On failure

Well, it looks like I'll be failing to meet my objective of at least two posts each month, but I guess I'll just have to make up for it later.

Image from StockMonkeys.com via Flickr

Coincidentally, I have been catching up on the latest series of Tabletop Deathmatch (well worth checking out) and heard a really interesting point from one of the judges, Luke Crane:

"Failure has to be the most interesting part of your game.  Failure has to be the thing that compels you to continue playing in games like this.  It spurs you on, it makes you want to play even more.  If failure demoralizes you and doesn't make you want to play any more, then your game is broken."

I guess this isn't really rocket science, but I feel I need to make sure I remember it.  The context for this was a game where there were situations like, for example, a player's entire turn was rolling a die to see if they passed a challenge, getting a bad roll, and that was it, they had to wait for their next turn to try again.  And this happened at least twice in a row.  This does not make for riveting gameplay.

It is also worth noting that another judge was commenting about the same game that being successful wasn't very exciting either.  I haven't got to the end of the series yet, but I'm guessing that this probably wasn't  the winning game.

This got me thinking that a good policy would probably be that in most cases where there is uncertainly of success or failure, either outcome should just open up a new opportunity to develop the game's narrative.  Or at least, if you fail, you gain something that may help you mitigate against bad luck later.

Actually, that is sounding quite fun, having a game where failure early on could give you real advantages later.  I'm sure that's something to work with.

A scurvy playtester helps out

Over at the Board Game Geek thread about Scurvy Crew I had one guy in particular expressing interest, and we have exchanged a number of messages both on the thread and privately.  Well, now he has done me the very great honour of printing out and making up a set of cards and reporting on his experience of playing the game.  Thanks once again, Andreas, you have been incredibly helpful.

Picture provided by de_la_poer from Board Game Geek.  This is his 2-player game at the end.

Most of Andreas' comments have been very supportive and included some very useful queries and criticisms.  I'll outline a few key points here...

• I had omitted a few points from the rules, like exactly how many crew cards get laid out in each tavern.  There were also some bits that weren't clear, either in the rules or the card texts, so I'll have to do a load of tidying, clarifying and editing before the next release.
• It looks like it is not clear when players should switch between acts: it is easy to get into a point where players just fill their hands with cards rather than go to sea.  Though if one player goes out, the others are likely to follow soon.
• The process of treasure hunting at sea seems really dull, especially compared to the combat, which Andreas enjoyed.

Further discussion has honed things a little, and I have a few things I want to try, the main ones being...

• I might merge the first two acts as they are indistinct, even though I like the idea of a game in three acts.  The real answer might be to add some more stuff to distinguish a little, but I'm in the mood to subtract, particularly as I want to add elsewhere.
• And one thing to add is a system to make it so you have to hunt merchant ships in a similar way to the player-vs-player combat, rather than the abstract (and dull) drawing of treasure cards.  I have a couple of ideas to try here, and would like to have an element of press-your-luck.
• It would also be nice to come up with a way of making the whole recruiting in taverns part a bit more thematic.  Maybe players could attack each other while ashore, or something like that.

I have plenty to be going on with, but I don't need to get everything sorted right away, as I think it would be better to get more testing done after just taking a couple of steps in what I hope to be the right direction.

So, I guess I'd better stop writing about this game and actually get on with improving it...

The poor man's 3D printer

Making games involves building prototypes, and so far I have made do by using blank cards (or printing them out), scavenging components from other games, or pulling stuff from my growing collection of game bits.  Matt Leacock, the designer of loads of great games, including Pandemic and Roll Through the Ages, as well as the currently-on-Kickstarter Thunderbirds board game, has written an inspiring blog post about using craft foam.

Stolen from Matt's blog: a fine example of sculpting craft foam into Thunderbird tokens.

He waxes lyrical in his post about the advantages of using this not-too-expensive material.  Aside from the sculpting potential (see the picture for neat Thunderbirds prototype components), I'm rather sold on the idea of using this stuff for making up tiles: print out what you want on regular paper, back with self-adhesive craft foam, then cut up with a sharp knife.  I'm definitely going to be trying this trick out...

And when the music stops...

One of the entries on my "hooks" list is "Musical chairs (but not Midnight Party clone)", which I originally wrote down because Midnight Party is so clearly (and successfully) based on that kids' party game, and I wondered where else that inspiration can go.  Pondering on that a little, I figured, heck, why not just make Musical Chairs, the board game?

I figured that the first thing I would need was some chairs, which I drew onto some blank cards, and I would need some meeples to act as kids playing.  For a first (solo) test I made a line of nine chairs (alternating facings as is traditional in party games) with three meeples of each of three colours, sitting on them.  When the music starts, the meeples get off their chairs and travel up one side of the line and down the other; when one of the end chairs has no meeple next to it, it is removed, and then when the music stops, players try to get their meeples to sit down.  Initially I was toying with movement by simultaneous selection of cards (a from a subset of a suit of playing cards for each player), and the music stopping when certain cards were played.  This didn't really feel right.

Attempt 2, showing beautifully hand illustrated game cards at their very best.

For a second attempt, I switched to two "players", each with three meeples, and I constructed a small set of special cards for each, with various movement options on them, including options to jump over chairs or barge other meeples out of the way, for a little more realism.  Each player had two cards in hand to choose from on their turn, and reshuffled their mini-deck when it was exhausted.

This version seemed to work a bit better, but I need to play it with someone else as I think much of the game will be figuring out what options the other players have available to them, and I find it particularly hard to bluff myself, so I have no idea how well this works.  I should have an opportunity to give this a spin with real people at the weekend, and will see what I need to do to make this into a working game.

24 hours of fairies

As I stated a couple of posts back, one of my objectives this year was to enter at least one game design competition.  Well, I have now done just that.  It was a very small competition, but it counts for all that.

Prototype 3 in play.  The mug of tea is not an essential component but it was helpful.

So, since the summer of 2012, a guy called Kai, who goes by the handle of schattentanz (I love that name!) on Board Game Geek, has been organising a monthly 24-hour game design contest.  The idea is that he gives a word or phrase that is intended to inform theme or give some sort of restriction, and then at some time in the month, participants spend a single 24 hour period working on a game, at the end of which a game must be made available for judging.  A winner is decided by interested parties "thumbing" the respective submissions, and the whole thing is run on an honour basis, and is intended as just a bit of fun.  It is also a really interesting challenge.  If you want to find out more, you can look at this BGG thread.

I have just completed my attempt.  This month's theme is "Fairy", which can be interpreted however you like.  After some pondering (you are allowed to think about it as much as you like, but no creating anything at all tangible until your window starts) I decided to work on something about tooth fairies paying children for their teeth and presenting sets of teeth to the king and queen of the fairies in exchange for rewards.

On Friday, just after lunch, I got started on the project and made an announcement in this month's thread, and started off by writing up my initial thoughts on rules and scribbling out a small selection of cards (it was going to be a card game) on a pile of blank cards I keep around for just this purpose.

I had to pick up my daughter, Miss B, from school that afternoon, but she helped me out by playtesting the cards and rules I had come up with so far, and this showed that the basic game seemed OK, but flagged up plenty of improvements that were needed.

That evening I worked on an expanded set of cards and tweaked rules, working my design into some nanDECK code and data, printing out a set, mucking around with it a bit and then scrapping it in favour of another set of cards.

This third set of cards got playtested on Saturday morning (this time with both wife and daughter), which threw up a few more tweaks which I managed to implement before bundling up a couple of PDF files (one for the rules and one for the cards) and submitting my entry with half an hour of time to spare.

So now it's a matter of waiting; voting will happen in early March.  I'm pleased with how Tooth Fairies has turned out so far, but there are still a lot of changes that need to be made before I consider it "done", but in the meantime we have a new game that the family enjoys and I have gained some valuable experience.  All good.  I think I'll try doing more of these 24 hour challenges.

If you want to take a look at the game, you can download the rules file and the cards file.  If you play the game (or even if you don't), please let me know how it went and if you spot any problems with it.

Why don't you stick to one thing?

You may have noticed that I am not concentrating on one game and focussing on getting it finished.  On the contrary, I have several games on the go in assorted stages of development.  Surely, if I just put all my effort into one game, I might get it to the point where it can be published...?

OK, stupid, lame joke. [Image yoinked from Wikipedia]

Well, maybe.  A few thoughts on that...

• I'm actually not trying to get anything published.  I am currently doing game design as a learning exercise and hobby.  Hopefully I will occasionally come out with something that someone else might like to play, and if a publisher wants to give me money one day that would be truly awesome, but for now it's fun thinking of ideas and seeing if I can develop them.
• Ideas keep coming up for all manner of reasons.  Quite a few of them are because of something someone says, or maybe I see a game and think about how a similar idea could go in a different direction.  Most of these ideas just won't really be good enough (or I may not have the skill to make them good enough), but how will I know if I don't explore them?
• Conversely, if I put all my energy into one game, I may become blind to its faults and find it hard to make major changes or even abandon a failing project, so having multiple projects at the same time should give me some protection against this.
• Also there may be a mechanic or other element in a game that I particularly like, but doesn't really work in the game that I have put it into.  If I have a heap of games on the go at once, then maybe I can find a proper home for that mechanic.
• I find it a lot more fun this way.

That said, I do need to get at least some of my projects to a state that could conceivably be described as "finished".  It's a discipline that I need to work on.  This is the reason that I have a couple of objectives for this year that effectively involve getting a game "finished" and making it available online.  Actually, possibly my next post will be about this, as I am planning to enter February's "24 hour" game contest, in which the idea is to create a playable game from scratch within a single 24 hour period.  I'm planning to do this in a few days, so watch this space...

I've got a little list...

I said that one of my resolutions for this year was to develop four ideas from my "game hooks" list into playable games and that I would post the list.  Well, here is that post.

Grabbed from openclipart.org

My hooks list is a file of a bunch of ideas that I think of at various times and remember to make a note of.  They aren't necessarily original ideas, but they are something that I think might be a decent thing to try out at some time.  Similarly, they vary dramatically in scope and detail, but they are what they are.

Actually, now I look back at the list in a different format, it doesn't really look very long.  I know I have had many more ideas than this, so I should probably make more effort to write things down.  I also need to do something about the ideas -- but that is what this resolution is about.

Anyway, enough rambling.  Here's my current list, as it stands today...

• A fantasy adventure (like Talisman, Runebound, etc.) with little or no downtime. 
• Players are on secret teams and have to figure out who their teammates are. 
• Three cards each: all players simultaneously play one, pass one left, pass one right, then draw one.
• Or slightly different: put one into a stock for the end game, put one into another other player's stock, and play one now. 
• During play, one player can request a boost and, if other players agree, can take a special ability, XP boost, money boost, or whatever, but the other players all gain a VP boost if they allow it. 
• Cooperative game where at the start of each round the players agree turn order. Or possibly there is a "captain" role, who assigns turn order. 
• You spend a resource to buy stuff to enhance your position, but that resource is also your "life", so run out and you're gone. (A bit like pool in V:TES.) 
• One player (maybe more) has a victory condition (possibly hidden) related to attacking the first other player to attack him.
• Game with just a few tiles or cards, with different colours and paths/patterns on each side.  Players take it in turns to flip cards (can put back any way around, or maybe choose axis to flip over) trying  to complete their own pattern.
• Use "Mastermind" style guessing/logic mechanic in a more themed game.
• More than one player taking a turn at the same time.  (Check out http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/14812/camelot)
• Auctions based on Loot tricks... several things to acquire, each player bids (or adds to a bid) on a set number each turn (maybe just one bid), and wins the auction on anything that they are ahead on at the start of their turn.  
• Dungeon crawl (or similar) based on stealth.  Actions create noise. Noise above a certain level attracts attention, which is bad.
• Tower defence/assault game where you acquire (maybe 2-sided) tiles which can either be used to build up/defend your castle or as attackers to assault your opponents.  I'm picturing queues of attacker tiles on each side of a castle.
• A game that requires no table - all play is cards in hand (see Top Trumps or Oddball Aeronauts).
• Dutch auction variation.  Resources sit on a price track.  Each player, on their turn, buys one resource at its current value, moves 2 (probably) resources one space down the track, and adds one resource to the top.  (Maybe attach this to purchase of Splendor-style cards or something like that?)
• Something like Left-Centre-Right, but with some sort of tactical decision to make.
• Something like LCR, where instead of passing chips you pass the dice themselves.  (Can this have some skill element?)
• A game with player elimination, but where the first elimination triggers the endgame (maybe one last round?).  Possibly with eliminated player taking a new role for endgame?
• Rock-Paper-Scissors liar's dice.
• Queueing worker placement.  Place workers at the back of a queue in a production spot, then when enough workers are in the queue, the one at the front can be popped off to complete the action.  (Maybe also allow "neutral" workers to be placed in order to stop workers getting completely stuck.)
• Diplomacy plus Dune/Rex style (temporarily) binding alliances.
• Dexterity + area control/majority...  Flicking, catapulting or dropping counters onto a map and scoring areas at times. (El Grande + tiddlywinks?)
• Base something on Cribbage
• Combat: make combat dice rolls in secret (in cup or behind a screen) then alternate with opponent adding or removing troops before resolution.
• Musical chairs (but not Midnight Party clone).
• War/conquest game, where you declare your objectives ahead of a number of turns ahead of invading; the value of a region to you is related to how far ahead you made the declaration.

As you can see, this list is very much a "note to self" sort of thing, and I haven't elaborated on the items so they make more sense to anyone else.  

I am sure I will be extending the list as we go along, but I will do my best to create my four games from this list as it currently stands.