Critique the October 2005 GDS entries

Legend of the Drunken Head Master and Cram-ium, Student Athelete Edition both make me wish I could've worked out my "Tenure Track and Field" design. But it just didn't work. :-(

All the entries look very interesting...I can't wait to start reading them in depth.

K.

I like Cubes & Sticks, but I'd never get to go first!

~Josh

I'd be interested in getting clued on in which games those are, as they all seeme to have at least a small part of "a mechanic or component that is essentially 3-D in nature" and "put your favorite college's name here."

Well, since this was my first ever entry, I am very pleased with
how everything turned out. Very enjoyable contest. Better yet was
the practical experience. I never knew writing good, clean and concise rules was this hard! I also enjoyed the wide variety of entries.

I look forward to next month's contest!

Danog

Judging was hard this month. I'm preparing prototypes for a Con this weekend, so I had time only to read each entry once. This meant many of the more involved games suffered because I couldn't appreciate the rules right away.

1. Legend of Drunken Head Master
I give big kudos to Mitch for doing something original (most of the other entires duplicated each other in some way). Unfortunately, I've never played a drinking game, so I had no basis on which to judge this. As drinking games go (at least, the few that I've heard of), this one seemed a lot more interesting.

2. Eras Academia
This was one of the games that suffered. I think there was a lot going on here, but I couldn't decipher it on the first go, so it didn't make my top three. If I survive the Con, I may go back and give it a second (and possibly third) reading.

3. Degree Builder
It was interesting to read this entry, as it shared a lot with my own (Courseload). In some ways, I think it handled the ideas more elegantly. The whole "wagons as loaded shuffleboard pucks" was pretty ingenious.

4. Cramium
I liked this game a lot -- it probably would have been my top choice -- but I couldn't really identify a critical 3D component. Beyond that shortcoming, it had everything I like in a game: clean rules, interesting natural interactions between mechanics, and mechanics that reinforced the theme.

5. Alumni Association
This was my top pick. I laughed out loud while reading the rules. The mechanics were instantly clear but their interactions deep enough to be interesting. The Calling Plans' 3D mechanic may have been "tacked on", but darned if I couldn't think of a non 3D way to reproduce the same functionality. Overall, a fun concept executed with elegance -- I wish I could play a round of it tonight.

6. Sticks & Cubes
I didn't fully get the intricacies of the rules, but this seemed like a pretty interesting game. The whole "click/clique" thing confused the crap out of me for the first 1/3 of the reading, but once I figured it out, I appreciated someone focusing on this aspect of college life. Some of the rules didn't quite make sense (step 1 says you don't have to tell people where you're putting the piece, then step 2 says you have to -- before any voting takes place), but the core mechanics seemed solid. This was my 3rd place pick.

7. Courseload
My entry. Every month, I tell myself that I'll post a summary instead of "full" rules -- and each month I blow it. This month hurt more than usual, as several key ideas were implied but not explained. Yes, the magnets help hold the stack together, but being heavier, the tend to unbalance the stack if you distribute them evenly (which is offset by the more evenly distributed magnetic field). Also, you probably can't stack 24 chips on your pawn, but there are enough cards like "Open Book Final" that let you place chips off your stack that, with luck, you might still collect a 'B' average in 6 courses. After reading Mike's comments, I agree that it might just be better the scratch the whole dexterity angle.

8. Alumni Fund
This was another complex game that I couldn't appreciate enough on one reading. It seemed well thought out and seemed like it could play wildly differently depending on the placement of the Clock Tower (this is a good thing). This is another game I should revisit when things settle down.

9. The Greek Company
I loved the theme of this game! The thought of philosophers dancing wildly on stacks of books has a lot going for it. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to pick apart the rules. It seems like the game could take a very long time to complete. I'd love to actually try this game and see how it feels to play.

10. Dean Duties
My 2nd place choice, and another example of clear rules with deep interactions. I didn't fully grasp the intricacies of play, but I understood enough to play (I think). The game itself looks quite attractive, which makes me wonder if this is Seo's entry?

K.

It's not that at all - I don't care how you rated my game, or whether you liked the concept. It's perfectly fine to score it lower for being unoriginal or for any other reason (like it's not really very 3D). What bothers me is that you said I "obviously lifted" it from another game. I did not.

It also bothers me a little that you counted your own votes. I don't think the contest runner should do that (given that he is the one person, normally, who knows who made each game), but perhaps that's how GDS has been done from the beginning.

I say, just for transparency, that switching places isn't enough. Let's disqualify both of them and proclaim MY entry the winner. ;-P

Because, as Kreitler accuratley deduced, Dean Duties was my entry. I would love to know who is the author of The Greek Company. Had it included some licensing comments, it might have received my 1st place vote (actually this situation made my life easier, as it would have tied in my ranking with The Alumni Fund.

Anyway, congratulations to all contestants, specially to those who beat me, Paralepsis and Xaquery. As I was reading those two entries I thought: "Oh no, two more games about building University premises, and both are better than mine!" With great pain but a clean conscience my votes went to The Alumni Fund and Cubes and Sticks, in that order, with Kreitler's Courseload taking the third spot. Hammumu's Alumni Association would have been in my top 3 too had he been more serious about licensing. I loved his licensing idea, though.

Seo

When reading the entries, I thought that was yours, based on the sense of humour. But I had my doubts, as it wasn't about pudding. ;-)

An easy alternative would be cutting holes in the cards. That would work for A.A., but not for Arcadia.

Seo

I'm getting stereotyped! Watch for my next game about a small town that's devastated when a bus full of children sinks into a frozen lake.

...

Yogurt

The problem with licensing for me was that my game is not one a college would be WILLING to sell. They might sell an unbranded one as a humorous take on college issues, but what college would willingly say "Hey, we harass our graduates ruthlessly!"? I mean, I'll always go for the joke if I can, so I'm happy with what I chose (and that people liked it! Yay!), but I'm not sure I had a possible "straight answer" for this. My wife suggested that you could brand it with the school's rival... but that is both still a bit of a joke and possibly libelous! I knew licensing was sort of a mark against me, and if there were money on the line, I might have gone with a different idea to begin with, but hey, it's all in fun! So I picked the most fun.

I actually came up with two games. The other was a very straight one, about building a school and making graduates. I had to go with this one though, just because it's so cynical, silly, and TRUE (if you're a college graduate, you know this! And they can track you down SO fast when you move. I had that in the game a bit, but it was needless complexity). And moreso because it was the simplest, cleanest idea I've ever had! While I do feel the calling cards are pretty tacked on, I really am proud of the core concept of just ordering your calls (not too big on the use of dice and chips... if I could just make it the 6 cards and nothing else, that'd be great!).

And since I didn't put these up before, my votes were #1 for Alumni Fund, which is well deserving. I don't think it's groundbreaking or anything, but it's rock-solid, just sounds great. There's something that feels Carcassonne-classic about it to me, which I can't really explain, just has to do with the mental image of nice looking blocks being stacked with roofs on top (which Carcassonne has nothing to do with, hence I can't explain it). And the clock tower is a great feature. I think there'd be a real tactile and aesthetic pleasure to this game (The Greek Company I could see also having that) that would make me want to play even though it has nothing to do with the gameplay.

#2, Degree Builder, good old-fashioned roly poly fun. I probably wouldn't have picked it until I went back and read more carefully and realized that trying to smack into other carts to spill them is a gameplay element. That's fun.

And #3, Dean Duties. I really liked the various "stack up college buildings" games, and while Alumni Fund takes top honors there, this is my second choice. I'm a sucker for "make something that matches this card". Had to do a lot of juggling for 3rd place though, with Sticks & Cubes (the other stacker!) and Cramium also good contenders.

for example: I have wanted to use the everyone-plays-a-different-role each turn mechanic like in Citadels or Puerto Rico but it doesn’t seem common enough yet and I am afraid that people here would consider it non-original.

- Dwight

I would say that as long as you can add something to that mechanic to make it your own, it is ok to use.

On reflection, I was out of my gourd.

What I thought was unfair was the idea that Hamumu wouldn't have thought of using transparent cards without the recent and local example of Arcadia, when of course there are all sorts of games with transparent components, just like there are all sorts of game where you stack blocks.

However, given my stance back with the Tom Jolly patent thread, I obviously don't think there's anything dishonourable with using ideas from other games, although I would usually call it "borrowing." So please ignore when I said otherwise. :)

(Sorry for continuing to derail the thread, but if someone brought up Jolly, I wanted it to be me.)

Yogurt

I don't see transparent cards as a new or innovative mechanism, or even a mechanism at all - they're more accurately thought of as an implementation (the playing of cards and laying of tiles are mechanisms, which are neither new or innovative).

Gloom is primarily a Take That game, like Munchkin or (going all the way back) Mille Bornes. You play bonuses on yourself and penalties on your opponents until someone achieves a certain victory condition. There is no real innovative mechanism there. The innovation in Gloom comes from the implementation - the use of transparent cards to track the various bonuses. Gloom could just as easily have been implemented as regular cards with some other method of tracking each character's various stats, much like Munchkin where weapons and armor cards are just left in the playing area to keep track of bonuses and levels are tracked with a die. (imagine the reverse - Munchkin with transparent Item cards that stack on your Character card, clothing him in armor and putting weapons in his hands,etc.)

Arcadia makes much more clever use of this implementation, yet remains a tile-laying game with some set collection and area influence mechanisms, similar in many respects to Carcassonne. Actually, Arcadia seems less gimmicky than Gloom and migh make a pretty cool little game if published.

Alumni Association, which is a clever game as well, makes use of the transparent card implementation in an even more disposable manner than Gloom (no offense!).

Sorry for the threadjack. I think it is an important distinction to make in design consideration.

Cards with holes instead of transparency might work just the same in AA, IIRC the game.

Seo