Daniel Solis

I often rely on set collection for my early prototypes. It's such a simple, satisfying framework to motivate players and give clear goals. The problem is how often set collection becomes a rote, emotionless task list to complete. The theme of the set collection is what set makes it more appealing to new players. An evocative theme suggests secondary mechanisms that help fill out the rest of the game. Here are a few themes I've used or seen over the years. Recipes and Shopping Lists Welcome to Stabbed! Impress the chefs, follow the recipes, and you won't be stabbed! This is by far the most common usage of set collection. Players are tasked with collecting certain amounts or combinations of resources. Then they're rewarded with a certain number of points. That straightforward transactional structure is certainly useful when the rest of the game is rather complex, but it doesn't necessarily suggest fun secondary mechanisms. I got around this in Junk Orbit by making th...

I'm in the process of updating Monsoon Market to make it more suitable for publisher pitches. I still enjoy this little game, but a few wrinkles have shown more prominently over the years of feedback and I am taking this opportunity to smooth them out. Check out the current live rules doc here. There haven't been any changes to the cards themselves, so if you own a POD copy already you're still good. It's mainly procedural tweaks and streamlining. Bonus Goods are spent, no longer permanent. When you spend a good, you note its expenditure by upgrading the Order to silver. Replenish the Market or Orders display at the end of your turn instead of immediately. You only get Bonus Actions if you fulfill an Order at Gold or Silver accuracy. The game ends immediately when someone achieves the point threshold, but you can adjust that threshold for longer games. Hope you get a chance to test these changes at home and offer your feedback! Thanks for your suppor...

Unpub 6 is in just under a month! I'm bringing almost all of my self-published games to pitch and present, but here are 6 games I'd like to highlight in particular. You may have seen my last post on the subject of "sale sheets" or "summary sheets" , but I've since expanded this to a whole series of at-a-glance summaries for handing out to publishers. Curse You, Robin Hood! You’re a merchant of Sherwood Forest trying to get rich while dodging those thieving Merry Men. Get as much treasure as possible, but not so much that Robin Hood notices you as a target! Koi Pond A zenlike, fast-flowing card game. Collect colorful koi fish and keep your pond as balanced as possible. Monsoon Market In 1405, a Chinese emissary sails the Indian Ocean, reporting the quality of each market along the way. It’s time to get busy! Earn a reputation for accurate orders or rush off any old goods in bulk. It’s a race to earn the fastest fortune in the Monso...

Good news, everyone! Monsoon Market is now available from DriveThruCards! I've been working on this game in various iterations for a long time and I'm glad to see it finally seeing the light of day. This is also my first experiment with early bird pricing. Here's the deal: Each new release will be deeply discounted until the next release comes out, however long that takes. So from now until my next game, Monsoon Market costs a clean $9.99. Get it now!

Heyo! Monsoon Market is almost ready to go to DriveThruCards, but I wanted to get some more eyeballs on the rules cards first before I push the big button. Can you take a look at this very short PDF and see if the rules all make sense to you?

Here's a quick preview of the art in Monsoon Market, the game of fast fortunes on the Indian Ocean. It's a time of peace and profit! There is abundant trade between East Africa and China, and whoever runs a port city can get rich quick. The game is a race is to get fifteen seals of approval from Zheng He, the Chinese Imperial mariner visiting every port on the Monsoon Market. You earn seals by using Gems, Books, Peppers, Silks, Leathers, and Wood to fulfill orders as they come into your port. The first four goods come in quantities of 1, 2, 3, or 4. Several of the 1s are actually hybrid cards, which may be used as either of two goods, but still only a quantity of 1. Leather is always in a quantity of 3 and Wood is always a quantity of 4, but no orders ever specifically call for these basic commodities. There are three levels of accuracy with which you can complete an order. For the gold rate, you must spend the exact types of goods in at least the quantity noted...

Over the weekend, I revised my Unpub prototype of Monsoon Market the old-fashioned way, by hand. I cut, taped, glued, markered, and sleeved up this mess until it was a tight little package. What I realized from earlier tests is that I was testing too many variables at once. Rarity: I had a weird multi-triangular distribution for resource cards, which pre-supposed rarity for certain resources. Four available at random in a starting market. Demand: A randomized deck of Order cards which could be purchased with specific combinations of resources. Three of which are visible at any time. Supply: Four random resource cards in each player's tableau at the start of the game. I needed to streamline this a bit just so that the random shuffling and revealing of two separate decks provided the grease for the engine. That's a lesson from my recent play of Splendor , which was just nominated for an SdJ. Compounding that randomness with a weird distribution made things just a littl...

Monsoon Market at UnPub Mini at Atomic Empire was great! Matt and Marcy Wolfe organized it way better than I did last year. (They had a raffle!) There were at least double the designers and double the playtesters. I had about a dozen individual playtesters across ten playtests. It really helps to have a short game at UnPub. Players get a tantalizing taste of gameplay and sometimes want to play a second or third time. That was really good data. Some changes I made based on feedback, which I still need to finalize and clean up with further testing tonight. Make points lower and rounder: In the first few tests, winning scores were in the high 70s. No one wants to do an arithmetic test after a light strategy game, so I'm cutting those down to the high 20s. No Bonuses...: Bonuses work best in slightly longer engine-building games. Because this game can end in as few as five rounds, there wasn't much time to actually score anything for bonuses. ...Only Actions: ...

(Photo: Playtesting Monsoon Market with Alec Nelson, Jon Bolding, and Joanna Bolding) Monsoon Market will be at the upcoming UnPub Mini at Atomic Empire in Durham, NC! I've got the core mechanics pretty much ready to go for the event, I just really need some play-hours to refine the point values and distributions. The basic gameplay is pretty familiar to most trading game fans. You've got several types of goods in your display (your tableau) and in your storage (your hand). There is a central lane of three Order cards, representing boats who have come to port to fulfill orders. There is a central market tableau of goods cards, too. On your turn, you can: Trade any goods cards from your display for an equal number of cards from an opponent's display. Steal one goods card from an opponent's display.* Buy goods cards from the central market. Discard a goods card. Its rank is the number of cards you can take from the market.* Fulfill orders and take Orde...

Here's a quick preview of the art I'm putting together for the cards in Monsoon Market . I was really inspired by the style of Jamini Roy, so I tried my hand at emulating his geometric and quasi-cubist rendering in vector. Specifically, I wanted to try my hand at the radial symmetry of traditional playing card art. My aim at the moment is to have four different goods as a primary suit depicted by the top icon and unique piece of art; varying quantities of coins based on rarity, which may also tie into color schemes or a background pattern; and maaaybe a tiebreaker letter if it becomes necessary in playtests. I've hired another designer to do the icons for me so those are just placeholders in her hand at the moment. Rest assured, mashed potatoes aren't a suit in the game. :)

In searching for artistic inspiration for my card game Monsoon Market, I came across the work of early Modernist Indian painter Jamini Roy . His distinctive style of large eyes, simple geometric shapes, and flat perspective still feels fresh. He also sometimes depicted Western subjects in an Indian context, which makes him sort of a post modernist, too. Maybe I like his work because it would make pretty cool playing cards, too.

The last several tests have shown me that my darling drafting/trading mechanism in Monsoon Market just isn't working out the way I hoped. It might work another time, for another theme... but for this game, it's just gotta be put aside. The main issue was that the mechanism just played itself. Choices were too simple and rote. Any way I could think to make the drafting more interesting just tread well-worn ground already covered by Sushi Go , Among the Stars , or 7 Wonders . The Good Stuff However, the Boom/Bust cycle actually works out really well. It makes some nice ebb and flow in commodity values. So I need to find a more interesting method of card acquisition, one that remains simple enough for a light strategy experience, but deep enough that even a two-player game is satisfying. So I'm thinking about a shift in perspective. Instead of each player representing their own port along the Indian Ocean trade route, they might all be playing in the same port, with...

In Nine Lives, one of the central scoring mechanisms is "scratches." You're trying to rescue stray cats without getting scratched too much. Whoever is scratched the least scores 1 point per scratch they've collected. So there is a really strong incentive to undercut other players in that set collection mechanism. The Basic Idea I'd like to explore this even further by tying it to player-controlled valuations and rarity. Here's the idea... Let's assume we have a game about rare metals and gems. Call them Gold, Silver, Diamonds, and Rubies. Each 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 of each resource will be converted to 1 point depending on how rare that resource is in a player's collection. So for example... Player with least Gold scores 1 point per Gold Player with second-least Gold scores 1 point per two Gold. Player with third-least Gold scores 1 point per three Gold. And so on, with the same structure for all other resources. So Bob might really value Gold...

See my previous posts on this game about the pre-European trade ties between Swahili coastal nations and dynastic China through Indian Ocean trade routes. I swear it's less dry than it sounds. The basic idea remains a card drafting game with a twist: At the beginning of the game, you have a hand of cards much like in 7 Wonders or Sushi Go, but you also have a personalized Ship card in your hand that is in your player-color. You also have a personalized tableau representing your port. To play, players pass their hand to the left and trade one card from the new ship for one card from their port, then pass again. Thus, each hand remains the same size throughout play and eventually ships will return to their home port, carrying an eclectic mix of cargo. One problem with this idea is that the tableau is public information, so savvy players may see what an opponent is giving up from their tableau, then change their mind about their own trade. This little dance could continue in...

Playtested a bit more of Train Town and Monsoon Market this week. Many thanks to folks who helped playtest! If you're in town and interested, swing by to Atomic Empire in Durham, NC most monday nights and you can see whatever weird idea I've cooked up that week. Train Town was more of a polish to check if the condition cards made sense as written. The rules themselves and the scoring mechanics were solid. There was some procedural clarification necessary, making sure that condition cards were used at the end of a turn, thus after the scoring phase. Also it seemed the 2x2 formation was better as a starter board since it was easier to track the paths from point A to point B. A 3x3 formation led to bigger point swings as each player could cover exponentially more territory with one clever placement. I may also make the endgame condition when either the condition deck or the path deck runs out. Keeping it only the path deck made the game run a bit too long for a light ...

I've playtested Monsoon Market Prototype B a few times now. It turned out to be waaaay too balanced. Ties happen all the time. It seems that any random deal across three rounds will result in some score around 20ish. That's great for new players who don't like getting thwomped in the first game, but sucks for any experienced players who find no way to break out of the pack. But first, a recap: Monsoon Market is a drafting game set in the Indian Ocean trade network during the middle ages, before European contact. Players have a public tableau, called their Port, featuring several goods cards. Each players also have a hand of goods cards, called their Ship. Each turn, the ships sail to a neighboring port (hands pass to the left). Then each player may trade one goods card from her port for a goods card from the ship currently at her port. When the round is over, each player's ships return to their home port with whatever cargo they've collected in their jo...

This morning I woke up with a pretty killer playtest hangover. It's that mixed feeling of excitement, self-doubt, enthusiasm and despair after a playtest with less than steller results. In this particular case, I playtested Monsoon Market [Prototype B] and Espionage [Prototype E]. Monsoon Market went pretty well, with positive response from the small sample size and only some minor streamlining changes to the core gameplay.  I'm eager to test this again with different groups to get a more well-rounded sense of direction. Espionage remains a cypher, as microgames tend to be. A good microgame is a sharp, multifaceted jewel. Alas, Espionage is still a rough lump of ore. Tactics were unclear, overall goals were muddled, and I was perhaps too eager about making it a six player game.  Playtests offered a lot of ideas though, which is very helpful. Once I've had a chance to polish off the rough spots again, I think I'll go public with Prototype F. Games Need Sun to ...

MONSOON MARKET - PROTOTYPE B [Card Drafting & Auction, 3-7 Players, 30 Min.] Wahoo! Monsoon Market is finally ready for outside playtesting. To recap, Monsoon Market is the card-drafting auction game inspired by the Seven Voyages of Zheng He , the medieval Chinese fleet admiral who sailed across the Indian Ocean trade network that extended as far as southeast Africa. This is a great place and time for a euro-style board game. The three or four hundred years prior to European contact was relatively peaceful in the trade network. Sure, you had the occasional pirate attack, but all in all a traveling merchant could get quite wealthy in relative safety. Even the seasonal winds were predictable enough that you could calculate departure and arrival within a few days. Amidst this time of prosperity, Zheng He traveled with a fleet of treasure ships collossal in number and size. According to accounts and archeological evidence, these ships vessels dwarfed anything to come for hund...

Art students in the renaissance would often be instructed to directly copy the work of classical masters. The idea was that by following their brush strokes, the student would examine their techniques beyond the surface detail. With that foundation, the student can go on to produce original work. I thought I'd give that a shot here while tinkering with Monsoon Market. See my previous post on Monsoon Market from way back in January. To recap, players run sea ports along the independent Indian Ocean trade routes that extend from Africa to China for hundreds of years before European contact. It's an evocative theme with familiar elements in an unfamiliar setting. Just what I like. It's always more difficult working from a blank slate, so just to get things started it can be useful to make variants for existing games. In this case, I needed a deck of cards that had variable quantities and thus variable set values. The Bohnanza deck was just the thing! So here's my...

I just recently watched the entirety of Crash Course World History, which is an excellent overview of the cool aspects of world history that your high school teacher forgot to tell you about. Most interesting to me were the episodes on Zheng He (the Chinese Muslim eunuch admiral of the largest fleet of treasure ships the world had ever seen) and the preceding episode on the Indian Ocean trade networks that Zheng He navigated. These networks were a long-standing series of sailing routes extending from the east coast of Africa all the way to China, and it was all so well-timed according to the monsoon cycle that you could plan departures and arrivals with an accuracy of a day or two. Zheng He sailed these routes over the course of seven voyages to establish trade agreements with the major trading centers of the era. This of course makes me wonder why there are dozens of Mediterranean seafaring themed games but relatively few (if any) concerning the "Monsoon Market." Y...