Board Game Blog pt 2: Deception of the First Playtest

Hey Again Gamers,

First, a personal announcement about blogging this journey:

    So, there has been some time since I have shared any real updates with this board game idea. And to be completely honest, this game did fall back a little in priority with other events in life, hobbies and interests popping up. 

    Please note: These updates take a lot of effort on my part and I am really putting myself out there for you to perhaps follow along this creative journey.

    That being said, keeping the motivation to continue providing updates can be challenging at times. This is a passion project, and I have been doing a lot of thinking towards this everyday, and I want to hold true to this motivational motto for summoning the courage to continue to make these posts.

"Strive to gain 1% each day". 

    So these updates will come unscheduled currently and are mainly to allow you to see what is going on at this current time. Basically, when major breakthroughs come along, or when we reach new milestones, will then a new update come out. 

    Practically, when news is ready to be shared, then it will come. It doesn't mean every week, but I will try my best to make it at most every 2 weeks like this one. If you don't see any new info, reach out and see, because I guarantee I am working on something delicious. 

        Anyways, cheers to those that are interested and please show love and support by liking, asking questions, or sharing this in your communities. Because I am trying to make some solid connections that will help with completing this project of mine.

Alright, back to what you're really here for.

THE FRIGGEN UPDATE:

    So I have been scheming, planning, and adding idea after idea to a "rule book"; and let me tell you this is in fact, not a real rule book by any means. This is more or less my idea journal. It serves as a medium to simply put all the pieces to the puzzle from my mind onto the actual table to then look at and begin scheming on what are my border pieces, what colors match, and how pieces begin to fit together.

    With all this idea generation, I had thought that perhaps I was at the point where we could, in fact, see how this game will possibly play. So, I invited my good friend Brian over to take a look at the game and see what may end up happening over our first playtest.

"Who is Brian?"

    Brian is a long time friend and a compassionate gamer. As long as I have known the man, he has been tethered to the mechanics and story of a game. Brian always seemed to enjoy discovering what makes sense with a game and how well the games art style blends with the structure.

    With a Bachelor's Degree in Graphic Design, Brian has a keen understanding on overall design concept. He has even been working on several design concepts before his graduation and has made a wonderful career based on it.

    All in all, The man knows design and he loves being tied up in that field.

"I have always wanted to work with Brian, and pursue a venture that not only utilizes his skills, but also caters to our passion for gaming."

    Since the beginning of our friendship, there has always been the urge to find some way in which we could work on a project together. We have batted several creative ideas around, but never felt like they sat well for both of us, or the timing wasn't right. The end goal honestly is to enable Brian to capitalize on his skills while I get to make something creative myself, and have it all flow together.

  I have always wanted to work with him and enable him to use his skills by trying to find a perfect avenue to venture towards together. And it turns out that board game development may strike a chord with Brian as well with his passion for gaming.

    One final honorable mention about why Brian is such a critical component for developing this idea, is he has logic and simplicity in mind while I bombard him with my slue of ideas.

    He listens and asks questions whenever confusion begins to arise. And it is exactly what I am in need of to provide a better product.

"So how did the game go?"

    Ah yes, the game. So we got together one Friday night to begin plotting and planning. My whole goal was to at least get playing and see what problems may be lurking in our first play test.

    We set up the game and instantly ran into the first initial problem. How do the teams spawn into the game? Trying to skip that and just play, we found our next problem fairly quick, How do characters move? How do characters interact? THE LIST WENT ON AND ON!!

    Practically, the questions started flowing like a powerful waterfall. Drowning the hopes and dreams I had initially set. *cue sad violin music* 

    You could say this whole event was washed down the drain from the expectations that I had originally gone into this get together with.

    Having this brain baby and nurturing it with all the love and compassion to make it a strong idea, and the intimidation of sharing that with another person. Especially someone that is able to think critically and will not hesitate to begin picking apart mechanics that don't 100% make sense. After that first real exposure to an outside mind, came that feeling of defeat. 

    Though sharing my initial game idea after weeks of planning was rather intimidating. As well as seeing the setbacks left me with a feeling of defeat, therein lies the potential for growth.  Without sharing this, some problems may not be addressed. Despite the feeling of  defeat, I felt an even greater hunger to go back to the drawing board and re-evaluate from square one all over again.

Major Takeaways for Play Testing

    So looking at all the rules I had written down, none of it really connected. They were actually ideas I wanted to implement into the concept of the game! So I came to the conclusion that the first real objective was to actually make the game playable. Which sounds easy enough, but limiting one's mind to just those mechanics can be rather hard. I would even go as far as to say that it takes the least amount of effort but the most amount of focus.

    When trying to pinpoint the 'bare' essentials, it is hard to control what exactly is the limit that you must set with all ideas. It's a gray area because there are things that could be critical to the main mechanics, and some things that may contribute to those additional items. 

For Example: In this game, I have had a time trying to figure out the spells that are essential for gameplay. From there, deciding that there is going to be a leveling system to upgrade those abilities for later game advantages. Then from there, decide what additional enhancements you could expect for each ability. 

This example has now become a tangent and will over cloud the mind in an unnecessary realm. These creative thoughts can end up leading you farther down a rabbit whole with all these wonderful creative ideas, but no real implementations yet. (Much similar to the scenario I had found myself in)

    Maybe you have the whole currency of a game down, but don't even know how to even go about having your players make purchases. You would think that the players should know how to buy things then worry about the currency after that?

    Unfortunately, my mind isn't wired, which truly demonstrates the importance of playing a new game idea.

1. Logic comes first

• Creativity is what gets the ideas flowing and enables you the opportunity to develop such a game, but to implement it, that is solely a logic based approach and needs to flow just as much.

2. Less is more

• Focus on the raw elements to make it work. Once those main parts are solidified, they become the base of the game, and from there, new items and mechanics may be added to help flesh out the entirety of the project.

3. Develop Scenarios instead of trying to playtest the whole game

• Instead of trying to play a game start to finish, focus up on varying situations that may happen mid-game. Discover outcomes and make notes on what you had hoped for, what actually happened, and if it wasn't what you may expected, what you can do to adjust it for the next attempt.

Some thoughts on Table Sizing

3-5 Players for base set

    There has been a lot of contemplating for the idea of a 3v3, one problem came to mind: 

"How do you coordinate 6 people's interests while centered around 1 game?"

    When thinking about current board games, there often is far more depth. With that, comes complexity. Often the number 6 is a dividing factor from an intimate game session to a party. And with that, comes party games, which have a much lower entry level to enable all to play and laugh and be entertained while enjoying their alcoholic bevvy of choice. It would seem board games stop at 5 and 6 is the beginning count for party games all together. The more the merrier...

    That being said, the idea of a 6 player game is on the chopping block. I am trying to come up with ways to recycle the idea to perhaps develop a stretch goal for Kickstarter, but for the base game I feel it would be unnecessary. 

"Next, with the problem of having an odd amount of players. Do you do a 2v3? or a 1v2??"

Excellent question reader! 

Answer's no... you don't do that... it would be just all sorts of broken having imbalanced teams duke it out in the arena. 

    I would like to take a moment to point out the theme of this game is revolving around the number 3. So, I have decided to create a third, alternate team that is more neutral based. Which then means there are 3 teams! And that also means that instead of a 1v2, it becomes a 1v1v1!

"But how do you go about making a 3rd side when its a 2 team battle??"

    Another great follow up question reader! This actually was a mechanic that I was contemplating for a while. 

    The Idea of the Wyld Land Guardians 

(Still working on an appropriate name for this bunch)

    Guardians are protectors of the Wyld Lands (obvi). With both the heros & villians from opposing sides attempting to wipe out their counterpart, they have to traverse the realm of the Wyld Lands. The Guardians are those that protect their homes of dense trees, breathtaking mountains with active volcanoes, as well as pristine crystal blue waters. 

    The Guardian's goal is to keep their lands pure and safe while preventing means to stop both sides from accomplishing their objectives of transporting the spirit sprouts across the board. They would prefer to even keep these two forces out to claim their lands for the Wyld Folk.

    So the best way of implementing a 3rd team is through 1 person controlling the guardians, developing them, and attempting to thwart each of their opponents objectives to continue to have the land for them to 'coexist in'. Knowing this, they will attempt to destroy a majority of the Sprout's on the map or aid teams to stop the opponent from transporting seeds across the map.*Still in the works as well*

    If it did come down to adding in a 6th player feature, then it would most likely be an addition to team of Guardians to make it a 2v2v2 experience. However, I am planning to make it easy for a single player to this team.

"So wait, if teams are now capped at 2 persons for a 3 person team, then how do you balance the 3 varying heroes on your team among the two people?!"

    Man, you're sure chock full of some critical questions that really have inspired the course of this game! Good for you for providing such critical feedback!

    To answer this question, we need to re-evaluate a team's approach and this game's solution. To be on a team, you must have the same goal as other members of said team, correct?

    So for this game, teams would want to defeat their opponents by destroying the enemies defenses and transporting their spirit seeds to the opponents ritual spots.

    Now you can participate in this goal but not play the game the same as other team members. Think of it like two members of a baseball team, one being the pitcher, and the other being the catcher. Both are working together to defeat their opponent but fulfilling separate roles.

    The first team member (lets name Hero), will be controlling all their teams characters and using them to do their bidding. Instead of making both team members control Heroes and run into balancing 3 between the two of them, one of the team members focus primarily on the heroes on the board. Like someone playing Chess.

That is fairly straightforward right? 

    They will be encountering the challenges of the land and rolling dice to test their luck when casting abilities at the enemy team. 

    Now for the 2nd team member, their objective will be in aiding the players on the board, this member will represent their team's Spirit. The Spirit of the team will have their own secondary goal, which is to upgrade their team's resource gathering and other abilities.

    This brings the problem of having that team member feel engaged in the game at hand, and the current resolution to that problem would be to bring a deck building essence to this game. Allowing the player to carefully construct their hands to best aid the team on the field's luck and also help when their teammate is in a bind. Maybe it could be played similar to that of Magic the Gathering, casting instant and sorcery spells, but keeping them simplistic and easy to understand.  

    So the play style is completely different, and yet, still oriented towards the same major goal.

"But Gavin, what happens in a 1v1v1 scenario with the two unique class types?"

    ...Welp, you got me. 

    That is a question I am still figuring out. The quickest solution would be to make the base game a 3-5 player requirement to rid this idea of 1v1. However, that can be used as a future Kickstarter stretch goal. It can be done, there will need to be a little more resources devoted to ensuring that it plays as well as having all 3 teams filled. Now even if it is a 3 person environment where the game becomes a 1v1v1, then there is still the problem of the Spirit team member. This is also some additional work that I need to consider to ensure that 3 people can at least play.

Shout-Outs

    That about wraps up this post. Learning from the first interaction, major takeaways, and re-evaluation on the process of game development going forward. I would also like to shout out a another friend of mine that would prefer to go by the name The Medium. 

    He has taken time out of his day to read over and provide edits to this blog. Without him, I would sound like a complete and utter buffoon. The Medium is currently working on a site of his own where he will be providing horror fiction short stories and other content of the like. The site he looks to open will thehaunted.org, it isn't up and running just yet. But please stay tuned for more updates for him and the launch of his site. Much like me, The Medium is also pursuing a passion project of his own and I would love to get his dream off the ground with your help.

Closing Notes From Gavin

    Again, thank you so much for sticking around and showing your interest by reading this blog. If you have any questions, comments, or ideas, please feel free to share them with me and I would be more than glad to shout you out in my next post with your inspiration. My goal is to include the community around this game to the best of my being. SO PLEASE GIVE ME FEEDBACK!

Until next time, stay thirsty my friends.

- Gavin