Rolling Realms - Jaffee Realms update update

 A couple of weeks ago I posted about updating the realms I'd made for Jamey Stegmaier's roll & write game, Rolling Realms. Well, since then I have gotten ahold of the published version of Rolling Realms, and I have played my updated realms a couple of times each. Here's the news...

Crusaders

This one works well. I went with the edit I made in the footnote of the previous post: for the odd numbers, you get 1 resource per dot, for the even numbers you get 1 star for every 2 dots. One game it felt kinda easy to get 6 stars (plus a handful of resources), so I considered changing that to 3 dots per star... but I'm not convinced that's necessary yet, so I left it alone for now.

I like the way this one works, and I think it feels on par with the published realms.

Eminent Domain

After that last post, I preferred the previous version of the EmDo realm, the new one seemed more fiddly. So I reverted to that, but added stars for each row or column of planets, so you can get some stars for just getting lots of planets. This continues to be based on the thematic feel of the game, not the mechanical feel, which could be bad for players unfamiliar with the game, and it could be forcing the realm to be too complicated.

Today I played a game with this version, as well as the published Pendulum realm, and they happened to be in the same round, so I actually played them side by side. This was fortuitous, because it highlighted an observation I made to myself when reading how the Pendulum realm worked. To put it bluntly and succinctly, I don't think I could have boiled my EmDo  realm down and condensed it half as well as the Pendulum realm does! The Pendulum realm is just like my EmDo realm, if you combined Trade and Research into 1 action, and indicated what you get for Trading/Researching on the planets themselves.

...which is cool! I like the Pendulum realm. But if that published realm is so similar (and more simplified) than my EmDo realm, then I probably need to go another route with EmDo. As I mentioned, maybe evoking the deck learning rather than the thematic or strategic aspects would be better anyway. So here's the new version:

1 column per die value. the first time you use a die of that value, you get 1 resource as indicated. the 2nd time you use that same value, you get 2 of that resource. The 3rd time, you get that resource plus a star. And the 4th time you get 2 stars. In this way, it's like you get better at using any given number in that realm the more you use it.

I was wondering if that would be enough, or if I should try and add just 1 more thing somehow... like maybe awarding a star for using 1 of each die value (nah!), or something crazy like "mark off a box in this realm when you use a die value -- whenever you use that die value again (in this or any realm), get the indicated reward in addition" - then award nothing, 1 resource, 1 star or something like that. So using a number in the EmDo realm would make you better at using that number everywhere, not just in the EmDo realm. That's a neat idea, but I think I'll try the basic version first. The neat thing about Rolling Realms is that the complexity comes from the combination of realms available and the opportunity cost of using a die in one realm instead of another. So the individual realms can (and in fact really should) be very simple and straightforward.

Jaffee Realms 2021, v2.0

Please feel free to try these out and let me know what you think in the comments! I'm going for realms that evoke Crusaders and EmDo, but that fit in with the existing realms in the published game.

Rolling Realms - Jaffee Realms update

About a year and a half ago, Jamey Stegmaier created a roll & write game called Rolling Realms for people to play over zoom during the pandemic. I loved it and thought it might actually be his best design to date, and I made some realms based on games I had worked on.

For the most part, my realms were more complicated than the ones he'd made, and I haven't gone back and revisited them at all. Since then, Rolling Realms was so popular that Jamey has made a full production copy. That has inspired me to revisit the realms I had done for my games, Crusaders and Eminent Domain 

Here's what I had from before, and some new versions that are potentially more in line with the published versions of Jamey's realms:

Crusaders Realm

Here's what I had back in April 2020 for Crusaders:

Crusaders Realm - 4/2020

I liked this because it encapsulated all the major actions in the game (Crusade, Build, and Influence), and they all seemed to sort of fit. It turned out to be a bit confusing for people though, especially if they weren't familiar with the Crusaders game.

However, this version did not refer to the driving Rondcala mechanism at all. So I thought I might be able to make the realm more straightforward, utilizing the Rondcala at the heart of Crusaders. Here's an attempt at that:

Crusaders Realm - 11/2021

I don't think there was room to fully explain the idea here. I'm not sure how much space there is on the official cards vs this mock-up either, and I'm not sure if the card needs to contain the explanation or if it can be written elsewhere. Here's what I had in mind for this version:

When you assign a die to this realm, resolve the corresponding wedge. It must have at least 1 pip in it. Depending on how man pips there are, you get 1, 2, or 3 of the pictured item:

1-3 pips: 1 of the pictured item  |  4-5 pips: 2 of the pictured items  |  6+ pips: 3 of the pictured items

Then, you cross off all the pips in that wedge (remember how many there were), and draw a new pip on each of the next wedges, one at a time in clockwise order, until you've drawn that many. Thus, you add pips to the wedges in the same way you'd add tokens when you distribute them in the board game.

I have not tried this yet, but it seems straightforward to me, so long as the rules are explained.

[Edit: maybe an even simpler version is to collect 1 resource per pip for the odd numbers, and 1 star per 2 pips for the even numbers. Sure, that's potentially a bunch more resources, but so what?]

Eminent Domain Realm

Here's what I had a year and a half ago for Eminent Domain:

EmDo Realm - 4/2020

I thought this was OK, you mostly Trade for resources (which rewards 1 of each planet type), or Research for stars, and you could either just get a couple planets, or get a bunch (though there's no actual reward or incentive for that.

Here's a very similar idea that I think might read a LITTLE better:

EmDo Realm - 11/2021

In this version, you still get more resources if you have dissimilar planets, and you need similar planets to get tech. But this time the tech gets crossed out when you get it, so you can't get the same reward box twice. I also added stars for getting complete rows or columns of planets. You kind of already want to do that for other benefits, but this seemed like a fair thing to add so you can use planet flipping as a strategy.

I guess this ignores the main mechanism of Eminent Domain, but it maintains the dynamic of needing a few planets to get anything done. If this doesn't work, I'll probably do something super simple that just rewards you for having done the same action before (the first time you do an action, mark a box and get nothing or very little, 2nd time get more, 3rd time get even more).

[Edit: I wonder if the old version isn't actually a bit simpler... I like the symmetry of the Trade and Research actions in it (1/2/3 dissimilar planets for trade, 1/2/3 similar planets for research)]

What do you think?

I'm curious to know how confusing or complicated these end up being, especially in comparison to Jamey's published Rolling Realms. I haven't tried either one, but I'd love to get a wide berth of playtest data. I'd really like to see them come down to the level that the published version of Rolling Realms. So if you give these a go, please comment below with your thoughts!

[Edit: I tried them once, and they seemed OK - got a really low score though! I'd still really like to know what people think of them]

"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.