A rare blog post that's not Mechanic Monday? Gorsh!
This is a status update on the state of one of my games, following a playtest event I brought it to. That game, of course, is fan favourite: The Birch Crown.
The idea for Birch Crown came to me in, I think, the Spring of 2015? It was the Stanley Cup playoffs if I recall correctly, and after watching the hockey game at a friend's place, some people started playing Cards Against Humanity. I groused to myself that it was unfair that the two runaway leaders (a couple who were both playing and obviously knew each other's sense of humour) had the same hand size as the rest of us lowly plebs. That made me wonder about a catchup mechanic where the prizes you won and your hand size added up to one fixed figure, so that the better you did in a game, the fewer options you had. # of Black cards + # of white cards always = 7. As I love card games, I had no lack of ideas for how cards would generate points. And thus began The Birch Crown. My first working prototype of it was thrown together in Microsoft Word on my work computer at the end of 2015, and it got its first playtest (immensely clunky, immensely fruitful) with fellow designers Logan Dean, Ed Soderbeg, and Danny Bass in early 2016. I realized that the more specific a card was, the less tempting, and that it should always be fairly easy to eyeball how much a card would be worth in your tableau. The game started with seven suits of seven cards each, and I quickly started tweaking individual cards in suits, streamlining suits or throwing them out entirely, and coming up with test versions of new ones. Before its second playtest, I had made an expansion with three new suits, an AI, a coop mode, and a fun random output event-generator. Oh and again I did all this in MS Word, with images I made in Paint.
And then the game mostly sat on a shelf. I playtested it again in 2017 I think? Late 2017, on a playtest night alongside D.I.E. Interceptor and Cowl & Mask? And once again, I immediately got good, usable data that completely changed one of the expansion suits. And again, the game went back on the shelf. There were easy next steps to take with the design, but its first form had come together so quickly that it was tempting to just coast on that early push and go do first drafts on other new ideas. I submitted Birch Crown to a couple of contests, to no real reply. And my work computer also died with the Word and Paint files un-backed up, so all I had was the pdfs I'd sent around.
Toward the end of this year, with the Logan Theatre / Nerdologues Playtest Party coming up, I decided to attend for the first time (I had gotten in with D.I.E. Interceptor, but had sent the aforementioned Logan Dean as my avatar as I could not in fact be there myself) and submitted Birch Crown and Fantasy Fantasy GM GM. When asked a week before the event to pick which of the two I'd like to present, I went with the one that I'd, you know, actually built.
So last week I spent some time rebuilding from scratch a new Word doc of Birch Crown, with changes to the suits and rules folded in. I also had long toyed with the idea of adapting the game to fit in the universe of Seth Dickinson's The Traitor Baru Cormorant, so since I was making fresh files anyway, I mirrored it and built Birch Crown and Fairer Crown alongside one another. I was so excited in fact that I got Fairer Crown to a more finished state by my deadline, with images from game-icons.net for each suit - no such luxury for Birch Crown. But both versions had cardbacks and diagrams to go with the rules, and I sent the files to my local Fedex/Kinko's and printed both versions up to take to the playtesting event. I ran very low on time, and after being one of the last designers to arrive at the event, I was still cutting my cards (I had even brought a corner punch in the vain hope of rounding out all the corners before demoing, because I'm an unrealistic perpetually tardy idiot) until about twenty minutes before the judges swung around. I'm lucky there were so many games being demo'd, as I otherwise would have been very caught out indeed.
I at least made the decision to leave Fairer Crown un-cut and in my bag, focusing on presenting the game I'd actually pitched, the one that matched the sign at my table. And so, as I swept away the trimmed margins of my cards and stuffed the paper cutter and the rest of my belongings under my lone high-top bar table on the threshold of the theatre lounge, I set up The Birch Crown with the rules cards displayed, the suits lined up nicely, and a sample tableau and auction. I'd gritted my teeth and taken notes after the various rejections I'd received from game design contests, and had my pitch down to a clear, succinct minute and a half. I made sure everything could be easily demonstrated visually, and, you know, I've been an actor for twenty years, I know how to listen and not look sweaty or panicked and answer questions confidently and pleasantly. I think I presented to the Judges about as well as I could have, absent better art assets. I don't really have any regrets about the demo, though looking back I'm not sure that it was the right move to submit Birch Crown in the first place; given the mixed analog/digital nature of the event and current trends, RunTime Error may have been a smarter pitch. Birch Crown is fiddly and fussy, and people have a creeping horror of hearing even a mention of Cards Against Humanity. But all in all, while I don't think I won anything or knocked the socks off any of the judges, I still think I acquitted myself well, and I got in some good playtests of the game, and, as usual, got usable, actionable feedback. I was in a very noisy part of the theatre though, and being a one-man team I did wear out my voice quicker than most. I retired early to get Mexican food, slake my thirst, and rest the old kneecaps. I wasn't looking for publishers or kickstarter backers, and I'd already gotten good data, so I didn't feel the need to kill myself over pushing the game.
I'm pretty happy with where the game is, and I think the next steps will be pretty straightforward, and for once I feel motivated to actually take them. I've always thought this would be a good candidate for Drivethru Cards or some other POD platform, as it has some market appeal but not enough for me to pitch it far and wide, or go through the exhausting slog that is a KS campaign. I should set milestones for when I want to implement changes, as well as playtesting nights and meetings with graphics people. It might not be a bad goal for me to try and have this self-published by the end of 2019. Just so I can feel a sense of completion on something.
Anyway, here's a link to the latest version if you're curious. Enjoy!
This is a status update on the state of one of my games, following a playtest event I brought it to. That game, of course, is fan favourite: The Birch Crown.
The idea for Birch Crown came to me in, I think, the Spring of 2015? It was the Stanley Cup playoffs if I recall correctly, and after watching the hockey game at a friend's place, some people started playing Cards Against Humanity. I groused to myself that it was unfair that the two runaway leaders (a couple who were both playing and obviously knew each other's sense of humour) had the same hand size as the rest of us lowly plebs. That made me wonder about a catchup mechanic where the prizes you won and your hand size added up to one fixed figure, so that the better you did in a game, the fewer options you had. # of Black cards + # of white cards always = 7. As I love card games, I had no lack of ideas for how cards would generate points. And thus began The Birch Crown. My first working prototype of it was thrown together in Microsoft Word on my work computer at the end of 2015, and it got its first playtest (immensely clunky, immensely fruitful) with fellow designers Logan Dean, Ed Soderbeg, and Danny Bass in early 2016. I realized that the more specific a card was, the less tempting, and that it should always be fairly easy to eyeball how much a card would be worth in your tableau. The game started with seven suits of seven cards each, and I quickly started tweaking individual cards in suits, streamlining suits or throwing them out entirely, and coming up with test versions of new ones. Before its second playtest, I had made an expansion with three new suits, an AI, a coop mode, and a fun random output event-generator. Oh and again I did all this in MS Word, with images I made in Paint.
And then the game mostly sat on a shelf. I playtested it again in 2017 I think? Late 2017, on a playtest night alongside D.I.E. Interceptor and Cowl & Mask? And once again, I immediately got good, usable data that completely changed one of the expansion suits. And again, the game went back on the shelf. There were easy next steps to take with the design, but its first form had come together so quickly that it was tempting to just coast on that early push and go do first drafts on other new ideas. I submitted Birch Crown to a couple of contests, to no real reply. And my work computer also died with the Word and Paint files un-backed up, so all I had was the pdfs I'd sent around.
Toward the end of this year, with the Logan Theatre / Nerdologues Playtest Party coming up, I decided to attend for the first time (I had gotten in with D.I.E. Interceptor, but had sent the aforementioned Logan Dean as my avatar as I could not in fact be there myself) and submitted Birch Crown and Fantasy Fantasy GM GM. When asked a week before the event to pick which of the two I'd like to present, I went with the one that I'd, you know, actually built.
So last week I spent some time rebuilding from scratch a new Word doc of Birch Crown, with changes to the suits and rules folded in. I also had long toyed with the idea of adapting the game to fit in the universe of Seth Dickinson's The Traitor Baru Cormorant, so since I was making fresh files anyway, I mirrored it and built Birch Crown and Fairer Crown alongside one another. I was so excited in fact that I got Fairer Crown to a more finished state by my deadline, with images from game-icons.net for each suit - no such luxury for Birch Crown. But both versions had cardbacks and diagrams to go with the rules, and I sent the files to my local Fedex/Kinko's and printed both versions up to take to the playtesting event. I ran very low on time, and after being one of the last designers to arrive at the event, I was still cutting my cards (I had even brought a corner punch in the vain hope of rounding out all the corners before demoing, because I'm an unrealistic perpetually tardy idiot) until about twenty minutes before the judges swung around. I'm lucky there were so many games being demo'd, as I otherwise would have been very caught out indeed.
I at least made the decision to leave Fairer Crown un-cut and in my bag, focusing on presenting the game I'd actually pitched, the one that matched the sign at my table. And so, as I swept away the trimmed margins of my cards and stuffed the paper cutter and the rest of my belongings under my lone high-top bar table on the threshold of the theatre lounge, I set up The Birch Crown with the rules cards displayed, the suits lined up nicely, and a sample tableau and auction. I'd gritted my teeth and taken notes after the various rejections I'd received from game design contests, and had my pitch down to a clear, succinct minute and a half. I made sure everything could be easily demonstrated visually, and, you know, I've been an actor for twenty years, I know how to listen and not look sweaty or panicked and answer questions confidently and pleasantly. I think I presented to the Judges about as well as I could have, absent better art assets. I don't really have any regrets about the demo, though looking back I'm not sure that it was the right move to submit Birch Crown in the first place; given the mixed analog/digital nature of the event and current trends, RunTime Error may have been a smarter pitch. Birch Crown is fiddly and fussy, and people have a creeping horror of hearing even a mention of Cards Against Humanity. But all in all, while I don't think I won anything or knocked the socks off any of the judges, I still think I acquitted myself well, and I got in some good playtests of the game, and, as usual, got usable, actionable feedback. I was in a very noisy part of the theatre though, and being a one-man team I did wear out my voice quicker than most. I retired early to get Mexican food, slake my thirst, and rest the old kneecaps. I wasn't looking for publishers or kickstarter backers, and I'd already gotten good data, so I didn't feel the need to kill myself over pushing the game.
I'm pretty happy with where the game is, and I think the next steps will be pretty straightforward, and for once I feel motivated to actually take them. I've always thought this would be a good candidate for Drivethru Cards or some other POD platform, as it has some market appeal but not enough for me to pitch it far and wide, or go through the exhausting slog that is a KS campaign. I should set milestones for when I want to implement changes, as well as playtesting nights and meetings with graphics people. It might not be a bad goal for me to try and have this self-published by the end of 2019. Just so I can feel a sense of completion on something.
Anyway, here's a link to the latest version if you're curious. Enjoy!
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