David Fair: Tabasco and Playtesting

I like spicy foods. I don’t usually go overboard with it, like when I order Buffalo Wings at my favorite wing joint, the place that has six levels of heat (Mild, Hot, Extra Hot, 911, Torrid Zone, and Flatliner), I just get the Extra Hot. It has enough heat to get my endorphins going, and I can still taste the chicken. I can’t imagine what the other levels are like, though I know you have to sign a waiver in order to get served an order of Flatliners.

Knowing this about me, some good friends got me a basket of hot sauces for Christmas. Now, the hot sauces I have been using forever have been Tabasco, Tabasco Chipotle, Red Hot, Crystal… the standard hot sauces that you can find in your grocery store. I had a vague knowledge that there were some new designer sauces available, but I was happy and didn’t ever really look into them.

I was aware of Scoville Units (used to measure the heat of foods) and that my Tabasco had about 8,000 Scoville units. When I read the bottles of my new collection of hot sauces, I discovered that one of them had 119,700 Scoville units, and frankly, that scared me to death. Suddenly, I was nervous about using any of the sauces that did not explicitly state their Scoville rating.

I grabbed the lot of them, sat down at my laptop, and typed their names into Google, one by one. What I found was amazing. There was a whole subculture, a whole world out there, devoted to the humble chili pepper and the sauces made from them. There were hundreds of blogs, review sites, recipe sites, manufacturer sites, distributor and e-tailer sites. Whoa.

I realized then that I was, at that moment, on the outside looking in. I was just like a guy who plays games occasionally, but always the same games he has always played, who had been given something new and used the internet to find out just what “Pirate’s Cove” or “Settlers of Catan” is all about and found Google giving him hundreds of links to BoardGameGeek, Boardgame News, Naturelich, The Games Cabinet, The Dice Tower, Days of Wonder, and so much more.

It was overwhelming and fascinating. Who were these people with such a passion about hot sauce, and what did they know that I didn’t? What were the different pepper sauces like, and how did a golden habanero sauce differ from a red one? I could see the questions from the new gamers mind as well… Who were these people with such a passion about games, and what did they know that I didn’t? What were the different games like, and how did a “eurogame” differ from an “amerigame”?

One thing I noticed in the hours I spent searching for information on pepper sauces was that almost all of the sites were commercial. Suddenly, I wasn’t sure about the reviews I was reading, and the recipes on the review sites were exactly the same sometimes, leading me to think the sauce maker gave the reviewer that recipe. It left a bad taste in my mouth, so to speak.

Now, there were many fan sites, but they were small and most of them gave only positive reviews all linked to sites where you could buy what they reviewed. It seemed a small leap to assume they would get a cut if I clicked-through and made a purchase. What was missing was the independent site with thousands of people contributing content, the independent site with a select group doing the same; There was no BoardGameGeek equivalent, there was no Boardgame News clone.

I don’t think I am going to become a Hot Sauce Geek anytime soon, though I still love hot sauce, but my eyes have been opened and I am trying new things. I hope those who find BGN and BGG through a chance Google search do the same.

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Okay, it has been a long time coming, but I finally have some stuff to share about my first fan-expansion for Age of Steam. The map is called “Age of Steam: C&O Railways”, and I have been working on it for some time.

I started out by making a map with a slightly different design element. Most of the maps I had played on when I started had an inside-out dynamic—that is, it seemed best to start in the middle of the map and work your way to the edges. This map is a bit different. All of the starting cities are around the outside edge of the map, and the centre is littered with towns. This meant that for most games, you would be starting at the edges and working your way inside. I liked that it gave the map a different feel.

The next thing was to come up with something that would make the map unique, rules-wise—1830’s PA has coal, Korea has the uncolored cities, NE USA has the Speculation action, and I needed something that would make people playing this have a different experience than they would get from another map.

I tried a few things but none of them worked really well, until I got the idea that the goods being delivered to the cites were just going into space; we needed them to do something. I added some rules involving players buying a Factory in a city, and thereafter whenever a cube was delivered to that city, the owner of the factory would gain one on the income track, and his factory would convert the goods that arrived into more goods that could be shipped out.

With cubes entering the game from the factory, I found that I had to eliminate Goods Growth and production, as otherwise there were far too many cubes in the game. It took some time, and many games of solo playtesting, but I finally hit on a mix I felt was good. I sent the map to few friends who were also Age of Steam fans and got some feedback. Cubes were now too tight, and I needed to work on that. Dale Yu and Valerie Putnam played (yes, that was my map she went bankrupt on...) and after talking with them, I got an idea for another way to handle factory building.

Now, instead of the player being forced to only build a factory if they won the factory role in the auction, anyone could build a factory by forgoing normal track building. After another playtest session, we found another problem. I was using a rule similar to Ted Alspach’s “Chain Reactions” from his Disco Inferno map. (Ted defies my Age of Steam purist sensibilities.) If a player could maneuver to get a set of links with factories at both ends and get lucky with the first few cube draws, he was likely set up for the whole game, as he could ship multiple times to his factories, get bonus points for the deliveries, and get more cubes to do it again next turn. It was too much. I needed to change that multiple delivery rule.

We tried another playtest, altering the multiple delivery rule so that you could not use the same link to deliver more than once on the same delivery action. This helped, but it was still not perfect. I also tried dropping the multiple cube delivery rule and just using standard cube delivery rules, but I did not like it as much; the total sum of changes for the map at the point was not enough. I tried using Ted’s rule, that the multiple cube delivery could happen only if you were picking up a cube in the same city you dropped one off from, and it was good—then I tried adding the caveat I had used about the track being only used once per delivery and I was really happy. Now it was working the way I had envisioned, and the system was not quite so fragile.

I have rewritten the rules for the umpteenth time, and both the map and rules should be available now on BGG. The only thing holding me up at this point is getting the names of all the playtesters so that I can give full credit where it is due. I hope that if you are an Age of Steam fan, you will play the map and let me know what you think, and if you aren’t an Age of Steam player, I hope you might give Age of Steam a try. It really is among the best games ever. Once you’re hooked, then you try AoS: C&O Railways.

PS. Hot sauce note… I got the Scoville information on the hot sauces I was given, so I am no longer afraid of them. I made Chili this weekend, and instead of the usual Tabasco or Chipotle Tabasco, I used Dave’s Total Insanity Sauce (Scoville units: 48,000), which had a very pungent aroma with a slight fruitiness and an intense garlic undercurrent. I used about a half teaspoon in the pot of chili.

It was the best chili I had made in a long time.

© 2007 David Fair

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Comments:

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Atsa speecie spicy column!  Very nice analogy and an incisive look at our hobby through the eyes of an outsider. And that’s an excellent summary of the typical path of a game idea from start to finish.  No wonder I haven’t created more designs...there’s no way I have that kind of patience.  Anyway, I hope the game goes well, Dave. Posted by Larry Levy on Jan 25, 2007 at 11:42 PM | #

One of my architecture professors used to encourage us to have patience in the design process by saying, “the sauce will happen” At restaurants, I almost always order the spiciest thing on the menu--my stomach doesn’t always thank me, but my sinuses are clear! My favorite name for a hot sauce is my brother-in-law’s favorite: “Pain.” Each type of their hot sauce is rated a percentage (90% Pain is the highest). Posted by Jeff Allers on Jan 26, 2007 at 01:48 AM | #

Mmmm...hot sauce. I probably have at least 10-12 bottles in my fridge at any given time.  The downside of many of them is that they seem to strive for “MORE SCOVILLE!” rather than different flavor.  RedHot will always be my deafult light-weight standard.  Moving up, Dave’s isn’t bad, but really, most of the “OMG HOT SAUCE!” sauces add so much more heat than flavor, they’re practically (at least, in my uses) interchangeable.  One sauce that I do highly recommend I discovered on my honeymoon (while playing BattleLine, no less).  Baron’s Scotch Bonnet sauce, from St. Lucia, is a delicious mustard-based sauce that makes a standard grilled chicken sandwich (how I first tried it) or even a lowly hotdog absolutely fantastic. Posted by Jon Theys on Jan 26, 2007 at 09:46 AM | #

As soon as someone comes up with a way to measure a thing, there will be someone who demands MORE or FASTER. This is not often a good thing… I really liked the Dave’s Total Insanity for the intense garlic flavor, but the heat was enough that there is no way you would use it at the table; it is only for cooking with. The baron’s sauce sounds good, I love mustard and a pepper sauce with mustard sounds right up my alley. I will have order a bottle for my (burgeoning) collection of sauces. Posted by David Fair on Jan 26, 2007 at 10:23 AM | #

Yup… I’m completely useless in trying to create my own game/board, but send me a prototype (especially AoS) and I’ll figure out a way to break it.  For a small additional fee, I might even try to give some ideas on how to fix it! Dale Posted by Dale Yu on Jan 26, 2007 at 11:51 AM | #

Breaking the game is what playtesting is all about. Someone (I think it was our own W. Eric Martin, but can’t recall for certain) wrote about that in the latest issue of Knucklebones. I was lucky that both you, and another group each found independent ways to break the game with the map I had made. Posted by David Fair on Jan 26, 2007 at 12:15 PM | #

Excellent article, David. Posted by Ryan Bretsch on Jan 26, 2007 at 05:11 PM | #

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