JCL (@clearclaw) header
JCL (@clearclaw) profile picture

JCL

@clearclaw

Maker of Makers, Questioner of Questions, These are a few of my favourite things.

 37.891418, -122.086472
kanga.nu/~claw/
Joined February 2008
  • Tweets5.9K
  • Following2
  • Followers516
392Media
Photo by JCL (@clearclaw)Photo by JCL (@clearclaw)Photo by JCL (@clearclaw)Photo by JCL (@clearclaw)Photo by JCL (@clearclaw)Photo by JCL (@clearclaw)Photo by JCL (@clearclaw)Photo by JCL (@clearclaw)Photo by JCL (@clearclaw)Photo by JCL (@clearclaw)
Goodbye.
199
New game-shopping method: Oh look, a game! (Box is covered in bright saturated colours) Opens box. (Components are covered in bright saturated colours) Pass. (Your retinas will thank you)
2
1
1
1,461
First stab at listing #18xx in which companies may reasonably buy a private owned by another player: - 1828: CanPac & CStL (track point & avoid sabotage). - 1839: HIJSM & LvG (get key token). - 1870: Any of several companies buying the Bridge (cross the Mississippi). Any more?
1
526
Two 3-player games of 1839 today, each called just as the permanents were breaking as the outcome was mostly clear (the loser was completely clear in both, winner only mostly clear). Pictures and other commentary: tabletop.social/@jcl/1099127… #18xx
J C Lawrence (@jcl@tabletop.social)

J C Lawrence (@[email protected])

Attached: 4 images Two 3-player games of 1839 today, each called just as the permanents were breaking as the outcome was mostly clear (the loser was completely clear in both, winner only mostly...

tabletop.social
1
390
#18xx track-tile upgrades tend simple: any strict superset. How about: - City upgrades that add station slots but reduce revenue. Or: - City upgrades that increase revenue but reduce station slots (if all stations still fit -- ergo extra tokens can limit future upgrades). ?
382
Doubling the train ranks & making them half-width has been illuminating beyond expectation. However, the roster I'm using for 1839 is...asides from playing a bit with pacing in brown...basically linear. Now I'm wondering about playing with framing. #18xx tabletop.social/@jcl/1095764…

J C Lawrence (@[email protected])

Doubling the train ranks & making them half-width has been illuminating beyond expectation. However, the roster I'm using for 1839 is..asides from playing a bit with pacing in brown...basically...

tabletop.social
1
1
420
What if I play with the rusting cadence (AKA pacing) and framing all together. It is so tempting! This is both not where I'd wanted 1813 (the real name of SekritProject) to go, and exactly what I'd intended for 1813. #18xx tabletop.social/@jcl/1095764…

J C Lawrence (@[email protected])

Doubling the train ranks & making them half-width has been illuminating beyond expectation. However, the roster I'm using for 1839 is..asides from playing a bit with pacing in brown...basically...

tabletop.social
1
1
342
The rest of the discussion will be on Mastodon: tabletop.social/@jcl/1095764…

J C Lawrence (@[email protected])

Doubling the train ranks & making them half-width has been illuminating beyond expectation. However, the roster I'm using for 1839 is..asides from playing a bit with pacing in brown...basically...

tabletop.social
1
261
Twitter has moved engagement metrics to the top UI from several clicks down. Bad design: pushing derived rather than primary values. Thing is...I only care if the number is larger or smaller than, umm, about 5. Everything over is noise; anything under that indicates a problem.
243
Lateral #18xx game design noodling: https://tabletop social/@gpage/109512029158825962 (Apologies for the masked URL -- put a . between tabletop and social -- Twitter is blocking posting links to Toots)
1
244
Musing: The nice thing about 1830-style privates is that their value is mostly dependent on the other players. In this, special-power privates are less interesting in that their values are more dependent on their owner's execution than combative interaction. #18xx
1
1
Design questions: a) What are other meaningfully different types of privates? b) How can their effective valuations be made a function more of opponent's play than personal execution? #18xx
1
More on this (private design): #18xx tabletop.social/@jcl/1093800…

J C Lawrence (@[email protected])

@[email protected] Musing: The nice thing about 1830-style privates is that their value is mostly dependent on the other players. In this, special-power privates are less interesting in that their values...

tabletop.social
The noise surrounding Twitter is starting to exceed the noise on Twitter.
1
Mashed potatoes on Monet, tomato soup on van Gogh...is the choice of foodstuff a cryptic?
1
Generally, player-options offer improvement; the base incentives for player choices. Can that be credibly reversed? Each option degrades that player's position -- they are worse off -- while placing their opponents under even more threat (eg their choices are now even worse)?
3
3
more replies
I suspect this devolves to a sequential bin-packing problem, with the key tension on the ordering (lemme give you this thing now, before you want it) and the lumps to be bin-packed (lemme give you this wrong-sized/shaped thing to bin-pack RightNow). Tetris, but with an ~economy.
1
Which is a cute way to view the classic #18xx train rush: a sequential bin-packing problem phrased against a geometric growth curve. Doesn't seem revelatory though.
Worth reading. #18xx #gamedesign
Sebastian Deterding (@dingstweets) profile pictureSebastian Deterding@dingstweets12 Aug 2022
Game research, design, #gamestudies peers: I haven't been as intellectually excited about anything like this in a decade (maybe since SDT). In this paper, we propose a new theory for why we enjoy uncertainty in games, drawing on predictive processing. A 🧵 frontiersin.org/articles/10.…
2
4
Load more