Happy New Year everyone! Wishing you all a good 2021...
Wait, what? It's March already? How did that happen?!
Okay, okay. I guess it's hard to keep track of time when you're cooped up in the same place all the time. Stupid pandemic. Here's hoping life gets back to normal sometime soon. At least I haven't been completely idle...
Nebula Blind Playtesting
My main objective right now is to get blind testing started on Nebula. I feel like the game is in a good place; the mechanics are fairly solid and I haven't made any major changes in a while. I'm certain I will need to make more tweaks; the balance is still slightly off but I'm thinking that should shake out with a large number of playtests.
I also have a rulebook put together for the game. This is not intended to be anything close to a final rules version. Instead, this particular rulebook is adapted for Tabletop Simulator, containing references to the game's digital interface elements, like menus and buttons and such. While I'm sure it could benefit from some diagrams and other improvements, it's not really intended for any use beyond the digital playtests so I'm not too concerned about how good it is, as long as it's understandable enough to play the game.
In addition, I have a Google Survey set up for players to give their feedback after playing. (The assumption being, since it is a *blind* playtest, that I might not be present for the playthrough.) Even if I am there, it's nice to be able to record players' feedback, and I've noted that players tend to be a little less inhibited with their criticisms if the medium is anonymous and I'm not there breathing down their necks. :)
Finally, in order to help facilitate the playthroughs, I'm trying to figure out exactly what players will need in order to playtest. 'Where' and 'when' come to mind as questions that need to be answered. In the context of an online playtest, 'where' needs to be a communication tool that can support voice chat and allow players to coordinate. 'When' means making sure all players know at what time to be ready to play. Both of those can be facilitated by my...
Discord Server
Mystic Tiger Games has its own Discord server! Currently, there's not much there. A couple of channels (text and voice) for playing board games online, and a couple of (text only) channels for playing with the server's bots. I intend to add more to the server over time; there's a couple of other Discord game bots I'd like to try out, not to mention still wanting to write one of my own. And I'd like to make a space for players to discuss games and such if they want.
I'm not ready to publish the link to it yet, as I have a little more setting up to do. (It's good practice to be able to moderate users if the situation requires it, and there are bots out there to help with that sort of thing.) But I do want to make it public, and soon.
Mailing List
One other thing that I haven't started yet, but I've been giving some serious thought to, is restarting my company mailing list. I've had a mailing list for a while but I've only used it a few times. Notably, the last time I used it was before they passed the big data protection law that basically says that everyone must explicitly opt-in to a mailing list in order to keep receiving stuff from it. Now, everyone on my list either requested to be on the list, or is someone I know personally. Still, since I don't have "explicit opt-in permission" from all of them, my best choice is to scrap the list and start over.
My plan is to send out one last email to the old list, informing everyone that there is a new list to subscribe to if they still want to keep receiving emails. If someone doesn't respond... then they're done. No more spam from me. Then I can try again with the new list, sending out the occasional announcement for Nebula or whatever else I'm working on.
Links
While I'm not quite ready yet to make a huge announcement about playtesting Nebula (it's coming soon tho!), I will put the links up if anyone wishes to look at the game now. Feel free to play around with it, though if you do run a full game of it I request that you use the feedback form afterwards to let me know what you think. (The form should be anonymous; feel free to trash the game as much as you like, I won't know who you are. :D ) You can put your email address on the last answer if you wish to be added to the new mailing list too, though I won't actually be able to add you until I create it. :)
Link to the Nebula rulebook:
http://mystictigergames.com/Nebula_rulebook_v34_tts.pdf
Link to the Tabletop Simulator mod:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2297746065
Link to the feedback form:
https://forms.gle/ws61sSjHgEtDgXR69
And that's it for now. Stay tuned everyone... I hope to make this year much more active for Mystic Tiger Games! :)
Wait, what? It's March already? How did that happen?!
Okay, okay. I guess it's hard to keep track of time when you're cooped up in the same place all the time. Stupid pandemic. Here's hoping life gets back to normal sometime soon. At least I haven't been completely idle...
Nebula Blind Playtesting
My main objective right now is to get blind testing started on Nebula. I feel like the game is in a good place; the mechanics are fairly solid and I haven't made any major changes in a while. I'm certain I will need to make more tweaks; the balance is still slightly off but I'm thinking that should shake out with a large number of playtests.
I also have a rulebook put together for the game. This is not intended to be anything close to a final rules version. Instead, this particular rulebook is adapted for Tabletop Simulator, containing references to the game's digital interface elements, like menus and buttons and such. While I'm sure it could benefit from some diagrams and other improvements, it's not really intended for any use beyond the digital playtests so I'm not too concerned about how good it is, as long as it's understandable enough to play the game.
In addition, I have a Google Survey set up for players to give their feedback after playing. (The assumption being, since it is a *blind* playtest, that I might not be present for the playthrough.) Even if I am there, it's nice to be able to record players' feedback, and I've noted that players tend to be a little less inhibited with their criticisms if the medium is anonymous and I'm not there breathing down their necks. :)
Finally, in order to help facilitate the playthroughs, I'm trying to figure out exactly what players will need in order to playtest. 'Where' and 'when' come to mind as questions that need to be answered. In the context of an online playtest, 'where' needs to be a communication tool that can support voice chat and allow players to coordinate. 'When' means making sure all players know at what time to be ready to play. Both of those can be facilitated by my...
Discord Server
Mystic Tiger Games has its own Discord server! Currently, there's not much there. A couple of channels (text and voice) for playing board games online, and a couple of (text only) channels for playing with the server's bots. I intend to add more to the server over time; there's a couple of other Discord game bots I'd like to try out, not to mention still wanting to write one of my own. And I'd like to make a space for players to discuss games and such if they want.
I'm not ready to publish the link to it yet, as I have a little more setting up to do. (It's good practice to be able to moderate users if the situation requires it, and there are bots out there to help with that sort of thing.) But I do want to make it public, and soon.
Mailing List
One other thing that I haven't started yet, but I've been giving some serious thought to, is restarting my company mailing list. I've had a mailing list for a while but I've only used it a few times. Notably, the last time I used it was before they passed the big data protection law that basically says that everyone must explicitly opt-in to a mailing list in order to keep receiving stuff from it. Now, everyone on my list either requested to be on the list, or is someone I know personally. Still, since I don't have "explicit opt-in permission" from all of them, my best choice is to scrap the list and start over.
My plan is to send out one last email to the old list, informing everyone that there is a new list to subscribe to if they still want to keep receiving emails. If someone doesn't respond... then they're done. No more spam from me. Then I can try again with the new list, sending out the occasional announcement for Nebula or whatever else I'm working on.
Links
While I'm not quite ready yet to make a huge announcement about playtesting Nebula (it's coming soon tho!), I will put the links up if anyone wishes to look at the game now. Feel free to play around with it, though if you do run a full game of it I request that you use the feedback form afterwards to let me know what you think. (The form should be anonymous; feel free to trash the game as much as you like, I won't know who you are. :D ) You can put your email address on the last answer if you wish to be added to the new mailing list too, though I won't actually be able to add you until I create it. :)
Link to the Nebula rulebook:
http://mystictigergames.com/Nebula_rulebook_v34_tts.pdf
Link to the Tabletop Simulator mod:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2297746065
Link to the feedback form:
https://forms.gle/ws61sSjHgEtDgXR69
And that's it for now. Stay tuned everyone... I hope to make this year much more active for Mystic Tiger Games! :)
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