2020-2021: A playtesting retrospective

 A couple of years ago I posted a playtesting retrospective spanning late 2017 through the end of 2019, and I thought it as interesting to see the breakdown of time spent on various games, especially while considering the state that I know those games to be in now.

Now it's a couple years later, most of which has been spent in a global pandemic. Let's see what I managed to get playtested in 2020 and 2021...

2020

January
Throughout January, after a break for a Disneyworld vacation, we iterated a few times on the All For One revamp, and I brought Apotheosis back out after 6 months on the shelf.

All For One seemed to be working well, and I remember being pretty excited about the new updates. Unfortunately I haven't played it since, though in the interim I did create a Tabletop Simulator mod for the game, and I've even pitched it to a couple of publishers that way.

Apotheosis progress was coming along, and we ended up playing it a few times a month throughout 2020.

February
In addition to Apotheosis, February saw the debut of an Isle of Trains board game. First we played Dan's first draft version. Then a few weeks later I brought my own take on his concept, which was a lighter, more straightforward game, and we played that a few times.

March
March was weird, because I had to cancel most weekends for my Anniversary, and then a COVID scare. The 1 time we did play, we tested Apotheosis one more time, and enjoyed a published game: Glen More. Beyond that, I did play Apotheosis one more time at home with my wife.

April
Sadly, I had to cancel my weekly playtest meetup indefinitely due to COVID. I didn't test anything at all in April, but I did figure out how to implement prototypes on Tabletop Simulator, starting with Apotheosis.

May
Thanks to the technology of TTS and the internet, I was able to get a test in now and again online. In May we played Apotheosis a couple of times.

We also played the Isle of Trains boardgame once, and I think I've come around to thinking that maybe Dan was on the right track wanting to make a heavier game.

Finally, we played an updated version of Automatown which designer Michael Brown joined in on as a co-designer. He made a TTS mod and we were able to see his updates.

June
I was still getting the hang of making digital prototypes, and getting online playtests together. Unfortunately I didn't get any tests in June at all.

July
In July I pulled couple of older prototypes out of the woodwork. I played Reading Railroad at home with my wife, I played Exhibit online with my testers, and I got together with a designer who had come on board to work on Kilauea with me to check out his ideas for the game.

August

I got an online tests of Reading Railroad in August, as well as a couple games of Crusaders at home with my wife to test new faction powers I was developing.

I had an online pitch meeting for Apotheosis, which seemed promising. The publisher wanted to set the game in their fantasy universe, which was a perfect fit, so Rick and I reskinned the prototype with their art assets.

September

I kicked off the month with another test of the new Crusaders factions with Michelle. 

A few weeks later I had a prototype of a brand new game, Keeping Up With The Joneses, which I played twice with Michelle, and twice solo - and solo testing is something I almost never do!

Online I played one more game of Apotheosis with Rick and Aaron, my two main testers since going digital.

October

October was a busy month for testing, mostly on account of solo testing for Keeping Up With The Joneses - I played 6 solo games in.

I got in three online tests of Keeping Up with the Joneses as well, and three tests of Apotheosis too.

November
I revisited a couple more older games in November via digital prototypes with Rick and Aaron: Exhibit and Dice Works. I also played one of Rick's prototypes called Cwen.

December

We finished off the year with 4 tests of Apotheosis with some significant changes based on playing with the publisher who had showed interest, and the game got better and better.

2021

January
I started out 2021 playing games by a couple of my testers' latest games: Andy's Gemstone Pylons, and Rick's Stardock (later renamed Starlight).

We played Keeping Up With The Joneses once, and Apotheosis twice (once with the publisher)

February
I only had 2 test sessions in February, and we switched gears and played Sails & Sorcery, trying to figure out how to fix the issues with the Plunder action.

March
I didn't test any of my own stuff in March, but I played Rick's Starlight game a couple of times, as well as a skiing game that Andy was working on as a developer.

April
In April I revived another prototype, Deities & Demigods, to reacquaint myself and my players with the game. We also played Exhibit again, then later in the month I had the opportunity to pitch it to a big publisher (unfortunately, they passed on it). 

May
I started off the month with two more pitch meetings: Apotheosis and Keeping Up With The Joneses with one publisher; Riders of the Pony Express, Deities & Demigods, Sails & Sorcery, and Apotheosis with the other.

I played Rick's Starlight once more as well, then missed the rest of my sessions due to a vacation to Hawaii, lack of players, and technical difficulties.

June
Another tough month for playtesting... I had a first test of a new I-Cut-You-Choose game idea (later titled Division of Labor) with Rick, and a pitch meeting for Sails & Sorcery, then missed the rest of my sessions for one reason or another.

July
I got a 2nd test of Division of Labor and found some fundamental issues that would need to be addressed, and finished off the month with 3 tests of another revived prototype, Skye Frontier.

August
Another rough month for test sessions, I only got 1 playtest in: I got a gig developing expansion content for Amun-Re, a classic Eurogame from 20 years ago, and I tested some early content for that with Rick.

The rest of my sessions were canceled, but I did have a pitch meeting for Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory (unfortunately that didn't go anywhere)

September
I started September with a solo test of Keeping Up With The Joneses, then spent the rest of the month working on the Amun-Re expansion - 3 live tests, and 6 solo.

October
Six more solo tests and 5 live tests of Amun-Re took up all my testing time in October.

November
One more Amun-Re test in November, then I switched gears to Deities & Demigods because (drum roll please)... it got signed by a publisher! The publisher requested some changes, and I spent November working on those.

December

I finished off the year with 3 more tests of Deities & Demigods iterations as I worked on addressing the publisher's concerns.

The switch to online playtesting was a setback in my playtesting throughput, and it cost me some of my regular testers, but TTS has allowed me to continue testing, and pitching games, through the pandemic, and I've got at least a couple of regular online testers.

I miss testing more, but the good news is that I am finally making a little headway with pitches. Over the course of the pandemic, Isle of Trains got picked up by a new publisher who's going to do the base game as well as the expansion Dan and I made what, 7 years ago now? Deities & Demigods has been picked up, and I got that development gig on Amun-Re. I've had a few meetings recently to try and find a publisher to ick up the EmDo and Crusaders game lines, hopefully one who's willing to pick up the entire line (base game, expansions, and as-yet-unpublished content). No luck with EmDo an Crusaders thus far, but I just had a promising meeting or two about them, so hopefully something will come of that.

A development gig, and a list of games I'm pitching

It's been a while since I've posted anything in my game design blog, but I've actually been doing a little bit of design/development work...

Development Gig

I got a gig working on a secret project (ooh, secrets!) - an expansion for a well known, classic Eurogame that's coming on 20 years of age. That's a fun project so far, even if I'm not always seeing eye-to-eye with the rest of the team on different aspects of it. As part of that gig, though it wasn't requested, I started thinking about how a solo mode might work, and so I tried a couple of things. My first attempt was just OK, but then I got inspired by a comment from a friend on Twitter (thanks Ariel!), and now I think I have something even better! Still could use some tweaking, and I'm not sure if it's exactly the kind of thing a solo player would be looking for, but it seems to work in general.

Re-licensing my Games

With TMG in the state it's in (effectively out of commission), I've had a few people come sniffing around, looking to republish the Eminent Domain and Crusaders lines. I'm hopeful that whoever does so will include everything:
Eminent Domain [Base game]
Eminent Domain: Escalation [expansion]
Eminent Domain: Exotica [expansion]
Eminent Domain: Oblivion [expansion]
Eminent Domain: Promos [Bonus Planets, Elusive/Exclusive Victory, Cygnus Planet (from Joel Eddy), maybe even Mars]
Eminent Domain Origins [standalone prequel]
Eminent Domain: Microcosm [standalone microgame]
Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory [standalone dice game]

Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done [Base game]
Crusaders: Divine Influence [expansion]
Crusaders: Amber Knight [expansion]
Crusaders: Crimson Knight [expansion]

Art for almost all of that new content is done and ready to go, so it would be a shame not to print them. And if a company chooses not to print, for example, Chaos Theory, then I don't know what I'll be able to do with an EmDo dice game :/

Pitching to Publishers

I've been trying to find ways to pitch some of my unpublished games to publishers. This is strange for me, because despite 12 years in the industry, I never really had to do much pitching. TMG was an avenue to get my stuff published, and that was good enough for me. Isle of Trains came out from another publisher, but that was because it was a content entry. A new publisher did sign Isle of Trains, as well as All Aboard, so maybe the expansion will finally see the light of day (6 or 7 years later)!

I've taken a zillion pitches from designers wanting TMG to publish their games, but I've only ever pitched a few games, and that was years ago. One was even signed by a European publisher, but that ended up falling through for ridiculous reasons.

This year I've made a few pitches, all online via Tabletop Simulator. One publisher showed a lot of interest in Apotheosis, but in the end they passed on it. A couple other publishers passed on that one as well, but I've got one who's still testing it with their fans to see if it's one they'd want to pick up.

Another publisher passed on Exhibit, which was a bummer, as that's probably my best unpublished design at the moment -- and I even had a cheerleader in my corner for that one (thanks Richard!). But at least now I'm passed the gate with that publisher, and they're going to look at my other games now.

I've put together this list of games (with super-brief descriptions) that I've got ready to pitch, and I'm hopeful I can just show that to publishers and they can ask me for more info on the ones they're interested in:

All For One [with David Brain]:
Thematic Euro-style Shared Piece Movement, Pickup/Deliver game about the Three Musketeers.
3-5p, ~60 mins

Alter Ego:
Cooperative Deck Learning game about vigilante heroism.
("Deck Learning" is a form of deck building as used in Eminent Domain. Could maybe use a little development polish)
2-4p, ~60 mins

Apotheosis [with Rick Holzgrafe]:
Worker Placement game where your workers level up and get better over time. Generic Fantasy (D&D) theme, since adventures level up with experience in that genre.
2-4p, ~60 mins

Deities & Demigods [with Matthew Dunstan]:
Sort of like a Deck Learning/Role Selection game where the game chooses the roles, and there's a single, common deck. Greek mythology theme: bribe gods of Olympus, then have them do favors for you.
2-4p, ~60 mins

Dice Works:
Real Time Dice Drafting game. Theme is about making inventions (originally was going to call it "Eureka!"), but it's mostly pasted on.
(This one could use a little development polish)
2-4p, ~30 mins

Exhibit: Artifacts of the Ages:
"Bluff Auction" game that's like 6 simultaneous games of Liar's Dice. Theme is collecting sets of artifacts to display in your museum.
2-4p, ~60 mins

Harvest [with Trey Chambers]:
Compact Worker Placement game about farming. Originally set in the Gullsbottom universe by TMG. Draft turn order+bonus, placement spaces change round by round, wildly diverse player powers.
(Small footprint, play time, and price point, but as satisfying as a bigger game. Could easily expand to 6 players and wouldn't take much longer to play)
2-4p, 30~60 mins

Keeping Up with the Joneses:
Rondel game about showing up your neighbors in various parts of life while trying to keep up with the Joneses down the street, who seem to be so good at everything.
(The title is an idiom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeping_up_with_the_Joneses)
2-4p, ~60 mins

Riders of the Pony Express:
Low Bid Auction, Route Planning game about delivering parcels for the Pony Express.
3-5p, ~60 mins

Sails & Sorcery [with Michael Mindes]:
Deck Learning, Area Control game with a pirate theme (including monsters, like a kraken, a ghost ship, blackbeard's ghost, etc)
("Deck Learning" is a form of deck building as used in Eminent Domain.)
2-5p, ~60 mins

Suburban Sprawl [with Matthew Dunstan]:
57-card, Sim City style dexterity game where you toss cards into play.
(Lighter and quicker than the others)
2-4p, ~20 mins

Wizard's Tower [with John Heder]:
Little abstract-ish game of placing pieces on a grid and moving them to form (or attack) towers
(An older design, lighter and more abstract than the others)
2-4p, ~30 mins

Sails & Sorcery playtest: plunder follow-up

After a nice 4-player 1/2 test (had to cut the game short half way through), I was able to compare the plunder card row (which I had tried previously) with the version I used last time (1 card per island, cost based on opponents present), and yeah -- the card row just played better.

Other than having to quit early, this test was pretty good all around: the players had fun, and most everything worked well. On the down side, after about 30 mins of rules and setup, we quit an hour and change into the game, and we were only 1/2 way through -- but most of that is down to Tabletop Simulator (and a learning  game), I think. I don't love dismissing problems by saying "it's just a learning game" though, because everyone's first play will be a learning game!

Here are a few notes I took down after the playtest and discussion:

* when coming out of hiding, deploy 1 from bag, not from ship

It's just lame to be unable to use the benefit if you don't happen to have pirates on your ship when the Kraken gets you

* maybe add immediate effects for all tokens (like drawing a card when you get the Hand Size one)...

It's a bit of a bummer to gain control of an icon, only to have it wrested from you before you even get a chance to use it. For the Monsters, you get their immediate effects when you summon them, so it's not so bad if you don't also keep control of the icons some of the provide. For the Hand Size icon, it bugged me whenever you would get the token, then lose it before the end of the round, meaning you had no chance to benefit from it. Because of that, I added the rule that when claiming the token, you immediately draw a card. With the rest of the icons, perhaps that would help as well.

Recruit and Deploy have obvious immediate effects (recruit a pirate, get 1 deploy icon to spend), but the rest don't have anything that makes obvious sense. Maybe collect a silver for Plunder? But what about Build and Summon? They could also be "get a silver," but that's kind of lame.

* OR, instead of permanent bonuses that pass around, maybe get a 1-shot icon each time you gain control of the area?

This idea has some merit along the lines of what I was saying above - nobody can take your bonus away from you. However, it changes the dynamic a bit, removing any reason to continue to hold control of an area, and I don't think I like that very much. Maybe a 1-shot icon could work for Summon and Build (and a silver for Plunder)

* Maybe extend the 2p variant to all player counts, ensuring the areas go up in value over the course of the game (instead of doubling the values half way through)

In the 2 player game, in order to maintain some tension, I add neutral pirates to the board each round, in the areas that will score. This way you can't just siphon points by dropping 1 pirate in each scoring area, and as some of the neutral pieces are buildings, it also serves to increase the value of certain areas. Perhaps this should be extended to all player counts, even if just to make 1st place worth more than 2nd by enough to matter via neutral buildings. 

Sails & Sorcery revisited -- now on TTS!

It's been about a year and a half since I posted about, or even played Sails & Sorcery, Michael's game that I had been working on. For some reason it drifted back into my consciousness recently. I thought about a tweak to the most recent aspect (treasure cards for the Plunder role), and realized it should be pretty easy to make a Tabletop Simulator mod for the game so I could potentially play it again. So here's a quick update:

First, the tweak to Plunder and treasure cards...

In my last post I re-imagined the Plunder role: Instead of just killing off masses of pirates, the new idea was to use Plunder to "buy" treasure cards, which each have an ability (on par with the Davy Jones effect - adding a couple of pirates to the board and/or capturing a couple opposing pirates), as well as one of five different gems, which confer some set collection scoring at game end. I liked this format a lot, but I wasn't sure what the best way to implement it was. I had gone with a simple card row, with the cost ranging from 2 to 6 (a good range, on par with the other roles) based on the position of he card in the row. But I had a number of other options in mind. 

The card row was simple, and it worked, but I kinda wanted it to matter which area (or at least which island) you were in when you Plundered. Another cost structure (even using a card row) that might have had an interesting geographic effect was "2 Plunder + 1 per opponent in the area." I thought that might have provided an interesting incentive to go where other people were not, which could stand in contrast to the dynamic incentivized by the way certain areas score each round (encouraging players to congregate in those areas). That's still something I think I'd like to try.

In addition though, it occurred to me that - especially with the alternate cost structure above - there's no reason the cards would need to be in a row at the side of the board. Perhaps better if they were in the areas (or on the islands) themselves? Might they then drive players to go to specific areas (or at least specific islands) if they're chasing VP from the gems? Or is that too many hoops to jump through? Maybe the option of any card in the row is appropriately flexible? I guess it's worth trying, if I can ever get some testing done!

And on that note, in an effort to eventually get some testing done on this game, I went ahead and made a Tabletop Simulator mod:

As you can see in the screenshot, I placed a treasure card in each area. Almost immediately I thought it might be better to just put one card per island instead of per area -- which could foster a little more interaction (in the case multiple players are after them). However, the more I think about it, the more I wonder if the better course is to just stick with a card row on the side of the board.

Even still, I would like to try the alternate cost structure (based on opponents in your ship's area) to see if that drives any geographical considerations or not. If so, and they're good enough, then that'll be great. If not, or if they're super weak, then the simpler cost structure might be a better choice.

Here's to hoping I get a chance to play it soon!

Sails & Sorcery progress

I have been continuing to develop Sails & Sorcery, Micheal's "Victorian era organized crime" themed game. After a disappointing few tests with the TMG guys at Origins and GenCon, and several attempts to balance the Plunder role, I have come to the conclusion that the way the role works is too problematic -- it cannot be fixed just by tweaking the costs and rewards.

The Plunder Role

The Plunder role allows you to remove opposing pirates from the board. You get some points for this, but the captured pirates go back to their owner's ship to be re-deployed. Deploying pirates to the board helps you win majority in an area, and then they stay in play for later, while Plundering an area helps you win majority in that area for the round, but nothing more. This sounded like a decent trade-off to me, but in practice it always seemed to be problematic. Part of the problem is the ability for a player to wipe another player out of an area entirely, reversing their progress, or cutting them out of scoring. Some of this might be groupthink, but it tends to scare players away from recruiting and deploying pirates (in an area control game about putting pirates on the board and moving them around).

We tried several versions of Plunder costs (capture 1 pirate per icon, pay N icons, capture N-1 pirates, Capture 1 pirate per *2* icons...), and considered several versions of rewards as well (you can capture ships and they're worth points, you can capture ships and they're NOT worth points, you can't capture ships, you get 1 point per pirate captured, you get 1 point per COLOR of pirate captured, you don't get points at all...). Over the different iterations of the game we even tried giving captured pirates back right away, vs the next round, and we experimented with those pirates going back to the player vs back to the general supply. The point is, we tried a lot of variations, and while each idea had its merits, none of them combined to make the role work correctly!

Re-imagining Plunder

A few times it crossed my mind that perhaps Plunder should do something else entirely, but I hesitated to change the effect because I liked the idea of having a way to remove pirates from areas. After all, El Grande (one of the main sources of inspiration for this game) has effects that add and remove pieces from the areas, as well as move them around. After a recent playtest, the idea of changing the nature of Plunder altogether came p again. One player suggested that perhaps there could be some kind of set collection associated with the role. Another something to the effect of digging up buried treasure. The epiphany I had that got me interested in it this time (when I was hesitant before) was this: perhaps there could be a set of "treasure" tiles, which you "buy" with Plunder. Each one could either give you an effect similar to Davy Jones (add one of your pirates to an area and capture 1 pirate from each opponent there), or some set collection scoring icon (like a gem of a certain type).

This way, a player could "Plunder for control" by going for the tiles with effects, or "Plunder for points" by going for the set collection stuff. My first attempt at this format was to make a bunch of tokens like that, put 4 of them on each area during setup, and make the cost of plundering an area go up each time one of them is taken. I figured that matched the Summon and Build cost structure, so it made some sense. I wasn't sure whether to go with the more strategic option (placing the tiles face up), or the more thematic option (face down), so I sort of compromised -- the tiles were face down, and when you plundered an area, you got to look at all the remaining tiles there and choose one. I tried that version last week, and it had some good points and some bad. Nobody missed the thought of having all of their pirates wiped off the board! However, it was weird that the choice went down as the cost went up (assuming the best tiles get taken first), and I would have preferred less setup anyway.

Thinking about it some more, I decided that this new format is similar to the old one, but limited in how many pirates you can capture, so maybe better than effect or points, it should be effect and points. So for the next playtest, I will try a tweak: I'll put 2 tiles on each area, each with a random plunder cost (between 2 and 6). Then I'll have a deck of treasure cards to the side of the board, with 4 of them face up. Each card will have both an immediate effect, and a gem for set collection scoring. This way, the plunder cost doesn't escalate like it does for building or summoning, but it'll still matter where you are when you Plunder, and it'll still be worth having plunder in your deck to afford the higher cost opportunities. And you'll get to capture or add pirates according to one of the available cards, plus you'll score a few points. We'll see if this version feels better.

If that doesn't feel right, another idea is to make the cost "2 + 1/player with presence in the area" -- which would scale in a potentially interesting way, but might not scale well with player count. But it would save the plunder cost tiles, and a little setup hassle.

A word on theme

At the top of this post I mentioned the theme was supposed to be Victorian era organized crime. Michael did mention that when he dropped off the game, but as far as I could tell, the game was a generic pirate game with monsters you can summon. If he hadn't told me he intended the players to be pirate captains backed by countries, doing espionage and etc, then I would never have guessed it. When I told him about this "buried treasure" version of plunder, he suggested we do something more in line with the Victorian era organized crime theme... which made me consider theme in general...

I think it's good to have a specific or interesting theme to a game. The less generic, the better. However, if the interesting, unusual theme looks the same as a more common, generic theme, then Occam's Razor would suggest that people won't even see the interesting theme.

So it's not a surprise to me that a player actually suggested a buried treasure sort of mechanism in this game, which is not intended to be a "pirate" themed game, but which clearly looks and feels like one.

If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and plays like a duck...

Origins 2019 -- playtests and interesting pitches

Due to Corbin being born, I missed all of the conventions last year, so I was excited to get back to them this summer. Last week I flew to Columbus for the first big convention of the season, Origins.

Origins has been growing in the last few years, and it seems to me like more exhibitors are launching games at the convention. I think that with GenCon pretty much outgrowing Indianapolis, people are sick of not being able to get a hotel room, and are starting to attend Origins instead. This has led me to my hypothesis that Origins is the new GenCon.

For the time being, that's great! The convention is still much smaller than the behemoth in Indianapolis, so the crowds aren't so bad, hotels are still obtainable, and restaurants don't ALL have a horrendous wait at all hours. Sales won't be as high as at GenCon, but as they expand their dealer hall, and more and more publishers launch games there, I suspect it is very worthwhile to have a booth. I don't know that I'd recommend Origins as a publisher instead of GenCon, but I think things are moving in such a direction that pretty soon, that trade off won't seems so crazy.

Interesting Pitches

Andy and I scheduled a dozen or so pitch meetings with designers. We are getting better at weeding out unlikely candidates, so we're getting a higher rate of pitches that are interesting to us. We ended up seeing several interesting ones, and Andy took a few back to the office to test out.

Game discovery is tricky though. A good pitch can make even a bland game sound interesting, so it's important to remember that no matter how good a game sounds, no matter how good the story of the game is, you really can't make a good decision about it until you actually play, often more than once, and possibly with various different groups of people.

Playtests

I managed a few tests of two of the games I've been working on:

* Sails & Sorcery x3 (Mike's game that I'm helping develop)
Most of the time, I go to conventions with a bag full of prototypes, and between booth stuff, meetings, and everything else going on, it can sometimes be like pulling teeth to get the TMG guys to play them with me. This time was different. One of the prototypes I'm working on is Michael's game, which I'm calling Sails & Sorcery for lack of a better title. Which meant Michael was interested in it, and he encouraged several playtests.

In total, the game got played 3 times at Origins, with varying levels of success. I was fairly happy with the state of the game in my recent tests with my regular playtesters (note: mostly 3p lately), so I was pretty disappointed with the first play (4p) with Andy, Michael, and Michael's friend when a few problems reared their head:

- The downtime was too much

The current format of the game was that you take turns doing 2 roles at a time. To be honest, that format felt a little old fashioned, but I had convinced myself it wasn't that bad, and that in this type of game, some downtime and AP potential is common. But playing with people less familiar with the game (because they haven't been playing weekly like we had) was a harsh reminder that new players will suffer those effects much more than experienced players. The game took far too long, and much of that time was spent waiting for your turn to roll around.

In some of the later playtests of the weekend, we tried breaking the rounds into twice around affairs, with players getting 1 turn at a time. Initially I didn't like the sound of that, so I hadn't tried it yet, but it did help decrease down time. I'll have to investigate that some more and figure out how to do it and maintain some of the other aspects of the round structure.

- Plunder was too prevalent,

Sails & Sorcery is an area control game, where you deploy your pirates to islands and build structures in order to vie for the most influence in the scoring areas. One of the things you can do is Plunder other pirates, removing them from the board, and collecting a bounty for doing so. If you are behind in an area, you can take the lead by adding more of your pirates, or by plundering your opponents' pirates. Plundering scores you some treasure, and the short term benefit of taking the majority in the area, but the plundered pirates go back to their owner's ship to be re-deployed later. On the other hand, adding pirates to the board not only helps take over majority, but those pirates stick around to continue to have an effect on the board. So there's a theoretical balance there, and in my recent tests (mostly 3p), the balance was holding fairly well.

However, in that 4p game, plunder was far too prevalent! The rewards were a little too high, or the costs were a little too low, or the cost to recruit and deploy pirates were a little too high in comparison, so everybody went heavily into plunder, and nobody deployed pirates to the board, which meant that all pirates were swept off the board pretty much the whole game.

Some of that may have been down to groupthink, and I would have liked to see what would have happened if a player did some big recruit/deploy actions. But even still, it was clear the balance was not correct. I had some adjustments in mind already, but had previously thought they might not be necessary -- now I will definitely try them out.

- The game appeared too tactical.

In this game, there are a number of areas, and originally they all scored once in the midgame and again at the end of the game. When I first played the game, I was immediately turned off by the tedium of counting up and scoring all the areas at once, and I developed a different way to do it -- first simplifying the scoring values (now you just grab a few gold and silver coins), and also scoring just a couple of areas every round rather than all of them at once. They still all scored at the end of the game, but as a sort of final scoring phase I didn't have as big a problem with that.

One potential problem with this is that some players feel forced to fight for whichever area is scoring this round, and there's not much in the way of strategic, or long term, planning. I'm not sure that's 100% true, but even if it's not, that's what many players will feel when they first play. I'll have to watch out for this to make sure the game isn't entirely tactical, because Michael and I both want there to be a strategic aspect.

So there were some issues with that one, and I've got a list of changes I'll be trying to address some of that.

* Worker Learning x1 (Mike suggested Apotheosis as a title)

My latest game design is a worker placement game where your workers level up and get better as you play them. I had this idea a while ago, but got busy and stalled out on creating a prototype, so I recruited a friend to help co-design the game, and he was able to get a prototype together and test it, and even iterate the design a few times. Now I've been testing it and iterating a bit as well, and I got one play in at Origins.

The game worked, but wasn't well loved by the players (I played a 3p game with Andy and one other designer in the Unpub room). Some of the changes I already intended to try would address some of the issues the players had, and I've tried a few of those since Origins, and I think I've made some progress in that regard. I'll probably post separately about this game, so stay tuned if you're interested in more info.

Recent playtesting - Sails and Sorcery: some details

The last few weeks, my Saturday playtest sessions have been spent playing Michael's game, Sails and Sorcery. It's kind of a mashup of my game Eminent Domain and the area control classic El Grande.

In Sails and Sorcery you are a pirate captain, sailing your ship from island to island, recruiting and deploying pirates, building structures, and summoning monsters in an attempt to make off with the lion's share of treasure when it's found in those areas.

Michael had been working on it for a while, he talked about it on the TMG podcast last year. In October, Mike figured it was time to get my input, so he brought the prototype to town with him for Rincon, we played a few times, and he left it with me to work on.

Role Selection

Because it was based on Eminent Domain, the game had a role selection mechanism (where opponents can follow your role). Michael had noticed an issue with that however, and he had disallowed following in the last round of the game. The issue was that if I make a play -- putting pieces on the board, or moving them around -- it's really easy for other players to undo my play by simply following. Disallowing the follow in the last round didn't fix the issue in the other scoring rounds earlier in the game though.

So one thing I suggested as we played was that maybe it should not be a role selection game at all. In other words, maybe there doesn't need to be following in the game. Role selection (the lead-follow dynamic) is the entirety of the player interaction in Eminent Domain, but in this game there is interaction on the board as players vie for control of different areas by having the most pieces there. With that interaction, the role selection isn't as necessary, so we tried it without.

However, without being able to act on other players turns, we wouldn't be able to get as much accomplished. So in place of following, we just did an additional role each turn (I'm going to continue using the term "role" here to mean "thing you get to boost with other cards," even though the terminology isn't as accurate any more. "Action" simply means playing 1 card for it's effect, no boosting). This seemed to work fine, and so the first few tests I did recently continued to use 1 action and 2 roles per turn, in that order.

One of my playtesters really wanted a more flexible turn order, because frequently you want to do your 2 roles in different locations (you act in the location where your ship is located), and so he wanted to do role/action/role, using the action to move his ship. I was hesitant to try this because Michael and I had said the same thing back in October, and we tried it, and I immediately did not like the results. This was partly because the "action" part of your turn was really resolving your whole ship, which had multiple things you could do.

However, I acquiesced to try it again, but with a simplified ship such that your abilities from your ship we're more static (like role icons), so it was just the card action you would be doing "out of order." We tried it, and it wasn't too bad, but I still didn't like it, maybe because I prefer the organized turn structure.

Then that player had an additional suggestion, to replace the action with another role. Most of the actions are miniature (1-icon) versions of the role anyway, so if we didn't have actions and just did 3 roles, then a bunch of rules overhead drops out, and the turn flexibility increases without feeling too weird or out of order. In addition, we said that taking a card for the role from the stacks (another aspect based on Eminent Domain) was optional. If you did it, then you'd have an additional icon for the turn, and another card in your deck. If you didn't, then you would miss out on that icon, but you could avoid bloating your deck with the card if you wanted. You only have so many cards in your hand, so often times one of your roles will only be for 1-2 icons. In that respect, the role/role/role format isn't really all that different from action/role/role after all.

We tried this new format once, and I was skeptical. I thought it would produce too much AP, or have other issues. However the first play with that format didn't take any longer on the clock than the game we had just finished using the old format. So I'll try it again next time.

Monsters and their cost

Another aspect I've been tinkering with is the monsters in the game. Originally, you could use a build role to build a building, which gave you permanent influence in an area, and unlocked some ability (like the buildings in Crusaders), or summon a monster, which had some cool effect, but was otherwise similar to a building. Michael had envisioned pieces like in Blood Rage - large miniatures with player colored bases that you could snap on to show who had summoned the monster. You needed to know that, because often times the monster counted as influence toward scoring (just like your buildings did).

My opinion was that the monsters and buildings were too similar, so I suggested making them more different from each other. Buildings give you influence and power ups, so I thought monsters should give you some awesome immediate effect, and then stay in play with some global effect for everyone, like it or not. I liked the image of summoning a force of nature and then being unable to control it.

My first draft of the monsters was to make them the high end of the build role. For 2 or 3, you build a building. I tried the monsters costing 5 (and if you were really interested in summoning them, there's a way to get a build icon from one if your buildings). This was too high a cost, by the time we were ready to summon the monsters, the game was over. Michael wants them to see play every game, not just some of them, and not just maybe, and not just at the end. And I agree with him.

I also thought it was weird that the same resource both built you buildings and summoned monsters. So I made 2 changes... First, I separated the roles. You use build roles to place buildings for influence and abilities, and you use summon roles to summon monsters. I set the summon cost of the monsters to be 2 summon icons, plus 1 more for each time that monster has been summoned in the past. This is easily tracked by dropping a token on the monster card after you summon it.

I have iterated through a few versions of each monster, but I am now super happy with this format and the current effects of the monsters. Splitting up the resources was great, and this cost structure is perfect. The monsters all start out cheap, so they get used. Then they get more expensive over time so that in the late game it's hard to afford them if you haven't been summoning all game long.

Buildings

The monster cost structure worked so well, I wanted to try it with the buildings too. The buildings on your player board (your ship) are in 4 rows of 2 columns, and for each row you must build left to right, just like Crusaders. Originally, the buildings in the left column cost 2 build icons, and the buildings in the right column cost 3. Additionally, each area had a certain number of build spaces (usually 2 or 3), and no more than that number of buildings could be built there.

Thinking about the escalating monster cost, I tried eliminating the build limit and old cost structure, and instead tried "buildings cost 2 icons, plus 1 more for each building already in that area. This way, you can build cheaply if you spend time sailing around or get to an area first, but once there are 2 buildings in an area, you will have a hard time building there again if you haven't specialized in it a bit, either by investing in the building that gives you a build icon, or by obtaining a number of build cards into your deck.

This works well because each building also increases the value of the area for the 1st place player during scoring.

The effects you unlock from moving these buildings off of your player board have also changed a bit. Originally, some of them were static effects, such as a role icon, or a hand size increase, and some were additional actions you could do at the beginning of your turn. While it was fun to do an extra action at the beginning of your turn, it often wasn't as useful as you wanted it to be. A free deploy doesn't help if you need to recruit pirates. A free plunder doesn't help if there aren't any opponents where your ship is. This is the kind of frustration that prompted the desire for a more flexible turn structure, but it's also the reason the more flexible turn structure was problematic. The game action happens with the card play, so it made sense to me that the buildings could all be static effects rather than additional free actions. Removing the game action from there made the flexible turn structure a lot more acceptable feeling. I've been tweaking and trying different combinations of unlock abilities, but most of them are the same as they were back in October. I'm trying to make sure there are a variety of strategic paths available in the abilities, but also make sure that you aren't forced to build a certain way (or at all) in order to succeed. Like the technology in EmDo, I expect players will build at least a little each game, and if they concentrate on it, maybe they'll build a lot. I expect most players to end the game having built anywhere between 2 and 6 of the 8 buildings and still be able to be competitive.

There are a bunch of other details I've been working on, but these were some of the biggest (and most recent) changes I've tried. Perhaps I'll post again later about other aspects, such as the scoring round format :)