Division of Labor (I Cut YouChoose Worker Placement) v2.0

The Story So Far

Some time ago I posted about some ideas about, and even a first playtest of, an I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement game that I so cleverly (haha) called Division of Labor. I thought the theme was sound: in search of a new home world, we were bringing specialists of various types on colony ships, and as officers, we players would boss the specialists around, then divvy them up and send them to their next assignment. 

Mechanically, you'd place a worker where there were Specialist cubes, do some actions based on the color (type) and number of specialists present, then split the cubes into 2 piles, sending each to a different adjacent location. In this way, players would take turns sort of *choosing* a pile, then *splitting* a pile for future players. This worked, technically, as a sort of procedurally generated worker placement game, but it really didn't feel like I-Cut-You-Choose at all, which was the feel I was going for. 

At that point, I had to decide whether I wanted to pivot to a procedurally generated worker placement game, or find a way to make it feel more like I-Cut-You-Choose, or abandon the project altogether. I decided to give ICYC one more chance, and tried to identify what makes that mechanism really work in the first place. 

What makes ICYC tick?

As I mentioned before, I-Cut-You-Choose has roots in something called Fair Division. I came across a video one time about fair division of a cake between more than 2 people, which was interesting, but which is kind of irrelevant when it comes to using ICYC as a game mechanism.

You see, in Fair Division the goal is to make splits that are *as even as possible*, while in a game, you kind of want the opposite - you want as big a difference as you can get away with! In order to accomplish this, the things you're splitting need to have a few aspects to them:

* They can't be worth the same to everyone.

If you were to split some pocket change into 2 piles, it would be trivial which pile is better - you'd just take the one with more money in it! But if you're splitting something that could have a different value to you than it does to me, then it's a lot more interesting 

* I think it helps if there's a "poison pill" in the mix. 

I don't actually like things that are strictly negative, but many ICYC games have a dynamic where a certain type of thing is good *unless you get too many of them*, then it's a problem. Or an item could be bad, unless paired with another type of item. In Zooloretto, any type of animal is kind of poison if you don't have a pen to put it in, but you can spend money to discard the extra animals, thereby getting rid of the poison

Things like that seem to help give players a sense of agency over their splits, a way to try and engineer a situation wherein they can get what they want, even though they pick last.

For this to work, I think it's important to know for whom you are making the split, and you need to be able to tell what that player may want or not want. If you have no idea who you're splitting for or what they might want, then you can't really "make them an offer they can't refuse," if you know what I mean. 

For these reasons, I also think that splitting for 2 players at a time works better than trying to split for 3 or more players. Not that the latter is impossible, just that it's hard to do well, I think. 

In my original game, when you split cubes, it wasn't clear who would be choosing them, so it failed to feel like you were even doing ICYC at all. Some of my thoughts to change the game were along the lines of trying to make players split more explicitly for a particular other player. However, I never got around to trying a 2nd draft. Disheartened, I shelved the game until I had some epiphany or something.

New Blood 

Despite having shelved Division of Labor, I kept it on my mental list of things to work on next, and when I'd done what I could with Taiko Kiri, Eminent Domain: Coalition, The Great Goballoon Race, and The Sixth Realm (and stalling out on Isle of Adventure), I needed something to work on next, so my thoughts returned to Division of Labor.

I mentioned the premise in a few different online design forums, and somebody said they had a friend who was working on a similar idea for an ICYCWP game, but the main mechanism sounded a lot more straightforward than what I had originally tried to do. Rather than each worker placement trying to be both a "choose" and a "split," it would only be one or the other -- worker spaces would take 2 workers each, one would split and the other would choose.

I felt inspired by this much more explicit ICYC format. Each worker space could be seeded with cubes related to available actions, as I had originally planned, and could take 2 workers. I could see four ways it could go:

1. First worker to a space splits the cubes, second worker to the space chooses
   One problem here is that you'd never know what player you're making a split for - so that's not ideal, given my above conclusions
2. Second worker to a space splits the cubes, first worker to the space chooses
   In this scheme, the splitter would know who they're splitting for, which seems better
3. First worker to a space chooses whether to split the cubes, or choose
   I strongly suspect it'll be vanishingly rare that a player is so interested in making a particular split that they would pick "split," without even knowing who would be doing the choosing
4. Neither worker splits the cubes immediately - after all placements, first worker decides who splits and who chooses
   Unlike the last option, players splitting the cubes would at least know who they're splitting for. This sounds like the most agency for the first player into a space, but as above, I suspect that the vast majority of the time, the first worker will decide to choose rather than to split

Of all those, the second option (2nd splits, 1st chooses) makes the most sense to me. Option 4 sounds like a better deal for the 1st worker, but in practice I strongly suspect it'll be the same thing, so might as well use the simpler, more straightforward rule!

Division of Labor 2.0

So there we go... I modified my old Division of Labor prototype on Tabletop Simulator to sort of shoehorn this new format in, and gave it an initial test with Rick, and was very promising! Rejiggered a few things and had a 3 player test a week later, and it felt a lot like a real game!

At that point I still didn't really have all the values of things, I was telling players things like "this is supposed to reward you for having done a lot of building -- so if you build a lot, just assume you get an appropriate bonus." These last couple of tests went so well though, I filled in the values and we played a 3rd game a few days later and I think the structure of the game is in really good shape. I have made some more detailed changes for the next playtest, and I'm excited to get it to the table again. I'll post about the current state of Division of Labor 2.0 in a separate post, including the current rules. 

I had been inspired to combine Worker Placement and I-Cut-You-Choose in the first place because of Jamey Stegmaier's top 10 favorite game mechanisms video, wherein his top two mechanisms are, you guessed it, I-Cut-You-Choose, and Worker Placement. Now that I have a working prototype, if I can clean it up and make it good, maybe I should try and submit it to Stonemaier games. Stonemaier has some pretty clear submission guidelines for games they publish - relevant points from their website:

We’re looking for tabletop games (not RPGs) that capture our imaginations.

This is a tricky one, as I tend to be attracted ore to clever mechanisms, but the story of the game is probably what captures most players' interest. The story of Division of Labor made more sense with my original conception of it but less sense with the new version, so I could stand to revisit the story of the game and find something better 

The player count must accommodate a minimum of 2 players without a bot (we’ll add a solo variant to take it down to 1) and an upper range of at least 5, 6, or greater (without adding significantly to playing time or downtime). We’ll ignore submissions for 2-4 player games.

 My current prototype only supports 4 players, but it could easily expand to 5 or 6 -- the biggest question form e in that case being downtime - will there be too much? Will the game take too long? Is it OK if the game takes too long at high player counts?

We’re looking for event games–the featured main course at game night, not the appetizer or side salad–that play in 1-2 hours.

This is my wheelhouse, and Division of Labor seems to be in that range 

We’re looking for unique games–your game must feature something that has not been done before.

I haven't seen a combination of ICYC and WP mechanisms before, so I think Division of Labor offers a new twist on Worker Placement, and uses the underused ICYC mechanism which appears to be becoming popular 

We’re looking for games that flow well, which typically means each player’s turn is short and there are no rounds to break the flow. If your game has a number of phases (either within each player’s turn or within each round), please don’t submit it to us.

Division of Labor does have rounds, like most Worker Placement games do. To an extent I think that's part of the genre, and there's not a lot of bureaucracy between rounds, so it seems reasonable to me. Hopefully that won't disqualify it!

Hmm... I wonder if there's a way to do it without rounds, like you just place your worker, and if you place 2nd in a space, you split, the other player chooses, and then you both get your workers back -- and if you have both of your workers out and your turn comes around, you're just skipped or something. For flow-of-game purposes, I wonder if that might be worth considering

We’re looking for designers who are open to constructive feedback and who are willing to work on their game well after we accept it for publication, as our version of the development process is a collaboration.

I am definitely such a designer!

I don't see it on their list, but there's one other criteria I thought Stonemaier looked for -- maybe I heard it on a podcast or video somewhere, or maybe it's old news -- that they like to have a notable component that stands out and grabs people's attention, such as the Mech minis in Scythe, or the sculpted buildings in Tapestry. In Division of Labor, you are able to build higher level buildings on top of lower level ones of the same type. I was thinking a way to make that very clear, and maybe provide an interesting component, that perhaps the building pieces could be like those in the abstract game Gobblet. In that game you have little upside-down cups of various sizes, and you can place a bigger one over the top of a smaller one, thereby "gobbling it up." So what if the Level 1 buildings were a little sculpted mini, and the Level 2 and Level 3 buildings were similarly sculpted, but bigger, and hollow, such that they fit over the top of the smaller ones, enveloping them. That seems like it would be pretty cool!

YANGI: Mono-match game

Dobble, Spot-It, and "Mono-match" technology 

Lately I've been giving some thought to and old idea: mono-match decks/games (like Dobble/Spot-It), and specifically how one could be made that's *not* a speed recognition/reflex thing. 

In case that sounds like gibberish, Dobble (AKA Spot-It) is a game where you have 55 cards, with 8 little pictures on each one, out of a total of like 57 different pictures. The distribution is such that any two cards will match one-and-only-one picture ("mono-match"). In the game, you flip up 2 cards and race to spot the matching picture. It's pretty fun. 

But the coolest thing about that game might be the mono-match-ness of the deck. There's a good video online explaining various ways to create such a deck which guarantees exactly 1 match between any two cards: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTDKqW_GLkw

I've long been interested in the idea of using this Dobble technology (the mono-match deck) to drive a more euro-style game. So in an attempt to leverage "Dobble technology" in a game that's *not* just speed recognition like Dobble/Spot-it, I have come up with this proof-of-concept 2-player, 7-card mono-match game in which you deal 1 card to each player and the other 5 to slots on the board labeled MUSTER, MOVE, FIGHT, BUILD, SCORE. On your turn, you'd choose one of the actions to resolve in the region where your card and the card in the slot match, then swap your card for the card in the slot. You'd take turns doing that until some game end condition is met, and the player with the most points wins. 

The actions I came up with are pretty bare-bones:

MUSTER: Add meeples to the board

MOVE: Move meeples around the board

FIGHT: Force opponent's pieces to adjacent regions (maybe also get some VP?)

BUILD: Place a building token from your player board in the region, increasing the scoring value of the region, and upgrading one of your other actions

SCORE: Award points for majorities in certain regions

I made a quick mock-up of this on Tabletop Simulator, and last weekend we were able to give it a shot. I observed while Rick and Daniel played a 1st draft of the game, and that test might be among the most liberal I've ever been with rules changes on the fly! 

After their game, we had a much better idea how things felt. Here's an updated rules summary:

2-player, 7-card mono-match game v0.2

* Deal 1 card to each player and the other 5 to slots on the board labeled MUSTER, MOVE, FIGHT, BUILD, SCORE

* On your turn, choose one of them to resolve in the region where your card and the card in the slot match, then swap your card for the card in the slot

* Alternate turns until some game end condition is met (Race to a VP threshold? Play until a player's meeples are exhausted?)

MUSTER: Add 1 meeple to the active region

MOVE: Use 2 movement points. With one movement point you may move 1 meeple between the active region and an adjacent region

FIGHT: For every 2 of your meeples in the active region, you may force 1 opponent's meeple from the active region to an adjacent region (maybe also get 1 VP?)

BUILD: Place a building token from your player board into the active region, increasing the scoring value of the region, and upgrading one of your other actions. In order to build a building of level X, you must have at least X meeples in the region: 

   Muster building: For every 2 Muster buildings, muster 1 additional meeple when you MUSTER

   Move building: For every Move building, use 1 additional movement point when you MOVE

   Fight building: For every Fight building, you may force out 1 additional meeple when you FIGHT

   Build building: For every Build building, reduce the build requirement by 1 meeple

   Score building: For each Score building, score 1 additional VP per area that you score

SCORE: For each region shown on the card in the Score slot, award vp to the player with the most meeples there (ties do not count). Score the active region (matching the player's card) double.

   Each region is worth 1vp, +1vp per building in it (so everyone knows which 3 regions will score the next time anyone does a SCORE action, but your card indicates which region scores x2)

This game plays like a 2 player abstract or something, it reminds me of Onitama or something. Come to think of it, I wonder if this will turn out to just be "bad Onitama" -- I will have to keep that in mind, and try to avoid it! 

I noticed a bit of the Strategy Triangle evident in the game... "Red" moves like scoring and fighting, "Blue" moves like mustering and moving, and Green moves like building. So maybe that's something worth keeping in mind as well.

As first tests go, this game was promising enough that I expect I'll keep working on it. I don't know if I'll ever make the jump to multiplayer though... I think I'd need to go up to 13 cards with 4 symbols/regions on each (13 total regions), and that sounds a bit cumbersome to me. 

EmDo: Coalition update

 Since my last post, I've played EmDo: Coalition 4 more times, and I've been iterating on a few things. My main goal lately has been to reduce game length, because while it feels pretty good now, it still takes longer than I think it's worth.

Reducing Duration

My friend Steve had a lot of salient suggestions for reducing the games' duration. My first stab at it was to simply reduce the amount of stuff you need to do in order to finish the project. I lopped off a planet slot from each section of the sphere, and I reduced the initial resource slots from 3 per section to 2 per section. In addition to this, I made them resource-specific, because otherwise I think it's too obvious to go for [+1 Action/turn] first every time.

That worked a little, but not enough. My next attempt was to increase the frequency that you get benefits from the sphere. I divorced the technology slots from the resource slots, and where you get your pick of two role icons when you commit a particular pair of planets to the sphere, now you get the other one for committing the level 2 technology in that section. The abilities no longer require the tech, just the 2 specific resources. It occurred to me that to get the resources, you have to first flip planets, then produce, then trade... it takes a while, and it' not even engine-build-y (normally), so this seems like enough work to earn [+1 Hand Size] or [+1 Action per turn].

That's all I've done so far, the only trick I have left up my sleeve might be to use scenarios or something to jump start the players a little bit. But I'm pretty lazy, and that might be tough to design, so I'm kinda hoping I won't be need to do that *fingers crossed*

Endgame Tension

Something that's been a problem all along is that as you fill up the sphere slots with planets (for example), then Survey and Colonize become largely worthless. Similarly, as you fill up the tech slots, Research isn't really needed anymore. Near the end game you get to a point where there are a couple specific things that need to happen, and for several players, there's nothing relevant left to do. This is always disappointing; the game action needs to stay relevant the entire game!

I have two ideas to address that issue, and I'm torn as to which I think might be better for this kind of game:

Option 1. If you win, total everyone's personal Empire scores and refer to a chart to see how you did

Option 2. In order to win, require a minimum number of total Empire points (add everyone's personal Empire score for this)

One thing I like about option 1 is that players who struggle to finish the sphere in time could feel good about just accomplishing the task, and they don't have to worry about how "well" they did, while players who can consistently finish the sphere could still have a higher score to shoot for. Another thing is that you don't need to see the points as you play, which means you don't have to track people's level 2 tech buys so you know they have 2 "invisible" points.

A couple things I like about option 2 are that requiring the condition may keep players involved who prefer a pass/fail sort of game end, but are competent enough to easily complete the sphere. This can also be used as a difficulty tuning knob: for an easier game, use a smaller total score requirement; for a harder game, use a larger score requirement. In addition, this format could allow (or possibly even encourage) plays such as "you are set up to ship a lot, why don't you do that and rake in some points, while we concentrate on completing the planets and techs for the sphere". I don't know why, but that feels cooperative-y to me. On the down side, I feel like I'd want the Empire scores to be state-complete (you could walk up mid-game and count them), and having a level 2 tech in your deck complicates that... so I'd either live it not being state complete, or I'd not count the techs, which seems weird to me.

I really don't know which way to go here. But either way, I think this score reckoning will help keep the game action relevant, even as the sphere fills up. I'm open to other suggestions as well, feel free to leave them in the comments below!

Tension from Aliens

I think the alien tension is kind of OK, I don't intend to change it further - at least for now. I'll probably revisit once I get the duration down and the endgame tension fixed (see above).

Coalition Actions

In an effort to clean up the Coalition tiles, I removed "Action: RFG an alien Spy card from hand" and simply made that an action on the Spy cards themselves. So as an action, you can play a Spy from hand to get rid of it. That's the same thing, but it makes space on the Coalition tile for something more interesting - though I'm not sure what that should be.

I had made some other tweaks as well... with Basic Coalition, you can spend an action to EITHER Bolster OR Repair a card in the sphere. It then goes on to explain what BOLSTER and REPAIR mean, which is reasonable, but maybe another ability would be better (the rules could go into the rulebook). I do like a good player reference...

I tried a version where the tile let you spend an action to commit a card to the sphere. At that time you could commit for free when you obtain the card, or as an action later, as a way to allow players to use their cards for a while and then push them into the sphere. But we didn't waste actions on that, we just did it for free upon obtaining... so the latest rule is that once per turn you may commit one card to the sphere for free (does not cost an action). I think this works better, so it can probably come off the tiles as an action.  

With Improved Coalition, you can both Repair and Bolster in one action, and you can send a ship to defend a stack. I'm pretty happy with the usefulness of Improved Coalition but I'm worried that the Basic side isn't enough -- any thoughts on that would be appreciated!

EmDo: Coalition progress

A while ago I posted about some early ideas I had for a cooperative mode for Eminent Domain. Well, after iterating through half a dozen playtests, I'm happy to report that Eminent Domain: Coalition has come together pretty well!

Since I haven't said much about it yet, here are some details of the early version of the game:

Players have formed a coalition (United Empires?) and are working on some common project - building a Dyson Sphere - that requires players to commit some planets, resources, and technologies in order to complete it. So each time you flip a planet, you choose to either keep it for yourself (to use is abilities), or commit it to the project (to further the victory condition)

Similarly, if you buy a tech card, you can either keep it, or commit it to the project. And if you trade resources, you put them into resource slots in the project board (I imagine a board with slots for all of these things)

Meanwhile, some semblance of "bad guys" (hostile aliens?) antagonize the players - they can put 'curses' into the players' decks, which makes them less efficient, and whenever a curse comes up, maybe that advances a "bad stuff" track, and every so often on that track a bad thing happens, like maybe some progress on the shared project is reversed

Maybe players could use ships/warfare to get rid of these curses, or spend their actions researching them away. If you don't keep the bad guys in check, then they'll keep coming up, and the bad stuff will get worse and worse!

Perhaps the Bad Guys get a turn after each round of player turns, in which they randomly (or algorithmically) remove a card from the stacks to hurry the game timer along, and also resolve some sort of effect

Players win if the project is completed before 1-2(?) of the stacks are depleted, and lose otherwise

Maybe players gain some kind of benefit for completing quadrants or certain portions of the project

How do the Bad Guys work? Maybe there could be a "Bad Guys" deck, and you'd flip a card from it after each round of player turns (or after each player turn perhaps, so it scales?), it could indicate which card to remove from the stacks, as well as what effect or action the bad guys take. Stuff like...

• If it's a warfare card, they power up their fleet (no attack, but increase their strength)
• If it's a colonize card, then they attack the planets in the project -- VP value is their "hit points," and players can defend by discarding VP tokens that they have collected
• If it's a research card, maybe the same thing but they attack a tech card in the project
• If it's a produce/trade card, then they knock out resources that have been placed in the project
• If it's a survey card, then some other bad thing happens

In any case, you'd reference their strength track to see how hard they attack, and maybe if they don't have anything in the project to target, then players take curses to make up the difference

When curses come up in your hand, maybe the bad guys strength track increases

Also, when bad guy cards come up maybe it's like "each player takes a curse for each [Advanced planet] in their empire, so some variable attack-type cards\

As I said, those were early thoughts. When I finally made a prototype. I stayed pretty true to the original ideas, but of course some things changed and evolved since then.

Of course it was far from perfect, but I was pretty surprised at just how well the initial prototype actually worked. The biggest problem I had was that it took far too long, and even more importantly, it took too long for players to interact with the Sphere. In retrospect, this made some sense -- EmDo is more-or-less an engine building game, and in any engine building game you first build your engine, then switch over to earning VPs. And in this case, filling up the sphere was the VPs of the game, so it makes sense that the first 1/2 or more of the game players would just build up their own empires, then start to deal with the Sphere. This was lame, and worse it rendered many of the "bad guy" (hostile alien) cards mostly ineffectual for half the game. Sure, they removed cards from the stacks, but many had no effect otherwise until you started actually working on the Sphere

Dysen Sphere

The solution here was simple, but took a few iterations to figure out: make the sphere also an engine building type of thing. I had initially thought it might be good to give a reward for finishing a section of the sphere, but that takes too long. I needed a strong, globally good effect, usable by all players, that would encourage them to engage with the sphere from the get-go (or at least very early in the game). I tried a few things, and in the end (well, currently) I settled on this: in each section, I connected 2 planets into a pair. If you complete that pair, then you get a benefit: all players gain access to a role icon. There are 3 sections of the sphere, and 6 role icons, so I dealt 2 role icons to each planet pair during setup, and now when you complete that pair, you decide however you want (as a group, individually, etc) which one comes into play, and the other is removed from the game

Then I connected the level 2 tech card slot in each section with the 3 starting resource slots, and said that when you complete those, you gain an ability. My first draft was "hand size +1" on each of them, but the current version has just one hand size +1, and the other two are the Streamlining ability (each turn you may remove 1 card in had from the game), and "+1 action per turn." I worry that +1 action might be the most obvious best thing, which would be lame, so it might need a nerf or something, but for now that's what I'm going with

In order to win, you need to contribute 2/3/4 planets per section (6/9/12 total) based on player count, one level 2 tech card per section (3 total), and one total level 3 tech card, as well as 9 resources, plus whatever resource slots are on planets committed. And you lose if the aliens attack an empty stack

Coalition Tiles

Like the Fleet, Mining, and Political Influence tiles from the expansions, I added a Coalition tile to the game -- a reference tile that allows you to do a couple of specific things as actions instead of playing a card. And just like the reference tiles from the expansions, you can upgrade to Improved Coalition via research to improve those actions. The actions on this tile give you a way to remove the 'curse' type alien cards from your deck (in an inefficient way), repair damage to the sphere or bolster it against attacks, and send ships to defend the stacks - if the aliens attack a defended stack, instead of taking a card, they remove the ship defending it. 

Hostile Aliens

The antagonistic force that challenges the players is a deck of Hostile Alien cards. Every so often (originally once after each round of player turns, but more recently I've tried effectively every 3 player turns, using the old Guards mechanism from All For One for 4 players), you draw a card from the Hostile Aliens deck and resolve it:

1. Note the stack that gets attacked. Remove a card in that stack from the game (unless that stack is defended, in which case remove the defending fighter instead). If that stack was empty (defended or not), game over -- the players lose.
2. Resolve effect printed on the card -- increase the Alien Strength track, attack a certain type of planet (in the sphere and in all Empires), attack all cards in a particular section of the sphere, attack the players (giving them all some 'curse' cards), attack permanent techs/techs in the sphere, or reshuffle the discards (and then maybe draw/resolve another card or two).

Whenever the aliens attack you, you take Alien Spy cards into your discard pile. When these come up in your hand, of course they don't help you -- they have no actions or role icons. Also, whenever they are discarded from your hand, you must increase the alien strength track. So they are pretty bad, especially if you ignore them and build up a handful in your deck. Your Coalition tile allows you to remove 1 of the Spies from the game as an action, and of course a Research action can remove up to 2 of them from the game

A newer rule I added in an attempt to disincentive to leaving the sphere empty too long was that they get stronger (advance the strength track) whenever they try to attack some type of card in the sphere, and there is none. I thought maybe that way if players don't build int he sphere, the aliens will get really strong really fast

Damage to the Sphere

My original thought was that when the aliens attacked the sphere, they would do so with strength based on the strength track, they would deal more damage the stronger they were. Then the VP value of the card being attacked would be the card's "hit points" - the damage it could take before being destroyed. But that led to some problems, and things like Bolster and Repair being equivalent

I figured out a better way, so the new rule is that the VP value of a card in the sphere is its defense, and the aliens damage the card only if their strength (per the track) is greater than or equal to the card's defense. Therefore it pays to Bolster -- you might be preventing multiple damage by keeping the card's defense out of reach of the alien strength for longer. And it still pays to repair, assuming that there's some down side to having a damaged card in the sphere

On that note, originally damage meant the card could be destroyed, reversing your progress. This felt pretty harsh, so I looked for something different. Since then, damage has just been something that you need to remove in order to win. So if a card got damaged, then you couldn't win unless you repaired it by the end of the game. But I wanted players to feel pressure to repair damage sooner rather than later, or risk some bad thing happening, so the new rule I am going to try in the next playtest is this: If a damaged card gets damaged again, then something bad happens. For starters I'll try "destroy it"

I'm pretty excited about this new damage format, with reasons to bolster cards before they get damaged, and reasons to repair them if they do (note that you could leave a card damaged for a while, and it's not bad unless that card gets successfully attacked again)

TTS Prototype

That's a long, rambling summary of where this cooperative mode currently stands. I think it's very promising, but it'll take a lot of testing and data to get all the details nailed down, and I have several big comments/ideas from my playtesters that I'm still considering. I'll post again in the future when I have more news about this. In the meantime, here's a screenshot of the TTS mod for the game :)

Playtesters welcome

I'd be happy to have fans of Eminent Domain give this cooperative mode a try! Let me know if you're interested, I could share the TTS mod, and maybe I could put together print-and-play files if anyone were so inclined

Currently Active designs - Taiko Kiri, EmDo: Coalition, The Great Goballoon Race, The Sixth Realm, Isle of Adventure

 I feel like I'm overdue a blog post discussing the games I've been working on lately. Ideally, I'll revisit each of these with a dedicated post in the near future, but here are the most recent projects I've been playtesting:

Taiko Kiri

In this co-design with my friend Steve, players are rebuilding Japan during reunification. It's a tile laying game where each round you place a tile into a common grid, and then either gain resources, or spend resources to start a project. Projects are scoring opportunities who's value depends on the configuration of the shared board. 

You can have two active projects, so whenever you get a third, you must score one of them for its current value. Most of the projects can increase in value over the course of the game, so there's some juicy decisions to be made with regard to which project to take on, when to score it, and when to keep working on it.

In addition, whenever you start a project, you add buildings to the board at the corners of the tiles, creating a network. There's a global network bonus based on the size and configuration of your network.

This game strikes me as having a similar scope to something like Cascadia, or Tiny Towns. I'm excited to think the game might be that approachable, and I hope other people find it as fun as I do. My only real concern at the moment is that it seems to take kind of a long time, but maybe it's not too bad. 

EmDo: Coalition

I thought I was done with expansion content for Eminent Domain, but a few months ago I figured out a way to add a cooperative mode to the game. That seems interesting and different enough that it's worth pursuing. The way it works is that you play Emmet Domain as normal, however instead of counting influence points, there is a group project that you're working on: building is a Dyson Sphere. Anytime you flip a planet or buy a technology card, you may choose to keep it for yourself as normal, or commit it to the Sphere. The players win together if they are able to complete the Sphere in time. Meanwhile hostile aliens are hassling the players, so you must build your engine, fend off the hostile aliens, and complete the project before time runs out.

I'm happy to say that this idea seemed to work right off the bat. Of course, I had to iterate a bit to make the details work, but the general format was pretty good. Probably the biggest hurdle, which Steve helped me get over with a great suggestion, was giving players incentive to add things to the Sphere early, rather than just build up their own engines until later, then putting work in on the communal project. The answer is to make contributing to the Sphere it's own sort of communal engine - once certain groups of cards have been added, *all* players gain access to extra icons or special abilities.

The most recent change I made had to do with player scaling... In a 4-player game, with the Aliens acting as another player, I felt like there needed to be more cards in each stack, like there would be in a 5--player game (according to the Escalation setup rules). Fortunately, Rio Grande intends to put Escalation in the same box as the base game, so anyone playing the new edition would necessarily have those 5p cards to add to the stacks. However, what happens if we want to play the co-op mode with 5? Then I had a new thought: borrowing a trick from an old version of All For One, I added an Alien marker to the game. In a 4-player game, it would start with the last player in turn order. Anytime it's your turn, and you hold the Alien marker... GUARDS! You'd resolve the aliens, then pass the marker to your right, so the aliens would get one turn for every three player turns, rather than every 4 player turns. I'm not sure whether to also use it in 2p, 3p, or 5p games, but so far it's worked alright the one time I tried it at 4p!

The Great Goballoon Race

Based on a race algorithm that I originally came up with when thinking of kid's games to play with Corbin, and inspired by the recent award-winning Challengers! (which has decisions punctuated by an algorithmic resolution phase), this game is about a hot air balloon race. But the players are not racing the balloons, rather the various high fantasy denizens (elves, dwarves, etc) are racing, and they have disallowed goblins. So when it's time for the annual balloon race, the goblin clans get together and have their own contest... As chieftain of a goblin clan, your goal is to toss goblins onto the balloons that you think will win the race. However, the more goblins hanging off a balloon, the slower it moves.

I had a little trouble making this mechanism into an actual game until I got that last idea, that backing a balloon actually reduces its chances of winning, from somebody's comment on Discord. Now I think the game actually works pretty well. It's kind of swingy with wild twists of fate, but I think that's good for a game like this.

There are five balloons, and to begin each round you deal an effect card to each. Then players simultaneously choose which one balloon to toss a goblin onto. Once these are revealed, from left to right you resolve each one. Every balloon with at least one incoming goblin has its effect occur once, then the incoming goblins board the balloon. Once all incoming goblins have been resolved, race cards are dealt per my race algorithm: Flip up four cards from a deck of 10 (2 cards for each balloon). For each card that comes up, that balloon moves forward. If that balloon is at high altitude, it moves six spaces. Middle altitude, it moves four spaces. Low altitude, it only moves two spaces. Altitude is determined by the number of goblins on the balloon - 3 or more drag the balloon down from high altitude to medium, 5 or more drag it down to low altitude. This way, adding your goblins to a balloon makes it more likely you'll control that balloon in case it finishes the race, but also less likely it will finish the race first.

At the end of any round if a balloon has crossed the finish line, check to see if anybody has won. The winner is the player with the single most goblins, in total, on all balloons that have crossed the finish line at the end of any given round. If a player has the single most, they win. If not, keep playing. So far it seems at least half the games go until 2 or 3 balloons have crossed the finish line.

The Sixth Realm

Back in November when I first played the heavily developed version of Deities & Demigods, The Six Realm, I was a little worried because not only was the game a lot heavier than what I had designed originally, but it was also kind of messy. I didn't feel like it was really finished enough to be going to crowdfunding that month. 

Fortunately, they had decided to delay this game's kickstarter launch until their previous project had fully shipped, which meant there was more time. I passed on my biggest concerns and ideas to the developer, and he took most of them to heart. I recently received an updated version, the version he says went to reviewers, and it was a lot cleaner. As yet I have not played a full game of The Sixth Realm, because it's taken about 45 minutes for the rules and about 45 minutes to play the first round (of three), and I just haven't had time in my sessions to play a full game.

My original design was kind of like a deck learning game with a common deck. This version eschews the deck of cards, and instead has almost like a rondel mechanism, but the result is similar. Each turn you'll activate one of the guilds (either the active guild, or one of the adjacent guilds if you pay a resource). Each guild has its own set of actions, more or less flavored towards a particular part of the game. For example, the merchant's guild has to do with resources; resetting them, gaining new ones, etc. There are six guilds, and you'll probably be trying to specialize in some combination of them each game.

Isle of Adventure 

I've met with Dan a couple of times about Isle of Adventure, and we've spoken at length about how it could work. There are a few ways that parts of it could go, and the last time we met I think we had a good idea for something to try, now it's just a matter of getting a prototype together and trying it. Dan is working on the prototype cards, and I will be putting it all into tabletop simulator when it's ready, then I'll be able to start testing it at my regular sessions.

2022-2023: A playtesting retrospective

It seems like every couple of years I post a playtesting retrospective, taking a look at what I've been doing over the last 2 years. It's about that time again, so let's see what got played and what projects I worked on in 2022 and 2023:

2022

January

I kicked off the year with what looks like one final test of the Amun-Re Afterlife expansion module (for Alley Cat's 20th anniversary edition) - in particular looking at a dummy for 2 player (I believe that was to do with the offering each round, to ensure players didn't walk away with 2 rewards for just $1)

Other than that, and a couple of cancelled playtests for lack of players, I spent the rest of January testing the new additions to Deities & Demigods. The publisher had wanted the game to be heavier and more "4X"-y, so I had added a new deity (was using Hades for a stand-in): a god of exploration. In particular I was testing some generic Enemy tokens that you could encounter and dispatch in some way -- the details are fuzzy, but my notes say they were not necessary, so they didn't make the cut

February

Not much testing at all in February... it looks like my only session was spent on a play of a game I was doing a consultation on - a time track version of "Frostbite," which is what eventually became Expeditions, by Jamey Stegmaier

March

Looks like March was another light month, with some sessions skipped for one reason or another. We played Rick's game Starlight (which we'd played a bit last year), as well as a new version of "Frostbite," this time featuring deck building instead of a time track

April

April was much better, it appears I got back to more regular sessions, beginning with 2 more plays of the Frostbite

Beyond that, there were 3 plays of Keeping Up With The Joneses (including one in person!), trying to find a better version of the Social aspect (maybe one that was more interactive). Also tried a "strategic Joneses" variant, where the Joneses marker moved according to player choice rather than at random

May

In May I played one more game of Keeping Up With The Joneses, and decided that the "strategic Joneses idea was OK, but not better than random

Then I moved on to a brand new game, a Worker Placement Microgame that I prototyped on scraps of paper at my friend Mohan's house. I quickly iterated through a couple of drafts with three plays of the game in May, and more to come in the following months

June

Quite a few plays in June, including 6 more plays of the Worker Placement Microgame (v 2.0, v2.1, and v2.2), 1 more play of Keeping Up With The Joneses, 1 play of Keith Burgun's new card game Spellstorm (a follow up to Dragon Bridge, with deck building), as well as another brand new idea... a trick taking game where the card you played moves your piece on a grid... it crashed and burned pretty hard

July

A decent number of plays this month, partly because some of the games are short and got played back to back... two more plays of Keeping Up With The Joneses, I'd finally found what I think is the final format for the Social track (every couple of steps it lets you activate one of the adjacent tracks), followed by another brand new one: a Push-your-Luck Microgame - an idea which came together quickly and seemed to work very well right off the bat! I have 6 recorded TTS plays of the PYL Microgame in July, but there might have even been a few more than that, because I remember playing it in person as well

In addition to those games, I had another brand new idea that kinda crashed and burned pretty hard: I tried to make a lane combat microgame, which used a Rock/paper/Scissors mechanic in it. That did not work

We tried the first draft of another of Rick's games (called Tanglewood), which was an enjoyable area majority game with entangled decisions, and then finally ended the month with initial plays of a couple of games for a development gig I'd gotten with Pandasaurus Games: a prototype called Trailblazers (later re-themed and called Holiday in Rome)

August

In August I played an updated version of that Spellstorm game, by Keith Burgun, but the rest of that month was dedicated to 5 plays of Holiday In Rome. I spent 2 of those plays experimenting with a whole new format, which turned out to be "just OK," and not clearly better than the original format, so I set that new format idea aside and concentrated on the low hanging fruit of the original design

September

In seven more games of Holiday in Rome, I went through 2nd and 3rd pass development changes, and zeroed in on final tweaks

Another play of Tanglewood rounded out the month, along with another consultation playtest - a game called Fled

October

Another two plays of Fled and I would complete my consultation work on that project, then I played another iteration of Spellstorm, Exhibit: Artifacts of the Ages (just to play an old design of mine), and a new idea for a 3-lane card game for an informal game design jam. This idea worked alright for a 1st attempt, but it wasn't great

The rest of the month was spent on Holiday In Rome (8 more tests - some finer details, and player powers)

November

We started off November with a 2nd draft of that 3-lane card game, which I think is the last time I ever played that one. Later in the month I had a different idea for a different lane based game, inspired by Rolling Realms and Animal Kingdoms, and I tried it 8 times over the course of the month

There was another development project (a game called Olroc, but think the name will change before it comes out), Daniel's 3-lane game, an interactive "flip & write" by Daniel called Shipdoku, and my Push-Your-Luck Microgame peppered in among5 more plays of Holiday In Rome (more player powers and last minute items)

December

To finish off the year we played with another game of Shipdoku, revisited Sails & Sorcery just for fun, and then dove into another development project: a reprint (and revamp) of Harvest. First, I played the original 2017 TMG release of Harvest to familiarize my playtesters and to discuss issues the publisher noted about it. The next 4 games we started in on the new version from the designer (Trey Chambers), and helped iterate through several versions of that.

Oh, man... 2022 was a pretty big year for me! It saw me start to finally get Seth Jaffee Development up and running, taking on 3 consultation jobs and a heavy development project. In addition, I came up with several new game ideas (at least one of which was actually good, maybe two!), worked on one of my own games (KUWtJ) quite a bit, and effectively co-designed a TMG favorite of mine for a new publisher.  

Now let's take a look at 2023:

2023

January

The beginning of the year was spent mostly on 7 plays of Harvest 2.0, though we also played 2 games of a new design by Rick: Scarab of Ra (a tabletop game reminiscent of an old Mac shareware game that he made in 1987(!) )

February

This month, among 5 more plays of Harvest 2.0, I started a new commissioned project... a publisher had signed the old Knizia title Merchants of Amsterdam, and they wanted it to be updated a bit. I had played the original game *years* ago, so in February I managed to get a TTS mod together for it (with the help of a photo of some of the cards from Rick!) and try the game out with my testers -- Rick and I hadn't played in over a decade, and the others had never played at all. Then we tried again with a "big new idea" I had for it, as a sort of proof of concept, and started to identify other ways to improve or update the game.

March

March was almost entirely taken up with 10 plays of "Revampsterdam" (my amusing code name for the Merchants of Amsterdam update), iterating on various rules and dynamics each time, honing in on something I considered good

In addition, we played a new design from Aaron, which was an interesting game where you were forced into interaction with each neighbor

April

April saw 1 more play of Aaron's game, and 7 more plays of Revampsterdam, iterating on a few details of the round structure and events

May

May was a weird month... we played two of Rick's games (Starlight with a new expansion module for God powers, and Ultimus Libre, a sort of deck building game. We only played 2 games of Revampsterdam, and one of those was to show another team of developers that the publisher usually uses, and who are evidently working on the game now

We also played a game of All For One, just for fun

June

Speaking of weird months... in June we didn't have any regular playtest sessions at all. however, I had a couple of unusual ones: 

First was a brainstorming session with Rick and Daniel, where we each talked about something we'd been thinking about or stuck on (Rick's was "trick taking as a mechanism," Daniel's was a sort of CCG/Eurogame mashup, and mine was I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement)

Then later in the month I toyed around with some of the kid's game stuff I'd considered before: a memory/rondel game, and the race mechanism that would later become the Balloon Race game). We tried each of the mechanisms, brainstormed a bit, even tried combining the two into one game

July

Late last month, Vincent was born, so all playtesting went on hiatus for the month of July. Fortunately, this time there was no "living int he hospital for 6 weeks" like when Corbin was born, so come mid-August I was able to start getting back into the swing of things, though regular twice-a-week playtesting wouldn't begin again until October or so

August

Playtesting was minimal in August, due to the new baby, but I did manage one play of Revampsterdam, and one play of a new game that my friend Steve came up with (and which I have since come in as a co-designer on). At the time it didn't have a title or setting, but we're now leaning towards a Japan theme circa late 1500s, with the title Taiko Kiri. In Taiko Kiri, you rebuild a war-torn Japan by placing tiles to *either* collect resources *or* spend them on projects, which score based on the configuration of the communal board

In addition to those couple of plays, I had a few meetings with a publisher who was interested in not one, not two, but *three* of my games! I played Keeping Up With the Joneses, Sails & Sorcery, and All For One with the publisher's rep, and the last 2 of those made it past that first hurdle, the rep wanted to play them with the team!

September

Unfortunately, after playing with the publisher team in September, they decided to pass on both of those games. *Sigh* oh well, just getting those pitch meetings feels like progress

To round out the month, I played Taiko Kiri once more with Steve, and I got Goballoon Racing (what became of that kid's racing mechanism from before) to the table 3 times

October

October was filled with games of Goballoon Racing (x3), and Taiko Kiri (x6). They both made great strides in that time

We also had another sort of brainstorming session to talk about an RPG idea Aaron had, and to discuss some of the comments I received from that publisher on All For One, including what a "modernized pickup/deliver" mechanism might be

November

November brought two more games of Taiko Kiri, and I think the game is settling into that "seems close to done" situation, where sometimes games sit for a long time, until they're either pitched around, or a breakthrough is made otherwise

It also brought two more chat/brainstorm sessions, one with Rick about Taiko Kiri, which yielded at least one idea that ended up being a keeper, and the other was about an idea I had for a cooperative mode for Eminent Domain

Speaking of... I put together a prototype and started testing EmDo: Coalition, and got 3 plays in, quickly zeroing in on a solid format

Another interesting thing that happened in November was that I finally got a "near final" version of The Sixth Realm from the publisher, and it's pretty much unrecognizable! It's much heavier and more involved, and in both games we played of it, it took us almost an hour to go through the rules, and another hour to get through the first (of 3) rounds of play. I sent a bunch of feedback to the developer, and it sounds like they took some of my suggestions to heart, so that's good. 

December

I'm posting this in early December, and so far I've just had 1 game of Eminent Domain: Coalition. That game is getting to a really good place, and I was really antsy to test it again with the latest changes on Thursday, but unfortunately, my players weren't around. Hopefully we can play it tomorrow, and I'd also like to get Taiko Kiri back to the table this month

I'm told that the deadline for The Sixth Realm is fast approaching, and that they've been tweaking and playing that feverishly at the publisher, and I hope to get to play the latest update to that as well this month

And one more thing that's on the horizon, and which may be ready to try this month, is an Isle of Trains follow up that I'm working on with Dan called Isle of Advanture

That's a lot of stuff to want to test this month, and with the holidays, everyone's schedule is screwey, but sometimes that means more opportunistic time for playtesting :)

Heavy is the game that holds the crown... Strategic weight vs Logistical weight

There are some games of a particular type that I sometimes refer to as "ducks-in-a-row" games, where the fun is in logistically executing actions rather than actually planning the actions themselves. Often in those types of games the strategic depth is low, so it's fairly easy to decide what you'd like to do... but actually getting it done is far from trivial. That can be a fun, puzzle-y challenge. While in other games, it might be easy to execute what you want to do, but coming up with what's a good thing to do is less clear

So maybe it's reasonable to split "heavy" games into 2 categories -- let's call them "logistically heavy" and "strategically heavy." For example, Ark Nova is strongly in the "logistically heavy" group, while 

Are there any games you can think of that are both logistically heavy AND strategically heavy?

The thing I'm thinking about isn't long term vs short term (strategic vs tactical), and when I say "logistically heavy," I don't mean planning... perhaps I should try again. The thing I've got in mind is (to throw a few more terms in the mix) Decision Cognition vs Compliance Cognition, as we talked about them on The Argument Hour... if you happened to catch that podcast.

Ark Nova has a lot of stuff that feels more like Compliance Cognition: 

I want to play this animal, so I will use my Animal action - no problem. I need an enclosure - it says I need size 4, oh and it says it needs to be by water. So I have to build that. Ok, what else do I need? A partner zoo in Asia? Ok, so I'll use an Association action to get that. Oh, I also need to upgrade my Animal action first? Ok, how do I do that? Oh, I need ANOTHER partner zoo, or I can get 3 more hat icons to do it... oh, or if I can find a way to get 2 Shields, then I can get it that way (as long as someone else doesn't do it first)...

In more general terms, this boils down to something like: "I want to do this? Ok, now I need to do these 5 other things first."

Some players play a game like that and think "I just want to decide to do the thing, then do the thing!"

This is what I mean by games that are logistically heavy. In order to do the thing, you need to do several other things, and each of those things might have a couple of steps or pre-requisites as well

But deciding which thing you want to do in the first place in Ark Nova isn't terribly complex -- it's pretty straightforward in fact. It's not the 'what' that's tricky, but the 'how', so it's not strategically heavy. The weight of the game comes primarily from the logistics -- from getting your ducks in a row

... As opposed to games where the what is challenging, but the how is not. I think these tend to be called "lighter" by folks

I think there's compliance cognition (which isn't quite the above, but is similar), there's logistics, and there's the strategic decision. At the highest level, you make your strategic decision, the move that's going to (hopefully) advance you toward winning. The next level down is logistics -- what has to happen in order to enact your plan, decided above? Below that there's a layer of rules that you need to navigate in order to achieve each logistical step.

In the simplest case, you decide what you want to do (decision), then you just do it (logistics), and you're allowed to (rules)

In a more complicated case, you decide what you want to do (decision), there are prerequisites and steps you have to take in order to do it (logistics), and then there are compliance considerations about what you're allowed to do (rules)