ONE 18-card game design jam, THREE microgames!

18-card game jam

In the KBGames Community discord they just did an 18 card game design jam -- which is an exercise to think about designing a game under certain constraints - much like we used to do with the Game Design Showdown at BGDF.com back in the day. The only restraint on this jam was to use 18 cards and nothing else, but it was made clear that this restriction was more like a guideline, and not a hard and fast rule...

Worker Placement Microgame

I've posted recently about the progress I've made on a Micro Worker Placement game, inspired by an offhand comment I read on Twitter. I haven't really played that game again since that last update (I'm still keen to see how it plays after whittling it down to 16 cards in the deck), but I know that the game works, and isn't terrible, but I'm not sure whether I can claim it's really very fun, though I enjoy it.

I figured I might submit that Micro Worker Placement game to the jam... is that cheating? I came up with it before the jam started, but I didn't spend any more time on it than would have been allotted. The current version only uses 17 "real" cards, but it does use 8 more to track things, so it really comes in at 25 cards, which is over the limit by almost 40%. Maybe that's fine, but the point of the jam is to come up with a new idea. I wasn't particularly interested in making another 18 card game, but lo and behold, an idea came to me...

PYL Microgame

Inspired perhaps by all the Living Forest I'd been playing on BGA (that's a good game, by the way, and recently won the Kennespiel des Jahres!), I thought maybe I could make an 18 card Push Your Luck game with that blackjack mechanism like in Living Forest or Flip City.

So I did that. Of the 18 cards, 2 are for tracking your gems and points (you need 8 tokens, 4 per player, to track those things on these cards), 1 is a double sided "objective" card, and the remaining 15 make up the deck. There are 5 cards each of red, blue, and gold colored cards, and each card has a gem, and some number of letters on it. Originally each card's gem matched the card color, but then I decided to mix it up a bit, so for example, 3 of the 5 red cards have red gems, but 1 has a blue gem and one has a gold gem.

On your turn, you start flipping cards off the deck until you chose to stop, or until you "bust" by getting 6 or more of the same letter (A, B, or C). You are allowed to pay a gold gem to veto a card as its drawn (set it aside by the deck), then either stop drawing or draw again (up to you). This could be used to keep from busting, or to keep a particular color from scoring (see below).

After you stop, you collect gems: all gems of 1 color if you busted, two colors if you didn't. Then you get the opportunity to use the objective card to pay some gems for a star (stars are victory points in the game, it's a race to get 9 of them): 2 red + 1 gold on one side, 2 blue + 1 gold on the other, after using the card, you flip it over. Finally, you discard the cards and check to see if any colors score. 

The discard pile is kept organized - sorted by card color, and splayed so you can see the information on each card. This information allows you to make informed push-your-luck decisions. After each turn, if there are 4 (or all 5) cards of a color in the discard pile, then that color will score. It's possible more than one color will score at a time!

When you score a color, the player with the most gems of that color gets a star, and loses some gems of that color. The colors have a rock-paper-scissors relationship for breaking ties - for example, if tied for red gems, then the player with the most blue gems wins the point for red. Originally the rule was that you lose one gem when scoring a color, but once you started to get a big lead in a color, it felt pretty easy to keep it, and losing just 1 gem didn't close the gap very much. I'm torn between upping that to 2 gems lost, and something even more impactful, like 1/2 your gems (round up), or even all your gems. For my next test I'll try losing 2 gems and see if that feels like enough. Maybe losing 1 gem is fine after all.

I have to say, this game has just worked ever since the first playtest. The only tweak I made was to up the bust threshold to 6. I started with 5, but that led to a lot of turns where you only draw 2-3 cards and they weren't very interesting. 6 is much more dynamic!

Not only does this game work - that is to say it's a fully functional game - but I think it might actually be pretty good. As I've played more and more games I've found there's definitely some subtlety to it - when to stop not just to avoid busting, but to control which colors score, when to hit into a probable bust, when to spend gems to veto a card, and even when and whether to use the objective card.

I figured this might be a better candidate to submit to the 18 card jam, partly because I came up with it in the week between when the jam was announced and when it actually began (so that's closer, right?), and partly because it's 18 cards instead of 25... however it does require 8 tokens to track gems and stars. Still, that's less cheat-y, isn't it?

Lane Combat Microgame - Rift Paper Scissors

Another game I've been playing a lot of (and enjoying!) on BoardGameArena lately is Riftforce. To be honest, I've never been a big fan of lane combat games, I haven't even played very many of them. I liked SolForge I guess, but I don't recall playing any others I really enjoyed much.

But Riftforce is very cool. You start by drafting a team of 4 guilds, and they encourage different teams by (a) removing 1 team from the draft each game, and (b) dealing you a random guild to start off with - so you can't be sure to get your favorite team. Though truth be told, a lot of the combinations don't feel terribly different from each other, and in any given game I feel like I effectively ignore one of the guilds in my deck, so I'm not sure the games feel all that different to me. I look forward to playing with the expansion some day, which adds a bunch more guilds... and I even had a little fun thinking up custom guilds, something this game lends itself to easily for anyone so inclined. Maybe I'll make a new blog post to share those. But I digress...

Since I was thinking of 18 card games for this game jam, my mind ran through a few main mechanisms to see if anything jumped out at me as a way to do them in a small deck game. So of course, my mind quickly jumped to the idea of a small deck lane combat game, like a mini-version of Riftforce. Since I didn't have the componentry to track damage on all the cards like in Riftforce, I thought maybe I could use a Rock Paper Scissors relationship to resolve little combats.

A long time ago, after Brainfreeze became an iPad app, I had some thoughts about a follow up game - specifically for digital implementation - in which you would have cavalry, archers, and footmen cards in a deck, and you would place them in different lanes (probably 3), or else send them to train, which would occupy the card for a few seconds, then level it up. Every so often (maybe every second for example), the computer would "resolve" each lane, comparing the bottommost cards and removing the loser - where a level 2 card would beat a level 1 card, but if both cards are the same level, then there'd be a rock-paper-scissors relationship to determine who wins (in the case of a tie, like two level 1 archers against each other, maybe they're both removed). If you had cards on a lane when it resolved and the opponent did not, then you would get a point. Come to think of it, that decade old idea had some similarities with Riftforce!

So in my lane combat microgame (affectionately known as Rift Paper Scissors, due to the RPS combat resolution and the Riftforce inspiration), I figured there could be 3 battlefields, and you would have a small hand of cards that are either Rock, Paper, or Scissors. On your turn you would play 2 cards of the same type (rock, rock), play any 1 card and activate it, or discard a card to activate 2 cards of that type on the board. Activating a card meant attacking an opponent's card in the same lane. A 4th option you had on your turn was to resolve 1 lane and refill your hand. When resolving a lane, which was represented by a face don card from the deck, the player with the most cards in it would score it, which would give you some kind of effect, as well as some stars (vp). When there were no longer enough cards to refill the lanes, the game would be over, and the player with the most stars would win.

This first draft of the game did not work at all - it was far to common that you simply had the right card to dominate any card your opponent played ("you played Scissors there? I'll play Rock there and activate it"). And the effects I chose for winning a lane didn't even make sense - I had put "draw a card," but by definition you'd be filling your hand when you score it, so that wasn't great.

I made a 2nd attempt, expanding the cards to a sort of 6-way RPS... I gave each card a letter (A-F), and each letter had 1 letter it was really good against (deal 2 damage), one letter it was terrible against (deal 0 damage), and 4 letters it was evenly matched with (deal 1 damage). The 1st damage on a card would turn it sideways, the 2nd damage would remove it from the game. 

When I made the prototype for this, I started from the file that had red borders for rock, blue for paper, and yellow for scissors, so I ended up with 3 copies of each card, one with each colored border. I figured maybe the way to go was again, like Riftforce, to say you could play or activate 2 cards of the same letter, or the same color, or play 1 card and activate it. In general, this felt a little better with respect to game flow - the cards started to build up in play, but there was still something very wrong with the format..

In discussing this with a friend, Mohan suggested drawing 3 cards and simultaneously playing all 3 of them, 1 to each lane. That sounds potentially promising, so I might try something like that next. Perhaps after 3 rounds of placing the cards in their respective lanes, each lane could resolve by comparing the front-most cards head-to-head over and over (like my old iPad game idea), until only 1 side has cards remaining, and that side wins the lane.

With only 18 cards, at that point I think you'd have to shuffle everything up and begin again, maybe keep doing that until someone has won X lanes? Most of these ideas would work better with a larger deck, but with a larger deck, I might as well just play Riftforce!

ANYWAY... back to the game jam

The lane combat idea seemed like the best candidate to submit to the game jam, since I thought of it during the actual timeframe of the jam, and because it conforms to the actual rules of the jam (18 cards, nothing else), BUT I haven't been able to get it working, so I went ahead and submitted the Push-Your-Luck game instead.

So that's what I've been thinking about the last few weeks!

3 new ideas... 1 new game! ... Part 3: Micro Worker Placement

 In part three of my 3-part post, the 3rd (and final) idea I'll discuss was inspired by another comment on Twitter, this one about designing an 18 card game. I recall that Eminent Domain: Microcosm was originally a 16 card game with some tokens -- those tokens became cards as well, and in all the game has 32 cards and nothing else.

This time, the idea is a worker placement game, where each card has a worker on one side, and a placement space (or "building") on the other:

Micro Worker Placement

In this idea, a deck of 18 cards would be shuffled, and some cards would be dealt out building-side-up to make a board. Here were my initial thoughts on how it could work: 

Use a 3x3 board of worker spaces, then that leaves 9 workers for the players to use.

If it's a 2p game, maybe 9 is more than enough, maybe you start with only 2 workers, an can get 1-2 more over the course of the game, and the rest of the cards can go into the board (and maybe they add in over time, like Agricola)

OR, maybe (like Microcosm) you DON'T start with workers, but they're in a deck/supply, and on your turn you draft 1 and place it on one of the spaces

Obviously, the spaces resolve based on what's printed, but maybe they get better based on color matching or printed info on the workers/spaces.

Maybe you play multiple rounds, where each round is:

1. Shuffle all 18 cards, deal a board
2. draft and place 8 or 9 workers
3. reshuffle for next round

If you draft and then play a worker from a supply, there's no real ownership of workers... but there IS a record of the type/color of workers in play -- like Splendor, perhaps that could matter: Something is cheaper for each Gold worker in play, or you get more wood for each brown worker in play. All of that doesn't care who placed the worker

Quick progress

While visiting a design-minded friend, I described this idea, and we had a pretty good discussion about it. Mohan talked bout defensive drafting, and we ended up with an idea to have 4 or 5 buildings in the supply, and on your turn you'd choose 1 to add to the board (pre-seeded with 3 buildings), then you'd choose another card from the supply, turn it face down, and place it as a worker into a building. This sounded neat, because it would offer multiple chances to draft each turn (which building to remove from the supply and turn into a worker, then which building on the board to block up with that worker).

Since it seemed so simple, we ended up making a quick mock-up and giving it a try! The first draft game worked alright, so when I got home, I made a few tweaks for version 1.1, and made a Tabletop Simulator module for the game. Perhaps I'll get a chance to play some more soon. Here's what the current version (v1.1, as of 5/22/22) looks like:

GOAL:

Be the first player to gain 4 Stars. Gain stars by accumulating resources of 3 types, and exchanging them for stars.

SETUP:

1. Shuffle deck and deal 3 buildings into play
2. Deal 4 (or 5?) more buildings into supply
3. Take turns until there is 1 card left in supply
4. Reshuffle cards and repeat setup

TURNS:

1. Place 1 building from supply into play, adding it to the board
2. Place another card from supply face down (as a worker) in an unoccupied building in play
3. Resolve that building as much as possible
4. Replace the 2 buildings from the deck

• Use tracker cards to track resources (rotate/flip as needed)
• When getting more than 7 of a resource, gain a star and reset that resource to 0 (extra is lost)
• Note that some buildings let you exchange resources for stars at a better rate than that
• First to 4 stars is the winner

Untested ideas - already

While I'm pretty confident that the above game will work (indeed, v .0 technically worked), I'm not sure it'll be any good. I've already got some ideas of things I might like to try out once I get a playtest of the above v1.1 in:

It might be nice if the 3 different resources had a different feel or flavor. For example, maybe overshooting a resource dial (getting to 8+), instead of just getting a star, maybe 1 resource gives you 2 stars, one gives a star and another resource of your choice and the 3rd gives you 3 resources of your choice (then you play to 7 stars instead of 4, probably)

Currently there's no much in the way of "player positions" in the game... you temporarily have certain resources, but those are ephemeral, and it doesn't strike me as being really enough to base your moves on. But if you gained power/benefit somehow as you ratcheted up your trackers, then that might give a more lasting effect of your actions, and make it matter more whether you went for red or for blue. I've been talking to Keith Burgun, finally learned his 2p card game Dragon Bridge, and playtested his next evolution of that game into a deck building game. Dragon Bridge is pretty cool, actually -- it's a back-and-forth game where you're on a bridge with your opponent, and there's a dragon at one end, and you either want to push your opponent into the Dragon end of the bridge, or escape through the other end. However, every once in a while the dragon moves, making both of those objectives more difficult.

I wondered if I could take a lesson from Dragon Bridge and apply it to this worker placement game. I think what I'd need is incentive to go for one resource over the others, where that incentive changes over time. Well, it might take a few more cards (just 1?), but I think I figured out ho that could work:

Of the 3 resources, let's treat one of them like an "econ" strategy, where you build up some sort of resource, and then later turn that into power somehow. Maybe that's the resource which, when you overshoot it, you gain 3 resources of another type instead of stars.

Then let's treat the other 2 as sort of opposed to each other, maybe blue and red. Like in Dragon Bridge, where you're MOVING toward escape, and BUMPING your opponent toward the dragon, only in this case, each of those is just ratcheting up a tracker. 

So what if there were another tracker card, which was red on one side and blue on the other. Like the resource trackers that you rotate and flip to track your resources (0->1->2->3-FLIP->4->5->6->7->REWARD), this red/blue tracker would count down and flip. This countdown tracker could be an always-available worker placement space (maybe one that can take multiple workers) that lets you exchange a particular resource for stars at a really good rate (so it's great to use it) - and which resource it takes depends on which side it's on (red vs blue).

Since the other worker placement spaces basically let you gain resources, and trade them back and forth (or trade them for stars), this would be kinda like "I'm building up X, because that's what's "good" right now -- but pretty soon, the card will flip, and Y will be better, so then I might try and exchange my X for Y to score that better," like you're switching direction

Thinking about it even further, maybe the effect shouldn't be a worker placement space, but instead (or in addition?) should be that when you collect your 8th resource of a particular type, it should be much better if that countdown tracker matches the resource you pegged than if it doesn't. Like maybe you get +1 or +2 stars in addition to what you were already going to get. So based on whether you think the card will flip too soon, you might do well to stick with what you were pursuing (X or Y, or Z which is Econ, which would help you get more X or Y), or you might do well to try and exchange it, via some building that says like "pay 3 X, gain 4 Y" or something. Or maybe it could act as a modifier for the buildings that allow an exchange of that resource for stars (like: "pay 1 less resource of that type, get +1 star")

Some of that might add incentive to go for one of those 2 resources over the other. But they key to Dragon Bridge is that the dragon moves. Without that aspect, it's just a game of Tug-o-War. So in this game, the "dragon moving" would be that card flipping over, reversing which of the resources are super-efficient to go for. Some effect that happens regularly could tick down that tracker, which would go 4->3->2->1->FLIP, the card would flip over and the countdown reset. I'd like for that trigger to be intuitive or elegant and easy to remember.. Here are a few thoughts that might work:

• Whenever anyone flips over a tracker card for any reason (going from 3 resources to 4, overshooting a resource tracker, or spending down from 4+ to 3 or less)
• Whenever someone buys a star
• Some buildings could say to advance (or turn back) the countdown timer as part of their effect

There may be other possible triggers, maybe some combination of those will make sense when I try it.

If I can manage, in the scheme outlined above, I'd like to differentiate "red" and "blue" more than just "this one's "better" right now because of the state of the countdown timer" as well. As I said, maybe overshooting red could give you *2* stars instead of just 1, while blue gives you 1 star and 1 resource (or you steal a resource from the opponent?). Maybe along with that, red is slightly harder to collect a lot of at a time. Maybe blue-gaining actions tend to steal resources from your opponent, or otherwise make things harder for them?

Oh, and one more thought... perhaps the effectiveness of some buildings, at least in part, could be tied to how many of a particular resource you already have.

Like maybe resource Z is good at getting more resources (economy)  so maybe a building says something like "gain Z/2 units of X, or gain 1 Z" (meaning if you have 3 Z, you'd get 2X, but if you have 7 Z, you 'd get 4X).

Then there could be buildings for X and Y that somehow care how much you have already, like "gain Y/2 units of Y" perhaps? Or "gain X/3 stars, then lose 3X"?

I'm sure more of this will become clear with a little playtesting. In a way, it might be cleaner just to have a simpler, more straightforward microgame like v1.1 as-is, but all of this sounds good to me right now.

Eminent Domain: Microcosm - on Kickstarter through October 17th!

Two months ago I presented Eminent Domain: Microcosm, inviting you to play the game with full art prototype copies at GenCon in the TMG demo room.


Now I'm happy to announce that as of this morning, Microcosm is on Kicksarter!

* For a mere $10 you can pick up a copy of my newest game.
* For only $6 more you can get a 2nd copy!
* While you're at it, you can acquire Eminent Domain for just $30...
* And Escalation for only $20...
* Or both for only $40! what a smokin' deal!

In addition, there's a pledge level where you get 2 copies of Microcosm, as well as a limited edition (Kickstarter version) of Dungeon Roll, complete with the Mimic box and all the Kickstarter extras. That pledge level is $46.

Why is there a Dungeon Roll pledge level? Good question! And I have an answer for you...

Inside the Microcosm box you'll find not just the 34 cards for the game, but several TMG promos as well:

* 5 New Base Game Scenarios for Eminent Domain + 3 Politics cards
* 5 cards for the upcoming Eminent Domain: Battlecruisers card game by Philip duBarry
* And 1 Time Traveling hero for Dungeon Roll!

Is this a sneaky way to sell more copies of Dungeon Roll? Well, maybe... but isn't everything a company that sells stuff does really just a sneaky (or not-so-sneaky) way to sell more stuff?

I prefer of it as a sneaky way to sell Microcosm to people who like Dungeon Roll :)

A word on shipping...

As everyone knows, shipping is very expensive. The additional charge to ship Microcosm internationally (anywhere non-US) is just $4, which sounds like a pretty good deal to me. Unfortunately, due to logistics and shipping, the add-ons of EmDo & Escalation, and the Dungeon Roll pledge level, are all US only.

The good news is that the existing games (EmDo, Escalation, and Dungeon Roll) will ship just 4 weeks after the close of the kickstarter project! Only Microcosm needs to go through the manufacturing process.

So check out the Microcosm kickstarter project, and if it looks good to you, back it! Heck, those promos by themselves would cost $15 or more, and for $16 you get 2 sets of them AND 2 copies of Microcosm! It's like we're just giving it away!

But you better hurry up - we're using that Quickstarter format again (I really do like that format), so the project will only be live for 9 days. So tell your friends to check it out!

One small step for games, One giant leap for game kind!

In 2012, Lover Letter and Coup came out and grabbed the attention of the hobby game world. These two games have basically defined a new genre of gaming - a genre that's always existed, but until now hasn't really been "a thing." These two games have started a "microgame" revolution, and over the last year more and more people have jumped on board.

What is a "microgame?" Simply put, a microgame is a game with minimal components and a minimal footprint. Love Letter and Coup consist of just 15 or 16 cards and some tokens, they are highly portable, don't take very long, but still provide a fun and interesting game experience.  As such, these types of games make excellent fillers - they fit in nicely while waiting for people to arrive, or while another game wraps up. They're also great to take on the go, so you can always have a game on hand. Most of these microgames can be played almost anywhere, not taking up much table space.

Over the last year or so, the whole idea of microgames has become very popular. Many games have been promoted with portability as a selling point, and people are excited to get a lot of bang for just a little buck. As it happens, these low component games tend to come with a lower price tag as well, and when the prices of board games have been climbing, I'm sure the lower cost of entry is a factor. Right this minute I'm listening to Dice Hate Me's State of Games podcast which is all about mini, micro, and portable games, in which Chris, Darrell, and TC each list off their favorite portable games.

Michael is a fan of this format, and to take it a step further he's happy to have found a way to deliver such a game in an affordable manner. So long as a game does not exceed 1/4" in thickness and 3 ounces in weight, the USPS considers it a letter with a non-machinable surcharge rather than a parcel, which makes a huge difference in shipping cost. He's already leveraged this discovery in 2 Kickstarter projects: Dungeon Roll Winter Promo had 5 cards and a punchboard, and Michael's own Werewolf style game, Templar Intrigue, had just 10 cards. Due to the inexpensive shipping and minimal components of these games, Michael has been able to use a Kickstarter format he's been wanting to use for a long time: Pay what you want. He's included a minimum just to cover delivery, but he's allowed backers to pay whatever they want beyond that. Those 2 projects were successful, so TMG is at it again with Coin Age, by Adam McIver. Coin Age is currently on Kickstarter, and it has caught fire - the game consists of merely a map card and pocket change.

Edit: Due to the overwhelming success of the Kickstarter project so far, an additional map has been added, and we're likely to reach another stretch goal to add a 3rd!

This format is beginning to catch on, and mini- or microgames have been seen on Kickstarter from several publishers. Games such as Council of Verona, from Crash Games, for example. Or their 5 card so called "nanogame" Where Art Thou Romeo in the same universe (currently on Kickstarter as well). Patrick Nickell has embraced the Pay What You Want format for WATR as well.

As I've posted before, I've thrown my hat in the microgame ring... MicroCiv is a 2 player (maybe 3 player) civ game with just 18 cards and 16 tiles, which I will eventually re-theme to the Eminent Domain universe. In addition to that, I designed a free game for my Twitter followers called Quick Change, which uses nothing but 10 coins and 3 dice per player. I'm playing around with a card game similar to Quick Change which is playable with a standard playing card deck.

TMG has some more portable games lined up from some of our favorite designers that I'm not at liberty to talk about yet. It's interesting to see the breadth of design space with such strict component limits. At BGDF.com we have a Game Design Showdown each month which similarly challenges designers to come up with a game based on some arbitrary theme, mechanics, or component restrictions. This reminds me of those challenges.

On one hand, it's exciting to see the enthusiasm people have for these small games. On the other hand, for the pessimistic lover of deeper games, it's worrisome that people may gravitate away from the 1-2 hour long strategy games in favor of these 15-30 minute games which are, almost by definition, not as deep or complex. I'm pretty sure that concern is for nothing, but it would be a shame to see my favorite types of games go by the wayside because they're just not as profitable as microgames - they take a lot more time and work to create, they cost a lot more to produce, and they cannot be delivered in any logistically efficient manner.

So when looking at these small games, I try to keep an eye out for that "bang for the buck" metric. I'm personally most interested in games with as much depth, complexity, and replayability as can be packed into these tiny packages. As a player of economic, resource management eurogames, I'm especially excited by one of the TMG submissions we've got right now... it's a small game, just 30 or so cards and some markers, but it plays like a full-on worker placement, resource management, economic strategy game. I'm looking forward to that one, and I'm hoping I can pack as much punch into MicroCiv as possible. On the down side, complexity tends to make a game less accessible, but on the up side, it makes the game more replayable and in my opinion it makes for a much more worthwhile game experience.

One more thing about these PWYW kickstarter projects... I'm happy to find that with such a small component cost, people seem to be willing to pay more than the minimum. That seems to indicate that, so long as the component cost isn't too high, people really do value game content after all! I wonder if that would work for a bigger, more expensive game, or if a "Pay What You Want, minimum $30" would effectively translate into "this game costs $30." At < $5 it's easier to throw in an extra buck or two, but at $30 I'm not sure people will be so willing.

Packing for BGG.con - What are you bringing?

I just packed up a backpack with some games to take to BGG.con with me this week. Plane leaves Tuesday, T-minus 36 hours!

I don't like to bring published games to conventions - other people have published games - con libraries are full of them. Bgg.con in particular has a Hot Games room, which is where most of the game I'll want to play will probably be located anyway. What people won't have is prototypes... not my prototypes anyway. That's why I like to bring the games I'm working on.

So here's what's in my backpack right now:

Odysseus: Winds of Fate is an old favorite design, and one I feel has real potential, but that I never was able to "finish." I brought it up at Sasquatch last week in conversation with David Chott, and it made me realize how long it's been since I've even thought about the game. David thought it sounded interesting, so I've dusted it off to bring to Dallas with me. I recall wanting to make certain changes for a new version, but I don't believe I've done that yet - so if we play it it'll have to be with the old version.

EmDice, my dice game based on Eminent Domain is probably as done as it's going to get. I rebuilt the prototype recently (following the unfortunate robbery of my prototype bag). I haven't played it in a while, but if anyone's interested, I'll have it with me in Dallas.

And of course I'm bringing EmDo with Escalation, it's no longer a prototype, but the ship bearing the production copies of Escalation doesn't arrive for another week, so my advance copy may interest some EmDo fans :)

Belfort: the Expansion expansion is on that same boat, so I'm bringing that with me as well. It'll require a copy of Belfort from the library though, because I'm not schlepping one of those with me!

Rockin Roll, a dice game follow up to Dungeon Roll, is getting closer to finished, but still isn't quite there yet. I'll have the current version with me, and I'll be looking for opinions on what to change (I already have some changes I'm considering)

I've got a current prototype of KoAaS: World Fair expansion, in case anybody wants to see what's coming up for that game in 2014.

MicroCiv, my newest idea - an attempt at a "microgame," with just 16 cards and 15 tokens, this 2 player civ game seems to be working out so far. I'm hoping to find out if people like it or not.

Battlecruiser, by Philip DuBerry, is a card game that plays like a microgame, but with a lot of variability from an abundance of different cards (of which you only use 5-8 per game).

And finally, I've got a prototype of Exhibit: Artifacts of the Ages, my bluff auction set collection game which I'm happy to say has been picked up by a european publisher :)

So, what are you bringing to BGG.con this week?

MicroCiv (my attempt at a microgame)

I mentioned in my last post that Michael has gotten very interested in microgames. The other day I thought I would see if I could make an interesting game with minimal components, so after giving it some thought I have put together a prototype on Friday, solo tested it that night, and got a chance to try it out with a couple people at the Ides of Gaming game day Saturday. This is just a first draft, and I can already see several things I'd like to update, but for a first draft the game certainly worked, and for the most part I think it worked pretty well. Here's the gist of it:

MicroCiv

A tiny, epic game for 2 players
(PDF)

EDIT: Files have been deleted - game has been updated and set in the Eminent Domain universe and is now called Eminent Domain: Microcosm.

Components:
16 MicroCiv cards
10 Territory tokens
5 Technology tokens

Setup:
* Shuffle the 16 MicroCiv cards and deal 3 face up into the supply.
* Mix the Territory tokens face down.
* Give 2 Technology tokens to each player and place the 5th token in the center.
* Randomly determine a start player.

Game Play:
Beginning with the start player, take turns adding cards to their hand and playing actions to explore and conquer territories and make discoveries to increase their Population. On your turn, you do the following:

1) Draw a card from the supply, then, if cards remain in the deck, re-fill the supply from the deck.
2a) Play a card from your hand and resolve the action printed on it, then place it into your discard pile. Some actions allow you to reveal additional icons (from your hand, Territories, or Technology) in order to get a better effect.
OR
2b) Return all cards from your discard pile to your hand.

Game End:
When the deck is exhausted, continue play without refilling the supply when cards are drawn. When the last card is drawn from the supply, the active player finishes their turn and the game ends. Players collect all cards from their hands and discard piles and determines their Population (score):
* Each card has a scoring condition at the bottom, indicating its Population value:
** 1 Population per Territory controlled,
** 1 Population per Territory in Spoils,
** 1 Population per Tech advantage (your Tech tokens minus your opponent's Tech tokens)
** 2 Population
* There are 4 cards and 1 Territory in each color. For each color, count 1/3/6/10 Population for 1/2/3/4+ items (cards and Territories) in that color.
* Some Territories indicate that they score additional Population.

The player with the most Population wins!

The Actions:
Explore:
Reveal Explore icons and take a Territory with that cost. You may look at your Territories, but keep them face down. You may reveal a Territory at any time to gain its benefit.
Conquer:
Reveal Conquer icons. Choose a Territory (owned or not) and reveal it. if your revealed Conquer icons meet or exceed the Defense value, put the Territory into your Spoils. You do not gain the benefits shown.
Note: Territories owned by players benefit from 1 additional Defense!
Discover:
Take 1 Tech token from the center OR opponent discards 1 Tech token to the center. Reveal 3 Discover icons to repeat this process.
Any time you have more Tech tokens than your opponent, take the Technology Advantage tile. Technology Advantage gives you 1 Conquer icon, 1 Explore icon, and 1 additional Defense for all of your owned Territories.
Culture:
There are 4 unique Culture actions.
* Swap this card with a card from the supply.
* Pick up and immediately play 1 card from your discard pile.
* It there is a Tech token in the center, take it. Return 1 card from your discard pile to your hand.
* You may play this action before or after drawing a card. Move any number of cards from the supply to the bottom of the deck in any order, then replace them with cards from the deck.

Dungeon Roll Winter Promo, TMG goes "micro", and "pay what you want"

Michael has been fascinated by the idea of so-called "microgames" for a while now. Ever since Love Letter met with great success and people started saying that games with minimal components are the wave of the future he has wanted to figure out how to produce and market them in a way he was happy with.

As those who follow TMG probably already know, we have a Kickstarter project going on right now for a Dungeon Roll Winter Promo - 4 new Heroes and a punchboard of Treasure tokens - and it's doing very well. There are just 2 days left, and we're over 5,000 backers! This performance has given Michael confidence in the format, and in researching this promo pack he's decided that he's comfortable shipping out microgames as well.

A year or so ago Michael, with microgames in mind, started working on a partial information, deduction game of his own. It's called Templar Intrigue, and it's in the genre of Werewolf and Resistance/Avalon. It plays much faster than other similar games, and uses just 10 cards. At one time the plan was to make Templar Intrigue available as a print and play game, and if it proved popular, Michael could use Kickstarter to print a higher quality version and sell it at a low price. Well, plans changed a bit... Templar Intrigue is on Kickstarter right now, and has over 2400 backers.

Both of these Kickstarter projects have a few common elements. For one thing, they are very short duration Quickstarters, a format that I like a lot for KS in general. Another common thing is the price structure. Michael is asking people to "pay what they want," with a minimum of $2 ($3 internationally) just to cover postage. This has proven to be a fairly popular price structure, and while some people are most certainly taking the opportunity to get the games at the minimum price, enough people are chipping in extra that the average per unit pledge is about $4.50 or so. This is only a tad under the "suggested" price of $5 (what the games would sell for normally).

I know Michael's got a few more microgame projects planned for the near future. The idea of microgames is interesting - in today's age of busy-busy-busy, interesting games that don't take a lot of time or space are a welcome thing. Often there's just no time for a bigger game experience. However, in most cases I find that I prefer a deeper experience than a microgame can offer, so I hope that the gaming world doesn't migrate entirely to these small, quick games... I'm sure it won't. In fact, TMG has another full size game project coming to kickstarter soon. It's for the hottest euro-style game you've ever played: Scoville!