Game #51: City and Guilds by Scurra (David Brain)

David,

Thanks for your continued willingness to expose yourself to scorn and ridicule in the GDW (kidding, obviously!). It's amazing to me how varied your repetoire of games is -- very impressive that you can design good games of such different styles and scopes.

I’m not sure I’ve fully digested the way this game is played, but perhaps that’s as useful a starting point as any for my critique. It seems like somewhere in here, there’s a simple, comprehensible game, but it feels to me like it would require quite a lot of effort on my part to discover it.

The economic system is a good example of this. There’s a very clever idea here, with the price of buying or selling X corresponding to the current space on the track, and as items are bought or sold, the price goes up or down correspondingly, with the numbers on the track representing the appropriate costs. This is a really cool idea, but the explanation of this system is practically non-existant in the rulebook. If I hadn’t remembered you explaining it in some separate post, I’d have been hopelessly lost.

There are some things that sound very promising. For example, the “apprentice, journeyman, master” construct, with each having a correspondingly higher probability of success at tasks. Ok, well and good. But now there’s also three levels called “Production, Craft, and Worker” which don’t appear to correlate to Apprentice/Journeyman/Master in any way. Moreover, the terms you’ve chosen throughout the game are horribly vague, and it makes understanding the game so much harder. “Resource” is fine, but what is the distinction between a “Good” and an “Item”? What’s the difference between “Craft level” and “Worker level”? You probably define these somewhere, and that’s fine, but the whole point of adding a theme is that it’s meant to make understanding the game easier because of the intuitive connection between the terminology and the mechanics. In this game, it’s exactly the opposite -- the terminology is so obfuscating that it’s actually *more difficult* to understand the game as a result.

In addition to that, there are some terms that don’t appear to be defined very clearly. For example, there’s something called a “Guild level” that confers between 0 and 2 “base actions”, but then you add to this the numbers showing on your dice, which correspond to whether you’re a Journeyman, Apprentice, or Master...

My overall impression of the game is that it borrows perhaps a bit too liberally from other games, most notably “Traders of Genoa”, to really shine in its own right. You definitely have some great, original ideas, but I think you might lean heavily enough on prior designs that the coolness of your own ideas is unnecessarily diminished. An example of a superfluous borrowed element is, I think, the contract mechanic. I think you could pretty much hack that out and change the game relatively little. Other random thoughts are that the board movement aspect appears to be somewhat superfluous, and I think the game could perhaps be sharpened a lot without it. It seems that the board is only needed for the “contract” mechanic (adding a pick-up-and-deliver aspect to an economic game, which I think is unnecessary and, in this case, too derivate of ToG), and for the current incarnation of the “thief” mechanic, but I’m not sure how much I like that latter mechanic anyway. It seems prone to guesswork, although I suppose it could work ok if you can say “well, I know Joe needs to go to town X to sell his Item, so I’ll stake out that route”, but since there are other routes, you’re basically just forcing Joe to go the long way. It might be better if it was more “Pirate’s Cove” style where the thief just stakes out one Guild and a player going there risks being shaken down.

Other than the thief, it appears that there’s no direct interaction in the game, and it seems like that is a bad thing in a 3 hour game. I suppose there’s perhaps the indirect “competition for limited stuff” kind of interaction, but since only 2 players can get into a given guild, I’m not sure how serious this will be. I would have thought there would be more deal-making or price-setting, but I suppose the players aren’t the guilds themselves, but just representatives of the guilds, and in that sense, the guild presumably sells all of its goods at one price.

Here’s how I would have designed this game. Presumably, some of this is the way it actually works, but anyway:

-- Like the current system, each player has memberships in up to two guilds, and has a level in that guild of Apprentice, Journeyman, or Master.

-- Each turn, “Contract Cards” are placed in each town, Disciples-style: this indicates a demand for something in that town.

--Converting Resources into Items and Items into Goods (or whatever) requires blending resources. Resources are available for purchase; they are NOT the purview of the guilds, and are not guild-specific (ie, different Guilds both want some of the same resource). Instead, the Guilds specialize in converting resources into Items. Maybe each Guild can produce two kinds of “Items” -- “standalone” items, and “component” items. So, for example, the “Blacksmith” guild could produce “Horseshoes” for direct sale, or “nails” which, along with “timber”, can be used to produce “Houses”.

So, the idea is that each Guild would need, as raw materials, some of the same resources as other guilds. Members of that Guild could use these to produce items; the sellable items could then be sold, and the “component” items could be used EITHER by a member of that Guild OR of the Guild that makes the corresponding component to produce a more valuable “Good”. So in my example, the Blacksmith makes nails, the Carpenter makes boards, and EITHER can take nails and boards and convert them into a House, which may be one of the Contract cards. Or, conversely, you could have a “cooperation” mechanic where reps from two Guilds must work together to complete a Contract. Or, you could have a “second level” of Guilds that convert components into Goods. (with perhaps the tension being that players can join the “lower” guilds who turn less of a profit but can convert resources into sellable goods, or they can join the “upper” guilds, who earn higher commissions but depend upon the lower Guilds to provide them with components).

On top of this would presumably be built some sort of economy whereby resources are bought and sold, items are produced and purchased, etc, and that would all have to be derived. But the crucial point of this is that in “my” version, there’s a sort of narrative flow to what is happening in the game. Resources are being converted into sellable goods, and those are used to complete contracts. In your model, it just feels too higgledy-piggledy -- the game is basically about making money, but there are so many ways to make money -- selling resources, selling goods, selling items, completing contracts, stealing, etc -- that it feels like it would be overwhelming to cobble an overall strategy together.
Of course, this would be a pretty substantial overhaul to do things this way. I think there are some genuinely good ideas in your rulebook, and were I to try to “fix” your game, to the extent that it even needs fixing, I would probably retain the Apprentice/Journeyman/Master construct, the Resource/Goods/Items construct (with better names), and the economic pricing model, which I think is quite clever. The things I’d look to remove or refocus are the secondary levels of complexity; the distinction between “Craft/Worker/Production” and “Apprentice/Journeyman/Master” just has to go.

Hope this is in some way helpful. I like the premise of the game, and look forward to seeing the next iteration of the design!

Good luck,

Jeff

The game ending mechanic also seemed a lot like the end mechanic of ToG (although advancement on that track wasn't triggered in exactly the same way).

My complaint was really more that if you just built the game around your own ideas, without incorporating the ideas from other games, you'd have a better game. This isn't an objective comment meant to refer to game design in general, but rather, to this specific game.

My complaint here may not be so much that the game has a board as a physical object (ie, this isn't a comment about "here's a component you can cut out and reduce the cost!" -- I don't care about that kind of stuff anyway). Rather, I'm saying that the spatial movement from town to town aspect is not really that interesting, except for the Contracts (which I claim are superfluous) and the Thief (which I'm not sold on), and as a vehicle to justify burning APs, which feels a lot like Hansa (and any other game where APs are used for movement). You could keep the different towns, keep the different price tracks, but remove the "travel" aspect and lose nothing.

But you could accomodate this abstractly in a travel-less game; Merchants' power could be that they can take actions in 2 cities per turn, as opposed to other players who can only act in one.

And moreover, my standard guideline is that you can't justify superfluous complexity by appealing to further superfluous complexity. If travel only exists to make the Merchant power important, then you can cut out two things and lose nothing! I'm not saying that merchants are superfluous of course, just using them to make a broader argument.

Glad we agree on that! I think I'm finally beginning to tease out the rules from the rulebook, and it's starting to make more sense. I do think some of the ideas in "my version" of the game were different from what you have, I'll say more on that below.

But only two players can be in any one Guild; where do Goods and Luxuries come from prior to one or both players advancing to that level?

I don't know; this feels like a classic case of Unnecessary Complexity to me. I would retain either Apprentice/Journeyman/Master or Craft/Worker/Production. Keeping both feels like too much (and will presumably drastically lengthen the game as advancing through the ranks will take a while, even with "skipping".)

I didn't get this at all from the rules or the supporting materials; are you sure it's in there?

I think that what was different about the idea I was articulating was a distinction between a "lower tier" of guilds that take raw materials and make them into intermediate products, and a "higher tier" that take intermediate products and make sellable goods. I think there's potential for some nice tension between these two different kinds of guilds. In contrast, the tension in your game is more about "should I get really good at making intermediate products, or start at the bottom rung of the 'finished product' world". But I think that realistically, you can start as a entry-level mill worker OR an entry-level carpenter pretty much equally, but obviously the carpenter and the mill worker depend on each other in an essential way. So that is what "my" version of this idea would be about -- the interplay that arises in a two-step production model. I think it's a different enough point of emphasis that it perhaps deserves its own game...

I'm sorry to have to agree wholeheartedly. Not that you shouldn't have put up the game, because I think it will be fun to talk about. But there are some very basic concepts of the game that aren't well explained, and I am afraid it will limit people's ability to comment -- that you'll have to spend your whole session talking about how the game is actually played, rather than about how to improve it. Perhaps you might spend tonight revising the rulebook and posting a better one tomorrow? It's your call, of course, but it might be a better use of your time than answering these kinds of questions all week...

Thanks again,

Jeff

- Seth

Hi

I have just read the rules and not the comments from the others.

Before I start to accuse the game for every bad thing that exist in the world, I must say that this game has potential ? but it need a lot of work.

My first reaction to the rules was (when I saw the graphics on the internet side), this look really interesting. Then I read the rules? and I read the rules? and I read the rules? and I read the rules. Something has to be done about the rules. Actually I did not understand the rules completely. There are still allot of question marks (I will read the rules one more)

I liked the basic layout for the game - but not for 3 hours. I would have guessed on a one-hour game. I think that one-hour is what you should aim for? or include more intresting interaction between the players.

I will be back when I read the rules once more (and check comments from the others).

// Johan

Hello

I agree with Jeff on nearly everything in his initial comment.

I absolutely not understand how the market works. I understand that the game is based around a mechanism where you go from town to town and try to sell the gods that you have made (or bought from the previous town).
How does the market work? How does the price move?
Why would a Commodity Guild member be on the roads to sell the gods?

A player could loose all his money (make some bad deals and then got robbed by the thieves). After that he will not be able to do anything more (If he is only a member of a merchant guild he is out of the game but can still move around).
You can also have a "run away leader" situation. A person with a lot of money can do nearly anything he wants. The other players can't do anything to prevent that. That is OK for a shorter game but not for a 3-hour length game.

I think that the main problem with the game is that you want too much.
- You want to have a producing game with several levels and possibilities.
- You also want a merchant game also with several levels and a lot of type of gods.
- Then you add the thieves for some sort of random element in the game. It looks like they have nothing to do with the basic game. Maybe you should remove them from the game and add them in an expansion.

Remove the dice
I would remove the dice from the game (actually you don't need any dice at all). I would instead include a deck of cards. Each Guild are represented by 6 cards. If you have one for that guild you are on level 1, two makes you on a level two basis and so on. The cost for the new guild card depends on how many Guild cards you have.

Black Rote markers
One way to deal with the thieves could be to that all players have the possibility to hire thieves each turn (for the next turn). The players that hires thieves, randomly get a Black route marker for each thieves that they hired. The thieves are only valid for one turn.

// Johan

In this game I think that the thief's guild can be the game winner (For no money you can take what the others has, and there is nothing they could do about it).

// Johan

Simplify, Simplify, Simplify

Remove bribing. All the little details like bribing, etc should be reconsidered. It seems like it would almost always be in the best interest of a player to bribe his way up. Maybe that should cost more OR in my opinion, done away with altogether. This way, the dice rolls become more climactic and meaningful. Maybe make a community dice for bribery that one player owns with like 3 - 1s, 1 - 2, and 2 special sides that you add to a dice roll if you are the current holder of the bribery dice. This could maybe be a Thieves guild trait. Anyhow, if you’re going to make dice rolls matter, make them matter. Otherwise do away with them like some players suggest (which I disagree with).

I like the game theme ALOT. And am actually inspired by it. But I feel the rules are way cumbersome.

It's funny how we always over presume something will occur...I do it ALOT with my games probably without even noticing. See although if I was designing the game, I would (and HAVE!!!) responded along those same lines, I realize now, from the critics perspective, that it doesn't matter. So what if someone's game is jeopardized by bad rolls!! It happens ALOT in any game with dice and people still play them. The key is to make some minor mechanic to counter that but still, having that possibility is always tense and fun. For the loser, as long as he feels he has a shot, a hope, he'll be itching in his seat until his turn. Everyone else will just be itching until it's their turn. The only problem is the system will promote a runaway leader if 1 player doesnt miss any of those first few critical rolls. Maybe make it always as difficult to advance it just costs more to do so. This way, there is always the tension and possibility that you can catch up with your level 5 opponent! Anyhow, thanks for putting your game out here like this!