Division of Labor 5p playtest

 I finally got a 5p test in of Division of Labor last night! It went alright. There was one brand new player, and the rules took us almost 30 mins for some reason - I sometimes think teaching a game is harder to do on TTS than IRL, but that did seem excessive. Then the play took a full 2 hours, which is on the high end of the range I expected. I'd prefer a little shorter duration, but I don't think 2h is out of the question for 5p. Also, I think that game took longer than average due to the new player, but of course, every person who plays after publication will be a new player at some point! 

I got a lot of feedback about certain aspects of the game, all of which is useful, but my goal for this test was specifically to see how 5p worked, and what changes would need to be made to accommodate the 5th player. Here are some observations I made specific to 5p:

1. Turn order compensation 

For 5p, I reduced the number of rounds from 5 to 4. This is mostly to keep the duration down, and I think it was fine, but it also means the player that goes last in round 1 (arguably the worst position) also never gets a chance to go first, which seems like a clue that turn order compensation would be in order. This came up in our last 4p game as well, and I just haven't gotten around to trying it yet. My thought is to give late turn order players (maybe just the last player) a random cube from the bag... or if that's not enough, maybe 2 cubes.

2. Penalty tracks 

Because there is 1 fewer round (and relative to 2-3p games, you get your 3rd worker 1 round later as well), you end up doing approximately 4 fewer turns, which means about 8 fewer penalty track bumps on average... Which means players won't be pushing up against game end penalties-though the early game in-game penalties are probably fine). I might want to reduce the track lengths for 5p, probably taking a space out of the middle section (between the 1st and 2nd penalties).

I seem to recall having a similar thought for 4p, so maybe the penalty track board could be two sided, with 4-5p penalty tracks on one side, and 2-3p tracks on the other that are 1 space longer. 

3. Worker spaces 

I was afraid this would be a problem... In lower player count games, there has always been enough worker spaces to go around, we've never had a player be unable to place a worker (though if enough players earn their extra worker off the training track, I think it's not impossible). In 5p, the way I had it set up, in the turn you get your 3rd worker automatically, there will be 14 worker spaces, and 15 workers (or more!). So immediately this is a problem. For the playtest we said that if you are unable to place a worker, you get a consolation prize of 1 cube of your choice. 

That allowed us to play, but it's not an ideal solution. I think I need to make sure that there are always enough spaces for all the workers in play. However, in a rare case where multiple players train their extra worker, there will be situations where this problem arises, unless I add a LOT of extra spaces (which might not be so terrible, perhaps). So, I'll think about how many spaces I'd need at an absolute maximum and consider making that available (a fortuitous side effect is that means almost always there will be some islands where the cubes accumulate and then you split like 6 cubes instead of 3). Failing that, another consolation prize option could be a free Explore action in any island you want... That's not nothing. Maybe also a random (or chosen) cube. If the consolation could be useful enough, then that might be preferable to the setup getting out of control! 

4. Letter token limit 

I had been scaling the number of each letter token because I thought "naturally there ought to be enough to go around." My last epiphany was that maybe scaling those isn't actually necessary, mostly because not every player will be going for them anyway. So lately I have been using 5 of each token no matter the player count. That's more than the 3 I had previously used for 2p games, which means there can be more of a back-and-forth fight for majority perhaps, and also that blue cubes don't become meaningless so quickly... 

My concern for 5p was that despite that revelation, 5 players might just be too many for that number of tokens. In our game last night, 2 players went heavily into the set collection (1 got a complete set, the other got shut out of one of the letters, costing them 4vp), 1 more ended up with 3 of the letters, and the last two players only got 2 letters. That result wasn't too bad really, and if it's common, then maybe 5 tokens per letter is enough after all. I'm tempted to up that a little bit though, maybe just 1 more of each token... Though I'd hate to change setup for only one player count :/ So maybe I'll leave it as 5 for now. 

Also, we upped the majority bonus a tiny bit... Instead of 1 point per majority, we got 2 points for a clear majority, and 1 point for a tie. I'm not sure if this was any better, but at least it was a little more complicated :) I do kind of like the idea of majority feeling worth going for.

Another suggestion that has come up, probably instead of a majority bonus, is to allow players to *spend* the letters for some effect. I'm not sure what effect would make sense - boosting actions, I guess. Maybe I could color code the letter tiles, so you spend the red one to boost the red action, for example, making them similar to the cubes "in hand," only they don't cancel penalties, and they are potentially worth more points. Does that mean they're better, or worse?

5. Letters "over-centralized"? 

Not related to 5p, but a concern keeps coming up (from the same people, so it may or may not be a universal concern) that the letter set collection is basically worth too much, they felt like the winner did that, and if you want to compete, you cannot ignore the set collection. I am not sure if I 100% agree that it's a problem, but I DO 100% agree that it would be bad if that were true!

Potential solutions, if it IS a problem, include:

* Nerfing the points, especially at the high end (doesn't have to be exactly triangular)

* Boosting the value of other aspects (e.g. buildings score face value rather than 1vp)

Side note on the set scoring...

Currently I'm using triangular scoring for different letters plus majority bonus for each. I also liked the multiplicative scoring (number different x number same) with a majority bonus for each as well, which was out of control when the letters scaled per player count, but is ok with a max of 5, though it *can* get up to pretty high scoring. Someone recently suggested RA monument type scoring, where you get triangular type score for variety, and then for each letter you get a flat bonus if you have at least 3 of them (so nothing for 1 or 2, except the set scoring) - that's pretty similar to the majority bonus, but I like that you don't have to count everyone else's stuff to get your score, so maybe I should try that - maybe 0/0/1/2/3vp for 1/2/3/4/5 of each type (AKA 1vp for each letter beyond your 2nd of each type).

6. Also unrelated to 5p, a suggestion came up that I don't want to forget about, so I'll include it here. It happens to be something I'd considered initially. but haven't given any further thought to yet. The suggestion was to make the Island tiles more distinct, more different from each other, perhaps by adding some kind of effect to them. For example:

• When you Split here, take a letter tile from the Choose player
• When you Split here, take a cube from the Choose player
• When you Place here, take a [red] cube from the bag into hand
• When you Choose here, you may add a cube of your choice from the bag to the island

I think this kind of thing could give the islands a bit more character

Division of Labor: My favorite mechanisms

 Jamey Stegmaier has a video series on his YouTube channel called My Favorite Mechanisms in which he makes short videos for various games he has played, highlighting mechanisms he finds interesting, clever, or fun. As I approach the finish line on my latest design, Division of Labor, I thought I might try to do a post highlighting some mechanisms in the game that I'm particularly proud of or happy with. So here we go!

I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement

The core mechanism of the game is worker placement mixed with I-Cut-You-Choose. While WP is a very common mechanism, ICYC seems a little underused, and I actually get the impression that it's a well-liked mechanism, with its popularity on the rise. But most games I can think of that use ICYC are small games where that's the whole game: from older titles like Colloretto, Zooscape, and Tussie Mussie, to new ones like The Great Split. There's a classic game called San Marco that utilized ICYC pretty well, though people say it's really only good at exactly 3 players. I did think Zooloretto did a pretty good job of building a bigger game out of the mechanism that is Coloretto - that's probably my favorite entry in the genre so far.

Division of Labor uses ICYC to drive a game that has a lot more going on, which I think came together pretty well.

"Penalty" tracks

As a key part of the ICYC mechanism, I think a "poison pill" is necessary - like the penalty you get in Zooloretto for taking an animal into your barn because you haven't got room for it in an enclosure. In Division of Labor, you are able to do 2 different colored actions per turn, but your split might have 3 or even all 4 colors of action cubes in it. Doing the same colored action too often, or taking splits with extra cubes you won't be using are ways to introduce this idea of "poison" into the game, which helps make the splitting and choosing really work well.

Note that you can mitigate the in-game penalties with a couple of the actions by gaining cubes to store on your board, covering up the penalty spaces on the tracks. However, if you do a particular action too many times, you could still end up with some negative points at the end of the game.

Overbuilding

A happy accident in Division of Labor is the dynamic born of the ability to cover up smaller buildings with larger ones of the same shape. I initially allowed this as a way to sort of increase the amount of space to build, so it wouldn't be too frustrating. But it led to a dynamic where building early for the uncovered benefit on your player board made you susceptible to being covered up, while waiting and building later in the game could potentially be better for scoring (cover up opponents' buildings, and ensure yours are in play to score at game end). That was an unintended dynamic that emerged, and one I'm pretty happy about. 

Overbuilding also makes the game feel a little more interactive than some euro-style WP games. 

Explore as a backup option

In Division of Labor, there are 4 actions color-coded to the action cubes, but anytime you're resolving an action with some cubes, instead of the action associated with those cubes' color, you may opt to Explore - drawing 1 tile per cube and choosing one to add to the island, augmenting the whole island for everyone. Doing this gives you a small benefit of your choice from what's available on the tile you added (a free level 1 building - if you haven't already built it, a free icon token - if any remain, or a free cube of a particular color). of course, the more tiles you draw to choose from, then more options you have.

Being able to Explore, which is never amazing but is also never bad - it's always a little bit good - means that you're never stuck with cubes you cannot use, and it also means you can explore with your first action in an attempt to improve your second action, making room for clever plays.

One of the building types allows you to draw additional tiles when you explore, which means you'll have a lot better odds of getting something useful, facilitating these clever plays even more.

Division of Labor v2.4 -- By Jove, I think I've got it!

 I've given this game a few tests, and made some tweaks each time, and finally have decided to add it to my pitch list. Which means I think it's "done" enough to pitch, even if I think small improvements could still be made - in this case mostly to do with thematic consonance.

Rather than paste the entire rulebook (v2.4 5-24-24) here, I'll link it, and provide a layman's summary below.

In Division of Labor, players are officers in some entity that is exploring and developing a new area - currently we're talking about a new, uninhabited planet, but perhaps it could be a newly discovered island, or some other (uninhabited) area. I'm not trying to model colonialism here!

EDIT TO ADD: maybe a better theme is this...

You and your siblings are heirs to a newspaper magnate. It may have made your father rich, but in this day and age, print media is out, and the newspaper is failing! If you are to salvage your father's legacy, you'll need to revamp the whole operation and bring it into the modern era. Which one of you will build your father's old newspaper business into a media empire?

EDIT AGAIN ON 6/14 TO ADD: I liked the novelty of the media empire theme briefly, but quickly grew tired of it. I'm working with this for the time being...

Lead a tribe of voyagers, sailing the seas with other tribes and discovering new islands everywhere you roam to explore, develop, and inhabit!

In any case, each round you reveal a new "Island," which is a worker placement space with 2 slots: one labeled "Choose" and the other labeled "Split." At the beginning of each round, you draw a random assortment of action cubes for each Island, and then players take turns placing workers. The first player to place in a space takes the "Choose" slot, while the 2nd takes the "Split" slot - immediately splitting the action cubes into 2 piles. 

Once all workers have been placed, you'll resolve the Islands from left to right - at each one, the player in the Choose slot will choose one of the available piles and use it for their turn, and the player in the Split slot will use the remaining pile for their turn. On your turn you'll do up to 2 actions based on the colors of cubes available to you, the more cubes of that color, the better.

After resolving your turn, you must advance "penalty" tracks in each color -- one advance on each track that had any cubes present in your pile, whether you used them or not. If you get too far along a penalty track, you'll suffer a penalty: that action becomes 1 cube more expensive for you. You can overcome this penalty by gaining an action cube via a certain action and placing it on your player board, covering that penalty. Those cubes can be kept for endgame points, or spent to boost future actions if you're short the cubes you need.

You keep doing that for about 5 rounds, then you count up your score. Things that are worth points are:

1. Cubes on your board (covering penalties) are worth 1 point each
2. Buildings in play are worth 1 point each (note that a higher level building can be built over the top of a lower level building of the same type -- yours or an opponent's! So if your building gets built over, it doesn't score a point anymore). Each level 3 building also has a bonus scoring condition that can be worth a chunk of points
3. Things you collect score - there are 5 icons, and you score the [number of different icons you have] x [the number of any single icon you have] (so it's good to get lots of one icon, and 1 each of the others). [EDIT: either this multiplicative scoring, or just a triangular score for different icons] There's also a 1-point majority bonus for ech icon (friendly ties)
4. There's a Training/Research track, and you advance a training marker and an Research marker on it. The training marker is not worth points (it can unlock a new worker though), but it makes way for the Research marker, which is only worth points (the Research marker cannot move past the Training marker)
5. Finally, there is a point penalty for being too high on each of the penalty tracks

And that's it, most points wins!

Division of Labor (I Cut YouChoose Worker Placement) v2.0

The Story So Far

Some time ago I posted about some ideas about, and even a first playtest of, an I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement game that I so cleverly (haha) called Division of Labor. I thought the theme was sound: in search of a new home world, we were bringing specialists of various types on colony ships, and as officers, we players would boss the specialists around, then divvy them up and send them to their next assignment. 

Mechanically, you'd place a worker where there were Specialist cubes, do some actions based on the color (type) and number of specialists present, then split the cubes into 2 piles, sending each to a different adjacent location. In this way, players would take turns sort of *choosing* a pile, then *splitting* a pile for future players. This worked, technically, as a sort of procedurally generated worker placement game, but it really didn't feel like I-Cut-You-Choose at all, which was the feel I was going for. 

At that point, I had to decide whether I wanted to pivot to a procedurally generated worker placement game, or find a way to make it feel more like I-Cut-You-Choose, or abandon the project altogether. I decided to give ICYC one more chance, and tried to identify what makes that mechanism really work in the first place. 

What makes ICYC tick?

As I mentioned before, I-Cut-You-Choose has roots in something called Fair Division. I came across a video one time about fair division of a cake between more than 2 people, which was interesting, but which is kind of irrelevant when it comes to using ICYC as a game mechanism.

You see, in Fair Division the goal is to make splits that are *as even as possible*, while in a game, you kind of want the opposite - you want as big a difference as you can get away with! In order to accomplish this, the things you're splitting need to have a few aspects to them:

* They can't be worth the same to everyone.

If you were to split some pocket change into 2 piles, it would be trivial which pile is better - you'd just take the one with more money in it! But if you're splitting something that could have a different value to you than it does to me, then it's a lot more interesting 

* I think it helps if there's a "poison pill" in the mix. 

I don't actually like things that are strictly negative, but many ICYC games have a dynamic where a certain type of thing is good *unless you get too many of them*, then it's a problem. Or an item could be bad, unless paired with another type of item. In Zooloretto, any type of animal is kind of poison if you don't have a pen to put it in, but you can spend money to discard the extra animals, thereby getting rid of the poison

Things like that seem to help give players a sense of agency over their splits, a way to try and engineer a situation wherein they can get what they want, even though they pick last.

For this to work, I think it's important to know for whom you are making the split, and you need to be able to tell what that player may want or not want. If you have no idea who you're splitting for or what they might want, then you can't really "make them an offer they can't refuse," if you know what I mean. 

For these reasons, I also think that splitting for 2 players at a time works better than trying to split for 3 or more players. Not that the latter is impossible, just that it's hard to do well, I think. 

In my original game, when you split cubes, it wasn't clear who would be choosing them, so it failed to feel like you were even doing ICYC at all. Some of my thoughts to change the game were along the lines of trying to make players split more explicitly for a particular other player. However, I never got around to trying a 2nd draft. Disheartened, I shelved the game until I had some epiphany or something.

New Blood 

Despite having shelved Division of Labor, I kept it on my mental list of things to work on next, and when I'd done what I could with Taiko Kiri, Eminent Domain: Coalition, The Great Goballoon Race, and The Sixth Realm (and stalling out on Isle of Adventure), I needed something to work on next, so my thoughts returned to Division of Labor.

I mentioned the premise in a few different online design forums, and somebody said they had a friend who was working on a similar idea for an ICYCWP game, but the main mechanism sounded a lot more straightforward than what I had originally tried to do. Rather than each worker placement trying to be both a "choose" and a "split," it would only be one or the other -- worker spaces would take 2 workers each, one would split and the other would choose.

I felt inspired by this much more explicit ICYC format. Each worker space could be seeded with cubes related to available actions, as I had originally planned, and could take 2 workers. I could see four ways it could go:

1. First worker to a space splits the cubes, second worker to the space chooses
   One problem here is that you'd never know what player you're making a split for - so that's not ideal, given my above conclusions
2. Second worker to a space splits the cubes, first worker to the space chooses
   In this scheme, the splitter would know who they're splitting for, which seems better
3. First worker to a space chooses whether to split the cubes, or choose
   I strongly suspect it'll be vanishingly rare that a player is so interested in making a particular split that they would pick "split," without even knowing who would be doing the choosing
4. Neither worker splits the cubes immediately - after all placements, first worker decides who splits and who chooses
   Unlike the last option, players splitting the cubes would at least know who they're splitting for. This sounds like the most agency for the first player into a space, but as above, I suspect that the vast majority of the time, the first worker will decide to choose rather than to split

Of all those, the second option (2nd splits, 1st chooses) makes the most sense to me. Option 4 sounds like a better deal for the 1st worker, but in practice I strongly suspect it'll be the same thing, so might as well use the simpler, more straightforward rule!

Division of Labor 2.0

So there we go... I modified my old Division of Labor prototype on Tabletop Simulator to sort of shoehorn this new format in, and gave it an initial test with Rick, and was very promising! Rejiggered a few things and had a 3 player test a week later, and it felt a lot like a real game!

At that point I still didn't really have all the values of things, I was telling players things like "this is supposed to reward you for having done a lot of building -- so if you build a lot, just assume you get an appropriate bonus." These last couple of tests went so well though, I filled in the values and we played a 3rd game a few days later and I think the structure of the game is in really good shape. I have made some more detailed changes for the next playtest, and I'm excited to get it to the table again. I'll post about the current state of Division of Labor 2.0 in a separate post, including the current rules. 

I had been inspired to combine Worker Placement and I-Cut-You-Choose in the first place because of Jamey Stegmaier's top 10 favorite game mechanisms video, wherein his top two mechanisms are, you guessed it, I-Cut-You-Choose, and Worker Placement. Now that I have a working prototype, if I can clean it up and make it good, maybe I should try and submit it to Stonemaier games. Stonemaier has some pretty clear submission guidelines for games they publish - relevant points from their website:

We’re looking for tabletop games (not RPGs) that capture our imaginations.

This is a tricky one, as I tend to be attracted more to clever mechanisms, but the story of the game is probably what captures most players' imagination. The story of Division of Labor made more sense with my original conception of it but less sense with the new version, so I could stand to revisit the story of the game and find something better 

The player count must accommodate a minimum of 2 players without a bot (we’ll add a solo variant to take it down to 1) and an upper range of at least 5, 6, or greater (without adding significantly to playing time or downtime). We’ll ignore submissions for 2-4 player games.

 My current prototype only supports 4 players, but it could easily expand to 5 or 6 -- the biggest question form e in that case being downtime - will there be too much? Will the game take too long? Is it OK if the game takes too long at high player counts?

We’re looking for event games–the featured main course at game night, not the appetizer or side salad–that play in 1-2 hours.

This is my wheelhouse, and Division of Labor seems to be in that range 

We’re looking for unique games–your game must feature something that has not been done before.

I haven't seen a combination of ICYC and WP mechanisms before, so I think Division of Labor offers a new twist on Worker Placement, and uses the underused ICYC mechanism which appears to be becoming popular 

We’re looking for games that flow well, which typically means each player’s turn is short and there are no rounds to break the flow. If your game has a number of phases (either within each player’s turn or within each round), please don’t submit it to us.

Division of Labor does have rounds, like most Worker Placement games do. To an extent I think that's part of the genre, and there's not a lot of bureaucracy between rounds, so it seems reasonable to me. Hopefully that won't disqualify it!

Hmm... I wonder if there's a way to do it without rounds, like you just place your worker, and if you place 2nd in a space, you split, the other player chooses, and then you both get your workers back -- and if you have both of your workers out and your turn comes around, you're just skipped or something. For flow-of-game purposes, I wonder if that might be worth considering

We’re looking for designers who are open to constructive feedback and who are willing to work on their game well after we accept it for publication, as our version of the development process is a collaboration.

I am definitely such a designer!

I don't see it on their list, but there's one other criteria I thought Stonemaier looked for -- maybe I heard it on a podcast or video somewhere, or maybe it's old news -- that they like to have a notable component that stands out and grabs people's attention, such as the Mech minis in Scythe, or the sculpted buildings in Tapestry. In Division of Labor, you are able to build higher level buildings on top of lower level ones of the same type. I was thinking a way to make that very clear, and maybe provide an interesting component, that perhaps the building pieces could be like those in the abstract game Gobblet. In that game you have little upside-down cups of various sizes, and you can place a bigger one over the top of a smaller one, thereby "gobbling it up." So what if the Level 1 buildings were a little sculpted mini, and the Level 2 and Level 3 buildings were similarly sculpted, but bigger, and hollow, such that they fit over the top of the smaller ones, enveloping them. That seems like it would be pretty cool!

ONE 18-card game design jam, THREE microgames!

18-card game jam

In the KBGames Community discord they just did an 18 card game design jam -- which is an exercise to think about designing a game under certain constraints - much like we used to do with the Game Design Showdown at BGDF.com back in the day. The only restraint on this jam was to use 18 cards and nothing else, but it was made clear that this restriction was more like a guideline, and not a hard and fast rule...

Worker Placement Microgame

I've posted recently about the progress I've made on a Micro Worker Placement game, inspired by an offhand comment I read on Twitter. I haven't really played that game again since that last update (I'm still keen to see how it plays after whittling it down to 16 cards in the deck), but I know that the game works, and isn't terrible, but I'm not sure whether I can claim it's really very fun, though I enjoy it.

I figured I might submit that Micro Worker Placement game to the jam... is that cheating? I came up with it before the jam started, but I didn't spend any more time on it than would have been allotted. The current version only uses 17 "real" cards, but it does use 8 more to track things, so it really comes in at 25 cards, which is over the limit by almost 40%. Maybe that's fine, but the point of the jam is to come up with a new idea. I wasn't particularly interested in making another 18 card game, but lo and behold, an idea came to me...

PYL Microgame

Inspired perhaps by all the Living Forest I'd been playing on BGA (that's a good game, by the way, and recently won the Kennespiel des Jahres!), I thought maybe I could make an 18 card Push Your Luck game with that blackjack mechanism like in Living Forest or Flip City.

So I did that. Of the 18 cards, 2 are for tracking your gems and points (you need 8 tokens, 4 per player, to track those things on these cards), 1 is a double sided "objective" card, and the remaining 15 make up the deck. There are 5 cards each of red, blue, and gold colored cards, and each card has a gem, and some number of letters on it. Originally each card's gem matched the card color, but then I decided to mix it up a bit, so for example, 3 of the 5 red cards have red gems, but 1 has a blue gem and one has a gold gem.

On your turn, you start flipping cards off the deck until you chose to stop, or until you "bust" by getting 6 or more of the same letter (A, B, or C). You are allowed to pay a gold gem to veto a card as its drawn (set it aside by the deck), then either stop drawing or draw again (up to you). This could be used to keep from busting, or to keep a particular color from scoring (see below).

After you stop, you collect gems: all gems of 1 color if you busted, two colors if you didn't. Then you get the opportunity to use the objective card to pay some gems for a star (stars are victory points in the game, it's a race to get 9 of them): 2 red + 1 gold on one side, 2 blue + 1 gold on the other, after using the card, you flip it over. Finally, you discard the cards and check to see if any colors score. 

The discard pile is kept organized - sorted by card color, and splayed so you can see the information on each card. This information allows you to make informed push-your-luck decisions. After each turn, if there are 4 (or all 5) cards of a color in the discard pile, then that color will score. It's possible more than one color will score at a time!

When you score a color, the player with the most gems of that color gets a star, and loses some gems of that color. The colors have a rock-paper-scissors relationship for breaking ties - for example, if tied for red gems, then the player with the most blue gems wins the point for red. Originally the rule was that you lose one gem when scoring a color, but once you started to get a big lead in a color, it felt pretty easy to keep it, and losing just 1 gem didn't close the gap very much. I'm torn between upping that to 2 gems lost, and something even more impactful, like 1/2 your gems (round up), or even all your gems. For my next test I'll try losing 2 gems and see if that feels like enough. Maybe losing 1 gem is fine after all.

I have to say, this game has just worked ever since the first playtest. The only tweak I made was to up the bust threshold to 6. I started with 5, but that led to a lot of turns where you only draw 2-3 cards and they weren't very interesting. 6 is much more dynamic!

Not only does this game work - that is to say it's a fully functional game - but I think it might actually be pretty good. As I've played more and more games I've found there's definitely some subtlety to it - when to stop not just to avoid busting, but to control which colors score, when to hit into a probable bust, when to spend gems to veto a card, and even when and whether to use the objective card.

I figured this might be a better candidate to submit to the 18 card jam, partly because I came up with it in the week between when the jam was announced and when it actually began (so that's closer, right?), and partly because it's 18 cards instead of 25... however it does require 8 tokens to track gems and stars. Still, that's less cheat-y, isn't it?

Lane Combat Microgame - Rift Paper Scissors

Another game I've been playing a lot of (and enjoying!) on BoardGameArena lately is Riftforce. To be honest, I've never been a big fan of lane combat games, I haven't even played very many of them. I liked SolForge I guess, but I don't recall playing any others I really enjoyed much.

But Riftforce is very cool. You start by drafting a team of 4 guilds, and they encourage different teams by (a) removing 1 team from the draft each game, and (b) dealing you a random guild to start off with - so you can't be sure to get your favorite team. Though truth be told, a lot of the combinations don't feel terribly different from each other, and in any given game I feel like I effectively ignore one of the guilds in my deck, so I'm not sure the games feel all that different to me. I look forward to playing with the expansion some day, which adds a bunch more guilds... and I even had a little fun thinking up custom guilds, something this game lends itself to easily for anyone so inclined. Maybe I'll make a new blog post to share those. But I digress...

Since I was thinking of 18 card games for this game jam, my mind ran through a few main mechanisms to see if anything jumped out at me as a way to do them in a small deck game. So of course, my mind quickly jumped to the idea of a small deck lane combat game, like a mini-version of Riftforce. Since I didn't have the componentry to track damage on all the cards like in Riftforce, I thought maybe I could use a Rock Paper Scissors relationship to resolve little combats.

A long time ago, after Brainfreeze became an iPad app, I had some thoughts about a follow up game - specifically for digital implementation - in which you would have cavalry, archers, and footmen cards in a deck, and you would place them in different lanes (probably 3), or else send them to train, which would occupy the card for a few seconds, then level it up. Every so often (maybe every second for example), the computer would "resolve" each lane, comparing the bottommost cards and removing the loser - where a level 2 card would beat a level 1 card, but if both cards are the same level, then there'd be a rock-paper-scissors relationship to determine who wins (in the case of a tie, like two level 1 archers against each other, maybe they're both removed). If you had cards on a lane when it resolved and the opponent did not, then you would get a point. Come to think of it, that decade old idea had some similarities with Riftforce!

So in my lane combat microgame (affectionately known as Rift Paper Scissors, due to the RPS combat resolution and the Riftforce inspiration), I figured there could be 3 battlefields, and you would have a small hand of cards that are either Rock, Paper, or Scissors. On your turn you would play 2 cards of the same type (rock, rock), play any 1 card and activate it, or discard a card to activate 2 cards of that type on the board. Activating a card meant attacking an opponent's card in the same lane. A 4th option you had on your turn was to resolve 1 lane and refill your hand. When resolving a lane, which was represented by a face don card from the deck, the player with the most cards in it would score it, which would give you some kind of effect, as well as some stars (vp). When there were no longer enough cards to refill the lanes, the game would be over, and the player with the most stars would win.

This first draft of the game did not work at all - it was far to common that you simply had the right card to dominate any card your opponent played ("you played Scissors there? I'll play Rock there and activate it"). And the effects I chose for winning a lane didn't even make sense - I had put "draw a card," but by definition you'd be filling your hand when you score it, so that wasn't great.

I made a 2nd attempt, expanding the cards to a sort of 6-way RPS... I gave each card a letter (A-F), and each letter had 1 letter it was really good against (deal 2 damage), one letter it was terrible against (deal 0 damage), and 4 letters it was evenly matched with (deal 1 damage). The 1st damage on a card would turn it sideways, the 2nd damage would remove it from the game. 

When I made the prototype for this, I started from the file that had red borders for rock, blue for paper, and yellow for scissors, so I ended up with 3 copies of each card, one with each colored border. I figured maybe the way to go was again, like Riftforce, to say you could play or activate 2 cards of the same letter, or the same color, or play 1 card and activate it. In general, this felt a little better with respect to game flow - the cards started to build up in play, but there was still something very wrong with the format..

In discussing this with a friend, Mohan suggested drawing 3 cards and simultaneously playing all 3 of them, 1 to each lane. That sounds potentially promising, so I might try something like that next. Perhaps after 3 rounds of placing the cards in their respective lanes, each lane could resolve by comparing the front-most cards head-to-head over and over (like my old iPad game idea), until only 1 side has cards remaining, and that side wins the lane.

With only 18 cards, at that point I think you'd have to shuffle everything up and begin again, maybe keep doing that until someone has won X lanes? Most of these ideas would work better with a larger deck, but with a larger deck, I might as well just play Riftforce!

ANYWAY... back to the game jam

The lane combat idea seemed like the best candidate to submit to the game jam, since I thought of it during the actual timeframe of the jam, and because it conforms to the actual rules of the jam (18 cards, nothing else), BUT I haven't been able to get it working, so I went ahead and submitted the Push-Your-Luck game instead.

So that's what I've been thinking about the last few weeks!

3 new ideas... 1 new game! ... Part 3: Micro Worker Placement

 In part three of my 3-part post, the 3rd (and final) idea I'll discuss was inspired by another comment on Twitter, this one about designing an 18 card game. I recall that Eminent Domain: Microcosm was originally a 16 card game with some tokens -- those tokens became cards as well, and in all the game has 32 cards and nothing else.

This time, the idea is a worker placement game, where each card has a worker on one side, and a placement space (or "building") on the other:

Micro Worker Placement

In this idea, a deck of 18 cards would be shuffled, and some cards would be dealt out building-side-up to make a board. Here were my initial thoughts on how it could work: 

Use a 3x3 board of worker spaces, then that leaves 9 workers for the players to use.

If it's a 2p game, maybe 9 is more than enough, maybe you start with only 2 workers, an can get 1-2 more over the course of the game, and the rest of the cards can go into the board (and maybe they add in over time, like Agricola)

OR, maybe (like Microcosm) you DON'T start with workers, but they're in a deck/supply, and on your turn you draft 1 and place it on one of the spaces

Obviously, the spaces resolve based on what's printed, but maybe they get better based on color matching or printed info on the workers/spaces.

Maybe you play multiple rounds, where each round is:

1. Shuffle all 18 cards, deal a board
2. draft and place 8 or 9 workers
3. reshuffle for next round

If you draft and then play a worker from a supply, there's no real ownership of workers... but there IS a record of the type/color of workers in play -- like Splendor, perhaps that could matter: Something is cheaper for each Gold worker in play, or you get more wood for each brown worker in play. All of that doesn't care who placed the worker

Quick progress

While visiting a design-minded friend, I described this idea, and we had a pretty good discussion about it. Mohan talked bout defensive drafting, and we ended up with an idea to have 4 or 5 buildings in the supply, and on your turn you'd choose 1 to add to the board (pre-seeded with 3 buildings), then you'd choose another card from the supply, turn it face down, and place it as a worker into a building. This sounded neat, because it would offer multiple chances to draft each turn (which building to remove from the supply and turn into a worker, then which building on the board to block up with that worker).

Since it seemed so simple, we ended up making a quick mock-up and giving it a try! The first draft game worked alright, so when I got home, I made a few tweaks for version 1.1, and made a Tabletop Simulator module for the game. Perhaps I'll get a chance to play some more soon. Here's what the current version (v1.1, as of 5/22/22) looks like:

GOAL:

Be the first player to gain 4 Stars. Gain stars by accumulating resources of 3 types, and exchanging them for stars.

SETUP:

1. Shuffle deck and deal 3 buildings into play
2. Deal 4 (or 5?) more buildings into supply
3. Take turns until there is 1 card left in supply
4. Reshuffle cards and repeat setup

TURNS:

1. Place 1 building from supply into play, adding it to the board
2. Place another card from supply face down (as a worker) in an unoccupied building in play
3. Resolve that building as much as possible
4. Replace the 2 buildings from the deck

• Use tracker cards to track resources (rotate/flip as needed)
• When getting more than 7 of a resource, gain a star and reset that resource to 0 (extra is lost)
• Note that some buildings let you exchange resources for stars at a better rate than that
• First to 4 stars is the winner

Untested ideas - already

While I'm pretty confident that the above game will work (indeed, v .0 technically worked), I'm not sure it'll be any good. I've already got some ideas of things I might like to try out once I get a playtest of the above v1.1 in:

It might be nice if the 3 different resources had a different feel or flavor. For example, maybe overshooting a resource dial (getting to 8+), instead of just getting a star, maybe 1 resource gives you 2 stars, one gives a star and another resource of your choice and the 3rd gives you 3 resources of your choice (then you play to 7 stars instead of 4, probably)

Currently there's no much in the way of "player positions" in the game... you temporarily have certain resources, but those are ephemeral, and it doesn't strike me as being really enough to base your moves on. But if you gained power/benefit somehow as you ratcheted up your trackers, then that might give a more lasting effect of your actions, and make it matter more whether you went for red or for blue. I've been talking to Keith Burgun, finally learned his 2p card game Dragon Bridge, and playtested his next evolution of that game into a deck building game. Dragon Bridge is pretty cool, actually -- it's a back-and-forth game where you're on a bridge with your opponent, and there's a dragon at one end, and you either want to push your opponent into the Dragon end of the bridge, or escape through the other end. However, every once in a while the dragon moves, making both of those objectives more difficult.

I wondered if I could take a lesson from Dragon Bridge and apply it to this worker placement game. I think what I'd need is incentive to go for one resource over the others, where that incentive changes over time. Well, it might take a few more cards (just 1?), but I think I figured out ho that could work:

Of the 3 resources, let's treat one of them like an "econ" strategy, where you build up some sort of resource, and then later turn that into power somehow. Maybe that's the resource which, when you overshoot it, you gain 3 resources of another type instead of stars.

Then let's treat the other 2 as sort of opposed to each other, maybe blue and red. Like in Dragon Bridge, where you're MOVING toward escape, and BUMPING your opponent toward the dragon, only in this case, each of those is just ratcheting up a tracker. 

So what if there were another tracker card, which was red on one side and blue on the other. Like the resource trackers that you rotate and flip to track your resources (0->1->2->3-FLIP->4->5->6->7->REWARD), this red/blue tracker would count down and flip. This countdown tracker could be an always-available worker placement space (maybe one that can take multiple workers) that lets you exchange a particular resource for stars at a really good rate (so it's great to use it) - and which resource it takes depends on which side it's on (red vs blue).

Since the other worker placement spaces basically let you gain resources, and trade them back and forth (or trade them for stars), this would be kinda like "I'm building up X, because that's what's "good" right now -- but pretty soon, the card will flip, and Y will be better, so then I might try and exchange my X for Y to score that better," like you're switching direction

Thinking about it even further, maybe the effect shouldn't be a worker placement space, but instead (or in addition?) should be that when you collect your 8th resource of a particular type, it should be much better if that countdown tracker matches the resource you pegged than if it doesn't. Like maybe you get +1 or +2 stars in addition to what you were already going to get. So based on whether you think the card will flip too soon, you might do well to stick with what you were pursuing (X or Y, or Z which is Econ, which would help you get more X or Y), or you might do well to try and exchange it, via some building that says like "pay 3 X, gain 4 Y" or something. Or maybe it could act as a modifier for the buildings that allow an exchange of that resource for stars (like: "pay 1 less resource of that type, get +1 star")

Some of that might add incentive to go for one of those 2 resources over the other. But they key to Dragon Bridge is that the dragon moves. Without that aspect, it's just a game of Tug-o-War. So in this game, the "dragon moving" would be that card flipping over, reversing which of the resources are super-efficient to go for. Some effect that happens regularly could tick down that tracker, which would go 4->3->2->1->FLIP, the card would flip over and the countdown reset. I'd like for that trigger to be intuitive or elegant and easy to remember.. Here are a few thoughts that might work:

• Whenever anyone flips over a tracker card for any reason (going from 3 resources to 4, overshooting a resource tracker, or spending down from 4+ to 3 or less)
• Whenever someone buys a star
• Some buildings could say to advance (or turn back) the countdown timer as part of their effect

There may be other possible triggers, maybe some combination of those will make sense when I try it.

If I can manage, in the scheme outlined above, I'd like to differentiate "red" and "blue" more than just "this one's "better" right now because of the state of the countdown timer" as well. As I said, maybe overshooting red could give you *2* stars instead of just 1, while blue gives you 1 star and 1 resource (or you steal a resource from the opponent?). Maybe along with that, red is slightly harder to collect a lot of at a time. Maybe blue-gaining actions tend to steal resources from your opponent, or otherwise make things harder for them?

Oh, and one more thought... perhaps the effectiveness of some buildings, at least in part, could be tied to how many of a particular resource you already have.

Like maybe resource Z is good at getting more resources (economy)  so maybe a building says something like "gain Z/2 units of X, or gain 1 Z" (meaning if you have 3 Z, you'd get 2X, but if you have 7 Z, you 'd get 4X).

Then there could be buildings for X and Y that somehow care how much you have already, like "gain Y/2 units of Y" perhaps? Or "gain X/3 stars, then lose 3X"?

I'm sure more of this will become clear with a little playtesting. In a way, it might be cleaner just to have a simpler, more straightforward microgame like v1.1 as-is, but all of this sounds good to me right now.

Division of Labor (I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement game) - quick thought on penalties

I just had a thought about the penalty tracks in this game. Here it is for reference. I'm happy to hear opinions on it in the comments, though without much context I don't know if it'll make a ton of sense:

Currently you advance once on each penalty track per cube of that color in the group where you place your worker. In other words, if you place in a space with 3-1-2-1 (red-green-blue-yellow) cubes, you would advance the red penalty track 3 times, the green and yellow ones once each, and the blue one twice. Granted, 7 cubes at once is probably uncommon, but that's just an example. Based on this, I can set the track lengths and penalties such that they'll fill up at about a certain rate - maybe for any given color, figure an average of 2 advances per turn, so if the first penalty is at space 7, that's about 4 turns - but it's variable based on whether you're concentrating on that color's action or not.

However, this can get a little swingy. If a space ends up with, for example, 5 red cubes, that's a significant penalty, and I'd hate for spaces to get so undesirable players don't want to choose them, lest they sit around all game, maybe gathering more and more cubes...

I was thinking about possible solutions to this potential problem, and came up with a few ideas. To keep spaces from becoming TOO poisonous, perhaps I need to limit the number of advances per track per turn somehow. Here are a few ways that could be done:

1. Limit the number of cubes allowed per group. That's arbitrary and weird, and might cause problems where you can't split cubes properly if certain situations arise.
2. Limit the number of advances per color. A simple version is that you only advance once on each track if there are any cubes of that color there (and of course you don't advance if there aren't). Or the limit could be some arbitrary number, like 3, which would preserve the current feel, but knock out the edge case where a space has a large number of cubes on it
3. Institute a clearing mechanism - if a split puts a group over a certain size (maybe 6?), return all those cubes to the bag. This could be used aggressively to remove cubes from the board (is that good or bad?)
4. Combine #2 and #3 above... after a split, discard any cubes beyond 3 of each color, and still advance once per cube on the penalty tracks. That would limit the penalty to 3 per color, and limits the power of actions as well, and it COULD be used to remove some cubes from play, if that's an interesting dynamic

Option #4 sounds interesting. A player could still boost their action by discarding cubes-in-hand, though I'm not sure how useful that would be.

Side note: Red and Blue actions keep getting better and better the more cubes there are (though the returns do diminish), but if you're only allowed to build 1 building or train 1 level per action, then the green and yellow actions miss out on utilizing extra cubes. Maybe you should be able to build/train as much as you can afford. I started with that rule, but thought I should switch to 1x/turn after the first playtest.

Just counting 0-1 penalty per track might be simpler, easier to grok, and quicker to recognize/resolve. It might also clear up any question about how boosting with cubes from hand works: if there's already a cube of that color, then you lose nothing by boosting whether you count the boosted cube or not (which might be a good thing rules-wise)

I'm happy to hear opinions or arguments for any of these schemes:

• Penalize each track at most once, if there are any number of cubes of that type there
• After splitting, discard cubes over 3 of each color
• Arbitrarily limit penalties to 3 per color per turn (but don't discard any cubes)

I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement: inaugural playtest and changes for next time

 Unfortunately, last weekend I was unable to do any playtesting, but the week before that I did manage to get a 2p test of the first draft of the I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement game (for lack of a better title, maybe Division of Labor?), and while just about every part of it needs some work, I'm relatively pleased with how it felt!

Prototype board

I have put together a physical prototype, but I'm not sure if I'll ever actually use it... I also uploaded those files to Tabletop Simulator (actually, someone volunteered to do that for me this time, and they did a much more sophisticated job than I probably would have!), and that's how I was able to get that first test in. The board I made is pretty uninspired:

First draft board for ICUC WP (working title: Division of Labor?)

Those center spaces are supposed to represent the spaceship / starting spaces, and even though it's awful graphic design, I was using those spaces as each player's starting 2 spaces. Yes, you'd split 8 cubes into 2 piles, and put them both into that odd shaped space -- that space was to act like 2 spaces at once. When you place there, you choose 1 pile of cubes and ignore the other, leaving it for the next person to place there. I have attempted to improve on that for next time, but I haven't had a chance to try it yet:

2nd draft of game board - to try next time

When splitting, follow the arrows
This was done in MS Paint, sorry about the 2 different styles of arrow!

This 2nd draft seems likely a little clearer, and closer to my initial intent to begin with. Each player now has their own 2 spaces (in their player color) in the center 3x3 section of the board. The very center space isn't really part of it, and neither are the 4 corners of the board (though I guess they could be). That leaves 44 spaces - I have no idea if that's a good or bad number!

8 does feel like a decent number of cubes to split at the beginning of each round. I've got players making that initial split concurrently, behind a screen, then revealing and placing the piles in the starting spaces. One question that came to mind is what to do if a starting space still has the 4 cubes from last round in it... presumably you'd add to them, which might be fine. I wonder if a max number of penalty track advances (per color) would be in order, mostly for that situation...

The player board worked as expected, as did the "research" track*. I had forgotten to make a file for penalty tracks, so the guy who made the mod for me did some up on his own.

* Side note: while I've been calling that a Research track, the buildings are more like your technologies, and the "research" ended up being extra workers and VP, so maybe better would be to call that a Training track

Training track and Workers

In the 1st draft, I went with [no effect] / [+1 worker] / [+1 worker] for the effects of the top token, and then [1vp] / [3vp] / [6vp] for the bottom token. I also started us each with 4 workers apiece. We were playing a 2 player game, and 4 workers to start felt like way too many. I could see more workers being a good idea in a game with more players, as there would be more spaces to utilize, but I'd have to try it to be sure. With 2 players I think perhaps starting with just 2 workers might be good (perhaps start with 2/3/4 workers for 2/3/4 player games).

Starting with too many workers already, adding another at 2 steps on the Training track seemed too easy, and the thought of adding a 2nd new worker on top of that didn't sound as attractive anymore, so next time I am going to try changing the 2nd space effect to [ne effect] instead of [+1 worker] and see if that feels more appropriate.

I also bumped up the VP values of the 2nd marker, as they just looked weak (not sure exactly what that should be worth yet).

Penalty tracks

I think the 1st draft penalty tracks might be a good length, but the penalties themselves need some work. The only in-game penalty that I could think of was increasing the cost of actions by a cube, but it turns out that causes some problems and raises a lot of questions. My opponent (Rick) suggested just making it loss of VP at game end, and that sounded like a good fix. I would have liked to have some in-game issue for players to have to deal with, but for now I'll try -2/-3/-5 VP (cumulative). You can still get out of these penalties (left to right) by covering hem with cubes "in hand" of the appropriate color.

The Actions

All of the actions in the game sort of worked, but it was a little weird how some of them (Explore, Experiment) worked no matter what, and some (Expand, Exploit) required a tile to have been Explored already in that location. I had figured it would work out, as Green and Blue cubes would just be "poison" if there wasn't a tile there yet, and Red cubes would become worth less and less as the board filled up with tiles. In a way, I like the sound of that, but realistically, it didn't feel great - a little too frustrating, especially if the red cubes just refuse to come out of the bag for some reason, and you just can't build anything at all.

Rick had a good suggestion for this as well: basically find a way to be able to Explore no matter what. My next draft will switch out the red action (Explore) with a new one: draw X cubes out of the cube bag and keep one of those "in hand," put the rest back in. Compare that to the Explore action, where you draw X tiles, choose 1, and get a bonus from it (which could be 1 cube in hand)... some of the tiles have no cube shown, so theoretically this new action will offer better choice of cube than Exploring (besides, if you take a cube when Exploring, then you're out a free scoring icon or building)

But we still need a way to draw tiles! So  let's say that ANY action could be used to Explore instead of the action indicated by the cubes' color. I think this will help a lot - you can ALWAYS explore, which populates the board with tiles, and gives you a thing, but maybe the specific actions are more efficient at their job. For example, Exploring can get you a Level-1 building for free, but your choice is limited, and it can never give you a Level-2 or 3 building at all. Similarly, Exploring can get you 1 scoring icon, but the Blue action can get you 1 per cube, so potentially several icons. And all of these are bolstered if you have built buildings to support them!

Oh, and on that note: I think the building that lets you draw 1 extra tile with exploring could apply that ability when drawing tiles (when Exploring) AND cubes out of the bag (when Recruiting - the new action).

Can't wait until next playtest!

Well, that about summarizes the changes I want to try next time I get a chance to play this game. Hopefully this weekend!

If this sound interesting to you, and you would like to blind test it on TTS with your group, let me know, I can probably get you access to the mod. I'd just ask for feedback in return!

I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement: Further progress

I spent the last week on vacation in Hawaii, and that gave me some time to think about stuff, and I chose to spend much of that time thinking about this I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement game design.

I like thinking out loud - I started my game design career spouting off ideas in the BGDF irc chat room to whoever would listen (even if that was just me, reading a transcript later). Terra Prime was largely designed that way, thinking out loud in BGDF chat and forums. Over the last few days I've tried something similar... I posted a few Twitter threads:

https://twitter.com/sedjtroll/status/1392214318989545472?s=20 ("poison pill" in ICYC)

https://twitter.com/sedjtroll/status/1394099337664163840?s=20 (a Menahune theme? Nah...)

https://twitter.com/sedjtroll/status/1393838830197698561?s=20

https://twitter.com/sedjtroll/status/1394832730148405249?s=20

https://twitter.com/sedjtroll/status/1394920800415715336?s=20

Thinking through those, and seeing some of the responses, has helped me visualize the game much more clearly, and I think I'm close to being able to create a prototype (if I can motivate myself to do so... that's often a stumbling block for me!). There are still some details to work out, but some of that happens for me during the actual prototyping process. Here's the shape of the game as I see it at the moment:

Players are officers in an organization that has sent multiple colony ships full of cryogenically frozen specialists out into the black, seeking a new homeworld. Now that we've arrived, groups of specialists are "thawing out," and we're directing them to do their thing, and then splitting them into smaller groups and sending them to adjacent sectors.

Each ship generates ~8 random specialists (colored cubes in 4 types) each round, which you will split into 2 groups to begin the round. Each player will do this simultaneously to seed the board with 2N spaces with cubes (plus any others that remain from previous rounds). Then you'll take turns placing workers (maybe 4 per player to start) where there are cubes.

When you place a worker on a space, you will mark off each of the cubes there on tracks per color. There will be thresholds on each track, beyond which you will receive in-game or scoring penalties, so marking off things is generally bad - but it's necessary... ideally you won't mark off too many more cubes than you need to (or too many cubes that you don't get the benefit of using). You will then be able to activate up to 2 types of cubes for their effects. Each type of specialist does an action:

Explore: For each cube of this type, draw 1 tile from the bag. Choose 1 to place in this space and return the rest. These tiles represent information about the local area. They will indicate one of the cube colors, a building type, and a resource icon, and when you place a tile, you get to choose one of those (take a cube of that type into hand, place a level 1 building of that type from your board, or take a resource of the indicated icon) 

Expand: Place a building from your player board in that space, as long as there are "enough" cubes to cover its cost. Level 1/2/3 buildings require 1/2/3 cubes, and a L(n) building can only e built where a L(n-1)  building of that type already sits. If you have enough cubes, you could build 2 buildings in one action. Only 1 type of building can be in each space, L(n) stacks on top of L(n-1), and at the end of the game, some scoring is based on the buildings showing from above. Each building you remove from your player board reveals some in-game benefit, where each type of building helps with one aspect of the game. For example, building Habitats might get you extra workers to use. Building Laboratories might help you Experiment (see below). Building Watchtowers might help you explore.  

Exploit (Extract?): Once a space has a tile on it, you can extract resources from it based on the icon(s) on the tile. For each cube, take 1 resource of that type. These resources are a set collection scoring type of thing... you get points for sets of different icons, and maybe a majority bonus for each icon type. 

Experiment: Studying the new world will yield benefits. You'll have 2 markers on a research track - the first will give you benefits as it moves up, and it will make room for your second marker to advance, which will increase your score. You can advance on this track as much as you can afford, using 1/2/3 cubes to get one of your marker to the 1st/2nd/3rd level of the track

After placing in a space with just 1 cube, you get that cube's effect, then take the cube into hand to use later... you can use it to cover (negate) a penalty from reaching a threshold on that color's track, or you can spend it in a later turn to boost that color's effect, as if there were an additional cube there, which will help you reach those more expensive actions such as L3 buildings and Research.

Once everyone has placed all their workers, take them all back, draw another 8 cubes from the bag to seed the initial spaces, pass a start player marker, and start a new round.

What I really need is (a) a game end dynamic (something I'm historically bad at), (b) details of building effects, tiles, and research track effects populated, and (c) a working title!

Since I'm so bad at (a), I really don't have anything in mind yet, and I'm hopeful that something will seem obvious by the time I get an initial playtest in.

As for (b), I do have a few thoughts. Like with Crusaders, I think each building type could help with one of the actions in the game. For example, one type could give a discount on building, or the ability to stack the wrong type of building on an existing one or something. Another type could help advance on the research track. A third type could help with set collection (maybe just give you icons?), and another could let you draw more tiles when exploring, or keep more than 1 of the choices when you explore. Finally, there could be a type that adds workers.

And for the exploration tiles, each one could have 0/1/2 (maybe a few 1/1/1) of cubes/icons/building options in all the possible combinations, so when exploring, you can have an interesting choice depending on what you're after.

I'm not sure about the research effects, but I imagine they should be small, on the order of a cube for the first token, and for the 2nd (the one that's supposed to help score), could maybe give icons for set collection, or straight VPs based on position.

As for a title... I'm afraid I've got nothing! I'm happy to entertain suggestions in the comments below!

I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement -- thoughts on a theme

 I'm still looking for a theme for that I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement game...

I still think the way it would work makes sense: 

1. Seed some spaces with ~6 cubes, 
2. Place your worker where there are cubes, 
3. Do a thing based on the number/colors of cubes there,
4. Split the cubes between 2 of the adjacent spaces, 
5. Repeat

I solicited theme ideas on Twitter, and got a few responses, one of which seems promising to me. Jonathan Weaver said: 

Wow I love the mechanism and I think a theme of widespread exploration of a new land and the color cubes are different skilled explorers (i.e. huntsman, trappers, cartographers, sailors, scouts, etc.) Then the game is about who can use the conscripted explorers best each split.

I liked the sound of sending, for example, a cartographer and a scout this way and a scout and trapper that way, then you choosing the scout/trapper and as a result get some furs, then sending the scout here and the trapper there.

Each unit type would need an effect, and there could be some combinatorial effects. Like maybe a scout amplifies the effect of another worker (cartographer makes a better map, trapper finds more animals).

My initial thought was that you'd add tiles to the board spaces, changing them for everyone (and maybe like Caylus, you get benefit when someone uses your tile). "Buying" tiles based on which unit types are there could represent effects of certain combinations of units.

Thinking about this a little more, it definitely sounds workable:

Players are officers in an organization that has sent multiple colony ships full of cryogenically frozen specialists out into the black, seeking a new homeworld. Now that we've arrived, groups of specialists are "thawing out," and we're directing them to do their thing, and then splitting them into smaller groups and sending them to adjacent sectors.

Each ship generates ~6 random specialists (colored cubes) each round. You place a worker on a sector with specialists to build a tile there, of 15 different tiles, each with a 2-color cost (those 2 colors of specialist must be present). Each tile gives 2 effects, 1 for each specialist required (so there are ~6 specialist effects in the game). 

If you place in a sector with just 1 cube, you get that color's effect, then take the cube to use later... Maybe you spend it to build when that color isn't present, or maybe you spend it for that color's effect in addition to a normal turn.

And I think an effect tied to the sector would be good, so there's a geographical element as well. Like maybe when you activate a building, you get the effect of the sector (and maybe you can do this instead of building, so long as you have either of the specialists related to the building present, or maybe in hand). "In hand" could be neat, so in the early game you're placing workers in sectors with more cubes, for better choice of tile to build, and you're building new stuff onto the board, then later you're placing workers to grab up singleton cubes in order to activating that stuff.

Maybe the tiles you build are on your player board, and the goal is to get yours all into play? I'm not sure about that, or what "winning" would represent, but in general this kind of theme -- with the cubes being units with specific jobs, and players bossing groups of those units around -- sounds to me like it makes sense and fits the mechanism.

What I really need is a discrete ability for each specialist, a "building" or whatever that makes sense for each pair (6 types => 15 different "buildings"), and some sector-specific effects before I could put together a prototype and try this out. I'm open to suggestions in the comments below!

YANGI x2, and an old game off the back burner?

In addition to Keeping Up With The Joneses, I have had a few other new ideas crop up. Unlike KUwtJ however, these other ideas haven't been fleshed out quite as much, so I haven't mentioned them. I should at least add these to The List, if not work on them to the point I could get them to the table...

False Prophet (Mancala-Worker-Placement)

Listening to an interview with Isaias Vallejo of Daily Magic Games about the new/upcoming Margraves of Valeria, I heard him say that Margraves started out as an attempt to use a Mancala mechanism in a Worker Placement game. He said he couldn't make it work, so the design shifted to what they have now... a Concordia-esque hand building game where you can move your Margrave around the board and use neutral Knight figures to help you fight monsters (one of the various aspects of the game).

I thought the idea of Mancala Worker Placement sounded really good, and I wondered how I would go about that. So far I just have initial thoughts for a structure, but I think they sound reasonable -- maybe I'm not far enough along to see how it wouldn't work :)

I'm imagining a board, maybe a grid of tiles (like Istanbul for example), with neutral "follower" pieces on it, as well as a "Prophet" figure for each player. The game would be about moving your Prophet around and doing deeds, while follower meeples tend to follow whichever prophet they most recently saw.

On your turn, you would pick up your prophet figure and all of the followers in their current space, and distribute them Mancala style (like Five Tribes), placing your prophet last. Wherever you place your Prophet, you take the action of that space, and it's more potent the more followers are there with you - perhaps there are 3 levels of the action, Level 1 for when there's only 1 follower with you, Level 2 for when there are 2 followers, and Level 3 for when there are 3 or more followers. If you land in an empty space, you'd add a follower to the board there, and if you resolve a Level 3 effect, you'd remove a follower from the board.

That's about all I have at the moment, so I don't know what these effects would be (other than manipulating the number or location of followers on the board, for example). It still sounds to me like it has potential.

Edit: Perhaps better, on your turn you pick up all the followers in the space with your prophet figure into your hand. Then you place followers from your hand onto spaces 1-by-1 from your prophet to wherever you want to go. Then move your prophet to the last space you placed a follower on and execute its action (again, the more followers there the better). This way you might keep a (presumably small) hand of followers from turn to turn, and there could be some income you collect at the end of each turn that's based on the number of followers remaining in your hand.

I-cut-you-choose Worker Placement

This is my latest idea, based on Jamey Stegmaier's "Top 12 favorite game mechanisms" video that he recently posted. His top 2 favorite mechanisms are (spoilers...) Worker Placement and I-Cut-you-Choose. Just for fun I wondered what a mashup of those two would look like.

My initial thoughts were mostly just "make piles and draft them," which removes the Worker Placement dynamic altogether, but then a structure hit me that I think could work really well:

Imagine a board with a network of big spaces (let's call them "cities") and little spaces (let's call them "towns"). At the top of each round, seed the cities with ~4 (~6?) random cubes. Then take turns placing workers.

You place a worker into a city or town that has cubes. Then you do something that relates to the number or types of cubes there. Finally, you distribute those cubes to 2 neighboring towns (divided any way you choose) that do not have workers there already. If you distribute cubes into a town that already had some, then it has more now, no big deal.

Maybe if you place a worker where there's only 1 cube, it goes away afterwards (you can't split 1 cube). After all workers are placed, I figure there could still be some cubes on the board - that's fine. Add 4 (6?) more to the cities and start again.

I think that sounds like a solid main mechanism. I have some thoughts about possible details for what you actually do when you resolve a worker spot, but it's not fully fleshed out yet.

At this point, I find it very helpful to come up with a good theme that would fit the main mechanism described above. That helps inform the rest of the design. 

Worker-ception (Worker Group Placement)

A few years ago on the inaugural BGG cruise, I came up with an idea for a game based on cruise lines. In the game, you would place groups of workers -- not individual worker pawns -- into a few areas on the board, and then when resolving an area, you sort of zoom in and play a mini-worker-placement game with the workers in the group you had sent there.

I had sidelined that idea, but recently local designer David Short showed some interest in it, and in theory we are going to try it as a co-design. David suggested a slight re-theme as competing travel agencies, where the groups of workers are families going on vacation, and the worker spaces are little brochures so you can change them out from game to game.

I came up with a list of mini-WP games that could be used, so it might be that this game is close to being ready for an early playtest!

Worker Learning progress -- what makes Worker Placement tick?

Worker Learning Progress

I haven't posted much about some of my latest game ideas here. In the case of my Worker Learning game, I've only made these two posts in this blog. I had written elsewhere about it, in a Slack channel, but unfortunately it was an unpaid channel, and the general chatter in that Slack drowned my posts about this game... they allegedly still exist, but someone would have to pay to access them at this point.

My previous posts are not very descriptive of the game, just the main "Worker Learning" mechanism which I described as a sort of cross between my own Deck Learning mechanism from Eminent Domain, and the basic card leveling mechanism in Solforge. So before I go on, here's a brief description of the game I'm working on (which could use a good title, leave your suggestions in the comments below!):

Similar to the theme of Lords of Waterdeep, in this game you will send adventurers out to prepare for, and then go on, adventures. Unlike Lords of Waterdeep however, your adventurers aren't just a resource you collect and spend. Rather they are workers you will place round after round, and after each adventure, they will level up and get better at their job.

You see, you'll have workers in different types, corresponding to typical character classes in the fantasy role playing genre (fighter, cleric, mage, and thief). My current thought is that you'll have two of each type of worker, one starting at level 1, and the other starting at level 2. You will send these workers to various action spaces on the board to collect resources they will need to go on an adventure. Like The Manhattan Project, instead of placing a worker on your turn, you'll have the option of recalling your workers, at which time they will go on their adventures (and side quests), and increase in level.

The various worker spaces will behave differently depending on the type of worker you send, or their level. Higher level workers will be able to go to occupied spaces, so long as they're the highest level worker at that space. Certain spaces may be inaccessible unless the worker is at least a certain level.

I feel like this worker learning mechanism has a good chance to produce a nice dichotomy between trying to slowly level your entire work force evenly, and quickly increasing just a few of your workers to the maximum level. I very much like the idea of his mechanism, but I was running out of impetus to fill out data details and construct a prototype to try, so the game has been on the back burner for a while. Recently I was chatting with my old friend Rick from the Board Game Designers Forum. Rick has a couple of published titles under his belt, and I've seen a few of his other promising prototypes as well. I asked Rick if he'd be interested in jumping in on this project with me, and with his help, the game has finally been making some progress! Watch this space for more info if and when the game progresses any further.

What Makes Worker Placement Games Tick?

Now that I've been thinking more about this game, I've been wondering what it is that makes for a good Worker Placement game. What keeps them from being a dry, "collect resources, turn in resources" exercise.

I asked my friend and fellow TMG developer Andy Van Zandt what he thought made WP games good:

I think most good Worker Placement games have something that causes tension on top of the math. Growing/shrinking resource pools, inbound tragedies, combos that are particularly dangerous if someone else completes them, etc. Basically stuff that makes people have to re-evaluate the perceived tactical benefits of placement spaces regularly. It's usually not the resource conversion that's interesting, it's balancing resource conversion with the changing environment.

Stone Age is a great Worker Placement game, and it features an uncertainty with each worker placed to gather resources. Sending 3 workers to get clay doesn't mean you get 3 clay. In fact, you might not get ANY clay, or you might get as many as 4 clay. In addition to the actions of the other players, you need to contend with the uncertainty of how many resources you'll get with each placement.

Lords of Waterdeep is another solid Worker Placement game, and very accessible. One complaint that can be levied at it is that it's a little bit "flat" (as Andy puts it), the resource collection and conversion is too straightforward and calculable. I don't want my game to suffer from that. I don't know if the leveling up of workers will give the game enough texture. So... how do we ensure that Worker Learning isn't "too flat?" That's the question, isn't it!

An example of something that might help in that regard might be this idea. Rick suggested that the adventures could reward you with a special "spoils" resource. This resource would be worth 1 point each at the end of the game, or you could use a certain worker space on the board to have an audience with the King, turning in your spoils for extra points.

Rick's idea was that there could be some tension between cashing in your spoils early, while you've got the chance, and doing it later, after collecting more, for a bigger score (the reward might be triangular with number of spoils). This might add texture because while you can calculate how many spoils you'll have, it might be uncertain whether or not you'll have access to that worker space to cash them in.

I'm not sure that goes quite far enough, but it made me think of something else that might help. It reminded me of the shields in Louis XIV, which come in 8 different suits, and which you draw at random. Each shield in that game is worth 1 point, and there's a bonus point awarded to the player with the most shields in each suit. Imagine if the spoils worked like that... after each adventure, you draw the indicated number of Spoils tokens from a bag, and they come in multiple types. At the King's Court worker space you could cash in sets of one type for triangular points. That would raise questions like "do I cash in now, or wait and see if my next adventure earns me more matching spoils?"

Either way, later in the game, the space is likely more valuable for everyone, and more hotly contested. With the Louie XIV version, you'd have more reason to go to that space more than once, as you could easily collect a few each of 2 or 3 types of spoils, and you'd want to be able to turn in more than one set.

Will that sort of thing help keep the game from being flat? I'm not sure, but it sounds like it has potential. It might be too fiddly. And this is just 1 action space... might the other, more standard action spaces need to be more uncertain?

Let me know what specific feature you like best about your favorite Worker Placement games in the comments below.

Dice Worker Placement: The Saga Continues

I've been thinking about that dice worker placement mechanism some more lately. The biggest problem I have when I start with a mechanism is finding a theme that makes sense, and as I've discussed before, even when starting with a mechanism, all design is really theme-first design.

So I put out a (relatively generic) question on social media... what theme could fit well in a worker placement game where the workers get better over time. In part because I didn't give any background to what I was looking for, and in part because of Twitter's strict character limit, I'm afraid I didn't accurately communicate my real question - and I got back a lot of ideas for general themes in which things get better: school, apprenticeships, software... even the most generic answer of all: "Literally any worker who gets training.

After a few threads and discussions on the topic, I was starting to settle onto a theme. I thought maybe a spy theme, where your workers are secret agents who get better as they do missions, and worker spaces could have to do with going on missions or making preparations to go on missions. Another idea though was to model the game after a standard worker placement game like Lords of Waterdeep. In LoW your workers are agents who recruit adventurers (fighters, rogues, clerics, and mages) to go on quests. The adventurers are the resources in the game, and quests require certain recipes or combinations of resources to fulfill.
At that point I read a post by my friend Mohan, who hadn't played Lords of Waterdeep in some time, and conflated the agents and adventurers, and mentioned the adventurers leveling up. I thought tat was interesting, but a wholly different premise than my basic idea where your workers (not the resources they collect) are the thing that levels up.

That said, I thought maybe it could be good if your workers were different types of adventurers, which could be easily tracked by color coding the dice... orange dice for fighters, for example; white for clerics, etc. They could still work the way I had originally proposed - you start with 8 dice (2 of each type), each at level 1. Most worker spaces could accept any die, but some could offer better returns if you use the correct type of worker (example: anybody can go to the Temple and gain 1 Faith, but a cleric who goes to the Temple gains 1 Faith per level). Some worker spaces could be exclusive to specific worker types (example: only Thieves can enter the Thieve's Guild). And of course, while some spaces may accept any TYPE of die, there may be a level requirement (example: only adventurers of level 3 and above can enter the Throne Room for an audience with the king).

Side note:
The Manhattan Project is a worker placement game where you either place workers on your turn or recall them. The turns you recall your workers feel relatively boring, as you don't really make an progress. Manhattan Project: Energy Empire takes that one step further: on turns where you recall your workers, you (a) may get to claim an achievement, and (b) get to generate power for future turns. This feeling of progress even on turns where you're mostly just freeing up your work force is good -- it means fewer boring turns for players.

That said:
As before, players would place 1 worker per turn, or spend their turn recalling workers (with a free recall once all 8 are placed -- as a sort of efficiency balance thing). When recalling workers, they level up, so you increment the dice to their next value as you collect them. While it would probably feel good to increase the power of your workers, it might not feel like progress... but suppose your recall turns are the ones where you actually go on an adventure!

So when you place your workers they are collecting resources and preparing for adventures, and when you recall them they actually go on the adventure, which means you get a chance to cash in some resources to complete adventure cards for points and stuff, and as a result, those adventurers level up. Perfect.

This sounds good to me, and makes good thematic sense as well. And it maintains the basic idea of the mechanism... do you want to recall workers early so that you can do an adventure now (I imagine those adventure cards would be in a public pool), and so that you can get a few higher level adventurers, even if it means several of your dice are left un-upgraded? Or do you wait until you have placed all of your workers, upgrading them all evenly (and getting an essentially free turn with that automatic recall thing I mentioned parenthetically above)? In addition, using different classes for dice means that if you do choose to recall early, which flavor of adventurer do you leave un-upgraded? I think these are interesting mechanical concerns which could lead to a fun, puzzly, euro-style game.

A little behind the scenes math:
Of course, at this point I can't be sure what the best number of workers per player will be, but let's take a quick look at some numbers based on 8 dice per player:

Case 1: Place all 8 dice, get a free recall, place all 8 dice again (another free recall)... After 16 turns you now have 8 level 3 dice, and have been able to do 2 adventures, and you probably could have afforded expensive ones since you collected a lot of resources first.
Case 2: Place 2 dice then recall, repeat... after 16 tuns you have 2 level 6 dice (and 6 level 1), and have done as many as 5 adventures, but of those 5 chances you probably either couldn't afford any of the available adventure cards, or were only able to afford small ones, since you're not gaining many resources before recalling.

Case 3: Place 3 dice then recall, repeat... after 16 turns you have 3 level 5 dice (and 5 level 1), and have had 4 chances to do adventures.

Case #4: Place 4 dice then recall, repeat... after 16 turns you have 4 level 4 dice (4 level 1), and have had 3 chances to do adventures.

These cases all sound interesting to me. I suspect that optimal play will unlikely mean either of the extremes (recalling every other turn, or always playing all of your workers), but might be somewhere in between, and that sounds ideal.

As for what the worker spaces do...
If going with a fantasy/adventure party/D&D style theme like this, then I imagine the board being split into a few areas...
For example, there could be a city area with places such as an Arena, where Fighters can fight to gain Glory, a Temple, where Clerics can pray to collect Faith, an Academy, where mages can accumulate Magic, and a Thieve's Guild (or a Marketplace?), where Thieves can procure Money. Again, maybe anybody can go to those spaces, but the correct class will be more efficient. There could also be generic locations such as a Blacksmith where you can get Equipment, or Throne Room where you can have an audience with the King, or a Tavern where you can learn local rumors or get information (whatever that means, maybe get side quests).

There could also be some adventuring spaces outside the town, such as a Dungeon where you can pick up side quests or minor encounters, like mini-adventures.

There would be a few face up Adventures, representing missions that are known -- maybe things the king has offered a reward for. When recalling workers, you'd have the opportunity to complete 1 of those adventure cards, as well as any number of side quests you may have picked up.

As for resources, it might make sense if each class is "good at" one of the resources (like thieves are good at getting money, and clerics are good at getting faith), but it might also be good to have some crossover, like maybe clerics are better at collecting magic than fighter and thieves, but not as good as mages, and fighters are decent at getting money, but not as good as thieves. This could offer some flexibility, though I'm not sure if it's needed.

I also think it might be good if there were basically something each resource could do besides being required for adventures, like Money could buy Equipment, or Glory might get you in good with the King. Magic might help you get cards that do special things (like the Intrigue cards in Waterdeep), while Faith might help you draw more or better adventures or side quests.

Those are my current thoughts. I might prefer a different theme, and I suppose I could re-skin all the above with some kind of spy theme where you have different types of agents, but in the meantime this sounds like it could work. I just need to get some specific locations ironed out and put together some adventures and side quests, and maybe it'll be ready to test!