Theory: Succession Wars and Not Having Enough Players

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This weekend I was forced to confront an issue that’s been lurking in Over the Next Dune’s development for a while: what happens when a group wants to play cooperatively, but has fewer than five players? To answer that question, we have to look at a game that grappled with the same problem–and that, I feel, got it wrong.

Fans of Battletech–the classic game of giant fighting robots–might be familiar with The Succession Wars (“TSW”). TSW was a zoomed-out giant fighting robot game in which five interstellar empires battled for supremacy. Instead of controlling a few robots, each player controlled one of the empires, moving its armies and trying to take over the other players’ territories. If you imagine Risk in space you have something of the idea.

TSW’s map was arranged in a circle, with each player having a piece of the circle. As a result, at the start of the game each player shared a border with two other players. In a five-player game, this arrangement is OK. Everyone starts with two players to worry about, and things are even.

Unfortunately, it turns out that that balance is very fragile. My friends and I tried the game once with four players. It was an unmitigated disaster. The rules direct that when there are only four players, one player plays two of the neighboring empires (the purple and green on the map). Hence, those two empires each had one “safe” border–my friend was quite reasonably not going to attack himself. Not having to divide their forces to cover two fronts gave those empires an enormous numbers advantage where they were actually going to fight. That game ended with the player controlling two empires steamrolling the opposition.

TSW was balanced around the idea that everyone would need to pay attention to two borders at once. Putting one player in charge of neighboring empires freed those empires from the need to defend against each other, which broke that cardinal rule and ultimately broke the game. The neighbors controlled by a single player effectively had twice as many forces to deploy on the border each was going to contest, which proved to be a dominating advantage.

The lesson I took from TSW is that when one player needs to “sub in” for others, controlling multiple players’ pieces, the rules must ensure that the player cannot combine those pieces to become more powerful than the other players in the game. TSW tried to avoid that sort of combination with a rule that the player in charge of neighboring empires could not pool their money or forces, but by allowing a strategic partnership between the two empires it ultimately failed to prevent the single player from having more resources than everyone else. OtND needs to avoid that mistake, and next time we’ll apply TSW’s lesson to our case study.

The Case Study: Playtesting Project – Results

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The playtesting project is finished! I’ve attached my notes from the games at the end of this post. For each game terrain pieces are listed from the top-left colored area to the bottom-right colored area (e.g., in the first game piece 1 was centered at column 4, row 2 in the grey area, then piece 5 was centered at column 6, row 4 in the dark blue area, etc.). The searchers are listed as (column),(row) to (initial direction). In game one, for example, the first searcher was at column 2, row 4 facing in direction 3 (“left” relative to the player).

Based on these games I’m changing the rules in four ways. The first three are just fixes to clarify what happens in unusual situations. However, the fourth is a bigger change that will require additional testing. For the first three, which are akin to FAQ entries, I’ll use the Q/A/D format–a question, its answer, and some discussion. The third will get a longer treatment.

Q. When a player token moves off the board, does that move a searcher adjacent to the token?

A. A player token moving off the board does not move any adjacent searchers. Searchers only follow player tokens that are moving to a space on the board.

D. In the absence of this rule it was possible to conclude that when a player leaves the board at a diagonal, a searcher would try to follow the player as best as possible by moving sideways. That’s an interesting idea, but I don’t think it really adds any interest; the number of cases in which that would be helpful is very small. Furthermore, what would the rules be like? “Players leaving the board must determine the constituent vectors of their movement . . . .” It seemed better to say that searchers give up on player tokens that have reached friendly lines.

Q. If there are not enough player tokens left on the board to rescue captured teammates, is it necessary to play the game out?

A. When one or more players have been captured and there are not enough uncaptured player tokens left on the board to free them, the game immediately ends in a loss for the players.

D. It’s senseless to make players continue when the game has already been decided.

Q. Can a player “trick” (drag) a searcher into another player’s square? If so, what happens? Is the other player captured?

A. Players may not trick searchers such that the searcher will move into another player’s square.

D. There might be times when it would be tactically advantageous to do this, but I think it’s overwhelmingly more likely to occur as a result of sheer error. The result is apt to be irritated players. Better just to say it can’t happen, so that if it does there’s cause in the rules to rewind the game.

Rule change: Three player tokens must be adjacent to a searcher to rescue a captured player, rather than two.

This one deserves a bit more discussion:

Facts: During the playtest two troubling dynamics emerged. First, under the current rules Over the Next Dune is pretty easy. In fact, it’s so easy that one can play very casually and do fine. It’s not generally necessary to think too hard about one’s decisions, because one can always turn things around with a couple of friends nearby. When the game is too easy, interest in the decisions drops.

Second, I noticed after a while that it was often viable to split up. Since only a small group was necessary for a rescue, it was OK to form into two small groups and make “end runs” up the sides of the map. When players do that, it tends to turn the game into a fairly simple race. To the greatest extent feasible I want to push players into the middle, where there will usually be more terrain, more searchers, and more decisions to make.

Issue 1: What should be done to increase OtND’s challenge?
Issue 2: What should be done to encourage players to stay together in the middle of the map, rather than going for “end runs” up the two sides?

Rule: The decisions players make should be interesting through the end of the game.

Thinking it through: I’m collapsing the two issues because I’m pretty sure that they share a root cause: rescues only require two players. Making them so easy has reduced the consequences for mistakes too far, and it has allowed players to split up while retaining the possibility of rescuing a teammate. Ratcheting up the number of players involved in a rescue should make the game harder and turn splitting up into a serious decision rather than an all-upside strategy.

It’s possible that this change will undo the rescue rule’s ability to resolve the worst-case scenario. I’ll be testing that soon.

It’s also possible that we’re losing the madcap games where captures and rescues chain together to make a wild experience. That’s not the normal mode of play, nor is it strictly intended, but it is fun. I’ll try to keep watch to see if that kind of game can’t occur under the new rule.

While the playtesting project is over, testing continues–just without a fancy name. 🙂 As always, let me know how your games are going!

OtND Playtesting Project Fed.-Mar. 2014

Something Completely Different

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The playtesting project is winding down, just in time for the group testing I’m hoping to get in this weekend. On Friday I’ll have a couple of fixes for issues that have arisen, along with a bunch of playtest data and some thoughts on the results.

Since Over the Next Dune will really be taking over soon, I wanted to take a moment to talk through an idea that’s been bouncing around in my head. I’m always a little wary of working on a second project when the first is at the difficult testing-and-refining stage; it’s easy for the new project to become an excuse for avoiding the grindy part of game design. However, I think it’s safe if we all agree to keep this brief for now. 😉

The idea is this: in writing, one can use things like sentence structure to make a point. In Frankenstein the main character tends to use long sentences to describe nature, giving a sense of the natural world’s power and constancy, while using shorter sentences when describing what he himself did, suggesting his agitation and hurry. Can the same thing be achieved in game design? How far can one use the structure of the game, not just to make the game work, but to focus attention and bring about a reaction in the players?

I’m envisioning as a test case a miniatures game patterned on the Dynasty Warriors series of video games. In those games one plays a character who fights his or her way through hordes of trivial and easily-defeated opponents on the way to a final one-on-one confrontation with a villain. By hordes I mean hordes–tens of people attacking all at once. There’s a clear break between the waves of thugs, who are not especially dangerous and are mainly there to be swept aside in ways that emphasize how mighty the player is, and the “boss” at the end who is a legitimate challenge.

The game would be built from the ground up to create that sense of escalating tension and player empowerment. Everything, from the rulebook to the rules themselves to the playing field to the miniatures, would contribute to it. For example, each player might control some thugs and a major warrior. The rules for the thugs would be brief even to read, inculcating from one’s first exposure to the game the idea that these pieces aren’t important and that the player can dispatch them quickly. By contrast, the rules for doing battle with the opponent’s leader-warrior would be much lengthier, so that before one even begins play one has the sense that that battle will be more involved–that it will deserve more focus.

It’s just an idea, but it’s one I think could be a lot of fun. Dynasty Warriors games are rarely critical darlings, but they have a devoted fanbase; for all their technical sins they work as power fantasies. A minis game aimed entirely toward delivering that same sense of I am awesome could be a blast. Perhaps the next project after OtND?

The Case Study: Cards v. Dice

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The playtesting project involves playing a lot of Over the Next Dune, which means setting the game up over and over. Unfortunately, OtND’s setup is a bit lengthy. I’ve been looking for ways to cut that time down, and one method under consideration is replacing the searcher movement cards (which have to be shuffled, a process which many find lengthy and somewhat challenging) with dice. For example, instead of drawing a searcher movement card players could just roll a die–on a 1 the searcher turns left, on a 6 it turns right, and 2-5 it would go straight ahead.

Facts: Currently, OtND uses a deck of 60 searcher movement cards to determine whether each searcher turns during the search phase. The deck has seven left turns, seven right turns, and 46 straight-aheads, which results in about an 11% chance of each turn and about a 77% chance of moving straight ahead. In testing, these odds have produced enough turns to add an exciting danger of the searchers turning without rendering their movement completely unpredictable.

Beyond controlling the searchers’ movement the cards provide information on how the searchers have already moved. As a result, players are able to make more informed judgments as the game progresses as to how the searchers will move in the future.

While it is not their intended function the searcher movement cards also serve as a perfectly good game clock. If the turn marker has become unreliable (e.g., because the table was jostled or there is some question as to whether it was moved when it was supposed to be), one can still tell when the game ends by when the searcher movement cards run out. Six cards a turn taken from a 60 card deck means that the deck runs out in 10 turns, which is also when the game is over.

Searcher movement cards are also occasionally handy to keep track of which searchers have already moved in a given search phase. If there are 23 discarded cards, the players know that this is the fourth search phase (six cards per search phase for the previous three turns), and that searcher number six is next to move (the five extra cards mean that searchers one, two, three, four, and five have already moved).

Although they are working well once the game begins, the searcher movement cards do add to the game’s setup time. In addition, some players find shuffling the cards inconvenient or even difficult.

It is possible to replace the searcher movement cards with dice, and to retain approximately the same odds of turning. For example, the odds of the results of two dice summing to five or 10 are each about 11%. Writing the rule as “roll two dice; if the sum is five the searcher turns left, if it is 10 the searcher turns right, and if the sum is anything else the searcher goes straight ahead” would produce almost the same rate of searcher turns as the current system.

However, using dice would make it impossible to predict the searchers’ future behavior from previous turns. The odds of the searcher turning would be the same for each individual roll, instead of changing as cards are used from the deck.

In addition, dice would not be able to imitate the game clock and which-searchers-have-moved functions that the searcher movement cards can serve.

Issue: Should dice replace the searcher movement cards as the means of determining whether and in which direction searchers turn?

Rules:

1. Decisions players make should be interesting throughout the game.
2. As a corollary, players should start making those interesting decisions as soon as possible.

Thinking it through: Switching to dice has some pretty serious costs. I very much like how the cards reward players for staying invested and revisiting the odds of various turns as the game goes on. Losing that would be disappointing to say the least. After all, such information-tracking was important enough to justify making the discard pile available to the players.

From the game design ivory tower keeping track of turns and which searcher is about to move is a lesser blow. However, in practice I’ve found that it’s easy for a momentary distraction to result in players losing their place in the game. That isn’t anyone’s fault or a criticism; it’s natural for a group of friends to pause their game as they chat about something, or for a parent to need to give attention to his or her child, or for other interruptions to occur. Having an easy way to get back on track is very valuable in the real world.

Using dice is only justified, then, if the greater ease of setup outweighs everything else. I just don’t think that one advantage can carry the weight. It’s true that it gets one to the meat of the game faster, but the time gained is minimal. What’s worse, the meat ends up being less satisfying, since one no longer gets the added interest of working with the changing odds. Players eat sooner, but the meal’s not as good.

It’s common, in law, for different rules or parts of rules to pull in different directions. Sometimes the only thing one can do is balance them out as best one can. For the moment, I feel that the balance is in favor of the searcher movement cards. If that changes, I’ll mention it, and if you disagree, feel free to let me know in the comments.

Theory: The Limits of Rules

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In discussing game design postulates, I proposed that one of them should be that a game is defined by its rules. What happens when someone acts in a manner which is plainly objectionable, but is not specifically addressed by the rulebook? Where are the limits of a game’s rules?

The classic example of this, in my mind, was suggested in one of Dave Sirlin’s articles: kicking your opponent in the shin. Obviously that’s not acceptable, but it’s very rare for a game’s rules to cover physically striking the opponent (contact sports aside). Surely games which do not explicitly make hitting illegal do not include hitting–but why?

Another, somewhat murkier example, can be found in a story about the Babylon 5 CCG that made the rounds years ago. For those not familiar with the game, it was based on a TV show which might be very briefly summarized as “the United Nations in space.” Like its namesake, the CCG was heavily political; it was played in a group and everyone was encouraged to wheel and deal.

As I remember it, the story went as follows: a husband and wife were playing in a game with several other people. One of couple offered the other a foot rub in return for attacking another player (or not attacking, or something). The other accepted, and the rest of the table was irked. I think there’s general agreement that this deal was fishy, and I agree, but I’ve never had or heard a really satisfactory explanation as to why.

Sirlin’s discussion of this sort of behavior concludes that “[a]ny reasonable person would consider ‘no cheating from outside the game’ to be part of the default rule set of any game.” That’s fair, but it’s more useful for tournament organizers than for designers. If I were running a tournament I could respond to a cheater who argued a lacuna in the rules by citing Sirlin. As a designer, saying “players shouldn’t cheat” doesn’t tell me when they’re out of bounds, or how far the bounds should extend.

In light of this issue, I’m considering modifying the postulate as follows: a game is defined by its rules and by the resources the rules make available to the players. When a player takes advantage of a resource not permitted him or her as part of the game’s design, the player is playing a different game just the same as if the player were using a mod or following a house rule.

This adequately addresses Sirlin’s example. Street Fighter and similar video games assign to players as resources their respective in-game characters (including special moves, hitboxes, canceling opportunities, and everything else that makes up a fighting game character). They also give players control over those characters, with all the skill, practice, and talent that players may bring to that control. Leg strength and pain tolerance are not resources provided to the players, and hence the game does not include the use of those resources.

I think it also provides a satisfactory answer to the spouses’ deal in the B5CCG. While the right to negotiate was provided by that game’s rules, foot rubs were not. As a result, offering and accepting one were outside the game’s parameters. From the perspective of the game in progress it was poor form and perhaps even cheating; from the perspective of the game’s design the spouses had begun playing a variant where some players begin the game with a special resource not available to others.

I’ve written more drafts of this post than any other, and even now I’m not entirely certain that I’ve reached a good resting place. Are there issues with the new postulate that I haven’t addressed? Situations it doesn’t answer? Let me know what you think.

The Case Study: Hotfixes and Information Tracking

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During the playtesting project two rules issues have come up. Below are the questions, the answers, and an updated rulebook. I’m going to steal Quirkworthy‘s Q/A/D format for these–a there’s a Question, an Answer, and some Discussion.

Q: What is terrain piece 4’s actual shape? Does it include the clear spaces between the spaces with terrain in them?

A: Piece 4 includes only the spaces marked as terrain. It does not include the clear spaces.

D: Piece 4 is fun, but it does cause some issues. As matters stand it’s inconvenient to cut out and not at all sturdy. I considered putting a border around it so that it could be handled as one giant piece, but that created two problems. First, it would require expanding the rules on overlapping terrain to deal with terrain that includes clear spaces–does the clear space or the difficult terrain “win?” Second, it would call for rules for two different kinds of borders–those that actually impact movement and those that are merely defining the edges of the terrain piece.

Neither of those rule changes would have to be elaborate, but I would prefer to avoid adding complexity just to make piece 4 easier to manage. I think the better solution here is to take another look at the print-and-play file to see if there’s a way to give piece 4 a bit more structural integrity.

Q: Is the discard pile for searcher movement cards public information? Can I look through the discard to see what cards are out of the deck?

A: Yes, the discard pile for searcher movement cards is public information. It is legal to look through it at any time.

D: This is a difficult question, and the answer could have gone either way. What follows is how I came to the conclusion I did, but I’m especially interested in hearing people’s views on this subject.

A fundamental rule of Over the Next Dune is that players should be making interesting decisions. The most fundamental decisions players make are where to move and what path to follow in getting there. It is vital that those decisions be as engaging as possible.

One way in which I am trying to make those decisions interesting is allowing players to “play the odds” with regard to searcher movement. Since the searchers are most likely to go straight ahead and less likely to turn, players can take intelligent risks. If you can’t get to a completely safe place, it’s still possible to choose a safer spot by going to a location where the searcher would have to turn to catch you. Picking the best spot under the circumstances is a (hopefully) interesting part of the challenge.

Similarly, if you are trying to trick a searcher in order to save a teammate, the relative odds of the searcher moving forward or turning affect where to drag the searcher. I’ve found it interesting to try to find the safest location for my teammates based on what the searcher is likely to do next.

Knowing what searcher movement cards have already come out affects these decisions. If four left turns are gone and no right turns are, the searchers are significantly more likely to turn right in the future, and that impacts where and how the players should move. I think it’s a positive that as the game goes on the odds change–as discussed last time, it keeps things interesting.

However, players can only revisit their decisions based on new information if they actually have the information. In this case, that means they have to know what searcher movement cards have been used. There are three ways for them to get that data: remembering, tracking it by writing it down, and being able to check the discard.

Remembering the cards is a skill; I have known players who were very good at that sort of thing, and it gave them a real advantage. However, it is not a skill that OtND needs to test. Thematically, I see no reason why soldiers sneaking behind enemy lines would be counting how many times their pursuers turned left. (Admittedly, I’ve never had to escape from behind enemy lines. Maybe I’m wrong?) From a gameplay perspective, I don’t want a player who is good at remembering to dictate to other players, or to have other players trying to cede their decision-making to the player with a strong memory.

Writing down the information just seems awkward and irksome. In competitive Magic: the Gathering it helps avoid confusion and prevent cheating, but this is a cooperative game with less potential for error and lower incentives to seek unfair advantage. It’s an unfortunate necessity there; we don’t need to go down that path here.

That leaves allowing players to look at the discard. I feel that this solution has two key benefits. First, it is effective. Players can only make interesting risk-re-evaluating decisions if they have the necessary information, and letting players check the discard accomplishes that. Second, it encourages players who can’t remember or didn’t track the discarded cards to seek out and use that information. In my experience, players who don’t recall what’s in a discard pile frequently just give up and ignore the discarded cards entirely. As a result, they don’t go through the re-evaluation. I want players to revisit the odds of the searchers moving in different ways over the course of the game, and letting them find out what has been discarded will encourage them to do so.

It is true that allowing players who do not remember or track the contents of the discard to check it could slow down play. My suspicion, however, is that this will not be a serious problem. I expect that most players will only check the discard when an exact count is vital; those who value the information most, and who might have the greatest inclination to look through the discard pile, will probably also be paying close attention to the cards as they come out and will therefore have the least need to do so.

Based on that reasoning I am currently saying that the discard is open information. Again, however, I am not wedded to that position. If you disagree, let me know!

Over the Next Dune – Rules – 3-5-14

Love Letter and Keeping Decisions Interesting

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I had the opportunity a little while ago to play Love Letter. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it turned out to be a great game–fun, a bit silly, easy to learn, good for a group that’s looking for something light. What particularly struck me, though, was the way its designer approached the very last decision players make. I went into the game expecting that to work one way, found that it was in fact completely different, and I learned a lot from the innovative solution.

For those not familiar with Love Letter, it essentially goes as follows. The game is played with a small deck of cards, each with a value and some text that does something when the card is played (e.g., look at the card an opponent has in hand or try to guess an opponent’s card to knock him or her out of the round). Players begin each turn with one card in hand. On his or her turn a player draws a second card, and then plays one of the two. When there are no cards to draw each player shows the card remaining in his or her hand, with the highest value winning the round.

The example of card text above suggests a fundamental strategy in the game: get information to make your plays more effective. Playing “look at an opponent’s card” first makes it much easier to guess that opponent’s card and knock him or her out!

In addition to cards that give information by their text, players can glean useful data by keeping track of the cards that have already been used. There are two Princes in the deck; if both have already been played, then no one has another in hand and “Prince” cannot be the right guess.

Most card games treat gaining information as strictly good, and use the last play as a reward for doing it well. Tichu rounds, for example, often involve a player with a strong hand tracking cards played (and the implications of those cards for what opponents have in their hands) until he or she knows the optimal order in which to put forward his or her remaining cards. If everything goes well, the last play is a formality that seals the player’s win.

Love Letter takes a different approach. At the start of each round, a random card is taken out of the deck and put aside without revealing what it is. As a result, one almost never reaches the point of having complete information. Even if one has carefully tallied all of the cards played, and made good judgments about what opponents are holding based on that information, one will still go into the last play with some uncertainty.

When we first encountered the take-out-a-card rule I was mystified. Introducing uncertainty to the last play seemed to take away the reward for gathering information–that “locked in” moment where one has complete knowledge of who is holding what and can make perfect moves. Preventing players from reaching total information, I felt, meant that the game could never amount to more than guessing; more informed guessing over time, perhaps, but guessing nonetheless.

Yet, as we played I noticed that the set-aside card changed the dynamic a great deal from what Tichu had accustomed me to. As a round of Tichu goes on it can become less interesting; the player with the best hand gets more information, increasing his or her control over the round, while the others see what is happening and start going through the motions. By contrast, everyone was engaged in rounds of Love Letter until either the round ended or they were knocked out. Keeping some uncertainty, even in the last play, meant that the last player could never set up a guaranteed victory and the other players could always hope to luck out.

In designing OtND I want to make sure that the players are making interesting decisions. Love Letter showed me that I need to expand that rule: those decisions should be interesting until the very end. Tichu is great, and its substantial rewards for gathering information are a part of its experience. However, I think OtND is closer to the casual Love Letter than to the brain-burning Tichu, and that the former is therefore a better model for OtND’s design.  I’ll be keeping an eye out during the playtesting project for situations where the endgame is locked in, and if that happens frequently we’ll explore ways to keep OtND engaging in the later rounds.

The Case Study: Playtesting Project

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I was writing a whole long post about adding “chrome” to OtND, which was predicated on the idea that the core game is in a good place–challenging but never unwinnable. However, as I wrote I realized that while I certainly thought the game was meeting that standard, I didn’t have data to back up that conclusion. For a long time I kept careful notes on whether or not the players won, and how many turns the game lasted. Recently, however, the rules have been changing and I’ve stopped tracking that data.

It’s time to get back on the horse.

For the next two weeks I am going to play at least one game of OtND each day, noting how the game ended (win, lose by capture, lose by time) and on what turn. At the end of those two weeks I’ll tally up the information and discuss the results.

If you’re interested in participating, please feel free to log your games as well. They can be put in the comments to this post, or sent directly. Having more players involved will be a great help in ensuring that I’m working from accurate data.

Prototyping Materials

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A bit of a change of pace today . . . .

I’ve built a number of prototypes for games, and have seen others’ prototypes as well. In so doing I’ve learned some lessons that I thought might be useful to others.

1. Invest in 3″ x 5″ cards. These are very cheap and can be used for just about anything. Every game I’ve thought up that’s had cards has started out with the text just jotted down on these (the cards have a bit of rigidity, so they can be shuffled). The first searchers for OtND were cut out of 3×5 cards. I’ve even used them as backing for my current set of searchers, to help protect them from the slings and arrows of outrageous storage solutions.

What’s especially great about 3×5 cards is that they make experimenting a snap. Don’t like how a certain game element is working out? No problem! Put that card to the side and write up a new one. No need for cutting something out, printing, or other barriers to the process. A game in its early stages is going to change constantly, and with 3×5 cards those changes are quick and easy.

I feel like a shill for a paper company, but I’m very serious: if you have a pack of 3″ x 5″ cards from the dollar store you can mock up a game.

2. Foam board is great. If you want something a little sturdier than a 3×5 card, this is the stuff to get. It’s light but has a nice thickness to it and is plenty strong. I make boards for OtND out of it, but I’ve also seen it used for individual playing pieces with great success. If I were making a “demonstration copy” of OtND 3/16″ thick foam board is what I would use.

This is also very cheap, and craft stores often have coupons. I’ve linked to Michaels above because (a) that’s where I know to get foam board and (b) they have a weekly coupon online which is often quite good.

3. Look into “generic” and reusable materials. Jay Treat has built a prototype out of lego. Another designer I know buys decks of cards that are just numbers 1-12 in different colors; he uses them for early testing of new mechanics, when the theme isn’t ready and it’s just necessary to find out if the gameplay can work. There’s also no shame in pulling pieces from games you already own. No one will be able to tell if your wooden cubes are repurposed, and even if they could it wouldn’t hurt anything. Just make sure you know where everything came from, and in what amounts. 😉

Perhaps the overriding theme is don’t spend more than you have to. Many games don’t work out, and there’s no sense in putting a lot of money and time into a concept that might be destined for the scrapheap. Simple, inexpensive, preferably reusable materials are great for early versions, and you won’t be out-of-pocket too much if a game falls flat. Keep that money for when you’ve got something that really sings and deserves the star treatment.

The Case Study: Thematic Mismatch

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Writers sometimes say that they didn’t make their characters act in a certain way; rather, the character him- or herself let the writer know what needed to happen next. Games, I’ve found, can do the same. One means for the game to be like this, but it becomes clear that the plan is not a perfect fit; the game wants to be like that.

I’m trying to figure out whether Over the Next Dune is in that place. Currently, the capture-and-rescue rules seem to be working very well. However, the play is undermining the theme. After a rescue the searcher just kind of keeps going–surely the Axis soldiers would be a bit more attentive. Furthermore, rescue missions can lead to a sequence where two or even three players are captured and rescued in turn, lending the whole situation a bit of a Keystone Kops feel. The mechanics have stopped lining up with the gritty narrative of desperate Allies and dangerous Axis.

I hate to alter the rules having just gotten them to a satisfactory state, so I’m tempted to look to the theme instead. At this moment I’m considering embracing the Keystone Kops notion. Playing out an escape from a comical jailhouse, running wildly about the prison yard while Benny Hill music plays in the background, might actually be a lot of fun. OtND has never been a detailed simulation; rather than trying to fit it into a wargame mode, it might be more fun if the the game ran with its broad-strokes, almost cartoonish approach.

On the other hand, “criminals fleeing” could be a controversial theme–and I’m not sure playing it for laughs will resolve detractors’ concerns. (Of course, war is also a theme that should be handled with some care.) Picking a narrative for OtND that offends is certainly going to make it less fun for some.

This isn’t a question that needs to be finalized right away; there are lots of backstories that could fit a game about sneaking around, and the mechanics are not so tied to the theme that the details have to be set in stone in advance. For now, I’m going to keep an eye out for situations where OtND’s gameplay isn’t matching its theme, and I’ll be trying to listen for what the game might have to say about narratives that would work better. If OtND says something to you about this, please let me know. 🙂