Kingdom Realms (3-Lane Game Jam): details

In a recent post I mentioned three new game ideas. In this post I'll flesh out one of them...

3 Lane Game Jam - Kingdom Realms

Man, that title sounds like it was created by an AI ChatBot, doesn't it? 

Kingdom Realms was my submission to a little 2-week game jam. Here's the description of the jam criteria, though it was made clear they were more like suggestions:

Games where there are 3 areas in which you can play cards, and you have to "win" two of the areas in some sense. Of course, if your game needs 4 or 5 lanes, that's okay too, but try and keep the "win 2/3" (or 3/5) lanes idea in there somehow if you can. There's no limitation on the number of cards or other components

Taking inspiration from Animal Kingdoms and Rolling Realms, I made a game where you turn up 3 Realm cards, each with a rule governing play in that lane, and a win condition, governing who wins that lane. Then you deal some cards into a supply, and take turns drafting a card and placing it in one of the realms on your side. In the end, I added effects that occur upon playing the cards as well. Once you get through the deck, you check each Realm's win condition and see who wins 2 out of 3.

To be honest, I'm much less thrilled with this game than I have been with some of my other games, but it does seem to work alright. I generally think I'm not very into lane combat games, Riftforce being an exception.

Tabletop Simulator:

Here's the TTS workshop mod for the game, if anyone's interested in trying it out: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2890010667

Kingdom Realms (version submitted to 3-lane game jam) 

COMPONENTS:

30 playing cards (6 each of rank 3, 4, 5, 6, & 7)

14 Realm cards (see file)SETUP:

Shuffle Realm cards and deal 3 face up (creating 3 lanes)

Shuffle playing cards and deal out 5 face up

Randomly select a start player

ROUNDS OF PLAY:

1. Take turns drafting the face up cards, one at a time (you'll get 2 total each round), and assigning them to two DIFFERENT lanes

(If you have no legal play, add the drafted card to your hand for tiebreak)

2. Resolve the card's effect (see below)

3. When there is only 1 card left, the start player takes it and keeps it in hand (for tiebreak)

4. Deal out 5 more cards face up, start player changes hands

GAME END:

Once all cards have been played, the game is over

Resolve each Realm... Win 2 Realms to win the game

If there is a tie, the player with the highest total value of cards in hand is the winner

CARD EFFECTS:

• 3: You may play this card face down. If you do, turn another card here face down. Face down cards have value = 1
• 4: You may swap this card with the most recent card an opponent played here
• 5: You may re-play a card from here in a different realm (face-down cards stay face down and have no effect)
• 6: If possible, turn a face-down card here face up
• 7: No effect

And here are the current Realms:

You must play cards in ascending order - Most cards wins

You must play cards in descending order - Most cards wins

Alternate color (black/red), you may not play the same color as the last card played here by any player - Most cards wins

To paly a card here, you must turn one of your face-up cards in another realm face down (face down cards have value 1) - Most cards wins

You must play cards in ascending order - Largest total value wins

Only RED cards can be played here - Largest total value wins

Only BLACK cards can be played here - Largest total value wins

Only ODD cards can be played here - Largest total value wins

Only EVEN cards can be played here - Largest total value wins

Alternate color (black/red), you may not play the same color as the last card played here by any player  - Largest total value wins

Card effects do not trigger in this realm - Largest total value wins

Alternate color (black/red), you may not play the same color as the last card YOU played here - Largest total value wins

Alternate parity (odd/even), you may not play the same parity as the last card YOU played here - Largest total value wins

To paly a card here, you must turn one of your face-up cards in another realm face down (face down cards have value 1) - Largest total value wins

For each card you have here, add 1 to the value or number of cards in each other realm - Lowest total value wins

You must match either SUIT or VALUE of the last card played here by any player - Last player to play here wins

Kid's car racing game: details

 In a recent post I mentioned three new game ideas. In this post I'll flesh out one of them...

Kid's Car Race

My 4.5 year old son LOOOVES vehicles. No idea why, I'm not a "car guy" by any means, but he's just fascinated by cars, trucks, tractor-trailers, vehicle transports, excavators, etc, etc, etc. He especially likes sporty cars (with spoilers), and he "oohs" and "ahhs" every time we see a Camero in traffic.

I thought this might be a good way to get him interested in playing games with me. We have a copy of Monza, and he plays that (he tolerates it, doesn't get as excited about it as I thought he might), and he understands the rules - including a house rule we use.

I recently saw a new game called HEAT: Pedal to the Metal, and started looking into it a little bit to see if I thought my son could handle a simplified version of that game (I don't really think so).

What he has been excited to play lately is War. He loves playing War, and he tolerates Monza... so I thought maybe I could make a game similar to Monza that used cards like War. In the end I came up with something that is NOT like War at all.

In this ide, you use the cars, board, and Dice from Monza, but instead of rolling the dice to move forward on the board, you play a card (value 1-3), and move that number of spaces. Then, whatever color you land on, you look at the dice and move 1 more space forward for each die showing that same color, then you reroll those dice. 

I tried playing 2-handed solo a few times, and it seems to work alright! So I tried to get my son to play it with me... no luck (at least not yet)

So here are the rules to the game -- you could try it if you have a copy of Monza and a deck of cards or two handy: 

COMPONENTS:

12 cards (4 each value 1, 2, 3) [use more for more players, or for 2 laps]
1 game board (see Monza)
6 color pip dice (see Monza)

SETUP:

1. Put the cars on the starting space of the racetrack
2. Deal 3 cards face up (could be face down instead) to each player
3. Roll all 6 dice
4. Youngest player goes first 

GAME PLAY:

On your turn, play a card and move that number of spaces (per Monza rules). 

Then, check the color of the space you land on. For each die showing that color, move 1 space farther (in that same lane, stop at tire spaces). 

Finally, reroll those dice and draw a replacement card (when the deck runs out, just don't draw - or reshuffle or something)

Card+Dice drafting: details

 In a recent post I mentioned three new game ideas. In this post I'll flesh out one of them...

Card + Dice drafting

This second idea hasn't got a title, it was inspired by a conversation which was initially about how to do an autobattler in a tabletop game. Someone suggested a dice drafting game with an autobattler sort of flavor, and that got me thinking "what if you drafted a die and played a card to a programmed row, then you rolled the dice and resolved the first card on your row vs the opponent, or the top card of a deck or something"

From there I quickly formulated a game structure - no theme or anything, so I'm probably stuck until I figure out a theme. I'll post the details in a fresh post, but it's got entangled decisions, cards+dice drafting, and programmed card play.

Here are the quick rules I came up with:

Components:

Cards in 4 colors
d6 dice in 4 colors
Victory point tokens?
Re-roll tokens?
"+1" tokens?

Setup:

1. Shuffle cards and deal out 1 per player in a draft row

2. Mix dice in a draw bag and draw 1 out to pair with each card in the draft row

3. Deal 1 die at random from the bag, and 1 card face up, to each player, followed by 1 card face down to each player (you may look at your face down cards). Roll your die and place your cards ina queue, face up 1st, face down 2nd

Rounds of play:

1. Determine turn order: Compare each player's face up card's value, plus the total pips on their dice of that color. Take turns in order from highest total to lowest. In the case of a tie, play RPS or something

2. On your turn, you may activate your current card's effects (e.g. a Yellow card might say "[Red]: For every 3 pips, score 1 vp"), then draft a card/die pair. The card goes face down into your card queue, and the die goes into your supply

3. Discard your face up card, then turn the next queued card face up

4. Roll all of your dice and pass the turn to the next player

...

Maybe in addition to going early in turn order, you get something that amounts to VP, or a set collection type of thing. Or maybe the cards themselves have a set collection icon on them

Game end should trigger at some point, maybe when players have about 8-10 dice. Maybe just when the dice/cards run out, or maybe when someone reaches some threshold of progress

The different colors could have different flavors of effect - like maybe red gets points, yellow gets re-rolls, blue gets progress on some track (maybe a race track which triggers game end and gives bonuses for position), green gets some +1 token to be used on a future roll, or a token which lets you use an off-colored die, or something like that

Of course, I haven't tried this yet, but it seems pretty simple to prototype, maybe I'll make a TTS mod and subject my playtesters to it.

Yangi x3! 3-Lane game jam, Card/Dice drafting, and a Kid's car race

I've been doing some freelance development lately, so not much I feel right talking about on my blog.. but I have had a few ideas of my own as well... I'll make a separate, more in-depth post about each, but here are my 3 latest game ideas (since the recent 18 card game jam):

1. 3 Lane Game Jam - Kingdom Realms

Man, that title sounds like it was created by an AI ChatBot, doesn't it? 

Kingdom Realms was my submission to a little 2-week game jam. Here's the description of the jam criteria, though it was made clear they were more like suggestions:

Games where there are 3 areas in which you can play cards, and you have to "win" two of the areas in some sense. Of course, if your game needs 4 or 5 lanes, that's okay too, but try and keep the "win 2/3" (or 3/5) lanes idea in there somehow if you can. There's no limitation on the number of cards or other components

Taking inspiration from Animal Kingdoms and Rolling Realms, I made a game where you turn up 3 Realm cards, each with a rule governing play in that lane, and a win condition, governing who wins that lane. Then you deal some cards into a supply, and take turns drafting a card and placing it in one of the realms on your side. In the end, I added effects that occur upon playing the cards as well. Once you get through the deck, you check each Realm's win condition and see who wins 2 out of 3.

To be honest, I'm much less thrilled with this game than I have been with some of my other games, but it does seem to work alright. I generally think I'm not very into lane combat games, Riftforce being an exception.

2. Card + Dice drafting

This second idea hasn't got a title, it was inspired by a conversation which was initially about how to do an autobattler in a tabletop game. Someone suggested a dice drafting game with an autobattler sort of flavor, and that got me thinking "what if you drafted a die and played a card to a programmed row, then you rolled the dice and resolved the first card on your row vs the opponent, or the top card of a deck or something"

From there I quickly formulated a game structure - no theme or anything, so I'm probably stuck until I figure out a theme. I'll post the details in a fresh post, but it's got entangled decisions, cards+dice drafting, and programmed card play.

3. Kid's car race

My 4.5 year old son LOOOVES vehicles. No idea why, I'm not a "car guy" by any means, but he's just fascinated by cars, trucks, tractor-trailers, vehicle transports, excavators, etc, etc, etc. He especially likes sporty cars (with spoilers), and he "oohs" and "ahhs" every time we see a Camero in traffic.

I thought this might be a good way to get him interested in playing games with me. We have a copy of Monza, and he plays that (he tolerates it, doesn't get as excited about it as I thought he might), and he understands the rules - including a house rule we use.

I recently saw a new game called HEAT: Pedal to the Metal, and started looking into it a little bit to see if I thought my son could handle a simplified version of that game (I don't really think so).

What he has been excited to play lately is War. He loves playing War, and he tolerates Monza... so I thought maybe I could make a game similar to Monza that used cards like War. In the end I came up with something that is NOT like War at all.

In this ide, you use the cars, board, and Dice from Monza, but instead of rolling the dice to move forward on the board, you play a card (value 1-3), and move that number of spaces. Then, whatever color you land on, you look at the dice and move 1 more space forward for each die showing that same color, then you reroll those dice. 

I tried playing 2-handed solo a few times, and it seems to work alright! So I tried to get my son to play it with me... no luck (at least not yet)

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.

3 new ideas... 1 new game! ... Part 2: Trick Taking as a Movement Mechanism

 Continuing my 3-part post about 3 new game ideas I recently had...

Trick Taking as a Movement Mechanism

The 2nd idea I'll discuss was inspired by a comment on Twitter about trick taking being used as a movement mechanic. Here's the outline of a pretty simple game idea where you race through a web of terrains:

Give each player a matching deck, with cards like 1-6 in each of 4 or 5 suits. Use a board that's basically a square grid, where players start on the corners and race for the center space. Each round, the leader chooses a terrain (suit), then each player plays a card that moves their piece on that terrain. The winner of the trick (player who moved the most in the led terrain) gets to be the leader next round and pick the next next terrain type. If you can't (or don't want to?) follow suit, maybe you just move 1 space in the terrain that was led, or not at all. 

There could be effects on the cards (inversely proportional to card value, so low cards have stronger effects), and you get that even if you play off-suit.

I have not yet prototyped this, but I think I know just how I'd do it:

• I'd use a standard card deck for starters, so 4 suites, give each player A-6 in each suit.
• Make 44 square tiles with a card icon (spade/heart/diamond/club) on each side, randomly distributed but with each icon on each tile.
• Make 4 corner tiles, with 2 icons on each of 2 sides (nothing on the exterior sides)
• Have players race from their corner to the center space (and maybe back, depending on the theme) 

For a first draft, I'd probably have each player shuffle their personal deck an draw a hand of cards from it -- because holding 20 cards would be annoying. Maybe a hand of 6 or 7 cards would work?

... Actually, it might work to use a single deck (of 24 cards, A-6), deal out 6 to each player, then reshuffle after some number of rounds of play.

Randomly choose a start player, that player will lead a card, and move their pawn a number of spaces equal to the rank of that card. You'd have to use all your movement, going from one space to the next (adjacently) moving over icons matching the suit of the card played. With a grid of tiles the way I described above, each interface would have 2 icons (or possibly 1 icon twice), and you could move over an interface if either of those match the suit of your card. No backtracking would be allowed, and if you moved across a double-icon edge and still had more movement, I think that would be a dead end (stop there).

In addition to moving, you'd note or resolve the game text on the card you played.

Then each other player would play a card. In order to move, they'd need to follow suit, but maybe following suit wouldn't be required. When playing off suit (either because you had to, or you wanted to), I think you'd still get to do the game text on the card, but you wouldn't move at all. 

The goal of the game would be to get to the center of the board, or to a series of specific spaces (to the center and then back to your starting space, for example).

I don't know exactly how big a board would be needed, or if the format I described will really work out for the board, but at the very least this idea sounds like it would work alright!

3 new ideas... 1 new game! ... Part 1: Telescoping game idea

 Recently I've had 3 new game ideas, inspired by something I saw on Twitter or heard on a podcast, one of which has already graduated to a physical prototype with 1 test, and a TTS mod (as yet un-played) with some adjustments!

Lest this post get overly long, I'll break it into 3 parts, one for each of the game ideas...

Telescoping game idea

The first idea I'll describe was inspired by something I heard in Keith Burgun's interview with Soren Johnson on his Strategy Can Be Fun podcast. Keith had said something about how Civ games have an interesting aspect in the beginning of building up a city, but after a point, you have so many cities that it becomes tedious to micromanage them all. My thoughts went immediately to "If it's fun to micromanage a city up to a point, then after that point, what if you didn't have to micromanage it anymore?" I'm effectively unfamiliar with everything in the realm of digital games, so I wondered if there existed a game that lets you micromanage a city or something, then at some point takes control of that city away from you, essentially letting it exist as a single unit with some stats associated with it.

Of course, I think of things in terms of tabletop, so I imagined a game divided into 3 or 4 Ages, where in the first age your units are individual humans (or maybe families), and you build up a city. Then in Age 2, your units are cities, and you build up a country. Then in Age 3, your units are countries, and you build up planets. Then finally in Age 4, your units are planets, and you build up a galaxy.

• Age 1 would be kind of you-vs-the-game, like standard euro-style multiplayer solitaire (or maybe even intentionally, actually solitaire). 
• Age 2 would be kind of you-vs-your-neighbors. 
• Age 3 would be kind of you-and-neighbors-vs-other-"teams" (since countries would be made up of cities from multiple different players). 
• And (here's an interesting twist) Age 4 could somehow be your-table-vs-another-table(!). Like, maybe Age 4 is cooperative, and it's just comparing your score vs other plays of the game

I used to have an idea for a "4X" game that was actually a series of individual games that could be played independently, or in succession, where for example, the end state of EXPLORE becomes the setup/start state for EXPAND. Maybe this could be like that, where each of those Ages is actually an independent game, and you could play them in succession, "attaching" them to each other if you want.

This sounds ambitious, but for the most part it sounds to me like it could work. And if each of the ages is a separate game, then (like my previous 4X idea) they could be played individually as standalone games, or combined to create a bigger game. As for theming, a little thought on that led me to a potentially promising idea... I've always wanted to do a game based on Moana - specifically that song The Way, which describes the people as voyagers, going from island to island (and presumably setting up camp on them). So with that in mind:

Age 1-- Let's make this tribespeople building up the best island they can. There could be "stats" such as population and boats - maybe the same resources builds both boats and houses, so you either have big population and few boats, or small population and many boats, stuff like that. Also, maybe you can do some farming/fishing to get an export good type of thing. For the most part this would be a multiplayer solitaire style game, where you perhaps draft things from a common pool, but otherwise the interaction is very low as you concentrate on your own player board.

Age 2-- Your tribe starts with 1 island, with stats (like Population, Boats, maybe Export), chosen from a few possible options. The one you start with could depend on the configuration of your island board at the end of Age 1, or if you skipped Age 1, then you could just start with a random island. The map has many uninhabited islands, and during the game you'll move your boats and settle them. Maybe your tribe's Population and Boats stats inform how much/how far you can move, and how many/what size settlements you can place at a time. Maybe Exports comes into it in a set collection way (exports of new islands could be printed on board, maybe the ones that match your starting one - or that DON'T match it - are more valuable to you). Now you're competing directly with your opponents for islands but maybe the map is big enough that you're effectively only competing with your neighbors.

Age 3-- Let's divvy the ocean up into regions, where you get 1 cube for each of the islands you had in that region. The regions are now interacting somehow (trade? war?), and you are aligned - at least a little - with the players who share your region, maybe in an area control way. Maybe the goal here is to add cubes of your color to other regions via trade (swapping cubes? adding cubes?) or war (replacing a cube), and scoring is by area majority.

Age 4 -- Maybe it's a little crazy, and outside the scope of the game, but maybe Age 4 could be a cooperative game, with all the players trying to make the best "global" community they can (maybe this is just the whole ocean area where these islands are). Then other groups can compete with that via score.

In talking this through with my friend Mohan, it occurred to me that maybe a 3-act structure would work better... Multiplayer solitaire -> Interactive -> Cooperative, and again, each of those being playable as a standalone game. For players committing to the entire 3-game "campaign." it might be very interesting to see how the culmination being cooperative affects the dynamics in the earlier games. In fact, it might be more interesting if that 3rd game were only MAYBE cooperative, so players could be presented with meta-dynamics like you see in Battlestar Galactica: "My 1st loyalty card says human, so do I try hard to make the humans win? Or hedge my bets and try to keep us on the edge, just in case I turn out to be a Cylon when the 2nd loyalty card comes out?"

I feel like this is a fairly ambitious idea, but it sounds kind of attainable - maybe more-so than the 4X series game idea. Maybe it's got some legs?

Post -Scarcity (YANGI?)

 Jamey Stegmaier sometimes posts interesting thoughts on his blog, and today he posed the question: "What Sci-Fi project would you pursue as an eccentric billionaire?"

On twitter, a few folks responded, and my personal favorite answer to that was teleportation. I've long been a fan of teleportation, I've always said it's my favorite impossible ability -- if I could choose a super power, that would be it!

Jamey described portals that you could step into in one location and out of in another (like in the video game, I guess). That's almost verbatim something I used to think about when I was young. Someone else mentioned food replicators like on Star Trek, another awesome prospect!

Like many things do, this of course made me think of a board game. Suppose there's a worker placement game, but you can only move your workers to an adjacent space each turn, and you have to feed them every round, etc. Then imagine you can invent technologies to get around that tedium and those drawbacks... first maybe something that lets you move 2 spaces, or cuts your food costs in half. Then later, teleporters (move anywhere) and food replicators (no more feeding). During the game, you spend time and effort inventing these technologies, which earn you victory points, but once invented, all players gain their benefits!

I've seen games like Antike where being the player to make a discovery is expensive, and worth VP, but then the discovery becomes cheap for other players to obtain (though they don't get the points). I'm not sure if I've seen a game where the technology is automatically useable by all players, though it wouldn't surprise me if such a game exists.

This sounds like an OK premise for a game, but really it's just a backbone. There'd have to be something for players to actually do. Also, I think there would need to be a few more inventions to make life easier.

Perhaps the theme could be creating a post-scarcity society. A utopia where people don't need to spend so much time toiling away just to pay bills and feed themselves, and can instead spend more time and attention on the arts and their loved ones. That would be a pretty upbeat theme for once.

I don't have any further thoughts about this at the moment (hey, maybe this could work into that I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement idea I had a while back), so I'll just file it away to possibly revisit later. If you have any thoughts about this game idea, please feel free to leave them in the comments!

"Rolling Rails" - YANGI

What's in a name?

There's already a game called Rolling Freight, by Kevin Nunn, where you use dice to build train routes and chip cargo... which is maybe too bad, because I had an idea today for a dice game about trains!

Though to be fair, my game isn't about freight at all, just about laying track. So maybe Rolling Rails would be a better title. Surprisingly, that one doesn't seem to be taken.

Rolling Rails - a game of dice rolling and track drawing

I was watching a video about the latest game by Carcassonne designer Klaus-Jurgen Wrede: Caral, and the thought crossed my mind to make a simple dice game, maybe along the lines of Carc itself. I imagined custom dice with track on each side (Crossroads, T-intersection, Straight, Curve x2, and Turnabout). You'd start with a crossroads in the center of a grid player board, roll 4 of these dice, then use each to extend your track in one of the 4 directions. My first thought was that you'd have 8 dice, place 4 of them onto your board each turn, then pick the previous 4 dice up to roll next. That way your dice would propagate outward from the center, and the goal would be to drive them to cities at the edge of your player board. Then it occurred to me that just drawing the track on a piece of paper would make more sense.

So, we start with a player sheet grid, crossroads (or a train station?) in the center, and cities on each edge. The goal is to connect the center to a city in each direction. The cities would be worth points - fewer for the ones in the middle of the edge (they're closer, easier to get to), more points nearer the corners of the grid. For example, maybe a 9x9 grid, where the cities are worth 4/5/6/7/8 from center to corner.

Perhaps there are no turns... in real time all players roll their 4 dice, assign 1 to each track, and draw in the result. As soon as a player connects their first city, they announce "1 city!" and grab a bonus tile, scoring a few points for that accomplishment. This only happens the 1st time a player does it. At that point EACH player must discard a die and continue with only 3 dice. That part reminds me of Bananagrams, when players call "peel!" upon playing their last tile, causing all players to draw another tile.

Similarly, as soon as a player connects a 2nd city, they announce "2nd city!," grab that bonus tile, then everyone discards a 2nd die. Same for the 3rd city. After someone connects their 4th and final city, the game end is triggered... perhaps at that point remaining players get 1 or 2 final turns to connect their last city, then score their boards.

Alternate format - Bingo style

I understand a lot of players do not care for the time pressure inherent in real time play. Perhaps another format of this game could be more like Take It Easy or Karuba, where one player rolls the 4 dice, and all players mark those the way they prefer on their own player sheet. While it's possible in these types of games for everyone to do exactly the same thing, in practice players tend to differentiate pretty quickly.

This format would work with the same components, and so would be easy to try, and both formats could potentially be included in the game box. Who knows, this might work better than the real-time format, and it would require fewer dice!

Either way, this sounds to me like it could work out, and it's probably worth a try.

A shortcoming of Tabletop Simulator

I quickly mocked up a board and die for this in Tabletop Simulator to try it. With an infinite number of those dice, I was going to just leave them in play and draw 4 more dice for the next roll, however I discovered a downfall to Tabletop Simulator when it comes to using a die as a tile... pressing Q or E to rotate the die (in order to orient a 90 degree turn, for example) does not do what I wanted it to do -- instead it changes the die face! There may be a way to rotate a die without changing its face, but until or unless I figure that out, I'll have to make tiles to place on the player board or something like that.

Thoughts on Mashups (also, Candyland + No Thanks = ???)

I like mashups.

What's a mashup?

A mashup is when you take 2 distinct things and, maybe literally, smash them together to make a new thing that's sort of a mix of the original two.

I solicited Twitter real quick to get some other people's off-the-cuff definitions, and they generally agree with what I said above:

@twentysides contributed the following:

Two or more things that are faithful representations of their type combined in a way that still works. So something that is kind of this and vaguely that, I wouldn't call a mashup. Something that is clearly this and very much that, now that's a mashup.

An the ever eloquent @belltowergames describe it thusly:

Two things that are unlike but are of the same kind are brought together to create a work that shares essential qualities of both.

I like all of these definitions, and I think they more than get the idea across. 

I'm trying to think of an obvious genre mashup TV show or movie, but nothing's coming immediately to mind -- maybe that's because I'm writing this in fits and starts as I scan documents for my real job, or maybe it's because I'm feeling a little light headed from my 2nd COVID vaccine dose, or maybe there really aren't that many of them (that can't be!) 

I guess I could point to Daybreak, [warning, I cannot vouch for the safety of that website -- it was recommended to me by someone, but I've never actually used it!], a 1-season TV series I saw maybe 12 years ago that's like Groundhog Day mashed up with a cop show, about a detective who keeps re-living the same day until he solves his own frame-up.

I suppose I could also point to something like Thor: Ragnarok, which mashes up a comedy with a big budget superhero flick. But I don't know if that counts -- is "superhero" really a genre all its own? Also, it's not a great example because I didn't love that movie, but I'm saying in this post that I do enjoy mashups...

The IDEA of mashups

So I guess what I'm REALLY saying is that I like the IDEA of mashups. I find them a good source of inspiration, and I think they can have the potential to take existing stuff I like, and create a new experience that I'm predisposed to like, but that's different enough to be interesting.

As you must know if you're reading this, I like games. I like playing games, I like thinking about games, I like thinking about game design, and of course I like designing games. So how do mashups come into it? Well, even more than a passive story like books/TV/movies,  mashups can inspire new game experiences that are significantly different than any of the games being mashed together. 

A good example of this might be Friedemann Friese' Copycat, which he (somewhat famously) billed as a ripoff of Agricola, Through the Ages, and Dominion. The thing is, Copycat was NOT a ripoff at all! It was inspired by those other three games (deckbuilding inspired by Dominion, worker placement/action spaces inspired by Agricola, and the card row inspired by Through the ages), but the end result feels NOTHING like any of those inspirations. Friese didn't copy those other games, he mashed them up, and then he did the design and development work to make a solid game out of Copycat... whether you think the result is any good or not is up to your preference, but it's certainly distinct from its inspirations. 

Another example could be the decks in the card game Smash Up. That game's whole thing is that you take 2 piles of cards, each with its own feel and flavor, and mix them together to get a deck that plays differently than other combinations. That game used mashups as a main mechanism, and it works rather well!

A starting point that inspires design

You see, a mashup is just a starting point that can inspire a design. You can't just shuffle 2 rulebooks together and press print! 

Like with Copycat, there's a lot of work to be done once you have decided you want to mix together equal parts Agricola and Dominion, and splash in some Through the Ages for flavor. Just like any other source of inspiration, that may be the starting point, but it won't be the finish line by a long shot.

I've entertained some thoughts on a mashup before, a combination of King of Frontier and the award winning Isle of Skye. Whenever I think about Skye Frontier it makes me want to revive the design, because I felt it really did work, and I had made good progress on it already. Just writing this post makes me want to drop everything I'm doing and work on a Tabletop Simulator mod for it! Maybe soon, but for now I've got my attention set on another mashup idea, the recent one about Candyland!

Let's do the Mash! (let's do the Monster Mash)

As a sort of proof-of-concept, I found a Candyland TTS mod, added a handful of checkers, and got my playtesters to try out a few rounds with me of a Candyland/No Thanks mashup. We literally just played Candyland, but instead of drawing a card to advance, we played No Thanks with that card: flipped it up, then either took it and advanced, or put a chip on it. When taking a card and advancing, you also get all the chips on it, just like No Thanks. Oh, and in this mashup, of course, progress down the track is bad!

We didn't play out the whole game, and indeed, with this mechanism, I think a Candyland board is way too long. But as proof of concept, it definitely did work! In No Thanks, a card could come up that's adjacent to one you already have, making that card excellent for you (free chips!) while still bad for everyone else. Every card in the Candyland version has a bit of this potential, as a red card might mean just 1 space of movement for me, but 4 for her, and 8 for you! There was no real analog for that dynamic in No Thanks where you have the 23 and 25, and the 24 comes up (something that's extraordinarily good for you), but with the shortcuts (assuming you MUST take the shortcut if you land on it), there were cards that were extraordinarily bad for you, which added a little consideration to taking a card that advances you a lot, but at least gets you past a dangerous shortcut. I liked the feel of that, and with a redesigned board maybe that dynamic could be exaggerated so it comes up more often. For example, perhaps the shortcut spaces could span 2 or 3 spaces, so as you approach, more cards could potentially land you on one.

One goofy thing about Candyland is the specific treat spaces, which can catapult you all the way across the board, straight to the end (woo hoo!), or even all the way back near the beginning (oh no!). In this mashup, I think I'd just make those "advance to the next special treat" (rather than a specific one) so it's more of a game. Again, those could be not-that-bad (if you're just a few spaces from a special treat), or awful for you (if you just passed one), which is just the dynamic I think this game needs to thrive.

So there you have it, a light, accessible game, along the lines of No Thanks. Is it heavier or lighter than No Thanks if you replace the numbers with a Candyland track? I think it has legs, and I plan to give some of the design details a little more thought.

[last minute thought, just wanted to jot it down... in this mashup, you can clearly see which space you'd advance to, which is a good thing in general. There could however be some subset of cards that have a plus sign or something, meaning that if you claim the card, you also must draw another card and advance per that one as well -- something to make cards a little bit more scary] 

Theme informs design

I've been known to say that even mechanics-first designs are really theme-first, or they become theme-first pretty quickly, as once you have the main mechanism in mind, the theme informs the rest of the design.

As for a theme for this mashup, one idea (sticking with the Candyland aesthetic) is kids binging on Halloween candy, last one to get a tummy ache wins. I like the nod to the inspiring game there, and the theme makes some sense, though I'm not sure it really necessitates movement on a board, but maybe that's not the end of the world.

Another, slightly more grown-up idea is paintball/laser tag/snowball fight, where you spend "luck" tokens to not be the target of an attack, and when you take a card, maybe it has an evasive maneuver on the back (I like the production hook there, take an "incoming snowball" card, and flip it over to show that you dove behind an embankment -- even if it's not mechanically relevant)... eventually your luck runs out and you get hit, last player standing wins. 

Or even more grown up than that, maybe a Battle Royale theme, like Fortnite, where the track board is your health bar. As you take hits, your health goes down (advances toward 0), and when you run out of health, you're knocked out, or dead, depending on the specifics of the theme!

All of these themes seem like they'd work. I kind of dislike the health bar idea just because it makes the shared track board irrelevant - it would be neat if the game board were non-trivial (though I guess in all those ideas the board is kind of trivial). 

I'm open to other theme suggestions, leave 'em in the comments below. And let me know what games you'd like to see mashed together!

Candyland, but a game!

(apologies in advance for the weird white background formatting - that happens when I paste stuff, and it's a huge pain in the butt to fix, so I'm not going to bother) 

There seems to have been a rash of threads on social media a couple weeks ago about whether or not Candyland is even a game, let alone a shining example of design. Perhaps they were in response to noted developer John Brieger's tweetstorm about how "Candyland is a masterpiece of game design that designers should be studying and dissect as one of the best examples EVER of game design craft for specific audiences." In any case, John decries the notion, put forth by many "game snobs," that Candyland is not even a game.

Of course, whether you consider Candyland to be a game or not depends entirely on your definition of "game." As one reply from GeekNights host Rym Decoster pointed out:

It fits the definition of 'orthogame' in that it has mutually agreed rules and a method of ranking players. It also fits my favorite definition of game: "An interactive amusement". It's not an ideogame. Nor is it a "series of interesting/meaningful decisions"

As for my thoughts on whether Candyland is a game... I'd say it is and it isn't. It's not a "game" like I like to think of games, because it doesn't have any choices to make. But in a more general sense, I think it's considered a game by a lot of folks. Is that just marketing? It comes in a game box, it is sold in the games section at Target, and people have been calling it a game for decades So yeah, it's all down to definitions

I generally enjoy Keith Burgun's 4 interactive forms, but I'm not sure that's much help in categorizing Candyland:

• It's not a toy, because it does have a goal (be the first to cross the finish line) 
• Is it a puzzle, because it's goal is meant to be found (you're meant to get to the finish line)?
• Is it a contest, because crossing the finish line first is a measurement?
• But it's not a game, because there's no decision making to be had

Based on that, I guess Candyland is a "contest," though the thing that's being measured is questionable -- your ability to raw the right cards? To unknowingly sit in the pre-determined winning seat? Feels a little fishy to me. But with no decisions to be made, I don't think Candyland qualifies as a game.

BUT THAT'S OK.

Being a game or not being a game is not what lends value to Candyland. Breiger outlined the value of Candyland pretty thoroughly in his thread.

Perhaps what's really in view here is the difference between game design and product design. Designer/Developer TC Petty replied to Breiger thusly:

I’d say all your points are “it was a good product.” It has no other game design craft qualities to study as evidenced by no mechanics to discuss nor how they were implemented or evolved. Product design: yes. Game design: no.

And while I am on record disagreeing with everything TC says, in this case I think I agree. John's points are all valid, but they're more about the product design of Candyland, and not the game design.

I hadn't really thought about the design of Candyland before, so I found the following assrertion in Breiger's thread interesting: 

A few mechanical considerations that go into designing Candyland board length space distribution shortcut placement color distribution composition of the deck (1's vs 2's vs special)

And it prompted this follow up from me: 

For a game without choices, ARE those considerations important? What does tuning them change? * Duration (important) * Movement range per turn (important to a point) 

Anything else?

 and he said:

Since there aren't decisions, the mechanical choices sort of funnel into 3 outputs that create a lot of the experience: Duration Pacing / Movement Range Surprises and Volatility The 3rd is pretty important to the what makes Candyland exciting for kids (big swings)

 and I said:

Looking at the board images above, it appears the order of the colored spaces are simply a repeating pattern: ABCDA... with occasional special spaces inserted I won't say that's NOT intentional, but am I out on a limb to think it's a default starting point?

The special spaces are more or less evenly spaced as well I'm not familiar with the card mix, but how much does it differ from an even mix of all the possible 2-color combinations?

You suggest these things were carefully chosen and intentional, but I'm not convinced there was a lot of design thought put into them That doesn't make Candyland any less special or good at what it was! But are there really under-the-hood design lessons for modern designers?

I don't think I saw a response to that, but it was interesting to think about anyway. It was also amusing to see some of the other comments being tossed around, like TC's argumentative ones, and the typical tangent from Jeff Warrender (author of You Said This Would Be Fun) in which he proposes turning Candyland into a game by adding a handful of convoluted mechanisms:

Since Candyland is the game of the moment, how about this variant: Candyland bid-to-move. Give everyone 30(?) coins. Each turn, flip a card. Everyone bid (closed fist?), high bid moves to that color. Ties friendly. Out of coins, eliminated(?).

Probably, if everyone is past a special space, when its card comes up it’s discarded. A mean variant would be, bid to avoid it, everyone but low bidder pays, low bidder moves back. Like bad cards in High Society.

A bidding game wants everyone interested in every bid. In a track game like this, "I only bid for big moves" will be common. So small moves have to have value. You also want/need asymmetry.

I think maybe instead of special spaces there are "conveyance cards" which you can win in a bid, and if you later land on a space with that conveyance you get to skip some of the track.

Easiest way to get asymmetry is from different or diverging paths. Maybe there are side quests, maybe those are what give those conveyance cards or some other treasure thing.  

Maybe rank order matters or there are checkpoints (e.g. it's a rally of some sort)

My idea to make Candyland into more of a game

In my mind, an attempt to "make Candyland into a game" should really maintain the general scope of the game. If changing it too much, and changing its scope and category, then why even include the original game at all? However, I think Jeff was orbiting a solid idea in there, which I would like to reach in and extract here:

What if we simply combine Candyland's board with another very simple, straightforward game: No Thanks. In No Thanks (now on BGA!), you flip a card with a number, and then take turns either paying a chip into the pool to avoid the card, or taking the card (and all the chips in the pool). Chips are good because they allow you to say "no thanks" to bad cards, and they're worth a point at game end. Cards are bad, because their value subtracts from your score. There's a twist however: if you can get a run of multiple cards in a row, then only the lowest value counts. So if I hold the 33 already, then the 32 is -32 points for everyone else, but actually +1 for me!

Imagine this mechanism, but instead of just collecting numbered cards that are bad, you advance down the Candyland board when you take a card with a color on it, and the goal is to be the last player across the finish line. This way, any given card could be better or worse for any given player, and then also there's the number of tokens you have to consider, making it a million times more thinky than Candyland as, but still a super accessible, simple game.

What theme would lend itself to wanting to be 'last past the post'? One follower suggested a political race, where "advancing down the track" is like scandals coming to light, and "reaching the finish line" is like having to drop out of the race due to an abundance of, I don't know, shame?

Let me know what you think. I actually suspect this idea could have some legs, and if I work on it any further, I may well get into some of those design questions such as distribution of colors in the deck, order of colored spaces on the board, number and spacing of shortcuts, etc. Maybe there's intentionality that could go into that after all - though I still find it hard to believe there was much intentionality behind it in Candyland!

Don't kill the messenger! A game about the post-funding KS process?

TMG in in the process of manufacturing and fulfilling 5 different Kickstarter projects right now. They are delayed, some much more than usual, and as I have taken it upon myself to handle Kickstarter updates and comments, I am pretty familiar with the kinds of things some backers post when a project is overdue, or when a project update is overdue.

Maybe I can make a game out of this dynamic! I don't think this is limited to KS projects, but for starters let's use that as a setting:

Play as a publisher working on crowdfunded projects. Get info on those projects, make progress toward completion, and post updates to your backers. Each of those steps informed by the real-world dynamics of running a post-funding Kickstarter.

PROJECTS
This game would be from the POV of a publisher, so the logistics of design and development, even the quality of gameplay, could be abstracted away. Perhaps there's a way to pick up future projects (representative of taking submissions or pitches). And maybe the more effort you put into it, the more possible points the project could be worth in the end (representative of quality/sale-ability of the game).

These projects, maybe tiles or cards, could show a combination of different types of work that needs to be done (development, rules editing, blind testing, art, graphic design), represented by different colored cubes. One thing you could spend time or effort on (worker placements/action points) is getting those things together, and the more you have before launching a crowdfunding campaign, the better prepared you are, so the more backers you garner, and the more money you collect.

This could be an interesting sub-dynamic. Ideally, you'll have all the pieces in place, so you'll get the maximum cash when you launch crowdfunding (in this game, your project would automatically succeed, but the extent to which is exceeds would depend on how prepared you were when it launched). However, you may need money to do other things, so it might behoove you to launch early, a little less well prepared, to get less-than-the-max money, but get it now.

The other consequence of launching a project early could be the time it takes to deliver... if you've already completed everything but the manufacturing, and you have everything else lined up nicely before launching, then you'll deliver the game in the minimum amount of time, which would result in a maximal score for it. The more stuff you need to do after crowdfunding, the longer that delivery takes, and that could end up reducing your score (or some other attribute, such as backer satisfaction? Probably easier to just say "score").

Again, the ideal situation would be getting everything ready before launching, however the crux of the game could be finding ways to manage launching early, so that you can afford to do more things.

WORK FORCE
Worker Placement is an excellent mechanism because it encompasses a few different things: it offers interaction with regards to blocking (as players take the actions that other players were hoping to use), it provides a user friendly way to represent budgeting of actions/effort, and it does an excellent job of introducing opportunity cost.

Action Point Allowance is similar, but without the interactive blocking. Depending on the theme, it might not make much sense to have limited access to actions anyway - Agricola and Stone Age famously having the "Family Growth" space limited to 1 player per round, which just doesn't make any real-world sense.

In either of those cases though, it makes sense to be managing your own personal work force (whether or not they directly interact with opponents' workers). One extreme could be a company with a minimal work force, that concentrates on 1 project at a time, maximizing gains from it. The opposite extreme could be a company with a bunch of employees, that take on many projects at a time, even if they launch the early (to get faster income) and therefore don't score the maximum for each. Many economic games have this sort of "quality-vs-quantity" dichotomy, and in those I sometimes refer to the "quantity" side as a "Wal-Mart strategy" :)

CROWDFUNDING
As I alluded to above, the main (only?) source of income in this game would be launching crowdfunding projects. When doing so, the project would automatically "fund" -- so you would immediately receive money. The amount you get would depend on the project itself, and how "prepared" you were to launch it (how many of the required cubes are already on the project).

In an ideal world, you would have all the possible cubes at launch time, thereby maximizing your income for the project. However, just like in the real world, the realities of scheduling and of stretch goals and things like that mean you seldom see projects launched wen they are 100% ready to print. In this game, the abstraction would be that you need money to operate, and the only way to get it is by launching a project, so you may have incentive to launch early if the economy of the game is nice and tight.

POST FUNDING
I think the crux of this game would be managing your projects post-funding. This means continuing to get the necessary cubes to complete the project, and posting updates to backers to keep their satisfaction high. Perhaps some of the required cubes are only for after-funding, and you can't possibly get them beforehand, but of course you might also still need to collect whatever you didn't already have before launch.

The flow of these cubes would be that they first go below a project card, representing information about the next step in the process for that project, then from there they go onto the tile, representing that progress being made.When posting an update, the relevant thing is the info gathered for the project -- perhaps backers want a particular combination of cubes in the "info" position when you update. If you don't have the correct combination of info to share, then your backers may be less satisfied. If you wait until you do have more info, then your update may be "late," and again, backers may be less satisfied. And as a weird quirk of this game, if you "spend" the info cubes (by making progress, thereby moving those cubes onto the tile) then maybe that actually works against the info you need to update (unrealistic, but could help make the game interesting). Maybe this represents that you had the info, but didn't update until the progress was made, so it's akin to being "late."

WHAT'S THE HOOK?
To be honest, it's been about a week since I thought of this and started writing this blog post. I hadn't gotten far past what I'd written above, and while I can see some game mechanics that might work, I can't really see a hook yet. The idea was to make a game inspired by how the post-funding KS process goes. I guess the management of information and progress, as well as the timing of it, while having to also maintain backer satisfaction would be what the game is all about -- is that interesting enough on its own?

This feels like one of those ideas I'll file away, with little-to-no confidence I'll ever get back to it, so if it does sound interesting to you, then be sure to let me know in the comments below. And if you're a designer who wants to work on a game like this with me in a co-design capacity, feel free to let me know that too!

[YANGI] Dice Drafting - collect or pay?

A thought crossed my mind the other day about a dice drafting game where it could be good to get either high numbers OR low numbers. The basic idea was that after drafting your die, you would choose to either collect a number of resources according to its value, or you would spend that number of resources to purchase something instead.

That thought quickly developed into having 1 die for each of several resources, and EITHER choosing one of them to collect that many of that resource, or else playing a card which has a cost in some subset of the resources. For example, if the dice are brown/wood, gray/stone, white/marble, and yellow/gold, and the roll were brown-2, gray-3, white-5, yellow-5, you could either collect 5 gold resources, or you could play a card that costs wood and stone for 2 wood and 3 stone.

Perhaps it's not a dice draft per se, maybe taking that 5 gold doesn't preclude someone else from doing the same. Or maybe it is a draft, and that yellow-5 can only be chosen by 1 player. Either way, the overall mechanism sounds like it's starting to shape up.

This morning I thought about an alternate mode of this mechanism... let's consider custom dice (which might be cool to help control the relative supply of the various resources, and to help control how many resources can be collected at a time), each face showing some number of the resource, and a + , a - , or a 0. This would also require a pricing chart, kinda like the one in Clans of Caledonia, indicating the current value of each resource. Each round you would roll the dice, maybe it's 2 dice for each resource, and adjust the chart based on the +s or -s that show up. If both wood dice came up with a + sign, the value of wood would go up twice. In addition to the resource dice, there would be two Build dice, that allow you to play a card in hand, with the additional cost of X (one side would show +1 of each of the different resources, one side would show +2 of any resource(s), and the last side could be no additional cost).

Then it could be a true draft, where you roll the dice, adjust the values, then take turns drafting them (collecting resources or building cards). Again, the cards would indicate which resources are required, you'd have to check the chart to see how many of those resources need to be paid. Note also that a card could list stone twice, which means you have to pay the amount of stone shown on the chart x2. I'm not sure what these cards would do exactly, but presumably it would be things like "+1 of a particular resource when you take that resource," or "score points based on some condition." Presumably the cards would be worth points in various ways (either directly, or via some set collection, or based on some condition).

This format sounds a little less elegant, but I think I see it working a little better in my mind (at first blush anyway).

A side thought I had was that if you collect resources and spend resources based on the die rolls, it might be the case that you spend more time collecting resources than you do actually advancing the game, so maybe when collecting resources it would be good to get an extra one, just so that you don't have to spend as many turns building up resources before you get to actually get to use them. I guess in that last format it doesn't matter as much, since the payment amount isn't based directly on the die roll.

YANGI: Dice Drafting Rondel game idea

Dice Drafting Rondel

You guessed it, I've had Yet Another New Game Idea (TM). This time it's a dice drafting rondel game. I found a note on my desk at work that I wrote a few weeks ago, and I had some time, so I thought about it a bit and pretty quickly sketched out a mechanical idea. Like I've mentioned before, from this point I'd probably need a theme that fits before I could make much more progress.

Imagine a Rondel with black spaces, gray spaces, and white spaces on it.

* Black spaces show specific basic resource icons which allow you to collect basic resources, as well as a higher level resource icons.
* Gray spaces show conversion icons which allow you to trade resources around, and next to each gray space there'd be a building tile with an ability and a resource cost.
* White spaces show coin icons which allow you to collect coins, and next to each white space there'd be a contract card with some requirement and some reward.

Each player has a pawn on the rondel, or maybe there's a single shared pawn -- I suppose either way would work.

I could imagine this rondel being printed on a board, or I can imagine it being assembled from tiles, such that the order of the spaces is not the same every game.

During setup, you'd roll 3 dice into a pool, 1 Black, 1 Gray, and 1 White.

On your turn:

1. Choose one of the three dice, and move your pawn clockwise on the rondel to the next space of the color matching the chosen die (you could pay some cost in coins to skip that one and move to the 2nd such space, etc).
2. Resolve that space according to the number of pips on the chosen die:
1. Black: Either:
1. Collect PIP of the resource shown, or 
2. Exchange PIP of the resource shown into the higher level resource shown.
2. Gray: Either:
1. For each pip on the die, either make the specific conversion shown, or collect 1 coin (maybe exchanges of advanced resources cost 2 pips), or
2. Purchase the building tile here by paying the printed resource cost, plus PIP coins (or additional resources?).
3. White: Either
1. Place up to PIP of your resources onto your contract cards, in an effort to complete them, or
2. Pay PIP coins to take the contract card here.
3. Re-roll the chosen die back into the pool for the next player.

[edited to make the actions interesting for both high and low rolls]

So you draft a die to collect, convert, or spend resources, and you care about the color for the type of action, and the pip value for the value of the action.

Thoughts on this? Any theme that might be a particularly good fit?

[edited to add this theme idea]

Here's a theme idea that may be a bit unusual:
You're an aspiring actor, seeking fame (and fortune?)... but you have to start somewhere. You wander around doing small jobs (voiceover work, perhaps?) to gain experience (collect resources), and maybe parlay some of that into some decent gigs (advanced resources). With enough experience and a couple of bucks you can take classes (build buildings) which give you an edge in certain aspects. Ultimately you're trying to land roles in TV and Movies (contract cards) to earn fame.

Worker Learning - applying deck learning concepts to a worker placement game (YANGI)

I've mentioned before that I'd like to do something more with the deck learning mechanism, and that has led to a few ideas... some of which I've pursued more than others.

A recent post in which I had a mechanical idea for "worker replacement" led to some discussion which grew into something that could incorporate some of the ideas of deck learning in a worker placement game... Yet ANOTHER New Game Idea, which I suppose I could refer to as "Worker Learning".

This new Worker Learning idea combines some aspects of deck learning with ideas I've had to use something from the online CCG Solforge, by the guys that made Ascension. Oh, and Richard Garfield.

In Solforge you have a 5 card hand, and you play exactly 2 cards per turn. When you play a card it "levels up" and gets better. After your turn you must discard your hand and draw a new one. So as you go through your deck, you are faced with decisions... not just "which card effect do I want," but also "which cards do I want upgraded for later?" This is a quintessential deck building / deck learning type of question. Furthermore, after cycling through your deck once, you will face choices like "do I play this level 2 card I've drawn to make it a level 3, or do I play another level 1 card to make it a level 2? Do I want to evenly upgrade my deck, or would I prefer fewer, more powerful cards?"

I thought that core component of Solforge was super interesting, and I've been wanting to explore it for some time now. Perhaps "worker learning" is a good way to do that. One way it could work is that you'd have some workers (maybe 8), each labeled (maybe A-G). Each worker would have a track on your player board which indicates whether they are level 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. Then you play a worker placement game, where your workers upgrade as you play them, and each worker space has a stronger effect the higher level your worker is. Like Tzolkin, Manhattan Project, or Concordia, if you want your workers back you must spend a turn recalling them. Perhaps there's some cost involved in recalling as well, maybe based on the number of workers that remain unplaced.

This way you have the option to play out all your workers before recalling (upgrading them all evenly), or recall early and then re-play upgraded workers -- upgrading them further. If the dynamics of the game are balanced properly, and the number of recalls work out to range from maybe 2 to 3 on the low end to 5 or 6 on the high end, then I think there could be some real diversity of strategy to be had.

So here we are again, another mechanics-first idea in need of a theme!

Again with the mechanics first -- I more and more think "theme-first" is the way to go! (Also, YANGI)

Some time ago (over 3 years!) I posted some thoughts on Mechanics-First vs Theme-First design, as well as an idea I'd had that was a mechanical game, completely devoid of theme.

Since then, a theme has emerged -- a theme that even seems pretty good -- and yet I have never gotten back to the game.

I'm starting to believe that Theme-First is the way to go, as it seems much easier and much more likely to maintain interest in the game, and to make progress with it.

That said, here is Yet Another New Game Idea (TM) which is, again, completely mechanical and devoid of theme. As a side note, I see a pattern: when I don't have an idea for a theme, I appear to gravitate toward color mixing as a place holder... basic resources of red, blue, and yellow combine into higher level resources of purple, orange, and green. As I said in my previous post, this just makes for easy grokking of the conversions in the game. It's tedious to memorize some chart of X+Y=A and X+Z=B, but everyone knows that Yellow and Blue make Green.

Worker Replacement game idea

I was listening to the Game Designers of North Carolina podcast last month, and they had an episode about turning a mechanism into a game. On the show they brainstormed a few mechanisms, and how they might build a game around them. The whole exercise kind of ties right in to what I was talking about above, and as I recall, after bringing up a mechanism, they immediately jumped to a theme to use with it. One of those mechanisms sounded like it had some potential, so I filed it away in the back of my mind to think about later.

Last week I started thinking about how that mechanism could work, and then this week on a plane trip, as I often do in that situation, I jotted down some notes and sketched out a game using that mechanism. As I said however, this is just mechanical rules, no theme to integrate, and as such it's pretty generic. Here's what I've got so far, let me know in the comments if you think it's any good, or what theme might fit...

As a player, you will be gathering resources, combining them into products, and trading in resources and products for money, points, or upgrades.

Each player will start with a neutral pawn in hand, and a board of 6 spaces will be seeded with 6 colored pawns. Each space on the board will be associated with an action. On your turn you will take the pawn in your hand, swap it with the pawn in one of the action spaces, then resolve that action -- and most of the time there will be a bonus available based on the color of the pawn in that space. So you will be making choices based on which action effect you want, as well as which color pawn you want for next turn.

As a placeholder for these actions I have put the following:
* Gather Raw Materials: Gain 1 red, yellow, or blue cube. Gain an additional cube of that color if the pawn matches that color.

* Refine Raw Materials: Combine 2 different raw material cubes into a product disc. Combine a second set of raw materials if the action pawn matches that color (same combination? any combination? Not sure)
** Red + Yellow = Orange
** Red + Blue = Purple
** Yellow + Blue = Green

* Buy Raw Materials and Products at Market: Buy any number of raw material cubes or product discs at the market prices (market is kinda like Glen More). If the action pawn matches color, then get a better deal or something.

* Sell Resources: Sell raw materials or products at market prices. Resources sell for money, products sell for money plus VP. If the action pawn matches color, get a better deal or something.

* Collect Money: Collect some money according to the color of the pawn placed (red, yellow, and blue pawns yield a little money, orange, green, and purple pawns yield more money. Neutral pawns yield a middling amount of money)

* Upgrade: Pay products/raw materials for cards with permanent abilities and VPs on them. Maybe there are 3 slots (color coded red, yellow, and blue), and if you use a red pawn, then you can take the card from the red slot, and if you use a purple pawn, you can take either the card in the red slot or the one in the blue slot.

That's all I've got so far. Maybe I'll make some more progress on the flight back home tomorrow. Let me know what you think!

Idea for solitaire card game, made multiplayer by first drafting the cards you play solo with

To be frank, I don't care much for them, and I don't play them much. there have been a few I've found interesting or impressive - namely Friday, by Friedemann Friese, and Pocket Civ, by BGDF'er Scott Slomiany (for which I contributed a resource mechanism). But for the most part, they're just not my thing.

I worked on the solo variant for TMG's Harbour a bit, and I worked on development for Dungeon Roll as well, which is basically solitaire. Not being a fan or a player of solo games, I'm not sure if my work in those areas really went in the right direction or not.

I've never really been interested in making a 1-player only game, or working on solo modes for my multiplayer games. If a fan is interested in making a bot to play Eminent Domain against, or a solo variant that doesn't require a "dummy" player, then more power to them!

But for some reason I was thinking about solitaire game the other day. I was thinking about a deck of cards that you would shuffle and hold in one hand like Flip City, and like Flip City you would look at the information on the back of the top card and decide whether to play it or not. More specifically, you would decide HOW to play it.

Since it's apparently my thing, I decided to use planets, resources, and upgrades... though this time I sort of had Terra Prime in mind rather than Eminent Domain -- maybe because I've been thinking of Terra Prime's upcoming return as Eminent Domain Origins :)

So you would look at the top card of your deck and you would decide whether to play that card as an upgrade (to make use of the upgrade text), or load it as cargo onto your ship somehow to be delivered to another planet, or flip it over and place it planet-side up in your row or network of planets -- like exploring, only it would probably tell you what type of planet it is on the info side of the card.

The idea would be that you're building some kind of network, and then shipping cargo of some kind through that network. Originally I thought the network could grow like a lattice -- in many directions, making a sort of hex grid out of cards. But maybe a simpler version is that your network is simply a line of cards from left to right.

Rather than actually having a pawn that traverses the network, perhaps what you're doing is trying to set up a line that will score well, and what you score is the cards you've saved for cargo (rather than put into play). In a way this scoring lines in an array of cards is similar to Arboretum, which I played once, and was reminded of last night when I saw some folks playing it. In that respect maybe a lattice-style network would make more sense, and I could use a scoring system reminiscent to (but hopefully less byzantine than) Arboretum's.

I figure that the planets should have types that are important, rather than needing to take a delivery to a specific planet, thereby making things a bit more flexible. In addition, I figure some cards would have hostile aliens rather than planets, which you would fight in a way similar to Terra Prime. Rather than adding dice to the game however, I would simply put a die icon on each card with some value, so looking at the top card of the deck you'd see the current "roll" value, and if I wanted to generate a new value, I could instruct the player to cycle that card tot he bottom of the deck and reference the new roll value on the new top card. I tried to utilize this type of roll aspect in a different game I never got around to finishing, and I always liked the idea of it...

So as you play your cards, one at a time, you would choose whether to use them as upgrades, or cargo, or to build your network. Some cards may have a cost, which could be paid by removing the next card in your deck from the game - thus that card would never get played... so paying a lot of costs would reduce your potential score, as well as deny you access to those particular cards.

Maybe a simple way to score would be to do it all at the end (like Arboretum), so a player need not record timing or order of cards played. Maybe any cards remaining in your deck count as cargo, and each one scores based on how you've built your network.

I started off by saying that I'm not fond of solo games. If this idea turns out to work, and be a fun and relatively simple to play solo game, perhaps it could be made multiplayer simply by adding a drafting phase in front of the solo game play -- so 2-4 players draft cards from the entire stock into their personal, then run through their decks making their own decisions as to how to play their cards. Perhaps there's just 1 big draft and then players play out their cards until they're done, or perhaps it's an iterative thing, where cards not played are set aside than hen mixed in with the new cards obtained in the next draft phase.

It's an interesting idea, and I'll let you know if I put any more thought into it.