Preparing to Playtest

Readable rules

Early version of Robot pawn.

Spent this morning refreshing the rules of Starship Rex to assure they're consistent and readable by other English-speakers.  This was a good exercise and helped me pare out a few extraneous rules by anticipating the "why's" for them.  I'm preparing for my first major play-test on Saturday night and I want to be able to pass around the rules to gauge readability and logic.

The play-test will be in Portland, Oregon, piggy-backing on an informal meeting of a local game developer group called Portland Indie Game Squad (PIGSquad).  The group is primarily video-game focused, but when I mentioned bringing my proto-game to test, there were enthusiastic up-thumbs.

Traits in Code

Using JavaScript to generate card sheets on the fly.

The colonists in the game each have three traits, one from each of three different categories.  The number of items in each of these categories is hovering around four, but they're far from set in stone.  The thought of making the card sets by hand each time I change the contents of these categories for testing was daunting, so I wrote a little JavaScript helper that would allow me to change the traits arbitrarily and regenerate all the card combinations in less than a second.  I can easily convert this page into a PDF for printing, or to mail around to remote play-testers.

Naming those traits has also been a sticky issue, and I'm not completely happy with the list I have now.  Not sure if or when I will be.  At this stage of play-testing, since I just want to prove out the abstract mechanics of the game,  I decided to replace the trait names with vague pixel art icons.  The JavaScript I wrote made this very easy.  Hooray for scripting and CSS!  Hopefully, the players won't dwell too much on the icons, but if they do, they'll get a little taste of the flavor I hope to present in the more developed versions of the game.

Ultimately, I'd like the trait names to be evocative, but still open to interpretation.  Right now, they end up with combinations like "Authoritarian, Diplomatic, Farmer".  Can you imagine what type of person that would be on a new off-world colony?

Let's hear it forum!

A few days ago, I posted a thread on BoardGameGeek about the bidding/voting mechanic from Starship Rex's end-game.  The purpose was to explore any details or gotchas I might be missing, especially with the mathematics of the vote.  The responses I've been getting are very helpful, especially in illuminating the dilemma of how the "conspiracy" element will play when there are only two players.  The thread has also pointed out a few other space colonization games I'd love to sink my teeth into.  Sincere thanks to everyone contributing to the thread.

I scream social

In an effort to ramp up visibility for what will soon be a crowd-funding campaign to print the game, I set up the requisite Facebook page for Starship Rex, and a Twitter account for n-state Games -- @nstateGames.  Twoot me up or likenate me or something, I seek validation!  Oh, and since you're likely a board game geek, if not a BoardGameGeek, you can find me on BGG as "edsito".