Deities & Demigods revisited (Game Design Attack #4)

I've been happy with the structure and most of the rules for Deities and Demigods, but there have been some issues with it. By and large, the biggest issues seem to be that the game takes too long, or takes too long to get interesting. This may be largely because the board is too big for players to really interact until the very end of the game. I've wanted to shrink the board to address that, but I wasn't sure how to do so while still maintaining enough cities and quest locations. Here are some changes I made to the prototype after a playtest at Game Design Attack #4:

* Use only 4 boards (at all player counts).
* Put 2 cities and 1 quest on each city board (2 quests and 1 city on the back).
* Rather than interacting with cities and quests from adjacent nodes, have players travel into cities or onto quest locations.
* At the suggestion that a victory point for level 1 Hephaestus might be too much, I might try changing that to 1 gold (or, 1 gold per city controlled to help incentivize controlling cities in the early and mid game.)
* I'm contemplating changing Hera's income to "1 gold + 1 gold per city controlled" to help incentivize controlling cities in the early and mid game.
* I've had combat in the game from the outset because I figured it went with the theme, and I'd hoped it wouldn't be much different than area majority such as El Grande. However, I'm not a player who really likes direct confrontation in games, and I think this is not the type of game that would really go along with that kind of interaction. So I will try removing combat altogether, or at least make it expensive and rare like I did in Escalation.
* I'm considering removing the deck of building cards, and instead allowing building tokens to count toward control of a city... it would be easy and intuitive to count control that way, just count up all of your wooden pieces in the hex. I'm not sure if I like that idea or not though, and I suppose if I didn't want buildings to count toward control, they could be punchboard tokens rather than wooden discs in the final game. It would reduce components and clutter to just cut the building deck though.
* If I cut the building deck, I'd have to adjust the scoring icons... instead of 4 each of 6 icons, I'd probably do 3 each of 4 icons. I could also consolidate the 12 best card effects I currently have between artifacts and buildings.
* I keep going back and forth on the turn order track and what happens if you gain initiative and land on another player's marker. Currently you always go on the bottom of the stack, no matter which direction you were moving your counter. I might change that to top of stack if advancing and bottom of stack when losing initiative and see how that goes. I think I was trying to be consistent, and I liked always going to the bottom of the stack vs always going to the top, but maybe that consistency isn't necessary.
* I don't know if this will be necessary, but if I decide I need a fail-safe way to hard cap the game at 6 cycles, I could try this... take all the Hera cards out of the deck, and instead have a supply of 6 Hera cards. At the end of each cycle, add a Hera to the deck. When that stack of 6 runs out, that's the last cycle (6 total). The game end may trigger before that, but it would keep the max length to 6 cycles. This would make Hera come up less often in the first 2 cycles, and more often in cycles 4-6, which might actually be good to facilitate more opportunities to earn the favor of the god cards.
* With a smaller board it's possible that 4 cycles would no longer be too few, so I could even change the above idea to 5 Hera cards instead of 6 (for a maximum of 5 cycles).

I'll probably post again when I get a chance to try all this stuff. My prototype is all updated and ready to go!

Rock & Roll revisited (Game Design Attack #4)

I played Rock & Roll at Game Design Attack #4 this weekend, and Tim had a really neat idea of a slightly different sort of structure, making it a bit more like a standard Yahtzee-style press your luck game. I thought of a related way to make sure there was some interaction so the game didn't feel solitary, and after a prototype update I was able to try the new version a couple of times and I think it might be a step in the right direction. The new version is highly thematic as well -- now there are song cards, so instead of scoring individual crowd tokens for as many points as possible, you play a song in order to please as many crowd members as possible. The songs have specific die results in a specific order.

Three of these songs are dealt out in a supply, and you start your turn by rolling 6 dice bearing symbols for Vocals, Drums, Guitar, Bass, Solo, and Gaffe. Gaffes are mistakes, and you are forced to lock those in when they come up. After rolling, you must lock in at least 1 symbol required for the song, and those symbols must be done in order from left to right as you play through the song. At this point if you fail to lock in a symbol required by the song, you must end your turn, and you get a small scoring penalty. However, as long as you did lock in a symbol, you can choose to stop and score, or roll any number of the unlocked dice trying to get the next required symbol.

Of course, you can also use cards to help you. You will start with just 1 card, but you can get more: at the end of your turn, you'll draw a new card for every 2 Gaffes you had. Also, if you are able to complete the entire song, you'll collect a completion bonus, which may be extra points, or perhaps a card.

As long as you don't fail, then you score some points based on the number of dice you were able to lock in, and you take the song and place it in front of you. Any player may either choose to play a new song from the center, or attempt to outperform you on your song. In order to do so, they must lock in more dice than you were able to, and if you were able to complete the song then they must also lock in 1 additional Solo -- if they are to outperform you then they must perform the song with more gusto and flair than you did! At the beginning of your next turn, if nobody has outperformed you on your song, then you place it into your "set list" and save it for potential end game bonus scoring.

A suggestion was made to add something -- I'd call them Record Labels perhaps -- which could act like the nobles in Splendor: an in-game scoring opportunity based on the genres of songs in your set list.

When the supply of crowd tokens (VPs) is exhausted and all players have had an equal number of turns, the game ends and there will be some set collection scoring based on genres of songs in your set list.

I'm excited about this new version, and I hope to play it with a few more groups to see how it goes over.

Game Design Attack #4 -- brief recap

Over the last few years, I've hosted a game design retreat here in Tucson which I call Game Design Attack:

This year Tim Fowers and Ryan Lauket came down from Utah, and Rob came in from California again. Gil Hova and J.R. Honeycutt had to cancel, but maybe next year they'll be able to join us. Dan Keltner and David Short are locals and they stopped in for a bit as well.

The guys showed up Thursday evening, and we started out the design talk by taking turns basically describing one of the games we'd brought to work on, and discussing it. Right out of the gate there was some great discussion -- even before the games were on the table!

Over the course of the weekend, each of us got at least one game to the table

Ryan brought two upcoming Red Raven titles (or potential titles, I'm not actually sure what the full story is on them).

The first one which I saw a few weeks ago at SaltCon, a euro style game with storytelling elements that's a follow up to Above and Below. I liked it a lot, though the scoring tended to snowball a bit. After Friday night's play, Ryan made a significant change and it then on Saturday we tried it again and it was much better. I think with a few more tweaks that game will be ready for prime time!

The second game Ryan brought was a co-design with Alf Seegert called Haven. We had some suggestions about that one, and tried implementing some of them... I think that one needs a bit more work, but could become a nice light 2p game.

Rob had come up with an idea for a game, and spent some of this weekend putting together a prototype and we gave it a try. The game was about crafting weapons for knights to use in a tournament, and it involved drafting sets of cards (some known and some unknown), refining your set, and finally resolving fights with a knight and your set of cards.

Originally there was an auction for the lots of cards, as well as a low-bid auction for the knights, and much of the action was fiddly and awkward -- not surprising for a first draft! But we made some adjustments on the fly which made things better. After the game we discussed a few potential improvements such as removing gold and auctions, and instead just drafting piles of cards, and later we played again with some modifications and the whole thing worked much better.

This was definitely a game where the designer's vision did not match up with how I would have done it, so when I got home I put together a similar prototype that I might try my version of Rob's game.

Tim's latest project is Fugitive, a 2 player deduction game where one player is a fugitive on the run, and the other is a U.S. Marshall trying to catch him. I played the game at SaltCon a few weeks ago, and he's made some improvements since then. At SaltCon it seemed like the Marshall couldn't won, but now it seemed like they coudn't lose... so Tim made another tweak to try and get the balance right, and the next few games were won by some mix of fugitive and marshall - so I think it's almost there.

Tim also has a new version of Now Boarding, the game he and I came up with, prototyped, tested, and updated at Game Design Attack #1 back in 2013. The new version is quite different than the original, but has some key aspects in common of course. It's still a real time cooperative game, and the new version addresses feedback from players of the previous version that it didn't feel cooperative enough.

Tim had a 3rd game with him, one that I think he's got on his back burner. Flowchart Fighter is a 2 player fighting game, like a Street Fighter card game so to speak.

David wasn't there very long, but he was able to get his micro deckbuilder, Another Man's Treasure, to the table. It has some interesting ideas in it, but David seems to be struggling to get it to work the way he wants it to.

Dan had a new version of his puzzle game, and a new single deck card game inspired by my comments about the book track in Mombasa. I didn't play the former, but I liked the latter quite a bit. We ran out of cards, so apparently more are needed, and I thought maybe another suite of resource types might help as well, but it certainly seems like a good start.

I was able to get 2 different games to the table this weekend. Rock & Roll is a light dice rolling / resource management type of game which was intended to be a sort of follow up to Dungeon Roll -- not related to that game, but to appeal to the same type of player perhaps. I've gone through a few iterations on that game, and got it to a point where it technically worked, but I had trouble knowing whether it was good enough or fun enough for the target audience since I'm not really in the target audience.

Tim had a really neat idea of a slightly different sort of structure, making it a bit more like a standard Yahtzee-style press your luck game. I thought of a related way to make sure there was some interaction so the game didn't feel solitary, and after a prototype update I was able to try the new version a couple of times and I think it might be a step in the right direction. The new version is highly thematic as well -- now there are song cards, so instead of scoring individual crowd tokens for as many points as possible, you play a song in order to please as many crowd members as possible. I'll go into more detail about this new version in a separate post.

Finally, I also got Deities& Demigods to the table. This game has worked in a general sense so far, but I've had problems with a lack of interaction, some hesitation about combat rules, and game length. I haven't thought about this game much since last November, but after re-familiarizing myself with it and playing a game, I got to formalize the issues and get some feedback on how to address them. I had been thinking that the board needed to be smaller, but I didn't know how to reduce the size while still having enough cities and quest locations. I got some good suggestions to address those problems which I'll elaborate on in a separate post. I stayed up until 3am updating my prototype, but sadly was unable to get it back to the table this weekend, so I'm antsy to get another playtest in soon!

All in all I think it was a highly successful and very fun weekend!

Game Design Attack #3 - debrief/report

Last weekend, 4 designers from California and 1 local joined me for Game Design Attack #3, another great weekend of design talk and playtesting. We got a lot done, and everyone got games to the table and seemed to have a really good time.

As these games are unpublished, I won't be able to say too much about them, but I'd like to sum up what went down at the event...

Tim Fowers got in a couple of plays of his upcoming cooperative game, which will be on Kickstarter before too long. It's very thematic, and I think people who like those Solitaire By Committee game will dig this one. We also brainstormed some card abilities and effects for Tim's hit deckbuilder, Paperback.

Ta-Te Wu had a few different quick games: a party style game, a team deduction game, and one I missed out on. He also had a larger 2p game about a sub vs a destroyer which seemed like a pretty cool idea, though it's not so far along yet.

Trey Aslup had his High School Horror Movie game again, which was a bit abstract, but seemed to work well. He also had a Resistance-style game which he's working on with Matthew O'Malley, who joined us last year fro GDA#2. That one didn't work very well, but Ta-Te made a suggestion which we tried out, and it worked a whole lot better!

Trey also described a quick, Love Letter type of game idea he had, and we all thought it sounded like it would work, so over the course of the weekend, he made some proof-of-concept cards and we gave it a try. It revealed some aspects that needed to be addressed, and I think Trey got some ideas to work with.

The other Californian, Rob, is more a developer, and is helping Tim with some of his projects - he didn't have any games of his own.

David Short joined us Thursday night and half of Friday. He was able to get a couple of his quick/micro games to the table, but neither of the larger games he had with him.

I managed to get 3 games to the table: Crusaders, Pony Express, and Dungeon of Fortune. Crusaders and Dungeon of Fortune might be too far along to get a lot of useful feedback from a designer meetup - many of the comments amount to "make another, different game." But I did get to try my new Build Bonus tiles for Crusaders, and I got some feedback on he game end trigger... the short version is that the Bonus tiles seem to be doing their job, the current/original game end trigger is probably fine, and I should increase the Level 4 building score. Most players wanted the Level 4 buildings to have abilities instead of scoring... I'll have to think about that. Tim had a neat idea to have the Farms confer additional cubes for your rondel, which is a cool idea thematically, but I was planning on that for an expansion.

I did get some good feedback on Pony Express though, that game is in a much earlier state, perfect for a design meetup.

I had hoped to get Odysseus: Winds of Fate to the table, or some discussion of Draft Fighter, a 2-player deck-learning fighting game I'm working on with Brad Talton. But alas, there's only so much time in the day! Maybe next time.

Pony Express - full playtest #6 (Game Design Attack #3)

I got Pony Express to the table Friday night at Game Design Attack #3. I watched and ran the game, as 5 designers sat down to give it a try. Unfortunately, in several ways this might have been the worst session of the game to date :(

After the Gamesmiths 5p game, I made a new board... I intentionally went overboard with routes, making a 3x4 grid of towns connected horizontally, vertically, and diagonally with routes. The base route costs for the horizontal and vertical routes is 2, and for the diagonal routes is 3, and each route has space for 1 Hazard (the diagonals actually share a hazard where they cross). I had been happy with the inflated route costs last time, so I figured they'd be OK here as well.

One player (Trey) keyed right in to the crux of the game, and he went right for the "bid 3" strategy, claiming parcels right away for $3, choosing towns along a single route to California. Other players weren't catching on as quickly, and some (especially David) were confused why Trey would make such plays, citing that he's only getting 3 points while giving his opponent 7.

I read a cool article online one time, many years ago, which talked about deal making in a multiplayer game. Unfortunately I cannot find the article, and I can't recall the author. As an example, the article used a hypothetical gem trading game, where each player had a supply of their own colored gems, and could trade them to opponents. Scoring was 1vp for each gem of an opponent you have (your own gems were worth nothing). In that example game, the article suggested that a player could trade away 2 of his own gems for 1 of an opponent's gems. Looking at a trade like that you might think it's a bad deal, you only get 1 vp while your opponent gets 2! However, the rest of the players get nothing. Also, suppose you made that same deal with each other opponent as well... in a 4 player game, each opponent would get 2 points, while you would score 3!

I think that philosophy applies here to an extent - you can accept only $3 from each opponent, giving them $7, and as long as you do it 3 times then you're making out ahead -- as far as the auction is concerned.

However, in Pony Express there's another factor... the cost of delivering. The idea is that the cost of delivering parcels is high enough that you can't really afford to just take everything for $3.

In this play, Trey was able to do very well with his "claim for $3" strategy in the first round. So well in fact that the other players decided to adopt the same strategy in later rounds. It got to the point that people were claiming the parcels before the auctioneer even started counting. Almost nothing went for more than $3. This is obviously a problem, as the entire auction broke down.

Oddly, this is the first time that's happened. In thinking about what contributed to it, I believe it's the following:
* 5 players is more susceptible to this dynamic than fewer players, because you can take more deliveries along the same route, thereby making more money even if taking things for $3.
* The new board layout allowed for just about ANY route to be viable, and at about the same cost. I suspect this is the major culprit.
* Too easy to get several deliveries on the same route, especially when you can get 2 parcels bound for the same town.

Players in this game all seemed to want a different auction mechanism, but I would like to see if I can bring the count-up auction back to a place where it works. I think I might be able to do that with the following ideas:
* I can increase the costs for some of the routes, making some of them more expensive -- maybe so expensive they're effectively not there anymore. I might also make a couple more "terrain" type Hazards to be put out in the first round - "Mountains" that cost 5 to cross for example.
* I can cut the deck down to just 1 parcel for each town (instead of 2), that way it's not possible to get 2 deliveries to the same town. The only reason I didn't do this before is that when there were 10 towns, there would not be enough deliveries to go around. Now that I've gone up to 12 towns, that's technically enough deliveries for 4 players, though not for 5 players. However, I have 2 possible solutions for that...
 -- I can add "Express Deliveries," which reward you for getting to the Post Office early. For example, "Collect $10 if you arrive at the Post Office first," or "Collect $8 if you are the 1st or 2nd rider to arrive at the Post Office."
 -- With the back-and-forth format of the board, players are already required to get to the opposite Post Office, so dealing out a parcel at random is less necessary. So maybe I only need 2 Parcels per player (plus 1) for each auction. On the down side, if I want to keep the Random Delivery item tile, I will still need a few more than 1 parcel per town will give me.

For the next playtest I plan to make the adjustments above for the next playtest, and as Orccon is coming up in 2 weeks, I had better hurry up and do that!

Game Deign Attack #3: This weekend (1/29 - 2/1)

This weekend will mark the third installment of Game Design Attack -- a 3 day design meetup where 6-10 designers sequester themselves in a house and work on design problems and prototypes for a weekend.

Thursday afternoon, 4 designers from California will drive in and stay through Sunday afternoon to meet up with myself and a few local designers. I'm sure everyone will have something to bring to the table.

In previous installments of the event I was able to get in full playtests of Alter Ego, discussion of game ideas such as Scourge of the High Seas, and even design, protoype, and play a full game with Tim Fowers.

This year I've got my to latest projects: Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done and The Pony Express. I have some specific feedback I'm looking for in each of those...

Crusaders: Game end triggers and dynamics, and incentives to go to one hex over another, or to build one building over another in your current hex.

Pony Express: Number of towns/routes, and whether and how those routes can or should change throughout the delivery phase.

I've also got a not-ready partial prototype of a 2 player deck-learning fighting game (code name Draft Fighter) that I am theoretically designing with Brad Talton of Level 99 Games. I hope to get in some discussion of that, although really I just need to sit down and pound out some cards and give it a try.

And who knows, maybe I'll revive Alter Ego again!

Oh, and I've got a "new and improved" version (and prototype) of Odysseus: Winds of Fate that has been just sitting there waiting to be played ever since I updated it in December. Maybe I can get that to the table.

Looking forward to this weekend!

The League Of Gamemakers

I know some people in California who have banded together to form a superhero team... well, it's like a team of superheroes, if you remove the heroics and replace it with thoughts of game design...

The League of Gamemakers is made up of a number of aspiring and professional game designers -- some well known in the industry, and some up-and-coming.  They post regularly in their blog, covering all kinds of topics including design, mechanics, gaming, technical processes, publishing, Kickstarter, features and general musings.

I was recently invited to join their merry band, and have accepted the invitation... already 2 of my posts have gone live on their website:
 
“You’re Playing Wrong!” – Good play experience and the designer’s responsibility
My first article for the League was about the designer's responsibility to make sure a player cannot screw up so badly that they're not just losing, but effectively disallowed to continue playing the game. In the comments it seemed like some people thought I was advocating some kind of strategic hand-holding, or catch-up mechanisms to ensure all players maintained a chance to win the game... but that's not what I meant at all. Bad play should absolutely lead to a loss. However, I maintain that it's the designer's job to make sure players are able to enjoy the game, even if they lose.

Balancing Game Elements

My second post is actually just a re-posting of my Balancing Game Elements post from a year ago. That post has been referenced a few times recently, so I thought I'd re-publish it in that forum.

I've got one more post written, sort of a follow up to that first one, looking at ways to go about ensuring a losing player can still enjoy a game. I'm not sure when that will be published, but it probably won't be too long.

I've got a few other posts in mind, and a few from this blog I'll probably re-up over there. So if you like reading my ramblings, feel free to check out the League and follow me over there.

Never fear, I'll still be posting here about my own game designs (such as Crusaders and Pony Express), and things like my Game Design Attack -- the third installment of which happens to be coming up this weekend!

See you around!

Alter Ego: Game Design Retreat playtest (3/8/14)

I got Alter Ego to the table during my Game Design Retreat last weekend, for the first time in a year and a half (!)... and with a few caveats, it went VERY WELL!

Caveats:

* The game took a very long time. I was not surprised to have a pacing problem, but I think it can be overcome - At this point I'm not as worried about the amount of time it takes as I am about whether or not the game works!

* I want to re-do the Henchmen deck. I knew this would be true.

* I probably need to reduce the number of tokens it takes to trigger an Arch Villain. The players were too strong by the time the Arch Villain arrived, and the ending was a bit anticlimactic.

Good stuff:

* The new version of Equipment seemed to work much better than the old version! I used some cards that you buy directly into play (they do not count as being in your display), and have activation costs. That way in order to make use of them, you have to constantly play Job cards to get $s to spend. I want to make some that are also good to buy if you don't concentrate on money, they'll have some static effect you don't need to pay for each turn. Also, I'd like some Equipment that goes into your deck as well and does stuff, so I'll make some of that again, but with an eye toward the right type of effects (and maybe I'll call them Events instead of Equipment).

* The Teamwork tokens really seem to make the cooperative feel in the game. The fact that players can use each other's cards by trading Teamwork tokens back and forth had everyone talking on everyone's turn about what card they should add to their deck, which Henchman they should go after, etc. It sounded a lot like other "real" cooperative games sound during play.

* The player boards and turn sequence (skipping phases when no cards are played) also worked well.

* The players really seemed to like the game! They appeared to be having fun while playing, they claimed to really enjoy it, and they were even sort of role playing up their roles. For example the guy who concentrated on money and equipment really felt like Batman, using all his wonderful toys to fight crime, and throwing money at problems.

* The limit of 5 Civilians of each type seemed like it worked alright. That could obviously change with other tuning to get the pacing right, but in the early game the players did say they felt like they were on the ropes with respect to the Civ tokens.

Changes and updates I'm making for the next playtest (hopefully Friday):

* I added and tweaked Equipment cards (and events) based on the playtest commentary and seeing it in action.

* I had forgotten that the boost icons were intended to be PER CARD PLAYED, not per phase... so a $ icon is supposed to give you 1 additional $ per Job card played, not just once no matter how many Job cards you play. That's a pretty big difference, especially once you get a few of them into play. The idea though is that I want every Job card not played to feel like a big deal. I don't want players to build up icons and think "ok, well I better play 1 Job card, but the rest aren't a big deal" - I want EACH job card to be worth a lot, so it's painful to play Hero cards instead. I have to be a little careful not to make the Equipment so good that you can ignore training and Hero cards altogether and just go all JOB all the time.

* Similarly, I think the Hero boost icons are supposed to boost each card OF THAT TYPE that you play. So if you have a Speed boost icon, it'll trigger when you have a Speed card in your display, but not when you have only a Will card. However, it'll trigger twice if you have 2 Speed cards in your display! This means getting a Hero boost icon trophy makes it much easier for you to defeat things that have THAT symbol, but not things that require diverse symbols. For example the 5-cost Henchmen that cost 3 of one icon and 2 of another.

* I re-did the Henchmen deck... I added some easy-to-beat Henchmen that take 2 of the same colored hostage, to make the deck a little more scary. Before I had henchmen that either attracted the attention of Villains, or else gave the players some benefit. I changed that to make most Henchman do both. I especially like that for the early game (cheaper) Henchmen, because that way going after boost icons will also usher in the Arch Villain, and players will have to be careful. I might have overdone it though, I want to make sure players have the ability to rescue hostage without accidentally summoning the wrong Arch Villain.

* I also added Teamwork icons to the Henchmen as well as Display +1 icons.

* For reference, Calling the Cops on a Henchman saves 1 Civ, and if that's the last Civ, the henchman is removed from play, and does NOT trigger the affiliated Arch Villain.

* I haven't done it yet, but I intend to revamp the Arch Villains, adding a status effect when they come into play. For example, maybe 1 version of the Mastermind has created distractions to occupy they police, so once they're in play you can no longer Call the Cops.

* It was suggested as well that one of the Arch Villain types require a broader range of icons to defeat. Where the other types encourage you to specialize in an icon or two, currently none require a more balanced assortment of icons. That was sort of on purpose, so players could reasonably build their deck toward defeating the Villain... but maybe a Villain requiring all the symbols would be interesting.

* I'm going to update the player boards as well, just to make sure everything is up to date. I'm considering reducing the card draw of Family cards to 1 per card, +1 (or 2) automatic during the phase. I.e. as long as there's a Family phase, you draw N+1 (or maybe N+2) cards, where N is the number of Family cards in your display. This way the Card draw boost icons might feel a little more strong and useful. Currently you draw 2N cards, which seems like a lot.

* The new mechanism for Equipment has 3 face up from a shuffled deck, and as a standard option players can spend 1$ to cycle 1 of the cards, or 2$ to cycle all three. This way a player who happened to have 1 Job card could have SOMETHING to do with that money. I'll add these actions to the player board.

* I think I might reduce the display size to 4. I think that will emphasize the main agonizing decision in the game - which cards do I play. I'll keep the hand size the same, so if you play no Family cards, you choose 3 of your 4 cards to play (plus add 1 from the supply). With the addition of Display +1 icons on the Henchmen I think that'll work out well (people can earn a bigger display).

I'm excited to be working on this game again, and even more excited that the prospect looks promising!

Reviving old games... Alter Ego and Scourge of the High Seas

In the last few weeks I've brought 2 old game ideas back to the forefront of my mind... partly because I really like the ideas and have always wanted to work on them, and partly because Michael would like to see more Seth Jaffee designed games in the marketplace. Many people don't realize that I'm associated with some of the big box games from TMG: Ground Floor, Kings of Air and Steam, and Belfort for example, even though I do have a developer credit on those games. Developer credits in the rulebook and on the back of the box are not as prominent as Designer credits, and on database websites such as BGG there's not a field for developer (though I think there should be). So I've finally gotten around to reviving 2 of my designs that have been sitting around for a few years: Alter Ego and Scourge of the High Seas.

Both of these games are card games with deck building aspects, and both have the opportunity for excellent art... both seem very thematic and fun to me, so i think they could both be well received in the marketplace. In case you're new to this blog, or have simply forgotten since it's been so long, here's a short description of each of these games.

Alter Ego

A cooperative deck building game of vigilante heroism

You won't see Crime City on any map, but that's how people have come to know your hometown. Sadists, Anarchists, and the Mafia each carving out portions of the city they call their own. Hundreds of innocent bystanders caught up every day in their turf wars, or held under their oppressive thumbs. Precious few have the time, the money, the guts, or the wherewithal to do anything about it. You're one of those few... Of course it means you'll have to give up that happy home life, or that cushy job. The paper paints vigilantism in a negative light - you'd be viewed by the community as a monster. But your city bleeds... the city bleeds and it calls your name. Will you answer?

You're a vigilante hero, one of the few in Crime City who have come together to put an end to the reign of terror the city's been trapped under. Banding together, you'll fight through a swath of henchmen in order to find and defeat an Arch Villain. But as you get stronger as a hero, you'll have to neglect some parts of your Alter Ego life - your family, your job, and your community.

In Alter Ego you play Job, Family, Community, and Hero cards into a display. You can only play so many cards each turn, and as the game goes on you'll need to play more and more Hero cards to defeat henchmen... meaning you'll have to neglect some aspect of your Alter Ego life.

Henchmen come into the game each turn and take civilians hostage. Fight the Henchmen to free the civilians, and defeat them to gain benefits... defeating underlings will eventually pique the interest of the whoever they're working for, bringing an Arch Villain into play! Defeat the Arch Villain to save the city and win the game!

In "expert" or "competitive" mode, each player will also have a Nemesis which they must defeat as well to win the game.

I'm pretty sure I know how the general rules of the game will go, and I have a prototype from before. I'm struggling with how the Equipment cards should work, but I have a new idea for that which I think will be good - all (or most) equipment stays in play, not your deck, and has an activation cost to use. Some can be used once per turn, some more often than that.

I just had a thought about a different way to do a showdown between each player and their Nemesis... maybe once the Arch Villain is defeated, players simply sort out their decks, and if your deck meets certain criteria (enough of each type of indicated card in it), then you are deemed strong enough to defeat your Nemesis. That way you don't need to play out some sort of battle turn by turn (though that might be fun). Defeating your nemesis could simply be worth some bonus points, and defeating henchmen could ls be worth points, and the winner could simply be the Hero with the most points.

Scourge of the High Seas

Yo ho, yo ho, a pirates life for me...

Captain of a ship in the Golden Age of Piracy! Visit Tortuga to recruit crew, buy equipment, and upgrade your vessel in order to engage in trade, treasure hunting, and plunder on the High Seas. Stash your booty away at your island hideout to keep it safe and off of your ship. He who buries the most treasure will be remembered forever as the Scourge of the High Seas!

This one is intended to be like Ascension, but with 2 Center Rows. I have a pretty good idea how I want this game to work as well, but have faltered on creating cards for it. I have a handful of card ideas from a year or two ago, and I just put together a spreadsheet to try and tabulate a bunch more card ideas. I have made some progress, but there's a lot of work to be done balancing and creating all the different types of cards in the game!

On your turn you first visit Tortuga and spend Treasure to get Crew, Equipment, and Ship Parts. You can also condense resources (turn 3 copper into 1 gold, to put it into Dominion terms).

Then you hit the High Seas and engage Ships, Trade Ports, and Buried Treasure cards ("buying" these cards with Plunder, Goods, and Maps which you've accumulated from other cards).

Finally, you visit your Island Hideout, where you man Bury cards to get them out of your deck. Each time you do that, you must take a Hideout card into your deck which is useless, so you'll want to be a little careful about when you choose to bury cards.

At the end of the game (when should this be???) the player with the most Treasure buried in their hideout will be the winner.

I've never been good with game end triggers. This game could end when someone has buried a certain number of Treasure (like Ascension), or it could end when a limited pool of Hideout cards are taken... I can't think of another way that makes a lot of sense.

Game Design Retreat

I'm hosting a Game Design Retreat this week (tomorrow through Sunday), and I hope to get both of these games "to the table" - to discuss with other designers even if not to play. I guess we'll see how that goes. I do not think I'll have a playable copy of Scourge, but hopefully I can get at least a partial test of Alter Ego in and see if I'm headed in the right direction with that one!

Game Design Retreat

This weekend I did something new and cool. It's something that's crossed my mind before, and in some ways it's similar to Protospiel - a design convention I've gone to for the last 3 years, only a bit more focused perhaps. Here's what happened...

I met Tim Fowers, designer of Wok Star and the recently-kickstarted Paperback, at OrcCon last February. We got to talking, and he had been wanting to do what he referred to as a Game Jam or Game Design Charrette, something I guess they do in the video game world where a handful of designers get together and discuss design, work on specific problems, playtest games, or whatever. I thought it sounded like a lot of fun, and I told Tim I'd love to join him - and if he wanted to do it here in Tucson, I'd even host it. This seemed like a good plan, as it would save hotel money.

So that's what ended up happening. Last Thursday Tim, James, and Brent flew in, and we ventured out to a 4-bedroom house on the outskirts of town. After some introductions, we got right to talking about game ideas and design stuff. Tim mentioned some thoughts he'd had about making a sort of board game version of his online game Now Boarding. It reminded me about all the thoughts I've had while waiting in airports... So I shared those thoughts, and we talked up the idea and how it could work - I felt like I wanted to prototype the game and try it right then and there!

Friday morning we did just that. We cut some index cards into 1.25" squares and put some data on them to make Passenger tiles, we made Hubs and Cities for each of 4 players, and we brainstormed a list of upgrades you could buy... and then we gave it a try. We went through a series of iterations very quickly as we came to see how the game felt - free form, turn based, with and without time pressure... It was great! It was a mix of analysis on one hand, and trial and error on the other. It quickly coalesced into a game experience that worked and was fun! over the course of about 5 hours we had created a working, fun, cooperative game from scratch.

Later that night, David Short was able to join us, and we showed him the game, and it held up. That is to say that it still worked, though we all had thoughts on how to improve it. Saturday we took the game to SAGA's Ides of Gaming event and played a couple of games with players there. With the exception of 1 player, everyone was able to play well and succeed. Since then we have refined the game a little bit further, and I look forward to getting home and making a nicer prototype to continue testing.

In addition to creating Now Boarding (tagline: "Now Boarding - now boardgame"?), Brent got an asteroid mining game idea together and we tried that as well. It was a very early (maybe first) draft of the game, and we all had lots of ideas about changes to make before moving forward. We implemented some of them and tried again, and it was definitely a step in the right direction.

Over the course of the weekend Tim got some valuable feedback on Paperback and Wok Star, both of which he's finalizing now that they have funded on Kickstarter. I also got several prototypes/submissions to the table, such as Shadow Puppets by Scott Almes, and Captains of Industry by Michael Keller. I also taught the guys Eminent Domain, which they'd never played - something I wanted to do so that I could discuss my thoughts on the upcoming Political expansion.

James had an idea for a game based on Dominion, but rather than drawing cards and playing them to add more cards to your deck, you move a pawn around a board and activate the spaces you step on. So it was kind of like you took your Dominion deck and laid the cards out in a grid, "drawing" them in the order that you want. That was the basis of the idea, but as he, Brent, and I discussed it the game  quickly diverged from just a modeling of Dominion to something fairly unique, with a shared geography which seems like it could lend a fair amount of interaction to the game. He got some great ideas to carry that game forward as well.

David Short and Den Keltner came by again last night and got a test of their current version of Bomb Squad - specifically the Training Missions - and I think they got some great feedback on how the Training Missions ought to be set up.

All in all I think it was a very productive weekend. I look forward to doing it again sometime, hopefully soon!