It's been a while.....

....and I'm afraid no game development stuff.  Lots of ideas - but getting anything down and firm appears to be a bit beyond me at the moment.

But it's just been stabcon so lets talk about some games that got played.

First up - Promised Land.  http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/142085/promised-land-1250-587-bc

Which is best described as "History of the World - Jewish Version" and not least because it was written by the Ragnar Brothers who also made history of the world and shares the historical role swamping of such games.  It was actually my Stabcon purchase last time and had sat on the unplayed shelves until now as I know it was up certain peoples street.

I don't want to do a full write up of it but we played it with six despite being advised it was best with 4 - because people were interested - and that was a mistake.  Oh it worked but there was a lot of downtime between your turns with a notable lack of involvement until your next race (who might well be pathetic).  So to my mind it's a good example of a designer trying to increase the appeal of a game to make a sale despite it not being a good idea.

I think it might also be a good idea to do a draft of races - because at the moment it felt a little random as to what you got.

Next up - Eight minute Empire http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/131366/eight-minute-empire

It turns out that while I'm not generally a fan of minimalism - I am when it comes to game design.  A pairing away of everything until you get it down to the key decisions.  Which in Eight Minute Empires are - husbanding a very limited (and never to be replenished supply of coin) while using the coins to get the best cards.  Picking between cards that give you the action you want on the board (to control areas that give VP's) or cards that give you the trade resource you want (sets that give you VP's). A nice little bundle of decision making there.  I'd talk more - but there's not a lot more to talk about - see minimalist game design.

The name is a white lie - as I suspect it's "3 people who play stupidly fast might be able to play it in 8 minutes"  - it took us 16 minutes for a game.  But you know what - I'm ok with that because it's was still pretty damn fast.  Would recommend - it's especially good if you might end up waiting for people to arrive or if the main game of the evening ended a little quicker then expected.

I'm certainly going to see if I can find a copy of "Eight minute Empire - Legends" Which is the follow up version.

And finally - Caverna - http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/102794/caverna-cave-farmers

This is Agricola with dwarves.  Seriously if they were not made by the same man somebody should get sued.

If you like Agricola and don't own it - I'd go with Caverna over Agricolaat least partially because of the sheer design elements of it but also because there are tweaks such as the 'imitation space' which removes a bunch of frustration, better balance because most people is no longer the best way to win, and because it's added going on adventures which is a whole other way to develop and play.
If you like Agricola and do own it - tricky especially since at £70 it's not cheap.  I've considered buying it - and it's on my Essen list if I can find a cheap UK version (unlikely) but then I'm an obsessive.
If you don't like Agricola- you might still like Caverna because it's simply less mean and less of a struggle to survive but I'd play it to make sure you do actually like it.

If you've no idea what Agricola is I'd better provide some details (or I suppose if you just want some details).

In Caverna you play a family of dwarves who start out with nothing but a simple cave next to a thick forest - and through sending your family members to do specific jobs you can expand your family, while carving and farming a mighty settlement out of the wilderness.  It's a very well themed game - digging out caves gives you stone and makes space to build new things, having iron mines make iron mine actions more effective, if you've got two sheep at the end of a turn you'll end up with 3 sheep, and dogs can look after sheep without them being fenced in.  This is theme is enhanced by the lovely bits - you don't get a cube for a vegetable - you get a carved bit of wood that looks like a pumpkin.  This is not some mad special edition - that is just the game.  Look at them - there so cute!



All of which combined with the fact it's alleged to play with 7 players (you'd be mad to try that - it's for 2-5 players game) makes the box come in at around 3.5 kilo's.  So if you rate your games by weight - it's certainly worth getting.

The key decision comes from the fact that only one person can do a job - and that a lot of jobs get bonus resources added to them if not taken - so what you want and need to do needs to be judged and evaluated a lot against other players actions.  You've got pretty limited interaction with other players - other then trying to work out if they might take the job you want and needing to take that into account when making your decisions.

It's not a simple game - a bunch of rules of remember - and it does have some odd little tweaks that need to be remembered about keeping animals but it's got good iconography  and most of what you need to know is there on the board.  It's also simply less mean then Agricola - it's less of an uphill struggle to get the food you need to survive while actually developing so you feel like your doing better where as a new player in Agricola it can be a struggle to achieve anything.

What might count against it is that Agricola comes with roles and profession that gives each player a slight edge that can drive your play style where as Caverna does not.  Those role give Agricola a massive amount of re-playability (especially with the number of expansions there are) but they can create a very unbalanced game.  Where as Caverna as rooms that yo ucan build which tweak your game - but it's always the same rooms and there available to all.  It's better balanced but less re-playable that's not to say I don't think Caverna can be played and replayed a lot.

I'll also point you onwards to this review of Caverna - http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/02/18/cardboard-children-caverna-goty2013/ because I do rather love the reviews.

13th Age

Sorry – no game development stuff.  Giant stone head I’ve stopped work on and coffeehouse is going nowhere at the moment.  Maybe I’m more of a game design consultant or critic then a game designer?  That would be depressing….

Anyway – so I’m going to talk about a role-playing game because that is what is currently taking up most of my game related brain power.  Warning we’ve had two a bit sessions so far – so my opinions around session 10 might be very different.

13th Age

It’s been a while since I ran any RPG – and I keep looking at indy games and somehow I just find myself not wanting to run them.  The setting grates, or the rule are odd, or the rules are to complicated and I would need to do the heavy lifting. 

Then a chance comment made me look at reviews of 13th age which turned into flicking through a copy in Travelling Man which turned into buying it which turned into looking forwards to running it which turned into actually running it.

 The best description of 13th Age is that it is the unholy love child of D&D 4th Edition and a story focused indie RPG that wants to recreate the very best of the D&D games you played in your youth but with a games system designed to make that happen as opposed to one you can make work if you work around a lot of the rules.

So it’s very D&D based in that it provides the classic stats, levels, hit points, and rolling a d20 to hit and a bunch of dice for damage.  It takes its main inspiration from 4th edition with characters picking from a list of class talents, feats and powers that have clear game effects.  In fact the whole things is  gamist rather then simulationist – the question ‘is this realistic’ is not important.  However in my opinion it avoids the most common complaint about 4thEdition D&D (it’s a board game) not least by removing the gridded map and counting out movement portion.  So combat was crunchy but reasonably swift with a touch of “I’ll just roll to attack” but just a touch and that might be low level. 
The result leaves a game of decent tactical weight and rules crunch  that  so far has done a good job of providing challenging and interesting fights which is what you want for old school D&D.  It’s an attritional system – fights are about whittling down the players making them use up there recoveries and there one shot abilities so that the challenge creeps upwards and upwards as they head towards a confrontation…...

That what it has taken from its 4th Edition parent – but it’s also taken a lot from its indie game roots.

It’s created a lovely simple mechanic that means your players start off on the back foot but build towards success – just like big damn hero’s should.  The escalation dice – starts at 0 and at the end of turn 1 it hits the table with a value of 1.  The players add that to all there hit roles – which is why the bad guys have pretty impressive resistance – so you might want to save that big spell till things look desperate and the dice is high.  It’s a lovely idea with the rule book outlining how you can play with the concept to create effects in your players for example renforcements arrive – players start losing – drop the dice back down again!

Gone are a clumsy set of skills that never felt quite right for D&D and they have been replaced back backgrounds. Just describe bits of your characters background and spend some of your eight points and your away.  No looking anything up – just a player explaining why that background is the right one for solving this problem.  This immediately starts making your character feel like a character and not a set of sets.

You need to define “one unique thing” about your character.  Something about you that is true about you – and so turns out to be true about the world.  The first chapter in your heroic story is how they describe it.  Some of them are big things and some of them are little things – but again they make you come alive.  But they also make the background come alive – because the background is designed to be vague – open with opportunities but actually missing a lot of detail.  As you play those details get decided – a process that starts with your backgrounds and your one unique thing.
And one final big story telling touch – there are 13 big powerful NPC’s called Icons who represent the movers and shakers of the world from the Archmage to the Prince of Shadows to the Litch King.  Players align themselves with or against these forces and then at the start of the game roll some dice to see what Icons are making an appearance in this story……  Is it the three or the ork lord you’ll be opposing?  Will the arch druid or the Priestess assist you?  And just how will your terrible relationship with the elf queen complicate your life this week…..  This has the prospect of being great but it’s the bit of the game I’m struggling to insert in the way I’d like.  If the great golden wyrm links you up with the other players – is that really you getting an advantage or the GM just making it all work?  And making your interactions ‘positive but complicating’ I’m finding hard to make work.  However I’m hopeful……

The rule book is also written in an open style which manages to give you permission to change and amend the rules in a way that other games don’t.  I mean other games say you can but by having the two writers explain the different rules they use for this – it really make it comes home.
For me at least this system has a lot of potential – it’s got a system that provides tactical crunch so fights matter – it’s got improv so there is no point planning to much – it’s got story telling elements that encourage your players to make the world feel alive – and most of all it allows you and your players to set your tone.  I mean the arrival of an ‘intimate entertainer of unknown gender of the two sided coin’ in my game already means the world stranger then I suspect.  And were still not sure what exactly the two sided coin is…….

Winter Stabcon 2014

So that was Winter Stabcon 2014 and jolly good it was to.

Now need to remember what I played so I can review it....

Nexus Ops - a sort of fast paced tactical game of violence (seriously it's all about the violence) in pursuit of vps.  Good game - I liked the general feeling of mayhem and violence that emerged.   With 12 vp's to win one person went from last (2vps) to winning in one turn by holding back his scoring cards and burning them.  Not sure if that was a  bug or a feature.....

A Study In Emerald - I generally like Martin Wallace games - in fact I own more of his games then any other designers (it helps he produces a lot of games).  This was one I was very interested in - since the art was done by friends of mine and it's based on a great story by Neil Gaimain A study in Emerald.  I'm not 100% sold - it's a rather odd game - and I suspect people have to have played it multiple times to get it.  It certainly came with a horrible data dump of rules leaving you going 'huh?' a lot - and no obvious first moves to ease you into the game.  Played it twice but I'm still not sure......

Caverna - Agriculla with dwarves. Its so cute.  But despite it being ace - and I think better then Agriculla I'm not sure if it offered anything new.

Glass Road Unlike this game by the same man - which is a master piece of good UI design and swift game play.  Normally his games take hours - but he's managed to pour all of the game play into a much smaller pot and remove all of the fiddling about.  Only downside - it's a very expensive game for what you get.  It's £10 cheaper then Caverna but with caverna you get a ton of wooden bits and quality boards.  Talking with people in the know it was about £10/£15 more then we'd expect from what is in the box.  On the other hand I played it three times over the convention.......

a brief history of the world is only brief in comparison to the older longer version.  But it was good and fun - although there is a slight oddity. You get one historical empire an epoch - and the person doing worse picks first.  And not all empires are equal - so the Roman are really strong.  This leads to the position where you kind of want to go into the final round doing badly and certainly not first......

las vegas A very simply and lovely dice rolling game.  With a hunk of luck - a hunk of skill - and a lot of messing other people (and sometimes your self) up.

village A very lovely game of medieval life in a village - including the fact that your often trying to work people to death....... I keep thinking "I should get this".

ad astra sold to me as settlers in space without the random - it's really is.  However the removal of the random actually makes things feel more chaotic.  So in settlers you role dice - in Ad Astra everybody puts in 3 action cards but they affect everybody.  But I had no idea what people would do - so it was utter chaos.........

And of course story telling games (did not work so well this time - not sure why) and games oh I poo cat that broke people.  It turns the phrase "mother fucking batman" becomes very literal very quickly........

I got a cheque to buy Caverna for my birthday - but it's delayed hitting the shelves and now I'm wandering if glass road would be a better buy if I was going to buy something.  If it's a little more expensive - but it's a present it's still a good buy.

Logo

So my friend dr Geof did me two possible logo's for Stormy Port games.

I like 'em both - but I think I refer the one wit the boat in the glass.  The only problem is - how will that look when shrunk down?

Now - best make some games.  :-)

Coffehouse

Is the eventual name I settled on for the coffee project.

I've had a bunch of ideas - which finally made it into a version that I moved some bits around the table with. but sadly that just did not work.  So back to the drawing board.

Some things are fixed.

After your turn anybody you've sat with will get a change to take a move buy drinking a cup of coffee (so no fixed turn structure - rather being near somebody means they might take another move).
It's set in a single coffee shop - with a single long bench - and when you move to a new seat you interact with the people around you.
It's about finding out what scoring opportunities exist - and picking the one you want.
The person who leaves the coffee shop first gets to pick the scoring card they want - while people who stay score up more resources to spend on those cards.  So that's a key tension to the game - go now and grab something or keep moving.

What is not fixed....

Why sometimes you'll want to interact with lots of people and why sometimes you won't want to avoid people (the choice is important).
What you get (in addition to seeing scoring cards) when you interact that is a known quantity.
Times when you'll want to stop after your move and times when you'd want to keep moving.

So this is me mainly saying "I'm not dead" - rather then having any specific plans.

Coffee!

Or since that name is taken - what ever I end up calling it.

So I've got a bunch of mechanics worked out.

I now exactly what the missing needs to do - and the sort of trade off I wants players to be making on there turn (end the turn early for first pick/cheapest but have less resource and less idea of what the options will actually be - or end the turn late and have less options).

But can I actually turn that into anything remotely resembling a system - can I arse.  My brains got stuck.

Stupid brain.

Apparently I'll be calling it Coffeehouse since that name is not being used.....

Coffee

So I was reading the book A History of the World in Six Glasses (it's very good) and the section about coffee made me go 'Hmmmmm' about a game based around moving from coffee shop to coffee shop where drinking a coffee allows you to take another move.

And that was pretty good - and I got sketching out version 0.01 and then I ran into a problem.

So it's mainly around people meeting in coffee and exchanging information - which creates a trading mechanic.  However the key thing about gossip is that after you trade it- you still have it....

And all of the trading mechanics I can think off seem to involve the swapping of stuff.

I'm hoping to sleep on it and see if there is a stroke of inspiration....