Pretentious Board Games

Today is the end of National Game Design Month. Over the course of the month I designed Moar Moai and Roguelike . I would say that Moar Moai is pretty darn playable, and that Roguelike is at least barely playable. Moar Moai has one open point of contention right now, and that is the exact way in which artifacts turn into control over the adventurers. I think that I will end up with players having perfect control over what 'cards' they get (although they might end up as tokens on a specific part of the mat instead of cards), but not know what 'cards' other players have until the scoring round actually starts. Roguelike is still largely unbalanced, and I have never played games with the new weapon cards that I have invented because I have never printed them up (here in California I do not have access to my card creation equipment). Perhaps next week I will do that. It does seem to work without the tokens (+1 etc), but needs a mat to be printed up to make it reall...

I have made good progress on my NaNo games (both Moar Moai and Roguelike) over the last two days. We played a few games of Moar Moai, and we had some modifications to make. First of all, roads have been removed from the game entirely (they seemed to just slow down the speed at which people get their statues out, and they give later guys in the turn order an advantage that doesn't seem to help the game balance out). Additionally the explorer cards seem to be too random for some players (they do not seem powerful enough, and if you don't get the ones that you want it can suck). We have considered a few possibilities for fixing it: 1) Draw two cards for each token and discard half the cards right before playing the explorer phase. 2) Exchange tokens for cards on a one for one basis, selecting which cards you get (making AAH cards not have additional effects, but making it not known what you can do) 3) Discarding tokens for one of the three explorer effects (Explore, Dig, ...

We are in the final stretch. I have been changing the rules of Moar Moai a lot, and I was pretty happy about them. After two games last night I am wondering if the penalty of road building is a little too steep (having your roads used by everyone for all time). Perhaps road building should be removed completely. I will test that option out over the next few days and see how that affects the balance of the game. I am also trying to figure out a way to remove the tokens from Roguelike completely. This will allow for the game to be much smaller. I will test that out some time today and see if I can figure it out. We played some games of Moar Moai  last night as well as The Resistance and Forbidden island. Everything was pretty fun. Hopefully we can end up playing more games tonight as well.

Yesterday we played a 3 player game of Moar Moai. With only 6 fish per player the fish ran out too fast. I have to figure out a happy medium (we are working with a very narrow range, since 8 is too many and 6 is too few). Perhaps I will tweak the equation so that I don't have to go to 7 (7 is a messy number since the fish should be divided in half and placed in two zones). I am sort of getting worried about finding a dominant strategy in this game. It seems  as if the person with the most people always wins, and if that is the case, then this game is a very boring one. I need to figure out if there are other viable strategies. Also, I have been working a little on Roguelike, but it keeps making me play game after game of UnNethack. Perhaps I will be able to focus more on it over the thanksgiving break. By the way. I really like chess variants. Some of them end up being pretty small (the last one I played was that you could capture your own pieces and that pawns could move bac...

We played a four player game yesterday with the new rules, and there was a serious problem: Too many fish. We just couldn't seem to break through the fish barrier to the point where the fish began to be depleted. I have decided to reduce the number of starting fish to 6 per player because of this problem. That will allow a population of 12 people to be supported without a problem, but any more than that will begin to eat up the fish. A third person also told me that deep sea fish should be worth more... I really don't like the idea, but it seems like a common enough complaint that I need to address it. I just don't know how to do that yet. Also, as I was complaining about having to separate my cubes at the beginning of every game Bob told me to get more bags. I had never thought of doing that. This, folks, is why it is useful to have your managers play your games with you. Finally I changed the map to include a place to put the Explorer cards. Not really necessary, ...

I have greatly simplified the rules of Moar Moai. I don't know whether they will stick, but I played a game with Alison last night and she liked it a lot. The bulk of the changes were to remove the ability to mine stone and chop trees, and roll them into the build canoes, build statues, build roads, and move statues actions. This also makes it so that the trees are infinitely more likely to not be sitting around in someone's stockpile during the respawn phase (which is a good thing for the tree population size). The game ended up with Alison in the better overall position (since she had more statues than me), but I was in a very strong strategic position (I had the furthest advanced statues as well as more cards). She would have won if the explorers made it to the third location or further, but she didn't draw two 'explore deeper' cards, so I carried the day. If you are interested in seeing the how the game looks currently, the rules document is here , a...

I have been having a hard time finishing my recent rules changes to Moar Moai. For one thing I want to cut out more of the game than I want to cut out (which basically means that I am conflicted about how much to remove.) The game works fairly well, but needs to be simplified to be played in the amount of time that I want to play it. Also, I have been spending a lot of time with Roguelike (and getting car repairs, but that is another story). I have printed up cards for Roguelike, tried to play it with my wife and found that in order for it to be playable a lot of impromptu rules had to be made. The game was crushingly hard (which was the goal), but I feel that to give it a more Roguelike feel there needs to be more equipment. I probably hurt less than ten monsters during the game because my wife and I had one sword between the two of us, and I was wearing the armor. We played a game of Ticket to Ride over the weekend with some light gamers. I don't love the game, but appreciate...

I worked a bit on the changes to Moar Moai, but then I got side tracked by working on Roguelike. I think that I am ready to do a first printing of Roguelike and see how it works out. I have already made all of the room/hallway tiles, the mundane/enchantment tokens, and created all of the cards that I can envision needing (at this point in time). The current boss is named the chromatic dragon, and as it stands it should be nearly impossible to kill (it hits first due to its breath attacks, has perfect armor (no sword in the game can damage it, even when it is sleeping), and enough hit points to withstand a blast from a wand of death (the only other monsters that can survive a wand of death are all undead). The expected way to kill it is to blast it twice with a wand of death, but perhaps enterprising players will find other ways. I played a game of Moar Moai with Chris this morning. We were trying the new rules (the ones with purchasing cards and such), but during the last turn Ch...

Yesterday I didn't get in a game of Moar Moai, but I did rework some of the rules and redraw some of the images. I have uploaded the results to the usual places. For those who don't want to scroll down, the rules document is  here , and the images are here:  Track ,  Mat , and  Map . I still have a little more work to do before I feel that I am ready for another big playtest, so It might not happen today. I have been working on Roguelike a bit as well. I have been considering how I would randomize the identities of the potions (wands, and scrolls as well), and I am starting to think that I will have to have "bubbly potion" cards AND "potion of healing" cards. The item deck is full of "bubbly potions" and when someone drinks one (or ids it) they draw a card from the identified potion deck and see what it does. From that point on you place the "potion of healing" card face up in the playing area with a bubbly potion token on it (so futu...

Yesterday at lunch we had a four player game: Players: Taylor, Dave, Chris, Antione Taylor, Dave, and Chris all started by grabbing four fish and two resources each. This allowed for them to all grow to six people. Antione opened up by grabbing six fish, so on the second turn he ended up fishing last (his population fell back down to four because of this, and he remained there most of the rest of the game). I have considered changing how things are done to prevent some from getting all the fish that they want and others from getting much fewer fish. Perhaps I will come up with something useful soon. The early game was dominated by canoe building and starting up building statues. Taylor, Dave, and Antione all ended up with the same number of statues (8) and people (4), and Chris ended up with two statues and 5 people. The statues were placed such that Chris was winning in positions 1-4 (he was the only guy who moved his statues very far), and Taylor was winning in position 5. The...

The weekend was a rough one for my game. On Friday we had someone leaving the company, so we had a farewell lunch and didn't get any gaming done. At home my wife and I played Forbidden Island (more about that later). Saturday we had sick kids, so most of the day was spent taking care of them, and Sunday was Sunday. Alison's sister Katie (who enjoys gaming more than any of my other sisters or sisters in law) is staying with us for a week as she does some student teaching as part of her training to get a degree, so I am hoping that this week will see a few more plays of my NaGaDeMon game. Now, Forbidden Island is a cooperative game where you play as a team against the game itself. The story is that you are an explorer trying to gather four mystical artifacts form an island that is sinking into the sea and then escape the island (probably to sell the artifacts for massive zorkmids, but that is beside the point). The game could probably be played by eight year olds without too...

For those who don't want to scroll down, the rules document is here , and the images are here , here , and here . I played two more games last night trying to emulate Bob and Antoine and figured out about how many of each resource you need to have in order to play the game without running out of anything. I have fixed the rules so that they reflect this (having more statues was a weird side effect of this, but it is possible for a large group of starving people to churn out statues.) I fooled around with AAAH! cards being added to the explorer deck. They make the explorer phase have way more options. I don't think that they add unnecessary complexity, but I will keep testing them to make sure. They sure seem powerful, though. The game feels like it is fairly well balanced, however it needs a lot of playtesting to clean it up. I don't know what I am going to do with the rest of this month if I am unable to get enough playtesters to help me out. As of yet I have been pi...

I didn't do anything last evening, but yesterday during lunch I had my team lead Bob face off against Antoine (another team lead). It was funny to see how they played so differently than my wife and I did. They both focused heavily on getting more guys than the other player (team leads... go figure). After watching their game I decided to add back in the pieces that I took out two days ago. I also ordered more pieces to use for the game. They should arrive in a week or so. It is hard to get people at work to help play-test for me ever since I introduced them all to The Resistance . I am glad that I convinced them to stop playing Bang (as fun as that game can be), but it is sort of annoying to have to fight to get even one person to play your game.

I played two more games last night. Fairly extensive changes to the rules followed the games. I realized that permanent canoes are great for the game, so they are a reality right now. This allows players to more easily commit piscicide, and allows the game to end due to not only the loss of all trees, but also due to the loss of all fish. The number of canoes can be reduced to 8 as long as there are only 32 fish in the game because 8 canoes can entirely empty the deep ocean out in a few turns (assuming that the shallow ocean is also empty) I also realized that pigs are superfluous, and I removed them. The players have to be a little bit more careful when they are fishing, but the game is still very playable. (perhaps even more so due to the simplification of the rules and the lessening of the number of parts). Finally, I decided that 16 trees is enough for 2 players. Perhaps with 4 players 32 trees would be better, but until I get four players I don't need to worry about th...

I have taken a small diversion and made a map, some mats, and a scoring track. The game rules are still located here . I think that the next step is to test how the game changes when canoes change to persistent objects. map: place wood, shallow fish, deep fish, and stone here: Placement map, cut this one in half and give one copy to each player: Extra parts and score track. Put the canoes and statues that haven't been built here (as well as the built roads, statues, and the unused meat and dudes.):

Today Alison and I played a game (first multiplayer game, woo!) The game went fairly well. We fixed up some rules and had to play to the very end to determine who had won. First of all, we decided that doing a hybrid choose/gather rule (where the first guy to pick is not necessarily the first guy to gather) is a bad idea cause someone can commit guys to doing something (mining for fish, for instance) and then have all the fish gathered out from under him. If this happens because of an event card it is ok, but if a player does it to another player that seems rude. By the way, I drew on a piece of paper to make the game board. We decided after the game that we need a separate scoring track as well as personal mats. That will be rectified soon. Alison thought that the game was less confusing than she initially expected it to be (that is a big plus) With two players who are neck to neck you cant really just chop the last tree (and that can draw the game out, what with the vying fo...

Yesterday I decided to make 'MOAR MOAI'. I started coming up with rules and such. I made decisions as to which cubes I would use for which resources. I also counted the cubes. Here are the results: maroon  16 5 stone/statues yellow  20 stone/statues red     32 meats orange  39 trees pink    37 dudes blue    36 fishs green   33 plant total  213 I got the cubes from a really cheap source, so they are super low quality (also, I got 13 bonus cubes, so I am not complaining.) I decided today to change the cube coloring a bit, and cut down the amounts for most of them: maroon  16 Statues yellow  16 Canoes red     32 Pigs orange  32 Stone pink    32 Dudes blue    32 Fish green   32 Trees total  192 I played a few solo games and changed the rules a bit from my original vision of them. As they currently stand, they are  here . The...