Arctic Roll is a novel roll and write game which sees players competing on the same sheet of paper. It is being released through Kickstarter as a Print’n’Play — players will receive a series of PDFs to download and print at home.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rollingrhinogames/arcticroll
The first part of this Designer Diary considered how the game reached the point where it was pitchable to publishers.
This, the second part looks at the decisions made once a publisher signed the game.
Pitch or Publish?
Something that many designers ask themselves is whether they want to self-publish or pitch. I have always been in the pitch camp (DYSWIDT?). I am more confident that I would be able to find a publisher for a game deserving of publication, than of my ability to choose which of all the games I have designed, were deserving of wider attention.
Sellsheet
The game was beginning to take the form that can be recognised today. I am pretty confident that Arctic Roll is the best sell sheet I have produced for any of my games. The most common critique of sellsheets is “too much text”. This sellsheet does have some text, but everything a publisher required to understand the game is conveyed in the pictures. The draft, the bonuses, the scoring and the map are all clearly shown, and it also conveys several ’hooks’ which set it apart from the slew of roll and write games that have appeared over the past few years. Players compete for areas as they move around an ice sheet, and the map records the entire history of the game.
While pitching the game to numerous publishers at Essen, I typically opened with a recognition that people were becoming a bit less enthusiastic about another roll and write. If it has done something that we haven’t seen before then we are still looking, was something I heard from multiple publishers, and so this ‘hook’ was therefore important.
Arctic Roll is almost unique in the extent to which at the end of the game the entire narrative from start to finish is laid out in front of players. How many times have you asked other players at the table, “So why did you get so many more points than I did?” At the end of a game of Arctic Roll, you are not also able to compare scores, but if you want to, you can also see exactly where and when the winning decisions were made.
A True Print and Play
This was the form in which Arctic Roll was first noticed and signed by Martin Van Rossum, from Rolling Rhino Games, who specialise in print at home, roll and write games.
My first discussion with Martin, touched on how we might remove some of the additional components, which could be easily included in a small box edition, but limited the suitability as a true Print’n’Play. Could we remove the separate draft board, and player pawns?
It wasn’t too difficult to move the draft board to the side of the map adding columns for each round to record player choices, and the player pawn on the map which was there to make it easier to keep track of each players location, was not a requirement. Players can, if they choose, draw around the hexes that they stop on at the end of each turn, but this is not required.
As we began to consider the potential for multiple different maps—this decision made even more sense. It would be easy to fit the specific bonuses available to players to the map on which they were currently playing. Although it would have certainly been possible to include draft boards designed for different player counts in a boxed edition, this constraint has actually allowed a greater freedom, both in the current edition and in the additional maps planned for the future.
Development
So began the process of development. It is not unusual for this to be something of a subjective process as the publisher tries to match a signed game to their target audience.
Designers often ask how complete does a game need to be before pitching. My opinion is that while a designer should make their game the best game they can, they typically reach a point where any further changes become change for changes sake — and could just as easily move the game away from a particular publishers preference as towards it.
In the case of Arctic Roll, my initial discussions with Martin Van Rossum from Rolling Rhino, were primarily around the desired level of complexity. How many scoring objectives did we want? How much should they each be worth?
It is not uncommon for Roll and write games particularly, to have numerous scoring methods with combinations triggering off other combinations which I turn trigger further bonuses, and these were all explored. Obviously the more of these, the longer the required ruleset and it was considered important that we produce short concise rules which could be easily digested — something that is important if the game is to be gateway or perhaps gateway+ in terms of complexity.
So Occam’s razor was consistently applied, reducing both the scoring objectives and combinations.
One of the design principles was that each of the different objectives, could be the focus of a strategy which could lead to victory.
New Maps, New Mechanics
One of the nice things about the development of Arctic Roll was that the route to publication as a Print and Play allows for any idea to be put on the (ice)shelf for later. The maps we include in the initial Kickstarter release, all have differences in the optimum player count and minor differences in scoring, but we have already planned more with various different mechanics. Were we to be pursuing a traditional route to market, then short of a runaway success like Ticket to Ride where there is a seemingly unquenchable desire for new maps , the number of new maps and therefore mechanics would be necessarily limited.
When all that is required to offer a new map to players, is to produce another PDF for download, then I am confident that new maps will be released as long as there is demand from players.
I playtested a 5-6 player map played over 2 sheets of A4, just a couple of days ago, which is a significant step up in terms of complexity. It felt closer to a big box game, played through the medium of pen and paper, than a roll-and-write filler. I am looking forward to really pushing the print and play format to create a series of maps, which each have different mechanics and new challenges.
Arctic Roll—Solo mode
However, a map that was not shared could be used by solo gamers, but could also be used in a similar way to many roll and writes, where any number of players can compete in a form of multi-player solitaire. We were looking for a way to recreate the challenge of drafting without the pressure of other players taking the dice that you wanted.
As the game was now primarily focussed on shared maps designed for specific player counts, there was a need to reconsider how the game might be played solo. David Digby wrote a 3 part article in this blog about his approach to designing solo modes ( https://www.thegamespeople.co.uk/designing-solo-modes-part-1/ ) and I discussed with him an approach that would see a player compete against a virtual player who would take dice and block the player from placing his hunters in the best spots.
However, I am actually really pleased with the solution that I found.
4 dice—3 of one colour and a 4th of a different colour are rolled. The odd coloured dice is fixed, and all players must take that dice. The 3 other dice are assigned to 3 different bonuses which are available in that round and each player chooses one of them.
As it is always ‘your turn’ I added extra rounds to make the game 9 rounds long, thus creating the late game congestion which is a feature of the other multiplayer maps.
I also added additional bonuses so that there are 9 in total, with each bonus appearing 3 times. Players mark which bonus they have used, and score additional points for each row or column of 3 bonuses they use. There is a final bonus if players manage to use each bonus over the 9 rounds. I like the conflict created by the fact that players can see which bonuses will be available to them in future rounds but not which dice value they will correspond to. To add a final twist, players can actually use bonuses ahead of the round they are currently on, but they are also sacrificing the dice that would be on that spot before they see what value that dice will be.
Enough (Interaction) is Enough!
Generally, multiplayer roll and writes try and create some interaction between players. Cartographers for instance, actually allows you to add monsters to mess up your neighbours map but this had already been discarded from early versions of Arctic Roll as a ‘negative player experience’. More commonly games empower players on ‘their turn’ to make a specific choice, that then influences what every other player is able to do. However this does tend to limit the number of players, as everyone has to get the same number of ‘special’ turns where they control the game.
The lack of interaction on this solo mode is apparent, but as every other map forces high levels of interaction between players at every point in the game, it is actually a benefit to offer a multiplayer solitaire version which can be played by any player count, and without that interaction is a bit more ‘zen’.
Kickstarter Campaign and the Lipstick Effect
The term “the lipstick effect” was coined to describe the fact that in periods of economic downturn, people will purchase less costly luxury products.
While Kickstarter backers are used to backing huge games that can take many months or even years to fulfil, the platform is surprisingly suited to low cost Print’n’Play games which offer almost immediate electronic fulfilment as soon as the campaign finishes. This model offers backers the opportunity to purchase a new game for a fraction of the cost and with minimal risk.
Arctic Roll will be Rolling Rhino’s third Kickstarter campaign to follow this model — and Postmark Games and No Box Games are amongst the other publishers who have a similar offering. It is very common for new publishers to be encouraged to start with a small Kickstarter campaign before attempting to publish something larger. While this model completely avoids the need to get your head around logistics and fulfilment, there is certainly a case to be made for encouraging new publishers to consider a print and play model as they start out.
Sustainability
Despite the fact that backers are being asked to print a new sheet of paper each time they play the game, we would assert that this remains the most sustainable way to deliver a new game to players.
By delivering electronically, we avoid the manufacturing and logistics costs, and do away with the need for additional packaging. Everyone has a few dice at home, and can gather together a few coloured pens or pencils, so by expecting backers to provide these, unnecessary production is avoided.
In view of the typical lifespan of dry wipe markers we would also encourage players to avoid laminating the maps, but simply print a new sheet each time you wish to play. If you are the sort of player who ever goes back over the score pad to compare your games then keeping the maps might appeal.
Arctic Roll is currently on Kickstarter.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rollingrhinogames/arcticroll