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. :)

Mystic Tiger Games is pleased to announce that Manaforge is available to play on mobile devices through Tabletopia!

The Tabletopia app is freely available for download on both Android and iOS. The app version of Tabletopia does not (yet) have the full catalog of Tabletopia games available for mobile play, but a good number of them are on there, and now Manaforge is one of them! Several of the games are also marked Premium (requiring payment to access), but Manaforge is free.

Android: Tabletopia on Google Play Store
iOS: Tabletopia on iOS App Store

Just download the app, select Manaforge from the game list, tap to download the game, and get to playing! Up to four players can play on the same device in hotseat mode, or players can play across multiple devices and save their game state by accessing Tabletopia through their accounts (signing up for basic level access is free). Manaforge is playable on any device that can run the Tabletopia app, though we recommend playing it on a tablet or other large screen device.

Give it a try! And if you happen to find any bugs in the game, please either contact us at [email protected], or the Tabletopia help team at [email protected]. Happy forging!

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, 2019 has been off to a slow start. Not for lack of trying, just that there hasn't been much progress to report. Most of my efforts have been going into trying to design the expansion for Manaforge. Feels like I've gone through a lot of ideas and iterations. I don't think I'm quite where I need to be yet, but I haven't given up.

Iteration 1: The initial theme of the expansion was supposed to be Dark Magic. Going on the feedback that the game does not have enough player interaction, I wanted to add black dice to the game that gave each player the ability to meddle with other player's turns. Steal a gem, exhaust a card, force someone to reroll their dice, etc.  I was also considering adding in a 'darkness' tracker that keeps track of how often you mess with other players and changes the game's balance if you get too high on the track. (Meaning, cards might cost more but give you more points or something like that.)

Result 1: Someone rightly pointed out that, while this approach would definitely solve the interaction problem, it would also alienate a lot of the game's loyal players, as the core game was not intended to be combative. So, idea one was out.

Iteration 2: This was an attempt to address a lot of the feedback that the game 'needs more cards'. So I designed a huge number of cards to add to the item deck. I also focused the new cards on player interaction, but not destructive interaction. I had item cards that would trigger and give you bonuses when other players performed a specific action. I had other item cards that were deliberately powerful but also gave bonuses to other players when they were used. And I added more cards where other players could participate when they are built. Plus, I also added hidden goal cards, special cards that were dealt out at the beginning of the game and would reward you for having certain combinations of cards or resources at the end of the game.

Result 2: Great ideas in theory, but I misjudged the effect of flooding the deck with all these new cards. The balance of card elements was completely hosed; certain elements came up too much, others not at all. And all of the player interaction I tried to build in barely had an effect. Meh...  idea two scrapped.

Iteration 3: This built on the ashes of the previous iteration. The hidden goal cards were a step in the right direction, but the game needed more. The hidden goals became public goals, re-imagining them as 'customers'. Each customer wants specific resources (themed as the customer wants a specific item made), and pays out a reward for getting what they want. After a customer's demands have been satisfied a certain number of times, the customer leaves play. Paired with that, I wanted to re-use the darkness track idea from the first iteration, so I made 'element' track boards for each player. Two tracks per player, fire<>water and earth<>air, with a tug-of-war relationship between them. Build a fire card, and you move towards fire and away from water. Get high up on the fire track, and your fire cards start getting bonuses, but building water cards becomes more difficult. Again, I wanted there to be a way to customize the game that you're playing, so that your experience feels different that the other players', and different than the other times you played.

Result 3: The customer cards actually worked out pretty well. The effects need a lot of tweaks; some of the customer costs consist of getting points from cards of a specific element, which is an awkward mechanic. But the cards that consume straight mana or gems are solid; not only do they give an alternate source of points, but they give you something to do with your resources at the beginning of the game, when resource outlets are scarce or nonexistent. The element tracks were a flop, though. Too much fiddlyness for not enough payback. Players would often neglect to move their tokens on the tracks and would ignore the rewards.

Iteration 3.5: Keeping the customer cards and element tracks, I reworked the effect of moving around on the tracks. I figured if there was a bigger carrot, that the players would be motivated to pay attention to them. I added square 'element path' cards, made so that each side of the card had an effect corresponding to one element. Move up past one of the three threshold spaces on a track, and you get to take a path card, meaning you can have a maximum of three per element (six overall). Each path card gave a special ability tied to that element, such as a free mana of that element or the ability to turn gems of that element into points. A couple of my designer friends have been making games that allow you to customize your abilities, so I thought the approach might work here.

Result 3.5: Nope. More interesting decisions doesn't make a fiddly interface any more interesting. Plus all of the combinations of abilities were too much to keep track of; when you can do twenty things each turn, and the order in which you do them matters, how do you work it all out? Too much brain melting.

Iteration 4: Okay, customer cards = good, element tracks = bad. Trying the same general idea from a different angle, I tossed the tracks and path cards and added tarot-sized 'relic' cards instead. These cards were loosely inspired by Magic's planeswalker cards. Some number of relic cards are dealt out next to the board, with all players being able to access them at any time. Each relic card has a requirement you must meet before being able to take it (something like 'have three fire cards'), and once you have a relic, you are stuck with it; you cannot change it out or gain another. In exchange, each relic has an 'energy' track, and several abilities that cost varying amounts of energy. Each relic also has a recharge cost; pay the mana or gems or whatever the relic is looking for, and its energy starts to tick back up. A good use for whatever spare resources you have left over at the end of your turn, plus abilities that should tie into particular needs. I had relics for generating mana and relics for turning mana into points, with various flavors of each.

Result 4: A solid 'meh'. The overall idea of the relics was good, but they didn't have enough of an impact on the game. Gaining a relic was not necessary to win, and the relics were mostly about optimizing your available resources instead of giving you something new.

Iteration 4.5: Fine, the structure of relics is okay but they're not impactful enough? Turn them up to 11! Really pulled in the balance of planeswalkers here. Reworked the relics so that they lost a couple of their less-relevant abilities, removed the cost to recharge them and gave them a way to recharge themselves, gave each one a 'super' ability that can change the balance of the game, and gave them end-game victory points. And all of those tied to a particular strategy! I've watched Manaforge being played dozens of times and I have a fairly good feel for the ways in which a player might build a successful engine, from focusing on one color to going crazy on gems to buying all wands. For each of those that I could think of, I'm going to create a corresponding relic that not only helps you do that thing, but rewards you for doing it. Yes, it's essentially locking you into a strategy, but the required board state for each relic is basically an indicator that you're going for that particular strategy anyway, so this is just helping you to your goal. And there will be more relics available each game than the number of players, so even the last player to get a relic will have options.

I'm playtesting this last iteration now. Fingers crossed that it goes well. :)


​P.S.  Oh yeah, and I haven't given up on Sky Pirates. It's slow going, but I've been chipping away at getting some prototype copies made, have those sent out for playtesting. I haven't put in as much time as I should there lately, but that will change soon.

"This is heavy."

- Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox), Back to the Future

So, this post will be a little different. I've had an idea brewing in my head for a while now that I just need to let out. However, this isn't an idea for a game, but rather a way of thinking about games. Still, like my design ideas, this is something that I've wanted to vent, for fear that it might burrow out of my head and run away somehow. Maybe this will be helpful to someone, maybe not. But if it gets at least one other person thinking, then maybe it's worth it.

Most experienced gamers will be familiar with the concept of a board game's 'weight'. At a lot of my gaming meetups, people will talk about how a game is 'light' or how they don't want to play anything too 'heavy'. But what does that mean, exactly? For such a definitive term, it seems like it's not well defined. I don't know if there has been any effort to try to classify games into one category or another. I know that the Board Game Geek website has a way for players to suggest a weight for games, with the game's official weight being some sort of average of all the submissions. But that's imprecise and subject to players' tastes. Is this type of measurement completely subjective?

First, we need to decide on what the idea of a game's 'weight' is really referring to. I've heard it mentioned recently (on one of the podcasts I listen to) that one possible definition of game weight is the amount of mental energy expended while playing a game. In a way, that makes perfect sense to me, so I've kind of adopted that concept. 'Light' games can be compared to appetizers, quick bites of gaming that don't require much thought and can be played multiple times or used as a warmup in preparation for something more involved. On the opposite end of the spectrum, 'heavy' games are huge undertakings involving intense concentration and calculation, at the end making you feel as if you just completed a semester's worth of college exams. While there are a few games at the extremes of each of these categories, the vast majority of games fall somewhere between the two, inferring a single axis for game weights. Therefore, where a game falls on this axis represents how much thought is put into playing that game.

Again, this can be a subjective scale, as some players are naturally more proficient than others at performing the thought processes associated with heavier games. The aptitude for this also increases with experience and practice; someone that has been gaming for a while is generally better at handling heavier games than newer players. This can even vary with a person's energy levels; someone who is tired may have more trouble with a heavy game than someone who is well rested.

Mulling this concept over, I've been trying to find patterns in games' weights. What exactly makes one game heavier than another? When does mental work go from easy to hard? This is colored by my own experiences, of course. I've been gaming since, well, forever, and I'm used to these patterns of thought and the need to adapt to new rulesets and challenges. (Being a computer programmer helps too. While I don't think about game goals in terms of work, the ability to break a complex task down into many simpler tasks still comes into play with a convoluted game.) Still, I'm thinking there must be something in common with similar weights of games.

One metric that seems to be a good general indicator of a game's weight is it's general type. Offhand I don't know the formal name for this, but most games are classified by their intended audience. 'Party' games are typically light, needing to appeal to a large crowd, not all of which might be gamers. 'Family' games also tend towards the lighter end of the scale, needing to be understandable by younger players. 'American' games tend towards the middle of the scale, with emphasis on their story and theme, and with randomness and interactivity taking the place of complex mechanics. 'Euro' games typically range from medium weight to heavy, with games often feeling more like puzzles or challenges to be thought through. 'Wargames' are often heavy monsters, requiring large amounts of strategy, tactics, memory, and bookkeeping in order to simulate combat on a massive scale.

Another metric that loosely corresponds to game weight is how much time the game requires to play. Shorter games tend to be lighter, longer games tend to be heavier. This is not an absolute correlation, though; light games can certainly be long, and heavy games short. However, a longer game means more opportunities to think about what is happening in the game, so in general longer games require more expenditure of brainpower.

Board Game Geek allows users to rate a game's complexity on a scale from 1 to 5, where larger numbers mean heavier games. However, this scale isn't rigidly defined. There is no absolute connection between a game's BGG weight number and how much it will make my brain work when I play it. So, this number doesn't mean much to me. Instead, I learn about how involved a game is when I learn about the game. A game with a short playtime and not many pieces is probably a light game. A game requiring multiple hours with hundreds of components and a novel for a rulebook will probably be a heavier game.

Hmmm. Is component count an indicator of game weight? It might be a factor. If nothing else, lots of pieces means more stuff to keep track of while you're playing. That has to require mental energy on some level. So, in a sense, a game's physical weight (literally, how heavy the box is) might loosely correspond to it's game weight. The size of a game's rulebook is probably also a way to try to guess weight. A game with a single-page rule sheet is probably going to be a lighter game than a game with a fifty page small-print rules tome. 

In my head, I think of games as 'light', 'medium', or 'heavy'. Some games might try to straddle the boundary between two categories, and others may take several plays before their full weight becomes apparent. But I generally try to group them into one of those three bins. However, within each group, some games will of course be heavier than others. This leads to the need to come up with sub-groups. Since I have a lot of roots in playing role-playing games, the Dungeons and Dragons alignment chart idea suggests itself here. Rather than two opposed axes, though, instead I have three groups with three sub-groups each. So, I have nine weight bins total, leading to a weight scale of 1 through 9. Each large group needs a way to differentiate the games in it, and the smaller groups are just a way to further separate games relative to each other.

Please keep in mind that I tend to play euro games more than anything else, so my opinions on where certain games fall will be colored by that perspective. Naturally, I am also limited by the number of games I've played; I don't claim to be an expert on every game out there. Additionally, I haven't played many games in some of these categories, so I will be doing some guessing as needed to fill in category examples. I will try to indicate when I do that.

Okay, so let's try this. For large categories, here's what I propose:

'Light': In general, light games focus on one thing. One goal, one path to victory, one concept to concentrate on. Sure, there can be secondary considerations and mechanics, but they all relate back to the one core goal of the game. If the game has victory points, then points can generally only be scored one way. If the game is a race to a goal, then there is generally one way to advance towards that goal. All mental effort is expended on either moving towards the goal, improving the effectiveness of your moves towards the goal, or hampering your opponents' movements towards the goal.

'Medium': Medium games introduce multiple ways of reaching a goal. If a game counts victory points, then there are multiple ways to score points. If the game is won by the first player to reach a goal, then maybe there are multiple goals, and the winner is the first player to reach any of them. These games sometimes require the player to formulate a strategy that focuses on one path to victory, with less or no attention given to the other possible paths. These strategies often need to be adapted to the game's starting conditions and the strategies that the other players are using.

'Heavy': I've had one designer friend say that a good indicator of a heavy game is the inability to explore the entire decision space of the game with just one playthrough. These games have so many considerations, so many branching possibilities, that playing the game just one time is insufficient to completely understand how all of the game's mechanics interact. These games have multiple paths to victory, and each path may have a different set of considerations that don't apply to the others.

Within each category, games can be further sorted by the amount of rules or information one needs to learn to play the game effectively, as well as the number of calculations the players need to make on their turn. A game with one hundred unique cards, each with a different ability on them, is going to take more brainpower to understand than a game with only five unique cards with twenty copies of each. A game where the ramifications of actions are easily understood and only cause small changes to the game state will feel lighter than one where actions are wide ranging and cause many consequences for other players and later turns.

So from those criteria, I have these game weights in mind:

Game Weight 1 "light-light":
These games can barely be called games. Decisions are few to none, and they often are played with minimal components and/or take only a few minutes. Longer games in this category may require only mechanical manipulation and not any sort of thought.
Examples: Coin toss, highest dice roll, Rock-Paper-Scissors, War (card game), Candy Land, Blackjack (one hand, no betting)

Game Weight 2 "medium-light":
These games are often quick and have simple and easy to understand rules. Some decisions are required, but they all relate directly to the goal of the game.
Examples: Yahtzee, Uno, Piece o' Cake, Apples to Apples, Exploding Kittens, Roll For It!

Game Weight 3 "heavy-light":
These games have one goal but multiple ways of getting there. Decisions can sometimes involve choosing between progressing towards the goal or making future turns more efficient. These games may have a significant learning curve with respect to understanding what options or effects are present at various points in the game.
Examples: Fantasy Realms, BANG!, Medici: The Card Game, Sushi Go, Herbaceous, Lost Cities

Game Weight 4 "light-medium":
These games have multiple ways to progress, either with multiple separate ways to score points or multiple goals where only one is required to win. Some ways to succeed in the game may be required while others are optional but beneficial. Thinking ahead to opponent's turns may be necessary to win.
Examples: Carcassonne, Splendor, Lanterns: The Harvest Festival, Azul, Downforce, Century: Spice Road

Game Weight 5 "medium-medium":
Multiple ways to make progress, often with more interdependence or more steps required to progress down each path. These games sometimes have a learning curve caused by a large number of potential effects.
Examples: 7 Wonders, Istanbul, Castles of Mad King Ludwig, Sagrada, Manaforge

Game Weight 6 "heavy-medium":
Multiple ways to progress, with many variables to keep track of. Often times there are many steps or chains of actions needed to work towards victory.
Examples: Hansa Teutonica, Lords of Waterdeep, Kraftwagen, Viticulture

Game Weight 7 "light-heavy":
These games have multiple potential strategies, not all of which are apparent on first playthrough. Many of the games' paths to victory are mutually exclusive (or practically so), requiring multiple plays to try them all.
Examples: Automobile, Coimbra, Rajas of the Ganges, Root(?)

Game Weight 8 "medium-heavy":
These games have multiple possible strategies with multiple variables to track. These are longer-duration games with many decisions to be made each turn. 
Examples: Terraforming Mars, Lisboa, Food Chain Magnate, Arkwright(?)

Game Weight 9 "heavy-heavy":
The most intensive of games. These can often eat up a whole day. Many combinations of player identities and/or board arrangements, plus complex bookkeeping or component manipulation, and sometimes lengthy negotiations or discussions, can mean that no two games are ever remotely the same.
Examples: Twilight Imperium, Arkham Horror


Of course, the weights assigned to the games listed here are guesses. Is 7 Wonders a 4 weight? Viticulture a 7? Arkwright a 9? While I'd like to think I have a pretty good line for when a game crosses from light to medium, the transition from medium to heavy seems more blurry. And trying to determine which sub-category each game falls into is still subjective. I think I need a better metric, or at least a better-defined one.


Okay, that was long. Took a while to write, too. And I'm sure this isn't the end of it. I will continue to refine this idea; hopefully with enough input on the subject a pattern will start to emerge. In the meantime, I'm open to any viewpoints on the subject if anyone wants to contribute. I'm sure I'm not the first person to try to put an objective criteria on this thing, so pointing me at work that other people have done on the subject might be good.

Thanks for reading everyone!

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!