❖ Version History ❖

July 19th, 2023
Last time, in the Librarium Games Design Journal, we set out to tinker with all the mechanics of this new prototype. Previously, we were working our way through how the card designs will come together to give us scoring mechanics in the game. Today, we are setting out to discuss an entirely new task for Librarium Games: Custom Component Design!

To this point in time, after five years of working on table top games, we have actually never custom designed a piece that we needed for a game. Until now, it had been an objective of mine to specifically avoid this path, because I knew that it would be a costly one… and I wasn’t exactly all that experienced in three dimensional design until very very recently with the 3d printer.

But of course, now I have done some graphic design for 3d modeling, and when I started thinking about the idea of using a custom dice, the concept seemed pretty approachable. So, (in a classic Alex Massar fashion), I spent another night that I was at my day-job doodling up some schematics, as you can see above.

Before we get into the 3d model discussion, let’s take a moment to go over how these color mechanics are going to work:

Purpose & Function of the TriChrome Dice:
In Royal Threadcount, we are striving to give players exactly ten turns to set up the most fashionable outfit that they can for the empress. Within these ten turns, each player will get one opportunity to roll the TriChrome dice, which will reward that player with a cube of “color dye”. The outcomes include: Red (R), Yellow (Y), Blue (B), & White. When the white is rolled, players may select any of the other three colors that they so choose (R, Y, or B, like a wild card).

Using Dye Cubes to Color Clothing:
After the second turn of the game, players will begin having the option to shop for colored fabric as a function of their turn. When shopping for colored fabric, there will be x12 total possible options for what a player may be able to afford by the beginning of the third turn, depending on what they have collected for resources. This is a breakdown of the exchange options:

Primary Colors:
Red Silk Costs: x2 Red Dye +x1 Silk
Yellow Silk Costs: x2 Yellow Dye +x1 Silk
Blue Silk Costs: x2 Blue Dye +x1 Silk

Secondary Colors:
Violet Silk Costs: x1 Red Dye, x1 Blue dye, & x1 Silk
Green Silk Costs: x1 Yellow Dye, x1 Blue dye, & x1 Silk
Orange Silk Costs: x1 Red Dye, x1 Yellow dye, & x1 Silk

Tertiary Colors:
Red-Violet Silk Costs: x2 Red Dye, x1 Blue Dye, & x3 Silk
Blue-Violet Silk Costs: x2 Blue Dye, x1 Red Dye, & x3 Silk
Red-Orange Silk Costs: x2 Red Dye, x1 Yellow Dye, & x3 Silk
Yellow-Orange Silk Costs: x2 Yellow Dye, x1 Red Dye, & x3 Silk
Blue-Green Silk Costs: x2 Blue Dye, x1 Yellow Dye, & x3 Silk
Yellow-Green Silk Costs: x2 Yellow Dye, x1 Blue Dye, & x3 Silk

This layout gives us really wonderful game data to work with when it comes to the scoring mechanics…. because players will need colors in order to “Finish” a piece of clothing, but they will also ideally need a diversity of colors in order to strive for bonus points at the end of the game.

Since there are only ten turns to play, a player will be very limited in their exchange options. Getting x4 primary and/or secondary color cards will be fairly achievable, because they are cheaper (only costing x2 dye cubes). But getting the tertiary colors will be very hard! You will only at best be able to afford two of these in addition to a few primary/secondary colors (since tertiary color cards will cost x3 dye cubes)… However, this higher cost comes with a great reward. Tertiary color cards will count as two different colors when assigning bonus points (in example, a Red-Violet Kimono will count as both Red & Violet!).

The result of this is amazing, because a player who gets the perfect combination of dye cubes could theoretically get all six colors covered by the end of their tenth turn by means of purchasing x2 primary/secondary colored fabric cards & x2 tertiary colored fabric cards (i.e. green, yellow, blue-violet & red-orange would net you points for: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, & violet even though you would only have x4 cards!).

I know this sounds like a crazy amount of math surrounding colors… but when I started to make all of these connections, my hype for this game & its color mechanics started really flourishing. Before the end of the following week, I would spend a great deal of time trying to design a 3d Model for the dice that could bring these mechanics to life. Here are my best attempts in Blendr at the time:

Before long, I was pretty happy with the layout. So, I exported the STL File, got my Ender 3V2S fired up, loaded in a spool of grey colored PLA to the extruder, patiently waited a few hours, got my paint kit ready, and generated this gorgeous masterpiece by the end of that day:

(and as you may have noticed, of course, I played a few rounds of the game before having the thought to take some pictures, so the paint has already been a tad bit messed up before this photo shoot hah!)

But truly, this was amazing. I couldn’t believe how easy it was to bring this idea to life. This being said though, (at this moment in time at least), we did not actually have enough of my prototype built in order to play the game yet, so we had some more work to be done in getting digital card designs made, and of course, getting our collaborative tic-tac-toe board built as well.

However, all of that is going to lead us down yet another rabbit hole of story telling, so for today we are going to call it quits! Be sure to check back soon though, because we have all sorts of crazy things to talk about still & more great stories to share about this designing process! I hope that you enjoyed this talk, and as always, thank you so very much for reading!