[GDS] March 2012 "Dragon Dice" - Critiques

I voted for only one of the top six listed, and I split my vote and voted for six. Go figure. With that apparent out-of-touchness as a disclaimer, here are my comments:

My feedback:

1 Dragon by the Tail:

Nice non-traditional use of the theme. The dice are clever; it might be useful (though less artistic) to include numbers on them for easier seeing. Very simple, but I think this would be really fun as a quick filler or family game.

2 Cursed Lands:

Could be fun, although with only four dice and five unique sides, I think it might be much more limited than Yahtzee, which is already pretty simple. The combos occasionally contain one Magic side, but the Magic sides are going to be rolled twice as many times as any other, so I think you're frequently going to have two of them (useful for only one of the combos) and roll even more of them when you don't want them. The combos also seem a little hard to remember, but if you had score sheets with pictures, that would go away. The luck factor is very high, but it's supposed to be a "light" game with dice, so maybe that's not a problem.

3 Dragons of the Four Winds:

Interesting idea, and I like the wind theme. I also like the "each player's choice must be unique" part, but why wouldn't you just take the most dice possible, because you have more of an opportunity to score? I'd have to do the math, but I think the doubling if they all match doesn't nearly compensate for this. I think it would be more interesting if the dragon die passed in a different way than the first-move - that would lead to more interesting choices. This would easily be playable by more than three - just roll one of the white dice to see which wind you're matching each turn.

4 Ryu Rally - First Race:

A cool idea; I like the race theme and the three different actions; I'm not sure they're balanced well, but playtesting could iron that out. It's hard to know without knowing how many of these gems you start with or what the dragons' special powers are. You seem to lose more gems than you gain with almost any action, and resting loses you victory points at a 1:1 ratio, so I think the game as written will go on for a time or even forever. I'd take out that penalty. Having random targets to the cards could be frustrating - if they were determined in some way (e.g. the dragon immediately in front of you, your choice of dragon within three movement gems) it could be a more strategic game.

5 Xiao Long Da:

This could be a really cool game, but that would depend on the cards, which aren't fully described (not that there's room in 300 words). I think 30 temples is far too many; it seems like you're going to need a couple of turns even to meet the conditions, and then you have to roll the right numbers. The game would go way faster (and be more fun, I think) if there were multiple temples available at once. Having variable claim conditions is really neat, too - you could even have "roll two threes" or something; that would give the game some interesting variety. I like that the tokens are useful separately from points, too. ==> 1 VOTE

6 The Dragon's Lair:

Different from other entries; this is more of a combat-heavy game. I think you're going to run into trouble with the math, since the only way to defeat a strength 15 dragon would be to have multiple bonus items and roll high. Two steps back for a loss is harsh, too; people are going to be stuck at the in for a long time, and they don't have any choices to make other than when to use their markers (which they'll only have for a short time anyway).

7 Have Dragon, Will Slay:

I love the charlatan theme - very funny. The game mechanics seem a little confusing; I don't know how you ever exceed the village threshold if it is 8-24 and you're rolling a d6, and you've got separate gold values for the village and on the ruse table, which isn't reconciled. Panache has multiple uses, which is cool, but they aren't all equal, which means you'll probably save it for the better use (which I think will be re-rolls) most of the time. I like the panache gain when you don't get to roll - a good balancing mechanism.

8 My Dragon Is Trapped:

A very clever theme idea; I love the ogre pile. The game is very, very simple, which I think might frustrate anybody who's graduated from Cootie-level play. You'll be down to a couple ogres in a couple rolls, and then it's just a lot of sighing loudly while rolling one die at a time. Anything you could do to make it slightly more complex I think would be a plus.

9 WyrmKyn:

This could be cool; it's very difficult to evaluate without seeing the dragon and mission cards. There sould seem to be lots of tables to consult, which can be daunting for new folks - it might be worth simplifying it to use six-sided dice and have simpler mission plans. It's not clear from the rules how one gets a mutation effect or how the mutations apply, or how one evaluates awesomeness of dragons.

10 Dragon-Fire Tunnel:

This could be crazy and fun - a little hard to visualize, but I think I get the picture. The luck factor is high and could get very frustrating if you never roll moves, or roll a ton of grabs with no gold nearby. There aren't going to be a ton of meaningful decisions to make. Still, it might be fun just to roll it out and see what happens.

11 Dragon Nesting Season:

This is also a simple simulation-type game, with limited player choices. The ending doesn't work as written - "when everyone has died or reached the nest" - because people can't die; they just respawn. Therefore, the only good strategy is to fly around capturing knights, and the first players to move will have a distinct advantage because the nearby knights will be gone for later players. The altitude thing is clever; I like it as a resource, but I think it's not going to enter into the planning much - you'll just float up if you need to. Very hard not to be able to get up to 11 with four dice to roll.

12 King Dragon:

An interestingly-themed betting game. It would be simpler to just have the highest dragon give the coins to the lowest dragon. I like that there's actually a small penalty (becoming king dragon) for getting everybody to drop out. It sounds like the king dragon never has a chance to fold? Or maybe he can't fold unless raised? That could be tricky or frustrating, especially since his hand is known to all. There's no reason to use three dice or have the rearranging here, either, since highest roll is best; might be easier just to use a single die and handle ties. I like it, though you might not want to scale the rounds to the players in the way you do - 3 players = 18 rolls plus betting, 6 players = 72 total rolls plus betting; the game would drag exponentially with more players.
==> 1 VOTE

13 Dragon Dice, Breath of Fire:

A neat simple strategy game. I'm not sure how much strategy there would be in the setup phase, but it would be kind of fun to build the board up. Likewise, strategies could be hindered by the dice controlling movement, but it would be fun to find the best move possible with a given roll, and you'd have to pay attention to where you were and what way you were facing. I'm not totally clear how you collect scorch tokens or how you fight knights and archers. But I think this could be pretty fun.

14 Fields of Fire:

A little hard to imagine without images of the boards. The moves could get pretty complicated, if you're moving all dragons along with the knight. The combat seems straightforward enough, but it doesn't say what happens when somebody wins - are the knights killed? Do they relocate? Are dragons killed? Can they come back? Some unanswered questions.

15 A Landscape with Dragons:

Tricky to understand the math involved without example characters, dragons, and villains, and without the cards described. It might be hard to balance if the villain has so many more moving parts than the hero, although the hero is stronger, and his moves always bring him closer to the castle. Sounds like a fun simple strategy game, though; I'd like to see it more fully realized, when I could see how it might play out.

16 Dragon Eggs:

This is a neat abstract game. I think it could be really fun; it might be a little too hard to score with 30 different eggs, since you only get one move. Maybe having two for each number 1-15 would offer more possibility for scoring. The warp moving is cool - that could make it pretty interesting. However, I think the strategy might be pretty obvious most of the time; your only challenge would be spotting your scoring moves, then checking your opponent's, and figuring out whether it's better to take your score or deny your opponent. Not much else to it. But this is a really neat idea and worthy of more work, I think. It looks like you're well on your way to testing it - how did it go? ==> 1 VOTE

17 Dragon Tournament:

A nice, non-traditional storyline, healing dragon mounts - very creative. It's very hard to know how the game would go without seeing the cards, but there might be something fun here.

18 Dragon Derby:

Interesting idea; I like the initiative system with the possibility to change actions. I'm not sure there are enough choices for what to do to keep it interesting - basically move or attack each time, with the various moves and attacks not differentiated. There could be more here if the land spaces and cards make it more complex, but without knowing what those do, it's hard to see.

19 Farmer's Nuisance:

A simple but cool resource management game. Balancing greed (workers) vs. need (warriors) is fun, especially when they exchange at variable rates. Clever; simple; I like it. ==> 1 VOTE

20 Mandate of the Dragon:

This is a neat little simulation. It's a little tricky to figure out at first, but it eventually made sense. The cooperative aspect could be fun as people discuss strategies, but I think you might end up with fairly obvious choices each turn in order to avoid collective death. It might be cooler if there were some random strength effect for the mongols - then there would be risks involved in different strategies, and the optimal one might not be so obvious.

21 Dragon Storm:

This was mine, so I won't critique it. :-)

22 Dragon's Eggs:

A cool idea for a simple strategy game. I really like the balance between strength and movement restrictions you've got here; I don't know for sure whether it's balanced, but it's a neat idea. It doesn't say how you allocate dice to dragons - is that by choice, or does one die have to go with a particular dragon? You also don't say how many eggs there are or where they start. It seems like you could easily stalemate, also, for example by moving your big dragon onto your nest, in which case nobody can enter it. And you could win very quickly just by getting some high rolls while your opponent is stuck with low ones - I'd be interested in seeing how it balances. So, some mechanics questions, but I really like the design. ==> 1 VOTE

23 Drago Masseuse:

Funny, unique theme - I love it. Relatively simple gameplay; the adding is clever, and gives the game some variety and interest. Without it, the press-your-luck part wouldn't work so well. Very cool use of simple components for a complex result. ==> 1 VOTE

#1 Dragon by the Tail

I really liked the use of the dice as eggs and the different scoring possibilities. This plus the push your luck aspect meant that this one got my vote.

#2 Cursed Lands

I think a little more explanation of the scoring system would have helped me here. Good thematic tie-in of the Dragon's body parts to the symbols on the dice.

#3 Dragons of the Four Winds

My entry… I'll do a blog post on the game, but I intentionally took the parameters and treated them as absolute (it must be a light three player with dice as the only component, in other words) and I think a couple other folks worked the same way with better results. I did work to make sure that everyone had a choice and that the choices were roughly equal (e.g. expected value on an East/West wind with one die is 2 (6 points if you roll the wind, since all dice show the wind) and expected value for three dice is 2.2 (~70% chance of getting 3 points, plus about 10% chance of getting 3 more). I'd love to hear what others thought of the game (or even better why you passed it over).

#4 Ryu Rally: First Race

I like game with limited actions represented by cards and the abstract movement and give/take of the different actions (without player elimination) was really cool. This got my vote.

#5 Xiao Long Da

Gameplay looked very interesting but I wasn't sure thematically on the polymorphing dragons.

#6 The Dargon's Lair

Thematically awesome, but there's a big problem: unless I'm reading the rules wrong, it's impossible to win. If you are fighting a Dragon of Strength 15 (or 14), the best you can get on the dice is 12, plus either +2 for the sword or the Dragon is -1 (down to 14). Even if you could do both (which you can't, right?), the Dragon would still win, since you have to exceed the value. This issue might be ameliorated by having not all Dragons be placed on the board, but I don't know if I'd break out a game where I knew there was a decent chance it would literally be unbeatable.

#7 Have Dragon, Will Slay

Faking gullible villagers out of their money by staging fake dragon slayings! I'm not sure what the Castle card does though. It did get me vote however.

#8 My Dragon is Trapped

Ogres sitting on dragons… with the right artwork this game could be a lot of fun. I liked that there was a bit of decision in how many dice to roll.

#9 WyrmKin

One of the meatiest games in the bunch, and I think strays away from the injunction to keep it a light game. I wasn't quite sure how to determine how awesome my dragon was, but I'm sure full rules would spell that out.

#10 Dragon-fire Tunnel

Again a very thematic game. I'm not sure of the distribution of the Insomnius die (I counted 8 possibilities, but it's called out as a d12). I think players might get frustrated by the decision-space: it's either use the dice as rolled or don't use (some of) the dice. When three Hides come up with no boulders nearby, I'm sure to hear some grumbling at the table…

#11 Dragon Nesting Season

I really liked the idea of rolling dice but then doing "choose 2" from the die roll, then having the option to press your luck by rolling less dice. The only thing that turned me off was having a number of lives and respawn points --- too video-gamey/meta for me, I liked how Avianfoo solved a similar problem in his game but kept within the story of the game. Maybe dragons who lost all altitude could just land for a turn and miss the next turn as they struggle to get airborne?

The other half is coming soon...

Here are my votes and short notes on each:

4 Ruy Rally
Simple, probably intense, not too long, and Dragons on the wing.
Everything the GDS asked for. And the theme really struck a note with me.

8 My Dragon is Trapped
Another very cool theme, and the game would be a hit with my kids for at least a few games, but the "all dice must match" rule feels a bit harsh and I suspect we'd have to soften it to keep playing.

11 Dragon Nesting Season
Eerily close to where my initial ideas took a wrong turn and became something else.
I would like to be able to attack anything stupid enough to end up straight ahead of me though, whatever the dice shows.

16 Dragon Eggs
What sold me on this one -besides the funny idea of actually Helping dragons.. was the disappearing gameboard (if I have understood the rules correct) as players take egg markers, and the chance to either pick a good egg or take a dice another player need for his best pick.

The rules for my Dragon's Lair is missing one important part , and that's why you can't win the game as it is described for the GDS:
I try to always have more markers available than will fit on the gameboard. Dragon's Lair will use 25-30 of the 40 markers, cutting down on wyverns and dragons so that the (medium level) drakes can be used for beefing up your supply of resources. (The text is 300 words despite some desperate pruning, plus I actually forgot to add it anyway)

My reasoning is that this adds uncertainty to the game on a very basic level, so that even a very young player can grasp that "the best treasure/worst monster may not be there this time".
And since it's a habit, explaining it gets left out unless I remember or get prodded to...

/E
Edit:typo

Hi all,

I really like seeing the feedback on my game so far, even when it is brief, so I thought I'd give my comments on the entries, because you all probably also like the feedback too (revelation!). Also, this was a really cool experience, my first GDS, though I hope not my last. Anyway, here's my thoughts:

1. Dragon by the Tail: A nice press your luck game and I liked the custom dice. If anything I thought the limit of 4 dice hurt this game a bit, but nothing you can do about that within the rules. Seems very solid.

2. Cursed Lands: I liked the custom dice for this one as well, and the combinations were good and interesting. My only problem with it was that it felt too Yahtzee-ish to me with the way the scoring worked. It is a clever take on that mechanic though.

3. Four Winds: Good work using a very strictly limited component set. One thing that might be interesting would be adding a reward for North and South since they're harder to get(if I understood the die makeup), or saving them for last to increase the challenge as the round progresses.

4. Ryu Rally: I voted for this one for 1st place, good work. The only thing I wasn't crazy about was the randomly determined target for Strafe, but I do think that random elements like that definitely keep it more accessible to a more general audience. Active, lots of player interaction, I think this could really work well.

5. Xiao Long Da: What a game! Great through and through. A real joy to read! :)

6. Dragon's Lair: I thought this was an interesting start, but would probably need more decision making to give it some more punch. It seems like it would have a good progression as the players get stronger and the enemies increase in difficulty, but that there just wouldn't be that many choices or that much variety.

7. Have Dragon Will Slay: Great use of the theme in an interesting way. I feel like there might be a better way to incorporate the ruses other than the ruse chart. It felt somewhat artificial to use the straight or two pair or whatever and look it up, maybe custom dice could be used? (Notwithstanding the GDS limitations of course.)

8. My Dragon is Trapped: I voted for this one too, I thought it was cute, sounded fun, and definitely met the GDS requirements. I'd like there to be a chance for Ogres to jump back on in the event you don't knock any off (maybe after 3 unsuccessful attempts or similar), but overall very good.

9. WyrmKyn: This one I just thought was a bit outside of the Light requirement, but has some good potential.

10. Dragonfire Tunnel: I voted for this game, which sounded great. Are the hazards in the tunnel randomly placed each play? That would add some good variety. My only concern is that the decision making is a little thin, just being which dice to use if I understood correctly. Maybe there could be a downside to not using dice, such as rolling fewer the next round, something like that?

11. Nesting Season: Good start but I didn't think it would have enough variety to stay interesting throughout, it might need another element or two to develop a bit.

12. King Dragon: Interesting and Unique, I like the liar's dice mechanic. Sounds really good.

Just as a quick example, (I haven't worked out how to make it fair and balanced myself) The Hero (Hacking: 3, Slashing: 2, Crushing: 1, Movement:3, Health: 5) Armed with a Flail (Crushing +3) and Shield (Health +1) moves onto a Fire-aligned square, currently occupied by a Juvenile Wyvern, (To defeat: 9 Crushing damage, +2 Fire bonus) The Hero attacks the Wyvern, and rolls one die (for his 1 Crushing Skill) which comes up with a three. Plus three for the Flail makes six, not enough to defeat the Wyvern's eleven total. The hero chooses to discard his shield, rather than take one damage. On his next attempt, the hero rolls a ten, beating the Wyvern's defense.

Hope that helps...

I'm going to do a post per critique, otherwise my other half will never get posted (I'll also go back and expand on a couple ones from earlier, especially AndyGB's entry, which deserved more than a single sentence) .

King Dragon:

After rereading the entry to do the critique, I had a much better handle on the way the digits (dice) were arranged. I think my confusion was just due to the word count limit (or just me being dense about higher being better). I liked the bidding system but the end game trigger seemed off to me. Maybe it would work better if all the players started with a set amount (say 50 coins worth)? Then you pay into a common pot and people who bow out have to take coins from the pot...

The only other thing was I'll agree that this one was a little light on the theme, but that didn't bother me or detract from the game.

Excellent, thank you very much for the feedback. Also Thanks ReluctantPirate Games, sorry I can't figure out how to quote two people here (though I know folks do it all the time...). The positive feedback I've gotten and the constructive questionsfrom Avianfoo are both super helpful (are the reason I'm here frankly!), and have made me think that I really want to develop this game into a full ruleset and maybe homemade prototype. I'll post the rules in a forum thread when I have them looking decent.

Thanks again folks!
AndyGB

I've been around here for three plus years, so I don't really think I'm one of the newer members...

Thanks for running it - it was a fun one. Nice to have a lot of entries, but I think the six-vote system (which I don't like that much anyway) breaks a little with that many games.