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new person, new game to critique

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Thu, 09/06/2012 - 17:50
Robinson
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The Good Shepherd board layout

Hello everyone, I’ve been reading the site for a while and decided I should start actually start contributing something and take advantage of the gathered wisdom more directly. I started playing European board games during graduate school and I’ve been hooked ever since. After brainstorming with friends on ways to improve games that we had, I decided that it would be really cool to design my own game. I now appreciate how much harder it is to start from scratch! After a fair bit of time, I've put together a game that plays reasonably well, even with strangers doing some of the play testing. However, when I got them to play test, I still had to teach them, so I wanted to ask people here if they would read over the rules and see if there is anything that I or my play testers have missed.

Thanks for the feedback and I look forward to participating in the general discussion.

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Thu, 09/06/2012 - 18:07
#1
Impudent Mortal
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Baaaah

Robinson wrote:
...I wanted to ask people here if they would read over the rules and see if there is anything that I or my play testers have missed.

I'd like to read them. I like the sheep herding theme.

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Thu, 09/06/2012 - 18:32
#2
Robinson
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file now attached

Thanks Impudent Mortal, I look forward to your feedback. I have corrected my initial failure to post the rules

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Thu, 09/06/2012 - 18:35
#3
Impudent Mortal
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Got 'em

I check them out.

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Sat, 09/08/2012 - 01:20
#4
Impudent Mortal
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Neat!

I have gone over your rules a few times and without actually playing it I can only find a few small things worthy of any notice. The game seems fairly solid and I like the sliding strips idea! Most of my comments would be about the layout of the rules and how some things are phrased, but being as that's outside the actual function of the game I'll save them for later; except one.

The rules state that a player is out of the game if he loses all his sheep, but situations could arise when a player is temporarily out of sheep, mostly when two players are stealing due to the order of action resolution. It seems like your intent is that in the context of the game, player actions are simultaneous so you might word the rule along the lines of "Players with no sheep at the end of the round are eliminated from the game".

The only "problem" I found with the actual game isn't a destructive problem so much as a non-function, but I am not sure. First, I have to ask what the purpose of the +5 bonus points is. It seems superfluous and here's my reasoning: All players finishing the game will get the bonus, so it won't change the outcome of the game. Why have it?

Being as the game doesn't end until all players either lose their sheep or make it to town, the only players who won't get the bonus are the ones who lose their sheep. They have zero points and they can't get more; they don't finish the game. The players who make it to town finish the game and calculate their victory points. Adding an additional five points to ALL the scores won't change the scores in relation to each other; If Able has 5 points, Baker has 10 and Charlie has 15, Charlie wins. If they all add in their 5 bonus points, Able has 10 points, Baker has 15 and Charlie has 20, Charlie still wins and nothing has changed.

It seems like this 5 bonus points doesn't have a function in the game. It doesn't HARM the game or make the game dysfunctional, it's just vestigial - maybe it had a purpose in an earlier version. IF I AM WRONG about this and have missed something critical, don't be afraid to slap me in the face with it.

It's a neat game. I presume the sliders and their random placement means the values on them vary per strip. It will ensure varying strategies from game to game, so that was a great choice. All the tables and results seem to be balanced and properly constructed - very clean and straight-forward. Good work.

I'll be going over the rules a few more times digging deeper, but I have to tell you it looks pretty playable. As of now I can't find any holes in it.

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Sat, 09/08/2012 - 02:14
#5
Robinson
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reason for +5 bonus points

Thanks so much for looking over the rules so closely! I can explain the +5 part. The bonus isn't a one time benefit, but something that accrues every turn that someone hasn't taken an action because they've reached the end of the board. This is because players are not required to travel at any given time and so one player might finish several turns before another. So going with your hypothetical players, if Able has 5 points from sheep, Baker has 10 points from sheep and Charlie has 15 points from sheep, Charlie will win. However, if Able reached town (the end of the board) 3 turns before Charlie and Baker, he will have 15 bonus points, 5 for each turn where he didn't take an action because he had finished and the other two players still took an action. So he will win the game with 20 points in total, 5 points from his flock and 15 bonus points. The purpose of the bonus points is to reduce the incentive for a player who has not reached the end of the board and is behind to sit on the last strip or two before the end and gamble for a bunch of turns on being able to pull off a miracle. In my play tests, a player might stall for 4 or more turns trying to pull off a highly improbable comeback while all the other players waited. With the bonus points accruing each turn, delaying a turn or two to breed or graze may have a net benefit, but stalling for a long period and dragging out the game makes less sense. I can emphasize the each turn part of this mechanic more in the rules to make it clearer.

I will use your suggested phrasing on losing due to a lack of sheep to clarify that it is checked at the end of the turn, you are correct about my desire for actions to be simultaneous. I can certainly see your point about the temporary 0 sheep problem and how that might confuse players.

You are correct that the sliders have different maximum numbers, I'll include the distribution in my revision, but there are three 5's, four 4's, three 3's, and the starting strip which is always a 4.

Thanks again for the feedback.

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Sat, 09/08/2012 - 07:33
#6
kos
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Sheep rustling

Overall the rules look good. In general I like simultaneous actions but the downside is that this can lead to race conditions or confusion when resolving them; you've done well to avoid most of these. I also like the way that the game is driven to a conclusion because of the depleting forage; it looks like it is not possible to stalemate.

The aspects of the game that I'm not so keen on at first glance are:
- Player elimination
- Potential to have a long, drawn out end game with some players either eliminated or idle
- The die
- Potential for much variation in game length

I'm unclear why you have the "sliders" under the board, but then refer to "removing tokens" to track the forage level. On the surface it looks like you changed your mind during development but didn't update one of the sections of the rules.

There are a lot of tables to remember, but I assume that you have cards which the players choose from to indicate their action each turn; if these cards also contain the relevant forage table then it's all good.

There are a few ways that the game might get broken or where action ordering is important:
- Scenario: 4 players are on the same location, each with 15 or less sheep. All 4 choose the "Steal" option. With the rules as written, all of them would be out of the game.
- Scenario: Alex has 5 sheep, and chose Breed. Betty chose Steal. Is Alex out of the game or not?

I'm interested to see how many points players typically end up with and now many turns it usually takes. One reason is that a boring player could move straight town and then sit out the rest of the game collecting +5 points. You'd want to make sure that this doesn't become the best way to win.

It would definitely pay to playtest a few "Breaker" strategies. If any of these strategies turns out to be unbeatable then you know the game needs some tweaking. E.g.
- one player steals every turn unless there is nobody to steal from, otherwise move forward
- one player breeds every turn if possible, otherwise grazes until the forage is completely depleted
- one player moves straight to town and exits the game
- one player does Breed-Move-Breed-Move etc until they get to town.

I wonder whether with a few minor rule changes you could eliminate the die completely. Not only is this one less component, but it would also make the game less luck-driven (i.e. more Euro-like). It looks like there is already enough randomization in the random setup, random weather, and simultaneous actions, so the die is an unnecessary complication that slows down gameplay.

There is one possible stalemate scenario, or at least a way that a Griefer can annoy the other players, and that is by Grazing every turn once all the other players have reached the town. Depending on the weather cards drawn, he could continue indefinitely (or at least long enough to annoy everyone else). Have you considered the following variation which avoids the problem: "The shepherds need to get their flocks to town before winter strikes. When the weather deck runs out, search the deck for a -1 weather card and place it face up; this is the weather card for the remainder of the game."
Or if that is not enough of a deterrent, create a special "Winter" weather card which is shuffled into the bottom third of the deck. The winter card counts as -1 Weather and kills 5 sheep every turn. Once the Winter card has been revealed, it remains as the Weather card for the remainder of the game.
The advantage of either of these solutions is that it both limits Griefers and forces the game to a conclusion.

Regards,
kos

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Sat, 09/08/2012 - 09:21
#7
Impudent Mortal
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Robinson wrote:The bonus

Robinson wrote:
The bonus isn't a one time benefit, but something that accrues every turn that someone hasn't taken an action because they've reached the end of the board.

Ah, OK, but this raises another question; when does accruing the bonus stop?
If this is the case, the first person to reach town will sit in town accruing points every turn until game end. A divergent strategy would be to race to town and just sit there gaining points, doing nothing.

As an incentive to travel, I don't know if this bonus works. Once a player is in town accruing bonus points, does it put victory out of reach for other players? Can they gain more points staying out of town to make up for the town player's bonus? You might end up with games where a player reaching town can't be beaten by other players staying out of town trying to gain more points; if so, why does the game continue when the win is already in the bag?

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Tue, 09/11/2012 - 01:03
#8
Robinson
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some answers

Impudent Mortal and kos, thank you both for your comments and suggestions. I'm posting a revised set of rules in a new thread based on your comments, hopefully clearing up some of the possible confusion you saw with some additional text. In addition, I've included a print and play version of the game with the rules so you can get a better sense for how things work by being able to see it. For example, each action card has the appropriate table on it to help a player make decisions, which was one of kos's questions. However I wanted to address some of the general questions you raised in this thread directly. Some I still need to work through or just need more play tests to answer properly, but hopefully this moves the discussion forward.
Thanks a lot for all the feedback.
Robinson
Length of game
The average of the last 6 playtest games is 17 turns with a minimum of 14 and a maximum of 22. The minimum necessary is 10 turns or regular travel or 5 of speedy travel. Most games are around a half an hour, potentially less depending once the players know the rules. With my newest rules, I've only seen one player eliminated, but I wanted to keep the threat in the game to encourage people to take care of their sheep and always leave the option open for stealing. If the general opinion is that this is too harsh, I could say that a player's last 5 sheep can't die or be stolen, but it seemed like that would take away from the game, though perhaps it also can act as a bit of a catchup mechanism.

Regarding the travel only strategy
If there are no travel penalties (unlikely) and you travel every turn then your score is 5*25 (initial sheep health * initial sheep #) = 125 plus a bonus of +5pts/turn. In a game with an average length (17) you would get 5 * 7 = 35 bonus points for a final score of 160.

From the starting values at 25 & 5:
a single graze on a 3+ strip brings your score to 25 * 7 = 175
a single successful breed gets you 10 sheep for a final score of 35 * 5 = 175
In both cases, stopping can bring clear benefits and allow a slower player to beat the straight travel strategy. Now of course there can be some additional dangers to not traveling (ie stealing), but this example at least provides a point of reference.
The +5 points/turn doesn't seem to be overwhelming, and some play testers have even suggested increasing it since a successful breed or graze can easily be worth 10+ pts, so I don't think it is overpowered. My hope is that it helps encourage people to move forward since it becomes harder to catch up to a finished player the longer it takes you to breed or graze successfully, and bad things can happen to knock back your progress.

With regards to other potential breaker strategies, while I have some ideas about how they play out, I will take your suggestion and try them more directly. Part of the problem is that the benefit of these strategies often depends on what others choose to do when you are executing them - breeding and grazing are both big benefits as long as there is no stealing, etc, and that is one of the interesting (I hope) parts of the game. I can tell you that continuous breeding or continuous grazing are not strictly optimal plays because the one with the highest incremental payoff switches based on your last choice. So at 25 sheep and 5 health, breed and graze give you the same score, 175 (see above). But once you choose one, the other becomes more valuable. So if you grazed last turn and now are at 25 and 7, breeding increases your score by 10 *7=70 (# of new sheep*health) whereas grazing again increases your score by 25*2=50 (# of sheep*increase in health), and the reverse is true if you breed the first turn.

Reason for the sliders
In my initial play testing, players found it bothersome (and occasionally confusing) to have to adjust every landscape strip individually as the weather changed. They wanted a way to adjust all of the strips in one go, but I had to maintain the ability to adjust each strip individually as players grazed. The board on top with sliders below was the best solution I could come up with - when you adjust the weather, you move the board up or down one, when people take actions that reduce forage, you can pull the individual slider affected up or down. You are correct that the tokens comment was a leftover from the previous version, that's a great catch that I've corrected now.

Regarding a permanent -1 weather card towards the end of the game, a lot of my initial play tests ended up with almost all of the shepherds dead and traveling every turn was the only way to not die because the weather was too harsh. I like the idea of discouraging griefers, but unless you are no more than one turn from the end of the board when that winter card comes up, you are pretty screwed. Potentially having a card that turns all of the +'s to zeros would be another way to accomplish that without nuking the landscape.

One point to note about your theoretical griefer, he would need to draw sequential + cards to see any gain in the landscape he was on because each turn he would remove one unit of forage. Since there are eleven 0's and -1's to the seven plus cards, and three of the plus cards can cause the griefer to lose sheep, it is hard to justify staying alone on the board long, especially if all of your opponents are getting a guaranteed 5pts each turn. While staying out one or two turns might pay off since a successful breed or graze can offer more that 5pts, the benefit of a single good turn diminishes if your opponents are racking up extra points. In addition, the landscape that the griefer is on will have been traveled over by the other players, so it shouldn't start at 100% forage in most cases - the lead players should have grazed some of it.

Regarding eliminating the die roll, I am open to suggestions, the best I've been able to come up with is accumulating some sort of damage token. For example, you lose 5 sheep for every X (2?) tokens you receive, you receive 1 for every turn you end with sheep health of 1.

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