My most common internal question during design is: How can I make this decision point more nuanced, more subtle and less obvious?  Obvious decisions are non-decisions.  Early decisions should only make later decisions more difficult and less obvious.  Ideally every decision in the game should be a challenge, a challenge both to determine that the decision is present in the first place as well as to decide on a good answer for that decision.

Note that Thomas Cauet (one of the autor) is one of the massive playtester / developper for Ystari and already did a lot of work on Caylus and other Ystari Games.

The sad part is that there is need of a Knizia replacement, since the Good Doctor has turned his hand to simpler games instead of gamer’s games. 

I found Nefertiti to be enjoyable but the way everything worked seemed artificial and unconnected to anything in the real world.  Particularly the market closing conditions seemed very abitrary.  Yet somehow it didn’t scratch the abstract itch either.  So, while I would play it again, I haven’t purchased it.

Kris, for an answer to your last question, check out Alan Paull’s Confucius. It’s designed by a parallel-universe Martin Wallace (who maybe took some of Richard Breese’s hair with him into the Telepod). Its priorities are closer to his older titles, through about Princes of the Renaissance. An outstanding and challenging title, I like to think of it as the game Struggle of Empires should have been.

While I’m no fan of Struggle of Empires, I’ll second the recommendation for Confucius.  It is a clever and underhanded game.

I interviewed Alan Paull, and I’ve been waiting for Confucius to become available.

I do a little playtesting for Reiner. The usual rule is what happens in the playtest sessions stays in the playtest sessions. (I wrote up an agreed exception once.) But I think I’m not breaking that by saying I’ve never heard the question “how do I make it less obvious that you are making a decision?”. In fact (stepping out of the sessions to just being a player) I think most of Reiner’s games, especially the great ones, make the decisions pretty much in your face - what two actions shall I take? (E&T), shall I turn another card? (Medici), how much shall I bid? (more games than I can count). The game play problem is that where the decisions are is obvious, just what decision to make isn’t. Of course not all decisions are equal, but in the best games all of them matter.

I think enough people have mentioned over the years that “how can I simplify this?” is such a key question for many designers, that mentioning this still means I’m not talking about Fight Club (sorry, Knizia playtesting). And (again, just as a player) removal of excess fat is a common Knizia feature (even when the originally inspiring theme may appear to be some of that fat).

Thinking Nefertiti was done by Knizia? Really?

I guess the bidding and Egyptian theme threw you off, but the actual game play is nothing like his play styles.

That game supports specialization and weird clunky rules, something Knizia is against.

I found Nefertiti to be interesting, but not something I’d play more than once or twice a year. It just has a lot of problems in the game design, such as exploiting the markets to horde money and making other people have no move options and such.

I’m not interested in making it less obvious that a decision is to be made.  The game says to build something, you build something.  That’s fine.  I am interested in players not being sure what their decisions really mean for long-term implications.  I’m interested in making the decisions have many facets, have implications in multiple areas over multiple time scales and for those implications to be soft-edged, un-obvious and un-intuitive, for many of the things decided by implication to be unclear in prediction but obvious in retrospect.

Yeah, I know the classic pattern is “have to do N things but can only pick one”.  That’s not my favourite pattern.  I’m not so fond of the “I have to do XXX but I don’t really want to!” pattern (eg Ra).  I much more like decisions which all seem variously reasonable, where it seems reasonable to do any one of them and to not do the others, but they are in fact all importantly different in many different ways.

(Re: J C Lawrence’s posting above.)

First to note that this is under a header “What would Knizia do?”. This is clearly not what Knizia would do. Fair enough, but I think worth noting. My remaining comment is not about what Knizia would do.

“I am interested in players not being sure what their decisions really mean for long-term implications.”

This and other parts of the comments (I’m not going to quote them all) lead to the danger of pointless decisions. Obviously in most games I can’t see the detailed implications of my actions, but I can see the broad implications (or sometimes the short term advantages, but I don’t thing we’re discussing those). If I buy a Harbor playing Puerto Rico then I don’t know how many extra VPs it will give me. But I do know it will give me some extra VPs, and I know what, in broad terms, I want to be doing to make use of my Harbor. I also should know why I chose to buy a Harbor rather than a Wharf.

The route you are suggesting has the danger that if the choice between Harbor and Wharf is unclear in prediction, how am I choosing between them? Of course in your first play of Puerto Rico the choice between Harbor and Wharf is probably unclear (both give extra VPs for shipping, which gives more?). Some people may spot it in their first game, some may take one or more games before it clicks. And then, in broad outline, it becomes obvious (generally, sometimes it’s still tough). But if it never becomes obvious, intuitive or (I presume you are also excluding) calculable, what exactly am I doing in this game?

Yes, there is a danger is that decisions are so indistinguishable that they are insignificant.  So far I’ve dealt with this in terms of commitment, decisions committing players to directions they can’t fully comprehend at the time.

Of course as the game comes to a close the effects of decisions become more obvious, intuitive or calculable as their lifespan and range becomes obvious.  However earlier in the game the idea is for the decisions to largely be attempts to assess and influence the similarly cloudy decisions of the other players. each player committing to a suggestive posture in attempt to influence the other players to commit to resonant postures, thereby communally setting a larger direction for the game as a whole.

Kris:
Even if the answers facing the problems in game design weren’t directly inspired by Knizia’s work, I think we are influenced by the pool of existing mechanisms, yet trying to add our small touch. I am a big big fan of Knizia’s work: “Fabrik der Traume” and “Amun-re” for example are in my favorite games.

Stefan:
“That game supports specialization and weird clunky rules, something Knizia is against.”
Maybe I didn’t understand the specialization, but you have more than just collecting one type of cards by for example, but the timing of buying them, according to the geometry of the market and the flow of money. You can do diversity (first to prevent other to do scribes), then vizier and merchants, though it is not the main strategy. Royal seals are the transversal layer.

I’m interested in the “clunky rules” in term of design (we can always learn from our mistakes).

“It just has a lot of problems in the game design, such as exploiting the markets to horde money and making other people have no move options and such.”

I don’t see the problem with hording money on the market: while the money is in a closed flow, it puts kind of dummy place to store and get money, the more you let money hording on market, the less you have money to buy stuff in total.

The no move option is essential to have a minimum of visibility about what you are doing and where you want to place your servants. I agree I’m not a big fan of screwing people.

It could have been a special character (moving was tested) but I don’t feel it would have been good as an initial set of character. This is the spirit we want to give to the game, it could have been implemented many ways. That’s the one I’m satisfied with :)