I'm a month or two late for expounding upon the virtues of the World Board Gaming Championships and my complete week's vacation at the event, but since this blog is inherently personal and updated as frequently/infrequently as needed, I feel no sense of immediacy or regret. The week was wonderful. And while I had scheduled out my tournament schedule weeks ahead of time, as I expected the most entertaining times came outside of competition (when I wasn't forced to play games with total douches), and usually involved random people looking for a game. It's great to have an open atmosphere where someone can feel invited to every game available, just as long as they time it right. I learned Die Macher, Through the Ages, Race for the Galaxy, Tichu, and a few more less memorable game experiences that I'm not recalling at the moment. I sat down with a few fellow game designers, one named Josh, on the verge of having his deceptively simple game, "Battle Time," picked up by a publisher, and the makers of "Wits and Wagers" played a few frustrating games of Dominion Intrigue with me.
If I was in the business frame of mind, I probably would have exchanged information, but at the time, I was much more content to make new friends and basically interview them about the whole process. It's terribly interesting to note that "Forecaster" was created early last year as a prototype, and that while it almost feels shelved to me because of the lack of development, these guys are working on their games for five years and still not ready to send them to the production floor.
An entertaining week, and surprisingly not a very expensive week as I pretty much bought one small meal and a coffee-flavored drink each day. I bought nothing at the dealer's tables, only really missing out on an opportunity to buy plastic game components and some sweet dice. By the last night, I was beat, and the final marathon 5 hour session of Through the Ages (losing by 1 point), almost killed me.
But, most importantly, I was courageous, and I did get to test out my coffee game on a group of 7 people.
Starbucks
While buying a coffee at Starbucks, sometime around closing, I immediately had this grand scope of an idea. Why don't I design an accessible Euro-style board game about coffee, that Starbucks would distribute throughout each of it's stores during the holiday season? This was many months ago, possibly around March or April, when the idea first sprang into my head. I happened to have a pen and paper in hand, and started jotting down some notes.
If I was going to design a game about coffee that carried the Starbucks brand name, the theme had to be solidly positive towards all of their brands. I quickly threw out the idea of competing coffee chop baristas, because why would Starbucks want to compete with itself, and why would one Starbucks store be better than another? It wouldn't send the right message. Cooperation seemed to be the way to go, but there had to be a point to it all.
When I checked out Starbucks' website, I found that they had sectioned the world off at the equator, and talked about three distinct regions where coffee was predominantly grown. This sparked an idea that fueled the game's basic premise. Each player is a field researcher, traveling the world and searching remote locations for the best new coffee beans for Starbucks. Since the world was split into three, I decided quickly that I wanted three teams to be created because of the choices made by the players. These teams would work together to blend their coffees, and the good blends would become top sellers at the stores, continuing to stay on the menu with each passing week. The theme was set in place, and from what I can surmise, it still appears to be safely competitive, while keeping a consistent, positive image for the store.
I was missing a major component though, what would you actually do? Because of my intensive work on the Burrito Game, I pushed the idea to the side, letting it fester in the back of my mind. But, it wasn't until sitting down with Tim Hing at Denny's, that the main mechanic was stumbled upon. I explained my idea to him, as roughly and quickly as possible. He really enjoyed the game, "Thebes," and within minutes had contradicted my idea of using cards as beans, instead throwing beans into each player's personal "roaster" bag. They would later work as teams, pulling their beans from their sack to make blends. This created an environment of simplistic compromise and teamwork. Shortly afterward, I realized that one of the main issues I was having with my previous games is that there was no consistent building mechanism that gave the player options that would pay-out in the long-term. I love games where the player feels like they are getting better and better. So, I created a personal research track for each player, allowing them to gain abilities that would aid them in creating better blends and obtaining specific coffee beans.
Play-tests (3 so far):
#1
The first official playtest occurred at Mario Arnold's house for the July 4th weekend. We were able to rope in two of his cousins to sit down and play for a good three hours, creating a nice 6-player game. On the fly, I suggested we start the game with three beans in our roasters; 2 white, 1 yellow.
I was extremely nervous while explaining the game. My three friends are avid board gamers and could intuit most of the game's mechanics as I explained, but the game is complex enough that it almost alienated the two casual players. To their credit, they stuck it out and made it through a complete, studdering (almost 30 minute) explanation of the rules. I knew before I had even begun explaining that a player-aide is definitely required and some of the more specific research abilities and symbols needed to be listed for quick reference.
The first round seems to be the key. The initial placement system is a life-saver. All a new player has to do is pick ANY space on the board and place their marker. It is very easy to understand, and after one round all but the "swap" symbol were easily understood. Then comes the first dual choice; to blend or to research. Again, once people knew who their teammates were they immediately began planning their turns. On the first round, I made sure to guide them through some of the confusion, showing how to score, where to move blends and best-sellers. By the time the second round began, they had already grasped the general concept and were helping to score and set up the next round.
I was impressed by the play-test. The game never fell apart and I never read a look of agony on anyone's face even as the game stretched into the three hour mark. It didn't fail miserably or have some insurmountable hiccup that required a rules update. This always makes me happy because the game proceeded how I had envisioned; but it is more difficult to discern the major problems, since nothing pops up. All players were constantly talking and involved, possibly even more so than later play-tests, and scheming and laughing. So, the mechanics worked and created a nice rubber band effect on the victory point track that I had really hoped I would see.
The game ended by three research tracks becoming filled by Mario's cousin. He ended up losing by one point when adding all victory points by a slight miscalculation.
After the game, we sat around and I asked some questions about where I should focus my attentions for the next playtest. Mostly positive. The negative feedback was almost all related to length and balancing issues. I had misjudged the amount of blend cards needed to trigger endgame (too many). I had misjudged the amount of victory points needed to trigger endgame (too many). And I had artificially enhanced the game's length by not giving out enough research points. All easily altered. But, shortening the game even further would require some more adjustments.
#2
WBC provided the location for my second play-test, this time with 7 players (5 had never played, 3 were strangers), allowing me a chance to see how the game would scale when three-player teams were involved. (Sadly, a really nice guy stopped by and listened to a complete rules explanation, but since our game started later than expected, he ended up having to leave before ever playing. However, this helped me streamline my stuttering immensely for when the big group gathered later). The rules were explained within twenty minutes, and the now standard 1 white, 1 yellow, 1 light brown, starting roaster was implemented.
Five cards were removed at random from the Blend deck, a few new cards were created for the Flavor deck, and the victory point total for end-game was changed from 30 to 20.
Even though there were more players and even more tense table-talk/negotiation in this game, it clocked in at about two and a half hours. The VP total was the catalyst to bring the game to a stop.
Sadly, this play-test emphasized more of the problems that had surfaced slightly within the first play-test. And even more sadly, I can't remember the names of all the players. The main issue was the power of the rainbow blend versus the 5-of-a-kind. What I hadn't anticipated was that when the game scales to teams of three players, it becomes much easier to create a rainbow blend then when there are teams of two. This caused a situation where a team was able to create a bestselling blend very early in the game and stay at the top of the list for an extremely long and unfair amount of time, before it was knocked down. Also, because of this and other similarly unbalanced reasons, there was a very clear winner and a large disparity between first and last place.
After the game was over, I received more genuine compliments than complaints however, and a pledge to play again. Considering the game was on it's second playtest and barely two months old at the time, they were impressed by the progress. I remember feeling dread when I was cleaning up. I thought that it might be a while before I could figure out a way to fix the looming issue of the bestseller list being unbalanced.
Gladly, I spoke to Tim a few days later and he suggested something which I initially deemed too fiddly, but quickly began to acknowledge as sound advice. Instead of bestsellers sitting on the list forever until they are knocked downwards by a better blend; they should degrade each round. More crazy rules! I complained. But, I knew he was right, and the next game I would test it out to see if anyone noticed.
#3
The final play-test was Game Night @ Comix Connection in Camp Hill, PA. This was another 6-player test, and went extremely smoothly.
Ten cards were removed at random from the Blend deck, a few new cards were created for the Flavor deck, two new country tokens were added (+2 VP & -2VP), and most importantly two major rule changes were implemented to balance out gameplay. After each scoring round, all coffee blends degrade in popular opinion and one bean is taken from each bestseller. Second, the rainbow blend is ranked as just above a three-of-a-kind, but never degrades. Also, to improve play-time, all teams were required to choose whether to Blend or Research at the same time, which ends up being very key in moving the game along at a steady pace.
The game-play last under two hours. Exactly what I had always wanted for this game. The end-scoring spanned 10 points between first and last place with a 1 point margin between first and second. The VP track ended the game, but there were 5 cards left in the Blend deck, and Jim was one point away from completing three Research tracks.
Every turn of the game (except for the first), Jim chose to research. I give this a special mention because it did not break the game. He did not win. And I'm very happy he didn't, because that would have been a big stumbling block.
The best compliment of the night came in the form of Brian saying, "I really like this game. This is your first game that I can safely say I would play again for sure." Sadly, this comment meant that he didn't really like the Burrito game, but it also meant that I had a truly good thing going. On the negative side, one of the irregular visitors seemed indifferent to the whole experience, possibly finding it silly or too fiddly. There are always things to fix.
...and more things to fix will come soon.
