Pretentious Board Games

So, I brought the new island game to the BGDG last night. I need to get a name for it - it is that game that I mind dumped in December about. Here are my notes from the playtest: Place one worker per building Must not place more than one village per region After divvying up resources bid workers for crown Mercenaries don't count as people of your color Scarcity should be higher in 4 player game Make canoes cost people to launch Remove 3 tiles from game per person missing: 5 → 18, 4 → 15, 3→12, 2→9 Take out weird tile with middle line Make it a tile without any lines at all Money costs people? stone? something To use mercenaries: drop multiple mercenaries as free actions at the start of your turn, and then play one worker, then remove all of the used mercenaries Now, I am going to start writing up the rules as they currently stand. I will work on that here . Additionally, I am getting ready to submit Citadel of Madness to the Cardboard Edison. Perhaps tom...

Here are my notes for the last BGDG meeting (which I never typed up till tonight): Add an icon to indicate when balancing is necessary? Perhaps scientists are needed to repair a room, but they refresh automatically when the action completes Scarcity is fun to play with Time rooms are powerful abilities, and fairly cheap to obtain - perhaps make them more expensive Make a bonus for ending the game - 3-5 points? machines are worth too much - perhaps 1 point each? make throne of arronax add a part or a core remove some time cards from the game sabotage rooms with minions? I have been really busy, so this is all that I am writing up right now.

I got rough sketches of the first eight pieces of artwork for The Perfect Moment: I am super excited about it - I have been playtesting the new cards almost every day this week, and I am getting them nailed down right now. I don't anticipate any more major changes to them, however I am still working on tweaking the wording to make them less ambiguous, and to balance them. One funny thing that I discovered is that Jason decided that the story behind the "Kill Hitler" scenario was really a "Bank Robbery" scenario. Either way, the equipment could work for both. I have also started asking myself "How would I make a 6 card expansion to The Fatal Flaw", and I have some up with some cool ideas. The theme that I am going with right now is Bertram Wooster misadventure. Then, I could add Jeeves as a card, and have him make you always able to score, or something like that. The new ideas that Jason came up with really gave me more ideas of my own for t...

I have been working more on the Citadel of Madness, and on Motu. I finished up another round of changes to the Citadel, and am ready to playtest it again. I also finished up a new version of Motu, and played it twice on Tuesday - once at work and once at the board game design guild. Here are my notes from the BGDG: Make it obvious that activate is bottom House, meeple and x are all the same. Taking over more islands should cost more shells Power up gather again! Swap gather to 2x and action to 1x shells. Ability to lock out cards by players Reword Marioso - to activate one card per turn max. Tie leaders and gods to strategy cards for legibility Combine worship & deify, and trade & sacrifice Use goods as cost for abilities Put worshippers in corner of blue card, and tuck that corner. Up player interaction I will work on updating this stuff as I have time to. Perhaps I will even drop the game to a 36 card game from a 52 card game if I combine the strategies toge...

I took The Citadel of Madness to the Board Game Design Guild meeting, and played it again. This  time with entirely new playtesters, so I got to see what a first time player feels again. I asked for first time players, so I am glad that I got them. Here are my notes (*** means that I am going to do these things first) Level up converters? Feels slow to take one action at a time Keep track of who to pay? Swap white cubes for brown*** End score: 17-1-2-6 Encourage people to build more machines - how? Award points for more machines? *** Hiding actions in rooms failed - the game is just complex Drafting one card feels lame*** take multiple cards as an action *** pay extra to take extra cards *** free cards every turn? drafting (or crappy actions) yield time balance energy felt more valuable than others remove balance balance costs 2 generic energy don't make start device give specific energy starting device not able to upgrade? minions that can upgrade ...

We played another two games of Motu (formerly Micronesia) the other day. Here are my notes: Labor is a better Gather than Gather - Possibly make Gather also build more farms? Islands should be worth 2 points each (or 3 if they have less places to tuck cards) Laka sucks. Fix it. Arohirohi should be: activate 1 ability n times. Check the gods - they need to be weaker than the leaders without followers. Hina is totally broken. Make her say 1+(n/4) points instead of 1+n points. Perhaps some limit to the number of gods/worshipers per god is necessary. This will prevent the godsnowball of doom. During the first game, I deified Hina, and then just won the game without any contest in four or five rounds. The game ended 13-26, and was not very fair. Alison contended that Hina needed to be changed, and I agreed. She said that no strategy could overcome it, and I wasn't so sure. It seems that that there are multiple options for beating it, but they would all involve composing a g...

I took a few weeks off from anything board games because after a reorganization at work, I suddenly found myself working on a far less desirable technology. All is well now, though. I went on a job hunt, and through the hand of providence secured a better paying job closer to home that allows me to set my own hours and work from home some times. I start next Friday. I played two games of The Citadel of Madness on Friday, and had a pretty good time. Here are my notes from the games (and my explanations of them): Name should be printed on both sides on part cards (I need to make it visually obvious that cards can be rotated 180 degrees, and making opposite facing names would do this. This is a really obvious solution to the issue, so I am happy that it was arrived at). Return all active workers to your mat (somehow the refresh action on the mat didn't say that, so I need to modify the action) Any ability that had an arrow takes your turn (this needs to be added to the rule doc...

SaltCon was super fun. I played a bunch of games that were new to me, bought a bunch of games, and also pitched the Citadel of Madness to a publisher with moderate success. My favorite game from the convention was Santorini. Alison's was Clank!. We had played neither before. As a result of this, I have a good idea for a birthday present for Alison. When I pitched Citadel of Madness, Ryan liked the game, and said that he wants to see how it will develop, and would consider publishing it if I were to clean it up and change the score cards. I am happy with that. His ideas were quite fun, and I am going to try them out soon. I don't get to go to the next BGDG because I have a dentist appointment planned then, however hopefully by the one that is two after that I will be ready to go with my changes. I have been drawing more icons, but haven't been able to work on my games very much - it has been pretty busy. That being said, I do have plans to do that soon - once I get the...

I have been working on The Citadel of Madness a lot recently. I have applied most of the changes that came from the last guild playtest, and they are working well. I also had a really helpful guy on the internet offer to create artwork for the game. The results speak for themselves: I have been making good strides toward getting the game completed. Even though it is not yet all the way there, it is moving along fairly quickly, and it is making strides toward becoming a easier to understand experience for those involved. I am preparing to submit it to Red Raven games. I think that Ryan could help to make it a better game than it would otherwise be. Perhaps he would even provide some final artwork for it. I have also been working on Micronesia. The game is undergoing major revisions. I will probably hold off on anything big until after SaltCon, but the game is definitely scheduled for some more surgery before I am through with this round of editing. The SaltCon math t...

After being sick and Christmas and such things, I finally got back to a BGDG meeting. We played "The Citadel of Madness" with two of Daniel's ideas applied. The two ideas were: removing rounds in favor of "refreshing" periodically, and removing "madness" in favor of "device levels" Here are my notes [comments], and things that I plan on trying out in the immediate future : 1 color cards are no longer nearly as good - play a card for both energy? The low cost 4 type cost room cards might be too easy to complete - perhaps reduce their value . Time is still confusing 1 action per turn is good - it speeds up the game. Secret rooms ? Possible ways to make the game have take that element [as an aside, I don't really want to add that type of play, but I am faithfully typing up these note, so I am recording them here] wipe out one/multiple rooms as an action so that other players cannot score them, and swap point cards with other p...

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...

I submitted Grab the Loot! to DV Giochi this week. I was originally preparing the game for Mayday games, but as I got to know Daniel better, I am not so sure it will fit with the direction that Mayday is going. Grab the Loot! definitely seems like something DV Giochi would like. I haven't yet finished up with Age of Vikings, however I have been making good strides in Jurassic Universe. My wife and I played a game and talked through some major changes last night. I think it should balance the game nicely. I have also been using math to make the number of cards more correct, and have been toying with re-adding the tech deck. Micronesia is currently on the back burner, I have been devoting its time to a Chronicles of Amber game currently in a really early stage. The game started when I listened to a podcast by Jason Tagmire , which reminded me of a "hell ride" from the Amber universe. The game is not really appropriate for Button Shy games, so Jason probably didn't h...

With the new year, there have been tons of things happening. I have submitted two games to the Cardboard Edison this year: The Citadel of Madness, and Grab the Loot. The feedback that I got from them was immensely helpful last year, so I am eagerly anticipating this year's results. I also received a large package of board game parts (which I ordered) in the mail. The most exciting parts was the blue gorilla meeple. I have designed a dexterity game based on it (for the January 24 hour game design contest). It is called "Where there's gorillas there's hope". It is fairly simple, and has a traitor mechanic. When I finally get over this cold, I will certainly bring it to work, and see how the guys like it. I also have been thinking about the 9 card design contest (I never intended to make a game for it, but one just arrived in my brain yesterday, and it is a really interesting idea. Perhaps you will hear more about it in future posts). The Icon creation thread...

I have been rule editing like a madman. My wife has been helping me (like a madwoman?). We are getting really close to having the Citadel of Madness and Grab the Loot! ready. Terran League of Defense Robots might not make it this year - but perhaps it will. We are hoping that it does anyway. I have also been making some movies for my submissions to the ION award. Here is the first one that I have completed. My PlaytestHub is in a semi-open alpha state right now. It still has a few more things I want to do to it before I open it up for a public beta. Most notably, I want to see how it is that one user was able to make two copies of themself in the database. I have also started working with Chauncy on Deception again. The new changes add some complexity to the game. I really want to retheme it as a sportsball game. The goal would be to either cause all of the opponents "ballmen" to have "career ending injuries", or to gain 5 points first. the game would still ...

I was a little bit bored. I was the only person awake, and I didn't want to edit my rules for The Citadel of Madness (formerly known as The Madness Place) any more. I wanted to play a game, but I don't own any solitaire games. I bought a pnp copy of Pentaquark, but have somehow never got around to printing it out. I have also recently been listening to the Ludology podcast, and I liked their episode on solo games. It made me think I could make one. Given this situation I decided to see if I could come up with some rules to make The Citadel of Madness a solo game. I came up with a few modifications that made the game into a pretty interesting (in my opinion) solo game: Every action you remove a time token from the game. If they ever run out you lose. Every time you pass do the following: Return all time tokens to the pool Build a new device that is not owned by you -or- modify a device that is not controlled by you (the rules are more complicated than that, but it am...

The rules editing for the Madness Place is finally calming down. The only change to the game's rules during the entire process was making it so that if you do an action it has to have an effect on the game's state for it to be a valid action. The Flavor test has greatly improved as well: They called you Mad, but could a madman have created a revolutionary living-brain extractor? Yes! You could, and you did it for SCIENCE! Not only did the fools not understand you, but The Tyrant even called you a criminal and sentenced you to repair The Citadel. A harsh sentence considering your ‘crimes’ were all for the furthering of science. No one has ever escaped this capricious, maniacal, homicidal, and irrevocably evil sentient castle. But, you will show them! After all, you were born with The Madness - a gift of supernatural understanding of all sciences. Build as many twisted abominations of science as is necessary to get the castle repaired so that you can earn your release fro...

I have gotten some great help on editing the rules for The Madness Place. They are looking much better now than they used to. I have yet to work on Grab the Loot and Terran League of Defense Robots, however. I have also been spending a lot of time working on PlaytestHub - which is nearing feature-completion. I have only one major feature to implement. After that, I will probably do some refactoring, alpha test it myself, and then open it up to a 'public' beta test (perhaps first for the people that are supporting me on patreon, and then to BGG next).

Alison and I played a game of the Madness Place yesterday, and we had some changes to make after we were done. I am recording them here so that I remember them. The game went well. We ended the game with me ahead by 2 points (15 to 13). Alison would have won in one more action, so it felt really tight. We played in about 45 to 60 minutes (we didn't record the exact times, but we put on a movie for the kids, and it ended about at the time that we were done discussing possible changes, which took about 45 to 30 minutes). We agreed that the recent changes to the passing mechanism (the person that passes first gains an immediate +1 time energy on the following turn for every time they are skipped) seemed to be a good way to deter the player/players that are ahead from taking tons of extra turns. We decided that the Citadel's Output mat should be double sided, and should have on one side printed a non randomized setup. This will help setup to be easier on the first few times p...

I just realized that with the ION Award coming up at the beginning of December, I need to work on my rules documents! The games that I am going to be preparing this year (if I can get them ready) are: Grab the Loot!, Terran League of Defense Robots, and The Madness Place. I expect that things will be pretty busy over the next few weeks. I have also almost finished my playtesting website. A few more features and it will be ready for an alpha release. Here's to hoping that I can get it all done.

I played Grab the Loot at work with the changes that Daniel and I talked about, and then the next night at the Board Game Design Guild without them. They definitely need some balancing, and I am not sure if they make the options less interesting, but I am going to work on fixing them up. My notes from the game at work were as follows: more money gain - things cheaper - top one is free most of the time.  add a few more greeds for 2 players Captain should give 2 coins.  I have implemented the first and last, and I am not sure if I am going to make the second one happen. I need another playtest before I continue with the new changes. I also made a new mat for The Madness Place taking into the feedback that I received from Daniel. Here it is in all it's glory: I also made some start cards for TMP - cards which guarantee that you start with a level 2 device, and a time card, so that removes a little bit of the fiddlyness of the setup, and balances the possibility o...