A Turn for the Better

At the BGDW meetings recently, I’ve been running into a various games that have been toying around with different ways of dealing with player order. I figure it’s an interesting subset of mechanics to explore for a little bit.

I’m not that interested in the “why” of wacky turn orders in these cases, as they are usually obvious. Balancing first player (or last player) strength is usually the number one culprit. However, there are a few other reasons: add some variability is one. Complicate the “cost” of things is another. But what I am more interested in is the “how” of player tracking, and simple solutions required to keep track of things that are more complicated that simply “the player on the left goes next.”

My first real encounter with alternate player order mechanics probably would be with Circus Maximus, the old Avalon Hill chariot “racing” game. I put racing in quotes, as the actual race part of the game was usually overshadowed by the whipping and pulling of drivers out of the carts and the spiking of opponent horses and such. One review I read of the game, which summed it up nicely, went along these lines:

Out of ten chariots, you will most likely find that only 2 are still in the race by the first turn, and one of those have one of his wheels still on his chariot mostly by the power of wishful thinking. The other eight players will be either getting dragged by their horses, or running for the walls desperately trying to climb out of the arena.

Really, there was very little reason to run three laps, aside from the glory of trying to run over players who are making hapless escape rolls.

Anyway, turn order in that game is resolved simply enough; everyone puts their color chit into a cup, players determine their current speed, and then a color is drawn and that player takes his turn. The next color is drawn for the net player, etc. Since a player’s turn is taken immediately as colors are drawn, you don’t have any knowledge of the complete turn order for the round, it leaves a bit of risk and reward for where you want to wind up on the board, who you are trying to block, and how you want to waste your speed on combat.

This didn’t seem that special at the time, as it felt like a good representation of the chaos of horse-ramming. And while I’m sure it’s not the first game to mess around with the standard “play moves to the player on the left,” it obviously didn’t scream “HEY LOOK AT THIS NEAT-O NEW MECHANIC” either.

The first game that I can think of that I ran into a player order featured that DID seem to call out “HEY LOOK AT ME” was Manhattan. The players “edge” (as we called it, a holdover from playing Jyhad: The Eternal Struggle), would move to the next player at the end of a round, and the edge would signify who would go first the next. Over the course of four rounds, each player would go first, second, third, and last; thereby negating somewhat the first-player advantage (or in some cases, last-player advantage) that games typically have.

Granted, nowadays, this is pretty much old hat; but back in 1994 or whereabouts, this was pretty slick and novel. At least to those of us who have never encountered such a thing before. But now, the these things seem to be a staple, with either auctions or “the edge” being the standard way to handle things.

And as usual, things continue to evolve. I’m sure that other games that are currently out there do various tricks and things that I am not aware of; I can only speak of things that I have played.

The trickiest part of handling wacky turn orders is trying to come up with a tabletop interface that helps keep track of the order. “Next player to the left” is pretty straightforward, but when the turn order can be all over the place, things can get a bit hairy.

On the simplest front, one designer of our little group has a game where players take turns collecting various things. At any point, you can get out of the dwindling collection phase; the order in which you leave determines the turn order for the next round. When a player quits the collection phase, his pawn is placed on a turn order track, along with a matching color marker, in the first open space. Not only does the pawn “over there” signify that he is out of the collecting, the matching color marker stays there, indicating future turn order for the next round when the pawn goes off shopping.

Next up on the complication scale would be a design of mine, which I’ll probably post up as a print and play when I get another play test under its belt. It’s an asymmetrical game, in that players select roles, with each role on a given round has different, and opposing, scoring opportunities. The turn order for selecting roles is determined through a bidding system.

However, the bidding is a little different than the standard auction rules, in an attempt to make the bidding feel more organic, and less structured. Everyone first blind bids an amount, which is revealed. Then the player with the lowest bid can then pass, or select any higher bid than his current one, that is not currently selected by another player. Note that this is ANY bid amount, he does not need to be the highest one, but he can “slide under” the high bid and happily be the second highest bidder (for example). Then the play proceeds to the newly-appointed lowest bidder.

To further complicate things, role selection is performed in reverse order of how players have passed. In other words, the first player to pass becomes the last player to select their role, and the last player still in gets first selection. Additionally, there’s a bit of a dollar auction going on here, in that the top TWO bidders must pay their bids.

Since players aren’t taking turns bidding, simply beating the current high bid, as is usual, the chore was to come up with a clean way to keep track of each player’s bid, and the turn order in which they will select their roles. Initially, we played based on strict memory of each player; which works, but a more concrete way of defining these events would be nice. An obvious choice would be something like poker chips for the bid, and turn order markers. Which is a lot of things to be shuffling around the table.

And so, the creation of a modified “secret bid” bidding wheel, which can be used for secret bidding, with additional marks on a second wheel for turn order indication was born. As can be seen in the pictures to the left here.

Notches in the wheels allow for easy thumb-turning access for quick adjustments as bids are made, and as players drop out, they can simply adjust the wheels to their up coming role selection order.

The third turn order complication really is a pickle.

In this game, players secretly bid to take different actions, which have a specific turn order to them. There is a “tie breaker” list, which is an ordered column of tokens related to player colors. This is important because only one player can use a given action per round. Taking an early action is usually very powerful, however, if you are in the back in the tie breaking list, odds are that someone else will take the early action (who is higher up in the tie breaking list), leaving you to do nothing.

However, as the actions are being taken, the player who takes the first action winds up moving to the rear of the tie breaking list for the next round. The player who selects the second action winds up being in the second-to-last position for the next rounds, etc. Players who are “beaten out” of an action and do nothing get to slide up in the list for the next round. So, usually taking a powerful early action on one turn usually means you are out of luck for doing anything useful in the next.

Anyway, the way to track the moving the tie-breaking list is rather complex. Basically, the order in which you take an action this turn, puts you in the reverse order for the next turn, with players who take NO action in the front of the list for the next round.

What I came up with to solve this problem is this: a stand up model, with rolling chips. The right side of the model indicates the current tie-breaking list, with the far right chip being the first tie-breaker leader.






As a player takes his action, he pulls his chip and places it on the left side. The chips roll down on the platform to the far left, in this case the cyan player.

After a full round is played, the left platform is rotated up, and all the chips roll back into their place on the right side platform, creating a new tie-breaker list. And there you have it! A kind-of-neat mechanical device that cleanly deals with the complexity of the turn ordering system in a fun way. I think.


Of course, I'm not saying that any of these solutions are cost effective from a publishing point-of-view. Especially considering that the last two games pretty much revolve around card play mechanics. But at least their solutions fix a problem; something that the silly cardboard cauldrons in Poison don't do.


** I'm a complete sucker for wacky mechanical cardboard stuff

The Thematic Lightbulb

It's sort of odd; as all game designers are want to do for various reasons, the discussions of theme and mechanics always seems to come up. Whether it's a generalized starting point as a discussion ("What do you start with, a theme, or a mechanic?"), or something that sort of gets sideswiped into the design discussion ("We really should do that, because that's what people expect when you are simulating XXX..."). And I've found this to be quite apparent across various game design fields that I've in contact with over the years. Generally, everyone is trying to simulate SOMETHING; even something as simple as Tetris could be described as a sort of gravity simulation. Mostly because, well, people just understand the nature of how strangely oblong blocks stack up, and that packing them one way will result in very different packing position if you pack them differently.

It does seem like board games is a game subgroup that really doesn't mind having an abstract genre (and yes, I know they exist in video games), but even when you get to something that really is completely abstract, such as pinball, the amount of theming within the rules is astounding from a developer standpoint (and as an ex-pinball guy, I know). Really, a pinball machine is just a set of play mechanics that allow the player to score points based on whatever state various shots and targets are in, but every effort is made to somehow theme each of these states and reasons for why "increased scoring potential" may be active. It all made sense to me when I was in the industry: "This game mode represents "Payback Time" from whatever hot movie license the game was based on." But a few months out of the industry, and I was completely lost.

STORYTIME!

As a case in point, before I was in the industry, I played a pinball machine called "Whirlwind." I enjoyed it a lot. And this was way before the craze of various continual play modes that began in the '90s.

Anyway, as it was frequently done back in those times, various things would advance the scoring of various other things. And in the case of Whirlwind, one of the features was "Jets At Max." First of all, there were no airplanes on the game, and since it was a weather/tornado themed game, I started assuming that Jets meant Jet Streams, and the outer loops had "cloud faces" blowing wind around; that looked like Jet Streams to me! Soooo, I figured, Jets at Max meant that the outer loop shots must be worth big points.

It was only I started working in Williams/Bally did I realize that Jets referred to "Jet Bumpers." In other words,the silly pop bumpers that bounced the balls around were maxed out at big points, not the loop shots.

Alas, what was my point? Maybe it was this: here was a case where the theme, and the search for a logical extension of the theme, caused me to guess completely wrong as to how a scoring mechanic worked.

END OF STORYTIME.

Anyway, as I said earlier, it's a little odd. There's always talk about themes and mechanics, and especially how Eurogames wind up just having a collection of mechanics with a theme pasted on. I know some people like having a brainburning good time fighting with mechanics and searching for optimal mathematical play, but I find myself leaning further and further toward the Fortress:Ameritrash side of things; I want a logical explanation for why things are happening, not "just because" a rule tells me so.

This came most strongly into my vision while playing a prototype recently. Mechanically, it worked fine; he added a few new features to it that felt better than the last. And while the stated goal of the game was often discussed in terms of mechanics and scoring mechanisms, the entire game devolved into operating things solely for the gain of positive points, or avoidance of negative points. And while he had studied up strongly on his chosen theme of the game, and various detailed historical matters regarding the theme he wished to impart upon it, it was clear that the game was pretty much an abstract; you did not feel like you were doing anything that represented anything close to his theme; all actions were solely manipulating little cubes to best scoring results.

The little theme-ing lightbulb turned on in my head near the end of the evening. Basically, one of the new features he added was the addition of neutral cubes that scored negative points. At this point, I realized that those cubes, based on a the discussion which kept coming back to him describing the games theme (which to any other player, doesn't really exist), could actually perform an action that relates to the theme and represenations that he decribed that affected the game interestingly, as opposed to just a point suck.

Whether or not that something like this gets implemented in his game, I do not know. But it did make something tangible to me that was often talked about in rather mysterious terms: what exactly does theme mean within the context of a game? And the answer was a rule that performs as you'd expect in simulating that particular thematic action.

At least until I change my definitions again.

** I know I'm being a little vague on describing the game above. As it's not my game, I don't feel it's right to talk too much about it's details.

If players want to do something...

This is a nice short article about the design of Asteroids. And how one design element leads to another.

Of particular interest is the idea that if players keep wanting to do something, maybe it's in your best interest to allow them to do it (shooting at asteroids).

Well, until the guys who pay your checks start complaining, then you don't let them do it (lurking).

Everything in moderation, I suppose.

An Epic Update!

Epic Solitaire Notebook Adventures has been updated once again. Click here for the link.

Numerous things have been hammered out and altered. A quick glance:

REMOVED
-- No more cursed items (for now).
-- No speed initiative for creatures.
-- No references to time penalties on Quests.

ADDED
-- As suggested by "Tim," the player has some decisions to make in Battles now (granted, not much too start the game, really)
-- In response to the "mighty Battle Actions" that the player can obtain, Creatures are built differently; known game types are randomly assigned, and can affect the rules of Battle now.
-- As a way to increases the useful of the Terrains, Creatures are randomly assigned Terrain Modifiers, which modify their Level.

CHANGED
-- Magical Items are Battle Strength modifiers, instead of Level modifiers.

Probably the biggest addition is the use of and acquistition of Battle Actions. These are basic modifiers that are used during battles, which can only be used once per player level change. So, when you increase your Level at a Temple, you "recharge" your Battle Actions. Also, increasing your Level gains new Battle Actions.

The selection of new Battle Actions is sort of interesting. They create "paths" towards a character archetype. So, instead of simply declaring yourself as a Fighter or Wizard, the "path" that you decide to take in acquiring your new action sort of thematically decides that for you. It's sort of subtle.

Anyway, the Creatures are probably too mean now, due to the Terrain modifiers. As they are using the modifiers regularly, whereas your Battle Action modifiers are pretty limited, especially early on. But maybe not.

Print on Demand

Currently, there's an uptick in discussions with regards to POD for games. This is attributed to various things, mostly to websites such as artscow.com that are now printing playing cards on demand. Granted, these are pricey, non-money making affairs for the designer at this point, and I doubt a publisher at this technology point could do single one-off games at a desirable price point.

Additionally, I doubt that an POD in the near future is even going to bother with the intricacies of box making, part making, and chit cutting that a large fancy game entails. But it could happen.

I guess the other aspect is with people thinking that they can become "publishers" with this method somehow, which, when you take the POD company's take on the deal, price-wise, the game won't be very attractive at all. Unless you are merely using the service to get the game out there, ala print-and-play.

For example, Lulu.com features a "store" option for most of their book publishing. Unlike "real" publishing, where there is a great amount of cost reduction in the mass producing of a book, lulu.com charges the same high price that you would get as if self-printing a book for yourself from your own data files. Whatever profit you want to charge to go to yourself gets added on top of that price. Your simple deck-o-cards-only card game better be good if you are going to wind up charging $25 total. This would include your additional profit, plus whatever the POD website charges for shipping and delivery. And that doesn't include a rules sheet.

I guess one could make an argument that if someone is POD a game, then they'd just download a free set of rules, or something else, or they'd find a way to get whatever else was needed. And it's a good argument. Or maybe you had a few cards leftover which you could put the rules on.

Granted, if you are trying to get a nice set of prototype cards done, it may be worth the $20 for 52 professionally feeling cards.

Anyway, part of the fun of this world is trying things out, and so, knowing what is currently available out there, I went off an attempted a simple little puzzle/game booklet, using artwork that my kids have done (the larger gallery can be viewed at the BuddingArtist link off to the side). It's sort of a more advanced choose-your-own-adventure book. I would up using shutterfly.com for no apparent reason really. It's available here for viewing, and I suppose, for purchase. It should be noted that I get none of the money in the very odd chance that someone really wants to purchase it, but I do have to say that the little java script thingy is very neat-o.

View Project at Shutterfly

And if the neat-o Java thingy above isn't working, you can go directly to the shutterfly entry for the book here.

The "game" of the puzzle entails collecting items from certain characters, then going to other pages with other characters that manipulate them somehow. Characters come in three different flavor, one's that give the reader something, ones that alter them, and ones that block enterance to other pages until they are given the proper item. Unlike a choose-your-adventure book, which is pretty linear, this is more of a simple text adventure where you can go back and forth between "rooms," experimenting.

Surprisingly, it was a lot tougher than I thought originally when I was taking notes and laying out my world. In fact, the 1st edition of the book was set up much more like a world, where each page would only be able to to other pages; in the final edition I simplified the world by letting the reader visit any of the "base world" pages.

At first, my idea was to layout the entire puzzle on paper, then it would be easy enough to copy and paste the structure into a POD photobook website. This turned out not to be the case initially. Conceptually, it was easy enough coming up with a few puzzles that could be strung along with various ideas derived from the "artists." But understanding the relationship of where each page would be was a harder concept to build. Ideally, you want to "hide" whatever linearity in the puzzle you have throughout the book, instead of it being a simple read through.




In the end, probably laying out the world of the pages on note cards would've been much better initially. The ability to move things around visually would've greatly helped.










At some point, I realized that instead of a typical NSWE grid layout, I decided that a ring around a central page was better, with a few additional "secret passages" across the world.

In the end, it didn't matter much anyway, as my wife, who is ultimately the target for this book, found it a bit hard to comprehend. And while this above method worked, the need to considering your target market prevailed, so, the new current edition was built with no "mapping" of most of the world...the reader can go to any of the early pages as if all the characters are in the same location, only the later pages were locked, to be "unlocked" by the earlier pages.

As far as the "published" book itself, I'm very pleased. Shutterfly provided an excellent end-product that feels truly published, and not just run off a printer in some guy's basement somewhere. So physical quality is not a question with regards to POD stuff at this point. And if you are going to design a game that uses just cards, or just a book, or any of the other wacky stuff that they can "publish" for you (I've always been fascinated by trying to design a game confined to a "space" of it being a published calendar), it works. Just don't expect a cheap price for it.

Congratulations are in order

Congrats go out to Dwight Sullivan, as his Nobleman game won top prize at Hippodice this year.

Another link with a little bit more information.

As I may have mentioned earlier, it's a game that I'm not surprised that they liked. It's got a much beloved theme for a German game (medieval-ish European land/castle building), with a lot of well known mechanics meshed together. Plus a LOT of playtesting went into it, so it's pretty polished. Not to mention some hand-crafted pastic molded pieces.

The Moral Compass

So, life has been getting in the way a lot recently. But I promised that I would update ESNA, and so here it is. The latest version of Epic is up with some rules clarifications, new cards, new quest types, and a new topic to discuss!

(Of course, I should note that I haven't really had a good chance to fully playtest this version. So while I've clarified things that has bugged people, I'm sure that the new added rules have just as many holes in them.)

And on to the topic...

At this point, I need to comment that I am not a student of philosophy of any size or shape, so I'm sure I'm using terms in the wrong way; hopefully the drift of my words is clear.

Dungeons and Dragons used to have this thing called Alignment back in version 1 days, I have no idea what the equivalent is, if any, in today's version. Anyway, it was a compass of sorts that described the way your character should act, making a cross between a Good/Evil axis and a Lawful/Chaos axis.

And in a lot of ways, pretty useless. Since you just played the game the way you wanted your character to play. Or at least that's how we did it. It was a game of heroes doing heroic things, not villains performing evil deeds.

And so, I bring up "morality," or the basic thinking of good actions versus evil actions within a game. This is something that to my limited vision never seems to be covered in games too much. Goals of games are hard wired into "best way to win" or "best way to collect the most points as fast as possible." And while these are all choices that players make, aside from a mere point-collection perspective, there is very little consideration with regards to which path is the "right choice" versus the "evil choice."

Just how far you can veer off the "most point laden path."

In fact, there is seemingly very little outside of RPGs that allow for a player to truly make a moral choice, even down to a simple childlike level of good versus bad. Even in shame such as Battlestar Galactica, where there's a "good" side (the humans) and a "bad" side (the skinjobs), it's not a player's choice; it's merely a card draw of fate that determines your goals.

Then you can take it a step farther; what is really good or evil; one's view of what is good is certainly different depending on which side of the fence you are on. Once you are a Cylon in BSG, getting rid of the humans are a good thing. The victor of a war decides who the patriots are, and revolting peasants are the losers.

So, the next step in this is, is there a way to define a good or bad aspect in a game, derived from a player's choice of actions? Something more than just a logical quest of point accumulation?

What I will contend here is that actions are only decided to be good or evil based on the defining conscience and responses around those actions. In fact, what makes actions somewhat compelling in an RPG is that the NPC, being run by the DungeonMaster, have a memory of how the characters treated them previously. And it is the "memory" of past actions that ultimately define the view of a character's action over the course of time as to whether they are good or evil. Without that memory, there is no justice to return in kind, and no remorse for following a different path.

Or something. As I said, my screw around time has been short. Hopefully this makes sense.

And so, I've imparted some rules into ESNA that attempts to capture this. I've given Settlements a simply memory of past actions where those who live in the Settlement feel they've been slighted by the player, and actions are altered based on those previous actions. Conceptually, I like this a lot; since my playtest time has been remorsefully short, mechanically, I don't think it's implemented as fully as I'd like, and in fact, probably doesn't come into play too much at all.

But it does allow you to go off to rape and pillage an entire Village, at the cost of spreading the news that you are, at best unstable, or at worst, someone that the other Settlements should not be dealing with.

And in some cases, late into the game, pillaging Villages is a good thing for you to personally do; it reduces the cost of building your Keep while gaining some extra gold. If you can live with the crummy reputation throughout the land.

Anyway, it's up for review. I'm always interested in comments and suggestions.