At an impasse -- a peek at The List and where some of my designs are at the moment

I'm at a bit of an impasse when it comes to my game designs right now... I feel like I can't make meaningful progress on any of my current designs, and with playtest sessions being so few and far between (not to mention more of a hassle on Tabletop Simulator), I feel a reluctance to start anything new. Maybe if I take a look at my active designs and their current status, it'll help me figure out what to do next. Here are some excerpts from The List:

Finished But Unpublished Games:
- Eminent Domain Origins [Ready to print]

- Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory (dice game) [Art on pause]

These EmDo universe games may yet see the light of day, but due to some issues (that it would probably be inappropriate for me to talk about), they are on hold at the moment. Too bad, because I was really excited about the prospect of releasing the Terra Prime revamp on TMG's 10th anniversary, and the dice game has been done for a pretty long time now.

- Crusaders: Crimson Knight (expansion) [Ready to print - fix faction powers!]
- Crusaders: Amber Knight (expansion) [Ready to print]

These Crusaders 5th and 6th player expansions have been ready to go for months, but the 1st expansion (Divine Influence) has just been sitting in China, waiting to be shipped to the US and released. Crusaders continues to be talked about (thank goodness), and I hope it remains in the zeitgeist at least until Divine Influence drops, so that doesn't end up being completely wasted effort. If that works out, then it could revitalize the game, and create some demand for these 5th/6th player expansions as well as a reprint (there's already been demand for a reprint of Deluxified Crusaders).

In the meantime, I looked at the files for some reason, and noticed that we were duplicating a couple of the new factions (because Crimson and Amber Knight expansions were supposed to be identical except for player color). That didn't make sense to me, so I developed 2 more faction powers, and we just need to swap those in before going to print.

- Olympus on the Serengeti  (FKA Deities and Demigods) [Art on pause]

I was excited to have a big name artist work on this one, but due to some of the issues mentioned above, Olympus on the Serengeti is on pause now too. Also, I'm becoming skeptical of the odd theme choice, and I wonder if just leaving it "normal" Greek mythology would be better.

- Exhibit (BGG) [Unlikely to be published due to conflict] [Abandoned]
- Dice Works (BGG) [Abandoned]
- Wizard's Tower (BGG) [Abandoned]
- Isle of Trains: All Aboard (expansion) [Abandoned]
- Suburban Sprawl [Abandoned]
- Watch It Played [Abandoned]
- Now Boarding [Abandoned]

These are all basically abandoned. I did make a TTS mod for Exhibit, and played it once with my testers a few weeks ago (and again yesterday). I think it holds up, and I'm tempted to try pitching it around. It's been several years, and the person instigating that ambiguous conflict I mentioned has disappeared as far as I can tell, so that might not really even be an issue anymore (I'm skeptical that it was ever REALLY an issue, TBH).

I also made a TTS mod for Dice Works as well, and finally gave it a partial playtest yesterday. I was surprised how well it actually worked on TTS (like, physically), so maybe this one could be tested or pitched that way now. Comments from the players led to the idea of loosening up the specificity of the board spaces (like, "[ ] < 3" as opposed to "[1]", or "[ ] < [ ] < [ ]" as opposed to "[ ] = [ ] = [ ]"). The players were also concerned about the possibility of an all-out scrap strategy being sort of dominant. I don't think that's the case, but it might ruin the other player's fun, which would be a problem all its own.

Maybe for something to do I could make a TTS mod for Wizard's Tower - that might be fun to revisit.

Current Active Designs:
- Alter Ego (BGG)

After a lot of testing about this time last year, I had made a lot of progress on this one. I had made a TTS mod for it a long time ago, and had been meaning to update it with all the most recent files, but never got around to it. I guess that's something I could be working on.

- Apotheosis (Co-Design with Rick Holzgrafe)

Most of my playtesting time (such as it has been) lately has gone to updating Apotheosis. I pitched the game virtually to 2 different publishers... the first wasn't interested, but the 2nd did show interest. They have a line of games in a particular universe, and Apotheosis fits pretty perfectly into that universe, so Rick and I have (a) revamped the prototype graphics and set the game in their universe, (b) addressed some items the publisher commented on after our playtest with them, and (c) fixed a major issue that came up in our pitch. I just reached out to the publisher to set up a time to show them the game with the updates again. I'm excited about the prospect of getting a game published by another publisher, just to sort of get my name out there more, and also to see how the process goes from the designer's end with another publisher.

- All For One (BGG) (Co-Design with David Brain)

I was feeling pretty good about the latest playtestes of All For One, almost a year ago at this point. I have been wanting to make a TTS mod for it and play it online, but I have been waiting for my co-designer to do some updates to the maps and missions. He had said he was working on it, but I suspect he got sidetracked, and he didn't even reply to my last email about it.

Maybe my best bet is to go ahead and either take a stab at the board/card redesign myself, or just upload a version like my physical prototype so I can at least play!

- Riders of the Pony Express (BGG)

I'm pretty happy with the status of Riders of the Pony Express content-wise, I think one of the biggest things I wanted to do was try and make it less physically fiddly to play. I had an idea for that, but I am stalled out on trying to implement it. Maybe the thing to do is to forget about that for now, and create a TTS mod so the game can be played.

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

I had prototyped a version of this, even made a TTS mod and played it online once or twice with my testers since the Pandemic hit. But I haven't had much opportunity to get together with Dan about it, and I was starting to shift my feeling toward what he wanted for the game -- for it to be a more complex, deeper game than what I had put together. So I kind of stalled out on it and haven't thought about it in a long time. I don't really know what I could do with this one right now.

- Keeping Up With The Joneses

My latest game project, which came together pretty quickly, has taken up the rest of my recent playtest and design time. At this point I feel like the game is stable, and I don't really see how I could make progress without more, ideally more widespread, playtesting (if you want to PnP/blind test this game, leave a comment below, or email sedjtroll@gmail and let me know!). I do have a TTS mod, so I could theoretically set up more, and more widespread, playtesting, but the logistics of playtesting online are difficult for me right now, so I don't see this happening anytime soon.

That's about it for my active designs. I guess I could take a look at some of my back-burnered designs as well:

            - Automatown [Michael Brown on board]

When Michael Brown came on board as a co-designer on Automatown, the game took some great leaps forward. However, it's been quite some time since I've heard from him, and since I played the TTS mod he'd made with my testers. I guess I'm not sure what I can do for this game at the moment.

            - Odysseus: Winds of Fate (BGG) [a designer has showed interest]

A friend showed interest in Winds of Fate, but ultimately got busy with other life events, and the pandemic hit as well, making playtesting much more difficult. So unfortunately, this game did not get revitalized as I had hoped it might.

            - Reading Railroad

For the first time in AGES, I broke out my old prototype for Reading Railroad and not only made a TTS mod for it, but even played it in person with my wife!

I was excited to revive this game, but after a couple of tests and some consideration, I kinda realized that using word-building as a mechanism just didn't seem to be that big of a deal after all. So my interest in Reading Railroad waned again, and it's back on the back burner.

            - Moctezuma's Revenge

Nobody really showed interest in Moctezuma's Revenge, which I thought was too bad because I like the theme and idea of this one a lot -- it really sounds like something that I could imagine existing. But without someone jumping in as a co-designer, I'm not sure this game will ever go anywhere. At least not anytime soon.

            - Kilauea [a designer has showed interest]

I met online with the designer who contacted me showing interest in Kilauea. He had made a new version, and I made a TTS mod for it so we could try it. We gave it a partial play, then discussed what worked and what didn't and came up with some ideas for him to try in the next iteration. Unfortunately, I haven't heard from him since then, and I haven't really thought about the game since then either.

            - Joan of Arc [a designer has showed interest]

A strong design duo showed interest in Joan of Arc, which gave me some hope that it would see some real progress, but as yet they have not gotten to it. Time is in short supply, and I know they have their own projects to work on, and I'm still hopeful they'll get to it eventually. In the meantime, I have left the game on the back burner.

            - Dynasty

One of my oldest ideas that I think is any good, I've been re-reading my old posts about Dynasty, and thinking that this might be the game I work on next. As always, it seems like it would be so easy to put together a prototype and try it out... now that I'm not doing regular playtesting anymore, it might be harder to actually get the game to the table, but I could probably make a TTS mod for it fairly easily if I just got some prototype files together for it.

I'll start a new post to describe a couple of new, or recently revived games that weren't necessarily on The List.

Recruiting Co-designers / Assembling a Design Team

Ever since I recruited my friend Rick to work on Apotheosis (FKA Worker Learning), that game has made a lot of progress where it would certainly still be sitting in my notebook otherwise. That arrangement is working so well that I would really like to recruit other designers to help me progress my other stalled or (or un-started but promising) designs.

Here are a few of the designs I could imagine handing off to another designer at this point and letting them run with for a while, or working together with another designer on...

Well established designs that I could use help finishing:
* Automatown - worker placement/resource management game about building an army of robots (which are your workers)
* Odysseus: Winds of Fate - Adventure game about Odysseus on his way from Troy to Ithaca. Play as the Fates, who don't care what happens to Odysseus, but pass the time by betting on his progress (and then influencing it)

Established designs that still need work:
* Reading Railroad - Build words (a la Scrabble) to earn coins, spend coins to build track. Connect cities to earn pieces of set collection scoring

* Moctezuma's Revenge - push your luck / deduction game about looting temples, but some are cursed

Early stage designs that still need a lot of work:
* Rondel Role Selection - Shared rondel / resource management / Role Selection game about splicing DNA to make hybrid creatures such as Hippogriffs
* Kilauea - Mancala game about spreading your people across an island, and sacrificing them to the volcano gods to control the lava flow

* Joan of Arc - Bag building game with shared piece movement. Play as a voice in Joan of Arc's head, vying to get her to accomplish your goals.

Idea stage designs that sound promising:

* Dynasty - Spread your villages across China, upgrade them to Cities, and fill your player board with Culture. You'll assimilate other players' culture, and they yours. When someone becomes Emperor, the winner is the player who's culture is best represented.

* Scourge of the High Seas - Deckbuilder along the lines of Ascension, with 2 buy rows (Tortuga, where you buy crew, equipment and ship upgrades, and the High Seas, where you spend crew and equipment to plunder ships)

Any takers?

2017 year in review

A lot of stuff has happened in 2017 in general, some of it good, much of it bad. In my own life, the good stuff includes getting married in March, and now expecting a little boy next May, so I guess that's big news. But as this is my game design blog, I suppose now would be a good time to take a moment and reflect on my experiences in 2017 on the games front.

I didn't keep specific notes or anything, so I'll just go through my calendar and blog posts and see what that reminds me of:

January

I started off the year wrapping up development on Eminent Domain: Oblivion, and coordinating art with Brian Patterson for the tech card illustrations and Ariel Seoane for the graphic design. A few people have grumbled online about how they don't like the look of the new tech illustrations, but as I have said in a couple of different threads already:

The main artists we had used for previous EmDo expansions were no longer available, and I wanted a consistent look within this set. Brian Patterson did all of the illustrations, and yes, he has a sort of cartoony style.

Many of the previous cards are a little bit cartoony, and there's a mix of styles from 5 or 6 different artists in them, so I don't think there will be much of a problem adding these new tech cards into the mix.

And as for the cartoony-ness of them, I kind of wanted that -- to an extent, Oblivion is a parody of government, and most of the time government could best be described as "cartoony."

I think Brian did a great job with these illustrations, I like that the expansion art is internally consistent, and I don't think there'll be any problems incorporating this set into the base game (or playing it with previous sets) based on that, but YMMV.

Also in January, Eminent Domain was featured in a Reddit forum called Game Of The Week, Redux. And I posted about a game idea sparked by an episode of The Game Designers of North Carolina podcast -- however, that game idea hasn't gone anywhere, and I don't expect it will. However, as I describe in the comments on that post, it did spark another game design idea which I think MAY actually go somewhere.

In addition, I was wrapping up rules edits for Harvest, and coordinating with Sergi on Pioneer Days art. I was pushing hard to get all three of those into production in time for a potential GenCon release, and failing that, at least an Essen/BGGcon release.

Outside of gaming, it looks like I flew to Dallas for a friend's divorce trial, a stark contrast to the time I spent on my own wedding preparations that month.

February

After January, I took stock of The List, a sort of compilation of games I've got at the idea stage, design stage, and published titles. I posted an update to kick off February.

Other posts in my design blog this month included:

• That game idea I mentioned above, which grew from the ideas that came to mind listening to that podcast.
• A sort-of formal definition of "Deck Learning," the term I've coined to describe Eminent Domain, which I feel is a significantly different type of deck building than games like Dominion, Ascension, etc.
• A request for Q's for a Casual Q&A, like those Reddit AMA's, but in a more laid back format. Only 1 person asked any questions in the comments.
• A summary of the beginnings of a new game about Joan of Arc, a design which I'd been tinkering with since Essen. It's intended to be a sort of sequel to Orleans, and spoilers: it did go somewhere, but now I've sort of backburnered it.

Not much else notable happened this month. It looks like I recorded a podcast episode with Isaac Shalev, though I don't think it aired until September.

March

I skipped SaltCon last year because it was 1 week before my wedding, which is a bummer, because that is a nice, relaxed convention which gives me a chance to hang out and catch up with my TMG cohorts. For the previous couple of years, Michelle came with me, we stayed at Michael's house, and we enjoyed the convention. I hope we can return in the future.

I think of March as the sort of deadline to get files to the printer in time for GenCon, so I furiously tried to finish Oblivion, Harvest, and Pioneer Days to give them their best shot at that.

I continued to think about that Worker Learning game idea, and had a "Eureka" / "Duh" moment about it, and I made a prototype for that Joan of Arc idea I'd posted about in February.

April

In April I had some promising playtests of the early versions of Joan of Arc: Maid of Orleans, and I updated my prototype accordingly.

I also went to Paris on my honeymoon, and unfortunately got a bit sick there. I did however get my new wife to play a game of Joan of Arc with me at a game cafe though!

May

I kicked off May by joining Lance to record Episode #3 of the TMG podcast.

Blog posts this month included:

• Progress on the Worker Learning game idea
• Follow up on the Casual Q&A post from February -- I answered the Qs from the previous post, and got a few new ones from another individual that I answered in the comments.
• Some thoughts on Minion Games' Manhattan Project dice game design contest. I ended up entering a little Roll & Write / Roll Selection game, just for fun, but that's not the scope of game James was looking for.
• Further development of the Joan of Arc game, including a significant change to the format.

I finished up the month with a trip to Birmingham with Andy, Aaron, and Daniel for UK Games Expo - a neat show, only mildly disturbed due to some terrorist activity nearby the week before.

June

I began the convention season in England at UK Games Expo, and continued in Columbus at Origins, where Andy and I had a number of meetings with designers to listen to game pitches. Not much interested me there, though we did see 2 things which we ended up signing later in the year.

My own design efforts were focused mostly on Deities & Demigods, which I hadn't tested since January, but which I revived at UK Games Expo and concentrated on throughout June, with a little bit of Joan of Arc thrown in for good measure.

July

I spent the first 2 weeks of July vacationing in Dallas and then Seattle. I managed to play a few games... Werewords and Wordsy went well at Michelle's family reunion in Dallas, and I introduced some of my Seattle friends to a new favorite: Barenpark. I also showed off a full art prototype of Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done, which finally hit Kickstarter in July!

As could have been suspected, there was a slight backlash to the theme of Crusaders, but to be honest, it wasn't all that much. While the material holds potentially controversial subject matter, I think that game really sidesteps it -- it's not about the Crusades themselves, it's about the so-called "crusading orders," such as the Knights Templar. It's also not really intended to be historically accurate, though it is based on stuff the Templars did.

In July I updated The List again, since a lot had changed in the first half of 2017.

August

A lot of stuff seemed to happen in August...

• Crusaders finished funding with 4,162 backers pledging a total of $330,691 of support, mostly for the Deluxified version of the game. That's not TMG's BIGGEST kickstarter project, but it's close, and it makes the $48k we raised for Eminent Domain 6 years ago look like child's play.
• I worked with a sculptor on knight and building sculpts for the Deluxified version of Crusaders.
• I also worked with Ariel to get the art and graphic design for the upcoming Homesteaders expansion ready to go.
• I checked production proofs for Eminent Domain: Oblivion, and found (and corrected) an error with the card backs.
• And of course, I attended GenCon with TMG, where Andy and I met with a bunch more designers to listen to their game pitches, and attended 2 nights worth of Publisher Speed Dating.

Most of the Publisher Speed Dating events I've attended have been a bit of a bust for me. Out of 400+ pitches, I'd only been interested in a few games, and of those, even fewer turned into TMG products. This year at GenCon, the signal to noise ratio seemed a lot higher for some reason -- just lucky I guess. There were several games I was interested in, and upon closer examination we took several of them home with us, and ended up signing more than one!

In addition to all of that, I started a new game design (Automatown rules), I revived an old game design (Alter Ego) and enlisted a design hobbyist to do some blind PnP testing of it, I re-posted some nuggets of design wisdom from Matthew Dunstan (with his permission) from a Twitter thread, and I revisited the Casual Q&A idea again.

September

September was similarly busy. This month I...

• Submitted my Roll & Write / Roll Selection game to the Manhattan project dice game contest
• Formalized a regular weekly playtesting group and set up a google sheet to track games played
• Evaluated the various games picked up this convention season
• Continued playing Alter Ego, Deities & Demigods
• Revived the Eminent Domain dice game I made a long time ago, but hadn't touched for four years
• Revisited Casual Q&A one more time

The big ticket item here is probably getting more organized with playtesting. I have been meaning to do that forever, and now I can much more easily track what gets played and when, and by whom.

I ended September by attending RinCon (Brian had a great geeklist from RinCon this year, and I didn't so I'll just link his), for once as an attendee rather than an organizer. I took on the responsibility of running the convention because I wanted it to happen, and it was very relaxing to finally just sit around and play games rather than answer questions and put out fires. Unfortunately, this reward was short lived, because I had to fly to California for a wedding on Saturday morning, so I was only able to enjoy RinCon for 1 day.

October

By comparison to the last couple of months, October sounds fairly uneventful:

I skipped Essen this year -- TMG usually sends 4 people, and this year we had a booth, and so wanted to send someone new to help run it, so I stayed home to make space. It's too bad, because two of the games I put a lot of work into, Harvest and Pioneer Days, made their debut at Essen. I hope to return in the future.

Instead of flying to Germany, I finally started updating Terra Prime for a new life as a prequel to Eminent Domain (it will be called Eminent Domain Origins), and I kept working on the Eminent Domain dice game ("Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory"?). I worked almost exclusively on those two games in the month of October.

November

November was a big month for conventions for me. I kicked it off with a trip to Seattle for Sasquatch, and followed that up with my annual trip to Dallas for BGGcon. Michelle came with me to both of those this year, and we took a day trip from BGGcon to Rockwall for Michelle's 3 year old niece's birthday party.

I wrote a post examining variable player powers, since I'm currently working on adding them to two different TMG games, and I started testing those, while continuing to test Eminent Domain Origins and Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory.

I had another new game idea as well, but this one is not as exciting or interesting as some, so it'll probably just sit in the toolbox, waiting to be combined with something else down the road.

December

I rounded out the year playing a lot fewer games than I normally do, but I did get a lot of testing done of the upcoming TMG game Embark (one of the summer pick ups) with player powers, and I worked with an illustrator and a graphic designer to get that game put together for submission to the manufacturer. I'll be wrapping that up in the next couple of weeks.

2018

I'm starting off the new year with 1 game project finishing art, two more about to start, two games in production, and two just waiting to be sent to the manufacturer. If things go well, I should see all of the following games (each of which I've had a heavy hand in) on store shelves by the end of the year:

• Eminent Domain: Oblivion
• Crusaders: Thy Will be Done
• Homesteaders 10th Anniversary Edition (by Alex Rockwell)
• Homesteaders: New Beginning (expansion, by Sean McCarthy)
• Eminent Domain Origins (Terra Prime 2nd Edition)
• Embark (in the Gullsbottom universe, by Philip duBarry)
• Old West Empresario (by Stan Kordonskiy, presented as a sequel to Pioneer Days)
• And maybe even Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory.

As for my designs, once these are all out of the way, I hope to return to Alter Ego, Deities & Demigods, Joan of Arc, and maybe Automatown.

And of course, I'll be doing development on another couple of TMG games.

Recent playtests: Deities & Demigods & Joan of Arc

Deities & Demigods

There are 33 playtests recorded in my Deities & Demigods record sheet google doc. This covers several iterations of the game, going back to May 17, 2016. In the last few playtests at Origins 2017, I used the latest version of Hera cards to determine start player each round. The first time I just shuffled all the Hera cards together and laid out 5 for the game. It was kinda lame that for the first few rounds, those conditions were irrelevant because, for example, it's completely impossible to have done a quest before the first time the condition is checked. But I thought of an easy solution to that - I took all the cards that WERE potentially relevant in the first round, and labeled them "A," and I took all the cards that were not relevant in the first round and labeled them "B." Then I shuffled them and used 3 "A" cards for cycles 1-3, and 2 "B" cards for cycles 4 and 5. I've played a few games with that setup, and it's really worked well.

I've tried a few of the draft player powers, and I guess they're alright. I'm not sure if I think they're necessary, but I suspect people would dig them, so I ought to try them some more and make sure I have at least 4 that I like. One problem with including them is that if you have diverse player powers, it's boring if you only have 4 for a 4 player game. So I'd really want to have 6-8 for more variety.

I'd still like to try the Hades expansion module, but that need not be in the base game box, so it's not all that important. Still, it would be cool to try out.

Joan of Arc

Since my last post on the topic, I did get a chance to play Joan of Arc (twice) at Origins.

The new column format for the tiles is cool, but frankly, for the current implementation, cards would
be more appropriate than tiles. So I have two choices...
* Give up on it being a "bag building" game. This could be OK, even if it is intended to be related to Orleans, but as a product I'd like to keep the bag building. Hopefully that's not just me being stubborn.
* Change the format such that tiles become the appropriate component.

Daniel made a comment that sparked my interest - he said it would be neat if you laid out the tiles in a more organic way or something, and activated them like a neural network. I'm not entirely sure what he had in mind, but to me that inspired the idea to connect tiles in 2D space (as opposed to vertical columns), and instead of the tiles having 2 sections with income (one that gets covered up), maybe they have an icon in the center, an little 1/2-icons on some of the edges.

So instead of columns, maybe you have three 2x2 square areas to put tiles, and you want to combo up tiles so that they have matching 1/2-icons on the sides so you get extra income.

I actually can see several different ways to do this... 2x2 squares, plus shaped areas where the 4 tile spots are orthogonally adjacent to a center space with printed income, or even columns where the tiles have the 1/2-icons on the top and bottom only.

Today I showed the idea to David Short, and he had an idea for a single, bigger grid of spaces to put tiles into, and then you activate a row or column. I added that maybe you could activate a 2x2 square instead. So you add tiles to a 4x4(?) grid, then activate a row, column, or 2x2 square inside that grid, take the income, then discard the used tiles from the board. I'd have to figure out how exactly you add tiles to the board and activate them to make it non-trivial (add 3 in a row, activate that row). David suggested that you could have 3 activation tiles, 1 showing a ow, 1 showing a column, and 1 showing a 2x2 square, and when you use one to activate that configuration, it's gone till you've used them all. There's something interesting about that, but I'm not sure it solves any problems. However, maybe if you had to place in one of those configurations and activate a different one, that could start to work. For example, maybe you place in a column, then you activate a row or square. Then you can't possibly activate more than 2 of the tiles you just drew. Or maybe you can only place in a single row or column, and then activate the other, but you can do a 2x2 square if it's complete (4 tiles). Or only the center 2x2 square. I'll give this some thought, because it might be a better personal puzzle than the three columns thing.

Another, different idea that David also suggested, more similar to the current column idea with the tiles I already have, is to stack them... so you place 3 tiles into the column, but not overlapping, then you stack the next 2 tiles on top of those, offset so you cover the top half of 1 tile and the bottom half of the next. Finally, if it gets that far, you stack the last tile on top of the top 2, making a sort of pyramid. This would maintain the idea of getting 1/2 of the stuff on the tile sometimes, and it would make tiles the more appropriate component, but I'm not sure it would work as well as some of the other ideas.

Those are all juicy ideas that are very interesting, but they are almost completely separate to some of the other changes I want to make, such as adding static effects on spaces for when the battle tile is gone, or changing up the stat tracks, or adding cannons. I DID increase the costs of sieges, somewhat arbitrarily. I probably will need to revisit those costs a bit. And I'd like to maybe make some more end game goal cards, perhaps a series that wants you to advance a certain amount on the stat tracks, so you'd be extra interested in training.

That's all the updates I have for now.

Bag building rondel? More like Bag Building NONdel!

I've gotten a couple of tests of Joan of Arc: Maid of Orleans in here and there, mostly 3 player and a couple of 2 player games. I've made a little progress on what the starting tiles should look like, and the skeleton of the game idea is holding up, but so far the reaction and overall feel of the game is a little underwhelming.

From the beginning I've worried that players might not have enough reason not to just move the maximum 3 spaces on the rondel each turn, which makes the whole idea of a rondel rather boring. My hope was that as you get good tiles into your bag, they will be so attractive that it will be a reasonable decision whether you stop early for the effect, or move all three spaces for maximum"income". To an extent that has proven true sometimes, and sometimes not, and I was prepared to be ok with that.

After playing with Mike and Andy, I'm not so sure I should be ok with that. Long story short, I don't think my game uses the rondel mechanism very well. Maybe it's just not the right mechanism for the game.

I was trying to think of a way to have "big turns" in the game, and Andy suggested removing the rondel and instead placing the tiles on columns, where you choose 1 column each turn, collect the income from each tile in that column, and execute the action of the last tile (most recent) in that column. Then discard the entire column, and draw 1 new tile for each column.

A few details aside (maybe draw tiles at the end of your turn and place them at the beginning of your turn so you can think about it on opponents turns, maybe cap each column at 5 tiles, etc), this sounds like a much better format than the rondel, and the best news is that I can try it without any changes to the prototype!

I like the idea of this mechanism, and have been wanting to use it for something anyway, so this is a good opportunity. Unlike the bag building aspect of the game, I didn't have any compelling reason to use a rondel, so I don't mind losing it. I briefly considered ditching the bag building in favor of "rondel building" - where you'd have a static rondel, but you'd buy upgrades for the spaces, but that wasn't an attractive option for me. For this game I'd rather emphasize the bag building, which this column mechanism may help facilitate better than the rondel was.

I hope to try the game again while I'm in England for UKGE this week, with the new format, and see how that feels. I should be able to tomorrow!

Edit: I was able to try the game once (2p with Ian) with the new stack system, and it worked alright. Discussion with Ian was helpful in re-framing how I want to look at the tiles (income vs action) in order to power them up appropriately. We talked about how pretty much everything in the game needed to be powered up a bit, and ways to potentially do that, with a little balance discussion thrown in for good measure.

I just updated my prototype with all new tiles (starting tiles as well as tiles for the supply). For now I've taken interesting actions off of the tiles, they're all just various combinations of income, basically. I might like to add some "actions" back in on some of the 3 or 4 cost tiles, but I might just decide to leave that sort of thing for the skirmish tiles and static effects of spaces once the battle in that space has been cleared out.

I'm itching to play and see how it goes. I'd hoped to try it at the shop this weekend, but it looks like I'll have to wait for Origins on Wednesday. Who'll be there, and who wants to try this game with me?

Joan of Arc prototype updated!

Prototype updated!
* All starting tiles have 1 coin on the back (3 of them also have a weapon).
* 1 starting tile has "cull 1 tile from your rondel" as the action on the front. I'm not sure I'll keep that, for one thing there's a chance a player could cull their bag down to fewer than the 6 tiles needed to fill their board, and I kinda think that would be dumb...
* 1 Starting tile has "+2 move" on the front. I figured maybe it would be good to have a big move on there. We'll see how that goes.
* 6 starting tiles have weapons on the front (2 of each weapon: sword, Bow, Pike).
* 4 starting tiles have a gold on the front.

* You can now buy a gold token (should give that another name. "War Chest"?) for 2 gold, which you can save and spend later as 1 gold.
* You can now buy movement for 1 gold each. Maybe that should be 2 gold, so you can buy anything for 2 gold (weapons, movement, and war chests)

* All Major Battles (I think I'll call them "Sieges") are just a straight 10 points now.
* Each Minor Battle ("Skirmish") has an ability rather than points. Well, 3 have 5 points and no ability. All 16 of them will be in play every game. The abilities are...
-- +1 move per turn
-- +1 gold per turn (this might be too strong, unless movement costs 2 gold, or maybe it should cost 4 fight icons instead of 3)
-- +1 sword per turn
-- +1 bow per turn
-- +1 pike per turn
-- You require 1 fewer icon to train Joan (so this is like +1 sword/bow/pike, but only for training)
-- Collect 1 extra VP when training Joan (so you get some extra points, but you make it easier for everyone to win battles)
-- You may move +1 rondel space each turn (this is sort of like "+1 resource at random, based on the tiles in your bag. Early game it's probably a gold, but late game it could be better stuff. This could be too strong, and might ought to cost 4 instead of 3 fight icons)
-- You may buy 1 weapon for 1 gold each turn (this is like +1 gold each turn, but only if you are buying a weapon. Another reason +1 gold (above) might be too strong)
-- Immediately cull any tiles from your rondel (this could theoretically thin your deck, but it might just suck. Maybe it should include your discard pile. I'm not convinced culling is great in this game, but who knows)
-- You may cull 1 tile from your rondel each turn (if culling turns out to be useful, then this could be good. It's pretty limited in that you can only choose a tile on your board. I'm not sure culling is good in this game anyway, but who knows)
-- You may buy 1 gold token ('war chest'?) for 1 gold each turn (this is like +1 gold, but only if you're buying a war chest)
-- You may swap 2 tiles after replenishing your rondel each turn (I suspect this could be very useful for planning ahead, making all turns at least a little bit better)

Now to give it another play!

Joan of Arc - playtest #2... promising!

For anyone interested and paying attention, I had a great playtest today. 3 players (Stacie, Fiki, and Hilary) gave the game a shot. This is version 1.2, with a couple of tweaks to the starting decks since the inaugural 2p game I played with Michelle. It went well. Better than I thought, in fact. I got a chance to see several specific areas where I could make improvements: * In the first play I allowed 1 free movement point per turn, so you could always move Joan around the board. Many turns it seemed like we didn't have the right weapons to win any battles, so moving didn't really matter, and I don't like a player being asked to make a decision that they don't care about or don't have any way to choose 1 thing over another. So when I updated the starting decks, I added a lot of movement points, and I removed the automatic one. I wasn't sure that would really make much difference, but overall I thought I added enough movement that when the board got sparse, there would be enough movement to get where you wanted to go. I don't think I like how this played out. There were many turns when players couldn't fight a battle, even if they had the right weapons, because they just didn't have any movement. One turn in particular in the mod-late game, one player had a turn where she had the weapons for ALL of the remaining battles except 1, and even had some movement, but not enough movement to reach any battles! I think the solution may be to allow players to PURCHASE movement with gold. I could keep movement points in the decks, but as a standard maybe players should be able to buy movement... it comes with the opportunity cost of not being able to buy anything else with that gold, and it might add the flexibility needed. I'm considering making 2 gold be the cost for anything (any 1 weapon, 1 movement point, etc) to make it really easy to remember, but for movement I feel like it might be appropriately costed at 1 gold per movement point. * You're allowed to buy any 1 weapon for 2 gold, and I like that. I wondered whether it should be allowed to sell 2 matching weapons for 1 gold as well. In fact, should there be a universal rule that you can 2-for-1 anything into anything else? After we talked about it, I don't think that would be good. A sword is a sword, the thing about gold is that it's flexible (but inefficient). * It seemed a bit difficult to get enough gold to buy tiles on a regular basis. I blame this on the starting tile mix... out of 12 tiles, 8 of them have a gold on them. But only 5 have the gold on the back side (you get that by moving over a tile)... 3 of them had the gold on the front side (you only get that if you land ON the tile). Too often this meant there wasn't enough gold coming up. I had gone into this with the typical deckbuilding mindset of having weak cards in your starting deck (or weak tiles in your bag in this case), with the point being to buy better tiles and improve your bag so you get better hands. However, I wonder if a better plan wouldn't be to have your starting deck actually be GOOD at the early game stuff, but bad at late game stuff, and then the tiles you buy will make your bag better at the late game actions (fighting). The way this could manifest is to have gold on the back of EVERY starting tile, maybe in ADDITION to other things (like Gold+Sword, Gold+Move, etc). That way you can buy guaranteed to afford tiles in the early game. I think it might be interesting that way, as your deck would fairly quickly get diluted with "better" tiles, causing you to necessarily get less gold each turn... UNLESS you specifically buy tiles that have gold on them to keep your money high. But if you do that, it's at the expense of other symbols, such as weapons. I think I will give this a try in the next test.

* Another idea to help the money situation is to create Gold tokens, and allow them to be bought, say for 2 gold. These tokens would be stored, and you could spend them on a future turn. This way, if you only get 2 gold in a turn, you could sort of bank it (as 1 gold for later), to build up to buying a more expensive tile. Again, this would be at the expense of buying a tile, or a weapon, that turn.

* Fiki had an interesting idea for a tile action that lets you automatically train Joan of Arc. I think I would make 1 of each type ("Train Swords at no cost" for example). This would allow you to advance the sword skill track (as if you had paid) and collect the points. It's like saying "+2 Swords, but only usable for training". This would probably cost 3 or 4 gold, depending on what's on the back.

* Stacie thought it would be good to have some way to re-shuffle your bag early. This could be a tile action (like Dominion's Chancellor), or as she suggested, it could be something you get to do when you arrive at a space that's been cleared of its battle. That might be interesting in the mid-game, if you can't fight a battle, maybe you could move to a space with an arrival action you'd like to do... reshuffle your deck, cull 1 tile, swap two adjacent tiles on your rondel, +1 gold this turn... stuff like that.

* Hilary really wanted a way to cull your deck. There are some tiles that let you do that, but they hadn't come up. I'm not sure that would really be desirable, especially if I make the starting tiles "better"... but it could be something players want... I could see adding 1 front-side starting tile action that says "cull 1 tile from our rondel", just in case people want to use it.

* Currently, the Skirmishes are all worth 5 points and nothing else, while the major Battles - while they cost 2x as much - are worth 10 points AND they give you an ability. I really think that needs to be the other way around. The Skirmishes should be worth next to no points and come with a useful ability, while the ate-game battles should be worth more points, with little or no ability. Of course, that doesn't preclude the potential for a weird Battle with an insanely god ability that's not worth many points, or a Skirmish or two with a lousy (or no) ability that's worth more points than the rest of the skirmishes.

I look forward to tweaking the game and trying again, hopefully soon!

Joan of Arc: Maid of Orleans -- bag building rondel game

A little bit of history

Orleans is a game by Reiner Stockhausen that debuted at Essen in 2014. Soon after, TMG partnered with DLP (Reiner's company) to bring the game to the US, and we had a very successful Kickstarter project for a Deluxified version of the game. TMG has gone on to make "Deluxification" something of a brand, and we have since done Kickstarter projects for Deluxified versions of Yokohama and Chimera Station, and I'm sure there will be more to come. Orleans was greeted very warmly both in Europe and in the US, and it went on to win some awards and honors including a nomination for the Kennerspiel des Jahres in 2015. In the last year or so, 2 expansions have come out (Orleans: Invasion, and Orleans: Handel & Intrigue) as the game continues to be popular.

Almost a year ago now I was put onto the idea that perhaps a follow up game to Orleans would be welcome. This follow up game could be themed around Joan of Arc, as that's the first thing many people think about when they hear the name Orleans. I was unsure if Reiner was working on such a game, or interested in one from an outside designer, so I contacted him to find out. It turned out that he was interested in a Joan of Arc themed game to follow up Orleans, but he was too busy to make one of his own by Essen 2016, so he was shelving the idea.

I hadn't put any more thought into it beyond that, but come October I met with Reiner while at Essen. That week I had an idea that I thought could fit the bill, and so I asked if a Jan of Arc follow up to Orleans was still of interest to him. He said that it was, and so I fleshed out my ideas further and wrote down a preliminary rule set.

What I've been up to

I have been busy in the last few months getting 4 different games ready to go to print, all potentially in time for GenCon (though we'll see which ones actually turn out to be GenCon releases). So while I did begin making a prototype of the Joan of Arc game, I never completed one or played it. Now that I'm about to be unencumbered by Crusaders, Eminent Domain: Oblivion, Pioneer Days, and Harvest, starting next month I will be diving head first into working on this Joan of Arc game whole hog.

Here is some teaser information (and by teaser information, I pretty much mean a full description of the game I have in mind)...

Description of the game

In Joan of Arc - Maid of Orleans you will play as a saint giving visions to Joan of Arc, encouraging her to fight certain battles and accomplish certain tasks in order to achieve your own private goals. The board will show the north of France, covered in blue tiles [er, red... see comments below] representing English-controlled areas (battles for Joan to fight). As Joan wins battles, driving the English out, the tiles are removed to reveal a red [er, blue... see comments below], French controlled board underneath.  Many of these tiles will be minor battles, easier to defeat, but not worth as much, while certain significant battles will be much harder and worth a lot more points.

The action in this game will be driven by a bag-building rondel... there will be square tiles that you will place into your bag, and you'll draw some out and place them in a circle on your personal rondel board. You'll move your pawn around this rondel, activating tiles and collecting temporary resources to be used that turn to buy better tiles for your bag, or to move Joan of Arc around the board and help her win battles. As you move over tiles, they will be discarded and replaced with new ones drawn from your bag. Of course, when your bag is empty, you will put your discards into it and continue to play. Over time, your bag will become full of better tiles, so your actions will become stronger. 

Over the course of the game, you will help train Joan of Arc to be better at different aspects of fighting, and you will have her win battles for points and powers as she drives the English out of northern France. You'll score points by training Joan, by making her win battles, and by achieving your secret goals (which are related to the things Joan of Arc does on the board).

I have some more details in mind about exactly how these mechanics work, but as I mentioned, I have only half-created a prototype so far, but I have a pretty solid structure that I envision for the game. I'm sure once I get a prototype together and get the game to the table, there will be plenty of tweaks and changes to make; such is the design process. Perhaps once I get a few playtest iterations in, I'll feel comfortable sharing the rules here.

Why I'm excited

I'm excited about this design for a couple of reasons... 

For one thing, I think the bag-building rondel mechanism will work well, and has the potential to be a good euro-style driving mechanism for the game. 

Second, I think the theme fits well with the mechanism -- Joan of Arc was famous for hearing voices and getting visions from saints, so it makes sense that players are each sharing control of a single Joan of Arc figure on the board, and each trying to get her to do certain tasks. 

And finally, with the success and popularity of Orleans, I think such a follow up game (with similar branding) has the potential to reach a lot of players, and so will get played a lot right out of the gate.

What do you think?

Let me know in the comments below what you think of a Joan of Arc bag building game. What aspects would you expect to see in such a game? Does this sound like a game you'd like to play?