New theme

Yes you are at the right site!!!   I found the old theme a little drab and needed it to be brighter – more inspiring – let’s see if it works.

AEG’s Tempest World and game design

Alderac Entertainment Group or AEG is a game publishing company based in Ontario, California.  They have released the popular Thunderstone and Nightfall games and their numerous expansions.  I own or have owned Thunderstone, Nightfall and Infinite City – all AEG games.  These games are very solid designs but have not grabbed my attention.  Now, however, AEG has released a series of four games –  Dominare, Courtier, Mercante and Love Letter – that have my attention!  These seem like solid Euro games with varying mechanics.  They are very different games – area influence, economic engine, quick playing card games – but all have one thing in common…they all take part in the same World – TEMPEST.  While the idea of different games existing in the same world or universe is not new (Twilight Imperium and Rex, Westeros etc.), the idea that the characters show up in different games and have similar characteristics throughout the game and potentially interact in similar ways with other characters across games seems to be unique and exciting.

What does this Tempest World have to do with my game design process?  AEG has a designer resource webpage for the Tempest World.  Here is the text on that site:

“AEG has opened up the resource toolbox for game designers interested in designing a game for the Tempest line. Note that this site does not contain previews for upcoming games; all Tempest news will be posted on this site.

If you are a game designer and would like to be allowed access, we’d love to have you on board. Please apply here and we’ll get you approved as soon as possible.”

I have signed up for access and am hoping for an email with details later.  A friend and I have been working on an idea for sometime now – more notes and mechanisms and rules than prototype at this point.  This game is titled Renaissance Man and deals with the acquisition of knowledge.  With a few twists Renaissance Man (with a new name – maybe Universitaire) would fit perfectly in the Tempest World.  I don’t want to reveal too many details about the game right now as I am working on a rule set that maybe I can forward to AEG.

Holy Cow!

Wow!!  It is a month since I last posted!!  What has happened?  Don’t worry, I have not given up on designing of thinking about games.  It just seems that I have had very little time to post, though I have lots of things to post about.  Now my daughter’s soccer season is over and we have her school routine down pat, I can get on with designing and thinking about board games.  The fire has been lit, the juices are flowing and I am ready to get back to some serious designing.  What has lit this fire?  Several things!!

1. Geek Chat – Game Design Room is seeing the usual crowd.  We always have great discussions and ideas
2. G+ GameLabs are back!  I have started hosting Google+ hangouts for the G+ GameLab circle – this got me thinking more about my Civ Rummy game
3. AEG games have a new Tempest World and are inviting game designers to share ideas for games that could exist in this world.  That has brought Renaissance Man back to the forefront
4. My friends are bugging me to get Tower of Doom ready for more play testing
5. Had a great discussion with David Short about Tombstone (formerly Redemption City) – so re-writing the rules for that game
6. Excited about All Access Tour – my touring rock band game

I will be sharing details about these games very soon!  I will post on one of these topics tonight!  And hopefully the next night and the next…

Latest Idea (and an old one)

OLD IDEA

In the past I have worked on a Rummy Civ game.  There are three ages and players collect cards using the Rummy mechanism of pick up, put down (meld) and throw away (discard).  There are 4 suits representing military, economy, culture and science.  These have cards ranked from 1 to 5.  So using the Rummy mechanic you can place runs of the same colour or sets of the same colour – building your military strength, economy etc…

However, there is a twist in each suit of cards there are neutral, attacking and defending cards.  The neutral cards have no effects.  The defensive cards create protection against the attacking cards when on the table as part of a meld.  The attacking cards can be played during the meld phase and once used are discarded.

Military attacking card allows players to steal cards that have been placed in melds by other players.

Economy attacking cards allow players to force a trade with another player – player may ask for a certain suit and give a suit of their choice to the other player (no suit then go fish!)

Science attacking cards allow players to look at the top 3 cards of the deck and keep one.  The player may decide to place both cards back on top of the deck or on the bottom of the deck.

Culture attacking cards allow the player to take a card from the discard pile.

 

Once a player has no more cards in their hand then the first round is over and the second Age – with the new Age deck – starts.

In the second and third ages cards may be added to sets from previous ages or may be melded into new sets.

Scoring – some kind of modified Knizia scoring system where  being strong in one suit is not necessarily advantageous.

 

      

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NEW IDEA

My new card game idea is a hidden identity trick taking game.  Players have hidden identities and maybe working together.  Cards represent regions that the players want to control.   The cards have some indication of what ‘faction’ they benefit.   By winning tricks players start to control areas on a map.  This could be a cold war type game or even be themed to something like A Game of Thrones.   Still mulling over the idea in my mind.

**edit**  It could be that during a round players have to declare their allegiance but this could change from round to round.  So, no hidden identity but rather a guess as to who might win the trick.  Points are given (or rewards – or control) to the successful group.

 

Weekend Update

Still not much going on with respect to the game design process but I have been involved in the board game community:

• Addicted to Ra on the iPad – an excellent App
• Played Revolution, Ticket to Ride Asia and a couple of games of San Juan…fun times…oh and played Say Anything – a great party game
• No BIGCON this year but I will still be running the Family Game Events in schools around Kamloops – so far Rio Grande Games and Out of the Box Publishing are donating to the events!
• Excited for my fellow geek, David Short, who has two games coming out this Fall – check out Ground Floor and Skyline by Tasty Minstrel Games
• Another geek friend, Seth Jaffee, the game developer at TMG seems to be rocking along!  TMG will be publishing some big game titles this year and next year!  Congrats Mike M. and Seth
• Bought a copy of Catan Junior – looks like a great variant for kids.  Can’t wait to crack it open with the family
• Got a brand new copy of Dungeons & Dragons Starter Kit.  I have never played RPGs but am now going to give it a try with Sophie and a friend and his son.  Reading through the rule book this weekend
• On the design front – will be playtesting Tower of Doom with the new cards soon and will be working on All Access Tour: North America
• Starting a lunchtime school board game club at my wife’s elementary school.  This club will be for grade 4 to 7 students (with some grade 3s sprinkled in – my daughter is in grade 3)
• I have been asked to write a monthly review of a board game for kamloopsparents.com.  Starting with either the Kids of Carcassonne of Catan Junior.  Should be fun!

That’s it for now.  Hopefully I will have more design news soon.

Ra on the iPad, Dominion campaign and party games

Not much designing going on with work and getting things ready for Pam and Sophie’s return to school (my wife is a teacher).  However, I have had time to play some games.  I am addicted to Ra on the iPad.  Such a great conversion though there seems to be a glitch where sometimes Ra tokens will get pulled in succession way too often – still a wonderful game.

I have rediscovered Dominion – such a great game.  For some inexplicable reason it sat on the shelf for way too long.  I think if there were any game mechanism that I could have invented it would be the deck building mechanism in Dominion.  Four of us got together and played Dominion and two of its expansions – Seaside and Prosperity.  In order to mix things up a little we followed Mike Watne’s (thegreybetween) campaign rules.  In campaign mode players are rewarded for their successes in earlier games.  Rewards include and upgrade of Treasure cards or the addition of Action Cards to the beginning deck of their next game.  We played three games using each different set for each round.  It was very interesting and I would suggest that Dominion players try it sometime.  The rules can be found here.

This Labour Day weekend we were invited to two ‘parties’.  The first was at one of my gaming buddy’s place.  My gaming friends all have kids around the same age as Sophie.  It is a wonderful group of friends!!  We are very lucky.  I was asked to bring a game that played eight.  I took Say Anything.  I picked up Say Anything at a local thrift store.  WOW!  Is it a great game!  We were laughing so hard.  I recommend it to anyone.  The second gathering was at my bosses house.  We played a family pick-up game of football soccer and then went back to his house for a BBQ.   After food and beverages and we had the kids settled in front of a movie, we played a game that my boss had played with his family in England last Christmas.  A very simple party game…Who’s in the bag?  A cloth bag is filled with celebrity names.  In the first round players have 30 seconds to get their team to guess as many names as possible by describing the person without saying the actual name.  A point is awarded for each correct response.  In the second round players may only act (a la Charades) and have their team guess and in the third round players may only use one word to describe the celebrity.  As is often the case with party games of this ilk, it was men versus women.  Round 1 – men 41 women 41.  Round 2 – men 62 women 60.  Round 3 – men 79 women 74.

Rockin’ All Over The World – except Scandinavia

Here are some stats about my blog:

• In operation for 608 days.
• 183 posts which comes to one every 3.3 days or twice a week
• 232 comments or on average 1.26 per post
• 7,177 views or on average 11 per day or 39 per post
• Since February 2012 the site has been viewed by people in 66 different countries

Below is a map of views over only the last 90 days.  I can excuse Central America, parts of Asia and Africa for not visiting – I’ll put it down to lack of internet availability BUT C’MON SCANDINAVIA!!!  What’s your problem  🙂  (Not including Denmark)  There are some countries missing off the list – could not print screen large enough.

Alien Invasion – a new idea (part 3)

Here is my second idea for an alien invasion board game.

Alien Invasion – The Deck Building Game

As with many deck building games, each player would start with a basic hand which they would shuffle, draw cards, play cards, discard and then re-seed their hand etc…

The difference with this deck building game is that players would start with a team of marine cards that have identical stats and possibly one ship card (transport/attack ship).  These cards would not be part of the deck but rather placed in the players tableau.  The marines and ship can be upgraded by playing various technology cards during a turn and buying other technology cards.  By managing resources and money and technology players build efficient teams that with the use of their ship can deal with alien threats.

Points come from dealing with alien threats.  There would be 3 decks of alien threats:

1. Yellow alert -low level alien incursions
2. Orange alert – cities being attacked by aliens
3. Red alert – alien base formed on earth

Players will choose what level of alien invasion they would like to deal with (could be by activation of cards or could be once per turn).  If the player’s marines have the levels needed to beat the alien incursion then they get rewards.  The higher the level the greater the rewards.  The rewards would come in the form of cards added to the deck.  If the marines are not successful then damage cards are placed in the deck – these are useless.  There could be a way of trashing these damage cards.

Another thought…the marines could be part of the deck and be played when needed…with the addition of some kind of reserve mechanism (a la A Few Acres of Snow).

Still mulling it over in my mind

 

Alien Invasion – a new idea (part 2)

Here is my first ‘fleshed out’ idea – though still a bit of a jumble.

Alien Invasion – worker placement game.

The board represents the Headquarters of the Earth Extraterrestrial Defence Squad.  Rooms represent research, recruitment, and other places where players can upgrade their tactical response teams.

There is a deck of cards that represent the marines that comprise each players tactical response team.  These cards have the characters skill levels.  Skill levels can be enhanced by going to various rooms in the base.  These enhancements would be shown by having cards slide behind the squad members character card (or tokens could be used).  Characters would start at different levels – there would be maybe 4 levels of characters each represented by a different coloured meeple.  Players would be dealt x number of marine cards and then a drafting process would ensue.  To start with players would have a threshold that they could not pass during the drafting process.  No level 4 characters would be in the draft.  So, if the threshold was 6 then a player could draft two level 3 marines, 3 level two marines, or 6 level one marines, or some combination.  The balance between experience and team numbers would be a key strategic decision in the game.

Each player would pick a continent where they have their individual base of operations – Asia, Europe, N. America etc…

On a turn players would place their marine meeples in one of the rooms – the more experienced the meeple the better the result achieved in some rooms.  Possibly something like, if you place a level 3 meeple in the recruitment room a player gets to look at 3 marine cards and gets to recruit one, whereas a level 2 looks at two cards.

At the end of the placement of marine meeples event cards are drawn.  Players now may respond to any alien attacks on earth.  These attacks could be a simple blowing the UFO out of the sky to defending the headquarters against an alien attack.  The key is players may only use meeples they did not use in the placement stage to defend or attack the aliens.  Also, if a player places a meeple in the communications room then they get to choose which event they want to which they want to respond.  The more time it takes for a squad to respond to an alien attack the harder the task becomes.  If a player’s home base is in Asia and the attack is in Asia they respond immediately.  If the player responds to attack in another continent the tasks get more difficult.  Using the research room allows for upgrade of tech which allows for quicker response.  You can also call on a closer player to assist with the attack.  However, the rewards are split evenly.

The end game scenario will be when the Headquarter attack occurs – the event card comes into play – in this scenario only the players that have been placed in the headquarters may defend.

There is no battle mechanic – players simply must meet certain levels of skill, strength, willpower etc to defend the headquarters.  Victory points are awarded for successful missions and number of marines alive at the end of the game.

Alien Invasion – a new idea (part 1)

This is the first of three connected posts about a game idea.  The first is some general background about where the idea came from and the second and third will include some ideas on how an alien invasion game might come to life.

I was on BGG the other day and added my two cents to a forum about creating a game based on the computer game X-COM.  In X-COM players control and build a team of soldiers who investigate and eliminate alien attacks on earth.  These alien attacks become more dangerous as the aliens create bases on earth and eventually start attacking the X-COM bases.  In order to complete these tasks players acquire wealth through selling resources obtained after dealing with an alien excursion, acquire new technology through the development of scientific research and upgrade their teams characteristics through the completion of successful missions.  The computer game is both part dungeon crawl and part ‘civ’ builder.  The difficulty in making such a game is that it could fall into the trap of becoming a fiddly game a la Sid Meier’s Civilization or even worse become a Descent like dungeon crawl – which has been done already with Space Hulk.

I am not a fan of fiddly 3 hour games or Ameritrash themed dungeon crawls.

Here are my initial thoughts (the next two posts will flesh the idea out some more)

Maybe a different way of approaching the game would be to have some kind of economic engine (cube pushing or meeple pushing or worker placement mechanism) where players increase there tech tree and strengthen their teams and the alien invasion and bases come in the form of event cards.  At certain points during the game event cards are revealed – or maybe laid face down.  Each event card has a geographic location.  Players bases are placed in geographic locations (maybe by continent) and then players react.  Maybe not all events are bad.

So four cards are revealed – Asia, Europe, South America and Asia.  Depending on what continents the earth bases were placed on there is a travel time.  So if Earth Base A is on Asia it only has a travel time of 1 to any event in Asia but longer to other continents.  The longer it takes to get to an event the more ‘potential danger tokens’ are placed on this card.  Players are also limited in travel by their tech tree.  Players choose which card to investigate – it is revealed and either they get a reward or the fight is on…meet levels on the card to get rewards.

Worker placement – place team members in areas to gain rewards – but balance that by keeping meeples at home because you will need to travel to events.

Draft agents at start of game.