picaresque in pictures

I spent three nights in a  cozy cabin in the North Woods of Wisconsin with seven great guys. Our annual Boys Cabin Weekend means different things to each of us, but we all look forward to a few days of relaxation and camaraderie, free from the pull of jobs, family and responsibilities. We hike, snowshoe or cross country ski. We do a little target shooting. We spend hours just reading. We talk and argue and laugh and listen to music. I like to use this time to work on game design and to play as many games as possible. Here are a few of my favorite moments from this weekend.

I taught Perry Rhodan: The Cosmic League to Colin while Michael set the play list.

 

Perry Rhodan: The Cosmic League is a neat little two player game of transporting goods and passengers around the solar system. Nice design.

 

A photo purported to capture the elusive Nuke It From Orbit in play. Several rounds of this delightful game were enjoyed by all!

 

Many fine beverages were enjoyed over the course of the weekend. I brought a bottle of bourbon barrel aged cyser, a homebrew club project from a couple years back.
We played the first game of a brand new copy of Risk: Legacy!

 

Scotty advances on my poorly defended territories in Europe.
At least I held Scandinavia against the ravaging hordes.

 

I did some work on my Dungeon of Doom prototype and was able to get a play test in with three players. Worked quite nicely.
We drove to a nearby tavern to watch the Packers game with the locals. It was an exhilarating, if ultimately disappointing game.

 

a cabin in the woods

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I’m leaving in the morning for a long weekend of tomfoolery, camaraderie and isolation in the North Woods of Wisconsin. I’m bringing a few games and prototypes, as well as my Chevee Dodd-inspired Idea Box for rapid prototyping while I’m up there.

I mentioned isolation–I’ll have negligible Internet access while I’m up there; I don’t own a smart phone, and there’s no Internet access at the cabin. I’m really looking forward to a few days away from the Internet. My pal John Kovalic has been leaving his smart phone at home when he’s working at his studio. I hope it’ll help me be as productive as he’s been.

I’ve got a brand new game to work on while I’m there, and a couple others to play test. Additionally, this morning I had an idea for a game based on the old Persian fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendip. I think it’s  a perfect basis for a game, and I want to explore the idea of serendipity in game mechanisms.

Before I go, I want to share this insightful video from one of my favorite YouTube series, Extra Credits. Fascinating stuff.

Snake and Ladders may be one of the oldest and one of the best “Mechanics as Metaphor” games out there.

 

 

I’m glad I didn’t get to play test Canardo’s Dungeon last Tuesday.

4P updates, design process, play testing, , , , ,

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As I mentioned in an earlier 4P update, I lost an opportunity to play test with some casual gaming friends last week because I took too long making pretty cards.

However, on Monday night I joined more than a dozen other designers from the Madison Game Design Cabal for their monthly play test Meetup at Essen Haus. It was my first time attending this Meetup, though I’ve played with many of the designers at other events. After making introductions, our host JT Smith encouraged me to get my game on the table right away. I sat down with five enthusiastic testers, including Steven and Peter Dast, two sharp designers I’ve play tested with for years.

I warned everyone going in that, though this was a redevelopment of an earlier game, I didn’t have a solid rule set and I wasn’t really sure how it would go. There was a lot of vague hand waving as I tried to explain how to play. My play testers had questions and I was short on answers; it was going to be a bumpy ride.

There was a lot of vague hand waving as I tried to explain how to play.

We groped our way through this rough draft, pausing every round or two to assess progress and make adjustments. By the halfway mark, we’d sussed out some of the major issues and paused for a pre-mortem dissection.

The debate at this point was lively and I could see the wheels churning in my fellow designers’ minds. I gathered and weighed the many suggestions, key among them a novel idea from Peter and crunchy analysis from Steven. From this, I winnowed a set of rules we’d test the last half of the game against.

From there out, the game played exactly as I’d envisioned it. It was charming and fun, with enough surprises to keep the players on their toes. It’s far from a finished gem, but we ground off a lot of the rough edges and exposed some exciting new facets to polish. There’s no way I could have accomplished that much on a first play test with non-designers.

So, I’m glad I didn’t get to play test Canardo’s Dungeon last Tuesday.

It would have been a disaster.

never reinvent the wheel

4P updates, prototips, prototyping, , ,

 

Well, I didn’t play any games last night, but I did finish the prototype for Canardo’s Dungeon. I had planned to just sketch out the board with Sharpies, but then I remembered seeing something that would fit the feel of the game nicely. What I needed was a numbered track that looked like rooms in a dungeon, and the level tracking board from Munchkin Pathfinder Deluxe would be perfect with a few minor graphical modifications.

I found a high resolution image of the board online, made a few alterations in Adobe Illustrator, printed it on label paper and stuck it on some card stock. It looks great and conveys the theme I’m going for pretty well. Much better than I could have done in the same amount of time with Sharpies. With a pawn and some coin tokens from my parts bins, I had an attractive finished prototype.

For early prototypes, use what’s on hand. Borrow art from the web, if you want art. Don’t spend a lot of time reinventing the wheel.

4P update…with a vengeance

That old saw about old habits dying hard is as true in game design as anything else.

To stay on track for 4P this month, I’d intended to have a first draft prototype of Canardo’s Dungeon ready for Board Games and Beer this week, but I fell victim to the worst of my bad prototyping habits and disappeared down the rabbit hole of “making it pretty,” sacrificing “getting it done.”

 

I spent way too long choosing placeholder art assets and colorizing black and white images to get just the right look for the game, and I lost a prime play testing opportunity with the casual game players who are the target audience for this game.

Still, I now have a reasonably attractive deck of cards and that can make a big difference when play testing with non-designers and casual gamers. Later today, I’ll mock up a functional board and tokens with card stock and Sharpies to finish the prototype.

I’ve got a casual game night coming up on Sunday and I’m hoping to get the first of my 4P play tests in there.