GenCon 2011 - Saturday, Part 2

If you haven't, read Part 1 first.

Once in, I set up Titans of Industry and raised the red flag to indicate I was looking for players. Over the next half-hour I had two people ask me about the game. I did my two-minute elevator pitch for them (it's a slow elevator). Both of them gave me their emails and asked me to let them know when the game would come out.

Eventually, Chris Parks, brother of Andrew Parks, came by and decided to play. One of the people who had asked about it (Andy) was not yet in a game, so he joined as well. Lastly, Paul Girardi of Z-Man, whom I've known for years, became our third player. None of them had ever played before, so this would be a good test with fresh players. Normally I prefer to watch my playtests, but there was a specific strategy I wanted to test out (and the game is more fun with more players), so I took the fourth spot.

I'll post scans of my test notes at the end of this post, but these were the key takeaways:

1. People who like economic games will like this one. Andy said that if he were to review this in fifteen words or less, "This is the game that Wealth of Nations wishes it was." That brought a smile to my face, especially considering my previous worries about Wealth of Nations.
   He also let my potential publisher Seth Jaffee know that, while it wasn't 100% ready yet, he would buy it when it came out. The other person who had asked about it also seemed sincere in being kept alert of this game. This might be me just putting more weight on things I want to hear, but I was very happy in how these two strangers reacted to my game.
   
   
2. Chris Parks is very good at finding exploits. At one point, he decided to ignore the markets on the board and just start drawing Titan cards almost every turn to try to rack up bonus points. He ended up scoring six(!) of them at the end of the game and actually tied me for the win at 169 points.
   This wasn't just a strategy that I thought wasn't good. It was a strategy that I didn't even know could exist as a strategy at all. It never occurred to me that a player would ever be able to score more than two or (at most) three Titan cards. No other player had yet tried such a thing.
   Thanks to Chris' brilliantly original discovery, I decided to forgo giving the current version to Seth and completely rework the Titan cards based on Seth's suggestion of replacing multiple related cards of different difficulties with a single card that gives different points based on what "level" of that card you accomplish. This could have sunk the game if it had ever gotten out and I am extremely grateful he found it.
   
   
3. The game's length hangs on a knife's edge between slightly too long and unsatisfyingly short. For the second age, I tried slightly tweaking the timing mechanism in a way that would shorten the age by one round. Of course, the age then ended crazy fast.
   Paul was the one to suggest shortening it, because he felt that Titans of Industry "feels very Euro and could do well in Europe, but it has to be shortened to under two hours". I think what I'll do is have the first age be shortened but keep the other two at their current length. This way players get to see the meat of the game (ages ending) for the first time slightly sooner without losing time during the more complicated second and third sections of the game.
   
   
4. The third age advancements stand out in a bad way. Instead of letting you do cooler things, most only score you points (and in ways that overlap with the Titan cards). The players were unanimous in not liking this.
   At first I disagreed with them, but in the time since the convention, I have realized they are correct and I was wrong. This is why I follow my personal rule that Chris pointed out towards the start of the game:
   "The reason a Keller playtest is great is that he writes down everything you say, even if he thinks it's ."
   While I would never characterize playtester feedback with the term that Chris used, he is correct that I force myself to write down everything because, as in this instance, I might later realize I was being foolish. Anything I don't write down is just because I missed it in the course of running/playing in a playtest.

After the test, Seth, Paul, and I talked shop for an hour or so. Sometime around 3am I finally crashed into bed, tired but pleased I was able to get a test together.

Below are my notes from the test.

Hurricaine Irene

I know I haven't finished my GenCon wrap up yet, but as a notice to my friends who read this, I don't intend on evacuating from New York. While it is wise for people in some areas to take precautions, I am in a neighborhood and in an apartment building that will have no real danger posed to it.

I wish those in more exposed locations the best and hope that they don't forget to have a good game or two on hand in case the power goes out.

GenCon 2011 - Saturday, Part 1

Post roundup:

• The Ares Project
• Infinite City
• Rules Seminar

I started off the day with a game of Summoner Wars against one of my roommates. I had not played it before, but it was simple enough to pick up. This game, like so many that I tried this weekend, also used dice to resolve combat. It was fine for what it is. Mercifully, it uses a slippery slope mechanic where killing your opponent's creatures rewards you with resources to summon more and better creatures to your side. This would help prevent the game from dragging on indefinitely. It also incentivizes you to use fewer, larger creatures as your opponent taking out one of those gives only one resource to him or her, as opposed to multiple resources for killing several smaller creatures of yours. My opponent tried to retreat at one point, but forgot about one of my creature's ability that allowed him to zip across the board and deliver the coup de grace.

Heading over to the exhibit hall, I saw that Geoff Englestein was over at the Z-Man booth giving demos of The Ares Project. I watched the tail end of one and then sat down myself for the next. You can read about that here.

Afterwards, I wandered by the AEG booth. They had a visualy striking ninja-themed game, but all of those tables were filled up, so a sat down for Infinite City. This is my post on that.

I had almost gone to a seminar of the philosophy of designing games, but the timing didn't work out. However, I did manage to attend a seminar on how to write a rulebook given by Mike Gray of Hasbro. My notes from that seminar can be found here.

I had gotten a few people interested in playtesting Titans of Industry sometime Saturday night, so I went back to my hotel room to grab my prototype and relax for an hour so I would be able to analyze the playtest with a fresh mind. Seth Jaffee, with whom I have been working on Titans of Industry for a few months now, had said he wanted to see the playtest, so I wanted things to go smoothly. Quite predictably, when I went to round up my four scheduled playtesters, three of them dropped out to play in another event. I called around to people I knew at the convention to see if anyone would like to take their place. Of course, you can't expect people to be available at the last second during a convention. Lacking any other option, I headed to the Board Game Library hoping to snag random people looking for a game to play.

While waiting in line at the Game Library room, I was introduced by Geoff Englestein, whom I know from the DexCon conventions, to Ryan Sturm, whose voice I had recognized from the Ludology podcast. We chatted as the line progressed and I told him about my designs. He recommended based on the games I liked that I try out the new Mayfair game Aeroplane. (Unfortunately, my flight the next day was too early for me to do so, but I will be certain to look out for it at future conventions.)

Once in, I set up Titans of Industry and raised the red flag to indicate I was looking for players and hoped the prototype looked interesting enough to draw people over. In my next post, I will wrap up Saturday's events.

GenCon 2011 - Rules Seminar

I attended a seminar on writing rules and laying out a rulebook by Hasbro's Mike Gray. Now, obviously, because of whom he works for, his advice was slightly geared towards making a rulebook understandable for the mass market. However, I believe his advice is still generally sound to apply to the Eurogame market. Here are my notes on his all-too-brief lecture. Sadly, I coldn't capture his interesting and funny anecdotes. I've also included a scan of the outline he gave us to use in our rulebooks.

Notes:

Three must-do's for rulebooks
1) clear: I understand
2) complete: it's all there
3) logically organized: need to be able to read straight through and flow naturally

date rules versions during development or you will mix them up

age affects a lot of things
-how simple or complicated it can be
-size of components for safety
-bluffing games don't work for under age 8
-winning/losing affects under-8 emotionally too much, better to go coop

number of players affects math of the game
-components
-waiting for turn (scrabble not fun with more than two)
-trading (monopoly/risk worse with fewer players)

Don't put a number of players or age on the box if you haven't really tested it.

object of the game
-if you don't know where you are going, how you get there is superfluous
-put goal at top so that rest of rules have context

game contents
-important in case there are missing pieces, alerts players

game assembly
-this is only for when it is first unboxed
-it is not as obvious as you think to assemble a game
-if labels, put warning on label sheet to read rules first
-if necessary, have drawing of pieces snapping together
-batteries: size, location

game setup
-have an actual picture of game setup instead of just text description
-Tasty Minstrel Games rulebooks are good at this

game play rules have two purposes:
1) primarily for helping game owner explain to friends how to play
2) secondarily for reference during game

For second purpose, make things easily findable Don't leave important exceptions as picture captions; people won't read them when trying to reference

Defining terms cannot go at the end. You have to define them at the start.

turn sequence
-give rules to a teacher to read
-make sure to also give components for review
-people won't want to read, because it isn't fun, but important to do anyway

Don't use "may", "can", "should", "could", etc. if you can avoid it. They are ambiguous and confusing to people.

Point-of-view is a problem. Instead of he/she, use "you" and "your opponent".

Humor is very important, even in little doses.

Special Conditions
-don't assume special conditions obvious, make sure to specify
-be careful about having myriad of combinations, there might be situations that come up which you didn't anticipate
-even if you think it can't happen, it will eventually
-don't fall for the odds trap; either cover it or fix it

board spaces
-better to have no language on cards if you want to sell worldwide
-cleaner board is nice, but if people don't want to keep going back to the rulebook every turn

winning
-don't like ties
-is exact count necessary?
-does it end immediately or equal turns?

variations
-fine for hobby game market
-bad for mass market

for any number other than four players, think about the mathematics of the game. with numbers other than four, player interaction changes.

strategy tips
-good thing

add color

best rulebooks:
Endeavor
Tasty Minstrel's Belfort - throrough, lots of illustrations, well laid out
Jamaica - rules done like treasure map
Days of Wonder

GenCon 2011 - Infinite City

This is a take-that tile laying game where you are primarily trying to string a many of your tiles together. I definitely wouldn't mind using this as a game day filler while waiting for other games to finish.  I don't think it is interesting with two players, as then blocking connections is cos of zero-sum. It is definitely better than Tsuro. $35 is to high, though for a filler game. At $20, I'd buy it.

In picture below, I am purple and won 16 to 11.

GenCon 2011 - The Ares Project

Just did a demo of the game run by the designer. It flows fast, uses a modified rock-paper-scissors combat advantage model, and looks like the factions have good diversity. Of course, it is a dicefest, but a competent one.

GenCon 2011 - Friday

Post roundup:
Star Trek: Expeditions
Star Wars LCG
X-Wing

I started Friday by heading back to the WizKids booth to try to get a demo of Star Trek: Expeditions. A demo was in progress, so I just watched instead. My impression was unfavorable. I wish I could just buy the two ships separately, though. They are gorgeously pre-painted (the biggest omission from the Star Trek: Fleet Captains game is that the models are unpainted, something that will suck up much of my free time for the months after I get it).

Next I demoed the Star Wars LCG, which also did not go well.

I went over to Z-Man to demo The Ares Project, but Geoff Englestein was off somewhere and Zev didn't have anyone else who could run the demo. Instead I tried out Ascending Empires.

Ascending Empires is a 4X space game whose twist is that ship movement is accomplished by flicking the cylinder representing your ship across the board. After the first couple of turns, the demoer asked if I had played before, because he said I was the first person to make the "correct" moves at the start of the game. This was actually foreshadowing of the game's first problem. It was apparent almost from the start that the game's system was quite shallow. Land, recruit, research, colonize, build a city, rinse, repeat. I quickly lost interest in the empire management side of things.

Instead, I turned to what was the fun part of the game, combat. Combat is very simple, if you have more strength participating in a planet attack than its defense, then the whole planet is wiped out and you get points for that. What makes it fun is the challenge in flicking your pieces into position to attack without alerting your opponents to your intentions (which would give them a chance to build up defenses). Then, when war is joined, there's the back-and-forth until someone ekes out a permanent advantage and claims an area. This is really, really fun . . . when it works.

The second problem with the game is that the map is quite large and made of of puzzle pieces. When flicking across the boundaries between map sections, there is a good chance your ship catches an edge and stops or even flips onto its side and goes rolling off the board (killing it).

At first, I took a planet from the player diagonally away from me, claiming a string of planets right through the center of the board. Then I took out a planet from the player to my right. Finally, I went after the demoer, who was sitting to my left and had colonized a couple of planets in my home territory. We kept going back and forth destroying each others' ships. I eventually won out (due to having closer resupply planets and having researched to get an extra movement per turn).

This took forever. The other players went merrily about their way snapping up planets while the demoer and I battled it out. The game took two hours, and we didn't even finish. For a game advertised at 75 minutes and one as simple as this, two hours is unacceptable. It wasn't even new player syndrome, as the only rules issues were when I came up with exploits. For instance, when two opposing ships collide, they both blow up. However, you can't take out two enemy ships with your one by colliding with both; only the first hit blows up.

The idea I had was to use the rule that "If a ship leaves the map for any reason, it is destroyed"; specifically, my idea was to flick my ship so hard that its momentum would send two adjacent enemy ships flying across the room. It was determined to be legal. The only reason I didn't do it was that I would have had to cross a map piece edge, which would have screwed up my flick.

There were some great moments, but this is just an almost-fun game ruined by poor construction and a too-slow end condition.

Next I tried out Kingdom of Solomon by Philip duBarry. This is a solid worker placement game. My only concern is that I seemed to win with an uncomfortably large margin by ending the game suddenly, but we were all new so that might have affected it. I will definitely have to play again before making a final determination about the game's math.

In the picture of the endgame shown, the blue disc is actually supposed to be about 30 points behind my red one, not 10 points in front of it.

Lastly, I played a partial game of X-Wing. It's still in early development, but right now it doesn't seem to have much lasting value. I hope they can turn that around, because the pieces are just oodles of fun to play with as toys.

I went to bed early to catch up on sleep and battle con fatigue, but my hotel room is directly over a minor league baseball stadium, and I was woken up by fireworks exploding about 200 feet from me following a game. Very pretty, but I expect tomorrow I'll be a zombie.

GenCon 2011 - X-wing

With about an hour to go before the convention hall closed, I started a demo of FFG's in-development X-Wing game. The game is undeniably attractive to the eye. I took a video of the demo which I'll post when I get back to NYC. My initial impressions are that I don't think this game has much replayability. I understand they'll add different kinds of ships, but in the end it will be just move, fire, roll, move, fire, roll. A big disappointment was that collisions are damageless. Booooo! I want to be able to ram my damaged Tie Fighter into the opponent and go out in a blaze of glory.

GenCon 2011 - Star Wars LCG

This game was a letdown (though not nearly as much as the new Star Trek card game). It is another co-op game where both players are Rebels collaborating to complete a multi-phase mission while fending off attacks by the Imperials. This game has a lot of the "taste" of Star Trek: Expeditions. I'm told it is also extremely similar to the new LotR card game by the same company. Maybe I'm just discovering an inner wargamer I didn't know was in me, but when I play a two-player Star Wars game as the Rebel Alliance, I expect to be throwing X-wings at my opponent's Tie Fighters.

This holding-hands, let's work together, namby-pamby nonsense has no place in a Star Wars game.

GenCon 2011 - Star Trek: Expeditions

Just watched a demo of the Star Trek co-op game and came away unenthused. I like love Battlestar Galactica and had high hopes for this, but it just doesn't deliver. I guess that despite my good experience trying Pandemic at Dexcon last month, I should steer clear of non-traitor co-op games.

GenCon 2011 - Thursday

Post roundup:

• Lego = Minecraft
• Fleet Captains
• Star Trek deck builder

Thursday was the day I dedicated to taking an initial tour of the exhibit hall and mentally noting games to demo on Friday. For the most part, that's what I did. However, when I saw the Star Trek: Fleet Captains game set up in the WizKids booth, I couldn't resist. While I had known about the Star Trek: Expeditions co-op game, this one had only had vague reports pop up in my rss reader from time to time. This explains why its appearance absolutely shocked me.

The game's opening turns were random to a point that almost made me quit, but somehow it all came together into something that I am excited about playing in a way that no game has done for me in far too long. This was easily the highlight of my day. I also demoed another Star Trek game, my less-than-pleased feelings about which you can read here. This was easily the lowlight of my day.

On a side note, my long abscence from GenCon had made me forget just how much walking is involved. After one day I would give good money to rent a Segway for the rest of the convention. Also, even a light backpack cuts into your shoulders after wearing it for 10 hours.

Geek Chic was showing off a table with an interactive screen built in to ostensibly be used for DMming RPGs. The software wasn't at the level of the Microsoft Surface Settlers of Catan, but it was still interesting to watch.

I met up with Philip duBarry, designer of Revolution!, who had contacted me prior to the convention. We chatted for a bit and I signed up for a demo of his new game, Kingdom of Solomon. I'll try that tomorrow. He also introduced me to Tom Vasel and Eric Summerer of The Dice Tower, who happened to be right behind me at that moment and gave me a badge ribbon for the Jack Vasel Memorial Fund. Philip mentioned my blog to Tom and he asked me about it and my game design efforts. I appreciated Philip helping me network like that.

I also headed over to the Tasty Minstrel Games booth to meet up with Seth Jaffee. This being Thursday, he was very busy demoing to people at the booth, so I told him I would swing by when it was less crowded. I have a Titans of Industry change kit to bring his copy of the prototype up to the latest version. It looks like I'll be able to get a playtest together Saturday night, so I'll make sure that goes well before giving the changes to Seth.

Finally, I stopped by Z-Man's booth to say "hi" to Paul Girardi and Zev. I won't have anything to pitch Z-Man for awhile, but Zev is nice (he was the first publisher I ever pitched to, with my awful Programmer: Battle for Bandwidth game half a decade ago, and yet he still speaks to me despite the criminally poor design of that game) and I want to keep the lines of communication open.

GenCon 2011 - Star Trek Deck Builder

I tried Bandai's new Star Trek deck building game. For those smart aleck commenters who think theme can override my aversion to randomness, this is proof positive that it cannot. This game left a very sour taste in my mouth after 20 minutes and I doubt I will give it a second chance. I was almost relieved when the other people demoing left to do something else, cutting the game short.

Imagine Dominion, except that instead of piles of cards to buy from, each pile randomly chosen but containing the same card, you shuffled every card in Dominion together and dealt out nine of them. On your turn, you may only purchase one of these nine or one of the three crew (read: treasure) cards. You can also discard one of these nine cards from the table to replace it with a new option to purchase, but essentially you can only pick from nine random cards. This has two effects. First, it is impossible to strategize over multiple turns, as you haven't the slightest clue what will be available for purchase and opponents might just luck into a great card happening to appear on their turn. Secondly, there is a huge learning curve, as you're constantly reading tiny text on a bunch of new cards when it is time to decide what to do.

To be fair, the game does have something Dominion doesn't: a purpose driving you other than deck building for its own sake. At the end of your turn you have the option of Exploring Space. To do so, you flip over a random challenge card from a separate deck. If the cards you've played this turn (which, in addition to their value as treasure and their gametext have challenge-solving stats) give you enough of the needed stat, then you could score the card. This is the only route to victory, as you need to score 200 points. However, if you fail the challenge or even get attacked by a more powerful starship, you could suffer setbacks which essentially pollute your deck with their version of Copper (a better idea than player elimination).

Unfortunately, even this avoidance of Dominion's inevitable "What's the point?" is poorly executed, as the card drawn when you explore can vary wildly from an automatic destruction of your ship to a freebie prize that required nothing on your part but to be lucky in topdecking it. This is a game with an unforgiveable amount of randomness.

Take that, theme!

GenCon 2011 - Star Trek: Fleet Captains

I haven't played this yet, but there is zero chance I won't buy it after seeing it.
Update: Just played it. Destroyed my opponent's Sutherland after also dumping tribbles onto his Defiant.
Game is almost too random for me, but I like it anyway.



My two Klingon warbrids (one heavily damaged) are about to destroy the Sutherland (already slightly damaged) as the Defiant watches helplessly, having been overrun with Tribbles I beamed over through their shields. Long live the Klingon Empire!

GenCon 2011 - Lego = Minecraft

This Lego display should be sold as Minecraft: The Board Game.

GenCon 2011 - Wednesday

I've arrived in Indy and am excited about the convention. I ran into some friends from the Star Trek CCG's Continuing Committee. I am actually staying in the CC's block of rooms, despite having resigned my post as Head Judge a couple of months ago. It will be nice to touch base with that community again, but I won't get drawn back into the game itself.

I've gotten my badge (40 minute line for pre-registered players while the new registration line seemed to have zero wait time!) and am now going through the book. I already have a couple of publishers who are expecting me to stop by their booths, but tonight I will go through the exhibitor list and identify other companies to whom I will introduce myself. I don't intend to give any pitches to these other companies this time, but I want to use this opportunity to make even the slimmest of personal connections with them.

This is the first time I've been to GenCon without intending to play in the Star Trek CCG World Championships. Playing in that usually takes up the better part of three days, so I've had minimal time in the past to wander the exhibit hall and play random new games. I will be making up for that this year.

GenCon - Playtest Opportunity

I will be attending GenCon this week. If you will be in Indianapolis and would like to playtest either Titans of Industry or Municipality, I would be happy to run a session. Just send me an email at mkeller@visiblehandgames.com and we'll arrange a session. I'll run the same contest I did for DexCon. If you playtest one of my games and win, mention this post and I will send you a playtest copy of Pioneer.

Alternatively, if you can't playtest but would like to just chat about game design, I'm always up for that. I will have the Visible Hand Games logo on my bag and/or badge, so feel free to say hi.

See you there!