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.....

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!

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......

How did 2.03 work?

As I'm sure your used to me saying - not as well as I'd like.  One big problem was that it was a 4 player game in which one player got removed pretty early on.  A result of him a) getting picked on and b) deciding that he might as well burn out and painting a target on his head.  That said the mere act of being in the lead should not damn you quite as hard as it seemed to this time......

The movement of 1 still slows the game down - in particular in this game in the last few turns everybody was very limited in there interactions - I often felt there was nothing I could do because everybody was in "the wrong place".  So quicker movement of some sort - either back to two spaces or more movement cards is rather needed.

There was no resource crunch at all in what turned into a 3 player game - people were drawing 5 or 6 cards all the way to the end.  Which seems way way to many.  Also the whole "each different resource" was annoying and fiddly.

Raiding - seemed not to happen - and the more I think about it the less I'm convinced me need a special mechanic. Given the current rules players will have an option of making a single attack on a "winning enemy" to gain renown and that would simply the game a lot. The renown mechanics however are solid and reward attacking - the villages mean sitting and doing nothing is not that strong a tactic - so I want both of those to stay.  

I'm thinking I might need another fairly big revamp......

Version 2.03 and links

So after a burst of creativity I've got version 2.03 ready to play test.

The changes seem pretty sensible - certainly not a giant leap anywhere....

I've increased the number of resources Icons on the board (basically doubled them) which won't increase the number of cards in peoples hands (I hope) but should mean that the resource crash is moved to later in the game. 

I've also changed the raid rules such that a) every card now has a raid value (so you can flip a card from the deck if you want) but also so that people in defensive squares are harder to kill with raids.

Both seem sensible but I've said that before......

A good quick write up of the basics of good game design here..... 

http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/3205.html

I especially liked the part about needing to make decision making.  I also need to reintroduce "return from the grave rules" to GSH because there right - being wiped out is bad.  The trouble is I don't see much way to deal with returning without introducing a large element of king making (or I may not be able to win but I determine who does....).

Version 2.02

So the first thing was that playing by myself made it really clear that - yes - it broadly worked but suggested one minor change for public consumption. So I then took 2.02 went for a spin around magic nerd club (my last magic nerd club in fact).  Where it turned out to be actually playable - and quite fun.  Which was a relief after version 2.01 was a giant step backwards...  This was a 3 player game - and they have often been the oddest ones.

So what changed?

Well the major change was to introduce "villages" that are built on food - these acted as a limit on the total number of warriors you could have (so 3 warriors for every village), and also as what brought your warriors into the game (1 warrior at each village).  As expected this meant people had an incentive to use there men a lot more because if they were at there maximum number of men they'd not get any more the next turn. 

Secondly I tweaked the raid rules so the attacker only ever needed a single warrior to raid - no matter how many were in the receiving hex - and gave a reason to raid the person with the most VP's.  Introducing a churn of warriors for renown.

Thirdly I removed one entire deck of cards - the one that allows you to build stone heads and moved that to an "at any time" list.  Which in turn meant changing the resource set up heavily as now one entire set of resources was no longer needed.......

Fourthly - movement was reduced to a single hex - mainly because I was worried about villages being vulnerable to sneak attacks.

Fithly introduced a special hex "basalt stone quarry" which meant any GSH you built that turn generated more victory points.

So how did it work - and what did not work - because clearly not everything worked.....

While the villages limited the men correctly and drove people into conflict - however I think the pool might be a little to small.

Having to have renown to build stone heads - also drove conflict.

And losing the project cards to an "at any time" list worked really well.  While the reduced cost of stone heads combined with the build once and cover - meant that we soon ended up with the board covered in stone heads. 

The slower movement seemed good - it became less of a knock about game - and you needed to think a bit more.....   Downside giant stone heads tended to get built in "safe" locations - and so seldom got kicked over.  However a few more swift movement cards would have gone down a treat.....

So what did not work?

Well with a single resource the board soon got covered and we saw a resources crash far far to early- and with the slow movement people tended to just fight over what was near them - rather the seek out ones that they "needed".

RongaRonga cards - formally known as "epic poems" - cards designed to reward attacking seemed to have become very seldom played from really rather key.  If you were going to give up something - you gave up them.....  So they need - reviewing/rebalancing.  It's possible there no longer needed - since they were introduced to reward conflict and the renown seems to do a better job of that.  Actually one of the Ronga Ronga cards turned out to be utterly pointless......  So that needs to go.....

Raids need to a) have a slightly more random way of deciding who won and b) it needs to be the case that defensive locations do something to help against raids - otherwise you just get raided out of them far to easily.  But that's a balance issue - the idea seems sound. 

The key seems to be sorting out the resource generation - we need something that a) offers players a little bit of choice in what to attack (so one hex can be worth more to one player then another), b) has more spaces to build on such that "resource collapse" happens later in the game.

So the question is - am I at the "change one thing and one thing only" stage of tweaking - not just yet I think.  As somebody said last night "you've changed a lot!" and there right.  A hell of a lot of stuff changed - so I really am back at the early stages where major design shifts are still a decent idea...... 

Oh and a random conversation gave me an idea for a rather nice game mechanic for a totally different game.... So I'll file that one away in the "ideas" holder and come back to it another day.....




 



 

I Aten't Dead

It's taken over a month - but I've finally got the notes I scrawled down on a train into a play testable version - I've got to do a solo play before I will let anybody else near it but that's a job for tonight and I'm hoping to talk Magic nerd club into playing it on Monday night.  So expect a report soon.

On the one hand this feels like it's taken forever to make any progress - however it took most of Saturday and a bit of Sunday to write out the rules and do another total update of the physical components - and two episodes of castle to sort out the printing problems and cut out it all out.  That's a lot of time to set aside.

The real problem is that I've learned I need to set aside a big chunk of time otherwise I get nowhere - I don't seem to be able to focus well enough to add up the odd day here and there - and finding that much spare time in one go is not currently easy......

Lets see how this has worked......