My boardgame hobby has been changing. In recent years I got into game design
and publishing, and am no longer purely a player. In a way, I'm playing a
different game. It's a complicated economic game. How does an indie boardgame
designer and publisher survive and thrive in a highly competitive market,
where the barrier of entry is low and there are already many established
players. I use my blog to record my boardgame journey. It started as a blog
about the games I've played. Now I'm also sharing about my design and
publishing journey.
One thing I have seen for many years and never really understood the appeal of
is designer diaries. I rarely read designer diaries. They normally talk about
the design and development story behind a particular game. They talk about
behind-the-scene details which the regular consumer wouldn't know. Most of the
designer diaries I see are not by particularly famous designers or about
particularly well known games. That is why I am rarely interested in reading
them. If I already like a game and I come across the designer diary, I would
be interested to read the story. Now that I am doing game design and
publishing, I can better appreciate how designer diaries are a marketing tool.
Well known games and designers don't really need them. It is the lesser known
games and designers who will benefit more from them. The fact that designer
diaries continue to exist means they are effective. It's just that they don't
work on me as a marketing tool.
Since this blog is just my personal journey, I decided to do a designer diary
for one of my games - Taking Sides. This game is not published yet. In
fact I haven't even decided to publish it. So it seems silly to write a
designer diary for it. It certainly serves no marketing purpose. There is no
product yet. However I am enjoying the development process of this game. So
this designer diary is just about recording the fun I am having with it.
The Game
Taking Sides is (at least for now) a card game for 3 to 8 players.
Every round the players will split up into two alliances. You get to choose
which side you want to be on. There is loot to be won each round. The winning
alliance wins the loot, and it must be divided equally among the alliance
partners. If the loot cannot be divided equally, any leftover stays in the
prize pool for the next round. The game ends when someone reaches 10 points.
Highest scorer wins.
What's interesting about the game (at least I think so) is the character
cards. Everyone gets a random character at the start of a round. A character
card has a strength value which ranges from 0 to 9, and a special power. When
you pick teams, you don't know yet the identities of the other players. At
least you don't know for sure. They can tell you who they are, but can you
trust them? If you get into an alliance of losers, you are probably doomed. So
the weaker characters will want to join the stronger ones. However, there is
no absolute weaker or stronger. The strength value is just part of it. The
special power can be crucial to the alliance winning. Some powers weaken or
disable opponents. Some boost teammates. Some powers combine well.
This is the game in a nutshell.
This is the setup for 6 players. Everyone is dealt a character card. Those not
dealt are revealed, except for one which is kept face-down. With 6 players,
there are only 5 blue alliance tokens and 5 red alliance tokens. This means
there are at most 5 players on one alliance. At least one person will be
forced to join the other alliance. You add 6 victory point tokens to the prize
pool every round, i.e. the same as the number of players. If the alliances is
3 vs 3, then members on the winning team will earn 2 victory points (VP) each.
If the competition is 4 vs 2, and the larger team wins, they will earn only
1VP each. However if the smaller team wins, they will each earn 3VP. That's a
300% difference! In the most extreme case, you can have a 5 vs 1 situation,
and the lone player winning. If this happens, that lone guy is scoring 6VP. If
there are points left over from the previous round, it can be even more.
The Core Ideas
I checked my records. The initial idea for Taking Sides was
written down in May 2024. One source of inspiration was Citadels by
Bruno Faidutti. This is a highly successful game. When I first got into the
hobby in 2003, it was already a hit. It was one of the earliest games I
bought. It is still a popular game now after more than 20 years. It has
become an evergreen title. In Citadels every player gets
to choose a character, and you don't know which character your opponents
have chosen. In Taking Sides, you don't get to choose your character.
Instead you get to choose a team to join. The idea I want to express in
Taking Sides is how fleeting alliances are. It is everyone for
themselves, and alliances are but a tool for selfish gain. Alliances of
convenience are temporary. Next round, you get all new
alliances.
I want to create a game with high player interaction. I create that through
players negotiating and discussing possible alliances. You want to know
whether these potential partners can actually help you win. You want to be
on the winning side.
I like to make games with some secret information, with the possibility of
gaining an edge with secrets you have, and with the challenge of guessing
secrets others hold. Cards are a good way to create secret information in
games. Having secrets in a game means people may lie about what they know or
don't know. Social deduction games are popular and there are many such games
out there, like Werewolf, Secret Hitler,
The Resistance. You don't know who is friend or foe and a big part of
the game is figuring that out. Having played several such games, sometimes I
find this aspect of the game tiresome. With Taking Sides I try to
turn this upside down. You get to choose your team, and it is public
information. You don't get to choose your character, and it is secret.
How the Theme Evolved
This is a mechanism-first game. The first theme I picked was Street Fighter
II. For no specific reason. I knew each card needed to be a character. It
would be best to use some characters people were familiar with. Randomly
deciding on SFII characters is showing my age. I Googled and found these nice
drawings of SFII characters, and used them in my first prototype.
Later on I saw that the prestigious Hippodice game design competition was open
for registration. I decided to give it a shot. For this competition I couldn't
use other people's art without permission. Using someone else's intellectual
property wasn't appropriate either. So I needed to find a different theme. The
SFII theme didn't quite make sense in the first place. I thought about using a
war era in history. I considered the Warring States period in China.
Eventually I decided to use the more popular Three Kingdoms period. Simply
because more people are familiar with the historical figures of that era. It
is also what I am more familiar with. I Googled cute Three Kingdom characters,
and found these:
I couldn't use them directly, so I drew my own versions in a similar style.
One reason I picked the Three Kingdoms theme was I wanted to express the
character combos in the game. It would be fun when the characters in the story
matched the combos in the game. For example Card 4 hurts Cards 7, 8 and 9,
turning them to 0. However if these four cards gang up, Cards 7 to 9 would
have little to fear and they would be a very strong combo. So I made Card 4
Zhuge Liang, the strategist, and Cards 7 to 9 the three sworn brothers Liu
Bei, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei. People who are familiar with Three Kingdoms will
naturally want to group them together. This makes learning the game easier
too.
As I work further on this project, I don't know whether I will continue to
keep the Three Kingdoms setting. This is a rather overused setting, often seen
in boardgames, comics and mobile games. I'll worry about this later. There's
more work I need to do on the game mechanisms.
How the Mechanisms Evolved
(1)
My first prototype involved dice. They were used in the loot mechanism. I
wanted to inject variability in the loot available each round, and also wanted
to make sure the loot was not always easily divided among the winners. You
determine the loot available every round by rolling dice. The pips are the
victory points. Players in the winning team take turns claiming a die, until
the dice are all gone. The number of dice won't always be exactly divisible by
the number of members on the winning team. That means someone will get fewer
dice. Also die values will differ. If you want to, you can negotiate how to
split the loot up front, before you decide who to partner with. The intention
behind the variability in the loot is to create a reason for
negotiation.
The moment I started playtesting this, I found it too much trouble, and
quickly gave up. The hassle wasn't worth it. It's good that I got rid of the
dice. That means lower production costs. The latest loot mechanism may be
simple, but it manages to achieve one important thing I want. Having many
partners may increase your chances of winning, but it also means the rewards
are spread thinly. So going with the smaller team (and winning) is more
lucrative. This tempts people to want to take chances with the apparent
underdog.
(2)
Bigger is stronger is a problem. Now I know it is logical that when you have
more people in your alliance, on average, the sum of your strengths would be
higher than that of the enemy alliance of fewer people. I have designed the
character powers to disrupt this. Some powers help the smaller alliance win.
However when I playtested the game, I found that the bigger alliance not only
had a higher total strength on average, they also had more powers they could
activate. So the problem was with those powers, not just the strength numbers.
I addressed this by limiting the number of powers the larger alliance was
allowed to activate. The larger alliance may only activate as many powers as
there are members in the smaller alliance.
Two of the powers are "bad" powers, and they are mandatory. Let's talk about
Zhang Fei first. He's a 9, the largest number in the game. However if he is
not in the smaller alliance, he becomes a 4. He is himself only when he's the
underdog. Even in an equal fight he would feel unmotivated. If he is in the
larger alliance, the alliance must use this power, taking up one valuable
slot.
Zhang Fei
I haven't decided what to call the other guy with a mandatory power. Maybe he
will be Dong Zhuo. His ability is good for himself, but not for his alliance
partners. If the alliance he is in wins, and the loot cannot be equally
divided, he takes the leftover. Imagine this. 7 points need to be divided by 4
alliance partners. Normally each only gets 1 point. However if Dong Zhuo is
present, he gets 4 points! His (temporary) friends won't be too happy.
Dong Zhuo maybe?
Both these powers are mandatory. If the larger alliance has these members,
these two powers must be activated and there will be fewer slots for other
powers that can help defeat the other alliance.
(3)
In one of the iterations of the rules, I gave the players an opportunity to
change characters. This is how it works. Once everyone has chosen an alliance,
beginning with the start player, everyone has one chance to switch to another
character. The start player picks up the only face-down card at the centre of
the table, and decides whether to switch to that character. Regardless of
whether he switches, he passes the unwanted character to the next player. This
goes on until everyone has had one chance to switch. After knowing who is on
which team, a character change can potentially affect the outcome of the
battle. One benefit of this mechanism is it makes players feel a little bit
more in control. You are not destined to be one specific character. You can
change your destiny.
Later on I decided to take out this mechanism. I felt it dragged the game. It
was interesting, but when one person is contemplating the switch, there is
downtime for everyone else. Maybe I can consider making this a variant.
(4)
Let's talk Lu Bu. From the start I wanted to have a character who could choose
to betray his mates. I thought this would be fun. The initial design was this
guy can decide whether to jump ship after everyone has chosen sides. This is
to be done before the characters (and thus strengths) are revealed. You don't
pick after already knowing which alliance will win. Being able to jump ship is
already a nifty ability. I gave him something more. If he jumps, his strength
increases by 2. This may sound counterintuitive. Shouldn't he be paying a
price for using the jump ship ability, i.e. be penalised instead? My thinking
is I want to incentivise him to use that ability. So he should be initially
joining a team he plans to betray, and then he jumps ship. This will mess with
everyone's plan, and this makes the game more interesting.
When I think of Three Kingdoms characters related to betrayal, Lu Bu is the
first person who comes to mind. However Lu Bu is also one of the strongest
warriors of the era. Making him a 0 doesn't seem quite right. Any other
suggestions?
Later on I further adjusted his power. The bonus for jumping ship was
increased from 2 to 4. Now it is ever harder to resist being a traitor.
The reference drawing I used was probably not Lu Bu. It might be Cao
Cao.
How the Components Evolved
(1)
During playtesting, one thing that I found annoying was the need to keep
counting the strength totals. Most character powers modified the total of one
alliance or the other. There was a lot of recounting involved. It was messy.
So I decided we needed a strength tracker like this:
This is formed using two cards. Once the characters are revealed, add up the
strength totals of both alliances and mark them here. Only after that you apply the
powers, and adjust the totals accordingly. Having the strength tracker makes
things much easier.
Then I found a graphic design problem. I coloured the spaces red and blue,
which corresponded to the colours representing the two alliances. The
strength markers are red and blue. When I needed to place a red marker on a
blue space, I felt a kind of cognitive dissonance. It didn't feel right to
place a marker on a space with a different colour, the opponent's colour. So
I changed the colour scheme of the strength tracker.
Multiples of five are in grey, to make moving markers easier.
(2)
The first version of the character cards had their faces in all four
corners. This was based on the design of standard playing cards. You have
the suit and value in all four corners. There are reasons for this. When
people hold a hand of cards, they normally fan them, so other than the first
card in front, you can only see one corner of all the cards. Thus the placement
of important information in the corner. You need to place at both left and
right corners because people fan their cards in different ways, some left
and some right. You need to place at both top and bottom corners so that
people do not need to worry about the orientation of cards when they shuffle
or reassemble the deck. This is convenience for the user.
So this was why in the first version of my card, I had the character's face in
all four corners, and I had the strength at both ends, top and bottom.
I later changed the card layout to this:
Here's why. In Taking Sides, you will only have one card in your
hand. There is no fanning of cards which will block other cards. So there is no need to squeeze important
information into a corner, nor is there a need to duplicate this information
in the other corner. The cards come with text, which means they need to be
held in a specific direction. There is a right side up, unlike traditional playing
cards. So there is no need to take care of the bottom corners of the card.
One idea is duplicating the block of text and having it in both
orientations, upright and upside down, but I think that's going to be
confusing and ugly. Now I can have my strength value larger, so that it can
be seen from across the table. This is important in this game.
(3)
I have arrow icons on the character cards. They are for determining order
of resolution of the character special powers. More arrows means earlier in resolution order. At first I used stars and not arrows. During playtesting
I realised a problem. People tend to interpret stars as quality, not
priority. Stars are misleading.
The original number 1 character was Chun Li
I needed to get rid of the stars, and change to something that represented
speed. I went with boots with wings. This would usually be interpreted as
speed right?
Later when I decided to switch to the Three Kingdoms setting, boots with
wings did not seem so appropriate anymore. This was a more western thing,
more suitable for themes like Greek gods. So I switched to arrows.
The current number 1 is Chen Gong, a strategist. His ability increases the
strength of an alliance partner. This sounds appropriate. Strategists don't fight but they help you win battles.
Other Characters
Let me also share other characters and their special powers. The core
mechanism in Taking Sides is simple. I have tried playing it without the character powers. I don't think the game works that way. It's rather
dull. The powers create fun interactions and give the game character.
From the beginning I wanted to have a power which directly helped the weaker
team win. This particular character had undergone several adjustments. The
basic idea is if he's in a much smaller alliance, that alliance immediately
wins without even needing to compare strengths. This character becomes
a threat everyone needs to be alert of at all times. It makes people avoid
creating alliances with big differences in numbers. I think it is a good
thing to have a character which people will pay attention to. This is what
makes a game have character.
At the moment I name him Xiahou Dun
The next guy is Sun Quan. When I referred to other people's art, I didn't
really know for sure who was meant to be who. The most famous characters
like Guan Yu and Zhuge Liang were easy. The rest I wasn't 100% sure. The
idea behind character number 5 is to create combo play. I wanted players to
look for specific partners to team up with. I wanted to create some
incentive for players to disclose their characters, so that they could find
the right partners.
At the moment the strongest character is probably number 8. So I made Guan
Yu number 8. 8 is already the second highest number. His power seems weak,
only adjusting someone else's strength by one. However this can combo well
with other character powers. Zhuge Liang turns any character with strength
7, 8 or 9 to 0. If Guan Yu partners Zhuge Liang, and the enemy alliance has
a 6, he can turn the 6 to a 7, and then Zhuge Liang turns that 7 to a 0.
Let's look at another example. Let's say Zhuge Liang is in the enemy
alliance, and number 9 is an ally. Guan Yu can turn that 9 to a
10 to protect him from Zhuge Liang. Guan Yu's weaknesses are Zhuge Liang and
Liu Bei. Zhuge Liang turns him into a 0. Liu Bei halves his strength. So
Guan Yu will do better allying with them.
Number 2 is Zhao Yun. He has a power I like - you get to cancel one special
power. You can use it to help your alliance win, e.g. cancelling an enemy
Zhuge Liang's power to protect your alliance partners. You can use it to
cancel an enemy Xiahou Dun, protecting your much larger alliance from
instant defeat. You would be the saviour. Zhao Yun is also important for
stopping Dong Zhuo, whose power is to claim any leftover loot. Winning
alliances often don't welcome Dong Zhuo. If you have Zhao Yun on the team,
you can neutralise Dong Zhuo. It is important to remember that in this game,
your friends are not your friends.
Number 4, Zhuge Liang, partners well with Liu Bei, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei (7,
8 and 9), because none of them want to be on the opposing alliance.
I kind of took an easy way out when designing number 7, Liu Bei. His ability
is to half an opponent's strength. There's a problem here. What if the
strength is an odd number. Do you round up or round down? I decided to make
his ability work only on even numbers. This solves the problem and there is
an additional benefit of making him slightly weaker. 7 is already a high
number. Liu Bei combos well with Guan Yu, because Guan Yu can turn an odd
number into an even number, which can then be targeted by Liu Bei.
Next Steps
Taking Sides is still under development. There is more playtesting I
need to do. Can you help me with playtesting the game? I have made the
rulebook and print-and-play components
available for download. If you play the game and have any feedback, please
contact me at cs@cilipadigames.com. Or you can also leave a comment
below.
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