Qarl

Some quick notes about recent books I have been enjoying:

Not Safe for Work by Emma Hart.

Disclaimer on this one, Emma is a friend, and was kind enough to send a copy (I bribed with a copy of Endeavor, which she was due anyway for proof reading). Excellent essays, and somewhat safer for work than her online essays, that tend to have links to bondage porn (as does her Twitter feed! although she claims that was an accident). In the essays Emma manages to be wry and geek out at the same time, which is a combination I don't think I've seen before.

Mostly mirthful, with a bit of sadness and a whole lot of sexual politics thrown. She also writes much better than I could hope to. I'm not sure there is a klunker of a sentence in the whole thing.

The Praxis(and sequels) by Walter Jon Williams

I've really been enjoying this despite it being in the most annoying genre of them all: aristocrats in space. Sometimes called military scifi there seem to be dozens of these 18th Century aristocrats an barely disguised British fleets, with romance and "real" physics. Despite all the horror that entails, they are actually pretty cool.

Dungeon Master's Guide 2

D&D 4th Edition is an extremely well done tactical combat game. I ran a game earlier this year and enjoyed it a great deal. However DMG2 is mostly about running roleplaying games. So it might actually cause confusion and problems if you tried using it in a D&D4 game, but it is an excellent read about how to run a roleplaying game. Oh, and there are some fun bits about skill checks, traps and designing your own monsters for the tactical dungeon bash bit too.

I'd Really Like to Eat a Child by Sylviane Donnio

Now that I read childrens books a lot I have really started to enjoy the good ones, and really hate the bad ones. Good childrens writers really write immaculate prose. Poor books for children grate very quickly, especially by the twentieth read or so. This book is well written, morbidly fun in a way my 3 year old loves, and the twist hasn't palled with around 30 reads so far.

I am currently very frustrated that I still don't have my copies of Endeavor. They were being sent through the local distributor. When some of the shipment got damaged he favoured his customers, which makes sense for him, but not for me. So Jarratt and I seem to be some of the few hardcore gamers without a copy of our own game.

Other than that almost all the news on Endeavor is fantastic. It seems to be doing well at Essen at the moment (ranking high on the Fairplay list, sold out at the Z-man booth).

In other news, I had a tooth break last weekend, which is resulting in much expensive dentistry, leaving finances somewhat strained.

My current computer game addiction is Anno 1404 which takes great glee in latching onto any OCD tendencies. It has a campaign with oodles of side quests, unlockables and several types of achievements. The achievements even include interlocking ones, as achievements give you gems which can be used to unlock features, and then there are achievements for unlocking features and then using them in games. And that is all metagame stuff on top of some of the most Byzantine production chains a game could hope to have in the actual game.

The other computer game attracting my attention is Last Stand for Dawn of War 2 which is pure dumb fun, but I may play more of that once I have a team formed for trying to beat all 20 waves.

Advance copies of Endeavor were shipped to Gencon and Wellycon.

The reception from players has been fantastic.

Seeing things like:

"This game has that magical ability to be so straightforward to explain and teach yet deep in its play. I'd not change a single thing. It's a real work of art."
"Just a superior game. Smart mechanics of taking actions, easy to see the strategies yet complex enough to warrant several plays of exploration."

is very cool.

It was great having a copy in Wellington too, it would have seemed really weird seeing all the nice comments, but not having seen it for real.

The production is also exceptional. Extremely pleased at the final product.

Some initial testing of the game has been done, and now I want too the very few bits that worked and redo everything else.

( Rough Notes )

The next stage of the game project is to get a working prototype for self testing by the end of Monday. That is harsh time frame, in case anyone was unsure. So with that in mind, here are my expanded ideas for the project. This is copied from the corse forums, so you get yet another brief intro, and possibly some odd formatting.

The plan is to work on Colony, which somewhere along the line I have retitled in my head to Colony One.

Posting elements of the game here, as it is a good place as any to record thoughts, and I always appreciate feedback if anyone is kind enough to provide it.

So far I have taken a bit of a kitchen sink idea to the design, throwing in lots of stuff and mechanics. Anything that doesn't work can be jettisoned. Anything that does work, but doesn't really serve the game will be reluctantly placed on the shelf until needed in this game or another.

Material

A set of worker/population markers in a different colour for each player.

Some money chips.

Resource tokens in the following varieties:

• Volatiles
  

• Heavy Metals
  

• Alloys
  

• Manufactured goods
  

• Artifacts
  

• Hybrid Technology
  

Exploration Tiles:

• 5 Heavy Metals mines, with spaces for 4 Heavy Metals markers
  

• 5 Volatiles mines, with spaces for 6 Volatiles markers
  

• Story tiles, so that 6 can be mixed in each game, ideally a pool of more than 6, possibly in sets intended to go together. Currently having imagination issues with this, hoping to get a second set and develop more with play.
  

Colony modules:
A set of tiles available for purchase on Earth, that provide advantages on Colony One. Possibly a mat to go with them that restricts order they can be bought. Could be controlled just by price.

Some tiles to represent loans taken

A Board, with the following features:

• Turn track, and a track for turn phases (there are currently a lot)
  

• A place to put exploration tiles. Not sure yet whether to have a stack, or have a track with story events embedded at set places.
  

• Action boxes - much of the game is driven by placing population tokens in action boxes. The ones on the board will be: exploration for 3, exploration for 4, possibly exploration for 5 but this requires a Colony Module, so may be best to use the module instead, an extraction box either one for all types, or one for Heavy Metals and one for Volatiles, a processing box, there may possibly be a political box.
  

• An independence track, showing the colonies independence (or lack there of) from Earth Government
  

• A turn order track to indicate the turn order of the players
  

Set up:

Each player takes 6 of their worker markers in front of them, and $10.

The exploration tiles are shuffled and placed on the board, with some set rules regarding the story tiles to time them  coming into play, and what their make-up is.

The Colony Modules are laid out (listed somewhere below or in another post)

The Independence Marker is placed in the middle of the independence track

A population marker of each player is taken from the bank, and placed in a random order on the start track.

Everything else is placed aside in a bank area.

The turn order

The turn consists of three broad parts. The first part is preparing the colony ship for going to Colony One. The second part is the actions on Colony One. The third part is loading up the ship, returning to Earth selling what was gained from Colony One. So each turn represents a round trip between Earth and Colony One.

Part I: Earth

[1] In turn order each player may choose to one of the following:

• Take a government grant: Gain $4. Move the independence marker towards the government side.
  

• Take a loan. Gain $6 and a loan tile.
  

• Pay back all your loans - pay $8 for each loan tile.
  

• If you have no loan tiles, make a speech for independence of Colony One. Move the independence marker to the Colony Independence side 1 space + 1 space for each Political Point you have + 1 space for each player that has already made a speech this turn.
  

[2] Change the turn order. The player in last may pay $1 to go to first place. If they do so, then the player in last may do the same. Continue until the player in last chooses not to. Heir position is fixed, start again the player in second to last place, until every place if fixed.

This may take too long for the game, but I'd like to try it. Alternatively a rotating start player may be sufficient, but I suspect there is enough turn order importance to avoid a left/right binding.

[3]In turn order players may purchase a Colony module at the listed price. (Alternatively auction)

[4]The ship travels to Colony One. This is mostly a place holder on the phase chart to show the story element, as in "hey there is a big ship travelling between Earth and Colony One with everyone's stuff on it". Players who have taken habitation modules could take their additional population markers at this time.

Part II: Colony One

In turn order players may place population markers on Action boxes to do stuff. I will mention specific Colony Modules in this step as they are important to how everything plays out. In general a Colony module can be used several times, and by more than one player. While no money transfers between players and the bank in this part of the turn, it may be freely exchanged between players. In fact it would be expected for players to wheel and deal the use of their modules to other players.

The number of spaces on the boxes are likely to not survive initial playtesting and are going to require much fine tuning.

If this makes the game drag too much, or players are too likely to be uncooperative, I might change it to a set fee to use a module of another player, and they have no ability to say no. If this rule is used then it will have to an auction for the Modules in part 1.

• Exploration. There are two exploration boxes, costing 3 and 4 population each. Using this option gives you an exploration tile, which becomes yours. If a mine, you place cubes on it immediately. Modules that effect - two that reduce the cost by 1 (Rover Garage and Base Station), Orbital Satellite Monitor  which lets you draw two and choose the one you want and one which gives the option of a third box (cost 5). Any number of these can be used for a single explore
  

• Extraction. Spaces for 12 population. Place 3 population for  Heavy Metal, or 2 population for one Volatile. You must own the mine, or be allowed to  use it (no doubt at a price). If a negotiated thing, you get to negotiate amine to use before taking the action.  Modules that effect: Mining Laser - take an extra cube when mining either Volatiles or Heavy Metals. Mining Robots - 1 less population cube required for mining Heavy Metals. Reticulated Transport - 1 less population required for mining Volatiles. Deep Core Drill - allows a population marker to be added to Extraction to instead of mining, add 4 Volatile markers to an existing mine.
  

• Processing - 4 spaces available. Placing a population marker here allows a Processing Module to be used. An Alloys Processing Plant converts 1 Heavy Metal and 1 Volatile to 1 Alloy. A Goods Factory converts 1 Alloy and 1 Volatile to 1 Colony Good. A Research Station allows 1 Artefact to be produced if you have access to a tile with thee Archaeological Site symbol (Story tiles gained from exploration will have these). A Hybrid Tech Plant converts 1 Artefact and 1 Heavy Metal and 1 Volatile into one Hybrid Tech Good.
  

• Political actions. There may be some political actions here. I may decide to only leave then in Part 3 of the turn. I'm a bit softer on how the independence/political element works. Colony Modules that have political bearing: Administration Computer. So far this is the first political module you cna get, and it is worth 1 Political Point. Political points are good for VP, and driving the colony to independence (or maybe away from). Next is the General Store, this is woth a Political Point, and you can place a population marker to get $2 from each other player. Atmospheric Processing Centre, Political Point again and once it is on the colony, the survival phase (at end of Part 2 of the turn) is skipped. Last is the Militia Training Centre, as well as political points, I was wanting players to be able to place population pieces on it as a militia. To reach independence a certain number of population markers need to be placed. Hybrid Tech Goods can be placed as a substitute for population. I haven't got a clear picture of how this works yet.
  

As I have described all the other Colony Modules in the Part, the others were Habitation Modules, which each provide 2 more population markers for a player.

Once all players have exhausted all the actions they want to do, there is a Survival phase. Each player must pay 1 Volatile, or lose a Population marker.


Part 3 - The Ship Returns to Earth

[1] The ship goes back with all the good produced, except Volatiles. Volatiles cannot be transported so either stay at in a players possession, or so not survive the turn. The latter appeals to me, but may be too harsh. If they don't survive the turn, then there should be a module that lets you keep them.

Goods pay out:

Heavy Metals - $2
Alloys - $5
Colony Goods - $10 (and Independence track moved to independence)
Artefacts - $10 (Independence track moved to Earth Government)
Hybrid Tech Goods - $30 (Independence track moved to independence - but add to required number of militia needed for independence (this suggests they and be used as a weapon))

(Numbers pulled from nowhere, to be changed soon, but should give an idea of progression)

[2] The Independence Track is moved by players with Political points, in the direction of their choosing.


- After some turns, set events, the resolution of either the story tiles or independence, the game ends! Victory points are awarded.

The game course has hit project time. The initial task is to come up with three ideas. I thought I'd post them here and ask for some feedback. What should I go ahead with? Let me know what you think, and why.


Idea #1: Colony

This is intended to fit the strong embedded narrative constraint. In this game the players represent teams or corporations investing in and building an interstellar colony.

There should be a board representing the new planet, with the initial colony area as the starting space. Tiles will be used to represent unexplored areas. There will be some level of progression through new exploration tiles, with bands of lower powered/less interesting ones easier to explore, up to some intended to be found in the late game with much more interesting features. My intention is to have a certain number of feature tiles that add to the story of the game. There will be a few different sets, of which only one or two will be chosen for each game. So each game will have some secret which drives the story of the game. There may be alien ruins that can be explored, new technologies developed from, riches gained from. Alternatively there may be a live alien civilisation; or no aliens, but other items of interest, a lost human colony, or just rich minerals and an excellent place to found a colony.

As well as the story driven by discovery, there will the story between colonists and the home planet and between the colonising forces themselves.

Initially players have loans, purchase equipment (probably auctioned cards from an earth resources deck, possibly a set menu of tiles may work better). These resources are shipped to the new planet. When the ship is full of resources from the new planet these can be shipped home for profits and more resources, like specialists and factories, taken back to the colony. As the game progresses what is taken home should increase in value, such as better finds, and processed manufactured goods. THe colony becomes more independent, loans are repayed. I'd like there to be potential the colony to declare full independence, either driven by one player or several.

Between players I want most of the tension to be between different approaches. Players will not be able to do everything. I'd like some extreme strategies to work, like straight exploration, or manufacturing, or providing services to other players (life support, entertainment to make money from their colonists, even a political path with security forces and backing from home.

While that all sounds like a huge game, I'd also like it be fairly abstracted and quick (60-90 minutes), so most of the story elements are quickly inferred from the game elements.

Basically I see the components being:

• the board of the colony area
• exploration tiles
• cards or tiles for resources from home which are used to form an informal tableaux of resources representing a players colonial holdings (example, an exploration vehicle to be able to choose further exploration tiles, a manufacturing centre to make alloys from found ore mines, a town hall to provide political sway in the form of advantages on getting "home resources" or maybe just points)
• possibly a board representing a colony ship used to indicate resources either going home, or goods coming out money
• loan tiles
• a board of story tracks - an independence track, alien contact/hostility, civil war, possibly a home government track
• an event deck - ideally this wouldn't be seperate, but integrated into a home resources deck, and into the exploration tiles

Idea #2: Battle for a Caribbean Port

Two player asymmetric. I know what theme I want, but have a couple of ways it can be implemented.

OK, it needs a better title. Basically a game of an a naval and land attack on a Caribbean port or fort in 17th to 18th century (Age of Piracy, or Seven years War, or even something as late as the Battle of San Juan. While tempted by choosing an historical attack and going the full historical route, I was beginning to tend towards something where the two players get some selection in what they have/use. Defender can opt for big defences, warships in port, troops etc, the attacker can choose their attacking forces and how they arrive.

I'd quite like something with a planning phase, where the defender gets to map out what they have, and the attacker plans a couple of waves of attack. Do they send forces across land under cover of darkness? Do they come in all guns blazing to knock down walls? So they blockade for a couple of months to try and starve out defenders.

The trick here, is that the more meaningful the planning decisions are, the less meaningful the actual battle mechanics are. It will be no fun to play out 2 hours of battle with hexes and counters if the result was already decided on a couple of pieces of paper where the plans were drawn up.

So I think I need to make a decision one way or the other, balanced, probably historical, battle with fixed forces, or a more abstract planning for a battle, with a little logistics and a few operational decisions, and a lot of game theory, and then a very quick resolution. For example, if I was the attacker, I might make plans involving ships and their guns and where to deploy them, and then a separate landing force on the Easy side of the town to advance at dawn. The defenders would have some points to spend on fortifications, scouts, defensive troops etc. It'll be a very game theory kind of game.

If going with more of a hex and counter game, the ships could be 2 hexes big, which would make them quite tactically interesting, and make facing for canon fire very clear. A square map may be more appropriate in some ways.

Idea #3: Crash Landing

This idea grew out of idea #1 but became sufficiently different to be an idea of its own. Science Fiction theme, the initial spark was a co-operative version of Colony.

I really the recent rise of co-operative games. The secret to the good ones seems to be very immediate, ongoing and rich external threats.

In this game the players would represent crew of a space craft crash landed on a planet. They have a variety of skills and equipment to use. The outside threat here is the planet, and all the elements of a strange environment that are likely to kill you.

So there would be key resources, like oxygen, they would start with some (probably uneven amounts). Initial goal would be to generate their own, then water becomes and issue, then food,along with whatever threats the planet has to throw at them.

This game wouldn't have the same scope of Colony above, no building a massive trading colony and declaring independence, more just survival until rescue.

The key to most tension would be deciding when to spent resources on the current emergency, and when to save for upcoming issues. The players would have different mixes of equipment and skills, and have final say on their own equipment and actions.

The board in this game would be mostly taken up by tracks representing various elements of survival. Exploration of the environment is probably best driven by a card deck, rather than on board and with tiles. Players are going to need player mats, given that they will have characters, with skills and equipment.

More coursework, this time just coming up with a game concept rather than a whole working game. Very good timing, as I had a move on, and I wouldn't have been up to a full design.

The concept was somewhat challenging: a game specifically to appeal to griefers.

( Trappers )

The goal of this one was to make change the card game War so it was mostly skill that determined victory. I decided the most important mechanic to keep (so it was still War) was the blind card matching. Not much else survived.

( Winning the Battle, Losing the War )

This project for the Game Design Concepts course is from the Games and Art lesson.

I topic I chose was to "Design a game that has intentionally incomplete rules, requiring player authorship of rules during the play of the game in order for it to be playable."

I'm not that happy with what I came up with, but it seems to have generated a reasonable amount of positive comment and discussion on the course forums.

( Progress? by Carl de Visser )

Lesson four came with yet another game design exercise.

This time the goal was to: Make a board game adaptation of a videogame. Make a prototype in an hour. For extra challenge, make it an adaptation of a game designed for the Atari 2600.

( ET The Extra Terrestrial - An adaptation by Carl de Visser from the Atari game )

The course has a new assignment.

This time the goal is to create a game with the follwoing characteristics:

• World War One theme


• The primary objective of players cannot be territorial control, or capture/destroy.


• You cannot use territorial control or capture/destroy as game dynamics. (My game skirts pretty close to territorial control as a dynamic)


• The players may not engage in direct conflict, only indirect.

Here is my effort:

( Eye in the Sky )

I've now completed lesson two of the game design course.

There are some interesting people on the course. Zack Johnson, the guy who runs Kingdom of Loathing is on the course with some other guys from KoL, as is a producer from PopCap.

Homework from lesson 2 included some iterative development on the games we made in lesson one. Here is the current iteration of ( Forest Fire: )

Any feedback would be welcomed.

I am currently signed up for this online game design course. Very interesting so far, really enjoying the texts. Part of the course are some game design challenges. The first one was to come up with a path based game with some conflict in fifteen minutes. I came up with something and wrote it in my notebook in about 15 minutes, but I went way over time writing it up on the wiki and changing the rules, and even doing a partial playtest.

( Here be the game: )

I have recently being getting into Roleplaying Games again. After playing a game for a while I really was feeling the need to run a game again. To break myself in gently I ran a 6 session D&D 4th edition game. 4th edition is much more a fantasy tactical combat simulator than what I used to think of an RPG, but is great fun. Good rules, well written, better guiding for a GM to make combat encounters than previous versions. The character creation seems to make characters that are great fun from the very beginning.

As the game is so combat oriented I ran a very stylised "TV serial" of a game. I have an arcing plot, which was covered in the first and last five minutes of each session. There was two combat set pieces, with some character interaction and preparation between them. It worked remarkably well. I scratch built all the monsters, 4th edition is very good for monsters, best handling in a D&D type game I have seen. Interesting use of powers, and monsters built to go together. The core books don't have many for each level though, so building all your own if you want to have interesting encounters is a good way to go. All the roleplaying and character attachment came naturally out of play. Always nice to see, really systems don't need rules for that kind of thing.

Some bits I thought I handled well. The players always felt under threat, partially real (I made tough encounters, and they were clever) and partially illusory (they seemed to think they had 50% survival rates for each session but went six sessions without loss). The bit I found I kept stuffing up was asking for skill rolls outside of combat. I realised after each fail, that I pretty much had no reason to want any of those attempts to fail. They helped drive the plot. I was thinking of having a critical only role, where they succeeded automatically, but a role was made for a critical success (cool stuff happens), or failure (it still works but not without consequences).

After finishing the game I bought a copy of Esoterrorists by Robin D Laws which is an investigative game that addresses this exact issue. Its core is something Robin calls the Gumshoe System. The players have lots of investigative skills that they are extremely competent in. They always succeed at these. Sometimes they have to spend skill points from a skill pool to make them work for hard stuff. As investigation plots just get boring and slow without progress, this really keeps the roleplaying and story at the forefront. Characters can fail at non-plot stuff like combat.

Other bits I was reminded of as being important in a roleplaying game:

- The players should get to do cool stuff.
-Show what happens off stage, it helps make the world feel more real.
-Don't follow that advice about hiding the mechanics, converting it all to description is too much hard work, and really players are just as good at imagining elements of the world from statistical elements as you are, and often are better and will add their own descriptive flourishes to events described in rules terms. (Example, I describe the ongoing acid damage to the giant construct they looted out of the arcane weapons store, Craig describes the eroding metal and acid burns as it gets destroyed).

So much time consuming work to run a a game however, and all the prep done pays off, which makes doing more appealing. I will swap back to playing for a bit, and will run part two, and maybe some other short session thing some time towards the end of the year I think.

Earlier in the year, really early in fact, January 2nd, I did some wargaming.

Alistair Ramsden has been working on some American Civil War rules for some time, they can be found here: http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/ACWSFRM/links

The title of the game won't endear itself to keen female wargamers, but the rules are excellent. It has the focus on command and control I like in a wargame. It reminded me of a less wacky Warmaster. The rules are fun, fast, and reward realistic play.

I recommend them. They are written like wargaming rules always are. By which I mean, it is not so much instructions in how to play, but a set of definitions from which the rules of the game can be inferred. I had told Alistair I was going to rewrite them a little (mostly for my own benefit), but I have been slack, and have not gotten around to it yet.

I went to see Amanda Palmer at the Bodega Bar last Thursday. It was most excellent fun. She played standing up, so people could see her (stage was very low indeed), so her piano playing was only in the hit the keys very hard mode, which is a bit of a shame. But she made up for it by being relaxed, informal, engaged with the audience, playing requests off the setlist, and then there was New Zealand, which was, well ummm, in keeping with the whole night really.

A++++ Would fanboy again.

I was looking through some old notes, and found a game I was had jotted down some ideas for a couple of years ago.

This afternoon I have gone from those notes to a prototype with a rough cut of rules. Very satisfying. It is quite interesting to me how these things come in bursts. I got a great deal done today, in what feels like a hit of inspiration and effort. I assume that there has been some great deal of subconscious activity about it over the past couple of years, as I only ever seem to get this kind of rush of ideas if there was some previous thought and note taking at some earlier point.

The game is is a two sided wargame about a planetary invasion. The original inspiration was Prefect, an extremely long complex game about planetary invasion, which requires a lot of planning on the behalf of the attacking player.

This game is much lighter, with mostly wooden counters, and a few one sided printed counters. Each side has two factions, which could in theory be divided between two players. Much fun if they aren't allowed to collude, but there probably isn't enough depth for experienced players to only have one faction on a side.

If anyone is keen to have more of a look, let me know and I can send you some files (it is pretty rough so far, but should be fully playable).

I've been reading a few books on Game Design recently. One of the more interesting authors in this area is Chris Crawford. There is one annoying element of his stuff. He assumes you are a young programmer who wants to do Game Design (with capital letters). He tells his readers to read some books, and worry about more than programming.

I'm 37, have a history degree, and a post-grad thing in strategy. I've done the reading, including a lot of Braudel who he seems especially enamoured with. Being told over and over again to do what I have already done to unlock the mysteries is really annoying, especially as I suspect he has other puzzle pieces I feel I am missing which he assumes I have.

I'm also amused about his extreme rant against low-interactivity games, when his current project is a good example of just the kind of thing he says is doomed to failure. He has authority issues. I respect that.

I'm not sure if there is such a term as push gaming, but if there was it would be temping to apply it to the "wargaming" discussions of possible modern civil war scenarios in the US on FOX news:

Seeing NIN last week turned out to be an emotional experience. I have listened to Trent's music for 19 years, usually during more stressful or unhappy times. Then after jumping up and down in a mosh, after barely eating anything (I hadn't eaten much as I assumed a big dinner would be had, instead no dinner was had), being overstimulated by noise, light and jumping bodies, was overwhelmed. Totally awesome, felt like some great shamanic or gnostic rite.

Soon followed by the vast normalness of getting fast food, driving home the next day, returning to family work. None of the latter felt like a letdown however, and none of the emotional concert going felt wasted or something I had grown out of.

This week my youngest has rites of his own, starting Montessori school (they have a 3-6 cohort). He lasted one hour today before requiring rescuing, he collapsed into sleep before being driven to a congratulatory/commiserating hot chocolate.