Progress report from the long holiday weekend

 I swore that I would get some game writing done over the long weekend, and I actually did.  Nothing exciting, but I made some progress fleshing out a few sections of Neon Knights to get it closer to my minimum threshold to put out a playtest draft.  I think all that's left at this point is to beef up the chapter on setting description, clean up a few rule discrepancies, and stat up some sample bad guys.  There's still a lot more to go before the book is complete, but those three things would be enough for me to be satisfied that I can start running playtests and publicly sharing this draft.

There was one other design-related thing I did over the weekend.  For a while I've been pondering how to write a game around a certain IP, and this weekend I got an outline together for how it might be doable.  I don't want to say more until I contact the IP creator and get the green light to move forward with it, and I'm not going to do that until after New Year's at the very least.  But since part of the reason for this blog existing is to keep myself accountable, I have to at least acknowledge that this is where a chunk of my time went.

Dwarven Guild of Engineers: Lessons from PAX Unplugged

 I don't know how the pros do a whole convention - I spent one day at PAX Unplugged, only half of which was in "designer" mode and the other half as general audience, and felt completely wiped out after that.  Maybe I'm just old and out of shape (which is a stereotype that definitely does not apply to game industry professionals, right?).

But if you're here at all, it's presumably to read about games, not to read my personal kvetching.  So yeah, I did spend half the day in the Unpub room where I got to test out DGE with a bunch of different groups, 3-6 players at a time.  People were clearly enjoying it, and I got a request for a Spanish translation (publishers take note, that's international demand for this game!).  Some of the highlights for me were using a steam powered accordion to make you a better fighter (because it's a cardio workout), using a reverberating brick to convince humans that you can turn straw into old (because nothing does the job like brain damage), and many enjoyable arguments about an invention following the exact phrasing of the patron's request and any consequences outside of that being irrelevant.

In terms of game feedback, one suggestion that came up early on, and which I implemented for the rest of the day, was that whoever won the last round should go first to reveal and explain their invention in the current round.  I don't know how important it actually is, though an argument could be made for slight advantages based on whether you speak before or after everyone else, but in any case it worked well enough and no one objected to it.  Besides that, there were two things that people brought up most frequently and which I will definitely be working into the game.  One was to put colors or icons or something on the front of the cards to make it easier to remember which deck they are from (I quickly saw the value of this after multiple rounds of organizing the discard piles and then shuffling them back into the right deck for the next game), and to add some kind of rule to let players change out some or all of their cards if they don't like anything in their hand.  I gave it some thought over the course of the day and eventually came up with: before playing an invention, you may discard all of your Base and Mod cards.  Draw the first Base and Mod cards from their respective decks and automatically play that as your invention.  At the end of the round, draw three of each so you have a full hand like normal.  I didn't think of it in time to actually test it out, but I did mention the idea at the end of the last game that I ran, and one of the players described it as "when you forgot to work on the project and suddenly realize it's due tomorrow," which I love.  So that's definitely going into the next iteration of the game.

I also talked with a couple of publishers and got as far as "they acknowledge my existence," which is a step in the right direction for me.  No exciting news yet, but who knows what the next 2d12 months might bring?

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.

DGE is now available online

Play for free in your browser - https://screentop.gg/@DrMindermast/DGE

Get it on Tabletop Simulator - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2875684618

DGE prototype and first playtests

I've never built a physical prototype before, but I spent most of Friday evening printing and cutting out cards, and I'm pretty happy with the outcome:

 

Yesterday and this afternoon I tested it out with two different groups - 3 players the first time, 4 players the second time (with a fifth joining in mid-game).  More fun the second time around, probably because of the larger group and definitely because that group got more into the improv/roleplaying aspect of the game (i.e. spinning wild b.s. explanations for why alcoholic armor will make you a better fighter, or a thundering accordion will help you win the gods' favor).

What I've learned so far is that the core of the game is easy to pick up and works as intended, but the scoring is too fiddly in a way that doesn't match the tone of the game.  Mentally juggling "preferred material" and "malfunction material" was more work than I expected.  I'm not 100% sure yet what I'm going to do about this, but right now I'm thinking maybe to drop "preferred" and just have the random "malfunction" penalty.  If I go more extreme, which is a possibility, I might get rid of scoring altogether, just have players hold onto the cards they won like in similar games, and give materials a different effect like maybe drawing different numbers of cards for the next round (whether you keep them all or choose one and return the rest is still up in the air).  Current rule is that you only have 3 Base and 3 Mods, which is definitely constraining when you're trying to figure out how to make that fit a specific request that probably has nothing to do with your items, but that's also where the bs-ing comes in.  And that's clearly the strong point of the game.  Time for more pondering, and hopefully a better iteration by the time I finish making virtual copies.