Recap & Preview

Jan 102008

Due to scheduling changes, at least for awhile, our game design meetings will be on Thursdays. Tonight I plan on testing Space Port to get it ready for a convention this weekend.

But first, a recap of last meeting…

First Drey, Ian, Marc, and I played Space Port. Actually we didn’t get very far. The whole thing fell apart gameplay-wise so we stopped. It worked fine last time, but I must have tinkered with the wrong gears and apparently made it unplayable. Surprisingly, this turned out to be a good thing. I got a lot of feedback about my train wreck… a lot of good and diverse feedback. This had me theorizing that “great” games cause enthusiastic responses, “ok” games cause silence or apathy, and “bad” games cause productive and creative responses. I think that the last one may be because they know that everything is changeable because nothing really worked, so all suggestions are more likely to be implementable.

Then we played Marc’s new re-theming of his old game Pangaea, called Coalescence. The old theme was about continents merging into land masses. The new theme is about star systems coalescing. He fixed some rules from the last time I saw it where the end game was hard to determine. This was fixed by making most actions irreversible. This worked perfectly and the game wrapped up nicely without any confusion. Both Ian (or was it Drey?) and I had a problem with the new galaxy board design. It was too busy and distracted us from the game. Other than that issue, and the need for a tie breaker rule, the game looks and plays pretty good.

Finally, we played with some hero cards and tactics cards from an expansion to Ian’s Taktika. The hero cards are “always on” abilities. The tactics cards are “one shot” abilities. Overall, the concept worked pretty smoothly, although the actual content of the cards will probably need to be tested and tweaked a lot.

Now for tonight…

I have been solo playing Space Port as a two-player game this week for testing. Tonight, I hope to try it out with more players. Right now, the game allows two to four players. Any more and the game would probably be too crowded. I suppose I could create a different board for more players with more spaces, but that is a problem for the future. A two-player game comes in at about 21 minutes, according to the four times that I timed it. I am going to speculate that four players will take twice that amount. Of course, my timing was based on me playing as two players, so it may be more or less that amount.

Part of my plans this year is to playtest as much as I can at conventions, especially easy-on-the-wallet local ones. This weekend Ian and I will be attending a convention in Round Rock where we plan on playing, playtesting, and selling some of out games. I’m trying to get Space Port to a solid enough state to where I can play it with strangers without having to apologize every minute about a hole in the rules or about a clunky mechanic. I am also printing up another copy of Travelogue to play. I haven’t played it since July when I sent it away to Italy, so I’m curious about my new perspective on the game.

My Days are Numbered

Jan 092008

I have been busy this past week working on Space Port (or sometime Space Dock, as I interchangeably call it). I can’t remember the last time I’ve worked so hard on playtesting and revising a game in so short a time. I think it may be a by-product of my new schedule for game design this year. Now that I know that I only have a fixed amount of time to work on this game, I guess I am putting more into it up front. I work better under pressure, and it shows. My current year’s calendar has me working on Space Port for four months starting in January. By the time March rolls around, I should be heavily playtesting it with whoever I can find. By the third month, I’ll have a polished copy of the rules to begin blind playtesting. In the end, I should have a publisher friendly game box with a nice prototype and rules.

Starting in February I will begin work on my war game for four months. So, the two games will overlap for awhile. This will allow me to have something to do when I’m frustrated with the other game. We’ll see how that goes. I plan on entering both of these games into the Hippodice game design contest at the end of October. I’l probably have to retheme them since they are both sci-fi themed, but that’s another issue for another day. So, February is my unofficial mini-deadline for Space Port since at that time my attention will be divided in half.

The rest of my year is also planned out with new games and old ones that need revisiting. One new game is for the Lucca contest, which I wont start until they announce the rules for entry. Another new game is just left wide open. I wanted to give myself an “elective” game of sorts. That way I can come up with a cool idea and rest assured knowing that I’d have time set aside to work on it. The old game I’ll be working on is Venture Forth which has been received with glowing indifference. I basically need to inject some pop into the game because I think it is worthy of it. I also have my group of finished (or 99% finished) games that are “on” all the time which means that I should be always actively dealing with them by sending them to publishers or refining that one extra piece. It is comforting to have this plan because I feel that I’m in more control over where my games are headed. While the past two years my games were in pre-school running rampant and doing what they pleased, this year they are in college with a nice schedule to help further them along to “graduate”.

So far, my plan is going smoothly. At the very least I feel more relaxed and focused.

2008 Game Design Resolutions

Dec 192007

The new year is upon us and I’d like to take a moment to make my game design resolutions for 2008. In no particular order, here they are:

I will only work on a fixed number of new games.

This resolution will be a hard one to follow, but it is important. Having a fixed number of games means that I will only be allowed to spend a certain amount of time on any particular game. Sometimes I move on too quickly after designing a game before I am actually done with it. Other times I spend way too much time on a game and neglect my others. Having a fixed number of games will help me divide up my months so that I will know where I should be and what should be finished. This is important especially when designing rulebooks. So often I neglect writing down important details and end up forgetting them when I pick up the game after a hiatus. I haven’t determined how I will handle the number of games, or if my existing prototypes will fall into the mix, but I do have an idea for what is on tap for the coming months.

I will enter more game design contests.

I found that entering contests this year has helped me a lot. It has given me focus with themes and deadlines to work around. Next year, I plan on picking a few contests, like Lucca or Hippodice, and being committed to them throughout the process. Too often I let the deadlines pass for contests that I should be entered into. Usually that is because my games are in a troubled state or they are being currently reviewed by a publisher. With that in mind, I hope to start planning ahead of time to make sure I have a game ready well in advance.

I will do more blind playtesting.

I can never get enough people to blind playtest my games. Having someone who has never seen my game before learn the game solely from the rules gives me great insight into how well I am conveying my game. Ultimately, I want to see if the game is ready enough for a publisher to look over. As long as the testers were able to play the game without much trouble, I consider it a good test.

I currently have a system worked out with our sister design group in Oklahoma where we will be sending our games back and forth for each other to playtest (it just so happens to be blind). Right now, they have one of my games, and I am waiting for them to ship it back piggybacked with their prototype(s).

I will collect more playtest data.

I nearly always forget to time how long it takes to play a prototype. I don’t write down the scores as much as I should. I really ought to be collecting stats on how often certain strategies win over other ones, or which items are used most frequently. Most of the time the info isn’t useful on the spot, but it sure makes a difference when you want to prove a point to yourself later on. This is a bother to do, but I think if I prepare better before the playtest begins, I will have a better chance of capturing this info.

I will listen more to my playtesters’ advice.

I often get defensive after a playtester offers some advice about one of my prototypes that I don’t agree with. I immediately counter their opinion with reasons why things are designed this way or that way. Sometimes they offer suggestions to add mechanics I’ve tossed two versions ago, other times they want to add arbitrary chunks of gameplay to the game. Well, it turns out that all feedback (whether I like it or not) is useful. It doesn’t mean they are all right, it just means that they have their place.

When one player says that my bidding mechanic is clunky, I need to write it down and remember it! I may scoff it off now, but when a few months later another player says the same thing, then there might be something to it. Part of listening is capturing it all down on paper. Filtering that info into good and bad advice can be done later. The more opinions collected, and the more I reflect on them, the more likely I will see perceived problem areas in the game.

I will be published in 2008.

By this, I mean I will have signed a deal to be professionally published. The actual game may come out whenever, but next year, I’m going to make it happen. Now, I’ve said this year after year, and haven’t done it, but this year I can see it happening. My backlog of working games is getting bigger and better, and one of them is bound to be noticed.

OK. That’s enough for now. I don’t want to give myself too much pressure.

~ Dan

Space Port

Dec 112007

The latest game design that I’m working on has spawned from a single mechanic into something really fun to work on. I won’t go into the mechanic now, but I will talk about the theme of the game: Sci-Fi!

The game’s setting is inspired by Mos Eisley from Star Wars. The central board of the game depicts a spaceport where there’s lots of hustle and bustle amongst the lowlifes and smugglers. You play as the equivalent of a Hutt Crimelord. Your job is to get your shipments of goods and contraband to where they need to go. You loosely control pilots and their ships to do your dirty work. Yes, this game could just as well be played in the Mediterranean with your typical traders with weird hats, but who wants to play that yet again?

By setting this game in a familiar place, I can infuse theme into the game by asking WWHSD? Han Solo would find business at the Cantina. Han Solo would do anything for the right price. So far, that seems to be working. Those ideas translate into: You can convert goods into contraband at the Cantina. You can use your opponent’s ships by paying the other player off. As I hone down the rules and mechanics, I’ll be adding more thematic elements like these.

Last night I refined my prototype to make sure I had enough pieces to play. When I threw the game together initially, I just grabbed some wooden cubes and said to myself “This looks like enough.” So, I looked through my box of game bits and found some colored cubes for the shipments. I took some small wooden milk bottle things and made them into rocket ships. My board, which is just a circular ring of docking bays, needed some cantinas, so I just added some gray blocks to the board. I put the board on a black cloth just to add to the space-faring theme.

The individual planets that a player controls were fun to design. Right now, they are just denoted by what cubes they produce and what cubes they require. Since there are only three types of planets and three types of goods, it was a bit tight to design them yet still make them interesting. Also, one of the planets is a Rebel planet. It is where all of your contraband needs to go once you acquire it. I still need to make the individual planet place cards because as of right now the cubes will be sitting on post-its.

Right now, I’m still in the design phase, but certain rules are starting to congeal into permanent ones. I’m still experimenting with ideas and trying new techniques out, which is where most of the fun is when working on a game. I’ll try to keep you posted on my progress.

Downdraft Skiing

Nov 302007

At this week’s meeting, I mentioned this dexterity game that I made for a BGDF designer challenge about two years ago, and I thought I repost it. I don’t remember why I brought it up, but it did come in second place and I think it’s pretty good. It’s really easy to make (household stuff), but be warned you will get light headed with all of the blowing you’ll be doing!

Downdraft Skiing
By Dan Manfredini

For any number of two player teams

Components

• 1 Cotton Ball
• 1 Ping Pong Ball
• 1 Crumpled Paper Ball
• 5 (or more) Unopened Cans (Soda, Beer, Soup, etc.)
• 1 Stop Watch
• 1 Sheet of Paper w/ Pencil
• 1 Long Table

The Object of the Game

Downdraft Mountain is notorious for its strong winds and deadly cliffs, but that doesn’t stop skiers from attempting to slalom down it. The object of the game is for you and your teammate to blow your skier (ball) in and out of the flags (cans) to the end of the course.

Setting up the Game

• Clear off a long table and remove all of the chairs around it.
• Place 5 cans down the length of the center of the table. You may use more cans depending on the length of your table. Player may agree to stagger them off of the center to increase difficulty.
• Designate a “start” end and a “finish” end to the table.
• Assign teams of two players.

Playing the Game

The game will consist of three rounds. The type of skier will vary each round:

Round 1 – Cotton Ball (Stops reasonably)
Round 2 – Ping Pong Ball (Does not stop)
Round 3 – Crumpled Paper Ball (Stops too early)

On Your Run

Each team will get one chance during each round to run through the course.

On your team’s run, both players go to the “start” end of the table. One player stands on the one side of the table and the other player stands on the opposite side. One player will place the ball on the table in front of him.

Designate a player on another team to be the referee. That person will give a countdown, tell the players to start, and then start the timer. The player will then blow his ball through the first gate (between the edge of the table and the first can). The teammate will then blow the ball back around the next can. This will continue until the ball goes through the last gate (between the edge of the table and the last can). When the ball passes through the last gate, the moment it leaves the table is when the timer should be stopped. The referee then records the time for that run.

Special Rules

• While the ball is on the table, it may not be touched, except the replace a fallen ball.
• If the ball falls off the table, put it back on at the edge where it fell off.
• A player cannot leave his or her side of the table.

Scoring

At the end of each run, that team is penalized one point (+1) each time the ball falls off the table, one point (+1) each time a teammate touches the ball illegally, and two points (+2) each time a player leaves his or her side of the table.
At the end of each round, the team with the best time marks off two points (-2).
At the end of the game, the team with the least points is the winner.

Drey's take on BGG.con

Nov 202007

This is cross-posted from my blog:

I was in Dallas this past Thursday through Sunday for BoardGameGeek.con, a fantastic board gaming convention. It was a smaller, more laid back type of con than your GenCon or ComicCon, with perhaps only 700 attendees.

I cajoled Cory into going at the very last minute, so he, Nukes, Majcher and I headed up there Thursday morning. The con was at the Westin near the airport. The only thing nearby was a Denny’s and a Shell station. That Denny’s must make bank as it was the only source of reasonably priced “food” within several miles, as we found out.

The con itself was spread out between a large ballroom, a smaller ballroom and an overflow room. Plus there was a foyer area and a games library. The games library was this heavenly wonderland where you could find every game you had ever heard of, no matter how rare or out of print. Games that would cost you $300 on eBay could be checked out and played, even taken up to your room overnight. That right there should tell you about the top shelf quality of people at this convention.

I got to see Mischa again! Mischa is a gaming dynamo. I came down one morning, at what I thought was an early time (maybe 7:30 or 8AM) to find Mischa embroiled in a game of Galaxy Trucker. He had gamed through the night with no signs of stopping. Later that afternoon, I began to suspect the use of illegal stimulants, or, at the very least, a clone. How could someone do this? The secret to his staying power was revealed a few days later, but I shall take it to my grave.

I had the most fun playing obscure games, out of print games or games designed by my friends. Kapitan Wackelpudding left a deep impression. Shipping a stack of coffins and video games to Dracula land is no easy task. Tales of the Arabian Nights stole my heart. It is a game I should have been playing during my childhood at the same time as Talisman or Cosmic Encounter. It is essentially a Choose Your Own Adventure board game with role-playing elements. Thankfully, Z-Man is coming out with a new version next June. I learned the ferocity of soccer moms vying for the best looking garden in Garden Competition.

I played Dan’s Monkey Lab again, outwitting my opponents. I also had a chance to play Majcher’s Honeypot, which is a brilliant abstract strategy game. I was also delighted by his prototype of Fluffy Bunny Tea Party. It involves bunnies sitting around eating cakes, drinking tea and being horrifically polite to each other. Dan sold out of Chains of Fenrir, Majcher sold out of Honeypot and Ian sold out of Taktika. We were all really happy for Ian. He walked around in this kind of daze, unprepared for how well his game would be received.

I brought 12 units of House of Whack and managed to sell 6 of them! At first I was really overwhelmed. I felt kind of stunned by what it was I was trying to do and a deep terror grabbed hold of me. I didn’t think anyone was going to like my game. I wanted to give up and run far away. But on the morning of the flea market, I went down to the show room, claimed half a table, and set up a display for House of Whack. When the browsers flooded in like a Zerg rush, I kept my head and hyped the game to everyone who came by. My very first sale was to Aldie, one of the guys in charge of the convention. That was cool.

Friedemann Friese, a famous game designer was there as the guest of honor. He hung out and played games with everyone like a regular guy. You could always spot him in the room due to his shock of bright green hair. He always looked like he was searching for something, entering a room, head craning about, trying to spot something just out of view. I talked with him about what it was like when he had finished his first game and he said that he felt like he had no idea what he was doing, but, after the first game, nothing else quite gives you the same feeling. I get that.

Sunday morning found us packing up our massive hauls of treasure gleaned from the math trade and the flea market. If I had an extra $100 (and more trunk space), I would have matched Jake and Jen’s impressive finds. I think they got Arkham Horror and Descent for $40 total. Nice.

And then we came back to Austin.

The End.

A Nice Little Meeting

Nov 142007

Last night Ian and Marc showed up at my place, and we did a bit of playing and a lot of design talking. Here are some of the highlights:

Lab Work 

I asked if we could try out Monkey Lab with some suggested rules. There were some clever plays, and a few evil ones.  In the end, I beat Marc by one point. Ian was spinning his wheels working on one cage the whole game, and wound up with only mooched points.

We discussed the merits of the rules changes. The first rule change (a monkey can’t open a cage in a room with the guard in it) didn’t come into play. The second rule change (the guard moves two spaces toward a cage being opened) worked alright. It was noted that the guard usually ended up in a room that was already tapped out of points. I think we were all ambivalent with the moving rule because there were good reasons for having it and good reasons for leaving it out.

Hell and Back 

We also tried out a game Ian and I made a few weeks back about escaping from hell. The game is a kind of set collecting game where you are trying to endure tortures without losing your will to escape. The sets being collected are actually runs of numbers, so collecting a “4-5-6″ would be a valid run that you could cash in to move one step closer to escaping from hell.

In our first version we used a d8 and some stones as a way to track our stats. In order to clean it up, the second version used a personal board for each player with some sliding counters to represent the stats. The funny thing was that the cleaner version was harder to use. It is much easier to glance at your opponent and see he has a pile of stones than it is to look at his board and see where his counters are at long their path.

Ian proposed that the cards utilize color in some way. I was against is because I think there is something novel in games that don’t use a suit. Games like No Thanks! and Category 5 just have that uniqueness about them that separates them from games with color and suit like Lost Cities. I eventually conceded to the “color matters” design, but I pushed that there only be two colors, red and black. The colors will be used as a way of progressing yourself out of hell a bit faster using a Candyland-like mechanic. Both Ian and I are going to try our hands at making a hellscape board that makes use of this mechanic and gives the player incentives to make progress rather than hoarding cards.

 Sci-Fi Party Game

As we were discussing game designs, Marc said that we needed to make a party game. I told him that I had an idea for a social game that is based on the game Zobmondo. Where Zobmondo likes to focus on sick dilemmas like “Would you rather eat a jar of spoiled year-old mayo, or drink out of a spittoon?”, the idea I had would focus on science fiction quandaries. For example, “Should it be legal to marry an intelligent being of another species?”, “Now that we’ve colonized and found oil on Mars, which country has rights to it?”, “If your brain is surgically transferred into your clone, is the clone you for legal purposes such as taxes, debt, and property?” We also discussed putting the game into a format where players would be debating these issues as futuristic presidential candidates. Marc jumped right on this one and is planning on working on it.

Ubermause

Oct 162007

I dusted off the Ubermause prototype and brought it over to design night. I got to meet John finally, who turned out to be interesting and pleasant. I had not really looked at the game in about a year and only had a ream of printed notes with the rules scattered throughout. I was able to convey the basic concept of the game and we played until John had to go. We got a lot of things wrong, mainly because I misinterpreted Drey From the Past’s notes to me, Future Drey.

One of Dan’s strong suits is creating elegant designs. I tend to throw tons of ideas into a design, fill it with all kinds of bells and whistles and options, but I often end up with this unwieldy beast.

Dan had some brilliant ideas to simplify the game and actually increase the fun factor. His idea was to integrate the ship power-ups into the mice themselves. That way players are immediately invested in the value of their crew even before they land on a planet. Also, we talked about making the ships themselves mini-boards, environments for the mice to move around in. For instance, an engineer could normally sit in one of the purple engine slots, increasing the ship’s movement. But if the ship got damaged, the engineer could move to the repair slot to fix it, but then you’d lose the extra speed. I was very excited about this idea as it took away several layers of complexity while adding a new fun element.

I shall mock up the new ships when I get a chance and maybe next playtest we’ll actually get to land on a planet and see the mice in action!

Tonight is Design Night

Oct 022007

Every Tuesday we have design night at my place and I usually shoot out an email with some agenda details and a call for who is coming. From now on, I figured I’d post this here on the blog instead so everyone can see what we’ve been up to.

One of the things I’d like to discuss this week is the ad we’re placing on The Dice Tower podcast. We’ve all pitched in and written little blurbs for our games, and hopefully we will attract some interest. In addition to that, Marc has updated the gizmet site with pages for our new games. Exciting times! Speaking of Marc, I saw that he had a playtest of his prototype Rocket Yard on Friday night with some rules tweaks, and I’d like to hear how that went. Hopefully Ian will bring his latest version of his prototype for Galaxy in Flames, a real time space combat card game, and maybe he’ll update us about the production of his game, Taktitka. I’ve got my genericly titled game “War Game” ready again to playtest with some hybrid ideas from the first and second versions. I’m not sure what is on the docket for Drey, Mark, or our newest attendee.

On another subject, I guess I forgot to update my story on my last post about the game I’m publishing. Well, first let me say the game is called Chains of Fenrir (formerly called the bead game). Secondly, to wrap up my story on the bag cinch: it worked out just fine since the stones I bought were too big to fall out if closed properly. That was actually the easy problem to fix. The bigger issue came when my stones arrived in the mail. It turned out that the purple stones and the orange stones were near identical on the table and could only be distinguished if held up to a light. I compare it to how a glass of grape soda and cola are hard to tell apart unless they’re backlit. My solution to this problem was to shop locally for some white stones as a replacement. Unfortunately, it was very difficult to find plain white stones. As luck would have it, one of my friends recently bought a ton of stones, and he happened to have a surplus of white stones. He let me have them, and I have enough for a little over a dozen games. I’ll eventually have to buy more, but at least I have some to start off with. If you’d like to check out the game, the rules should be posted on BoardGameGeek shortly. I’ve got some pics of the components up there too. If you’d like to buy the game, we’ve got it all set up for you to do that here.

Improv Challenge!

Jun 062007

Mischa, Dan, and myself met tonight for a couple hours at Austin Java to give Dan’s Travelogue prototype one last go-around before it was shipped off to Italy. A three-player game ran just over half an hour, and I must say, it was a pretty solid, fun card game, all around. Mischa smashed out the lead with a monster twelve-point “trick”, but the scores were satisfyingly close, and everyone felt a certain level of control and pacing throughout the game. I like the broader range of scores on the cards, and the new stacking system for the destination cards. There were a few other modifications from the last time I played that I wasn’t sure of at the beginning, but it all hung together very well, and although I know that Dan loves to tinker, tweak, and twiddle his games over and over until everything is perfect, it feels like a winner to me already. I look forward to seeing how it fares in the contest.

We chatted some more and fiddled a little bit with designs here and there – Mischa brought out a copy of Siege Stones, and we played around with a few designs around the pieces in the box, including one based very loosely on Lines of Action. Dan also gave us the sad news that he’s going to be re-theming his Monkey Lab game along the lines of some fantasy thing, to make it more palatable to publishers. (Wah!) Mostly game chat, though – although, and the end, we decided that Flywheel needed another challenge, and we each put in one restriction. So, Flywheelers, here is your challenge: you have one week (or two, or three, or however long it is before you show up to the next playtest hootenanny) to devise a game that 1) uses a board, 2) does not use any numbers, and 3) uses cards, with some kind of “flip and take” mechanic. I’ll leave those open for now – if anyone wants to post a clarification question, the person who put forth the restriction can pipe up and sort things out.

In production news, I have found myself some artists! I have a spreadsheet delivered to and a promise received from an illustrator friend of mine in San Francisco to draw me some pretty spaceship parts for my RocketYard cards, and another one in Austin who says he’ll kick down some art for Pangaea and Fluffy Bunny Tea Party, and potentially some Flat Track Action down the road, when I get that game not to suck so much. This means that I need to get back on track with hunting down cheaper card and box printing for RocketYard, and start thinking about how I want to package Pangaea up – I’m leaning more towards a flat board, rather than the (pretty sweet) bandanna printing I used with HoneyPot, but we’ll see how that goes. Hopefully, with a few more games available (or more, if the rest of the Flywheelers want to sell some stuff indie-style on Gizmet instead of waiting around for a publisher) I can make more of a marketing push, and get things moving a bit better…

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