GBS

[safra]

Hoping to be in Toronto mid-November, give me tourism recs or let me Cube with you plz

cube with Chris T, his group rule and have been very nice t ome

go to the Aga Khan Museum of Islamic Culture, it's really good
do some brewery tours in the Distillery District
Toronto actually has a few really good izakaya spots. I can vouch for Guu, Kinka, and Kingyo Izakaya, in Cabbagetown, which is vegetarian and vegan-friendly. Izakaya is the best way to get drinks with friends in the evenings.

 

[Chris Taylor]

I second Guu izakaya! Also my cube group.

 

[Chris Taylor]

So long as you keep it simple, you could make that in right about anything.

Visual Basic might work for a starter project like that, especially since it's quite WYSIWYG, but it might be less helpful in future

 

[FlowerSunRain]

Lol, sorry I deleted that question, but thank you for the answer!

 

[Jason Waddell]

So I've been prototyping a bunch of different card games that use Grid Drafting, all of them failures so far, and the last play session made it abundantly clear:

!!!! You can't have somebody draft a deck for a game they've never played before. !!!

It's obvious in retrospect, but I kept designing these games where you would do a couple grid drafts to make an opening deck, then grid draft as you play a game to add cards to your deck / hand. But the drafting for the opening deck was always miserable, because the other person was like "I don't know how to evaluate these cards at all".


So after my last playtest, my girlfriend was like "what if you just give them a deck to start, and it changes later". So I designed this concept where you start with a 10 card deck, do an initial duel, and then after, you Grid Draft with the winning player selecting first. The duels would get longer as the match progressed.


--

Then yesterday I launch Hearthstone for the first time in about a year, and there's a prompt telling me about a new game mode: Dungeon Run. And it's a series of increasing length battles where you add 3 cards to your deck after each game (the same number you get from Grid Drafting).

I'm still going to prototype this out, but now I feel like 100 times less original.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Dungeon Run is fun to play though, so don't let that deter you from designing an offline variant

If the goal of your game is to win X games first (or gather X points, or whatever), it may be more interesting to let the losing player select first from the Grid Draft. That way you have a catchup mechanic built into the game, instead of it being a case of the rich getting richer. The reward of winning a game is getting you closer to winning the match, which, being the objective of the game, sounds like enough of an incentive already. You don't want to purposefully lose to select first on the Grid Draft.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Dungeon Run is fun to play though, so don't let that deter you from designing an offline variant

If the goal of your game is to win X games first (or gather X points, or whatever), it may be more interesting to let the losing player select first from the Grid Draft. That way you have a catchup mechanic built into the game, instead of it being a case of the rich getting richer. The reward of winning a game is getting you closer to winning the match, which, being the objective of the game, sounds like enough of an incentive already. You don't want to purposefully lose to select first on the Grid Draft.

Yeah, I was thinking first to 3 wins.

The other idea I was playing with would be other treasure cards. Like maybe for each round there are 5, and the winning player gets to select from 3 and the losing player from 2. And the losing player selects first from the grid?

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Yeah, I was thinking first to 3 wins.

The other idea I was playing with would be other treasure cards. Like maybe for each round there are 5, and the winning player gets to select from 3 and the losing player from 2. And the losing player selects first from the grid?

So five treasures, loser picks first and third, winner picks second, fourth and fifth? Yeah, that would work I think, unless all of the treasures are super desirable, then picking more might be better than having first choice. That's something that can be figured out during play testing though. The important thing is to recognize that that part of the game can either let the winner snowball into an insurmountable lead (which ?I personally don't like) or let the loser crawl back from behind (which I think leads to more memorable games).

 

[Jason Waddell]

So five treasures, loser picks first and third, winner picks second, fourth and fifth? Yeah, that would work I think, unless all of the treasures are super desirable, then picking more might be better than having first choice. That's something that can be figured out during play testing though. The important thing is to recognize that that part of the game can either let the winner snowball into an insurmountable lead (which ?I personally don't like) or let the loser crawl back from behind (which I think leads to more memorable games).

Uh, I was thinking more along the lines of, the winner gets 3 to pick from (pick 1) and the loser gets 2 (pick 1).

It's probably not that needed though. As I think about it, it seems best for the post-game actions be winner-neutral. Maybe what is best is for there to be two grids after each match (one started by either player), and a maximum sideboard size for each round.


In other news, I wrote some R functions to make development / printing / prototyping easier.

produces

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Nice work! Mocking proxies is a chore, anything that speeds up the process is great news

 

[James Stevenson]

That looks great!

 

[James Stevenson]

So I made a hat, but it's basically illegible. Still looks cool! 10 points to whoever can read it.

 

[Jason Waddell]

I really like the idea that in-game decisions can affect your future deck. What if you had a spell that you could cast for a regular effect, or trash it forever to get it's enhanced effect once. Your future deck would (likely) be weaker, but you give yourself a better chance of winning THIS game.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Dominion plays around with this mechanic, though when I looked it up there were actually less cards with the mechanic than I thought. Most of the cards offer a bonus if you trash them, not actually enable you to trash themselves for an additional bonus. I found only two straight up examples that exactly mirror your idea:

http://dominion.diehrstraits.com/?card=!miningvillage
http://dominion.diehrstraits.com/?card=!engineer

The only one I have experience with is Mining Village, and it offers an interesting choice, since the standard effect is powerful, but so is gaining that extra two gold if it allows you to buy an expensive card like a gold. I think the templating on the Dominion cards is a little bit clearer than your proxy, but it's harder two have two different effects rather than an additional effect (like: draw card, then discard a card OR draw a card). Maybe you could replace the garbage bin icon with the OR text, and then spell it out on the bottom half. E.g.: "Deal 3 damage. --- OR --- Deal 5 damage. Trash this."?

 

[Onderzeeboot]

So I made a hat, but it's basically illegible. Still looks cool! 10 points to whoever can read it.

Does is say BROSHUGGS?

 

[Diakonov]

The Dark Ages expansion for Dominion does a lot with trashing as a mechanic. It's one of the better expansions.

 

[Dom Harvey]

yo I'mma be Canadian

what type of Canadian should I be

 

[Dom Harvey]

yo I'mma be Canadian

what type of Canadian should I be

 

[safra]

yo I'mma be Canadian

what type of Canadian should I be

if you have money: Vancouver
if you're boring and have money: Toronto
if you're looking for somewhere vibrant that doesn't have extremely high rent: Montreal (it's about half English and half French and you can get by perfectly fine without French)

A friend of mine recently put together an Excel sheet with a ton of different metrics (metro population, climate, rent, proximity to other cities). Here's a link: it's probably at least interesting if not actively useful.

 

[Jason Waddell]

So yesterday, during my team meeting at work, I wanted to show something from Facebook. It was a sort of mural we made during my girlfriend's birthday party. So I open up Facebook, regrettably on screen, and this is at the top:

I hid it and said something like "sorry, some of my friends are a bit abrasive" and some woman in the meeting just says "birds of a feather...".

 

[Onderzeeboot]

That's... a bit passive aggressive, isn't it? You've never struck me as abrasive online, quite the opposite really, what's up with that remark? Now I'm wondering group dynamics and how the rest of the team reacted to that remark.

 

[Jason Waddell]

That's... a bit passive aggressive, isn't it? You've never struck me as abrasive online, quite the opposite really, what's up with that remark? Now I'm wondering group dynamics and how the rest of the team reacted to that remark.

No, it was a joke. I thought it was really funny, like, an opportunistic burn. People laughed. It's a light-hearted dynamic.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

No, it was a joke. I thought it was really funny, like, an opportunistic burn. People laughed. It's a light-hearted dynamic.

Oh good, much better then It's hard to read context over the interwebs

 

[Dom Harvey]

if you have money: Vancouver
if you're boring and have money: Toronto
if you're looking for somewhere vibrant that doesn't have extremely high rent: Montreal (it's about half English and half French and you can get by perfectly fine without French)

A friend of mine recently put together an Excel sheet with a ton of different metrics (metro population, climate, rent, proximity to other cities). Here's a link: it's probably at least interesting if not actively useful.

I now know a lot more about plant hardiness zones but little more about rent

Obviously interested in a more detailed take on Vancouver (/other places) if/when you have time spare

 

[safra]

I now know a lot more about plant hardiness zones but little more about rent

Obviously interested in a more detailed take on Vancouver (/other places) if/when you have time spare

I asked him about the plant hardiness zone thing and he says it's a better descriptor of a place's climate than weather reports are. Seemed legit, didn't ask a second question about it.

Vancouver is really really nice. The metro population is about a million, but there's a lot of urban sprawl. Public transit infrastructure is good and getting better all the time. But because Vancouver is crowded in on all directions (urban sprawl, mountains, the ocean), a lot of the problems of the city have to do with access to space. This means that parking is really expensive, and so is rent. If you drive, you're probably best-off joining a co-op like Modo or Car2Go.

The metro area is divided into a couple major areas. There's downtown (high density, towers) in kind of the northwest of the metro area. To the east, along the main E/W artery, you'll hit East Van (where people like me live) and then Burnaby (university students, families with dogs). Then you can go south a little and hit New West (one of the remaining cheaper places to live. A solid commute each way to downtown, but there aren't many apartment towers, and it's a good place to raise a kid). West of downtown is the part of the city that's basically an extended campus for the University of British Columbia; tons of students, tons of nightlife, no jobs. Going south from downtown will take you to a few other areas of the city like Marpole (nice, quieter, commute to downtown is not bad).

Housing will be your largest expense, and then food. Finding good housing that you love will require you to hustle or know people.

Vancouver's nightlife is unfortunately very corporate, especially downtown. We have independent cinemas and lots of bars, but all the clubs are owned by The Donnelly Group and a lot of the bars too, which means they're all basically the same on the inside. Not sure this is a big deal for you but I thought I'd mention it. Night bus service regularly runs until the wee hours of the morning downtown and until about 2AM elsewhere.

I'm not really sure what else to talk about - let's work out a time and then you can give me a call and we'll talk more specifically.