Game #9: Dirty Business

I agree with Scurra, a lot of little bits to push into a box. And for me at this time of night a lot to digest, so this will come in two pieces.
The first are my first impressions on how to reduce # of componets.
1) Supplier boards. Make them double sided. Flip them over when needed for Shortage conditions.
2) Product chips. Pretty much the same thing. You essentially have three commodities, a raw state and a refined state. If you added a mark or such to one side of each color chip, you would only need one set instead of two.
3) Order chips. Thought the First, just add a few more product chips into the bag. This doesn't really reduce the # of anything, it just reduces complexity. Since they are stacked on the customer board there should be no confusion with actual products.
Thought the second, make them cards. There is not a lot of art that I can see. Maybe cards as orders would allow for a better development of theme. ie. Prize winning Tomatoes: Premium Soil.
4) Calender. If the track was 4 wide and 12 long, you could eliminate one of the two time markers. I think this would also make it clearer without having to look in two places on the track.
5) Customer boards. If the Contract boxes were tracks, you could move the white markers up or down as needed, instead of having to move them back and forth from the pile. Also most human minds can instantly count things up to about 4, and really quickly count them up to about 7.

Hmm.. Thats all I can think of. It does seem like a neat game, but I will have to read again tomorrow and get back here on some other stuff.

Andy

Observations:

Too many different components to be seriously considered for commercial release. Also possibly too "fiddly" (can't really tell without playing the game though, I think I would call Puerto Rico "fiddly" too had I only seen the list of components).

Pre-game decisions. I don't think it is a good idea to let players decide on the endconditions and the number of customers. This is stuff that can make of break a game. Decide a number and end conditions, possibly tweak it after extensive testing and set it in stone. I think that such important decisions should be left to the designer, not the players. Players can always play a variant or tweak the numbers if they want, you do not need to mention that in the rules or, if really want, you could add it in a "variant" section at the end.

What if a player cannot pay interest on his loans?

Does the game have a runaway leader problem?

How is the downtime in this game?

Whims of fate. The mechanic is very random and seems tacked on. It just doesn't feel "right" in what seems to otherwise be quite a heavy business, resourcemanagement game. There must be other ways to achieve some nasty interaction with the components you already have, right?

- Rene Wiersma

The reason why I think this game could have a runaway leader problem is the way the scoring system works. The scoring system rewards having a lot of money and production units at the end of each month. It seems to me that whoever scores the most points in the first month is likely to win the game anyway, because he has more resources which he can use to expand his lead even further. In other words, there is no tension between going for vp's or for resources since they are technically the same.

Perhaps it is an idea to award vp's to players with the most money, but ignoring Debt Chips. This way it might be lucrative to take an extra loan for a temporary boost in money and vp's, but it would be detrimental in the long-run.

In anyway it is a good idea to score vp's for something that doesn't directly translate into a good position in the game resource-wise. You could give some end-of-game bonuses for most money or such, because that encourages players not to "waste" money on vp's and to force them to keep playing within the theme of the game right up until the last turn.

A related idea is to allow the players to pay off only one loan per turn. This way the decision to take a loan is even harder, as it takes longer to pay them all back.

Also, calculating the vp's for Largest Operation seems extremely fiddly. I can't imagine that it is easy to see who has the largest operation, unless you do a large amount of counting, recounting, checking and rechecking.

Is there something else you do with the bag except drawing starting tiles? If not, you could use drawing tiles from the bag as an extra randomizer instead of the die. Used-up tiles could go back in the bag in some cases, so that you have some control over what is in the bag and the odds of a certain tile being drawn, which makes it is possible to plan around that a little bit. I always like to connect every "thing" in the game with another "thing" in the game, so that when you do something *here* it influences something *there*. Even if it is something very small such as subtly changing the odds of a card- or tiledraw.

- Rene Wiersma

Hi Matt...

Very interesting! It seems that there are a few different directions this game could go in...

SIMULATION - By "simulation," I mean a game that adheres to a real-life scenario through a host of complex rules. To me, this is why theme is so crucial for a simulation. A WWII grognard will demand that a simulation of the landing at Normandy Beach be as true-to-life as possible, and if this means reams of modifiers and fiddly rules to simulate the smallest of minutae, so be it.

STRATEGY GAME - This would be more like Puerto Rico, in which the game sacrifices realism for mechanics that are elegant but engaging. As you know, strategy gamers are interested in game balance over realism, so that their gameplay decides the outcome of the game, rather than a deterministic mechanic (no matter how realistic). The rules need to be simple enough to be absorbed and memorized by the end of a player's first game, yet involving enough that a player will want to come back to it again and again.

FAMILY GAME - This would be a game that retains some strategy, but throws in enough random events that a less skilled player can beat a more-skilled player.

I know this is common knowledge to most BGDFers, but I wanted to lay out my definitions at the outset to make sure we were talking about the same things. Now, I can use these three directions this game can go in my responses...

1 - THEME
If you're aiming for a simulation, you could try to make this a model of modern business, with the logistics of supply and demand, vendor/customer relationship, and goods transportation all in the mix. If you went this direction, would keeping the "dirt" theme still be applicable? Would your target audience be willing to overlook the somewhat mundane theme, or even be drawn into it?

If you're aiming for a strategy or family game, theme isn't so important as long as the mechanics are strong. In fact, if you rethemed the game to be about tampon manufacturing or frog baking, you might not even have to change a single mechanic. Obviously, a family game has more room for overt humor than a strategy game.

Personally, the more of a simulation a game becomes, the more the theme needs to appeal to me. If a game promises 15 minutes of light, fulfilling fun, then I couldn't care less what the theme is.

2 - WHIMS OF FATE
You've mentioned that you want to keep some chance in the game, to represent the "whims of fate" that can mess with the best of businesses. I'm not sure what I think of this. It depends on what kind of game you're shooting for.

If you're aiming for a simulation, there is a place for these. Some wargames let players pick up single cards that can be played to one of your "whims of fate" effect. This would be better than a die roll, in that it would encourage a player to formulate a strategy based on his available cards. On the other hand, you might consider having the game trigger these events, and players would have no control over them, good or bad.

If you're aiming for a strategy game, then the Whims of Fate need to be reined in. They need to be triggered by the players at the most optimal time; but their effect shouldn't be so strong that another player feels "interfered with." Direct interaction is a tricky thing here; too much feels chaotic (a player feels that he lost because he wasn't dealt the right cards), but too little feels like multi-player solitaire.

One way you can do this is by strictly budgeting a player's options. Done properly, a player will have to judge whether he has a spare action to mess with another player, or if it will not justify the neglect done to his own processes.

If you're aiming for a family game, then the Whims of Fate would be a great way to even the competition. You may want to consider printing the results directly on the dice, so that players don't have to constantly refer to a table. Again, you don't want to make them too powerful, lest the game become a matter of who rolls the best.

3 - STREAMLINING
If you're aiming for a simulation, then I don't know how much streamlining you need. Maybe a nip here and a tuck there, but it depends how realistic you want to keep things, and how many bits you can afford to provide.

If you're aiming for a strategy game, perhaps you don't need vehicles. Your resource-to-goods process is very rich, and there's enough there to build a good game around. Anything else might detract from a potentially wonderful mechanic. Also, you'd be able to dispose of a number of bits and boards that way.

If you're aiming for a family game, then perhaps you would consider the following radical suggestion: how about a card game? You'd have resource cards, vehicle cards, customer cards, and fate cards. Draw a certain amount from the deck, play a few, produce goods tokens if you can, and sell them for money. It could work, it would simplify the game to the level that anyone could play, it would seriously cut down on the number of bits and boards the game needs, and it would still have a relationship to your theme.

Finally, I second (or third, or fourth... I lost count) the idea that you should have fixed game-end conditions. Anything variable could be too overwhelming, when combined with potentially complex rules.

I hope this helps...

Bryk,

The design looks much "cleaner" now and makes a cohesive impression. You seem to have tackled most things discussed here.

However, you still have a lot of components. One way to reduce the number of components is to have some double-sided chips. Another way is to simply reduce the amount of chips, especially the number of supply-, order- and productchips and to make the shortage of chips an integral part of the game, something players have to plan around. You might want ot tweak the amount of chips available for each different number of players, though.

I like it that players now have their own customer as well. This brings a nice interactive aspect into the game, as well as a method to slow down the leader a bit.

The description of the banking phase is a bit wordy. Perhaps it is a bit easier to understand if you clearly state the steps in this phase. The order in which things are processed is pretty important here. For example:
- Sell Vehicles and Factories
- Pay interest on loans and maintenance on vehicles
- Pay off any loans
- Buy new vehicles, factories and/or take new loans

I think this is the most logical order in which to do things. It does allow a player to sell vehicles and factories before paying maintenance on Vehicles, but that is not a big deal. I think it would be nice if you gave the players to option to sell Vehicles and Factories, even when it is not needed to pay the loans.

It is still theoretically possible that a player cannot pay his loans, even after selling all of his factories and/or vehicles. You need to state in the rules what happens when that occurs.

I wonder if the Vehicles or not too powerful. If they are, it might be an idea to give a player 2 actions for his first Vehicle and only 1 for each next Vehicle. Of course, tweaking the costs and abilities of things can only be done through playtesting.

I am a bit worried about downtime in this game. The bidding for orders is an interactive phase in which all players can participate, so that should give players something to do and think about in between their own turns. However, the banking- and actionphase are pretty much solitaire. If these phases take up quite a bit of time, other players might get bored.

A nice trick to prevent downtime is to divide a turn into smaller segments. This is easy to do in this game, because it has clearly defined, separate phases. For example: player A executes the banking phase, then player B executes the banking phase, then player C executes the banking phase. Then player A executes the action phase, the player B executes the action phase, etc. This would decrease the perceived downtime dramatically, although it does alter the dynamics of the game somewhat.

Have you thought about changing the order in which the phases are executed? What if a turn starts with, for example, the order phase, then an action phase and then the banking phase? How would this effect the dynamics of the game? What if the starting player could choose the order in which the phases are executed? Just some stuff to think about. It might add some nice strategy to the game.

Drawing chips from the bag. I think that is a really nice touch. It's something the players can plan around, especially later in the game, but it's still a bit random.

The new scoring system doesn't convince me. It's much cleaner than the previous version, but the new system is very "calculative". Every 1$ is still 1 VP. I think this also makes the bidding for orders less exciting, because it is much easier to see how much an order is worth.

Perhaps it is an idea to award the player with the most money (and perhaps second-most, etc) and to reward the player with the most factories + vehicles. Fulfilled orders could still have a fixed VP value.

Such a scoring system would create some more competition between players. For example, a player might want to buy an extra factory just for the vp's even though he doesn't really need it for his production. Or, a player might sell a vehicle, because he cannot win the "most of" in that category, but he can win the "most money" with the money generated from the sale.

In anyway, it would be harder to determine how much exactly a VP would be worth in $'s which is important to keep the bidding for orders interesting.

I think both scoring systems would promote min/maxing in the last turn(s). One way to solve this is by having a more or less random ending. For example put 7 "endgame" chips in the bag. When the last one is drawn, the game ends. Another idea is to hide some information, for example, put the money chips behind a screen or use one-sided papermoney that players keep facedown.

Another thing that you might want to think about: allow the players to only sell 1 thing (loan, factory, vehicle) and buy only 1 thing (loan, factory, vehicle) during the banking phase. This way players are forced to look ahead a bunch of turns and it will introduce some gut-wrenching decisions, especially with the threat of going bankrupt (through costs of maintenance and interest on loans) always looming over one's head.

- Rene Wiersma