One of those "Aha!" moments...

This morning I had one of those infamous and elusive "AHA!" moments. It's a small idea for a game, but it feels like a big step forward. It went something like this:

There's a game I'm working on for TMG - kind of a follow up to Dungeon Roll. I say follow up because it's a dice game, and it's similar in scope to DR, but it is otherwise completely unrelated. I suspect some of the people who enjoyed Dungeon Roll might enjoy this as well.

In the game, you roll some dice (obviously). Each turn you use some, and re-roll the ones you used but not the ones that went unused. Kinda like I have done for EmDice (Eminent Domain: the Dice Game). This mechanism has a tendency to build up certain die faces until you use them, but if the die face that builds up is not one you want to use, then you have a problem... unless of course you're allowed to re-roll things in some way. The latest rule was that you COULD re-roll some dice, if you sacrifice one of your dice forever. Or possibly score 0 points for the turn.

In addition, there are some cards in the game which can help increase your score for the turn. Originally three was going to be a sort of draft to get these cards, which I'd hoped would allow players to get good synergy out of their cards... but based on the scope of the game, it's quicker and simpler to just deal out the cards. My concern of course was about fairness, and especially the perception of fairness. In a light game, players aren't going to do math or analyze everything to see if the cards are fair, they're just going to either feel like their cards were as good as their opponents' cards, or not. So more important than the cards actually being fair, there has to be something to compensate a player who got a "bad hand."

My first approach to this was to award bonus points for cards leftover... generally speaking you would do better to actually play the card, but if you got a card you couldn't use, at least you get something out of the deal. That seemed OK at first, but in reality that doesn't solve any problems at all, and it introduces questions such as what's a fair compensation? And at what point is it actually better to NOT play the cards? No, that wasn't the right solution. But what is?

This morning I had a minor epiphany about this - one of those "Aha!" moments you read about. There does need to be some compensation for being dealt a card that, in theory, could be completely useless... but rather than points, why not allow players to discard any card they want to re-roll their dice? Like most Aha! moments, after having this idea it seemed so obvious it's tough to imagine NOT thinking of it. As it stands, sacrificing a die to get a re-roll is an awfully high price to pay, but you'd do it a couple times at the last minute to score a few more points, or possibly once early if your roll is atrocious (though that's probably just asking for trouble). So more ability to re-roll would be welcome, and if you have been dealt a card you know won't be useful, then you can happily spend it for a "free" re-roll! If you ave a card that could be worth +1 point, you might even consider whether a re-roll would be worth more than that (based on what you have).

At any rate, I'm pretty happy with this realization. Aha moments feel good, no matter how minor they are or how obvious they feel after the fact. I look forward to testing this game again with this new rule (as well as the updated cards I recently made) :)

What Aha! moments have you had in your designs?

If you build it, they will come. And if they come back, you'll have to rebuild it...

I've been complaining all week on Twitter, FaceBook, and I.R.L. (is that still a thing?) that my house was robbed (again), and this time the worst thing they took wasn't my TV, or my Laptop, or my iPad... it was a bag full of prototypes! I don't know what use thieves will have with a bag full of prototypes, but be that as it may, they are gone. Probably in a dumpster somewhere by now. And I got to spend much of last weekend reconstructing prototypes for the following games:

Rockin' Roll (follow up game to Dungeon Roll)
* 144 die face stickers to adhere to 24 dice
* 36ish crowd token stickers to adhere to circular tokens
* 50ish 1/2 size cards to cut and sleeve in mini sleeves
* Box (small US Flat Rate box works really well for most prototypes)

Eminent Domain: the Dice Game
* 4 player boards
* 1 Tech board
* 66ish planet tile stickers (I still need to get something to stick them to)
* I still need to collect tech counters in player colors and something to use for Resource/Fighter tokens
* Box (again, small US Flat Rate)

Kings of Air and Steam: World Fair
* 45 Technology cards
* 8 Characters (4 teams)
Sadly, KoA&S was in the bag as well, and I only had that one copy. And we're out at the warehouse. So I need to track down another copy of the game before I can play the expansion again.

Dungeon Roll
* 4 Holiday Heroes
* 8 Hero Booster #2: Legends (under construction)
I had a really awesome Minotaur figure in the dungeon Roll box that was taken, not to mention one of those nice playmats people like so much. Now they're gone.

Exhibit: Artifacts of the Ages
* I had left my original prototype with the European publisher who is now interested in publishing the game. I made myself another prototype, but I didn't have any more color spot dice, so I used regular d6s (which was pretty lame). I finally ordered some color dot dice (a little different, these actually have 1-6 on them, and each side has different colored dots) and I put together 2 prototype copies of this, each one including:
* 5 player boards
* 1 two part folding auction board
* 5 player screens
* 40 Auction tiles (I need to make the 2nd set of these)
* 5 Grant tiles
* 25 player markers
* Box (this one is set up to use a Jab or Train of Thought sized box)

Captains of Industry and City Hall
* Since this one is going to print, I don't think I'll be replacing the prototypes

Chimera Station
* A designer had just left a game with me when I saw him at Rincon last weekend, and it was in there as well. That totally sucks. I believe the designer is working on some changes and ideas I mentioned, and after the next update maybe I'll get another copy.

If anyone knows me, then they probably know if there's one I like less than actually having to do something, is having to do that thing again! That said, rebuilding these prototypes wasn't all that bad. Fortunately I had files that were more or less up to date, and this gave me a chance to update any that weren't.

So that's what I was up to all weekend - what were you up to?

Michael Keller Double Feature funded - Captains of Industry and City Hall going to print! So what's next?

Last month I mentioned that we were running a Kickastarter for two games by designer Michael Keller: City Hall and Captains of Industry. That has wrapped up, and we finished with just under $50,000 in funding to print those two games. I put quite a bit of development work into Captains of Industry, and I'm looking forward to its debut! Art for both games is being finalized and sent to the printers for pre-press.

Thanks to everyone who backed the project, I hope you all enjoy the games as much as I do, and for the cost of the Kickstarter pledge you can't really go wrong - I'm sure there will be people who missed out on the project and will want the games when they arrive.

While we wait for those games to go through the long manufacturing process, we will be starting another Kickstarter in November for a game called Scoville, by Ed Marriott.

Scoville is a game about planting, cross breeding, and harvesting peppers to fulfill orders or mix into chile recipes. It's a fun game, and it's been universally well received by every group I've played it with. Ed puts a lot of work into game design, and it really shows in his work. There was almost nothing I felt I needed to tweak in this design, which makes my job a lot easier! I'm looking forward to this one as well, and we'll have demo (prototype) copies with us at BGG.con in November, while the Kickstarter is live, so if you're going to Dallas you can give it a try before pledging.

So watch for Scoville on Kickstarter mid November, and I'll see you all at BGG.con!

Captains of Industry / City Hall - Keller Double Feature

Captains of Industry / City Hall - Keller Double Feature

 The other day TMG launched a new Kickstarter project for 2 upcoming titles:

Captains of Industry and City Hall

In this project you can get either game for about 30% off MSRP (save $20)... OR you can get a package deal and get both of them for $70! That's 46% off - save $60... that's 2 for the MSRP of one!

That's a pretty ridiculous deal, and if you are into economic euro style games (and if you're reading this, the chances are good), then this might be the project for you!

I said euro style, and I meant it. But for euro style games, both of these are very interactive. Neither one feels like a solitary experience.

In Captains of Industry the players set the market prices, and they buy goods from each other. This makes the game very interactive as players compete directly with each other on prices, and every game plays out differently.

In City Hall players auction off actions, or pay to take the action themselves. This requires a lot of resource management, evaluation of the actions, and paying attention to what your opponents have been up to.

I like these games, and if you're reading this then I bet you will too. I suggest you check them out, and since it's such a good deal you might consider taking a chance on them. We have some resources available to help you make up your mind - I'll link to the rulebooks below, and there are game play videos and reviews for City Hall online from the previous project. A game play video for Captains of Industry should be ready soon as well.

Thanks!

City Hall rules
Captains of Industry rules

Strategicon recap

Just a quick recap, for those interested in what I did at Strategicon. In no particular order:

Special Guest Vlaada Chavtil
I always like meeting the big names in game design, and if you don't mind a name drop or two, I have met such big names as Reiner Knizia, Richard Breese, Bruno Faidutti, Martin Wallace, James Ernest, and Antoine Bauza at various conventions. I also know other, maybe lesser known designers such as Tory Niemann Sebastian Bleasedale and others from the BGDF forums, and of course all the designers I've worked with through TMG (David Short, Scott Almes, Jay Cormier and Sen Foong-Lim, etc). I've met some RPG designers as well (Mark Truman for example), but as I'm not much of an RPG player, I don't worry about that too much. I do enjoy expanding my name dropping ability by meeting th famous board game designers though, and I hope to one day be considered a name that an upcoming designer might drop when posting along these lines in their own blog!

The special guest at Strategicon was Vlaada Chvatil, designer of a wide variety of games (in a wild variety of styles) from the Check Republic. I didn't spend as much time with Vlaada as I'd have liked, but I did check out his new prototype - an abstract game (I'm not really into abstract games) where you place pieces into play trying to satisfy specific patterns which allow you to play cards. These cards have bigger/better effects, and you use them to try to satisfy the conditions on the available scoring cards. It looked like an interesting game, but as I mentioned, I don't generally care for abstract games, and this was pretty abstract. Also, I'm not a big fan of 2 player only games, and this one looked like it was best with 2, if not really a 2 player only game.

Scribes Arena
Jason Chan came all the way from Hong Kong to his first ever US Game Convention to promote his game, Scribes Arena, which will be on Kickstarter, maybe as soon as later this year! Scribes Arena is billed as a cross between magic: the Gathering and Hangman. I'm not sure that's accurate, it's really more like a Hangman card game - the similarity to M:tG is that it uses cards (called "spells"), resources ("energy") to pay for the cards, and some of the cards ("Counterspells") cancel the effects of other cards.

Scribes Arena is a really cool game. I am pretty bad at Hangman (though usually decent at word games in general), and this one definitely has a unique twist. On your turn you draw a card and get 1 Energy, and then you play cards (which give you chances to guess letters), and finally you get 1 free guess (letter or word) for your turn. If you guess all the letters of a word, you move on to the next one, and if you uncovre all 3 of your opponents words before they do the same to you, then you win.

I look at it like you're dealing damage to the other player. At most, you'll need to deal 26 damage to "kill" each word (guess all 26 letters of the alphabet), but you can do much better by 'aiming' your shots - deducing which letters are likely in the word and guessing those. Guessing the correct letter feels like getting a sort of critical hit, because while it's only "1 damage," you only need so many correct letters before you can guess the word and get a finishing blow.

Jason has obviously put a lot of work into this game, and when it does hit Kickstarter I highly recommend you take a look.

Scheduled games:
I only played 2 scheduled games this time, which is 2 more than I've played in the last several years combined... Brass, and Village.

I haven't played Brass in a while, and I really enjoy it. I thought I was doing poorly, as every time I had a great plan, I'd end up distracting myself with something else and someone would beat me to it. So I did nothing spectacular, but a lot of solidly good stuff. I managed to win (barely!), and because it was billed as a large tournament I received 10 Dealer Dollars for my efforts!

I've played a fair bit of Village, though none before TMG imported the game, so I am at no real advantage over anyone else who's played a fair bit of Village. Except I'm apparently pretty good at the game, and as it turns out, that's something of an advantage. :) The person running Village didn't really pull her weight, leaving me to teach the new players while she played in the neighboring Thurn and Taxis event. I have done my share of teaching games, and while I hadn't signed up for this event in order to teach it, at least I am well practiced at it. We had 7 players, so 2 tables, and the top 2 from each moved on to the final round. After teaching the game and playing twice, it was a fairly large time investment, but at least I came out on top and was rewarded with another 5 dealer dollars (this one was billed as a Small tournament).

Dealer Dollars and Maximum Throwdown
It has been a while since I collected enough Dealer Dollars to matter, and unfortunately there was nothing in the dealer room I was really interested in. I ended up getting a copy of Maximum Throwdown, a dexterity game where you throw cards into play. I like to throw things, so I figured it was worth a shot. We tried it at Brian's house the following game night, and it was wildly mediocre for us. i was awful at the throwing - in the beginning I missed altogether, and later my cards slid underneath those already in play rather than landing on top of them. nobody was too terribly thrilled with the game, but I think the group isn't one to really get excited about dexterity games to begin with.

Scoville, Battlecruiser, and other TMG playtesting
I played 1 game of Scoville at Strategicon, and managed to win by a mile... but everyone seemed to enjoy the game a lot. I used a new feature which I'd just gotten from the designer, and I liked it a lot - I think it will probably make the final cut of the game. In fact, with that new feature, one of the rules was able to be streamlined away, and I always like when we can do that!

I played a couple sessions of Battlecruiser, one of which was great for comments afterwards - we tried lots of different combinations of cards, and discussed the wording, intent, and ramifications of most of them. I got some great feedback for the designer on that one, and much of it has been addressed in the latest version of the game.

I also playtested a future TMG dice game, which isn't coming along as well as I'd like, but based on the tests and comments, Michael and I were able to theorize a better structure that should work out better (sacrifice one of YOUR dice to re-roll anything you want, not one of your scoring opportunities!) Also, we're thinking that an up-front draft of all the cards (instead of 1 card per round) would be better as well. Sorry to be cryptic about this one, I'm not sure how much info I'm really allowed to put out there for this one just yet...

Hanabi and party games
I didn't play much Hanabi, but I did play some. As for Party games, I finally tried Reverse Charades. It was fun, but I really think the ideal team size is 3-4 people. We had 5 people per team, and I think it was too many.

The 8 hour drive wasn't too bad, with the company of my friends Jeff, Elisa, and Brian. I wouldn't mind doing it again, though I also like the expediency of air travel, especially when the convention is so conveniently close to the airport.

Now Boarding
I met up with Tim Fowers briefly on Sunday, and we played our design from the Design Retreat: Now Boarding. It's a cooperative optimization puzzle with time pressure, and this time we used a different version of time pressure - we timed each Departures phase (1 minute), and the rest of the game was un-timed. It seemed to work really well, and it automatically synchronized people and kept them from getting out of phase with each other.

It was nice to see many old friends, and make some new ones... some of whom may be coming to Rincon next month :)

T - minus 3 hours... headed to Strategicon!

I don't know how or why this happens, but as usual I'm awake mere hours before I have to get up and leave for a convention. This time I'm driving (or riding) to L.A. for Strategicon - mostly because I never got around to buying plane tickets, and now they're ridiculously expensive.

But after the 22 hour drive to Indiana, this 8 hour trip to L.A. should be no big deal :)

I have been so overwhelmingly busy leading up to this convention that I have done no preparation for it whatsoever. No plane tickets, no pre-registration, no scheduling of games... I was pretty close to deciding to just not go. But I'll be there, and I spent all day today preparing some prototypes to take with me.

I'll be bringing 8 prototypes - 9 if you include new Heroes for Dungeon Roll:

Captains of Industry, and City Hall, by Michael Keller
Two great economic games, both coming soon from TMG. Watch for a Kickstarter for these two in about a week!

Scoville, by Ed Marriott
A 2014 release from TMG about breeding peppers :) Cross primary colored peppers to get secondary colored peppers, and cross those to get even better peppers. Fulfill orders and complete recipes to score. So far just about everyone I've played this with has loved it. Watch for a Kickstarter project for Scoville this November (to coincide with BGG.con).

Battlecruiser, by Philip DuBerry
A quick card game, reminiscent of Libertalia, but much simpler and quicker (and therefore I like it better).

Rockin' Roll (in house TMG production)
A follow up to the very successful Dungeon Roll. If things go well we should have a Kickstarter project for this around the end of the year, and hope to deliver in time to debut the game at Gen Con.

Exhibit: Artifacts of the Ages, by Seth Jaffee
The Bluff Auction game. This one is not a TMG game, but it has gotten some foreign publisher interest. However, the publisher has become very busy, so it hasn't moved forward in a while.

Now Boarding, by Timothy Fowers and Seth Jaffee
A cooperative optimization puzzle, which may or may not have some time pressure. I'm having trouble identifying whether players will tolerate a real time game clock.

Eminent Domain: Exotica (and Escalation), by Seth Jaffee
Exotica is just about done, and I'll have my Escalation prototype with me as well. I'll also have the color proofs for Escalation (and Belfort: the Expansion Expansion) to wave around.

Dungeon Roll: Legends Booster and Holiday Heroes
We're working on the next Hero booster pack for Dungeon Roll - Legends. These heroes are more powerful than the original heroes, so they don't level up. These are first drafts, so they're not done yet, but they will likely have flavor and story text on the back, as well as some personal achievements a player can try to accomplish with them.

We've also got a holiday promo planned, with some holiday themed heroes such as Klaus, Saint of the North (Santa Clause!). I have these heroes (also first draft) in case anybody wants to give them a try.

So if you're at Strategicon this weekend, come by and say "hi!" I'll be in the boardgaming ballroom pretty much the whole time. Hopefully I can score a table and just set up all these games to teach to whoever wants to try them.

I'm also hoping to play some games that I didn't have a hand in. I played 1/2 a game of Spyrium at Gen Con (the only published title I even looked at all weekend) and I wouldn't mind playing a full game of that. I haven't played much Hanabi in a while. I picked up The Scoundrels of Skullport expansion to Lords of Waterdeep, but haven't tried it yet. I'm sure there's some other stuff I've been missing out on recently as well.

Ok, maybe there's time for a REM cycle or two before I have to leave. See you in L.A.!

Holy GenCon, Batman!

A little thing called Gen Con happened last week, and I thought maybe people would like to hear about my experience - nay, my adventure in Indiana this year.

I've been to Gen Con twice, the last two years. In 2011 we had a booth, and it was our first time at a big con as a vendor. It was pretty wild, and we didn't know what to expect. We did decently well, and I remember looking across our table and seeing all the titles we had, and thinking that while not all games are for everybody, each of the TMG titles, for its category or genre, is really top of the line. I was proud of that.

In 2012, TMG products were for sale in the Game Salute booth, which gave me a lot more time to experience the con. I played a lot more games, and I met a lot more people. On the down side, with the TMG products sort of buried in the Game Salute booth, I don't think it was a great financial success.

This year we went back to having our own booth. In fact, this year Michael went BIG. We had a 20'x20' space, with 6 or 8 demo stations set up to show our new dice game Dungeon Roll. We had a table (or 2) full of other games (Belfort, Kings of Air and Steam, Ground Floor, Skyline, Martian Dice, Rialto, Village, Village Inn, Il Vecchio, Magnam Sal, and Alba Longa) which ended up selling out, but we focused the demos on Dungeon Roll, as it's much easier and quicker to demo. It turns out that having people commit to sitting down for a full demo of a eurogame is a hard sell, and it's terribly inefficient. Games like Dungeon Roll are much better to demo (at a standing table) as it's quick, easy to demo, and almost every time leads to a sale.

But I'm getting ahead of myself...

On Friday August 9th I flew to Utah, where Michael has moved. He picked me up at the airport and I got to see his new house (which is gorgeous!). Saturday we went disc golfing, and then packed some things into Mike's truck - only to find that the volume of stuff to pack exceeded the volume of space in the truck! Somehow we fit almost everything in, and we only had to leave behind 1 box of folding chairs, and instead of a 6' table we brought a square card table. As it turned out, we could have left behind more chairs and that table, we didn't end up using them.

Sunday we headed out on our +/-22 hour drive. This would be the longest road trip I've ever been on, and it was just me and Michael in the car. I wasn't sure how well this would go... We drove about 14 hours on Sunday, and it went surprisingly well! We didn't get board, we didn't get on each other's nerves, and we made great progress! We also saw an awful lot of corn on the side of the road :)

Monday we finished out our trip with about 9 more hours of driving, and by the end of that I think we were both ready to be done driving. Luckily we got to our hotel around then :)

Tuesday we had some work to do. It costs a fortune to use the unionized company to bring your pruduct in for you, so our product had been shipped to a warehouse, and we had booked a Uhaul with which to get it to the convention center. We picked up the Uhaul and brought it to the warehouse without any problems, but it was a challenge to get 5 pallets of product into the truck. It wouldn't fit! So we put 3 pallets in, and then we un-palletized the other 2 and placed the boxes into the truck by hand. We got a loading dock without hassle, but of course the Uhaul isn't the same height as the trucks they build the docks for, so rather than using a pallet jack or anything, we had to break open our pallets and take the boxes out of the truck by hand and bring it to our booth space.I took a photo of our booth after Tuesday's efforts...

Wednesday we had some help, as our demo team - a handful of college students organized by Chris Schreiber, as well as some other friends of TMG arrived and helped finish putting together the TMG booth. Here's what it looked like after Wednesday's efforts. Here's our booth, ready for the onslaught!

One thing I was kind of excited about was the idea of having a giant Dunegon Roll box in our booth. Here's a pic of the oversized treasure chest prototype I made as proof of concept:

I got artwork sized properly from the artist (Rob Lundy), and dropped it off at an Office Depot Wednesday morning. I was able to pick it up later that night and assemble it. Here's the final treasure chest, full of treasure (Dungeon Roll boosters) as it appeared in our booth. I think it came out great!

I was really impressed with our booth setup, and we got a few compliments over the course of the con as well. Tuesday and Wednesday were tough, and we didn't eat or rest until dinnertime... but fortunately I managed to eat better over the rest of the week.

Thursday morning the floodgates opened, and we were non-stop demoing all day long. our booth was very popular, and we were helping as many customers and fans as we could. Really, that pace didn't let up all weekend. We sold a lot of games, and had several podcasters come by and talk to me and Chris Darden, designer of Dungeon Roll.

Saturday I had an appointment with BGGtv, and recorded 3 sessions, showing off Dungeon Roll, Village Inn, and some upcoming TMG stuff that's not out yet. I haven't seen the video yet, so I'm interested to see how I did!

After hours I spent a lot of time with some friends: Andy Van Zandt and Oliver Kutnik who I spent most of Protospiel with last month, and Ken Gruhl and Quinten, who I've met at previous Prototspiel events. I also attended a Designer - Publisher Speed Dating event where designers set up their games on tables, and publishers would sit for a 5 minute pitch. Then a bell would ring and the publishers would move to the next table. It was an interesting event, but really long. I was there for about 4 hours, during which time I heard about 40 pitches. Of those, maybe 5 or 6 were interesting to me, and even those weren't all TMG material. I don't want to say it was a waste of time, because I think it was actually a really good event, especially for the designers... but I'm not sure it's as valuable to a publisher/scout. James Matthe put the event together, and he was talking about improvements for the next time, which included a shorter timeframe.

Congrats to James for putting together that event, as well as a Designer/Publisher meet and greet!

I didn't get to play any published games, except 1/2 a game of Spyrium demo at Asmodee's booth. But I did see a number of games from Ken and Quinten that were fun little fast games, as well as some of Andy's stuff (which I'd seen before). I also showed those guys a few things I'm working on and got some good comments on those.

I didn't manage to meet Bruno Cathala, but I did have a couple chats with Antoine Bauza, who I met last September at Strategicon in L.A. He's a great guy, and right now he's very popular as a designer, after 7 Wonders won the KSdJ in 2012 and Hanabi won the SdJ in 2013! Speaking of Hanabi, I only briefly saw Nyomi and Sean, who I met playing a 12 hour Hanabi marathon last Gen Con. they met that day, and got married a couple of months ago! I wanted to introduce them to Antoine, but we couldn't find him at the time.

Finally, the convention wound down on Sunday, and of course there were things I didn't get a chance to do. Michael, Chris and I retired to our hotel to relax, and the next morning we would pack up and head out on our 2-day drive back to Utah. One good thing about these 2-day trips is that they provide good "forced meeting" time, where Michael and I were able to go over quite a few things for TMG, from scheduling, to strategy, to game design. Again, the trip back was much easier than I expected, and we were able to get all the way home without getting on each other's nerves or at each other's throats!

Tuesday night at Michael's house I signed a bunch of posters for Dungeon Roll kickstarters - those posters look awesome! Wednesday I headed out to the airport and flew home, and I've spent the entire rest of the week catching up on emails and things that I hadn't been able to do while we were at Gen Con.

So that's basically how my last 2 weeks have gone... what have you been up to? :)

Now Boarding - The Board Game: A cooperative, real time airport rush for 3-4 players

Now Boarding - The Board Game

A cooperative, real time airport rush for 3-4 players

In Now Boarding, 3-4 players will control airport hubs (and eventually cities as well) and manage randomly drawn passengers, sending them to each other's hubs en route to their specific destinations. Time is of the essence as passengers' patience run low and the days draw to a close. Work together to service as many passengers as possible, and try not too let too many run out of patience and storm off in a rental car!

Components:
88 Passenger tiles (22 each in 4 player colors)
4 International Hub ("A") boards (1 each in 4 player colors)
12 City boards (3 each in 4 player colors, labeled B, C, and D)
4 Jet tiles
XX Upgrade tiles (Concessions, Commuter planes, Gates, New Planes)
Countdown timer

Setup:
1. Give each player the International Hub, 3 Cities, and 22 Passengers in their chosen color. All Passengers should be sorted by Destination.
2. Each player places their International Hub "A" and City "B" boards in front of them, and shuffles their "A" and "B" Passenger tiles into a face down supply in the center of the table. City "C," City "D," and their associated Passenger tiles are set aside - they won't be used until later.
3. Give each player 1 Jet to place on the Gate on their International Hub board, and 1 Commuter Plane tile to place below their boards.
4. Set the countdown timer to 5 minutes. If you like, you may use more time per day as a handicap for new players, or less time for expert players.

Return any unused components to the box. You are now ready to begin.

Game Structure:
Now Boarding takes place over three days, and each day is comprised of a series of rounds. During each round players will play simultaneously, managing the Passengers in their airports and sending them to each other's hubs in order to take them to their destination cities. Each round follows this sequence:
Step 1: Departure
 - Draw new Passenger tiles
 - Load and depart planes
Step 2: Arrival
 - Receive planes
 - Score or age passengers
Step 3: Purchase
 - Spend scored passengers to purchase infrastructure

IMPORTANT NOTE:

Players must sync up their play at each step of the round. 

No player may move to the next step until all players are ready to do so.

This is very important! Things get very confusing if any player gets ahead of the other players.

Let's look at each step of the round in detail...

Step 1: Departure

The first thing that happens during the Departures step is that each player draws new Passenger tiles from the supply in the center of the table. One Passenger is drawn for each airport, and is placed into that airport in its starting orientation, with the text on the tile aligned vertically (as it would be read normally).

NOTE:

If a Passenger is drawn for an airport that exactly matches their destination, that passenger is returned to the supply face down and another is drawn in its place.

After drawing, players simultaneously manage their Passengers by loading them onto planes in their Gates, or by loading them onto their Commuter tiles.

Jets: The starting Jets have Capacity = 2, meaning that 2 Passengers may be placed inside that plane.
* Orientation of Passengers is very important and must be maintained at all times!
* Passengers in an airport may only be placed into Jets that are currently in Gates at that airport. Passengers may not be placed into Jets on a Tarmac or Runway.

Commuters: Commuters have Capacity = 1, meaning that only 1 Passenger may be placed onto a Commuter at a time. Each player starts with 1 (2?) Commuters, and unlike Jets, the Commuters can only shuttle Passengers between a player's cities and hub. Commuters can never be used to send Passengers to another player!
* Remember, orientation of the Passengers is very important!
* Commuters do not use Gates, they are virtual shuttles that are constantly moving back and forth between airports. 

* Passengers from any airport may be placed into Commuters.
Also during Departures, Jets in a player's Gates or Tarmac may be sent to other players' International Hubs (with or without passengers in them). Players each start with 1 Jet which has Range = 1, meaning that it can fly to a neighboring player's Hub. Later in the game, Jets may be upgraded to Range = 2, meaning that they can fly to the Hub of a player 2 seats away.

To send a Jet to another player, place it onto their Runway. Remember, orientation of the Passengers is very important, so it's useful to place the Jet so that it is oriented properly for the receiving player.

Once all players have completed the Departure step then it is time to move on to Arrivals. Remember, all players must move to the next step at the same time! Note: when moving to the Arrivals step, no player should have any Jets in any of their Gates*.

* During Departures it is legal to move a jet, with or without passengers, from your gate onto your own Tarmac. You would do this if you want to add a passenger to that jet next turn before sending it to another player.

Step 2: Arrival
The first thing that happens in the Arrivals is that all players receive Jets on their runways. Move all Jets from all runways to the Tarmac. from the Tarmac, jets can be moved into Gates. Each Gate can hold 1 Jet, so if a player has more Jets on the runway than Gates, some will have to wait on the Tarmac.

Next, all Passengers in Commuters and Jets in Gates (NOT Jets on Tarmacs) deboard and are placed in the airport.
* Passengers deboarding a Jet are placed on the same airport where the Jet is located.
* Passengers deboarding a Commuter may be placed into any airport.
* After deboarding, there should be NO Passengers on any Commuters or in any Jets in Gates. There may be Passengers in Jets on Tarmacs. There should also be no Jets in Runways.

Now each Passenger will either score or age.
* If the Passenger is currently in the location printed on the tile, congratulations! You have successfully delivered that Passenger to its destination! Score that Passenger by placing it aside, face up, in a personal score pile. Note: Passengers on the Tarmac do NOT count as being in the airport, they never score!
* If the Passenger is in ANY OTHER LOCATION (including the Tarmac), instead of scoring, age that passenger by rotating it 90 degrees clockwise. passengers have colored edges (Green, Yellow, and Red). This indicates how much patience they have left. When a Passenger's patience runs thin, they get sick of waiting and storm off in search of other transport (a rental car, or another nearby airport). The color along the TOP of the Passenger tile is important - Green means the passenger is just fine. Yellow is a warning that the passenger's patience is wearing thin. Red means that the passenger is just about fed up... any time a passenger is rotated off of it's red side, place that passenger aside in a Lost pile - that passenger is lost and will never be scored this game!

When all players have scored or aged each of their passengers then it's time to move on to the Purchase step of the turn.

IMPORTANT NOTE:

Remember to age all passengers in Jets (on Tarmacs) in addition to passengers in airports!

Step 3: Purchase

During the Purchase step, players may spend money printed on face up passengers in their score pile on upgrades and infrastructure. Passengers used to pay for these things are turned face down, but kept in the score pile for now. No change can be given, so when using a $2 and a $3 passenger to purchase a $4 item, $1 will be wasted.

The items and upgrades available to purchase and their prices are...

$3 Concession (Place at an airport. Each round 1 passenger at that airport does not age.)

$4 Commuter

$5 Gate (be able to deboard additional Jets)

$6 Upgrade Jet (turn the Jet to the back side)

$7 New Jet (see below for possible non-standard Jet)

$8 Upgrade a City into a Hub (comes with a Gate and a Runway - other players may send Jets there now)

Additional ideas for items to add:

$? Helicopter (Range = 1, Capacity = 1, Does not require a Gate)

$7 Jumbo Jet (Front: Range = 1, Capacity = 3 Back: Range = 1, Capacity = 4, Passengers do not age)

$4($2?) Commuter Train (Place between 2 adjacent airports. Capacity 2)

When all players are ready to move on, the next round begins with another Departure step.

Rounds continue like this until the countdown timer (started at the beginning of the first round of the day!) runs out. The timer running out signals the end of the day. After the current round is complete, the game will progress to day 2.

During the Purchase step at the end of the day, players MUST purchase until they can no longer afford anything. Then, all face down passengers from all score piles are shuffled back into the face down supply in the center of the table. Note that players with an extra $1 passenger face up may keep that passenger!

As time goes by and players service passengers, their regions grow and new airports open up nearby! Before the next day begins, each player places their City "B" board in front of them alongside City "A," and adds all of their "B" Passenger tiles to the face down supply. Mix the supply well!'

Reset the timer and Day 2 is ready to begin. NOTE: Now that players have 3 airports, they will each draw 3 new passengers during the Departure step - 1 for each airport!

Day 2 plays just like Day 1, though with more passengers and more destinations it will be a bit harder. Hopefully the players will have built up some infrastructure to help deal with all of the customers.

At the end of Day 2, each player adds another new City ("C"), and all of the "C" Passenger tiles, and the processes is repeated 1 last time.

Scoring:
At the end of Day 3, each player adds the total value of all passengers in their score pile - both face up and face down (so it doesn't matter if you've 'spent' them on upgrades). Add each player's total together and divide by the number of players to get a final score. Go ahead and round up. Refer to the chart below to see how well you did:

00-10: Keep trying!

11-18: Notable

19-24: Great

25-29: Epic

30-32: Legendary

33-41: Mythic

   42+: PERFECT

Game Design Retreat

This weekend I did something new and cool. It's something that's crossed my mind before, and in some ways it's similar to Protospiel - a design convention I've gone to for the last 3 years, only a bit more focused perhaps. Here's what happened...

I met Tim Fowers, designer of Wok Star and the recently-kickstarted Paperback, at OrcCon last February. We got to talking, and he had been wanting to do what he referred to as a Game Jam or Game Design Charrette, something I guess they do in the video game world where a handful of designers get together and discuss design, work on specific problems, playtest games, or whatever. I thought it sounded like a lot of fun, and I told Tim I'd love to join him - and if he wanted to do it here in Tucson, I'd even host it. This seemed like a good plan, as it would save hotel money.

So that's what ended up happening. Last Thursday Tim, James, and Brent flew in, and we ventured out to a 4-bedroom house on the outskirts of town. After some introductions, we got right to talking about game ideas and design stuff. Tim mentioned some thoughts he'd had about making a sort of board game version of his online game Now Boarding. It reminded me about all the thoughts I've had while waiting in airports... So I shared those thoughts, and we talked up the idea and how it could work - I felt like I wanted to prototype the game and try it right then and there!

Friday morning we did just that. We cut some index cards into 1.25" squares and put some data on them to make Passenger tiles, we made Hubs and Cities for each of 4 players, and we brainstormed a list of upgrades you could buy... and then we gave it a try. We went through a series of iterations very quickly as we came to see how the game felt - free form, turn based, with and without time pressure... It was great! It was a mix of analysis on one hand, and trial and error on the other. It quickly coalesced into a game experience that worked and was fun! over the course of about 5 hours we had created a working, fun, cooperative game from scratch.

Later that night, David Short was able to join us, and we showed him the game, and it held up. That is to say that it still worked, though we all had thoughts on how to improve it. Saturday we took the game to SAGA's Ides of Gaming event and played a couple of games with players there. With the exception of 1 player, everyone was able to play well and succeed. Since then we have refined the game a little bit further, and I look forward to getting home and making a nicer prototype to continue testing.

In addition to creating Now Boarding (tagline: "Now Boarding - now boardgame"?), Brent got an asteroid mining game idea together and we tried that as well. It was a very early (maybe first) draft of the game, and we all had lots of ideas about changes to make before moving forward. We implemented some of them and tried again, and it was definitely a step in the right direction.

Over the course of the weekend Tim got some valuable feedback on Paperback and Wok Star, both of which he's finalizing now that they have funded on Kickstarter. I also got several prototypes/submissions to the table, such as Shadow Puppets by Scott Almes, and Captains of Industry by Michael Keller. I also taught the guys Eminent Domain, which they'd never played - something I wanted to do so that I could discuss my thoughts on the upcoming Political expansion.

James had an idea for a game based on Dominion, but rather than drawing cards and playing them to add more cards to your deck, you move a pawn around a board and activate the spaces you step on. So it was kind of like you took your Dominion deck and laid the cards out in a grid, "drawing" them in the order that you want. That was the basis of the idea, but as he, Brent, and I discussed it the game  quickly diverged from just a modeling of Dominion to something fairly unique, with a shared geography which seems like it could lend a fair amount of interaction to the game. He got some great ideas to carry that game forward as well.

David Short and Den Keltner came by again last night and got a test of their current version of Bomb Squad - specifically the Training Missions - and I think they got some great feedback on how the Training Missions ought to be set up.

All in all I think it was a very productive weekend. I look forward to doing it again sometime, hopefully soon!

Eminent Domain - getting ahead of myself (Political Expansion thoughts)

Last night I met with Mike Watne, a big fan of EmDo who did a lot of playtesting of Escalation for me. At this point he's pretty much an unofficial member of the EmDo team. It was great to meet him and his wife Holli (sponsors of the Hostile planet Odonata, which you'll see when you get Escalation). Among other things, we discussed some ides for the upcoming and final EmDo expansion... the Political expansion. I don't have a name for it yet, but it would be amusing to choose a subtitle whose first letter is symmetric so it fits the scheme of ED:E and ED:X... maybe ED:B, ED:C, ED:D, ED:H, ED:I ED:K, or ED:O? This is really not a big deal, it's just something that comes to mind when I think about what to call the expansion...

The thrust of the final EmDo expansion is intended to be Politics. To an extent, this has been planned from the very beginning. I intend to have a new role stack (Politics role), filled with cards very similar to the Politics cards that already exist in the game. The only difference might be that they also have a Role box which says 

"Select Agenda. Leader: +[Politics symbol]"

Agendas are intended to be global effects that players will have some control over how, when, or whether they come into play. I was planning on doing some kind of voting mechanism based on following (you follow with symbols to cast your vote, or you dissent and effectively abstain from the vote). That still may be interesting, but I think there might be a smoother way to do it. In the conversation with Mike, this is what came up, and it's sounding pretty solid to me:

The Politics role could work just like the Survey role does in EmDice- pay 2/3/4/5 Politics symbols (leader bonus = +1 symbol) to put an Upcoming Agenda into play from the display, OR pay 2/3/4/5 Politics symbols to discard an Active Agenda from play. Agendas would come into play in the 5 slot, bumping older Agendas down to the next lowest slot, making the older Agendas easier to dispose of.

When following a Politics role, the leader would get to use your symbols, making it easier to afford higher valued Agendas - allowing players to work together to get an expensive Agenda either into play or out of play. In return for your support, you would get 1 Clout token for supporting the leader (whether they need/want your support or not). A Clout token has a Politics icon on one side, and a random icon on the other, and can be spent to boost or follow as either of those icons.

New tech cards can mess with Agendas, making them cheaper or more expensive to get into/out of play, translate icons to Politics (L1?) and Politics to other icons (L2?), and could let you draw Clout tokens - stuff like that.

I could add planets of each type with Politics icons on them (Political Planets?) (inc. Exotic, and an Asteroid). Maybe a bustling planet that lets you discard a Clout token to search for one of your choice, or just get one of your choice as an action, or discard 1 for 2 of your choice, or something. Maybe planets with Politics "translators" as well.

That sounds to me like a decent structure for the expansion. I think it would integrate very well with the game as it is, so players won't have to figure out how to play again, but the global effects could really shake things up and force players to play differently. Now I just have to design Agendas that shake things up and force players to play differently :)

City Hall avatars!

The Kickstarter for City Hall will only be running through Friday, and we've got a ways to go before we fund.

Here's a heartfelt video from the designer Michael Keller, thanking you for your support thus far.

In an effort to help spread the word, I've got these handy dandy City Hall avatars - if you could spare the effort and change your FaceBook/Twitter/BGG/etc avatar to one of these just through Friday, that would help us out a lot!

City Hall is a great euro-style game, and I'm certain that fans of TMG eurogames will really enjoy it. I hope we are able to reach our funding goal so we can bring this game to our fans - and more selfishly, so I can play it myself!

Thanks for your support!

Beyond EmDo

I played Eminent Domain again yesterday - teaching some new players. I continue to be very pleased with how that game turned out! I'm excited for the upcoming Escalation expansion, I'm happy with the following Exotica expansion thus far, and I look forward to working on the future (and final) "Agendas" expansion.

I mentioned before that I put some thought into an Eminent Domain Dice Game, and that came together quickly. I'm happy with EmDice, and I think it's likely to be published soon.

I'm very proud of the 'deck learning' mechanism, and while it's done wonders in Eminent Domain, I don't know if I'm done with it. I've had some thoughts on other ways to utilize this mechanism. Here are 2 examples of possible games I might try to make based on EmDo's deck learning mechanism...

Railroad Tycoon style train game
I played Railroad Tycoon today - first time in a long time. I really, really like that game. I've considered a game based on Railroad Tycoon, using a deck learning mechanism to drive it.

There would be a board with cities and hexes, like Railroad Tycoon. Using your deck of cards you would build track to connect cities, deliver cubes, upgrade your engine, complete specific routes, etc. Main strategies would involve expanding your network and making deliveries, and like EmDo, I envision that early game players will need to add cities to their network, then at some point players will have to decide if they'll concentrate on continuing to expand their network, or if they'll transition to making more deliveries for example.

Historical Civ game
EmDo is basically a civ game set in outer space. I had originally intended to set it in a more common, historical, terrestrial civ game setting. I can imagine doing a civ game in such a setting with deck learning in it, and a game board, perhaps similar to Eight Minute Empire. Or perhaps like Princes of the Dragon Throne, with colored regions and cities (or locations) of each color within each region.

I imagine 2 rows of "tech cards" - each row a display from a shuffled deck (like Ascension's center row). One row with a money cost, the other row with an Influence cost. Perhaps one of these rows has cards which go into play (like EmDo planets) while the other has cards which go into your deck. Or perhaps cards of each of those types are shuffled all together. Maybe both rows even come from the same deck.

Actions/Roles would be things like:
Recruit: Move units from "provinces" (general supply) to "court" (personal supply)
Place: Place units on the board
Move: Move units around the board
Get "tech" card type A (based on Money)
Get "tech" card type B (based on Influence)
Trade(?): Get money somehow
???: Get Influence somehow

City Hall - now by TMG - back on Kickstarter!

Last November I posted about a game called City Hall, by Michael Keller. I had a chance to play it at BGG.con while it was on Kickstarter and I really enjoyed it.

Unfortunately, Keller's Kickstarter project fell short of the funding goal. But we here at TMG thought it was a strong game, and deserving of publication, so we offered to publish it!


Here's a brief overview of City Hall:

Stakes are high in the Big Apple. 

In your bid to become Mayor you will send your staffers to the seven City Hall offices and auction off their benefits to build parks and buildings to secure the votes of the populace.
You can accept your rivals influence, or pay your own to keep the benefit to yourself. Leverage your money and influence to win the voters' approval and become the next Mayor of New York!

City Hall pits 2-4 players against each other in a bid to build a thriving city and gain the approval of the voters in order to win the Mayoral election.
There are seven Offices in City Hall. Each has a distinct function. Some of these offices help build up the city, while others only benefit the player who controls them.
On your turn you will choose any Office that hasn't already been chosen, and put it up for auction. Your opponents will bid influence, trying to wrest away control of that Office. You can accept the highest bid, or pay that much of your own influence to the bank and maintain control of the Office and use its power for yourself.

The Offices in City Hall are...
Tax Assessor: Collect money according to the population you have brought to the city
Campaign Manager: Pay money to increase your Approval Rating
Surveyor: Purchase a plot of land
Lobbyist: Convert money to Influence and vice versa
Zoning Board: Build property on a plot of land you own
Deputy Mayor: Advance in turn order
Health Commissioner: Bring new population to the city

The game ends when one player's Approval Rating is high enough, or when enough properties have been built, and at that time there's an election for Mayor! You'll multiply your Approval Rating by your Population to determine how many votes you get - the player with the most votes becomes the Mayor of New York and wins the game!

After a thorough rules rewrite (not rules changes, just clean-ups), TMG has now put City Hall back on Kickstarter - effective TODAY! We're trying another short run "Quickstarter" with this title, so the project only lasts 9 days. Since the game was already done, we do not have any stretch goals planned, we just want to see the game published. But we'll need your help if we're going to be able to afford it.

As a backer of City Hall, you'll get a significant discount compared to MSRP (20%, comparable to some online prices), including shipping inside the U.S. Unfortunately Canadian and overseas shipping costs more, but we do have the usual bundle prices which make it more cost effective outside the U.S.

We're not big fans of exclusive game content, however for our backers we will have a special limited edition  box, and we'll add some wooden star bits to use in lieu of the normal cardboard ones.

Perhaps the main incentive to get in on the Kickstarter this time is because TMG won't be publishing the game without sufficient support! Unlike some of our other projects, we're not planning on just doing this game anyway. So by pledging your support you will...
* Help ensure the game is produced,
* Get a copy at a reasonable price,
* Be among the first to receive the game once the production run arrives.

I hope you'll take a look at City Hall, and consider backing the kickstarter project to get yourself a copy!

Recent Gaming

What have you been playing lately?

Here's what's been hitting my table:

Tzolk'in: the Mayan Calendar
After playing Tzolk'in at BGG.con last November, I was excited to play it again. My friend knew I would likely pick up the game once it became available, and at the time people were really getting into painting the gears. He offered to paint my gears for me as a birthday gift when I got a copy. Unfortunately it took quite some time before he got a chance to paint them - but I finally did get to play my copy! I've played a handful of times now, and I have been enjoying it.

A couple of my friends think that buildings just aren't lucrative enough to be a winning strategy - they think the game is all about the God tracks. While it's true that the God tracks are good and should be ignored at a player's own risk, I have won my share of games concentrating on buildings. Last weekend I played a game where all I did was build! I maxed out the resource and architecture tech tracks and built a total of 11 buildings plus 2 monuments. One of the monuments gave me 2 points per building/monument for a total of 26 points! I ended up with 95 points, 25 ahead of 2nd place. That game I even begged for food 3 or 4 times, scoring NEGATIVE 3 points off of God tracks at midgame, and only about 7 God track points at the game end.

So it seems that buildings can be a viable strategy after all!

Bora Bora
I have played a couple games of Bora Bora recently. People have described games like Bora Bora as "victory point salad" - often using the term as a criticism, citing that a player can "just do whatever, get points for it, and see if they win." But anyone who's trying to win cannot simply "do whatever." The whole point is to find synergistic actions that maximize your points. The fact that everything is worth points simply acts as a way to evaluate actions and gauge how well you're doing. I for one enjoy games like that.

I've enjoyed Bora Bora so far, but I don't get to play it too often because my normal play groups don't have access to a copy.

Terra Mystica
Terra Mystica has been very popular lately as well, though I've only played it once - and I'm not sure if I liked it as much as I thought I would. Compared to Bora Bora, in Terra Mystica you have a bunch of options and none of them are worth points directly, so it's actually harder to tell how much progress you're making!

That's exaggerated a little, but it's kinda how I felt after my first game. I wouldn't mind playing again, but I haven't sought it out, maybe because it seemed to take a really long time.

The Manhattan Project (with Second Stage expansion)
I pledged for the Second Stage expansion to The Manhattan Project a while ago on Kickstarter, and the other day it arrived. Since then I've only gotten it to the table once, and we used all the different parts (each one is optional). ere's what we thought of them:

Role Selection: There are 7 "personalities" to choose from, and every time you vacate (use your turn to get your guys back) you must choose one. While you have a personality in front of you, you gain the benefit of that personality. These benefits are "immune to espionage," "Each turn collect a Fighter and a Bomber and take a free Air Strike action," "Once each turn you may use a Laborer as a Scientist, or a Scientist as 2 Scientists," and stuff like that. This aspect was pretty awesome, we all liked it a lot.

Hydrogen Bombs:  There's a new type of bomb, called a Hydrogen bomb. You can get one instead of a normal bomb, and to play it you'll need 8 or 9 workers and a handful of Lithium Deuteride - a new resource that comes from LD Mines (new buildings in the deck). The effect of the H-bomb is to double the score of one of your already made Plutonium bombs (not Uranium).

In our game, LD Mines didn't come up until very late, so nobody even thought about using an H-bomb. I guess I can see why the H-bombs aren't just shuffled into the bomb deck, but is that really necessary? I'm not sure. I don't mind playing with the H-bombs, but I wonder if anyone will ever really build one. I suppose it's efficient enouhg, as long as an LD Mine shows up.

Rockets and Rocket Factories: Also instead of a bomb, a player can choose to take a Rocket Factory. This is a building that creates a new kind of "plane" - a rocket. Like Bombers, Rockets can be used to load bombs and to damage buildings. In fact, rockets can damage buildings even if the target player has Fighters! I guess that kinda makes them strictly better than bombers...

One player in our game decided to go straight for those and he did so with a vengeance! He got 3 Rocket factories (no bombs!) and just damaged the crap out of all of us. He started with me, for no really good reason - that probably cost me the game. Then he moved on to Russel, even though Mandy was winning. Finally, Russel convinced him to aim his rockets at Mandy, which slowed her down enough that Russel eventually won (the turn before Mandy and I each could have). It made for a fairly interesting, if unrealistic game. The attacker wasn't really even trying to win. None of us were particularly fond of the added Air Strike abilities in the expansion.

Nations Expansion 2: There are new Nations to play. For some reason they have different backs than the first Nations expansion (what?). Most of the Nations powers don't seem all that great, some are OK, and a couple seem really, really good. This is how we feel about the first Nations expansion as well.

Firenze
We've slowed down on this one now, but a little while ago we were playing Firenze pretty heavily. By the same designer as Hansa Teutonic (which I like, even if I haven't played it in a long time), Firenze is a pretty solid game about building towers. While it would fit in my self-defined category of "Mediocre Euro," it would be among the top of that genre. I feel like I used to be pretty good at that game, but my performance lately has been miserable.

Captains of Industry
I have been playing Captains of Industry pretty heavily lately - pretty much every chance I get. I've been finalizing a few aspects of the game for publication, as artwork is being done and the game will be hitting Kickstarter within the next few months.

I believe I've finally got a Progress configuration which I like. Adding a 10th card (6 City, 4 Recycle) seems to have made the probability of 4-round age acceptably low. I'm still finalizing the Advances, but I think they're almost done as well now.

TMG submissions
I have tried a few TMG submissions lately. Of those, we will be publishing at least one! There will be more info on that when the time comes.

What is Game Content worth?

I came across this excellent post on Jamey Stegmaier's blog from 2 months ago (at the end of the Dungeon roll kickstarter project), and in the comments I saw something that bothered me a little bit. Here's an excerpt from commenter "Kim":

"I also thought the stretch goals of single new cards were in fact VERY measly (they probably each represent say 10 hours of design and testing, a piece of art, and the additional print cost)." 

Of course, however Kim feels about the stretch goals for that project is fine and valid. What I am uncomfortable with is the idea in the parenthetical. Suppose Kim is exactly right - that a Dungeon Roll Hero represents 10 hours of the artist's time for an illustration, 10 hours of a designer's time to invent, test, and balance the new character, and additional printing cost. I'm curious what people think that should cost.

In my experience, many (maybe most) people don't tend to value game content creation. I have seen posts and comments up and down the internet complaining about the price of a game which is "essentially just a handful of cards and a board" or whatever. They say they could print it out at home for cheaper than buying it in a store. Everybody sees the value of the physical bits, but nobody wants to pay for the actual game content.

Art on the other hand is something people don't mind paying for. An illustration takes work, and it's relatively easy to see how much work went into it - people see an amazing illustration and they think "yeah, that's awesome, that must have cost a lot." Then some of those same people wonder why kickstarter projects can't just throw in more game content as a stretch goal, as if it's a trivial thing to do.

"Boy Seth, you're making an awfully big deal out of this point, why do you care about this so much?"

I create game content, and I don't think it's trivial.

If you frequent game design forums, you'll see time and time again how games take hundreds and hundreds of hours to design and develop, not to mention the total man-hours spent playtesting (which grows exponentially when new groups of blind testers are involved). In those posts you're likely to find the context to be about the level of royalties a designer gets, and how little money that translates to on a per-hour basis for the blood, sweat, and tears they have poured into their pet project over the years. Most designers do not design games because it's lucrative. With very few exceptions,you can't really make a living out of it - and if you do then you're probably self publishing, and therefore not designing as much as you might like.

In the grand scheme of things, I'm not sure what if anything can be done about this. Until consumers value game content enough to pay for it, the game industry and it's tiny margins will continue to be about selling games at just over production cost to eek out a profit.

In the meantime however, at least I can maybe impress upon a few people here and there that when it comes to stretch goals and kickstarter, throwing in additional game content is not trivial!

Belfort: The Expansion Expansion

As you may already know, TMG is finally coming out with the first full expansion to Belfort. The expansion features Assistants and Expansions, and is called Belfort: The Expansion Expansion.

The Expansion Expansion is on Kickstarter right now, and in the first 2 days it has garnered the support of 600 backers, to the tune of $18,570! I never cease to be amazed by the support of the TMG fan base. The minimum funding goal is set at $20,000 but to include all the realistic stretch goals will take $50,000 or $70,000. I am not sure if we'll make that or not, but if the project goes crazy and reaches $100,000, then there will be some surprise "bling" added for everybody! It hasn't been announced what this "bling" might be, and I'm not sure it will be even if we make that goal... but rest assured it'll be something cool. I'll be surprised if we reach $100,000 with this project anyway.

One nice thing about running a Kickstarter project for an expansion, as Michael points out in this blog post on BGG, is that it renews interest in the base game. I've seen more traffic on the Belfort forums in the last couple of days, and over 100 copies of the base game have been ordered through the expansion kickstarter (via "combo packs" - both the base game and the expansion for $65 - a decent discount!).

In the spirit of revisiting the base game, I dug up this old Under the Hood blog post about Belfort. I wrote this about a year ago, but now that people are revisiting the game, or discovering it for the first time, it seems prudent to revisit that post as well.

Belfort is a strong title, which has proven to be popular amongst the TMG fan base. It's a eurogame of the type I enjoy, and I put a lot of work into it along with designers Jay and Sen. I think it's safe to say we're all very proud of the final version of the game, and we all had a great time putting together an expansion for such a great game as well.

For those interested, Jay and Sen wrote up a designer diary for the expansion on their blog. Check it out, and if it sounds interesting to you, then visit the Kickstarter page and see if Belfort: The Expansion Expansion is something you'd like to support.

Expand Belfort!

P.S. Some notable features about this kickstarter project:

* 17 day duration: Another "quickstarter" - we won't be begging for your spare change for 6 weeks!
* No gameplay-related stretch goals - we designed a full expansion, and that's what you'll get, no matter the funding level.
* Belfort Comic!?! - there exists an online comic by artist Rob Lundy about Belfort. If we reach $35,000 in funding, each copy of the expansion will come with a physical copy of that comic!

Great Escalation overview on BGG

A fan of Eminent Domain, Kenneth VenOsdel, has posted a fabulous overview of the Escalation expansion over on BGG.

Thanks for posting that, Kenny!

Anyone on the fence or wondering about what to expect in Escalation, take a minute to read that and then I'll see you in the Kickstarter comments :)

Eminent Domain: Escalation Kickstarter going great!

I just wanted to mention how well the Kickstarter project for Eminent Domain: Escalation is going, and how excited that makes me.

Some people have wondered why the project is only up for 12 days - why such a short time? Why not extend it so more money can be made? Michael has started a podcast about his experience with publishing called Business of Play, and in today's episode he gives some of his reasoning. This is the 5th episode in his 20 episode trial run, check out all 5 episodes if you haven't already and give him some feedback. So far its been really good.

I've been pushing for shorter Kickstarter projects ever since day 1. Well, day 2 - after experiencing the project for Eminent Domain, and especially when many more game projects hit the scene. Slogging through week after week of the same project for months in a row is really not good for anybody. Kickstarter projects take a lot of energy and effort to run, you have to stay on op of it all day, every day. For the consumers it can be annoying to see the same tweets or updates about the same project, two or three times a day for what seems like an eternity. And if you look at the stats, most projects have a high traffic spike in the first couple of days, a high traffic spike in the last couple of days, and a giant lull in the middle. From the beginning I thought "wouldn't it be nice if we could just cut out the lull, and just use the beginning and end?" My theory is that while some of the backers from that middle lull would be lost, most of them would just get shoved to the late project spike, so the funding of the project probably wouldn't even be affected very much.

Well, the nature of crowdfunding being what it is, that strategy won't work for everyone. You might NEED that middle lull to make your funding goal. Depending on the project, if the majority of your day-to-day funding is coming from people browsing Kickstarter rather than from people you directed to your project via your own marketing efforts, then cutting out the lull could indeed reduce a lot of funding. But I believe for most projects (board game projects, the type I'm interested in), that category isn't going to be dominant. As all the experts say, you cannot count on Kickstarter.com to fund your project for you!

All that said, I think TMG is well poised for a short run Kickstarter (Quickstarter!) project. TMG has a sizable audience, and a large mailing list of people interested in Tasty News from TMG. The last TMG Kickstarter project (Dungeon Roll) funded with in the first day, and went on to garner $250,000 in funds before the time was up. Sure, shortening the duration of that project might have meant lower funding numbers, but as long as certain funding goals are reached, then it doesn't really matter. The game will be sold at retail anyway. Any TMG Kickstarter project will probably fund in the first couple of days, because of this audience, and because of TMG's diligence in choosing games that this audience will enjoy. This is especially true of an expansion to a game such as Eminent Domain, which has a fan base already. But it's probably true of a new, unknown title as well. This is the strength of a good brand.

So if the game will surely fund in the first couple of days, why bother stringing it out for a long period of time? There are many other benefits of a short run project. In addition to the time and effort it takes to maintain a project, a shorter project means you can move on to the next one much more quickly. Also, for day 1 backers, that's 6 weeks less they have to wait for the game to arrive!

In my opinion, if a short run Kickstarter project can be successful, it's a win-win for everyone involved. We've already seen projects in the board game space come down from 60 days to 30, and now TMG is taking the next logical step and reducing it further. I feel like this is the direction that many Kickstarter project may go, at least the ones who can support it (project owners with a decent sized audience). I don't know if we'll ever get down to the 5-day project that I see in my mind, just due to how people use the internet - but I'm excited to see that the 12 day project appears to be working well so far!

For those of you who are already in for a copy of Escalation - thanks! And thanks as well for helping to spread the word. I'd really like to hit all of our stretch goals and provide everything we can for you.

Rincon Fundraiser a big success!

Last Saturday we hosted a fundraising game day for Rincon. I was a little worried that not many people would show up, and that we wouldn't end up making much (if any) money... but I guess that's just typical me - I'm kind of a pessimist. I'm happy to report that in fact, 70 people came to our event, some from Tucson, some from Phoenix, and some from Sierra Vista. And from what I could tell, everyone had a really good time!

18 of those people played in the poker tournament, expertly run by Jeff Becker. Karl Davis came out on top after a hard fought, back and forth heads up battle with Russel Knox. Karl won a hotel room for the weekend of Rincon, while 2nd and 3rd place (Russel and Brenda Lundt) walked away with free passes to the convention.

We also had several prize drawings, sponsored by games donated by myself, Brian Poe, and Patrick Nickell of crash Games.

That day happened to be National Tabletop Day, and at least a couple of people found out about our event through the Geek and Sundry TabletopDay website. The event was bustling from 10am to 10pm, and everyone seemed to have a great time! We managed to raise significant funds for Rincon, and by any account I think it's fair to say the Game Day was a resounding success! It was so great, we're planning another similar event for June!

Thanks to everyone who came by and supported Rincon and SAGA!

EmDice: Playtester prototype pics, and an update

One of you awesome people who has printed a copy of EmDice sent me some pics...

Thanks for sending those! They included the file they used for the Fighter/Resource/VP tokens as well.

I realized that there was an error in my original prototype files - I had used the Fertile Planet icon in a few places where I should have used the colonize icon (oops!) - I have replaced the EmDice Proto file with the correct icons.

In addition I created player boards with areas for Fighters, Influence, Planets, Active dice, and Used dice. There's a turn order reminder on it as well.

And I made a clarification to the rule about "Re-roll +1 Die" - I would like to try allowing that extra die to come from the Used pile if you like. In other words, if you have dice in the used pile when you Dissent, you get 1 back in addition to re-rolling any dice of 1 chosen type. If you don't have dice in the used pile, then you're allowed to re-roll 1 extra Active die in addition to any dice of 1 type.