Mostly Game

The “Themed Rummy Design Contest” over at BGG just completed. There were 24 designs entered by the Dec 7, 2009 deadline, including three from me (Wu Xing Rummy, Nobles of Venice, and Cold War Rummy) and one from Brian (WW2 in Europe Rummy). Preliminary judges graded the games and chose nine finalists, announced in January, including CWR and WW2. These finalists were then sent to Mike Fitzgerald, a well-known and respected game designer (in gaming circles, anyway) of many card and board games, as the final judge.

Yesterday, the contest sponsor, Cate108 on BGG, announced the results. Mike (and his playtest team?) graded the games on four criteria — rules (10 points), concept (10 points), creative elements (40 points) and gameplay (40 points). Brian’s WW2 game finished ninth overall and my CWR game finished second overall. The top three were actually very close in points:

WILD KINGDOM = 70 points total

• Rules = 7, Concept = 8, Creative elements = 30, Game play = 25

COLD WAR RUMMY = 68 points total

• Rules = 8, Concept = 10, Creative elements = 25, Game play = 25

GASTON GAME = 66 points total

• Rules = 8, Concept = 8, Creative elements = 30, Game play = 20*
• * GASTON GAME would get more points as a game to be played with small children, which is its target audience. This ranking is as a game between adults

I emailed Mike just to say thanks for judging the contest and got a nice reply back from him:

Thank you for letting me see one of your designs. Very creative and playable. I love Twilight Struggle as well but would never have been able to come up with a card game like you did.

I also received very good feedback on all three of my games from my first round judge, Sean Ross (of the Game Artisans of Canada). I will probably tweak all of them eventually, but for now I’m focusing on CWR as it is my favorite game of the bunch and had the best feedback from multiple sources. In fact, I already took some suggestions from Sean and have ordered 21 replacement cards from Artscow for updated cards in the next version. I plan to playtest them here and then send them to Dan’s gang down in Austin for more external playtesting.

Oh, this contest also had awards. My second place finish was worth $30 and 70 GG (geekgold, a virtual currency on BGG). This brings my lifetime design income to $280:

• 4GxG Project = $100 for a winning mechanic.
• Small World contest = $150 for a winning special power.
• Rummy contest = $30 for second place.

Not that I’ll ever make much at this, but I like to think this offsets some of the costs of paper, cardstock, ink, blades, bits and components, etc. I’m excited about working CWR up to the point of publication, be that via a publisher or a POD/self-published route (being ideal for that as a card game).

For those following my ongoing saga as a contest entrant in Stride Gum’s “Rename the gum” contest, you know that I would eventually receive a box of gum packaged with my proposed name, Permamint. This finally arrived yesterday: one box of 12 packs of 14 pieces of Permamint gum. Woot!

I’m debating if I want save a pack for posterity. It seems weird — saving a pack of gum. We already opened one because Ryan can’t stay away from gum — “I think they added extra mint!” he said in approval. (I don’t think there was actually any formula change from Nonstop Mint to my custom Permamint.)

Anyway, it feels like a good year for my contest efforts. A dozen packs of gum and a dozen copies of a Small World expansion (plus $150) — oh, I also won a $30 gift certificate to an online retailer of my choice, from a little giveaway contest someone ran over on BGG.

Maybe I need to buy more lottery tickets this year…

Heh, me and Bman have been resurrecting our (mostly old) CCGs, starting with Magic and Game of Thrones. I decided to get a few thumbs and entertainment out of it by writing session reports on each new (old) CCG, and then linking them up with an ongoing geeklist over on BGG. So, if you are so inclined, you can keep up with…

My Journey Back to CCGs

I subscribe to quite a few blogs in my Google Reader. I don’t always keep up with them all, especially the last few months after Caroline came home and my free time took a big hit. This morning, it occurred to me that I never write anything like real game analysis or strategy for a game. For example, Seth Owen’s blog Pawnderings tends to have a lot of wargame analysis, and a recent series on My Play has focused on Race for the Galaxy strategy.

I got to thinking about why I don’t write articles like that. I’m a strategic kinda guy. I like writing. I love gaming. So what gives? I think it’s because I don’t feel like I’ve mastered any particular game sufficiently to feel comfortable writing a strategy article about it, and for those games I do have a lot of plays on, they are already well-known and well-discussed already (Puerto Rico and Dominion, for example).

I think it is a direct result of my apparently insatiable appetite for new games. Sure, I enjoy playing games multiple times, but the low frequency of gaming I “enjoy” these days coupled with the large number of distinct games owned by me, my friends and gaming group, means repeat plays are few and far between. I even acknowledge this in the geekbadge on my BGG profile: Game Tourist.

I also tend to avoid reading strategy articles myself. A big part of the fun in gaming is “discovering” different strategies, and I’m especially known for trying things that are off the beaten path. If I don’t read strategy much, why would I write it?

Brian and I are really getting more serious with our game design this year, apparently. We’re getting active in the monthly Game Design Showdown, and the forums in general, over on BGDF. We’ve resumed our weekly game design night (Thursdays at Fuddruckers, heh). We’re in the middle of a brainstorming/development exercise. We’re getting ready to send some prototypes to the Flywheel guys for playtesting. Brian actually has two games under review by a fellow who works for ZMan. We’re even being more active on our Royal Steamwork Society blog.

Partially in response to a little peeve Brian has going on, we’re going to be submitting our first games to the BGG database. I’ll be posting up the rules and downloads for a little print-and-play card game called Matched Blades, in which players use identical sets of action cards to cut and thrust their way to victory over each other. I think Brian is going to be posting his game Seventh Coalition, a set-collection card game with a Napoleonic theme.

I really hope I have the right kind of game developed to the point where I can enter Hippodice this year. All my current “middle-weight” or heavier games have petered out in development lately, which is a little discouraging.

Overall, though, I feel like this is / will be a good year for us as amateur designers.