Refubrished GK Game Board

Well... it took me some time since last post. So the current status is as follows. A lot of tokens are now purchased. I mean - a real lot of tokens. I hope to use them not only in this game, but in others as well. In total - around 1.5k of tokens made of glass jewelery like tokens. In different sizes, different shapes, different colors. At first I did consider to take wooden ones, but seems - the variety is not really sufficient. This is why I went with glass ones. In some time - I will also need some additional ones that are already considered.
And that is of course not the only thing. What you can see is the player board, that will be the future one with the use of tokens. When I did summarize - now I need to find good printing shop, where I will be able to print out round tokens for some other stuff. In the meantime - additional changes will be applied to the reference cards (aa... yes, those are also already created) that will describe different 'tokens'. And the last thing. I can perfectly remember, that most frustrating thing about this game was, that each time game was moved (either way - accidentally / deliberately) probably something like 30-70% of tokens were misplaced. To prevent this from happening, board above should be prepared in a way, that tokens will fit into special 'holes'. For the moment I'm considering PLEXA, but if that will not work - I will use maybe some special paper. Soon I will also produce cards for the agents... but I've never considered this as first thing to do. Impressive? Well - I hope to deploy all together by end of April. We'll see. Ps. When I'll receive tokens - I'll give those a shot.

What a nice surprise!

Well, well, well. It is only few hours since I've posted my work and it seems, that someone looks at this (I even have some recommendations for my work on boradgamegeek.com)! Even if those are 'fake' entries :) I still enjoy it a lot. And you know what? That motivates me even furthermore! So what is next? As wrote earlier - I'll try to customize the game board with related game tokens, so that it is more 'playable'. Let's put it on the paper, in terms of the principles:

1. Simplify the board.
2. Each player will receive own boards, where he will play with his resources and fleet.
   
3. Eliminate hand writing for different activities (that's the challenge).
   
4. Get rid of tokens (1x, 10x and 100x) representing HT's (after all - is there anyone using those? :) )
   
5. Reference cards for each player convenience.

What is the plan than? In few steps, what could be done to re-edit the game and make it easier to play. Maybe points to be done grouped by importance.

1. Move out all the data from board to custom reference sheets.
2. Create player boards for each player to work with.
3. Provide 'rapid' method of resolving trades / price changes.
4. Eliminate paper tokens with some 'nice' bricks / other elements.
5. Provide custom solution allowing players to note deals they will do without using pen.
6. Different way to handle ships (again - no paper tokens).
7. Paper cards representing agents and describing agent abilities.
8. Create reference sheets for players (differentiate ones that will be used often, and ones that will be used rarely).

I think that is a very good plan and will take me some time. At the end - I assume, that this game will be reborn :) And playing it will not take something like 10h but will be rather nice and easy for someone, who plays it for the 2nd or third time in his life (since rules itself are bit difficult). So to speak - aim is to create custom extension, that will speed the game up with additional fun factor increase.

Gwiezdny Kupiec - board ready!

After my last post I decided, that I need to finish what I previously started. So there you have it - fully customly recreated "Gwiezdny Kupiec" boards. Those are available in four versions in fact:

- light + background
- dark + background
- white background
- blue background (original)

Those can be viewed on: http://picasaweb.google.com/sielimek/GwiezdnyKupiec#.
I had a lot of fun developing and reminding the game... and I also made a decision, that I will tune it so it is easier to play. I mean - tune the board and the way it is all played on it. I'm willing to bring it on printed to the 'GameDay' with intention to finish it (which takes quite a long time in reality - 10h?).
There is also second contribution - change slightly the rules, so that game is more suitable and quicker to play. But this probably should be decided also after we have the first play on the changed board.

Aha - those attached are not HighQuality, but I have one - vector one. I will probably put them somewhere... but to gain one - you would need to write me. :-) Those are just to heavy (something like 8 MB x 9).

Enjoyfull night

What can I say - lately together with my wife quite every Friday we are trying to visit MisHa's "BANG!". What could I say - a great way to meet and to try out different games. This time (as far as I can remember) we played: Agricola, Puerto Rico, Bang, Tigris & Euphrates and Warcraft Board Game. What I've learned, is that MisHa is also developing a board game and that can result in some good ideas. Additionally - I did dig up some old resources - board for "Gwiezdny Kupiec" that I would have to finish up plus my concept - karP I RACIczki (which could be translated to English something like - tiPI - RAT EScape) that is in mind and resulted in developing some new techniques. As to rate what we played. My view on this is still the same: Agricola ROX. Additionally - my wife did enjoy it (after having some "why didn't you tell me") catching the point somewhere in the middle of the game. T&E was also quite fun, but a bit random. With Bang - well.. I did not play it, as well as did not PR. WBG was interesting (since it was quite new to all) but appeared to be again - not well balanced. We decided on additional rules: 'home' mines do produce only one token per peon, but never deplete and upgrades cost 6w and 6g. Additionally - on 4 player board... we said the win will be at 12 victory points. Well... after I think 2 battles the game was over :) Anyway - a very good one evenig.

Startup

Let's think. What makes board gaming fun? Different people will have different views over it. What is actually important for me? Different, different topics. One game will be ok while other will be just boring. Let's than concentrate on some points.

o Each player should have exactly the same possibilities
o Game should be little random only (I'd say - nothing like fantastic dice roll)
o It should still provide a way to create own strategy
o Well... it should still remain a board game rather than a PC game :)

For me - game that fits is Agricola. You have all there plus - it is really easy and dynamic, even if you are a first timer. Comparing this to "Settlers of Catan" - well... both games are still great, aren't those?
Maybe than it is about inventing new smart ways to make those games fun? True. And this will be my aim I suppose. Along with that - I hope some interesting game designs will come.

As per first topic
How to make a game random, without roll dice?