Meetups and Resurrections

I've not been going regularly to playtest meetups since before Covid - I've been to a handful, but that's in comparison to generally about one a month beforehand. But then the lovely Naomi and Callum, designers of Platypus, and friends and helpers at the UKGE Playtest Zone, decided to reestablish the Oxford meetup at a pub around the edge of the city, a location that is much easier to get to for an out-of-towner like me than the city centre would be. 

So we've had two meetings so far, taking place on the last Wednesday of each month. The meetups are a bit shorter than other ones I have been to, with the structure so far being two slots of an hour or so each. We have so far been fortunate to have several attendees each time who hadn't brought games and just wanted to play, which makes it far easier to make sure everyone who did bring a game can get it tested.

Bits of three prototypes: Boogie Knights, Reign of Terror, and My Name Is...

I've been on a bit of a run of trying out old, shelved projects, as I was musing back in my post in April. I have tried out two of the games mentioned in that post and one other, so I think I'm doing OK on that front. The aim of the tests was what one of the other designers described as a "vibe check", it was kinda like throwing part-cooked spaghetti at a window to see what sticks. 

Reign of Terror is a game that I threw together long ago as a possible party favour at a French Revolution themed event, and is a hidden role game where multiple players can win or lose according to their individual role. I playtested and revised it a couple of times, but I didn't persist long enough to get to a place I was happy with. The game worked OK in this test; the players enjoyed it overall, but some elements were unclear or inconsistent, and it was a bit frustrating in places. The concept was a hit and the flow of the game was good, so maybe if I can tidy up the messy bits, it could become something to take further. It does have the disadvantage of four players being the minimum count for a decent game, so that's a limitation for testing and potential pitching.

My Name Is... is about memory and mental agility and I am truly terrible at playing it. The game is great at inducing both pain and laughter, sometimes simultaneously, but has a potential issue with timid players - if nobody is brave enough to challenge other players over their mistakes, nothing happens in the game. In its current state, tracking what cards people have in their stacks can be a big issue too - though with more players (we had only three, which I think is the minimum) that is likely to be less, though there would be other challenges coming into play. All in all, this feels like it is one or two small rule changes away from being "done", but I don't really have inspiration. Maybe this is one I should talk to one of my game designer friends about possibly turning it into a co-design.

This week I got Boogie Knights out. This is the first game I ever took to a specific playtesting event, and I have a real soft spot for it, though that may be a problem, preventing me from either letting go of it or making a dramatic change. Shockingly, it has been seven years since the last revision I made to the game, so this fresh look was long overdue. The game has, practically from the start, been enjoyed by players in general, but has just been a bit hollow, with actions being frustratingly unavailable, periods of play being repetitive, an unexciting endgame, or any number of other flaws at different stages of development. My players this time played the game in the spirit that is intended (it's pretty much a family game with gentler conflict than you might imagine), found that the game is basically OK (as usual - engagement was good) but the discussion afterwards came up with a whole lot of potential avenues to explore.

All in all, I think I will be spending some time on Boogie Knights and seeing if I can address its current flaws. I mean, I'm seven years older, and a load more experienced, so maybe the game has a chance...

Up to Eleven

Looking back I see that my first post in this blog was in April 2014, so I've been blogging - albeit sporadically - about tabletop game design for eleven years. As this is a nice, round number, I figure it's probably worth a look back - and also a bit forward. 

I have a spreadsheet, on which I record all the games I developed as far as having a playable prototype and note its status, etc., and the earliest entry on there is from 2013, so pre-dating this blog. At present there are 58 entries on there. It misses a few entries, like some speed-design exercises done at an event last year, but it covers most of what I have done. Plenty of these games have had a test or two and been buried, never to be seen again. There were a good number of these games, however, that went through at least a few iterations of playtesting and improvement before being shelved, and I'll have a think about some of those in a bit.

I make it that eleven of these projects have got as far as being pitched to publishers. Some of these were a bit speculative rather than in any real expectation of getting anywhere, but four of them actually ended up being signed. Three of these fell through for various reasons - one of which did have a 30-copy limited edition made first though - leaving the one that is now out on shelves and available to buy.

5 prototypes. Clockwise from top left: Corlea, Invaded, Explore & Settle,
Boogie Knights, and in the middle, My Name is...

Thinking back over the past projects, there are plenty that I would like to go back for another look at. I went through something like this a couple of years ago, but I'm a bit more positive about game design in general than I was back then, so here are some of the ones that come to mind...

Boogie Knights is the first game that I took to a public playtest event, in 2015, and helped introduce me to the Playtest UK community. It was a game that I got to a state where it pretty much always went down well with players, but it felt like something was missing. I think there were some unnecessary complexities in it and a fresh look might find how to straighten it out.

Explore and Settle is a terrible working title for possibly the heaviest game I have designed yet. I think there was some interesting stuff in the game with resource management and map building that could have potential. It might actually be that a new title is the main thing needed here!

My Name is... is pretty much the polar opposite of the last game, and is a mind tangling party game with just a deck of cards and very few rules. For some people, this game just worked amazingly, producing laughter and agonised groans in equal amounts. There was never a satisfying end or win condition for the game though - in this sort of game, scoring and winning is rarely that important for most groups, but that aspect does need to be there for it to be sellable.

Corlea is a midweight Euro-ish game based on a real example of iron age people in Ireland building a wooden road through a peat bog. 

And finally for now, Invaded, my long-running white whale of a game with an interesting concept of being a competitive game with a players being residents of a land under attack from a powerful, non-player colonial force. I never really got this one firing properly, and have had thoughts about remaking it with squirrels, but I dunno... should I get back to it and take advantage of years of more experience, or just consign it to the archives?

That question applies to all of the games really, but I think I left Invaded in a state that is most in need of work before being worthy of a playtest. The others, though, maybe I can get them out and onto the table to see what can be done with them. 

To be fair, though, the last time I did a review of games I could get back to work on, it didn't go anywhere, so let's say that by UK Games Expo (which is just a month away), I'll have at least one of these games in a playable state and will see if I can get it to the table there, if not before.

A New Style of Boogie

Based on feedback from a few plays of Boogie Knights at UK Games Expo (and, frankly, long before, but I'd not really faced up to it properly), it was clear that, if I wanted to get Boogie Knights running properly, I needed to make some more changes. The biggest issue that kept coming up is that at some point in the game, getting more equipment tends to become uninteresting, and there just don't seem to be enough challenge cards to go around at that point.

At UKGE various suggestions were thrown about, including having separate decks to draw from, so you could choose if you want equipment or challenges. That has some potential, but the idea that I ended up getting stuck in my mind was for multi-use cards. This is potentially a bit jargony, so the idea is that a given card has more than one way you can use it, rather than having separate card types for separate functions in the game. So, in this case, you could have cards that can be used as equipment, or as challenge cards (or other actions), and you choose which option to use. With cards set up like that, it should be possible to design the game so that in any hand of cards you always have options for something sensible to play, regardless of the game state.

After a few days of pondering I gave it a go.

Not quite what I ended up with, but very close.
Action icons in the squares, challenge bonuses in the yellow strip.

It took some thinking and fiddling around before I decided that I would have three copies of each "costume" (a kinda-matching set of head, body and legs equipment, which is how I created them), and add an action icon to each card to indicate the alternate use for each card.  The three copies of each equipment card would then have variations for different actions available.  The way I have set things up doesn't make each card unique (though I could have done that), but there aren't many duplicates: we have 48 different cards in the 54 card deck.

I settled on four different actions: the two types of challenge (disco and combat), a "tricks" action (swap cards on the table -- not quite as good as the previous iteration's dirty tricks card), and a "discard" (allowing you to drop as many cards as you like before replenishing). I think the discard may be too weak, but we'll see in play. The thing is that I can tweak the actual effects of the actions without having to modify the components, which I like. The distribution of the icons is such that there are rather more of the challenge actions than the others, hopefully meaning that play will be guided more towards challenges, which is what the game should really be about.

As part of this, I decided to drop the "kit inspection" cards, which were a way to steadily nudge the game towards an end, but didn't really fit properly in this iteration. These cards have been a part of the game I liked a lot from early in its development, but in the spirit of "kill your darlings", out they go. They can always be reintroduced later if the game needs them.

Print... cut... sleeve... et voila!

One of the results of this round of changes is that I have greatly simplified the game setup, which previously had multiple steps to defend against having an unplayable hand at the start of the game. I managed to knock a couple of paragraphs or so out of the setup instructions, taking them from 252 to 139 words.  Word count (or lack of it) is not the most critical metric of a rule set, but for a light game, having short rules is a huge advantage, and it felt like a really positive payoff for this revision.

As I write this, I have not yet playtested this version of the game, but will hopefully get a chance to do so in the next few days. I'm sure something will be wrong with it, but I have a feeling we are moving in the right direction again.

If you would like a look at the current state of the game, print and play files are available...

• Boogie Knights v8 rules on Dropbox
• Boogie Knights v8 cards on Dropbox

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Back From the Expo

So, another year's UK Games Expo has been and gone, and this time I traveled up the day before it started, thanks to a generous lift from a friend (thanks, Matt!), got checked into my hotel, and then wandered over to the NEC where the set-up was under way.

A view of Hall 1, mid-setup, from the Playtest Zone balcony. 

After a little help on the Cubicle 7 stand and then in the Playtest Zone, I headed back to the hotel, where I stumbled across a group of lovely people who let me play a few games with them for the evening. I seem to manage this with a different group each year, somehow finding a really relaxed and friendly group each time, and it is one of the things that makes this event so special for me. It was also lovely to catch up with these folk at breakfast each morning and occasional other times through the weekend.

On Friday I worked as a volunteer in the Playtest Zone for the morning, then had my first ever "formal" pitch meeting with a publisher in the afternoon, which was terrifying but didn't need to be, as the publisher is an absolutely lovely fellow who was easy to talk to, and was very supportive and interested in what I had to say. The outcome of this was that they won't be publishing Invaded, which is the game I was presenting, but I am welcome to pitch other games in the future, which seems a good result, and I got some very helpful suggestions.

Friday evening included the designer-publisher speed-dating event. There were something like fifteen publishers there, but twenty designers, and twelve time slots for pitches, which sounds like a horrendous mismatch, but it worked out that the designers each ended up seeing nine or ten publishers, with a couple of "break" slots in between, and it was organised so that designers mostly saw publishers that were more likely to be interested in their games. For instance, I didn't get to see the publisher of party games, who definitely wouldn't have been interested in Invaded.

By Saturday morning, after a couple of exchanges of emails based on meetings at the speed-dating, one publisher had asked for a copy of the prototype (I had a spare copy so was able to accommodate that) and another had asked for a meeting to try actually playing Invaded.

After my Saturday morning spell of volunteering I was able to quickly eat a sandwich before meeting with the publisher who wanted to play Invaded. We found a table and had a full, three-player game that demonstrated well some of the features of the game, but fell flat overall (quickly make some notes about what went wrong -- mostly that the game went too quickly and was entirely peaceful). This publisher was very interested if the issues that showed up could be addressed, and gave some really useful feedback.

Drafty Valley in play. Hand modelling by Jen.

Continuing another busy day I got back to the Playtest Zone in time for a testing slot of my own, running a play of Drafty Valley. This being something of a prime time, I hadn't even finished setting up when I had two players asking to play, and we were just starting off when another two turned up, so we reset and got going with a four player game.

So the headline news was that the game was horribly broken. One player in particular seemed to be  getting a bit frustrated by the imbalances between the action options and the objectives. I need to do a massive reworking of the game before another playtest, but I have a list of points to address and some ideas on how to progress, so I can work with that over the next week or two.

Alongside the problems that were identified, there was something totally awesome. I managed to explain the game in about five minutes, and then stepped back and managed to watch the players play the game on their own, with only a few clarifications and corrections needed here and there. I don't think I have ever spoken less during a playtest. This was an amazing feeling, and I'm holding onto that bit of win with both hands.

Saturday was rounded off with an actual sit-down dinner with some friends (some old, some new) followed by a great session of gaming (some published games, some prototypes).

On Sunday morning I had another playtesting session booked, which I had been intending to use for Drafty Valley, but given the previous day's test I felt I would not gain very much by playing that again before an overhaul, so on a whim I pulled out Boogie Knights, to take a fresh look at that.

The knights seem quite fighty at the moment, but there's that tutu...

We managed to play three games of Boogie Knights (twice with three players and once with four) in the ninety minute slot, and managed to get a good amount of feedback and insight in that time. The biggest problem at the moment is that the balance of equipment and challenge cards can be uneven, and particularly late in the game in three player games (less so with four, but it's still there) it can be frustrating to have too many equipment cards and not enough challenges.

Based on some of these discussions I am now thinking about ways to change the game to include multi-use cards (cards that work for both equipment and challenges, for instance). This would be a dramatic change to the game, but if I can figure this out it might just work. I have a couple of ideas...

The rest of Sunday was largely spent perusing the stalls around the two enormous convention halls with my wife and daughter, who had come up for the last day of the event, as they have done for the last few years. And then it was all over.

So, I've finally put my toe in the water as far as having meetings with publishers is concerned, and survived the crucible of the speed-dating. I probably wouldn't do the speed-dating again, but it was a valuable experience and helped get some dialogues going. Overall, I now feel a lot more confident about talking with publishers about my games, so will be sure to do more of that in the future. As always, the experience of being involved in the Playtest Zone was really rewarding, being an opportunity to meet and hang out with game designers ranging from first-timers to highly experienced, published veterans, who make up a great community.

Now I need to catch up on sleep, and get to work on implementing the changes I need to make to various games...

Back to the Boogie

I had a playtest session this week, which was focused on Invaded, but after playing and some time on discussion, the players said that they were up for something else.  On a whim I pulled out Boogie Knights, a game that I haven't put in front of playtesters since autumn last year.

The last time I tested Boogie Knights, I was trying an alternative system where, instead of rolling dice to resolve challenges (in disco or combat skills), you played cards for their numerical value.  This went down well with the playtesters and I was happy with the change at the time, but since then I couldn't help but dwell on the fact that the players were all "serious" gamers and that the play time pretty much doubled from previous plays.  It was great that the players felt engaged and thought that there were decent decisions to make, but the more I reflected, the more I felt that the game had become something that I didn't really think it should be.

Complete sets of kit for almost everyone.

So we went back to the previous version of the rules, with a small tweak (rolls of 6 "explode") and gave it a go.  I would normally have my notebook open and writing down comments from the players and observations about their behaviour, but this time I didn't bother, I just wanted to give this game an airing and get a feel for it again.

Overall I'm pretty content with this playtest. I feel that this form of the game is not very far from "done" from my point of view, and I may give it a cosmetic change or two (like getting the action cards to have the same style art as the kit cards) and then pretty much leave it.  I was given advice that more publishers would be interested in the game if I could lose one of the types of component (specifically the dice!) but now I think that I will just go with what I have, and if someone wants to publish it, that would be great, but otherwise I have learnt so much from developing Boogie Knights from that rough 24-hour game design from two and a half years ago.

Also, whatever else, I enjoy playing it!

Thirsty Playtests

After a bit of a playtesting drought over the last couple of months, things have started to improve.  I have managed to persuade a few people to try my "Secret Satan" game, which is now known as "Giftmas with the Grimms", and is my most popular prototype with my daughter, Miss B.  And better still, I was able to get to a Playtest UK meetup in Oxford.

Oxford is a load closer to me than the London meetups I have been attending, but it is an evening meet, which has disadvantages, and the dates haven't fallen right for me previously, so it was nice to finally get along to meet a different group.  This meetup takes place at the Thirsty Meeples boardgame cafe, which unfortunately means paying a cover charge to sit at a table, and it's a little cramped, but it is also a totally awesome place with brilliant staff who bring you good coffee.

There were seven of us there last night and we were given two tables between us, and had games running on both tables for much of the evening.  I was lucky enough to get a five-player play of Boogie Knights in, getting half way through before the last couple of people turned up.

I don't have a photo to share from the meetup, so here's a picture of some modified Boogie Knight cards.

This was a big deal, as I have made a fundamental change to Boogie Knights, which had been working consistently well in playtests, but I had been bugged by a steadily flow of comments asking if it would be possible to remove the dice.  I know some people love the tension of using dice to resolve contests, but that also a good number of people feel that using dice in this way is a terrible mistake that removes both fun and challenge.  Recognising that whatever I do I won't please all the people, and also taking onboard some games industry insider advice that in general it is good to reduce the number of types of component (so cards plus score markers is more attractive to some publishers than cards plus score markers plus dice), I resolved to at least experiment.  I pencilled a number (from 1 to 6) onto each card, decided that in challenges players choose a card from hand to act as in lieu of a die roll, and made a few other rule tweaks to support the change.  This was quite a while ago and I just never quite managed to get the new version of the game into a playtest.

Until last night.  The headline news is that basically it works, and the players were enthusiastic about the change (I explained the previous form of the game).  There are a few rough edges to deal with, but this looks like I could be heading in the right direction.

Following that I got to play one of someone else's games, this one being a cooperative puzzle solving game which I had actually played an earlier incarnation of at UK Games Expo.  There have been a few tweaks since I last saw the game, which I think have been for the better, and I really enjoyed this play.  It will be interesting to see how it develops.

Finally, and actually rather surprisingly to me, I got to test Giftmas with the Grimms with four players, and got some more useful insights.  It's nice to get a few playtests of a game close together as you start getting a real feel for the characteristics of the game.  And, of course, now I really need to finish writing a rulebook...

So, overall a really useful evening out and I'm sure I'll be back again if the dates fall right.  Apart from anything else, it's great to have more opportunities to chat with like-minded people.  I find it's great for morale.

Boogying at Expo Again

So, three spells of playtesting Boogie Knights at UK Games Expo and getting 19 strangers to play across five games has resulted in quite a lot of feedback and notes that I took at the time.

One of the 5-player games at Expo, running at Saturday lunchtime. Fun to watch.

Firstly, statistics.  I wasn't rigorously checking the play times, but we do seem to be fairly steady at around 20 minutes (plus or minus about 4), regardless of how many players we have, which is pleasing.  I recorded the number of reshuffles, and the end game scores for each game, noting the scores in player order (so first player first):

# players	Scores	Reshuffles
3	10, 8, 5	1
5	10, 8, 8, 4, 5	2
3	4, 10, 8	1
4	6, 6, 7, 10	1
5	8, 9, 10, 7, 3	3

In most cases, there seems to be an issue where one or two players lag behind the leaders by quite a large margin.  This is a little concerning to me, though there isn't yet enough data to see if this is really a thing.  I discussed this with some of the players and, in that discussion at least, it was felt that this is probably not a big deal and might actually be an issue due to inexperienced players making basic mistakes (like not being assertive enough).  I think I need to check this, and can do so by getting some testers to play a few times and see how the score distributions change as they gain experience.

My general observations in all the games were that the game generates a fair bit of laughter and the quick change and dirty tricks rules were very popular and used extensively, and often effectively.  I think I may have got them about right now.

From the feedback, both written and spoken, most people seem to like the game for what it is, but there were a few players who felt that the game needs some extra options or different actions to increase the variety of play. One player suggested that there could be a third area for competition aside from combat and disco.

I'm a bit cagey about adding more in, as I think the game seems to be working well at present, but I think perhaps I can think of some cards to add for an advanced game in case people want a bit more.  It would be nice to have some sort of expansion module that could be included, as it might spread the appeal, but perhaps crowbarring that sort of thing in might be working against what the game wants to be.  I'm sure it can be done though and I will get to that eventually.

I did actually make a very minor change to the rules based on feedback on Saturday (dirty tricks can now swap items with the armoury row as well as with other players), and this change appears to be for the better, so thanks to the guy who suggested that.

Other feedback included a suggestion that a soundtrack is needed for the game; a comment that the non-medieval elements of the game don't seem to fit in as well (this might be due to my dodgy art!); having too many challenges turn up too early can be a problem; and final artwork will be key to the game's appeal.

All in all, I owe a huge thank you to everyone who played over the weekend.  I'm starting to get some confidence that I'm now moving in the right direction, and that I probably just need to get the game played as much as possible and try to shake out any long-term trends to see what needs working on next.  Part of this is investigating what happens with experienced players, as discussed earlier.  And I think it might be time for me to start pushing a bit harder to get some blind tests done...

Return to the Expo

So UK Games Expo, in its new and shiny home of the enormous NEC Hall 1 (as well as the Hilton that it has been in for the last few years!) has been and gone, and I attended for all three days, a fair bit of which was spent in the Playtest Zone (organised by the awesome Rob Harris of Playtest UK), with time divided between running games of Boogie Knights, playing other folks' prototypes, and helping to draw innocent victims in to the tables.

Proof that I actually had the attention of some players, despite wearing an obnoxious shirt.
Thanks to Namgyal Chatral for the pic.

I had two sessions of testing Boogie Knights, and during each session I managed to get two plays in, and it was pleasingly easy to fill the tables, though that was largely down to the efforts of the volunteers roping in passers-by.  In total that made for 17 people who hadn't played the game before, most of whom gave helpful feedback (mostly very positive, but some interesting points raised), and I even got an extra play that I joined in back at the hotel on Saturday evening with a couple I met, so this has extended the number of people who have played the game quite significantly.

I'll write another post to discuss the feedback I got in a couple of days or so.

Aside from that I got to play some really interesting prototypes, including one that has a The Resistance sort of vibe but is based on the prisoner's dilemma and ultimately has you choosing your own side, and a clever cooperative game about moving animals around fields.  Even volunteering at the zone for a while and wearing the Red Shirt (which makes us far more likely to suffer an unpleasant fate than the yellow-shirted Expo volunteers) was really rewarding, and I'll try to spend more time helping out next year.

Both at the Playtest Zone and elsewhere I enjoyed meeting people (several who I had previously met online) and making new friends and contacts.  Highlights included getting high-5's from numerous people; learning to play Guilds of London from the designer; Tony Boydell, and then listening to Gil Hova deconstructing it afterwards; a brief chat with Paul and Pip from Shut Up and Sit Down; cramming into the packed open gaming halls on Friday night and then having a really quiet little gaming session at the hotel bar on Saturday; discovering that the little coffee stall in Hall 1 near the Playtest Zone made damn fine coffee; and just getting to talk game design with heaps of interesting and interesting people.

Imminent Expo

Lately most of the game design portion of my brain has been focussed on the forthcoming UK Games Expo, which takes place at the Birmingham NEC between 3rd and the 5th of June, and preparing for this has been one reason I have temporarily dropped a few projects.  I will be attending the show for all three days for the first time, and am looking forward to having extra time to be playing, exploring, talking and so on.

So what will I be up to?  Well, the focus for me this year is on playtesting.  I have two 90 minute slots booked in the Playtest Zone, where I will have some table space for a few games of Boogie Knights.  The idea is that Boogie Knights seems to have reached a fairly stable form and I would now like to see a heap more plays before making more changes.  The game probably does need more tweaks, but first I would like some more data, especially from people who haven't yet played the game.

So, if you would like to come and say hello and try out Boogie Knights, I will be running games between 11:30 and 13:00 on Saturday, and 10:00 to 11:30 on Sunday.

I will also probably be hanging around the Playtest Zone at various other parts of the weekend, and have volunteered to help out in (and wearing one of those natty red t-shirts, I think) on Friday afternoon.

So that's my main bookings, but I am hoping to also get along to the Wyvern's Lair session on Saturday afternoon.  As you may remember, I submitted Boogie Knight for this event, but unfortunately didn't make the cut for the final twelve entrants.  While this is a little disappointing, it does mean that I can relax a little more for the weekend and just enjoy myself without stressing about my pitch.  It will be nice to get along and just watch and learn from other people's experiences this time, and maybe I'll give it another go next year.

I'm not sure what I will be up to in the evenings.  Last year I stayed over for Saturday night and had a great time making use of one of the open gaming areas for the evening, so I'll probably do something like that, though there has been talk about a load of prototype play in the evenings too, so that would be great as well.  I'll be taking a couple more games along, just in case the opportunity arises.

Then on Sunday, after my second playtesting slot, I am expecting the family to join me for the last day of the expo.  I know Miss B wants to play in a couple of the roleplaying games for kids, so I'll get her booked in for them, but apart from that we'll just have to see how it goes.

Wyvern Charming: the First Attempt

UK Games Expo is coming up at the beginning of June, and I am planning to attend from Friday to Sunday, which will give me more opportunity to participate more fully than I have in the past.  I am planning to join in the public playtest sessions again, but this year I am hoping to go another step further.

One of the events taking place over the weekend is the Wyvern's Lair, which is inspired by the TV show Dragon's Den.  The idea here is that there will be a panel of representatives of assorted game publishing companies and game designers get the opportunity to make a pitch to these people.  This isn't really about getting someone to invest in or publish a game (though that is a possibility) but more about making contacts and having the opportunity to talk to people and, hopefully, get some advice and guidance from them.

I spent quite a while agonising over this.  Boogie Knights is clearly the game that I have progressed the furthest and is closest to being publishable (other than the tiny I Know An Old Woman), but I don't feel it is really ready to pitch to a publisher.  However, the blurb on the UKGE website suggests to me that "completed" games are not really necessary, so why not give it a go?

Of course, it's not quite as easy as putting your name down.  One does not simply walk into the Wyvern's Lair.  Well, maybe one does, but first I need to submit a written pitch of no more than 100 words plus a single image.  It turns out that getting the essence of a game down to 100 words in such a way that it makes someone want to know more is quite tricky.

I have read in blogs and heard on podcasts all sorts of advice about pitching games, but one of the key aspects I remember is that a lot of designers make the mistake of focusing on the mechanics of their game and how unique they are, rather than emphasising  the overall experience and "feel" of the game.  So I drafted up a few sentences along those lines along with a short bullet list of features (play time, number of players, components) and slapped them together with a picture.

The picture took some thinking.  At short notice I figured I had three main options:

1. Use a picture I had taken at a recent playtest, which would feature the not-quite-latest black and white art.
2. Mock up a picture on the computer using the latest art.
3. Print out a copy of the game with new art and stage a game to photograph.

I decided to go with the first option as I figure it gives some impression of how the game works, and I quite like the slightly scruffy table and the hands waving around in view.  

A couple of friends had offered to look at what I was doing, and they provided some really helpful feedback and suggestions.  I'm not really much good at salesmanship, so coming up with a short and punchy bit of text doesn't come easily to me.  These guys helped me trim out some superfluous words and focus on the guts of the message, making the pitch a whole load better, I think.  The end result isn't far off the back of a game box, which seems like a good place to be.

Lesson learnt: don't be afraid to ask for help.

Anyway, I've now submitted my initial pitch and have nothing to do for the moment but wait.  I have no idea how many people are applying for a place or how many spaces are available, so how good my chances are of being selected are anybody's guess.  But it has been a worthwhile experience and I feel I have now found a reasonable "elevator pitch" for Boogie Knights, and I think that is a big help in itself.

The back of the BK box? Not quite, but it is at least something...

Capital Playtesting

Yesterday I took a second trip to London for the monthly Sunday meetup organised by Playtest UK.  The travel this time wasn't so smooth.  I hadn't checked that rail services were running as usual, so when I got to Didcot to find that a huge section of train track was closed, meaning a ride on a replacement bus service to Reading, then a train from there to Paddington (moving more slowly than usual due to other work on the way).  Then, in London, the Circle Line was closed so I had to make a change in my trip to Victoria.  Ah well, I had allowed plenty of time and was still able to grab a coffee and lunch before going to the pub.

I took Boogie Knights with me again, and got to watch version 0.6 played by four players (one of whom had played an earlier version) as part of the first session of testing.  I was trying out the new rules and cards, with a target of 10 points for the win, which made the game run a little too long -- I'll be revising this number down a bit in future, and this is actually a parameter that can be easily tweaked any time to help hit my target play time of 15 to 20 minutes.

Aside from observations about game length, I made a few more notes and took down plenty of comments and suggestions from the players.  Possibly the biggest issue this group was feeding back was that they felt that there was not enough to do each turn, and there was a general feeling that they were looking for a little more complexity and depth.  I think this is the first time I have had that particular line of feedback, but it did come after I had cut a fair bit out of the game, so they may be on to something.  Or it might just be that this was the feeling after the game ran a bit long.  Or maybe this is just an out-lier result.

You see, this is one of those things about playtesting, and something I am only now really starting to appreciate as Boogie Knights has had a fair bit more playtesting with other people than any of my other games so far: feedback from one group may mean nothing, or it may mean everything, and it probably means something different to what they are actually saying.  One playtest just gives a data point, and that needs to be compared with others to figure out how it all fits together.  Sometimes (as with my previous couple of sessions), the message is clear quite quickly, but other times you just need to plug along and get more data.

Fortunately, I think this version is looking stable enough that it could stand a few more rounds of playtesting to help find what needs to happen next.

Of course, I played a load of other games at various stages of development: steampunk airships travelling through a portal in time and space to hunt dinosaurs; a team game where one member of each team is colour-blinded with red-lensed glasses and has to be guided to identify tokens of their team colour in a game of What's My Line? meets Guess Who; a boules-like game of frisbeeing beer mats; and a "saga-driven" game set in a battle for a Helms Deep style megafortress, where players are trying to earn their places in heroic songs, which could be by being involved in a tragic love affair just as much as by feats of heroic derring-do.

I totally love all this playing of prototypes.  Just being exposed to all that creativity is kinda intimidating, but it is also inspiring, and the level of mutual support being shared around is amazing.  Now, when can I get down there again...?

Boogie Five is Alive!

Version 0.5 of Boogie Knights is up and running, and after giving it a test with a table of players who hadn't tried it before, I'm pretty sure it is an improvement over the previous iteration.  The main changes for this version were that accessories had been fully done away with, along with the special moves, and I had added possibility of playing a face-down piece of equipment for a "quick change" (when you are challenged, you can choose to swap your quick change card into your equipment).

In addition, I had tried to speed the start of the game up a little by allowing players to discard and replace as many of their initial hand of cards as they like, and then play a card into their quick change slot before starting.

Oh yeah, I had some new kit cards too!

After playtesting we had a really great discussion with lots of suggestions flying around. While the game is basically OK, everyone spotted something that just didn't seem quite right for them.  Possibly the row of face-up cards in the armoury didn't feel like it added much to the game.  Or the magic cards didn't seem good value (and also seem a little incongruous in the setting).  Or the fact that the "challenge anyone" cards are strictly better than the "challenge left/right" ones might have been irksome.

So I ended up with a load of notes, and have been working in my head on ways to improve the game.  I had a load of thoughts about what to do next, and was intending to make a couple of minor changes and then getting on with more testing, working in a slow, incremental way.  I mean, I am planning to attend another testing day in London this coming Sunday, and I only have so much time until then, so can't really do anything major...

But then an idea that has been at the back of my mind for a while clambered to the front and has been clawing its way into my brain and refusing to go away...

So the idea develops from a simple thought that, instead of amassing tokens to count towards victory, players' progress is marked on a score track.  What this allows now is an easy way to see who is in the lead, and that suggests something thematic: surely there is more glory to be had from defeating someone who is more renowned than you than someone who is behind you on the track.

I won't go into all of my thinking right now, but where I have ended up is on a plan to scrap almost all of the challenge cards and only have "challenge anyone" cards for the two disciplines.  Then, if the person who wins is behind their opponent on the score track, they win two prestige, otherwise they win one.  Right away I suddenly have a simpler game with a lot less to explain and, potentially, added some more interesting decisions to make.  Plus I think this should address several of the issues that have been raised over the last few months.

Ah, sod it!  I can get this sorted before the weekend.  In fact, as I write this, I'm nearly done -- it mostly required deleting stuff out of my data file that I feed into nanDECK to construct my cards.

As a small aside, I'm also replacing the magic cards with "Dirty Tricks" cards, which allow you to swap two cards and then issue a challenge.

Time to get that card cutter out again...

Boogie Fails

Last week I finally pulled my finger out and produced version 0.4 of the Boogie Knights cards, and then this week I got to playtest using these and some modifications to the rules I had been working on, though I hadn't actually got around to producing a new rulebook to go with the cards.  We actually managed to have a couple of games using different rule variants, as I was looking for clues as to where I was to go.

The main change from version 0.3 to 0.4 was that I had removed the accessories and added "special move" cards that could be played on someone else's turn to give a bonus in a challenge and increase the element of surprise and uncertainty.  Rule-wise, I had also added the rule that you could discard and replace as much of the hand of cards you were originally dealt, and that you could play an equipment card face down in front of you and then, when challenged, you could choose to "quick change" into that equipment.

Pour encourager les autres

So the playtests of this new set suggested that the changes I had made resulted in a worse game overall.  The card mix was all to pot and the special moves just didn't really seem fun.  I was effectively adding a new card type and associated rules, without making the game more interesting or enjoyable.

Version 0.3 had some shortcomings, but stuck around for some additional playtests as it was a reasonable base on which to experiment. In this case, however, I detect a blind alley, and I'm going to abort and try something else.  It is possible that the special moves are fixable, and I may come back to them in another form later on, but for now, so long!

Actually it wasn't all negative.  The face-down quick change cards were deemed good, and I think they pretty much achieve what the special moves were meant to do, so that rule will stay for now.  And the optional mulligan at the start was good.

So, so long version 0.4, we barely knew you!  Coming as soon as I can manage, version 0.5...

Playtesting in London

Yesterday was another big step for me, as I took a day trip into London for an afternoon of playtesting organised by the Playtest UK group.  These are the guys who ran the playtest zone that I went to at UK Games Expo last year, but the difference with these more regular meets is that everyone (more or less) is a fellow game designer, so you probably get a different style of feedback to when you are testing with either friends or members of the gaming public.

I neglected to take a photo while at the meet, so here's a recreation of the scene. The actual players on the day might have been a little larger and, you know, not made of Lego.

I will admit to being very nervous on the way down, but I found the pub venue easily and the one guy who was there before me was very welcoming, and very enthusiastically discussed my game with me until everyone else turned up a few minutes later.  The everyone else was just as friendly and comprised a good mix of people ranging from seasoned veterans with several published games to rookies like myself, and the atmosphere was very relaxed throughout.

The afternoon was divided into ninety minute sessions, during each of which there were two or three tables running, and organised so that each designer who wanted to run something had the opportunity to do so, though to make time, some tables ran a couple of shorter games, one after the other.  Boogie Knights, being a short game, got to share a slot with another game (a chaotic dungeon crawl), but benefited from having a five-player game where I could just sit by and watch.

Pleasingly, once I had explained the game, everything flowed along quickly and I only needed to clarify things on a couple of occasions.  The game was played with good humour and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves (despite one player grumbling comically about the dice).  I've come to the opinion that one of the most useless questions you can ask playtesters is "did you enjoy the game?" as, certainly if you are present for the game, it should be pretty obvious just by watching who is engaged and who is drifting.

What is really encouraging was that once the game finished, we were instantly into some very interesting (to me) discussion about various points about the game.  The magic still seems to need work and the difficulty-to-reward relationship for challenges may be off, for example.  We even got into some really interesting suggestions that I really like and will see if I can work them into the game, like that these players would like to see reactive cards that you can play off your turn, possibly to give yourself a temporary bonus in a challenge.  This thought developed into having special moves like, for instance, having a special dance moment where you moonwalk and gain +2 disco.

All this has resulted in me having a sizable list of comments and ideas which I will have to think about.  I think I would like to have another test or two with this set of cards (maybe with slightly tweaked rules) before I do another iteration of the card set.

So this was a great experience overall and has fired me up about the whole game design process.  Getting to sit in with some far more experienced designers was also really instructive as everyone seems to have their own way of going about playtesting, so just observing the way some of these guys work is helping me to figure out how to improve my own methods.

I'm certainly hoping to get along to another of these meetups in the not too distant future, and I am even more determined to take more opportunities to test locally.

The Knight of the Boogie, 0.3

At last I've managed to get my nose back to the proverbial grindstone and fix up a new version of Boogie Knights, incorporating what I have learnt from the last wave of playtesting.

As discussed previously, the "neutral" equipment cards have been culled as, while they could be of some use, the perception of players is that they do nothing at all and in practice only get played as a last resort.  They clearly do not add to the fun and thus had to go.

Basically the same pic as last time, but now with the new card style.

The magical equipment had to change as well.  The rules I had for them required repeated explanation in any group (always a bad sign for a lightweight game), and the fact that they took the place of more useful equipment just didn't fit with the rest of the game.  As a result, I have removed all that but, as the concept of mischievously swapping equipment around was popular, I have introduced magical scrolls that allow you to muck about a bit.  There are only two each of two types of scroll at the moment, but they should be enough to shake things up.

I have now replaced all the art for body parts with my simple cartoony characters, though there is repetition of parts; I would prefer more unique stuff, but I'll live with that for now.  I still need to do something new with the accessories, but maybe I'll get somewhere with that for the next version.  Similarly, there should really be a load of different art pieces for the various types of challenges so they can be recognised and differentiated more easily, but that will be for another day.

One of my biggest concerns at the moment is that the Kit Inspection cards sometimes cause confusion: "Do I play this now?"  The idea of these is to ensure that every now and then (in practice, usually about three or four times per game) somebody automatically scores something, making the game tick towards an end just a little faster.  I'll need to watch this aspect closely as, if it continues to bemuse people, this is something that may have to be axed.  That said, it is entirely possible that it is my explanation and/or the card design that is at fault, and by improving these we could deal effectively with the whole issue.

I am also pondering the possibility of providing some sort of bonus for anyone who manages to put together a matching set of equipment.  The cards would need some sort of identification to make it easy to figure out, but that's not a big deal.  The reward could be a bonus in challenges, or there could be a third type of inspection, giving prestige for the "best turned out" or something.

See, I've only just sorted out this version and I'm already working on the next.  Need data first...

If you are interested in taking a look (and if you do, I would love to hear any thoughts you have on the game), download links for the latest version are here...
Boogie Knights v0.3 rules on Dropbox
Boogie Knights v0.3 cards on Dropbox

Five (plus one) go playtesting

Achievement unlocked! I have finally done something that I have been talking about for over a year but never quite got around to organising: I hosted a playtesting evening, having somehow managed to persuade a group of friends to come round for the evening to try playing incomplete game designs in return for tea and biscuits.

In the end we had five volunteers turning up, which made for six of us crammed into my little games room, and we tried out Boogie Knights (which is in a very playable state but has a lot of rough edges to work on) and El Tiddly (which is more of a test-of-concept than actual game right now).

The most professional looking board for one of my prototypes so far.

Boogie Knights went pretty well.  One major thing I wanted to see was how well it works with five players, as it sucks with two, so the hope is to be able to claim that it works as three-to-five, and I also needed to know if more cards would be needed.  The good news is that five players seems fine; we only needed one reshuffle of the deck (the same as I had seen in three and four players) and the game finished in half an hour - with some of that taken up with discussions of matters arising and making adjustments on the fly, so we could expect the play time to actually be a load shorter.

There was loads of good general feedback too.  The "magic" equipment that got introduced in version 0.2 is really not working, but some discussion got us ideas for replacement cards/rules (potions or magic scrolls that allow some mischievous moving around of equipment) that should meet the intent of the magic kit (mostly to add a little disruptive fun) in a way that fits the game better.  We also found a few other bits of tuning to do.

So, I know what I need to do for version 0.3, so I'd better get on with it.

El Tiddly really didn't work well.  For a start, we didn't get enough counters onto the board to make for real competition, and the fact that I had cards allowing people to remove counters (without possibility of failure) meant that the board stayed sparsely populated.  There was also a feeling that the tiddlywinks were just too difficult to control (it should be noted that "proper" tiddlywinks has a cup for a target, so the winks don't generally slide on out after hitting the target), and access to different sides of the table to make shots can be a bit of a pain.  Apart from that, there was general agreement that there was a lot of downtime between turns (particularly with five players) and what was going on on other people's turns wasn't really fun enough to make up for that.

Overall, then, I think El Tiddly is getting shelved.  There were, however, loads of ideas being thrown around as to how it might be possible to make a game like this actually work (from cutting it down to a two-player duelling game to having a contoured board), so I may get back to it at some time.  I need a lot of sleeps first, though, and in the meantime I have plenty of other projects to be focusing on.

Thanks again to the fine individuals who came to help with the playtesting.

Boogie Knights 0.2: Electric Boogaloo

It is done!  Well, more-or-less.  I have made a load of changes and now have Boogie Knights version 0.2.

Still no Turner Prize, but the cards are coming along.

The rules have not changed much, though I have added some "wizard" equipment, which provides magic, which sweeps out the contents of the armoury (dealing with the "stale cards" issue that got mentioned during playtests) and allows you to steal a piece of equipment from another player (some playtesters were wishing for more ways to "stuff" other players).  I had considered not allowing the blind draw from the deck, but decided to leave that in for now.

The big changes are in the cards themselves, most significantly in the balance of the cards.  There are now a lot more challenge cards, including ones which allow you to choose a target, and a new class of challenge which makes for a grand contest between all players at the same time.

I have started overhauling the artwork of the equipment cards, so many of them are now in a new form which is closer to the "mix & match flipbook" idea that I have for the presentation; it's still rough, place-holder art, but hopefully it gets the idea across.  I wanted to get this set of cards made sooner rather than later, though, so I haven't yet finished this new art, meaning that some of the cards just don't look right together, but the next version should be more consistent.  Also, I decided to drop the card title for equipment, relying solely (for good or ill) on the illustration.  Unfortunately this means that some of the cards have a touch of "WTF is that meant to be?!", but hopefully that won't matter too much right now.

As an aside, artwork is always a thorny issue for prototypes.  Most of the old hands at game design say that you shouldn't invest in artwork for an unfinished game, largely on the grounds that most publishers will want to arrange for their own art as part of the process of preparing the final product.  I would definitely agree with this, and won't be spending money on art any time soon, but I've actually been really enjoying applying my limited artistic talent to this game.  As I want all the graphics to line up, I made a simple template to use as a base for all the different figures that get split into three parts.  I have so far made four of the planned eight figures as very simple line art, and when they are all done I plan to add some colour to liven things up a little.

Something I haven't done properly for version 0.2 is to ensure that there is an appropriate balance of bonuses for disco and combat, so that is a task I will definitely need to do for 0.3.  I don't think it's too far off right now, but I may be proved wrong on that.  I have also left some "neutral" (no bonus) cards in the set, which is probably not ideal, but we'll see how that works out.

Now, I think I am probably in a place to start a Work-In-Progress thread for Boogie Knights on BoardGameGeek in the hope of getting a little more external input.

In case you would like a look at the current state of the game, you can download the print and play materials...
Boogie Knights v0.2 Rules on Dropbox
Boogie Knights v0.2 Cards on Dropbox

Where things are at right now

I just thought it would probably be worth making a note of the projects that I have on the go, and a sentence or so about the status of each.

Boogie Knights...  Working on a revised version following playtest feedback.  Should be able to get that to the table very soon.  Incidentally this is up for voting in the May 24 hour contest on BGG, where there is some very stiff competition; well worth looking for the sheer variety of interpretations of "Knight" for a game.

Scurvy Crew...  Still in mid-revision, with crew cards mostly overhauled but a lot of work yet to do on treasure cards, which are being converted to merchant ships to capture.  This is quite a major overhaul, but has been stalled due to other projects and other demands on my time.  Hopefully I'll get the new version sorted in the next few weeks.

Tooth Fairies...  Would like to work on this some more, but is currently on hold.

Space Station 7...  Stalled for the time being.  Having done early experiments to test the very basics, I had a big heap of work to get to the next stage.  I'm probably about 3/4 of the way to another playable prototype, so hopefully I'll find some time to push this through to being playable.

El Tiddly...  Also stalled.  Again, early experiments show promise, but in this case I don't think it would take long to get a playable full game.  Maybe soon.

So what now?  Well, the priority is to get a new version of Boogie Knights fixed up, at which point I will probably start a Work-In-Progress thread about it on BoardGameGeek.  Then I think completing this stage of work for Scurvy Crew would be the next job.  After that we'll have to see.

Of course, there may well be an interruption for the June 24 hour contest, which has "assassin" as a requirement, and this has me thinking about the scene in The Pink Panther Strikes Again where Clouseau is being pursued through Oktoberfest by an international army of assassins, so I may well try to put together a game along those lines as long as I can figure out how to prevent it being a bad copy of Kill Doctor Lucky.

Expo Boogie

So, I'm back from my first multi-day trip to UK Games Expo and, apart from playing a heap of games, mostly new to me, buying a few, and having some great chats with friends old and new, I managed to attend the playtest session run by Playtest UK, and had a 90 minute slot for running games of Boogie Knights, after which I stayed on to try out someone else's game.

Actual people, actually playing my actual game.

I'll just mention this other game... It was a resource management/conversion game with some very nice features, designed by Dave Mortimer.  This game is totally my sort of thing and had me fully engaged all the way through, to the point that I wasn't paying any attention at all to the fabulous looking prototype with dinosaurs and cowboy minis on the next table.  I'm really looking forward to seeing how Dave's game develops.

Anyway, on with the playtest report.  I had two volunteers, a couple (I think), very quickly and we played a three-player game before being joined by another lady to make it four for another game -- and, yes, the original players were (or at least seemed) keen to play again.  After that play through, these folk were replaced by another couple for another three-player run.  The game was quick to explain and took about 20 minutes each time.

It was also interesting to note that in every game we needed to reshuffle the deck only twice, and I think this means that the deck is probably just about big enough to support a four-player game -- I would really like to have the game comfortably playable with 54 cards as this number works really well with most "print on demand" services, and only required six pages to print out for print 'n' play purposes.

In the evening, I joined a couple of guys (and some others who dropped in and out of the table) for assorted games, and they said that they had seen Boogie Knights in the playtest zone but weren't able to get to play.  Fortunately I had brought the cards with me, so we had another play then.

So, what did I learn?

Well, overall the concept of the game went down well and drew people to the game, and folk seemed to think that the mechanics of the game fit the theme pretty well.  My playtesters in the afternoon spent a lot of time laughing, and there was a little light table-talk about the reasons for swapping, say, a lance for a tambourine, and all this made for lively and fun play.  All of this was very gratifying and suggested I was working along the right lines.

I also showed some concept sketches to give an idea of how I imagine the final artwork could be, and these went down very well indeed.

I won't be winning the Turner Prize for this, but at least it gives an idea of the direction this game's presentation could take.

Of course, it might be excellent for the ego if all the comments were positive, but it wouldn't be very helpful for game development, and all the playtesters were very helpful with constructive criticism.  The evening session was especially useful in this respect, as we weren't limited by time like we were during the official playtest period and we were able to discuss some aspects of the game fairly thoroughly.

I'll sum up the major points...

• There were points in each of the games when players had little to do other than just switching equipment around.
• One suggestion was to increase the proportion of challenge cards.
• Sometimes players ended up without useful or interesting cards.
• There were a couple of requests to be able to discard cards.
• The challenges versus a target number seemed a bit hard.
• Could there be challenges of different difficulties?
• Some players wanted to be able to pick on or mess with other players more often.
• In the four-player game, you couldn't challenge the player opposite.
• Some thought that the randomness of the die rolls was a bit too swingy.
• Though one player said that for such a quick, light game, it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if it was more random and chaotic.
• Sometimes the cards in the armoury languish there for a (long) while, so maybe there should be some way to clear them out.
• While, on discussion, everyone could understand the merit of having "neutral" equipment (which can cancel penalties, even if they don't add bonuses), it still seems like playing them makes for a bit of a "non-move".
• The iconography and graphical design needs a lot of cleaning up.
• But I knew that, and the playtesters all accepted that this was something that would come later.

So, I think I have a lot of food for thought and plenty of really valuable feedback to be going on with.  I will definitely be tweaking the number of challenge cards in the deck (and the difficulty of the target number challenges), and this will probably address a few problems if I get it right.  Less duplication in the deck would also improve things.  I am also pondering on having things like a wizard's robes, hat and wand as equipment, which would probably be neutral for combat or disco, but may have other effects, like clearing and re-supplying the armoury.  A feel a new version heading this way...

Many thanks to my fine and very helpful playtesters over the weekend: Tom, Paula, Lynn, Khia (I hope I got your name right), Craig, Liam and Paul.  You were all awesome.

Playtesting at UKGE

I have taken what feels like a big step for me and committed to running a public playtest of one of my games at the UK Games Expo this coming weekend.

One of the features of the Expo is a playtest zone, being run on both Saturday and Sunday by Playtest UK, a group which facilitates meetups in several locations around the UK for the purpose of testing out games.  I've not been able to attend any of their regular meets as most of them are weekday evenings and far from me, so are awkward, but there is a monthly Sunday afternoon meet in London, so maybe I'll get to one of them some time.

The deal at Expo was tables available for assorted time slots on a first-come-first-served basis, and I was able to secure myself a 90-minute slot from 1:00 on Saturday.  Of course, the big decision is what game to take for testing, and I decided to go with Boogie Knights as it seems to me to be in the most presentable state, and it would really benefit from having a few play-throughs in order to find the rough edges.

As an aside, I think that I would have most liked to take Scurvy Crew along, but I am in the middle of a complex re-tooling of the game and have no idea if I would be able to get it into a properly playable state in time.

Now here is where my insecurities start to set in, as I am certain that most of the other designers who will be there are much more experienced than me, and most will probably have far nicer looking prototypes than I have (the art and design of Boogie Knights is rudimentary, at best), but I think I need to suck it up and give it a go.  After all, everyone has to start somewhere, and I only have to survive for 90 minutes.

Plus, of course, I'll hopefully be able to gather some decent feedback to help me take the next few steps forward with the design.

So if you are at the Expo on Saturday, please do come over to the playtest tables in the Monarch Suite between 1:00pm and 2:30pm.  It'd be great to see you.