Monday, December 30

2013: The Year in Review

2013 has been a lot less momentous than last year, no major purchases or moves. We've been adapting to life as a family and trying to make do with very poor nights' sleep (bless her, The Daughter seems to be one of the worst sleepers of her cohort of friends). It's been an excellent year, as The Daughter grows up we've got to watch her learn to smile, crawl, walk and start to talk. We're starting to meet the person too, as her personality develops. She's a very happy, giggly and affectionate girl and brings us both a lot of pleasure - which more than makes up for the nights.

Professionally, my employer (that I'm working for for the third time) that I've been employed by for half my working life was bought by a large American corporation which meant, predictably, a slight increase in bureaucracy, countered by an nice increase in benefits. I got to visit Minneapolis for work in June, my first visit to the mid-west US, and while there hooked up with a few gamers via BGG (who thankfully weren't axe-murderers) and went to the Fantasy Flight Games Event Centre for some after work gaming.

The year is ending on a strange note though, as I've come home from Bristol on my own, with The Wife and The Daughter remaining in Bristol for three weeks while I get radiotherapy for an over-active thyroid. It's strange having the house to myself - very quiet and lonely.

Games Design

I spent most of the year pressing on with Codename: Vacuum, racking up one or more plays per week, tweaking things here and there. It's getting better, slowly, but with so many cards each tweak needs careful balancing to ensure the decks are all roughly as good as each other.

In August, Dan Howard and I started up Newcastle Playtest, a bi-monthly meetup in a pub to playtest each other's games. It started off strongly with six designers getting involved, and plenty of willing playtesters. Nearer to Christmas it has died down a bit, it'll be interesting to see if there's enough interest in the New Year to keep it going. I've found it very useful, interesting and enjoyable on the occasions when I've managed to make it along.

In November, I decided to get in on the NaGa DeMon action and resurrected Codename: Proteome with a new theme and new mechanics as a game of Zombie science: Zombology. I managed to make five different prototypes, six different rulebooks and played it 16 times in the month of November. The end of the month version is available print-and-play and I'm still continuing to work on it.

After the hectic month of NaGa DeMon action, and with Christmas and its associated socialising on the cards, I had a fairly quiet December, no prototyping, hardly any playtesting and not much gaming at all until the Christmas break. I did have another game idea though: Codename: Dragon - a 2-player card game about St. George and the Dragon. It's been a long time since I last had three designs on the go.

General Gaming

I've had an un-written goal for the last five or so years to play as many games as there are days in the year. I've not managed it since 2010, but I've done it again in 2013: 370 + whatever I play at tonight's bonus Games Night. Again, I've counted iPad games against real opponents. My five and dimes were:

56: Codename: Vacuum - played this a lot!
27: 6 Nimmt! - a favourite Games Night filler
22: 7 Wonders - popular at Games Night and with the in-laws
19: Ra - mostly on the iPad while travelling for work
18 Race for the Galaxy - popular at Games Night and with The Wife
18: Zombology - almost all in November!
14: Incan Gold - popular at Games Night
13: Hol's der Geier - a Games Night filler
11: Carcassonne - On the iPad and with the in-laws
11: No Thanks! - Games Night filler
11: X-Wing Minis - need to play this more!
10: Thunderstone - popular with The Wife and the in-laws
9: The Resistance - at Games Night, and when Paul came to visit
8: Coloretto - Games Night I guess?
8: For Sale - another short game popular at Games Night
8: Hanabi - love this one, only got it in July I think
7: 11 Nimmt! - Games Night filler
6: Hey! That's My Fish! - on the iPad while travelling
6: The Speicherstadt - I taught this a couple of times at Newcastle Gamers
5: Carcassonne: The Castle - on holiday with the sister-in-law
5: Lords of Waterdeep - a Games Night favourite
5: Love Letter - learnt this at Beer and Pretzels

I also made it to a convention this year, for the first time in about 4 years: Beer and Pretzels in Burton-on-Trent in May. It was a great weekend, hanging out with my friend Terry whose Games Night I used to attend when we lived down south. I learnt several new games that weekend too.

Purchases-wise, I bought The Bridges of Shangri-La in the Travelling Man sale and Hanabi and Love Letter later in the year. I got Macao, Thurn and Taxis and Alea Iacta Est for my birthday and Coup and Galaxy Trucker for Christmas. Plus I got a boatload of X-Wing minis during the year. I also got rid of Babel, Canal Mania, Clans, Eminent Domain, Fzzzt! and Meuterer - given away to friends in the hope they get played in their new homes.

Blogging

My goals for blogging for the year were to blog on at least 45 of the Mondays in 2013 and get 20,000 page views and a few extra followers. As it turns out I've blogged every Monday in 2013 (plus a bunch of extra times in November for NaGa DeMon), got 35,000 page views and 7 new followers. A huge success. Mostly down to NaGa DeMon if I'm honest. My most popular posts this year were:

I hope you all had good years too, and here's hoping next year will be even better!

Monday, December 23

Merry Christmas!

Just a brief one this week. I'm now down in Bristol for the Christmas break with the in-laws and the entirety of my family. I'll be taking it easy for the week, just having some nice chilled out time with The Wife and The Daughter before my enforced exile begins when I drive home on my own on Sunday.

I've not brought any prototypes with me, just a few games: Carcassonne (which has already seen some action last night), 7 Wonders (popular with the in-laws), X-Wing Minis (popular with the brother-in-law) and Love Letter and Hanabi, which are pretty easy sells. Gaming is more popular with the in-laws than my family, though my sister has asked for Carcassonne for Christmas (yay!).

Of course, I've asked for a couple more games for Christmas, so if Santa has judged me to have been nice then I might be on the receiving end of Coup and Galaxy Trucker :)

Anyway, I hope that those of you who celebrate Christmas have a wonderful holiday full of festive family gaming and I hope you are equally blessed by an overgenerous Santa. You'll have to let me know what he gave you!

Monday, December 16

The Drought Before The Storm

This week has featured no played games and almost no games design. We had several days of planning meetings at work which has got in the way of lunchtime playtesting and my weekly Games Night (which has been disturbingly infrequent recently due to visitors and illnesses) wasn't on because Thursday evening was our office Christmas party instead. The evenings have been short with The Daughter down with another filthy cold (I'm beginning to think her nursery is actually an undercover black ops lab for testing the virulence of bioweapons) and not sleeping well, so I've not had much time to do anything.

I have at least been thinking about games with Codename: Dragon top of the list. In my youth I did eight years of Tae Kwon Do, so I have a little experience of fighting. In Dragon, I wanted to capture the feeling of not knowing what your opponent is going to do, with the attack and defence with moves having both strengths and weaknesses (if you do an axe kick you'll get two points for a head shot, unless they do a back kick: then you'll drop the the floor holding your crotch!).

To achieve that feeling I want each move to have one or two counters that leave it open to a hosing if your opponent correctly guesses what you've gone for. The simultaneous action selection will mean that instead of reacting to your opponent's move, you'll have to play a Princess Bride like game of bluff and double bluff. I've started making some specific card notes, they'll need fleshing out over Christmas. I also want there to be two different ranges, close (swords and claws) and long (lances and fire), so the cards available to you are limited by your current range.

I've lots of ideas at this point, no concrete prototype or even set of rules yet though.

So that's the drought covered, what about the storm? This Thursday, Games Night is back on and it's Christmas Games Night with mince pies and Glühwein instead of the usual snacks and beverages. I'm anticipating a good turn out and a convivial evening of gaming. After that, we're away to see the grandparents (and aunts and uncles and cousins) for a week. We'll stay with the in-laws, and I'm hoping there'll be a few gaming opportunities that week in the evenings.

The big storm though will be in early January. As many of you know I have Multiple Sclerosis. For the last few years I've been on an experimental treatment as part of a clinical trial. It's been great at combatting my MS, but it's not without side-effects and thanks to one of those I'm going to need some radiation therapy at the beginning of next year. As I'm sure you can imagine, being a source of gamma radiation does not gel well with young children - I have to avoid picking up, cuddling and kissing The Daughter for three weeks after I get nuked. Obviously, that's going to be really hard on both of us, but I know what's going on and that it's temporary, whereas you can't explain to a 16 month old child why daddy doesn't want to cuddle you any more. It's going to be awful for her.

To avoid just really upsetting her, we're thinking that The Wife and The Daughter might just go away to stay with the grandparents for those few weeks. She'll still miss me (I hope!) but she'll be showered in affection by the grandparents, and missing me will be less traumatic than me being around but avoiding her like the plague (that I am!).

Which means a couple of weeks in the house by myself. I'll miss them terribly, but needs must. Any ideas how I could fill the time? ;-)

Monday, December 9

Three on the Go

This week, for the first time in many, many years, three game designs have been in my head simultaneously: Zombology, Codename: Vacuum and my new idea for a two-player St. George and the Dragon themed game that I mentioned last week - which I'm calling Codename: Dragon.

Zombology

At Newcastle Playtest on Tuesday we played Zombology. I'd missed the second Newcastle Playtest in November, so it was the first time any of them had seen it since the very first version/play at the beginning of November. Dan had played in those two early games and Alex and Michał had turned up during the second of those two early games so they had seen the early version, but not played it. We were playing a four player game, so I tried out one of the ideas Konrad had provided via email during NaGa DeMon: taking out one of the suits with fewer players. It seemed to work well.

The scoring still feels pretty clunky though, so I've been thinking about how to make that a smoother experience. I think the next thing I'm going to try is numbering the cards from 1-10 again, instead of 1-5. I switched to 1-5 in the first place to make it easier to count up the value of the cards you had collected. But since then, I stopped scoring the face value of the cards you collected and just counting the number of cards. The downsides of having low numbered cards is when working out which suit was the most successful. You end up saying: 'Which suit has a five? Those four, right, which of those four has a four? Three of them do, ok, so that rules one out, how many fours do those three have? That one has two, so does that one, but that one only has one - right now we know suits suits are scoring.' Seamless! Clearly this is a right chew-on. If the cards went 1 to 10 then it would be easier to see which had the high cards, instead of two 3s and two 4s per suit there would be a 6, 7, 8 and a 9 which would mean you'd be able to spot the differences more easily (I hope!).

I'm also considering making the requirements for higher numbered cards a number of cards played. Currently, to play a 5, for example, any player has to have played a 3 or a 4 in that suit. If instead, the 5 (or will it be 10?) required a certain number of cards out in that suit it might make them easier to play (while still meaning that you need to play the low numbered cards first). In fact, while I type this, I've had another idea, maybe you score face value of your cards in the most successful suits and -1 point per card in the rest (a bit like Coloretto).

Anyway, I've now got loads of ideas of further things to do with Zombology over the coming months. I'm also speaking to an artist about getting some exclusive art done for the NaGa DeMon winners. I've started contacting them to get their shipping addresses, but with the art to sort out it's going to be at least January before I ship them.

Vacuum

During NaGa DeMon I'd pretty much shelved Vacuum - I didn't play it during November at all, a noticeable break from the usual once or twice a week - so that I could concentrate on making headway with Zombology. Last time I played I got some really good feedback from Dan, my co-host for Newcastle Playtest. He pointed out there there are effectively six resources in Vacuum (the five card symbols, plus cashy money), and that the Population and Trade mechanics are a bit dull - just get as much as you can. It's made me think about several things, but the one I'm most keen to try is that you get points for your income, rather than your stockpiled cash. That would mean that you no longer need to keep track of the money you've accrued, just how much you can make in a turn. I'd need to change several things to interact better with that idea, but I'm going to try it out first to see if it's worth the effort. I meant to play Vacuum last week at lunchtime, but had to blow it off after leaving work just after lunch on Monday to take The Daughter to the doctors after a fall at nursery and a bumped head :-( She's fine, but that stuffed my hours for the week.

Dragon

Dragon popped into my head just over a week ago. I was trying to think of another quick and simple game that I could do for NaGa DeMon next year. I was thinking that instead of trying for a game that plays lots of people, I could go for one that plays two, that would be easy to get playtests lined up for. The idea in my head was a simultaneous action selection game with dice-based combat and uneven player powers (clearly, George can't breathe fire). With the thought so quickly established, I decided to give up on getting it done next November and instead crack on. I've installed Evernote on my phone and started sketching out ideas for how the game could work. I'm not that far from making my first playtest copy I hope, though this close to Christmas I'm struggling to find much time for games design.

With three games on the go I worry that I'll struggle to make decent progress on any of them, especially with limited free time. Still, if you've got the ideas in your head, you just have to run with them!

Monday, December 2

NaGa Demon: A Retrospective

I work in software engineering and at the end of a project we hold a 'retrospective' to answer three questions:

What went well, that we would want to do again?
What went badly, that we would want to avoid next time?
What else should we do?

Seeing as this was my first NaGa DeMon, my first game I'd designed entirely in the public domain and at the last minute I decided to run TGWAG, there's lots of things that I could look back on and evaluate the performance of. So, without further ado:

What went well?

I got a lot of page views on the blog. November was my best month by far, outstripping the reddit month (which I honestly though I'd never equal) by 50%
By posting the rules online I got a lot of useful feedback as the month went on, letting me iterate the rules very quickly
Several people said they would/had print out a copy
Someone (thanks, Konrad!) not only solo'd it three or four times, but also played it at least three times with friends, and then sent me very detailed feedback.
I managed to design a game within a month, from ideas to reasonable game (with room still for improvement of course)
I iterated the rules six times, made five different prototypes and played Zombology sixteen times in a month!
Lots of people got involved (possibly due to TGWAG and free PIPs, possibly not)
I wrote loads of blog posts in November
I chose a simple, short game to design - something complex and hard to balance would be very difficult to develop in only a month

What went badly?

I over estimated. I offered five free copies (and for the first three weeks there were only three TGWAG players!) and I set the achievement levels too high (or I was too stingy with my PIP allocation)
I designed the rewards badly - a free copy of a game you can print out yourself? Pants!
I decided to fix that by adding exclusive artwork, but far too late in the day - the winners are going to have to wait a month or so for their prizes
I didn't advertise it very well - just a link from BGG

What else could I do

Raise awareness about TGWAG earlier to try to drum up some interest - make the prize more enticing and offer fewer of them so there's a sense of competition
Find out better ways to publicise it, beforehand and during the game.
Try to attend more sessions to try it with more people - I missed one of the two Newcastle Playtest sessions in November and both of the Newcastle Gamers sessions :(

Overall, I felt it was a great success. I took a game (not Vacuum!) that I had an idea for and turned it into a playable game in only a month! Is it the best game ever? No, of course not. Is there room for improvement? Definitely. I'll continuing designing this in addition to Vacuum, and hopefully it'll get better and better. I definitely want to do NaGa DeMon again next year.

In other news, I've had another idea, which initially I considered for NaGa DeMon next year, but I think I'll get cracking on it shortly. It's a two-player game about St. George and the Dragon. :)

Sunday, December 1

TGWAG: Final Scores!

The Game Within A Game (TGWAG for short) is now over, huge thanks to everyone who took part - your feedback was really useful. In the last week there were a couple of new entrants (GamesBook and Mal) and a huge rush for the finish line from @pidaysock, the only person who has actually given me feedback from games they've played. Congratulations to @pidaysock (the overall TGWAG winner) and Tiffany Ralph, Frugal Dave, Derek Hohls and boardsandbees - free copies are yours!

I'm now in negotiations with an artist about getting some exclusive artwork done for the five TGWAG freebie winners. I'll be in touch with you all for a postal address. What with Christmas and all, and having to get the art done I think it'll be the New Year before the freebie copies are shipping.

Playtester	PIP Score	Level	Free Copy?
@pidaysock	17	MSc	Yes!
Tiffany Ralph	15	MSc	Yes!
+Derek Hohls / GamesBook	11	MSc	Yes!
Frugal Dave	8	BSc	Yes!
boardsandbees	6	BSc	Yes!
@spdesigntwit	5	BSc	No :(
Mal	2	Intern	No :(

Amended to fold GamesBook's score into Derek Hohls's score!

Friday, November 29

NaGa DeMon 13: One Last Hurrah

Yesterday I managed to get a lot of games of Zombology in. I had set myself a target of playing four games in this final week of the month. I'd played two on Tuesday lunchtime, and I was hoping for one more Thursday lunchtime, and then either one at Games Night or one at Newcastle Gamers tomorrow.

In the end we played three games at lunchtime (with Wilka who'd played several times before, and Steve, fresh back from his honeymoon, who hadn't played yet). We completed those three games and the rules explanation for Steve in 28 minutes. It's fast!

At Games Night we played another three games, so Steve and I played six games, Wilka, Hoops, Dave and Gav three games, The Wife two and His Nefariousness one. Everyone seemed either interested in playing several times or at least not averse to it. Obviously, these are all friends of mine, so there's a bias involved, but still that's really good. In addition, Steve said what must be any designer's favourite words during a playtest: "I'd buy that!"

At the end of Games Night, I got my first feedback from a playtest not involving me. Konrad (@pidaysock) who'd been one of my best customers during my Reiver Games days had printed a copy out and solo'd it a few times last week. Last night I got an email with feedback from his first three games with other humans.

Konrad's feedback was much more critical (and hence useful, five PIPs for you, sir!). His friends in Germany really didn't experience the theme in any meaningful way, none of them felt the game had anything to do with Zombies, and most of them didn't even get the science bit of the theme either. Our group (as well as others I've played with) really got the science feel, especially with the conference rounds in the newer versions, but we all agreed the zombie link is tenuous. I'm alright with that, the games I'm trying to compete with, things like 6 Nimmt! and Hol's der Geier are very quick games with very tenuous themes. I've no idea what the bulls have to do with 6 Nimmt! And while the cards in Hol's der Geier all feature mice or vultures, all you really care about is the numerical value of the cards played. A bit of zombie art will help here, but it's never going to be as thematic as most (shotgun heavy) zombie games.

The other major criticisms from Konrad's group were that the game was too short and too chaotic and there wasn't enough information early on for you to be able to plan a winning strategy. Again, that's definitely on the money, especially since I changed to the three different types of cards. Now you have no idea which suits will have the fours and fives until the fourth round - halfway through the game.

Konrad had a few ideas about how to address these issues, if I can make it along to Newcastle Gamers tomorrow, I'll see if an opportunity arises to try some of them out...

Tuesday, November 26

NaGa DeMon 12: Responding to Feedback

We played a couple of games of Zombology at lunchtime today, with Wilka, The Nefarious Doktor M and Mal (who hadn't played before). It went ok, Mal's major criticism was that he wasn't clear when the conference rounds were coming up. So here's yet another version of the rules. This time there's no changes to the cards, and only a couple of slight tweaks to the rules - when you get dealt extra cards has been changed slightly so that you always have two cards in hand at the start of a Conference round (and having two cards in hand can be used for working out whether or not it's a Conference round), plus a couple of improvements to the wording of the rules based on comments from Tiffany and Derek (though I've lost Derek's comments when reverting to Blogger comments, so I've fixed the typo he mentioned, but can't remember the other point he made :-( ). I've also incorporated Konrad's scoring suggestion, so cards score at most 1 or -1. This seemed to be a good improvement, preferred by Wilka, Dr. M and I over the previous version we'd played.

Zombology!

The Science of the Zombie Apocalypse

Version 5 - 26/11/2013

3-10 players, 20 mins

The game comprises of 120 cards, 19 each in the following 6 suits (treatments):

DNA Retroviruses
Stem Cells
Herbal Extracts
Vegan Diet
Pharmaceuticals
Crystals

Plus six additional Repeated Experiments cards.

For each treatment there are the following cards:

1x Bad Science (value:-2 - flip 1-5)
3x Strong Rebuttal (value: -1 - flip 1/2)
5x Theoretical Framework (value: 1)
5x Petri Dish Proof (value: 2)
2x Works in Mice (value: 3)
2x Works in Monkeys (value: 4 - requires 1/2/3)
1x Successful Human Trial (value: 5 - requires 3/4)

Aim of the Game

The aim of the game is to score high in the two most successful treatments and low in the least successful treatment.

Setup

Separate the cards into their three types: Groundwork, Trials and Prejudice. Shuffle each pile separately. Deal each player five of the Groundwork cards and two Prejudice cards. The remaining Prejudice cards will not be needed and can be placed back in the box. Place the remaining Groundwork cards centrally as a face down deck and all the Trials cards in a deck alongside them, also face down.

Play

The game is played over 8 rounds. Each round the players secretly choose a card from their hand and place it face down in front of them. Once all players have chosen a card, the chosen cards are revealed and added face up to their player's collection.

Once all of the cards played have been resolved, the players pass the remaining cards from their hand to the player on their left and receive the cards from the player on their right. Note: Do not pass on your Prejudice cards, they remain with you.

Another round is now played as before with the cards they have just received. In the eighth round, each player chooses one of the three cards they have been given and discards the other two - they will play no part in the game. After the eighth round the game is scored.

The eight rounds are either Research or Conference rounds:

(Deal 5 Groundwork and 2 Prejudice cards to each player)

1: Research
2: Research
3: Research
4: Conference

(Restock up to 2 Groundwork and deal 2 Trials cards to each player)

6: Research
7: Conference

(Deal each player 1 or 2 Trials cards, so they all have 3 cards in hand - excluding Prejudice)

8: Research

Research rounds

In Research rounds the players can only play the Groundwork (or later, Trials) cards from their hands.

Conference rounds

A Conference round occurs when the players have only two cards in their hand. In the Conference rounds the scientists get together to debate their progress. It’s your chance to debunk, rebut, lambaste or otherwise rubbish your opponent’s support of ridiculous treatments. You can either present new research (play a Groundwork or Trials card) or attack an opponent’s shoddy research by playing one of your two Prejudice cards.

After the first Conference round, if any player only has one Groundwork card deal them a second Groundwork card and then deal each player two of the Trials cards.
After the second Conference round, deal each player Trials cards until they have three cards in their hand.

Requirements

If the card played has a requirement (Works in Monkeys requires 1, 2 or 3; Successful Human Trial requires 3 or 4), the card cannot be played unless one of the required cards in the same treatment has been played in a previous round by any player. E.g. Jack can only play the Successful Human Trial (5, requires 3/4) for Stem Cells, because Jesse has played a Works in Mice (3) of Stem Cells in an earlier round.

Prejudice cards

If the card played was negative (Bad Science or Strong Rebuttal), choose a face up card in any player's collection to target that was played in a previous round. It must be of the same treatment type and have a value within the range shown on the negative card played. Flip the target card face down - it will not count for scoring unless flipped back face up. E.g. Tiffany plays a Bad Science (-2) card in Crystals, and chooses to flip a Works in Monkeys (4) in Crystals that Dave played in the last round.

Repeated Experiments

The Repeated Experiment cards let a player repeat an experiment that has previously been discredited - they flip one of cards they have previously had to flip face down back face up - it will contribute to their score at the end of the game.

Scoring

Determine the two most successful treatments (these will score positive points) and the least successful treatment (this will score negative points). The most successful treatment is the one which has a Successful Human Trial (5). If there's a tie, then the treatment with the most Works in Monkeys (4) will break the tie. If still tied, then the treatment with the most Works in Mice (3) will break the tie, and so on. The least successful treatment is the one with the lowest high card, i.e. if Stem Cells has -1, -1, 1, 2 and 4 and Crystals has -1, 1, 1, 1, 1 and 3 then Crystals is less successful since 3 is lower than 4.

Players score one point for every positive card they have in the two most successful treatments and minus one point for every negative card they have in those treatments. In addition, they score one point for every negative card they have in the least successful treatment and minus one point for every positive card they have in that treatment.

The player with the highest score wins and can boast, brag and crow about their scientific prowess, while ridiculing the pathetic attempts of their fellow scientists.

Download

As ever, the new rules are available for downloading: V5 Rules.

Please let me know what you think, and for those of you who've downloaded and printed it out, let me know any comments from yourselves or your fellow playtesters.

Monday, November 25

NaGa DeMon 11: Entering the Final Straight

So there's just under a week to go until the end of NaGa DeMon. I've now created four different prototypes (including the first one which I didn't make available P&P, and played with five different sets of rules. All in less than a month. Next up are some changes to the scoring suggested by @pidaysock via email (that's two PIPs for you Konrad, congratulations, you've unlocked the MSc achievement!).

Determining the best treatments stays the same, but instead of each player scoring face value for the cards they've collected, they score one point per positive card and minus one point per negative card. These are reversed for cards in the least successful treatment. Because the scores will be lower and ties are more likely, there's now a tie-breaker: The player with the highest face value card in a successful treatment wins (further ties are broken by next highest card, etc.).

There's no Newcastle Playtest session this week, so I can only try it out on my lunchbreaks at work and at Games Night on Thursday, I'll let you know how it goes.

Because the game is print and play and will remain available after NaGa DeMon draws to a close at the end of November, I've been trying to think of a way to make the TGWAG prize of a signed and numbered handmade copy of the game from me more interesting. My mate Wilka has a friend who's a good artist, so I'm trying to see if he'll be interested in me paying him to do some artwork exclusively for the TGWAG winners (and me of course!). I'll let you know whether he's interested too.

Finally, if you have printed out a copy to playtest, please let me know in the comments, I'm interested to know how much interest there has been from people who aren't playing TGWAG. To make that easier, I've (hopefully) undone the change whereby you need a Google+ account to comment on the blog. That snuck in under the radar with linking my blog to my Google+ account. I don't want to force commenters to use Google+, nor restrict my commenters to only those with Google+ accounts.

Sunday, November 24

TGWAG: League Table 4

The Game Within A Game (TGWAG for short) continues, trying to encourage people to give me the feedback I need to make Zombology. Since last week we've had a new Twitter based player Stuart Patterson (@spdesigntwit) and the other newcomers (@pidaysock and +Derek Hohls) have both climbed the table. With only a week to go there's finally some competition for the free signed and numbered limited edition copies. To make things more interesting, I'm speaking to a friend of a friend about getting some exclusive artwork done for the limited edition with pictures of zombie monkeys and everything! The three original players of TGWAG have been static this week, if they're not careful, they'll be overtaken!

Playtester	PIP Score	Level	Free Copy?
Tiffany Ralph	13	MSc	Yes!
@pidaysock	9	BSc	Yes!
Frugal Dave	8	BSc	Yes!
+Derek Hohls	8	BSc	Yes!
boardsandbees	6	BSc	Yes!
@spdesigntwit	5	BSc	No :(

Thursday, November 21

NaGa DeMon 10: Rules Re-Write And Modified Cards

There's a new version available at the bottom of this post. It's pretty similar to the previous version, only six cards have changed. If you want to print it out for the first time I've included the A3 and A4 PDFs again, if you printed out the last one there's a couple of update PDFs (front and back) that just provide the six new cards. Replace the Groundwork 3s (Works in Mice with a green Groundwork back) with these new cards. It's a single sheet of A4 so not a big deal.

The rules for this version haven't changed from the corrected version of the last version, but the have been re-written in place to hopefully make them clearer. Anyway, here they are (I've excised the exposition and the acknowledgements for the web):

Zombology!

The Science of the Zombie Apocalypse

Version 4 - 22/11/2013

The game comprises of 120 cards, 19 each in the following 6 suits (treatments):

DNA Retroviruses
Stem Cells
Herbal Extracts
Vegan Diet
Pharmaceuticals
Crystals

Plus six additional Repeated Experiments cards.

For each treatment there are the following cards:

1x Bad Science (value: -2 - flip 1-5)
3x Strong Rebuttal (value: -1 - flip 1/2)
5x Theoretical Framework (value: 1)
5x Petri Dish Proof (value: 2)
2x Works in Mice (value: 3)
2x Works in Monkeys (value: 4 - requires 1/2/3)
1x Successful Human Trial (value: 5 - requires 3/4)

Aim of the Game

The aim of the game is to score high in the two most successful treatments and low in the least successful treatment.

Setup

Separate the cards into their three types: Groundwork, Trials and Prejudiuce. Shuffle each pile separately. Deal each player five of the Groundwork cards and two Prejudice cards. The remaining Prejudice cards will not be needed and can be placed back in the box. Place the remaining Groundwork cards centrally as a face down deck and all the Trials cards in a deck alongside them, also face down.

Play

The game is played over 8 rounds. Each round the players secretly choose a card and place it face down in front of them. Once all players have chosen a card, the chosen cards are revealed and added face up to their player's collection.

The eight rounds are eight Research or Conference rounds:

(Deal 5 Groundwork and 2 Prejudice cards to each player)

1: Research
2: Research
3: Research
4: Conference

(Deal 3 Trials cards to each player)

5: Research
6: Research
7: Conference
8: Research

Research rounds

In Research rounds the players can only play the Groundwork (or later, Trials) cards from their hands.

Conference rounds

In the Conference rounds the scientists get together to debate their progress. It’s your chance to debunk, rebut, lambaste or otherwise rubbish your opponent’s support of ridiculous treatments. You can either present new research (play a Groundwork or Trials card) or attack an opponent’s shoddy research by playing one of your two Prejudice cards. After the first Conference round, deal each player three of the Trial cards and if any player has one card less that any other player they draw an additional card from the Groundwork deck. After the second Conference round, if any player has one card less that any other player they draw an additional card from the Trials deck.

Requirements

If the card played has a requirement (Works in Monkeys requires 1, 2 or 3; Successful Human Trial requires 3 or 4), the card cannot be played unless one of the required cards in the same treatment has been played in a previous round by any player. E.g. Jack can only play the Successful Human Trial (5, requires 3/4) for Stem Cells, because Jesse has played a Works in Mice (3) of Stem Cells in an earlier round.

Prejudice cards

If the card played was negative (Bad Science or Strong Rebuttal), choose a face up card in any player's collection to target that was played in a previous round. It must be of the same treatment type and have a value within the range shown on the negative card played. Flip the target card face down - it will not count for scoring unless flipped back face up. E.g. Tiffany plays a Bad Science (-2) card in Crystals, and chooses to flip a Works in Monkeys (4) in Crystals that Dave played in the last round.

Repeated Experiments

The Repeated Experiment cards let a player repeat an experiment that has previously been discredited - they flip one of cards they have previously had to flip face down back face up - it will contribute to their score at the end of the game.

Once all of the cards played have been resolved, the players pass their remaining cards to the player on their left and receive the cards from the player on their right. Note: Do not pass on your Prejudice cards, they remain with you.

Scoring

Each player adds the value of their cards in the highest two treatments together and then subtracts the value of their cards in the least successful treatment. Note that if you have played negative cards in the weakest treatment then they will score you positive points.

The player with the highest score wins and can boast, brag and crow about their scientific prowess, while ridiculing the pathetic attempts of their fellow scientists.

Downloads

If you want to print the game from scratch you need either the A3 files (5 sheets) or the A4 files (14 sheets), not both, plus the rules (2 sheets of A4). If you have already printed out the last version, then you only need the updated rules and the V3 to V4 updates (1 sheet of A4, front and back):

Wednesday, November 20

NaGa DeMon 9: A Flaw, Corrected

Yesterday I go to try out the new version for the first time. I had hoped to try it out at work and then again in the evening at Newcastle Playtest, but I'd had Monday off work with a filthy cold and didn't feel up to a late night (just as well really, I've been up since 1:45am with The Daughter who's not right, so I'm wasted today even without the late night).

This was my third prototype and my fourth set of rules. It introduced some fairly major changes in an attempt to counter three items of critical feedback I'd received for the earlier versions. I'd separated the cards into three decks, the low valued ones (to play at the beginning of the game), the high valued ones (to play at the end) and the negative cards, which I'd introduced some special rules for.

We were playing at work on our lunch break, which is convenient but also particularly useful for Zombology since I work for a company who sell scientific software, and hence my colleagues have a good understanding of the scientific community that I am lampooning in Zombology. Three of the four people playing had PhDs and we had all attended scientific conferences and worked with scientists as they try to publish their results.

I started explaining the new rules and how there were now two types of round: Research rounds during which you perform your own research and Conference rounds where you can either present new findings or rubbish an opponent's research. Dave in particular got very excited (he's an excitable fellow!). It was nice to see them buying in to the slightly deeper theming. The rules explanation made it clear that these changes made things more complicated, and hence it wasn't that surprising that the game lasted slightly longer than our previous plays (just under 20 minutes I think). And the scoring was still difficult to clearly explain.

The game went fairly smoothly until after the first Conference round. Until then we'd been playing a card and drafting the rest in the same way as in previous games. In the Conference round you have the option to either play one of the cards you've been passed by your neighbour, or to play one of your two Prejudice cards: negative cards in particular suits that you have an irrational hatred of. Because you keep your negative Prejudice cards, whether you play them or not, suddenly everything was out of kilter. People who played a negative card passed on the two remaining cards in their hand (to which another three cards were added, making a hand of five for their neighbour), but people who chose not to play a Prejudice card, instead played a normal card, and only had one to pass on, leading to their neighbours only having four cards. Through no fault of their own, they had less options. So far, this felt a bit unbalanced, but I could explain it away as an attempt to undermine your opponent's research, so I was only slightly uncomfortable with it.

After the second Conference round, it all went Pete Tong. Now there was one player with only 1 card to choose from for the last round, one with 2 and two of us with 3 cards. Broken! We cobbled it together by letting everyone draw up to a hand of three cards. But clearly it was now a problem that needed properly addressing.

Last night, on the bus home from work I thought about it a bit more and came up with a proper solution:

If after the first Conference round you have a card less than any other player, draw an additional card from the Groundwork deck.
If after the second Conference round you have a card less than any other player, draw an additional card from the Trials deck.

That should fix it - I've updated the rules PDF accordingly.

Tuesday, November 19

NaGa DeMon 8: Another Version

Here's another version of the rules that I alluded to earlier. I hope that this version will address the major problems people have raised with the previous versions:

Having a handful of cards that you can't play because of their requirements
Seeing all the cards time and time again in a game with few players
A nonsensical order of card play (low, then high and then low, low, low)

Zombology!

The Science of the Zombie Apocalypse

3-10 players, 20 mins

It finally happened. The Zombie Plague has arrived, decimating entire continents and turning the masses into drooling, stumbling, brain-munching hordes. You're not that bothered though, you live and work in a high security government facility, and for you the plague is an opportunity. It's your chance to finally prove that you're a world-class genius in the field of curing diseases, not like that chump Dr. Gimlet at the CDC, what a tool! Seriously, the guy's an absolute fool, as if DNA retroviruses are a credible cure for anything.

You've got a few weeks to come up with a cure before you run out of the test subjects needed to show that your cure is the best. Choose a method or a few different ones and then quickly gather the evidence you need to prove your genius.

The game comprises of 120 cards, 19 each in the following 6 suits (treatments):

DNA Retroviruses

Stem Cells

Herbal Extracts

Vegan Diet

Pharmaceuticals

Crystals

Plus six additional Repeated Experiments cards.

For each treatment there are the following cards:

1x -2 (Bad Science - flip 1-5)
3x -1 (Strong Rebuttal - flip 1/2)
5x 1 (Theoretical Framework)
4x 2 (Petri Dish Proof)
3x 3 (Works in Mice)
2x 4 (Works in Monkeys - requires 1/2/3)
1x 5 (Successful Human Trial - requires 3/4)

Aim of the Game

The aim of the game is to score high in the two most successful treatments and low in the least successful treatment.

Setup

Separate the cards into their three types: Groundwork, Trials and Prejudice. Shuffle each pile separately. Deal each player five of the Groundwork cards and two Prejudice cards. The remaining cards from those decks will not be needed and can be placed back in the box. Place the Trials cards to one side for now.

Play

Rounds 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 and 8 are Research rounds. Rounds 4 and 7 are Conference rounds. In Research rounds the players can only play the Groundwork (or later, Trial) cards from their hands. In the Conference rounds the scientists get together to debate their progress. It’s your chance to debunk, rebut, lambast or otherwise rubbish your opponent’s support of ridiculous treatments. In the Conference rounds you can either play one of the Groundwork or Trial cards in your hand, or one of your two Prejudice cards. After the first Conference round, deal each player three of the Trial cards. The remaining Trial cards can be placed in the box, they will not be used this game.

If the card played has a requirement (Works in Monkeys requires 1, 2 or 3; Successful Human Trial requires 3 or 4), the card cannot be played unless any player has already played one of the required cards in the same treatment in a previous round. E.g. Jack can only play the Successful Human Trial (5, requires 3/4) for Stem Cells, because Jesse has played a Works in Mice (3) of Stem Cells in an earlier round.

If the card played was negative (Bad Science or Strong Rebuttal), choose a face up card played in an earlier round in any player's collection to target. It must be of the same treatment type and have a value within the range shown on the negative card played. Flip the target card face down - it will not count for scoring unless flipped back face up. E.g. Tiffany plays a Bad Science card in Crystals, and chooses to flip a Works in Monkeys in Crystals that Dave played in the last round.

Once all of the cards played have been resolved, the players pass their remaining cards to the player on their left and receive the cards from the player on their right. Do not pass on your Prejudice cards, they remain with you.

Scoring

The player with the highest score wins and can boast, brag and crow about their scientific prowess, while ridiculing the pathetic attempts of their fellow scientists.

Downloads

As before, here are the cards and rules in PDF form. This time I've added card back files to make it easy to separate the Groundwork, Trial and Prejudice cards, in addition to the front ones, again in A4 and A3. You'll only need the A3 ones (5 sheets) or A4 ones (14 sheets), not both.

Monday, November 18

NaGa DeMon 7: A 7 Player Game and Major Changes Afoot

On Saturday, I went to York for six and a half hours of gaming :): my friend Paul had hired a church hall for the day to celebrate his birthday. Attendance was good with about forty-odd people, a mixture of friends from his games night (that I used to attend twice weekly for four years so know well but see very infrequently), people from Beyond Monopoly the local games club (which I used to attend once a month or so for four years, so I know pretty well but in most cases haven't seen for years) and friends of his daughter and their parents, of which a recognised a surprising number.

I'd taken Codename: Vacuum and Zombology, plus a few rarely played sci-fi games from my collection. In the end the only game I'd brought that we played was Zombology: a seven player game with a bunch of old friends (plus a couple of new ones!). The game lasted slightly longer than I had expected, probably about 20 minutes. There were lots of rules queries, plus a few people were taking it quite seriously (it's a game about zombie science featuring the healing powers of crystals - it's clearly not a serious game!). Afterwards we discussed it briefly and the feedback was generally positive, though again the scoring proved a bit tedious and people struggled during the game to identify the strongest suits, which made their choices slower as they tried to determine what was their strongest move.

Two interesting bits of feedback were:

Robert's suggestion to put a time limit on the individual rounds to avoid people over thinking their turns and to keep it moving quickly.
John's disapproval of the way the mechanics didn't fit the theme, since people played the best cards in the second or third round and then after that your spend the last five or six rounds playing the dross cards that are left - why if someone has already run a successful human trial would you bother trying to prove it in a Petri dish again?

All this got me thinking, along with the feedback I'd had during my lunchtime playtest, and gave me an idea.

On the weekends I tend to take The Daughter on a couple of walks to get her to have decent naps (and hence be chipper for the rest of the day). During the morning walk on Sunday I spent the hour working out in my head a new version to address those points. I've got a new version now to try out that makes use of the existing cards (pretty much!).

I'll try to play this version at work again, and also take it to the Newcastle Playtest session on Tuesday, it will be interesting to see if it's any better...

The other games I played at Paul's party were Oregon, Dominant Species The Card Game and Homesteaders (all new to me) and Ave Caesar. Of the three new ones, Homesteaders was my favourite and seeing as I think it was one of Tasty Minstrel Games' first games I can see why they got off to a flying start. It's a great game with worker placement, city building and auctions set in the Wild West. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Sunday, November 17

TGWAG: League Table Week 3

The Game Within A Game (TGWAG for short) continues, trying to encourage people to give me the feedback I need to make Zombology. As mentioned here, the third league table of playtesters' scores follows. Remember, the top five (i.e. everyone at the minute!) will get a free copy of the finished game, signed and numbered at the end of the month. There's been some movement from the usual three suspects, their scores are up a bit, but I've expanded the eligibility now to anyone who gets involved, so Derek Hohls (who has given some feedback this week) and @pidaysock (who has printed out a copy and emailed me with some ideas and rules questions) are also in the running...

Playtester	PIP Score	Level	Free Copy?
Tiffany Ralph	13	MSc	Yes!
Frugal Dave	8	BSc	Yes!
boardsandbees	6	BSc	Yes!
@pidaysock	5	BSc	Yes!
+Derek Hohls	3	Intern	Yes!

Thursday, November 14

NaGaDeMon 6: Local Minima

In my last post I made available a Print and Play version of Zombology. Seeing as NaGa DeMon is only a month long, I need to get the game playtested as many times and by as many people as possible, to find the wrinkles fast and iron them out, but also to crowdsource new ideas and incorporate them into the design.

For the first version I'd made a quick (though admittedly not quick enough!) prototype and taken it along to Newcastle Playtest. We'd played a couple of six-player games back to back. The feedback from the first game was that there were too many suits (each of which represents a potential treatment for Zombyism), so in the second game we discarded five of the twelve suits and it was much better. Of course this left me with only 70 of the original 120 cards, so I could only play with up to six players. I want the game to go up to ten players and be a quick filler like 6 Nimmt! So clearly, I needed to make another prototype. This one has only six suits, but with more cards per suit, so the game still goes up to ten.

With the limited opportunities available to me to try the game out myself, I posted this second version as a print and play game before trying it out, which I wasn't particularly comfortable with, but needs must - the clock is ticking. In fact this whole NaGa DeMon thing has taken me out of my comfort zone from start to finish. With my previous game design efforts (and in fact the games I published on behalf of others) I kept things fairly close to my chest while the game was in development. Of course, I tried to play them a lot, and with lots of different people, but I didn't widely publicise the theme or mechanics or anything until I was pretty much ready to go. With NaGa DeMon, I've been posting the rules (and multiple versions thereof), and making the prototypes available P&P which is a first for me.

To avoid wasting the time, expense and effort of my willing P&P playtesters (who has downloaded the PDFs, printed them out or played it? Anyone? ... Anyone?) I want to try to keep changes to the components to an absolute minimum, so they don't need to print out a new version (and cut it out, etc.) every few days. Because of the short window of NaGa DeMon I'm turning things around far quicker than normal. So I'm trying to limit myself to improvements that change the rules rather than the components.

Anyway, back to the point. I got a chance to try the new version out during my lunch break yesterday with a couple of my Games Night attendees. There were potentially eight of us, but three weren't in the office, one was prepping for a quality audit and one couldn't spare the time, so that left only three. In theory the game plays with 3 to 10, but until now it had only been played with six. A couple of the changes I thought would improve the game with fewer players, so I was interested to see how it would go.

The good news was that it worked as a game, nothing broke spectacularly and it played in the right sort of timeframe. We played two games, one lasted 12 minutes (including scoring) and the second eight minutes. Scores were 14, 13, 13 in the first game and 13, 6, 4 in the second.

The bad news was that both Dave (one of my core Codename: Vacuum playtesters) and His Nefariousness (my boss) didn't like the way that the cards went round so quickly. It's a drafting game played over 8 rounds, so with 9 or ten players you will never see all the cards in play. With eight players you'll have seen all the cards at the start of the eighth round and with fewer players you'll have seen them all sooner. With three players, you've seen all the cards in play at the start of the third round, and you'll see each card two or three times. They didn't like that. Dave also raised the point that it was possible to start a round with a handful of cards you couldn't play, since some of the cards have pre-requisites that might not have happened yet. It didn't happen in either of our games, but came pretty close at one point.

So now I need to think of solutions to those problems, ideally without changing the cards as provided in the P&P PDFs. One idea for the first one is to make the game 5 to 10 players instead of 3 to 10, another is to somehow get more cards into play as the game progresses if you're playing with fewer players.

Any ideas? There's PIPs for good ones...

Monday, November 11

NaGa DeMon 5: Second Version - Now P&P!

Thinking about things, and considering the feedback I've had, I'm going to try these rules next, and so can you! Print and Play PDFs at the bottom:

Zombology!

The Science of the Zombie Apocalypse

3-10 players, 20 mins

It finally happened. The Zombie Plague has arrived, decimating entire continents and turning the masses into drooling, stumbling, brain-munching hordes. You're not that bothered though, you live and work in a high security government facility, and for you the plague is an opportunity. It's your chance to finally prove that you're a world-class genius in the field of curing diseases, not like that chump Dr. Gimlet at the CDC, what a tool! Seriously, the guy's an absolute fool, as if DNA retroviruses are a credible cure for anything.

You've got a few weeks to come up with a cure before you run out of the test subjects needed to show that your cure is the best. Choose a method or a few different ones and then quickly gather the evidence you need to prove your genius.

The game comprises of 120 cards, 19 each in the following 6 suits (treatments):

1) DNA Retroviruses
2) Stem Cells
3) Herbal Extracts
4) Vegan Diet
5) Pharmaceuticals
6) Crystals

Plus six additional Repeated Experiments cards.

For each treatment there are the following cards:

1x -2 (Bad Science - flip 1-4)
3x -1 (Strong Rebuttal - flip 1/2)
5x 1 (Theoretical Framework)
4x 2 (Petri Dish Proof)
3x 3 (Works in Mice)
2x 4 (Works in Monkeys - requires 1/2/3)
1x 5 (Successful Human Trial - requires 3/4)

Aim of the Game

The aim of the game is to score high in the two most successful treatments and low in the least successful treatment.

Setup

Shuffle the cards and deal ten to each player, place the rest back in the box they will not be needed this game.

Play

Once all of the cards played have been resolved, the players pass their remaining cards to the player on their left and receive the cards from the player on their right. Another round is now played as before with the cards they have just received. In the eighth round, each player chooses one of the three cards they have been given and discards the other two - they will play no part in the game. After the eighth round the game is scored.

Scoring

Each player adds the value of their cards in the highest two treatments together and then subtracts the value of their cards in the least successful treatment. Highest score wins.

Download

You can get the files to print your own copy of Zombology here, you only need one of the cards options, A3 is more efficient, but few people have access to an A3 printer, so I've done A4 too:

Next Up

I'm going to try to get this played in a lunch break at work this week, most of my Games Night attendees work in the same office, so I'm hoping I can recruit some of them!

Sunday, November 10

TGWAG: League Table Week 2

The Game Within A Game (TGWAG for short) continues, trying to encourage people to give me the feedback I need to make Zombology. As mentioned here, the second league table of playtesters' scores follows. Remember, the top five (i.e. everyone at the minute!) will get a free copy of the finished game, signed and numbered at the end of the month.

Playtester	PIP Score	Level	Free Copy?
Tiffany Ralph	10	MSc	Yes!
Frugal Dave	8	BSc	Yes!
boardsandbees	5	BSc	Yes!
You?	0	N/a	Yes!
You?	0	N/a	Yes!

Friday, November 8

NaGa DeMon 4: Rules and Revisions

I took the first version of Zombology to the Newcastle Playtest session on Tuesday night. We played with these rules (note, draft quality!):

Zombology!

The Science of the Zombie Apocalypse

The game comprises of 120 cards, 10 each in the following 12 types:

1) DNA Retroviruses
2) Stem cells
3) Herbal extracts
4) Radiotherapy
5) Snake venom
6) Vaccines
7) Vegan Diet
8) Leeches
9) Pharmaceuticals
10) Crystals
11) Surgery
12) Chemotherapy

For each type there are cards numbered: -5 (forged results - flip 1-10), -3 (bad science - flip 1-5), -1 (strong rebuttal - flip 1-3), 1 (theoretical description), 2 (computer model), 3 (petri dish proof), 4 (works on mice), 5 (works on monkeys), 7 (successful small trial), 10 (successful large trial).

Aim of the Game

The aim of the game is to score high in the three most successful treatments and low in the two least successful ones.

Setup

Shuffle the cards and deal ten to each player, place the rest back in the box they will not be needed this game.

Play

The game is played over 8 rounds. Each round the players secretly choose a card and play it face down in front of them. Once all players have chosen a card, the chosen cards are revealed and added to the players' collections.
If the card played was negative, chose a face up card in play of the same type belonging to another player, it must have a value within the range shown on the negative card. Flip this card face down - it will not contribute to the total when determining the highest and lowest scoring types, but will contribute to that player's score.

The players pass their remaining cards to the player on their left and receive the cards from the player on their right. Another round is now played as before. Once eight rounds have been played, the remaining cards are discarded and the game is scored.

Scoring

Work out the total score for each type of cards across all players - do not include the values of any face down cards. The three types with the highest and two types with the lowest totals will score, the cards for the rest can be discarded.

Flip any face down cards back face up. Each player earns positive points equal to the total of their cards in the highest types and negative points equal to their totals in the lowest types. Add the positive and negative points together to get a final score. Highest score wins.

Revisions

The feedback I received was mainly to do with too many suits and too complicated scoring. We played another game with five suits removed, but what I really need to do is make more cards rather than just remove some, so that there are still enough cards to play with 10 players.

What I'm thinking is that I'll cut it down to six suits (DNA Retroviruses, Stem cells, Herbal extracts, Vegan Diet, Crystals and Surgery) and up the number of cards to 20 per suit. To make the counting easier I'm using a smaller range of numbers:

2x -2 Forged Results (flip 1-4)
3x -1 Bad science (flip 1-2)
5x 1 Theoretical framework
4x 2 Petri dish proof
3x 3 Works in mice
2x 4 Works in Monkeys
1x 5 Successful human trial

I'm still not sure how to simplify the scoring while keeping the concept of getting points for backing the most successful treatments. I think I'll cut out the negative points for the least successful treatments and just score the two most successful ones. I need to think on it more. Any ideas?

Wednesday, November 6

NaGa DeMon 3: The First Play

Before making Zombology available to the PIP-hunting masses I wanted to play it at least once first to give me a chance to iron out the worst of the problems.

I'd worked hard over the weekend to get the first prototype's graphic design done on the computer, then get it printed and cut out ready for the first of two Newcastle Playtest sessions in November, last night. I was excited to see how it plays, but a little concerned about the complexity of the scoring.

As people started to arrive it was easy to sell them on a ten minute game that we could all play, so we sat down to a six-player game. After a quick run through of the rules that made it clear that the scoring was too complex (lots of questions along the lines of 'run that by me again', 'so which cures score?' And 'hoojamawhatnow?'), we set off. The game played as quickly as I had hoped and was as chaotic and vicious as I had intended. People seemed to get their heads round the rules pretty quickly.

I had first had the idea for this game nearly two years ago, it was going to be themed around the science of proteomics and would be something that we could possibly have as a scientific conference giveaway for my employer. The initial idea was played once and really didn't work so it died a death and stayed that way.

However, I've been toying with how I could transform it into a working game and on my weekend walks taking The Daughter for a nap in her buggy I've occasionally considered Proteome as well as Vacuum. In the last couple of weeks I've thought that card drafting à la 7 Wonders might be a good fit for the science theme. As the game progresses you'll get to hear on the grapevine/at conferences what sort of things people are interested in and build up an idea of what's hot and likely to be successful. I ditched the proteomics theme and instead though of curing a disease. And that led to Zombology - curing zombyism.

I created a game with 12 different possible cures, each containing the same range of evidence (positive valued cards) and attacks (negative valued cards). Seeing as you'd never play with the full deck, even with the posited maximum of ten players, some of the cures would end up more powerful than others. The more powerful ones would change every game and at the beginning of the game you wouldn't know what would be best - it would be a journey of discovery that you could shape as you choose cards to play. Much like science.

I wanted players to score points for backing the most successful cures, and I thought it would make things interesting if they lost points for backing the least successful cures. So my initial scoring idea was that at the end of the game you would add up the total of each cure across all players and the ones with the highest totals earnt their players positive points and the ones with the lowest totals earnt their players negative points. The attacking cards earnt you negative points so if you attack the winning cures you lose points and attacking the losing cures won you points. In addition, the attacking cards cancelled a positive card in the same suit.

Before I went to the playtest session I was concerned the scoring was over complicated, and my fears were realised - it took almost as long to score the game as it did to play it! Afterwards I asked for feedback, and in addition to a load of interesting ideas, the main complaints were the complicated scoring and that twelve suits was too many, making it hard to keep track of how the game was progressing.

So we took out five of the suits and played again, and it went much better. The scoring was still too complicated, so I need to think on that. What that reminds me of is prototype decay, the idea that prototype components have a lifetime that changes rapidly at the beginning, so it's not worth investing too much effort in them. I've now got to make a new prototype with all new cards in six rather than twelve suits, and re-think the scoring.

I've only got a month though, so I'll need to move quickly...

Monday, November 4

NaGa DeMon 2: The Premise

As I mentioned last week, and in Saturday's post, this year I'm going to try to take part in NaGa DeMon. Last year I thought about doing a game themed on the old Populous computer game, but gave that up as soon as I heard they were try to make a new Populous via KickStarter. I've decided to go zombie science, with a working title of Zombology: The Science of the Zombie Apocalypse. So here's the premise:

I feel the Zombie genre tends to focus too much on the survivalist with a shotgun (or axe or chainsaw). As I'm sure you're aware, the real heroes of any zombie apocalypse will be the scientists who slave day and night over a lukewarm microscope, trying to discover a cure to this dreadful plague. But the poor scientist doesn't get any love, no - no shotgun, no genre representation. So I've decided to redress the balance and come up with a game about the science of the zombie apocalypse.

Scientists are a competitive bunch, and come the zombie apocalypse, their preferred yardstick (peer-reviewed publications) will have disappeared - it's hard enough to get a decent review from an unpaid scientist who considers the work he's reviewing direct competition, so imagine how hard it'll be when the only thing the editor, reviewer, typesetter and printer care about is where their next brains are coming from. In the absence of publishing, there's only one way to prove yourself the best scientist: cure the plague! Ideally, before you run out of test subjects.

I'm aiming for a 6 Nimmt!-like experience: a short game (under 20 minutes) for up to ten players with lots of shafting each other and getting hosed.

Here's the exposition as it stands now:

It finally happened. The Zombie Plague has arrived, decimating entire continents and turning the masses into drooling, stumbling, brain-munching hordes. You're not that bothered though, you live and work in a high security government facility, and for you the plague is an opportunity. It's your chance to finally prove that you're a world-class genius in the field of curing diseases, not like that chump Dr. Gimlet at the CDC, what a tool! Seriously, the guy's an absolute idiot, as if DNA retroviruses are a credible cure for anything.
You've got a few weeks to come up with a cure before you run out of the test subjects you need to show that your cure is the best. Back a method or a few different ones and then quickly gather the evidence you need to prove your genius.

This is actually based on Codename: Proteome, but since the theme has changed beyond recognition and the mechanics are also totally different, I figure I can count it as a new game, which I started making on the weekend - safely within the November window. I've got a copy ready to take to the Newcastle Playtest session at The Bridge Hotel this Tuesday for its inaugural outing. Once I've tried it out I'll post the rules and a P&P download so you can start trying it out yourselves and earning some playtest PIPs.

I'll keep you posted about how it's going, in the meantime, any feedback on how to make the exposition more enticing? There's PIPs available...

Sunday, November 3

TGWAG: League Table

So as part of NaGa DeMon, I'm running The Game Within A Game (TGWAG for short) to encourage people to give me the feedback I need to make a game of above dreadful quality with only a month of time available to me. As part of that I promised to keep track of playtesters' scores and keep a league table. Of course with only three volunteers so far I look like a bit of a spanner doing it, but that never stopped me before, and I'm good to my word. So here's the first of my Sunday night league tables. Remember, the top five (i.e. everyone at the minute!) will get a free copy of the finished game, signed and numbered at the end of the month.

Playtester	PIP Score	Level	Free Copy?
Tiffany Ralph	4	Intern	Yes!
boardsandbees	3	Intern	Yes!
Frugal Dave	3	Intern	Yes!
You?	0	N/a	Yes!
You?	0	N/a	Yes!

Saturday, November 2

NaGa DeMon: The Game Within a Game

I've decided to take part in NaGa DeMon this month. So I'm going to create a 20 minute, chaotic, vicious card game for 3-10 players on the theme of 'The Science of the Zombie Apocalypse'. I'll be posting a bit more regularly than usual, and will need some help playtesting the game.

So I'm running a game within the game (gamification-tastic!):

I've a small daughter, so not much spare time, so if you help me playtest the game, I'll award you Pointless Internet Points™ (PIPs). I'll keep a league table of everyone's points and award achievements for certain levels (who wants a PhD in Zombology?). In addition, at the end of the month I will hand-make, and post free of charge a signed and numbered copy of the final game to the people with the top five PIP scores.

How do you register for this exciting, yet pointless, opportunity? Post a comment on this blog post using a registered account (anonymous users are not valid). Every time you post a comment using that blogger account on any of my NaGa DeMon blog posts, I'll award you some PIPs equal to how helpful I find your feedback, I reserve the right to be capricious and unpredictable in my awarding of points, so no quibbling if you disagree.

Applications below please!

Update

Achievements for the game-within-a-game:
1PIP - Intern, you can clean the glasswear
5 PIP - Undergrad, you know almost as much about Zombology as the cleaner
10 PIP - MSc, you get to call the faculty by their first names
20 PIP - PhD, congratulations! Now get published.
30 PIP - Tenure. That's the last time you have to do any work! Yay!
50 PIP - Chair. You're a Professor of Zombology, you get to wear a fancy hat.

Monday, October 28

A Weird Week

It's been a strange week, this one. The daughter was ill last weekend and the early part of the week and on top of that we're changing childcare providers. The Wife and I are both very busy at work with deadlines looming, so we split up the childcare while we introduce her to the new nursery. So Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I was in charge. On my own.

Thankfully, we'd had some practice at the beginning of September when The Wife had a conference to attend for work so I was in charge for a few days, but then I had the help of my friend Paul who we were staying with, who has a nine year old daughter of his own, and hence is far more experienced than I. But this time it was just me.

It was lovely, especially once she got over her illness and was much happier, I wish I had more holiday so I could spend more time with her, but sadly, I've used this year's allowance up :(

As a result of the sleepless nights while she was ill, we didn't have a Games Night to give us a chance to catch up. Seeing as I was off work with The Daughter at the beginning of the week, I missed Tuesday lunchtime's Codename: Vacuum playtest session too. My parents came up last night, so I skipped Saturday's Newcastle Gamers session to prepare for their visit. So from a gaming point of view it's been a dry week.

The new Vacuum has had a lot of changes, so I really need to focus on trying them all out and finding and improving the weaknesses, so next week I hope to get back to lunchtime playtesting and then there's another Newcastle Playtest meetup on the 5th, so I'll take it along to that too.

In other news, I've been thinking about Codename: Proteome again, and in my head have made some sweeping changes. I'm considering giving it a go for NaGa DeMon, the game designer's equivalent of NaNoWriMo.

So not much to report this week, but stuff is afoot!

In other news, 700th post! Who'd have thought Creation and Play would last so long?

Monday, October 21

One Day Late

I hadn't played Codename: Vacuum for four weeks. During the Newcastle Playtest session a month ago I had some great feedback with cracking ideas from Paul and Olly. Then as I started making those changes, the power pack on my laptop died and with it any chance of getting those changes ready in time for the Newcastle Playtest session a couple of weeks ago. But I got a replacement power pack off the internet, and one week later I was ready to make those changes in time for this week's Playtest session. Sadly, it was not to be again. I had a couple of early nights to recuperate from a few sleepless nights and then got out the printer ready to print out an assemble the prototype the night before the Playtest session and ... my printer went on the blink :(

The next morning I tried out a few cleaning and calibrating cycles on the printer and managed to get it to play ball, but the prototype was printed before I went to work, not cut out and assembled, so it missed yet another Playtest session.

So instead, I went along purely as a playtester again, and played a couple of games by Dan, the other organizer of the group. First up, seeing as we were the first two to arrive, was Mainframe, a two-player game of head-to-head hacking a corporate network to steal its information. The prototype was fresh back from the White Goblin Games 2-player games competition where it had been a finalist (though didn't win). It was an interesting game which I thoroughly enjoyed. I gave Dan some feedback, with a couple of minor things I'd change the names of and some ideas to make it feel more thematic to me (with my programming background).

I found it interesting that as I was playing the game I was thinking what I would do from a graphic design standpoint if I was publishing the game. It took me right back to my thinking during my Reiver Games days when I received a prototype I liked. It also reminded me that a lot of the pleasure I derived from publishing games was working on the graphic design elements of the games to make the as easy to play, attractive and clear as possible. I'm not saying I did a particularly good job, just that I enjoyed doing it. I wasn't able to do the art (Border Reivers is proof of that), but I did do the graphic design.

After Mainframe, we played a couple of games of Samizdat, Dan's game about publishing illegal books in 1950s Russia. We'd promised to play each other's games - I'd play Samizdat and Dan would play Vacuum, but with Vacuum languishing at home, uncut, we just played Samizdat twice. It was another good game, a bit more involved than Mainframe, but everything tied nicely together. It was the first outing of this particular version, and we spotted a couple of things that didn't see much action (and hence were probably a bit weak) and Michał was keen to have the variable turn order reinstated from a previous version. Another enjoyable game, and both in pretty good shape too.

Since the weekend, The Daughter had been sleeping better, so despite a late night on Tuesday at the playtest session, and another late one planned on Thursday for my regular Games Night I went all out and had a late night on Wednesday too - three on the trot! - and cut out and assembled the new version of Vacuum. One day too late for the Playtest session, but it did mean it was ready for Games Night where Wilka, Dave and I played and also for the lunchtime session on Friday with Chief and Dave. Chief couldn't make it in the end so Dave and I ventured out again, just two player.

Early indications are that the new changes are a big improvement. The events make exploration more exciting - it can go alright, very well or really badly. I'm slightly concerned that there might not be enough locations any more though. To really confirm that I think I need to have a five player game...

Of course, after my three late nights on the trot, The Daughter came down with another fever, so Friday and Saturday nights were pretty bad, and the weekend was a bit of a wash out. I did fix a couple of errors I found on cards in the new Vacuum though, and started to make some improvements to the graphic design of the event cards.

Monday, October 14

Games/Life Balance

I now have the replacement power lead for my laptop, so I've been able to finish making the requisite changes to Codename: Vacuum. I didn't finish them until this weekend with the printing and assembly booked for this evening, since at the beginning of the week The Daughter was ill and not sleeping well as a result. In a bid to survive the working week we went to bed pretty early to try to get some sleep, which left me with very little time in the evenings to make the changes, print them out and then cut out and assemble the prototype in time for Thursday. I'd planned a playtest session on Thursday lunchtime and I'd intended to have it available for Games Night, but in the end I just couldn't find the time to get it ready. It's now been three and a half weeks since my last game of Vacuum, which considering I've been playing at least once a week for a year now feels very weird indeed.

All this reminds me of a blog post I've been meaning to write for a while about my balance of real life and games and how it's changed over the years. So here it is :)

In the early days of Reiver Games, I had a full-time job as a Software Engineer which morphed into a project management role. I was hand-crafting the games I was selling (four hundred of them between Border Reivers and It's Alive! first edition) and that took time. I was giving up weekends to go to conventions to sell the games and a good chunk of most evenings either assembling games, checking and responding to emails, doing some half-arsed marketing or designing games of my own. In addition, in the run up to a big convention such as The UK Games Expo, The Cast are Dice or Beer and Pretzels, I'd have to build up some stock to take and, seeing as the handmade games took 1.5 to 3 hours each to create, that was a significant investment in time - so I'd end up using some of my work holiday allowance to spend a couple of days working 12 hour days flat out making games. Games were starting to take over a large chunk of my personal life.

Following my MS diagnosis, and the subsequent life insurance payout, one of the driving reasons behind trying to get Reiver Games off the ground properly and running it as a full-time concern was that I'd get my evenings, weekends and holidays back, seeing as I'd be able to do all that stuff during the working day while The Wife was at work herself.

So now I was spending all day during the working week working on gaming stuff. Of course, as anyone who's run their own business knows, it's not that easy to turn off when you're the boss. So I still ended up spending a bunch of time on RG stuff in my 'free time'. In addition, all my friends in York I'd made through gaming, and my social life was twice weekly games nights at Paul's house, once a week playtesting evening at mine and frequent trips to Beyond Monopoly on a Saturday. My trips abroad were for Essen. Life was now heavily dominated by gaming. When we moved down south it was a similar story, my friends were all made through gaming, so my social life and my job were both entirely games related.

With the demise of Reiver Games I swung back the other way. With the exception of a weekly games night with my friends down south, I did very little to do with games. My work was once again software development, I spent little time gaming and no time designing games or playtesting.

Since moving back to Newcastle things have slowly started to swing back the other way again. I've started up my own Games Night once a week and bought a few more games so that I have a decent selection for people to play. I've been designing Codename: Vacuum, spending a few evenings a month doing graphic design on the computer and then cutting out and assembling the prototypes. I've been playing Vacuum once a week on a lunchbreak at work. In addition, in the last few months I've started up the Newcastle Playtest sessions and started attending Newcastle Gamers a bit more often too. Games are once again becoming a large part of my life. But I'm still a more rounded character than I was in the Reiver Games days. My work is software development again, and I spend some of my free time brewing beer and learning to play the guitar. Plus I'm a father now, so I spend a lot of my time entertaining and looking after The Daughter.

I often wonder what I would do with Vacuum if I ever get it to a point where I'm happy with it. If it ever reaches that point I'll have to decide - I toy with the idea of hobby publishing again like the early days of Reiver Games, or KickStarter, or approaching the other publishers I know through my days at Reiver Games. But what I come back to is that my family is a far more important use of my time.

In the meantime, I'm going to concentrate on getting the new Vacuum printed and cut out this evening, ready for tomorrow's Newcastle Playtest session at The Bridge Hotel, and then working on getting Vacuum to the point where it's 'ready'. That's plenty to keep me busy for the moment.

Monday, October 7

Newcastle Playtest Gaining Steam

This Tuesday was the fifth Newcastle Playtest session in The Bridge Hotel. With my laptop out of action and my sweeping changes to Codename: Vacuum still a work in progress, I went along purely in a playtester capacity. Although, having said that, I took Codename: Vacuum (the old version) because according to the Meetup page as I left the house that morning there were only three of us confirmed to be going, with me as the only designer. I didn't want the evening to be bizarrely quiet and there be no games there to test at all.

Thankfully, Meetup was underselling it. Later that morning, Dan the organizer confirmed he was going and Paul piped up to so there were going to be four of us, and three designers. Vacuum could safely stay in my bag. As it turns out, even that was underselling it. In addition to the three of us and Amo, we had several others who I wasn't expecting: Gareth from Newcastle Gamers came along, Alex joined us and three guys from the Northumbria University Gaming and Roleplaying Society had seen a poster Dan had put up in Travelling Man our local FLGS. So there were nine of us! A new record. And then Lydia joined us later after her other event had finished so ten in total.

I got my wish, and Vacuum remained in my bag, unmolested, since between Dan and Paul we had three games. Initially, there were just four of us, so we sat down to play 54 Jones, Paul's game of sci-fi sewage surfing!

As with Mad Monks, another of Paul's prototypes I'd played a couple of months ago, 54 Jones was a lovely laser-cut MDF prototype with laser-cut perspex counters too. It was a fairly quick, light fun game where you were racing to escape the sewers ahead a wave of encroaching sewage. I really enjoyed this one, and when more people turned up I requested a second play so we played it again while the other table broke out Dan's Samizdat - a game I've been meaning to play since the very first session two months ago. Both games of 54 Jones brought up some interesting ideas, we tried one in the second game, which I think improved it and Gareth had a really good idea after the second game (though that would have involved some component changes so it couldn't be tried out on the night).

At the end of the second game of 54 Jones (which slowed down a bit due to very aggressive play), we broke up again and swapped around a bit. I moved to Dan's table and tried his other game: Galactic Contractors. This is a very early prototype (I think Dan said it had only been played three times!) but already it felt like a solid game. There were plenty of options and some very interesting mechanics. From what I remember Dan said he'd come up with the mechanics first for this one, hence the theme being a little flaky at this early stage. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it, and would like to play it again.

Galactic Contractors at Newcastle Playtest

All in all it was a very enjoyable evening, and after playing Codename: Vacuum twice at the previous session it was great to be able to go along and play other peoples' games. I'm also very pleased with the way it's taking shape, from Dan, Michał and my initial ideas and email conversations it's great to see more designers getting involved and lots of willing playtesters. I can't wait until next session on the 15th when Dan and I have promised to play each other's games: Vacuum and Samizdat. My replacement laptop power cord has arrived so I can crack on with making the new version of Vacuum, which I hope to have ready in time...

Pages

Monday, December 30

Games Design

General Gaming

Blogging

Monday, December 23

Monday, December 16

Monday, December 9

Zombology

Vacuum

Dragon

Monday, December 2

What went well?

What went badly?

What else could I do

Sunday, December 1

Friday, November 29

Tuesday, November 26

Zombology!

The Science of the Zombie Apocalypse

Contents

Aim of the Game

Setup

Play

Scoring

Download

Monday, November 25

Sunday, November 24

Thursday, November 21

Zombology!

The Science of the Zombie Apocalypse

Contents

Aim of the Game

Setup

Play

Scoring

Downloads

Wednesday, November 20

Tuesday, November 19

Zombology!

The Science of the Zombie Apocalypse

Contents

Aim of the Game

Setup

Play

Scoring

Downloads

Monday, November 18

Sunday, November 17

Thursday, November 14

Monday, November 11

Zombology!

The Science of the Zombie Apocalypse

Contents

Aim of the Game

Setup

Play

Scoring

Download

Next Up

Sunday, November 10

Friday, November 8

Zombology!

The Science of the Zombie Apocalypse

Contents

Aim of the Game

Setup

Play

Scoring

Revisions

Wednesday, November 6

Monday, November 4

Sunday, November 3

Saturday, November 2

Update

Monday, October 28

Monday, October 21

Monday, October 14

Monday, October 7

FlickFleet