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thespaceinvader
Mar 30, 2011

The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!
Thanks very much.

This is for entirely non-game-related reasons, I think the ships could be handy for a project I have in mind.

Cheers.

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Solkanar512
Dec 28, 2006

by the sex ghost

thespaceinvader posted:

Thanks very much.

This is for entirely non-game-related reasons, I think the ships could be handy for a project I have in mind.

Cheers.

Make sure you see the edit! Anyway, I believe the material is polystyrene, but I could be mistaken.

Retrowave Joe
Jul 20, 2001

DirkGently posted:

Eclipse stuff.

Alternatives:
For a similar system you could create a series of two sided circular cardboard chits with a red side and a green side. Every time that you upgrade, you get a new chit -- so the number of chits equals the max power. When systems are damaged, flip chits to red (or even stack them together in a designated area), so the current value of the stat is the number of green chits.

Finally, you could also use different sided dice. So, on an upgrade you go from d4 to d6 to d8, etc. The number of sides of the dice indicate the maximum stat and the currently showing number is the value of the system. I have no idea what the cost of this would be for your game (although for prototyping you can get dice pretty cheaply) -- the only big problem with this approach is that I find it takes me a little too long to find the side that I need of a dice.

I like the way that looks and it could be fairly easily implemented into my game. I'd have to pick up some cubes at GenCon for testing, but I doubt they'd be expensive. The chits I could also see working, but I'd need to decide which size tokens to use (I have plenty to choose from), and I think they'd work better if they were thick enough that a person could tell at a glance how many were on the stack. I'm not crazy about the dice, if only because there're enough being used for combat already and I want to take another pass at that system to reduce the number of dice.

DirkGently
Jan 14, 2008

Paper Mac posted:

Which Eclipse are you talking about? This definitely isn't the 2011 Eclipse.

Oh yeah, the drawing is something that I personally banged out -- definitely not from Eclipse. I was trying to adapt the general principles I remembered from the Eclipse board (how they deal with resources/citizens) to illustrate a slightly more sophisticated slider system (like he mentioned). Although on further reflection, Eclipse actually uses the removed cubes to mark things elsewhere which makes it much more elegant.

Retardog posted:

I like the way that looks and it could be fairly easily implemented into my game. I'd have to pick up some cubes at GenCon for testing, but I doubt they'd be expensive. The chits I could also see working, but I'd need to decide which size tokens to use (I have plenty to choose from), and I think they'd work better if they were thick enough that a person could tell at a glance how many were on the stack. I'm not crazy about the dice, if only because there're enough being used for combat already and I want to take another pass at that system to reduce the number of dice.

The cubes might actually be expensive at GenCon... but on Amazon they are around 13 dollars for a pack of 500 -- but you could probably find them for cheaper.

Centimeter cubes link

They also have 250 the translucent chit/markers that I was talking about for like $5.

Transparent counters

I have used both of these frequently in various games prototypes.

DirkGently fucked around with this message at 02:30 on Aug 8, 2013

DirkGently
Jan 14, 2008

Solkanar512 posted:


I've read enough of this thread (and the related game business thread) to know that I'd be crazy to think of this as a great way to make money, I'm looking at this from a "just for fun" type of thing. What I'm curious about is how are these sorts of things made, printed and cut out? What sorts of equipment are needed to print on plastic about as thick as a credit card and able to punch pieces such that they remain in the card until actually popped out? Is it just a bunch of custom dies and presses? Some crazy job outsourced via Ali Baba?

Thanks in advance, I've been trying to find this out for the longest time!

Since I don't know anything about manufacturing, some Googling revealed a thread on boardgamegeek, here, where they discuss it...

Highlights:
  • Wizards of the Coast claimed to own a patent on this basic concept (that of the 'constructible strategy game') and, for a while, was fighting it out with WizKids starting in 2007-- although so long as you are not trying to market it as a 'collectible' game though I can't imagine they would care (warning: I am not a lawyer).
  • There is some disagreement on whether or not it was a laser cutter (which would be perfect for polystyrene but would set cardboard on fire) or custom dies... apparently WizKids used custom dies.
  • Someone who previously explored making a 'fan made' version of Pirates of the Spanish Main came up with a figure of around 20K for the print run -- this and what the fans hashed out about many of the technical details can be found here

But... if you really cared, you should definitely talk to some of the people that produce those 3d jigsaw puzzle figures on AliBaba. It is possible that there are some overseas manufacturers who could adapt their process without as much of an overhead (especially if cardboard is okay)... but they will probably not be interested in smallish print runs (like I assume you want to d0).

DirkGently fucked around with this message at 03:09 on Aug 8, 2013

Solkanar512
Dec 28, 2006

by the sex ghost

DirkGently posted:

Since I don't know anything about manufacturing, some Googling revealed a thread on boardgamegeek, here, where they discuss it...

Highlights:
  • Wizards of the Coast claimed to own a patent on this basic concept (that of the 'constructible strategy game') and, for a while, was fighting it out with WizKids starting in 2007-- although so long as you are not trying to market it as a 'collectible' game though I can't imagine they would care (warning: I am not a lawyer).
  • There is some disagreement on whether or not it was a laser cutter (which would be perfect for polystyrene but would set cardboard on fire) or custom dies... apparently WizKids used custom dies.
  • Someone who previously explored making a 'fan made' version of Pirates of the Spanish Main came up with a figure of around 20K for the print run -- this and what the fans hashed out about many of the technical details can be found here

But... if you really cared, you should definitely talk to some of the people that produce those 3d jigsaw puzzle figures on AliBaba. It is possible that there are some overseas manufacturers who could adapt their process without as much of an overhead (especially if cardboard is okay)... but they will probably not be interested in smallish print runs (like I assume you want to d0).

This is great, thanks! Searching Ali Baba for "3d Puzzle Card" gives me pretty much what I'm looking for though drat it's fairly expensive.

Paper Mac
Mar 2, 2007

lives in a paper shack

DirkGently posted:

Oh yeah, the drawing is something that I personally banged out -- definitely not from Eclipse. I was trying to adapt the general principles I remembered from the Eclipse board (how they deal with resources/citizens) to illustrate a slightly more sophisticated slider system (like he mentioned). Although on further reflection, Eclipse actually uses the removed cubes to mark things elsewhere which makes it much more elegant.

Heh, it looked so polished that I assumed it was from a published rulebook.

Nemesis Of Moles
Jul 25, 2007

I'm going to Gencon this year thanks to a really awesome donation from a friend of mine. Any tips on how to get myself out there while I'm at the con? How should I go about trying to show off my games? I have two prototypes ready to show off.

jmzero
Jul 24, 2007

I'm working on a game. Character cards need two stats:

1. Their effectiveness in individual-combat/adventuring/surprise-fight type situations
2. Their effectiveness in a war/pitched-battle/big-group-fight type situations

Anyway, I need to refer to these stats often in other text, but I can't think of a good name to differentiate them. The exact theming of these stats is flexible - basically you'll accumulate played characters and initially their value (which will be hidden, unless "things happen", long story) will be based on stat 1.. until you hit the maximum count at which point all the cards are revealed and their value is based on stat 2.

I can't think of any words that say what I want here clearly and concisely. Any ideas?

VVV: Thanks for the suggestions!

VVVV: Thanks for all the continued suggestions. I'm currently leaning towards something like "Strength"/"Leadership". I prefer some of the suggestions below, but the wording ends up sounding goofy if they aren't clearly descriptive of the character. Or I may scrap the bloody mechanic, because it's not playing out well in testing so far.

jmzero fucked around with this message at 17:16 on Aug 15, 2013

modig
Aug 20, 2002

jmzero posted:

I'm working on a game. Character cards need two stats:

1. Their effectiveness in individual-combat/adventuring/surprise-fight type situations
2. Their effectiveness in a war/pitched-battle/big-group-fight type situations

Anyway, I need to refer to these stats often in other text, but I can't think of a good name to differentiate them. The exact theming of these stats is flexible - basically you'll accumulate played characters and initially their value (which will be hidden, unless "things happen", long story) will be based on stat 1.. until you hit the maximum count at which point all the cards are revealed and their value is based on stat 2.

I can't think of any words that say what I want here clearly and concisely. Any ideas?

Aptitude and Tenacity. Skills and Teamwork. Grit and Fire. Sneaking and Brawling. Talent and Might. Ability and Reserve. Daring and Guts. Skill and Nerve.

Broken Loose
Dec 25, 2002

PROGRAM
A > - - -
LR > > - -
LL > - - -
Who here lives in or near Central Florida that would like to help playtest a 3-6 player real-time coop? My normal group is very busy nowadays, and I'd be feature complete at this point if I had a larger amount of data.

jmzero posted:

I'm working on a game. Character cards need two stats:

1. Their effectiveness in individual-combat/adventuring/surprise-fight type situations
2. Their effectiveness in a war/pitched-battle/big-group-fight type situations

Anyway, I need to refer to these stats often in other text, but I can't think of a good name to differentiate them. The exact theming of these stats is flexible - basically you'll accumulate played characters and initially their value (which will be hidden, unless "things happen", long story) will be based on stat 1.. until you hit the maximum count at which point all the cards are revealed and their value is based on stat 2.

I can't think of any words that say what I want here clearly and concisely. Any ideas?

Duel/Battle
Challenge/Mastery
Fight/War

Broken Loose fucked around with this message at 05:37 on Aug 14, 2013

TalonDemonKing
May 4, 2011

Broken Loose posted:

Who here lives in or near Central Florida that would like to help playtest a 3-6 player real-time coop? My normal group is very busy nowadays, and I'd be feature complete at this point if I had a larger amount of data.

I'll be in Atlanta for Dragon con (Labor day weekend) and I could probably drag someone else into it; if that'd help.

Broken Loose
Dec 25, 2002

PROGRAM
A > - - -
LR > > - -
LL > - - -

TalonDemonKing posted:

I'll be in Atlanta for Dragon con (Labor day weekend) and I could probably drag someone else into it; if that'd help.

I'm 95% sure I won't be able to afford to go to Dragon*Con, but good gumption!

hito
Feb 13, 2012

Thank you, kids. By giving us this lift you're giving a lift to every law-abiding citizen in the world.

jmzero posted:

I'm working on a game. Character cards need two stats:

1. Their effectiveness in individual-combat/adventuring/surprise-fight type situations
2. Their effectiveness in a war/pitched-battle/big-group-fight type situations

Anyway, I need to refer to these stats often in other text, but I can't think of a good name to differentiate them. The exact theming of these stats is flexible - basically you'll accumulate played characters and initially their value (which will be hidden, unless "things happen", long story) will be based on stat 1.. until you hit the maximum count at which point all the cards are revealed and their value is based on stat 2.

I can't think of any words that say what I want here clearly and concisely. Any ideas?

VVV: Thanks for the suggestions!

Tactics and Strategy seems like such an elephant in the room that I assume there's a reason you veto'd it?

Individual and Team value is bland but gets the point across. You could just do whatever word you want (battle/fight/etc.) for the individual value and "Unity Value" for the team?

PlaneGuy
Mar 28, 2001

g e r m a n
e n g i n e e r i n g

Yam Slacker
It's not very badass sounding, but "together" and "alone" might work. Depends on the tone of the game.

U-DO Burger
Nov 12, 2007




Lone wolf and comradery?

TalonDemonKing
May 4, 2011

Presence & Charisma?

What if they're named differently depending on your role in the group/army?

Admin Understudy
Apr 17, 2002

Captain Pope-tastic
I created a game for BGG's 24 hour design contest with the theme Wild West.

Here's a link to the PDF

Fair warning, the artwork is terrible.

It was fun, I'll probably do this again occasionally. I'm happy enough with the design considering 24 hours is a ridiculous time frame. Obviously I really need some more time to balance it out.

Trynant
Oct 7, 2010

The final spice...your tears <3
I have a fun story:

I decided to take a break from one game I was working on to try for something simpler. Or, well, I thought it would be simpler; going from a grid-based minis game to a card game. Right?

Hah.

Here I am spending hours and hours writing individual card stats and sketching out game rules to try to make something that seems sensible, hopefully play(test)able. It's...

:negative:

I'm amused how how my attempt to think small backfired tremendously. At the same time, designing something like this is a huge joy as much as it as huge challenge.

Griping/musing aside, I definitely want to share this design after I hammer out some rough spots with the game. It's basically a card/tableau-building game that parodies videogame RPGs.

Nemesis Of Moles
Jul 25, 2007

Yeah, same thing happened with me way back when.

'Oh i'll make this simple robot fighting game, hit people, yaay :downs:'

Only game I've ever outright scrapped and thrown away. Could never get it to work.

PlaneGuy
Mar 28, 2001

g e r m a n
e n g i n e e r i n g

Yam Slacker

Trynant posted:

I have a fun story:

I decided to take a break from one game I was working on to try for something simpler. Or, well, I thought it would be simpler; going from a grid-based minis game to a card game. Right?

Hah.

Here I am spending hours and hours writing individual card stats and sketching out game rules to try to make something that seems sensible, hopefully play(test)able. It's...

:negative:

I'm amused how how my attempt to think small backfired tremendously. At the same time, designing something like this is a huge joy as much as it as huge challenge.

Griping/musing aside, I definitely want to share this design after I hammer out some rough spots with the game. It's basically a card/tableau-building game that parodies videogame RPGs.

Did you read that "secret history of dominion" post? Essentially Dominion started when he got tired of statting all the cards and just played with multiples of the ten he had at the time. Maybe just stop and try the mechanics with what you have and tweak from there.

girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?
I'm currently back to the drawing board with Dig Too Deep, my Dwarf Game, and I think I've got something.

The best way I can describe what I have right now is "Space Cadets Jr." Or, alternatively, "Escape in reverse". (Details later.) One thing that's always bothered me about hectic co-op games is that there's no curve. No way to give yourself more breathing room, make allowances to ease in New players, or chop down the margin for when you're feeling masochistic.

So, I've put down three Mission Statements:
1. Make a time-based, tactile co-op game.
2. Solid mechanics. No copping out by Ameritrashing it. Game should feel logical and simple when untimed.
3. SCALED DIFFICULTY. Preferably by player number AND skill, rather than just one or the other.

Thoughts?

Sarx
May 27, 2007

The Marksman
At Gen Con I got to be a judge for Cards Against Humanity's Tabletop Deathmatch competition, where I was brought on to provide the perspective of a retailer and it really re-inspired me to get my designs to completion, so hopefully I will be an active participant in this thread from here on out.

I am currently working on a worker placement/dungeon crawl game and I was wondering if anybody had any thoughts about what the sweet spot for a maximum number of workers was?

silvergoose
Mar 18, 2006

IT IS SAID THE TEARS OF THE BWEENIX CAN HEAL ALL WOUNDS




Sarx posted:

At Gen Con I got to be a judge for Cards Against Humanity's Tabletop Deathmatch competition, where I was brought on to provide the perspective of a retailer and it really re-inspired me to get my designs to completion, so hopefully I will be an active participant in this thread from here on out.

I am currently working on a worker placement/dungeon crawl game and I was wondering if anybody had any thoughts about what the sweet spot for a maximum number of workers was?

Most games seem to have 3-6, often starting at 3 and going up as you get more.

girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?
Six is generally the maximum you'll see, yes.

girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?
Apologies for double post, But I finally have some almost solid ideas about Dwarfgame.

There are a certain number of roles, like Space Cadets, but unlike SC, you are neither required nor expected to stick to just one, especially in games with fewer players. If you wanna just mine and mine all game, go for it, but it's by no means necessary.

The roles I've worked out so far:
Mining - Plays like Yahtzee, shamelessly stealing Escape's locking dice mechanic. Each 'expedition', a miner chooses five of the available Mine Dice. They have sides with different faces in different numbers, but each has at least one Balrog legally distinct monster entity face. You can only reroll a number of these equal to the military strength of your expedition force. By default, each mining dwarf has 1, and upgrades (Mithril Pick, +3 strength, etc.) or guards can be bought and assigned.

Once the miner either chooses to or cannot roll any more, the yahtzee 'hand' says what was gained. Think it can be a choice, like "one silver, three copper, Ralbog", you could get either one silver or two copper.

Rolling five Balrogs would be... bad. :unsmigghh: My idea right now is that you straight up lose access to that mine. You seal it forever so that you don't get Moria'd. (Or, muster absurd military might, and drive it back to the shadows.)

Other roles I have fledgling ideas for: Builder (make the shaped tiles fit), hunter/woodcutter (Concentration?), blacksmith/carpenter (something with building or stacking or...????) trader (something with taking tiles out of a bag? I dunno.), general (fightin' the goblins and thieves trying to raid the halls)... don't wanna make too many, but there should be more tasks needed than people to do them.

girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 07:30 on Sep 1, 2013

Sarx
May 27, 2007

The Marksman

The Leper Colon V posted:

Apologies for double post, But I finally have some almost solid ideas about Dwarfgame.

There are a certain number of roles, like Space Cadets, but unlike SC, you are neither required nor expected to stick to just one, especially in games with fewer players. If you wanna just mine and mine all game, go for it, but it's by no means necessary.

The roles I've worked out so far:
Mining - Plays like Yahtzee, shamelessly stealing Escape's locking dice mechanic. Each 'expedition', a miner chooses five of the available Mine Dice. They have sides with different faces in different numbers, but each has at least one Balrog legally distinct monster entity face. You can only reroll a number of these equal to the military strength of your expedition force. By default, each mining dwarf has 1, and upgrades (Mithril Pick, +3 strength, etc.) or guards can be bought and assigned.

Once the miner either chooses to or cannot roll any more, the yahtzee 'hand' says what was gained. Think it can be a choice, like "one silver, three copper, Ralbog", you could get either one silver or two copper.

Rolling five Balrogs would be... bad. :unsmigghh: My idea right now is that you straight up lose access to that mine. You seal it forever so that you don't get Moria'd. (Or, muster absurd military might, and drive it back to the shadows.)

Other roles I have fledgling ideas for: Builder (make the shaped tiles fit), hunter/woodcutter (Concentration?), blacksmith/carpenter (something with building or stacking or...????) trader (something with taking tiles out of a bag? I dunno.), general (fightin' the goblins and thieves trying to raid the halls)... don't wanna make too many, but there should be more tasks needed than people to do them.

The downside of games like this is that they are difficult to teach and even more difficult if people can switch roles because everybody at the table will have to be paying attention as you teach each minigame rather than just their own. I listened to Geoff Engelstein talk about how he designed Space Cadets: Dice Duel because he wanted a game he could teach at cons easily since Space Cadets is hard to teach a group of people.

girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?

Sarx posted:

The downside of games like this is that they are difficult to teach and even more difficult if people can switch roles because everybody at the table will have to be paying attention as you teach each minigame rather than just their own. I listened to Geoff Engelstein talk about how he designed Space Cadets: Dice Duel because he wanted a game he could teach at cons easily since Space Cadets is hard to teach a group of people.
Mmm. Ideally, I want each minigame to have to involve as little teaching as possible. "Remember X? Well, do that." X being Yahtzee, or Concentration, or some other game that a small child can learn. The difficulty from them will be multitasking under time constraints.

xopods
Oct 26, 2010

Solkanar512 posted:

This is great, thanks! Searching Ali Baba for "3d Puzzle Card" gives me pretty much what I'm looking for though drat it's fairly expensive.

Die-cutting is similar to injection moulding in that there's a high setup cost. This is why it's always the big companies that come out with games with tons of little plastic figures and tokens cut into irregular, custom shapes, while smaller publishers and indies tend to use wooden cubes and standard sizes and shapes of cards and tokens. If you're printing tens or hundreds of thousands of copies, the one-shot costs for making dies or moulds are not a big deal, whereas when you're doing a run of 2500 or 5000, they might be comparable to your overall printing costs, thus doubling the cost of the game.

xopods
Oct 26, 2010

re: Dwarf game, I love the theme and the idea of scaled difficulty, but yeah, maybe don't go for the "seventeen different minigames" approach. Much better would be a few core mechanics that apply for all the tasks and then variations on that foundation for each task. Otherwise, people will tend to get locked into a single task on their early games because it'll be all they remember how to do, and they can't stop and ask others for clarification on the details of the others because of the realtime element.

xopods
Oct 26, 2010

I'm really glad to see this thread becoming active again. I was checking in for a while but mostly too busy being a dad to keep the ball rolling, and it seemed like it was dying out, so it was nice to check in now and find that I missed a page and a half of posts.

Design-wise things have been pretty slow for me, both because of the kid and because my publisher seems a bit overwhelmed with what he's got on his plate now and isn't interested in seeing new stuff until we've actually reached production with the games we've already signed on. The good news is that Sultans of Karaya is doing really well internationally. The Russian version is out, the German and Baltic States versions should be coming soon, and I just got a sneak peek at the artwork for the Korean version (rethemed as a Romance of Three Kingdoms game), which looks awesome.

Because Sultans is doing so well and because I've got time since it'll be a while before anything else I design has a chance of being published (unless I start chasing other publishers, which I don't have time for now), I'm thinking I'll do a thematic sequel to Sultans but with deeper and more strategic mechanics. Since the rule booklet for Sultans states that Karaya is an archipelago of tiny little sultanates, my idea is to do Captains of Karaya, where each player pilots a vessel traveling between the islands picking up and dropping off sultans, assassins, guards and so forth.

I've toyed with a few different ways of doing it, but I'm thinking it'll be a kind of cross between worker placement and area control, with hidden information. You've got a circular track of islands, each of which has four slots, with random character cards placed in them face down. Each player starts at a different end of the board and has two face-down passenger cards, also random. You move around the track in some way TBD, and whichever island you land on, you get to peek at two of the four cards, then either place your marker on one of them (not necessarily one you peeked at) or exchange one of your passengers for one of the people on the island and place your marker on the passenger you just dropped off.

When all four cards at a given island have markers placed on them, you flip them all over and resolve those four actions in order (which slot you're in matters, not just which card you played on), resulting in the island being awarded to either Rebels or Loyalists (this mechanism again TBD, and the biggest hole in the design right now), and everyone who participated will move one or more spaces in the appropriate direction on the allegiance track.

Once an island is resolved, it's skipped over in further movement. The eventual winner is the player who is furthest from neutral (i.e. who most consistently helped the same side in all islands they participated in). But the wry twist is that one of the characters (probably the Vizier) will be an action that allows you to reverse your alignment while keeping its value the same... i.e. if you're a trusted Loyalist, you can play on the Vizier on an island that you know is going Rebel, thereby switching teams and scoring a bunch of Rebel points. You can even switch back later with a second Vizier. But since islands are only resolved when the fourth spot is taken, you might not know exactly when your treachery is going to be revealed, and you may end up having your alignment reversed before you were ready...

For movement around the track I'm thinking maybe of having a role-drafting mechanic on top of all this, where roles let you do things like have extra peeks, reverse your direction of travel around the track or exchange passengers with someone if you end up in the same space as them, but with each role also having a distance on it, so you have to balance landing on the island you want with getting the power you want.

Thoughts?

xopods fucked around with this message at 01:12 on Sep 4, 2013

girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?
It sounds like it will end up feeling kind of like Pirates!, as a board game. That would be amazing.

Re: Re: Dwarf Game: Thank you. That was the push I needed to discard the 'all these mini games' idea. Instead, I'm going to go with the one I'm most liking, and that best fits the theme. Press-your-luck Yahtzee.

Miners want to dig up valuable gems but don't want to wake up a horrific monster. Traders want to walk away with a lot of stuff for little money, but the Dwarven Bazaar is a dangerous place full of pickpockets and counterfeits. Architects want to make structures, but their construction workers are all perpetually smashed. Generals want to train an accident-prone band of alcoholic misfits into a proper fighting force. (Expansion ideas: Alchemists want to make useful one-shot effects without blowing up their labs. Beastmasters want to tame and train wild animals into killing machines, without ending up nicknamed 'Stumpy'.)

Already, the 'comedy of errors' tone so prevalent in early Dwarf Fortress is showing through. It's more elegant, easier to teach and learn, holds the theme better... and I never would have thought of it without the push from the thread.

girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 07:29 on Sep 4, 2013

Nemesis Of Moles
Jul 25, 2007

Glad to see you back Xopods!

So I did Gencon. It was a rollercoaster of frustration, exaltation and then more frustration. Got to meet face to face with a lot of publishers, managed to demo one of my games but missed out on a lot of designer heavy events which I'm annoyed at. Still, lot of new email addresses for the Sandy Pug New Game Mailing List.

Quick aside here - Compared to every other industry, damned if our publishing model isn't great.

I highly recommend hanging out at conventions if you have games ready to show off. Its probably the best way to actually get in touch with people.

That said, no closer to publishing any of my games yet, though one company wants a prototype sent in. In the same email the chief designer also said that he wasn't sure if he was really into it though, so who knows.

My latest game has gone through hell and back, and is, what I think, close to show-off-to-publishers time. I've also been working on a RPG just to keep myself fresh.

My newest game is Arena Shooter. I'm pretty happy with it, but I'm sure there's more to improve upon. Been playtesting a while now though and I think it could do with one or two more tests, then its time to show it off, here's the rules PDF if anyone wants to have a gander - https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/68455681/Arena%20ShooterV4.pdf

xopods
Oct 26, 2010

I feel like to capture the feeling of an arena shooter, you need simultaneous moves or at least pre-committed moves with some kind of hidden information. Something like Roborally, but maybe with some limited ability to mess around with your sequence of actions as things unfold... e.g. maybe you have seven cards and you have to put down five in a fixed sequence, keeping two in your hand in reserve, then people take turns flipping one at a time and taking the action. The two in your hand can be played any time you like in the sequence. So you could lock in a move sequence but keep two attack cards in your hand so you can decide when to shoot, or else incorporate the attacks in the sequence, but keep e.g. a speed boost and a duck card in your hand to respond to threats as they occur, or lock in your attacks and defenses, but keep movement cards in reserve so you can control where you end up, etc.

------

Back to Captains of Karaya, I think I have a better idea of how the characters are going to work. Rather than every character having an action, I think that there will be two main stats: Political Value and Might. Loyalists have both (but those with more PV have less Might and vice versa). Rebels only have Might, but generally more of it. Neutrals only have Political Value, but also have special actions that they perform. Total Might on an island determines the winner, but Political Value determines how much those on the winning side move on the alignment track (neutrals are always "on the winning side" for better or worse). So Rebels have an easier time winning islands, but if there aren't any Loyalists or Neutrals there, it isn't worth anything. Meanwhile, placing Loyalists gives you control over how much an island is worth, but of course you can only place one at a time and either have to work with others or find a way to revisit the same island to make sure you aren't dropping your Sultan into a den of Assassins. And placing neutrals lets you use special actions, but you're committing Political Value on an island whose outcome you have no immediate control over, so you may find yourself getting dragged in the wrong direction on the alignment track as a result.

xopods
Oct 26, 2010

I spent the morning building a simple Monte Carlo* simulation for the core mechanic of awarding islands and scoring alignment points for Captains of Karaya. Especially for hidden information games where it's hard to test by yourself, I highly recommend this if you know a bit of programming, before you make a physical prototype. Depending on the game, simulating the full game might be more complicated than is worth your while, but if a given mechanic can be separated out from the rest of the design using certain assumptions, it's a really great way to get an idea of what the implications are going to be.

In my case I just assumed that characters are placed completely randomly on islands and that players place their markers randomly on them, then looked to see what the outcome was. Mostly, I wanted to check how easy or hard it is to score points with the Rebels compared to the Loyalists (as I said above, the advantage of the Loyalists is that they have both power to control an island and influence on what it's worth, whereas the Rebels only have power - but more of it - and are reliant on there being some Loyalists on the island for it to be worth anything. Turns out that with random placement, using the character stats and distribution I'd arrived at intuitively, the Loyalists were outscoring the Rebels by a factor of 2.

So, by tweaking and repeating the simulation a few times I was able to bring it down to a 9/7 ratio which I think should be fine as I think with non-random placement there are factors that will make the Rebels more desirable strategically, thus bringing everything into balance.

Glad I tried this before making a physical prototype... probably saved myself a lot of iteration and frustration (and cardstock).

------

*: For those who haven't heard the term, the Monte Carlo approach to solving problems means using a computer to generate random input, seeing the outcome, and averaging this over a large number of iterations, rather than trying to work out probabilities exactly. A lot of game AIs use this approach, often combined with other sorts of heuristics... for each possible move (or sequence of moves which you can read out using heuristics), assume that both players play randomly thereafter and see what percentage of games are won by each player on a large sample, then pick the move which leads to your highest chance of winning under random play, under the assumption that this is also likely the move that wins for you under perfect play. Of course, this assumption isn't always true, but it's true often enough that Monte Carlo AIs can do reasonably well at a lot of games, especially ones where the game itself contains a certain amount of randomness, making precise long-term planning difficult anyway.

girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?

xopods posted:

:words: about Pirates!-game.
How long have you been working on games? You seem to have a lot of experience.

Some more brainstorming progress on Dwarfgame. I have a name, for starters. Dig Too Deep!: The Tragicomedy of the Dwarves of Little Bigrock. I like how it sounds, and it catches the tone. Especially with the title being an imperative. :getin:

So, rough ideas for all the roles.
*Miner: Is trying to get different colored gems which are used for different things by the other players. Rolls three times, but can't reroll BADFACE except with an expendable and limited resource. At the end of the third role, chooses which color to harvest. One face = One gem, but it takes three matching faces to get two gems, and five to get three. So, if you want a decent number of anything, you need to go for those matches. One face of each non-bad type gets you two gems of every color. Five BADFACE means Balrog.
*Trader: Similar to Miner, wants goods, but will only get one item, and needs a three-of-a-kind match to get one thing. Five gets you two. BADFACES make the Trader reroll those dice, and one non-BADFACE die. One face of each non-bad type gets you two items of your choice, as though you'd gotten three-of-a-kind on both. Five BADFACE dice means you're kicked out immediately, and (need better matches next time because the traders don't like you?).
*Builder: Each building needs a small set of different 'hands' to get made, though you can/need only one 'hand' per set of three. Once you have all the hands, the building is complete. More complex buildings take more complex hands, in greater numbers. BADFACE is simply blank in this case, but five BADFACE collapse the building in progress entirely.

No ideas for general or any other jobs yet.

xopods
Oct 26, 2010

The Leper Colon V posted:

How long have you been working on games? You seem to have a lot of experience.

The short answer: About 4-5 years professionally, plus a few years pseudoprofessionally before that (i.e. with the intention of trying to self-publish or get published, but not succeeding at that time). As an amateur, basically my whole life.

The long answer: As a teenager in the 1990s I was really into RPGs, especially the worldbuilding aspect, and inventing house rules/variants/expansions for existing board games. In university, I designed a few board/card games that weren't very good and wrote sections for a few commercial RPG sourcebooks (getting paid 3 cents per word woo woo! :tenbux:).

After university, I went to Korea for a couple of years to teach English, and designed some games for my students while I was there. Then I came back to Canada, studied graphic design and went to work doing color correction at a photo lab... during that time (around 2005), I tried to improve on my family's favorite traditional card game, Oh Hell, and ended up designing a whole new game with a non-standard deck, called Bloody Hell, which years later would end up being my first published game, with the title changed to Insidious Sevens.

I quit that job in 2006 to try to devote myself full time to two designs I had that I thought were really good. I was intending to self-publish, not realizing how terrible an idea that is at that time, or what would have been involved. Fortunately, I talked to an actual game publisher (David Capon of FoxMind, here in Montreal) and he convinced me not to flush my life savings down that particular toilet. Instead, I showed him my games and although he wasn't interested in publishing them (not his company's style), he started giving me graphic design and writing work.

Eventually, one of his employees decided to quit and start his own publishing house. He'd liked Bloody Hell/Insidious Sevens when I'd shown it to them and had tried unsuccessfully to get David to publish it, so his first act on his own was to call me up and ask if I was still looking for a publisher. It achieved some (very) modest success, not selling a lot but getting into the GAMES 100, and we've been working together ever since.

-----------

quote:

Some more brainstorming progress on Dwarfgame. I have a name, for starters. Dig Too Deep!: The Tragicomedy of the Dwarves of Little Bigrock. I like how it sounds, and it catches the tone. Especially with the title being an imperative. :getin:

Have you played/heard of this? http://www.lunargiantstudios.com/games/featured/delve-deeper

Your title and theme are similar, the gameplay's not at all the same.

quote:

So, rough ideas for all the roles.
*Miner: Is trying to get different colored gems which are used for different things by the other players. Rolls three times, but can't reroll BADFACE except with an expendable and limited resource. At the end of the third role, chooses which color to harvest. One face = One gem, but it takes three matching faces to get two gems, and five to get three. So, if you want a decent number of anything, you need to go for those matches. One face of each non-bad type gets you two gems of every color. Five BADFACE means Balrog.
*Trader: Similar to Miner, wants goods, but will only get one item, and needs a three-of-a-kind match to get one thing. Five gets you two. BADFACES make the Trader reroll those dice, and one non-BADFACE die. One face of each non-bad type gets you two items of your choice, as though you'd gotten three-of-a-kind on both. Five BADFACE dice means you're kicked out immediately, and (need better matches next time because the traders don't like you?).
*Builder: Each building needs a small set of different 'hands' to get made, though you can/need only one 'hand' per set of three. Once you have all the hands, the building is complete. More complex buildings take more complex hands, in greater numbers. BADFACE is simply blank in this case, but five BADFACE collapse the building in progress entirely.

No ideas for general or any other jobs yet.

Are you planning on having separate dice for each role (a bad idea, I'd say) or just having a set of dice with generic faces, like 5 different colors + a skull?

girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?

xopods posted:

Are you planning on having separate dice for each role (a bad idea, I'd say) or just having a set of dice with generic faces, like 5 different colors + a skull?
I was, at first, but yeah, standardized dice would reduce production costs by a small fortune, wouldn't it? And it'd mean I could get away with using generic glass beads and cubes for components. (Yellow, red, green, blue, purple?) Anything else about the game stand out?

(Also, I realized that, with the Miner probably rolling the most rapidly, giving them the harshest bad-Yahtzee penalty was a BAD idea. At this point, I'm thinking maybe it just steals all the unused gems the Miner hasn't given to anyone else yet, with a rule that you have to hand other players cubes/beads/etc, no just shoving them in their direction. The puts the miner in the dilemma of "slow down mining to make sure you always give everyone stuff" or "actually mine at a reasonable rate without slowing down the whole team".)

quote:

Have you played/heard of this? http://www.lunargiantstudios.com/ga...ed/delve-deeper

Your title and theme are similar, the gameplay's not at all the same.
I hadn't. Do you think I should change the game's title? I'm sticking with the subtitle, though.

quote:

The short answer
Cool. Explains how you know so much about this.

girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 13:51 on Sep 7, 2013

xopods
Oct 26, 2010

The Leper Colon V posted:

I was, at first, but yeah, standardized dice would reduce production costs by a small fortune, wouldn't it? And it'd mean I could get away with using generic glass beads and cubes for components. (Yellow, red, green, blue, purple?) Anything else about the game stand out?

I don't know that much about getting custom dice made, but I suspect most if not all ways of manufacturing them would be one of those things with a high setup cost and then low per-unit cost. So yeah, the production costs aren't going to depend as much on how many dice you have as how many different types you have. Making them all the same will make the game a lot cheaper to produce and thus increase your odds of finding a publisher.

It also avoids a foreseeable gameplay problem, which is that if you have custom dice for each task, then there's going to be a lot of passing dice around the table and only one person can be doing a given task at once, etc. Whereas if the dice are the same for each task (and you're just using a pawn on the board or whatever to indicate what task you're doing) then everyone can just have their own set of dice and you don't have people yelling "hey, who's got the mining dice?" or whatever.

quote:

I hadn't. Do you think I should change the game's title? I'm sticking with the subtitle, though.

I don't think you have to change it. It's just what it made me think of so I figured I should bring it to your attention. (Also, don't worry too much about a title anyway... if you spend a lot of time coming up with a name you really like, then you'll be pissed if a publisher wants to change it. Most of my games end up getting their name changed and often their theme somewhat tweaked before release. Cash or Crash started as an abstract called Tinkzo, Sultans of Karaya was originally more generically European-medieval themed, etc.)

The Leper Colon V posted:

Anything else about the game stand out?

It's hard to say much without seeing how the roles are going to interrelate. I think three is a good number to start with and now you can try to figure out what the overall objective of the game is and how the roles work together. You'll probably find holes in the gameplay, at which point you can introduce new roles to fill those in. Whereas if you create too many roles without knowing the big picture, you'll probably have trouble getting them all to fit together.

xopods fucked around with this message at 14:25 on Sep 7, 2013

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girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?

xopods posted:

It's hard to say much without seeing how the roles are going to interrelate. I think three is a good number to start with and now you can try to figure out what the overall objective of the game is and how the roles work together. You'll probably find holes in the gameplay, at which point you can introduce new roles to fill those in. Whereas if you create too many roles without knowing the big picture, you'll probably have trouble getting them all to fit together.
Retroactively recognizing that as the reason I abandoned the "everyone plays a different mini-game" idea.

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