2020-2021: A playtesting retrospective

 A couple of years ago I posted a playtesting retrospective spanning late 2017 through the end of 2019, and I thought it as interesting to see the breakdown of time spent on various games, especially while considering the state that I know those games to be in now.

Now it's a couple years later, most of which has been spent in a global pandemic. Let's see what I managed to get playtested in 2020 and 2021...

2020

January
Throughout January, after a break for a Disneyworld vacation, we iterated a few times on the All For One revamp, and I brought Apotheosis back out after 6 months on the shelf.

All For One seemed to be working well, and I remember being pretty excited about the new updates. Unfortunately I haven't played it since, though in the interim I did create a Tabletop Simulator mod for the game, and I've even pitched it to a couple of publishers that way.

Apotheosis progress was coming along, and we ended up playing it a few times a month throughout 2020.

February
In addition to Apotheosis, February saw the debut of an Isle of Trains board game. First we played Dan's first draft version. Then a few weeks later I brought my own take on his concept, which was a lighter, more straightforward game, and we played that a few times.

March
March was weird, because I had to cancel most weekends for my Anniversary, and then a COVID scare. The 1 time we did play, we tested Apotheosis one more time, and enjoyed a published game: Glen More. Beyond that, I did play Apotheosis one more time at home with my wife.

April
Sadly, I had to cancel my weekly playtest meetup indefinitely due to COVID. I didn't test anything at all in April, but I did figure out how to implement prototypes on Tabletop Simulator, starting with Apotheosis.

May
Thanks to the technology of TTS and the internet, I was able to get a test in now and again online. In May we played Apotheosis a couple of times.

We also played the Isle of Trains boardgame once, and I think I've come around to thinking that maybe Dan was on the right track wanting to make a heavier game.

Finally, we played an updated version of Automatown which designer Michael Brown joined in on as a co-designer. He made a TTS mod and we were able to see his updates.

June
I was still getting the hang of making digital prototypes, and getting online playtests together. Unfortunately I didn't get any tests in June at all.

July
In July I pulled couple of older prototypes out of the woodwork. I played Reading Railroad at home with my wife, I played Exhibit online with my testers, and I got together with a designer who had come on board to work on Kilauea with me to check out his ideas for the game.

August

I got an online tests of Reading Railroad in August, as well as a couple games of Crusaders at home with my wife to test new faction powers I was developing.

I had an online pitch meeting for Apotheosis, which seemed promising. The publisher wanted to set the game in their fantasy universe, which was a perfect fit, so Rick and I reskinned the prototype with their art assets.

September

I kicked off the month with another test of the new Crusaders factions with Michelle. 

A few weeks later I had a prototype of a brand new game, Keeping Up With The Joneses, which I played twice with Michelle, and twice solo - and solo testing is something I almost never do!

Online I played one more game of Apotheosis with Rick and Aaron, my two main testers since going digital.

October

October was a busy month for testing, mostly on account of solo testing for Keeping Up With The Joneses - I played 6 solo games in.

I got in three online tests of Keeping Up with the Joneses as well, and three tests of Apotheosis too.

November
I revisited a couple more older games in November via digital prototypes with Rick and Aaron: Exhibit and Dice Works. I also played one of Rick's prototypes called Cwen.

December

We finished off the year with 4 tests of Apotheosis with some significant changes based on playing with the publisher who had showed interest, and the game got better and better.

2021

January
I started out 2021 playing games by a couple of my testers' latest games: Andy's Gemstone Pylons, and Rick's Stardock (later renamed Starlight).

We played Keeping Up With The Joneses once, and Apotheosis twice (once with the publisher)

February
I only had 2 test sessions in February, and we switched gears and played Sails & Sorcery, trying to figure out how to fix the issues with the Plunder action.

March
I didn't test any of my own stuff in March, but I played Rick's Starlight game a couple of times, as well as a skiing game that Andy was working on as a developer.

April
In April I revived another prototype, Deities & Demigods, to reacquaint myself and my players with the game. We also played Exhibit again, then later in the month I had the opportunity to pitch it to a big publisher (unfortunately, they passed on it). 

May
I started off the month with two more pitch meetings: Apotheosis and Keeping Up With The Joneses with one publisher; Riders of the Pony Express, Deities & Demigods, Sails & Sorcery, and Apotheosis with the other.

I played Rick's Starlight once more as well, then missed the rest of my sessions due to a vacation to Hawaii, lack of players, and technical difficulties.

June
Another tough month for playtesting... I had a first test of a new I-Cut-You-Choose game idea (later titled Division of Labor) with Rick, and a pitch meeting for Sails & Sorcery, then missed the rest of my sessions for one reason or another.

July
I got a 2nd test of Division of Labor and found some fundamental issues that would need to be addressed, and finished off the month with 3 tests of another revived prototype, Skye Frontier.

August
Another rough month for test sessions, I only got 1 playtest in: I got a gig developing expansion content for Amun-Re, a classic Eurogame from 20 years ago, and I tested some early content for that with Rick.

The rest of my sessions were canceled, but I did have a pitch meeting for Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory (unfortunately that didn't go anywhere)

September
I started September with a solo test of Keeping Up With The Joneses, then spent the rest of the month working on the Amun-Re expansion - 3 live tests, and 6 solo.

October
Six more solo tests and 5 live tests of Amun-Re took up all my testing time in October.

November
One more Amun-Re test in November, then I switched gears to Deities & Demigods because (drum roll please)... it got signed by a publisher! The publisher requested some changes, and I spent November working on those.

December

I finished off the year with 3 more tests of Deities & Demigods iterations as I worked on addressing the publisher's concerns.

The switch to online playtesting was a setback in my playtesting throughput, and it cost me some of my regular testers, but TTS has allowed me to continue testing, and pitching games, through the pandemic, and I've got at least a couple of regular online testers.

I miss testing more, but the good news is that I am finally making a little headway with pitches. Over the course of the pandemic, Isle of Trains got picked up by a new publisher who's going to do the base game as well as the expansion Dan and I made what, 7 years ago now? Deities & Demigods has been picked up, and I got that development gig on Amun-Re. I've had a few meetings recently to try and find a publisher to ick up the EmDo and Crusaders game lines, hopefully one who's willing to pick up the entire line (base game, expansions, and as-yet-unpublished content). No luck with EmDo an Crusaders thus far, but I just had a promising meeting or two about them, so hopefully something will come of that.

Rolling Realms - Jaffee Realms update update

 A couple of weeks ago I posted about updating the realms I'd made for Jamey Stegmaier's roll & write game, Rolling Realms. Well, since then I have gotten ahold of the published version of Rolling Realms, and I have played my updated realms a couple of times each. Here's the news...

Crusaders

This one works well. I went with the edit I made in the footnote of the previous post: for the odd numbers, you get 1 resource per dot, for the even numbers you get 1 star for every 2 dots. One game it felt kinda easy to get 6 stars (plus a handful of resources), so I considered changing that to 3 dots per star... but I'm not convinced that's necessary yet, so I left it alone for now.

I like the way this one works, and I think it feels on par with the published realms.

Eminent Domain

After that last post, I preferred the previous version of the EmDo realm, the new one seemed more fiddly. So I reverted to that, but added stars for each row or column of planets, so you can get some stars for just getting lots of planets. This continues to be based on the thematic feel of the game, not the mechanical feel, which could be bad for players unfamiliar with the game, and it could be forcing the realm to be too complicated.

Today I played a game with this version, as well as the published Pendulum realm, and they happened to be in the same round, so I actually played them side by side. This was fortuitous, because it highlighted an observation I made to myself when reading how the Pendulum realm worked. To put it bluntly and succinctly, I don't think I could have boiled my EmDo  realm down and condensed it half as well as the Pendulum realm does! The Pendulum realm is just like my EmDo realm, if you combined Trade and Research into 1 action, and indicated what you get for Trading/Researching on the planets themselves.

...which is cool! I like the Pendulum realm. But if that published realm is so similar (and more simplified) than my EmDo realm, then I probably need to go another route with EmDo. As I mentioned, maybe evoking the deck learning rather than the thematic or strategic aspects would be better anyway. So here's the new version:

1 column per die value. the first time you use a die of that value, you get 1 resource as indicated. the 2nd time you use that same value, you get 2 of that resource. The 3rd time, you get that resource plus a star. And the 4th time you get 2 stars. In this way, it's like you get better at using any given number in that realm the more you use it.

I was wondering if that would be enough, or if I should try and add just 1 more thing somehow... like maybe awarding a star for using 1 of each die value (nah!), or something crazy like "mark off a box in this realm when you use a die value -- whenever you use that die value again (in this or any realm), get the indicated reward in addition" - then award nothing, 1 resource, 1 star or something like that. So using a number in the EmDo realm would make you better at using that number everywhere, not just in the EmDo realm. That's a neat idea, but I think I'll try the basic version first. The neat thing about Rolling Realms is that the complexity comes from the combination of realms available and the opportunity cost of using a die in one realm instead of another. So the individual realms can (and in fact really should) be very simple and straightforward.

Jaffee Realms 2021, v2.0

Please feel free to try these out and let me know what you think in the comments! I'm going for realms that evoke Crusaders and EmDo, but that fit in with the existing realms in the published game.

New Crusaders factions?

I don't think I've posted about the extra player expansions for Crusaders, but art is done for them, and they're ready to be printed (just as soon as everything else gets sorted out)...

There will be 2 boxes you could get to add a 5th player to your Crusaders game, Crimson Knight (red player color), or Amber Knight (yellow player color). You'll even be able to play with 6 players if you get both!

These expansions contain a player board and pieces for one new player, including Divine Influence stuff, and 2 new faction powers to choose from. These new factions were ones that I had been testing originally, but had not made the cut to the final 10 in the game.

As I mentioned, all of the art for these expansions is done, and has been for some time now. As I happened to be looking at those files recently, I noticed that I apparently included the same 2 factions in both expansion boxes. I don't exactly remember why I did that, it seems like the boxes should each have 2 unique factions. In fact, I think I remember choosing 4 different ones, but in any case, the art files have the same pair of new factions, and that's not great. So I decided to come up with 2 new factions so that players who get both boxes to play with 6 players won't have any duplicates.

That said, I needed to think of new dynamics. I got a few ideas from Twitter followers who responded to a request for abilities they'd like to see, and I decided on 4 powers to try. I had hoped that at least 2 of those would be good enough to use. Here are the 4 draft factions (sorry, no fancy names yet):

1. When resolving an upgraded wedge, you may add 2 virtual tokens. If you do, downgrade the wedge afterwards. 

This one seems good so far, it might be a winner.

2. Remove an action token from the game instead of taking a normal turn. If you do, resolve that wedge based on the number of tokens on an opponent's board. Distribute your own wedge as normal afterwards.

I think it might be better to NOT distribute the bin... But this power might not make the cut anyway. With 2 players it as a little annoying to see what was available all the time, but not too bad. However with more players it would probably get too AP prone or annoying.

3. Before resolving a wedge, you may remove a token on it and set it aside to upgrade it.  When you take an upgrade turn to upgrade a wedge, you may add a token set aside that way to the upgraded wedge.

This worked pretty well, and may be a winner also. I might want to change the wording so that the 2nd clause works with Divine Influence's Upgrade actions (in the expansion there are more ways to upgrade your wedges besides just taking an upgrade turn).

4. Instead of a normal turn, choose any wedge, distribute it, and resolve the last wedge you place in.

Could call that one the Feldian Order of Trajan or something :)

This one was neat. Very different, and probably way too powerful. Next time I try it, I'll add "-1 to each action" as a drawback.

If I can balance this one acceptably, I might like to make it a promo item, because it's so unique, rather than a regular faction power in an expansion.

Having played just 1 game with each of the draft factions, it looks like I have 2 that will work, and they both deal with upgrades, which is interesting because Divine Influence adds more ways to upgrade your action wedges. And I also like the idea of using the Trajan-styke one as a promo, if I can make it fair enough :)

Just need to get a little more testing in for those, and to look up some more faction titles I could use!

Tabletop Simulator, digital prototypes, and online playtesting

A Virtual Tabletop

Tabletop Simulator is a virtual tabletop with working, realistic physics, which exists to facilitate tabletop gaming over the internet. There's a similar app called Tabletopia that is browser-based, while TTS is a $20 app on Steam.

People have created TTS "mods" of many tabletop games. Somebody even made a mod for Crusaders!

Unlike online portals such as BoardGameArena, Boiteajeux, and Yucata, Tabletopia and Tabletop Simulator do not enforce the rules to these games. They are literally just a digital version of the game on a table, and players can move the pieces around however they want to. So to play a game on TTS, you need to know the rules.

I am not too familiar with any of these programs yet, but designers all over the world are turning to these or other online options in order to accomplish much-needed playtesting, since gathering in groups is ill advised these days (for future readers, we're talking about COVID-19 here, a worldwide pandemic that has people self-quarantining for the most part).

About a year ago I tried to make a TTS mod for my game Alter Ego, and while I got it set up, I did not know how to play it with anybody. By now, the game not only has pretty much finished art, but there have been significant rules and structural changes, so I really need to re-do that one before I can try to test it out. At the time, I was playtesting weekly, so the pressure to create online versions of my games was not there. For the last couple of months though, I have been able to make no progress whatsoever with my games, and that's just not going to work for me!

My Digital Prototypes

I currently have three digital prototypes that are ready to go:

* Apotheosis

I often feel uncomfortable trying to do something I'm not familiar with, and I've been really strapped for time lately anyway, so the first thing I tried was paying someone to make a TTS mod of Apotheosis. It was a snap for him to implement the game, and while the cost was more than I would have wanted to pay, I consider that it essentially included some TTS consultation, which has helped me gain the knowledge and confidence to try the next one on my own.

Once implemented, I was able to get online with my co-designer and my main playtester and give it a play. It worked! We spent some time familiarizing ourselves with the user interface, and fumbling with the components was more fiddly and took longer than simply grabbing things with our hands, but we were able to do the actual game in about 2 hours, and it went pretty well, all things considered!

One nice thing about a portal like this that doesn't enforce rules is that I can change the rules on the fly, or between games, and nothing has to be done with the prototype before playing again.

* Isle of Trains boardgame

Now that I had gained some familiarity with Tabletop Simulator, I thought I'd try my hand at inputting another prototype myself. I chose the Isle of Trains boardgame [side note: this needs a good title. I am fond of Isle of Trains: All Aboardgame, but it's a bit silly for a real title, and also that implies passenger trains, whereas this game is about freight trains], because I thought it'd be the simplest one to do. It wasn't too bad, and I had the whole thing ready to go in a couple of hours...

...until I realized that I did not have updated prototype files for the most recent changes after the last playtest.

Last night I spent another couple of hours updating some of those files and re-creating the TTS mod, and now it's just about ready to play. I haven't added uncoverable bonuses for building (like Crusaders has), which is something we might want to have, but the game is technically playable without that, and that would be pretty easy to add to the mod (once it exists).

* Automatown

I took on a co-designer for Automatown a few months go, and nether of us have had much time to focus on Automatown lately. However, Michael had done some work re-configuring the structure of the game, and I think he even got a test or two in before Stay At Home orders came into effect. Since then, he created a TTS mod of his new version of the game, and I'm ready to give it a try, as soon as I can carve out some time!

Prototype feast or famine

Ever since Corbin was born (last summer), I have felt like I've been in a relative famine with regards to playtesting (and gaming in general). I have tried to make up for that with online play at BoardGameArena.com, Boiteajeux.net, Yucata.de, etc.

In October, Michael was in town for Rincon, and I manages to get a couple of plays in with him. Then I sent 4 of my prototypes to Utah with him in hopes that they would get played in the TMG office.

Finally, after 8 or 9 months off, my playtesting group is back up and running again! This was great news, and it came just in time to finish up last minute development on Eminent Domain Origins, the reboot of my first game, Terra Prime.

Now that that's done however, I've run into a problem. All my prototypes are in Utah, what do I test next? Fortunately, I had something. TMG is doing a Deluxified version of Emperor's Choice (I'm in charge of the art direction and rules updating, like I did for Yokohama), and someone suggested we add a 2 player variant to that 3-5 player auction game. So I came up with something, and the last couple of weeks we've been testing that.

Yesterday, I came home to a box at my door containing my prototypes! They appear to be in fine condition, and now I've got the opposite problem: which of these should I test next?

* Crusaders: Divine Influence (expansion)
* Deities and Demigods (now Olympus on the Serengeti)
* Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory (dice game)
* Alter Ego
* Sails and Sorcery (Michael's mash-up of EmDo and El Grande)

In addition to that, pretty soon I'll have a version of Worker Learning to test as well!

Crusaders: Divine Influence (expansion)

Since Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done arrived a couple of months ago, it seems to be very well received. This makes a perfect window for a Deluxified expansion to go on Kickstarter, along with the opportunity to get the Deluxified base game again, later this year. In anticipation of this, I designed an expansion before my playtesting haiatus, and I'm pretty happy with it so far.
Divine Influence adds 4 new building tracks (16 more buildings per player), a revamped (more involved) Influence action, and a few new knight orders to go with them.

Olympus on the Serengeti (fka Deities and Demigods)

I posted before about the theme of Deities and Demigods changing to re-imagine Greek mythology in an animals of Africa setting. Art is underway on this one, and I'm a little worried how it will turn out. I think that, like Eminent Domain's title, when players see everything in context, it will work well.

This one doesn't really need more testing, unless I want to add that Hades module to the game.

Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory

Last I checked, with the final tweak to 5p (and maybe 4p) games (everyone starts with 1 tech advance), I think this one is ready to go. It is in line to get art done after the more pressing Divine Influence, which will start as soon as we wrap up art for Eminent Domain Origins which is happening right now (about a month late, which means it probably won't make GenCon, unfortunately).

Alter Ego

I finally hired an artist and a graphic designer for this age old prototype, though I haven't seen anything from them yet. The game could use some finishing touches, but nothing that would change the major art pieces, so I figured starting art would be ok. There's no deadlude for this one at the moment per se, so maybe starting art now will mean when it comes time, I'll actually make it for once!

Sails and Sorcery

Michael impressed me with the thoroughness he was putting into his mash-up of EmDo and El Grande when he talked about it on the TMG podcast. He didn't really have a title, so I made this one up for now. He didn't want to let me in on the game until he'd gotten it far enough along - perhaps for fear I'd sort of take over the design (that's kind if my MO). In October, he brought the game with him and we played a few times. I think it was an excellent start! He was ready to let me start doing my thing...

Right away I had a few course grained suggestions, some of which we implemented on the spot. Others Michael didn't necessarily agree with. He left the game with me to work on, but my testing was on hiatus at the time, so beyond editing the rules to include what I wanted to try, I wasn't able to do anything.

Come December, Michael was in town again for the holidays, and I sent his prototype back with him, with my rules edit inside, so they could try it in Utah. I don't think they ever got to it though.

Now that I'm playtesting again, I asked for this prototype back, so we could give it some plays.

Worker Learning

I think I've mentioned that I recruited my friend Rick to help co-design one of my more promising ideas. After some good discussion back and forth, some solo testing on his part, and a couple revisions of the prototype, Rick tells me this game just got its first live playtest! Sounds like it went well, and generated good feedback. Rick will be bringing an updated version to Gamestorm next weekend, and after incorporating that feedback, I'll make a prototype and bring it to my group.

I'm excited to see this game in action! But some of the others have a little higher priority, so it might be several weeks before I get to try this one.

Crusaders expansion prototype PDF and rules doc

http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/search/label/KnightsTemplar

I finally sat down and wrote out the rules for the Crusaders expansion I've been testing. It's in the format of my prototype rules for Crusaders, not the finished Crusaders rulebook. Once I'm convinced the design is finished, the next step will be translating it to that format.

For those interested, here is a sneak peak at the expansion rules and prototype PDF:

Crusaders expansion rules v1.0_7-15-18

Crusaders expansion prototype PDF

The major thrust of the expansion is twofold:
1. An all new, more involved Influence action. Some playtesters suggested that just collecting VP for the Influence action was boring. In general I like having an axis in games with multiple paths to victory that is "just points," things like the big buildings in Puerto Rico for example. But for the expansion, I tried out a new version of that action...

Instead of just collecting points, you use Influence to collect influence tokens from the regions on the board, leaving your influence markers behind. These tokens give you 1-time or permanent bonuses to certain actions, and the markers you place allow you to travel more easily through those regions.

This turned out to be pretty cool, but I'm really glad I didn't try to put it into the original game, because I think it complicates things and makes more fiddly.

2. Four new building types. This was the first idea I had for expansion content, way back in January of 2015. I've tweaked it a bit, now the new buildings can be built anywhere, but they're more expensive than the old ones. However, if you build a new building int he same hex as a specific existing building (belonging to ANY player), you get a discount.

The latest effects of the new buildings have been pretty good so far in testing...
* Keep - Take your next Troop for free. There are also 2 additional troops for each player, and the enemy strength tracks are modified so they don't slow down at the top end.
* Chapel - Add an action token to your action wheel
* Vault - Immediately upgrade one of your action wedges, and score VP at the end of the game
* Mill - Remove any other building of this level or less from your board (not level 4 Bank)

I originally wanted them to be buildable ONLY where an OPPONENT had built a specific building, but that didn't work too well when I finally tried it. I was afraid that if you could build a Keep over your own Castle, for example, that players would just do that, and it wouldn't add the interaction I was going for. But I tried it, and it seemed to work out OK.

Finally, I decided it would be better if players could build a Keep (for example) without building a Castle first, even if an opponent hadn't built a Castle, so I tried allowing that, but at a higher cost. That seemed to work out alright as well.

So I'm pretty happy with the different aspects of the expansion, and with the help of my trusty playtesters we came up with a few new Factions to try as well. I have 2 that didn't make the cut in the original game for one reason or another that I might include as well, bringing the total of new factions up to 6.

I could use a title for the expansion, and I'm open to suggestions! Since the new Influence action is central to the expansion, maybe a phrase with the word "Influence" in it would be good? Lance suggested "Divine Influence," which I like quite a bit. Can you beat that?

Quick Crusaders expansion idea so I don't forget!

Last week I tested a first draft of the new Influence action, and while it could use some tweaks, it worked alright.

The other day I thought of something I could add as a reward on the Influence tiles other than simply 1-shot and permanent icons...

What if you could, upon taking an influence tile, immediately distribute one of the other bins on your action wheel?

Timing-wise, I always say that you resolve the action, THEN distribute the action markers. I realize that players frequently do this in the wrong order, distributing first, then resolving the action. I even catch myself doing that sometimes. This idea could be prone to error if players insist on distributing cubes before resolving the action, but maybe this rule will encourage them not to do that, and it shouldn't be too hard to fix if someone does that.

You see, because if you do an influence action that earns the right to distribute a bin, that could put tokens into the current bin, which would further be distributed at the end of your turn. So if you distribute, THEN take the tile (allowing you to distribute some more), you could en up with some cubes in the wrong place.

Realistically it would probably be just 1 cube, and the error might not even be in your favor very often, so maybe I shouldn't care about people who do it wrong.

Anyway, I think this is a neat ability, and I could also add it to some of the expansion buildings -- like maybe all the vaults (the ones that give an upgrade), and the level 3 keep and chapel.

Crusaders - expansion thoughts

Spurred by a request from Michael, who's eyes got a little big at the sight of Pandasaurus' Dinosaur Island expansion kickstarter funding, I have started thinking about expansion content for Crusaders, in case it goes over well upon release.

My first thought was that (a), the game isn't even out yet, and (b) for many reasons, a kickstarter for a Crusaders expansion won't bring in any 2 million dollars... but Michael had a good point that waiting until the game comes out to work on an expansion just means it'll be longer before one comes out... and it would be better to "strike while the iron is hot," so to speak.

So now that I (finally) have declared Old West Empresario (a sequel to Pioneer Days, by a different designer) development to be DONE, I brought my trusty old Crusaders prototype to playtest day. One Two of my testers have played it, but not recently (one of them hadn't played since I was struggling to fix the Wave of Destruction endgame scoring!). Another had never even heard of the game. So a couple of weeks ago I taught them the game anew, just to get them familiar with it, so we could start thinking about expansion content.

Last week, I (finally) made prototype pieces for the only expansion idea I've had so far -- new buildings that can only be built where other players have already built something. I wasn't sure how well these would work, their goal was to add some more interaction (whenever you build, you open a building opportunity for an opponent), as well as some more choices in build paths.

NOTE: If you read the linked post, I had called the building that builds on Churches "Monasteries," but I will be referring to them as "Chapels" instead. Also, I swapped the Marketplace to be the one built on a Farm, not a Bank.

The first game (3 player) we played with them, they didn't seem particularly interesting. For one thing, I didn't like the idea of getting rondel control as you built buildings, so I just left off buildings that you build over Banks altogether, and only used 3 new building types. It didn't help that several players built a lot of Banks, so not many new building opportunities ere opened up. So we didn't really see the new stuff in play very much.

For the second game, a 4th player had arrived, which I figured might lead to more buildings in play, and therefore more building opportunities. Also, we decided it might not be so bad to be able to build the expansion buildings over your own buildings -- that way if you want a Keep, and nobody builds a Castle, you can still build a Keep... You just need to build your own Castle first. So we allowed that. Sure enough, with the ability to overbuild your own buildings, and the extra buildings in play from a 4th player, the new buildings saw a lot more action!

I was worried that if you could simply overbuild your own buildings, that players would simply move-build-build, move-crusade-build-build, and the game wound't be any more interactive than it was before. However, I was happy to note that only about 50% of the new buildings were built on players' own buildings, and the other 50% were built on opponents' buildings. That was pretty cool.

One more tweak we made was this: We felt like, in case of emergency, you ought to be able to build an expansion building even if nobody had built the pre-requisite building yet. To facilitate this, we said you could build the expansion buildings at cost+3 if the appropriate building was not present. After trying that, I felt like +2 would be enough. The final wording will probably be something like this:

Original buildings cannot be built where there is an enemy or a building (from the original rules).
Expansion buildings can be built for [cost] where there are no buildings, or for [discounted cost] if the appropriate building has been built in that hex already (by any player).

I'll show both costs in the upper right corner like this:

[cost +2]

[building: cost]

The Keeps (the ones that give you an upgrade) seemed a little weak. You can get an upgrade any turn you want, and you don't have to afford a building to do it. Building a Keep gave you the upgrade AND a couple of points, but it did seem a little unattractive, so we decided to try upping the point values on that one by +2. This way, if you build a Keep, you get an upgrade, and 3/4/5/6 points (instead of just 1/2/3/4). This also helps the fact that the level IV Keep (1vp per upgrade) maxes out at 6, while the original level IV buildings max out at 8 or higher, and the Church scores 6 points with no work needed.

The Chapels (the ones that give you extra cubes for your action wheel) were pretty cool. I had worried that ability would be super strong, so I made the first one give no effect, while the next two give you a cube. After playing, we didn't think it would be too strong to have a cube on the level I Chapel as well, so we tried adding that. The level 4 Chapel (1vp per wedge with 2+ cubes) also only maxes out at 6 points, and might be really hard to actually max out, so I might raise the VP value of that one by a coupe of points. Or, if the cubes do turn out to be strong, maybe it's ok for that one to score fewer end game points.

We played a 3rd game with those tweaks, and it worked out pretty well! After the game we talked about options for the 4th new building type, because I'd like there to be a new building for each of the original ones. Dave suggested adding powers, similar to my original rondel control, but more like some of the player powers I'd tried (like "you can build two buildings per action"), but I think that's a little too crazy - I'd rather have something you can show with icons. We tossed around other ideas:

* "+Travel"
I thought about how to reward someone who has built up a lot of travel... Dave suggested it might be cute to reward being close to Paris at the end with your Knights (like 2 points per Knight adjacent to Paris), because you generally end the game on the side of the board, and if you had a ton of Travel you could race back.

*  "+Troop"
This would theoretically reward having a lot of troops, but the Farm already does that. but then again, you could build these INSTEAD of Farms, so maybe that's OK. And if you try really hard, maybe you could build all of these AND all your Farms, and score really well off of your Troops. But I didn't want it to score in the exact same way as the Farm, so I thought maybe "score VP according to your biggest troop" might work. I'll probably try that, although it too maxes out at 5vp... maybe I could add some VP to the building to compensate for that.

Before this weeks session I plan to update my prototype again, making all the changes I've been talking about:
* Swapping the Castle effect (+Upgrade) to the building that's built over a Bank (I need a name for that one),
* Upping the VPs on the +Upgrade buildings by 2 each
* Trying the [+Troop/+Troop/+Troop/VP based on biggest Troop] effect for the Keep.
* Listing both costs for the expansion buildings
* maybe upping the VPs on the L4 Keep and Chapels

In addition, I have another idea for expansion content! this one is based on a suggestion that League of Gamemakers member Luke Laurie made, but I had decided not to pursue for the base game. I could replace the Influence action... instead of just collecting points, there could be a token on all (or most?) hexes indicating a number (cost to influence the hex), and an icon. When doing an influence action, you need enough cubes to cover the cost of the hex. When you do it, you take the token and put your player marker (a crest or coat-of-arms) on the hex to show that you have influence over that hex. The cheap tokens (3-4 cost) would have a 1-shot icon that you could discard for a +1 in that action on a future turn. The more expensive ones (5-6 cost) could have a permanent icon for one of the actions that you can use for the rest of the game.

Also, you could travel out of a hex that you have influence over for -1 cost (so influencing hexes helps you move around the board), and there could be a majority bonus at the end of the game for most influenced hexes, just like there is for most of each enemy defeated.

I like the sound of this, but I don't necessarily like the sound of losing the "just gain vps" aspect of the influence action, so I might make it so that you can still do that, OR you can influence a hex.

Finally, I'll want to come up with a few (maybe 4) new faction abilities to add to the game. I have nothing yet for those, the factions that didn't make the cut for the original game are pretty bad. it would be good to come up with a few that interact with the new aspects of the expansion (this new influence thing, or the expansion buildings) somehow. That'll take some more thought, and will have to wait another couple of weeks I think.

I'm excited to be working on a Crusaders expansion!

2017 year in review

A lot of stuff has happened in 2017 in general, some of it good, much of it bad. In my own life, the good stuff includes getting married in March, and now expecting a little boy next May, so I guess that's big news. But as this is my game design blog, I suppose now would be a good time to take a moment and reflect on my experiences in 2017 on the games front.

I didn't keep specific notes or anything, so I'll just go through my calendar and blog posts and see what that reminds me of:

January

I started off the year wrapping up development on Eminent Domain: Oblivion, and coordinating art with Brian Patterson for the tech card illustrations and Ariel Seoane for the graphic design. A few people have grumbled online about how they don't like the look of the new tech illustrations, but as I have said in a couple of different threads already:

The main artists we had used for previous EmDo expansions were no longer available, and I wanted a consistent look within this set. Brian Patterson did all of the illustrations, and yes, he has a sort of cartoony style.

Many of the previous cards are a little bit cartoony, and there's a mix of styles from 5 or 6 different artists in them, so I don't think there will be much of a problem adding these new tech cards into the mix.

And as for the cartoony-ness of them, I kind of wanted that -- to an extent, Oblivion is a parody of government, and most of the time government could best be described as "cartoony."

I think Brian did a great job with these illustrations, I like that the expansion art is internally consistent, and I don't think there'll be any problems incorporating this set into the base game (or playing it with previous sets) based on that, but YMMV.

Also in January, Eminent Domain was featured in a Reddit forum called Game Of The Week, Redux. And I posted about a game idea sparked by an episode of The Game Designers of North Carolina podcast -- however, that game idea hasn't gone anywhere, and I don't expect it will. However, as I describe in the comments on that post, it did spark another game design idea which I think MAY actually go somewhere.

In addition, I was wrapping up rules edits for Harvest, and coordinating with Sergi on Pioneer Days art. I was pushing hard to get all three of those into production in time for a potential GenCon release, and failing that, at least an Essen/BGGcon release.

Outside of gaming, it looks like I flew to Dallas for a friend's divorce trial, a stark contrast to the time I spent on my own wedding preparations that month.

February

After January, I took stock of The List, a sort of compilation of games I've got at the idea stage, design stage, and published titles. I posted an update to kick off February.

Other posts in my design blog this month included:

• That game idea I mentioned above, which grew from the ideas that came to mind listening to that podcast.
• A sort-of formal definition of "Deck Learning," the term I've coined to describe Eminent Domain, which I feel is a significantly different type of deck building than games like Dominion, Ascension, etc.
• A request for Q's for a Casual Q&A, like those Reddit AMA's, but in a more laid back format. Only 1 person asked any questions in the comments.
• A summary of the beginnings of a new game about Joan of Arc, a design which I'd been tinkering with since Essen. It's intended to be a sort of sequel to Orleans, and spoilers: it did go somewhere, but now I've sort of backburnered it.

Not much else notable happened this month. It looks like I recorded a podcast episode with Isaac Shalev, though I don't think it aired until September.

March

I skipped SaltCon last year because it was 1 week before my wedding, which is a bummer, because that is a nice, relaxed convention which gives me a chance to hang out and catch up with my TMG cohorts. For the previous couple of years, Michelle came with me, we stayed at Michael's house, and we enjoyed the convention. I hope we can return in the future.

I think of March as the sort of deadline to get files to the printer in time for GenCon, so I furiously tried to finish Oblivion, Harvest, and Pioneer Days to give them their best shot at that.

I continued to think about that Worker Learning game idea, and had a "Eureka" / "Duh" moment about it, and I made a prototype for that Joan of Arc idea I'd posted about in February.

April

In April I had some promising playtests of the early versions of Joan of Arc: Maid of Orleans, and I updated my prototype accordingly.

I also went to Paris on my honeymoon, and unfortunately got a bit sick there. I did however get my new wife to play a game of Joan of Arc with me at a game cafe though!

May

I kicked off May by joining Lance to record Episode #3 of the TMG podcast.

Blog posts this month included:

• Progress on the Worker Learning game idea
• Follow up on the Casual Q&A post from February -- I answered the Qs from the previous post, and got a few new ones from another individual that I answered in the comments.
• Some thoughts on Minion Games' Manhattan Project dice game design contest. I ended up entering a little Roll & Write / Roll Selection game, just for fun, but that's not the scope of game James was looking for.
• Further development of the Joan of Arc game, including a significant change to the format.

I finished up the month with a trip to Birmingham with Andy, Aaron, and Daniel for UK Games Expo - a neat show, only mildly disturbed due to some terrorist activity nearby the week before.

June

I began the convention season in England at UK Games Expo, and continued in Columbus at Origins, where Andy and I had a number of meetings with designers to listen to game pitches. Not much interested me there, though we did see 2 things which we ended up signing later in the year.

My own design efforts were focused mostly on Deities & Demigods, which I hadn't tested since January, but which I revived at UK Games Expo and concentrated on throughout June, with a little bit of Joan of Arc thrown in for good measure.

July

I spent the first 2 weeks of July vacationing in Dallas and then Seattle. I managed to play a few games... Werewords and Wordsy went well at Michelle's family reunion in Dallas, and I introduced some of my Seattle friends to a new favorite: Barenpark. I also showed off a full art prototype of Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done, which finally hit Kickstarter in July!

As could have been suspected, there was a slight backlash to the theme of Crusaders, but to be honest, it wasn't all that much. While the material holds potentially controversial subject matter, I think that game really sidesteps it -- it's not about the Crusades themselves, it's about the so-called "crusading orders," such as the Knights Templar. It's also not really intended to be historically accurate, though it is based on stuff the Templars did.

In July I updated The List again, since a lot had changed in the first half of 2017.

August

A lot of stuff seemed to happen in August...

• Crusaders finished funding with 4,162 backers pledging a total of $330,691 of support, mostly for the Deluxified version of the game. That's not TMG's BIGGEST kickstarter project, but it's close, and it makes the $48k we raised for Eminent Domain 6 years ago look like child's play.
• I worked with a sculptor on knight and building sculpts for the Deluxified version of Crusaders.
• I also worked with Ariel to get the art and graphic design for the upcoming Homesteaders expansion ready to go.
• I checked production proofs for Eminent Domain: Oblivion, and found (and corrected) an error with the card backs.
• And of course, I attended GenCon with TMG, where Andy and I met with a bunch more designers to listen to their game pitches, and attended 2 nights worth of Publisher Speed Dating.

Most of the Publisher Speed Dating events I've attended have been a bit of a bust for me. Out of 400+ pitches, I'd only been interested in a few games, and of those, even fewer turned into TMG products. This year at GenCon, the signal to noise ratio seemed a lot higher for some reason -- just lucky I guess. There were several games I was interested in, and upon closer examination we took several of them home with us, and ended up signing more than one!

In addition to all of that, I started a new game design (Automatown rules), I revived an old game design (Alter Ego) and enlisted a design hobbyist to do some blind PnP testing of it, I re-posted some nuggets of design wisdom from Matthew Dunstan (with his permission) from a Twitter thread, and I revisited the Casual Q&A idea again.

September

September was similarly busy. This month I...

• Submitted my Roll & Write / Roll Selection game to the Manhattan project dice game contest
• Formalized a regular weekly playtesting group and set up a google sheet to track games played
• Evaluated the various games picked up this convention season
• Continued playing Alter Ego, Deities & Demigods
• Revived the Eminent Domain dice game I made a long time ago, but hadn't touched for four years
• Revisited Casual Q&A one more time

The big ticket item here is probably getting more organized with playtesting. I have been meaning to do that forever, and now I can much more easily track what gets played and when, and by whom.

I ended September by attending RinCon (Brian had a great geeklist from RinCon this year, and I didn't so I'll just link his), for once as an attendee rather than an organizer. I took on the responsibility of running the convention because I wanted it to happen, and it was very relaxing to finally just sit around and play games rather than answer questions and put out fires. Unfortunately, this reward was short lived, because I had to fly to California for a wedding on Saturday morning, so I was only able to enjoy RinCon for 1 day.

October

By comparison to the last couple of months, October sounds fairly uneventful:

I skipped Essen this year -- TMG usually sends 4 people, and this year we had a booth, and so wanted to send someone new to help run it, so I stayed home to make space. It's too bad, because two of the games I put a lot of work into, Harvest and Pioneer Days, made their debut at Essen. I hope to return in the future.

Instead of flying to Germany, I finally started updating Terra Prime for a new life as a prequel to Eminent Domain (it will be called Eminent Domain Origins), and I kept working on the Eminent Domain dice game ("Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory"?). I worked almost exclusively on those two games in the month of October.

November

November was a big month for conventions for me. I kicked it off with a trip to Seattle for Sasquatch, and followed that up with my annual trip to Dallas for BGGcon. Michelle came with me to both of those this year, and we took a day trip from BGGcon to Rockwall for Michelle's 3 year old niece's birthday party.

I wrote a post examining variable player powers, since I'm currently working on adding them to two different TMG games, and I started testing those, while continuing to test Eminent Domain Origins and Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory.

I had another new game idea as well, but this one is not as exciting or interesting as some, so it'll probably just sit in the toolbox, waiting to be combined with something else down the road.

December

I rounded out the year playing a lot fewer games than I normally do, but I did get a lot of testing done of the upcoming TMG game Embark (one of the summer pick ups) with player powers, and I worked with an illustrator and a graphic designer to get that game put together for submission to the manufacturer. I'll be wrapping that up in the next couple of weeks.

2018

I'm starting off the new year with 1 game project finishing art, two more about to start, two games in production, and two just waiting to be sent to the manufacturer. If things go well, I should see all of the following games (each of which I've had a heavy hand in) on store shelves by the end of the year:

• Eminent Domain: Oblivion
• Crusaders: Thy Will be Done
• Homesteaders 10th Anniversary Edition (by Alex Rockwell)
• Homesteaders: New Beginning (expansion, by Sean McCarthy)
• Eminent Domain Origins (Terra Prime 2nd Edition)
• Embark (in the Gullsbottom universe, by Philip duBarry)
• Old West Empresario (by Stan Kordonskiy, presented as a sequel to Pioneer Days)
• And maybe even Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory.

As for my designs, once these are all out of the way, I hope to return to Alter Ego, Deities & Demigods, Joan of Arc, and maybe Automatown.

And of course, I'll be doing development on another couple of TMG games.

On the theme of Crusaders

The Crusades were a thing that happened in history, and with them are associated myriad things -- not the least of which were atrocities committed in the name of religious war. There are some who have seen the title of my new game on kickstarter, Crusaders: Thy Will be Done, and assuming it is based on those atrocities, have decided it's not for them -- which, to be clear, is perfectly fine. However, just to let everyone know where I was coming from, here's how I came to that theme and title.  If you are a long-time reader of my blog, then you probably know this already: 

Originally, the theme was the Knights Templar. Players would increase the influence of the Templars until such time as King Philip freaks out and disbands them. However, as players competed with each other to win the game, it didn't make a lot of sense for them all to be Templars, so I looked up a bunch of other similar factions. Sure, they weren't all active at the same time, and they didn't all suffer the same fate as the Knights Templar -- but this was never intended to be historically accurate to begin with, so I took some artistic license there. But now that there were other factions, I needed a title that made sense, one that incorporated various different militaristic orders of knights, and preferably one which sounded cool. "Crusaders" made sense, as many of those orders were notably involved with the crusades.

That said, the game is mostly about those order building up their influence, not about the crusades themselves (and the atrocities involved there). Hence the name "Crusaders," and not "Crusades." Unfortunately, I guess those two words are similar enough, and the proximity of those orders to the action of the crusades is close enough, that some people are not going to be interested in the game just based on the theme -- and again, that's fine. There's a thread on BGG about it, which is pretty civil as complaint threads go. It's odd, on the one hand I have people saying "how can you have a game about the crusades that doesn't include the Holy Land on the map!?" (i.e. it's not realistic enough). And on the other hand I have people saying "how can you make a game glorifying wars based on hate?" (i.e. it's too realistic).

I'd take a lot of flack if I said the game wasn't about the crusades. I mean, it's called "Crusaders," and there's a "crusade" action in which you fight against [enemies that wikipedia told me those orders fought against]. So I've been saying that it's LESS about the crusades, and MORE about the orders building themselves up. But even if that information would assuage some people's concerns (and for some, it won't), they probably wouldn't get that far before getting a bad taste from the title and perceived theme :/

This is the first time I've had to wrestle with this kind of dynamic on one of my games... nobody complained about the potential genocide involved in annexing planets in Eminent Domain, and nobody worried about whether the rail workers in Isle of Trains were paid a fair wage. I've played a host of games with potentially problematic themes or dynamics, some, like the slave cards in Five Tribes, spurred a lot of discussion in various forums, while others, like assassins in Five tribes, notably didn't. 

Maybe I'm naive, but when I learned and played Puerto Rico so many years ago, it did not even occur to me that the "colonists" were de facto slaves. I just assumed they were your "workers", which meant they got paid -- just outside the scope of the game. Only years later did I notice people pointing out that the pieces used to represent the colonists were dark brown in color. I never considered that that might have been a deliberate choice, or have any meaning to the game. Even still, Puerto Rico was played by thousands, and topped the charts for a decade, despite this whole colonist/slave thing.

But I digress... As far as Crusaders is concerned, I reiterate that from my point of view, the game is about the militaristic orders building up influence until eventually disbanded by the king. I do not support the atrocities associated with the crusades, but neither do I think this game glorifies them. That was certainly not my intent.

I hope that people aren't being mislead by the theme of this game! But if you are, then maybe my comments above will help give a better idea of the extent to which the theme applies. And if it's still not your thing, then that's fine -- plenty of other games to play!

Crusaders: Thy Kickstarter be Funded

TMG has been seeing some success with our Deluxified(TM) line of games...

Orleans Deluxe was (and still is) a big hit. Yokohama Deluxe set a record for TMG first-day KS funding ($85,000) as well as total funding for the project ($430,000). The people have spoken, and what they've said was basically "I don't want to miss out on TMG Deluxified(TM) stuff!".

As such, I was super excited with the decision to make my next game, Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done, a TMG Deluxified(TM) product! I was sure this meant that a lot of people would go in on it, and the game would end up being played and enjoyed by a wide range of people. And based on Yokohama's performance, I was pretty sure we'd see some decent funding numbers as well.

Now on Kickstarter!

But Yokohama had been released by the original publisher, a bunch of people had already played and liked it, and I would wager Hisashi Hiyashi is a bigger name than Seth Jaffee. So I did NOT expect Crusaders to outperform Yokohama's first-day AND second day funding! Crusaders hit $85,000 by 5pm on launch day, and hit $100,000 by the time I woke up the next morning.

But I guess it makes sense. With each Deluxified(TM) project, we gain more followers. More people who miss out on the deluxe copies and regret it. More people who get excited for the next one.

I hope this trend continues, it would be great if my game holds the record for biggest funding level in TMG history, at least until the next Deluxified(TM) kickstarter ;)

And I think there's a strong chance it will continue... the stretch goals are really nice, and they certainly add a lot of value to the box. Here's the current stretch goal image showing what we've unlocked so far, and the next few items which we'll unlock if we reach the funding levels indicated:

Stretch goal graphic from KS page - 7/15/2017

We have some more ideas for good, useful things to add if and when we exceed $230,000 as well.

So, if you read this blog, then you've probably seen me ramble on about my Knights Templar game for the last 4 or 5 years. If you haven't done it yet, check out the kickstarter project and see how it's shaped up!

I don't like to ask people to buy something, but please take a look and see if it seems like your thing. If not, no big deal. The only favor I'd ask is that if you know someone who might be interested, please let them know this exists so they can check it out too!

Thanks!

General update to The List

About a year ago I revisited The List to take stock of the status of my game projects. I thought it might be nice to update that list a little bit, as some of the games on it have made some progress...

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)
- Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done (BGG)
- Isle of Trains: All Aboard (expansion)

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

Current Active Designs:
- Deities and Demigods
- Eminent Domain: Oblivion (expansion)
- The Pony Express
- Odysseus: Winds of Fate (BGG)
- Alter Ego (BGG link)

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:
- Rondel Role Selection
- 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:
- Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done (BGG)
I'm excited to say that Crusaders is moving forward at TMG! Adam McIver, now a full time TMG employee, has been spending some of his time working on the art and graphic design of the game (I shared the box cover recently), and it looks fantastic!
- Isle of Trains: All Aboard (expansion)
Dan Keltner and I finished our expansion to Isle of Trains for Dice Hate Me/Greater Than Games almost a year ago, and we've recently been told that it will finally be on Kickstarter in the next week or so! The final title of the expansion is Isle of Trains: All Aboard.
- Terra Prime (BGG)
In the near future (perhaps for TMG's 10th anniversary) we will be bringing back Terra Prime as a 2nd edition, with updated rules, expansion included, and set in the Eminent Domain universe. It'll be called Eminent Domain: Origins.

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 between me an another designer on "IP rights" sort of nixed that deal. 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 (Wok Star, Paperback, Burgle Bros, and most recently Fugitive). Since we made this game he has taken it in a bit of a different direction, and I think he might be making that version of Now Boarding his next project.
- Suburban Sprawl
Based on another DHMG/GTG contest - this time a dexterity game (which uses 57 cards, plus score sheets)- I designed Suburban Sprawl with Matthew Dunstan. In Suburban Sprawl you toss cards into play to build Residential, Commercial, Industrial, and Civic buildings. I was going for a light, quick game with a sort of SimCity feel that's easy to learn and play, and at that I think we succeeded. Unfortunately, we didn't win the contest :(

Current Active Designs:
- 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 around a map in an effort to complete quests and control cities. Matthew Dunstan has been working with me on this one, and it has taken shape quite well, dare I say it's nearing completion. I still would like to add some more interesting board elements (terrain, or at least water), and I have yet to try the "expansion module" featuring Hades, a deity that was cut from the base game.
- 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 once Exotica was in production I finally started prototyping and trying it. I've gone through an iteration or two so far, and I think I'm close to something I could call the final phases of development, but I've been concentrating on other games lately so this one hasn't been played in a while.
- Alter Ego (BGG link)
Mike's always been a fan of this one. Alter Ego was finally shaping up, but it hasn't hit the table in a while now. I think with a little TMG Utah input and some nice art, this could potentially be ready for a GenCon 2017 release, but looking at the release schedule, that seems really ambitious (I don't think I can count on TMG development help on this one... too much going on over there).

Recent Designs That Are Not On The Front Burner:
- 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.

No fun blog post title, just a Board Games Insider interview, and some fancy art for Crusaders.

 A couple of weeks ago I recorded a quick interview with Ignacy Trzewik for Board Games Insider's new special interview episode series. That interview went live yesterday, so check it out and let me know what you think. (Is there an easy way to embed audio from someone else's web page here? Or is that like stealing or something?)

At the end of that interview I mentioned that I was giddy for another Seth Jaffee title (Crusaders) to be moving forward. Adam McIver has started on the art for it, and has been knocking it out of the park (as per usual).

 

I'll just leave this right here...

Yes, I used the word "giddy" (Michelle made fun of me for that), and it's true. I didn't realize how excited I would be to have another designer credit under my belt. I figured with Terra Prime (watch for the re-release as Eminent Domain Origins, coming soon!), Eminent Domain, Escalation, Exotica, Microcosm, and Isle of Trains (watch for Isle of Trains: All Aboard, coming to Kickstarter soon!), as well as all my developer credits (don't worry, I won't inundate you with those here), that the novelty would have worn off a bit.

But no. Maybe because it's been a while, or maybe because most of my design credits are for the same line of games... for whatever reason, I'm finding a feeling of excitement and yes, giddiness, at the thought of my next game coming out.

And it might help that I really like Crusaders. I think it's good. "Good" like I enjoy playing it over and over, but also "good" like I think it has a good chance of going over really well with players, leading to commercial success, and all the riches and popularity that accompanies being a "big name" game designer :)

Yeah, right. Someone on BGG the other day said they were buying Exotica and contributing toward my Lamborghini... I was like "Lamborghini? I am just hoping I can pay my bills this month!" :)

But wouldn't it be cool? Every time I have a game come out, there's a small part of me that thinks it would be so cool if that game somehow blew up, and really did lead to fame and fortune! Realistically though, the best I can hope for is that players do like the game, and that it sells enough to warrant reprints and becomes an evergreen title for TMG. Note that most games DON'T do that, many games don't get a reprint, and those that do may not get a 2nd reprint. If Crusaders warrants a reprint and an expansion, I'll count that as a success!

Crusaders and Oblivion print and play opportunities on Tasty Testers Guild!

We have something which I think is an underutilized resource... it's the Tasty Testers Guild (number 1976) over at BoardGameGeek.

In the Tasty Testers Guild we sometimes post PnP files for upcoming TMG games when they're ready for blind testing. It has worked well in the past for games such as Exotica and Battlecruisers, but sometimes I put a game up there and get little if any response.

I currently have PnP files for two of my upcoming games (through TMG of course), and if you follow this blog you will recognize both:

Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done

Crusaders is fully blind-test ready, with a rules doc as well as up to date PDF files, and the game is very nearly in its final form. If anyone has a really great suggestion for the rules I'd consider it, but I'm mostly concerned with perfecting the game end trigger timing (number of influence in the supply at each player count) and balance of the faction powers. I probably won't include all 18 of them in the game -- I might cut it down to the best or most fun and interesting 10 or so.

If you play, please let me know what you think, where the game is fun and where it wasn't, which faction powers you liked best and least, and what you think of the game end trigger (was the game too long or too short, and if so by how much?).

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And now that Exotica has arrived and interest in EmDo is stirring:

Eminent Domain: Oblivion

Oblivion has come a long way, through several distinct iterations over the last 4 years or so. I finally have the Agenda system where I think I want it, that part of the game seems to be working very well.

I have only recently added all the Prestige planets, the whole idea of Annexing planets, an all of the tech cards, so it's likely some of them are too good or not good enough, or that I'm trying to add too much to the game.

If you play this one, please first off tell me if the description in the Tasty Testers Guild thread made sense (sorry, I don't really have a rules doc for this one yet), and tell me what you think of the Politics role, the Agendas, the Annexing of planets, the effects on the Prestige planets, and the existence of (and usefulness of) the Prestige tech cards.

Now would be a perfect time to start getting some feedback on both of those games!

Thanks, and I look forward to seeing feedback in the Tasty Testers Guild!