Hello everyone! As 2019 comes to a close, I've started looking around at what I've accomplished this year, where I stand now, and where I want to go next year.

On the surface, it doesn't seem like a lot has happened in 2019. I haven't published any new games, commissioned any artwork, or put anything new on Tabletopia or Tabletop Simulator. I've only sold a handful of copies of Manaforge, and I've only been to a couple of game conventions.

However, behind the curtain, a lot has been going on. I've put a lot of energy into designing the expansion for Manaforge, developing Sky Pirates, and getting my newest design Nebula off of the ground. And, of course, all of those required playtesting. LOTS of playtesting. Also, of the conventions I attended, one was Dice Tower Con, where IGA sold several of my games; another was the first year of Orlando Games Con, where Zack Crawford of The Thirsty Gamers did a good job of organizing a play space for lots of board games; and a third was HoliCON, where I was invited to demo Manaforge.

Here's a breakdown of what's been going on:


Manaforge Expansion

The project I want to complete most is to finish the expansion for my first game Manaforge. It's been difficult trying to settle on what exactly should be in the expansion; Manaforge has a ton of untapped design space and I'm struggling to figure out exactly what the expansion should do. Here's the list of design goals I'm fighting with:

• Add More Cards [mandatory]: Create more item cards, give more choices in the recipe market, add more variety to the card effects. This is one of the things I'm trying to accomplish with the 'dark item' cards; two dark items are dealt out alongside the six standard items, giving the players more choices and more variability in what the cards do. This variability needs to be in both card effects and card power; there can and should be cheap but weak cards that leave resources free for other things, and super-expensive cards that give tons of points but leave you unable to do anything else in the turn.
• Add More Resource Outlets [mandatory]: Create more ways to spend resources. When I see Manaforge played, either when I'm playing or when I'm watching others play, I always sense some disappointment in the first couple of rounds of the game, when players are getting resource generation cards but not having any place to spend those extra resources. When I'm teaching the game, "I'm not allowed to build another card?" is a common question I get early on. I created the 'customer' cards to try to combat this, giving the players something else to spend mana on.
• Add More Point Vectors [mandatory]: Create another strategy option for scoring points. Right now, there are two major ways to do well in the game: build a solid engine in your workshop for churning out points each round, or build lots of high-point cards (typically done by going all in on wands). I want a third option, a third strategy that players can focus on. I was hoping to accomplish that with the customer cards, giving a chaotic but steady source of point opportunities for the players. I'm not convinced what I have now does that well, though; players often treat the customers as a side note instead of as a primary target.
• Increase Player Interaction [optional]: Add ways for your actions to affect other players and for other players to influence your decisions. Manaforge is not very good at this; really the only major interaction in the game is drafting the item cards, where you might take something that someone else wanted. My original idea was to add take-that effects but I learned that that doesn't fit well into the game's current feel. Right now I'm adding the customer cards, which are a first-come-first-served source of points, but that is just more of the same; taking something your opponent wants. I've been trying to add card effects that pull the other players into whatever it is that you're doing but those tend to get passed over in favor of more straightforward cards. I haven't found the formula for this yet.
• Vary the Value of Existing Game Elements [optional]: Best described as an 'event deck', the game might benefit from having periodic things happen that change the landscape of the game. For one round, fire items give bonus points, or water items are cheaper, or everyone gets a free earth gem, or whatever. Force the players to react to some sort of source of chaos. Or course, the game already has plenty of creating order from chaos in it, but this could be something completely out of the player's control. Dunno if this is needed, but it's something to investigate.

For the moment, the Manaforge expansion is 'on hold'. I haven't given up on it, but it's currently sitting on the back-burner, waiting for some new ideas and a fresh perspective to help figure out where it needs to fit into the base game.


Sky Pirates

The project I have that is more finished is my area control game Sky Pirates. This game is in very good shape; the mechanics are pretty solid, the theme seems to fit well, and the balance isn't far off. Right now the game just needs a ton of playtesting to help chase out any problems I'm not seeing. I also need to put another big dent in the rulebook; the first draft is done and playable but I need to make some terminology and description changes to go with the results of my most recent playtests. This game is kind of in a holding pattern as well, but for a different reason: I'm trying to decide if I want to publish the game by myself or have someone else help me with it. Game development and production I can handle, it's the marketing and Kickstarter aspects that I'm not very good at. Dunno if I just need to find an adviser or two to help, or if I should bring in another publisher.


Nebula

My current focus is my new roll-and-write game, code named "Nebula" (pictured at the top). I'm still keeping this mostly under wraps for right now; I'm trying something new with a roll-and-write game that, to the best of my knowledge, hasn't been done before. (Of course, I say that, and then someone will come out with a new game that does exactly the same thing. Oh well.) It's still a novel idea, and I'm hoping it generates some attention by that alone.

I'm on my second prototype version of Nebula. The first idea was pretty much a disaster; it was slow and boring. I recently finished a rework of it and got to playtest it a couple of times. It's...  well, slow and boring. But at least it's less so this time. Last time I playtested this, it didn't seem to go over well at all. This time, it seems like there might be a spark. I need to do some rebalancing to see if it's just the way the game is currently paced that's the problem. Hopefully in a couple of iterations it will start to become an interesting game.


HoliCON

I recently attended a convention in Ocala called HoliCON. I was invited by one of the convention organizers to go and demo Manaforge, get some extra exposure for the game. I had never heard of this convention before then, but I decided to give it a try, and I'm glad I did. While not a particularly large convention, there was a great group of friendly people that made us feel welcome there. I got in a few Manaforge demos, and even managed to sell a copy there due to my showing it off. I didn't have time to play many games, but I did manage to try something new:

- Fantastic Factories (4/5 Liked)
I played this game for the first time at HoliCON, and I'm glad I did! Interesting mix of dice placement and engine building. You use rolled dice to generate resources which you use to gain cards and add them to your tableau. Some cards give you ways to transform resources, while others you have to activate by using up your dice. Lots of fun! I kind of think of this in the same family as Gizmos, but with an extra level of complexity on top. Dunno if I would buy it (maybe if I found a cheap copy), but I'd definitely play it again if someone offered.


Other Games

While I've played a lot of games over the year, one of them bears mentioning because it helped me with my designs:

- Terraforming Mars: Turmoil expansion (4/5 Liked)
I recently received the latest expansion to Terraforming Mars, and it didn't disappoint! So far I've played this a couple of times; once as a 2-player game with all of the expansions mixed in, and a second time in a 5-player game also using the Prelude expansion. Overall, I think it's a good addition to the game. The expansion adds a political aspect to the game, where six political parties wrestle for control of the planet. Players may add their own delegates to various parties, and at the end of each generation the party with the most delegates becomes the one in charge. Each party gives a bonus for having certain tags, and imposes a rule that gives benefits to certain types of actions for the next generation. The expansion also introduces global events, which give players penalties or bonuses based on certain criteria, and the effects of the events can be altered (improved, for good events, or reduced for bad events) based on how the players' delegates are positioned. The expansion has a couple of rough points, like the complexity of calculating the delegates at the end of each generation slows the game down, or how a run of bad events can be brutal on all the players, but overall I enjoyed playing with this expansion and will be using it again.

This expansion is notable because it gave me some fuel for the Manaforge expansion. The event cards in Turmoil help to mix the game up and divert some of the player's focus away from the main task of building their engine. But in a way that's good because navigating the events correctly can actually give you a boost to your resources. Maybe Manaforge needs this kind of randomizing element, some global event that changes the way players value certain actions. There needs to be some care in there, though, as players don't have perfect flexibility to do anything they want, especially when it comes to the game's four elements; an event that benefits fire cards is great for someone playing all fire but is useless to someone playing water. The randomness needs to be, on some level, equally beneficial (or harmful) to everyone.


Cool Stuff Games

More of a side note, but I recently got Manaforge listed for sale on the CoolStuffInc.com website. Yay! Gamers now have an additional outlet to buy Manaforge. In addition, there are a few 'ding & dent' copies listed for sale on there, so if you're looking to get a bit of a discount on the game and don't mind a little box damage, then check that one out!


Looking Towards 2020

That's everything I have to report on for now. I likely won't post again until the new year. I still need to do a design post on the idea of Cognitive Load, but I haven't had much inspiration towards that recently. I'm going to need to give it a good push soon.

I hope everyone had had a good year, and I'm looking forward to what 2020 will bring. Happy gaming!

Just a status update on the expansion...

Manaforge

I've had a couple of minor successes recently during my playtest sessions with Manaforge. Here's where I stand:

Iteration 6.6: Trying something different with the customer cards. The way customers were implemented, customers want players to construct item cards of specific elements. However, with the random distribution of item cards on the center board, plus the randomness of the dice, there just isn't enough player agency over what kinds of cards the players build to make that sort of goal reliably attainable; the mechanic ended up being frustrating instead of fun. So, instead, I changed the customer cards directly consume mana to activate. When activated, the customers immediately give VP. Once a customer is activated three times, they leave. (Kind of a throwback to the original 'tracks' idea.) Sure some players are biased towards certain mana types, but all players can potentially generate all four mana types. If I do the customers this way, tho, then the customers aren't really suitable to be endgame scoring anymore. I'm okay with paying that price. Also, just to see what happens, I gave out one 'private' customer to each player at the beginning of the game.

I also flipped the polarity of the dark effects. Instead of losing health, you gain 'dark' tokens. (Think of it like gaining corruption.) Each dark costs you half of a point at the end of the game, though that will definitely change; probably should be a sliding scale.

Result 6.6: Huh, not entirely bad. The customers give the players another place to spend mana, which is one of the design goals for the expansion. And each player getting their own personal customer is a nice touch. The customers weren't getting used up fast enough though, so by the end of the game there were a bunch of customer cards out in play. Not good; I need to change the way new customers show up.

The dark tokens worked out well enough. One player had a huge stack of them at the end of the game, another had barely any; a good indicator that the game possesses different possible strategies. The black die was very popular, almost always being seen as useful. The dark market cards didn't go over quite as well. Apparently only a few of the cards were attractive, the rest were largely ignored. I got a few requests for better and more varied effects in there as well. The point difference between few and many dark tokens isn't significant enough, but that can be tweaked.

Iteration 6.7: Since these ideas are starting to come together, I paused for a moment to jot stuff down and try to organize it all. I ended up classifying my ideas into one of four categories: 1) customer cards, 2) the black die, 3) dark item cards, and 4) the effect of 'dark' tokens.

1) The customers work but don't flow right. Using player feedback, I changed customers to leave after they are used twice, to encourage turnover. Then instead of dealing out a couple of customers at the start and then one more per turn, I just set the number of customers to two; when one leaves, another is dealt out immediately.

2) The black die works well. No changes needed.

3) I have dark item cards that can potentially give three mana each turn; testing shows that those are too strong. However, I'd kind of like to keep the idea, so I'm going to give it another chance. I changed the card so that you get dark not only when you build it but also when upgrade it. Dunno if that's right. At first glance, it should probably give dark when you tap it, but that makes its best power strictly inferior to the effect of the black die. Also, I had a card that removed dark from the player; that changed to remove curses (explained below) instead. No other changes yet, though I know some are coming.

4) The effect of gaining dark on the player needed to be more interesting. So I removed the tokens and added a small (6 space) circular track. Each space on the track has a VP penalty, increasing from 0 to -3, applied to your score at the end of the game. Each time you gain a dark, you move forward on the track. If you make a lap around, your penalty resets back to zero, but you must take a 'curse' card. (Another deck to shuffle. Yuck.) Each curse card is worth -4 VP if you have it at the end of the game, but each curse also has a unique 'dispel' cost that lets you discard it if you pay a large amount of a specific combination of mana. So in essence the darkness has come back to collect on the power it loaned to you. :)

Result 6.7: Moderately successful. The pacing of the customer cards worked well. Only two uses per customer means that you really need to jump to get the one you want. The table had several "d'oh!" moments when one player stole a customer that someone else wanted. The high turnover meant that customers did not stay stagnant for long. I had several requests for more variation in the cards; maybe I need to give out more rewards than just points.

The black die worked well, as always. The dark item cards are still unappealing except for a select few, so that still needs work. The curse cards... I'm not sure about. It seems like they went over well. One player got a curse and was able to discard it. Another got one right at the end of the game and had to keep it. No surprises either way, tho. And the game winner came down to a tiebreaker, so it looks like the point balance isn't too far off. Will take a couple more plays to see if it's working as intended.

Other Stuff

One interesting thing to note is that a lot of the various podcasts I listen to have been talking about roll & write games lately. I'm starting to get the itch to pull my Nebula prototype back out and see if I can make it work.


Nothing else to report right now. Hopefully I'll have more successes to talk about soon!

Various news...

Manaforge

So, I'm still trying to figure this silly expansion out. Seems like very time I have a 'great' idea, I put it in front of other people and it just falls apart. Here's where I stand...

Result 5.5: Dropped. I took a hard look at the artifact system I wanted to do, and decided that that wasn't the right direction, both mechanically and thematically. I have a particular piece of the game's world that I want to explore, and I should get back to that particular root.

Iteration 6: Okay, let's try this. Rather than making the entire expansion as one big piece, let's try a piece at a time. The idea of 'customer' cards is working reasonably well mechanically, so I'll focus on that. Fleshed out the customers. Each round, some number of customers is dealt out alongside the board; this number decreases over the course of the game. (I was doing 4 for Dawn, 3 for Noon, and 2 for Dusk.) Customers have a 'recruit' cost that you have to pay to move them to your store, where they sit for the rest of the game. At the end of the game, each customer 'buys' one or more cards from your store pile, paying you in prestige points. Some customers have restrictions, such as 'must have at least 2 fire cards in your workshop' or 'may not have any wind cards', where if you don't meet that then the customer won't buy anything from you. Customers are flushed every round just like the item cards; grab them or they walk away.

Result 6: Not bad. The customers didn't have a huge impact in the final scores; I think their point values are too low. But they did flow the way I wanted; they force the players to divide their resources between taking them or doing other stuff, which is what I want. The players should have to choose their path instead of being able to do everything.

Iteration 6.1: Minor test run. Tweaked the customer point values to be more significant, along with tweaks to their cost and how many item cards they will buy. Searching for a good balance.

Result 6.1: Okay, this looks pretty good. I was only able to test this solo, so it's not really a good indicator of how it will fare in a real game, but just running through the motions myself it seemed to flow the way I intended. Choosing to go after the points from a customer instead of powering some other aspect of my engine is exactly the sort of trade-off I was looking for.

Iteration 6.5: Okay, with the customers in a good place, I tried building the rest of the expansion. Here, I'm circling back around to my original 'Dark Magic' expansion, with one key difference. Before, dark magic was supposed to have ways to mess up your opponents. I don't want direct attacks in my game. So, for this iteration, I'm aiming for the 'dark side of the force' concept; dark magic is powerful and tempting, but also ultimately harms you more the deeper you steep yourself in it. Players start the game with ten 'hit point' markers. I added a dark market, with corrupted item cards that are deliberately overpowered but drain your hit points when you build them. I also added a single black die that gets rolled each turn, where players may sacrifice one of their hit points to gain the effect on the die *without* it counting towards your four-dice-per-turn limit. Right now, remaining hit points are worth a small number of prestige at the end of the game, but I intend for that to change.

Result 6.5: Huh, not what I was expecting. The black die went over relatively well; it's kind of easy to overlook but if you do use it it's a very nice boost to your resources when you need it. The dark market cards worked well enough; having eight items to choose from instead of six is kind of option overload, but the effects are nice and strong (too strong, in fact...  nerf needed) and so the cards have their own temptation. Plus there were a couple of turns where the items on the main board were meh so having alternates was highly desirable. The hit points thing is the right idea but the wrong polarity; I need to flip them back around to be something like 'corruption' that goes up instead of a resource that goes down. Fixable. The disappointment was the customer cards; I thought I had these relatively nailed but it seems like the balance is off. One player ignored customers entirely and got trampled by other players scoring endgame points. Another player complained that the customers were too expensive. (That's the point tho...  that might just be that player being vocal.) And the third player picked up exactly the right combination of customers and ran away with the score. Not sure...  I think there's something here but the balance is off. I want to keep these ideas but I will need to flip a couple of switches and see what happens.

Other News

Other than hammering away on Manaforge, it's been pretty quiet. There's been a lot of other personal stuff going on lately so I haven't had a ton of free time.

One big piece of news (for me, anyway) is that my inventory transfer appears to be complete! I have moved my remaining stock of Manaforge copies (less than four hundred copies) from GamesQuest in the UK to Quartermaster Logistics. This is good for me for a few reasons: I don't have to deal with international transaction crud when I'm paying for services, the games are very close by so I can drive to pick some up when I need instead of placing costly shipping orders, and having the games out of the UK sidesteps any potential future hiccups with Brexit and trade deals and all of the other political uncertainty going on right now. It's a minor thing, everything considered, but it puts me in a better position.

Sky Pirates is kind of stalled right now; I haven't had the time to give it the attention it deserves. The game is in very good shape. I have identified a few tweaks I need to make, but those are more wording and rules consistency bits then any mechanical changes. Just idly looking around to see if anyone is interested in publishing it; not sure if I want to push it myself right now.


And that's it for now! I'm going to try to make another post soon; I have some thoughts I need to get out of my head regarding a particular game design topic. Plus I hope to have more to report about Dark Magic attempt #2 soon.

Haven't made a blog post in a while. Time to fix that.

Anyone that has been following me on social media knows that I attended Dice Tower Convention 2019 at the beginning of July. What a great con! Five days of board gaming with lots of friends, old and new. Unlike last year, where I was mostly tethered to a demo table trying to show off (and sell) Manaforge, this year I had a lot more time to actually play games. Sure, I got some demo time in, but not nearly as much.

I also was able to get in a few playtests of the latest iteration of Sky Pirates. The game is looking very good! It definitely needs some polish; little bits like inconsistencies in the terminology and confusing rules that need to be ironed out, but the core mechanics seem to be solid. A couple of the card abilities are underutilized and need to be improved or just removed entirely, and I'm thinking newer players are shying away from the hard to understand parts, so there's still work to be done. But I'm at the point where I'm open to the idea of a publisher picking it up. Of course, I can publish it myself, but publishing is a lot of work and I'd prefer to save my time for working on Manaforge if at all possible. We'll see how that goes.

Okay, on to the games! Here's a list of what I played at this convention. (At least, this is all I can recall; played so many games that I may have forgotten one somewhere.)

Rating scale:
5/5 Loved: would play again and probably suggest, want to own
4/5 Liked: would play again, maybe suggest
3/5 Neutral: would play again
2/5 Disliked: could possibly be convinced to play again
1/5 Hated: will never play again

- Lanterns Dice: Lights in the Sky (4/5 Liked)
Great game! Roll and write. Love the way that the dice substitute for the tiles but still have the same mechanic of other players gaining resources based on seating orientation. Fill in tile squares on your board, gain 'gift' marks to use special powers, and cover up completed squares in specific patterns with 'firework' polyomino tiles for bonus points. Interesting choices all around.

- Nemesis (2/5 Disliked)
Played this twice at the con. First time, the decks were not shuffled correctly. My character got eaten by the queen. Second time, the ship exploded due to fire breaking out. I wanted to like this, but the never-ending stream of bad dice rolls and token pulls just made the games feel pointless.

- Root (4/5 Liked)
Enjoyed this game, and not just because I won. I like the very different play style of all the races, and yet all races are similar in that they must be kept in check or they will run away with the game. I think that's what happened to me; other players left me alone and I just became unstoppable. Game felt easy because of that. Want to try the other races for comparison.

- Chocolatiers (4/5 Liked) [own]
Cute filler game about the best food in the world. Set collection and tile placement. Gain cards, play cards to get tiles, place tiles with chocolates of the same type clustered together. Surprisingly good array of strategy options for a light game. Was gifted with a copy at the con and I'm never letting this go. :)

- Fire in the Library (1/5 Hated)
Another game that I wanted to like but did not. Press your luck by pulling cubes out of the bag. Luck was completely against me; I constantly pulled 'fire' cubes and lost my turn where other players got point cubes. The game has 'tool' cards to score extra points and mitigate bad luck; but even using those I still lost my turn more often than not. I won't play a game where my choices are meaningless.

- Century: A New World (4/5 Liked)
Enjoyed this! I'm a fan of the first game, not so much the second. The final chapter in the trilogy was as much fun as the first. Worker placement but with the same theme of transforming resources. I own the first two so I'll probably be picking this up at some point.

- Space Base (5/5 Loved)
I know this isn't new, but I played it for the first time at this con. Now I want to buy it. :) Totally kicks Machi Koro to the curb. I like the multi-use nature of the cards and the way the game escalates. I see so many ways I could've played better after just one play, the mark of a game brimming with depth but not drowning in complexity.

- Ethnos (4/5 Liked) [own]
Okay, I've played this before but didn't own it. I bought a copy at the flea market and broke it open with friends at the con, introducing it to them. Love the mix of set collection and area dominance. Haven't played with all of the races yet, but I'm sure we'll fix that. :)

- Kami-Sama (3/5 Neutral) [own]
Shout out to AJ Lambeth, the designer of this game; he personally came over and taught us how to play! Interesting game idea; a rotating circular board divided up into quadrants. You can only play on the portion of the board facing you, and the board rotates every turn. Asymmetric player powers require a different strategy for each. A lot of push and pull; players are constantly kicking each other out of spaces on the board. I didn't have the expansion with me, but the base game felt... just okay. I'm hoping more playthroughs and adding in the expansion content will make it more engaging.

- Lockup: A Roll Player Tale (4/5 Liked) [own]
I'm a fan of Roll Player, and this very much not-Roll-Player game managed to be a lot of fun, even if it didn't invoke the character building theme of Roll Player at all. Worker placement, but the worker tiles have different power values, and some tiles can be face down to keep your opponents guessing. Highest power gets the best reward, lower values get less rewards or get moved to the 'library' to get a sometimes-useful one shot ability. Dodge 'suspicion' cubes or get raided, losing a significant number of points. Glad I backed this one; it sold out at the con fast.

- Empires of the Void II (1/5 Hated)
I guess this was someone's attempt at a 4X-lite? The rules were very confusing; it took a good chunk of an hour to figure out how to play and set everything up. And even then we had to open the rulebook basically every turn. Fly around space on tracks, play influence markers on planets to gain their special powers, or attack them to gain real estate. Upgrade your empire by paying resources to take tokens off of your board and place them on planets, then gain whatever powers were uncovered by removing the token. I suppose we could've started attacking each other, but we stopped the game before we got to that point. Won't touch this again.

- The Quacks of Quedlinburg (4/5 Liked)
This game kind of came out of nowhere for me. I think I had heard of it before the con, but walking around the gaming hall I saw it being played practically everywhere. My friend managed to borrow a copy from the game library, so we tried it out. Lots of fun! Press your luck game with bag building; each player buys tiles to add to their own bags, so you can customize what special abilities you can get. Pull tiles and add them to your cauldron, but stop before you draw too many bombs or else your turn ends and you lose half of the rewards. Wide array of tile powers, and the powers change with each play. I might pick up a copy of this if I can find it cheap.


And that was my convention! Playing new games, meeting up with remote friends that I don't see often, and just having a good time. Tiring but rewarding. Not sure what to think about next year, though. From what I'm hearing the Dice Tower Network is taking complete control of the convention starting next year, meaning that a different crew will be responsible for running the convention. This year the con ran very smoothly; I'm skeptical that the transition to "Dice Tower East" will be painless. We'll see.

I have more info to post about the Manaforge expansion (or lack thereof), but that will have to be a separate post. Soon, hopefully!​

Another day, another post. It feels like this is a continuation of the last post I made. Three topics to touch on here... Sky Pirates, Manaforge, and Dice Tower.

Sky Pirates

Since my last post, I finally had the chance to go through all of the feedback forms that people filled out. Each Sky Pirates playtester got a feedback form. The front of the form is filled with 'on a scale of 1-5, how much did you like game element xyz?' questions, while the back has a few somewhat vague, open answer questions. Nobody was forced to fill any or all of it out, of course, but I'm glad that they did. Here are the trends I noticed:

Overall, the game was very well received. I'd say there was an average of a 4 out of 5 rating for the general 'did you like this game?' question. Many 5s and 4s, a couple of 3s and one 2. Great to hear that I'm doing something right. :)

Most of the other questions did very well. Lots of high marks all around. However, there was one question that stood out as a sore spot. The question of 
"Was this game interesting even during other players' turns?" often was rated the lowest out of all of them. This tells me that there isn't enough to keep the players occupied when it's not their turn. I hope that won't be too much of a problem, considering that it is meant to be a 20-30 minute game, so the turns are fast; even if a player becomes disengaged, they won't stay that way for long. Still, it's something I have to keep an eye out for as I'm making game tweaks.

As for the free-response answers, again I got several 'great games' compliments on paper. Great ego boost! The positive answers praised the game's balance and mechanics. The negative answers focused on smaller details; some of the icons looked similar, a keyword effect here or there was difficult to understand, some card effects felt underwhelming or useless. Several bits of actionable feedback in there; I'm too close to the game so I don't always notice the rough spots, so it's nice to have them pointed out in a way that I can understand and address.

With all that under my belt, I have my list of stuff I need to fix now. I haven't started on it yet; I've been working on Manaforge plus dealing with various chores that fall under the vague 'running a business' umbrella. It is on my to-do list though, so I will eventually get to it.

Manaforge

Speaking of Manaforge, I was finally able to get another iteration out. Here's the rundown:

Result 5: This still didn't quite work. After several design attempts I settled on large monolithic artifact 'cards' that might have better been described as player boards. Each artifact has a prerequisite condition that you must meet before you can take it (something like 'have three fire items'), and you can only ever get one artifact over the course of the game. Once you have it, you can upgrade it by doing various tasks, anything from spending mana or gems to having certain symbols on your dice or exhausting specific cards. Each time you upgrade the artifact, you get a choice of one of two new abilities, both printed right on the board. Once you choose one ability, you are locked out of the other, and each upgrade tier has a different pair of abilities to choose from. I like the idea that you are working on your 'masterpiece' as you play, and you can customize what it does so that the benefits it gives fit into your engine.

The cards worked more or less as intended, and they did add some decent decisions to the game. (Make a beeline for the artifact early, or pick one up later? Focus on the point-generating powers or pick ones that give resources?) It didn't quite make the game more fun, though maybe there's a spark in there? Or I'm just imagining it; after burning through a bunch of many ideas, I really want something to click into place. The idea of building something up over the course of the game is good. The idea of customizing what you're building is also good, but this iteration didn't go far enough; perhaps something less monolithic and more modular is in order? I got some good ideas from the people helping me test so at least I have a path forward.

As before, the idea that clicked the best was the 'customer' cards. Aside from making the rewards more appealing, I added a second use for the cards. Now, when you fulfill the last step of a customer's request, you take the customer card (now a 'loyal customer') instead of discarding it. Each customer card now has 'roll' symbols printed on it that let you reroll one die of a specific element one time. (Discard the card when you use the ability.) Used dice rerolled in this manner become available to be spent. I think this was a major step forward, giving these cards a second purpose. My friends suggested, and I agree, that more bonuses and more varied types of bonuses would do well on these cards (discard to gain mana, temporary extra dice, card recharges, etc.). In addition, the artifacts could be more closely tied to the customers, maybe expend customer cards to substitute for some resource that you need to construct the next piece of your artifact.

Iteration 5.5: Okay, customers good, artifacts bad, though I think this last iteration was the closest so far. Two things to do here. The first is to supercharge the customer cards. Focus more on what they can do once you have them in your possession. Maybe get rid of the multi-step track (yay less fiddly bits) and just make them 'pay x, get card'. Tie them into more game mechanics and see if anything explodes.

The second thing is to break the artifacts apart. Rather than all of the artifact info being on one card, I think I need a large 'core' card that serves as the artifact's base (representing it's basic power/affinity/concept/shape), and a deck of 'module' cards that add various modifiers (representing choice of materials, enchantments, special craftsmanship, whatever). I like the structure I came up with on the large cards (bottom tier to top was: core, shape, material, primary special power, power modifier, epic status), so I think I want to try to keep that same concept of slot 'types' on the artifact. I don't want a gajillion new decks of cards, tho, so I'm going to have to come up with some multi-use cards that have different powers for different slots. Gonna take some thought to make it all balance out.

Dice Tower

In case you've been living under a rock, the 2019 Dice Tower Convention is less than a month away. This is probably my favorite convention, especially since it's close to home and it's difficult to fit travelling into my schedule. I get to reconnect with a lot of friends that I rarely see, meet new people, try out new games, and just bask in the energy of a thousand gamers having tons of fun. I expect I will still be doing some Manaforge demoing this year, but not nearly as much as before. I want to play something this time around. (I don't regularly get much actual gaming time, so this is a major opportunity to do some catching up, see what's currently hot.) We'll see what happens this time. As always, if you want me to be somewhere to teach Manaforge, feel free to contact me; I will make time in my schedule.


That's it for now. Back to the drawing board again, but at least right now I have a solid direction to go in. :)

So, I mentioned in my previous posts that 2019 had been a slow year. I guess someone heard me, because it hasn't stayed that way.

Since our local Prototype Con fell through, I was convinced to make the trek up to Atlanta to attend ProtoATL. To that end, I needed to get Sky Pirates into good enough shape to demonstrate to a bunch of other game designers. Lots of work to do!

After my previous post on the subject, I received my first professionally printed prototype copy of Sky Pirates. Overall, it turned out very good. The card stock is good quality, everything is easily visible, and the card content is centered reasonably well. I like how the bits, when packed together, fit into a relatively small box. After seeing it all together, I can imagine how the biggest component to this game is going to be the rulebook; it will be an interesting graphic design challenge to shrink that down to match the rest of the components and yet still keep it understandable. My one major gripe about this copy is that the artwork is significantly darker than it appeared on my computer; I assume this is a side effect of the color space, as The Game Crafter takes files in RGB format instead of CMYK. 

With the first prototype copy successfully obtained, I placed an order for six more copies, with some minor changes to the content to reflect some local playtesting. Received those, printed out six copies of my first draft rulebook, packaged those all together, and I was ready for the convention!

Overall, ProtoATL was fantastic! Three days of non-stop playtesting. I got several playtests in of Sky Pirates and received a good amount of feedback. (I'm still processing it all.) I also got to playtest many other designers' games; I hope the feedback I gave was at least a little helpful. I also attended a few seminars on various topics such as how to navigate legal contracts with publishers and how to design with player experience in mind. Great stuff! (Not a fan of the nine hour drive, though. I'll be better prepared for that aspect of the trip next time.)

Sky Pirates seemed to be well received at the convention. While many people that played it had some suggestions for parts that could be improved, overall the structure of the game seems solid and just about everyone liked it. I even got one publisher to take a look at the game, and he liked it enough to want one of my prototype copies. While I'm open to the idea of publishing this game myself, I'd prefer to have the burden of dealing with advertising, funding, and distribution handed off to someone else so I can focus on designing.

Next stop: Dice Tower! I don't yet know what playtesting facilities they're going to have there, but I'm definitely going to try to get more eyes on the game at that convention. (That, and trying to sell more copies of Manaforge of course. :)

Thinking of Manaforge, I've been slowly chugging through my next design idea for the expansion. Here's what I've been doing on that front:
(http://mystictigergames.com/blog/developer-diary-redesign-ad-nauseam)

Result 4.5: Still a solid 'meh'. With the power boost, the relics are definitely playable, they definitely affect the power balance of the game, and they definitely add more for you to do. However, they still don't really pop...  I don't get the feeling of excitement from them. The idea may have something to it, but this version doesn't quite hit it right. However, it is interesting to note that the 'customer' cards do seem to work. While they're pretty small as far as what they add to the game, they do add something to the game. It will take a couple of iterations of the costs and rewards to make them really shine, but there is definitely a spark there.

Iteration 5: Okay, stepping back for a second. What should the experience be for this component? The game is about building up an engine. So, what about this new something lets you build up your engine? Drawing from another idea I had for an expansion (codenamed "Artifacts"), what about item cards that you build up over the course of the game? Rather than just building them once and they're done, you have to build on them multiple times, and they get stronger each time? Sort of like the wonder stages in 7 Wonders, each level has different requirements and provides a different benefit. Would be nice if you could customize your engine as you build it? Okay, pulling in the idea of a 'skill tree'. For example, a game like Diablo, what if you can select which abilities you get as you improve this item. Boom...  I have my idea. I'm trying to construct 'artifact' cards that have multiple abilities but a highly varied set of costs and actions you have to deal with in order to build it up. Let's see where this goes...


And that's it for now. Definitely a lot busier than last update. Hopefully that means there will be more progress too. :)

2019 has been a slow year for me. Not that I haven't been busy; far from it. Just that there hasn't been a lot in the way of breakthroughs. Unfortunately, the Manaforge expansion has taken a bit of a back seat for now. Not that I've stopped trying entirely, but I figured I'd put my ideas on hold for a bit, see if some time and distance helps to bring things into perspective. Maybe a different point of view is what's needed to overcome the block there. I have ideas, for sure, but I'm getting a little frustrated that nothing is quite clicking together the way it needs to. Players should be excited about improvements to the game, but all I've felt with my tests so far is that the extra mechanics have made the game more complex without making it more fun.

Instead, I've been putting my time lately into Sky Pirates. I've made very little in the way of rules changes to it lately, but I have had lots of time to think about the comments and such I received while I was having it playtested. I incorporated a little bit of the feedback from those into the game.

Mainly, though, I've been focusing on getting a good-quality copy of the game made. To that end, I've been rebuilding the game files for Sky Pirates to fit into the sizes that The Game Crafter wants. It hasn't been easy; printing the cards and such for my own local use didn't need quite as much detail on the files; why worry about bleed area when perfect cuts are guaranteed? So there's been a lot of reworking going on.

However, that work has just paid off. I've placed an order for one high-quality game prototype to be sent here. Hopefully that one will come out good; I'm going to use that one copy as a proof of sorts, seeing what else I need to change in the game files. Once that's done, I plan on ordering a larger batch...  probably somewhere between five and ten copies. Many of those will go to the Indie Game Alliance, to be sent out for blind playtesting. I'll keep one for my testing, of course, and probably give a couple out to close friends so they can test it as well. They're nowhere near the final version of the game, what with incomplete rules and placeholder art and everything. But it's enough that I can spread my net, so to speak, and get a whole lot of feedback on the game. And that's what it needs. You can never have enough playtesting.

That's it, for now. I was hoping to get more feedback on my games at Prototype Con, but so far that has been delayed. I know there's also a big prototype convention coming up in Atlanta in a couple of months. I probably won't be able to get there, but hopefully I can send a couple of my prototypes that way and have someone else test them. And, of course, there's the Dice Tower convention in July. So I have avenues for more feedback on the horizon. I just need a bit of a push for right now. Here's hoping my beta game copy comes out good. :)

So, there hasn't been much news lately. I've been busy, but haven't achieved much in the way of milestones. Thought I'd post something anyway; it has been about a month, after all. Here's where I stand:

Sky Pirates

Development on Sky Pirates has slowed down. Not for lack of trying, but more that there isn't much development left to do. The new command tokens are working well. The card powers seem to be good. I've done a few playtests lately and I've gotten primarily good feedback. The biggest complaint I've been getting is that the cards aren't quite balanced yet. But if I'm having small balance issues instead of major mechanical issues, then that means I'm doing something right. I have some detailed data from one of my latest playtests and I think I know how I can balance the cards better. Just need to sit down and do it.

Besides tweaking the balance, the next major step for Sky Pirates is to write the rulebook. I've been chipping away at that, though it's been slow going. I'm about halfway done with my first iteration. I suspect that this first draft will be a pretty big train wreck. I remember how the first draft of Manaforge was; the rules needed a heavy dose of editing and reorganization just to make them usable. But at least I have some of the experience from that to help me here; I doubt it will make my first attempt better, but it should give me a better indication of what will need to be improved. Regardless, it is a work in progress, if a slow one.

Once the balancing and the rulebook are set, the next step is to print some decent quality prototypes. These will be very rough; placeholder artwork and non-final rules. But it should be enough that I can ship them out to some remote playtesters who will really put the game through its paces. Soon, hopefully.

Manaforge Expansion

Recently I've been pouring a lot of my time and creativity into the Manaforge expansion. Seems like a simple task, create more item and talent cards for the game. I've had two design goals in mind while I do this: increase the amount of player interaction, and highlight the dual-element pairs. My previous design goal of adding take-that elements to the game has been completely scrapped; after a lot of contemplation, I determined that that's just not the direction that the players of the game want the expansion to go.

For some reason, designing these new cards is turning out more difficult than I expected. I've been exploring the design space of Manaforge, going back to old ideas I had and adjusting them to fit into the current structure, and finding new mechanical edge cases and ideas for component interactions that I hadn't considered before. However, not all of my ideas are fitting neatly into the structure I'm trying to build. I'm trying to add player interaction, which in this game is taking the form of effects that trigger during other player's turns, effects that benefit other players during your turn, or ways for other players to use your resources (giving you a bonus as well).

I've had to add in one minor mechanic (with associated component) so far to make enough design space to hit all of my targets. I'm still running a little short on ideas that work, but hopefully soon I'll get over this block. I'm hoping to have a basic prototype that I can start playtesting with before the end of the year.

Upcoming Event

One other piece of news: I'm having a Manaforge demo event! The event will be at the newly-opened BAMF! Comics & Collectibles store, located at 500 E Horatio Avenue in Maitland, Florida. This event will be on Sunday, Nov 11th, from 11am until 2pm (or later if there is interest). I will be available to run demo games of Manaforge, plus there will be copies available to purchase, and  the store has a cool game rental system where someone can pay to borrow a copy of Manaforge (or other games too!) for a few days. Plus, we'll be getting some attention for a new local business that opened shop recently; the more places to game the better! I'm hopeful that we'll have a good turnout. Stop by if you're in the area!


​That's all for now! More posts when I have something to actually report. With luck, it'll be a completed Sky Pirates rulebook. Fingers crossed!

So, I've been thinking about roll and write games quite a bit lately. It definitely seems like this is one of the current fads in games; compact games that you play on a pad of specially-made score sheets, using dice and a pencil. Of course, Yahtzee (and it's predecessor, Yacht) has been around for a long time, pretty much being the first roll and write game. But the genre has been booming lately.

I know a couple of my designer friends have been trying to make roll and write games. They're not bad; in particular, one friend is making a casino-themed roll and write game with cards and dice that is shaping up really well. I also tried making my own, though my first playtest of that was a pretty big failure. Still, there might be something to my game, if I can just figure out where I went wrong.

I'm thinking I might not truly know what makes a roll and write game fun. Or, alternately, maybe this type of game does not appeal to me, and I'm going down the road of trying to create a game that I ultimately won't enjoy playing. To that end, I've been trying to get my hands on various roll and write games out there. (Playing board games and calling it research! :) Gotta love this hobby.) Sure, I've played Yahtzee lots of times, so I know how that flows. Ganz Schön Clever is a step up from that, with multiple colored scoring areas and different rules and point values for each one. Noch Mal! adds a two-dimensional aspect to the game, as you can only score places on the grid that you're adjacent to. The Castles of Burgundy dice game is another step in that direction, with a hex grid and adjacency restrictions, as well as one-use special abilities that can be obtained by marking hexes of certain colors. And the newest one onto my scene is Welcome To..., which is a card-flipping game where you are filling in house numbers on streets, with special powers associated with each of the available number cards.

I've noticed a trend in these games, one which I think might apply to the genre as a whole. Each of these games on some level creates tension by reducing the player's options over the course of the game. When these games first start, you have a blank slate to work with and the ability to place marks anywhere, subject to some sort of placement rules. But as the game progresses, your options on your turn become progressively more limited. Sure, games like Noch Mal! and Castles of Burgundy dice game have a map that you spread out on, so your options expand initially, but as the map fills up you are again left with diminishing possibilities. This forces you to plan ahead, both mapping out your strategy and trying to leave leeway for bad dice rolls or card flips. Some games have ways to mitigate bad luck, but those are finite and often run out just before those last few turns of the game when you really need them.

Other more traditional board games generate their tension in other ways. I'm know there are typical strategy games out there that try to amp up the game tension by having options run out. However, those often have other mechanics that you have to navigate, and the disappearing possibilities are often because other players have chosen those options, making them inaccessible for the remainder of the game. Roll and writes seem to be heavily reliant on this idea of you limiting yourself later in the game, forcing you to really think ahead.

So, what if there was a roll and write game that created interesting decisions without using this shrinking decision space method? A way to continually open up possibilities over the course of the game, rather than reducing them? Better ways to interact with other players and be affected by their choices? (The norm for roll and writes seems to be that all players can pick from the same pool of possibilities, though the 'active' player gets something extra. Great for asynchronous play, bad for interactive moments.) Ways to mark other players' boards? Ways to erase marks? Ways to temporarily have resources without marking a board? (Mind the component count, though; one plus of roll and write games are how light and compact they are.) I know I've only played a small sliver of the roll and write games out there, but I know the entire design space hasn't been traversed yet. There's plenty of room for adventurous designers to do some trailblazing here.

Maybe I'll end up making something unique, eventually. Here's hoping.

So, I haven't posted on here in a while. But there's been a good reason for that: I was at Dice Tower Con a couple of week ago. What a great convention! Five full days of nothing but board games and the people that play and create them. This was my third time going to this convention, and for me it's gotten bigger and better every year.

However, the thing that surprised me most about this convention was the amount of *work* it was compared to previous years. Before, when attending Dice Tower, I was going to play new games, meet new people, learn about being a developer and publisher, and just have fun. But this year, I spent about half of my time in the vendor hall demoing Manaforge. definitely work, but the good kind of work. I was able to use one of the demo tables in front of the Indie Game Alliance booth, where my games were being sold (along many others). It seems like from the time I started demoing, to when the vendor hall was getting ready to close, I had demos running almost continuously. Tiring to be sure, but definitely a good problem to have! Within ten minutes of one demo finishing, there was another group of people ready to see the game. I lost track of how many demos I did, but I do know I spent well over twenty hours demoing across the entire convention.

Totally worth it, though! Because of all time spent demoing, plus the lure of being taught the game by the designer, and the felt component bowls we were giving out with the games, the IGA booth actually ran out of games. That's right, I now have "Achievement Unlocked: My Game Sold Out At DTC" to add to my list! Great feeling!

Aside from games, I also attended a couple of panels, with various board game media celebrities. One was a talk about media content creation and interviews with some of the personalities, and the other was a 'game show' styled panel of the audience trying to guess how the celebs would answer various questions. Good stuff!

And, of course, there was getting to see and chat with old friends. And meeting new ones. And attending parties and mixers. Plus something I'm still not used to, random people coming up to me and saying hello. (I have a terrible memory for names and for people that I only meet for a couple of a minutes. Please don't take it the wrong way if you come up and chat with me and I don't remember who you are.) I suppose I should be flattered but really it's more the introvert in me bubbling up and making it an awkward meeting.

As far as game development went, I had a little bit of progress there. I got in two plays of Sky Pirates with a couple of friends. It was good to see my latest round of changes in action. I have to say that separating the locations from the ship cards was an excellent idea; I'm hoping that will be the last major design change to the game, and the rest of the development will be balancing the cards and effects.

For actual games played, I really didn't get to do much. Not for lack of wanting, just that there wasn't time. Here's the stuff I did play (in no particular order):

- The Expanse (1/5 Hated: would not play again)
Area control game based on the sci-fi series. Fly ships around the solar system, drop influence cubes, and score points based on who has dominance. Very interesting dual-use cards; you can play a card for it's Action Points (more powerful) or it's Special Ability (many varied effects), but if you play a card for it's AP then others players have a chance to use the Special. Overall, I didn't like this, because it's a very cutthroat game and I'm more of a carebear player. Just not my type of game. Also, the card special abilities were *too* varied, with no iconography, meaning a pause in the game every turn to decipher the wall of text on each card. 

- Fantasy Realms (5/5 Loved: definitely want to play again, would suggest)
Bought this game on the spot after I played it. Simple filler card game about building the best hand. Start with seven cards, each turn draw one then discard one. Cards have point values, plus many varied special abilities that combo with other cards. Build the best hand of cards before the game ends. Simple, quick, plays a lot of players, and the only learning curve is learning what cards are in the game. Great fun!

- Heaven & Ale (2/5 Disliked: might be convinced to play again)
This was one on my want-to-play list. Rondel action selection, tile placement on personal boards. Move around a track on the main board, taking actions you can afford. Take hex tiles and add them to your board, then activate them for their benefit by taking other actions. Beware, though: each method of activating tiles can be used only once, so you have to think ahead about which tiles you take and how you place them. Benefits include money (needed to take tiles) and resources (needed to score). At game end, the resource you have the *least* of determines your score. I found the game play to be enjoyable, but I didn't like the scoring system at the end because it was both convoluted and unforgiving. If you're unable to get all of your resource markers above the zero line at the end scoring (they start at negatives), then you score *zero* points for the game. The confusion at the end was because you are required to move your highest-valued resources down in order to move your lowest-valued resources up, but the exchange rate between the two is horrible (sometimes as bad as 5:1). Might give it another try now that I understand it better but I'm not in a hurry.

- Lords of Xidit (3/5 Lukewarm: would play again but not suggest)
I own this one but had never played it. Action programming, pickup-and-deliver, area control. You must plan moves ahead; each round you dial in five actions onto a personal board, then everyone reveals their boards and performs their movements. Move around the board, recruit fighters, then 'spend' those fighters at monster spaces to kill the monsters. The reward is to either gain coins or place one of two types of control markers on the board. At the end of the game, rather than counting victory points, instead the player(s) with the *least* of a particular reward (coins or control) are eliminated, meaning that to be successful you must gain spoils of three different categories instead of focusing on one. Would have been a good game if not for that wonky winner selection system.

- Puerto Rico (3/5 Lukewarm: would play again but not suggest)
I own this one, played it a few times. Classic role selection and resource management game. Build plantation tiles, hire workers, gain resources, sell resources for money to buy more plantation and building tiles, or ship resources for victory points. Players take turns selecting role cards; each player does the role action but the player that selected it gets an extra perk. Points come from shipping produced goods and what tiles are on your board at the end of the game. I do like this game, though I'm not particularly good at it, but it often gets ignored in favor of newer, shinier stuff.

- Coimbra (4/5 Liked: want to play again, might suggest)
I hadn't even heard of this one before DTC. Dice drafting, dice placement, resource management, card drafting. Draft dice, then place them to be able to purchase cards. Highest-numbered die gets first choice of cards, but also pays the most to buy the card. (Cool mechanic!) Dice color determines the type and amount of income you get at the end of the turn; push your counter up on the color tracks to get more income from that color of die. Move your meeple around the map and drop markers to gain one-shot bonuses. Took a couple of rounds to really grasp the flow of the game, but after that it was great fun! Might have bought a copy, if there were any left; I think I heard this was a pre-release batch, so they only had a *very* limited stock. Sold out on the first day if I understand it right.

- Rajas of the Ganges (4/5 Liked: want to play again, might suggest)
This was another one on my want-to-play list. Heavy euro with worker-placement, tile-laying, and resource management where the dice *are* the resources. Innovative scoring system, similar to Red Dragon Inn: you gain money (which can be spent) and fame (only goes up), but the tracks are pointed in opposite directions. When your two tokens on the two tracks cross each other, you win! Various worker actions gain you dice, which you roll and store. Other actions expend dice, returning them to the pool. Some actions require high dice values, others low values. Buy tiles to add to your personal board for money and fame, plus build routes on your board for extra one-shot bonuses. Enjoyed this a lot! Could possibly buy this in the future, though because of the game weight it might be difficult to get to the table.
​

And that's my Dice Tower Con, in a nutshell. This is really the only major convention I can attend, due to time and money constraints. Hopefully in future years I will be able to travel to others, but for now this convention is really my only big chance to catch up with a lot of people. Already looking forward to next year!