Deities & Demigods: It's been a while... I've made some tweaks but haven't tested them yet.

The last time I posted about Deities & Demigods I mentioned that Hades didn't make the cut... at least not for the base game. I intend to keep him round as an expansion module (maybe on of those so-called "in-spansions").

After that post I did excise Hades, and I've played a few games without him... and I'm happy to report that it works just fine. Great! Now the game is easier to teach and learn, and is still interesting to play.

I have created all the stuff needed to try out the Hades module, but I have yet to try it out. As I was updating my prototype I made some other changes that I've also yet to try out, but I think will be pretty good...

* Buildings and artifacts no longer have set collection scoring.
I kinda liked the idea of set collection scoring on buildings and artifacts, like the Exploration cards have in Goa for example. However, it may have been a little out of control (or not), and more importantly, it was annoying to have to count up so many things at the end of the game. The more interesting rewards were the ones that gave you gold, favor tokens, devotion bumps, or advances on the Zeus track. So I just replaced all the set collection icons with those, and added another: 2 Troop movement.

* Building costs vs incentive to spread out and build in different cities.
Originally, each player was allowed only 1 building per city, so if you wanted to build another building, you had to move to another city before you could do that. There was some bonus for being the first player to build in each city, to give you some incentive to race to build in the cities before anyone else did.

More recently I've tried instead allowing multiple builds in a single city, with the rule being that you pay 1 gold per building already in the city... so if you stay put and build, it'll cost you more and more. Then the incentive to spread out is cheaper building. That was OK, but I wasn't sure I liked it.

My new tweak is this... each city now has 6 spaces for buildings. 5 of them each have one of the standard icons, the ones you find on the building and artifact cards:
- Advance x2 on the Zeus track
- 2 Troop movement
- 1 Gold
- 1 Favor token
- 1 Devotion bump

The 6th space has a better version of one of those:
- 3 Zeus track
- 3 Troop movement
- 2 Gold
- 2 Favor token
- 2 Devotion bump

The idea is that the FIRST time you build a building in a city, you may choose any remaining space to build in and collect the bonus. Any further building you build in that city is placed on top of your first building marker, and earns you no additional bonus. I had intended to also keep the cost of 1 gold for each building already built, but maybe with this tweak that's unnecessary... instead of paying more, you're giving up opportunity cost of getting those bonuses.

There's incentive to spread out so you can collect more bonuses, and there's incentive to act fast as the first player to build in each city has first dibs on the better-than-usual space.

One of those icons will be marked, and when players choose their starting city they will get the marked bonus (which will be the weaker version of whichever powered up bonus is in that town).

* Virtual Zeus phase in cycle #1.
I was thinking that Zeus was kind of boring in the first cycle or two of the game, so in the last couple of games I have tried starting the game with a Zeus round before drawing any cards. This way Zeus would come up twice in cycle 1, but only once in cycle 2 (unless someone added a Zeus card). I've enjoyed this, but I don't know if it's necessary or not. Especially with the possibility of starting with extra Zeus track advances from your starting city this might not be important anymore.

* Simplifying the board to a simple hex board.
I've always enjoyed the movement rules where you move on the vertices of the hexes rather than from hex to hex. But since I made the Quests and Cities reside inside hexes, that line has blurred. Some players get a little confused by the movement rules. It's possible the troops should just move from hex to hex and NOT reside on the hex nodes after all.

This dramatically reduces the size of the board, but if I similarly reduce the amount of troop movement you get from Ares then everything should still work similarly... so instead if 3/7/11/15 troop movement, you'll only get 1/3/5/8, and instead of costing 2 troop movement to bring a troop from your supply into play, it'll only cost 1. This simplifies Ares a bit, and the lower numbers might make movement turns easier and faster to execute.

I hope to get a chance to try these changes, as well as perhaps adding the Hades module back in with experienced players!

Shameless promotion - a couple of non-TMG kickstarters (plus Yokohama Deluxe!)

I'm not big into promoting other people's kickstarters, and as such I don't ask people to promote the projects I'm involved in either.

But tonight I played a game that a couple of local guys have up for crowdfunding right now called Martial Art. The project is funded, so this isn't a plea to help them reach their goal. It's a pretty fun little game of double-think. A 54 card deck supports 2 players for $12, and apparently you can play with up to 4 if you have 2 copies. I didn't play with more than 2, and I suspect I'd prefer 2 players anyway. However I also suspect that with 2 decks you could play a variant where each player has their own deck, which could cut down on any luck of the draw (or perceived luck of the draw) if you like.

I usually don't love the "let's both play a card at the same time" type of games, but this one was kinda fun. If you like that sort of thing then maybe give this one a shot.

Speaking of kickstarter projects, another local guy who made 3D models of the genetic component pieces for the upcoming TMG game Chimera Station is running a project for some software to help design 3D models for things like D&D characters. The software is called Desktop Hero, and you can follow the link to see what that's all about. I don't know much about the project or the software, but Andrew was a really nice guy and did a great job on our Chimera Station pieces.

So if you are in the mood to do some shopping on Kickstarter (perhaps you're backing Yokohama Deluxe from TMG...), maybe give those projects a look and see if they interest you at all.

And for those interested in Yokohama Deluxe, I'm going to be involved in fixing up the graphic design for the English edition, which is something that's definitely needed - the game is great, but the graphics make it a lot less accessible than it could be. So if you trust me, then you can be sure the game will look awesome (and I've played a handful of times, the game really is a lot of fun!)

R.I.P. Hades?

For a while now there was some question as to whether Hades has been pulling his weight. It's been a bit of a struggle to keep him relevant. Initially I was OK with Hades being a sort of support deity, enabling players to pursue building, quests, and city control. However, as Matthew Dunstan pointed out, you could pursue scoring from each of the other deities, but not Hades:

Zeus: Collect deity cards for end game scoring.

Hermes: Collect gold to spend on favor when showing devotion to deities.

Ares: Score points for controlling cities (Matthew would like to see even more in the way of scoring for Ares)

Hephaestus: Score points for buildings (I am strongly considering ditching the set collection scoring and going with something simpler, but still worth points in some way)

Hades does not provide any path to victory, and as a result, there's often no reason to add him to the deck. As yet he's served only as a way to get more troops into play, and then recycle them after doing quests or building. For me that was working, but it's become more and more apparent that it's not ideal.

I've got a couple of friends who tend to think that in a game like this, with 5 deities, a player should just be able to pick one, concentrate on it, and be competitive with another player who picked a different deity. I've never subscribed to that personally - I believe it's fine for games to have early game actions and late game actions, and I don't think it's too much to ask of a player to consider the benefit of the choices they make, and whether they make sense at this point in the game. For example, buying a big building early in a game of Puerto Rico is not the best choice, though I'll concede that they did make those too expensive for players to build right away.

But in the case of Deities & Demigods it does make sense that there be reasons to add any of the deities to the deck, so I was interested in Matthews suggestion to add a scoring avenue to Hades. He suggested adding Trial spaces to the Underworld that you could spend Hades points to occupy with troops, gaining some kind of end game bonus at the cost of permanently losing those troops. That scoring could even be interactive, like majority scoring for devoting the most troops to the trials for example.

While that does sound interesting to me, I can't help but wonder if it's really necessary. Maybe it's just too much... the explanation of this game tends to take longer than it should (EmDo is similar), so anything to reduce that would be welcome. So if Hades isn't really necessary, then it maybe better to just excise him from the game altogether like I did Poseidon.

So next game I'll try that -- no Hades at all, and no Underworld per se. Your troops will either be on your player board or in play. 2 Ares points will bring a new troop into play, and of course 1 Ares point will move troops around the board as normal.


But to stay true to theme, rather than just leave Hades on the cutting room floor, I think he could become a sort of expansion module. It actually seems like adding Hades as a module would be fairly simple...

* Devotion track for each player
* Underworld board (with Trial spaces)
* Hades starting Olympus card and a stack of 6 Hades cards
* Hades monument, talisman, and shrine (maybe other artifact/building cards that deal with Hades)
* Potentially a couple more troops per player
* Rules indicating how Trial scoring and Hades points work

If playing Hades-less works out, then I'd like to give this expansion module a shot. If it works, then maybe I can find a way to add other deities (such as Poseidon) back in as modules too!

Side note on controlling cities:
I've been struggling with city control scoring, and how it's sort of all-or-nothing. I'm beginning to think that perhaps you should only count troops, not buildings, for control of cities. Furthermore, I think the scoring should be 1 per city you have troops in, and an additional 2 or 3 if you have the MOST troops in that city. That way you can pursue some scoring by running your troops around the board, and you can score better if you make sure to outdo your opponents. I've been thinking of adding a couple of troops per player for this reason as well, so you can reasonably fight for a couple of cities.

Deities & Demigods -- quick update

I just tweeted about Deities & Demigods with a link to this blog tag, so it seems prudent to post a quick update on the latest few plays of Deities & Demigods.

The Deities

In short, I deleted Hera, Poseidon, and boats altogether so there are only 5 deities now:

Zeus: 
No longer a turn order track per se... turn order is clockwise from a start player, and the leader on the Zeus track at the end of the cycle becomes the new start player and choose a deity to resolve and add to the deck.

There are now triggered benefits every couple of steps along the Zeus track (devotion bump, God card for scoring, a Favor token, and a minimum Devotion bump), and everyone resets at the end of each cycle.

Hermes:
No change here, Hermes continues to deliver gold which you use to show your devotion to the deities.

Ares:
With the removal of boats, Ares is the deity in charge of moving your units (just "troops" now) around the board. I upped the values at each level, and I've been liking the recent update tot he board: 4 board pieces at all player counts, and you move around the hex nodes, and into the hexes at cities and quest locations.

Hephaestus:
Buildings, artifacts, and monuments haven't changed (still using a separate deck for buildings and artifacts), but the level 1 reward has changed. Instead of 1 favor token (1vp), you now get 1 gold per building you have in play (minimum 1). Having removed Hera, it's nice to have some additional income opportunities, and I like the idea of building just a couple of buildings in the early game and then ignoring Hephaestus and just taking 3 gold whenever he comes up (juxtaposed with concentrating on Hephaestus and scoring off a lot of buildings and artifacts).

Hades:
I like the existence of Hades, who brings troops back from the underworld. After removing combat from the game it was questionable whether this would be relevant though. I think I've found a way to keep Hades relevant...

Currently you start with just 2 troops in play, 4 more in your personal supply, and 4 more in the Underworld. Hades moves troops from the Underworld to your personal supply, or from your supply to play. So you can use Hades from the outset to get more troops into play. Whenever you build a building, one of your troops goes back to your supply, so Hades will help you get them back into play. When completing a quest, one of your troops goes to the UNDERWORLD, so you can either consider them lost forever, or you can show some devotion to Hades to get them back into circulation. Considering that you only have a total of 10 troops to work with, this could be a big deal.

The Demigods

Since I've changed the game so dramatically, my sample player powers kind of fell apart. I tweaked a fe of them, but rather than worry about that too much I made some standard player boards (same for all players). In the end I'd like to have A-side and B-side player boards like you see in Kings of Air and Steam for example, with more interesting, unique B-sides

Herekles:
Obviously Herekles should have some benefit when doing quests, or some small incentive to pursue a Quest strategy. I've been using "whenever you complete a quest, increase devotion to any deity by 1" which seems like a good reward. I might offer a few extra points for having done quests, but that might be too heavy handed.

Perseus:
Perseus had the ability to put units directly into play during Hades, but now that's the standard so I need to figure out something better for him. Perhaps allowing Hades to add troops to play wherever you have a troop (as opposed to wherever you have a building) for example. I'm not sure that would be good enough, but it might be interesting. I could also give a small benefit such as a gold whenever you take control of a city, or whenever another player takes control of a city away from you, to make city control more of a thing during play.

Nike:
Nike used to have a benefit on the turn order track. After the changes I think his ability has to change to something like "when resolving Zeus, move 1 extra space on the Zeus track". I'm not sure if that's good or bad though. In any case, I'd like Nike's ability to have something to do with the Zeus track.

Jason: 
As captain of the Argos, Jason's original ability had to do with Poseidon and boat movement. Of course after removing that whole section of the game, this ability will have to change! Currently the board is just an array of spaces, I have been ignoring any kind of terrain (such as water). However in the end I would like the board to have some more texture, and I would like to see water being a thing. Probably I will just say something like "water costs extra to move over", and then Jason's ability will counteract or lessen that movement penalty. Until that's added though, I think there just isn't an ability for this player board.

I'm open to suggestions as to other demigods to use, and types of abilities they might have!

The next thing I will try is to expand the starting Olympus deck to 2 of each deity, rather than just 1.

London, Paris, Deities, Demigods, Stained Glass, and Rock & Roll

LONDON

I just returned from a 12 day trip to Europe. An old online friend, Sebastian Bleasdale, got married in London, and he was kind enough to send me an invite. I suspect he didn't think I would come, but I called his bluff! I had a really good time at his wedding, and though I didn't get too much time to catch up with the busy groom, I was able to get some quality time in with a number of UK designers that I rarely see such as Matthew Dunstan, Tony Boydell, Brett Gilbert, Ian Vincent, and even caught a glimpse of big names such as Reiner Knizia and Richard Breese!

A gathering with so many designers would be nothing without a little playtesting and prototypes. I was able to play upcoming TMG title Pioneer Days (something like an Oregon Trail themed board game) with one of the designers (Matthew Dunstan), as well as test a drafting game by Tony Boydell, play an excellent mancala-rondel game by Sebastian and Ian based on my Crusaders rondel mechanism, see an interesting deck building (ish) game by Matthew, and even get my latest Deities & Demigods to the table.

DEITIES & DEMIGODS

I had some good discussion about Deities & Demigods with Matthew, who has expressed interest in co-designing that one with me, and I decided on some BIG changes -- some of which have been hanging around waiting to be tried, and some new ideas that came u in those conversations. The big changes include cutting out Hera, Poseidon, and boats altogether, and attaching the the manipulation of the Olympus deck to the initiative track itself. The original initiative track was intended to be for turn order, and there was supposed to be incentive to care about turn order. We decided that it may be easier to just have clockwise turn order from a start player, and we could reassign start player at the end of each cycle based on the initiative track. The new version has a few rewards that you get as you advance up the initiative track, and then the markers reset for the next cycle. Without Poseidon, there are simply troops that navigate the board. When we get the game working better we can add texture by saying things like "moving over water costs extra" or something. These changes worked out pretty well, as you'll see if you read on...

PARIS

After the wedding, I headed to Paris where I saw a number of touristy things including Notre Dame, the exterior of the Louvre, Ferris Wheel, Arc de Triumph, Eiffel Tower, and even Euro Disney. I enjoyed each (well, the Eiffel Tower was disappointing), even Disneyland was more fun than I expected. But I enjoyed Notre Dame most of all. In fact, looking at the stained glass windows, I came up with a new game idea... and in the following days I have pieced together a new game design, ready to be prototyped and tested! The game is a simple set collection game about building attractive stained glass windows. Watch for a future blog post about that one.

ETOURVY

When I found out that Bruno Faidutti was having a gathering during the time I'd be in France, I was excited at the prospect of attending. Bruno was kind enough to invite me, so I took a quick trip by train and got to see people like Ignacy Trzewiczek, Bruno Faidutti, Bruno Cathala, as well as other French gamers and industry folk. At the event I got a chance to play Crusaders with some folks, as well as Deities & Demigods with all the new changes. The players were great sports as I stumbled through the playtest with brand new rules, and they said they enjoyed the game a lot. The changes worked out alright, but were a little wonky, so when I got home I made a few adjustments, and managed to get two 2-player tests in on Tuesday which went very well.

ROCK & ROLL

In Etourvy I also played a pirate themed press-your-luck dice game which someone thought TMG might be interested in, and then I pulled out my press-your-luck dice game, Rock & Roll. The latest version of Rock & Roll (with changes based on Game Design Attack #4) has players rolling dice to play songs and satisfy the crowd. I had been allowing players to lock in more than 1 die at a time where possible, but there was something unsatisfying about that... after this test comments implied that a better format might be to allow players to lock in only 1 die at a time. So every time you roll the dice, you first lock all Gaffes, then you must be able to lock the next die in the song or else you bust. Even if you have more matching dice, you can only lock 1 into the song, then you must either stop and score, or roll again.

This new format makes a lot more sense, and if the songs are designed such that they start fairly flexibly then they'll naturally get harder and harder as dice get locked. Players may press their lock going for more crowd tokens, completion bonuses, and making it harder for opponents to "outperform" the song. Or they can play it safe and stop early, risking that another player outperform their song and take the card away from them.

I suspect this is the correct format for the game. All that remains now is to tweak the cards to fit the new format, redesign the songs, and see if it's really any fun :)

What a difference a month makes... Deities & Demigods playtest, new version

A whole month ago at Game Design Attack #4 I had a test play of Deities & Demigods. I posted some notes after that play and updated my prototype, but never got the game back to the table... until tonight.

I've been very busy with Chimera Station, which will be on Kickstarter later this year, so I haven't been playing much in the way of other prototypes, but tonight I finally got back to D&D. For starters, I can officially say that lesson #1 is this: Don't let a month go by between playtests!

I rushed home from work to get my table cleaned up and get the game set up. I remember basically how the game is played, and I had a vague idea of the changes I'd made... but as it's been a whole month since I've even thought about the game, when my players showed up I found myself floundering and reading through my marked up rules to see what we were going to be doing. It might have been even worse because these players had played an older version of this game, so they sort of remembered how to play -- but half of what they remembered is out of date!

So the start was a little shaky, and I felt dumb not to be more prepared... but once we got going things worked alright... for the most part. I did have to audible a card that I'd forgotten to update, and a rule or two that didn't jive with the new changes. But at the very least we were able to successfully finish the game.

In my last post I outlined changes I'd made to the prototype, I'll go through those here and comment on how they went in play:

* Use only 4 boards (at all player counts).
I did use 4 boards, and it worked pretty well. I had a note that maybe 3 boards would be enough for a 2p game, but I guess I'll burn that bridge when I come to it.

* Put 2 cities and 1 quest on each city board (2 quests and 1 city on the back).
 This worked pretty well in conjunction with the previous point. This makes for 4-8 each of cities and quests. I made a note that as a rule during setup, make sure there are at least 5 of each... I think 4 would be too few.

* Rather than interacting with cities and quests from adjacent nodes, have players travel into cities or onto quest locations.
This was a little shaky because the board wasn't really designed with this in mind, but I think it worked. The players had some trouble with it, but I suspect most of their concerns could be alleviated with better graphics/presentation/explanation.

I think I'd intended for only troops to enter cities and only boats to enter the seabound quest locations, but in  practice that seemed weird (and our board setup had an isolated lake with a quest that no boat could get to), so I ruled that troops could get to the quests even in water hexes. And I'd drawn little rivers into the cities from the hex sides that were adjacent to water, so I rules that boats could enter cities, but only from where waterways were shown. After the game I drew similar land areas leading to the Quests on water hexes, but I wonder f that's going to screw things up.

* At the suggestion that a victory point for level 1 Hephaestus might be too much, I might try changing that to 1 gold (or, 1 gold per city controlled to help incentivize controlling cities in the early and mid game).
I tried "1 gold per city controlled", and maybe that happened once. I definitely would prefer "per city where you have a building" (or similar "per building you have built")... but I'm not really sure that's better than 1 VP. The designer that made the suggestion was very adamant that it need to change. He was comparing it to the level 1 abilities of the other deities, none of which score you points. But I'm not sure that's a fair comparison... I think the proper comparison would be Level 1 Hephaestus compared with higher level Hephaestus. But I will continue to try the "gold per city" thing, including the Home City which I will be instituting for the next game.
 
* I'm contemplating changing Hera's income to "1 gold + 1 gold per city controlled" to help incentivize controlling cities in the early and mid game.
I didn't try this, but did try it for Hephaestus level 1 (see above). I didn't like tying it to "control" of a city, might be better "per building".

I still might try upping the Hera income to "1 gold per building" as well (or instead), but that doesn't make much thematic sense, and I'm not sure if it should be both here and on Hephaestus level 1.

* I've had combat in the game from the outset because I figured it went with the theme, and I'd hoped it wouldn't be much different than area majority such as El Grande. However, I'm not a player who really likes direct confrontation in games, and I think this is not the type of game that would really go along with that kind of interaction. So I will try removing combat altogether, or at least make it expensive and rare like I did in Escalation.
I dropped the combat altogether and to be honest, nobody missed it. It had never really come up before anyway (maybe because the board was too big before).

Instead the rule is that you may pass through but not end movement on a node containing opposing units. Any number of units can co-exist in a city, and in fact control of a city is based on number of units there.

I had to change a couple of cards that dealt with combat. I changed them so they had to do with gaining or losing control of a city.

* I'm considering removing the deck of building cards, and instead allowing building tokens to count toward control of a city... it would be easy and intuitive to count control that way, just count up all of your wooden pieces in the hex. I'm not sure if I like that idea or not though, and I suppose if I didn't want buildings to count toward control, they could be punchboard tokens rather than wooden discs in the final game. It would reduce components and clutter to just cut the building deck though.
I liked the idea of cutting the building deck, but I'd want to reconfigure the bonus icons... to approximate this I just said A=D, B=E, and C=F... that part was fine, but changing the buildings like this was a big mistake.

You lose a unit to build (which I like, as it keeps Hades relevant), so making the building count toward control doesn't actually gain you anything. So without getting a building card, there's really not much incentive to build buildings over artifacts! In fact, I'm wondering if there ever really was such incentive... I think the Building Cards might be a little more powerful than the artifacts in some cases, but only in some cases, and only maybe (there ARE a number of building cards with end game bonus scoring opportunities).

If I'm going to remove the building cards, then buildings would have to be a whole lot better than they are now. But I think I want the building cards back. In addition to bringing them back, I might try counting the buildings as 2 units toward control, so they help you control a city AND they give you a powr and potentially set collection scoring. That will make them better than Artifacts for sure.

To parallel quests, maybe there should be a reward for the first player to build in a city... but what? I don't think a devotion or minimum devotion bump would make any sense. Maybe some gold? Maybe you get to place a 2nd building marker (counts as extra influence toward controlling the city)? Maybe you place the building token upside down, indicating that it's worth 3 influence instead of 2?

* If I cut the building deck, I'd have to adjust the scoring icons... instead of 4 each of 6 icons, I'd probably do 3 each of 4 icons. I could also consolidate the 12 best card effects I currently have between artifacts and buildings.
I didn't do this (see above). I would do it if I do end up ditching the building deck, but currently I think I'd like to keep it.

I suppose I could combine them into 1 deck, where a building gets you both the building marker and a card, and the artifact only gets you a card, but that might be tougher to swallow thematically.

* I keep going back and forth on the turn order track and what happens if you gain initiative and land on another player's marker. Currently you always go on the bottom of the stack, no matter which direction you were moving your counter. I might change that to top of stack if advancing and bottom of stack when losing initiative and see how that goes. I think I was trying to be consistent, and I liked always going to the bottom of the stack vs always going to the top, but maybe that consistency isn't necessary.
I did try it with top-of-stack if advancing and bottom-of-stack if descending, and I think I did like it better that way.

* I don't know if this will be necessary, but if I decide I need a fail-safe way to hard cap the game at 6 cycles, I could try this... take all the Hera cards out of the deck, and instead have a supply of 6 Hera cards. At the end of each cycle, add a Hera to the deck. When that stack of 6 runs out, that's the last cycle (6 total). The game end may trigger before that, but it would keep the max length to 6 cycles. This would make Hera come up less often in the first 2 cycles, and more often in cycles 4-6, which might actually be good to facilitate more opportunities to earn the favor of the god cards.
This is still a viable idea, but I don't know if I like it. I might try it some time. I'll note that I only really need 5 Hera cards for that, not 6... add 1 at the end of each cycle, and when there isn't one to add (after the 6th cycle), the game is over.

* With a smaller board it's possible that 4 cycles would no longer be too few, so I could even change the above idea to 5 Hera cards instead of 6 (for a maximum of 5 cycles).
Not sure about this (see above), but as I mentioned, this would only require 4 Hera cards, not 5.

Now that I have the game more fresh in my mind, and I've given those things a try, I am well armed to take the game with me to London tomorrow (er, today... in about 12 hours) and hopefully play it with some people while I'm there.

2, 3, 4, 5... That's the way we subitize!

 I learned a word a few years ago from a friend of mine -- a word that I don't use nearly enough. Not that it's a common word that would come up in conversation very often, it's actually a fairly obscure word that a lot of people probably haven't heard. But there's at least 1 context in which I think I will start to use it more often.

 And the word is (drum roll please)...

 The context in which I intend to use the word subitize more is iconography. I'm currently working on a game for TMG called Chimera Station, by League of Gamemakers member Mark Major. In Chimera Station, you employ a team of alien workers to build a space station, and in order to make your workers better at various jobs you splice brains, claws, leaves, and tentacles onto them. As you build the station you'll be adding numerous modules to the board, each one representing a new worker placement space:

 I've been working with graphic designer Daniel Solis, trying to express a lot of information onto these small tiles, with a little room for background art where possible. If you've played a game that has tiles like these then you probably know what I mean... there's a lot to convey, and a few different ways to try it:

• Some games try to go language independent, replacing all English text with icons. This can lead to an overwhelming amount of hieroglyphics if the effects to be iconized are too complicated or varied.
• Some games forego icons altogether and just use English text to convey all the information. The problem here is that text takes up a lot of space, especially if it's specific and thorough. Trying to abbreviate text to take up less space can be harder to read than the over-iconizing mentioned above!
• Some games use a combination of text and in-line icons, which is what we decided to do for Chimera Station. On the down side it's not language independent... but on the up side, it offers the best chance at fitting the necessary info best and most clearly.

 It's that third option I'd like to talk about today. The first pass of the modules with in-line icons (see left images below) did manage to reduce the text, making the tiles more readable. However, the text is small, the space is compact, and most players will not even be reading it face up... so I asked Daniel to show multiple icons rather than a number followed by an icon ([coin][coin] rather than 2[coin]):

The parenthetical clarification was removed from the tile - it will be included in the rulebook. The right image shows a sample background, not the right one for this module.

 The new format looked great on tiles that only had 2 or three icons on them, but it introduced a different problem on modules with more icons on them. For example, Cryogenics allows you to trade a genetic component in for 6 coins...

Six coin icons is probably easier to read upside down from across the table. The cost (top) and VP value (bottom) on this tile got adjusted, but that's not relevant to this discussion.

 While I do think the version with 6 icons looks better than the original version, it's difficult to tell at a glance exactly how many coins you get. Which brings me to the whole point of this article... subitizing.

 The definition above indicates that humans are limited to being able to subitize about 7 items, but a more common or practical limit is more like 4 or 5 items. If you see fewer than 5 items, you can immediately know how many items there are without having to count them one by one. That's called Perceptional Subitizing.

 It could be that the 6 coin icons are too many for players to comfortably subitize, but I wasn't happy with the idea of going back to the original text version either. So I tried a simple tweak: I added a gap in the middle of the row of coin icons, separating the 6 items into two sets of 3 icons.

 Three items are easy enough for anyone to subitize, so breaking the coin icons up in to two sets will allow players to fairly easily combine 3+3 and identify 6 icons. This is called Conceptual Subitizing:

It's much easier to identify "6 coins" in the right image than the left one, isn't it? The tile also looks a lot better with the correct background :)

 There are only a couple of tiles in Chimera Station that have more than 5 icons on them, and for those I'm hopeful this format will work out.

 So, what do you think?

Were you familiar with "subitization", the concept if not the term?

In general, can we can count on people's ability to subitize in order to help create useful iconography in these games we play?

How have you used this concept in your games, even if you didn't know what it was called?

Should I include Emperor Avatars in Oblivion? Or make them a separate mini-expansion/promo?

A while ago I made something for Eminent Domain that I referred to as Emperor Avatars. These were tiles that players would draft during setup that confer some bonuses or abilities. They were intended to be an another Scenario sort of thing. I enjoyed them, and I think they worked pretty well, but I haven't done anything with them in a long time.

Now that I'm more actively working on Oblivion (PnP files are on BGG at the Tasty Tester's Guild!) I'm wondering if I should include them in that expansion -- possibly instead of Scenarios.

I recently added a host of Prestige planets and Prestige tech (for a while I wasn't going to include tech in Oblivion), and of course I already have Agendas and Clout tokens... Does the expansion really need more content? With the new tech existing it's likely I should make some Scenarios that use it, so maybe Emperor Avatars aren't necessary here.

On the other hand, I could make them into a promo item or mini expansion (or split them into a series of promos) and maybe give them away at conventions, use them as KS bonuses for Oblivion, include them in other games (perhaps Eminent Domain Origins?), or sell them for cheap.

What do you think makes the most sense here?

Crusaders and Oblivion print and play opportunities on Tasty Testers Guild!

We have something which I think is an underutilized resource... it's the Tasty Testers Guild (number 1976) over at BoardGameGeek.

In the Tasty Testers Guild we sometimes post PnP files for upcoming TMG games when they're ready for blind testing. It has worked well in the past for games such as Exotica and Battlecruisers, but sometimes I put a game up there and get little if any response.

I currently have PnP files for two of my upcoming games (through TMG of course), and if you follow this blog you will recognize both:

Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done

Crusaders is fully blind-test ready, with a rules doc as well as up to date PDF files, and the game is very nearly in its final form. If anyone has a really great suggestion for the rules I'd consider it, but I'm mostly concerned with perfecting the game end trigger timing (number of influence in the supply at each player count) and balance of the faction powers. I probably won't include all 18 of them in the game -- I might cut it down to the best or most fun and interesting 10 or so.

If you play, please let me know what you think, where the game is fun and where it wasn't, which faction powers you liked best and least, and what you think of the game end trigger (was the game too long or too short, and if so by how much?).

---


And now that Exotica has arrived and interest in EmDo is stirring:

Eminent Domain: Oblivion

Oblivion has come a long way, through several distinct iterations over the last 4 years or so. I finally have the Agenda system where I think I want it, that part of the game seems to be working very well.

I have only recently added all the Prestige planets, the whole idea of Annexing planets, an all of the tech cards, so it's likely some of them are too good or not good enough, or that I'm trying to add too much to the game.

If you play this one, please first off tell me if the description in the Tasty Testers Guild thread made sense (sorry, I don't really have a rules doc for this one yet), and tell me what you think of the Politics role, the Agendas, the Annexing of planets, the effects on the Prestige planets, and the existence of (and usefulness of) the Prestige tech cards.

Now would be a perfect time to start getting some feedback on both of those games!

Thanks, and I look forward to seeing feedback in the Tasty Testers Guild!

Tips for playtesters

With UnPub 6 coming up this weekend, the State Of Games podcast this week was all about tips for playtesters. It's a good listen for people heading to UnPub or any designer convention, or otherwise participating in their designer friends' playtests.

To prepare for that podcast, Jessica putout a call for tips from designers to help players of prototypes contribute in the most helpful way when playtesting a game. I answered the call, and they summarized some of my comments on the show. I thought I'd share my advice here for anyone interested in reading the entirety of the email I sent them :)

"What are some specific tips you have for playtesters testing your games?"

I'm going to begin this answer as I often do, with the phrase "It depends."

The type of feedback you're after will depend on what stage your game is in, so as a designer it's probably a good idea to clearly communicate that to the players before you begin. Otherwise you'll end up with players interrupting the game to make suggestions about the graphic design of the player board that you just threw together to facilitate playtesting and will obviously be redone by a professional should the game ever see print!

TIP #1: Just play the game like it's a normal game.
In most cases when I'm playtesting a game I just want players to play it as if it were a finished game that came off the store shelf. Unless I specifically request it, I'm not looking for a player to go out of their way to break the game by doing things that aren't in pursuit of their own victory. Especially in early testing... finding game breaking loopholes and edge cases is my job as the designer, not your job as the player.

Now, if a you see a loophole that you can abuse in pursuit of victory, then by all means abuse it! But it's a waste of time to intentionally try to torpedo the game while doing something you're not realistically going to do in the game.

It's a bit different in a late-stage playtest when the game is nearly done. At that point it might be good to intentionally do something stupid to make sure the game holds up. I wrote a blog post on the League of Gamemakers about making sure a bad play or mistake won't keep a player from enjoying the game experience.

Tip #2: Avoid commenting on graphic design of a prototype.

Occasionally you'll playtest a game by someone who's self publishing, or a game that's got near final art, and in that case it might be acceptable to point out flaws in the graphic design. But in MOST cases when you're playtesting a game, it will have prototype components, lovingly hand crafted by the designer. That's secret code for "cobbled together in photoshop (if not MS Word), and printed in B&W -- and if you're lucky there'll be google image art here and there." This is NOT the final graphic design of the game, and the designer knows that.

Some game designers are also graphic artists, and their prototypes make the rest of us want to hide in a ditch, ashamed of the bland, boring look of our handmade games. But even those designers are unlikely using final graphic design and iconography.

My point is that interrupting the game to say "you know, this icon should really be a triangle" or "your green and red centimeter cubes you got in bulk from an education supply store aren't colorblind friendly" is probably more disruptive than it is useful.

I hereby apologize in advance for any difficulty you have learning and playing any designer's prototype that hasn't had the benefit of professional graphic design!

TIP #3: Don't interrupt play with suggestions mid-game.

When an idea or suggestion comes up, it's tempting to bring it up before you forget, while it's fresh in your mind. But that can be very disruptive to the playtest, so often times it's better to make a note of it and bring it up after the game.

TIP #4: Bring paper and pencil to a playtest session.

Speaking of note taking, it would be awesome if the designer handed out paper and pencil at the beginning of the playtest so that players could take notes of their thoughts during the game in order to revisit them later. Some designers do this, others (like me) would if they ever remembered to... but there's nothing stopping you from bringing your own paper and pencil to a playtest session!

TIP #5: Stay on topic during feedback sessions.

Often times feedback sessions aren't very structured, and that's fine. But if a designer asks a specific question, or asks about a specific part of the game, it's probably more helpful to address that question and only that question until the topic changes, rather than sidetrack the conversation with other unrelated thoughts (even if they're well thought out and good thoughts).

Treat the problem, not the symptom

Things go wrong in playtests all the time. When something goes wrong in a playtest, it may just be an anomaly of that particular game -- but if the same thing comes up in multiple plays, then it's probably indicative of some kind of problem with the design. As designers, it's our job to identify these problems and fix them.

This may be harder than it sounds though. Sometimes the issue experienced in a playtest is merely a symptom of a deeper problem. While it may be worthwhile to fix the symptom, what we really want to do is determine the underlying problem and fix that, or else another symptom is likely to rear its ugly head before long.


By way of example I'll illustrate what I mean:

When I was originally testing Eminent Domain, instead of the 5 different role cards in the game there were 6. Produce and Trade were separate cards, not combined into one card. Produce/Trade cycles had the potential to be more lucrative than other scoring paths, but the logistics behind having to take the two separate roles, and having cards for each in your deck, were supposed to balance that out. However, in practice I found that Produce/Trade strategies were frustrating to pursue because it was hard to score well off of the cycle. So hard in fact that players would ignore that strategy altogether.

At first I tried doubling the value of a Produce/Trade cycle, thinking that with higher rewards, players would pursue the strategy. In theory that worked, I could keep increasing the value of trading until it was worth going for. But that solution treated the symptom, not the problem. The more valuable I made trading, the more variable and swingy that strategy (and the game) would become... a player trying to produce and trade might never get their cards in the right order, and when they did they'd get a disproportionately high reward, like a slot machine. The real problem here was that it sucked to have to fill your deck with 2 different cards that were terrible on their own just so that MAYBE you can use them to collect lots of points.

Fortunately one of my players (thanks Wystan!) suggested putting both roles on the same card so that whenever you draw that card, it'd work for either the Produce role or the Trade role - whichever you need at the time. This solution ignored the symptom and went straight for the throat of the underlying problem. As soon as I tried it I immediately knew it was the right solution. And as a result of solving the problem, it eliminated the symptom as well.

So let that be a lesson to you. When something goes wrong in your playtests, don't take it at face value. Make sure to look and see if the issue is merely a symptom of a bigger problem, then do what you can to fix the underlying problem.

Deities & Demigods revisited (Game Design Attack #4)

I've been happy with the structure and most of the rules for Deities and Demigods, but there have been some issues with it. By and large, the biggest issues seem to be that the game takes too long, or takes too long to get interesting. This may be largely because the board is too big for players to really interact until the very end of the game. I've wanted to shrink the board to address that, but I wasn't sure how to do so while still maintaining enough cities and quest locations. Here are some changes I made to the prototype after a playtest at Game Design Attack #4:

* Use only 4 boards (at all player counts).
* Put 2 cities and 1 quest on each city board (2 quests and 1 city on the back).
* Rather than interacting with cities and quests from adjacent nodes, have players travel into cities or onto quest locations.
* At the suggestion that a victory point for level 1 Hephaestus might be too much, I might try changing that to 1 gold (or, 1 gold per city controlled to help incentivize controlling cities in the early and mid game.)
* I'm contemplating changing Hera's income to "1 gold + 1 gold per city controlled" to help incentivize controlling cities in the early and mid game.
* I've had combat in the game from the outset because I figured it went with the theme, and I'd hoped it wouldn't be much different than area majority such as El Grande. However, I'm not a player who really likes direct confrontation in games, and I think this is not the type of game that would really go along with that kind of interaction. So I will try removing combat altogether, or at least make it expensive and rare like I did in Escalation.
* I'm considering removing the deck of building cards, and instead allowing building tokens to count toward control of a city... it would be easy and intuitive to count control that way, just count up all of your wooden pieces in the hex. I'm not sure if I like that idea or not though, and I suppose if I didn't want buildings to count toward control, they could be punchboard tokens rather than wooden discs in the final game. It would reduce components and clutter to just cut the building deck though.
* If I cut the building deck, I'd have to adjust the scoring icons... instead of 4 each of 6 icons, I'd probably do 3 each of 4 icons. I could also consolidate the 12 best card effects I currently have between artifacts and buildings.
* I keep going back and forth on the turn order track and what happens if you gain initiative and land on another player's marker. Currently you always go on the bottom of the stack, no matter which direction you were moving your counter. I might change that to top of stack if advancing and bottom of stack when losing initiative and see how that goes. I think I was trying to be consistent, and I liked always going to the bottom of the stack vs always going to the top, but maybe that consistency isn't necessary.
* I don't know if this will be necessary, but if I decide I need a fail-safe way to hard cap the game at 6 cycles, I could try this... take all the Hera cards out of the deck, and instead have a supply of 6 Hera cards. At the end of each cycle, add a Hera to the deck. When that stack of 6 runs out, that's the last cycle (6 total). The game end may trigger before that, but it would keep the max length to 6 cycles. This would make Hera come up less often in the first 2 cycles, and more often in cycles 4-6, which might actually be good to facilitate more opportunities to earn the favor of the god cards.
* With a smaller board it's possible that 4 cycles would no longer be too few, so I could even change the above idea to 5 Hera cards instead of 6 (for a maximum of 5 cycles).

I'll probably post again when I get a chance to try all this stuff. My prototype is all updated and ready to go!

Rock & Roll revisited (Game Design Attack #4)

I played Rock & Roll at Game Design Attack #4 this weekend, and Tim had a really neat idea of a slightly different sort of structure, making it a bit more like a standard Yahtzee-style press your luck game. I thought of a related way to make sure there was some interaction so the game didn't feel solitary, and after a prototype update I was able to try the new version a couple of times and I think it might be a step in the right direction. The new version is highly thematic as well -- now there are song cards, so instead of scoring individual crowd tokens for as many points as possible, you play a song in order to please as many crowd members as possible. The songs have specific die results in a specific order.

Three of these songs are dealt out in a supply, and you start your turn by rolling 6 dice bearing symbols for Vocals, Drums, Guitar, Bass, Solo, and Gaffe. Gaffes are mistakes, and you are forced to lock those in when they come up. After rolling, you must lock in at least 1 symbol required for the song, and those symbols must be done in order from left to right as you play through the song. At this point if you fail to lock in a symbol required by the song, you must end your turn, and you get a small scoring penalty. However, as long as you did lock in a symbol, you can choose to stop and score, or roll any number of the unlocked dice trying to get the next required symbol.

Of course, you can also use cards to help you. You will start with just 1 card, but you can get more: at the end of your turn, you'll draw a new card for every 2 Gaffes you had. Also, if you are able to complete the entire song, you'll collect a completion bonus, which may be extra points, or perhaps a card.

As long as you don't fail, then you score some points based on the number of dice you were able to lock in, and you take the song and place it in front of you. Any player may either choose to play a new song from the center, or attempt to outperform you on your song. In order to do so, they must lock in more dice than you were able to, and if you were able to complete the song then they must also lock in 1 additional Solo -- if they are to outperform you then they must perform the song with more gusto and flair than you did! At the beginning of your next turn, if nobody has outperformed you on your song, then you place it into your "set list" and save it for potential end game bonus scoring.

A suggestion was made to add something -- I'd call them Record Labels perhaps -- which could act like the nobles in Splendor: an in-game scoring opportunity based on the genres of songs in your set list.

When the supply of crowd tokens (VPs) is exhausted and all players have had an equal number of turns, the game ends and there will be some set collection scoring based on genres of songs in your set list.

I'm excited about this new version, and I hope to play it with a few more groups to see how it goes over.

Game Design Attack #4 -- brief recap

Over the last few years, I've hosted a game design retreat here in Tucson which I call Game Design Attack:

This year Tim Fowers and Ryan Lauket came down from Utah, and Rob came in from California again. Gil Hova and J.R. Honeycutt had to cancel, but maybe next year they'll be able to join us. Dan Keltner and David Short are locals and they stopped in for a bit as well.

The guys showed up Thursday evening, and we started out the design talk by taking turns basically describing one of the games we'd brought to work on, and discussing it. Right out of the gate there was some great discussion -- even before the games were on the table!

Over the course of the weekend, each of us got at least one game to the table

Ryan brought two upcoming Red Raven titles (or potential titles, I'm not actually sure what the full story is on them).

The first one which I saw a few weeks ago at SaltCon, a euro style game with storytelling elements that's a follow up to Above and Below. I liked it a lot, though the scoring tended to snowball a bit. After Friday night's play, Ryan made a significant change and it then on Saturday we tried it again and it was much better. I think with a few more tweaks that game will be ready for prime time!

The second game Ryan brought was a co-design with Alf Seegert called Haven. We had some suggestions about that one, and tried implementing some of them... I think that one needs a bit more work, but could become a nice light 2p game.

Rob had come up with an idea for a game, and spent some of this weekend putting together a prototype and we gave it a try. The game was about crafting weapons for knights to use in a tournament, and it involved drafting sets of cards (some known and some unknown), refining your set, and finally resolving fights with a knight and your set of cards.

Originally there was an auction for the lots of cards, as well as a low-bid auction for the knights, and much of the action was fiddly and awkward -- not surprising for a first draft! But we made some adjustments on the fly which made things better. After the game we discussed a few potential improvements such as removing gold and auctions, and instead just drafting piles of cards, and later we played again with some modifications and the whole thing worked much better.

This was definitely a game where the designer's vision did not match up with how I would have done it, so when I got home I put together a similar prototype that I might try my version of Rob's game.

Tim's latest project is Fugitive, a 2 player deduction game where one player is a fugitive on the run, and the other is a U.S. Marshall trying to catch him. I played the game at SaltCon a few weeks ago, and he's made some improvements since then. At SaltCon it seemed like the Marshall couldn't won, but now it seemed like they coudn't lose... so Tim made another tweak to try and get the balance right, and the next few games were won by some mix of fugitive and marshall - so I think it's almost there.

Tim also has a new version of Now Boarding, the game he and I came up with, prototyped, tested, and updated at Game Design Attack #1 back in 2013. The new version is quite different than the original, but has some key aspects in common of course. It's still a real time cooperative game, and the new version addresses feedback from players of the previous version that it didn't feel cooperative enough.

Tim had a 3rd game with him, one that I think he's got on his back burner. Flowchart Fighter is a 2 player fighting game, like a Street Fighter card game so to speak.

David wasn't there very long, but he was able to get his micro deckbuilder, Another Man's Treasure, to the table. It has some interesting ideas in it, but David seems to be struggling to get it to work the way he wants it to.

Dan had a new version of his puzzle game, and a new single deck card game inspired by my comments about the book track in Mombasa. I didn't play the former, but I liked the latter quite a bit. We ran out of cards, so apparently more are needed, and I thought maybe another suite of resource types might help as well, but it certainly seems like a good start.

I was able to get 2 different games to the table this weekend. Rock & Roll is a light dice rolling / resource management type of game which was intended to be a sort of follow up to Dungeon Roll -- not related to that game, but to appeal to the same type of player perhaps. I've gone through a few iterations on that game, and got it to a point where it technically worked, but I had trouble knowing whether it was good enough or fun enough for the target audience since I'm not really in the target audience.

Tim had a really neat idea of a slightly different sort of structure, making it a bit more like a standard Yahtzee-style press your luck game. I thought of a related way to make sure there was some interaction so the game didn't feel solitary, and after a prototype update I was able to try the new version a couple of times and I think it might be a step in the right direction. The new version is highly thematic as well -- now there are song cards, so instead of scoring individual crowd tokens for as many points as possible, you play a song in order to please as many crowd members as possible. I'll go into more detail about this new version in a separate post.

Finally, I also got Deities& Demigods to the table. This game has worked in a general sense so far, but I've had problems with a lack of interaction, some hesitation about combat rules, and game length. I haven't thought about this game much since last November, but after re-familiarizing myself with it and playing a game, I got to formalize the issues and get some feedback on how to address them. I had been thinking that the board needed to be smaller, but I didn't know how to reduce the size while still having enough cities and quest locations. I got some good suggestions to address those problems which I'll elaborate on in a separate post. I stayed up until 3am updating my prototype, but sadly was unable to get it back to the table this weekend, so I'm antsy to get another playtest in soon!

All in all I think it was a highly successful and very fun weekend!

Oblivion playtest -- with the new planets and techs and stuff! Big update with lots of details!

I played a 4p game of Eminent Domain: Oblivion today. If you've only just happened upon this blog, or if you've been living under a rock or something, Oblivion is the 3rd expansion to my card game Eminent Domain. The first expansion, Escalation, has been out for just over a year, and the second one, Exotica, is going to hit store shelves in about 2 weeks. Oblivion will likely be the final expansion for the game.

I've posted quite a bit about this expansion over the several years I've been working on it, so I'll assume you have read that, or will go read it if you haven't and are interested (go ahead, I'll wait...)

Yesterday I finally got around to making more planets for the expansion, and while I'd discussed not including any tech in this set (I feel like there's kind of already too many techs, and too many points in the tech stacks), there are some fairly obvious types of effects that would make sense to have. So I decided to make a couple of Diverse techs (requiring Metallic, Fertile, and Advanced planets), and more importantly a small stack of Prestige tech. This is because I also decided to make most of the new planets Prestige types, the idea being that Prestige planets are all about the politics.

Originally I'd made 5 planets... 1 each of metallic, advanced, and fertile with a Politics icon, and 2 Prestige planets with a replenishing Clout token. I had talked about making more planets of the Bustling variety (ones that give you actions -- there were a handful of those in Escalation), and I decided to make them all Prestige planets. Since I make prototypes on 8.5x11 sheets of paper and can fit 9 cards on a sheet, I made 9 new planets... which seemed like a good number actually, since there are 9 of each planet type in the base game. So in Oblivion, if I remove one of the replenishing clout planets, there'll be 10 of each planet type total. That means there'll be enough to go around that I can make a Prestige tech stack without worrying too much about people not being able to access it. In fact, I should probably make that stack more robust, but if I don't make prestige starting planets then it's not as big a deal.

PLANETS

Anyway, I made the following planets:
Advanced -- Politics icon, Silicon (3vp)
Fertile -- Politics icon, Food, Water (2vp)
Metallic -- Politics icon , Iron (3vp)
Prestige -- Replenishing Clout (2vp)
Prestige -- Action: Draw 2 Clout tokens (2vp)
Prestige -- Action: Recon the Agenda deck (4vp)
Prestige -- Action: Recon your deck (2vp)
Prestige -- Action: Swap 2 upcoming or Active Agendas (3vp)
Prestige -- Action: Dismiss up to 2 Upcoming Agendas (4vp)
Prestige -- Action: Discard a Clout token to collect 1vp (2vp)
Prestige -- Action: Annex a Planet (pay [POL] equal to its Annex cost) (3vp)
Prestige -- Action: Trade 1 Resource for 1vp and a Clout token (2vp)
Prestige -- Your planets gain Annex Cost: 6[POL] (3vp)

Having now played with these planets, I think some of them might need tweaks. The two 4vp planets' actions are pretty weak or narrow, but that's why I made them 4vp. I could potentially add resource slots to some of them, but historically, Prestige planet resource slots can hold "any resource", and that might interact too strongly with some of the Agendas (then again, maybe that's a good thing).

ANNEXING PLANETS

I mentioned an Annex cost in the previous section. All of the new Prestige planets have an Annex cost listed on them (they're all Annex Cost: 4[POL]). There are a few effects which give you ACTION: Annex a planet (pay [POL] equal to its Annex cost). In addition, as an option when doing a Politics role, instead of activating or dismissing an Agenda, you may Annex a planet (which of course means flip it over by paying it's annex cost).

John suggested that the Politics cards could have "ACTION: Annex a planet" on them, but for one thing, the Politics cards already have an action printed on them, and for another I wouldn't want to have to reprint all the politics cards! Also, it might be too easy to flip the Prestige planets that way.

The Improved Political Influence tile (hmm, maybe I should just call that the "Politics tile" -- "Political Influence is a very long term!) now has All planets gain Annex Cost: 7[POL] instead of the extra vp for trading at least 3 different resources at a time.

I'm not sure those costs are perfect, they may need some tweaking. I settled on 7 for the Politics tile because Improved Politics also gives you a Politics icon, so you really only need 6 other ones, and that's on par with one of the more expensive Agenda costs (and so shouldn't be impossible). It might be too high though, and I could see bringing that down to 6. 5 seems awfully low, though it's still higher than the standard Annex cost of 4 printed on the Prestige planets.

TECHNOLOGY

As I mentioned, I made just a couple of Diverse tech cards:
Diverse Lobbyist (Diverse perm L1): [POL] (a permanent politics icon)
Diverse Clout (Diverse perm L1): Whenever you draw Clout tokens, draw 1 more and then discard a Clout token.

Filibuster (Diverse perm L1): When dissenting a role, draw 1 clout token.
Party Whip (Diverse perm L1): When another player follows your role, draw 1 clout token.

And I made one of each Advanced, Fertile, and Metallic tech:
Farming Subsidy (Fertile perm L1): ACTION: Discard any number of Clout tokens. produce 2 resource for each clout discarded this way.
Grassroots Movement (Fertile perm L1): Your [COL] icons can be used as [POL].

Free Trade Agreement (Advanced perm L1): Once per turn: You may discard a Clout token to collect 1vp.
Scientific Community (Advanced perm L1): Your [RES] icons can be used as [POL].

Political Climate (Metallic perm L1): ACTION: Recon the Planet deck for a Prestige planet.
Police State (Metallic perm L1): You may attack planets by paying [F] equal to the Annex cost.

And of course, a handful of Prestige tech:
Political Annexation (Prestige L1):ACTION: Annex a planet (pay [POL] equal to it's Annex cost).

Campaign Trail (Prestige L1): ACTION: Target planet gains Annex cost: 4[POL] until end of turn.

Targeted Lobbying (Prestige L1):ACTION: Recon the Clout tokens for any one token and take it.

Call in a Favor (Prestige L1): ACTION: Trade up to 3 Clout tokens for 1vp each.

Wheel & Deal (Prestige L1): ACTION: Trade a resource for a Clout token and another different resource (doesn't need a slot).

Executive Order (Prestige L2):  ACTION: Activate the rightmost Upcoming Agenda, or Dismiss the rightmost Active Agenda. (2vp)

Prestige Clout (Prestige perm L2): Whenever you draw Clout tokens, draw 1 more and then discard a Clout token. (2vp)
Prestige Lobbyist (Prestige perm L2): [POL] (2vp)

Many of these techs are permanent because I have a few Agendas that refer to permanent techs, and I thought it would be interesting to have several in the game even when not playing with Escalation or Exotica. I feel like some might be too strong at L1, but who knows. I'm not sure if I want to keep the Diverse tech or not, I could just delete Diverse Lobbyist and Diverse Clout and make Party Whip and Filibuster into Prestige techs. Then I wouldn't have to explain Diverse Tech in the Oblivion rulebook for just 2 cards.

I currently just have a [POL] icon on each of the Prestige tech (2 icons on the L2 tech). I suppose I could make sure there are at least 6 L1 prestige techs, and put a role symbol on each (in addition to the [POL] icon).

AGENDAS

The current Agendas look like this:
* When activated or removed: Recon the Agenda deck for any 1 Agenda and put it into the center active slot.
* Return any one Upcoming Agenda to the bottom of the deck, then Recon the Agenda deck for any 1 Agenda.
* Attacking a planet requires 2 more [F]. When activated: Settle a planet.
* Attacking requires 2 fewer [F]. When activated: collect 2 [F].
* After your turn, if you have at least 1 Adv, Fert, & Met planet in play (face up), collect 1vp.
* After your turn, if you have the most Advanced planets in play (face up), collect 1vp.
* After your turn, if you have the most Fertile planets in play (face up), collect 1vp.
* After your turn, if you have the most Metallic planets in play (face up), collect 1vp.
* After your turn, if you have the most permanent techs in play, collect 1vp.
* Collect 1vp each time you play a L1 tech card for its action. When activated: Take an L1 tech.
* Colonize costs are increased by 2. When activated, Attack a planet.
* Colonize costs are decreased by 1. When activated, Settle a planet.
* Research costs are increased by 2. When activated: Take an L1 tech (ignore pre-reqs).
* Research costs are decreased by 1. When activated: You may spend [RES] to buy a tech card.
* Agenda Activation costs are increased by 1. When activated: Remove 1 Active Agenda from play.
* Agenda Activation costs are decreased by 1. When activated: Return an Upcoming Agenda to the bottom of the deck.
* +2 Produce symbols per Produce role. When activated: Produce any 2 resources (no slot required).
* -2 Produce symbols per Produce role. When activated: Produce any 2 resources (no slot required).
* +2 Survey symbols per Survey role. When activated: Take the top Planet card (face down).
* -2 Survey symbols per Survey role. You may keep 1 additional Planet per Survey role. 
* Hand size +1 for each permanent tech in your empire. When activated: Draw 3 cards & play another action.
* Hand size +-1 for each permanent tech in your empire. When activated: Draw 5 cards & ignore hand limit this turn.
* Annex costs are increased by 2. When activated, Improve Politics tile.
* Annex costs are decreased by 2. When activated, All other players downgrade Politics tile.
* Tech cards may not be played as actions. When activated: Take an L1 tech.
* You may trade Clout tokens as if they were resources. When activated: Draw 2 Clout tokens.
* [POL] icons can be used as [WAR] or [PRO] icons.
* [POL] icons can be used as [WAR] or [TRA] icons.
* [POL] icons can be used as [SUR] or [PRO] icons.
* [POL] icons can be used as [SUR] or [TRA] icons.
* Choose a resource type. +1vp when trading if you trade at least 1 resource of that type.
* Choose a resource type. ACTION: Discard that resource to collect 1vp + any other resource.
* Choose a resource type. ACTION: Discard that resource + Water to collect 3vp and a Clout token.
* Choose a resource type. ACTION: Discard that resource + Food to collect 3vp and a Clout token.
* Choose a resource type. ACTION: Discard that resource + Iron to collect 3vp and a Clout token.
* Choose a resource type. ACTION: Discard that resource + Silicon to collect 3vp and a Clout token.

I think I need to test more, but most of these seem alright. I'm not sure what a good Agenda deck size would be. I used to want the deck to be small enough that if an early Agenda got dismissed, there would be a chance to see it again later, but I think that's unlikely to matter in practice so I think I'll stop worrying about that.

ALTERNATE VICTORY CARD

I still need to come up with an Alternate Victory card for this set: Political Victory being an obvious title, but I'm not sure what to make it. All of the alternate victory cards so far have been double sided, so I might need something to go on the back. I think I had an idea for "Traditional Victory: Nobody can with with an Alternate Victory card." or something like that.

But there was also the idea that the Alternate Victory card be an Agenda, one that's always available and has a high Activation cost. Maybe that would be too easy to achieve... but maybe Traditional Victory could be such an Agenda, which means you couldn't win by an alternate victory while it's in play, but could be dismissed (for a high cost). Also, that way players wouldn't be afraid to follow your Politics role for fear of an instant win!

So what should Political Victory do? It could be a planet that's always available, need not be surveyed, cannot be attacked or settled, and can only be Annexed (with a high Annex cost), but that has a similar problem as an instant win agenda.

It would be neat if you didn't have to use the Research role to access it. The obvious thing would be to tie it to the Politics role somehow. Maybe have it cost some number of Clout tokens? Except you can just draw 1 for an action every turn and then win... Hmm. I'll have to give it some more thought. If you have any ideas, leave them in the comments!

What ever happened to that Mars themed game?

I've heard of a number of Mars themed games coming out soon, and I've even heard of a few other Mars themed prototypes in the design community. Some have said that 2016 is going to be the year of the Mars game, like 2010 was the year of the wine game.

Every time I see something about a new Mars game, it reminds me of the thoughts I've had in the past about my own game about colonizing mars. Makes me want to re-read my old blog posts on the topic and see where I left that one.

Maybe the recent popularity of Mars (combined with the discovery of water last fall?) will give me some impetus to actually prototype that game and try it out!

More Oblivion tests and thoughts

I got some really nice comments on my last post about Oblivion, but the game has been on the back burner ever since. But I did bring it with me to SaltCon last week, and I managed to play several games, with 2, 3, and 4 players. They were a good sample of games, and they reinforced for me that the structure is sound, and that what I need to do is flesh out the rest of the expansion.

Adding tech

I'd said that I don't want to add more tech to the stacks. But it seems natural to add at least an L1 tech to each stack that has to do with with the Agendas or the Clout tokens.

Perhaps I could add a couple Diverse techs, as that stack isn't terribly big so far.

Or as mentioned in that last post, I could make a new stack of Prestige tech... hopefully that won't throw off people who read the original rules for Prestige planets which say they don't help with research (I had meant that they don't qualify you for the techs that existed at the time).

As an example, I think it would be good to have a tech that gives you a permanent Politics icon.

Agendas

I have edited many of the Agendas to try and make them all attractive to activate, but a few still need work. The key is that all Agendas have a benefit for the person activating them so that they don't just sit there being boring. Some of the really good ones are like "Increase all warfare costs by 2. When activating this agenda, settle a planet."

I created a series of 6 agendas that give everyone the action "trade [Food] and [Iron] for 4vp and [Silicon]" or similar. There are 6 so that they cover every combination of food, water, iron, and silicon. The idea being that if you produce exactly those resources, then those agendas are really good for you, and if you don't, then you can use your Political Influence tile's action to trade what you do produce for the right stuff.

I like these, and it's kind of neat to chain them together, but I don't like that there are so many of them. It's a bit boring if multiples come up, and especially if nobody tries to take advantage of them. I thought about just having 1 or 2, and letting the activating player choose which resources get traded in ("When activating this agenda, place 2 different resources from the supply onto it. Action: Trade the two resources on this card for 4vp"). Michael suggested instead that I make 4 cards, each with 1 specific resource, and let the activating player choose the other ("When activating this agenda, place 1 resources from the supply onto it. Action: Trade Water and the resource on this card for 4vp" - maybe force the chosen resource to be different than the given one, maybe not). I don't mind that idea, but I wonder if 4 is still too many such cards.

I had originally made 4 different cards that gave +1vp when trading at least 1 resource of a particular type (one for each type), and I cut that down to 2 cards where the activating player chooses the type. I suppose just 1 of those could be enough? And maybe 4 of the "Action: Trade 1 X and 1 Y for 4vp" (where X is given, and Y is chosen by the activating player) might be OK too. Worth trying at least!

"When activating, put a resource on this card. ACTION: Trade that resource for vp + any other resource" might be a good Agenda to try as well.

I made 2 agendas that adjust people's hand size: one that increases your hand size by 1 for each permanent tech you have, and one that decreases your hand size for each permanent tech you have. These hand size adjusters should probably get "When activating, draw 3 cards" or something added onto them, to encourage people to activate them. Or maybe "...draw 3 cards and then play an Action" or "...draw 3 cards and ignore your hand limit this turn." Michael suggested that instead of "Hand size -1 for each permanent tech (min hand size 3)" that it should be "Hand size -1 for each permanent tech (max -3 hand size)" because he didn't like the idea of someone's hand getting completely obliterated such that they can't play... but that would only happen if they have a lot of permanent techs, and that's kind of the point of the card, so I don't think I would want to change it. I figure that agenda might be most useful in conjunction with Escalation, to combat things like Peace Treaties. It's inclusion however might help justify adding a few permanent techs to the game (maybe 1 in each stack, for example, plus 1 Diverse or Prestige type).

 

Agendas that give you an action upon activating them seem really cool. I really like the ones that let you attack or settle a planet for example, or take an L1 tech card.

 

Maybe an Agenda that says "Collect 1 Influence when you play a L1 (3-cost) tech for it's action." would be cool. Maybe you get to take an L1 tech (that you qualify for?) when activating it. That would benefit everyone, since most players would have a couple L1 techs, but it would really benefit a player that has many L1 techs, when most of the time you'd just want a couple, then you want to get to L2 techs asap. I could imagine a strategy where you get that in play, get a lot of L1s and thin other cards out of your deck so that you're gaining a vp each turn from playing an L1 tech :)

Planets

I've been saying that I would like to add some of the tech-style abilities onto Bustling planets instead, which means adding some number of planets to the deck. I don't mind adding planets to the deck -- the more I do that, the less bad it is to do big surveys.

What I've been strongly considering is giving each planet in this set an alternate "Annex" cost in addition to the Colonize and Warfare costs. This cost would likely be about 4 or 5 in all cases. Then, as a 3rd option during a politics role, you could use the politics icons to Annex a planet that has an Annex cost. Then the Improved Political Influence tile could have the ability (instead of a trade bonus) to give every planet an Annex cost of 6 or something like that.

Alternatively, maybe the standard PI tile gives everything an Annex cost of 8, and the improved side brings that down to 6.

Another idea is to have an action that says "ACTION: Reveal X Politics icons to Annex a planet", which would be sort of like a boostable action. This could be on the Improved Political Influence tile, or potentially on a new Bustling planet. I'm not sure if I want to add a boostable action to the game all by it's lonesome though.

An interesting comment on my last post suggested that the new planets be not shuffled into the deck, but permanently available to the first player to Annex them. This is an interesting idea which merits more thought... it's not what I had in mind, but it might be a good idea.

Another "Seth Jaffee Development"

I remember back in 2008 having aspirations of becoming a professional game developer. I enjoyed designing games, and wanted to have some published, but I felt my real strength was in development.

I should clarify... in the video game world, the term "developer" is often synonymous with "designer" and "programmer". That is an unfortunate fact of language and jargon, as in the board game world it means something different. The best way I've found to describe it is to liken games to books:

Books have an author, who comes up with the idea for the story, writes a rough draft, and refines it into a finished book.

Books have an editor, who cleans up the language, revising the story as needed, and puts on finishing touches for publication.

And books have a publisher, who chooses which books to publish, employs editors and printers, and brings the book to market.

Games draw a distinct parallel to books in many ways, and production is no different:

Games have an author, who comes up with an idea for the game, writes a preliminary rule set, playtests and iterates to refine it into a finished game. In the board game world we often refer to the author as the "designer".

Games have an editor, who cleans up the balance, revises the mechanics as needed, and puts on finishing touches for publication. In the board game world we often refer to the editor as the "developer".

And of course games have a publisher, who chooses which games to publish, employs developers and manufacturers, and brings the game to market.

Ever since Michael started Tasty Minstrel Games back in 2009, My dream of becoming a professional developer has become more and more a reality... Indeed, today I can list Board Game Developer and Board Game Designer on my resume alongside Structural Engineer. Achievement unlocked!

A few years ago, Michael suggested that I launch a company to do game development, rather than doing it as an individual. I guess the idea there is to build a brand, and maybe position myself better down the road. I didn't mind the idea, but as someone who's usually quite comfortable with the status quo, I never got around to pursuing the idea. Recently Michael brought it up again, and I have finally started looking into it a bit.

I figure one major part of building a brand is to have a name and accompanying logo. I think a logo on game boxes will be much more recognizable than my name in small print on the back of the box or buried in the rulebook. I know a lot of great graphic designers, but before I shell out a couple hundred bucks to one of them for a professional quality logo, I thought I ought to have a good idea of what I want. As such, I started to think of (a) names for such an endeavor, and (b) concepts for a logo design.

As for a name, I'm fond of Seth Jaffee Development. It's straightforward, it includes my name, and it's even got a subtle bit of word play -- as in, anything I put the logo on could be considered a Seth Jaffee development. And if it's a game, hat probably means it was developed by Seth Jaffee.

As for a logo, I have two front-runner ideas that I kinda like. I'm open to suggestions for others as well.

Seth Jaffee Development logo idea #1

Possibly the better of the two ideas, Idea #1 is to make the logo look something like a professional stamp -- like a seal of approval. For reference, I pinned a few images I found online (I especially like this one). My quick not-an-artist mockup in MS Paint looks something like this:

In an effort to get a better idea of what this would look like, I went on fiverr.com and solicited a better version of this logo idea. I'm sorry Gavan, I know you hate that site, but my plan was to get concepts fleshed out, and maybe find a designer I could hire in the future for real work. 

To be honest, I didn't expect much for $5... and this is what I got (after 1 revision -- the first version looked almost exactly like my attempt above):

In general I think this does a better job of communicating my initial idea than my sketch did, but I would want something a lot better/cooler looking than this for a finished logo.

Seth Jaffee Development logo idea #2

The other thought I had was to do something that incorporated my signature, which appears in shiny foil ink on the covers of the Eminent Domain boxes for Kickstarter backers. I like that autograph, and I could see using it in the logo above as well (professional seals are always accompanied by a signature).

But the other idea I had was to just use the autograph itself, along with the word DEVELOPMENT, perhaps in a style like was used for the Eminent Domain tech card titles (like a shiny metallic look). My crappy sketch in MS Paint:

Attempt #1 from the fiverr guy (I'll note that the colors look wrong in this PNG):

In some ways I like this one... it's simple, kind of elegant, and I like the red highlight (again, the colors are all weird in that png). But I had asked for that to be my actual autograph, and I wanted some more texture to the letters, so after a revision request I got this:

To be quite honest, I feel like this is pretty half-assed. The first version of Idea #2 seemed like they put more thought and effort into it, this one looks like they just took files I sent them and dropped them on top of each other. As I said, I didn't expect much for $5, but the spacing is pretty poor, and the size of "development' seems pretty small compared to the rest. I suspect this would look a lot better if that bottom word were bigger and moved such that it were more centered, and with the top of "development" much closer o the bottom of the "eth" and "a" in my name. And maybe the autograph would look good in a dark red or burgundy?

Now that I have these (and actually, I should have another set coming from a different designer), I should be have a better idea of what I want, and maybe a better starting point to give a real graphic designer to work from. I was kind of hoping that the $5 "tryout" would impress enough that I'd want to hire the designer themselves... I feel like that's what fiverr is really good for. But so far, I'm not all that impressed. Maybe I'm just spoiled by being friends with so many great graphics people!

So, what do you think? Which of these ideas seems better to you? Do you have an idea you think would trump these? I'd love to read about it in the comments!

EDIT: My good friend, a professional graphic designer from Uruguay, read my comments about this on FaceBook and surprised me with a really good version of a logo! Check it out and let me know what you think:

 I really like it. but I'm not sure about the "Board Game" part, or the doubling up of my name -- I suppose that's because the autograph might not be legible. Any suggestions or comments on this?

One thing I noticed from the last one above (the on I called "half-assed") was that they took my signature and cleaned up the lines a bit or something... made them look bolder. Does anybody thing that looks better than the signature in the latest version?