And like a number of recent tests it's not got to the end.... This time it was more about a baby stopping play and a plane then "oh god it's all gone wrong....."
Overall it seemed to go ok - spent most of a flight writing down notes about what needs to be changed and stuff - as always needs to be changed. We've swung back away from a rather pointless journey - things that have been removed might well be about to make a return - and generally there is some more smoothing of rough edges to be done.
However I've got to a bit of a cross roads. I've had a large lump of time off - and one of things I wanted to do in that time off was get GSH to "finished" mode. Tweaking - looking at production - that sort of thing. But it's no where near that - because over the last two months I've done very little and play tested it even less....
Part of that is lack of enthusiasm - some from me and I think some from people I game with. Most of them have limited amounts of time to game - there's lots of finished games they want to play - and they have played GSH before. Where as me - I just don't want to be a bother. And you know what - sometimes I have trouble remembering what the rules are - because I've got so many different version in head I'm not always sure what I decided in the end. Although in fairness that's not always just me - the new improved simpler attack and defense cards confused the hell out of somebody who had played an earlier version and had got there head around how things had used to work.....
So it's decision time..... Do I make 2.06 and drag it round with me - or do I start working on one of the other two projects I've got rough notes for? At what point does one's equine collapse? Given that the criticism somebody made "there's nothing new" was (and still is) reasonably true.
Tuesday, 28 February 2012
Monday, 13 February 2012
No real news
Basically I've got a new testable version of GSH - but I lack of forum to play test it - so no real progress is being made.
All I've played recently is a new game of Eclipse - which has once again convinced me that it's a) my favorite space conquest game b) badly flawed c) Plasma Missile break the game quite badly.
Well at the SFX weekender I did get two games explained to me - and thus have my prejudice against tie in's confirmed....
The first was "the walking dead". So your a zombie survival game - linked to a deep and detailed background. And you've got roll a dice and move. Really? Roll a dice and move. 2012 and that's what you give us? I admit I sort of turned off at that point but really it looks terrible.
The second was "penny arcade - gamers vs Evil". Now I have a lot of time for penny arcade. There basically nerds made good - and I find them commentary often very interesting. And this game was clearly made by somebody who was paying attention to games made within the last 5 years - since it was a deck building game. And it seemed a reasonable implementation of that - but nothing innovative or indeed anything that seemed to invoke the spirit of Penny Arcade.
Of the two of them - the penny arcade was the only worth even looking at - but even that I'd generally avoid.
All I've played recently is a new game of Eclipse - which has once again convinced me that it's a) my favorite space conquest game b) badly flawed c) Plasma Missile break the game quite badly.
Well at the SFX weekender I did get two games explained to me - and thus have my prejudice against tie in's confirmed....
The first was "the walking dead". So your a zombie survival game - linked to a deep and detailed background. And you've got roll a dice and move. Really? Roll a dice and move. 2012 and that's what you give us? I admit I sort of turned off at that point but really it looks terrible.
The second was "penny arcade - gamers vs Evil". Now I have a lot of time for penny arcade. There basically nerds made good - and I find them commentary often very interesting. And this game was clearly made by somebody who was paying attention to games made within the last 5 years - since it was a deck building game. And it seemed a reasonable implementation of that - but nothing innovative or indeed anything that seemed to invoke the spirit of Penny Arcade.
Of the two of them - the penny arcade was the only worth even looking at - but even that I'd generally avoid.
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.....
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://
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!
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......
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......
Tuesday, 20 December 2011
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......
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......
Monday, 12 December 2011
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....).
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....).
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