Game Designer Wannabe

How much randomness is good? I have a brand new design (although you could argue it was born out of the ashes of Black Market) that is about commodities production and its got some pretty complex stuff going on. Right now, however, the game is entirely lacking in randomness. I'm considering adding event cards that affect the market for the different goods in positive and negative ways. Is this a good idea? I want this to be a serious gamer's game. So, the question is, should I leave out the random event cards or would they add to the fun?

Feedback on this one would be heavily appreciated.

Thanks go to Don for directing me towards this post. In it, one of the designers for Marvel Heroes gives a preview for the yet-to-be-released game. I do like how the game sounds so far, it appears to have captured the correct perspective for a superhero game. More interestingly, though, Roberto Di Meglio (the aforementioned designer) explains the goals laid out by the design team for the game and how those goals influenced the design decisions made. I am always interested in reading such backstories about the design and development of published games.

A couple of weeks ago I went to a board game day at a friend's house. I wasn't planning on doing any playtesting, just wanted to have some fun. While waiting for the bulk of the invitees to arrive, we played some filler games. After a couple of rounds of Guillotine, I felt like playing something else, so I suggested we try a round of Programmer. As a few people arrived at that point it ended up being a 6-player game, and I just watched. I was glad I did, because what I found was interesting. Even in this relatively simple version of the game, about half of the people had difficulty predicting what the program would do to the token. So I think this version is the closest to what will be the final version, even though it was turned down by Out of the Box Publishing and Mayfair Games. A couple of the people there did spontaneously express further interest in the game and said they knew people who would probably like it, so I let them know they could download it from here. That's a good sign. Unsolicited positive comments and actions are always much more reliable than ones prompted by a question. So I am quite pleased with it. Soon I'll let you guys see the other, more complicated version of Programmer, since I've decided that it was going down the wrong path.