Daniel Solis

Zoomies: a Trick-Taking Game for the Mirror Deck

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Solis) — Sun, 29 Sep 2024 18:42:00 +0000

Hi all! Following up my earlier post about analyzing the unique aspects of the Mirror Deck, I promised a trick-taking game using the deck. Here it is!

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Zoomies

A trick-taking game for the Mirror Deck. You are cats wildly climbing up and down. The player with the most points gets in trouble for breaking the furniture. The player with second-most points at the end of the game wins.

Overview

Players: 4
Time: 15 Min
Age: 8+

About the Mirror Deck

This deck is 54 numbered cards. Each card is numbered 1 through 99, but each two digit number can be reversed. For example, the 53 card is also the 35 card. All the single-digits’ counterparts are multiplied by 10. For example, the 01 card is also the 10 card.

Setting Up the Game

Shuffle the deck and set it to the side of the play area. Remove 2 cards from the deck. They will not be used in this game.

Setting Up Each Round

The game is played over three rounds. At the start of each round, deal cards from the deck to each player’s hand. In the first round, deal 5 cards to each player. In the second and third round, deal 4 cards to each player.

Playing a Round

A round is divided into a set of tricks in which each player takes one turn in clockwise order. The first player of the first trick is chosen at random.

Playing the Trick

The first player plays any card from their hand to the center of the table and declares which of the two numbers is the one in play. This determines the Goal for the trick

If the first player chooses the higher number on their card, then the highest valued card will win the trick.
If they chose the lower number on their card, then the rule is that the lowest valued card will win the trick.

Example:
You are the first player. You play 45|54. You decide this card is considered a 45. (The “54” is ignored for the rest of the trick.) Because you chose the lower number, the goal of this trick is to play the lowest valued card.

Each other player then takes their turn for the trick, each playing one card and declaring which of the two numbers on their card they’re using.

Continuing the example:
The second player plays 19|91, deciding it is 19.
The third player plays 72|27, deciding it is 27.
The fourth player plays 40|04, deciding it is 04.

Note: Regardless of the current goal, each player decides how to use their cards. If for whatever reason they opt to not win a trick by intentionally choosing a suboptimal number, that is their prerogative.

Collecting the Trick

The winner of the trick takes all cards from the center of the table and places them face down in a separate hidden score pile.

Continuing the example:
The fourth player played a 04, the lowest valued number, so they won the trick.

The winner is the first player of the next trick.

Special Cards

Certain cards have only one value. These are 11, 22, 33, 44, 55, 66, 77, 88, and 99. Playing a special card reverses the Goal of the trick. If it’s high, it changes to low. If it’s low, it changes to high.

Example: You play a 45|54, deciding to use the 54. The goal is to have the highest value card in the trick.
The next player plays a 17|71, deciding to use it as a 71. She currently has the highest value card in the trick.
The third player plays a 22, which now changes the Goal to having the lowest value card in the trick.
The fourth player plays a 56|65, treating it as a 56.

If you lead the trick with a special card, you decide whether the goal is High or Low.

Game End

In the first round, each player gets 1 point for each trick they’ve collected. In the second round, each player gets 2 points for each trick. In the third round, each player gets 3 points for each trick. The player with the most points is eliminated for breaking the furniture. The player with second-most points wins.

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Thanks to the Matt and Ainsley in the Game Designers of North Carolina for suggesting the theme and extra little wrinkle for the endgame.

Analyzing the Mirror Deck for Game Design

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Solis) — Mon, 02 Sep 2024 19:21:00 +0000

It's been a few years since I created the Mirror Deck and posted it on DriveThruCards. As a reminder, it's a deck of cards numbered 1 through 99, where each number can have its digits transposed, so the deck is only 54 cards. I asked some advice from other game designers recently on where to take the deck next. James Ernest was especially helpful, recommending that I look for any rarities or natural "sets" in the deck that would lend themselves to game mechanisms.

I'm looking at how I can make a two-player trick-taking game out of the Mirror Deck.

Triangular Numbers

There are 13 triangular numbers in the deck's range, which I could mark with a triangle "suit" icon.

1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 28, 36, 45, 55, 66, 78, 91

Perfect Squares

There are 9 numbers in the deck's range, which I could mark with a square "suit" icon.

1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81

Primes

There are 25 prime numbers in the deck's range, which I could mark with a "P" icon as its own suit.

2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, 37, 41, 43, 47, 53, 59, 61, 67, 71, 73, 79, 83, 89, 97

Differences

The main hook of the Mirror Deck is how you can treat each card as a higher or lower value. It would be useful to know the maximum difference of any two inverted numbers.

Difference: 0 (9 Cards): 11|11, 22|22, 33|33, 44|44, 55|55, 66|66, 77|77, 88|88, 99|99
Difference: 9 (9 Cards): 21|12, 32|23, 43|34, 54|45, 65|56, 76|67, 87|78, 98|89, 10|1
Difference: 18 (8 Cards): 31|13, 42|24, 53|35, 64|46, 75|57, 86|68, 97|79, 20|2
Difference: 27 (7 Cards): 41|14, 52|25, 63|36, 74|47, 85|58, 96|69, 30|3
Difference: 36 (6 Cards): 51|15, 62|26, 73|37, 84|48, 95|59, 40|4
Difference: 45 (5 Cards): 61|16, 72|27, 83|38, 94|49, 50|5
Difference: 54 (4 Cards): 71|17, 82|28, 93|39, 60|6
Difference: 63 (3 Cards): 81|18, 92|29, 70|7
Difference: 72 (2 Cards): 91|19, 80|8
Difference: 81 (1 Card): 90|9

I can use a dice face symbol to note the number of cards in each of those suits, for example the Difference:36 cards would have a ⚅ symbol because there are six cards in that set.

Multiples of 11

One thing I noticed from the beginning is that a multiple of 11 has the least flexibility in the whole deck, since it cannot create a new number by transposing its digits. In most game designs, I'd probably set this set aside with some special rules. For example...

A dummy leader in a two-player trick-taking game: Shuffle up the 11s into their own deck. Reveal a new card at the start of a trick. This is the lead card.
Stakes of a round: The game is divided into 9 rounds, each worth progressively more points. The first round is worth 11, the second worth 22, and so on. The winner of a round takes the card into their score pile.
Trump Cards: I could just say that these nine cards "beat" any other card in a trick. A trump card can only be beaten by another trump card of higher value. So 11 beats any normal trick, but 22 beats that, and 33 beats that, and so on.

I think I'll go with the last option since it keeps things flexible.

In a future post, I'll write up the rules to a trick-taking game using the Mirror Deck. Stay tuned!

Designing Punch Out Components for Board Games

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Solis) — Sun, 19 May 2024 19:10:00 +0000

These components go by many names in the industry — Chipboard, Punchout, Punch Sheets, or Cardboard — but I typically just say “punch board” out of habit. They all refer to thick cardboard pressed between two glossy color laminate sheets on either side. A factory can create custom dies that perforate these sheets into different patterns, then the resulting tokens can be punched out of the sheet. (Packaging and shipping tokens still connected to a sheet protects them in transit until they’re purchased.)

Before getting too far along in your design process, consult with your factory representative to confirm they are able to achieve your requests. They’ll offer solutions that best suit your needs at a budget you’re able to sustain. They will also explain how they prefer to have their files delivered.

Assume all punch board components require designated bleed, trim, and safe zones just like a card design. However, the thickness of the sheet determines how strict those margins need to be. Typically a factory will demand need a minimum 3mm bleed and safe zone, meaning that there is a minimum of 6mm between any two components.

Here are some samples of how you might format art for some components and the errors you may encounter in doing so.

COIN

Problem: The coin’s shiny details have stopped at the trim line, meaning that they will sometimes be cropped-off-center.
Solution: Either extend the shine all the way to the bleed line OR add an outer border so the shine stops within the safe margin.

WATER TILE

Problem: This water tile has small landmasses that sit entirely between the trim line and bleed line, meaning they will appear inconsistently across various tiles.
Solution: Either make the landmass more solid and contiguous so it can tolerate miscuts OR make the water texture more homogenous without high-contrast details.

ROCKET

Problem: The rocket ship’s artwork is entirely cropped to the intended trim line, meaning any miscuts will draw more attention.
Solution: Extend the hull artwork all the way to the bleed line, removing any details that would be outside the safe margin. Use angles perpendicular to the trimmed edge where possible, so vertical and horizontal mis-registrations aren’t as noticeable.

CAR:

Problem: The car has a similar problem as the rocket, however there is an alternate solution in this case.
Solution: Rather than extend the artwork, you can expand the trim line so the safe zone margin roughly matches the car’s silhouette. Outside the car, you can add simple landscape and sky textures to fill in the space.

All of these bleed-extensions may look strange on the page, but they’ll look fine when the component is punched out. Without these extensions, misalignments will be very obvious and look amateurish.

For artwork depicting people or animals, it’s safer to not make the trim line hug the exact shape of the artwork. Instead, you must imagine the artwork’s silhouette as your safe margin and add several mm around that shape. Round out any sharp internal recesses, otherwise an especially deep notch might mar the art. You can put whatever you like behind the artwork to fill in the extra space, like in the car example above. You may leave it blank white or add a background. Just make sure it’s indistinct enough that it won’t make misalignments too obvious.

For example, to save on production expenses, the four Elemental Lords in "Gates of Mara" all use the exact same die cut pattern. Artist Nastya Lehn illustrated each of the lords in similar poses that would fit within the safe zone of that die cut. On the base of the figure, you’ll see that we duplicated the icons on both halves of the circle since the standee would be blocking line-of-sight for some players.

Taking this one step further, your trim lines may have no correlation with the artwork at all. Instead, the shape itself can have embedded mechanical relevance in the gameplay. For example, the standees in "Gates of Mara" may only be placed in certain geometric spaces matching their base. A square base can only be placed on a square space, a circle base on a circle space, and so on. To help recognition, the tops of the standees are cut to resemble their bases. The circle bases also have round tops. The square bases also have flat tops. The triangular bases have pointed tops.

Hopefully these tips and examples will help you along with your own punched components!

A Visit to Sid Sackson's Archives

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Solis) — Fri, 05 Apr 2024 12:37:00 +0000

After legendary designer Sid Sackson passed, the Strong Museum of Play became the home of his personal papers. This collection includes correspondences, journals, prototypes, sketches, and a bunch more ephemera from his long career. His diaries alone spanned 35 years and were intricately indexed. It will take years to transcribe and digitize them all, but the early parts of his career are up on the Sid Sackson Portal here: https://sacksonportal.museumofplay.org/s/sackson-portal/page/welcome

A year after the portal's launch, Julia Novakovic posted an update on the project's ongoing road map for future transcription and public display: https://www.museumofplay.org/blog/the-sid-sackson-portal-one-year-later/

But before the portal went online, the only way to see any of these papers was to go personally to the Strong Museum and schedule a visit with the curator. (Many thanks to Julia for giving a rando like me access to these artifacts!) My wife and I paid a visit to Rochester to see a few museums, but I had carved out an hour or two to peruse and photograph as much as I could and share it on twitter.

Below is the unspooled thread of those posts. Forgive the brevity of these tweets. Since I knew they would soon be launching the portal and I only had a brief window, I didn't devote much time to documenting his diaries. I instead looked at the correspondences, invoices, and other documents relating to the day-to-day business of being a professional game designer.

Hope you dig this peek into history!

That's... A lot of historical archives. This might take a minute.

My god. Sid Sackson's hand drawn diagrams for Playing Cards Around The World.

So many questions already, like why was the game Tresette cut from the book?

I can't imagine writing and diagramming one solid rulebook by hand, let alone an entire collection. Incredible.

Manuscript preface from GAMUT OF GAMES. Gosh, if he felt like there wasn't enough selection back in the day, I wonder what he would say to the flood of new games we have now.

Oh, you're a game designer? Tell me the proper usage of the verb "foreplace." (Manuscript excerpt from MATE in GAMUT OF GAMES.)

My man Sid was out here playing Indiana Jones, parleying with a book dealer's wife to find a dusty unpublished booklet from an obscure German designer.

A sample of hand drawn diagrams from GAMUT OF GAMES manuscript.

At the request of @CCGHistory I checked what was the correspondence between WotC and Sid Sackson. WotC thanked Sid for visiting, included several Fallen Empires boosters and a rules booklet. Couldn't find a diary entry about this trip, but Sid's diaries will be public in Oct.

Back when gamers wore a full suit, pearls, and diamond earrings for game night.
(From the box of ACQUIRE correspondence.)

I'm running out of time so I'm taking as many pics as I can while I'm here. I have to share this remarkable correspondence from 3M to Sid about ACQUIRE. Can you imagine a publisher today waiting "several years" for a game to go "full tilt."?

Letters from Feb-July 1964, finalizing the rules of ACQUIRE. Can you imagine game dev limited to the speed of postal mail these days?

Then again, 3M pre-selling the game before the rules were done sounds like a modern Kickstarter to me. HEYOOO🔥

I was delighted to find Strong Museum has the actual royalty invoices from 3M for ACQUIRE. How much did Sid get paid? In Q4 1964, adjusted for inflation, he earned $25,292.23 that quarter alone. Seems like a very different industry back then.

Even after that apparent success, Sid still had to submit his new games with the proper forms like any old schmuck. Here's the submission form for his game SPECTRUM, submitted July 1965.

I got to hold the actual galley of ACQUIRE's cover art. That's my hand besmirching that artifact!

In case you're curious, here's the first royalty advance invoice for ACQUIRE from Q4 1963. $75 or about $660 in today's dollars. I dunno if this stuff is as interesting to anyone else. Game design is one thing, but I like seeing how the guy made a living of this business.

Earlier in this thread I said I couldn't find a note in Sid's diary about visiting WotC. However, I did see this Jan 1995 note anticipating "the collectable card game market" at the next GAMA in March 1995. However WotC's thank you note was sent in February. Mysterious.

The editor's red line notes from the typescript preface of PLAYING CARDS AROUND THE WORLD. July 4, 1981. I was a baby when this was written.

I didn't take many photos of the diaries since they will be going live online in a couple months. I did see an entry where he literally wrote that he was up in bed, right then, thinking about overhauling his old prototype TRADE. The next week's entries document playtest results.

That's the moment where it became very real for me. Here's this guy in his final years, a long career already accomplished, and yet still kept up awake thinking about his next game. That used to happen to me, but not in a very long time. I dunno which is the healthier path. Hm.

It was so wonderful getting this brief glimpse of Sid Sackson's life and career in game design. Countless thanks to @archivesjulia for arranging this access. I hope I can do it again some time. Thank you!

Translating Game Text to Language-Neutral Diagrams

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Solis) — Sun, 31 Mar 2024 12:35:00 +0000

Good news! I've submitted the final draft of my book "Graphic Design for Board Games" to the publisher! Of course that now leaves a void in my schedule for some other long-term project. I'm not yet certain what that would be, so for now I'll continue sharing early drafts and previews of what I've written for the book. The following section comes from the chapter on designing language-neutral diagrams. In this sub-section, I discuss the practical process of diagramming each part of a game action into glyphs and icons.

Let’s make a diagram for a very simple in-game action: You take 2 apples from one opponent.

The effect text is written in second-person declarative tense, so “you” is implicit. To be very clear, it could be written as “You take 2 Apples from one opponent.” For most games, you won’t need an icon for “you,” but let’s assume that this game does need that extra clarity. So you need two “person” icons, one for “you” and one for “opponent.” In this example, you have two “person” icons. “You” has arms raised, a solid color and no outline. “Opponent” has arms lowered, a black outline, and a dartboard for a head to indicate that this one opponent is being targeted.

Presumably, you’ve already made icons for your game’s most commonly used nouns. If you’re lucky, your nouns are actual items, like food or water, which can be represented by symbols of the real things. For more abstract concepts, like prestige, energy, or actions, try simple flat shapes like stars, lightning bolts, or hearts. If the game has fictional resources like “Unobtainium” or “Magic,” then make the symbol resemble the corresponding game component as much as possible. For this case, you can show the apple icon twice and delete the “2” from the diagram.

The only remaining text is the verb “take” and the conjunction “from.” It’s helpful to look at the effect from a very high-level perspective and translate the game effect into different “zones” of the game area. In this case, the effect is really saying “2 Apple moves from Zone A (an opponent’s supply) to Zone B (your supply).” The transfer of resources can be represented by a large arrow going from left (the opponent’s icon) to right (the “you” icon). Within that arrow, you show the two icons for Apple. Thus you have a complete diagram for this game effect that can be easily recognized at most scales.

Here are some more examples of common effects and how they might be diagrammed.

Gain 1 Apple or Banana

“Gain 1 Apple or 1 Banana.” While this is still technically a transfer of resources from one game zone (the general supply) to another (your supply), using an arrow and making an icon for the general supply may make the diagram rather cluttered. In most cases, players will understand that these simple effects presumably affect themselves alone. You can show “+” an icon for the apple and banana. You can represent “or” with a diagonal slash “/”

“Spend 1 Apple to increase your Strength.” This transactional style of effect is very common in games. It’s implicitly an “if/then” statement. In other words “If you choose to lose 1 apple, you increase your Strength by one increment.” Most games use “:” to divide the “if” and “then” portions of a diagram. Let’s also presume this game has a “Strength Track” rather than Strength tokens. In that case, it’s useful to depict “increase” as a different symbol from “gain.” In this case, upward-pointing chevrons imply an upward movement of along the strength track.

(Diagram of four possible in-game actions in Diamonds.)

This is an excerpt from the rulebook for Diamonds. Each suit of a standard card deck lets you move diamonds among different vaults as shown. Note how the arrow in each example goes over or under the vault icon to indicate whether it’s publicly accessible.

(Diagram of a multi-step action in Senators.)

This diagram is an example of the “Extortion” phase of Senators, in which a player sets a price for their opponents’ goods. Note how each step of play focuses on one point of time, using transparency to attract or avoid attention when most pertinent. The colors of arrows are color-coded to match the acting players. Inactive players are about 25% opacity, like the white player in the second panel or the pink player in the third panel. When the green player makes an offer, it’s depicted as a comic-style speech bubble.

Three Principles of Card Design: Visibility, Hierarchy, Brevity

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Solis) — Tue, 20 Feb 2024 21:46:00 +0000

This is an excerpt from the rough draft of my book Graphic Design for Board Games. If you want early sneak peeks at the rest of the draft, including editorial comments and discussion, head over to my patreon!

Three Principles of Card Design

I spend most of this chapter getting in the weeds of print production and manufacturing. That’s just where I spent most of my time in my career, so that’s where I have the most information to share. However, if you’re just getting started designing cards, you don’t have to worry about all that just yet. There are three main principles of card design to remember as you design your card. These are not “rules” per se, just useful concepts to keep in mind.

Figure 4.0a Visibility of cards from Ettin (2020).

Visibility: Make the most important information easily visible. If your cards are held in hand, stacked, splayed, or tucked, consider the areas that are going to be most visible at that moment. Check corners and edges in particular, since those will most likely be hidden by a thumb or other components. You can use this to your advantage by hiding information that may only be relevant in special circumstances or edge cases.

Figure 4.0b Hierarchy of cards from Ettin (2020).

Hierarchy: Arrange information from the most important to least important. List all of the elements on a card and make a decision about which is most important. (Don't be precious and say everything is important.) For example a card title comes up a lot, so you probably want that closer to the top and a visible corner. A card cost may be relevant as well, that is conditional to your specific game. If you have to pay for a card each time you play it, then it's very important. If you only pay for the card once, then you can afford to tuck it away in a more hidden area.

Figure 4.0c Brevity of cards from Ettin (2020).

Brevity: Abbreviate common phrases with key words or icons. When your game has many cards, you have to be efficient with how much text you fit onto each card. More content means that the font has to be smaller and/or more compressed, making it harder to read. Looking for other solutions helps keep the card approachable and fun to play. Discuss with your game developers whether lengthy and recurring game terms can be condensed into shorter key words or even use icons. For example, "Rotate this card 90º" can be condensed to the key word "tap" or "exhaust." This is such a common action in card games, most just replace the entire clause with one simple icon that takes a fraction of the space.

You might be able to cite a few long-standing successful card games that violate one or more of these principles. Some may place critical information at inconvenient spots, or arrange information in an unintuitive order, or squeeze in paragraphs of information into tiny fine print.

Bear in mind that many of those venerable titles were first published before best practices had been established, so they’re doing their best to retain their identity while still serving a more sophisticated audience. Established games also have the luxury of a built-in player base that can tolerate the quirks of their favorite hobby. (In fact, some very belligerent veterans may protest any attempt to streamline or improve their game’s visuals.)

Your new game doesn’t have such a luxury. Instead, it has the advantage of learning from the mistakes of all those prior games. You can risk breaking any of these principles at your discretion, but it’s worthwhile to know the nature of that risk so you can make an informed decision. Make it clear to any player that you willfully chose to break these “rules” of design.

What to do with Trickster, hmmm...

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Solis) — Sat, 03 Feb 2024 21:02:00 +0000

I've got the rights to Trickster back in my hands! I'm considering where its future may lead.

Trickster was my first attempt at really pushing print-on-demand as a primary distributor. It was an ambitious plan back in 2015. In those days, it was a series of individual small-deck card games. The deck sizes were optimized for best margins and ease of shipping from POD.

Each deck was standalone, but could be shuffled together. The core rules were the same for all of the games, but the cards in each deck had unique abilities. (I would attempt this again with the "I Can't Even" series and with the Plume decks.)

After releasing the fourth deck, Trickster got picked up by a publisher as a big box edition on Kickstarter, with a new look at revised theme. Unfortunately it never really caught on in retail. I think it's really better for a small indie channel like DriveThru. I'd been waiting for the retail inventory to run low before promoting the classic decks again. So for now it's back to POD!

You can find them here on my store at DriveThruCards.

https://www.drivethrucards.com/browse/pub/5381/Smart-Play-Games

Rocket Broker - Worker Placement Area Control Roll-and-Write

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Solis) — Tue, 30 Jan 2024 14:07:00 +0000

(This is a rough sketch of a game from 2017, when dice placement and roll-and-writes were gaining more popularity. I was in a phase where I was just merging as many different ingredients together to see if they'd stick. You can see some of these ideas in Pencil Park.)

You’re trying to get your payloads onto rockets and into orbit. Rocket space ain’t cheap and neither is the fuel. You have to invest wisely if you want to launch!

Setup

The game comes with a deck of rocket cards. Shuffle a number of cards based on player count. (Designer note: I never determined a number since this prototype never got tested.)

Lay out six random rocket cards onto each of the launchpad spaces. Each rocket card has a space agency that is sponsoring its launch, like NASA, or JAXA. Each rocket has a different arrangement of spaces representing its cargo capacity. The oval below each rocket card space is its fuel, which will be needed for the rocket to launch at all.

Start of Round

At the start of a round, a player rolls three dice and sets them where all players can see.

On Your Turn

On your turn, you may do one of the following actions. You must have enough cubes available in your supply to take the chosen action.

Action: Load

Choose one die to represent the type of cargo you want to load. The other two dice represent which launch pads you may load with that cargo. All our cubes cubes must fit in the on empty spaces of the chosen cargo.

With the results ⚀ ⚁ ⚃, you can place ■ on launchpad 2 or 4; or ■ ■ on launchpad 1 or 4; or ■ ■ ■ ■ on launchpad 1 or 2.

Some rockets give immediate benefits when you load certain types of cargo.

Action: Fuel

Add together two of the dice and place that many cubes in the dotted area below the launch pad of your choice. There are no spatial requirements for fuel. Just pile up those cubes!

Action: Launch

Choose a rocket that has more fuel cubes than cargo cubes. That rocket launches! A launched rocket rewards whoever has most, 2nd most, and 3rd most cubes in cargo and/or fuel. Tied players get equal rewards.

⚡: Gain 1 power in the rocket’s agency.

★: Increase the agency's prestige.

♥: Gain 1 popularity.

Replace the rocket card with a new one from the deck.

Midgame

Crossing milestones on the ♥ track give you points, plus ⚡ or ★ for you to assign to an agency of your choice.

Endgame

The game ends when the rocket deck runs out. Your endgame score is (⚡×★) in each agency where you have either, plus points from ♥.

Ludology discusses imposter syndrome

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Solis) — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 14:10:00 +0000

It's the annual recap episode of the Ludology podcast. Important notes on imposter syndrome here. Host Erica Bouyouris is the designer of "Dumb Ways To Die," the best-selling new card game of the year. That should be a huge achievement for any game designer. Unfortunately, that doesn't align with BoardGameGeek buzz or lead to big awards, so she's had to come to terms with that as she continues in her career.

Good discussion on feedback, mental health, and managing your well-being as a game designer.

https://ludology.libsyn.com/ludology-315-happy-2024

2023 Book Review

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Solis) — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 16:00:00 +0000

Here are all the books I've read and reviewed over the past year. As is typical of my lifestyle, I take in more audiobooks than physical books. I'm not a purist about that sort of thing. The one hitch is that I've already burned through a LOT of the audiobooks from the library that had my interest. It's forced me to branch out to other genres, so you'll see some more non-fiction and a couple of mysteries here. Plus one or two books I'm categorizing as Fantasy, though there are no swords and sorcery in the mix.

There is one very specific element that kept popping up in the sci-fi I read this year: A distant-future community of humans has their Earthly origins kept secret by a manufactured religious authority.

The Interdependency Trilogy features a theocratic government put in place to manage an interplanetary alliance of traders and producers.
The Safehold series backstory, human survivors of an alien purge get their minds erased and rewritten to avoid any new industrial technology that might draw the aliens' attention.
The SILO trilogy has an isolated community of humans living underground, compelled by religious doctrine to never leave their enclosed environment.

What a peculiar recurring theme to encounter in books from very different authors at very different levels of quality. I wonder if something's just been in the air the past ten years or so.

Anyway, what follows are my gathered book reviews from my Mastodon account. (https://mastodon.social/@DanielSolis) Follow me there if you'd like to see more!

Non-Fiction

DUCKS by Kate Beaton covers her time working and living on the oil sands, just before her rise to fame. Beaton is unflinching as she presents all layers of the oil sands' fraught economies, flashes of empathy, banal commonplace brutality, and heartbreaking rage. Throughout the slices of life, a question lurks: Has this system changed these people or just exposed something already within them? This is the kind of book that sits in your gut for a while.

I'M GLAD MY MOM DIED by Jennette McCurdy

This memoir hits different because I never watched the Nickelodeon show and I wouldn't recognize any of the cast in a crowd. (I was just a few years too old for it.) So instead of the celebrity aspect, what hit me most was deep gravity that poverty and mental illness can have across generations. In particular, how little that new wealth or fame can heal those deep scars.

THE SIRENS OF MARS

Sarah Stewart Johnson

A wistful memoir of a planetary science career, contextualized by anecdotes from our historical fascination with Mars. A fun read, even if you're familiar with bits of that history. It's humbling seeing it braided together.

ACROSS THE AIRLESS WILDS by Earl Swift

A loving history of the hectic development of the three rovers that Apollo astronauts drove on the moon. Detailed with actual memos and diaries, but never mired in minutia. I have a deeper appreciation for the LRV as more than a mere "moon buggy." Throughout, the events leading to the final Apollo missions have a wistful, ominous tone. Everyone knew this would be the last trip, they just didn't know how long it would be.

THE NEW GUYS

Meredith Bagby

In the late 70s, NASA introduced their first class of civilians, women, and POC — "those f*ing new guys" as the old-timers put it. Bagby details four decades and a dozen astronauts, offering plenty of space history without getting bogged down. In effect, this is a biography of the space shuttle program itself. That includes cynical beginnings, heartbreaking tragedies, and infuriating mismanagement. The New Guys rise above it all.

Sci-Fi

DOOMSDAY BOOK by Connie Willis

This 1992 time travel novel was eerily prescient about the pandemic, aside from the absence of cell phones and internet.

Alas, I found the present-day plot full of fretful complainers and anime-style repetition. The 1300s story had more emotional stakes, though also its own share of nasty fretting.

I grew impatient with the delirious evasions that slowed the 1st half. It recovered in the 2nd half, but I don't think I'll revisit this series.

AT THE SIGN OF TRIUMPH

David Weber

I haven't recorded my thoughts on each of the SAFEHOLD books since my opinion has only lessened over time. The nautical stuff was fun, but increasingly rare amidst other cringey, repetitive plot points. (I made a bingo card of Weber's oft-used phrases, like "he showed his teeth" or "in the fullness of time.") This is not the last book, but I'm ending here since it took nine doorstopper novels to close just *one* major arc. That's it, I'm done.

WOOL

Hugh Howey

A centuries-old community lives in a mile-deep subterranean silo, forbidden from mentioning anything "outside" or "before." That pressure cooker ratchets up the tension while confidently answering each question raised by the central premise. No interminable mystery boxes here. The world unravels just enough to tantalize. What a blessed relief it is to sense the author has an endgame in mind and does not dawdle. Props to the editing team.

SHIFT

Hugh Howey

Howey doesn't dawdle with a mystery. SHIFT lays bare the backstory of Silo's core premise. While those answers require *many* suspensions of disbelief, the greatest is that we're expected to have empathy for such a feeble, weak-willed protagonist. His milquetoast hand-wringing directly leads to the end of most life on Earth. Made even more inexplicable by the only two female characters being desperately in love with him? Oy vey.

DUST

Hugh Howey

After SHIFT, you might be surprised I read on to book 3, but the plot veered back to book 1's much more endearing characters. (Thankfully.) As usual, Howey isn't coy about doling the outlandish premise a definitive answer, even if the details strain credulity. (How long are canned vegetables still edible?) There's a brief unnecessary digression into a sadistic apocalyptic cult that goes nowhere, but overall a satisfying conclusion.

KAIJU PRESERVATION SOCIETY

John Scalzi

The hero's pandemic job loss leads to a new gig with an intergovernmental group managing an alternate Earth's colossal wildlife. A breezy adventure written mostly during the depths of the pandemic. Office Space meets Godzilla. Funny how the threat of a giant radioactive monster is a light-hearted escape from the grim reality of a tiny virus. Thankfully, this closes with a tidy happy ending without loose threads suggesting an ongoing "saga."

MICKEY 7

Edward Ashton

Sometimes, you accept a core premise to get to the rest of the story.

Accept that a planet colony requires one laborer who is replaceable with their own clones. It's a role valuable enough to spend scarce resources, but for various reasons that tech is not used to help any other colonists "survive."

The resulting story is mostly inoffensive. It skirts towards a bro-ey voice at times. I'm not surprised it will become a movie. I'll read the sequel.

ANTIMATTER BLUES

Edward Ashton

Mickey7's sequel is fine as far as the plot went, except that characters wouldn't share vital information with each other when it would be really useful. Lots of

"Well are you going to TELL me?"

"Not yet"

"Why didn't you warn us?"

"I did, technically."

Makes sense for nascent alien miscommunication, but got increasingly bizarre for the humans. One character's arc hinges on a series of unanswered text messages. Odd.

EMBERS OF WAR

FLEET OF KNIVES

LIGHT OF IMPOSSIBLE STARS

Gareth L. Powell

This feels odd to say, but this trilogy is the first time I've read something where I felt like I had read the same books as the author. The alternating POV chapters feel like the Expanse. The scrappy rogues' gallery of crewmates feels a bit like Wayfinders (though might just as easily be Firefly- or Farscape-inspired.) The sprinkling of opaque alien artifacts left behind as warning and security from an ancient galactic threat feels Revelation Space. The snarky ship minds having hyperspeed conversations in virtual environments felt like The Culture. In the end, the melange never quite gelled for me though. I could see the seams between these disparate inspirations to clearly. This is a shame, because I do desperately want a new author to pick up the mantle of Banks.

FRACTAL NOISE

Christopher Paolini

I like "doomed exploration" scifi stories into the heart of darkness. Here, a crew of blue-collar space workers find the first sign of sentient alien life: A giant hole, kilometers deep, emitting megatons worth of energy into space at regular intervals. They must approach on-foot, testing their humanity at each step. Alas, this genre too often has an obtuse antagonist seemingly intent on worsening any crisis. This story has TWO of them.

THE CONSUMING FIRE

John Scalzi

Happy to come back to this trilogy after a long time since I read book 1. Lingers on the court intrigue for my tastes, but the players are down-to-earth and find some fun space opera hooks. Immediately checked out book 3.

THE LAST EMPEROX

John Scalzi

Great closer to a tight trilogy. Carries on a bit of the courtly intrigue but better balanced with the revelations and space shenanigans introduced in book 2. Gently opens some possible new stories but I'm satisfied with how it wraps up.

Fantasy

BEFORE YOUR MEMORY FADES

Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Anthology about a cafe where you can travel through time, but following such strict rules that it may as well just be a therapy session. Thus the traveler in each story reconciles some deep regret or grief in their life.

This is the third book in the series, but I took a chance jumping in. You get the gist pretty well since it's mainly an anthology anyway.

A gentle, low-stakes Quantum Leap. Recommended!

NONA THE NINTH

Tamsyn Muir

I already have trouble keeping track of names. Here, everyone has multiple names and bodies are shared by multiple people. Add to this salad a few dozen other Proper Nouns, several vaguely defined disputes between various factions, and a main character who has very little agency throughout most of the story. Protagonist as MacGuffin.

I did like getting some answers about the back story of the world.

Otherwise, this is not for me.

Mystery

THE THURSDAY MURDER CLUB

Richard Osman

A kind and humanist spin on the classic cozy murder mystery. The heroes are septegenarian amateur detectives living in a retirement community. All have histories that contribute to their team, like an elderly Scooby Gang.

THE MAN WHO DIED TWICE

Richard Osman

I really enjoyed the first of these mystery novels, but wondered how it could possibly become a series. I shouldn't have worried! Osman ties together about three separate mysteries then cuts them all at once, like a Gordian knot. That said, the real draw is the gaggle of septuagenarian detectives and their widening circle of confidants. A true delight for any mystery fan.

THE BULLET THAT MISSED

Richard Osman

The geriatric detective gang face unexpected consequences of how they solved their last mystery. Includes some of the enemies-turned-friends arcs that I like. There is one bit of "Knock the heroes unconscious, but they experience no long-term medical repercussions" that is my constant pet peeve. It seems especially galling when the heroes are 80+. Ah well, it's in good fun. I love hanging out with these low-key, smartass old folks.

Five Themes for Set Collection in Board Game Design

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Solis) — Tue, 26 Dec 2023 21:26:00 +0000

I often rely on set collection for my early prototypes. It's such a simple, satisfying framework to motivate players and give clear goals. The problem is how often set collection becomes a rote, emotionless task list to complete. The theme of the set collection is what set makes it more appealing to new players. An evocative theme suggests secondary mechanisms that help fill out the rest of the game. Here are a few themes I've used or seen over the years.

Recipes and Shopping Lists

Welcome to Stabbed! Impress the chefs, follow the recipes, and you won't be stabbed!

This is by far the most common usage of set collection. Players are tasked with collecting certain amounts or combinations of resources. Then they're rewarded with a certain number of points. That straightforward transactional structure is certainly useful when the rest of the game is rather complex, but it doesn't necessarily suggest fun secondary mechanisms.

I got around this in Junk Orbit by making the "resources" serve two purposes. On one hand, the tiles you collect are worth their listed value if they're delivered to their destinations. On the other hand, you may discard a tile to move a distance equal to its value. Now you must decide whether it's worth the opportunity cost of tile A in order to deliver tile B.

Awards and Achievements

Start your research! Bribe the committees! Be the first to publish... or perish!

If you want to add some more urgency to the proceedings, you can award set collection values mid-game in a racing format. Whoever achieves the set conditions first gets the best reward, followed by consolation prizes for follow-up finishers.

In Monsoon Market and Space Battle Lunchtime, I gave each recipe a perfect "gold" value if you matched the requisite ingredients and quantities exactly. However, I also permitted incorrect quantities and ingredient substitutions for lesser values. There the choice is whether to rush a recipe for a quick gain or hold out for a better reward that may take longer.

Omens and Prophecies

It has been foretold that a hero would deliver three sheep, two lumber, and one stone.

I really love this theme for a set collection mechanism. The theme reframes the set collection mechanism as a foretelling of future events. In essence, you begin the game with an epic debt that must be repaid or face divine consequences. Critically, for this theme to work, the set collection must be randomly assigned. You didn't ask for this! That puts you in the POV of an archetypal hero called by circumstances out of their control, rising from humble beginnings to higher purpose.

I haven't used this mechanism myself, but I think it suits mythical themes very well. I recommend revealing the set collection goals slowly over the course of the game, letting players predict and adapt to shifting fortunes as they're uncovered. (The game Akrotiri does slow reveal very well.) Consider the secondary outcomes of an unfulfilled prophecy. The impact should affect the central shared game space of the board somehow, like a monster left unslain or a voyage doomed to drift eternally.

Pledges and Promises

I do hereby swear to build a train route connecting Seattle to Vancouver via Orlando.

This is a slight hybrid of the Awards and Omens structure. Players must "call their shot" early in the game, declaring that they will achieve certain conditions. The more outlandish the promise, the higher the reward if accomplished. This might be done during the setup of a round, like predicting how many tricks you will take in a card game. It might be done as a part of normal gameplay, such as funding awards in Terraforming Mars.

This theme works well if you're willing to let players have a loose, unguided couple of turns early in the game. That lets players assess their standing during the first few rounds before they commit to a certain goal. This is great for gambling games where early bets pay out the most money. I recommend giving players some small randomly assigned contract to get things started, like the initial draft of tickets in Ticket to Ride, so they have some initial starting steps to follow. Games like Downforce, For Sale, and many trick-taking games force players to commit to a goal very early, which requires some play experience to make an informed decision. This is great for veteran experts, but can be off-putting to new players.

Fuel and Tech Trees

We need to make a stop at Pluto if we're going to hit our quota.

In this theme, the set collection is a set of prerequisites that must be met in a particular order. It's not enough to get all the ingredients by the end of the game, each condition must be met in a particular sequence to satisfy the ultimate goal.

I've wanted to use this theme as a representation of gravity assists orbiting through the solar system. For example, the two Voyager probes only had so much space to carry thruster fuel, which wasn't enough to accelerate to the outer planets. To build up momentum and save thrust, they had to do flybys of inner planets at key opportunities when they were aligned.

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What other set collection themes have you seen?

Artist Advice: Early in my career, should I focus on building my portfolio or taking on small jobs?

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Solis) — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 13:47:00 +0000

This is extremely important:

What you draw today is what you'll be hired for tomorrow.

If you draw spaceships, you'll show up on searches for spaceships.
If you draw dragons, you'll be sorted with the dragons.
If you don't want to draw spaceships or dragons, don't post them in your portfolio.

As an art director, I have to search through hundreds of portfolios for each project, looking for the right potential candidates. If I don't see what I need in your portfolio, you don't even appear in that initial search, let alone get further consideration.

If you're in a financial position to just work on your portfolio so you can build up your skills, that's totally valid. Just make sure you're posting consistently and that your best work is visible first. You can also delete older work that doesn't show your current skill level. (I see a lot of portfolios with years-old freshman-level work that never got cleared out.)

To get paid will building your portfolio, search for jobs with licenses or themes that will fill your portfolio with the type of work you want to keep doing. If it pays a little less, but the client pays on time, offers good direction, and it beefs up your SEO, then it might be worth it. Just be prepared to charge higher rates as you move up in your career. You're worth it!

"Small" jobs should still pay!

Artist Advice: How do I pick freelance jobs early in my career? Should I argue for higher pay or take what I can get?

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Solis) — Mon, 18 Dec 2023 13:38:00 +0000

First of all, never work (for someone else) for free!

I'll break those four ideas down below, but just remember that only you can determine what your time is worth. You can always go lower, but it's hard to go higher. I recommend starting high. Never accept the feeling of being underpaid for your time and skill. You'll be surprised how quickly you can fall out of love with art.

That said, both of these questions require an honest assessment of your skills, availability, the client's personality, and your enthusiasm in a particular project.

Skills: Browse "open for commissions" tags on social media and look for artists with a similar style and skill level as yourself. Try to do this with a healthy perspective. This isn't an attempt to make yourself feel bad or good. Think of it as co-workers organizing for better pay. You're just assessing a fair pay rate. Even if all other skills are equal, you might still opt to charge more for the same project than another artist.

Availability: As you look at the current commission market, check where other artists are based, whether art is their full-time job, and how fast they promise to complete their commissions. Take all of those factors into consideration when you determine your pricing. If you live in a major city, this is your full-time job, and you're very fast, you should charge much more. If you live modestly, this is a side hobby, and you don't promise a fast turnaround, then you'll have to make adjustments accordingly.

Client: There's some old advice that there should be a "jerk tax" for working with difficult clients, but I recommend just declining those offers outright. Even a good project can last for weeks or months depending on the scope of work, and you don't want to be chained to a miserable experience that long. Set your parameters in the beginning and stick to them. Be ready and willing to fire a client if the project goes out of scope.

Enthusiasm: When I freelanced, I accepted projects that had a noteworthy license or interesting theme that would look good on my portfolio. Beware of unscrupulous licensees using this to their advantage. They'll low-ball their offers because they expect the prestige of the license to be an honor in its own right. Prestige doesn't pay the rent. Get your fair rate.

Remember that you should have a contract from the beginning. At minimum the contract should list:

What you get paid
When you get paid
What you're expected to deliver
By what due date you're expected do deliver

Get those terms locked down early and you'll have a much better experience earlier in your career.

Never work for someone else for free!

7 and 1: Avoiding Confusion

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Solis) — Wed, 10 May 2023 13:52:00 +0000

Photo of two tokens. One with a one and one with a seven but they look almost identical making it hard to differentiate. (Source)

Some typefaces don’t have enough distinguishing features between their 7 and 1. The usual culprits are sans serif, modernist, or futuristic fonts that have removed so many distinctive features of their characters that they become indiscernible from each other. You may also run into this problem with italicized numerals, where a slanted 1 could be confused for the angle of a 7.

7 should have an exaggerated angle, with a wide stance that significantly extends its top bar. It may also be handy to have a small crossbar across the midsection, though this is not a common attribute. Avoid any 7s that have a serif base, since that is more common for a 1 and may lead to further ambiguity.

1 is should be upright, to contrast the 7's lean. You can look for an even MORE simplified 1 that is so abstract that it just becomes a skinny vertical line. Just be careful this wouldn’t be found near a capital I or lowercase l, since those may also be mistaken for a 1. I prefer a 1 that has short, downward sloping top stroke and a strong serif at the base.

If you’re putting these numbers on tokens representing different denominations, like money or resources, then you can put the larger values onto increasingly larger tokens, with 1 being the smallest token. You can also change the colors, ranging from gray at the lowest value to gold at the highest value.

Of course, the easiest solution is to change fonts. However, you may be forced to make manual edits to your numerals in Photoshop or Illustrator. In those cases, adding the details described above should resolve the problem. (But really, it’s better to pick a different font.)

"Snappy Dresser" Card Template

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Solis) — Sun, 07 May 2023 16:48:00 +0000

As a little weekend hobby project, I was thinking about how some of the concepts and visual language of Marvel SNAP would translate into a printed card.

Very quickly, this spun out into its own concept. I imagined the cost and strength would both have to be locked to the top left for ease of reference. I minimized the cost icon to be less prominent since you'd rarely have to look at it while it's in play. The basic, ongoing, and reveal abilities ought to have distinct backgrounds so you could quickly scan the board for triggers.

The artwork here comes from "Aguila Negra" (Black Eagle) issue #100, a Portuguese language comic from 1966 that is now in public domain. I loved that this guy wearing a full knight costume would don a disguise OVER his costume, including sunglasses over his mask and a fedora over his helmet! Quite a snappy dresser indeed!

You can download this Photoshop file at the Patreon post linked below.

» https://www.patreon.com/posts/82651355

This includes layered smart objects for the backgrounds, borders, and icon elements. Note how most of the layers are plain vector shapes with layer effects, so it's relatively easy to upscale or downscale them as needed. The only rasterized layers are the halftone textures and the artwork.

Enjoy!

Troubleshooting: How to fix "Remove Blank Lines for Empty Fields" in InDesign Data Merge

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Solis) — Fri, 31 Mar 2023 15:40:00 +0000

I'm working on a card design that has multiple variables within the same text field. Each variable is its own paragraph with its own Paragraph Style.

It's rare that every card has content for each variable ABC though. Usually it's a mix, like AC, AB, or BC. The issue is that when you delete empty lines, sometimes the remaining paragraph gets re-assigned the deleted paragraph's style. Compound this over a whole document and you can see why it's a pain in the butt.

Here's a video explaining the situation:

Here's my solution:

To reliably remove blank lines from a merged document, first do NOT activate "Remove Blank Lines for Empty Fields" in your Content Placement Options. It's often too buggy to be reliable, except in the most simple cases where all of the paragraphs have the same style anyway. 

Then Create Merged Document as you normally would. The resulting document will have a lot of blank lines because of the empty fields. Here's what you do about that:

In your merged document, run two Find/Replace searches.

First, you want to delete the strange white space characters introduced by Data Merge. You have to clear these out first since they get in the way of a traditional find/replace for empty paragraphs. In your Find/Change menu, make sure you are in the Text tab and run this search:

Find what: <FEFF>

Change To: Leave this completely empty since we want to delete these empty spaces.

Search: Document

Click "Change All"

Next, you can now delete empty lines. In your Find/Change menu, make sure you are in the GREP tab and run this search:

Find what: ^\s+

Change To: Leave this completely empty since we want to delete these empty spaces.

Search: Document

Click "Change All"

That should resolve any empty spaces you might have in your document.

---

BONUS:

If you happen to have an empty space at the end of your text field that hasn't been resolved by the first two steps, here is an optional third step:

In your Find/Change menu, make sure you are in the GREP tab and run this search:

Find what: \s+$

Change To: Leave this completely empty since we want to delete these empty spaces.

Search: Document

Click "Change All"

It's important you only do this search AFTER you've done the first two, but it should work like a charm.

Hope this helps!

Junk Orbit is back! In box form!

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Solis) — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 20:34:00 +0000

Howdy folks! Big news announced yesterday from Renegade! There will be a new edition coming with new content, some rebalanced ship powers, bigger ship meeples, and all in a proper box!

From the publisher: https://renegadegamestudios.com/junk-orbit/

New Features!

New box! Now in a standard box with a fitted plastic tray for tile storage!
Solo mode included!
2 mini expansions included! The Mission Control promo pack with new ship cards and player powers and Tours Mini-Expansion with new Tourist cards and ways to score!

"Tolstoy" by Sid Sackson (Excerpt from "Beyond Words")

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Solis) — Sun, 05 Mar 2023 22:26:00 +0000

Cleaning out some old office furniture, I stumbled across a cache of vintage game books I purchased from Dickson Street Books many years ago. Among the collection is this well-loved 1977 edition of Beyond Words by Sid Sackson, the legendary designer of Acquire and Can't Stop.

This was the third in his series of "Beyond" game books, the first two being Beyond Tic Tac Toe and Beyond Solitaire. This book contains six word- and letter-based games named in honor of famous writers. The book presents short rules for each game, followed by perforated sheets that you were meant to pull out and play on with pencil or pen. Kind of a crossword or word jumble book you'd find in a supermarket checkout.

The first of these games is titled "Tolstoy," which I share below.

First, some historical notes if you've never read rules by Sackson. I've often considered Sackson's designs years ahead of his time, yet I still get tripped up by how he writes his rules. I can't tell what is just 50+ years of linguistic drift, restrictions of 1970s print publication, or just idiosyncrasies of Sackson's writing style. Some examples you'll notice:

He calls "Preliminary" what I would now call "Setup."
He uses third-person male pronouns where I'd use second-person pronouns.
He uses passive voice where I'd use declarative sentences.
He uses em-dashes and embedded clauses where I'd advise shorter, simpler sentences.
He uses only one diagram, where I would have used a series of diagrams.
He doesn't label the cities on the board, he only using stars.

I've noticed similar oddities in his other rules. Each of these are small choices that on the whole make his rules feel less approachable. I doubt this is Sackson's intent, given his long history of making mass market board games.

I personally chalk this up to a different era of game design. This is a time when a rulebook was written more like "Voice of God" arbitrating disputes, bestowing rules from in a legalistic tone to lend an air of authority.

Nevertheless, I find it a valuable exercise to look back on one of the foundational game designers of the 1970s. I've transcribed the rules text below. If you spot any errors or typos, those are my fault! Hope you enjoy this brief peek at another era in game design.

TOLSTOY

2 Players

Named in honor of Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy (1828-1910), author of War and Peace, because both the book and the game are based on Napoleon' invasion of Russia.

Object.

For the "French" player, to move into Russia by forming words to capture Odessa, St. Petersburg, and Moscow — and to escape to the border. For the "Russian" player, to stop this from happening by using letters the invader needs.

Preliminary.

Carefully cut or tear the sheet along the dividing line into two halves. Each contains a field of triangles, some empty, some with letters, and three with stars. (The triangle with three stars represents Odessa, lour stars represents St. Petersburg, and five stars represents Moscow.) The boxes at the left are for keeping score, and the circles at the right indicate letters that earn bonuses.

Each player takes one of the fields and using a black pencil or pen, writes in the letters of the alphabet in twenty-six of the empty triangles. When the letter Q is written, add a u next to it in the same triangle. The fields are exchanged, and the players write in another alphabet in the remaining twenty-six empty triangles. (When the letters are being filled in, a player doesn't know which side he will be playing with that field, so the letters should just be placed at random. And if by mistake a letter is left out or is used an extra time, it doesn't really matter.)

Either of the two fields is picked for the first round of the game. Then who will be the French player is determined by tossing a coin, or in any other convenient manner; the other player is the Russian. In the second round, with the second field, the players reverse roles.

How to Play.

The French player secretly decides in which of the five triangles—numbered from 1 to 5—he wishes to start his invasion. At the same time the Russian player secretly chooses one of six triangles—numbered from 6 to 11—from which to start his defense. Using differently colored pencils, each player draws a circle around the letter in his chosen triangle and lightly colors in the entire triangle.

[In the illustration, showing part of a field, the French player—blue—has chosen triangle 1 and the Russian player—red—has chosen triangle 8. The coloring of the other triangles will be explained shortly.]

The French player plays first. Starting with a letter in a triangle next to—either along an edge or at a corner—his original triangle, he forms a word of at least two letters, each letter being next to the previous letter. The letter in the original triangle is never used as part of the word. The triangles used are colored and the last letter is also circled.

[In the illustration, the French player makes Qu-I-P as his first word.]

The Russian player then forms a word in a similar manner.

[In the illustration he makes the word N-A-I-L]

The players in turn continue by forming words, starting with a letter next to the last letter in the previous word. Colored triangles may not be used again by either player.

In order to occupy a city (triangle with stars) the French player must end a word on that triangle. He may use the starred triangle as any letter he wishes.

[In the illustration, the French player makes Y-O-U as his second word, occupying Odessa.]

The Russian player is not allowed to enter any of the three cities. He is also not allowed to enter any of the seven "border" triangles—the five triangles numbered from 1 to 5 and the two triangles directly above them.

The round continues until the French player either reaches the border—by ending a word on one of the seven. border triangles—or until he can no longer form a word. If the Russian player is unable to form a word, the French player continues alone until the round is ended.

Scoring.

Only the French player scores. He scores one point (one box in the scoring area) for each word he forms. For each J, Q, X, or Z in a word he scores one bonus point.

[In the illustration, the French player scores two points for Qu-I-P: one point for forming the word and one point for using the Q, a bonus letter.]

If the French player occupies a city by using that triangle as a bonus letter, he does not score a bonus point.

When the French player occupies a city he scores as many points as there are stars in the city—in addition to the point for forming a word.

[In the illustration, the French player scores four points for occupying Odessa—three points for the stars in the triangle and one point for Y-O-U.]

If the French player ends the round by reaching the border, he scores again for each city he occupied.

[For example, the French player occupies Odessa and Moscow and then returns to the border. He scores an additional eight points. If he returns to the border without having occupied a city, he receives no extra points.]

Winning.

After the two rounds are completed, the French player with the higher score is the winner.

Hi, it's me Daniel again here in the 2023. If you like this sort of article and want to support more of this work, drop a buck at https://www.patreon.com/danielsolis. Thanks!

New HeroClix card format!

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Solis) — Wed, 22 Feb 2023 13:23:00 +0000

The new #HeroClix card format is now public! The main goal was to bring more attention to the sculpt, not having it cropped to a little bust on the corner.

That dominoed into a few other measures to conserve space, compress reference information, and generally make the game easier to approach. I learned a lot!

While I'm happy with this first wave, the future waves look even better now that the template is stabilized and future-proofed.

See official release for details: https://wizkids.com/heroclix/2023/01/30/breaking-new-ground-heroclix-2023-rules-4-comprehensive-rules-and-miscellaneous-changes/

Label Punchboard Sheets in Board Games

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Solis) — Sun, 19 Feb 2023 16:32:00 +0000

I'm trying to make it standard that punchboard sheets label the components in the negative space between die cuts. My hope is that this helps the customer during the unboxing process as they're sorting out their bits.

I know it might seem redundant if they're also looking at the rulebook as an inventory list, but I'm always trying to find ways to improve the customer experience. Sometimes that means an extra affordance that 99% of customers won't notice, but that 1% who feel served will be very vocal about their satisfaction.

What would you like to see added to punchboard sheets in board games?

For more tips and tricks, please sub to my patreon at patreon.com/danielsolis.

Making a Better Drop Shadow

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Solis) — Sat, 11 Feb 2023 20:40:00 +0000

New video! Here's a simple trick I've used for years to make a better drop shadow than the default shadow you get from layer effects. Hope you find it useful!

Components and Setup in Rulebooks [Video]

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Solis) — Fri, 03 Feb 2023 15:52:00 +0000

Here are the two basic methods we've used for laying out diagrams in Components and Setup sections of our board game rulebooks. There are slight variations between these two extremes depending on the game, but generally they start with either of these two options.

Combined

This is one diagram showing a complete game setup. I use numbered tags to that correspond to each step of setup and lettered tags that indicate each game component.

Components and Setup from Atlantic Robot League

Pros: Saves space. Great for small games or small books.
Cons: Can be crowded. Difficult to see the smallest components. Doesn't easily account for optional modules or variable setups.

Separate

This is a more traditional option you'll see in most rulebooks. There's one "contents" or "components" section, usually a full page or a spread. The components will be neatly organized into a clean grid and individually labelled for ease of reference. The components are not at accurate scale, they're sized for optimal readability on the page.

Components section from Gates of Mara

Then on the next page or spread, you'll see the full game setup with all components at their correct scale to each other. Usually there will be an inset or sidebar mentioning variable setup based on player count or difficulty level. Because there are fewer tags floating around, there's usually more room for arrows to indicate how cards are dealt to different locations or components divided amongst other players.

General Setup section from Gates of Mara

This option also gives you the advantage of making a separate page focusing just on an individual player's personal setup after the general setup is complete, as shown below.

Personal Setup section from Gates of Mara

Pros: Easier to parse individual steps. Easier to take an inventory of all game components. Generally more generous with text sizes and readability.
Cons: Makes the rulebook bigger. May make setup seem more daunting than it actually is.

As you can see, both are valid for their use-cases. Neither is inherently better than the other. Do you have some good examples from rulebooks you liked? Please share in the comments!

Oort/Pizza Coven, a spatial auction game [Games that Got Away]

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Solis) — Sun, 22 Jan 2023 17:13:00 +0000

This is the story of how I tried to make a cool spatial auction mechanism into a complete game, but never quite found a concept that sold to a publisher. The last version was called OORT and the details are here:

Theme Pitch: The Oort cloud is the last stop for a thousand light-years, so you better stock up! Dock your ships at the right stations to claim the best supplies and send their whole fleet further into space.

Gamer Pitch: This is an auction in which where you place your bid matters. A top bid only lasts once, but a lesser bid can persist for multiple rounds.

(Rules Google Doc Here)

What Worked: Top bidder wins, but doesn't stay.

Players have "ship" discs valued at 1 to 15. Each round, a random segment of the board is being auctioned. Bids are placed in turns, face-down. Though the bids are hidden, you do know some information: Small ships are valued 0-4. Medium ships are 5-9. Large ships are 10-15.

You must place bids at specific spots around that segment. Each spot is adjacent to other segments, but those aren't in play during the round. Only the one segment currently up for auction is what gets resolved.

The "ah ha" moment is that whoever wins the auction must remove their ships from that segment. Everyone else leaves their ships in place, allowing them to contribute to future auctions when adjacent segments come up for auction later.

Example: Players are auctioning on the station named Ride.

Black already had a "1" disc in place from a previous round. They place a "14" disc this round.
Orange already has a "9" disc on the space labelled "rim." They place a "10" disc closer to the core.
Pink places a "6" disc.
Lastly, Blue places a "5" disc. This ends the round.

First Place: Orange's total bid of 19.

Second Place: Black's total bid of 15.

Third Place: Pink's bid of 6.

Fourth Place: Blue's bid of 5.

After earning their awards, Orange wins the auction and will remove their chips from the board at the end of the round. Black, Pink, and Blue keep their chips on the board.

Theme 1: Pizza Coven

I couldn't figure out something compelling to win in each auction. The first version of this game was called Pizza Coven. Players were competing to surround cauldrons filled with ingredients. The ingredients were shaped like semi-circles, each with up to three toppings. Your goal was to assemble complete pizza pies that had high scoring ingredients based on random recipes active each round. It looked like this:

Unfortunately this had such a disastrous pitch at an UnPub that I just had sour feelings about it for years. Regular players loved the theme, but publishers wanted more visible magic in a game ostensibly about witches making pizzas.

When I announced that I would change it, former testers lamented about the loss of that theme. Sadly, no amount of player testimonial weighed on a publisher's opinions.

Theme 2: Fall of the Kingpin

So I tried paring down the game to just the auction, where you compete for area control. Each city district had a random assortment of scoring tokens, all publicly visible at the start of the game. The top bidder would get the highest scoring token. The second-place bidder got second highest, and so on. The city center was worth a flat value of 7 points, higher than any single chip in the game.

But competing strictly for points was rather flat. This was a boom time for game complexity and modular elements. Publishers weren't interested in something that felt like it was designed in the late 90s. They wanted more content and expansion avenues that fit the stretch goal model of crowdfunding. The city prototype was a complete game in itself, without room for expansion. No powers, no secondary mechanisms, just a cutthroat spatial auction.

I couldn't think of a more compelling theme to make it sing, aside from a thin veneer of cyberpunk aesthetics. I couldn't even think of a real reason why the top bidder would lose their chips. Best I could rationalize is that the kingpin gets toppled or retires, clearing space for the next upstart gang to take over.

Nowadays, I think this theme would be accepted if the chips were generic icons. Those icons would have different meanings each game, like in Quacks of Quedlinberg and the updated Libertalia.

Theme 3: Oort

So I shifted to more familiar territory for me: Space! In OORT each bidding chip represented a spaceship docking at a space station for supplies before leaving the solar system. I didn't go so far as to make a set collection mechanism like Pizza Coven. Instead, I used the movement mechanism from Cartagena.

Each segment of the board had a random tile showing a sequence of three icons. These icons corresponded to places along the score track. The first-place bidder moved to the nearest icon A, then B, then C, skipping any spaces without these icons and any occupied spaces. The second-place had a choice of moving from A to B or B to C. Third-place had a choice of moving to either A, B, or C.

I also divided up ships into small, medium, and large, which allowed you to displace your own smaller ships in key locations. This gave players more flexibility to raise their bids.

Lastly, I gave players extra incentive to place at the central spaces: In round 1, 2, and 3, you'd immediately advance 1, 2, or 3 spaces along the track.

I wasn't ever really convinced this was better than a basic score track. I kind of liked the idea of the score track itself being the play field, but the stakes were too hidden. What mattered more than being the top bidder was when you moved. If a space ahead of you was occupied, you'd leapfrog ahead to the next available space with that icon.

Nowadays, I think I would have kept the Oort theme, but done a mix of flat point chips and set collection icons, as described in the Fall of the Kingpin theme above.

Do you have any games you never quite cracked? How'd you get past that block? Or did you just let it rest, never to be? Tell me your story!

In Praise of Marvel SNAP's character logos

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Solis) — Mon, 02 Jan 2023 20:28:00 +0000

Like everyone else late last year, I got pretty hooked on Marvel SNAP. But enough ink has been spent praising the elegant gameplay, clever wagering strategies, and rather generous business model. I'd instead like to highlight the logos! The little names you see on every card in the game. Having worked on several Marvel card games in the past two years, I've certainly considered giving every card their own masthead name like this, but the challenge is always three things:

Not every character has an iconic masthead to pop onto the card. Some characters have just not headlined their own comic series, so there's no precedent for their logo.
We have limited graphic design resources that need to be spent on boards, rulebooks, tokens, packaging, marketing, and web. There's just not room in the pipeline to make a whole new brand logo for each character.
Even if we had the bandwidth to do it, space on our components is so limited that a big masthead would cut into valuable real estate. Plus it's an extra variable to manage in our automation process.

So that's what impresses me most about Marvel SNAP. Those madmen actually did it! They did the thing!

More than that, the logos aren't merely a nice looking ornament, they serve a valuable purpose in gameplay and business model.

Because every card has any number of variant art options, plus visual upgrades that change the borders and backgrounds, it's especially important that one element remain stable and legible on the play area.

Each logo has its own distinct typographic style and visual treatment that remains consistent even when the rest of the art is wildly different. In the example above, you'd be forgiven for thinking the characters on the right and left were not the same as the middle, but the logo resolves any confusion.

Below I'd like to spotlight some of the logo groups I've identified in the current card pool.

The Headliners

These are your big names like ol' Webhead here. These characters have long-established masthead logos that pretty much come readymade.

When you have decades of comic history backing up a character's brand, it's wise to take advantage of it, rather than fighting it.

Not much else to say with this group. I just want to compliment their decisions here. They opted to keep existing logos when they were available. In some cases, I wonder if they would have preferred to make a new logo, but I think it was smart to capitalize on existing brand equity.

The Underdogs

I also love that they give everything the same degree of care, even for secondary non-super characters. Here the Squirrel shares the same typographic treatment as the Squirrel Girl masthead.

Uncle Ben gets an old-fashioned, almost-noir typographic treatment. I imagine if there's ever an Aunt May card, she'll get a similar logo.

The baseline of ROCK is chaotic, the letterforms cracked, all helping sell the dynamic motion shown in the card art.

RAPTOR has the rough-hewn strokes that match the other cards related to the Savage Land. You can see similar typography in KAZAR, SHANIA, and ZABU.

The Long Names

You may notice that in most of these examples, there are several nested strokes and 3d extrusions. I can't speak with any authority, but I suspect it's because they have to be laid across a border along the bottom of the card.

That presents a problem for logos where the negative spaces have not been filled in. The bottom border resting behind the logo may give the appearance of a ~~strikethru~~.

You can especially see this in long names with compressed typefaces, like the logo for Taskmaster. The grey of the basic border almost exactly matches the grey of Taskmaster's logo. A thin stroke and shallow drop-shadow helps set it off from the border, but it's not quite enough.

Nightcrawler gets the better deal here, since his masthead is completely filled in and contained by an outer black shape. That lets the light text be legible and blocks out the lower border.

Negasonic Teenage Warhead has to be one of the very longest names in the game. (Heck, one of the longest names in the entire Marvel superhero roster.) They pretty much had to use a compressed font. Further, added a stroke just thick enough to enclose the negative spaces within the A and G. I do wonder if the NEGASONIC is stretched out wider than the font was originally drawn, which is something I'd normally oppose. Hard to tell, so I guess it's just right.

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What do you think of Marvel SNAP's logo treatments? Have you been playing much?

Estimates for Art Costs (2022/2023)

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Solis) — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 15:03:00 +0000

Planning an art budget for your board game? Here are average estimates I'm seeing lately, as of the end of 2022. But first, a caveat: Quotes vary by many factors, including but not limited to the following:

Dimensions: The bigger the art, the more expensive it is.
Medium: Traditional paints and inks cost more than digital.
Style: The more you make an artist work outside their expertise, the more it will cost.
Complexity: A shot of a superhero flying in the open air is cheaper than the full super-team defending a city.
Color/Ink: Some artists will cut you a deal if you only need linework.
Terms & rights: If you want full work-for-hire rights to the art, expect to pay for it.
Size of cast: Each character multiplies the complexity of the scene. If you want a big battle, it'll cost more depending on how many participants there are.
Detail: Photorealists charge more than cartoonists, typically. That's not always the case though.
Timeline: The sooner you need it, the more expensive it will be.
Planning: If you can provide plenty of visual references, photobashes, sketches, composition notes, and other prep materials, that may reduce your costs. The more mind-reading you make an artist do, the more it will cost.

All that said, here are the quote ranges I'm seeing for these typical game art specs:

Isolated Characters (Full-body, no background): $100—$250
Isolated Objects and Items (Weapons, Vehicles, Tech, Clothes): $50—$200
Any of the above set in a full scene or backgrounds: Add $100—$300
Game Cover or Game Board: $1k—$4k
Card Art (like in a CCG): $150—$550

This is the average I'm seeing for board games. Different industries charge and pay their own rates. Even within the tabletop game industry, there's huge variance. For example, one CCG card illo can equal an entire board game's budget, whereas most RPGs barely pay a fraction of that.

As always, approach an artist respectfully, as a professional, and be honest about your expectations. Even if that particular negotiation doesn't work out, that artist may be able to recommend another artist who is a better fit for your project.

As always, pay artists promptly and well. Good luck in the new year!