweaking in that respect, but I thin it's on the right track.<br /><br />One thing about this game though is that you can't necessarily go bull-headedly into any color, because while you do have 7 (out of 16 existing) options available to you on your turn, you don't have every option. Some cards aren't out yet, others are occupied, and others still have been turned face down as workers. So you have to have some flexibility as well, and you might have reasons (in the early game, or in general) to go for one strategy over another when you don't have gems yet.</div><div><br /></div><div>I'm pretty happy with this game in general. It's not the deepest game ever, and attempting to keep it under about 18 cards is probably holding it back from being significantly better than it is. That may make it difficult to get published, but I think it does a fair amount with very little components, and as microgames go, I don't think it's half bad! </div><p></p>Seth Jaffeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12449603052617321357noreply@blogger.com1