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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-219880302014-11-20T22:24:03.828ZBoard Games - Creation And PlayA blog about board game design and publishing by Jackson Pope formerly of Reiver Games.Jackson Popehttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-21988030.post-69072329161196153542014-11-19T09:36:00.001Z2014-11-19T09:36:44.647ZNaGa DeMon 9: An IntermissionJust a brief one today. I've finally been brought low by the sickness bug that's been sweeping my office and house, so there's not going to be any progress on anything for a day or two. I've got a new version that hopefully fixes the problems with the last version that I did on Monday night before I came down with it, but I'd rather not post it until I've had more of a chance to test it. Hopefully it'll be up in a few days...Jackson Popehttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-21988030.post-30709101400501481032014-11-17T09:11:00.000Z2014-11-17T09:11:30.329ZNaGa DeMon 8: ReduxIt's just gone half-time in November, and finally I've got a second version of Dragon Dance for your delectation. Initially I'd intended to make fairly minor changes (decrease dragon hit points and tie = knight win), but feedback from Konrad's three games and a game I played with Dave late on Thursday night inspired some more sweeping changes which kind of crept up on me while I spent 6 hours on trains on Friday.

 The changes have led to the dragon becoming stronger (more damage, another attack card and breathe fire now works at both ranges) but also clumsier (0 damage for low dice on most attacks) and bolder (no retreat). Meanwhile the knight now gets some defence while advancing and retreating, and his block reduces the dragon's attack die roll potentially reducing the damage received to zero! In the last version I think the dragon was too strong, and yet these changes have probably made it stronger still, so the knight needed some bulking up too. I've no idea whether these ideas will improve things, or how broken they are, but hopefully they are at least more interesting!

 New rules follow, with new print and play files at the bottom.

  Dragon Dance
  Fire v. Lance
 2 players
 10-30 mins
 10+?

Contents:
8 Knight action cards
 8 Dragon action cards
 1 Knight player aid card
 1 Dragon player aid card
 9 heart tokens representing the knight's life force
 20 gold coins representing the dragon's life force
 3 large red dice for the dragon
 5 small white dice for the knight

 Dragon Dance is a game of bluff, cards and dice between a knight and a dragon in a mortal fight over the King's daughter.

Aim of the Game
The aim of the game is to reduce your opponent to zero life force through cleverly timed attacks without running out of your own life force. Each round you will simultaneously choose a die and then a card to action - either attacking, defending or manoeuvering as you dance around each other looking for an opening to exploit. The dragon is more powerful and has more life force, but it's also less agile and slower, so the knight has to strike fast before his limited life force is extinguished. The game weaves between long and short range as combatants close and retreat to catch each other on the wrong foot.

Setup
Decide between yourselves who will play the dragon and the knight. The dragon player takes the dragon player aid, action cards, three red dice and the twenty gold coins to represent its life force. The knight player takes the knight player aid, action cards, five white dice and nine heart tokens representing his life force.

 Both players roll all their dice and place them in front of them and place their player aid cards with the 'Long Range' side face up nearby.

Play
The game takes place over a number of rounds during which the players act simultaneously. Throughout the game the players' life tokens, remaining dice and played cards are kept open so that both players can see them.

 Each round consists of four phases:

Choose a die (or none)

Choose a card

Action the card

Discard card and die

Choose a die
 In the first phase, both players simultaneously choose either one of their remaining dice, or none. High values boost attacks, low values boost defence and medium values boost both attack and defence but to a lesser degree.

 During this phase, hide your remaining dice from your opponent and then choose one of them to use this turn (by, for example, placing a finger on it) or choose none (by, for example, placing a finger on the table next to your dice). Then reveal your dice along with your selection. The chosen die will be used to either boost an attack or defence card, or as a bluff to trick your opponent into playing a sub-optimal card.

 Choose a card
 Once both players have revealed their chosen die (or none), both players simultaneously chose a card to play this turn. The chosen cards are placed face down on the table in front of them and then when both players have chosen the cards are revealed. Chosen cards must be playable at your current range, check your player aid to see which cards you can play at your current range, or check the 'Short range' or 'Long range' icons on the cards in your hand. You begin the game at long range. The only effect of the short and long range icons is to limit the cards available to you during this phase. If one or both players play a card which changes the range, the cards chosen are still valid as long as they were valid choice at the starting range this round.

 Action the card
 Both cards are actioned simultaneously.

 Attacks & Defence
 If either player chooses an attack card, calculate the damage they deal as follows:
 If they have chosen a die, use the table on the card to determine how much damage they are dealing, if no dice is chosen determine damage using the no dice column in the table.
 If their opponent has not played a defence card, they lose life force equal to the damage dealt.
 If their opponent has played a defence card, use the table on the defence card (along with any die chosen) to determine the defender's protection as for the attack damage. The attacker's damage minus the defender's protection is the amount of damage dealt to the defender.

 Example 1:
 Konrad (the knight) chooses a '5' and the Hack attack card and Derek chooses a '1' and the Flap defence card. With a 5, the Hack deals 3 damage, but the Flap and a 1 prevent 4 damage, so no damage is dealt.

 If both players attack, the damages are calculated and dealt simultaneously, possibly killing each other at the same time.

 Example 2:
 Roberto (the knight) chooses a '6' and the Charge card and Todd chooses a '3' and the Breathe Fire card. With a 6, the Charge deals 5 damage, which is unblocked, so the dragon loses 5 life force. Breathe Fire with a 3 deals 3 damage, so the knight loses 3 life force.

 Charge
 The knight has the Charge card, which is a very powerful long range attack, combined with a reduce range movement. After dealing damage, if any, resolve the movement as described under 'Movement' below. For example, in Example 1 above, the combatants would now be at short range.

 Dodge
 The knight has a Dodge card which if played reduces damage dealt to him this round to zero regardless of what attack the dragon performs.

 Example 3:
 Jack (the knight) chooses a '4' and the Dodge card. Sam chooses a '5' and the Rake card. Sam's attack would have dealt 3 damage to the knight, but the Dodge reduces that to zero, so no life force is lost.

 Knight's Block
 The knight also has a block card which reduces damage dealt. If the dragon player has played an attack card and a die, the block will reduce the value on the die before calculating the damage dealt. This could reduce the damage dealt to zero. The amount the dragon's die roll is reduced by depends on the die the knight used in conjunction with it: with a 1,2 or a 3 the dragon's die result is reduced by two, with a 4, 5, or a 6 it is reduced by one. If used without a die it has no effect or against a defence or maneouvre card it has no effect.

 Example 4:
 Enrique (the knight) chooses a '4' and the Block card. Mal chooses a '5' and the Bite card. With a '4' the Block reduces the dragon's attack die by one, so Sam's '4' is changed to a '3'. Sam's attack now deals 2 damage to the knight, instead of the 4 damage it would have dealt with a '4'.

 Combo
 Knight has two short range attacks Hack and Slash which have the 'Combo' keyword. If a Hack or Slash is played and deals damage as described in the 'Attack and Defence' section above, the knight may perform a follow up attack. Providing the combatants remain and short range and the knight has his other short range attack card in his hand he may immediately play it (assigning a remaining die if any) as an undefended attack which deals a second round of damage this turn.

 Example 5:
 Konrad (the knight) chooses a '4' and Hack, while Roberto chooses a '2' and Advance. The Hack deals 2 damage to the dragon, and seeing as it dealt damage, Konrad can use the Combo effect to immediately play the Slash card from his hand (not the discard pile) along with the remaining '1' die to deal a further 1 damage, the second attack cannot be defended against. Roberto's dragon loses a total of 3 life force.

 Movement
 If either player has played a movement card (Charge, Advance or Retreat) then the range is adjusted:

If one or both players 'reduce range' you are now at short range

If one or both players 'increase range' you are now at long range

If one player 'reduces range' and the other 'increases range' your range remains the same

Both players must now flip their player aid cards as necessary to show the range they are now at. Both player aids must always show the same range.

 Note that the knight's advance and retreat cards also prevent one damage if played with a die showing a 1, 2 or a 3.

  Discard card and die

At the end of the round both players discard the cards they played (face up where they are visible to both players) and any die they used with it. These discarded cards and dice are unavailable to the player until they play the Recuperate card, which allows them to reclaim all discarded dice and cards, returning the cards to their hand. Once they have reclaimed the dice all their dice are re-rolled.

End of the Game
The game ends at the end of the round in which at least one player has been reduced to zero life force. If the dragon has zero life force, the knight has won regardless of whether or not he has life remaining. Otherwise the dragon wins.

Download the cards
To keep everyone happy there's now two versions of the cards: either front and backs as two separate files or alternatively, all the pages as a single file interleaved for easy double-sided printing.

Version 2 A4 fronts

Version 2 A4 backs

or

Version 2 A4 interleaved

Jackson Popehttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-21988030.post-15285631528479096632014-11-15T20:04:00.000Z2014-11-15T20:04:58.256ZTGWAG League Table 3Another great week of Dragon Dance progress. I've played it another five times and I've had a report from Konrad who has played it three times as well. Early indications are now hinting that the dragon is possibly a little overpowered in version one of the rules.

 Talking about the rules, I've been very surprised at how stable this first version has been. Usually my first version of any game is dreadful, but this one not so much. So I've been struggling to think of how to improve it. Initially the only change I was thinking of making was to make a tie count as a knight win (the dragon's dead after all) and maybe reducing the dragon's hit points a bit. But Konrad's very detailed feedback gave me a couple of ideas and then I had a couple more from Dave's feedback after our end of Games Night game on Thursday. On the train on Friday I ended up making fairly large changes, so when that version becomes available it'll be interesting to see whether it's more interesting/fun and how badly I've broken the balance!

 In terms of TGWAG there's been steady progress across the board, but Konrad's printing out, pimping, playing three times at the expense of his own NaGa DeMon game and then very detailed feedback with some cracking ideas has enabled him to race away at the front. Enrique (Eblasco/@7isprime) has also managed to nudge Roberto (during his trip to Saudi) into fourth place, currently out of the running for a free copy of the game.

 Name	 <acronym title="Pointless Internet Points">PIPs</acronym>	 <acronym title="Pointless Internet Achievement Level">PIAL</acronym>	 Free game?

 Sir Konrad/@pidaysock	 23	 Knight	 Yes

 Derek Hohls/@gamesbook	 11	 Squire	 Yes

 Eblasco/@7isprime	 9	 Footman	 Yes

 Roberto	 8	 Footman	 No

 @kimacus	 3	 Serf	 No

 Mal	 3	 Serf	 No

 @MTTJ_Patrick	 3	 Serf	 No

 @toddderscheid	 2	 Serf	 No

 Congratulations to Sir Konrad of Deutschland on his well deserved knighthood!
 Jackson Popehttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-21988030.post-9983209036811930982014-11-14T07:36:00.001Z2014-11-14T07:36:59.456ZNaGa DeMon 7: Less SelfishLast year, despite the point of NaGa DeMon being to share and discuss your experiences I was very much focussed on my own efforts: Zombology. I played it lots, I blogged about it lots and that was it. The Daughter was still sleeping dreadfully and to survive at work I needed very early nights, so I had little time available for my NaGa DeMon and none for anyone else's.

 This year, a couple of things are different. Firstly, The daughter, bless her heart, is finally sleeping like a boss - so I can go to bed at a sensible time fairly safe in the knowledge of an uninterrupted night and a morning that won't start at some ungodly hour in the middle of the night. Which means more free time. But also, more opportunity.

 Sam, a friend at work is also taking part in NaGa DeMon, designing his first game themed around electioneering. So we've been splitting lunchtime playtesting sessions between Codename: Dragon and his game. In addition, a couple of the Newcastle Playtest crew were talking about taking part this year, I missed the last session due to cleaning up after the day's double-glazing, but we've arranged an impromptu meet up next week, so hopefully I'll be able to get involved and help them out with their playtesting.

 Konrad, last year's TGWAG winner (and looking increasingly like this year's too!) is also taking part, so I'd like to try out his Cyberspace game too.

 With the NaGa DeMon website fairly stagnant, I've been cross posting my NaGa DeMon blogs to the Google+ group for Board Games Design, so I'm watching that space too, I've not had much to say there yet, but as more information comes up about other people's games I hope to get involved.

 In other news, I'll be spending 15 hours on trains over the next three days, so I hope to do more artwork for Dragon Dance, along with a new version of the rules and some more blog posts.

Jackson Popehttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-21988030.post-56249477817267893542014-11-13T12:47:00.001Z2014-11-13T12:47:48.187ZMobile Development: Beta Testers WantedA brief interlude from my NaGa DeMon efforts.

 I've been working on a Windows Phone version of the Martian Dice game designed by Scott Almes and published by Tasty Minstrel Games. Initially it was purely a personal project, so I could play it on the train when I go to Manchester for work (it's not available on the iPad) and as a programming exercise for myself. As it took shape I was fairly happy with it, so I approached Michael Mindes of TMG, and he very kindly said I could make it available as long as it was free of charge and I made clear it wasn't made or maintained by TMG.

 It's now 'finished' and going through beta testing, and I'm looking for beta testers for it. If you would like early access (in return for some feedback!) please post a comment including your email address.

 It only works on WP8 and WP8.1, and it's pass and play with no AI.Jackson Popehttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-21988030.post-82160973089590772512014-11-12T08:50:00.000Z2014-11-12T08:50:49.993ZNaGa DeMon 6: Something To Aim ForI've now played seven games of Codename: Dragon, four against Sam, two against Mal and one against Ian. I've drawn twice, once as the dragon and once as the knight both against Sam, and won every other game. Which is good, it makes me thing there's an element of skill in the game as the most experienced player wins more games.

 Recently, Mal was wondering whether the dragon had too few hit points. I replied that I didn't have enough data, and here's the proof:

 The blue bars represent the games I've played and the amount of life the winner had left at the end. The knight is on the left of zero, the dragon on the right. The orange line represents a target for the win distribution I'd like the final game to have. So very few ties, and a roughly Gaussian distribution on either side, but with the dragon as likely to win as the knight (assuming equally matched players).

 It's going to be really difficult to achieve this considering the asymmetry in the game:

the knight has fewer hit points

the dragon has fewer dice, so needs to recuperate more often

the dragon's attacks and defence are stronger

the knight has the ability to attack and change range

the knight has the ability to prevent all damage once

the knight has the ability to combo attacks

 But it gives me a target to aim for. Clearly what I need to begin with is a shed-load more data. That's where you come in - there's PIPs galore available for helping me to fill in those blanks!Jackson Popehttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-21988030.post-4527841514493256322014-11-10T09:35:00.000Z2014-11-10T09:35:47.625ZNaGa DeMon 5: Since Records BeganA vital part of designing any game is recording ideas, what works and what doesn't and outcomes.

 In recent months I've been using Evernote on my phone, iPad and Laptop to record ideas about games along with feedback and information about game outcomes. This year I've also been using it to keep track of everyone's PIP scores (it's much better at that than the way I was using Excel last year).

 I generally expect a new game to go through its first few versions very quickly, since the first time you try it there's usually something dreadfully broken that you'd not even contemplated that needs immediate attention - without fixing it the game is so broken that it's not even playable.

 With that in mind my first prototype was a mixture of pen and pencil scribbles on plain white card, I only used pen for the things I was convinced wouldn't change (the names of the characters: St. George and Dragon), with everything else drawn lightly in pencil ready for frequent erasing and amending.

 As it turns out after a week of playing I've not changed anything (except the name of one of the characters: now the more generic Knight). So it's time for a component upgrade: I've printed my own P&P files ready for testing this week:

 A disadvantage of my assumption of horrible brokenness is that I've not been recording the outcomes of the games properly. When the components are changing on a daily basis, recording the results of the games in minute detail is a waste of time. You know there's something obviously broken, so knowing that the knight wins 53.3% of games with on average 3.45 life left isn't going to help. Expecting the worse I've made a mental note of who won (me!) and who they were playing (a fairly even mix of knight and dragon) but I've not been recording the final scores needed for tweaking to try to make the game as balanced as possible between the asymmetric knight and dragon. Seeing as I've now played five games and I've just made a new version with no substantive changes I can now start tracking the scores to the point where I accumulate enough data to be meaningful. I've also tried to work backwards and remember the scores from the five games I've already got under my belt.

 Hopefully I'll soon have some more data from TGWAG competitors to add to that which I've collected and mis-remembered myself...Jackson Popehttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-21988030.post-42346232024806805512014-11-08T22:39:00.000Z2014-11-08T22:42:53.264ZTGWAG: League Table 2It's been a good week, not only have I played Codename: Dragon five times already (without a loss!), but I've also managed to get a first stab at the rules and an initial print and play version up for playtesting. And all this despite having the house turned upside this week due to the double-glazing being done. The double-glazing will be finished by the middle of next week, so things should settle down a bit then I hope.

 It's also been a good week for TGWAG. In addition to last week's four competitors (all of whom have gained points this week) we have four new competitors too.

 Name	 <acronym title="Pointless Internet Points">PIPs</acronym>	 <acronym title="Pointless Internet Achievement Level">PIAL</acronym>	 Free game?

 Konrad/@pidaysock	 12	 Squire	 Yes

 Derek Hohls/@gamesbook	 8	 Footman	 Yes

 Roberto	 6	 Footman	 Yes

 Eblasco/@7isprime	 4	 Serf	 No

 @kimacus	 3	 Serf	 No

 @toddderscheid	 1	 Serf	 No

 Mal	 2	 Serf	 No

 @MTTJ_Patrick	 2	 Serf	 No

 So we have a few people raised from serfdom, and Konrad has even been made a squire! Heady heights. The big question is: will anyone get knighted next week?Jackson Popehttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-21988030.post-23344197271231502132014-11-07T21:32:00.000Z2014-11-08T20:03:35.993ZNaGa DeMon 4: Print and PlayJust under a week in and already I'm posting Print and Play files!

 Codename: Dragon has really surprised me. It's the first time I've designed a game and the first prototype hasn't been so hideously broken that I've had to make sweeping changes - either during the first game or immediately afterwards. I've now played this version five times, three times as the knight and twice as the dragon. The first game resulted in a tie, but since then I've won every game I've played, which implies that it's not so totally random that there's no learning curve that rewards repeated plays.

 That's the good news. The bad news is that despite it kind of working how I had hoped and not being too unbalanced or broken, there's been no love for it yet. My testers have been happy to play again and I think are largely still trying to get their heads round how the game works. But no one is clamouring for another game or offering to sell me their firstborn or a kidney for a copy of their own that they can carry with them at all times and foist upon unsuspecting spouses, relatives, friends and strangers.

 So it clearly needs some work.

 But I'm not sure what. That's where you come in. There's a couple of links at the bottom of this post to the front and back files, both two sheets of A4. If you fancy it please print them out and give the game a go (you'll also need the rules, 29 counters and 8 six-sided dice). There's PIPs by the bucket-load for feedback (especially critical) and ideas.

 Please get stuck in!

Card fronts (2 sides of A4)

Card backs (2 sides of A4)

 Jackson Popehttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-21988030.post-29077668989517889072014-11-05T08:58:00.000Z2014-11-05T09:03:16.599ZNaGa DeMon 3: First Rules!We're still right at the beginning of November, but things are off to a great start. I've managed to play Codename: Dragon a few times at work this week already and considering how fresh the idea is, the game works remarkably well. Don't get me wrong, it's a long way from finished. But even now it's playable and interesting. I was delaying putting the rules up here until I'd had a chance to play them and check them for glaring problems, but here are the first version rules for critique:

  Dragon Dance
  Fire v. Lance
 2 players
 10-30 mins
 10+?

 Contents:
 8 The knight action cards
 8 The dragon action cards
 1 The knight player aid card
 1 The dragon player aid card
 9 heart tokens representing the knight's life force
 20 gold coins representing the dragon's life force
 3 large red dice for the dragon
 5 small white dice for the knight

 Dragon Dance is a game of bluff, cards and dice between a knight and a dragon in a mortal fight over the King's daughter.

 Aim of the Game
 The aim of the game is to reduce your opponent to zero life force through cleverly timed attacks without running out of your own life force. Each round you will simultaneously choose a card and a die to action - either attacking, defending or manoeuvering as you dance around each other looking for an opening to exploit. The dragon is more powerful and has more life force, but he's also less agile and slower, so the knight has to strike fast before his limited life force is extinguished.

 Setup
 Decide amongst yourselves who will play the dragon and the knight. The dragon player takes the dragon player aid, action cards, three red dice and the twenty gold coins to represent his life force. The knight player takes the knight player aid, action cards, five white dice and nine heart tokens representing his life force.

 Both players roll all their dice and place them in front of them and place their player aids with the 'Long Range' side face up nearby.

 Play
 The game takes place over a number of rounds during which the players act simultaneously. Throughout the game the players' life tokens, remaining dice and played cards are kept open so that both players can see them.

 Each round consists of four phases:

Choose a die (or none)

Choose a card

Action the card

Discard card and die

 Choose a die
 In the first phase, both players simultaneously choose either one of their remaining dice, or none. High values boost attacks, low values boost defence and medium values boost both attack and defence to a lesser degree.

 During this phase, hide your remaining dice from your opponent and then choose one of them to use this turn (by, for example, placing a finger on it) or choose none (by, for example, placing a finger on the table next to your dice). Then reveal your dice along with your selection. The chosen die will be used to either boost an attack or defence card, or as a bluff to trick your opponent into playing a sub-optimal card.

 Choose a card
 Once both players have revealed their chosen die (or none), both players simultaneously chose a card to play this turn. The chosen card is placed face down on the table in front of them and then when both players have chosen the cards are revealed. Chosen cards must be playable at your current range, check your player aid to see which cards your can play at your current range, or check the 'Short range' or 'Long range' icons on the cards in your hand. You begin the game at long range.

 Action the card
 Both cards are actioned simultaneously.

 Attacks & Defence
 If either player chooses an attack card, calculate the damage they deal as follows:
 If they have chosen a die, use the table on the card to determine how much damage they are dealing, if no dice is chosen determine damage using the no dice column in the table.
 If their opponent has not played a defence card, they lose life force equal to the damage dealt.
 If their opponent has played a defence card, use the table on the defence card (along with any die chosen) to determine the defender's protection as for the attack damage. The attacker's damage minus the defender's protection is the amount of damage dealt to the defender.

 Example 1:
 Konrad (the knight) chooses a '5' and the Hack attack card and Derek chooses a '1' and the Flap defence card. With a 5, the Hack deals 3 damage, but the Flap and a 1 prevent 4 damage, so no damage is dealt.

 If both players attack, the damages are calculated and dealt simultaneously, possibly killing each other at the same time.

 Example 2:
 Roberto (the knight) chooses a '6' and the Charge card and Todd chooses a '3' and the Breathe Fire card. With a 6, the Charge deals 5 damage, which is unblocked, so the dragon loses 5 life force. Breathe Fire with a 3 deals 3 damage, so the knight loses 3 life force.

 Charge
 The knight has the Charge card, which is a very powerful long range attack, combined with a reduce range movement. After dealing damage, if any, resolve the movement as described under 'Movement' below. For example, in Example 1 above, the combatants would now be at short range.

 Dodge
 The knight has a Dodge card which if played reduces damage dealt to him this round to zero regardless of what attack the dragon performs.

 Example 3:
 Jack (the knight) chooses no die, and the Dodge card. Sam chooses a '6' and the Rake card. Sam's attack would have dealt 3 damage to the knight, but the Dodge reduces that to zero, so no life force is lost.

  Combo
 Knight has two short range attacks Hack and Slash which have the 'Combo' keyword. If a Hack or Slash is played and deals damage as described in the 'Attack and Defence' section above, the knight may perform a follow up attack. Providing the combatants remain and short range and the knight has his other short range attack card in his hand he may immediately play it (assigning a remaining die if any) as an undefended attack which deals a second round of damage this turn.

 Example 4:
 Konrad (the knight) chooses a '4' and Hack, while Roberto chooses a '2' and Advance. The Hack deals 2 damage to the dragon, and seeing as it dealt damage, Konrad can use the Combo effect to immediately play the Slash card from his hand (not the discard pile) along with the remaining '1' die to deal a further 1 damage. Roberto's dragon loses a total of 3 life force.

 Movement
 If either player has played a movement card (Charge, Advance or Retreat) then the range is adjusted:

If one or both players 'reduce range' you are now at short range

If one or both players 'increase range' you are now at long range

If one player 'reduces range' and the other 'increases range' your range remains the same

 Flip your player aid cards as necessary to show the range you are now at.

  Discard card and die

 At the end of the round both players discard the cards they played (face up where they are visible to both players) and any die they used with it. These discarded cards and dice are unavailable to the player until they play the Recuperate card, which allows them to reclaim all discarded dice and cards, returning the cards to their hand. Once they have reclaimed the dice all their dice are re-rolled.

 End of the Game
 The game ends at the end of the round in which at least one player has been reduced to zero life force. If the other player has at least one life force remaining they are the winner, otherwise the game is a draw and the Princess wanders off.Jackson Popehttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-21988030.post-23497724899295135432014-11-03T08:54:00.001Z2014-11-03T08:54:21.157ZNaGa DeMon 2: Codename: Dragon - ComponentsI've said before that you shouldn't invest too heavily in the components of your early prototypes since the game is likely to change beyond recognition and those components that you splashed out on or invested hundreds of hours of artwork in are liable to be replaced by something else in very short order.

 NaGa DeMon is a slight exception to that rule for me, since at the end of the month, I've committed to sending prototypes to the three most helpful competitors in TGWAG. So I need to make my copy plus three more. Since those three competitors will (hopefully!) invested their valuable time and effort in helping me, the least I can do to show my appreciation is to give them a signed, limited edition prototype that doesn't totally suck. So I want to splash out a little and make the prize a neat little package. So I need some components. Times four.

 As I mentioned on Friday, I'm expecting the game to feature cards (which I'm a dab hand at, if I do say so myself), dice and counters. Some dice for St. George and some for the dragon, plus some counters for St. George and some for the dragon.

 When I think dragons I think big scaly red beasts guarding a vast hoard of gold (thanks J.R.R. Tolkien!) and when I think St. George I think white and red - the colours of the flag of St. George, the national flag of England which is incorporated into the Union Jack of Great Britain.

 So, to separate the dice between players, I've gone for white dice for St. George and red ones for the dragon (the dragon is a bit wordy, he needs a name. Bonus PIPs for the best suggested name in the comments). I went to Travelling Man after work on Friday to get the dice and they had some nice Chessex ones in two different sizes. Since I need more white than red (I think!), I've gone for smaller white ones (bonus: St. George is smaller than the dragon) and nice marbled red and gold ones for the dragon.

 For life counters, I recently bought some red wooden hearts from BoardGameExtras.co.uk for pimping my copy of Love Letter. Thinking ahead I bought a load more for Codename: Dragon purposes. That's St. George sorted, and it fits well since lots of computer games use hearts as the iconography for lives. Which just leaves the dragon. Dragon = hoard of gold. As it happens I've a load of yellow wooden disks left over from the limited edition of It's Alive I published back in 2008. I've hung onto them knowing they'd come in handy sooner or later. Their time has come!

 Which give me this:

Jackson Popehttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-21988030.post-2625959356345735142014-11-02T16:06:00.000Z2014-11-02T16:06:00.901ZTGWAG League Table 1We're only two days into NaGa DeMon and already The Game Within A Game is off to a good start. We've got four competitors so far competing for three signed and numbered limited edition copies of the NaGa DeMon version of Codename: Dragon.

 Konrad and Derek both took part (and won a copy) last year, with Roberto and Todd new participants for 2014.

 Name	 <acronym title="Pointless Internet Points">PIPs</acronym>	 <acronym title="Pointless Internet Achievement Level">PIAL</acronym>	 Free game?

 Konrad/@pidaysock	 4	 Serf	 Yes

 Derek Hohls	 3	 Serf	 Yes

 Roberto	 2	 Serf	 Yes

 @toddderscheid	 1	 Serf	 No

 My father-in-law is visiting at the moment, but I've managed to bag up the components I think I need for my first copy, and last night I made some basic cards for it too. The cards are hand-scribbled with pencil to enable easy editing when the first version inevitably turns out to be horribly unplayable. I'm going to try to get some games in at lunchtime this week, since I'm pretty sure I can't make Newcastle Playtest on Tuesday after all - it'll be cleaning up after the first day of double-glazing instead.Jackson Popehttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-21988030.post-39138823215060829042014-10-31T13:12:00.001Z2014-10-31T13:13:18.613ZNaGa DeMon 1: Codename: Dragon - A First LookThis time last year I had a first draft of the rules of Zombology, but due to various things I'm not quite so organised this year, but here's what's in my head at the moment. I'd appreciate any feedback on the ideas, what you think might work well or what badly and anything you think I've overlooked. This week we're having our house double-glazed, so I imagine I'll be spending most of my free time cleaning up whichever rooms have been trashed during the day. Also my father-in-law is visiting shortly. I'm hoping to make it to Newcastle Playtest on Tuesday, though I won't know until after Monday's clean up how viable that is.

 Codename: Dragon: The Concept
 It's a two-player card game about the showdown between St. George (patron saint of England and a bunch of other places) and the dragon. It's a Good Little Game, so 18 cards, some counters representing George's hit points and the dragon's hit points and some dice (a few for each player). One player plays St. George, he has nine cards, a few hit points and several (4? 5?) dice. The other player plays the dragon, with more hit points, but fewer dice (3? 4?).

 At the beginning of the game both players roll all their dice. Then each round both players simultaneously choose a card (representing an attack, defence or movement) and optionally a die. Once chosen, both players reveal their chosen card, action them and then discard them and any die they chose.

 The cards represent attacks (which do more damage for high die rolls), defence (which work better with low die rolls), movement (between long and short range) and a recoup card which lets you draw back the cards from your discard pile to your hand and re-roll all your dice.

 The game has two ranges, long and short. At the beginning you are at long range. Some attack and defence card only work at long/short range and the ninth card that both players have is a double-sided cheat sheet showing which cards work at the current range. Each player has cards that let them move from short to long range and vice versa. If one player advances and the other retreats they stay at the same range, if both advance they are at short and if both retreat they are at long range. If only one player moves then the range changes as appropriate for the card played.

 First player to run out of hit points is slain by their opponent.

 Some details
 The game is asymmetric, the dragon cards are different from George's cards and have different strengths and weaknesses. I'm thinking the dragon cards will be:

Cheat sheet

Recoup

Breathe fire (long range, high damage)

Bite (short range, medium damage)

Slash (short range, low damage)

Block (medium protection)

Flap (high protection)

Advance (move long -> short)

Retreat (move short -> long)

 St. George's cards could be:

Cheat sheet

Recoup

Charge (long range, high damage + move long -> short)

Hack (short range, medium damage)

Slash (short range, low damage)

Combo (short range, medium damage, can be played immediately after Hack or Slash if they did damage)

Block (short range, low protection)

Dodge (all damage avoided)

Retreat (move short -> long)

 An example card
 An example of what I'm thinking to make the above a little more tangible:

 Slash (St. George)
 Can only be played at short range.
 Damage done:
 If no dice: 0
 If 1/2/3 on the die: 1 damage
 If 4/5/6 on the die: 2 damage

 Flap (Dragon)
 Can be played at long or short range.
 Reduce damage by:
 If no dice: 1 damage
 If 1/2 on the die: 4 damage
 If 3/4 on the die: 3 damage
 If 5/6 on the die: 2 damage

 Obviously, I'm going to have to play this a lot to adequately balance it, but what are your first impressions? Any ideas? Want to help test it when the files and rules available? There's PIPs in it!

Jackson Popehttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-21988030.post-33953383090304251472014-10-27T08:46:00.000Z2014-10-27T08:46:13.847ZNaGa DeMon 2014: TGWAGLast year I took part in (inter-)National Games Design Month (or NaGa DeMon for short): during the month of November you are challenged to design a game. It's extremely unlikely that you'll be able to make a decent quality game in only a month, but like its fiction counterpart NaNo WriMo, the idea is to get a first draft completed. Last year I worked on Zombology, a drafting card game that has ended up being my main focus in the months since I 'finished' it during last November.

 I was very keen initially to take part again this year and then umm-ed and ahh-ed a bit as various impediments appeared in my calendar in November, but some of them have disappeared and I've finally come down off the fence on the side of taking part. Yay!

 My focus this year will be Codename: Dragon - a 2-player card game about St. George and the Dragon. It'll be a game of bluff and simultaneous action selection with dice and only 18 cards (so fitting with the Good Little Games ethos). Which makes it easy to test (I only need one playtester) and easier for others to print and play. I'll be posting the rules here along with print-and-play files as I make them and would really appreciate your help in testing and refining the game.

 As with last year I'm going to run the game within the game (TGWAG) to encourage you, my internet audience to take part and help me make progress in the very short timespan available to me. During TGWAG I award Pointless Internet Points™ to people who help out and at the end of the month the three (down from five last year) people with the highest PIP totals will get a free copy of the NaGa DeMon version of Codename: Dragon, signed and numbered by my good self. Though probably not until January, if last year is anything to go by!

 I'll be awarding PIPs to people who help me out by promoting the game or the TGWAG competition (e.g. retweeting my tweets, Google+ shares, etc.) or proofreading the rules that I post here, or giving me ideas or suggestions for new rules or mechanics or, most importantly of all, for printing out the print and play files and actually playtesting the game for me and providing feedback on what you liked and didn't like.

 No PIP competition would be complete without Pointless Internet Achievement Levels (PIALs), so here's this years goals:

 1 PIP: Serf
 5 PIPs: Footman/Footwoman
 10 PIPs: Squire
 20 PIPs: Knight Errant
 30 PIPs: Knight Sergeant
 40 PIPs: Knight Commander
 50 PIPs: Patron Saint

 Interested? Sign up in the comments below and start your arduous journey to Patron Saint.

 In other news, this week was mostly testing and releasing an update of my BGG Last Plays app. It now supports loading over close/restart, landscape support and sideways scrolling of the game name for games with longer names. Plus a couple of minor UI tweaks and fixing a crash found four times by various users.

 In yet further news, my latest Windows Phone app (a super secret, unlicensed board game app that I've been developing as a training exercise and for my own amusement) has been approved by the physical game's publisher. So I now need to get it finished off so that I can add it to the store. It's approved for non-commercial use, so like my other apps it'll be free and ad-free.

Jackson Popehttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-21988030.post-50244274106694589882014-10-20T08:52:00.000+01:002014-10-20T08:52:50.762+01:00Holding ForthIt's been a busy week with, thankfully, a boat load of gaming. During the week I got to playtest my secret game app with some friends, which gave me some great new ideas for improving the UI (plus revealed a bunch of bugs I'd not found by myself). Thursday lunchtime we played a couple of 3-player games of Zombology, and despite my fear that the new version (with the ability to hold over a card each round) was too easy we managed to lose both, so the 3-player win/loss ratio for this version stands at 1/2 which to my mind is about right! I still need to make some changes, but maybe not as sweeping ones as I first thought.

 My November has also resolved itself. I had been hoping to do NaGa DeMon again, but with the major work being done on our house slipping back into November and my parents planning to visit for a week during November (both during the week of Newcastle Playtest, effectively ruling that out) it was looking like I'd really struggle to make enough progress to make it achievable. My parents have now delayed their visit to the start of December, so I think NaGa DeMon is go again :-) I've an idea for a game I'd like to try to make (Codename: Dragon that I mentioned at the end of last year), and I'll run TGWAG again.

 To top the week off in style we drove down south to spend the weekend with my mate Tim and his family. Tim and I go way back, so it's always good to catch up and spend some time playing with our families, plus Tim and I get to game late into the night (or at least what I call late, so gone 10!). This weekend was no different we played lots of games during the day with Tim's son (I was whooped at a surprising number of games by a six-year old - clearly I'm not quite as bright as I like to think!), and then in the evening we played a game Tim is designing, then Thunderstone and finally Tim and I played Firefly until just gone one am. It was a great weekend and Firefly came in around 2.5 hours with the two of us, despite Tim not having played before.

 Tim and I spent most of the weekend talking game publishing. Tim's game is coming on really nicely and he's considering KickStarting it. By day he writes computer games for a living so he's got a great understanding about what makes a good game and he know loads of great artists. (As an aside RH Aidley who did the art for It's Alive! and Carpe Astra for me and also Ice Flow for Ludorum Games is someone I met through Tim). Tim wanted to ask loads of questions about the process of publishing a game, so I got to hold forth, wittering on about my experiences with Reiver Games and what little I know about KickStarter. I wish Tim all the best with his game (and now have a copy for playtesting :-) ), but I'm still not sure if I'd want to go back into publishing if ever I consider one of my designs ready for the world. Still, it reminds me that I know a load of contacts and still have a bunch of knowledge about the process and finances of running a game company. I hope I can use that knowledge to help Tim out.Jackson Popehttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-21988030.post-90407561028850271792014-10-13T09:00:00.000+01:002014-10-13T09:00:57.436+01:00My Brain Is Finally In GearAfter several weeks of very little progress on my games design while I focussed on app development for my phone instead, I've finally had a good week of game design progress.

 It got off to a good start on Monday night, when I printed out the latest version of Zombology, which has sat on my hard drive for several weeks if not a month waiting to see the light of day. There were a couple of problems I spotted after printing that I didn't have time to correct, but I'll fix them up before the next version.

 Tuesday was the October meetup of the Newcastle branch of Playtest UK. With new Zombology in hand we started off with a couple of games of that - it's becoming a habit to start with Zombology as it's short and supports lots of players so we can play a couple of games of it before splitting into smaller groups for other games. We tried the new rules which I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, and as I feared at the time, they require more changes to be made. Opinion on the new rules was split with Dan and Paul preferring them and the others either on the fence or preferring the old rules. With twice as many decisions to make and the ability to hang onto a card you definitely felt a lot more in control, but the downside was that the Cure cards were all hogged in the second half of the game, so the initial deal was more important. Either way, the new version was way too easy for the players to win, so I'll have to address the card balance if I continue with the new rules, as well as come up with something for the Cure-hogging possibly.

 After Zombology we split up and I got to play 54 Jones, Paul's game about Sci-Fi Sewer Surfing Cleaner Clones. As ever it was very entertaining, and this version was the slickest I've played so far. Then we played another Zombology (with Alex who'd missed the first two games) and then a couple of side-by-side Border Reivers, using the bits from the four players limited edition to cobble together two two-player games. Paul had played the limited edition rules last month, so this time we all played some of the ideas I've had for a new version. As is to be expected for a first play, it was pretty unbalanced, so I've got a bunch of changes to make before I play it again.

 Thursday lunchtime we got a couple of games of Zombology in (three and four player, so I've now played this version with 3, 4, 5 and 6) and yet again they were player wins, further convincing me that it needs tightening up again.

 Finally on Saturday I made it to Newcastle Gamers for a few games. We played Trains (new to me), Carcassonne the City (on my list of games to play this year) and Love Letter. Trains was suggested by Olly as something a little like Codename: Vaccuum that I might want to play for research purposes. As it turns out it gave me some new ideas.

 On top of all of this, I've been cracking on with my board game app on my phone and I really ought to put out another update to my BGG Last Plays app to fix a crash reported in the wild and a couple of minor things suggested by friends.

 Busy, busy, busy!Jackson Popehttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-21988030.post-45816302913094459782014-10-06T09:29:00.001+01:002014-10-06T09:29:47.983+01:00Zombology UpgradeYet another week of no real game design progress. Thankfully, all that is about to change. It's Newcastle Playtest again on Tuesday and it looks like it's going to be a busy night - three new members have signed up via Meetup.

 I'm going to spend tonight finally making the new version of Zombology I talked about several weeks ago, so it'll be ready for Playtest on Tuesday. The only differences to the components are replacing the three remaining serious scientific suits with ridiculous ones and smartening up the art a bit in the places where I hadn't got round to it in the previous version. I've also got the new idea I had last week to try out too. One of the critics of the current version is Paul Scott from Newcastle Playtest. He's another person who finds it too random - a problem the new idea will hopefully address. I'm looking forward to hearing whether he, in particular, prefers the new version to the old. It's been a few weeks since I last played Zombology, it'll be good to make some more progress on it once again.

 I also need to start thinking about NaGa DeMon. NaGa DeMon was a huge success for me last year. It was the birth of Zombology and the busiest month I've had on my blog by a country mile, so I'd like to repeat it this year if I can. It's going to be a bit more awkward though this year. My parents will be up for a week in November and I'll probably miss Newcastle Playtest due to their visit. We're also having some major work done on our house, so I'm going to struggle to find the time to design, iterate, playtest and blog during November. I've considered giving it a miss this year, but at the moment I'm still hoping to go for it. We'll have to see how things go...Jackson Popehttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-21988030.post-77566095104743857412014-09-29T11:05:00.000+01:002014-09-29T11:05:02.698+01:00A Breaking Change?Not much to report on the game design front again (apologies to those of my readers who are coming here for game design!). I've not played many games this week, just Eclipse (for the second week on the trot) at Games Night. I tried to arrange another Zombology for lunchtime during the week, but yet again couldn't raise a quorum for it.

 I have had an idea for Zombology though. Ok, that's a little disingenuous. Several of my playtesters have had the same idea, and after months of brushing it off as something that would over-complicate the game, I've finally decided to give it a try.

 It's all been sparked by The Wife's criticism that she didn't feel like she had any control. When she said it it made me think back to a bunch of other people who had had the same criticism. So I thought about it, and 'I've had' this idea that might help. Zombology is a drafting game, like 7 Wonders, where every turn you play a card from your hand and pass the rest on to the player on your left. I like the fact that the draft gives you some knowledge about what's available in this particular game (since not all the cards are dealt in each game), and it allows you to play cards based on the knowledge of what you've passed to your neighbour. The downside is that if you're dealt a handful of great cards that can't be played yet, you have no choice but to give them to someone else.

 The idea I've shamelessly stolen from my playtesters is to play a card, and keep a card, from each hand, passing all but one of the remaining cards on. Suddenly there's twice as many decisions to make in the game, which card to play and which one to keep each round. Do you keep the same one over many rounds and play it at the end, or play the kept card and chose a different one to keep next round? Do you keep an event card to prevent another player from playing it, or keep an excellent science card for the end game?

 The pros of this idea are hopefully:

You feel a lot more in control

Twice as many interesting decisions

Opportunities to block opponents' attacks

No changes to the cards necessary

 The cons are likely to be:

The cards going round are more crap as everyone is hogging the good ones

More decisions means longer play time

Might require sweeping changes to the cards

 Notice something about the last item on each list? The change is an incredibly minor one, just a couple of new lines in the rule book, no card changes or new artwork required. But I fear it will drastically change the dynamic of the game, making it far easier to win and unbalancing all the strategies I've spent nearly a year balancing to a fine point. Once I've tried it a few times I should know whether I need to go back to the drawing board again, re-building the decks from the ground up to fix the balance again. Of course, it might not even help with the control aspect, so at least I don't need to make any changes to try it out.

 In other news, this week's free time has mostly been spent making a board game app for my phone. I make a trip or two a month to Manchester with my boss (usually) on the train. That's six hours that's often spent playing games on my iPad. I'm making an app for my phone for a simple game that I can't get on the iPad. It's not something that I'm going to publish, seeing as I don't have the license to do it, but it'll be fun for my own enjoyment and I'm learning new stuff as I make it. It's already playable if you know the rules, but it doesn't restrict you at all, so it's very easy to make illegal moves. That's the next step - make it force you to play by the rules!Jackson Popehttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-21988030.post-62280231584888632872014-09-22T09:25:00.000+01:002014-09-22T09:25:01.803+01:00Gone DigitalNot much progress this week on Games Design, because I've been focussing my efforts in the digital realm. Last weekend we got a new PC, replacing our knackered old laptop (I think it ran on Windows 1885) with something a bit more modern. It came with Windows 8.1, which has the added bonus of being able to develop Windows Phone apps on it. I also got my phone back on Monday (with a new motherboard!), which meant I was in full digital flow again.

 Early in the week I released a new version of my BGG Last Plays app which fixed a crash found by my mate Mal, tweaked a couple of things in the UI and included games in your collection you'd never played (an oversight - since I don't have any unplayed games I didn't think to check!). That also meant that expansions were included now too (though as before you can hide any games you're not interested in).

 The rest of the week was focused on developing a recording app I'm making for Zombology. Now that Zombology is fairly stable what I need to do is play it a lot of times and see whether the win/loss ratio is where I want it, and check it's consistent across different numbers of players. So I've written a little app to record this information and present it graphically for quick reference. It's nearly done, just the graphing of the results to finish off.

 After that I've a couple more app ideas that I'd like to knock up, one which is a little project that I doubt I'll be able to make available for license reasons, but it'll be a fun little project and I'll use it, the other is an idea that might actually be saleable! But that's a bigger job, and further off.

 On the games front, I've not even played Zombology this week, I was unable to form a quorum (of three including myself!) for a lunchtime game during the week and at Games Night we just played Eclipse (another one ticked off my games to play this year list).

 However, The Wife played Zombology last week and found it a little too random for her tastes, she said she didn't feel like she had enough control. I'm fine with some of that in a ten minute game, but thinking about it that tallies with a similar criticism from Paul Scott at Newcastle Playtest, so perhaps I need to address it after all.Jackson Popehttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-21988030.post-13001216936021243002014-09-15T08:44:00.002+01:002014-09-15T08:44:38.037+01:00Zombology: EvolutionAs most of you know, Zombology started life as my attempt to do a NaGa DeMon game. In November last year I set myself the goal of designing a game in a month!

 Of course, I knew it wouldn't be finished by the end of November, but I wanted to make something playable in that time. I decided on a quick card game as that would be the easiest thing to make. With only a month I wanted something that I could iterate quickly: both the rules and the components, posting new versions of the rules, playtesting the game frequently and incorporating the feedback quickly into new versions that could then be tested too.

 By the end of the month I'd been through five versions of the rule book and I'd played it sixteen times. And, as a bonus, it kind of worked as a game. But that's not the end of it. In the following ten months I've played it another sixty odd times, there have been another five major updates to the rules and the components have gone from incredibly basic to slightly more polished (with basic art and everything!).

 The games has morphed from an every-man-for-himself drafting game for 3-10 players to a semi-co-op drafting game for 3-8 players. It's morphed from sensible science to ridiculous science (Vegan Diet as a potential cure for Zombies!?). But at its heart it's still the same game - a quick, silly, science-themed drafting game with some take that and some collective suit building.

 It's now at the point where I've got to make a decision what to do with it. I think it's a fun little game for playing at the beginning or end of a night - perfect filler material. The options I'm considering at this point are:

approach one of the publishers I know from my Reiver Games days

or, make it available print on demand through Drive Thru Cards or the Gamecrafter

 There's a few publishers that I'm comfortable approaching, though I've no idea whether it's the sort of thing they are interested in. Perhaps that needs to be my first step.

 On a related note, before I sent my new phone off for repair (the camera stopped working when I upgraded to Windows 8.1), I starting working on another app for my phone. This one is for personal use: it's to record games I've played of Zombology and the win-loss ratios by number of players. Now the game is settling down I need to get a better idea of how well balanced it is. I've also invested in a Windows 8 laptop to replace our archaic, glacially-slow one. This means that I can now do Windows Phone app development at home, rather than just during my lunch breaks.Jackson Popehttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-21988030.post-75513315131953212472014-09-08T09:06:00.000+01:002014-09-08T09:06:28.632+01:00Reavers! Incoming and Heading Straight for Us!Bonus points if you get the title source. Most of this blog post isn't actually about that kind of reaver though, it's about Reivers. With an 'i'. Border Reivers to be precise. In 2002, after an incredibly long and unsatisfying game of Mighty Empires, I had an idea for a light civilisation/wargame that eventually became Border Reivers. Published in 2006, I made 100 copies by hand and sold them all over the world. It was the first game I designed and the first game I published, and while it obviously holds a special place in my heart, it was one of the weaker games I published, which partly explains why I never reprinted it. Over the years (as this post attests) I've toyed with the idea of doing a second edition, with some changes to fix the reported weaknesses, but nothing ever came of it. After the poor sales of Carpe Astra I lost confidence in my ability to design games and decided that I needed a checkpoint between designer and publication which I could provide for other designers but couldn't for my own designs, since I didn't have the required distance to objectively critique my own games. So Border Reivers II withered and died.

 Until a month or so ago. As part of my goal to play all my games at least once this year, I played a game of Border Reivers against my boss at the end of one of my Games Nights. He crushed me like the proverbial grape, in part assisted by some lucky reinforcement dice rolls - which relates to one of the criticisms I had received about the game.

 So that got me thinking about Border Reivers again and, now I'm not looking to self-publish and have the excellent Newcastle Playtest resource available to me, I've decided to brush BR2 off again and see if I can do anything with it. On Tuesday it was the aforementioned Newcastle Playtest so, as well as a new version of Zombology, I took Border Reivers along. There was lots of interest in playing it, but one of the changes I'm keen on is to switch it from 2-4 players to 2 player only, so Paul Scott and I had a game. We played the good old-fashioned rules, and then at the end I asked Paul for ideas on how to improve it, before a lengthy discussion about the criticisms I'd received from players/owners of the first edition.

 Border Reivers is a light wargame with some civilisation aspects, set on the English-Scottish border during the late middle-ages. It was a time of continual skirmishing along with frequent livestock-rustling (or reiving as it was known). In the game, you start with a city and five armies and have to cultivate your territory, raise armies, build fortifications and settlements as well as going to war, ambushing and reiving your opponent. In the original rules there were two ways to win - either by annihilating your opponents (which only really happened in a 2-player game) or by being the first to accumulate 40 cash. Each turn you got to gamble on reinforcements, either armies or cards that gave you several interesting hidden tactics to assault your opponents. You spent an amount of cash between 0 & 9 and then rolled a D10, if your die roll was less than or equal to your spend, you got a reinforcement. Lots of people really didn't like this and, in fairness, lucky dice rolls early on could really swing the game. One of the ideas I've had is to keep this mechanism, but take away the chance of a free reinforcement and reduce the variability - i.e. roll a die with fewer sides. I'm also considering replacing the cash victory condition with a victory points one, where you get victory points for a variety of things throughout the game. I'll need to try some of these ideas out over the next few months and see which of them stick. Mal, I'm assuming you're up for a game?

 Back to the title, after the crazy success of my BoardGameGeek collection Windows Phone app (now up to 9 downloads, that's got to be almost everyone who owns one, right?) I've now published my Firefly: The Game app too. This one is designed to streamline the Full Burn movement action in the Firefly board game by reducing the number of 'move a piece, draw a card' cycles you have to go through. It's called Keep Flyin' and is available in the Windows Phone Store now.

 Finally, we played a couple of seven-player games of Zombology at Newcastle Playtest on Tuesday. The new version has another card type removed, more of the new style art and a few informational changes requested by testers. It went pretty well and on the train on Wednesday down to Sheffield for my quarterly MS check up I made some more cosmetic changes to the cards. This is feeling pretty finished now, so I ought to step up my efforts to contact some publishers.Jackson Popehttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-21988030.post-55921843573721780052014-09-01T09:11:00.000+01:002014-09-01T09:11:34.244+01:00I'm Published!But not in the way the you might think. On Friday I submitted my first app to the Windows Phone Store. It was accepted within the hour and was available to download two or three hours after that. A twitter, BoardGameGeek and Google+ announcement later and it's got 5 downloads! 5! As far as I can tell that means that about 80% of the worldwide Windows Phone ownership have installed my app. How's about that for market penetration?

 The app, BGG Last Plays, is available for WP8 and 8.1 from the store as we speak. It's a Windows Phone port of the excellent http://lastplays.herokuapp.com, with a couple of improvements that I wanted from the web original: it caches your BGG collection, so you don't need to wait for the download every time and it allows you to set a date, any games that you haven't played since that date are highlighted in the UI and on the live tile. More info is available here.

 In addition to publishing that at lunchtime, I also finally got the next version of Zombology finished on the computer on Friday night, plus got it printed and cut out. I didn't get it done in time for a potential Playtest session on Thursday, but it is ready for Newcastle Playtest this coming Tuesday. It's been ages since I last made a prototype, it felt good to be crafting something again.

 Talking of Newcastle Playtest, I'm thinking of taking Border Reivers along with me this week. I've had some ideas for things I could do for a second edition, so it would be good to try those out with the team and get some fresh ideas from them for further improvements.

 I've also got four hours of train journeys on Wednesday for my quarterly hospital check up that I'm going to spend on the laptop writing blog posts and probably doing some Codename: Vacuum work. After a week of nothing gaming related the week before last, I'm back!Jackson Popehttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-21988030.post-51482104096000935822014-08-25T09:00:00.000+01:002014-08-25T09:00:00.603+01:00IconicThis week I've done nothing particularly relevant to the blog at all. This weekend (today is a Bank Holiday in the UK) we've had lots of family up for The Daughter's second birthday and we spent most of last week preparing for the visitors and the party.

 So, what to talk about? I've arranged a playtest this week on Thursday with my colleagues at lunchtime, as much as anything to force me to finish off the next version of Zombology ahead of the next Newcastle Playtest session on the following Tuesday. There's a bunch of graphics stuff to do in InDesign ahead of printing that out, so that's how I hope to spend the beginning of next week. It's been several weeks (maybe even a couple of months) since I last played it at work, so there have been a few changes since my colleagues have last played it. It'll be interesting to get their feedback on the changes and see what they make of the new version.

 The new version also features some artwork that I've actually got permission to use. The previous version featured a hotchpotch of random images culled from Google, which seeing as it was just for personal use, I figured was alright. But the game looked a bit of a mess and the lack of rights concerned my puritan views on copyright, so I've finally got around to sourcing some legitimate artwork. Seeing as it's all come from the same place it all looks similar too, which ties the game together nicely.

 So what is this source of free art I hear you ask? www.game-icons.net. It's got over 1,300 icons that are freely available for use under Creative Commons, that you can even modify to better suit your particular project. These files are available as pngs or SVG vector art which make them easy to modify in a tool such as Adobe Illustrator (which I got as part of the InDesign Creative Suite while I was running Reiver Games for laying out and submitting art to the printers). I've tweaked almost all the art I've got from there, but without the starting point they provided I'd never have ended up with anything that looked half as cool. It's plenty good enough for prototyping, playtesting and submission to a publisher.

Jackson Popehttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-21988030.post-77272627971751490822014-08-18T09:21:00.001+01:002014-08-18T09:21:45.476+01:00What a Blinder!It's been a really busy week this week, both gaming and non-gaming. We're having a load of family up next weekend for a birthday party for The Daughter, so we're trying to sort the house and garden out a bit in preparation for all the visitors. On top of that, I've done a trip to Manchester for work and we've been to York for the weekend to see Paul and his family.

 The week got off to a great start with some really detailed feedback for one of the two people who signed up for blind playtesting Zombology a couple of months back. He'd asked some questions about the timing of various things on receipt of the rules, which I'd given a really crappy answer to (the low quality of my answer was one of the things that encouraged me recently to address the timing resolution in the game). After that I'd not heard anything from him, so I'd assuming the shoddy response had put him off trying the game. This week I got a response from him detailing the four times he'd played with different groups and what everyone thought of the game along with some identified weaknesses and some ideas. He apologised for the delay getting back to me, he'd wanted to leave it until he had a bit more data. This was exactly the kind of feedback I was hoping for when I requested play testers, so it was very gratifying to receive it, especially as he's keen to continue testing it with the recent changes.

 I took Thursday off work to wait in for a tradesman, and after exhausting myself in the garden I got an hour or so to update the Zombology rule book to the newest rules that I have in my head. Now all I need to do is update the cards as well and then print out the new version. In the evening we had a great Games Night with eight (!) games played, but the late night hurt me the next day when I had to be up at 5am for a trip to Manchester. Fortunately there was copious coffee to keep me conscious and Steve (a former Games Night attendee) and an iPad full of board game apps to keep me company on the six hours of train journeys. We chalked up another nine games!

 This weekend we went down to see Paul and Lisa in York. Paul was my main playtester during my Reiver Games days, so I took Zombology again. We played it twice with his friend Chris along with six other games, so another great day's gaming. 24 games in 3 days! It was a great weekend catching up and playing games, plus hanging out with the kids.

 I also started knocking together the cards for the new version. I doubt I'll have time before the party to finish them off, but hopefully next week in time for the next Newcastle Playtest.Jackson Popehttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-21988030.post-44810177881334587892014-08-11T08:54:00.000+01:002014-08-11T08:54:03.031+01:00Rush JobThis week was Newcastle Playtest again on Tuesday, but with guests visiting last weekend, I'd had no time to prepare for it so I went along with Zombology and Vacuum with none of my intended changes made to either. Newcastle Playtest is going from strength to strength, we had seven people, six of whom were regulars and designers and Olly, who's been a few times before as a tester.

 To begin with Paul T wanted to try out a few mechanic ideas he'd had that he wanted to test. He'd brought a load of brightly coloured dice and matching Hot Wheels cars, which made it much more fun! We tried a few ideas, and suggested a few of our own, which hopefully will help.

 After that, there were five of us, so someone suggested Zombology. I'd not made the changes I wanted to try out, but Graham had a pen and I had 100 cards, so I quickly put the two together and scribbled a small number on the top of each card, allowing me to test the idea that Dan had suggested the previous week. No sooner had we finished that game than Dan arrived, so we played again with six players. We won both games, and in fact in one of the games two players tied on points, needing the Cure as a tie breaker, so reducing the cures to value eight meant the scores were much tighter.

 The timing thing seemed to work, there were a few suggestions for how to make it more obvious that all cards with the same effect happened together and that number was there only to break ties. I've had another of my own for clarifying that too.

 Afterwards we split up and I finally got play Graham's flower nursery game, which was very interesting, and extremely well crafted considering how few times it has been played.

 Over the next few weeks I'm going to struggle to find time to update my games as The Daughter's second birthday is fast approaching and we're having a bunch of family up for a party. The house and garden need a bit of attention so that's taken priority over games design.

 In other news, I've 'finished' my Last Plays Windows Phone app, in the sense that it does everything I want it to do now. It need polishing before I could put it in the Store, but essentially it works. Unlike my new phone. I updated it to Windows Phone 8.1 and the camera stopped working. Everything else is fine, but the camera won't work from any app. I've tried rebooting the phone and even a factory reset, but to no avail, so I guess I'm going to have to send it off to the shop :-(Jackson Popehttps://firstname.lastname@example.com


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head-up displayLine breaks: head-up dis|play
(North American also heads-up display)
Definition of head-up display in English:
A display of instrument readings in an aircraft or vehicle that can be seen without lowering the eyes, typically through being projected on to the windscreen or visor.
Example sentences
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- The cockpit is fitted with head-down displays and a head-up display from Smiths Industries.
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Definition of head-up display in:
- US English dictionary
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Word of the day ingratiate
Pronunciation: ɪnˈɡreɪʃɪeɪt
bring oneself into favour with someone through flattery…


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Hi Patsy, Since you say that once the turkey is removed from the heat source it will be 5+ hours before it is served, it will either need to be kept hot (above 135 degrees F) or cooled down to 41 degrees
The answer depends on *which* specific packaging you're talking about. There was a "middle era" of CPUs between chips that relied on L2 being external, to L2 being "on package" (but not "on die") meaning
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Don, the other end of the camshaft is held into the sprocket with a tapered bolt. Remove the nut and washer, then turn the nut back onto the bolt just enough to get the nut flat with the end of the bolt
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quick linksCURRENT ISSUE PREVIOUS ISSUES NEWS INDUSTRY NEWS COLUMNISTS BROWSE EDITORIAL TOPICS WEBINARS
resourcesABOUT MT AUTHOR GUIDELINES CLASSIFIEDS EDITORIAL CALENDAR MEDIA GUIDE MASSAGE MART SCHOOLS & EDUCATION FEEDBACK
Jingei Diagnosis: An Effective and Powerful Diagnostic
I graduated from the Kotatama Institute under the direction of Drs. Masahilo and Katsuharu Nakazono in 1984. As a student, I was exposed to the practice of most of the various theories and modalites of Oriental Medicine.
Lime Jello on Morphine
Taste is in the eyes... actually the mouth... of the beholder. My food preferences have changed, lightening from the food of my youth. My parents loved heavy eastern European cuisine and I loved it as a child. Now I enjoy leaner, healthier whole foods.
Talking to Patients About Healthy Aging
I've noticed that a particular category of patients seems to make up more and more of my practice – they work out, but still experience lots of degenerative joint disease (DJD) issues.
To The Finish Line With the Help of TCM
When acupuncturist Eddy De Smedt pursued a career in Traditional Chinese Medicine, he knew he wanted to make a difference.
Help Patients Achieve Optimal Vitamin D Levels
Much research has been done on vitamin D levels and their impact on health; optimal levels have been correlated with a reduced risk of developing numerous conditions.
Calcium Helps Prevent Colorectal Cancer
Over the past 25 to 30 years, studies have suggested calcium may confer protection against colorectal cancer.
Managing Patient Expectations About Acupuncture
Last year, I attended the Pacific Symposium in San Diego for the first time in six or seven years. It was the 25th anniversary of this event, and on one evening there was a panel discussion with the title; "What is Qi?."
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It was the great baseball legend, former New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra – he of countless aphorisms, each with a mind-bending twist – who once declared, "You can observe a lot by watching."
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I recently received an email from one of my fertility patients: "Got my lab results back. FSH is 11, AMH is 0.7. My doctor said these numbers aren't good. I guess I'm infertile. Just as a thought. Just set up an appointment to speak with an adoption agency."
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For the prisoners at San Quentin State Prison, life-sentences are the reality of every day life. It is not often that prisoners get the opportunity to use alternative medicine to deal with common ailments they encounter behind bars such as, depression, anxiety and pain.
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May, 2002, Vol. 02, Issue 05
Working with Clients Who Have Spinal Cord Injuries
By Ruth Werner, LMP, NCTMB, Massage Therapy Foundation President
Dear Readers,
In my last article I provided some information on multiple sclerosis - a topic that many readers had requested. I hope that information was helpful and provided some insight into fruitful ways to work with these clients.At the end of the article, I promised to devote my next column (this one) to working with clients who have spinal cord injuries - another frequently requested topic. Then I put out a request for those of you who work with that type of client to share what you do, what works, and what to avoid, so that we all might benefit from your experiences.
Guess how many responses I got? Goose egg. Zilch. Bupkis. To me, this means one of two things: either no one is doing any work at all with spinal cord injury survivors, or no one feels confident enough about what they're doing to share it with others. I know the first can't be true, since somewhere between 183 and 230 thousand people in this country currently live with permanent spinal cord injuries. Surely some of them receive massage!
After considerable research, I finally found a few therapists with experience in this area. In addition, I just finished being a support person for the 2002 Winter Sports Massage Team for the Paralympic Games, so I do have some things to share. I'll proceed on the premise that many of us do have some of these clients, but we feel that we're working in the dark. I'll do my best to shine a little light on this subject.
First, let's look at what exactly happens when the spinal cord is injured.
Spinal Cord Injury: What Happens?
Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a situation in which some or all of the fibers in the spinal cord are damaged, usually by trauma, but occasionally from other problems such as tumors or bony growths in the spinal canal. They fall into one of three categories: concussions, in which tissue is jarred and irritated but not structurally damaged; incomplete injuries, in which only some of the neuron tracts in the spinal cord have been damaged; and complete injuries, in which all the ascending and descending tracts have been interrupted at a specific level or levels.
As long as at least part of the spinal cord is intact, some motor or sensory function may remain in the affected tissues. This factor will determine what kind of recovery a person can expect to achieve. Obviously, the higher the damage, the more of the body is affected. Injuries to the anterior part of the cord affect motor function, while damage to the posterior aspect affects the senses of touch, proprioception, and vibration. Damage to the lateral parts of the cord interrupts sensations of pain and temperature.
An injury that affects the lower abdomen and extremities, but leaves the chest and arms intact, is called paraplegia. An injury that impacts the body from the neck down is called tetraplegia or quadriplegia. Among the SCI patients alive today, quadriplegics slightly outnumber paraplegics.
A person with a newly injured spinal cord goes through a period called "spinal cord shock." During this time, blood pressure is dangerously low, the heart beats slowly, peripheral blood vessels dilate, and the patient is susceptible to hypothermia. A number of secondary reactions may occur in the CNS at this time, including excessive bleeding; edema; free radical activity; scar tissue formation; white blood cell attacks on healthy tissue; and demyelination of healthy cells. These secondary responses can interrupt function up to two full levels above the primary injury, but they can be controlled with medical intervention, so it is vital that the patient receive aggressive care during this window of opportunity. With a new spinal cord injury, the affected muscles may be either flaccid or hypotonic. When the inflammatory process begins to subside (and this can take days or weeks after the initial injury), the muscles supplied by damaged axons begin to tighten, and their reflexes become hyperreactive. Spasticity along with hyperreflexia is a hallmark of spinal cord injury. If muscles stay flaccid and reflexes are dull or nonexistent, the damage is probably to the nerve roots rather than to the spinal cord itself. Injuries to the low back often show this pattern, as the spinal canal is occupied by the cauda equina nerve root extensions from T12 down to the sacrum. Depending on the nature of the trauma, it is perfectly possible to sustain injury to both the spinal cord and the nerve roots simultaneously.
Spinal Cord Injury Complications
Spinal cord injuries can lead to many serious long-term complications, several of which have important implications for massage therapy. SCI patients invest a lot of time and energy in working to prevent, minimize, or recover from these secondary problems.
Spinal Cord Injury Treatment Options
New treatment options for SCI patients are being developed daily. Some SCI patients may have electrodes implanted in muscles that are controlled from an external computer. These implants can provide pinching and gripping capabilities for people who otherwise would not have the use of their hands. Surgical transfer of healthy tendons can also be helpful. For some people, the triceps muscle may be paralyzed, while the deltoid is not. Surgically extending the posterior deltoid tendon and attaching it to the olecranon can provide these people with the power it takes to use a wheelchair.
Treatment for SCI survivors is targeted at providing them with the skills to live as fully as possible. Physical and occupational therapists specialize in helping these patients gain the skills they need to function; mental/emotional therapists are also critical, especially for those who are adapting to their paralysis as a new way of life. Ultimately about 90% of all SCI patients are able to live independently with these new skills.
Spinal Cord Injuries and Massage
With all these complicated processes going on, and all these potentially dangerous problems that may develop, could it ever be appropriate for an SCI survivor to receive massage? Absolutely. In fact, the range of massage therapy modalities that can be successfully used with SCI patients is exactly the same as that for any other clients. As long as threatening complications like blood clots, pressure sores, and infections are not present, massage therapists can apply their skills with compassion and imagination to the great benefit of their clients.
Some bodyworkers specialize in energy and light-touch work with their SCI clients: this approach, which could include therapeutic touch, craniosacral therapy, and any number of other modalities, can be especially powerful in achieving "incorporation"- that weaving together of the whole body that many SCI patients lose.
Other approaches address the mechanical challenges of being confined to a wheelchair. The spasticity that SCI patients live with is a chronically progressive situation. This progress can be slowed or even halted with a carefully applied program of exercise and stretching-massage is certainly appropriate in this setting. Further, some of the spasticity and contractures that SCI patients experience seem to be a function of myofascial binding as much as loss of enervation. One therapist I spoke to described how exciting it was to work with an elderly patient's gnarled and claw-like hand, and see her gradually relax and be able to regain some control.
As SCI patients' muscle tone changes, they are likely to experience postural distortions that can be quite painful. Massage can help to limit this process and reduce the pain associated with it. As long as sensation is present so the client can give accurate feedback about how the bodywork feels, massage can be a powerful tool in keeping these changes at bay.
Finally, many SCI patients have to cope with chronic tendinitis and overuse syndromes in their hands, wrists, elbows and shoulders. In these cases it's not only appropriate, but essential to receive bodywork that can help to restore function as quickly as possible.
Practical questions such as how to position clients on a table, or whether to use a table at all, can only be answered on a case-by-case basis. At this year's Paralympics, the 2002 Winter Sports Massage Team had hydraulic tables that could be raised and lowered to make getting in and out of a chair as easy as possible. This is a good investment for therapists who work with any clients who might have movement difficulties. Plan on using bolters extensively, and be sure to accommodate for urinary catheters and/or colostomy bags. Ultimately, the best service we can offer is simply to ask, "How can I make you most comfortable?"
I'd like to conclude this article with excerpts of a reflection written by Jan Fields, a member of the 2002 Winter Sports Massage Team, after he had worked with a Paralympic alpine skier with spina bifida:
So, readers, what's next? Give me some ideas of topics you'd like to see discussed in "Dealing with Pathologies: What's on Your Table?" Otherwise, I'll just make some up of my own!
Ruth Werner, LMT, NCTMB
Click here for previous articles by Ruth Werner, LMP, NCTMB, Massage Therapy Foundation President.
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Just because Gucci Mane-signee Young Scooter is currently incarcerated doesn't mean that his peoples can't rep while bouncing to his latest single. Plus it can't hurt that Houston OG Bun B is featured on the track. "Street Lottery" is a pretty transparent tune (what you see is what you get) and that ain't necessarily a bad thing. Scooter's verse and chorus glorify the fast life of growing up around local hustlers while Bun's lines educates the listening masses about the rules and lessons learned from the same upbringing. This one's definitely dedicated to all the corner lives. Look out for Gucci Mane and Big Krit cameos throughout as well.
Young Scooter "Street Lottery" ft. Bun B
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Wu-Tang Clan Performs "Ruckus in B Minor" on "Late Show With David Letterman"
Wu-Tang Clan Performs "Ruckus in B Minor" on "Late Show With David Letterman"
While the group was not out in full force, they still tore it down.