Playtesting Questions

It was Newcastle Playtest again on Tuesday, and now Christmas is out of the way it was better attended than it had been for several weeks. We started off with a couple of quick games of Zombology which led to a really useful discussion about ways to improve it. After that I rather selfishly grabbed Paul and Alex and we played Codename: Vacuum too while the other table played a couple of games of Paul von Scott's The Thing with the Ring and then Dan's Samizdat. I'd made some changes to Vacuum since Paul had last played it, changes that were specifically triggered by Paul's last set of feedback so I wanted to see what he made of those changes. All that got me thinking about how as a designer to get the best of out a playtesting session.

A playtest session of a game that's in development serves many purposes:

• To allow you to try out ideas and see which ones work well and which don't
• To check whether it's worth continuing with the design
• To find broken mechanisms or combinations
• To see how the game works with different play styles, numbers of players and levels of experience
• To gather feedback from other people
• To test how the market might respond to your game
• To find flaws in the rulebook (for blind playtesting)

Depending upon how mature the game you are testing is, the relative importance of those questions varies - finding flaws in the rulebook is very important near the end of the process, but less so at the beginning when you are just testing out a rough idea. Some of these questions you are the best person to answer, but usually it's the opinions of the playtesters that you are trying to gather. Your playtesters are a small sample of the game-playing market that you are exposing your game to in order to try to predict whether your game will be successful or not and to work out what changes are required to make it more successful.

In order to be successful, your game needs to be:

• Enticing
• Enjoyable
• Engaging

Enticing means that your potential customers want to play as soon as they hear about it, and after playing want to play again and again and again, despite the endless stream of shiny new games pouring onto the shelves. Enticing is a mixture of theme, attractive artwork, affordable price point and interesting mechanisms, but also replayability, fun and a lack of frustration. A game that no-one can quite conjure up the enthusiasm to play or that only ever gets played once is never going to sell hundreds of thousands of copies. Like successful YouTube videos, successful games have to go viral: someone buys them, plays them with lots of people who also buy them and play them with lots of people...

Enjoyable means that it's got to be fun for its target market. The market is flooded with tens of thousands of games and hundreds more go up on KickStarter every year. A really successful game has to compete in that crowded market, and win. I own 70-odd games, but only a few of them I've played hundreds of times. Those happen to be really successful games, not just with me and my friends but in the market in general. Because they are fun. Different groups will have different ideas of what makes a game fun, but if no group likes your game then it's going to tank.

An engaging game is one that draws you in and keeps you involved throughout. If you look round the table during a game and everyone is either playing games on their phone or staring morosely into their pint that's not engaging. One that keeps your attention throughout is. If you have little downtime between your turns or the ability to get involved on other player's turns then you're more engaged. If the game isn't so random that you can plan ahead for your next move or if the theme and events keep you excited then you're engaged. You're not going to rush out and buy a game if it lasted four hours, and you spent 3 hours and 45 minutes of that playing Angry Birds and praying that the game would just end.

Playtesting is your chance to see how your game performs against these yardsticks, get the opinion of people who aren't so close to the game and have the critical distance required to be objective about it and to work out what you need to do to make it perform better.

A while ago I heard that Tom Lehmann (designer of Race for the Galaxy) likes to ask two questions during playtests: 'Is there a game in here, and have I found it'. Those questions get to the nub of designing games: Is this going to be a worthwhile addition to the legion of available games - is there any point continuing working on this idea - and how close is it to being finished.

Dan, my Newcastle Playtest co-host has his own favourite questions: 'What did you like about the game, and what did you not like'. These allow you to quickly zoom in on which parts of the game are coming along nicely (and should be emulated/left alone) and which parts are potentially putting off gamers (and should be removed/re-designed).

Back when I ran Reiver Games I used to ask my playtesters after they had played one of my prototypes whether they would buy it and how much would they pay for it (useful market research when you're a newbie publisher).

Now I tend to ask my playtesters to provide some critical feedback via email after they've played my games - the slight disconnect of providing the feedback via email makes it easier for them to be critical without worrying so much about upsetting me and, with my particularly pants memory, having the feedback in electronic form means it's easier for me to revisit it and remember it later.

What are your favourite playtesting questions, and how do they help you assess the game?

Cut Out The Middle Prototype

As I mentioned last week, Codename: Vacuum has returned to the fore after a couple of months in the wilderness. I've been making some quite significant changes to a couple of the core decks recently: Trade and Population and I've finally got around to working on a version where the corresponding advanced decks reflect those changes.

When I make a new version with large changes my process tends to be two stage:

1. Make a new version with the new rules and what I think will be a decent set of cards that apply to it
2. Make a second version quite quickly after that which fixes all the problems I had failed to foresee

I started down that road last week, doing the new cards on the computer ready for printing to take to Thursday lunchtime's playtest with Dave. However, now The Daughter is back at nursery the inevitable happened and she came down with a filthy cold complete with fever and sleepless nights (I swear her nursery is actually a secret black lab for testing bioweapons), so printing went out the window.

I turned up to Thursday's playtest with the same old version as before, but a bunch of new rules and new versions of cards in my head. Dave, my co-conspirator has played Vacuum probably 70-odd times, he knows it really well. So we just played the new version. I told him what the new cards would do, and we just ignored the cards as printed and played with the new ones. It flagged up a few problems, and along with a new strategy that Dave was trying (using AI to draw lots of cards with his usual very lean deck) it flagged up a few problems - before I'd even printed them out!

This meant that I could correct the cards on the computer on Friday and Saturday during The Daughter's naps, and I've only got to print and cut them out once - saving card, ink and precious time (or so I thought...). As well as tweaking the cards to change a few things I've also added some more artwork to the player mats (which were being re-designed anyway) and the backs of the event cards. Of course, this new version will have other rough edges, so I don't want to over-invest in its artwork - I'll have to make another version reasonably soon to fix those problems...

Having an experienced playtester like Dave was really useful though, testing things out before I had printed them. I've also tweaked the AI card as well now to fix the other problem that Dave found.

Sunday night I had time to print it and get it cut out. Or at least I should have been able to do the printing. I'd bought some cheap 'Canon-equivalent' inks on Amazon. They were £18 for 15 cartridges (instead of £12 for one!). I'd already noticed that the ink bled more than the official ink (so the text looks a little blurry) but it turns out they also block up the nozzles more, so I spend Sunday evening running nozzle clean after nozzle clean with the test pages in between and ended up wasting loads of card - each time I thought I'd fixed it the artwork came out green again. In the end I replaced the (brand new!) magenta cartridge with another one, ran a couple more cleaning cycles and eventually got it printed. Now I've just got to cut it all out tonight ready for Newcastle Playtest tomorrow.

Back To Life

The Wife and The Daughter have been back for a whole week now and life is returning to a very welcome normality. Memories of my three week exile are fading as the house returns to normal levels of light, warmth and laughter.

I've spent most of the evenings hanging out with the girls, so I've not made much progress on my games designs, but I did get a bit done on Wednesday and some more on Saturday while The Wife was out for dinner with friends.

I've been concentrating on Codename: Vacuum since Christmas, which also feels like a return to normality too. I started work on Vacuum over two years ago, and it's now been strongly in development for a year and a half with frequent playtests and almost monthly versions. All that was put aside for NaGa DeMon in November, and then pretty much nothing happened in December from a games design point of view as Christmas took over.

But since I got back from our Christmas trip to Bristol I've been making progress on Vacuum again. Dave and I have been playing once a week at lunchtime, I took it to Newcastle Playtest at the beginning of the month and I tweaked a few of the cards before that - the first new version since October!

This week I've been working on another new version, incorporating a lot of the ideas I've had over the last few weeks and updating some of the advanced decks to better support the changes I've made to the basic ones. It'll be good to get the new version to the table when it's finished, it feels like Vacuum has come on leaps and bounds over the last four or five months, despite (or possibly because of) the hiatus in its testing.

On Zombology, there's not much to report, I'm still waiting for the majority of the artwork for the NaGa DeMon competition winners' copies and I want to incorporate cures into the next version, though I've not quite worked out how yet.

And no progress whatsoever on Codename: Dragon :-( Perhaps three games is an overcommitment, considering how little free time I have.

And Low He Was Welcomed Into The Fold

Well, my three weeks of enforced exile are over and I've been re-united with my family :-)

The last three weeks have been really weird. The house has been very dark and quiet. I've been living a bachelor lifestyle of constant gaming and basic food, I've been watching my daughter change noticeably between our video chats every few days. Aside: Anyone who tells you that we're not living in the future because cars don't fly, we don't have personal jetpacks and we don't live on the moon hasn't appreciated the full wonder that is video conferencing with your one year old offspring. One the phone she silently holds it then either hangs up or puts me on hold accidentally. Over video she gets really excited to see me and interacts with me as if I was there (pressing my nose on the screen and saying 'beep' is my favourite!).

It's been hard being away from them for so long, having to hear about the new skills she's learning second hand and knowing there's nothing I can do to help when she has a bad night or is ill. It's going to be tough to re-adjust to the bad nights and early starts after three weeks of late nights and lying in, but it'll be totally worth it and I'm glad it's finally over.

That's not to say I haven't put my exile to good use. I had to keep myself busy to distract myself from the loneliness, so I played a lot of games. I've made it to Newcastle Gamers twice (once all day!), Newcastle Playtest once, been down to see my mates Terry, Andrew and Graham in the south for a day's gaming and played a 10 hour game of Twiglet. In total, 54 games in 18 days!

Now that my family are back I'm going to have a break from gaming for a bit and concentrate on spending some quality time with them.

Having said that, I'm still working on getting another Codename: Vacuum version together, incorporating the ideas I've had over the last few weeks and at a lower priority I've got some more Zombology ideas to get together too.

In related news, I've started getting art for the NaGa DeMon competition winners' copies of Zombology from the artist :-)

Narrative in Games

I've had a good week of gaming this week, trying to fill the hole left in my life by the absent wife and daughter. Last weekend I made it to Newcastle Gamers for their all day session on Saturday (it was my first visit in months!) and then Dave came round on Sunday night for X-Wing minis. Monday and Thursday were Games Nights, Saturday was Newcastle Gamers again and Sunday we played Twilight Imperium :-) On top of all that, Tuesday I played Codename: Vacuum at lunchtime with Dave and then in the evening it was Newcastle Playtest.

What struck me about the beginning of the week (and Twilight Imperium!) was the stand out games had great narratives. During play you felt like you were telling a story. On Saturday I'd played A Study in Emerald, Snowdonia and Battlestar Galactica among others. Those three stood out for the clearly defined story we were telling. Sunday's X-Wing minis was a blast and Dave loved it so much that he was still singing its praises at work on Monday to anyone who'd listen. We'd played three games: the introductory game, then a 50 and finally 100 point battle. In each game there was ebb and flow, critical moments when everything hung in the balance - the crap dice roll where the battered, limping Tie Fighter manages to weave between the lasers just long enough to take out the Y-Wing, the epic dice roll where the tricked out B-Wing loses its shields and takes some damage suddenly changing the balance of power dramatically. It was great: there was a story unfolding before our very eyes, and we had (some!) control over it. After Twilight Imperium we spent a good half hour (after a ten hour game!) talking about the highs and lows of the game: massive fleets mutually annihilating each other, the cheeky action card that stops someone claiming an objective, etc.

Our group even creates narrative around games so simple that they don't even have a theme. There's Helga the imaginary milkmaid who turns up when someone sends a card round a few time in No Thanks! when only they can benefit from it, and Gunther the 70s porn star who turns up in a game of [6|11] Nimmt! when someone is about to get shafted!

I was reminded of Joe Gola's awesome Amun Re session report. The game was just a framework that the story hung off. Playing the game is a form of collective story telling.

Tuesday lunchtime Dave and I sat down for our first game of Vacuum in a good couple of months. I'd mothballed Vacuum during November while I concentrated on Zombology for NaGa DeMon and then I'd been too busy in December to do anything at all really. We were trying out a new trade mechanism inspired by Dan, my Newcastle Playtest co-host. Dave and I have played at least fifty games together, and this was the first major change to Trade. We were focussed on getting our heads round the new mechanism and a feel for whether or not it worked. At the end Dave had some concerns about the fact the you discarded the trade cards into an opponent's graveyard - he didn't like the lack of control over your deck that implied (he usually runs an extremely lean deck). Thematically it made sense to me - if you trade with someone they get a trade benefit and it fit my aim that trade be a non-combative form of interaction in the game where you do something that provides a trade benefit to both player and target. Plus it was much simpler to track than the previous mechanism.

So far so good. It was one in a long series of games of Vacuum Dave and I have played and felt much like any other. We explored the solar system, Dave captured lots of locations (a favourite tactic of his) but didn't whale on me (unusual!). I focussed on researching the tech tree and striving towards the Knowledge goal, which I brought in a few turns before the end of the game. Dave's deck was unusually chubby and he couldn't get the right combination of cards together to chose a Conquest victory, so I managed to bring in the second victory condition: Exploration which he beat me on, but not by enough to win. Like the fifty games before it there wasn't a particularly overarching story to the game - we were just cracking on with it. The only stand out moments came from the exploration mechanism.

For the first fifty odd plays, the exploration mechanism involved drawing a given number of cards from a deck and picking the best one to bring into play. It was pretty dull. In September or October last year Paul Thompson suggested spicing it up: "If I'm playing a steampunk game I expect to be finding resources or exploiting natives or being attacked". Off the back of that suggestion, I changed the exploration mechanic to bring both less randomness (you choose a location to explore) and more (each location has an event on it that could be good, bad or indifferent). In our lunchtime game I'd explored Geostationary Orbit early on and found a Silicate Consciousness, adding an advanced Artificial Intelligence card to my deck very early in the game. A few turns later Dave had discovered a Heat Ray which improved the strength of all his military units. The final stand out moment was Dave's two or three attempts to explore Pluto, all of which failed with contact lost to his probe. It was noteworthy: "Pluto is hard to explore!"

That evening I played Vacuum again at Newcastle Playtest with Dan and it was a completely different experience. In the second turn Dan sent a probe to Earth-Moon L1 and discovered a really unfriendly alien race. Each turn they attacked our strongest location with a military strength of 25! At this early point in the game our total military strength was 4 or 5 each. Dan lost control of the US (his homeland) and then I promptly lost control of France (mine). All of a sudden it was the third turn of the game, neither of us controlled any territory, had any income or any real chance of capturing territory until the overwhelming might of the alien aggressors was vanquished. Going deep underground the French Resistance and the US minutemen researched martial technologies and assembled military power. Trading (what I can only imagine were packets of fags and tinned goods - that's cigarettes and canned goods for my American audience!) between each other to gain the income we needed to fund our boffins to develop some decent military units. Slowly we accrued military strength while researching other technologies and occasionally sending out a probe to try to find something helpful. Occasionally we managed to find a seam of valuable materials which we could exploit for a turn until the aliens promptly wiped them clean of human presence. Finally I got to the point where I had a couple of warships and an armada on ready alert - only 16 military strength - but I had more armadas in my deck and a reasonable chance of drawing one next turn, so I sent out a sortie and captured Atlantis. At the end of my turn I drew a new hand: all armadas! The hand was so good I had to show Dan! My next turn rolled around, and when the aliens came knocking I had 42 military strength - an auspicious number :-) I annihilated them and then sent the two unused armadas over the scorched earth to claim the US and France. Dan meanwhile had managed to launch an orbital weapons platform, ready to defend his (as yet non-existant) territories with the threat of nuclear rain from orbit. For the rest of the game we both had the large militaries we'd acquired early on to defeat the aliens. I used mine to conquer a large chunk of the solar system, Dan used his to raid my territories, safe in the knowledge that his nuclear threat would prevent reprisal - most turns I could see off his predation, but I lost several locations to him during the game. The game eventually ended when I chose Conquest as a scoring condition and Dan quickly got Knowledge in before I had a chance to get Population as the second.

The game had such a strong narrative that I had to relate it to Dave in the office the next morning (and in fact to you here). The game lasted just under an hour (not bad for Dan's second game) and fully one third of that we were under assault, severely limited in what we could do. It was hard, but it felt like we were under assault, too afraid to show our faces until we'd built up the military we'd need to defend a territory against the alien scourge. It's rare that aggressor card turns up in a game, and especially rare to see it so early. The game was unusual and totally different as a result. It's not all good news though, in his feedback email Dan described the aggressors as 'annoying' which is probably something I need to pay particular heed to.

Dave and I have had some ideas about how to bring this level of excitement to some of the other strategies in the game. I'm really excited about Vacuum again :-D

2014: Setting Myself Some Goals

Like I did last year, I'm setting myself some goals for the year. As I mentioned last week, I had mixed success with my goals last year, I aced the blogging ones but made pretty poor progress on the games design ones. So this year, I'm going to stretch myself on the blogging ones again, and reign in my designing goals to something a bit more realistic.

Games Design

I want to make some decent progress on Vacuum, and Dragon. I want to get Zombology to the state where I can consider hawking it to publishers or going it alone (again) and I'd like to do NaGa Demon again in November. I'm thinking print and play again, I felt it was a great success this year.

Blogging

I want to blog every Monday for the year, plus a bunch more posts in November for NaGa DeMon. I managed 76 last year, so let's say 75 for 2014. Last year's page views were the best ever by quite some stretch and also included my best two months ever, both better than the reddit month which I thought was completely unbeatable. I'd targetted 20,000 views for the year but ended up getting over 35,000. This year's target is 40,000 over 10% growth. My blogger followers went from 49 to 56 last year, a gain of seven. I'm hoping for another 10 this year. As you can see these are all a stretch, hopeful they'll encourage me to do more on the blog and continue building an audience, which might help if I ever have a game to actually sell in future!

Gaming

I've had in my head over the last 7 years a goal of playing as many games as there are days in the year. I've managed it 4 times including 2013. My goal for 2014 is to do it again. I'd also like to end the year with no games in my collection that I haven't played in over a year. Exceptions for games that I own for sentimental reasons (i.e. Reiver Games' games and games that I've received as gifts for certain things) and games that we own as a family (that I'm not particularly keen on playing). I'm going to use this to focus my collection on games that I actually play (or want to play). So I'll probably get rid of a few more of the ones that aren't seeing any action.

It's good to have something to aim for, something to stretch me and stop me just coasting along.

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:

• My thoughts on KickStarting games
• Excitement building about Newcastle Playtest
• A discussion of how my games/life balance has changed over the years
• A mention of doing some Windows Phone development
• The rules to a game I ran to encourage NaGa DeMon feedback

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

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!

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? ;-)

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!

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. :)

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!

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...

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

Contents

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)

5: Research
• 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.

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.

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 :(

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

Contents

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.

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

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.

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):

• A3 fronts
• A3 backs
• A4 fronts
• A4 backs
• V3 to V4 update front
• V3 to V4 update back
• Rules

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.

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.

Contents

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

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.

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.

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. 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.

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.

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

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.

• A4 fronts
• A4 backs
• A3 fronts
• A3 backs
• Rules

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.

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!

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...

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.

Contents

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

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 face up to their player's collection.

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.

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. 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

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.

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:

• Cards on A3 paper (5 sheets)
• Cards on A4 paper (14 sheets)
• Rules (2 sheets A4)

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!

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!

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

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.

Contents

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?