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Dominic Crapuchettes
United States
Bethesda
MD
This overtext is brought to you by the abstract strategy game Battle of LITS and the number 20.
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I have a dream game in my head that I'm eager to bring to life. It's a personal project that I work on in my spare time - it has nothing to do with North Star Games. I might start a new board game company to publish this game, but I definitely won't raise investor money for the endeavor. That way I'll have the freedom to follow my dream without regard for the financial side of the equation.
I am writing this blog for two reasons. First, I thought it would be useful to record my progress in one place. I want to have everything important in one place that I can refer to, instead of the hundreds of paper notes that I now have. And second, the visibility will be helpful for getting feedback, possible play-testers, and getting people interested in the buying the game after it is published. Please subscribe to this blog you'd like to follow the process. My plan is to post several entries a year.
Summary
This entry is an overview of what I plan to do with this blog, what I've done with this game over the past 10 years, and several problems I faced with my first prototype. Future entries will focus more on specific game design issues.
About the Game
My goal is to create a civilization/trading/exploration game that is playable in under 2 hours. It's going to be a Euro / Ameritrash hybrid, meaning the rules will be as streamlined as possible while also being thematic. Although the game will include military units, success will usually be determined by thoughtful trading instead of military aggression.
The goal of this game is to explore Adam Smith's views about how specialization and free trade make a nation wealthy. In other words, a nation of experts who trade their surplus goods for other surplus goods is wealthier than a nation of generalists. The military plays an important role in mitigating the threat of theft and ensuring free trade.
A Quick History
After years of sketches in 20 different notebooks, I finally put together a prototype in 2010 to test at a game designer weekend retreat. The first test was very rough (as usual), but it showed some promise.
I tested the game solo several times over the next month to prepare for Protospiel 2010. I played it four times at Protospiel with some experienced game designers (and some not so experienced game designers) and it made significant progress. I left Protospiel with a game that was pretty good - publishable, but nothing that would wow the BGG community.
I spent a couple hundred hours on the game during my 3 month paternity leave in late 2010. It was the perfect thing to think about in the middle of the night during feedings and while walking my little tyke to sleep! I probably put together 10 new versions and tested them during those months. Most of my plays were solo, but I also found the time to test the game about 15 times with others. The feedback was mixed. Some people really liked the game, some were lukewarm, and a few actively disliked it.
I made a lot of little tweaks over the next 6 months to give it more depth. My goal was to create something that had lots of replay value. As to be expected, these changes increased the strategic depth at the expense of the new player experience. In hind sight, this was probably a mistake.
I took my new prototype to the Gathering to get more feedback and to pitch it to publishers. I have to admit that I was disappointed with the response. I played it 4 times, but I don't think anyone was gushing with excitement about it. Most people thought it had promise, but nothing more. I was very excited when I finally got to pitch the game to Zev from Z-Man Games. The best part is that he quite actively disliked it! I found it funny that Zev disliked my game so much, even so, the whole experience was a rude awakening for me.
What Went Wrong?
I think the biggest problem is that my goals were too ambitious. I don't have a whole lot of experience at designing big games like this one, and I was giving myself way too many constraints. Two of my goals were practically incompatible. First, I wanted a very simple version that North Star Games might be willing to publish. Then I wanted to develop a more complicated version that some other company (like Z-Man Games, Days of Wonder, Rio Grande Games, Hans im Glück, etc) would be interested in publishing. The deeper version would use all of the rules from the simple version, but have added layers of complexity. It was a nice goal, but it was pulling the game into two opposite directions, and I am simply not skilled enough at complex games to pull it off. I have now accepted that this is a game that will never get published by North Star Games.
To complicate the matter, I have several other goals that are still important to me. I want the game to have very few rules, but I want every rule to be thematic. It turns out this is a VERY difficult goal if you also want the rules to lead to interesting strategies. As I said above, I want the game to illustrate some of Adam's Smith's principles. But I'm also hoping to use of Marx's ideas about how natural resources from the land define the course of history. In this case, I want the course of the game to derive from how the resources in the land happen to lay out during game play. If things work out the way I'm hoping, this will lead to a lot of the variability in game play. These are all the goals that I'm hoping to keep. We'll see if that changes...
Another problem is that I was not listening to feedback very well. This is such a personal project that I let myself get in the way of the development. I was designing this game for me instead of for other people. This is not a new problem for me. My strategy games are often unintuitive and unforgiving - two things that should never go together (unless you already have a following that expects this from you - like Martin). When I am designing something for North Star Games, I meticulously listen to feedback from everyone. I never let me personal preferences get in the way of designing a game that resonates with people. It's weird how things change when I work on my own hobby projects!
Final Words
I have accepted that I lack experience at this type of endeavor, and that this project will take several more years as I gain the experience I need. I have given up the goal of a core rule set that is simple enough for North Star Games. The problem was making a simple rule set that worked on it's own, and was thematic enough for the deeper version. I don't think I could solve this problem to my satisfaction even if I devoted the rest of my life to it. Heck, I doubt Aristotle could solve this problem even if we raised him from the dead specifically for the challenge.
It's time for my yearly game designer retreat weekend, so I am putting together the 2.0 version. This version is more thematic, less chaotic, and more forgiving. We'll test it this weekend and I'll write an update when I return. Thanks for reading. Cheers!
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This overtext is brought to you by the abstract strategy game Battle of LITS and the number 20.
