Hobbyists or Dabblers Games

11/05/2024

Finish Him!

04/28/2024

Essay #3 - A Handful of Cards

I can't quote exactly what was said, I wasn't part of the conversation. I don't even know who the conversation was with.

In essence the comment was “you must have some sort of physical media.” I believe it was said with helpful intentions.

In order to properly answer to the suggestion, we have to make a certain number of assumptions about the definitions implied in the statement. This may be best framed with a series of questions that address the possible paths the scope of the assertion may be aimed at.

“Who needs physical media?”
“What sort of purpose does this media serve?”
“What nature of physical media are we talking about?”
And ultimately this leads to: “Is this actually an unassailable fact?”

I'm going to go to the TDLR here and give the simple answer to the last question first: “Abso-f**king-loutely not!” If you've read essay number one, this answer will not surprise you.
In short, I think the thinking behind the assertion is antiquated and assumes that paradigms that may once have held true for good reasons sustain their relevance in the updated digital contexts of today.
I actually want to assume that I am misinterpreting what has been said, and that some major aspect is being missed on my part… but damned if I can figure out what it is.
Trying to identify alternative interpretation(s) brings me back to explore the other questions.

“Who needs physical media?”
I have three answers of varying levels of legitimacy:.
People with some sort of totemic need/obsession.
Players clinging to a belief that without a physical commodity, they are playing a video game, not a hobby game.
Retailers.

…I suppose I could have done myself the favour of ordering those in some sort of logical declension.

Players clinging…: I am fascinated by this mind set. And I appreciate that there is a grey zone. I play hobby games for the interaction. The face to face time. I play video games when I play alone. (I basically don't do MMORPGs or similar multiplayer online games.) Brian, from our team can attest to how hard it is to keep me coming back for more of any online communal game experience.
But I don't think that in a face to face experience that a digital tool/facilitator is an anathema. Winter Palace is built around a mechanic of mingling. Socialising is inherent in the play of the game. The app merely does the (frankly arduous) bookkeeping behind the curtain of the game.
The inclusion of a digital assistant does not necessitate pinning a definition to the game, tagging it as a “video game.”
I appreciate that it shares some intellectual DNA with a video game as a result, and it is NOT a “boardgame” (and neither is the “popsicle-stick prototype” version.) But there is nothing about the notion of a hobby game that requires a fistful of cardboard.

“People with some sort of totemic…”: I DO appreciate the tactile nature of boardgames. I LOVE punching games out upon purchase and sorting the components. But it isn't a necessity. No game is broken by the absence of material.
Winter Palace will not stumble at the starting block because it doesn't provide a narrow segment of players something to turn over in their hands. If their needs can be satisfied by the addition of some sort of merch, perhaps we can land upon something appropriate. I think of Root's Racoon-vagabond plushies. (Though, Root is literally boxes of playable components if you happen to be a completist fan like me.) Perhaps one of the roles will develop some sort of meta appreciation that can be celebrated with a fetishistic for-sale item. (I'd bet on either the Charlatan or the Revolutionary, though the key-role, the Princess could be the odds-on favourite and I just don't see it.)

Retailers:
This is the real discussion.
We've already been asked by a retailer when we would see it on their shelves.
It's worth noting that December and I already have a friendly relationship with this retailer. I say this, not only to highlight that this is not a sign that retailers are already chomping at the bit to get their hands on Winter Palace, but more to the point that an empathetic relationship helped shine a light on the value of maintaining a presence in brick and mortar in addition to online digital markets.
While a retailer could also provide the totems discussed above (and many do venture into that overlapping realm), this isn't at all the same as providing ‘Winter Palace’ at your FLGS.
The Hobbyists or Dabblers team has discussed the possibilities at length. Indeed most of our back and forth in the wake of the assertion that we had to have physical media was aimed at brainstorming the possibilities for retailing the game itself in a physical space.
There are, as we see it, three paths to putting a physical commodity in game stores:

A playable hardcopy.
The short version of why this won't work is also the explanation of why we decided to pursue digital options after a single playtest.
Mark on the Omnigamer Podcast nailed it recently when he noted that he dropped his assets all over the floor about 5 times during his game at TCTC. (I noted during the game in question that he had set a new record
… but only barely.) The other aspect that makes this untenable is that every playtest took three of us an hour working as a group to set up. And this is after we had figured out a number of efficiencies. That is twice the length of the game. No game survives this issue. Period. We even looked into the cost of a card sorter. Suffice to say no game survives that added cost.
Digital set up we estimate will be measured in low single digits of minutes. There is simply no competition between formats here at those differences of efficiency.

A purchasable private digital network. (A router dedicated to the game.)
This is far more achievable than the playable physical copy. I can even imagine a world where a limited series of this premium product is made available. But it would be a premium product - which only happens in this case well after the success of the base product. A big question becomes “where/when does this become a necessity as a product?”
I suppose there are niche situations: The game is very successful. Scout groups camping (with their phones) out of cellular coverage regularly want to play the game together. I am sure I could come up with other situations - but they would all be similarly niche. One can dream of such outrageous success.

The REAL option.
While we don't yet know the actual digital sales model, we can determine the likely routes. One-time purchase. Subscription. Pay per play. Each of there could go down a per/host or per/player road, and each model can also support some variation of a “first-play per IP is free” entry to the game.
There are variants beyond this, but this covers the primary options/parameters.
Any version of the above can be saleable at brick and mortar by coded cards - like buying a Google Play or Minecraft (or… or… or…) card for topping up your account.
In tandem with this, a variant could centre around a hardcopy of the rules with an included code.
This is a bit more complicated as the rules are intended to evolve over time as we add additional roles and favours and narratives. But who is to say we can't roll that into our plan? A one time purchase is less functional this way.
IE. Buy the rulebook (presumably cause you hate reading online, or need a totem) with a purchase code… and then the rulebook gradually becomes more and more out of date.
But with a subscription model or pay per play (FWIW: There will likely be an essay on our thought processes as we determine how to monetize this - I have necessarily simplified the possibilities here.), a top-up code can either be purchased raw from and FLGS, (or directly on-line of course); or you can get it with a Gazetteer that outlines recent additions to the game.
I haven't played Magic the Gathering in any way that wasn't laughably casual in decades, but when I bought my first deck, there were still Beta packs available at regular prices. I fondly recall the days when Ice Age or Legends were rolled out and part of purchasing a deck instead of a booster was that you would get a fresh rulebook with all changes and new mechanics outlined.
I don't imagine a world where Winter Palace has any of the long term success of MTG, but I'll be more than satisfied with a fraction.

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03/30/2024

I am not sure if me writing a second essay sets a precedent. Will I feel obliged to come up with a relevant topic on a weekly basis? Or, probably more importantly, how long will I keep it up?
At this point, the previous essay and this one stem from December and me and her Mom immediately going on vacation following TCTC, and me having loads of travel time to ponder while the Irish countryside rolls past. I've easily got a third topic after this one, if I can keep to schedule after returning home.
A major category of thought - oh wouldn't it be nice if I could thematically link this to walking the walls of Derry or standing at the edge of Galway Bay, but if you are reading this, I did not come up with something that wasn't contrived - has been balance.
Winter Palace is NOT, and never will be a balanced game. In defence of that, I will turn to the infamous Peter Olotka (co-designer of Cosmic Encounter and Dune) quote "Balance is for weenies." It is Feature, not Flaw.
That said... better balance is better game.
The myriad thoughts on balance and Winter Palace ultimately boil down to three things:
1) The current state of (lack of) balance is unsurprising and substantially predicted.
2) We are working on it.
3) It is an exceedingly interwoven equation.

1: Yeah, we saw this coming.
Of course, any game design should be expected to come out of the gate with some imbalance born into it.
With each role in Winter Palace having its own set of win conditions - a goal to be achieved, and a downfall to be avoided (a design choice to be discussed in a later post), it was inevitable that imbalance would be a concern.
In initial design, the question for each role's conditions was not "is this balanced?", but "is this possible?" With some additional consideration to parameters that at least seemed reasonable.
Playtests have underlined more specifically where the imbalance lies... though at this point the "low hanging fruit" is really what is face-forward and validating our initial expectations of where imbalance is. In other words, as we've been collecting data for just seven games, our results at this point are either; pretty obvious or statistically insignificant.
One interesting bit that I expect falls into "statistical insignificance" is that no player, in any role has had an end result of "partial loss." Partial Wins and Total Losses, yes...Perhaps it's time for some context...
If a player avoids their Downfall half of their win conditions, they will score a "win"; having their Downfall triggered will result in a loss. Achieving their Goal will land them in the top-half of the end of the Win-Loss Continuum that their Downfall places them. (A Total Win, or Partial Loss) while failing their goal will put them on the respective bottom half (Partial Win, or Total Loss.)
While there is some thematic pairing of Goals and Downfalls, the mechanical pairing is (or at least seems - we may be in the process of being proven wrong) weak in most cases.
So, it seems odd that when a loss has been triggered that it has always resulted in a Total Loss. At this point, not a true concern - but we will continue to watch for incidents, and address that as we nudge balance towards a middle-state.
Some aspects of expected imbalance were foreseen, but not to their apparent degree. Case in point: it seemed obvious that Suitors (up to three in one game - the only role that truly duplicates in a single game) would have a harder time reaching their goal with each additional Suitor in the game - to the point where it practically IS the game for them, with a full-slate in play.
Sure enough, every game we ran with two Suitors neither avoided their Downfall. Yet, in the single 3 Suitor game the 3rd (a totally arbitrary designation) dodged their Downfall. (Note that as Suitors are directly in conflict with each other, that only 1 can truly be successful.)
We need more data here. But those 2-player games have definitely caught my attention.
Meanwhile, the Assassins... who are very nearly duplicate roles, saved by the fact that each has their own target. They are otherwise identical.
But the difference in those targets is significant. Assassin #1 has the Princess as their target. This is almost certainly the toughest Assassin to win with. The Princess has the largest number of other roles whose well-being is positively connected to them. Each of The Regent, The Valiant and the Lady in Waiting specifically require the Princess to survive in order to avoid their Downfall. The Mad Monk needs all Royalty (of which The Princess is one) to survive and is the single greatest source of Poison-neutralising Tinctures. Only The Regent is a top 5 (thus required) role. But both the Valiant and the Lady in Waiting are among the 3 slot-6 roles of which 1 will be in any 6 player game.
Assassin #1 is a top 5 role as well. Their job is always going to be a challenge, even when the Young Prince - who shares their goal - is in play.
Any Assassin's Goal gets easier when there are additional Assassins in the game. This is due primarily to there being more Poison favours in the game for any Assassin's target to receive, but also that if Assassins can identify one another, they can team up to collectively Poison targets faster than possible on one's own.
The 2nd and 3rd Assassins each have targets who aren't explicitly being protected (Though both have the Mad Monk's implicit protection.) thus their Goals are more readily met. The 4th Assassin has the best circumstance. Their target, The Regent, does not have their own life to protect in order to avoid their Downfall - they will happily die in order to save the Princess. "Assassin 4" can be the 2nd Assassin put into the game, despite the numbering. (That naming may be changed in order to avoid that bit of confusion.) This interconnectedness gets very complicated.
Is the Princess safer with the 4th Assassin in play? I honestly haven't bothered to guess at how to figure this out yet.
For the games we ran at TCTC we had 2 variants ready to go with lots of Assassins. But, the two games that were set up for this (in the hardcopy prototype it requires an hour of set-up, so changing is an issue) were the two games with the largest number of no-shows from the sign up. So we didn't get to test those large numbers. Bah! (All in good time.)

2) "We are working on it."
Let's be honest here. At this point "working on it” pretty much means "we are well aware of it and are taking notes." Many of those notes are evident in this essay.
Detailed work will require a lot more data and analysis thereof. But the app will be very useful for that.
There are a number of levers to pull when tweaking balance. While no doubt balance will be affected on a per-player and per-role basis by adjusting details like duration of rounds and inter-round times as well as number of rounds (currently fixed at 4, but unlikely to survive as a constant for all player-counts) and dances per round; all of these variables are global and do not target specific roles.
The levers that are per-role are: the Goal, the Downfall, and the starting Favours of each role.
While any Goal or Downfall can be changed, the discrete units of change are not equal. A role whose success requires the win or loss of another role effectively has a binary unit of 1 bit. (Discounting any units within the win/loss parameters of the subject role.)
Assassins (currently) are required to distribute 3 Poisons in excess of any Tinctures that their targets have received. (There is a requirement that Tinctures not be received prior to the Poison - a slight wrinkle.)
Any role whose win conditions are tied to arrest only have to deal with two units, but those units are of separate types (Warrants and Chains) that must be delivered in an immutable order. Thematically this is challenging to adjust.
Some roles are required to receive certain items (from 1-7 depending on details) which may be simpler if more of a given commodity is in circulation. In some cases a role may be required to gather a variety (specific or not) of items.
In the case of Suitors, The Consort and the Lady in Waiting, the number required (in all of these cases, Letters) is not a fixed number but is dependent upon the number your opponents have acquired. In these cases, the difference between being strictly more (or less) than an opponent instead of merely "equal-to-or..." is an important consideration.
Currently, "the equal-to-or..." vs. strictly more/less question has entirely been answered as a thematic question. A thematically driven choice is more likely to survive a question of imbalance, particularly if the imbalance is not game-breaking. (By necessity a game-breaking imbalance would be appropriately addressed.)

3: “...An exceedingly interwoven equation.”
When considering adjusting starting favours, it is less a matter of simply adding or subtracting favours from a given role. It is more a factor of adjusting the underlying equation, which is different per favour, per role, then adjusted for player-count.
"What the heck does that mean?"
Well, it is a tangled mess, which is made worse by the fact that I wrote each equation but kept no notes as to the underlying considerations. I will need to reverse engineer this sooner than later.
An example by rough-memory:
Take a 13-player game. Each player has 25 favours. Half of all roles have Invitations, but only ever 1 - so this count is simple, it is fixed at 1. The God Mother's Goal is based on choosing 3 players and having at least 2 achieve their own Goal. Those three chosen players are identified by the God Mother handing out 3 favours (1 ea.) - in this case Secrets. So, the God Mother also receives a fixed amount of Secrets. No more, no less than three. She is also empowered to be able to assist her chosen players by having examples of each of the other favours - as closely as possible matching the distribution of favours in the game (few Tinctures, but lots of Neutrals and everything else in the range between) but with a minimum of 1 per type. This isn't a particularly challenging formula, but it's not simple addition and subtraction, and the balance in lower total favour counts will skew away from the expected ideal due to rounding and minimums.
For any given favour for a given character there may be a fixed count, a percentage based on their own balance, a percentage based on the entire distribution of favours in the game, there may be exclusions (few roles have Tinctures at all), there may be hard minimums and/or maximums, and of course there are no partial favours. Fortunately, in almost every case, the Neutrals that the player has is an easily manipulated amount - though even those cannot be cavalierly adjusted without implications. The Princess, by design, cannot go through the first Ball handing out ONLY Neutrals in order to 'hide' (thus thus number adjusts based on Dances in the first Ball, which itself is a function of player-count.) The Peasant, so much as I have gleaned (I may be mistaken once the data is in.) benefits from a higher overall Neutral count, but there must be a logical ceiling where an imbalance can arise for them from too many Neutrals.

And none of this takes into consideration specific role inclusions.
Should Assassins get a bonus Poison if the Mad Monk is in play? Should the Mad Monk get bonus Tinctures when a threshold number of Assassins are in play? Should Assassins have their total number of Poisons throttled when there are more of their own kind in play?

Which levers to pull in order to add the greatest amount of correction with the least amount of disruption is likely a Salesman Problem level of imperfectly unanswerable complexity. There is much to consider, and much ground to cover before we can do more than consider it in the abstract, and once we have applied our best guesses, we will inevitably discover that we were no less than partially wrong - either in fact, or in perception. There is no clear win here, merely a best eventual result.

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03/21/2024

Woke up in Belfast this morning to a very pleasant message from Alan Gerding (creator of 2 Rooms & a Boom) giving advice on how to avoid losing your voice when presenting at a convention.

03/20/2024

Having spent 3 days demonstrating Winter Palace at Terminal City Tabletop Convention, it's not surprising as we were facing the public for the first time, rather than (if anything, too) supportive friends and family, that we would get a range of new perspectives on the game.
Some of these were entirely unsurprising, things that we had in our subconscious, or that we would certainly have recognized on our own in due time, or that were variations on notions we had already had - such as the small group of players who spent nearly an hour talking to John, encouraging us to pursue opportunities to use Winter Palace as a corporate team-building or ice-breaker activity.
But a few comments and ideas were entirely unforeseen. Some, discardable - such as the insistence that without physical media, Winter Palace is not a marketable hobby-game. Lots of ways to interpret this assertion, and through discussion we have concluded that this is a grumpy-old-man position. (Note that no less than half of us would qualify as grumpy old men from a subjective yet reasonable definition.) I'll probably muse on this in a later post. For now, suffice to say that we've picked this apart from several angles, and while we have thus far firmly come down on the side of "Yeah, that’s bu****it." we aren't done thinking it through. Particularly the notion of 'shelf-presence' in retail is a sticking point we haven't really conquered entirely.
I've been thinking a lot about one comment - which actually came from within our ranks, from Brian the newest member of the team, who legitimately was playing catch-up all weekend and discovering Winter Palace first hand for the first time.
"This isn't just a social deduction game. This is a mIcro-LARP." I paraphrase.
Obviously I need to discuss this in depth with Brian, but as I write this, I am on my way to Ireland, so discussion will have to wait.
I have never played a LARP, though years ago I did read the entirety of several Vampire the Masquerade source books, and broadly speaking am aware of a range of LARP and LARP-adjacent activities.
I am not sure what parameters define a Micro-LARP vs. a LARP. Player-count? Duration? A combination? Other factors entirely?
I suppose what *kind* of LARP it doubles as in its primary identity as Social Deduction game isn't particularly important - at least not to me at this stage, though I may ponder upon it further. For me, for the meantime, what is germane is that it can exist as both a Social Deduction game or a LARP of some minor-capacity, and possibly both simultaneously.
I figure that simultaneous capacity is a narrow band.
My game instincts and preferences lean toward a taught 30 minutes of frantic game-play where Winter Palace is concerned. Embracing the limited solvability and diving head-long as a player into probabilities and social-reads determined by instinct and flash-calculations. Good players still rely upon a certain wedge of luck in order to achieve a superior win rate.
But I've spent a long time considering that a longer game - played out over an evening cocktail party, or even over the course of an office work-day during water-cooler talk could be a "thing." The step to a game with longer Balls in order to get in more role-playing is neither anathematic, nor a long-step from other extended options.
I DO think that being clear on what sort of game is being played in a given instance would be important.
Indeed, not everyone in our playtests got the message right away. In our first playtest I was amused to witness two players role-playing in the second Ball.
"I say, this yuletide affair doesn't have a patch on the Harvest masquerade" (pronounced Masker-odd).
Five minutes later, when I announced "one minute to go to complete your trades." They were still talking and dismayed "But we're still on our first!"
We did not have time in our time-slot to extend to LARP-speed.
I even took, in sessions later in the convention, to extending the first session of the game to allow for a certain amount of role-play. But then prior to the second ball sharing the above anecdote as a cautionary tale before announcing that players would have half as much time per trade in the second ball.

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03/18/2024

I wish there was.a realistic way of sharing our post convention debrief.
Our experience at Terminal City Tabletop Convention was well above our expectations.

Watching happy people walk away from every game, and multiple players returning for additional sessions was so validating.

We are.taking 2 weeks off for vacation (the fact that 2 of the 3 most significant pivot points in development of Winter Palace have occurred while on vacation is not lost on me) then reconvening for discussion of the next stage.

Off for now to consider the input of designers and publishers and retailers like Off the Page Games, First Fish Games and Rain City Games, respectively and figure out the strategy going forward.

03/16/2024

In the category of "Good Problems to Have."

03/15/2024

All set up for Terminal City Tabletop Convention.

Our first demo is one seat away from being full, and we are only 1 hour in (and the demo is 4 hours away.)

03/07/2024

Big and exciting step in the app implementation over the past day.
While there is so much left to do before this meets the fully-conceived version, last night we crossed an important threshold where we are truly confident of the stability of the app and it's ability to adminstrate the primary aspects of WInter Palace.

Sure, there is no timer (yet); sure we have to parse the win/loss conditions manually once the game is done; sure the advanced special favours aren't in the game yet (and probably shouldn't be until we've tested the basic game with real players); sure we need players to self-police a handful of basic behaviours - they had to do that in the analog prototype too; and yeah, its still only got a cursory UI and Graphic Design... but the core gameplay is fully operational!

WAHOOO!

I am very happy and really need to pour John a Scotch.

03/05/2024

10 Days to go before Terminal City Tabletop Convention and 5 of our 7 demo slot are FULL!

December was very excited to see this. It was adorable.

But... it's an illusion.

The slots available are the minimum nnumber of players we need for a game.

There are still plenty of player spots available per game - but you will have to come to our booth to sign up for them!

02/19/2024

Had the first (private) peopled test of the Winter Palace app yesterday.
Exciting stuff.
Of course, anyone who has ever done this kind of work will let you know that you can always expect hiccups.
We had hiccups.
But we learned a lot about what we need to focus on next!

02/15/2024

Still an early version without a lot of UI finesse, beautification and, to be totally up-front we still have to administrate a bunch of the game manually behind the scenes.

But this is actually a functional version.
Watched the pieces come together over the course of the day.

02/14/2024

Okay, so this is going to sound like a variation on the last post...

Fun day.

About every 45 minutes John was messaging me to check out new features of the (still early version) App.
It's getting to be much more than just a preliminary wrapper.
It's STILL very preliminary, but in a day or so it will actually be playable... which really means TESTABLE... which is a good thing 'cause Sunday it is making it's private premiere at Great Day of Games VI.

01/23/2024

Exciting day. Saw the first version of the App*

It ain't pretty - and honestly probably won't be before we demo it at Terminal City Tabletop Convention - but it's virtual entity and while it may not yet be functional except at the most basic layer of navigation, it marks a turning point for us as desingers where this thing we imagined, that was simultaneously simple in concept, yet too ungainly to manage in real-space, has manifested it's earliest digital form and has suddenly become much less abstract.

*I am calling it an App, but at this point it is a proto-typed intance that will not function outside of a very short-range hot-spot and not what the layman would really think of as an app.

01/19/2024

It has been a long time...

But we have news.

Coming to Terminal City Tabletop Convention in March of 2024:

Winter Palace...

6-22 Players, 30-60 Minutes, Ages 8+

The era of the Monarchy is in decline, but the Upper Class hasn’t got the memo. With unrest afoot, a winter full of Masked Balls have been announced while the populace freezes in the streets.

WINTER PALACE is a digitally-enabled ‘on your feet’ social deduction game where players take the roles of guests at a season of four Masked Balls at the Winter Palace of a fictional kingdom.

Each role has its own individual win conditions. Some win conditions require collaborating with other roles. Some win conditions are mutually exclusive of others. More than one player can win at a time in the same game. Many roles can win even if their immediate allies lose.

Dancing with the wrong person could be the difference between life and death… though some causes are worth dying for.

https://terminalcitycon.ca/