Kris Rhodes
United States
Indiana
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(Edited to incorporate feedback)
(Note: This has been fairly heavily revised since original post.)
Please tell me whether you see anything immediately obviously broken about this very simple game?
OVERVIEW: I am designing a game titled Gardens of Living Stone. Players reveal (and sometimes exchange) stones of five colors from hidden stockpiles, using the stones' powers (determined by their color) to ultimately claim ownership of the highest-scoring set of stones they can.
Points are acquired both by having a larger number of stones of a single color than anyone else, and also by forming sets of five differently-colored stones.
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GARDENS OF LIVING STONE
+Game Equipment+
One pouch
Sixty stones, twelve each of five colors.
Four screens.
+Start of Play+
1. Two to four players can play.
2. Each player takes a screen and sets it up in front of him in a position that will allow him to hide ten stones behind it.
3. Each player draws ten stones at random from the pouch, keeping these stones hidden in a secret stockpile behind his screen. (A short “skirmish” game can be played by drawing only five stones instead of ten.) The area in front of his screen (in view of the other players) is the player’s “garden.”
+Playing the game+
4. One player is designated to be the first player. Play proceeds counterclockwise.
5. On his turn, a player does the following, in order:
a. Optional: Activates a stone in his garden, as determined by its color. (See below for explanation of powers.) Upon activation, the stone is discarded unless it is black. (Discarded stones are returned to the pouch.)
b. Mandatory: Reveals a single stone from his stockpile, placing it in his garden.
6. The game ends once all players have exhausted their stockpile. (This will happen on the same turn for each player, as on each turn each player ends with exactly one less stone in their stockpile.)
+Scoring the Round+
7. Each player arranges his stones into sets of four different colors (including black). For each set in this arrangement, he receives ten points.
8. For each color, whichever player has the largest number of stones of that color receives five points. In case of a tie, no player receives the points.
9. Each player loses one point for each black stone in his garden—unless he has the largest number of black stones, in which case he loses no points for black stones. (In case of a tie for largest number of black stones, all players lose points for black stones.)
+End of Round+
10. All players return all stones to the pouch. The player to the first player’s left is now designated the new first player. If the players have played five rounds, the game ends. Otherwise, the next round begins.
+Winning the Game+
11. The winner is the player with the highest score after five rounds of play.
+The Powers of the Stones+
Blue: “Friendship.” The player selects one stone from each garden. Taking these stones in hand, he distributes them as he wishes, one to each player.
Green: “Bounty.” The player places two stones from his stockpile into his garden, then draws two stones at random from the pouch to place into his stockpile. (If he only has one stone in his stockpile when he activates a green stone, then he places just that stone and draws only one new one from that pouch.)
Yellow: “Greed.” The player takes two stones, one each from two players' gardens, and places them in his own garden. (In a two player game, only one stone is taken.)
Red: “Strife." The player declares a stone type. Every other player must discard a stone of that type from their garden. (If they do not have one of that type, do not discard a stone.) If a player is required by this rule to discard a stone, he may at his option substitute a red stone from his garden instead.
Black: “Suffering.” Player places this stone in another player's garden.
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Kris Rhodes
United States
Indiana
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Re: The Garden of Living Stones
One thing is, I'm not sure whether the screens (and so the secrecy of the stockpiles) are necessary, or even good.
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BT Carpenter
United States
Reston
Virginia
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Re: The Garden of Living Stones
Red stone's power is a bit kludgy, and the definition of 'loses a stone' is not clear -- loses a red stone (to where)? Further, the loss of a turn is pretty harsh.
P1: Red stone
P2: Red stone (P1 loses stone and next turn)
P3: Red stone (P2 loses stone and next turn)
P1: loses turn
P2: loses turn
P3: red stone, immune to losing turn and both stones.
It becomes a game of chicken, where you're hoping every other player after you doesn't also have a red stone.
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Green 'bounty' can allow players to deplete the bag of stones. They do this by withdrawing the green and retaining at least one green gem (to play next turn). With 4 players and 60 stones, everyone has to do this 5 total times in order to deplete the bag.
Not clear if stones placed due to green stones activate their powers (assuming not).
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Blue stone's power: does the player of the stone get to pick the PLAYERs who will trade (who then have free will), or the specific STONES they will trade?
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Black stone: Not clear if 'a tie' means that everyone fails to lose points for black stones.
Examples:
P1: 1 // P2: 1 // P3: 2 -- who gets negative points, how many?
P1: 2 // P2: 2 // P3: 1 -- who gets negative points, how many?
P1: 3 // P2: 2 // P3: 2 // P4: 1 -- who gets negative points, how many?
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Getting a 'last turn' after depletion of your stockpile gives rather strong power to the last player. Save one yellow stone to play 'last' and you can steal exactly what you need to put yourself over the top in a category while simultaneously ruining another player's position.
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Kris Rhodes
United States
Indiana
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Re: The Garden of Living Stones
Thank you, those are good criticisms.
byronczimmer wrote: Red stone's power is a bit kludgy, and the definition of 'loses a stone' is not clear -- loses a red stone (to where)?
Right--I should replace "lose" with "discard" in every case (and clarify that this means you put it back in the pouch btw, and that it comes from your garden, not your stockpile).
Quote: It becomes a game of chicken, where you're hoping every other player after you doesn't also have a red stone.
I'm worried about that too, but there are ways around it, for example using the green stone to put two red stones out at once. (And note that losing one red stone effectively protects you from subsequent attacks unless you put one back.)
Quote: -=-=-
Green 'bounty' can allow players to deplete the bag of stones. They do this by withdrawing the green and retaining at least one green gem (to play next turn). With 4 players and 60 stones, everyone has to do this 5 total times in order to deplete the bag.
Hrm, good catch. I did have a rule in place before about what to do if the bag is completely depleted, but for some reason thought later that I'd made that impossible somehow. I'll have to take a look at that again.
Quote: Not clear if stones placed due to green stones activate their powers (assuming not).
Will definitely clarify that it does not.
Quote: -=-=-
Blue stone's power: does the player of the stone get to pick the PLAYERs who will trade (who then have free will), or the specific STONES they will trade?
Specific stones. Will clarify.
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Quote: Black stone: Not clear if 'a tie' means that everyone fails to lose points for black stones.
I'll check the wording on that. My inetnion was that everyone who has a nmber of black stones equal to the highest number of black stones held by anyone does not lose points for black stones, while every other player does lose points for black stones.
Quote: Getting a 'last turn' after depletion of your stockpile gives rather strong power to the last player. Save one yellow stone to play 'last' and you can steal exactly what you need to put yourself over the top in a category while simultaneously ruining another player's position.
You don't get a last turn after depleting--everyone else does. (I'll double check to make sure that's clear.
Again very many thanks for taking the time to provide those criticisms.
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BT Carpenter
United States
Reston
Virginia
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Re: The Garden of Living Stones
Speusippus wrote: Quote: Getting a 'last turn' after depletion of your stockpile gives rather strong power to the last player. Save one yellow stone to play 'last' and you can steal exactly what you need to put yourself over the top in a category while simultaneously ruining another player's position. You don't get a last turn after depleting--everyone else does. (I'll double check to make sure that's clear. Again very many thanks for taking the time to provide those criticisms.
When Px depletes, Px-1 is guaranteed to get a 'last turn', and will know the situation of the board when it is their turn to go. Just a warning that the last 'go-round' has the potential to lead to some analysis paralysis.
Further, it's easy to keep track of who has how many stones remaining in stock, and I don't see any way around that.
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BT Carpenter
United States
Reston
Virginia
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Re: The Garden of Living Stones
Run with this concept, see where it leads you:
You may EITHER play a stone to your garden OR use its power. Used powers either end up in someone else's garden (black) or back in the bag (everything else).
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Kris Rhodes
United States
Indiana
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Re: The Garden of Living Stones
byronczimmer wrote: Run with this concept, see where it leads you:
You may EITHER play a stone to your garden OR use its power. Used powers either end up in someone else's garden (black) or back in the bag (everything else).
In fact I just was thinking of a very similar fix--on each turn, you MAY activate a stone that lies in your garden, and you MUST play a new stone into your garden. When stones are activated they are removed from the garden and placed back into the pouch.
I'm going to have to think a lot about the struggle and curse stones--forcing players to lose a struggle stone from their garden seems like too little, but causing them to lose a turn does indeed seem like too much. Meanwhile, without a mechanism in place to make the curse stones 'stick' to people they're played against, it seems to lead potentially to an endless "hot-potato" game.
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BT Carpenter
United States
Reston
Virginia
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Re: The Garden of Living Stones
Think not of it as 'fixing a problem' as identifying elements you do and do not want in the game.
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Kris Rhodes
United States
Indiana
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Re: The Garden of Living Stones
Burning a stone when you activate it is creating much more "stone attrition" than I would like. The guy who burns a lot of stones tend to win (in my self-play games) against the guy who is more conservative. But this seems to me to kind of ruin it for everybody, because you end up with just a few stones at the end if everyone's constantly activating them.
On the other hand--that there are few stones doesn't mean there's no winner, and doesn't mean there's no way to strategize towards that win, so maybe I should find a way to go with this.
On the other other hand, it's not too exciting to end up with "gardens" of juts a couple of stones. Thematically odd.
On the other other other hand, the game is theme-extremely-light in the first place.
On the other other other other hand, I do need a way to prevent players from simply being allowed to activate any old stone in their garden--there's too few stone types to make that a meaningful decision, I think.
Edited to add: If I don't like stone attrition, I could go back to having you activate a stone when playing it, without discarding it--but that would remove some of the partial knowledge (i.e., knowledge of which stones opponents could activate on your next turn) that helped add a strategic element to the game. Or, I could have the stones have a pre-activation and post-activation state, but this seems a little fiddly. (OTOH it adds potential for a new power which reactivates some number of stones. That could potentially be an alternative "bounty" power, or simply a sixth power.)
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Isaac Shalev
United States
Stamford
Connecticut
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If you want to end up with more stones in people's gardens, then you have to change the incentives. Right now, there's major incentive to activate stones (they have powers) and littel cost, because scoring is relative to other players' stones, not absolute. If you got points for set collection, rather than points for having the most of a set as compared to other players, you would change the incentive structure and make the choice of activating a stone versus keeping it in your garden much more strategically interesting.
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Kris Rhodes
United States
Indiana
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In fact I was just testing a version where you get more points for having sets of four different colors* than you do for having larger numbers of a single color, and stone attrition did indeed seem to become much less of a problem. Is this the kind of thing you mean?
Points for larger numbers remain in the game as a way of staying in the game even when you don't score sets during a round.
Thanks for your advice by the way.
*Four because t seems too hard to keep a hold of a set of five different colors. Of course, this suggests maybe different point values should be awarded for sets of different numbers of colors. Maybe I'll go that route--but my current feeling is to keep the scoring simple as I believe the gameplay may be turning out to be more complex than I expected. In playing the game, I'm running into inordinate amounts of AP on occasion...
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Matt Riddle
United States
Michigan
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its a really, really good idea. there are a lot of set making games and this is a nice twist.
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Isaac Shalev
United States
Stamford
Connecticut
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Kris, that's exactly what I had in mind. It may be that including both points for sets AND points for majorities will hit the balance you're looking for. Good luck with the game, it seems like it's coming along very nicely.
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Posted Wed Feb 1, 2012 4:42 pm
