Candyland is something of an enigma to me. It has been a lurking frustration for many months now – it is simply confounding in nature. I do not refer to why parents continue relentlessly torturing their children with such a device, that is easily solved (they do not know any better, much as the teacher yelling at her Linux-using disciple does not know of the world outside the Windows).
No, here I refer to something much more intricate, something that didn't occur to me until I needed a frame of reference. I have written the occasional review over at Board Game Geek (http://www.boardgamegeek.com), and in doing so have attempted to come to a more precise definition of what I like and do not like about the game I am reviewing. One aspect of games I generally tend to dislike heavily is the random one. It bothers me, and almost always feels lazy at lack of a more precise solution to a mechanical problem. There are notable exceptions, and impressive instances of mitigating such luck. That is not the point here. I decided to utilize a randomness scale, from 1-5 stars, in each review. While only an estimate in each case, this scale would depend upon how much random luck the game featured, and would be subsequently reduced by the amount it is mitigated or confined to the game opening solely.
This led me to another thought: what are the extrema here? What is the maximum amount of luck possible in a game, I asked myself. The answer turned directly to Candyland. What is the minimum amount of luck possible in a game? One which is entirely predetermined, where a player cannot even use a random method to make a decision. A labyrinth, in other words.
The astute reader will see where this is headed. Candyland *is* an entirely predetermined game from the onset. Assuming no extra shuffles are necessary, or that three decks are used in the initial shuffle, once you pull that first card, there is nothing you can do to change things. Your fate is sealed, you just don't know where it will lead. This differentiates itself from a game in which one rolls dice or shuffles cards several times during play, which is certainly random, and subject to completely random effects as the game progresses.
So now we see the confusion. How can the most random game possible also be the least random game possible?
A potential answer, perhaps, lies in quantum mechanics, specifically in the infamous Schroedinger's cat analogy.
For the uninitiated, here is the analogy: a cat exists with a cyanide capsule inside a sealed box. Every second the cat remains in there, there is a certain probability (p) the capsule will open, killing the cat instantly. When you open the safe, will you find a dead cat or an alive cat? Was the cat dead or alive *before* you opened the safe? The obvious answer upon opening the safe is that there is a certain probability (P) that the cat has died in the given time, and a certain probability (1 – P) that the cat is still alive. Once you open the safe, you know for certain one way or another, for sure (this is called “collapsing the wavefunction”).
The interesting part comes from the state of the cat before opening the safe. While no observers are around, the cat is *both* dead and alive at the same time. This is of course a silly result, and it is often refuted with an easy claim that the quantum universe does not apply to a macroscopic one (half of all quantum effects cancel out once you are dealing with just 2 particles – a single mole is composed of 10^23 atoms) (hence, the cat is never both dead and alive). But at the quantum level, this sort of thing does happen, this does exist.
The question here is, can we consider a theoretical random color spectrum with a given probability of turning up each turn as not macroscopic in nature and therefore applicable to quantum effects, or is each card a macroscopic entity with the information imprinted upon it being dependent upon the card itself, leading to a nullification of any and all quantum effects? Is any possible quantum effect here largely canceled due to the number of cards necessary to play a complete game?
In the meantime, Candyland will remain something of an enigma to me.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Monday, December 1, 2008
Top 10 games of October 2007 - October 2008
The games year works a little bit differently than the standard year – it begins and ends with Essen in October. As a result, I have decided that this will only reflect games released, and games I played between October 15, 2007 and October 14, 2008.
There are two lists: Top 10 games released in this time period, and Top 10 games that I had not played prior to this time period. The lists are quite different.
Top 10 of 2008
10 - Rails of Europe:
Rails of Europe is an expansion to Railroad Tycoon (being re-released as a “Rails of the World” series, with various different maps). The game is about connecting cities and delivering goods in Europe by rail. It features a pseudo-”stock” mechanism, where stocks are actually quite bad for you. They give you a small amount of money, but reduce both your per-turn income and your points at the end. It is a tighter game than RRT, more difficult to be successful, and requiring a great deal more shares than in RRT. It also lacks much of the route-building fun of RRT. It is more similar to Age of Steam in its style, but much less difficult to play well at.
9 – In the Year of the Dragon:
ItYotD is about a year in China. This is quite a difficult game to play well at, and can take several plays to get right. It is an odd design, where you have different houses with workers in it. These workers enable you to gain more of various goods, which are needed to prevent a whole slew of disasters being thrown your way. These disasters are all known at the beginning of the game, so you can plan for them accordingly You need rice to deal with famine, warriors to fight barbarians, and doctors to fight plagues. Whenever you cannot properly deal with a disaster, you will lose one of these workers permanently. Generally, it's all about disaster management, and there are so many different aspects to balance it can get a bit crazy. I enjoyed this game; although I have not played it since April or so, I would enjoy doing so again.
8 – 1960: The Making of the President
Here, one player is Kennedy, the other is Nixon. You are campaigning in all 50 states to rock the vote. It is a card-driven game, where each player plays cards alternating. These cards carry events (such as race riots, Communism hearings, or Eisenhower's delay of supporting Nixon), which either benefit Nixon or Kennedy directly, or offer a bonus to either. You may ignore these events (useful if they are for the other candidate!), but the other player has a way of activating them, too. I didn't like this game as much as Twilight Struggle, although the time commitment is much less (unless the US loses quickly in TS). It's still a solid, interesting game.
7 – Galaxy Trucker
This is another “disaster”-ridden game, but of a much different sort than ItYotD. You spend the first half under a player-generated time constraint, building the best ships you can, and then fly them through a series of random (but mostly observable in the first half) disasters. Watching other players' ships get destroyed is a large part of the fun here – watching your own ship get destroyed is painful, but fun players tend to have a pained smile on their face while it occurs. Good fun, short-ish time commitment – set-up and rules are a little involved, particularly on first go.
6 – Pandemic
Pandemic is a great, fast, cooperative game about saving the world from disease. The mechanics are simple and yet engaging. It encourages players to discuss what they're doing, and reduces the chances of one player taking full control. This will still happen if the players let it, mind you. Quite a fun one.
5 – TZAAR
This is the last of the Project GIPF series, a series of 6 abstract games for 2 players, all based around hexagonal structures. The game features a more-or-less random setup, at which point you have three types of pieces. There is no difference between the pieces in terms of how they move. On your turn, you must first capture an opponent's piece, simply by moving your piece/tower in a straight line. Your tower must include more pieces than the one you are capturing. The captured piece is removed from the board. As a second move, you may either capture another piece or increase one of your tower's size (this is the only way they are increased, as captured pieces are removed). It is fun, quick, and quite deep. It is my favorite of the Project GIPF series.
4 – Agricola
The big one of the year. It has replace Puerto Rico as #1 on BGG (for whatever that's really worth). A difficult and enjoyable game about farming in the 17th century, you begin with nothing but two farmers and some food. You take occupations and make improvements (via a small hand of cards), and make your farm efficiently generate food which frequently needs to be consumed by your farmers. It can be a frustrating game to play, as someone else can take the wood that you desperately need right out from under your nose, but that's part of the fun of the game. I have some issues with the game, but it is well-deserved to be so recognized by so many people – not too difficult to play, but with a lot of strategic options present.
3 – Brass
This one's a hard one to describe – there is a lot going on. You are building up middle England during the Industrial Revolution. This occurs in two stages – one with canals, and one with railroads. You are creating buildings and connecting them up to ports via canals/rails. Some buildings, when used, create a lot of income, others a great deal of VP. Early game, you are focused on that income, and at one point you switch to wanting just VP (usually the railroad phase is a good trigger). You have a personal network you are expanding as well as being able to use other players' networks to a limited extent. The game is not terribly difficult, but there are a myriad of rules to learn, so the first game can be a little frustrating for people. Solid game, underrated.
2 – Container
One of the oddest designs of the year. You have factories, warehouses, and ships. Your factories produce goods which you sell to other players, who store them in their warehouses until selling them to ships (usually at a higher price), who then sell those goods to an island. Each player blind bids on the goods as they arrive on the island – highest bid gets it, and the bank matches the price given (the only way money is injected into the game!). Each good type is worth a secret, different, amount to each player. One very interesting thing about Container is that on your turn, there is no way to earn money – the auction occurs at the very end of your turn only! While you often receive money while it's not your turn, the cash flows like negative entropy when it is (never increasing). Requires apt players – a silly bidder breaks the system a fair bit.
1 – Wabash Cannonball/Chicago Express
What an astounding game! There are four rail lines starting on the east coast. You do not control one company, you buy stock into them. The lines have 3,4,5, and 6 shares, respectively. They have an income level dependent upon what cities the lines have expanded into. This income is divided by the number of shares currently bought – so one way to screw over your fellow player is to simply bring out another share of something they just paid dearly for. It plays in less than an hour (usually), and is full of so much strategy and manipulation that it can be quite difficult to wrap your mind around what's occurring in the game. Each game plays so incredibly different – it is simply wonderful, all around. It features a great deal of applications of pure n-player game theory (which I have been reading up on a fair bit). It is probably the purest game-theoretically sound board game available, and maintains a high level of excitement and strategy. I can't recommend it highly enough. It's not just my favorite of 2008, it's my favorite game period. I have the “old prototype,” Wabash Cannonball, but Chicago Express will be released in the next week or two (there are no rules changes, just much better looking components).
Top 10 New To Me Games of 2008
But, well...some of these games, while they are the best games that Oct 2007 – Oct 2008 had to offer, they aren't the best games I've learned this year. Here are the 10 best new-to-me games that I've played in the aforementioned time. I won't rehash the ones that have made it onto both lists.
10 – Mr. Jack
Mr. Jack is a 2-player deduction game – Jack the Ripper has disguised himself as one of 8 characters, is trying to either escape or last 8 turns, and it is up to the Inspector to figure out who it is before that happens. Each player takes turns moving the characters around – each turn, Jack either is in the light or in the dark, and tells the Inspector which group they belong to. Choosing which players to move where, both to hide Jack into the majority of suspects and possibly to escape (as Jack), and to keep the suspects from escaping while trying to divide suspects evenly into two. Certainly the best new-to-me two-player game this year.
9 – Agricola
8 – Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization
This is a “civ-lite” game, albeit still relatively complex. It takes after the Sid Meier's Civilization franchise (MUCH better than Sid Meier's Civilization: the Board Game). There is no map. There is a very cool system of making new developments cost a lot to take when first introduced (4 actions), and costing less when not otherwise taken (down to 1 action), similar to that seen in Vinci. I'm a little underwhelmed with the military cards/aspect, as it is quite random. I've only played one game, but the military didn't seem to play *too * large of a role here. I really want to play it again, it does a fair number of things right, even if it's not quite perfect. If you enjoy Civilization games, and have others locally who also do, this is a great choice (but a little pricey). The third edition just came out, purported to be perfect (the second was marred with large errors).
7 – Acquire
Yeah, I hadn't played Acquire until this year. I love it. The random tiles can be a pain, but they're usually manageable. There are newer games that have a similar system which is better, but considering the age of this game, it holds up very well to this day.
6 – Gulf, Mobile, and Ohio
Technically, this didn't get released until Essen 2008, so it will likely be on my list for next year. But someone in Tucson got it early, and we've played it a few times. It's next-to-impossible to get if you don't have it already. Basically, there are 23 different lines, each with two shares. Someone proposes a line, everyone bids on it, and then the line immediately builds using that money. There are different amounts of different colors of cubes, and whatever cube type is most plentiful at the moment gets used for a new line. You get points for building into cities, and connecting to other colors; each share also pays a small pittance on occasion. This is by the same makers as Wabash Cannonball, and while I've only gotten in a small number of plays in so far, is my favorite of the new releases. Preussische Ostbahn is more accessible to the general crowd, but I don't like it nearly as much as I do GM&O.
5 – Brass
4 – 18XX
Yeah, I hadn't played an 18XX game until this year. Made “popular” in the 80s, they're still quite popular among certain crowds. Like many games of the 80s, they can take quite a while to play through (4+ hours – our first game took us 10! (it was a bad one for beginners) The 18XX system is about manipulating stock prices while connecting train routes. There is a phase of share-buying and selling, then each line builds one piece of track (as the game progresses, they build 2,3, and 4 before the next stock round). You can increase the price of stock buy buying it, or decrease it by selling it. There is an element of getting rather screwed by being President of a line, when you are forced to buy a new train – manging that is very important. I would love to play more of this, but it is difficult to find a crowd willing to play it here in Tucson, particularly given the time constraint.
3 – Indonesia
This one is all about Mergers and Acquisitions. You are controlling plantation companies and shipping companies in Indonesia, managing both the logistics of getting your products to the cities as well as merging with the more profitable lines. The logistics can get a bit overwhelming by the end, but the game is a lot of fun.
2 – Container
1 – Wabash Cannonball/Chicago Express
Whew! It's difficult to describe so many games, and try to explain why I enjoy them! I'm happy to provide further details, I just didn't want to make this *too * long...(I know, it's quite long.)
There are two lists: Top 10 games released in this time period, and Top 10 games that I had not played prior to this time period. The lists are quite different.
Top 10 of 2008
10 - Rails of Europe:
Rails of Europe is an expansion to Railroad Tycoon (being re-released as a “Rails of the World” series, with various different maps). The game is about connecting cities and delivering goods in Europe by rail. It features a pseudo-”stock” mechanism, where stocks are actually quite bad for you. They give you a small amount of money, but reduce both your per-turn income and your points at the end. It is a tighter game than RRT, more difficult to be successful, and requiring a great deal more shares than in RRT. It also lacks much of the route-building fun of RRT. It is more similar to Age of Steam in its style, but much less difficult to play well at.
9 – In the Year of the Dragon:
ItYotD is about a year in China. This is quite a difficult game to play well at, and can take several plays to get right. It is an odd design, where you have different houses with workers in it. These workers enable you to gain more of various goods, which are needed to prevent a whole slew of disasters being thrown your way. These disasters are all known at the beginning of the game, so you can plan for them accordingly You need rice to deal with famine, warriors to fight barbarians, and doctors to fight plagues. Whenever you cannot properly deal with a disaster, you will lose one of these workers permanently. Generally, it's all about disaster management, and there are so many different aspects to balance it can get a bit crazy. I enjoyed this game; although I have not played it since April or so, I would enjoy doing so again.
8 – 1960: The Making of the President
Here, one player is Kennedy, the other is Nixon. You are campaigning in all 50 states to rock the vote. It is a card-driven game, where each player plays cards alternating. These cards carry events (such as race riots, Communism hearings, or Eisenhower's delay of supporting Nixon), which either benefit Nixon or Kennedy directly, or offer a bonus to either. You may ignore these events (useful if they are for the other candidate!), but the other player has a way of activating them, too. I didn't like this game as much as Twilight Struggle, although the time commitment is much less (unless the US loses quickly in TS). It's still a solid, interesting game.
7 – Galaxy Trucker
This is another “disaster”-ridden game, but of a much different sort than ItYotD. You spend the first half under a player-generated time constraint, building the best ships you can, and then fly them through a series of random (but mostly observable in the first half) disasters. Watching other players' ships get destroyed is a large part of the fun here – watching your own ship get destroyed is painful, but fun players tend to have a pained smile on their face while it occurs. Good fun, short-ish time commitment – set-up and rules are a little involved, particularly on first go.
6 – Pandemic
Pandemic is a great, fast, cooperative game about saving the world from disease. The mechanics are simple and yet engaging. It encourages players to discuss what they're doing, and reduces the chances of one player taking full control. This will still happen if the players let it, mind you. Quite a fun one.
5 – TZAAR
This is the last of the Project GIPF series, a series of 6 abstract games for 2 players, all based around hexagonal structures. The game features a more-or-less random setup, at which point you have three types of pieces. There is no difference between the pieces in terms of how they move. On your turn, you must first capture an opponent's piece, simply by moving your piece/tower in a straight line. Your tower must include more pieces than the one you are capturing. The captured piece is removed from the board. As a second move, you may either capture another piece or increase one of your tower's size (this is the only way they are increased, as captured pieces are removed). It is fun, quick, and quite deep. It is my favorite of the Project GIPF series.
4 – Agricola
The big one of the year. It has replace Puerto Rico as #1 on BGG (for whatever that's really worth). A difficult and enjoyable game about farming in the 17th century, you begin with nothing but two farmers and some food. You take occupations and make improvements (via a small hand of cards), and make your farm efficiently generate food which frequently needs to be consumed by your farmers. It can be a frustrating game to play, as someone else can take the wood that you desperately need right out from under your nose, but that's part of the fun of the game. I have some issues with the game, but it is well-deserved to be so recognized by so many people – not too difficult to play, but with a lot of strategic options present.
3 – Brass
This one's a hard one to describe – there is a lot going on. You are building up middle England during the Industrial Revolution. This occurs in two stages – one with canals, and one with railroads. You are creating buildings and connecting them up to ports via canals/rails. Some buildings, when used, create a lot of income, others a great deal of VP. Early game, you are focused on that income, and at one point you switch to wanting just VP (usually the railroad phase is a good trigger). You have a personal network you are expanding as well as being able to use other players' networks to a limited extent. The game is not terribly difficult, but there are a myriad of rules to learn, so the first game can be a little frustrating for people. Solid game, underrated.
2 – Container
One of the oddest designs of the year. You have factories, warehouses, and ships. Your factories produce goods which you sell to other players, who store them in their warehouses until selling them to ships (usually at a higher price), who then sell those goods to an island. Each player blind bids on the goods as they arrive on the island – highest bid gets it, and the bank matches the price given (the only way money is injected into the game!). Each good type is worth a secret, different, amount to each player. One very interesting thing about Container is that on your turn, there is no way to earn money – the auction occurs at the very end of your turn only! While you often receive money while it's not your turn, the cash flows like negative entropy when it is (never increasing). Requires apt players – a silly bidder breaks the system a fair bit.
1 – Wabash Cannonball/Chicago Express
What an astounding game! There are four rail lines starting on the east coast. You do not control one company, you buy stock into them. The lines have 3,4,5, and 6 shares, respectively. They have an income level dependent upon what cities the lines have expanded into. This income is divided by the number of shares currently bought – so one way to screw over your fellow player is to simply bring out another share of something they just paid dearly for. It plays in less than an hour (usually), and is full of so much strategy and manipulation that it can be quite difficult to wrap your mind around what's occurring in the game. Each game plays so incredibly different – it is simply wonderful, all around. It features a great deal of applications of pure n-player game theory (which I have been reading up on a fair bit). It is probably the purest game-theoretically sound board game available, and maintains a high level of excitement and strategy. I can't recommend it highly enough. It's not just my favorite of 2008, it's my favorite game period. I have the “old prototype,” Wabash Cannonball, but Chicago Express will be released in the next week or two (there are no rules changes, just much better looking components).
Top 10 New To Me Games of 2008
But, well...some of these games, while they are the best games that Oct 2007 – Oct 2008 had to offer, they aren't the best games I've learned this year. Here are the 10 best new-to-me games that I've played in the aforementioned time. I won't rehash the ones that have made it onto both lists.
10 – Mr. Jack
Mr. Jack is a 2-player deduction game – Jack the Ripper has disguised himself as one of 8 characters, is trying to either escape or last 8 turns, and it is up to the Inspector to figure out who it is before that happens. Each player takes turns moving the characters around – each turn, Jack either is in the light or in the dark, and tells the Inspector which group they belong to. Choosing which players to move where, both to hide Jack into the majority of suspects and possibly to escape (as Jack), and to keep the suspects from escaping while trying to divide suspects evenly into two. Certainly the best new-to-me two-player game this year.
9 – Agricola
8 – Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization
This is a “civ-lite” game, albeit still relatively complex. It takes after the Sid Meier's Civilization franchise (MUCH better than Sid Meier's Civilization: the Board Game). There is no map. There is a very cool system of making new developments cost a lot to take when first introduced (4 actions), and costing less when not otherwise taken (down to 1 action), similar to that seen in Vinci. I'm a little underwhelmed with the military cards/aspect, as it is quite random. I've only played one game, but the military didn't seem to play *too * large of a role here. I really want to play it again, it does a fair number of things right, even if it's not quite perfect. If you enjoy Civilization games, and have others locally who also do, this is a great choice (but a little pricey). The third edition just came out, purported to be perfect (the second was marred with large errors).
7 – Acquire
Yeah, I hadn't played Acquire until this year. I love it. The random tiles can be a pain, but they're usually manageable. There are newer games that have a similar system which is better, but considering the age of this game, it holds up very well to this day.
6 – Gulf, Mobile, and Ohio
Technically, this didn't get released until Essen 2008, so it will likely be on my list for next year. But someone in Tucson got it early, and we've played it a few times. It's next-to-impossible to get if you don't have it already. Basically, there are 23 different lines, each with two shares. Someone proposes a line, everyone bids on it, and then the line immediately builds using that money. There are different amounts of different colors of cubes, and whatever cube type is most plentiful at the moment gets used for a new line. You get points for building into cities, and connecting to other colors; each share also pays a small pittance on occasion. This is by the same makers as Wabash Cannonball, and while I've only gotten in a small number of plays in so far, is my favorite of the new releases. Preussische Ostbahn is more accessible to the general crowd, but I don't like it nearly as much as I do GM&O.
5 – Brass
4 – 18XX
Yeah, I hadn't played an 18XX game until this year. Made “popular” in the 80s, they're still quite popular among certain crowds. Like many games of the 80s, they can take quite a while to play through (4+ hours – our first game took us 10! (it was a bad one for beginners) The 18XX system is about manipulating stock prices while connecting train routes. There is a phase of share-buying and selling, then each line builds one piece of track (as the game progresses, they build 2,3, and 4 before the next stock round). You can increase the price of stock buy buying it, or decrease it by selling it. There is an element of getting rather screwed by being President of a line, when you are forced to buy a new train – manging that is very important. I would love to play more of this, but it is difficult to find a crowd willing to play it here in Tucson, particularly given the time constraint.
3 – Indonesia
This one is all about Mergers and Acquisitions. You are controlling plantation companies and shipping companies in Indonesia, managing both the logistics of getting your products to the cities as well as merging with the more profitable lines. The logistics can get a bit overwhelming by the end, but the game is a lot of fun.
2 – Container
1 – Wabash Cannonball/Chicago Express
Whew! It's difficult to describe so many games, and try to explain why I enjoy them! I'm happy to provide further details, I just didn't want to make this *too * long...(I know, it's quite long.)
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Invasion of Trishula Session Report/thoughts on future changes
Got another session of Trishula in on Saturday - 2 "experienced" players, 2 more or less "new" players (although Seth had previously played it, it has changed quite a bit since).
Response was positive, with some good suggestions.
The main problem I have with this game is it's seemingly impossible to test it on my own - it is too frustrating to deal with everything by myself, and I'm gearing it only to my personal responses. The secondary (perhaps larger) problem is that it's a 4-player only game! This makes things quite difficult sometimes.
The change to a shorter game is much better, and still gives the game enough of a "length" to feel that things are happening. It took us about 3.5 hours w/rules (poorly explained by me).
The new Temple rule (where each player gets X points / unit of any species in the Temple, X=3 in this game) "worked" as well as I hoped, although it was broken (worth too many points, too many units inside caused a problem) . A point system related to the cum. aggression track will be instated in the future, should work well.
There was a complaint of too many units - probably true, but one main issue was that there were many more units outside of the cities than normally occurs. I'll reduce the numbers, but not by too much (50/species instead of 65). There was a good suggestion of a starting distribution of units, which will be a good idea for a "basic" set-up, an "advanced" set-up (my normal one) would be easily re-implimented. So, we'll go for 50 units, 30 in the cities at the beginning.
The 4X,3X,2X system of resource gathering based on cum. aggression worked much better than it being based on individual aggression. If I reduce the number of units, I'll be reducing that to 3X,2X,1X, which will bring on an additional dynamic of its own (you must save resources for the later turns or risk losing your units).
The Cum. Aggression track was also not right, took too long to get to the 2nd level, tottered on the brink of the 3rd without going in. Will need reduction (was 15,40,70; going to 10,25,45?).
The Invaders have a major problem - sacrificing is bad. This gives them a single-goal - build up a small amount of tiles to "increase their economy" and eventually make a run for the Temple. This needs to be changed. The Sacrificing action will now be tied to one thing with two aspects: the Portal growth amount has previously been a separate amount of resource paid to increase, now it will be a part of the sacrificing; and the cost of units will also be tied to this amount, previously it had been a simple 1-1 amount. By sacrificing, you will be moving up your Portal Growth (acceleration) amount AND/OR your unit ratio (how many units you get / resource).
value (-> amount to increase) value ( -> amount to increase) .....
PG: -3 (->1) -2 (->2) -1 (->3) 0 (->5) 1 (->8) 2 (->13) 3 (->21) 4
Units: 1U/4R (->1) 1U/3R (->2) 1U/2R (->3) 1U/1R (->5) 2U/1R (->8) 3U/1R (->13) 4U/1R) (->21) 5U/1R
The Trishulans will similarly be able to knock down these values by sacrificing more (every Y cum. resources gives -1 to BOTH tracks). I'd like to turn this into a differential, but I don't want to overcomplicate the system.
This should let me be able to just give the Invader 2 resources / flipped hex without having all of those go straight into more units. This should also give the Invader some more choices about how to sacrifice, how many units to get, and how much flipping they're going for. In the same note, the Invader will now only need to sacrifice (1/3)X, (1/2)X,1X the amount of the Trishulans (tie to Invader) to delay the Temple activation.
As it (seems) more likely to have delays, I will reduce the base number of turns to 5.
This sounds like a massive overhaul, and perhaps it is. We'll see how it works, what does work and what does not work. Hopefully this will get some further testing soon, as it will take shape better while these things are fresh in my mind.
Response was positive, with some good suggestions.
The main problem I have with this game is it's seemingly impossible to test it on my own - it is too frustrating to deal with everything by myself, and I'm gearing it only to my personal responses. The secondary (perhaps larger) problem is that it's a 4-player only game! This makes things quite difficult sometimes.
The change to a shorter game is much better, and still gives the game enough of a "length" to feel that things are happening. It took us about 3.5 hours w/rules (poorly explained by me).
The new Temple rule (where each player gets X points / unit of any species in the Temple, X=3 in this game) "worked" as well as I hoped, although it was broken (worth too many points, too many units inside caused a problem) . A point system related to the cum. aggression track will be instated in the future, should work well.
There was a complaint of too many units - probably true, but one main issue was that there were many more units outside of the cities than normally occurs. I'll reduce the numbers, but not by too much (50/species instead of 65). There was a good suggestion of a starting distribution of units, which will be a good idea for a "basic" set-up, an "advanced" set-up (my normal one) would be easily re-implimented. So, we'll go for 50 units, 30 in the cities at the beginning.
The 4X,3X,2X system of resource gathering based on cum. aggression worked much better than it being based on individual aggression. If I reduce the number of units, I'll be reducing that to 3X,2X,1X, which will bring on an additional dynamic of its own (you must save resources for the later turns or risk losing your units).
The Cum. Aggression track was also not right, took too long to get to the 2nd level, tottered on the brink of the 3rd without going in. Will need reduction (was 15,40,70; going to 10,25,45?).
The Invaders have a major problem - sacrificing is bad. This gives them a single-goal - build up a small amount of tiles to "increase their economy" and eventually make a run for the Temple. This needs to be changed. The Sacrificing action will now be tied to one thing with two aspects: the Portal growth amount has previously been a separate amount of resource paid to increase, now it will be a part of the sacrificing; and the cost of units will also be tied to this amount, previously it had been a simple 1-1 amount. By sacrificing, you will be moving up your Portal Growth (acceleration) amount AND/OR your unit ratio (how many units you get / resource).
value (-> amount to increase) value ( -> amount to increase) .....
PG: -3 (->1) -2 (->2) -1 (->3) 0 (->5) 1 (->8) 2 (->13) 3 (->21) 4
Units: 1U/4R (->1) 1U/3R (->2) 1U/2R (->3) 1U/1R (->5) 2U/1R (->8) 3U/1R (->13) 4U/1R) (->21) 5U/1R
The Trishulans will similarly be able to knock down these values by sacrificing more (every Y cum. resources gives -1 to BOTH tracks). I'd like to turn this into a differential, but I don't want to overcomplicate the system.
This should let me be able to just give the Invader 2 resources / flipped hex without having all of those go straight into more units. This should also give the Invader some more choices about how to sacrifice, how many units to get, and how much flipping they're going for. In the same note, the Invader will now only need to sacrifice (1/3)X, (1/2)X,1X the amount of the Trishulans (tie to Invader) to delay the Temple activation.
As it (seems) more likely to have delays, I will reduce the base number of turns to 5.
This sounds like a massive overhaul, and perhaps it is. We'll see how it works, what does work and what does not work. Hopefully this will get some further testing soon, as it will take shape better while these things are fresh in my mind.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
too long since last update - here's some information you don't care about.
It's been far too long since my last update, and I'm certain no one is currently following this, so I'll have to actively direct you to it. Hopefully I can say something slightly meaningful.
I have been thinking a bit about my gaming history, and want to write in that direction.
My experience is as follows:
In 2003, I was introduced to Settlers. We played it continuously for 2 years, and formed a group, "Seattle Settlers," which officially met every Sunday after eating dim sum, but informally met 2-3 times a week for some Settlers. There was some exposure to some other light games in there too, on occasion, such as Fluxx or Carcasonne.
Eventually, someone discovered Puerto Rico. We alternated between that and Settlers (primarily) for over 2 years. I created an account on BGG somewhere in here, (as that's where the person found PR), but didn't do much with it.
Then I went to Austria for the first time (and turned a good friend into a girlfriend), and literally spent an hour in Salzburg looking for a game shop which was supposed to have a copy of the "hard to find" Die Siedler Von Nurnburg" there, in the rain. It was acquired. I've since seen that game in about 5 different places in the US, albeit 2-3 years later.
A friend of mine got me Deflexion for Festivus that year, after I posted about drooling over the laser setup. Most people still wouldn't play it with me :(. I got War of the Ring for Christmas from my brother (played it once with Seattle people, otherwise only with my brother), and perhaps something else from my parents...(I don't remember, but it was more likely my yellow rain jacket which was great for hiking in Seattle in the winter, but not so useful here in Tucson). I went to Vienna again, and picked up Caylus (which was hyped at the time) before it was out in the US.
Then I went to live in Vienna for 3 months. I discovered many games there, and had some friends who were on holiday visit. I had discovered a game library there, and checked out RoboRally, which we had all been interested in trying, playing it on an island on the Danube. I played it several times with Anna, but two-player RoboRally wasn't very good. Got Anna to play War of the Ring (yes, I brought it with me, along with most of my board game collection at the time) a few times, but she doesn't and didn't like the theme of Lord of the Rings. I also found a fellow gamer in Vienna who helped me find some great games (like Antike), as well as a few I disliked (Tigris and Euphrates). I got onto BGG more frequently, and listened to podcasts like The Dice Tower, and thought they were full of useful information and knew what were good games and what were bad ones, listening to their advice on what to investigate further (ha! I say now.)
I came back from Vienna and was still surrounded by a group of friends who I loved and didn't want to ignore, but they had no interest in the games I was interested in, so I mainly played Settlers and Puerto Rico with them. I got them to play Ticket to Ride, which they loved...and subsequently couldn't stop playing. So I played that.
I had another acquaintance (who never quite became a friend, unfortunately, he had too many other people/things in his life for me, I think) who had game night every other week, and was generally more open to more difficult games. He was also brilliantly good at these, and would win ~50% of the time. He was polyamourous, and another poly couple would join, and it would often be the four of us, which made it awkward as I was not part of their poly group. I started going to some poly events right before leaving Seattle, but it was too late to generally get in with that crowd. This group was, as a result, always a bit awkward for me, and I'm still not 100% sure that I was 100% welcome. A lot of the poly crowd in Seattle are gamers, and vice-versa, it's interesting that the two mesh. I now wish I'd gotten into this crowd a bit more heavily before coming to Tucson (where the gaming crowd consists heavily of religious conservatives, many of whom work for something I don't agree with personally, Raytheon). As liberal as I am (and sometimes take a bit of joy in making others aware of that), I can usually get along with the conservative nature of the group here. There are some ridiculous things I will not tolerate, such as a swear jar, putting underpants on a picture of a naked statue in a board game, or writing "root" on a card where you drink Beer (root beer). But generally, I don't talk about my ideals unless they try to shove theirs in my face (which very, very rarely has happened).
In my search for other groups in Seattle, I also came across a terrible one, filled with people who played a ton of board games (the guy had 200+ games), but had no idea how to play. I would consistently beat these people, and they didn't understand either simple rules or strategy. I was still new at this time, and found this group to be a bane. I left it after 2 sessions, although I liked one or two people, and got to play my first game of Antiquity (which I won after 7 hours, due to two of the four people not getting the game at all). A woman at this group, I recall, told me about her belief in ghosts, and how she seriously believed one was trying to contact her.
Before I left for Tucson, I got a glimpse of some of the gaming culture when Scott Nicholson came to Seattle and wanted to have a game night. I met with some cool people, played some interesting games, and several of us decided to try to form a more serious game meet-up, once a month. I only made it to one other meeting, but it still lingers in my mind, with many of the games that I played and others played as having become mini-grails simply due to their presence at this event (such as HamsterRolle, Stephenson's Rocket, and Graenaland). It's too bad I left for Tucson right as this was starting to pick up. But through this group, I met Julie and Peter, friends of Seth's, who told him to look out for me and vice-versa. Seth and I don't generally agree on which games we like, but we share some common interests and have become friends in the 1.5 years since. If only he liked WC or Container still (I somehow missed out on the phase where he played it 15+ times..)
But, leave for Tucson I did. And, conservatives or no, I have opened up to the gaming culture much more effectively here as a direct result of not having the group of casual-gaming friends around, so I haven't been torn between which events to go to.
And I've since played so many games, and really learned what I enjoy in games and what I don't enjoy in games. I'm still learning, of course.
And now I've started to read game theory. I'm just finishing Straffin, 1992, "Game Theory and Strategy," and am likely moving on to Von Neumann and Morgenstern's "Theory of Games and Economic Behavior," which is the equivalent of 2+2=4 for game theory, as this was the first collection of game theoretical ideas. I'm guessing it will provide the missing mathematical details from Straffin, and provide a good basis for further game theory reading.
Well, that's a rough history. I'm sure I've missed details/people in my blind writing of < 1 hour.
I've gotten onto BGDF chat a lot more lately, but I think there is less interesting discussion there than I had hoped for. Actually, I'm having quite a good one right now with clearclaw about theory as applied to board games.
Maybe I'll write on that next. Hopefully it will be soon.
I have been thinking a bit about my gaming history, and want to write in that direction.
My experience is as follows:
In 2003, I was introduced to Settlers. We played it continuously for 2 years, and formed a group, "Seattle Settlers," which officially met every Sunday after eating dim sum, but informally met 2-3 times a week for some Settlers. There was some exposure to some other light games in there too, on occasion, such as Fluxx or Carcasonne.
Eventually, someone discovered Puerto Rico. We alternated between that and Settlers (primarily) for over 2 years. I created an account on BGG somewhere in here, (as that's where the person found PR), but didn't do much with it.
Then I went to Austria for the first time (and turned a good friend into a girlfriend), and literally spent an hour in Salzburg looking for a game shop which was supposed to have a copy of the "hard to find" Die Siedler Von Nurnburg" there, in the rain. It was acquired. I've since seen that game in about 5 different places in the US, albeit 2-3 years later.
A friend of mine got me Deflexion for Festivus that year, after I posted about drooling over the laser setup. Most people still wouldn't play it with me :(. I got War of the Ring for Christmas from my brother (played it once with Seattle people, otherwise only with my brother), and perhaps something else from my parents...(I don't remember, but it was more likely my yellow rain jacket which was great for hiking in Seattle in the winter, but not so useful here in Tucson). I went to Vienna again, and picked up Caylus (which was hyped at the time) before it was out in the US.
Then I went to live in Vienna for 3 months. I discovered many games there, and had some friends who were on holiday visit. I had discovered a game library there, and checked out RoboRally, which we had all been interested in trying, playing it on an island on the Danube. I played it several times with Anna, but two-player RoboRally wasn't very good. Got Anna to play War of the Ring (yes, I brought it with me, along with most of my board game collection at the time) a few times, but she doesn't and didn't like the theme of Lord of the Rings. I also found a fellow gamer in Vienna who helped me find some great games (like Antike), as well as a few I disliked (Tigris and Euphrates). I got onto BGG more frequently, and listened to podcasts like The Dice Tower, and thought they were full of useful information and knew what were good games and what were bad ones, listening to their advice on what to investigate further (ha! I say now.)
I came back from Vienna and was still surrounded by a group of friends who I loved and didn't want to ignore, but they had no interest in the games I was interested in, so I mainly played Settlers and Puerto Rico with them. I got them to play Ticket to Ride, which they loved...and subsequently couldn't stop playing. So I played that.
I had another acquaintance (who never quite became a friend, unfortunately, he had too many other people/things in his life for me, I think) who had game night every other week, and was generally more open to more difficult games. He was also brilliantly good at these, and would win ~50% of the time. He was polyamourous, and another poly couple would join, and it would often be the four of us, which made it awkward as I was not part of their poly group. I started going to some poly events right before leaving Seattle, but it was too late to generally get in with that crowd. This group was, as a result, always a bit awkward for me, and I'm still not 100% sure that I was 100% welcome. A lot of the poly crowd in Seattle are gamers, and vice-versa, it's interesting that the two mesh. I now wish I'd gotten into this crowd a bit more heavily before coming to Tucson (where the gaming crowd consists heavily of religious conservatives, many of whom work for something I don't agree with personally, Raytheon). As liberal as I am (and sometimes take a bit of joy in making others aware of that), I can usually get along with the conservative nature of the group here. There are some ridiculous things I will not tolerate, such as a swear jar, putting underpants on a picture of a naked statue in a board game, or writing "root" on a card where you drink Beer (root beer). But generally, I don't talk about my ideals unless they try to shove theirs in my face (which very, very rarely has happened).
In my search for other groups in Seattle, I also came across a terrible one, filled with people who played a ton of board games (the guy had 200+ games), but had no idea how to play. I would consistently beat these people, and they didn't understand either simple rules or strategy. I was still new at this time, and found this group to be a bane. I left it after 2 sessions, although I liked one or two people, and got to play my first game of Antiquity (which I won after 7 hours, due to two of the four people not getting the game at all). A woman at this group, I recall, told me about her belief in ghosts, and how she seriously believed one was trying to contact her.
Before I left for Tucson, I got a glimpse of some of the gaming culture when Scott Nicholson came to Seattle and wanted to have a game night. I met with some cool people, played some interesting games, and several of us decided to try to form a more serious game meet-up, once a month. I only made it to one other meeting, but it still lingers in my mind, with many of the games that I played and others played as having become mini-grails simply due to their presence at this event (such as HamsterRolle, Stephenson's Rocket, and Graenaland). It's too bad I left for Tucson right as this was starting to pick up. But through this group, I met Julie and Peter, friends of Seth's, who told him to look out for me and vice-versa. Seth and I don't generally agree on which games we like, but we share some common interests and have become friends in the 1.5 years since. If only he liked WC or Container still (I somehow missed out on the phase where he played it 15+ times..)
But, leave for Tucson I did. And, conservatives or no, I have opened up to the gaming culture much more effectively here as a direct result of not having the group of casual-gaming friends around, so I haven't been torn between which events to go to.
And I've since played so many games, and really learned what I enjoy in games and what I don't enjoy in games. I'm still learning, of course.
And now I've started to read game theory. I'm just finishing Straffin, 1992, "Game Theory and Strategy," and am likely moving on to Von Neumann and Morgenstern's "Theory of Games and Economic Behavior," which is the equivalent of 2+2=4 for game theory, as this was the first collection of game theoretical ideas. I'm guessing it will provide the missing mathematical details from Straffin, and provide a good basis for further game theory reading.
Well, that's a rough history. I'm sure I've missed details/people in my blind writing of < 1 hour.
I've gotten onto BGDF chat a lot more lately, but I think there is less interesting discussion there than I had hoped for. Actually, I'm having quite a good one right now with clearclaw about theory as applied to board games.
Maybe I'll write on that next. Hopefully it will be soon.
Friday, May 2, 2008
This is a pretty good talk by Matt Leacock about Pandemic's development, and game development in general.
The thing that struck the biggest nerve with me was the notion of finding the core(s) in your game and developing those being the most efficient route, otherwise you get caught up in minute iterations forever.
This comes across as very good advice to me, and has shaped my thoughts of playing/developing "Delivery/1955" in the past few days. I had already been thinking about how a "family" version of the game would work, and this helped to convince me to strip all the unnecessary "flavor" away, at least for the moment, and get a glimpse at how the core is working. Suddenly, I created a small prototype within a short amount of time, and the core of the game can probably be played in about an hour.
The stripped down version consists of the following reductions: no shares, no likes/dislikes, all countries beginning with the same amount of cash, the same minimum wages and maximum purchases, and much less cash differential (from $1 million to $200 million rather than $1,000 to $1 billion) (since the game will hopefully have exponential amounts of cash growth, this wouldn't be as big of a difference as it might seem at first glance).
And the core of the game appears to be setting your prices and wages. So playing around with that will be first order. But this can be worked on in a much shorter time than I was anticipating (I had been thinking of trying to start a prototype in June sometime, whereas this enabled me to begin with much less difficulty/time).
This doesn't mean the rest of it is expendable or useless fluff. In fact, I can see how the game is more boring with just the basics, everyone is doing similar things because there are less routes to go. I'm just finding it useful for getting some basics down and figuring out myself where the "simple" mechanics are running into frustrations (I'm having a mental image of land below a fault's locking depth moving and that fault occasionally rupturing as a result).
Last night, I played Reading Railroad for the first time. It worked differently than I was expecting/hoping, but that is not necessarily a bad thing.
There were some major issues with the factories which was just a detail issue to balance out - Seth was thinking of capping the number of letters you can possibly draw at 6, but this still seems like too much to me. If you come up with 2 5-letter words, you're still having an excess of letters, of which you're going to build up a continuously growing pile of unless you have an expectation value of 6 letter words (which in itself requires you to get the right letters).
Tile drawing was too random by my count. It could be really neat to have every letter sitting up somewhere, with their "Scrabble values" (common letters are worth 1, more difficult letters are worth more [Qs are worth 10, I believe]). You can purchase them for some amount relative to their "Scrabble value" (so, maybe a base amount of $5, -"Scrabble value" to a minimum of 0: $5 - $1=$4 for an E, $5 - $3=$2 for a P). This would likely inflate the values of the coins such that connection fees would cost more on the order of $3 - $6 per spot, but given how much cash we were earning off the letters, this doesn't seem to be problematic.
The biggest problem I had with the game was not feeling connected to the final letters. They had no real interaction with the game itself, they were just some sort of bonus points at the end of the game (like # of tracks built in Age of Steam, albeit worth much more). I didn't like the mechanism of picking them up, as the most efficient way of doing so is simply to build a lot of sets of 2 disparate from each other and then connect them up later on (connect up one set early on so you can build more than 2 factories) - you'll nab a lot of tiles before others get a chance at them, increasing your chances of getting "good" letters.
A suggestion might be similar to the above suggestion: purchase your letters. Perhaps you get some sort of cash bonus for connecting up different cities, perhaps depending on your network size. At the end, you spend this cash to spell out as many words of "The quick brown fox jumped over lazy dogs. Reading Railroad" as possible in some fashion.
Or perhaps letters you grab from the cities are "permanent" letters that you can always use (up to your largest network). This would reduce the function of the factories, but would increase the number of tiles you're having to process at any given time. I think I like this idea best, as it integrates two disparate parts of the game best.
Well, next time...
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Friday night playtesting/Quick test today
Friday night was a bit hectic (I was still finishing preparing things when people arrived - I probably shouldn't have made pieces for two games at once), but things settled down and flowed somewhat smoothly in the end, I think.
This was the first game of Trishula I'd played where I was not the Invaders. Kaly took on that role. It was interesting to see someone else at the helm, particularly since she made some "obvious" mistakes. The most likely reason she made these mistakes was being unable to track who was going next, and move to the appropriate places to minimize her impact. I might add a little track to the Invader player aid to make this potentially easier. The other, more major changes will be changing how the Trishulans get their primary resources (based off Cumulative rather than Species aggression); and that the game will last only 7 rounds. 5 Actions is likely too much of a maximum, will cut it off at 4 (only at the highest Aggression level) and will change the Aggression thresholds. The game keeps "working" for about 2/3 of the playtime, and then suddenly things get static, and hopefully this reduction will both keep things very challenging for everyone as well as reduce this static-nature. The Morale cards played a nice role in this session - the Invaders lost by 1 unit due to them. Although Kaly "should" have been able to win easily, by my count - the Trishulans were killing each other a little too much. We also didn't get to see the new flipping-aggression mechanism more than 2-3 times, which should improve with a change in Aggression thresholds.
I also got to try the new one, Hand of God (previously referred to as Perfect World), on Friday with Seth, in a quick 2-player game. The first sessions were relatively disastrous; having 10-max levels and being able to play 4 cards at once is too powerful. Played it again quickly with Anna again this morning after breakfast (it's such a fast game, less than 10 minutes), using a rule of playing 2 cards maximum on your own board at once. Things flowed much more smoothly with this, although the first blue spot became a horribly easy pocket in which to find yourself.
Two changes for next time:
-Allow the deck to reshuffle: with all of the changing timelines, the number of cards provided is too few - we ran out of orange cards, for example, where that particular set is crucial to the game. I'd at least reshuffle the discards in, if not allowing the whole deck to be reshuffled when out of cards. The cards on offer would fall under the same category, because no one wants a blue when the greens and oranges just came out.
-Make each space "worth" a certain number of cards. For example, there is a pocket of 3 blues very early in the game. If the first one cost two Blue to play, the second 3, and the third 5 (ending the timeline), then falling into that pocket would be incredibly more difficult to obtain (particularly given the hand limit). Meanwhile, the chain of 4 yellows on the left might be relatively cheap to get to, although going to areas of less points.
I might also want to consider a way to throw away a large number of cards at once, since one can no longer play more than 1 card onto someone else's board. The board itself is preliminary, and needs restructuring.
One nice thing about a game this short is that you can playtest it very quickly and improve things swiftly. Initial impressions seem to be positive, although the game is still rough enough to have not worked properly. The decaying timeline mechanism is fun.
Just had one interesting thought - forcing a player to correct the timelines before they can advance their own. So if a single yellow just got played onto your board, you would have to play your own yellow before playing on your own board, otherwise your original path decays. Possibly too random and could make games take half an hour; too long for this one.
I'd really like to try Indonesia, it seems mildly similar to Delivery, but only on the surface perhaps? Maybe we'll do some league of six and then see if we can't try Indonesia on Monday. If not, Anna and I will have to give it a go sometime in the next week, although I suspect it plays best with more players.
This was the first game of Trishula I'd played where I was not the Invaders. Kaly took on that role. It was interesting to see someone else at the helm, particularly since she made some "obvious" mistakes. The most likely reason she made these mistakes was being unable to track who was going next, and move to the appropriate places to minimize her impact. I might add a little track to the Invader player aid to make this potentially easier. The other, more major changes will be changing how the Trishulans get their primary resources (based off Cumulative rather than Species aggression); and that the game will last only 7 rounds. 5 Actions is likely too much of a maximum, will cut it off at 4 (only at the highest Aggression level) and will change the Aggression thresholds. The game keeps "working" for about 2/3 of the playtime, and then suddenly things get static, and hopefully this reduction will both keep things very challenging for everyone as well as reduce this static-nature. The Morale cards played a nice role in this session - the Invaders lost by 1 unit due to them. Although Kaly "should" have been able to win easily, by my count - the Trishulans were killing each other a little too much. We also didn't get to see the new flipping-aggression mechanism more than 2-3 times, which should improve with a change in Aggression thresholds.
I also got to try the new one, Hand of God (previously referred to as Perfect World), on Friday with Seth, in a quick 2-player game. The first sessions were relatively disastrous; having 10-max levels and being able to play 4 cards at once is too powerful. Played it again quickly with Anna again this morning after breakfast (it's such a fast game, less than 10 minutes), using a rule of playing 2 cards maximum on your own board at once. Things flowed much more smoothly with this, although the first blue spot became a horribly easy pocket in which to find yourself.
Two changes for next time:
-Allow the deck to reshuffle: with all of the changing timelines, the number of cards provided is too few - we ran out of orange cards, for example, where that particular set is crucial to the game. I'd at least reshuffle the discards in, if not allowing the whole deck to be reshuffled when out of cards. The cards on offer would fall under the same category, because no one wants a blue when the greens and oranges just came out.
-Make each space "worth" a certain number of cards. For example, there is a pocket of 3 blues very early in the game. If the first one cost two Blue to play, the second 3, and the third 5 (ending the timeline), then falling into that pocket would be incredibly more difficult to obtain (particularly given the hand limit). Meanwhile, the chain of 4 yellows on the left might be relatively cheap to get to, although going to areas of less points.
I might also want to consider a way to throw away a large number of cards at once, since one can no longer play more than 1 card onto someone else's board. The board itself is preliminary, and needs restructuring.
One nice thing about a game this short is that you can playtest it very quickly and improve things swiftly. Initial impressions seem to be positive, although the game is still rough enough to have not worked properly. The decaying timeline mechanism is fun.
Just had one interesting thought - forcing a player to correct the timelines before they can advance their own. So if a single yellow just got played onto your board, you would have to play your own yellow before playing on your own board, otherwise your original path decays. Possibly too random and could make games take half an hour; too long for this one.
I'd really like to try Indonesia, it seems mildly similar to Delivery, but only on the surface perhaps? Maybe we'll do some league of six and then see if we can't try Indonesia on Monday. If not, Anna and I will have to give it a go sometime in the next week, although I suspect it plays best with more players.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
18XX, missed game idea, and Trishula
Firstly, I got to play 18AL tonight. It was the first time I've played that particular game, although the third 18XX game I've played. I felt like I was missing more of it tonight than in previous games. In other games, I've felt comfortable with doing the math, but feel like this time I made some poor decisions due to an incapability to calculate whether I made more relative money keeping stock versus throwing it away. I'm not sure if this is something of just my mindset on a Thursday at 9 p.m. (after a long day of grading, TAing, and colloquium), or something more fundamental to my lack of understanding of the game that I might just be learning now.
Regardless, it's a great "quick" map. We got through an initial game in about 3 hours or so (after rules), which is great compared to other playing times of the series. Louis brought a cool program which didn't work out too well in the end, made the game feel weird for not having your cash in front of you (I never had any *real* idea as to how much cash I had, even when I had $1500). Dunno if I'd want to use it again, but a neat idea anyway.
I realized yesterday that I missed one current idea for a game in my previous post:
-Senate: In this game, each player is a senator in power. They have all just been elected, and have a public platform and a private goal. The public platforms are all fairly standard political statements in different hot topics: alcohol, tobacco, firearms, religion, education, etc. Each player also has a (set of?) secret goals to accomplish while in power: having an affair, making secret money, religion into government, religion abolished completely, etc. If a players' secret objective is outed, they are forced to resign (giving time enough for one more round for all players' to potentially be outed). Players would be trying to hide their secret objectives from others (who could extort them if they figure out what it is) while voting for their public objectives. The chain of extortion would hopefully drive the game. At some point, perhaps there are midterm elections of some description. Points are awarded with less points for accomplishing public objectives, and more points for accomplishing secret objectives.
We'll be playtesting Trishula tomorrow night. I need to create/print out a few things for that to run more smoothly, as well as go over the rules again since it's been several months, but I expect it to go well. It gets really difficult to remember the rules sometimes, because I can't remember which particular thing I'm following - the old way or the new way, I can't remember which is which. Usually, I find out about halfway through a session that I forgot to tell people about/play with certain rules which would make things better, and this can be a really frustrating experience, probably not just for me. I'm hoping to avoid this tomorrow by reviewing the rules a little before again.
Anyway, session report to follow.
Regardless, it's a great "quick" map. We got through an initial game in about 3 hours or so (after rules), which is great compared to other playing times of the series. Louis brought a cool program which didn't work out too well in the end, made the game feel weird for not having your cash in front of you (I never had any *real* idea as to how much cash I had, even when I had $1500). Dunno if I'd want to use it again, but a neat idea anyway.
I realized yesterday that I missed one current idea for a game in my previous post:
-Senate: In this game, each player is a senator in power. They have all just been elected, and have a public platform and a private goal. The public platforms are all fairly standard political statements in different hot topics: alcohol, tobacco, firearms, religion, education, etc. Each player also has a (set of?) secret goals to accomplish while in power: having an affair, making secret money, religion into government, religion abolished completely, etc. If a players' secret objective is outed, they are forced to resign (giving time enough for one more round for all players' to potentially be outed). Players would be trying to hide their secret objectives from others (who could extort them if they figure out what it is) while voting for their public objectives. The chain of extortion would hopefully drive the game. At some point, perhaps there are midterm elections of some description. Points are awarded with less points for accomplishing public objectives, and more points for accomplishing secret objectives.
We'll be playtesting Trishula tomorrow night. I need to create/print out a few things for that to run more smoothly, as well as go over the rules again since it's been several months, but I expect it to go well. It gets really difficult to remember the rules sometimes, because I can't remember which particular thing I'm following - the old way or the new way, I can't remember which is which. Usually, I find out about halfway through a session that I forgot to tell people about/play with certain rules which would make things better, and this can be a really frustrating experience, probably not just for me. I'm hoping to avoid this tomorrow by reviewing the rules a little before again.
Anyway, session report to follow.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Intro Post
I've been creating some prototypes, and in a burst of inspiration by others (sedjtroll in particular), am creating this blogspot blog to mark my gaming/prototyping life. I have a LJ, but my friends/audience on that won't care so much about detailed aspects of game discussion, and this is likely a better location for this.
What games do I like? I really enjoy heavier games, longer and with more depth. This doesn't mean that I like *all* heavy games, I don't like a heavy game for the sake of it being heavy. Nor does this mean I don't like lighter games. I'm a really big fan of Pandemic and Galaxy Trucker at the moment, and enjoy games like Yspahan and Treasure Fleet as well. Usually, I get a little burned out on these games pretty quickly, however, and they fade into the distance, while the heavier games tend to stick around for a much longer duration of exploration and fascination (and other -ations).
What I tend not to enjoy are simple randomness in a longish game. If there is an element of randomness, I tend to dislike it more as the length of the game increases, or the randomness must be dealt with in an interesting/randomness reducing manner. Why would I want to play a 1.5-2 hour game where a card coming up or not means I win or lose, unless there's something more interesting behind the game itself?
You can find my BoardGameGeek user info here: http://boardgamegeek.com/user/blueatheart for Top Ten/Hot Ten/Games Played and other info.
Current prototype:
The Invasion of Trishula: This is a light wargame hybrid where three species on a distant planet have been fighting for thousands of years, evolving to respond to their enemies. It is 200 years in the future, and humans have first found the planet and then become bored with it. Only a small team of researchers remains to observe an ancient temple of unknown
origin, but great importance to the indigenous species begins to operate. Within a day, several Portals to another dimension have opened up, and this new dimension has begun spreading across the land. The humans investigate the temple, and for the first time their presence is discovered. They are revered as gods who have returned to make the temple work, and the species, while still fighting, rely upon their new gods to deal with the menacing Invaders. The small team of humans, having no way to stop the invaders, tell the indigenous species that whichever species fights against the invaders the best will receive large amount of technological knowledge from the humans. As time progresses, the species become more and more desperate in their fight against the Invaders, and their focus becomes more and more on fighting them off and working together, and less on fighting amongst each other. I'll probably upload the rules to this at some point, as I have them in PDF.
Works-in-progress:
Evolution: In this game, each player controls one animal species and 2 plant species on an island. Animals have attributes such as size, speed, defense, reproduction rate, and ability to eat other species; plants have attributes such as required sun, required water, defense, seed number, seeding by wind, seeding by digestion, and size. The animals all start off on the same area, while the plants have dispersed across the island. Only the animals may make actual actions, but their actions will directly affect their attributes, as well as the attributes of other life around them. They may attempt to eat either a plant or animal species (which can increase their ability to eat that species, but also increases that species' defense levels), migrate (which will move a certain amount of animals to an adjacent space, increase their speed, but reduce their reproduction rate), or reproduce (which will increase the population of the species, but reduce their speed). Players simultaneously choose which number of their species will do what (written down on a piece of paper), then reveal. Any species which becomes separated from their fellow species members by more than one tile at the end of a turn becomes a new species. At the end of the game, animal species get differing amounts of victory points depending on if they are "king of the island," an herbivore, or something in between; plant species get VP simply for their numbers.
Perfect World: In this card game, each player is a God trying to create as perfect of a universe as possible in parallel universes. Unfortunately, the God of one universe is the Demon of every other universe. At the center of the table is the Big Bang. From this, there is a split-off that may occur - a yellow reality and a purple one (in which a galaxy forms or does not form). In chronological fashion, the next event has either a continuation of the yellow reality, a continuation of the purple reality, or a blue split-off from the yellow reality (the galaxy formed, and now a solar system is formed, whereas in yellow, the galaxy formed, but a solar system did not). Players choose from a set of cards available similarly to Ticket To Ride. They may play up to 4 cards onto their own reality instead of taking cards, or play up to 3 on someone else's reality. If choosing a new split-off, the first card of that split-off must be played (i.e., you can't switch from one reality to another without using the appropriate split-off). You have a "current reality" indicated by a sideways card. The card existing at the latest time in a parallel reality is discarded every time you take a new card or place new cards into a separate reality (so if you have a 3rd-level blue and a 4th-level yellow, but the last card played was blue, the 4th-level yellow would disappear; if this happened again, the 3rd-level yellow would disappear, leaving you with the 2nd-level yellow/blue, where the split-off occurred; from here, no more cards would disappear).
Delivery: In this economic simulation, a random amount of money (averaging $10,000,000,00 globally cumulative) is placed into 8 worldwide regions (North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Middle East, Far East, Russia, Oceania). Each region has a corresponding wealth associated with it, as well as minimum wages, production costs, and purchasing ability (these are all the associated with the same track). No more money is ever introduced into the game. Each region also begins with a random like-dislike level of every other region, between 5 and -5. The regions will also get random properties (such as a social state or big on human rights) which will influence the way players may interact with that region. This is (hopefully) the only source of randomness in the game. Each player begins the game with 1 company in each of 3 different production industries (so 3 companies altogether). These companies are large but local companies.
At the beginning of the game, these companies gain $5,000 for themselves, and $1,000 for the owner (who begins with 0 cash). The money comes from the company's starting region, which is chosen by each player during setup.. The owner may choose to upgrade one of these companies for $5,000, at which point the company gains $10,000 for themselves, and $2,000 for the owner each turn. The player may then again upgrade another company to this level, or upgrade a company at the 10,000/2,000 level to a $15,000/$3,000 level for $15,000. This part of the game could consist of about 20 quick rounds, hopefully about 10 minutes, with players simply gaining enough cash to begin the game as well as see which companies will be begun on the global scale and act accordingly.
Once a player has enough money, they may announce one of their companies is going public. In this case, they decide to issue a certain number of shares, of the player's choice, and how much each share is worth. The player must be able to purchase at least 60% of the shares at this time, however, to maintain control over the company. The other shares await investors in a global market pool. Shares of a company may be purchased by other players or by other companies. Once a company has gone public, it must use the money generated by the player to purchase a production facility, as well as a retail facility, in any region (they can both be in the same region).
At this time, a transportation company also goes public with the same number of shares at the same price. Players and companies may purchase into the transportation company, with the player with the most shares taking control. The transportation company does nothing more than build ships between regions, to help facilitate the transfer of goods across regions (and taking a nominal fee). In any game, there can be either (# of players -1) or 3 transportation companies, whichever is lower.
Players operate the companies simply by producing goods for the production price of the region + employees' wages, transporting the goods if necessary, and selling the goods for a price near the regions' wealth, minus employees' wages for this region. Each company is also liked and disliked by each region, depending on how much these regions like or dislike the regions where your production facilities are and your retailers are. For example, in the current political realm, someone producing in Middle East and selling in North America will have more difficulty than someone producing in Europe and selling in North America. If a company is liked in a particular region, they may sell their goods for more. Each region will purchase from one industry only a certain number of times, depending on the wealth of that nation. If two companies of the same manufacturer are selling in a particular region, it is the cheapest one (adjusting for liked and disliked levels) who sells first, so they will likely sell more than the other players with higher prices.
Stock prices increase and decrease depending on how well things are producing and selling. The owning players may sell their shares after 100% of the initial offering has been purchased, and from there companies may exchange hands frequently, either by being purchased for a certain amount of money, or by hostile takeover. Companies may also issue more shares (which decreases the value but gives the company more money for expansion), or buy back shares (which increases value but depletes the company of money), but the decision may be stopped if the other stockholders have more than 50% of the stock and they agree against it.
The game ends when a player has more money (in their pockets, not the companies') than there is globally. The round finishes and whomever has the most money wins.
I host a weekly game night, Brettspiele and Bier, on Mondays. Last night, I got to play Seismic, Galaxy Trucker and Antiquity (although a dumbed-down version of it, due to everyone being pretty new).
Seismic: not a fan, just sort of boring. I wish the earthquakes acted differently, although the tension of one coming soon can be okay.
Galaxy Trucker: I'm liking this game more and more, although we're either giving ourselves too much time or we're already too good at it, as ships aren't getting too destroyed. The game needs 4 players to really shine, and 2 is "too easy," 3 is a little harder but still difficult - it has a similar correlation to Pandemic in terms of difficulty by # of players. I want to try the Rough Road Ahead cards, as they have some really fun sounding variants.
Antiquity: It's been a long time since that first game 2 years ago, but I remember that very well. It made a large impression on me (and took 7 hours, due to incapable players), and while you get brain-burnt by the end of it, I really enjoy it. The game was likely unbalanced/too easy without the famine and pollution phases (and only took 2 hours). One of the things I enjoy most about this game is that you are subtly conflicting with the game more than with each other, and this doesn't happen with those phases removed. Looking forward to playing it again properly soon - this will probably become one of my favorite games again, although I do also get annoyed at the fiddly-ness of it at times.
So, that's enough for now. I'll post more about current games being played and developments with these games later(it seems like I'm coming up with new ideas for games about once a month, before another game is even fleshed out enough for a prototype). I'm hoping this also kicks my ass into gear to be more active on BGDF, and get support from that group.
What games do I like? I really enjoy heavier games, longer and with more depth. This doesn't mean that I like *all* heavy games, I don't like a heavy game for the sake of it being heavy. Nor does this mean I don't like lighter games. I'm a really big fan of Pandemic and Galaxy Trucker at the moment, and enjoy games like Yspahan and Treasure Fleet as well. Usually, I get a little burned out on these games pretty quickly, however, and they fade into the distance, while the heavier games tend to stick around for a much longer duration of exploration and fascination (and other -ations).
What I tend not to enjoy are simple randomness in a longish game. If there is an element of randomness, I tend to dislike it more as the length of the game increases, or the randomness must be dealt with in an interesting/randomness reducing manner. Why would I want to play a 1.5-2 hour game where a card coming up or not means I win or lose, unless there's something more interesting behind the game itself?
You can find my BoardGameGeek user info here: http://boardgamegeek.com/user/blueatheart for Top Ten/Hot Ten/Games Played and other info.
Current prototype:
The Invasion of Trishula: This is a light wargame hybrid where three species on a distant planet have been fighting for thousands of years, evolving to respond to their enemies. It is 200 years in the future, and humans have first found the planet and then become bored with it. Only a small team of researchers remains to observe an ancient temple of unknown
origin, but great importance to the indigenous species begins to operate. Within a day, several Portals to another dimension have opened up, and this new dimension has begun spreading across the land. The humans investigate the temple, and for the first time their presence is discovered. They are revered as gods who have returned to make the temple work, and the species, while still fighting, rely upon their new gods to deal with the menacing Invaders. The small team of humans, having no way to stop the invaders, tell the indigenous species that whichever species fights against the invaders the best will receive large amount of technological knowledge from the humans. As time progresses, the species become more and more desperate in their fight against the Invaders, and their focus becomes more and more on fighting them off and working together, and less on fighting amongst each other. I'll probably upload the rules to this at some point, as I have them in PDF.
Works-in-progress:
Evolution: In this game, each player controls one animal species and 2 plant species on an island. Animals have attributes such as size, speed, defense, reproduction rate, and ability to eat other species; plants have attributes such as required sun, required water, defense, seed number, seeding by wind, seeding by digestion, and size. The animals all start off on the same area, while the plants have dispersed across the island. Only the animals may make actual actions, but their actions will directly affect their attributes, as well as the attributes of other life around them. They may attempt to eat either a plant or animal species (which can increase their ability to eat that species, but also increases that species' defense levels), migrate (which will move a certain amount of animals to an adjacent space, increase their speed, but reduce their reproduction rate), or reproduce (which will increase the population of the species, but reduce their speed). Players simultaneously choose which number of their species will do what (written down on a piece of paper), then reveal. Any species which becomes separated from their fellow species members by more than one tile at the end of a turn becomes a new species. At the end of the game, animal species get differing amounts of victory points depending on if they are "king of the island," an herbivore, or something in between; plant species get VP simply for their numbers.
Perfect World: In this card game, each player is a God trying to create as perfect of a universe as possible in parallel universes. Unfortunately, the God of one universe is the Demon of every other universe. At the center of the table is the Big Bang. From this, there is a split-off that may occur - a yellow reality and a purple one (in which a galaxy forms or does not form). In chronological fashion, the next event has either a continuation of the yellow reality, a continuation of the purple reality, or a blue split-off from the yellow reality (the galaxy formed, and now a solar system is formed, whereas in yellow, the galaxy formed, but a solar system did not). Players choose from a set of cards available similarly to Ticket To Ride. They may play up to 4 cards onto their own reality instead of taking cards, or play up to 3 on someone else's reality. If choosing a new split-off, the first card of that split-off must be played (i.e., you can't switch from one reality to another without using the appropriate split-off). You have a "current reality" indicated by a sideways card. The card existing at the latest time in a parallel reality is discarded every time you take a new card or place new cards into a separate reality (so if you have a 3rd-level blue and a 4th-level yellow, but the last card played was blue, the 4th-level yellow would disappear; if this happened again, the 3rd-level yellow would disappear, leaving you with the 2nd-level yellow/blue, where the split-off occurred; from here, no more cards would disappear).
Delivery: In this economic simulation, a random amount of money (averaging $10,000,000,00 globally cumulative) is placed into 8 worldwide regions (North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Middle East, Far East, Russia, Oceania). Each region has a corresponding wealth associated with it, as well as minimum wages, production costs, and purchasing ability (these are all the associated with the same track). No more money is ever introduced into the game. Each region also begins with a random like-dislike level of every other region, between 5 and -5. The regions will also get random properties (such as a social state or big on human rights) which will influence the way players may interact with that region. This is (hopefully) the only source of randomness in the game. Each player begins the game with 1 company in each of 3 different production industries (so 3 companies altogether). These companies are large but local companies.
At the beginning of the game, these companies gain $5,000 for themselves, and $1,000 for the owner (who begins with 0 cash). The money comes from the company's starting region, which is chosen by each player during setup.. The owner may choose to upgrade one of these companies for $5,000, at which point the company gains $10,000 for themselves, and $2,000 for the owner each turn. The player may then again upgrade another company to this level, or upgrade a company at the 10,000/2,000 level to a $15,000/$3,000 level for $15,000. This part of the game could consist of about 20 quick rounds, hopefully about 10 minutes, with players simply gaining enough cash to begin the game as well as see which companies will be begun on the global scale and act accordingly.
Once a player has enough money, they may announce one of their companies is going public. In this case, they decide to issue a certain number of shares, of the player's choice, and how much each share is worth. The player must be able to purchase at least 60% of the shares at this time, however, to maintain control over the company. The other shares await investors in a global market pool. Shares of a company may be purchased by other players or by other companies. Once a company has gone public, it must use the money generated by the player to purchase a production facility, as well as a retail facility, in any region (they can both be in the same region).
At this time, a transportation company also goes public with the same number of shares at the same price. Players and companies may purchase into the transportation company, with the player with the most shares taking control. The transportation company does nothing more than build ships between regions, to help facilitate the transfer of goods across regions (and taking a nominal fee). In any game, there can be either (# of players -1) or 3 transportation companies, whichever is lower.
Players operate the companies simply by producing goods for the production price of the region + employees' wages, transporting the goods if necessary, and selling the goods for a price near the regions' wealth, minus employees' wages for this region. Each company is also liked and disliked by each region, depending on how much these regions like or dislike the regions where your production facilities are and your retailers are. For example, in the current political realm, someone producing in Middle East and selling in North America will have more difficulty than someone producing in Europe and selling in North America. If a company is liked in a particular region, they may sell their goods for more. Each region will purchase from one industry only a certain number of times, depending on the wealth of that nation. If two companies of the same manufacturer are selling in a particular region, it is the cheapest one (adjusting for liked and disliked levels) who sells first, so they will likely sell more than the other players with higher prices.
Stock prices increase and decrease depending on how well things are producing and selling. The owning players may sell their shares after 100% of the initial offering has been purchased, and from there companies may exchange hands frequently, either by being purchased for a certain amount of money, or by hostile takeover. Companies may also issue more shares (which decreases the value but gives the company more money for expansion), or buy back shares (which increases value but depletes the company of money), but the decision may be stopped if the other stockholders have more than 50% of the stock and they agree against it.
The game ends when a player has more money (in their pockets, not the companies') than there is globally. The round finishes and whomever has the most money wins.
I host a weekly game night, Brettspiele and Bier, on Mondays. Last night, I got to play Seismic, Galaxy Trucker and Antiquity (although a dumbed-down version of it, due to everyone being pretty new).
Seismic: not a fan, just sort of boring. I wish the earthquakes acted differently, although the tension of one coming soon can be okay.
Galaxy Trucker: I'm liking this game more and more, although we're either giving ourselves too much time or we're already too good at it, as ships aren't getting too destroyed. The game needs 4 players to really shine, and 2 is "too easy," 3 is a little harder but still difficult - it has a similar correlation to Pandemic in terms of difficulty by # of players. I want to try the Rough Road Ahead cards, as they have some really fun sounding variants.
Antiquity: It's been a long time since that first game 2 years ago, but I remember that very well. It made a large impression on me (and took 7 hours, due to incapable players), and while you get brain-burnt by the end of it, I really enjoy it. The game was likely unbalanced/too easy without the famine and pollution phases (and only took 2 hours). One of the things I enjoy most about this game is that you are subtly conflicting with the game more than with each other, and this doesn't happen with those phases removed. Looking forward to playing it again properly soon - this will probably become one of my favorite games again, although I do also get annoyed at the fiddly-ness of it at times.
So, that's enough for now. I'll post more about current games being played and developments with these games later(it seems like I'm coming up with new ideas for games about once a month, before another game is even fleshed out enough for a prototype). I'm hoping this also kicks my ass into gear to be more active on BGDF, and get support from that group.
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