Recognition...

Something occurred to me today while reading this:

"Dominion is a deck-building card game scheduled to be released at Essen this October by Rio Grande Games. It has been designed by Donald X. Vaccarino over the last decade or so and developed by Valerie Putman and Dale Yu."

That's a pretty innocuous statement, but it reminded me of something that's crossed my mind... Designer Board Games are unique in that they are not only authored by a designer, but by the fact that this information is available and meaningful - as opposed to older, American style games like Payday and Sorry... This has all kinds of implications regarding the games themselves, the industry, and the hobby. Some players have a favorite designer for example, and will seek out games authored by that person. In many cases the game developer isn't widely known or credited... maybe a mention in the rulebook, but by and large noone knows who helped develop Puerto Rico - just that it was by Andreas Seyfarth.

I happen to know that Reiner Knizia has teams of playtesters, some of which actually do a lot of design work with him. In his case it makes some sense that the big name "Knizia" is placed on the box rather than one of the lesser known designers who also worked on it.

Dominion sounds like it's got a lot of hype behind it, and will probably be the biggest thing since sliced bRftGd. It's been designed by a relative nobody - not a big name designer. What I notice that's different is that Valerie Putman and Dale Yu's names have been associated with the game at every turn... They have been developing the game for Jay at RGG for about a year, and now there are articles everywhere about this great new game coming out that's been "developed by Valerie Putman and Dale Yu."

It's interesting to me that this is occurring, and I wonder whether it's more regular than I realize, or if it's a sort of marketing ploy (either on purpose or incidental) to associate a couple big names in the community with the upcoming game to help create hype... not a bad marketing strategy I have to admit.

It worries me a bit too though, as a game designer who aspires to have his name known, I wonder if Donald X. Vaccarino feels at all cheated out of some of the recognition that he may deserve for creating the next blockbuster smash (if that's indeed what it becomes) - or if instead this becomes an opportunity for the developers to get some much deserved recognition as well - after putting a years worth of work into the project.

You see, I'm also an aspiring game developer, so I'm torn as to which side of the fence to be on (should I have to choose). I will note this though... Jay's minions are currently testing Homesteaders, a game designed by Alex Rockwell and developed by myself, and I really hope RGG decides to publish it. But I'll be pretty upset if next year all the news posts say "...developed by Valerie Putman and Dale Yu." Nothing against Valerie and Dale - but I want that to be my job.

Further thoughts on the "final" Terra Prime changes

Last week I posted some changes to Terra Prime, and Ben had a great idea (posted in the comments).

"Why not just take red cubes out? If people aren't using them... then maybe the cubes aren't worth having."

That's a great suggestion, and I think I'm going to try it that way this weekend with the publisher. Originally I figured the big late-game play for certain strategies would be to drop a colony on a red planet then cart a red cube home to TP and score big points from that delivery. The problem was that the costs in time and effort were so high in delivering Red cubes that it never happened. I shrunk the board, making it much easier to actually achieve this, and it still didn't happen. As I mentioned, at one point I actually upped the reward for delivering Red to $10 (which is 10 points... up from 6), and it still didn't happen. The game would end before people got around to it.

So I thought about Ben's suggestion. At first I was skeptical about losing the symmetry of the 2/3/6 point deliveries, and how all the planets work the same with respect to production. But then I realized that was all pretty arbitrary, and a long time ago I removed any Modules from red planets (because it didn't make sense - the modules help you get out to the red zone, no need to buy anything once you're out there). So the Red planets already aren't the same as Yellow/Green/Blue planets. How bad would it be if they didn't produce?

Thematically, the Red planets might be inhabited by aliens (not hostile ones) and that's why they're worth more points, but it wouldn't be right to rape their planets and ship off their resources. I like the sound of that.

With this change, the red cubes and red delivery tiles can all be cut from the game. The big late game play is now not delivering Red, but colonizing a Red planet in the first place. This is something that has been happening, especially since the change to the smaller board. To amplify that, as well as to fix a VP balance issue I've already been having with the game, I will also increase the value a planet adds to a colony.

Currently the colonies score 2vp per planet plus 1vp per distance from Terra Prime. I like that formula, but from the beginning the "2vp per planet" was really a placeholder. It was easy to remember and easy to calculate. I didn't want to commit anything to the tiles in case I wanted to change it later, so I went with that. Ideally, the planets could be worth different amounts of points, and they'd be printed on the tile - no remembering necessary. As for values, I believe what I'd like to do is have blue and green planets remain at 2vp, Yellow should be worth 3vp, and Red planets should be worth 4 or 5 vp. I'd long thought the distant colonies weren't really worth enough, as the nearby colonies get used a lot by players and therefore end up being worth more than the distant ones. I tried fiddling with the vp reward for distance, but I always liked the original formula best (1vp per sector from Terra Prime). Increasing the value of the planets will emphasize the reward for distance a little, as Yellow planets and Red planets by definition are further from Terra Prime.

I think this new structure will really reward exploration and colonizing far from Terra Prime, which was supposed to be one of the big strategies that I think wasn't strong enough to compete with Delivery or Alien Hunting. Losing the Red cubes sounds like it will just cut some of the unnecessary components from the game, making it feel more finished.


Combat Resolution
Combat resolution remains a sticky situation. The current rule is that you roll 1 die and if you roll a 6 then you hit an alien. You have to hit all alien symbols to wipe them out, and after your turn, if not wiped out the aliens will return to full strength. Each weapon module on your ship allows you to roll 1 additional die, AND confers a +1 modifier to all dice rolled. Thus, with 2 Weapons modules, you would roll 3 dice and add 2 to each, meaning any roll of 4, 5, or 6 would kill an alien. Shields currently work the same way - you roll 1 die and on a 6 your shields cancel a hit. Each Shield module allows an additional die AND gives +1 to all dice.

The purpose of this type of resolution is, I think, well thought out and relatively simple: I want aliens to be big and scary if you're not prepared for them, and easy to remove if you are, but I don't want it to be automatic - I want a feeling of tension and a chance of failure even if you're prepared to fight the aliens. For the most part, failure just means having to use one more action, and maybe lose a module by getting hit. I want a battle ready ship taking on three alien symbols to win, but not without taking a hit or 2. I want a ship that's been through a couple of battles to have to limp home damaged to resupply (re-purchase shields/guns). The Aliens are worth good points, and I want the 'cost' of that to include your ship getting F'ed up in combat - or at least the risk of damage.

With the current resolution, the more prepared you are to fight aliens, the more likely you'll win easily. The more guns/shields you have, the more effective each gun/shield is. Thus without any guns or shields, your chances of surviving an alien encounter, let alone destroying the aliens, are astronomically low. With a couple guns (or a couple shields and a couple extra actions) your chances are much better. But to be truly prepared for battle a player should have to invest in 2 guns and a shield (or 2 shields and a gun) as well as one or both of the Combat upgrades - re-rolling missed rolls or a built in extra Gun and Shield.

So with respect to the intended result, the current rules work properly. However, they may be too complicated. I've noticed that they are awkward to explain, and that's a symptom that could mean there's something fundamentally wrong with the rule I'm also not sure I'm happy with the reciprocal rule for Aliens attacking players. The current rule there is that they simply roll 1 die per symbol, hitting on 4, 5, or 6. Of course then players get a chance to use their shields. I don't know if I like that it's different, though the Asteroids work the same way, and I do like that it's simpler. I tried using the same rule for aliens - the more symbols present, the worse the aliens were... but then the single aliens weren't very scary at all, and it seemed more complicated than it was worth.

It's been suggested in the past that the combat should be reduced to 1 roll, not 1 roll for guns then another for shields. To facilitate that, shields would have to change into just a negative modifier on the roll to see if you're hit. that's a possibility, but I don't really see an advantage to that over the current system, except maybe that it's 1 fewer die rolls.

So long story short, I'm still hemming and hawing over whether or not I like the combat resolution as is.

Ticket, please!

I spent about an hour last night drawing a schematic-type proto board for "Ticket, Please" - the airport game. I probably could have done that better on the computer, but oh well... I have a full board in mind, this draft is just to test out some mechanics.

This first draft of the board has 9 airports in a 3x3 array. The center is the "hub" - none of the tickets originate or terminate there. There are 2 "gates" (player cube queues) at the Hub (and perhaps a third for later in the game).

The corners are smaller airports... they have 1 Gate, and another which appears later in the game. All tickets originate from one of the corners. The last 4 'cities' are just destinations, and they have only 1 gate.

There are "1" routes between orthogonally adjacent cities, "2" routes between diagonally adjacent cities as well as from 1 corner to each 'adjacent' corner, and "3" routes from each corner to the 2 'destination' locations which aren't right next to them. Corner to corner is the longest trip, and there's no direct flight there... though there are tickets which go from one to the other.

EDIT: I drew a schematic that describes the board!

There are 2 of each ticket at the moment from each corner to each other location except the hub in the center. I think the game will have 3 phases, in the first phase only the "1" routes can be used, so there will be more stops and layovers. In the 2nd phase, technology has advanced, so "1" and "2" routes can be used. Finally in the 3rd phase technology has advanced again, so any route may be used.

Now I just have to decide which mechanics to test out... I think I'm going to try the following first:

Begin by giving each player the 10 cubes in their color - one goes on the income track (which will be modeled after Brass' income track for the time being). Deal 3(?) Ticket cards to each player, then turn up 3 Ticket cards to form a draw pool. Each player should start with a couple of bucks - probably 10 or so.

On your turn you first collect income according to the Income track, then you choose a Ticket from the face up pool or play one from your hand. Finally, you turn a new card up to refill the draw pool.

You have 3 options of how to play this Ticket:
1. Place/advance a cube in the gates in each of the cities listed on the Ticket card.
2. Place/advance a cube in any 1 gate on the board.
3. Complete the ticket.

In more detail...
A "Gate" is a column of boxes located at an airport in which players place their cubes. No player may have more than 1 cube in any given Gate, but some airports have multiple gates, so a player could have more than cube at an airport (1 in each Gate). Whenever a player places a cube in a gate, they pay $2 and place their cube in the first available space (from the top of the gate down). If a player already has a cube at that gate, they can pay $1/3/6/10 to advance 1/2/3/4 spaces at that gate. Their cube is moved up the appropriate number of spaces, bumping other players' cubes down 1 space as they go.

Completing a ticket is how points are scored and income is advanced. I explained it a bit in a previous post, each card has a Base Income and a Point value. The Point value is a number of points you get for having completed the ticket. To determine how much Income is earned, you take the Base Income on the card and subtract off the Cost of the trip. The Cost is the sum off all Route numbers used on the trip as well as the numbers in the Gates occupied by that player's cubes (Gates are numbered 1/2/3/4/5 from top to bottom). The minimum Cost for a trip occurs when the player's cubes are at the top of 2 airports and those are the only 2 airports used (i.e. they are both listed on the Ticket card). If the route is a "1" route, then the minimum Cost would be 3. I'd love to post a graphical example of this, because it's hard to explain properly.

When Completing a ticket, players also receive points for being "on top" at each Gate used. this may or may not be the player who's turn it is.

Also when completing a ticket, the active player must move his cube to the first available space at each Gate used, with other cubes in line sliding up. thus, when you complete a ticket, you move to the end of the line in each of the gates used.

There needs to be a score track as well, to count the points you get for being on top when a gate is used. I'm not sure if it would be better to add the points from Tickets to the score track and shuffle them back in for later rounds, or to simply keep the tickets out of the game and count their points later. The latter might be interesting as it would change the distribution of cities in the deck, and would also make later phases (which are more profitable) a bit shorter. I'll go with that for now.

Each phase will end when the deck is exhausted, and the game will end after the third phase. The cards dealt to players during setup are each 1-use cards which do not get replenished. they can be used at any time during the game, but only once each. The winner will be the player with the most points. If tied, the player who completed more tickets should probably win, with 2nd tiebreaker going to the Income track.

I think I've kept the game simple, yet interesting. I'm curious if it'll play out the way I expect - I guess I'll have to try it and see!

"Final" (?) Terra Prime changes... yeah, right!

Terra Prime has gotten steadily closer to "done" over time, and I have been pretty happy with the progress I've made on it. As has been mentioned, a publisher is reviewing the game and planning on publishing it. I'll be visiting them when I go to Seattle next week to meet them in person and play Terra Prime with them.

One of the things I intend to talk about with them is what still needs tweaking in the game. Here are some items that I think they're not satisfied with (and frankly, they are things I'm not completely satisfied with either):

1. Red cubes/planets - not interesting enough. Since I shrunk the board and added a VP reward for exploring red tiles there has been more action in the 'red zone' - but it's still rare that a player ever carts a Red cube home to Terra Prime for delivery. At one point I tried bumping up their VP value from 6 to 10, which I thought was way too much, but even that didn't seem to help. I definitely think 6 is the right value (60 credits), but there's something about red that just makes it too unattractive to deliver.

Solution: It was suggested (by Mohan mostly, though I think I've heard it elsewhere as well) that Red cubes be sort of wild, in that they can be used to deliver in place of any colored cube on a demand tile. I am beginning to really like the sound of that, as it means a player carting a red cube all the way back to Terra Prime not only gets their 60 credits, but now also likely gets to complete one of the demand tile (irrespective of what's required), scoring bonus points for that.

In addition, I am considering allowing red cubes, because they are wild, to be carried in any hold - i.e. you could carry them in your initial, built in cargo hold. This would allow a player to carry Red cubes even without an additional cargo hold (either because they invested in 2 additional thrusters, or because they lost their Cargo Hold in combat with aliens). The down side is that it also means said player can carry 2 red cubes at a time, and if they satisfy any slot on the demand tiles at Terra Prime, then it might be too uninteresting. Then again, maybe the time you spend waiting around for that 2nd red cube to generate is cost enough for being able to deliver 2 red cubes for 12 points plus probably completing the tile... OR, and I don't really like the sound of this, there could be an arbitrary rule that you can only carry 1 red cube at a time on your ship.

Idea: I could add a built-in Red-Specific hold on the ship, like I did with Brown, such that a ship with no additional Cargo Holds could carry 1 Red, and a player who has invested in an additional hold could carry more than 1. I don't hate the sound of that...

2. Combat resolution is annoying. It's annoyingly random, and since my last rules changes I now find it annoyingly hard to communicate. Currently the guns and shields work as follows: The more you have of each, the better they each work. I like that. It means that if you prepare to fight aliens, then they're not too terribly difficult to kill - it just takes time, and you should take some damage when fighting them, so you can't just wipe out alien after alien with no risk. It also means if you don't prepare for them, the aliens are terribly scary and a huge deterrent - which they're supposed to be.

Solution: I'm not sure what to do about this one. With regard to the "luck factor" of winning or losing because you (or someone else) "rolled well" - I'm not sure I care about that. I think as long as the chances of success are really good once you've prepared, and really bad if you haven't, then that's good enough. this is why I like guns and shields that each work better the more of them you have.

To make it easier to explain again I was thinking of going back to a simpler model for combat, but that detracts from what I just mentioned, making luck a bigger factor again. I don't want people complaining that they lost because they didn't roll well enough, or that they lost because so-and-so got lucky with the aliens.

I'll have to keep thinking about this one, and talk to the playtesters about it. I'm not sure if the mechanism is OK as is, or needs to be changed. Maybe it just needs to be better represented.

3. Combat upgrades (and modules) seem unbalanced. This is a comment from the playtesters which I don't particularly agree with. It does go hand in hand with combat resolution though, and so depends on that somewhat. One thing to note is that upgrades are expensive - they cost cubes which would otherwise be points, and they use a marker which could have been a colony or delivery tile (and therefore worth points). Admittedly that last only matters if you're the player that triggers game end, and therefore is probably not a concern - but the point is if you spend too much time and resources pimping out your ship, then you won't get the value back. This happened to a player at KublaCon - she complained that the game ended too early because she had attained a good level of infrastructure, but didn't have time to make good use of it. She had over-invested in her ship. The playtesters also made a comment that 1/2 the modules were combat oriented (I believe they were referring to Shields and Guns)... but my view is that Shields aren't just for combat, they're also for exploration - to defend against asteroids.

Recent Gaming: Merchants of Amsterdam

At KublaCon last month I played a game called Merchants of Amsterdam, an auction game by Reiner Knizia (who'd have though..?) which is also an Area Majority game - with 12 different areas to gain majority in! When you gain influence, you get it in 2 of the 12 areas, and there are bonuses for spreading out your influence as well.

In Merchants of Amsterdam players take turns drawing 3 cards off the deck. One they'll keep, using the action themselves, one they'll discard, and one they'll auction off. The auction used in this game is a Dutch Auction - an Auction Clock is started which counts down from 200 to 0 (by 10s), the first player to speak up with a bid wins the auction, and their bid must be the amount indicated by the Auction Clock at the time of the bid. It's a neat, different system which is a little more tense than a regular turn order auction. A similar method could be to use a blind bid, but then there would have to be some system to break ties. I guess one could argue that in the Dutch Auction system there could be ties as well, but it hasn't come up in the couple games I've played so far.

The 12 areas where you can gain influence are divided into 3 sets of 4 areas - Colonies, Districts in Amsterdam, and Commodities. Scoring of a set of areas occurs on occasion, and when it does, the areas in the set are first ordered highest to lowest with regard to total amount of player influence. Then in each area, the players with the 1st and 2nd majority score some points - more for the 'largest' overall area and fewer for the 'smallest'.

Bonuses are earned when a player has presence in each of the 4 areas in a set. This influence is put on the board as a result of the cards you are drawing and auctioning for. Each card allows you to place an influence marker in either a colony or a district in Amsterdam, and then advance one of the commodity tracks. Each card either tells you specifically which track to move (and gives you more flexibility as to where to put the influence marker), or lets you choose (and gives you less flexibility in where to place the marker).

I find the game very clever, and I'm glad I traded for it.

Holy progress, Batman!

Last December I wrote some new years resolutions, and one of them was:

Game Publication/Submission
I'm trying to get a game published. I have 3 that are at the point where they need to be shown to publishers, and I've finally started that process. I'm learning about it as I go, so it's taking a long time because I'm not sure what I'm doing. In order to stay on track, I resolve to submit Wizard's Tower, All For One, and Terra Prime to as many publishers as possible/necessary in an attempt to get one/some/all of them published. I further resolve to enter a game in at least 2 game design contests: KublaCon in May and Hippodice in November.

To that end, I did enter a game (Reading Railroad) in the KublaCon design contest - though it didn't do very well. In addition, I handed All For One off to Zev Shlasinger of Z-Man games last November - but he has been so busy he's not had a chance to look at it.

Terra Prime is currently being reviewed by a potential publisher, and when I go to Seattle in 2 weeks I'll be meeting with them and probably playing a few games of TP with them.

Wizard's Tower really impressed the judges at the KublaCon design contest last year, and I gave a copy to Julie Haehn (who runs the contest). This year at the convention she informed me that a new publisher is cropping up in the Seattle area, and asked if she could show them Wizard's Tower. I sent her the latest and greatest rulebook and player aids for that purpose, and I guess she's given the game to them.

And finally, last March at Gamestorm Jay Tummelson asked for a copy of Homesteaders to take to the Gathering and try out. I have not heard peep from him, not even in reply to my emails checking in (which I've kept to one every 5 weeks or so), but I do know that the game was played a couple of times at the Gathering and I've talked to a couple of the people who played it.

So I guess that means I'm making progress, even if it's slow going.

Then today I got an interesting geekmail on BGG from a Dutch publisher - they said "I saw your proto of "Terra Prime" on the BGG, which looked to me. I was wondering if you are interested in sending/email us some proto games so we can take a look at them. We are busy with our 2009 program and are searching for new great games."

That sounds like really good news to me, so I'm composing a reply. I'm not entirely sure what to say, so far I've thanked them for contacting me, I've asked what kinds of games they're interested in, and I've given a short list of games with short descriptions including A41, TP, WT, Homesteaders, Reading Railroad, and Ariel's Tennis card game Love Means Nothing. I've mentioned that TP and Homesteaders are currently under review by publishers - perhaps I should not mention them at all...

I realize that Homesteaders and Love Means Nothing are not technically my games, but I feel that they are great games, I'd like to see them published, and I've been helpful in the development of both... to the point where the designer of each has said that if I help get the game published, I could have my name on the box in addition to theirs.

Maybe this is"no big deal" - but for me it seems pretty exciting. The publisher that contacted me seems like a quality operation, so I think they'd do a good job... I hope they like the sound of All For One, as that's my oldest project (that's any good) and was always sort of my flagship design (though perhaps Terra Prime has replaced that by now).

Board for Airport game

I was thinking about what the board would look like today, so I printed out something and started sketching it out.

Also, with regard to theme, perhaps this ought to really be a game about Travel Agents. Players are Travel Agents who can get access to seats on planes (doesn't matter what airline) - and they do so to satisfy the "tickets" representing trips passengers wish to take.

In this case it doesn't make sense for players to pay to upgrade their planes to fly farther, so maybe the game would be in 3 rounds... in the first, all planes can only use the "1 distance" routes, in the 2nd phase of the game, plans can use the 1 and 2 distance routes, and in the final phase players can move passengers across any route. Each round/phase might end once all tickets have been exhausted?

Airline game

I've given some more thought to the ideas I'd had about an airline game, and I think I've come up with a basic structure of a game themed on the airline industry - specifically routing passengers from Origin to Destination in an efficient manner. On the down side, it doesn't incorporate my favorite part of the initial thoughts: the Rush and Cheap passenger types... but on the up side I think it could be simple and elegant.

The game is something of an area control or area influence thing, where you gain influence in different airports in order to complete tickets. Tickets have an Origin airport and a Destination airport, and when you play one, you score some number of VPs and some amount of income. The VPs will probably be static and dependent on the ticket (i.e. printed on the card), while the income will be variable. There will be a maximum value, and the player will receive less for any extra stops or layovers the passenger would have to make.

The board would look like an airline Route Map, with a simple web of routes to and from a couple of 'hub' locations and several other airports. Each route would have a circled number along it relating to the 'distance' - 1/2/3 unit (roughly relating to hours of travel). There would also be an Income track like in Brass (or potentially a score track tied to it, as in Railroad Tycoon), and a Plane Level track indicating what size route your planes can use and how much it costs to improve them.

Turns would be pretty simple, along the lines of Ticket to Ride: Either you buy influence in an airport, you upgrade your planes, or you complete a ticket. Buying influence in an airport means placing a cube in a column of boxes by that airport on the game board, or if you already have a cube there, bumping it up a level relative to other cubes. This 'stack' of player cubes acts like a line where the player 'on top' of the stack has priority. It would probably cost a unit of money (or 2) to place a cube in an airport, and a unit of money to bump your cube up the line. Perhaps in one turn you are allowed to buy influence in 2 different airports, or three, or maybe you get 2 (3?) units of influence to spend wherever you like...

The upgrade action is simple - pay the indicated amount of money and move your marker to the next space in the Plane Level track.

Playing tickets is where the points are made. I imagine tickets with a printed value X on them. Income for playing the ticket would be equal to that value X, less the "cost" of the trip, where "cost" is the sum total of all Distances on routes used, as well as any Layovers (1 unit for your cube at the airport, and 1 unit for each cube ahead of yours in line). After a ticket is played, the player's cube at each airport used is either moved to the bottom of the queue, or removed from the board entirely.

I feel like the cost description wasn't clear, so here's an example or two:
I have a ticket which has origin LAX and Destination PHX. There is a route between L.A. and Phoenix which is distance 1 (has a 1 in the Distance circle). My cube is 2nd from the top at LAX and at the top in PHX. The "cost" is 2 (at LAX) + 1 (Dist) + 1 (at PHX) = 4. Perhaps the printed value (which I was calling X) on the ticket was 6... I'd earn income of 6-4=2, so I would move my marker 2 spaces on the income track. The minimum possible cost for that trip would be 3, if my cube were on top at both airports. In that case I'd increase my income by 3.

I'm not sure this is a complete game as is, but as a main mechanic I think it might be solid. I'd like to think about it some more and see what else could go into the game. I feel like there ought to be more to it, but then when I look at what games are popular coming out right now - Stone Age, Ming Dynasty, Aquaretto... I see simplistic games, not complicated ones. So I'm trying not to get too complicated with the design of this one. To me, Stone Age is a "light filler" type of game. To a lot of people it's a "meaty strategy" game. I have to remember to keep that in mind when considering a design...

Fundable.com

I came across a website that might be useful in self publishing something like a board game. It is a service that takes care of "preorders" like GMT's P500 or whatever - you set a goal, people can "pledge" money (preorder), and if the goal is met by the deadline then the pledges turn into payments (the site charges people). if the goal is not met, everyone's pledges are canceled and nobody pays anything.

The fee for this service is 7% of the total, plus a flat $10 if you want a check (rather than paypal payment). I don't know if that fee is worth the service, but not knowing another way to really go about a preorder system this seems like it might be worth looking into for anyone who is thinking about self publishing a game.

Personally I don't want to spend the time and effort to get the game published, so i probably won't go this route.

Definitive list of Railroad Tycoon variants Id like to use

My friends and I all like Railroad Tycoon, and we play it relatively frequently. We adopted long ago a variant to make the card draw at the beginning of each round more interesting, and recently I've been considering and trying other variant rules to try and improve the experience. Here's the full list of variants I like and would like to use on a regular basis...

1. Remove Railroad Executive cards from the deck.
Those cards are ridiculous - most of the cards are desirable for some players at some times, Railroad Exec is strictly better than any other action for all players at all times. So while most auctions are kinda lame, suddenly this card comes up and people have to bid like crazy. We didn't like that dynamic.


2. Add Passenger Lines card from Rails of Europe as a starting card.
I like how this encourages/rewards making a variety of deliveries.

3. Instead of the 'official' 10 cards to start and 1 more per game turn, use a smaller number of cards (5, or #players) at the beginning of the game (in addition to the 3 Starting cards of course), and turn up 2 new cards each game turn.
Without this rule too often nobody cares what card came up, and the start player aucti8on is much less interesting. This way it's more frequent that people want to bid.

4. Reveal Major Lines. Like in Rails of Europe, make all Major Lines available from the beginning of the game. Just take them out of the deck and line them up beside the board. First person to complete each gets the points.
This removes some of the luck of the draw that can occur when one player randomly has a Major Line appear in the area he's building - especially early in the game, while another player builds in the vicinity of another Major Line which never happens to appear.

5. Display next cubes. There are several actions which require 2 random cubes to be taken from the bag and placed on the board. This variant takes 2 random cubes from the bag and puts them on display, and the next time 'random' cubes are needed, the displayed cubes are used. Then 2 more cubes are displayed for the next time cubes are needed.
This changes some of the conditional planning into precise planning. One friend is adamantly against it, but I much prefer this variant.

6. New turn order auction. Rails of Europe adopts a variant to the Age of Steam auction which I like, however I have an additional variation on it. Instead of 'around the table' the turn order is based on an auction. On your turn you bid or pass, first passer will go last, next passer will go 2nd to last, etc. Only the winner of the auction pays their bid. Next round bidding begins with the last player and goes up the turn order (as opposed to starting with 1st and going down).
There are often situations where you are in competition with another payer at the table, and there's no telling where they'll be sitting - if it's the player to your right, then you HAVE to win the "normal" auction to go before them, and if anyone else bids, they don't have to. This variant auction makes everyone bid for turn order relative to anyone they might be in competition with. I don't think it needs to be as harsh as Age of Steam where everyone pays 1/2 their bid except the 1st passer because most of the time going 5th isn't much different than going 3rd - you just want to go before a particular player.

7. One day I'd like to try some variant to make the Southwest more interesting. this is probably only good in a 6 (maybe 5) player game, but I've always wanted to see Dallas as a Red city. I might like to see a 6vp service bounty to one of the gray cities in that area like Little Rock. There could be a Major Line or 2, like a long one (Shreveport to Raleigh?) and a shorter one (Dallas to Louisville?). And maybe add a cube to each city down there. This isn't as high on the list because I think the game is fine without it - but it's silly to have that portion of the board and not use it.

Precise planning vs Conditional planning - take 2

My last post about Precise Planning vs Conditional planning sparked some good discussion about Randomness/Chance vs Player-induced Chaos. It was my own clumsy wording that drove the conversation to that, and while I enjoyed the discussion, it didn't address what was the initial point of the thread: Precise vs Conditional planning.

I'll try again to (correctly this time?) define these terms the way I see them. Put simply:

Precise planning is planning based on known information.

Conditional planning is planning based on unknown information.

I began about this difference specifically in regard to the variant I mentioned for Railroad Tycoon in which the next 2 cubes to be "drawn out of the bag" are put on display. Also in mind was Ra and how to decide whether a lot is "good enough" to bid on.

KublaCon 2008

I went to KublaCon again this year. I had a really good time hanging out with Chris Hillary, Andrew Schoonmaker, Rick Holzgrafe, Derk and Aldie from BGG, Doug Garrett, JC Lawrence, and others. I also played a lot of games, some of which were very good, very interesting, or both!

Reading Railroad didn't do so hot in the design contest, but I expected that. I was a little disappointed in just how poorly it went over though, talking to the playtesters. One commented "I know what you're trying to do, you're trying to hit 2 markets." For some reason that comment hits me like an insult... I hate marketing, and I am not trying to weasel some shenanigans by trying to appeal to 2 types of gamers, trying to trick both groups into buying my game, which is the connotation I get out of that comment. Rather I am trying to make a fun, cool game - and in this case I think Reading Railroad could have "cross-market appeal." I expect some word game players would like it, and some eurogame players would like it. Sure, in either market by itself it might not be a smash hit, but that's not the point of the game. I did glean some good information which I hope to use to improve the game, some of which ties into things I already wanted to try. I think the game is good enough to continue to work on.

Rick Holzgrafe's entry Spatial Delivery did win the contest, and boy did it! Asmodee asked for a copy to review - they might want to publish it! Congrats to Rick on that! I remember when Rick first conceived that game for one of the Board Game Designers Forum Game Design Showdowns.

As for general gaming, I'm looking into a game purchase. There are some problems with this idea - some of the stuff I want isn't in stock at the moment. Also, I'm not sure I want to buy some of the games for one reason or other - I may have a blog post about that soon. I've been playing Container a lot, and I've grown to really like it.

Design-wise I've got some changes to make to Reading Railroad, and I've got some new ideas for that Airline game I'd mentioned. besides that, just more of the same. No movement on Winds of Fate, Dynasty, or Hot and Fresh :(

Precise planning vs Conditional planning

I'm coming to realize that there are 2 different types of planning you can do... Precise planning and Conditional planning.

Precise planning is when you have all the information you can, and the only variables are player-created chaos: what will the other players do?

Conditional planning is when there is an element to plan around that you do not know for sure, based on chance. Often you can use probability to decide how to go about planning around this element.

Some gamers prefer to have all the information, they prefer to plan precisely, dealing only with the chaos of the other players' actions. Other gamers much prefer preparing for the random element as well. Let's look at some examples...

Railroad Tycoon is one of my favorite games, so I'll use it as an example. There are 2 instances of Conditional planning in RRT:

• Random cubes which come onto the board via City Growth/Urbanization/New Industry
  
• Whether or not a particular Major Line or Service Bounty card will come up.

Under the standard rules, when someone adds cubes to the board, 2 random cubes are drawn from the bag. The result of this could be that a player in the late game chooses City Growth and either gets a couple of 2 point deliveries, or a couple of 6 point deliveries. At that point in the game, 2 point deliveries are fairly worthless, while 6 point deliveries are great. The random draw could decide the result of the game for that player (1st vs 3rd). The obvious answer to that is "build your network so that no matter what cube comes up, you'll have a decent delivery." That's a good point, and an interesting consideration when planning your network, but the problem still remains - suppose my opponent doesn't plan his network as well, but lucks out on the draw, and gets an 8 point boon?

Similarly, you can build track such that you can connect Baltimore and Toledo, Atlanta and Richmond, New York and Chicago, etc... and then whether you win or lose the game can come down to whether the Major Line card you've prepared for comes up. The player in the Southeast could get an 8 point boost because the Atlanta-Richmond card came up early, while the player who's built from New York to Kansas City is in last place because that major line never came up. While it's true you can't expect any particular card to come up. just the benefit gained by a Major Line coming up early in the area you're dominating is a huge advantage, and without knowing which Major Line will come up or when, there's no way to know where to build so as to take advantage of that boon.

Recently I tried playing Railroad Tycoon with a couple of variants to turn some of the Conditional planning into Precise planning:

• Remove Major Lines from the deck and make them all available from the outset.
  
• Display 2 cubes from the bag to be used whenever the next 2 "random" cubes are needed.

I enjoyed both of these variants because I think I prefer Precise planning to Conditional. It removes some of the uncertainty and maybe the need to build your network such that any cube is good, but it adds the ability to decide if and when to take actions which add cubes to the board, and where to put them if you do. It also takes the luck-of-the-draw out of the Major Lines, which are worth a significant number of points. I might like to try beginning the game with the Service Bounties all available as well. They don't seem as bad as the Major Lines though because they aren't worth as many points, and when they come up they can often be sniped by any player, not just the player who happens to have built in the area.

Reiner Knizia tends toward Conditional planning in many of his games. Ra for example is a perfect example: you evaluate each auction lot and make the decision to bid, or to wait for a better lot. This is something of a press your luck mechanism because whether the lot increases or decreases in value and by how much is entirely based on chance, not on player actions. A friend of mine cannot stand that, and feels "why should I even play if I'm just guessing if this is the right play or not?" While it's clear I prefer Precise planning to conditional planning, I don't mind as much as that friend seems to - I like evaluating the lot in Ra and thinking about the chances it'll improve. I likened my friend's play to "being greedy."

I think the main difference between Conditional and Precise planning is the idea of "working with what you've got," and it's tied to the difference between Tactical and Strategic thinking. In a game with precise planning, you can plan out a long term strategy, and your tactical play can deal with the chaos brought in by the actions of your opponents. In a game with Conditional planning you have to play a more tactical game, and there's less (if any) semblance of a coherent long term strategy.

What now?

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

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

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

Reading Railroad prototype pics

I decided to take some pics of the Reading Railroad prototype before sending it off to the KublaContest today. Here's a picture of the board the way it might look midway through a game:



And here is a Player Board. The Purple player is about to spell CLAWS for 9 coin. So far he's collected Q, U, I, K, T, and E, and bought a Factory. He needs a C and to make sure he have 5 cities connected if he wants to score 25 points for QUICK. If he also get an H and has 8 cities connected by the end of the game, he'll score 25 for QUICK and 9 for THE. At this point in the game Purple draws 3 Resource Letters at the end of his turn, 1 normally, and 2 more since he's filled up 2 rows of City Tiles.

Finally we have a close up of the Factory tile. Factories help you draw Resource Letters faster, which in turn helps you spell bigger words each turn and earn more Coins.


And now to make a final pass at the rules, pack up the prototype, and head to the post office!

Reading Railroad Rules

I've updated the rules for Reading Railroad after Tuesday's testing and brainstorming. This is going to have to do for the KublaCon game design contest. I feel like this game isn't as solid or "finished" as previous entries All for One or Wizard's Tower, but at least I think it's refreshing and new as far as games go. I guess I'll have to wait until the end of the month to find out what the judges think!

EDIT: Please feel free to nitpick the rules and leave a comment on this post as to what needs fixing! Typos, inconsistencies, etc.

EDIT AGAIN, 5/10/08: I updated the rules for submission to the contest, and uploaded them again. If you want to see the new version you can check that out now.

Ties and Tiebreak Rules

There has been some discussion lately at BGG and in the BGDF.com chat room about ties and tiebreaking rules. Jim Cote referenced an old blog post he'd made on the subject. I guess the big divide is that some players would like designers to include tiebreak rules, so there can be a definitive winner of the game even in the case of a tie. Other players prefer to treat the tie as a shared victory - or no victory.

JC Lawrence asserts that there should be no tiebreaks:

The goal of the game is to win. It provides a measurement of winning or not winning. You either did it or you didn't do it. Binary. There is one winner (or more in ties) and some number of losers.

That was part of the following conversation:
‹sedjtroll› If you and I run a race, and we get the exact same time, but I ran up hill the whole way, and you ran downhill the whole way, which one of us should win that tie?
‹clearclaw› Both of us. We were both competing for the same measurement. The terrain is beside the point.
‹sedjtroll› It's obvious running uphill the whole way is a bigger accomplishment than running downhill.
‹clearclaw› But the accomplishment isn't being measured, only the win.

I on the other hand am of the opinion, as I often am, that it depends. In this case, it depends on the game whether a tiebreak rule to determine a winner in the case of a tie score is appropriate.

A "win" is a measure of accomplishment, it has no other meaning. The game system defines the things to be accomplished. "I won, therefore I accomplished winning," while a valid statement, is not what I'm talking about - that's a different instance/use of the word "accomplishment." Having won a game, by definition, means having accomplished something else - as defined by the game system. Saying that that something else is "having collected the most VPs" in most games is meaningless - just restating the words "the winner has accomplished winning." The game system rewards certain accomplishments (often with VPs), and by winning you have accomplished whatever goals were defined by the game. In some games at least, there are multiple ways defined by the game system to "accumulate the most points;" multiple things that can be accomplished in order to win... and some of those accomplishments are bigger than others.

Therefore I think in many cases a tiebreak is perfectly reasonable. Like in my footrace example above, given the same time on the stopwatch, the winner of the race should be the runner who had the more difficult terrain (where difficulty of terrain is defined by the game system - in the runner example it would be defined by the physics of running).

Situations wherein a tiebreak rule is appropriate and justified:
* One strategic path is "harder" than another, or is otherwise encouraged by the designer
* Scoring is not fine grained enough to distinguish a winner when the delta is very small (the scores come out the same, even if one's theoretically incrementally higher than another)
* The game is intended for a competitive or tournament environment
* Games in which the goal can be reached more/less efficiently

Some people complain about arbitrary tiebreaks. I sympathize with those people to an extent, but I also wonder if their idea of "arbitrary" really applies.

A tiebreak rule can be used to subtly counterbalance a favorable (or unfavorable) starting position, much the same way that the first player in some games starts with fewer actions in the first round, fewer points, or less money than the later players. Nobody complains about those rules being arbitrary.

Tiebreak rules can be used to reward a player for accomplishing the game's goals more efficiently than another player - to finish with the same score, but with resources to spare.

Tiebreak rules can also be used by a designer to show a preference for a particular strategic path - be that for thematic reasons, or because that path was the one the designer thought most interesting.

It's important to note that a tiebreak rule is more/less important depending on how likely ties are to occur in the game. If ties occur frequently, then omitting a tiebreak rule would be unsatisfactory for the players. Also in that case, since it's likely to happen, playing such that you can win the tiebreak is a valid and important strategy. If ties are unlikely, then it may not seem worth your while to secure a decent tiebreak condition. However if you then lose on tiebreaks, you ought not feel slighted by such an "arbitrary tiebreak rule!"

I have little sympathy for the "arbitrary tiebreak" detractors because arbitrary or not (and it's not clear the rule is actually arbitrary to begin with), the rule is there from the outset and everybody knows it. The only case in which I'd agree with these detractors is in a game where the tiebreak is based on a random event, outside the control of the player - where a player could win on tiebreaks sort of on accident, through no fault of their own. I prefer a tiebreak rule which takes into account the actual play of the game, and rewards a player for playing accordingly - whatever that might mean for the particular game.

Reading Railroad 5/6/08 playtest #4 - 2p

Lowski and I played 2 games of 2p Reading Railroad last night, and I tried a few variations to the rules which I've been discussing over the last few posts. Seems like a lot of progress was made, but maybe that's just because it's crunch time and I need to get this in the mail this week (eep!)

I tried the following configuration:
* Start with 3 letters and $3
* Buy Vowels (cost: $1, income: $1/2/3... per tile used)
* Factory = 4 city tiles, cost $10
* Endgame trigger = 15 City tiles
* Add partial scoring - 2vp per letter not in a word, up to LN
* !$! tile = Pay $1 or discard each letter tile in hand.

Starting with $3 and 3 Letter tiles seemed good. I had been starting with 3 tiles and no money, and I didn't like how some people had a word in front of them and some people had a pile of vowels. Starting with $3 is good because you can always build first turn, even if you don't have a word to make.

The biggest structural change I tried was probably Buying Vowels. I took out all of the vowels from the letter tiles. I also reduced the tiles to 2 of each letter (3 for the letters that had 4 or more in a Scrabble set). I kept the 4 Investor (!$!) tiles in. When building a word, you can use your tiles, and you can buy vowels for $1 apiece. You get paid for the tiles you use, then you pay for the vowels, so you can build a word even if you are broke. For example, if you have WDG you can make the word W-E-D-G-E, collecting $1+2+3 for the W, D, and G, then paying $2 for the 2 E's - for a net profit of $4. I liked this format a lot, it reduced the "can't make a word" factor tremendously, and it was kinda fun.

The Investor tile rule was bad. I finally drew one the turn I spent all of my cash, and buy the new rule I would have had to discard my hand. I think I had 4 tiles in hand at the time, and discarding them would have been pretty bad (one might argue I should have spent some!) In retrospect I might have forgotten that I wouldn't have to discard tiles drawn along with the !$! tile, but i didn't like the rule anyway... we brainstormed a little for a replacement rule and I decided that since the !$! tile was causing so much trouble, and wasn't doing what it was supposed to do, maybe better would be to remove it, and simply have a hand size limit to keep people from drawing and hoarding too many tiles.

After last Thursday's playtest I was worried about drawing too many tiles and making 7+ letter words turn after turn. A hand size would put a cap on that altogether. I decided to remove the !$! tiles and use a hand limit of 5 tiles, since I shifted the pay scale up*.

* You may have noticed I shifted the pay scale back up to $1 for the first tile, $2 for the second, etc. (rather than $0/1/2...) - this is because when buying a vowel, a 3 letter word such as D-O-G would pay $0 otherwise! now it pays $2.

I later decided maybe 6 would be a better hand size. I might worry that you could make $21 words and that would be too much, but that would be reduced by having to buy vowels (probably 2 or 3), and if you can only draw 4 tiles a turn then it won't happen every turn anyway.

Our first game was pretty cutthroat from the outset, Lowski grabbed a V and an E, going for OVER early, so I jumped in and took the other 2 letters he needed from the area. There are plenty of City tiles to go around though, especially O's and R's so he was able to finish that word eventually. He ended up with 13 cities in his largest network, $19 in coin, and he spelled FOX, LAZY, and OVER for a total of 19+9+16+16+2+2 (the +2+2 is from the 2 "unused" cities in his largest network) = 64 points. I ended up with 11 cities in my largest network, $12, and spelled JUMPED and BROWN for 12+36+25=73.

So I won by 9 points, and i spelled 2 bigger words than he did, though he did finish 3 words total, and had a larger network than mine. I think that's a reasonably close game, and was pretty happy with the outcome. The rules were sort of in flux during the game, so who knows how differently we would have played "for real."

Our second game was different. We continued to play without the !$! tiles, and all the same rules, but we allowed the Largest Network to be 'cheesed' - if you had built in adjacent regions on different builds such that it looked on the board like you had a contiguous network, then that counts as a contiguous network. I think that's horrible, but with the board as is I think the rule pretty much has to be that way.

In the first game nobody bought a factory, because we were after some of the same letters. this time I decided to go the factory route ans see how it worked. Lowski went for RAILROAD right off the bat. I played in various places around the board, collecting 2 City tiles at a time on turns 1 and 2. On turn 3 I couldn't afford a Factory, so I built another connection for 2 more city tiles. Turn 4 I could have afforded a Factory, but it seemed strictly better to get another 2 city tiles (cheaper, and I could use the City tiles). Turn 5 I did buy a factory and started to draw 4 tiles a turn. I never did have a 6-tile play, in fact the only time I had 6 tiles I couldn't use them all at once. I was raking in 5 or 9 points a turn, and I was still interested in placing track because I had the word BROWN (could have gotten QUICK instead if I'd tried). At one point I could have grabbed 2 city tiles and ended the game, but instead I went for connections to get my 25 points from BROWN, but in discussing it later it's possible that triggering the endgame might have kept Lowski from spelling RAILROAD (rather from connecting enough cities for it).

Instead I got my letter, and stopped building for a couple turns, trying to build up more Coin. The pressure was on Lowski (who was now winning) to end the game before my coin racked up too much. In the end, Lowski had 10 cities connected, $11, and 68 points from RAILROAD and 2 more tiles at 2 apiece. I had only 6 cities connected, spelled BROWN for 25 (+2 for an extra city), but I had $29 in coin. final score 79-56, Lowski destroyed me!

I think the point value for the big words (READING and RAILROAD is too high, and I think I've decided to bump them down to 40 and 50 respectively (from 49 and 64). these are nice, round numbers. I might also award partial credit for READ, RAIL and ROAD (16 points apiece), although that sort of defeats the purpose of having other words. Lowski mentioned something similar to one of the hidden goal words I'd already contemplated - he thought they could be like the Tycoon cards from RRT - you get one at the beginning, and you score if you make that word out of your City tiles in addition to the words you are already going for.

I'm also considering, with the Factories being so expensive now, I might try making them give +1 tile draw in addition to their filling up your board** with city tiles 9for more tile draws). I think with the hand limit and the cost of Factories that might be ok.

** One other thing I did last night was create player boards (with Lowski's help on Autocad), and Factory tiles as well. Maybe I'll take pictures and post them before I send the game off. The Factory tiles are sweet.

Reading Railroad playtest #3

Last time I said I wanted to try the game without the investor tile because I thought maybe it wasn't necessary - maybe the natural incentives to build track would be enough to keep people from hoarding (or to punish people appropriately for hoarding). I also thought I'd raise the payout by sliding the scale over a notch (1/2/3/4... for each letter in your word rather than 0/1/2/3...). I tried both of those modifications last Thursday, and I also tried a modification to the Factory: I made it a single tile (counting as 1 tile toward ending the game) rather than 4, and I made it give an additional tile draw. So in effect, the Factory became 1.25 City tiles toward letter drawing, but only 1 City tile toward game ending. I still made them cost $4, a completely arbitrary number that I made up when I first thought of Factories and not based on anything real at all.

The sum total of all of those changes was disaster, which I could have predicted, but I wasn't sure so I wanted to see it in action. Especially with no investor tile, people just bought factories as fast as they could (I didn't limit it to 1 per player), and were quickly drawing 5 tiles a turn, making big words worth a ton of coin... I had clearly overcorrected for the problem I saw before of people being drained of all their coin all the time.

It was so bad I aborted the game and started again. This time I put the Investor tile back in, and made a limit on how many factories you're allowed to have (no more than cities in your largest network). that seemed like a fair limiter (you should have to have cities to put your factories in, right?), and it meant you couldn't buy a factory until you've at least built 1 link, which is kinda nice. But at $4 they were still a must-buy, and so people bought them as soon as they could, ant here was no good reason not to. One player avoided it for a while, but decided eventually that that was ridiculous and gave in to the temptation. I also shifted the pay scale back because I didn't see any benefit to the higher payouts.

Things I learned about Factories are...
- I still think they are a good feature, but they need to be implemented correctly
- They need to take up more of your city tile space, to ensure you're not going to score a big endgame bonus if you get the Factories, because you should be earning more coin.
- They need to cost more... a lot more. I noticed that a sort of average income was 6 coin a turn (a 4 letter word), which I feel is a good number to keep in mind when setting costs. In this case, a $4 Factory can be financed with a single turns worth of word building, which means you're not giving up much in order o get the factory. you could instead build onto the board and get a letter tile, or pay the $4 and get the Factory, which is like 5 letter tiles (under the rules we were using). A far better cost might be $10, which means you have to spend at least 2 turns not laying track to build up to the factory. I also think the factory will go back to being a size 4 tile (equivalent to 4 City tiles) for simplicity and to fill up your City tile slots, and there will be a rule that you can't buy one if it'll end the game. So at $10 you're spending 2 or 3 turns getting "4 City tiles" which you can't use in endgame, vs getting 2 or 3 that you can - and in return you get to draw extra letter tiles.

This version of the Factory will also put a natural limit on the number you can buy - no buying 4 factories and drawing 6 tiles a turn! People were drawing way too much and getting far too many 7+ letter words on Thursday.

The Investor didn't help too much, because I exempted 3 tiles to keep people from getting screwed who weren't trying to hoard tiles. The problem was that (a) when you draw 6 or 7 tiles a turn, you don't have to try to hoard tiles, you just draw all you need, and (b) if you're making huge words, you can easily afford the paltry taxes. I found myself thinking that maybe Scott's idea to have the Tax tile affect all players was a better idea for that reason, but there are all kinds of problems with that rule as well.

A suggestion was given to me that you have to (or can) discard tiles you can't (or don't want to) pay for when the investor comes up. This removes the whole idea of Debt, which is fine with me, and it still has the effect of costing you potential points if you're holding the tiles. In fact, discarding a tile instead of a coin could be giving up even more points. but it allows you to discard "bad" letters and not have to pay for them. I think I might go with that rule next time. I might try to find a way to make the investor not hurt if you draw it early, like before you have been able to make a word. Oooh... maybe it should depend on your City tiles... like you pay X coin, where X is your number of City tiles. If you haven't made a word yet, you pay nothing. And if you buy a factory, this boosts your tax payment up by 4. That might be neat!

I also think players should start with a couple coins to help jump start the early game. I'll try 3 tiles and 3 coins per player.

Oh, another suggestion a friend had was that the letter tiles could all be consonants, and you can make whatever word you want, but you had to buy the vowels you want to use - probably at $1 apiece. you'd only get paid for the tiles you use, so the word C-A-T would pay out $1+$2-$1=$2 total. For this system I might slide the pay scale back up, lest C-A-T pay $0+$1-$1=$0! Players would start with some coins to make this feasible, and the rule would probably be that you collect the income and then pay for the vowels, so if you're broke you can still make a word.

I'm liking the "buy a vowel" idea more and more over time, and I hope to try that out sometime. I'm running out of time to be finding new things to try!

Interview with Pandemic designer on Google Talks

Jim Cote made a blog post about Pandemic, of which he's a big fan. I don't dislike the game either, it seems to me to be the best cooperative game yet because it really seems to encourage teamwork better than other games of that type (Shadows over Camelot and Lord of the Rings being some of the big ones).

Jim linked to this Google Talk interview with the designer of Pandemic, which is 50 minutes long, and is really interesting. He talks about the design process he went through, some of his experiences talking with publishers about the game, and then answers questions about it. It was a very cool interview, and on top of that, it's neat to see board gaming addressed in a sort of "mainstream" forum such as Google Talk. Admittedly, the target audience of Google Talk may not be mainstream America, but rather techy or tech savvy people who get their news from the internet rather than TV and the newspaper... but as far as board gaming goes, this seems like a big step outward!