Archive for Prototypes
-
Brett J. Gilbert
United Kingdom
Cambridge
Divinare — Coming from Asmodee 2012!
-
In which I finally catch up with myself, and report on my recent trips to the Fira Jugar X Jugar in Granollers, Spain, and the UK Games Expo 2012 in Birmingham. What japes!
Last year, as regular readers will know since I have hardly failed to mention it, my game Oracle Pathway won the game design contest in Granollers, Spain, putting it on a path to publication by Asmodee as Divinare. The game is now available in Europe and the UK, and is currently being launched in the US at Origins.
I couldn’t visit Spain last year to receive my prize and see Oracle Pathway enjoy its celebrity (the dates clashed with the UK Games Expo), so I was very excited and honoured to be able to visit this year — invited by Oriol Comas i Coma, Director of the Fira Jugar X Jugar, and Haritz Solana of Asmodee — to see Divinare given a really fantastic and generous reception by everyone in Granollers.
But stepping off the train at Granollers Centre station I didn’t really know quite what to expect. Would the locals be friendly to the English interloper? Would the people collecting me even be able to spot me? (I needn’t have worried about that: I was the idiot who took three attempts to correctly put his train ticket into the barrier.) I was warmly greeted by Jordi and Stephane, who kindly ferried me to the hotel and then on to the fair on the other side of town.
The Fira Jugar X Jugar is just one part of the much larger Fira L’Ascensiò, so in addition to boardgames there were fantastic food stalls and markets, local and regional businesses, Catalan TV (more of them later), cars, a funfair and even some goats, cows and pigs — which, to all the gamers present, appeared to be some sort of live-action Agricola.
I arrived on the Thursday evening, the first day of the fair and just after opening, and was warmly greeted by Oriol, a game designer himself and a force of nature in the Spanish gaming community. One of the first people I was introduced to was Bascu, an illustrator whose credits include the artwork for the Fira Jugar X Jugar itself — a last-minute addition to which was his brilliant mini-portrait of me for the fair’s flyer! Bascu was also their volunteering along with many other enthusiastic gamers for the charity Ayudar Jugando whose goal is to improve the lives of disadvantaged children through games and other forms of play.
I also had the great pleasure of meeting and being entertained by the utterly irrepressible Magic Andreu who, for the sake of an expedient shorthand for UK readers, one might describe as Spain’s answer to Paul Daniels, but with better jokes. His daughter Joana, also a professional magician, was there too, entertaining the visitors and supporting their charity Sonrisas Sin Fronteras (Smiles Without Borders) which goes into hospitals to help children affected by cancer and their families.
So you see, within an hour of arriving in Granollers I had already met some amazing people! All of them welcoming and open and full of the joy and potential of games and playfulness.
A little later an entourage of local dignitaries moved through the marquee — shepherded by Enric Brufau the Director of the Fira de l’Ascensio (another force of nature!) — stopping to be amazed by Andreu and Joana, and then admiring the Spanish edition of the new 2-player Agricola published and demonstrated by Pol Cors of Homoludicus. I was introduced to them also, and shook everyone’s hands, although I could not tell you now who was who!
In another corner Toni Serradesanferm, the designer of 4 Monkeys, had pulled from his exceptionally large bag of prototypes a colourful, compact and inventive abstract called Skyline and had plenty of people ready and willing to play. There were lots of other Spanish game designers (both published and unpublished) at the fair, and the game design community seemed very strong, friendly and collegiate. Over the two days I was there, I got to play prototypes from Toni (Skyline and Sapiens), Diego Ibañez (Bajooli Xeel) and Pau More (Herbolaria) amongst others — apologies to those designers I have forgotten!
Haritz Solana had made the trip from Madrid by road (a 6-hour run, albeit one driven by his remarkably accommodating girlfriend Ainhoa!) and arrived a little later in the evening armed with boxes of games and a large quantity of Divinare posters. I was introduced more formally to the cheerful crew of 5 Minutos Por Juego — Stephane, Ribo and Israel — who were getting ready for a busy recording schedule of reviews and interviews over the coming days, including one with with me and Haritz.
So the scene was set for Friday, a local public holiday, when a much bigger crowd was expected (bigger still on Saturday). Haritz, Ainhoa and I enjoyed a late snack (well, late for an Englishman; Spaniards would think differently) from one of the amazing food stalls — I couldn’t tell you what I ate, but it was delicious and very Spanish. And while we were eating Enric bounded over and insisted on bringing us all a glass of the local bubbly, which was also delicious, and exceptionally Catalonian! Thank you Enric!
On the Friday there was lots to do, but the main event for me and for Divinare was a formal presentation in the smaller marquee. This was an rather grander affair than I was expecting, and a lot of fun. I lined up with Oriol, the Mayor of Granollers and Haritz to introduce the game and say a few words to the expectant audience (photo below is from Games & Co.). I am not now sure exactly what I did say, but I hope I adequately expressed both my excitement and my gratitude to everyone there. There is video of this event, but I don’t think it’s online just yet. Watch this space!
What is online however, is a segment broadcast on Catalan TV and recorded after the presentation. They interviewed me (with Haritz doing a great job as translator) and Oriol, and also filmed us playing a quick game — which, history should record, Oriol won easily! In the clip, I do look inexplicably glum while playing, which profoundly misrepresents my mood. The whole thing was fantastic, if slightly bewildering, and the reception to the game was universally enthusiastic. All day (and this continued on Saturday) people were coming up to me and asking me to sign their box of Divinare — and this experience taught me a very important lesson. I am afraid that several of the boxes I signed were done so in apparently effective but actually impermanent ink, a mistake we only realised the next day. Speak softly, designer, and carry a good pen!
Haritz and I had a great time being interviewed by, and introducing Divinare to, Stephane and Ribo of 5MPJ — the next edition of their webcast Mag 5 isn’t cooked yet, but watch out for it! — and Ribo sprang some interesting questions on me at the end. The final one was “What is your favourite game theme?” which caught me a little off guard. Stumbling around for an answer I eventually came up with “Landscape”, which on reflection I am rather pleased with. Good question, Ribo!
I had a great time playing a 6-player game of Toni Serradesanferm’s Sapiens, which, to use a crude analogy, was a sort of multiplayer Top Trumps. Given that the topics included the Spanish football league, I think I pulled off something of a coup to win, especially to win by such a large margin!
The fun and games continued, and in the evening I had a great time at the large dinner hosted by 5MPJ in the Hotel Granollers. It was fun chatting with Ribo and Israel about, amongst other things, J.K. Rowling, LOST and European politics, although not necessarily in that order. One thing: I’m not sure who actually paid for my dinner, but thank you to my unnamed benefactor!
We’d arrived back at the hotel to discover the lobby suddenly full of not only new guests but police officers. We later discovered the King (or possibly the Prince?) of Morocco, and clearly quite a few of his closest friends, had all arrived for a night or two. This put a crimp in our late-night gaming plans, since the conference room was unexpectedly full, but some of us did find space in the lobby. I broke out my prototype of Runaway Rabbits (more about that in Part 2!) which everyone seemed to enjoy, and we also played several different prototypes brought by Josep M. Allué — who I have so far forgotten to mention!
Josep is a very creative designer from Barcelona, and was another guest of the fair. His brand new game is Jinx, published in Spain by Homoludicus (and curiously marketed everywhere else as Dixit Jinx). He came armed with lots of great prototypes, including a neat card-based storytelling game, and also a fantastically silly card game about making facial expressions (a simple game whose rules I nevertheless found surprisingly hard to grasp at 1 o’clock in the morning!).
Saturday was my last day in Granollers, but my flight left Barcelona in the late afternoon so I had plenty of time to enjoy more of the fair and play more games, including a play of Pau More’s Herbolaria with Haritz and a profoundly unlucky Josep, seen below rolling a ‘1’. Again.
Oriol was keen to give Josep and I a personal tour of the old centre of Granollers, including its famous medieval covered market, the Porxada. This was a tour we undertook in some style, ferried there and back in a lemon-ochre, tank-like military bus: What else!?
But soon enough my Spanish adventure was coming to an end. It was a fantastic experience for me to see Divinare being played and enjoyed by so many people, and my heartfelt thanks goes out, once more, to everyone in Granollers who made me feel so welcome, with special thanks reserved for Haritz, Oriol and Enric for looking after me so generously!
You can look forward (if you want to) to news of my exploits at the UK Games Expo in Birmingham, in Part 2: Half a Pint of Cider.
This post also appears on my BrettSpiel game design blog.
-
Brett J. Gilbert
United Kingdom
Cambridge
Divinare — Coming from Asmodee 2012!
-
We were schooner-rigged and rakish
With a long and lissom hull,
And we flew the pretty colours
Of the crossbones and the skull;
We’d a big black jolly roger
Flapping grimly at the fore,
And we sailed the Spanish waters
In the happy days of yore.
— John Masefield, ‘Long John Silver’
I am thrilled to announce that my card game Brethren of the Coast has been announced as the winner of this year’s Hippodice game design contest in Germany. The Hippodice organizers have not yet themselves published the results — so I sincerely hope that I am not jumping anyone’s gun! — but the news comes from no-less a gaming authority than the Spiel Des Jahres website. A trusted sourced, I think we can all agree.
I spotted my own name, quite by chance, in the @SpieldesJahres twitter feed — something that would surely raise the eyebrows of even the most phlegmatic of game designers — and I will post more details soon. But for now: Go me!
This post also appears on my BrettSpiel game design blog.
-
Brett J. Gilbert
United Kingdom
Cambridge
Divinare — Coming from Asmodee 2012!
-
In which, primarily for my own reference, I collate the details of five board game design contests that are all open to international submissions. If you know of any other regular contests that I’ve missed, do let me know!
Europa Ludi (France/Spain)
http://www.ludotheque.com/spip.php?article583
Europa Ludi has been newly formed in 2012, and combines the existing Boulonge-Billancourt and Granollers contests. The schedule for this year’s contest has not yet been announced.
Hippodice (Germany)
http://www.hippodice.de/AWB.html
The 2012 contest is already underway, and the winners will be announced in March. Submissions for the 2012 contest were made in November 2011, with shortlisted prototypes requested in December.
2013 contest details
Deadline for submissions: November 2012
Winners announced: March 2013
Premio Archimede (Italy)
http://www.studiogiochi.com/en/p/premio-archimede.html
The Premio Archimede contest is run every two years by studiogiochi in Venice.
2012 contest details
Deadline for submissions: May 31st 2012
Winners announced: September 29th 2013
Lucca Comics and Games: Gioco Inedito (Italy)
http://lucca2011.luccacomicsandgames.com/index.php?
The contest is only for card games, and each year the contest organizers choose a theme, with is typically only a few words. For example, the themes for the 2009, 2010 and 2011 contests were ‘Nessun Dorma’, ‘15 Minutes’ and ‘Jungle!’.
2012 contest details (not yet confirmed)
Deadline for submissions: July 2012
Winners announced: October 2013
Ludopolis (Portugal)
http://ludopolis.pt/en/
The contest is being run for the first time in 2012 as part of the Ludopolis games festival held in Lisbon in June. Deadline for submissions has already passed and this year’s winners will be announced in June.
This post also appears on my BrettSpiel game design blog.
Mon Jan 16, 2012 12:09 am
-
Brett J. Gilbert
United Kingdom
Cambridge
Divinare — Coming from Asmodee 2012!
-
Yesterday I had the honour and privilege of attending the playtest group organised by Rob Harris (@playtestuk) in the unassuming corner of a London pub borrowed from the London on Board crew. Rob and I were joined by Jonathan (@joffwarren), Chris and Brian, and after drinks, a light lunch and some introductory banter, we got down to business.
And first to the table was my own prototype Mēxihco, the new take on my old tile-laying game Terraform, now with added LEGO. The game does take rather longer to fully explain than I would like, and it’s not a game that lends itself very well to a ‘learn as you go’ approach so start-up time is relatively long for new players. But since this was the beginning of the session Rob, Chris and Jonathan were alert and patient and took in most of the rules (at least the ones I actually remembered to explain!) with sage nods.
The game mixes card drafting with tile laying and area control, so is likely to seem relatively familiar to the average eurogamer in terms of structure and mechanisms. This means that most players will come to it with a number of expectations mapped from other games, and it’s only, of course, where these expectations conflict with the game that things can get tricky.
However, overall the playtest was a success and I think everyone enjoyed the game, but that’s not to say there weren’t plenty of interesting wrinkles and keenly made observations from the playtesters. Was the set-up a little too fiddly? How necessary was the split of the tiles into two phases? Could the card drafting be made less frustrating? Can you clarify the scoring — for example with a player aid — please? Should the variable game-end timing be made, well, less variable? And finally, why did the game forbid the player from taking (apparently) reasonable actions?
That last one, for me, was the most interesting, although the others are certainly no less important. Players lay tiles to create and expand territory, but can also (in certain circumstances) overlay tiles, meaning that territories once created are not necessarily immutable. Players can (again, in certain circumstances) protect some of their territory, but in doing that territory becomes ‘locked down’ and, in the words of the rules, “cannot be enlarged or reduced by any player”.
I thought my rules were clear, and that they accurately reflected both the law and the spirit of the game. But — rather excellently — Chris was, in one turn, in a position where two apparently possible and equally desirable moves directly challenged both of these concepts. My intent, in formulating the game, was to render a protected territory inviolate. Players are able to choose to protect their territories and stop others from interfering with it, but the ‘cost’ of this choice is that any further expansion is explicitly forbidden. Hence the phrase “cannot be enlarged or reduced”. That seems pretty clear, doesn’t it?
Well, as it turns out, not so much. Or rather, it is a clear instruction, but it is not one that completely describes the intended limitation. There is a loophole! At the end of my post Game Spaces: Why Everything Not Forbidden is Compulsory, I explained the nature of loopholes as follows:
In this case the possibility of moving outside of the game space is neither explicitly forbidden nor allowed, rather the rules have created a ‘grey area’, a crack in the boundary drawn by the rules through which players can choose to play. Often players themselves will veto expanding the play space in this way by reasoning that to do so would break the ‘spirit of the game’, but there will always be others who seize the opportunity and point out, correctly, that no rule forbids it.
What is the loophole? You may be ahead of my here, but saying that a territory “cannot be enlarged or reduced” says nothing about the legality of an action that leaves its area unchanged. And, as it happens, there are very good reasons why a player might seek to do this and Chris quite rightly asked why he shouldn’t be allowed to. Much discussion ensued!
At the same time — in the very same turn — another possible move highlighted how explicitly preventing “any player” from enlarging or reducing a protected territory, though unambiguous, directly challenged the spirit of the game intuited by the players.
The intent of the rule was to draw a very clear line around these inviolate territories, and everyone accepted that it did indeed make perfect sense that expanding your own protected territories ought to be forbidden. But what about expanding a protected territory belonging to another player? Did it make sense to forbid this when there could be circumstances — as aptly demonstrated by Chris — when to do so was the consequence of an entirely reasonable and desirable move? Much discussion ensued about this one, too!
Chris’s turn, which probably created a 15-minute hiatus in the game while all the options, expectations and ramifications were closely scrutinised, only goes to show how difficult it is to create truly bullet-proof rules and why, as a designer, you need to take into account not just what your players can and cannot do, but also what they would, all things considered, wish to do.
All games might be said to set up a series of playful obstacles for the participants to overcome. Rules codify these obstacles, and are therefore primarily designed to stop players doing whatever the hell they want whenever they want to. When people choose to play they enter into a contract: they agree to play their game by your rules. And I think the designer has an absolute duty to make a fair bargain in return: to respect and reward the player’s faith in your game by demonstrating more than a little faith in your players.
And so, when Chris challenged my game — challenged me, indeed — to defend the logic of its internal law I found that I could not, in all good conscience, do so. I could not wag my finger and deny his entirely reasonable and reasoned request, and so we agreed that the move — which safeguarded his own territory while expanding Jonathan’s — should in fact be allowed and played on.
The game ended with a surprisingly close win for Rob: 26–25–25–23, and the dissection of its vices and virtues continued. Exactly how variable the variable timing of the end of the game should be, and what mechanism should be used to achieve it, remains an open question. My first playtest last week resulted in a 400-to-1 ‘play till the bitter end’ result; yesterday’s was a more modest 7-to-1 result in the other direction that led to a shorter-than-average game. But was it too short? That was the question! I need to go back to the maths on this one and make sure I really do know what I am letting myself (and my players) in for. Personally, I don’t mind the idea of unpredictability, but I appreciate that it won’t be to every player’s taste.
I won’t dissect the other games we played in quite so much detail (you will probably be relieved to hear), but next up was Rob’s London Game, which I have played before and which, delightfully, continues to defy obvious categorization. Is it a deduction game? Possibly. Is it a casual or gamer’s game? Both. Are there meaningful strategies? Perhaps. If so, what are they? Ah, well, now you’ve got me! Is it, in the final analysis, even a game? Yes. And possibly no, depending on what you mean.
You see, it really is the most mercurial of animals! We played twice. And I won twice. But I couldn’t tell afterwards if I’d played the game, or if it had played me. Don’t get me wrong: I like it, as did the others, but exactly what ‘it’ is remains shrouded in mystery.
Finally — provided, that is, we don’t count my other prototype, Rumba, and I would prefer not to — we played a round of Hung Out To Dry, a prototype designed by Jonathan in collaboration with his trans-Atlantic design partner Rebekah Bissell. This was a very neat and nicely thematic set-collecting card game, designed for children and families. We all enjoyed it, but agreed that it was over a little too quickly with four players. Jonathan already knew this, and Rob confirmed that in with two or three players the game allowed more time for the more interesting aspects of the game to emerge. There was a lot to like about the game’s theme and colourful artwork which will both definitely appeal to children, so I wish Jonathan and Rebekah all the best with the game’s continued development.
I did get Rumba to table, but it was a rather inglorious and disappointing experience which I, Rob and latecomer David endured rather than actually played. Somewhere this design has got lost, and every attempt to take it forward has failed (yesterday was no exception). It’s not that there’s nothing there, it’s just that I haven’t figured out what it is yet. The latest prototype was just too fiddly and ungainly and inescapably dull. There’s too much of it, and it collectively delivers far too little. Less said the better, to be honest.
Does any of that sound like fun? (Apart from the last bit.) If so, and you are either a game designer with a prototype in need of playtesting, or a gamer willing to suffer the slings, arrows and outrageous fortunes of unfinished and thoroughly rough-around-the-edges gaming experiences, do keep an eye on Rob’s website for details of future get-togethers and feel free to come along.
This post also appears on my regular BrettSpiel blog, which you are, of course, more than welcome to come visit!
Mon Sep 26, 2011 11:06 pm
-
Brett J. Gilbert
United Kingdom
Cambridge
Divinare — Coming from Asmodee 2012!
-
Mēxihco is a strategy tile game in which you play the part of Aztec rulers, competing to develop and protect districts of maize and bean crops, irrigation ponds and city precincts during the rise of the Aztec empire in the Valley of Mexico.
So reads the introduction to my newly written and wholly revised ruleset for the latest incarnation of the game that started out as Terraform (of which more can be found in the BrettSpiel archives). It’s always been a favourite of mine, and I have returned to the design often over the past few years. There are absolutely nothing wrong with Terraform in its final form, a form which Jackson Pope of the erstwhile Reiver Games seriously considered for publication, but the more I went on to design other prototypes, the more I realised that Terraform could be and do something more, and I have since tried out various ideas to elevate and enliven the player experience.
Yesterday was the first playtest of the new Mēxihco and as playtests go, it was a pretty satisfying and reassuring experience, even if probabilistically arresting — but more of that in a moment.
The idea of shifting the theme to something more Earth-bound was the beginning of this process, and the first thing to change was the name. The play involves landscape building and definitely classifies as an ’area control’ eurogame, but the game itself — the core of it — is actually rather more combative than the average eurogame and is really one of constant brinkmanship. My earlier attempts to ‘fix’ the game missed the mark, serving only to stab at its very heart, injuring the thing that made it interesting in the first place: the cycle of tension and resolution. Never forget the good stuff when attempting to exorcise the bad!
Another key aspect of change — which I discussed at length in my Game Design 101: What Are The Odds? article — was changing the timing and tempo of the game by introducing an (appropriately constrained) degree of unpredictability into its progress. The game has a stash of tiles, which the players claim and place to build the landscape. Terraform simply ended when these ran out, which led to flat and anticlimactic endgame. My solution, as discussed in the article although now implemented slightly differently, is to add a small population of special tiles to the main stash. These tiles emerge randomly, but once they’ve all been played the game is over.
With a little bit of combinatorial and permutational maths you can work out the likelihood of any particular number of tiles turning up before the game can end. I’d done the maths and thought I knew what to expect. But the Universe, it seems, likes to solve its own equations and yesterday delivered a result that was roughly a 400-to-1 long-shot. Thanks, Universe!
In a way, this result only goes to show how careful and respectful the game designer must be when dealing with our old friend Lady Luck. Since just one playtest has the capacity to deliver even the most aberrant of outcomes, any game designer without a meaningful understanding of the maths could be easily deceived into thinking either the best or worst of their creation. I am confident I have a handle on the numbers, but to experience what an edge case actually feels like was very useful.
As I said in my original article, when you hand over any aspect of your game to chance you can no longer rule out the genuinely shocking outcome — ‘Everything Not Forbidden is Compulsory’, remember? — but actually, that’s part of the fun. And last night’s playtest managed to reinforce that message while highlighting the value of an almost Orwellian ‘ignorance is strength’ credo. Let go the reins a little and learn to love the chaos!
Plus — and this was a very important aspect of the playtest — my little LEGO Aztec temples did the job very nicely, thank you very much!
This post also appears on my regular BrettSpiel blog, which you are, of course, more than welcome to come visit!
-
Brett J. Gilbert
United Kingdom
Cambridge
Divinare — Coming from Asmodee 2012!
-
I'm going to try cross-posting stuff from my regular blog here on BGG, although the reformatting is a bit fiddly, isn't it? If you know of any HTML-to-BGG-forum-formatting conversion tips or tricks, do let me know!
Devotees of such things will no doubt have noticed that Days of Wonder have announced the twin winners of their Ticket to Ride Map Design Contest. Fulsome congratulations are due to the winners, who will see their maps published later this year: Ian Vincent of the UK (go Ian!), and François Valentyne of Canada. Readers interested in the delicious details of the new geographies offered in the forthcoming Map Collections can find out more on the DoW website.
When I first heard about the contest I, like many, many others, immediately set about the task of designing my own map, but before doing so publicly speculated on what Days of Wonder, in creating the contest, might be looking for. Ian Vincent read that blog post (without realising who I was, although we had previously met) and has, graciously, been kind enough to credit me in the rules for his India map.
Not, I hasten to add, for inspiring any specific part of his design, but rather, I think, for helping to articulate the nature of the Ticket to Ride brand itself. It’s genuinely gratifying to know that my words were helpful, and a geek thrill of another kind to see my newly minted nickname — Brett “Spiel” Gilbert (thanks Ian!) — up in metaphorical lights. Commensurately small lights, of course, but lights nonetheless.
But what of my own design? News of the winners has reminded me of how much I enjoyed the challenge of designing a map, and I thought you, dear reader, might be interested to see what I came up with — Ticket to Ride: Around the World.
The year is 1925. A quarter-century after our five old friends met to commemorate Phileas Fogg’s famous journey, they meet again. Within the past decade, great transport projects such as the Panama Canal and the Trans-Siberian Railway have opened up the world to the adventurous traveller like never before, and now, with the Roaring Twenties in full swing, and inspired by their dynamic spirit and industrial fervour, our friends agree to take on their grandest challenge yet — to recreate Fogg’s impossible journey for themselves!
That was my pitch, and the principle conceit of the map was that some routes would wrap around the left and right edges of the map, creating an entirely new geography and the possibility of true ‘Around the World’ tickets. These ‘long route’ tickets feature two cities as usual, but require them to be connected by a single, continuous, circumnavigational series of track. Other than that specific addition, the game preserves all the familiar concepts of the existing games and added no new mechanics or scoring bonuses.
I do wonder, of course, whether anyone else who entered had the same idea. It’s impossible to know, although since when I mentioned the contest to my maze-designing sister, herself a keen TtR online player, she independently expressed exactly the same idea, I can’t help but think that other entrants had it too!
Anyway, I began by looking at the different world map projections, and quickly settled on the Robinson projection as being a good fit for the standard Ticket to Ride board size. After that I roughly scaled the projection, overlaid this with a scan of the original Ticket to Ride map (of the United States) and, working in my favourite graphics package, began to pick out a selection of world cities that might form the basis of a workable map.
I deliberately set out to create a map which would have (roughly) the same scale and density as the US map, partly because I was looking to create a map that would similarly fill the rectangular board space, but also for pragmatic reasons. I knew the US map ‘worked’, in terms of its balance of route lengths and colourations, and I didn’t want to set myself the additional challenge of reinventing that part of the system. To me, the geographical conceit of the map was the key idea.
Soon enough I began to add routes to the map, using the background US map as guide to how large the train car spaces needed to be. If you compare the first two versions of my map you will see that I quickly ‘zoomed in’ on the Robinson projection, cropping the Arctic, Antarctic and Pacific regions as much as possible to focus on the main continental landmasses. This maximised the usable portions of the map and allowed more room for longer routes to be fitted between cities.
The overall form of the map began to take shape quite speedily, although many details remained to be worked out. I had to pick junction cities for the wrap-around routes, and work out how dense or otherwise all the ferry routes demanded by the abundant oceans ought to be. Inevitably, of course, I started to take rather preposterous liberties — What’s that? A trans-Atlantic tunnel between Africa and South America? — but I was still playing around with ideas and figuring out where more routes would be needed for the map to be suitably connected to support 5 players.
Ah, now things are starting to come together! This was an early attempt at colouring the routes, but established some useful conventions: Note the rounded lozenges for ferry routes, where dots indicate necessary locomotives, the heavy outline on tunnel routes, and the six differently coloured routes that span the board edges. Things would continue to evolve, but I wanted to make sure that the Pacific routes would be clearly readable during the game to avoid any confusion, so decided upon a limited number, all differently coloured, which would be as disparately located as possible: top, bottom and middle.
Here we catch the map in the middle of being re-coloured (something that I did repeatedly, each time trying to balance the mix and density of routes). Note that the routes within Africa and Asia have been visually tided up — I didn’t like all those kinks! — and that there is a new Iceland-Africa ferry route, that there is (at last) a ferry from Dakar to South America, and that some of the place names have now changed.
By now I had begun to think more carefully about the time and place of this map (the very thing I counselled readers about in my original post) and realised that I needed to pick a specific year and cross-check world place names with that era. I eventually settled on 1925, and so Brasília was out (not founded until 1956!), and Jakarta, Ulan Bator and Chennai all needed to revert to their erstwhile monikers.
Playtesting continued to reveal more things that needed to be fixed, such as relieving the congestion around Panama, and also demonstrated that simply forming a circumnavigational route was actually rather hard work! Not that that I wanted the map to make things easy for the players, but I did moderate the challenge by contracting key routes such as Tokyo-Panama, and completely removing the need for a trans-Pacific stopover in Hanga Roa (goodbye Easter Island!). Meanwhile, South America, which I had never been happy with, changed again to more accurately reflected the local geography of the cities, and elsewhere some of the tunnel routes shifted, again to better match the placement of large mountain ranges.
Rules mavens should note that the necessarily large number of ferry routes mean that the game is played using the ‘three card’ joker rule from Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries (where, when completing a ferry route, three matching cards can be played in place of a locomotive).
Another complete re-colouration of the routes and — at the very last! — the sudden disappearance of Beijing and appearance of San Juan (plus another nudge to South America) brought the map into focus. Personally I really enjoy both the detail and the whole, and was pleased with how the varied geography created different challenges for the players at different points on the map.
My favourite part (if I were forced to choose) is the array of routes in and out of Panama, which features regular, ferry and tunnel routes, and all 9 route colours (if you count grey as a colour, that is). That one city offers everything in the game in one place!
This post also appears on my regular BrettSpiel blog, which you are, of course, more than welcome to come visit!
|
|
