Pretentious Board Games

I met with Daniel Peterson (of Mayday games) to show him some of my games. He was not impressed with any of them. Though that was true, we still had an interesting conversation, and I gained some good insight into what Mayday wants. I think it increasingly unlikely that I will ever get a game published by Mayday, because I enjoy a lot more calculation, accounting, and heavy, repeated planning than they want in a game. The biggest take home was that I should be designing games for ADHD players, and that the math and accounting all has to happen in a very subtle way to be palatable to players. That being said, I have also determined that if Berrett likes a game, then it is possible that Mayday would like it too. Here are my notes from the meeting. The Madness Place: madness should be integrated into other costs high level machines should cost more to build all cards should be level 2, and have the ability to level up (taking actions and or cards and or something) perhaps tech t...

Since coming back from our vacation in California I have continued to work on Hungry Oni and Deception. I entered Deception in a microgame design contest and have gotten a pretty good review on it here . Hopefully more people play it and it does well in the contest :). I have also rewritten the rules for Dancing Robots in preparation for the SaltCon Ion Awards . I am planning on submitting four games (dancing robots, moar moai, witch hunt, and hungry oni) this year to the awards, but I have not yet finished the rulesmithing for them. I also found a new game that I want to try out. It is named Comrade . I have printed it out and plan on shanghaiing my coworkers into a game this week.

Dead Drop  is a 2-4 player micro card game. It takes 2-15 minutes to play and could have been named "Clue - the good parts" were it not for copyright reasons. That last statement is not entirely accurate. It has a similar deduction requirements, but the mechanics are different. I have played about 30 games so far (given that I printed it on Friday of last week this is a pretty decent amount of games). About 8 were 2 player, 8 were 3 player, and 14 were 4 player. In the game one card (the drop) is placed face down in the middle and all players attempt to deduce what card that card is by finding out what cards all the other players hold. There are cards that are visible to all of the players (one per player), and cards that each player holds (1/nth of the remaining cards). There are three possible actions that players have allow them to swap cards with other players, with the visible cards, and to ask other players if they have specific cards. A round of the game co...

I went to a meeting of the Sandy Board Game Design club last night. We played Ryan (of Red Raven Games ) Laukat's new game, which is based in the same universe as Empires of the Void. It was a 4x game which combined mechanics of area control, drafting, and combat similar to Cosmic Encounter , and it was pretty fun. Alison liked it, which is surprising since she has never liked a 4x game before this. I tested the combat of the game (every time I design a game like that people never really fight enough to test the combat fairly well, so I thought that would be a good thing to do), and it was pretty easy to understand and seemed balanced fairly well (with a slight bonus to the defenders that made them have enough of a boost that you had to think about attacking a planet). We also played a game of Dancing Robots, which went fairly well. After the game was over there was a short brainstorming session and we discussed how to speed up the game. A drafting mechanic was discussed for...

I entered my creative accounting game into a game contest. I rethemed it again as an Oliver Twist game, but the rules did not have to change at all. I look forward to seeing the results. Also, I ordered a high fidelity version of dancing robots to be printed up. I wanted to order it at the game crafter, but they had a wait time of a few months and so I ordered it at drive thru cards instead. Hopefully everything will go well, and I will have cool cards soon.

I have been spending a lot of time in gimp preparing the dancing robots cards to look good for my printing. I have the following to show for my efforts: They seem to be getting closer to correct, but I still am working on them a bit. Also, I am considering entering cook the books into this contest. I just need to retheme it as an Oliver Twist game.

I just got my copies of Burgoo, Templar Intrigue, and Coin Age. They were excellent quality, and I am very happy with all of them. Over lunches recently I have been not playing games because I have been working on my dancing robot cards. They are coming along quite nicely. Here is a sample of what will probably be the final look of the cards. I have a poll running to choose between a few final versions of the cards. The poll is here .

I have received word that my rewards from my first Kickstarter campaigns will arrive soon (probably Monday). This is exciting because I have been waiting for them for a while. With the small time frame between now and receiving Burgoo we have seen a resurgence of interest in it at work. It is a really fun game, especially for the small size that it is, and the simplicity of the rules. I have been working on an android app for my daughter. It is a really simple application, but since I have never created a real android app before I am still learning things. Hopefully I will be done soon so that I can focus more on finishing up all of my Dancing Robots cards. I figure that my next step is to get some high fidelity copies made up and  send them out to a publisher and some reviewers. If the publisher doesn't respond in a reasonable amount of time, then I will send it to another one while setting up a kick-starter campaign (and sending it to more reviewers). If the second one...

I have completed a first draft of my Dancing Robot move cards. I am still missing some artwork for the parts (the Portuguese guy who is drawing it is taking some time finishing the last three parts). I have made do with a hand drawn "Stand" card as well as a small version of Dave's "Droid" card (since the third card is a antigravity device it is technically not necessary for any given move). Here are some samples: Here is the full gallery.

I have recently been working on the format of my dancing robots cards. I have been changing the way that all of the cards are laid out to put heat and electricity values in the upper right hand corner. This will allow the cards to be more easily read by just looking at the top half of the card. With these changes all of the rule text at the bottom has also generally become shorter. I also went through and fixed up the judges with actual art. Now I am starting to working on the move cards. When I am done I will be ready to make some more efforts to get some Playtesters to play it. Over the weekend I got some players to play witch hunt. They liked it fairly well. I will continue to play test it and post updates.

I have started on some artwork for witch hunt . It still is not complete by any means, but it is closer to what I want than the white paper with black writing that I used to have. The cards were designed by me, and the art was drawn by Kit Cox. I found it on the Discworld Wiki . I am currently tracking down Kit and asking him permission to use it, but I have not succeeded so far in contacting him. (He is no longer active on the wiki, and the last time he posted there was 6 years ago). I think that I have found him on Facebook, but it remains to be seen weather it really is him or not. I am trying to come up with ways to speed up the game, and I think that lowering the number of testimony cards will do that. Perhaps that will be enough, but perhaps I will have to do more. I am being quoted on another Kickstarter campaign (this time by tasty minstrel games, so a bigger campaign than last time). I have not gotten as many games of Harbour in as I would have liked recently. Wit...

I played another game of Witch Hunt (this time with my monthly gaming group). They liked the idea of the game, but said that it needed more work. I already knew that it was a good idea that needed a lot of balancing, so I was pretty happy with the feedback. We also played Dancing Robots (which I haven't played for a long time). They loved the judges and liked the difficulty that the game presented in balancing the various stats of the robots. The game went well, but I almost want to speed up the dance off. I need to figure out how to do that. I also talked with Dave, and hopefully he will get me the last part card artwork soon.

We have been hunting witches a lot recently. We have changed the game a fair amount, and are considering changing it more. The most up to date rules can be found here . Some changes that have been made: Balancing the Governor and Magistrate to make them give a standing bonus (+3) or penalty (-3) instead of making them kill players outright. Changing the pastor to give other players point penalties for not helping him. Changing the way that the roles gain points (almost all of them) Removing 'Witches' from the game entirely. There are now 'hags', 'trollops', and 'crones', all of which still have effects that activate upon people looking at them. Split up the Accomplices and the Witch Haters into more people (they still share common point gaining mechanisms, but they are quite different now.) We have experimented with different values of claim cards (+2, +1, 0, -1, -2), and (+1, +1, +0, -1, -1). It remains to be seen which set will win out. The...

We played a game of Eminent Domain  at work. They would play it again, but I have not brought it back yet since I have been working on one of my goals for the year, and I have not been playing lunch games for this last week. The games continue without me (I made the group, but it has taken a life of its own, so even when I am not there it continues). I did publish a new version of Dancing Robots online (with the mostly completed artwork), but haven't done much else on that front recently. I finally got my Dominion base set cards sleeved, and I decided to put all the cards from all the dominion expansions that I own into one box. The expansions that I own are: Dominion, Intrigue, Hinterlands, and Dark Ages (Also a copy of Platnum, Colony, and Walled Village). I measured that I could just barely not fit three rows of cards into the box (the box is 1mm too narrow), but I decided that I would build it as if I could fit all the cards in anyway, and perhaps try to compress the foa...

Dave got me some new artwork for Dancing Robots. I have updated all of the previously generated cards with the new artwork. The only part that has yet to be drawn is the spring (which is still sporting my trendy artwork). Here is a gallery of the current look of the cards. With the new artwork I am more excited about working on dancing robots some more (I have been much more excited about Creative Accounting recently, but that hasn't prevented me from working on Dancing Robots and Collusion as well) Tonight I put together a simple example of a visual way of displaying the amount of space a card provides or takes up. Here are some of the example cards I made: The cards that provide space have the space that they provide graphically represented on the right side of the card. The cards that use up space have the amount of space that they use up graphically represented on the left side of the card. You stack the cards up until the dark brown bar is as tall as the ligh...

For the last three days we have been playing Council of Verona  at lunch. The work crew have been enjoying it a fairly well. The best play that was played was a certain player 'poisoning' Romeo with his 5 token (Which fooled everybody into thinking that he really was poisoned and won the player the game). We also played a game of Avalon, which was pretty good as well. My Dancing Robot artwork is very nearly done. I can't wait for it to be finally completed. Alison and I have been working through the games that I brought home from SaltCon. Just last night we played Dominant Species. It was pretty fun. I was ahead in the beginning, and she came back for a close victory at the end. The grub eating eagles and the oat spiders were our favorite parts.

I am back from Salt Con. Here are the highlights: I played a bunch of games which I had never played before. Here are my thoughts on them: Machi Koro: This game was very similar to Settlers of Catan. It was slightly better that the aforementioned game (which I don't like very much), but not entirely horrible. There was a better ability to control your own destiny Council of Verona : This game was excellent. I had read the rules before the con, and decided to play the game at the con to see how much I liked it. After having played it I bought it (those who know me know that I am not really that likely to buy things right off the bat (so that is a large endorsement for me)). I would definitely recommend it to anyone that liked Love Letter, Avalon, or Coup. Get Bit: It was pretty fun. I would try it again. Walk the Plank : This game was very fun. I would definitely play it again. It has the ability to be moderately strategic, but you have to plan your moves in advance, and yo...

Tomorrow is SaltCon. My current plan is as follows: Attend all of Friday and Satuday Play some games (Caverna, Glass Road, Eminent Domain, Rialto, Walk the plank, Belfort, Council of Verona, Get Bit, Milestones, Robots on the Line, perhaps some Two Rooms and a Boom) Help out some (working in the game library and as a game teacher) Do the math trade (and get some cool games) Perhaps talk to some publishers (If I am lucky - apparently I am bad at getting people to email me back and set up appointments) Attend Prototype Alley (I think I am going with Cook the Books. More on that later.) Watch Ion awards Visit various workshops It should be fun. About the Prototype Alley: The total vote count (including all my responses from my different sources) was: 3 Dancing Robots, 4 Creative Accounting, 2 Collusion. I am going to go with Creative Accounting for one additional reason: Creative Accounting is not really play-testable as a 2 player game, and I have played Dancing Robots wi...

I am getting ready for SaltCon's Prototype alley , but can't figure out which game I should bring. Which one would you be most likely to want to play (given brief descriptions and rules): Dancing Robots : A game where you draft part and dance cards to build the ultimate dancing robot. You need to balance concerns to build a good robot that can dance a lot of moves. Finally, you must defeat all the competition in a judged dance off. 2-4 players, 20-40 minutes Collusion : A game where you buy and sell goods in an attempt to make more money than others through price fixing and undercutting. Alliances can be formed but no agreement is binding. 2-8 players, 10-40 minutes Creative Accounting : A team game where you are either a bean counter who tries to cook the books to give your company an unfair business advantage or a whistleblower who is trying to catch companies cooking the books. It is sort of Werewolf like, but there is no player elimination. 3-12 players, 10-30 minut...

I finished my first read through of all of the rules. I have not yet read all of them enough to feel comfortable playing them all. (Also, I was unable to find the rulebooks for a lot of them online.) The Following seemed to be impossible to find the rules for: Misty Ruins Other World Stadium Stella Nova: Journey of the Magi Superpowers The Demise of Dr. Frankenstein UFO Hunter Where Chickens Dare! Here are my thoughts on the others: Paradise Fallen: Seemed to be fairly simple to understand. More examples of cards would be nice. The game felt fairly simple, but it seemed like play might uncover some hidden complexity Rialto: A fun sounding game. I will probably play this one time or more at the con. SlapShot: it is a hockey game. There seems to be some randomness to it, but also the possibility of winning through strategy. It is possible that I found some old rules for this because it seemed very old. Space Sheep: a simple game that could be fun based on...