Friday, November 26, 2004

I'm stricken once again....

by "the disease". That being the disease of designing games. I read about a new game called 7 Ages a couple days ago, then yesterday started to read the Vinci rules (first sentence and a half), and it hit me. It's a cross between Mesopotamia (that being a cross between Germania and Britannia) and, more or less, Risk, Vinci and History of the World. I want historical groups, following their historical characteristics (Nomads don't like forests, e.g.), but not forced to follow the historical course the way Brit encourages them to. And I want it to be fairly simple, and not take TOO long.

At this point I have a board (modified from the small version of Dark Ages, with eastern areas added), a combat system (also borrowed from DA), point systems... I still have some sequencing to figure out, then I'll be ready to try to play.

Of course, it could be a year before it can be playtested outside the local group. We'll see.

I am calling it Europa (TM), for the time being. It covers Europe, North Africa, and Asia to the borders of India and (modern) China.

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

It has been too long since I updated the blog.

In early October I created, in record time, a somewhat Euro-like game aimed at lasting an hour, about the Italiam maritime republics. Within three weeks I had a full set of rules written (not my normal process). I actually only played it once solitaire, also not my normal process. Since then I've been tweaking and sometimes making substantical changes to the rules, through several playtests. I've now posted information about it to the Web page. I finally settled on the title Seas of Gold (tm), though for a while I wanted to use an Italian word. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a good one, and the translation of Seas of Gold isn't very exciting.

An offshoot of this game will be "Seas of Promise" (or whatever I decide to call it) about European discovery/exploitation worldwide.

LEP

I've been pursuing correspondence with old buddies like Alan Paull, and have "activated" my playtesting yahoo group for Britannia II.