All For One epiphany

There's always been a concern that a competitive player might maliciously drop all tokens off any character they activate to keep other people from completing missions. It's always been a threat that this kind of play would ruin a playtester's experience, though it hasn't seemed to come up in practice. Still, it's something David and I don't like in the game, and he's gone as far as to make a rule about when you're allowed to drop things in order to control such malicious play. I haven't been satisfied by any rules I can think of to control this kind of thing because players are supposed to be able to use characters to move tokens around the board. I think the answer just came to me this morning while composing an email to David... if dropping items is causing a problem, why not simply disallow dropping items? It's so simple, and it automatically solves the problem and at the same time encourages more use of the other actions in the game in order to move the tokens between characters.

I'm going to put that rule in effect for the very next playtest!

A thematic movement mechanic, but what theme?

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

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

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

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

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

Playtests at Spielbany

I attended Spielbany, a meeting of game designers from the Board Game Designers Forum, last weekend and I managed to get some playtesting done. Of the games I brought, All For One, Terra Prime, Blockade Runner, and Wizard's Tower were played. I also managed to play games by other designers:
Acts of the Disciples by Jeff Warrender
Push and Shove by Tom Kiel
Prolix by Gil Hova
Love Means Nothing by Ariel Seone
Othberon by Tom Kiel

I also saw but didn't get a chance to play Wag the Wolf by Gil Hova and Lost Adventures by Jeff Warrender and Steve Sisk.

Since this is my game design blog, I'll only post about the games I'm working on here. If you want to know about the others, check out BGDF! The only game I have
extensive comments on is All For One...

All For One
Of course I'm always happy to play this game... I've been working on it with Scurra (David Brain) for something like 3 1/3 years - my first email correspondence with David is from March 2004. In that time, this game has gone through waves of development followed by waves of sitting on the shelf. For the last 2 years there have actually been 2 different versions, "my" Identity (ID) version, and "David's" Story version. The main difference being that David's crew added Story tracks instead of the secret identities in order to try and (a) separate the players from the characters in a more complete way, and (b) make for a more thematic, King vs Cardinal feel overall (maybe adding some story arc to the game). His 3 Story tracks had a player goal at each end, and each player got a goal card indicating which goal they wanted each track to lean toward. Points were scored depending on the position of the tracks... you would earn points for each track if it were further toward your goal than the opposite one.

When I visited London in November I finally had a chance to play the Story version, and while I like the results it tried to achieve, I did not like the way it went about trying to achieve them. After some thought and some discussion with other testers, I came up with a sort of hybrid Story Track version of the game - one which attempts to achieve the same goals (fixing some of the more common complaints about the game), while preserving the good things about the ID version that I liked and that have earned compliments from many testers. This Hybrid version was the version I brought on Saturday, and Saturday was the 2nd time this new version had ever been played. Important to note may be that we played a 5 player game, and I'm happy to report the potentially unfair distributions of goals did not appear to be a problem at all. I had originally forgotten about the handicap I intended to give the players who started at a disadvantage until someone suggested the exact thing I had in mind...

Of the 5 players, 3 had played once or twice before and 1 was brand new. I of course have played more than probably anyone else on the planet. I was very interested to see how the people who'd played before fared this game, and what they thought of the new version.

I didn't take any notes, but from what I recall the consensus was that the Story Tracks were an improvement over the secret IDs. Everyone managed to do 3 or 4 missions (which is typical) except for Jeff. I couldn't figure out what was holding Jeff up, but according to his report it appears he was trying some longer term planning. Unfortunately, this game with 5 players doesn't really allow for much long term planning. With 4 players it's ore possible, and with only 3 players it's VERY possible to plan long term plays (spanning 2, 3, or 4 turns), but with the chaos introduced by 5 players it's simply not a viable strategy to plan much more than 2 turns out. 2 turns is still very possible, because a player can get 2 turns in a row using their One For All card. That being the case, it's not impossible to really plan a 3 turn play if people don't seem to be using the character you need... beyond that, all bets are off - too much stuff happens between your turns to count on the board position more than 2 turns down the road.

Since the chaos is a feature of the 5 player game, and the game still works as a tactical game that way, it doesn't concern me too much. That said, Jeff's suggestion of a 7th character for the 5 player game is an interesting one which deserves consideration. I'm not sure how that would work in, perse, but it may be worth trying anyway. I'm not sure it would really help the situation though. Perhaps a hand size of 3 instead of 4 (so there are fewer mission cards out there) may help, but I doubt that would be a net gain either because 4 Missions sees to be the sweet spot with regard to having a play you can reasonably work toward without having way too many options.

I'm fairly happy with the game as is, and wouldn't mind sending it off to publishers this way. The only thing I'm currently considering as a change is trying to find a way to inject some long term strategy into the game. So far I've had 2 ideas to do this, one of which I didn't like when I tried it, and the other of which has sounded pretty bad to the testers I've mentioned it to...

I had tried a system (the last iteration) in which you got Blue points or Red points depending on which character did the mission (Musketeer or Agent), and then only counted one of the two depending on how the game ended. I thought it was too swingy or "all-or-nothing" for my liking, but it does offer the benefit of a long range plan. I'm not entirely sure how this would jive with the story tracks, but I think it can work - maybe I'll try that again.

The more recent idea had to do with set collection - I didn't want to change the game at all, so I was looking for some way to reward stuff players already do if they plan ahead to do it. Since at the end of the game you can see which missions you've done (they're lined up in front of you on the table), it would be easy to give a bonus for some configuration of missions. The regular scoring rewards doing any mission, and the Story Tracks reward using the same character a lot, so I wouldn't want to reward, say, 3 missions by the same character. Nothing in the game rewards using a variety of characters... so my thought was to give a bonus for using each character at least once (with "any character" missions counting as wilds). The down side there is that you really only do 3 -5 missions per game, and there are 6 characters... I suppose there could be a reward for 3 different characters, and a bigger reward for 4 different, but that sounds a little weak to me, and as Jeff mentioned there's already a lot of functionality to the mission cards.

If anyone can think of a reasonable way to add long term planning to the game, please let me know - or if you think it's really not necessary, let me know that too.

Sedjco Playtest Session

Another playtest meeting occurred last Sunday. It was very interesting in that I implemented the new version of All For One!

It seemed to work well enough. I look forward to testing some more soon to see if I like it. I am really used to (and enamored with) the ID version, so I'm trying to be objective with this system.

Sebastian suggests that the story track score start slow and ramp up more and more as the track goes on in order to differentiate the tracks and to get players to want to sort of shape a strategy... however I'm unsure of this because the strategy it encourages is "use the same character you want to use anyway so you can bump the same track over and over" - and also you share each track with another player. An idea I'm mulling over to solve the "no long term strategy" problem is to look at adding some kind of set collection element to the missions you complete. At the end of the game you'll already have the missions in front of you, seems like rewarding a set somehow should not take any real design work, and at the same time inject a possible long term goal.

I guess I'll keep thinking about it...

Long time no post... long time no design!

It's been a couple weeks since my last post, and I still haven't gotten to some of the things I said I'd post about... like those Strategy and Tactics articles Oh well, such is life. Here's what has been going on:

Playtesting: I've finally gotten a playtest group started, we meet at my house on Sundays from 11ish until frisbee time. The core has proven to be myself, Aric Jack (shrike on BGDF), and Eric Flood, with a few others who've been once or twice each. So far we've been testing several of Aric's card games, as well as All For One, Blockade Runner, and a game of Eric's as well.

Gaming: I went to PhoenixConGames last week - it was mediocre relative to KublaCon and BGG.con, but it was worth the trip. I played a handful of board games, mostly with people I play with at home anyway. I did meet a couple guys from Phoenix, and a couple of Bo's friends as well, and hang out wih my friend Chris who lives in Phoenix as well. At RTeam game club I've gotten to try Notre Dame finally. I was disappointed at first by some aspects of the card drafting mechanism, but the game is growing on me.

Game Design: I haven't done much with design lately. I had decided to postpone new design ideas and work on "finishing" some of the many I have already. I had resolved at New Years to get All For One "in line to be published" this year. Blockade Runner is allegedly going to be published by Shifting Skies games, working on contacting people about a license right now. Wizard's Tower got 2nd place in the KublaContest (it's not actually called "KublaContest", but it ought to be ;) ) and both the contest director Julie Haehn and Aldie from BGG wanted a copy. Julie said she knows an up and coming publisher, and wants to show them Wizard's Tower and All For One, and Derk and Aldie said I should submit Wizard's Tower to Z-man games... I guess that's a step in the right direction! I have been agonizing over a way to combine my current "ID" version of All For One with David's current "Story" version in a way that accomplishes the goals of the story version but maintains the good aspects of the ID version... and I think I've finally done it. I need to get that finished up and sent off to Julie so she can show her publisher friend! I also told her she could have a copy of the game, since she likes it so much - I just have to make another prototype now...

Aside from the All For One version stuff, I haven't done any real design work at all in the last who-knows-how-long. I've all but forgotten about that Time is money thing, which may be my next project when I get back to designing. Either that, Kilauea, Dynasty, or Hot and Fresh.

Comments on Rick's game Spatial Delivery

Spatial Delivery general thoughts and comments
I was happy to get the chance to play Spatial Delivery, a prototype by Rick Holzgrafe, at KublaCon last weekend. The game is about collecting resources at earth and then setting up trade routes and delivering them to planets in need. The resources come in 4 flavors: Medical, Science, Robots, and Culture- each planet wants one of them. The game is played in 6 rounds, each round consisting of the following phases:
1. Draft – Players draft Resource and Exploration cards until they have a hand of 5 cards.
2. Action – Players take turns building or moving and selling the resources at various planets to get VPs

So in general you get the resources you want to trade based on their value and the route you plan to take to deliver them. Then you get VPs for building Trade Stations (which cost Exploration cards) and for dropping off stuff at planets – only 1 trade per planet per round is allowed.

I liked the basic structure of the game, and how your draft picks hep drive where you want to go on the board, then where you establish trade routes on the board help drive what cards you want to draft. I think there’s some really good ideas in there and the game has the potential to be quite good!

Spatial Delivery specific thoughts and comments (mostly for Rick)
I liked all the basic aspects and the basic skeleton of the game:

- Players “get stuff” (in this case via draft) in order to deliver… so the stuff they want to get is driven by what they want to deliver, then later their network dictates what they want to get. I think this is good, and probably fairly standard.

- The reward structure is good, more points for trade stations at ‘better’ locations, more points for further away – rewards the extra work done to build those stations and make those deliveries.

- I’m beginning to like the ‘competitive draft’ more – I’m still not altogether fond of it though. I think it can work, but it needs some help from what we played (I’ve got some ideas on that, below)

The things I didn’t like can all be fixed, I think, and the game seems to have plenty of potential. I didn’t like the way spending your challenge token to protect your card didn’t really protect your card. I didn’t like the amount of time and effort that went into the draft. I didn’t like the stalling out, waiting for someone else to build. I didn’t like breaking up trade routes with other trade stations (as I believe Rick didn’t either). I didn’t like how different Exploration cards were from goods cards, and how different in relative value they could be. But as I said, I think all these things can be fixed. Here’s how I’d probably try it:

1. Modify the draft. For starters, perhaps if you challenge for a card and get denied, you shouldn’t get a chance later to draw a card to replace the one you didn’t get now. I.E. there should be exactly X rounds of drafting, not just ‘until everyone has X cards’.

2. When challenging for a card, you give the player one of your Rocket tokens (put it on the card to indicate the challenge). It should cost 2 challenge tokens (maybe just 1 in light of comment #1) to deny the challenge – the defender would give the 1 (or 2) tokens to the challenger, and the card would be protected from theft. In effect, challenging a card should be like trading movement points for that card (see next)… so if you ever lose a card in a challenge, you get movement points in return, and if you ever keep a card in a challenge it should basically cost you movement points. Note, based on #1 above, challenging costs you your turn, and if you get denied, you get movement points instead of a card. In general, if you challenge for a card you’re really just offering to trade your movement points for their card. Maybe you should be able to challenge with as many tokens as you want, and to defend they have to give you that number of tokens.

3. Challenge tokens should take on additional meaning. I think they should count as Rocket cards... that is to say you can spend them to move or build trade routes. If you challenged for cards, then you’ll have fewer of them to spend (and the person whose card you took will have more). If you defended then you’ll have fewer (and the person you defended against will have more). I think there could still be rocket cards in the deck, as players will need (or maybe want) them… but they wouldn’t need to be 50% of the deck. Maybe 20% would be fine.

4. Change the costs for building and add a cost for moving. Cost for building should be 1 Rocket card per trade route segment (stick), and trade stations should cost 1 card per adjacent planet, of the type the planet wants. I also think you should be able to build track without having to build a station. Cost to move should be 1 rocket card to move from station to station along a single colored route. So if there’s a long Red route, and Yellow splits it with a trade station, you could fly along the red route, PAST the yellow station, to the red station. I suppose you could stop at the yellow station if you like. Alternatively, make all routes the same color and don’t allow stations to break them. Remember, challenge tokens can be spent as rocket cards for moving and building routes! So each turn players get an income of rockets in the form of challenge tokens, and they might ‘barter’ for more via challenges.

5. I might suggest with these changes that you try laying out the whole board at the outset… that might be alright, or it might be like you found before that players simply want to jet straight out to the boonies. Not sure about that.

All For One - first update in years!

I was chatting with Sebastian about what he thought was wrong with A41 (the ID version). What he mentioned was similar to the negative comments that I've gotten from playtesters... Players are or feel tied to a particular character, only want to use that character, spend too much time and effort cycling cards looking for missions for "their character," etc.

David's story track version attempts to address this issue by completely severing the ties between the player and the character, which is good. It also adds theme and story arc to the game, which is also good. However, when I played it (and also just in thinking about it), I didn't like how it went. There seemed to be problems with the back and forth tug-o-war for the tracks, making for swingy outcomes and whatnot. Also, there was information being added to the cards, and the missions need to be redesigned. Adding info to the cards is a bad idea because the other biggest complaint is that there's too much info on the cards already. Now I'll be the first to say that the info on the cards is only used in certain parts of the game, and organized well there's no reason there couldn't be a ton of info on the cards. I'm fine with that personally, maybe because I've played a lot of CCGs where there's a lot of info on cards, or maybe just because I'm smarter than the average bear... I dunno. But testing indicates that the cards need to have less info, not more.

Sebastian's idea was basically to assign the characters different traits (of the 6 traits from the story tracks), and when you get your goal card it would correspond to one of the character (i.e. match their traits), but there would be other characters you could use as well to tug your tracks the way you want.

In thinking about his idea, and David's Story version, I had a few revelations. Here's what I'd like to try...

Have 6 tracks, one per trait (King/Cardinal/All/One/War/Peace) - instead of 3 with a trait at each end of each. Assign each character a pair of traits, like King/All (Dartagnan?) or Cardinal/War (Rochefort?). When a mission is completed, the player scores 1vp per token delivered (as normal), and instead of the character scoring points per the ID version of the game, the active player increments one of the tracks associated with the active characters traits - per token delivered. So if you deliver 2 tokens, you bump up both tracks. If you deliver just 1, you just bump up 1 of the 2 tracks (your choice). The game would end when any of the tracks peg to the end, or when all the tracks are past a certain point (not when the vp pool runs out). Instead of ID tiles, players would get goal cards, showing 3 different traits (and the traits could be sort of paired, so you won't have both war and peace). At the end, your score is equal to the favors (vps) you've accumulated plus the level of each of the traits on your goal card.

This scoring is similar to the current (ID version) scoring, with a bit more points given out on he tracks, but those points are given out to more than 1 player. Also, this setup encourages doing a 3-token mission (bonus point for player and not for anyone else), being a little choosy about who you use but allowing for players to benefit by using multiple characters, it's more thematic of course, and it might even encourage loading up a character who's traits you have as a goal, hoping someone else will complete a mission with him. That last hints at a more cooperative feel to the game, which would be good. Also, this does not require more info on the cards, nor a redesign of the missions, nor really any of the mechanics - so I think it'll work well. In the case of a duel, I'd suggest the active player bump a track associated with the duel winner's traits - that's for either guard duel or character duel.

KublaCon was fun!

I went to KublaCon last weekend, and I'm in the process of writing up various reports and thoughts on stuff I saw and did there, and people I met. Thus far all I've posted is a Geeklist covering day 1 of the con. I of course plan to finish up with days 2, 3, and 4, and also post on here about some of the prototypes I played and experiences I had at the con.

More to come!

Edit: Here's my Geeklist covering day 2 of the con.

Keep on Truckin' - or in this case Spaceshippin'

This weekend saw another 2 playtests of Terra Prime, incorporating some of the changes discussed in the last post...

Aliens: I had decided they were too easy to kill, so to make them "appropriately difficult" as well as to clean up some of the rules, I removed the "Fight back" retaliatory strike altogether. Aliens shoot at players 1 time at the end of any action, period. If a player wants to shoot at (or be diplomatic toward) aliens, they must use an Attack action. This being the case, there need not be any bonus associated with the attack action to make it "better than" the retaliatory strike. Also, I decided that ANYTHING (aliens, asteroids, people shooting at aliens) should hit on a 5 or 6, not 4, 5, or 6.

Along with this change, I've combined the Weapon and Shield upgrade tracks into 1 track. they were similar, and not used enough, and now for the same cost you upgrade both weapons and shields so maybe it'll get used more.

I like the way these changes have affected the game. it takes more actions to kill aliens, which is the intention, and they always get to shoot at you when you move into the sector... so they're more dangerous and more of a hindrance, but if you prepare for them you can defeat them without much worry.

Game end trigger: I'm not sure I like the Yellow tiles explored game end trigger, but it might be for a different reason. I'm not sure it does anything for the game. I'm still considering removing it altogether, but I still like it in some ways. Maybe it is fine as is.

The bigger problem is that there's not enough action in the Red zone. Someone suggested something simple - award VPs for exploring the Red tiles. Simply get 3 (?) VPs whenever you explore a Red tile. That rewards "explorers" for exploring the outer reaches on the board, and it gets red tiles into play. Red tiles are dangerous, which encourages "preparing" your ship to go out there, and maybe using scanners as well. I'd like to try that out.

Demand tiles: The demand tiles seem to be working just fine. I might just do away with the ones that require 1 green and 1 blue cube, as anyone can fulfill that with their base ship...

Tech upgrades: In addition to combining the Weapon and Shield upgrades, I also added the Cloaking device, which I like, though it hasn't been used yet. With vps for exploring I think it'll be a lot more enticing, as you can explore without fear of aliens. I'm still not thrilled with the cargo upgrade track... cryo-chambers taking 1 spot instead of 2 (so you could carry up to 6 if you buy Holds) is sorta bad I think, and the interchangeable holds is lame. An idea we discussed after yesterday's game was that the first upgrade changes your starting cargo hold from Blue/Green to Wild/Wild/Wild... other cargo modules are still color specific. then the second upgrade could be that a colony marker will fit into any single Wild cargo space (then clarify that they normally require a Green/Blue hold - meaning only your initial hold can take it).

I was going to remove any holds from the supply that are Green/Blue, but I just realized that buying a Blue/Green hold might be interesting if you can out a colony marker in it... and if it also turned into 3 wilds with the upgrade, because buying it means you can't carry Yellow. I'll think abotu that some more.

Finally, I thought it might be interesting to have an upgrade that gave you 10 extra credits per delivery. Since the 2nd row of the Engine upgrades isn't usually taken, I might add that to the +1 action per turn (like the Harbor in Puerto Rico)... then the Quick delivery player will want that upgrade more, more points per delivery and more actions to do it faster.

Balancing VPs: I have felt that Colony points are too high relative to delivery points. I did a lot of mathematical gymnastics trying to determine a reasonably accurate VP-per-action comparison of delivery points and colony points... I thought I had something figured out which would reduce the Colony points and increase the delivery points, bringing them both up to what I thought was a reasonably similar VP-per-action... but in practice I hated it! I'm going to go back to the colony scoring I had, and then I'm going to double the VP value of money (10 credits = 1VP) at the end of the game. This may leave deliveries at a smaller VP-per-action, but I think players have more chances to do it, so that might be OK. Plus there are bonuses for tiles, and the new idea for the "harbor" upgrade to increase that. Not to mention, a Delivery strategy might not need to spend as much money on other modules.

I'd like to try the game one more time before I go to KublaCon to see if I need to abandon any of these changes, but I think even if they're bad they're not so bad the game won't work.

Once more through the wringer... Another Terra Prime playtest

I got yet another test game of Terra Prime in yesterday, incorporating some of the ideas from the
last post. Most notably the reduced score for Delivery tiles (# of cubes on tile minus 1 = bonus), and the direct purchase of a 4th Engine.

The alternate delivery scoring probably didn't make much difference, but I think it's a step in the right direction for fair scoring across the game.

The direct purchase of Engines (aka Thrusters, aka Fuel Cells) was a big improvement. You still have to get out to a Yellow planet to get them, and you still have to raise some cash first. Now it seems like you can get extra actions at the appropriate point in the game.

Things I'm still iffy on:
1. Ease of defeating Aliens and Alien scoring - It seems too easy to kill aliens, and since I had increased the points for them, it therefore seems too easy to get lots of points. The obvious solution is to either reduce the points back down, or make the Aliens harder to kill. I want the Aliens to have a bigger impact on the game, so I'm opting for the latter.

2. Game end trigger (Yellow exploration tiles) - One thing I worry about is that the game might end a little too quickly due to exploring the Yellow tiles. This happens if all players are out looking for yellow planets, which didn't used to seem as common, but now it seems more prevalent. This may be due to the nature of the Yellow delivery tiles, which each require at least 1 yellow cube.

3. Perhaps the demand tiles ought to have more cubes on them, so a single player can't do an entire tile on their own without at least buying a cargo hold.

Things I thought of to fix them:
1. Make aliens a little more of a hindrance and a little harder to kill again. I think the appropriate thing to do is to keep the Attack action, which gives you a bonus for attacking (maybe change it to a +1 on the roll. On second thought maybe remove the bonus to attack), but remove the "fight back" retaliatory strike whenever the Aliens shoot at you. So the Aliens shoot at you once at the end of any action, and you only shoot at them if you dedicate an action to the attack. That seems cleaner and less confusing, and it makes you spend some actions to fight aliens, rather than getting free shots at them. It also means that if you fly into a sector with Aliens, even if the tile was face up and you knew they were there, they will shoot at you at least one time before you can wipe them out.

2. Maybe this doesn't have to be a game end condition at all. it doesn't relate to any of the main point-garnering strategies, so maybe it's inappropriate.

3. I hadn't considered this too much, so I'll think on it a bit. I'll also have to consider the size of the bonus relative to the points people get for delivering individual cubes.

To go along with my solution to the alien stuff, I thought of a Tech Upgrade that would be cool...

Cloaking: Aliens do not attack you at the end of a Move action.

This means you can sneak by Aliens if you're just passing through, or you can sneak up on them and attack. So this upgrade will be good for people who are hunting aliens, and for people who are exploring to colonize (explore is a special case of a Move action, so this upgrade will help avoid dangerous aliens while exploring). It'll be the first yellow upgrade, which means it's more costly than other upgrades, and probably should be cool. I think this upgrade sounds cooler than Explore 2x/turn (which I might leave on there too, because i want to see if it gets used).

Another Terra Prime playtest, with afore mentioned changes

Last post I mentioned some changes I thought would be good for the game. I implemented them and made all the necessary adjustments to the prototype, and today I got a chance to try the game with the new changes. I'm not sure I've decided whether I think they were successful or not...

Some of the significant changes were...

Switching the cost of Fuel Cells (aka Thrusters) and Cargo Holds.
Since the number of Thrusters on your ship dictated the number of actions you get to take, the early game for all players was fairly universal... upgrade thrusters in order to get the maximum number of actions. It seemed strictly better than anything else. Ideally, the cost in time and money to upgrade that much would offset the bonus of doing almost twice as much stuff every turn, but either it didn't cost enough, or since everyone would do it it didn't really matter what the cost was. The worst part was that aside from the Thruster upgrades, the tech upgrades were largely ignored.

It didn't help that the upgrades required Blue resources, and the thrusters were bought at Blue planets - the ones found nearby Terra Prime and discovered early in the game. In an effort to remedy this, make other upgrade tracks more interesting, and to incent other courses of action (other strategies) besides "upgrade actions," I tried switching it so that the Thruster upgrade required Yellow cubes, and making Thrusters available on Yellow planets. Yellow planets are further away from Terra Prime, and with this change I hoped to push Thruster Upgrades and extra actions they bring into the midgame.

In theory this was sound, it meant if you wanted to go for maximum actions as quickly as possible you could do that, but it cost a lot of time, so it might not be worth it anymore. After the playtest game, no one even tried to upgrade their thrusters except me, and after getting the tech upgrade which allowed me to install more thrusters, I never did buy a 4th or 5th one. Thinking about it afterward, the MINIMUM number of turns to upgrade Thrusters and buy a 4th (allowing for 1 additional action per turn) is 20. So it takes at least 7 turns, and that required that other people colonize a Blue planet and an Asteroid for you. In order for you to make out ahead with that extra action, the game would have to go more than 20 turns after that one. 10 if you buy a 5th Thruster module. That's just to break even.

Unfortunately, I have not been counting turns, but that seems like too many to really make the thruster upgrade worth it. I want people to be able to gain advantage by maxing out their actions, I just don't want it to be so much better than anything else that it's clearly the best thing to do right off the bat.

Solutions I'm considering to make Thruster upgrades better again (but not too good) are...
1. Add "+1 Action per turn" to the first Thruster upgrade, so you get an extra action per turn as soon as you upgrade, which still takes a minimum of 14 actions, as well as the ability to buy more Thrusters (which will take another 6 actions at least). So a player can break even on actions and start making an actual profit (actions over other players without the upgrade) on turn 14 or 15 (at a minimum) rather than turn 17 or 18 as it is currently.

2. Thruster upgrade costs a Yellow cube, but Thrusters are available at the Blue planets. This way to get started with extra actions takes 14 actions, but to start actually using them only takes another 3 or 4 actions. This cuts it down from the current rule by only 1 turn though.

3. Thruster upgrade costs a Blue cube, but Thrusters are available at Yellow planets. This cuts Upgrade time down to (a minimum of) 7 actions instead of 14, but it will still take another 11 actions to purchase a Thruster (and start getting extra actions)... cutting out only a turn's worth of actions from the current rule.

4. Remove altogether the buying of thrusters, and make each upgrade simply add 1 additional action per turn. This has the added benefit of allowing Shield and Weapon modules to be available at green and blue planets and cargo holds at yellow (or perhaps weapons at yellow and cargo/shields at green/blue) and no modules available at Terra Prime. This may be simply easier, but on the down side, it takes away from the decision between more Thrusters and more Cargo Holds which I currently have.

5. I just thought of this one. Forget the restriction of having to upgrade first to buy Thrusters, and just put them on Yellow planets. Then you can get them with 7 actions at a minimum (but more likely it'll take a little longer than that) and you can start benefiting after about turn 10 (turn 8 or so if you get a 5th Thruster). Then, to keep it interesting, the places you put thrusters should be able to hold either a thruster or a cargo hold (as they do in this latest version), so getting all 5 thrusters means you can only carry 1 Cargo Hold worth of stuff (2 cubes or 1 Colony marker). I'm liking this best of all I think. And this frees the Engine upgrade up to be something more useful...

Changing the costs of the Tech Upgrades for consistency.
My friend Bo was pretty intent on not using money for the tech upgrades, only resource cubes. He was also pretty adamant that the prices of the upgrades should be symmetrical (i.e. look the same - Thruster upgrade costs Yellow and Brown, Weapon/Shield upgrades cost Green and Brown, Cargo upgrade costs Blue and Brown...). So the cost indicator on the tech tree looks the same, but the actual cost isn't really the same because Yellow cubes are harder to get (take longer to find, more rare) than Green and Blue cubes. Bo is a stickler for consistency, however I fear he tries so hard to look consistent that he misses whether he's actually being consistent, or if it's even appropriate. In the case of the Tech Upgrades, the costs are listed on the sheet, so if one costs more than another, or one costs money and one doesn't, then it's not that big of a problem. Also, as I mentioned, just because it costs the same number of cubes doesn't mean the costs of the upgrades are consistent.

Bottom line, I will have to reconsider the costs of upgrades anyway, as I'm reconsidering what some of them do... and when I do, I probably won't put too much weight into whether or not the costs look consistent.

Money worth points at game end.
I liked this change, which was to make money worth points at the game end. Specifically 1 VP for 2 units of money. The 'going rate' for cubes is 2, 3, or 6 units of money (for Green and Blue, Yellow, and Red cubes, respectively) - and this VP payout lets me equate that to 1, 1.5, and 3 VP. When you pick up a cube at an opponent's colony, they get 1 VP, and now you get effectively 1, 1.5, or 3... with the option of spending some of that to upgrade your ship. I think I like that, it sounds about perfect.

Delivery system - Demand tiles and bonus points.
The relatively new system of demand tiles appears to be working out. In order to facilitate something else in the game, I tried beginning the game with 2 Green tiles face up, and added a face up yellow tile as soon as a Yellow colony was founded, and adding a red tile as soon as a red colony was founded. That seemed to work OK. The number of tiles needs to be tested and tweaked, as I'd like to use it as a game end condition - either when the last Yellow Demand tile is completed (consistent with "last yellow space tile explored"), or when all the green and yellow Demand tiles are completed.

The scoring for these is as follows: When delivering a cube, the player gets money depending on the value of the cube (2, 3, or 6 units of money). This translates into 1, 1.5, or 3 VP as has been discussed. When completing a Demand tile, a player keeps the tile in front of him (face down)... the tiles have a number on them (2, 3, or 4) and are worth that many bonus points at the end of the game. These numbers were higher at first, and money was not worth points, so a player putting the last single cube would score all the points for the tile. Now a player placing the last cube gets maybe 3 or 4 out of 4 or 6 points available, and whoever else that contributed gets a point or two as well. That might still be too many points for completing the tile, I might like to reduce it a bit, maybe X-1 VP where X = number of cubes on the tile.

In all, I think the new system is good, but I don't know if the tiles are a good mix, how many I should have, and how exactly they should trigger the game end.

Game End
The game end rule we used was that one of the game end triggers occurred, we finished the round, then played 1 more full round (like Railroad Tycoon). However in that last round, 2 people had absolutely nothing they could do. It makes me wonder if that last round is needed, or if the game end trigger should simply signal that the current round is the last one (like Hansa). I think I do like the idea of each player getting the same number of turns. This puts the first player at something of a disadvantage at the end of the game, and some players claim there's a disadvantage to going first already (which I'm not sure I agree with). This game we started the first player with 4 points, the second player with 3, the third player with 2, and the last player with 1 point at the beginning of the game. I'm not sure this made any difference, really - the difference in scores were 13, 6, and 7. If I subtract out the starting points for each player, the difference in points would be 14, 6, and 4 (same finishing order). If I do this again, I might start players with 5/4/3... which would be nicer for a 5 player game anyway, and might make a little bit of difference, though I'm not convinced. I don't know if that last round of actions is needed either, and if not I might set the starting points at something like 6/4/2/1/0 or something, as it seems painful to get screwed out of that last turn at the end...

Aliens - scoring and the Attack action.
I adjusted the alien scoring... instead of 3 VP per symbol, I scaled it up to 3/7/15 points for level 1/2/3 aliens in order to reflect that they get harder and harder to kill as you add more and more. That was more true when you had to kill them all in one action. Now that you don't (you just need to kill them all in one turn), it seems pretty easy to kill the aliens. The Attack action which gives an additional die to roll makes it even easier to kill them. In tonights game John killed 22 points worth of aliens (a level 3 and a level 2), with relative ease. Under the old scoring that would be 15 points, 7vp fewer than he got. He won by 13 points, so it wouldn't have meant the difference in the game, but it would have made for a closer game.

Looking a little closer, the winner (John) got about 1/3 of his points from Aliens, 1/3 from colonies, and 1/3 from deliveries. Considering that he didn't have many colonies relative to other players, killed 2 sets of aliens, and had a lot of demand tiles I think maybe that split isn't so good... although he did spend most of his money on upgrades, hereby reducing his delivery score. 2nd place (Ben) got almost all of his points from colonies, and he did put out all 8 of his colony markers (1 on an alien that got in the way). So 7 colonies, including several in the deep reaches of the board. I think his score being comprised mostly of Colony points is probably representative of his game, and had he upgraded a tad less he would have been able to score more delivery points. 3rd place (Aric) had 2/3 of his points from Colonies and 1/3 from delivering. He put several colonies out there and avoided aliens, so this is a reasonable split... his score was low because the colonies were pretty low in value. 4th place (Seth) had 70% colony points, 20% Alien points, and 10% delivery points. With what I did that game that was a reasonable split, but I had a low score because I didn't do it very efficiently. I didn't get any bonuses off the Demand tiles, and I spent resources on upgrades I didn't use. I also spent too much money on upgrades I didn't need.

In light of that, I think the scoring is probably OK, but I'll keep an eye on it to see if Aliens are "too easy" to kill, and if they are, is that only true when you spend money on weapons, shields, and upgrades, or are they too easy in general... I'm not sure about the Attack action giving a bonus like it does (right now it's an extra die to roll) - maybe it should be a +1 on any one die rolled, so it's not as good as the upgrade.

I think that's enough for now, I'll let this playtest sink in and try the game again. I'm not going to send it to the KublaCon design contest, because it needs more work, and the rules are not written clearly enough for a blind test. I'll wait until it's ready and maybe submit it next year.

Terra Prime playtest and updates!

I finally got Terra Prime back out and had some friends over to test it out again. I liked it better than the last time, which is a good sign, and after he game I discussed a bunch of stuff with Bo which I believe will lead to changes that will be good for the game. Full update to come, but the most significant change is actually a rather simple one - switch the cost of Fuel Cells (aka thrusters) and Cargo Holds. I also cut down and tweaked the upgrade tech tree a bit to try and encourage people to use it more - especially the Cargo track, which was never really used before.

I even rejigged the module slots on the player boards to make the decisions about what to get more important (and to make upgrading Weapons/Shields more important). Now there's a choice between Thrusters and Cargo Holds, which is much more interesting than Shields vs Thrusters (where you'd always rather have Thrusters), and then there are 3 Weapons/Shields slots, so you can't have lots of both. If you want to hunt aliens, you'll probably want to upgrade Weapons, Shields, or both now.

I'm excited about these changes, but now I've got a lot of work to do.

Wizard's Tower submittal

Later this month I'm off to KublaCon, where every year they have a game design contest. Last year All For One "almost won" the contest, finishing a close second after losing some points for being "late" (that story's probably worth a blog post on its own). This year I plan to enter a couple games, the first of which goes in the mail today!

I spent some time last night with Boyan playing with photoshop and images that Seo made for me, and ended up with some passable box art (for a prototype) - as you can see. It's pretty cool looking, though I'm not sure it encapsulates the gameplay at all. Well, it's better than submitting the game like this, which is what it would have looked like without the new art...

Or this, like last year...

Time is money!

A couple posts ago I had begun thinking about the value of time. The balance between what things are worth and what your time is worth. I've expanded on those ideas as they relate to a game, and here's what I've got so far. You may notice a conspicuous lack of theme, or even title, but the important bits are the mechanics and the ideas behind them at the moment...

The basic structure of the game would be that each player has a set number of Action Points each turn - a constant Action income, if you will. They will also have some $ income, which will start out as a small number, but will grow over the course of the game as players build their income up. So in the beginning of the game, all players are cash-poor, and they all have the same number of actions (let's say 5 of them).

There would be at least 4 different things you could do with your action points:
Step 1) Shop for resources
Step 2) Upgrade your operation
Step 3) Process resources
Step 4) Profit!
The basic premise of the game is that in each step there is a trade-off of what amounts to money vs action points. In general you can spend money (or VPs) in order to conserve action points, or vice versa.

In greater detail:
Step 1) Shop for resources: As described 2 posts ago, the basic idea is that you can "spend time hunting for a bargain" by spending more action points to draw cards to choose from, and then only paying $1 per card you want to buy. These cards would have raw materials or resources that would be turned into something worth VPs later in the turn (step 3).

The current mechanic is that you can spend 1 action point to draw 1 card then decide if you want to buy it for $1. Or, you can spend 1 action point to draw 2 cards, then decide if you want to by either or both of them for $2 apiece. Finally, you could spend 1 action point to draw 3 cards, then decide if you want to by any or all of them for $3 each.

Thematically, when you can afford it you might be willing to pay more money for your resources, because you've got better things to do with your time than bargain hunting.

Step 2) Upgrade your operation: The game needs to have ways to change the resources from step 1 into something worth points in step 4 (via the processing in step 3). In Step 2 you'd spend some action points and some money (if you want) to purchase some form of upgrade - hire craftsmen, buy machines, build buildings, whatever. The net effect is that what you buy in step 2 will give you some abilities, income, or make step 3 more efficient in some cases (like if you hire a better carpenter, then you could do a better job of turning wood into furniture). I imagine the things you'd get in this part of the game would be on par with buildings in Puerto Rico, or Craftsmen in Pillars of the Earth.

Like step 1, the more action points you put into this action, then less money you'll need to spend.

Step 3) Process resources: Through this action you convert the resources from step 1 into something you can sell for money or victory points, using the upgrades from step 2. In this step, spending more action points (putting more time/effort into the conversion process) will yield a greater return per unit input. So if you take 1 Wood resource input, and rush through or do a bad job, you get 1 unit of Furniture. However, if you hired a better carpenter, maybe it takes him longer, but you end up with 2 units of furniture without any additional Wood resource input (like he makes a table, and a chair, instead of a table and a bunch of scrap).

I'm pretty sure the upgrades would have to indicate outputs per input, like the Carpenter could say:
1 ap: 1 Wood -> 1 Furniture
2 ap: 2 Wood -> 3 Furniture

Step 4) Profit!: Finally, you want to profit off of the work you've done so far. In this game there are 2 ways to profit: Money, and Victory Points. Depending on what you have done with your resources, you'd sell the products for money, or VPs, or some combination thereof. It seems logical to keep the same kind of game mechanic wherein you could spend extra time/effort (action points) in order to get a better deal (more money/vp per unit sold).

In the end, the player with the most victory points would win, and I think it would be much better to separate VPs from Money in this case. If it were just all about making money I think it would lose a dimension and be less interesting. I like games where you need to build money income, but eventually have to start generating VPs to win - if you just keep pumping up your income, you'll be rich, but you won't have won the game. I think it's far more interesting that way.

Yspahan - better than I gave it credit for

Evidently you can download Ystari's Yapahan for the PC and play against computer opponents. My original assessment of the game was that the different choices and strategies weren't really different enough to make much difference. After a couple games, I was undefeated but didn't feel like I'd done anything worthy of winning the games. My friend Ray says that with the die roll mechanic, sometimes the strategy you've chosen must be sidetracked because your actions aren't available to you when you need them, and then your plan B ends up getting sidetracked for the same reason. All this switching of plans amounts to the same thing I was thinking - that everyone does a little bit of everyhting, and there's really not much to the game.

Now that I downloaded it and played 25 games, I'm starting to see some subtleties of play. I wouldn't go as far as to say I really love the game, or that it's the deepest game out there, but I think Yspahan deserves more credit than I had originally given it.

Really nice implementation, too!

Value of money - Rich vs Poor

I was looking through a Family Dollar today and wondering about the difference between people for whom that's the grocery store, and people who can't be bothered to go to a place like that for a few cheap items and then to a supermarket for the rest, even if they pay a few dollars more. It got me thinking about the mechanics of the phenomenon from a game design point of view: why would anyone pay more for the same item? Why does your definition of frivolous change depending on how much money you have?

The reason is that people's time and effort have intrinsic value. I could go to Family Dollar and get 3 or 4 items for about $1 cheaper than at Safeway, but they don't have all the stuff I want, and I'd have to go out of my way to save that money. If I couldn't afford to spend the extra couple of dollars to buy everything at Safeway, then maybe I'd spend the time and energy (resources I did have) in order to save the resource I didn't have.

So how could this be applied to a board game? This is what I came up with so far...

Suppose in a game, each player gets a set number of action points each turn, the same number all game. Players also get some income each turn, and at the beginning of the game that income is small. Over the course of the game, players' incomes will grow such that later in the game they are making a significant amount more than at the beginning. In this game there's a deck of "stuff" that you can purchase by going to a store, and there are 3 stores characterized as follows:

Lower Class store: spend 1 action point to draw 1 card from the "stuff" deck, and then pay $1 per card you want to keep.

Middle Class store: spend 1 action point to draw 2 cards from the "stuff" deck, and then pay $2 per card you want to keep.

Upper Class store: spend 1 action point to draw 3 cards from the "stuff" deck, and then pay $3 per card you want to keep.

Thus as you get richer, you may be willing to pay more money for the same items if you can do so more action efficiently. In effect, you're buying more actions with that extra money you're spending, and in most games, extra actions is a good thing. Of course players would spend those actions (and "stuff") on things that get them points or increase their income, or whatever else the game does.

Blockade Runner (formerly Kessel Run)

I discussed the Kessel Run idea at length with a friend of mine, Boyan Radakavich, who then proceeded to build a prototype and fill out some more specifics of the game. We now have a working game which is called Blockade Runner.

In the world of Blockade Runner, the ominous Empire has imposed a blockade on one of the systems within its borders because the governing planet in that system (which for now we'll call Kessel) was "out of line" politically. Imperial Gunships patrol the borders of the system, and merchants are forbidden by law to trade with any planet in the system.

As rogue merchants, the players have broken through the blockade, and are trading their way to Kessel. An Imperial Gunship is on their tail, and if they can make it back to the Blockade without getting caught then the player who's earned the most Prestige on the Blockade Run will be the winner!

The blockaded system is made up of 10 planets and Kessel. To get from the Blockade to Kessel and back, players pass by 5 planets in each direction, making a loop - they can't go back the way they came, because there's an imperial Gunship after them! 5 of the planets are smaller, uncivilized planets which won't trade with the players. The the other 5 are civilized and will trade for the resources players can deliver.

The game is played in a series of rounds, each round containing 5 phases. Each phase is played simultaneously, so game play can be fast - games take 15-30 minutes depending on the number of players. In each round players first allocate 2 of their resource cards (if they don't have enough resource cards, they use Bluff cards to hide their intentions) to each section of their ship - Engines, Tactics, Bridge, and Cargo. Then, each of those sections is used to Move, Fight, Earn Prestige, and Trade (respectively).

When a player (or players) finish the round at the Blockade then the game is over. The players who return to the Blockade earn bonus Prestige, and players who didn't lose some prestige, and the player with the most Prestige wins.

The game is not as deep or epic as I'd originally hoped, but it is tight and quick playing. We're going to enter Blockade Runner into a game design contest in Italy, and if it wins, DaVinci games will actually produce 100 copies of it, and offer us a contract to publish the game.

Card game designs

Kessel Run
I'm sure I'll have to rename this (maybe Blockade Run or something), but in the meantime Kessel Run is a race between smugglers (a la Han Solo) to smuggle contraband to various systems en route to Kessel and back.

The 'board' is a series of planets which will purchase one or some of the various resources in the game, and will pay a certain amount for them. Your ship can move to the next system on your turn, OR you can initiate your hyperdrive and 'jump' several systems down the line. However the Hyperdrive must be charged.

For each system you stop in, you take a Parsec card (indicating that you have travelled through a parsec), then you can deliver goods. Payouts for a delivery is drawing more cards, you assign some of the cards to charging your Hyperdrive and the rest are goods to be delivered later. At the finish line, your score is the number of goods in hand minus the number of Parsec cards you've collected.

The idea is to choose efficient stops where you can make good money off your deliveries, and choose wisely how much of your payoff to put into fueling your Hyperdrive (up to it's capacity) and how much to save for later. The sooner you return to the starting planet, the fewer points you lose for mucking about in outer space.

9-ball
In an attempt to capture the feel of 9-ball, I'm working on this card game.

On your turn you first play a card either from your hand or from a face up pool. The difference being that your hand does not refill until the end of your turn, while the face up pool refreshes after each shot. Thus, if you make several shots in a row, your hand size will decrease and eventually you will run out of plays.

Then you would follow that up with another card, either from your hand or the draw pool, and you would keep doing that until you decide you're done, or until you play a [BALL -> POCKET] card, sinking a ball in a pocket. After the shot is complete, you may perform a "Leave" if you wish, which consists of discarding one of the face up cards from the draw pool and replacing it either from your hand or the deck.

Finally, you refresh the draw pool to 3 cards from the deck. If your shot both began by hitting the Object Ball and ended with sinking a ball, then you may begin another shot by playing another card. Otherwise, you refill your hand and it's your opponents turn. If you happened to Table Scratch (not hit the Object Ball first, and not play a SAFETY card), then you opponent gets to discard a card out of the draw pool or his hand and replace it from the deck before starting his turn.

The player who sinks the 9 Ball wins the round. The game can be played to any number of rounds, or you could score per round as follows:
Score points equal to the number of the ball you've sunk. So the 8 Ball is worth 8 points. Sinking the 9 Ball in this case should count as some kind of bonus as well. The game could be played until a predetermined point total is met, or the player with the most points at some particular time could be declared the winner.


Table Tennis
The genesis for this game was the following:
First, consider Rock paper Scissors. Not much player decision there, you pick either R, P or S, and you see if you win or lose.

Now consider a similar game where there are 5 choices (A, B, C, D, and E), and each choice 'beats' 2 of the other choices (A>B,C; B>C,D; C>D,E; D>E,A; E>A,B), and instead of player simultaneously choosing, these choices are on cards an you take turns playing cards back and forth - where you have to play a card that 'beats' the last card played. So if you play a C card, I have to play either an A card or a B card. This gives me a choice to make, but not much to base that choice on, so it's still not terribly interesting.

Next, let's say that we each have a deck of these cards, and we turn 3 of them face up - and when playing a card, it must come from that face up pool (and then replace that card from the deck). Now that we can see what options the opponent has available, we have some information on which to base our decision. It's still not a terribly interesting decision though...

Finally, let's add time pressure. Each player has 5 seconds on a chess clock, and if your time runs out, you lose, and if you have no legal play you flip cards off the top of your deck until one is legal to play. After you play your card you hit the clock and my time is ticking: I have 2 basic options... make the first/fastest legal play I can each turn and hope to stay ahead of you so that your flag
falls first, or look at what plays you have available and try to play cards you cant respond to immediately, costing you valuable time cycling through your deck looking for a play. The catch is that even such a simple decision will take a little time, and you only have 5 seconds total.

I think that could make for a fun and interesting game.

Aggravation

I wrote up a big post about a new game design, and I fell asleep without saving it. In the morning I found my computer had rebooted, and thus my unsaved post lost.

The bitter irony is that I was composing the post in ScribeFire, an addon for Firefox which is mildly less infuriating than the Blogger user interface. Evidently ScribeFire doesn't autosave, while the piss-poor Blogger interface at least does that.

Gah! Maybe I'll get around to re-writing that post. but if there's one thing I hate more than actually doing something, it's doing that thing again.

In the meantime

Those Strategy & Tactics articles are still in the works. In the meantime, here's what I've been playing and thinking about recently, in no particular order:

Fermat

Tom Jolley's a pretty nice guy, I've met him at a couple different game conventions. Last February at OrcCon in Los Angeles I hung out with him a little and checked out a couple of his prototypes. One in particular was very interesting... it's called Fermat, after a mathematician. The board is a grid of tiles, each with either a number or an operation on it (+, -, x, /). The game
is kind of like Set, but instead of racing to find patterns, you're racing to find an equation in the grid, made up of exactly 5 contiguous tiles, which equals a particular number.

At the con Tom was saying he didn't think he could sell the game, but it seemed wildly popular among the people walking by. I'm glad to report that last I heard, Tom has sold this game to a company specializing in educational games, which I presume means it will be published! In the meantime, I've made my own copy and have been playing it with my friends - we can't get enough!

Pillars of the Earth

I saw this game at BGG.con last year, and I spent the whole con trying to play it - to no avail. Since then I've talked to some friends who have played it, and they all think it's pretty mediocre. I finally got a chance to play the game a couple of weeks ago and I've found that I like it very much. I got a copy the day after it hit the shelf at Game Daze, and I've now played the game a total of 4 times - I can honestly say I don't know what my friends were talking about, the game is great.

Pillars of the Earth is all about efficiency. Everyone starts with the same set of Craftsmen, which give you the ability to convert resources into victory points. Over the course of the game you upgrade these craftsmen, get resources, and convert them. One friend's complaint with the game was that the conversion was so direct that he felt like the game was boring and the choices were obvious. What I think he missed was that the point of the game isn't to convert the resources into VPs in clever and different ways, the point is to do it efficiently. If you end up paying too much for your resources or the actions you want to take, then your score will suffer. If you don't pay enough, you may not get to do what you want (because an opponent will beat you to it).

The only complaint I've heard which I feel is valid is that at times there is a big advantage to being the guy who goes first - which in itself isn't too big a problem because for most of the game you can make a play which allows you to go first next round. However, there is a phase of the game where players turn order is assigned randomly, and while the first person to get to play during that phase does have to pay more, sometimes the cost isn't as big a deal as the valuable first action, and there's really nothing you can do about that.

A complaint my friends and I have come up with on our own isn't something that's ruining the game (for me anyway), but it's something that might cut down on replay value... in the game there are 4 new craftsmen that become available each round, and they are predetermined, and are always the same each game. We'd like to see 6 new craftsmen per round, only 4 of which are used. This would not only allow for more variety of what comes out game to game, but would also add variety to the types of things you can do (strategically) by adding different ways to convert resources to points, or to money, or to other resources. The main thing that drives your strategy is the capabilities of your craftsmen, so more variety there would do the game some good. We even have some ideas for additional craftsmen abilities that could be used.

I wonder if auctioning off each Master Builder placement instead of randomly assigning it would help remove that bit of the game everyone complains about...

Somebody's watching me!

I put Sitemeter on my blog, and it appears that people are occasionally actually visiting it now... I guess that means I should start updating once in a while.

This is basically a gaming and game design blog. I haven't been doing much with game design lately, but there might be some interesting news on that in the near future. What I'm planning to do next though is start a series of game reviews entitled "Strategy & Tactics" in which I first give a very brief description of the game, then a more in-depth summary of the various long term strategies available (the "Strategy" section), and finally some detailed tactical plays to help implement the strategies (the "Tactics" section). It would be intended for people who are already familiar with the game, not total newbies or people just thinking of trying it out.

So watch for the strategy posts coming soon!

New game ideas - Press Your Luck, Bluffing, 9-Ball, and Tabloid Journalism

I have been thinking about various different game ideas recently. Here are some of the 'quick little games' I've dreamed up or discussed with someone else recently. They are nothing groundbreaking, and are really just variants on Liar's Dice (Bluffing) and Diamant (Press Your Luck)

Press Your Luck game
The first game I came up with was going to be a cross between Rock-Paper-Scissors and Can't Stop - but after a while I realized the RPS portion was bogus so I dropped it. After some revision, here's what I've got:

There are 3 decks of cards, 1 deck with single symbols, one with 2 symbols, and one with 3 symbols. These symbols are each one of 5 different types. Then there are 3 6-sided dice, with one of the 5 symbols on each side, and a Skull on the 6th.

On your turn, you pick one of the decks, and a matching number of dice (1 die per symbol on the card). You roll the dice, and if you get the right symbol, then you add 1 gold piece to the pot and put the die on the matching symbol. Then you either cash in and end your turn, taking whatever's in the pot, or you press your luck by rolling again. Anytime you complete a card (match all the symbols), then you add an additional 1 gold piece to the pot per symbol on the card. If at any time you roll a Skull, then your turn ends immediately, and all the gold is removed from the pot.

On second thought, it would be better to have something along the lines of rolling a skull means setting aside the die, rolling a second skull means setting it aside as well and losing some of what's in the pot, and rolling the third skull actually ends your turn.

Anyway, the object is to get a certain amount of gold first.

Liar's Dice variant
The other game I thought of for this was a variant of Liar's Dice, which has got to be the best bluffing game of all time. In this game you have a deck of cards numbered 1-6 or whatever, and in addition to the number, each card would also have one or 2 coins on it. Give each player 5 coins per player in the game (so 25 for a 5 player game), then deal 5 cards to each player. On your turn you first play one card face up into the pot in the center of the table, then you make a claim such as "Four 3's", meaning you assert that there are at least 4 cards in people's hands with the number 3 on them. Then the next player can either accept that assertion and start their turn, or challenge the assertion. When an assertion is challenged, everyone reveals their hand and between the challenger and the challengee, whoever was wrong pays the player who was right a number of coins equal to the amount of the pot (the coins on the cards in the center of the table).

The object is to get all of the coins, or to collect a certain number of coins.

9-ball card game
My online friend over at BGDF had an idea for a card game about 9-ball. I was bouncing some ideas back and forth with him, and came up with a system I think will work. I don't think I should blog about this just yet, as he's entering his idea in the Game Design Showdown on BGDF.com. I'll have to wait until after Thursday to divulge more.

4/5/07 Update: It's been a while since this post went up. That showdown thing is long over. I haven't done anything with this 9-ball game, but I did have some basic rules and card design laid out. Basically you have an object ball like in 9-ball, and you play a card that either hits it directly into a pocket, hit's it into another ball and then you play another card to 'sink' that ball, or you can't make a play - which results in a table scratch and your opponent gets to go. So you play through a game of 9-ball, just like you would in a pool hall. But instead of hitting a ball with a stick, you play the appropriate cards. I believe your cards would be face up, so you could get an idea what your opponent could do, and try to set them up to fail.

Investigative vs Tabloid Journalism
While riding the Underground on my recent trip to London, I came up with an idea for a game in which players publish magazines or newspapers, and they can strive to be either reputable, or they can embellish their stories. In general, embellishing the stories makes them worth less points when you publish them, but it makes them more likely to win bonuses. At the end of the game there's a bonus for both the least total embellishment (most reputable), and the most (biggest rag on the rack). I put some thought into it and I think I've got the whole system worked out, for a first draft at least. Now to make some cards and try it out!

Random game design thoughts - stream of conscience style.

So I had this great idea for a game... it had to do with delivering pizza and breaking traffic laws. I mean, who doesn't love pizza? And who doesn't love breaking traffic laws? Actually, every time I think about the game I get excited because I feel like the mechanics should work really well and that game would be fun. I even got about 1/2 way through a prototype when I hit a snag because I decided I was inept at creating a map board for the game.

This could be because I have a grandiose scheme to have a really novel board, with holes cut at the intersections (traffic lights) and a rotating color wheel below the board - so the lights will change over time, impacting the available routes. The game is intended to be about route planning and pressing your luck. The route planning comes from the changing traffic lights, and the pressing your luck comes from breaking traffic laws - which make you more and more likely to get busted.

Anyway, in the time since I started prototyping that one (the rules are ready to test, though they could maybe use some more player interaction), I have gone through the process of writing, prototyping, and testing several other games, as well as prototyping and playing games by other people. Here's a quick rundown:

Terra Prime
An idea I originally got from a friend, which I turned into a decently working prototype. It's about exploring space, colonizing planets, harvesting resources, and protecting the colonies from hostile aliens. Sounds like a lot, but it's like a 90 minute game, involves a nifty economic model, and a chart of upgrades for your spaceship.

I was very fond of this one, but lately I'm bummed because there's one part that's just not working for me. I can't seem to fix it, so I haven't even played this one in a long time.

Kilauea
A relatively simple game about fictional ancient Hawaiian tribes, who made sacrifices to the volcano goddess Pele in hopes she would not send fiery lava toward their village. Points are acquired by spreading out your tribesmen (which of course makes them more susceptible to lava flows), controlling the lava flow (by making the biggest sacrifice in a round), and collecting Fertile tokens (left when lava flows cool and go away). Novel movement mechanic borrowed from Mancala. I originally played this on a simple 9x9 square board. I thought perhaps hexes would be better, so I made a nice big board with big hexes... then realized I hadn't really increased the number of hexes or the distance from the mouth of the volcano to the edge of the board. Since then I've found a nice pic of the big island to use, and superimposed a hex grid - but I'm thinking I'll go back to a square grid... the game seemed better that way.

Homesteaders - by Alex Rockwell.
The king of Puerto Rico strategy articles, and Caylus 2p analysis, has come up with a game of his own. I played it when I met him last summer, came home, and made my own copy so I could play it some more. It's a sort of cross between Caylus and Vegas Showdown. You auction off the right to build a certain type of building, and there are lots of buildings per type. The buildings give you various abilities or incomes, which you use to build other buildings or otherwise translate into points. I have been testing it out and offering my comments through many changes, and will have a copy with me at BGG.con...

Soldiers and Builders - by John Heder.
No, not Napoleon Dynamite... his cousin. No, really, I know a guy named John Heder (hederj on BGG), and he's related to the Napoleon Dynamite guy (who's name is also John Heder, in case you have been living under a rock and wonder what the hell I'm on about). So my friend John found some 6 sided dice with colors on the faces (like in Carolus Magnus) at a store, and he was dieing to make a game that used them. So he did. It's relatively abstract, and has to do with placing dudes on the colored spaces on a grid. You determine where you can play by rolling 1 Region die and 1 Color die. I tried it out, and it was amusing at first, but quickly got old as there wasn't really enough to do, or enough control or player choice for my liking. So... I fixed it. I modified a few things in order to inject some options for players. I took a hint or two from Reiner Kinizia's new Genesis, where you roll 2 dice and play on both colors that come up or just 1 wild. I merged that into the game by having the player roll 1d4 for region and 2d6 color dice, and for each color die you either make a play, or discard it to change either the region die or the other color die. We (John and I) also implemented tower powers (towers result when you make a square of dudes, like a monument in T&E) in order to incentivize building towers. Scoring is based on towers (better if in groups), majority of guys in each region, majority of towers in each region, and destroyed towers (oh yeah, you can do that too). It's alright, but I would love to give it a theme. It kinda reminds me of that computer simulation thingy called "Life."

Odysseus: Winds of Fate
Another friend of mine from the Board Game Designers Forum asked me to help him out with an idea he had. It sounded really good to me, so we discussed it for a while. And as usual, I forked off with my own route on it while he went a different way. Well, it made so much sense to me, that about 2 days later I had a prototype ready to test. My friend (Nando) said that my version is closer to his original vision than his version is. Irrespective of that, I'm excited about this one because of 2 reasons... it's got a cool scoring mechanism in which you get points in 2 different varieties during the game, and the one that matters depends on how the game ends. Players have a little control over which type of points they get, and a little control over which way the game ends. The other thing I like about my implementation is that while there are numbers on cards that you play (via a mechanic not entirely unlike Taj Mahal), the numbers don't really matter for getting points - just the number of cards. The numbers (and suit of the cards) matter as to which points you get, and which game end condition gets furthered, but you can't get screwed out of points by a bad draw. The number of cards you have is (almost) completely within your control.

I also like the theme a lot... there aren't a lot of games out there with the Odyssey as a theme. In this one, players play the Sisters of Fate, who observe Odysseus on his voyage from Troy to Ithaca, not entirely interested if he makes it home safe or not... but they decide to sort of bet on it.

Dynasty: The Spread of Culture in Ancient China
This one will probably be my next "Hot and Fresh" (that's the pizza game, by the way) in that it's a great idea, 1/2 prototyped, that I'll probably never get around to finishing. It's based on yet another friend's idea... he asked me to help him with a game idea about China, which was to be some epic thing with wargame elements and everything. I took what we talked about, or the parts that interested me anyway, and made a Eurogame out of it. It's so simple yet seems like it would be so good. My friend didn't like that I posted it though, but said he wouldn't care as long as I changed the theme... maybe to something about India. Until I figure that out I was going to keep working on the mechanics anyway, which are ready to test, I just need to figure out some tech advances... here's the gist of it:

Each player represents a culture in ancient China. You start by establishing little villages in various regions on the map, which allow you access to resources. You don't actually GET resources, like cubes or anything, you just have access to them or you don't. Then you can buy technological advances or whatever, which better your civilization. If you can't afford one, you can ask an opponent to help you. They get points for doing so... Basically, as you get these advances, and especially as you "trade" with other civs, you get markers to fill up your Cultural Development chart. When you fill up the first part of the chart, you become advanced to the point that one of your villages becomes a city, granting you abilities and access to higher level resources. Later in the game you can found more cities and take over other players' villages and cities, but each time you assimilate another players culture, you get their chits on your board. As soon as a player has filled up their board, they become the first Emperor of China and the game ends. At this point you see who the winner is by revealing all the chits on everybody's boards... the newly crowned Emperor may not be the winner (though they get a bonus to scoring) - they may be Emperor, but they're empire is infused with another player's culture. The player who's culture is the best represented is the real winner.

Well, that's all the designs I can think of offhand. I also proto'ed a solitaire civ game made by another BGDF friend... it's pretty cool - made to be played solo (obviously), like on an airplane or something. All you need is a pad of paper, the rules (with list of Advances), and a small deck of Event cards (16 cards). Scott even made a 'deluxe' version with printable tiles for those that want the tabletop experience :) If you're interested in this game you can look up PocketCiv on Doho123's blog MeepleSpeak .

I suppose that's enough blah blah blah from me... leave a comment if you read this, let me know what you think of the game ideas.

Thanks!

New Games!

It's unusual for me to buy new games, or new books, or new clothes for that matter. But last week was a rare exception. There are some games I've been wanting to play, and even though I know people who own them, I want to play them at home with other friends, and/or more often then once a week at my game club so I put an order in at Thoughthammer.

Thoughthammer is an online retailer of board games. I'd prefer to support my local game stores, since it's nice to go in there and browse around, have free gaming space, etc. However I was in Game Daze the other day and looked at some of the titles I was interested in... 50 bucks for a board game seems like quite a bit of money - especially when the online retailers sell the same thing for less than $30. The other store I frequent (Hat's Games), can order things, and gives us a discount, but the club makes these group orders only once every so often and Hat's distributor can't always get what I want. It's all just too inconvenient to deal with. Thoughthammer is quick, cheap, and easy. I put in my order on Monday, and the games arrived on Saturday.

Admittedly though, this wasn't quite fast enough in some respects. There's something to be said about the convenience of deciding that I want to play a game, and then walking out of the store with that game in hand the same day so I can play it that evening. While waiting for my order to arrive, I did pay retail for ANOTHER game last Thursday so I could play it that night at Hat's. Of course, for that kind of convenience I had to pay full price.

Wow, I didn't know this post was going to turn into a treatise on buying online vs supporting your FLGS (that's "Friendly Local Game Store"). I thought I was just going to list all the cool new stuff I got. So here's what I got:

Bison: Thunder on the Prairie
I read some discussion of this new game on BGG and decided the game sounded interesting. I was unsure if it was available yet, but I thought I had seen it at Game Daze a few days earlier. So at lunch I stopped by the store to see, and I was telling myself not to buy an unplayed game for $50 just to see if I like it. Well, it turned out to be only $30, so I went ahead and bought it so I could play it that night at Hat's.

As it turns out, I only played 1/2 a game of Bison at Hat's (the second half), and then I played another 1/2-game afterwards at Denny's (but people had to leave). Finally I played a full game the next night at home. each time was with an entirely different group of people, so each game was a learning game.

I wrote a review of the game based on my experience thus far. In short, I'd like to play it more, but I fear it will get old real quick. In that respect it probably wasn't worth the $30 price tag, I could have just waited until someone else bought it and played their copy a couple times.

TempusI played Tempus twice at BGG.con last November, as it was one of the eagerly anticipated games from Essen. I liked it, but the hype had built up my expectations a little too much. Now that it's finally available, I played the game again at a game day event and enjoyed it even more than I remember from last year. I played it again a few nights later at Hat's, and liked it again. Since then I've wanted to play more Tempus, but I only know one guy who has it, and I don't see him very often. So I decided to buy it myself. I am finding that I like it, but there are some other games (like Goa) that I'm currently liking a bit better.

GoaAbout a year and a half ago, a friend got Goa and was very interested in playing it. I remember having read some things on the 'net that led me to believe I wouldn't like the game much - that it was formulaic and sort of tedious. So, disinterested, I never gave Goa a try. A couple weeks ago, I finally did give Goa a try, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was nothing like I expected it to be. I enjoyed Goa a great deal and wanted to play it more immediately. This was the kind of heavy game I thought I could get my other friends to play, so I decided to add it to the order as well.

Rum & PiratesBefore seeing Pirates of the Carribean 2: Dead Man's Chest, my friends and I stopped by a game store called Uncles Games (this is in Seattle) for their weekly open game night. We saw a new title from Alea called Rum & Pirates. I thought it was odd I hadn't heard anything about the game, but it WAS about pirates, and that was the theme of the evening. The store owners let us open up a copy and try it out, mostly because they were curious themselves. They also let my friends buy the "open" copy for 30% off afterwards.

I wrote a review of the game after a few plays. I like it and I wanted to play it with some specific friends that don't go to Hat's, so I added it to the order.

In the Shadow of the EmperorI have played ItSotE once, and it was pretty good. I've also read some good things about it being a deep/heavy game, and in such a small package (and price tag) I've been interested in actually buying it - I just never got around to it. As it turns out that's probably a good thing, because I ended up trading a game to my friend, who's just recently into gaming, and he ordered this for me (instead of ordering the game I owned for himself). So now I have it, I just need to find time and people to play against. On the down side, I'm pretty sure that even if it's good, it won't be AS good as some of my other games and therefore won't get played much. On the up side, the game I traded for was never going to hit the table again anyway, so it's almost like getting something for nothing.

Citadels (with Dark City expansion)I have Citadels already, and my friend Jeremy really likes it. I often give him a board game for Christmas, and of course he gives me a Playstation game for Hanukkah in return. I've been meaning to get him Citadels because I know he likes it, but I had trouble getting it at the right time for whatever reason. So finally, here it is. Merry Christmas, Jeremy!

BANG! - Dodge City expansion
I have BANG! though I don't play it often. Last December I had some non-gamer friends in from out of town. They're Ultimate Frisbee players who came for a tournament, and they're "gamer types" for the most part, they just don't play a lot of games. Well, long story short: We played BANG! for about 6 hours straight, and had a blast the whole time! So I decided I'd like the expansion in case that kind of thing ever happens again. Also, the expansion allows for an 8th player, which could be handy. I've never played the game with a second Renegade, but it could make things interesting.

... Speaking of bad die rolls (as I was like 3 months ago)

I was playing Blood Feud in New York recently. I got a copy on sale for like 20 bucks, and of course the price dropped to $15 the next day. Anyway, I finally played it*. It's pretty fun. However one time I fortified my boss a bit. Admittedly, I could have left about 3 more guys with him, and would have been plenty safe. As it was I got attacked in my Penthouse Palace. My opponent needed 9's or 10's on a d10 to kill my guys. I had about 5 guys. My opponent rolled 9,9,9,9,10. I immediately remembered why I didn't like games like that.

So that sucked. I swear to god I'm not losing that game ever again! Or at least I'm not going to let my boss die. I was never any good at Risk or Axis and Allies or anything like that because I always spread myself too thin. Evidently that's still the case.

* Eagle Games makes some good stuff, but their rulebooks suck ass. They seriously ought to hire someone to proofread them and see if they're going to look like tools to the gaming community before they print a hundred thousand of the fucking things. For god's sake, the (inconsequential) order you roll dice for combat is explained in painstaking detail, with multiple examples, but nowhere in the rules does it say that the Helicopters take 3x as long to cross a bridge as a Thug on foot!