Rochester Gamers Community

My buddy Curt took his printout of my prototype to the LaCrosse Gamer's game night last week and actually got them to play it:

La Crosse Board Game Group - Games Played 9-03-09

I sent him some updated pdf's and I think he's trying to get them to play it again this week. Hopefully their feedback will be as good as last time.

Just a quick note that I will be running two events for A Dangerous Business at this year's Gamer's Reunion.

I wanted to express my gratitude for everybody who has been and will be spending your own hard-earned gaming time to play test my prototype.

This article from Boardgame News, written by someone who has designed their own game, says what I want to say with better eloquence.

This time instead of writing everything out clearly I just copied and pasted my notes from the play test last night at Micre's game night.

I had fun and appreciated the guys' willingness to try my game.

This is the fourth playtest because the third was conducted by my buddy Curt with his gaming-aware family. He tried with 5 players, the old (mean) level-ups, and without the new boss tiles, but I guess it still worked pretty well. Anyway, here are my notes for last night (and Cyrus/Joel -- let me know if I forgot anything!):

It's late Monday now, and I'm writing about a playtest that took place on Saturday. Will do my best.

First off: the good (actually, great) news -- we got a full game in in about 60 minutes. I was thrilled with that play time!

Played the first real playtest of it on Wednesday. It was pretty late and I was a little hesitant to start a game that late but they seemed eager so you don't waste that.

It went well.

That was two days ago. That's about all I can remember.

I was in the shower today when I realized that this game will not be fun with fewer than 4 players.

There is too much of a likelihood of only drawing "good" tiles and having the quests be too easy. I will have to think about a solution.

About 3 weeks ago I asked myself, "If Reiner Knizia were to design an adventure/RPG board game, what would it be like?"

I started jotting down a few things. First, it would be as abstract as possible (Ra, most others). It would have to involve rows & columns (Kingdoms, Beowulf, Atlanteon, his new one about robots). It would involve some kind of push-your-luck mechanism (Ra, Amun Re). It would use cards with symbols to pay for things (Blue Moon City, Lord of the Rings). It would have a set collection mechanic (Ra again, Dragon Land). It would involve drawing tiles from a bag (T&E, that one egyptian one). You would draw cards at the end of your turn (Knights of Charlemagne). It would involve an auction (Modern Art, ummm... Ra). And it would be impeccably balanced and sublimely elegant (most of his).