Well.....

....February has been for a number of reasons a total bust in terms of play testing or designing.  I will be honest and say I'm not a jot closer to either being happy with the game or having started budiling the final versions.

Which gives me two months - March and April to get the game ready for Bristol Comic Con.

Not going to happen especially as I'm now meant to be prepping for a new interview and also I'm out of the country for two weeks at the end of the March. 

I'd best admit it now.  Bit sad - but I've just not been able to make any progress on the damn thing recently along with a good pile of doubts if it's actually any good.

Due to the lack of actual content - please find a link to a useful post on Board Game Geek from the designer of Britania - here

Play test! Yeah!

So play test last night – first in a while – only change was a reduction in the end of game points for resources and hexes.  4 players – bit over two hours – but with lots of faffing and talking about larp.  So 90 minutes is starting to look like a reasonable time frame.

Very solid game – worked well – I thought I was going to run away with it but got caught up with (and passed) on the last turn after I messed up - seems smooth and sensible.  Not all of the cards seem to be working – specifically the points awarding ones.  The Shaman says what cards – some of the RongaRonga’s.  I did mess up and forget the very important rule of “if attacked – draw a card” which is the second time I have done that.  And it’s very clear just how good a rule that is as somebody got pounded on when that rule was missing……..

There has also been feedback that setting the cards up differently – so it was more obvious that the cards where an “or” would be good and there is an idea floating around to flip the bottom part of the card over so it’s more obvious what way you play it.  That combined with needing to reduce the number of cards down to 54 means that the next bit of work is clearly redoing the cards. 

So glad I got that sorted.

I’m considering removing invite your neighbours– it’s a pretty powerful card and it reduces the whole “running around like loons” part of the game.

Need to work out the ratio of dual use cards to single use cards.

Need to work out the amount of movement cards – because without movement cards your options are pretty limited.

Not sure about the ratio of “men” to “cards” you get when you pick a build card either.  A small hand of cards is quite crippling as you lose the ability to do stuff.  And with a fairly low cap on the total number of men you can have – a card that gives a lot of men will not always be the most welcome.  But cards are random while men are certain.  Given the game only takes 4/5 turns I’m thinking maybe of just getting more men and cards into the game – and hence more options and more fights – is a good thing.    Not sure about this one.

It’s feeling like a very solid framework of basic rules – now it’s all about ratio’s and balance.

But big problem is making sure stuff is play tested before the final version is made……..

All quiet on the Stone Head front

Not a lot of action on here – but then that is because there has been not a lot of action on the GSH front – which is actually pretty disastrous production wise as the clock is ticking.  I was going to meet up with Dr Geof to talk art, cardboard and printing on Wednesday but he called it off.  We have rescheduled to next Wednesday.

I also let an opportunity for play testing go past this weekend – as I headed away for a really rather fabulous weekend of gaming and totally failed to do a play test.  I believe the word you are looking for is doh.

So lacking anything else to talk about – I’ll talk about a rather fabulous weekend of gaming.

This all started from a rather off the cuff comment about how cool it would be to play castle based board games in a castle – ok maybe cool is the wrong word – maybe geekily awesome is the phrase.  And then nothing happened until one person appeared and said “I don’t have a castle – will a manor house do” and we all went “yes?”  And so bouncecon was born – named after the bouncy castle it was possible to hire but we never did – not a proper con but a group a friends who wanted more gaming.  The manor house in question was http://www.skendlebyhall.co.uk/ a somewhat sprawling pile that could not only hold 24 people, but get all of them in the dining room at the same time while having more reception rooms then we knew what to do with.  What with having the dining room, the kitchen table, main hall and the library - the lounge and music room pretty much got ignored – and I only think the snooker room, table football room, air football room and children’s room only got used by people who went out of their way to use them.

And cost – just over £100 per a person – for Friday, Saturday and Sunday night.  Much cheaper than any other con I’ve been to and with some fabulous facilities – take a good kitchen (well two of them) as read (and the third back up kitchen) and then add in a sauna.  Which I did take full advantage off – relaxing on the Sunday morning in the Sauna – before bolting out of the sauna – running down the corridor and throwing myself into the snow to make a snow angel.  I swear there was a hissing noise as flesh hit the snow.  Bracing – and requiring a trip back to the sauna to warm myself up.

 Actually I have just realised I totally lost track of where the second kitchen was and could never have found it again if I had needed to – it was that sort of place.  It was an excellent idea – organised brilliantly – and we are already talking about number 2 and I’m tempted to arrange something similar for my 41^st birthday.

I’ll leave you with this fabulous photo of the location and an awesome snow meeple -  it was that sort of weekend……. 

When I got to work.....

....I saw this.

Do you think they know that Giant Stone Heads are meant to have hats or was that just one of those things?

Quick Empire

There was a quick play test of the Empire game post RPG.

General feeling was - good idea - had nice thematic elements - but the scoring was overly complicated.  One specific criticism was that Virtues had to be the best card set for themetic reasons - but there was a set of 8 cards.  Which was fair.....

People now get six cards - and the deck composition has changed.

So there are now 7 virtues, 4 generals, 4 merchants, 4 senators, 4 mages, 4 priests (representing the 5 in character groupings such as the Bourse for merchants) and 1 empress. 

Still 2 cards face up, and 2 face down.

To go out you either need all 4 of something and 2 of something else. 

You then score points based mainly off how much of the something else you hold.  But it looks much more obvious then what we had which was a little obtuse.

I'm sort of missing the 6 realms, 5 herbs etc - but putting them in caused a lot of problems.  But now with 6 different things to collect it seems like there is more options.

Giant Stone Head and Empire

Two very distinct things in this post.

First off a play test of Giant Stone Head.  All good - nice tight game (I did really badly) but the end of game points were just to much.  I think they need to still be very focused - so only a few players get anything but the end result was just to extreme a swing.  So they need to be trimmed down.

The cards when unable to place a GSH went fine - and the the increased value for the "all the cards" build card worked.

One thing we did do was play with one less build card - so only as many build cards as the number of players.  It worked fine - made resources more important - but was a bit meaner as the last person got no choice.  Overall I think I preferred it as resources have always felt a little unimportant and this seems to kick them over a little bit.

The second was that I play tested a new game today - working name is Empire Jong.  So I go larping (or cross country pantomime as I've heard it called) and the company I go to are about to start a new game "Empire". 

So I've got talking to people about making a game to play in character - and this is a very different design experience.

So there are some very clear design requirements - it has to be easy to learn, suitable to play in a poorly lite tent while drunk, deep enough to interest a gamer (so contains interesting decisions) and reflect some aspects of the background in it's set up and style.

In many ways I'm after something that feels like a decent classic card game - something of a similar nature to Whist.  However using tiles rather cards - because tiles will feel more suitable - and with a different distribution you can create a different game. 

It pretty much started from the background fact that there are "seven virtues, and six realms".  Which made it very tempting to create a version of Dalmutai skinned for Empire - but it felt wrong as the "virtues" should be important.

So what got play tested this weekend - a couple of quick hands was.....

A deck made up of eight materials, seven virtues, six realms, five herbs, 4 coins and 1 empress.

You have seven cards - there is one face up in the middle - or two face down.  You can either take the face up and replace it or take both the face down and replace them.  The aim of the game is to get a single full set and then the rest of your hand of seven as the same thing.  The empress is wild and different hands are worth different things.

It went well - couple of suggested changes.  Two face up cards rather then 1 - which will mean the addition of an extra tile.  The empress as wild is too good.  So the plan is to make the empress just give bonus points if you can go out holding her - and introduce a wild card that costs you points if your holding it at the end of the game (currently it's going to be called 'the Foreigner').

I also think that there needs to be more scoring opportunities so holding the most of some cards - say materials or virtues should give you some points as they are much harder to complete......  Will need balancing but currently hopeful.

Production

It was pointed out to me over the weekend that I'm generally writing for people who know what I'm talking about - people who have played the game or myself - rather then a wider audience.  Which might be an error even if it's an understandable one when I created this blog to stop bombarding my non-gaming friends on other social media sites.

But lets set out what actually needs to be produced to make a copy of giant stone head.  I'm not going to talk about art assets since that is in the hands of dr Geof of the island of doctor geof.  Since I'm going to talk about costs I should point out that I believe I have a production budget of about £15 per a copy.  I'm sure I have have talked about where that number comes from before but if not - just go with it.

Box -  easy to overlook but we obviously need something to keep it in.  I've not actually tried to source this one yet - as I figure it should be easier to do then a lot of the other issues.  But to get 100 copies of a custom printed box of an appropriate standard size I'm estimating will cost about £1.

Rule Book - another one I think will be easy to do and this one would be easy.  Using digital printing 100 copies of a rule book is not going to be over 50p and if I can write out the rules out well might well be a lot cheaper - I think the rules for Giant Stone Head might well be possible to put on two sides of A4 which would make it a single double sided piece of paper which would be very cheap.

Score chart and turn sequence  somewhere to keep track of the VP's and turn order and general help and advice.  This just needs to be on thinish card - so that's about 50p.  This would replace the player aid cards.

Pieces - each player needs 18 meeples and a single piece for a big man - I've received a quote for suitable pieces at £1.50 a copy. I even end up with a lot of spare pieces due to the minimum order.

Hexes - I need 19 hexes - printed on one side.  This one is a bit of a printing nightmare being a pretty specialist printing job with a run size so low no printer could be bothered.  But the idea has been floated of getting the hexes laser cut out of plywood.  I like this idea because having nice wooden hexes with patterns burnt onto them would be something of a plus point when coming to actually sell the game - and making a virtue out of a problem would be good.  I've got a very rough quote of £6 for a sheet of wood A3 sized - which we think should provide enough space with some wastage around the edges.

Worshiped and Unworshiped stone heads.  After a talk about 3D printing getting more of the lovely heads I have in my test version done is just not going to be possible.  So it's either getting a mold done and hand make them or lets make a virtue out of a problem again.  I need about 42 Unworshiped stone head markers - one for each space on the board.  And I was planning on getting them cut out of the wastage around the edge of the wood on the hex board...   If I get a giant stone head cut into one side with the other side blank - then I can create two sided counter.  Cost - nothing - since the cost is included in the production of the hexes........  it's going to be a pretty crowded piece of wood if we are honest so that's a possible problem.

Build cards - these don't even need to be cards since there are only 12 of them and they don't get handled as much- in fact some sort of token would work just as well.  I suspect they could be printed on reasonable card and then cut out.  Possibly manually - since getting proper punch out bits I'm not sure is an option - that's very specialiced printing.  Thinking about it I'd be tempted to put them on the magic sheet of wood - but then that gets supper crowded.  But lets assume we are looking at a sheet of card that gets manually cut out that looks like it's another £1 for thicker card.

Action Cards - there are currently 72 action cards and apparently I need to be looking at multiples of 52 for a professional printer.  At the moment card mix is something that needs sorting - so it's possible - there are a lot of repeats in the deck so trimming is possible.  With a maximum hand size of 7 and 5 players then we should always have at least 17 cards in the deck so that's workable.  Sadly well I've contacted a couple of card printers I've heard nothing back - I'll have to chase again - but I've got not idea of the cost of this.

So how are we doing with our £15 budget.....?

Box: £1
Rule Book:£0.50
VP sheet and turn sequence £0.50
Bits: £1.50
Hexes £6
Worshiped and Unworshiped free! (maybe)
Build cards £1 (with a bunch of hand cutting)
Estimated Total - £10.50

Which leaves a budget of £4.50 for action cards - which is not going to be enough....... There might be some over estimation caused by rounding in there but I don't think that much........