Re: "Time Marches On" Winner - Conspiracy responses

["tempus42" <qa1226@...>]

> Second, I'll not keep you waiting... I chose [trumpet 
> fanfare] "Kidsprout Jumboree" as my favorite (and therefore the 
> winner).  

Congratulations to Ron!

Then, like Ron, I'd like to sincerely thank James for sponsoring this 
contest and for really trying the games and giving great feedback.  
I've entered other contests that died due to failed sponsorship, but 
James did a great job!!!  Thank you!!!

As you can probably tell, games and game design really energize me, 
but I so rarely find anyone who will listen to me ramble on about it, 
so I hope those here might be interested in my thoughts on James' 
comments:

> CONSPIRACY
> Comments: Conspiracy was the most complex entry and is the most 
> complete piecepack ruleset I've seen, including inline examples, 
> inline designer notes, additional pages of designer commentary, and 
a 
> lengthy play example.  

Thanks -- I hope all the extraneous commentary didn't make it too 
hard to follow the rules, which is why I provided the commentary-free 
version as well.  But that still wound up being something like 8 
pages which is more than I expected.  My chicken-scratch notes that 
formed the original design only covered about a page and half of 
notebook paper, including a lot of scratched-out parts.  I know I'm 
usually too verbose, and my heavy use of indentation doesn't help 
keep the document short.

I'm pretty obsessive about game rules -- I approach them the same way 
I do software requirements and design documents:  I personally prefer 
them to be in outline form, with rigorous use of consistent 
terminology, and complete logic (i.e. all possible cases explicitly 
covered), plus indexing.  That's why my game rules tend to read like 
a technical spec.  Reading game rules is almost more fun for me than 
playing the game is (depends on the game!), and I pride myself on 
being able to critique a game with some fluency just by reading the 
rules.  On the other hand, I find most people are satisfied with 
natural-language English paragraph rules and find reading rules to be 
a pain.  Then again, I also find most people learn how to play games 
from someone else who knows how to play and/or they play 
incorrectly.  So is it a good thing or a bad thing to write rigorous 
rules?

And regarding the inline commentary:  Do people like to read this 
kind of stuff?  I usually love to get some insight into the minds of 
the designers and developers of a game, but do other people feel the 
same way?

> I like the "conveyor-belt" tile movement.  I 
> also dig the "coins gang up by pointing" mechanic (which would seem 
> useful in a piecepack wargame as well).

Thanks.  The "conveyor-belt" mechanic was in my head before I ever 
saw the "Time Marches On" contest, and that was the first thing the 
theme reminded me of.

> Suggestions: This might sound goofy, but I'd like to see the board 
> upside-down (i.e., take the current board and rotate the words 180 
> degrees).  Since we sat in a U-shape around the table when we 
played 
> this, having the Present end of the board toward the players would 
> give a better sense of the Future coming _toward_ the players.  
Small 
> thing, but hey.  

Ok, I think I know what you're saying.  Make it look like this:

Future 4
Future 3
Future 2
Future 1
Present

I agree it's a very easy change to make, but sometimes it's the small 
things that can mean the difference between players "getting" a game 
and "not getting it".  These are also the sorts of feedback that you 
only get from letting someone else look at your game...

> Also, it might help alleviate the opacity of the 
> rules if the theme were better integrated with the rules text.  For 
> example, instead of the "Place Coin" action, maybe call it "Concoct 
> Scheme (place coin)" or something.  

You know, I thought of that when I was just about done writing up the 
rules.  I had all of that "flavor text" in mind as I was writing it, 
but I worried that it would make the rules even *more* opaque and 
lengthy.  I started out with a mix of flavor text and piecepack 
terminology, and I decided to standardize on piecepack terminology 
only.  By the time I finished, I looked back and realized that a lot 
of the theme of the game might not be readily apparent, but it was 
too late to re-write the whole thing.  I'll probably try to 
incorporate this kind of language more in the next version.

For those who missed the point:
Place Coin = Marshal Resources
Reveal Coin = Put Plan in Place
Reveal Tile = Enact Plan
Attack Coin = Foil Opponent's Plan
Advance Column = Hasten Fruition of Plans
You know:  All the sorts of things evil global conspiracies do. :)

> Some of the possible changes 
> mentioned in the designer commentary sound interesting, though it 
> already feels to me like there's more minutiae than I could ever 
hold 
> in my feeble brain, so perhaps some pruning could be considered 
first.

This is feedback that I really need to take to heart.

I know there are two things I need to do:  1) Write rules more 
succinctly (see above), and 2) Avoid the temptation to keep adding 
chrome to a game.

Based on your criteria for the contest, I expected I was really 
pushing the limit of what you would probably consider optimal for 
game complexity.  But my background is in more hard core gaming, now 
shifted primarily into German style games because of time 
constraints, so I still personally consider Conspiracy to be pretty 
simple.  I guess I'd rate it about a 3-4 for complexity on a scale 
from 1 to 10 where War is a 1 and Advanced Squad Leader is a 10.  
When this game finally came together, I figured it was about 
equivalent in complexity to most German games out there.  The most 
complex German-style game I've personally seen is Die Macher, which I 
would rate a 7 or so.  I'd rate most German-style games in the 3-5 
range, which is the nice thing about them, because I can typically 
read the rules in 15-30 minutes, and then teach others how to play in 
5-10 minutes.  I believe I could teach Conspiracy as it's written in 
5-10 minutes as long as players have basic experience with board 
games.

As for "gold-plating" a game, this is where I always fall apart, and 
I'll admit it.  Most of my game ideas die on the drawing board 
because I get myself all tangled up in inter-connecting bits of 
chrome that I convince myself are absolutely required for the game to 
be fit the image in my head.  That's why entering contests like this 
one is a very good thing for me -- An external deadline forces me to 
say "good enough is good enough".  I do think Conspiracy is one of my 
better attempts to date because I did cut out a bunch of potentially 
destructive chrome in order to get the basic framework working by the 
deadline.

Several of the suggestions I mentioned in the design notes were the 
chrome that was giving me fits, but I do still want to go back on 
work on those things some more:  1) Giving the different suits some 
character by giving them each some different special abilities when 
placed on the board, and 2) making it really matter which tiles you 
have face up by having face-up tiles affect the parameters of the 
game somehow.

There is also at least one change that I'm currently exploring that 
might address possible problems I'm seeing in further playtesting:  
Making it a little easier to Reveal Coins by letting you place 
support and reveal in the same action (similar to how you can place 
and attack in the same action).  If anyone has feedback on this or 
similar problems in play, let me know!

Thanks again,
Brad/tempus42.