Black Friday/Cyber Monday Loot

12.06.2012

Somewhere in the past couple of years board gaming has become my big hobby. I'm not sure what it exactly replaced, but it seems to be the thing I dwell on these days, especially in the past 6 months or so (trying to make my own game that other people will play undoubtedly has some effect on that). In my group(s) of people I game with, I've elected myself as the one to get the games and components needed. I'm the single guy with disposable income, and I like buying things, so I just do it and nobody argues. Once upon a time I would get games and never play them. I still do that, but I get games in hopes of one day playing them, having been bitten by the Out Of Print quandary in the past more times than I would like to admit. This past year we did a good job of tearing the shrinkwrap off some of those games. Six games as a matter of fact! I bought more than 6 new games to make up for it, but that's not important.

The games we play tend to be on the expensive side, normally $50 and up. I'm always on the lookout for a good sale, and I had a feeling the Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend would be a good time to stretch my online game shopping skills. I was not proven wrong.

Thanks to various forum threads and posts, I ended up placing orders from 5 websites (and one of them got orders placed Friday and Monday). The average sale was for 10% off, and a couple of those sites were offering clearance specials that went up to 75% off. I went overboard. I know I did. I feel guilty. So, so guilty.

Yesterday I opened up the boxes now that everything has been delivered. I wanted to make sure there weren't any problems with my order since I had read on one of the aforementioned forum posts that someone else had received the wrong order from one of the sites I ordered from. As long as that sentence is, I got exactly everything I ordered.

It may be in poor taste to get myself these things - I could put them on a list and others might get them for me for Christmas. But these are the types of things I prefer people not get me as gifts. They're totally frivolous and for most people not worth the cost. Plus, since I was able to take advantage of some good deals, I was able to save money and get what I wanted. It's a Christmas present to myself.

So now I'm going to put everything up in a closet until Christmas, or at least my Christmas Vacation. There's a part of me that can't believe I'm grown up enough to do that.

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Reading is Still Fun. Da Mental?

12.04.2012

Last week I made one of my quarterly trips to the local bookstore. While making my way back from the bathroom, I detoured by the sci-fi section to see if there were any covers that caught my eye. There were a couple, so I tried my best to remember their names until I could get to an Amazon order screen.

I had left my iPhone in the car, so I couldn't snap a quick picture like I normally do. When I got back to the car I typed the names into a memo/note, but even 5 minutes later I changed "Only Superhuman" into "Being Superhuman". I try to actively remember 2 things and manage to forget 1 after 5 minutes. I'm like Guy Pierce in Memento!

I still have a couple of books to read from my last "hey, I need books to read!" scurry. Heck, one of them I even took a picture of in the book store with my iPhone, like I'm supposed to! Sometimes I'm in the mood to read, and sometimes I'm in the mood to pick out something to read. This time was the latter.

So what did I get and why?

Only Superhuman, a sci-fi novel with the word "superhuman" in it. It's not a superhero book, but it should be comic booky/sci-fi. Maybe. And I really like the cover.

The Mammoth Book of Zombie Apocalypse! Fightback. I've read 1 zombie book and it was ok. I want to read another. This one, besides having a cover that caught my eye, is an oversized paperback (7½" tall) as opposed to normal paperback size. I hate normal paperbacks now that I'm old and grumpy. They're so tiny and flimsy. In addition, this is not a book of short stories.

I have such odd reasons for giving in and buying books.

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Zombie Mall Play Test #3

12.03.2012

This play test was a solo game with Alex. The first thing I did was hand Alex the rules sheet(s) and not explain a thing, then check for what questions he had. Alex is excellent at reading game rules - he tends to not infer things not written, and what is written he interprets correctly. Luckily I know this from past experience, so I really wanted to see how he would do with the written rules. There are a couple of things not in the current rules: details about movement under certain conditions, mainly. This I figured I would explain when and if it came up.

The big change from the last play test was that instead of the 2 needed key Loot Cards being shuffled into the deck with the other 106 cards, I had pulled those 2 cards along with 2 cards of bad things out of the deck and set them aside. I placed 4 numbered Objective Tokens on the board, then placed a matching numbered Objective Token on each of the cards I pulled. Now Alex would have some specific spaces to go after. I also tweaked the zombie spawning a little.

The game started a little slow, and after about 10 turns Alex had gone to 2 of the Objective Tokens and gotten 1 of the keys. At this point he had to backtrack a little to go after the other Objective Tokens. At one point he got ganged up on by spawning zombies in the hallway and used up a lot of Health re-rolling. He made it to the 3rd Objective Token and uncovered the last key, so then it was a race to the Security Office. The challenge was that Alex was at the bottom of the board while the Security Office was at the top.

Alex had to use a combination of Health to re-roll and Adrenaline to escape when he had reached hallway to the Security Office and lost another combat, this time with no remaining Health or Adrenaline, so the true "you get bitten" scenario finally played out. It was time to see if he would spawn back on the board. Alex had 3 bite tokens, so he needed to roll 4-9 on 1d10 to spawn. He rolled a 0, which would normally mean "DEAD. OUT OF GAME. GAME OVER, MAN." Being a play test, he re-spawned like a winner, and only 2 spaces away from his keys dropped the previous turn.

In going back to get those 2 keys, Alex had to use all 5 of his regained Health, plus 2 Adrenaline (I think there were 4 zombies he had to fight before getting both keys). From there he made his way to unlock the security room door and then the radio, ending the scenario without indecent, but was wary of a couple of spawning zombies.

This game took just under 2 hours, which is much more to my liking. Having objectives to go after seem to make a difference, both in game play and how the player felt more focused rather than just running around looting. The drawback was that Alex quit looting the regular Loot Markers since he wouldn't get a key from them, and most of the time he drew something bad. I need to better explain what's in the loot cards. With that in mind, I went back today and made a list of what cards are helpful and which aren't. I originally thought the numbers were 60-70% bad, but it turns out:

• 53 "Good" Cards (49%)
• 28 "Bad" Cards (26%)
• 27 "Trash" Cards (25%)

I think the Bad Cards are noticed more because they are played immediately in most cases. A lot of the Good Cards depend on special circumstances so they may not actually be used. Everybody has been pulling Bad Cards while testing, though.

The changes for this game really made a difference:

• Objective specific markers give the player something to go after
• 1d10+1 movement through the whole game covers the right amount of terrain over the game. Those low roles really hurt.
• Players have a base 70% chance of winning combat - even then everybody has died in testing
• 5 Health & Adrenaline seem high to me, but people are still dying.

I've thought about changing combat to where the player only has a 60% chance of winning, and dropping the initial Health & Adrenaline to 4 each, but the current numbers seem to be working (since people are dying). I think lowering these may make people more apt to stop on the regular Loot Spaces if they know they can pick up items that will give them bonuses - I think if somebody started picking them up now and managed to get a gun card (which would give them an 80% chance to win combat) the game might be too easy.

For now, though, I'm keeping the combat, Health, and Adrenaline numbers I've got.

Next up, I update the rules with a couple of changes to make things more clear. I also have to start re-writing the more detailed rules that cover things I've been explaining. From there, I'll either have another Keith & Jer play test session or move on to some 4-player tests.

Permalink boardgames game dev zombie mall

Zombie Mall Playtest 2

12.02.2012

Last night was Zombie Mall Playtest #2, featuring somebody other than me playing. Jerry and Keith came over to try out the game. Gratefully they knew they were guinea pigs to help me tweak. The best part for me was watching someone else play something I designed. It wasn't a perfect design, but they stuck with it through the end and helped me out enormously.

By games end roughly 3 hours of game play had passed. That's twice what I want it to be, even with the learning curve of first time play and rules tweaking along the way. I even moved one of the needed Loot Cards higher in the deck, which cut out 10 turns of searching. Once Keith and Jer had the 2 key Loot Cards, play seemed to speed up - a combination of them running to the Security Office, not stopping to loot any tokens, and having a physical goal they were heading toward. Keith actually died about 2/3 through the game, and Jerry died in the Security Office near the end. Being a play test I forced them to arise and continue :)

Tweaks from the last play test included:

• Player Movement changed from 1d6 to 1d10+1 (had to take care of rolling a 0).
• And the end of your turn, you can trade 3VP for 1 Loot Card.

Since the play test scenario is a straight-up escape scenario, the Victory Points aren't really used for anything, so cashing them in for Loot Cards is a nice bonus. That bonus bit Keith a couple of times by spawning zombies right on top of him. Frustrating, but that's what a good chunk of this game is supposed to be. Evil game developer!

Thanks to someone else reading and interpreting rules, as well as having a strategy that I might not have thought of, I now have some more tweaks to make for the next play test.

• Better define when combat happens (there's no real "combat" phase of a turn)
• Better define the difference between Getting Bitten and Dying.
• Instead of the key Loot Cards being randomly shuffled into the deck to be found, have them marked by special Loot Tokens. This way the Players have a goal they can see to reach. Of course, the card they're heading for may not be the card they need. Evil game developer!

Most importantly, I have to cut down on the length of the game. I want 90 minutes, so far I've got 3 hours. Part of the nature of the game is that it feels as if it starts out slow while the zombies populate the mall with each player turn. About halfway through the game it gets crowded enough that you really start to get interested - the challenge starts. I don't think there's a plausible way to "start in the middle", I've just got to think of a way to get to the middle faster. Hopefully having the key specific Loot Tokens as objectives you can go after will help.

Permalink boardgames game dev zombie mall

Zombie Mall Playtest 1

11.27.2012

Tonight began play testing of Zombie Mall. Single player play testing, as I needed to take a first whack it it and see how the game plays with someone who knows the rules (I made up the rules, so I should know them). I was expecting a few tweaks here and there, and I wasn't disappointed. The game is supposed to be hard to completely finish - that's one of the reason you collect Victory Points along the way. Here's a few pics from my play session.

I took a break in the middle for dinner, but I think I ended up playing overall for about an hour. I played through 21 turns before I died. In those 21 turns I:

• Killed 28 zombies
• Had 27 Victory Points left
• Got 4 of the Loot Cards
• Was bitten by zombies 4 times before I finally died.

Looing back, it felt like I was spending most of my time spawning zombies. Here's how a turn would go:

• Roll 1d6 for number of zombies to spawn.
• For each spawning zombie, roll 1d10 for direction, then 1d10 for distance.
• For each zombie that spawned adjacent/on top of me, resolve combat (1d10).
• Roll 1d6 for my movement
• Fight any zombies along the way (1d10)
• Move 1d4 zombies 1 space
• Resolve combat if required (1d10).

Mainly I wanted to move farther per turn. Maybe 1d6 is too small? Maybe I should up it to 1d10?

After I died, I played through as if I had the door and radio keys needed to complete the scenario. It took another 10 turns to reach the radio, rolling normally for movement. Along the way I had to kill another 22 zombies, and I would have lost combat & been bitten 4 more times. So it would have been possible for me to complete the scenario, but highly unlikely.

Next I need to go through a 2-player scenario. Maybe after that I'll play around with tweaking movement.

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