Down with Autoplay audio and video content!

A decade ago, the internet was less sophisticated than it is now. At least, with respect to presentation. Sites like MySpace would auto play music when you loaded them up, and pop-up ads abounded.

Things have gotten a little better since then, and we've all been able to pretty much forget that awful past. But like the old saying goes - those who ignore the past are doomed to repeat it.

Not too long ago, news sites and even FaceBook started a new trend of about the worst type of advertising on the internet... auto-playing videos. News sites had auto-playing ads, and nobody liked it. Facebook pushed auto-play videos into our streams, and nobody liked it.

Despite the complaints of millions of users, as well as the common sense obviousness of how awful they are, many sites bowed to the almighty advertising dollar, and shoved auto-play content down our throats anyway.

Twitter has started auto-playing gifs and vines, which is bad, though a little less bad as they at least mute it, and gifs and vines are generally small.

About a week ago, Kickstarter started auto-playing their project videos. On my browser, they play muted, and you have to click on them to hear the sound, but as Jamey Stegmaier notes, for some people they auto-play with audio, at full volume.

How could this possibly be? After all the experience people have had with auto-play content (and none of it good), how could Kickstarter POSSIBLY think this would be an OK move?

Auto-play is the worst. The WORST! It slows down or hangs up browsers, it eats up bandwidth, and it attempts to get your attention in the worst possible way - by literally waving its arms and shouting at you.

Never mind the folks who pay for bandwidth - for whom auto-play content is akin to stealing from them (especially when muted so you don't know it's loading video in the background). Even with unlimited internet access, that doesn't make it OK to clog up the bandwidth of every user in the area by constantly shoving video content down people's throats. By way of comparison, it doesn't cost anything to drive trucks down the road, but it would be uncool to drive 500 of them up and down Broadway during rush hour. It would make people not want to drive anywhere. Similarly, auto-play content makes people not want to load up websites.

A commenter on Jamey's post (Julius Besser) contacted Kickstarter about this, and was kind enough to share the reply he got:

Sorry to hear you’re not a fan of autoplay. This is something we’re testing out on the site, so any feedback from our community is extremely helpful. Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts – I’ll be sure to share them with our team. Unfortunately, at this time, there is not a way to turn it off for repeat visits to the page. However, as I mentioned, we are testing this feature and I will be sure to pass your thoughts along to the team here. Thanks for your patience and understanding.

Best,
Noah

According to that, this is just an experiment, and they're taking feedback from the community. I find it hard to believe they thought the feedback would be anything but overwhelmingly negative, but maybe there's some subset of people that are really into wasting time and bandwidth to auto-play every video on every web page they open - who knows.

So here's what I'd like you to do. I'd like you each to contact Kickstarter (support@kickstarter.com), in a civil and polite manner, and let them know that you are absolutely unhappy with the experiment and would strongly prefer they went back to not auto-playing their videos. Then I'd like you to tell 5 friends to do the same.

This can not stand!

Last call for Exotica/Battlecruisers Kickstarter!

We're into the final hour of the kickstarter project for Exotica and Battlecruisers, and as of this writing we've raised $109,205! That's pretty good - surpassing the $103,479 raised for Escalation in April 2013 (oh, my... has it been that long already?)

This EmDo expansion was combined with a standalone game by another designer - Battlecruisers by Philip duBarry. I might have expected Exotica alone to raise about as much as Escalation did, so I might have expected a combined kickstarter to post somewhat higher numbers...

Not that I'm not happy about the funding as it is. In fact, I've been so excited about it that I went ahead and started prototyping the next expansion, Eminent Domain: Oblivion (finally)!

There are plenty of factors that might have led to Exotica not raising as much as Escalation did, and based on the comment threads I suspect people will put these at the top of the list:

* Lack of Exotica-centered stretch goals (Escalation had a series of Scenario and other stretch goals)
* Less dedicated community involvement (I feel like the comment threads were more active all around in the Escalation project)
* Combined project with Battlecruisers (Some backers didn't seem to like the combined project)
* Number and quality of competing KS projects (There are a large number of high profile projects on lately)
* Kickstarter fatigue (it's been 2 years after all...)

So what do you think? Which of these factors do you think affected the funding the most? What other factors do you think applied? What do you think would have benefited this campaign in particular? Let me know in the comments below.

Dexterity / City Building

I saw an image on twitter of a city building game someone (someone named Steve Caires) is making, and it looked kinda like the cards had been thrown onto the table, in the same manner as Maximum Throwdown or the upcoming Monstrous.

When I asked if that was the case, the designer said no... but I thought it was funny and so joked that I should make a dexterity based city building game where you toss the cards into play. He joked back: "That would be about as much urban planning as a lot of older cities got..."

A day later I found myself thinking about tossing building cards into play, and the fact that Dice Hate Me Games has a Dexterity Challenge on right now - and wouldn't you know it, now I want to enter the contest... with a Rabbit eligible (I co-designed a 54-card game that was published as a result of Dice Hate Me's last design challenge) dexterity game based on the likes of Sim City, where you toss residential, commercial, industrial, and civic buildings into play, and gain points or card draws based on which buildings you have in play and their relative proximity to other types of buildings.

Keeping it to 54 cards is a low priority, and I already think each player should have a starting card that should maybe be oversized (though could still fit in the Rabbit sized box, I suppose). Here are my current thoughts on how the game could go. These are recent thoughts, only germinated since this morning, so I don't know if (a) I'll really pursue this as a contest entry, or (b) what will change by the end if I do.

* The game would need to be easy, not a hassle to play. As a result, I can't have players checking every card in play every turn in the manner Suburbia does.
* However, each card could have a "comes into play" type of effect (i.e. it's acceptable to have players always check the card they just played.)
* Cards could reference or score for other cards touching it, as well as maybe the first card in each direction, or in certain directions. This should include opponents' cards.
* Any sort of measurement should be relative, players shouldn't need any sort of equipment to figure out if a card is "within range" of another card. The only measurements I should require should be "touching" and "nearest."
* The game needs to deal with the interdependence and interactions between building types - such as the obvious "residential doesn't like to be near factories."
* Each player should probably have their own deck of cards, which reduces luck of the draw, and also helps identify which buildings belong to which player once in play.
* There could be (at most) 1 type of card which is checked every turn. Maybe this should just be the Starting card.
* There could be (at most) 1 type of card which is checked at game end for bonus scoring (such as "1vp per Residential building")
* Players must ALWAYS have a card to toss on their turn.
* Cards could have prerequisites, making them harder to play, and therefore be worth more.
* Cards should never be unplayable - every card should be playable no matter what.
* Cards could be double sided, potentially with a "harder to play" card (with prerequisites) on one side, and a basic (can always toss it) card on the other.
* Perhaps I could use the idea of Zoning to create legal places to play cards (if you miss the legal zone, the card is discarded?)
* I'd like there to be strategies based on concentrating on particular building types.
* I'd like there to also be cross-type synergies.

As I mentioned, I think there ought to be 4 suits or types of building: Residential, Commercial, Industrial, and Civic. Each of those should have something it's good at... 2 obvious things would be gaining cards, and gaining points. I think cards could represent population, and maybe points represent Approval. But what else could there be? I was going to have a 5th category for the endgame bonus points (Landmarks?) - probably just a "1vp per card of this type" for each type. I suppose I could make those the "Civic" buildings though.

I figure the better cards could have a 'cost' associated with playing them - a prerequisite number of specific types in play. For example, maybe a Landmark requires 2 buildings of each type in play before you can play it.

I like the sound of this stuff, and I've always wanted to do a Sim City style game... I think I'll give this some more thought.

What do you think about city building? What aspects do you feel are "must haves" for a city building game? What about for a dexterity game along the lines of Monstrous, Maximum Throwdown, or Flower Fall?

Eminent Domain Origins: Terra Prime

Those following this blog may recall my first published game: Terra Prime. You may also recall the production issues that plagued the print run. Only 2,000 copies of Terra Prime were printed, and some of those were thrown away due to extremely poor alignment and die cutting, and potential for mold inside the box.

Needless to say, that was a disappointing start to my game design career. It was also a disappointing start to TMG's publishing career. Thankfully, Michael persevered, and TMG has grown into a well established, well known, and well loved board game publisher, and along the way I've grown as a designer and a developer as well.

But when it comes to Terra Prime, I've always wanted a sort of "do-over." The game is now almost 10 years old, but I played it again recently and I still think it's a solid, fun game. Over the years I have romanticized doing a re-print, updating the rules, using a high quality manufacturer, and including the expansion I already designed. Occasionally Michael has mentioned that it's not out of the question to do a reprint, but the priority is never high, and he's very concerned that the fact it's a reprint of a game that (automatically) didn't sell well will hurt it's chances in the marketplace. I've even toyed with the idea of kickstarting it myself so Michael and TMG wouldn't have to worry about that part of it.

Since Terra Prime was published in 2009, I (and TMG) have enjoyed a little more success with my next game, Eminent Domain. In 2010 we successfully kickstarterted that deck-learning game, raising over $48,000. Since then we've reprinted that game twice, successfully funded an expansion for over $100,000, and are currently funding a 2nd expansion as well as another game by Philip duBarry in the EmDo universe.

EmDo is a franchise that's done well for TMG, and Michael likes the idea of setting other games in that universe. Battlecruisers is the first, but may not be the last. Recently Michael mentioned the possibility of setting a Terra Prime reprint in the EmDo universe, and I think that would be a fine way to go.

I would absolutely love the opportunity to clean up the rules to Terra Prime, set it in the EmDo universe, and see it kickstarted and made into a reality. I imagine the title would be Eminent Domain Origins: Terra Prime, and the setting would be well in the past, before the players had carved out sections of the galaxy to rule over, they were all part of the same faction... vying to ascend to the Leadership of the Federation.

All the planets would get swapped out with Fertile, Metallic, Advanced, and Exotic planets. The resources too would be swapped out - no more Bluium, Greenium, Yellium, and Brownium - but instead Food, Water, Silicon, and Iron. The cartoony, retro sci-fi art (that wasn't too well received) would be replaced with the sleek EmDo art (that's gone over very well).

What do you think? Would you want to see Eminent Domain Origins: Terra Prime become a thing? Would you support such a kickstarter project? Let me know in the comments below!

Eminent Domain: Oblivion - prototyping

I've been doing some prototyping this week - in addition to updating all my Alter Ego files, I've finally gotten to work putting together a prototype for Eminent Domain: Oblivion!

Here are some pics to prove it:

 Clout Tokens

Agenda Display

In case you don't recall, the basic idea of the Oblivion expansion is that there are Agendas, which are global effects that apply to everyone. You can bring them into and out of play via the new Politics role.

When choosing the Politics role, you will reveal a new Upcoming Agenda from the deck, placing it in the leftmost (most expensive) slot in the Upcoming Agendas row (above the Central Card Display) - sliding other Upcoming Agendas down to make room. Return any Agenda sliding off the rightmost space to the bottom of the Agenda deck.

You may boost the role as normal with Politics icons, and other player may follow (playing Politics icons of their own), or Dissent (drawing a card as normal). After all players have Followed or Dissented, you may use ALL Politics icons played (by you and your opponents) in order to EITHER:

1. Activate one of the Upcoming Agendas, moving it to the leftmost (most expensive) slot in the Active Agendas row (below the Central Card Display) - sliding other Active Agendas down to make room. Return any Active Agenda sliding off the rightmost space returns to the bottom of the Agenda deck.

OR 

2. Remove one of the Active Agendas, returning it to the bottom of the Agenda deck.

In order to do either of these, you must have the required number of Politics icons, printed on the board in the Agenda's current slot. Again, you may count ALL Politics icons played by yourself and your opponents.

In return for offering their Politics icons, opponents who Follow your Politics role draw 1 Clout token from the supply. Clout tokens depict a Politics icon on the back side, and one of the other role icons on the front. These tokens may be kept until spent to boost or follow either a Politics role, or whichever role the other icon applies to. For example, a token with a Produce icon on the back may be spent to boost a Politics role or a Produce role.

I expect that sometimes players will Follow a Politics role because they want to hep the active player get a particular Agenda into or out of play, and I expect that other times players will Follow just to collect a Clout token. Still other times I expect players to Dissent, perhaps because they don't want to help the active player out, or perhaps because they need better cards for their own turn.

My current draft of Agendas might not be spectacular. I just wanted something to test out. I think many of them will need to be more impactful things that really stand to help or hinder someone's strategy.

In the lower right corner of that 2nd pic you might even be able to see the Market tile I mentioned before. For a first draft I went with the following version: 

Market:
Action: Draw 1 Clout token, then discard 1 Clout token.

Action: Exchange 1 resource for another (store it in the same slot the traded resource came from).
Research: Spend 3R to upgrade to Improved Market.

Improved Market:
Action: Draw 1 Clout token, then discard 1 Clout token.

Action: Exchange 1 resource for another (store it in the same slot the traded resource came from).
Action: Exchange 2 resources for up to 3 other resources.
+1vp whenever you Trade 3 different resource types in 1 Trade role.

I intend to make a few techs that interact with Clout tokens and Agendas, maybe swapping the locations of Upcoming or Active agendas (making them more/less expensive to activate/remove, or making them stick around longer) for example. I think I will keep the tech to a minimum though, since I've added so much in the other expansions. I think this one will be mainly about the Agendas.

Now, to playtest!

Alter Ego rules and PnP files

I have just finished updating my prototype files for Alter Ego, as well as the rules, and they are in good shape for anyone who would like to print and play the game and try it out.

If this interests you, then please feel free to do so, the only thing I ask is that you comment here or email me (sedjtroll) at gmail dot com with your comments (please use "Alter Ego comments" in the subject line).

Please note - text in red in the rules doc is notes, and should be ignored.

Alter Ego Rules 
Alter Ego Player Board 
Alter Ego Cards (Hero and Alter Ego)
Alter Ego Equipment Cards 
Alter Ego Henchmen Cards
Alter Ego Arch Villain Cards

Enjoy, and let me know if you do print these out or if you have any questions!

Winds of Fate playtest 6/20/15

6/20/15: 5 player test of Odysseus: Winds of Fate

I had a nice, successful playtest day at a local store the other day, getting in 2 games of Alter Ego and one game of Winds of Fate. Many thanks to Mandy, Hoss, Tony, Karen, and Aaron for coming by and participating!

After the Winds of Fate game we spent a lot of time talking about Timeline/Destiny bets. Maybe it would be good to combine them, so you'd "Place a Bet" on a particular round OR a particular outcome:

1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10|11|12|Stranded|Dead|Safe

With the payout divided between bets on both the correct round AND the correct outcome. This might simplify the whole betting thing.

Hoss suggested that the timeline/destiny bets be matched so that when you bet, you increase the amount in the pool by more, but I think that's the same as just saying that those bets are worth more.

I definitely would like to see more god tiles in the game. There are currently 12 tiles on the board, 6 more in the decks, and 3 more in the reward tiles - that's 21 total... theoretically enough for each player to get 4-7 of them. However, it seems likely that several of the tiles from the game board won't be claimed, so realistically there's only maybe 12 god tiles in a game, which is only 3-4 per player... that doesn't do much for a set collection mechanism.

For one thing, I could start players with 1 god tile (at random, or of their choice, or one of each perhaps)... if it's at random or chosen (as opposed to one of each) then that might also give them a reason right away to prefer one location over another.

If I add three more tiles for each of Dionysus, Hades, and Hermes and then place 2 tiles at each location instead of just 1 - either awarding 1st and 2nd highest contribution, or else rewarding the highest contribution on each side help/hinder - then that gets quite a few more gods into the game.

At GameLab in Portland last March a player suggested I give each player a matching deck, rather than everyone drawing off the same deck. That could help even out luck of the draw. If I do that, then adding each of the three god tiles to EACH deck would increase the number of gods, but I think it would equate to just giving each player 2 of each god. However, if those cards were the only high value cards, then maybe players would leave them in their deck to help control outcomes... at least until the end of the game.

But I kinda like drawing off of a single deck... Aaron made an interesting suggestion - to add more god effects to more cards, like almost every card could have an alt-use god effect... then the card play might be (a) more fun, because there would be lots of stuff you could do, and (b) more interesting because the play of each card would come with an opportunity cost.

For when Odysseus arrives at a face down tile (an encounter that's already happened), we talked about how it could be better and simpler if the direction the boat goes were not based on the type of path that was taken to get there. I kind of want the gods to decide - like you flip an Olympus card and that determines which way the boat continues. Also, maybe the event could happen - giving more God effects happening. This could make the death spiral less likely, or at least less certain. I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing.

This is the best version of the game so far, but I've clearly got a ways to go before I'd consider the game "finished." At this rate it's probably never going to be. On the up-side, it seems Greek mythology has become a popular theme of late!

Alter Ego: playtests and progress

This weekend I got in several good playtests of Alter Ego! All 3p games, but importantly, one group played the game twice back to back, something that seldom happens in playtests. Many times at least one playtester is new to the game, and you don't get very deep into a game if you're always playing a learning game!

Game 1 ended in a loss in the 5th round. The players agreed to play again to see if they would play differently or perform better the 2nd time. Game 2 ended with a win in the 6th round, though there was a chance they would have lost right up until the end (though at the very end that chance got pretty low). I am not sure 5 or 6 rounds is enough to really let your deck change - I feel like the game ought to last a little longer than that. In the first game I had seeded the Arch Villains with 1 token each, but to increase the game length I didn't do that in the second game (as expected, the game took about 1 round longer).

In another 3 player game today (different players) I didn't seed the Arch Villains, and we played about 8 rounds (and then lost). We didn't play very well, and we strung out the Arch Villain triggers - which lengthens the game - until we eventually had only 1 token left for each AV - which is not a great position to be in.

It's possible I need to up the trigger threshold by 1 or 2 on each card, but I think I need to do some concentrated testing on that with various player counts. Currently I'm removing tokens rather than adding them, which makes it more clear how close each AV is to arriving, and I'm playing with the printed values for 3p, removing 2 for 2 players, and adding 2 for 4 players. So currently the average trigger value looks like this:
4p: 10
3P: 8
2P: 6

This should lead to a game that lasts 7-9 rounds, allowing players to add 7-9 cards to their deck (nearly doubling it).

In an effort to streamline the game, I think it might be best to move all the card drawing to the Support phase... currently you draw cards at the end of the Recoup phase, then you draw more cards during the support phase, and nothing happens in between. I have seen players have trouble keeping straight which pile of cards is their deck, which is their hand, and which is their discard pile. Since there's no real reason to look at your cars until after your fight phase anyway, it seems reasonable to simply put all the card drawing in the Support phase, so you just draw cards once.

Players have asked why the phases are in the order they're in... that's something I've actually gone back and forth on a bit. Currently it's Income, Support, Patrol, Fight because there are zero decisions involved in the Income phase and the Support phase (you just collect money and draw cards, maybe collect a teamwork token). There's 1 or 2 decisions to make in the Patrol phase (1. Which of these henchmen should I put into play, and possibly 2. which henchmen do I call the cops on). Maybe the Family phase should go AFTER the Fight phase, so you don't draw cards until you're about to ply them? Though then you can't really use Events that come up very well...

I updated the rules last night (see them here: http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_21.html). Time to go through and update the prototype...
* remove "draw cards" from Recoup phase.
* add 4 AE icons to the board in the support phase.
* change henchmen to eliminate "+1 hand size (that's the same as just drawing 1 more card).
* Add Badge icons to Community cards - link Calling Cops to badge icons, not community icons..
* adjust henchmen to have Badges as trophies (maybe just replacing the Hand Size icons with badges).
* Maybe update the Arch Villain cards to indicate number of tokens to use for each player count.
* Go through Equipment cards (especially Events) and update to work better under current rules.

Case study in countering luck of the draw: Deus

I've played a lot of Deus lately, and I like it a lot. If you haven't tried the game, I recommend giving it a play. If you're not familiar with how the game works, it's basically a big deck of cards in 6 suits, and you generally churn through a lot of cards each game, either putting them into play, or discarding fists full of them at a time for some benefit.

One of the complaints I hear about this game is to do with luck of the draw... as unlikely as it sounds, sometimes you just can't seem to find a red card (or whatever) no matter how much you feel like you're churning through cards. This dynamic isn't really unique to Deus, some people levy the same complaint against Race for the Galaxy and other card games from which players draw unique or varied cards from a large, common deck.

When I first learned Deus, a friend emphatically suggested that we use the variant from the back of the rulebook which is included for players who are unhappy about the luck of the draw in the game. The variant rule is that one time per game, each player has the option of playing any card face down as if it were any color. This is important for several reasons, mainly because...
(a) in Deus, when you play a card of a color, you activate all the cards you've already played of that color. So using this variant rule you can re-activate cards you've got in play - even if you don't draw any cards of the the right color, and...
(b) Deus has a certain type of card called a Temple which scores big endgame points, and in order to build a 2nd Temple, you must first have played a card of each color. So this variant can help when you're missing cards of one color and you want to play a 2nd Temple.

We used this variant in the first game I played, and I was pretty happy with it - I felt it went a long way toward keeping players from getting screwed by the luck of the draw. In the 2nd game I played, we did not use the variant, and I felt that I missed the ability, and even thought maybe it shouldn't be a once per game thing, but maybe more expensive, but allowed all the time.

I've played a handful of games since then, most of which are a learning game for someone, and I've played a handfull of online games as well. None of those games used the variant rule, and the more I play without that variant, the less I miss it. I've been wondering if that rule is really necessary at all. I think I've come to the conclusion that this variant is not only unnecessary, but perhaps it actually makes things worse!

Yes, for the player who feels screwed by the luck of the draw this variant does feel comfortable or even necessary. In a vacuum, it's a great fix for the problem. However, the game is not played in a vacuum. Let me back up a step and point out that the ability to play a card face down as if it's any color is extremely powerful in this game. That said, any player who's NOT being screwed by the luck of the draw has a power play in their pocket, to be used when they see fit. On the other hand, the player who DOES get screwed must cash in their power play just to get back to even.

So as I said, sure - it feels like a helpful fix... but in reality I don't think it really addresses the luck of the draw problem - a problem which may be overstated in the first place.

I haven't put too much thought into a better rule to combat the luck of the draw, or the feeling of being screwed by the card gods. Perhaps my initial comment has merit - increase the cost for this effect to an appropriate level, and then don't limit it to once per game. I'm not sure, but the point of this post wasn't to fix the issue, just to study it a little bit and share my thoughts on it.

What methods do your favorite card games use to counter luck of the draw?

EmDo resources - differentiating them... is that a thing?

Ever since Eminent Domain came out, there have been people who were disappointed that the 4 resource types in the game are not more different from each other. While there are a few techs that reward you for either trading a variety of different resources or for specializing in one resource type, other than that Food, Water, Silicon, and Iron are equivalent.

This has never bothered me in the least - the resource type is merely a reflection of the type of planet that produced it. I could have used a generic "resource" token, but I opted for the more flavorful resource names and colors. I was a little surprised when people complained about that, citing it as one of the reasons the game was "obviously not finished" (the differently sized ship tokens being another such reason), though I guess I shouldn't have been.

When working on the first expansion to Eminent Domain, I wanted to address the complaints people had. As you can see in Escalation the different ship sizes have meaning, putting the complaint that "they're different sizes but all just 1 Fighter" to rest. I explored the possibility of using resource costs to differentiate the resources, but I realized that (a) tech cards already have planet requirements (which is the same as specific resource requirements), and (b) it was PHENOMENALLY painful to try and recall which cards cost which combinations of resources.

So I've been of the opinion that differentiating the resources is not a thing that matters at all, and I haven't tried to do it - with the caveat that in the future Oblivion expansion (the political agenda one), there could be agendas that reward trading a particular resource (again, that just rewards trading if you have a certain planet type in play).

Today I had an idea that may go along with those types of agendas, and focus on there being some meaning behind which resources you have...

In Escalation we have a Fleet tile, and in Exotica we have a Mining tile. Perhaps in Oblivion we can have a Market tile which allows you to trade one resource for another. That way, no matter which actual planets you have in play, you might be able to make use of those types of agendas. It could look something like this:

Market:
Action: Exchange 1 resource for another (store it in the same slot the traded resource came from)
Research: Spend 3R to upgrade to Improved Market

Improved Market:
Action: Exchange 1 resource for another (store it in the same slot the traded resource came from)
Action: Exchange 2 resources for up to 3 other resources
+1vp whenever you Trade [with a qualifier - like maybe when you trade 3 different resources, or when you trade 3 of the same resource perhaps. Or maybe just whenever you lead Trade?]

The thrust of Oblivion is supposed to be agendas and clout. Agendas are global effects that players can bring into and out of play via a new Politics role. Clout is like role symbols you can save up to be used later. I plan to have just a few techs in the set, dealing with the Agenda display and with clout. But I think there could be room for a Market tile in the expansion as well, to allow players a way to take advantage of some of the Agendas that have to do with trading particular resources, or potentially to use in conjunction with those few existing techs that reward diversity or specialization. Improved Market might be nice just as a way to produce resources as an action!

I like the sound of this, so I wanted to jot it down so I don't forget. If not a Market tile, I'd probably want some kind of Lobbyist tile or something that dealt with Clout or Agendas in some way. I hadn't really thought about that yet.

Deities & Demigods - Map board and cities (some ideas)

Something occurred to me about the difference between "Permanent Devotion" and "Spent Devotion" ... PD lends itself to story arc - a change in scope from the early game to the late game. This is the kind of thing I think can give a game an epic feel. SD is more cyclical and therefore tactical - once you spend your devotion, you're back to the beginning, and in the late game you're doing the same kind of things you were doing in the early game.

Of course, there are other ways to inject story arc into a game, and things like permanent/reusable artifacts can create that change in scope as well. But that might be why I'm interested in a more PD type of dynamic.

That said, at the end of my last blog post it occurred to me that maybe the game could have both... for a low cost you could up your devotion, then later spend it back down, and for a higher cost maybe you could up your minimum devotion for a more permanent effect (that comes with a higher investment).

On that note, this morning I started thinking about how the board might look. I'm assuming Deus style board pieces, with a healthy number of water hexes, for a variable board. Boats exist and move on hexes that show water, land units ("dudes" for lack of a better term) exist and move on hexes that show land. Some hexes might show both (coast, or river), and so both types of units could go there.

Thus, Poseidon could let you add boats to the board and move them around, and Ares could do the same for dudes. I envision a lot of water (great seas with islands) such that you might concentrate on land units (devotion to Ares) or sea (devotion to Poseidon), or potentially try to do both - at the cost of one, the other, or some other deity. This sounds analogous to Warfare vs Colonization in a way.

There could be "city" type spaces indicated on the board, where you would want to move your units. Maybe these cities are worth points to the player with the most units at them (at the end of the game for example), so part of the game is "fighting" over cities via area control (and perhaps there are ways to remove pieces from the board - actual fighting). I think I'd want the actual directly interactive fighting to be minimal/secondary in this game, because I generally don't like those types of games.

I envision the cities having "slots" or spaces for Buildings or Monuments (or hybrid spaces which can hold either). In fact, each city could offer a different combination of:

* Spaces for units (so max capacity for area control, maybe overstuffing a city is how you "fight")

* Spaces for Buildings

* Spaces for Monuments

* Spaces for Building/Monuments (either/or)

* Victory points (and maybe Buildings/Monuments increase the VP value of a city)

I also envision generic pieces, not player specific, for Buildings and Monuments. When you build a Building, you actually put a card into play in front of you - maybe from a hand of cards, or maybe from a supply pool - and you place a generic Building piece (maybe a cube, though ideally a little molded Greek building would be awesome) into a city where you have a unit. Maybe this increases the value of the city as well.

Monuments would be a different shape (a disc? Molded Greek statues would be awesome in production) but also generic, and when you place one of those, maybe you get to permanently increase your Devotion to a particular god, or how you add a card for that god to the deck (or both). That way you wouldn't need any other way to remember which god it was, or who built the monument. And again, maybe monuments increase the value of the city. Though I guess it would be cool if, ignoring the effect for the player building it, Buildings and Monuments meant different things to the city. That might make hybrid spaces more interesting.

It's possible that each thing in the game (boats, dudes, buildings, and maybe even monuments) could have 2 different sizes, and if your devotion is high enough, then you get the bigger one (which counts as 2). For buildings that could relate to the power level of the building you get as well. Each building could have a level (I or II) and you need at least X devotion to get a level II building... or maybe better, each building has a level I side and a Level II side, and if your devotion is high enough then you get the better version of the building.

That gives us reasons for the following deities so far:

Zeus - turn order

Hermes - gold

Poseidon - boats

Ares - dudes

Hephaestus - buildings

and maybe:
Athena - monuments

Hades - killing units? Culling the deck?

Would it be good to get some semblance of Agriculture in there as well? Another aspect cities could have (wheat icons), which could relate to... number of units you can have? Number of units that fit in the city (maybe devotion to Demeter can increase that)? Amount of food you harvest (and then feed to your units)?

I guess that could act as a limiter of how many dudes you can have in play, kinda like the feeding mechanism in Agricola. But if area majority is the only way to score, then might that just be some necessary evil? How do you get by on low food and still win majorities? Maybe this whole idea is not necessary.

As always, I welcome your thoughts on this!

Deities and Demigods - more ideas and alternate structures

Matthew Dunstan, designer/co-designer of such games as Relic Runners, Empire Engine, and the KdJ nominated Elysium (as well as the upcoming TMG title Frontiers), was kind enough to send me an email with some thoughts on this Deities & Demigods game idea, with some ideas and suggestions which have spurred at least 1 alternate structure from what I originally had in mind. It's not fully formed, and I'm not sure if it's better, but then I'm not sure my original structure was fully formulated either. Here's something more specific than I had before which might be a good direction for this game to go:

There's still a Pantheon of god cards, each with it's effect. The (central) deck is made up of 1 of each god card. The rest of the cards in the Pantheon are splayed such that there's a cost below the top-most card, and when that card is removed, there's a new cost showing for the next card (the costs would escalate, like 1/2/3/4...). I'll explain more about this later.

Around the Pantheon there's a Zeus track for recording turn order - this would work exactly like the turn order tracks in In the Year of the Dragon, Macao, or Ground Floor. The player who's marker is farthest along the track is first in turn order, etc.

You'll have a player board with Devotion tracks. Markers on these tracks record your devotion to each of the gods in the pantheon.

Each game turn, a card will be revealed from the shuffled deck. In turn order, each player will have a turn, which will look something like this:

1a: Buy Devotion to the god: Spending some amount of gold, you will increase your Devotion track for the corresponding god by 1 space. The cost to increase your Devotion to a particular god will increase as you go up the track.

OR

1b: Resolve the god's ability: According to your current Devotion level, resolve the ability printed on the god card.

2. Optionally add 1 gold coin from your supply to the god's stack in the Pantheon.

If at any time the number of gold coins on a stack in the Pantheon is equal to the cost printed below the top card in the stack, then remove all those coins (back to the supply) and add that top card to the central deck's discard pile.Therefore, that god will come up 1 more time the next cycle through the deck.

That's all the specifics I have at the moment. I have some general thoughts on what some of the gods could do.

Matthew suggested an alternative where you either buy Devotion or else SPEND all of it to get the benefit of the god. So building up Devotion isn't an investment that will pay off all game, but one that will pay off only once.

That's a really interesting idea, that could lead to a lot of interesting decisions, and it's well worth considering as well.

Hmm... perhaps both ideas could be incorporated... for a smaller cost maybe you could up your Devotion, and as Matthew suggested, you could spend it all to get the effect... but maybe for a larger cost you could increase both your devotion and your minimum devotion, so when you spend your devotion, you don't drop all the way to zero. Maybe that's an interesting idea... it could be as simple as "You may pay $1 to increase your Devotion, then you may pay $1 to increase your Minimum Devotion. OR you may spend all of your Devotion to get the effect of the god (based on how much Devotion you had)." Could that work?

Deities and Demigods - deck learning with a common deck (further thoughts)

If the central deck is "calling roles" as it were rather than other players, then it makes much less sense to need a hand of cards from your own deck. So perhaps the "cards in your own deck" should just go in front of you in a tableau.

So when the card in the deck comes up, it tells you what action to take, and you get to boost it with all the cards in your tableau that apply.

And if they're in front of you in a tableau, then they don't really need to be cards as such, they could be tracks with a single marker on each, showing how much "devotion" you have to each deity. This would cut the number of cards needed in half.

This makes sense to me. Now, what should the common/starting actions be, and what should the actions of each of the deities in the pantheon be? And how exactly should the turns resolve?

One thought I had on turn order was that maybe one of the gods - let's say Zeus - dictates turn order... when given the opportunity to do so, you 'buy' a Zeus card (into the deck, as well as increasing your devotion), thereby improving your turn order. Maybe turn order is based on devotion to Zeus, from highest to lowest, where tied players reverse relative turn order (so if you're a later turn order player, you can get better turn order by obtaining a Zeus card).

I suppose that could work like the turn order track in In the Year of the Dragon for example, maybe when Zeus comes up you can either buy a Zeus card, or advance X spaces on that track (where X is your devotion to Zeus) Or both?

So in this structure, a card would be revealed, and in turn order each player would get the option to 'buy' devotion to that god (spending some resource), and (or?) gain the benefit of that god.

So another example is maybe getting gold. So maybe Hermes (god of trade) offers gold... when Hermes comes up maybe you can buy devotion to him, then receive some gold, plus 1 more per devotion to Hermes. This gold is maybe what you pay to 'buy' devotion to gods.

If you are cash rich, you could buy devotion to lots of gods, making all your actions better, but you're going to need to spend actions getting money. And maybe the cost of devotion increases for each devotion you already have (so maybe 1 devotion to each of 4 gods is cheaper than 4 devotion to any 1 god). Big Money could be a strategy, but it wouldn't be very focused.

On the other hand, you could show devotion only to those gods that support your strategy for a more focused approach, with less need to worry about collecting a lot of gold.

If 2 people support the same god, more cards for that god will be in the deck (this is sorta like in EmDo where 2 players will call the same roll more often if they're sharing a strategy), so maybe the cost of devotion should be more based on the number of cards left in the pantheon and less on the number you've already bought. That jives with an idea I had last October about deck learning anyway.

I'm liking the direction this is taking. Maybe I'll keep thinking about it...

Exotica / Battlecruisers Kickstarter (EmDo Double Feature!)

This morning a kickstarter project for two Eminent Domain products went live - my EmDo expansion Exotica is one of them, and the other is a standalone game by Philip duBarry called Battlecruisers.

In that kickstarter you can get either game for $25, or both for $40!

Here is an interview from The Inquisitive Meeple about Exotica (I believe Ryan will have an interview with Philip about Battlecruisersup shortly):



Seth Jaffee Introduces Us to Exotica


 So, if you've been waiting for this, or if you like EmDo, or if you're just curious what I'm on about... check out the kickstarter project!

Edit...

And here is the Battlecruisers interview:

Philip duBarry talks Eminent Domain: Battlecruisers

Deities and Demigods - a new deck learning game?

Playing all this Deus and Elysium got me thinking a bit about the Mythology theme. In short, I like it. I liked it way back when I played Cyclades in 2009, when I played Olympus in 2010, and when I played Olympos in 2011. I've got my own design that centers on Greek mythology (Odysseus: Winds of Fate), and I've always wanted to work on a game about Hercules and his 12 labors.

I may have also mentioned that I'd like to find more uses for the deck-learning mechanism from Eminent Domain. I think there's more to that mechanism than just the one game. The other day when I was discussing design stuff with Dan Keltner, and he had some ideas which reminded me of some of the roots of the ideas that became EmDo - there was a thread on BGDF.com some years ago about Queen Games looking for games using their Cube Tower. I had a couple of thoughts about that - one of which ended up in EmDo, but another of which involved a central cube tower as well as individual cube towers for each player. The individual cube towers would have an effect on a player's individual game, but the central tower would be accessible by all players, and its contents would change based on the collective actions of all players. In terms of deck learning, this would translate to a central deck that would affect all players, and would be affected by all players.

One idea I had to which I could apply a Greek Mythology theme is to have such a central deck with a couple of standard actions in it, as well as a Pantheon (stacks of cards like in EmDo) of cards corresponding to Greek deities. The central deck would be shuffled, and cards revealed one at a time - giving each player a chance to do that card's action. In lieu of the effect of that card, a player may choose to instead pray to one of the gods in the Pantheon, thereby getting some effect related to that god, and putting a copy of that god's card into the central deck's discard pile. The next time through the deck, that card will come up, and if you wanted it in the deck, then ideally it'll benefit you more than others. In this way the game would be a deck-learning game with a single, shared deck.

The idea of a single shared deck is interesting, but I'm not sure it fits the deck-learning format very well. The variation in your deck creates player differentiation. Therefore maybe another approach would be more appropriate.

I do like the idea of a Pantheon of different deity cards, each supporting some game action. In order to have meaningful actions, I think there would have to be a game board to support land units (Ares), sea units (Poseidon), buildings (Hephaestus), agriculture (Demeter), and etc. I think a modular board would be popular, so I might try something like in Tempus (which I guess is also similar to Deus). I'll have to figure out what it means to have groups of units on land or on sea, but it would make sense if Poseidon let you add units to a sea space, or move units in the sea and stuff like that.

If your deck is made up of cards from a Pantheon (which I think is a great, thematic name for the central card stacks), then what would you as a player represent? My current thought is that players would be heroes or demigods from Greek mythology, like Perseus, Achilles, and Herakles, honoring the Olympian gods to aid in their conquests (or their empire building, or whatever).

I said in my earlier post about deck-learning that I don't think Role Selection is required to make the mechanism work, so long as there's some other form of interaction in the game. Though Role Selection does fit perfectly with having a hand of cards... Maybe this favors the above "common deck" idea, as the common actions could act like roles even if the game isn't exactly a role selection game. Or maybe it's fine not to worry about role selection, even if that sort of wastes some of the hand management aspect of deck-learning.

I don't know, this is a new idea and I'm just feeling it out at the moment, kinda brainstorming. Please leave comments with any thoughts you have on this!

Thinking about podcasting

I've long thought that while the number of gaming podcasts is high, there's an aspect of the industry that's underrepresented... there aren't a lot of podcasts dealing with game design. Once (circa 2007 I think) I even downloaded Audacity and tried recording something... it turned out to be about a half an hour of me talking about one of my first games, All For One.

Nowadays, with the advent of crowdfunding, the amateur/indy design scene has grown quite a bit. Gaming in general has become a lot bigger and more well known, and now more than ever there are a lot more podcasts and video-casts focusing on games. Some of them are by designers, and some interview designers about their games, but for the most part I still don't see a lot of content about the actual design of games.

Prominent reviewer Richard Ham (Radho Runs Through) started a podcast series recently, and reading some comments about that new show, as well as some of the comments they made on The State of Games,renewed my interest in pursuing the idea of a game design focused podcast. I polled Twitter to see if people would be interested in hearing that type of thing, and got a general sort of "I'd listen if it were short" type of response.

Based on what I imagine people would be interested in, I was thinking that each episode might be organized as follows...

1. Recent gaming (5 min): I could mention the games I've been playing, maybe going into detail about the most prominent one.

2. Thoughts on hotness (5 min): I could give my opinion on whatever the hot topic of the day might be... a particular game that'sbeing hyped, the SdJ nominees, or some other hot topic in gaming.

3. The meat of the podcast - some game design topic (10-20 min): I figure I'd choose some topic and approach it from a "this is how I did it" point of view, then solicit comments from the audience as to how they would have gone about it.

I might ought to squeeze in there some segment for answering questions from Twitter or previous show comments. In total I'd try to keep the episodes down to 30 mins or less. I figure I could record several episodes at a time, cut it up and stitch it together into episodes with Audacity, and post them on SoundCloud or something.

So what do you think? Does this sound like something worth doing? Would you be interested in listening to this type of thing?

Status report: Current active designs

At the moment, I have no fewer than 5 active designs in my prototype bag.

That might be a little bit of an exaggeration, as I am not physically working on all 5 right this minute, but they are all playable, and have all had progress made recently.

Here's a rundown of each of those games and their current situation. If you want to try any of them out, let me know! You can probably find me at a local game store meetup.

Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done

Crusaders is my 45-60 minute euro style Mancala-Rondel game wherein you move your knights around Europe, fighting crusades, erecting buildings, and spreading the influence of your order until such time as the orders become so influential that King Philip disbands them.

Crusaders is in a weird place, as I feel like it's done to a certain level - ready to be pitched to publishers - but there are things that could be added to make the game more complex. In fact, the guys at TMG would like to see the game more like Terra Mystica, where each faction is unique - significantly different than the next... not like now where the factions are very similar but for the faction card. We're talking different upgrades on the rondel pieces, and maybe even different building abilities to build.

I have some thoughts on different abilities which I'd discussed for a potential expansion, but I lack the impetus to change a game I feel is done. So if TMG will publish the game, I'm hoping to pass on the intricacies of unique player boards to the team in Utah to develop.

The Pony Express

Play as a rider for the Pony Express, risking life and limb for profit delivering parcels in the old west!

Pony Express is an attempt at a low-bid auction game, using a variant of a Dutch auction. I was calling it a "count-up auction" - the auctioneer gets $10, chooses a parcel and starts counting up (from 3 to 8). At any point, an opponent can claim the parcel ("I'll do it for that!") and receive the last amount declared (e.g. "3...4...5...6..." "I'll do it for 6!"). The auctioneer retains the other 4.

This game has gone over much better with random players than it has with designer types. It's not intended to be deep and thinky. One comment that's come up a couple of times is that I could replace the count-up thing with a blind bid using bidding cards. I'll give that a try, but I'm not super excited about it because it replaces what I see as a fun, tense dynamic with a quiet, dry one. Sure there's still tension of choosing the right value, and technically it's the same mechanism, but with the cards it really looks like blind bidding, while with the count-up thing it feels less like blind bidding. And nobody in their right mind likes blind bidding! Also, that adds like 28 cards to the game to do a job that currently doesn't require any components.

Other than that, the game seems to be working well at the moment. I need to figure out how to make more delivery cards, especially if I want to bring it back up to 5 players (currently it's only 4). A player had a good suggestion last test - something that rewards doing many deliveries in a round. Kind of the opposite of the Express deliveries which reward being done first. As for the express deliveries, it's possible I should just cut those and reward money based on the order players return.

Alter Ego

A cooperative deck learning game of vigilante heroism. In order to become a stronger hero (necessary to win the game), you must necessarily neglect some aspects of your Alter Ego life: your Job, your Family, or your ties to the Community.

This one has been around for years with no real progress made in a long time. I have always loved the story of this game, but I never liked the state of it. It just wasn't working to my satisfaction. Now I finally have it where I think it needs to be, and so I'm excited to work on fine tuning it and finishing it up.

Michael's always been fond of this one, so TMG might want to publish it - which means maybe Andy will help me finish it up. Currently it just needs some tweaks for pacing and scaling, unique Arch Villain game text and flavor, and possibly Nemesis cards (an idea which strikes me as the kind of thing that would be a Kickstarter stretch goal - a little extra that's not the main focus of the game).

Odysseus: Winds of Fate

Play as the Fates, watching Odysseus' journey from Troy to Ithaca. Place bets on his path and destiny, and use your influence with the gods to try and make your bets pay off.

This is another one that's been around for years and years, through iteration after iteration, and just hasn't been working out. I like the story of this one as well, but so far I haven't been happy with the game experience. The latest version is probably the best one yet, but it still needs some work - and I've got some interesting ideas from the last playtest to try out.

Frontiers [TMG Submission]

Frontiers reminds me of The Oregon Trail, and indeed I feel like it would be cool if we could get ahold of that license for the game. In Frontiers you draft dice to take actions, moving your wagon train across the frontier, collecting townsfolk, specialists, wood (to repair your wagons), medicine (to heal your townsfolk), and cattle. Whichever die is not drafted by players advances one of four disasters, which will affect all players when they occur.

Frontiers is a solid submission, but we're looking at some tweaks to the townsfolk to make them more interesting, and we're examining the specifics of some of the disaster resolution.

Scaling Alter Ego

The other day I played a 2p game of Alter Ego, and it seemed easier than the recent 3p games I've played. It makes sense - with fewer players, each player gets more time (more turns) before the Arch Villain enters play. Therefore they get stronger, and they stabilize sooner, getting to the point where the game becomes trivial.

On the other hand, with fewer players, there are fewer people to get and use Teamwork tokens as well. But experience tells me that's not as big a deal. I needed to find a way to scale the game for player count...

When I made the Arch Villain cards, I used a particular threshold for triggering their coming into play. So far, that threshold has seemed to work decently well, though lately I've been thinking that the game may be too easy, and maybe I should reduce those thresholds. But in thinking about it, the thresholds seem better with higher player counts - they're probably good for 4p games. It's 2 and 3p games that need a tweak.

So tonight I played another 2p game, and I decided to pre-seed each Arch Villain with 2 tokens (I'd try 1 token for 3p games). That's it, no other changes.

This 2p game felt much tighter than any of the recent games. I felt a lot more like we were in danger of losing for much of the game, like we needed to be careful each step of the way. In fact, we lost the game 1 turn before we would have won! This is the first loss I've seen in a long time.

I've been much happier with the last few tests than I have ever been before with this game. I'm looking forward to playing some more!

Side note about equipment...

I think the way to go with the Event cards is to not put them into your display, but instead play them from your hand during your turn. I'm sure I'll have to revisit those cards and make sure they make sense under that rule... and I'll have to clarify what happens when you don't have enough cards to play into your display (because 1 of them is an event) - maybe I could make the events count as a certain type of card if played to the display, or an effect if played from hand?

I used No-Doze tonight, which says "1x/turn, pay $2 to play an additional card to your display" - but I forgot about the 1x/turn bit. I was paying $2 more than once and adding multiple additional cards into my display. For a moment I thought it seemed strong, but in retrospect I'm not so sure. $2 is 2 Job cards worth of money, so trading that to put 1 card into play might be OK. Then again, if you have the right hero card in hand, then you can effectively buy a hero icon for $2 which seems too cheap. However, it's dependent on drawing that card, so it's limited. I was also using the No-Doze to avoid penalties, and even earn Teamwork tokens by playing additional Family cards. Is that OK? Maybe it is.

Playtest Day! Frontiers, Pony Express, and Alter Ego

I had 7 friends over tonight for a great night of playtesting...

Frontiers

First up, old friends Brian and Mandy joined new friends Garrett and Lucy for a 4 player game of a newly signed upcoming TMG title: Frontiers. Frontiers reminds me of The Oregon Trail, and I think it would be awesome if we could figure out a way to get a license to use the Oregon Trail branding.

Unfortunately, Mandy had to leave 1/2 way through the game, but the other three were able to play the rest of the game as if it were a 3 player game. The game went well, everyone seemed to enjoy it, and I got some good comments.

Pony Express

Michelle, Russell, and Dave played a 3 player game of The Pony Express. I spent much of that game talking to the Frontiers group, so unfortunately I didn't get to watch the entire game. It wasn't the type of game Dave normally likes to play, but Michelle liked it the last time she played, and seemed to like it this time as well... though there was some confusion since I wasn't there to answer some of their questions.

In general, I've noticed that when I play Pony Express with designer types, it doesn't go over too well (such as the playtest from the last Game Design Attack). But when I play with regular folks, it seems to go just fine. It's definitely not the type of game I normally design, or play... that's one of the things that makes it interesting to me.

Russell had an idea for a new delivery type... sort of the opposite of the Express Delivery idea: a bonus if you delivered at least X parcels. There could probably be only 1 copy of that, and the Express Deliveries haven't been impressing me. I still need a few more delivery cards than that though.

In a previous playtest the idea came up to have deliveries that require 2 different locations - like "Visit towns #5 and #12" - I'm not sure if that will be too similar to just doubling the deliveries at each location though.

Alter Ego

Russell, Dave, and I played a 3 player game of Alter Ego. I haven't played that game in quite some time, and I just sent the files to Andy to see if he could make any progress on it.

I put tokens on the Arch Villains as henchmen were drawn rather than as they were captured, and that worked very well. In fact, the entire game went very well. Russell and Dave thought it was appropriately difficult, that we were on the ropes for pretty much the whole game. They thought it felt pretty much like a cooperative game - in fact, a little less solitaire than some solitaire by committee games. That's pretty much what I was going for, so that's good news!

I felt like the game was a little too easy, but I think that's just a matter of tweaking and instituting the Arch Villain game effects I've got planned. Also, it could be argued that we played on "easy" level, only needing to defeat 1 Arch Villain. I am not sure I actually want players having to face more than 1 of the Arch Villains though, or it messes with the long term deck building goals.

All in all I'd call this a successful playtest night!

Worker placement ideas based on a probably unpopular opinion

John Oliver recently did a segment for Mother's day pointing out that the US and Papua, New Guinea are the only two countries in the world that do not provide any paid time off for new parents. In his usual fashion, Oliver makes fun of this and asks, if we really love mothers so much, why doesn't our country back legislation that makes life easier for them...

After reading a couple of Facebook comments about this in my feed, some of which arguing for federal regulations providing paid time off (citing that it works for every other country in the world), and some of which arguing "if we want the government to support new parents financially, why not do it directly by just giving them a stack of cash, rather than regulating businesses to do it - that way it'll be more fair, and not just for employed women who have kids."

I REALLY dislike talking about this kind of thing, because pretty much no matter which side of the issue you're on, you're going to sound like an incredible jackass. So I guess here's my chance to sound like an incredible jackass... and then I'll tell you how that relates to a potentially interesting worker placement mechanism.

First of all, the jackassrey: Why is it that people (not just women, but couples) get to treat the ability to have children as some sort of unalienable right, no matter what? And by "no matter what" I mean "no matter what their situation." Why can't people be expected to be responsible about reproducing? Isn't a child important enough that a couple should ensure they're able to support it before having one?

What do I mean by that? Well, if you're in a situation where you will not be given paid leave, and you can't afford to take the time that you need, then might it be irresponsible to have a child under those circumstances? Never mind that if you're any good at your job, and work for a reasonable person, you shouldn't have to worry about job security - they should look forward to your return, even if they can't afford to pay you for the leave.

I'm sure it's an unpopular opinion to say that some people (based on their situation) shouldn't be having a child, though I'm not sure why that should be so unpopular.

Now, to lighten the mood, a little absurdity. Let's take my statement above to an extreme conclusion... I feel like this would make a really good book, movie, or Netflix miniseries:

Let's say that for some reason everybody decided (maybe by government mandate, or maybe by some sudden enlightening or some such) that they'd be more responsible, and not have children unless they could afford to support them properly. The extreme then is that poor people don't have children, and rich people do. Over time, the poor people get old and close to dying out, while the rich people continue to procreate and live their lives as usual. In a way, maybe this paves the way for some utopian society... as the poor people get old and die off, nobody complains about the distribution of wealth anymore, as pretty much everyone is wealthy. I could see it portrayed in a movie like something out of Demolition Man or the capital city in Hunger Games perhaps.

Then maybe there's the twist, the liberal message hidden in the fiction... the rich people, in an effort to stay wealthy, expect their kids to grow up into high paying jobs, there's nobody around willing to take $20k a year to be a teacher, and nobody's willing to pick up trash.

I dunno, I feel like there could be a good story in there, and I'm not sure what the moral would be. But enough absurdity, I promised game design!

In thinking about this, I considered putting it into game design terms. The argument I read about "why doesn't the government just give women $20k when they have a baby" has some obvious issues... if there's a reward for something like having a baby, then there will be people who will try to game the system, people who have a baby to get that reward, without any regard to what happens to the baby afterwards. In fact, I think this already happens to an extent. In any case, this is obviously bad, as it leaves a real, live person out in the cold.

But in a board game, that's not so terrible. In most worker placement games, it's key to get more workers as quickly as possible. Many games attempt to make this less trivial by assessing some kind of fee for workers - for example in Agricola you need to feed each worker during the Harvest phase, and there's a steep penalty if you are unable to do so. Similarly, Stone Age requires the feeding of workers - though in that game starvation could be a viable strategy. Even with these requirements, it's generally considered best to get more workers.

So what if there was a board game where getting a new worker was something of a chore... many games make you wait at least until the next round to use your new worker, and many require a big investment to get the new worker in the first place. Imagine a game where getting a new worker didn't cost anything up front, but instead came with a stipend. Then, before you can use that worker, it has to go through a "training" process which has some resource cost each step of the way. The stipend should cover the cost of those resources (at average price anyway), and failing to pay the required resources would come with a steep penalty, akin to the Begging card in Agricola.

So, a player who has a store of resources could comfortably afford to get a new worker, spending their accrued resources as necessary on the "training" process. This player could then afford to spend their stipend on whatever they wanted. Meanwhile, a player without a store of resources could still get a new worker, using the stipend to purchase the required resources for training. Finally, a player without a sore of resources could get a new worker just for the stipend, deciding to deal with the resource requirements later - perhaps via an engine that required that stipend to get running.

And of course, a player who just wanted the stipend could get it by recruiting a new worker, and then ignore that worker and take the penalties related to not paying the training resources. This would probably not be a winning strategy in the game, but it's a possibility, and maybe it illustrates the whole idea above of  offering a reward of some kind for having children, and the consequences of doing so.

Ok, I feel like I've thought about this more than enough for today.