EoL: reducing downtime

 I was reading this blog post about decreasing downtime in games, and someone shared an idea in the comment section that really hit me - reward players for things that happen on someone else's turn, not just their own.  I think that would fit perfectly with the redesign I've been working on, and what I mentioned in my previous post about giving each team a more limited set of abilities but getting them to emphasize the theme more.  So the idea here is that each team will have an ability that gives them a bonus during their next turn if another player did something that fits with your team's theme.  For example, the Eyes of the Earth (the "rangers and druids" team) would get a bonus whenever another player draws an Exploration card in a forest, while the Guardians of the Hearth (the "defend our homeland" team) would get a bonus whenever another player interacts with a Threat anywhere on the board.

That's what I've got for now.  More news to come, sooner or later...

Some thoughts on Legends

 So, first things first - the game that was previously The Grand Expedition has a new working title, which is Explorers of Legend.  That may or may not stick if/when the game ever gets published, but that's what it is for now, so at least I can minimize confusion for anyone who's been following this.

This game has been very much back-burnered in the last couple months while I've been getting DGE up and running and then getting ready for PAX Unplugged.  But I did spend some time thinking about it again this morning, specifically the idea of Legendaries.  One of the concerns I've had since I first had the idea to make that a central part of the revised game is how to make them feel more interesting than other Exploration cards, and I think I have that now, with two features.  The first is that each Legendary has some effect that applies throughout its Zone, such as difficulty modifiers or keywords for Exploration cards in that Zone, or other effects such as fewer actions or inability to heal while in that Zone.  These will be things that are thematically linked to the Legend in question.  The other feature is that players cannot attempt to deal with a Legendary until they have met some prerequisite, such as having traveled through a certain combination of terrain types, or having successfully Negotiated with at least one settlement or dungeon in the same Zone.  To keep things interesting, prerequisites are randomized, and some amount of exploration is required to learn what the prerequisite is for each Legendary.

Oh yeah, and going along with that I'm also thinking about changing the system for upgrading your team.  What the game has looked like so far is that each team has their starting stats and two special abilities, and about a dozen upgrades listed on their sheet that they can purchase over the course of the game.  This appeals to my RPG sensibilities, but it can be a lot to track over the course of the game (especially if you've purchased a few situation-specific upgrades and have to keep track of which ones apply when).  What I'm probably going to do with the big revision is to strip is down - each team has a couple more special abilities at the start, to help emphasize their thematic differences, and only 4-5 upgrade options.  And instead of buying upgrades with gold, you unlock one each time you win against a Legendary card.  So that's one more thing that makes those feel special too.

Convention planning, and a bit of other stuff

 Design work has largely been paused lately, but I'm still around.  I'm going to be demoing Dwarven Guild of Engineers in the Unpub room at PAX Unplugged next month, so most of my energy lately has been focused on promotional materials for that - a flyer describing several of my games, plus a demo video for DGE specifically (I think it's a simple enough game, but some people like to see videos, and some publishers specifically request them).

Video is at https://youtu.be/XTVPZou0NSY if you want to watch it, by the way.

Besides that, I've been thinking on-and-off about The Sum of Its Parts.  Haven't gotten very far with it, but I'm pretty much settled on the basic task resolution mechanic, and thinking that I should adapt the Carta system (as seen in a bunch of games on itch.io) for exploration.  Maybe even take it a step further and go fully GM-less, though I'm not sold on that yet.  Maybe GM-optional.

That's it for the moment.  I'm not sure if I'll have much more in the next month, but we'll see what happens.