Of Power & Glory... PUBLISHED!

Well, almost anyway!  I am happy to announce that Of Power & Glory will be published by Game Salute.  This officially fulfills my New Year's resolution!  And I'm glad too, because I promised myself that if I didn't have a publisher by April, that I was going to publish it myself...  April has seemed awful close the last few weeks!

There are a few changes (mostly minor) that they want to make so far.  The most notable change is that they want to have a fictional map instead of Western Europe.  They also want a slightly different name - Altero: Of Power & Glory. There have been a few minor rule changes requested, but they only address edge conditions or are small tweaks to improve the experience without really changing the rules (e.g. placing the extra nobles on the stared sections of power track).  I'm sure there will be more tweaks to come.

I should have more to blog about now!  I'll try to do much better about keeping you updated!

First Of Power & Glory Quote

I got the first quote back for Of Power & Glory...  for 1000 units, $13.50 a piece then it gets closer to $11 a piece as the quatities go up.  I'm not what to think about that...  I suppose it's in the ballpark of what I expected.  That's it!  short and sweet.

Of Pride, Power, Glory and Policy update

What do you want first the, the good news of the bad news?

Let's start with bad...
The review for Of Pride & Policy game out.... it was....  blah.  It got a 6.3  I guess that's not horrible, but the main reason they didn't like it was because it was "dry."  That's not easy to address.  If there was some mechanical problem with it I would have a better idea how to improve it, but if the theme just isn't very exciting.... whatcha gonnna do?  For the record, I don't think it's dry, but I can see where they're coming from.  Oh well, I guess it is what it is.... they can't all be winners.

Ok, let's have some better news.
I got a response back from Game Salute about Of Power & Glory.  It was generally positive.  Most of the negatives are easily addressed.  They wanted to change the name slightly and they didn't like that that map was a real place.   They wanted a fictional land.  I'm ok with that.  They also wanted the board to be more balanced i.e. each territory should touch 2 or 3 other territories.  The current board has some that touch 1and others that touch as many as 7.  I have mixed feelings about that...  I would be fine with reeling it in a little bit, but just 2s and 3s seems too much.  I want the geography the be relevant.  But I'm willing to give it a shot.  In addition to becoming more uniform, limiting it to 2s and 3s might make expansion less likely.  3's and 4's might be better.  But it sounded generally positive, so I'm happy!

later!

Another Update

Of Power & Glory:
I've decided that If I don't have official interest from a publisher by April, I'm going to try to self publish Of Power & Glory.  In perpetration of that I have begun collecting quotes from manufacturers.  I'm getting 2 from companies in China, Panda and Wingo and one from an American company, Customized Playing Cards.  When I get quotes back, I'll keep you posted.

Rendezvous:
I've made a major change to the game since my last post.  I decided to cut the number of tiles with buildings in 1/2 and fill up the rest with tiles that just have roads.  Players now have 1 Noble to move along with 3 communal Peasants.  The Noble works how it always did, but the Peasants work like blockers.  The roads are used travel of the Nobles, Peasants and King.  I have done a little self testing with it and it seems much better, but of course, I need real playtesting... a lot more than I'll actually get before the contest deadline, so I'll just have to get it as good as I can hope it's good enough.

Treasures of Seraph Isle:
On my last post i said that the game work, but was kind of blah...  Well I had an idea to spice it up that I can't wait to try.  The dig tokens will now have a number on them from 0-4 and the number.... these number are face down so no one knows what they are.  They represent the number of treasures you want to pull from that spot.  This makes it more interesting since deception is more likely to be effective and ties should be less likely.

Of Pride & Policy:
The guys at the gamer's table said they filmed the review...   it's not up yet, but my fate is already sealed!!

Later!

A few VERY quick updates...

Of Power & Glory:
I just had a publisher request a copy of the game....  very excited!

Scarborough Fair:
After some more playtesting I've made a couple of small rule tweaks.  First, with 2 players, two of the stages will be taken out of the game.  Second,  I've changed the market rules so that a player can only increase the price of at most 3 of the resources....  that should hopefully make the markets a little more interesting.

Treasures of Seraph Isle:
More playtesting....  the Rondel worked very nicely.  The game is ok, but not great with 3 players...  much better with more players.  I feel like there needs to be something added to make it a little more interesting.

Rendezvous:
First playtesting of it...  it needs work not surprisingly.  After one tweak during the playtesting, the game was playable, but kinda "blah".  There aren't enough interesting decisions in it yet.

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!

Of Power & Glory Playtesting

I posted the following to a Secrets Factory meetup discussion. But I thought I would copy it here:

First, I want to thank everyone who helped me play test Of Power & Glory this weekend.  You are all a great help. 

So after having a little time to reflect on some of the feedback I've made a few decisions on the game and I wanted to run them by people to see what they think.  I really liked the rule change we played with the second time around... the one where territory cards that don't result in an actual battle just get removed.  So I want to make that change.  It also more elegantly solves the problem that the silly the-king-takes-a-ring-from-a-player rule was trying to address, so I want to remove that rule.  Rodger indirectly suggested something to me that makes me want another rule change:  He kept trying to change turn order as an action instead of favor.  I think that's actually a good idea.  So I want to make that change.  That leaves 4 favors and all of them are about the king.  Floyd had mentioned that the turn order favor wasn't really about the King and until he said that, I didn't really consider it thematically...  but you were absolutely right!  So it shouldn't be a favor, it should be an action.

Floyd as recommended using cubes for the map and rings for the titles.  I'm willing to give that a shot, but I'm not compelled right now to make that change.  Yesterday, while reflecting on the playtesting, I rediscovered why I wanted those two things to be linked in the first place.  Of course my  silly the-king-takes-a-ring-from-a-player rule (which may go down as one of the worst things I did to my game), destroyed the effect.  So here's the reasoning:
If one King, say the red king, starts to get powerful, players will start to take more red rings.  That effectively limits the amount that the red King can expand and makes that other kings more attractive comparatively.  My thinking is that that will tend to even out the power of the kings and make it less possible for one player to control the whole game. 

I did, however, start thinking about the number of rings.  If you think about it a bit, the fewer rings you have, the greater the effect described above.  And after a little math, I decided I want to add two more rings per king.  That's enough to (almost) cover the board and allow all 20 possible nobles to max out their rings.  Of course, some kings will die reducing the number of rings, but on the other hand, not all 20 nobles will be used and not all that are used will max out their rings.

I've also decided to make the conditions on the King cards easier.  I don't want them to be just as good as taking a glory favor, but they should be within the realm of being possible.  Here's what I'm thinking for them: 

• Have at least 1 territory
• Have at least 3 territories
• Have at least 5 territories
• Have move power than at least 1 other king (including defeated kings)
• Have move power than at least 2 other kings (including defeated kings)
• Have move power than at least 3 other kings (including defeated kings)

I would love to hear what other people think about this.  Thanks!

(Very) Quick Game Idea

I don't have long to post today, so I'll just give a brief description of a half baked....  make that a quarter baked game idea I had.  I actually thought about t while watching some horrible reality show called moonshiners.. about moonshiners.  So I can't currently think of the game with other theme than that (even though I'm not super thrilled with that theme).

Ok, so it's a card game for three or four players.  One player is the moonshiner, one player is the bootlegger (they work together).  The other one or two players is/are cops.  The cops are trying to bust the other two players.  The bootlegger has to come and pick up a delivery, but the moonshiner needs to make sure it really is the bootlegger and not a random car or worse yet, the cops in a sting operation.

The cards have various cars on them.  The bootlegger draws some number of them...  lets say 6.  He then displays them face up on the table however he wants.  Something about how he displays the cards is supposed to indicate to the moonshiner which car is the correct one.  Maybe one is upside down (that's an example, but far to simple to be realistic).  The moonshiner and bootlegger can discuss the signal before game play begins, but not during.  Of course, the cops can see everything the other players are doing to.  The bootlegger then lays down six of his special cards next to the six cars...  one of those cards is an arrow saying... this car!!!  The cops do the same thing.  Then the moonshiner picks a car to put the moonshine in.  If he picks the cops car, the cops "win" if he picks the bootleggers car the criminals "win".   Cops win if it's the same car...  something (or perhaps nothing) happens if he picks a car that no one chose.


That's about it...  there's a lot to work out, but it's an interesting mechanic....  information passing.  I'm not familiar with any other game that does that... at least not as a primary mechanic.

A few random updates

I came up with an idea for a party game...  actually I had the idea a long time ago, but I started actually working on it a little.  For some strange reason I don't think I want to explain it here... at least not yet.  It feels kind of crazy, because no one is reading this and even if they were, who would still the idea.  And If they did, why am I protective over this one and not the other game which I actually have more pride in?  I think it's because this game is SO simple that it wouldn't take any effort at all to steal it....  but for all I know, it's been thought of before.  Or it could be one of those "Why didn't think of that?" things...  except I actually did think of it!  :)

But here's what I can say:  It's called doppelganger and it consists of nothing but cards.  I also challenged myself (and I think I've succeeded) in making it so simple that I could write the rules on the box... a tuck box.  Seriously... the rules are something like, 6 sentences (I don't have them in front of me right now, so don't kill me later if it turns out to be 7 or 8).   This is, of course, a huge change for me.   While the game itself is very simple, the cards will take some work.  Each card (or nearly each card) requires it's own artwork.  That's a pretty common thing, but I've managed to largely avoid that.  I'll just be using clip art and/or stock photos, but it will still take a while.

In other news:  I ordered a new copy of Of Feast & Famine a few days ago and was a bit stressed out when I saw I was 180 or so in the queue for The Game Crafter.  I don't think I've never seen it that high.  I was a little stressed because I wanted it for this weekend.  Then I saw on TGC news that their cutter went down and I decided that I had no chance of getting my game in time.  But yesterday, it actually shipped!  I'm supposed to get it tomorrow...  even if it's off by a day (which it ofter is) or even two days, I should have it in time. 

But, the event that I wanted it for (game designers meeting for the Secrets Factory) got changed a bit.  As of this morning I was the only RSVP other than the guy who runs it.  So he decided to move it to a board gaming convention at Georgia Tech that happens to be happening on the same day (which, perhaps, is why no one else RSVPed).  That could be cool, but It's a lot harder to get playtesters at something like that.  Most people seem to want to play finished games.  I guess we'll see how it goes.

I also ordered a copy of Scarborough Fair.  Not much more news there except that (like usual), it wasn't 3 hours after ordering a copy that I made a change...  that happened on Of Feast and Famine too  except that was just a very minor cosmetic change.

That's about all!

Scarborough Fair

So I started thinking about a game that I had put on the back burner a long time ago.  I you read back far enough in the blog, you'll remember that I had an idea a while back for a game called Scarborough Fair that I bastardized and turned into a game called ATL for a Game Crafter contest.  It didn't win so I unpublished it to hide it's shame from the world. 

Ok, really, I just didn't like the airline theme and I started thinking about taking it back to it's original theme.  But when I started thinking about it recently, it changed a bit and I got more excited about it.  So I'll explain what I'm thinking now.

It's an economic game, so you win by having the most gold at the end of the game.  There are 4 resources: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme.  Part of the board allows each player to set a price that wish to sell each resource at...  the game starts with everyone selling everything for 3 gold each.  The rest of the board shows the actual fair. 

The fair has a few elements that I should explain:  There are 7 attraction areas with paths that connect each one to other attraction areas.  Schematically there's one attraction area in the center with the other six connected to it and their two closest neighbors.  However, I plan on drawing it much less regular than that.  Along the paths are tents where the players will have a chance to sell their goods.  There are varying numbers of tents on the paths.  Right now I'm thinking that 2 paths will have 1 tent, 2 paths will have 2 tents and so on up to 6 tents (there are 12 paths in total). 

There are 6 attraction tokens.  Each one has a different attraction on either side.  There are 3 types of attractions: Food, Music and Juggling. One side of each token has a food icon and on the other side, 4 of the tokens have music and the other two have a juggler.  The game starts with 3 food, 2 music and 1 juggler showing randomly placed on 6 of the 7 attraction areas.  On the left over attraction area in a pawn that represents a customer (similar to the passenger from a game call on the underground; the game that inspired this one not to mention Of Power & Glory).

There's a deck of cards.  Each card describes the desires of the customer.  It lists an amount and a resource (this is how much of what resource the customer wants to buy) and an attraction.  One card is used to control the customer each turn, but I'm thinking you actually get to see a few cards so you can see what he'll do next turn.

On your turn, you take one of three types of actions then the customer moves (likely resulting in goods being sold).  But first, the actions:

Changing the market:  you can modify each of the 4 prices that you charge for Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme by moving a marker up or down by 1 or leaving it where it is.

Buying resources:  You can buy as much of any one resource type you can afford and is available.  Each one costs 2 gold.

Hiring / Moving a worker:  You can place one new (or move one exiting) worker to any unoccupied tent.

Then the customer moves.  Here's how that works:
The customer will move from his current location to the closest attraction area with the type of attraction on his card.  If there's a tie (and there often will be), the player decides which one to go to.  You must always take one of the shortest paths possible (in terms of number of paths).  Note that you can get from any attraction area to any other in no more than two steps. 

Along the way, the customer will try to buy goods considering any player that has manned a tent on his path (or paths).  He will always buy the cheapest goods available.  However, if a player doesn't have enough to fulfill his order, he will get the remainder from other players if possible.  Ties on price are broken by choosing the tent that he encounters first along his way. 

Once he reaches the attraction area, the token from that area is removed and moved to the area that was just vacated by the customer.  And, the token will (usually) be flipped over to reveal that other attraction.  The only time you don't flip the attraction token is when by doing so you remove the last of a particular type of attraction.  E.g. if you you just went to the only juggler on the board, you place it on the vacant spot with the juggler still showing.

That's pretty much it.  A lot simpler than most of my games.  I do have one concern (a fairly big one)...  I'm worried about a run away leader issue.  After a good play test or two, I'll see if it's an issue and if so I may to add something to control that.  I've tried to think of something, but so far I haven't come up with anything I like.

Of Feast & Famine - New Thoughts

The simulation continues to suck.  But I've thought of some new ideas for the game....  I'm sure if the simulation helped with that or not.  Nonetheless, since I have new ideas for the game and I haven't yet gotten the simulation to work with the previous rules (much less the ones I just came up with).  I may have to abandon the simulation... at least for a while.

So here are the new ideas:
I'm going to give each player a pawn...  a different style pawn from the workers.  There are Eight specialties and Eight available colors from The Game Crafter, so that works out nicely.  Here's the color mappings: 

• Agriculture - Green
• Architecture - White
• Combat - Black
• Medicine - Blue
• Diplomacy - Purple
• Finance - Yellow
• Religion - Red
• Education (replaces the old specialty Planning) - Orange

Now when a player takes an action, they will place their pawn on the board.  There will be two new spots added to the board as well:  one for a school and one for a market. 

The school is really just giving a name to a game concept that was already in the game.  When ever you add new workers they had to wait a few seasons, but I didn't really explain why (because I didn't know yet!) .  But now I know;  They're at school learning the basics required to work.  Brand new workers take 4 seasons to teach.  Another subtle change here...  all workers have an implied ring for each discipline.  To add additional rings, you have to go back to school.  2 season to add the first ring.  3 seasons to add a second ring of the same type as the first ring.  Workers can no longer have a third ring (because there are implied ones for every worker).  I'll include fewer rings in the game too...  6 each instead of 9 each. 

The market is the way to make money.  Previously there was an awkward "add gold" action that didn't involve workers or a place on the board where it happened.  The market is that place now. You can place your pawn there and bring as many workers as you like and you earn one gold per pawn/worker.  I just had a thought right now, as I was typing.  Maybe there should be a 5th discipline for finance (yellow).  And your pawn counts as one too.  And another thought...  maybe your pawn always counts as one worker.  I'm not sure if it works in the barracks especially since orange and purple don't show up on the dice.  Anyway...  there are some things to think about there.

Many of the specialties have changed too (in fact some may have just changed in the last few minutes!).

• Agriculture -Counts as 3 rings on the farm
• Architecture -Counts as 3 rings on the castle
• Combat - Can re-roll one die.
• Medicine - Counts as 3 rings on the Hospital
  
• Diplomacy - Can exchange a Tribute card for another one from the deck.  This is similar to the old planning specialty (that was too powerful), except that it's limited to Tribute cards and it now eats up a player action to do.
• Finance - Counts as 3 rings on the market.
• Religion - Can use workers in Poverty to generate gold...  this doesn't remove them from poverty; one gold per worker (yellow rings don't matter).  This is like a less powerful market except that you don't have to remove them from poverty which costs gold.
• Education - Can teach workers in 1 fewer seasons than normal.

I think that may be it.  At any rate, I'm almost out of lunch break, so I'll have to end here anyway!

Of Feast & Famine simulation and other updates

The simulation for Of Feast & Famine continues....  right now I've simulated nearly aspect of the game with the exception of the Specialty cards (which I'm working on now).  But I'm bugged because the simulation only seems to end in a win about 1/3 of the time.  And yet in play testing it's been too easy.  Like I said before, I haven't simulated the Specialty cards yet which should make the game easier, but I would be surprised if it made it easier enough to account for the difference. 

I guess I just don't have confidence that my simulation is valid.  I feel like there must be a big bug somewhere (and there probably is).  But now I'm starting to wonder if I'll ever feel confident in it....  even if the end results start looking right, it doesn't mean that I got there in the same way. 

We'll see...  I'm not giving up on it yet, but I am a bit discouraged with it right now.

In other news, I was asked to do an interview for The Game Crafter a couple of weeks ago and the interview just went up today.  You can see it here:  http://news.thegamecrafter.com/post/28115029737/allow-me-to-introduce-you-to-allan-lamb-from-the#disqus_thread

Note the misspelling of my name in the link.. if that gets "fixed" you can go here http://news.thegamecrafter.com/  and scan the news until you find it.  Though if it's much later than 7-27-2012, you'll have to scan for a long time!

That's it for today!

Another game idea

Here's an idea that's pretty different from my normal kind of game.. which is to say, simple!  :)

 It's a game for 4 players: 2 teams of two actually.  The partners sit next to each other.  The board is pretty simple, there are 5 regions and each region has 3 parts to it: a part close to one team, a part close to the other team and a part in no-mans land.  Perhaps it's simple enough for some ASCII art:

Team A

+--+--+--+--+--+

|  |  |  |  |  |

|  |  |  |  |  |

+--+--+--+--+--+  

|  |  |  |  |  |

+--+--+--+--+--+ 

|  |  |  |  |  |

|  |  |  |  |  |

+--+--+--+--+--+  
Team B

Like that, except probably at a 45 degree angle.  There are 5 markers that start in the middle row of the board... except they aren't ordinary markers, they're sand timers.  The game starts with them exhausted.  Each team has a deck of cards and each player gets some number (we'll say 7)   cards from their deck.  The game is played simultaneously... no turns.  So when it starts (perhaps one of the sand timers could signify the start) everyone just starts playing.  You want to make sets of 3 cards.  You can draw new cards from the team deck and discard them to the team discard pile... or pull them from the team discard pile (which is how cards can be traded between teammates).  When you get a set, you discard them to a special discard pile and move one of the sand timers.  When you move a sand timer you move it into your opponents space and flip it upside down (so it starts ticking so to speak).  Once a sand timer is moved out of the center, it never goes back, it just alternates sides.  If the sand timer ever runs out, it's locked where it is...  you want that to happen on you opponents side.  Think of the sand timer as a time bomb...  you want it to explode near your opponent.  As soon as 3 bombs have exploded on a particular team's side the game (or perhaps round) is over.  Talking between partners is completely fine.  I haven't decided yet, but maybe the sets are typed and correspond to the particular sand timers and if that's the case, then maybe the cards are not equally distributed so that some kinds of sets are easier to make than others (or maybe not).  I would probably put a thin theme on it...  the time bomb metaphor is nice so I may run with that.  That's it!

.

Of Feast & Famine Simulation and other Updates

I just wanted to give a quick update on the simulation for Of Feast & Famine.  I have written the first version of it, but I not yet convinced it's all correct.  I've only run one game at a time so far... and in total it's probably been something like 40-50 runs.  So far, every game has been a loss... so clearly this doesn't yet represent a realistic simulation (at least not a realistic simulation of the game as I would like it to be).  Keep in mind that not every run is equal.  I've been finding bugs in the simulation so the earlier runs are less representative of the state of the game than the last ones. 

Right now, the hard part is determining how much of the results are due to more bugs and how much is due to the weak player AI.  As I said in the previous post, every player decision (or nearly every one) has an interface and an implementation (later it will be multiple implementations).  Most of the implementations are very simple.  The hardest one is one I call the "ActionStrategy."  It basically decides what action a player takes.  This turns out to be tricky. :)  From a game design standpoint, that's good!  But it does make the simulation kind of hard.  I might end up breaking that Strategy into smaller parts.

In other news...
I failed to mention this earlier, so I'll bring you up to date now.  I had a crazy idea a couple of weeks ago...  It was one of those ideas that starts out being no more than a joke in your head  until you keep thinking about it and then reach a point of saying... "You know, why not?!"  I was reading the blog of Patrick Rothfuss (Author of a couple of really great Fantasy Novels: The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear and if you're not familiar with them I highly recommend them) when I saw a reference to board gaming.  And I thought that maybe I had seen another reference to board gaming in his blog a while back.  I actually did a search to validate that he is, in fact, a board gamer.  So I thought, "Hey, why don't I send him a copy of my game?"  If you're asking what I expect to happen, all I can say is that he is a fantasy author with a big following and a like (or maybe love) of board games...  if he were to like my game "something" good may come of it.  What's that something?  I have no idea, but it couldn't hurt!

Anyway, so I wrote him an email...  correction an embarrassingly star-struck email.  I basically asked him if he would like a copy.  And he wrote back and said yes!  So I ordered a copy.  I'm guessing he'll get it in a few days.  It may not result in anything real, but it's kind cool anyway knowing someone famous has a copy of my game.

I'll let you know if something comes of it.  Later!