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Admin Understudy
Apr 17, 2002

Captain Pope-tastic
What if the component slots or system layers had a secondary purpose for the card drawing and combat actions. Like as long as you had a card in the legs slot you got to draw an additional card for construction each round, a card in the body slot is increased hand size or something, each arm lets you conduct combat less randomly.

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Nemesis Of Moles
Jul 25, 2007

All awesome ideas. I already have a 'Tricks and Traps' style system where some of the cards you draw will be poo poo you can play on others to have their robots malfunction or steal their cards, etc, and most of the robot part effects do stuff exactly like you're saying, example;

Head – Hack Targeting Data, If only the Head remains, once per round, redirect combat to the player to your left on a roll of 4, 5 or 6, even if that player is the attacker.

Heads, currently, are usually entirely defenceless.

Railing Kill
Nov 14, 2008

You are the first crack in the sheer face of god. From you it will spread.
I've taken some of the points from this thread and some of the linked resources and started researching publishers. Here's an issue I'm having:

Most of them state that they do not accept unsolicited submissions. Mayfair Games is a good example but they explain themselves a bit more than most:

quote:

In general, we do not accept open submissions–submissions that arrive unannounced from designers we have had no previous contact with. In general, these e-mails are likely to be discarded unread. More importantly, any open submission prototypes that are sent to Mayfair will be discarded/not returned! Please do not send any unrequested game materials to us!

We work with designers that we have past relationships with, and designers recommended to us by our existing network. In addition, we actively look at designs at conventions where our production staff is present by appointment. This always includes the Nuremberg Toy Fair, Origins Game Fair, Gen Con, the Essen Spiel Fest, as well as many regional shows.

Our current Minister of Product Acquisition is Alex Yeager (submissions@mayfairgames.com). We are much more likely to consider a game from a designer willing to make the effort to meet us at a convention or show, and we do aggressively schedule meetings at shows to evaluate as many designs as possible. Our meeting schedule is usually full before we arrive onsite for a show, so it is very unlikely that we will meet with you at a show without a previous appointment. Once scheduled, plan on taking about 20-30 minutes to present your design.

Emphasis mine.

I get that they don't want to be deluged with e-mails from ameteur designers who range wildly in skill and effort, but it's going to be tough for me to be heard since I'm not easily able to go to big cons. I live in the middle of nowhere and I don't have the disposable income to spend on plane tickets to Gen Con and poo poo. It's a tough spot because I want to be heard by these companies but I am not able to get in contact with them in the way they describe.

This may just be me bitching, but is there another way? Is it possible to do some networking online or in some other way that doesn't require going to a con? If anyone has had any luck dealing with publishers online, I'd love to hear some advice.

Just to be clear: I don't mind the idea of going to a con to network and promote my ideas, but I'm just not able to between my schedule, my location, and my budget. Any alternatives?

Also: smaller publishers are probably more willing and able to look at unsolicited submissions, so has anyone had good luck with that?

xopods
Oct 26, 2010

Railing Kill posted:

Also: smaller publishers are probably more willing and able to look at unsolicited submissions, so has anyone had good luck with that?

This is what I was going to say. It's like anything - big publishers work with big designers, small publishers work with small designers, unknown publishers work with unknown designers.

I mean, you can maybe get a deal with a big publisher if you've really, honestly got the Next Big Thing on your hands, like Dominion... but usually you don't. If you don't have any published games under your belt, and your design is merely good, not earth-shatteringly awesome, then look for a small publisher.

If you do think you have a shot with a big publisher, like Mayfair or Rio Grande or whoever, then yeah, you have to try to corner the relevant people at a game show and show them your prototype directly. Even a company like ZMan, which theoretically is open to submissions, typically won't respond to your emails at all.

My "success," such as it is, came about because my current publisher (a one-man operation publishing under the name MJ Games... the guy's name is Mounir) saw my games while working for another publisher (FoxMind, based here in Montreal). My games weren't exactly the sort of stuff FoxMind is interested in, but Mounir really liked my stuff, so when he split off to start his own thing, he called me up and asked if I'd found a publisher for Insidious Sevens yet. I hadn't, so off we went...

But the great thing for us there is that we got our start together, so there is loyalty between us... he likes my work, and I can come up with good games faster than he can publish them, so he doesn't solicit submissions from other designers, because I can give him everything he needs. And I'm loyal to him, and will always give him the right of first refusal for anything I come up with. He has one other designer for younger kids' games, but for games for older kids and adults, we're pretty well "monogamous."

Of course, to get into that sort of business relationship requires a certain amount of luck... there's no way I can think of that you could deliberately go out there and find someone who is serious about wanting to go into publishing, but doesn't have any games out yet. Maybe we need to make the equivalent of a dating site for would-be publishers and would-be designers to hook up. :) Outside of that, my best guess would be to hang out at game shows and talk to as many people as possible.

In terms of finding an existing publisher, I'd recommend looking for newish publishers that have maybe 3-8 games out, which have been fairly well-received. If those first games have sold well, they've probably got the cash flow to be looking to expand their line, but aren't so big that they're being harassed constantly with submissions, or so well-established that they've got a stable of regular designers who they work with exclusively.

xopods fucked around with this message at 19:26 on Nov 29, 2012

Railing Kill
Nov 14, 2008

You are the first crack in the sheer face of god. From you it will spread.
Awesome. I had that feeling, but I just wasn't sure how similar board game publishing is to publishing writing. What you describe is pretty much the same in publishing fiction: little fish publish little fish, and big fish publish big fish. I only just started researching BG publishers, so I'm just getting a taste of where to look and what to look for when I'm there, so I'll be on the lookout for small, independent publishers.

I just found ZMan's open submissions policy, but I'll probably not bother sending them an e-mail. If they're not likely to reply, I don't want to waste my time waiting for them if a smaller outfit is much more likely to give me the time of day.

Thanks for the advice!

Back to design for a moment: I'm interested in the somewhat new "dice building game" genre. Quarriors is fun but I've found it lacks the depth to stay fresh. I do like the idea of customizable games, be they CCG's or the much more managable LCGs or deck-building games. I also like using dice as the foundation of some games, from a design perspective, simply because the probabilities are easy to calculate and control, and making the components is a breeze. I have a few ideas for dice games that are also customizable, but I've only just begun fleshing them out. I'm just curious about the saturation of these types of games. Oversaturation happened to the deck building genre a while back, and I'm wondering if the same will happen (or has happened) to dice games like Quarriors.

Nemesis Of Moles
Jul 25, 2007

If anyone finds any more Small Time Publishers, please post them, I'm looking for people now and I'm not entirely sure my massive contact list of 4 is going to do the trick.

xopods
Oct 26, 2010

Railing Kill posted:

I just found ZMan's open submissions policy, but I'll probably not bother sending them an e-mail. If they're not likely to reply, I don't want to waste my time waiting for them if a smaller outfit is much more likely to give me the time of day.

If you've got a sell sheet prepared, it's probably worth firing off to them anyway just to see. They do publish an absurd number of games each year, so your odds aren't that slim, even if they're receiving a lot of submissions from others. I wouldn't wait around for them, though... send it off and submit elsewhere at the same time, unless you're looking at a publisher who clearly states that they won't consider simultaneous submissions.

The 20+ weeks they're talking about is once you've reached the point of sending them a prototype. I doubt you'd have to wait that long to hear back if you sent them a sell sheet that they found interesting. So even if you wanted to submit to someone else who doesn't consider simultaneous submissions, I think you could send Z-Man your sell sheet and just wait like two weeks.

Worst case scenario, you get a bite from the other publisher, Z-Man finally gets back to you several weeks later... in a way that's a good problem to have; you can tell Z-Man you honestly thought they weren't going to get back to you and you're now in negotiations with someone else. They may then be a little more eager to get back to you next time you send them a pitch.

It's the same thing with my publisher and foreign publishers... he showed Sultans of Karaya to one guy for some region for possible licensing of the translation rights. The guy said he had to think about it, came back to Mounir a few days later, but in the meantime Mounir had signed with someone else. He said he could see the guy really regretted the missed opportunity, so presumably when Mounir shows him my next game, he's not going to drag his feet as much.

xopods
Oct 26, 2010

Nemesis Of Moles posted:

If anyone finds any more Small Time Publishers, please post them, I'm looking for people now and I'm not entirely sure my massive contact list of 4 is going to do the trick.

I don't think Minion Games was on your list... I have something I keep wanting to pitch to them but never get around to it:

http://www.miniongames.com/about-our-company.html

signalnoise
Mar 7, 2008

i was told my old av was distracting
Before I get started would this be the best place to just spitball an idea? I have an idea but it's not even fully fleshed out to a point where I could play a game of it. Still in the forming stages.

Nemesis Of Moles
Jul 25, 2007

I'd say thats almost exactly the reason of for this thread. Go ahead man!

signalnoise
Mar 7, 2008

i was told my old av was distracting
OK so here's my idea in parts

1- Minis on a grid. Squad based minis game. I want it to be grid based because I want clear rules for things like cover and movement, no guessing. I want no room for error. Each mini has a stat card with whatever special abilities it has, but by themselves the game is very very simple. Your dude can move a certain amount, make very basic attacks, that's pretty much it. However, there are special characteristics for each dude like knowledge of explosives, or special non-attack abilities the character can do instead of attack. The rest of the game's actions are served up by

2- Cards. Cards allow your character to perform special actions (suppressing fire for example), interrupt enemy actions, lay down new terrain, etc.. These cards are drawn from a communal deck.

I want to marry these two ideas to make it so even though you're picking unique dudes, you and your opponent still both draw from the same deck and the strategy here is always having options. When you kill an enemy's guy, I want it to be not because you rolled the right number the right number of times- I want it to be because you laid down a card and they had no answer.

I also like the idea with this plan that since you're dealing with one hand for each set of guys, every time one of your guys dies, the rest become potentially more dangerous because you have fewer mouths to feed, so to speak. The last guy will always be slippery because he is one guy with an entire hand to use.

So that's the idea in a nutshell. A squad tactics game with a hand of cards to deal with.

Problems I already have-

1- Nailing down exactly what cards I want available. I know that I want the main idea to be the active player laying down attacks and the other guy using what's left in his and at the end of his turn to evade those attacks. But what cards will those be?

2- Hit points. I don't think I want hit points, because I want the end result of you running out of options to be that a guy is dead. I want it to mean something for you to have no way out, and I want the attacker to have the satisfaction of knowing he did that. Should I have hit points?

3- Actions and theme. I would like to think that whatever cards I think up, those cards should be purely about the system, but at the same time I feel that the theme of the game, whatever it is (right now I'm thinking old west) should feel like it is integral to the game.

4- How the gently caress do I organize decks of cards? I could do it Dominion style where I have banks of cards and the player tailors their deck to their force over the course of the game, but that feels like I would be cheating in terms of game design. Right now the best idea I have though is to rip off Dominion pretty much wholesale in the deck building area, where players choose multiple types of cards to be available, and then pick units based on what actions they know will be available.

Rudy Riot
Nov 18, 2007

I'll catch you Bran! Hmm... nevermind.

signalnoise posted:


2- Hit points. I don't think I want hit points, because I want the end result of you running out of options to be that a guy is dead. I want it to mean something for you to have no way out, and I want the attacker to have the satisfaction of knowing he did that. Should I have hit points?


The Gears of War board game (Rules) has a cool take on hit points, by making your hand of Order Cards double as your health. So you'll start with a hand size of 6, and as you take damage, you'll have to discard a card for each hit you take. The order cards are how you move and attack, so thematically, the more hurt you are, the less you can do. I find it really novel and worth exploring as an interesting twist on HP.

Nemesis Of Moles
Jul 25, 2007

I made a sort of similar game as my very first design. It ended up a godawful bloated mess. BUT, for Hitpoints, consider the way Mage Knight handles health. Each hit you take forces a Wound Card into your deck/hand, Too many and you're out for a turn. Wound Cards are basically useless chunks of crap that clog up the efficient deck-machine you spend the game designing. With a few tweaks, I can see it doing exactly what you're looking for.

signalnoise
Mar 7, 2008

i was told my old av was distracting
What if I made it so when you would have taken damage, discard a card (or cards, depending). When you run out of cards, that's when you take real damage. That way you're encouraged to make the enemy discard as many cards as possible during your turn while minimizing the amount of cards you have to use to do so, unless you think that using all your cards will result in more gains this turn than losses next turn.

I think that might bring about a lot of running from cover to cover, making sure you're in cover at the end of the turn after killing a dude. You think this could work?

I could also see having each card in your hand have a wounds value inversely proportional to the utility of the card during your turn.

lilljonas
May 6, 2007

We got crabs? We got crabs!

signalnoise posted:

OK so here's my idea in parts

1- Minis on a grid. Squad based minis game. I want it to be grid based because I want clear rules for things like cover and movement, no guessing. I want no room for error. Each mini has a stat card with whatever special abilities it has, but by themselves the game is very very simple. Your dude can move a certain amount, make very basic attacks, that's pretty much it. However, there are special characteristics for each dude like knowledge of explosives, or special non-attack abilities the character can do instead of attack. The rest of the game's actions are served up by

2- Cards. Cards allow your character to perform special actions (suppressing fire for example), interrupt enemy actions, lay down new terrain, etc.. These cards are drawn from a communal deck.

I want to marry these two ideas to make it so even though you're picking unique dudes, you and your opponent still both draw from the same deck and the strategy here is always having options. When you kill an enemy's guy, I want it to be not because you rolled the right number the right number of times- I want it to be because you laid down a card and they had no answer.

I also like the idea with this plan that since you're dealing with one hand for each set of guys, every time one of your guys dies, the rest become potentially more dangerous because you have fewer mouths to feed, so to speak. The last guy will always be slippery because he is one guy with an entire hand to use.

So that's the idea in a nutshell. A squad tactics game with a hand of cards to deal with.

Problems I already have-

1- Nailing down exactly what cards I want available. I know that I want the main idea to be the active player laying down attacks and the other guy using what's left in his and at the end of his turn to evade those attacks. But what cards will those be?

2- Hit points. I don't think I want hit points, because I want the end result of you running out of options to be that a guy is dead. I want it to mean something for you to have no way out, and I want the attacker to have the satisfaction of knowing he did that. Should I have hit points?

3- Actions and theme. I would like to think that whatever cards I think up, those cards should be purely about the system, but at the same time I feel that the theme of the game, whatever it is (right now I'm thinking old west) should feel like it is integral to the game.

4- How the gently caress do I organize decks of cards? I could do it Dominion style where I have banks of cards and the player tailors their deck to their force over the course of the game, but that feels like I would be cheating in terms of game design. Right now the best idea I have though is to rip off Dominion pretty much wholesale in the deck building area, where players choose multiple types of cards to be available, and then pick units based on what actions they know will be available.

I'm sort of trying to figure out a miniature game of my own. I want to make a descent samurai skirmish game that:

A) is simple and fun enough to play as one-off games at conventions, and

B) has an optional campaign setting.

The reason I want to build the game is simply because I like to build terrain, and I've previously brought a table with a slightly modified Lord of the Rings game. The problem I found with LotR is that while still quite simple, it takes too much effort to learn the rules to be a perfect convention one-off game. I've also made a re-skin of Mordheim to play at the club, but we found out that the rules are not really balanced, and Warhammer's D6 system doesn't work perfectly for a skirmish game (sorry 40K, but it doesn't). I love the Mordheim campaign rules, though. I've also heard great things about the new Muskets and Tomahawks rules, but I haven't had the opportunity to read them yet.

I haven't gone as far as to consider a grid system, but it would simplify movement and combat a lot. It's weird how much it feels like the border between a tabletop wargame and a board game is defined by grids vs. no grids.

I really don't have much to show for now, but I would love to be able to include hanafuda cards in some way. I haven't found a possible way yet, as the set is way too complicated and the pictures are too abstract. It would also make it pretty much impossible for people who don't have a very obscure set of playing cards to try the game by themselves.

My playtests this far has had similar problems as you, in that it is difficult to balance stats. In LotR's ruleset, some stats are just so much better, so characters who are weaker in Fight are just weaker overall, no matter how much their other stats are buffed.

The best results for my playtests have been with a team vs. a GM, with the GM playing a band of thugs and the players having one player each. However, I find the balance between many weak units and a few strong ones to be very difficult. Either the bandits are helpless, or they'll just swamp and massacre the players.

At the moment I'm pretty much stuck at a waypoint with two options. My first option is to go with LotR-ish tactical rules and Mordheim-ish campaign setting, and just work on polishing, or to do the actual work of hammering out some real, original rules. I don't plan to release it as an actual product, but I still want it to fill my need of an enjoyable convention game.

signalnoise
Mar 7, 2008

i was told my old av was distracting
As far as balancing stats are concerned, I am trying as much as possible to eliminate stats in favor of options. I don't want hit points because I don't want one guy to be able to take twice as many bullets as another. Instead, give characters special abilities that increase the number of your possibilities.

Crackbone
May 23, 2003

Vlaada is my co-pilot.

En Garde uses a system that's intersting: You have a hand of cards with values of 1-5. When you attack you can lay down a card or multiple cards if you have matches (ie you could lay down 3 cards with value 4). You opponent must match what you laid down or you score a hit.

So your cards could serve as both maneuvers and attack/defense. It could potentially be a balancing mechanism as well - make your best maneuvers have the best attack/firepower values, thus forcing you to choose between speed or combat strength.

xopods
Oct 26, 2010

You could use something on the board (commanding officers, or HQs or something) to determine the number of cards you get to draw each turn... or, to make it more strategic, make them grant "command points" or some such thing, which can be used for a number of purposes, including drawing cards and playing cards (maybe different cards cost e.g. 0, 1 or 2 command points to play, or maybe your first card per turn is free to play, your second costs 1, and subsequent cards cost 2 each).

That way, you're combining a game mechanic (how you get and use cards) with an objective (capture/destroy all the opponent's officers/HQs).

apophenium
Apr 14, 2009
Wow, I just noticed this thread right when I finished prototyping a game. I'd like to ask for some advice. My game is lightly themed around going to a junk yard to get various parts from the cars. The game mechanics are flexible enough to fit with any number of themes, though. Players control individual characters, and it kind of plays like a competitive Elder Sign. The game board is generated by cards that say how many cars make up the yard and how they're placed. Then the cars are placed out face down. So players walk about inspecting the cars and then attempting to remove the parts. Players also have contract cards that show a certain number of parts they need. Once they fulfill that contract they get victory points.

The main point of contention for me is how the players actually go about removing the parts from the cars. Currently, it's like Elder Sign. The player announces which part they're trying to get and then rolls dice to match up to what's required. It's not as strict as Elder Sign, though. There are a lot less things the dice can actually roll. But I'm not a huge fan of the mechanic, it just seemed like the easiest way to go about it.

There are probably a ton of other things I should change about the game, but I'd like to play test it some in its current state before going too crazy. But this is the one thing I'm still having a hard time deciding on.

xopods
Oct 26, 2010

I like the theme, but the mechanics sound awfully dry at the moment, TBH.

It sounds a bit like you're trying to go completely top-down for this game, but I think you'll get better results if you work bottom-up for at least part of the design process.

By this I mean, instead of asking yourself "how do players get parts off the car?" ask yourself "what are the key decisions players will be making?" This can be directly influenced by the theme or not - if not, you can usually invent some thematic excuse later to make it fit.

The worst Ameritrash games come about because of a purely top-down approach to design... if you start with the narrative and work down to the mechanics, you tend to come up with solutions that always involve just rolling dice or drawing cards from decks, because those are one-size-fits-all solutions that can be used to model basically any action you want. The problem is that they displace agency from the actual player to the fictitious game-world character, leaving the player nothing to do but roll dice or draw a card and see if "their guy" succeeds or not. If you ask ten people how players in a game might get past a locked door, you'll get a lot of people saying "draw a key from an Item deck" or "make a die roll to pick the lock," but if you ask what sort of mechanics could could be included in a game about exploring a haunted house, you'll probably get more interesting answers.

Given your theme, the mechanics that first spring to my mind are an action point system and hand management. Going from there, you could, for instance, come up with something like:

  • Players get a certain number of action points per turn. One action point can be used to move one space, inspect a car, or attempt to remove a part.
  • Prior to attempting to remove a part, players don't know how many action points it will take. This is randomly determined once the attempt is made (maybe by rolling a die?). If the result is 1, the part is removed; if it's more, the player has a choice between spending the remaining effort (e.g. 3 more AP if the part is Difficulty 4, since he's already spent 1 to initiate the attempt), or giving up. If he gives up, mark the part with a token or something to show how stubborn it is - any player later wanting to remove it will have to spend the given number of AP.
  • Players can only hold a limited number of parts (say 4), and must return to the entrance to drop them off. Unwanted parts can be dropped (at no cost) and later picked up by the player or others (maybe at no cost, maybe 1 AP?).

Then, you start looking at how your mechanics can interrelate:

  • Players can also find tools (or maybe there's a pile of them at the entrance to begin with?), of a few types. Tools reduce the number of AP you need to use to remove a part... perhaps each type of tool only works on a given type of part, or maybe each reduces the cost in a different way (e.g. one tool makes everything cost half AP, another makes the initial effort free (so you can check and abandon at no cost), another makes 5s and 6s cost 1, but has no effect on 1-4, etc.) However, tools take up an inventory slot, which could otherwise be used to carry a part. You can drop a tool, of course, but then you might be leaving it in a convenient spot for an opponent to come and grab it and use it to get some parts they need.

------

Anyway, you don't have to take any of those suggestions literally, I'm just illustrating how you go about designing from the bottom up; ask yourself what types of decisions you want the players making and what general mechanics could be useful for producing those decisions, and work your way up from there.

xopods fucked around with this message at 13:10 on Dec 3, 2012

signalnoise
Mar 7, 2008

i was told my old av was distracting
That is really good advice, I'll be using that in my own game

signalnoise fucked around with this message at 13:15 on Dec 3, 2012

Nemesis Of Moles
Jul 25, 2007

Also brings up a point I've been thinking of. The term Ameritrash just seems really juvenile and derogation toward what is basically 'Theme Heavy Games'. It just seems way way dumb to me that we keep using it to describe an increasingly vague 'genre'.

I mean, most games out these days don't fall into either Eurogames or the Ameritrash bin, but a combo of the two. As well they should.

Thoughts?

edit; Actually if we could get rid of the Eurogames label too, that'd be ace. The implication that Europeans are the ones who make smart games with deep mechanics is more than a little odd.

Nemesis Of Moles fucked around with this message at 15:46 on Dec 3, 2012

xopods
Oct 26, 2010

Better terms are definitely needed, but the BGG monikers of "thematic" games and "strategy" games are not adequate, because when we talk about American-style games and Euro-style games, we're talking about a lot of different things.

As for geography, "Eurogame" and "Ameritrash" are historically accurate, even if now you find American companies making Euro-style games and vice versa.

"(Continental) European" Design Philosophy
  • Bottom-up design focusing on mechanics
  • Low-concept themes, usually family-friendly, often related to economies, often based on real world history
  • Minimalist, abstract interpretation of the theme
  • Minimalist, abstract components
  • Low direct interactivity
  • "Endothermic" balance, aka rubber-band mechanics
  • Low direct luck factor - where randomness is present, the results are neither explicitly good nor bad for a certain player
  • Implicit complexity - fewer rules, less variation between similar game objects (e.g. types of units), but more tightly interconnected; game concepts must be understood holistically.
  • Usually symmetric and ordered in setup

"(Anglo-)American" Design Philosophy
  • Top-down design focusing on narrative
  • High-concept themes, often violent, often related to conflicts, often in the sci-fi, fantasy or horror genres
  • Maximalist, simulationist interpretation of the theme
  • Many components, high production values
  • High direct interactivity
  • "Exothermic" balance, ability to dominate opponents by superior strategy or luck, runaway leaders possible
  • High direct luck factor, often directly affecting the outcome of the game
  • Explicit complexity - many rules, high variation between similar game objects, but less interconnectivity; game concepts able to be understood individually.
  • Usually asymmetric and organic in setup

It's understood that most games don't fall 100% into one slot or the other, but it's a definite spectrum, and the distribution of designers and fans is definitely bimodal - more people fall into one camp or the other than enjoy both equally, and more designers lean one way or the other than land right in between.

EDIT: Some suggestions...

"Loud" games vs. "Quiet" games
"Blockbuster" games vs. "Arthouse" games
"Maximalist" games vs. "Minimalist" games
"Extroverted" games vs. "Introverted" games
"Chaos" games vs. "Order" games

xopods fucked around with this message at 18:33 on Dec 3, 2012

Nemesis Of Moles
Jul 25, 2007

Blockbuster/Arthouse is a good one, but I think you hit the crux of the issue in your first like. The idea that any game, these days, is either American Design or Euro Design isn't really a statement worth making anymore.

When we're talking historically, we can say use terms like that that to describe the origins of ideas, Blockbuster games started in America, etc. But these days every game has some elements from both, or hell, neither. Board Games are just getting too big to consign all of them to one camp or another.

Crackbone
May 23, 2003

Vlaada is my co-pilot.

Nemesis Of Moles posted:

Board Games are just getting too big to consign all of them to one camp or another.

They were never small enough to do so, it's just a convenient shorthand.

xopods
Oct 26, 2010

Crackbone posted:

They were never small enough to do so, it's just a convenient shorthand.

This.

If designers and fans showed a normal distribution, or if choices regarding high- or low-concept theme tended to be made independently of choices regarding explicit or implicit complexity, then yeah, it would be a meaningless distinction.

But they're not, and if there's a real distinction, then we need words to talk about it. There are a whole bunch of design decisions that tend to correlate with one another, and most designers and fans are more towards one end of the spectrum than the other. Therefore it's normal and natural to classify games in those categories* and, if a game really is somewhere in the middle, to talk about it as a "hybrid."

Anyway, I'm fond of "Arthouse" and "Blockbuster" as terms too. If we can start using those terms in this thread, that's more than fine with me, though it means that newcomers might be confused by them and need to be told that they're our new, politically correct versions of "Euro" and "Ameritrash."

*: There are of course other categories of games that don't quite fall on that axis, like party games which have minimal rulesets but high production values, or wargames which have maximal rulesets and low production values... but those are very specific types of games for very specific markets, and particular reasons they don't fall on the "main sequence" of board games.

xopods fucked around with this message at 18:46 on Dec 3, 2012

Nemesis Of Moles
Jul 25, 2007

I'll accept that there is a distinction to be made between the two schools of design ideals and influences, I still hold some issue with the idea that most people lean one way or the other but I'm happy to admit I might not have a solitary clue what I'm talking about here.

Those terms feel better to me though. Euro/Ameritrash always come off as derogatory which isn't really conductive to good discussion.

PaybackJack
May 21, 2003

You'll hit your head and say: 'Boy, how stupid could I have been. A moron could've figured this out. I must be a real dimwit. A pathetic nimnal. A wretched idiotic excuse for a human being for not having figured these simple puzzles out in the first place...As usual, you've been a real pantload!
There's really no sense trying to change what you call things at this point. If you say your game is Ameritrash or it's a Euro people will have a good idea of what to expect. I think we're past the point where it really matters towards the feeling of how the games are respected. There's tons of good Ameritrash games just like there's tons of bad Euros. Neither is inherently better in this day and age. Just adding in more terms isn't going to serve a big enough purpose to help us discuss a game. If you tell me game X is a 'Blockbuster' or an 'Arthouse' that could mean a lot of different things because those aren't clear terms, while Euro and Ameritrash are clearly established terms. I'm not saying you shouldn't add in more terms, but I don't see any reason why you should throw out the terms that are already established.

xopods
Oct 26, 2010

(a) They're not descriptive terms at all, even if they're accurate in terms of where the design philosophies originated. To a non-gamer, they say nothing about what a game is like, whereas Arthouse and Blockbuster refer to something most people know more about, i.e. movies.

(b) NoM isn't the only person I've encountered who takes offense at the "-trash" part of "Ameritrash." Arguing about whether something is or isn't derogatory leaves the original point lost by the wayside.

That said, I realize that it's far too late for other terms to gain widespread use, so I don't know. We need to be able to talk about design philosophy, but we also need to be able to do it without ruffling people's feathers, but also while being understood.

Maybe it's best to just say "American," which is what I usually do. In the post that started this, I included the "-trash" in the phrase "the worst Ameritrash," because the implication was meant to be "what happens when American-style top-down design goes horribly wrong." There are plenty of good American-style games, but most of them show signs that the designer did do some bottom-up thinking here and there. (And conversely, some terrible Euro-style games where a designer was so obsessed with elegance and balance that they forgot to put any fun or variety into their design.)

xopods fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Dec 3, 2012

PaybackJack
May 21, 2003

You'll hit your head and say: 'Boy, how stupid could I have been. A moron could've figured this out. I must be a real dimwit. A pathetic nimnal. A wretched idiotic excuse for a human being for not having figured these simple puzzles out in the first place...As usual, you've been a real pantload!

xopods posted:

(a) They're not descriptive terms at all, even if they're accurate in terms of where the design philosophies originated. To a non-gamer, they say nothing about what a game is like, whereas Arthouse and Blockbuster refer to something most people know more about, i.e. movies.

(b) NoM isn't the only person I've encountered who takes offense at the "-trash" part of "Ameritrash." Arguing about whether something is or isn't derogatory leaves the original point lost by the wayside.


a) They are not inherently descriptive but they are descriptive to people who understand them. While you're right that Arthouse and Blockbuster refer to something more people know about, they aren't helpful in describing the mechanics or gameplay of the game itself which is more important. Someone who has never played a board game will have no idea how a Blockbuster plays as opposed to an Arthouse game. People who've played board games already have a definition of a Euro and an Ameritrash, and adding in more terms isn't helpful to actually discussing the game itself none of those terms you created describe stuff relevant to how the game plays which is the most important part the game. Even a core level just knowing a Euro game is themeless but mechanically solid, while an Ameritrash is highly random with a ton of theme is a decent enough starting point to put most games between the two.

b) There's a community of people that love their "-trash" and wear it like a badge of honor, recognizing the negative connotation and turning it into a positive one. 5 years ago, I'd probably agree with you that the term was pretty bad but now there's plenty of games that fall under the banner and are proud to do so.

Nemesis Of Moles
Jul 25, 2007

PaybackJack posted:

a) They are not inherently descriptive but they are descriptive to people who understand them. While you're right that Arthouse and Blockbuster refer to something more people know about, they aren't helpful in describing the mechanics or gameplay of the game itself which is more important. Someone who has never played a board game will have no idea how a Blockbuster plays as opposed to an Arthouse game. People who've played board games already have a definition of a Euro and an Ameritrash, and adding in more terms isn't helpful to actually discussing the game itself none of those terms you created describe stuff relevant to how the game plays which is the most important part the game. Even a core level just knowing a Euro game is themeless but mechanically solid, while an Ameritrash is highly random with a ton of theme is a decent enough starting point to put most games between the two.

b) There's a community of people that love their "-trash" and wear it like a badge of honor, recognizing the negative connotation and turning it into a positive one. 5 years ago, I'd probably agree with you that the term was pretty bad but now there's plenty of games that fall under the banner and are proud to do so.

Bolding the problem here. If a term is only descriptive in any sense to people who already know what the term means, then by definition it isn't descriptive. People, including board gamers, understand what a blockbuster/Arthouse is and its an easy image to convey over to board games when we're talking about them like that. If the terms 'Aren't important' then what's wrong with wanting ones that are a bit less geographically-centred and a bit less derogatory?

We don't refer to basically anything else like we do Euro/Ameri. The closest analog I can think of is the JRPG, which in itself is a good example of why we shouldn't use labels like that.

Just saying American is fine, I guess. Part of my main beef is that we call games that aren't developed anywhere near Europe - Eurogames and we call games not developed in America - Ameritrash.

PaybackJack
May 21, 2003

You'll hit your head and say: 'Boy, how stupid could I have been. A moron could've figured this out. I must be a real dimwit. A pathetic nimnal. A wretched idiotic excuse for a human being for not having figured these simple puzzles out in the first place...As usual, you've been a real pantload!

Nemesis Of Moles posted:

Bolding the problem here. If a term is only descriptive in any sense to people who already know what the term means, then by definition it isn't descriptive. People, including board gamers, understand what a blockbuster/Arthouse is and its an easy image to convey over to board games when we're talking about them like that. If the terms 'Aren't important' then what's wrong with wanting ones that are a bit less geographically-centred and a bit less derogatory?

We don't refer to basically anything else like we do Euro/Ameri. The closest analog I can think of is the JRPG, which in itself is a good example of why we shouldn't use labels like that.

Just saying American is fine, I guess. Part of my main beef is that we call games that aren't developed anywhere near Europe - Eurogames and we call games not developed in America - Ameritrash.

There's just as many negative connotations to your terms Blockbuster and Arthouse already and they aren't established within the community already. You could just as easily tell someone it's a worker placement game, but that wouldn't mean anything to them unless they'd place a game with that mechanic before. Similarly you could tell someone this movie is an Arthouse film but they probably wouldn't really know what that means until they played one. Again if you want to make more terms to talk about games, fine. Blockbuster/Arthouse are not good examples because they don't describe the important part of the game which is how it plays.

And we do other things that way, Westerns for example. Pretty much any movie made involving cowboys, gunplay in a desert, will be called a Western, but that means nothing to someone who hasn't seen a Western before.

Why is JRPG not a good example? I think it helps when you think of them as abstracted from what they actually mean. JRPG has little to do with games from Japan these days, instead it refers to a sub-genre of RPGs that are in the style of games produced in Japan during the popularity of RPGs. I don't think of that as having a negative connotation in that genre at all.

Nemesis Of Moles
Jul 25, 2007

I disagree, I dont think 'Blockbuster' or 'Arthouse' have any negative connotations, certainly not on the level of literally having the word 'Trash' after them. Ameri-trash and Eurogame don't describe the games at all to anyone other than people who already know what those terms mean, and even then its incredibly loose. Frankly I don't think any term like that would be useful, a more 'design' term, like Top Down/Down Up and a more 'Gamer' term, like Blockbuster/Arthouse would work best, I think.

If you can't see the problem with having a whole subgenre of RPGs named after the country that made the first one with a similar template, I think we're on vastly different wavelengths here.

Westerns aren't a good comparison, because 90% of all the movies in the western genre take place in 'The Wild West'. Its a setting. Like Space Opera or something. What we're doing with board games is saying half of them are French Movies and half of them are German Movies. It makes a pile of assumptions right of the bat that aren't useful or healthy.

PaybackJack
May 21, 2003

You'll hit your head and say: 'Boy, how stupid could I have been. A moron could've figured this out. I must be a real dimwit. A pathetic nimnal. A wretched idiotic excuse for a human being for not having figured these simple puzzles out in the first place...As usual, you've been a real pantload!

Nemesis Of Moles posted:

I disagree, I dont think 'Blockbuster' or 'Arthouse' have any negative connotations, certainly not on the level of literally having the word 'Trash' after them. Ameri-trash and Eurogame don't describe the games at all to anyone other than people who already know what those terms mean, and even then its incredibly loose. Frankly I don't think any term like that would be useful, a more 'design' term, like Top Down/Down Up and a more 'Gamer' term, like Blockbuster/Arthouse would work best, I think.

If you can't see the problem with having a whole subgenre of RPGs named after the country that made the first one with a similar template, I think we're on vastly different wavelengths here.

Westerns aren't a good comparison, because 90% of all the movies in the western genre take place in 'The Wild West'. Its a setting. Like Space Opera or something. What we're doing with board games is saying half of them are French Movies and half of them are German Movies. It makes a pile of assumptions right of the bat that aren't useful or healthy.

The majority of people who are in the hobby have disassociated the locations with the terms, just like jRPG. If you say jRPG I don't think the game is from Japan, I assume it's made in a style that was made popular by Japan years ago. If you say the game is a Japanese RPG I just assume the game is an RPG made in Japan which could mean anything. Similarly Euro Games are different than European Designed Board Games, and people understand this. Yes, it's confusing to new people but it's not too hard to figure out and I've explained it to many people using bullet points not unlike the ones Xopods did.

You're right that having a word with -trash added on the end does have an obviously bad connotation. However if you say to me "Would you like to watch a blockbuster?" I think: big budget movie with lots of nice special effects with a big name actors with an outrageous story and probably lovely writing and characterization. and if you say to me "Would you like to watch an Arthouse movie?" I think: low budget movie with no actors I've ever heard of, probably pretentious as gently caress, but might have good writing and characterization. Neither one of those is something I want to watch based on giving me a one word description. I'd say those are pretty common conceptions of those two terms. If you asked me to play a board game using either one I wouldn't want to play either.

We have plenty more terms to talk about games, and they involve the mechanics at work in those games. Saying this is a role selection Euro game is different than saying this is a worker placement Euro game. The terms didn't stick because they were useless, they've been around a long time, just like jRPG. Just like jRPG, they aren't going to be replaced anytime soon. If you want to create new words to help people who aren't into board games get into them, GREAT! None of the terms suggested would help people understand what the games are about unless they already had a concept of board games.


Edit: To clarify a bit more. Describing a game in a term someone knows is pointless because the term isn't analogous between genres.

PaybackJack fucked around with this message at 22:20 on Dec 3, 2012

homullus
Mar 27, 2009

For my part I'm just glad neither is a racial slur.

Go to a real game store and look at all the games named after European cities where you move painted blocks of wood; for every one of those, you have a full-color game with goddamn zombies, Cthulu, or both.

Hey, what do the Germans call the two kinds? (this isn't the setup for a joke)

xopods
Oct 26, 2010

Regarding geographical terms, there's plenty of precedent for this outside of gaming... if you tell me, for instance, that you're going out for Chinese food, I don't assume you're flying to Shanghai to get it.

The reason I like arthouse and blockbuster, though, is that I do think they convey the essence of the design philosophy: less is more vs. more is more. But if that's really all I'm shooting at, maybe minimalist and maximalist are more direct and obvious.

quote:

Hey, what do the Germans call the two kinds? (this isn't the setup for a joke)

I don't know, but I'm willing to bet they're both at least 25 letters long and end in -spiel.

apophenium
Apr 14, 2009
Thanks for the tips xopods. I've changed it around now where players have 5 actions per turn. Moving is 1 action, checking a car is 1 action, removing or sabotaging a part is 2 actions, stealing from a player is 3 actions. Stealing is only successful on a 6 sided die roll of 5 or 6. Players can also trade parts or tools if they both occupy the same spot for 1 action per trade.

At the entrance to the yard a player can purchase a set of tools for 1 action, cash in any parts in their inventory for 1 action, or discard and draw a new contract for 1 action. Having tools reduces the cost of removing and sabotaging a part to 1 action. Parts and tools now take up inventory slots, of which a player has 4.

So players have to weigh the benefits of having tools. They'll have less room in their inventory for parts, but can take parts much faster than a player without tools. Sabotaging parts also adds an interesting aspect since the players are unaware of which parts their opponent is trying to get. Some players might opt to pick up every part they can get, whether or not they need it and become a sort of trade broker.

I'm kind of worried that it might get kind of annoying to have to go back to the entrance to cash in points. Maybe I should allow players to go back to the entrance from anywhere on the board for 2 actions. They would still have an action to cash in any parts and also a chance to get back into the yard.

signalnoise
Mar 7, 2008

i was told my old av was distracting
So I have been thinking about the whole bottom-up design philosophy as it applies to my game, and I have been thinking ok, this is a minis game. Why is it a minis game? What does that actually accomplish as far as what the player has to do?

Positioning is my answer to that, and I think I could work positioning in as the primary quirk in what is fundamentally a card game. Rather than use any hit point system at all, simply have everything revolve around positioning, like chess. This will make the most important attributes on a miniature be attack range and movement speed. A unit only dies when they have nowhere to run. One unit covering puts that character in check, forcing it to take cover. If there is no way to take cover, the unit is taken out of the game.

This makes it so I don't even have to worry about attack or defend actions, which is something I wanted to eliminate anyway. This makes it all a logic puzzle. Suppression of an area would have to be a deliberate action that takes a card and only lasts one round, or something like that. Places that you have not covered can be freely traversed for the duration of their turn but units cannot end their turn in an enemy's attack zone or they will die. Melee-capable units automatically kill if they can end their movement in base to base contact with an enemy.

I think this type of game should allow me a lot more liberty with cards and have things like terrain cards mean much more. It also would take what had been fundamentally a card game and brings minis back to the forefront.

Thoughts on this system as opposed to using cards as hit points?

xopods
Oct 26, 2010

signalnoise posted:

Thoughts on this system as opposed to using cards as hit points?

Sounds like a game I'd play!

I like the idea of making it chess-like, where there's a step in between threatening the attack and executing it, so the opposing piece has to retreat or die.

You could also have cover squares, where a suppressed figure doesn't actually have to retreat, but it still gets pinned down and unable to do anything until the suppressing figure moves (or is suppressed/killed itself).

Your main danger in positional games is stalemates, where both players have an effective defensive formation and neither player wants to be the first to take an aggressive action... but in your system, the card deck should provide an effective tool for dealing with that. Stalemates might actually become interesting positions, where the action on the board slows down for a moment while the players focus on hand management to try to build up the right combo to crack the opponent's nut.

xopods fucked around with this message at 00:06 on Dec 4, 2012

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signalnoise
Mar 7, 2008

i was told my old av was distracting
Time to get to work making cards. Thanks for the help!

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