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Couple years ago when I was writing about designing the 51st StateI told a story about Baby Swift. For those who don’t remember or didn’t follow my blog back then here is a short recap.
One week during play testing marathon of 51st State we received new artwork for the game. I printed old cards with the new artwork and prepared new version of the prototype. Among new cards there was a card called Baby Swift that gained an amazing piece of art (shown above).
Since that moment from being almost never drafted card it changed into nearly the most often drafted card in the game. I didn’t change the rule of the card. I have just put there an amazing art.
***
We always say that there is lots of mathematics involved in the designing games. We work very hard to balance stuff, to calculate odds, to make all actions equally valuable. And yet, even though this calculations are pretty easy to achieve and in most cases we have no problem with that part of design process, we face many other problems, problems that can not be just simply calculated. Problems that have much to do with pure emotions and psychology.
Let me today tell you about interesting problems I face when play testing First Martians.
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First Martians is built on the engine of Robinson Crusoe. Both games use the same basic mechanism – you spend 1 Action Pawn and you roll a dice or you spend both your Action Pawns and you have auto success.
You go for Explore action, you spend 1 Action Pawn, so you grab green dice and roll. Most likely you will succeed (5 success icons), most likely you will have an adventure (5 adventure icons) and you’ll have so so chance to get wounded (3 wound icons).
Even though all adventures in the deck are bad, players often provoke adventures. They are eager to see what will happen. Get lost in the woods? Find cursed hut? Find corpse of dead goat? So many cool things might happen!
They roll dice, they have adventures, the game is rich in stories and theme. Robinson Crusoe at its best!
Let’s visit the Mars.
There is an interesting issue I face. Play testers don’t roll dice. They do all actions with 2 Action Pawns and they do everything, literally everything they can just to not roll dice.
Last test I run? They didn’t plant seeds in greenhouse, plants didn’t grow (obviously!) and in the second scenario players will most likely die of hunger, because food reserve is really low. And yet they just achieved objective of scenario, the absolute minimum they needed to achieve to finish the game and did nothing more. No single preparation for second game.
‘Why didn’t you plant seeds?’ I asked after the test game.
‘We had no time for that.’
‘You had time. You did all your actions with 2 Action Pawns. You easily could split some of them, roll dice and plant.’ I pointed.
‘I am not rolling these fucking dice’ I heard in response (and this is a quote just in case you wondered).
‘You will die of hunger in second scenario of the campaign!’
‘It’s space. I am not rolling these fucking dice in space.’
***
There is no logic here. There is nothing I could predict building the game. There is nothing I can address in rules set. This is just pure emotional problem. Having adventures on cursed Island is exciting and cool. Having adventures on Mars is…
‘I am not rolling these fucking dice.’
