[Idea Time] A reverse swords and sorcery 4x card game.

I wrote this idea for a game for November Game design challenge hosted on Board Game Designer Forum. While I was far from winning the challenge, I quite liked the idea and might work on it more in the future. Until then, I am leaving it here. IF you have any ideas on how to improve this game, leave it here.

Doomed Realm

A sword and sorcery empire survival card game.

Components:

• Empire cards - represent special achievements/technology/buildings of each empire. Sword&Sorcery theme. Each has resource icons and special abilities that let you manipulate your dice. Can be activated via dice and/or tapping.
• Fate cards - Natural and Magical disasters, old ones awakening, colonists conquering the lands etc. (akin to mythos cards from Arkham/Eldrich Horror). Fate cards have a target number needed to discard it. if the sum of all the dice on the card is equal or greater than TR the card leaves play.
• Dice (d6s in different colors - 5 per player) - representing “manpower” of each empire.

Game starts by establishing each player’s empire through drafting. Starting player draws X( number of players) empire cards. Chooses one and passes the remaining to the left. This follows until one player receives one card. He draws up to X cards, chooses one and passes it to the left. This continues until each player has empire 10 cards in front of them. This represents their empire.

The aim of the game is to be the last empire standing (still having cards in front of you). Play begins by placing a fate card(s) in the middle of the table. Each player rolls their dice and places them one at a time to:

• Your empire card to activate special ability - what card/ability you can use depends on the value of the die you are using. (exploit)
• Enemy empire card to try to claim a part of their empire (exterminate and expand)
• if there is an enemy die on your card, you can protect yourself from losing it by playing a die of equal or higher value.
• Play a die on fate card to try to prevent from bad things happening.

After playing one die play proceeds clockwise until all players played all their dice. After that all actions are resolved in order:

• Fate cards are discarded if TR is beaten.
• Remaining Fate Cards activate
• Territory is claimed (if one player has higher total than current owner).
• New Fate Card(s) is played and new turn starts.

Gameplay and theme comes from special rules on empire/fate cards (think MTG level of variety).

Once you are out of empire cards you are eliminated.

Empire cards have icons represent 4X resources (food, industry, culture etc.)

Fate cards affect players based on the amount of certain resource in their empire (least, most, more/less than X) and often affect more than one player at a time.

Fate cards force players to discard empire cards with certain resources.

If you play your die on a Fate card, it stays there until the card is discarded (you roll less die on next turn).

Players will want to collaborate to defeat Fate Cards faster.

Players can negotiate / make treaties. Those are not binding.

Difficulty can be affected by playing more Fate Cards each turn and/or including/excluding certain cards.

micro Review - Intro & InSpectres

I check out a lot of games. From RPGs, trough card and board games, down to video games. There isn't a week, that I don't discover and investigate some type of game. I am especially interested in small and indie productions. They are the ones that usually have some interesting mechanic or a gimmick, that catches my attention. Sadly, many of those games fly under the radar of most gamers. In this recurring segment I try to will give some sort of spotlight to those small games I discovered. This is not a full review, just my impressions in a few paragraphs... a micro review.

micro Review?

Yeah, I call it micro review. The plan was to call it "µView"  with the fancy micro symbol that looks a bit like "u". It was a play on words so, it will look like "U View". This was supposed to encourage you to go and check the game out yourself. The idea was scrapped, it looked silly and didn't display correctly everywhere ;) Anyway...
There is a lot of great games out there, and a lot of brilliant people who create them, that don't get enough recognition they deserve. I hope that this little section will introduce you to some games, that you would otherwise overlook.

I am planning for those reviews to happen weekly. The plan is to (re)read/try the game around weekend and write my thoughts and musings during the week. The aim is to introduce you to the game in a "elevator pitch" manner - quick and fun, with focus on highlighting its strengths. Those micro reviews will always have a link to the place where you can get the game, so you are only one click away from checking it out. While those reviews will center on RPG related content, all types of games are fair play here - RPGs, Story Games, Board games and even video games. All games are cool! So without further ado, I introduce you to this week's micro review.

InSpectres by Memento Mori Theatricks

PDF avaialable for $10 from DriveThruRPG

A true pick-up game. Your scheduled session was canceled? Some guy didn't show up? Fancy some horror-comedy in the vain of Ghostbusters? Open this book, get some D6s and start playing!

Players are InSpecter agents who, much like the ghostbusters, specialize in dealing with things that bump in the night. The game is a rules-lite, lighthearted horror, where anything can happen, as both the GM and the PCs can influence the plot. This is the main strenght of InSpectres - GM doesn't need to prepare anything! Plot hook is randomly generated and from there the dice decide what happens. You rolled well? You can decide what happened. Rolled poor? It's GM's turn to decide. Because no plot was prepared for the session, neither players, nor the GM knows what will truly happen during the adventure - they just make it up, as they go. Playing this game will teach you about story creation and improvisation. Because InSpectres is a comedy at its core even outrages ideas can be easily incorporated and it won't mess up the game. 

If it sounds like some kind of story game, you won't be far off. But, contrary to the story games of today, this game still feels like a proper RPG. Characters have attributes, gain experience (trough expanding their InSpectres franchise), there's a GM and all that jazz. It is a hybrid of story/narrative games and RPGs. If you wanted to try story games, but couldn't convince your RPG pals to give it a spin, where curious about narrative games in general, or want to test and polish your improv skills, while having a laugh - you can't go wrong with InSpectres!

P.S. If ghostbusters-like horror-comedy is not your cup of tea, try out InSpace from Lame Mage Productions - a free supplement where you play a crew of a starship investigating strange phenomena in spaaaaaaceee....

DRAWCEPTION! - Eat Poop You Cat!

You are probably familiar with the game of Chinese Whispers. You probably played is as a kid. You probably even found it funny back then. But as the years have passed, you enjoyed it less and less. And just like other kid games, you stopped playing, because it wasn't fun anymore...

What, If I told you, that there is a much better/funnier game with a similar mechanic, but uses drawing and writing instead of whispers? This game is full of pop-culture and geeky references,  memes, and other internet culture.

What if I told You that can play it for free right now?

Let me introduce you to Drawception!

What is it?

I couldn't sum up the game better than the game's creator did. Drawception is "A free web game that combines drawing with the classic "Telephone Game". As a phrase is drawn and described by players it changes in unexpected ways. Miscommunication and hilarity ensues!"

When you choose to play, you are given either a prompt with a phrase to draw, or a picture to describe. Your input is a part of a larger chain (usually 12 panels - 6 drawings and 6 descriptions). You can choose to skip this prompt, and you are given a new one. You can skip as much as you want (most players do) until you find a prompt you like. Then, you have 10 minutes (60sec in a Blitz Game), to either draw or describe. Once you are done with your creation, you submit it and wait for the game to finish.

Games usually take a day or so to finish, but you can play more than one game at a time (8 at the start, 32 when you level up). Once a game is finished, you can see all of the panels, and how the original prompt got twisted during the course of the game - you laugh, "thumb up" your favorite panels (those thumb-ups are the experience points of the game) and play again.

That's it?

Well, yeah - that's all the rules for the game, but you are not playing here for rules. Just like RPGs or Story Games, rules are only a siphon for the experience you will have.

Drawception has a great strange community of players - some are amazing artists, some are amazingly funny - but all of them have one in common: they love geek and pop-culture references! If you enjoy the "internet culture" you will be right at home here. Puns, Memes, Sublimal  Batmans - they are all here, in a weird social experiment of a game. You might need to play a bit to get into the really good games. You get access to vet(eran) games at level 20 - and vet games are where all the cool kids hang out! But even starting up you will have fun and have a laugh. You don't need to be an amazing artist to play. Sure - the great artists are getting a lot of exp for their work, but so many games take a left turn because someone thought your drawing of a turtle was a cabbage.

I started playing Drawception in 2012. Every time I thought I was done with the game, I found myself coming back to it every now and then. For me it is a mark of a great game!

On top of that, I think my drawing skills improved quite a bit thanks to drawception. Win - Win!

If any of this sound interesting - head down to Drawception.com and start playing! And while you are there, check out my gallery of games.

And if you want to play this game with your friends in the mythical offline world - check out Eat Poop You Cat or one of its commercial kin like Telestrations or Cranium scribblish.

[Idea Time] Educational Adventure Game? Mathematical!

This is just an idea I have for a game. I might, or might not work on it more. I am pouring it on "paper", so I can focus on other projects.

ELEVATOR PITCH: Adventure Time inspired dungeoncrawl-style RPG, where you resolve tasks using mathematical formulas. Aimed at kids learning the times-tables, and making the memorization and using math more fun. Released either as a normal book-style RPG, or as deck(s) of cards with cartoony artwork.

This idea hit me while binge watching Adventure Time (♪c'mon grab your friends♫). I heard "Mathematical!" for the Nᵗʰ time and something clicked. Mathematical basically means "Cool" or "Awesome" in the "very distant lands" of Adventure Time. So, in that world, something happened that made math cool? Hmmm... 

This is when my brain got aboard the Thought Train: What did happen to make math cool? How can you make math cool? Using it in a game! But almost every game out there is using simple math... Maybe addition and subtraction isn't enough to make math cool? But how can you make multiplication and division fun? Won't it be too cumbersome?

This is where the train hit a wall.

The answer came to me when I stumbled upon a small board game by the name of Secret Code 13+4.

Secret code basically makes you roll some dice to get numbers. Your task is to use the rolled numbers and any of the four basic mathematical operators (+, -, *, and /) to achieve a target number represented on a randomly drawn card (e.g rolling 1,3,5 and 5 and trying to achieve 24 - you can use 5*5-1). This is a simple enough system, and makes the gameplay somehow puzzle-like.

This, combined with a teamwork mechanic and some simple narrative rules can make a half-decent RPG or Adventure Board Game.

Obstacles (like traps, enemies, etc.) would have target numbers ranging from 1 to 100. Possibly lower numbers for easier tasks.

Players would roll D10s (I think up to 4 or 5 per player) to try to overcome the obstacle using the mathematical operators. To make it more thematic and gamey I would include location/dungeon cards that would modify target number, combos between obstacles (goblin chieftain adds +3 to all other goblins on the table) etc. There would need to be a system for loosing HP (as it would be a kids game I would name it courage or determination) and gaining gold(?). Each player would have a times tables cheat sheet and a special power that they could use to get rid of particular obstacle type easier.

Some random concepts:

• Teamwork encouraged
• No player elimination (loosing a turn at most)
• Adventure Time inspired artwork (or at least cartoony)
• D10 generate numbers from 1 to 10 - the scale of basic times tables
• Character Powers (lateral thinking?)
• Could be played with or without a GM

Basically it would be a times tables educational game disguised as an adventure game. As a kid, I remember hating to memorize the times tables and I would appreciate having a game like that. I think putting obstacles on cards with some cool artwork would make the game more appealing to kids and just easier to manage. 

While aimed at kids, the game would have enough depth and theme to appeal to adults looking for a light puzzle game and would not be boring while playing with kids.

A BIG thank you to Fantasy Flight Games

If you ever played the "designer" or "strategy" board games, you probably heard about FFG or Fantasy Fligh Games. It is one of the biggest board game companies out there, always delivering high quality products, amazing artwork and overall great Ameritrash games.

But few days ago, FFG surprised me in a very positive manner!
As you might know, recently I moved from UK to US. Because of shipping costs, I sold most of my boardgaming library, and only shipped my favorites and some small games. 
Well, my favorite game up to date is Arkham Horror - a cthulhu inspired cooperative game, just oozing with theme and giving it's players (or at least me) great immersion. I love it so much, that I started making a custom case for it and all of it's expansions out of a 1920 suitcase (something that I will write about in more detail, once I will have a chance to finish it). So I shipped the secured suitcase with almost all the components (and this game has a lot of components).


Because I had all the cardboard counters stored in the original box, I have put them in a Ziploc bag and put it in a different, cardboard box. Long story short, the shipping company managed to rip this box and lose all my counters.
So I contacted FFG if there is a any chance I can buy only the counters for the game and expansions I have. This is what they came back with:
"We are more than happy to help you with your request and will send the requested replacement at no cost to you."

Wow! Just to be clear - this is a lot of counters. Counters that people on ebay charge good money for replacements. 

Thank you Fantasy Flight, you are sure that I will go out of my way now, to support your company.