New Years Resolution

I will have a game picked up by a publisher in 2013.  I don't care what game or what publisher but I will make it happen.  I won't rule out self publishing, though it is still not my top choice. If it starts looking like self publishing is the way to go, I going to have to start talking to people who have done it.  I know it takes a lot of time to self publish, so I'll give myself until April 1 to find a traditional publisher then I'll have to ramp up on the self publishing front.  I will make it happen.

Overdue... once again.

I haven't felt like reporting much lately. In fact, I'm actually a bit frustrated. I have this feeling that I'm just doing this whole "get a board game published" thing all wrong. I've submitted Of Power & Glory to a number of publishers and I've gotten quite a few "We don't accept unsolicited games", one "We don't like the theme", one "The game is too long" and another publisher that has had the game for nearly a year and as of a few weeks ago still hasn't played it.

As for the other games, I wanted to get them reviewed before I started presenting them to publishers and there's been more frustration there. The Dice tower no longer reviews games from the Game Crafter unless you pay them more than I can spend. And the gamer's table has had Of Pride & Policy for many months now and it has yet to be reviewed. I'm not sure how to interpret that, but I'm not sure it's good.

I released another game Scarborough Fair that I've gotten some great feedback on. JT of the Game Crafter said it was his favorite game (not designed by himself) on the Game Crafter. High praise! He also said he would make it a staff pick, but that has yet to happen (another point of frustration).

Most of my frustration seems to be coming from me waiting on other people... and I want to say to myself "You can't wait on other people, you have to make things happen yourself!" And while I think that's good advice (thanks me!), I don't know what more I should be doing now. I don't think I want to self publish, but lately I've been wondering if that's not such a bad idea... though it scares me. I would want to get a lot of advice from someone whose been through that (preferably more than once).

Am I not approaching publishers correctly? Am I approaching the wrong publishers (I have been targeting the big guys)? Do I need to aim lower? I've considered Game Solute. Once again something I have to wait on since they cut off game submissions through the end of the year. I know that's only a few days away now, but I've been considering it for while and there's no guarantee they're going to flip the switch back on January 1st.

I keep hearing about people from the game crafter getting their games published and I know this is going to sound like jealousy... probably because that's what it is. But Why can't I have a little good fortune? Don't get me wrong. I am genuinely happy for those who get published. But it does make feel a bit left out. I feel like I have some really good games... nearly everyone who plays them seem to agree. I guess I really don't know how to take the next step. I could really use some advice or even just a bit of encouragement.

Long time no see...

I know.. I get into these stretches where I don't update the blog for a long time. So here's a long overdue update on various things. I published Of Feast & Famine in The Game Crafter. The Game Crafter released a new product, rule books. I have upgraded Of Power & Glory, Of Pride & Policy and Of Feast & Famine to use these. This drives up the cost even more, but since nobody's buying the games anyway, they might as well not buy the best game I can make! The rule books are actually not bad... a big improvement over the documents. Now if only TGC would upgrade their boxes, the games would actually be pretty close to true pro quality.... to expensive still, but that's a whole other issue. I have another game that I will likely publish soon called Scarborough Fair. I'm getting another copy soon... likely today. So I'll take some pictures of it and publish it. It's a much simpler game than the others, but still too pricey to sell much. I'm also going to have put a hold on any more games for the time being. It's just become too much of a financial burden. If / when I can start making a little money off the games I already have, I may start up again. I'm not looking to get rich, but it would nice to at least break even! Or course, I won't turn down being rich either! I sent off Of Pride & Policy to be reviewed by the Dice Tower... a long time ago, I had sent it off the The Gamer's Table and I wanted to wait until that review came back before I sent it off to someone else, but they had gone a few months without updating their website (some people!) that I started to wonder if they were still "in business" so to speak. As it turns out, soon after, they chimed in again, so I guess I'll get both reviews at some point. This is way too short a blog for as long an absence as I've had, but nonetheless, I think that's all I have right now!

Web site update and other thoughts

I've decided to change the website a bit.  Previously I had a site hosted on a sever that I was paying for that was running php.  The original thought was that I could build a dynamic website that automatically updated when ever I made changes to games on The Game Crafter.  And it sort 1/2 worked, but ultimately I decide it wasn't worth the effort...  By the way, the hosting is about to expire which kind of forced the issue.  So now the site is running completely off of blogger.  I lose the dynamic updates when I change games on Game Crafter, but that's a two sided coin it turns out.  It wasn't easy to format text so that it works correct on both sites.

Changing subject...
I've decided to make some changes to Of Feast & Famine.  I'm simplifying the mechanic for driving the wars and plagues.  I think is was an innovative mechanic, but not appropriate for this game... maybe I can use it in some other game.  The main problem was that it took too long for things to get interesting.

Plagues will get much simpler.  Each plague card causes a plague.  I thought about driving the intensity of the plague off the population; higher population means more plague.  This makes thematic sense, but I don't know yet if it makes the game better so I'll have to try it both ways.

For the wars, I'm still going to have a tracker, but instead of cubes bubbling up like they did in the past they simply move up (or down) in a more straight forward manor.  Each card bumps the cube up if you refuse the tribute or down if you pay it.  As the cube moves up the attacks get stronger.  Defending an attack is also simpler now:  each worker (and minister) cancels one die.  I'm also considering bringing the black rings back.  Another thing that I keep flip flopping on is weather the tributes should be reoccurring or not.

One partially related concern I have is that there's too much in the game.  I feel like there not enough time in the game to educate workers.  A thought just occurred to me.  What if I got rid of the rings and made the colors of the workers relevant.  A green worker is better at agriculture, while a blue worker is better at medicine.  Interesting simplification, but it has a large impact of the game.  Education goes out the window and what are the red workers?  There isn't a red ring.  The red minister is all about religion, so maybe there's a thematic area, but what does that translate to in the game?  Or maybe I exchange colors....  lots to think about.

Of Feast & Famine Rules

I don't have much of an update, but since I haven't posed in while I thought I should post something!  I have complete the first draft of the rules for Of Feast & Famine.  There will doubtlessly be changes in the future.  I have made a few rules changes since the last time it was played.

• Building the Castle is now the last step in the season... previously it was before paying Tribute.  The last time I playtested the game, we could simply accept all the tributes on the last round because we knew we were going to win before paying Tribute for the season.  That felt like cheating, so I changed the order.
• I've decided to not allow Tribute to be refused once it has been accepted.  So if you accept it...  you've accepted it for the whole game.  This does a couple of things.  It makes paying tribute a bigger deal and therefore increasing the likelyhood that you fight....  which is what I want.  It also gets rid of at least one  "loophole."  If the Player with the Combat Specialty happened to be Chancellor, then the players could all "pay tribute" only to have it refused by the Chancellor (Combat Specialist) later.  That too felt like cheating.
• I decided to change Poverty to be like the other dice rolling events in that ALL workers matching the die color go into poverty instead of one chosen by the player.  This is done for consistency and to just make the game a bit harder.

While I have made the change yet, I'm thinking about changing the Specialties a bit more.  Currently there doesn't seem to be enough reason to give an Event card to player as opposed to another.  I think I like the current abilities, but I want to add to some of them.  Also, some Specialties seem stronger than others so I may need to balance that out a bit.  Some ideas I had are:

• Giving the Religion player the ability to re-roll the die when Poverty comes up.
• Giving the Medicine player the ability to re-roll the die when Plague comes up.
• Adding a set of modifers to each Specialty for Gold, Stone and Food (medicine, at least right now doesn't apply).  These modifiers concern how much resource is lost during for the Famine, Repairs and Feast cards.  In fact, maybe I take all the numbers off the event cards and only use the number on the Specialty Cards.  There could be multiple instances on a resource icon on a card that indicates that you subtract a particular resource more than once.  Hmmm... I like.

That's it for now.

An extension of a couple of previous game ideas

A few days ago I posted a blog about a game idea that was sort of a variation on the game Scotland Yard.  And a few months ago I posted a blog talking about how cool it would be to have a game that had a really big turning point where the game completely changed.  Well, yesterday, while hiking for 5 miles through Kennesaw Mountain park, I came up with an idea that sort of combined those two ideas into one.  It's still, at best, a half baked idea, but here it is.

Suppose every player was on sort of a treasure hunt...  I don't know what the treasure is, but there's on one on them in the game.  There may be many minor treasures that help you out in some way or another, but there's one big treasure that every one is looking for.  The board needs to mostly contain lots of places to look, possibly with various terrains that the minor treasures could help you to navigate easier.  Once someone finds the big treasure, the game completely changes (here's one of the ideas mentioned above).  The game then runs into an asymmetric game where the one player who found the treasure is up against all the other players...  those other players represent a team that wins or loses together.  They are trying to catch the player that found the treasure before he can get to some particular location....  the location he has to get to needs to be far from where the treasure is found...  I'm sure some mechanic can be used to ensure that.  The treasure that is found gives the player that found it some sort of special power (there's a bit of a supernatural theme going on here I guess).  That power allows him to move more freely than the other players (see my previous post for more details of what I'm thinking.)  Of course, it could be a magic ring that makes him invisible, but that may be to Scotland Yard like (or Lord of the Rings like). 

The second phase of the game (i.e. after a player finds the treasure) needs to be balanced so that the single player has an advantage...  otherwise, why would players be hunting for it in the first phase of the game.  But it shouldn't be an overwhelming advantage.  I'm thinking, ideally, the single player should win 60% of the time.  There are some other concerns too.  When searing for a treasure, how do you keep someone from finding it on the first turn?  Or do you just embrace that?  perhaps finding the treasure early means that players haven't found many minor treasures that improve transportation, thus making the second phase of the game longer.  Or maybe it's not just a single treasure, but a few treasures that, when obtained by a single player, has the game changing effect.  Of course if you do that, there's the potential for deadlock....  I have part A, you have part B and no one will give up one part to the other player.  You can minimize that by having multiple copies of part A and B, but you can't eliminate the deadlock unless you do something like this:  have at least as many copies of the parts as there are players and then not allow a player to take more than one copy of a part.  So maybe that's what I'll do.


Oh well, that's it for today!

Of Feast & Famine update and other thoughts

I've been working on creating a rules document for Of Feast & Famine.  I don't think the rules have completely settled down, but I do think they're at the point where having them written down is a good thing.  The recent changes to the Specialties is an improvement, but I'm not sure I'm happy with them yet.  They "work" but they're not terribly exciting.  There doesn't seem to be enough of a reason to assign a particular event to one player or another.

*change of subject*

I've started wondering if I'm using the right strategy with trying to sell Of Power & Glory to publishers.  So far, I've submitted it to 1 publisher and no one else.  That's because I had heard that publishers don't want to look at games being considered by other publishers.  But recently I've heard some things (almost said in passing) that made me wonder if that's really true.  Or maybe it comes down to what "Considering" really means.  I wish I had someone that I could ask about it.  Perhaps I'm just getting impatient.  I think I just want an answer from the publisher I submitted it to... even if it's a "no".  But if it is a "no", I hope I get some feedback that I can use when I try the next publisher (or the next game to the same publisher!).

*change of subject*

I started thinking about a game I played a long time ago that I liked called Scotland Yard.  The cool thing about that game is that is was "asymmetrical" meaning that it was one player vs. the rest of the players.  The one player by himself was a criminal trying to escape the police (the other players) in London.   The board was basically a map of London with tons of distinct locations on it with paths to near by locations.  There were different types of transportation that the criminal could use: walking, bus, taxi, subway, ferry (I think....  it's been a long time).  But the big advantage that the criminal has is that he doesn't have a pawn on the board (or at least, not always).  So the police have to figure out where he is using information about what types of transportation he has used.

Anyway, I started to think about a twist on this concept.  I loved the idea of an asymmetric game, but I thought I could change the advantage of the single player to become some other game.....  I'm not at all tied to the police chasing a criminal theme, but that's where I'm starting.  If it ends up being a game about duck hunting on Mars so be it! Nonetheless, I don't have another theme yet, so I'll stick with criminal theme for this post.

What if instead of being hidden, the one player was allowed to move and take actions at will, but the other players had to plan in advance.  In other words, what if the other players had decide a turn in advance (or 2 or 3 turns in advance) what they were going to do.  Could be be kind of cool!  I can imagine some wonderful frustration of being right next the bad guy and knowing you're about to move the wrong way.  And this kind of restriction might make some thematic sense.  Big groups (represented by the many players) often are slower to move and must plan further in advance.  While a single person can just do what they want.

That's it for today!