Nuggets of game design advice from designer Matthew Dunstan (Relic Runners, Elysium, Pioneer Days, Professor Evil and The Citadel of Time)

A while ago on Twitter, people were posting in a format such as "for every like this tweet receives, I'll post a nugget of wisdom." As a result, a few threads of potentially useful information appeared, but as is the nature of Twitter, those threads were relatively easy to read in passing, but difficult to reference, copy,/paste, or be otherwise useful in the long term. As such, they're probably effectively lost to the annals of history, only to be stumbled upon via random google search every now and again.

One of my friends, renowned game designer Matthew Dunstan, did one of these threads, stating:

I am going to try this '1 like = 1 nugget of game design advice' thing. Hope you find it useful!  #gamedesign

— Matthew Dunstan (@wisegoldfish) July 5, 2017

I left it open in a tab, but hadn't gotten around to reading it until now, and I realized that the a tweetstorm may not be the best format for reliable access to good advice, so I took a few minutes to copy, paste, and clean up the list. I'm presenting it here (with permission, of course). And I took the liberty of correcting some of Matthews British misspellings..:

Nuggets of game design advice from designer Matthew Dunstan

1. Where possible, start your design with pen and paper - it's much easier and quicker to get started, and forces you to simplify.

2. Ideas may be cheap, but that doesn't mean you have to be wasteful. Give your ideas enough time and effort to find their best form.

3. There are no excuses for not trying a new prototype as soon as possible - most games can be played solo perfectly well. Don't put it off!

4. Find information about new games deeply and often, especially games you don't think you'll like. The best inspiration can come that way.

5. It can be very easy to get caught up with a cool new mechanic or system and forget why the players should care or notice each other.

6. Try to have each decision point in your game have several different consequences - the game will be just as strategic but quicker.

7. When starting out in game design, be very careful of starting too many projects without actually finishing one, even if it feels easier.

8. If you have rounds or upkeep in your game, ask yourself whether you need them. Can you fold these parts into the regular player actions?

9. Having actions in a game which are the inverse of each other (and mixing this ratio) mean players can be in control of the game flow.

10. Game design isn't a solitary pursuit. Even at the start, cultivating communities that you can be a part of and contribute to is vital.

11. Follow @CardboardEdison - they do a great job hunting down game design content so you don't have to!

12. When you start on a new game, you really want to do it. Don't give up when it becomes something more like work, both stages are needed.

13. Game design is like any other skill: to improve you need to practice often. Even if the game doesn't work, you'll get better.

14. For me, the best way of pitching games is at conventions; it also allows you to get to know editors which can lead to opportunities.

15. Write down feedback from playtesters as soon as you get it. You will forget it otherwise, and it shows your testers respect.

16. Good games are easy to design, but the best games require struggle and doubt in their inception.

17. Never underestimate the joy that players get from the physicality of board games, and try and find ways to make the most of it.

18. If you have to design a game with abilities or special effects, first design 1/4 of what you need, make 4 copies of each, and test.

19. If you want to get published, recognize that there is a lot of work beyond a contract. Development, editing and promotion are important.

20. Entering design competitions are a great motivation to finish games, and provide useful feedback (sometimes) - use them!

21. Design progress = # iterations/ time.

22. Watch @britishgaming Game Makers Toolkit on YouTube. While based on video games, very thought provoking for tabletop design as well.

23. Find software that has Data Merge, and read @DanielSolis articles on how to use it. Big time saver for iterating on card games.

24. Have a prototype on you at all times. You never know when you'll have a playtest opportunity (eg. At the film festival this week).

25. Wherever possible, insist on an advance payment in contracts, even if it's small.

26. Constraints-based design is a great way to turn ideas into a first prototype. How can I turn theme X if I only had Y cards?

27. Avoid requiring players to make decisions that effect future turns, but giving them no way of knowing what is a good choice now.

28. Any change to a design that simultaneously solves multiple problems is probably the right change to make.

29. Keeping up with trends can be useful; both by knowing what has already been done and what publishers might be looking for.

30. Try co-designing a game at least once. At worst it's a learning experience. At best you'll make better games, and new friendships!

31. Try to find out what situation or activity best stimulates the game design part of your brain (mine is going for a walk).

32. Whenever you sit down to design, no matter how much time you have, set a goal. It makes the process much less daunting.

33. Be aware of absolute versus relative values. Having a range of 1-4 (points, resources) can be very different to a range of 2-5.

34. In open systems, giving players some direction early is important. Starting quests, special powers etc are only some ways of doing this.

35. The best special player powers are ones that make the player feel powerful, but not restricted to only one strategy.

36. Adjusting the level of randomness is a good way to make a cooperative game more resilient to alpha players.

37. Try to give every game an arc. Even if it's a short game, try and make the start, middle and beginning feel different to play.

38. Some of the best games keep players involved even when it's not their turn, e.g. Catan. Keep your players engaged as much as possible.

39. Collaborating is much like theater sports - designs progress more quickly if you always say yes to different ideas and viewpoints.

40. Once in a while, try designing a game in an unfamiliar genre. It's good exercise for your design brain.

41. Where possible, encourage the publishers of your games to include characters of diverse backgrounds and gender.

42. Don't put off updating your design - the longer you wait the more chance you will miss the opportunity to playtest the changes.

43. Be professional at all times, with publishers, developers, designers and players. You never know where an opportunity might come from.

44. Elegance in game design often comes from simple systems with interesting and deep interactions between players. Interaction is key.

45. Early in a design, don't be afraid to make large changes. Exploring more of the design space makes it possible to find the right fit.

46. If you are going to pitch to publishers, know their games, and know how your games could fit their line. Respect their time.

47. Don't spend too much time turning an idea over in your head. It will all change once you play it, and you won't know how beforehand.

48. Even if you're not led by theme in a new design, finding a good theme early ensures a close match between experience and setting.

49. Don't settle for a mechanic or part of your game that is 'good enough'. It will be found out sooner or later.

50. Down time is as important as active  time. Sometimes when you step away from a problem the answer comes when you least expect it.

51. Use the 2:3 rule - whenever  you design a game where you upgrade actions, the upgrade should double its cost and triple its effect.

52. Think about how your game can have memorable moments for a player, things they will remember many weeks and many games later.

53. For majority games, use prime numbers for the number of different majorities, it means that players will be forced to compete.

54. Having a mix of short and longer term goals keeps players having to weigh tactical vs strategic considerations.

55. Beyond making a game with multiple paths to victory, try to make the experience of these paths feel different, not just the label.

Life imitates life - the beginnings of a designer diary for Automatown

A few months ago (circa April 2017) I was responding to interview questions for Initiative Magazine. I was being featured in the June issue of their Game Mechanics section in an interview by Robert Nolan about refining games. It's not a free magazine, or I'd just link right to the article so you could read it.

I may have gotten a little carried away with some of my responses, in particular to the question about what it means to be "finished" with a game. At the time I had ants in my pants about people cavalierly saying "I designed a game," in the past tense, implying that they'd finished a process, when what they mean is that they've only started that process. I may be in a pedantic minority here, but I feel like conflating "I designed a game" with "I conceived of a game idea" really belittles and diminishes the hard work of game design. As a game designer (as well as a developer and a publisher), I stand firmly against anything that minimizes the work of design, and especially development.

Aside: Really, the crux of it is agreeing on where "design" (invention) stops and "development" begins. We don't really have sufficient (or sufficiently agreed upon) vocabulary for this, so as long as the word "design" is used to refer to both a finished game design, as well as just the initial, unfinished game idea, we're going to have a communication problem, one which I maintain is bad, as it leads to people putting unfinished, underdeveloped games up on Kickstarter and therefore out into the wild.

Here's an excerpt from my response to the question I mentioned above:

It's a lot of fun to brainstorm a game idea, come up with the story for a game, maybe suggest a loose framework for how might go, and leave it at that:
"It would be cool to have a game about building automatons to do your bidding! You should have assistants to help you, so maybe it's a worker placement game. Oh! And When you finish an automaton, you could put it to work for you as an additional assistant! Your assistants would gather materials to make automatons, study ways to make better automatons, and eventually your army of automatons would grow in strength until you can take over the world.”

That was right off the top of my head as sit here replying to these questions. It might have taken me 3 minutes. It's an OK idea for a game, it could work, but it’s obviously not finished as you can't sit down and play it! But it was fun to think about. I would not say at this point "I have designed a worker placement game about building automatons." Rather, have come up with an idea for a game. The next step would be figuring out rules of the game. What do you do on your turn? What do the worker placement spaces do? What does it cost to build an automaton? What constitutes a “better automaton"? What does it mean to "take over the world"?

Many designers get to this point in a design. I have several rule sets in my notebooks that seem fully fleshed out, and need to be tested before going any further. Since you’ve got a fully written rule set, it's tempting at this point to say “I’ve designed a game!” But as most designers have probably experienced, the first time you test a game, it doesn’t necessarily go as planned. Game design requires testing and iteration. So, even with a complete rule set written down for the automaton placement game described above, I still wouldn't say “I have designed a worker placement game about building automatons," because I'm not done yet.

Now that we have rules, the next big hurdle is to create a physical prototype and test the game. Sometimes this is as simple as creating a deck of cards; other times there's a lot more arts and crafts involved. For the aforementioned automaton placement game, I would need to gather some pieces to use as assistants, resources, maybe victory points as well, and create a board where worker placement spaces exist. This does not need to be very fancy, and if geography doesn't matter, it could just be a simple grid of spaces. Again, I'm assuming the goal is to create a game to pitch to publishers, not to self-publish. Either way, art and graphic design come later.

Once I have cobbled together a physical prototype, I STILL haven’t designed a game! I'm no further along than the last step until I've tried the game. Upon playing the game - either solo or with other people - we are sure to find details that don't work, aren’t ideal, or could use improvement. This is where the nitty-gritty work of design and development come in: iteration. We make improvements and we test. Make more improvements and test again. Each time, presumably, making the game better and closer to finished. 

As you see, buried in the response to that question, I came up with the seed of a game idea. A pretty neat game idea, one that stuck with me and might be fun to work on. Let's fast forward to July 2017...

Since I was attracted to the idea, this automaton game idea swam around in my head, and eventually made it into my design notebook, along with many other game ideas. In the middle of the night one night I had an epiphany about how a certain part of the game could work, so I went downstairs, got on my computer, and filled out some spreadsheets, and the next day I scrounged for bits and pieces to use, and cobbled together a prototype.

That Friday at RocketCon (a local game day my friend hosted on Raytheon campus), I got a chance to try the first draft of the game. As predicted in my quoted passage above, "it didn't go as planned." We made a couple of audibles during the game, and I immediately had ideas about what needed to change. But the players and I all felt like the game had potential.

1/2 a new prototype later, I played again the next day at a store, revealing more information about what I'd changed, and what still needed to be addressed. A twitter follower was nice enough to volunteer to print and play the game, and he returned feedback that very night, leading to decent design conversation over the next few days, and further updates to the prototype.

The following weekend (we're up to last Friday now), I took yet another version to a local game day and played two more 4 player games. I was homing on on how I wanted the different aspects of the game to work. Yesterday I finished another version of the prototype, and I'm ready to test again - though I think I ought to update the rules before I forget anything.

I think it's amusing how an off the cuff idea for a game that I spit out as an example for an interview question turned out to be something I was inspired to work on, and something that seems to work fairly well. I think it's even more amusing that the process of designing and developing this game has mirrored the narrative of my interview response almost exactly!

In my next post I'll describe the game as it stands. Maybe one day I'll finally be able to say "I have designed a worker placement game about building automatons to take over the world."

Quick post: The FULL List?

Every once in a while I do a blog post to check in on "The List" - a list of my published games, current active designs, designs on the back burner, and "old standbys," or game ideas that I'd like to get back to one day.

Mostly those posts are intended to highlight progress or changes of status in some of the designs. For example, yesterday I updated the status of:

* Isle of Trains: All Aboard (coming to KS early 2018, or so I'm told),
* Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done (on Kickstarter now),
* Eminent Domain: Oblivion (pre-production copy should be waiting at my house while I type this),
* Deities & Demigods (moved to active, because it's about done),
* Joan of Arc (a recent design added to active designs), and
* Automatown (a brand new design added to active designs), and a few other adjustments to better reflect the status of some of my projects.

And I updated the descriptions of some of the ones I had more detail on to reflect the current status as well. But that list isn't really complete.

In actual fact, I've got a lot more designs at various stages, from ideas in a notebook, to playable first draft prototypes, to games I've actually played several times, but that I'm not really focusing on right now. I sometimes wonder if that's the type of thing people would be interested in reading about, and whether I should expand The List to cover all of my projects more comprehensively.

I usually say that I write these blog posts for my own benefit, so maybe the better question is whether that would help ME out or not. But in truth, I do like it when people read my posts and comment, so if a lengthy diatribe about all of my various ideas sounds like a turn-off, then I'd like that to weigh into my decision.

Also, is it enough to just categorize the games into various categories (such as "Currently Active, Back Burner, Old Standby, etc)? Or is the descriptive status helpful/enjoyable to read?

Let me know what you think. The next time I look at The List, maybe it will have a lot more entries!

The List - July 2017

GenCon is coming up again, and it's been a while since I've taken a look at The List to take stock of my designs and prototypes. Let's take a look at where things stand, shall we?

Published Games:
- Terra Prime (BGG)
- Eminent Domain (BGG)
- Eminent Domain: Escalation (BGG) (expansion)
- Eminent Domain: Exotica (BGG) (expansion)
- Eminent Domain: Microcosm (BGG)
- Isle of Trains (BGG)
- Eminent Domain: Oblivion (expansion)
- Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done (BGG)

Finished But Unpublished Games:
- Exhibit (BGG link)
- Eminent Domain: the Dice Game
- Dice Works (BGG link)
- Wizard's Tower (BGG link)
- Now Boarding
- Isle of Trains: All Aboard (expansion)
- Suburban Sprawl

Current Active Designs:
- Deities and Demigods
- Automatown
- Joan of Arc

Recent Designs That Are Not On The Front Burner:
- Odysseus: Winds of Fate (BGG)
- Alter Ego (BGG link)
- The Pony Express
- Moctezuma's Revenge

Old Standbys - games which have been around, 1/2 done and untouched, for years:
- 8/7 Central
- Hot & Fresh
- Dynasty
- Kilauea
- Reading Railroad
- All For One (BGG)

Old Ideas that Haven't Gone Anywhere (Yet) - some of these have been getting stale as well:
- Investigative/Tabloid Journalism
- Red Colony
- Clash of the Kingpins
- Time = Money
- Dating Game
- Ticket Please
- Scourge of the High Seas
- Rondel Role Selection

Let's take a closer look at some of these:

Published games:
- Terra Prime (BGG)
Last time I said "I'd love to bring back Terra Prime as a 2nd edition, with updated rules, expansion included, and set in the Eminent Domain universe. It'd be called Eminent Domain: Origins, and one of these days it may be possible."

Well, the time is growing nearer and nearer! Eminent Domain Origins is officially on the list for TMG publication. At this point it might be good to have that be a "TMG's 10th anniversary" release (maybe along with Homesteaders re-release) -- but like James Ernest did, maybe we could do that, but not really wait until the 10 year mark. Maybe a 9-1/2th anniversary would suffice, which would be late 2018 (which is when this might actually happen).
- Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done (BGG)
I'm happy to report that this game is about to go into production, not only as a fine game from TMG, but as a Deluxified(tm) product! The kickstarter for it runs through August 4th (6 more days as I type this), and we're currently about to break $230,000 in funding. With 6 more days, and considering the common influx of funding at the end of a project, I would not be surprised if this game breaks $300k. Not TMG's biggest funding, but close!

The Deluxified version will have awesome plastic minis for knights and buildings (in addition to silkscreened wood), spot UV on the knight order tiles and game board, and a few other great upgrades. The retail version will be very nice as well, but the Deluxified version is going to be super fancy!
- Eminent Domain: Oblivion (expansion)
The 3rd expansion to Eminent Domain is finally in production, and should be out later this year -- possibly debuting at Essen!

Finished But Unpublished Games:
- Exhibit (BGG link)
No change here. I'm still disappointed in the status of Exhibit. A European publisher was very interested, but a difference of opinion on whether a certain person's IP rights were infringed caused it to be canceled altogether. I checked with an IP lawyer to ensure that my understanding was correct, which it was, but I don't blame the publisher for not wanting to get into the middle of it. The whole thing left a sour taste in my mouth. It's too bad, because the game is good.
- Now Boarding
I worked on this with Tim Fowers, who's since published several games via kickstarter: his co-op game Burgle Brothers, his 2 player deduction game Fugitive, and most recently, a follow up to his deck building word game Paperback (the follow up is called Hardback). He took Now Boarding in another direction, and I thought he was about done with it. Maybe it'll be his next kickstarter project :)
- Suburban Sprawl
My entry to the DHMG/GTG dexterity game contest also fits their previous contest, using only about 56 cards. In Suburban Sprawl you toss cards into play to build Residential, Commercial, Industrial, and Civic buildings. I'm going for a light, quick game with a sort of SimCity feel that's easy to learn and play. Matthew Dunstan helped with this one, but it did not win the contest. Maybe it'll see the light of day some day, but I haven't tried to pitch it to anyone yet. I was thinking maybe TMG could set it in the Flip City universe, with similar artwork, but I'm afraid that perhaps a dexterity game might not go over too well with our audience.
- Isle of Trains: All Aboard (expansion)
Dan Keltner and I created an expansion to Isle of Trains for Dice Hate Me/Greater Than Games to follow up our contest winning entry. We submitted the final game to them quote some time ago (December 2015 I think), and they kept planning a Kickstarter, then delaying it for various reasons. However, Chris Kirkman assures me that they're still excited about it, they've started getting art done for it, and that it will likely go up on Kickstarter in 2018.

Current Active Designs:
- Deities and Demigods
Another attempt at Deck Learning, Deities and Demigods is like a role selection game, but the game calls the roles, and in random order. Players will have some control over which roles are in the deck, and can upgrade their efficiency at each role. The effects of the roles will allow players to move armies around a map in an effort to complete quests/tasks and control cities.

I put a lot of work into this one lately, and I think it's about done. Most recently I added a bunch of player powers to try out, and I haven't had a chance to do that yet.

- Automatown

A new idea that I quickly made a prototype for and I've tested a few times so far. The idea is that you work in a factory making robots, so you make robots to work the assembly line for you. But why stop there? With an army of robots behind you, you could take over the factory, the city, or even the world! It's a worker placement game where you get and exchange resources in order to build more robots from blueprint cards. Each blueprint has a specific cost, a strength, and an ability, but any blueprint can be built out of scrap to just be a simple robot with no ability. So far it seems to have potential, but it still feels like an early design.

- Joan of Arc

I had an idea to do a follow up game to Orleans about Joan of Arc, co-brand it and put it out as a TMG/DLP partnership. I have made some good progress so far, but I still have a lot of work to do on it. In the game, players are each a different saint, giving visions to Joan of Arc. That is to say all players control a single Joan of Arc figure on the game board. You'll move her around, train her in different weapons, and have her win battles for points or in-game benefits. The action is driven by a bag building mechanism, where you draw tiles out of your bag and place them on your player board, then activate certain subsets of them. Originally, your player board was going to be a rondel, but that didn't work right. I tried a different idea, and that was a step in the right direction, but now I have what I think may be an even better idea, I just need to try it. There are a few other changes I know I want to make, I just have to get around to making them and trying the game some more.

Recent Designs That Are Not On The Front Burner:
- Alter Ego (BGG link)
Mike's always been a fan of this one. Alter Ego finally shaped up a while ago, but I just haven't been playing it, so it hasn't finished up. I had hope that with a little TMG Utah input and some nice art, this could potentially be ready for a GenCon 2016 release, but that never came to pass. I need to get this one back on the front burner and finish it up!
- Odysseus: Winds of Fate (BGG)
I keep circling and iterating on this one. I need to implement the most recent change ideas and try it again. This is basically the story of this game's life... I should probably move it to the "Old Standbys" section.
- Moctezuma's Revenge
This one ALMOST returned from the dead, as John Gilmour started to work on it with me, but that was short lived, as he had something come up and couldn't devote the time to that project anymore. Still, revisiting the game brought some improvements to it, so some progress was made. I don't know if or when I'll revisit it again though.

On the theme of Crusaders

The Crusades were a thing that happened in history, and with them are associated myriad things -- not the least of which were atrocities committed in the name of religious war. There are some who have seen the title of my new game on kickstarter, Crusaders: Thy Will be Done, and assuming it is based on those atrocities, have decided it's not for them -- which, to be clear, is perfectly fine. However, just to let everyone know where I was coming from, here's how I came to that theme and title.  If you are a long-time reader of my blog, then you probably know this already: 

Originally, the theme was the Knights Templar. Players would increase the influence of the Templars until such time as King Philip freaks out and disbands them. However, as players competed with each other to win the game, it didn't make a lot of sense for them all to be Templars, so I looked up a bunch of other similar factions. Sure, they weren't all active at the same time, and they didn't all suffer the same fate as the Knights Templar -- but this was never intended to be historically accurate to begin with, so I took some artistic license there. But now that there were other factions, I needed a title that made sense, one that incorporated various different militaristic orders of knights, and preferably one which sounded cool. "Crusaders" made sense, as many of those orders were notably involved with the crusades.

That said, the game is mostly about those order building up their influence, not about the crusades themselves (and the atrocities involved there). Hence the name "Crusaders," and not "Crusades." Unfortunately, I guess those two words are similar enough, and the proximity of those orders to the action of the crusades is close enough, that some people are not going to be interested in the game just based on the theme -- and again, that's fine. There's a thread on BGG about it, which is pretty civil as complaint threads go. It's odd, on the one hand I have people saying "how can you have a game about the crusades that doesn't include the Holy Land on the map!?" (i.e. it's not realistic enough). And on the other hand I have people saying "how can you make a game glorifying wars based on hate?" (i.e. it's too realistic).

I'd take a lot of flack if I said the game wasn't about the crusades. I mean, it's called "Crusaders," and there's a "crusade" action in which you fight against [enemies that wikipedia told me those orders fought against]. So I've been saying that it's LESS about the crusades, and MORE about the orders building themselves up. But even if that information would assuage some people's concerns (and for some, it won't), they probably wouldn't get that far before getting a bad taste from the title and perceived theme :/

This is the first time I've had to wrestle with this kind of dynamic on one of my games... nobody complained about the potential genocide involved in annexing planets in Eminent Domain, and nobody worried about whether the rail workers in Isle of Trains were paid a fair wage. I've played a host of games with potentially problematic themes or dynamics, some, like the slave cards in Five Tribes, spurred a lot of discussion in various forums, while others, like assassins in Five tribes, notably didn't. 

Maybe I'm naive, but when I learned and played Puerto Rico so many years ago, it did not even occur to me that the "colonists" were de facto slaves. I just assumed they were your "workers", which meant they got paid -- just outside the scope of the game. Only years later did I notice people pointing out that the pieces used to represent the colonists were dark brown in color. I never considered that that might have been a deliberate choice, or have any meaning to the game. Even still, Puerto Rico was played by thousands, and topped the charts for a decade, despite this whole colonist/slave thing.

But I digress... As far as Crusaders is concerned, I reiterate that from my point of view, the game is about the militaristic orders building up influence until eventually disbanded by the king. I do not support the atrocities associated with the crusades, but neither do I think this game glorifies them. That was certainly not my intent.

I hope that people aren't being mislead by the theme of this game! But if you are, then maybe my comments above will help give a better idea of the extent to which the theme applies. And if it's still not your thing, then that's fine -- plenty of other games to play!

Crusaders: Thy Kickstarter be Funded

TMG has been seeing some success with our Deluxified(TM) line of games...

Orleans Deluxe was (and still is) a big hit. Yokohama Deluxe set a record for TMG first-day KS funding ($85,000) as well as total funding for the project ($430,000). The people have spoken, and what they've said was basically "I don't want to miss out on TMG Deluxified(TM) stuff!".

As such, I was super excited with the decision to make my next game, Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done, a TMG Deluxified(TM) product! I was sure this meant that a lot of people would go in on it, and the game would end up being played and enjoyed by a wide range of people. And based on Yokohama's performance, I was pretty sure we'd see some decent funding numbers as well.

Now on Kickstarter!

But Yokohama had been released by the original publisher, a bunch of people had already played and liked it, and I would wager Hisashi Hiyashi is a bigger name than Seth Jaffee. So I did NOT expect Crusaders to outperform Yokohama's first-day AND second day funding! Crusaders hit $85,000 by 5pm on launch day, and hit $100,000 by the time I woke up the next morning.

But I guess it makes sense. With each Deluxified(TM) project, we gain more followers. More people who miss out on the deluxe copies and regret it. More people who get excited for the next one.

I hope this trend continues, it would be great if my game holds the record for biggest funding level in TMG history, at least until the next Deluxified(TM) kickstarter ;)

And I think there's a strong chance it will continue... the stretch goals are really nice, and they certainly add a lot of value to the box. Here's the current stretch goal image showing what we've unlocked so far, and the next few items which we'll unlock if we reach the funding levels indicated:

Stretch goal graphic from KS page - 7/15/2017

We have some more ideas for good, useful things to add if and when we exceed $230,000 as well.

So, if you read this blog, then you've probably seen me ramble on about my Knights Templar game for the last 4 or 5 years. If you haven't done it yet, check out the kickstarter project and see how it's shaped up!

I don't like to ask people to buy something, but please take a look and see if it seems like your thing. If not, no big deal. The only favor I'd ask is that if you know someone who might be interested, please let them know this exists so they can check it out too!

Thanks!

Frustrating mistake! Deleted comments and they hadn't posted :(

Yesterday I noticed 3 comments on my blog, and they were from a new reader. I love to see that people are reading what I write! I mostly do this for myself, but it makes me feel better to think I'm not just screaming into the void :)

Blogger has a page where you can review comments, and you can publish them by clicking "publish," delete them by clicking "delete," and mark them as spam by clicking "spam." Unfortunately, I get WAY too many spam comments to avoid this type of moderation, but it's not that big a deal... I just go to that page sometimes to see if anybody's posted, read it to make sure it's not spam, then publish the comments.

So last night I hit "publish" on each of these comments, and then I deleted them Only it turns out that for whatever reason, they didn't actually post! So they're gone now :( I don't see any way to get them back (no "trash" tab like email has, for example).

So I apologize, Anonymous User (who said his name was.... dang... Michael I think?) who has just started reading my blog. I am very sad to have lost your comments! I hope you keep reading an comment again in the future!

- Seth

Dallas and Seattle trip

Not much game design in the last week or so, as I've been on summer vacation...

I spent the 4th of July in Dallas with Michelle's family, and was also able to see my friend Brian. We ddin't do much in the way of gaming, but one afternoon we did play some Werewords and a little Wordsy. Werewords has gone over really well two out of two times so far.

In Seattle I normally play a lot of games, though so far we've done some touristy stuff and have only played one. We went on the Underground tour, which was cool, and we saw a lovely winery (Chateau Saint Michelle). We also saw what my sister billed as the tallest waterfall in the country (Snoqualmie Falls in Issaquah). We went to a movie, Wonder Woman, which was OK I guess, not sure it lived up to all the hype I've heard. And we met some of my friends for dinner. After dinner, we did play one game: Rialto, by Stephan Feld. Rialto is one that TMG imported a few years ago, and I haven't played it in a long time. I enjoy that one, and managed a win despite having very little board presence for end game scoring. I got some blue buildings, and used them to get quite a few points directly, I scored one of the two 5 point bonus tiles, and I dominated 1 region for 12 points or so, and got a 2nd place and a few 3rd place majority scorings.

Today I'm heading to MOX Boarding House, and I look forward to playing some more games! I'm bringing a full-art prototype of Crusaders with me to show off, and I intend to get photos of people playing, and maybe record reactions afterward for potential use in the kickstarter project, which goes live NEXT TUESDAY, July 11!

I will probably try and play Bear Park to show my Seattle friends, but Michelle isn't as big a fan of that one as I am, so maybe that's not as high a priority.

Time to go to MOX! :)

Recent playtests: Deities & Demigods & Joan of Arc

Deities & Demigods

There are 33 playtests recorded in my Deities & Demigods record sheet google doc. This covers several iterations of the game, going back to May 17, 2016. In the last few playtests at Origins 2017, I used the latest version of Hera cards to determine start player each round. The first time I just shuffled all the Hera cards together and laid out 5 for the game. It was kinda lame that for the first few rounds, those conditions were irrelevant because, for example, it's completely impossible to have done a quest before the first time the condition is checked. But I thought of an easy solution to that - I took all the cards that WERE potentially relevant in the first round, and labeled them "A," and I took all the cards that were not relevant in the first round and labeled them "B." Then I shuffled them and used 3 "A" cards for cycles 1-3, and 2 "B" cards for cycles 4 and 5. I've played a few games with that setup, and it's really worked well.

I've tried a few of the draft player powers, and I guess they're alright. I'm not sure if I think they're necessary, but I suspect people would dig them, so I ought to try them some more and make sure I have at least 4 that I like. One problem with including them is that if you have diverse player powers, it's boring if you only have 4 for a 4 player game. So I'd really want to have 6-8 for more variety.

I'd still like to try the Hades expansion module, but that need not be in the base game box, so it's not all that important. Still, it would be cool to try out.

Joan of Arc

Since my last post on the topic, I did get a chance to play Joan of Arc (twice) at Origins.

The new column format for the tiles is cool, but frankly, for the current implementation, cards would
be more appropriate than tiles. So I have two choices...
* Give up on it being a "bag building" game. This could be OK, even if it is intended to be related to Orleans, but as a product I'd like to keep the bag building. Hopefully that's not just me being stubborn.
* Change the format such that tiles become the appropriate component.

Daniel made a comment that sparked my interest - he said it would be neat if you laid out the tiles in a more organic way or something, and activated them like a neural network. I'm not entirely sure what he had in mind, but to me that inspired the idea to connect tiles in 2D space (as opposed to vertical columns), and instead of the tiles having 2 sections with income (one that gets covered up), maybe they have an icon in the center, an little 1/2-icons on some of the edges.

So instead of columns, maybe you have three 2x2 square areas to put tiles, and you want to combo up tiles so that they have matching 1/2-icons on the sides so you get extra income.

I actually can see several different ways to do this... 2x2 squares, plus shaped areas where the 4 tile spots are orthogonally adjacent to a center space with printed income, or even columns where the tiles have the 1/2-icons on the top and bottom only.

Today I showed the idea to David Short, and he had an idea for a single, bigger grid of spaces to put tiles into, and then you activate a row or column. I added that maybe you could activate a 2x2 square instead. So you add tiles to a 4x4(?) grid, then activate a row, column, or 2x2 square inside that grid, take the income, then discard the used tiles from the board. I'd have to figure out how exactly you add tiles to the board and activate them to make it non-trivial (add 3 in a row, activate that row). David suggested that you could have 3 activation tiles, 1 showing a ow, 1 showing a column, and 1 showing a 2x2 square, and when you use one to activate that configuration, it's gone till you've used them all. There's something interesting about that, but I'm not sure it solves any problems. However, maybe if you had to place in one of those configurations and activate a different one, that could start to work. For example, maybe you place in a column, then you activate a row or square. Then you can't possibly activate more than 2 of the tiles you just drew. Or maybe you can only place in a single row or column, and then activate the other, but you can do a 2x2 square if it's complete (4 tiles). Or only the center 2x2 square. I'll give this some thought, because it might be a better personal puzzle than the three columns thing.

Another, different idea that David also suggested, more similar to the current column idea with the tiles I already have, is to stack them... so you place 3 tiles into the column, but not overlapping, then you stack the next 2 tiles on top of those, offset so you cover the top half of 1 tile and the bottom half of the next. Finally, if it gets that far, you stack the last tile on top of the top 2, making a sort of pyramid. This would maintain the idea of getting 1/2 of the stuff on the tile sometimes, and it would make tiles the more appropriate component, but I'm not sure it would work as well as some of the other ideas.

Those are all juicy ideas that are very interesting, but they are almost completely separate to some of the other changes I want to make, such as adding static effects on spaces for when the battle tile is gone, or changing up the stat tracks, or adding cannons. I DID increase the costs of sieges, somewhat arbitrarily. I probably will need to revisit those costs a bit. And I'd like to maybe make some more end game goal cards, perhaps a series that wants you to advance a certain amount on the stat tracks, so you'd be extra interested in training.

That's all the updates I have for now.

Deities & Demigods - the return of Hera

A few different times in the past, Hera has played a role in Deities & Demigods -- usually, in one way or another, controlling which deity cards get added to the Olympus deck. Each time thus far, she's been cut.

In my last post I described a potential issue that I've been worried about, which is that a player concentrating on Zeus when nobody else does can basically choose all the cards that go into the deck. I will reiterate that I don't think it's necessarily too powerful to be able to do so, but that frankly, it's not fun. Not for the other 1-3 players in the game anyway.

In that last test (UKGE with Andy, Matt, and Ian), I tried a rule to combat that dynamic, which was simply that you cannot be Start player twice in a row. In that game, the dynamic I'm worried about didn't actually come up and neither did that new restriction -- not really, though it's possible players made some decisions based on it (like, I believe Matt would have played differently when he was start player if he were allowed to get it again). To tell you the truth, it's not "being start player twice in a row" that I'm really trying to avoid... it's dominating the Olympus deck that I'm worried about. My "simple" fix of disallowing start player 2 rounds in a row didn't seem like the best idea after all. For example, consider a 2 player game - that would remove any sort of ability to "go for" start player!

I want to keep in mind that it's very possible there's no problem to begin with, and that concentrating on Zeus allows you to control the rest of the game... and maybe that's just fine. Matthew said he'd run some tests with the rules as they were, and maybe force that dynamic to come into play and see if he thought it was a problem (he said he hadn't seen it come up, or didn't notice any issues with it so far).

Out of the aftermath of all the discussion, I have updated my prototype to try what I figure is probably the best solution that came up: re-introducing Hera cards into the mix. This time, Hera will have a handful of cards (could be tiles, or 1/2 size cards, or whatever), of which 5 will be placed face up at the beginning of the game, 1 per cycle. These cards will indicate a condition, and at the end of the cycle, that condition is checked, and the player who best fulfills the condition becomes start player (and gets to add a deity card to the deck). Ties would be resolved by the initiative track, so sometimes (and especially in the first cycle) I suspect the dynamic will be the same as the current game. But the point is, instead of just bumping up your minimum devotion to Zeus and adding a 2nd Zeus to the deck for likely uncontested access to start player, you'll have to do different things each cycle.

In my first attempt at these Hera cards, there are 2 cards that kind of lean toward concentrating on each of the deities, but only 1 for Zeus, since he also controls the tiebreaks. Here's what I tried for the first draft:
* The player with the most A/B/M cards in play becomes the start player. Initiative track breaks ties.
* The player with the most building markers in a single city becomes the start player. Initiative track breaks ties.
* The player with the most troops in play (not on quests) becomes the start player. Initiative track breaks ties.
* The player who controls the most cities (including ties) becomes the start player. Initiative track breaks ties.
* The player with the most gold becomes the start player. Initiative track breaks ties.
* The player with the most total devotion becomes the start player. Initiative track breaks ties.
* The player with the highest quest bonus becomes the start player. Initiative track breaks ties.
* The player with the most completed quests becomes the start player. Initiative track breaks ties.
* The player farthest along the initiative track becomes the start player.

A few of these are unlikely (or impossible) to have any real effect in the first cycle, which just means the initiative track will control in that case, just like it does now. But I think all of them could come into play starting with the 2nd cycle, and some during the first as well.

I definitely don't love adding another stack of cards to the game, and I also dislike adding more process to the end of the cycle. As I type this, I have a feeling that "concentrating on Zeus so that you can control the direction of the game" is probably a valid strategy that should exist. But I'll give this a try at least once or twice and see how it goes.

If I don't like how this goes, I think I will revert to the last version saved, and maybe just make the initiative track a little less lucrative, so if you're climbing that track, it's because you want to control the direction of the game, rather than you incidentally controlling the game while climbing the initiative track for other reasons.

Deities and Demigods - update

Had a nice 4p test tonight with Matthew, Andy, and Ian. I implemented some of the tweaks from yesterday's post - start player must change hands, and monuments can either bump devotion or earn the favor if the deity

I liked the monument change, and the more I think about it, the more I would rather have the either/or monuments than add more monuments, especially if the monuments wouldn't be the same effect (though that's not really important, I mean the buildings don't all have the same effects). So I think I'll keep trying that out, and it will probably be a keeper.

The start player rule didn't really come into play. It almost did, and would have been disappointing for Matthew (though to some extent that might be because he's used to being able to keep start player, if that were never the rule then it might not be as bothersome for a player). Discussion after the game made it clear that solution was not popular amongst these players. Several other options were presented and discussed, some reasonable options, some (in my opinion) either too fiddly, too complicated, or don't actually address the problem I'm referring to.

One thing that might be wrong with that proposed fix is that it might not scale well for player count. In particular, in a 2p game it would mean the start player will alternate, and you cannot fight for it. Is that bad? It sounds kinda bad.

One possibility is that maybe I'm too sensitive to a potential problem that really isn't that bad. Matthew said he hadn't noticed it being a problem in his games, but I swear it seems to come up in a like 20% of mine... Or else I've inflated that in my mind because I'm so sensitive to it. I've asked Matthew to play some and watch for that dynamic, maybe play to force it, and see if he finds what I'm worried about. I intend to do the same.

Of the other fix ideas, maybe the .later promising is to decouple the start player from the Zeus track and use some other measure to determine start player. I inherently don't love this idea, because not only does it add rules, bit do.ponents and dynamics for something that currently works well most of the time. However, it might be necessary to fix that one issue.

But what to attach start player to? Well, maybe Hera should be called off the bench again... There could be a small Hera deck, or set of Hera cards, that would indicate the aspect of the game that will be measured each round in order to see who gets start player. This is somewhat similar to the last incarnation of Hera cards, which gave bonuses based on some conditions. In this case the bonus would be start player.

 But what to measure? Well, I used to want city control to matter more during the game. Should number if cities controlled, or maybe current city scoring (5/2/1 for most/tied/min1 troops), be the factor that earns you start player? Or does that just make Ares stronger instead of Zeus? And what happens in case of a tie? I'd rather have an unambiguous measure.

It could be an auction of some kind, blind bid (boo!), round-and-round, or once around perhaps. This would give something else to do with gold, which might be welcome... But it adds a whole mechanism to the game which I'm not too fond of doing, plus added game length. And it might sort of just transfer the problem from players who concentrate on Zeus to players who concentrate on Hermes.

I kinda hope I'm just wrong that there's a problem to worry about, because leaving things the way they are seems easiest!

I think Deities and Demigods is about done.

I played Deities and Demigods tonight at UK Games Expo... I haven't played it since Jan 22 at AZ Game Fair.

I've been thinking for a while now that the game is about done. There are a couple things I'd like to try, but they're small details... I think that overall the game is in really good shape.

Things I'd like to try:
Add 2 quests...
* Have 4 buildings in the same city.
EDIT: that would be too hard. Maybe just 2 buildings, as you could theoretically do that in the first cycle, but only if all the stars aligned. Maybe also 3 buildings in a city. But if these 2, in one case maybe you should have to lose a building marker too. So like "2-stack to 1-stack", and then "3-stack".
* Have 2 cities with 2 buildings each.
EDIT: that actually sounds kind of hard. But maybe that's ok.

Maybe try a rule that the same player can't be the start player 2 turns in a row. If they are at the top of the Zeus track, then start player skips to the next player in line (more on this later).

Maybe add 4 more Monuments that don't bump minimum devotion, but instead let you earn the favor of the deity. The current ones are good early but not late. These would be good late, not so much early. If that's too much for some reason then another idea is making the existing Monuments say "...or earn the favor of this deity". So at least they remain relevant all game when not snapped up early. And in my experience, they are only sometimes snapped up early (certainly it's uncommon that they're ALL snapped up early).

I had an idea (it might have come from a player) that maybe a 5th spot on each devotion track that lets you earn the favor of that deity might be cool, as another way to get a scoring card that doesn't require Zeusing. I'm not sure how necessary that is, and I worry a little that it'll be too easy to get a lot of those, but it would be easy to try.

I'd like to try the Hades expansion. I'm not sure if it should be a separate expansion, a promo, or a module included in the box.

Things that have been "on the list" that I don't think are necessary:
Adding any kind of terrain, or otherwise making the map more interesting. It's something Matthew has brought up a few times, and while it sounds decent, the more I play, the more I'm just not sure it's necessary. To me it sounds like promo or expansion material.

Adding more troops. I tried going up to 15 troops, but I think it may be a mistake. I THINK I want people who go for quests (and sacrifice guys for min devotion bumps and vps) to have a hard time fighting for city majorities. However, that fight is lackluster if everyone does do quests and therefore only has 1-2 troops to devote to each city. I keep thinking maybe 15 or so troops would make that fight more interesting, but whenever I try it I feel like it just allows players to do all the quests AND win a lot of city points. 12 troops is enough to do every quest and have 1 troop in each city. If you do the quests and still want to fight for city points, you'll have to fight for just 1-3 majorities, while players who don't do a lot of quests should be able to win more majorities than that, as well as some other points for being present in other cities. In tonight's game I only got 6vp from quests, and beat the guy who got 21 because I wasn't challenged for majority and got 3 of them with only 4 troops, for a total of 17 city points. So I got 23 total from quests + Cities, while he got 26 total. I think that's probably fair.

Probably my biggest concern is a player concentrating on Zeus, getting ahead on the initiative track, adding more Zeus to the deck, and upping their minimum devotion to stay on top. Not because it's an overpowered strategy, but because it means nobody else gets to choose the cards that go into the deck, and that kind of spoils the game in some ways (at least for the other players). The thought I had tonight to simply keep that from ever happening is to add a rule that the start player MUST change hands each cycle. I don't like adding rules, especially arbitrary ones like that, but I think it would completely solve that potential problem, so maybe it's worth a shot. As above, the start player would simply go to the player with the most initiative that doesn't already have it. Then you could concentrate on Zeus all you want, you'll get your scoring cards and other rewards, but you won't get to choose every card that goes into the deck. You'll probably get to choose 3 of them though (more than your share). I've found that the best plays are ones where the start player moves between the players a lot.

So if that's true, if the game is really about done, then I guess it's time to make a quote request and see if it's financially viable, or if I have to consider component changes and stuff.

I think I have a problem with waiting too long to finish my games, or to call them finished. Rather than leaving it sit for 4 months, I should have been sending it out for blind testing. I need to get better at that if I want to see my high-potential games get through the process...

Bag building rondel? More like Bag Building NONdel!

I've gotten a couple of tests of Joan of Arc: Maid of Orleans in here and there, mostly 3 player and a couple of 2 player games. I've made a little progress on what the starting tiles should look like, and the skeleton of the game idea is holding up, but so far the reaction and overall feel of the game is a little underwhelming.

From the beginning I've worried that players might not have enough reason not to just move the maximum 3 spaces on the rondel each turn, which makes the whole idea of a rondel rather boring. My hope was that as you get good tiles into your bag, they will be so attractive that it will be a reasonable decision whether you stop early for the effect, or move all three spaces for maximum"income". To an extent that has proven true sometimes, and sometimes not, and I was prepared to be ok with that.

After playing with Mike and Andy, I'm not so sure I should be ok with that. Long story short, I don't think my game uses the rondel mechanism very well. Maybe it's just not the right mechanism for the game.

I was trying to think of a way to have "big turns" in the game, and Andy suggested removing the rondel and instead placing the tiles on columns, where you choose 1 column each turn, collect the income from each tile in that column, and execute the action of the last tile (most recent) in that column. Then discard the entire column, and draw 1 new tile for each column.

A few details aside (maybe draw tiles at the end of your turn and place them at the beginning of your turn so you can think about it on opponents turns, maybe cap each column at 5 tiles, etc), this sounds like a much better format than the rondel, and the best news is that I can try it without any changes to the prototype!

I like the idea of this mechanism, and have been wanting to use it for something anyway, so this is a good opportunity. Unlike the bag building aspect of the game, I didn't have any compelling reason to use a rondel, so I don't mind losing it. I briefly considered ditching the bag building in favor of "rondel building" - where you'd have a static rondel, but you'd buy upgrades for the spaces, but that wasn't an attractive option for me. For this game I'd rather emphasize the bag building, which this column mechanism may help facilitate better than the rondel was.

I hope to try the game again while I'm in England for UKGE this week, with the new format, and see how that feels. I should be able to tomorrow!

Edit: I was able to try the game once (2p with Ian) with the new stack system, and it worked alright. Discussion with Ian was helpful in re-framing how I want to look at the tiles (income vs action) in order to power them up appropriately. We talked about how pretty much everything in the game needed to be powered up a bit, and ways to potentially do that, with a little balance discussion thrown in for good measure.

I just updated my prototype with all new tiles (starting tiles as well as tiles for the supply). For now I've taken interesting actions off of the tiles, they're all just various combinations of income, basically. I might like to add some "actions" back in on some of the 3 or 4 cost tiles, but I might just decide to leave that sort of thing for the skirmish tiles and static effects of spaces once the battle in that space has been cleared out.

I'm itching to play and see how it goes. I'd hoped to try it at the shop this weekend, but it looks like I'll have to wait for Origins on Wednesday. Who'll be there, and who wants to try this game with me?

Manhattan Project "Roll (& Write) Selection"? "Role & Write"? Continued

Well, I've thought about this some more, made up a reference/score sheet, played some solo and 3p games, and made some adjustments and tried again...

Isaac Shalev was in town, and we played and discussed the game a little bit. Saturday I got a test in at the game store. Yesterday I played with Andy van Zandt (from TMG) as well. Good feedback each time.

Currently I need to adjust some scoring, and maybe add a little bit to get more cross strategy possibilities going on, such as add yellow cake production to one of the factories. Then I think the game could be in fairly good shape.

A few other details, like swapping the bombs so that the more lucrative bomb is the first one, not the last one, should also help players pursue strategic paths a bit. The goal being to provide a few different paths without making it just be "I'm doing energy this time", or "I'm making bombs this time".

I never intended to go quite this far with the game, but okay this rate I'll probably submit it to the contest (the deadline isn't until September) and just see how it does.

Manhattan Project dice game contest

Our friend James Matthe over at Minion games has published a number of games, including a few that I really like, such as Grave Business, by Andy Van Zandt (developer at TMG), Battle Merchants, by Gil Hova (owner of Formal Ferret Games), as well as The Manhattan Project, by Brandon Tibbetts (I don't know that guy), and the follow up Manhattan Project: Energy Empire, by Luke Laurie and Tom Jolly (members of The League of Gamemakers), and many others.

I'm a big fan of The Manhattan Project, and an even bigger fan of Energy Empire, so needless to say that Manhattan Project 2: Minutes to Midnight (I can't NOT read that as "Manhattan Project: 2 Minutes to Midnight") is on my radar, and it has recently launched on kickstarter.

In an effort to promote that campaign, and to find fodder for the MP brand, James has decided to hold a contest to find a dice game set in the Manhattan Project universe. He's looking for a dice game that has the thematic feel of the Manhattan Project games, but will play in about an hour, for 1-4 players. That's right, it must include a solo mode. Boo! I've got nothing against solo modes, but I also don't think designers should be required to provide them.

Anyway, I have plenty of my own projects to work on, such as Joan of Arc: Maid of Orleans, Deities & Demigods, Eminent Domain Origins, as well as TMG stuff, and any new ideas that creep into my head in the meantime. So I don't really have time or inclination to create a game for a contest, and for a non-TMG publisher no less.

But after skimming the post about the contest, wouldn't you know it... I had an idea for a dice game about The Manhattan Project.

I haven't put a lot of thought into it, but I think there are two obvious ways to go with the custom dice required by the contest: either put different game resources on each side, or put different worker types on each side. While TMP had 3 types of workers, Energy Empire had a whole host of diverse worker images, even though in that game they were equivalent. My first thought was to put a different type of worker on each face of the die, and then make them different from each other so it mattered which ones were rolled.

However, that thought didn't immediately go anywhere in my mind. My second thought, however, sort of did. Suppose the dice had different game resources on each side, including laborers, engineers, and scientists. Now suppose there were a dice pool of about N+1 of these dice. You'd roll all the dice, then take turns drafting them, but as a role selection mechanism ("roll selection"?). If you pick a die showing coins, maybe you get 4 coins while everyone else gets 1. You get 3 yellow cake while everyone else gets 1. You get your choice of engineer or scientist while everyone else gets a laborer. Etc.

The point would be to build up resources to do various different things. Enough yellow cake and a scientist and you can make plutonium. Enough plutonium, a scientist, and a coin, and you can make uranium. Enough uranium and an engineer and you can make a bomb. There could also be buildings you can buy with coins (or perhaps with steel and plastic, like in Energy Empire), which could make you better at certain things. And there could be achievements (also like MP:EE), which give you game end bonuses based on certain criteria. You would score points for bombs made, achievements met, and your ability to clean up your environment... You see, certain things could give you pollution (building certain buildings, testing bombs for bonus points, etc), and there could be a "clean up" die face to help get rid of it. A certain number of the dice in the pool would be black, and those would pollute when you draft them

When thinking about the components it would take to track all this, it occurred to me that perhaps roll & write could be a good format for this game. Like Roll Through the Ages, you could mark off boxes as you make progress toward various goals. All you'd really need is a handful of custom dice and some score sheets, and I'm sure that would fit James' vision for the budget of the game (or might even be "too small").

I don't know if I'll give this any more thought, but I wanted to preserve the idea here in case I care to revisit it later. For those of you entering James' contest, good luck!

Casual Q&A, revisited

A few months ago I made a Casual Q&A blog post, inviting people to ask questions that I could answer, like an AMA, but not confined to a short timeframe, and not on Reddit. Only 1 person commented with quesitons, and I never got around to answering them (sorry Josh). So I thought I'd finally revisit the topic, answer Josh's questions, and renew the offer to post questions in the comments below, which I will (eventually) answer! Josh asked...

- What do you think about Legacy type games? Are they here to stay or are they just a phase? Would you like to make one?

What do I think about legacy games? I think there are 2 aspects to the genre that really define it, that make a game a "legacy" game rather than a regular game.

First thing: Permanence. For the most part, the legacy aspects of the game are basically a glorified tech tree. You make choices that give your character some kind of upgrade or benefit, and you have to choose one aspect to improve over another. Things like writing on cards or applying stickers causes a permanent change, but really it just makes bookkeeping easier. When you play D&D, you simply write these changes on your character sheet: you're carrying a 50' rope and a 10' pole, you've used 3 of your 12 arrows, you know Elvish and Common languages, you have 18 13 9 7 11 hit points, and 2 1 potion of Cure Light Wounds. Bringing that ongoing story element to board games, where you generally don't have a character sheet, means you have to start writing on the board or cards, or applying stickers to things. Done well, this can lead to some good storytelling -- which shouldn't be a surprise, since it has worked for RPGs for decades.

 Second thing: Investment. The above is true of legacy games, but it's also true of campaign games (which you can reset and play through again), or even regular games that have other ways to track status changes. However, legacy games invite you to rip up cards, or write on the game board... these permanent changes can't be undone, which raises the stakes on your decisions. These stakes gets you invested in the game, they make you care a lot more about what happens. I have played countless games of Puerto Rico, most of them very fun and intense, but with a few exceptions, I can't tell you now what happened in a given game of Puerto Rico. I've also played games where I had fun, but ultimately didn't care if I on or not. Amping up the level of investment as legacy games do, and having them play out differently for different groups, adds a bit of investment, and has the potential to make a more memorable game experience. That's the point anyway.

 Legacy games are something of a fad, made popular by the (excellent) Pandemic Legacy. I think that just like Cooperative games, Legacy style games will become a consistent, though small portion of the market going forward. We already have a handful of new ones that have just come out or are coming soon...

Pandemic Legacy Season 2
Gloomhaven Charterstone
Chronicles 1: Origins (and the rest of that series)

I have heard of a few other mystery legacy games in the works, like a legacy card game from Mike Fitzgerald, or My Father's Work, by T.C. Petty III. Very hush-hush for the most part, but I know they're out there.

 I don't think consumable, story-heavy games as a genre are going anywhere, but I don't think they'll take over the industry or the hobby either. For one thing, they take way more work to design, develop, and produce. In an industry like ours, with the tiny margins that we have, I'm a little surprised that legacy style games are gaining the traction that they are. That may be why I don't think they'll ever really saturate the market, but there are people invested in making them, and people invested in playing them, so I don't expect them to disappear. It does seem that, so far, legacy concepts seem to go best with cooperative games. I have a copy of Seafall, but haven't played it yet, and I never played Risk Legacy either, but from what I've read, they pale in comparison to the experience delivered by Pandemic Legacy. Time Stories is somewhat popular, and is also cooperative. As is Gloomhaven. We will have to see how Chronicles 1: Origins, Charterstone, and other competitive legacy games hold up. As for me, while I applaud the effort and the ambition in these legacy style games, I'd just as soon play an intense, interesting Euro-style strategy game with a clever main mechanism :)

- If you could change one thing about each of your games in retrospect, what would that be? EmDo interests me in particular.

TERRA PRIME
Way back in 2010 I wrote a post about lessons learned on my first game, Terra Prime. Fortunately for me, I'm going to have a chance to realize some of those lessons, and make some of those changes, as Terra Prime returns as Eminent Domain Origins. Set in the world of Eminent Domain, as a prequel to that game, Terra Prime will get an update including the changes I noted in that post, as well as a few other details I've thought of over the years, and even the expansion I made way back when. I'm not sure when this will happen, my thought is that it might be a good 10th anniversary thing for TMG -- re-releasing a better version of one of the launch titles. I'm excited about it, because I've played the game recently, and I think it holds up.

EMINENT DOMAIN
Eminent Domain is far and away my most popular, and best game yet. I realize I haven't gotten much published yet, but I think I'll be hard pressed to outdo EmDo. I continue to be impressed with how well it holds up, and delighted to see people still playing it or discovering it for the first time. The next (and probably last) expansion, Eminent Domain: Oblivion, the one with political agendas, will be coming out soon, and I hope that we will see another surge of interest in the game at that time. So what would I change about Eminent Domain? Not a whole lot, actually. In the base game, I released errata cards for Abundance, Bureaucracy, and Logistics, which fixed most of what annoyed me about the game, though I kinda think Fertile Ground might be a bit too strong.

 In Escalation, I think I added too much technology to the stacks. If I had it to do again I think I would save some of that for future expansions.

 In Exotica I made a boo-boo on one of the Scenarios (Espionage), which is kind of broken as written. I would change that so it worked better. As written, if playing against a Scenario that starts with a permanent tech card, you can just steal it right away. Espionage's special text says you can ignore Reparations, which on Stolen Trade Secrets is giving up the card to the opponent. This just automatically shuts down most other scenarios, and was a mistake. I believe the intention was that the special text wouldn't shut down the reparations on Stolen Trade Secrets itself... online I suggested playing as if it said "Ignore all Influence Reparations on cards you play" -- so if you get other cards with Reparations, you can ignore that. Another fix might be to say "ignore all reparations except when targeting a permanent technology", or "ignore all reparations. You cannot target permanent technologies". Any of those might have worked better.

MICROCOSM
I've always been pretty happy with how Eminent Domain: Microcosm came out. I still feel like it's got a lot more game than most microgames (many of which aren't interesting to me). If I had it to do again, I think I would do the static effects a little differently. they were admittedly sort of an afterthought, and I don't know how much they really add to the game. I'd also try to do a better job with the rules sheet. A lot of people had trouble with it, and even if I think it should have been sufficient, the fact that they had trouble means it could have been better.

ISLE OF TRAINS
Outside of TMG I have 1 design credit... I feel like Isle of Trains, from Dice Hate Me Games, co-designed with Dan Keltner, is a pretty strong design. It was in a 54 card game contest, and while they did let us go with 56 cards for publication, the deck is a bit small and players complain at having to shuffle a lot and use "phantom cards". If we could have added an extra 9 train cards (1 more copy of each car type), that would have cut down on those complaints significantly, I think. I'm told that the expansion, which we finished almost a year and a half ago, should be on Kickstarter in 2018. It's a long time to wait, but I think people will be pleased with what we've come up with.

UNPUBLISHED PROTOTYPE
All my other games on BGG are not yet published, and maybe some will never be. There are all kinds of things I wish I'd done differently in some of them!

- What game mechanisms do you feel get too little love? Which are "overhyped"?

I'm not sure I feel any mechanism gets "too little love", and my philosophy is that it isn't game MECHANISMS that get old, it's game EXPERIENCES... so I'll answer a slightly different question: which mechanisms do I like best, and which do I like least.

I really like Role Selection games (Puerto Rico, Glory to Rome -- but not the Black Box!), as evidenced by Eminent Domain being a role selection game. I feel like the fact that everyone gets to play on everyone else's turn really keeps players interested in the game, and I think it's one of the more interactive forms of indirect interaction out there because your choices literally allow your opponents to act.

I also really like the Rondel mechanism (Antike, Navagador, Shipyard), as I think it does a great job of forcing players to plan ahead and sequence their actions well.

I enjoy the time track mechanism where the player at the back of the line is the one to play next (Glen More, Olympos, Thebes), because I think it does a great job of simulating the time it takes to do a task (the bigger the task, the more time it takes), and it makes time into a valuable resource.

But my favorite mechanism is probably Multi-use cards (Glory to Rome, Race for the Galaxy, Oh My Goods), because they are such an efficient game component, and they have built in opportunity cost (and good choices in games are all about opportunity cost).

 Two game mechanisms come to mind as my least favorite. I'm personally pretty bad at trick taking (Bridge, Hearts, Wizard), and similarly, climbing games (Tichu), and they don't interest me at all. Somehow I don't mind Diamonds, by Mike Fitzgerald, because there's more to the game than simply trying to communicate your hand in code to your partner and then deduce who has what cards.

The other mechanism I dislike, and think in many cases might be a demonstrably bad game mechanic, is Simultaneous Action Selection (especially with arbitrary resolution order). This includes blind bids, as well as "everyone choose a card then reveal". It's a little less bad when the resolution order is known, because you can use that information to help you decide what to choose.

The only thing that really redeems this mechanism for me is getting to make decisions after the reveal as well. Take Kings of Air and Steam for example... you must pre-program your movement (choose your move cards simultaneously), and then each turn you must reveal the next one and move that amount. But you get the freedom of moving wherever you want, only the amount of movement is pre-programmed, and then you get to do an action of your choice after that. If something goes awry and your plans are interrupted, you have reasonable ability to change them in a productive way. This also means that when planning your movement, you can reasonably have a plan B, in case your preferred plan does get scuppered by a faster opponent.

Thanks for the questions, Josh! If anyone else wants to ask anything in the comments below, I'll happily answer them... eventually :)

Dice Worker Placement: The Saga Continues

I've been thinking about that dice worker placement mechanism some more lately. The biggest problem I have when I start with a mechanism is finding a theme that makes sense, and as I've discussed before, even when starting with a mechanism, all design is really theme-first design.

So I put out a (relatively generic) question on social media... what theme could fit well in a worker placement game where the workers get better over time. In part because I didn't give any background to what I was looking for, and in part because of Twitter's strict character limit, I'm afraid I didn't accurately communicate my real question - and I got back a lot of ideas for general themes in which things get better: school, apprenticeships, software... even the most generic answer of all: "Literally any worker who gets training.

After a few threads and discussions on the topic, I was starting to settle onto a theme. I thought maybe a spy theme, where your workers are secret agents who get better as they do missions, and worker spaces could have to do with going on missions or making preparations to go on missions. Another idea though was to model the game after a standard worker placement game like Lords of Waterdeep. In LoW your workers are agents who recruit adventurers (fighters, rogues, clerics, and mages) to go on quests. The adventurers are the resources in the game, and quests require certain recipes or combinations of resources to fulfill.
At that point I read a post by my friend Mohan, who hadn't played Lords of Waterdeep in some time, and conflated the agents and adventurers, and mentioned the adventurers leveling up. I thought tat was interesting, but a wholly different premise than my basic idea where your workers (not the resources they collect) are the thing that levels up.

That said, I thought maybe it could be good if your workers were different types of adventurers, which could be easily tracked by color coding the dice... orange dice for fighters, for example; white for clerics, etc. They could still work the way I had originally proposed - you start with 8 dice (2 of each type), each at level 1. Most worker spaces could accept any die, but some could offer better returns if you use the correct type of worker (example: anybody can go to the Temple and gain 1 Faith, but a cleric who goes to the Temple gains 1 Faith per level). Some worker spaces could be exclusive to specific worker types (example: only Thieves can enter the Thieve's Guild). And of course, while some spaces may accept any TYPE of die, there may be a level requirement (example: only adventurers of level 3 and above can enter the Throne Room for an audience with the king).

Side note:
The Manhattan Project is a worker placement game where you either place workers on your turn or recall them. The turns you recall your workers feel relatively boring, as you don't really make an progress. Manhattan Project: Energy Empire takes that one step further: on turns where you recall your workers, you (a) may get to claim an achievement, and (b) get to generate power for future turns. This feeling of progress even on turns where you're mostly just freeing up your work force is good -- it means fewer boring turns for players.

That said:
As before, players would place 1 worker per turn, or spend their turn recalling workers (with a free recall once all 8 are placed -- as a sort of efficiency balance thing). When recalling workers, they level up, so you increment the dice to their next value as you collect them. While it would probably feel good to increase the power of your workers, it might not feel like progress... but suppose your recall turns are the ones where you actually go on an adventure!

So when you place your workers they are collecting resources and preparing for adventures, and when you recall them they actually go on the adventure, which means you get a chance to cash in some resources to complete adventure cards for points and stuff, and as a result, those adventurers level up. Perfect.

This sounds good to me, and makes good thematic sense as well. And it maintains the basic idea of the mechanism... do you want to recall workers early so that you can do an adventure now (I imagine those adventure cards would be in a public pool), and so that you can get a few higher level adventurers, even if it means several of your dice are left un-upgraded? Or do you wait until you have placed all of your workers, upgrading them all evenly (and getting an essentially free turn with that automatic recall thing I mentioned parenthetically above)? In addition, using different classes for dice means that if you do choose to recall early, which flavor of adventurer do you leave un-upgraded? I think these are interesting mechanical concerns which could lead to a fun, puzzly, euro-style game.

A little behind the scenes math:
Of course, at this point I can't be sure what the best number of workers per player will be, but let's take a quick look at some numbers based on 8 dice per player:

Case 1: Place all 8 dice, get a free recall, place all 8 dice again (another free recall)... After 16 turns you now have 8 level 3 dice, and have been able to do 2 adventures, and you probably could have afforded expensive ones since you collected a lot of resources first.
Case 2: Place 2 dice then recall, repeat... after 16 tuns you have 2 level 6 dice (and 6 level 1), and have done as many as 5 adventures, but of those 5 chances you probably either couldn't afford any of the available adventure cards, or were only able to afford small ones, since you're not gaining many resources before recalling.

Case 3: Place 3 dice then recall, repeat... after 16 turns you have 3 level 5 dice (and 5 level 1), and have had 4 chances to do adventures.

Case #4: Place 4 dice then recall, repeat... after 16 turns you have 4 level 4 dice (4 level 1), and have had 3 chances to do adventures.

These cases all sound interesting to me. I suspect that optimal play will unlikely mean either of the extremes (recalling every other turn, or always playing all of your workers), but might be somewhere in between, and that sounds ideal.

As for what the worker spaces do...
If going with a fantasy/adventure party/D&D style theme like this, then I imagine the board being split into a few areas...
For example, there could be a city area with places such as an Arena, where Fighters can fight to gain Glory, a Temple, where Clerics can pray to collect Faith, an Academy, where mages can accumulate Magic, and a Thieve's Guild (or a Marketplace?), where Thieves can procure Money. Again, maybe anybody can go to those spaces, but the correct class will be more efficient. There could also be generic locations such as a Blacksmith where you can get Equipment, or Throne Room where you can have an audience with the King, or a Tavern where you can learn local rumors or get information (whatever that means, maybe get side quests).

There could also be some adventuring spaces outside the town, such as a Dungeon where you can pick up side quests or minor encounters, like mini-adventures.

There would be a few face up Adventures, representing missions that are known -- maybe things the king has offered a reward for. When recalling workers, you'd have the opportunity to complete 1 of those adventure cards, as well as any number of side quests you may have picked up.

As for resources, it might make sense if each class is "good at" one of the resources (like thieves are good at getting money, and clerics are good at getting faith), but it might also be good to have some crossover, like maybe clerics are better at collecting magic than fighter and thieves, but not as good as mages, and fighters are decent at getting money, but not as good as thieves. This could offer some flexibility, though I'm not sure if it's needed.

I also think it might be good if there were basically something each resource could do besides being required for adventures, like Money could buy Equipment, or Glory might get you in good with the King. Magic might help you get cards that do special things (like the Intrigue cards in Waterdeep), while Faith might help you draw more or better adventures or side quests.

Those are my current thoughts. I might prefer a different theme, and I suppose I could re-skin all the above with some kind of spy theme where you have different types of agents, but in the meantime this sounds like it could work. I just need to get some specific locations ironed out and put together some adventures and side quests, and maybe it'll be ready to test!