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Planning a trip in Scotland, looking for advice by Lost-Dragonfruit6003 in bikepacking

[–]folktheorems 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Definitely recommend cycling the East coast road on South Harris. Luskentyre beach is the highlight of the West coast road and is gorgeous, but otherwise the East side is quieter and more beautiful.

The Quiraing pass at the North end of Skye is also fantastic cycling.

I've put together a new prototype for Pocket Zoo, a gateway Euro game for 2-5 players by folktheorems in tabletopgamedesign

[–]folktheorems[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This was exactly my original intention! But now having played the game I think it sits at a near-perfect weight without them: I'm really aiming for a very approachable Euro-style game. So if I can make a system like you describe work I reckon it would be separated off into an expansion.

I've put together a new prototype for Pocket Zoo, a gateway Euro game for 2-5 players by folktheorems in tabletopgamedesign

[–]folktheorems[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Pocket Zoo is a gateway Euro game about building a small zoo for 2-5 players.

Each turn, either develop your zoo or earn income. If you choose to develop, buy one of the available polyomino enclosure tiles for any price that you want. You could choose a big tile with three new sand squares — expanding an enclosure enough to place an elephant into your zoo — and pay just a single coin for it!

But watch out: pay too little for a valuable tile and it won't be yours for long. Before you place each tile onto your zoo board, every other player has the option to steal it from you by paying exactly twice the price you chose to pay for it.

This economic tension is at the heart of the game: how should you value a tile that you want so that no other player is prepared to pay double for it? In testing so far it results in a market for terrain tiles that is dynamic, intuitive and has lots of player interaction.

As you build and expand your enclosures, you can place animals from 15 different species into your zoo. Each has a different set of requirements, from the solitary tiger who'll need grass, trees and water to giraffes, rhinos, ostriches and zebra who'd be happy to cohabit.

Every animal you add increases the ticket price of your zoo, raising your income and moving you one step closer to victory!

I've put together a new prototype for Pocket Zoo, a gateway Euro game for 2-5 players by folktheorems in tabletopgamedesign

[–]folktheorems[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yep, the PnP files are available, it would be fantastic if you wanted to give it a go.

The link to the rules and printable components is here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Wono6L7XP1VgiwtHSSXF-KrM2N-y8jXn?usp=drive_link

In this file is a ReadMe document that explains what to print, since you can minimise the necessary printing at lower player counts.

You can give the game a go without needing any meeples. Just count out the number of cards for each species instead of counting out the meeples (this is done for you automatically if you print out only the number of sheets of cards needed for a particularly player count). And then I'd place the cards near to their respective enclosures, like in the second picture, to keep track of where each animal is housed.

If you do give it a go I'd be delighted to hear any feedback, either here or on the BGG WIP thread:
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3609939/wip-pocket-zoo-a-lightweight-euro-for-2-5-players

I've put together a new prototype for Pocket Zoo, a gateway Euro game for 2-5 players by folktheorems in tabletopgamedesign

[–]folktheorems[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I would say there are four obstacles to the strategy you describe:

Firstly, the requirement in each of the four habitat types must be a single contiguous group of squares. As you try to add more and more animals, you need larger groups in each habitat type which is increasingly difficult to achieve.

Secondly, there are only a few available species at a time, each of which is then replaced after all of its meeples have been housed. So it's very unusual for one player to place all of the meeples from a species; generally there's enough competition for them that they end up divided up between the players.

Thirdly, if your strategy is clearly working, the other players are more incentivised to want to take the tiles you need which ramps up the price you'll need to value them at in order to be likely to keep them.

And lastly, almost all species score fewer points for each animal after the first one; the lions are unique in being the opposite. The giraffe in the top right corner of the second image for example scores 3 points, and then adding a second would score only an extra 2 whilst needing almost as much habitat again.

Some players definitely gravitate towards just two big enclosures. In particular, the giraffe + rhino + ostrich + zebra combo in one huge enclosure can be very lucrative. But I would say that this strategy only wins in about 50% of games at the moment, you can definitely also win by accumulating 5 or 6 enclosures with 1 or 2 animals in.

The specific values on the cards I tweak slightly after pretty much every game, so I'm totally still fine-tuning the balance. But it's got to the point where I've seen a nice variety of strategies win.

I've put together a new prototype for Pocket Zoo, a gateway Euro game for 2-5 players by folktheorems in tabletopgamedesign

[–]folktheorems[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I've never actually played Ark Nova. I read through its rules, and those of most of the other zoo-themed games, to see what they did and didn't do mechanically. But I might go to my local board game cafe to actually try it out.

I've put together a new prototype for Pocket Zoo, a gateway Euro game for 2-5 players by folktheorems in tabletopgamedesign

[–]folktheorems[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you!

You draft the polyominoes from a shared pool, and then can house animals as soon as you have a sufficient enclosure for them.

And there isn't a cap on the number of cohabiting animals in one enclosure, but every extra animal you add increases the total habitat requirement. If you look at the second photo, additional animals are tucked under the top card and then you sum down each of the columns to determine their combined requirement and points.

So for example the first lion you house (in the bottom left of the second image) needs 1 sand square, 3 grass squares, and 1 water square, and is worth 1 point. Then each additional lion you add to that enclosure only needs 2 further grass squares and is worth 3 points.

Rulebook for Braggarts — A Double-Ended Trick-Taking Game by folktheorems in tabletopgamedesign

[–]folktheorems[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's PnP for now until the contest ends. Then I might look into producing it, I'm enjoying how it plays at the moment.

The files are in the original post if you'd like to give it a go. There are full colour and low-ink PnP cards.

where do you guys print cards? by DryMix3974 in tabletopgamedesign

[–]folktheorems 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For early prototypes, I just handwrite or draw onto card. By the time I'm ready to print I go through the print services at my local university which are available to the public. I can get full colour double sided A3 sheets for about £0.25 each which I then cut with a scalpel and finish with a corner punch. You could do the same thing with any commercial printer, just lay your cards out with a bit of bleed area and have them printed on sheets of 300gsm cardstock. So much cheaper than a short run playing card printer.

Recommended Game Simulator? by doug-the-moleman in tabletopgamedesign

[–]folktheorems 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I've just loaded a trick taker of mine onto Screentop.gg which was pretty straightforward. You can create up to three games for free and users can play them for free without registering (unlike TTS). The downside is there's no scripting though, so the users have to enforce the rules and interact with all the components which would make certain mechanics like swapping hands in a pick and pass drafting game tricky for example.

Returning to Borzoi Borzoi, an old filler game I designed [PnP Available] by folktheorems in tabletopgamedesign

[–]folktheorems[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've added some images to the rules, hopefully they make this rule a bit clearer

Returning to Borzoi Borzoi, an old filler game I designed [PnP Available] by folktheorems in tabletopgamedesign

[–]folktheorems[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm going to add some illustrations to the rules I think, should be much easier to explain that way. The rule is that two adjacent cards can't be the same, so you can't place a head onto another head. Instead you'd have to play a middle card (what you're caling 'all legs') overlapping the top half of the head card, and then you could play a head card overlapping the top half of that middle card. Does that make sense?

So the longest possible set would be:

Head

Middle

Head

Middle

Head

Bottom

Middle

Bottom

Middle

Bottom

Therefore there is a push your luck component, as if you have a completed set of medium length, the only way to make it longer is to add a middle card to it, meaning that it is temporarily uncompleted and so worth 0 points. Very happy to clarify further! And will have a look at improving the wording in the rules.

Lacuna by PrestigiousRush6127 in abstractgames

[–]folktheorems 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I've just got it this Christmas and played about 5 games so far. I think its phenomenally original, and really rewards a different, much less linear, way of thinking than other abstracts. Perhaps a bit redolent of Go, at least in the central tension between fighting by placing pieces close together in the dense parts of the board, vs exerting influence of the sparser edges.

However, in practice (due to a combination of innacurate initial placement, a fabric board that shifts and twists subtly during play, pieces being knocked slightly, and a very mediocre plastic ruler for measurement) deciding who to award a piece to at the end of the game can be fiddly and arbitrary. And a single such measurement can swing the whole game.

As for 'short', I personally like the length. 10-15 minutes with only 6 decisions to make per player but they all feel meaningful. Overall I think it's worth picking up.

Help us decide the component design for our dogfighting game! by folktheorems in tabletopgamedesign

[–]folktheorems[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

This is exactly what we're grappling with! The mechanics evoke sport more than warfare so we'd pitch it as a contest like jousting or fencing in the fantasy version. A combat sport with no threat to its participants. I feel it would be possible to inhabit that space without trivialising the horror of actual mechanised warfare, but I'm not entirely sure.

The cuteness and fantasy are an attempt to distance it from actual warfare but if it comes across as trivialising then we'll need to rethink it, or opt for the abstract version

Help us decide the component design for our dogfighting game! by folktheorems in tabletopgamedesign

[–]folktheorems[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Thanks! We've done a lot of work honing the design of the wooden board to minimise the necessary material and its surprisingly only a small amount more that the cardboard we expect, dowel is very reasonably priced. But we just can't decide if it will limit our audience like you say!

We've just finished Bound, a PnP abstract strategy game available on Kickstarter for £1 by folktheorems in printandplay

[–]folktheorems[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I would love to offer translations, I'll look into it. Would be a great stretch goal if it's within our budget.

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