Spardo's page

Yes, I've started my own discussion thread.

My primary question here is based on the fact that I've categorized Artifakes as a "humor" game, and that I'm not sure that's the proper categorization. The game does involve some strategy, and is built around a pretty humorous premise. But does categorizing it as a "humor" game deter Stonehenge gamers from trying a game out at all, or should it have been a strategy game that just happens to be funny?

I've just published my first Stonehenge Anthology Game (called Artifakes), and I'm now curious as to whether there's a way to see how many times the rules have been viewed or downloaded. I'm mostly just curious as to whether anyone's interested in my game from a pure numbers perspective.

Granted, after posting and downloading a PDF of my rules, I noticed that many of the punctuation marks I had typeset dropped out of the PDF... so I wound up going through eight or nine rounds of edits, revisions and re-saves of the file, so I'm certain that if a "download count" were available, my numbers would be hideously skewed.

Is it possible that the counts would be rendered meaningless if people were to "spam" their own rules sets to spike their counts? Sure, but what's the point? I'm really only interested in how often my game - eventually games plural - is being checked out, and as such, spamming my own count would be pretty counterproductve.

I'm about halfway with you on the redesigned disks idea; I actually like the disks that come with the game as they are stylistcally, but I keep thinking that ten just aren't enough. Perhaps alternate disks are a good idea, but I'd hesitate to make them match the size of the original disks simply because getting one stuck in a trithilon would suck a lot. If anything, I'd make the chips thinner than the disks, make their radius slightly larger than the disks (size of an American quarter perhaps?), and emboss a symbol on either side – sun/moon – that would have a radius equal to the disk. That way a chip could be placed atop a trithilon and stay in place, and it could also represent a trithilon in day or night state.

Aside- is it odd that we're now discussing ways to expand upon the tools of the game without actually discussing new games for the pieces? Not that I'm looking for an immediate answer, it's more hypothetical, but something about this feels like creating new tools to be sold in a hardware store, and not having a purpose in mind for them... and I'm enjoying it.

Stonehenge Dice? Any idea how those would be done? Do you have a black and white die each have the numbers 1-30 and the numbers on the side match the colors on the board/card?

A black 30-sider and a white 30-sider ain't a bad idea. Hadn't actually thought of those. I was actually starting with just your everyday, basic cubes.

I would imagine that one die would show one of the six colors on each side. Assuming your suggestion for grouping colors and assigning letters (A-E) is adopted, I'd probably also include a die that showed the letters A through E and a trithilon on the sixth side. If we were to go so far as to include a 10-sided die, you could show the five basic colored disks and the five basic colored bars, though this would likely become obsolete or irrelevant once the expansions featuring pieces for extra players (beyond the fifth) become popular.

Of course, we could also just get wacky and include a handful of poker-chip type "coins", one for day/night randomization, one for disk/bar randomization, and the ultimate coin that just says "win" and "lose" (which could just be one really lame game all on it's own).

Hello everyone. I have getting a design bug for games based around the cards in Stonehenge. I am thinking that a deluxe version of the Stonehenge deck would be worth selling...

...Anyone feedback anyone can provide here on this?

I'm all for the larger sized cards, simply because the small ones just don't seem like they're going to weather repeated shuffling. Mine are two weeks old and already getting pretty beat.

I think that many of your suggestions would add many interesting new angles to Stonehenge games, and I think that selling the Deluxe Deck separately is a smart move. That way, those of us who already own the original Stonehenge box won’t have to purchase an entire new “system”.

Your suggestion opens up other “option packages” that could easily be sold separately at nice, cheap “impulse buy” prices. A Deluxe Deck might sell for about twelve dollars. A set of special Stonehenge dice could probably go for 7-10 bucks. Other novelty/specialty pieces could be purchased and integrated as the game evolves, and players of Stonehenge variants would have the freedom to pick and choose based on the games they want to play or create.

Consider that a thumbs up.