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.
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| 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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