jonsan

Pantheon: Posted an outline of the game on Board Game Designer Forum and got some good input from a couple people. Tried the game yesterday eschewing rounds and playing until the deck ran dry. We also added "Tribute to the Gods" cards and "Sacrifice to the Gods" cards. Both of the boys preferred the individual rounds to the continuous play, but the ability to end the round with a flush worked well. I finished another draft of the cards for further testing. I kept the 5 point cards with discard effects and the 1 point cards with scoring effects. The 3 point cards are now "curses" that are attached to another player when they are discarded and have a negative effect. Each of the cards is moved to a new player by the cursed player at the end of their turn. The 0 point cards lost a special effect, but they cannot be discarded. The Sacrifice cards still allow a player to destroy card and draw one. The Tribute cards no longer have a discard effect, but they add points equal to the number of cards in the player's final Pantheon. I will playtest more over the weekend. I'm hoping the game feels stable enough to email the cards to a few people for outside playtests soon.

Monster Fighter: Ugh. Christmas Tree light debacle ate many of my hours yesterday and today. I am about to continue to work on the card spreadsheet and might draw the stick figure character cards tonight. Alpha playtests won't start this work week. Maybe on my next weekend, but definitely over my holiday break.

Nothing to Fear: Nothing new.

Storycraft Decks: Nothing new.

New, untitled game idea: I was responding to a thread in BGDF where-in someone was asking about the potential offensiveness of virgin sacrifices as a game element. In my response, I was offering examples of messing with tropes and offered the idea of gods being given sacrifices they don't really want. I think there is a decent game in there somewhere. Maybe you get human sacrifices so you build them houses and help them live, or each god is trying to get rid of all the sacrificed stuff to the other players.

Don't drop my sausage: Morgan and I were bantering and happened upon an Apples to Apples-ish concept where-in everyone gets a hand of cards with a word on them. A card is drawn from a main deck with something naughty/risque and each player has to create the best euphemism they can with their words. Still brainstorming, but might be a fun, adult party game.

Pantheon: Played a quick, two round play-test with the boys Friday morning using the new special cards. I've already identified some strengths and weaknesses with the new cards, and I'm ready to shake things up again. I've decided to drop each suit to 12 cards and add 6 identical cards called Tribute to the Gods. Tribute cards will allow you to end the round using the special "End Round" cards. I also figured out how to simplify the detrimental cards so I don't have 2 paragraphs of text on a card. Next iteration should be ready today or tomorrow, and we'll have time to play a few games during my off days.

Monster Fighter: Off days will also involve transferring my grid of cards into a spreadsheet and making sure they pair up well. Then assign the Icons to the monsters and we are off to the races. My goal is for the first Monster Fighter alpha play-test to begin 12/11.

Nothing to Fear: Nothing new for this one, although the next section spawned from mulling over ideas for this game.

Delirium and Storycraft Decks: I've been watching Wil Wheaton's web series, Table Top, and saw the Fiasco episode while sitting out on the interstate on a side job. I got to thinking about structured storytelling as a game and how much I enjoy those sorts of games. Then I mentally wondered over to Nothing to Fear and considered changing it to a board game where the players each take part in telling a suspenseful, horror-ish, waking dream kind of story. And then, while brainstorming about the mechanics, I remembered my story-card games I've been making notes about for the past couple years. Boom, Storycraft decks are conceptualized, with Delirium being the first Storycraft deck imagined.

The basic idea of a Storycraft deck is for a group of players to cooperatively tell a story. They have to use cards and card interactions to generate story points to continue the narrative. However, each player is given a different "ending" card at the start of the round, and everyone is trying to steer the story into their ending. Each ending will have conditions, elements of the story that must be present during the game before the ending can be played (e.g. 3 Horror elements, 5 suspense elements, 2 hospital locations, 1 major death).

The start of the game the players are given a randomized group of the cards and they draft them. Then they are given their ending, then another round of drafting, then the first storytelling phase starts. Between storytelling phases there will be another round or two of drafting for more story cards. Cards will be played like a puzzle, with Anchor cards having sections marked on the corners so that other cards can be played off of them. Considering a bidding mechanic for narrative rights...not sure yet. Might be too much. I will need to make a very small Storycraft deck and test the very core mechanic first to see if it is interesting or not. If it's any fun, Storycraft decks could be created for any or all genres, so plenty of design space to explore.

I decided to limit myself to 3 games in prototyping at a time. Pantheon and Monster Fighter are currently the focus, but I'm not sure if I want to prototype Nothing to Fear or a Storycraft deck next. Either way, it will probably wait until mid to late January.

Finally completed the rules update for Pantheon. Each suit now has 4 special cards (1 in play, 1 during scoring, 1 round-ending, 1 detrimental). Now comes more play-testing. Provided nothing major needs to be tweaked, print and play copies can be sent mid month to a few interested groups. Hoping to get blind play-tests set up for early to mid January.

Got the "Item" cards started for Monster Fighter. Tomorrow during my part-time I will nail down the bonuses from each item. I am going with stick figures on the first set of cards for the characters. I will be adding in the Monster Icons by hand on the printed Monster cards so they can be changed easily without re-printing. The boards will need to be re-designed a bit, but the existing prototypes will work for the initial play-tests. On track for in-house play-testing to start in about a week.

Working title for the other game is Nothing To Fear. Decided to expand the theme beyond just imaginary friends. Thinking about a day cycle and night cycle to each turn. One deck of cards for day events, when those run out the game is over. Night cycle is choice of decks. Right now I'm thinking the goal of the game is to hit one of 3 states of equilibrium (Live in Fear, Escape into Fantasy, Become Too Old for Childish Things). If you can't maintain a specific range of Fear tokens you become Consumed By Terror. Collect so many Fantasy cards you can't deal with the encounter card and you Lost Touch with the Real World. Lose all Fear and Imagination tokens and you will become a Soulless Automaton. Still brainstorming stage, and Nothing to Fear is definitely more complex and would require extensive testing. Maybe a good stepping stone to Talon and Flame.

For the time being, this space will be a log for game ideas and development progress.

Continued work on Monster Fighter cards tonight. I need to decide if I am going to do crude art for the character cards or just use text labels for Head, Torso, and Legs to be done with it. I need kids to be able to partake in the playtest, so I think some artistic representation on the cards will go a long way to making the game more interesting and understandable to the <10 crowd (aka, a big part of the target audience).

Play-tested Pantheon tonight and now I am rethinking some mechanics. I might go back to the drawing board a bit and move away from a purely Push Your Luck core. I want to play it another ten or twenty times before I decide though.

New idea: Players are children who create imaginary creatures to defend them from fears and nightmares. Maybe a deck-building game? Maybe cards representing imagination and innocence are used to buy cards that represent aspects and abilities for the imaginary defender. Instead of a standard victory point win condition, maybe defeating fears and nightmares builds resilience to them and you win when you can remove all of the imaginary creature cards from your deck. Hmmm. Lower heat, cover, let simmer.

Based on rave reviews by colinmcl, I checked out Better Off Ted last night and I agree with him that it a) is cooler than Coolio and b) will likely get canceled. Here's hoping there are some good extras on the series box set. If you like quirky comedy then go over to ABC's website and watch the episodes they've aired so far.

I also checked out the pilot of The Unusuals, a show centered around a NYPD police precinct, which was better than I expected. The show is quirky and funny, but the main story thread is a mystery about one of the detectives being murdered and the secrets that all of the other police detectives are keeping. The show feels like a mixture of Hill Street Blues, Scrubs, and NYPD Blue. The writing is clever, the mystery at the center of the show is intriguing, and the dialogue is funny. I'm willing to give it six episodes and see if it takes off.

How cool is it that I can check out the latest shows and yet I don't have a cable subscription. Not quite flying cars, but still pretty cool.

What's your new favorite TV show?

So, I enjoy pretty much every pie Joss Whedon puts his finger in, but his new show Dollhouse hasn't been satisfying my pie craving. The sixth episode, however, was pie-tastic. The slow start for the series seems to be in some part due to the network's reticence to tell stories about the more complex and difficult issues the show's premise conjures up. Shocking. I assume Joss put this show on Fox because he was contractually obligated.

Anyway, I decided to give the show six episodes before I called it quits, but the sixth episode was a hail mary and now I am vested for the first season. Here's hoping the last episode's rise above mediocrity wasn't a fluke.

Transcription of a letter I found shortly after Christmas, written by my elder son, and folded to emulate an envelope.

On the outside:
ADRESS
1.1.1.3. Noel Street / let it snow bolavard
hohoho lane Santa Works inc.

On the inside:
dear Santa,
Please bring me a new collar.

Yours truly
roxy the dog

P.S. This is a joke.
P.P.S. Woof Woof
P.P.P.S. bark bark bark!

And then a crude picture of a dog. Pure. Genius.

Water Bearer
A man used two large buckets to carry water to his house from a nearby stream. Every day, he hung the buckets on either end of a pole, and balanced the pole across the back of his neck as he walked home. One of the buckets was cracked on one side, but the other bucket was perfect and unbroken. At the end of the long walk from the stream to his house, the cracked bucket always arrived only half full. The perfect bucket was proud to deliver the most water it could hold, but the poor cracked bucket was ashamed of its imperfection and miserable that it was broken.

For two years this went on daily, with the man carrying one and a half buckets of water to his home. Finally, the broken bucket, after enduring two years of shame, spoke to the water bearer as he filled it in the stream.

"I am ashamed of myself and I apologize to you," it said.

"Why?" asked the bearer. "What are you ashamed of?"

"For these past two years, I delivered only half my load because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your house. You have to do all of this work, and I only give you half of the water I should."

The man smiled, and told the bucket to look at the path as he carried water back to his house.

As they went up the hill, the cracked bucket noticed a trail of beautiful wild flowers. At the end of the trail, it still felt ashamed because it had leaked half of its water. It apologized again to the man, but the man shook his head and laughed.

"Did you not notice that there were flowers only on one side of the path?" He asked. "I have always known about your flaw, so I planted flower seeds on your side of the path. You water my flowers each time I walk back from the stream."

And the cracked bucket decided that beautiful flowers and half a bucket of water was nothing to be ashamed of.


The Missing Money
A man lost some money he had hidden in his closet. He suspected that his neighbor's son stole the money. He observed the boy, and noticed that the the boy's mannerisms, speech, and attitude all betrayed his crime. That night, the man discovered he had just misplaced the money. The next day, nothing about the boy's behavior nor appearance suggested that he had stolen the money.

Just, wow.

I expect my flying car or jet-pack by the end of next year.

EDIT: The linked site doesn't allow a specific video to be targeted, so click on the "Teen Receives New Heart" vid.

Friday was my 29th birthday. A fairly uneventful event, all things considered, but I am certainly not complaining. I received some thoughtful gifts (a paper shuriken from Liam was my favorite) and Morgan and I had a nice dinner date at a splendid local restaurant.

Saturday morning, Liam and I continued our weekly series of missions to clean and organize his bedroom. Last week we cleaned and sorted through everything on his floor, desk, dresser, and nightstand. Yesterday we braved his closet. As we were finishing up and admiring our handiwork, I noticed a pad of paper sitting out on Liam's desk. Here is what it said:

Name: Jon
Age: 28
Planned cake: Strawberry
Present: Paper Shuriken

My son is so accidentally cool.