Re: Fwd: Good Portsmanship contest results

["Clark D. Rodeffer" <clark@...>]

Hey! Congratulations to Gary, Mike & Steve, and all the rest. This
sounds like a fun crop of games, and I can hardly wait to get to play
them.

> 6. Take Off, Eh!, a port of El Grande, by Clark
> Rodeffer. [...] However, mechanics count too, and
> the mechanics to this game need more playtesting.
> One game of TOE! was enough to show there are some
> serious things wrong.

Ron, thanks! I'd very much like to take you up on your offer of more
detailed feedback and chat with you off-list about the mechanics,
rules and how they might be improved.

> In our game, for various reasons, the Queen hardly
> moved at all. Imagine if the King never moved in
> El Grande -- it would be a static, anticlimactic
> disaster for all players. [...]

I agree. In the next version of the rules, I plan to test the idea
that moving the queen is not optional, that she must move to a new
province if a crown tile is taken. After all, no one says, "No," to
the queen.

> We were all also put off by the incredible
> redundancy and clutter in the rules -- multi-page
> tables repeated multiple times at random intervals,
> and so on. The rules to this game are actually
> something like six or eight pages longer than the
> rules to the original when printed in the same
> typeface. [...]

I admit that long-winded rules are one of my weaknesses. I'd love to
chat with you and/or anyone else who played the game about suggestions
on how the rules can be made more succinct, yet get everything across.
A player aid card would almost certainly help, but doing something
like that in Markdown would be a challenge. Thoughts or suggestions?

> Everyone who played agreed the game was fixable,
> however, and we have several suggestions.

Please send the suggestions my way! Thanks again for playing Take Off,
Eh!, and I want to make it as good as it can be.

Clark