Arrival of Trains Planes and Automobiles

Trains Planes and Automobiles box art

Wednesday my publisher's shipment of Trains Planes and Automobiles arrived.  I could not have been more happy to have a production version of my game design in my hands, complete with professional art by Sean Cooke.

Trains Planes and Automobiles is a family game for two to six players, age eight and up, who play as news correspondents attempting to race each other to cover the most stories.  The game is set in mid-twentieth century North America, when airlines connected the largest cities, and newly built interstates allowed convenient long-distance travel by car, while trains still served as the workhorses of American transportation.  The board renders a map of most of North America in an old-fashioned post-card style, with Alaska and Hawaii as insets.  Faintly rendered hexagons divide the board into 100-mile-wide spaces for movement.  

Assignment card

The map includes 56 Canadian, American, Mexican, and Carribean cities (including Havana, accessible to the American traveler in the years prior to the Cuban Revolution).  Of the cities on the map, approximately a third have airports for travel by plane, about two-thirds are connected by railroads for travel by train, and the remainder can be reached only by automobile.  A number of island cities can only be reached by plane.  

Travel card

The game includes a deck of 57 "Assignment" cards, one for each city on the map.  The winner of the game is the first player to complete seven Assignments by traveling to assigned cities and claiming the corresponding Assignment Cards.  The game also includes a deck of "Travel" cards that govern movement on the board - by plane (the fastest means, but only between cities that have airports), by train (only along rail lines), or by automobile (anywhere on the mainland, but the slowest method).  The Travel deck also includes ways to slow opponents down (Bad Weather, Train Delays, and Car Breakdowns) as well as bonus abilities for faster travel.  

I have to say that I am really pleased with the feel of the game that Sean Cooke created in the art for this game.  It has a nostalgic atmosphere, with Travel cards showing paper plane tickets and folded road maps.  Assignment cards depict push-pins on destination cities (a subtle nod to a certain well-known earth map computer application).   

That evening my family sat around the dining room table and played my game with a real production copy for the first time.  They had participated in a number of playtests with early home-made prototypes, but it became a whole new experience to enjoy the game as a professionally made, artistically finished product.  My wife jumped to an early head start as she completed three assignments in her first three turns.  The kids of course ganged up on Mom to keep her from running away with the lead, but in the end it was Dad the Designer that won the maiden session of Trains Planes and Automobiles.

Both my sons (ten and 15 years old) said several times that they really had fun playing the game.  I think the gameplay is a nice balance of hand management, racing for goals while disrupting your opponent, and a little card luck as well.  There's no run-away leader, as there are some balancing mechanisms for trailing players to take action to stay in the game.  All in all, I have to say that I am pleased at how much fun TPA turned out to be, and the kids think so to.  I think this can be a real "family game night" hit.  

Worthington Games has published TPA under their new Blue Square label.  The marketing campaign is in work, so the game is not yet available online as the outlets for purchase are still being developed.  They offered TPA for sale for the first time at Origins Game Fair and will be selling it at the Boardgame Players Association's World Boardgaming Championships the first weekend in August. 

I plan to demonstrate Trains Planes and Automobiles in the Juniors Room at WBC starting Thursday 4 August.  

World Boardgaming Championships coming in August

The Boardgame Players Association will be holding their annual World Boardgaming Championships convention in Lancaster, PA the week of 1-7 August (with some pre-convention activity in the last days of July).  I'm looking forward to the opportunity to immerse myself in a fun, competitive boardgaming atmosphere.

Even more than playing, though, I anticipate meeting people in the game design and publishing business.  I'm fascinated by different philosophies that govern how people approach game design, and I look forward to engaging designers and developers in the industry to find out how the bring new titles from concept to market.  Clearly the various categories and types of games require different emphases and approaches, but I'm curious to explore differences among the way people design and develop games even within the same genre.  It would be particularly illuminating to find what distinguishes the makers of some of my favorite games (Z-man for example).  I suppose I'd like to learn how best to design the kind of game I like to play.

Britannia, designed by
Dr. Lewis Pulsipher

One designer I specifically intend to meet is Dr. Lewis Pulsipher, whose blog I've followed for quite some time now.  His series of instructional presentations discuss his thoughts on game design.  A good convention provides the opportunity to engage names in the industry and exchange ideas, and this is an opportunity not to be missed.

I am already making long-range plans for WBC 2012.  My intention for next year is two-fold:  To run Trains Planes and Automobiles as an official Juniors Event at WBC, and to bring a playable prototype of my space-mining game for playtesting or perhaps even demonstration to a potential publisher.

It's good to have a focus.

Maybe Werewolf beats Resistance after all

I'd earlier blogged about my recent discovery of The Resistance and my initial impression that it must be better than Are You a Werewolf?  Well, now I'm not so sure, based on two days of family reunion gaming in which I introduced siblings, nieces, and nephews to both games and got some very unexpected reactions.

Image used by permission
of Indie Boards and Cards

First we tried two games of The Resistance (designer Don Eskridge, publisher Indie Boards and Cards), a social deduction game that I'd never played before but which I was convinced would be better than the more familiar Werewolf, particularly for the new crowd.  We found that the secret ballot process was a little clumsy, since we'd be constantly turning in votes, then turning in the unused vote cards, then redistributing them again, once or twice for every mission assignment.  But more to the point, in two games, the Resistance never successfully completed a mission.  In both games, the spies successfully sabotaged three consecutive missions.  Now, I don't know if that's a function of the experience of the players, in which we were invariably approving mission teams with spies in them, or a function of the play balance of the game itself.  So my intention later this week is to research what others have written about play balance in Resistance.

So then at my 15-year-old son's insistence, we switched to Werewolf (derived from the Dimitri Davidov designed Mafia, publisher Looney Labs).  I was worried about how the younger kids would react to the elimination aspect of the game, the killing theme, etc.  Oh, but that was not a problem.  Everybody jumped right into the spirit of the game.  My brother Pete was particularly enthusiastic.  I lost count of how many games of Werewolf we played over the two days.  The games were quite varied, too.  Sometimes we would leap right on the werewolves and eliminate them quickly.  Sometimes the wolves would make short work of the village.  And sometimes there would be long, convoluted debates over who was a wolf, or a seer, and why.  But I think everybody who played had a great time and kept asking to play again.  We even drew something of an audience at the picnic ground at one point.

(c) Looney Labs
Used by permission

So this experience begs the question:  Why did Werewolf turn out to be so much more popular with the family than Resistance?  Frankly, I think that there are two reasons: (1) We had an unfortunate early experience with Resistance appearing to be so lopsided after just two games, and (2) Werewolf really is an engaging, exciting game in its own right.  First, I do want to make sure we got the rules right; if so, I should revisit the play balance in Resistance, because that just seems so unlikely to be a common experience with a game that was so well-reviewed the first time I researched it.

How popular was this game with the family?  Well, my brother Brenden wants me to order a copy for him, and my brother Pete plans to order two copies - one for himself and one for his girlfriend, whose family apparently enjoys playing games.  I feel as though I should get some kind of discount from Looney Labs on my next order from them for all the business we generated...

Social media

My wife the writer has introduced me to the wide world of Facebook as Paul Owen and Twitter as PaulOwenGames.  You can find me there - wading at first, plunging a bit later, I expect.

He who will not Risk

"He who will not risk cannot win." -- John Paul Jones

1980 reprint of the
1959 classic (but lengthy) Risk

My son (15) and his friend and I played Risk (designer Rob Daviau, publisher Hasbro) Sunday afternoon.  I should note that I was never a big fan of the original Risk (designer Albert Lamorisse [director of the French short film The Red Balloon], publisher Parker Brothers), largely because it simply took too long to play.  It didn't really seem to be much of a strategy game, either, at least not at the age I was playing.  A lot of pushing and shoving, taking territory only to have it taken back. Worst, if it was a multi-player session, it became a player-elimination game, which as anyone who has followed my blog knows is a fundamental flaw in any multi-player game outside of a tournament.

2008 Revised (and much more
enjoyable) Edition of Risk

My opinion of the new Risk, however, is quite the opposite.  With the introduction of objectives and the change in the way cards are traded in for armies, players have some real decisions to make, and that's something I appreciate in a game.  Particularly nice is being able to identify a winner in a reasonable amount of time, rather than requiring world domination simply to end the game.  Generally speaking, a winner emerges long before any single player is really close to elimination.  I think I most appreciate the fact that the facelift addressed only the weaknesses of the game and retained many recognizable, likable elements, right down to the combat mechanism - which is an imperfect attrition system but still an interesting tactical problem at times.

In our three-player game, my capital was in Greenland, my son's in Australia, and his friend's in Argentina.  My son easily took over Australia and moved quickly into southern Asia.  In so doing he completed the "Control 18 territories" objective.  His friend took over South America and a substantial chunk of North America.  I sought my first objective by taking over all of Europe, and succeeded only on my last dice roll.  So I was in a pretty vulnerable position even after my end-of-turn redeployment, and feared that my son's Asian army would roll into Russia.

My son smelled blood in Asia, however, and ignored me in favor of trying to take over the continent.  His friend started the game with a strong holding in Japan, however, and would not fall, so my son's Asian campaign stalled.  His friend sought to finish taking over North America, but he, too, could not complete the task.  As a result, my European position remained unperturbed, which made my next decision rather straightforward - to take over Africa.  Europe gave me five additional armies, and I started everything in central Africa, whence came the great tide.  Once I'd conquered Africa, I agonized over whether to jump the Atlantic and attack Brazil to break up the South American stronghold - but that position wouldn't have been as strong (given the way I left my armies) as it was to attack the Middle East and shore up the defense of my eastern border.  At the end of my turn, I'd taken over my second continent and thus completed my second objective ("Control two continents").

My son and his friend discussed the fact that I held everything from South Africa to Greenland and ought to be squeezed from both sides.  It certainly would have made sense at that point in the game - after only two turns, when I held two objectives of three needed to win - to gang up on me and take apart my continental holdings.  Strangely, however, the desire to control Asia still consumed my son, and after re-taking the Middle East, he turned away from European Russia and instead attacked his friend's holdings, east across the steppes.  His friend then nearly took over North America at that point, but I held my ground in Greenland.  At that point, my continental holdings still remained intact, and I started my third turn with 16 armies and seven cities.  The next step was obvious.  I attacked Brazil to obtain my eighth city and third objective, to win the game.

So I won in three turns, largely I think because my son and his friend allowed their own agendas (occupation of Asia and North America, respectively) to distract them from stopping me from winning.  Nevertheless, I came away convinced more than ever that this re-vamping of Risk has breathed new life into an old classic and made it a fun game to play, far more fun that the original ever was.

Sacked in Citadels

A couple of weeks ago, our good friends Sheila and Keith invited us and our friend Jeff over for dinner and games.  The five of us played Citadels (designer Bruno Faidutti, publisher Fantasy Flight Games), which turned out to be terrific fun.  As it happened, Sheila had an extra copy, so we went home with Citadels as a kind of door prize.  Later we learned that she and Keith had been playing two-player and really enjoying it, so we tried it ourselves this evening.

Citadels has become my favorite game of all - even over 7 Wonders.  The brilliance of the game is in the role selection and sequential role resolution.  When the five of us played, we all seemed to value the Architect most of all for the two free cards he'd offer - until someone would always select the Assassin and kill the Architect.  That seemed to be de riguer in our session that night.  So then people would shy away from the Architect unless they had some reason to believe that they wouldn't be assassinated.  There was a lot of second-guessing, and at one point I had a particularly lucky turn when I selected the thief with the expectation that Sheila (who had six gold pieces) would select the Magician for his card-exchange ability (because she kept complaining about her cards).  My bet paid off, and Sheila was set back more than a turn in building construction when I took her stack of money away.  (If looks could kill .... :-) )

So, fast forward to this evening:  Kathy and I decided to try the two-player variant ourselves, in which each player ends up with two roles.  The brilliance of the two-player game is that you can usually narrow down your opponent's likely roles to two out of four possibilities.  There is often a kind of, "you expect me to take the merchant, so I should take the bishop, except that you know I know you expect me to take the merchant, so you think I'll take the bishop, so I should take the merchant..."  

Kathy's winning Citadel
at the base of her wineglass

 In our case, I think I was too willing to build small buildings with the intent to jump to an early lead and get control of triggering the end of the game.  My building efforts stalled out, however, and Kathy ended up building her seventh and eighth buildings in one turn.  That undermined my selection of the Warlord, who had planned to burn down her Church (but could not do so once she had eight buildings).  She ended up beating me both in building points and in building the eighth building first.  Final score - Kathy 36, Paul 31.

I really, really like this game.  I am surprised it has not caught on at PrezCon nor at the World Boardgaming Championships.  Maybe I should do something about that.

Poor Man's Resistance

I stumbled upon a review of The Resistance and immediately thought two things:
(1) this game of hidden identity and "social deduction" should beat Are You a Werewolf? hands down (no small feat, since I'm a huge Werewolf fan) and
(2) this game can be played easily with a small subset of a normal deck of cards.

The game is designed for five to ten players.  Players secretly determine their identities as rebels (attempting to conduct missions) or spies (attempting to sabotage the rebels' efforts) as follows:  From a normal deck of cards, select a number of face cards equal to the number of players such that a third of the cards (rounded up) are red face cards and the remainder are black face cards.  Shuffle the selected face cards and deal them face down, one to each player.  Each player looks at his or her face card to determine whether he or she is a rebel (black) or spy (red).  These secret identity cards remain face down in front of the players for the remainder of the game.

One player is randomly selected as the leader.  Players shield their eyes so that no one can see any of the others.  The leader announces, "spies reveal," and the spies (only) open their eyes and look to see who their fellow spies are.  The leader announces, "spies hide," and the spies close their eyes.  The leader announces "everyone open," and all players open their eyes and begin the game.  By this procedure, all spies should know who all the spies are (and therefore who all the rebels are), whereas each rebel knows only his own identity.  Unlike Werewolf, this is the only occasion in the game when it will be necessary for players to cover their eyes.

The remainder of the game consists of a series of missions.  For each mission, the leader assigns several players to participate in the mission.  The number of people that the leader assigns depends on both the number of players in the game and the mission number to be executed; it varies from two to three players (in the first attempted mission) to three to five players (in the fifth attempted mission) and can be discerned in the table appearing in an image of the gameboard posted on boardgamegeek.

Once the mission team has been selected, players vote openly whether to approve or disapprove the selected mission team.  [Edited for correctness.  In my original post, I mistakenly indicated that the vote to approve or disapprove the mission team was done by secret ballot. - PDO]

If the mission team has been disapproved, the mission is aborted, the role of leader rotates one player to the left, and play resumes as above with the new leader assigning a new mission team to be voted on again by all the players.  (Note that the aborted mission does not "count" as an attempted mission, so the number of players on the mission team does not change.)  If five consecutive missions are aborted, then the game is over, and the spies win.

If the mission team has been approved, then the mission team members (only) each get one red non-face card and one black non-face card.  From these two cards, each mission team member secretly selects a card to execute (black) or sabotage (red) the mission.  Each mission team member turns in his vote face-down to the leader, who shuffles the votes and then turns them face up to determine whether the mission succeeds (all black) or fails (at least one red).  There is an exception to the requirements for a successful mission:  In games of at least seven players, on the fourth mission only, at least two sabotage (red) votes are required to cause a mission to fail.

If this was the third successful mission, then the game is over, and the rebels win.  If this was the third failed mission, then the game is over, and the spies win.  Otherwise, the role of leader rotates one player to the left, and play resumes as above with the new leader assigning a new mission team to be voted on by all the players.

The brilliance of this game relative to Werewolf is that it requires no referee (i.e. everybody gets to play) and - most important to me - does not eliminate players over the course of the game.  Also nice is that it is only necessary for players to cover their eyes once at the beginning of the game to allow spies to identify one another (unlike Werewolf, which requires players to close their eyes in every round).

The reviews I have read and seen are quite exciting, and I look forward to trying this game out with a decent-sized group.

I should add that the original game comes with a small expansion set of cards that provide the leader with some additional "powers" to make the game more interesting, so there's motivation for buying the game regardless.

Release of the eagerly awaited Trains Planes and Automobiles

Well, it sneaked into the marketplace with little fanfare, but Worthington Games released my game Trains Planes and Automobiles under their new Blue Square label at Origins Game Fair last weekend.  It is not yet available from them online as they work out their marketing strategy.  More to follow.