Demon's TD: Day Two

The written rules for Demon's Tower Defense are coming together but are doing so very slowly. I knew that writing the rules would be slow but I expected most of that to present itself during the scrubbing process as I added examples and flourishes to keep things interesting. The process of recording the basic principles of the game, so that an unfamiliar player could read and be competent playing my game, is itself very time consuming. Already I see holes in write-up and can quickly identify places where I will need examples and expanded information. In general I am learning quite a fair amount and I am pleased with my progress for the most part.

The game has been changed and is no longer one where players roll dice to select roles. The availability of important actions could not be guaranteed and often the players just felt as though the game slowed down during the process of creating the dice pools. I have instead opted to push the game towards a card driven engine which cycles through a predefined set of cards. This basic purchase system has the added perk of allowing players access to a light draft mechanism where they can overpay for cards that pop up further along the display. Mostly however the card driven system allows me to capture much more story and introduce more player interaction as well as overall flexibility. It is hard to model a wide variety of possible options using six-sided dice without resorting to tables, yet today I was able to create a wide number of simple and flavorful card options that should help the players formulate a narrative as they play.

GameStorm Prep.

I forgot that I enjoy boardgames.  No, I guess that lie will not work, huh?  I have been lazy.  Yes the truth is, well, so.. honest.  There is a local convention in Vancouver, WA this weekend and I have been working on Wizard's School in an attempt to get it ready for my first public play test.  I have been making minor tweaks, interesting revisions and the occasional sweeping change.  I am very happy with where the design is headed and while I think the core concepts are very strong I am not sure I am all that near to a final product.Tonight I hosted some friends, Sean and Chase, and with Jenni's help we slogged through another partial game.  I have to say that the experience was very helpful and with their help I was able to identify at least half a dozen issues with the game and create some compelling resolutions.  I am going to list them below and speak briefly on their proposed solutions but basically what it all boils down to is this:  I am excited to test again.

1. The most troublesome class, Alchemy, has recently been changed to Enchantments for the better but an underlying issue with the spell book mechanic persisted and made catching up when you fell behind basically impossible. This is bad.  Allowing players the opportunity to overwrite cards in their spell book for an increased cost will resolve this issue and in a very streamlined way allow players to recover from silly mistakes.
   
2. Potions class was a magnificent table hog and due to the rewards structure did not properly create incentives for players after they had made their first or second resource contributions.  This made it feel flat (not enough interaction).  Scoring the class based on the number of potions created as opposed to the number of unique potions created has all but dissolved this issue.  Additionally, allowing the use of the potions has balanced the payout, making it comparable to Enchantments, and added another space where players can interact.
   
3. Magical Writings is the grease that makes your engine churn. However, in the current version the distribution of cards both in your starting hands and those available during the card drafting phase would often not provide players with the requisite flexibility that the spell book demands.  All of the necessary cards are represented, but are mixed with other more compelling but expensive cards.  I am moving towards a series of structured phase decks.  In phase one you will have access primarily to building block cards and as the game progresses more specialized cards will appear.
   
4. The advancement icons on the skill tracks was poorly distributed which caused the pacing of the early turns to be too slow.  Easy fix.
   
5. General Studies, which represents a consolation for lost draft cards, was not being utilized well.  It is in fact ripe design space and I am excited to develop cards for what could develop into an auxiliary strategy.
   
6. To create visual direction, prevent board clutter and drive the overwriting mechanic, I will be adding spaces for the cards a wizard is currently scribing.  This will simplify many aspects of the game in terms of rules complexity, add design space, and emphasize the importance of managing your hand of cards.

Fun stuff ahead.  I will keep you posted as I near a better prototype.

victory

A couple of thoughts on victory conditions and general gameplay:

A lot of games include a certain "delay the leader" dynamic. The two best examples I can think of are Munchkin and Settlers... in both cases the group teams up to prevent the leader from attaining the victory condition and ending the game. I like attacking the leader, but I don't like the group dynamic it sometimes creates, in which those in last place are pressured to do something which, frankly, isn't really in their own self-interest. Once you're really out of it in Catan, upholding an embargo on the first place player only prolongs the pain and gives some other jerk a chance to win. Often, the last place player figures this out, and stops helping the group hold the winner back.... and everyone else gets angry because the last place player isn't being "competitive." I say, don't hate the player, hate the game.

All that leads me to ask, is there a way to make the "attack the leader" action help the last-place player? In other words, what if hurting the leader didn't prolong the game... but instead hastened victory?

Here's a simple example of what I'm talking about: take a deck of playing cards, deal some out. Players take turns giving points by playing cards on one another. The game ends when the group total=100 (or whatever), and the winner is the low point holder. Giving the leader points both hurts their position and brings the end a bit closer.

Aquaretto review

Played Aquaretto today, and thought this would be a good venue for a quick writeup.

If you want a walk through of the game play, obsessed board gamers has done a decent video review; take a look.

The mechanics I liked in this game:

1. The building up and selecting of animal "trucks". - basically for each player there is a truck that holds up to 3 cards, you go around in a circle and place animals on the trucks, anyone can choose to take a truck at any point. Tile selection is one of the few random events that I really like in board games. In this case you've got the interplay between loading a truck that you wan't vs not making it too inticing for other players. Since you can't place a tile on a truck and take it in the same turn, there is a lot of posturing. It worked well.
   
2. Animal placement, and expansion of the board. Since animal's can't be directly adjacent, there are decisions to make about where you place animals, but more importantly, how much space you need to expand your collection of animals. Time is involved to make sure you expand the board where you need space for animals. I ended up expanding in the wrong direction one game, and this resulted in a glut of animals that I simply didn't have space for, but should have. This added a bit of a puzzle aspect to the game, I liked.
   

These two aspects combined to make an interesting game that you could get through in 45mins easily. The only shortcoming that I came across was that some of the professions your workers (you are awarded workers for producing 5 or more of one animal in your zoo) could be were just not as good as others. This power balance might change with more players, but in a 3 player game your optimal choices were limited. Still, we played 3 consecutive games and each one held my interest and managed to play differently. This was a good one.