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I Looking for playtesters

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Armand
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Joined: 03/19/2013

Looking for play-testers. I have designed an Action Selection/Area
control euro-style board game. (That’s right, that means it’s awesome)
The game plays in about 25 min per player. (plenty of time to catch
something on SciF) I designed a Vassal Module to make play-testing
easier. I hope to find players who will play each other and give me
feed back as well as play with me so I can get live feedback. And if
you obliterated someone while testing it out, I want the blow by
blows.

The game plays something like a reverse El Grande or Dominant Species.
The area control mechanic is divided into two types of control. The
first type of control is the normal Majority control which will reward
players with action options in later turns. The second control type is
Minority control, meaning having the least amount of control of an
area. This Minority control is how players earn points. The
juxtaposition (Kudos to me for working that one in) of these two types
of Area control make for an innovative way to think about Area Control.

Here is the game theme description I've written as well as links at the
bottom.

Welcome to the complex world of plants. A place where thriving depends
on strategy, tactics and maybe a tiny bit of luck .

Plants competes to be the most successful wild plant. Players will be
deciding how to use there resources to best support their plants
success in this games environment. "Competition Among Plants" at is
core is both an action selection and a area control game, but with a
twist. The environment does not always favor the most abundant species.

rulebook https://www.box.com/s/pmbp8si1fkp82vojwxdx

vassal module https://www.box.com/s/5pcbjz3zra8czj9ouqu7

vassal application http://www.vassalengine.org/download.php

P.S.

I am totally willing to do play testing for your game, help you with graphics design and/or help you design a module for the vassal platform in trade for your time.

GrimFinger
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Joined: 08/06/2008
I am not inclined to playtest

I am not inclined to playtest the game, since it deals with plants, rather than, say, dinosaurs.

But, I did download the rulebook, and I decided to print a page. I printed what I thought was supposed to be page # 4, but as it turns out, it's actually page # 2. Thumbs down on that.

Also, the page that printed has a background image on it, which translates into wasted toner on my end.The background image serves no worthwhile purpose, when printing things out on my laser printer. The page looks worse on paper, rather than better, compared to if the page had simply been white.

silasmolino
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Joined: 02/01/2013
Ahem...

What Grimfinger is saying is that your rule book is too pretty to print.
Perhaps something more inkfriendly would help.

The rule book looks well designed so kudos on that.

I also liked the variation on rules to make it more competitive and/or family friendly.

Fhizban
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Joined: 01/11/2009
come on guys - it seems like

come on guys - it seems like he put a lot of work into this

but, the background is not required at all. what i do is that i have a line at bottom or top of my page with some background or decal on it. but not on the whole page. still, a minor issue as your background seems to be very light (have not printed it yet).

the theme is a bit boring. but actually very funny and family friendly. its also not a war theme - something you see rarely these days.

i did not chew through the rules, but one practical thing to handle sprang up my mind:

did i get this right? you have to place tiles on the board AND furthermore you have to put tiny, differently colored tokens on the CORNERS of the tiles? So the tiles, the mini tokens, their position and orientation (not sure on the last one) play a big role in the game?

the fiddly finger-work put aside, what happens when someone trips over and slightly bumps against the gameboard?

just think about it!

PS: Great work on the rulebook. I do lots of layout myself, and that must have been a lot of work (so many examples and diagrams).

GrimFinger
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Joined: 08/06/2008
Fhizban wrote:come on guys -

Fhizban wrote:
come on guys - it seems like he put a lot of work into this

He sought play testers, and the very first thing that I would do, as a play tester, would be to print out the rulebook, so that I could have a copy in hand, as I tried to actually figure out how to play the game. Hence, the relevance of how the pages of the rulebook look in print form.

The large mass of gray color printed onto the page adds nothing to the printed page. Perhaps it does, if printed with a color printer, but it certainly doesn't, when printed on a standard laser printer. I'm just glad that I wasn't using an ink jet printer to print it.

Armand
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Joined: 03/19/2013
Printer Friendly Rulebook

Thank you all for the feed back. I will make a printer friendly rulebook and post a link asap.

Armand
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Joined: 03/19/2013
is the game fiddly

Fhizban wrote:

did i get this right? you have to place tiles on the board AND furthermore you have to put tiny, differently colored tokens on the CORNERS of the tiles? So the tiles, the mini tokens, their position and orientation (not sure on the last one) play a big role in the game?

The game board is built with hexagonal tiles, and round wooden tokens are placed on the vertices. The idea is much like Catan or Dominant Species. The token positions do play a major role in the game. If you feel that a game like Catan is fiddly then this game is slightly more fiddly than that.

Armand
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Joined: 03/19/2013
new printer friendly rule book.

Here is the file
https://www.box.com/s/spmrc8pz31oyopgk6hvb

The first thing I would like to say is, I'm amazed at the swiftness in which I received feedback on BGDF . I had posted in both BBG and the Vassal engine forums and have not gotten any replies at Vassal. Getting replies that say not interested (here is why) is still great feedback and better than nothing at all.

I edited down my rulebook in order to be more printer friendly. I hope that this will help generate interest or at least not scare away potential play testers. The original rulebook was setup to print on a pro-printing press or a pro-digital printer with the resolution brought down on the raster images in order to save on file size for download. I made the file not thinking about people wanting a printer friendly file. (Not cool, sorry about that)

I am a graphic designer by day so, I did things the way I do them at my day job. I edited down my rulebook by removing the background images as well as took out the first two pages. The first two pages are the front cover and the Table of Contents. The page numbers on the page now correspond to the actual numbers in the pdf in the printer-friendly version.

Armand
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Joined: 03/19/2013
I made a print and play pdf

I made a print and play pdf for those who are interested in printing the game.

https://www.box.com/s/sd27trk5gnadb3i0xe94

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