Category: Staking the Throne

A filler design with the “Auction: Sealed Bid” as the primary mechanic.

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Rocketeers Space Soup Staking the Throne

Loose Ends

As it seemed in the previous post, Space Soup did not fare that well in the TGC’s Community Anthology Challenge. I was expecting a bit better position than 67/89, but I guess this where you get with no-marketing, a-nothing-that-special-concept, and effectively nonexisting theme. Still, the view/vote -ratio seemed to be 15 to 1, which was something that few designers of better-faring entries posted afterwards.

In the TGC’s Mint Tin Challenge held earlier I had a rather strong mechanical concept (but a bit lacking in the game itself) known as Master of Keys. This one had probably the view/vote -ratio of 9 to 1. I did absolutely nothing to promote this one… and the experiment did give me the confidence that if one does have a strong concept and a very good game, the design would get through the popular voting phase even without promoting.

One other missing story ending is the Board Date Project (which the organizers are now running a second time): nothing happened with Staking the Throne. The video was viewed few times (less than average) while those who did check the video watched to the end. Some interesting statistics were shared on boardgamegeek regarding what kind of games got the most interest, and that would seem to indicate that children/party/family games have the most appeal.

And that’s it… well… I do have an entry in an ongoing contest, but one is supposed to be less vocal about one’s participation. But in the meantime, I’m pondering on enrolling into 7th Roll & Wrote Game Design Contest on BGG. I have this idea of rockets moving in an ever-speeding fashion, in which players try to desperately steer their rockets (and obstruct others) through checkpoints. I did some initial testing a while ago, but there were few bigger issues and some other project deadlines… so this was but on a back burner. But I think now it’s time to draw the line.

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Staking the Throne

Second Impressions

It is the time for Board Date Project to commence. My submission Staking the Throne (see the original post First Impressions) did get through the preliminary step… but only barely. The organizers skipped it first, but they asked to view the game rules just in case—and the rules got the design through. So it’s probably safe to say that the first impression did not hit the mark. And I guess this is one of those rare occasions in which one gets to redo the first impression.

Hence I’ve been working on the pitch video. I had some… visions… involving a green screen and Tabletop Simulator, but I kind of run out of time (and perhaps luckily so). Here’s the pitch:

And here’s the adjusted specs and description:

  • Players: 3 to 5
  • Playing Time: 15 minutes/game
  • Primary Mechanic: Auction: Sealed Bid
  • Game Type: Competitive
  • Audience: Family + (Medium Heavy)
  • Youtube Description: A board game design for 3-5 players, which features blind bidding and set collection. In this game the auctions are held in pairs, into which players divide their limited bidding resources. Check it out, especially if you happen to like For Sale or High Society.

The number 200 has been mentioned as the total number of pitches. I might be missing the WOW factor to stand out… but as they used to say once upon a time: Alea iacta est!

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General Staking the Throne

Everybody was tie-breaking

In games with simultaneous actions, it is often necessary to determine what happens first and to whom. I’ve got a bit of a personal case study in the subject known as “Staking the Throne”. The core of the design—simultaneous blind bidding and set collection—has persisted, but pretty much everything else has shifted back and forth during the years:

  • “v0.1 Profiteers (2015)” was the very first version of the game: The players were allowed to choose when to win a tie or whether to save that possibility for later. The ties were common, so this slowed down the gameplay considerably.
  • “v1.0/v2.0 Roar for the Throne (2015)” had basically the same thing for ties, but players were forced to cash in their possibilities.
  • “v3.0 Symboletto (2016)” is the only published version of the game… well… if you count a small print run of 70 copies as “published”. The tie-breaking was streamlined a bit, but effectively this was still the same (i.e., check who won, update the order afterward). The bigger changes were in other mechanics, which reduced the number of ties quite a bit.
  • “v4.0/v5.0 Bets and Bids (2018)” had no changes with respect to tie-breaking.
  • “v6.0/v7.0 Staking the Throne (2020)” had ties broken by unique value (eliminating the need to update the tie-breaker).
  • “v8.0 Staking the Throne” has no tie-breaking! This was enabled by having differents tracks for points as well as for sets, so now rewards could be given to all players involved.

The journey has been rather long, starting from a clunky solution to an issue, which in the end turned out not to even exist. This actually reminds me of a Ravensburger game design video I watched recently, in which one piece of advice was to “Instead of adding stuff to cope with something, fix the underlying issue.”

Getting back to the topic: In my humble opinion, there should not be tie-breaking during gameplay, as it breaks the game flow, complicates rules, and could be unfair. For instance, tossing a coin gets the job done, but that would not have anything to do with the game. And sometimes you need to break and shake things around until they fall into positions, which allow you to get through neatly. So join with me: No more ties! No more ties! No more ties!

Categories
General Staking the Throne

To Boldly Prototype…

…in Tabletop Simulator. It took a while, but I finally managed to make the leap. And it only took two nights or so to import the graphics, make components, and create snapping points to make a playable version of Staking the Throne.

My regular gaming group gave it a go… and indeed: the game could be played, playing didn’t take that much time, and the game worked (or let’s say it had its moments). The game was definitely not perfect, but it was a good testing session.

Regarding Tabletop Simulator, there are plenty of good reasons for using it: a lot of functionality exists already, prototyping is faster, prototyping is cheaper, and there are more possibilities for playtesting. Unfortunately, there’s a bit of a learning curve… and when you do want to play/test with your friends, you need to get them to buy it too.

For completeness sake, the other framework out there is Tabletopia. On afterthought, getting a framework for online prototyping is a no-brainer for an enthusiastic game designer. Assumably in the end the framework probably does not matter that much, as each of the frameworks has its strengths and weaknesses. So if you are hesitating about online prototyping… stop thinking and start clicking instead.