Dolomball - a new season

PAX is over, Werewolves is in competition limbo, so I'm finally back to focusing on Dolomball.  I ran a test game with some minor changes following from the previous playtest, six months ago, and it looks like I'm moving in the right direction of having a good fast-paced strategy game but I'm not there yet.  Got some good ideas from today's game though, for some more radical changes that I think will take it much further.  Both of the test players agreed that the most fun aspect of the game in its current form was ricocheting, so that needs to get amped up next time.  Current idea is to add a few straight panels which start out in the middle of the board but which players can rotate and shift during the game to block opponents or set themselves up for fun trick shots.  I'm looking forward to seeing how that one works out.

Other ideas brewing as well, but I'll wait until after the next test to talk about those.

PAX Unplugged 2024

Yesterday was my annual tradition of attending PAXU to do some playtesting with Unpub and try to get any attention at all from publishers, so today is the annual tradition of breaking down how it went.  The game I brought was Werewolves of London, and it was a great success - the people who played Under a Violet Moon last year mostly liked it, but the people who played Werewolves this year really liked it.  Overall I came out feeling like this is much closer to done compared with how Violet Moon felt after a busy Unpub morning (still a few bits to polish, but no major changes).  Here were some specific things that stood out from playtesting:

• Now that I've finally gotten to see the game all the way from start to finish, I can say with confidence that the duration is about an hour.  Slightly longer than I was aiming for, but it felt right during play - long enough to have some interesting back-and-forth, not so long it overstays its welcome.
• Everyone who played felt like once they were a couple turns in and got the basics down, everything felt very intuitive.  I even had some unintended semi-unguided testing, as I got wrapped up in a side conversation at one point and the players went through about one-and-a-half rounds without me hovering there, with no difficulty.
• The theme clicked right away, and people wanted to be vicious toward each other
  
• It always felt like there were multiple viable strategies to succeed, and players found it really interesting to think about whether they should focus on spreading out vs focusing on a few territories, and how to work endgame bonuses into their plans (whether for their own benefit, or just to prevent opponents from getting bonuses).
• This was the first time that I got to see the new combat mechanic in action, and it worked exactly as intended and felt fair to players - someone who was willing to risk more had a better chance of winning, but was never guaranteed
• Players in the first group suggested an improvement to the rule for sabotaging opponents' investments, and it worked out great when I implemented it later on
  

No luck with publishers unfortunately - only got one meeting, and they quickly concluded that the production was heavier than they were interested in (and probably the gameplay too, but it was a short meeting and we didn't get into that as much).  So I might want to veer toward publishers who do heavier games, even if the gameplay itself is solidly midweight.  But in any case I'm not doing any more pitching until Ion Awards are done, and probably also Cardboard Edison (and I've worked in whatever feedback they give me as well).

And in the meantime I will once again have the time and brainpower to get back to serious work on Dolomball...

I guess I haven't updated in a while

 Still here, just haven't had much to say lately.  Made some last-minute revisions to Werewolves that I'm excited about, gradually working on putting the physical prototype together so I can bring it to PAX Unplugged, looking forward to seeing what a full morning of playtesting will show me.  Also excited about the flyers I made to bring to the convention with me.  That's pretty much it for now.

Just rip my lungs out, Jim

Massive overhaul on Werewolves of London after the last playtest, and then got to test the new version yesterday.

• New map - focusing on Inner London only, with territories divided up a little more arbitrarily, rather than doing all of the boroughs like I had before.  Fewer territories than before as well.  This was moderately successful both at reducing information overload and at increasing frequency of players fighting over the same territory.
• New end condition - the game now goes for a set number of rounds rather than "until all territories are owned."  I still need to figure out what the right number is, but this is definitely an improvement in any case.
• Cleaner division of each round into "day" and "night" phases.  This made it easier to keep track of what was happening when, and succeeded at reinforcing the werewolf theme a little better.
  
• New income rules - get money for territory that you own and also have the option of pulling money out of one of your investments and multiplying it based on the value of the territory where you invested.  This was good for reinforcing the "business predators by day" side of my game pitch, but had the slight problem of being able to grow insanely wealthy in just a couple of turns with the right investments.  And since wealth translates to control over the map (and maybe also scoring at the end of the game; I'm still fiddling with that), this is pretty important.  Still weighing options for how to solve it.

 

And then there's combat.  I had put something like this into the previous iteration, following from the "not wolfy enough" comments in the first one or two test games, and then for this version I took it further.  When two or more players are trying to hunt in the same territory, they bid a secret amount of Meat, with the winner getting to hunt and the loser(s) licking their wounds and going home empty-handed (and also increasing the risk of tipping off Scotland Yard).  What we got in testing was that this was the core of a good idea, but the way I have it current set up, there's little incentive to bid less than all the Meat you have, unless you really care about the current state of the investigation.  So the challenge now is to find a way to keep the blind bidding system but 1) make you really care about how much you're bidding, 2) not be too punishing to a player who is already too far behind, and 3) not accidentally be too punishing to the player who wins the fight.  And maybe also other unwanted consequences that I haven't bumped into yet.  Hopefully I can get this figured out soon, because I've got less than two months to put together a hard copy for PAX Unplugged...

Cross one off the list

 Neon Knights is now live on DriveThruRPG!!!

That's it, that's the post.  I worked hard over the past couple of weeks, I finished the game, and I posted it. Feeling pretty good about that.  Now I can rest a bit, then back to work on all the other games.

In which the author finds himself to be extremely busy

I may have bitten off more than I can chew here.  Lots going on, and (self-imposed) deadlines adding pressure to it.  At this moment I am working on revisions for Werewolves of London (trying to get it up to where it's worth showing to publishers at PAX Unplugged, even if it's not 100% done at that point), revisions and layout for Neon Knights (I'd really like the flyer I give out at PAXU to list it as "available now" instead of "coming soon" for the third year in a row), and also a surprise round of revisions on Under a Violet Moon (publishers are interested but want to make changes), and with all that I'm still trying not to let Dolomball fall off the radar but it still needs a decent amount of work as well after the last playtest.

And that all has to fit around the day job, and family, and not letting the house fall apart, and whatever else pops up at any moment.  At least I'm not sitting around getting bored...

There wolves

Finally had time to revamp Werewolves of London and bring it out for testing.  Biggest change coming from the previous playtest was that I added rules for border skirmishes with other players - reducing their investments in the contested territories or preventing them from scoring those territories at the end of the game.  I also changed some rules for scoring, for where you can invest money, and for what happens when the police investigation progresses.

Overall conclusion from today's test is that it's moving in the right direction but still has plenty more moving to do.  It does feel more wolfy now, but needs to also feel more businessy, and find the right balance of the two aspects.  The test players gave me some good ideas based on what they were expecting from the pitch, and how that differed from what I actually had, so that gives me a really good sense of what to aim for with the next round of revisions.  We also talked a lot about building around the day/night contrast; I'm kind of kicking myself that I hadn't thought about that more explicitly before since it is rather central to the whole concept of werewolves but again, it does give me some ideas to play with.

And it also led one of them to come up with a new tag line that I'm definitely stealing - "outbid them during the day, outbite them during the night"