Metatopia 2011 is this weekend and I will be running playtests there (as well as participating in other designers' tests and attending panels). If you plan on being there, make sure to try out Titans of Industry and Municipality. The schedule for my events is below.
Friday (11/4)
Saturday (11/5)
Sunday (11/6)
Dave Dobson over at Plankton Games Journal commented on some Kickstarter data that I myself had been looking at. I agree with his conclusion that the first-level data is lacking appropriate context, but I felt there was a way to combine the graphs into something meaningful to a designer looking to Kickstart his or her game. Go read his post and my response in the comments.
Last weekend I held a playtest day to prepare for the upcoming Metatopia convention. I always like to shore up my prototypes with my own group before showing it to strangers because tests with complete strangers are a ralatively rare and valuable opportunity. Strangers not only are more willing to crush your spirit, but they approach the game without expectations from playing previous version. I don't want to squander such an opportunity on problems my own group could have found.
First on the block was Titans of Industry. My main goal in this test was to try out another set of level-3 advancements. Below is the set used for this game.
I also introduced a new rule: the first facility each player builds in the game is immediately upgraded to size two for free. This helps get the game moving faster, as well as differentiating the players more as players can no longer swap the order of their choices and end up in the same place.
The eventual winner of the game had bought the two-facilities advancement and bought the Advertising advancement twice, so I feel it is safe to say that those are finally powerful enough. The other players felt that advertising might be too valuable, but since the margin of victory between first and second was only 9 points (148 to 139), I feel comfortable with the power level.
The players also felt that the Titan cards had relatively low payouts versus their initial expectations. This is good; Titan cards should be a jumping-off point and not dominate a player's game.
Finally, one of the level-one advancements was deemed to be not only bad, but so obviously bad as to not have any chance of ever being bought. I am okay with a game having "bad" choices, but I think they should not be blatantly bad to a first-time player. Therefore, I have increased the payoff of this advancement. It is still not something I think I would ever buy, but it might be good enough to attract some players to try it out.
I'll go over the second game tested in the next post.
The Federation captured another sector tonight when the Klingon Empire, led by the inept and cowardly Commander J'eff Sa'm, forfeited the field of battle after I not only raced out to a 4-0 lead, but heavily damaged their largest ship with the U.S.S. Venture while their second largest ship was infested with tribbles. Meanwhile, the U.S.S. Enterprise-A and the U.S.S. Voyager had explored and established control of much of the sector, overcoming several anomalies.
At only $1,000, I was quite tempted to pick this up and make cool custom pieces for my prototypes. What stopped me wasn't the price; it was the realization of how much time I'd have to put into learning how to program the thing. For a game designer wannabe with a real life to tend to in between playtests, time is the ultimate resource constraint. Anyway, watch the video through to the end, it's pretty nifty to think I could have such a device.
Ever since the GenCon tests revealed a need to replace the level 3 advancements, I have had a few playtests dedicated to trying out different ideas for said replacements.
The problem with level 3 advancements is that they are only available in the third age. This means that they will only have an effect for less than a third of the turns in the game. The earlier advancements have low power abilities, but that is okay because those abilities can be in effect for nearly the entire game. Level 3 advancements don't have the luxury of time.
Originally, I had almost all of the level 3 advancements be simple one-shot point scorers. This made them desirable, but it alsoo meant that they had much the same function as the Titan cards. I believed that that was alright because the advancements were open information and you didn't have to be dealt it to use it. In practice, this distinction proved to be less important. The worst part was the overlap of actual goals between the Titan cards and the level 3 advancements. As one of the GenCon testers said, "You shouldn't be able to score two things with the same action."
So I have been going through various powers for the level 3 advancements that affect actual gameplay. Unfortunately, nothing I've tried has been powerful enough to entice players to spend a precious third age turn acquiring it. Even when I myself was playing, I could never justify losing that turn.
I am dialing up the powers, trying to make advancements that will pay off for that lost time by the end of the game. I need to be careful, though, as the powers I am trying all seem like they could easily blow up the game's economy if abused in the right circumstances.
A long slog of tiny adjustments. That's what game design is all about.
