I used a game I designed in one of my recent leadership training sessions - Tradition and Innovation. The game was not originally designed for training or learning purposes, but I realised it was fitting for the particular training programme I was doing, on leadership. The core idea I wanted to convey in Tradition and Innovation was that two competing factions have a common objective, but they pursue two very different ways to achieve it. The game was originally designed for 2 to 6 players. To turn it into a training activity, I made it playable for 12 participants.
You have the tradition faction and the innovation faction. Both want prosperity for the world. However one wants to achieve this by honouring tradition, while the other believes innovation is the only way forward. In game terms, the tradition faction wins by pushing prosperity level and tradition level to 20 or more. The innovation faction wins by pushing prosperity level and innovation level to 20 or more. They have a common goal - prosperity. The game is played over at most 6 rounds. If neither faction achieves their winning condition, the game ends with both of them losing.
The game was designed to explore human nature and human interaction in an organisation where people have both common goals and conflicting agendas. If an action would help the other party a lot, would you choose not to do it even if meant hurting yourself a little? Since there is a common goal, will you then focus your resources only on your own goal, and just let other people take care of the common goal? Because it's in their interest anyway? How willing are you to contribute to the common goal?
This training activity I ran turned out to be very exciting. In Round 4, one of the factions already had a chance of winning. However the events had to be resolved first to see whether the two required levels could be maintained. Unfortunately one of them dropped below 20, so there was no victory yet. In Round 6, again one faction was poised to win. So now it came down to the last three event cards. Event cards were all bad. It was a matter of which stat was hit. At this point the innovation level and prosperity level were both above 20. The innovation faction would win if they both stayed at 20 or more. The first event card revealed affected the tradition level. No problem. The second event card affected the prosperity level. Thankfully it dropped from 23 to 20. That was still good enough. So it came down to the very last card in the very last round. And... innovation level dropped below 20. The innovation faction groaned in disappointment. The tradition faction cheered so happily it was as if they had won. In fact they were just happy the other team lost the game together with them. I teased them - you should be ashamed of yourselves.
This was a boardgame gathering with my BNI friends. They are all non-gamers, so I mostly bring light games. I often bring my game design projects to get some playtesting done. This round I brought some prototypes too, but we were so engrossed with playing other games I forgot to bring them out. Blokus is very easy to teach, but as you play, you'll learn that it can be quite tricky and strategic.
I was finally able to play Potato Tomato, which I brought back from the Thailand Board Game Show. I also managed to play Jinx-O from Indonesia. More and more games checked off from my to-play list.
Ubongo is a game with a spatial element. It requires a different kind of brain power. Even if you are smart and strategic, you may not have that spatial reasoning ability. Alex is one of the smartest guys I've met, and he had difficulties with Ubongo, so Susie had to come to the rescue. Susie grasped the techniques quickly, and was often first to solve her puzzle.
The gems of Ubongo
18 Jan 2025. TTGDMY playtest session. This is Jon's Dive for Gold, a push-your-luck game about diving for treasures. You keep revealing cards hoping to get valuable treasures. Each card comes with an oxygen cost. If you exhaust your oxygen supply, you will be forced to return without taking any treasure. So you need to decide when is good enough. If you decide by yourself to return, you don't necessarily claim all the revealed cards. You only get the most recent cards, up to a weight limit. You must take treasures beginning from the most recent, and you must take as many as you can, up to the weight limit, even if it means some are rubbish.
You can take at most 10 treasures. Once anyone has 10, the game ends. The bikini is a treasure with no value. It just takes up a slot.
This is Chee Kong's new game. He continues to develop new games using components from Zodiac Go. If you have a copy of the game, you will keep getting new games. You can download them from the Zodiac Go website. This particular new game in development has a bit of trick-taking. You win tricks to compete in five areas.
I continue playtesting and developing Taking Sides. Number 7 is Liu Bei (from Three Kingdoms). I am now focusing on playtesting the 3 and 4 player variant rules. The game has 10 characters, each with a different strength value and special ability. Every round, you draw a random character, and then you have to decide which of two factions to join. For just that round, members of a faction fight as a team, but next round they may be on different teams. Now that I am using the Three Kingdoms theme, I name these two factions the loyalists (to the Han Dynasty) and the rebels. In the early days of playtesting, I mostly played with 6 to 8 players. At a high player count, many character powers came into play, and there was enough interaction between the powers to make the game interesting. However at a low player count, the game became less interesting. That is why I want to introduce variants for the 3 and 4 player games. The idea is I want to always have at least 5 characters in play.
With 4 players, during round setup, one of the unused face-up cards becomes the Han Emperor, an NPC (non-player character). This character is already in the loyalist faction. After knowing who is already in the loyalist faction, the (human) players take turns deciding which faction they want to join. Knowing which character is already in the loyalist faction affects players' decisions. If my character works well with the Han Emperor, I probably want to join him. If my character's power can neutralise the Han Emperor, I will not be afraid to join the rebel faction.
With 3 players, in addition to the Han Emperor NPC, there is another NPC - the Yellow Turban Rebel. In the Three Kingdoms story, the downfall of the Han Dynasty usually starts with the Yellow Turban Rebellion, which is a religious movement. When playing Taking Sides with 3 players, the identity of the Han Emperor is known. There will also be four characters face-up at the centre of the table. When players take turns choosing a faction, whoever is first to pick the rebel faction gets to claim one of those four face-up characters. This will be the Yellow Turban Rebel, who of course joins the rebel faction. Being able to choose an NPC teammate is attractive, especially when one of those four combos very well with your character. When you see an opponent pick a character to be the Yellow Turban Rebel, that gives you some clue too as to who that opponent's character might be.
This was a smaller playtesting session with just the five of us. Erin left slightly earlier. Darryl was camera-shy. Thus only the three of us (me, Chee Kong, Jon) in this photo.
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