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Friday, June 7th, 2013
This morning was spent making many of the changes suggested in Thursday night's playtest session. I updated the rules, the room card backs, the player references and the contract board. However, I printed out only the Player References, which are now larger and better organized.
For a while now, I've been looking for a plastic hard hat token to use as a start player marker, just for our playtest version of the game. Toni found a site that has some hard foam ones, so I ordered one. While she was looking, she came up with an idea: What if, in lieu of getting the bonus for completing a room, you could get a tiny little LEGO-sized hard hat, and once you had two of them, you could trade it in for any bonus? We talked about it for a while, and while I am reluctant to add anything that's a new component, the one aspect I really liked was a "wild" completion bonus. Eventually, we decided to try something in today's playtest session: For every two downstairs rooms that are completed, you get one of the other seven bonuses of your choice.
In our two playtest sessions (Toni and I), we used that functionality, and it was great, a really solid addition to the "Completed Rooms" set of features. (Remember, up until now the Downstairs rooms didn't give you any bonus.)
Of course, just this morning I updated the player reference card that lists all the completed room bonuses, so now I have to do that again.
Saturday, June 8th
Origins is this coming week, so updates to Mansions will probably be far and few between during that time. I plan on showing it to Dale Yu for the first time on Thursday, but aside from maybe a few other friends joining us for that playthrough, it won't be seen by anyone else there. And we'll probably be too busy to do any additional playtests.
Printed out the updated Player Reference cards with the new Downstairs "wild" bonus (for every two completed Downstairs rooms).
Also printed out a new set of Room cards with the new backs. Coincidentally, since I updated the room tile backs a few days ago, the cards now have the correct icon order (most frequent to least frequent), which doesn't match the existing fourth Gen room tiles. (I haven't printed out another set with the new icons.) I also used the corner rounder on the room cards and pulled out the bonus cards and did a corner rounding on them as well.
Little change: Changed the Train Room into a shooting range, and increased the Instant Points to 4. Not printed yet (waiting for fifth gen set).
Rules were updated with the new Downstairs completion rule, as well as other items, like a description of the bonus cards and goals, clarifications based on playtesting notes from the Karen/Mike playtests, lots of example images, and other minor adjustments.
Watched a four-player playtest game with Aliza, Jeremy, Michael and Monika. It took a little over two hours (one of the players was VERY slow in putting the tiles out for the Contract board, taking more than five minutes each time, which added about 30 minutes to the game). Only one of the players had played Suburbia, and that player liked Mansions more than Suburbia. One of the new players mentioned he thought it was completely balanced as is. He played Suburbia (including the expansion) after this play, and noted that while the games share some similarities, they felt entirely different.
Notes from the Playtest:
• Bonuses felt swingy - one player said they would like to take three cards instead of two.
• Maybe the players should get money bonuses instead of VP bonuses for not going first?
• There was a discussion about letting players choose from a two-sided Foyer (or even between different foyers). One side could be a certain type with X entrances, and the other could be a different type with Y entrances. I like this idea a lot.
• They mentioned the idea that maybe everyone should start with one random room. I'm intrigued by this, but I think it would add a big chunk of luck to the beginning of the game. If there were a way to implement this fairly, I would be more likely to seriously consider it.
• One of the players noted that the Secret Room and the Panic Room had the exact same layout. Note to self: Go through and compare each of the room stacks and make sure all the different combos are represented.
• There were three Downstairs Completion Bonuses with the new rule: Bonus Cards, Extra Turn and 7 Points.
Sunday, June 9th
Updated the rules with yesterday's playtesters.
Played a four-player game with Steve and Nicky today. Good feedback. One of the big ideas that came out of that playtest session was to possibly start each player with a set of double-sided tiles that they can arrange as they'd like on the first turn (based on the tiles that initially show up under the Contract Board). That could give each player a way to set up their set in a unique fashion.
Steve also mentioned that he wasn't particularly enthralled with the theme. I need to give this some thought, but I think he's onto something.
Tuesday, June 11th
Created three double-sided three-tile sets that players can use to customize their mansion at the start. The Foyer will go back to a corridor, but it will have three entranceways. Piece #1 will be a Utility/Kitchen tile. Piece #2 will be a Purple/Red tile. And piece #3 will be a Blue/Green tile. It'll take a bit of tweaking to get the balance right so that it's not the same choice for each player on their initial setup.
Friday, June 14th
Showed Mansions to Dale while at Gen Con to see whether he's interested in developing it. He is, and we'll start work on it this summer, with the goal of a Spiel 2014 release. I talked to him about retheming, and he said he'd think about it.
•••one month break•••
Tuesday, July 17th
After more than a month off to work on other projects (Suburbia Inc and many other new games), I'm back to Mansions — but it's not "Mansions" anymore. After feedback from playtesters and Dale (who is now signed on to do development work), it's been rethemed to "Castles of Mad King Ludwig".
I think the theme change will work well with the different planned ideas.
Today I worked on new cover art for the prototype box to get myself more engaged in the theme.
Tuesday, July 24th
Today was spent redoing the first chunk of room tiles to match the new theme. Significant changes:
• The walls were changed to stone. Much more aesthetically pleasing.
• Changed the Utility, Activity and Food icons to an Anvil, Mandolin and Goblet, respectively.
• Added shading to the rooms to give them a more 3D look (dark edges around the walls)
• Changed the "star" icon to a castle. Now there are Castle Points.
• Made the room icons much larger.
• Added a wrought-iron fence to the top edge of Outdoor tiles. It looks much better than the old black/yellow stripe.
Wednesday, July 25th
I finished up the room tiles this morning.
Thursday, July 26th
I finished up the the bonus cards and room cards this morning. Re-theming is a lot of work.
Friday, July 27th
It's printing day today...started this morning by printing all of the components. Will be spending several hours cutting, pasting onto cardboard, and cutting again.
Sunday, July 28th
Playtest with Doug and Shelley prior to the Suburbia Inc podcast. Both of them were very excited by the game and the new theming. (They had never seen it as "Mansions".) The walls are too dark and not thick enough, so they'll need to be redone soon. Doug's biggest concern was that Bonus cards were overpowering or that there were too many available to players.
Shelley liked the theme but wanted more themed rooms, like the Grotto and other Ludwig-specific rooms.
Tuesday, July 30th
West Coast Meeplefest prep includes redoing ALL the room tiles with better walls, and adding more themed rooms. This is an all-day project.
Wednesday, July 31st
Updated the Contract board to have Marks instead of dollars. Moved the 3m label down to the sides of the hallways so it could be viewed easier. Updated the logo. Made a double-sided contract board. Rules are updated with the new components. Here's a look at the updated rules as of July 31, 2013:
Also changed the number of cards for a four-player game to 40 instead of 50. That's ten rooms per player, not including hallways, stairs, and blue room bonuses.
Sent the new components to Dale.
Thursday, August 1st
Meeplefest Day 1. Lots of Castles playtests, all of them run by other people (Doug, Denis, etc.). Feedback is overwhelmingly positive. Some confusion about the bonuses vs. room completion bonuses.
Friday, August 2nd
Meeplefest Day 2. More playtests run by other people. Still very positive. Lots of good buzz about the game.
Saturday, August 3rd
Meeplefest Day 3. More playtests, and this time I taught two of them, played in one. Castles was being played pretty much nonstop throughout the day. Discussions about including an "L" or "Z" shape room took place. I think I might try those with a few of the sizes.
Oh, and the game has been in development for three months now. Happy Birthday, Castles!
Sunday, August 4th
Meeplefest Day 4. Prior to Meeplefest, I was up to fix the Room Completion Bonus reference cards. I changed them all to Room Completion Rewards (aha!) and modified the layout/graphics a little to better match the room tile "look". Prior to now, the back of those reference cards were blank. Now they have "Actions & Scoring" so they really are a true reference card. And the Actions and Scoring resembles the back of the room tiles, so they fit together very nicely.
Monday, August 5th
Did some research today about square feet vs. square meters. In Germany, square meters weren't law until 1872, so for most of King Ludwig's life, things were in square feet (or fuß).
Wednesday, August 7th
One of the things I've wanted to try out is irregularly-shaped rooms. I'm starting today with L-shaped 300 sqft rooms to replace the current ones.
L-shaped 300 sqft rooms are done. Whew. It's tough to cut these.
I had an idea, and a lot of math later, I think I'm going to try it: round rooms. There are pro's and cons to round rooms:
Pros:
• Looks amazingly cool.
• Fits well with the castle theme.
• Distinguishes the sizes that are round from the square/rectangular ones.
Cons:
• Only four doors possible, n/s/e/w on each tower. No variation.
• Pain in the butt to cut them for prototypes.
• No corners to put the castle points, square footage, icon.
I've already figured out that 500 sqft rooms are great candidates for this: the 500 square foot rooms were virtually 20x25. The round rooms are 25x25,which by doing the math, makes a 490square foot room, which is really really close to 500. Enough that it works for game purposes.
The smaller round rooms aren't as nice...if I do the 225sqft rooms (which is the plan right now), which is 15x15, the round room size is 176sqft. The upside is if I call it 150 sqft, I now have rooms that are 100, 150, 200, 250, 300, 350, 400, 450, 500, 800. The downside is it's a lot further off from 150 than 490 is from 500, but I think for game purposes it'll work!
Thursday, August 8th
As I was working on the new rounded rooms, I realized that the foyer (starting tile) needs to be 150 and rounded as well. So I created all the rounded rooms, printed them and cut them today...cutting rounded rooms is a ridiculous amount of work!
Looked at some castle floor plans, and while the new L and round rooms give the game some nice flexibility...but it's missing something. So I revamped the 800 sqft rooms to make them long octagons totaling 600 sqft. And I did those and printed/cut them as well.
Now I need to revise the Room cards and Bonus cards that refer to the changed rooms since the picture (and the size for some) doesn't match anymore. I changed the Bonus cards, but we wanted to get some playtesting in so the Room cards will have to wait.
Toni and I played five (yes, five!) two-player games (bringing the current number of playtests to 70), and several things came up:
• It seems like there are too many purple tiles and there seem to be too few blue tiles. In two games, we were flooded with them. I'm going to update the Room List spreadsheet with the current set of tiles and see where we are with that.
• The Gazebo is currently a 400 sqft room (square). If anything should be a round room, it's the Gazebo.
• Bonus card changes: Unique types and rooms should be all or nothing, because of the new set-up rule. I'm thinking 7 points for having ALL sizes and 7 points for having ALL types. done 8-9-13
• The Start Token should move to the next player after the set-up round.
The set-up round should be the first round; you just can't buy anything (or take $) that round. The rules need to be reworked here.
• We had some discussion about making a basic and a "strategy" game.
• I need to add a line to the rules about the contractor NOT reading the tiles when setting up in order to make the game move at a decent pace. At Meeplefest, some players were taking way too long to read the tiles. It should take no longer than 30 seconds to set up the tiles. I can't overemphasize this enough: It's no fun to sit and watch another player deliberate the costs of tiles.
• There should be a note in the rules to clarify that getting an extra turn via the Yellow room reward results in players being able to take an additional Corridor reward (which is limited to one per turn). That extra turn means you can have a second one. (It's not on the same turn since you have two in a row.)
• Lowered the number of cards for two players to 22 (from 25). done 8-9-13
Friday August 9th
Printed out updated room cards. Also changed it so that the deck is 50 cards, with six each of the 100, 150, 200, 250, and 300, and four each of the 350, 400, 450, 500, and 600. The number of cards for each set of players:
• 2 Players: 22
• 3 Players: 30
• 4 Players: 36
That might change, but it seems like a good set to start with to ensure the game is played in a reasonable amount of time. Also, it makes each game entirely different...you never know exactly which cards will come up.
I also updated and added Bonus cards: Updated the Uniques to be all-or-nothing, and added a few more: 1 point per $5, 1 per Round Room, 1 per Square Room, and 5 for having the Start Player token at the end of the game. I'm not sure about that last one...players have some control over extending/ending the game; obviously this is harder the more players there are.
Did a three-player test with Brett and Toni. One of the issues we ran into was two 150 round rooms that overlapped slightly (and definitely should not have fit there). Also, Brett mistook a great hall for a downstairs room because the sides/doorways are too dark.
Sunday, August 11th
Today is the day to revamp the rules. Until now, the rules had been four pages, with the contents/set-up on the first page like Suburbia. Set-up is the real catalyst here: Squishing it all onto a portion of a page is making it too difficult to read, so I'll be putting contents on page 1, set-up (and the first turn) on pages 2 and 3, and the rules will then start in earnest on page 4. In addition, I'm going to look into spreading them out more, to make them more digestible. The goal is eight pages when I'm done (same as Suburbia, if you include that game's tile manifest, which this game will not have).
After working on the rules, they are at six pages now, though I don't have any visual example for the first turn, and I probably need more images for the main portion of the rules. But the Contents and Set-up are totally updated to cover 2.5 pages now, and it looks a LOT better.
•••end of diary entries•••
Well, that's when I stopped writing about the game, but a whole lot of work was done between then and the end of April 2014, when the game was finalized. Most of that was tweaking, though there were a few major changes. Getting the artwork really helped bring the game to life, and the top-down perspective really looks like a detailed floor plan of a castle.
Castles of Mad King Ludwig will debut at Spiel in October 2014 and should be available in the U.S. at about the same time.
Ted Alspach
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