Bits

So this was my 40th Birthday Party - and amongst the lake of pork and collection of other random but cool presents I got given a box for Giant Stone Head.  And in that box were these......

A big bag of my very own giant stone heads - 3D printed.

Thank you very much - and also damn you - now the final version has to have bits at least this awesome.........

So obviously I had to play with them as soon as possible - so a little fragile we had a play test. 

The good.....
........drawing a card when attacked really worked.  Not to fiddly and meant it was impossible to work out exactly what was happening.
........the reduced build deck worked well.  It's certainly more controlled and seems to present more genuine choices making controlling resources more valuable.

The Bad....
.......once again somebody got out ahead and stayed there.
.......some of the cards really confused people.  The movement cards and the ronga ronga cards.
........getting the balance of the cards is trick - to many ronga ronga cards and you've a worhtless hand.  To few and you've got limited options.  Same with movement cards as well. 
.........it's still running a little long.
...........the feeling was that the Giant Stone Heads are generating to much in the way of VP's.
.............the end condition was good and stopped it dragging on with an awkward last turn.
................I'm not sure where in the turn order to go is good anymore.

So there is a raft of changes I want to do - and I'm not sure which to do for this version. 

I want to......

..... reduce the points for building a GSH - so the fighting and the violence has more impact.  Keep GSH at the end of a turn unless you've flipped them for a VP.  So taking a GSH and keeping a GSH are similar in terms of points - but taking one is easier as you don't need a card to get the point.  So offenses is rewarded but defence is possible.  And your able to try and build up a bundle of points to score.

......remove the pool mechanic as it seems not to be doing that much and just give people a lowish population cap.
..... change the cards so that everything can be dropped for either an attack point or a defence point while also having another function.  So people have more flexibility.  This might well mean the build decks values need to be reviewed because cards might be just better then men then and at the moment taking "good cards" gets you 2 cards more then "ok cards" where as "good men" is just 1 more man then "ok men".

I'm not sorting out the turn order problem at the moment.  I don't have a clever idea.....

Which all of which is a lot to sort out in one go.  But as always the problem is - if I know I'm going to change it why put people through a play test with a version I think is flawed?

Started talking to people about production.  I see a number of significiant problem areas.
1) Making hexes.  Here I have an idea - I might need a conversation with a friend with a laser cutter to make wooden hexes.
2) Getting bits.  here I need a wholesale contact - assuming a wholesaler bits dealer will deal with an order as small as mine will be (at most 2,400 pieces).
3) Box.  No idea about this one.
4) Printing - rules and player aids and score board.
5) Cards.  This is the one I'm really stuck on.  Card runs are expensive unless you do lots and lots. 

On the interrelatedness of all things.....

Or at least when designing games.

So after a pretty good play test I wanted to make a pretty small list of changes.

One of which was updating the resource cards to make a more limited but more distinct range of options for players. And I think I have the values for that.

But I also wanted to change game end - specifically with respect to making the game a little shorter. Easy enough - got a good suggestion about that last play test.  But changing the resource cards changes the rate at which giant stone heads go on the board - thus changing the rate the game ends.

Worse - I know I want to change the hexes (blance and quality of resources) at some point which once again changes the game end.

I have three options.

1) change the cards.
2) change the cards and the game end rule.
3) change the cards and game end rule and the hexes.

One bit of advice was 'don't change two things at once' otherwise you don't know which change is responsible for the alteration in behaviour. And yet play tests are rare things for me - and each time I play test with a rule I suspect I'm going to change of feels like a waste.

I'm going to go with number 2 - it seems a reasonable compromise - and I'll need some information before changing the hexes.

I need to sort out the quarry - which in turn means a change to some action cards that relate to it. So my 'minor' update looks like it will impact on resources, hexes, action cards, and game end........

Mussings

So two things I really approve of in game design are…..

The micro turn – take a single action – onto the next person – and back round to you it comes sharpish.  Much better then the ponderous mega turns where one person does everything and it’s impossible to plan as the world will be a very very different place when it comes to your turn.

The second is the existence of “roll then do” – games like “roll through the ages” where you roll our dice and then see what you can do with that as opposed to “decide then pass/fail”.

So it’s a little odd that Giant Stone Head fails to have the micro turn – although the turns are not supper long – and the rough notes of These Dark Satanic Mills seem to have heading towards the “decide then pass/fail” dice mechanic…….

 

Play Test and Games

This weekend I headed over to Midcon where I got to play some of my essen purchases (libertallia - solid and fun; luna - which hurt my brain the 1st time but I got into my stride for the 2nd game).  I also found my first "wish I had brought game" in the shape of tzolk'in which has the coolest dial based mechanic in it.

But what I want to talk about is ugg-tect a much dafter game - in which you play as a team of neandorthols trying to build a monument in which only one of you can see a card - in which you communicate via a prescribed list of gestures, noises and bashing people with an inflatable club.  A genuine classic of stupidity - and a really clever idea.  Placing limitations on players and making a game out of what would otherwise be a frustating situation - as the ugg-tect keeps saying the same thing and you all look confused and go "ug?".....

We also snuck in a play test of GSH - five players all of who had played a number of versions over the years.  Including one person who played the last playtest - and seemed impressed about how much a fairly simple change made.....

So the defensive obsession went away - since stone heads are now just a source of VP's for other people - which caused a more more fluid game of violence.  It's - as always - not quite right.

The build cards need work - specifically there needs to be less of them and each one more clearly defined.  This has been something I've been thinking about for ages - but it's time has arrived.
It's still far to possible to get worn down and beaten up - but the addition of a card each time your attacked should short that out.

It's also been suggested that the end point is hexes out of trees - and I've decided I like that.

Also RongaRonga cards appear a little on the weak side - for all that there steal a point mechanism is clearly vital......

Now what needs to be added is some sort of defensive thing people care about - somebody suggested that the quarry allows you to score for holding a unfinished stone head at the end of the turn which could be interesting.  Also the idea that ronga ronga reward you for holding certain things - rather then just killing lots of people.  These I need to think about but the first two changes are definitely going in.

Essen and GSH

So this weekend I headed out to Essen to attend Spiel - the worlds largest board game fair.

And believe me when I say it's massive.  Multiple halls - each one as big as I've ever seen a UK games con manage (and possibly bigger) and swarms of people.  Endless milling swarms.  The latest release - all the hot games. Last years hot games at knock down prices - and 2nd hand games stores for the years before that.  The companies also setting out tables and just let you play - with people explaining the rules.  So you can get a look at something before you buy.

Yes most of it is in German - and if I was German it would be even more awesome - but it's still damn good.

There is nothing in the way of evening events - so your left to your own entertainment.  We found a hotel with a large downstairs area and just play games there.  Along with about half the hotel making it an impromptu games convention and really quite awesome.

This year we also branched out and headed out to a metal pub and then a metal club until about 4 in the morning.  The bouncer seemed unsure about letting us in - but we convinced him that we were in fact Metal enough to get in - I think he spotted my hair.

It's not cheap  - but it is awesome.  I normally only go ever other year - but for some reason I'm tempted to go again next year.  But you need a group of people to go with, hang out with, and play games with.

One day I want to be there with a pile of my games and my own stall.  It can happen - there was a man selling his own game based on the gangs of Rome and the proscriptions of Sulla with a count of how many of the 100 games he had left to sell.......  By Saturday he'd stopped trying to sell it as he only had twenty left and just treated it as his own personal table to play games.  But then he was clearly treating the whole thing as sunk expenses since he was selling his games for 50 euro's and they cost 35 to make - not including the £1000 he had spent on art....  or the time he'd taken to make little boxes.......  A real reminder that self publishing board games is not a way to make money.

I also discovered that a luggage allowance of 22 kilos is a lot of games.....  My loot came to just under 18 kilo's not including two copies of infinite city (3 euros!)  that were in my hand luggage.  If your wandering what 18 kilo's of games looks like.....

Including funky metal money for Libertalia for only 3 Euros - bargain.


I did however get a play test of GSH in - and with people who had played one of the earlier version.  Generally positive feedback - it was clear it was not right - and that the new mission cards were not doing what I wanted them to do  But the general feedback was "heading in the right direction" - and better that a lot of there concerns in earlier version had been taken away.

One person specifically liked the resource card - as a nice simple way of giving people choice - but preventing a resource gap opening up between players.

It was interesting listening to people talk - I've been trying to encourage people to attack but because stone heads are worth more VP's at the end of the turn - they are encouraged to defend more.  So I want to try something - it's a pretty big flip - but make stone heads worth 3 vps to the person that builds them straight away.  However give 1 VP to any player that takes a freshly built stone head off another player - while introducing a card so that at the end of the round you can get a bonus point for a stone head. Inverting the current point system in effect.

This may result in non stop overly aggressive attacking if defending is not seen as worth doing.  But I want to give it a try.......  Mr P will roll his eyes at me of course.

So....

.....I made another version of These Dark Satanic Mills.  Printed it out - moved some stuff around - decided it was not working.  So then I made another version - which I've not yet printed out and moved stuff around on because two of the key mechanics are not in yet.  They have not been in previous versions either but I think I need to get them in.  But this time round I want to add in proper rules for acquiring "civic tiles" & "workers" to try and get a better view of the whole thing.

I'm not sure I'm following the rules about "make a simple version at first" - It's not pretty but I'm spending quite a lot of time just laying stuff out in a way that makes some sense.....

So I waved....

.....these dark satanic mills under a mates nose.

He felt it was rather dry - and did not really reflect the theme of turning orphans into VP's through the use of horrible machinery and inhuman conditions.  I felt it was fiddly and involved to much cube shuffling......

Still food for thought.