At an impasse -- a peek at The List and where some of my designs are at the moment

I'm at a bit of an impasse when it comes to my game designs right now... I feel like I can't make meaningful progress on any of my current designs, and with playtest sessions being so few and far between (not to mention more of a hassle on Tabletop Simulator), I feel a reluctance to start anything new. Maybe if I take a look at my active designs and their current status, it'll help me figure out what to do next. Here are some excerpts from The List:

Finished But Unpublished Games:
- Eminent Domain Origins [Ready to print]

- Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory (dice game) [Art on pause]

These EmDo universe games may yet see the light of day, but due to some issues (that it would probably be inappropriate for me to talk about), they are on hold at the moment. Too bad, because I was really excited about the prospect of releasing the Terra Prime revamp on TMG's 10th anniversary, and the dice game has been done for a pretty long time now.

- Crusaders: Crimson Knight (expansion) [Ready to print - fix faction powers!]
- Crusaders: Amber Knight (expansion) [Ready to print]

These Crusaders 5th and 6th player expansions have been ready to go for months, but the 1st expansion (Divine Influence) has just been sitting in China, waiting to be shipped to the US and released. Crusaders continues to be talked about (thank goodness), and I hope it remains in the zeitgeist at least until Divine Influence drops, so that doesn't end up being completely wasted effort. If that works out, then it could revitalize the game, and create some demand for these 5th/6th player expansions as well as a reprint (there's already been demand for a reprint of Deluxified Crusaders).

In the meantime, I looked at the files for some reason, and noticed that we were duplicating a couple of the new factions (because Crimson and Amber Knight expansions were supposed to be identical except for player color). That didn't make sense to me, so I developed 2 more faction powers, and we just need to swap those in before going to print.

- Olympus on the Serengeti  (FKA Deities and Demigods) [Art on pause]

I was excited to have a big name artist work on this one, but due to some of the issues mentioned above, Olympus on the Serengeti is on pause now too. Also, I'm becoming skeptical of the odd theme choice, and I wonder if just leaving it "normal" Greek mythology would be better.

- Exhibit (BGG) [Unlikely to be published due to conflict] [Abandoned]
- Dice Works (BGG) [Abandoned]
- Wizard's Tower (BGG) [Abandoned]
- Isle of Trains: All Aboard (expansion) [Abandoned]
- Suburban Sprawl [Abandoned]
- Watch It Played [Abandoned]
- Now Boarding [Abandoned]

These are all basically abandoned. I did make a TTS mod for Exhibit, and played it once with my testers a few weeks ago (and again yesterday). I think it holds up, and I'm tempted to try pitching it around. It's been several years, and the person instigating that ambiguous conflict I mentioned has disappeared as far as I can tell, so that might not really even be an issue anymore (I'm skeptical that it was ever REALLY an issue, TBH).

I also made a TTS mod for Dice Works as well, and finally gave it a partial playtest yesterday. I was surprised how well it actually worked on TTS (like, physically), so maybe this one could be tested or pitched that way now. Comments from the players led to the idea of loosening up the specificity of the board spaces (like, "[ ] < 3" as opposed to "[1]", or "[ ] < [ ] < [ ]" as opposed to "[ ] = [ ] = [ ]"). The players were also concerned about the possibility of an all-out scrap strategy being sort of dominant. I don't think that's the case, but it might ruin the other player's fun, which would be a problem all its own.

Maybe for something to do I could make a TTS mod for Wizard's Tower - that might be fun to revisit.

Current Active Designs:
- Alter Ego (BGG)

After a lot of testing about this time last year, I had made a lot of progress on this one. I had made a TTS mod for it a long time ago, and had been meaning to update it with all the most recent files, but never got around to it. I guess that's something I could be working on.

- Apotheosis (Co-Design with Rick Holzgrafe)

Most of my playtesting time (such as it has been) lately has gone to updating Apotheosis. I pitched the game virtually to 2 different publishers... the first wasn't interested, but the 2nd did show interest. They have a line of games in a particular universe, and Apotheosis fits pretty perfectly into that universe, so Rick and I have (a) revamped the prototype graphics and set the game in their universe, (b) addressed some items the publisher commented on after our playtest with them, and (c) fixed a major issue that came up in our pitch. I just reached out to the publisher to set up a time to show them the game with the updates again. I'm excited about the prospect of getting a game published by another publisher, just to sort of get my name out there more, and also to see how the process goes from the designer's end with another publisher.

- All For One (BGG) (Co-Design with David Brain)

I was feeling pretty good about the latest playtestes of All For One, almost a year ago at this point. I have been wanting to make a TTS mod for it and play it online, but I have been waiting for my co-designer to do some updates to the maps and missions. He had said he was working on it, but I suspect he got sidetracked, and he didn't even reply to my last email about it.

Maybe my best bet is to go ahead and either take a stab at the board/card redesign myself, or just upload a version like my physical prototype so I can at least play!

- Riders of the Pony Express (BGG)

I'm pretty happy with the status of Riders of the Pony Express content-wise, I think one of the biggest things I wanted to do was try and make it less physically fiddly to play. I had an idea for that, but I am stalled out on trying to implement it. Maybe the thing to do is to forget about that for now, and create a TTS mod so the game can be played.

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

I had prototyped a version of this, even made a TTS mod and played it online once or twice with my testers since the Pandemic hit. But I haven't had much opportunity to get together with Dan about it, and I was starting to shift my feeling toward what he wanted for the game -- for it to be a more complex, deeper game than what I had put together. So I kind of stalled out on it and haven't thought about it in a long time. I don't really know what I could do with this one right now.

- Keeping Up With The Joneses

My latest game project, which came together pretty quickly, has taken up the rest of my recent playtest and design time. At this point I feel like the game is stable, and I don't really see how I could make progress without more, ideally more widespread, playtesting (if you want to PnP/blind test this game, leave a comment below, or email sedjtroll@gmail and let me know!). I do have a TTS mod, so I could theoretically set up more, and more widespread, playtesting, but the logistics of playtesting online are difficult for me right now, so I don't see this happening anytime soon.

That's about it for my active designs. I guess I could take a look at some of my back-burnered designs as well:

            - Automatown [Michael Brown on board]

When Michael Brown came on board as a co-designer on Automatown, the game took some great leaps forward. However, it's been quite some time since I've heard from him, and since I played the TTS mod he'd made with my testers. I guess I'm not sure what I can do for this game at the moment.

            - Odysseus: Winds of Fate (BGG) [a designer has showed interest]

A friend showed interest in Winds of Fate, but ultimately got busy with other life events, and the pandemic hit as well, making playtesting much more difficult. So unfortunately, this game did not get revitalized as I had hoped it might.

            - Reading Railroad

For the first time in AGES, I broke out my old prototype for Reading Railroad and not only made a TTS mod for it, but even played it in person with my wife!

I was excited to revive this game, but after a couple of tests and some consideration, I kinda realized that using word-building as a mechanism just didn't seem to be that big of a deal after all. So my interest in Reading Railroad waned again, and it's back on the back burner.

            - Moctezuma's Revenge

Nobody really showed interest in Moctezuma's Revenge, which I thought was too bad because I like the theme and idea of this one a lot -- it really sounds like something that I could imagine existing. But without someone jumping in as a co-designer, I'm not sure this game will ever go anywhere. At least not anytime soon.

            - Kilauea [a designer has showed interest]

I met online with the designer who contacted me showing interest in Kilauea. He had made a new version, and I made a TTS mod for it so we could try it. We gave it a partial play, then discussed what worked and what didn't and came up with some ideas for him to try in the next iteration. Unfortunately, I haven't heard from him since then, and I haven't really thought about the game since then either.

            - Joan of Arc [a designer has showed interest]

A strong design duo showed interest in Joan of Arc, which gave me some hope that it would see some real progress, but as yet they have not gotten to it. Time is in short supply, and I know they have their own projects to work on, and I'm still hopeful they'll get to it eventually. In the meantime, I have left the game on the back burner.

            - Dynasty

One of my oldest ideas that I think is any good, I've been re-reading my old posts about Dynasty, and thinking that this might be the game I work on next. As always, it seems like it would be so easy to put together a prototype and try it out... now that I'm not doing regular playtesting anymore, it might be harder to actually get the game to the table, but I could probably make a TTS mod for it fairly easily if I just got some prototype files together for it.

I'll start a new post to describe a couple of new, or recently revived games that weren't necessarily on The List.

Recruiting Co-designers / Assembling a Design Team

Ever since I recruited my friend Rick to work on Apotheosis (FKA Worker Learning), that game has made a lot of progress where it would certainly still be sitting in my notebook otherwise. That arrangement is working so well that I would really like to recruit other designers to help me progress my other stalled or (or un-started but promising) designs.

Here are a few of the designs I could imagine handing off to another designer at this point and letting them run with for a while, or working together with another designer on...

Well established designs that I could use help finishing:
* Automatown - worker placement/resource management game about building an army of robots (which are your workers)
* Odysseus: Winds of Fate - Adventure game about Odysseus on his way from Troy to Ithaca. Play as the Fates, who don't care what happens to Odysseus, but pass the time by betting on his progress (and then influencing it)

Established designs that still need work:
* Reading Railroad - Build words (a la Scrabble) to earn coins, spend coins to build track. Connect cities to earn pieces of set collection scoring

* Moctezuma's Revenge - push your luck / deduction game about looting temples, but some are cursed

Early stage designs that still need a lot of work:
* Rondel Role Selection - Shared rondel / resource management / Role Selection game about splicing DNA to make hybrid creatures such as Hippogriffs
* Kilauea - Mancala game about spreading your people across an island, and sacrificing them to the volcano gods to control the lava flow

* Joan of Arc - Bag building game with shared piece movement. Play as a voice in Joan of Arc's head, vying to get her to accomplish your goals.

Idea stage designs that sound promising:

* Dynasty - Spread your villages across China, upgrade them to Cities, and fill your player board with Culture. You'll assimilate other players' culture, and they yours. When someone becomes Emperor, the winner is the player who's culture is best represented.

* Scourge of the High Seas - Deckbuilder along the lines of Ascension, with 2 buy rows (Tortuga, where you buy crew, equipment and ship upgrades, and the High Seas, where you spend crew and equipment to plunder ships)

Any takers?

The List - July 2015

GenCon is coming up in two weeks, so it's probably a good time to revisit The List and take stock of my designs and prototypes. It's been a while since I've done this, and I'm interested to see just how much this list has changed over time!

Published Games:
- Terra Prime (BGG)
- Eminent Domain (BGG)
- Eminent Domain: Escalation (BGG) (expansion)
- Eminent Domain: Exotica (BGG) (expansion)
- Eminent Domain: Microcosm (BGG)
- Isle of Trains (BGG)

Finished But Unpublished Games:
- Exhibit (BGG link)
- Eminent Domain: the Dice Game
- Dice Works (BGG link)
- Wizard's Tower (BGG link)
- Now Boarding

Current Active Designs:
- Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done (BGG)
- The Pony Express
- Odysseus: Winds of Fate (BGG)
- Eminent Domain: Oblivion (expansion)
- Alter Ego (BGG link)
- Isle of Trains More (expansion)
- Suburban Sprawl

Recent Designs That Are Not On The Front Burner:
- Deities and Demigods
- Rondel Role Selection

Old Standbys - games which have been around, 1/2 done and untouched, for years:
- 8/7 Central
- Hot & Fresh
- Dynasty
- Kilauea
- Reading Railroad
- All For One (BGG)

Old Ideas that Haven't gone Anywhere (Yet) - some of these have been getting stale as well:
- Investigative/Tabloid Journalism
- Red Colony
- Clash of the Kingpins
- Time = Money
- Dating Game
- Ticket Please
- Moctezuma's Revenge
- Scourge of the High Seas

Let's take a closer look at some of these:
Published games:
- Terra Prime (BGG)
I'd love to bring back Terra Prime as a 2nd edition, with updated rules, expansion included, and set in the Eminent Domain universe. It'd be called Eminent Domain: Origins, and one of these days it may be possible.

Finished But Unpublished Games:
- Exhibit (BGG link)
I'm disappointed in the current status of Exhibit. A European publisher was very interested, but a difference of opinion on whether a certain person's IP rights were infringed has caused it to be delayed - maybe indefinitely. I checked with an IP lawyer to ensure that my understanding was correct, which it was, but the whole thing has left a sour taste in my mouth.
- Now Boarding
I worked on this with Tim Fowers, who's recently finished a kickstarter for his co-op game Burgle Brothers. Maybe he'd like to print Now Boarding as his next project? Maybe I'll pitch that idea to him :)

Current Active Designs:
- Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done (BGG)
I'm happy with this one as-is, but there's a desire from the TMG staff to add super-unique faction abilities (with unique upgrades and buildings, like the factions in Terra Mystica).
- Odysseus: Winds of Fate (BGG)
I keep circling and iterating on this one. I need to implement the mot recent change ideas and try it again.
- Eminent Domain: Oblivion (expansion)
3rd expansion to Eminent Domain. I worked out how this would play several years ago, and now that Exotica is in production I've finally started prototyping and trying it. So far, so good!
- Alter Ego (BGG link)
Mike's always been a fan of this one. Back on the front burner, Alter Ego is finally shaping up. I think with a little TMG Utah input and some nice art, this could potentially be ready for a GenCon 2016 release!
- Isle of Trains More (expansion)
Dan Keltner and I are working on an expansion to Isle of Trains for Dice Hate Me/Greater Than Games to follow up our contest winning entry.
- Suburban Sprawl
Working on the next DHMG/GTG contest - this time a dexterity game (which currently only uses 54 cards, plus 8 scoring cards) with Matthew Dunstan. In Suburban Sprawl you toss cards into play to build Residential, Commercial, industrial, and Civic buildings. I'm going for a light, quick game with a sort of SimCity feel that's easy to learn and play.

Recent Designs That Are Not On The Front Burner:
- Deities and Demigods
Another attempt at Deck Learning, Deities and Demigods is like a role selection game, but the game calls the roles, and in random order. Players will have some control over which roles are in the deck, and can upgrade their efficiency at each role. The effects of the roles will allow players to move armies and fleets around a map in an effort to complete quests/tasks and control cities.
- Rondel Role Selection
Another variation on role selection, this one got off to an OK start, but hasn't gotten any attention in a while.

Old Standbys:
- Hot & Fresh
I'm a little disappointed I never finished this one, but the most recent changes (several years ago now) seemed like a big step in the right direction. I'm just not sure how excited i am about a press your luck pickup/deliver game anymore.
- Dynasty
This is my shelved design that I'm probably most interested in, or at least the one I think might have the most promise as a "mediocre euro."
- Reading Railroad
I always think that Reading Railroad would be a fun word-building / connection game, but the truth is that people who like word games probably don't want to play a connection game, and people who like connection games probably don't want to play a word game. Still, I'd like to finish this one day.
- All For One (BGG)
All For One might be my single biggest disappointment. It is the game that really got me into the design hobby, and I thought it was good - really good - but it never got any publisher interest. It's suffered some setbacks, and now - almost 10 years later - I feel like it might be a bit old fashioned and in need of an overhaul, but I don't have the impetus to overhaul it.

Old Ideas that Haven't gone Anywhere (Yet):
- Investigative/Tabloid Journalism
I think a game where you put together parts of stories and embellish them to make them work would be a cute and fun game, but the theme may not really be very desirable, so I never revisited this idea, even though I think I had the main mechanism completely thought out.
- Ticket Please
A game about controlling gates in airports and moving people to their destinations, in the same scope as a Ticket to Ride seems like it could be really successful, I'm not sure why I haven't revisited this yet.
- Moctezuma's Revenge
Maybe it's because I don't really like press your luck games or deduction games much, but I never got back around to Moctezuma's Revenge, even though it sounds like a system that could make for a solid game.

The List - revisited

It's been a while since I've given any thought to old game design ideas. Last night I had the opportunity to recount some of them to a friend, and it reminded me how awesome some of them are! So I thought I'd revisit The List:

Old Standbys - games which have been around, 1/2 done and untouched, for years:
- 8/7 Central
- Hot & Fresh
- Dynasty
- Odysseus: Winds of Fate
- Kilauea
- Reading Railroad

Old Ideas that Haven't gone Anywhere Yet, But Probably Should - some of these have been getting stale as well:
- Investigative/Tabloid Journalism
- Red Colony
- Clash of the Kingpins
- Time = Money
- Dating Game
- Ticket Please
- Moctezuma's Revenge

I have lots of ideas for several of these games, so many that I think I'm overwhelmed and am not making any progress on any of them! The good news is that I have at least made SOME progress on my games, like Exhibit, Alter Ego, and The Knights Templar.

I think the best of the bunch are:

Dynasty: The Spread of Culture in Ancient China
Build villages and learn advances, assimilating opponents' cultures as you go. Your villages give you access to resources to spend on things like advances. If you cannot afford what you want, you can "trade" with an opponent (they cannot say no) - but if you do then you must take one of their Culture Chits onto your player board. This is both good and bad, as filling up your player board gives you benefits, but each of those Culture Chits represents scoring for your opponents. The first player to fully fill their board becomes the Emperor (and scores a small bonus), but it's the player who's culture is best represented who is the real winner!

Hot & Fresh
Delivering pizza can be frantic work! Plan your route and push your luck with the traffic laws to make deliveries and earn tips. There is a simple set of traffic laws, and the more laws you break, the more likely you will get busted. Driving safe for a while will turn the heat down, but your tips decrease over time so you're encouraged to press your luck at least a little bit. Originally the routes were intended to change as traffic lights turn from green to yellow to red - a newer development involves placing tiles between the main roads to represent shortcuts that you know about but your opponents do not.


Red Colony
Players build colonies on Mars, first by claiming property (building tubes and domes), then constructing various buildings under those domes. Income is customizable and ranges from early game building materials to late game higher level materials, to people. You'll have to spend time and effort to modify income over the course of the game. The goal will be to house as many people as possible in your Colony by the end of the game. A lot of the ideas for this game came directly from The Case For Mars.


Alter Ego
Cooperative deck building game of vigilante heroism. Save the city from Arch Villains - but as you become a stronger hero, you'll need to neglect some aspect of your Alter Ego life. In the early game you start with Family, Job, and Community cards which each give you some benefit. Each turn you must take another card, either another Alter Ego card or a Hero card. You'll need Hero cards to defeat henchmen, but you can only play so many cards per turn... so playing more Hero cards necessarily means playing fewer Alter Ego cards! This game will have a Cooperative mode, and possibly a Competitive mode as well where each player has a personal Nemesis in addition to the Arch Villains.

The Knights Templar
After hearing about Trajan's Rond-cala mechanism I had a guess as to how it would work. I was wrong, but I thought my idea might make an equally good game, so I combined that main mechanism with an older idea I had for a Knights Templar theme. In this game you'll Move your knights, Crusade against Moors and other enemies, Erect buildings, and spread the Influence of the Order of the Temple. But when the Order gets strong enough, King Philip will become nervous and issue arrest orders for the Templars! Race to Portugal (and maybe Scotland) where you'll be safe while a wave of destruction radiates from Paris, destroying buildings as it goes. When a building is destroyed, players with that type of building still standing earn some points, so it could matter which buildings you erect and where you erect them.

Random Red Colony and Dynasty thoughts

I have been wanting to revisit some old designs, and in fact, I have put together another copy of All For One (sort of) since the copy I had got sent to Z-man, then on to Jackson Pope in England, and then to the co-designer David Brain - where I understand most of the bits have gone missing :(

Sadly, I had made changes by hand to the board and cards, and I'm not certain what all of them were. I guess I'll just have to rediscover them.

In addition, I have been putting more thought into Dynasty - probably my most ridiculously neglected game considering how simple it ought to be to try it! My friend Steve is living at my house for the time being, and I have decided that while I've got the chance I should really bounce ideas off of him and get some of these ideas progressed!

RED COLONY
I briefly described Red Colony to Steve, and in doing so I thought of an idea which might be good. I'd always imagined things in Red Colony being built under a network of protective domes. So it follows that the early game building you do in the game is to build some domes connected by tubes. This could be a sort of land-grab in the early game where players build tubes and domes in order to reserve land for themselves in order to build buildings.

The domes and tubes would of course require some resources, which the players would obviously start the game collecting. At some point they will be done with those resources and will need to switch their income to some different type of resources in order to construct the buildings they want in their domes - Farms, Factories, Habitats, whatever.

So the crux of the new idea is that you begin with an area enclosure type of thing, and go from there. Admittedly I have not reviewed my posts on the game, and I don't necessarily remember exactly how I thought the game would work, so I don't know how this new idea would fit in exactly, but it sounded interesting.

DYNASTY
In re-examining Dynasty I read some of my more recent posts, and in one of those I detailed an alternate method to deal with military aspects in that game. Since discussing it with Steve, I have done some more thinking about how the military part could work, and I think I have refined it further.

First of all, I think players should be able to purchase Leaders. I don't think there needs to be a distinction between Political and Military leaders either, just Leaders. The cost should be some set thing, and they would be purchased just like Discoveries are purchased - you'd have to have access to all the resources needed, or else trade with someone. Since I like the idea of Leaders really affecting the game after Cities exist, maybe the cost would include some special resource that you can only get from a City, so nobody can build a new leader until SOMEONE obtains a city.

The rule I currently think might be a winner for attacking is this... in order to conquer a Village, you have to have 2 more Leaders in the area than the defender. As long as that's true, you can remove 2 Leaders from the board and take the Village (maybe the Leaders set up shop in the Village and don't move around the board anymore). For a city, same thing, but it costs 3 Leaders to take a City. So if you have a city and a Leader in a territory, I would have to have 4 Leaders in the territory in order to Attack the city, in which case I would remove 3 of them and take over the city.

I chose 2 and 3 for the numbers so that there could be a Discovery (gunpowder?) which allows you to take a Village or City with 1 fewer Leader.

Steve and I talked about some other aspects of the game. I should probably list some of them here so I don't forget. In no particular order:

* I have always considered that there would be 8 different resources. Suppose instead there were 9, 3 of which are represented twice each on the board, 5 are represented once each, and 1 is not represented on the board at all. Now consider that each city tile has one of the 5 rarer resources on it. When upgrading a Village to a City, you gain access to the listed resource. Thus, in the early game, there would be 3 resources which are in abundance (easy to gain access to), and 5 which one player will own and others will have to trade for. Then, as cities come into play, the rare resources will become more common as cities pop up showing their symbol. In addition, the 6th city tile would bear that 9th resource, which is not represented on the board (Gold?). the only way to gain access to that one would be for someone to upgrade that city.

Steve suggested that when you place Village tiles, they must be face down, so you don't know which one has which resource on the back. That's an interesting idea, but I don't know if it's better than being able to decide which resource you want access to.

* I don't think I like the previous posted idea for founding Villages - starting with a leader in play, and moving them around to found Villages wherever you want. I think it would be cooler if you had to deal with the resources near your starting territory, and trade for the rest. So I think Founding a Village in a Territory adjacent to one of your other ones sounds better to me. Steve and I briefly discussed the possibility of only being able to found a Village in a territory adjacent to one containing ONLY your own Village/City... so you couldn't spread through another player's territory, just create a border. I don't think that idea is very good though.

* Steve mentioned that perhaps instead of trading for anything from anyone at any time, perhaps you could only trade for the resources that are available in Territories containing or adjacent to your own Villages. So if you need access to Wood, and you aren't at least adjacent to Wood, then you will have to found a Village first to get closer - even if 3 opponents all have access to wood. I don't know if I like that or not. I thin it would make some differentiations in who can get which Discovery, which might differentiate strategic paths (or "player postures")... but I expect that to sort of happen organically based on the scoring system. if you trade willy-nilly for resources to bu whatever Discovery you want, then you will be giving points away left and right. I hope that players will be judicious in how much trading they do, and attempt to be as self sufficient as possible, trading minimally when necessary. In other words, if your desired strategy requires a lot of blue and red resources, and some brown and gold as well, ten you should probably try and gain your own personal access to red and blue, and maybe 1 of brown or gold and only trade for the one you need, and of course for the odd orange or yellow resource as needed as well.

* Based on my idea above for removing leaders from the board to do things, I think the leaders would have to be fairly easy to replace. Maybe the standard action could be "get 1 leader for XXX cost, or 2 for XXXYY cost." There could be a discovery that gives you +1 Leader perhaps, or make it cheaper. If attacking removes leaders from the board, then upgrading a Village to a City should probably remove 1 Leader as well.

Overdue update

It's been almost 2 weeks since I posted anything! Not terribly much has been going on. Here's a brief summary of what's going on with my various endeavors:

Tasty Minstrel Games
The question on everybody's mind is probably "how's the publication coming?" Or if I'm lucky it's more like "When will Terra Prime and Homesteaders be in stores?"

Well, I'm currently working on rulebooks while Michael is soliciting quotes from manufacturers. Research is leading toward some good news for both price and schedule, so that's good. If everything goes as planned, the games should be out in plenty of time for BGG.con (see below)

Another thing that's new is that we received some submissions:
* a space themed worker placement/area control game,
* a colonization game,
* and a railroad game

I've had a chance to play each of those, one of which we've decided we're not going to pursue now, though we may be interested next year, one we're fairly interested in, but it needs some work, and one we can't really consider yet because another publisher has first dibs - if they decide they're not interested then we will decide if we are :)

I got an email about a submission as well, and we will be receiving yet another from someone we met at the GAMA trade show. I'm looking forward to the latter, because I liked it a lot when I played it before.

Game design
Nothing doing on the game design front at the moment. Concentrating on TP and HS publication, and notes on the prototypes I've been playing.

On a plane recently I read through some of my design notebook, and put a little thought into an old Pirate game idea. Actually, it's a game about trade where you can pursue victory by being a merchant (facilitating trade with pickup/deliver trips around the board), a pirate (attacking merchant ships and ports), or privateering (attacking pirates, and interdicting trade). It occurred to me that some of the mechanisms from Terra Prime could be used here - some of the bookkeeping and mechanical actions I mean. It would be an entirely different game with different decisions and different motivations, but some of the mechanisms could be similar to Terra Prime.

Gaming
Lately I've played a lot of Glory to Rome. John came over and we played 8 or 9 2p games - I won all but one of them. I even beat Tyler 2 out of three yesterday.

I've started going to a new friend's game night once a week, and I've tried some new games there: Municipium, Giants, Castle for all Seasons, and Jet Set, among other games like Space Alert, Goa, Princes of Florence, and Yspahan.

I'm playing in an online In the Shadow of the Emperor tournament, and I'm doing terribly. I also lost an online game of In the year of the Dragon - by 2 freaking points!

Conventions
Kublacon is coming up in about 2 weeks, and I fully expect to go to that. I seem to have slacked on buying a plane ticket, so I might have to pay too much to get there. Also, Southwest.com hasn't been working the last couple times I tried it, which is getting pretty annoying. I'm sure I'll also go to Strategicon's Gateway event in September, and of course BGG.con in November.

In fact, Tasty Minstrel Games has plans for BGG.con! We will have a booth, and we will be having a sort of launch party for our 2 games. We call it the Tasty Minstrel's Winner Cleans Up event - participants will gather for a presentation style rules explanation, then random groups of 4 people will be given a copy of the game to play in the open gaming area. The winner gets to keep the copy of the game! We plan to run one of these events for each game. I'll be posting on BGG about it, and I'll probably put up a sign-up sheet so we can get an idea of how many people will want to participate.

I'm such a slacker!

I have been seriously slacking where it comes to game design lately. The Hippodice (game design contest) deadline is approaching, and I'm not sure which game - if any - is in good enough shape to submit!

Of the games on the list, there are several which are (still) partially prototyped, and I'm spinning my gears trying to decide what version of rules to use. The list is only getting longer, here's an updated list:

Old Standbys - games which have been around, 1/2 done and untouched, some of them going on 3 years now:
- 8/7 Central
- Hot & Fresh
- Dynasty
- Odysseus: Winds of Fate
- Kilauea
- Reading Railroad
- Rodeo Drive

Old Ideas that Haven't gone Anywhere Yet, But Probably Should - some of these have been getting stale as well:
- Investigative/Tabloid Journalism
- Red Colony
- Clash of the Kingpins
- Time = Money
- Knights Templar

New Ideas that Haven't gone Anywhere Yet, But Probably Should:
- Dating Game

New Ideas that I've started actually prototyping or testing:
- Ticket Please
- Moctezuma's Revenge

I have lots of ideas for several of these games, so many that I think I'm overwhelmed and am not making any progress on any of them!

What now?

Since I sent Reading Railroad off to the KublaContest, all weekend I've been feeling sort of weird about games - both design and just gaming in general. Maybe it's anxiety because I don't feel like Reading Railroad is as polished as some of my prior submissions, or maybe I just don't know what I want to think about now.

I have lots of ideas to choose from, but I think I might (finally) get to finishing a prototype of Dynasty. As I keep saying, the game is nearly done and just needs to be tested, and the prototype is nearly complete as well. Nothing has happened with this since those previous posts, but I think if I concentrate on it I can have a working prototype - I just need to stop getting distracted by other ideas!

This is why I like collaboration - there's always another person to sort of keep you honest. It's easy to let a design slip to the back burner if there's not another person mentioning it and thinking about it all the time (or even just occasionally).

Winds of Fate, revisited

Odysseus: Winds of Fate was originally to be about "betting" on whether Odysseus and his crew would make it safely to Ithaca or not, then trying to influence his voyage to the outcome you bet on. I have been unhappy with how my first draft of the game ended up representing that, while I liked some of the ideas, it just didn't come together right. As a result, it's sat un-played and un-thought about for well over a year now.

Recently I realized that I actually had much of the game prototyped, and that I should take the upcoming Protospiel opportunities to maybe try it out again. It might be easier than trying to get together copies of Hot and Fresh or Dynasty, which require more prototyping before they can be played at all.

Today I put a little thought into making the game more directly about betting on the outcome and then influencing the outcome, and I think I like what I came up with.

Originally there were going to be 2 types of 'coins' or scoring chits, and you would win them by "winning" an adventure - you'd get White ones if the adventure outcome was favorable for Odysseus and you'd get Blue ones if it was not. White and Blue represented Athena, who hopes to help Odysseus return home, and Poseidon, who hates Odysseus and wants to see him drown. Players would collect coins in these colors, and depending on the outcome of the game - Success or Failure - only 1 of the colors would score. Or maybe 1 color would score more than the other.

I liked this mechanic so much that I also tried it for All For One briefly - King points and Cardinal points, and the ones that counted depended on which pool ran out first. One problem with the mechanic in both games was that it seemed too "all or nothing" - you could put a lot of work into collecting blue points, and if the game end is White, your efforts turn out to have been worthless. No one liked that very much. Also, it didn't correctly reflect an investment in or betting on the outcome, so it was failing the initial design goal anyway.

The latest idea modifies these White and Blue coins a bit. Instead, there could be coins with Athena on one side and Poseidon on the other. When finishing an Adventure, players would "win" some number of these coins (depending on their performance), and of their reward they could bank a certain maximum amount toward a Successful outcome and a certain maximum amount toward a Failure outcome - basically investing in the game end. They could also withhold some of the coins to be spent during the game, presumably to influence the outcome. Ideally, if you thought the outcome would be Success, you'd always invest the maximum possible into "Success," and you'd withhold some or all of the coins you could have invested in "Failure" to spend trying to influence the game toward a successful outcome.

Originally, the game had cards, and you would play these cards to try and influence which of 2 paths the boat takes each round. Then you would play these cards to influence the outcome of the adventure, which would have an effect on the overall outcome of the game. Now I think the path choice will be based on a blind bid using these coins. I think players will also buy more cards with these coins. Then the card play could work as before (similar to card play in Taj Mahal), with the rewards being coins... more for the 'winner' and fewer for 2nd/3rd place, etc.

At the game end, players will score for all banked coins, where the coins invested in the 'correct' outcome will score a return of 1 coin for every 3 invested - in other words coins in the 'right' bank will be worth 1.33 points while coins banked toward the 'wrong' outcome will only be worth 1 point each.

I think this better represents an investment into the game outcome and then influencing the outcome. I also like the decision of whether to bank the coins for points, or keep them to buy more cards or influence the path of the boat and thereby the Fate of Odysseus.

I'd like to go through the Encounter tiles I made and modify the events that occur, and maybe the powers on the cards that exist. Some will have to be changed to work with this new structure - others could stand to be more fun or interesting. Hopefully I can get this done in the next couple of weeks so I can actually play the game at Protospiel West when i go to GameStorm at the end of the month!

Gears are turning, feels good!

I'm really happy with the feeling of progress that's come along recently with respect to Terra Prime, Dynasty, and Hot and Fresh. Heh, in the case of Hot and Fresh, gears are literally turning (almost)!

As soon as I get TP off next week, this is what I need to jump on or else the designs will stall again...

Dynasty: Brainstorm discoveries.
I need a list of Discoveries or inventions, preferably ones that were made by the ancient Chinese (such as gunpowder, hot air balloon, compass, plow...), some cost for them, and of course a game effect. Some of these I think are pretty straightforward, like the Plow could allow access to an extra resource of a couple types (the types you would harvest with a plow). Of course, for it to make sense I also need a number of resources... I think the Hot Air Balloon will allow leader pawns to move further, maybe the Compass will allow 2 leaders to move with 1 action.

If anyone has any suggestions, don't be shy! Some of the inventions will simply be for VPs, and some will have prerequisite discoveries (either by player, or in general - like Paper must have been invented by someone before Paper Money can be invented. Maybe Paper Money is a personal invention which allows you to "trade" for 1 resource per turn without giving points away (taking the other player's chit onto your board).

Hot & Fresh: Design board
As discussed prior, I need to lay out the board for the game. I have had a map section for a long time which I'd like to use...


I just need to pick locations and figure out how many spaces need to be in between different places. And I need to delete every other residential road, there's a bit more in that section than is necessary. I might also like to add more traffic light intersections, as that was the original point of the game.

If I can keep on top of those things, then I think I'll have prototypes of these games to play before too much longer!

Dynasty revisited, also Hot and Fresh prototyping

As per my New Years Resolutions, I've been putting some thought into both Hot & Fresh and Dynasty. Ariel has been experimenting with the color wheel idea for Hot & Fresh, and says he's got something that will work, and that it's not even that tough. That's good, because even though I've known in my mind for 2 years how it would work, I have yet to produce a working prototype! I now have a deadline... create a map for him to make a board out of in time for him to produce a prototype for me before he goes to New York City this summer (so he can mail it to me from there instead of from Uruguay).

I've also been discussing some of the finer details of Dynasty with Dylan and Nando in the BGDF chatroom. I think I'm feeling more comfortable with some parts of it. Hopefully I can talk them into brainstorming tech advances ("Discoveries") with me so I can get a prototype of that working as well.

In particular, here are some of my recent thoughts on Dynasty:

• When Settling a village, perhaps a player shouldn't get points at all. I'm a little worried that all players will spend the 1st 6 turns each game just settling. That would be lame - and if it's true I guess I could simply make the setup phase include taking turns settling villages - but I think I'd rather that be part of the game. I'd like people to think about doing things other than Settle, even if they haven't gotten their 6 resources. Maybe if there weren't points involved in settling a village, then that would promote other actions sooner as you might not need further resources to get the Discoveries you want. I'm already thinking of rewarding players who get to a discovery first (see below).
  
  
• Thus far I've liked the idea of having to settle adjacent to a region where you already have a village, to keep people from just plopping villages wherever they like the resources, and to encourage trading. Dylan (dnjkirk from BGDF) thought it would be better to be able to settle anywhere, perhaps with an additional cost for not being adjacent. I just had an idea though which combines his thoughts with something that could help my previous point... players could start with a pawn on the board, and could only be allowed to Settle where the pawn is located. Thus it would take a few turns to traverse the board. This mechanic already exists in the game, but until now it's been after villages start turning into cities. No reason not to start with the Political pawn in play from the beginning though! I think this idea will add validity to Discoveries such as a cart which allows your political leader to move 2 spaces.
  
  
• I had originally figured that each culture would handle discoveries separately, irrespective of what other players discover. However it makes more sense to say that when anyone discovers, say, paper, that anyone else could build on the knowledge and discover paper money. Thus perhaps whenever anyone discovers something, everyone gets to use the benefit, and noone else can discover that thing. This way there's competition for the discoveries for points, but getting the points opens up abilities to all players.
  
  
• I have never been happy with the mechanic for conquering a city or village. Currently, you can just conquer a village with your military leader as an action. Conquering a city requires that you have more cities than the defender. It's too easy to do that, and I think the first person to get a city would likely be able to conquer everybody, and that's no fun. I would like there to be a viable strategy that involves being militaristic, but I would like taking over villages and cities to be relatively unexciting outside of that. Maybe you conquer a city so you can gain access to its resources without having to trade with that opponent every time you want to use it, but aside from that you probably don't conquer much unless you're using a military strategy and have bought the advances which make it easy enough to do so. I think I have come up with a Conquer system that better represents that. Instead of 1 Military leader total, players could get a military leader (or a political leader) each time a City is developed, and each military leader could have some 'strength' (say 2). There would be discoveries such as Gunpowder which would add 1 Strength to each military leader. In order to conquer a village or City, a player would have to get enough" strength worth of leaders in the area... where "enough" depends on how many Villages and Cities (and maybe Military Leaders) the defender has. Perhaps each village has strength 1, each city strength 2, and each military leader in the area has strength 1 for defense (or strength 2 to match their offensive strength). This has the advantage of adding opportunity cost to "going on a war path" - you have to spend actions moving your leaders around the board. It also lends validity to discoveries such as "Hot Air Balloon" (move 1 leader 2 spaces) or some other discovery which allows you to move more than 1 leader at a time.

So I guess with respect to my New Years Resolutions... I'm working on it!

The List

Viable game ideas to work on in 2008 (and what needs doing on them). Not all of these will be finished, or even looked at, but this is the current list of stuff I've got in mind. In no particular order:

Hot and Fresh
- Create board
- Create Order cards
- Test rules as-is
- Redesign Order mechanics and End Game conditions
- Revisit rules after testing

Dynasty
- Create list of Tech Upgrades with costs made up of 8 different resources
- Create game board dividing China into probably 16 regions, 2 associated with each resource
- Test rules as-is
- Re-examine Leader actions
- Revisit rules after testing

Time is Money
- Consider theme and scope of game
- This is more a mechanic/structure at the moment, not a complete game. Maybe find a complement game in which to use this system.

Kilauea
- Test again as-is
- Superimpose square grid on Hawaii map
- Revisit rules after testing
- Enter in KublaContest this year?

Investigative/Tabloid Journalism
- Create Lead and Follow-up cards of each category
- Test rules as-is
- Revisit rules after testing

8/7 Central
- Dust off and test again
- Revisit rules after testing
- Redesign auction mechanic

Red Colony
- Consider theme and scope of game
- Write rules

Rodeo Drive
- Test more
- Revisit rules after testing
- Re-examine board placement/scoring

Reading Railroad
- Decide if it's worth pursuing (see if Scott wants to pursue it)
- Write rules
- Prototype and test
Edit: I did pursue this with Scott, I entered it in the KublaCon design contest - it didn't fare too well. It could use finishing touches, but I rather like the game. I think the cross section of people who would be interested in this might be small though.

Clash of the Kingpins
- Re-imagine the game as a non-CCG
- Discuss with Tom Lehmann, see if he's interested in working on it with me (he mentioned he might be, that would be cool)

I'd like to one day publish a game!

I emailed Zev from Z-Man games to see if he'd like to look at All For One again (he played it once at one of the Spielbany meetups)... he got back to me the other day giving me the go ahead to send it in. So this weekend I'm making new cards and a new board (I hope) and I'll be sending it to him next week! That's exciting, though I have a pretty good feeling he will not want to publish it. Hopefully I'm wrong about that!

In addition to that, I have this new BrainFreeze! game that everyone seems to like. It's fast and fun, but it requires a chess clock and I'm afraid that might make it prohibitively expensive to produce. I plan to talk to Mike Nicholoff and see if his company Sorvent can help find a publisher for it.

Blockade Runner is intended to be published by Shifting Skies Games, but that's in a holding pattern for a couple of weeks, and there are funding issues that may or may not take a while to resolve. Sadly, I don't really have money to throw at it.

And finally I have Wizard's Tower which is ready to be shown to publishers, I'm just not sure how to go about getting it there. A friend in Seattle who works in the industry has shown Wizard's Tower to a new game company, but I haven't heard anything about that company at all yet - i know it's tough to get a new company off the ground.

I have some game prototypes by other friends that are worthy of publishing... Ariel's Love Means Nothing tennis card game, Alex's Homesteaders heavy strategy game... As far as I know they wouldn't mind if those games were published, and if I could help them achieve that I think it would be cool.

As for my other games "in development," I have Terra Prime which is probably "mostly done" and could be made ready for a publisher if, say, one were to ask for it. Kilauea might also be more or less done, though I haven't touched that in forever.

Of course I have a bunch of other designs in the "idea stage" - the most promising of which are probably Dynasty and Hot and Fresh.

So if I'm to uphold my new years resolution to get a game in line to be published, I'd better get to work on that!

Long time no post... long time no design!

It's been a couple weeks since my last post, and I still haven't gotten to some of the things I said I'd post about... like those Strategy and Tactics articles Oh well, such is life. Here's what has been going on:

Playtesting: I've finally gotten a playtest group started, we meet at my house on Sundays from 11ish until frisbee time. The core has proven to be myself, Aric Jack (shrike on BGDF), and Eric Flood, with a few others who've been once or twice each. So far we've been testing several of Aric's card games, as well as All For One, Blockade Runner, and a game of Eric's as well.

Gaming: I went to PhoenixConGames last week - it was mediocre relative to KublaCon and BGG.con, but it was worth the trip. I played a handful of board games, mostly with people I play with at home anyway. I did meet a couple guys from Phoenix, and a couple of Bo's friends as well, and hang out wih my friend Chris who lives in Phoenix as well. At RTeam game club I've gotten to try Notre Dame finally. I was disappointed at first by some aspects of the card drafting mechanism, but the game is growing on me.

Game Design: I haven't done much with design lately. I had decided to postpone new design ideas and work on "finishing" some of the many I have already. I had resolved at New Years to get All For One "in line to be published" this year. Blockade Runner is allegedly going to be published by Shifting Skies games, working on contacting people about a license right now. Wizard's Tower got 2nd place in the KublaContest (it's not actually called "KublaContest", but it ought to be ;) ) and both the contest director Julie Haehn and Aldie from BGG wanted a copy. Julie said she knows an up and coming publisher, and wants to show them Wizard's Tower and All For One, and Derk and Aldie said I should submit Wizard's Tower to Z-man games... I guess that's a step in the right direction! I have been agonizing over a way to combine my current "ID" version of All For One with David's current "Story" version in a way that accomplishes the goals of the story version but maintains the good aspects of the ID version... and I think I've finally done it. I need to get that finished up and sent off to Julie so she can show her publisher friend! I also told her she could have a copy of the game, since she likes it so much - I just have to make another prototype now...

Aside from the All For One version stuff, I haven't done any real design work at all in the last who-knows-how-long. I've all but forgotten about that Time is money thing, which may be my next project when I get back to designing. Either that, Kilauea, Dynasty, or Hot and Fresh.

Random game design thoughts - stream of conscience style.

So I had this great idea for a game... it had to do with delivering pizza and breaking traffic laws. I mean, who doesn't love pizza? And who doesn't love breaking traffic laws? Actually, every time I think about the game I get excited because I feel like the mechanics should work really well and that game would be fun. I even got about 1/2 way through a prototype when I hit a snag because I decided I was inept at creating a map board for the game.

This could be because I have a grandiose scheme to have a really novel board, with holes cut at the intersections (traffic lights) and a rotating color wheel below the board - so the lights will change over time, impacting the available routes. The game is intended to be about route planning and pressing your luck. The route planning comes from the changing traffic lights, and the pressing your luck comes from breaking traffic laws - which make you more and more likely to get busted.

Anyway, in the time since I started prototyping that one (the rules are ready to test, though they could maybe use some more player interaction), I have gone through the process of writing, prototyping, and testing several other games, as well as prototyping and playing games by other people. Here's a quick rundown:

Terra Prime
An idea I originally got from a friend, which I turned into a decently working prototype. It's about exploring space, colonizing planets, harvesting resources, and protecting the colonies from hostile aliens. Sounds like a lot, but it's like a 90 minute game, involves a nifty economic model, and a chart of upgrades for your spaceship.

I was very fond of this one, but lately I'm bummed because there's one part that's just not working for me. I can't seem to fix it, so I haven't even played this one in a long time.

Kilauea
A relatively simple game about fictional ancient Hawaiian tribes, who made sacrifices to the volcano goddess Pele in hopes she would not send fiery lava toward their village. Points are acquired by spreading out your tribesmen (which of course makes them more susceptible to lava flows), controlling the lava flow (by making the biggest sacrifice in a round), and collecting Fertile tokens (left when lava flows cool and go away). Novel movement mechanic borrowed from Mancala. I originally played this on a simple 9x9 square board. I thought perhaps hexes would be better, so I made a nice big board with big hexes... then realized I hadn't really increased the number of hexes or the distance from the mouth of the volcano to the edge of the board. Since then I've found a nice pic of the big island to use, and superimposed a hex grid - but I'm thinking I'll go back to a square grid... the game seemed better that way.

Homesteaders - by Alex Rockwell.
The king of Puerto Rico strategy articles, and Caylus 2p analysis, has come up with a game of his own. I played it when I met him last summer, came home, and made my own copy so I could play it some more. It's a sort of cross between Caylus and Vegas Showdown. You auction off the right to build a certain type of building, and there are lots of buildings per type. The buildings give you various abilities or incomes, which you use to build other buildings or otherwise translate into points. I have been testing it out and offering my comments through many changes, and will have a copy with me at BGG.con...

Soldiers and Builders - by John Heder.
No, not Napoleon Dynamite... his cousin. No, really, I know a guy named John Heder (hederj on BGG), and he's related to the Napoleon Dynamite guy (who's name is also John Heder, in case you have been living under a rock and wonder what the hell I'm on about). So my friend John found some 6 sided dice with colors on the faces (like in Carolus Magnus) at a store, and he was dieing to make a game that used them. So he did. It's relatively abstract, and has to do with placing dudes on the colored spaces on a grid. You determine where you can play by rolling 1 Region die and 1 Color die. I tried it out, and it was amusing at first, but quickly got old as there wasn't really enough to do, or enough control or player choice for my liking. So... I fixed it. I modified a few things in order to inject some options for players. I took a hint or two from Reiner Kinizia's new Genesis, where you roll 2 dice and play on both colors that come up or just 1 wild. I merged that into the game by having the player roll 1d4 for region and 2d6 color dice, and for each color die you either make a play, or discard it to change either the region die or the other color die. We (John and I) also implemented tower powers (towers result when you make a square of dudes, like a monument in T&E) in order to incentivize building towers. Scoring is based on towers (better if in groups), majority of guys in each region, majority of towers in each region, and destroyed towers (oh yeah, you can do that too). It's alright, but I would love to give it a theme. It kinda reminds me of that computer simulation thingy called "Life."

Odysseus: Winds of Fate
Another friend of mine from the Board Game Designers Forum asked me to help him out with an idea he had. It sounded really good to me, so we discussed it for a while. And as usual, I forked off with my own route on it while he went a different way. Well, it made so much sense to me, that about 2 days later I had a prototype ready to test. My friend (Nando) said that my version is closer to his original vision than his version is. Irrespective of that, I'm excited about this one because of 2 reasons... it's got a cool scoring mechanism in which you get points in 2 different varieties during the game, and the one that matters depends on how the game ends. Players have a little control over which type of points they get, and a little control over which way the game ends. The other thing I like about my implementation is that while there are numbers on cards that you play (via a mechanic not entirely unlike Taj Mahal), the numbers don't really matter for getting points - just the number of cards. The numbers (and suit of the cards) matter as to which points you get, and which game end condition gets furthered, but you can't get screwed out of points by a bad draw. The number of cards you have is (almost) completely within your control.

I also like the theme a lot... there aren't a lot of games out there with the Odyssey as a theme. In this one, players play the Sisters of Fate, who observe Odysseus on his voyage from Troy to Ithaca, not entirely interested if he makes it home safe or not... but they decide to sort of bet on it.

Dynasty: The Spread of Culture in Ancient China
This one will probably be my next "Hot and Fresh" (that's the pizza game, by the way) in that it's a great idea, 1/2 prototyped, that I'll probably never get around to finishing. It's based on yet another friend's idea... he asked me to help him with a game idea about China, which was to be some epic thing with wargame elements and everything. I took what we talked about, or the parts that interested me anyway, and made a Eurogame out of it. It's so simple yet seems like it would be so good. My friend didn't like that I posted it though, but said he wouldn't care as long as I changed the theme... maybe to something about India. Until I figure that out I was going to keep working on the mechanics anyway, which are ready to test, I just need to figure out some tech advances... here's the gist of it:

Each player represents a culture in ancient China. You start by establishing little villages in various regions on the map, which allow you access to resources. You don't actually GET resources, like cubes or anything, you just have access to them or you don't. Then you can buy technological advances or whatever, which better your civilization. If you can't afford one, you can ask an opponent to help you. They get points for doing so... Basically, as you get these advances, and especially as you "trade" with other civs, you get markers to fill up your Cultural Development chart. When you fill up the first part of the chart, you become advanced to the point that one of your villages becomes a city, granting you abilities and access to higher level resources. Later in the game you can found more cities and take over other players' villages and cities, but each time you assimilate another players culture, you get their chits on your board. As soon as a player has filled up their board, they become the first Emperor of China and the game ends. At this point you see who the winner is by revealing all the chits on everybody's boards... the newly crowned Emperor may not be the winner (though they get a bonus to scoring) - they may be Emperor, but they're empire is infused with another player's culture. The player who's culture is the best represented is the real winner.

Well, that's all the designs I can think of offhand. I also proto'ed a solitaire civ game made by another BGDF friend... it's pretty cool - made to be played solo (obviously), like on an airplane or something. All you need is a pad of paper, the rules (with list of Advances), and a small deck of Event cards (16 cards). Scott even made a 'deluxe' version with printable tiles for those that want the tabletop experience :) If you're interested in this game you can look up PocketCiv on Doho123's blog MeepleSpeak .

I suppose that's enough blah blah blah from me... leave a comment if you read this, let me know what you think of the game ideas.

Thanks!