Some good news about game pitches - one in particular!

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

Big multi-pitch meeting

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

Deities & Demigods signed!?!

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

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

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

Changes on the Horizon for Deities & Demigods

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

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

The Pantheon

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

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

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

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

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

Deity Favor scoring conditions

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

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

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

More variety in monuments

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

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

The story of the game

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

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