❖ Version History ❖

20th December, 2020
Once Ben and Aimee had constructed their new prototype, I knew that it was time to once again visit Amherst. My plan was to drop off the original layout of Phoenix Farm with Ben, and take home the one with the new artwork to start considering how I might go about the next round of designs.

When I came to visit Ben and another old friend of ours (Juliet) this afternoon, we played a game together to see how we would enjoy the elements of the Dragon mechanic in a smaller game setting. We also had a few other rules that we wanted to toss into the mix of things, like changes to the scoring system in the game. These adjustments to the scoring system were of major significance as well, but we will cover that aspect in our next journal to help keep the thoughts separate form each other!

Once we got our game going this afternoon, there were some new lessons to be learned from our rearranging of these mechanics. Let’s get into the nitty-gritty of what played out, and analyze how this affected the next round of decisions that we made for Phoenix Farm:

The Dragon Mechanics

So. Before we began our game on this day, here are some baseline rules to how we decided the dragon mechanic was going to be introduced into Phoenix Farm before very much play testing had been dealt with:

1. There is a new tool in the shop. It is a single card titled: “Dragon Bait”. It can be purchased for x1 Phoenix Feather, and it has a unique set of outcomes for the dice roll:

1 – Critical Failure :: Dragon is now “Attacking” you.
2 – Failure :: Nothing Happens, return the bait to shop.
3 – Failure :: Nothing Happens, return the bait to shop.
4 – Success! :: The Dragon is “In Play” but, not attacking yet.
5 – Success! :: The Dragon is “In Play” but, not attacking yet.
6 – Critical Success! :: The Dragon is “In Play” & “Attacking” any player you want.

2. Once the Dragon has entered play, remove the bait from the game.

3. Once the dragon is “In Play” the next player who rolls a ‘1’ on the dice when using any other tool will attract the dragon, and now the dragon is “Attacking” them.

4. Once the dragon is “Attacking”, a player must roll the dice to attempt removing the dragon from the coop. This works like the bait roll, except a ‘1’ will cause the dragon to eat the oldest phoenix in your coop & return to a state of no longer “Attacking” anyone.

5. A player who has lost a phoenix to the dragon will receive x1 Ash in the coop slot.

Now, up until this point in time, Ben and I had been talking about these rules with the dragon, but we had very few chances to see how it would play out. This meet-up with Juliet was going to be the first time we had the opportunity to really explore how the mechanics might be working alongside the other rules of the game.

We thought this was going to be an innocent and fun experience of testing the game… oh how wrong we were. There were two major miscalculations to how this was going to feel in the game. Heres what happened:

1. The dragon rule being activated played out exactly as we expected: one player got an early lead in the game, and another one of us felt the need to knock them back… but once the dragon was activated, it began wreaking havoc on the table. ‘1’ got rolled so many times that the game took well over an hour, and everyone had major losses. One player even ended up having only ash, no feathers, and tools they couldn’t use, so they were completely trapped from moving forward in the game. ~ Disaster.

2. Once the dragon rule was on, there was no option to stop it from happening. We had been devastated by the dragon several times over, and no one wanted it to come back, but we didn’t plan a way to conclude the rule… we wanted the dragon to feel like a mistake, and a punishment for being turned on… but this was too much. ~ Disaster.

So, we fooled around with some ideas real quick, and decided that we would try the game out again. Juliet had to leave, but Aimee had just returned home… so we redescribed the rules of the dragon, but amended three ideas:

1. The dragon required a D10 dealing with the “Attack”. 1, 2, 3, & 10 on the 10-sided dice would do the same things as the 6-sided dice used to do, but 4-9 would be a ‘regular success’ of thwarting the dragon attack. (bumps odds up from 32% to 60% chance of success).

2. Once the dragon successfully “Attacked” someone, it would be removed from the game, and the bait item would once more return to the shop. This helps to reduce the frequency that the dragon impacts the game and adds some needed “relief”.

3. Any player who has been “Attacked” by the dragon successfully has the option to sell their remaining tools back to the shop that turn. Everything that they sell back nets them +1 phoenix feather in return (this way they can afford to get themselves out of the ‘locked’ scenario of being out of tools & money).

The next play test went significantly better than the one that came before… but something unfortunate happened in this run as well: The player in last, who summoned the dragon, got severely wounded by it and ended up losing the game anyway, even worse than they would have otherwise.

This was a major setback to the rule concept. It was designed to help the player who was in last place, but in this game it killed that player’s chance of victory. Despite the fact that we had done such good work to make the idea behave better, it was still failing to do it’s intended job… and unfortunately we were stumped. More work definitely had to be done here, and some serious brainstorming would have to be done… but that progress would have to wait for another day, because it was getting dark and it was time to head home.

Though we did not succeed in fixing our problem yet, a lot of important learning happened in this phase. A frustrating, but necessary aspect to designing a good game! Be sure to check back in for our next adventure in the Design Journal, where we expand on the updates that took place to the scoring system!