Paint by numbers

Like Yoggity, here's another game, Pastiche, that deals with combining paint colors to make various other colors.  It looks like you're laying tiles next to each other to generate the various colors you need to make masterpiece paintings - a neat idea; I don't know how it plays.  I don't think the games are very similar at all, but it's interesting to see somebody thinking partially along the same lines.  I haven't seen a lot of other games where you combine colors as a part of the gameplay.

Sherwood rules

The following are the rules for the game I submitted for the September BGDF design showdown.  The restrictions were that it had to have a Robin Hood theme and that it had to have two mini-games.  I didn't place 1st or 2nd, but I have no idea how I did other than that.  Only one guy has posted a critique of the games other than me, and the vote tallies weren't shared, so I have nearly no feedback to go on.  I was pretty excited about the game, and I thought it captured the challenge goals pretty well. Let me know what you think.

---

Sherwood

(c) 2010 by Dave Dobson

For 2-4 players

Object: You are competing to join Robin Hood’s band of rogues. Robin prepares a contest: be the first to steal 8 shillings worth of loot and return it to the Outlaw Camp, and he’ll accept you into his band.

Components:

• Game Board - contains normal spaces (white circles), Sherriff’s Guard spaces (red circles), and special spaces (Outlaw Camp, Chapel, Castle, Village, Archery Range)

• 8 Merry Man Tokens per player
• 16 Movement Tiles in 4 denominations
• 1 Movement Base circle
• 4 Movement Tile Markers per player
• 5 Gambling Tokens per player
• 2 Cart Markers per player
• 15 Loot Tokens in 3 denominations
• 15 Arrow Tokens

Setup: Place the Loot tokens as follows:

• Chapel: 2 x 1 shilling, 3 x 2 shilling
• Castle: 5 x 3 shilling
• Village: 3 x 1 shilling, 2 x 2 shilling

Each player starts with 3 Merry Men and 1 Cart in the Outlaw Camp. Place the other resources in reserve off the board. Each player also gets 3 arrow tokens.

Set up the Movement Minigame to one side. Build a pyramid of four movement tiles numbered 1-4, with the 1-space tile touching the Movement Base Circle as shown in the Movement Minigame image below. Make one pyramid for each player playing.

Turn Order: The game plays as follows:

1) Gambling Minigame – each player has five gambling tokens with five different characters on them as shown:[Gambling Minigame image goes here] Each player chooses one character in secret. All players reveal their choices. If your character is not beaten by any other, you get the prize indicated. New carts and men are placed on the Outlaw Camp. Movement Tiles are chosen from the Movement Minigame.

The Gambling Minigame also determines move order, with the lowest numbered token going first. If there are ties, the player with the least treasure goes first. If there are still ties, the player who moved later in the previous turn goes first. On the very first turn, the player with the longest criminal record goes first.

2) Movement Minigame – on his or her turn, a player claims one movement tile by playing a movement tile marker on an unclaimed movement tiles. The player may only claim a tile if it is touching the Movement Base Circle OR if it is touching a tile he or she has already claimed. For example, on his first turn, a player can claim a #1 movement tile that touches the Base Circle. On his second turn, he can claim the #2 tile touching the #1 tile, or he could claim a second #1 tile.

3) Movement – Once all players have made their moves in the Movement Minigame, they may collect movement tiles and make moves. If a player elects to collect his claimed movement tiles, he takes all the movement tiles he has marked. If this leaves any unclaimed movement tiles unconnected to any other tiles, the player to the left of the current player MUST shift these movement tiles so that they either (1) touch the Movement Base Circle or (2) touch two other movement tiles in the Movement Minigame. The tiles can have any orientation provided they obey the placement rules.

Players spend movement tiles to move pieces. A player may play one movement tile per turn. When a player plays a movement tile, he may move each of his men up to the number of spaces shown on the movement tile. Multiple men may be stacked on the same space.

Sherriff’s Guard – a player must play an arrow token or discard a man token to enter a red guard space. Similarly, if a player wishes to move a man onto a space with another player’s man, he must play an arrow token or sacrifice a man token.

Cart Movement – Carts can only move with a man. They move one space less than the move tile played (so they cannot move at all on a 1-space tile).

When a player plays a movement tile, the player to his left returns the tile to the Movement Minigame in any legal position as above (i.e. touching the Base Circle or touching two other movement tiles).

When all players have moved, start over with the gambling minigame.

Treasures: A man entering a space containing loot may collect one loot counter. A man can carry loot worth 1 shilling. He needs a cart to carry loot worth 2 or 3 shillings. Players score loot by bringing it back to the Outlaw Camp. Men and carts cannot carry multiple treasures at once.

Archery Range: When a man enters the Archery Range, the player collects two arrow tokens. A given man cannot collect more arrows until he visits the Outlaw Camp again.

Winning: The first player to return a total value of 8 shillings of loot to the outlaw camp wins.

Entries in for Hippodice

I've got two entries - Diggity and Yoggity - submitted for the 2011 Hippodice Autorenwettbewerb.  They have a first stage which is purely electronic - I've sent a description, rules, and some pictures for each game, and they'll tell me in November whether they want the full games to play.  I'm a little worried about that, since I have to send them to Germany - it might be a little tight there on the timing to get them there by Dec. 1, but I guess I can spring for whatever fast shipping DHL has.  There are customs and such to worry about too - hopefully that won't be a problem.  If I even make it into the general competition, that is!

No prize for this one other than prestige and a good feeling, but they do a write-up of the top games and circulate them to companies, and it's a pretty well-known competition. Foreigners have done pretty well there, too, unlike some of the other European competitions which seem generally to prefer games in their own language. When I lived in Munich last fall, it seemed like nearly everyone I met spoke English (they start teaching it in 5th grade), so hopefully there won't be much of a language issue. 

Anyway, pretty exciting.

Yoggity Reader Mail

Reader Daniel writes the following about my recent post on Yoggity:

So have you decided how to tackle the judges' "ruling" (or maybe input should be a better word)? I am thinking you can go three ways: either add more strategy to the game, accept the rulings and maybe re-theme it as a kids game or ignore them because they are wrong and do not know better. But then comes the funny part if you choose door number three.

Why do you think the judges left out a big part of the strategy in the game? Did they miss it or did they not play the whole game? Or do they not think what you refer to as strategy is some mundane thing a 3 year old can do?

I would love to hear what you plan on doing with the judges feedback and whats your next step. 

Daniel sets up three possibilities:

• Add more strategy - I've considered this; I really like how the game plays now, but I understand that some folks (particularly boardgame enthusiasts) might want there to be a bit more depth. One potential weakness for the game (that doesn't seem to affect how much fun it is for me, but might for some) is that there's no overarching plotline to the game - you're doing mostly the same kind of thing in the last few turns as you are in the first few, although obviously a bunch of the scoring has already been decided by the end, and people have collected different resources and cards. It's possible that I could come up with some kind of plotline this way - something that builds up over time, that might solve both potential problems - complexity and plotting.
• Re-theme as a kids' game - Maybe a possibility, but I'm not sure it's a good one, for several reasons. One is that although the gameplay itself is pretty simple, being good at the game requires making complex strategic decisions about resource use and deal-making. So, younger kids might miss out on the part that makes the game the most fun. Another reason not to do this is that the market niche I'm looking at is probably boardgame enthusiasts - they're more likely to buy a fairly obscure game from a small publisher, I think, and I'm not so likely to get the widespread play I'd need to attract a kid-based audience. A kid-oriented game wouldn't sell well to this crowd. On the flip side, if I self-publish, I'm hoping to market the game also to my former Snood customers, and for those folks, a family-friendly game (which Yoggity certainly is) that's marketed that way would maybe be more appealing. So, I don't know what to do along these lines. My idea of a great game is one that both grown-ups and kids can play and want to play - it's simple enough to understand that kids can handle it, but fun enough and complex enough that adults enjoy it and would play by themselves. Checkers isn't quite at this level, although there are certainly grown-up checkers enthusiasts. Monopoly has become nearly exclusively child-oriented, but I think played by the proper rules, it's a fine game for adults.
• Ignore the judges - that's very tempting, but I don't know that it's a good idea. On one hand, it sounds like they didn't play the game the way it was supposed to be played, so any advice they give is not necessarily useful. On the other hand, they read my rules and chose to play that way, so either they didn't get it, or I didn't make it clear enough that trading makes the game much more fun and more complex for multiple players, and making good trades is the best strategy to win overall. My suspicion is that I could easily rewrite parts of the rules (maybe add a "strategy" section) that point out the benefits of trading in order to highlight that. I think that's maybe my best option now.

As to what they were thinking, I can't really speak to that; they obviously enjoyed the game, or they wouldn't have ranked it as highly as they did. I wish they'd tried the trading, and I need to get people to want to.

Thanks for the feedback - I have lots to think about here.

More on Yoggity and kids

The judges at Gamecon Memphis thought my game Yoggity was suited for 6-8 year old kids.  I certainly need to listen to that feedback and figure out what it means.  However, I think they're wrong, for a couple reasons.  As I said yesterday, they left out a major part of the strategy of the game, and that part of the strategy is the part that requires higher-order strategic thinking.  But a second reason might be that the game looks relatively simple on the surface, but the strategy is quite a bit deeper.

Think of chess for example - an eight-year-old could learn the rules, but a grown-up would always win.  Ditto for checkers, go, Othello - lots of games with simple rules have more complex strategy.  I think Yoggity (while admittedly not as strategically deep as chess or go) falls in the same boat - it's easy enough to learn how to play, but playing well requires some careful thinking.  I've lost a number of games of Yoggity because I made deals that ended up being bad, but I was convinced at the time that I was being very clever and helping myself out more than my opponents.

If I can get people to recognize that complexity while still appreciating the simplicity of the rules, then I think I've got a game that's a winner for a bigger audience.  People justifiably don't like games that are too simplistic, but they also don't generally like games that are byzantine, particularly if they're non-gamers.  I don't know for sure, but I suspect the Memphis judges were pretty hard-core gamers (which you'd expect for convention goers who volunteered to judge a contest).  So, maybe they were looking for something they could really sink their teeth into, rather than a lighter game like Yoggity.

A real commercial success, like Settlers of Catan, has simple rules but complex interactions, which makes it both accessible and deep.  That's what I was shooting for with Yoggity, but the Memphis judges only saw the accessible part.  So, I have to figure out how to showcase the depth, too.

Robin Hood BGDF contest

The entries are up.  Some interesting ones - the Robin Hood theme made most of them overlap in terms of plot  and layout, but the minigame thing led to some interesting design choices.  Votes are due tomorrow - I'll let y'all know which was mine when the results are up.

BGDF contest for September

I got my entry in for the Robin Hood BGDF contest for September.  In addition to a Robin Hood theme, you had to include two mini-games, where you had a game-within-a-game to handle various parts.

This is always tricky - the minigames can end up being dull and uninteresting, and end up hampering gameplay, or they can end up more fun than the actual game.  I got two in my design that I think work, would be fun without being obtrusive, and  still fit the overall style of the game.  We'll see what other folks think.

In some ways these contests, because of their restrictions, actually get in the way of making excellent games, because you have to honor the restrictions.  In that sense, they're more like etudes for musicians - they push your skills, but they don't necessarily sound the best when played.  I hope I get a chance to make a protoype and try this one out, though - I think it could be quite fun.

I'll post a link to my entry when the voting is over - can't reveal it until then.

Awards != Sales

As I consider entering all these competitions, it's good also to heed what Tao over at Starlit Citadel writes - that award-winning game designs don't necessarily sell well.  I think that's true in a whole bunch of settings; commercial success and quality are correlated on a first-order basis, but one person's "quality" is another person's crap, and there are some pretty big second-order effects.  And what you play (and what would be fun) is very situational - I've probably played much more Barbie Uno than I have played better games that I like far more.

So, what's the key to marketplace success?  A great game, sure, and hopefully one that could win awards, but maybe more importantly, one that is eminently playable - not too long, accessible to newbies, easy to set up, visually attractive, cheap and available, and fun to play over and over again.

Hey, I just described Barbie Uno, didn't I?

Barriers to publication

The Boardgame Designers Guild of Utah apparently has a recurring newsletter now.  A recent issue has a neat article on the barriers to entry to the boardgame market by Benjamin Stanley - good stuff.

Rio Grande contest judging standards

With my entry in the Rio Grande game contest sent out, I'm eagerly awaiting the results.  The judging is based on total points in a number of equally rated categories:

Decision Driven (How much is the winner determined based on their decisions, as opposed to luck factors?) Originality Wait Time (How much time do you spend without interacting with the game/other players?) Unpredictability (How often is the outcome of a turn/round known before it ends?) Broad Appeal (Would you teach this to someone who is not a serious game player?) Replayable (Do you want to play it again soon?) Interactive (Do the player decisions impact other players?) Equal Opportunity (Does every player have an equal chance of winning regardless of turn order/role?) Fun  Simple to Learn (the rules were clearly stated and communicated) Scale for each criterion is set at 1-5. For each criterion that does not positively or negatively impact the game (or simply doesn't apply), the criterion is scored at 3. If a criterion does impact the game, the score is adjusted positively or negatively and a note/comment is made to explain the decision.

That's actually an interesting way to judge the contest.  Obviously, the intent is to get a "good" game out of the competition.  But that's very subjective; a Scrabble fiend might hate Settlers of Cataan, and a chess player might despise Monopoly and vice versa.  Breaking it into the ratings above is maybe useful, but weighting them equally is maybe misleading; I'd value "Fun" and "Replayable" as far higher priorities than most of the others.  You could put together a snoozer of a game that scored well in 8 of 10 categories but got a 1 in Fun and Replayable, and it would stand a better chance of winning than a wildly fun game that wasn't, say, as interactive or original or balanced.

This comment by Mark Salzwedel on BGG tries to get deeper into the categories, and it sounds like he's even providing guidelines for the judges at his regional contest.  I think that's a good idea, although tricky to standardize; I have no idea if they'll do something similar to that at the Memphis regional, where my game will be.  He worries that the "Decision Driven" category is a problem - since some folks like more luck and others more strategy, maybe a 3 is the desired outcome, but I think that ignores the instructions at the bottom, where you're actually supposed to rate from 1-5 depending on the impact of luck on the game itself, not on the amount of luck actually involved.

For Yoggity, my entry, I think the framework above might actually help me, since the game's strengths are a reasonable fit with the categories.  My game is more of a family game, and some of the other entries in my regional contest (shown here) look a bit like heavier wargames, although you can't tell too much from the pictures.  Games like that, even if they're awesome, are going to be more likely to lose points in the Broad Appeal and Simple to Learn (and often Wait Time and Replayable) categories.

Of course, it will all be up to the volunteer judges and how they decide to apply the categories, so there's no sense worrying too much, but it's interesting to ponder.

Anagrams Galore, or Aroma Rage Slang

Getting working on Scryptix again, after an 8-month hiatus.  I need to get some more puzzles made, which is tricky, since they need to start with interesting phrases with words of equal length that convert into anagrams that contain the same number of words with the same length, with an understandable clue.

I've made about 160 of these.  At my best, I can make 10-20 an hour or so, but I burn out after that - it's a bit tedious to look for anagrams, and you run out of ideas.  To get the game to work as I envision it, with a daily puzzle, I'm going to need to have a good number of puzzles banked up, so I can take an hour here or there every couple of weeks to make new puzzles.

At some point, I'd like to crowd-source it, and let people submit their own puzzles, but I'd have to write a submission interface for that, which takes a while, and my time is currently better spent getting the game running better.  I also have no idea if people would actually enjoy submitting puzzles and would do it in enough numbers to support the game and make it worth my while to program the interface.

Anyway, though, exciting to get the project going again.

Design by iteration, and the perils of blind spots

An interesting retrospective on the evolution of a game design over at Board Game News - Gil Hova's Prolix.  I haven't played the game, but the story he tells is a familiar one.  I get this great idea, I make up a prototype, play it, enjoy it, with family or with a few friends.  It seems awesome.  I'm so stoked about this that I kind of ignore the issues that surface during playtesting.  Finally, some flaws become apparent.  Then, I try increasingly arcane tweaks to fix them, eventually ending up with an unworkable Rube Goldberg machine, where the attempts to fix old flaws have created new ones.  Then, I despair.  Eventually, I try more tweaks, some of them radical, iterating back and forth, never sure if I'm actually progressing, until eventually, I either fix what's wrong, or realize I have to give up for a while.

That's been my experience with several boardgame designs.  One example is Galapagos - I've been working on this game on and off for over ten years.  I got excited again about it last fall after playing some fun games with my family.  So I finally got it all put together in a nice package at TheGameCrafter.com, bought myself a test copy, and then tried playing it a few times with new groups.  It ended up being hard to explain, not really working, being too luck-based, and taking way too long.  It obviously needs some help, but I don't know what to do at the moment.  Totally in the despair stage, although I think it's a terrific theme and pretty good game - I just don't know what to try next, so I've shelved it and gotten focused on other projects.

With Diggity, I've been through several rounds of iteration, and I think it plays well.  I've tested it with all kinds of groups, and although there are some who like it better than others, it's worked every time, and many people like it a lot.  The game rules are pretty simple and easy to understand.  So, I'm pretty confident that I'm at the end of the iteration process here, even though it's taken way less time than Galapagos.

The blind spots are always worrying - you don't know what you're not seeing (or willing yourself not to see).  You know you design games that you'd want to play, so obviously you're more likely to enjoy your designs.  You want to maintain your enthusiasm and be excited about the game, but at the same time, you need not to ignore any problems that come up repeatedly, even if they don't bug you much.  A tricky tightrope to walk, and tough to know when you're finished.

Custom Dice

Chessex offers custom six-sided dice in relatively small quantities here.  Not too economical for a small run (a fully custom die with all six sides would be $6 per die up to 25 of them, with a minimum order of 10 or $60, and not too much of a bulk discount at $2.52 per die at 500 of them, a total order cost of $1260) but maybe worth it for prototyping or small-print-run hand-made games, especially if you only need custom sides for a few of them.

BGDF Results

The results are in.  My game, Caravan, came in second in a massive four-way tie at five votes, well behind the winner at 11 votes.  The winning game, Sorceror's Apprentices, was a neat idea - played on an Othello board, but with a magic contest theme.  I certainly think it deserved to win, although it would need a ton more design, detail, and testing to make a fully-realized game, and I think the victory conditions are not workable as written.

I'm curious about the voting - that huge a lead is uncommon, since most folks split up their votes among many entries.  I wonder if somebody sent all six of their votes or something like that.  The voting is kind of a game by itself.

I'll post the rules to Caravan up here soon.  I didn't get a chance to test it; one commenter worried about stalemate, which I was also concerned about, and that would be a very real danger.  I think I might give it a try - I've got a hex mat and some poker chips that would work.

Off to Tennessee

Yoggity's packed up and in the mail to GameCon Memphis.  Exciting - I hope the testers there have fun with it.  We'll see how the contest goes.

Yoggity ready to go

I got my new versions of Yoggity from TheGameCrafter.  I need to put the stickers on the parts (wouldn't want to make the testers do that kind of set up) and make sure all the components are OK, and print up a nicer box label than TGC does.  But then I should be good to go to send it to Memphis for the Rio Grande regional contest.  Along with my hopes and dreams.  And return postage.

BGDF contest, again

Just got done reading through the BGDF contest entries for August and casting my votes.  Neat stuff - there are a number of them with very clever design components - mechanics, board layouts, theme ideas, etc.  No idea how I'll do.  To me, it seemed like a few of them suffered from the typical problem in this competition where the games just aren't fleshed out enough in 800 words to get a sense of how they go, or they invoke big decks of cards that you have to imagine would be carefully tested and full of cool stuff.  But others are just neat-o.

A couple also seemed not to honor the restrictions put on entries this time around, which were that you had to have shared components and two separate unique paths to victory.  For a couple of the games (in one case, one that I really liked otherwise) they seem to have ignored this completely; for others, they're technically honored, I guess, but not really in spirit (the two victors get there the same way, by following the same goals, for example).  There's not really any way to police this, other than to hope the voters see it too, but I guess it's not that big a deal for something with no real prize that you're doing for fun.

August BGDF entries up

That was fast.  Eight of them, ranging from a new card game with a standard deck of cards to a couple with over 240 pieces.  Lots of artwork in these entries - more than usual, and more complete.  Because of the restrictions, the rules are pretty complex - I need to sit down with a monster Diet Mountain Dew and wade through them all before voting.

Which is soon this time - midnight on August 30.  Exciting.  I hope more people give comments and reviews than last time - that was kind of disappointing, since only I and one other guy did.

August BGDF contest entry in

I got my entry in for the August BGDF showdown.  I think it's a good one.  The problem is, I had to rush at the end, and I never got a chance to playtest it.  I think it would work OK, but I didn't have time to find four people to give it a try.

Might get that chance this weekend.  Anyway, we'll see what everybody else did within the restrictions.

New BGDF showdown is a doozy

Lots of conditions for the BGDF design showdown this month - shared resources, at least four players, and two people have to win simultaneously.  I'm at a loss for now, but hopefully something will occur to me.