Nothing much to report

I feel like I haven't been posting enough, but then again I haven't had much to report. I wonder if those two phenomenon aren't related to some extent...

I went to BGG.con a couple weeks ago, and I had a pretty good time, but on the down side I got kinda sick on day 2, and was coughing all week. I even threw up one night. :( I hope I didn't infect anyboy else.

I didn't get to all of the things I wanted to play at BGG.con, but I did manage to play my number 1 priority: Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar. It was awesome, just as I expected it to be. People make a big deal about the gears, or about how they thought the gears would just be a gimmick... but if they've read anything about how the game works, then there's no reason they should not see that the gears are not a gimmick, but an integral part of the game. It could have been a plain board with 5 tracks to place workers on and a round counter, and a fiddly accounting phase where you advance all markers on each of those tracks - which would have worked just as well, but may have simply been too much physical work, and distract from the game itself. The gears simply make that a reality - automatically updating each of those tracks with a quick turn of the gear. I like the game a lot, and cannot wait to play it again.

Looking at that board makes me think that maybe gears are a way to make possible the changing streetlights for Hot & Fresh.

I did get to spend some quality some of my good friends that I hardy ever see. There are people I missed or would have liked to spend more time with of course, but such is life.

I didn't play any of my prototypes that I brought with me, though I did teach EmDo: Escalation to 1 group, and played Venice and 8 Minute Empire once each.

Now that I've sent the completed rules and everything for Escalation to Gavan and Michael (I hope they have coordinated a schedule on that), I have started looking at EmDo: Exotic again. I haven't looked at it since before I was done with Escalation, so I would like to update my thoughts on it and bring in line with the other expansion (which will precede it). For example, I've introduced new concepts in Escalation such as paying Fighters for Tech cards, Fighters/Resource icons on Tech cards, Recon, Reparations, and Replenishing slots... I might like to expand on those concepts in Exotic. Of course, I would also like to ensure that Exotic is playable without Escalation as well...

I'm also considering all kinds of new types of things for Tech cards. For example, I would like to create a run of tech cards who's action is, in effect, boost-able. For example:

Unnamed Metallic L2 Warfare Tech Action
Action: Collect 1 Fighter for each [Warfare icon] in your empire (you may play [Warfare icons] from your hand).

In effect, an Action that acts like a Warfare role. I can see this for each of the standard Actions:

Unnamed Metallic L2 Survey Tech Action
Action: Recon the Planet deck for "X" where "X" is the number of [Survey icons] in your empire (you may play [Survey icons] from your hand). Take the top Planet card and put it into your Empire, face down.

Unnamed Advanced L2 Research Tech Action
Action: Choose 1 Technology card who's Prereqs you satisfy. If you pay its cost with [Research icons] in your empire, put it in your hand (you may play [Research icons] from your hand).

Unnamed Advanced L2 Trade Tech Action
Action: Trade 1 Resource for each [Trade icon] in your empire (you may play [Trade icons] from your hand). Collect 1 Influence from the supply for each Resource traded.

Unnamed Fertile L2 Produce Tech Action
Action: Produce 1 Resource for each [Produce icon] in your empire (you may play [Produce icons] from your hand).

Unnamed Fertile L2 Colonize Tech Action
Action: +1 Colony. You may place [Colonize icons] from your hand under Planets in your empire as Colonies.

The impetus for this was new wording on a tech card I had in mind for Exotic:

Exotic Efficiency:
Action: For each [Exotic icon] in your Empire, Draw 1 card or remove 1 card in hand from the game.

There's an open question as to how big this expansion should be. I believe the original plan was to have mini-expansions, which wouldn't cost terribly much, and would fit in a box the size of The Resistance (about 4"x6"). In that respect, a couple of tiles and a small handful of cards would be enough. but will that significantly impact game play enough to warrant having it? I am very happy with the effect on game play that Escalation provides. I would be disappointed if Exotic didn't deliver on that front as well.

On the other hand, perhaps Exotic could be a smaller mini-expansion to tide things over while I work on the next more significant Agenda expansion I've had in mind all along. I'll keep that in mind as I revisit Exotic.

Here's a question... would it be acceptable to have a subset of cards in Exotic that are for use only if you also use Escalation, and if you don't have ESC (or don't care to use it) then you just leave those cards out? Leave a comment and let me know what you think, and any other thoughts you have on integrating one expansion with another (in addition to integrating with the base game, obviously).

As a sort of recap, I'll briefly mention that the main thrust of the Exotic expansion is a new planet type. Thematically, the players have finally left the recognizable portion of the universe and are running into exotic planets with alien life and technology. So far all of the "characters" we've seen have been human, the aliens will likely be humanoid but decidedly foreign and not human.

The thing about exotic planets is that they provide benefits, but without the ability to translate or understand it, it's not useful. I.e. there's a new role symbol, but all by itself it doesn't do anything. While some planets in Exotic will provide this new, useless symbol, many other planets will proved "translators" which allow a player to use an Alien symbol as another type of symbol. This sounds like a lot of work, but when you consider that multiple different translators work on the same Alien icon they become very flexible. The idea is that if you collect a lot of effects from this expansion, they build on each other. And of course all tech cards in the Exotic stack will have Alien icons on them...

Another thing about exotic planets is that they produce a different type of resource: Crystal. Which could be interesting in certain deck builds.

 

Now that Escalation has introduced Civilized, Hostile, and Bustling planets, I could add Exotic planets of these types. I am hesitant to add TOO many new planets though, and I'm already planning on 9 Exotic planets and 6 new planets of the basic types. I could see NOT adding Civilized planets, because thematically that doesn't make a lot of sense, and mechanically there are plenty of those already. I could see adding a Hostile planet, but unless I change the Warfare cost (which I suppose I could do), then without a Fleet tile from Escalation, how do you attack it? Adding Bustling planets (that is to say planets with Actions on them) would be the easiest, but of course I'd have to decide which actions to add.

In other news, I haven't done too much in the way of gaming lately. Since returning from BGG.con I have only played Robinson Crusoe (this week) - which was highly thematic, but other than that had little-to-nothing really going for it as far as I was concerned. Seemed long and fiddly, it felt like we were probably forgetting rules or playing wrong, it seemed pretty darn easy, and even if not, it just didn't feel like fun to me. 

 

Other than that, I've only been playing Glory to Rome - best of 3 with my roommate John almost every evening. I probably win 60+% of our 2p games, but he was beating me pretty bad last week. Maybe it was because I was under the weather, I don't know. but I'm happy to say that while he beat me 2 days in a row, I have been beating him the last few - so I'm getting back to true form :) I have been experimenting with trying to control the game end a little better, and for the most part it was working. I will also say that in the past 4 sessions or so I have seen way more successful Colosseum action than I ever had before, as well as a Forum victory. Almost every game we've played, John has been able to go first and many of them he was able to hire a Craftsman (I got anything from a Merchant in the best case, to a laborer in the worst case). ONCE I got to hire a Craftsman turn 1, and that game I barely used him! :)

Glory to Rome is really a great game, and anyone who doesn't think so is just wrong - that's all there is to it.

Let's get it started... Let's get Kickstarted in here!

I don't care for marketing, and I don't usually shill for products, but I think it's appropriate to make a post about a game that's currently on Kickstarter. It's not a TMG game, but I am developing a different game - Captains of Industry - from the same designer, which TMG is publishing next year.

The game in question is City Hall. I got a chance to play City Hall at BGGcon last week, and while I'd say it's a bit lighter than Captains of Industry, I'd also say it's a great, solid, polished design. I have pledged for a copy, and I would like to see the campaign fund so that I will eventually get it! Here's a little bit about the game:

City Hall is like Goa: On your turn you select an action, and somebody is going to take that action. There is a once-around bid of Influence (one of the games two currencies), and then you may choose to either accept (one of) the highest bid(s), collecting the influence from that player and allowing them to take the action, or you can pay that amount of influence to the bank and take the action yourself.

For starters, let me remind everyone that Goa is a great game, and that this mechanism worked very well in it. But in City Hall it plays out much differently...

Like in Goa, you often want to be selling off the action you choose and collecting Influence, not paying Influence to the bank: that's your income. A player who always chooses the action they want and then pays the bank for it will run into trouble because they will be Influence-poor. However, in City Hall there's no guarantee that another player will choose the action you are interested in - or more importantly, there's no guarantee that the other players will choose actions in the order you want them to happen - so sometimes it's better to choose the action you want after all, and be prepared to pay for it, just to make sure your plans aren't ruined! In some ways this amps up the mechanism from Goa a little bit.

Of course, the rest of the game is nothing like Goa - just that main mechanism. In Goa you're collecting various resources in order to upgrade tracks as efficiently as possible... in City Hall you are trying to garner enough votes to become Mayor by increasing two different tracks: Population and Approval Rating. Your standing on each of those tracks will be multiplied together at the end of the game to determine your score, so it is important to advance both of them.

The way that you advance on those tracks involves buying land spaces and building Houses, Offices, Factories, and Parks. Each of those can gain "stars" based on their location relative to other buildings:

• Houses like to be next to other Houses, Offices, and Parks, but hate being next to Factories. 
• Factories like being next to Offices, but don't care about Houses. 
• Offices like being next to Houses and Parks... etc. 

One of the actions creates a mini-scoring round in which players score Population (increase their marker on the Population track) for "star" majority. The more/better they've contributed to the city, the more population they bring in. Parks are interesting as well because they allow you to advance on the other track, your Approval Rating. The more parks you've built (and the more stuff built next to your parks), the more Approval you gain.

The other way to advance Approval Rating is by paying money during one of the other available actions (Campaigning). Money is used for that purpose, as well as buying land, and there's another action that allows you to exchange Money for Influence and vice versa.

City Hall felt like a tight wrestling match with players fighting to advance on both the Population track and the Approval Rating track. But that's not all there is too it - there are also a handful of bonus rewards, each of which are handed out at the end of the game. These reward things like Most Money, Most Influence, Most Houses on the board, Most Factories, Most Land purchased, things like that. The points available from those are not insignificant, so keeping them in mind is definitely worthwhile.

I really enjoyed my play of City Hall, and I sincerely hope Michael reaches his funding goal on Kickstarter so that I can get my copy and play it some more! So take a look, and even if it's not your thing, consider sharing it with your gaming friends. There's about a week left to pledge, and a long way to the finish line.

Trick Taking - redux

Apparently it's been two years since I made this post about trick taking. I guess I haven't given it too much more thought since then. This morning I was thinking about the new Eight Minute Empire by Ryan Laukat - a really great idea for a quick card drafting game that plays like a real game. Many fillers really don't offer satisfying decision making, where this one packs more of a punch for the time investment. Anyway, I was thinking about Eight Minute Empire, sorry that I didn't think of it myself, and somehow the trick taking ideas came back to mind. This time it wasn't so much about cards from tricks staying in play (though I guess that could still happen) so much as each card in the trick giving you a small action. Here's how I thought it might work:

* Leader plays a card. I'm thinking that other players need not follow suit, but the highest card in the leader's suit wins the trick. Then again, following suit is a quintessential part of trick taking, so maybe it's necessary.
* When a player wins a trick, that player resolves all of the actions on the cards in that trick.
* The larger the value of the card, the weaker the effect. The smaller the value, the larger the effect. In this way, when sloughing a card (because you cannot follow suit), you must balance strong actions with ability to win a trick..

Something just occurred to me - a player with a hand full of low cards could be severely hamstrung by never getting any actions. Perhaps players could get the effect of the card when played, and then the winner of the trick could get a mini-version of the action on each card as well - or a listed supplemental action which is like a weak form of the main action. For example:
Main action - Put X units into play (where "X" depends on the value of the card)
Supplemental action - Put 1 unit into play

* Actions could be anything, really. Perhaps the same sorts of thing as in an Empire Building game - movement around a map, harvesting resources, fighting battles, etc. I like the idea of having a board, in much the same way that I like how Eight Minute Empire uses a board.
* Action types could be grouped by suit, so for example Spades actions allow a player to add units to the board or move them, while Hearts actions revolve around resources, Diamonds actions are like technology, and Clubs actions are like warfare.

Somehow I feel like this sounds better than the cards-stay-in-play idea I had before (I'm not sure why). Maybe I'll think on it some more and see if I can come up with some useful actions for this.

Dallas bound! BGG.con 2012

Seven years ago I heard that the people who run BoardGameGeek.com - the premier source for user generated info on just about every board game out there - decided to host a game convention in Texas. On a whim, I decided to go... and I've been back every year since.

Next week will be the 8th year I'll be making the trek (not much of a trek, really - just a 2 hour plane trip) to Dallas FOR BGG.con 2012, and I'm really looking forward to it!

Over the years the convention has gotten bigger and bigger, longer and longer- from a little 300+ person 3-day weekend, to a 1400+ week long affair. Even with a whole week, there's still not enough time to do all of the things I want to do each year. This year I don't have too many specific things I want to do, but I'm sure I'll still figure out a way to miss something :) Here are a few things I'm looking forward to doing over the next week:

Prototyopes

* Reading Railroad - Unsatisfied with the state of Reading Railroad, I have finally gotten around to prototyping an alternate version. Actually, this is much closer to my original vision of the idea. For now it'll use the board, track tiles, and cubes from Railroad Tycoon. Since I don't want to lug all that around I am just taking the new stuff (Factory tiles, Player aids, Letter tiles, etc) and I plan to check Railroad Tycoon out of the library.

* Venice: City of Trade - a TMG submission which I enjoyed on first play. I would like to see how it holds up to repeat plays, and how players react to it. Maybe this will be a TMG release in the near future!

* Moctezuma's Revenge - an old prototype I've revived and plan to bring to Proto Alley. I recall thinking this one worked, but was lacking. I hope to see whether it has any potential.

* Winds of Fate - same story as Moctezuma's Revenge, only this one was further along, and I feel like it's got a lot more potential.

* Eminent Domain: Escalation - I'll have my expansion prototype on hand, I'm certain people will be interested in playing it!

* 8 Minute Empire - I might bring my PnP copy of 8 minute Empire, which just funded on Kickstarter. It's a great idea for a game, I'm kinda sorry I didn't think of it myself! I bet it'll be a big hit, even if i have my own ideas about how I'd have done it...

* Kings of Air and Steam - I'll likely have my Kings of Air and Steam prototype with me. If we're lucky, there MAY be a copy in the Hot Games Room!

* Captains of Industry - I'll have my Captains of Industry (TMG 2013 release) prototype with me as well.

Essen titles

* Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar - I've been looking forward to this one ever since I heard about it around last April. The gear thing sounds like a great twist (...literally!) on the Worker Placement mechanism.

* Terra Mystica - In researching Essen I read about this game, and it sounds pretty cool. I look forward to trying it out.

* Urbanization - I played this at Essen once, and I'm pretty sure I liked it. I want to play it some more to be sure. I do not know if there will be a copy at BGG.con or not though.

* Suburbia - I played this once at Gen Con, and I enjoyed it... I look forward to playing it again, probably this week.

* Clash of Cultures - I like the idea of civilization games, but in practice they're usually too long, or too busy - I end up not enjoying them like I'd like to. I read a little bit about Clash of Cultures a while ago and it sounded like it had some neat mechanisms in it. I don't know if I'll fall in love with it, but I'd like to take the opportunity to play it at BGG.con.

Special Events

* Puzzle Hunt - one of my favorite events at the con is the Puzzle Hunt. I hope they put it on again this year!

* Disc Golf - last year I went on a Disc Golf outing. It's being arranged again this year, and I was planning on going... but on further thought I think it might be too much hassle and too early in the morning to bother. I can disc golf anytime, I might take a pass in Dallas.

* Game Show - sometimes they have a Game Show event which, depending on the format, can be pretty fun.

I've probably missed a few things, but this was not intended to be a comprehensive To-Do list anyway :)

Michael prefers that we enjoy the convention, so there will not be a TMG booth at BGG.con. Instead,  TMG products will be sold in the Funagain store, and Michael has sponsored the convention with some product. After Gen Con and BGG.con 2010 I think we both like it better this way :)

Moctezuma's Railroad of Fate

I mentioned on Twitter/FB recently that I'm revisiting some of my old designs - finally! In about 2 weeks I'm going to BGG.con, and I hope to bring 3 prototypes with me. I hope to utilize Proto Alley to test these out again and see if they're as promising as I remember - and to find out what each one needs to move forward. Here are the three games I'm bringing, in no particular order:

Moctezuma's Revenge

At the height of the Aztec empire, great temples were built for the Kings. When their time had come, the Kings were entombed in their temples to be revered forever, surrounded by great treasures of the Aztec people! While researching the temples it’s easy to make off with Aztec treasure, but some of the kings are cursed!

Research the temples and collect treasure, but beware of cursed treasure – it’ll count against you! Also, some temples contain clues to the whereabouts of the fabled lost City of Gold! Find all the clues and lead the way to El Dorado!

Odysseus: Winds of Fate

Play as the Sisters of Fate, who observe Odysseus on his voyage from Troy to Ithaca. Not entirely interested in whether he makes it home safe or not, you will bet on the outcome of Odysseus' journey, and then use your influence to make sure your bets pay off.

Reading Railroad 

Use Resource Letters to form words and earn Coins for each letter used. Spend Coins to build connections between cities and collect City Tiles. At the end of the game score points by spelling out words using collected City Tiles.

Hmm... I usually have more colorful descriptions than those above for Winds of Fate and Reading Railroad. Weird. In any case, I think all three of these games have some potential. Let me know which you think sounds the most promising, and what ideas you have for any or all of them. I look forward to your comments!

Heading to Essen, and some "spring" cleaning

Tomorrow I leave for Essen.

I've been waiting several years to say that, and I'm really excited to go to Germany and see the spectacle that is the Essen Game Fair! I'm not sure I'm prepared for the enormity of the show, but that's OK - I count this first trip as a sort of scouting mission to see how Essen goes. I am not sure if or when it'll happen, but I suspect in the future TMG might have a booth there, and it'll be nice to know what to expect before having to do the show "for real."

I got a little lucky with this trip, as I didn't really expect to go and I didn't prepare in advance at all. When it looked possible, I posted online that I was thinking of going, and I got an email from someone offering me a place to stay. I'm pretty sure finding a hotel would have been problematic, so I was happy to get that offer! In exchange for putting me up for the week, my host has asked me to spend some time in his booth, signing copies of Eminent Domain... sounds like a win-win to me!

So if you are at Essen, swing by LocWorks booth (4-230) and say hello! I'll probably be helping demo Ground Floor, and if you buy a copy of Eminent Domain, I'll sign it for you :)

In addition to spending some time in the LocWorks booth, I look forward to seeing what the rest of the con has to offer. I'm not sure I plan to do much in the way of shopping - I know a lot of people rush to buy their most anticipated games, but frankly I'm not sure how I'd get them home, and the one's I'm interested in will be available in the US before too long (specifically T'zolkin: the Mayan Calendar, which will be released by Rio Grande Games before too long). I do have a short list of games I'm interested in checking out though. I hope to see a few of those at the show.

One game I might actually pick up is the new version of Hanabi. I love that game, and have not got a proper copy of it. I like the cards in the new version - the first version is unavailable, and the 2nd edition - even if available - has square cards that are a pain to use. From what I've seen this new version should be easier to read and use.

In other news... 

I've been doing a little bit of "spring cleaning" (only a couple months out of season). I cleaned out a shelf where I kept some of my unpublished prototypes. Some of those are prototypes of my own design, some are prototypes of other people's games. Like an archeologist uncovering an exciting find I came across a wealth of interesting things!

8/7 Central - I came across 2 different prototypes of this card game about running a TV network by my friend Mohan which I worked on with him for a summer several years ago. This game always seemed like a good idea to me, but it also always suffered from the same problem. I think that problem boils down to information overload - it's difficult and cumbersome to try and track each player's schedule of shows, even if you've only got one 1-hour time slot, 5 days a week. I do think the core concept worked, and I remember having fun playing the game though, and if I had infinite time I would definitely like to make this game work.

Moctezuma's Revenge - A game about collecting treasure and avoiding curses. I liked the idea of this one too, and I recall playing the prototype... not sure what stopped me moving forward with it. I think I'm not a big fan of push-your-luck mechanisms, and this game had quite a bit of that in it. This is another one I'd like to revisit sometime.

Blockade Runner - Originally designed for a card game design contest (never entered), then co-developed with another designer, this game was intended to be published by a publisher at one point but that fell through. Then later it was intended to be published by another publisher, and I sold my rights to it in order to facilitate that. I notice the game is not out, which means I believe the rights have reverted, but I'm not sure what good that does me. This quick game of bluffing and double think seems destined to live on the shelf :/

Nursing coop game - I came across a prototype I made of a game my friend Brian wanted to make. He's a nurse, and he had an idea for a cooperative game set in an ER. I thought it sounded cool and I liked the main mechanism he had in mind, so I went home and made a prototype. We played through it once or twice, but then kind of forgot about it.

Reading Railroad - Originally to be titled Conjunction Junction (and I submit that could be a good name for an expansion), Reading Railroad was an idea I had with an online BGDF friend Scott Slomiany. I maintain that it's a fabulous idea, combining a word game with a connection/railroad game. You gain money by spelling words with Scrabble-style letter tiles, and you spend that money to buy track to connect cities. Connecting cities allows you to collect a different type of letter tile (I would actually like them to be little tiny alphabet blocks, with 3 different letters on each). Your final score will be based on words you can spell using those Alphabet blocks. But this game is intended to be one that wordsmiths can play along with their vocabulary-challenged friends, so the end game scoring words are actually found on reference cards - so really you are just collecting specific sets of cubes. You see, a wordsmith could do well making larger words with their Income tiles, leading to more income for buying track, but a player who is not good at word games could still do well with strategic connections and set collection without needing to make big or complicated words.

I entered Reading Railroad into a game design contest once, and it didn't go over very well - even though I actually had people playing and enjoying it at game night. The judges thought it was some underhanded ruse to sell the game to 2 different demographics (word gamers and strategy gamers) - which in a way could be true, but really it was an attempt to make a game that players from both of those genres could enjoy together. I really want to get back to this one some day, as I think it has real potential.

Odysseus: Winds of Fate - A game about making bets on outcomes (of encounters as well as the entire game), then trying to make sure your bets pay off. I tried pretty hard to make this game work, and I was never really happy with it. I think it's got potential, and I'd like to revisit it again sometime.

All For One - One of the oldest designs I ever worked on that was worthy of being published. I'm actually not sure why this one never did get published! David Brain's original design, which I worked on with him for years, was very well received at conventions I brought it to, but never found a publisher. Now I feel like it might be a little old fashioned and in need of an overhaul. One day I'd really like to see this game in print!

Templar - I've been putting some thought into this, my most recent project. Based on what I thought Trajan's mechanism would be, Templar is about a year old at this point... and while I have a prototype made up, I've not tried a playtest yet!

I even found prototypes of published games, such as Gil Hova's Prolix, Alex Rockwell's Homesteaders, Jay Cormier and Sen-Foong Lim's Belfort, and my own Terra Prime! And amongst all that, I found prototypes of other people's games as well:

Smoothie King -When in London 7 years ago, I met Ian Vincent, and played his game based on Power Grid. It was about making Smoothies, and I liked it quite a lot. He sent a prototype home with me, and I frequently wonder why I don't play it again.

Roman Emperors - Another BGDF member Juan Carballal had a game I found very interesting in which players take turns running the Roman Empire. It's not a cooperative game, you want your stint as Emperor to be remembered as the greatest time in Roman history - but since players take turns controlling the Empire, the resources are largely shared. I think the game has a ton of potential, but I don't think the designer and I were seeing eye-to-eye on some of the specifics of how it should work. I'm also not sure what the designer did (if anything) with it since I saw it. I think it would be fun to one day take a stab at making "my version" of that game, and then send that to the designer and seeing what he thinks of it.

Admirals of the Spanish Main - Another game by Juan, we were trying to make a "dice building" game which did a better job than Quarriors, and he came up with a game about hunting pirates in the Spanish Main. It was a good start to what I was looking for, but it was too random, and my friend Andy Van Zandt and I worked on trying to mold it into what I was really looking for... in the end though, many playtesters said that if they're playing a pirate game, they want to BE the pirates, not hunt them, so we eventually gave up on it. I think the game had some good things going for it, but for whatever reason it just wasn't all the way there.

Equilibrium - Shea Parks had a game that I thought was really interesting called Equilibrium. It was like a response to the Deckbuilding craze... each player starts with the same deck, and over time you remove cards from it. Quit when you want, each card in your deck is worth -1vp, and cards played are worth positive vps (most of them based on which cards remain in your deck). I like this game, and think maybe it deserves another look...

Lost Adventure - More friends from BGDF, Jeff Warrender and Steve Sisk, made a deduction game with an Indiana Jones theme which I think is fantastic. The only real problem with it might be that the end game phase seems too different from the majority of the game. Also, originally it was "too Euro" and could use a lot more theme to immerse players in the Indiana Jones action. I fear the designers may be overdoing it with the changes they've been making along those lines, but I haven't really been keeping up with their blog about the game as much as I'd like.

It was fun running across and thinking about all these games. Makes me want to spend more time working on them!

TMG is rocking and rolling this year

I got word that inside the latest issue of Buyer's Guide/GAMES 100, Belfort, Village, and Martian Dice have been listed among their picks for the best games of the year!

In addition, Tasty Minstrel Games has some games nominated for Golden Geek awards over at BGG:
* For The Win is up for Abstract Game
* Belfort is up for Art/Presentation and Strategy game
* Eminent Domain is up for Card Game
* Martian Dice is up for Children's Game and Party Game
* Village is up for Family Game, Strategy Game, and Innovative Game
* Train of Thought is up for Party Game

Way to go TMG! Take a look and cast your votes!

"Templar"

I've mentioned my Rond-cala game about the Knights Templar a bit recently. Playing Trajan again just made me want to work on this game. So I pored over my most recent posts and rules for the game, brought it to our monthly Gamesmiths meeting, and have been giving it a lot of thought. Here are some of the questions that have come up and decisions that I've made about the game:

• Title: I'm now leaning toward the simple title Templar. Order of the Temple, Knights Templar, and Templar Knights are decent titles, but the word Templar is almost iconic and relatively unique, so maybe cutting the chaff and just using that word alone is the way to go.
• A communal coffer containing funds for players to use will be problematic. When players are not spending their own resources, there's no reason to budget - and when spending resources leaves less for the next guy that becomes an even bigger concern! Therefore I am considering 2 options:
  Option 1) Remove currency from the game. This makes things simpler, you just do the action according to how many tokens are in the action bin, period. No need to manage another resource.
  Option 2) Have an "infinitely large" communal coffer, and whenever you spend you actually take the money out of the coffer and keep it. This record of how much of the Order's money you have spent could be referenced at game end, and there could be penalties for players who spent the most/2nd most, etc. This may encourage budgeting, even in light of player "not having personal holdings." Then again, at some point why not just have personal holdings after all?
• Along the lines of simplifying things, I am reconsidering how Troops ought to work. Currently they are a currency in the game - you use the Muster action to collect Troops, and the Crusade action to spend Troops to "buy" enemy tokens (and the VP they provide). On top of spending that currency, there must be enough tokens in the Crusade bin to defeat the enemies. That seems cumbersome and redundant. The strength of the action is supposed to be based on the number of tokens in that action's bin. Perhaps Troops should add to that in the way Buildings add to other actions. Thus, Troops act the same way Buildings do, but you get them with a different action. The rules I'm considering now is this:
  CRUSADE: The crusade action allows you to fight Enemies, scoring influence and clearing regions to make space for more buildings.
  1. Choose 1 region containing one of your (any player's?) Knight figures and an Enemy token.
  2. Determine the Enemy Strength by checking the Enemy Strength track for the appropriate enemy type.
  3. Each Troop token adds 1 to the number of action tokens in the Crusade bin. If the Enemy Strength is less than or equal to the number of action tokens in the Crusade bin, you have won the Crusade. Otherwise you have not.
  4. When you win a Crusade, collect Influence tokens equal to the Enemy Strength and move the Enemy token to the appropriate Enemy Strength track. When you lose a Crusade, do nothing.
  
  MUSTER: The muster action allows you to muster troops to take crusading with your knights.Each Farm you have erected adds 1 to the number of action tokens in the Muster bin. Collect the next Troop token from your supply - its level must be less than or equal to the number of action tokens in the Muster bin. Your board has 3 spaces to hold Troops. Each Farm you have erected confers an additional space to hold a Troop token.
• That said, the building wording would need to be adjusted for Banks - they should add 1 to the number of action tokens in the Build bin. For that to work, the Buildings would have to "cost" something like 3/5/7/9 rather than 1/2/3/4. Similarly, each player would have a supply of 7 Troop tokens with levels something like 3/4/5/6/7/8/9.
• I like the idea of the End Game Phase, where destruction radiates from Paris and Knights flee to safe havens. I like it thematically, and mechanically I like how buildings can score that way, making building score values sort of interesting and variable from game to game. Other than that mechanism, I don't currently have a reason to build a particular building in one location over another, or a reason to build one building over another in a particular location. However, I'm not sure I like having to change the rules for the last 20% or so of the game. Perhaps better is to simply end the game when the Influence pool runs out. This was suggested at Gamesmiths, and in some ways I like the idea while in other ways I don't. Historically, the arrest order for the Knights Templar was given in 1307, but the Knights weren't gone until 1312, so there were a few years there where things kept going. Maybe it would be OK to keep the End Game Phase, but NOT change the rules? Let people build and Crusade as normal. Maybe offer a bonus for each Knight that's in a Safe Haven at game end (or a penalty for each Knight on the board that isn't).
• There were some additional comments at Gamesmiths about making the Rondel do more stuff, like a benefit for having the most action tokens in a particular bin - maybe to encourage saving them up in different bins? This may add a layer of player interaction, which could be a welcome thing, but at the same time it adds a whole layer of complexity that I'm not sure I want. I think I prefer a simple, straightforward implementation of the Rond-cala, at least for now.
• One more comment that came up at Gamesmiths was about the Crusade action. Matt wanted to see more focus on the Crusades - specifically on an individual Crusade. I think it was a difference in scope - I am looking at the whole thing from a more 'zoomed out' perspective, where the crusades moving across the land are represented by you moving your Knight from region to region, and the culmination of the Crusade is the Crusade action where you defeat an Enemy. I think Matt wanted to zoom in more and watch a Crusade actually move across the board.

Super busy + not feeling well = unfortunate combination!

When I started this blog post on Monday I was feeling feverish - my fingers were numb and I was shivering despite it being almost 80 degrees in here. I spent about 4 hours feeling this way, but then made a more-or-less miraculous recovery! I'm so relieved I didn't get sick (or, that I got better right away)!

We're inside 2 weeks from RinCon! That's both very exciting, and very hectic. I feel like there's so much to do, and everything feels like it's behind schedule - but at the same time I feel like it will all get done, and the convention will be awesome! I'm learning a lot about what I'll want to do differently for next year - making plans for that already.

In addition to RinCon planning, I've been finalizing the rules for my Eminent Domain expansion: Escalation as the illustrations for tech cards roll in. I believe we're down to the last two! [EDIT: We've got them all now!] Then the whole shebang gets sent to the excellent Graphic Designer Gavan Brown who worked wonders with the base game. I haven't heard if the cover will be done by him again, or if we're going to get an illustration done this time.

On top of that, the final pages of the Kings of Air and Steam rulebook have been popping up like wildflowers, and approvals have been fast and furious. As usual Josh has really hit this one out of the park... again! Perhaps Kickstarters will get a peek at a rules spread in an upcoming update. The rest of the graphics look as good if not better than the rulebook - with my favorite being one of the player board images - but I'll keep that to myself for now - you can place your wagers when they become public as to which one is my favorite (hint: they're all fantastic, but there are 2 I like best, the "favorite" wins by a nose, so to speak).


In case you haven't heard, the big news is that Michael and I are headed to Essen next month! TMG will not have a booth, but you can find TMG titles Ground Floor, Belfort, Eminent Domain, and Martian Dice at booth 4-230 (LocWorks). I will be in the LocWorks booth signing copies of Eminent Domain for a couple of hours each day, so if you are at the show (especially if I have any European readers who I may not otherwise meet in person), please come on by and say hello! It would make my day to hear that my humble blog is being read on the far side of the world :) I'll try to post more information (such as, I don't know, some kind of schedule maybe?) as it comes to light.

In actual gaming news, I finally got a chance to play the copy of Trajan that I picked up at GenCon. I think I like the game, but I do find something about the Rondel mechanism to be overwrought... I think I might like it better for example if instead of 6 colors, the action tokens were monochrome, and instead of a particular combination of colors, the Trajan tiles simply had a number on them, and you scored them by landing in that action bin and having exactly that number of tokens. Trying to plan ahead which color you'll want where is largely impossible, and introduces my least favorite dynamic to the game - analysis paralysis due to simply not knowing which of 2 choices could possibly be better (and trying to find some reason to pick one over the other).

Playing Trajan mostly made me want to revisit my own game idea using a "Rond-cala" mechanism... For those just tuning in (and for those who read my blog all the time, since it's been a while since I talked about this), here's how my idea came about:

When I first read some teaser information about Trajan, I only heard that it used the Mancala mechanism to distribute markers around a Rondel. I thought that idea was brilliant, and made some assumptions on how that must work. My guess was that on your turn you would choose an action to do, resolve that action based on the number of action tokens in that space on the Rondel, then distribute those tokens around the Rondel a-la Mancala. This sounded fantastic, as each action would sort of grow in power until you take it, then it would revert back to zero, and you'd have to build it back up again or settle for it being weaker the next time you take it. I was really excited about this idea, and waited with baited breath for Trajan to come out... only to find that I'd guessed wrong! Trajan did not work the way I thought it might, instead that game has you choose a bin, distribute the tokens around the Rondel, and then perform the action associated with the last bin you land on.

Trajan's mechanism is also interesting, but as I mentioned above, I find it annoyingly difficult to plan ahead, and a small mistake seems to not just set you back, but force you to drop all of your plans and start again (because all the bins have the wrong number of tokens now, meaning all of your available actions are different than you may have expected). I think my guess would make for an entirely different mechanical experience, one well worth pursuing. Playing Trajan has encouraged me to start thinking about this again, and so I brought my 1/2 prototype (more like 80%) to Monday's Gamesmiths meeting where I described it to a few people and got some feedback from them. One of these days I'd like to actually play the game and see what needs fixing! My next blog post will likely be new and ongoing thoughts about that game (the title of which I'm now leaning towards Templar).

Recent Developments

Gen Con was a lot of fun. We didn't have to spend a lot of time in the booth, so we got a lot more opportunity to meet people, play games, and review submissions. We played 3 or 4 prototypes, accepting 2 of them to take home with us.

I met a number of people at Gen Con, some of whom I'd met before, some of whom I see on Twitter, and some brand new faces.

While at the con I managed to play Hanabi for 12 hours straight. An epic session culminating in a very satisfying perfect score! It's fascinating to watch people play Hanabi together over time, and watch how they shift their thinking and behavior to be on the same page. We found that even with the same 4 players, our score would drop when we mixed up turn order.

Speaking of Hanabi, I spent last weekend at Strategicon in Los Angeles where the Guest of Honor was Antoine Bauza - designer of a number of popular games including Ghost Stories, the award winning 7 Wonders, and Hanabi. I played prototypes of Antoine's upcoming Tokaido, Sinbad, and the 7 Wonders expansion: Armada. I liked all three of those. I chatted with Antoine quite a bit over the weekend as well, even introduced him to Mountain Dew (he'd never heard of that particular soda) - though I don't know how he liked it. Antoine was nice enough to play one of my own prototypes as well: Exhibit. He had some interesting comments for me, which I will be taking into account.

At Strategicon I also ran several events or tournaments for Village, Belfort, and Eminent Domain. My friend Brian happened to win the sponsored Village tournament on Monday, so he got a copy of the game :) Other games I played at Strategicon include Seasons, which was the sleeper hit of Gen Con (and seemed very popular in L.A.as well), Off Your Rocker, and Dixit Jinx. Seasons and Dixit Jinx, along with Tokaido, were taught to me by Stefan Brunelle of Asmodee, who turned out to be a fun guy as well.

P.S. Stefan: I think you got a rule wrong in Seasons! That emergency action where you discard 2 resources to get 2 other ones - the rulebook says they don't have to match. Not a big deal, but thought you might like to know!

I had brought with me an advance copy of Noblemen, a co-production between Pegasus Spiel and TMG. I didn't really have time to play it, so I set the game up on a table and made a "Try Me" sign... I left it set up all weekend, and it got played at least 5 times, with at least 15 different people! I didn't talk to all of them, but I know for a fact that Brian Poe and Eric Elder liked the game :) I'm really excited for Noblemen to come out because I remember its development 4 years ago, before it won Hippodice. I even wrote some blog posts about it back then.

I've also been playing a homemade copy of Il Vecchio, by Hall games, which I believe TMG will be doing in English as well. It's by Rudiger Dorn, and I'm excited to have a big name designer such as Dorn in the TMG line. Yesterday we played Rialto, by Stefan Feld, which I believe TMG is going in on with Pegasus as well. That's another name I'm proud to see in the TMG lineup. At Gen Con I picked up Feld's Trajan, which I played at BGG.con last year, but sadly I have not had a chance to play it yet.

Finally, the big news is that I'm making arrangements to go to Essen this year! I've been interested in Essen for some time now, but it's so expensive (and so long) that I haven't really seriously looked into going. Well, this year I am taking the plunge! My plan is to scope it out so that hopefully next year TMG can have a booth there and I'll have an idea of what's going on. I'll post more details as I have them, but I have secured a place to stay, and now I just need to buy a plane ticket!

Gen Con bound

In about 5 4 hours Mike and I head up to Phoenix to fly out to Indiana for Gen Con! Last year was an interesting experience... this year we will be camped out in the Game Salute booth along with a few other small publishers. As far as I can tell we'll be spending the week demoing and selling Village, Belfort, and Eminent Domain. I've also done something I've been meaning to do for several years - I've had play mats made!

I got a phone call this morning from Larry Fettinger, who we're staying with in Indiana, letting me know that the mats arrived safe and sound. he opened them up to take a look, and he tells me the quality is phenomenal. I'm excited to see them and play on them tomorrow!

I'll be bringing the following stuff to gen Con with me...

• Eminent Domain: Escalation prototypes (x2)
• Captains of Industry prototype
• Ground Floor prototype
• Kings of Air and Steam prototype
• Exhibit Prototype

After all that I ran out of space in my bag!

I'm also bringing some flyers and Exhibitor Info packets for RinCon to see if I can drum up some business for that. I don't think I've posted the flyer I'd made here, so behold:

Swing by booth 1033 to check out (maybe purchase!) Village, or the EmDo playmats, or whatever other TMG stuff we have. After vendor hours I'll be happy to demo any of the prototypes I am bringing as well!

Eminent Domain Play Mats

I've always wanted to do this, and now I'm excited to say that it's finally happening... I'm getting play mats made for my card game Eminent Domain! Just like everything I do - this is kind of last minute for Gen Con coming up next week, so for the moment we only have two designs. I would like to follow this up by getting more designs made, incorporating more different tech cards. I personally would like to see Improved Warfare, Exclusive Victory, Improved Colonize, and some of the images for the upcoming Escalation expansion (images you haven't seen yet).

Here are the first two...

Eminent Domain

 Terraforming

I think they're pretty darn cool, and I look forward to playing on them next week at Gen Con! click over to boardgamgeek.com (or leave a comment here) with your nomination for which tech card art you'd want to get on a play mat!

Storytelling game thoughts - Fiasco, Lady Blackbird

I mentioned recently that I had played Fiasco, and since then I've given it a bit more thought - and I watched the two-part Table Top episode featuring the game (and the Setup clip as well, which is useful if you want to play the game).

After the conversations started by my last foray into storytelling (in the blog comments, on Twitter, and in person) I think I gained a bit more insight into how these games are intended to work. Of course, like with any type of game I always think that some variant version would better suit my personal liking - and so in my last post on the subject I outlined some thoughts on a game similar to Fiasco that I might like to try. Well, I haven't done that yet (I still intend to sometime), but I have observed another indie STG which I think has the potential to work really well. It's called Lady Blackbird.

Lady Blackbird isn't so much a system as a single "adventure" or "module" (I don't know the terminology, if any exists) intended to be played over 1-3 sessions. It has pre-made characters (though you could make your own), and a very specific starting scenario, but I suspect it has at least some replay value, as the story could play out differently each time along the lines of Groundhog Day or episodes of Daybreak.

The system it uses appears to me to be a good one for promoting storytelling on the part of the players. Each character has a set of traits, and each trait has a set of tags. When you are faced with an obstacle or challenge, you apply 1 trait and roll dice based on the number of tags that apply. You may add some dice from your personal supply if you wish. The difficulty of the challenge indicates how many successes are required (4+ on a d6). In general, the action described will succeed, but the situation may escalate due to a failed die roll. Or else the action will fail, the situation will escalate in some way, and then you may try again. Mechanically, if you succeed, you lose any personal dice spent on the roll, but if you fail, then you keep your dice and in fact earn 1 more from the supply. If you wish to recharge your personal supply (which is only 7 dice), then you are supposed to do a "refresh scene" - which sounds like it's supposed to be a sort of dialogue with other characters which gets some character development going without advancing the plot. In other words, if a player is telling a portion of story, they are encouraged to play "in character" - because if they do things that are out of character then they will not have as many dice to roll when they are called upon to roll dice. I like that the system seems to reward that, rather than a Game Master having to assign rewards or penalties for playing in character.

I got the impression from reading the 'rules' stuff that it was intended to go something like this: a player (or players) gives a detailed narrative of what they want to do, then the GM tells them if and how many dice to roll and what the outcome is. By way of example...

Blackbird: "I'll make a raucous to lure the guards into the room, and once they are beyond the 1st cell we'll cut off their escape and overpower them!"

GM: "OK, you start to make a raucous. That's a Cunning plan, using Deception and Misdirection, so roll 4 dice. It'll be easy to get the guards into the room, but to lure them to your cell is more tricky - they may see through your ruse. Difficulty 4."

Kale: "I'll chime in to, to help sell that there's a hull breach. Here's one of my pool dice."

Snargle: "Me too - here's one of my pool dice"

Cyrus: "I'll stand at the cell door (which has been unlocked by Kale already), waiting to spring on the guards.

Blackbird: "Ok, I'll add 3 of my own pool dice as well, so we have better than even odds of this working. [Rolls 9 dice, looking for 4 successes, gets 3]

GM: "The ruse works like a charm! Well, almost. The door opens and 2 Guards file into the cell room. A 3rd guard scurries off down the hall, probably to get help of some kind." (the situation escalates)

Cyrus: "Concerned there may be a hole in the hull, the guards approach the far cell to take a look. As soon as the 2nd one is even with my door, I fling it open - knocking him into the opposite wall - and leap out of the cell to cut off the 1st guard's escape!

Naomi: "...and I swing open the door to our cell and jump out to surround him! The guard raises his nightstick, but as the two of us close in he thinks better of it. Dropping the stick to the floor the guard gives up!"

GM: "Ok, sounds like a good plan. And pretty easy, since they've already fallen for the ruse... difficulty 2. Vance's Warrior trait applies, but none of the tags really do - that's just 2 dice, and Naomi can give one of her personal dice for helping."

Cyrus: "I'll add 2 dice from my pool [rolls 5 dice]..."

Etc. That's how it sounds to me like it's supposed to go, but while watching a session the other day, what I observed was that players mostly looked at their stats and tried to roll dice to allow them to do various things. Players constantly asked the GM about details such as how exactly the door opened, in an effort to try to formulate some plan based on the details of the environment. I'd kinda like to see that game played by various groups and see how it pans out. I think it would be cooler if the players asked fewer questions and took the responsibility of inventing the details themselves - I think that's the way it's supposed to go.

My guess is that more typical GM'ed RPGs (such as Dungeons and Dragons) have conditioned players into a pattern where the GM invents the world, and the players simply interact with it. These Storytelling games, Lady Blackbird anyway, seem to be the opposite. I think that's neat for a collaborative storytelling exercise (I'm not so sure they should be called "games")!

TMG updates, recent gaming, and Protospiel

It's been a little while since I posted any sort of update, so here're a few things that have been going on...

TMG Updates

* The Ground Floor kickstarter project went well, raising over $116,000! Skyline and Ground Floor are at the manufacturer, and production is underway.

* Michael mentioned in his last update that Kings of Air and Steam has suffered from some art delays, but the art updates we've received have looked great!

* People have received their Kickstarter copies of For The Win, and it seems very well received thus far.

Recent Gaming

* Lords of Waterdeep has been getting a lot of play lately, and I got a copy for Jeremy and Amelia for putting me up while I was in Seattle. I continue to be very happy with it. We've been playing without the Mandatory Quests and without the Lord who rewards buildings. However, after several games with my Seattle friends in which we added that building Lord back in, I am not so sure we need to leave it out anymore. I don't see us playing with the Mandatory Quests though.

* Castles of Burgundy is my most recent game acquisition, and I've played it a handful of times.  I like it, but it does tend to take a really long time.

* Ascension was never my favorite game by any stretch, but after several hours alone with the iPad app, I've definitely grown to appreciate it more.

Protospiel

Last weekend I attended Protospiel for the second time. It turned out to be really productive for me, and a fun time overall. Here are some games I played by other designers:
* A prototype in early stages by Kevin Nunn which he asked us not to discuss. Later in the weekend I didn't play but got a peek at another of Nunn's games which looked more interesting to me. I gave some comments for both which seemed promising, I hope they pan out for Kevin.

* A dice game by Andrew Juell which was pretty cool. It didn't really have a theme, but it reminded me of Dice Works a little bit.

* Pushka by Peter Dast is an abstract game which I thought looked pretty cool. You have different types of units, and you use cards to move them across the board, pushing or trapping opponents' pieces. Score by trapping pieces or getting your own pieces across the board. Later in the con we tried a modification to make it more like a weird game of football, which is a theme that seemed to fit the mechanics.

* I saw a low-bid auction game called Skyline (which the designer said he needed to re-name now that TMG's Skyline is coming out. I didn't play this, or even see it played, but that didn't stop me from talking about it for about an hour with the designer and making comments!

* Gladiators by Sam Liberty and Kevin Spak (Spoiled Flush Games) is a game which will be coming out from Rio Grande since it won the RGG game design contest. Something of a deck building arena game based somewhat on Texas Hold'em.

* Grave Robbers Dilemma is another game by Sam and Kevin. this one is all about double think and simultaneous action. It's very quick, and I ended up liking it a lot better than I thought I would.

* Avast is a pirate themed deck building game that I got the rules for at GenCon last year, and now I've played a few rounds with the designer. I think it's a bit too involved and fiddly as-is, but it had one aspect that I really thought was interesting - the idea that you actually bury treasure. In the airport on the way home I started to come up with one of my typical "this is how I might pursue that idea" things, and I've got my own thoughts about a pirate themed deck builder in which you bury treasure in order to thin your deck and score points. My version is more along the lines of Ascension in complexity, but of course that would be too simple for me, so there's a bit more to it than that.

* A Game of Cat and Mouse by Al Leduc is another simultaneous action double think game where you send your cat to collect mice.

* Beware the Dragon is a set collection game which is sort of like a trick taking game. Each round the 'leader' plays a card face up, then all other players play one face down as an offer. Once revealed, the leader may choose one of the offers to exchange with, or else keep his own card. This reminded me of the main mechanism in Oasis.

And I managed to get a fair number of games I'm working on to the table as well:
* Captains of Industry is a 2013 release from Tasty Minstrel Games formerly known as Titans of Industry, until a few months ago when a Kickstarter project popped up for a different game with that title. I had played that game last year at Protospiel, when it was called Industrialist... At first we were bummed that we had to change the title, but there are some advantages to Captains of Industry, which is what we've decided to go with. I sat out and watched a 4 player game of CoI with Al Leduc, Dave Whitcher, Peter Dast, and Steven Dast. The game (not including rules) took 2:15, which isn't too bad, especially for a con environment (I find that environment adds 10-20% to the game length). The game went well, and the players seemed to enjoy it. We played with a slight modification to the round end dynamic that I've been meaning to try, and I think it worked well. I got some good comments on a few details such as terminology, but the main feedback I got here was on the Captain cards - like Railroad Tycoon's Tycoon cards, the Captain cards confer end-game bonuses based on what you've done in the game. Those and the Advances are what I am really concentrating on at this point in development - the main rules and dynamics of the game are pretty much final.

* I have trouble testing the Escalation, the expansion to Eminent Domain, because in order to do so I really need people who already know the base game. Last year I tried testing Exotic, but I first had to teach the base game by itself, and one player asked why we were playing a published game at Protospiel... This year I was able to put together 3 players who had at least played EmDo before, though 2 of them were only barely familiar with it, while the third was a bit more familiar, but none were really all that experienced with the game. But it was enough that they knew the rules! I sat out while they played a 3 player game with the expansion. I think it went pretty well - in fact it was kind of a lousy playtest, since there wasn't really much in the way of feedback. Gil mentioned that he felt like there wasn't enough to do with Destroyers, and that might be a missed opportunity. Gil did end the game with a few leftover Destroyers he couldn't use, but he also passed up on the opportunity to take some planets to spend them on and stuff like that. It brought up a good question though - should a player be allowed to spend a Destroyer as if it were a fighter? It's a bad deal, and since a Destroyer is harder to get (and therefore "better"), one might expect it can do anything a Fighter can do and more... I am considering allowing that, as I think it won't matter very often, and when it does matter, it'll only disappoint people if they cannot spend their Destroyers like Fighters. I haven't made a final decision on that yet.

* Alter Ego is a game I've been stuck on for a while now. I love the theme and basic idea of the game, but I haven't been happy with the design. I was ecstatic to get not 1, but 2 different groups to play it this year at Protospiel! First, I got a 3 player game going, during which I realized that I had forgotten to remove a number of (about 1/2 of) the Henchmen cards. We cut that game short and talked about it a bit, then we tried again, incorporating some of the comments (and I removed those cards). Unfortunately, the cards I removed (because they were unaligned with the Arch Villains) happened to also be the cheaper Henchmen, AND one of the suggestions was that the display size might be too big - so this resulted in a game where players could only play 4 cards at a time, and the Henchmen mostly cost 5 Fight symbols. In theory this is not impossible, as players can use Teamwork tokens and trophies, but getting there was tougher than it's supposed to be and the game didn't go exactly right.

As that game was wrapping up. 4 other people walked up and inquired about the game, so when the first 3 had to leave, the next 4 sat down and we started again! More great comments and suggestions this time. All in all I probably had about 4 hours of Alter Ego on the table. Very useful!

* I played Exhibit with Sam Liberty and Kevin Spak (Spoiled Flush Games), to test the finishing touches I'd put on that game. Everything worked really well except for one thing, and I'm not sure if that was an anomaly or not, so I'll have to play it again with that rule (lopping off a round by starting the game with 2 tiles in each auction).

* All For One: My biggest disappointment so far in my short game design career is that the first game I worked on that was any good, All For One, never went anywhere. For years it was very well received at conventions by just about everyone who played it, but now it feels sort of, I don't know... old fashioned or something. I have been wanting to revive it though, so I brought it with me to Protospiel. Fortunately I was able to get it to the table late Sunday. There were 5 people interested in playing it, and I'd forgotten that 5 is not the best number for new players because the level of chaos is higher - so we played a 5 player game (I watched). I had thought about not using the guards, but since I hadn't played it in so long, I just left everything the same and figured I'd take comments on what the players thought of the current state. Sadly I forgot the rulebook somehow, but on the up side, my player aids were very descriptive, and I remembered how to play the game!

A41 went over well, everyone seemed to like it. There were some suggestions which I liked, and some I'm not sure I agree with - some players didn't like how you can duel to affect the game end timer (and thereby end-game bonus), and they especially didn't like that you could start a fight (with a Demand action) intending to lose. Thematically that might be a very valid point, though if players are sort of storytellers, then it stands to reason that they can manipulate the characters like that. It might be good though to make it such that the Active player does not have any incentive to tank a fight.

Thanks to everyone at Protospiel who played my games, and to those who showed me theirs. I had a great time, and look forward to the next event!

Yet Another New Game

Finally, as I mentioned, some of the hours in airports and on planes on the way home from Protospiel I spent outlining my version of a pirate themed deck building game based on the idea I got from Avast. I'm calling it Scourge of the High Seas. Maybe I'll get some cards together for it and give it a try, but I'm not sure if or when that will happen.

I'm trying to make this game along the lines of Ascension, sort of. There's a "center row" like Ascension has, only there are 2 of them: displays from a Tortuga deck and a High Seas deck. Each turn players will first visit Tortuga, where they can upgrade their treasures into better treasures (like combining 3 Copper into a Gold, to use Dominion terms), spend treasure on Crew, Equipment, Ship parts, Rum, and Treasure Maps. Then they will go a-plunderin' on the High Seas, where they'll spend Crew and stuff to plunder ships, or they'll spend Treasure Maps to find Buried Treasure. When these things are done, they'll confer some booty (some combination of treasure, goods, rum, maps, etc), any or all of which the player can take into their discard pile. Finally, the player will visit their Island Hideout, where if they choose, they can bury any number of Treasure cards, setting them aside in a score pile. However in doing so, they'll have to take an Island Hideout card into their deck, which is completely useless. I suppose this could be simplified to 'players BUY Island Hideout cards of a particular value with their Treasure by returning the treasure to the supply. Anyway, the more often you do this, the more useless cards will be in your deck, so the idea is to get treasure, maybe combine it into fewer, higher value treasure cards, then build up a hand of those and then bury them.

I expect Ships my have treasure value on them, so you can use them to buy stuff - allowing you to bury the treasure in your deck. I also foresee "goods" which you would be able to turn into Treasure if you have the right cards (Avast had something like this as well), to offer a strategic path there (If you have the cards which allow you to Trade Goods, then you go after/keep Goods cards, otherwise, maybe you let them sink rather than take them as plunder). Rum is for activating better abilities on some Crew cards, allowing players to either ignore it, or get some rum and crew with good Rum abilities. I think there will also be a Hold on your ship which allows you to hold over 1 card (plus 1 more card for each Hold Ship Part you have obtained) - which should help players build up a good hand for either plunder, or a hand full of treasure to bury.

I'll let you know if this pans out at all, if I ever get around to making cards for it!

GM Conference, Fiasco! And beyond...

Last Sunday SAGA hosted its GM Conference at which a number of speakers gave presentations - about 30 minutes apiece - about some aspect of running a roleplaying or storytelling game. I missed the first half, but managed to catch the presentations after the lunch break. In fact, I caught them on video! Currently the videos are about 5GB each, and as soon as I can find a way to reduce them to a reasonable size, I'll post them online.

After the conference I was invited to my friend Brian's house for an RPG. If you read my blog regularly, you probably know that I'm not much into role playing... I played some Dungeons and Dragons in junior high, tried it again in college, but while I liked the idea of it, the experience never panned out the way I would have liked it to. More recently, Brian has introduced me to some of the more modern indie RPGs, most of which don't appear to me to really qualify as "Role Playing Games" so much as "Collaborative Storytelling Games." Many don't even have a GM. At one of SAGA's RPG days I sat in on a session of Yesterday's Tomorrow!, a sort of retro-sci-fi storytelling game based on speculative future... what did people in the past think the future would be like? So the stories you make will resemble old, dated pulp sci-fi such as Flash Gordon.

A few years ago I learned about a Storytelling game called Fiasco. When it came out I heard about it from several people, read about it a bit, and watched Brian and friends play a session of it. The idea is pretty cool - the game sets you up to tell a story in the vein of those Fiasco movies such as Fargo, Burn After Reading, or Blood Simple... you know, those movies where people get in over their heads, and everything seems to go wrong. The game's tagline is "A game of powerful ambition and poor impulse control." It was Fiasco that we played at Brian's house the other night.

I really like the way the game structures a web of interconnections between characters and encourages their stories to overlap and be at odds with each other. I had a pretty good time with it - even though it took about 5 hours rather than the advertised 2. With all it's good points though, there are some aspects of that game I'm not too happy with... For one thing, the game goes out of its way to encourage failure. The book goes on and on about it, and people who like the game seem to like it at times merely because it's a foregone conclusion that pretty much everybody's going to die at the end. Any goal your character may have? Forget about it - you'll be lucky if you're still walking when the credits roll. I agree that it can make for a more interesting story if everything doesn't simply go the characters' way all the time. Part of the reason Indiana Jones is such a fun hero to watch is that he fails constantly! But then he perseveres and succeeds in the end. But it's as if whoever wrote this game (or at least some proponents of it) thought "well, if failure makes a better story, then if ALL the players fail ALL the time, then it'll be the best story EVAR!"

I don't agree with that. JC Lawrence said something insightful in a short Twitter discussion yesterday:

"The narrative requirement isn't success, but personal growth thru travail. The growth needn't connect to orig goal."

I think a good story can result from a game of Fiasco, but I don't think that in order for that to happen, all players must meet with disaster. I think it's enough that the game sets the characters up to be in conflict with each other from the outset, so it's not possible for every character to succeed all the time. I might go a step farther and suggest that instead of requiring just 1 "Need" for the group (which is what the game rules suggest), that each character be assigned a "Need" of their own, so each character has their own ambition, and because of how it's set up, that ambition will bring the characters into conflict with each other.

So that's my beef with Fiasco. I have another, smaller issue with the game, but it's not really something that I would say is wrong with the game so much as I simply don't like a particular dynamic that comes along with the way that game does a shared narrative. The same thing is true of Improv Comedy to an extent. When I have an idea for a story, it's not a simple action by a character... for a choice or action to even make sense a lot of times it depends on other things happening in the future. If a storyline gets re-routed before the initial idea plays out, then it fails to even make sense anymore, and makes for a disjointed, unfulfilling story for me. Instead, the way to go is NOT to plan ahead at all, just be reactive and live in the moment, so that it doesn't matter what direction the story takes, it won't dismantle what you were going for. That's fine, it's just not the way I want to tell a story - I'd personally prefer a bit more control over at least my character and what I want to do with him.

On that note, the other day I was thinking about how a game like Fiasco could allow for more player control over their own character's story, and I came up with an idea that may have merit. I'm not familiar with many of these storytelling games, so it's possible something like this already exists - I wouldn't know. I'll preface by saying that I very much enjoy movies like Pulp Fiction, with multiple separate, distinct story arcs which occasionally cross paths, and are not necessarily told in order. In my storytelling game, of course, there would be an overall setting, and probably some overall attributes like there are in Fiasco (important locations for example). Each player would be in control of a Story Arc, which would have a main character, possibly a supporting character, and probably some sort of goal or ambition. Also like Fiasco, the players would have inter-relationships between themselves and other players at the table.

The storytelling in the game would take place in 2 Acts. In the first Act, scenes would alternate between Monologue scenes, and Interactive scenes:

1. Player 1 would start with a short Monologue scene, basically telling part of their Story Arc - what happens to the characters that they're in charge of - up to a point at which their Arc crosses paths with another player's Arc. 
2. At that point, those players play out an Interactive scene together, shaping their stories based on what happens between them.
3. After the Interactive scene is resolved, that second player gets a chance to do a Monologue scene following their own Arc, probably a chronological continuation informed by the previous Interactive scene.
4. The second player's story will then cross paths with a 3rd player's Arc, initiating another Interactive scene, this time between players 2 and 3.
5. ... And so on until the last player's Monologue scene collides with player 1's Arc, ending the round with an interactive scene between PX and P1.

In Act II, the players return to the beginning of the overall story chronology, and players 2 and 3 (who's Story Arcs have not yet crossed) will do an Interactive Scene, filling in a gap in the story leading up to the first Interactive scene of the game. It'd be like "while player 1's Monologue scene was going on, Players 2 and 3 were doing this." And the end of that scene leads up to the Interactive scene between Players 1 and 2 (the first one of the game). Then we get to see what was going on in Player 3's Arc while P1 and P2 were having their Interactive scene... etc.

That probably sounds a bit confusing, I have a graphic that makes a bit more sense (click for bigger image):

Anyway, I haven't tried this and I don't know if I ever will get a chance to, but I think the Monologue scenes would offer the control I'd prefer to see. I also think the constrained end conditions of Act 2 scenes (they have to set up scenes from Act 1) could be really interesting. And with a setup like Fiasco's where the characters all have ambitions that will force conflict, then there will be an appropriate amount of failure going around.

Gamesmiths - 6/18/12

Last night's Gamesmiths meeting was poorly attended. While there was a new face there, none of the regulars were in attendance, only myself, Ben Butterfield (who's Rail net we played last month), and Aaron (referred by Ethan Myerson).

I had a few different games I wanted to test for various reasons, and I wasn't sure which to go with. I brought Alter Ego, which needs some work, but I could not find the player boards. I also brought a submission called Panic which TMG is considering, and a game TMG is committed to for next year which really needs to get back into the development rotation.

While it was just the 3 of us, I suggested we start with something short and see if anyone else would arrive. So I brought out Panic.

Panic

Panic is a quick, light game by James Ernest, Greg Parsons, and Mick Sullivan. There's a blog post about its inception (linked above), which is a pretty interesting read. It's about stock trading and set collection, sort of - or as James put it: the last 5 minutes of Trading Places. There are cards in different suits (where suits are commodities), and players begin with a hand of 9. There are also 9 cards (3 sets of 3) face down in "the market" - the center of the table. Players will bid for the right to peek at the face down cards, pass cards from their hand to their opponents, and eventually dump cards from their hand to the market, and by the end of the round, players will end up with a hand of 5 cards. The value of each commodity will depend on what's in the market - the commodities of which there are the most in the market are in plentiful supply, and therefore aren't worth much. The commodities of which there is not much supply are in high demand, and are therefore worth more.

The structure of the game is quick and easy. You bid to gain information about the makeup of the market (the winner gets to peek at a face down stack of cards), and you pay for your bid by locking cards into your final hand (face up so opponents can see). Each round after bidding players pass some cards to their neighbor in an attempt to improve their hand. After the 3rd round, each player discards 4 of their 9 cards into the market, finalizing their scoring hand. The market is sorted by commodity and the value of each commodity is determined (ranging from -2 to 2 for example). The idea is to keep cards that are worth positive points and not cards that are worth negative points.

I have played this game a couple of times now, and the response as been pretty universal - it's interesting and kinda fun, but it seems like too much of the market comes out at the final discard. So much that it overshadows any information you may have received from bidding. And being able to discard your unwanted cards completely insulates you from being passed cards you do not want to deal with. However, these are things which could only be an issue with certain groups, and they may be easily addressed without really changing the game much.

Last night's game has solidified a few questions and comments I'd like to discuss with the designer before deciding whether this is a game we should pursue further.

Captains of Industry

Captains of Industry is the new name for the game I'm developing for TMG that was originally called Titans of Industry. We had to change it when another Titans of Industry popped up on Kickstarter. It's been a while since I have played the game, and I have not yet used the newest small changes.

The 3 player game went smoothly, taking a total of about 2.5 hours including rules explanation. One player was slower than average, and I hope that the average game time turns out to be less than that session would indicate.

Comments after the game centered around some details of the technologies, such as maybe a tech which increases your demand (exportation) should occur earlier in the game so that it pays off more, or perhaps tech should cost more if someone has already purchased it. Other comments included:
* Rules questions such as Do you score your Titan card (Captain card?) if you are tied for "most" on something? and a component question about the new 1st Facilities (is that a production cost or an OVERTIME production cost printed there? Answer: Overtime. Designer changed icons on me!)
* Are the Titan cards well balanced? Especially the ones that reward Real Estate - which (a) you have other incentive to buy, and (b) accelerates the game, making other cards harder to score.
* Why is there no tech which gives a bonus for selling the higher level goods? (maybe Age 2, +1 Market Share, or at least + $$ per Machine/Oil/Corn sold)
The thing that concerned me the most was a comment that perhaps the ages end too abruptly. I like the Age timer mechanism a lot, but it might be true that once the 2nd Real Estate is bought, players are further encouraged to buy the third, and that ramps up the speed of the Age considerably. It might not actually be an issue, but it's one of the main things I'll be watching out for in future playtests.

We discussed some of the other potential new titles for this game, and a couple came up that we had not yet considered:
Masters of Capital
Captains of Capital

Overall a useful Gamesmiths, even if poorly attended. Hopefully next month's session will be better.

Game Auction on BGG

I have posted a Game Auction on BGG, selling off pretty much every game I own (save a few that I actually expect to play soon or often).

Some of my favorite games are on that list, but I figure if it hasn't hit the table in over a year, it's hard to argue that I need to keep it!

So take a look, and if there's something you like, feel free to bid!

Somebody asked me about donations. I hate the thought of asking for handouts, which is why I thought it was better to sell off these games, but if you are so inclined I suppose I wouldn't turn it down. Maybe the best way to handle that is with the donation link at the Board Game Designer's Forum. I pay for that every month, so any donations there will help me directly and would be much appreciated!

Thanks everyone for your support. I feel kinda like a jerk complaining about my robbery when other people have real problems (like when their house got destroyed by a natural disaster, or their child died). But I appreciate the help all the same!