Pretentious Board Games

I tentatively made changes to The Madness Place recently, but haven't tried the game out until tonight. Here are the new rules: Turns are now one action each (With the exception of balancing a device, which happens as part of modifying the device) After players pass, the player who passed first goes first the next round. Get energy from the castle only at the start of each round. storing keeps energy between rounds. draft and rooms repair refill every round. We tried out the new rules at the BGDG meeting, and it went fairly well. Here are my notes from the playtest: Make sure to note that Any modify requires balance Balance only the worst balanced device on a swap Using time should be a free action Gain access to another player's device too? Store energy too? Add energy to the castle's output too? Balance a device too? Turns are too small Perhaps group actions? Perhaps spark increases actions per turn? Perhaps minions left on your mat increase ac

I have been doing so many thing recently that I have forgot to write any blog posts. For one thing, I have been playtesting a new game that Seth Jaffe (creator of Eminent Domain and other fine games) is designing. The game is called Automatown, and is about building robots that build more robots for you until you have enough robots to take over the world. For an early prototype it is pretty fun and well balanced. I have had an idea that I have been sitting on for a few years about building snowmen that build more snowmen. This ends up being thematically really similar, but my ideas for mechanics were way different than his. We have played it at work a few times, and the people are interested in seeing his new changes. Being that today is Friday it might end up being a skateboarding day, so perhaps we will not get to play it, but perhaps we will. In terms of my games, I have gotten a few games of The Fatal Flaw in, and also played a game of the Madness Place. I am thinking of givi