It's been 2 months since I've talked about Star Runner, and I've mostly let it sit. I think all good games go through a waiting period. For the most part I'm happy with where the game is, but I like having some time to randomly think it over, and try to play the same game without making tweaks. I was able to play a 4 player game last weekend with 2 new players, and one person who had only played once. This game took longer than I'd like, and it got me thinking about having a "starter" ruleset, or having some other options to speed up the early part of the game. I've also realized that the game is hard to explain. Once you start playing, it makes sense, but until you see what's going on, players don't have a strong notion for what they're trying to do. I'm planning on creating a video which shows how to play the game, so this will help the visual learners out there.
I think I've reached the point where the game is solid, but there are tweaks to be made in terms of card distribution, starting resources, and the ever important tech-tree. One thing that a lot of people have noticed is that the game has a definite narrative arc. For those of you who don't know what that means in gaming terms, it's essentially that the end of the game feels different than the start, that through the game, players have made choices that shape what they're doing at the end. This may have a negative effect on new players, but I feel that it makes the game more rewarding after you've played it once.
The best part about getting Star Runner played was that my friend actually asked me to bring it over without any mention of it from me. She also commented that it's a game she wants to play more often to try out new strategies and attempt to do better than the last time. This is music to my ears, and I think it's what every designer should be striving to achieve.
All that being said, if you're interested in reading rules, and maybe even playtesting, let me know and we'll get in touch. Rules can go out basically as soon as you get ahold of me, playtesting kits will take a bit, but I hope to have some ready to go around Thanksgiving.
Showing posts with label Star Runner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Star Runner. Show all posts
Friday, October 19, 2012
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Star Runner and General Games Update
It occurred to me that it has been 11 days since I last posted. There is a good reason. No, I wasn't at Gencon or anything exciting from a game perspective. Real life is happening, job interviews and such, and that's kept me busy.
Some news of note. I received a pre-release copy of Wits and Wagers Party from Northstar Games. No, I haven't hit the big time of getting free games to review. It was a thank-you from the folks at Northstar Games for my efforts in playtesting in the summer of 2011. Seeing the lid of the game signed by the designer was a cool thing. I finally got a chance to play it on Friday and had a good time. I played with a couple people who had played W&W in the past, and some who hadn't. We liked the 7th round ability to wager the chips you already had, not that it made a difference as one player kinda ran away with things. I liked the question variety, the chips are great in the game, but the best part is the pens with erasers on them.
This last week, I got a new prototype from Northstar to test out, so I look forward to giving that a go. More on that to come soon.
Like I said earlier, I got a chance to play games on Friday. That was a great thing because it was my first gameday all month. August has just been kinda weird for games. People are on vacation, doing summer projects before school starts, and all that. We played more Tsuro, and I won the first game, and then was in the final 3 who all died on the same tile, so that's kinda a win. At the end, I got a chance to show off my revisions to Star Runner, which was fun.
Speaking of revisions to Star Runner, here's the breakdown of what's changed. I now have indented dice with stickers, rather than using standard dice and a conversion chart. The map shape has stayed the same, but the breakdown of it is a lot simpler. It also goes together in about 30-90 seconds as opposed to around 5 minutes. Contracts have been revised and further balanced. The scavenging deck has been tweaked slightly, and there's something new to the game that's yet to be tried. I'm not sure if it will stick, or become something for an expansion/different way to play, but I want to try it out. The game is actually coming together. I'm kinda shocked by how quickly SR has come together. I know there's still a lot of testing to do, and a lot to tweak, but the core mechanics feel solid, and it feels like a fun game. I can't wait to get some of my readers a chance to try it and tell me what you think.
While we're on random musings, you can now find us on facebook. http://www.facebook.com/bitsboardgames
Head over there to see some polls, other info, and to ask some questions and get feedback asap.
Some news of note. I received a pre-release copy of Wits and Wagers Party from Northstar Games. No, I haven't hit the big time of getting free games to review. It was a thank-you from the folks at Northstar Games for my efforts in playtesting in the summer of 2011. Seeing the lid of the game signed by the designer was a cool thing. I finally got a chance to play it on Friday and had a good time. I played with a couple people who had played W&W in the past, and some who hadn't. We liked the 7th round ability to wager the chips you already had, not that it made a difference as one player kinda ran away with things. I liked the question variety, the chips are great in the game, but the best part is the pens with erasers on them.This last week, I got a new prototype from Northstar to test out, so I look forward to giving that a go. More on that to come soon.
Like I said earlier, I got a chance to play games on Friday. That was a great thing because it was my first gameday all month. August has just been kinda weird for games. People are on vacation, doing summer projects before school starts, and all that. We played more Tsuro, and I won the first game, and then was in the final 3 who all died on the same tile, so that's kinda a win. At the end, I got a chance to show off my revisions to Star Runner, which was fun.
Speaking of revisions to Star Runner, here's the breakdown of what's changed. I now have indented dice with stickers, rather than using standard dice and a conversion chart. The map shape has stayed the same, but the breakdown of it is a lot simpler. It also goes together in about 30-90 seconds as opposed to around 5 minutes. Contracts have been revised and further balanced. The scavenging deck has been tweaked slightly, and there's something new to the game that's yet to be tried. I'm not sure if it will stick, or become something for an expansion/different way to play, but I want to try it out. The game is actually coming together. I'm kinda shocked by how quickly SR has come together. I know there's still a lot of testing to do, and a lot to tweak, but the core mechanics feel solid, and it feels like a fun game. I can't wait to get some of my readers a chance to try it and tell me what you think.
While we're on random musings, you can now find us on facebook. http://www.facebook.com/bitsboardgames
Head over there to see some polls, other info, and to ask some questions and get feedback asap.
Monday, July 30, 2012
Daring to Dream
When I graduated college, there were many cards of congratulations, some with encouraging words, others with funny quips about "real life" and such beginning, but one stood out. My elementary principal, who was a family friend during and after my time in school, mom was on PTA and all that good stuff, sent me a card with a very nice bookmark. On the bookmark, there is a quote from Henry David Thoreau, "Go confidently in the direction of your dreams."Now, I'm not the biggest fan of Thoreau, but the quote is a good adage to strive towards, a good message when nothing is going right, and a good reminder when everything is going well. All of us have many dreams, some seem like pipe dreams or the things that have almost no chance of happening, but others seem obtainable. Maybe they're a longshot, but that's what dreams are for. Dreams inspire us to keep going, to do more than we think we can.
At this point you're probably thinking something along the lines of "well that's all well and good, but what does this have to do with boardgames?" Well, 2 parts. The first part is this blog. This blog started as a dream. I wanted a way to voice my thoughts and opinions on boardgames. I never dreamt I'd get nearly 7000 page views in 8 months. I never dreamt I'd have dicetowernews posting about my blog, or countless game companies retweeting and reposting my reviews. I set out on a cool idea, blogging about boardgames, and I found a wonderful community where the people do care, and do appreciate what you have to say, even if they disagree with you.
The second part of the dream is what has turned into Star Runner, my game design. I dream of getting that game published. I'm working on that dream practically every day. It's a very long process, but I'm going to get there someday. I honestly believe that, because if I didn't, I wouldn't keep going. I think the game is fun, I think there's some cool stuff out there, and every time I play, I'm learning more about it. The best part, other people are excited to play, and keep asking to play. That's the biggest thing for me, because even if the game never gets published, it's something I can play with my friends, and isn't that fulfilling the dream? Ok, maybe it's a modified dream, but it's still there.
Here's the takeaway. Dare to Dream! Take the thing you want to do, or love doing, and go for it. If it doesn't work out, try something else, but keep dreaming.
*gets off the soapbox, puts it back in the corner with the cobwebs*
Thanks for indulging me in a philosophical post. Let me know what you think. Do you want to see more of these? Do you want me to stay away from these? Let me know. I can take criticism.
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Redesigning Star Runner - Part 3 of the Design Series
Awhile back, I started talking about Star Runner, the game I'm designing. That was mostly in this post.
Well, a lot has changed since April. With the help of a good friend, I've taken the game and trimmed it down to the core. I had a lot of ideas that sounded really good in my head and even on paper, but when they were put into a game, they weren't elegant. A lot of things felt too clunky, or too math based, and because of that, the game was taking 4-5 hours and not even getting played to completion. At first I chalked this up to a completely new game taking far longer than any other play but when play 2 came and took about as long, even after changes, I was growing weary. Then, the best thing happened. I brought the game with me on a weekend to LA, and got a chance to pull it out and just explain things to my friend. It became very clear to both of us that there was too much going on. Set-up for the game took 45 minutes, and I hadn't even explained all the rules.
We left the game set-up and talked about the core ideas. Essentially, what made the game tick? It started the process of trimming the fat. In a way, I had built a shorter version of Twilight Imperium 3, maybe something like Eclipse, but that wasn't what I was going for. I wanted smuggling, not combat, and stealth, not blatant aggression. Perhaps the downside of being 22-23 is that you want to play games that have a "cool" factor. Lots of pieces, lots of cards, abilities, etc. The simple fact was that 500+ cards was never going to be feasible for a game with so many other components.
So that was end of crew and unique ships. Players had too much to worry about that they didn't need to decide which one of 3 ship types, and then which of 3 ships in each type to buy. I also didn't need to worry about how to balance 30+ crew members on top of everything else. Maybe an expansion someday, or something to add later, but nothing for now.
Let's get back to the core ideas. You're probably asking yourself something along the lines of "what is actually driving the game?" Here's the elevator pitch(a conversation in an elevator where someone asks what you do, or something like that) in a very rough form. Star Runner is a smuggling game in space. You have contracts to complete. In order to do so, you go to various planets, buy resources, and then sell them to the planet that needs the resources. You use money to buy more ships, upgrade your ships, and by technology for your ships. The person who does that the best, wins the game.
In an effort to further explore these ideas, let's dig into each one.
Contracts
Contracts are what they sound like, a list of resources to be delivered to a planet with a reward for doing so. Nothing too original here, contracts exist is many games. The twist for these contracts is that players have far more choice, and when they pass on a contract, it doesn't get discarded, it gets incentivized. I'm leaving the details of that vague for now, but I'm going to talk more about it later.
Ships
Like any good smuggler, you want to be known for great exploits. A good way to go about this is to have multiple ships to carry out your nefarious activities. Players have to balance having multiple ships versus upgrading the ships they already have. Again, probably nothing too original, but these work well and have a nice blend of attributes.
Technology
This is the area that underwent the most changes. They started as cards that came from a randomized deck that players could buy with special resources. They transformed into a common pool that had several different techs which could always be purchased. This was a good step, and I liked this place, but no one seemed to want to buy tech at this point. So it changed one more time. This time, tech is something you buy for your entire fleet. The costs are simplified, the abilities are straight forward, but the choices each player has to make in regards to technology are tricky, and sometimes subtle.
The core of the game is contracts. At the heart of contracts is the market. Everything else revolves around that. The game is economically driven, you're trying to gain money, use it to do stuff, and have the most stuff at the end.
In the span of 3 weeks, I took a game that had tons of stuff going on, 25 resources, 18 planets, a black market, mining, mining resources, 50 tech, 9 different ship types, passengers, crew with abilities, and a some other things, and boiled it down. Now there are 8 resources, 12 planets, a black market, mining which now uses the same 8 resources, very modified tech, very simple ships (down to 4 types).
For all that work, the game went from taking 5-6 hours to now taking 2 and a half hours. I'm fairly confident that I can get that down to 2, maybe even 1.5 with some streamlining. At that point, I feel like I have a game that people will enjoy, but moreso that I will enjoy. As an aspiring designer, I want to design something I want to play. If I can't enjoy my game, how can I expect others to enjoy it?
Well, a lot has changed since April. With the help of a good friend, I've taken the game and trimmed it down to the core. I had a lot of ideas that sounded really good in my head and even on paper, but when they were put into a game, they weren't elegant. A lot of things felt too clunky, or too math based, and because of that, the game was taking 4-5 hours and not even getting played to completion. At first I chalked this up to a completely new game taking far longer than any other play but when play 2 came and took about as long, even after changes, I was growing weary. Then, the best thing happened. I brought the game with me on a weekend to LA, and got a chance to pull it out and just explain things to my friend. It became very clear to both of us that there was too much going on. Set-up for the game took 45 minutes, and I hadn't even explained all the rules.
We left the game set-up and talked about the core ideas. Essentially, what made the game tick? It started the process of trimming the fat. In a way, I had built a shorter version of Twilight Imperium 3, maybe something like Eclipse, but that wasn't what I was going for. I wanted smuggling, not combat, and stealth, not blatant aggression. Perhaps the downside of being 22-23 is that you want to play games that have a "cool" factor. Lots of pieces, lots of cards, abilities, etc. The simple fact was that 500+ cards was never going to be feasible for a game with so many other components.
So that was end of crew and unique ships. Players had too much to worry about that they didn't need to decide which one of 3 ship types, and then which of 3 ships in each type to buy. I also didn't need to worry about how to balance 30+ crew members on top of everything else. Maybe an expansion someday, or something to add later, but nothing for now.
Let's get back to the core ideas. You're probably asking yourself something along the lines of "what is actually driving the game?" Here's the elevator pitch(a conversation in an elevator where someone asks what you do, or something like that) in a very rough form. Star Runner is a smuggling game in space. You have contracts to complete. In order to do so, you go to various planets, buy resources, and then sell them to the planet that needs the resources. You use money to buy more ships, upgrade your ships, and by technology for your ships. The person who does that the best, wins the game.
In an effort to further explore these ideas, let's dig into each one.
Contracts
Contracts are what they sound like, a list of resources to be delivered to a planet with a reward for doing so. Nothing too original here, contracts exist is many games. The twist for these contracts is that players have far more choice, and when they pass on a contract, it doesn't get discarded, it gets incentivized. I'm leaving the details of that vague for now, but I'm going to talk more about it later.
Ships
Like any good smuggler, you want to be known for great exploits. A good way to go about this is to have multiple ships to carry out your nefarious activities. Players have to balance having multiple ships versus upgrading the ships they already have. Again, probably nothing too original, but these work well and have a nice blend of attributes.
Technology
This is the area that underwent the most changes. They started as cards that came from a randomized deck that players could buy with special resources. They transformed into a common pool that had several different techs which could always be purchased. This was a good step, and I liked this place, but no one seemed to want to buy tech at this point. So it changed one more time. This time, tech is something you buy for your entire fleet. The costs are simplified, the abilities are straight forward, but the choices each player has to make in regards to technology are tricky, and sometimes subtle.
The core of the game is contracts. At the heart of contracts is the market. Everything else revolves around that. The game is economically driven, you're trying to gain money, use it to do stuff, and have the most stuff at the end.
In the span of 3 weeks, I took a game that had tons of stuff going on, 25 resources, 18 planets, a black market, mining, mining resources, 50 tech, 9 different ship types, passengers, crew with abilities, and a some other things, and boiled it down. Now there are 8 resources, 12 planets, a black market, mining which now uses the same 8 resources, very modified tech, very simple ships (down to 4 types).
For all that work, the game went from taking 5-6 hours to now taking 2 and a half hours. I'm fairly confident that I can get that down to 2, maybe even 1.5 with some streamlining. At that point, I feel like I have a game that people will enjoy, but moreso that I will enjoy. As an aspiring designer, I want to design something I want to play. If I can't enjoy my game, how can I expect others to enjoy it?
Monday, June 4, 2012
Skip-Bo, Dominoes, and things from Redondo Beach
This past weekend, May 31- June 3rd, I visited Redondo Beach in the greater Los Angeles area. I was fortunate enough to stay with a friend's family, and that led to a lot of games. We were also lucky enough to have some friends from college visit us, and that led to even more games. Overall, a good time spending time with friends, getting to know people better, have a lot of laughs and play games.
I took the train down to LA on Thursday, arriving late in the afternoon. That evening we broke out No Thanks, Scary Tales, Tiki Topple, and Mexican Train Dominoes. It had been years since I had played Dominoes, so it was nice to get an old classic to the table.
Friday wasn't much of a game day, even though it was my birthday. I did get a chance to go mini-golfing and arcade game playing(ski-ball and the like) with my friend. I know it's not a boardgame, but hey, it's a game, an activity, and mostly fun. I think of mini golf as a fun dexterity game with more space to play. After dinner, a family friend stopped by, so that gave us 6 for Skip-Bo. We played one game alone, and then 2 games with partners. I was able to win one of the partnership games. It's actually a really fun game. I wouldn't have chosen skip-bo, but now it's moved up on my list of fun games for the not as serious crowd.
Saturday was a bright and early start since games began at 10am with the aforementioned couple. We started the morning off with Ticket to Ride Europe, including the 1912 expansion. We didn't play depots, just the extra tickets. Early on, I got blocked off from Budapest by both of the 1 length routes. Needless to say the workaround was extensive. Sure I could have burned a station, but I kinda needed to go other places too, and didn't want to get caught without enough stations too early. That basically cost me the game though. One player was able to go from Petrograd to Madrid, in a straight shot. This allowed her to draw a lot of tickets, and make small branches to make things work. She ended with over 100 points in Tickets alone, and something like 194 as a final score. I managed 2nd with 121, but that was a very, very, distant 2nd.
After Ticket, we moved on to something a lot lighter, Scary Tales. Everyone had fun with that, since the game is not overly serious in nature, and feels very light. The dice really do help maintain a quick pace and everyone tends to have fun with it.
One player had to depart, so we moved to Coloretto. Yes, that's right, I finally got it played. I really like the game. I think there's a lot of thought that goes into your choices and there's enough interactions with different players, and ways to make the game hard on them without the screwage factor.
The most important part of Saturday was talking to a good friend about Star Runner. He had a lot of good ideas to add more secrecy to the game play, and while that will add a little bit of time, I think it enhances the feel of the game, makes it feel more like you are moving things in secret, and gives the patrols a better reason to exist.
Overall I had a good time. Some of the social aspects were not as good as they could have been, but I wouldn't change a thing. I got a lot of games played, I think I'm completely back on track for the goal of 300, plus, Star Runner will be worth the extra work.
I took the train down to LA on Thursday, arriving late in the afternoon. That evening we broke out No Thanks, Scary Tales, Tiki Topple, and Mexican Train Dominoes. It had been years since I had played Dominoes, so it was nice to get an old classic to the table.
Friday wasn't much of a game day, even though it was my birthday. I did get a chance to go mini-golfing and arcade game playing(ski-ball and the like) with my friend. I know it's not a boardgame, but hey, it's a game, an activity, and mostly fun. I think of mini golf as a fun dexterity game with more space to play. After dinner, a family friend stopped by, so that gave us 6 for Skip-Bo. We played one game alone, and then 2 games with partners. I was able to win one of the partnership games. It's actually a really fun game. I wouldn't have chosen skip-bo, but now it's moved up on my list of fun games for the not as serious crowd.
Saturday was a bright and early start since games began at 10am with the aforementioned couple. We started the morning off with Ticket to Ride Europe, including the 1912 expansion. We didn't play depots, just the extra tickets. Early on, I got blocked off from Budapest by both of the 1 length routes. Needless to say the workaround was extensive. Sure I could have burned a station, but I kinda needed to go other places too, and didn't want to get caught without enough stations too early. That basically cost me the game though. One player was able to go from Petrograd to Madrid, in a straight shot. This allowed her to draw a lot of tickets, and make small branches to make things work. She ended with over 100 points in Tickets alone, and something like 194 as a final score. I managed 2nd with 121, but that was a very, very, distant 2nd.
After Ticket, we moved on to something a lot lighter, Scary Tales. Everyone had fun with that, since the game is not overly serious in nature, and feels very light. The dice really do help maintain a quick pace and everyone tends to have fun with it.
One player had to depart, so we moved to Coloretto. Yes, that's right, I finally got it played. I really like the game. I think there's a lot of thought that goes into your choices and there's enough interactions with different players, and ways to make the game hard on them without the screwage factor.
The most important part of Saturday was talking to a good friend about Star Runner. He had a lot of good ideas to add more secrecy to the game play, and while that will add a little bit of time, I think it enhances the feel of the game, makes it feel more like you are moving things in secret, and gives the patrols a better reason to exist.
Overall I had a good time. Some of the social aspects were not as good as they could have been, but I wouldn't change a thing. I got a lot of games played, I think I'm completely back on track for the goal of 300, plus, Star Runner will be worth the extra work.
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Star Runner Part 2 The Why
I think the first question any aspiring designer has to ask themselves is why do I want to design x? Without a reason, designing something is essentially meaningless. So one must ask themselves some questions. What do I want my design to do? Who is my target audience? What is different about my design?
Ok, that's all the abstract thought going on. Let me swing it back to Star Runner. Why Star Runner? Why have I chosen to spend chunks of my free time since the summer of 2010 on one game? Well, the short answer is, because it's been fun. The longer answer follows, just stick with me. Star Runner started as a board game version of the TV show Firefly. It was a fun theme to work with, and there was maybe one game about it that wasn't very good, so I thought it might be fun to try and make it work. One of my friends had a book with charts and stuff about the verse, names of people, and a lot of the goings on behind the show. It was great and all, but the design fizzled for two reasons. First, it was the middle of school and I was terribly busy. Second, I knew that getting the license to use anything officially in Firefly would be a huge pain, especially for a first time designer.
New plan. I should also mention that I never had a name for things, it was just this nebulous game. Let's keep things in space, keep each player as their own entity running a ship, but let's have some more options. I still wanted patrols to keep players on their toes, as well as a Black Market, it's just more fun that way. The thing that really changed was eliminating the jobs. I still wanted to move cargo, but having jobs on planets seemed like an unnecessary complication to the design, and also a way to make things longer. (More on length later.) I also thought that by eliminating the "petty" jobs or the "iffy" jobs, it would open up more lines of work for the players. I find that having options in a game makes them more interesting. So that's what I did. No jobs on planets, simply moving goods and people between planets. Why, because that made it streamlined, and gave you less to worry about. Could I see on planet jobs becoming part of things, sure, but it's not in testing, and I don't think it needs one more thing.
Ultimately, I wanted to design a game that I wanted to play. I love space games, I think it gives the designer a lot of freedom in terms of location and what you can actually do. Aliens or just humans? How do ships travel? Militarized ships or transports? Lots of options. Star Runner has a blend. Right now, all characters are humans, but there is a lot of space out there. Ships travel quickly, but the specifics aren't really defined, so pick your favorite method. All ships have weapons and defenses of some kind, but some are better than others. Any patrol ship would still crush a player's ship if it came to a fight, thus the only combat in game is between players.
You can't set out to make an epic game. Those games are written by players. I'm not sure that Star Runner has the ability to tell great stories, but maybe that's because I'm not a great storyteller. I think a game represents the person or people creating it. I like things being calculable, but I also like chance. I like having a lot of things to do and trying to keep them all straight.
So that answers some of the whys of Star Runner. It's also a bit twisty and turny, but that's some more info on Star Runner.
Hopefully more tests coming soon. I've been working on the rulebook a lot. If you'd consider reading it and giving me some feedback, I'd love to hear it.
Ok, that's all the abstract thought going on. Let me swing it back to Star Runner. Why Star Runner? Why have I chosen to spend chunks of my free time since the summer of 2010 on one game? Well, the short answer is, because it's been fun. The longer answer follows, just stick with me. Star Runner started as a board game version of the TV show Firefly. It was a fun theme to work with, and there was maybe one game about it that wasn't very good, so I thought it might be fun to try and make it work. One of my friends had a book with charts and stuff about the verse, names of people, and a lot of the goings on behind the show. It was great and all, but the design fizzled for two reasons. First, it was the middle of school and I was terribly busy. Second, I knew that getting the license to use anything officially in Firefly would be a huge pain, especially for a first time designer.
New plan. I should also mention that I never had a name for things, it was just this nebulous game. Let's keep things in space, keep each player as their own entity running a ship, but let's have some more options. I still wanted patrols to keep players on their toes, as well as a Black Market, it's just more fun that way. The thing that really changed was eliminating the jobs. I still wanted to move cargo, but having jobs on planets seemed like an unnecessary complication to the design, and also a way to make things longer. (More on length later.) I also thought that by eliminating the "petty" jobs or the "iffy" jobs, it would open up more lines of work for the players. I find that having options in a game makes them more interesting. So that's what I did. No jobs on planets, simply moving goods and people between planets. Why, because that made it streamlined, and gave you less to worry about. Could I see on planet jobs becoming part of things, sure, but it's not in testing, and I don't think it needs one more thing.
Ultimately, I wanted to design a game that I wanted to play. I love space games, I think it gives the designer a lot of freedom in terms of location and what you can actually do. Aliens or just humans? How do ships travel? Militarized ships or transports? Lots of options. Star Runner has a blend. Right now, all characters are humans, but there is a lot of space out there. Ships travel quickly, but the specifics aren't really defined, so pick your favorite method. All ships have weapons and defenses of some kind, but some are better than others. Any patrol ship would still crush a player's ship if it came to a fight, thus the only combat in game is between players.
You can't set out to make an epic game. Those games are written by players. I'm not sure that Star Runner has the ability to tell great stories, but maybe that's because I'm not a great storyteller. I think a game represents the person or people creating it. I like things being calculable, but I also like chance. I like having a lot of things to do and trying to keep them all straight.
So that answers some of the whys of Star Runner. It's also a bit twisty and turny, but that's some more info on Star Runner.
Hopefully more tests coming soon. I've been working on the rulebook a lot. If you'd consider reading it and giving me some feedback, I'd love to hear it.
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Star Runner Part 1
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| Sample box holding all the components. |
Some of those ideas are found in the set-up of the game, which is get a ship, get a crew, find a job, try to make money, and stay out of trouble.
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| Focus on the various types of cards From left to right we have Tech in orange, Passangers in blue Runs in green, Crew with the black bar and colors at the bottom, and resource cards in the TTR deck facedown. |
I think the components look pretty good, especially for testing. I'm using old Star Trek CCG cards as backers for the big cards, and the US Ticket to Ride cards as backers for the small cards. Fortunately, they don't detract from the game play, though the sleeves get annoying for shuffling at times. The good news with shuffling is that most of it is done in the beginning, and after that, there's very little, so it keeps things moving. It took us about an hour to go through set-up and teaching, but that's because I was the only person setting up, and next time it should go faster, at least I can hope.
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| Game in progress, about 1/3 done. |
One of my biggest fears going in, besides the fear of complete rejection and not having a fun game, was that the market system would crash and burn. As it turns out, it was a pretty clear system with two players monitoring it. Everyone ended up having a job or two of their own. One player was the banker for money, two managed the market, and helped with cards. One also helped manage the movement arcs, and I took care of drawing market and inspection tokens. Several other things crashed and burned, but we tweaked what we could while playing, and wrote down changes that we think will work better next time. Next time is also the best news I could ever get, because it means they liked the game.
Speaking of the fear of rejection, it really is unnerving to place something you've created in front of other people for the first time. I've invested parts of the last 30 months into this, and a good portion of the last 3 months, so to have that go to waste would be deflating. The crucial thing I learned with testing this was how to make adjustments on the fly. We saw that something wasn't working, and we came up with a way to fix it. Some other things are design elements I have to go back and rework, but I have a much better idea on how the game plays, and thus how to design it how I want it to play.
I hope this post also clarifies why I've been a bit sparse with my postings. Trying to get a design to prototyping was a big push, and once I could see it close, I just had to get there. My original plan was May 1st and I'm proud to say I beat that arbitrary deadline by 2.5 weeks.
If you'd like to know more, leave a comment with any questions, and I will answer them to the best of my ability in Part 2.
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