Archive for the ‘Jeff’s Blog’ Category
Monday, July 25th, 2011 in Jeff's Blog
I just took Sean Garrity of Baksha games to the airport this morning for a 7:30 am flight. He’s Canadian but he’s all right. (Do you even capitalize “Canadian”? They seem like such an unassuming people. I’ve actually never met a Canadian I ddin’t like.) I really enjoyed his visit. I got to test out his sequel to “Good Help” called “What’s he working on in there?” a worker placement game where you build a doomsday device and an escape plan. I also got to get his valuable feedback on two of my games, “Horrible Ending” and “Lost Tiles”.
Tonight at 7:30 pm, I picked up my friend Paul Wastney at the airport when he flew in from Holland. Paul’s a New Zealander and an avid Battlestations fan. He’ll be road tripping with Jason to GenCon and helping to run Battlestations there along with my friend Thomas Reuter who arrives in a few days from Germany. I’m certain we’ll have great fun together.
So, because of gaming, I find that the world is full of people that I like and the world gets cosier. And that is a good thing.
Comments OffWednesday, January 5th, 2011 in Jeff's Blog
I recently got an email from somebody asking for tips on creating a game and it occured to me that there are a few differences between designing a game and bringing a product to market.
Make a game
A game is an activity where one or more players make decisions to influence an outcome in question.
A good game is also interesting (fun is a subset of interesting). Games like chutes and ladders aren’t really games because there is no decision making. One could argue that most casino games aren’t games by this definition because they rely so purely on chance. I submit that casino games wouldn’t be played by anybody if there weren’t money involved. Choosing whether to bet on red or black isn’t an interesting decision. Putting money into the equation makes it interesting because you could become richer or poorer.
Clean Slate
Get a blank sheet of paper and write your game idea on it. Surround the central premise with all the things that it brings to mind. The theme and mechanics should feed off one another. Build a system out of it that provides interesting choices (that is my definition of a game). Use pre-existing mechanics where they work. Obviously, there should be something unique about your game that makes it special but you don’t need to reinvent the wheel for every aspect of the game.
The initial stages of design are the most exhilirating for me. I escape into a world where literally everything is possible. Many of my game ideas start out with the an absurd premise such as “a universe where a star-fighter can go up against a star-destroyer” or “a gladiatorial game that has all of the depth of a ccg but without being a ccg and it has a board and maps and only one page of rules…” That last bit is one of my favorites because most everything I do has only one page of rules to start with. It is going to be so intuitive and rich that there is only one page of rules but the depth makes it amazingly intricate. During this early stage, everything is cool. At some point later on, I’ll realize I won’t be able to have a thousand rules on a thousand cards and still publish it for under ten dollars and teach in 5 minutes and play in 20 minutes.
Prototype
It doesn’t have to be fancy but the better it looks the more chance your game will get taken seriously. I find that when I have a crappy prototype, it sends the message that the idea is unfinished. People put on their helper-hats and instead of playing the game and evaluating it, evaluate it and play it. The subtle difference is that the opinion is one step further removed. Ideally, I’d have production ready art and pieces for every step of the way but it is impractical to get a professional artist to work up a layout for a design that just might go nowhere.
Playtest
Alone first and then with friends and eventually with strangers and sending of blind copies to strangers get it tested. Only through testing will you find out if it works and here is the tricky part. You need to find out what works and what doesn’t work independently. I had some really crappy rules in place early on in Battlestations development but it was so much fun to be in space that my playtest group forgave the crappy rules. When I eventually fixed those rough edges people loved the game even more. Objectively evaluate what is really fun about the game and what isn’t. Find out where it is providing depth and where it just bogs down. Are the mechanics fitting with the theme? A dice game about roulette doesn’t feel right. Maybe a spinner would work better?
Redesign
Go back to the drawing board and rework it. The new thing you are doing doesn’t owe anything to the original.
Have fun
There is work. It is frustrating. You might have to set aside an idea for an hour a week or a year. Trust yourself. Enjoy this process.
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By Her Majesty’s Sacred Egg Sac
Friday, December 3rd, 2010 in Jeff's Blog
Well, my crew completed the zoallan campaign I had designed and I realize that I don’t have enough material here for a whole book so the events at hand will start a Zoallan Civil War!
One of my players suggested building a choose your own adventure out of it so I’m going to noodle around with that idea.
I’d been blowing them up real good for the last few missions so I dialed it down too much on this finale. Even my munchkin players noticed it was too easy!
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Galactic Civil War PDF Now Available
Wednesday, October 20th, 2010 in Battlestations, Jeff's Blog, News
An electronic PDF file version of the long out-of-print Galactic Civil War expansion is now available!!!
Swing on by our store and buy your copy here
Take your adventures to the next level with a complete rebellion campaign and some new modules!
New equipment, a new species, new special abilities and new actions (like sideslip, Piloting skill check vs. speed + Size to have your ship maintain its facing, but move forward into the port or starboard hex on its next move).
GCW includes a 96 page rulebook and a complete Civil War campaign.
Comments OffMonday, August 16th, 2010 in Jeff's Blog
It was great to commune with my people at GenCon. The gaming community is a wonderous collection of misfits that fit together perfectly like flagstones.
Some of the highlights:
Meeting artist Tegre Layne. I had the privilege to run the game for the “Bot Wars” artist who showed up unexpectedly for one of my Bot Wars sessions along with an entourage.
Jason Siadek showed up. He hadn’t planned on going but the pull of GenCon is too great to resist; even from New Orleans!
N-Con. The folks I stay with in Indianapolis are the best. Imagine a hot chick, a gamer, a gracious hostess, a costume geek, a sweet little girl, a microbrewer, and a professional scientist and that was just Nicole! The rest of her family was lovely as well.
Sales. I sold out of “Lifeboat” and “Who Would Win?” on Sunday and sold a ton of Battlestations. Sean of Baksha games sold out of his Good Help and Todd of Ninja Magic had his best show ever. Yoyo of Swan Panasia didn’t have the same retail success but he was always buzzing around generating connections for his pan pacific gaming empire.
Sunday Morning Disc Golf with Ben. I finally get how to throw a golf disc. It will still be years before I’m competitive with Ben who was kind enough to teach me even though I’ve been throwing discs since before he was born.
Booth Babes. Bryan was kind enough to reconvene Mark and Pete for Setup and Teardown (did I say booth babes?). Liz and Katrina did a great job of hawking the wares while I ran events.
Now I just have to get ready for Essen.
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Tuesday, July 6th, 2010 in Jeff's Blog
I had a blast at Origins. The fans were great and the games went well and sales were good.
I even had a chance to play a few games that weren’t my own but still were a lot of fun. Baksha Games released Sean Garrity’s “Good Help” about mad Scientists building a monster to wreak havoc on their village. It was good fun.
I also got a chance to play “Lords of Vegas” by James Ernest and Mike Selinker released through Mayfair games. I enjoyed it thoroughly. It has a lot of dice in it but is much more of a eurogame than it appears on the surface. A last minute grab enabled me to win which nearly always colors my view of a game favorably.
I’ll write more soon, I’m sure.
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Friday, May 14th, 2010 in Jeff's Blog
One of my most popular designs from my early career with Gamesmiths was “Monster Derby”
I recently had an idea about how to fix a couple of problems with it that bugged me so I’m going to republish it.
The first problem I had was that with a random first player each turn, you could go several turns without a chance to take a meaningful action. I fixed this by adding the option to take the First Player Marker instead of moving a monster. This means you’ll always get to do something you want or at least be further up the pecking order toward getting first crack.
The second problem wasn’t a problem for me and my playtest group. In over a hundred plays it never came up for us but on the Boardgamegeek a couple of different groups mentioned that players sometimes picked the same monsters in the same order.
My fix is to have each player draw a random monster at the start of the game as their tiebreaker. This doesn’t count for points but counts as a tiebreaker for the endgame if they have exactly the same score. This gives you a slight but personalized stake in selecting one monster over another.
I’ll have to get Lifeboat off my brain before I go to press with this one.
Admiral Siadek Out!
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Friday, April 9th, 2010 in Jeff's Blog
I had the pleasure tonight of playing Knizia’s “Digging” and Borg’s “Hera and Zeus”.
Digging is supposed to be 4 player with rules making it viable for two players. I played it as two player and was unimpressed. I think Knizia suffers from the fact that he is so good and so popular that he can publish things that aren’t publishable by more stringent standards. Maybe I’d have to play the 4 player version to pick up on the nuances but I doubt I’ll ever get the chance. There are too many other promising new games or tried and true favorites out there vying for my attention. The theming of mining was poorly applied and I felt more like I was playing a card game than mining and it wasn’t a very good one.
“Zeus and Hera” was much better by comparison but still left me a little flat. I will play that one again. I feel like I’ll have to play it a few times just to understand what is going on. The special powers on the cards were confusing. There are 4 or 5 different ways to win the game but it is tough to figure a clear path to most of them. The way I eventually won was by blasting my opponents cards of the table.
I want to build a catalogue of games that people can look over and say, “Wow, I love those games!”
(and by people I mean especially me).
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Friday, February 5th, 2010 in Jeff's Blog
I’m going to write the Battlestations RPG.
Here are the parameters.
1. Be true to the boardgame
2. Go beyond the boardgame.
3. Roleplaying is make-believe made real.
4. Quick entry
5. Deep as you want to get
6. Intuitive
7. Story
8. Characters
9. Mechanics
That’s enough thinking out loud for now.
Comments OffThursday, January 21st, 2010 in Jeff's Blog
Everybody wants to be the king of France. However, unfettered fantasy is ultimately unsatisfying. One needs a context and a challenge. Try being the king of France while there is a Queen of England opposing you and a revolution brewing in the streets of your city slums and things get interesting. Rules provide a framework for interacting with that fantasy world.
Gaming is making decisions and taking actions within the parameters of a system. Roleplaying is immersion in an environment through a personal avatar. People can roleplay in theater as a castmember or vicariously as the audience. Improvisational theater allows for a limited range of free will. Writing is probably the closest analog to roleplaying gaming but it is extremely deterministic and generally solitary. Even writing with collaberators is done in collective isolation and the outcomes are chosen. No character in a novel dies without the author’s permission. The fate of characters in games is governed by their choices and their fortune.
When I roleplay, I want a story to emerge that combines elements of the world and of the players in a way that is exciting and dramatic. The best in fiction is when the unexpected takes place but in retrospect it seems obvious. I want my referee to set a rich feast at the table with personae of all strata represented and then be prepared for when I flip the table and insult the host.
The game part of roleplaying needs to have enough tactical options to be interesting but it shouldn’t be so involved that you need to know how to play it. I want to play in a system where my fellow players are Robert E. Howard or Arthur Conan Doyle and they announce their actions in a way that makes sense to them (crush the enemy or find the connecting thread of the mystery) and those actions translate intuitively into the game system. “I swing recklessly”. “I’m examining the footprints.”
I feel like the advent of special abilities in 3rd edition and moreso 4th was inspired but I also think it has boardgame-ified the roleplaying out of the game. “Adventure” has become the opposite of its true definition. Adventure means something extraordinary happens to take the participants outside the realm of their expected worlds. Now, the expected world is three interesting combats and a skill challenge. It has become kabuki theater. Players spend their “once per day” actions to maximize their combat advantages.
I loved Burning Empires but I played it with the wrong people with the wrong mindset. I think the game itself had a few flaws in connecting the fantasy to the rules but I really like where it was headed. I want a game that scales up or down depending on the players. I would love to be able to have a hundred years war last a few seconds or a few seconds last all night depending on what was most important to the players. Can I get a special ability that gives me +1 on “hundred years war”-ing?
Other than Agricola and Spider Solitaire (and my novel) this is where my mind is these days.
My holy grail is a roleplaying game that:
- Can get up and running in minutes
- Is rich enough that you could spend hours on it
- Takes into account differences
- Is intuitive
- Moves at the right pace
- Has simple enough mechanics but more depth available
I’ll think of more, I’m sure.
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