Riders of the Pony Express - map board thoughts

I originally tried to use a thematic prototype board for Riders of the Pony Express:

(I had drawn routes on this image)

But while iterating on the design, I quickly switched to a more schematic type of board:

A few iterations later, and that schematic turned into a bigger, more grid-like schematic:

I had originally wanted the routs to be asymmetric, so the board geography would be more interesting, but then I realized that that's what the hazard tiles are for! So I made the symmetric board shown above, with the "shortest" routes being the north-south and east-west ones, and the longest routes being the diagonal ones. The "cost" of the routes is supposed to represent the distance and danger of taking the route, and you pay it by advancing that number of spaces on the time track. At the end of the round, you collect a bonus based on your position on the time track - the farther you have gone, the less money (points) you receive as a bonus.

Hazard tiles will be placed in each of those red squares along the routes, which will add anywhere from +0 (tumbleweed) to +5 (mountain) to the route. These randomly placed hazards serve to make the board asymmetric, and to make certain towns easier to get to than others, or certain routes more expensive than others. This way, the board itself can be a simple grid, but the routes can be dynamic and interesting.

That's all well and good for testing a prototype, but when it comes to getting serious about the design, it would be great to figure out how to represent this schematic board in a more thematic way. In addition, the game is currently a bit fiddly to set up due to having to draw a bunch of hazard and items tiles, place them on the board, and then return some of them to the bag. One of my testers had the great idea of combining a few of the hazards onto single, bigger tiles, so that setup is easier, quicker, and less fiddly.

I wasn't sure how to do that at first, and I'd prefer to also make the board look less like a grid and more like an organic map. However, so far I've only managed to come up with this tessellation, which I think will work just like the schematic above, but with the hazards printed on them. Some of those hazard spaces could be empty, to be filled in later rounds as normal:

 This could work out OK, but I don't know if it attracts me as much as an organic-seeming geography. In any case, it could be a step in the right direction.

If the board were made up of tessellated tiles like this, then it might be good to keep the name of the towns fixed. To facilitate that, I was thinking that each tile could have a hole in it,  so the town would show through the holes. This could hep keep it both thematically more accurate, and also easier or players to remember which town is where!

So what do you think? Should I stick with this tessellated tile idea? Or find another way to improve the board for the game?

Riders of the Pony Express update

A few months ago, I dusted off my Riders of the Pony Express prototype. It went over really well with my current playtest group, which is always nice to see -- they don't love every game, and it makes me feel bad forcing them to play the ones they don't enjoy enough to "finish" them.

I played RotPE a couple more times lately, and tried the changes I listed in my last post:
1. Increase value of Bears from +2 to +3. I wanted to make the Bears more different from the Bandits (which are +2), and I wanted to make the Shotgun item better... a shotgun can be discarded to remove a bear or bandit from the board, but that's really not worth using ever. This change to +3 accomplished both of those goals, though the shotgun STILL wasn't good enough. Yesterday I tried an improved version of the shotgun: ONCE PER ROUND you can "kill" (turn face down) a Bandit or a Bear. This way you can use it twice, for 2-3 each time, which is a little better - maybe worthwhile. But I'm considering not even having that limit (after all, removing the tile helps other players too!)

2. Deal mandatory parcels face up instead of face down, they don't use up inventory slots. This change seemed good, and simplifies the rules quite a bit. Along with this change, I reduced the max inventory back down to 4 items. Of course, this means you must deliver it before the end of the round.

3. Instead of random parcels for rounds 2 and 3, let players draft from a face up supply of N+1 parcels when they arrive back at the post office. This worked well. It might be a little awkward to have to deal more cads out when you're done auctioning cards for the turn -- maybe better is to deal them at the same time you deal he cards to auction (put the auction cards on one side of the board and the new parcels on the other side)? Anyway, it seemed like a good change.

4. Movement change: Move from town to hazard, or hazard to town... This was proposed by Hoss because he did not feel like it made sense the way I was doing it (move from town to hazard, and on your next turn, finish moving into the town you were heading towards). However, we found hazard-town-hazard to be sort of tedious, and didn't like how that felt. As a compromise, we went back to what I had, but explained it a little differently: you move from town to town, but you ACT at the BEGINNING of your turn, not as you arrive in a town. So you move to the next town, paying whatever cost (by moving your time marker). Then next turn you deliver (if you have anything, costs 1 time), buy an item (if you want, costs 1 time), and then move to the next town (costs some amount based on route, hazard tile, and items you have). This format worked well, and I think it communicated better also.

In addition to those changes, one of my players had a good suggestion: the time track started out going down $1 per space, then later along the track it went 2 spaces per $ drop, and eventually 3 spaces. Aaron pointed out that that felt backwards... once you're already spending a lot of time, spending even more time didn't really cost you anything. So I reversed that... now at the beginning of the track you move several spaces before your reward drops, but farther along the track you lose $1 per space, and near the very end of the track you actually lose $2 per space! I also added a dead stop at the end of the track -- if you hit that, then your delivery phase is automatically over, and you lose $10 for each undelivered parcel. Those changes have all helped combat dynamics I didn't like in the game, and they work toward making sure players care how much they bid for things.

As I mentioned above, I beefed up the shotgun item, which is a definite improvement (side note, it combos with Spurs now, since you can remove the hazard AND then get your spurs discount). In addition, I tried changing the maps to say "ignore the hazard tile when moving to town X" rather than a discount of 2. This made the maps a little more variable, potentially more attractive (at least in some cases), and reduced some of the match involved in calculating your route. As it turns out, this makes maps better for Mountains (+5) and Bears (+3), the same for Banidts (+2) and Lost! (+2), and worse for Snakes (+1) and Rivers (+1). At first I didn't like that (I fear the maps are already not good enough), but you CAN discard them to any Lost! tile, and players seem to think they're worth getting, so maybe they're fine. I think I'll try the "ignore hazard" rule again to see if I want to keep it.

Similarly, Compass should say "ignore Lost! tiles" to help minimize the arithmetic in the game.

Finally, one of the worst parts of the game is the fiddly setup -- drawing a million square tiles and placing them on the board, then removing the tumbleweeds and snakes. Then in week 2, adding more tiles, only to remove tumbleweeds again, etc. I'm looking for a way to do bigger tiles that each cover several hazard spaces, so that setup can be simpler but the map board could still be somewhat variable with respect to where the mountains, rivers, and Lost! tiles are.

It would be cool to make the map not look like a schematic/grid as well!

The List - December 2019

It's been a while since I've taken a look at The List... Time to once again take stock of my published games, as well as current and back-burnered designs and prototypes! I'll try and be more thorough, like last time.

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

Finished But Unpublished Games:
- Eminent Domain Origins [Ready to print]
- Crusaders: Crimson Knight (expansion) [Ready to print]
- Deities and Demigods  [In line for art]
- Exhibit (BGG)
- Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory (dice game)
- Dice Works (BGG)
- Wizard's Tower (BGG)
- Now Boarding
- Isle of Trains: All Aboard (expansion)
- Suburban Sprawl
- Watch It Played

Current Active Designs:
- Alter Ego (BGG) [moved to Active]
- Apotheosis (FKA "Worker Learning") [moved to Active]

Recent Designs That Are Not On The Front Burner:
- Riders of the Pony Express (BGG)
- Automatown
- Moctezuma's Revenge
- Joan of Arc

Old Standbys - games which have been around, 1/2 done and untouched, for years:
- 8/7 Central
- Hot & Fresh
- Dynasty
- Kilauea
- Reading Railroad
- All For One (BGG)
- Odysseus: Winds of Fate (BGG)

Old Ideas that Haven't Gone Anywhere (Yet) - some of these have been getting stale as well:
- Investigative/Tabloid Journalism
- Red Colony
- Clash of the Kingpins
- Time = Money
- Dating Game
- Ticket Please
- Scourge of the High Seas
- Rondel Role Selection
- Cruise line game
- The Untouchables
- Day labor job based on craps

Misc and Really Old Stuff:
- 9-Ball
- Blockade Runner
- Roman Emperors (my version of someone else's game)
- Admirals of the Spanish Main (my version of someone else's game)


Let's take a closer look at the games that have seen some movement recently:

Published games:
Crusaders: Divine Influence (BGG) (expansion) [In manufacturing]
The first expansion to Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done (BGG) has been printed, and is about to ship from the manufacturer! I played two games with a sample copy at TokenCon in Oklahoma City this year, where I was a special guest. Divine Influence adds new building types, and replaces the Influence action with something more intricate and involved. There are 4 new Knight Orders as well.

Eminent Domain: Oblivion (BGG) (expansion)
The third (and final) expansion to Eminent Domain was released about a year ago, and is in stores now. Oblivion adds Clout tokens (1-shot role icons), and a Politics role. Using Politics, you can flip over the new Prestige planets in the set, and you can "vote" public agendas into and out of play. These agendas have lasting effects that apply to everyone. So far I haven't seen a lot of comments on this expansion, but the ones I've seen have been pretty positive, so that's nice.

Finished But Unpublished Games:
Eminent Domain Origins [Ready to print]
All of the art is done for this Terra Prime re-release, but the production is on hold for various reasons. The game is an update to my first published title, Terra Prime (BGG), and includes an as-yet unpublished expansion I made years ago. The art and theme has been changed to the Eminent Domain universe, as the game fits perfectly as a prequel to Eminent Domain. 

Crusaders: Crimson Knight (expansion) [Ready to print]
I have art ready to go for another Crusaders expansion, this one just adds red player pieces for a 5th player. If things go my way, we'll print the same exact thing in yellow to facilitate a 6th player in an "Amber Knight" expansion box. There's a new rule which allows space for more players to play on the same sized board -- you're allowed to build the same building as an opponent has built in a region. So if you built a Farm in a hex, I can build a Farm in that hex as well. This rule means the building spaces don't completely dry up with 5 or 6 players, and it adds an interesting dynamic as well.

Olympus on the Serengeti (FKA Deities and Demigods)  [In line for art]
The theme for this one was so commonplace that, when getting an artist involved, I tried to find something new and different. I landed on animals of the African plain... sort of like The Lion King is Hamlet, but with African animals, Olympus on the Serengeti is Greek mythology, but with African animals. Unfortunately, I wasn't liking the direction the art was going in, so the project has been set back a bit. I've got a different artist lined up for January, so hopefully this one will start moving forward again soon.

Isle of Trains: All Aboard (expansion)
I think it was 4 years ago that Dan and I gave the publisher an expansion to Isle of Trains, and while it kept getting pushed back, I have seen some art that they had made. My understanding is that it's in fact all done, however the publisher now would like to instead do a bigger box game that's like Isle of Trains including the expansion (!) So Dan and I have to figure out whether and how we'd like to re-design the game given the new constraints. One idea they had was to create a game that could use the base Isle of Trains game as an expansion to it... but that seems unlikely to pan out. Unfortunately, we haven't really made any progress on the re-design yet.

Current Active Designs:
Alter Ego (BGG) [moved to Active]
I have revisited Alter Ego after what appears to be 2 years, and I've been playtesting it quite a bit lately. My playtesters finally convinced me that the turn sequence was too confusing, so that's been simplified. And I came up with a new format for the Arch Villains: instead of bringing one or more of them into play at some point, all three Villains will be in play from the outset. Their henchmen will be placed below their Villain mats, and each turn, before you get to fight, each Villain will resolve a Villain Event card. The effect of the card depends on the Villain (the Sadist takes extra hostages, while the Mastermind limits your access to certain abilities) is worse if the Villain has 3 or more henchmen in front of them, so you have incentive to keep the henchmen at bay. So far this new format has been working very well, but the game isn't quite done yet.

Apotheosis (FKA "Worker Learning") [moved to Active]

Michael suggested the name "Apotheosis," which describes the game very well. Thanks to the help of a new co-designer, Rick Holzgrafe, we've made some serious progress on this game. I set it aside this summer and it's been simmering on the back burner since then, but pretty soon I'll probably try some of the latest ideas we've had for it.

Recent Designs That Are Not On The Front Burner:
Riders of the Pony Express (BGG) & Automatown

Each of these games got a playtest recently, which generated something new to try, but they quickly got set aside for other projects. My playtesters don't love Automatown, but they really enjoyed Riders of the Pony Express, so I should bring that one back into active development!

Maybe next time I'll add games I've developed (or am developing) for TMG... would that be something you'd like to see? Let me know in the comments... it's a pretty long list!