Some good news about game pitches - one in particular!

 It's been a while since I posted much of anything at all on here, let alone anything about my games. But I did mention that I'd started pitching games to publishers, and though that hasn't gone too far yet, I may finally be making some progress in that arena!

Big multi-pitch meeting

The other day I had a meeting with a publisher who had turned down one of my games previously, and I ran through quick pitches for 8 of my games. One of them they said they'd like to give a play, and they were going to discuss a couple others to see if they'd like to try those as well. So that's promising, and it goes to show you that a rejection isn't the worst thing in the world - in this case it opened the door to making these other pitches. But that's not the headline for this blog post...

Deities & Demigods signed!?!

Another publisher I'd pitched to showed interest in 4 of my games, and wanted to play them in person, so I sent them prototype files to print out and use. Life happened, and time went by, and then there was Essen season, and I checked in every once in a while to see if they'd had a chance to try any of those games yet. Eventually, they did, and I got a nice email summary... 3 of the games they weren't interested in, but they would like to sign Deities & Demigods, if we don't mind setting it in the universe of some of their other games, and making a few changes to the game.

The other day Matthew and I had a meeting with them to discuss some of the particulars of the direction they'd like to go (make the game a little heavier, a little longer, and a little more 4X-y), and based on their email I'd already begin to think of what we could do to shape the game into what they're looking for.

So I'll be thinking about this quite a bit, maybe I'll post about it too. As soon as we figure out what to add, I'll need to update my prototype and start doing some playtesting! Fortunately, a few months ago I created a Tabletop Simulator mod for Deities & Demigods, which should help facilitate playtesting. Unfortunately, ever since then I have not been able to find my physical prototype box anywhere! I've looked everywhere I can think of two or three times each, and it's nowhere to be found! To be honest, I'm not sure when I'd really be able to get a physical playtest in anyway - but I'd still really like to find that prototype!

Changes on the Horizon for Deities & Demigods

I struggled with the Greek mythology theme for a while, and went with a somewhat bold idea when TMG was going to publish the game. In retrospect I don't know if that was such a good idea after all (still, might have worked out - I guess we'll never know!) When I started pitching the game, now that TMG is not the publisher, I'm figured I'm absolved of the problem! Someone else can figure out how to make the Greek mythology theme stand out, or what to change it to... well, the new publisher would like to port the game into the universe they're building, so the ball may be back in my court with respect to theme...

I'll be a little cagey, because I'm not sure whether the publisher would be happy about details being posted, or if they prefer to play things closer to the vest (the latter seems to be how most people do things, it seems more professional). 

The Pantheon

I can see a couple different ways to port the game over - a couple of different representations of the pantheon of deities to whom you show devotion and ask for favors. The front runner is just making up our own pantheon... something I'm told we have the freedom to do. They are building up their game world with each release, and so we have the freedom to create canon! That's going to be handy, as it should be pretty easy to find a pantheon that fits our game action if we can just make them up! The challenge I'd mentioned before of the deities being recognizable may crop up, but I bet we can take care of that with flavor (the name and image of the deity could make it clear which is the god of craftsmanship and which is the god of adventure, for example)

In addition to porting the deities to the new world, the publisher would like us to add 1 deity to the mix. Basically, they would like to see the game weight increased and more action on the board, and we can accomplish both of those things by adding a deity. The thing I'd like to watch out for is making the game go too long without the players having enough to do.

My first thought for a new deity, since they said they wanted more 4X aspects in the game, is something to do with exploration. I think the first thing I'll try will be something along the lines of a god of adventure, who allows you to "search" the hexes where your troops are and find resources (gold, devotion bumps, etc, as well as new Gem resources - see below), as well as new board features. Like, you'd draw some tiles out of a bag and choose one, get the pictured item, and then place the tile on the board to add some feature to that hex. This could be a new city added to the board, or some other special geographical feature, Matthew and I have to figure out what we could add.

A scoring condition for this new deity could be some kind of set collection of the gems I mentioned (like 1/2/3/5/8vp for 1/2/3/4/5 different gems), and maybe you can also use the gems to boost the effect of another deity (color coded to the gems) or something like that.

This sounds promising to me, and it pings just about all the things they wanted to be affected: additional deity track, additional meaning to the board spaces, more of a 4X feel, etc.

Deity Favor scoring conditions

There are currently 4 deities in the game, and each one has a scoring condition associated with it. The idea was that you could "concentrate on" one of the deities, do their thing a lot, then try and get multiple of their favor cards to reward your efforts. The publisher said they'd like to see more variety there, and they didn't like the idea of just picking one and trying to double- or triple-score it.

At first I didn't really have a good idea how to change that... I mean the deities each do 1 thing, and there aren't a ton of ways to reward having done a lot of that one thing. But Matthew had an idea that sounded decent: instead of claiming those cards from a supply, players could be dealt (or, if more experienced, maybe draft) them from a set of probably unique cards. Then, when you earn the chance to claim a favor, you just play one from your hand. If you don't like the ones left in your hand, then don't pursue Favor cards anymore. If you want to play them all, then go big into Zeus, or build some monuments or whatever!

This could work, and I'm sure there are different scoring conditions we could add once they're divorced from the actual deity cards (which was an elegant use of cards, but not strictly necessary). In particular, there could be cards that reward certain combinations of deities, and stuff like that. I think we'll need something like 5 per player to make sure there are enough.

More variety in monuments

There are currently 4 Monuments in this game, ne for each deity. They allow you to either increase minimum devotion to that deity, or claim one of that deity's favor cards. They're not trivial to get, at least not right away, and they're really strong early (or valuable late). You get them with a level 4 Hephaestus action, and if they're gone then the alternative is to get a Building AND an Artifact, which I felt covered the bases -- there's a bit of a race for the monuments if you want them, and if you don't (or are too late), then you still get good value out of an L4 Hephaestus action.

But the publisher would like to see more variety in the monuments. I suppose I can see the desire there -- getting a fancy, unique card seems "cooler" than getting 2 other, lesser cards. On the down side, I don't love the prospect of inventing a bunch of unique Monument cards that are on par with, but different than, the existing ones - especially when there's a working alternative already! Maybe this is something the publisher's internal developer can help with, because in my mind, the monuments are already doing their job exactly the right way, so I feel like I'll be coming up empty trying to figure out more different ones.

The story of the game

Hopefully without giving too much away, the story of the game (to fit the existing game world) is going to be something to the effect of the denizens of the world (us) exploring and sort of re-colonizing the ruins of their own ancestors' homeland. You see, the ancestors were driven from the land by an evil darkness that spread when the local Deities were defeated and imprisoned like genies in a lamp, so to speak. Now, a thousand years later, the Deities have been awakened, and the darkness is receding. It's time to take back the homeland! But it's been a thousand years, and everything is foreign to us. So we can explore the area, maybe fight off some remaining shadow creatures, rebuild the ruins back into cities, and maybe instead of "quests" we're closing portals to shut out the darkness once and for all.

Perhaps I'll post some more about this one as we develop it further for publication!

Rolling Realms - Jaffee Realms update

About a year and a half ago, Jamey Stegmaier created a roll & write game called Rolling Realms for people to play over zoom during the pandemic. I loved it and thought it might actually be his best design to date, and I made some realms based on games I had worked on.

For the most part, my realms were more complicated than the ones he'd made, and I haven't gone back and revisited them at all. Since then, Rolling Realms was so popular that Jamey has made a full production copy. That has inspired me to revisit the realms I had done for my games, Crusaders and Eminent Domain 

Here's what I had from before, and some new versions that are potentially more in line with the published versions of Jamey's realms:

Crusaders Realm

Here's what I had back in April 2020 for Crusaders:

Crusaders Realm - 4/2020

I liked this because it encapsulated all the major actions in the game (Crusade, Build, and Influence), and they all seemed to sort of fit. It turned out to be a bit confusing for people though, especially if they weren't familiar with the Crusaders game.

However, this version did not refer to the driving Rondcala mechanism at all. So I thought I might be able to make the realm more straightforward, utilizing the Rondcala at the heart of Crusaders. Here's an attempt at that:

Crusaders Realm - 11/2021

I don't think there was room to fully explain the idea here. I'm not sure how much space there is on the official cards vs this mock-up either, and I'm not sure if the card needs to contain the explanation or if it can be written elsewhere. Here's what I had in mind for this version:

When you assign a die to this realm, resolve the corresponding wedge. It must have at least 1 pip in it. Depending on how man pips there are, you get 1, 2, or 3 of the pictured item:

1-3 pips: 1 of the pictured item  |  4-5 pips: 2 of the pictured items  |  6+ pips: 3 of the pictured items

Then, you cross off all the pips in that wedge (remember how many there were), and draw a new pip on each of the next wedges, one at a time in clockwise order, until you've drawn that many. Thus, you add pips to the wedges in the same way you'd add tokens when you distribute them in the board game.

I have not tried this yet, but it seems straightforward to me, so long as the rules are explained.

[Edit: maybe an even simpler version is to collect 1 resource per pip for the odd numbers, and 1 star per 2 pips for the even numbers. Sure, that's potentially a bunch more resources, but so what?]

Eminent Domain Realm

Here's what I had a year and a half ago for Eminent Domain:

EmDo Realm - 4/2020

I thought this was OK, you mostly Trade for resources (which rewards 1 of each planet type), or Research for stars, and you could either just get a couple planets, or get a bunch (though there's no actual reward or incentive for that.

Here's a very similar idea that I think might read a LITTLE better:

EmDo Realm - 11/2021

In this version, you still get more resources if you have dissimilar planets, and you need similar planets to get tech. But this time the tech gets crossed out when you get it, so you can't get the same reward box twice. I also added stars for getting complete rows or columns of planets. You kind of already want to do that for other benefits, but this seemed like a fair thing to add so you can use planet flipping as a strategy.

I guess this ignores the main mechanism of Eminent Domain, but it maintains the dynamic of needing a few planets to get anything done. If this doesn't work, I'll probably do something super simple that just rewards you for having done the same action before (the first time you do an action, mark a box and get nothing or very little, 2nd time get more, 3rd time get even more).

[Edit: I wonder if the old version isn't actually a bit simpler... I like the symmetry of the Trade and Research actions in it (1/2/3 dissimilar planets for trade, 1/2/3 similar planets for research)]

What do you think?

I'm curious to know how confusing or complicated these end up being, especially in comparison to Jamey's published Rolling Realms. I haven't tried either one, but I'd love to get a wide berth of playtest data. I'd really like to see them come down to the level that the published version of Rolling Realms. So if you give these a go, please comment below with your thoughts!

[Edit: I tried them once, and they seemed OK - got a really low score though! I'd still really like to know what people think of them]

"Rolling Rails" - YANGI

What's in a name?

There's already a game called Rolling Freight, by Kevin Nunn, where you use dice to build train routes and chip cargo... which is maybe too bad, because I had an idea today for a dice game about trains!

Though to be fair, my game isn't about freight at all, just about laying track. So maybe Rolling Rails would be a better title. Surprisingly, that one doesn't seem to be taken.

Rolling Rails - a game of dice rolling and track drawing

I was watching a video about the latest game by Carcassonne designer Klaus-Jurgen Wrede: Caral, and the thought crossed my mind to make a simple dice game, maybe along the lines of Carc itself. I imagined custom dice with track on each side (Crossroads, T-intersection, Straight, Curve x2, and Turnabout). You'd start with a crossroads in the center of a grid player board, roll 4 of these dice, then use each to extend your track in one of the 4 directions. My first thought was that you'd have 8 dice, place 4 of them onto your board each turn, then pick the previous 4 dice up to roll next. That way your dice would propagate outward from the center, and the goal would be to drive them to cities at the edge of your player board. Then it occurred to me that just drawing the track on a piece of paper would make more sense.

So, we start with a player sheet grid, crossroads (or a train station?) in the center, and cities on each edge. The goal is to connect the center to a city in each direction. The cities would be worth points - fewer for the ones in the middle of the edge (they're closer, easier to get to), more points nearer the corners of the grid. For example, maybe a 9x9 grid, where the cities are worth 4/5/6/7/8 from center to corner.

Perhaps there are no turns... in real time all players roll their 4 dice, assign 1 to each track, and draw in the result. As soon as a player connects their first city, they announce "1 city!" and grab a bonus tile, scoring a few points for that accomplishment. This only happens the 1st time a player does it. At that point EACH player must discard a die and continue with only 3 dice. That part reminds me of Bananagrams, when players call "peel!" upon playing their last tile, causing all players to draw another tile.

Similarly, as soon as a player connects a 2nd city, they announce "2nd city!," grab that bonus tile, then everyone discards a 2nd die. Same for the 3rd city. After someone connects their 4th and final city, the game end is triggered... perhaps at that point remaining players get 1 or 2 final turns to connect their last city, then score their boards.

Alternate format - Bingo style

I understand a lot of players do not care for the time pressure inherent in real time play. Perhaps another format of this game could be more like Take It Easy or Karuba, where one player rolls the 4 dice, and all players mark those the way they prefer on their own player sheet. While it's possible in these types of games for everyone to do exactly the same thing, in practice players tend to differentiate pretty quickly.

This format would work with the same components, and so would be easy to try, and both formats could potentially be included in the game box. Who knows, this might work better than the real-time format, and it would require fewer dice!

Either way, this sounds to me like it could work out, and it's probably worth a try.

A shortcoming of Tabletop Simulator

I quickly mocked up a board and die for this in Tabletop Simulator to try it. With an infinite number of those dice, I was going to just leave them in play and draw 4 more dice for the next roll, however I discovered a downfall to Tabletop Simulator when it comes to using a die as a tile... pressing Q or E to rotate the die (in order to orient a 90 degree turn, for example) does not do what I wanted it to do -- instead it changes the die face! There may be a way to rotate a die without changing its face, but until or unless I figure that out, I'll have to make tiles to place on the player board or something like that.

A development gig, and a list of games I'm pitching

It's been a while since I've posted anything in my game design blog, but I've actually been doing a little bit of design/development work...

Development Gig

I got a gig working on a secret project (ooh, secrets!) - an expansion for a well known, classic Eurogame that's coming on 20 years of age. That's a fun project so far, even if I'm not always seeing eye-to-eye with the rest of the team on different aspects of it. As part of that gig, though it wasn't requested, I started thinking about how a solo mode might work, and so I tried a couple of things. My first attempt was just OK, but then I got inspired by a comment from a friend on Twitter (thanks Ariel!), and now I think I have something even better! Still could use some tweaking, and I'm not sure if it's exactly the kind of thing a solo player would be looking for, but it seems to work in general.

Re-licensing my Games

With TMG in the state it's in (effectively out of commission), I've had a few people come sniffing around, looking to republish the Eminent Domain and Crusaders lines. I'm hopeful that whoever does so will include everything:
Eminent Domain [Base game]
Eminent Domain: Escalation [expansion]
Eminent Domain: Exotica [expansion]
Eminent Domain: Oblivion [expansion]
Eminent Domain: Promos [Bonus Planets, Elusive/Exclusive Victory, Cygnus Planet (from Joel Eddy), maybe even Mars]
Eminent Domain Origins [standalone prequel]
Eminent Domain: Microcosm [standalone microgame]
Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory [standalone dice game]

Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done [Base game]
Crusaders: Divine Influence [expansion]
Crusaders: Amber Knight [expansion]
Crusaders: Crimson Knight [expansion]

Art for almost all of that new content is done and ready to go, so it would be a shame not to print them. And if a company chooses not to print, for example, Chaos Theory, then I don't know what I'll be able to do with an EmDo dice game :/

Pitching to Publishers

I've been trying to find ways to pitch some of my unpublished games to publishers. This is strange for me, because despite 12 years in the industry, I never really had to do much pitching. TMG was an avenue to get my stuff published, and that was good enough for me. Isle of Trains came out from another publisher, but that was because it was a content entry. A new publisher did sign Isle of Trains, as well as All Aboard, so maybe the expansion will finally see the light of day (6 or 7 years later)!

I've taken a zillion pitches from designers wanting TMG to publish their games, but I've only ever pitched a few games, and that was years ago. One was even signed by a European publisher, but that ended up falling through for ridiculous reasons.

This year I've made a few pitches, all online via Tabletop Simulator. One publisher showed a lot of interest in Apotheosis, but in the end they passed on it. A couple other publishers passed on that one as well, but I've got one who's still testing it with their fans to see if it's one they'd want to pick up.

Another publisher passed on Exhibit, which was a bummer, as that's probably my best unpublished design at the moment -- and I even had a cheerleader in my corner for that one (thanks Richard!). But at least now I'm passed the gate with that publisher, and they're going to look at my other games now.

I've put together this list of games (with super-brief descriptions) that I've got ready to pitch, and I'm hopeful I can just show that to publishers and they can ask me for more info on the ones they're interested in:

All For One [with David Brain]:
Thematic Euro-style Shared Piece Movement, Pickup/Deliver game about the Three Musketeers.
3-5p, ~60 mins

Alter Ego:
Cooperative Deck Learning game about vigilante heroism.
("Deck Learning" is a form of deck building as used in Eminent Domain. Could maybe use a little development polish)
2-4p, ~60 mins

Apotheosis [with Rick Holzgrafe]:
Worker Placement game where your workers level up and get better over time. Generic Fantasy (D&D) theme, since adventures level up with experience in that genre.
2-4p, ~60 mins

Deities & Demigods [with Matthew Dunstan]:
Sort of like a Deck Learning/Role Selection game where the game chooses the roles, and there's a single, common deck. Greek mythology theme: bribe gods of Olympus, then have them do favors for you.
2-4p, ~60 mins

Dice Works:
Real Time Dice Drafting game. Theme is about making inventions (originally was going to call it "Eureka!"), but it's mostly pasted on.
(This one could use a little development polish)
2-4p, ~30 mins

Exhibit: Artifacts of the Ages:
"Bluff Auction" game that's like 6 simultaneous games of Liar's Dice. Theme is collecting sets of artifacts to display in your museum.
2-4p, ~60 mins

Harvest [with Trey Chambers]:
Compact Worker Placement game about farming. Originally set in the Gullsbottom universe by TMG. Draft turn order+bonus, placement spaces change round by round, wildly diverse player powers.
(Small footprint, play time, and price point, but as satisfying as a bigger game. Could easily expand to 6 players and wouldn't take much longer to play)
2-4p, 30~60 mins

Keeping Up with the Joneses:
Rondel game about showing up your neighbors in various parts of life while trying to keep up with the Joneses down the street, who seem to be so good at everything.
(The title is an idiom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeping_up_with_the_Joneses)
2-4p, ~60 mins

Riders of the Pony Express:
Low Bid Auction, Route Planning game about delivering parcels for the Pony Express.
3-5p, ~60 mins

Sails & Sorcery [with Michael Mindes]:
Deck Learning, Area Control game with a pirate theme (including monsters, like a kraken, a ghost ship, blackbeard's ghost, etc)
("Deck Learning" is a form of deck building as used in Eminent Domain.)
2-5p, ~60 mins

Suburban Sprawl [with Matthew Dunstan]:
57-card, Sim City style dexterity game where you toss cards into play.
(Lighter and quicker than the others)
2-4p, ~20 mins

Wizard's Tower [with John Heder]:
Little abstract-ish game of placing pieces on a grid and moving them to form (or attack) towers
(An older design, lighter and more abstract than the others)
2-4p, ~30 mins

Skye Frontier - 4p playtest

 I got a chance to play a 4p game of Skye Frontier this afternoon with Rick, Aaron, and a new arrival at my playtest group, Eric. Other than some technical difficulties right at the start, I think it went fairly well...

The game only took about an hour, but I think we got enough stuff done. I audibled during the game to awarding N coins for completing an area of size N (instead of N-2), which spend the game up a little bit -- with that change I should probably add a few coins to the supply (like 18-20 coins per player rather than 15/player). Also, my current rules say that the game ends at the end of a turn when the coin supply runs out, but it seemed clear that we should finish out the round.

We used the tweaks I decided on after last week's 2-player test:

• Scrolls cost 1 of each cube (rather than 1 of any cube), and are worth 1x value (2x if in a completed area)
• Start with 1 of each cube (rather than producing in each area, which amounts to about 2 of each cube or so)

Those seemed to work OK, and seemed to have the expected effect - more people were storing tiles, and the Build action being used more.

Here are some notes from this session:

• Barrel icons should be worth something extra, since there aren't as many things that score for them. Conveniently, they have a coin icon incorporated into them, so maybe I could just make them worth 1vp at game end
• OR... one (or two) of my players suggested just removing the barrels, making fewer total icons, and making it a little bit easier to get the other icons you're after
• We used 4 each score tiles, scroll tiles, and regular tiles to explore. I had considered scaling the regular tiles by using N+1, so no matter what all players would be choosing from 2 or 3 of them every time. I think I might try that next time. As for score and scroll tiles, I might try reducing those to 3 next time
• I haven't ever used it, but technically there's a rule in the rules doc that say s you can draw a scroll tile off the deck if you don't like what you see, but I don't like that, so I'll be deleting that rule
• As mentioned above, I think I'll award N points for completing an area of size N (rather than N-2). Originally I wanted to disincentivize making a bunch of small size-2 areas, but I'm not sure that's necessary or worth the extra rule
• Also as mentioned above, I think we should play out the round after the game end triggers so players get an equal number of turns

The players all said they did enjoy the game, so maybe it's time to start looking for a re-skin or re-theme. Since I've been calling it "Skye Frontier," it's made me think of a game about airships and flying islands, with something of a steampunk vibe, but I don't have anything specific in mind. One of my players had some good, unusual ideas, which I'll list here so I can find them later:

• The scrolls suggest towns or factories that need specific resources. Could be like space colonies or factories.
• Or make it ecosystem themed - icons are prey, scrolls are predators, trading is migrating or something
• Ok this might run into appropriation issues but: volcano island culture, scrolls are temples, icons are villages and farms, trading is sacrificing to the volcano (or boats represent escaping/expeditions to another island?)
• A little more abstract could be restaurant manager themed: castle represents your restaurant, trading is delivering food, icons are food suppliers (butchers, farms, fishers, specialties like truffles), and scrolls are restaurant reviewers. "Exploring" is connecting with new suppliers, terrain could be growing regions OR cuisine styles

It was good to have a full test, to get a full table of testers, and to have a game go over decently well!

My kingdom for a playtest! Partial plays of Division of Labor and Skye Frontier

 I have been missing out on playtesting lately, as every week for the last month I have had to cancel for one reason or another. So I was very excited to get a 3-player test of not one, but two of my games last Sunday. Well, they were each only partial plays, but it was still a lot better than nothing!

Division of Labor

First up was Division of Labor, which is the working title I'm using for the I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement game. The last time I playtested anything, Rick and I gave this idea a first run, and that basically led me to believe the mechanism had some potential, but the game had all kinds of issues. I addressed some of those and was excited to give the 2nd draft a go. At this point I don't really have the endgame figured out, so Rick, Andy, and I just played 1 round and then had some discussion (also, at that point, TTS started acting funny anyway). The biggest idea that came out of that session is that while the main mechanism did work, it didn't feel much like I-Cut-You-Choose. In addition, it felt frustratingly difficult (in a bad way) to do some of the things you wanted to do.

For the next iteration, I will make some tweaks and changes, the most important of which address the above issues. It might be OK if the game doesn't FEEL like I-Cut-You-Choose... I could just stop billing it like that and it could just be a worker placement game with procedurally generated spaces or something. But I do like the idea of "I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement," enough to give it at least 1 more shot. I think a mistake that led to this failing has to do with the hasty board I made in order to test the game. I had players each splitting a bunch of cubes and placing them in a central location, and as they were used, they got distributed outward. As a result, there were basically far too many options when placing your workers - when splitting cubes it didn't fee like you were making an important split that would affect another player. 

To make the choices feel a bit more like ICYC, I will try reducing the instances of splits. Instead of each player splitting 8 cubes at the top of each round, I'll just have 1 player split 8 cubes, then the next player choose between them. Then player 3 can choose between the other pile from p1, or the 2 new piles from p2, etc. I suspect this will feel a lot more like ICYC, though it may be tricky to make geography matter, or else I could lose the Worker Placement aspect.

As for the latter issue, things being frustratingly difficult to do, I have a solution as well. In general terms, I had designed a lot of stuff in the game with restrictions, when I may have done better using incentives instead. For example, in the first draft you could only build the building indicated on the tile explored in its space. Therefore if you wanted to build a particular type of building, you were at the mercy of the Exploration draws. Perhaps better would be to allow any building to be built, but offer a bonus or discount when building the indicated type. That's similar to what I did in Crusaders, and the thought crossed my mind in this case as well - and now I think that's probably the way to go.

Skye Frontier

Since we only played a partial game of Division of Labor, we had time to try another game. A few weeks ago I started getting antsy to dig into one of my older designs, last played about 2 years ago at AZ Game Fair: Skye Frontier. Unfortunately, we had to cut that one short a few rounds in when my toddler awoke, and my players were running low on time anyway, but we did get a chance to feel out at least a few rounds of play. It went OK, though I started getting the impression that of the 4 actions in the game (Explore, Build, Produce, Trade), it seemed like most of the turns the player chose Explore. I'll note that when we had to stop, it was about when we were all running out of our starting cubes (it costs cubes to build tiles into play - we might have started with too many cubes by the way), so perhaps we would have started seeing some Build and Produce actions, maybe Trade too.

Maybe this is OK - I mean, it is a tile laying game... maybe it's OK if most turns consist of drawing and placing a tile? But to an extent, if that's all we're doing, then why bother with the other actions. The obvious response is that you could set up an engine, then start producing and trading or something like that. So maybe there's not a problem at all. I'd like to get through a whole game before committing to any thoughts on that.

TTS Prototype update

 About a year ago I posted about some of the prototypes I'd implemented on Tabletop Simulator. Man, has it been that long? Here's an update, kinda like The List, but just for TTS mods. I currently have 16 total virtual prototypes. In alphabetical order:

All For One

My oldest project that was any good. I came in on this one as a co-designer in about 2003! After waves of development, playtesting, and shelf-sitting, I recently revived this white whale again, gave it a much-needed update, and I think it's in pretty good shape... then I promptly put it back on the shelf (at least in part due to the pandemic). I finally made a TTS mod recently, and I hope to play it some more virtually soon. I've also begun pitching it to publishers.

Apotheosis

A much newer game, but still pretty old if we're talking about the initial idea (a Worker Placement game where your workers level up). I stalled out on this one until my friend Rick Holzgrafe joined the project as a co-designer, he really got this one back on track, and we worked on it heavily up until the pandemic started, and then virtually afterward. We have pitched Apotheosis to a few publishers, one of which seemed very interested in setting it in their universe, which would have been a perfect fit. We even re-skinned the prototype using their graphics/icons. In playing with them (they gave it 3 or 4 iterations), we found and made some significant improvements, but in the end they decided not to sign the game. So we re-re-skinned it back to the generic fantasy setting, and I'm continuing to pitch the latest version around.

Automatown

I came up with the idea for this worker placement game where your workers are robots, and you building an army to take over the city while getting carried away answering an interview question, and then ended up making a prototype. The game wasn't getting anywhere, and I ended up taking on a co-designer, Michael Brown, who had done some print and play testing for the game and enjoyed it. He has made some big strides with it, but I guess it's been sitting idle for a while now.

Atomic Age

This was a silly little thing I came up with for James Matthe's (may he rest in peace) Manhattan Project Dice Game design contest. I wasn't planning on entering that contest, but I got an idea in my head for a little roll & write / role selection game with the Manhattan Project trappings, so I put this together and entered it. It could use some work, and I don't think James was wanting a roll & write, so it didn't win the contest or anything (I never expected it to), but I think it's an alright little game. I made a TTS mod one day just because it didn't seem like it would be tough to do, and I played around with it solo a few times, haven't tried subjecting any playtesters to it though, other than Isaac Shalev and Andy Van Zandt, who both played it while i was working on it for the contest. 

Candyland/No Thanks mashup

Technically I have a virtual prototype for this, because I found a Candyland mod (there are several!), and just added some checkers to use as "No Thanks" chips. A couple of my players gave it a proof of concept test (we took a few turns to see how it felt), and it definitely worked. I have a few ideas for things to address if I ever decide to take this one any further.

Deities & Demigods

Another design that's been sitting around for a while now, TMG was going to publish it, and I even got a little bit of art done - but that was put on hold about the time the pandemic started. I had gone down a rabbit hole with regard to theme, because it seems like there are so many Greek Mythology games out there -- but I'm second guessing my crazy, Lion King style "Olympus on the Serengeti " idea now. I'm pitching the game with the original theme, and if a publisher picks it up, it'll be up to them how to make it stand out :)

Dice Works

Another really old design that I never did anything with. It works well as a real time dice drafting game, and since I made a mod for it earlier this year, I tried part of a game thinking TTS would be lousy for a real time dexterity-based game -- but it actually worked pretty well. The necessary combos could stand to be a little more sophisticated, but the game itself seems to work well. One challenge is that a lot of gamers just aren't into real time play, so it might be hard to find an audience.

Division of Labor

My newest project (as of mid-2021), this I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement game came together pretty quickly when I had a Twitter follower volunteer to create a TTS mod for it. I managed a first test (2p) with my friend Rick a coupe of weeks ago, we didn't play through an entire game (indeed, I'm not sure what the game end condition should even be!), and based on that I've been able to iron out some obvious details. I've got v1.1 ready to try now, but I've missed out on playtesting the last 2 weekends in a row! I hope to get this to the table soon, as there's nothing I can do with it until it gets played again.

Exhibit: Artifacts of the Ages

One of my more finished, and frankly probably one of my better designs, Exhibit is a "Bluff Auction" game that's like playing 6 simultaneous games of Liar's Dice. It was at one time, years ago, signed by a publisher, but it was retuned for reasons unrelated to the game itself, and it's just been sitting around ever since. I figured it's about time I tried again to get it published, so I made a TTS mod for it.

Isle of Trains Boardgame

Isle of Trains was published as the result of a 54-card game design contest back in 2014. The publisher had asked for an expansion, and we provided one in December 2015, they even got some art done for it, but for various reasons it never came out. More recently they asked us about expanding the game to be a board game rather than just a card game, so we started thinking along those lines and came up with a Rondel game with a circle of tiles that you move your train on (like Teotihuacan). Co-designer Dan and I had differing thoughts about the target weight of the game - I was stuck in the mindset of the publisher putting the game out (even long after it was pretty clear that wasn't going to happen), while Dan (and at least one of my main playtesters) was interested in making it a bit heavier. When I was working on it (before the pandemic hit), I had a working prototype of a light-ish version of the game, and after the pandemic I input that into TTS, and played it a couple of times. At this point I think Dan was probably right, maybe it ought to be a bit deeper.  

Keeping Up With The Joneses

The first new game I designed post-pandemic, I actually played this rondel game about 1-upping your neighbors by myself (solo playing 2 or 3 hands) quite a bit -- something I very rarely bother to do. Then I made a TTS mod for it and played with my online playtesters. This one iterated pretty quickly to a point where I think it's "almost done," with the biggest challenge being that it took longer than I had expected (and intended) to play. I got that down a bit, and adjusted my expectations, and now I think it's within tweaking range, so I've mentioned it to a couple of publishers to see if they'd be interested in a proper pitch.

Kilauea

This really old Mancala mechanism game about sacrificing people to a volcano god to avoid fiery lava being sent your way was actually relatively well received at my old game group where I used to bring my prototypes. Recently when I tried to recruit co-designers to help revive some old designs, someone showed some interest in this one, then he made some strides revising it. I took his updated files and made a TTS mod, and we had a video chat about it one time, but after that I'm afraid it kinda fell off the radar a bit.

Reading Railroad

This attempt to marry a word building game (a la Scrabble) with a connection game (a la Railroad Tycoon) was a personal favorite idea for a while, even if not a favorite design. I actually had something that worked, and was even requested at that game night I mentioned above! I entered it in a contest, and got universally poor feedback, even showing distaste that I might try to trick people into playing a genre they wouldn't want to play. After a loooong hiatus, I revived this one a while ago, made a TTS mod and played it once, and even played it IRL once as well... now I'm afraid the game might just not work the way I'd hoped :/

Riders of the Pony Express

I've seen a few attempts at a low-bid auction, but never one I thought really worked well. I tried my hand at that mechanic in this route planning game about delivering parcels across the southwest. I started this design about the time I saw a post by Gil Hova about his "4p challenge," so I decided to try that out. Let me tell you, it worked great! I made more progress in a single month on that game than I have made on maybe any game I had ever worked on before. I got the game to a point I was pretty happy with it, and then it kind of sat on the shelf for a while. Every once in a while I'd bring it to a convention and get it played, but it always ended up back on the shelf after that. Right before the pandemic, I brought it out again with my then-regular playtest group, and it went over pretty well, with the biggest challenge probably being setup hassle, and we thought of an idea to combat that, though I have yet to implement it. I did however take the time to create a TTS mod, though I haven't played with it yet.

Sails & Sorcery

Mike had an idea to mash up my deck learning card game Eminent Domain with his favorite classic eurogame El Grande, and he really impressed me with how much effort he and work he put into it, being his first real game design of this scope (he's not really a designer, though he did make Templar Intrigue, a werewolf style game). He was hesitant to let me even see the game until he was ready, because I tend to sort of take over a design, and he wanted to get it farther along first. Eventually, he did show me the game, and handed it over to me for development, and as he expected, I got right in there and rebuilt it from the ground up, trying to capture the essence of what he was trying to do. I recently made a TTS mod for it, and I've played a couple of games online. 

Skye Frontier

I heard of a game called King of Frontier, which sounded like a cross between Carcassonne and Puerto Rico, a role selection tile laying game where you could build up your little area and produce and trade resources. It sounded great, but when I got a chance to play I found it kinda lacking. Some time later, I was playing Isle of Skye, a wonderful I-Cut-You-Choose tile laying game, and it occurred to me that if you basically played King of Frontier with the tiles from Isle of Skye, it might work better... so I created a mashup of those two games. The prototype just used my copy of Isle of Skye plus a handful of cubes in 3 colors for production, and it seemed to work really well. I had gone through some iterations and thought the game was coming along, but of course, it ended up on the shelf and didn't come back down for a while. A couple of years ago I brought it to a convention in Phoenix and got a chance to play, only to find out I'd forgotten the player boards at home -- so I tried it without player boards and found that it worked just fine, if not better, without them! That was the last I'd thought of that game, until recently when I was reading some of my old posts, and decided to revive this one. It was easy to make a TTS mod, as I just found an Isle of Skye mod, and added the cubes. One of my readers has played this one a couple of times recently and given me some feedback, and it still seems to work pretty well as far as I can tell. I'd love to play it again soon, and if it does indeed work well, maybe I need to start a re-theme. Since I've been calling it Skye Frontier, I feel like something stemampunky with airships and flying islands would somehow be cool, or cloud mins like Bespin in Star Wars r something. But of course, it could be anything really - I'm open to suggestions!

Winds of Fate

An white whale design of mine, Odysseus: Winds of Fate has never fully come together for me. I've got most of the parts worked out, but somehow I just haven't been able to finish it off. I made a TTS mod a while ago for it, but I haven't gotten around to trying it, and I fear I may have lost some impetus to work on it. Maybe one of these days my interest will re-invigorate and I'll come back to it.

Prototype revival: Skye Frontier

 It's been about 3.5 years since the last time I played Skye Frontier, my Isle of Skye/King of Frontier mashup. Of course, it's one of those "designs with so much potential" that I know so well. I seem to have a lot of those, don't I? Backburnered, or forgotten games that I think have "so much potential" every time I read my old notes about them...

Well, a little while ago it occurred to me how easy it would be to make a TTS mod for this game, as long as I could find a mod for Isle of Skye -- just add a few infinite bags with gray, green, and blue cubes, and that's it! So that's what I have done, and now I have a virtual prototype of Skye Frontier!

In addition, I noticed a comment on that old blog post (linked above) from Michael Brown, a Utah based designer who has commented a lot on my posts, done some playtesting for some of my games, and came on board as a co-designer on Automatown. The comment was saying that if he could pick up a copy of Isle of Skye, then he'd give my mashup a try. I didn't feel at all bad about that, because even if he didn't like my mashup, Isle of Skye is a fantastic game all its own :)

I emailed Michael to see if he ever did pick up a copy of Isle of Skye, and if so, whether he had tried Skye Frontier at all. I didn't expect that he would have even remembered that, but if he had, I was interested to hear about it! As it turned out, he had not gotten Isle of Skye, but had been meaning to for a few years, so he went to his FLGS and picked up a copy, then he gathered the cubes needed to try Skye Frontier, and gave it a play with his wife. He wrote a nice, detailed blog post about his session.

Now, in talking about that session with him, it seems he played a few rules wrong... they didn't take VP out of the supply when completing areas, and they doubled the points from scroll tiles. But I think the sum total of that was mostly that the game may have gone a little longer than it should have (which favored his heavy shipping strategy over Alison's more generalized strategy) - at the very least, the final shipping phase he mentioned (which netted Mike +6 points on Alison) wouldn't have happened. But at the same time, un-doubling the scroll tiles would cause a similar net loss for Alison, so the final score might not have been much different after all (hard to be certain).

From the session report in that blog post, it sounded like the game was fairly close, with two really divergent strategies, so that generally sounds good. On the down side, Mike felt like his strategy was degenerate and boring, and if a strategy is degenerate and boring, then I'd prefer it not also be competitive. However, it also sounded like perhaps Alison would have done well to stop choosing Produce once Mike got that big lake set up... but then again, leaving that to Mike means she wouldn't have gotten as many cubes. Hard to say if she could have played differently to overtake the big shipping strategy.

In any case, I've got a TTS mod for the game all set up now, and I'd love to give it a shot one of these days and see how the latest version holds up. I worry a little if the Explore action isn't still a little bit too good/juicy.

Division of Labor (I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement game) - quick thought on penalties

I just had a thought about the penalty tracks in this game. Here it is for reference. I'm happy to hear opinions on it in the comments, though without much context I don't know if it'll make a ton of sense:

Currently you advance once on each penalty track per cube of that color in the group where you place your worker. In other words, if you place in a space with 3-1-2-1 (red-green-blue-yellow) cubes, you would advance the red penalty track 3 times, the green and yellow ones once each, and the blue one twice. Granted, 7 cubes at once is probably uncommon, but that's just an example. Based on this, I can set the track lengths and penalties such that they'll fill up at about a certain rate - maybe for any given color, figure an average of 2 advances per turn, so if the first penalty is at space 7, that's about 4 turns - but it's variable based on whether you're concentrating on that color's action or not.

However, this can get a little swingy. If a space ends up with, for example, 5 red cubes, that's a significant penalty, and I'd hate for spaces to get so undesirable players don't want to choose them, lest they sit around all game, maybe gathering more and more cubes...

I was thinking about possible solutions to this potential problem, and came up with a few ideas. To keep spaces from becoming TOO poisonous, perhaps I need to limit the number of advances per track per turn somehow. Here are a few ways that could be done:

1. Limit the number of cubes allowed per group. That's arbitrary and weird, and might cause problems where you can't split cubes properly if certain situations arise.
2. Limit the number of advances per color. A simple version is that you only advance once on each track if there are any cubes of that color there (and of course you don't advance if there aren't). Or the limit could be some arbitrary number, like 3, which would preserve the current feel, but knock out the edge case where a space has a large number of cubes on it
3. Institute a clearing mechanism - if a split puts a group over a certain size (maybe 6?), return all those cubes to the bag. This could be used aggressively to remove cubes from the board (is that good or bad?)
4. Combine #2 and #3 above... after a split, discard any cubes beyond 3 of each color, and still advance once per cube on the penalty tracks. That would limit the penalty to 3 per color, and limits the power of actions as well, and it COULD be used to remove some cubes from play, if that's an interesting dynamic

Option #4 sounds interesting. A player could still boost their action by discarding cubes-in-hand, though I'm not sure how useful that would be.

Side note: Red and Blue actions keep getting better and better the more cubes there are (though the returns do diminish), but if you're only allowed to build 1 building or train 1 level per action, then the green and yellow actions miss out on utilizing extra cubes. Maybe you should be able to build/train as much as you can afford. I started with that rule, but thought I should switch to 1x/turn after the first playtest.

Just counting 0-1 penalty per track might be simpler, easier to grok, and quicker to recognize/resolve. It might also clear up any question about how boosting with cubes from hand works: if there's already a cube of that color, then you lose nothing by boosting whether you count the boosted cube or not (which might be a good thing rules-wise)

I'm happy to hear opinions or arguments for any of these schemes:

• Penalize each track at most once, if there are any number of cubes of that type there
• After splitting, discard cubes over 3 of each color
• Arbitrarily limit penalties to 3 per color per turn (but don't discard any cubes)

The List: circa June, 2021

I've decided it might be a good idea to reorganize The List, and I've updated the categories a little bit: 

Published Games - this hasn't changed much lately, but I hope more games will bump up soon:

- Terra Prime (BGG)
- Eminent Domain (BGG)
- Eminent Domain: Escalation (BGG) (expansion)
- Eminent Domain: Exotica (BGG) (expansion)
- Eminent Domain: Oblivion (BGG) (expansion)
- Eminent Domain: Microcosm (BGG)
- Isle of Trains (BGG)
- Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done (BGG)
- Crusaders: Divine Influence (BGG) (expansion) [printed and waiting]
- Dungeon Roll: Winter Heroes (BGG)
- Gold West: Bandits promo (BGG)
- Gold West: Trading Post promo (BGG)
- Yokohama: Achievements & Free Agents promo (BGG)
- Brainfreeze

Finished But Unpublished Games - in line to be published:
- Eminent Domain Origins [Ready to print]
- Crusaders: Crimson Knight (expansion) [Ready to print]
- Crusaders: Amber Knight (expansion) [Ready to print]
- Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory (dice game) [Ready for art]

Currently Pitching Games - actively looking for a publisher:

- Olympus on the Serengeti  (FKA Deities and Demigods - might go back to this title) [Art paused]

- Apotheosis (Co-Design with Rick Holzgrafe) [pitching to publishers]

- Sails & Sorcery [with Michael Mindes] [pitching to publishers]

- Riders of the Pony Express (BGG) [pitching to publishers]

- Exhibit (BGG) [pitching to publishers]

- Keeping Up with the Joneses [pitching to publishers]

- All For One (BGG) (Co-Design with David Brain) [pitching to publishers]

"Finished" But Unpublished Games - abandoned or backburnered designs that are "done":
- Dice Works (BGG)
- Wizard's Tower (BGG) [Abandoned]
- Isle of Trains: All Aboard (expansion)
- Suburban Sprawl
- Watch It Played [Abandoned]
- Now Boarding [Abandoned]
- Rolling Realms: Jaffee Realms (for Jamey Stegmaier's Rolling Realms)

Current Active Designs - these are the games I'm actively testing or working on:

- I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement [ICYC/WP]

Backburnered Designs - I kid myself into thinking that I'm still working on these:

- Alter Ego (BGG)

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

- Joan of Arc

Promising Recent ideas:
- Worker-ception [with David Short]

- False Prophet [Mancala/Worker Placement]

- Come And Play [Sesame Street memory/rondel game]

- Candyland Game [Candyland/No Thanks mashup]

Old Standbys - games which have been around, 1/2 done and untouched, for years:
- 8/7 Central [Abandoned]
- Hot & Fresh [Abandoned]

- Odysseus: Winds of Fate (BGG)

- Reading Railroad [Abandoned]

- Moctezuma's Revenge

- Kilauea [a designer showed interest in co-designing, but that didn't go anywhere]

- Automatown [with Michael Brown]

- Dynasty [I still think this one has potential]

Misc and Really Old Stuff - most of this I'll probably never get back to, but I like keeping it around just in case:
- 9-Ball
- Blockade Runner
- Roman Emperors (my version of someone else's game)
- Admirals of the Spanish Main (my version of someone else's game)

- Investigative/Tabloid Journalism
- Red Colony
- Clash of the Kingpins
- Time = Money
- Dating Game
- Ticket Please
- The Untouchables
- Day labor game based on craps

- Rondel Role Selection

-Scourge of the High Seas [deckbuilding game with 2 center rows]

Here are notable comments on some of the above titles:

- Olympus on the Serengeti  (FKA Deities and Demigods - might go back to this title) [Art paused]

I have started pitching this game to publishers, and I'm really having second thoughts about the whole Lion King style theme idea... I'm pitching it with the original Deities & Demigods theme, and I'm hoping that an interested publisher will worry about the theme issues I'd mentioned.

- I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement [ICYC/WP]

I put some thought into this, drafted up some rules, and made a physical prototype to try out. A Twitter follower was kind enough to implement my prototype files on Tabletop Simulator as well, so I've managed a first run 2p game with Rick. It went OK, pretty good as first runs go in fact, and I have made some changes that sound promising for a second attempt. I missed out on playtesting last weekend, so I look forward to Saturday when I can hopefully give this one another go.

- All For One (BGG) (Co-Design with David Brain) [pitching to publishers]

After 17 or 18 years, it's finally time I started pitching this game! The latest changes seemed very good, and I found some time to make a TTS mod for the game. I'm hoping I can get some plays in especially if any publishers bite on it. I've always said that (until recently) the biggest disappointment of my game design career is that All For One hasn't been published. I'm hoping to rectify that sometime soon.

- Worker-ception [with David Short]

Since David Short came in on this with me, we made a little headway with regard to how the game should work. I even came up with a host of mini-games to try out, so it might not be too hard to put together a prototype for this one at this point. I should probably write up the current ideas in a blog post! However, it hasn't been as high a priority for me, and apparently not for David either, as communication on it kind of fizzled out a while ago. I'm pretty sure we both want to get back to this one though.

- Ticket Please

This idea always struck me as a potentially simple-yet-fun, accessible game on the order of Ticket to Ride, and every time I look back on it I wonder why I don't put together a prototype and give it a shot. My most recent posts on the game (circa: 2008? Geez!) still sounds viable, and not even that hard to make a prototype for! I am trying to convince myself to make this the next game I work on - I should be able to get something together on TTS without TOO much trouble. Who knows, maybe that'll spur some development... if it turns out to have promise after a first play.

I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement: inaugural playtest and changes for next time

 Unfortunately, last weekend I was unable to do any playtesting, but the week before that I did manage to get a 2p test of the first draft of the I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement game (for lack of a better title, maybe Division of Labor?), and while just about every part of it needs some work, I'm relatively pleased with how it felt!

Prototype board

I have put together a physical prototype, but I'm not sure if I'll ever actually use it... I also uploaded those files to Tabletop Simulator (actually, someone volunteered to do that for me this time, and they did a much more sophisticated job than I probably would have!), and that's how I was able to get that first test in. The board I made is pretty uninspired:

First draft board for ICUC WP (working title: Division of Labor?)

Those center spaces are supposed to represent the spaceship / starting spaces, and even though it's awful graphic design, I was using those spaces as each player's starting 2 spaces. Yes, you'd split 8 cubes into 2 piles, and put them both into that odd shaped space -- that space was to act like 2 spaces at once. When you place there, you choose 1 pile of cubes and ignore the other, leaving it for the next person to place there. I have attempted to improve on that for next time, but I haven't had a chance to try it yet:

2nd draft of game board - to try next time

When splitting, follow the arrows
This was done in MS Paint, sorry about the 2 different styles of arrow!

This 2nd draft seems likely a little clearer, and closer to my initial intent to begin with. Each player now has their own 2 spaces (in their player color) in the center 3x3 section of the board. The very center space isn't really part of it, and neither are the 4 corners of the board (though I guess they could be). That leaves 44 spaces - I have no idea if that's a good or bad number!

8 does feel like a decent number of cubes to split at the beginning of each round. I've got players making that initial split concurrently, behind a screen, then revealing and placing the piles in the starting spaces. One question that came to mind is what to do if a starting space still has the 4 cubes from last round in it... presumably you'd add to them, which might be fine. I wonder if a max number of penalty track advances (per color) would be in order, mostly for that situation...

The player board worked as expected, as did the "research" track*. I had forgotten to make a file for penalty tracks, so the guy who made the mod for me did some up on his own.

* Side note: while I've been calling that a Research track, the buildings are more like your technologies, and the "research" ended up being extra workers and VP, so maybe better would be to call that a Training track

Training track and Workers

In the 1st draft, I went with [no effect] / [+1 worker] / [+1 worker] for the effects of the top token, and then [1vp] / [3vp] / [6vp] for the bottom token. I also started us each with 4 workers apiece. We were playing a 2 player game, and 4 workers to start felt like way too many. I could see more workers being a good idea in a game with more players, as there would be more spaces to utilize, but I'd have to try it to be sure. With 2 players I think perhaps starting with just 2 workers might be good (perhaps start with 2/3/4 workers for 2/3/4 player games).

Starting with too many workers already, adding another at 2 steps on the Training track seemed too easy, and the thought of adding a 2nd new worker on top of that didn't sound as attractive anymore, so next time I am going to try changing the 2nd space effect to [ne effect] instead of [+1 worker] and see if that feels more appropriate.

I also bumped up the VP values of the 2nd marker, as they just looked weak (not sure exactly what that should be worth yet).

Penalty tracks

I think the 1st draft penalty tracks might be a good length, but the penalties themselves need some work. The only in-game penalty that I could think of was increasing the cost of actions by a cube, but it turns out that causes some problems and raises a lot of questions. My opponent (Rick) suggested just making it loss of VP at game end, and that sounded like a good fix. I would have liked to have some in-game issue for players to have to deal with, but for now I'll try -2/-3/-5 VP (cumulative). You can still get out of these penalties (left to right) by covering hem with cubes "in hand" of the appropriate color.

The Actions

All of the actions in the game sort of worked, but it was a little weird how some of them (Explore, Experiment) worked no matter what, and some (Expand, Exploit) required a tile to have been Explored already in that location. I had figured it would work out, as Green and Blue cubes would just be "poison" if there wasn't a tile there yet, and Red cubes would become worth less and less as the board filled up with tiles. In a way, I like the sound of that, but realistically, it didn't feel great - a little too frustrating, especially if the red cubes just refuse to come out of the bag for some reason, and you just can't build anything at all.

Rick had a good suggestion for this as well: basically find a way to be able to Explore no matter what. My next draft will switch out the red action (Explore) with a new one: draw X cubes out of the cube bag and keep one of those "in hand," put the rest back in. Compare that to the Explore action, where you draw X tiles, choose 1, and get a bonus from it (which could be 1 cube in hand)... some of the tiles have no cube shown, so theoretically this new action will offer better choice of cube than Exploring (besides, if you take a cube when Exploring, then you're out a free scoring icon or building)

But we still need a way to draw tiles! So  let's say that ANY action could be used to Explore instead of the action indicated by the cubes' color. I think this will help a lot - you can ALWAYS explore, which populates the board with tiles, and gives you a thing, but maybe the specific actions are more efficient at their job. For example, Exploring can get you a Level-1 building for free, but your choice is limited, and it can never give you a Level-2 or 3 building at all. Similarly, Exploring can get you 1 scoring icon, but the Blue action can get you 1 per cube, so potentially several icons. And all of these are bolstered if you have built buildings to support them!

Oh, and on that note: I think the building that lets you draw 1 extra tile with exploring could apply that ability when drawing tiles (when Exploring) AND cubes out of the bag (when Recruiting - the new action).

Can't wait until next playtest!

Well, that about summarizes the changes I want to try next time I get a chance to play this game. Hopefully this weekend!

If this sound interesting to you, and you would like to blind test it on TTS with your group, let me know, I can probably get you access to the mod. I'd just ask for feedback in return!

I-Cut-You-Choose with more than 2 players

I stumbled across this video today (someone posted it in the new BGDL+ forums) talking about I-Cut-You-Choose with more than 2 players. It's not the process I'm using in my newest design, an I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement game, but I thought it would be really good to keep track of it in case I'd like to review it later:

The basic idea being that P1 splits something into 3 groups, P2 decides one thing they DON'T want, and trims one of the other two so they're "equal," then P3 chooses one thing... P2 gets the thing they trimmed (if it's still available), or the other, "equivalent" thing (if it's not), and P1 gets the remaining thing, and everyone should be happy... then they similarly divide up the trimmed piece.

This process would work for any number of players, but it looks like it gets pretty cumbersome pretty quickly as you add people. A pragmatic solution might be to discard the "trimmed" bit, or do something else with it (add it to the next group to be split?) - then it still should be the case that each player is happy with what they get, and it doesn't get too iterative.

For example, P1 takes 13 cube and splits them into 3 piles of 3, 4, and 6 cubes. Note that while these aren't even with respect to total number of cubes, they might be even (or close to even) with respect to total value of cubes. Then, P2 decides they don't want the 3-cube pile, and trims 1 cube off the 6-cube pile (making it a 5-cube pile instead) -- the trimmed cube is discarded, or maybe used later in some other part of the game. P3 get to pick any of the three piles, maybe they choose the 3-cube pile, because those specific cubes are really good for their position. Then P2 gets the 5-cube pile that they had trimmed, and P1 gets the remaining 4-cube pile.

P1 should be happy, because they (theoretically) split the cubes such that they'd like any pile, P2 should be happy, because they (again, theoretically) trimmed the 6-cube pile so they'd be equally happy with the 4-cube or the 5-cube pile, and P3 should be happy, because they got 1st pick of all the piles.

I'll note that "everyone being happy" is the goal when splitting a cake, but in a game there might be more of an aspect of "getting away with something." If the cubes have different (non-obvious) values to different players, then things like P3 in that example taking the 3-cube pile over the other two are reasonable, and there's an opportunity to make piles that are not so much "even" -- tempt someone into leaving you what you want by making a pile that's attractive to them! That's the crux of the ICYC mechanism in games, I think.