zoydraft

[zoydraft]

I finished Downtown Loop, my first (only?) TTRPG zine! It's an imagination and dice adventure through Toronto's subway tunnels, playable by my pre-schooler. By donation over on itch.io!

[zoydraft]

Transit Puzzle Game Playtesting

Notes from May 24, 2025 playthrough of the Transit Puzzle Game.

Oldest kid found one of our old maps and asked to play the game. Surprisingly, he held attention for the entire time, which was probably around 30 minutes. I made some rules modifications on the fly that I think worked well for him, which might be improvements or might just be changes.

Parallel Play. We kept the parallel play from my last session with my dad. In this case, I helped him manage his map (I showed him options, he picked his moves, I marked up his map), he rolled all the dice.

Naming Stations. Kid wanted to name his stations. I'm very happy to oblige.

No Line Management. Kid wanted to be more free form with his line colours. I think the game loses some depth when the network isn't divided into lines (with the rules about what makes a contiguous line, and the opportunity to have them factor into victory points), but it undeniably was simpler.

End State. The game ended when we rolled two dice in a row with no legal moves. I was prepared for either that, or someone placing their 20th station. It felt a little aggressive. Three rolls (which I see I previously landed on) would probably feel better.

Alternative Final Scoring

Without distinct lines, the "achievements" of most connections, longest lines, etc. were mostly unusable

Although we rolled origins and destinations on the hex grid as previous (after the placement of Station 10, and then again at the end of the game), we ended up abandoning those for a much simpler option

We rolled two D20 to determine starting and ending stations. Whoever had a shorter trip between their numbered stations won a point. We repeated these rolls until someone got 3 points

Because it's likely that players will not have the same number of stations (in this game I had 15 and my kid had 14), some rolls result in wins by default. I capped this at a maximum of one point, because otherwise I would have won just through the luck of us rolling too many 15's, when my network actually sucked.

Thoughts for the Future

It's tough to know where to draw the line between simplicity and depth. The ruleset we played today felt ideal for the kid, but lost a little bit of depth

The lines were part of that missing depth, although honestly I didn't miss them too much

The 2D20 Station to Station trips felt like an elegant solution, but it did make it feel more random, like we weren't being evaluated on the same thing. It strongly rewards building an interconnected network, which I think is a good thing.

The real big miss was not having the trip objective revealed part way through. Maybe that's still doable with the 2D20 system, but I'm worried it won't have the same "oh shit, now we have to fix our system" feeling. Maybe it actually would, since no player will have an 11th station. There's a 75% chance that the station hasn't been placed yet, which will be weird, but interesting. It just doesn't as nicely match up with the fiction. I'll have to think about that more.

This game is a stickier than I expected, and I was surprised at the level of sustained interest from my pre-schooler.

[zoydraft]

May 14, 2025 Pink Sleeves Draft Report

cubecobra.com/c/pink | four player Housman draft | hosted at Steadfast Brewing Co. | organized on the Toronto MtG Cubers Discord

I'm so glad I got to do this draft instead of watching the Maple Leafs lose very badly. Not that I would have cancelled for that, but that would have been a much worse night.

Thank you to Gray for organizing this off-night draft for while my mom was in town so I could get out of the house without my wife being outnumbered by our children and I'm really grateful for that. He is also organizing the Untap TO cube event in September, you should get tickets!

Housman Draft

At Gray's request we tried a four player Housman draft, which I've never done before. I enjoyed it, but I saw some dynamics that would work better in some groups than others.

During the draft I commented that it felt slow, and it did, because everything is happening in series instead of parallel. However, I don't think it actually takes that much longer. We each made 27 exchanges, which meant in a group of 4 we had 108 total "moves". If we had been picking 3 packs of 15 (just using that as a baseline) we would have had 45 moves each, and the draft would progress as quickly as the slowest person. A fast drafter can speed up a Housman draft, but normal booster draft always depends on the slowest picks.

What made it feel slower is that you have a lot more downtime. You're making fewer decisions and spending more time watching others. There is also a bit of a need for book-keeping that makes the process less self-reinforcing than opening boosters.

That sounds all very negative but you have to remember that 4 player drafts are already janky compared to 8, so you're trying to find a way to make it work. I still like 5 packs of 15, discard 7.

We had a very chill group, so I think it worked well, but because you're working with open incomplete information you can get stuff like insecure drafters needing to make their picks in the open, which can be intimidating. We also got into a groove where Gray (acting in his own self-interest) was sending me really good cards for my deck and it was obvious in a way that some players could feel was unfair, bordering on collusion. In reality, it's not that different from reading signals, but it feels different when it's out in the open.

I would be reluctant to Housman draft with strangers—I would want to know that everyone at the table is either at a similar level, or is going to be unbothered by the above dynamics. However, it felt strategic in a really fun way and I would definitely try it again in a group that knows what they're getting into.

🏆 3-0 (6-2) Abzan Parallax Conduit, drafted by Gray

ML: "Lesson of the night: always take Parallax Wave"

I am resisting the urge to think that black-green is a problem.

I love seeing relatively creature-light decks win. In my match Parallax Wave and Accursed Marauder were huge parts of the gameplay, and that made me so happy. I have been thinking of cubes as libraries of agencies, and those two cards are such good examples of giving players tools that expand how games are able to play out.

I question whether there's too much recursion in the cube, but it's a part of Magic I really like. Conduit of Worlds' one spell per turn limitation straddles the line of being a too-clever solution and I can't tell if I really like it or find it tedious. Maybe a little more grave hate would balance it out but that's not an exciting mini-project.

UBr Scrawling Maniac, drafted by DR 2-1 (4-3)

DR: "This was the weirdness I was so happy to pilot tonight"

On the penultimate turn of my game 1, DR cast Windfall with Scrawling Crawler on the battlefield to deal 7 to me. Game 2 I was stupid and didn't hold up mana to counter Living Death with my Miscalculation, which mattered because that brought back Laboratory Maniac in time for Ashiok to empty his library. First Lab Man win in the cube and I was overjoyed to be on the receiving end.

Naya Ghalta-cleave, drafted by ML 1-2 (4-5)

ML: "My weirdly effective and unintentional combo from last night: Den of the Bugbear with Metallic Mimic as goblin, I got it off a few times despite my only goblin being Ignoble Hierarch"

Izzet Mage, drafted by SJ 0-3 (2-6)

This deck was partly to see whether How to Keep an Izzet Mage Busy and Guttersnipe are too good together. They are not! But they can do a lot of damage.

This deck was a lot of fun but would have been a lot better with more fixing (I just don't think any was opened that I didn't take), more burn spells (I got opponents down to bolt range a couple times), and another couple counterspells.

I think the ideal draws for this deck are basically unbeatable, but people were definitely still able to use their windows of interaction to disrupt it. I think there's a meaningful takeaway about Izzet decks being more fragile than the (very popular) Golgari+ decks, but I'm not sure if there's something to do with that.

Stray Thoughts

It thrills me to have cards like Parallax Wave, Accursed Marauder, Windfall, Laboratory Maniac, and How to Keep an Izzet Mage Busy be an important part of the gameplay. It lets the game be... Magic, instead of Creatures. There's an old school (important context: I am a millennial but first played Magic in 2018—this is not nostalgia) feeling to it. Like playing a TTRPG and having spells that do something to the world, and not just "I roll this much damage". Creatures are still important, but they're part of the eco-system, not the whole thing.

We did get some interest from the D&D players once they were finished up their sessions. I was able to give a quick spiel on cube and then Gray was able to mention the weekly drafts on Friday nights, but unfortunately the handiest thing to give them was the QR code for my cube, which is not the best pathway to joining weekly drafts. If you're drafting in public, have something to give people! Physically or as a QR code.

I was an idiot and forgot to close out my tab so had to contact the brewery the next day to settle up. Don't do this!

[zoydraft]

For posterity, the twelve different ways the five colours of Magic: the Gathering can be divided into five even-ish three colour factions. Useful for cube and custom set designers who want to venture out from traditional wedges and shards

[zoydraft]

Playing Oppression

Lucky Paper Radio did Playing Oppression as a book club. I read it last year and enjoyed it. I recorded a hot take and then wanted to cut it down cuz it was a couple minutes long, but then this morning they posted the episode. Anyway, this is the transcript of what I was planning on saying. I haven't finished the episode yet, so this is without context from their discussion.

Available as a rough recording with my infant in the background:

I got Playing Oppression from the public library.

My big question coming out of the book is: what do these games do to players? It's easy to understand when the games are straightforward propaganda, but it's less obvious how people are effected by like, Catan. I'm not skeptical that there's an effect, but I'd be really interested in empirical evidence.

It's not a knock against it, I think it's just out of this book's scope, and would be interesting further reading.

The one spot that stands out as kind of answering that is when they talk about reviews or message board posts that say, "be careful who you play this with." At that point, games are actively creating exclusionary communities.

The most surface level application of that in cube, is like... Don't play those cards that were banned for being too racist. A step beyond that, I night not mind Earthbind making puritans squirm, but I don't want to exclude people who are sensitive to sexualized depictions of violence.

I have thought about some of the narratives that are communicated during gameplay in my cubes, especially how the idea of collective action and self-sacrifice in white are completely subverted by everyone being controlled by you, but I also don't think people really experience the game that way.

Not that we shouldn't think about it, but there are probably more effective avenues toward liberatory play.

I'm really excited that this book is getting this spotlight in the community and I'm looking forward to hearing other people's takeaways, so thank you for covering it, and thank you for the gift of cube!

Playing Oppression: The Legacy of Conquest and Empire in Colonialist Board Games by Mary Flanagan and Mikael Jakobsson. The MIT Press 2023.

[zoydraft]

Pink Sleeves May 9, 2025

cubecobra.com/c/pink | 6 player draft | 4 packs of 15, burn the last 4 | Cogwork Librarian added to each pack 1

SH was back in town! So we ordered pizza and folks brought over an absurd excess of candy and soda. DR and I watched the Leafs game out of the corner of our eyes while I wore my infant in the BabyBjörn [not a sponsor], and we had the slowest draft, only getting through two rounds, but getting to spend lots of time with friends.

We tried putting Cogwork Librarians in the first pack instead of everyone starting with them. I liked that, but didn't feel strongly about it and no one commented on it at the time.

🏆 Golgari Living Life // Death drafted by DR 2-0 (4-2)

DR: "Life // Death won a couple games, both with and without Garruk. I think Field of the Dead procced one single time. I should have splashed blue, the deck would have been incredible with a little more card draw. Oh and Pest Infestation is busted."

I had the misfortune of choosing to allowing Life to resolve while holding up counter-magic... Only to have DR activate Garruk's ultimate, ending the game. In my match Living Death was decent although not game-ending and Accursed Marauder had some value.

Esper Intangible Lurrus drafted by SJ

I was super excited to have this deck come together. Token Control with Lurrus (P1P1) companioned isn't something I specifically designed into the cube, and no one has drafted it before.

In this shell Intangible Virtue and Lingering Souls felt busted, and most of my games involved holding up a lot of interaction and then having an explosive turn where I was triple spelling, or casting Secure the Wastes for X>5 on my opponent's turn.

The downside of this deck is I often went down a lot of life early, and I had to be cautious about spending life on Thoughtseize, Prismatic Vista, or shock lands. This deck probably would have failed without two board wipes, and it probably wouldn't have been able to afford Toxic Deluge. On the other hand, Dark Confidant felt free.

Curious Obsession plus Shoreline Looter felt gross, as did casting Phantasmal Image repeatedly with Lurrus. I actually had to discard to hand size a couple times which never happens.

This deck was such a treat to discover, and I hope others find it too.

Rakdos Sacrificial Dance drafted by DF

DF: "The highlight of my night was using Captivating Crew to take over Ghalta and then equip him with Embercleave to do 24 damage."

Captivating Crew creates a story just by doing what it does.

Boros Intrepid Dragons drafted by SH

My match with this deck was really tight, and probably came down to SH not drawing his burn. It's so easy to get value out of Arc Lightning, even if it's just taking out one creature and dealing some damage to face.

Simic Elf Krasis drafted by CC

CC: "I started drafting blue white flicker but just drafted blue. Later on I realized I wasn't getting enough white, so I tried to get some green for my blue. i got some but not much. Most of my blue was based on etb so wasn't great without the flicker."

Sidisi Big Folk drafted by GL

GL: "Hypnotic Specter did some good work for me. I did get Hogaak out but it didn't win me anything"

CC: "Copying Hogaak [with Phyrexian Metamorph] was fun. I had to blow mana on Managorger Hydra."

GL: "Yeah, I think [Hydra and Splinterfright] both threatened DF a bit."

DF: "The game you beat me your Managorger was like an 8/8 or something. Got big so fast."

GL: "Oh yeah, I remember that, two dice!"

Glad to hear that no one has been complaining about Hypnotic Specter so far. I'm probably close to take it off my mental watch list. Hogaak, Managorger Hydra, and Ghalta are also cards that create a story just by functioning. I love that.

Stray Thoughts

A Golgari deck having the best record at the table when two out of six drafters were taking those cards might be concerning. Golgari has had a few good showings lately, but it's also a really heavily drafted colour pair, so it's hard to get too worried about it. Something to notice though.

All the matches went to three games, which might be encouraging (it makes matches feel close), but was probably just a fluke.

We took fucking forever to play, but I think that was just the mood people were in. I don't think it had much to do with the design. My games were especially long, but it's hard to tell how much of that was "I am holding a baby"-related. They still felt like they were progressing and engaging, it wasn't like they just stalled out.

I am really liking the triple shocks test. Everyone has access to awesome fixing, but it comes at a real cost of life, and it gives a little extra potential value to my other non-basics, although probably not to the point of changing pick orders.

[zoydraft]

What am I asking players to pay attention to?

I’m spending a chunk of my parental leave learning more about game design and my current read is Unboxed: Board Game Experience and Design by Gordon Calleja (The MIT Press, 2022, check your local library). The second chapter argues that attention is the foundational aspect of game experience, and a central constraint for all games. I hope this perspective can make us better at achieving our Magic: the Gathering cube design goals.

Calleja illustrates the concept with a story about his own game, Posthuman Saga. The game was intended to have a rich narrative alongside strategic puzzles. The interlocking systems created challenging, consequential, and absorbing decisions. They weren’t too complex for players but they placed too much demand on players for them to also pay attention to the narrative. The effect was that players are so focused on decision-making that the experience of playing failed to live up the goal of providing an interesting narrative.

This sounds a lot like a complexity budget, but it’s a more generalizable idea. It can incorporate complexity budgeting, but it also provides the “why?” Complexity budgets (allegedly coined by Richard Garfield) show up in engineering, project management, and of course game design as a rough mental accounting of how much complexity a project can afford to incorporate. That usually means offsetting necessary complexity by simplifying other elements of the project or design.

In cube design I most often see complexity budgets treated as a curb-cutting accessibility tactic, and prioritized accordingly. After all, it’s rare for a cube to reach the absolute fail case of an overwhelming, exhausting, and ultimately negative play experience. Thinking about attention helps me understand how the cube experience is tinted by complexity, but also by other design decisions that divert attention in one direction or another, even when we’re well clear of the fail case.

Think about some of the most common cube design goals:

Gameplay with interesting, skill-testing strategic decisions

Exploring interesting mechanical spaces, such as context shift cubes

Evoking a specific setting, such as the fae or a favourite plane

Evoking a specific fiction, such as class warfare or monopoly

Cultivating a visual aesthetic

Creating a positive social environment.

Most cube designers will relate to at least one of the above, and each of those are areas they would like their players to pay attention to and engage with.

Magic is a deep game. In a 50 minute match you’ll divide your attention between sequencing decisions, combat math, and navigating difficult trade-offs. You’ll spend time shuffling cards, organizing your battlefield, and trying to find the right token (or giving up, settling for an upside down sideboard card, and then trying to remember two turns later whether it was a Soldier or a Human Warrior). You’ll also spend time reading reminder text, parsing unfamiliar designs, and squinting to decipher what a Secret Lair actually is.

You probably won't be overwhelmed--although some players might be--but all of those elements, from understanding cards to physically maintaining the board state, take your attention away from other aspects of the game you could be engaging with.

Complexity is only one aspect of this, and thinking about attention this way is agnostic to your goals. Even in the Spikiest environment designed for the most enfranchised players you can still consider what you want your players to pay attention to and rethink the design decisions that distract from that. This could mean running the most recognizable printings of cards, or adjusting your power distribution to make the most difficult strategic choices central to games.

I want to think through one example: obscure cards and mechanics.

Imagine for a second you were playing chess without 100% knowing what the pieces did, and each piece included reminders. You’ll probably be able to navigate the game, but time spent double-checking what pieces do means relatively less time thinking about strategy. Is that a satisfying use of your time?

In Magic, enfranchised players are unphased by this, taking it as a requirement of playing, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a distraction. Sometimes the novelty of an environment is the point. In a context-shift cube understanding unfamiliar cards and mechanics (hopefully with reminder text as necessary) may be an important part of the experience. However, if your goals are to have players focus on decision-making or aesthetics, unfamiliar mechanics ask for players’ attention, even if they’re necessary, and will mean less attention available where you want it.

For my own cubes, I would like my players to have more space for socialization at the table, and for players to pay more attention to what their opponent is doing. I don’t think there are any revelations here that spur me to overhaul my lists, but it is a consideration I will take forward with me. It also gives me a better explanation of why I believe managing complexity specifically is important, even though the idea isn’t limited to complexity.

I like that this framing draws a clear connection between our goals and our decisions without simplifying it down to “accessibility is good.” Accessibility is good, but it often gets mischaracterized as designing for new players. Thinking in terms of what you want players to pay attention to and what can distract from that applies to any design goal, and any audience.

Anyway, the next chapter of the book is about complexity, so maybe I’ll need to rewrite this once I read that :D

Thank you to ChampBlankman, klaylk, and Stu for providing feedback on my first draft!

[zoydraft]

Pink Sleeves, April 1, 2025

List: cubecobra.com/c/pink

4 drafters (one of them a pre-schooler); 5 packs of 15, discard the last 7 from each pack

🏆 Busy Izzet Mage 2-0 (4-1), drafted by me

How to Keep an Izzet Mage Busy made 20 tokens or do. It was great. Faithless Looting was also huge for me, getting to the cards I needed, as were DRC, Ponder, and Shoreline Looter. Threshold was effortless. Sprite Dragon won a game as a lone threat. Izzet izn't a trap.

Goblins❤️💛Humans 1-1 (3-2), drafted by CC.

Goblin Rabblemaster kicked my ass. Coppercoat Vanguard is a really nice to play against: a complication, but not insurmountable value or anything. Inspiring Paladin was also good, although CC didn't realize it during deck-building. I'm curious if that's a personal blindspot, or if others might underrate it too.

Gx Field of the Dead, drafted by DF

Repudiate actually got some value, that's nice to see. Mindwhisker may have been the MVP. There was a heartbreaking turn cycle where DF was ready to cast Ghalta, only for CC to cast Captivating Crew, which he couldn't answer.

Pre-schooler Draft Pool

Build your own deck from this pool!

[zoydraft]

There are too many fun things for them all to be the good thing

Another mini podcast about Magic: the Gathering cube, and where "make the fun thing the good thing" breaks down.

[zoydraft]

Looking at a pack of Magic cards and thinking about the texture of different cubes

Is shuffling a part of gameplay? Are you using fetches to shuffle after a Brainstorm, or are you just using Evolving Wilds to reset your library to preserve uncertainty?

How is land fixing gated? Is it primarily based around damage, or coming into play tapped?

What is the combat economy? How do power, toughness, and keywords translate to mana-value? Is there a slant of more aggressive, defensive, or square power and toughness?

How does interaction line up against creatures? How much of a mana advantage (or disadvantage) is typically gained through removal? What's the economy for targeted damage? How much damage can a certain amount of mana do? E.g. are you running Lightning Bolt and shocks with upside, or do you progress from Shock to Lightning Strike and so on? Is there removal that can be activated without mana available?

How often are players able to gain life? Is this repeatable? Is it happening early game, or restricted until later? Is it incremental, or in big chunks? Does it coincide with inevitability?

Is mass removal available? How much?

How prominent are N-for-1's? Do they tend to make the game state bigger (e.g. more relevant cards in relevant zones - making tokens, drawing cards, milling sometimes) or smaller (e.g. removing permanents, reducing hand size)?

Does combat favour attackers or blockers? By default Magic's system benefits blockers, so in practice this question reduces to checking the presence of mechanics that benefit attackers

How often are cards able to be recurred from the graveyard? Is that indefinite, or tightly capped? How narrow or universal are those effects?

Are there combat tricks? Do they tend to be onboard or in-hand (or ((yuck)) in the graveyard?)

Are there ways (other than counterspells) to thwart interaction? How frequent are these effects, and again, are they on-board or in hand? E.g. Dauntless Bodyguard in this pack, or Snakeskin Veil or Giver of Runes.

What is the counterspell economy? What is represented by open mana? Compare Force of Will + Daze, versus Force Spike + Quench + Cancel, versus Mana Leak + Counterspell. Are counterspells more tempo-focused? E.g. Remand, Memory Lapse, or Reprieve. Are counterspells universal, or narrow? E.g. Stern Scolding, Spell Pierce, Negate.

Can cards be "dead"? Are cards given cycling, or additional modes to prevent them from being irrelevant? Does this encourage or discourage sideboarding?

Do lands that conditionally come into play tapped encourage you to play them early, or late?

Is the O-Ring trick present and exploitable?

Do card types matter? E.g. are there kindred synergies, or cards that check for basic land types?

How much attention and/or accounting needs to be devoted to the graveyard?

Are there cards that can be played outside of their nominal colour? E.g. Phyrexian mana, Damn, off-colour lands that offer some kind of benefit (bicycles, surveils, scrys, bounces)

What is the card draw economy? How prevalent is card selection/filtering vs raw card advantage?

Do cards tend to be self-contained packages, or do they need to be combined?

Are there cards that impose deck-building restrictions, either explicit (e.g. Companion) or implicit (e.g. Dark Confidant)

I'm not sure how to word this but are there common game actions or mechanics than provide additional value? E.g. are some or most decks equipped to get extra value from things like sacrifice, milling, artifacts, landfall, discard, etc? Are these relatively obvious / common, or are they more specific to the environment, like Constellation in Theros? Are they spread across the cube or limited to specific archetypes?

Are there A+B synergies or combos, are they unbounded, and do they end the game? Pointing out that Jegantha and Golos fit tightly together, but wouldn't be called a "combo," but certainly contribute to the texture of games.

[zoydraft]

Transit Puzzle Game Playtesting

Notes from March 12 playtesting of the Transit Puzzle Game.

My dad was in town for a few days and he wanted to try out some of the games I've been making. We got a number of reps in with the transit puzzle game, which lead to creating the March 11 rules that I've posted. On March 12 we tried a head-to-head game.

Rules Modifications

All rolls are shared. We take turns rolling and share all the same random inputs

No less convoluted scoring. We played with victory points for the longest line, the most interchanges, and the biggest interchange, plus one each for shortest trip for the two origin / destination pairs. We did still calculate trip time using 4 "minutes" per walking tile + 1 minute per transit tile + 1 minute for station passed through + 1 minute per line change.

Advancing the game. The first trip is determined when at least one player places their 10th station. When any player reaches their 20th station the game ends and proceeds to the determining the second tip. Additionally, if either player can not place a track on three consecutive rolls that also ends the game and proceeds to the second trip determination.

Fog of War. We initially tried hiding our maps from each other, but it was immediately obvious that this wasn't necessary. At most, you'd want to hide from each other for a couple rolls to make sure you weren't influencing each other, but our systems diverged extremely quickly.

Experience

I was really pleasantly surprised how fun the head-to-head version of this game was. I have been designing one-player (+ game master) games for my son (and to a lesser extent myself) and even though this game wasn't competitive, it was fun to play a game where we were going for something other than a high score.

By far my favourite element of gameplay was setting up stations where multiple future rolls would contribute toward a better network. That is, "if I place this line there, I need a 3 to make a connection, but if I place it here, then I can make a connection with either a 2 this way or a 4 that way."

The experience especially benefited from the shared die rolls. I've never played a game with that mechanic before, but I did hear about it from somewhere, and I liked it a lot.

I think the biggest friction with the game is the visual vocabulary. I don't explain it at all in the rules, and I need to.

This game could easily (well, for someone with the skills) translate to digital

A fun expansion on this idea could be having players set the victory points. Basically setting the goals and stakes for themselves.

[zoydraft]

Transit Puzzle Game

A transit-themed pen-and-paper puzzle game for one or more players, about the constraints of incremental planning.

These are the rules for the first stable-ish version, written up March 11, 2025

Planning supplies

1 D6

A hex grid (I’ve been testing with 9 by 11.5 (alternating 11 and 12 tile rows), which introduces space constraints very quickly. I have also tried a much bigger grid and found it too wide open, but more testing would be beneficial)

A die with at least as many sides as the longer dimension of the grid

Coloured writing utensils. At least 5 per player, preferably more.

You’re probably curious about how to win

You will be scored for your system attributes and performance. Your score can either be used in pursuit of a personal best, or competitively around a table.

The system attributes are:

Length of longest line (in tiles)

Number of interchanges (defined as tiles with tracks heading in ≥3 directions)

Other ideas

Most stations in a line (redundant with longest line)

Super-interchanges (defined as tiles with tracks heading in 6 directions)

Once you have placed your 10th station you will roll the coordinates of a trip’s origin and destination. Once you have completed your map, you will be evaluated on your system’s service of this trip.

Once you have placed your final station you will roll the coordinates for a second trip which you will also be evaluated based on.

Gameplay

Randomly decide your starting coordinates (e.g. if using a 9 x 12 grid you can roll 2D12 and re-roll if the numbers are too high to correspond to a tile) and draw your first station there.

If playing multiplayer, all players share all rolls, including starting position, track lengths, and trip coordinates.

Roll a D6 to find the length of track to be placed. All tracks must be straight, exactly the length rolled, begin at an existing station, and end at another station, which can either be new or already existing.

Repeat step two until you have placed 10 stations.

Determine your first trip coordinates (origin and destination) and indicate them on the map

Continue placing tracks and stations until you have placed 20 stations, or you have rolled 3 consecutive D6 that have not allowed a legal track placement.

Roll your second trip coordinates and show them on the map.

Track Placement & Lines

Tracks can only be straight lines

Tracks can not cross, except at stations

Lines are continuous tracks that do not turn more than 60°at stations

You may start a new line on any roll, but it must originate from an existing station

You must use all rolls that you are able to. If you do not believe there is any possible track placement possible you may re-roll up to 3 times. If you have 3 consecutive rolls that do not allow legal track placement your map is finished.

Scoring

The first iteration of scoring is intentionally convoluted to appeal to my weirdo child, whose favourite part of the game (by far) is using a calculator. Simplifications may be beneficial.

Trip Evaluation

The first step of trip evaluation is checking the walking distance between the two tiles to figure out the baseline trip time.

Then, you find the trip time by adding up the factors on the table below.

Origin coordinates: (___, ___)

Destination coordinates: (___, ___)

Final Trip Score

(Alternately, use only K)

K x M =

Final Score

(M1 + M2) x C

Commentary

This game evolved from a collaborative world-building game that my kid had no initial patience for. As is, it is much more puzzle-y and fairly fun and satisfying.

Future Work

Illustrations for instructions, or example maps.

Testing different maps

Different grid sizes

Incorporating obstacles or points of interest

Testing multiplayer

Scoring could be simplified using a victory points system, such that system attributes are a sum of superlatives around the table.

Players could agree in advance on attributes of interest.

Refining scoring options

Current rules are purposely convoluted.

[zoydraft]

They're DOGS (and cats) and they're playing UNO!

I've been playing The Roottrees are Dead, which is not on the level of Return of the Obra Dinn, but I'm still enjoying it. It made me wonder if I could create something in that vein of mystery games / logic puzzles that my 3.5 year old would enjoy.

Can you make a mystery for someone who is illiterate?

I planned the game to be a guided experience of course, but I wanted the player to be able to review clues they have received, which meant presenting clues as pictographs, but even more than that, creating clues and puzzles that could be conveyed as pictographs.

Case of the Golden Idol provided inspiration for a more manageable scope for the puzzle than Obra Dinn or Roottrees.

Since he's not only illiterate, but also a pre-schooler I decided that hints would be explicitly provided as such. That is, there's very little you need to notice. It's really just a little logic puzzle.

That made me realize I don't really know what a mystery game is. Is it just a logic puzzle with some flavouring? It's an impetus to keep going? This is an un-baked thought and I'm sure many people have answered it, but how do we differentiate genre as game mechanics versus genre as narrative vs genre as whatever else. "Western" is truly a genre of film, with conventions beyond the setting, but is Red Dead Redemption a Western, any more so than that godawful Super Mario Bros Movie is a platformer? Anyways, this may be the most college freshman thought I have ever written down.

Making the Game

I borrowed liberally from an early puzzle in Case of the Golden Idol where you deduce who was sitting where around a table. I needed something easy to draw and to differentiate, so dogs and cats sitting around a table playing cards came up pretty organically / spontaneously. Kid likes Uno, so I have them playing cards.

Basically, everyone was playing cards, got up for snacks, and now can't remember where they were sitting. Who has Uno?

I worked through the clues one by one, thinking alternating between clues that will be useful later and clues that provide concrete information. I've never had to think through this kind of puzzle before, so it was fun to do.

From my very first notes I only had to make a few revisions, mostly around pushing puzzle elements to be more distinct. I built the clues and the table layout simultaneously. I can imagine this getting exponentially more complicated, but it helps me visualize games like Obra Dinn better, and the way they weave linear strings together to keep puzzles tidy for the designer and player.

Stray thought: I can't help but think of the unpleasantness of overly-linear escape rooms. If you're going to make me do a bunch of puzzles one after another, they better be interesting puzzles, and maybe just dispense with the overarching conceit, unless they tie in really well. Anyway, I haven't been to an escape room in over 5 years, so I think I'm in the clear.

Setup

I made the game from two pieces of paper, with the table sheet, 8 animal cards, and 3 clue cards. The clue cards are double-sided. There was no world where this wasn't going to be a guided game run by me, but an obvious spot for improvement would be adding criteria for when to flip clues 2 & 3. I knew when they should be flipped, but I didn't make it clear anywhere.

Play Experience

The game went over well, and he kept interesting and engaged throughout, but he needed some prompting at times.

He understood the first two clues no problem, but didn't immediately get the uncertainty of which stool which blue animal would sit in. Fair enough, he's never done this before!

He understood the pattern, and where the orange dog needed to go but needed some help understanding the orange and purple being together. I think in general he had a difficult time understanding that I was trying to communicate a clue about an animal of a specific colour without specifying the animal.

He was very pleased to place the small cat on the big chair, and registered that the last clue was about the robot being across from the blue and purple, but then had a hard time translating that into the correct seat without me telling him. I don't know what the hang up was there. Once he got that right he was easily able to follow the seating pattern to complete the pattern.

Other Post-Mortem Notes

I think I got the difficulty level almost right, and the sequencing of hints worked pretty well.

This took a lot of time to think through and make (maybe an hour?) for how long it took to play (maybe 10 minutes?), and is really not extensible. That would scare me off from making another game like this in the future. Maybe I just need to think more about how it could be built upon, but I'm skeptical.

I could have put more effort into structuring the clues so that they could consistently be discarded or not. As is, the first clue is superfluous once you've placed the first two animals, but you need the second clue until the end.

The placement of the cards on the table was not confusing to him, but I was worried it might be.

He was very positive about this game and said he'd like to play it again, which is nice. If that ends up happening, I wonder if he'll just memorize the solution.

Created March 24, 2025. Played March 25.

Addendum March 29: my kid actually has wanted to keep playing this, and has more or less memorized the solution, but still works it through in clue order, and is able to either interpret or recite what the clues are supposed to communicate. He has asked for more games like this, which is a tall request. We'll see if I have it in me.

[zoydraft]

3.5 year old requested a game set in an ice cream factory where you go up to 101 and do calculations.

Ice Cream Climb is a game where you roll a D12 to progress through flavours of ice cream, trying to determine their component flavours. Upon landing on a space, check if it is a Prime Flavour (in earlier version I had him make up some of the flavours to override my pre-sets). If it's not, determine at least one Prime Flavour that's a component part (i.e. find at least one Prime factor). See how many different Prime Flavours you can collect by the end of the game!

This went over well. It was a reasonable level of complexity for him, although he got a little silly at the end (e.g. checking 100÷97, instead of starting with smaller primes) but that's only bad in that he was maybe getting bored. Maybe I could put in something that would give him an outlet for that kind of thing

[zoydraft]

Image hosting again (these have left Pink Sleeves now). Cycle is incomplete cuz I have "real" copies of the other 3.

[zoydraft]

Scare School Playtest Notes - March 15

My kid has decided he only wants to try new games, but my dad really wanted to try this game out so I ran a session. Some observations...

Okay, pre-observation, this was my first time ever running a TTRPG for anyone other than my son. So that's a milestone. I think I did... okay?

Skill Checks & Progression. I decided to run the encounter on Level 3 - that is, all rolls of 3 or less are failures, which meant that the player's skills increased rapidly. I think that worked well for a one-shot, but was too generous if there's any continuity between sessions.

Setting the Scene. I again found moderately detailed illustrations of children's bedrooms online, but this time invited the player to add some detail to the room. I did not characterize the child at all. I think there's an opportunity to build that out.

Retry Rule. In an attempt to force some variety in tactics and add some non-narrative bite to failures I ruled that you can't repeat a skill-check you just failed. I think this reduced the feeling of brute forcing through a check and encouraged some more creativity.

Failures, narratively. I found it a little difficult to consistently give narrative explanations for failures. I think I should have differentiated 1's vs 2's vs 3's, but that doesn't work if you're at a lower difficulty level. I didn't do a good job of communicating what would happen on a failure; If I was better at that it probably would have solved the problem.

Failures, in scoring. The scoring system is purposely convoluted to appeal to my kid (final calculations was the only part he participated in on this day), but I had a hard time knowing how much to penalize the Suspense score when there was a failure.

Delayed Parents. I slightly tweaked the parents mechanic. Now, if you or the child do something to alert the parents (mainly but not exclusively making a loud noise), the parent countdown does not start immediately. It only begins after a second alert. At that point, after every subsequent action, the GM rolls a D4. When the cumulative D4 rolls reach 8 the parent arrives in the room and you fail.

Multi-Part Skill Checks. Towards the end of the encounter the player started combining skills, which I wasn't sure how to assess. In one situation, it was synergistic enough that I felt passing 2 out of 3 skill checks felt appropriate, but in another I felt it was almost entirely dependent on one skill, while the other two could be auto-passes. If this were someone else's game I was running I would want more direction, as I had to make up those approaches in the moment.

Teacher Feedback. I didn't do much within-world communicating with the player character. I did have what I thought was a really good idea, but I was hesitant to offer it (and did not end up offering it) because I didn't want to steal away the opportunity for the player's own creativity.

Finding the Fun. The fun here is definitely in stretching the creativity. I am not sure (here expressing sincere ignorance, not doubt) whether the scoring system is helpful or not. I think in best case, it might be something like Balatro (I can't stop talking about Balatro!) where the scores are technically calculable to the player, but in practice more fuzzy. At minimum, the scoring provides a little bit of momentum and tension, just from a number going mostly up. I am not sure how much that encourages creativity

Scoring Sheet. The character sheet (at the top of the page) did its job, but I still had to track the actions. If I were to develop this game further (and keep the scoring system) I would want to create a GM sheet for tracking actions and their effect on suspense. However, it hasn't been bad tracking it freeform.

Unless my kid re-expresses interest in this game I don't think I'll be picking it up again any time soon, but I really enjoyed the experience and will keep thinking about it.

[zoydraft]

March 14, 2025 Draft

list: Pink Sleeves | 5 player draft @ Steadfast Brewing Co | 4 packs of 15, burn the last 4 from each pack. everyone started with a Cogwork Librarian | organized on the Toronto MtG Cubers discord

This was my first time drafting at Steadfast, and it was super, super fun. Great vibes from everyone and delicious beers. I've never had a bad experience drafting with strangers / people from online, but the energy was great and I had a fantastic time.

On top of that, Tales from the Mana Crypt's own Eric wrote up an amazing draft report!

🏆 3-0 (6-0) Golgari Elves drafted by Zach

The highlight of my night may have been misplaying my last turn in game 2 against Zach (I should have selected Fiery Confluence modes differently and then cast Pyroclasm), and then Zach showing me the absurd amount of shit he was set up for if the game went any longer, avenue after avenue after avenue to lock down the game.

As told by Zach:

"An elf wheeled from my p1p1, I identified green was open and moved in using my Cogwork Librarian to secure my first 2 green cards and ended up being the only green drafter."

"I built around casting one of my 1 mana elf on turn 1 (4x 1 mana elf, 10 untapped green sources, 15 lands) and I leaned into the golgari theme trying to play with my graveyard with Hogaak and Living Death. Even though I never ended up casting either of those cards, they would have been really good in almost all of my games!"

I mulliganed aggressively to start every game with a t1 elf and it paid off. Vengevine was a beater."

2-1 Jeskai Tempo, drafted by Eric

[Eric's Draft Report]

This was the one deck I didn't get to play against, but Eric wrote a great report!

2-1 Esper Boomer Control, drafted by Gray

I love a good small game deck. Zyym was an all-star, and I was impressed that Far//Away did things.

I got to cross my fingers and cast Massacre Wurm into open mana and have it resolve (to be answered immediately, but it still resolved damn it!).

Rakdos... stuff, drafted by SJ

I didn't feel like I ever had a great start with this deck and it wasn't aggressive enough and didn't come together as a real sacrifice deck. There was a lot of sideboarding, which I loved. Bloodghast being ~counter-proof felt reassuring, and I got some nice hellbent upticks with Liliana. Grafted Wargear may have been my MVP.

Azorius Blink, drafted by GL

This photo is the entire on-colour pool. This deck didn't quite come together for whatever reason. In the portions of games I got to watch I was pleased to see Mirage Mirror be relevant, and it was fun to play around