Some initial thoughts...

The component restriction is of course a nightmare, which is sort of the point. More specifically, only one of the jurors actually prefers short, simple games. I perceive that a big part of the challenge will be to provide enough depth to entertain everyone.

Twitch mechanics: I think this is out immediately. While Ethan plays Darts, he also plays Chess, and I think he prefers the latter. Catherine enjoys shooting things in Halo, so she might be okay with some twitch mechanics in the context of a light-hearted party game. The other jurors positively despise twitch mechanics.

Randomness: Bob, Dave and to a lesser extent Catherine have preferences that lend themselves to rather large amounts of randomness. However, that’s completely antithetical to what I think will engage Alice and Ethan. So I guess I should seek to have a low to medium amount of randomness, if any at all. Also, with cards, the typical randomization technique is shuffling, which isn’t an inherently fun activity.

Theme: This is a conundrum. While the component restrictions lend themselves to a silly or family-friendly theme, the jurors are all nerdy adults. They would probably prefer a game about zombies and lasers over a game about cute creatures or architecture. Maybe some sort of historical theme could work? Or maybe a silly sci-fi or fantasy vibe? I’m not really sure. Gameplay comes first anyway.

Deduction mechanics: Some sort of bluffing, deduction or hidden information is probably a good mechanic to include. This can create all sorts of depth – which my design sorely needs – and it’s a type of mechanic that meshes well with pretty much everyone’s preferences.

Gotcha mechanics: I’m really on the fence about those. While Bob and Dave like them, I’m not entirely sure if they appeal too much to the other jurors. I’ll probably need at least some truly interactive mechanics, but not any really in-your-face gotchas.

Multiplayer: The game should probably be a multiplayer game, not a two-player game. Ideally, it should be playable with anywhere from 3 to 5 players, though that may be too difficult to do with the limited components. I think I’ll aim for a 4-player game, maybe with a 3-player variant. Of course, 18 isn’t divisible by 4, so if there is to be hands and dealing involved (most card games do), that’s something to keep in mind.

I’ve been thinking very much along the same lines!

Set collection or "matching" is a tried and true mechanic in card games, from Poker to Canasta. The beauty of it is typically that it can provide interesting decisions and multiple avenues to victory, such as whether you’re going for a straight or going for a flush. I’m pretty sure my design is going to involve some sort of set collection, like yours, since I can’t use any other component other than the cards to track progress.

Giving away cards to build sets is the basis of the card game Pig, which is somewhat similar to your idea. And while that’s a fun little bluffing game, it’s not very deep. The jury is mostly composed of strategy game enthusiasts, so I guess they would need some additional layers of depth if they’re going to find the game any fun.

https://www.bicyclecards.com/how-to-play/pig/

Of course, a similar mechanic is also used in the opening phase of Hearts, which is a much deeper trick-taking game where you also sort of build sets (except you either want all the hearts or as few as possible). I’m pretty sure some version of this mechanic is going to make it into my design, seeing as I have so few cards in play. I can’t really have a draw pile and discard pile, and I do need to spread the cards around somehow.

Alternatively, I could have the players trade cards freely. But that leads to the problem of "double coincidence of wants", unless I can somehow introduce a common currency (which I doubt I’ll have the necessary components to do). Also, such transactions are frequently zero-sum in nature, given the competitive nature of games, so it’s probably not a very good mechanic in this specific situation, seeing as there are so few components. Unless I go co-operative or player teams? That could maybe be a thing.

Thanks for your input!

Going with the idea of debate, negotiations and hidden information to hopefully prolong playing time somewhat, here’s a rough draft for an idea I’ve been working on. At it’s core, it’s a set collecting game that involves some subterfuge, some politics, some luck and some strategy.

I have no idea if this will be any fun at all. But if it crashes and burns completely, I just may try my hand at a more direct confrontation game instead, seeing as I got some great ideas off questccg!

The theme is sort of SimCity meets Junta. That isn’t ideal, but at least it’s silly and inoffensive. With some more work on the individual cards, I think this might be ready for a playtest.

What do you guys think? Anything that’s obviously going to be a problem? The rules writing is a bit rough, but I'll be happy to answer any qustions!

URBAN DEVELOPMENT

A Card Game for 3-4 Players

In Urban Development, the players takes the role of corrupt city councilors and their contractor cronies. The goal is to get the best development deals – in the right neighborhoods.

COMPONENTS

18 cards, each depicting a specific type of building project.

A card belongs to one or more of the following zoning categories:

• Residential
• Commercial
• Industrial
• Civic

Some cards have a Productivity rating and/or a Desirability rating. The latter can be negative. Also, some cards have special, conditional scoring rules. For example, the Suburban Villas are worth +1 point if you also have the Shopping Mall.

(I’ll post a tentative list of cards in a later post.)

SETUP

Shuffle and deal the cards. In a four-player game, remove two cards and set them aside face up. Randomly determine which player will be the Chairman.

RULES

The game is divided into rounds. Each round is divided into three phases:

• I. Planning Phase
• II. Voting Phase
• III. Building Phase

I. Planning Phase

In the planning phase, the Chairman chooses either right or left. Starting with the Chairman and going in turn, each player passes a card face-down to the next player in the chosen direction. You may look at your new card before passing on a card, and you may even pass on the card that you just received.

Random Bureaucracy: At this point, the Chairman may take a card at random from any player’s hand. That player then takes a card at random from the Chairman’s hand.

II. Voting Phase

In the voting phase, the council decides which building project to go forward with. This is done by absolute majority vote. Abstaining is permitted. In a four-player game, the Chairman has a tie-breaking vote only.

Each player places one card from his or her hand face-down. Shuffle them and turn them face-up. These cards are the proposed building projects for this session.

Only one proposal can be selected, but the proposals can be freely debated until a motion to vote is made and seconded by anyone, including the Chairman. The Chairman decides how the debate is otherwise conducted, as well as the order and method of voting.

Players may negotiate to heart’s content, but no promises made are binding.

Failed Vote

If no proposal gets the required majority, shuffle the proposed cards back together and deal them out randomly. Then go back to the planning phase.

Successful Vote

The selected proposal becomes a contract.

The player whose proposal was selected picks up the discarded proposals, secretly takes one for him or herself, shuffles the rest and deals them out to other players face-down. The Chairman does not get a card.

If it was the Chairman’s proposal that got selected, that player shuffles and deals the discarded proposals to the other players. These cards go to your hand.

III. Building Phase

In the building phase, it’s time to see who gets the contract card and in which neighborhood the building gets built. Buildings in your neighborhood are placed face-up in front you.

Beginning with the Chairman and going clockwise, each player takes the contract card and reveals three cards from his or her hand and/or neighborhood to create a portfolio of four cards.

The player with the strongest portfolio gets the contract and builds the building in his or her neighborhood. That player then becomes the new Chairman.

Comparing Portfolios

Each card in the portfolio is worth one point. In addition, the player or players who fulfill or tie for the following criteria get bonus points:

• Most residential, commercial, industrial or civic buildings in portfolio: +2 points for each category.
• Most desirable portfolio: +3 points.
• Most productive portfolio: +3 points.
• Diverse portfolio with all four building types: +1 point.

Furthermore, some cards give additional points under certain circumstances.

WINNING

The game is over when any player is out of cards in hand at the end of a round.

Compare the cards in each player’s neighborhood in the same way as portfolios are compared. The best neighborhood wins!

EDIT: Math. Clarity.
EDIT 2: Wording, typos.

Yesterday, I met my competitor for beers and design talk. This is a very friendly competition, as you can imagine. I invited him over to these forums, so maybe he’ll join this thread at some point (if an admin approves his account!).

Anyway, the conversation was rather illuminating. I confided that I had some difficulty in identifying Ethan’s personal game preferences. But together, we eventually came to a few insights.

Obviously, Ethan enjoys skill-intensive games. Secondly – and this maybe isn’t so obvious – he prefers games that have a great deal of clarity. Ethan is totally fine with losing, but he needs to know why he lost or won, so that he can learn and improve.

The topic then drifted towards game design in general, and an important philosophical difference quickly emerged. My competitor sees game design largely as a mechanical exercise, sort of like engineering. A game either fails or succeeds, largely on its own merits. Player preferences and psychology are extrinsic and external constraints: build something great, and the right people will enjoy it.

I see things differently. In my opinion, player preferences and target audience are probably the most defining features of a game. Ice hockey, Snooker, Chess and Mafia are all great game designs. They all work. What really separates them isn’t how they’re internally constructed (in fact, they share a lot of high-level design patterns, such as having rules). Rather, it’s what kind of player they appeal to.

I’ll make another post later that further elaborates on some of my personal game design philosophy, more specifically about tabletop games. Also, I’ll post the tentative card list for Urban Development sometime later today.

In the meantime, I encourage everyone to share more ideas and thoughts about the challenge! I would love to see how other game designers would approach something like this, even if it’s just an initial idea or a rough draft.

We had our first initial playtest yesterday, with Dave and Alice present from the jury. We were five people in total, so I thought what the heck, let’s see if the game works with five people as well. Turns out it does, mutatis mutandis.

Overall, people had fun, but we played only one game. We decided we would not try again until certain sorely needed quality of life changes were made.

Here are my notes.

Hotfix for initial chairman: This was my bad. The first chairman is down a card in hand by the beginning of round two, without necessarily getting a building in his or her neighborhood. That’s a major problem. We hotfixed this mid-game so that the chairman starts off with +1 card in hand, which worked rather well. But doing this from the get-go hypothetically leads to a potentially significant first-player advantage, so I’m not sure if this should be the permanent fix. Maybe the chairman can get one card from the ‘burn’ if and only if he or she does not get a building in the first round? That’s how our hotfix sort of worked in practice.

Length: The length is definitely there. Our playthrough took north of an hour. However, a lot of that time was spent trying to figure out some of the more fiddly bits, such as the convoluted scoring system.

Depth and strategy: I think this is there as well. Overall, interesting decisions were being made and interesting stuff did happen. Dave understandably bemoaned the lack of open information and having to keep track of complicated card movements to see who’s doing well. Alice, as expected, disliked the fact that strategic advantages were a bit hard to achieve and maintain over time. I do have ideas on how to address those concerns, but at some point, catering to everyone’s respective preferences becomes a mutually exclusive thing.

Graphics: We just quickly scribbled down the card entries on scrap paper and added them to sleeved cards. Bad idea. This game really needs some graphic design, even at the prototype level.

Skill factor: I won the game rather handily, so I suppose there is a skill component involved, seeing as I was the one who knew the most about what the design was trying to award in terms of strategy. It’s definitely a very opaque process though, and the rules took a while to ‘click’ for everyone. Repeat playtesting is needed to be sure.

Communication and negotiation: By design, there’s not so much of this going on. However, many players thought that there would (or even should) be more of this, based on the theme and how the rules work. There are some expectation management issues at work here. Also, I speculate that repeat playing might lead to more of this, as players learn what information and favors can and should be traded (sadly, there are no other resources to trade, due to component restrictions).

Scoring is a mess: This turned out to be way too complicated and time-consuming. A total overhaul is needed, and I did get some good feedback on ways to do this. The mechanics achieved their design goals admirably, but probably not in the best way possible. Major usability problems here, and this deserves its own post. I’m very glad I didn’t spring this on Catherine as it is right now, as she would have hated it for being positively Byzantine!

Synergies were a hit: The +1 synergy bonuses were much liked. However, as one player pointed out, they can be hard to spot from across the table (as opposed to colors or icons), so this may not be something I should go overboard with when I’m simplifying the scoring mechanics. Also, I suppose their relative scarcity is also a part of what makes them fun, but there could probably be a few more of these around.

Politics vs economy: The dual nature of the game, with its political and economical dimension, turned out to work really well, much better than I had feared. However, the economical part is of course a lot more important than the political. This is a bit counter-intuitive, since you interact with the political component first. Once again, there’s an expectation management issue here. Maybe I can just flip the phase order? That doesn’t really make sense though...

Parliamentary procedure: I kept the rules for this very open, fluid and in the hands of the Chairman. That was by design. Mostly, none of this procedural stuff really mattered, but not for lack of players trying. Alice did make a decision once about the order of voting which resulted in a surprise proposal getting approved! The players came up with different approaches to how they would chair the meetings, which was cool. Fun stuff all around, but very messy. We never had a voting phase in which no proposal went through, which actually surprised me somewhat. I do want to streamline and formalize the procedural debating rules at some point, but I’d like to see what typical patterns and strategies emerge first.

More obvious set collection: I’m toying with the idea of changing the portfolio scoring system to better reward being relevant to the actual contract at hand. Turns out set collecting is intrinsically fun, so people want to be properly rewarded for doing it. Some players felt that they were cheated out of contracts that they intuitively thought that they had the best portfolio for, since the system somewhat detrimentally rewards generically "good" portfolios over those that have specific relevance to the project at hand.

Risk management: There was even more of this going on than I initially had anticipated. In hindsight, I’m not so surprised though. The core gameplay is in many ways similar to a hand-management version of Texas Hold ‘Em Poker tacked onto a silly debate about the flop. I should have seen this coming.

Card balance: Major issues here, as expected. But somewhat to my surprise, this was even more of a problem than I had thought. A social process like voting typically serves to mitigate the effect of card power inbalances. But as it turns out, the mechanic from Pig and X3M’s idea of passing off cards to other players really does work better with a tightly balanced card set (i.e. few obvious discrepancies in unconditional power levels).

Theme, humor and satire: This worked out surprisingly well. Lots of jabs about silly bureaucracy, local political incompetence and public sector work culture. Someone suggested I should send out packs of instant coffee and really dry pastries as hypothetical Kickstarter rewards, since these are true staples from Norwegian public sector meetings (we're Norwegian). Everyone really felt the pain of jumping through all the hoops required to get political and bureaucratic approval for a development project, which was fun in a weird kind of way, like a dark comedy.

Swingy starting hands: One player had a rather bad opening hand, and this was an issue that had ramifications throughout the entire game. I had thought about actually drafting up the starting hands instead of randomly dealing them out, but I decided against doing that for the first playtest. I’m also not too fond of the idea, as it adds set-up complexity to an already complicated game. Better card balance will likely serve to mitigate the opening hand problem somwhat, but more testing is needed.

Thanks for dropping by, larienna!

I’m definitely going for a social game. It’s one of the few game styles that meshes well with the entirety of the jury’s specific preferences and the component restrictions. And it’s definitely going to be multiplayer. However, I don’t want to make a full-on party game, so there needs to be just enough strategic depth to it. I realize that this is very difficult to achieve.

Of the games you mentioned, the only one I’m not familiar with is Microcosm. I’ll definitely check that one out!

There are also quite a few twitch-based games that use very few components, though they’re typically not cards. I’ve decided against going that route however, since many people see games like that more as toys than games proper, even if they have win conditions and strategy.

Regarding deepening the possible configuration space, I did think very hard about ways to include some spatial positioning factors into Urban Development, possibly in how neighborhoods are built (or even in how portfolios are constructed). However, it’s my experience that these sorts of spatial minigames quickly degenerate into rather trivial optimization exercises if they are not tightly integrated into the core gameplay.

In the computer gaming world, there are a lot of games that successfully use zonal systems where adjacent objects affect each other in interesting ways. Are there any small-box card games that do this? Might be worth looking into. At the moment though, my current design has way too few permanent cards in play for this to really work, but I could maybe see an opportunity here for making the portfolio construction part of the game into an interesting spatial exercise.

In addition to positioning, there’s also orientation and flipping. Using special card backs of course precludes any shuffling mechanics, and it would make hidden information stuff much harder to achieve (social games thrive on hidden information). There are probably some clever solutions here, but I’m not sure if I want to pursue them, since rapid prototyping becomes much more difficult when special card backs are involved.

One thing that I’ve tentatively decided against is overloading the cards with too much information. That sort of puts a stop to having modal multipurpose cards if the information content isn’t very carefully managed, which also makes card rotation a difficult mechanic to employ. There are some personal aesthetic reasons for this decision, but I also think that a majority of the jury would prefer not to be overloaded with visual and textual information.

As I’ve briefly mentioned before, Urban Development is something of a social variant of community card poker, with a theme and special cards. Now, I’m not much of a poker player, and neither are the jurors. Still, I thought I should look into what makes poker-type games fun, to see if I could gleam some insight into what I can do to improve the game.

Very central to the strategy in poker is the idea of “outs”, what sorts of flops/draws will make your hand into a likely winner. This is basically how hands are valued. Hands with few outs shouldn’t really be played at all – you don’t want to pay to see the flop just to lose anyway. This is central to poker strategy. Good players show great restraint in what hands they to play. Pure bluffs are rare creatures.

And there’s the rub: your outs in Urban Development are largely transparent, even more so than in poker. However, it’s not really possible to fold. So what do you do if you have a bad hand?

Sabotage the politics

Ideally, you want to tank all the proposals in the voting phase. This gives you the greatest chance of making your hand better for the next round, without anyone else gaining anything in the meantime. However, it turns out that this is a very difficult thing to do, requiring great political skill. And the payoff can be mediocre.

Get your own proposal passed

This may seem like the go-to play, but I don’t think it’s usually all that advisable. Outside of the early game, the small bonus of getting to secretly pick one card for your hand isn’t worth the likely political and economical consequences. At least, you need to consider these consequences thoroughly. This is a much more viable strategy if you’re already in a strong position, allowing you to more easily shift into a different strategy or seal the deal on a risky proposal.

Improve your odds

Sometimes, you can get a majority to agree with a proposal that you’re more likely to win – playing to your outs. The problem here is that you still have a bad hand, so someone else is likely favored to win the contract anyway. And if that person already has a lead on the board, you’re pretty much screwed. This is what I think poker players call “the limp”, paying too much to attempt to improve a bad hand instead of folding early.

In general, I don’t think you should politically ally with a player that is favored on-board. But if you can make a favorable deal with someone else who’s also having a hard time, that’s usually in your interest. The contracts in this game aren’t entirely fungible (like money), so there can be non-zero-sum interactions in the short term. On the flipside, a winning player can and should accept greater risks in order to lure other players into political deals. So there’s a fair bit of skill to this.

Sabotage the winner’s neighborhood

So you know you’re losing, and you know who’s likely to win. One strategy may then be to give the winning player the worst possible incremental gain. For this to work, it’s very important that there are combos and “nonbos” in the final neighborhood scoring system, which I’ve yet to remake.

Make allies

You could try selling your vote for favors. However, there’s no guarantee that this will ever pay off. And the only way to punish a recalcitrant political ally is to systematically work against them later. This will likely entail sabotaging your own efforts as well, so it’s not a good position to be in. It’s easy enough for a cabal of players to stonewall a single player, but it’s very hard to make concrete deals with individual players.

Conclusion

Playing a bad hand correctly is much harder than in poker. In poker, you just fold. In Urban Development, the closest equivalent to folding requires an absolute majority, which is very difficult to achieve. This may be a design problem. Pure bluffs are also impossible, since the other players can’t fold either. Of course, there are plenty of disadvantages to having too strong a position, so it might just balance out in the end.

However, I think I should introduce at least some more randomness, as this will favor the underdog. I could, for example, deal out new hands every round. But I really, really don’t want to undercut the strategic elements from the planning phase.

Currently, I’m toying with the following idea: the card that the Chairman first passes in the planning phase is chosen at random. This injects more randomness into the system, and it further penalizes a winning player, leveling the playing field somewhat. Of course, such a mechanic does introduce additional seating order issues. But from my research, that’s not necessarily a bad thing in a poker-like game (though this is usually about the betting rounds, which are not a factor in UD).

Oh, and this mechanic will replace the Random Bureaucracy rule. What do you guys think?

The deadline was postponed to sometime in August 2019 for personal reasons. But this is happening, it would appear! Neither I nor Weresquid have looked at our designs for a while now, so this is exciting.