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But just playing wasn't enough. I stumbled on the Playtest UK group on Meetup and from there the more local Cambridge Playtesters – then started on my own game design journey. And while I don't think Reiner, Uwe, Friedemann, and the rest have too much to worry about, I have got my first design onto the printing presses: Empire Engine has left the building.
The mainstays of the Cambridge Playtest Group are Brett Gilbert (Divinare) and Matthew Dunstan (Relic Runners) — dedicated designers with more pedigree than a small city such as Cambridge could expect. One evening Brett told us about an idea he was hatching for a website that would be full of microgames from a whole host of designers and that we were all welcome to submit things if they fit the criteria. The games needed to have no more than eighteen cards, plus maybe a few extra bits players could provide easily themselves. While he didn't intend it as one, the challenge (for me at least) had been set.
I went away and thought about the types of mechanisms I liked best in games, and how they might fit into such a limited number of cards. My first thought was worker placement — an idea I still haven't completely given up on — but I ended up settling on the rondel mechanism so beautifully realized by Mac Gerdts.
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Rondel from Gerdts' Antike
First Steps
If you're unfamiliar with it, Gerdts' rondel is a static wheel (drawn on the game board) that is divided into eight sections, each of which represents an action. Each player has a single piece he places onto this wheel in the first game round, then takes the appropriate action. In future turns he moves his piece around the wheel to take different actions, the catch being that he can advance only up to to three spaces clockwise around the wheel without paying a penalty. As you can imagine, this makes decisions decidedly tricky as you weigh efficiency in time versus efficiency in expenditure.
This idea actually translated quite easily in my mind into card form: Cards have four sides, so that's two clockwise-turning "rondel" cards each per player (rather than placing pieces on the cards) – which also meant two actions each per round per player; not much of a diversion, and hopefully an interesting one – especially as there wasn't going to be a board to add a spatial element to the game.
If I worked on it being up to a four-player game, this was about half (eight) of my eighteen cards gone: What of the rest? I needed a way for the existing cards to be turned to emulate the difficult decisions you had to make in a Gerdts rondel game, and so the movement cards were born. Alongside his two rondel cards, each player also has two movement cards: a "1" and a "2". Each turn he must place one movement card next to each rondel, thus turning one a single 90º turn clockwise and the other 180º. This might just work...
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Getting It to the Table
I centered on a simple and proven action structure, taking three sides from the classic "4X" gaming standard: expand, exploit and exterminate. (I left explore out, thanks to the lack of board!) This led me to specific actions of arm/attack/defend; harvest/export; and invent/salvage. I'd decided each rondel would point at a different opponent, so if I limited the number of actions to seven, it meant "attack" could be on both rondel cards.
The actions offered themselves to a simple system: You'd either be drawing tokens/chips to represent resources you had collected (arm, harvest, invent/salvage) or turning them into victory points (successfully attacking or exporting). This also lent itself well to three scoring types – military, export and technology – which could be totted up to decide a winner. I drew some actions on some bits of paper and headed to the pub for playtest night.
Putting something you've created in front of your peers is an extraordinarily nerve-racking experience. I've been doing it for years with writing so that's water off a duck's back now, but with game design I feel those old fears coming back to haunt me. But the Cambridge playtest guys are a supportive yet critical and thoughtful bunch — the perfect combination, really. It's usual to find the post-game conversation going on miles longer than the playtest itself.
While the test was from being a roaring success as I hadn't really thought into many of the small but important details, Matt could see the design had promise and I was eager to enlist the help of someone who had been down the design path many times. It's hard to quantify what Matt brought to the process without it sounding a bit trivial, which it was anything but. What I had was an idea that worked on paper, just; what Matt had was an analytical/numerical brain, experience, patience, and an eye for gaming details that were beyond me. Between us, following his lead, we started to refine my ideas into a better game — you know, one with rules, a scoring system, etc.
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The Nitty Gritty
Over the following six months, we tinkered and tinkered and tinkered some more. Luckily much of the initial game fell straight into place; the very first game document simply read: "Arm: Gain 2 soldiers, Produce: Gain 2 goods, Invent: Increase tech level by 1, Export: Ship all goods to score pile, Attack (use 1 soldier): Destroy a good.” But the devil was most definitely in the details and for a while this was amazingly frustrating for me; I'd no idea you could be so close to being happy with something, but have so much trouble putting the damned thing in the can! One action in particular (that ended up as "Salvage") changed pretty much every time we played — or what seemed like a great idea on the way to test night actually broke the whole of the rest of the game rather than fixing a small issue.
Moving actions between the rondels until we had the right combination — that is, balancing the risk/reward of some of the harder actions and trying to stop an obviously more powerful combination emerging — was critical and took a lot of tries to get right (something Matt nailed). Timing was also a big concern as I wanted as much of the play as possible to be simultaneous once cards were revealed. This for me was very important as I think it adds that element of "poker face" to the game, which I enjoy watching most when others play. And a key part of this was hidden information – in which order would action choices be revealed, and how much could players on either side of you deduce from this? Luckily Catan-style timing (used in set-up for initial placement of settlements) fitted perfectly, but took a long while to get into the thought process.
Fairness was also crucial as we needed players to feel all mistakes were equally cruelly punished! For example, initially you failed an attack action if you had no soldier, but if you tried to do an export action and had no goods you gained a good – which left an attacker feeling pretty hard done by in comparison. The other big challenge was the scoring system, something I don't think I'll ever be totally happy with/ (I expect for every game design there is something, but sooner or later you have to let go!) I think in the end we at least reasonably balanced the likelihood of gaining each type of scoring cube – and the hidden scoring really helps the game zip along.
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The Finished Product
Once I was sure we would definitely be finishing the game, I asked a talented artist friend (Seb Antoniou) if he might be interested in helping out with a few images – although I couldn't pay him. Just what a struggling artist with a young family wants to hear. In terms of theme, steampunk had been obvious. Conflict, cards working as gears/cogs – it simply made sense. (I came up with the game name as a riff on Gibson & Sterling's The Difference Engine – which I really need to get round to reading.) Luckily steampunk was a genre that comic fan Seb loved, which made his decision easier – plus the fact that he had to design only one image (although he also did a brilliant job on the icons)!
The game went live on Good Little Games (and was listed here on BoardGameGeek) in August 2013 and for a while I thought that was that: Mission accomplished. But with my Essen trip for 2013 booked, Matt and I decided it was worth trying the game with a few publishers while there – especially as he had arranged meetings to show off some other games anyway. What did I have to lose?
I went to only one meeting, with Stephen Buonocore at Stronghold Games, which was as exciting as it was terrifying. Despite Stephen being really nice it was somewhere between a job interview and a first date; luckily Matt did most of the rules explanation as I'd have probably made a massive cock up of it. Stephen didn't bite, but to my immense pride AEG did. We found out the day after Spiel, on the Monday. I was halfway home in a bar in Cologne with friends when I heard the news – and duly celebrated with some of the world's best beers. If things went to plan, my little idea was going to be in the shops! And now a year on with my Spiel 2014 trip booked, if the shipping gods are kind, I'll be there to witness it. Yup, it's time to get ridiculously nervous all over again...
But before I sign off, the story wouldn't be complete without giving a massive "thank you" to the print & play community. Since putting the game live here on BGG, we've had it translated into French, Russian and Portuguese; had a complete card redesign (from Ilya Baranovsky); and been nominated for a Geeky — none of which we sought out ourselves. And that's not to mention all the positive feedback, reviews and GeekList mentions — thanks to you all!
Chris Marling
(Some parts of this diary first appeared on Marling's blog Go Play Listen)
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