Act of Treason: Direct To Your Door!

I have the tendency to pontificate. So, allow me to get right to the point.

I’ll be releasing Act of Treason for open play testing.

You read that right. I’ll be releasing Act of Treason for open testing. As many of you know, I’ve been developing Act of Treason for over 5 years now. I am very confident of how solid Act of Treason is, so why open play testing?

Why?

• Additional Marketing: Marketing has always been a large hurdle for me and for Act of Treason. Everything else has been polished and tucked away. It is my last and only hurdle  - hence the open playtesting. I figure it’s a great way to get the game out there, and get some marketing going. If people like it, it will spread organically.
• For The Fans: I have a lot of pride in Act of Treason, and I wanted to see it through to the end. Over the years, my interest in becoming a game designer has waned somewhat. I still want to make games, but I cannot dedicate as much time to it as I would like. It doesn’t help that getting Act of Treason across the line has been so difficult. I’m not complaining, it is what it is. I would never want to lock Act of Treason away from the world. Act of Treason has already cost me thousands in time and money. Some of that is my own doing - again, not complaining. It is what it is. I’d just as soon release Act of Treason and make no money than not release it at all. This is a thank you to all of those who were fans of the game, and who waited for it so patiently, and so eagerly, for so long. Thank you. I hope it was worth the wait.
• Feedback: While it will be unlikely that I’ll be making any sweeping changes, it will be great to get feedback on the game, and potentially improve it further still from where it sits currently. Every little bit helps, so feel free to share your thoughts. To that end I will provide feedback forms as well as an email address for feedback. All feedback will be reviewed and potentially incorporated into the official Kickstarter release.

An example Printout

When?

I’ve managed to overshoot timeline estimates in the past. Things crop up that I cannot control, and I have to adjust my schedule accordingly. So I am reluctant to post a firm date. However, I will aim for the first week of December. It would be great to get it out to you all before the Christmas and New Years holidays, giving you ample time to prepare a game to play over the holidays with family and friends. 

I’ll be removing the art, tweaking some of the rules and images used in the rules and on the cards. In addition I’ll need to make sure everything is set on the website, mailing list, and with Gamecrafter, in order for a smooth transition into a public trial. It’s a bit of work, but I imagine I should be able to get it done in time.

Where?

You’ll be able to get the game in two core ways:

• Print and Play: Sign up to the mailing list and you’ll get a link to download the Act of Treason print and play PDF. I’ve had to remove all card art from the game, as I do not have permission to use it for this purpose. The print and play will be roughly 20 A4 pages + rulebook. It includes standard Magic: The Gathering sized cards, which can easily be sleeved, and a few larger printouts to make up the board, which had to be cut up into sections in order to fit onto A4. This trial edition, once released, will be available indefinitely.
• Gamecrafter: I don’t like excluding those who might not have access to a printer. For those who may be willing to pay a little extra for the convenience of not having to cut up 20 pages worth of cards, I have decided to offer a printed trial edition of Act of Treason for a limited time. It is essentially the same as the print and play, but professionally printed and delivered to your door for your convenience. How much will this service cost? Don’t know yet, but I’m not trying to profit from this, and I don't want to charge people retail prices for what is effectively a trail copy. I will seek to make the cost as cheap as possible, but bear in mind that a large part of the cost will be determined by The GameCrafter, which is the service I'll be using.
  Edit (2018/01/06): I would love to offer this service, but after some research it's sadly not viable as an option. However I am happy to offer a copy to reviewers for the purpose of evaluating. If this is you, you can contact me here.

I think that about raps it up. I look forward to the coming months, and to your feedback.

Cheers,
 Tyson

Act of Treason Design Journal - Part 3

Why aren’t there more Examinations in the game?
I’ve deliberately put many opportunities to gain Examination Blocking and few opportunities for players to examine other players in Act of Treason for very good reason. If too much information is given out as to the loyalty of the players then the mystery and tension of the game is stripped away. Players can narrow down the suspects and simply make a plan to win, eliminating those they need to - there is no more unknown - The fun gets sucked right out of the game almost instantly and the game becomes an accounting exercise to wrap up an who wins.

If you know too much, then Act of Treason is no longer a game of intrigue and deception, and the whole point of the game is lost. I’ve witnessed this effect many times during my early playtests, and because of this, I’d rather have too few examinations than too many. You need to keep the suspense of who is who right up until the very end of the game for the maximum fun.

As it currently stands. Act of Treason has a good balance. You won't get too many examinations to reveal too much, and it's highly likely you'll get one or two - enough to encourage suspicion, interaction, and added conflict.

Why are there lots of ways to get Examination Blocks?
Sort of the inverse question to the one above. Examination Blocks gives both the Heir and Traitors the ability to pick up these cards without being too suspicious - after all if there are so many it's tough to avoid them... right? This makes getting an Examination Block less suspicious.

Added to this, you don't want the game flooded with Examinations, as noted above. Players will have to adapt their examinations to the blocks that are currently in play - It just makes getting clear information that much more tricky, which is a plus. In my opinion, there definitely isn’t too many examination blocks. I’ve never seen full saturation of Examination Blocking - there’s always been at least one person at the table who can still be examined by the end of the game.

Depending on your loyalty, the trick is trying to get an examination block as inconspicuously as possible! At the very least you may want to try to stop others from getting them, or use the opportunity to throw suspicion on them if they do!

Why do players gain Examination Blocking if they Examine?
'Chaining' examinations is a very powerful strategy that has been used in previous editions of Act of Treason. What is 'chaining'? It’s when player A examines player B and then Player B examines Player C. By 'chaining' examinations in this manner you gain an extremely strong sense of who is who, to the point of sometimes actually knowing for certain. A can’t be lying unless C is on their team, and so forth, The larger the chain, the stronger the information. This is very bad for he game as mentioned in 'Why aren’t there more Examinations in the game?' The fun gets sucked right out if you know too much!

As an added negative, this gives examinations so much power that players were incentivised to get Examinations at any cost. Worse still, the strategy was only dominant for the loyals, and yet the Traitors would be forced to go along with it or risk exposing themselves as a Traitor! This created a terrible dominant strategy that removed all meaningful choices from the game and replaced them with "buying Examinations so that you can chain them".

Examination chaining was removed from the game early on. Now, Examinations are both scarce and they can never really be proven to be correct because 'chaining' has been removed. This keeps the mystery of the game going. In the current iteration of the game, players who examine others or who get examined gain examination blocking - this is what prevents examination chaining. I trailed this in a few games a while back and have never regretted my decision to add it to the game. This is a very good mechanic to have because it keeps distrust and intrigue going, and if anything it adds to it!

Why does the Steward get to reward a Court card if the Quest passes?
The Court is where players can go to purchase cards that give them additional powers and effects. A Court card must be purchased buy spending Knowledge. Since Knowledge is used to pass Quests, players will be lowering the chance of the passing the Quest that round, and potentially subsequent rounds.

This has mostly been covered in parts 1 and 2, but simply put, the Court is restricted to put a limit to the amount of damage that players can do when acquiring cards from court - knowledge spent on court card can't be used to pass Quests for instance. Likewise, allowing the Steward to reward any left over cards in Court is a nice free bonus that rewards players as a group for not just buying cards outright.

Without these mechanics in play, new players have a strong tendency to purchase cards without knowing why it’s the wrong time to buy, or what it means. Then some new players may blame the game rather than realise the fault was with them. With these mechanics in place as well as the tips in the rulebook, players are more likely to build up the understanding that buying without solid reason is the reason for their downfall, not the game or anything else.

Why are the Quests ordered?
This is highly related to the point above, and why it is recommended that advanced players play with the Quests unordered and randomised.

For beginning players, playing with ordered Quests is somewhat like playing with training wheels. In blind playtesting some players would leap into tactics that were quite destructive without realizing. This could lead to them blaming the game for their actions, not realizing that they were "playing the game wrong". Now as a designer I don't believe players can play a game wrong, so I needed to provide a clearer incentive and push for players to play in such a way  I covered this before with the social contract as discussed before.

I've found that using ordered Quests help to keep the kingdom nice and controlled in the early game, with some of the more dangerous cards coming out near the end game to help facilitate conflict. This guides players into the the social contract and tactics that keep the game on course. When the Quests are unordered, players will have to organise themselves to ensure that they stay on track and that Quest and the Court cards aren't misused by the other players.

Why do you have a Deception Phase?
I've played a lot of games both with and without a Deception Phase, and with many different groups. The consensus is that including the deception phase is more fun and allows for more tactics with your Traitor friend. That said you don't have to include it as stated in the rule book. Optional rules exist that allow you to play without it. In fact for the five player game it's mandatory that you play without it.  Both ways of playing are equally viable, and in my opinion.

Why do you not reveal Loyalties after a player dies?
This keeps the suspense of the game going until the very end of the game. As discussed above, revealing too much can take away the suspense, and locking down a players loyalty after they die so that they cannot be examined adds yet another factor into if killing them is a good idea.

Tune in next time for the following:

Why is the Quest phase before the Action Phase?

Why do you discard down to 4 Knowledge cards each round?

Why is the cost of Court cards variable?

Why is there a Town Watch?

Are the Court cards balanced?

It seems way too tough for the Traitors/Loyals to win Tribute/the game?

Why do you not reveal Loyalties after a player dies?

Development Diary #9 - Less than 24 Hours to go

Hey Y’all,

Under 24 hours to go until Act of Treason launches on Kickstarter. It all just feels so surreal.

The Update

Let me take you through some of what I’ve been up:

• Updating the Act of Treason website (playaot.com) and prepping it for the Kickstarter launch. It’s mostly new art assets and concept images, but the biggest update was adding the rules for Act of Treason, which are all sitting online now at www.playaot.com/rules.
• Created a press release, and sent it around to various bloggers and board game related news sites.
• Act of Treason is now up on Board Game Geek. If you've played it, feel free to create an account and post up your review.
• The Kickstarter page has seen a ton of work and is looking very swish now. I’ve included a mixture of text and what I’ve been calling “long tiles”, which are basically just images. I call them long tiles because they are tiled down the page and are typically quite long. A fair bit of work went into Photoshop to make sure they all look good and they covered all the needed information.
• I created my own company called Saffron Entertainment. It doesn’t have an identity of itself yet, or website, or anything really - right now it’s basically a holding company for Act of Treason, but it will be getting its own unique personality & all the frills sometime after the KS launch.
• Prepared some blog posts to come out before and during the campaign. A recent one went up for those who are interested in learning more about me and my future projects. You can read it here. Also, expect posts to come up soon for both The Dominant Strategy as well as parts 3 and 4 of the Design Journal.
• I created an Act of Treason video with some basic animation for the KS page. It's embedded below. It took me roughly three days out of a planned two. First was getting the VO right, cutting out the background noise proved both necessary and more difficult than I had anticipated. That was most of Day 1. Days 2 and 3 where on the visuals, first half and second half respectively. I had most planned out ahead of time, but winged a couple of parts when I arrived at them. I think it’s important to stay adaptable for situations like that - you can sometimes stumble upon an easier and/or better solution if you stay flexible and open to it.

Personal Stuff

So about two weeks ago, windows decided to push updates on me really hard, and so I decided to go ahead with them. The next thing after I boot back into windows - my screens are glitching out and artifacting, flashing gray for a frame or two. Thanks Windows update! I trouble shoot to try resolve it via updates etc, but it keeps happening. The graphics card is the likely culprit - Gigabyte GTX980Ti for the tech nerds out there who are interested. So I decided to take my graphics card out and clean it. That's when I notice that it's boiling hot. I'm beginning to suspect overheating.

Sure enough I clean the card to remove the dust and then when I plug it back in I find out the fans either aren't spinning, or are making weird noises when they do spin. Sure enough, shortly after plugging in the card the fan falls off and I'm getting the artifacts again. I jam a large fan next to the case for a while until I can get my hands on a replacement - it actually worked too! No more artifacts while I had that setup. The culprit fan must have not been spinning for a while, or something came loose with it? Who knows. All I know is that I'm down one boss graphics card. RIP.

My makeshift cooling setup

Now I'm running my brothers old card, about the same power as an Xbox360 gfx card. While I wait for gigabyte to examine the card under warranty. The timing is just great as you might imagine. Right as the Kickstarter campaign is about to begin. Oh well, could be worse. I mean I could have had my hard drive fail with all my Act of Treason stuff. Instead I just had my hard drive fail with all my old movies and TV shows. Yes, you read that right - one of my hard drives failed like a few days ago! Afterwards I Immediately rushed and backed up my entire Act of Treason folder. At least I can still work and all my files are alright. That's the main thing. It is genuinely painful to work on some of my files now however. Even slightly large Google Docs documents are laggy at times!

Okay Google

So when I first started prepping Act of Treason for Kickstarter, I knew I wanted to have a website dedicated to Act of Treason. One of the things that really got stuck in my craw was that my website wasn’t appearing on google unless you typed in something very specific like “Act of Treason board game” - even then I don't think it was top of the page. Back then, typing in just “Act of Treason” had my website on page 5 or something, which might as well been tantamount to it not existing.

I’m proud to announce that when I typed “Act of Treason” into google today I got the following:

3rd result, not bad! And when I type in “Act of Treason board game” the results are even better still! It just feels good to make progress on something like that, especially when it has mostly resolved itself.

Learning From Mistakes

I was going through the Kickstarter, typing up the "Risks and challenges" section. For the unfamiliar, this is an area that sits at the bottom of your Kickstarter page. It is for the project creator to explain: "The risks and challenges that come with completing your project, and how the project creator is qualified to overcome them."

A rather important section for some projects and for backers too. It helps set the stage for what could go wrong and should be used by the creator to honestly reflect on where they could become stuck, which allows the backers to make a informed decision about the level of risk they are willing to take on.

In typing up that section, it made me realize something: It’s all about trust.

Trust is a huge part of any business interaction. If you don’t trust whom you’re dealing with, it’s unlikely that you’ll give them any money in exchange for a good or service. Why? Because you can’t be sure of the level of quality you’ll get, or that you’ll get the product or service you asked for. Heck, you could potentially not get the product or service at all. Any number of things can go wrong in a business situation, and not having trust and confidence in whom you’re conducting business with means that you might not get the outcome you want. Trust means you're confident that you'll come out okay, even when things go wrong.

Now, with all that in mind, I need to come clean about something that has been buging me.

This was not a great promotion I ran. I’m going to peg this one up to me not being so great at marketing - but even then I should have known better! Some of the things I mention in my post when I first revealed this are just straight up wishful thinking. It just wasn’t very grounded of me. I’m going to unpack it a little here for you so you can learn from my mistake. 

Let's start with the reward of this promotion - doubling the marketing and art budgets. My rationale at the time makes some sense:

“I wanted a reward that didn't detract from the product and divert attention or effort elsewhere. I also wanted a reward that all backers could enjoy. A reward that would be fair to all backers. This reward is in line with my main concern - making the best game possible.”

While I stand by this rationale, the biggest issue with the reward is that it’s vague, and not very tangible or salable. What does "double the budget" actually mean? Having values such as an increase of $4,000 for both would have been much clearer and more transparent. But even then, that’s not a very salable reward. No one is going to get excited when you tell them that they should sign up to a mailing list because they then get to increase the numbers on somebody's else budget.

A better reward would be in line with all the rationale I laid out above, while at the same time being  more tangible, salable and clear. I would give you an example, but if I could do that I would have run a better promotion in the first place. Something like adding a new card or two into the game kind of works, but that comes with it's own cost. I for one am very dubious of any Kickstarter game when they do this - offer to increase the components or mechanics of the game as a stretch goal or bonus. I wonder, "why am I not getting the most complete/best product when the idea is already out there and tested?", and "Doesn't adding/removing that component upset the balance of the game?" Both fair questions.

Another smaller mistake, but a mistake none the less, is that I should have taken a different tact with the x3 mailing list “rule” worked into this promotion. I should have only applied a 1 for 1 across all social media accounts, OR only included the mailing list in the promotion. Having mailing list sign ups count for x3 followers is a confusing and convoluted message.

In marketing, I think you should treat everything that you do like you’re playing Chinese whispers - if it can be miscommunicated, it probably will. You should always aim for the clearest and most impactful message you can as this has the greatest distance - a convoluted message won’t travel very far. This is one reason that memes have the spread that they do. They are a short snappy highly shareable idea or message that provides some level of value - The messages you give out to the public should be almost like memes. Clear, short, snappy and valuable. If you can do that, then the message will share itself. In hindsight I should have gone with email signups only for a clearer message.

But by far the biggest error I made was the amount of followers needed for the promotion to be successful. 4,000!? Are you serious? In my defense, I figured that if they were to all be email sign ups which is what I was pushing for the real number is ~1,333. Added to this I already had quite a few signups which made the number of signups I needed less still. But having such a large number as the goal would have made me look like I was living in a dream world - and let's be honest, in some sense I was.

I did see an increase in the email signups at the start of the promotion. I want to thank my supporters for that, but I’m sure it’s much less than it would be had I included a sensible goal, focused purely on e-mail signups, and had a much clearer, salable, and tangible reward for hitting the goal. My bad.

As it turns out, after doing some more calculations and juggling the budget, you’ll be getting some of this reward for free anyway. I really want to see the final product have great art, even at the lowest possible funding goal. So the minimum Art budget for Act of Treason has been tweaked to just under double of what it was to ensure this. The marketing playbook has also had some rework to allow for easy scaling. I might not be doing more marketing spending, but I most certainly will if the advertising has good hit and conversion rates.

Please don’t make the same mistakes I did - focus on simplicity & clarity. Run your ideas past someone first who will be willing to challenge you.

----

That about covers it. I look forward to the post Kickstarter blog write up where I can break down what went right (or what went wrong).

See you on the other side.

Cheers,

 Tyson

Music of the Week

Facebook | Twitter

Development Diary #8

Hey Y'all,

Merry Christmas and I hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season!

Only 43 days until Act of Treason is up on Kickstarter! I'm currently rushing, making sure all the i's are dotted and the t's are crossed. This week I'll be talking about the most recent Act of Treason review by Unfiltered Gamer, the website update, social media, and other sundry miscellaneous thingys.

Unfiltered Gamer - Act of Treason Review

I'll start with the most awesome news - Unfiltered Gamer has reviewed Act of Treason, and from the sounds of it they really liked it! For those of you who don't know Unfiltered Gamer is an independent 3rd party board game reviewer. They often review games that are going up on Kickstarter to help people get to know if the game is for them. Overall I loved the review and I'm very happy with it. You can watch it below.

In addition, Unfiltered Gamer will be doing a live play of Act of Treason on Wednesday the 17th of January PST. This is the best opportunity to check it out and see what AoT is all about before the launch date ! You can watch the livestream at the Unfiltered Gamers Facebook Page. Be sure to sign up so that you get notified when it's on!

Website Update

With the new video from Unfiltered Gamer I wanted to slap on an update to the Act of Treason website. I've added the following:

• Featured the Unfiltered Gamer review on the front page as well as on the feedback page.
• Revealed more rules for Act of Treason in the Rules section.
• A few other small tweaks and Quality of Life improvements here and there.

Social Media Promotion

I just wanted to say a big thank you to everyone who is signing up to the Kickstarter mailing list. I've already seen a notable increase to the number of subscribers there. It has more than doubled since the 8th of November, which I'm pretty ecstatic about, which brings us to a solid ~700 followers. We're well on our way folks!

As some of you may know where currently running a promotion whereby if we get enough followers before the Kickstarter launch date on the 10th of Feb we'll be boosting the art/marketing budget. I think 4,000 followers may have been a bit high in hindsight, but it's still very much possible! If we can make a sizable dent in it then I'll definitely consider giving a small bonus as a reward even if we don't hit the 4k goal.

I'll be working hard to make sure that we try to collectively hit the 4k goal! I want to be able to make the best product possible and 4k would make for a very stable foundation indeed.

If you know any podcasters or 3rd party reviewers who might be interested in covering Act of Treason to help get the word out please do let me know in the comments or you can contact me directly.

Miscellaneous

I'm not sure if I've shared it yet, but here is the final prototype all boxed up. The art is subject to change, and the components might be altered a bit, but at this stage the mechanics are all pretty much locked down.

That's Emilien Rotivals artwork featured on the back an front of the box. Great artist, you can find more of his work over at theartysquid.com.

Frontside of Box

Backside of Box

For those of you who may have missed it, the first article of The Dominant Strategy is up. It's called 'What Makes Games Fun?' In it I explore the various reasons why we enjoy games and give some color to how a game designer might use this information to inform your design choices. If you're interested in game design, feel free to give it a read here.

I think that about covers it for this week.

Cheers,
 Tyson

Music of the week