NaGa DeMon 3: The First Play

Before making Zombology available to the PIP-hunting masses I wanted to play it at least once first to give me a chance to iron out the worst of the problems.

I'd worked hard over the weekend to get the first prototype's graphic design done on the computer, then get it printed and cut out ready for the first of two Newcastle Playtest sessions in November, last night. I was excited to see how it plays, but a little concerned about the complexity of the scoring.

As people started to arrive it was easy to sell them on a ten minute game that we could all play, so we sat down to a six-player game. After a quick run through of the rules that made it clear that the scoring was too complex (lots of questions along the lines of 'run that by me again', 'so which cures score?' And 'hoojamawhatnow?'), we set off. The game played as quickly as I had hoped and was as chaotic and vicious as I had intended. People seemed to get their heads round the rules pretty quickly.

I had first had the idea for this game nearly two years ago, it was going to be themed around the science of proteomics and would be something that we could possibly have as a scientific conference giveaway for my employer. The initial idea was played once and really didn't work so it died a death and stayed that way.

However, I've been toying with how I could transform it into a working game and on my weekend walks taking The Daughter for a nap in her buggy I've occasionally considered Proteome as well as Vacuum. In the last couple of weeks I've thought that card drafting à la 7 Wonders might be a good fit for the science theme. As the game progresses you'll get to hear on the grapevine/at conferences what sort of things people are interested in and build up an idea of what's hot and likely to be successful. I ditched the proteomics theme and instead though of curing a disease. And that led to Zombology - curing zombyism.

I created a game with 12 different possible cures, each containing the same range of evidence (positive valued cards) and attacks (negative valued cards). Seeing as you'd never play with the full deck, even with the posited maximum of ten players, some of the cures would end up more powerful than others. The more powerful ones would change every game and at the beginning of the game you wouldn't know what would be best - it would be a journey of discovery that you could shape as you choose cards to play. Much like science.

I wanted players to score points for backing the most successful cures, and I thought it would make things interesting if they lost points for backing the least successful cures. So my initial scoring idea was that at the end of the game you would add up the total of each cure across all players and the ones with the highest totals earnt their players positive points and the ones with the lowest totals earnt their players negative points. The attacking cards earnt you negative points so if you attack the winning cures you lose points and attacking the losing cures won you points. In addition, the attacking cards cancelled a positive card in the same suit.

Before I went to the playtest session I was concerned the scoring was over complicated, and my fears were realised - it took almost as long to score the game as it did to play it! Afterwards I asked for feedback, and in addition to a load of interesting ideas, the main complaints were the complicated scoring and that twelve suits was too many, making it hard to keep track of how the game was progressing.

So we took out five of the suits and played again, and it went much better. The scoring was still too complicated, so I need to think on that. What that reminds me of is prototype decay, the idea that prototype components have a lifetime that changes rapidly at the beginning, so it's not worth investing too much effort in them. I've now got to make a new prototype with all new cards in six rather than twelve suits, and re-think the scoring.

I've only got a month though, so I'll need to move quickly...

A Weird Week

It's been a strange week, this one. The daughter was ill last weekend and the early part of the week and on top of that we're changing childcare providers. The Wife and I are both very busy at work with deadlines looming, so we split up the childcare while we introduce her to the new nursery. So Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I was in charge. On my own.

Thankfully, we'd had some practice at the beginning of September when The Wife had a conference to attend for work so I was in charge for a few days, but then I had the help of my friend Paul who we were staying with, who has a nine year old daughter of his own, and hence is far more experienced than I. But this time it was just me.

It was lovely, especially once she got over her illness and was much happier, I wish I had more holiday so I could spend more time with her, but sadly, I've used this year's allowance up :(

As a result of the sleepless nights while she was ill, we didn't have a Games Night to give us a chance to catch up. Seeing as I was off work with The Daughter at the beginning of the week, I missed Tuesday lunchtime's Codename: Vacuum playtest session too. My parents came up last night, so I skipped Saturday's Newcastle Gamers session to prepare for their visit. So from a gaming point of view it's been a dry week.

The new Vacuum has had a lot of changes, so I really need to focus on trying them all out and finding and improving the weaknesses, so next week I hope to get back to lunchtime playtesting and then there's another Newcastle Playtest meetup on the 5th, so I'll take it along to that too.

In other news, I've been thinking about Codename: Proteome again, and in my head have made some sweeping changes. I'm considering giving it a go for NaGa DeMon, the game designer's equivalent of NaNoWriMo.

So not much to report this week, but stuff is afoot!

In other news, 700th post! Who'd have thought Creation and Play would last so long?

Reaching a Climax

The last few weeks have been exciting, with several things, both games related and not, coming to a head. On the gaming front, I've had the combination of my mate Paul from York and his family up this weekend, and Tuesday is the first Newcastle Playtest Meetup at The Bridge Hotel from 7pm.

On the subject of the Playtest meetup, it looks like we're going to have around 8 people, with at least four designers trialling games on the night. I was hoping to take a new version of Codename: Vacuum (the July version) and possibly Codename: Proteome too. Sadly, what with visitors and everything else, I've not got a new version of Proteome ready to go. But the July version of Vacuum was finished off and then corrected last week (with a couple more corrections to come tomorrow night I hope!). I'm really looking forward to introducing Vacuum to some more people, and getting the feedback of other designers. It's at a point where I think it could benefit from an injection of new ideas.

On the subject of Paul's visit, we got a few games in on Saturday night and during The Daughter's Sunday afternoon nap. I introduced Paul to X-Wing Minis and Pergamon and he introduced me to Hanabi. Hanabi's a great fun little game, I can see it being popular as a starter for ten or a closing game on Games Night, so it's going on my wishlist. I loved both the 'cards in your hand are hidden from you but visible to everyone else' mechanism, and the way you have to try to inform the other players while imparting only very limited information. I also got a second chance to try Love Letter. Definitely still interested in that one too...

We played until one in the morning, which considering I'd been up since five am with The Daughter was a late night! I was practically falling asleep during Pergamon, so I had to stop there. On Sunday I asked Paul if he'd like to receive another playtest copy of Codename: Vacuum. He'd received a copy back in March at the same time as my friends in Bedford. He'd acknowledged receipt of it, but then I'd not heard anything - no feedback forms or reports or anything, so I'd assumed it hadn't been played, so I didn't want to send him another copy if he was just going to shelve it.

Paul said that he was interested in another version, that the version I'd given him back in March had been played a few times. People weren't wowed by it, but they didn't hate it either. Yay! More ambivalence :(. He gave me what criticisms he could remember from the games they had played (not all including him). It was really useful stuff, even though the version they're playing is very out of date now. They liked several of the mechanisms in the game, but found them a bit too much all in one game. The wealth of cards (meant to introduce re-playability) was too confusing and made it harder to learn. It took too long to play. Military was overly strong.

Several of those points I've addressed in subsequent versions, but the most telling one was that their games last 40-45 minutes per player!. Ours, with very experienced players, last about 20-25 minutes per player. But I think I'm aiming for 15 minutes per player once you know the rules and the cards. Still more work to be done on that front, even in the latest version. Back to the drawing board.

In other news, I'm going to stay with Paul and his family in early September for a couple of days. I'm going to set myself that as a deadline to get the August version done, printed, corrected and the rules finally re-written. There. I've said it. You can hold me to that!

Going Off Piste

This week has been a game of two ends, like football (that's soccer for my largely American audience).

In the first half, I've been chatting via email with the two designers I played a prototype with at last week's Newcastle Gamers about setting up a Newcastle playtest meetup once a month at a local pub. Dan seems to be very keen (and far more organised than me!) so this might actually happen, starting next month. I'm going to try to get both a new version of Codename: Vacuum and a version of my new Codename: Proteome idea together for the inaugural session. The Proteome idea is a complete reboot, significantly different from the prototype I made and played once in February last year, although bizarrely uses a very similar set of cards. The Vacuum idea would be a major change as I mentioned last week to separate out the Trade (and to a lesser degree Population) strategy from a dependence on owning locations and hence the Military strategy.

Which leads me on nicely to the second half - Ding, ding! Change ends.

The second half of the week has been all about the Trade strategy of Codename Vacuum. I've been through several ideas in my head some which add extra components, some which add extra complexity and some which simplify everything to the point of making the Trade strategy dull as ditchwater. The Trade strategy as it stands in my current prototype was designed to add another form of direct interaction between players on top of the Military struggle for controlling locations. As it stands it doesn't really succeed - you trade with the neutrals if you can, and the player with the least cash if you can't. There's not a lot of interesting decisions to be had there, or in fact, much in the way of player interaction.

So I've spent my hours walking to and from work thinking of half a dozen new ideas to make Trade interesting again. The constraint being that if you get your arse handed to you in a Military beat down, you can still Trade effectively. I've gone through ideas featuring adding corporations to locations with little discs in the players' colours, taking corporation cards out and into play like locations, adding resource types to locations and a few others. I want try out a few of them, but ideally without coming up with significantly different art/cards until I'm happy with the idea. I played with Chief on Thursday lunchtime, trying one of them out.

Ideally, I want something that: separates Trade from a dependency on locations, adds player interaction, simplifies the game mechanics, doesn't make the locations too similar, oh and I want the moon on a stick. Surely, that's not too much to ask?

The first idea I tried on Thursday: letting players bring the corporations into play like locations, and then getting coins for them every turn with points for the number of corporations you had 'incorporated' at the end of the game. It didn't really seem to work at all, though Chief said he liked the idea. Back to the drawing board I think.

Anyway, all these ideas have got me thinking about significantly changing Vacuum. A fresh injection of ideas can only help at this stage: at best I'll introduce some changes that significantly improve things, at worst I'll try out some ideas and ultimately reject them.

Moving the Goalposts

Back at the beginning of the year, I set myself some goals. My next major target according to those goals is to get copies of Codename: Vacuum to playtesters around the world by the end of May. Which is just over a month away.

That's not going to happen. Not even close. The last couple of weeks we've had my parents up for a week and now my father-in-law up for a week. In two weeks time we're off on a family holiday for a week and we've another long weekend family holiday at the end of May. For the last couple of weeks I've not made much progress on Codename: Vacuum for all these reasons (excuses again!) and it's clear to me now that I'll not get those playtest copies ready by the end of next month. In fact, after the rulebook disaster, I'm not even sure I'll manage to get the rulebook re-written by the end of May, let alone the playtest copies constructed.

So, I'm moving the goalposts. I've got a work trip to the US in June, so it's unlikely to be done by June either, but maybe July is achievable. In the meantime, I've just printed the April version for myself which I now need to cut out and I'll need to make update packs for Terry and Paul who have the March version. I can also be making boxes and box inserts for the playtest copies already. The other components will change between now and the end of July, but the boxes won't so I can make them ahead of time.

The other thing I need to be thinking about is who gets the playtest copies. I want people who can give really good feedback, people who like deck-building games and people who are prepared to play it several times to make the cost of sending them a copy worthwhile. I've a few ideas, friends I made during my Reiver Games days. But I think I want to send out maybe fifteen copies, so I'll need to find a few more playtesters. I feel a BGG post coming on, nearer to the time...

In other news, I've been having some more ideas about Codename: Proteome. Maybe it's time to make another version of that and get that tested too.

Proteome: A Designer for Hire?

As I've mentioned recently, I've started designing a second game: Proteome: The Drug Discovery Card Game. I've mentioned before that I got the idea after a joke from the marketing department at work. We were discussing my games designing past and Beth mentioned that I should make a game for our company to giveaway at scientific conferences that we attend. We all had a laugh about it, but it sparked an idea in my head.

To make a game professionally, you need to make 500 copies at a bare minimum - 1,000 is a more realistic number. Making a board game, with several components, a board, cards wooden pieces, etc. is not cheap. A small run - 1,000 copies or so could be very expensive - £15 or more a copy, which would mean a £15,000 outlay. Clearly a lot to be spending on conference giveaways. The next morning, in the shower I had an idea for a card game that fit the bill. A card game is that much cheaper to manufacture - plus easier to pocket as you wander the convention trade show.

If the game is to be given away at conferences the audience is not going to be hardcore gamers, there might be a few gamers in attendance, but it'll be almost entirely people who've played nothing but Monopoly and Cluedo. The audience will be smart, but not into complicated games. Of course, being me I don't want to produce something rubbish that I'd be ashamed of if a hardcore gamer saw it - I'm looking for a fairly simple filler that is engaging and appropriately themed. Appropriately themed in this case means collecting and publishing data on proteins that could be a target for a new drug, while robustly refuting the discoveries of your competition.

The more I thought about it, the more I thought it would be a good idea - both the game concept and the giveaway idea. So over the last couple of weeks I knocked up a prototype for my game idea, and took it to work (where I dropped it on the desk of Paddy, a vocal encourager, and said 'Done!'). We played it this week and it's not there yet, but the basic idea works. It's too complicated (a perennial problem with early prototypes of mine!) and could do with simplification, but there's something there. It gathered quite a lot of interest while we were playing it during lunch in the office :).

Marketing seem to be taking the idea of a game as a giveaway quite seriously. Who'd have thought that I'd stop working in games, go back to work and then still get to do games design as part of my day job? Of course, even if I can get the game finished there's no guarantee that management will go for the idea, so it may all come to naught. But it's fun while the idea is still a possibility.

My Juices Are Flowing...

Creative juices that is, before you get any ideas.

Reiver Games, my previous games publishing effort was formed after I got into games design. After years writing tiny bits of computer games I was in the mood for doing something that I could start, work through and finish. I'd played Mighty Empires with some friends for a weekend (and I mean a weekend - we played for 36 hours over three days!). I thought I could create something similar that was a bit less random (I'd been wiped out in a dragon attack after 24 hours of play!) and that played a bit quicker. Border Reivers was the game I created in that vein. On the back of Border Reivers and the perceived success of it (I sold out of the 100 hand-made copies within a year) I was in the designing mood, I started probably five or ten new games ideas, all sorts: an abstract game, an empire game, a beach-combing game and card game about the development of York.

After a year or so, I had another game out, designed by another designer and it was selling much better than Border Reivers had. With a little distance I'd realised that Border Reivers wasn't as good as I'd originally thought. In fact, I was beginning to think it was pretty weak. I'd played it with a lot of people by that point, and some loved it, some liked it and some were distinctly unimpressed. I could see there were flaws in the design, but as both the designer and the publisher I had no distance. I'd not played many games by the time I'd finished Border Reivers: Carcassonne, The Settlers of Catan and Citadels, maybe a couple of others. As I played a wider range of games I got a better grip on what a good game was. At this point I was trying to position Reiver Games as an independent publisher, and I was receiving more and more submissions to publish. The quality of those submissions varied enormously and it was clear that some designers really struggled to understand just how unfinished their designs were. As an independent adjudicator, I could clearly see these games were weak, but as the designer they were too close, too invested in their designs to see the flaws.

Seeing this from the other side made me re-think my own designing. I was that designer too, too invested in my own games to see their weaknesses and flaws. I start to be much harsher on my games, equivocating, second-guessing myself and struggling to make any decisions. Aware of the flaws of Border Reivers and the problems a lack of impartially brought I stopped designing my own games, afraid I'd publish games of my own design, after blinding myself to their flaws. After It's Alive! I published Carpe Astra (with some design input from myself) and Sumeria, neither of which sold very well. As Reiver Games slowly crawled towards the grave I lost confidence in myself, even to choose other designers' games.

Needless to say, designing was far from my mind for all this time. Now, a year and a bit after I went back to work I'm in the mood again. I've got two different prototypes ready to go: Codename Vacuum a Steampunk/Sci-Fi deck-building and tableau driven game, and Proteome: The Drug Discovery Card Game, an idea that sprang into my head after a joke from one of the marketing team at work. What's next? I've a tile-laying game knocking around in my head too, themed around Lewis & Clark's exploration of the American west.

What I really need to do now is get playing them, so I can start the improvement/design/development process. I've a weekly games night that I don't really want to become all about the playtesting (as the games will be broken a lot of the time and not much fun to play), and there's a bi-weekly games club in Newcastle which I don't make it to very often. I'll be going to Beers and Pretzels in May, but before then I could do with a few playtesting nights to get the games into some sort of shape before showing them to the discerning public. I need to find some time in my busy schedule.