Wednesday 18 January 2012

No progress

A 6 day holiday has resulted in no progress on GSH - since I'm at the "I need to print out a copy and playtest" stage and my printer has died.

I did however review a friends initial draft notes which was interesting and fun - and come up with a theme for project 2 which has cheered up me.  I'm finding project 2 a bit odd - I know lots about it - certain key aspects and yet I don't seem to have a basic mechanic.  And I've never had to decide on that before - since the first (badly broken) version of GSH came to me in a dream and I've been refining since.  I'm hoping my sub concious gets busy on the issue.....

Wednesday 11 January 2012

GSH 2.05

So I've been that using the http://magicseteditor.sourceforge.net/ to make paper prototype cards (and then slipping them into card sleves with something else to give rigidity) is a good idea.  But that will take some time to do, and I wanted to take a version north with me so I made version 2.05 using my random template.  Only to have the printer throw a paddy and refuse to print - so to the recycling it will go....  It was free and has spent 3 years in storage so it was always possible.  It's also the size of a bear and sounds like it's going to explode when turned on....  Best spend some money.

Anyway - I've made the changes.....

Firstly I've changed the resources - the whole "one card per a icon" seemed to work in theory but was fiddly and annoying. So we've changed it to food, trees and chickens - all of which produce cards.  Chicken are rare and the most efficient at giving cards.  Trees are common and produce cards at a reasonable rate.  And food is good for building villages (gives a discount) but poor at producing cards.  There's no pyramid cost - they just work on a straight line.  Slightly worried that in 5 players people won't have enough cards and in 3 players they will have to many but lets see how that works.

Village can now be built on anything - so the "no way to recover on turn 2" problem is gone because there should be something you can build on- but food gives a discount for building a village.  There also more expensive and I might need to change that back to ensure somebody getting shafted can always rebuild.

Back to one move, but added a lot of cards for extra movement.  There a little naff - move one counter one hex but then you get to draw a card (more card churn but just moving one seemed to weak).  Villages are back to being weaker since loosing one is no longer such a nightmare (I hope).

Changed the event deck so now there are event cards that reward having a stone head in the first few turns - so the nail that sticks up wont' get hammered down quite so hard (I hope).

Pretty big set of changes.  Now just need to make a set and get some play testing!

Sunday 8 January 2012

Stabcon and a play test

So this weekend was Stabcon - it's 21st Anniversary event in fact (there was cake) which means drinking, gaming and no where near enough sleep. Stabcon for those not in the know is my favourite gaming con - it's a bi-annual con in a hotel in Stockport and I like to think one of the friendliest places to game I know.  I keep trying to talk my friends into going but I keep failing - I've no idea why.....

Anyway - one of the joys of Stabcon is standing in the middle of the room and seeing what is being played.  You can often tell the game of the moment simply by counting how many copies of it are being played simultaneously.  It's probably the most accurate definition of "what's hot" it's possible to get.

And this time - what's hot is Eclipse because I doubt there was a single point in time during con from 10 in the morning till midnight where there was not a game of it going on.  Often 3 or 4 simultaneously on the go - I played it twice over the weekend.

It's a large scale space command and conquer game is the "twilight imperium" tradition - plastic ships, space exploration, technology trees.  It's incredibly well designed and damned intuitive. For that sort of game I'd of expected 45 mins of rules explanation which left me looking puzzled - I still don't get Twilight Imperium for example.  After 30 mins of rules for Eclipse - I felt I got it - and even better I was right.....

It's user interface - how you track information - how you interact with the game is incredible.  It manages to provide method where you have different ship design in which you customise with technology to make your ships work the way you want.  Easily, simply, obviously - and which feeds into a combat system which provides a genuine feeling that the design of your ships really matters and different players can fight different ways.  Hulking brutes that soak damage, glass hammers, lighting fast fighters trying to strike first or missile boats that try and end the combat before the opponent even gets to fire.....

And at a speedy pace as well.  Don't get me wrong it takes hours - but compared to twilight imperium it's a cheetah.  It looks like people who know what there doing can get a game done in about 30 mins per a player (our play time was longer).  And with revolving actions the down time is not massive either.

It's not perfect - in my opinion it's got a nasty death spiral made worse by high stakes combat, there are times when the smart thing to do is hunker down and ignore the universe which is a little dull.  Also luck is a big factor as combat is dice based and frankly can sometimes just suck and which tiles you find as explore has a massive effect.  I don't mind that - but for some people it's the kiss of death......

While the overall rules are clear - there are a few oddities tucked away as to exactly what happen in some circumstances which adds to the complexity and frankly one of the most commons conversations of the weekend was something along the lines of "are you sure that's not what we did last time......."

But I think overall it's better then starcraft - my previous "twilight imperium done right" game - and if I wanted a giant universe conquering game right now I'd get eclipse.  For a game that's just released I want to say - I look forward to the inevitable second edition which can smooth out the oddities......

It's also apparently bloody impossible to get - which also tells you something about Stabcon that there were multiple copies for sale (at the recommended retail price no less)......

So that was Stabcon - and at Stabcon we got a play test.  5 people - one of the least successful play tests ever.  Somebody got a village killed on turn 1 and frankly was doomed to lose at that point because they were unable to rebuild.  This is a repeat of something that happened the previous play test - and shows I've got a serious issue so rather then have that person have a bad game we called it off at the start of turn 2.  Quick discussion later - and it was agreed the problem is not the burning the village down - but that the resource map meant that they had no chance to rebuild....

So it's the "rebuild" opportunity that needs to get fixed.  I've been unhappy as to how the resources were working any way so it's back to the drawing board there.  I also need more cards as the deck ran out in pretty short time.  Plus some incentive to get stone heads down early...... 

Oddly these tests - well going wrong - and going really rather wrong leave me more hopeful then the version 1.n tests which superficially played better but always left me with the nagging sense that something underlying was wrong.......

I also got to play test my friends PB game -and that was good.  Still early days - but it has potential. Oh and somebody wants my help thinking about a game project....  So it's nice that people seem to think of me as somebody to talk to about games and design......