Making steps forward ("killing your darlings")

In a few of my games I have started with a specific mechanism or idea that, over the course of the game, has had to drop out, or change significantly. I'd venture a guess this happens in many, if not most, designer's games.

For example, in my first published title, Terra Prime, I began with a "great" idea for a supply/demand mechanism for the value of resources you deliver. Based on Power Grid's fuel market, you would get paid more for delivering Bluium if there hadn't been any delivered yet than you would if there were already some Bluium sitting there on the ships, ready to send back to Earth. Every once in a while, the ships would take off, and the resources on them would clear off, resetting the demand (and therefore the price). Each resource was supposed to have a different curve - maybe Yellium was worth 7 the first time it's delivered, then 4, then 1... so it's super valuable, but goes down fast. On the contrary, maybe Bluium would range from 5 down to 3, and be a lot more steady:

I forget the exact details, but the bottom line is that while I liked the idea, the mechanism just wasn't working in Terra Prime.

In the end I (thankfully) decided to replace the whole thing with a Demand Tile mechanism. Much more simply, each resource had a price, and tiles indicated how many were required. Once all the blue spaces were filled, the demand for Bluium dries up, no more can be delivered. As soon as one of the tiles fills up, it goes away and a new one comes up, which may bring back some demand for Bluium.

This worked a LOT better, and I'm happy that's how I ended up going in that game.

The point of that story is to show how a major mechanism that I really liked ended up changing because it wasn't right for the game. Recently, that dynamic has showed up again on one of my current active designs: Apotheosis.

One of the instigating ideas for Apotheosis was that your workers would level up when played, like the cards in Solforge. The crux of the game was intended to be whether you play out all of your workers before recalling, and leveling up your entire workforce evenly, versus playing just a couple of workers then recalling them and playing them again, and ending up with a few high level workers while the rest remain at low level. That idea being the whole point, survived the first several revisions, and many playtests. However, as of last week, I tried a new version -- instead of leveling up every worker you have played when you recall them, we said you could only level up one worker.

I was hesitant to try this, but I was hopeful it would fix certain issues I was having with the game. As we began the first game with that rule, I missed being able to play an extra worker before recalling in order to level them up, but pretty quickly I could see how certain aspects of the game seemed to be tighter and work better. All told, you're still choosing whether to recall early to level more often, or play more workers first for their effects.

One concern with only leveling one worker at a time was that it slowed things down, but that's just a matter of balancing costs, and could be easily fixed. However, in an effort to try something in between "level one worker" and "level all workers," we tried something that amounted to "level some workers." I had expected that to be better, with some of the benefits of the restricted leveling, and some of the benefits of the original idea. But in practice I found that it didn't really work as well, and it became clear that just leveling once per recall (and maybe a few special rewards for things could get you an extra level-up) is the way to go.

So there you go -- once again I've had to "kill a darling," so to speak, and remove or significantly change an instigating mechanism for a game.

As a side note on this topic, my friend Gil Hova (of Formal Ferret games) has a particularly aggressive auction mechanism from an old, unpublished game of his called Wag The Wolf (one which I thought was good!) that he keeps designing games around. He used it in Battle Merchants, but in the end cut the mechanism. He used it again in The Networks, and again cut the mechanism before the game was finished. And I believe he started his latest game, High Rise, with that mechanism, and eventually cut it from that game too!

Eminent Domain Origins playtests - 2p and 4p

Today I got a couple more "last minute" tests of Eminent Domain Origins in, one 4-player (using the 2-5p starting cards), and one 2p (turns out I hadn't tested 2p since making all these updates and changes).

In the 4p game, Dan joined Dave, Jesse, and me. He played the game once about a year ago, so was basically a new player, so I asked him to just play normally and let me know what was fiddly, odd, hard to understand, or easy to forget. Dave and Jesse each tried the new 4-5p starting cards (Jesse started with a colony marker loaded, an energy, and $10; Dave started with 2 crystal and an energy). I decided to try alien hunting, since I hadn't seen it much lately, and so started with a weapon and a crystal. I gave Dan a basic $30 starting card.

In the end, the game was quite close, with Dave winning out 60-50-50-49. I may have missed a round or two, but I counted 17 rounds -- I thought I remembered Terra Prime lasting more like 20-24 or so. Jump starting the game a little bit by giving players starting resources and cutting the phase 1 reward cards, and allowing colony spots (planets) to exist in adjacent sectors, may have sped the game up a little bit, but I DID add 3 tiles to the phase III rewards, so we were only really net down 1 reward tile total. It's likely players just did more scoring actions (colonizing and defeating aliens) than what sometimes happens so the game was on the short end.

Dave's winning 60 points came on the back of quite a lot of delivering. He used his 2 crystal start to quickly (turn 4 or 5) get a Matter Converter, and soon after delivered a bunch of cubes for a fistful of credits and bought 2 Thrusters in one turn. Dave is usually partial to Afterburners, but I guess he decided he didn't have the energy economy for it this time. In any case, he had 5 actions while the rest of us ad only 3 for a while. Dan and Jesse eventually got Thrusters of their own, for some reason I didn't bother, which may have been my downfall. The verdict on the starting card is that it's probably fine. The verdict on Matter Converter is that it's potentially very strong, probably not a problem, but might ought to be worded such that you still have to carry the correct cubes according to your holds, and then deliver/upgrade as if they're wild, rather than letting you convert them to whatever you want whenever you want, which just encourages you to visit your own places.

Jesse's downfall may have been poor rolls combined with potentially ill advised pathing. He kept crashing into asteroids, and hadn't bought shields first. This cost him 3vp on more than 1 occasion. Had he just rolled a little better (or spent the action and $20 to get and charge shields), he could have been neck and neck with Dave in the end. Never mind that one of the collisions cost him an engine, about 1/2 way through the game, putting him out maybe 7 or 8 actions! However, his start was strong, Starting with a loaded colony marker was pretty great, it allowed him to usurp a colony spot from player 1 (Dan, who might have been better off doing something a little bit different), and as Jesse pointed out, irrespective of turn order, starting with a loaded colony means that he's the ONLY player who could colonize 2 spaces from TP on turn 1. It also means that players earlier in turn order have to be a bit more careful and hedge their bets if they're not colonizing on turn 1, lest their colony get sniped. That's probably OK, but we decided to take away the energy, so that if there's an asteroid in the way, at least you have to risk losing 3 points to do that.

I tried to do some alien hunting, and I did an alright job, my big errors were getting an early Battle Station instead of selling cubes to afford a Thruster, and not setting up any accessible early game colonies for other players to use. The only planet 1 step from TP was a green one off to one side, and since Dan didn't take it, I decided to colonize it on turn 1. Nobody used it all game, and I didn't drop any colonies in high traffic areas, so I didn't get to leach any points off of other players.

Any way you look at it, that score was pretty darn close all around.

After Dan left, I mentioned the board scaling for 2 players (2 fewer tiles in each row, and only 1 of each tech upgrade), and it occurred to me that I hadn't played 2p in this new version of the game. So I had Jesse and Dave play 2p while I watched. They ended up choosing the sort of standard $20 and $30 for starting resources, and while I lost count half way through the game, I'm pretty sure it lasted about 20 rounds -- just a few more than the 4 player game. I noticed that in the mid-game, both players spent time upgrading their ship rather than dropping colonies or killing aliens, which dragged the game out a little bit, but also was fun for the players to really pursue a strategy. Dave ended up with a Thruster and 2 Afterburners (with Additional Module Slots), so was doing 8 actions per turn. Jesse had 2 Thrusters for 5 actions per turn. Both geared up for alien hunting, but neither did a whole lot of it until the end of the game. Between the two of them, they explored every tile, but they also left a lot of maybe lower scoring colony spaces alone... had either of them grabbed a Cryo Chamber (or Cargo upgrade) and started dropping multiple colonies per trip, the game could have been considerably shorter (on par with the 4p game perhaps).

The verdict was that the 2p game seemed fine. I think we don't need to do any further scaling such as removing any reward cards. It felt like the game dragged a little, but that was because (a) players drew it out a bit, and (b) Dave's turns started taking incredibly long as he hemmed and hawed over planning out his 8 actions!

All in all, I think it was a fine test day. I made a tweak to one of the starting cards (take the energy off the loaded colony marker one), and I might tweak the wording on Matter Converter. I might also add a reward card or two (probably double up on existing ones) just to make sure there's enough time in a 5 player game for players' strategies to develop.

Eminent Domain Origins - starting resource testing

I got another 2 playtest games in today...

Game 1: simulated 5p game (Dave and I played 2 seats each)

I wanted to test the 4-5p starting resources, but there were only three of us. Dave has played a handful of games (last year), while Hoss hadn't played at all. I wanted feedback from fresh eyes on the game in general from Hoss (mostly about fiddliness and grokability), but had Dave and myself each play 2 seats so we could see the 4-5p starting cards in action. Dave had the Afterburner to see if he could abuse it. I had the Upgraded Cargo Hold to see if it felt way too good.

Playing multiple seats is never ideal, but it wasn't too bad. The worst part was probably when the blue player scanned, and then the purple player (both played by me) was able to act on that info :/

In the end, the 5th player (Upgraded Cargo Hold) won, but I don't think it was really due to the starting resources. In fact, I felt like I kind of squandered my start, but that seat just played a good game otherwise.

Dave tried to get the Afterburner online as quickly as possible in seat 4. He ended up in 2nd place by only 6 points. Only two points back was Dave's other seat (P1), who started with $20 and tried avoiding buying a thruster (he got a Hyperdrive).

My other seat (P2-shield +3energy) and Hoss (P3-Cargo Hold) tied at about 10 points back, both seats playing loie n00bs :)

Game 2: 4p, but with starting resources of players 2-5

Russell showed up right at the end of that first game,so next we played with 4, but to test more if the 4-5p cards, we just skipped the 1p ones. Hoss and I started with 2-3p cards cryo Chamber and Weapon+Crystal, respectivly). Dave starter with the Upgraded Cargo Hold and Russell started with Additional Module Slots+$20.

Hoss, still a newbie, didn't do great. He was doing better until a pretty devastating mistake - he left the Outpost to Colonize but forgot a colony marker! I worry a little bit that this may be a common error, but other than warm about it in the rules, I don't think there's anything I can really do about it witjwit making significant changes to the system :/  I did about as badly as Hoss, just taking way too long to actually put my plans into action.

But more importantly, how did the 4th and 5th players do with their starting resources? We'll, Russell had a pretty strong showing, getting 2nd place without ever using the Additional Module Slots. Though all three of us were close packed in score.

Dave however finished 25 points ahead... Which is like 2-3 big plays in this game. How much of this was due to the Upgraded Cargo Hold? We'll, probably at least 10 of it was from capitalizing on Hoss' mistakes, but he was also able to do a lot with the ability to hold both 2 colony markers and so many resources.

In the end, the Upgraded Cargo Hold is probably overpowered, and the Additional Module Slots is probably underpowered. That technologhy just isn't a "starting resource," and as such is not a useful thing to get at the beginning of the game. I'm going to try "$10+1 Energy+loaded colony marker" and "2 brown + 1 energy" instead of those two starting cards.

Also, originally each player started with 3 VP, in case you ran into an asteroid in the early game and didn't have shields. I've been trying the game without that, but I realized today that starting with 1 energy is irrelevant if you have nothing to lose by crashing into asteroids. So I think I'll add VP to all of the cards so that starting with 1 energy is relevant again. I think most of the cards will get 3vp, but I can tune up or down for cards that feel a little strong or weak.

A few other little details...

With the inclusion of the starting resource cards, I have deleted the stage 1 rewards, because they served the same purpose. This shortens the game a little bit, but I did add 3 tiles to stage 3, so it should not be too different than the old version. However, one of the stage 3 rewards is a free Thruster module, which is great (better the earlier you get it), but comes out fairly late, so there isn't much time to use it. But without the stage 1 rewards, that one can come out all the earlier, which may be too strong. I might move that one to stage 4 instead.

As for the Wormhole physics I talked about last time, I worry that "any OTHER wormhole" will be one of those easily forgotten rules. I guess the game doesn't break if players go in and out of the same wormhole, I've been playing that way. But should I have an easier to remember rule?

Eminent Domain Origins - final playtest phase

Starting Resources (and turn order advantage)

It's been over a year since my last post about Eminent Domain Origins, and one of the last things I was trying out was a starting resource draft. Inspired by Mark Major's Chimera Station, I thought it could be fun to mix up the starting resources in the game by drafting starting resource cards. Rather than draft them in reverse turn order though, I decided to make a subset of cards for 1st player, 2nd-3rd player, and 4th-5th player, and deal out 2 of those cards to each player based on their turn order. You can choose one of the two for your starting resources.

I had played a couple of 3 player games with these new starting resource cads, and yesterday I finally got the game to the table again, and we tried them one more time. So far they have worked out well, and I think I have mix I'm happy about (for up to 3 players anyway, I haven't tested the 4-5p ones yet). I hadn't made physical cards for the 4-5p ones yet, and I had forgotten what I'd wanted to try, so yesterday I thought of what might be a good mix:

* 40 credits
* 30 credits and 1 energy
* 20 credits and 1 crystal
* 20 credits and Additional Module Slots tech
* Afterburner module
* Upgraded Cargo Hold module (holds 2 resources or 1 colony marker)

I thought the Afterburner might be crazy, but then realized that in order to take advantage of it, you'd have to buy and charge shields, which means you'd have to do a delivery first. So after a few turns you could get your starting Afterburner online, and you'd have to "stop for gas" every once in a while to keep it going. I actually think it is valuable, but won't be overpowered after all. Looking at my previous post now, I see that I had a similar thought a year ago :)

An Upgraded Cargo Hold sounds potentially problematic as well, but I doubt it will turn out to be overpowered either. I hadn't thought of this before, but I like the idea of it better than what I had originally written (Cargo Hold + 10 credits, and Cryo Chamber + 10 credits).

Because of early turn order advantage (dibs on the early game colonies nearby the Terra Prime space station, and potentially 1 more turn over the course of the game), the starting resource cards scale up for later turn order players. I am certain that turn order advantage early in the game, and unequal turns at the end, are the types of things players will key into, and therefore turn order compensation is warranted. One thing players don't necessarily notice as often is the inherent DISadvantage for early turn players in a game where you don't know for sure whether you'll get another turn, which is the case here as well. Between this inherent disadvantage, the partial credit for resources and colony markers on your ship at game end, and the turn order compensation, I figure the game is (and looks) well balanced enough that no particular turn order is really advantaged over another.

Setup and exploring the Green zone

One of the things I didn't like about the new exploration tiles was that in the Green zone, most of them are blank. It's not fun to "explore" an area, flip up a tile, and find nothing. Last year my notes suggest I was considering putting weak hazards, like single asteroids, or even boons, like pieces of crystal (FKA brownium) for players to find. However, that exacerbates any early turn order advantage. And while it may be neat to find a wormhole right outside the door of the space station, when that happens it really distorts the map, making that entrance much more heavily traveled, and with it, the player(s) whose early colonies are on that side of the board are more heavily used.

I thought of an alternative, and tried it out yesterday... I can just GET RID of the green exploration tiles altogether! Instead, I can just have 1 tile with a wormhole that gets placed on the center green hex (the only one without a direct route to Terra Prime). To be honest, this doesn't really reduce setup very much, you still need to lay out the space hexes, and put exploration tiles on the yellow and red ones. However, it makes the game a little less fiddly (no flipping tiles to reveal nothing), and a little more consistent with the standard placement of the wormhole.

Wormhole physics

Speaking of wormholes, I'd originally used a rule that for 1 move action, you could move into a wormhole, and for another move action, you could move out of ANY wormhole on the board. A few key points about this was that it required a MOVE action, not an EXPLORE action, so players could not legally exit a wormhole at a sector with 2 face down tiles. This maintained a dynamic wherein you NEVER could be in a situation where you were flipping 2 tiles at once. To be honest, I kind of liked that rule, but it did lead to a little bit of confusion at times, and players frequently conflated MOVE and EXPLORE actions, and therefore asked about flipping 2 tiles at once coming out of a wormhole. David Short insisted that while you shouldn't be able to flip 2 tiles at once, you SHOULD be able to flip 1 when coming out of a wormhole, which he held was consistent with a turn where you weren't coming out of a wormhole... that would translate to the rule "you can move or explore out of a wormhole, but not to a sector with 2 face down tiles." I did not agree that that was more consistent (I didn't like the exception clause), but it definitely made clear that some people would try to do that.

A year ago, I decided to simplify the game by basically combining MOVE and EXPLORE into the same action. No more limit of 1 Explore per turn, if you move into a sector with a face down tile, you simply flip it up. This sped the game up a bit, and didn't really harm it any, but it brought up the issue of flipping 2 tiles at once coming out of a wormhole... I decided to try allowing that, and so far it hasn't really been a problem. Exploring comes with it's own risks (encountering aliens or asteroids) anyway. The question is bound to come up: "in what order do you resolve the tiles?" -- I will probably say in the rulebook that you flip them over and resolve them one at a time, however in reality, I don't think there's ever a conflict. Undoubtedly, someone will ask "what if I flip an alien and an asteroid at the same time?" But that's actually already answered if you play the rules as written: When revealing a stray asteroid, you immediately roll to evade them. When revealing aliens you do nothing immediately. At the end of the action, if you are adjacent to aliens, then they attack you. Even though this is clearly defined in the rules already, I will likely address it specifically, perhaps in an example, because I've learned that people have a tendency to conflate or misinterpret rules.

Another change I made at that time was to allow movement into and then out of a wormhole in the same action. This was to speed things up a little bit, and to avoid questions involving ships being "in wormholes" as opposed to in sectors, where they usually are. The rule was "Use 1 action to move into a wormhole and then out of any wormhole." This meant you could traverse a hex (from one corner to the opposite corner) with a wormhole in it for 1 action instead of spending 3 actions moving around the outside edge. It also meant you could jump pretty deep into space with only 1 wormhole on the board, and I had just implemented a permanent wormhole on the green zone (rather than a probable one, which could be off to one side of the board). That's not really what the wormholes were meant to do -- I wanted them to sort of shrink the board once it had been explored a bit.

Yesterday we tried a tweak on that rule: "Use 1 action to move into a wormhole and then out of any OTHER wormhole." This meant that the first wormhole (which will now be in the center of the green zone every game) doesn't really do anything at all, until a 2nd one is found. No more jumping over a hex, or using that starting wormhole to dart out into deep space! This seemed to work well, and made the wormholes behave like I'd intended -- in the midgame they start shrinking the board.

Simplified turn order / Board clutter

In Terra Prime, the first thing you do on your turn is make sure there is a resource cube at each of your colonies. If there isn't one there, you produce one. If there is, you do nothing. This way, there's only at most 1 resource at each colony, making a little bit of a race to pick them up, however you can be sure hat your own colonies will always have resources available for you on your turn. I liked that dynamic, and it was one of the points of interaction in the game (if I go after you, and I want your Green resource, you can always take it from me... which means I might have to stall or change my plans if I think you'll snake the resource I want). It was also one of the easiest things to forget in the game... your turn rolls around, and you start doing your stuff, forgetting to produce resources. It was very common, even among veteran players. It also wasn't a big deal to forget, because it was very easy to figure out at any given time whether a colony ought to have a resource on it (it would have produced on your turn, and neither you or she picked it up, so it should be there for me now).

Another issue with the production rule is when teaching the game, the first thing you say is "on your turn, you first produce a resource at each of your colonies..." only players don't know what a colony even IS yet, or how to get them! That's always been kind of sub-par.

So in an effort to do some house cleaning, I decided to try removing that portion of he turn. Instead, I've simply said you can always pick up a resource at a colony, and just limited that action to 1x/colony/turn. That way there's no need to explain production, no chance to forget to do it, and the board is a bit less cluttered.

Eminent Domain Origins -- Starting Resource draft?

I mentioned in my last post that I was considering replacing the stage I rewards (which serve to differentiate player profiles) with a starting resource draft. What I hope to achieve by that is...

1. Give players more variety in their game starts
2. Give players more agency when it comes to their early game strategic direction
3. Maintain an aspect of turn order compensation

Currently, players start with some credits, and that's it. The earlier you are in turn order at the start of the game, the fewer credits you start with, to make up for the advantage of having first dibs on the early game colony options. Other than that difference in starting money, all players have always started out on equal footing. However, the stage I reward tiles give players a different module, which serves to differentiate them once they've colonized something (and really, your first actions should always be to colonize something ASAP). This new idea would replace that random method of player differentiation with one where you'd get some say in how you'd like to play the game.

The scheme I've gone with for the starting resource cards is to make a few at each of three tiers, then to deal 2 cards from the appropriate tier to each player, based on their turn order (1st, 2nd-3rd, and 4th-5th):

• Tier 1: 1st player (3 cards)
1. 20 Credits
2. 10 Credits and 1 Energy
3. 1 Weapon module
• Tier 2: 2nd-3rd player (6 cards)
1. 30 Credits
2. 20 Credits and 1 Energy
3. 1 Brownium and 1 Weapon module
4. 1 Shield module and 3 Energy
5. 1 Cargo Hold module
6. 1 Cryo Chamber module
• Tier 3: 4th-5th player (6 cards)
1. 40 Credits
2. 2 Brownium and 1 Weapon module
3. 1 Brownium and 1 Shield module and 3 Energy
4. 1 Brownium and 1 Cargo Hold module
5. 1 Brownium and 1 Cryo Chamber module
6. 1 Afterburner module

My thought is that you basically start with 20/30/40 credits worth of stuff, and I'm counting an action as 10 credits. So for example, as player 1, you might have to choose between a Weapon module (costs 10 and an action at a green colony), and 20 credits (which you could use to buy shields, or a cargo module).

With respect to the three goals stated above:

1. Give players more variety in their game starts

    Each game you will get to choose between two different starting positions, and that choice will be different game-to-game, and based on your turn order position.

2. Give players more agency when it comes to their early game strategic direction

    Compared to the original game, where your differentiation came at random, this scheme will allow players to choose their strategic path (at least between two head starts). And I tried to make the options somewhat versatile, so they don't necessarily lock you into a specific, scripted strategic path.

3. Maintain an aspect of turn order compensation

    The card are in three tiers, offering more compensation to later turn order players. I think the fact that players 2 and 3 get the same level of compensation, and players 4 and 5 get the same level, is probably fine, as the difference between 1st and 2nd is probably bigger than the difference between 2nd and 3rd, etc.

So far I've tried this twice, and I think it's OK. What I haven't tried yet is removing the stage I reward tiles. The combination is kinda lame, as your random reward tile may or may not synergize with your chosen starting resources. Removing the stage I tiles will shorten the game a little bit, and with all the recent changes to jump start it, I think cutting a couple of rounds off the game wouldn't hurt.

Eminent Domain Origins progress

It's been a while since I last posted about Eminent Domain Origins, my Terra Prime reboot in the EmDo universe, so I'll begin by revisiting the changes discussed in that post and offer my current thinking on them. Then I'll mention the latest modifications, and how those went in yesterday's playtests.


New modifications discussed 10/27/17:

• Add one "any module" slot to the command ship.

After trying this a few times, I ended up removing it, and I prefer the game without it. The expansion (being included in EDO) added an Extra Module Slot tech, which is pretty cheap and allows players to get extra slots if they want them.

• Add 1 "any resource" hold to the command ship.

I have continued to like this, and decided to keep it. With this extra slot, players are not required to purchase a cargo hold in order to carry 1 Yellow cube, or 2 Blue/2 Green cubes, which means they are able to go for various technologies without having to buy a cargo hold first.

I also updated the cost and effect of a few technologies.

• Set direction on tiles, so there's no possibility of illegal placements or configurations.

I have been using completely random orientation for space hexes, and I've come to like it just fine. The map is more different game-to-game, which is probably a good thing. 

• Re-examine distribution of hazards on exploration tiles (I haven't done this yet).

I still haven't done this, and I still might. I have more to add to this now, see below...

• Change Weapon module cost (a simple $20 each. Or even just $10?)

I've kept the $10 weapon cost, and I've been fine with it. I also did nerf alien scoring down to 1vp/alien killed instead of 2, which seems fine, but I wonder if alien hunting is no longer as strong a strategy as it used to be. Maybe that's OK, as it used to be fairly strong!

• Consider changing the Shield action (people have trouble with "Do one, the other, or both: Buy a shield module for $10, charge shields for $10"). Maybe recharging shields should be free?

After some hemming and hawing, I think the best thing to do is just keep the Buy Shields rule the same... in one action you may optionally (1) Buy 1 shield module for $10, then optionally (2) charge all of your shields for $10.

• Change Delivery Optimizer to "+1 LP when you complete a demand tile. At game end: 1vp per demand tile collected."

I have continued to use this, and I think it's fine. If you buy it before completing any demand tiles, then it's the same as it ever was. If you buy it after you've completed some tiles, then it's a little bit better than it was.

• Start with energy on your built-in shield?

I have been doing this, and it seems OK so far. I have a new idea that will make this point moot, see below...

• Colonies immediately produce as soon as they're created, so there's less wasting actions waiting for the new colony to produce. 

I have enjoyed this, but I have a new idea that will make it moot, see below...

• Ignore the "no planet adjacent to Terra Prime" rule as well, all of this hopefully just speeds up the game a little bit.

I have been doing this, and I think it's fine. I am planning on keeping this rule (that is to say, removing the restriction).

• Ignore the limit on Exploring, and just have that be wrapped into the Move action 

I've been fine with this. I've decided to embrace just about anything that removes stalling and waiting from the game.

• Wrap the Pacify and Attack actions into one. 

Yeah, this can be 1 action, dealing with aliens. You can shoot them, or you can "Pacify" them (might change that to Befriend or something). I reduced the cost of Pacifying aliens to "1 cube per icon," rather than "1 cube per icon plus 1." Perhaps for that reason, I've seen more pacifying of aliens lately, and it's kind of neat - you give them a brown and a green, and maybe they give you a yellow and an energy (on the reward tile) -- it's like a trade.

• If I remove the Explore limit, then it might mean I ought to allow exploring out of a wormhole (I'd rather not do that), which leads to exploring 2 tiles at once (or that).

I have allowed this, and so far it seems to be fine. Again, I think it just sort of speeds up the game.

• Finally, the Afterburner module (pay 1 Energy for 2 actions this turn) seemed WAY too good. I think it was probably a little too good before, but it didn't seem that bad because to power it efficiently you had to fill your module slots with shields... but with the additional module slot (see above), you could pretty easily get 3-4 shield modules and 2 Afterburners, and do 7 actions per turn, only needing to spend one of those actions every 3-4 turns to refuel. That felt like too much, even if the player who did it didn't score very well (I think it took him too long to set up and start abusing that). So losing the extra module slot might make the Afterburner OK again, but I might try another version.

I'm currently of the opinion that without that extra module slot, the 1 Energy = 2 Actions Afterburner is probably OK.

Now I'll discuss some of the more recent changes:

• Hyperdrive: Cost changed to Yellow+Blue+Brown, points removed, effect changed to: "After each (->) spent on a move action, you may immediately take an additional move action."

Now that there's no "explore" limit, it doesn't make sense to allow it 2x/turn. I COULD just have this be a thruster that doesn't take up a module slot, but in an effort to be more interesting, I thought I'd try this effect. It lets you move after moving, which is like saying your move actions move you 2 spaces (worded that way to avoid rules issues, for example Alien attacks). This will therefore help you zoom across the board, which could be good for a delivery strategy, or a colony strategy that wants to get to and from the red zone quickly, or maybe even an alien hunter.

• Cloaking Device: Cost increased to Yellow+Green+Brown. 

Cloaking device has always been a very strong tech, and so it should cost a little more. Also, this way the costs are more evenly distributed. hyperdrive costs Y/Br/Blue, cloaking device costs Y/Br/Green. And cloaking device is better for an alien hunter, so using green makes sense, while hyperdrive may be better for a delivery strat, so using blue makes sense there.

• Wormhole: 1 move action will move you into a wormhole and out of ANY wormhole (used to be 2 actions)

In an effort to make the wormhole rules less confusing, I'm trying this change. This way you're never in a sort of limbo space "inside" the wormholes, so you won't ever try to short range scan something from inside the wormhole (which a player did, and I realized doesn't make sense). I've tried this twice now, and as a result, the wormholes seem to do a much better job at what they were supposed to do... shrink the board in the late game! There are currently 3 wormholes in the green zone, 2 in the yellow zone, and 1 in the red zone, but I might change that a little bit. I might add another in the red zone, and I might go back down to 2 in the green zone, or even just 1, but make it always in the same place (see below).

• Add free resources to the blank green zone exploration tiles

It was pointed out that exploring a tile and finding it blank is super boring, but I couldn't think of anything else to put on the blank green exploration tiles. I don't want the green zone to be dangerous, so no aliens or stray asteroids. It would be lame to find a sunstar ("Treat this tile as if it were blank") there on turn one. I already have some wormholes... so the only thing I can think of is a free resource. I tried it with a free brown whenever you explored a blank tile, which was kinda interesting because it maybe speeds up your ability to get tech, especially if nobody builds a mine.

Later I had a different idea which I might try that would make this a moot point. What if the green zone just didn't have exploration tiles at all? And what if there was always 1 wormhole, in the center green tile (the only one that's 2 moves from Terra Prime instead of just 1)? It could make some thematic sense, that the Terran Federation set up their first space station just outside a wormhole -- maybe that's how they got there. This would remove the need for exploration tiles on the green zone, and would make blank exploration tiles irrelevant. And that wormhole placement MIGHT make for more interesting games than when a wormhole occurs 1 space from Terra Prime (not sure).

• Nix production, just spend an action to get a resource.

One thing that's been a bit of a hassle with Terra Prime is clutter on the board, and it's always been easy to forget to produce on your colonies at the start of your turn. I've never worried about that, as it's easy to tell if a colony should have a resource or not, but I've never loved having to figure that out (and it happened all the time). So what if you din't have to produce goods and place them on the board? What if you could just always get a resource as an action? That would remove one of the interactions I liked in the game -- competition to pick up certain resources, but the assurance that YOUR resources would always be there for you. However, I don't know if that interaction is really such a big deal, and having to stall or out when someone takes the resource you were going to get seemed like a feel-bad moment. As my playtester kept putting it yesterday, "being able to do things is better than not being able to do things." So I thought I'd give this a try. So as not to be degenerate though, I thought it should be limited to once per turn per colony, so you can't sit there and fill up on cubes so easily.

In the first playtest yesterday I tried this, and it worked pretty well. It felt a lot like the regular game, the only real difference being you never got screwed out of a resource, and I didn't miss that dynamic.

I wondered if the arbitrary 1x/turn limit was really necessary -- after all, you're already a little bit restricted on what you can carry. So in the 2nd playtest I tried removing that limit, even though I suspected it would cause a problem. Sure enough, I didn't like the result. Without the limit, there's less reason to visit someone else's planet to get resources, and with the Matter Converter tech it got a little ridiculous -- you could just go to the closest planet, pick up 57 resources, then come back and deliver them all for money and points.

So, even though I don't like arbitrary limits and I'm trying to remove rules, I think the 1x/turn/colony limit is necessary. This rule still allows me to chop off the production phase, which needs to be awkwardly explained before anybody has any colonies, and it gets rid of the "should this colony have a resource?" questions entirely. It also makes obsolete the idea of producing a resource immediately upon colonizing (which is just one more step in the fairly lengthy colonize process).

• Define Sunstar exactly

I think the simplest rule for sunstars is "treat this space hex as if it ere blank." In fact, it may be good to have a few blank space hexes (with a sunstar icon on back), and when you reveal a sunstar, you simply replace the hex with a blank one.

This has an unintended consequence (though one I'm OK with) of removing asteroids from being in the way. There's one rule clarification that's probably necessary... what happens if you explore into a sector with an asteroid field, and find a sunstar on the tile with the asteroid field? Do you roll for the asteroids? I think the answer would be no - you'd move in, flip the tile, replace it with a blank one, and then see if you roll for asteroids. I think that makes the most sense.

The other alternative would be move in, roll for asteroids, then explore the tile... either way would work, but I just want the rule to be clear and consistent.

• Draft starting resources

At the beginning of the game, it's possible the first players have an advantage over later turn players. That's why the later turn players got more money to start with. I've been increasing that compensation lately, such that players start with 10/20/30/40/50 based on their turn order. In related news, I had started players with their built-in shield charged with energy, just because people seemed to want that.

Adding 2 more paths out of Terra Prime helped the turn order thing a little, but it occurred to me that I could try something new: I could make starting resource cards for players to choose from. I like how that works in Chimera Station, where you draft starting resource cards in reverse turn order. I was going to try using that here, but in the end, this is what I tried:

I made 3 P1 cards, 6 P2-3 cards, and 6 P4-5 cards. For each player, I dealt 2 cards for their position, and let them choose between them. The P1 cards are worth about 10-20 credits, the P2-3 cards are worth 30-40 credits, and the P4-5 cards are worth about 40-50 credits.

I kinda liked this, and more importantly, I think players would see this as more interesting, more variety in the game. Originally the game achieved this by having the first N reward tiles (1 per player) give you some module which would set you apart from other players, differentiating the player profiles. Since everyone's early game should really be "establish a colony ASAP," this meant everyone would have a nudge in one direction or another. Of course, it'd be at random, not chosen.

Adding these starting resource cards are neat, but now I'm sort of double dipping on that mechanism. You might choose a starting resource card based on how you want to approach the game this time, then after dropping your first colony you might get something that works well with that, or something that doesn't. I don't love that, so I might just take out those first stage rewards altogether.

• Ion Cannon useful all turn

I've noticed a few times that when using an ion cannon (spending an energy for 2 weapons), sometimes you don't defeat the aliens, and then your next attack is super weak unless you spend MORE energy. I don't like that, so I think the ion cannon should continue to work until the end of the turn.

This would be consistent with the afterburner, I think. You'd activate the module by placing an energy on it, while active, it does its thing. At the end of your turn, you'd clear off any energy on your afterburner or ion cannon. I think this will make the ion cannon a lot more useful, a player with enough actions could potentially use a single ion cannon activation to fight several alien clusters!

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.

Eminent Domain Origins and Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory -- progress!

I've been devoting the last few weeks of Friday playtests to Eminent Domain origins (the Terra Prime reboot) and Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory (the title I'm leaning towards for EmDice). I think it's been going well overall, and I feel like progress is being made. Here's about where I'm at with each of those:

Eminent Domain Origins

In addition to making changes to Terra Prime that I've been wanting to make for years, I'm also hoping to improve and update the overall experience Here's how the recent changes have played out so far...

• Add one "any module" slot to the command ship.

I tried this, and have had mixed feelings about it. In the next play I will remove the extra module slot, and instead turn one of the Weapon/Shield slots into a Weapon/Shield/Cargo slot.

• Add 1 "any resource" hold to the command ship.

I have been liking this change, and I think I will likely keep it.

• Allow "Offload Colony Marker" at any time as a free action (describe this under "Load Colony Marker" and remove "Offload" as an action altogether)

This is absolutely a change I am keeping, as it makes sense, it removes an action from the action list, and frankly I've wanted to do it ever since the game came out.

• Use expansion setup: space hexes face up from the outset, with face down Exploration tiles on top.

I do like this change, but I'm struggling with a related aspect (see next).

• Set direction on tiles, so there's no possibility of illegal placements or configurations.

This is something I'm not too sure about. In the last test, I tried ignoring the "no 2 adjacent sectors may contain planets" rule and simply set the tiles out completely randomly. This had the effect of parts of the board with colony locations quite close together, while they were more spread out in other parts of the board. However, I also added 2 additional paths out of Terra Prime, which effectively shrinks the board a little bit.

In some ways, I think the completely random setup is beneficial, though it also means I might need to add resource tokens, because there could be more colonies in the game.

In other ways, I'm not sure it's ideal. I never liked the idea of having colonies in every space along a path, I liked that they had to be spread out a little bit (kinda like the settlements in Catan). But I'm not sure I have a good reason for that. However, the problem I'm running into now has to do with scoring for colonies...

Originally, I tied the scoring of colonies to 2 things... the type (color) of the colonized planet, and the distance from that colony and Terra Prime. I added extra points if there were asteroids in the sector, because you had to "brave" them to colonize there (though honestly that was a little fiddly and unnecessary). The idea was to make placement of the tiles more interesting, and to make colony choices (which color?) more interesting. That was also the reason for the "no 2 adjacent..." rule -- to make the planets group up together so you have to choose between them.

I think that scoring scheme was a mistake. The higher value planets are already found farther away from Terra Prime, and you already want to choose them (you'd seldom choose a blue planet over a red one, even if the red one wasn't worth 3 more points). What I wish I had done is reward the amount of total stuff in the sector (in addition to distance from Terra Prime). However, just scoring 1 point per icon in the sector (which would be the simplest way to count it) might not really be enough.

One solution is to dictate the orientation of the tiles, and then simply print numbers in the sectors (I could increase the numbers as the sectors get farther away from Terra Prime). This could replace the distance calculation as well -- you would just add up the numbers in the sector and that would be your score. However, there are some issues with that as well.

I'm currently debating whether it's better to have to count distance and add that to some value based on what's in the sector, or to simply add values printed in the sectors (which would mean a bit more work to re-design the tiles, and the unfortunate aesthetic of having to print numbers in the sectors).

• Re-examine distribution of hazards on exploration tiles (I haven't done this yet).

Still not sure about this. If I do it, I suspect I could change some of the alien clusters to "1 Warship + 2 Scouts" for example.

• Clarify reward sequence (all simultaneous, so you CAN keep goods gotten as rewards for colonizing).

This is a done deal for sure!

• Change Weapon module cost (a simple $20 each. Or even just $10?)

I've been playing with $10 weapons, which seems OK so far. I might nerf alien scoring (1vp/alien killed instead of 2), especially if I end up reducing the colony scoring a little bit.

• Consider changing the Shield action (people have trouble with "Do one, the other, or both: Buy a shield module for $10, charge shields for $10"). Maybe recharging shields should be free?

So far I've been using the original shield rules (1 action: optionally buy 1 shield module, then optionally pay to charge all shields).

• Change Delivery Optimizer to "+1 LP when you complete a demand tile. At game end: 1vp per demand tile collected."

This seems OK, but it's hard to tell because it's rarely used. I might like to force a heavy delivery strategy to find out.

• Start with energy on your built-in shield?

I have been doing this, and it seems OK so far.

On a similar note, I've been having colonies immediately produce as soon as they're created, so there's less wasting actions waiting for the new colony to produce. I've also tried ignoring the "no planet adjacent to Terra Prime" rule as well, all of this hopefully just speeds up the game a little bit.

In an effort to further streamline the action list, I will try ignoring the limit on Exploring, and just have that be wrapped into the Move action, and wrapping the Pacify and Attack actions into one. If I remove the Explore limit, then it might mean I ought to allow exploring out of a wormhole (I'd rather not do that), which leads to exploring 2 tiles at once (or that).

Finally, the Afterburner module (pay 1 Energy for 2 actions this turn) seemed WAY too good. I think it was probably a little too good before, but it didn't seem that bad because to power it efficiently you had to fill your module slots with shields, which limited the number of weapons you could have, making Afterburners pretty good for non-alien-fighting strategies, but alien hunters might still want regular weapons. Or else you could go with 2 shield modules, 1 Ion Cannon (pay 1 energy for 2 weapons this action), and some Afterburners if you wanted to kill a few aliens along the way.

But with the additional module slot, you could pretty easily get 3-4 shield modules and 2 Afterburners, and do 7 actions per turn, only needing to spend one of those actions every 3-4 turns to refuel. That felt like too much, even if the player who did it didn't score very well (I think it took him too long to set up and start abusing that).

So losing the extra module slot might make the Afterburner OK again, but I might try another version. We talked about this... 

Pay 1 energy: After each -> spent on a move action for the rest of this turn, you may immediately take an additional move action.

I'm not 100% sure that's any fewer actions really, but it means you have to spend those extra actions moving (and you only get them if you move), which means the Afterburner is good for zipping around the board, but not for doing a ton of other stuff. I'll try that out next playtest, but I might go back to the previous rule, as long as I remove the additional module slot.

Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory

I'm trying out "Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory" as a title for EmDice. So far it's my favorite of anything that's come up or that I've thought of. I'm open to suggestions for better titles!

With the recent changes (summarized below), I think the game has improved. Maybe the tech board could use a little more tweaking, and maybe the planets should be worth a little bit more (3vp instead of 2? 2vp apiece plus a bonus for most of each type?), but I think the game is in pretty good shape -- even better than t was before. Here are some of the new tweaks I've made recently:

• Added a 5th player's worth of dice. This required 12 more fighter/resource tokens for the pool (I don't know if that number is exactly correct or not), and a rule that probably should have been there anyway: If there are not enough planets to refill the Planet row at the end of a Survey role, the game end is triggered.
• Combined Produce and Trade icons onto the same die face. In retrospect this seems so obvious that I'm ashamed I hadn't already done it! For the same reasons I did it in the card game.
• Added a Politics icon for the 6th side of the die. You may discard a Politics icon at any time to change another active die to any face.
• Reduced the cost of most of the technology, except for the 3rd and 4th techs in the Advanced tree (which by definition have the benefit of an extra research icon from Improved Research), and the 3rd and 4th techs in the Diverse tree (which seem very powerful, and have the same planet requirement as the previous levels in that tree). The idea being that the higher level techs in the non-advanced trees should be easy enough to get without needing Improved Research, because you only have that if you are on the Advanced tree.
• Swapped some other techs around so that the other trees (non-Advanced ones) are more useful/powerful. So far this has led to more diverse play, which is a good thing.

In the last test and again in the next test I'm going to try no planet requirement for the 1st tech upgrade. That way you can research on turn 1 (rather than your only options being Survey, Colonize, or Warfare), and there's precedent in the EmDo expansions with things like the Fleet, Mining, and Political Influence tiles that don't require planets.

Terra Prime updates for Eminent Domain Origins

IT's finally time! Last week I played a 2p game of Terra Prime to teach one of my playtesters, yesterday I started making tweaks to my copy of TP (the one with my prototype expansion in the box), and tomorrow I will play some more games with these changes to see how I like them, and identify what else ought to change for the re-implementation as Eminent Domain Origins.

I've started noting rules changes in the rulebook too. Here are the tweaks I've implemented so far (and will try tomorrow):

• Add one "any module" slot to the command ship.
• Add 1 "any resource" hold to the command ship.
• Allow "Offload Colony Marker" at any time as a free action (describe this under "Load Colony Marker" and remove "Offload" as an action altogether)
• Use expansion setup: space hexes face up from the outset, with face down Exploration tiles on top.
• Set direction on tiles, so there's no possibility of illegal placements or configurations.
• Re-examine distribution of hazards on exploration tiles (I haven't done this yet).
• Clarify reward sequence (all simultaneous, so you CAN keep goods gotten as rewards for colonizing).
• Change Weapon module cost (a simple $20 each. Or even just $10?)
• Consider changing the Shield action (people have trouble with "Do one, the other, or both: Buy a shield module for $10, charge shields for $10"). Maybe recharging shields should be free?
• Change Delivery Optimizer to "+1 LP when you complete a demand tile. At game end: 1vp per demand tile collected."
• Start with energy on your built-in shield?

Players have suggested that they would like to be able to better customize their command ships, so I don't see any problem with adding 1 module slot that can hold any type of module. 

While I think I know why I did it, I feel it's annoying to have to buy a Cargo Hold in order to carry Yellium ("Silicon") at all, or to afford many of the upgrades. While that did keep some of the upgrades in the midgame, I will try giving players a 1-door cargo hold that holds anything in addition to the color-specific starting holds.

I've long regretted that offloading a colony marker was listed as an action,, required you to be at a colony, and gave a point to the opponent if it was their colony. I'm happy to cut that from the list of actions and just say that once loaded, you can offload a colony marker any time you want, without using an action. Thematically, the colony markers are equipped with low-power engines and autopilot to fly them back to Terra Prime, so if you find you don't need it, rather than jettisoning cryogenically frozen people into space, you can just send them back home.

I've never liked the complexity in the weapons costs. Each weapon you get is more useful than the last, so I made the costs escalate accordingly. However, that's more complicated than necessary, and basically means you'll never buy a 3rd weapon (you don't really need that many anyway)... there's no reason the cost shouldn't be more simple. I'm debating between making it a straight $10 and $20, not sure which way to go. Maybe just $10 would be fine, you could sort of use them as shields -- if you get hit without energy, you can lose weapons and get them back fairly easily for just $10 or 1 Brownium ("Crystal").

I'll see how these changes go tomorrow, and I'll look for more places to streamline the game.

General update to The List

About a year ago I revisited The List to take stock of the status of my game projects. I thought it might be nice to update that list a little bit, as some of the games on it have made some progress...

Published Games:
- Terra Prime (BGG)
- Eminent Domain (BGG)
- Eminent Domain: Escalation (BGG) (expansion)
- Eminent Domain: Exotica (BGG) (expansion)
- Eminent Domain: Microcosm (BGG)
- Isle of Trains (BGG)
- Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done (BGG)
- Isle of Trains: All Aboard (expansion)

Finished But Unpublished Games:
- Exhibit (BGG link)
- Eminent Domain: the Dice Game
- Dice Works (BGG link)
- Wizard's Tower (BGG link)
- Now Boarding
- Suburban Sprawl

Current Active Designs:
- Deities and Demigods
- Eminent Domain: Oblivion (expansion)
- The Pony Express
- Odysseus: Winds of Fate (BGG)
- Alter Ego (BGG link)

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

Old Ideas that Haven't gone Anywhere (Yet) - some of these have been getting stale as well:
- Rondel Role Selection
- Investigative/Tabloid Journalism
- Red Colony
- Clash of the Kingpins
- Time = Money
- Dating Game
- Ticket Please
- Moctezuma's Revenge
- Scourge of the High Seas

Let's take a closer look at some of these:
Published games:
- Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done (BGG)
I'm excited to say that Crusaders is moving forward at TMG! Adam McIver, now a full time TMG employee, has been spending some of his time working on the art and graphic design of the game (I shared the box cover recently), and it looks fantastic!
- Isle of Trains: All Aboard (expansion)
Dan Keltner and I finished our expansion to Isle of Trains for Dice Hate Me/Greater Than Games almost a year ago, and we've recently been told that it will finally be on Kickstarter in the next week or so! The final title of the expansion is Isle of Trains: All Aboard.
- Terra Prime (BGG)
In the near future (perhaps for TMG's 10th anniversary) we will be bringing back Terra Prime as a 2nd edition, with updated rules, expansion included, and set in the Eminent Domain universe. It'll be called Eminent Domain: Origins.

Finished But Unpublished Games:
- Exhibit (BGG link)
I'm disappointed in the current status of Exhibit. A European publisher was very interested, but a difference of opinion between me an another designer on "IP rights" sort of nixed that deal. I checked with an IP lawyer to ensure that my understanding was correct, which it was, but the whole thing has left a sour taste in my mouth.
- Now Boarding
I worked on this with Tim Fowers (Wok Star, Paperback, Burgle Bros, and most recently Fugitive). Since we made this game he has taken it in a bit of a different direction, and I think he might be making that version of Now Boarding his next project.
- Suburban Sprawl
Based on another DHMG/GTG contest - this time a dexterity game (which uses 57 cards, plus score sheets)- I designed Suburban Sprawl with Matthew Dunstan. In Suburban Sprawl you toss cards into play to build Residential, Commercial, Industrial, and Civic buildings. I was going for a light, quick game with a sort of SimCity feel that's easy to learn and play, and at that I think we succeeded. Unfortunately, we didn't win the contest :(

Current Active Designs:
- Deities and Demigods
Another attempt at Deck Learning, Deities and Demigods is like a role selection game, but the game calls the roles, and in random order. Players will have some control over which roles are in the deck, and can upgrade their efficiency at each role. The effects of the roles will allow players to move armies around a map in an effort to complete quests and control cities. Matthew Dunstan has been working with me on this one, and it has taken shape quite well, dare I say it's nearing completion. I still would like to add some more interesting board elements (terrain, or at least water), and I have yet to try the "expansion module" featuring Hades, a deity that was cut from the base game.
- Odysseus: Winds of Fate (BGG)
I keep circling and iterating on this one. I need to implement the mot recent change ideas and try it again.
- Eminent Domain: Oblivion (expansion)
3rd expansion to Eminent Domain. I worked out how this would play several years ago, and once Exotica was in production I finally started prototyping and trying it. I've gone through an iteration or two so far, and I think I'm close to something I could call the final phases of development, but I've been concentrating on other games lately so this one hasn't been played in a while.
- Alter Ego (BGG link)
Mike's always been a fan of this one. Alter Ego was finally shaping up, but it hasn't hit the table in a while now. I think with a little TMG Utah input and some nice art, this could potentially be ready for a GenCon 2017 release, but looking at the release schedule, that seems really ambitious (I don't think I can count on TMG development help on this one... too much going on over there).

Recent Designs That Are Not On The Front Burner:
- Rondel Role Selection
Another variation on role selection, this one got off to an OK start, but hasn't gotten any attention in a while.

Old Standbys:
- Hot & Fresh
I'm a little disappointed I never finished this one, but the most recent changes (several years ago now) seemed like a big step in the right direction. I'm just not sure how excited I am about a press your luck pickup/deliver game anymore.
- Dynasty
This is my shelved design that I'm probably most interested in, or at least the one I think might have the most promise as a "mediocre euro."
- Reading Railroad
I always think that Reading Railroad would be a fun word-building / connection game, but the truth is that people who like word games probably don't want to play a connection game, and people who like connection games probably don't want to play a word game. Still, I'd like to finish this one day.
- All For One (BGG)
All For One might be my single biggest disappointment. It is the game that really got me into the design hobby, and I thought it was good - really good - but it never got any publisher interest. It's suffered some setbacks, and now, almost 10 years later, I feel like it might be a bit old fashioned and in need of an overhaul, but I don't have the impetus to overhaul it.

Old Ideas that Haven't gone Anywhere (Yet):
- Investigative/Tabloid Journalism
I think a game where you put together parts of stories and embellish them to make them work would be a cute and fun game, but the theme may not really be very desirable, so I never revisited this idea, even though I think I had the main mechanism completely thought out.
- Ticket Please
A game about controlling gates in airports and moving people to their destinations, in the same scope as a Ticket to Ride seems like it could be really successful, I'm not sure why I haven't revisited this yet.
- Moctezuma's Revenge
Maybe it's because I don't really like press your luck games or deduction games much, but I never got back around to Moctezuma's Revenge, even though it sounds like a system that could make for a solid game.

I found a mini-review of Terra Prime, by BGG user Rachel Schnoor (tartujik) -- Thanks for playing!

 I came across this mini-review on BGG of my first published game, Terra Prime. It was buried in a geeklist by user Rachel Schnoor (tartujik). It warmed my heart a little bit to see such a positive review, even now... 7 years after the game came out:

This is also a pick-up-and-deliver space game, but it plays with more people than the last one I listed (up to 5 players), is longer, incorporates fighting as well, and has little cubes for goods (and sometimes you just want to play with little cubes). The goods are names brownian, greenium, bluim which gives you an idea of how seriously this game takes itself. The art is really fun too. You have to watch out for asteroids, fight aliens, explore new areas of space, set up mining colonies for the different resources, etc. To help you combat the hardships of space and to give you an extra edge - you can buy upgrades, but to do so you'd have to use cubes you can get victory points for, so it's a trade off. I guess this game hints at 4x type stuff, but really it feels more pick up and delivery to me - the rest of your options are there, but are less of a focus. For example - in order to fight aliens effectively you have to upgrade your ship, in order to upgrade your ship you have to pick up little cubes required to purchase upgrades, in order to pick up little cubes you got to lark around space a bit - you get the point. Most of the baddies are out in deeper space anyway, so you have the option to avoid (the super bad ones anyway) by avoiding deep space... on the other hand, you get extra victory points for exploring the most dangerous depths of the unknown. Anyway, this game is colorful and light-hearted, but don't let it's image fool you - it's got a lot of strategic options - AND is just a real good time. Fair warning though - there were many print run problems with this game so if you pick up a copy make sure to ask plenty of questions about the status of the components.

I'm glad people are still playing Terra Prime here and there. It'll be awesome to see those that enjoyed the game come out of the woodwork when the game gets rebooted as Eminent Domain Origins (probably next year)!

The List - July 2015

GenCon is coming up in two weeks, so it's probably a good time to revisit The List and take stock of my designs and prototypes. It's been a while since I've done this, and I'm interested to see just how much this list has changed over time!

Published Games:
- Terra Prime (BGG)
- Eminent Domain (BGG)
- Eminent Domain: Escalation (BGG) (expansion)
- Eminent Domain: Exotica (BGG) (expansion)
- Eminent Domain: Microcosm (BGG)
- Isle of Trains (BGG)

Finished But Unpublished Games:
- Exhibit (BGG link)
- Eminent Domain: the Dice Game
- Dice Works (BGG link)
- Wizard's Tower (BGG link)
- Now Boarding

Current Active Designs:
- Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done (BGG)
- The Pony Express
- Odysseus: Winds of Fate (BGG)
- Eminent Domain: Oblivion (expansion)
- Alter Ego (BGG link)
- Isle of Trains More (expansion)
- Suburban Sprawl

Recent Designs That Are Not On The Front Burner:
- Deities and Demigods
- Rondel Role Selection

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

Old Ideas that Haven't gone Anywhere (Yet) - some of these have been getting stale as well:
- Investigative/Tabloid Journalism
- Red Colony
- Clash of the Kingpins
- Time = Money
- Dating Game
- Ticket Please
- Moctezuma's Revenge
- Scourge of the High Seas

Let's take a closer look at some of these:
Published games:
- Terra Prime (BGG)
I'd love to bring back Terra Prime as a 2nd edition, with updated rules, expansion included, and set in the Eminent Domain universe. It'd be called Eminent Domain: Origins, and one of these days it may be possible.

Finished But Unpublished Games:
- Exhibit (BGG link)
I'm disappointed in the current status of Exhibit. A European publisher was very interested, but a difference of opinion on whether a certain person's IP rights were infringed has caused it to be delayed - maybe indefinitely. I checked with an IP lawyer to ensure that my understanding was correct, which it was, but the whole thing has left a sour taste in my mouth.
- Now Boarding
I worked on this with Tim Fowers, who's recently finished a kickstarter for his co-op game Burgle Brothers. Maybe he'd like to print Now Boarding as his next project? Maybe I'll pitch that idea to him :)

Current Active Designs:
- Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done (BGG)
I'm happy with this one as-is, but there's a desire from the TMG staff to add super-unique faction abilities (with unique upgrades and buildings, like the factions in Terra Mystica).
- Odysseus: Winds of Fate (BGG)
I keep circling and iterating on this one. I need to implement the mot recent change ideas and try it again.
- Eminent Domain: Oblivion (expansion)
3rd expansion to Eminent Domain. I worked out how this would play several years ago, and now that Exotica is in production I've finally started prototyping and trying it. So far, so good!
- Alter Ego (BGG link)
Mike's always been a fan of this one. Back on the front burner, Alter Ego is finally shaping up. I think with a little TMG Utah input and some nice art, this could potentially be ready for a GenCon 2016 release!
- Isle of Trains More (expansion)
Dan Keltner and I are working on an expansion to Isle of Trains for Dice Hate Me/Greater Than Games to follow up our contest winning entry.
- Suburban Sprawl
Working on the next DHMG/GTG contest - this time a dexterity game (which currently only uses 54 cards, plus 8 scoring cards) with Matthew Dunstan. In Suburban Sprawl you toss cards into play to build Residential, Commercial, industrial, and Civic buildings. I'm going for a light, quick game with a sort of SimCity feel that's easy to learn and play.

Recent Designs That Are Not On The Front Burner:
- Deities and Demigods
Another attempt at Deck Learning, Deities and Demigods is like a role selection game, but the game calls the roles, and in random order. Players will have some control over which roles are in the deck, and can upgrade their efficiency at each role. The effects of the roles will allow players to move armies and fleets around a map in an effort to complete quests/tasks and control cities.
- Rondel Role Selection
Another variation on role selection, this one got off to an OK start, but hasn't gotten any attention in a while.

Old Standbys:
- Hot & Fresh
I'm a little disappointed I never finished this one, but the most recent changes (several years ago now) seemed like a big step in the right direction. I'm just not sure how excited i am about a press your luck pickup/deliver game anymore.
- Dynasty
This is my shelved design that I'm probably most interested in, or at least the one I think might have the most promise as a "mediocre euro."
- Reading Railroad
I always think that Reading Railroad would be a fun word-building / connection game, but the truth is that people who like word games probably don't want to play a connection game, and people who like connection games probably don't want to play a word game. Still, I'd like to finish this one day.
- All For One (BGG)
All For One might be my single biggest disappointment. It is the game that really got me into the design hobby, and I thought it was good - really good - but it never got any publisher interest. It's suffered some setbacks, and now - almost 10 years later - I feel like it might be a bit old fashioned and in need of an overhaul, but I don't have the impetus to overhaul it.

Old Ideas that Haven't gone Anywhere (Yet):
- Investigative/Tabloid Journalism
I think a game where you put together parts of stories and embellish them to make them work would be a cute and fun game, but the theme may not really be very desirable, so I never revisited this idea, even though I think I had the main mechanism completely thought out.
- Ticket Please
A game about controlling gates in airports and moving people to their destinations, in the same scope as a Ticket to Ride seems like it could be really successful, I'm not sure why I haven't revisited this yet.
- Moctezuma's Revenge
Maybe it's because I don't really like press your luck games or deduction games much, but I never got back around to Moctezuma's Revenge, even though it sounds like a system that could make for a solid game.