Exploration mechanics - revisited

 A few months ago I posted some thoughts I was having about exploration mechanics, specifically for the new deity I was adding to Deities & Demigods. In the end, I decided for that game to go with the higher level action allowing you to explore more than once at a time, rather than drawing multiple tiles from which to choose (representing better preparedness, luck, or more time searching).

Back to the drawing board?

More recently I have been asked to consult on a game, and this game has a different exploration mechanism. In the first version I saw (which I understand was far from the designer's first version) had face down tiles, and player's avatars had some movement allowance, and you'd move however many spaces (skipping over face down tiles if you like), then flip up the tile you ended up on. I commented on this s it's a personal pet peeve of mine: I hate when a game asks me to make a choice without giving me any way to pick between the different options.

The latest version of the game is structurally pretty different, but still has the same exploration mechanism, and it really gets my goat! So the other day I racked my brain and posted on Twitter and a couple of Discord channels looking for various exploration mechanics people had seen and liked, hoping to find something that I felt worked better than having to randomly pick between a few different face down things every turn (even if it's only really in the early game, until the map is mostly face up).

Crowdsourcing mechanisms

Most of the replies I got were not that helpful (and I wasn't particularly specific about the game, so I expected that), but in the end I think my crowdsourcing bore fruit, as somebody mentioned the way resources get revealed in Gold West. I had never thought of that as an exploration mechanism before, but I think in this case it would really work well. 

Gold West style exploration

The way Gold West works is that you have a board full of face-down tiles, with a few of them face-up. On each player's turn, they will claim one of the face-up tiles, which confer resources (in that game it's important that you get resources every turn, so that's mandated by rule). When you claim a tile, you then turn face up each tile adjacent to that one, making more resource options available. This easily works well with an exploration theme, imagine walking through a dark dungeon or cavern, where the surrounding area (1 tile radius) is illuminated by your torch - it's just like that! So you can see what's nearby (not just where you're standing), but the information horizon is still limited. Starcraft and Warcraft do this same thing as well.

This solves all the problems I was having with the exploration in the game I'm consulting on: It allows a player to go to the tile they want (given a subset to choose from), and it maintains a feeling of exploration. In addition, it works to kind of gate the mind- and late-game tiles, because currently you're allowed to just walk past face down tiles and skip them, and that feels anticlimactic to me.

Keep this one in the back pocket

I have not yet pitched this idea to the designer, and it's possible he prefers the feel of the current mechanism better. I will admit that I might not be in line with the target audience for that particular type of thing, and some players might prefer the feeling of discovery when you flip the tile and find out what you'll get for the turn. If that's the case, I'm going to be sure to keep this mechanism in my back pocket for the next time I'm looking for an exploration mechanism in a game!

"Space" or geography in games, and a twist on engine building? (also, YANGI)

 In the last few days, I had 2 separate interactions on twitter, which I've sort of combined to form Yet Another New Game Idea (YANGI!)

"Space" or geography in games

I was discussing "space" in games with Keith Burgun, author of Clockwork Game Design, and host of a podcast with that same name (though actually, he just rebranded the podcast to a much less good title: Strategy Can Be Fun?). Keith comes from a videogame background, and I think he was mostly talking about space in open world RPGs, or maybe grid-based tactics games, but I likened it to "geography" in tabletop board games as well. I said there's something nice about geography in a tabletop game... Otherwise, it doesn't really need a tabletop!

In many worker placement games, the board is just an array of action spaces. It's convenient to see what's been taken, because there are pieces sitting on the spaces, but in most of those games the geography of the spaces is not important at all. It could be interesting (and thematically strong) if the geography of the board mattered more.

Keith suggested that if you have "space," you need enough of it to really do something with it. Like if it's just five spaces or something, that's kinda not enough, that's more like just menu options. He cited a videogame I'm not familiar with, saying it had a 5x5 grid, and that's just barely enough to feel like space. He summed up by saying

The trick to space is, create enough space that players feel like it's a space and they can do things with it, BUT ALSO make the whole thing feel meaningful and not just like a plodding chore to move around on

I agree with that last statement, but of course I got a little semantic about the size needed to "feel like space" -- the space needs to be big enough to be interesting, but not so big as to have wasted space (whether that's a 5x5 grid, or even just 5 spaces). The amount of space you need in order to feel like it's "enough" depends on how far your units can move at a time. 5x5 is nothing if you can move 8 spaces, but it's huge if you can only move 1!

So, bottom line: I wouldn't mind seeing more non-trivial geography in board games.

A Twist on Engine Building?

Separately, I saw a twitter thread from Jeff Warrender, author of You Said This Would Be Fun, and designer of Sands of Time and his new self-published Acts of the Evangelists [BGG link], listing off some of his random game ideas, just for fun. One of those sparked my interest:

Engine-builder where cards don't synergize with each other, they synergize with locations on the board. But we share a conveyance, and thus our engines don't get "fuel" at the same rate.

 

My response off the top of my head:

This could be cool... basically playing cards to your tableau that boost the effects of different locations, then vying to get the group to visit the locations you have cards in play for Stack up a couple locations with tons of effects and risk not going to them? Or play cards everywhere, ensuring you always get a decent (if not amazing) action?

I'm not sure that actually constitutes a "twist" on engine building, but in case the common perception of it is building a tableau of cards that synergize with each other," maybe relating them to a geographic game board is somewhat novel. 

YANGI

Then I started thinking of how these concepts could apply to a boardgame. For example, I could think of a few ways that geography could come into a worker placement game... 

• Making adjacency matter 
• Limiting movement, so your options are limited (like a Rondel)
• Making resolution order matter (like Caylus)

I came up with this example structure for a game that considered some of this spatial/geographic stuff, and employed Jeff's idea about engine building that incorporates the game's geography:

• Say we as players are in a group, so we travel together in a van or something. 
• There's a board with some number of towns (maybe 7-10?), each connected to 2 others (like maybe they're in a circle, and you can only drive around the circle) 
• Say each town has a main action and a sub-action (lesser version of the main action, or just a less strong action) 
• On your turn, you may move the van to an adjacent town, then you get to do the main action of that town, and the sub-action of one adjacent town

Then I thought about combining those thoughts with the idea from Jeff's twitter thread: 

Maybe one thing you can do is play cards into your personal tableau, which make certain towns better for you...

• When you get the main action of town A, also get THING
• When you get the sub-action of town A, also get LESSER THING
• When ANYONE gets the main action of town A, get THING

Stuff like that. In general, you could stack several effects up on each of a couple of towns, making those super good for you, or you could play cards to all the towns sort of evenly, so you always get some good stuff, even if nothing super-amazing.

I haven't really got a good theme for this yet, which undoubtedly means I'm stalled until I think of one, or until someone suggests one :)

And because I feel like there aren't enough bulleted lists in this post, here are some ideas for groups that travel together:

• Traveling players, like the company in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
• A band on tour
• A family or group of friends on a road trip
• A family or group at Disneyland
• Students on a field trip

A Knight in Shining Armor

Originally posted an unabridged version of this as a backer-only KS update for the Crusaders project a few days ago. Heads up... this is one of those good news/bad news sorts of things

It has been 3 years since Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done delivered to backers, and I've really enjoyed seeing positive reviews, session reports, and pictures on Instagram and Twitter of people enjoying the game!

For those of you who play games online, Crusaders has recently gone into Alpha testing on BoardGameArena.com, with a very nice implementation!

As I'm sure I've said before, I designed an expansion to the game, called Divine Influence. I may also have said that that expansion got printed over 2 years ago, and has been sitting at the manufacturer this whole time!

The Bad News

How can that be? Wouldn't TMG want to sell the product that's already been printed? Well, that brings me to the "bad news" portion of this post. I'm sad to report that the rumors you may have heard are true: TMG will not be publishing games for the foreseeable future. This has led to a number of disappointments for me, not the least of which is that Divine Influence was never released. For a while now I have been trying to find a way to make the existing copies of Divine Influence available myself, to no avail.

The Good News

But hark! I bring good news as well! I'm happy to announce that, like the eponymous (see post title) knight in shining armor, RENEGADE GAME STUDIOS has licensed the Crusaders line, as announced at their Renegade Con virtual event today (Friday, March 4th)!

If you tuned in to twitch.tv/playrenegade this afternoon, you saw a cavalcade of products announced in their G.I. Joe, Power Rangers, My Little Pony, and other lines (deckbuilding games, role playing games, and board games), you saw an unboxing of My Father's Work (a very ambitious and awesome sounding legacy-style game by T.C. Petty III), and you saw Crusaders retail, Crusaders Deluxe, and Crusaders: Divine Influence mentioned.

Renegade has the existing stock of Divine Influence (with TMG branding) available for pre-order now, and if-and-when that sells through, they'll print a Renegade version (which is the same thing, but with a Renegade logo instead of a TMG one).

They also teased more Crusaders content, which was referring to Crimson and Amber Knight (5 and 6p expansions - see below).

What's In The Box

A few years ago, the fine folks at boooored.com made a fantastic summary of what's in the Divine Influence expansion, so check that out to see what's in the Divine Influence box. I'll add that there will be only one version of the expansion, and it's compatible with both the retail and the Deluxified base game. That was TMG's plan all along, and it kept the price of the expansion way down.

If 3's Company, and 4's a Crowd, What Are 5 and 6?
[Eleven!]

And just to tease one more little thing: For those of you who enjoy Crusaders, but generally have 5 or 6 players at game night, I have also designed a 5/6p expansion, which Renegade will print a little bit later. I'm not sure when that will release, let's give them a chance to get the base game out first!

That's actually 2 separate expansion boxes, one (Crimson Knight) adds a red player color, the other (Amber Knight) adds a yellow player color. The boxes are nearly identical, so you can get one or the other to add a 5th player, or both to play with 6. Each box comes with 2 new Knight Orders as well (4 total if you get both), and they are also compatible with Divine Influence - they have all the additional stuff you'd need to play with the expansion. That's how it was set up before anyway, and the art is done, but Renegade may decide to combine them into one box or something.

Oh, and on BGA you can play with both Divine Influence and Crimson/Amber Knight if you'd like! So try them out online, then buy them to play at home with your friends!

I'm So Excited, and I Just Can't Hide It

I can't begin to tell you how happy I am, and how much of a relief it is, to see Divine Influence finally moving forward into circulation. I'm having a blast playing the Alpha implementation on BGA, and I get excited whenever I see people post about playing it on there, or signing up to be an Alpha tester just so they can play it. Now, if only I got royalties for games played online! 

Actually, my position is that the best advertising you can get for a game is people playing it, so an online implementation is only going to increase sales of the physical copies when they release later this year. So it's super-good timing that the BGA implementation will go live around the same time the game becomes available for purchase!

A random thought on making a kid's game

 Not too long ago I had the idea to make a Railroad Tycoon inspired game about moving patrons around a Disney style amusement park. Someone even helped me make a potential board draft by overlaying a hex grid over a map of Disneyland I found online, and I colored some of the hexes with different colors such as yellow for eateries, green for shops, blue for rides, pink for character encounters, and orange for shows. As yet I have not taken that idea any further.

Recently, my 3.5 year old son, seeing that draft board, wanted to "play this game" with me. So I grabbed a couple of pawns and a die, and we started taking turns ...

I rolled the die, then moved my pawn, space by space, a number of times equal to the roll result. Then I said "your turn" and gave Corbin the die. He rolled and moved his pawn around more or less at random, but the right number of times according to the die roll. Cool. So I took another turn, clearly and intentionally moving space-by-adjacent-space, trying to end up on a colored space. When I would do so, I'd say something like "I'm going to ride this ride." Turn by turn, Corbin started getting closer and closer to what I was doing, eventually moving space by space, and sometimes even trying to land on the colored spaces!

Now, that's not really a game by any definition, as we didn't have a goal or anything, but I was thinking about how to make it into one. Today, Corbin wanted to "play" that game again, and so we did the same thing, only this time I figured maybe the goal could be to visit one of each type of attraction, then again but without repeat attractions... Imagine you left a cube on each colored space showing you'd been there, and once you have a cube on one of each type of space, you replace those with markers and start placing cubes again

Also, I had marked some spaces purple and labeled "tram" - maybe you could move from one purple space to another as if they were adjacentis that simple enough for a kid? The goal: visit all the different colored spaces! The mechanism: simple roll and move. It's not super exciting or deep, but that's not really the point of a kids game, right?

Why I don't like 18XX

 There's a genre of game out there called 18XX... for those who don't know, 18XX is a series of games such as 1830: Railways and Robber Barons, or 1846: The Race for the Midwest. There are a million of them, and to be honest, I don't know the first thing about their pedigree, their history, which ones came out first vs which are newer, and frankly I don't know enough about them to even tell them apart. The genre is big though, and it has many hardcore fans - including some friends of mine, some people I've mentioned in this blog before, such as J.C. Lawrence (AKA clearclaw) or Eric Flood (AKA etothepi).

One way you can tell that the series has become a whole genre is by looking at the titles of similar games that are not named after a year, but follow the same nomenclature, such as 18MEX, or 18Chesapeake.

Games in this genre look like rail games, where you don't own any particular rail company -- rather you buy shares in the different companies, and you sometimes build rail or upgrade engines on behalf of the companies in an effort to increase the value of their stock, resulting in your earning dividends or your holdings increasing in value.

Another, similar stock manipulation game that I found myself not loving was the rondel game Imperial, by Mac Gerdts. In that game, you bought shares of countries, and when a country's turn came up the share leader would decide what to do. One thing to note about that game (and I think they changed the dynamic a little in Imperial 2030) was that if you did not control any countries, you basically did not take any turns - you could play a good portion of the game without even taking a turns, but still be in contention to win! I love rondels, but I found that dynamic odd.

One of my favorite games of all time, Railroad Tycoon (AKA Railways of the World), could be described similarly to the 18XX games above EXCEPT in that game (and Age of Steam/Steam) you DO own a rail company, and while you "issue shares" to get money to work with, you're issuing them to nameless, faceless NPCs, and they don't fluctuate in value at all, so they're nothing like the shares in an 18XX game.

So why is it that I love RRT/RotW but I can't bring myself to even look at any of the 18XX genre? Well, there might be a few reasons... 

1. 18XX tends to take a very long time to play - I prefer games in the 1-2 hour range
2. 18XX games tend to have low production values - this isn't a huge concern for me, but it is a small one
3. 18XX games have a lot of counting, calculating and passing money back and forth - this isn't a deal-breaker for me, but it is a lot of busywork
4. Owning a rail line vs owning shares of various rail lines - the big difference between RTT and 18XX. I think I like to build up and have ownership of my own stuff
5. Stock Manipulation as the main mechanism - this is probably the biggest reason I like RRT but dislike 18XX. I'm just not into stock games
6. The promise of a train game - I'll explain below

As I mentioned above, the biggest difference between the Railroad Tycoon family of games and the 18XX family is that one is a network building game, while the other is a stock manipulation game. Yes, you build rail networks in 18XX as a way of influencing the stock values, but the heart of the game is the stocks: influencing their value, timing your buys and sells, that type of thing. I guess I'm just much more interested in the network aspect and in delivering cubes, and I like having my own personal capacity to do that.

So that's probably enough reason to like or not like a genre of game -- if I don't enjoy the main mechanism, then it follows that I wouldn't want to play the game. But there's one more aspect to it that might twist the knife just a little bit...

The promise

I've actually seen a few posts around the blogosphere lately about promises. Andy just posted today in his Prototypical blog on BGG about the promise made by box art. Jeff Warrender posted last year in Jeff's World of Game Design (also on BGG) about this topic as well. I feel like I've seen the topic of promises come up on Board Game Twitter lately as well.

The general idea is that the box cover, art, theme, and setting of a game suggest a promise to the player of what kind of experience they can expect to have while playing. When gameplay doesn't live up to that promise, it degrades the overall experience - sometimes to the point where you're turned off to the game and just don't want to play it anymore.

Stock manipulation not a mechanism I'm particularly fond of, but it's not a deal-breaker on it's own. I like Acquire, for example, which is entirely a stock manipulation game about building and merging hotel chains. So while the difference in main mechanism certainly explains why I'd prefer Railroad Tycoon over an 18XX game, perhaps the reason I don't feel compelled to play 18XX at all is that to me, the "build a train network" trappings implies a promise to me, one that is fulfilled by games in the Railroad Tycoon family: I'll be building up a rail network in order to make deliveries. That said, the focus in 18XX games on stock manipulation rather than network building or delivering fails to deliver (haha) on that promise - from my point of view anyway.

So I think that's probably why I shy away from wanting to try an 18XX-style stock manipulation game with a train theme, even if it's a game (or genre) that I might actually enjoy, given a chance.

2020-2021: A playtesting retrospective

 A couple of years ago I posted a playtesting retrospective spanning late 2017 through the end of 2019, and I thought it as interesting to see the breakdown of time spent on various games, especially while considering the state that I know those games to be in now.

Now it's a couple years later, most of which has been spent in a global pandemic. Let's see what I managed to get playtested in 2020 and 2021...

2020

January
Throughout January, after a break for a Disneyworld vacation, we iterated a few times on the All For One revamp, and I brought Apotheosis back out after 6 months on the shelf.

All For One seemed to be working well, and I remember being pretty excited about the new updates. Unfortunately I haven't played it since, though in the interim I did create a Tabletop Simulator mod for the game, and I've even pitched it to a couple of publishers that way.

Apotheosis progress was coming along, and we ended up playing it a few times a month throughout 2020.

February
In addition to Apotheosis, February saw the debut of an Isle of Trains board game. First we played Dan's first draft version. Then a few weeks later I brought my own take on his concept, which was a lighter, more straightforward game, and we played that a few times.

March
March was weird, because I had to cancel most weekends for my Anniversary, and then a COVID scare. The 1 time we did play, we tested Apotheosis one more time, and enjoyed a published game: Glen More. Beyond that, I did play Apotheosis one more time at home with my wife.

April
Sadly, I had to cancel my weekly playtest meetup indefinitely due to COVID. I didn't test anything at all in April, but I did figure out how to implement prototypes on Tabletop Simulator, starting with Apotheosis.

May
Thanks to the technology of TTS and the internet, I was able to get a test in now and again online. In May we played Apotheosis a couple of times.

We also played the Isle of Trains boardgame once, and I think I've come around to thinking that maybe Dan was on the right track wanting to make a heavier game.

Finally, we played an updated version of Automatown which designer Michael Brown joined in on as a co-designer. He made a TTS mod and we were able to see his updates.

June
I was still getting the hang of making digital prototypes, and getting online playtests together. Unfortunately I didn't get any tests in June at all.

July
In July I pulled couple of older prototypes out of the woodwork. I played Reading Railroad at home with my wife, I played Exhibit online with my testers, and I got together with a designer who had come on board to work on Kilauea with me to check out his ideas for the game.

August

I got an online tests of Reading Railroad in August, as well as a couple games of Crusaders at home with my wife to test new faction powers I was developing.

I had an online pitch meeting for Apotheosis, which seemed promising. The publisher wanted to set the game in their fantasy universe, which was a perfect fit, so Rick and I reskinned the prototype with their art assets.

September

I kicked off the month with another test of the new Crusaders factions with Michelle. 

A few weeks later I had a prototype of a brand new game, Keeping Up With The Joneses, which I played twice with Michelle, and twice solo - and solo testing is something I almost never do!

Online I played one more game of Apotheosis with Rick and Aaron, my two main testers since going digital.

October

October was a busy month for testing, mostly on account of solo testing for Keeping Up With The Joneses - I played 6 solo games in.

I got in three online tests of Keeping Up with the Joneses as well, and three tests of Apotheosis too.

November
I revisited a couple more older games in November via digital prototypes with Rick and Aaron: Exhibit and Dice Works. I also played one of Rick's prototypes called Cwen.

December

We finished off the year with 4 tests of Apotheosis with some significant changes based on playing with the publisher who had showed interest, and the game got better and better.

2021

January
I started out 2021 playing games by a couple of my testers' latest games: Andy's Gemstone Pylons, and Rick's Stardock (later renamed Starlight).

We played Keeping Up With The Joneses once, and Apotheosis twice (once with the publisher)

February
I only had 2 test sessions in February, and we switched gears and played Sails & Sorcery, trying to figure out how to fix the issues with the Plunder action.

March
I didn't test any of my own stuff in March, but I played Rick's Starlight game a couple of times, as well as a skiing game that Andy was working on as a developer.

April
In April I revived another prototype, Deities & Demigods, to reacquaint myself and my players with the game. We also played Exhibit again, then later in the month I had the opportunity to pitch it to a big publisher (unfortunately, they passed on it). 

May
I started off the month with two more pitch meetings: Apotheosis and Keeping Up With The Joneses with one publisher; Riders of the Pony Express, Deities & Demigods, Sails & Sorcery, and Apotheosis with the other.

I played Rick's Starlight once more as well, then missed the rest of my sessions due to a vacation to Hawaii, lack of players, and technical difficulties.

June
Another tough month for playtesting... I had a first test of a new I-Cut-You-Choose game idea (later titled Division of Labor) with Rick, and a pitch meeting for Sails & Sorcery, then missed the rest of my sessions for one reason or another.

July
I got a 2nd test of Division of Labor and found some fundamental issues that would need to be addressed, and finished off the month with 3 tests of another revived prototype, Skye Frontier.

August
Another rough month for test sessions, I only got 1 playtest in: I got a gig developing expansion content for Amun-Re, a classic Eurogame from 20 years ago, and I tested some early content for that with Rick.

The rest of my sessions were canceled, but I did have a pitch meeting for Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory (unfortunately that didn't go anywhere)

September
I started September with a solo test of Keeping Up With The Joneses, then spent the rest of the month working on the Amun-Re expansion - 3 live tests, and 6 solo.

October
Six more solo tests and 5 live tests of Amun-Re took up all my testing time in October.

November
One more Amun-Re test in November, then I switched gears to Deities & Demigods because (drum roll please)... it got signed by a publisher! The publisher requested some changes, and I spent November working on those.

December

I finished off the year with 3 more tests of Deities & Demigods iterations as I worked on addressing the publisher's concerns.

The switch to online playtesting was a setback in my playtesting throughput, and it cost me some of my regular testers, but TTS has allowed me to continue testing, and pitching games, through the pandemic, and I've got at least a couple of regular online testers.

I miss testing more, but the good news is that I am finally making a little headway with pitches. Over the course of the pandemic, Isle of Trains got picked up by a new publisher who's going to do the base game as well as the expansion Dan and I made what, 7 years ago now? Deities & Demigods has been picked up, and I got that development gig on Amun-Re. I've had a few meetings recently to try and find a publisher to ick up the EmDo and Crusaders game lines, hopefully one who's willing to pick up the entire line (base game, expansions, and as-yet-unpublished content). No luck with EmDo an Crusaders thus far, but I just had a promising meeting or two about them, so hopefully something will come of that.

Exploration mechanics

Exploration tiles 

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

Another approach

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

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

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

So tell me what YOU think...

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

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

Entangled Decisions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Post -Scarcity (YANGI?)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rolling Realms - Jaffee Realms update update

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

Crusaders

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

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

Eminent Domain

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

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

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

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

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

Jaffee Realms 2021, v2.0

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

Deities & Demigods playtest - new deity!

 I apologize for again being a little cagey or cryptic about some of the details of Deities & Demigods getting signed. I'll just continue to use terminology and context from the Greek mythology theme, familiar to myself and anyone who happens to be following the progress of that game. At some point I'm sure I'll post about a retheme, a new title, and other publishing details.

Adding new content to an old game

Interestingly, I'm adding new content to this old design at the same time that I'm consulting on the development of an expansion to a classic game. Seems like a parallel there. I've created expansions to Terra Prime (Eminent Domain Origins), Eminent Domain (Escalation, Exotica, and Oblivion) and Crusaders (Divine Influence, Crimson/Amber Knight) as well. So I'm not a complete stranger to fitting new content into an existing game.

In Deities & Demigods, the publisher asked for a few specific things to be added to the game. Among those:

• More of a 4X feel
• More relevance to all spaces on the board (not just City and Quest spaces)
• Slightly heftier game weight (a little longer/more complicated)
• More variety in game action (an additional action you can do)
• More variety in the Favor card (game end scoring conditions) 

I believe that we can address all of that in 1 fell swoop by adding a new deity to the game. A new card in the starting deck necessarily means a longer game and another action. More different actions means a heavier and more complicated game. And since we get to choose what the deity does, we can use it to add relevance to the board spaces and give the game more of a 4X feel.

New Deity: God of Adventure

Since we'll be changing pantheons, I didn't bother actually getting a new Greek god for this role, and since my prototype components already say Hades on them, I decided to just use Hades for a stand-in here (I never did try that Hades expansion material we'd come up with, though I think Matthew may have). So... Meet "Hades," God of Adventure and Exploration!

With this new action, you can explore blank hexes, collect gems, and add features to the board. As nobody probably recalls, the game board was made up of 4 boards, each with 7 hexes, and each board had 3 features: either 2 cities and a quest space, or 2 quest spaces and a city space. This way, a random arrangement of the boards would yield 5-7 quests per game, and 5-7 cities per game (and as it happens, 5 quests meant 7 cities and vice versa). Now I have removed 1 feature from each board, leaving 1 city and 1 quest space, and I colored in the other blank hexes to represent different terrain. Each of the colors also corresponds to one of the deities, this way the stuff you find in an area could be weighted toward the type of thing one of the deities is known for.

When using this action, you choose one of your troops and they explore their hex. You get 1 gem of the color matching the hex, and then you draw some Exploration tiles to choose from; the more devotion you have to Hades, the more tiles you draw. You'll choose one of the drawn tiles to add to the board in that hex. So far the features on those tiles are new cities, new quest spaces, tunnels that connect distant hexes, monument sites where more monuments can be built (the monuments are getting a pretty big tweak as well, so they're not just fancy buildings anymore), and a "stronghold" - a space which is meant to have some kind of common enemy that you can "fight" by sacrificing troops to gain the printed effect.

The gems I keep mentioning are also color coded to match the different deities, and the plan is that when resolving a deity, you can spend up to 1 gem of that deity's favorite type (matching color) in order to resolve it as if your devotion were 1 level higher.

First playtest of this new deity

I played a 2-player game the other day with Aaron, who's played Deities & Demigods before, but not that recently. He picked up the nuances of the new content right away, but based on how the game went, we didn't see too much of it in play. For one thing, neither of us added an Ares to the deck, so movement was a little hard to come by, and that was exacerbated by more things requiring you to move around the board. Other than that, the game went fine, and I noted a number of things to change for next time.

Tweaks and changes for the next test

The biggest hurdle was a dearth of movement. Aaron suggested it might be good to add a 2nd Ares to the starting deck, since questing, city control, building, and exploration all require adding troops to the board and moving them around. This might not be bad, but I think I had a better idea -- add movement points to the Hades action, so no matter what you'll be able to move a troop before exploring. Also, even if you didn't care too much about exploring, you could utilize the extra movement to accomplish other goals. So I'm updating the Hades track to give movement points as well as gems and tile draws.

I figured that the result of this action would be an immediate benefit for the player (the gem), as well as a lasting effect on the board (the tile) - if you draw multiple tiles, you have a better chance of getting a feature that better benefits you. Some of the tiles weren't that exciting - for example a tunnel does nothing unless there are more than one in play. This felt a little disappointing when choosing between tiles, getting a poor one feels bad compared to getting a good one, feels like you didn't get a benefit. But you did... you got the gem! I guess you were getting that gem anyway, so it doesn't feel connected to the choice of tile. So I might simplify the action by removing the gem, and instead print a gem on many of the exploration tiles, so whichever one you pick, you can feel like you got something. That also means I can change the value of some of the tiles by adding or not adding a gem if I want to, for balance reasons.

For the monument sites, I might let the player actually build that monument for free, which makes it a lot more attractive to explore! And for the quests, I was just thinking of drawing a new quest tile, but instead maybe specific quests would be better.

I'll be updating these items in my prototype, and I look forward to trying the game again as soon as I get a chance!

Incremental progress and "Point Salads"

I probably have a lot to say about the term "point salad," but as this is the first time I've ever sat down to talk about it, it may be a haphazard post about some of those thoughts... maybe some day I'll gather them better and write about them in a more official capacity (or at least in a more intelligible blog post).

"Point Salad" is a term in board games that refers to... well, there's an interesting thread on BGG about the definition of the term, but for the most part I hear it used to describe a game that rewards lots of different things with points, and I usually hear it used as a pejorative, to support a straw man argument that "this game is bad because it doesn't matter what you do, you get points for everything."

Just to get this out of the way, in case you couldn't tell by the way I phrased that last sentence, I think that's about the most ridiculous argument one could make against a game. Well, assuming it's not the case (and it seldom is) that playing randomly or arbitrarily could reward you with a winning score, anyway.

Yes, in the type of game often derogatorily called a Point Salad, often times many different actions confer points... but that definitely does not mean that it doesn't matter what you do! The way I look at it is this: in any respectable point salad style game, certain combinations of actions (call them "strategic paths") will result in a larger accumulated score than others, and the better you play, the better your score will be. The fact that the game rewards incremental progress (i.e. awards points for many little things) just gives the player a way to gauge the value of one action over another, a way to compare options and make intelligent choices.

There's a corollary to this that I'd like to mention... many point salad detractors conflate what I just said with "you just do whichever thing gives you the most points each turn." That assessment is also laughably incorrect, as evidenced by the fact that in any respectable game of this type, simply doing the thing that gives you the most points each turn will not outscore strategic paths which use synergistic actions, look ahead, and maybe even engine building. This great article by Greg Aleknevicus (The Games Journal, circa 2004) explains very plainly how simply doing what's worth the most points right now can end up being very clearly a losing play (for the record, Greg's previous article is also very good).

In the BGG thread linked above, Trey Chambers (a game designer in his own right) argued that the problem with a point salad is that a player playing badly is rewarded with "a ton of points" (200 for example), which is too many. However, in the same example, he admitted that in such a game, the winner may well have 400 points. Bryan Thunkd did a pretty good job trying to explain how the actual number of the score doesn't matter, in that example the loser only got 50% of the winner's score, and it doesn't matter if that was 400-200, 40-20, or 4000-2000. I can almost see Trey's point, that he dislikes the idea of bad play being rewarded - like maybe the bad player will feel like they're "high" score implies they weren't playing badly after all.... almost. But no, I agree with Bryan whole-heartedly here... the goal of a game is to win, not to "score a ton of points." If you score 200 points and lose by a factor of 2, then you did not play well, period.

So I've argued against the down-sides people pose for point salad style games, but is there an up-side to rewarding incremental progress in that way? I think there is. And lucky for me, someone in that BGG thread brought it up as well! Phil Hendrickson said:

One thing I like about point-salad games is that all players receive positive reinforcement throughout. Even if you are not doing well compared to other players, at least your score keeps increasing. It can be a small encouragement to keep trying, hoping to achieve bigger scoring plays as you get better at the game.

Another feature that game designers can use in this style of game is to make players decide between short-term scoring opportunities and actions that score less up front but set up later big turns.

Some point-salad games do it badly, and make players feel like their choices really don't matter. Others do it well, providing an array of choices that are challenging, meaningful and delicious.

Which is a pretty succinct way to describe not one, but two good things about point salads. In addition, Tommy Occhipinti said this:

I tend to think of point salad games as being like a race. Everyone is at all times moving forward along the track (the scoring track, in this metaphor) but the more astute racers are moving faster. No matter how bad of a driver you are, your car is moving forward, even if it is barely chugging along spewing out smoke from the engine, but there is a real thrill in making the engine hum and running along at top speed, linking together multiple bonuses at once and weaving together seemingly disparate goals.

In point salad games, when they are going well, I get the closest to feeling that sense of Flow. On the other hand, no matter how poorly a point salad game goes, there is at least a sense of accomplishing something. Maybe I finished my one section that I worked for all game and got a hefty set of bonus points, or whatever it is. This series of little mini goals you set for yourself and accomplish is, for me, very pleasing.

In particular, it is more pleasing (to me) to finish a game feeling I've accomplished some goals and lost than to end the game with everything I've worked towards in a smoldering pile of ash. I (personally) relish neither being destroyed nor destroying other players.

His first paragraph is a pretty vivid analogy, explaining why it makes sense to score points for every action in a game, and his second and third paragraphs touch on some of the good reasons to utilize this type of dynamic in a game design.

I understand not everyone enjoys point salad style games, or games that reward incremental progress, and I'm not here to tell them they're wrong to not enjoy them. Hey, like what you like - you do you! But I think we'd all be better off if we could get rid of some of the lousy reasoning. You don't like math? Fine. You don't like numbers? Fine. You feel like your decisions don't matter because everything you do is worth points? Well, that's just false, and it's logical fallacy... you're pretending that the points you get for each action are equivalent (False Equivalency), like saying "what are the odds the sun won't come up tomorrow? Well, either it will, or it won't, so 50-50!" And then using that premise to say there's no difference between them (Begging The Question).

Not too long ago (circa 2018), there was a much derided talk at SHUX by Scott Westerfeld called Victory Points Suck about how game designers should stop using victory points in games. To me, this feels pretty similar to complaints about point salad from people who either don't like adding up points, or think that doing so pulls them out of the experience of the game. I liked my friend Gil Hova's reaction post to that video. The problem with the idea of removing victory points from games "to make them more exciting" is that that's just window dressing... VP are just a measure of progress toward victory, by definition. You can call them something else, or make them more or less granular, but if you're declaring a winner then you are awarding victory points in some way.

"But Seth, what about a foot race? There aren't victory points in a foot race!"

Well, ignoring the flippant "yes there is, you get 1 point for crossing the finish line first, and it's a game to 1," I'll point out that a wise man once said "victory points a measure of progress toward victory." In a foot race where you have to travel 500 meters to get to the finish line, you could consider that each meter is "1 victory point," and the game is a race to 500 points. Victory points are just a convenient way to measure that progress, but they need not be explicit!

Fun Problems podcast - Structure vs Content

Every once in a while I read an article, or listen to a podcast, and I come across something that's basically always been on my mind, only I hadn't formally thought about it, or didn't have useful vocabulary to express the ideas. A good example is this twitter thread by Jessica Price about Tropes vs Clichés:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1093196276974276608.html

Another example I just came by the other day was on a game design podcast called Fun Problems. On episode 19, Peter and A.J. discuss the difference between Structure and Content. I think they did a pretty good job defining each of those terms and explaining the difference between them:

Structure: rules that form the basis of the game, that apply every time you play, such as the turn structure or main mechanism

Content: rules that you don't need to start playing, that may or may not come up in any given game, such as cards in a deck

This isn't necessarily something I've talked about before, but that podcast resonated with me. I tend to think about the structure of a game to start with, before I get into the content. As a matter of fact, with Apotheosis I had the structure all worked out for ages, but stalled out creating content until Rick agreed to join the project!

One thing from the podcast that I didn't wholly agree with though was the idea that balance of content is completely unimportant while you're working on the structure of the game. I mean, I get the idea... until the structure is locked down, all of the content could just be considered stand-in. However, while I agree in principle with that notion, I tend to think that if the content is too unbalanced or unrealistic, it'll skew playtest results, and could run the risk of tainting your perception of the state of the game's structure.

Maybe I'm fooling myself, or making excuses for paying more attention to content before fully figuring out the structure sometimes. And as with Apotheosis, sometimes I can't even come up with content until I've got a really good handle on the structure anyway. But to the extent that I have a playable early prototype, I do tend to like my content to be at least realistic, even if not perfectly balanced.

Deities & Demigods - back on the table (... the operating table that is)

 I recently mentioned that one of my favorite designs, Deities & Demigods, has been signed by a publisher. I'm sure I'll talk more about details such as which publisher eventually, but for now I'll keep that under wraps.

Yesterday at my weekly scraped together playtest, Rick was the only player available, so we played a 2p game of Deities & Demigods so I could refamiliarize myself with the game, and to make sure he knew how to play -- he'd played it once back in April, and possibly one other time years ago.

Playtest Report

With 2 players, my notes said to put 2 neutral troops in each city, to make the City points a little harder to win. This is like a 3rd (and/or 4th) player fighting for control of the cities, and I think it's a good idea so players can't just drop 1 troop in each city and score 5 points just because their opponent never got to that side of the board. To be specific, my notes say to add 1 neutral troop for a 3p game, and 2 troops for a 2p game, and while I know I've played that way in several 3p games, I'm not sure if I'd ever actually played 2p with that rule. I think it worked out well though. It makes me wonder a little bit whether 3p ought to also have 2 troops, so you can't get 3 points for just 1 troop sometimes -- not sure (and TBH, I'm not sure that matters a lot).

I had a bit of an advantage just from experience, and in the early game I did a pretty good job of building up my engine -- I bought 3 monuments in a hurry, and did 1 quest in cycle 1, and another in cycle 2, so my minimum devotion was way up on several deities! Rick started in a more central location, and decided early to concentrate a bit on Ares so he could spread out from there... that was my downfall. I didn't do enough Ares, and besides starting next to 2 quests, I wasn't very close to much of anything else, and all that building of monuments removed my troops from the board, leaving very few in play. I never did spread out very much, though in the end I dominated 2 cities (for 5 points each) and tied the neutrals in 1 (for 3 points) - actually outscoring Rick on City points 13-11. He had 1 or 2 troops in each city, but also had 3 Ares Favor cards, so while he only had 11 points for city control, he had 15 points for those favor cards. I only had 2 Hephaestus Favor cards, also for 5vp apiece, so I only had 10 points there. Rick had a 4 point building, and all I had was monuments, which didn't help my endgame score (though gave me a lot of power on my actions). Finally, Rick did 4 quests to my 3, which gave him a 4vp lead there. In total, he outscored me by about 7 points or so, enough to pull off a solid victory.

Thoughts on upcoming changes

After the game, I briefly described the initial ideas I've got in mind to add the things to the game that the publisher is interested in -- more of a 4X feel, more relevance to the board spaces, an additional deity/action, etc. He liked the sound of what I have in mind, and would have liked to be able to do some of it that game, so that's promising at least. We'll have to see how it goes when I get the changes prototyped and implemented.

New Deity - God of Adventure

As I probably described before, my idea to add a God of Adventure (since we're going to make up our own pantheon, I'm not even going to try and pick a Greek god for this role) which allows you to sort of search a hex where you have a troop an add a feature to the board, seems like it would work, and I've now put a little more thought into it. Initially I imagined bags of tiles (one per terrain type) which you would draw from -- the higher your devotion, the more tiles you'd draw, and you'd choose 1 of the drawn tiles to place on the board. These tiles would also depict some resource or immediate benefit you'd receive. But when I sat down to try and list off board features, I was coming up pretty dry.

Then I had a revelation... looking at the board, which so far has been a good size, there are 4 mega-hex boards of 7 hexes each, and each one currently has 3 features: either 2 quests and 1 city, or 2 cities and 1 quest. The way it's laid out results in a range of 5-7 cities and 5-7 quests (totaling 12, so 5/7, 6/6, or 7/5). So far I've been pretty happy with that range, and I like the quests being face up from the beginning so that you can start to make a game plan from the outset. BUT... suppose instead there were just 1 city and 1 quest space per tile, leaving 5 blank tiles per hex (20 total blanks). Let's also say there are 5 types of terrain, color coded to the different deities. If that's the case, then for each terrain type, there could be just a few (4, maybe 5) different tiles, meaning just a few different features to add to the board. For example, in each terrain type, maybe you could find the following:

• Ruins (a city space)
• Portal (a quest space)
• Enemy Stronghold (a space where you can spend Ares points to sacrifice a troop and gain a specific benefit)
• Catacomb entrance (once 2 are in play, you can move from one to another as if adjacent)
• Monument space (perhaps monuments can only be built in specific spaces, and this would add a space to the board where someone could build a monument)

If I only need 4 of each type of tile, maybe each terrain type could lack one of those, or double up on another, just to give them a little different flavor.

Note: This could result in a range of 4-9 buildings and 4-9 quests, and they wouldn't be related to each other (9 buildings doesn't mean only 4 quests), but that's probably fine, and the likely range of these features in play will be pretty close to what I had before (I think), so the game should work about the same that way -- assuming players can (and do) utilize the God of Adventure. There may ought to be a rule that if you resolve the deity (i.e. don't pay), and you have a troop in a blank hex, you must choose that troop -- no intentionally choosing a troop in a non-empty hex just to keep the features off the board!

In addition, I had wanted the player to get some prize just for themselves, so it's always good to use this effect, even if the board feature doesn't matter to you. So in that respect I'm thinking of having 5 types of gems, again color coded to the terrain types/deities. Maybe you get 0 or 1 at level 1 devotion, 1 at L2 and L3, and 2 gems at L4 (that way even if the tiles have dwindled, L4 is still better than L3):

1. L1: 0 gems, draw 1 tile at random
2. L2: 1 gem, draw 1 tile at random
3. L3: 1 gem, draw 2 tiles, choose 1
4. L4: 2 gems, draw all tiles, choose 1

Or possibly:

1. L1: 1 gem, draw 1 tile at random
2. L2: 1 gem, draw 2 tiles, choose 1
3. L3: 1 gem, draw 3 tiles, choose 1
4. L4: 2 gems, draw all tiles, choose 1

Gems:

These gems could have 2 uses:

1. At game end, there could be a way to score points for the gems, maybe a Deity Favor condition is to collect a set of different gems
2. During the game, perhaps the gems could be spent when resolving a deity to resolve it at the next highest level. In that way, it'd be very similar to a cube bump.

So to test this out, I would need to put together the following:

• 1 starting God of Adventure card
• 8 additional God of Adventure cards (with scoring condition)
• edit player boards to include God of Adventure tracks
• edit the boards to add terrain types to 5 hexes (removing a city or quest space) - color coded with deities
• 25 new tiles (5 per terrain type with features as listed above)
• a handful of "gems" in each of 5 colors - color coded to the deities (and terrain types)

Fortunately, my prototype files already have each deity's name in a different color, and there's even a 5th track on each player board with Hades expansion material (that I never got around to trying). So some of that updating should come pretty easily.

Unfortunately, I still cannot find my physical prototype, which means I may decide to make an altogether new one sometime soon, as I like to have physical prototypes rather than just virtual ones on TTS.

New version of Favor cards and Monuments

The publisher also wanted to see more, and more unique, monuments and favor scoring conditions. Matthew will be working on some of this pretty soon, but I think the direction we're headed is this:

Favor Cards:

Currently the favor cards use the same components as the deity cards you add to the deck. This is an efficient/elegant use of cards that I'm a fan of, and it made sense to me when I built the game because the scoring conditions all go along with concentrating on for a certain deity. Do a lot of building, score a lot of Hephaestus' favor. However, there's not really a reason those have to be connected beyond elegant use of components. Matthew had an interesting idea to have a bunch of unique conditions, and deal them out (maybe draft them if you're experienced) to players, and whenever you get the chance to claim a favor card, you play one from your hand.

This sounds reasonable to me, though it means we need to come up with about 20 more scoring conditions, and ideally they'll max out at 8 or 9 points if you do a good job. I don't know how easy that part will be, but I guess we'll see!

Monuments:

Currently there are just 4 monument cards, and they are like big, fancy buildings. Their purpose is to allow you to increase minimum devotion to a deity (good in the early game), or claim a favor card from that deity (good in the late game). When the Monuments are gone (or if you don't care for the ones that remain), then you instead may choose a Building AND an Artifact, which could be viewed as a unique monument that has the effects of both that building and that artifact (though admittedly, it doesn't look that way). The publisher would like to see more, and more variety, of monuments, which I assumed meant making a bunch of additional cards on par with the existing monuments power-wise, which seemed like a lot of content to create, but this morning I had an idea that might be simpler. Maybe we could go another way with the monuments:

• Get rid of the cards altogether
• Have a monument mini above each of the devotion tracks on your player board
• Require that a monument be built on a monument space on the board (each City that starts on the board could have one, and as described above, maybe you could ad them via exploration)
• Require that the monument be built in a terrain type that matches the deity (?)
• Once built, an icon could be revealed on the player board - giving you an additional benefit (perhaps +1 to the resolution, like +1 Ares move per Ares phase for example)
• In addition to the above, you would also increase minimum devotion to that deity

Then, instead of "Building+Artifact" as an option for L4 Hephaestus, instead of building a monument, maybe you can claim (play) a favor card that matches a deity's monument where your troop is. In other words, you could move your troop to a monument to Zeus (belonging to any player), then use L4 Hephaestus to play a favor card with a Zeus icon on it (which presumably will care a little bit about how much you've been using Zeus)

An example of such a card might be:

Zeus/Ares:
Score 1 point for each Favor card you have played

Score 1 point for each city where you are at east tied for most troops

This might make you care about things like which monuments are in play, making sure you get a particular monument into play, and also about getting to specific hexes to do so.

 

Random idea for buildings (that I'm not necessarily fond of):

While coming up with the above idea for monuments, the thought crossed my mind that perhaps the buildings could also come off your board to reveal a benefit, rather than having benefits printed on the board. This way the buildings could be something of a tech tree... if you build a "coin" building, you get a coin. If you build a 2nd "coin" building, you get 2 coins Either way, your 1st "Troop" building gets you 1 troop movement. 

Then there could potentially be some kind of scoring for building different TYPES of buildings. I don't know if this is really necessary to be honest, I kinda like the buildings just saying what they're worth, and I also kinda like the desire to move to a particular city because you like the build reward printed there. But I wanted to note this down as an idea, because it could have merit.

Some good news about game pitches - one in particular!

 It's been a while since I posted much of anything at all on here, let alone anything about my games. But I did mention that I'd started pitching games to publishers, and though that hasn't gone too far yet, I may finally be making some progress in that arena!

Big multi-pitch meeting

The other day I had a meeting with a publisher who had turned down one of my games previously, and I ran through quick pitches for 8 of my games. One of them they said they'd like to give a play, and they were going to discuss a couple others to see if they'd like to try those as well. So that's promising, and it goes to show you that a rejection isn't the worst thing in the world - in this case it opened the door to making these other pitches. But that's not the headline for this blog post...

Deities & Demigods signed!?!

Another publisher I'd pitched to showed interest in 4 of my games, and wanted to play them in person, so I sent them prototype files to print out and use. Life happened, and time went by, and then there was Essen season, and I checked in every once in a while to see if they'd had a chance to try any of those games yet. Eventually, they did, and I got a nice email summary... 3 of the games they weren't interested in, but they would like to sign Deities & Demigods, if we don't mind setting it in the universe of some of their other games, and making a few changes to the game.

The other day Matthew and I had a meeting with them to discuss some of the particulars of the direction they'd like to go (make the game a little heavier, a little longer, and a little more 4X-y), and based on their email I'd already begin to think of what we could do to shape the game into what they're looking for.

So I'll be thinking about this quite a bit, maybe I'll post about it too. As soon as we figure out what to add, I'll need to update my prototype and start doing some playtesting! Fortunately, a few months ago I created a Tabletop Simulator mod for Deities & Demigods, which should help facilitate playtesting. Unfortunately, ever since then I have not been able to find my physical prototype box anywhere! I've looked everywhere I can think of two or three times each, and it's nowhere to be found! To be honest, I'm not sure when I'd really be able to get a physical playtest in anyway - but I'd still really like to find that prototype!

Changes on the Horizon for Deities & Demigods

I struggled with the Greek mythology theme for a while, and went with a somewhat bold idea when TMG was going to publish the game. In retrospect I don't know if that was such a good idea after all (still, might have worked out - I guess we'll never know!) When I started pitching the game, now that TMG is not the publisher, I'm figured I'm absolved of the problem! Someone else can figure out how to make the Greek mythology theme stand out, or what to change it to... well, the new publisher would like to port the game into the universe they're building, so the ball may be back in my court with respect to theme...

I'll be a little cagey, because I'm not sure whether the publisher would be happy about details being posted, or if they prefer to play things closer to the vest (the latter seems to be how most people do things, it seems more professional). 

The Pantheon

I can see a couple different ways to port the game over - a couple of different representations of the pantheon of deities to whom you show devotion and ask for favors. The front runner is just making up our own pantheon... something I'm told we have the freedom to do. They are building up their game world with each release, and so we have the freedom to create canon! That's going to be handy, as it should be pretty easy to find a pantheon that fits our game action if we can just make them up! The challenge I'd mentioned before of the deities being recognizable may crop up, but I bet we can take care of that with flavor (the name and image of the deity could make it clear which is the god of craftsmanship and which is the god of adventure, for example)

In addition to porting the deities to the new world, the publisher would like us to add 1 deity to the mix. Basically, they would like to see the game weight increased and more action on the board, and we can accomplish both of those things by adding a deity. The thing I'd like to watch out for is making the game go too long without the players having enough to do.

My first thought for a new deity, since they said they wanted more 4X aspects in the game, is something to do with exploration. I think the first thing I'll try will be something along the lines of a god of adventure, who allows you to "search" the hexes where your troops are and find resources (gold, devotion bumps, etc, as well as new Gem resources - see below), as well as new board features. Like, you'd draw some tiles out of a bag and choose one, get the pictured item, and then place the tile on the board to add some feature to that hex. This could be a new city added to the board, or some other special geographical feature, Matthew and I have to figure out what we could add.

A scoring condition for this new deity could be some kind of set collection of the gems I mentioned (like 1/2/3/5/8vp for 1/2/3/4/5 different gems), and maybe you can also use the gems to boost the effect of another deity (color coded to the gems) or something like that.

This sounds promising to me, and it pings just about all the things they wanted to be affected: additional deity track, additional meaning to the board spaces, more of a 4X feel, etc.

Deity Favor scoring conditions

There are currently 4 deities in the game, and each one has a scoring condition associated with it. The idea was that you could "concentrate on" one of the deities, do their thing a lot, then try and get multiple of their favor cards to reward your efforts. The publisher said they'd like to see more variety there, and they didn't like the idea of just picking one and trying to double- or triple-score it.

At first I didn't really have a good idea how to change that... I mean the deities each do 1 thing, and there aren't a ton of ways to reward having done a lot of that one thing. But Matthew had an idea that sounded decent: instead of claiming those cards from a supply, players could be dealt (or, if more experienced, maybe draft) them from a set of probably unique cards. Then, when you earn the chance to claim a favor, you just play one from your hand. If you don't like the ones left in your hand, then don't pursue Favor cards anymore. If you want to play them all, then go big into Zeus, or build some monuments or whatever!

This could work, and I'm sure there are different scoring conditions we could add once they're divorced from the actual deity cards (which was an elegant use of cards, but not strictly necessary). In particular, there could be cards that reward certain combinations of deities, and stuff like that. I think we'll need something like 5 per player to make sure there are enough.

More variety in monuments

There are currently 4 Monuments in this game, ne for each deity. They allow you to either increase minimum devotion to that deity, or claim one of that deity's favor cards. They're not trivial to get, at least not right away, and they're really strong early (or valuable late). You get them with a level 4 Hephaestus action, and if they're gone then the alternative is to get a Building AND an Artifact, which I felt covered the bases -- there's a bit of a race for the monuments if you want them, and if you don't (or are too late), then you still get good value out of an L4 Hephaestus action.

But the publisher would like to see more variety in the monuments. I suppose I can see the desire there -- getting a fancy, unique card seems "cooler" than getting 2 other, lesser cards. On the down side, I don't love the prospect of inventing a bunch of unique Monument cards that are on par with, but different than, the existing ones - especially when there's a working alternative already! Maybe this is something the publisher's internal developer can help with, because in my mind, the monuments are already doing their job exactly the right way, so I feel like I'll be coming up empty trying to figure out more different ones.

The story of the game

Hopefully without giving too much away, the story of the game (to fit the existing game world) is going to be something to the effect of the denizens of the world (us) exploring and sort of re-colonizing the ruins of their own ancestors' homeland. You see, the ancestors were driven from the land by an evil darkness that spread when the local Deities were defeated and imprisoned like genies in a lamp, so to speak. Now, a thousand years later, the Deities have been awakened, and the darkness is receding. It's time to take back the homeland! But it's been a thousand years, and everything is foreign to us. So we can explore the area, maybe fight off some remaining shadow creatures, rebuild the ruins back into cities, and maybe instead of "quests" we're closing portals to shut out the darkness once and for all.

Perhaps I'll post some more about this one as we develop it further for publication!

Rolling Realms - Jaffee Realms update

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

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

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

Crusaders Realm

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

Crusaders Realm - 4/2020

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

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

Crusaders Realm - 11/2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eminent Domain Realm

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

EmDo Realm - 4/2020

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

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

EmDo Realm - 11/2021

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

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

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

What do you think?

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

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