I made paper shares for Muck & Brass tonight using the share PDFs I genned yesterday. I don’t need them, the glass bits I have been using work well enough, but I suspect that a slightly crisper presentation (and demonstration of personal investment?) will make acceptance of a very early stage prototype easier.

A quick trip to an office supply store produced a pad of craft paper in 8 colours (sadly one of the colours was a very dark purple). A couple aisles over revealed two packs of copier paper in 5 colours, one set rather pastel and the other day-glo. I grabbed the craft paper and pastel sets, printed four sheets of each share sheet, cut them quickly with a Fiskar’s rotary cutter and slipped them into penny sleeves. 390 penny sleeves no less. However, they’re really quite nice. The paper colours are bold and clear, the black printing shows well, the company abbreviations on the ends of the shares allows them to be fanned easily (as often done in the 18XX) etc. Fair dinkum.

Meanwhile yesterday’s trip to the paper supply store revealed a business card cutter: feed printed stock in one end, turn the handle and out fall cut business cards. Cost ~$150. I suspect card production is not as trivial as it suggests and that a vice-based paper cutter remains the better choice there. Lastly, while business cards could make good shares/cards but there are narrow limitations on available stock colours and relatively high media costs. Bah.

The paper supply store also had a manual corner rounder for $300 (essentially a jig with a vice and a curved blade). It was a rather heavy-duty piece of equipment; likely to survive WWIII unscathed. it was tempting to be tempted. I have a hard time resisting such well-formed mechanical engineering. Thank the gods nobody is waving a Curta calculator in my face.

Lessons from tonight’s production run:

• Colour copier paper in a wide range of colours (I need 10 colours for the 10 companies in Muck & Brass) is readily available outside my local office supply stores (Stapes, Office Max, Office Depot etc). eg this store
• Sleeves are constant size. This can hide a multitude of sins surrounding cut shares not being of constant size.
• Craft paper is nice stuff to work with
• Craft paper easily jams in the printer. Treat it carefully and ensure the guides and feed are aligned well!
• Coloured copier paper is not so nice to work with, tending to crease, crumple and stick
• With a little care the rotary cutter will handle and cut stacks of 8 sheets well enough. That makes for 8 cuts for 64 shares. Not bad.

The goal is to play tomorrow at the Endgame Anniversary party. It isn’t likely, but worth a shot.

A broken out action track for testing the proposed new action selection rules:

For some reason the scaled-down PNG is showing with a black background. View it directly to get the proper image. Hopefully we’ll get a chance to playtest it this weekend. I’m having a terrible time attempting to simulate games.

Being in possession of a new printer, an HP K8600 whose main claim to fame is that it is can up to print A3¹ (roughly 13”x19” – useful for prototype maps/boards), I spent a little time this evening messing with another new tool: Scribus. Scribus is a page layout tool akin to Adobe’s Framemaker. There’s little Scribus can do that I could not do and likely do better with my long standing favourites of LaTeX and LyX, but for quick, experimental and mostly throw-away tasks Scribus has a lower barrier to entry. The fact that it also emits SVG and PDF is icing on the cake.

My first test project was to draw shares for the 10 companies in Muck & Brass (EUR, B&GR, L&SR, L&MR, LB&SCR, CR, GWR, LNWR, NER, SWR). The assumption is that each sheet would be printed 4 times, each company on a different colour of paper, and then one of the non-merger shares for each company would be discarded. The final shares would be slipped into penny sleeves, perhaps with a card backing. This would give 3 non-merger shares and 28 merger shares per company, which is just barely enough.

Winsome Games uses rather nice coloured paper in a wide range of colours for many of their shares. I’ve not seen anything quite so pleasant at my local office supply stores. I wonder what I’m missing?²

As Ben Keightley graciously reminded me on #bgdf_chat, it would be better to put small images showing the position of that company’s home city on each share. I plead gross laziness and a knowledge of English geography! I can’t quite be bothered to gen 10 maps of England with highlighted cities, not when the above sheets merely required producing one master and doing search-and-replace with XEmacs to produce the others.

Assuming that Capitalisation (or control of Capitalisation) remains the most attractive early action in the game (an argument I’m having difficulty supporting):

• (E7/D5/C3)
• P1-C3/3 P2/C3/3 P3-C3/2 P4-D1/1 P4-D1/2¹ P4-E2/4² (E6/D3/C0)
• P1-D1/4³ P2-D1/4³ P3-D1/4⁵ (E6/D0/C0]

Total actions performed: 9

Total actions per player: P1:2 P2:2, P3:3, P4:3

Now let’s assume that P1 recognises the action race and changes tempo:

• (E7/D5/C3)
• P1-C3/3 P2/C3/3 P3-C3/2 P4-D1/1 P4-D1/2⁶ P4-E2/4 (E6/D3/C0)
• P1-E2/5⁷ P2-E2/5 P3-E2/5 P4-E2/6 ⁸ (E1/D4/C0)
• P1-E2/7⁹ (E0/D4/C0)

Total actions performed: 11

Total actions per player: P1:3 P2:2, P3:2, P4:4

Interesting.

Let’s assume that P4 wins one of the early share auctions with his cash lead and thus has more he can develop:

• (E7/D5/C3)
• P1-C3/3 P2/C3/3 P3-C3/2 P4-D1/1 P4-D1/2 P4-D1/3 (E7/D2/C0)
• P1-E1/5¹⁰ P2-E2/5[^111] P3-E2/5¹² P4-E2/5 (E3/D2/C0)
• P1-D1/6¹³ P2-D1/6¹⁴ (E3/D0/C0)

Total actions performed: 12

Total actions per player: P1:3 P2:3, P3:2, P4:4

Now let’s assume that P1 is cash poor, diluted on both sides and that P2 in similarly incented towards a fast dividend:

• (E7/D5/C3)
• P1-C3/3 P2/C3/3 P3-C3/2 P4-D1/1 P4-D1/2 P4-D1/3 (E7/D2/C0)
• P1-D1/4 P2-D1/4 (E7/D0/C0]

Total actions performed: 8

Total actions per player: P1:2 P2:2, P3:1, P4:3

This is fascinating. The players have no choice but to focus on Expansion next turn as there’s just no opportunity for any more Development. What interesting rhythms!

A more tactically interesting turn:

• (E7/D5/C3)
• P1-E2/2 P2-E2/2 P3-E2/2 P4-C3/3 (E4/D5/C2) (no change)
• P1-D1/3 P2-D1/3 P3-C3/5 (E4/D3/C1) (no change)
• P1-E2/5¹ P2-C3/6 P4-E2/5² (E2/D3/C0)
• P1-E2/7³ P3-E2/7⁴ (E0/D3/C0)

Total actions performed: 12

Total actions per player: P1:4 P2:3, P3:3, P4:2

Note that the round ended due to exhausted actions at the same time as it ended for total action points. This may be deceptively convenient, in which case the reins will need to be drawn in a bit. More interesting is the turn-penalty for being late in the turn order. How curious! Is this the coat-tail-riding forced-alliances of Preußische Ostbahn, or is it just bad to have cash? How very appealingly curious. It might be time to build a small AI to model a few basic player incentive assumptions and see how this pattern plays out.

Somehow I seem to keep returning to the action selection and turn order mechanism in Muck & Brass. The current Pampas Railroads and Wabash Cannonball is a little unstable when employed for the very cash and share-sensitive Muck & Brass. I’m not convinced it needs changing, but I’m also not convinced it doesn’t. An unpleasant kettle.

I’ve been looking at a variation on the previously discussed and dismissed model, but losing the sliding concept and using a fixed tie-breaker for collisions.

• There is a grid of action squares, one row per player. 7 columns long
• Players start with a marker in the first column of one the rows of the chart, ordered by increasing personal cash going down (this could change, see below)
• The player whose marker is furthest to the left and closest to the top (tie breaker) has the current turn
• There are three action tracks (Expand, Develop, Capitalise) but likely with a different distribution: 7/5/3(?)
• On their turn a player selects an available action, moves the cube on the track in the standard manner and does the action (not optional?)
• Upon completion of the action the player’s cube is moved forward on the action chart per the cost of the action (Expand: 2, Develop: 1, Capitalise: 3?)¹
• The next/same player (leftmost/top) now takes their turn, etc etc
• When two actions are exhausted or two players reach or pass the end column of the chart dividends are paid in the normal fashion and the action tracks reset

Possibly the turn order tie-breaker, after the first round, can instead of cash be the reverse order of total action points used in the last round; the implications aren’t obvious to me.

An example opening round using the format Player-ActionCost/ActionTotal followed by a summary of how many of each action are left is listed below, one line per re-ordering:

• (E7/D5/C3)
• P1-E2/2 P2-E2/2 P3-E2/2 P4-C3/3 (E4/D5/C2)
• P1-D1/3 P2-D1/3 P3-C3/5 (E4/D3/C1)
• P1-D1/4 P2-C3/6 P4-D1/5 (E4/D1/C0)
• P1-E2/6 P3-E2/7 P4-E2/7 (E1/D1/C0)

Total actions performed: 13

Typical total actions per round in Wabash Cannonball: 8

Typical total actions per round in Pampas Railroads: 9-10

Total actions per player: P1:4 P2:3, P3:3, P4:3

I’ve made little attempt to make action choices logical. This is just a thought model. Most noticeable is that the rounds is longer (more actions done in the round). This may be acceptable, albeit at a cost in game length. My surface sense is that the tactical choices in this ordering are interesting and rather tweaky.

With Hippodice drawing near it is time to dust and prune about the edges.

• New rules for ‘Ohana Proa.

• New Player Aid for ‘Ohana Proa.

• New Rules for Muck & Brass

The changes aren’t large. I’ve shortened the end-game in “Ohana Proa a bit, hopefully lopping off 10 minutes or so, and allowed a pass action and end-game qualifier for Muck & Brass. I’m not convinced the latter is necessary but it is at least consistent with the rest of the pattern.

Having fought through much of the three day weekend with the Neuland-style action track for Muck & Brass, I’m calling it quits. It is not a good fit for the design. The mechanism has a number of interesting properties but they will be better used elsewhere.

In the prior discussion I defaulted without examination to moving forward in the event of a collision¹. Why?

If collisions do not trigger slides then either it must always be possible to avoid a collision (easily proven impossible in 4+ player games) or there must be an ordering function for players resident at the same action slot, perhaps a FIFO or LIFO. Both queue forms have their interesting aspects with LIFOs perhaps being the more interesting as later players can get an instant second turn by ending atop a prior player, perhaps to the earlier player’s discomfort (making turn prediction more difficult and yet more valuable).

Stacking seems inevitably less interesting. Collision sliding offers a few clear interest-benefits:

1. A slide moves the subject player further around the ring thus making their next dividend closer/sooner
   • Situations can be crafted which allow multiple positions to be collision-slid
2. Collision sliding encourages players to chose actions which use/absorb the lost action point. Because this value cuts in both directions, Development gets an extra boost encouraging a slightly more Development-centric game than Expansion-centric
3. Unpreventable slides (can) force players to waste action points in non-income producing movement

Meanwhile almost the same multiple-turn opportunity remains, just trimmed by one action point to not include the collision point.

More simply collision-sliding offers an additional decision: To slide or not to slide. Each side of that decision has significant effects on turn order – effects which are interesting for the subject player and interesting for other players to predict and arrange afore-hand.

The Neuland action-track, even Thebe’s simpler version, is just an action costing/selection mechanism akin to the rondel that Mac Gerdts has been so fond of using. The track controls turn order and expresses choices in terms of action versus cost where the cost is implied against turn order. Key to the whole pattern is differentiation both in terms of board position and action track position. This localises values to that the turn order ramifications of subsequent action choices are significant.

Neuland does this through the combination of three patterns:

1. Food and Wood must (nearly) always be protected through occupation/production
2. Players must consume their products each turn or lose them at the end of their turn
3. Players ending with their action market on a slow already occupied by another player must slide forward to the next free slot

The result is an accelerating wave front of consumption, driven from behind by the constant input of food and wood and fanning out into ever more orchestrally difficult complexity in the mature mature products. The wave front collapses when products must be discarded rather than consumed¹ and around point-producing buildings consume of mature/complex products, allowing the player to reset back to a simpler world² and begin the next heady climb³.

The key here is differentiation. Differentiation is required by any temporary emergent alliance game else the alliances have no value gradients to form around. Like both Pampas Railroads and Wabash Cannonball the current initial share auction in Muck & Brass establishes a couple primary points of differentiation:

1. What shares are held by whom at the end of the auction
2. Total cash holdings (and resulting turn order)

However those differences are too small for Muck & Brass. Unlike Wabash Cannonball and Pampas Railroads, companies are poorly differentiated in Muck & Brass as their long-term income potentials are mostly dependent on action selections that surround the early mid-game (access to London and merge opportunities). Again like Wabash Cannonball and Pampas Railroads, Muck & Brass uses competition for limited action supplies to provide the rest of the differentiation. Any replacement action selection and turn order system will need to at least equal that level of differentiation if not improve on it, and there are a few problems.

Unlike Neuland, Muck & Brass does not have an oscillating wave-front of commitment. Actions will generally not be selected in large sets, rather a player will take an action (sliding forwards Neuland-style as needed) and the player furthest behind on the action track will take the next action (usually a different player). The result is that opportunity cost becomes significant – not opportunity for self but opportunity afforded to others. A large/expensive action which passes over other players affords them the opportunity to perform multiple smaller/cheaper actions before the expensive-action-player can react.

This has large implications for the numbers selected. If, for instance, all the costs are even values, then the players will rapidly sort themselves into sets, the odds and the evens, with transfers between sets occurring only on collisions⁴ All odd costs also has the same behaviour. Having the action cost values close to each other suggests that collisions will be more frequent, but also suggests that players will select actions in part to avoid collisions (they might as well spend the action they’d otherwise lose by sliding forward). The intersection of these two patterns arrives when some costs are multiples of other costs. Multiples suggest phase relationships with the parity of the modulo affecting action selection in order to avoid collisions, Additionally there’s a relationship between the size of the average action cost and the number of players. For instance if the costs are 1/2/3 and there are 5 players in the game, then after a few turns every action choice will result in a collision.

The significant attributes appear to be:

1. Odd/even spread of costs
2. Ratio of average cost to number of players
3. Density of action cost values
4. Average rate of collisions
5. Strength of set-formation among players along parity lines
6. Breath of action cost range in terms of cost-multiples

And of course:

1. Length of action track as a function of action costs as a determinant of dividend rate

Hurm. I was looking at 1/2-2/3-4 as action costs, but that seems clearly poor, especially when compared to player counts. 2/5-3/5-7 seems attractive. This is going to take some work.

As a total aside, I’ve also been toying with an extension to the Capitalisation action:

- In addition to the normal behaviours a player holding a clear plurality of shares in a company may have that company reclaim any one of its shares held by any player for a sum equal to twice the current dividend value of the share