Don't know why I'm starting this. In all likelihood it'll end up being a single lonely post. Heck, I'll probably forget the login and password within minutes of signing off, but what the heck...
Games. That's what this is about. Games that I'm working on, either designing or developing. I do my work mostly for/through Victory Point Games (VPG), but have occasionally done small projects for other firms. I prefer working with VPG because they don't have rigid deadlines and allow me a lot of leeway to explore topics and ideas that interest me but which may not necessarily be stuff that has a lot of commercial potential.
Case(s) in point: Army of the Andes, Weimar Republic, and Germany20.
Army of the Andes is a project a friend/ex-classmate from NWC wanted me to develop for him. Operational level game about San Martin's 1817 campaign to liberate Chile from Spain. He and his co-designer think this subject has "vast untapped potential" with a Spanish-speaking market in South America. I think that's nonsense -- there are other games, in Spanish, that have already been done on this campaign (and others by Bolivar) and they'r essentially unhead of. Still, it's an interesting topic that deserves to have some visibility with the historical game public, so I agreed to take the project on. Probably a mistake. My friend doesn't seem to be able to focus on what makes a game "good" and instead just adds stuff to the design because he thinks it's important and/or interesting, and his co-designer (who does most of the historical research for the game) hasn't a clue about how to translate data into game terms. I'll ask questions like, "When did San Martin march through the Andes passes from Agrentina into Chile?" He'll tell me four or five different dates, some for San Martin's main column, some for the supporting forces, some for decoy forces, and fail to specify which ones are which. Confusing as hell. I'm currently waiting for answers on my latest batch of questions, it's been almost two months since I heard back. I'm starting to suspect the project is dead because they've both lost interest. Meh.
Weimar Republic is a card game. Players don't represent specific parties like the Nazis, Zenter, or Communists, instead they form their own party, adopting issues and assets to help them acheive the goal of taking power. The basic idea is that the game ends when order is restored to German political life or when the nation descends into chaos and the parties stop trying to find a "political" settlement and just try to sieze power through force. When the game ends, the side with the highest "legitimacy" wins -- but some of the assets/issues come with associated liabilities (depending on how the game ends). For example, if the game ends in chaos, you're going to want as much armed strength available to you as possible, so having a paramilitary arm to your party (like the SA) or the support of the Reichswher are good. However, if the game ends in order (i.e. with a stable elected government in charge) then having that sort of armed strength behind you will actually lower your "legitimacy" score. The key to making the game work is finding the right balance for the cards, so that there's no "I drew the over-powered Freikorps card, so I'm going to win" effect. That's tough because as each card gets adjusted, it has a ripple effect with the other cards (making some stronger and others weaker), so there's a lot of experimentation involved.
Germany20 is the linking system for my seven games covering Napoleon's campaign in central Germany in the autumn of 1813. The idea is that the outcome of each of the individual battles can impact the starting setup and available forces for the next battle in the sequence. Most of the mechanisms are already done and have been given a rough test to ensure they work, so my challenge/problem is finding a way of putting all that into words (i.e. writing the rules) so that it makes sense to the players. Did I mention that I loathe rules writing? I'm pretty good at coming up with ideas/concepts/mechanisms/systems to get a game to do what I want it to, but finding the right words to make my designer's/developer's intent clear? That's a whole 'nutter kettle of fish. What tends to happen is that I get frustrated and put the project aside, fully intending to come back to it at another time, but what typically happens is that the damned thing sits there, mocking me and making me feel guilty, while I work on other stuff... Until I finally force myself to get back to work, at which time I often find that I've completely forgotten all the neat ideas I came up with originally and have to go back and completely re-work the whole project.
Oh well. There you have it. Andes, Weimar and Germany20 are just three of about a dozen different projects I have in various states of completion. Who knows whether they'll ever get finished, or whether (like this blog?) they'll just sit there in my in-box waiting for me to find the motivation and discipline to do what I know I should.
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