Candyland, but a game!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BUT THAT'S OK.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And it prompted this follow up from me: 

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

Anything else?

 and he said:

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

 and I said:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My idea to make Candyland into more of a game

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

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

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

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

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

Another day, another prototype on Tabletop Simulator

Tabletop Simulator - tips and tricks

Tabletop Simulator is not the greatest way to play games, but I have to say that without it, I'd be doing ZERO playtesting, so I'm glad it exists!

As I've been using TTS more and more, I'm starting to become more proficient a it. Notable Game Designer of North Carolina, Matt Wolfe, has been posting a helpful series of TTS Tips on Twitter and their blog, and my friend and former TMG cohort, Andy Van Zandt, passed on to me a handful of helpful tools he'd come across and saved, such as a table resizer, a thing that places evenly spaced snap points between 2 items, and a bag of moveable text (which is awesome, as the text feature sucks so badly).

Deities & Demigods Virtual Prototype

I realized I have a game that's basically done, but not yet published, and I haven't played it in quite some time. So last weekend I decided to make a TTS mod for Deities & Demigods (AKA Olympus on the Serengeti):

Deities & Demigods virtual prototype on TTS

The files I had contained a Hades module, which is still untested, and not intended to be in the game (perhaps a future expansion), so I decided to include all that, but cover it up (see gray panels above). Those panels are locked in place over the bits, and could easily be removed if I ever decide to try the module out -- now that I have the prototype on TTS, maybe that's something I can realistically do now.

I'm looking forward to playing this game just to play it, even if not testing something new -- I like it, I think it plays well, and I haven't played in forever!

Sails & Sorcery Virtual Prototype Update

And because TTS screenshots are cool, here's one of the updated prototype for Sails & Sorcery that I did after playing a couple weeks ago and finding the mod lacking a bit. Table space is always a buggar on TTS, so that resizer tool Andy found seems like it could be super useful:

Sails & Sorcery playtest: plunder follow-up

After a nice 4-player 1/2 test (had to cut the game short half way through), I was able to compare the plunder card row (which I had tried previously) with the version I used last time (1 card per island, cost based on opponents present), and yeah -- the card row just played better.

Other than having to quit early, this test was pretty good all around: the players had fun, and most everything worked well. On the down side, after about 30 mins of rules and setup, we quit an hour and change into the game, and we were only 1/2 way through -- but most of that is down to Tabletop Simulator (and a learning  game), I think. I don't love dismissing problems by saying "it's just a learning game" though, because everyone's first play will be a learning game!

Here are a few notes I took down after the playtest and discussion:

* when coming out of hiding, deploy 1 from bag, not from ship

It's just lame to be unable to use the benefit if you don't happen to have pirates on your ship when the Kraken gets you

* maybe add immediate effects for all tokens (like drawing a card when you get the Hand Size one)...

It's a bit of a bummer to gain control of an icon, only to have it wrested from you before you even get a chance to use it. For the Monsters, you get their immediate effects when you summon them, so it's not so bad if you don't also keep control of the icons some of the provide. For the Hand Size icon, it bugged me whenever you would get the token, then lose it before the end of the round, meaning you had no chance to benefit from it. Because of that, I added the rule that when claiming the token, you immediately draw a card. With the rest of the icons, perhaps that would help as well.

Recruit and Deploy have obvious immediate effects (recruit a pirate, get 1 deploy icon to spend), but the rest don't have anything that makes obvious sense. Maybe collect a silver for Plunder? But what about Build and Summon? They could also be "get a silver," but that's kind of lame.

* OR, instead of permanent bonuses that pass around, maybe get a 1-shot icon each time you gain control of the area?

This idea has some merit along the lines of what I was saying above - nobody can take your bonus away from you. However, it changes the dynamic a bit, removing any reason to continue to hold control of an area, and I don't think I like that very much. Maybe a 1-shot icon could work for Summon and Build (and a silver for Plunder)

* Maybe extend the 2p variant to all player counts, ensuring the areas go up in value over the course of the game (instead of doubling the values half way through)

In the 2 player game, in order to maintain some tension, I add neutral pirates to the board each round, in the areas that will score. This way you can't just siphon points by dropping 1 pirate in each scoring area, and as some of the neutral pieces are buildings, it also serves to increase the value of certain areas. Perhaps this should be extended to all player counts, even if just to make 1st place worth more than 2nd by enough to matter via neutral buildings. 

Sails & Sorcery revisited -- now on TTS!

It's been about a year and a half since I posted about, or even played Sails & Sorcery, Michael's game that I had been working on. For some reason it drifted back into my consciousness recently. I thought about a tweak to the most recent aspect (treasure cards for the Plunder role), and realized it should be pretty easy to make a Tabletop Simulator mod for the game so I could potentially play it again. So here's a quick update:

First, the tweak to Plunder and treasure cards...

In my last post I re-imagined the Plunder role: Instead of just killing off masses of pirates, the new idea was to use Plunder to "buy" treasure cards, which each have an ability (on par with the Davy Jones effect - adding a couple of pirates to the board and/or capturing a couple opposing pirates), as well as one of five different gems, which confer some set collection scoring at game end. I liked this format a lot, but I wasn't sure what the best way to implement it was. I had gone with a simple card row, with the cost ranging from 2 to 6 (a good range, on par with the other roles) based on the position of he card in the row. But I had a number of other options in mind. 

The card row was simple, and it worked, but I kinda wanted it to matter which area (or at least which island) you were in when you Plundered. Another cost structure (even using a card row) that might have had an interesting geographic effect was "2 Plunder + 1 per opponent in the area." I thought that might have provided an interesting incentive to go where other people were not, which could stand in contrast to the dynamic incentivized by the way certain areas score each round (encouraging players to congregate in those areas). That's still something I think I'd like to try.

In addition though, it occurred to me that - especially with the alternate cost structure above - there's no reason the cards would need to be in a row at the side of the board. Perhaps better if they were in the areas (or on the islands) themselves? Might they then drive players to go to specific areas (or at least specific islands) if they're chasing VP from the gems? Or is that too many hoops to jump through? Maybe the option of any card in the row is appropriately flexible? I guess it's worth trying, if I can ever get some testing done!

And on that note, in an effort to eventually get some testing done on this game, I went ahead and made a Tabletop Simulator mod:

As you can see in the screenshot, I placed a treasure card in each area. Almost immediately I thought it might be better to just put one card per island instead of per area -- which could foster a little more interaction (in the case multiple players are after them). However, the more I think about it, the more I wonder if the better course is to just stick with a card row on the side of the board.

Even still, I would like to try the alternate cost structure (based on opponents in your ship's area) to see if that drives any geographical considerations or not. If so, and they're good enough, then that'll be great. If not, or if they're super weak, then the simpler cost structure might be a better choice.

Here's to hoping I get a chance to play it soon!

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

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

I still think the way it would work makes sense: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Come and play, everything's A-OK

Now that I've got a toddler, it might be about time to start thinking about games for a lower age range. I have to admit, I don't really know much about kid's games, how they work, or what little ones are looking for in a game.

My son has had a little Sesame Street themed Memory game, 2 cards with each of 8 characters. Other than really liking Elmo, he's showed almost no interest in it so far. Recently, he got some hand-me-down figures of 5 Sesame Street characters, and it just so happens, they are all represented on the cards in that Memory game. Looking at that, I thought "there MUST be a game I can make out of this!"

I solicited some thoughts on Twitter, and I got some interesting responses. One of them sounded really promising, so today I gave it a shot...

Basically, it's a Rondel Memory game:
Components:
10 Cards (2 per character)

5 Figures (1 per character)

Setup:

1. Shuffle the 10 cards and deal them, face down, into a circle

2. Place a figure on every other card

Game play:
Take turns moving the characters around the circle as they look for cards with their own picture on them.

On your turn:
1. Choose any figure and move it 1 or 2 cards clockwise

2. Reveal the card it lands on. If that card matches the moving figure, keep it! Otherwise, put it back face down

When the last card is kept, the game ends -- whoever has kept the most cards, wins!

This could be made easier by removing characters (and their corresponding cards), or by setting a character aside once both of its cards are found and kept, and it could be made harder by using additional cards (for characters that don't have figures).

We actually played thorough a whole game, and Corbin even seemed to sort of follow the rules for the most part! As playtests go, I'd say it was pretty successful :)

So that was pretty cool, I can't wait to try it again some time.

Afterwards, I was thinking about other possible mechanisms that could work with those cards and figures, and I came up with a racing mechanism. It's not so much a <i>game</i>, but I could actually imagine the mechanism in a euro-game or something:

1. Shuffle the 10 cards and discard 5 of them without looking

2. Line up the figures in a row

3. One-by-one, flip a card and move the matching figure forward 1 "space"

4. After flipping all 5 cards, reshuffle the 10 cards and repeat

The first figure to move 5 spaces (or any number, really) wins the race!

This could be made into a simple game by guessing which figure will win the race, or a more complicated game by betting on it each time you shuffle (like the bets in Downforce). Either way, the mechanism certainly seems to work well and give some tense and exciting races!

I'll keep thinking about these components and games we an play with them. Until then, at least we can try the Rondel Memory game again :)

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

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

False Prophet (Mancala-Worker-Placement)

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

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

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

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

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

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

I-cut-you-choose Worker Placement

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Worker-ception (Worker Group Placement)

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

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

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

At an impasse -- a peek at The List and where some of my designs are at the moment

I'm at a bit of an impasse when it comes to my game designs right now... I feel like I can't make meaningful progress on any of my current designs, and with playtest sessions being so few and far between (not to mention more of a hassle on Tabletop Simulator), I feel a reluctance to start anything new. Maybe if I take a look at my active designs and their current status, it'll help me figure out what to do next. Here are some excerpts from The List:

Finished But Unpublished Games:
- Eminent Domain Origins [Ready to print]

- Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory (dice game) [Art on pause]

These EmDo universe games may yet see the light of day, but due to some issues (that it would probably be inappropriate for me to talk about), they are on hold at the moment. Too bad, because I was really excited about the prospect of releasing the Terra Prime revamp on TMG's 10th anniversary, and the dice game has been done for a pretty long time now.

- Crusaders: Crimson Knight (expansion) [Ready to print - fix faction powers!]
- Crusaders: Amber Knight (expansion) [Ready to print]

These Crusaders 5th and 6th player expansions have been ready to go for months, but the 1st expansion (Divine Influence) has just been sitting in China, waiting to be shipped to the US and released. Crusaders continues to be talked about (thank goodness), and I hope it remains in the zeitgeist at least until Divine Influence drops, so that doesn't end up being completely wasted effort. If that works out, then it could revitalize the game, and create some demand for these 5th/6th player expansions as well as a reprint (there's already been demand for a reprint of Deluxified Crusaders).

In the meantime, I looked at the files for some reason, and noticed that we were duplicating a couple of the new factions (because Crimson and Amber Knight expansions were supposed to be identical except for player color). That didn't make sense to me, so I developed 2 more faction powers, and we just need to swap those in before going to print.

- Olympus on the Serengeti  (FKA Deities and Demigods) [Art on pause]

I was excited to have a big name artist work on this one, but due to some of the issues mentioned above, Olympus on the Serengeti is on pause now too. Also, I'm becoming skeptical of the odd theme choice, and I wonder if just leaving it "normal" Greek mythology would be better.

- Exhibit (BGG) [Unlikely to be published due to conflict] [Abandoned]
- Dice Works (BGG) [Abandoned]
- Wizard's Tower (BGG) [Abandoned]
- Isle of Trains: All Aboard (expansion) [Abandoned]
- Suburban Sprawl [Abandoned]
- Watch It Played [Abandoned]
- Now Boarding [Abandoned]

These are all basically abandoned. I did make a TTS mod for Exhibit, and played it once with my testers a few weeks ago (and again yesterday). I think it holds up, and I'm tempted to try pitching it around. It's been several years, and the person instigating that ambiguous conflict I mentioned has disappeared as far as I can tell, so that might not really even be an issue anymore (I'm skeptical that it was ever REALLY an issue, TBH).

I also made a TTS mod for Dice Works as well, and finally gave it a partial playtest yesterday. I was surprised how well it actually worked on TTS (like, physically), so maybe this one could be tested or pitched that way now. Comments from the players led to the idea of loosening up the specificity of the board spaces (like, "[ ] < 3" as opposed to "[1]", or "[ ] < [ ] < [ ]" as opposed to "[ ] = [ ] = [ ]"). The players were also concerned about the possibility of an all-out scrap strategy being sort of dominant. I don't think that's the case, but it might ruin the other player's fun, which would be a problem all its own.

Maybe for something to do I could make a TTS mod for Wizard's Tower - that might be fun to revisit.

Current Active Designs:
- Alter Ego (BGG)

After a lot of testing about this time last year, I had made a lot of progress on this one. I had made a TTS mod for it a long time ago, and had been meaning to update it with all the most recent files, but never got around to it. I guess that's something I could be working on.

- Apotheosis (Co-Design with Rick Holzgrafe)

Most of my playtesting time (such as it has been) lately has gone to updating Apotheosis. I pitched the game virtually to 2 different publishers... the first wasn't interested, but the 2nd did show interest. They have a line of games in a particular universe, and Apotheosis fits pretty perfectly into that universe, so Rick and I have (a) revamped the prototype graphics and set the game in their universe, (b) addressed some items the publisher commented on after our playtest with them, and (c) fixed a major issue that came up in our pitch. I just reached out to the publisher to set up a time to show them the game with the updates again. I'm excited about the prospect of getting a game published by another publisher, just to sort of get my name out there more, and also to see how the process goes from the designer's end with another publisher.

- All For One (BGG) (Co-Design with David Brain)

I was feeling pretty good about the latest playtestes of All For One, almost a year ago at this point. I have been wanting to make a TTS mod for it and play it online, but I have been waiting for my co-designer to do some updates to the maps and missions. He had said he was working on it, but I suspect he got sidetracked, and he didn't even reply to my last email about it.

Maybe my best bet is to go ahead and either take a stab at the board/card redesign myself, or just upload a version like my physical prototype so I can at least play!

- Riders of the Pony Express (BGG)

I'm pretty happy with the status of Riders of the Pony Express content-wise, I think one of the biggest things I wanted to do was try and make it less physically fiddly to play. I had an idea for that, but I am stalled out on trying to implement it. Maybe the thing to do is to forget about that for now, and create a TTS mod so the game can be played.

- Isle Of Trains: The Board Game (Co-Design with Dan Keltner)

I had prototyped a version of this, even made a TTS mod and played it online once or twice with my testers since the Pandemic hit. But I haven't had much opportunity to get together with Dan about it, and I was starting to shift my feeling toward what he wanted for the game -- for it to be a more complex, deeper game than what I had put together. So I kind of stalled out on it and haven't thought about it in a long time. I don't really know what I could do with this one right now.

- Keeping Up With The Joneses

My latest game project, which came together pretty quickly, has taken up the rest of my recent playtest and design time. At this point I feel like the game is stable, and I don't really see how I could make progress without more, ideally more widespread, playtesting (if you want to PnP/blind test this game, leave a comment below, or email sedjtroll@gmail and let me know!). I do have a TTS mod, so I could theoretically set up more, and more widespread, playtesting, but the logistics of playtesting online are difficult for me right now, so I don't see this happening anytime soon.

That's about it for my active designs. I guess I could take a look at some of my back-burnered designs as well:

            - Automatown [Michael Brown on board]

When Michael Brown came on board as a co-designer on Automatown, the game took some great leaps forward. However, it's been quite some time since I've heard from him, and since I played the TTS mod he'd made with my testers. I guess I'm not sure what I can do for this game at the moment.

            - Odysseus: Winds of Fate (BGG) [a designer has showed interest]

A friend showed interest in Winds of Fate, but ultimately got busy with other life events, and the pandemic hit as well, making playtesting much more difficult. So unfortunately, this game did not get revitalized as I had hoped it might.

            - Reading Railroad

For the first time in AGES, I broke out my old prototype for Reading Railroad and not only made a TTS mod for it, but even played it in person with my wife!

I was excited to revive this game, but after a couple of tests and some consideration, I kinda realized that using word-building as a mechanism just didn't seem to be that big of a deal after all. So my interest in Reading Railroad waned again, and it's back on the back burner.

            - Moctezuma's Revenge

Nobody really showed interest in Moctezuma's Revenge, which I thought was too bad because I like the theme and idea of this one a lot -- it really sounds like something that I could imagine existing. But without someone jumping in as a co-designer, I'm not sure this game will ever go anywhere. At least not anytime soon.

            - Kilauea [a designer has showed interest]

I met online with the designer who contacted me showing interest in Kilauea. He had made a new version, and I made a TTS mod for it so we could try it. We gave it a partial play, then discussed what worked and what didn't and came up with some ideas for him to try in the next iteration. Unfortunately, I haven't heard from him since then, and I haven't really thought about the game since then either.

            - Joan of Arc [a designer has showed interest]

A strong design duo showed interest in Joan of Arc, which gave me some hope that it would see some real progress, but as yet they have not gotten to it. Time is in short supply, and I know they have their own projects to work on, and I'm still hopeful they'll get to it eventually. In the meantime, I have left the game on the back burner.

            - Dynasty

One of my oldest ideas that I think is any good, I've been re-reading my old posts about Dynasty, and thinking that this might be the game I work on next. As always, it seems like it would be so easy to put together a prototype and try it out... now that I'm not doing regular playtesting anymore, it might be harder to actually get the game to the table, but I could probably make a TTS mod for it fairly easily if I just got some prototype files together for it.

I'll start a new post to describe a couple of new, or recently revived games that weren't necessarily on The List.

Dice Works and Exhibit - out of the woodwork playtesting!

Today I had a chance to playtest with 2 of my regular testers, but I didn't think my latest projects (Apotheosis and Keeping Up With The Joneses) would really benefit from another 3p test with the same people because nothing's really changed on them. So I pulled a couple of older games out of the woodwork. I had made TTS mods of them a while ago, and even played one of them a few weeks ago.

Dice Works

First we played a partial game of Dice Works, a real-time dice drafting game. I had expected the real-time nature of it to be problematic on Tabletop Simulator due to how awkward it is to do anything on that format, but truth be told, it went a lot better than I had expected. But first I wanted to try the game in a turn-based fashion, just to see how it would feel. As expected, the game dragged and the draft wasn't very interesting without the time pressure (like with my iPad game, Brainfreeze, simple decisions require time pressure to become fun). After a round of turn-based drafting, we played a few rounds in real-time, and it seemed to work fine. Rick isn't a fan of the time pressure, so I didn't force him to play through an entire game that way.

I haven't played Dice Works in YEARS, and it was fun to revisit. One of the big challenges to publication is that it's a real time game, and those tend to have a more limited audience than turn-based games. Another challenge is probably a way to get around needing 80 or more dice! I have considered using tokens to block up spaces where dice had been placed so that the dice could go back into circulation. However, thinking about it, the real cost of custom dice is in the molds -- I don't think the materials are all that expensive. So it might not be out of the question to use 80-100 dice, so long as they're standard d6s.

One question that came up was whether just placing dice into scrap as fast as you can would be dominant. I don't recall it being a problem, and I recall being happy with the scrap rates as I currently have them (you start out at 4-for-1, and get better with even advancement up the tracks), so the bigger question to me is, even if it's OK as-is balance-wise, does it ruin the fun for other players if one person is just indiscriminately scrapping dice as fast as possible? If that turns out to be the case, a couple solutions could be as follows:

* Increase the scrap rate (but again, I think I'm happy with the current rates)
* Add dice to the supply so that other players still have something to choose from, at least for a few seconds, while the scrappers are scrapping
* Make the "specific" spaces where you place dice a little more flexible. For example, instead of requiring a "1", maybe require "<2" and instead of requiring "[ ]=[ ]=[ ]" maybe require "[ ]<[ ]<[ ]"

That last comment is interesting, and I should probably give it a try just to make the boards more interesting to begin with. Adding more dice might be worth doing, at least in the first round, even if not ALL the time -- just to get things sort of jump started.

Exhibit: Artifacts of the Ages

Then we switched over to just play a game of Exhibit. With the exception of a tweak or two, that game is pretty much done as far as I'm concerned, so this was less of a playtest, and more of a chance to just play one of my games :)

It went well, Rick had played once, years ago, and adored it back then. Very little has changed since that game. Aaron played a couple of weeks ago, and also liked it. A tweak I tried was changing the value of the Art exhibit. Originally, an Art exhibit was worth 2 additional points, as opposed to a Weapon exhibit, which helps yo win a specific auction in the future, and a Tool exhibit, which lets you re-roll dice. When I shortened the game to 5 rounds, I reduced that to 1 extra point for an Art exhibit, worried that the power of the Tool and Weapon had gone down and I didn't want Art to be "too good" in comparison. But I wanted Art to be more of an option early game, so players didn't just ignore it early, and use it late, so I tried something that sounded more interesting... Treat an Art exhibit as if it had +1 tile in it. This amounted to anywhere from 2-5 points, depending on the size of the exhibit, which means I failed at my goal of incentivizing art early but not late!

I think I need to just go back to +2 points for an Art exhibit, and be OK with players not using it early and valuing it more in the late game.

Keeping up with Keeping Up With The Joneses

I've played a few more solo games of Keeping Up now, including a 3-player solo test to see how that would go. It went fine, but had the same issue I've been seeing in the 2p games: It went too long! This post might get a little bit into the weeds, but to be honest, I'm writing it for my benefit more than for yours, so here we go...

Every playtest so far has taken longer than I would like on the clock, and I'll get back to that in a minute. But the game has also consistently taken more turns than I expected -- math has been failing me! The game timer is the Jones track. After each player turn, a Jones marker advances 1-3 spaces on the Jones track, depending on the number showing on the back of the top card of the deck. I figured I could control the average amount that the Joneses (TJ) move by manipulating the distribution of numbers on the backs of the cards. For example, if all the cards had a "2" on the back, then the average TJ move would be 2 (in fact, they'd move exactly 2 spaces each time), and the game would last [track length]/2 turns per lap, and currently there are 4 laps in the game. For a 2 player game, I'm using an 18 step TJ track (3 steps per rondel space). In this way, the Jones marker on each track will advance 1, 2, or 3 times each lap.

At an average TJ move of 2, one lap on an 18 step track would take 9 turns, so that's 4 or 5 turns per player. Obviously putting a "2" on every card would not be ideal, because I want the Joneses to move 1 and 3 sometimes also... so my first attempt had an even distribution of 1's, 2's, and 3's. This worked OK, but in my first playtest or two I felt like we weren't getting enough turns to make good progress. I started thinking a slower speed would be better, so I messed around with the distribution and played a few more games. My last few tests have used an average TJ value of 1.7 on the cards, but laps kept dragging out, and getting a bunch of 1s in a row felt off. Players were consistently getting 6 or 7 turns per lap, and while the card distribution had an average TJ value of 1.7, the actual average TJ move was only 1.4 or 1.5 steps per turn!   

From my experience so far, I think 5 turns per lap feels pretty good, and 4 might be OK on the low end. 3 would probably be too few. 6 would be OK, but consistently getting 6-7 turns each lap feels like too much. Overall, I've been aiming for a 20 turn/player game, plus or minus a couple. But for some reason, my card distribution is not providing that as the math would suggest.

That brings me back to the game duration on the clock. I had been aiming for a 20 turn/player game, and assuming turns would take less than a minute apiece most of the time (sometimes it's super quick, other times you have to think a bit, but I still wasn't expecting many turns to be even a full minute long). For 2 players, that's 40 turns at 1 minute or less each, the game shouldn't take more than about 40 minutes, right? Well, so far it's taken twice that long, just about every time! It's possible that I'm underestimating the amount of time a turn takes - maybe it really does take a minute or more to grok and evaluate the three options (occasionally more if you have a Minivan), make your decision, then physically resolve it by moving a card, a rondel piece, possibly some money tokens, a track marker, another card, the Jones track mover, and then the Jones' marker on a track. Geez, when you put it like that, it sounds like a lot!

So right off the bat, perhaps I need to adjust my expectations. I had expected the game to be about 15-20 minutes per player, and therefore range from 30-40 minutes for 2 players up to 60-80 minutes for 4 players. Maybe this simply isn't a "one hour wonder," but rather a 60-120 minute game to begin with. Is that acceptable for the weight of the game? Maybe, I'll have to consider that some more.

One thing I could do to decrease the duration is to lop off a lap. Instead of playing through 4 TJ laps, scoring 2 areas each time (and all of them at the end), I could make it 3 laps, scoring 3 areas each time (again, all of them at the end). This would not change the number of times any area scores in the game, just the timing on some of them, and it would reduce the total number of turns in the game to 3*18/[TJ avg move] for 2 players. So at my current theoretical TJ avg move of 1.7 steps/turn, that would be a 32 turn game, or 16 turns per player (5 or 6 per lap). And at the observed TJ avg move of 1.4-1.5 steps/turn, that would be a 36-38 turn game, 18-19 per player (on par with my initial target)!

So this sounds like an attractive move. In addition, after the first playtest, my wife suggested that scoring only 2 areas at a time seemed lame to her, so scoring 3 at a time could address that comment as well. However, it does present one challenge, but it's one that should be easy enough to overcome... One thing I liked about scoring 2 areas at a time is that each player (up to 4 players) could start at a different rondel space, give them a track bump in that space, and none of those spaces would score at the end of the first lap. This feels to me like a nice setup, differentiating players from the outset, and keeping anyone from getting a potentially unfair advantage from starting at a space that will be scoring in short order. Scoring 3 spaces at a time, that scheme still works for 2 and 3 players, but not for 4 players. What to do about 4p setup?

1. I could let someone have that advantage... I could try and figure out whether early or late turn order is "better," and compensate with that small advantage, but even if that were properly balanced, it's the kind of thing players would scoff at as obviously unfair.
2. I could stop giving players a free bump in their starting space, so it wouldn't really matter if you start in a space that will score first or not. This would simultaneously address the lingering question of which track to bump when starting at KIDS or HOME, since those spaces have multiple tracks. This might be the way to go.
3. I could modify setup for 4 player games such that only 2 spaces score the first lap, and the other 4 score the 2nd lap (and of course, all 6 score at game end). 

As I type out those options, I am leaning toward number 3, even though it involves a setup exception for player count, which is lame. In the end, number 2 (don't give players free bumps) might be the simplest solution, and I should probably just go with that one.

In any case, if I can cut out 25% of the turns, then it stands to reason that the duration should come down by about 25% as well, so those 80 minute 2-player games should come down to about an hour, which is better, if a little long.

Jumping back to my thoughts on the distribution of TJ movement numbers, there is one other issue that concerns me: In order to get the average move down below 2, I need to have a higher concentration of 1's in the deck. And by definition, there are fewer 2's, and there aren't very many 3's at all. I suppose that means if any 3's are on the first 4 cards of the deck (which aren't used for TJ movement), or the last few cards (that won't ever come up), then that could account for a much lower actual TJ average move than my calculated one. One thing I've noticed about that is that there are times in the game where a bunch of 1's come up in a row. Not only does that slow the game down a lot, but it also means the TJ markers on those tracks shoot up very quickly. Now, I'm not sure that's a problem really, but it feels a little weird to hit so many 1's in a row. I'm not sure if there's really anything I can do about that though if I want to maintain this elegant TJ move mechanism of just referencing the top of the deck.

That said, I did have an alternate thought about that. What if the TJ track didn't move a random amount, but rather the same amount that the player did. In other words, if I choose the card in slot 3, then I move 3 spaces, and the TJ marker moves 3 steps. That would add a 3rd consideration to your choice each turn: Which card do I want? Which space do I want to land on? Which space do I want the Joneses to advance on (and maybe also do I want to slow the game down, or speed it up?) In a way, that sounds interesting, however I'm skeptical of it for a couple of reasons. I think it would overwhelm the main decision point with too much information, inviting AP (and therefore slowing the game down even further), and it would have an unpredictable effect on game length - if players frequently move 3 spaces, the game will be very short, and if they often move just 1 space, the game could drag on too long. But it's an idea, and is probably worth trying at least once.

Side note for anyone following along with the math, especially if you want to tell me where I've steered myself wrong, here's the rest of the data needed:

• For 2p I'm using an 18 step track (3 steps per rondel space)
• For 3p I'm using a 24 step track (4 steps per rondel space, one of which is marked "no bump" to help avoid the Joneses getting too out of control - though maybe that's not necessary)
• For 4p I haven't tried it yet, I was going to use the same track as for 3p, but the math suggests that won't be long enough, so I'm considering making a 30 step track (5 steps per rondel space, 2 of which marked "no bump)

Unrelated to movement, the point of the Jones marker on each track is to disqualify players from scoring if they are too far behind it, and I'm considering defining "too far" as "more than N spaces behind, where N is the number of players." So in a 4 player game, you'd only have to be within 4 of the Joneses to score. Hmm... typing that I'm wondering if those "no bump" spaces are even necessary. Maybe I WANT the Joneses to advance a lot on the tracks, especially if they're only making 3 laps! I should probably get rid of that for my next test and see if I miss it!

Keeping Up With The Joneses

 In my last post I teased a new game I'm working on. It's not really a secret, I just haven't had a chance to sit down and write out a post about it.

I haven't played on that TTS mod yet, but it looks like I'm going to have to update it, because I've done 2 live playtests and a few solo tests as well (something I rarely do), and I've made some adjustments here and there. But for the most part, the game works just like I envisioned it, which is always a promising sign :)

Keeping Up With The Joneses

One-up your neighbors in 6 different aspects of life, while trying to keep up with the Joneses up the street, who really seem to have everything together!

In this rondel game, each space on the rondel has a track representing a life aspect you can compete in: Job, Home, Kids, Cars, Charity, and Social. When you land on a space, you advance that track. Occasionally, an aspect will score in a majority fashion (farthest up the track gets 1st reward, etc), but if you are too far behind the Jones marker, then you don't score any status. 

JOB: whenever you pass or land here, collect income based on your position on the Job track. When scored, you'll earn Status points for having the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd best job.

 
HOME: either maintain your home (mow the lawn), make improvements, or pay extra money to do both. You compete with your neighbors and score based on your improvements, but you get a multiplier on that score based on your maintenance (it doesn't matter how many garden gnomes you have if your landscaping is too overgrown and unkempt). If you pass here without stopping, your maintenance track goes DOWN a space as your home falls into disrepair.

KIDS: Compete in 3 areas where your kids can excel: Grades, Sports, and Popularity. You'll score in each of those, and you'll get a multiplier for evenly advancing all three.

CARS: Every couple of steps on the Cars track will earn you a new car, which comes with an ability:

* Sports cars are flashy, they earn you Status points each time you collect income

* Minivans are convenient, they allow you to add 1 to your rondel move, making you more flexible

* SUVs are powerful, but expensive, they allow you to pay money to make additional track advances

* Hybrids are efficient, they give you extra money each time you collect income [or maybe a $1 discount any time you spend money to advance a track?]

CHARITY: either decrement your marker on that track to get a little money, or you pay (more and more) money to advance on the Charity track, and maybe collect a few Status points for doing so.

SOCIAL: advance on the Social track, then you may buy Status points for $1 apiece a certain number of times according to your position on the Social track.

On your turn, you'll first draft a card from a display with three slots labeled 1, 2, and 3. You'll resolve the card's effect, and then move your rondel pawn a number of spaces based on the slot it was in. Finally, you'll replace the card from the deck, then reference a number printed on the back of the new top-of-deck card. Move the Jones pawn that number of steps around the Jones track - the Joneses take 3 or 4 steps (based on player count) for each rondel space, and they advance a Jones marker on the track where they land. You must be within N spaces of that marker during scoring to qualify for any points at all (where N is the number of players in the game).

When the Joneses complete a lap on their rondel track, 2 areas will score. When they complete another lap, 2 more areas will score. After their 3rd lap, the remaining 2 areas will score, and after their 4th lap, the game ends and every area scores one more time.

The playtests so far

So far the game has been working well, just how I imagined it would. Sure, I'm finding lots of little details and balance issues to change, but the overall structure of entangling the rondel movement with a card draft (I expect to make a blog post about entangled decisions sometime soon) works well, and the majority scoring while needing to be "close enough" to the Joneses seems to be working out in 2 player games-it remains to be seen if it holds up at higher player counts.

Here are some of the things I've cut, followed by some of the changes I've made that have worked already or that seem promising:

I struggled at first coming up with enough interesting content to scrape together a test copy of the game, and I had a couple of effects that let you move the Jones rondel marker backwards or forwards. The idea was to control the speed of the game a little bit, and possibly also influence the scoring of different areas at different times. However, it simply wasn't very useful or desirable, so I took all of those effects out.

I was worried the Joneses would be too easy to keep up with, so I started out bumping their tracks when revealing which ones will score (at the beginning of a lap, giving you a few turns to act before those areas score). It turned out in my first test that that might have been premature. I reversed the decision, and it seems like the Joneses do a good enough job on their own. At least in my 2p tests so far.

For simplicity, I started with all the tracks scoring the same amount of points: 5/3/2 for 1st/2nd/3rd place. However the Kids track has 3 separate tracks in it, and each of them scores... AND you get a multiplier for even advancement that applies to each of those tracks. That was way too lucrative, especially in conjunction with too much money floating around, so I reduced the scoring to 3/2/1.

In the first couple of games, the money seemed a little too plentiful, which may have contributed to the ease of dominating the Kids tracks. I reduced the income a bit on the Job track to try and make the whole game a little more tight.

Originally, I had the Maintenance track drop when you get income (when you pass the Job space), in an attempt to keep all the bureaucracy clumped together at the same time. However, I did not like the dynamic that created, so I switched to a more thematic (and I think more interesting) method in which you only drop your maintenance if you fail to stop on the Home space, which is the space here that track resides. Now when you stop at Home, you can either advance your Improvement track or your Maintenance track, or pay money to advance both, and if you skip the space, then your maintenance track goes down 1 (reducing your multiplier).

I thought it would be interesting to have more cross-track effects, so I added some specific home improvements that you could get as you ascend the Home track (a 3-car garage, which advances your Cars track, for example). However, I think that was overloading that track, which already had a mechanism associated with it... so I took that back out for now. That kind of thing can come from the cards, I think.

I had originally started the kids track off with a multiplier of 0, meaning to get any points at all from that track, you had to advance each of the sub-tracks at least once. I didn't like that dynamic, and it became especially obvious when Kids was one of the first areas to score -- it was too easy for nobody to be able to get any points at all. I had thought I should either have a minimum multiplier of x1, or else keep it as-is, but start the players 1 step up the track, allowing for the possibility of going down to a 0 multiplier. But the more I thought of it, the more I disliked the idea of regression anyway, and so I adjusted the cost of advancing on those tracks so that you get 1 track for free, and you never drop, and I can just start the multiplier at x1.

I put a lot of thought and math into the distribution of numbers on the card backs which control how many steps the Jones marker takes each turn, aiming for +/-5 player turns per lap. In the end I decided on a distribution that should give an average of about 1.6 steps per turn, and a longer track for 3 and 4 players than for 2. I think that should yield a good number of turns (maybe only 4/player at 4p, hope that's enough) per lap. I was hesitant to go to 4 steps per rondel space for the Joneses because it seems like at that rate, they can really shoot up the tracks if they move just 1-2 spaces a couple turns in a row. So I figured out a way to avoid that eventuality -- I put a "no advance" icon on one of the steps in each space, so every once in a while the Joneses won't advance a track.

I've got some other tweaks to make, and I really would like to play with 3 or 4 players to see how that goes. Time to update my Tabletop Simulator prototype!

Another day, another prototype on Tabletop Simulator

I spent a few hours tonight making a Tabletop Simulator mod for a new prototype of mine. I haven't posted about this one yet, but I probably will do so soon. I'm pretty excited about it, I think the theme, story, and even the rules are pretty accessible, and the inaugural playtest went about as well as I could have hoped. So far, so good! Just gotta find some time to do some playtesting...

Here's a teaser image for Keeping Up With The Joneses:

Keeping Up With The Joneses - Tabletop Simulator prototype

Keeping Up With The Joneses is a rondel game in which you one-up your neighbors while trying to keep up with the Joneses down the street - who always seem to have it all together!

Designing with competitive vs NON-competitive play in mind

No catchy title this time, just wanted to talk about how we should design games that hold up to competitive play… AND to NON-competitive play.

I've said before that all things being equal, games are better if they hold up to competitive play. That is to say that they don't break down when a player "tries to win." For many games, that's not strictly necessary, for example, many party games are not really played "to win," but just to facilitate a fun time. That's well and good, but my point still stands: the game would only be better if it did not unravel when one or more players do play competitively.

I've stumbled across a new observation that is related to this, and may be even more important. Not only should a game strive to hold up to competitive play, but it must also hold up to NON-competitive play! By this I mean simply: if one, some, or (worst case) all of the players do not aggressively pursue the winning condition, the game must not stop working, and it must still progress toward an end.

Case Study: Apotheosis

This has come up on my current design, Apotheosis. In every playtest of that game, at least one player (myself, if not my friend Dave) would treat the game as the race it was intended to be. We both strive to do tier-2 adventures as quickly as possible, as they're much more efficient then tier-1 adventures, and we press as hard as we can toward reaching the win condition (the end of a track). As a result, the duration of the game was always acceptable, and I thought the game was in pretty good shape.

The other day I had a test with 3 other players on Tabletop Simulator, and I decided to sit out and help facilitate instead of playing because TTS is kinda fiddly, and I thought it would go faster that way. This turned out to be fortuitous because it revealed what I'd consider a fatal flaw in the game: all three players went for even advancement to obtain the "consolation" level-ups I'd added, effectively spending too many turns building up rather than pressing to get to those tier-2 adventures and racing up a track. As a result, perhaps not unexpectedly, the game dragged on and ended up taking about 2 hours -- fully twice an acceptable duration!

Thinking about this problem is what turned me on to the axiom above: games must hold up to non-competitive play. First time players will not necessarily notice that you're intended to push up the tracks as fast as you can. In fact, the current incentives kind of suggest the opposite. And many players just play games to explore their systems, and don't try doggedly to achieve victory. Therefore, it is definitely appropriate to address this game-dragging problem in some way.

Brainstorming solutions 

My first thought was to remove or reduce the "consolation" level-ups. I'd added them to ensure that simply picking one track and ignoring the other two wasn't necessarily the best path to take. To be honest, I'm not sure they were really necessary in that respect, but I did like having a reward for even advancement in a game where the goal is to advance any 1 track to the end. While that might have reduced the problem, it would not have eliminated it, as new or bad players could still dilly-dally too long and make the game drag. This might not be a practical problem, but it's certainly at least a theoretical one. The game should naturally push toward an end, no matter how players decide to play.

My next thought was to make some of the rewards on the tracks "1st come, 1st served" to encourage players to race for those. This might be good to do, but I'd also like to see players get those rewards more often, so limiting them might not be great after all.

Finally, the 3rd thing that came to mind was the biggest, and possibly best solution: add a game end condition that would trigger when players dilly-dally. Such a game timer would keep the game from dragging by definition, if players don't progress the game themselves, it will still come to an end. In general I'd say this is an obvious choice, except in Apotheosis, the win condition is reaching the end of a track. So what happens if the time runs out and nobody has achieved the win condition? How do you decide who wins? In some games it's easy to assess relative progress, and award the game to the player who's closest to winning. But here that is thematically odd because topping out a track is supposed to represent a big, momentous event.

Another option is to say that if time runs out, then nobody wins. This is an interesting thought, however it may be out of place in this type of game, and it's likely to make for a bad first play experience if players all lose in the first game.

Settling on a solution? 

What I have decided to try is this: add a game timer (the king will return, and once he does, your opportunity to steal the throne will be gone!), and if you win before time runs out, great (the king returns to find you on his throne, controlling his army, or backed by a demon, or with his court turned against him)! But if nobody has won by the time the king returns, then the player with the best reputation across all of the guilds (evenly advanced up the tracks) is the winner.

Tangentially related: game end dynamic 

In addition, I'm considering a variable, slightly random game length, something like this... When the adventure deck runs out, the king is ALMOST home. Put a King marker on a short (6 space) track that's revealed under where the deck was. Give the triggering player a marker as a reminder, and for the rest of the game, after that that player's turn each round, roll a die. On a 1-3, advance the king marker 1 space. On a 4-5, advance 2 spaces. On a 6, advance 3 spaces. Therefore when the deck runs out, you have 2-6 turns left to win by getting to the end of one of the three victory tracks. This way, if you don't think you can reach the end of any the tracks by the time the king returns, or if you think someone might beat you to it, you can advance your track markers more evenly in case nobody else achieves the win condition in time either. This gives you something to do if you feel you can't win, and it might also extend the tension (until the last minute at least) even if you know you can reach a track end before anybody else.

The game must communicate its dynamics to the players

This brings me to another recent observation, which we could put down as another axiom: The game must communicate its dynamics to the players. I have talked about this in the context of the "Alpha Player Problem" and what I call "Solitaire by Committee", or committee-style cooperative games, but it applies more generally as well. In SbC games, this axiom suggests that it's important to let players know that the game is not about making your own choices and having full agency with some incentive to coordinate with or help the rest of the group, rather in an SbC style game, the whole point is to have a little committee meeting to decide on a course of action, and then do that.

For the new perspective alternate end game trigger in Apotheosis, this axiom would suggest that it's important to make clear the "most evenly advanced" win condition is a secondary condition, and that the primary and most common way to win will still be by reaching the end of a track. Without clearly communicating this, I can see how it'd be very easy for a player to assume both win conditions are equally viable to go after, and I can just see reviewers now complaining that "the game is not well balanced, not all win conditions have the same win rates" (duh, they're not supposed to!)

I'm not exactly sure how to go about that communication outside of explicitly stating it in the rulebook, which is not ideal by itself, because it is too easy to overlook or forget about.

TL;DR summary 

Games are better if they hold up to competitive play, but they MUST hold up to non-competitive play. Don't allow your game to drag on or fall apart if players don't pursue victory as aggressively as you expected them to.

New Crusaders factions?

I don't think I've posted about the extra player expansions for Crusaders, but art is done for them, and they're ready to be printed (just as soon as everything else gets sorted out)...

There will be 2 boxes you could get to add a 5th player to your Crusaders game, Crimson Knight (red player color), or Amber Knight (yellow player color). You'll even be able to play with 6 players if you get both!

These expansions contain a player board and pieces for one new player, including Divine Influence stuff, and 2 new faction powers to choose from. These new factions were ones that I had been testing originally, but had not made the cut to the final 10 in the game.

As I mentioned, all of the art for these expansions is done, and has been for some time now. As I happened to be looking at those files recently, I noticed that I apparently included the same 2 factions in both expansion boxes. I don't exactly remember why I did that, it seems like the boxes should each have 2 unique factions. In fact, I think I remember choosing 4 different ones, but in any case, the art files have the same pair of new factions, and that's not great. So I decided to come up with 2 new factions so that players who get both boxes to play with 6 players won't have any duplicates.

That said, I needed to think of new dynamics. I got a few ideas from Twitter followers who responded to a request for abilities they'd like to see, and I decided on 4 powers to try. I had hoped that at least 2 of those would be good enough to use. Here are the 4 draft factions (sorry, no fancy names yet):

1. When resolving an upgraded wedge, you may add 2 virtual tokens. If you do, downgrade the wedge afterwards. 

This one seems good so far, it might be a winner.

2. Remove an action token from the game instead of taking a normal turn. If you do, resolve that wedge based on the number of tokens on an opponent's board. Distribute your own wedge as normal afterwards.

I think it might be better to NOT distribute the bin... But this power might not make the cut anyway. With 2 players it as a little annoying to see what was available all the time, but not too bad. However with more players it would probably get too AP prone or annoying.

3. Before resolving a wedge, you may remove a token on it and set it aside to upgrade it.  When you take an upgrade turn to upgrade a wedge, you may add a token set aside that way to the upgraded wedge.

This worked pretty well, and may be a winner also. I might want to change the wording so that the 2nd clause works with Divine Influence's Upgrade actions (in the expansion there are more ways to upgrade your wedges besides just taking an upgrade turn).

4. Instead of a normal turn, choose any wedge, distribute it, and resolve the last wedge you place in.

Could call that one the Feldian Order of Trajan or something :)

This one was neat. Very different, and probably way too powerful. Next time I try it, I'll add "-1 to each action" as a drawback.

If I can balance this one acceptably, I might like to make it a promo item, because it's so unique, rather than a regular faction power in an expansion.

Having played just 1 game with each of the draft factions, it looks like I have 2 that will work, and they both deal with upgrades, which is interesting because Divine Influence adds more ways to upgrade your action wedges. And I also like the idea of using the Trajan-styke one as a promo, if I can make it fair enough :)

Just need to get a little more testing in for those, and to look up some more faction titles I could use!

Revisiting old titles -- Reading Railroad and Exhibit playtests

Every once in a while I review The List and take stock of my active, back-burnered, and abandoned game projects. Early this year, in an effort to make progress on some of the stale games, I solicited co-designers - this has borne fruit in a couple of cases:

Kilauea was picked up by Thiago Jabuonski, who follows this blog. He had some great ideas to revive that, one of my oldest designs on the list. He made some prototype files of his new version, and I imported them into Tabletop Simulator, and we're going to meet online this week to discuss it.

I've probably posted before about Mike Brown coming on board for Automatown, and he made some big strides forward. I've played his latest version with my testers on the TTS mod he made for it, and he entered it into a contest recently where it unfortunately didn't fare too well in the first round.

And I've definitely discussed how Rick Holzgrafe has helped immensely to bring Apotheosis from pretty-well-thought-out-idea to basically-finished-design (to the point I've pitched it to a couple of publishers).

In addition to getting co-designers on board for some of my old games, I have decided to revive some of my old favorites on my own as well. At the tail end of last year, I finally revisited the first real design I ever worked on: All For One. It was fantastic to get that one back to the table and fix some niggling problems I've had with it for literally years!

More recently I got another couple of old favorites back to the table: Reading Railroad, and Exhibit: Artifacts of the Ages.

I had a rare playtest opportunity with Michelle a few weeks ago, so I brought out Reading Railroad for the first time since probably 2008 when I submitted it to the KublaContest (it didn't go over well in the contest as I recall). The rulebook in the box didn't sound quite like I remembered it, so we played the way I remembered -- I'm not sure that made any real difference though. The game went OK, but revealed a few things worth changing, or at least looking into:
* I could use some more buildings (like Factories) that do different things. As Factories are "size 4" (they take up 4 City Tile spaces), perhaps I should have a building of each size 1, 2, and 3 as well. I may be over enamored with symmetry :) I'm sure I could figure out 3 more effects to add... for example, "treat one of your City Tiles as wild." 
* Maybe allow buying ANY letter, not just vowels. This would make the word building even more forgiving, but it would still be much more efficient to use the tile you've drawn. This could even be a building effect!
* Instead of 1 letter per turn, players should probably draw at least 2 -- that would speed up the recharge and make the game more consistently fun, I think. You'd still get additional letters for every 4 City Tiles you have collected.
* Michelle suggested having multiple different endgame word sets, which could be worth doing, though I'm not sure if it will actually change the game at all.
* I'm unsure whether it would be better to "take 1 City Tile from each city you add to your network" or "take 1 City Tile each tine you build track" (this was the rulebook discrepancy I mentioned). The implication of the former is that you can get 2 City Tiles in a turn by starting a new network, but you can never get 2 Tiles from the same City, which might be annoyingly frustrating. The implications of the latter are that you CAN get 2 tiles from the same city, but only ever 1 Tile per turn.

I enjoyed playing this one again, and having made a TTS mod for it, I was excited to play it with my playtesters as well. Sadly, a TTS error made it so I couldn't play Reading Railroad with my playtesters after all, so last weekend when I got the chance to playtest, I revived another old game instead: Exhibit!

Exhibit is kind of a finished game, I even signed it with a publisher at one point (7 years ago!), but it never came out due to dumb reasons. At this point I think it's been long enough, it's time to revive this one, and maybe see if I can't get it signed once again!

I played Exhibit with Dave and Aaron on Saturday, first time since 2014. The game still worked, went well, and felt good. I've been hemming and hawing over the Art effect (+1vp vs +2vp), unsure whether one is too little a reward to matter or the other is so much it will destroy the set collection mechanism. During this last game, I thought of an alternative... instead of additional points, maybe art should score as if the set had +1 tile. This would make art worth +2vp on a 1-tile exhibit (on par with what I was already considering), and +3 or 4 on a bigger exhibit. This might overvalue Art in the late game, but I'm not sure that's necessarily bad. I'll give that tweak a try next time I play, but other than that, I think this game could be considered finished.