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jackHistory
Two mornings last week, I designed a board game. It was by far the quickest I ever have, having got something to the point of being plausibly playable. After a few iterations, I think I've reached a local maximum though -- it's currently "ok", but is a bit stale, but any improvements will have to come from fairly major changes that may or may not work.
Major thanks to Liv, Ghoti and Sebi for playtesting and suggestions!
The basic idea was dominion with dice, which is an idea that has cropped up in a few games. My current implementation is:
* A header strip lists all numbers from 2 to 12. Currently double 1 and double 6 are combined together, and that row together with 3 and 11 give a bonus to offset the lesser chance
* Ten long thing action cards are dealt out along the header strip, one for each row. These are things like "take 2 coin" or "take 2 VP", but also things like "add 1 to any of your dice". Currently, I designed exactly 10, but the idea is that like dominion you have more than that and deal out 10 for one game. One big advantage is that you only need ONE card of each type, so it's easier to store and deal, and there's no shuffling.
* A turn is "roll 4 dice, combine in two pairs, do the action square from 2-12 corresponding to the sum of the two dice if you have a meeple on it", and then "pay to place a meeple, the cost is written on the card"
* If you do no action at all, you get 1 coin (instead of starting money)
* You win at 20 VP.
What works
What I like is that it's compact. If you can find meeples, coins, and VP tokens on site, you can bring _just_ a small pile of strips of card. Even with meeples (animeeples borrowed from agricola) and coins and VP (borrowed from Steamworks) it's the size of a small handbag game, about the size of two decks of cards with a bit of padding.
Also, it's quick. Each decision to place a meeple feels fairly easy, all of the squares are "good" so you can safely say "that sounds cool", without worrying about being backed into a corner where the action you want to take is counterproductive, and a game can be 10-20 minutes, maybe less if you aren't playtesting :)
And each game is a bit different, depending which actions fall in the 6,7,8 sweet spot and which end up adjacent to each other, which is good.
Everyone likes the "roll 4 dice, choose two pairs" mechanic.
What's in progress
I altered a few actions to reduce the maximum money/VP produces, and make the max money/VP actions remove a meeple when you use it (others you just build up). And added a "gain money this turn only" action. All gained give the feeling of "building up" to the more expensive actions like in dominion, where pure "saving" isn't the only sensible strategy.
I've removed a lot of small ambiguities after playtesters drew them to my attention, but even though it's less complicated than some games, there are still unexpected interactions (which are good, because that's interesting, but bad, because it's often confusing).
It probably needs a catch-up mechanic, like victory cards adding drag to the deck. But I'll think about that after I've resolved other issues.
Flavour
I haven't decided a flavour at all! The flavour is about building up... something, probably but not necessarily by placing workers. Ideally a bit interesting, funny, or cute, but not over the top. I tried Dwarf Mine, Dwarf University, Farmyard theme (which isn't very appropriate, but I just love the animeeples) and Robin Hood.
I was trying to think of themes where there's a flavour for "gain VP" actions separately from "gain money", hence Robin Hood -- some actions steal money, some do both (waylaying tax collectors) but others are obviously victory, eg. "free prisoners", "give to the needy".
What next
The major problem now is that for one game, a couple of actions are usually best, and then it's a race to place as many meeples as possible on them. People don't always agree which is best, which is good, but there's nothing stopping you switching to them if your opponent seems to have a better idea that you.
I think what's needed is more synergy between different actions, like in Dominion where you buy lots of "+buy" cards and gardens. In dominion, this is usually because there are "hidden" resources not represented by tokens, ie. cards in hard, cards in deck, actions this turn, buys this turn, etc, in addition to the obvious "money in hand" and "action cards in hand", and you can invest in one if there are cards that reward it.
One way is by introducing resources, either explicit resources tracked with another token (eg. allowing you to spend VP, adding different colours of money, having more action squares which are more of a resource than an action.) But it's hard to think what won't increase the complexity a lot.
Another is by increasing the synergy between two actions in the same turn, have more "do the other action twice" type actions so it's more worth investing in the two actions that go together best rather than the actions that are best in isolation. With 4 dice and a few "+/-1" actions, you can quite quickly get any one action, but it takes ages to get to an exact two-action combination.
I could combat that by having more smoothing, eg. actions which allow you to do another action in place of that action, or with tokens you can save that can alter the dice. Or roll more dice at once. Or have separate simple actions for each dice individually and then more powerful actions for each pair. But I'm not sure what will work best.
Two mornings last week, I designed a board game. It was by far the quickest I ever have, having got something to the point of being plausibly playable. After a few iterations, I think I've reached a local maximum though -- it's currently "ok", but is a bit stale, but any improvements will have to come from fairly major changes that may or may not work.
Major thanks to Liv, Ghoti and Sebi for playtesting and suggestions!
The basic idea was dominion with dice, which is an idea that has cropped up in a few games. My current implementation is:
* A header strip lists all numbers from 2 to 12. Currently double 1 and double 6 are combined together, and that row together with 3 and 11 give a bonus to offset the lesser chance
* Ten long thing action cards are dealt out along the header strip, one for each row. These are things like "take 2 coin" or "take 2 VP", but also things like "add 1 to any of your dice". Currently, I designed exactly 10, but the idea is that like dominion you have more than that and deal out 10 for one game. One big advantage is that you only need ONE card of each type, so it's easier to store and deal, and there's no shuffling.
* A turn is "roll 4 dice, combine in two pairs, do the action square from 2-12 corresponding to the sum of the two dice if you have a meeple on it", and then "pay to place a meeple, the cost is written on the card"
* If you do no action at all, you get 1 coin (instead of starting money)
* You win at 20 VP.
What works
What I like is that it's compact. If you can find meeples, coins, and VP tokens on site, you can bring _just_ a small pile of strips of card. Even with meeples (animeeples borrowed from agricola) and coins and VP (borrowed from Steamworks) it's the size of a small handbag game, about the size of two decks of cards with a bit of padding.
Also, it's quick. Each decision to place a meeple feels fairly easy, all of the squares are "good" so you can safely say "that sounds cool", without worrying about being backed into a corner where the action you want to take is counterproductive, and a game can be 10-20 minutes, maybe less if you aren't playtesting :)
And each game is a bit different, depending which actions fall in the 6,7,8 sweet spot and which end up adjacent to each other, which is good.
Everyone likes the "roll 4 dice, choose two pairs" mechanic.
What's in progress
I altered a few actions to reduce the maximum money/VP produces, and make the max money/VP actions remove a meeple when you use it (others you just build up). And added a "gain money this turn only" action. All gained give the feeling of "building up" to the more expensive actions like in dominion, where pure "saving" isn't the only sensible strategy.
I've removed a lot of small ambiguities after playtesters drew them to my attention, but even though it's less complicated than some games, there are still unexpected interactions (which are good, because that's interesting, but bad, because it's often confusing).
It probably needs a catch-up mechanic, like victory cards adding drag to the deck. But I'll think about that after I've resolved other issues.
Flavour
I haven't decided a flavour at all! The flavour is about building up... something, probably but not necessarily by placing workers. Ideally a bit interesting, funny, or cute, but not over the top. I tried Dwarf Mine, Dwarf University, Farmyard theme (which isn't very appropriate, but I just love the animeeples) and Robin Hood.
I was trying to think of themes where there's a flavour for "gain VP" actions separately from "gain money", hence Robin Hood -- some actions steal money, some do both (waylaying tax collectors) but others are obviously victory, eg. "free prisoners", "give to the needy".
What next
The major problem now is that for one game, a couple of actions are usually best, and then it's a race to place as many meeples as possible on them. People don't always agree which is best, which is good, but there's nothing stopping you switching to them if your opponent seems to have a better idea that you.
I think what's needed is more synergy between different actions, like in Dominion where you buy lots of "+buy" cards and gardens. In dominion, this is usually because there are "hidden" resources not represented by tokens, ie. cards in hard, cards in deck, actions this turn, buys this turn, etc, in addition to the obvious "money in hand" and "action cards in hand", and you can invest in one if there are cards that reward it.
One way is by introducing resources, either explicit resources tracked with another token (eg. allowing you to spend VP, adding different colours of money, having more action squares which are more of a resource than an action.) But it's hard to think what won't increase the complexity a lot.
Another is by increasing the synergy between two actions in the same turn, have more "do the other action twice" type actions so it's more worth investing in the two actions that go together best rather than the actions that are best in isolation. With 4 dice and a few "+/-1" actions, you can quite quickly get any one action, but it takes ages to get to an exact two-action combination.
I could combat that by having more smoothing, eg. actions which allow you to do another action in place of that action, or with tokens you can save that can alter the dice. Or roll more dice at once. Or have separate simple actions for each dice individually and then more powerful actions for each pair. But I'm not sure what will work best.