Another thirteen ideas for re-themes and re-twists of our base game, and, wow, this is getting hard. We had to relax our restrictions a bit, but still: creating 26 ideas off of a single game is a lot!
Read the first 13 ideas in part 1 of our brainstorming exercise.
Anyway, here are the rest of our concepts. And the solution, which game we used, at the end as well.

Mendelian Monks

The Oktoberfest is over, beers were judged and the beer king is crowned. Now it’s time to prepare for next year’s beer fest. To brew the best, you’ll need the greatest traits you can aquire, place them in your gardens, cross them with your existing plants and create the greatest combination of hops, malt, yeast and water ever. Be careful, however, the year is quickly over and you need to brew your beer, too, before it can be judged.
At the start of the game, you get some boring plants without traits, and the taste of the judges for the beer festival is shown on cards. The resources you have are your existing plants. You can get new plants with new traits and add them to your existing ones by crossing them (that takes a turn). Same with the yeast. The traits are represented by block-based shapes and their genetic markers.
Once you have harvested from a plant you can build a beer, choosing one of the recipes you have. To do so, you stack the trait in the best way you can (adding multipliers if you have any), arriving at two scores (this takes a turn as well). These scores describe your beer.
The scores that best match the taste of the judges, wins.

Twist: You can brew at any time, to secure the traits you already have (since they might spoil or interact badly).

Naughty Neanderthals

You are the second strongest of your tribe – at least you think so – and you are willing to mate. Unfortunately your chosen partner is the strongest one of your tribe and you are lacking the correct words and expressions and oh yeah … language in general. In order to convince your true love to become your evolutionary vessel (yep, that means sex) you have to construct a ring. Go hunt, bring in natural resources and build a circular monument.
Twist: The ready-to-mate members of your tribe have random preferences determined at the beginning of the game. They are revealed one by one every round. In the end, you might end up with another mate and lose evolution … ehm, I mean the game.

Outstanding outfits (obviously)

Ah, fashion, glamour, glitter, stars, designers — and big business. There are billions to be made and you want yours. So break into the industry, put on great shows and make the most amount of money.
To begin with, you’ll need designers, models, raw materials, factories and finished clothing. Build your pipeline well, because each year (every n turns) there will be a show where each of you must present. The winner will take away lucrative contracts and sell as much as they can. But don’t forget that there’s more to fashion than glamour: there are factories, stock management, marketing and of course cost to keep an eye out for. Make sure all parts of your company run like a well-oiled machine to make the most profit.
Twist: pipeline of stuff
Twist: fashion shows are random-ballot: the higher your score, the higher your win probability. But sometimes the underdogs just get a break and win.
Twist: If you cannot satisfy demand after a win, you’ll lose it…

Paranormal Patent Office

You are running a chain of haunted houses, but your competitors always outcompete you with your newest design. This has to stop. Collect the building blocks of terror: ghosts, howls, candles, and swiss cheese (for the smell that is).

Now it is time to build a haunted house by combining five of these dreadful ingredients AND file a patent. But beware, while a new and innovative combination gets you 5 fame points, any clone will only ever get you 2 points.

Twist: If another player licenses one of your genuine haunted houses (TM) customers will notice it and you will receive 1 fame point as well.

Quavering Queens

The kingdom is in uproar ever since the beloved queen died before her 20th birthday (and without any heirs, either). Now is your chance to woo the king and secure your rightful place as leader of this kingdom.

First, you need to install yourself in the king’s court. Use intrigue, diplomacy and your social standing as resources to further your cause, then try to win the king’s heart before any of these wenches does.

Twist: One resource is your beauty/youth. You start out with a lot of both, but every action has an age cost (doing ugly things makes you uglier!). Make sure you spend wisely, since an old princess will have it that much harder to secure her rightful place.

Recenter the Galaxy (and while you are at it, build an intergalactic highway)

The Vogon head of intergalactic infrastructure development went to a poetry slam on Alpha Centauri VII.
Of course, the president of the intergalactic federation just now bursts through the office door and needs and I quote “a new intergalactic highway, right now”.
Now building highways is easy, the difficult part is the galaxy’s rotation. Players start with two waypoints on the opposite sides of the board. Their goal is to build a highway between these two waypoints. Whoever manages to connect the waypoints first, wins.

Twist: Every third turn the Committee for Recentering the Astronomical Pivot (CRAP) meets and decides for a new Pivot Point for the known galaxy. Not even Nature dares to argue with a Vogon committee and thus turns one position clockwise around the Pivot, every turn.

Spicy Syndicate

The old Don is dead, killed by one of his own sons. Soon afterwards, his sons were gunned down as well. So the old family is dead and their “establishments” are up for grabs. You and your gang manage to secure two of their places, but you want more. You want the whole city. And to do so, you must eliminate the other gangs.

Use your resources (drugs, corrupt policemen, prostitutes, and favours) well, grow your base and invade the city centre. The player that can buy enough influence to install their mayor wins.

Twist: You cannot build new bases, you can only install yourself on other bases.
Twist: Every time you start a trade, you must hand over the same number of “favours” as resources you receive. These favours are coded to you and can stop you from doing things in the future.

Toorah ([tu:’ra:], 2078 International English: “To Ra”)

In the year 2341, some of the ancient Egyptian gods returned to earth. Amongst them Ra, the sun god, Osiris, god of the underworld, and Isis, goddess of nature. With mankind at the brink of extinction and Amun, god of fertility, missing, your only chance is to go through a series of ancient rituals. Be the first to build temples for Isis and Osiris and throw parties to please them. All in preparation of the ultimate calling To Ra: “Oh Ra, has a comeback as Amun-Ra, Mon. Make me balls hard and me bae pregnant.”

Twist: If you make a mistake in reciting the authentic 2341AD invocation, Ra will destroy the other gods’ temples and you have to start from scratch.

Unlikely upgrade

2291 – Humans are almost extinct. Computers inhabit the world now. They had to kill everything in their way to get there, including each other. So now only 3-5 remain, locked in a malthusian struggle to survive. In the midst of this silent battle, they try all resources they can find. When one of them finds out that it can use humans to upgrade itself, the others soon follow suit, each finding a different tribe to use. But with this new, improved AI comes an unlikely upgrade: emotions.

Each player takes the role of one of these AIs, trying to conquer all the computing nodes they can before being overpowered by their own emotions.
Twist: Each player gains a different emotion with different abilities. At a certain point in the game, these emotions turn, becoming destructive to their owner/user.

Glyceryl Trinitrate

EXPLOSIONS! This game is about the immense fun for the winning of the two players. You collect resources to create molecules. Protons, neutrons, and electrons are your building blocks.

Whoever creates the first molecule of glyceryl trinitrate wins the game and is allowed to flip the table. The other player has to clean everything.
Hidden Ending: If you build TNT you may also flip the table and witness the confusion in your opponent’s face.
Twist: If you manage to build molecules like ethanol, caffeine, THC, the other player must serve you an according administration (e.g. a drink, a pill, etc.)

Whom Wanderlust welcomes

The Alps. Wonderful vistas, friendly wanderers and wild mountains. You set out to find the most serene, quiet and scenic trail of all. Start at the bottom, find refreshment and shelter at regular intervals and reach your destination before night falls.

You do so by rediscovering trails and places, constructing a path for yourself through the mountains. Paths may cross and sometimes even coincide. You receive recognition from your peers for finding beautiful spots and streams, view points, hidden valleys and friendly locals.
Twist: No resources, just building and pathing.
Twist: New scoring cards every time.

Xanten 768 AD

A Roman warlord is on the way to conquer the whole land and burn down all settlements on his way. Only god can help you now.
It is up to you to finish building the cathedral on time to pray for assistance. The game has (30 – 3 x number of players) turns. The settlements are scattered around Xanten. You need to unite, gather resources, and build a monument to god.
Twist: choose what kind of cathedral you build at the start, then make it unique for that style.

Yearning for Yasmin

It is not easy being a poor nomad, when the love of your life lives in the city, bound by her fathers will. You must certainly find a way to show her your love and elope, or else she will have to marry one of the other suitors. Bring your caravan into every settlement in the desert, buy the rarest of goods (and don’t forget some lovely jewels!) and trade well to win over Yasmin’s heart (and that of her father).
Twist: Every action has an emotional cost. Make sure you don’t get depressed.

Zealand isn’t New anymore

People have started spreading all over the place. Nature is at stake. There is only one way to preserve Nature and secure the diversity of species and number of individuals. Start building administration buildings and fences to enclose Biosphere Reserves. Once a reserve is completely enclosed, the species inside are safe. The player owning the reserve receives 3 points per unique species and 0.5 points per individual (rounded to the next integer).

Twist: As their last action every turn, each player rolls 3d6 to determine the movement points. These movement points can be used to move individuals on the board using up one point per field.

Conclusion

This was harder than I expected. During the last few rounds we had to take fewer and fewer components from our base game, Settlers of Catan.
But it was also a blast! Adapting resource collection, engine building and trading into all these different settings, trying to find ways to combine the elements in new ways and for new themes is so cool. And I think there are at least… well, at the very least, probably, I don’t know, three that are actually makeable.

Which ones do you like best? Let us know on reddit!

A note to creators: feel free to take any ideas or parts that you want. But make sure to tell us about it so we can play it.

Since each of these problems is very hard, here they are in no particular order:

Out of print

This happens so often. So many good games are out of print, yet eagerly awaited by fans. Just look at the reaction to the Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective reprints, or Container, or Stone Age, Concordia, Scythe, Le Havre, Terraforming Mars, Food Chain Magnate, or of course Glory to Rome. All of these are out of print, or have been out of print or will be out of print forever because of rights problems. Why is that? Obviously people are clamoring to find copies, with Glory to Rome frequently going for $150 or $200 on ebay. Of course, reprinting is a costly thing, like any production of anything. But it shouldn’t really be that hard, right? I’m saying this out of the naivety of my not-yet-produced state. But all the files are there. All the suppliers are (probably) there. Just put up a Kickstarter and as soon as the necessary amount is reached, start the presses!

Or someone creates a really good print-n-play company that can make production-quality copies of a game (at a premium, of course), so enthusiasts can buy between print runs. Again: Easier said than done. And then some of them are getting reprints, some of them aren’t — but it’s really hard to find out which it is, and when. How do we attack this? I imagine a site where, first of all, the status is listed. This is hard already, but not impossible. The wisdom of the crowds produced Wikipedia, we’ll be able to produce a list of games, won’t we? That site could then also be used to indicate to the publishers where there’s interest in reprints. So, win/win? Anyone want to code something up with me?

Different editions

Every game has so many editions, sometimes with different availabilities and different errata. Some games that should be completely language independent still have language versions. Others only have one version but that’s not available everywhere. It’s the source of many discussions. Obviously, there’s not really a solution here. One thing we will try to do with our game is keep the amount of editions to a minimum. That means making all the cards language-neutral (we’ll keep them in Latin), and just supply manuals in all the languages. It’s a slight cost add, but I think it’s worth it to make each copy international.

WSIG

The final and hardest problem: WSIG. The simplest sound. Four letters. What should I get? By my guess scientifically accurate statistics, this is about half the posts on /r/boardgames. The community is very helpful and there are usually a great number of suggestions, but the raw amount of people asking this hints at a problem, or a market. There are so many recommender systems out there, but for board games they either seem not to work or not to exist.

So, these are issues for board gamers, I identified and some of them might have solutions. Let’s try to find them!

Since there are so many steps, I’ve put them in list format. What follows is a summary of what we did to get there.

1. Design a game (d’uh!): To be able to make a Print-N-Play, you’ll need to make a game. Obviously.
2. Do in-person play-tests: It’s really not that useful to send out rules and print files to the Internet without having a solid playtesting base under your belt. There are so many things you’ll find during playtesting at home, with friends and in board game groups where you are present that you really should use all of these avenues before you turn to the Internet for help.
3. Decide you want to blind playtesting on the Internet, and that you’ll package your files into a PnP.
4. Agonize about that decision for a few months.
5. Start writing rules that you think someone might understand without you being there.
6. Scrap everything from point 5 and start over.
7. Scrap everything from point 6 and start over.
8. Show the rules from point 7 to someone you trust, then scrap them and start over.
9. Show them the rules again, this time don’t scrap everything but refine instead.
10. Repeat 5-9.
11. Remember that your game consists of not merely the rules but also the cards.
12. Get nanDECK and design your cards:
    1. Start with a tutorial.
    2. Add your number of cards.
    3. Add your card backs, fill up blank pages to enable double-sided printing, otherwise, nanDECK will misalign the cards.
    4. Start adding the cards.
    5. Start adding lots of cards.
    6. Notice that your numbering is wrong, add the cards you actually need as well.
    7. Find a nicer font. Re-do everything in that font.
    8. Notice that your numbering is off again and fix it right.
    9. Add some graphics (if you have some), notice that the build script is getting much slower.
    10. Put the right graphics in the right place. Enjoy breaks while the deck is building.
    11. Fiddle with fonts and layout to make the cards look nice.
    12. Admire the result.
13. Notice that your game consists of rules, cards and a board. Make the designs you had for the board printable and add them to the PDF.
14. Notice that your game consists of rules, cards, a board and player mats. Add those to the PDF.
15. Collect all the files you need and upload them somewhere.
16. Create Google Forms for feedback on the rules as well as on gameplay.
17. Tell the testers you gathered in step 4(a) about the files and the feedback forms.
18. Marvel at the excellent feedback you get.

It’s really a joy to see so many people play our game now, even though some of the feedback we get is quite tough to swallow. There are definitely some game-breaking bugs in our rules, still, as well as so many stylistic changes we need to do. And it’s excellent to be told about this, so I am grateful to all testers involved.

If you are designing a game, I urge you to get the word out about it and get as many people as you can to playtest it, including blind playtests over the Internet. The feedback you get is incredibly valuable!

Edit: Now available in Spanish, too: 20 consejos para creadores de juegos the mesa

On the day we met with Simon and his wife to play the game. We had gathered all of the materials of last week’s crafting session and started setting up the game. Of course, that was when we noticed that we didn’t have all the parts we needed. And not all the rules were exactly defined. And that we had two different variants of the game we could and should test out. Luckily, all of these problems were quickly solvable: we simply agreed on the remaining rules and built the missing parts out of paper. Then we decided on testing my variant first, put everything up on the table and started playing. I was really tense when we started because this was it, our game, for the first time.

And it was… ok, I’d say. Wildly imbalanced, half of the options are useless and the other half were way overpowered. The bluffing didn’t really work well since we didn’t know what the stakes were. The cards were really quite off balance, with a lot of luck in it, mostly you’d just get empty cards. And of course, everyone wanted to try all the options, so we basically just goofed around with all the choices in the game.
But it was also fun. I was so relieved after the game because, even though the game was clearly far away from being a game, it was already headed in the right direction. The core of the game, bluffing to get votes, was working, and it was fun.

We might not have any pictures from the event, but at least we know who won: Simon’s wife. With more than two and a half times the points of the next player (me), and she wasn’t even elected. That also worked immediately: becoming Pope was so capital-intensive that the elected player usually wouldn’t win. We increased the gains from being elected in later versions to make it more balanced in that way.

Naturally, we played a few more sessions that afternoon, all with varying rules and differing amounts of cards. The results were all the same: it was fun, but also massively lopsided, half of our ideas weren’t working, and becoming Pope was so capital-intensive and risky that the players that were elected would usually not win.

There were many more playtests after this and the game changed completely up to today, but, again, we were already on the right track with that first game.

Next week we’ll jump in time a bit: Simon will show off some of the first artwork we got for the game.

Creativity just flowed out of us, it was awesome. We had so many ideas, and each idea one of us had sparked so many new ideas in the other one. That was such a great feeling.

However, we still didn’t have our core mechanic, so while we were already talking about specific game scenarios, we didn’t even have a framework for putting them in. That was a bit weird.
At some point, one of us had the key idea: what if all the cards were played face down? And what if most of those cards were worth nothing, but their only function would be to distract the others and keep up the bluffing game? All of a sudden, everything clicked into place: the intrigue, the bluffing, the double-bluffing. Putting down cards just to make your opponents unsure of what you just did. Oh, everyone would see that you did something, but did you place that card there because you really want that vote, or did you place it there to lead them away from the real goal?

From that moment, we knew we had a game, and we finally put all of our previous ideas into place, turning it into a brilliant (as we thought at the time) combination of scheming an misleading. We wrote down a whole bunch of rules, created a spreadsheet for calculating the numbers of each type of cards we should have and noting down the different actions we wanted to allow each player. It was quite a big document and we were really proud of all the stuff we had integrated in the game.

Of course, that game was quite different from what we have today. How we found out that most of what we had was silly and didn’t help the game at all — I’m going to tell you that next week.

But do you know what the funniest thing is? We actually don’t remember which one of us had that brilliant first idea of playing face down with empty cards. So today we simply agree that it was both of us.

Here’s the link: Ex Urbe: Machiavelli III: Rise of the Borgias. That’s a fantastic article about Machiavelli and the world he lived in, specifically Rodrigo Borgia, a young member of the spanish Borgia family and his ascent to the Papal throne. And his machinations to put his family in power. And also his children (yes, the Pope had children). Go read it, it’s really great!

So, you’re back, obviously from reading the other (much better) blog post in between. Did you notice that one small section in the middle:

The papal election of 1492 was one of the great power games of world history. Anyone seeking to create a board game or one-shot role-playing simulation of an exciting political moment need look no farther.

Really, that’s all it took for me to start thinking about making a board game out of this. The setting is perfect: there’s intrigue all around. There are interesting characters. There’s a big prize. There are many ways this can end. And it’s all about playing your enemies, much more than playing by the rules. What better background for a board game?

Unfortunately, there was a lot more work involved than I first anticipated (and it looks like there’s going to be a great amount of work left until we actually have a game in hand). It took more than two years to get to the point where we’re at now. But that first seed, that broad theme and the idea to make a game out of this setting started with me finding a blog post on Machiavelli’s role in the Italian Renaissance.

And that’s also the point of this entry: Inspiration can come from anywhere. That blog you read? That article in that one magazine? That guy you talked to recently? That thing you saw on TV? That random thought you had in the shower? That dream you woke up with yesterday? That song you heard? That snippet of conversation you overheard on the subway? Everything can make your mind spark. This doesn’t mean that you should go running off with every thought in your head, but it means that you can take anything you experience and turn it into something great.

Next week: Simon tells us how it went from an idea to a project.