Exploration mechanics

Exploration tiles 

I'm adding an exploration mechanism to one of my games, and iterating through a few variations on it has got me thinking about how exploration works. An obvious mechanism is to have face down tiles and flip them up when you get to them. I went this route in my first game, Terra Prime, and it worked alright. In an expansion however I modified that a bit -- set all the tiles face up so you could see where the planets are, then added a face-down exploration tile to each in order to maintain the exploration feel.

Another approach

Another approach though, is drawing multiple tiles to choose from. This could represent preparedness, or luck -- the more tiles you draw to choose from, the more likely you'll find something you like. Some years ago (circa 2007) I suggested this as a variant to the dig mechanism in Thebes, as a way to balance it out a bit, and I encountered a bit of pushback from some folks. Evidently, it can feel a lot less like exploration if you get to choose what you find.

In the game I'm currently working on, making changes requested by the publisher, the actions can be better or worse depending on how invested in them you are. In the case of this new exploration action, my first attempt allowed you to draw more and more tiles the higher your action level was. This is similar to my proposed Thebes variant - the more prepared you are to dig (or in my case, the more invested you are in that action), the more likely you'll find something you'll like. this works if you consider that the tile you choose is the one that's 'actually there,' and that you got to look at several first just means you're luckier, you tend to fid better stuff on average.

I still feel that's an OK mechanism, but I can see the point of the people who think that breaks the exploration theme... when you're making a choice, it does feel less like you're literally exploring what's there. So in my latest playtest, I just had players draw 1 tile, not several to choose from. If you were more invested in the action, you could do more than 1 explore at a time. Then I made sure that no matter what tile you draw, you get something of appropriate value, even if it's not the actual thing you had hoped to find. Also, I only have 5 tiles of each type, so in the late game, when the bags are low, you can have a pretty good idea of what you'll get.

So tell me what YOU think...

Does drawing multiple tiles to choose from break the exploration theme for you? Or do you see that as a way to represent spending more time, doing a better job, being more prepared, or getting more lucky?

In my last playtest, my players and I didn't miss the ability to draw more tiles to choose from, so I am very likely to keep the "surprise me" version. I could see adding a unique card or ability to the game that can let you draw 2 tiles to choose from when exploring, and if that breaks the theme for anybody, at least it's a specific piece of content, and not part of the game's structure.

Entangled Decisions

 A while ago (gosh, I think it's been over a year now!) I was mentioning how enamored I was with a particular game mechanism. I had mentioned using it in Keeping up with the Joneses (and even kind of promised a blog post on them), and I brought it up on Twitter as well.

I've always named multi-use cards as my favorite game mechanism (the Rondel is up there as well), but lately a new challenger has arisen... I'm starting to think Entangled Decisions are making a run at my favorite mechanism.

Multi-use cards are great because of the inherent opportunity cost every time you play one. They're compact and versatile, and can do almost anything! Entangling two unrelated decisions though-that's a compact way to ratchet up tension, agony, and decision space without adding content.

Entangling decisions is where you take 2 things a player might want (or not want), and connect them such that choosing one necessarily means choosing the other. This is sort of the opposite of an opportunity cost, if you think about it. When you play a multi-use card for one effect, then by definition you are giving up access to its other effects. When you make an entangled decision, it's like playing a multi-use card and being forced to take all of its effects, like it or not.

Cascadia is a great, pure example of what I'm referring to as an entangled decision. First you pair independent tiles and tokens, then choose which tile-token pair you want. "I like THIS tile, but I want THAT token!" makes for an agonizing decision with very little design effort.

Kingdomino does this a little bit as well by having you draft a tile plus turn order, which sometimes means you're drafting this turns tile and next turn's tile. You might take a less good tile this turn in order to go first next turn to get an even better tile.

Coimbra's dice draft counts too. You might want a die because it's a 5, or you might want the die because it's green.

Concordia's cards appear to have a similar feel: you might want the card for the action, or you might want the scoring condition... though to be honest, I've always felt like those scoring conditions are a little same-y, so I don't usually feel like I'm buying a sub-par card just for the scoring condition. Also, in that game if you have a bad card, you can just choose to not play it, so you don't lose much by taking a card for the scoring condition.

In Keeping Up With The Joneses, I entangled the effect of the tile you draft with the amount you'll move on the rondel (and therefore the effect of the rondel space you'll get). If both of those things are compelling, then it should create agonizing decisions between 3 pairs of effects, while still being a fairly simple game: just choose one of these 3 options. 

What games have you played that make good use of entangling two (or more) disparate, independent decisions?

Worker placement ideas based on a probably unpopular opinion

John Oliver recently did a segment for Mother's day pointing out that the US and Papua, New Guinea are the only two countries in the world that do not provide any paid time off for new parents. In his usual fashion, Oliver makes fun of this and asks, if we really love mothers so much, why doesn't our country back legislation that makes life easier for them...

After reading a couple of Facebook comments about this in my feed, some of which arguing for federal regulations providing paid time off (citing that it works for every other country in the world), and some of which arguing "if we want the government to support new parents financially, why not do it directly by just giving them a stack of cash, rather than regulating businesses to do it - that way it'll be more fair, and not just for employed women who have kids."

I REALLY dislike talking about this kind of thing, because pretty much no matter which side of the issue you're on, you're going to sound like an incredible jackass. So I guess here's my chance to sound like an incredible jackass... and then I'll tell you how that relates to a potentially interesting worker placement mechanism.

First of all, the jackassrey: Why is it that people (not just women, but couples) get to treat the ability to have children as some sort of unalienable right, no matter what? And by "no matter what" I mean "no matter what their situation." Why can't people be expected to be responsible about reproducing? Isn't a child important enough that a couple should ensure they're able to support it before having one?

What do I mean by that? Well, if you're in a situation where you will not be given paid leave, and you can't afford to take the time that you need, then might it be irresponsible to have a child under those circumstances? Never mind that if you're any good at your job, and work for a reasonable person, you shouldn't have to worry about job security - they should look forward to your return, even if they can't afford to pay you for the leave.

I'm sure it's an unpopular opinion to say that some people (based on their situation) shouldn't be having a child, though I'm not sure why that should be so unpopular.

Now, to lighten the mood, a little absurdity. Let's take my statement above to an extreme conclusion... I feel like this would make a really good book, movie, or Netflix miniseries:

Let's say that for some reason everybody decided (maybe by government mandate, or maybe by some sudden enlightening or some such) that they'd be more responsible, and not have children unless they could afford to support them properly. The extreme then is that poor people don't have children, and rich people do. Over time, the poor people get old and close to dying out, while the rich people continue to procreate and live their lives as usual. In a way, maybe this paves the way for some utopian society... as the poor people get old and die off, nobody complains about the distribution of wealth anymore, as pretty much everyone is wealthy. I could see it portrayed in a movie like something out of Demolition Man or the capital city in Hunger Games perhaps.

Then maybe there's the twist, the liberal message hidden in the fiction... the rich people, in an effort to stay wealthy, expect their kids to grow up into high paying jobs, there's nobody around willing to take $20k a year to be a teacher, and nobody's willing to pick up trash.

I dunno, I feel like there could be a good story in there, and I'm not sure what the moral would be. But enough absurdity, I promised game design!

In thinking about this, I considered putting it into game design terms. The argument I read about "why doesn't the government just give women $20k when they have a baby" has some obvious issues... if there's a reward for something like having a baby, then there will be people who will try to game the system, people who have a baby to get that reward, without any regard to what happens to the baby afterwards. In fact, I think this already happens to an extent. In any case, this is obviously bad, as it leaves a real, live person out in the cold.

But in a board game, that's not so terrible. In most worker placement games, it's key to get more workers as quickly as possible. Many games attempt to make this less trivial by assessing some kind of fee for workers - for example in Agricola you need to feed each worker during the Harvest phase, and there's a steep penalty if you are unable to do so. Similarly, Stone Age requires the feeding of workers - though in that game starvation could be a viable strategy. Even with these requirements, it's generally considered best to get more workers.

So what if there was a board game where getting a new worker was something of a chore... many games make you wait at least until the next round to use your new worker, and many require a big investment to get the new worker in the first place. Imagine a game where getting a new worker didn't cost anything up front, but instead came with a stipend. Then, before you can use that worker, it has to go through a "training" process which has some resource cost each step of the way. The stipend should cover the cost of those resources (at average price anyway), and failing to pay the required resources would come with a steep penalty, akin to the Begging card in Agricola.

So, a player who has a store of resources could comfortably afford to get a new worker, spending their accrued resources as necessary on the "training" process. This player could then afford to spend their stipend on whatever they wanted. Meanwhile, a player without a store of resources could still get a new worker, using the stipend to purchase the required resources for training. Finally, a player without a sore of resources could get a new worker just for the stipend, deciding to deal with the resource requirements later - perhaps via an engine that required that stipend to get running.

And of course, a player who just wanted the stipend could get it by recruiting a new worker, and then ignore that worker and take the penalties related to not paying the training resources. This would probably not be a winning strategy in the game, but it's a possibility, and maybe it illustrates the whole idea above of  offering a reward of some kind for having children, and the consequences of doing so.

Ok, I feel like I've thought about this more than enough for today.

Random Thoughts: End Game Triggers

I'll freely admit that endgame triggers are not my strong suit. I've historically had lots of trouble with figuring out when a game should end, what should trigger that, and how should the final turns play out. I wrestled with that quite a bit for Terra Prime.

Luckily, Eminent Domain had a natural trigger (stack depletion), but it still wasn't trivial to get the end game right. In fact, I don't think I got it right in the base game, so in Escalation I actually changed it - rather than simply finishing out the round, the new game end rule is that once the game end is triggered, you finish out the round and then play 1 full round.  I MUCH prefer this rule for Eminent Domain, especially as the player count increases.

I have noticed a few games lately have a game end trigger and a last round dynamic that I find really disappointing, and it's the same thing I had done in Eminent Domain. I'm sure there are more, but specifically I'm talking about Splendor and The Builders: Middle Ages here.

Splendor is up for the prestigious Spiel Des Jahres - the German Game Of The Year award. I heard that it was all the rage at The Gathering Of Friends, so that it was nominated didn't surprise me terribly.I got a chance to play a few games of Splendor, and it's a solid game - elegant, streamlined, simple yet interesting... all around a fine nominee for the SdJ as far as I'm concerned. But every time I played the game, one thing in particular really bothered me. It was the end game. The game end triggers when 1 player reaches 15 points. When that happens you finish out the round so that all players have the same number of turns, and that's it. While I think that's completely fair, the problem is that during the normal course of play, it's unintuitive and annoying to keep track of how many points each player has, and therefore how close they are to triggering the end of the game. As a result, you can be surprised by the end - just when you think you're about to make some big play in a couple of turns, another player will build a 2 point card and say "That's 15!" - immediately putting an end to your plans.

The Builders has that exact same mechanism - as soon as a player hits 17 building points in that game, you finish out the round and then see who has the most total points (building points plus money). For some reason it didn't bother me as much the one time I played The Builders - possibly because I was the one to trigger it, so I didn't get surprised by it. But it definitely bothers me just about every game of Splendor I play!

My thought at the moment is that like Eminent Domain, both of those games (and possibly many other games that use the same end game dynamic) could benefit from playing one full round after the game would normally be over.

Have you ever felt this way about a game? Which one? Does this dynamic of a surprise game end bother you in Eminent Domain? In Splendor? In The Builders? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this! Maybe it'll help me make better end game rules in the future :)

Random thought - communal farming vs personal farming (my ideas for a Keyflower expansion)

A few months ago I was chatting with my friend Sebastian Bleasedale, who's had a pretty good run recently of having his games published!

One of which was Keyflower with Richard Breese, an expansion to which just came out. I remember talking to him about a possible expansion idea I had for that game, which I thought could be a thematic fit, but he didn't think it worked with the game...

But the idea had an interesting mechanism in it, so I thought I'd jot it down here where I could find it, just in case I want to use it in some future endeavor:

So Keyflower is supposed to be about people coming over o the new world on the Mayflower, right? Maybe something about Native Americans, and Thanksgiving?

The event that Americans commonly call the "First Thanksgiving" was celebrated by the Pilgrims after their first harvest in the New World in 1621.[2] This feast lasted three days, and was attended by about 53 Pilgrims and 90 American Indians.[3] The New England colonists were accustomed to regularly celebrating "thanksgivings"—days of prayer thanking God for blessings such as military victory or the end of a drought

I'm surprised Wikipedia says "American Indians" rather than "Native Americans"

Americans commonly trace the Thanksgiving holiday to a 1621 celebration at the Plymouth Plantation, where the Plymouth settlers held a harvest feast after a successful growing season

So like at the end of the year you have the harvest Feast, which is like a special additional scoring maybe?

Squanto, a Patuxent Native American who resided with the Wampanoag tribe, taught the Pilgrims how to catch eel and grow corn and served as an interpreter for them (Squanto had learned English during travels in England). Additionally the Wampanoag leader Massasoit had donated food stores to the fledgling colony during the first winter when supplies brought from England were insufficient.

So you can get additional animals (fish, corn - different from grain in the first expansion), but not unless you interact with the Native Americans. These would help you with stuff, maybe including the Harvest Feast scoring.

The Pilgrims held another Thanksgiving celebration in 1623, after a switch from communal farming to privatized farming

Ooh... Switching from Communal farming to Privatized farming (!) the game could start with communal farming, and players could work toward making their own little farms (which is better for them). So like you have a harvest scoring phase at the end of each year, maybe it's sort of a set collection type of thing - there are various things you can bring to the celebration, and the more variety you bring, the better (?)... there's communal farming, which switches to private farming over the course of the game. As players switch over, they contribute less to the communal farm, therefore players still relying on the communal farm get less stuff from it.

You can get more stuff (fish/corn) from your farm if you go out of your way to interact with the Native Americans, which will help you score more at the harvest, but which of course has a cost involved.

I kinda really like the idea of a communal farm transfering to private farms. I imagine a Communal Farm board, with each type of thing you can farm on it, and a player piece from each player on each of them. When you get stuff, you get as much stuff as there are player pieces by that thing. When you plant your own stuff, you take your player piece off of that thing, and now you get your stuff (because you've planted it), and everyone who hasn't gets less stuff (because you're player piece isn't on the communal board anymore).

So like you get a tile that has, I don't know, a Carrot farming space. You now grow your own carrots, and when it's time to get carrots you get like 5 carrots. And because you grow your own carrots, you no longer contribute to the communal carrot making, therefore everyone who does not make their own carrots gets 1 fewer carrot per time they get carrots. Eventually the last 2 people to make their own carrots will only get 2 carrots each, while everyone else gets like 5.

So give a cost to planting (a cost involving existing resources), and give each player a set of player tokens with the different things you can plant on them (for the side board). When you plant something, you take your token off the side board and put it on your own tile.

And because you don't want a ton of currencies, maybe make these things that aren't spent, just scored, in a way that having more different things is good, and maybe having multiple sets of things is good (like a set is any number of different items, and each set you have scores with triangular (or something) scoring).

That's about it, copied, pasted, cleaned up, and edited from chat transcript. As usual, thoughts are welcome in the comments below!

Super busy + not feeling well = unfortunate combination!

When I started this blog post on Monday I was feeling feverish - my fingers were numb and I was shivering despite it being almost 80 degrees in here. I spent about 4 hours feeling this way, but then made a more-or-less miraculous recovery! I'm so relieved I didn't get sick (or, that I got better right away)!

We're inside 2 weeks from RinCon! That's both very exciting, and very hectic. I feel like there's so much to do, and everything feels like it's behind schedule - but at the same time I feel like it will all get done, and the convention will be awesome! I'm learning a lot about what I'll want to do differently for next year - making plans for that already.

In addition to RinCon planning, I've been finalizing the rules for my Eminent Domain expansion: Escalation as the illustrations for tech cards roll in. I believe we're down to the last two! [EDIT: We've got them all now!] Then the whole shebang gets sent to the excellent Graphic Designer Gavan Brown who worked wonders with the base game. I haven't heard if the cover will be done by him again, or if we're going to get an illustration done this time.

On top of that, the final pages of the Kings of Air and Steam rulebook have been popping up like wildflowers, and approvals have been fast and furious. As usual Josh has really hit this one out of the park... again! Perhaps Kickstarters will get a peek at a rules spread in an upcoming update. The rest of the graphics look as good if not better than the rulebook - with my favorite being one of the player board images - but I'll keep that to myself for now - you can place your wagers when they become public as to which one is my favorite (hint: they're all fantastic, but there are 2 I like best, the "favorite" wins by a nose, so to speak).


In case you haven't heard, the big news is that Michael and I are headed to Essen next month! TMG will not have a booth, but you can find TMG titles Ground Floor, Belfort, Eminent Domain, and Martian Dice at booth 4-230 (LocWorks). I will be in the LocWorks booth signing copies of Eminent Domain for a couple of hours each day, so if you are at the show (especially if I have any European readers who I may not otherwise meet in person), please come on by and say hello! It would make my day to hear that my humble blog is being read on the far side of the world :) I'll try to post more information (such as, I don't know, some kind of schedule maybe?) as it comes to light.

In actual gaming news, I finally got a chance to play the copy of Trajan that I picked up at GenCon. I think I like the game, but I do find something about the Rondel mechanism to be overwrought... I think I might like it better for example if instead of 6 colors, the action tokens were monochrome, and instead of a particular combination of colors, the Trajan tiles simply had a number on them, and you scored them by landing in that action bin and having exactly that number of tokens. Trying to plan ahead which color you'll want where is largely impossible, and introduces my least favorite dynamic to the game - analysis paralysis due to simply not knowing which of 2 choices could possibly be better (and trying to find some reason to pick one over the other).

Playing Trajan mostly made me want to revisit my own game idea using a "Rond-cala" mechanism... For those just tuning in (and for those who read my blog all the time, since it's been a while since I talked about this), here's how my idea came about:

When I first read some teaser information about Trajan, I only heard that it used the Mancala mechanism to distribute markers around a Rondel. I thought that idea was brilliant, and made some assumptions on how that must work. My guess was that on your turn you would choose an action to do, resolve that action based on the number of action tokens in that space on the Rondel, then distribute those tokens around the Rondel a-la Mancala. This sounded fantastic, as each action would sort of grow in power until you take it, then it would revert back to zero, and you'd have to build it back up again or settle for it being weaker the next time you take it. I was really excited about this idea, and waited with baited breath for Trajan to come out... only to find that I'd guessed wrong! Trajan did not work the way I thought it might, instead that game has you choose a bin, distribute the tokens around the Rondel, and then perform the action associated with the last bin you land on.

Trajan's mechanism is also interesting, but as I mentioned above, I find it annoyingly difficult to plan ahead, and a small mistake seems to not just set you back, but force you to drop all of your plans and start again (because all the bins have the wrong number of tokens now, meaning all of your available actions are different than you may have expected). I think my guess would make for an entirely different mechanical experience, one well worth pursuing. Playing Trajan has encouraged me to start thinking about this again, and so I brought my 1/2 prototype (more like 80%) to Monday's Gamesmiths meeting where I described it to a few people and got some feedback from them. One of these days I'd like to actually play the game and see what needs fixing! My next blog post will likely be new and ongoing thoughts about that game (the title of which I'm now leaning towards Templar).

Revisiting the Templar Knights

A few years ago I had the idea that a euro game about the Knights Templar ought to be doable. I haven't put too much thought into the idea since then, but recently it's popped back up on my radar as something I'd like to think about. Here's the fruit of that thought:

* I still like the idea of players dealing with a communal coffer
* I like the idea of players building structures on the board which will give them points and benefits
* I like the idea of player actions boosting the overall influence of The Order of the Temple, and that eventually triggering the End Game Phase (Friday 13, 1307 - when King Phillip IV issued an arrest order for all members of the Order of the Templar)
* I like the idea of an End Game Phase where players must flee and make a last ditch effort to score points, potentially losing flat out if they do not make it to safety in time
* I like the idea that the End Game Phase represents the destruction of buildings players had built, and that buildings closer to the 'epicenter' of destruction are worth more points while buildings further away will last longer (and confer their benefit longer)
* I like the idea of both militaristic and economic viable strategies
* And most recently I like the idea of using a Rondel mechanism to drive the game. Specifically, a "Rond-cala" mechanism (combination of Rondel and Mancala) similar to that in Stefan Feld's recent Trajan

I've mentioned before that upon reading about the Rondcala mechanism in Trajan, my guess was that you would choose an action and it's intensity would be based on the number of bits in that actions bin... then you would Mancala those bits around the Rondel. It turns out I had it backwards - instead you pick a bin and Mancala the bits from it, and you take the action at the end of the line. That's a lot harder to wrap your head around, and I wondered if it wouldn't be worth trying my mistaken guess out as a main mechanism in some game of my own - and now I'm going to give that a try.

I currently don't have a complete game, rather I have various parts of a game and ideas about how I'd like them to go together. The purpose of this blog post is to help chronicle them and facilitate putting the pieces of this design together to see if I can come up with the game I've got described in my head.

I suppose I could start with a title... since the game is about the Knights Templar it seems fitting to name the game Knights Templar, Templar Knights, or Order of the Temple. The subtlety of tricky or clever titles such as Friday the 13th or Order 66 would likely be lost on most players, and would cause more harm than good. I am open to suggestions on this, I'm leaning toward those first three - I like Order of the Temple but I also like the word Templar...

Players will be members of the Order of the Temple, and as such they would have gifted all of their personal wealth to the Order. Therefore players will not have personal holdings. They will act on behalf of the Order, spreading the Order's influence throughout Europe by building infrastructure and fighting in the Crusades. Players WILL however have personal Influence, representing their standing in the Order - the escaping player with the most influence will win the game.

My version of the Rondcala:
Actions in the game will include things like...
* Moving pawns on the board
* Constructing buildings
* Mustering troops
* Crusading (attacking a hostile region on the board)
* Spreading influence (collecting VP)

Each player will have a personal Rondel, and each of these actions will have an action space ("bin") on that Rondel. Each bin will begin with some number of bits in it (probably 2). On your turn you choose any action for which there is at least 1 bit in it's bin, resolve that action according to the number of bits in the bin, and then "mancala" those bits around the Rondel - that is to say take all of the bits and distribute them, one at a time, clockwise around the Rondel. In this way, the relative strength of each action will rise and fall over the course of the game. If you want to do a strong action (one with several bits in it), you must first do the actions preceding that one in order to build up enough bits in your chosen action's bin.

In addition, and I'm not entirely sure this is necessary, I thought it might be interesting to have money in the game. But as above, that money is in a communal coffer and accessible to all players. This means that one player could spend money, and not leave enough money for the next player (which could be good or bad I suppose) - and it also means that there needs to be a way to add money to the coffers. My old thought was that there'd be an action to "collect charity" or something, which would add money to the coffers. My current thought might be a bit better though... Each time a player chooses an action, an amount of Gold is added to the coffers equal to the number of bits in that action's bin. This way, the bigger or more powerful your action is, the more money you make available for your opponents to use. That dynamic sounds interesting to me.

In order to simplify the discussion, I'm going to define a variable X to be "the number of bits in an action's bin" - so the paragraph above translates to "when taking an action, add X Gold to the coffers."

Now that I've got a pretty good idea of how the main mechanism in the game might work, I probably ought to consider the rest of the game...

Actions:
Here are some of the actions I expect to want to use in the game. This is not necessarily an exhaustive list. It seems like +/- 6 actions seems to work well for a Rondel game.

* Move: Move your pawn up to X spaces. Or perhaps split X movement points between all of your pawns on the board. I expect that other actions such as Build and Attack will take place where your pawn is, so moving around the board may become important in order to take your other actions.

* Build: Construct a building of level X or lower. I expect to use a variety of buildings, each conferring a specific benefit, and each coming in different levels (say, 1-4). The higher the level, the stronger the benefit of the building. In order to build a Level 3 building, you would need 3 bits in your Build bin, AND the Level 1 and level 2 buildings of that type must already be on the board. It's possible that the buildings will also cost some amount of Gold, in which case that Gold must be available in the coffer... though with the scheme outlined above you'd be adding Gold to the coffer before building anyway, which should help.

Possible buildings and what they might do include...
* Bank: allowing you access to more money in some way
* Church: helps you score Influence with the Influence action perhaps
* Castle: helps you with attacking perhaps? Or makes troops stronger (more Knights for example)? Or maybe when you build a Castle, you get a new Knight pawn on the board, making your movement options better/more versatile.
* Farm: helps muster or maintain troops (you have to feed them)

* Influence: Collect X influence (plus additional influence from each Church in play?) I like when a game has a 'straight VP' action, usually weaker than other actions, unless you work really hard to make it good. In this case, perhaps by building Churches you can choose this action more often and make out ahead while doing so.

* Muster: Collect X troops (plus additional troops from each Castle in play? Limited by number of Farms in play?) Troops will be needed to attack regions. I expect there could be Knights, a special kind of troop that is stronger somehow.

* Crusade: Attack a region with up to X troops, or maybe with strength X (or X per troop). I expect the board will have some spaces (region) that are empty at the beginning of the game, and others that are defended by enemies. Each region should have some number of building spaces (no 2 like buildings in any region), so in order to continue expanding players may have to clear out Enemies via Crusading. This would earn them influence as well as open up new Building spaces.

Interesting idea: suppose you attack 1 region with this action, and if costs you X troops, meaning for this particular action, you want X to be small, not large. There could be a building that reduces the troop cost to attack (hospital?) In this way, the more often you attack, the less it costs each time - rewarding a warmonger for attacking often.

* Move: Perhaps another Move bin, since movement may be key to positioning your pawns.

Influence track and game end timer:
I envision an Influence track across the top of (or around) the board, which records influence each player brings to the order (which will be their score), as well as the overall influence of the order itself - which I envision to simply be the running total of the player' influence. So whenever a player scores Influence, they adjust both their marker and the Order's marker on the Influence track. When the Order's influence marker reaches a certain point, marked on the board, that will indicate Friday 13, 1307, the time at which King Philip issues the order to arrest all members of the Knights Templar. At this point the Order's marker on the influence track would cease to represent the combined influence of the players, and instead would turn into a countdown timer of sorts. In some way the marker would decrement, and when it reaches certain spaces (marked on the track), buildings in the region(s) indicated by that space would be destroyed. Perhaps as well, Knights in those regions would be captured. Players would need to move their Knights to Portugal, the only European country where the Knights Templar were safe, before they are captured. When all knights are safely in Portugal (or captured), then the game will end. Perhaps there could be more than 1 (I want to say 3) different possible 'epicenters' of this destruction, so you don't know which it'll be, and it could be different from game to game.

Building tech tree:
I've got a couple of different ideas about this... it could be the case that there is 1 big set of buildings, with 1 or 2 tiles of each, and when all the Level 1 Farms (for example) are gone, then it'll be a little harder to get a Farm (need to build Level 2)... then the benefits would probably be related to the total number of the appropriate buildings on the board, meaning everybody has the same tech upgrades (though in theory you'll build the buildings that support your strategy more than someone else's).

Another idea is for each player to have their own supply of building tiles. While this requires more bits, it could be better because (a) players could differentiate their player profiles based on which buildings they build (only 1 building of each type would be allowed per region, and only 1 building per player would be allowed per region as well) - and (b)there could be 2 copies of each, and when built, 1 could go onto the board, and the other could go onto the player's Rondel so it's easy to calculate and not miss the benefit. In this case, for each player it will get harder and harder to specialize in a particular building (each one will be a little harder to build), which is a neat dynamic. On the other hand it would be relatively easy to build several different level 1 and level 2 buildings, giving the player a variety of bonuses, but no action that is super powerful. This scheme sounds best to me at the moment.

That's about all I have for now. I'm working on some thoughts for the game board. I'm sure I'll keep you posted on any progress this game sees. In the meantime I'd be interested in any comments you may have on it!

Game mechanic for a hunt

Sitting at lunch today I had a random thought, about Seal Team 5 and their capture/killing of a terrorist. I heard someone say that Disney had bought the rights to "Seal Team 5" - as if to make a movie about it (maybe they're waiting for that not to be in extremely poor taste?)

Anyway, that thought led to game mechanics for searching for a hidden target. Imagine that each player represents a different intelligence agency, and they're all out to find (capture?) a hidden target, maybe a terrorist or maybe just a particular item or piece of information (the Holy Grail, like the Da Vinci Code?)

Suppose that there are first of all several Macro-locatins where the target could be located. Maybe these are countries for example. Players would go about getting information, trying to figure out which macro-location they should dispatch their Ops team to. When they think they have this information, they may dispatch their team, but so as not to tip off other players they would not reveal which location the team has been sent to. They would however have to lock that choice in.

While everybody else is still trying to figure out which location to send their team to, you can go about your business trying to learn more specific information - like where within that macro-location the target is hiding, or how to go about getting it. Meanwhile, since you have dispatched your team, you can (must?) spend some of your limited actions 'advancing' them... say you have an "Ops Team Progress track" for example, and you advance a marker on that track to indicate that your team is making physical progress.

Eventually there would be some trigger which would cause the correct Macro-location to be known to all players. Maybe at this time a specific board for that location is brought into play. Any player who has dispatched their team must reveal where they dispatched them to. If they were incorrect, then all the "progress" they made is wasted - they won't find the target. However, assuming they were right, then they have already effectively taken X moves on the new map (where X is the number of advances on the Ops Team progress track have been made). Thus, they have ahead start in the race to find the target.

I don't know how interesting this would turn out to be, or how fun, or exactly how the game would work - but it sounded like a neat way to implement a race for hidden information. I think this could jive well with the type of thing that Indiana Jones' Lost Adventures was doing with the game system knowing information that the players do not.

Cow Tipping details

I had a few thoughts today about Cow Tipping... I don't know whether they are good ideas or not at this point, but I think they are worth considering. There are 2 different ideas, completely unrelated...

1. Numbers on cards are highly anti-thematic. You're allegedly recruiting a gang of cows, so what's the deal with cards with numbers on them? Suppose instead that the cards simply had 1 of 7 or 8 different cows pictured. Then instead of a Set of like ranked cows or a Run of several cow cards in numerical order in the same suit, there would simply be "All the same suit" gangs and "All different suit" gangs.

I'll note that if you look at Rank instead of Suit in the current version of the game, a Set gang (all the same Rank) is just like the proposed "All same suit" gang. In the current game there are 5 suits, 7 ranks. So a Set gang would be the same as a "Same Suit gang" if there were 7 suits.

It would be much easier however to get a Run gang (All different suits), because it would not require a specific numerical ordering. Therefore the tipping costs would have to increase for that type of gang.

The purpose here is two-fold: Get rid of the antithematic numbers on the cards, and make more nice pictures of cow characters. As an added bonus, it might be easier to grasp how to make a set for a young player - either all the cards have to match, or none match.

2. Scoring has been touted as too complicated for the game. I'm not sure I agree with that, especially if using the "Draw 2" mechanism rather than the original "refill hand to 7" rule. However, it occurred to me that it might be easier to simply count majorities for each type of vehicle tipped and for each color. there are 10 categories (5 types of vehicle, 5 colors), and for each category there could be a player with the most cards collected. The player with the "most mosts" could be declared the winner.

This could devalue the importance of variable costs and the fact that Busses are harder to tip (cost more) than Motorcycles, making it a race for the Motorcycles for example. Another possibility is that a Motorcycle majority isn't worth anything, Car/Truck majorities are worth 1 point, Tractor majorities worth 2, and Bus majority worth 3... color majorities worth 1 point each. This kind of thing would sort of be a middle point, still some adding of points, but the numbers would be smaller. There could even be 10 scoring cards, 1 picturing each type of vehicle and 1 picturing each color, which he winner of each majority would take, making it really easy to add up their points (VPs could be listed on the card)

Another thing to note is that once you have 3 Trucks, there's less incentive to get a 4th Truck. It's worth something for the color, but since you already have the majority in Trucks then it doesn't help anymore.

In other news:
The turn sequence has thus far always been "Tip, Discard, Draw." This made a lot of sense when the "draw" meant "refill your hand to 7 cards" - if you didn't discard first and didn't tip anything then you would already have 7 cards! When using the "Draw 2" rule it was less important, and players often wanted to draw first, then discard.

I was pretty adamant that Tip/Discard/Draw was the same as Draw/Tip/Discard, just delayed by a turn, but players were still unhappy with the prospect of having to choose a discard then drawing something matching the card just discarded. I pointed out that if you drew at the beginning of your turn, you'd have the same issue drawing a card that worked with the one you discarded at the end of last turn... I was only met with the bad logic "at least you'd have something else to choose from!"

I understood the reason the designer placed the draw at the end of the turn was so that when a player's turn came around, they'd know whether they were going to Tip or not, and they wouldn't have to reconsider based on the new cards they drew. What I didn't consider was reorganizing the turn as "Tip/Draw/Discard" - which still puts the card draw after the Tip, but also allows players to draw new cards before having to discard one.

One major factor which led me to agree that this was in fact better than Tip/Discard/Draw was that sometimes you Tip using all the cards in your hand, and in that case you have no card to discard. So you don't. Then you draw 2 cards... thus gaining Card Advantage (as we used to call it in the old days of Magic). The person doing this is generally someone who has tipped, and probably tipped several times in quick succession since their hand wasn't built back up. Therefore the person is likely winning, and why should they get an advantage of any kind? They shouldn't - this is just what I thought was wrong with the "Refill Hand to 7" rule. So yes, it's true, Tip/Draw/Discard is a better turn order. It also felt a little more like I was building up a set on purpose that way. I'll be using that rule from now on.

Rummy Variant vs Set Building

I've been calling Cow Tipping, a card game Tasty Minstrel is planning on releasing next year, a Rummy variant. This is mostly because in the game you are putting together a run or a set like you do in Rummy. The rules as written force you to discard a card, and then allow you to draw one from opponent's discard piles or from the top of the deck (which is like Rummy). Before that happens, if you have a sufficient set or run, you can discard it in order to claim a scoring card (which, obviously, will help you score points). Then you refill your hand to 7 cards.

I've decided that I'm not sure when a game is a Rummy variant and when it is simply a set building game. How many aspects must be similar before a game is considered a Rummy variant? There are specific definitions for "Trick taking" and "Climbing" games - is there such a definition for a Rummy game?

I'm considering trying the following changes in order to inject more control and player choice into this particular set building game, because as written I don't think it feels enough like you're building a set:

Set building on the table in front of you.
Rather than building up these sets and runs in your hand and then discarding them to take a scoring card, I think it might be good to construct the sets on the table in front of you. To keep it simple, you are allowed 1 of each type of set (1 Set and 1 Run), and each turn you can add to them until they are sufficient to exchange for a scoring card. If you cannot add to either of them, then you have to discard one and start a new one. This I think will encourage people to be drawing cards when possible that add to their sets, and to start to build sets that they have cards in hand to add to it with. In addition, this will give players (who are interested in watching for it) a reason to discard 1 card over another - THIS card will hep an opponent, THAT card won't, so I'll discard that one! Currently you can't really know whether THIS card or THAT card are safe to discard, so you just pick one.

Card drawing vs Card playing
Instead of filling your hand every turn, I would like to try a mechanism wherin you draw cards. Borrowing from Thurn & Taxis a little bit, I would like to see players having the opportunity to draw more cards and play fewer in one turn, in order to build up their hand, and in another turn have the opportunity to draw fewer cards and play more. I also want to maintain players having to discard a card for other players to use each turn, so the rule I'll try is that you can either Play 3 then Draw 2... or Play 2 then Draw 3. One card must be played to the discard pile each turn. The other card (or cards) must be played to your sets in play. If they do not legally combine with the cards in play to form a set, then you have to discard what you had and start a new set with the card you play.

This brings up a question I hadn't considered. Suppose you have a red 2, 3, 4 in play, and you have a red 6 in hand but no 5. Can you play the red 6, as it's legally part of a set that is simply unfinished yet? I think so, but you wouldn't be able to cash in that set until it is complete. It seems like it would be really tough if you had to lay down the cards for a Run in order, and there's no similar restriction for the Sets.

The point of these changes, as I mentioned, is to make it feel like you are building a set, and to give players some reason to do one thing over another, while still keeping the game fast paced and light.

Scoring
Scoring in Rummy games is often based on what cards you have left in hand when someone 'goes out' (and in that case scoring is bad). In Wyatt Earp for example, scoring is based more on majority of each color for which you have sets in play, which is very different than the scoring in Gin Rummy for example. In Cow Tipping, scoring is of course based on the scoring cards you collect during the game. It's sort of another set collection mechanism in that you score more for having more of the same color or type of car. It's been mentioned by players that the scoring is too complicated for the game, and I think that's true - you have to do a lot of math to add up the points you get for sets of cars, then do it again for sets of colors, then add the 2 results together for your total score. I'm not sure what better scoring method there could be, but there's got to be something similar that is easier to calculate.

Soliciting Suspense!

Scott has been mulling over a way to make a board game give the feeling of suspense you'd find in a good thriller movie, or perhaps a video game (though it seems many attempts at a video game aren't too impressive in that department). Off the top of my head I couldn't think of a good way to impart that edge-of-your-seat feeling to a player, so I thought I'd solicit ideas from my readers (both of them)...

What do you think? Got any ideas how to make a board game offer the feeling of creeping through a haunted house, not knowing if a ghost is about to pop out of nowhere? Or maybe looking through a campsite for a lost companion, suspicious that a psychopath is on the loose but unaware where he is or what he'll do if he catches you? Giving it a little thought I came up with a potential start to something, but it's not amazing:

Let's say there's a deck of cards, some of which are blank, and some of which are scary monsters or events of some sort that you don't want to encounter - let's say Werewolves. Players have a limited number of counters which will cancel out these bad cards, let's call them Silver Bullets. At certain times a player must draw a card, and if it's a Werewolf then they get hurt (or something else bad happens), but they can, before looking at the card, spend a Silver Bullet to escape the effects of the card (whether it's a werewolf or not). Maybe this is like shooting the person walking up to you - maybe it's a werewolf, maybe a regular joe - either way you're down 1 bullet and you don't get attacked.

Furthermore, if the player somehow is prepared, or has a particular item, or maybe knows something about the person coming up to him (that he's more or less likely to be a werewolf), then instead of just drawing 1 card, he'd draw a couple - maybe 3. He'd look at them, then decide to use a bullet or not, then shuffle them up and choose one at random to encounter. This means that you can see how likely the card is to be dangerous, which would give you a better idea whether you should use the bullet or not. Maybe some cards are actually good (like additional bullets, or health), so if you see one of those you might not want to use your bullet so maybe you'd get the good thing. But the main point is, you don't know exactly what you'll get, and you only have so many bullets!

The way to create suspense however would be not just in the existence of these cards, but in how and when you have to draw them. One quote from Scott's post stood out to me: "In other words, it doesn't just instantly jump monsters out at you, but alerts you to the fact that something MAY be jumping out at you in the very near future. Which makes a lot of difference." Suspense in the movies come from the anticipation of something happening, not the thing actually happening. The more you wait for it (knowing it's gotta happen any second), the closer to the edge of the seat you get. To capture that essence in a board game, I think you'd need to figure out a way to make the player know that at any moment they might experience some event (maybe drawing from that deck of werewolves), which could be really, really bad - or just completely unknown.

Not knowing what is going to happen, but knowing that whatever it is will happen any minute, is probably a great way to build suspense!

A thematic movement mechanic, but what theme?

I have this movement mechanic, and I wonder what kind of game it would go well in.

The point is that the board would have some topography, like each space has a number representing it's relative elevation. Players would have some tokens/chits/cards/whatever representing energy, and you pay some amount of energy to move from one Elevation to a higher Elevation (you pay the difference in elevation). Moving to a lower elevation would cost less, probably 1 energy per 2 elevation levels. And if you don't move on your turn (rest) then you get 1 energy in addition to your regular income.

So moving from Elevation 2 to Elevation 5 costs 3 energy, while moving back down from 5 to the 2 costs just 2 energy. Climbing from Elevation 1 to Elevation 6 costs 5 energy, jumping back down would cost 3.

I'll keep this one on the back burner for a while until I can think (or someone can suggest) a theme in which this mechanic would fit. Maybe hiking/trailblazing, looking for something (set collection, pickup/deliver - could use some mechanic to represent GPS... Geocaching maybe).

I think each player should have multiple pawns to move (but just 1 pool of energy to spend from).