Saturday playtest results for Prolix and Pax Robotica

07Jun09

I got to playtest Prolix and Pax Robotica on Saturday. It’s rare that both my games hit the table in the same day, so I was quite flattered.

Prolix tweaks
For Prolix, I was specifically testing the 5-player variant. As I discussed in my last post, I wanted to try a variant where each player crosses out one fewer Regular Scoring word than the number of times he interrupted. So if a player interrupted three times, he’d cross only two words out instead of three.

The upshot of this is that players must interrupt at least once, plus once for each zero they were forced to take, in order to maximize their score. It seems that players were frustrated by the lack of interrupt opportunities in a 5-player game, so I hoped that this would open things up.

And it did! In the last 5-player game I saw, the guy who eventually won didn’t really have a practical interrupt opportunity after Round 3. In this game, we were all paying rapt attention to the board until the last round. It felt much better.

The final scores of the game were pretty thrilling: 103, 102, 102, 101, and 96.  It was quite close!

The only problem was that one of the players was new to the game, and he didn’t really grok the scoring system. I’m probably going to recommend that new players start with the 3-4 player game before going to 5 players.

So I’ll be sending a blind test copy of the game this week with this 5-player variant, plus the 2-player variant I talked about last week.

The next change I’m going to make is to change the timer length to 45 seconds. Right now, players use a 1 minute timer for everything except for the 2-player game, which uses a 30-second timer. I’d rather include only one timer with the game, and one minute is a little too long anyway. 45 seconds seems like a nice compromise.

The only problem? I don’t seem to be able to buy 45-second sand timers in any quantity less than 100. Hmm. I’m not planning to make that many blind test copies.

Pax Robotica tweaks
Pax Robotica got some much more significant tweaks. I was concerned about the relative value of the bots, so I sat down and did some math. It turns out that it’s better to buy two Level 3 bots than one Level 5 bot. I didn’t like that; I wanted the big bot to be a real hammer. Two Level 4 bots should be about equal to a Level 5 bot, and that’s not even close. It seemed that some re-juggling was in order.

I scribbled like crazy in my notebook, and came up with some better numbers. There are now only three levels of bots: 1, 3, and 6.

It’s neat, because the numbers represent three things:

• The number of Tech symbols you need to build a bot of that level.
• The amount of VP you get when you build the bot.
• The battle value of the bot.

Now, the highest bot is about even with two of the lower bot.  If you do the math, selling two Level 3 bots gets a tad more VP than one Level 6 bot because they’ll be getting twice the survival points.  But the Level 6 bot is cheaper to build, more likely to survive, and more likely to swing the endgame VP bonus to its side.  So it’s no longer a slam-dunk decision.

In our game, we never got to build Level 6 bots, because I found I need to make the Tech deck more dynamic.  I’ll probably split it into A and B cards like the Government deck, and put 3x Techs among the B cards.  That’ll make tech growth much more explosive.

Bot quantities were another thing I found I needed to tweak (which didn’t surprise me, considering that the best I can do before a playtest is guess).  For the next game, I’m going in with 6x Level 1 bots of each type, 5x Level 3 bots, and 2x Level 6 bots.

I’m very excited about this change, because it streamlines a lot of rough edges.

• The bot values now stand for three different things, which is much neater and easier to understand.
• It’s no longer necessary to remove double Techs revealed in the first round.  That always felt kind of artificial to me.
• The Level 1 bots get less attractive by Round 3, because they’re so likely to get blown up.  So I don’t think I need to have a minimum bot value in the later squares of each battlefield.  Another fiddly rule gone!

The game showed a lot of rough edges of the new system, but a lot of potential too.  It ended on a tiebreaker, although if the Level 6 bots had come out as they should have, I think they would have been different.  I also felt that the auction was a bit more powerful than before, which was great; I’d seen players disregard the auction entirely and win on bot placement, which isn’t how I want the game to go.

Some interesting thoughts came up regarding the tiebreaker system, but I’ll save them for another post.

Filed under: Board Games, Designing, Pax Robotica, Prolix   |  2 Comments

Some quick Prolix updates

31May09

I have some big news about Prolix! You see, a couple of months ago REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED so obviously, I’m very excited.

So in other news, I’m trying to tighten up the various player counts. Here’s where we stand…

The “official game” is for 3-4 players. That seems to be tight as a drum.

The solo variant, Solix, is very good.

That leaves the 2-player game and the 5-player game.

I found that the 2-player game was missing pop. If it was just me and someone else, I would turn down a 2-player game of Prolix. That’s a bad sign right there.

The problem is that an interrupt in a 2-player game isn’t really as interesting as in the other games. 2-player games are pure zero-sum games. My gain is your loss. If you’re going to interrupt the other player, why not make it a straight puzzle game?

By “puzzle game,” I mean a straight, turnless game, where both players are trying to work out their turns simultaneously. I tried a puzzle variant at Protospiel 2007, and the result really wasn’t much fun. The problem with a puzzle game is that it tends to get unbalanced very quickly. Usually, a group will have one really good player and one very crummy player. Granted, that’s the case with most games. But in a puzzle game, and especially in puzzle Prolix, that good player ran away with the game, and the crummy player never got a chance.

Clearly, puzzle Prolix wasn’t the answer for a multiplayer game. I insisted on keeping it turn-based, and I’m very happy with the decision.

But I had a thought last week. What if I made 2-player Prolix a puzzle game, and put in a strong handicap?

So I hammered out Prolix Duel, a 2-player Prolix variant. Here’s the gist of it. There are up to 9 rounds, and each player is trying to get a “mark” each round. 5 marks wins the game.

You get a mark by getting the best word each round. To start the round, you lay out the board as normal, and then both players start thinking of a word.

If a player comes up with a word, he flips the 45-second hourglass in front of him, and secretly writes his word down. The other player now has 45 seconds to come up with his own word.

When the timer runs out, both players score their words. The higher-scoring word gets the mark. In case of a tie, the player who flipped the hourglass wins.

Here’s where the handicap comes in. The player with the most marks has a handicap every round. So if I lead you by a score of 2 marks to 1, my word this round will be worth 1 point less. If I manage to get a mark this round too, my word next round will be worth 2 points less.

The handicaps are what turn this from “meh” into a something with pop. I’ve played it twice now, and both plays have been really interesting. Today’s game was my friend’s first game, and she took me to the wire. I got the first 3 marks, but she rattled off 4 straight marks. I managed to sneak the last 2 marks in to win, the last one by 1 point! It felt much more like a game than the 2-player game has ever felt. So it’s probably good enough to hand over to the blind testers, at this point.

Now, the 5-player game. This one is a tougher nut to crack. I playtested this with 5 last weekend, and it didn’t go so well. One player fired off three straight 20+ point words, and interrupted twice by the third round. His game was effectively over, but he kept seeing great words that weren’t worth interrupting with. He was frustrated, and I can’t blame him.

Granted, this is possible in a 4-player game, but much rarer. It’s more likely in the 5-player game, where someone has to wait four turns in between his own words. That’s four interrupt opportunities. It’s a lot.

This player happened to be a very experienced game player; he developed for SPI in the seventies. He gave me some thoughtful feedback, but the changes he proposed would radically alter the game, and I’m not convinced they would completely eradicate the problem without introducing a different set of problems. Stupid elegant ruleset!

My current choices are…

* In the 5-player game, each player crosses off one fewer word in his Regular Scoring column than he Interrupted with. This has a nasty implication: Players should interrupt at least once to maximize their score, plus once for each zero they were forced to take.

This will greatly increase the number of interrupts. But that’s what we want, right? I may have to note in the rulebook that the 5-player game is the most brutal version of Prolix.

What I like about this ruleset is that it’s really only one minor change from regular Prolix. If this works, I don’t want to change anything else.

* But if it doesn’t work, I may have to introduce radical changes into the 5-player game. One of the playtester’s suggestions was that if a player is interrupted once, he flips the timer for his second turn. No one can interrupt him, but he must take a -3 for his word.

I actually had something similar to this rule early on, but I wasn’t crazy about it. I want players to be continually engaged every turn. Also, it’s a big change from the base game. It’s different, but not necessarily better. So I may try it, but I’m afraid I’m skeptical.

* Perform a 5-player-ectomy. In other words, cap the game at 4 players. This would be my last resort, but I’d rather limit the game’s player count than endorse a potentially lousy game experience.

I’ll probably get to try the 5-player rules in a couple of weeks at Recess. I’ll also be sending a blind test copy of the game to Atlanta in a couple of weeks. I’m hoping to have this thing zipped up soon.

Filed under: Board Games, Designing, Prolix   |  2 Comments

“Yes and…” vs. “Um, no…”

24May09

I’ve never been much into religion, partially because I don’t think the universe can be sliced up into two neat groups of Good and Evil. The idea of taking something as complex and real as a person’s life, intertwined as they all are with loves, hates, mistakes, and regrets, and somehow judging that he or she belongs in Heaven or Hell is something that sets off my bullshit detector.

Nevertheless, I do like seeing interesting dichotomies, especially ones that are more interesting and that ring more true than the old, banal Good versus Evil. One that’s been on my mind is the difference between “Yes and…” and “Um, no…”

Let’s start with “Um, no…” because it’s what a lot of people are familiar with. You see it a lot on internet forums. One person will say something, and another person replies, “Um, no…” and refutes his point. Sometimes it’s good feedback. But very often, it’s anything from arrogant, reactionary burbling to pedantic grammar corrections.

You may not be as familiar with “Yes and…” It’s one of the first rules of improv comedy. If your improv partner comes up with an idea, you never shoot it down mid-performance. You take it and you build on it. Improv is all about construction, building, and progress. Destruction, contradiction, and regression kill improv.

So if we’re doing an improv scene, and you turn into a dinosaur, “Yes and…” suggests that I not say “That’s stupid,” and immediately turn you back, let alone breaking character to ask to start again. I can turn into a dinosaur myself, or a horseshoe crab, or a mammoth, or something that builds on your scene.

From here, it’s easy to pull these actions into a bigger paradigm. “Yes and…” and “Um, no…” are metaphors for common worldviews. When you read something new, or come across something you haven’t seen before, do you reject it? Do you pull it into your life?

Now, it’s easy to infer that we as a people (and especially those of us who post persnickety comments on forums and blogs) could use a lot less “Um, no…” and a lot more “Yes, and…” For the most part, that’s true. But like any other dichotomy, it’s all about balance. “Um, no…” is a vital skill in life.

Sometimes we have to call bullshit. Your friend who insists on staying together with her abusive lover needs to say, “Um, no…” Your relative who’s starting an asinine and clearly doomed business venture with a pushy, shady partner needs to say, “Um, no…” Anyone who’s lived a little can tell you that “Yes” can be an incredibly destructive word.

My recent life changes have got me thinking a lot about this dichotomy, and where I need to be. There are some people to whom I’ve said “Yes and…” too many times, and others to whom I’ve said “Um, no…” too many times.

I’m trying to fix this. I’m going out weeknights now, seeing friends and catching up. I’m also trying to be more forthright, telling people my honest opinions, even if it’s awkward and difficult.

“Yes and…” versus “Um, no…” Where do you fit in?

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From Battle Factory to Pax Robotica

17May09

I’ve been casting about for a new name for Battle Factory for awhile now, but I think I’ve finally hit on one: Pax Robotica.

My problem with the old name was that it sounded too much like a wargame. I strongly believe that a good game name prepares players for what they’re about to play. If the name is misleading, it creates a dissonance that the game has to overcome.

Like Hey, That’s My Fish. This is a tense and somewhat savage little board game whose title and cover art turn off anyone over the age of eight. I’ve had to twist arms to get people to play this game, and people are usually surprised at how much fun the game actually is. Even a more generic name like “Penguins” would have been more inviting.

Why borrow trouble? Name the game properly the first time, and players know what they’re in for.

So I have this economic game that sounds like a wargame. No good. I opened the issue up to my Twitter friends, and I got some great responses, especially from my friends Brett Myers and Sean Weitner. Brett eventually coined “Pax Robotica,” and Sean immediately jumped on it. I think I’m going to keep it.

As for the game’s latest playtest: it went very well. One of my playtesters, A, was playing her third game and won. She’s become one of the game’s most vocal fans. Pretty good for someone who wouldn’t play the game originally, and only relented when her boyfriend promised to buy her dinner.

It was interesting, because the other two players bid each other up like crazy on the first round. I think the winning bid was in the mid-twenties. That hurt them both for the rest of the game, as A and I were able to get bots on the board in the first couple of rounds. That seems to be a huge key to success in the game, as we made a good amount of money and points from it.

I suppose I could introduce rules to limit players’ bids in the first round, but I’d rather not. I can’t hold their hands, and I especially don’t want do do this with more rules. They’ll just have to figure it out for themselves (although a tip in the rulebook is probably a good idea).

I bought a Level 5 bot in Round 4, and that seemed to be my undoing. A entered the last round with more money than me, and overtook me with some big builds. She won by 9 points.

I’m now at the 80% mark, which means I’m halfway done. Any game designer can tell you this: half your work is getting your game to 80%. The other half is getting that last 20% done. Sometimes getting from 90% to 95% can be excruciating, because you have to tear down game elements you’ve trusted for months. You’re taking two steps backwards for what you hope will be five steps forward.

So what’s left?

My biggest concern with the game is still the complexity of building robots. Building a bot means getting money and victory points from the sale, and I don’t know if there’s any way to simplify that without lobotomizing the game. If I specify in the rules that one player is responsible for the scoreboard (like how players divide themselves in Power Grid into Banker, Resource Schlepper, and Power Plant Card-Flipper, or how there are Security and Communications Officers in Space Alert), then it might not be too bad.

I’ve finally gotten around to updating the components, and that’s made bot building much easier. Bots now stand in plastic stands, color-coded for each player. This makes bot placement more intuitive, because players can’t place the bots without the stands (before, they had to place their bots on cardboard squares, and this was easy to forget).

Ideally, I’d like there to be a tough choice between spending your money at the auction, on one big bot, or several smaller bots. Right now, it seems that several smaller bots is the dominant strategy. I may have to tweak some numbers to make the other two strategies more viable.

I’ve raised the High Bid reward to three points. I was worried that it was too much during our game, but now I’m thinking it’s okay. Lowering it back to two would make the auction irrelevant. I may even raise it to four or five, just to see if I can make the auction too powerful. Once I get to that stage, I can split the difference.

The game took about two hours with four players. So I’ve decided that this is a four player game at maximum. No more five-player dreams. Maybe I’ll make a lighter game with this auction mechanism for 6.

My first few playtests of a game are always with other designers, just so no one gets disappointed playing a broken game. With a new name, better components, and solidifying rules, I think Pax Robotica is finally ready for a non-designer playtest.

Filed under: Board Games, Designing, Pax Robotica   |  8 Comments

A trip to Citi Field

13May09

Disclaimer: I have a really crappy cameraphone.

The more perceptive of you may have noticed that I’m a Mets fan. I grew up following the team, though I fell out of watching sports in college. I quickly picked it back up when I moved back to New York, and I haven’t stopped since.

Why the Mets? Same reason most other people follow a team; they’ve been my team my whole life. The only way I’d stop being a fan of a team is if they pulled some crazy, stupid real-life political messiness. Thankfully, the Mets tend to leave their messiness on the field, so I remain a fan, despite all the daggers they stick in my heart.

They’re a strange team to follow. They’re certainly not the #1 team in town, but you can’t be an underdog with the second-highest payroll in baseball. So they’re in this quasi-world of not being good enough to be the clear favorites, but not being downtrodden enough to be a plucky fighter. They’re not the sexy cheerleader or the big bully; they’re the snot-nosed little brother of the rich, obnoxious, and most popular girl in school.

A team in a large market has so many fans, so much revenue, and so many expectations that they tend to spend freely, especially in free agency, and hire a team of mercenaries. While it must be annoying to be a fan of a small-market team and watch the local homegrown talent always flocking to the coasts for the big bucks, it doesn’t seem to work out to well for the big spenders.

Even the Yankees didn’t win four straight championships by snagging every free agent they could. They did it on the backs of homegrown talent. It was only after they started spending freely on the likes of Giambi and Damon that they started to stall in October.

The Mets are no stranger to this phenomenon of spending, but since they’re notorious for poor scouting (over the last few years, we’ve shelled out big bucks for the likes of Robbie Alomar, Mo Vaughn, and Tsyoshi Shingo, while saying goodbye to Scott Kazmir and Heath Bell), they’ve become the Wile E. Coyote of MLB. Every year, we get that shiny package from Acme with the best superstar money can buy, and every year, he blows up spectacularly somehow.

So maybe it’s the high drama I like. It’s interesting to see the different flavors of misery the Mets can inflict. There was the torpor of the Howe era, with a team that once took home league championship hardware unable to fight back with any passion or spark. There was the tragedy of 2006, which ended much sooner than we wanted. And there’s the absurdity of today’s team, where a bunch of talented players find incredible new ways to lose, with the inevitability of gravity.

Anyway. All this to say that I made my first trip to the Mets’ new digs last night. I’ve been to quite a few games at Shea (I’ll estimate about forty, over the span of twenty years and change), and as dumpy as it was, it felt like home. It was that torn-up pair of jeans you had in high school. Unpresentable, but comfortable.

But we all must grow up and cast aside childish things, and there’s a construction zone where Shea used to be. I understand there’s going to be parking there, although they’re leaving home plate. Good move.

Shea was a technological wonder (did you know that the field level seats were on rails, and moved parallel to each other for football games? You can find out all sorts of trivia about the Mets’ one-time eighth wonder of the world here, which is where I got the picture above), but Citi Field is a welcome update.

Of course, it’s going to feel like a visitors’ ballpark that just happens to be your home stadium for now, and maybe that’s going to last for awhile. But there’s enough attention to detail, that I don’t think the transition is going to be difficult. For example, Citi Field’s foul poles remain obstinately orange. It and Shea are/were the only major league stadiums with non-yellow foul poles.

There’s also the Apple. Man, I love the apple. If you don’t know, the Mets’ slogan for the 1980 season was, “The Magic is Back.” (They went 67-95 that year, so I’m a little fuzzy as to exactly what kind of magic had returned. I’m thankful that magic left six years later.)

That year, the team installed a large, upside-down top hat just beyond the center field wall. Every time a Met hit a home run, a huge apple flashing the Mets’ logo would rise out of the apple. It was just about the tackiest thing you could see, but it hit just the right level of kitsch for the team. When they announced that the apple would not be moving to Citi Field, the fans all but threatened self-immolation.

Management buckled. They installed a huge home run apple in the batters’ eye in center field, and moved the original apple behind Citi’s center field wall, in a little party area. After the game, fans can walk up to it, touch it, and take pictures. It’s nice to be able to make contact with a childhood memory.

At this point, I have to talk about the stadium food. Oh, man, the food. They clearly wanted a “foodie” feel to the stadium, and they got it. You can have breakfast, lunch, and dinner at Citi, and still want to come back for more. It’s the polar opposite of the slop they served at Shea.

I had a Shake Shack burger, while my brother had tacos. Both are very good, miles beyond regular stadium food. We followed it up with mayo-dipped frites and a hot chocolate. Next time, I might try the brick-oven pizza.

The main food court is beyond center field, although, unlike Shea, you can always see the field as long as you’re on the field-level concourse. A small bridge (modeled after the Hellgate bridge) from the stadium leads to the main food court, with the Shake Shack, Blue Smoke barbeque grill, the taco place (Keith Hernandez raves about it during Mets telecasts) and a host of other surprisingly good eateries. There’s also a kids’ area with a wiffle ball field (modeled after Citi Field) and lots of tables and benches where you can eat.

One awesome bit of detail is that when you’re in the food court, you’re facing the opposite side of the huge center field scoreboard. Rather than just have blank space, there’s a large jumbotron there, so you can continue to watch the game, even if you’re on line for a hot dog.

The sound of the stadium is much more pleasant, too. Shea veterans will recall that the speakers were all out in the batters’ eye in center field. The sound arrived at the fans’ ears swooshy, because it kept getting caught in the wind. Citi Field’s speakers are all along the stadium structure, so the sound is actually coming from behind you. That means it’s better-sounding and nowhere near as imposingly loud, while still being fairly clear (it sounded a little digitally data-compressed, like a suboptimal cellphone connection). A definite improvement.

The ushers and vendors behave differently. They’re not surly or rude like the Shea employees. Maybe it’s just new stadium glee, and maybe it’ll fade by next year. But it’s nice to have for now.

Oh, and the game? Mets beat the Braves, 4-3, in the 10th inning on a bases-loaded walk. That doesn’t quite make up for 1999, but it’ll do.

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