My brain hurts when I think of time travel

I was never good at physics in high school but that is not the reason that thinking about time travel makes my brain hurt.  I would have thought that being educated by Dr Who for the majority of my life and having watched Rod Taylor deal with the Morlocks would have given me some great insight into time travel and even how it might be translated into a board game.  But, when I think time travel and board games a garbled mess of ideas comes out of my mouth or through my fingers onto the keyboard and onto the page – as you are witnessing here.

So, here are my thoughts on time travel and how it could be represented in a board game.  I have tried to make it a logical progression but as with time travel I might have to re-visit already typed comments.

THOUGHTS ON ESSENTIAL QUALITIES IN A TIME TRAVEL GAME:

• Any action that is taken in the past should have an affect on the present and future
• Any game should be dripping in theme as you cannot really travel in time
• Paradoxes should be dealt with by some mechanic.  Therefore if you travel back to the same point in time more than once you cannot revisit what you did otherwise you might meet yourself…???

POTENTIAL MECHANICS THAT I HAVE THOUGHT ABOUT THAT MIGHT WORK IN A TIME TRAVEL GAME:

• Using multiple time lines and moving between them.  I have thought about using multiple tracks in time.  Each point in time on the track would be represented by a colour – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple.  The tracks would be aligned so that a secondary colour on one track lines up with a primary colour on another track.  Players would somehow have access to cards that represent these colours.  They could play a single card to move up or down a timeline or play a combination of cards to jump across the timeline – red and blue would allow a person to jump to the purple on another time line.  While this is a very abstract mechanic I feel that it might be possible to build a game around this simple mechanic or for that matter it could be a neat themed abstract game.
• Adjusting Macao’s compass rose mechanic.  David Short suggested something like Macao’s compass rose.  In Macao – on each turn six dice are rolled.  They are coloured to match resource cubes.   The rose has seven sides – one representing the current round and the others coded from 1 to 6.  If you roll a red die with a six value then you may place six red cubes by the number six on the rose.  If you roll a purple die with a value of 1 then you may place a purple cube by the number one on the compass rose and so on for the other colours.  However, a player may only choose two dice values and use the corresponding cubes per round.  The cubes in the 1 spot on the rose may only be used on the first turn, the cubes in the two spot on the rose are only used on the second turn and so on…  This means that players have to plan for the future hoping to have the specific cubes they need to perform actions when the turn arrives.  How can this be converted to time travel?  (1)  At the start of the game dice are rolled and cubes are placed on the communal compass rose that represents the timeline for the game.  The seventh side represents the present and the other places on the compass rose depict the past and the future. When players move to specific points in time (1 – 6) they roll the dice and effect every future point in time (add cubes for any value that represents a future time point).   (2) Each player has their own compass rose that they use to control their actions/resources/events along the timeline.
• Another movement mechanic.  As mentioned above I am a big fan of Dr Who (John Pertwee was my favourite but the last three have been very good).  In Dr Who, the Doctor – a Time Lord – often ends up at a point in time that was not intended.  Some temporal anomaly/shift pulls his craft – the TARDIS – off track and to places that need the Doctor’s assistance.   With this in mind I have come up with a mechanic that pushes and pulls people through time depending on how severe the event is at a certain point in time.  Imagine 8 points in time along which players may travel.  At each point in time there is a deck of cards that represents events/actions at that point in time.  Each card has a push/pull value.  This value represents the locations effect on the space-time continuum.  The greater the effect the event has on the continuum the greater its pull value or lower push value.  Therefore it attracts time travellers to that location and makes it harder for time travellers to leave that location.  Fix the event/action and start to restore normality to the timeline.  As I have mentioned in a previous post it might be possible to use these push and pull values to restrict movement along the timeline.  So if a location had a push of 1 but a pull of 4 then the player could move only one point away from the planet but might be able to move further if there is another point that has a pull that is equal or greater than the original point in time.  It makes sense to me.  🙂
• Risk: Legacy.  In Risk: Legacy the game changes permanently dependent on decisions made by players.  Stickers are used to place on cards etc…  Maybe this mechanic can be translated to a time travel game.  Instead of having a permanent change to the physical aspects of the game, there is a permanent change to the skills of the players or to locations that can or cannot be reached.  Once a decision is made by a player it forces other players to to distrust that player or help that player.  The change takes away the players ‘free will’ when making choices.

That is it for now – there are some other thoughts mulling around in my mind.  This post is really just a splurge of my thoughts.  Nothing concrete or too coherent.  Just something possibly to build on in the future…

Cumbersome

It is Thanksgiving weekend in Canada and I am at my mother-in-law’s celebrating the occasion.  Unfortunately, there is not a lot to do here so I bought along my laptop hoping to work on some game designs.  However, I have been fighting a bit of a cold this weekend.  So, I have been doing some reading – online reading.  I have just finished reading the 5 years of blog comments at Cumbersome a blog by Seth Jaffee.  If you are an aspiring game designer or a long time gamer in North America, I would be very surprised if you have not heard about Seth.  He is a published designer of Terra Prime and Eminent Domain, the game developer at Tasty Minstrel Games, and the ‘master’ of the Board Game Design Forum (BGDF).  Seth has a great passion for designing and his knowledge of the industry should be picked at every opportunity you get.

I originally found out about Seth through a friend, David Short.  David is having his first game published by Tasty Minstrel.  The game is called Ground Floor – I encourage everyone to read more about this game because I think it is going to be a hit among Euro gamers when it gets released – hopefully either later this year or early next!  I joined BGDF and had some brief chats with Seth and he sometimes pops his head in boardgamegeek’s chat room and says hi.  He is a very busy man – especially with the recent release of Eminent Domain and the upcoming release of Ground Floor but is always willing to offer a piece of advice or answer a question.

I thought I would pick Seth’s brain by reading his blog and this is what I learned:

1. Attend more conventions!  Conventions are a great way to get people to play your prototypes and get feedback from gamers.  They are also a great way to network with fellow aspiring designers, established designers, geek buddies, publishers and everyone else.  This is a major goal of mine.  However it seems harder to do when currently out of work and living in Canada – though there are more conventions in Western Canada what I was originally aware.
2. Give more details about game ideas!  On my blog I have held back on giving too many details of my games.  I am not sure whether I was scared that someone might steal my ideas or that someone might over criticize them.  Either way, now there will be more details.
3. I need to play more games!   The more games a person plays the better they can evaluate their own ideas and be inspired to new ideas.  Sebastien Pauchon gave the following advice:
   The more you can appreciate how well balanced, clever, funny, original (etc.) somebody else’s game is, the more that might inspire you and give you thinking material for improving your design. Also, bad games, or games that are supposedly broken, or ones you wouldn’t ever play again should give you a flavour of things to avoid, and defaults to recognise and fix in your own designs.

   Don’t necessarily fall into group thinking and ignore “bad” games, play them instead!  And while you do, don’t kill them, dissect them!  Ok, it sucks, ok it’s bad, ok it is waaaay too long. But wait; isn’t the trading phase really clever? And why is that? 

   If you can really name what you liked, what you didn’t and why, you might be in a position where you can also objectively judge your own games and act accordingly.

4. Don’t give up on old ideas.  Coming back to old ideas with a fresh and more ‘experienced’ viewpoint may add a new lease of life on games that you thought might have died a sad death.
5. Time travel is hard.  Coming up with a game design that represents time travel is a difficult proposition.  Seth is working on a game that involves time travel and as a big fan of Dr Who (since I remember hiding behind the couch when I was a kid peering around the end with my hands over my eyes) the idea of time travel has always been exciting to me.  And recently the idea of a game that uses time travel as it’s main theme is also exciting.
6. Don’t worry about long blog posts!  This is a blog where I share my ideas and if they are long, so be it!
7. I am not saying I am as much an authority on games or gameplay as Seth and I know he can definitely dissect a game better than I, but it seems we have similar thoughts about games – mine seem much more, for want of a better word, juvenile or underdeveloped.

Wrapping up – although the weekend may not have been as productive as I had hoped, reading Seth’s blog has certainly kick started some ideas .  Over the next week I will be working on Tower of Doom, creating a new game flow document for Redemption City, blogging about my deck building/area influence spy game, spilling all my thoughts about time travel into a post and revisiting all my old ideas with as many details as possible.  I know I have at least 3 regular readers of this blog and I hope they along with any others with critique my ideas.

Cheers and Happy Thanksgiving.

Update on design ideas…

I have many ideas – see my last updates for a list of the games.  For this update I am only going to concentrate on games that I have been actively working on or thinking about.  So here goes…

TOWER OF DOOM:

The Tower of Doom is a cooperative, dexterity, dungeon crawl.  Players make their way down through a Tower – in which they have been held captive on the uppermost floor – defeating monsters that bind the Tower together with their cumulative life force and magic.  As players explore, the now, three cavernous levels they must draw a brick from the Tower and either defeat a monster, deal with an event or find nothing and continue on.

Some of you may have already read my previous posts but I will review them quickly and then update on what is happening with this game.  I have a prototype made and play tested.  The first play test was frankly awful.  While the players could see the idea and were having fun the brick removal mechanic just did not work and the fight mechanic was fiddly and overdone.  During the second play test the floor by floor brick removal mechanic was removed and replaced with the idea of three cavernous rooms, represented by the different shaded levels of the Tower.

The second play test was successful in that the brick removal mechanic worked but was unsuccessful in that the fight mechanic was still too fiddly.  So, in a discussion with a fellow designer, I have now stripped the game down to its bare bones.  The fight mechanic is much easier and this will be now tested with the latest brick removal mechanic.  Now when you fight a monster not only may the monster do damage to the characters but the monster may also influence the balance of the Tower.

I will re-post as soon as I have mocked up new cards and dice for the prototype.

REDEMPTION CITY

I made another prototype – one is with David Short in Arizona – and play tested this with my gaming group.  There were only three playing and this game is really made for 4+.  Certain issues were evident from this play test the main thing is that the Sheriff has too many things to worry about.  Again, this game has been stripped down to the basics:  shoot, gain fame, get wounds!   More after a play test with more people.

SMALL TALK

This game is prototyped and has been play tested once.  It is a true party game in the way Apples to Apples or Cranium is a party game.  Again, the play test involved three people.  Certainly more challenging than it looks and certainly fun.

RENAISSANCE MAN

This game is a set collection, worker placement Euro where players take on the role of great thinkers who must present their findings and knowledge to an esteemed panel of aristocrats.  It is the week before the presentation and the scholars have to cram and increase knowledge before the big event.   This weekend I hope to take my notes and write an outline for the game and maybe sketch out some of the parts for prototyping.  The hardest part to figure out will be the scoring.  There are three ways players can score points and players have to have an all round knowledge.  Superior knowledge in one topic will not win the game alone.

All quiet on the design front…apart from a ‘shout out’

Working slowly on The Tower of Doom.  I have the Monster Cards edited for the new battle mechanic and will do the event card either tonight or tomorrow.

I will give an update on all projects tomorrow.

I want to give a shout out to Mark Klassen who is designing a tile placement/action point game titled Quarantine.  I had the chance to play this game at BIGCON and am very impressed.  Great work Mark!!

 

Advice from Mike Elliott

Mike Elliott is a hot commodity in the game design world right now.  He has designed the increasingly popular deck building game, Thunderstone, he has co-designed the recent Quarriors which is seeing a lot of buzz and he has recently released Star Trek: Fleet Captains (which is top of my Ultimate Wish List)

     

Here is Mike’s advice to aspiring game designers:

Hi Clive,

Sorry for the slow response. I have been very busy recently.

Most important advice.

Treat game design as a hobby when you are starting out. Very few designers are successful enough to make it a full time job, and board game design is not one of the most lucrative fields. Never spend your own money to promote or publish your game unless you can afford the possibility that you will not recoup that money. Prioritize your day job and most other things above game design even if you think you have the next million seller game.

Make sure you have other non-associated people evaluate your design work. Anyone working on the project and even friends are potentially biased. If you can, test it with a local gaming group that is not part of your circle. Watching groups play a game is generally more useful than any comments that the group will give you. You can gauge whether they are having fun, what the sticking points are, and many other things that they will not always be able to convey in the post mortem.

Building a reputation takes time. You typically cannot just start out as a game designer, even if your games are incredible. Working as a play tester, developer, or in any other capacity for a game publisher is one of the best ways to get your foot in the door. Game companies that take submissions get hundreds a year, and unless you put in the legwork to attend conventions and network, you are unlikely to have your game reviewed without any prior published work or credits in the field.

Mike

Tower of Doom 2.0

After a couple of play tests and discussions with the play testers it was obvious that the new mechanism was better (but won’t know how much better until more play tests) and that the Tower should become the ‘star’ of the show!

With that in mind the following changes have been made for future play testing:

1. Brick Removal – depending on the number of players the number of bricks successfully removed by each character change.  Right now, with 4 players each player will successfully remove 4 bricks each for each of the three main levels, with 3 players it will be 5 per level and with two it will be eight.  Of course, 2 or 3 players may cooperatively manage all 4 characters if they wish to do so.
2. Battle Mechanic – the battle mechanic has been stripped down.  Rather than 3 dice – one used for each level – there will be one die per character.  These dice will have swords (hits), shields (blocks) and blood droplets (misses) on them, along with possibly some special powers.  To defeat most monsters, 2 swords will need to be rolled.  For more dangerous monsters it may require 3 dice rolls.  Swords (hits) are managed first followed by blocks and misses.  Rather that calculate hit points dependent on the Monsters attack value and a defense value for the character, now a hit is a hit and the character will take one damage.
3. Making the Tower the Star! – in the original battle mechanic the damage was between creature and monster – now if a monster is not defeated it will have a greater effect on the Tower while also dealing the single damage to any heroes who roll a miss.  Now the 30+ creature cards will be organized by specific classes.  Each class will have a specific effect.  The classes are:

• Normal – if monster is not killed then deal damage to heroes who miss and the continue battle
• Flying – if monster is not killed then lead character (player removing brick) must place brick on top of the Tower after damage is dealt.  This is not a successful brick removal.
• Wurm – when reveal a wurm player must remove a brick from layer below
• Spirit – if monster is not killed then brick must be slid back into a space already removed by a character – this does not count as a successful brick removal.
• Dragon – if monster is not killed then one hit to all heroes
• Concussive – if not killed each player who rolls a shield must remove a brick from the tower.  These do not count toward successful brick removal.
• Pack – every time a creature is not killed another brick must be slid half way out of the tower
• Spiny – if monster is not killed the lead character is frozen and cannot participate in next battle roll
• Doppleganger – if monster is not killed then this brick is replaced by sliding another brick out.  The new brick becomes the event/monster. The new brick counts as a successful brick removal.

I like the above classes ant think they will work well.

Quick Review of Play Tests at Game Night and BIGCON

It seems like forever since I last posted (four days).  In this time I created three prototypes and managed to play test them all – though not as often or as much as I would have liked.

SMALL TALK:

There were only three of us at our regular game night so for each game we were below the optimum number of players.  We still went ahead and tried the games out.  The last one to hit the table, but the first I will talk about, was Small Talk.  This game is a party game that definitely plays best with 4+.  We tried out the card drafting mechanic and paired up three times to have a ‘Small Talk’.  It was funny and way more difficult than it seems.   I think this could be a party game tomorrow!

REDEMPTION CITY:

The second game to hit the table.  With three players, two players go head to head and one plays the role of Sheriff.  In a three player game, this means that if one person dominates the first round they may be hard to catch by the other players even though that player with the most Fame takes on the role of Sheriff in the next round.

Potential fixes:  Instead of each player starting with no Fame tokens each player would start with three Fame tokens.  No Fame tokens are given out when diving for cover when dynamite is thrown onto the street.  When a player defeats another player in a gunfight they take a Fame token from the player they defeated.  If the player defeated has not Fame tokens then they receive one from the pool.

Other fixes – the Sheriff has way too much to think about.  So – in the words of Kramer, get rid of unnecessary mechanics.  Gone are the bullets and healing for now!

TOWER OF DOOM:

This was the first game to hit the table at our game night and at BIGCON.

Game Night – wow, thought the game is a very cool idea the brick removal mechanic did not work!  Disappointed but not unfix-able.  Removing bricks layer by layer just did not work!  The battle mechanic was convoluted but worked – the math needs working out.

BIGCON – much better!!   A new brick removal mechanic was put in place but still the battle mechanic is too convoluted.

Potential fixes:  Make the Tower the star of the game and simplify the battle mechanic.  Have the creatures, when destroyed, effect the Tower as well as or instead of the characters.

STAY TUNED FOR MORE DETAILED UPDATES OF GAMES

Redemption City Prototype

An outline of the game can be found in a previous post.

Below is a picture of the basic components.

Six white poker chips represent the six bullets in each player's pistol. The six red poker chips represent Fame Points. The top five cards are five of the 10 cowboy (player id) cards. In the middle are the wound, jail, and sheriff card. At the bottom is the player's hand. Missing are the scene cards (picture to follow).

Small Talk prototype

The description of Small Talk can be found here.  Below is a picture of all that is needed for the game (minus the ‘egg’ timer).

Today’s discussion

I am often in the BGG chat room – in the Game Design room – where I discuss ideas with Dshort (David) and Metz (Steven) and whoever else pops their head in to see what’s going on.  Today I brought up the question, what types of game are there?  To be more specific, what times are game are there when defined by how their scoring is calculated.  We came up with the following list:

• Player Elimination
• Set Collection
• Resource Collection
• Area Control
• Trick Taking
• Race Game

Are there any others?  Wouldn’t it be unique if someone came up with some other way of calculating scoring?  Just some thoughts!