Observations of the Fox

Yesterday's anecdotal post was intended to be more than just a trip down memory lane. There's actually quite a bit to unpack in it. A lot of good game theorising occurred in the early 2000s to give names and context to what we were doing, but at the time we were just following trial and error. The main reason I'm thinking about this is one of those many projects I've got that feeds on previous ideas and occasionally rears it's head demanding attention. I'll probably meander back and forth between a few developments where these ideas have manifested through my work over the years, but to keep things a bit more organised, I'll add a few discreet heading categories. Flat Comparisons vs Randomisers This is where I was heading with yesterday's post, before I cut things off. Standard Magic: the Gathering uses flat comparisons to determine conflicts. If a creature's power is at least equal to their opponent's toughness, they kill them. If it's...

I hoped it would be, but now I can be happy to announce that Town Guard is a finalist in The Game Crafter's "Miniatures Design Challenge". It's up against some great games, I don't know if it will win; but I think I'm in with a chance. Now if only a copy of the game would sell, then it'll really feel worthwhile. I've got so many ideas for expansions but if no-one owns a copy of the game then there's not much point expanding it.   

I've just lowered the price on Town Guard...from $49.99 to $39.99 At this stage I don't care about profits, I'd just like to see a few more people playing it. https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/town-guard

There have been some issues keeping 'Town Guard' in stock, the miniatures in the game have had a low stock level and The Game Crafter has had issues with replenishing them. Hopefully, this has been resolved in the short term by swapping out some of the out-of-stock figures. https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/town-guard

I don't know if this will work, but if you're interested in buying a copy of the new Vulpinoid Studios game "Town Guard", hopefully the link below should facilitate that.

After positive responses at the convention over the weekend, "Town Guard" is now available for sale over at The Game Crafter . I'm pretty happy with the way this one has turned out. https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/town-guard Having trouble with images at the moment...sorry, just follow the link.

You may have seen the arrival on my social media profiles, but the game prototype has arrived. "Town Guard" is now a thing. Now for some intensive playtesting.

I thought I had "Town Guard" ready to go, but final attempts to publish have led to a few glitches. Busy working to overcome them now.

A bit fantasy, a bit "law and order", and a bit heraldic. Getting pretty close to what I originally envisioned.

I’m in a real dilemma about adding dice to the town guard game. They make a cheaper option, but dramatically change the nature of the game. With this in mind, I’m looking to create a mechanism that alters the game as little as possible, but could be used as a touchstone for flavoured expansion sets in the future. Option 1 - 1 Die The simplest option would allow a player to add the roll of a die to their attribute total when confronting a mission. Increasing the difficulty of all missions by 3 would offset this. Basic Missions (currently target number 3, but upgraded to 6):              Low attribute (1) : 33% chance of success (needs a 5 or better) Medium attribute (3) : 66% chance of success (needs a 3 or better) High attribute (5) : Automatic success Legendary attribute (7) : Automatic success Advanced Missions (currently target number 6, but upgraded to 9): Low attribute (1) : No chance of succe...

I've been uploading all the files for Town Guard and have found that I need to remove a few of the cards in order to get the cost price below $30 for the contest it's a part of. That's thrown an annoying glitch into the works because the only cards I was able to remove from the game were mischief cards or rewards. This now means that the set-up has lost some of the fun dynamic where players can interact with the stories of other guards. But it's dropped the cost price down to a level where I might be able to include a die in the box. Now, I'm questioning whether to change the core resolution mechanism from one that relies purely on card play, toward one that has a random element injected by the die. At least with randomness, players can blame the dice when they lose.

New Old Generally comments on the location tiles have been positive. But much of the critique has focused on the way the centre of the tile is obscured by the ghosted hexagon. I'd love to put the relevant game play information around the outside edges of the location tile, but I'm not sure how good the cutting tolerances are when these parts are produced. I'd much rather have the background image obscured in some way rather than have useful play information cut away from the piece. I've also been toying with the way the locations play into the wider game. Now, if a location is troubled by an unresolved mission, all missions across the town are impacted by the modifier on the location. It gives the variation in locations variation a bigger impact on play this way. The keywords on the locations already interact with mischief cards, so it seems an unnecessary complication to add localised effects for specific locations as well as global effects that modify...

 Old New It's been pointed out that the cards I've produced for Town Guard have writing that's too small to read across the table. It's also been pointed out that the icons used throughout the game are cool, but probably a bit small to be read as anything other than black circles with white swirls and squiggles in the middle of them. With this in mind I'm probably going to be changing the card layout a bit. The first batch of cards that I'm looking at changing are the reward cards, because these now have an additional effect within the game (they help escalate things so that it's possible for the town's criminals to win, and thus for all of the town guards to lose). This comes through the number of the lower centre of the card. As you see in the illustrations above, I'm also thinking of adding a bit of flavour text to the cards, to give a bit more thematic atmosphere to the game. Nothing too specific or dramatic, just enough to give t...

Looks like it's time to generate up another new font. This time incorporating the glyphs for the Town Guard game rules. Up until this time, I've been using Photoshop with different layers holding text, while other layers held glyph symbols. It will take a bit of work to set up the font, but it will save a lot of hassle in the long run.

The first round of feedback for Town Guard was great. There were a few interesting points raised. One of which stated that the game looks pretty cut-throat and competitive, but very random. This can lead to some ill-will at the table beyond the control of the players, but which ends up getting focused between the players...a bit like Monopoly. A way to remedy this could be to make gameplay co-operative as well as competitive; change the game in such a way that the mechanisms challenge the players. This means that the players can lose, and if the game takes certain twists the players will need to cooperate to prevent this happening. Then they can compete once they have things under control. This works thematically within the game because there is always the chance that the criminal elements of the town might take control while town guards are busy fighting among themselves. It wouldn't take much to tweak the game in this direction. Another factor that has come up is the wa...

I love getting playtest feedback, even if that feedback says that a game needs a lot of work to bring it up to scratch. I've just recieved some feedback along those lines for 'Town Guard'. The good news is that there's plenty of time to get things fixed before the contest is judged.

I think I've generated the general box art for Town Guard. There are a few elements missing, but this is the basic idea. I'll probably be adding in a picture of a pair of town guards in the top corner, one male, one female. Maybe put them in some kind of "Law and Order" pose.

The first draft of the complete "Town Guard" playtest rules is now available. This is the Link. If you want to play it, you'll need to print it out and get a pair of scissors to cut out the various cards and tokens. But if you could do that and provide some feedback, it would be greatly appreciated. I'm hoping to provide some kind of benefits for playtesters (perhaps a cheap copy of the game when it's formally released).

Town Guard is nearly complete. The playtest kit is only a few hours away from completion (hopefully). Here's a preview. 12 character trait to combine with 12 character races...that's 144 possible characters to play with. 12 hexagonal city segments 108 cards 70 tokens 12 card figures to play with In the final version, the figures will be plastic, and the rest will be printed on card. Hopefully everything makes sense.

All the hexes have now been drawn up, labelled and basically coloured. These are being added into the playtest document now. If you're interested in playtesting the game, let me know.