I was at WBC (World Boardgaming Championships) the first week of August. I watched 22 B2 games in the tournament (and a bit of one pickup game) as well as having B3 played one and a half times, and a few B2 scenarios as well.

What I had resigned myself to, came to pass by the semi-finals: in the last five games, the Romans maxed their Round 3 points in four (80 points), and missed max in the fifth game because one territory was missed and the Roman failed in a 2-1 attack on Boudicca and one army (both Romans died!). I believe in that game the Picts did not submit; in all the other games, all eligible submitted. In many cases they put up a decent fight (Brigs killing three Roman armies and a fort in the final), but they submitted. The difference is how many the Romans get in R5, and how many points the non-Romans score.

The Romans do not have to take a lot of chances to achieve this result. If they did, the result would not be so consistent.

I am not thrilled at this result, though it does illustrate historical Roman power. If I had it to do again I might reduce the number of Romans back to 15, though more likely I'd give the Picts (and maybe the Brigs) the option of revolting if the Romans leave no garrison up north (as is often the case). At WBC many of the English players refuse to expend armies in raids on the Romans unless a fort is undefended by an army. If more armies had to stay north, there's be more targets further south.

OTOH, I read about people who have so much trouble with the Romans, that it might be bad if I'd made it even harder. There is definitely a learning curve here, and some people assume that if they have trouble the first time, then the Romans must be at a big disadvantage ("hosed"). I only saw the Romans achieve this max once in the preliminary three rounds (17 games), but people were learning. Many had not seen B2 before.

In B3 I already have the Welsh (with Caratacus) moving after the first half of the Roman MI; I may include revolting opportunities (double meaning there, from the Roman point of view) for Brigs and Picts as well.

I will also venture this: any Roman who does not take Devon in his first move, and does not take Downlands before the Belgae submit, has Screwed Up BigTime.

The tournament had 45 participants, up from 34 the last two years. Apart from two games at Origins, this was the first time I'd seen people playing the published version of B2.

More in the next couple weeks.

I was writing about "too many games", which I'll post in a while, when the news surfaced that Eagle Games had ceased operations (no chance of revival, though curiously, their Web store will continue business). There was much speculation on Boardgamegeek once the newspaper notice of sale of physical and intellectual assets was seen. Glenn Drover, Eagle's owner, then stated that "Due to a sudden and severe downturn last year in the demand for poker products, Eagle Games, Inc. became insolvent and finally ceased operations on May 31, 2006."

Even after this, some BGG people continued to speculate that poor game quality had done in Eagle. I think we ought to take the owner largely at his word: he put a lot of money into Poker products, and suddenly demand disappeared. I recall Eagle selling a Texas Hold 'Em computer game a couple years ago. Perhaps this game initially made a lot of money. Perhaps Eagle produced large quantities of the game and additional computer titles, then found that few were buying them. When they could not pay those production costs, they'd be forced out of business.

I can imagine that there are now free or advertiser-supported computer programs that do the same thing the Eagle programs did. Once the pool of people who would buy the Eagle products in stores (not knowing about the free stuff) was played out, who was there to buy it? I'm not into poker, but I understand the poker programs are a dime a dozen.

The games business may have been doing OK, but could not provide the money to pay the poker production costs. I recall talking with a publisher a couple years ago who wondered how Eagle could make money selling those big box, plastic-pieces games. Hasbro can do that, but they have vast distribution and can benefit from huge economies of scale in production. Someone (IIRC Glenn himself, but I could be wrong) told me then that Eagle printed 10,000-40,000 copies of a game. This is considerably higher than most game production, as far as I can gather. But they did get into distribution channels that most game companies only dream of.

And Eagle, in later years, went with a formula that only Fantasy Flight also pursues, as far as I can see. They looked for tie-ins with books and movies. While I cannot understand any reason why a game based on a book or movie is any more likely to be a good game than one that is not, the public at large doesn't look at things this way. So if you want to sell lots of copies in places where non-hobby-gamers might buy games, you look for those tie-ins to help persuade the buyers who never heard of BGG to spend $40-60. In a sense, what a thousand people at BGG think of the game doesn't matter much, when you're trying to sell 10 or 20 thousand copies or more. People buy the game because of the tie-in and the good looks, not because it's known to be a good game. Even BGGers seem to anticipate the release of Pirates the boardgame and Age of Empires III the boardgame, not knowing whether they will be good games or not.

So Eagle's business model might be OK. Whether the game business model was adequate or not, it was an overinvestment in poker that did them in.

Let me tell you about another case where a poor decision, having nothing to do with boardgames (or even with games at all?) did in a well-known company. In 1982 Heritage Models produced eight "microgames" under the "Dwarfstar" label. Heritage was primarily a producer of miniature figures, owned (IIRC) by the well-known Duke Seifried. Two of those Dwarfstar games were designed by people outside the company, one of them me (Dragon Rage was the game). Consequently I heard the story when Heritage closed its doors.

The way I heard it, the owner and his banker got into a "spitting contest" (not literally spitting, of course) and this finally resulted in the banker calling in the loan. Although the Microgames sold well (print run was 10,000 copies each, not so much then but very large now), there was no way they could mange to pay off the loan. So that was the end of the company (and I was never paid a cent for designing the game). The "plates" used to produce the games remained in the hands of the (unpaid) printer, and ultimately disappeared.

This was not a bad *business* decision, it was a bad personal decision, but the company died as a result. Someone who did not hear the story might speculate that the failure of the games had led to the company's failure, but nothing could be further from the truth.

(My memory of this is 20-some years old now, so I hope I haven't butchered it; and of course, I can only repeat what I was told by my contacts in the company.)

In Eagle's case, they made a business decision to "bet the farm" on one product line, the result was the opposite of what they expected, and they're out of business. Unfortunately for all boardgamers. The ones who might benefit the most will be Fantasy Flight, as there will be less competition for those tie-ins.

Lew Pulsipher

When do players score?

In many victory point boardgames, players score at the end of each play. For example, Vinci and many others. This is the rough equivalent of the scoring method used in boxing. In boxing some people dislike this method, because you can have one fighter in a mess at the end of the match, and the other doing fine, yet the first could win because he piled up scoring in the early rounds. Perhaps for that reason, in other games, players score at the end of the game (often, the game ends when one player has a given score), and everything that contributes to their score is present at the end of the game. Catan??? In other words, this is a "snapshot" score, directly gaining nothing from previous turns even though the actions of each player have helped create the game-ending situation (the gain is indirect). If this were applied to boxing, at the end of the match judges would decide which fighter was in best shape to win if the fight continued, and award him the victory.

The score-by-turn method tends to suit the "age of instant gratification", because you play your turn and then you get your reward (points). The score-at-end method tends to suit an older generation that was willing to put off short-term rewards for long-term good.

At my age (55) I seem to be in the score-at-the-end camp in my designs, but I can understand the other point of view, especially in historical games. After all, EVERY nation is going to "lose" sooner or later--even the Roman Republic/Empire lasted "only" a thousand years--so we ought to consider how well the nation is doing along the way.

Here's my proposal, something that may already be done in some games though I do not know of any. Why not score both ways? Say the game lasts four rounds. Players score at the end of their rounds 1 through 3, and at the end of the game (round 4) they score three times their round 4 score, which is based on how they're doing right now. So the score would be R1 + R2 + R3 + 3xR4. This provides the instant gratification, yet also rewards the player who manages to be in the best position at the end of the game.

Clearly, in some games--such as Vinci--this method doesn't make much sense. But in others, say civilization-building, games, it has much appeal.

I think most score-by-turn games let each player score as soon as their turn is over. Some others wait until the end of the round, then have everyone score at once. I suppose which method you use depends on the sequence of play and on what advantage there is to moving first, since the score-at-end-of-entire-round favors those who play last in the round.

Does anyone know of a game that uses the combined form of scoring?

Cultural differences in game-playing

Origins 2006 was my third Origins in a row (I also attended way back when it was at Baltimore, just starting up). Something I try to do is observe who it is who are playing the games.

We already know that there are cultural differences in game playing. The Germans, for example, regard playing boardgames with the family as what we now call a "family value". American parents evidently don't feel that way--one of the K12 teachers said he'd be ecstatic if he could get parents to play boardgames with their kids. German manufacturers market educational games aimed to persuade parents to buy them for their kids. It may be harsh or cynical, but I'd say that Americans would tend to be suspicious of anything labelled "educational game" that they saw in Toys R Us or Wal-Mart--somehow "educational" can't be "fun" to us.

Game manufacturers would love to know if the Chinese and (Asiatic) Indians have a culture that encourages play of boardgames. That's over two billion people in opening markets.

I've written before about the graying of the wargamers, and it still seems to be the case that most of those playing board wargames--not a large number, really--tend to be middle-aged. The CCG players tend to be young. And the miniatures players (miniature armies, not HeroClix and such) also tend to be gray but with an admixture of quite young players. (A friend of mine who goes to Historicon, evidently the mecca for historical miniatures players, says they're starting to see youngsters there in some numbers.)

What's really striking, though, is the absence of black (and Hispanic) players. I live in an area that's about one third black, and that has sprouted hundreds of dual-language signs in the past 10 years or so because of immigrants from Mexico and parts south. Yet when I remember to look for black and Hispanic players, I see virtually none at game conventions, whether it's Origins, PrezCon, or WBC.

A black friend of mine says that there is no cultural difference between black and white Americans, but this doesn't appear to be true. If you're at Disney World, for example, and see a black person (there aren't many), odds are that person is not speaking American English. At Origins this year I saw two black people (at a convention that, last year, had 15,000 different individual attendees). One was a woman from Harlem, a teacher who had heard about the convention only a few days before and came because she's interested in using games to help teach. The other was someone I noticed in passing in the crowd.

Now given that I don't ordinarily notice the color of folks in a crowd, I once again did my unscientific survey, sitting in the same place I did last year (but early in the day, rather than late afternoon, unfortunately), and counted 200 people who passed by. I was mainly interested in the proportion of females (who seemed more numerous this year), but it was also easy to count blacks, as there were NONE in 200. I didn't try to count Hispanics as I can't reliabily recognize all Hispanics just from looking, but I saw few if any that were "obviously" Hispanic. There were 57 females in the 200 people.

I have managed to misplace my figures from last year (and that's hard to do when you use Info Select and Google Desktop....), but IIRC the proportion of females was somewhat less, and slightly more black.

Now does this mean black people don't play these games? Not necessarily, but it does mean they don't attend conventions for people who play these games, which may mean they don't play them much, or may mean something else.

It would be interesting to see data for ethnicity of those who play computer games. Anyone have any?

Copyright 2006 Lewis Pulsipher

Player elimination--how to avoid in Euro-wargames:

One of the most common characteristics of Euro-style games is "no player elimination". One of the most common characteristics of multi-player wargames (such as Diplomacy and Risk) is . . . player elimination. My question here is, how do we avoid player elimination in multi-player "Euro-wargames".

In case it isn't obvious, I'm not including two player games, as if you're wiped out, you lose, and the game is over. What I don't want is a game that has not ended, yet a player has been eliminated.

First, players can control several nations, with new ones appearing according to historical or other schedules. Individual nations may be eliminated, but the player will still have forces to control. This method is used in Ancient Conquest, Britannia, and the many derivative games of this type usually called "Britannia-like" games.

Another form of this "succession" is that players can choose to play new nations when their old ones lose steam or disappear entirely. This is used in Vinci and (somewhat differently) in History of the World, for example.

It's worth noting that the above games are victory point games rather than games with a territorial victory condition. Risk, Diplomacy, and other games that allow player elimination often have territorial victory conditions.

In games that reflect great chaos, an eliminated player can return as a new nation. For example, a player of a "civilized" nation can re-enter the game as barbarian horde (or more generally, re-enter game as new player).

In my prototype Germania, when a player feels his nation is in hopeless shape, he can take over another, non-player nation (barbarian invaders, usually) and play it as a player nation henceforth. On rare occasions a player can win this way, though usually not.

In general, in any game an inexhaustible supply of new resources (many card games, for example) often combined with lack of geography or very abstract geography, means that no player is eliminated. This can be achieved in a wargame, though one of the typical characteristics of a wargame is a specific geography.

For example, you can make the player's home unassailable by other players. Generally that home will deliver significant resources so that there's a chance to re-expand. I have used this in several prototypes such as Colonia (TM). Another possibility is that even if the home area is taken, the invader must leave (a "civilized" peace treaty) and the victim can begin to recover. For example, in Seas of Gold (TM) (prototype), a player's Italian maritime city may be sacked, but the attacker then extracts wealth and other benefits from the city yet is forced to leave. It is difficult but not impossible to win after suffering a Sack.

In these games I have abstracted the geography of the players' homes. In Colonia all begin in a single area (e.g. Greece), yet may expand throughout the Mediterranean world. In Seas of Gold all are in Italy, without considering the specific geography there because it would so strongly favor Venice and Genoa.


While some of the non-elimination games I've mentioned have some zero-sum characteristics, none is truly zero-sum, whereas Diplomacy certainly is, and Risk has strong zero-sum characteristics. One might posit that when a game is zero-sum, that is, when one player's gain is another's loss, and you cannot make a gain without causing someone else a loss, you will likely have player elimination. In a non-zero-sum game it will be much easier to avoid player elimination, because players can gain without causing others to lose an equivalent. Elimination of territorial victory conditions should also help avoid player elimination.

Copyright 2006 Lewis Pulsipher

I've been thinking again about "alternate history" scenarios for Britannia. This would be events such as Charlemagne attacking Britain. At one time someone suggested the Huns might have beaten the "Romans" in 451, then raided Britain. This was my response:

In counterfactual history we can posit whatever we want, really, but as I see it there are two possibilities, the plausible and the "no way!".

Because of a fairly obscure circumstance, the Huns were never going to stay in Gaul, any more than the Avars or Magyars did when they raided France. In case anyone is interested I will explain.

All of these were horse nomads, "warriors of the steppe". They required grasslands to survive (living on their herds), and there aren't many natural grassland areas in Europe (which is good for us descendants of Europeans). The Hungarian plain is the westernmost, another is Bulgaria. The Huns, moving west for whatever reasons, settled in Hungary (which is actually named after a Magyar word, I understand, not after the Huns). They displaced some Germans in the process, who moved south and west. They raided from Hungary but always came back to where their horses would thrive. When the Huns were defeated by Gepids and others, the remnants either streamed back into the Russian steppe, or hung out in Bulgaria--many of these first Bulgarians may been Huns. (There was another, slavic, lot, more or less, later on.) Some Bulgars went to Bulgaria, some went up the Volga to become the Volga Bulgars. Who knows how many were Huns?

Anyway, the Avars showed up and took over the H. plain. They raided all over the place, besieged Constantinople unsuccessfully, finally got stomped by the Byzantines (but the emperor was murdered before he could finish them off (602)). After that they made much less trouble, but Charlemagne had to stomp them and "more or less" finish them off.

Then Magyars turned up in Hungary, and they raided all over, Balkans, Italy, Germany, France, until defeated twice by Germans (second time 955). After that they turned into Christian European Hungarians.

The Mongols stomped the Hungarians; fortunately for us, they streamed back into Asia when the Great Khan died. Could the Mongols have conquered Europe? Maybe they had the technical knowhow to take castles, but there were no grasslands to attract them, not much treasure--so why bother in the long run? And they never came back.

There were grasslands in between the two rivers of Mesopotamia, the Aljazeera (I've seen it spelled different ways), which is where the Seljuk Turkish nomads were happy to base themselves. The other horse area down there is the central Anatolian plateau--unfortunately for the Byzantines.

Why are these areas grasslands instead of forest? Insufficient rainfall, I think, same as the American Great Plains. Only near rivers did you see trees, out there, before men intervened.

So I'd count the Huns as "no way".

BTW, the Goths became horsie types when they migrated to the steppes, but I suspect they maintained an agricultural orientation, and so could adapt back when forced off the plains by the Huns. And they were willing to migrate to areas that, while not grasslands, had been cleared of forests for agriculture, that is, Spain, Italy, France. Not Germany (which wasn't cleared until 1100-1200 thereabouts).

Forests are heavy-duty barriers to the non-technological. Southern Sweden used to be part of Denmark because forest intervened between it and the main part of Sweden.

Copyright 2006 Lewis Pulsipher

For some reason, the other day I wondered about how a Britannia-like treatment would work with a hex board. (Hexes are not attractive to large markets, of course.) Ancient Conquest was a hex game.

Hexes give the opportunity for more detail in terrain...swamp, forest. And if they're fairly big hexes, say big enough to accommodate the new pieces, there might be room for terrain without having TOO many spaces.

I just tried to find an online source of transparent hex material to lay over the board, but no luck.

Not that I'm likely to pursue the matter.

I went to Paizo Publishing’s reception Saturday night at Origins to talk about their magazines. They publish Dragon and Dungeon, and used to publish Amazing Stories and Undefeated, but those have gone away. I used to write lots of articles for Dragon 25 years ago, but quit doing so when TSR (owner at the time) chose to buy all rights to articles. To me, no self-respecting writer sells all rights, though nowadays it is the most common deal even for those who write RPG books. At any rate, I learned that Paizo must purchase all rights, even to generic material, because they are required to as part of the deal that lets Paizo license the magazines from Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro (WotC bought TSR some years ago, Hasbro bought WotC). So unless I someday dig up some old material (which I own the rights to) and revise it to let it go to these magazines, I won’t be appearing there again.

The more interesting question was the continued survival of the magazines. The “Millennial Generation” (Gen Y) is disinclined to read; national newspaper readership is declining rapidly, and I suppose magazine readership is declining as well (and they’re getting shorter...). Erik Mona, the editor, told me that they did a reader survey, and found that the average reader is 35 years old. This really surprised me, as the contents of Dragon appear largely aimed at kids. Even more interesting, he said that when the results were compared with a survey from way back when Kim Mohan was editor, most of the results were the same except the readership then averaged 16! So it appears to be the same readership, much aged. He expressed doubt that a new magazine of this type could succeed now, and I have to agree. I didn’t ask questions about circulation, but I’d speculate that Dragon circulation is much lower than it was in the heyday of first-second edition D&D. Still, it’s enough to keep their company going (and put on a nice reception). Dungeon magazine is even more valuable, for third edition D&Ders, than it used to be for first, because there’s so much more detail required in the stats to create a complete adventure. I would still be subscribing to Dungeon, but I decided not to ref 3D&D any more about a year ago, and I already had dozens of unread issues.

I haven't had much luck finding information about trends in magazine circulation generally. However, news magazine circulation is holding steady, though getting older, while "the audience for pop culture, entertainment and lifestyle magazines is growing". http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.org/narrative_magazines_audience.asp?cat=3&media=7

Copyright 2006 Lewis Pulsipher

I got used to doing several things at once when I worked in computer support, but this is ridiculous. I seem to be reading the following books, all at the same time (well, not literally):

Illuminatus Trilogy (just the appendices, which I may never finish; it wasn't a very good set of novels)
Atlas of Middle Earth (revised edition)
The Fall of Rome by Peter Heather (for Barbaria(TM) and other Rome games)
The War God's Own (David Weber, one of over a dozen Weber novels on a CD with a recent hardcover Honor Harrington book)
Patterns of Pillage by Galvin, about Caribbean pirates (for Pirates Gold (TM))
Castles & Crusades Players Handbook

Lew

I have not played D&D in over a year, after playing at least 10 times a year for 29 years. And I haven't missed it. I can't even remember the name of one of my major characters! (I have quite a few). It's partly circumstance, people moving away, few referees, and partly devoting time to boardgame playtesting instead. But I occasionally think about it.

I think also that third edition D&D's failings ("fantasy Squad Leader", someone called it), its encouragement to look for unearned advantages (such as high character attributes and prestige classes) instead of playing skill, put me off the game, and I've decided it's most unlikely I'll ever ref 3/3.5 again.

Recently I bought Castles & Crusades, which was recommended to me as a return to first edition D&D simplicity and adventure. I mainly played first edition D&D, but a drawback to it is that you cannot have new players go buy the rulebook(s), as the game is long, long out of print. I have about half a dozen copies myself, but that's not entirely satisfactory. I looked at Hackmaster, which uses first edition D&D as a base, but I didn't care for some of the attitude involved (players competing with the referee--if a ref can't win that, he isn't worth a hoot). C&C has much less detail than Hackmaster, but makes some useful changes to the older D&D rules (e.g., monks have d12 hit dice instead of d4, and saving throws and skills are subsumed in ability-based dice rolling).

This game is almost word-for-word first/second edition D&D in many places. The list of magic items includes one item after another with the same names and characteristics. Clearly, at some point WotC allowed companies to reproduce and sell the older D&D editions nearly verbatim.

The Players Handbook is quite inexpensive at Amazon ($12.97 for 128 pages with pasteboard covers). That makes it practical for new players. List is $20.

Copyright 2006 Lewis Pulsipher

A recent Wired magazine includes an article on "crowdsourcing". This is an Internet phenomenon: the Internet provides access to many, many "amateur" practitioners of a skill, such that they now compete with professionals (and lower the prices available to professionals). The first example is stock photography: companies used to pay hundreds or thousands for small numbers of stock photos, but now there are sources of good digital photos available for stock use at $1 a photo. Why pay a hundred times as much when the "amateur" photos are excellent quality?

I believe that a form of "crowdsourcing" has happened to the role playing game industry. Quite apart from the glut of professional products, there are many, many products published by both standard publishers and PDF publishers that are written "by the crowd". Or to put it another way, there are so many fanboys and fangirls willing to write RPG material for nothing or next to nothing, material easy and cheap to find on the Internet, that traditional publishers cannot charge much for their publications, and cannot pay their authors much.

Given the amount paid to most writers (as low as two cents a word, and rarely as much as five cents a word), and the lack of royalty payments (RPG books are "works for hire", you're paid a lump sum and that's it), it's impossible for most writers to get a reasonable return on their time. This is particularly true if they test their material in actual gameplay, so usually they don't. This has contributed to the low quality of professional publications. At the same time there are people who love RPGs, who actual play their new stuff, then write it up and contribute it to the world at large. Some of this is likely to be better than much of the quickly-written junk published by the traditional publishers.

The result of all this: why buy RPG material, or why buy expensive RPG material when the PDFs are likely to be about as good and are much cheaper? And so the bottom has fallen out of the RPG market, with no prospect that it will ever return--because crowdsourcing is here to stay.

It is less likely that this will happen to boardgames, because much of the popularity of boardgames come from the tangible feel of the pieces. You can't put tangible pieces in a PDF, or self-publish them through lulu or xlibris. Though a day might come when there are companies that can mass produce small numbers of tangible pieces to be included in boardgames. Nonetheless there are places like wargamedownloads.com that offer PDF wargames cheaply.

Moreover, without much playtesting hardly any game will be worth a hoot. You can write fairly decent RPG material without testing it, but you can't write a good boardgame without testing it.


Copyright 2006 Lewis Pulsipher

Late last year I started a thread on BGG about fundamental structures of games. The brief version of my conclusions is listed below. Now I'm going to try to go through each of the nine elements and list many of the alternatives that are available to designers for that element. I did Economy in late December, now I’ll try some more.

Brief listing of nine structural systems of games (but not sports)
1. Theme/History/Story.
2. Objective/victory conditions.
3. “Data storage”. (Information Management)
4. Sequencing.
5. Movement/Placement.
6. Information availability.
7. Conflict resolution/interaction of game entities.
8. "Economy" (resource acquisition).
9. Player Interaction rules.

Conflict resolution/Interaction
“None”
Tic-Tac-Toe (even here–the “resolution” is, you cannot place your maker where a marker already exists)

Bidding/auction
silent
by rounds

Displacement elimination
chess
checkers (form of, since you jump over rather than displace directly)

Surround or other pattern
Go
Carcassonne (that’s scoring rather than conflict)
(You can see checkers jump as a form of this)

Adjacent conflict (wargames) often with dice or cards, sometimes with "combat tables"

Action at a distance (artillery, ship combats)

Trick-taking ("highest" wins)
Many variations
"Odds"--the strength of the piece makes a difference
Strength makes no difference in chess, pawn can take queen

Capture vs eliminate
Captured unit may be recovered/reused in some games, eliminated can be rebuilt in many
Captured can even be used by the captor (card games)
In some games, when it's gone, it's gone (checkers, "king" is just a way to show new status, not recovery of a unit)

"Bump" other piece to another location (as opposed to back into a pool)
backgammon?
some family games
some card games

Resource comparison (another form of "highest", but not confined to one card/piece)
Tigris & Euphrat

Video:
Often shoot from a distance (FPS) at a target

Copyright 2006 Lewis Pulsipher

"Euro-izing " Brit-like games

I've made a "current" list of techniques for making Brit-like games more like Euro or German-style games. Can anyone think of something that might be added?

Almost all of these methods are used in "Brit Lite" and have been playtested in that game or another.

1. No dice
I use cards for combat, each player playing one (usually); each player has an identical pile of cards, and has a hand of several of those cards at any given time.

2. Fewer areas
There is a danger of clogging movement channels here; however, occasional joint occupancy (two nations in one area) seems to work well enough, in conjunction with the card-based combat

3. Fewer pieces
However, I've found by testing that reducing stacking to one in difficult terrain and two in clear just doesn't work right. 2 and 3 seem to be the minimums. But with fewer areas you can end up with fewer pieces. Also, the "overstack" can be one greater than the normal max, perhaps +1 more if a leader is present.

4. Fewer decisions to make
Fewer pieces can help, but the extreme is an action system, where you can take only a few actions in a turn (that is, you won't be able to move all your pieces)

5. Fewer turns
8 to 10 looks viable (Brit lite has 9)

6. Easy points method
Points based on one (or two) areas, no nation cards needed (or very simple)

7. Score points at the end of the Nation Turn (immediate feedback, typical of Euros)
But NOT scoring every round--that just doesn't work

8. Choose up sides option
Players choose their nations at game start; when this works, it allows for three and five player versions, too (standard setups included as well)

9. Event cards for an optional version of the game (not tournament standard). These can provide lots of historical flavor, too

10. Quicker combat resolution
This is provided by the card option, very quick

11. Less "death"
If you have fewer pieces, and a combat system that doesn't result in massacres but more likely in retreats, this works out

Sweep of History Games Magazine #2 is available (7 MB download!, PDF only):
http://www.pulsipher.net/sweep_issue_2.htm
(This is a page link, not a direct link to the file.)


There are also two new surveymonkey polls open:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=680622169595 Britannia ColorComparison poll

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=291602166511 Brit event frequency poll

I recently completed an online gamers' survey sponsored by GAMA. Here's the announcement:


Help us bring you better games!

OhioState University's School of Communication, in partnership with the Game Manufacturers Association and The Wargamer, is doing a survey of game consumers to gather information about what kind(s) of games you like and why you buy them. This information will go to manufactuers and publishers to help make the type(s) games you want. Any and all gamer players are welcome to participate and submit their responses. Please help us bring you better games by going to http://www.gamesurvey.org (http://www.gamesurvey.org/) and taking the survey. Thank you for your time!



It is very long, especially at the end. I suspect that many people will quite partway through, thus further skewing what is already inevitably skewed because it's a Web-based survey. Jakob Nielsen tells us that Web surveys should be very short to get higher participation. This is the opposite.

The results will nonetheless be interesting, keeping the skewing in mind.

I went to Rick Steeves' in Durham for his monthly game night, and was lucky enough to find players much of the night for Law and Chaos (TM). This included several four player games, which I had not tried before--not entirely good, as I anticipated, as the game can go on much longer owing to the ability of three to gang up on one. Testing confirmed that it really is a natural three player game, one of the rarities of gaming.

Someone--a lawyer, I think--told a story of playing a game with someone who, unbeknownst to him, was the designer of the game. The story-teller kept challenging rule interpretations until the designer finally revealed who he was. The story-teller continued to challenge rulings, and the designer finally said something like "that's not how I meant it". Amusing, but it does point out that even a designer has to go by what the published rules say, or get an official errata distributed. This is one reason why I told people, once I'd come back into the hobby, that I couldn't provide rule interpretations for Brit 1, that they'd have to go by what was written.

One of the advantages of a Web page and blog is that I can indeed get errata distributed, if necessary, though it's quite clear that most game players do not look on the Web for additional information.

I am trying to get Sweep of History Game Magazine #2 finished and distributed before a vacation. Here's a minor part of it:

Book review:
Gwyn Jones, A History of the Vikings (second edition 1984), Oxford University Press, paperback, over 500 pages.

This is one of the standard histories of the Vikings. Jones wrote in an era when the savagery of the Vikings was being downplayed--"oh, they were mainly merchants"--though he does not seem to have been entirely of that party. He does, however, buy the notion that the "Great Army" was only 500-1,000 men, a notion I find quite ludicrous given what that army did in both England and France. But it's inconvenient, if you believe the Vikings were mainly traders, to account for armies of 5,000-10,000, which is the size you'd judge both from the capabilities of the Great Army and from the number of ships reported by the chronicles. (The typical trick here is to believe the chronicles when they report small numbers of ships, and simply disbelieve when they report large numbers.)

Jones says at many points that Scandinavians in general and Vikings in particular (Vikings being those who roved overseas) were motivated by (had a goal of) "land, wealth, and fame". Anyone who designs a Viking game but does not account for this is leaving something out--of course, designers are always leaving things out.

Jones writes with a dry British wit combined with a poetic turn of phrase that is quite enjoyable. There is a LOT of detail, much of it not military in any way.

I am attempting to generate a formula that gives a rough guide to the complexity, or perhaps the length, of a Brit-like game. Playing my various B2 scenarios brought this on...

The first attempt multiplied number of areas, number of nations, and number of turns. I added number of players to that, though most of these games are four-player. (I understand 3 player Maharajah is better than 4. I don't know of any game that is best with five.) This gives 40,256 for B2 (37 areas, 17 nations, 16 turns, 4 players). I am not including sea areas because no conflict can occur there, in effect they are merely staging areas.

What I really wanted, though, is average number of pieces on the board, as a gauge of complexity, rather than number of areas. But I only know those averages for a few games, so at first I was supposing that number of areas would be proportional to number of pieces. However, in "Euro-ized" games, especially ones not using dice, the number of pieces per area may be significantly lower.

At some point I recognized that it may be average number of nations on the board, not total in the game, that really counts (since we're accounting for number of turns separately). This is around nine in Brit, and I can derive some figures for my other games to make comparisons.

However, average number of pieces is the best gauge of complexity of movement, so how much one should count the number of nations is open to question.

At that point I have a formula which is average number of pieces times number of turns times number of players.

This latest formula yields 2080 for Caledonia(TM), which is certainly a much shorter game than Brit (3328).

None of this takes into account the time spent in combat. One could assume it is about the same (especially as the published versions of Brit-like games all seem to use virtually the same combat system), but I have a radically different system (no dice) which is quite quick, and table-based systems which are significantly quicker than the old system. I'm not sure, though, how much difference that would make to time as a whole...



I don't know where this has brought me, other than to realize that my Viking Brit may have a length problem (haven't played it yet). Hellenia (TM) comes up large on the originla formula numbers (5,100 on the latest formula), but doesn't seem to be all that long a game; I think that's because there are no big invasions and only a few minor ones, as opposed to Brit where we have big invasions that tend to take a long time to play out. Moreover, in Hellenia(TM) the Hellenistic nations often receive few new pieces each turn owing to the economic system. So my formula may need yet more of a tweak, including something like how many new armies come on the board during a turn whether from appearance (Invasion) or from Increase.

I tried running a formula for Diplomacy, which averages 33 pieces, has 7 players, and lasts about 22 turns (maybe less). That yields 5,082, to 3,328 for Brit. But Diplomacy is a simultaneous-move game; OTOH it emphasizes negotiation, which takes a long time. At any rate, I'd certainly agree that Diplomacy is a longer game than Brit, in general.

Another impracticality: it's easy to count number of areas and number of nations, but harder to know the average number of pieces and average number of nations (I do count, sometimes, in solo play).

Brief advice to would-be game designers/developers:

First, read Game Inventor's Guidebook by Brian Tinsman. This tends to cover marketing far more than design, but it's short and sweet. Unfortunately it's out of print, but sometimes a used copy is available through Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0873495527/sr=8-1/qid=1144850887/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-3833292-6136003?%5Fencoding=UTF8

There are several online sources.

Yahoo Groups Board Game Design often involves questions by novice designers, and sometimes more meaty design questions. There is a lot about self-publishing. The archives are all there, so read all those old discussions and messages! http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/BoardGameDesign/

The Boardgame Designers Forum is an online discussion group that can be useful for many purposes. I don't check it regularly, but it has many regular inhabitants. http://bgdf.com/

Boardgamegeek, a general online discussion group for boardgames, has a game design section with many interesting dicussions going back years. http://www.boardgamegeek.com/

USENET rec.game.design is mostly useless, often overrun with junk.

Someday I may have a book out about the nuts and bolts of game design. There are no "nuts and bolts" books presently available, though there are many books that talk about games, analyze games, and talk about computer games in particular. They are not "how to" books, for the most part. Check Amazon for a selection.

Some articles I've written are on my own web site at: http://pulsiphergames.com/gmarticles.htm

(Disclaimer: I own Amazon stock.)

Brief note about how I organize my game designing

First, I believe that you must write everything down (or perhaps I should say, record it). You may have an idea that you'll never have again--do you want to lose it? Moreover, when you write down your ideas, reading them can stimulate yet more ideas. Of course, writing down ideas forces you to actually figure out and understand what you mean; so many novice designers have "ideas" that are only in their head, and when they're asked to articulate them, they find out that there's a lot they haven't figured out.

Similarly, when playtesting you should write down anything you want to keep track of. I keep printed copies of the rules at hand so that I can change them, or I write all notes on scrap paper and then, after the game, transfer to computer.

Recording ideas starts with my PDA, which has a one touch record button (not all do). This allows me to "leave voice messages" to myself, so to speak. I can press the button, talk, and when I let it go it stops recording--the only reasonably safe way to record things during my 50 minute commute. I transfer these to my desktops (gives me three copies, one in the PDA, one at home, one at work), and then write the information down (on computer) when I have time.

I rely heavily on a program that has been around for a very long time but is not well known, Info Select (www.miclog.com). This is a free text database program. It not only allows me to organize information, it allows a full text search in the blink of an eye (because all the stored information is loaded into memory). You might think this would take a lot of memory; no, an entire novel is roughly one megabyte of text, so as long as you don't store a LOT of graphics, it won't put much of a dent in your RAM.

Microsoft OneNote is another program somewhat like this. I'm sure there are others.

I also use a free program called Memento at times and a little program I wrote myself (in dBase and Clipper), to track ToDo lists,

I also have a paper spiral notebook, for occasions when I'll be away from home for a while but don't want to wield a laptop computer.



So when I have an idea I record it, then copy it to other places, and ultimately get it into Info Select.

When I'm to the point of organizing ideas into a semblance of a game, I make a separate note for each category of rules (such as movement, combat, economics). I usually print these out to help me when I'm playing, write further notes by hand on the sheets, then make changes on the desktop computer. (If I were a little more with it I'd probably have a laptop with me when I playtest, but that's one more thing to carry and secure. So I don't.)

At some point I try to write rough rules, as opposed to notes, in these same notes (or in new ones). I can color code the notes accordingly.

I write actual sets of rules in WordPerfect (Microsoft "Worst" is not my favorite word processor). Much of the preliminary writing is done in Info Select, then transferred. But there are many, many revisions to a set of rules, and those are done in WordPerfect. I am not fanatical about it, but I usually save each significant revision as a new file, so in the course of designing and developing a game I might end up with 20 versions.

WordPerfect makes it easy to make usable cards for games. I print on business card stock using the WP template, then put the cards in collectible card protectors (which can be had pretty cheaply, on sale, at Dave and Adam's Card World on the Internet, or at conventions sometimes). The protectors make the cards easy to shuffle, the card stock gives them sufficient stiffness. These are text-only cards; I've seen many prototypes with beautiful graphical cards, but I am not interested in spending the time needed to do this, preferring to concentrate on game play. Moreover, if I did spend a lot of time on a playtest prototype, I'd be reluctant to change it, and that is truly a Bad Thing. Change is the norm when designing and developing games.

I am not an artist or a graphics person. I draw maps in CorelDraw, which does a fine job except that I haven't yet figured out an easy way to shade things (an airbrush or something like it would do, but CorelDraw is a vector graphics program, not bitmap, and while this makes printing very flexible, it seems to make shading elusive, at least for me). You can see some examples on my Web site at www.pulsiphergames.com/projects.htm

I get base maps from the Internet (out-of-copyright historical maps are available, especially at the Perry Casataneda Library (google it)). CorelDraw usually won't autotrace them satisfactorily, so I laboriously trace (with a mouse) what I need. This is not fun, but is quite practical. (Tracing with a tablet PC is easier, because you're using a pen, but I rarely use my wife's tablet laptop.)

I work on about 30 games in the course of a year, and there are many more than that in some stage of work. I really need something to organize what I'm doing, and this helps a lot. Another time I'll describe how I cope with pieces and prototypes.

During Easter vacation I had an unplanned minor ego trip, reading the personal comments on Boardgamegeek about Britannia. (It helps that I only read down to the 7.x ratings!)

One fellow didn't like the graphics of the new game, which I can see might be "too bright" for some tastes. As a non-artist I think the board is beautiful, even though I liked the sea better before the wave pattern went onto it. The cover art is excellent (I like the darkness of it). I don't pay attention to the figures on the pieces, relying wholly on the symbols (axe, spear, Viking ship, shield), and I'm very glad FFG took my suggestion (I don't recall who originated it on Eurobrit) to use the symbols. FFG's original idea was round pieces with a second color circle along the outside to differentiate side and nation, but they switched to the rounded-corner squares, which I really like. They feel a little bit like plagues or tiles rather than cardboard. I started gaming when every wargame used half inch cardboard counters, but nowadays I almost never use cardboard in my designs (I've collected lots of blocks, chips, glass beads, and figures). (I've learned since writing above that the commenter didn't like the difficulty of identifying the pieces, preferring the nation names on the old. I think the symbols on the new pieces are much easier to see, though I'd like them to have been much larger and the figure smaller.)

Many people remarked that the game is too long, and that is addressed in "Brit Lite", which may someday be published. There is some sense that Britannia is an extraordinary game because it is long, giving it the feeling of the "sweep of history" over centuries. In that respect it's like a mini-Civilization: some people cannot conceive of a game being like Civilization if it isn't at least four hours long (it often goes 8-12).

I think that a shorter Brit must have a combat system that has less standard deviation. About 80% of the players responding to my Web survey (http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=504421468301) think the amount of chance in Brit combat is OK (all but one of the rest think there's too much luck). In Brit the dice rolls tend to "even out" (but only tend); in a shorter game this would not be so, hence a different combat system is desirable. My experience playing short Brit scenarios I'm working on confirms that a few good dice rolls can have a major effect in a short game.

I have three combat systems that involve less luck (one uses no dice, but is not luckless). The diceless one is used in Brit Lite. "Advanced Britannia" will probably use the standard system. Other (dice table) systems are used in Dark Ages (TM) and Hellenia (TM).

Someone mentioned an innovative "for it's time" mechanic used (and I think the reference was to the point system). I confess that I've never cared whether a mechanic was innovative or not, as long as it modeled reality well or worked well for the game, but nowadays, as someone pointed out, some people admire games for the mechanics rather than the modeling (reflection of reality). I suppose there are some "Euro" aspects to Brit (no player elimination, usually short downtime between your turns), and I continue to try to think of ways to make this type of game more attractive to the "Euro" crowd.

Lots of Euro methods and characteristics were used in games before ever "Euro" games existed. I think there's an attraction here that is the equivalent to the attraction of designer jeans. Sorry, I NEVER bought anything because it was "designer" clothing and never will. I care about how good it is, and I know that many "designer" garments are identical to non-designer garments except for the label.

On 13 October of last year I wrote:

"I begin to think that the only way to get a lot of games published is to design but not develop them."

After my conversations at PrezCon, I am even more inclined to that opinion.

I talked with some developers and manufacturers about games, of course. The conversation turned at one point to prolific wargame designers. There is one (call him "X") whose games I have never played, but I have read several sets of the rules. They always give me the feeling that the "game" is actually a simulation first, game second; and from various readings, plus my own impressions from these rules, I felt that the games probably weren't well-playtested, and probably weren't much fun as games.

Opinions ran even more strongly at the con. One person was of the opinion that only good developers could save games designed by X. He thought X does hardly any actual playtesting. Another called X a "one book wonder", that is, he'd read one book, design a simulation, maybe play it a little, then pass it on to the developer who might or might not make a good GAME of it. As this all jived with my impressions (and they can be no more than that), I wasn't surprised. Someone talked about another designer (call him Y) who delivered his "design" as "a box of notes". Yet, this person felt, better games came from Y than from X. And Y could be paid a small lump sum rather than a designer's royalty.

Jim Dunnigan of SPI fame--SPI appears to have created the concept of "developer"--compared the developer to an editor (or in computer games, a producer); the expectation at SPI was that the guy doing the research would only come up with some sort of decent prototype, perhaps 80% complete, not publishable as is. The developer would do the work to make the game playable.

There is no doubt that the last 20% of refinement of a game takes 80% of the time. Playtesting is time-consuming, tweaking rules is time-consuming. Even when you don't intend to change the rules, rewriting them introduces unintended consequences (as evidenced by the Britannia Second Edition rules rewrite by FFG--and then having no testing of the new version of the rules compounded the problem). When you rewrite to change a rule, the repercussions are often larger. So a remarkable amount of testing is needed.

At some point recently I've also realized that, while delivering the "80% finished" game is far more practical than delivering 100%, to some manufacturers it doesn't matter. They are going to change it, and possibly not playtest the changes, whether the designer likes it or not.

I remember talking to Andy Lewis of GMT two years ago at PrezCon, and being put off by the assumption that a developer would likely need to change the game. Now that I've heard more about some of the well-known current designers, I'm not so surprised by the notion.

In effect, "designers" who don't deliver complete games make it harder for those of us who do. At any rate, I have realized that I am pretty much afraid of letting some "developer" take on one of my games with a license to change it. I have had very mixed experiences in that regard, some good, some bad (see http://www.pulsipher.net/gamedesign/developers.htm). I suppose I need to figure out which games I need not get ego-involved with, and which I do. I may also be able to arrange that my final version can be made available on the Web so that, if the published version is eviscerated mangled, people can see what it was intended to be. (You might say, "who are you to know what's best"? Well folks, if the person who created the game cannot use the playtesting to make the best version possible, who can? Some designers are not writers, I know; some are not editors; I've been both.)

This reminds me of my experience as a freelance writer long ago. I actually had "editors" change my correct spelling to incorrect! Some editors are more interested in fitting an article in a space than the meaning of the article. Some, on the other hand, make useful suggestions, and I am open to suggestions. What I'm not open to is someone changing something in a way I disagree with: it is MY GAME.

At this point some people might say, "get a grip, as long as it's published you'll get paid". However, I'm not in this to make money (very few do, and as one person said, you could spend the time scavenging bottles for deposit and aluminum cans for recycling and make as much money). I'm in this because I saw how much people enjoyed Britannia many many years after it was released, and I wanted to do more of the same. That means it is indeed MY GAME and I want it to be right (Britannia as originally published isn't quite right--changes by publishers).

Some publishers routinely minimize the importance of the contributions of designers, and assume that they know better. Perhaps the trick is to find the publishers who, if they don't like what you submit, won't try to change it to their way of thinking, they'll just say "no thanks".

A while ago I wrote a few notes in my trusty Info Select about "designing against the grain". That is designing a game that's a lot different from what you usually design, perhaps from what you like to play. I'm always a bit leary of this, as I've also written that if *you* don't like the game you design, why should anyone else?

Maybe I should modify this latter to "if you dislike the game you design, why should anyone like it?" Because I have recently designed a game that I don't care to play, because it's abstract, but that has been very well received by my local playtesters.

I like games that model reality, or "a reality" in the case of fantasy and science fiction. I want to be able to compare a move or play I'm making in the game with something that could happen in the (or a) real world. If I cannot, then I have trouble getting any interest in the game. I played chess when I was a kid, but gave it up at about age 15 because it was too much like work! Yet chess originally modelled warfare.

In the end, it's my interest in history that combines with the interest in games.

So I don't care for abstract games. Nonetheless, a few months ago I started with the premise that I wanted to design a game that uses the colored glass beads or "stones" that were originally made to decorate plants, but which now have many uses including games. At first I tried to come up with a system without chance that just used the stones, but that seemed too sterile., insufficiently varying. I didn't want to use dice, of course, or any overt chance mechanism, but I wanted more happening than you get in a "typical" abstract no-chance game such as Go or Chess. So I came up with the idea (used in Fluxx and, I suppose, other games) of varying the rules. There are cards for different victory conditions and different capture methods, plus some action cards, that players may have in their hands. Players can play the cards to change the victory and capture conditions of themselves or of other players, making for a rapidly-changing game.

Because the game combines the positions of the stones on a hex board with the wild variance of the cards, I called the game "Law and Chaos"(TM). It is much shorter than my other games (30-40 minutes), and feels more "Euro" than my others (no one is really out of the game, surprises occur). I'm not a Euro fan. And I have been quite unable to come up with any theme for the game at all--to me it is purely abstract.

I tried it first as a two-player game, which worked but didn't seem terribly exciting to me (the disliker of abstract games....). But when the local playtesters got hold of it, especially when they started playing with three players, it has turned out to be very popular and to be a "natural" three player game, where "kingmaking" is necessary, but difficult enough that it works out very well. We have found a second way to play (the Law way) that de-emphasizes the changes produced by the cards, and consequently rewards planning and "strategy" much more than the first (or Chaos) version, which rewards efficient reaction to frequently-changing conditions.

At this point, then, "designing against the grain" has proved once again to be quite worthwhile.

Britannia Rights

I am occasionally asked about the rights for the systems used in Britannia. The following is from the government copyright site (retrieved 11 March 2006):

http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html

"The idea for a game is not protected by copyright. The same is true of the name or title given to the game and of the method or methods for playing it.

Copyright protects only the particular manner of an author’s expression in literary, artistic, or musical form. Copyright protection does not extend to any idea, system, method, device, or trademark material involved in the development, merchandising, or playing of a game. Once a game has been made public, nothing in the copyright law prevents others from developing another game based on similar principles.

Some material prepared in connection with a game may be subject to copyright if it contains a sufficient amount of literary or pictorial expression. For example, the text matter describing the rules of the game, or the pictorial matter appearing on the gameboard or container, may be registrable."

[Emphasis added by L. Pulsipher]

As you can see, the ideas or systems of a game cannot be copyrighted, only the written expression can be. The Britannia game is copyrighted, hence no copy can be made that uses the words or pictures in it. However, if someone designed a game about British history from the Roman invasions to the Norman Conquest, and used many or even all of the ideas and techniques of Britannia, but used a different title (which may be trademarked), a different-looking board, and completely rewritten rules, it would be legal, however reprehensible it might otherwise be.

A patent covers a particular expression of an idea. Very few games are covered by patents. The Britannia "game system" has been used in many other published games such as Maharaja (Avalon Hill), Hispania (Azure Wish), and Rus. The fundamental idea for Britannia actually comes from a game called Ancient Conquest, for which I read the rules while watching a game being played. (Recently I bought a used copy of the game, to see what resemblance there is between it and Britannia. It is a hex-based, combat-factor combat table wargame; all the nations have exactly the same number of potential points, and all the nations of one player play at the same time. In other words, there is little resemblance to Brit beyond the fundamental idea, and even that is differently executed.)

I have been aware of this for many, many years, as any experienced game designer is aware, and as has been described numerous times on numerous game designer Web sites and discussion groups. Moreover, I am very careful about my rights (which is why I long ago stopped writing for Dragon Magazine, because they decided to insist in buying all rights to articles, and still do). I would never sell any of my "game systems" to anyone even if I legally could. If anyone tells you that any person or company owns the rights to the "Britannia game system", they simply have no idea what they're talking about--please let me know about it.

(Usual disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, so what I've said is not legal advice. But you can read what the copyright office says.)

Lew Pulsipher, designer, Britannia

It's been more than a week since I returned from PrexCon, and I still don't have my notes together. Guess I'll have to publish things bit by bit, as this one:

At PrezCon one of the game manufacturers told me about what he called the "collapse of the distributors". Along about 1995, distributor orders for wargames dropped drastically. At that time collectible card games were really big, and I understand from other information that in effect the CCGs took over the retail stores. This manufacturer now acts as their own distributor (and can actually make more money, as they got 40% of list from a distributor, but charge 54% of list directly to the retailer).

This came to mind when talking with someone who preordered a copy of Brit in the Washington DC area. The store called him to come get his copy. While there he asked to buy another. Other than two other preorders, they had none! The store caters to miniatures gamers, boardgamers, and role players, but despite having three preorders for Brit had ordered (or at least, had received) no more.

When he put in his preorder, he originally asked the clerk if they would stock Brit. "Uh, what company makes it". He said he thought it was the same company that made DOOM. "Oh, yes, we get all the FFG games". FFG is identified with role-playing, cards, and and fantasy in general, as well as with boardgames.

So it's good fortune, from the point of view of introducing new people to the game, that it's published by a company that still has clout with distributors. Despite the experience with this particular store.

My article The Essence of Euro-Style Games (it's another attempt at definition) has been published by Games Journal. Yes, Games Journal is alive again, though on a reduced/occasional basis rather than in a monthly format.

http://www.thegamesjournal.com/articles/Essence.shtml

I'm told that a European publisher will be co-publishing my boardgame Germania with an American publisher. But there is a long way between intent and actuality, so we'll see how it goes. It took three years for me to revise Britannia, find a publisher, and get it published (should be in stores in the next couple weeks), so I've learned to have patience.

I hear second-hand that Brit 2 will be in stores either late this month or early next.

I expect to be at PrezCon in Charlottesville 24-26 Feb, arriving Friday evening. (I expected to be there last year but got sick... as I'm sick now, maybe I'll avoid it then.)

I've ordered some plastic Vikings (1/72 scale made for miniatures battles) for my Viking games, not quite as cheap as ordering extra pieces from Eagle Games, but not too horrible, either.

In a surprise, considering that I haven't felt well, I wrote the full rules for the "one hour wargame" this week. 4,500 words, much shorter than even Seas of Gold (TM) rules. Also surprising because I've had writer's block about writing new rules sets. We played two-thirds of a game last Friday, first time anyone other than myself has played it. Sometimes playing the game with others stimulates the rules-writing.

Goldsworthy, Adrian, The Fall of Carthage: The Punic Wars 265-146 BC. Cassell, 2000. 412 pages including notes and index, paperback, purchased from Amazon.

When I've not felt the energy to do much of anything else, I've been reading this interesting summary of this subject. The author takes a particularly realistic view, I'd call it, trying to see things as the participants would without imputing modern values to them. Moreover, his ideas of how battles were fought seem to me far more likely than the wild charges and melees we see in the movies.

My history prof used to say "there were just too damn many Romans", and (including non-Roman Italians) that seems to be the way it was. This, combined with the uniquely Roman determination to fight until the enemy was not merely defeated but subordinated (permanently, it was hoped) meant they, not the Carthaginians, would prevail in the long run. Where Hellenistic states expected negotiated peace with a possible renewal to the struggle later, the Romans fought on. Disasters that would have prompted any other state (including Carthage) to sue for peace only made the Romans fight harder. They thought they had finished it at the end of the First war, but Hannibal's family found a way to continue in the Second. The Third war was terrifically one-sided, a consequence of Roman arrogance and fear of the economic revival of Carthage that resulted in the utter destruction of the Carthaginian state.

Once again we see how much of the history of the ancient world was lost in the Dark Ages. For the greatest prolonged struggle of the ancient world--much larger in scope than Greece vs Persia--we have large holes in our knowledge and often sometimes depend on only one (unreliable) author.

I have released another game-related poll (mostly about sweep of history games):

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=807321722096



In my previous post, I've misued the term "kingmaking". That evidently should refer specifically to cases where one player knows he cannot win, but can determine who DOES win. "Leader-bashing" is often used to represent the tendency to gang up on the leader.

At the request of someone on Boardgamegeek, I have activated the comments capability for this blog.

Lew

Questions that must be answered by the designer about every game design

Can we come up with a set of questions that can be used to define the nature of a game (whether non-video or video), if we have settled on the structural choices?

As a reminder, the structural elements are:
1. Theme/History/Story.
2. Objective/victory conditions.
3. “Data storage”. (Information Management)
4. Sequencing.
5. Movement/Placement.
6. Information availability.
7. Conflict resolution/interaction of game entities.
8. "Economy" (resource acquisition).
9. Player Interaction rules.

What's the difference between the structural elements and these questions? A designer MUST choose something within each of the structural elements (not choosing is itself a default choice). On the other hand, he or she can ignore any of the following questions, but other elements in the game will create some answer to each as the game is developed. As a designer, I'd prefer to answer the questions initially rather than stumble into an answer, but others may have a different point of view.

Here are the questions I've come up with so far (in no particular order):

How complex is the game? Complexity can come from the rules or from the play, or both. The rules of chess are fairly simple, but the play is complex. Generally speaking, the more plausible choices a player has, the more complex the play, but that is not always true.

Role of chance
Anywhere from essentially none (chess, checkers--the only chance is who plays first) to complete chance (the cardgame "war"; or just rolling dice against each other; Candyland, Chutes and Ladders)

Number of "sides" (generally, 1, 2, or many) and players
football has 22 players, but only two sides
Axis & Allies or War of the Rings can be played with four or five people, but is a two-sided situation (regardless of attempts to use strange victory conditions to make it appear otherwise, there are only two primary interests)

Symmetric vs. Asymmetric
symmetric--similar starting positions/forces (typical of abstract games)
asymmetric--different starting positions or forces (and sometimes different objectives)(typical of historical simulations)
["Big box" video games are often symmetric; asymmetry often comes from different starting characters]

Zero-sum (ZS) vs. non-zero-sum--in the former, any gain by one player comes from a loss by another
Diplomacy is an epitome of zero-Sum; Risk has some aspects of it, as do many wargames with strong economies (e.g. Axis & Allies)

Another way to pose this: is your opponent's loss your gain, or your gain your opponent's loss? If the game is two player ZS, the answer will always be "yes" . If it is multi-player, someone will gain when someone else loses.

ZS vs. non-ZS can be posed a different way, not quite the same thing: how easy or hard is it to hinder an opponent while at the same time helping yourself? If it's easy, you're closer to ZS; if it's hard, you're farther from ZS. An important aspect of most "Euro" games is that they are far from ZS.

Games in which you score points regularly through the course of the game tend to make zero-sum unlikely, I'd say, and encourage situations where it's hard to hinder an opponent while at the same time helping yourself. (How many games let you take points away from another person that have already been scored?) Of course, there are exceptions, this is a tendency only.

What is the outstanding mechanism involved? [Someday I'll attempt to list genres/mechanisms separately. Not anytime soon, for mechanisms!] What is the genre involved (this is related to theme/story, and is very important in video games).

How strongly will the decisions of the players influence the outcome of the game? Some Euro games, and almost all traditional American family games, are designed so that even if a player is making mistakes, the gameplay can allow them to recover and win. In other words, we want the non-adult or inexperienced players to still have a chance to win. Many wargames are not so designed, and a person who isn't concentrating and isn't making good decisions will rarely, if ever, win. Years ago I christened this characteristic the "gyp factor". If a game lets a less skillful player win often, the skillful player is "gypped" (you can see what school of thought I come from . . .). See http://www.pulsipher.net/gyp_factor.htm. Here's the lead sentence: "The Gyp Factor (GyF) of a game is the degree to which it permits or prevents the expert (near-perfect) player from winning consistently against less than expert but at least average players. If the GyF is very low, the expert will beat the good player virtually every time--chess is an example. If the factor is very high, the expert wins no more often than the good player--in other words the expert is gypped because his additional ability cannot be exerted in the game"

What is the "take that" factor? Is the game "serious" or "just for laughs"? This one requires little comment.

See http://www.pulsipher.net/game_playing_styles.htm or the February 2005 Games Journal. This article about Romantic and Classical playing styles also has application to the next two questions just below.

Which kind of skill does a player need to use, adaptability, or planning? Some games such as War of the Ring, and "card driven wargames", place the premium on adaptability, because you don't fully control what your side does. The roll of the special dice, or the draw of the cards, makes a big difference. Other games (chess, obviously, and traditional hex wargames) place a premium on planning. Euro games tend to focus on adaptability, which often makes for less analysis than older wargames. You can also suppose that the more information is available, the more planning is emphasized (think chess), and vice versa.

Related to this is the level of Fluidity or Chaos in the game. How much does the situation change from one "play" (turn) to the next? How much can a single "move" by one player change the situation? A high "take that" factor often indicates a highly fluid game, and a fluid game usually requires adaptability more than planning from the players.

Is the game "mechanical" or "psychological"? That is, is the game largely determined by positions and pieces, or by psychological effects? This is a very difficult question: Which one is Diplomacy? While the mechanical aspects are important and occasionally vital, mostly it is a psychological game determined by negotiation (as most people play it). "Romantic" players tend to make any game psychological, while "classical" players tend to concentrate on the mechanics.

How is "kingmaking" treated? "Kingmaking" might be defined as the tendency of players to gang up on, and drag down, the leader. If this is too easy, the game becomes an attempt to avoid looking like the leader. If it is too hard, the game becomes multi-player solitaire. Some games address this question by making it unclear who the leader is. In a three-player game in particular, the "petty diplomacy problem" (as R. Wayne Schmittberger calls it in New Rules for Classic Games) is related to this: when one player realizes he cannot win, how easily can he determine, by his actions, which of the others wins? If it is easy to do this, then the game probably isn't much fun to play, in the long run, for many types of players.

Some people believe that a good game naturally falls into three phases, the opening or beginning, the middle game, and the end game. Chess is often looked at in this light. While not all games need to have these phases, the question might be, What phases does the game naturally fall into? For example, Britannia has four phases: the Roman dominance, the Anglo-Saxon dominance, the Viking invasions, and finally the endgame with three (or four, in Britannia Second edition) kings in competition.

My structural list rose from seven to nine elements through discussion on design forums, and I suppose this list will grow and be modified, as well.

Lew Pulsipher

Starting seven different classes this week, then having visitors, has left me very busy. I think next weekend there will be lots of playtesting, at schook, at Rick Steeves', and at NCS Game Day.

Physical description of Britannia 2, using advanced copy sent to me by FFG before they'd received their shipment (which they're going to modify).

I noticed, and my wife saw immediately, that the box doesn't close properly, in the sense that the top doesn't come all the way down over the bottom. That turns out to be a problem caused by the cardboard insert, which is too high. This is the insert that will be replaced (perhaps by one that has four compartments rather than one for storing pieces, as well--we can hope).

The box is 11 by 11 inches, and would be 2.75 inches thick if it closed all the way.

The board is six sections each 11 by 11 for a total of 22 by 33 inches. It is mounted on folding hard cardboard, the six sections together about five eighths inch thick.

There are four counter sheets each 11 by 11 (see the pattern?). The four sheets together are three eighths inch thick (thicker than the old pieces, I think). Standard pieces are seven eighths inch square with slightly rounded corners. Leaders are shield-shaped (like the shield used for heraldry), 1.25 inches long and 15/16 inches wide. Round pieces (mainly the point counters) are 13/16 inches in diameter. As with the original games, the pieces are individually cut (unused cardboard between each piece), not mass-cut as with many old-time wargames. They are printed on both sides.

There are 251 pieces, I'm told (I didn't count).

The rules are 24 pages, 11 by 11 inches.

The nation cards are 5 by 7 inches on quite thin stock, much like photographic paper. I believe these are going to be replaced with more sturdy stock.

There are five dice, five eighths inches square, made of wood, surprisingly.

I should say something about late changes in any game, anywhere, anytime:

Experienced game designers know that *any* change in a game, whether in actual rules or in how the rules are written, can have unanticipated effects whether due to unexpected/unforeseen interaction with other rules or simple misunderstanding. Last-minute, untested, changes in rules are *poison*.

It was inevitable in the case of Brit 2 that when the rules were rewritten at the publishers in major ways (though with no intent to change the game), under a deadline, there would be glitches through misunderstanding and through sheer human error (typos and such).

This is much like making last-minute changes in a computer program. Writing rules is much like writing a computer program insofar as there will be "bugs", some of which may never actually rear their ugly heads, some that will be more often encountered. The last version you *tested* is the version that should be put into use, not one in which further changes have been made.

Yet those of you who play video games know that many are issued with so many bugs that they are not really completely playable until the first patch is issued. (Which makes for interesting problems in console games, where patches are sometimes not possible.) What happens is, companies need to get their stuff to market so that they can make money, and there is every incentive to rush a bit and get it out earlier rather than later.

In Britannia 2's case, changes were made in the rules because they were rewritten, but if they were tested in the new form, they were not tested much, and probably not in a "blind" environment (using people who had no previous experience of the new rules). An obvious example is the use of counters for scoring. I think the counters are useful insofar as they help people use "hidden" scoring, if they wish, but I'm also sure most people who use a scoresheet will then prefer it. Whatever your opinion, though, you have to recognize that little or no testing of the use of scoring counters occurred.

Now this situation, little or no testing of changes, is the norm in non-video game publishing, not the exception. And that's one reason why we have so many games with misunderstood rules or rules that simply don't work. The more complex the game, the more bugs there will be; even though Brit is usually characterized as a "light wargame", it's still fairly complex in its rules compared to many games popular today (such as "Euro" games).

To go full circle: designers know that new rules MUST be thoroughly tested; but publishers rarely test the late changes they make to a game. What designers hope for is that the new rule bugs won't mess the game up too much. In Brit 2's case I think we're in very good shape in that regard, and much better off than we were with the Avalon Hill version.

Most of the forums and listservs I check have gone very quiet beginning early December. It's remarkable how much the season and end of year affect people.

At Rick Steeves' last Friday I played "Pitch Car", an audacious French game that is "caroms on a wooden racetrack", more or less. You flick a wooden disk around a race track (the track cna be set up many ways) in competition with others. Everyone walks around the table trying to get the angle to get ahead when he shoots. There are railings on the curves (Rick doesn't use the railings for the straights) to help keep your "racecar" on the track and going around the curves. (And if you don't get the reference to "caroms", most people under 40 seem to have never heard of it.)

The set is quite expensive, as the wooden track is very substantial and well-made. I won all three races I was in, so naturally I liked it!

I watched a game of Citadels, a clever card game. It probably has a slightly stronger connection to reality than most "Euro" games, but the result is the same--you admire the cleverness of the mechanics rather than the cleverness of the depiction of reality (which is what you get in historical games).

Another game of Seas of Gold was played as well. The near-simultaneous rules worked well, the economic tweaks worked well, the game is nearly finished (but I've said that before).

While Brit 2 is being sold in Finland and Germany, I'm told by FantasyFlight that there is a problem with the plastic trays produced for the game, and it will not be issued from FFG until this is rectified, at the end of January 2006.

I am having a good time with the "one hour wargame", which is working out pretty well as a new "system" related to Seas of Gold (TM) but still rather different from it.

My first taks next Tuesday (start of Christmas break) is to play Caledonia(TM) and try to sort it out.

I hear of one person who has bought Britannia Second Edition in . . . Finland! It is also supposed to be in stock at German retailers.

Having had time to think about it, I suppose that the reason the game is first available in Finland and Germany is that it was shipped from East Asia, past India into the Red Sea, then the Med and perhaps Black Sea, to be trucked through eastern Europe (hence France and UK should have it in a few days).

Berlin to Hong Kong as the crow flies is 5,512 miles. (Helsinki is 4934, but again that's straight, not by sea then land.) Hong Kong to Minneapolis is 7,508 miles, but there are fewer corners to turn. So how long will the extra miles take? Dunno. Then it has to go from
Minneapolis to distributors to retailers in this country, another long trip.

At least many people will be able to have it for Christmas, if they wish.

I've played the "one hour wargame" (Eurowargame) three times and am pretty pleased so far. You don't have to be warlike to do well, but it probably helps.

The listservs and design boards seem to go dead at this time of year.

I have finally played the "one hour wargame", four players, worked pretty well but needs the Event Cards (which I didn't use). In some ways the game resembles a very-much-modernized version of Diplomacy, in other ways not (obviously, if it's intended to last just an hour). The diplomatic system may be too rigid, that is, once a war starts, it may tend to lock in. Scoring systme works well, but I've revised the Progress/Culture/Well-being to require supplies.

Anyway, I'm ready for another go with the revisions, but with work things hanging over my head, I don't know when that will be.

This must be the first game I've solo played in a couple months. Hellenia(TM) will be the next game to be soloed, I think. It's always an exciting time, the first play of a new game...

I have been taking some notes about "one hour" with the idea that I'd use them to illustrate the development of a game in a design book. Of course, the "one hour" idea goes back to Germania(TM) and through Seas of Gold(TM), and there are resmblances between SoG and this new one.

After reading Warriors of the Steppe, I was inspired to complete the Central Asia map.

I seem to be sending a fair number of things to Boardgamedesign, boardgamegeek, and BGDF, connected with the possible game design book. But this kind of thing can always soak up time without much result; I need to write some proposals.

One Caledonia PBEM test has finished. Not much testing otherwise.

I am working toward the elusive "one hour wargame", and Euro/wargame crosses in general. My games tend to be longer than an hour, however (they are usually multiplayer), so I've made a list of techniques to reduce the length of a game. There is not much exposition here, but I thought you might be interested, and might think of additional methods:

Limit to two players

"Time" limit
Actual Time
Turns/hands (is a natural for some historical games)
Expenditure of something (such as a deck of cards)
Play to a certain number of points

Simultaneous action. (reduce the time it takes to do something)
Simultaneous plays (or nearly so)
Real-time (anyone acts anytime)
(The "norm" is turns)

Reduce the number of pieces the player must manipulate/keep track of/plan for
In some race games, each player has only one piece
In most card games players have few "pieces" (the cards)
Traditional games often have few pieces (12 each in checkers, max 5 in Tic-Tac-Toe)

Multiple victory conditions--if you can win more than one way, the victory may come more quickly

Avoid the need to write anything down or calculate anything

Avoid the need for any record-keeping outside of the pieces/board/cards themselves

Resolve any conflict quickly (no interminable dice rolling, for example)(no calculations required)

Limit the time spent managing resources (economy--way to acquire new pieces)--which may mean, have no economy

Information: either make much of the information available so that players won't have to wonder/ponder what's going on, or make almost no information available so the player cannot profitably use information to make an analysis
In many card games, little information is available
The same can be said for many role-playing games

How to reduce "analysis paralysis? Even games with fairly simple rules (chess) can profitably be analyzed for long periods. I'm not sure what you can do about this, nor am I certain that you need to--"analysis paralysis" is practically a personality trait that tends to show up regardless of the game, unless it is dominated by chance.

I've posted "one page What's important when designing a game" several places, have to put it on my Web site.

Sweep of History Gmaes Magazine issue 1 is available at:
http://www.pulsipher.net/sweepofhistory/Sweep1.htm
http://www.pulsipher.net/sweepofhistory/SweepofhistoryGames1.pdf

I put a feedback survey address in there, and have had virtually no responses, which I suppose might mean few people are reading the magazine. At this point, *shrug*.

I'm reading "Warriors of the Steppe", for Barbaria(TM), the Central Asia game, maybe others such as Europa(TM).

I've spent Thanksgiving evening putting together the first issue of Sweep of History Games Magazine. The software has behaved itself (as well as can be expected), and I've got 14,000 words in 38 pages! Thanks to Torben and David it is much larger than I'd hoped. I still have to create the feedback survey and reference that, then (I hope) be done with it.

I've taped together the very long and narrow Hellenia (TM) map. But I don't know when I'll be able to play.

FFG's Britannia Web site is up, but it is still not orderable. I wrote to the person who is supposed to be in charge of the site a couple weeks ago, but have not had a reply.

http://fantasyflightgames.com/britannia.html

Lst Friday I went to Rick Steeves' monthly game night, and managed to have Seas of Gold(TM) (2 players) and Enchanted Labyrinth(TM) (3 players) tried. The "simultaneous" (mostly) method worked well in SoG, but Rick, who is the most experienced player after myself, preferred five rounds of five cards to the shorter four rounds of six. More PT required; I think I'll try reducing the island trade values by one and increase the initial value of trading to the North.

EL worked fine. The problem with that game is marketing, as the idea sounds too much like other things, even though it is in fact unusual.

Otherwise, the Hellenia (TM), Barbaria (TM), and even a Middle Eastern version of Brit have been taking what little time I have.

I'm not a denizen of Consimworld (I think my games are representations rather than simulations, though some people disagree). It has been recommended to me as a place to publicize Brit 2 and so forth. I've nosed around a few times, and a few weeks ago, noticing that magazines have areas in the forum, I wrote to John Kranz about "Sweep of History" magazine. Haven't got a reply, however, not even a "you're not a real magazine". I had thought about coughing up $18 for the privilege of posting at CSW, but that put me off a bit, and so did the (non) reaction to a "news" item I submitted--one I thought might not be regarded as suficiently worthy, but OTOH I'd think it might warrant the courtesy of a response.

Somehow I'm not impressed so far.

I publicized the Brit survey on Boardgamegeek and immediately got about one third of the total respondents (now at 39) coming in, I assume from that notice. So I posted my "Fundamental Structures of Games" there, and got some useful comments.

The seven (or eight) structural subsystems of any game (video or non-video):

A game can be thought of as a system (as in "systems analysis", for the computationally inclined). What I'm trying to achieve is a list of the fundamental sub-systems that are necessarily a part of any game. This list may help novice designers, because if they think about all seven of these systems as they rough out their game, this will help them conceptualize and arrive at a playable idea.

I want a framework that will help a novice designer think about games. There are other ways to analyze the fundamentals of games, e.g. in terms of states and changing state, but I don't believe that point of view helps new designers much.

This scheme is related to games that are models of something (often, of some reality); I have not tried to include sports, such as football or basketball, in which people participate bodily. The systems should apply to a tabletop sports game, but perhaps not to the sport itself.

If one of these systems is completely missing, you might have a toy or puzzle, but not a game. For example, in Katamari Dimachy (sp?) there are no victory conditions, and you have a toy. Sometimes the system is assumed, but still a decision has been made about the category. For example, in Tic-Tac-Toe there is no acquisition of resources, but it still has an economy of "none"--it could have a way to gain resources, and there may be variations where you do.

I've tried to list these subsystems in an apparently-logical order, but every one is just as necessary as every other one.

Objective/victory conditions. In other words, what causes one player to win, (and what causes the game to end)? Role-playing games have no end, but do have objectives: usually to acquire experience points and (magic) items. The game ending can be arbitrary ("play five rounds", yet there will still be a way to determine the winner at that point.

“Data storage”. (Information Management?) Something has to record the current state of the game. This is often a board/map. In Tic-Tac-Toe, it's the nine-box layout. In card games, the layout of the cards on the table, and the cards themselves, store data. Pieces can store data, in particular the traditional cardboard pieces of wargames that contain movement, attack, and defense values. A detailed map stores LOTS of data.

Sequencing. In what order do things happen? "Simultaneously" can be the answer, but taking turns is the norm in non-video games. Even in video games that appear to be simultaneous, there is usually a hidden non-simultaneous sequence (as that is the nature of most computing).

Movement/Placement. Players generally manipulate something, most often pieces on a board or cards in their hand or on the table. Chess and checkers have movement rules, the Asiatic game Go has placement rules. Movement/placement one at a time is the norm. Even paper-rock-scissors has movement (as well as sequencing) rules.

Information availability. What information about the game available to all players? In traditional boardgames all information is available, but in card games information is largely hidden. Five-card draw poker has a lower level of information availability than Texas Hold 'Em, because in the latter you see some of the cards "held" by the other players.

Conflict resolution/interaction of player-controlled entities. What happens when an action of a player leads to a conflict? This can be as simple as in Tic-Tac-Toe (conflict is not allowed, you can't place your mark where the other player already has one), or it can be simple as in chess (when a conflict occurs, the moving player always wins). In checkers you jump a man in a conflict. In Go you surround stones to capture them.

You can argue that Tic-Tac-Toe has no conflict rules, that movement rules govern where markers can be placed; but in this view a choice has still been made, that there will be no conflict. It is possible to have a game without conflict, such as a race game or many card games. There's no conflict in Solitaire, either.

"Economy" (Resources). How are new pieces/capabilities acquired? Some games have no way to acquire these, but that is still a decision made about the game. Even games that don't appear to have an Economy have some elements, for example, in chess you can promote ("queen") a pawn, and in checkers you can make a king. Many modern games, especially many computer games, are economic/resource management games.

Originally that was the extent of my list. I may want to include an eighth:
Player Interaction rules. What governs how the players interact with one another. For example, in a multi-player game, are negotiations allowed? Physical intimidation? (The answer to that is almost always "No", but it is a decision, and I have seen games that involved physical intimidation...) Some people might include this in Conflict resolution/interaction.

This is an "ongoing" work. Any comments?

Lew Pulsipher

Owing to the results thus far of my poll about Brit subjects, I've started a Roman-Empire game, and I've resurrected my notes about "Diadochi" and turned it more toward Brit.

No playtesting going on locally lately, unfortunately. I've been tied up with domstic things, too. I am not finding time to play any of the new games.