For the past few weeks I have super intense testing sessions. Super intense ass kicking in a fact. I play with the best players I know to balance new faction for Imperial Settlers. That means they beat me over and over. They get results I will never made. Then they look at me like I am this lousy boy who does his best but he just don’t have enough talent. Poor boy, they think. Every time they destroy me and look at me with this look, I want to punch their face and say something like: „I design this game in the first place you smartass!”

But I don’t punch them. I say nothing. I just ask for another game. And I get beaten again.

***

It’s really hard to explain. I talked with many fellow designers and most of them say the same – we can’t play our own designs. We get beaten over and over.

Why is that? Why we, people who know the game the best, people who know every single card, every single connection, synergy, why we are unable to use them and win? What’s wrong with us?

Anyone knows? Anyone?

This is a guest post by Charles Beauvais
You can learn about his game and back it at Kickstarter!

„What are you playing?”, she asked.
„It’s a new game idea I’m tinkering with.” I replied, somewhat distractedly.
„I want to play.”, she said.
„It’s not ready yet.”
The first thing you learn about game design is that your initial attempts are always bad. Not just unbalanced, or filled with unclear edge cases, or too fiddly, but really bad. The opposite of fun.
As such, I always do some solo playtesting before inflicting the game on anyone else. Sara, my wife, is often the first innocent victim of unfinished designs.

„I still want to play.”, she insisted.
„I don’t even know what the rules are yet. I’m just rolling the dice and moving pieces around.” I replied.
„But, you’re coloring!”

***

We had played a lot of Matt Leacock’s Roll Through the Ages, and I thought it would be an interesting design space to explore. In particular, the one side of each die where a player had to choose between 2 food and 2 workers. My goal was to combine RTtA with something like Delve, the solo dungeon-crawl dice game. In my mind, it was „Roll Through the Dungeon”, where the symbols on the dice would be swords, shields, wands, etc.
But, before I could allocate the symbols appropriately, I wanted to get a sense for the probabilities. I replaced the symbols with colors, and now I could roll 4 green, for example, or 2 purple. But what to do with them?
I sketched out a landscape scene: a river, tree, bird, sun, and arbitrarily assigned weights to them – this required 4 yellow, that required 2 green. And this nascent game is what my wife wanted to play.

***
A few weeks later, Sara’s mom (my primary Dominion opponent) was visiting. One morning, Sara woke me up.
„You’ve got to print out more puzzles. We’ve already colored in all the ones we could find.”

***
We’re out shopping, and I pick up a few boxes of crayons that are on sale, half-price.
„Buy more”, advises Sara, but I’m not sure.
„I’m still working on the game, and it might be a dud. I don’t want to be stuck with boxes of crayons.”
„You should buy them while they are on sale.”
„I’m sure crayons go on sale periodically. There’s plenty of time.”
Did I mention this was during September? When all the stores have their back-to-school sales? Periodically is right, I’d have to wait a year before crayons would be that cheap again.

***

„What is that?”
„It’s my coloring for this stained glass puzzle. I’m going to for an even distribution of the six colors.”
„It looks like a clown threw up. Print a blank copy for me, please.”
You be the judge. My version actually inflicts damage on the eyes.

***
Before finding a publisher, I created some copies of the prototype to demo and sell. While „how much would you pay for this game?” is a good question for playtesters, it’s even more powerful when it’s not hypothetical. I started with a print run of 250 dice, then another 250-die run, followed by two 1000-die print runs. That’s 2500 dice, all of which had to be stickered by hand. Each face of each die had two stickers, so, yes, we (with help from our friends) applied 30,000 stickers.
Three of the four corners can be stickered easily. Is it a purple die? Surround one corner with purple stickers, another corner with blue, and another corner with red. Simple. The last corner, however, required the remaining three colors in a specific configuration. For all 2500 dice, Sara was the only person I trusted (other than myself) to do this correctly.

***

I’m teaching the game to some new friends, and I start explaining the color bank mechanic.
„Wait,” interrupts Sara, „that’s not how it works.”
„Yes it is. I’ve changed it.”
„Well this new version is stupid. The last version was much more powerful.”
She’s right. The new version is weaker, but much simpler to explain. New players didn’t understand the old version, and thus didn’t use it correctly.
Game designers aren’t the only ones who find it hard to let go of clever mechanics. It affects early playtesters, too.

***

It’s 8:00 PM. We’ve just had dinner, and we sit down to sticker some more dice.
„I think it’s time.”, Sara says.
„Okay, let’s just finish this batch of dice.”
„Okay”.
We finish the last batch of dice, and then drive to the hospital. Twelve hours later, our daughter is born.

***

„The publisher wants to add a trading phase at the start of each round.” I inform Sara.
„That won’t work. It’ll slow the game down too much. It’ll be a disaster.” she replies.
I also have my doubts. I could see the need for more interaction, but I was worried about slowing down a quick-moving game.
„We won’t know until we give it a try.”
We try it with some friends, who are new to the game, so we introduce trading after they’ve got the basic flow of the game going. And what do you know? It works. It doesn’t slow down the game, it gets players to interact with each other, pleading, threatening, and having a great time. It’s a great addition.

***

There are many emotions involved in game design: elation, despair, pride, and disappointment. But I’d like to talk about gratitude. I wouldn’t have been able to produce this game without Sara’s help and support. She’s guided me through the disappointment of being rejected (again) by potential publishers, and she’s shared the joy of reading great player feedback. She’s supported me in this crazy dream of being a game designer, and I hope I can show the same support in her next ambitious project.

I am back with article about Imperial Settlers. I did plan a short break from the game but things not always let you stick to the plan. Things like… like Eric W. Martin and his lack of love for theme in your game…

So here I am talking about the game again. Today’s stuff is totally not important. That stuff is not part of my Game Designer series. That stuff is boring. I know it. This is 5 most insignificant things about Imperial Settlers you ever heard.

But I had to write it. Blame Eric W. Martin.

1. 2 guys and some Resources.

In his preview of the game, Eric said (and I quote!): ’I can take two guys and transform them into wood. Don’t ask how that happens.’

Let me put it straight – you say something like that in front of me, and I will strangle you! You don’t transform guys! You do send them to the forest and they bring you wood! This action is all about – send two guys to bring you stuff. You can send them to bring wood or food or stone. They go and they bring! It’s not transforming, sir!

Euro gamer’s cynical question: 'If they bring wood, why you discard them? They went for wood and wood came back alone’?

Ignacy honest answer: You sir, don’t mess with me. I know Aikido.

2. to Raze means to Pillage!

In his review of the game, as far as I recall, Tom Vasel did the same – he did dare to explain rules of my game without mentioning theme.

When you raze a card you discard it and you  take stuff depicted on the card right corner. This stuff depicted on the card matches the card. If you Raze Wood supply, you will gain wood. If you Raze Coal mine you take workers and stone. If you Raze Pig farmer, you take Food and worker.

It’s not about discard a card to get resources.

It’s all about take this location, go there, burn everything, pillage and destroy, take the loot and forget about the rest.

Euro gamer’s cynical question: How exactly pillaging Forest look like? I mean how many knights you need to conquer the Forest and get loot?

Ignacy honest answer: Give me an axe and I’ll show you.

3. common Cards represent surroundings.

Common deck represent all this cute locations that are spread all over this land. That is why you gain a card when you build Watchtower (with such a building you can look what’s on the horizon). That is why Castle gives you more cards (you send troops to go into field and look who’s living there). That is why when you send 2 guys for a card it simply means they go for a long walk and investigate lands around you.

Euro gamer’s cynical question: Why Desert card from Egyptians deck let you discard cards from enemy hand? Sandstorm makes it impossible to know about neighborhood or…

Ignacy honest answer: I’ll just make you one.

4. Players board is border.

Players board makes everything set up clear and clean. In thematic terms it is border. Your faction cards, core of your Empire in on the left. Buildings from local residents are on the right. You know them, they work for you, but they are not part of the core.

You can rebuild them. You discard a common card from the table and build a faction card. Core of your Empire grows. When you begin the game, player board is in the middle. With each round you will have more cards on your left side and your core Empire will dominate on local residents. It looks cool.

And it has very clear mechanic reason – common locations can be Razed by opponents. By dividing those two types of cards we make it super clear for opponent. One look and he knows what buildings he can attack and which ones are protected.

Euro gamer’s cynical question: This time I have no…

Ignacy’s honest answer: You better!

5. Deal with other regions.

Common cards represent surroundings. You either build them and make them part of your Empire either Raze them and destroy (discard). Faction cards represents buildings of your kin. Your either build these buildings and make them part of your Empire, either at least you have a good relationship with them and make some deals. That is why we have this simple distinction:

– common card might be built or razed

– faction card might be build or signed deal with

How cool is that?!

Euro gamer’s cynical question: And you make a good relationship with people and sign deals always by giving them an apple, right?

Ignacy’s honest answer: I am done with you, sir! I’m done.

I could go on and on. I know, this is crazy. I am designer. I am super excited. I am super dedicated to the game and to every and each, even smallest one piece of it. I can’t wait for Gen Con. I can’t wait to see you playing the game.

Last week I discussed problem of recurrence in Imperial Settlers. I showed you how I was making each faction unique and how I made it more or less predictable. I presented you how I managed to achieve that simple thing – if you choose a Barbarian deck, you will be able to pillage, raze and destroy enemy each time you play.

With a little help from google translator I called it recurrence.

So basically last week I wrote whole damn article showing you that Imperial Settlers is a fucking boring card game – you pick a faction and it plays each time the same. Recurrence, he calls it. You played it once, you played it 100 times.

Yeah. That’s me. Super seller.

So now it’s time to deny every single word I wrote last week…

***

OK, but joking aside. The problem we are facing here is that on one hand we expect our deck (whenever it is Barbarians deck in Imperial Settlers or Weyland deck in Netrunner) to have a specific nature and be predictable (recurrence) but on the other hand we want it to work different each time we play it – we want fun each time we play (replayibility).

Here come Twist cards, I mentioned last week. 9 cards in each faction deck that change everything. Let me show you:

Barbarians may build Barter card that let them change any resources into Victory Points. Suddenly your people become peaceful traders! Or perhaps you build Robbers card and now you can steal Deals from other players. It changes their strategy a lot! Or you want to build Temple? Very expensive card that will give you just like that 6 VP!

Egyptians may put Desert into play and from now on they will discard cards from opponent hand! Or they build Chariot builder and suddenly they are crazy vicious! Or they have Oasis and they take opponent’s workers who were sent to work…

When Japanese build Casino, they become very rich (spend 1 worker to earn 1 gold!) but when they put Negotiator in play and they can change their Deals into actual Buildings in their Empire…

Romans can build Barracks and now they produce 2 more workers and their game changes a lot. Or they build Colossus and they go for stone – with Colossus they can spend 3 stone into 4 Victory Points!

Each of this cards is very strong. Each of this cards change the game. Your game will be different if you have Barracks in play and different if you have Colossus in play. This 9 twist cards gives you what you want – it gives you replaybility. They change each game. Without killing recurrence, they add replayibility.

Each faction deck has 9 such cards. You will draw few of them during game. You will build some of these few. They will have great impact on the game. and will give you lots of fun.

***

I think that’s all I wanted to share about designing Imperial Settlers. I believe you have your opinion about the game and you know if this is your cup of tea or not. After weekend I will post rulebook in PDF format.

I hope you enjoyed the series of articles. I hope to see you at Gen Con, Essen and any other con you attend. Have fun!

In the previous post I presented four factions that you’ll find in Imperial Settlers. I believe they are very thematic, they’ll inspire your imagination and along with the artwork they’ll make you want to play the game. But let’s face it – thematic descriptions, superb art, words that make your imagination run like crazy can only do one thing – make you sit to the table and give it a try.

To make you play the game over and over designer need to try harder and give you much more than just cute factions. Cool blog posts are not enough, I know that. Today I’ll show you what I have up in my sleeve and why I believe you will play this game over and over…

Different scoring methods
Factions need to work differently. And by work differently, I mean score differently.

You play to win the game, right? You build locations, you gather resources, you make many actions and you do all that shit but it all boils down to one – you, sir want to score points. Playing game means trying to score points, over and over.

Different factions means different ways of scoring.

It was easy with Rome. I designed cards that change stone resource into Victory Points. I also made cards that awarded player every time he or she builds a Rome Location. That way – with every new designed card – I was slowly building Rome scoring mechanism. It was like creating snowball effect (and trying to control it). With building more and more locations Rome was getting stronger and scored more and more points. It was a great feeling to play and to score with Rome. Theme, checked. Rules, checked. Move on…

Barbarians needed something different. I connected their scoring methods with war. I let them score each time they make Raze action. I let them change spoils for a really big Victory Points. I let them earn when they build black (war) locations. It was all about war. Raze, get spoils, win the game. Theme, checked. Rules, checked. Move on…

Egypt needed something different. Since the very beginning I wanted them be crazy rich and on the other hand, I was balancing it with a difficult scoring. I gave them many tricky cards, and not too much straightforward, easy scoring options. I gave them this card that gives you Victory Points only if you’ve just earned Victory Points. This one that let’s you score on opponent card. This one that let’s you activate any of your cards again (and score that way again)… From the very beginning it was a dark magic faction, on both theme and rules level. You have to contrive. But if you do contrive well, you will score a lot… Theme, checked. Rules, checked. Move on…

Japanese of course needed something totally different… I made them flexible. They can change food into Victory Points. They can score when make a Deal. They score when they have samurai. They score when they storage resources in chapel. They score in so many ways. You will never say your draft of cards sucked – you always have so many options to score…. Theme, checked. Rules, checked. Move on…

Recurrence
The real problem I faced here was – how to make this faction work this way on regular basis. How to ensure player that if he or she plays Barbarians, he or she will get those cards that let score in particular way. That’s the moment when math had to appear on the table. It was the moment when story telling Ignacy had to change a hat and do some boring stuff. And you know what? It went quite smooth and wasn’t that scary.

I divided cards in the Faction decks in 3 categories. Super important cards. Characteristic cards. Twisting cards.

Super important cards are cards like Village in Barbarians deck (it gives them more workers) or like Pyramids in Egypt deck (gives them Stone and Gold). Without these super important cards particular faction looses a little bit of its power. In each deck I choose 3 such a cards and I put 3 copies of each into deck. This makes 9 cards that are like commons for that faction. You are likely to have at least one or two of them, when you play.

Characteristic cards are mostly scoring cards. They show character of Faction and let you score points. These are cards that work together perfectly and let you build super fun combos. I choose 6 of them and I put 2 copies of each in the deck, to give you bigger chance to draw them. That way we had 12 cards in the deck that build character of the faction and let you score (in most cases).

9 super important cards and 12 characteristic cards makes 21 cards, cards that work together and build recurrence in the faction. With this system I know that if you play Barbarians you will probably draw Primeval Forest (it produces a lot of Wood and let you build cool Barbarian buildings). But if you don’t draw Primeval Forest you will probably draw Raid card (scoring for attacks) or Chapel (scoring by spending workers). Because of Deal part of each faction card, I also was able to lower luck element a little bit. Many Egypt cards give you Gold in the Deal field of the card. Most Rome cards give you stone in the Deal field, etc. That way recurrence was built. You play Rome and you build from stone. You play Barbarians and you burn. You play Japanese and you have lot of food…

And that is almost the end of the story of faction deck building, if not…

If not… You know, let’s count it. 9 super important cards + 12 characteristic cards… We are missing 9 cards. Twist cards.

And let me tell you about those 9 cards next week…