Game Design & Prototyping

Initial Design Sessions

For our in-class day to meet with a partner for the initial design steps, I made some notes about the type of theme I’d like to put into a game. For me, thematic ideas are important to the design, since the theme I work with will have a heavy bearing on the mechanics I work into a game, whether the theme sticks to the end or not. The one that stuck with me was Medieval plague doctors and the four temperaments or classical humours. The idea of being doctors working to balance their patients humours sounded interesting and fun to me, though my tastes do often lean towards the macabre and unusual.

In class, I teamed up with Tom Lin, who had an inspired idea for a game system: a card dueling game that relied on combos of cards to create unique effects during play. I was instantly intrigued. I introduced the plague doctor and four temperaments idea, which Tom liked. We workshopped our ideas together, using Wikipedia to learn a bit about the four temperaments, which each had associations with the four classical elements. Because the temperaments are fairly esoteric - sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric and melancholic - we used the four classical elements as placeholders - in the same order, air, water, fire, and earth. While we developed the ideas, we quickly cut up mini cards to use for our playtest and Tom started a chart of card combos.

Tom's initial plan was to use 4 suits of cards and combos of up to three cards, but the list of combinations because daunting with the three-card system. Cards were drawn from a common deck. We created simple mechanics for each card type - fire damages, air heals, earth allows card draws, and water builds up charges that can modify other results - included some other modifying effect cards to represent locations and tested it out. At first we allowed any number of cards to be played up to three. In our initial test, we pulled a lot of location cards, which in our first draft overrode each other. We also started with high hip points, so the game felt very slowed.

We did some revisions and settled on combos of two cards, and every round players would play two cards and redraw. This sped things up by making each player turn a bit quicker. We experimented with different combos but kept it relatively simple, with each suit of cards doing generally the same thing. For example, fire either damaged your opponent or made them discard, while air could heal you. Earth built up charges, and then five charges could be spent to increase your damage output or healing. I created some simple playmats to play cards on and we used dice to track hit points and charges. We used the simple name Plague Doctors but the theme didn't really contribute too much early on. With a few tests of mechanics and sample hands, we were out of time, and split off to create our separate prototypes.

I owe Tom Lin a huge "thank you!" for the great core mechanic of card combos that gave me a solid foundation to build on.


Our testing lab for the first draft prototype, Plague Doctors

First Draft Design
I took our format and mulled the game over at Rabbit's Foot Meadery over some pints of cider and glasses of mead (good for lubricating the idea engine!) My wife, Chelsea - an experienced gamer - acted as my sounding board and helped me flesh out mechanics. One idea we considered was to borrow a page from Firefly:  Out To The Black and create a co-op game where players used their Medieval surgical skills to cure a patient (in a similar way to the mission system in Out To The Black) but I realized that this endeavor might be best saved for a time when I have more experience balancing systems.

Keeping to the classical element-as-four temperaments theme and still playing in alternating turns, I did some balancing and set up some basic rules - 12 hit points per player, draw 4 cards and play 2, made locations universal cards drawn every round rather than being in the core deck - and ran a playtest with Chelsea. The core system was engaging but the game was too raw and simple. Once a player had the advantage, victory was assured - something that game designers frequently warn about being a big flaw in designs. Still, the idea felt like it had potential.

First Draft Spell Combos

	Fire	Air	Earth	Water
Fire	2 Damage	1 Damage 1 Heal	1 Damage 1 Discard	1 Damage 1 Charge
Air	1 Heal 1 Damage	2 Heal	1 Heal 1 Discard	1 Heal 1 Charge
Earth	1 Discard 1 Damage	1 Discard 1 Heal	2 Discard	1 Discard 1 Charge
Water	1 Charge 1 Damage	1 Charge 1 Heal	1 Charge 1 Discard	2 Charge

I went back to the drawing board and did some more refining. We came up with the theme of "apprentice wizards dueling in an ever-changing arena" which worked well with the mechanics. I also consulted my friend Jorge (regular readers of the 5th Stage blog will know him as El Conquistador), who is my go-to guy for board games, to look over my chart of spell combos. He gave me balancing advice and also gave me some important food for thought when he told me that the game sounded a bit like blackjack and rock-paper-scissors. "Hmmm," I thought. "This gives me an idea."


Those beautiful cards, though!

Second Draft Design
In round two, I implemented some overarching changes: play occurred simultaneously, with both players playing their cards face-down and flipping them after both were ready, resolving effects at the same time. This sped up play quite a bit. I also added a new resource - currency - which could be built up over play and could contribute to victory . . . somehow, I wasn't quite sure. This replaced the charges system.

This round of play was when Chelsea and I knew we were on to something. The simultaneous play made it feel more exciting, with a good play or blocking spell feeling very satisfying. We made some simple adjustments during play, such as to damage numbers and the card effects. I also decided that currency should determine the winner, regardless of hit points. This turned out to be a bad system which slowed the game down: in a player was behind on currency, there was no impetus to attack their foe, so the game hit a standstill of back-and-forth attempts heal oneself and drain their foe's currency. Balance was needed in the Force. Thankfully, at this point I also stumbled on a new theme.

Third Draft Design
By this point I felt like I was on to something for sure. I plucked a theme from a pen-and-paper RPG world I've been developing that is basically, "capitalism run amok in a fantasy world." In my game world - Unholy Profits - mortal wizards struck eldritch pacts with gods, devils, and demons to carve up the world. The masses are enslaved but pacified by magical technologies that make their home lives easier, and wizards and gods run mega-corporations that rule the lives of the populace. You know, fantastical concepts. So I took a page from my own Unholy Profits and decided my prototype should be Wizards of Wealthiness, where players are members of a cabal of constantly-competing corporate conjurers seeking to Own the World!

To match the theme, the cards had to change. Fire, air, water, and earth became military, science, influence and bureaucracy. I also borrowed from blackjack a bit more with the idea that each player would be dealt a face-up card every round that had to be used in their combo. More tinkering with spell combos occurred. For some reason I also tried to keep the "most currency wins" thing, but that got thrown out in the third round of playtesting. I also spent what probably ended up being too much time designing printable cards, which - regardless of the invest of time, ink, and thick paper - made the play experience seem more refined and tactile. I guess since it helped me to connect with the game more, the time was probably pretty well spent, actually.

Spell combos in draft 3

	Military	Influence	Bureaucracy	Science
Military	Blitzkrieg: 3 Damage to Opponent	Espionage: Look at Opponent’s Hand and Discard 1	Blacklist: 1 Damage to Opponent and You Gain 1 Currency	Shock and Awe: 1 Damage to Opponent and You Heal 1
Influence	Espionage: Look at Opponent’s Hand and Discard 1	Gag Order: Block All Damage	Veto: Opponent Discards  Their Hand	Top Seller: Gain 2 Currency
Bureaucracy	Blacklist: 1 Damage to Opponent and You Gain 1 Currency	Veto: Opponent Discards Their Hand	Wall of Paperwork: Opponent Gains No Currency This Round	Copyright: Block 1 Damage and you gain 1 Currency
Science	Shock and Awe: 1 Damage to Opponent and You Heal 1	Top Seller: Gain 2 Currency	Copyright: Block 1 Damage and you gain 1 Currency	Full Coverage: You Heal 2

Chelsea and I both enjoyed this version, despite some still-present errors. We realized, for example, that our hit points and currency fluctuated a lot but usually resulted in net-0 gains. We were often back to where we started by the 10th or so round. But still, the game was fun and funny. Tracking the resolve phase was tough, but it got easier as we went. Overall, I felt like I had a prototype that would work.

Fourth Draft Design

The version of Wizards of Wealthiness I brought to class was improved based on the results of my third playtest. The theme was further improved to replicate negotiations for shares of a divine or infernal mega-corporation - this replaced the currency for the former prototypes: reach 10 shares and you win! Hit points became trust - representing how much the owners of the mega-corp trusted each player: get to 0 and they vaporize you, meaning you lose. Also I replaced the military suit with espionage to change the feel of the spells, and also did more balancing, trying to make each suit provide a somewhat predictable effect.

In class I playtested with Ailea, who enjoyed the game. We still faced the issue of back-and-forth shares and trust, where even farther into the game we'd be practically where we started (takeaway: balancing numbers is hard work). She offered some good suggestions, such as changing the amount of shares needed to win, simplifying the resolve phase (which honestly feels little convoluted when one player gained a share and the other either blocked a gain or reduce their opponent's total) and clarifying some of the location rules. Overall, though, I was happy with the result. The game was playable and the issues still feel like something I can resolve.

The fruits of my labor - tested

Going Forward

My prototype has become a little source of pride for me. I'm generally happy with the results and absolutely plan to continue working on it. This is my first major attempt at creating a game that isn't part of another system, such as D&D. I want to keep working on my prototype and actually try to get it published someday. Based on the feedback I've received, I'm already considering removing the ability to reduce your opponent's shares and other ways to simplify and streamline the resolving of spells. I've also already worked out a slightly revised theme, staying in the same world but modifying the feeling a bit - but more on that later! Before too long, I think I might actually be ready to take it to some local game stores and try it out with people that are not socially obligated to say nice things to me.

I've been reading a lot about design, prototyping, and playtesting from both our class readings and the Kobold Guide to Board Game Design, a magnificently useful tome of essays by game design wizards like Mike Selinker, James Ernest, and Steve Jackson (yes, this is a sales pitch: if you want to make board games, go get Amazon's Kindle version and you can thank me later). I think I am prepared to take criticism and work to make my game the best it can be. It is simple but - I hope - enjoyable, with good levels of strategy deliverable with a fairly simple core mechanic. And I also think it can be more complex for the intensive game crowd, adding things like characters with unique powers or global effects that stay in-place for entire sessions. Time will tell.

~Jamieson