Blog Post 3: Play Logs and Session Reports of "Pirates and Ninjas Do Not Get Along"

One of my favorite past-times was to play chess. I loved the strategy and the tactics behind it. Along the way some of my friends ventured out and played an extremely simple but extremely deep Chinese game known as Go (Baduk in Korean, Weiqi in chinese). Through the simplicity of the gameplay, I learned that there was endless strategies and combinations. In chess you could have the best computer controlled engine play on par or even best the players in the world. In Baduk this would merely result in the computer becoming broken. The combinations are endless and even patterns would be nigh impossible for a computer to break down.

Recently, in our Intro to Game Studies class (taught by Morgan) we were invited to create our very own board game. We partnered up with someone who was not our own major. I ran into Benn who was a Digital Design major and we came to brain storming some ideas. For some reason I was fixated on making it a treasure hunt of some sort but still maintaining some simplicity to the mechanics to keep the game open strategically. He also liked the idea of keeping it simple as to possibly use it as a drinking game.

Our very first idea was terrible. We decided it could be 2 vs 1 NPC entity. We thought of ninjas trying to steal money from miners. We couldn't decide on a good map layout and had too many variables. It was getting too complex and we kept coming up with strange scenario rules. We decided to scrap it and move onto something else. Alas, we took no pictures of our shit idea.

Pirates vs Ninjas in it's rawest form

You can see here the board was 9x12 and treasures were randomly placed. We thought of trying to keep it random in the placement. We started with 5 ninjas and 5 pirates all starting on their side of the boards. We rolled one dice to give movement but allowed the value to be divided among the pieces. We wrote down the rules on the piece of butcher paper we had and you can see how we crossed out certain rules as we played because it didn't seem to work too well. I came up with the idea of pieces not dying, but when they came into battle they would push the other piece away.

• One rule we were able to agree on, to get a treasure, you needed two of your pieces on the treasure square. We started off with needing multiple turns (like we had to mine the treasure) but we had no way to keep track how many turns it was. We knew we had to scrap that but didn't come up with a solid solution.
• Another rule we had was battles were decided by rolls. I wasn't too fond of the randomness behind the game but it kept it kind of tense and fun. We ultimately decided to keep that rule. We also made it so the winner got to move the loser's piece by how much they lost by. I altered that rule in a later iteration.
• We also had boss pieces that had +1 to their rolls but we felt it was too imbalanced and took it out. All pieces were made equally.
• Another rule that we definitely decided to scrap was battles were on the same square. So two pieces of different colors were on one square. I don't know what we were thinking. I made a key change her in a later form.

We began to play a bit more and found out that there was some strategy involved with the two to take a treasure rule. We liked how it wasn't just a race to grab a piece of treasure but about working all of your pieces as a team. Unfortunately we ran out of time but Benn was winning in this pathetic raw form.

Our second play test resulted in Benn being away from class (he also had the board so I had to make a new one). He unfortunately had to tend to his ill grandmother (hope she's doing alright). I was unable to play test with him in class and helped my friend Richard play test his game. All was not lost as I stole one of his game mechanics. His game involved a race to get more castles than the opponent but landing on a castle meant you had to move your piece back to the start. I borrowed the idea of not necessarily starting over but not being able to go through. This fell perfectly in line with the idea of simplicity and strategy.

I did a second play test in the library with my friend Arjun, who happened to be one who I played Splendor with in the library. On the board I decided to make it odd lengthwise at 9x15. I taught him the basic rules and though we didn't finish, I got to try out a few different mechanics.

• I decided to implement a new method of counting out the moves. I felt sixes were too common and almost game-breaking. I wanted to find a way where 6's were less than 1/6. I decided to implement the idea of the difference of two dies. (5 & 2 was 3). Doubles meant you got the average. So (4 & 4 was 4). This dropped the amount of 6's to 1/36. Perfect. The full data was rolling a 1 was 31%, 2 was 25%, 3 was 19%, 4 was 14%, 5 was 8%, and 6 was 3%. This slowed down the game the right amount. I felt the halving rule slowed the game down far too much.

The difference rule slowed down the game just the right amount. Here 5-2 = 3

Doubles meant you got the average. Here you get 3 moves.

My final game test I was able to put in some cool features that improved strategy and gameplay. These ended up being the final rules that allowed for about a 20-30 minute play time with both simplicity and strategy involved. I introduced terrain! Pirates like water so they would get a +1 when they're on water. Ninjas like hiding so they would get +1 in the forests. This became an interesting feature that allowed for strategic movement of pieces. I took care to allow for evenness of the board and created a 15x11 board.

Terrain was introduced in the third iteration.
Pirates get +1 in battles when fighting from water.
Ninjas get +1 in battles when fighting from forests.

Territory battles: Ninja on neutral territory with treasure and pirate on water with bonus.
This was a memorable flank battle.

Rules for Play (A Turn)

1.  Collect any treasures if you have 2 pieces on one piece of treasure.

2.  Roll, calculate the difference (6-2 = 4), doubles count as the face value of a die shown (2 & 2 = 2), and you can divvy up the moves amongst your pieces. Pieces cannot go through other pieces. Pieces that have moved can move again (for you indecisive people).

3.  Pieces that are touching (adjacent) to an enemy piece may choose to fight. Take turns rolling two dice. Remember to calculate difference when fighting. Roll again if tied. Winner gets to move enemy piece 1 square (if they won by 3 or less) or 2 squares (if they won by 4 or more). Winner may take a vacant square left by a lost enemy.

Special Rules

•        Two of your pieces are needed to collect a treasure. If you start a turn and there are still two on a treasure, you may collect the treasure.
•        Pieces cannot go through enemy pieces, if an enemy piece occupies a square you have to go around or fight your way through.
•        You cannot go diagonally
•        You must finish divvying up your roll before starting the fight stage.
•        Ninjas get +1 on their fights when in the forest, pirates get +1 on their fights when in the water
•        1vx fights are done as 1v1 fights. If the 1 wins, he fights another 1v1.

Strategy

• Teamwork makes the dream work.
• Use territory to your advantage, the +1s may come in handy.
• Sometimes blocking your opponent may be better than reaching the treasure first.
• One piece with a roll bonus can be a nuisance

I was extremely satisfied with the way the board game turned out. Eager to playtest some more. Some of the game mechanics were:

Game Mechanics

• Turn-based
• Dice Rolling
• Area Movement, Area Control
• Grid Movement

Blog Post 2: Splendor Session Report

"This game is going places." Instagram: @pakjunho

Taken at Philz Coffee on Paseo de San Antonio an hour before class.

For my Intro to Game Studies class, we were recommended to bring a board game that wouldn't take relatively too long to play. Of the numerous board games I owned, Splendor was by far one of the simplest to teach and had one of the shortest round times. If we were to play two full rounds of the game, I couldn't fathom bringing something like Agricola that would take several hours to explain all the quirky rules before even starting. Splendor is a lot like chess, it's simple and easy to teach, but there is a surprising amount of depth to it. My friend from church borrowed and after teaching her parents, who speak zero English, were playing every night.

Right before, I was hankering for some good Indian food and decided to hit up Punjab Cafe on Santa Clara with two friends before class. One was in CS108 with me and another took the class last semester. We talked about association football (soccer for us Americans, though I insist on calling it football). We barely had time to eat our food and we raced to class and got in about 5 minutes late. Alas, all the good spots were taken. No worries, we were able to squeeze ourselves somewhere and I ended up standing for the majority of the time. That's okay, I'll burn more calories standing. I needed to lose some of the jiggle I accumulated in my time as a CS major.

We sat down and I began to explain the rules of the game. I started with the objective: You are a merchant and you want to get 15 points.

I worked backwards and told them the cards that have a white number on the top left will give you points. Like one of the jewel cards or the "noble" cards below:




The purchase prices for the jewel cards were the coins and their respective colors, so the black jewel card would cost 3 white, 3 blue, 5 green, and 3 red coins. The noble cards could only be purchased with cards and not coins. Something my friends kept forgetting. Without peppering them with too much strategy I let them know that the noble cards would be more of a long-term strategy.

The obvious segue to this information is, how do I get coins? So I moved to the next item was what they could do on their turns. First, if they have sufficient cards, they may purchase a noble. Second they have a number of choices:

• Grab 3 different coins
• Grab 2 of the same coin IF there is 4 or more in the pile
• Reserve a card and take the wildcard coin.
• Make a purchase of a card, either a reserved card or a card available to everyone in the front

Splendor Coins (White, Red, Green, Blue, Black, and WILDCARD

I reminded them that they are merchants trying to prove their worth as the most savvy and cunning of them all. Accumulate wealth and buying power and you will win favor with the nobles. They have a market of jewels available to them but once you purchase a card, you can reuse that card as increased buying power. If you accumulate enough cards, some purchases may actually be free. Often times young merchants get carried away with purchasing free or cheap jewels that they forget that they are trying to impress the nobles.

The first round started and I was unafraid to claim the initiative. I quickly eyed some low cost jewels and deduced which coins to grab in order to purchase it first. My fellow merchants saw my move and attempted to emulate it. Perhaps they eyed the same card that I did, maybe not.

The second round came and I grabbed a few more coins. First I made sure I had the necessary 2 green and 1 red coin to purchase the jewel card I wanted, then I made sure to have a little bit of diversity in my coins.

The third turn came around and I made my first purchase. My fellow merchants had failed to come up with a contingent plan and was left wasting precious class time wondering what their next move was to be. Both of them settled for grabbing more coins.

I had surmised from glancing at the nobles that the nobles tended to value merchants who accumulated many white jewels and blue jewels. I made it my mission to quickly purchase the inexpensive white and blue jewels whenever possible. Alas my fellow merchants hadn't quite understood the endgame but they had certainly picked up on the idea of owning jewel cards made more purchases cheaper. Unfortunately one of the merchants fell into the trap of saving coins and buying a very expensive card at the beginning. I wanted to say something, but a mistake learned from is better so I held my tongue.

Before long I had 3 blue jewel cards and 2 white jewel cards. I had also accumulated 4 black jewel cards, 3 red jewel cards, and 2 green jewel cards. My fellow merchants were starting to realize that they did not have nowhere near enough blue cards to impress the nobles. They saw that the only way to block my success was to purchase white cards as soon as they could. However, fortune favored this merchant and I had amassed the necessary jewels to impress the nobles. Before long, I had acquired 4 nobles before my fellow merchants and had shown my cunning as a merchant.

The nobles saw my cunning for white and blue gems and awarded me

My fellow merchants, envious of my victory declared that it was a fun time and would be willing to challenge me again in the future. For now, this merchant decided to play a quick game of chess with his friend Richard before heading off to his next class.

Tournament chess set with weighed pieces for blitz

This game started off with a King's Indian that transposed to a Catalan Opening. Gibberish to the layman but a deep positional game to the avid chess player. Alas, my opponent bested me in the middle-game and I had to admit defeat. You win some you lose some.

Catalan Opening