Sometimes, when you're playing a game for the first time you look at or attempt to use some of the components and you go ..
"Wait! What?"
This list proposes some answers.
Disclaimer: I should point out that some of the games on this list are amongst my favourites, and that I am well aware that game designers often don't have any say in the final graphic design of their products.
"Hey look at this design bill. Those flags for the individual races cost a fortune! We better use them everywhere we can. Let's see, we can stick them on the command counters, the ships, the control markers and the technology cards."
"There's no way we can stamp designs that detailed on plastic ships! Anyway, that'd mean including eight sets of ships in the game and then you can bet that some damn fool group of players or other will try playing the game with eight, and find out that it sucks vacuum with eight and write in and complain."
"Yeah, good points. All right then, just the counters, markers and cards".
"But if we put them on the technology card, some idiot is going to get them mixed up with the technology symbols."
"You're right again. So just the counters and markers then."
"So let me get this straight. We're going to a ship a game in which a player has a set of ships and tech cards in a matching colour and then has their markers and counters based on a racial flag in a colour which probably doesn't match the ships and the cards?"
"Damn right we are. They can just pick a set of flags that match the colours of the ships."
"Even though we could just have six sets of ships, cards and counters all in matching colours?"
"That's right. Those flags cost a kings bloody ransom! Besides, what the hell else are we going to do with all the excess cardboard around the planet tiles?"
I think what he's saying is wierd is that the flags for your race (used to mark your territory) probably don't match up to your ships colors as there are 6 (8 with expansion) ship colors and 8 (12 with expansion) races. For some reason it was very important for you to know that the planet you are eying next to your planet is owned by the Mind Net, not Bob the player to your left.
"There's no way we can stamp designs that detailed on plastic ships! Anyway, that'd mean including eight sets of ships in the game and then you can bet that some damn fool group of players or other will try playing the game with eight, and find out that it sucks vacuum with eight and write in and complain."
I played an eight player game this weekend. It was great, all players knew the game pretty well and it flowed quite well. I think the total playing time was 5 hours. Great experience.
'Cause a game of TI3 with the same six races each game would be great!!
Y'all whipper-snappers with your new-fangled alien races! Back in the day, we only HAD 6 races in Twilight Imperium, and we liked it! AND technologies costed 30 resources! No freebies!
"Oh, I love railway games. It's great the way the theme comes through in all the components - those railroad accessories used as city markers and the little plastic trains and such. It's just a shame we can't get a railroad theme right there on the board before anyone even puts a piece on it."
"Sure we can! Let's make the scoring track like a railway track and have players put an engine on it to mark their score."
"Ooooh, that's a great idea! Won't it cause a problem if there's a score draw though?"
"Weeeel, it might. But I don't remember any of the playtesters even specifically mentioning that the scores were often tied. And in our own test games I don't remember there ever being a score draw."
"Neither can I. But we were smashed on moonshine most of the time we were playing."
"It wasn't moonshine, we ran out of that months ago. It was meths. Meths doesn't damage your memory at all so we're on safe ground."
"Oh cool! So we'll implement it then. Let's celebrate!"
"Before we party, don't forget to call the printers in China and tell them that the blue is too pale and the purple is too dark, so if they just mix a bit of one into the other and vice-versa, it'll be fine."
Playtesting? Who need playtesting?!? We're Eagle Games, you dumbhead! We don't need no farting palyesting: see our other games, Age of Mythology, Sid Meyer Civilization and so on!
"So, what's this monolith going to look like then?"
"Well, it'd better be really imposing and impressive. We'll make it a really tall cardboard tube like a tower, with spiky battlements and everything."
"But won't that mean the player on the other side the table won't be able to see what's on the other side of the Monolith, waiting to attack him?"
"Right. But that's the really clever part. See, not only will the Monolith be tall and impressive but by making it so tall we have, at a stroke, vastly increased the amount of tension and excitement in the game."
"Why don't we have the evil pieces y'know, sort of evil colours, like red and black."
"Cool idea! What about the good pieces."
"Uhmmm ... oh well it'll have to be white and gold, obviously, or maybe silver. Yeah, silver, kind of like Mithril."
"But metallic sparkly plastic is expensive. And white plastic figures just look crap."
"Good point ... erm .. right, I know, we'll make them the colour of snot and pus instead! Because everyone knows that snot and pus are the heroic defences of your body fighting off infection so that's really good isn't it? And they're shiny plastic too, so they'll even look like snot and pus! Everyone will get that reference, won't they?"
"Okay, so for the political markers we'll use the White Tree for Gondor, a horse for Rohan, the Red Eye for Sauron and the White hand for Saruman. Anyone vaguely familiar with the source material will get those."
"Sure. But what about the other nations?"
"Well. The Elves could be a tree. That's pretty obvious too. And I guess a snake could make sense for the Southrons and Easterlings."
"Yep, I can see that working. Come on, let's keep these ideas flowing while we're on a roll. How about the north and the dwarfs?"
"Right yeah, think ... think. Dwarfs ... Dwarfs like iron don't they ... how about a ball of metal? And for the North ... crap, that's hard as it's not a proper nation at all. But it's pretty cold up there, so let's have a purple-and-blue blur in a sphere to represent that."
" ... "
"Well, what do you think?"
"Frankly, those are shit ideas."
"Thanks for nothing! You come up with something better then, smartarse!"
"Well, I don't think I can to be honest. So we'll have to use them. But I don't reckon the players will like it much."
"Ok, how about this then. Both my designs are in a circle. So let's take all the other ideas and put them in a circle too, and then distort and blur them so badly that no-one will be able to tell what they are either."
"Ok, I could see that working."
"Oh! And I'll tell you what else. If we make all the units on each side the same colour and then have the figure designs virtually identical to each other and make several spaces on the board too small for more than one figure to fit in, all the players will complain about that and ignore the political marker issue!"
"If we make all the units on each side the same colour and then have the figure designs virtually identical to each other and make several spaces on the board too small for more than one figure to fit in, all the players will complain about that and ignore the political marker issue!"
...and then they'll go fork out a few hundred dollars for the "Deluxe Edition".
"Now, for the Nazgul...let's make them imposing---tall!"
"But, won't they fall over because they're top heavy?"
"Weeeeellll, maybe if you aren't using tweezers to move them! FP players can also be encouraged when the SP player knocks one over, shouting some menacing threats!"
"Wow, I'm well chuffed with the way this game is looking on the table. But wait a minute, those dice are so boring. Can't we do anything with the dice?"
"Well, dice are like that for a reason. It's a functional design for what the dice does. Dice have been like that for hundreds of years. If it 'aint broke, don't fix it and all that."
"Come on, we're not going to get anywhere with that defeatist attitude! Let me think ... right, let's put Roman numerals on the Roman dice and ... Carthaginian numbers on the Carthaginian dice!"
"But most people can't read ancient Carthaginian!"
"Possibly not. But most of the people who're going to buy this are Grognards. They're so steeped in the history of the games they play that most of them can speak a dozen or more ancient languages."
"What about everyone else?"
"Well, I doubt there will be many. But it can't be that hard, surely. Remember that I got our playtesters for this game to learn ancient Latin and Carthaginian as a way of getting closer to their source material. I don't remember them complaining!"
"Well, actually ..."
"Shut up. We're putting Carthaginian numbers on the die."
You see this one that looks like a 1? It's a 4 And this one that looks like a roman 1? It's a 6 This one that looks like a slanted 4 is a 1. The Y is the 5... I forget the other two...
I love the Carthaginian numerals more than anything else in this game. Not only is it cool, but it makes those Alps crossings very tense the first few games.
It's an object lesson -- the lesson being that if the conflict covered by the game had ended differently, the Roman die might seem as alien to you as the Carthaginian one does now.
"Hi, yes, is that the North American table manufacturers and retailers association?"
"Why yes it is, can I help you?"
"We have a business proposition for you. Listen: if we were to release a game with a board so absurdly huge that it wouldn't fit on any ordinary table, would you be willing to give us a cut from all the new, vast tables that would get sold as a result?"
"Sounds like a great idea. Shall we say two percent?"
"We have a deal. I'll get the paperwork in the post."
"We were thinking about shrinking our boards when we got the Railroad Tycoon license, but now that we have this new table deal, let's increase it by 5 times the normal size of a game board, add some warping just for kicks, and really make some good kickbacks from the table industry."
"I think 5 times is too small... How about 10 times?"
"Sounds good. It'll have to be 50% wasted space. I can't imagine a board that big being functional."
The problem is less the size of the board as it is the very poor use of all that space. In a typical Eagle Games board you get vast amounts of useless filler, and the areas where your armies actually fight are STILL too small.
For an example of a still larger board, but one that WORKS, see EuroFront II
"Right, so on the board we're going to have markers to indicate where players should play their cards, and we'll colour the markers with the same colours used on the cards."
"Come on, do we really need a board for this? People can just make up their own stacks, or for the truly desperate we could just put in some more cards to use as markers."
"Ah, but if we put a board in then we can call it a proper board game and charge a price which is astronomical compared with the actual value of the components!"
"Of course, I forgot that! OK, so the colours - red for red cards, green for green cards ..."
"Yellow for yellow and blue for blue, right!"
"But what about white? That won't look very good on this high colour board at all, will it?"
"I suppose not. I know! We'll draw lots of lines on it so it looks black instead."
"No way! Everyone will spot that as a fake."
"Okay then, let's make the green one in the same style so it doesn't look so out of place. And we'll put them next to each other on the board as well - that way they'll be virtually indistinguishable."
"Excellent news! We've won the license to republish this classic game! Is there anything we can do to improve on the design of previous versions?"
"Well, we could put a player aid on the board."
"Oh yes, that'd help loads! Any other ideas?"
"We could save a little on the costs by getting rid of that useless Ra figurine that everyone complained about in the last edition."
"Oh no, we couldn't possibly do that."
"Why not? Most people thought it was pointless. Anyone who thought otherwise can just use a coin or something to mark where the bidding started, or we could have a custom tile."
"Ah but this game is for the next generation. The current game-buying generation are young and they have no attention spans and can't count. It's in all the papers, so it must be true."
"Well, I'm not so convinced."
"Besides, people who buy games are geeks, and everyone knows that geeks can't count. You find hardly any geeks doing university level maths, computing and science courses!"
"I'm not entirely sure that's true either."
"Well, I know I'm right. And anyway, even if I weren't (which I am) we've got to have the piece in there to get up to the alloted wood quotient."
"The what?"
"The alloted wood quotient. All Eurogames must, by German law, contain a certain amount of wooden components. Why else do you think Tigris & Euphrates has those daft wooden palaces? We're struggling with Ra - the sun tokens we can make out of wood, but wooden tiles or board would just be silly. So we have to keep the Ra token to get up to our alloted wood quotient."
Come to think of it, someone should make an auction game that includes an actual gavel.
Done. I'm not sayin' it's great, but here it is: Going Going Gone If nothing else, definitely worth thrifting to get the gavel so you can use it in the auction game of your choice.
Yea, but there's no way we can do this game with anything else.
So how are we going to keep the cost down?
Well first of all, you know all those pesky player boards? Scrap them. We'll just give out flimsy sheets of paper.
But that still won't be enough money!
Well, you know those nice player aids, why do they all have to be printed on their own piece of cardboard. Couldn't we just print the same player aid on both sides of the same tile to save space?
You mean we could print the same number of player aids with half the cardboard? Brilliant!
You are suppose to hold up the player aid board vertically while you look at it so the player opposite from you can read the other side at the same time. Clever.
You're right, that model weighs too much to use a bunch of them in a single game. Find some game in the pipe line that just needs one distinctive piece.
"Uh-oh. Our artist just went on a journey of self-discovery for the next few years, and he never drew the monsters!"
"Never drew the monsters!!! But this is a horror game, how can we print it without pictures of the monsters on their tiles?"
"Well, we've got to. We'll just print the name of the monster on the tile, and players can use their imagination. Doesn't all the best horror rely on people's imagination?"
"Dang, well if it's that or pay another artist, I guess we'll have to do it. But we can't just have the name, what else could go on the tile? Do we have any extra artwork at all?"
"H'mmm...it looks like we won't need this stoplight picture. Maybe we could chop out the lights and use them as the tile art for monsters? Would that be scary enough?"
This game would be much cooler if all those tiles were plastic miniatures. Players should make a sanity roll every time when they look at those multi-dimensional multi-purpose thingies that should not be!
"So, I think I've worked up this neat game for our license. Draws a lot on Puerto Rico, that new game all the cool kids are playing, should be fun."
"Can't wait to play it. We're just getting the demo figures back from China, too, so we can demo it and them together."
"Demo figures?"
"This is a battle game put out by Eagle games. Did you think we'd just have little round brown guys for workers?"
"Well... actually... that's more or less what I was thinking."
"What? This is a license for a battle game. It goes without saying that there should be buckets of dice, a nice big battle mat and serious carnage, every round!"
"Well... it's a game of resource management. I mean, I guess I could put in a battle system..."
"Well, throw something together for the demo. Maybe some rock paper scissors thing."
"Cool! What are these tokens that look like circular arrows?"
"Well you use those during combat - if both character choices equal a standstill they get one of these spin tokens. If it happens three times in a row then combat is over"
"But... Why are there three of them? Wouldn't the combat be over on the third roll? Why would I hand them a third spin token if the combat is over?"
"I... well... Look at these cool blood tokens Dracula uses for his health!"
"Well, why does he have 15 of them and the hunters only have one each?"
"The hunters just move the heart down to show their current health"
"But why doesn't Dracula do that? Wouldn't that be easier than putting 15 of those things all over the board and risking bumping them all over?"
Ha, very true indeed Oh, and for some time I didn't know what "Heavenly Host" was, and I scratched my head and wondered "Hey, whatever it is, why does it look like a cloudy something?".
"We've created an excellent "Attack Effectiveness" rule. It adds depth to the game, but there is one small problem."
"What is it?"
"The rules that say a player should turn a unit over whenever it loses "Attack Effectiveness" but all of the counters are blank on the reverse side. Once the fighting starts a blizzard of 1/2" white squares appears on the map. Nobody can tell what is what and who is who."
"Mmmmmmmmm. No problem! We'll call that a 'Fog Of War' rule."
"So, there's a lot of money being tossed around, I think that we should probably make money a private matter."
"Yeah, that sounds great, that way the better gamers will have an idea of what other players have but not know exactly how much their opponents have. How will we make the money private, though?"
"Oh, I already thought of that, just print the value on one side and then if you make all of the bills the same size, color, and shape, then you can just turn your money over and no one will be the wiser."
"OH! sort of like the money from Axis and Allies. I get it."
"Exactly, I already sent the intern to the printer to get the money."
....
"Hey guys, I just got back from the printer and, just like you wanted, I made all of the different denominations different colors! It looks awesome but man was it expensive! Also, the paper quality is totally crap so that players can just photocopy more if they need it!"
This applies to most games that use paper money. That's why I invested in a nice set of poker chips.
I don't have too much of a problem hiding the amount of money I have in Power Grid. They can only see the color of your top bill. I had a harder time with poker chips. Stacked, it's easy to count the exact amount by looking at the side of the stack. I had to hold my chips in my hand the whole game.
"So.. what's your favorite number?" "Seven. It's such a cool number, you know, deadly sins, days of the week, jackpot, all that stuff." "And your least favorite" "It's a ten-way tie. From 90 to 99. Those numbers are just stupid. It's so close to a hundred, yet not a hundred. It's like they resent having only two digits... Damn, do I hate those numbers!" "Okaaaaaaay..."
---
Either this or it's like a little girl cheating in a big hide and seek game "81... 82... 83... 84... 85... 86.. 87... 88... 89... 100! Ok you guys, here I come!"
"This was a great idea, having the colonists to settle and select actions, and then the specialists that can be used in the same way, but with extra abilities."
"We should use plastic figurines for those. Gamers love plastic figurines."
"Really nice looking ones. And then - we should make them all look so similar that no one can tell them apart from across the table."
"Yeah, um - wait, why should we do that?"
"That way the game doesn't just challenge strategic and tactical ability, but also visual acuity."
"Ok, we have this great idea from a Brit about the Dutch Revolution..."
"I'm looking at it - I don't think it was an actual revolution..."
"Never mind that, take a look at this map..."
"Well, I like your choice of colours, maybe a little dark in spots, but..."
"And I had this really great idea that we could use a flowery script kind of writing that would be very thematic!"
"Yes, theme is important, but..."
"See, I've used the same script on the city and province deeds! It all hangs together perfectly!"
"Umm, are you sure people will be able to read the words? I don't recognize a lot of the place names - what if people don't know Dutch geography, or speak Flemish?"
"I thought you were the one telling me that it isn't just about Holland!"
"No, I was referring to the revolution thing..."
"The map is really a good part of Northern Europe, and you're just being overly picky about the cosmetics - nobody is going to find it a problem - trust me!"
Yeah, the font was an odd (and poor) choice. It's not a big deal at all after the first play, but it makes the game so much less approachable for many people.
Sorry I have to ask, why would it not count as a revolution??
Well, he didn't really get any of it did he?!?
He probably got all of it except why you don't consider it a revolution. If you're going to make a statement like that, you have to expect to back it up to the residents of the region in question.
The "he" I was referring to was the one in the fanciful dialogue I had used to pose all the awkward questions about the graphics etc. In fact there were a lot of revolutionary things going on during the eighty year span of the game, the Dutch "revolt" being only one of them. To be honest, I find it hard to prise that actual struggle from what is taking place as I don't see "Holland" per se, either "before" or "after," as being represented by anything in the game. Maybe you have to live there...
How many times, at the end of this game, do you seriously look at each other and say: There! Now Holland is free to determine its own destiny!?!
My apologies to anyone who took offence to my apparent rudeness. It was aimed at a ficticious character who was having a lot of trouble getting "any of it"...
Edit note: As simply a game however, once the barriers are overcome, it is very good indeed...
I just re-watched this for fun's sake. I only wish they didn't do this, so I could get a copy for much less. As it stands, the price is just too high for me for this game...
"O.K. so we got those brilliant John Howe designs for the boards and the cards. You think we can ask him to do the tokens, too?"
"Don´t bother, the doctors keep telling me that my son has developed some skills in that branch in his therapy."
"Right on, what´s he in for again?"
"Well, he is afraid of thrombosis, stroke-anxiety they call it. On top of that he can´t stand sunlight, calls it the yellow face. Thirdly, there´s this anxiety of intimate relationships to the point where he can´t even watch people getting married on T.V."
"Oh boy. Now, that´s that. Had any ideas about the illustrations for "Wizard" lately?"
Wow, we've made an incredibly successful game. We should come up with a way to charge more for it.
How about adding new characters as an expansion.
No, no, that would only mean selling a small box of new cardboard inserts. How about a complete reissue --- a Deluxe version!
But won't people who already have the game be annoyed?
No we'll ditch the original short, stable playing pieces for magnificent tall pieces that everyone will want.
But won't those tip over at the slightest provocation and reveal your setup, thus ruining the game?
Not at all, it will be more exciting because now it's a dexterity game as well!
That's great. Let's also hide the strength numbers in the corner to give people an excuse to constantly bob up and down like they have no motor-control while playing our new dexterity version.
If only we could afford to mount the board on really bouncy springs then it would be PERFECT!
We'll just recommend playing on a water bed or in a canoe instead.
"What should the scoring track go up to? How about 80? Nobody's ever gonna get more than 80 points, right"?
"What's a typical score for a winner? About 85 points? Ok, then let's make a score track that goes up to 80, so he is clearly separated from the losers."
Posted Tue Jun 17, 2008 8:53 am
