Jul 11, 2021

Erica, Gil, Scott, and Sen have a roundtable discussion about
player counts. We go through each of the common player counts, as
well as a few uncommon counts, and discuss what’s special about
designing for them.

SHOW NOTES

0m39s: Our thoughts about and general strategies for designing
games at different player counts.

5m42s: 2-player games

9m20s: We chatted with Matt Wolfe about decision scales on
Ludology
157 – Come Scale Away.

13m08s: Inhuman
Conditions

13m59s: Belfort

16m24s: Alien:
Fate of the Nostromo

19m41s: Pandemic

22m06s: Tokaido,
High
Rise

24m20s:
Scott Pilgrim Miniatures the World

24m38s: 3p games

26m44s: The three-body
problem.

27m38s: Here’s
Cole Wehrle’s talk on kingmaking in games, and how it can be a
good thing.

28m16s: Churchill

28m37s: Basari, which
was adapted into Edel,
Stein, and Reich in 2003 and modified to try to better handle a
higher player count. Also, a note on ties with 3-players: it’s
impossible to tie on a vote with 3 voters (or any number of odd
voters), as long as you are limited to two choices to vote for.
Once you have at least 3 choices to vote for, the possibility space
gets far more complicated (see the three-body problem above).

30m52s:
Rayguns & Rocketships

32m25s: 9-5-2 is known by various names. Here are the rules to
Sergeant
Major, which is a very similar game; rule changes for 9-5-2 are
further down the page.

Also: Carolus
Magnus, Bargain
Hunter, End of
the Triumvirate (Gil was wrong, it can play 2 players),

Three Kingdoms Redux

32m58s: 4p games

38m24s: Stuffed
Fables, Between
Two Cities

39m14s: Tichu

40m03s: 5p games.

Also, a note: Eagle-eared listeners will notice that you don’t
hear much from Scott from now until the end of the episode. He had
to leave our recording session early, so we quickly recorded his
bits for the end of the episode. And that’s how the sausage gets
made!

41m10s: 7
Wonders

44m16s: Alhambra,

Alhambra: The Vizier’s Favor,
Catan: 5-6 Player Extension

47m36s: 6p games

50m44s: Godfather:
A New Don. The “other Godfather game” Sen is hinting at is
The
Godfather: Corleone’s Empire by friend of the show Eric
Lang.

54m43s: Floor
Plan, Welcome
To…, Take It
Easy, Time’s Up,
Karuba

56m11s: Werewolf,
Two
Rooms and a Boom

57m11s: The
Unlock! series of games, Cranium

1h00m59s: Terra
Mystica

1h01m23s: Arkham
Horror

1h02m02s: 1p games. If you want to know more about designing
solo versions of games, check out Ludology
154 – Leave Me Alone! (with Morten Monrad Pedersen), Ludology
234 – Playing With Time (with Dávid Turczi), and Ludology
248 – Solo-liloquy (with Carla Kopp).

1h05m12s: Onirim

1h06m38s: Chainsaw
Warrior. Sen also mentions Ian Livingstone, who created the
Fighting
Fantasy series of interactive books with Steve Jackson (that
is, the British Steve Jackson who co-founded Games Workshop, not
the American Steve Jackson who designed Ogre, GURPS, Illuminati,
and Munchkin. To muddy the picture further, the latter Steve
Jackson authored three Fighting Fantasy books himself!).

1h07m33s:
Kingdom Rush: Rift in Time

1h10m03s: 0p games, starting with So,
You’ve Been Eaten. (Note that the BGG header only shows it as a
1-2 player game; technical limitations prevent it from properly
showing as a 0-2 player game.)

1h11m34s: Strat-o-matic
Baseball

1h13m30s: In Ludology
142 – Slots of Fun, Geoff and Mike chatted with slot machine
designer Jeremy Hornik.

1h15m19s: Another link to Alien:
Fate of the Nostromo.

1h15m43s: Sen’s project: Avatar: Last Airbender
RPG, Tiny
Frontiers: Mecha and Monsters (referred to as “Mechs vs.
Kaiju”), Coded
Chronicles (Jay and Sen have already designed games with the

Scooby Doo and
The Shining licenses for this series),
Dungeon & Dragons: Rock Paper Wizard

1h16m34s: Erica’s projects: Rat
Queens: To the Slaughter, Disney
Sidekicks

1h17m37s: Gil’s projects: Networks
Broken Token insert, shipping issues,
con season coming up