Interview: Tristan Hall, from Hall or Nothing Productions

Hello, fellow gamers!

After a small pause during the holidays, I come with something a bit different than usual. While Rory and I were visiting the UK Games Expo back in early June we decided to do some interviews.

So let me present you Tristan Hall, from Hall or Nothing Productions. The designer of the great "Gloom of Kilforth" and the upcoming "1066, Tears To Many Mothers", also a fellow 1 Player Guild member from BGG and a friend of mine.

After many years of development, he successfully kickstarted his first game, Gloom of Kilforth. Though I remember being part of the campaign and it came close to the end. The delivery of the games was earlier in June this year and he delivered on everything he promised. Great gameplay, immersive stories and one of the best artwork ever seen in a boardgame. A review will definitely come at some point.

No wonder his second Kickstarter, 1066, Tears To Many Mothers run much smoother and reached its goal much earlier and funded in the first days of the campaign, after such a good reception of the first game.

We thought it was a good opportunity to get some insight into the games world from a small designer point of view.

Also, if after reading this you want to know more or even get one of his games, you can still late pledge for 1066, Tears To Many Mothers and tomorrow friday 29th o November, Tristan will launch his 3rd kickstarter with a reprint and an expansion for Gloom of Kilforth. I'll update the article with a link to the campaign :)

And now onto the questions, I hope you enjoy it!

Gloom of Kilforth:

• When reading the synopsis of the game I was immediately reminded of some of my favourite fantasy films of my childhood, namely The Never Ending Story, with its intangible and abstract growing menace – and I appreciate this question is the chagrin of fantasy authors, but I’ll ask it anyway: Can you tell me about any of the direct influences (as well as Tolkien that you’ve mentioned) to this game – from both/either other art forms, books/films/music or other games?

I’m obsessed with stories, and I always have been, so influences can come from anywhere, but if I had to list authors I guess anything by Terry Brooks, Terry Pratchett, Weiss and Hickman, Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, even the gritty stuff from Iain Banks (or any of his sci-fi stuff as Iain M Banks) and Irvine Welsh, or the sweeping tales from Dickens or Dostoevsky, all of these have fed into my pools of influence in some way or other.

For films, a key moment in my life was watching Ralph Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings when I was 5 - I think it maybe had an even bigger impact on me than Star Wars.  All of Ray Harryhausen’s films blew me away.  Anything fantastical from the 80s like Labyrinth, Legend, Conan, Beastmaster, or any of the cheaper sword and sandals B-movies.

For other games it would be a combination of the Arkham Horror board game meets the Dungeons and Dragons RPG.

• As an RPG style game, self-generated narrative is an important feature of the game can you tell me a little about how you devised this system, as you say there are few to no games like it.

Basically I wanted to play a fantasy RPG but didn’t have the time, and I wanted it to be solo-playable too.  All the fantasy games on the market were based on combat - fighting baddies and nicking their treasure.  Which is fine, of course, and I probably bought all of them.  But for me, actual RPGs were more about negotiating with strange people, going on amazing adventures, exploring ancient and deadly locations, saving people by going on epic quests, and THEN fighting baddies and nicking their treasure.  And there were no games that seemed to deal with all of that other cool narrative stuff, so I worked hard to include all of those elements in Gloom of Kilforth.

Interestingly, there has been a surge of fantasy games focussed on narrative experiences recently, so it’s clearly not just me who feels this way!

• With the success of this Kickstarter and “similar” projects like The City of Kings and Gloomhaven – where the border between board and RPG is becoming thinner, and of course with the recent and sudden popularity of the Legacy format, what do you think this means for this new genre/style of game?

I think that narrative games are an excellent direction for the industry, and my usual reason for designing games is because they don’t already exist.  If we have a gamut of excellent RPG style adventure games with great storytelling then I can spend more time playing than designing them!

I love campaign games but I’ll be honest, I’m not a huge fan of the Legacy format.  I know there are two schools of thought on this and that the proponents of Legacy games argue that it’s not just a marketing gimmick and that you can’t get the same tension from a game when you know you can just reset it again afterwards.  But after playing through campaigns of renewable campaign games like Kingdom Death compared to say the one-shot experience of Pandemic Legacy, I just don’t think that games where you have to destroy components deliver a better experience.  I also like to come back and play games that I’ve had for decades too.  That said, there is now a movement of ‘green legacy’ style games where you can play through a changing world campaign game but not have to destroy your game in the process.  I think these will offer the perfect balance of experience in the long run, when people realise you don’t have to buy multiple copies of a disposable game instead.

That said, if the market for disposable Legacy games continues to grow too, that’s cool as well.  There’s nothing to stop us all from having our cake and eating it!

• As a member of the 1 Player Guild, I guess it was important for you to include a solo mode.  Were there any notable/specific challenges you faced when designing that mode of play, was it something you had in mind from the beginning?

I have been a solo game player for as long as I’ve played board games, whether it was playing both sides at Tank Battles when I was a child (never enjoyed playing both opposing sides as much though) to developing full solo/cooperative rules for HeroQuest when I was a pre-teen.  I’m a huge advocate for solo play, and though asking for solo rules for games was kind of frowned upon by some of the gaming community ten years ago, today it seems like including solo rules is par for course, which I think is fantastic.  I certainly set out to do that with Gloom of Kilforth from the outset, as I was often frustrated by games that offered solo rules but forced you to play as multiple characters for the game to work.  As an avid reader of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks as I was growing up I always loved the idea of one hero against the world, so that mode of play was built in from the ground up, meaning that the challenge of achieving that was equivalent to me as the challenge of just designing the game in the first place.  If that makes sense.  Which it might not, reading that back...

• The artwork in this game is incredible, just eye-wateringly beautiful, one of the things I love the most about it,and it is used is in the gender neutrality of the card-flipping, as you say in the Kickstarter video, which side of the card is used has no impact on the game, was the inclusion of this extra art etc important to you at an early stage?  

I’ve always thought that being able to play as male or female in a fantasy game was just common sense, and I think that games like this but which preclude one gender or another are senseless.  If it’s a historical game based on real individuals, you might well be limited to a number of characters of a specific gender, but when you’re creating a new world from scratch there’s no reason to hold back in this respect other than the costs involved for the extra art work.

• Your wife Francesca developed a beautiful soundtrack to the game, something very different and unique, can you tell me about how and why that came about?

Francesca is an amazing pianist, and the daughter of a concert pianist so music is in her blood, literally!  She would be playing the piano whilst I was designing the game in the same room and we talked about how cool it would be if she could score the game.  We went through the themes of the game together, the descending Gloom, the heroes against the odds, strangers meeting and joining forces, epic adventures, and Francesca used the art as inspiration too, to develop piano music to go with it.  I wanted just piano for this soundtrack - like Philip Glass did for Dracula.  And what she achieved is spectacular I think.  If you listen to the music whilst playing the game it provides that extra level of immersion and world-building that really draws you in.  Maybe one day she can score the music to the Gloom of Kilforth movie too!

• With the upcoming expansion, "Touch of Death", will it increase the base game contents or will it add new very different mechanics to the game?  

Touch of Death is a stand-alone expansion to Gloom of Kilforth with a focus on the rising undead threat, so it’s effectively the same game system again, but with entirely new heroes, adventures, rewards, and content.  You can either play Touch of Death or Gloom of Kilforth independently, or you can shuffle them both together to create one epic world and double the content of all of your decks of cards!

• Did you consider anything else to further the immersion into the world you created?

We are launching an artbook Kickstarter for Ania’s incredible work on Gloom of Kilforth soon.

• With 8 years in development what was it you set out to do, and how does the end product differ from that?

I set out to deliver a sort of D&D RPG experience in a box, that could be played in one evening, either solo, cooperatively, or competitively.  In that respect I think I’ve achieved my goal.  But the help along the way from play-testers and backers regarding the rules and gameplay has dragged the concept along leaps and bounds, and with the money from the Kickstarter campaign we were able to hike up the quality of the art and components to a level I had honestly never envisioned.  There is nothing else out there like it for the amount of art and content you get in a single box, and seeing it sitting on my local shop shelves next to the highest rated games out there I could not be prouder of what we all achieved together.

• Have your plans changed at all about attempting a retail release for Gloom of Kilforth?

GoK had a limited retail run in the UK through Esdevium, who sold out and oversold almost straight away.  The same happened with our US retailer The Game Steward.  Both retailers have asked for much bigger print runs and we now have international language retailers and distributors interested, so we will be launching a second print run soon going straight to retail.  But we’ll also be running a Kickstarter campaign to attract direct buyers - and there will be something in it for existing owners of the game too, so stay tuned!

1066 Tears to Many Mothers:

• A great name for a game, where does it come from?

In April of 1066 Halley's Comet was in its perihelion orbit and writers at the time said it was four times the size of Venus and shining with a light equal to a quarter of that of the Moon. Many thought it was an evil omen - the monk Eilmer of Malmesbury Abbey wrote about the event:

"You've come, have you? – You've come, you source of tears to many mothers. It is long since I saw you; but as I see you now you are much more terrible, for I see you brandishing the downfall of my country."

Which is where we get the title.

• How long have you been working on 1066 TtMM?

The game has been in development for about 5 years.

• As potentially part of the Alt Wars series why start with the Battle of Hastings?

As an English kid growing up this was one of the most fascinating subjects to learn about at school.  Such a romantic notion: Harold as the tragic king fighting for the centuries-long fate of our country, and from a military point of view this idea that the battle could have gone either way at any moment, the whole thing just seemed to write itself into an asymmetrical conflict game in my head.  I loved the idea of making a two player card game like Star Wars LCG or Magic the Gathering but with historical events and characters instead.  And I knew with Ania’s art that we could make history look beautiful in a card game format, rather than a dry hex and chit type affair that lots of war games become - not that there’s anything wrong with those too of course...

• This game so far has picked up two pretty big awards, is this successful enough for you to develop Agincourt?

Award nominations - it’s a big distinction.  But I think people are just as happy that it’s been nominated, especially considering it hasn’t actually even been released yet!  Agincourt was certainly on my list of conflicts/theatres to cover, but as has been pointed out many times, it would pit the French against the English once again.  So I’m convinced now that the second game in the series will be another prominent contender from my list - ‘1565, St Elmo’s Pay’ (Siege of Malta).  And given the success of the 1066 TtMM Kickstarter, I’m confident enough to start development on it as soon as I can.

• Are you planning on doing a retail release for 1066 TtMM, or will you keep it as a Kickstarter exclusive like Gloom of Kilforth?

If the retailers will have it, I’ll sell it.  Gloom of Kilforth did get a limited retail run at hobby shops in the UK and US, and I believe 1066 will too.  But it will be a long time before we’re threatening the shelves of Barnes and Noble, Waterstones or Toys R Us!

• TtMM sees quite a bit of a departure from Gloom of Kilforth, was this born from a desire to create a game mechanically very different, or was i the theme/history that lead the mechanics?  

The history bled into the mechanics of 1066 enormously, and once the main elements fell into place (two armies fighting over the three wedges of troops) it started to come together quite quickly.  Even though it’s an abstracted card game, everything about it is drawn from the history and/or stories of the time, so there are cards for almost anything you can think of that occurred at the battle - the legendary Saxon Hatchet Knight, the stopping the battle for a food break because the bodies were piled too high, the Normans confessing and praying the night before, whilst the Saxons drank and sang, we even have an ‘Arrow in the Eye’ card...

But there’s also an element of needing to prove I’m not a one-trick pony too.  The path of least resistance would have been to release a Gloom of Kilforth expansion straight away, and that will certainly happen soon, but I wanted to show I could design a totally different game altogether, and I think 1066 is, as you say, a clear enough departure.  And wait till you see what’s coming further down the line too.

• Do you think this game will appeal to a different/wider audience then Gloom of Kilforth?  Do you see any risk in creating a game that is mechanically very different?

It was definitely a risk, because we could have got back all the people who enjoyed Gloom of Kilforth by doing an expansion, whereas there was no guarantee that anyone who wanted a 1-4 player epic fantasy adventure experience was going to want a 1-2 player head to head card game based on history.  But I was shocked by the number of backers who came back to support a combination of Ania’s artwork, Francesca’s music, my game designs, and Hall or Nothing as a company I guess.  We also actually drew in more initial backers this time (1,906 backers for 1066 Tears to Many Mothers versus 1,481 for Gloom of Kilforth), I think from the much lower price point, being an established/trusted brand now, and also from the historical element, maybe.  I definitely wasn’t sure we’d reach a wider audience, but I’m delighted that we did.

• After your second Kickstarter for “1066 Tears to many mothers”, as a small independent company producing games, crowdfunding looks like a good system to launch a new game. What are the biggest challenges you faced the first time that you’re doing differently now? What advice would you give to a new designer who is thinking of launching a Kickstarter based on your experience?

Go for it!  It’s a great time for the industry right now, many are calling it the golden age, as people want to escape from screens and spend time with real people and real components around a real table, being sociable, having drinks and snacks and listening to music or whatever.

Make sure your game idea is fully fledged - play-test it a hundred times, and get people you don’t know to play it too.  Take on all the feedback you can, and as long as you put in the time and effort to make your game the best it can be, don’t be put off by too much negativity, because there are games for everyone.  I’ve had to learn the hard way that no matter how beautifully produced, researched or presented your game, there will always be people who will not like it for any number of reasons.  One reviewer said that the art for Gloom of Kilforth was ‘too good’ and broke the immersion for him.  And I recently had a 1066 backer pull his pledge because he found out that Saxon warriors liked to drink ale!  You have to learn to love these differences in people, and realise that for every individual who doesn’t like your game, there will five hundred more who love it.

Platforms like Kickstarter can be incredibly supportive and positive if you keep your backers updated and you are open and honest with them.  But a badly handled campaign with a quiet creator and/or an unfinished game can quickly descend into toxicity.  Stay on top of your project and ask for help when and where you need it.

• Anna Kryczkowska provides the excellent artwork again for TtMM, why have you chosen to retain the same artist, and do you plan to continue doing so?

Have you seen her work??  Seriously though, Ania K is a consummate professional who delivers the highest quality art I’ve ever seen in board games, and in an incredibly quick time frame.  We have a great working relationship too.  Hopefully we’ll get busy enough to require multiple artists to get projects completed, but I would happily continue working with Ania for as long as I’m producing anything creative because she’s a legend

What is next for Hall or Nothing Productions?

For Hall or Nothing Productions Ltd here's a very rough guideline:

• ‘1066, Tears to Many Mothers’ - production underway


• ‘Gloom of Kilforth’ reprint + small GoK expansion


• Ania Kryczkowska Art-book


• Mark Chaplin’s sci-fi epic ‘Lifeform’


• ‘Touch of Death: A Fantasy Quest Game’


• ‘Sublime Dark’ (horror storytelling game)


• ‘1565, St Elmo’s Pay’ (Siege of Malta)

 

That's all folks!

Thanks for reading and special thanks to Tristan for taking the time to answer all our questions!

Bad Pets: A Good Plan

Deadlines

Deadline 1: Wyvern’s Liar 20^th April – 100 words + 1 image

Deadline 2: Playtest Slot at UKGE

It is a good thing to have a deadline, it focuses the mind and the intentions.  For deadline 1 I need a game that I know people find fun, exciting, re-playable and most importantly sellable.  If it does all of these things and does them well writing a 100-word pitch will be a piece of cake.  Getting a “decent sketch” and generally good looking prototype for the photo will also be “Highly Desirable”.

From that point onwards I only want to be making small changes, little tweaks as I don’t want it to change too much between submission and (fingers crossed) presentation for Deadline 2.

GDA - Game Design Adjustments

This is a list of GDAs to bring the game up to what I have in my head.  Most of these have been part of the “original plan”, some have come as a result of playtester comments and feedback.  But right here, right now I’m writing them down and planning them.    With each Adjustment, though it is important to know at least 2 things:

1. Why am I adding it?


2. What is the intention?

Now, if these 2 questions cannot be answered and quantified then said “Adjustment” doesn’t go in the mix.  Answers such as “Just because.” Or “Its cool” do not count as answers.

My Adjustment List:

1. Bonus Scoring
   
   
   
   1. General Tiles
   
   
   2. Player Die
      
      
      
      1. Start of Game
      
      
      2. End of Game
      
      
      
      
   
   
   3. Clock/Picture/Window Tiles
   
   
   4. Four Player Game
   
   
   5. 3 Player Game
      
      
      
      1. 2 Vs. 1
      
      
      2. The Kid
      
      
      
      
   
   
   6. Boredom Busters and Beds
      
      
      
      1. Treats
      
      
      2. Toys
      
      
      
      
   
   
   7. Pets
      
      
      
      1. Guarding
      
      
      2. Attacking
      
      
      3. Movement
      
      
      4. Asymmetry (?)
      
      
      5. Penalties
      
      
      
      
   
   
   8. Bonus Scoring.
   
   
   
   

I have two ideas here and within those two ideas, I have a further two.  The bonus scoring will add modifiers if a set of, or certain furniture is damaged.

1. General Tiles – now this came about because of my love for Tera Mystica, and if you’re familiar with the turn scoring in that game you may notice some similarities. If you’re not then it works that 5 random tiles are drawn and laid on the board to indicate how that turn will score.  Bad Pets will just use 2 (although one of these is actually a turn reduction to create a faster-paced game).


2. Dice – These will have to be custom dice eventually really (I’ll create a little look-up table for early playtests) but these will give a more specific modifier, there’ll be one cat die, and one dog die and these will determine what will score for that specific animal

The What and the Why for these additions are very heavily linked.  Increase the strategy level.

In playtests, some very regular feedback was that strategy seemed a little light, and it was difficult to really set a goal and plan.

Graphic Time:

Let’s start with a heat map.  I put together a pretty decent post-game questionnaire that every player happily filled in, which allowed me to build this.  What this tells me is that the majority of playtesters felt the game had a medium level of strategy but it leant more heavily on chance.  Now, there will always be a sizable level of chance in Bad Pets; it’s a tile placement game so just like Carcassonne, Isle of Skye etc. chance plays a pretty integral part of the game.  Now, if I can increase the level of strategy, give players something more to think about, something else to aim for my hope is that my Strategy score goes up and I can hit that sweet spot of High Chance and High Strategy – this, in turn, will hopefully make the game more replayable and more worthy of coming to the table.

My other choice I have here, and I feel more inclined to let the player decide which is best suited for the game they want. 

Are the bonus tiles/dice decided at the beginning of the game?

Deciding at the beginning of the game gives players something to really fight over: great – however, this is a Mechanical decision. However; deciding at the end of the game potentially gives players an added bit of drama and tension (especially in close scoring games), this then would be a Thematic decision.

Story Time:

Now I’ve come home from work or a day out, on more than one occasion to discover my dogs (I’m not a cat person, and my dogs are really not cat dogs) have chewed a remote control, a console control pad, a book, shredded a magazine, smashed a mug, pulled the carpet up (and then proceeded to eat the underlay) and have also taken chunks out of the sofa.

Note: on these occasions, I have not scolded, reprimanded or told my dogs off – the destruction they cause is really my fault; not enough exercise, too many treats, too long left alone, not enough interesting toys left out for them and so on.   

The point here is that when there is a lot of destruction it’s not always the biggest, most expensive item that causes the most upset – in the above example, the most upsetting thing was a particularly beautiful picture of my partner and me at a wedding.  So for me, at least the thematic decision seems right, but we’ll have to see how it playtests.

2-4 I’m not going to list every change and the ‘whats’ and the ‘whys’ as it will just make for dull reading, just rest assured that change will come.

5 & 6 Boredom Busters, Beds & Pets

The biggest, most consistent feedback I received was regarding the pet pawns, and truth be told, I was fairly sure this would be the case going into the playtest.

What exists at the moment is a really good idea, that hasn’t been executed fully.

The primary function of the Pets is to Guard a tile; preventing an opponent from changing it. This simple mechanical aspect of “worker placement” adds a very slight bump to the strategic value of the game.

The secondary function of the Pets is to fight/chase the opponent pet away, thus preventing the Guard and now allowing access to a previous inaccessible tile.

Super-Mega-Important

Getting the Pets right is pivotal to the success of this design:

There really is no down-side to the pets, unless they don’t work well, which at the moment they don’t.

Boredom Busters and Beds

Just 2 ideas of how the Pet actions can become more dynamic.

Boredom Busters will become a weapon for players, forcing an opponent to miss a turn, and or disabling their Pet’s Guard – and thematically this works too.  Which is nice.

Beds will be an additional title, or game component: which is literally the pet’s bed that players will put down on one edge of the board, and now whenever a Pet is chased it will return to its bed.

Additionally, I could make the pets more asymmetric, or give them Hit Points, but; not only do I not want to open that can of worms, I’m certain it would up the complexity with very little gain.

So, there’s lots to do, lots of Alpha testing and hopefully, I can be in a position to get this to Charlie Level testing soon.

 

I hope you’ve enjoyed this more in-depth look at playtesting and a glimpse at the playtesting analyse that I’ve done.  You’ll find a copy of the questionnaire I used to get this data too if you want to have a look and adapt it to your needs, please feel free.

 

Thanks for reading folks

Down the Playtesting Rabbit Hole

“No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.” Said Field Marshall Helmuth von Moltke as he surveyed the discarded pieces of cardboard and playing cards that had been very deliberately thrown down.  Clearly, the playtesting session with some pals had gone…well, not exactly to plan.

Ok, so that didn’t happen.  Von Moltke was really writing about an actual battle with an actual enemy, but that gets a little morbid, and let’s face it, the abstract idea of killing a wooden cube or a card is far easier to digest.

What does this have to do with playtesting?  In a word: everything.

“The biggest factor in the playability, the successful gameplay, of a game is not the quality of the ideas, nor the strength of conception, nor the marketing skill, nor the skill of artists […].  It’s the quality and quantity of playtesting and the resulting improvements made to the game.” – Game Design: How to Create Video and Tabletop Games, Start to Finish

About Playtesting

Before we go further down this rabbit hole there are, I think, two types of testing that need to take place, and in tabletop game design these two types happen (more or less) simultaneously: Game Testing and Bug Testing

Game Testing – “Does the game work as intended?”

Here you’ll encounter issues like fun, theme, player interaction, turn sequence, the need for more or fewer components etc.  You’ll be testing whether the game is a game, or rather you’ll be testing your idea and feel of the prototype and matching that against the idea and feel of the game in your head.

Bug Testing – “Do the mechanics of the game work well?”

This is where you’ll resolve issues of weighting and probability.  The number of actions per turn, what happens when one player does this or that.  You’ll be testing both the amalgamation of the rules – how one rule interacts with another, and the little details of the game.  The focus on bug testing is ensuring that each player, in every game has the same (or intended) chance/possibility of completing and or winning the game.

Even though a tabletop game will be playtested for both types at the same time, I think it’s important to recognise which side of the proverbial line the issues fall, and it’s important to recognise that there are two types when you start playtesting, especially when you start getting feedback from other people.

 

Rules of Playtesting

Using the previous two quotes we can assume 4 fundamental rules:

1. Your design will fail (but that is okay)

[caption id="attachment_259" align="alignleft" width="300"] An early game of mine about a race through space...or maybe dragons which got exactly this far.[/caption]

The most important rule on this list: with almost certainty your game will fall flat on its arse the first time you play it.   To paraphrase Von Moltke, “Your game design will not work when it is first played.”    This, dear reader, is a good thing.  Just like a baby learning to crawl, a chick learning to fly, and Bruce Wayne falling down a well. You will learn to pick yourself up, dust yourself down and get better.

Better at thinking about all sorts of games,

[caption id="attachment_244" align="alignright" width="300"] Dr. Seuss's Waiting Place - in case you missed the reference.[/caption]

About structure and mechanics,

About rule writing, and rules that are lame.

Better with things like economics.

 You’ll discover new levels of simplicity,

About randomness and chance,

Player roles and asymmetry

You’ll learn, improve and advance.

 

Yes!  Everything will get better.

(If I don’t get ‘Likes’ from a Doctor Seuss-style rhyme about board game design, then there must be something wrong with the Like button!)

I consider game design just as much as a piece of art as writing, painting and music.  In those professions, and let's take writing, for example, a chapter of a novel might not feel the way the writer intended, so they can either change their intention or go back and identify where the writing lost its way and put it back on track.  This is a very different process to the way a writer will deal with mechanical things: typos, spelling mistakes, and errors of grammar, or pace and structure.  It’s easy to take this analogy and apply it to a musician, a painter, an illustrator, filmmaker and yes, even a game designer.

2. Playtest a lot. A lot.

The most important rule on this list: Some problems can hide.  Back at the UKGE 2016 I met Gary Wareham (of Entropic Games and designer of Oligarchy which successfully funded on Kickstarter last year and will be reaching backers and retailers very soon) and he explained to me that roughly 1 in 25 starting hands of cards are dud, and so a Mulligan is needed- certainly when demonstrating a game at an event like UKGE. Now, to calculate those odds, that game must have been played at least 25 times but was mostly likely played more.  Many, many more times. (Note to self: arrange interview with Gary)

The point here is that quantity is needed, whether you plan to Kickstart your game or sell it, it will need to be played over and over again.  Further to this is that every time you change something, no matter how small; that running tally of playtests gets set back to zero.

3. Playtest well.

The most important rule on this list: “No-one is as smart as everyone”, some smart person once said.  What does this mean for you and your game?  Well, you probably play games in a certain way/style, you also probably play with the same group of friends (be that a large or a small group, which in turn means you will probably play your game the way you play games, as too will your friends.  You probably won’t try to “break” your game by playing it badly, your friends (if they’re the nice kind) probably won’t either.  You and they will no doubt play the game the way you intend them to.  But that isn’t the way everyone will.

There are 3 stages to playtesting a game well:

1. Alpha Testing – or solo testing

You’ll play on your own, against yourself.  You’ll take different positions around the table, or perhaps line up your old teddy bear or an action figure to represent a different player (I use my dogs).  You’ll take copious notes, pause the game while you create a couple of new cards, or even stop the game part way through because you just need to do something completely different.  You do all of this on your own before exposing anyone else to this cripplingly boring process. (For the non-designer that is).

1. Beta Testing- other players

You’ll do this when you have a game that can be played from beginning to end without interruption, and you’ll rope in your most loyal and friendly gamer friends and family.  The journey might be bumpy, but you’ll get them from the start of the game to the end.

• Charlie Testing (most people don’t call it that, they consider it beta 2 testing, but they’re missing a trick here: Charlie is what the military call the enemy (well, in Forrest Gump they did), and this links back to our pal Von Moltke)

This is blind playtesting.  You’re not there when the game is played (or if you are you stay out of the gameplay altogether).  The players read the rules and play your prototype as if it were an actual, real game.

4. Improve your game

The most important rule on this list: inch by inch, and mile by mile your game design should change.  Hopefully, that great game idea you had is still there, although that may have changed too, the design will have done certainly.  Whether you start your game by painstaking making every component and then testing the whole thing, or you start with the very basic, foundation level of your game and build up, there should be changes at every step along that route.  Some of these changes will be huge; you’ll add a board, a whole new deck of cards, a different action or resource type.  You might take things away too.  You may even do both.  Multiple times.  The important thing here is to recognise and be prepared for the fact that your game/design will change.

“A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

Those I would consider 4 of the 5 fundamental rules of playtesting.  And they are important, but rule 5 is a biggy:

5. Enjoy playtesting.

You are going to spend a lot of time playtesting your game, a lot of time fine tuning it.  Try and enjoy it.

In my experience, the tabletop gaming community is brilliant and friendly and clever and generally awesome.  Ask for help at your local gaming club or store.  The internet is rife with help too, I’ve found these to be particularly useful:

http://www.bgdf.com the board game designer’s forum – need I say more?

http://www.playtest.co.uk this site will also list region groups (so if you end up starting one be sure to let them know)

 

I’ll be discussing Playtesting Analysis in my next post, with more pictures, fewer words, charts and Playtesting Questionnaire downloads.

Do you have any tips you’d like to share about your experiences as a playtester or designer?

If you’ve enjoyed this article hit the little star icon to let me know.

Thanks for reading folks!

 

Prototyping – Over Prototyping Compulsion Disorder

Hello, my name is Rory and I’m an Over-Prototyper.

(This is where you say hello back to me in unison)

[caption id="attachment_76" align="alignright" width="300"] My tableau tile placement game: Bad Pets[/caption]

I suppose thematically it makes sense that I would write about prototyping at the beginning of my blogging journey, but also since I’m building version 2 of my current game (literally I’ll be glueing some paper to card as soon as I finished writing this blog post) it also makes chronological sense too.  Which is nice.

Now, I tend to make a bit too much of my prototypes; which as I’m told is a flaw common to many beginner designers.  I try to justify it to myself by saying it will be worth it, and it will make the game more visceral when I play test it, or even that I’m doing most of the work during my lunch break.  But truth be told, I’m just addicted to game frills.

I tried using sticky address labels and a deck or two of old playing cards, and it made me very sad.  I tried using paper cut-out squares and it just wasn’t for me.  When I figured out that I could use Microsoft Word’s table feature to perfectly duplicate the dimensions of

[caption id="attachment_77" align="alignleft" width="300"] A version 4 prototype of a game that is taking a break at the moment: Devil's Deal[/caption]

playing cards and that I could add colour and some graphics it was the end of moving a project forward, but I was blissful in my time wasting.

My experience so far, has been that most of my game ideas have only a certain level of what I’m calling “Enthusiasm Fuel”; that is, I only have so much time to turn an idea into something that I can put on the table before real life happens, another game idea comes along, or my Enthusiasm Fuel just runs out.

Case in point, I’m “working” on a Zoo building game, think Zoo Tycoon for the table top, with a deck building and worker placement mechanics and I went wa

My Zoo game has over 300 cards, all sleeved and backed, but has never been played.  Error :/

y, way over the top on making the cards.  (This photo is the first time I have even laid this game out).  It was fun but futile.  The game idea wasn’t bad, and at some point, I will go back to it, but I think there is (certainly for me) a real need to get the game out of my head and onto the table as quickly as possible.  Doing this is very tricky when a lot of your time is taken up with getting the right shade of purple (I very real problem I had, and how daft does that sound), however; I have developed a process.

 

My process isn’t written in stone, it’s not a set of rules or steps, it’s a guideline, and, as Rufus, the thirteenth apostle says “It’s a very good idea”.

Very Good Idea 1. Stop.  Just hold the dice and wait.  Think through the game, think through the player turn.  Really think about it – it is perfectly acceptable at this point to think “I’ll come back to that later”, in fact thinking that is great, it indicates that your game is layered; which is a good thing.

Very Good Idea 2. Write down (scraps of paper allowed) a list of components. This is like a shopping list of game parts – I do this so I can then figure out how much I’ve got to build, buy or borrow from existing games.  Writing this down will also help focus your mind.  Ask yourself what do you need to get the game skeleton (the most basic level of the game) on the table.  If you can only get part of it to the table, just get that part down, the rest will come.

Very Good Idea 3. Build it (must restrain oneself from clichéd Field of Dreams quote). This will take some time, the less time you spend here the better because this step will be repeated over and over, like a monkey with a miniature cymbal.  Remember the ABCC of building a prototype:

Audience – remember who you are building this for, to start with you’ll be playing against you, then friends and family, then strangers, then, if all goes well you’ll demo this to publishers or you’ll go down the Kickstarter route (to be discussed another time in another blog).  Make your prototype fitting for your audience; you, your friends and family will be happy to play with the most basic level of the prototype.  Simply turn the quality up a notch or two for each subsequent level of player.

“Bin-able” – your first pass at this will no doubt end up in the (recycling) bin.  As too will version two, three and four.  Do yourself a favour and don’t be precious about it.

Concise – just use the information required – fluff text and pictures take up too much time

Clear – your prototypes need to very understandable, chances are it will be pen on paper/card, all the same colour across everything, and when there are a lot of pieces on the table it will look quite unruly.

Very Good Idea 4. Play your game.  Play it lots.  Add to it, take stuff away, change it.  It’s yours and you can do what you want to it, but you’ll only improve it by putting it through its paces, simply called playtesting, which is what I’ll be writing about next week after I’ve taken my latest game to friendly local gaming store to be tested by strangers (exciting!).

This is the first of my prototyping blog post, there will be more bite-sized prototyping blogs at a later date which will deal with specific issues (art and custom pieces for example) in more detail.  Until then, it’s over to you.

Do you suffer from Over Prototyping Compulsion Disorder too?  Is it just a phase every designer goes through?  Is there anything you do during the prototyping phase that is different or extra?  Let me know in the comments.

If you’ve enjoyed this article hit the little star icon to let me know.

Thanks for reading folks!