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Game #44: Homini Terra by RookieDesign

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RookieDesign
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Joined: 12/31/1969


This game is a project started last October 2003. It's has been my project for the last year.

This game is about the earth centuries ago. Six legendary kingdoms provide the much needed magical stone. The Elves, the Orcs, the Gnomes, the Ogres, the Dwarves and the Lizardmen have finished fighting themselves. In this era, the Humans are gaining in power, number and sometimes wisdom. There's only one faith possibles: Only man will live on the earth. Homini Terra. Soon the Humans will be the only habitant of the earth and the legendary kingdoms will only lives in the tales. You, great mages, your only hope of survival reside in the conception of a potion of immortality. You must hurry. Soon one of the legendary races will disappear with its magic. At this time, you'll lose all power.

Please read the rules carefully.
Here the central board
Here is some the harvest cards: Set 1, Set 2
Here is some formula card: Set 1, Set 2 and Set 3
Here is a better look at the Companion
Finally here is the player board

I would like to focus the discussion on certain aspect of the game.

    *The game is quite long. I added the Humans Major Victory recently to help speed up. I can adjust the experience needed before doing the potion of immortality to shorten the game. Any other suggestion to help reduce the length of the game is welcome.
    *Any opinion on the Companions. Any other suggestion for new ones.
    *I've been looking for something to spice up the game (Humans blockade is one). Some kind of blocking mechanism for the other players. I'm not sure what. Not something very bad, just annoying, but simple.
    *Is there enough players' interaction with the game?
    *Any part of the rules that need to be clarify, please just say so. I'll answer by a post then try to complete the rules later. My challenge was to keep the instruction to 12 pages. I know that the companion actions aren't clear enough I'll work on them a bit more.
    *I'm thinking about racial objectives. Like if you own all Elven companions you can create an item (not the immortality potion) and they will bring you over the ocean. You'll live there forever. Any suggestion is appreciated.
    *The name is composed of two parts. Title:Homini Terra. French is Terre des Hommes. English is Earth of Men. The subtitle is Universalis sine Magica. In French: Univers sans Magie. In English: Universe without Magic. Unfortunately, the correct latin sentence is Terra Hominum: Universum sine Magia. I prefered a title that sounds more interesting than correct grammatically. I would like to know your opinion on this.

This game is quite simple to learn. Two turns are enough to be able to play a good game.

Microsoft Word is the worst software for publishing. Next time I'll use Adobe Framemaker.

Any comments good or bad are welcome as long as they are constructive. My goal is to present this game to some contest in Europe this winter and spring. I'll continue play test it this fall. Is there hope for this game?

Thanks.

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Scurra
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Game #44: Homini Terra by RookieDesign

And an excellent game it looks too.
I'm a sucker for fantasy themes, and this one is surprisingly original* - fighting the game system is often an interesting way to drive the players (see all those discussions about "player goals" in the [TiGD] forums!) and the whole "well, the humans are going to win in the end" is nicely reminiscent of the wonderful game end in "Evo": the meteor strikes and all the dinos die out anyway!
(*well, more original than is usual in these contexts ;-)

Set-up: I will add the traditional "woah! component overload" comment here too: 150+ cards, 200 "stones" plus tokens and gold pieces. I must admit that I am always wary of games that need a central board and player mats as well; it adds significantly to the table space required and can end up causing problems. This is even more the case when you have multiple card stacks to draw from, and a board design that doesn't lend itself to an obvious place for them.

Rules: The only real grammatical comment I have is with a very early section: it shouldn't say "completes his Magic Harvest hand", it should be something like "refills" or "draws back to". It took me a moment to work out what you meant there. The rest of the rules were pretty clear (albeit occasionally prone to language-oddities) although they still felt a bit like a first draft set, with odd comments stuck in when you remembered them - I notice this because I do it myself!

Otherwise the only comment I had was that the first section ended with the mysterious line "Companion: Ogre Bodyguard". Since the Companions aren't really mentioned until about seven pages later (!) you need a line there which says "(see 6: Companions, below)" or something.
(Note that this companion should really be attached to phase 3, since apparently you don't reveal the Harvest cards until that point.)

Length: I certainly think it would be way too long to interest me, even though there are some nice lines: you may need to accelerate the Human conquest mode even more; the difficulty is that the neat "this slows delivery to market" mechanic would become even slower that way! And you can't really add player trading in, as that would slow the game down even more.
Is there only one real victory goal - the immortality potion? It feels to me as though there needs to be alternate ways to be able to make the potion but you've tied everything else in the game together so nicely (you can only earn serious money through making magic items, and you can only recruit companions through increased experience) that an alternative route to the potion doesn't seem obvious.

Title: I don't understand what you've got against Terra Hominum - it sounds fine to me. (Actually, my humour-translator kicked in when I first saw the title and thought "aha, someone has finally dared to call a game Planet of the Apes ;-))

Finally: this certainly feels like a game that's been a year in development; it's certainly nearer the end of the process than some GDW games. I'd be interested to know why you settled on six races: did you try using five or seven, or has it always been six?
But I can certainly see your concern about player interaction: there just isn't any, beyond the "who gets to the market first?" issue - and that may not be enough to sustain the game length.

RookieDesign
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Game #44: Homini Terra by RookieDesign

Thanks Scurra for being the first to review my game.

Scurra wrote:
Set-up: I will add the traditional "woah! component overload" comment here too: 150+ cards, 200 "stones" plus tokens and gold pieces.

I'm reducing the number of cards next version. I don't need that much card of level 2 and level 3 items. The stones are Risk pieces. Tokens are 3/8 wooden pieces and the gold pieces are monopoly money.

Scurra wrote:
I must admit that I am always wary of games that need a central board and player mats as well; it adds significantly to the table space required and can end up causing problems.

I tried with the cost chart on the main board, but the players found it hard to view the correct price of items.

Scurra wrote:
This is even more the case when you have multiple card stacks to draw from, and a board design that doesn't lend itself to an obvious place for them.

I'll let the publisher deal with this. If I ever get published

Scurra wrote:
Otherwise the only comment I had was that the first section ended with the mysterious line "Companion: Ogre Bodyguard". Since the Companions aren't really mentioned until about seven pages later (!) you need a line there which says "(see 6: Companions, below)" or something.
(Note that this companion should really be attached to phase 3, since apparently you don't reveal the Harvest cards until that point.)

You are right on this one. The Ogre bodyguard was changed there few days prior to relase to BGDF.

I have to test the length of the game on more time. to be sure.

Scurra wrote:
Is there only one real victory goal - the immortality potion? It feels to me as though there needs to be alternate ways to be able to make the potion but you've tied everything else in the game together so nicely (you can only earn serious money through making magic items, and you can only recruit companions through increased experience) that an alternative route to the potion doesn't seem obvious.

I'm thinking about this one. Comments welcome.

Scurra wrote:
I'd be interested to know why you settled on six races: did you try using five or seven, or has it always been six?

With 5 players, I would always have some kingdom left alone. This slow the increase in the number of army token the kingdom has. With four, I would tought that the players will rob all the kingdoms of their stones too quickly.

Scurra wrote:
But I can certainly see your concern about player interaction: there just isn't any, beyond the "who gets to the market first?" issue - and that may not be enough to sustain the game length.

Thanks for the help. It's greatly apreciated.

Trickydicky
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Game #44: Homini Terra by RookieDesign

I really like the way this game is set up. I personally don't mind the length of time, but I know that a lot of people will. It also seems like it is more of a niche game. You're only going to get so many people who are interested in this kind of game.

My questions concerning the rules:

Do you have to be a certain level to make an item of that same level? For example to make a level 2 formula do you have to be at least level 2?

In the Humans Reinforcement section you said that you should subtract 1 for EACH of the markers in the 5 to 8 region. But in your example there were 2 in the -1region, and 1 in the -2 region. Yet it was only added to -3. Does this mean you only subtract 1 once? Does it not matter how many markers are in a subtract region? you simply subtract that number if there are any markers in the area?

It said that the companion ability can only be used once. I would suggest that being able to use the ability more than once would give more of an incentive to get the companion you want Thus creating a sense of player interaction, because you want to gain the level faster, as well as get to market faster than the other players. I guess it is more of a sense of urgency in comparison to the other players more than a sense of player interaction. In my gaming experience both are good for a game, especially if one is missing. Secondly, by allowing the companion's ability to be used more than once it might speed up the game, because players have more ways in which they can sell stones, make formulas and so on.

Another way you could make the human urgency seem more substantial, is by ending the game when a fixed number of provinces are taken over, no matter what race they are from. For example, if 10 total provinces are taken over then there simply isn't enough magic left in the world for the potion of immortality to be made. (just a thought)

I think you've got a very interesting and unique game here. I still think that the theme and gameplay make it a game that will only attract a fairly specific crowd, but we need games for that crowd so keep it up.

RookieDesign
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Game #44: Homini Terra by RookieDesign

Thanks for your comment.

Trickydicky wrote:
Do you have to be a certain level to make an item of that same level? For example to make a level 2 formula do you have to be at least level 2?

No there is no restriction of the sort. Initialy I tough of it, but the effect is a slower game.

Trickydicky wrote:
In the Humans Reinforcement section you said that you should subtract 1 for EACH of the markers in the 5 to 8 region. But in your example there were 2 in the -1region, and 1 in the -2 region. Yet it was only added to -3. Does this mean you only subtract 1 once? Does it not matter how many markers are in a subtract region? you simply subtract that number if there are any markers in the area?

Look like my inability to correctly add numbers together took over. The correct total is -4 then.

Trickydicky wrote:
Another way you could make the human urgency seem more substantial, is by ending the game when a fixed number of provinces are taken over, no matter what race they are from. For example, if 10 total provinces are taken over then there simply isn't enough magic left in the world for the potion of immortality to be made. (just a thought)

I like this and think about this one.

Trickydicky wrote:
I think you've got a very interesting and unique game here. I still think that the theme and gameplay make it a game that will only attract a fairly specific crowd, but we need games for that crowd so keep it up.

Many thanks for the help.

Anonymous
Game #44: Homini Terra by RookieDesign

Sure don't know why you call yourself RookieDesign, this is a masterpiece! The game is very deep, which may spark a problem for gamers when they go to purchase it. I like how you included examples in your rules as they went along, a la Runebound.

I see this game is 2-3 hours long, which could be a disaster for some. The variant you included to make the game shorter is nice, but one more thing. Since the rules are fairly complicated, have you considered doing something like HeroScape and making a "basic game" and a "master game", or is it just not going to work?

I like this game, very unique and well done. Looks like a lot of effort went into it. If someone was to pull this game out and I didn't know what it was, this is the type of game I wouldn't mind learning if it took a long time.

Good luck with it (sorry I wasn't much help)

RookieDesign
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Game #44: Homini Terra by RookieDesign

snipy3 wrote:
I see this game is 2-3 hours long, which could be a disaster for some.

I have to time it watch in hand. With the last changes I did, I think it will run in the 1h30-2h00 with 5 players.

snipy3 wrote:
Since the rules are fairly complicated, have you considered doing something like HeroScape and making a "basic game" and a "master game", or is it just not going to work?

I dont think I could split the game in basic and advance, but even with the 12 pages of rules, the game can be learn in a snap. There's 10 step in the game but 6 of them is straight forward and don't really need any players action. (Maybe not a good thing after all).

I spent 11 months of slashing in the rules, material and complexity to achieve this game. Previously I had 30 companions, I down it to 18. All this in the hope to make it simple enough and cheap enough to be produced in quantity.

snipy3 wrote:
Good luck with it (sorry I wasn't much help)

You are helping me. Expressing that you like the finished and worked look of the game motivate me to present it to competition. That's for me a great deal. Thanks.

jwarrend
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Game #44: Homini Terra by RookieDesign

I haven't had a chance to fully digest the rulebook yet, but I just wanted to chime in with few quick reactions.

First, the visual presentation is obviously great; kudos! I think the core idea is also quite imaginative, and quite compelling. I could easily see Fantasy Flight picking this one up.

That said, your component list is a bit silly; 2400 Gold pieces?! A game that takes 2400 of anything is a non-starter. Happily, I think it shouldn't be too hard to remove the need for this many tokens; I see them as a by-product of what I perceive to be a vastly overcomplicated cost structure. Any payout schedule that runs into the high double digits is too complicated. Find a way to simplify things to where payouts, costs, rewards, etc, are all between 1-10 at most (and 1-3 is really ideal, but probably too narrow for this game). This will require some creativity, but you've shown you're capable of that. I may have specific suggestions after looking things over again.

In that sense, I see the "game" as working like this: You are a wizard, and you want to complete great spells/artifacts. The components for these come from the various races, (and the products are bought by the races), so you want to keep the races that contribute the stuff you need for your spells in business to keep supplying you with that stuff. But, the humans are going to attack the "weakest" race each turn, and you want to machinate that so that the races you deal with aren't affected by that for as long as possible.

I think that's roughly how your game works. And that's a very good base indeed. Now you need to work harder to make sure that everything in the game contributes to this core system, and extraneous stuff -- companions, lookup charts, stress levels, etc -- all is pulling its weight at contributing to the central structure of the game. Think long and hard about everything. Don't accept that just because you want it in there, it needs to stay. Don't be afraid to hack gratuitously.

My feeling is that there's a good 90 minute game in here, but 3 hours is just too much. As I said, I'll try to come up with specifics if I can find anything. But overall, my reaction is that you have a very original and clever thematic idea, and some good mechanics, but also some rubble that you need to clear to expose the beautiful sculpture underneath.

Good luck!

-Jeff

RookieDesign
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Game #44: Homini Terra by RookieDesign

jwarrend wrote:
That said, your component list is a bit silly; 2400 Gold pieces?! A game that takes 2400 of anything is a non-starter. Happily, I think it shouldn't be too hard to remove the need for this many tokens; I see them as a by-product of what I perceive to be a vastly overcomplicated cost structure.

I realized that 2400 gold pieces aren't pratical. In fact that is the amount of money the entire game has. Right now I'm using monopoly money with 1, 5, 10, 20 and 100. I'll try to put my hand on some gold pieces that come with Talisman or Blood Royale. They have large denominations on them and will work perfectly.

I'll rewrite the component list.

Anonymous
Game #44: Homini Terra by RookieDesign

I agree with jwarrend on a few things:

1. If you are looking to get this game distributed, contact Fantasy Flight Games (fantasyflightgames.com), they have an easy to use send in form available online, and this is just the type of genre they seem to target.

2. The gold pieces are a big issue. I also thought of paper money before I read you were using it, but in most FFG games they use cardboard tokens or butterscotch tokens, so you may want to figure out denominations of tokens or just lower the costs of everything.

RookieDesign
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Game #44: Homini Terra by RookieDesign

snipy3 wrote:
2. The gold pieces are a big issue. I also thought of paper money before I read you were using it, but in most FFG games they use cardboard tokens or butterscotch tokens, so you may want to figure out denominations of tokens or just lower the costs of everything.

Not so easy to do decrease the price of everything. May it will worth it in the end. I know that Puerto Rico coins doesn't handle well, but I will left the decision on the coins material to a editor.

I'll try to see if I can fit lower price.

Thanks

GeminiWeb
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Game #44: Homini Terra by RookieDesign

Sorry its taking me a while to make some comments. I'll try to be quick and to the point (unlikely say those who know me ....)

I'll also say that I'd like to make better comments but I feel I'd need to lay the game to offer better insights ...

Concept

Firstly, great concept. I also like the way the gameplay and the theme are so closely linked. To me, this aids to the enjoyment and I suspect it should also help players in determining strategies as they can fall back on the theme to guide them.

Components

I am envious of your graphical skills. That said, there do seem to be a lot of components. What options are there for reducing them?

For example, consider less
- races
- magic stones
- army tokens
- gold pieces

I like the variety the 6 races and the 6 stone colours offer, but are they really necessary? (Hard for me to say without playing). Reducing one or both of those will help reduce componets and simplify the gameplay.

For the gold pieces, the numbers seem to get quite big. Is it possible to scale this down? This will reduce both components and the amount of calculation from the players.

Magic items

I couldn't see anywhere how they actually helped against the humans. Do they or is this a trick employed by mages wanting some extra cash?

Game length

Here are some ideas that I have used to reduce game length:

- (A) Have an accelerated start-up. In my GDW'd game "High Council of Evensford", players are given 3 cards from a resource deck and 3 cards from a technology deck. Then they can immediately trade in one tech card for a tech advance in the related technology (which usually requires 3 of a kind).

(B) Scale down things. In my game, (which is about building houses and buildings in a growing city) this meant reducing the resources required to build things.

(C) Increase available resources. In my game, the initial resource deck had too many low value resources, so it took too long to accumulate enough resources to do things.

Trading

I may have missed it, but do you have a way of tracking what people have bought/sold in thier first phase so they don't sell/buy it in their second phase?

Companions

Lots of variety and interesting, but the game might play fine without them and keeps the game simpler. (Save them for your first expansion perhaps?)

I assume only one of each is available.

Also, looking at them, I'm guessing some are better for you personally (e.g. ogre bodyguard, lizardman smuggler), while others are better for the group (e.g. gnome bard, orcish war drums). Is this the case? Do your playtests suggest the same companions are always being taken?

There's some quick comments for now at least ... nice work!

Anonymous
Game #44: Homini Terra by RookieDesign

I'm one of RookieDesign's RL friends who helped playtest his game. We saw the evolution of his boards, cards, and tokens, and offered him constructive criticism whenever possible, or how great/meaningless our victories were.

The last time we played , we were able to play 2 matches (with 4 players)within 2.5 hours, despite the fact that we got interrupted by our fifth member of our clique, who asked questions and suggested possible changes while we were playing. Although I haven't played his recent "release" yet, the fact that the number of companions got reduced from 30 to 18 and that the Level 4 magical items got removed from play were from that game session.

While reading the comments on this thread, the more common concerns were game length, the number of tokens/cards/money involved, player interaction, and the ability for a beginners/mastery version of the game.

One concept that came to mind this week was removing the army tokens from all 6 Kingdoms. Instead, all items sold to a specific Kingdom are kept in a stack, as they represent the reinforcements (each item level represents the number of army "tokens") that the Kingdom has. That means their armies get increased during the Sell Item phase, and not the Market/Purchase Stones phase.

After some discussion, this suggestion has the following advantages:
- Less tokens needed for the game;
- The players have a more direct influence over the reinforcements in the Kingdoms, and give them more choices for strategy to protect one Kingdom over another;
- The humans now have a logical reason for the Blockade if a Kingdom has too many items (therefore a larger army) and prevent it from getting more powerful (and balances the game to the humans' advantage);
- Removes one step in the game flow, making it easier to manage and shortening the time needed to play;
- If a Kingdom loses a confrontation against the humans, it loses one (or two for a major victory) items from its stack, randomly chosen, which then goes to the discard pile.

There is still some discussion over the number of human tokens needed to go with that suggestion, but that is RookieDesign's problem, not mine =). But it will look like there will be less human tokens needed as well, but that's for him to judge.

One other suggestion, for a beginner's version of the game, consists of eliminating all human and Kingdom tokens (if we don't use the previous suggestion). Instead, during the War phase, we take for granted that the humans will win against the Kingdom that they hate the most (or determined randomly) and it loses 1 of their lands. No dice roll, no tokens, and the players only concentrate on making items until they are capable of doing their Immortality potion before the humans inevitably destroys all the Kingdoms.

I hope I made the suggestions clear enough. If you have any questions regarding these, post positive comments in this thread, and all flames through RookieDesign's PM =P.

RookieDesign
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Game #44: Homini Terra by RookieDesign

GeminiWeb wrote:
I am envious of your graphical skills.

Don't be, I stole the companions art from the web. The objects are from Blizzard Diablo II. I just work them a bit in photoshop. The map is mine, and it suck.

GeminiWeb wrote:
I like the variety the 6 races and the 6 stone colours offer, but are they really necessary? (Hard for me to say without playing).

The problem that I see with only 4 kingdom is if I have 5 players, the kingdom will be bought from all players every round. With one more choice than players, there is a small chance that stones remain on the board for the next buying round.

GeminiWeb wrote:
For the gold pieces, the numbers seem to get quite big. Is it possible to scale this down? This will reduce both components and the amount of calculation from the players.

I'm amazed by the reaction a got on gold pieces. It doesn't seems to me that big of a deal, because I played Blood Royale years ago and this game had large denomination coins. That reduce the quantity of material involve.

GeminiWeb wrote:
I couldn't see anywhere how they actually helped against the humans. Do they or is this a trick employed by mages wanting some extra cash?

My friend TuskThunder suggest some more improvement above.

GeminiWeb wrote:
Game length

I take notes on the suggestion and think about it. I know it's an issue and will try to pin it down shortly.

GeminiWeb wrote:
Trading
I may have missed it, but do you have a way of tracking what people have bought/sold in thier first phase so they don't sell/buy it in their second phase?

While playing the game you don't sell very often. It is a very bad strategy. The sell price is ridiculously low and the sell phase is there only to help a bad planning from a player in case he run short of cash. We found out that we easily remember what colour was sold if any the previous round. Playtest could show otherwise.

GeminiWeb wrote:
Companions

Lots of variety and interesting, but the game might play fine without them and keeps the game simpler. (Save them for your first expansion perhaps?)

I assume only one of each is available.

Also, looking at them, I'm guessing some are better for you personally (e.g. ogre bodyguard, lizardman smuggler), while others are better for the group (e.g. gnome bard, orcish war drums). Is this the case? Do your playtests suggest the same companions are always being taken?

Yes the game play fine without them, but they had a bit of advantage to the more experience player. It also make the end game easier to play and speed up the finish. One major point to keep them is if I remove them, the kingdom won't have any image to reinforce the racial aspect of it. The Human's enemy will be faceless.

You are right and there's only one of each.
Finally yes, they are increasingly helping you. The level 2 help all players, the level 3 is personal advantages. I still have to see which companions are favorites, but I add 30 to pick from previously and try to keep the more balanced, fun and easy to use.

Thanks for your help.

DarkDream
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Game that Has Great Potential

RookieDesign,

I went ahead and looked at the game. Before I get into some details, I did notice some sentences that were not grammatically clear. Towards the end of the rules you have, "The humans will go to War against the Kingdom have the higher Stress." I would rework this sentence.

"Each player put one Magic Harvest card in from of him face down." I think you want "front" instead of from here."

Another one:
"You cannot sell stones of the same colour you planned to buy or bough during a given turn."

I'm not sure that "bough" is an English word.

There are some other minor grammatical issues. A good proof read would sort them out.

My initial impression is that you have a good game here at the core. I think you need to stream line it a bit to make it really sparkle. Right now, the whole war section seems to be bit of a just a simulation element. Right now players only really have a periphery impact on the action.

Personally, it would be neat if somehow players had more of an impact on the war itself. Right now, there appears to be no system where all of the goodies given to the various races are even used. It seems to me, if you give a race a lot of goodies it should increase its chance in winning the war.

I have not given it a whole lot of thought, but why not try some ideas about a race offering money for a mage to fight for them to increase their chances?

Maybe, mages at the beginning of the game can be offered quest cards that indicate if they achieve certain goals they will acheive more experience. An example would be, to sell to the Lizard race a shield object.

Maybe there can be some items that will allow an alliance between races or break one apart. So in a war, the humans would fight a combined force.

Another idea, is that depending on how many items a mage has given, there are certain races that will pay a little extra to a mage that has sold a lot to encourage good business.

The element I'm trying to add here, is that the game should maybe push certain players to sell only to certain races. Then you have the dynamics of where certain players will purposely try to make certain races loose battles (to stop their opponent getting money from them) and where players will try to help certain races over others (even at a slight business loss) so that it makes them more likely to shun them buying from other players and so on. I would somehow try to make this element of the game more cut throat, where the issue of selling to a race at a certain cost creates more interesting decisions. Maybe you need a system of "like" points, where you gain and loose "like" points with a race if you trade with one versus the other and so on.

Also what seems counter-intuitive to me is that if you sell an item to a race, their Stress is increased. It seems to me that their stress would decrease as they are more sure they can win the battle. Why would humans more inclined to attack them if they just bought an item that makes the race harder to get rid of.

I'm not clear what Stress is. I understand its function, but from a thematic stand point, what does it represent?

The amount of player interaction seems to be a bit worrying. I'm not that sure if there is a whole lot of direct interaction.

I think you have a good game here, but I just feel right now that it needs some streamlining and adding another element to it that will make it not just sparkle but shine. Right now I can't think of anything besides the race relation idea, but I think if you can add one more element here you can take the game to the next level.

It looks like your game has great potential.

--DarkDream

GeminiWeb
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Game #44: Homini Terra by RookieDesign

Back again.

Firstly, thanks TuskThunder for your insights. Its always good to hear opinions from a playtester's perspective.

Back to some specifics ...

Armies and Items

I like the idea of items being used in the war against the humans. Removing armies altogether does make things simpler but I'd be tempted to keep some form of army as its a neat concept ... perhaps a fixed army per region, supplemented by magic items?

Game length

My concerns about game length were more a reaction to

Quote:
*The game is quite long. I added the Humans Major Victory recently to help speed up. I can adjust the experience needed before doing the potion of immortality to shorten the game. Any other suggestion to help reduce the length of the game is welcome.

If you think that's now better paced, don't worry about those comments!

races and stones

Quote:
GeminiWeb wrote:
Quote:
I like the variety the 6 races and the 6 stone colours offer, but are they really necessary? (Hard for me to say without playing).

The problem that I see with only 4 kingdom is if I have 5 players, the kingdom will be bought from all players every round. With one more choice than players, there is a small chance that stones remain on the board for the next buying round.

I think I missed something on my first reading through here (and not helped by the fact that I printed it all out in balck & white before reading it). Correct me if I'm wrong, but each type of stone is only produced by a specific race? If I hadn't originally picked up on that ... I was somehow thinking that you might have different stones coming form different areas. For example, the first person would allocate all of the stones on their harvest card to a single race ... the next person would chose a different race and so on ... (or it could be the same race as well, representing a greta harvest from them?)

Anywhere these are just random ideas ... I can see the importance of having a large enough market to support the buying (and selling).

Gold pieces

For me its not only the number but the effect on the maths and amount of calculating involved. Okay, I've got a degree in statistics and it doesn't worry me, but there are quite a few people that are much happier working with smaller numbers ... particularly if they are trying to plan ahead and keeping a running total in their minds.

(For example, in Goa, you can choose to produce differenttypes of spices in your turn. To help my planning and to speed up the game [in my one and only game to date], while it was not my turn, I played with the out of play spice tokens to try and work out the best combination of spices to produce in my turn ... given that all sort of actions required different combinations of spices. If the numbers of spices produced were big, this would have been near impossible and would have significantly slowed down the game).

Companions and races

Quote:
One major point to keep them is if I remove them, the kingdom won't have any image to reinforce the racial aspect of it.

I take this point, although the races still have some sort of relationship with the types of stones I think? That said, the companios are a nice touch, but I'd be wary if everyone was always trying to pick the same ones ... (as a measure of game balance in the companions)

Moving the stones

An interesting idea, to presumably produce a delay before the stones actually making it to market ...

That said, what would happen if stones always went straight to the market? I'm just trying to think of ways to streamline the game ...

Finally, I'd like to reinforce DarkDream's general comment. I think you've got quite a good game here, but with a bit of streamlining and a possible extra twist, it could potentially be a very good game.

And most importantly, it sounds like the playtesters are having fun.

Bill

RookieDesign
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Re: Game that Has Great Potential

DarkDream wrote:
Also what seems counter-intuitive to me is that if you sell an item to a race, their Stress is increased. It seems to me that their stress would decrease as they are more sure they can win the battle. Why would humans more inclined to attack them if they just bought an item that makes the race harder to get rid of.

I'm not clear what Stress is. I understand its function, but from a thematic stand point, what does it represent?
--DarkDream

Thanks for the review. You have there a valid point. What is the Stress define in the game. I'll try to make some emphasis on it in the rewrite.

I'll explain it here.

The Stress is the feeling the Humans have against a certain Kingdom. As you sell item to the Orcs, the Humans will fear them more and attack them. If the Humans win the war the Stress decrease as they fear less the Kingdom. I struggle alot to find the right terminology. Stress is the best that could come.

As for the interaction and impact on the selling, tonight I'm testing a drastic change in the rules. I'll let people know how it went.

RookieDesign
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Game #44: Homini Terra by RookieDesign

GeminiWeb wrote:
Armies and Items

I like the idea of items being used in the war against the humans. Removing armies altogether does make things simpler but I'd be tempted to keep some form of army as its a neat concept ... perhaps a fixed army per region, supplemented by magic items?
I'll test it and see what I can pull.

GeminiWeb wrote:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but each type of stone is only produced by a specific race?

Anywhere these are just random ideas ... I can see the importance of having a large enough market to support the buying (and selling).
You are correct. The Kingdom only produce the stone they are suppose too... but let me think about many colour stones coming one kingdom.

GeminiWeb wrote:
Gold pieces

For me its not only the number but the effect on the maths and amount of calculating involved. Okay, I've got a degree in statistics and it doesn't worry me, but there are quite a few people that are much happier working with smaller numbers ... particularly if they are trying to plan ahead and keeping a running total in their minds.

Believe me, it isn't that hard of a calculation. Only to provide proper change. I wish I can change the scale, but the selling price of the item must match the buying price of the stones with a profit margin. I wish I could round out everything to the nearest 10. Maybe I can look at my buy and sell chart again.

GeminiWeb wrote:
That said, what would happen if stones always went straight to the market? I'm just trying to think of ways to streamline the game ...

Droping the stone directly to the market, I guess I could remove the Kingdom Provincial adjustment. This isn't a bad thing after all.

Thanks talk to you.

RookieDesign
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Game #44: Homini Terra by RookieDesign

We're running toward the end of the week. Most of the regular have posted.

I want to thank everybody for their help. I'll print the thread and reread everybodies suggestion.

I was surprise that nobody raise the issue of the strange looking stones on the card. I guess that everybody recognize where they were coming from.

Have a good day.

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