I DO MY OWN STUNTS Update #9

 I DO MY OWN STUNTS Update #9

What's better than a handful of meeples? A handful of MORE meeples!! Let's examine the question, how many meeples are enough meeples? 

But first, let's examine the word meeple. Meeples are wooden figurative pawns originally found in German strategy games.  Heimlich & Co. (1984) was one of  games to use these wooden figure. They  are supposed to be spies but they look like British bankers to me. 

 Europa 1945-2030 (1998) had both male and female meeples.

The standard meeple, as we know it today, first appeared in Carcassone (2002)

The term "meeple" was created when gamer Alison Hansel mistakenly mashed together the words "my" and "people" when describing the game's wooden figures. She shared her spoonerism online, it caught on and has been used ever since.

In 2024, Carcassone's publisher Hans um Gluck trademarked the term meeple in Germany and Europe and sent cease and desist letters to publishers who used the word in their games or even in their company's name! As a result, for example, Cotswold Games and its worker placement game, Meeple Inc., had to be renamed as Tabletop Inc.

 

 

Needless to say, this created a backlash from gamers who just assumed the term was fair use.  Meanwhile in America, a group of concerned game creators banded together to trademark the term here in the US. They vow to make sure the term remains free for everyone to use.

I DO MY OWN STUNTS will use meeples, but I still have a few decisions to make. Firsst of all, in the game's rules, they will be refered to as "stunt performers" or "stunt peeple". 

As for their form-factor, I have yet to decide whether they be standard meeples - but with heat-transferred or screen-printed faces and/or details on them. Or they might be a slightly different version of a meeple (note the upraised arm) - to differentiate them from the Hans Um Gluck meeple. 

However, these alternate components would have to be tested to see if they work as well as the standard meeple does. My samples should be arriving in the mail soon, so then I can start testing!

 

Speaking of testing, I was able to playtest a rough version of the game this weekend - which I estimate at 65% complete gameplay-wise. I was pleasantly surprised that the game did what I wanted it to do, the players had fun (and lots of helpful feedback) and wanted to play it a second time!

 

One thing that was resolved was the question: "how many meeples should be in the game?" I estimate there will be 24-28 meeples in the final game. I'll write about why that number is important in a future update. 

Another note, unlike the Red/Blue/Yellow/Green meeples in my prototype, the Stunt Performer Peeples in I DO MY OWN STUNTS will use color vision deficiency friendly colors.

One more note about the playtest - we had another half-dozen backers back the game! And a small quantity of the game will be (eventually) carried by Geeky Teas and Games, my favorite board game store in Burbank, CA! If you want your friendly local game store to carry I DO MY OWN STUNTS, please send them my way! 

I DO MY OWN STUNTS Update #8

 I DO MY OWN STUNTS Update #8

 As the publisher of Level Up! once said to me: "Congratulations, you signed a book! Now all you have to do is write it." 

Whether its writing a book, or drawing a comic book or making a movie, creative endeavors require a lot of time, energy and persistence. You have to keep the vision of the finished product in your head and how good it will be to finally finished. At least, that's what keeps me going. 

While I've been designing cards for many years, I still feel like I could do things better. Last update, I showed the progress of the scene cards in the prototype, which were all hand-drawn.

Everyone has said they like my art style for the game. But there has to be a better way to create these than drawing them all by hand...  so, I brushed up on my card design skills first by reading a couple of articles on the topic.

4 Layout Tips for Designing Card Games 

Phil Freeman's gallery of card game design  

Then I jumped into Photoshop to create a standard format for the cards. I most do this to determine where all of the icons will go and if I've left enough space for artwork.

 

This card was the result.

Then I added in a scan of the drawn card to see what it would look like against all of the Photoshop elements. 

After looking at the revised card, I felt like it was a little too slapped together. The card needed to look more like I drew the whole thing... so I went back to the Wacom drawing board and created this next version of the card. 

I'm pretty pleased with the results. What do you think?

 

I DO MY OWN STUNTS Update #6

 I DO MY OWN STUNTS Update #6

And now for something different... a video showing the work-in-progress prototype!

I DO MY OWN STUNTS Update #7

 I DO MY OWN STUNTS Update #7

Anatomy of a Card

in I DO MY OWN STUNTS players complete movie scenes by rolling and placing meeples on scene cards. This means that I'd have to design my own cards for the game.

I always imagined the cards as looking like film strips with perforations on the edges.

 I usually hand-draw my prototypes to begin with. It's often faster for me to do this than do it on a computer.

The next step is fitting all of the information on a card. I did some "test run" cards to use in my prototype.
 

Because I like to draw, I couldn't resist creating some art for the cards. I'm not sure whether I should create the art in this style, trying something else or hire someone to create it. The problem is, the budget of this game is tight, so hiring someone might not be an option.

 Do you like this cartoony style? Let me know in the comments.

Next, I create a digital version of the card. This allows me to play around with the orientation and combinations of elements.

 

 

These cards have a lot of elements on them and legibility is of primary importance.  Which layout do you think works best?

Needless to say, there's still a lot of work to be done - not to mention other cards to be created. I'll keep you posted as things progress.

There's a dozen backer spots left to be filled! You can help this project by sharing these posts and letting your gamer friends know about it! Thanks in advance for your support!

 

I DO MY OWN STUNTS Update #5

I DO MY OWN STUNTS Update #5

Today I had a great chat with Ian Powers, who has performed stunts in dozens of Hong Kong action movies like The Man with the Iron Fists, Dragon Blade and Old Boys: The Way of the Dragon. He's even worked with martial arts legend Jackie Chan!

Ian can now add a new credit: board game consultant! 

We had a great talk about I DO MY OWN STUNTS, stunts, stunt culture and stunt performer jargon. I now know the name of my favorite comedy stunt gag - a "Texas Switch"!

A Texas Switch is when an actor is in frame and then goes off frame and a stunt person wearing identical clothes does a stunt, making it look like the actor did it. You've seen it all over - Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Hot Fuzz, Baby Driver and many more movies not directed by Edgar Wright.

It's also used in comedy movies and TV shows when a dummy falls out of a window or off a roof, painfully lands and then gets up as if nothing has happened. This always cracks me up.

Ian gave me some great ideas about how to incorporate these kind of real Hollywood jargon and scenarios into the game. He also reassured me that casting the player as a "stunt coordinator" was correct. Whew!

 

 

The next step is to figure out how to translate some of this knowledge into game play! Here's where the fun begins!

Also, we now have 35 backers! We are 16 backers away from my 51 game goal! If you haven't backed the game yet, please consider doing so! Just reach out to me at mightybedbug@gmail and say "I'm in!"

I DO MY OWN STUNTS Update #4

 I DO MY OWN STUNTS Update #4

Last night I had my first systems playtest of I DO MY OWN STUNTS!

I always say that iteration is the heart of game design, so it's best to get something on the table as quickly as possible so you can start banging on it. And bang on it we did! We had five play sessions of the game, changing rules and adding components as we played.

We tried different ways of rolling the dice - by hand, down a ramp and in a dice tower and the dice tower was a far superior (and more fun) way of rolling dice.

 
Using the dice tower brought up several questions - what would it look like? Could there be multiple exits? What other game play features could the tower add (such as an airbag zone targeting)? I've been using the ingenious dice tower/box from DON'T GO IN THERE, which is definitely an inspiration for the packaging of I DO MY OWN STUNTS. I've even reached out to the manufacturer of the dice tower/box to see what it would cost.

This initial prototype consisted of two sets of "themed" Scene Cards - Sci-Fi and Action - in the final game, there will probably be around six different genres. There are plenty to choose from! Which genres do you most associate with stunts?

I want there to be some sort of set collection element to completing these scenes, but I haven't quite decided how that works. As of now, I'm thinking that the player has to actively pursue making a "movie" out of a specific genre - but you don't necessarily have to do that to win either. How the player gets genre cards, whether that's achieved by drafting scene cards, "buying" them from a market or some other method, I have not decided.

 
One thing became very clear during the play test, the players will have to re roll the meeples several times on a turn so that they will get "standing" results. The method we play tested was a draft-style where the players took turns choosing the meeples they wanted like how you select dice in Sagrada or Wingspan. 

One player rolled first and selected which meeples went into the draft pool, then the second player rolled the remaining and selected which meeples to be drafted and then the first player rerolled the remaining and they went into the draft pool. The the second player got first pick of which meeple they wanted and they players chose back and forth until all usable meeples were selected.

For a first pass, this system worked pretty well and some strategies about which meeples were selected and which were re rolled emerged quickly.

We also played around with placeholder cards that will grant players the abilities to reposition meeples to the configurations they need to complete scenes.

First we gave each player a four cards, each of a different color, that when discarded, could be used to reposition a meeple. It worked pretty well... until the player ran out of cards. It was clear that the player would need more of these. We played another game with a market of these cards, which was just ok. This still needs thinking and play testing, especially since I originally intended for these cards to represent characters with skills. If that's the case, they perhaps they aren't discarded and remain persistent through the game? This is the challenge of game design - too many options!

More play testing results coming soon!

 

 

I DO MY OWN STUNTS Update #3

I DO MY OWN STUNTS Update #3

Good news! The creation of the prototype keeps chugging along. Creating prototypes is a time-consuming process. Some days game design is filled with exciting choices and decisions, other days, it's drawing little squares on cards.

Currently, there are four types of components in the game: Meeples, Scene cards, Character cards and probably one other component - whether it's tokens or another type of card. I'm still figuring it out.

 While there are definately faster ways to create a prototype, I like creating them by hand. I have always liked the "craft" aspect of game design. It's really the only way I can relax these days.

Even though the complete prototype isn't completed, I will be playtesting what I have just to see if rolling meeples and placing them on spots on cards is fun. I suspect it will need something more (which is where the character cards come in) but I like to test each system first before combining them together with others.

 Is this fun? Let's find out!

Speaking of rolling meeples, I did a variety of tests to see which was the best way to roll a meeple: by hand, off of a ramp or down a dice tower. They all seemed pretty equal. 

It was also interesting to learn that, on average, slightly less than 50% of the meeples rolled ended up in a "standing" position. I definitely will need a mechanism to mitigate that.

Which method do you prefer? LMK in the comments!

 

I DO MY OWN STUNTS Update #2

 WOW!

Only 24 hours have passed and we're over 24 backers of I DO MY OWN STUNTS. We're almost to my half-way goal of 51 backers!

We have backers from as far as Germany and Denmark, which means that we will be shipping the game internationally. It will cost more to get a copy to you if you live overseas, but I'm willing to accommodate international backers!

 
Yesterday, I answered questions about the game, so here is another:

Q: Will you be adding things like props to the game?

I've been thinking long and hard about this. While I love the idea of papercraft cars, walls of fire or broken windows for the meeples to get tossed through, this would end up making I DO MY OWN STUNTS a dexterity game... which isn't what it is.

While I like Dexterity games like Flick 'em Up and Meeple Circus,  I'm much more interested in exploring the dynamics of rolling meeples and creating exciting combinations from them and I feel that dexterity elements will take away from that.

Speaking of rolling meeples, I'm tickled to see backers already thinking about the game. Here's a picture that backer Marcus sent me exploring all the positions a meeple can take! Thanks Marcus!

I DO MY OWN STUNTS now has it's own BGG listing! When I was filling out the form, I had to think about all of the mechanisms that I want in the game. It's a great way to help clarify your vision. As a result, I was able to create a core design loop diagram for the game. 

I think I'm getting close to assembling a playable prototype for the game! Things are moving fast and getting really exciting!

Remember, if you want to back I DO MY OWN STUNTS, please email me at mightybedbug@gmail.com. Also share posts (like this one) about the game! I appreciate it!

 

I DO MY OWN STUNTS Update #1

Woot! It's not even been 24 hours and we're off to an explosive start for a home-grown, self-promoted unknown tabletop game! 

 
The game already has more backers than Escape from Rotter Mansion (11) and we've already have more than half the backers of OH NO! There Goes Tokyo! (31).

Not only that, but an award-winning Hollywood director has reached out to me! He has offered to put me in touch with his stunt people friends! This is very exciting and I'm looking forward to adding some authentic Hollywood stunt terms and scenarios to the game!

   It might be one of these guys... who knows?

Now I know that many of you have questions about the game that you'd like answered before you back. I don't blame you. Here are some answers for now:

• What kind of game is it? I DO MY OWN STUNTS is a drafting, rolling, placement, set collection game. At least I think it is.
• How are the meeple used? Still being designed, but take a look at the ideas below!
• When will it be available? I am shooting for late fall - definitely before Christmas.
• How long do I have to become a backer? I will accept orders through July 15th
• What is the shipping cost? It depends on where you live. If you live in LA, I can hand-deliver it to you. If you live in Germany... then it might be expensive.

Some of you might be hesitant to back the game, not knowing much about it. I've opened up my sketchbook and want to share with you the ideas I've playing with. Many of these concepts are built around production costs. Some of this might be easy to pull off, other options might be more costly thanks to the overseas tariff situation.

 

IDEA 1 uses standard meeples. It's the easiest to create (from a production POV) and all the parts (except for maybe the box) can be made in the United States.

 

IDEA 2 is more ambition production-wise. I really like the dice tower in the game Don't Go In There and have actually started talking to the printer about what something like this would cost.

 

IDEA 3 features screen printed meeples. The other option is stickers, but personally, I hate putting stickers on meeples. How do you feel about putting stickers on meeples? Let me know in the comments.

IDEA 4 is more complex from a production perspective. It would require creating totally custom meeples which would then have to be tested to see if they roll and lay on all sides correctly. I do like the ideas of the film reels and band-aid tokens. These could be cardboard or wood.

I think I need to have one more round of ideation before I commit, but if you have a preference for one of these ideas, please don't hesitate to chime in! I want this to be a game that people will be excited to play!

And remember, if you want to back I DO MY OWN STUNTS, please reach out to me at mightybedbug@gmail.com!