Joan of Arc prototype updated!

Prototype updated!
* All starting tiles have 1 coin on the back (3 of them also have a weapon).
* 1 starting tile has "cull 1 tile from your rondel" as the action on the front. I'm not sure I'll keep that, for one thing there's a chance a player could cull their bag down to fewer than the 6 tiles needed to fill their board, and I kinda think that would be dumb...
* 1 Starting tile has "+2 move" on the front. I figured maybe it would be good to have a big move on there. We'll see how that goes.
* 6 starting tiles have weapons on the front (2 of each weapon: sword, Bow, Pike).
* 4 starting tiles have a gold on the front.

* You can now buy a gold token (should give that another name. "War Chest"?) for 2 gold, which you can save and spend later as 1 gold.
* You can now buy movement for 1 gold each. Maybe that should be 2 gold, so you can buy anything for 2 gold (weapons, movement, and war chests)

* All Major Battles (I think I'll call them "Sieges") are just a straight 10 points now.
* Each Minor Battle ("Skirmish") has an ability rather than points. Well, 3 have 5 points and no ability. All 16 of them will be in play every game. The abilities are...
-- +1 move per turn
-- +1 gold per turn (this might be too strong, unless movement costs 2 gold, or maybe it should cost 4 fight icons instead of 3)
-- +1 sword per turn
-- +1 bow per turn
-- +1 pike per turn
-- You require 1 fewer icon to train Joan (so this is like +1 sword/bow/pike, but only for training)
-- Collect 1 extra VP when training Joan (so you get some extra points, but you make it easier for everyone to win battles)
-- You may move +1 rondel space each turn (this is sort of like "+1 resource at random, based on the tiles in your bag. Early game it's probably a gold, but late game it could be better stuff. This could be too strong, and might ought to cost 4 instead of 3 fight icons)
-- You may buy 1 weapon for 1 gold each turn (this is like +1 gold each turn, but only if you are buying a weapon. Another reason +1 gold (above) might be too strong)
-- Immediately cull any tiles from your rondel (this could theoretically thin your deck, but it might just suck. Maybe it should include your discard pile. I'm not convinced culling is great in this game, but who knows)
-- You may cull 1 tile from your rondel each turn (if culling turns out to be useful, then this could be good. It's pretty limited in that you can only choose a tile on your board. I'm not sure culling is good in this game anyway, but who knows)
-- You may buy 1 gold token ('war chest'?) for 1 gold each turn (this is like +1 gold, but only if you're buying a war chest)
-- You may swap 2 tiles after replenishing your rondel each turn (I suspect this could be very useful for planning ahead, making all turns at least a little bit better)

Now to give it another play!

Joan of Arc - playtest #2... promising!

For anyone interested and paying attention, I had a great playtest today. 3 players (Stacie, Fiki, and Hilary) gave the game a shot. This is version 1.2, with a couple of tweaks to the starting decks since the inaugural 2p game I played with Michelle. It went well. Better than I thought, in fact. I got a chance to see several specific areas where I could make improvements: * In the first play I allowed 1 free movement point per turn, so you could always move Joan around the board. Many turns it seemed like we didn't have the right weapons to win any battles, so moving didn't really matter, and I don't like a player being asked to make a decision that they don't care about or don't have any way to choose 1 thing over another. So when I updated the starting decks, I added a lot of movement points, and I removed the automatic one. I wasn't sure that would really make much difference, but overall I thought I added enough movement that when the board got sparse, there would be enough movement to get where you wanted to go. I don't think I like how this played out. There were many turns when players couldn't fight a battle, even if they had the right weapons, because they just didn't have any movement. One turn in particular in the mod-late game, one player had a turn where she had the weapons for ALL of the remaining battles except 1, and even had some movement, but not enough movement to reach any battles! I think the solution may be to allow players to PURCHASE movement with gold. I could keep movement points in the decks, but as a standard maybe players should be able to buy movement... it comes with the opportunity cost of not being able to buy anything else with that gold, and it might add the flexibility needed. I'm considering making 2 gold be the cost for anything (any 1 weapon, 1 movement point, etc) to make it really easy to remember, but for movement I feel like it might be appropriately costed at 1 gold per movement point. * You're allowed to buy any 1 weapon for 2 gold, and I like that. I wondered whether it should be allowed to sell 2 matching weapons for 1 gold as well. In fact, should there be a universal rule that you can 2-for-1 anything into anything else? After we talked about it, I don't think that would be good. A sword is a sword, the thing about gold is that it's flexible (but inefficient). * It seemed a bit difficult to get enough gold to buy tiles on a regular basis. I blame this on the starting tile mix... out of 12 tiles, 8 of them have a gold on them. But only 5 have the gold on the back side (you get that by moving over a tile)... 3 of them had the gold on the front side (you only get that if you land ON the tile). Too often this meant there wasn't enough gold coming up. I had gone into this with the typical deckbuilding mindset of having weak cards in your starting deck (or weak tiles in your bag in this case), with the point being to buy better tiles and improve your bag so you get better hands. However, I wonder if a better plan wouldn't be to have your starting deck actually be GOOD at the early game stuff, but bad at late game stuff, and then the tiles you buy will make your bag better at the late game actions (fighting). The way this could manifest is to have gold on the back of EVERY starting tile, maybe in ADDITION to other things (like Gold+Sword, Gold+Move, etc). That way you can buy guaranteed to afford tiles in the early game. I think it might be interesting that way, as your deck would fairly quickly get diluted with "better" tiles, causing you to necessarily get less gold each turn... UNLESS you specifically buy tiles that have gold on them to keep your money high. But if you do that, it's at the expense of other symbols, such as weapons. I think I will give this a try in the next test.

* Another idea to help the money situation is to create Gold tokens, and allow them to be bought, say for 2 gold. These tokens would be stored, and you could spend them on a future turn. This way, if you only get 2 gold in a turn, you could sort of bank it (as 1 gold for later), to build up to buying a more expensive tile. Again, this would be at the expense of buying a tile, or a weapon, that turn.

* Fiki had an interesting idea for a tile action that lets you automatically train Joan of Arc. I think I would make 1 of each type ("Train Swords at no cost" for example). This would allow you to advance the sword skill track (as if you had paid) and collect the points. It's like saying "+2 Swords, but only usable for training". This would probably cost 3 or 4 gold, depending on what's on the back.

* Stacie thought it would be good to have some way to re-shuffle your bag early. This could be a tile action (like Dominion's Chancellor), or as she suggested, it could be something you get to do when you arrive at a space that's been cleared of its battle. That might be interesting in the mid-game, if you can't fight a battle, maybe you could move to a space with an arrival action you'd like to do... reshuffle your deck, cull 1 tile, swap two adjacent tiles on your rondel, +1 gold this turn... stuff like that.

* Hilary really wanted a way to cull your deck. There are some tiles that let you do that, but they hadn't come up. I'm not sure that would really be desirable, especially if I make the starting tiles "better"... but it could be something players want... I could see adding 1 front-side starting tile action that says "cull 1 tile from our rondel", just in case people want to use it.

* Currently, the Skirmishes are all worth 5 points and nothing else, while the major Battles - while they cost 2x as much - are worth 10 points AND they give you an ability. I really think that needs to be the other way around. The Skirmishes should be worth next to no points and come with a useful ability, while the ate-game battles should be worth more points, with little or no ability. Of course, that doesn't preclude the potential for a weird Battle with an insanely god ability that's not worth many points, or a Skirmish or two with a lousy (or no) ability that's worth more points than the rest of the skirmishes.

I look forward to tweaking the game and trying again, hopefully soon!

"Worker Learning" revisited (a "duh" moment)

About a month ago I posted about a game mechanism that could have some potential... Worker Learning, a worker placement game where your workers get better as you use them, incorporating aspects of games like Solforge and Concordia.

In that post I brainstormed a mechanism by which your workers got better as you played them. It was a potentially fiddly idea wherein each worker had a name or reference (A-G for example), and then your player board would have a track for each worker to indicate its level.

Tonight, while listening to a podcast, I heard mention of Biblios, described as a game where you have dice but you don't roll them... and upon hearing that, I had an epiphany. One of those "duh" moments that you can't figure out why you didn't notice it before.

Why not have your workers be dice! Not dice that you roll, but dice that indicate the worker's level!

So you could place a die, resolve the action, then increment the die face. In addition to the resolution of spaces ramping up with worker level, larger value dice could potentially be allowed to go to an occupied space, so long as their current value is higher than the value of the die occupying the space. This would probably make the whole idea of tracking worker levels much less fiddly.

As I said, I can't believe I didn't think of it before. This isn't even the first time I've considered using dice as workers where the pip value indicates level... my comments on Euphoria generally include something about a missed opportunity -- I would have preferred if the dice in that game were not rolled, rather the pip values indicate the knowledge level of the workers, and stronger actions increase the worker's knowledge, so when a worker becomes too enlightened and goes away, it's because of your actions, not a die roll.

Anyway, I wanted to get that down before I forgot it. If I ever get around to building a game out of this Worker Learning mechanism, then I'm pretty sure using dice for the workers is the way to go!

But before I worry too much about that... Joan of Arc!

Joan of Arc: Maid of Orleans -- bag building rondel game

A little bit of history

Orleans is a game by Reiner Stockhausen that debuted at Essen in 2014. Soon after, TMG partnered with DLP (Reiner's company) to bring the game to the US, and we had a very successful Kickstarter project for a Deluxified version of the game. TMG has gone on to make "Deluxification" something of a brand, and we have since done Kickstarter projects for Deluxified versions of Yokohama and Chimera Station, and I'm sure there will be more to come. Orleans was greeted very warmly both in Europe and in the US, and it went on to win some awards and honors including a nomination for the Kennerspiel des Jahres in 2015. In the last year or so, 2 expansions have come out (Orleans: Invasion, and Orleans: Handel & Intrigue) as the game continues to be popular.

Almost a year ago now I was put onto the idea that perhaps a follow up game to Orleans would be welcome. This follow up game could be themed around Joan of Arc, as that's the first thing many people think about when they hear the name Orleans. I was unsure if Reiner was working on such a game, or interested in one from an outside designer, so I contacted him to find out. It turned out that he was interested in a Joan of Arc themed game to follow up Orleans, but he was too busy to make one of his own by Essen 2016, so he was shelving the idea.

I hadn't put any more thought into it beyond that, but come October I met with Reiner while at Essen. That week I had an idea that I thought could fit the bill, and so I asked if a Jan of Arc follow up to Orleans was still of interest to him. He said that it was, and so I fleshed out my ideas further and wrote down a preliminary rule set.

What I've been up to

I have been busy in the last few months getting 4 different games ready to go to print, all potentially in time for GenCon (though we'll see which ones actually turn out to be GenCon releases). So while I did begin making a prototype of the Joan of Arc game, I never completed one or played it. Now that I'm about to be unencumbered by Crusaders, Eminent Domain: Oblivion, Pioneer Days, and Harvest, starting next month I will be diving head first into working on this Joan of Arc game whole hog.

Here is some teaser information (and by teaser information, I pretty much mean a full description of the game I have in mind)...

Description of the game

In Joan of Arc - Maid of Orleans you will play as a saint giving visions to Joan of Arc, encouraging her to fight certain battles and accomplish certain tasks in order to achieve your own private goals. The board will show the north of France, covered in blue tiles [er, red... see comments below] representing English-controlled areas (battles for Joan to fight). As Joan wins battles, driving the English out, the tiles are removed to reveal a red [er, blue... see comments below], French controlled board underneath.  Many of these tiles will be minor battles, easier to defeat, but not worth as much, while certain significant battles will be much harder and worth a lot more points.

The action in this game will be driven by a bag-building rondel... there will be square tiles that you will place into your bag, and you'll draw some out and place them in a circle on your personal rondel board. You'll move your pawn around this rondel, activating tiles and collecting temporary resources to be used that turn to buy better tiles for your bag, or to move Joan of Arc around the board and help her win battles. As you move over tiles, they will be discarded and replaced with new ones drawn from your bag. Of course, when your bag is empty, you will put your discards into it and continue to play. Over time, your bag will become full of better tiles, so your actions will become stronger. 

Over the course of the game, you will help train Joan of Arc to be better at different aspects of fighting, and you will have her win battles for points and powers as she drives the English out of northern France. You'll score points by training Joan, by making her win battles, and by achieving your secret goals (which are related to the things Joan of Arc does on the board).

I have some more details in mind about exactly how these mechanics work, but as I mentioned, I have only half-created a prototype so far, but I have a pretty solid structure that I envision for the game. I'm sure once I get a prototype together and get the game to the table, there will be plenty of tweaks and changes to make; such is the design process. Perhaps once I get a few playtest iterations in, I'll feel comfortable sharing the rules here.

Why I'm excited

I'm excited about this design for a couple of reasons... 

For one thing, I think the bag-building rondel mechanism will work well, and has the potential to be a good euro-style driving mechanism for the game. 

Second, I think the theme fits well with the mechanism -- Joan of Arc was famous for hearing voices and getting visions from saints, so it makes sense that players are each sharing control of a single Joan of Arc figure on the board, and each trying to get her to do certain tasks. 

And finally, with the success and popularity of Orleans, I think such a follow up game (with similar branding) has the potential to reach a lot of players, and so will get played a lot right out of the gate.

What do you think?

Let me know in the comments below what you think of a Joan of Arc bag building game. What aspects would you expect to see in such a game? Does this sound like a game you'd like to play?

Casual Q&A

You've probably seen AMA threads (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit and elsewhere, where someone will make themselves available for a day to answer whatever questions people would like to ask them. I've done one myself to promote Yokohama when it was on Kickstarter.

I'd like to do a sort of casual version of that here on my blog. So if you'd like to ask me something, leave your question in the comments below and I'll make a follow up post with answers. As this is a game design blog, it might be best to ask questions about game design, game development, games I've played, and games I'm working on... but if you have a question on something else, you could ask that too.

I hope this will give me a chance to learn a little bit about who's reading my blog: how many people read it, and what they're interested in hearing about.

Looking forward to your questions!

Defining "Deck Learning" - in case I haven't yet...

In a comment on a recent post, my friend Thomas asked exactly what I meant by "Deck Learning".
"Deck Learning" is the term I coined for Eminent Domain to set it apart from "Deck Building". I know I've talked about this before, but I don't know that I've formally defined the term. Since I use that term a lot it's probably worth a post defining it.

In a deck BUILDING game, you add cards to your deck because you want them in your deck, and that's cool and interesting because they'll come up later. In a deck LEARNING, your deck gains cards as a side effect of the actions you take. This is similar in some ways -- your deck changes over time and the new cards will come up later like in a deck building game -- but also different in a few important ways. By way of example, in EmDo you might call a Survey role simply because you want a Survey card in your deck, but MOST of the time you do it because you want the effect of the Survey role. In fact, one could argue that after a point, adding another Survey card to your deck is actually a detriment.

So the more often you call Survey, the more Survey cards you get in your deck, and therefore the better you are at surveying (you can boost Survey more and more often), so it's like your deck "learns" how to Survey.

In Eminent Domain, one of the main features is this deck learning, but the catch is that you can't do well by just being really good at one of the roles. Rather you need to manage your deck so that you can pursue some strategy, and any successful strategy needs to incorporate at least 2 and usually at least 3 of the roles in the game.

Hopefully that helps clear up any questions you have on what I mean by "deck learning", if you would like any more information, lease leave a comment below!

Worker Learning - applying deck learning concepts to a worker placement game (YANGI)

I've mentioned before that I'd like to do something more with the deck learning mechanism, and that has led to a few ideas... some of which I've pursued more than others.

A recent post in which I had a mechanical idea for "worker replacement" led to some discussion which grew into something that could incorporate some of the ideas of deck learning in a worker placement game... Yet ANOTHER New Game Idea, which I suppose I could refer to as "Worker Learning".

This new Worker Learning idea combines some aspects of deck learning with ideas I've had to use something from the online CCG Solforge, by the guys that made Ascension. Oh, and Richard Garfield.

In Solforge you have a 5 card hand, and you play exactly 2 cards per turn. When you play a card it "levels up" and gets better. After your turn you must discard your hand and draw a new one. So as you go through your deck, you are faced with decisions... not just "which card effect do I want," but also "which cards do I want upgraded for later?" This is a quintessential deck building / deck learning type of question. Furthermore, after cycling through your deck once, you will face choices like "do I play this level 2 card I've drawn to make it a level 3, or do I play another level 1 card to make it a level 2? Do I want to evenly upgrade my deck, or would I prefer fewer, more powerful cards?"

I thought that core component of Solforge was super interesting, and I've been wanting to explore it for some time now. Perhaps "worker learning" is a good way to do that. One way it could work is that you'd have some workers (maybe 8), each labeled (maybe A-G). Each worker would have a track on your player board which indicates whether they are level 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. Then you play a worker placement game, where your workers upgrade as you play them, and each worker space has a stronger effect the higher level your worker is. Like Tzolkin, Manhattan Project, or Concordia, if you want your workers back you must spend a turn recalling them. Perhaps there's some cost involved in recalling as well, maybe based on the number of workers that remain unplaced.

This way you have the option to play out all your workers before recalling (upgrading them all evenly), or recall early and then re-play upgraded workers -- upgrading them further. If the dynamics of the game are balanced properly, and the number of recalls work out to range from maybe 2 to 3 on the low end to 5 or 6 on the high end, then I think there could be some real diversity of strategy to be had.

So here we are again, another mechanics-first idea in need of a theme!

The List - January 2017

It's been 4 months or so since I revisited The List to take stock of the status of my game projects. Here's another update...

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)
- Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done (BGG) (Watch for this summer 2017)
- Isle of Trains: All Aboard (expansion)
- Eminent Domain: Oblivion (expansion) (Watch for this late 2017)

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

Current Active Designs:
- Deities and Demigods
- The Pony Express
- Odysseus: Winds of Fate (BGG)
- Alter Ego (BGG link)
- Moctezuma's Revenge

New Ideas that Haven't gone Anywhere (Yet)
- Worker Replacement game
- Joan of Arc bag building game

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:
- Rondel Role Selection
- Investigative/Tabloid Journalism
- Red Colony
- Clash of the Kingpins
- Time = Money
- Dating Game
- Ticket Please
- Scourge of the High Seas

Let's take a closer look at some of these:
Published games:
- Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done (BGG)
Last update I announced that Crusaders is moving forward at TMG, with Adam McIver's awesome art and graphic design (and I shared the box cover recently). At this point pretty much all the art is done except for the rulebook, and once Adam finishes a few other high priority items, he'll get back to finishing this.
- Isle of Trains: All Aboard (expansion)
The Kickstarter project for All Aboard was pushed back to the point where it conflicted with the holiday season, so we're still waiting to see that one pop up. I'm not sure what the schedule is, but as far as I know it's still going to happen.
- Eminent Domain: Oblivion (expansion)
I'm moving Oblivion up to the "Published Games" category because over the last month or so, Brian Patterson has created all the tech card art, and Ariel Seoane has put together all the graphic design for the expansion, so while the game is not out yet, it's in the process of being published! Mischa has been working on getting foreign partners to co-publish the expansion, and I wouldn't be surprised if there's an Eminent Domain Big Box in the near future.

Current Active Designs:
- Deities and Demigods
I have been playing and working on Deities & Demigods, tweaking and tightening things up. I even wrote a blog post about doing due diligence in testing player suggestions. I feel like the base game is very close to "done," but I still haven't tried the Hades expansion module.
- Moctezuma's Revenge
After a nice chat at BGGcon, I brought on Jonathan Gilmore as a co-designer to revive Moctezuma's Revenge. In getting him the files for prototyping and discussing the game again, I got it to the table a couple of times myself, and I think made a bit of progress! Revisiting an old design now that I've got more experience was interesting. Unfortunately, Jonathan has run into some life stuff which has conflicted with his co-design efforts, so he won't be working on this game after all. Now that it's revived, there's a chance I'll get back to it myself, but I kind of doubt it since I have so many higher priorities to think about.

New Ideas that Haven't gone Anywhere (Yet)
- Worker Replacement game
This is one of those "I have an idea for a mechanism, but not a game" types of things, like the Rondel Role Selection idea, and the Draft Row idea. For now I'm just recording it so that I can find it later, when I may actually get a chance to use it for something.
- Joan of Arc: Maid of Orleans bag building game
This is a high priority idea, and I think I have the game fairly well sketched out. I have even mad a first attempt at some prototype pieces. As soon as I'm done getting Harvest, Pioneer Days, Crusaders, and Oblivion ready for publication (so approx March 1) I intend to dive into this idea and create a bag building game with a Joan of Arc theme. More info on this to come!

Again with the mechanics first -- I more and more think "theme-first" is the way to go! (Also, YANGI)

Some time ago (over 3 years!) I posted some thoughts on Mechanics-First vs Theme-First design, as well as an idea I'd had that was a mechanical game, completely devoid of theme.

Since then, a theme has emerged -- a theme that even seems pretty good -- and yet I have never gotten back to the game.

I'm starting to believe that Theme-First is the way to go, as it seems much easier and much more likely to maintain interest in the game, and to make progress with it.

That said, here is Yet Another New Game Idea (TM) which is, again, completely mechanical and devoid of theme. As a side note, I see a pattern: when I don't have an idea for a theme, I appear to gravitate toward color mixing as a place holder... basic resources of red, blue, and yellow combine into higher level resources of purple, orange, and green. As I said in my previous post, this just makes for easy grokking of the conversions in the game. It's tedious to memorize some chart of X+Y=A and X+Z=B, but everyone knows that Yellow and Blue make Green.

Worker Replacement game idea

I was listening to the Game Designers of North Carolina podcast last month, and they had an episode about turning a mechanism into a game. On the show they brainstormed a few mechanisms, and how they might build a game around them. The whole exercise kind of ties right in to what I was talking about above, and as I recall, after bringing up a mechanism, they immediately jumped to a theme to use with it. One of those mechanisms sounded like it had some potential, so I filed it away in the back of my mind to think about later.

Last week I started thinking about how that mechanism could work, and then this week on a plane trip, as I often do in that situation, I jotted down some notes and sketched out a game using that mechanism. As I said however, this is just mechanical rules, no theme to integrate, and as such it's pretty generic. Here's what I've got so far, let me know in the comments if you think it's any good, or what theme might fit...

As a player, you will be gathering resources, combining them into products, and trading in resources and products for money, points, or upgrades.

Each player will start with a neutral pawn in hand, and a board of 6 spaces will be seeded with 6 colored pawns. Each space on the board will be associated with an action. On your turn you will take the pawn in your hand, swap it with the pawn in one of the action spaces, then resolve that action -- and most of the time there will be a bonus available based on the color of the pawn in that space. So you will be making choices based on which action effect you want, as well as which color pawn you want for next turn.

As a placeholder for these actions I have put the following:
* Gather Raw Materials: Gain 1 red, yellow, or blue cube. Gain an additional cube of that color if the pawn matches that color.

* Refine Raw Materials: Combine 2 different raw material cubes into a product disc. Combine a second set of raw materials if the action pawn matches that color (same combination? any combination? Not sure)
** Red + Yellow = Orange
** Red + Blue = Purple
** Yellow + Blue = Green

* Buy Raw Materials and Products at Market: Buy any number of raw material cubes or product discs at the market prices (market is kinda like Glen More). If the action pawn matches color, then get a better deal or something.

* Sell Resources: Sell raw materials or products at market prices. Resources sell for money, products sell for money plus VP. If the action pawn matches color, get a better deal or something.

* Collect Money: Collect some money according to the color of the pawn placed (red, yellow, and blue pawns yield a little money, orange, green, and purple pawns yield more money. Neutral pawns yield a middling amount of money)

* Upgrade: Pay products/raw materials for cards with permanent abilities and VPs on them. Maybe there are 3 slots (color coded red, yellow, and blue), and if you use a red pawn, then you can take the card from the red slot, and if you use a purple pawn, you can take either the card in the red slot or the one in the blue slot.

That's all I've got so far. Maybe I'll make some more progress on the flight back home tomorrow. Let me know what you think!

Eminent Domain, Redux on Reddit

To be honest, I don't spend much time on Reddit. I find it somewhat not-user-friendly, and at times abrasive, and I just haven't committed the effort to make it a regular internet stop.

However, every once in a while I interact with Reddit, like hosting an AMA (when Yokohama was live for example), or when my game Eminent Domain was Game of the Week in Reddit's GotW forum.

Today I found out that Reddit also has a Game of the Week, Redux forum, where people look back at a previous game of the week and talk about how it's held up over time. And guess what... This weeks GotW,R once again features Eminent Domain!

First of all, let me say that it warms my heart to hear that people are still discovering, playing, and enjoying Eminent Domain.

In addition I'll point out that this is timely, as I have just secured an illustrator and a graphic designer for my long-awaited-by-me final expansion, Eminent Domain: Oblivion. The deadline to get files to the manufacturer in time for a game to debut at GenCon is coming up soon, and I was sort of expecting that to be when things would be due, but a deadline kind of sprung up on me quicker than that when Mischa at TMG lined up a foreign partner who is interested in co-publishing the expansion, maybe along with other EmDo products, because they need time to localize the cards.

So I've been scrambling to secure the artists, which I have done. They're getting started in the next couple of days while I further scramble to make last minute tweaks and design decisions so I can write and edit the final rules. Nothing like an imminent deadline to get things moving!

So if you're following Eminent Domain, or the Oblivion expansion, or just me in general, then pop into Reddit and make some comment or ask some question, so we can use this opportunity to let people know about the greatness that is Eminent Domain! :)

Moctezuma playtest and tweaks

Last Saturday I was able to get in not one, but two 3 player tests of Moctezuma's Revenge!

One of the main things that has kept this particular game down, and I think it's the thing that keeps many prototypes from making progress, is simply not getting it to the table. That's why I was so excited to play Moctezuma's revenge again, for the first time in 8 years.

I was over at Isle of Games, the FLGS that's nearest my new home, and it just so happens my longtime friend Ben is a manager over there. Ben is the one who tested Moctezuma's Revenge with me all those years ago, so it was neat hat he was around this time too... unfortunately he was busy working and couldn't join us to play :(

Here are some notes from those two games, followed by some changes to try next time:

For reference, the rules I used: Moctezuma's Revenge rules v2.0.

The game went over pretty well with the players. I wonder if it couldn’t use some more fundamental changes...

Game 1: 

I used the "5 action point" rule set ("5AP"), and I used 14 cursed and 11 safe chits, requiring 2+ cursed chits for a temple to be cursed. This was a mistake, actually, and it resulted in 6 cursed temples out of 7 (I added chits to the prototype according to majority needed, not 2+, AND I counted wrong when deciding how many chits to use... OOPS). 6 cursed temples is almost certainly too many! I think 4 or 5 max would be better. The players thought it would be OK if the minimum number of cursed temples was zero, but I think it might be better to guarantee that at least 1 temple will be cursed each game. 

We all knew which temples were cursed a few turns before the end, which was lame. Jim and I had researched several times before going exploring, while Hillary just went out and started looting temples. She ended up with maybe the highest score, but the most cursed icons and therefore an automatic loss. Is an auto-loss too harsh? Maybe there should just be a bigger penalty for the player with the most curse icons, like -1vp/icon, while everyone else only loses 1vp/2 icons.

Game 2: 

This time I used the "2 actions per turn" rule set ("2A"), and I used 9 cursed and 16 safe chits, requiring a majority of cursed chits for a temple to be cursed. This resulted in 3 cursed temples. I had the most points, but also the most cursed icons so I lost. Jim and I did about 2 turns of double research before exploring, while Hillary did about 4 this time. The 2A version went quicker and felt a little lighter than the 5AP version, but I think we got to do about as much stuff. 

I didn’t like that it took a whole turn to move to or from the library, and I didn’t like the temptation to research everything first then go explore, and never really research again.

Here are tweaks I would make for next time:

• In 2A version, it should only take 1 move to get to or from the library, but you shouldn’t be allowed to do both in the same turn (the Library isn’t a shortcut)

• In 2A version, 2nd Research in a turn should cost a discard of any treasure card. This gives you another way to dump cursed treasure, and it also means you can’t double research until you’ve gone exploring. So you probably will turn 1 Research/Move and start looting temples, then later come back to do more research.
• Asymmetric starting info would be nice, but how to implement?
• Is “Most cursed icons = you lose” a good rule? Too harsh? Maybe just a bigger penalty? try "most cursed icons: -1vp/icon, everyone else -1vp/2 icons".
• Try using 12 Cursed/15 Safe chits for a total of 27, so 2 are unused each game… so you can’t count. I think that leads to 1-5 Cursed temples (and more likely 2-4).
• Maybe make the Loot action (2A version) 3 cards, then 4… so if you see the Name card in the first draw, you still have a choice of 2 cards to keep. Or else add a SEARCH action to look at more cards, keep none (see below)
• Maybe make an option to look at more cards but keep none… for if you want to find the name of a temple at the cost of getting a card. So like:
• Move 1/Move 2 (1 space in the first move action, 2 more if you move a 2nd time in a turn).
• (temple) Search 4/5 (keep 0). Helps you find the Name card.
• (temple) Loot 2/3 (keep 1). Gets you more cards.
• (library) Research 2/3 (reveal 1. 2nd one costs 1 card). Gets you info, reveals some, allows a discard avenue for cursed treasure.
• (library) Study: Discard 1 card to reveal that temple’s name tile. Discard avenue for cursed treasure, and a way to learn the name of a temple.
• One idea I had to prevent over-researching was this: You can only research the CURRENT or NEXT column, not beyond that. Then if you want to see info in the 3rd/4th/5th columns then maybe you’ll return to the library once the game is about ⅓ (or ⅔) over. Alternatively, maybe you can always research any column, but it costs a card to research beyond 1 column ahead of where the game is currently at?

Here's the updated rules based on this playtest and commentary: Moctezuma's Revenge rules v2.1

Stay tuned for more playtest reports or info about this game, and the experiment in co-designing with Jonathan Gilmour.

Post script:

I just had a thought on card distributions: Maybe there should be some more texture to the cards as far as VPs vs Curse icons. For example, currently the treasure distribution is 5/3/3/2/2/2/1/1/1/1/1, where the 5 has 3 curse icons, the 3s and 2s have 2 curse icons, and the 1s have 1 curse icon.

Perhaps it would be cooler to have some of the cards with a disproportionate number of curse icons, not directly related to the amount of VPs on the card, something like:

5vp/3 icons

3vp/2 icons

3vp/2 icons

2vp/3 icons

2vp/2 icons

2vp/1 icons

1vp/2 icons

1vp/2 icons

1vp/1 icons

1vp/1 icons

1vp/1 icons

Moctezuma revisited

Every once in a while I review The List and spare a moment's thought for designs that have been sitting on the back burner, some for far too long.

Every time I do that, I invariably have the same thought... why did I never get anywhere with that one? I have this thought pretty regularly with respect to some games, less often with respect to others. But one of the games I often wonder this about is Moctezuma's Revenge.

Moctezuma's Revenge is a sort of deduction, action efficiency game about looting Aztec pyramids, but some of the pyramids are cursed. At the beginning of the game there are 10 pyramids, 7 of which are home to Aztec kings, and the other three contain clues to the location of El Dorado, the lost city of gold. Some (perusing the rules it seems between 3 and 7) of the 7 kings are cursed, and treasure from the cursed temples will be worth negative points at the end of the game. You don't know which temple is which, and you also don't know which of the temples are home to the cursed kings, so you can do research at the Library to find out.

That's the status of the game at the moment, you can see an old rule set in my blog. While I've thought about it every now and again, I haven't touched this game since 2008. For 8 years it's been one of those perennially back-burner-ed ideas, just sitting there wasting potential. That's why I'm happy about this next bit...

There's a prominent game designer you might have heard of... his name is Jonathan Gilmour. He designed something recently that's turned out to be very popular, and I know he's got some other stuff either out there or coming down the line really soon. I contacted Jon on Twitter a few weeks ago, and it turns out he was open to the idea of co-designing something with me. So I showed him my list, and Moctezuma's Revenge caught his eye. We had a chat about it at BGGcon, and it sounded like we were both on the same page when it comes to co-designing and the value that could offer to each of us, so when I got home I sent him whatever details I had about Moctezuma's Revenge, and today he put together a prototype and gave it a try!

I'm looking forward to the feedback, and to working with someone on this game, as it's not one I was likely to finish on my own anytime soon. Just discussing it with Jon has already got some creative juices stirring... here are some thoughts that came up in our conversation at BGGcon, some of which may end up being tested out:

* I don't know what I was thinking when I made 7 "cursed" chits - the possibility of all 7 temples being cursed seems like a lousy game experience to me. Perhaps I didn't want players to be able to win by just picking a temple, looting it like crazy, and just hoping it's not cursed. But I do like how the curse system works (and I think Jon does too). I suspect we'll want to cut that down to something like 4 "cursed" chits, so that 2, 3, or 4 temples will be cursed.

* As I recall from my one or two playtests 8 years ago, it was too tempting to sit in the Library and peek at all the curse chits before running off with good information about which temples are safe. There should probably be some incentive to not do that... one thought is maybe when researching kings, you flip the next curse chit (revealing it for everyone), and then peek at another 1-2 [alt: peek at a couple chits, choose 1 to turn face up]. Would sharing info like that make any difference? Or just serve to lengthen the game?

* Should you be able to research temple names at the library (look at X cards from the temple, keep none)? Maybe more efficiently than drawing cards when you’re AT the temple (so like look at 2/3/6 rather than 1/2/5)? Should this also be “reveal the top card, then peek at 1/2/5 (or 2/3/6) cards (again, so it helps others)?

* Maybe instead of action point allowance, you could just take a Library turn (Flip next Curse chit, then spend turn peeking at 1 Name tile, some (3?) curse chits (max 1 per king?), or maybe a few cards from a single deck) or an Explore turn (move and search or search x2, where “search” in this case is look at the top 2 or 3 cards of the deck where you’re at. Maybe it’s 2, and if you double search it’s 5).

* Maybe researching the name of a king (peeking at the name tile) should be done at the library by discarding a card from that temple. So you can pay points to learn the identity of the temple, or you can find it via exploration. If you learn that you have collected a cursed treasure, this would allow you an avenue to get rid of it. I would think you could only do this once per temple (leave the card face up in front of you to remember you did it), so you can't unload a truck full of tainted treasure, but maybe a limited discard would be good to have available.

* Instead of cursed treasure being strictly negative points, perhaps all treasure should be worth points. Maybe each treasure has 2 values, one for if it's safe, and a lower one for if it's cursed. In addition, the treasures could have curse icons which only count if the temple was cursed, and the player with the most of those at the end of the game simply loses (like corruption in Cleopatra and the Society of Architects or Unrest in Struggle of Empires).

I look forward to posting more about Moctezuma's Revenge, hopefully Jonathan likes it and gets some good tests and feedback in! 

Deities & Demigods: Due Diligence

Looking at the title of this post, it kinda reads like an expansion to the communal deck learning game I've been working on...

No such luck! This post is about the due diligence we have to -- or ought to -- do as designers. When we playtest games, we tend to get a lot of suggestions from players. As designers, it's our job to parse those comments and decide which suggestions would lead to good changes in the game, which to write off, and which could be indicative of underlying problems (even if they're not directly useful).

It can be easy to write off suggested changes, especially when you feel like the game is done. Taking the suggestion to heart would mean making changes to the components and doing more testing. If you are happy with the game as-is, then this can feel like extra work for no good reason.

A real life example.

I am personally guilty of this exact thing... 10 years ago I had a very good suggestion from a player of Terra Prime. The player suggested having the space hexes face UP during setup, so you can see where all the planets are from the outset, then covering the center of the tiles with Exploration tiles so you still have the exploration aspect to the game. I thought this was an interesting idea, and thought I might even like it if I tried it... but I was pretty happy at the time with the exploration aspect as it was - face down hex tiles, and you explored to find the planets. Specifically, I liked the idea that the player who explored a tile got to choose its orientation. So while I figured I might try the suggestion for a future expansion or something, I completely wrote it off at the time.

After the game came out, one of the biggest questions people had was to do with the rule (there's only 1 rule!) about tile placement: "no 2 adjacent sectors can contain planets". I was surprised by this, since I figured that one rule wouldn't be hard to grok, and as I said, I liked the agency players had to create the board layout. When working on an expansion I finally did try the suggestion from that playtester: I laid the tiles out face up, and covered the center of them with new Exploration tiles (with Aliens and Asteroids, and a few new things I added such as Wormholes and Sunstars). It turns out I liked this method very much, and it removed the potential for that one rules question people were having.

I hadn't done my due diligence. 

Had I tried that suggestion out when it was made, I probably would have used it in the original release of Terra Prime, and the game would have been better for it. With Terra Prime that might not have mattered too much, what with the poor manufacturing, and the fact that very few people every really got a chance to play the game... but the point is that I received a good suggestion, and I ignored it. I don't want to make that mistake again.

Learning from our mistakes:

A couple of weeks ago I was in Seattle for Sasquatch, and I got a chance to play Deities & Demigods with Tim Eisner and his brother Ben. It was a pretty good test, and Tim and Ben had some interesting comments. I took note of two of them in particular:

1. In response to my saying I needed a round counter, and the idea of simply putting a round marker on the initiative track and make that track do double duty as the game timer, Tim and Ben suggested that the round timer work like the minimum devotion markers, and as the rounds advance, the initiative markers get pushed along the track and begin on the 2nd/3rd/4th/5th space. That way the game would kind of ramp up, and it would support my desire for players to have easy access to 1 or 2 Deity rewards even if they pretty much ignore Zeus.

2. Tim and Ben suggested that the high end of the Hermes devotion track was boring compared to the other tracks. I hadn't had any problems with it thus far... 12 gold seemed like a pretty good thing to get, but it's true that just getting a handful of gold isn't terribly interesting. We chatted about it and came to the suggestion that perhaps less gold and an immediate cube bump would be appropriate, and more interesting than just a handful of gold.

In an attempt to learn from my mistakes, I made an effort to try these tweaks, even though neither one was really solving a "problem" that existed in the game. I updated my prototype files and sent them to co-designer Matthew Dunstan, and I got ready to bring my prototype to Dallas with me. I got Deities & Demigods to the table 3 times during BGGcon last week, here's how it went:

In the first game, I tried tweak number 1 (which I've since dubbed "rising tide" variant, as a rising tide floats all boats, and the initiative markers are currently boats), but while I had updated my prototype files for the Hermes track changes, I hadn't printed them, so I left that tweak off. The rising tide variant did a couple of good things - it was a little bit interesting to get easier access to the early rewards on the Zeus track, and indeed players were able to get deity cards without concentrating on Zeus. However, it introduced some fiddliness, and some timing questions... I wasn't sure it was worth the effort.

I wanted to try that tweak again before passing judgment on it, so I kept it in for the 2nd game. And this time I also tried the alternate Hermes track... I just explained that instead of 1/4/8/12 gold, you get 1/3/6/10 gold plus a cube bump in 0/1/2/3different tracks. As it turns out, this instant cube bump basically undermined the main mechanism of the game! Players could use Hermes to directly bump their cubes, and when other deities came up they could simply resolve them, hardly ever paying them. As a result of that, players were ending up with large amounts of gold just sitting around unspent, and I didn't like the effect of these cube bumps at all! I might have gone a little overboard with this suggestion, perhaps a single cube bump at the top of the Hermes track would have been ok, but this certainly wasn't. I might try just changing the top level, so Hermes would be 1/4/8/10+cube, but going back to the known quantity of just gold is probably the way to go.

As for the rising tide variant, having played it a 2nd time, I think I decided that overall it was more trouble than it was worth, and while it did do something sort of interesting, it wasn't a good addition to the game. So I'll just be using a round counter to track rounds.

In the third game, I didn't use either of the tweaks, reverting back to the game as it was 2 weeks ago. I think I like that better, so I don't think I'll end up using either of the suggestions from Sasquatch.

Back to square one?

So were those tests a waste of time? Well, to an extent one could argue that they were, but that's a hard sell. Unless you know for sure that a suggestion isn't going to pan out, then it's worth doing due diligence and testing it out. I was happy I tried both of those tweaks, even though I won't be keeping them. though I do think that the next time I try an untested tweak, I'd prefer to do it with a group who's played before, rather than in a learning game.

So there you have it. You've got to do your due diligence, because you never know which decent-sounding suggestions will be right for the game, and which just won't pan out, until you try them.

Yokohama rules PDF (retail and deluxe versions)

If you're reading this you are probably aware that I work with/for TMG. In that capacity, I was in charge of revising the English rules for Yokohama when TMG picked up the license for US distribution.

You may recall we ran a (very successful) Kickstarter project for a Deluxe Edition of the game, which included some nice component upgrades such as metal coins, custom wooden goods tokens and custom wooden president and assistant pieces. We even ended up with cute stickers for the presidents due to overfunding :)

While some of the component upgrades were for the Deluxe version only, the whole game got a graphic design overhaul which will apply to the retail version as well. In that same vein, the rulebook edits will of course also apply to both versions.

I worked pretty hard re-writing the rules, and I got a lot of great feedback from the community which all got taken into account before finalizing the rulebook, and I am pretty happy with the result.

So if you're curious about the game, or looking for a diversion to pass the time while you wait for our Deluxe version to arrive, there's now a web friendly version of the rules to check out on BoardGameGeek.com:

Retail version: https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/139827/tmg-retail-version-rules-english

Deluxe version: https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/139828/tmg-deluxe-version-rules-english

Enjoy!

Essen interview with Würfel Reviews - role of the developer, among other things

One of the things I enjoyed most at Essen this year was an in-depth interview I did with Würfel Reviews about the role of the developer, as well as a bunch of other topics. It's about 45 minutes long, but I watched it and I am pretty sure I didn't sound too foolish! :)

Actually, I think it's pretty good, with a lot of good information in there. And I got to tell several good stories :) 

Let me know what you think in the comments below!

Deities & Demigods playtests at Essen 2016!

I managed to get not 1, not 2, but 3 whole playtests of D&D in at Essen 2016! Well, 2.8 at least...

First off, I went to Motel One on Thursday night and joined the UK Playtest meetup. I mainly went there to connect with Matthew and maybe play D&D with him, but he was late, and the person herding cats got 3 players sent my way to play! I sat out to facilitate, since the playtesting round was only  hour long, and we had to do rules... we made it through 4 (out of 5) cycles and got some commentary afterward. 2 of the players seemed to grok the mechanics, and went about their business. One player had a really rough time grokking the rules, got nothing done, and predictably complained at the end that there wasn't enough time to do anything.

We used the recent Hera's Spite rule that when Hera arrives, players either sacrifice the demanded item or else take a Spite token. If they sacrifice twice, they can discard a spite token. Like previous versions of Hera, I think this just served to slow the players' progress without any real benefit.

Matthew arrived near the end of that game, and we got to talking, and ended up playing a 2p game of D&D, trying the same Hera rule. After that we both agreed that maybe Hera just isn't necessary at all. We also discussed changing movement to simply be 1-troop-1-hex rather than the whole Army thing (moving multiple troops at once), to make the rule easier to understand. We also talked a little bit about "terrain" meaning both some stuff to make movement more costly, but also some beneficial things such as a gold mone, and whenever you step on it, maybe you get 1 gold.

A couple of days later Matthew and I had a scheduled meeting to play D&D, so we played another game, this time with Andy as well, who had played only once before. This version is much improved from the one Andy played last year at BGGcon, but beyond that he didn't have much in the way of comment.

We played without Hera this time, and just counted cycles - neither of us missed her. So yet again, Hera has been cut from the game! Maybe she can come back as another expansion module, where you simply reckon her scoring condition at the end of each cycle.

In discussion afterwards I think we may have agreed that terrain may not be necessary after all. We did change to the simpler Ares movement, and added 2 to each level of Ares so as not to remove overall movement from the game, and frankly the added movement wasn't necessary. Next time I'll try without adding any movement, and if that seems too tight maybe I'll try adding just 1 movement instead. 2 was way too much.

We talked a little about theme, as Andy pointed out that Oracle of Delphi would share a description almost entirely, and especially where it comes to god tracks where you increment them until you eventually use their ability and reset them. of course, the two games are nothing alike, but it might be nice to avoid that conflation. Andy and Matthew suggested Norse gods, or Egyptian ones. I don't know if I have the impetus to make that change though, as I like the Greek theme, and by the time this comes out, people will likely have moved on from Oracle of Delphi anyway (or even better, this might re-invigorate sales of that title) :)

I would still like to get some player powers worked in, since players ted to expect those nowadays. I think I have a few already, but I'd like at last 4 different ones, and possibly more like 6 or 8.

As a minor note (and I say this mostly to remind myself), I think I'll add like 3 more troops per player to the game. Also, instead of placing a disc when you do a quest, maybe you should just lie your troop down, thereby losing it for the rest of the game. I think that could be good, and now that the number of discs remaining isn't a game end timer, there's no need for them to mark both quests and buildings.

I feel like this one is in the home stretch, so to speak!

Essen 2016!

As I sit here, in a SUBWAY Cafe in Atlanta International airport, entering the 2nd hour of 6 hour layover waiting to board a plane to Dusseldorf, I am trying to remember whether this is the 4th or the 5th time I've been to Essen.

A quick perusal of my blog indicates that the first trip was in 2012 - Michael and I went on what I described as a 'scouting mission', and at the time I had envisioned potentially returning to the big show to man a booth, much like we do at GenCon.

If memory serves, we skipped 2013, but returned to Essen in 2014, this time with Mischa. We did not have our own booth, and in retrospect I am pretty happy with that decision. Instead we scheduled meetings with various european designers, publishers, and distributors about partnerships and the like.

In 2015, Michael decided he didn't need to be at Essen himself, and that he much preferred Tokyo. So while he has now attended Tokyo Game Market a few times (making great friends and partners, and picking up great titles such as Flip City, Yokohama, and Ars Alchimia, to name just a few), Mischa, Daniel, Andy, and took on Essen by ourselves. And a bit more organized this time. Daniel and Mischa filled their schedules with business meetings with partners (for both incoming and outgoing licenses), while Andy and I spent our time taking pitches from designers and checking out new releases for potential licensing.

This year will be pretty much the same I think. Andy and I will be taking pitches and checking out new releases (that reminds me, I'm supposed to be identifying potential titles to pick up!), while Daniel and Mischa again maintain existing foreign partnerships and forge new ones.

Unfortunately, I haven't had the bandwidth to really get excited about any new offerings... the only one I can think of offhand that I'd like to try, The Great Western Trail by Alexander Phister, is already picked up for US market by Stronghold Games. Lucky for me, W. Eric Martin puts together a terrific list of all the new releases each year, and Richard Ham (a celebrity in the game review space who has similar tastes to mine) maintains a list of his games of interest, and recently posted a 3 hour podcast discussing the games and expansions of interest to him. I've already listened to most of that podcast, but in a minute I'll be diving into both of those resources and looking for potential TMG pickups, as well as stuff I might like to check out for myself.

I'm curious to see how Essen goes this year, and whether I am going to think it's worth it for me to go, or if I'll do what Mike did and start opting out of the trip in future years. Last year we only signed 1 title from those pitches (though Guilds of London has been a successful title thus far), though it's refreshing to see designs from European designers - they seem different from the pitches we see at GenCon.

Side note: A further inspection of those blog posts have reminded me that I did not think to bring my Camelback this year. Drat. Fortunately I seem to recall water being more available last year than it had been in the past.