Last night I had a ton of crazy dreams. One of those dreams was about 10MtM and why I am doing what I am doing. I love gaming and the board game community. There is nothing I want more than to see one of my games being played at a convention or a friendly game store by a group of people. That brings me to this blog, why I work the way I work, and so on.
As you know, over the past few years I have been in the good fight against cancer. Chemo sessions, as you may know, are long and boring. They are time killers that drain you of everything you have and replace all of that with poison. I have had good days with chemo, bad days, and worse. The were days that I blacked out, days where I could no longer take it, and days where I thought that this would be the rest of my life. Playing board and card games with Meghan, my wife, really helped me get through even the worst of days. It was something that saved my sanity and kept my spirits up when I couldn't see an end to all of the treatment, poking, and hospital trips.
Now, this came with two caveats. The first being is all the nurses thought we were strange. There we were, two adults alone in a room playing strange games and laughing hysterically. I guess part of that comes from all the dark jokes we made about the cancer and my lack of good luck, but strange we were. I say this, but all the nurses love(d) us. The second caveat is the lack of space. Those rooms have little room to maneuver when you are hooked up by rubber tubing to a giant, mobile stripper pole. This means that table space is very limited, so limited that most rooms had nothing bigger than a lunch tray.
The lack of playing space really narrowed down our selection of games to play. The chemo, some days more than others, also wore me down to were I could only pay attention to shorter games. We played a lot of roll & write games like Balloons, Rolling Japan, & Rolling America. We also played a lot of micro and mini games. Perplext games Pack O Game was brought along more than once and so were a lot of smaller Asian games like Mini Park. I became a master of Mini Park during chemo.
During the times I was not at the hospital and feeling in a good state of mind I was working on a few games, 10MtM was one of them. These games all shared two common themes, they play at an hour or less and they take up as little space as possible. Space and time became very important to me at chemotherapy. I didn't want to feel sick or tired. Cancer is a horrible situation in many ways, it is all consuming. When I started working on 10MtM and other games, working titles Grave Mistakes and King's Standard, I wanted them to fit within the time and space parameters. I know I am not the only, or last, gamer to go through chemo and I wanted to create games that are not only fun to play on game night, but so someone else in my position could else find an escape while in the hospital.
If I didn't have a wonderful spouse and these few small games to keep me focused on the positive, I don't know where I would be right now.
When browsing board games some of us tend to look past box size and ignore play time markers, which is fine there is a time and a place for every game. For me size and time became so insanely important, these are seemingly minor details that became much more to me. This is my motivation, my drive for these games.
Even now, while I continue chemo treatment, I am working on 10MtM and a new one page tabletop RPG, I am so far calling it God Less. The idea is little table space needed and minimal components required so my games can be something that can be played virtually anywhere and in any situation. My RPG is so far using just a d4, a d6, and a singular page of rules (which will eventually be posted here on my blog).
I felt this was important to get out there, important for me to say.
That is all for right now. I am going to work some more on 10MtM and God Less. Tomorrow I go to chemo and I will be taking my Game Dev notebook with me so I can tinker on these games as well as outline a couple of ideas I have as well.
Cheers,
Phil
Thursday, August 15, 2019
Tuesday, August 13, 2019
Game Dev Blog #2
Hello everyone! It has been two weeks since I last posted, sorry. I am not being neglectful, but this has been a hell of a time between doctor appointments, friends visiting from out of town, and other stuff going on in life. So, today I wanted to make a follow up Game Dev blog. It has been on my mind because over the past two weeks, when I have had some alone time I have continued to work on and refine 10 Minutes to Midnight.
I have transitioned into the next stage of game development with 10MtM hitting the prototype phase. This has come with a couple of things that needed to be a reality, cards and the doomsday clock. First I want to talk about the cards. In my game I have two sets of cards, 11 Character cards and 30 Event/Headline cards. Both sets of cards are drastically different in how they play and what they do, so I wanted to give them a dramatic difference in look as well.
I want the Character cards to be tarot sized. Tarot size gives a few benefits and adds flare to the game. The first benefit is that the character art can be larger while not sacrificing room for the printed character ability. Now, I have very little in the way of artistic talent, but as I work on the game it seems more and more that it lends itself and its characters to a political or historical portrait style.
The Character cards are a big part of the game as they allow the players to manipulate the Doomsday clock hand, snatch up WMDs for later scoring, and play off of other characters or player decisions. The tarot size, being larger, I feel helps to convey the importance of what the cards represent. Now we move to the Event/Headline cards. These cards are supposed to represent possible benefits or consequences in the game. First let me address the name. The idea behind them is that they are supposed to be representative of events transpiring in the newspapers of this fictionalized world. I originally called them Event cards because it is straight and to the point, it is a blunt name for what it is a straight and to the point idea. However, a friend of mine pointed out that if these are supposed to represent what may be reported in a newspaper that the term Headline might fit better and add on that sense of dramatics. I tend to agree and have changed their name accordingly. The Headline cards have two functions within the game. The first function is to give the players a decision to make the second function is to travel around the Doomsday clock until they expire. The former function, the decision, is the player on their turn can either use their character ability or take a Headline in play and use its beneficial ability. The Headlines move clockwise around the Doomsday clock starting at 12 then moving to 3, 6, 9, & then finally back to midnight. Once they reach 12 again, the Headline is discarded and its consequence is triggered. So as a player do you use your character ability or do you take a Headline from around the clock? The Headline might not benefit just you. Next was the size. I want the cards to give out the necessary info, no fuss or dramatics, I want them to look almost innocent so maybe players will forget about them until it's too late, like a trap in plain sight. I landed on the mini Euro size of cards, you know like the old Ticket to Ride size. Beside that, the cards need to move around the Doomsday clock, the small size doesn't take up a lot of table room and let's the cards move without getting in the way of play, comfort, or snacks.
I have a hard time formatting cards, I really can't do it by hand. Thanks to the help of the people at the Card and Board Game Designers Guild on Facebook, I was pointed into the direction of Card Creator on Steam. It helped me format my cards, give them the look and layout I wanted while being easy to export to .jpg and .pdf so I can print them off and play.
That brings me to prototyping the Doomsday clock. I want this game to fit in a smaller than normal box, not take up a lot of table space, can be setup and broken down without a lot of fiddly bits or particulars. The clock needed to be a certain size, large enough so the cards can properly move around without being on top of each other, large enough for players to see the minute marks and the hand can properly move, but not so big that it would expand the box size or take up a lot of table space. Going with everything else in the game, Meghan settled on a 6" round. She is much better with that spatial relation reasoning than I am, I originally picked a 4" round and it was really puny. The 6" round works well, it isn't overtly huge while making the time marks easy to read.
Getting to this point, bringing 10MtM to prototype feels amazing. This is how Dr. Victor Von Frankenstein must have felt when his creation was fully built and before he gave it life. I see 10MtM, I see what it is and what it could become. I now need to playtest it and give it life.
That will be all from me today, once again I hope you enjoyed it. Feel free to drop a comment.
Cheers,
Phil
I have transitioned into the next stage of game development with 10MtM hitting the prototype phase. This has come with a couple of things that needed to be a reality, cards and the doomsday clock. First I want to talk about the cards. In my game I have two sets of cards, 11 Character cards and 30 Event/Headline cards. Both sets of cards are drastically different in how they play and what they do, so I wanted to give them a dramatic difference in look as well.
I want the Character cards to be tarot sized. Tarot size gives a few benefits and adds flare to the game. The first benefit is that the character art can be larger while not sacrificing room for the printed character ability. Now, I have very little in the way of artistic talent, but as I work on the game it seems more and more that it lends itself and its characters to a political or historical portrait style.
 |
| The Emperor Napoleon in His Study at the Tuileries by Jacques-Louis David |
The Character cards are a big part of the game as they allow the players to manipulate the Doomsday clock hand, snatch up WMDs for later scoring, and play off of other characters or player decisions. The tarot size, being larger, I feel helps to convey the importance of what the cards represent. Now we move to the Event/Headline cards. These cards are supposed to represent possible benefits or consequences in the game. First let me address the name. The idea behind them is that they are supposed to be representative of events transpiring in the newspapers of this fictionalized world. I originally called them Event cards because it is straight and to the point, it is a blunt name for what it is a straight and to the point idea. However, a friend of mine pointed out that if these are supposed to represent what may be reported in a newspaper that the term Headline might fit better and add on that sense of dramatics. I tend to agree and have changed their name accordingly. The Headline cards have two functions within the game. The first function is to give the players a decision to make the second function is to travel around the Doomsday clock until they expire. The former function, the decision, is the player on their turn can either use their character ability or take a Headline in play and use its beneficial ability. The Headlines move clockwise around the Doomsday clock starting at 12 then moving to 3, 6, 9, & then finally back to midnight. Once they reach 12 again, the Headline is discarded and its consequence is triggered. So as a player do you use your character ability or do you take a Headline from around the clock? The Headline might not benefit just you. Next was the size. I want the cards to give out the necessary info, no fuss or dramatics, I want them to look almost innocent so maybe players will forget about them until it's too late, like a trap in plain sight. I landed on the mini Euro size of cards, you know like the old Ticket to Ride size. Beside that, the cards need to move around the Doomsday clock, the small size doesn't take up a lot of table room and let's the cards move without getting in the way of play, comfort, or snacks.
I have a hard time formatting cards, I really can't do it by hand. Thanks to the help of the people at the Card and Board Game Designers Guild on Facebook, I was pointed into the direction of Card Creator on Steam. It helped me format my cards, give them the look and layout I wanted while being easy to export to .jpg and .pdf so I can print them off and play.
That brings me to prototyping the Doomsday clock. I want this game to fit in a smaller than normal box, not take up a lot of table space, can be setup and broken down without a lot of fiddly bits or particulars. The clock needed to be a certain size, large enough so the cards can properly move around without being on top of each other, large enough for players to see the minute marks and the hand can properly move, but not so big that it would expand the box size or take up a lot of table space. Going with everything else in the game, Meghan settled on a 6" round. She is much better with that spatial relation reasoning than I am, I originally picked a 4" round and it was really puny. The 6" round works well, it isn't overtly huge while making the time marks easy to read.
Getting to this point, bringing 10MtM to prototype feels amazing. This is how Dr. Victor Von Frankenstein must have felt when his creation was fully built and before he gave it life. I see 10MtM, I see what it is and what it could become. I now need to playtest it and give it life.
That will be all from me today, once again I hope you enjoyed it. Feel free to drop a comment.
Cheers,
Phil
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