Free Design Friday: Mystic World

Ugh, honestly the name for this prototype bugs me. But it's a prototype, so let's not get hung up on it.

I like the idea of a game that has a double-sided board...but that the pieces stay where they are as the board flips. There’s basically a normal board of 4 quarters, with a clear & stiff acrylic sheet overlay. Lift the plastic overlay with pieces on it, flip the boards over, and put the overlay back down.

Inspiration

This game was inspired by a Tim Powers book “Last Call” - a great story. Instead of being set in Las Vegas, I sent it to a center of weirdness, Albuquerque. Each player controls their character. In the “normal world” side of the board, they are mundane people. In the “mystic world”, they are characters based on Tarot cards.

Story

As you play, your character is drawn into a mystery in Albuquerque. Something is afoot – it could maim your character, maybe even kill it – removing you from the game. Your resources can be spent here or in the mystic world – your win condition in the real world and mystic world are going to be different, giving you options on how you win/play the game.

You might even be on the verge of winning the game in the mystic world, only to have a player or event revert it to the normal world. As the Empress, you were powerful and magnificent preparing to take the orb in the throne room. Shunted back into the real world, you are back to being a drunk in a dead-end alley, facing down a corrupt cop with a gun drawn on you. You spent so many resources making you powerful in the other world, that the neglect might finally catch up with you here.

Design Issues

I really like the double-sided board, alongside the two win conditions. I was considering even having each Major Arcana having its own goal, and each real world character having their own – almost too much design space.

Using the deck of 56 Minor Arcana is likewise a fun tie-in. If I had each one doing a different thing, it would require a custom Tarot deck with extra text, or I would need to reduce the variety of gameplay down so the Minor Arcana become more of a trick-taking or set-making game.

Overall

I really like the give-and-take of playing in two different arenas. If you're behind on one board, you can pivot to trying to win on the other. (I'm imagining that it would be hard to be winning on both boards at the same time.)

It has an additional game design difficulty, as you need to design two separate-but-overlapping board games. Balance one, you might need to go back and balance the other...risking a seasaw effect at the drawing board.

Free Design Friday: Chairman of Mars aka Russian buyback

This is a social game, hitting the theme of a plutocracy occasionally selling off its valuable resources to its richest oligarchs...only to claw them back for free later.

Tagline

"The Mars Federation committee has decided to embrace capitalism! The winner will become the permanent chairman of the board...at least for a little while. May the richest Martian win!"

The game

The players are both an oligarchs and a minister on the committee. Each round, each minister will offer up a government contract for the others to bid on, but only they know the true value. The other oligarchs will get to place one secret bid for that contract, and the highest one wins. (The money goes to the minister.)

At the end of purchasing, the current chairman can veto any one contract that was purchased this turn, with that money being going to the bank and the contract going back in the deck. Any kind of bribe is okay, nothing is enforceable.

As the last act of the year, ministers vote who will be the next chairman. Each contract gives them a vote, current chairman instead gets a number of votes equal to the number of players.

End score is based on your money on hand, and the worth of your hidden contracts.

You also get a small income after each round, as befitting an oligarch.

Overall review

It's a social interactive brawl kind of game, which derives the fun from who you are playing with. The chairman position doesn't get to auction things off, but can take bribes.

It's a little weak, because players are bidding on contracts, without any kind of information. Maybe have 3 stages of value for stocks, with some money amount overlapping. It might be interesting to give each contract a power, or a "set" power, if you were to hold 3+ contracts of a certain type. Players would be on the lookout to offensively or defensively draft contracts.

Free Game Design: AR/QR 4X Space Explore

I have too many game concepts to ever take all the way to the end. Feel free to borrow from my "Free Game Design" series, but I would appreciate a thank you in the credits if you decide to publish it. I'll generally have more material for these games, than what I post here - feel free to reach out to me. If I end up using this myself or some other company picks it up, I'll let folks know.

Space Explore

Space Explore stems from a problem of replayability, the difficulty of expansions, and ...an interest in AR/QR codes. It's a board game that uses both types of codes, allowing for some interesting dynamics. There is no way to play this game without a phone, and the server would need to keep around in order for the game to keep playing. (I would maybe say "this game is good for 10 years", after which, we'd provide a method to migrate over to their own custom servers.)

Honestly, we could probably set up some way to set up a server in AWS with the populated data right now, but there's a reason why we'd set up a server for now. I'll only cover the QR+AR aspect of the game - that's the interesting bit.

In addition to any of the standard piece components of a space-based 4X game, there's a double-sided QR code as the "key" universe card, a stack of planet cards with random AR images, and sets of technology cards with different AR images.

QR Code Part 1: The Universe

When a group of players sit down around the table, they pull out the double-sided universe card, the "owner" checks into the game using the QR code, sets up the game, flips the universe card over, and the rest of the players check in.

AR Code Part 1: Technologies

Players will research new technologies, manufacture new components, and create new ships. New technologies/components will result in gaining cards with AR codes on them.

AR Code Parts 2 & 3: Planets & Exploration

As players explore their universe, the phone app will tell them how many planets show up in a system, and have them scan planet AR codes so the game knows what's there. As the player attempts to explore a planet, they will get a short synopsis of what their sensors tell them (sometimes modified by their technologies installed on their main ships), and then they can send a shuttle down. Shuttles will have 4 "slots" for technology AR codes - as the shuttle approaches the planet, the player takes a shot using their app, of the 4 AR cards representing the technology they feel will allow them safe access to the planet and gain access to its resources.

Adding new content: setting up a game

One of the great parts about this game, is you can add new planets to the game without having to sell more board game components in physical stores. We could even have a part in the game app or website, where players could submit new planets - either for just themselves or for consumption by others. When an owner is setting up a game, they can even have sliders for what mix of planets they want - maybe 60% base game, 20% fan-made, 10% owner-made, 10% expansion number 1.

What I really like about this game concept, is that it allows for players to become designers. It allows for a bigger universe, where expert players don't always know what they will see. There's always a mystery on what planets will be out there, what technologies will pay off,

Adding Expansions

I was initially just going to write about Terraforming Mars, and how the expansions gave the game a lot of variety in techniques to play/win the game. Someday I'd like to see a game where players had so many varietal ways of choosing how to play, no single game could ever be the same strategy. But, we should probably discuss the nature of expansions first.

One of the challenges of games is adding expansions - covering board games this time around.

Different types of expansions

• More money: Additional revenue streams for a successful game
• Bigger: Couldn't fit the "full" game into the base game
• Ooops!: Fixes for a game's mechanics

Finding more money from a successful game is not the worst thing. What could take the same designer a year or more for another completely new game (without a guarantee of greatness), an expansion might only be 3 months of design & test time. These expansions usually feel more "tacked on", as if it was an afterthought. The base rules need to change in order for new mechanics to work properly, or it feels like the expansion should be a different game altogether. (For example, Turmoil for Terraforming Mars has voting and a ruling council - not matching any of TM's basic game structure.)

Occasionally you'll see games that need patches to address core gameplay issues. Trading card games run into problems with massive discard, or maybe an engine where an opponent simply doesn't get another turn. A game like Eclipse (1st edition) orange missiles were such a dominant endgame, they included anti-missile tech in later expansions as well as weaker missiles with extra battle-speed components. (It still didn't necessarily "solve" the orange missile problem, just added possible counter-measures.)

Sometimes there are games that are some big in scope, it would bombard the players with too many mechanics or concepts...or increase the cost of the base game to become too big of a risk for a casual buy-in. Everdell is an example of a game that was designed to include expansions - made clear by board expansion arrangements that fit together as a puzzle around the core release.

Downsides of expansions

Might not be found - the publisher might only make 2000 copies. In 5 years time, all of those copies have been purchased, but the publisher doesn't want to get stuck with a remainder...they don't print it again. Base game might see reprints, or had a larger 5000-count print run, leaving a lot of copies without the extra fun. Companies will sometimes follow-up years later with a "big box" version, with all the components and expansions. Feel like re-buying your base game?

Some expansions might rely on other expansions for their gameplay. As the publisher, they're stuck adding more components (just in case they don't have the earlier one), adding extra rulebook parts (and needing to match consistency), or ignoring the other expansions as if they weren't necessary (removing interesting gameplay interaction).

Where does that leave us?

Oh man, some expansions really make the games complete. Race for the Galaxy (card game, first 3 expansions) show how things can come together...but they were forced to add extra components. Terraforming Mars (Colonies (more interaction), Prelude (fixing a slow start), Hellas/Elysium (variety for replay) are solid additions, whereas Venus Next (TR for focusing on Venus slows down the overall endgame) and Turmoil (Voting blocks and events also slow down the game) start branching into inconsistent areas).

That said, I feel like expansions are 50/50. Someone might want to play a game, but only play expansions 1 & 3, and someone else might 1 & 2 - maybe it means that game doesn't come to the table. At the very least, one or more of the players don't get the experience they hope for at game night. Maybe the "big" version of the game is too much for a new player, meaning the expansions don't even come to the table. (And the experienced players feel like they're playing an incomplete version.) I still haven't gotten the airship expansion into a Scythe game yet, years later.