Thursday, December 25, 2008












Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Holiday season playtesting and gaming



Stay tuned!

Friday, December 12, 2008

Winds of Fate: minor adjustments




Monday, December 01, 2008

Winds of Fate V3.0 - playtests and updates!





















Friday, November 28, 2008

BGG.con 2008 report

Last week I made my annual pilgrimage to Dallas to visit my friend Brian and to attend BGG.con - the annual open gaming convention put on by the guys who run the BoardGameGeek website.

BGG.con is my favorite convention for a number of reasons: the people, the new games (it's hot on the heels of Essen), the atmosphere, the timing... it's a lot of fun, I haven't missed one yet, and I don't plan to miss it in the future.

I wrote up my experience at this year's convention in a Geeklist. Feel free to peruse it if you like.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

A flurry of Cooperative games!

No fewer than 6 cooperative games came out recently, and I was anxious to try some of them to see what they're gimmick was, and to see how they tried to make a game where multiple players can (or better, have to) work in concert to win rather than the loudest, most experienced, or bossiest player playing while everyone else watches.

Space Alert has time pressure and hidden cards indicating what players have the possibility of doing, making it hard or impossible for one person to micromanage everyone's turn. That's a step in the right direction, though I'm not sure if Space Alert succeeds - I liked it at first (played it 6 times in a row, training through 1st mission), then later played it once and thought it was horribly boring.

Battlestar Galactica has the traitor mechanism from Shadows over Camelot, and it has it in spades. BSG isn't so much a cooperative game as a team game, maybe that should really be it's own category. In any event, it tries to keep 1 player from playing everyone's turn by stating up front that player could very well be working against you!

Ghost Stories felt like a step backwards in the development of the genre. It makes no attempt to fix what I believe is the biggest failing of most cooperative games (and perhaps, the entire genre) - it's solitaire.

It's not even multiplayer solitaire... one person can just play the game all by themselves. All weekend at BGG.con people were loving the game and talking about how hard it was, but I'm not sure that "hard" should correlate to "chances it's impossible to win, whether you know it or not." Pandemic suffers from that, some games you can't possibly win, but you don't know that until after you play.

So far the cooperative game that I think promotes teamwork the best is Pandemic. Space Alert with a crew that does a better job of communicating (as opposed to everyone shouting out what they can do, which I heard a lot this weekend) might do a better job, but so far I've not seen it. It's odd to say that Pandemic promotes teamwork when people can just turn their hands face up and one player can play the whole game... but in my experience if you don't turn your hand face up, you actually have to talk to your friends to formulate that good plan, and somehow that feels more like teamwork to me.

There are some more cooperative games that I didn't try, such as Red November, whose gimmick I heard was that any player can turn traitor at any time, but if you don't do it right then you lose. I didn't hear much good about Red November. I did play a prototype of a Pandemic expansion - that was pretty cool. There were new roles, some more similar to the old ones than others. Also they added Viral Epidemics - which make one color (at random) worse than the others. When an Epidemic is drawn, it indicates something bad that happens with the viral color. It serves to prioritize the colors differently because even if Yellow isn't as bad off as Black on the board, you have to count each Yellow outbreak twice (for example).

I'm convinced that a real cooperative game, a game in which players are doing they're own thing but are encouraged to cooperate, will require some hidden information that can't be known by all players. I think time pressure will help keep one player from playing for everyone else as well, but there has to be some ability to overlap my task with yours so I can help you if you need me to. Maybe with this flurry of cooperative games on the market I'll attempt to put my vision for that genre together. My chosen theme so far is the TV show 24, where players play CTU agents cooperating to thwart a terrorist plot. Players will be able to utilize Jack Bauer as an NPC, but they are all generic agents, and at a certain point in the game you can find out that you're actually a traitor. If that happens you'll need to bring the game to a close quickly, because if you wait too long, you may turn back into a non-traitor player! It seems to me that kind of thing happened all the time in the first season.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Rules for "Alternate" Winds of Fate

15 Destiny cards (5@ Safe/Death/Stranded)
50(?) Adventure cards (2 suits, Help/Hinder)
30 Crew tokens
1 Odysseus counter
1 Round counter
30 Player markers in 5 colors
supply of scoring chits
supply of Bet Chips
5 Turn Order tiles
8 Reward Tiles
9 Encounter Tiles
6 God Cards

Each player begins the game with:
3 Bet Chips
3 Destiny cards (Safe/Death/Stranded)
6(?) Adventure cards in hand

The board is set up as normal - 9 Encounter tiles distributed randomly. Odysseus marker begins at Troy. Starting crew depends on number of players:
3 players: 20 crew
4 players: 25 crew
5 players: 30 crew

Each round consists of an Encounter phase followed by an Adventure phase. In the Encounter phase, Odysseus and his crew travel from one Encounter tile to the next. The path taken (Calm vs Stormy) depends on the outcome of the previous Adventure - if Odysseus won the adventure, he takes the Calm path. If he lost the adventure, the stormy path is followed. The Encounter tile will indicate any effect it has, follow the instructions on the tile before proceeding to the Adventure phase. Reward Tiles are drawn (as many as there are players in the game) and displayed.

In the Adventure phase players play cards to aid Odysseus in the adventure or hinder him. At the end, the gods Athena and Poseidon weigh in and the Adventure is resolved. In player order, players take turns either playing an Adventure card face down in front of them, or passing. Once a player passes, they no longer participate in the Adventure. Once a player has played an Adventure card to either Help or Hinder Odysseus, all subsequent Adventure cards played during that Adventure must follow suit. When a player passes, they take the lowest turn order marker available such that the first player to pass will play last in the following round, and the last player to pass will play first.

After all players have passed, reveal the top God card and all played cards. Athena cards count toward Helping Odysseus, Poseidon cards count toward Hindering. If the total value of all Help cards meets or exceeds the total value of all Hinder cards, then Odysseus has won the adventure! Otherwise, he has lost the Adventure, and a number of crew is lost equal to the value of the God card (even if the God card pictures Athena).

After the adventure is resolved, players take the consolations listed on the turn order tiles and in turn order draft the Reward Tiles on display. These rewards indicate some number of cards or Victory Points, or the opportunity to take a new Bet chip, place a bet, or move a bet. After the rewards are taken, advance the Round counter and move Odysseus to the next Encounter tile along the appropriate path (Stormy/Calm) depending on the outcome of the last adventure.

Scoring in this version of the game is based on placing bets. There are 2 types of bets players will place, a Destiny bet (HOW the game will end - what Odysseus' fate will be: Safe return home, Death, Stranded at sea) and a Timeline bet (WHEN the game will end). The game ends when one of three things happens:
1. Odysseus arrives at Ithaca and survives the Adventure there
2. Odysseus loses all of his crew
3. Odysseus runs out of time (12 rounds)

At the beginning of the game, each player takes one of their Destiny cards indicating which of the 3 game end conditions they think will occur, and place it prominently in front of them face down. At certain points during the game (when passing in an Adventure without having played a card) the player can switch their Destiny card with one of the other 2. At the end of the game, the Destiny cards are revealed and a 10 point bonus is scored by all players who's Destiny card matches the actual game end condition.

When instructed to PLACE A BET, a player may take a Bet chip (assuming they have one) and place it on the Round track. They are betting that the game will end on that round. Additional chips are added to the bet from the supply - 1 for each round between the current round and the round the bet is made on. For example, if it is currently round 2, and you place a bet on round 6, 4 additional chips are placed on your bet chip. The player then places an ownership marker of their color on the stack to indicate who's bet it is. At the end of the game players are paid for their bets. Each stack is paid to it's owner, with a penalty for inaccuracy: players are penalized 1/3/6/10/15 chips for being off by 1/2/3/4/5 rounds in either direction. For example, our round 6 bet, made in round 2 has a total of 5 chips (the bet chip plus 4 additional chips). If the game ends in round 8, our payout is 5-3=2.

After all bets are paid out players score 2 points for each Bet Chip they have. This score is added to the victory points collected during the game and the 10 point bonus for the Destiny bet for a final score. The player with he most points, wins. In the case of a tie, the player with the earliest final turn order is the winner.

Alternate Winds of Fate structure

Randall McClain (Nando on BGDF) - the person who's original idea Winds of Fate was for a Game Design Showdown entry - has been thinking along other lines for this game. Here's what he feels is probably the best structure.

Like my basic skeleton, his idea still has episodes, resolved one at a time via card play as I've suggested (a la Beowulf or Taj Mahal), but instead of this new "invest in Odysseus' safe return" mechanism, Nando suggests players place bets on 2 things:

(1) A timeline - WHEN will the game end? How many more rounds?
(2) A result - HOW will the game end? Will Odysseus return safely home? Will he die trying? Or will he become stranded at sea?

Mechanics for this have been floating around in my mind, but basically they're to the effect of this: Players would begin the game with some limited supply of Betting chips - like the Coins I've been talking about perhaps. At discreet times during the game, players will be allowed to place these bets on the timeline, thereby betting the game will last a certain number of turns. The further away that point is from the time of the bet, the higher the maximum payout will be, and that payout will be reduced for inaccuracy. A nice way to calculate the payout is that you bet the game will last N more rounds, and the payout is = N-(1/round missed by). For example, if you be the game will last 8 more rounds, and it ends in 6, then you are off by 2. Your payout is 8-2=6.

In addition, players would place a side bet on HOW the game would end - Safe Return vs Death vs Stranded (I'm not really sure there needs to be a difference between Stranded and Death, but maybe 3 possibilities is better than 2). At the end of the game players would earn a bonus if they have bet correctly as to how the game ended.

Initially I thought the HOW bet would be a secret, and could change at certain times during the game (at a cost), and that the WHEN bet would be public info. However I quickly realized that your HOW bet might become obvious through your actions, while your WHEN bet would not, so the other way around would probably be more fun.

Then again, the mechanisms I have in mind for making these WHEN bets involve public info, so maybe everything could be in the open. Or - if there are 3 HOW results, maybe secret goals there is ok... "Is he aiding this adventure because he want's Odysseus to make it home, or because he wants to strand Odysseus at sea?"

I'll keep this in mind as an alternative 0 I'd like to try both versions and see which is more fun.

Monday, November 17, 2008

Another Winds of Fate epiphony

As I've mentioned, I've been trying to work on Odysseus: Winds of Fate recently. I haven't been as diligent as I'd hoped, but I did get a chance to discuss the game with Mike Nickoloff at RinCon the other week, and think about a couple of aspects. The current plan is to have a prototype to test at BGG.con this week - which gives me about a day and a half to get it ready.

I gave some thought to the player rewards for each adventure, and I'm (finally) making tokens for them. Here's the epiphany I had today though:

In Taj Mahal there is an additional reward for dropping from an auction without playing any cards. This makes sense, you're giving up any chance of gaining any points at all in order to sort of reload. Since my main mechanism for resolving adventures is similar, it stands to reason that there should also be some reward for dropping without playing any cards - a consolation for not having any say whatsoever on the outcome of the adventure, which contributes to the outcome of Odysseus' overall journey.

Originally I thought maybe drawing additional cards would be the obvious way to go. Then I realized that maybe that would be a good opportunity to allow additional opportunities to 'invest' in the game end! If a player drops early (without participating in the Adventure) then they get no say in the impact that adventure will have on Odysseus' "stock" (the value of a Safe Return). So it would be cool if that's the price you have to pay to make a (potentially lucrative) investment.

The cost of that investment (I'm going to talk about it like "buying a share" in Odysseus' safe return home) will depend on Odysseus' current position on the board. The board is a 3x3 array of Encounter tiles which Odysseus will traverse more or less from left to right. The left column will amount to a cost of 1 coin per share. In the middle column a share will cost 2 coins. In the rightmost column a share will cost 3 coins.

I like the sound of this!

Sunday, November 09, 2008

Recent gaming: Shadows over Camelot: Merlin's Company and Dominion

Shadows Over Camelot: Merlin's Company
My roommate won Merlin's Company in a drawing on BGG, so he bought Shadows Over Camelot in anticipation. For a long time the expansion never came, and when I asked him about it he said he tried to email Days of Wonder about it, but he wasn't sure if the email actually went or something, and that he didn't want to deal with it. "That's silly" I thought, so I emailed Days of Wonder on his behalf inquiring about the prize, and they said it had been returned in the mail back in August! While I don't know why they wouldn't have tried to contact Ben about this, I gave them the correct address and they said they'd resend it the next day - and what do you know, a few days later it arrived!

Friday I finally got a chance to try the game with the expansion, and with 8 people, 1 traitor in the mix for sure, probably 2. The group may not have been the best for that kind of experience, as one loyal player did some blatantly awful things like a false accusation, letting a fairly obvious traitor out of prison* and suggesting they also make a (false) accusation. If not for his behavior, I would have been convinced I knew the identity of the other traitor (and would have been correct), but he talked me out of it.

* In Merlin's Company, whenever a player tries to move to a quest he has to draw a Travel card which has some effect. Sometimes nothing happens, sometimes Merlin accompanies you on the quest (which is good in general, but if you liked where he was before then it can actually be a detriment to move him away from there)... but most of the time the travel card is a nuisance which makes you discard some cards, fight a siege engine, or simply lose your turn. Knowing the contents of the travel deck one can protect against it by carrying a Grail card and a pair of fight cards that they don't otherwise need (preferably 3's or better, so that you have a good chance vs that siege engine if need be) at all times, but that's a lot of work. If you don't prepare like that then you run the risk of losing your entire turn trying to move and failing. One of the cards is called CAPTURED! which not only ends your turn, but says that your turn is skipped until someone discards a special card as their Heroic action - so not only does the captured player lose their heroic action, but so does one other player, AND the knights lose a special white card, AND whatever quest the captured player was going to advance is delayed AND they have to try and move there again in the future!

I think what I'm saying is that I don't like the expansion much. The up-side is that you get Merlin, who hands out white cards to players for free, but the up side doesn't seem to me to be all that attractive compared to players simply having to lose their turns in a game where you only get to do 1 thing on your turn then wait a while for your next turn.

One good thing about that Captured! card is that if a player who you suspect is the traitor is captured, they not only have to skip their turn (unable to wreak havoc), but at the end of the game, if they're still captured, then they don't get to turn 2 swords from white to black!

In other news, I finally played the "new hotness" - Dominion. I played it "irl" at the RinCon game convention last week, and then I figured out how to make BSW work on my computer again (firewall was blocking it) and I've played a handful of times on there. As with Race for the Galaxy and Magic: the Gathering, I prefer Dominion as a 2-player experience, but in this case I'm more tolerant of the multiplayer game than I am with those other two card games.

Dominion is a game of competitive deck building. You begin with a small deck of 7 coins (copper, value = 1) and 3 Estates (worth 1 VP, but useless otherwise). Each game there are cards you can buy into your deck, there are Treasure cards (Copper, Silver, and Gold) which you use to buy other cards, Victory cards (Estate, Duchy, and Province) which count as victory points toward winning, and Kingdom cards (there are 25 different cards) which do different things to help you build your deck. Each game you use only 10 of those 25 Kingdom cards, so the ones you want to add to your deck will be different depending on what combination of cards are available. There will be 10 of each of the 10 Kingdom cards.

On your turn, you get to do 1 Action, and then 1 Buy, then you put all the cards you played, bought, and those left in your hand into the discard pile and draw a new hand of 5 cards for next turn. Your discard pile will cycle through back into your deck when you run out of cards to draw. An Action means playing one of the Kingdom cards, which give you some effect and might give you additional Actions or Buys to use that turn, or money to spend that turn. The idea is that you buy cards which will help construct a deck that does what you want, with the goal being to have the most Victory Points in your deck when the game ends - when 3 of the piles of cards run out (get bought up).

That's it. Dominion is pretty simple rules-wise. The effects of the cards in combination with each other is what makes each game interesting. You are trying to build a deck which performs well, while other players are trying to do the same thing. The number of each card is limited, and buying the popular ones up hastens the game end. The trick is that all these neat Kingdom cards don't actually count toward winning, so you have to figure out how to translate their effects into buying Victory cards. Some people online have suggested that the hands play themselves, but that there's some interesting decisions in which cards to purchase. I disagree. Of course it depends on which cards are available and which cards you buy - if you only draw 1 Action card, then you can only play that card. In that respect your hand plays itself... but in many cases you can be building a deck that contains card combinations which lend themselves to more choice. Sometimes it feels like I'm playing an old Magic combo deck, drawing card after card, getting lots of actions, and ending up having played half of my deck each turn. And in any case, whenever you have a Buy to make there's a choice which can be very significant.

In the end, I like Dominion pretty well. I think it takes long enough to set up that it can be annoying, but if you're playing several games in a row then maybe it's acceptable. I wouldn't want to lug out all the tiny 10 card decks and everything just to play 1 hand and then pack it all back up. It's cool that you can play online, but with laggy connections and long stings of cards to play I don't love waiting for my turn to come around in a 4 player game. But as I said, multiplayer Dominion is a lot more tolerable than multiplayer Race or Magic. I really like the competitive deck building feel I get from playing Dominion.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Winds of Fate: a new idea

I had a new idea about how to resolve the adventures in Winds of Fate. It's really just a variation on the original Taj Mahal type of thing...

So the cards are in 2 'suits' still: Help and Hinder. On your turn you either play a card face down or drop. Once you play a card, you have to keep playing cards of the same suit - and you can tell which suit the card is in by the back of the card. What you can't tell is the numerical value on the front of the card... in other words, you an tell if a player is trying to help Odysseus or hinder him, but you can't tell how much.

If you choose to drop from the round you cannot play any more cards - but your cards played will still count. In addition, when you drop you peek at the top card of the Olympus deck, and then are allowed to add any number of coins to your cards played. Each coin will count toward either helping or hindering Odysseus (depending on which suit you played), but will be discarded and no longer count for your score.

After all players have dropped, the top Olympus card and all of the played cards are revealed, and the total amount of help and hindrance is added up. If there's more help than hindrance, then Odysseus "wins" that adventure. If not, Odysseus "loses".

A win result increases the value of the coins (as described in the last post), while a loss decreases it. Also, a win will move Odysseus' crew closer to Ithaca while a loss will move him to another location parallel or further away for the next adventure.

Meanwhile, players get individual rewards for their personal performance in the Adventure. As before, rewards come from saying in longer, and maybe a bonus for playing the suit that ends up deciding the outcome (help if "win" - Hinder if "loss").

The idea would be to earn these coins, and then either save them if you think they'll be worth more at the end, or spend them to ensure they're not (i.e. ensure Odysseus doesn't make it home). However, if you spend too much on that, then you may lose to someone who has saved some coins.

I believe there would need to be a VP reward for the Adventure that is separate from the coins in order to make the coin value matter at the end - otherwise it's simply about getting more coins than other players, and it doesn't matter what they're worth.

Monday, October 20, 2008

Odysseus: Winds of Fate - another idea

I just came up with an alternate 'investment' idea for Winds of Fate. Recall that the basic structure is that players bet or invest on whether Odysseus will make it home or not, and then attempt to influence each Adventure along the way to that end.

The new idea is that there is a track indicating the 'value' of each coin invested. Players earn coins through "good play" in the Adventure mini-games, and then they can either invest them (a bet that Odysseus will return home safely), or not.

Each adventure won by Odysseus will increase the value of the track, thereby increasing the value of coins invested. Each adventure lost will decrease it. A safe return home will increase the value by several units. At the end of the game, the track will indicate how many points each invested coin is worth. Uninvested coins are worth 10 VP apiece (the track would start at 10).

So betting on a safe return could end up in lost money if Odysseus loses too many adventures along the way, but could end up with a positive return if he doesn't. Betting on failure means not investing coins. Of course coins could also be spent in order to draw cards, or otherwise influence the individual adventures.

Any thoughts on this alternate structure?

Monday, October 13, 2008

I'm stuck!

One of the best reasons I can think of to collaborate with another person in a creative endeavor is that it will help get you past the inevitable point where you get stuck.

I've been trying to revive Odysseus: Winds of Fate lately, and Ive been giving a lot of thought to the structure of the game. I'm happy with that:

Odysseus's ship moves from location to location, and at each stop there's an adventure. "Winning" the adventure means he gets closer to home, "Losing" it means he moves further from Ithaca. Either the ship reaches Ithaca, or all the crew dies trying. Players are Sisters of fate, betting or investing in the final outcome of the voyage, and also influencing each of the adventures. Players should be rewarded for "good play" (whatever that means) during each adventure, as well as for bets/investments that turn out to be correct.

So the structure is there, but I'm stuck on the main mechanics that should be used to resolve each adventure. I can't get away from the original idea I had - card play sort of like Taj Mahal. I would like to come up with mechanics which go along with the theme of the game, and I don't know if Taj Mahal card play is the way to go - but I can't think of anything else... I'm stuck!

I need to get back in touch with Nando on this - the guy I was working on the game with in the first place (it was originally his entry to a BGDF Game Design Showdown). Maybe he can help me either find a new mechanism that would fit, or help find a way to make the Taj Mahal card play work better.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

10/11/08 playtest: 8/7 Central and Invasion of Trishula

According to my record keeping, I haven't played 8/7 Central since January 2007. I've been meaning to get back to it and fix the stuff I didn't like all this time, but it seems I just never got around to it.

Mohan has asked for the current state of the game, and I have yet to get him any information (sorry Mohan!) - I sat down to figure out what exactly to send him and realized Eric was coming over to playtest, so I would be able to try 8/7 Central again, with the latest ideas implemented, and then send Mohan up-to-date information.

8/7 Central
I incorporated the recent ideas into the game:
* No auctions - instead you buy programs from a track like Civ cards in Stone Age.
* During Setup, players were simply dealt a random program for each day, then paid for those out of a starting $30.
* As an action a player could purchase a program and place it directly into their lineup, or move a program from one time slot to another. As a result of the move/placement, another program could potentially be 'bumped' into the player's 'hand' - which doesn't count as being in play, but may be moved back into the lineup with a future Move action.
* All advertisement cards were removed from the deck (even the special ones I planned to keep). Any card could be placed face down as an Ad. Placing an Ad rewards a player with $1 immediately, and $2 each time that program is viewed. There can still be 1 ad on a 1/2 hour program and 2 on a 1-hr program.

All of these changes seemed to work well. I believe $30 is too much to start with, it used to be $30 when players would start with 6 programs, for which they would bid in an auction, and I felt like that was a good number. Now the prices are a little lower (due to no bidding), and they started with only 5 programs, so they had plenty of money to start with and weren't pressured to get more in the early game. However it did seem that as they spent their money, it got appropriately tight, so this wasn't a problem.

I think the next time I will start players with fewer shows. My first thought was to have people start with a random program on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and let them buy new ones for Thursday and Friday... but Ben suggested starting the first week on Wednesday and just having a 3 day week. I think the first week or week and a half will be mostly a setup week to get your lineup going, so having a short Week 1 seems like a really good idea.

I'd like the early game to be about filling out and building up your lineup, and the late game to be about aggressively going after Victory Points by moving strong programs to compete with your competitors. Maybe to emphasize this there should be a ramp-up of Victory Points... I was going to say "award 1vp/Genre during Week #1, 2vp during Week #2, 3vp during Week #3, and 4VP during Week #4" (I'd like the game to last at least 4 weeks) - but 4vp at a time seems way to much compared to 1 in the first week. Maybe 0/1/2/3 would be alright. Or maybe 1/1/2/2 VP for weeks 1/2/3/4.

Alternatively, maybe the game should only last 3 weeks, and then 0/1/2 could be feasible. There's a problem with a shorter number of weeks though, which I'll talk about later. Ben also suggested giving more weight to Friday programming because thematically, that kind of thing happens in real life (I guess more people watch TV on Friday nights). I don't think this is necessary, and in fact I think it kind of happens naturally since there are lots of actions available each week before Friday is scored - while there are only a couple before Tuesday is scored. However it might be interesting to offer an extra VP in each category for Fridays to give players something to concentrate on (the big point Fridays, or easier, smaller points the rest of the week). It's an idea worth considering.

The Moving/Placing programs as an action seemed fine to me. There was a small problem with the purchasing mechanism though. When the queue fills up with programs that are unattractive, then nothing will change that except purchasing a program. But nobody want's to purchase an unattractive program! So what I think needs to happen for that mechanism to really work is either (a) as an action, a player can wipe all or some of the queue clean and replace with cards from the deck, or (b) at the end of each day simply remove the program in the cheapest slot and slide the rest down. The removed program could be discarded, or placed on the bottom of the program deck, or whatever. If deemed necessary, this could also happen an additional time at the end of each week.

The new advertisement mechanism worked beautifully - just as I'd hoped it would. Players now have the choice between Fundraising (discard a card for $2), and playing an Ad (for $1, and potentially more later) - which seems good. Normally an Ad is better, but if you are in a bind and need that extra buck, you can get it. Also, in the endgame there's a way to get more than $1 at a time (via Fundraising action).

The game really needs to be longer (more weeks) so that shows can build up, gain Ratings counters, ads can yield revenue, etc. Maybe an additional die roll at the end of each week would help - ALL programs would be checked for hits, allowing more programs to be viewed, gain ratings counters, and yield revenue. This could be a tricky way to add virtual weeks to the game without adding to the game length.

The game length was an issue - we played for 2 hours and cut the game short after 2 weeks. People's turns were taking entirely too long. I think the fact that this was a 4 player game (maybe the first time this was played with 4 players) might have been part of it, as well as the fact that it's difficult to see who has what on each day - the information isn't organized very well. I've had an idea to make a central board where you place your programs, so it's easy to see who has what on each day - but even better than that might be a central board which has a chart for each Genre on each day, and each player has a marker in each column - this would simply show your current level in each genre on each day. Then at a glance you could tell which genres you're winning on a given day, and how close you are if you're behind. I think that will cut down on people's turn lengths considerably, but I still worry the game might take too long.

Let's see... in a 4 player game lasting 4 weeks (with the 1st week curtailed to 3 days) each player gets a total of 18 turns, and there are 22 status update phases. That's about 94 'turns' worth of time. For the game to take a reasonable amount of time (with 4 players, maybe 75 minutes, max) then each of those turns needs to average just 45 seconds. I just hope that's realistic.

The good news is that the players felt the game worked alright (aside from the information processing snags, and some number balancing), and was fun. They said they thought it's definitely worth pursuing.

The Invasion of Trishula
After some discussion on 8/7 Central we played Eric's game: The Invasion of Trishula. I'd played this before, but not since a year ago June. The basic idea of the game is pretty neat - 3 players are co-existing on a planet, sort of fighting amongst each other for territory (and therefore resources). Then a common enemy arrives to invade their planet. The game is won by the Invader player if they reach the Temple. If the Trishulans (the other three players) successfully defend the temple until the end of the game, then the Invader loses, and the winner of the game is the Trishulan with the most VPs.

You gain VPs by (1) occupying ("Defending") the temple, (2) sacrificing (or donating) resources to the temple each round, and (3) defeating Invader units in combat. it costs a couple VPs to attack Trishulans. There's a neat mechanism wherein at the beginning of the game, the Trishulans aren't very aware of the Invader, so the amount of resources they can gather and a few other things are at a certain level becasue they're not worried or concerned with the invasion. As the Invader kills your units or contaminates your territory, you become more and more aware or upset, and after a point you become more dangerous to the invader, and at that point your rewards/incentives shift away from bickering with your fellow Trishulans. The idea is that you begin fighting amongst yourselves, and over time you become aware of an ever-increasing invasion force, so you are supposed to band together and protect against it (or die).

The biggest problem with this game, for me, is that any game with a common enemy and a single winner is just begging for a Kingmaker. Some people don't mind that in games, where at the end of the game it comes down to player A making a choice which either makes player B win, or player C win, and neither option has a net effect on themselves. In fact, one could argue that every game is like that, but the "kingmaker" decision is not obvious, and occurs well before the game is actually over. However I for one agree with those who feel that is a design flaw. When playing a game and coming to such a decision, I feel deadlocked. I feel I can't reasonably choose one over the other, so what am I to do? Randomly choose the winner of the game? Vinci is a game that I actually enjoy, which sometimes comes to a kingmaker decision in the end. Tyler used to argue that the point was to get so far ahead you couldn't get kingmade out of the win. In that respect you could consider a win one in which you were that far ahead, and anything where kingmaking happened a tie I suppose - or you could consider the game a sort of diplomacy game, where you don't want to be the guy that was picking on the eventual kingmaker the whole time - or he won't make you king!

That said, I don't think there's anything that can be done about kingmaking in such a game. One idea might be to hide Victory Points, so that it's not obvious ho is winning. However, if VPs are hidden but trackable, then in essence they're not really hidden at all (many people don't bother hiding trackable information, and there is good reasoning behind that, even if I don't necessarily agree with it). The next logical step would be to make VPs hidden and not trackable. Not sure how that would work exactly...

The rest of the game seems a lot better than it was the last time I played. The game attempts to balance an exponential growth of the invading force with a linear regression of the strength of the Trishulans in such a way that at the climax of the game it will come down to player action as to whether the Invaders succeed or fail. In that respect I think the game is succeeding. There are still some balance issues, and some aspects of that system that aren't right, but I think it's getting pretty close. In our game it did come down to the wire, and while a couple of us had a rule or two wrong, in retrospect the Invader may have in fact been able to win.

Suggestions made after the game were, in no particular order...
* The Trishulans started with 65 units in play - WAY too many. That could be scaled down to 40 or maybe even fewer.
* The first round was intended to be for the Trishulans to do some stuff without the invaders in play yet, so the invaders start on the 2nd turn. Maybe better would be to 'pre-play' that first round, and start the game with the Trishulans in a reasonable position (where they'd be after 1 round of play) and begin with the Invader arriving.
* The invader never sacrificed any resources - she couldn't afford to. There's a mechanism wherein something happens if the invader sacrifices more than the combined Trishulans, but since the invader cannot afford to sacrifice, that thing will never ever happen. I suggested that this other thing that the Invader can (and wants to) pay for right before the sacrifice be folded into the sacrifice - where "as long as the invader sacrifices X resources, that thing happens." There's an analogous thing for the Trishulans, so I think it fits well.
* Eric forgot a rule about movement which would have helped - that you can move 2 spaces if moving through friendly territory. This is important because otherwise units get stranded on the board and cannot do anything. But moving 2 when attacking is too good, so the rule should be that you can only move 2 spaces if you're moving through your own territory (probably ending in your own territory), and you can only move 1 if you're attacking a unit or in fact moving into territory that's not your own.
* The points awarded for occupying the temple were atrocious. Originally it was a straight 25 points for being in the temple. That was too much. This time it was 3vp per unit in the temple (irrespective of who's unit) - which meant when Eric and I each brought 12 units into the temple, we gained 24*3=72 points against Rif, two rounds in a row. There's no way he could come back from that - so obviously that was not the right reward. Eric's intention was to reward players for 'cooperating' to defend the temple. I see where he's trying to go with that, however I think the long and short of it is this: The reward for cooperating in the temple (being friendly and not killing each other in that location) is "being able to defend against the invader". The penalty for not doing that is "you all lose the game". Therefore I don't think it's so necessary to have a VP reward for cooperation in that respect. The VPs from the temple need to be more in line with the other VPs in tha game (mainly the VPs from sacrificing - as you sacrifice 1x/round, and you get temple points 1x/round). Note also that you sacrifice resources for points each round, while temple points don't cost you anything. So maybe a better VP reward (if it must increase for sharing) would be "each player in the temple gets 3vp per player in the temple" - which means you either get 3 points on each opponent, or 6 points on 1 opponent, or you net nothing if all three players are present. This is also irrespective of the number of units there... the reward for having more units there might be defending vs the invaders anyway...
* Actually, this is counter to my last statement... a thought I had last night was that there should be an opportunity cost to hanging out in the temple en-mass. So if temple VPs is based on the number of people you have in there, then those units are getting you VPs instead of getting you something else. I'm not sure what - maybe you should need a unit on a space to get resources from it? Or maybe having a static VP reward is the answer, so piling guys into the temple simply doesn't do much for you in the early game - except keep you from being kicked out by your opponents.

That was sort of a disjointed, stream-of-consciousness report, but hopefully helpful in some respects.

Friday, October 10, 2008

I'm such a slacker!

I have been seriously slacking where it comes to game design lately. The Hippodice (game design contest) deadline is approaching, and I'm not sure which game - if any - is in good enough shape to submit!

Of the games on the list, there are several which are (still) partially prototyped, and I'm spinning my gears trying to decide what version of rules to use. The list is only getting longer, here's an updated list:

Old Standbys - games which have been around, 1/2 done and untouched, some of them going on 3 years now:
- 8/7 Central
- Hot & Fresh
- Dynasty
- Odysseus: Winds of Fate
- Kilauea
- Reading Railroad
- Rodeo Drive

Old Ideas that Haven't gone Anywhere Yet, But Probably Should - some of these have been getting stale as well:
- Investigative/Tabloid Journalism
- Red Colony
- Clash of the Kingpins
- Time = Money
- Knights Templar

New Ideas that Haven't gone Anywhere Yet, But Probably Should:
- Dating Game

New Ideas that I've started actually prototyping or testing:
- Ticket Please
- Moctezuma's Revenge

I have lots of ideas for several of these games, so many that I think I'm overwhelmed and am not making any progress on any of them!

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

BGG.con coming up!

It's getting close to November, which means it's getting close to time for BGG.con! I don't think I prepare for any trip as far in advance as I do for this convention. I bought plane tickets months ago, I arranged hotel accommodations (sharing a room with a friend from previous years), and now - still 6 or 7 weeks before the con, I'm posting a sign-up list on BoardGameGeek for playing unpublished games.

I did this last year and I think it was successful, so I intend to make it an annual thing. I'm trying to help grow the burgeoning game design community the only way I really know how - by designing games, and bringing unpublished games to conventions to drum up interest!

Not all the games I bring are my own. I have several friends from the Board Game Designers Forum who have designed some excellent games, and I have made or obtained copies of some of them.

My action isn't entirely altruistic though, I'm constantly trying to find a way to get some of these games, by myself or my friends, published. Several publishers will be in attendance at the convention, and it would be great if I could show these games to them as well - though so far that hasn't gone as well as I'd hoped. But it's still great to get the games played and hear feedback from players.

So I'll see you at BGG.con - sign up to play some unpublished games!

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Moctezuma's Revenge - first playtest







Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Moctezuma's Revenge! - Rules

by Seth Jaffee
A game of research and exploration for 2-6 players



6 Researcher pawns in 6 different colors
1 pad of Record sheets





1 action: Move your Researcher to an adjacent location.
Research Kings (at Library):
2 actions: Peek at 2 face down Curse chits.
3 actions: Peek at 5 face down Curse chits.
Explore Temple (at a temple):

Game end:



Monday, September 08, 2008

Moctezuma's Revenge!


There ought to be a game called Montezuma's Revenge









* 2: Look at 1 face down Temple ID chit
* 3: Look at 3 face down Temple ID chits

Friday, September 05, 2008











Wednesday, September 03, 2008

8/7 Central - thoughts on the plane







Now to playtest!

Strategicon report - work in progress



Friday 8/29/08:







Saturday 8/30/08:












Sunday 8/31/08:


[will finish later - left notes at home]

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Recent Gaming: Keltis

At KublaCon in May Aldie had Keltis with him but he hadn't printed out the English rules. When he went to bed he left the game with me in case I was able to find out the rules... to no avail. So I had the game, but no rules.

Sunday Andrew and I figured out how to cheat the boarding pass printing station into letting us open a browser window, and I was able to print out the game rules... so now I had the rules, but no game!

I did not end up playing Keltis at the convention, and now it's gone and won the Spiel des Jars, so of course I thought I ought to give it a try. I was finally able to do so last weekend, as Wystan and Liz brought a copy back with them from their trip to Europe.

Keltis sounded OK, like multiplayer Lost Cities but with a little more going on than the card game. Generally speaking I like the idea of building a bigger game out of a smaller game which is basically just a mechanism by itself. I had my issues with the execution of Zooloretto, but in general I liked the idea of building a zoo using the Coloretto mechanic. I had had a similar inkling based on something Jim Cote had said, about making a bigger game out of the mechanism that is eXXtra, and I also was working on a game built on the basic mechanism of Liar's Dice with Boyan before he moved to Atlanta. So I think the idea of building a multiplayer game out of the Lost Cities card game is cool, and was anxious to see how it turned out. I like Lost Cities, but in general don't play a lot of 2 player games.

On Sunday I played 4 games of Keltis, and I must say, I'm disappointed. I will note that the rules we played by turned out to be incorrect (I found out by talking to Sebastian, who works with Knizia on a lot of stuff), but even with the correct rules I think the game is simply based too much on having to draw amenable cards.

In case you're not familiar with the game, there are 5 paths, each corresponding to one of the 5 different suits of cards in the deck. players have a hand of 8 cards, and on your turn you either play or discard one, then draw a new one. When you play a card, it goes into a 'stack' for that suit in front of you - there can be only 1 stack for each suit in front of you. When starting a stack, any card can be used, and there are 2 of each card labeled 0-10 in each suit. When adding the second card to a stack, the card added can be either higher or lower (or equal) in value to the previous card, but all subsequent cards must continue this ascending/descending trend. In other words, for each suit, once you start a stack, you must play cards in either ascending or descending order. When you add a card to a stack, you move one of your markers 1 space along the path on the board that corresponds to that suit. Along the paths there are tiles which offer small bonuses in points, extra advances, or stones. Each step along the path is worth some number of points as well - the first few steps are actually negative points, while later steps are worth more points.

Instead of playing a card and adding it to a stack in front of you, you can discard it - there is a separate discard pile for each suit. Then you draw a card, either one from the deck, or the top discard from any of the discard piles. The game ends when either the draw pile runs out, or when 5 markers advance past a certain distance on the paths.

Like Lost Cities, the idea is that you don't want to begin down a path without enough cards to get past the negative spaces, and preferably you want to advance to the further, higher scoring spaces. If you start down all 5 paths, you may not get very far in any of them, and your score will suffer. If you only start down 2 paths, you might run out of cards for them and be equally screwed. In theory the game sounds fine, but in practice it simply didn't work out.

In Lost Cities the discard mechanism is interesting, because as a 2 player game, there is a zero sum. If you don't use a card, it's possible your opponent can, therefore you want to discard only when it's "safe" (the opponent can no longer legally play the card, or it appears they wouldn't want to play it anyway) to do so. In Keltis, because (a) there are more players, and (b) you can play cards in either ascending or descending order, it is never safe to discard. Almost never anyway. Also, in Lost Cities it's good to discard because you can't afford to start new expeditions willy nilly - there's a severe penalty for not reaching a 20 point threshold. Sometimes you start a 'junk' expedition instead of discarding, when you are reasonably sure you'll hit the threshold before the game ends, but there's a risk involved there. In Keltis, the penalty for starting down a path and not getting very far is not very severe. It only takes 3 or 4 cards (and it doesn't even matter what they are) to get out of the negative point spaces, which means that instead of discarding 4 cards you could play them, and maybe come out a little ahead. Considering that any card you discard is very likely useful for at least 1 opponent, there's really very little incentive to discard instead of simply playing a card (even if it's to a 'junk' stack).

So the multiplayer game, and the distribution of points on the board (low barrier to entry on each path), effectively break the interesting mechanism of Lost Cities. The 2-player game uses that mechanism to get some back and forth play between the players - discarding and building up hands with which to go on expeditions. Holding cards you know an opponent needs, collecting a color until you feel it's safe to begin an expedition. In the multiplayer Keltis, without any discarding going on (as discussed above) there's no building up of a color in hand, you simply have to play the cards you're dealt, and the cards you draw - and there's no telling what those might be. In addition, there are rewards for getting out on the paths in the form of bonus points and stones. Admittedly this is where an incorrect rule might have made the game even worse for us - we were playing such that only the first person to get to a tile was able to use it, and then it came off the board. Incidentally, we also played witht he tiles face down, which Wystan and Liz enjoyed because it added a sort of Press Your Luck aspect to it... but in any case, there was urgency to get down the tracks first, exacerbating the "better to play cards than discard" issue. We did play one game with face up tiles (at my request), and I enjoyed that part of it better (though Wystan and Liz preferred face down). But there's still the main issue that you're simply either dealt cards in the same suit, or you're not.

So in the end, the game seems to be pretty much all luck. If you draw cards that are in the same suit, then congrats, you win. If you don't, then there's nothing you can do about it. the best thing I can say about the game is that it only takes about 15 minutes, so no matter what happens, it'll be over fast. I was unaware going in that Keltis, winner of the Spiel des Jars (Family Game of the Year), was intended to be a 'quick filler' game. Perhaps I expected more from an SdJ winner, or perhaps I expected something at least as interesting as Lost Cities. But I was let down by Keltis in these respects.

As a side note, I find it a little worrisome that the Spiel des Jars winning games are leaning more and more toward light, quick, filler type games. If the Family Game of the Year is like watching television (Sit at the table, draw some cards, and see what happens next), what does that say about families and gamers?

As an exercise, here's what I'd do to try and improve the Keltis game experience:
- Bigger penalty for beginning a track and not getting very far.
- Single discard pile, not 1 pile for each suit.
- I actually liked our incorrect rule that the tiles (for scoring and extra movement) are only for the first player to get there.
- Maybe a face up draw pool to draw cards from. Alternatively, maybe when playing a card you draw from the deck, and when discarding you draw from a face up draw pool or something like that.
- Maybe certain spaces let you draw and discard.
- Maybe force players to play a card AND discard a card (or discard 2) and then draw 2 (one must be from the deck).

Just some thoughts off the top of my head to give players some sort of say in what happens in the game.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Homesteaders status: "Recommended"

I'd mentioned that Homesteaders was under review by Rio Grande Games. I recently received word that Jay's freelance developers (Dale Yu and Valerie Putman) had finished testing the game and returned it to him. An email from them said...

"Jay asked us to look at several titles this summer that he was considering for publication and we did get to play (and recommend) Homesteaders. We enjoyed the game and would be happy to share our feedback with you."

I'm trying really hard not to get too excited about this, because it's still up to Jay to decide if Homesteaders is worth producing... it may prove too expensive, or he might decide it's too similar to other games he's published already, or who knows what. However this recommendation from his developers is certainly a step in the right direction, and I'm having trouble not feeling at least a little giddy!

Stay tuned, I hope to have good feedback from Dale and Val to digest, and I'm sure I'll post about it here.

Prolix - by Gil Hova

I received a package this morning from Gil Hova. It can only be a copy of his word game Prolix! I really enjoyed this game when I played it, and I'm anxious to play again and see what changes he's made... and then probably try to talk him out of them ;)

So who wants to play a quick word game this week?

Friday, August 15, 2008

Noblemen - 2nd (and 3rd) playtest

After chatting with the designer about the comments I made, I gave Noblemen another try with some rules changes. Here's what I did differently, and how I think it went...

Aquire Land action: One thing Dwight had said he didn't like, and something I too didn't like, was that once 1 player played an Acquire Land action, each other player had to do so as well, or get no land. Therefore there was no "opportunity cost" associated with that action, you would have all the same options as before taking it - the other players would not have taken any actions. Furthermore, it's obviously better to be first than later in the turn order to Acquire Land, so the obvious first play every game is to take that action. It's not necessarily bad to have an obvious first play - a "Settler-Quarry" as I like to call it - but in this case it didn't feel right. Most of the game was all about different races and the opportunity cost of taking an action (meaning you will miss out on other good actions).

To fix this, one thought was to make it one of the "all play" actions - when anyone chooses the action, everyone gets to take land in turn. This means that the player to take the action gets the benefit of choosing first, but all the other players get to take land as well without having to spend their action on it. Dwight had mentioned that spending an action was supposed to be a big cost, so a player might be less inclined to take this action automatically. However, another thing we had talked about was getting rid of all of the "all play" actions. Dwight didn't like the similarity to Puerto Rico, and I agreed with him that it would probably be better to structure the game so that it's not like a Role Selection game where everyone participates in each action, further emphasizing the opportunity costs.

I had made a couple of suggestions as to alternate ways to handle the distribution of land. The main thing I thought would be cool is if when you get land, you only get land of 1 type. This would start you down a strategic path, and differentiate you from other players (because they'd take a different type of land). One method was to set up exactly 2 of each land type on the board, and when taking the Acquire Land action, you take all tiles of 1 type, then "juice" all the stacks by adding a tile to each. So I might take a stack of 2 Woods, then the next player might take a stack of 3 Farms, leaving stacks of 4 Clearings, 4 Ponds, 2 Woods, or 1 Farm for the next player that takes the action. Another option was to draw say 15 random tiles from the bag, and sort them by type, and when taking the action you get all tiles of one type OR 3 at random from the bag. I had assumed there would basically be between 1 and 4 tiles in any given stack. We used this rule to try it out, and unfortunately the distribution was way off - stacks came out with distributions like 6-5-2-1, which isn't so good. I didn't like that method.

In a later playtest I tried the "juicing" method, and that worked really, really well.

I liked the way the original Place Land action let you only place 3 tiles, and it takes 4 to make a 2x2 "feature". In our first game I thought money was unnecessarily tight, and I had the idea that maybe when playing land you should get a reward right away. So we tried awarding $1 for each Farm played, and 1 tile draw for each Woods played. This worked well, and in later games worked very well with the "juicing" Acquire action rule. Of course you still get $2, draw 2 tiles, or take the Crown when completing a Plantation, Forest, or Garden.

The Donate Land action was originally an "all play" action, and I didn't like the way it worked at all. A player not at all concentrating on Land could keep pace with a player who was heavily invested in a Land strategy, and that seemed really bad. In line with removing the All Play actions, I tried this action being simply "donate land and get 1vp per land donated" - but I thought it needed to be limited, so I specified "donate land of one type and get 1vp for each." I also removed the limit of 2x/round. This was ok, but it really meant you wouldn't want to Donate until the end of the game, you'd just build up all the land you could, and at the end use a Donate action (or 2) to turn them all into points. I think there needs to be some kind of pressure to do the action, and maybe a reason you might do it in the first scoring rounds. In later tests I added back in the 2x/round rule, and put a limit on the number of land you could donate - we removed the "of one type" restriction, but limited the number you could donate to the level of your prestige. That sounded interesting to me because if you spend time and effort increasing your Prestige, then you'll probably not have as much land to donate, and if you build up a lot of land, you probably will have lower Prestige - limiting your donation potential...

The Bribe action was similarly modified - we played that you could take a Bribe action whenever you wanted and exchange $1 for 1vp. That rate seemed fine to me, but I made the mistake of forgetting to put a limit on how much you could donate. Therefore it was a very good deal to tax a lot whenever possible and at the very end donate for 30 points or something. In later games we tried it with the same limit as Donating land - no more than your current Prestige, and that was much better. Also, I think it was better with the limited number of total Bribe actions available (2 per round, like Donate) which we reverted to in our last playtest.

As for buildings, the Church remained unchanged... cost escalated with each one built, and building the last one ended the round. I had forgotten that when drawing a Scandal card you're supposed to be able to look at the top few and choose one, but in retrospect that seemed unnecessary, and we liked it fine with simply drawing 1 card. Castles cost the same as well, but we attached a Men-At-Arms action to them. Instead of being able to choose a M@A action on your turn, you simply get one whenever you build a Castle. I liked that change very much. I didn't try any changes with the Follies at all. The comment that Follies are a really bad deal was exacerbated by the change I tried with the Bribe action (see above). I did notice that in the end game, when Castles are only worth 3-5 because there's only 1 scoring phase left, the Follies are a better deal - but not by much. You don't have to surround them, and they're worth 8/7/6/5 for $10 in 1 action, Castles are worth 3-5 per action, and must be surrounded. In the latest game we tried Follies being worth 12 points, and that seemed like a much better idea. The decreasing value was cute, but in the end I don't think it's all that necessary. I like the prerequisites for buying them as they are.

The Tax action has remained unchanged throughout the games we've played, however I did try it without the 2x/round (total) limit. I realized that removing all those limits was bad and in the last game I put them back in. It is worth noting thought that we tried a variant to the original rules: as you play land you get money. This is like an additional Tax action, and I liked how it worked. It got a little more money into the game.

For the first couple of games we played the Masquerade Ball as it was originally written in the rules. In the last test however we tried something different which I like a whole lot better. Instead of the Ball being an action, why not have it be triggered... once in the middle of the round, and again at the end of the round. I had discussed this with Dwight in the chatroom, and he seemed to like the idea. To me it makes a lot more sense thematically, as well as mechanically.

In the second to last game we used a set number of rounds, 7, with a Ball after round 4 and after round 7. It felt really cool having a hard limit to the number of actions you get! It means you can't just play land all day long, or else you'll run out of time to do real stuff. It's this aspect that makes me question the free stuff for playing land idea - but that feels so nice. I'm not sure which would be better.

In the last game I took that a step farther. I thought it would be neat to have a somewhat indeterminate round end - so you know you'll get about 8-10 turns for example, but you never know for sure. I also liked how the players had a little bit of say in when the round ends. What I did was to say that there are a certain number of rounds (I guessed 10, with a Ball in the middle and at the end), and at the end of your turn, if you have the Crown marker, then you get your 1vp and then you advance the round marker. I put that at the end of the turn instead of the beginning because that way when the Crown changes hands it effectively pushes the round marker forward. If at the beginning, then taking the Crown would prolong the round, and I thought it would be cooler the other way. *I* liked it, but my friend felt cheated when he thought he had another round and then the Crown changed hands and he missed out on his last turn. He preferred a definite number of turns which you could plan for. I'm still leaning for the indeterminate rounds.

The only other thing I tried out in the last game after Tyler's suggestion was that the Noble Titles which you win at the Masquerade Ball could have been more interesting. I added an ability to each, a simple one - a $1 discount on all buildings for the Viscount, $2 discount for the Earl, $3 discount for the Marques, and a $3 discount plus 1VP when building for the Duke. The purpose is to make the Titles more interesting, and especially to give you more incentive to go for them in the mid-round Ball, since they won't be scoring right then. I liked this a lot. The abilities could stand to be more interesting, but this seemed fine - possibly too good. Maybe better discounts would be $0/$1/$2/$2+1vp for Viscount/Earl/Marques/Duke. Either that or maybe buildings should cost more, which might be good with the freebie cash when playing Farms anyway.

Oh, a final note - since I like the Crown used as a Turn Marker (when to advance the turn), I suggest you not be able to discard it for Prestige at the Ball. Someone has to have the Crown at all times. Instead I think it should be worth 1 Prestige.

So that's it - I will be sending the prototype back to Xaq tomorrow, so I don't know if I'll ever play the game again - but I hope to hear if he plays it with any of these suggestions and how it goes. I had fun playing the game!