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American Hippodice Redux

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FastLearner
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I had some great conversations about the American Hippodice contest while at the Gathering. I got strong acceptance from the publishers I spoke to, so the final judging looks good. They all wanted details about how the contest would work before committing 100%.

Which brings me to the incredibly helpful Mario Pulowski, who also attended the Gathering. I learned that he was one of the main organizers of the Hippodice contest a few years back and so asked him all kinds of questions. I have a very solid idea of how Hippodice is run, and have some thoughts on what we might want to do similarly and what we might want to do differently, and why. More on that tomorrow or so, after I've recovered a bit from my trip.

I also have a "Gathering from a hopeful designer" report I can put together, but... I think I wouldn't be comfortable posting it in the main forums here. A lot of it is stuff that I'd happily share with my buddies -- you guys -- but am not sure would be considered public information from Alan (R. Moon)'s perspective. Should I go ahead here?

Also, on personal notes, I got some awesome feedback and compliments on Elvencraft, with playtesting by other designers and, with some minor changes, will be submittting it for publication come July or so, submitting it to some companies that I hadn't considered (someone I greatly respect said it would make a great Alea big box game -- with a retheming -- and thought that Stefan would love it).

Oh, and I'm going to PowWow.

-- Matthew

jwarrend
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American Hippodice Redux

Matthew,

Glad to hear you had a good trip! Definitely give us details about your trip! I'd be very interested to hear about the experiences of a designer -- all of the session reports you read that talk about prototypes say "I played a prototype, but I can't talk about it." We want details!

I'd be interested to hear about the conversations about the American Hippodice. (Let's start calling it by its rightful name -- the "Sackson award"!) I strongly suspect that their model of doing things will need to be drastically retooled for our version, since getting that big a committment from a single group is unlikely to happen. We should start figuring out how the intermediate judging will work -- We actually don't have all that much time to locate game groups.

It's great that you're converging on an Alea-worthy design! I recall that you said a while back that Stefan likes games that need some development work; I have a game that I think might be appropriate for their new mid-level line, and may pitch it to him at some point. It would be great to see some BGDF "no-names" on Alea boxes. Good luck! I still don't actually know anything about Elvencraft, but would be interested in looking at the rules when and if you're ever ready to go semi-public with them!

Talk to you soon,

Jeff

sedjtroll
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American Hippodice Redux

Having played an early version of Elvencraft, I think it felt a lot like the kind of thing that you'd get out of a published box. It was still rough though, and it's already gone through a couple revisions since I played it. I'm not all that suprised that people in the industry liked it!

I felt similarly about Everest, which I hope Matthew will update us on as well.

I think Sackson is a great guy to name the Ammerican Hippodice after. We could even go as far as to have some plaque or trophy depicting a sack... maybe a little too campy though.

Like Jeff I am eager to read about all the juicy details, here in these Admin forums or wherever. I read through some of the reports linked from BGG hoping to hear some mention of Elvencraft or Everest, or maybe a fun little filler card game about cows tipping cars or dinosaurs racing.

Welcome back, Matthew :)

- Seth

phpbbadmin
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Joined: 04/23/2013
Rock on

Matthew,
I look forward to your Gathering report. Good news about American Hippo. I'm glad you were able to plant the seed and get the project growing. Keep us posted on that. I know you've said that the Gathering might not be the best place for the judges to judge such an event, but it seems like it would be a natural choice.

I'm glad you're going to be at Pow Wow. I look forward to trying out some of your games, especially Everest and Elvencraft.

It looks like we will have a good BGDF turnout. Approximately 6-7 regulars will be in attendance.

-Michael

FastLearner
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Joined: 12/31/1969
American Hippodice Redux

So, let's get this discussion rolling.

First question is this: should we discuss it here or in public? I have some info about how the Hippodice is judged (rules and description separated, etc.) that probably isn't confidential, really -- Mario Pawlowski, who is interviewed in this Games Journal article, gave me the scoop -- but I don't know how public we want to end up being with our judging system.

Thoughts?

-- Matthew

phpbbadmin
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American Hippodice Redux

FastLearner wrote:
So, let's get this discussion rolling.

First question is this: should we discuss it here or in public? I have some info about how the Hippodice is judged (rules and description separated, etc.) that probably isn't confidential, really -- Mario Pawlowski, who is interviewed in this Games Journal article, gave me the scoop -- but I don't know how public we want to end up being with our judging system.

Thoughts?

-- Matthew

Should we start a yahoo group (or some other e-mail list server) to discuss this project outside out of BGDF? I know that some of the interested parties might not want to join BGDF just to discuss the american hippodice contest. Perhaps if we did this and then invited all the necessary individuals it would be better than directing them all here. And I don't think the contest needs to be a democratic process. I think, especially with Mario's help, that we can set up the contest a certain way and then just run with it. It will be too difficult to try and assimilate everyone's personal opinion into a working contest.
-Michael

jwarrend
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American Hippodice Redux

Just out of curiosity, who are the interested parties that we need to take into account? I think we want to avoid a "too many cooks" situation here. I propose the following people can be involved in the planning stages of this:

BGDF admins:
Matthew
Michael
Matt
Seth
Me
David
Rene
David (T)
Steve (Sisk)
J-F.

Others:
Alan Moon
Stephen Glenn

Who else should be on this list? Once we figure that out, we can decide where to hold the discussions.

It might not be a bad thing to figure out, also, what the discussions are going to be about. I think it's highly likely we'll follow a format loosely like Hippodice, with an initial screen, a playtesting round, and a final judging round. So perhaps a sub-discussion for how each of those should work might be appropriate.

Also, starting to guesstimate the size of the competition might be helpful. Working backwards might help us to figure this out. How many games can we ask the final judges to test? I'd say 5-6 might be reasonable. So, that means probably about 15 games should enter the playtesting round. I know these numbers are small, but I think we want to be really conservative here.

Another issue is the timetable. If we are to have final judging at the Gathering, that means playtesting must start no later than January, which means entries would need to be in by Thanksgiving, which means that the announcement should go out by mid summer at the latest.

So there are a variety of fronts on which conversations could proceed...

-Jeff

FastLearner
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American Hippodice Redux

I hadn't thought about a separate discussion venue, but I really like it. Unlike a semi-private discussion here, we could freely invite others and not have to make them BGDF mods or admins. Plus if we used a Yahoo group, it would be automatically delivered to me (so I wouldn't have to keep checking manually) and it would be familiar to almost everyone.

I think it would be cool to invite Mario -- he and his wife (or girlfriend, I wasn't certain) were both heavily involved and it's clear that they had a lot more good advice than I could question them about.

That timeline sounds good to me, Jeff, though we might need a bit more playtesting time, depending on how we do it (my favored model, two different gaming groups somewhere in North America, with as many as a dozen groups involved, might need a bit more time).

The sooner we nail down some particulars (how the judging will work, how many games will make it to the final round, etc.), I can nail down some judges for certain (as opposed to the "sounds good, let me know when you have more details" that I have from most of the publishers), which will make the contest announcement better -- it would be nice to say that there will definitely be judges from Days of Wonder, Rio Grande, Uberplay, etc. than something like "American publishers."

-- Matthew

FastLearner
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American Hippodice Redux

I've gone ahead and set up a Yahoo group. The group is here:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CardboardCompetition/

You can join there, or you can send an email to

CardboardCompetition-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

I struggled with a name for a while and finally just went with a workable name, knowing that we can argue about the name of the competition later. :)

-- Matthew

phpbbadmin
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Joined: 04/23/2013
American Hippodice Redux

I went ahead and joined the Yahoo group. Let's go ahead and move the discussion there. I will say that in order for this contest to succeed, WE MUST move it beyond the scope of this community. For that particular reason, I don't feel we need all the moderators of this community to be actively involved. We (BGDF) need to be a partner in this contest, not the motivating force. We're going to need SAZ, and a least a few solid gaming groups to get this thing to work. If anything, we (again, BGDF) need to take a backseat. I personally feel that you two (Jeff and Matthew) are the only real representatives we need to get this project going. Of course I am willing to help, but in all honesty, there is little in the way of concrete help that I can provide, other than getting the word out. I'm not trying to bow out of this contest, I'm just trying to be realistic as to what I, and the BGDF can do to actually facilitate it. Matthew and Jeff, you guys have both been instrumental at getting this thing off the ground. I think you guys should run with it.

-Michael

jwarrend
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American Hippodice Redux

Darkehorse wrote:
I went ahead and joined the Yahoo group. Let's go ahead and move the discussion there. I will say that in order for this contest to succeed, WE MUST move it beyond the scope of this community.

I agree, but I think that the more people that have decision-making authority in structuring the contest, the less likely we'll be to actually get it off the ground. I say that we should decide how the contest will work, and then we seek outside help for the implementation. (Or alternatively, find someone outside who knows how it should work and has the drive to spearhead)

Quote:

For that particular reason, I don't feel we need all the moderators of this community to be actively involved.

I agree, though of course any who want to be should be involved, that was all I was saying.

Quote:

We (BGDF) need to be a partner in this contest, not the motivating force. We're going to need SAZ, and a least a few solid gaming groups to get this thing to work.

Yes to the gaming groups, and while I agree that SAZ would be helpful, the reality is that SAZ is, in my opinion, a non-factor among American hobbyist designers at the present time. The BGDF is the main player in this constituency. The main purpose for getting SAZ involved was the industry link. I still think they can play a key role, but handing this off to SAZ would be a mistake, I think.

Quote:

If anything, we (again, BGDF) need to take a backseat. I personally feel that you two (Jeff and Matthew) are the only real representatives we need to get this project going. Of course I am willing to help, but in all honesty, there is little in the way of concrete help that I can provide, other than getting the word out. I'm not trying to bow out of this contest, I'm just trying to be realistic as to what I, and the BGDF can do to actually facilitate it. Matthew and Jeff, you guys have both been instrumental at getting this thing off the ground. I think you guys should run with it.

I'm happy to help out to the extent that time permits, and presumably in the yahoo group we can define the jobs that need doing and then I assume we'll naturally place ourselves in the roles that we feel we can best fill. I assume, for example, we'll need some rulebook readers, some folks to coordinate getting the prototypes sent to the correct groups, drumming up playtest groups, etc. It's way too big for any one or two people to coordinate, but with a good core team, I bet it will be manageable.

I'll move over to the yahoo group for further discussion, just wanted to say non-publically that I do think we should try to set the scope of the contest among ourselves before opening up to broader input.

-Jeff

FastLearner
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American Hippodice Redux

I purposefully haven't invited anyone else to join, yet, for that very reason. Let's chat about that very topic there.

-- Matthew

phpbbadmin
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American Hippodice Redux

FastLearner wrote:
I purposefully haven't invited anyone else to join, yet, for that very reason. Let's chat about that very topic there.

-- Matthew

Ok, I'm sitting on pins and needles eagerly awaiting the first post.
-M

sedjtroll
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American Hippodice Redux

I joined the group... awaiting approval. :)

FastLearner
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American Hippodice Redux

I figure it's best to wait another day or so before posting there, so people who get to this thread late don't have to read a bunch of archives.

Speaking of which, I'm automatically making everyone here (BGDF mods) moderators of the group -- can't see any reason why you guys shouldn't be able to make changes there, like you can here. And I made Jeff the co-owner, as well.

To save you all hassle, though, I've set it so that only I receive the join approval messages. Y'all can still do it via the web interface, but you won't get an email every time someone asks to join (I already handle that for 6 or 7 other Yahoo groups, so it's party of my multi-times-a-day standard web stuff, approving people, and I don't mind).

-- Matthew

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