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Re: [piecepack] Croquet, Everest, King Arthur's Court

Ron Hale-Evans wrote:

On Sun, Sep 15, 2002 at 07:39:11AM -0700, Mark Biggar wrote:


I used that free online conversion service www.gobcl.com and all I have
to check out the results is acroread on my windows laptop.  It looked
okay.  The main body of the text is suppose to be 12pt Times Roman.
I'm attaching the word file.



Well, your Word file used Times NEW Roman, which may be part of the
problem.  This is not one of the "standard 13" fonts that most
PostScript (and PDF) printers and renderers can handle; it is a
proprietary Microsoft font, and many non-Windows computers don't have
it.  That would probably explain why I couldn't see the text under
xpdf on my Linux box.  I haven't used the free conversion service, but
they probably have an option called something like "include
non-standard fonts".  You want to choose this if you're using
proprietary fonts -- however, it will make your PDF _much_ larger than
if you use standard fonts, and probably look ugly on some setups.

I converted your text to plain old Times and created a new PDF, which
I uploaded.


Thanks.
BTW, I just noticed a bad typo in the Corquet rules. The folowing sentence in the middle of the Player turns paragraph needs to have a 
NOT added, so that it reads:
A player does NOT get an additional flick if his coin passes a wicket in the wrong direction or out of order 

Ron, if you would mind fixing that an reuploading the file, Thanks.



I just got home from Seattle Cosmic Game Night.  We managed to squeeze
in a four-player game of King Arthur's Court and a two-player game of
Everest.  The players had some important criticisms of both.  Would
the authors prefer the playtesting results on the mailing list, or in
private email?


Either is fine with me.



OK, here are a few points about Everest:

1. I like the fact that the tick marks on the coins are relative to
   the board and not to the player, as you state in the rules.  In
   Roborally the direction cards are actually relative to the _robot_,
   so it's hard to keep them straight.  This way is much easier and
   less frustrating.  However...


Well as the pawns are not orientated (an old argument on the list), it
would be hard to make the ticks relative to the pawns. ;-)


2. That means it's really easy to move around and get to the top
   quickly.  Tim Schutz and I played a 2-player game last night, and I
   won on the second turn.  I got to the top on the first turn; Tim
   miscalculated and couldn't stop me.  He managed to get to the top
   on the third action of his second turn, but by then it was too
   late.


Yes, it does play better as a 4 player game.  May eliminating the 5 coin
in two player games would help here


3. There was some question about whether he would make it to the top
   or whether I would knock him back with a snowball first.  We
   couldn't find the rule about how to resolve action conflicts.  It
   turned out I would have won either way; even if he had made it to
   the top, that was the last thing he could do on his second turn.


Yeah, I forgot about that problem. There are a couple of possiblities
here: I could put an order on things (E.g., all movement, then snowballs and roars) or I could add rules to action conflict resolution to handle 
it.  Let me think about it.


   In any case, the rule about resolving action conflicts needs to be
   emphasised, maybe broken out into its own section for easy
   reference, instead of being buried in the "Executing the plans"
   section.


That makes sense, I already broke out damage to a separate section as it
cluttered up movement too much.  I'll look at doing that.


4. Other things that need to be emphasised and clarified: "steps" are
   1-high, cliffs are 2-high; you can push another yeti up a step but
   not up a cliff;


Agreed.


under "Yeti Movement", you should reiterate that a
   yeti that falls off the board goes back home but does not heal;


Agreed


   under "Roaring", in the phrase, "it must also make a die roll and
   acts accordingly", "it" refers to the other yeti.


I believe that "it" in this case referes to a "roared back at" yeti,
I'll work on that so it's clearer.


5. Questions: Can Yeti A at the top of a step hit Yeti B, one square
   away at the bottom, with a snowball?  What about a cliff?  What if
   Yeti B is more than one square away?
The intent was that snowballs going down hill be not restricted and would go until either hitting a yeti or going off the board. Your right 
this should be clearly stated.



6. Under "Making a Plan for your Yeti", you state, "a coin showing the
   ace-5 [this is unclear, BTW--Ron] specifies that the yeti will move
   that many steps in the direction shown by the tick mark."  This is
   incorrect: the yeti will move that many _movement points_ in that
   direction; for example, if the yeti is next to a step, it will move
   only two squares because 1 MP is expended climbing the step.  Or am
   I missing something?


Yeah that should be clearer.  "ace-5" means of course "ace,2,3,4 or 5"
corresponding to 1,2,3,4 or 5 MP.


7. In general, the board is so small that "30-40 min" is an
   overestimate for game length.  Once we figured out the rules, it
   took us probably 5-10 minutes to play.  This may be because it
   doesn't work as a two-player game, but I'm afraid that even in a
   four-player game, three people might be tied up in fighting while
   one person gets a clear shot to the top and wins on the second turn
   or shortly thereafter.


In my playtests with my group (it's nice to have lost of nieces and
nephews) 4 player games have gone around 5-6 rounds each taking about
5 minutes each.  Your right about it not being a good two player game.
That's one reason I need play testing.


8. It would be helpful if you could clarify where to put yetis in two-
   and three-player games; we put ours diagonally opposite each other
   to start, which may be one reason I had a clear shot.


Agreed, I put something in about that.  Unless I decide to limit the
game to 3-4 players.



9. Since there's a chance that a yeti will automatically roar back
   when roared at, there's a possibility of "roar cascades", in which
   yetis roar back and forth several times in succession (I think).
   The rules need to be clearer about what happens in this case.


Yes, I need to be clearer here.  The intend is that once a yeti is
running due to a roar, it never rolls again even if roared at.


10. Perhaps placing obstacles on the board (such as unused coins in
    games with less than 4 players, which need them more anyway) might
    slow things down a bit and make things tougher to figure out for
    the players.


I'll think about that.


Overall, I enjoyed this game, even though I hate Roborally.  I think
having the tick marks be relative to the board rather than indicating
which way the yeti turns helps a lot.  However, it may make things too
easy on the players, so the board might need to get more complicated.


It would be difficult to make the board harder without needing to add
tiles from a second piecepack.  The current board is the last of several
tries to get a 3-D board that looked like a mountain.  I had the
programmed-movement/King-of-the-hill/Yeti theme first and went through
several other boards before I built this one, which was 3-D and 4-way
symetrical.



Keep up the good work!


Thanks for your comments, they should help alot.


--
Mark Biggar
mark.a.biggar@...