[GDS] February 2011 Game Design Showdown - "The Dice Gods Must Be Crazy" - Comments and Questions

I think that's the meat of this particular challenge: strip away anything that isn't absolutely necessary. Sometimes, what separates a great design from a good design is knowing what to cut out.

That's the part I'm struggling with the most, too. How simple is too simple? I come up with lots of ideas to add game-design bullet points (player interaction, bluffing, negotiation) and then end up cutting them right out because they're adding too much complexity.

Elegance is so elusive....

Well, bluffing requires hidden information (a little tricky in dice-based games, especially with these component restrictions), and diplomacy requires some way for the players to interact in-game, and rules governing those interactions.

But you're completely right in that I have a little core and am trying to branch out, and the whole game could include those things more elegantly if I'd started from a different direction.

Maybe I used bad examples when I mentioned things that would make my game "better" in a bullet-pointed sense, but aren't being included for the sake of simplicity.

Indeed, Zom.

I intend to conform to the dictates of the challenge. It said 40 dice and I won't exceed that in my design. It also listed a number of acceptable additional components, from which we could pick one. However, the subsequent posts in this thread revealed that, as envisioned by the publisher, the box could hold EITHER 40 dice only (and barely, at that), or fewer dice and some number of those components. That's a critical difference, and it's what made the dice size question such a big issue.

Without the clarification issued above, I might have said my game needed "40 dice and a bunch of markers" and been within the design specs. Let's further speculate that I then win the user vote, based on this design.

In such a case, I'd be winning the battle and losing the war, because Michael would say "well, it's great game and the BGDFers like it, but I can't publish it because it won't fit in the box I want to use." By clarifying that smaller dice could be acceptable (ie he has a source for 12mm dice), I can keep the integrity of my original design, without running afoul of the publisher's additional requirements described in this thread (ie "fit it in the box of X size").

If my game is great, and it would work better with 45 dice, or 50, or 80, I hope Michael would consider that change when thinking about publishing it; indeed, I would hope that he would REQUIRE it. In the mean time knowing that I could fit 120 12mm dice in the box means that I feel I have a good sense of how much space I have for 40 dice (namely, a third of the box), and how much is left for the markers (a lot!).

Ok i'll bite. Why not Kodak?

Now now, RC, there's no need to get snippy. Obviously this is an unusual GDS because there is an actual publisher interested in reviewing the submissions. With that real-world interest, there will naturally follow some real-world considerations that aren't usually part of the GDS. I'm grateful that Michael and Seth have been so candid about their goals and thoughts for this contest, and I look forward to seeing what everyone brings to the table.

I'm sorry it apparently offends you so that we're talking about anything except pure game mechanics in a GDS. Personally I'm grateful to have a publisher take the time to solicit game ideas, possibly critique them from a real-world point of view, and possibly even pick them up. But if you don't want to submit a design because it either won't fit in the box they've described, or the whole idea of thinking about the box size is anathema to you, feel free to keep your great dice game to yourself.

And I think a game that fits in a picture frame, or incorporates a flat-rate mailing container, might not be a bad idea for a future GDS.

Yeah... I started writing my reply as a satire. But towards the end, I was like... this might actually be fun. I liked the UHaul one personally... the angels can have their pin head all to themselves.

Five seven and five
haiku don't always make sense
refrigerator

You can summit it by personal message to Sedjtroll. Seth asks that you pre-format your section headings, italics, bullet points, etc... with the markdown language syntax so he can just cut and paste. Here's a link to the guide on the syntax:
http://www.bgdf.com/sites/default/files/BGDF_GDS_Template.txt

Looks like a short fun game already. I look forward to reading it. Hopefully in the meantime, I'll remember to forget that I saw your components beforehand. Seth posts the entries anonymously to not bias voting. ;)

But since michaels vote is the one that counts this time, it probably won't be an issue.

I submitted my game idea - but the 800 words was actually more restrictive than the game requirements! Hopefully I'll be able to get my revisions done in time to include all the info :-)

This was a super-fun exercise and actually gave me the last hit of inspiration I needed to finish up a game I've been thinking about in brief spurts for the last year.

If I'm not mistaken you can e-mail them to Seth or put them up on a cloud photo-hosting site.

Can I request the addition of a "2nd component option" of a small pad of paper and a golf pencil? A score pad is not an uncommon component in dice games, can be as small as needed to fit in the box, and is much easier to use for score tracking than, say, a bunch of additional dice!

The score pad would be the "2nd component" where the dice are the 1st component. Picture a game like Yahtzee, for example.

JW,

Ah, I thought you needed a second ADDED component, so the game would be dice + score pad + one of the markers/tokens/figurines/tiles/cards/etc.

I still think Seth made the right call, but it's not even the bad news for you as I thought it would be. That is, if it's just Yatzee you're thinking of (dice plus score-pad), you have half a dozen different ways to keep score instead, using the components provided. Part of the hair-pulling madness fun of the GDS is figuring out how to make a cool design, stay inside the rules, and do it all in 800 words or less.

As for Michael, he is obviously a big meanie, to joke around with poor designers like that. Just for a chuckle indeed, sir! Harumph!