by James Martin

For the past 2 months I have been designing my first proper game. I would call it a board game but really the board itself is fairly minimal! (Below is a bit of a personal statement so to speak, if you want to just read about the game please skip ahead to where it says boardgame starts here, or whatever I call it by the time I get there!)

I have always had a passion for design, which for the past 12 years I've used working in architecture, on projects around the world… but mostly in Yorkshire and London, and an autistic brain that loves nothing more than understanding patterns and mechanics. I have a track record of breaking games, I am geared up towards solving things, and games are no exception. I have found ways to completely legally cheat almost every system I've come across, from working out how to buy any player on football manager for free forever, or selling players for £100m every time, or my unkillable Templar in Elder Scrolls Online. Or more importantly breaking tabletop games like Ticket To Ride and Azul, both games I cannot lose. I also can't let people win, I'm just not built that way though sometimes wish I was.

This has led me to changing almost every game we play with advanced ‘House Rules’ to make them better, or at least better for me, going beyond tweaking them when I've broken them just so that people will want to play with me cause I don't then always win.

I recently became unhappy in my career and quit to take a break. The stress of running a department in a huge architecture practice is highly stressful, especially for an autistic person, and I felt I was about to break myself.

Since then I've decided to follow my passion for design and mechanics, and design my own games. I don't have any expectations of being the next Jamey Stegmeier, though wouldn't that be nice… 😅 I just want to make the best games you've ever played. I have never been so excited to get up every morning and get to work, it's the first time in my life I cannot wait to see what the next day will bring.

I really hope you can join me on this journey, I will not promise to make it worthwhile, but I will promise to always be me and that I only ever try to do things as well as they can be done. This is my first ever post, and it feels weird to be putting myself out there, especially as openly as this.

I could say this post is my… Baseline…



!!! BOARD GAMEY BIT STARTS HERE !!!!!


Yes, if you felt the Baseline part was a bit weird, I did too, but it was a ham fisted attempt to segue into the creation of my first full game, BASELINE.

The idea:

​A dice-driven duel played across a simple 1-6 track. It is designed to eventually fit into an ultra-compact, Oink-style box, but you can play it right now with just a few dice and a scrap of paper.

(Full disclosure, I am aiming for this to be an actual game people can buy, but you can play with for free with some paper and dice, and I will also be giving away the print and plays for free which will be exactly as per the game i release, I just want people to play it.)

The working tagline is “Grab a dice. Roll it twice” (yes i know a single dice is a die, I'm usually the one pulling people on things like that, which really makes me popular.) This tagline really tells you what you will be doing, it's that simple.

OK it's not that simple. Behind this most basic of actions is a huge amount more thinking and planning involved, which can be gazumped by a dice roll, but it is designed to be mitigated and feel like a joyful moment, not one where you feel cheated.

While the game is ostensibly about rolling some dice, it feels more like a game of area control. Yes you are always driven by a dice roll, but which dice you use and how gives a lot of player agency, without taking away the fun of a dice roll. I think a lot of Euro gamers (like me) forget that a well done game of rolling dice can actually be a moment of excitement and fun.

I despise luck games, or games that pretend to be “push your luck”. I have written my thoughts on this mechanic, why they fail, and what I think game designers miss or misunderstand in them, and will post it if people want to see my ramblings!

But yes, a designer's first game being the exact game he hates is a curious one. But I think I've fixed the why it doesn't work in this game.

THE ACTUAL MECHANIC

You have 3 dice to choose from. An attack dice, a neutral rally dice, and a defensive dice. You roll these first for movement (NOT a roll to move, more a roll to see if you are able to move, able to reach the ball the other player has hit).

These dice each have different outcomes, which are activated if the movement roll was beyond successful.

The baseline is a grid of 1-6 (and 0 and 7 which will become clear why when you can't roll those), the player hitting the ball rolls a dice and that determines where on the baseline it lands, lets say your meeple is on space 2, the other player lands the ball at position 5. That is 3 spaces away. You choose your dice, roll it, if you roll at least 3, you managed to reach the ball in time. You then roll the same dice and this determines where you hit the ball. Simple.

But, a simple mechanic makes this shot the culmination of several turns flowing from shot to shot, a balance of putting the opposition on the back foot and not letting yourself sacrifice court position too much in the process. You are rewarded for being in a better position by the dice modifier. In the above example, if you are 3 spaces away and reach the ball, you are able to return it. If you roll higher than that, this gives you bonus ‘time’, which can be used on your actual shot, depending on which dice you used. Rolling 1 or 2 higher on the movement dice brings the following:

Attack dice: a 1 or 2 position bonus for the attacking shot. Say you roll a 5 on your movement, you can use the leftover 2 movements as time to really place your shot, so you roll a 3 on the shot, right down the middle of the court and easy to reach, but you have 2 bonus movements so you can place this upto 2 positions away, so this suddenly becomes a much better shot, landing in the 1 position or the 5, because you had more time, which is earned by a good court position.
Defensive dice: a 1 or 2 position bonus after the shot. The defensive dice is less about scoring a winner and about getting good court position for the future shot and rally. For instance if the opponent hits the ball to your 6 position, you use an attacking dice and return it, you are stranded in that slot, meaning your attacking shot has to be good or you're leaving the court wide open for them to return an easy winner. But using a defensive dice, you can use those same 2 movement or time bonus from the first dice roll just as the attack dice, but this time you apply then to take upto 2 recovery steps after you hit the ball. So instead of being stranded in the 6 position, you can take 2 big steps after hitting the ball to recover back to a 4 position, giving you much better court position in an area control sense. (The defensive dice also has a +1 modifier on the first dice roll, the movement, but this is balanced by it giving the opponent a free anticipation step after you hit it, which simulates them having more time because the ball is coming over to them more slowly).
The neutral, base rally dice: this is designed to be a balanced dice, probably the one used most. It has the attack and defensive dice modifiers build in, but while they can reach 2 shot bonus or 2 recovery steps, this can do 1 of each, so you gain a position of a better shot placement and a step of your own court positioning. Well, you do if your movement roll is +2 of what was needed, but if it is only +1, then you choose which way around the bonus is used, do you push the player to the corners, or scramble yourself back to a better position?

The above is the heart of the game. Sounds simple, but I think if you try it you will be surprised at the tactical depth even when it hinges on dice rolls. While also having the ebb and flow and real world feeling dynamics of a real game of tennis.


SERVING

The game though starts with a serve. The most difficult part to face in almost any game of tennis. Again this is designed and calculated to feel like facing a real serve in tennis, with accurate percentages to real world tennis for aces, faults, double faults, and a push your luck mechanism which is inherent in tennis itself, do you go big on that second serve or play it safe and potentially give the returner a better shot and court position?

The game has you serving from one side and then the other, like tennis. Start on the 1-3 side. You always start with the attack dice. Roll the shot (no movement required, the ball is in your hand!) If it lands in their 1-3 side that is in. (I'll talk about returning a serve just below.) If not, it's a fault.

Second Serve time. Do you go for it and grab that attack dice again? Or play it a bit safer without giving too much and use the Neutral dice? Or play really safe and use the defensive dice, sacrificing the ideal position for the safety of not double faulting?

The neutral dice gives you a 1-place movement, but only for it to land in. So with the neutral dice a 1-4 roll will land in. Just.

The defensive dice takes this a step further. Literally. It can drift upto 2 spaces to land in, meaning a legal serve can now be in if you rolled 1-5. (Naturally if you serve from the 4-6 position this is all flipped.)

So, if these are safer, more likely to land in, why would you go for a big second serve? Well…

The attack serve has a -2 modifier on the returners dice roll. Lets say the serve lands 1 space away from them, they would, on a normal shot, only need to roll a 1. But now they have to roll a 3. Seems small, but it is a significant change. It also means they are likely to use the defensive dice in response, which gives you, the server, an anticipation step so you're in a much stronger position to play the next shot and to dictate the rally.


Each shot and dice choice has so much more impact on every shot that follows, it honestly feels so much like a real game of tennis. I have playtested this with family, and watching is almost as satisfying as playing, it has the ebb and flow, and a real dynamic of tennis.

For instance my mum and dad played it, and my mum was hitting the ball right in the corner every time, my dad was constantly on the back foot scrambling for the ball with his defensive dice, just barely reaching it for several turns, because he was so hopelessly out of position every shot, he wasn't getting the bonus recovery steps, so he remained out of position. Slowly he was able to get a single bonus, then another, and eke his way back into a good position, then he was finally able to switch his dice to an attack, and on his first attack painted the lines and won the point!

It was a genuinely great moment, it didn't feel he had fluked it, it felt earned, and I can still remember the rally and the winner days later, and isn't that what a large part of gaming is? The shared experience, shared memories? Something that you mention days, weeks, months later? It still gets brought up in our gaming group the time my other half took the owl from my friend in Everdell, shattering his perfectly constructed tableau.

I have loved boardgames all my life. For this reason. I've always been the quiet kid, the shy kid, the autistic kid I have more recently learned, that would rather play on his own in a corner. I remember loving monopoly, getting so excited to play it around Christmas it was genuinely the main thing I looked forward to.

I probably knew deep down that it was awful, but it was the only thing people played, the only thing people knew, and for me it built a bridge, a way to connect over something I was interested in, a way to feel a part of something, like I belonged. I didn't care there was no depth, I just cared that I was there. I looked forward to being able to play it.

This is what games are to me. A bridge. A community. It is a genuinely heartfelt passion I have to make games that runs deeper than just I enjoy them or enjoy making them. Making games, playing games, is a vital connection.

I want nothing more than to give everyone that connection, give everyone that great night, that great connection, belonging. Because everyone deserves that.

END

I am sorry for the rambling, this was meant to be telling you about the game, but I want these posts to be real, in a world where increasingly everything we see is AI, or sanitised and formatted and carefully constructed by PR for image and so on, I'm just a guy who wants to make games.

If you're local let me know, happy to grab a drink. You're paying though cause I seem to have less money since I quit my job, weird.

Thanks from Yorkshire.
James

by rdanker11

$30.00 for Board Game: Legacy of Dragonholt
Condition: Like New
Location: United States

by Eric R.

All right, it's 3am, you've got ADHD and you've just been treated with epinephrine for a severe asthma attack. That's what Black Moth Super Rainbow feels like all the time. Gymkata!
Youtube Video

by Steve

August 2

1876

- Wild Bill Hickok shot by Jack McCall from behind during a poker game. The combination of black Aces and black 8s becomes known as "Dead Man's Hand" [microbadge=10211]

1905

- Actress Myrna Loy (The Thin Man) [microbadge=4593]

1924

- Actor Carroll O'Connor (All in The Family) [microbadge=6968]

1932

- Actor Peter O'Toole [microbadge=23974]

1939

- Horror film director Wes Craven [microbadge=8222]

August 3

1904

- Sci-fi Author Clifford D. Simak (Way Station) [microbadge=664]

1940

- Actor Martin Sheen [microbadge=14525]

1950

- Director John Landis [microbadge=8] [microbadge=42872]

August 4

1693

- Traditional date ascribed to Dom Perignon's invention of Champagne [microbadge=7820]

1792

- Poet Percy Bysshe Shelley

1892

- The father and stepmother of Lizzie Borden are found murdered [microbadge=10392]

August 5

1906

- Director John Huston [microbadge=17418] [microbadge=4671]

1930

- Astronaut Neil Armstrong [microbadge=7754]

1941

- A. K. Dewdney, recreational mathematician [microbadge=27660]

1948

- Larry Elmore [microbadge=12578]

August 6

1809

- English poet Alfred Lord Tennyson [microbadge=13763]

1881

- Alexander Fleming, inventor of penicillin [microbadge=21172]

1911

- Comedienne Lucille Ball [microbadge=9517]

1934

- Sci-fi/fantasy author Piers Anthony [microbadge=2136]

1996

- George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones published [microbadge=184] [microbadge=868]

2019

- BGG/RPGG/VGG site re-branding [microbadge=10388] Old Look

August 7

1960

- Actor David Duchovny [microbadge=31553]

August 8

1937

- Actor Dustin Hoffman [microbadge=35067]

1978

- Garfield's canine pal Odie [microbadge=20856]

I'm sure this list can be improved. Feel free to offer suggestions for this and upcoming weeks. If you want your birthday included just add it to this geeklist: RPG Geek Birthday List

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