User Questions

Overview: This is part of an ongoing series of articles on the design of a new board game that I am working on in partnership with Brendan McCaskell and OOMM Games. Throughout these posts, I want to give readers a sense of my design process, as well as some of the ruminations that came out of work I was doing at each stage. Check out the introduction to this series here, and my discussion of the game’s minimum viable prototype here. Today, I’m answering some basic questions about the mysterious Codename: Lithotaph that people have asked me so far! 

Q: What type of game is it?

A: It’s a cooperative exploration and survival game. Players take on the role of members of a hunter-gatherer society moving into a glacial valley recently opened by thawing ice. They must work together to achieve shared goals, navigate perils to their civilization, and survive the massive, immortal beasts that have also entered the valley. As they explore the valley, new hexagonal tiles are added to the valley to represent the locations they explore, and this map persists from game to game by fitting into the game’s custom trays.

Over a campaign of linked games, players chronicles events in the lives of new generations of characters, creating a tapestry of connected stories over numerous generations and several epochs.

Q: How many people can play?

A: At present, the game supports 1 to 5 players. These can be the same players over multiple games, or players can come and go on a game-by-game basis.

Q: What is the complexity level of the game? What age range is it appropriate for?

A: The game is targeted at what I’d term middle-high complexity. What does that actually mean? I’d say it’s comparable to Betrayal at House on the Hill or Pandemic – it has a relatively simple core loop of characters moving around a map and taking actions, but a lot of emergent events the game presents that someone needs to read and understand. In terms of age range, I’d say probably “recommended for 12 and up?” But I’ve met a lot of ten-year-olds who would do fine with it. Like a lot of co-op games, if one person is very familiar with the rules, they can make the experience smoother for others who are newer to the game.

It’s also a campaign game, intended to be played over numerous game sessions. While individual game sessions are meant to be more stand-alone than a typical Legacy game, it is best enjoyed through repeat plays in a persistent world.

Q: What are the key ideas behind the game?

A: The key concept is one that arose from the original discussions of painting on a cave wall: it’s a game about leaving your mark. More broadly, it’s a game about how humans change their environment, and how they change to adapt to it. The choices you make will affect how your society’s culture develops, which in turn will impact future generations and the challenges they face and decisions they must make.

Q: What do you do in the game?

A: Each turn, your character moves around the map, interacts with terrain nodes by playing various minigames to gather resources, crafts new items and buildings, or pursues specific goals set forth by the game scenario. Over the course of a game, players must work together to attempt to complete key societal goals and prepare for the coming of a titanic, primordial creature that might threaten their people if left unaddressed.

Q: Mini games?

A: Resource-gathering, crafting, and even inventory management take the form of minigames. For instance, foraging consists of a simple trick-taking game of finding supplies in the woods while avoiding the attention of lurking predators. Meanwhile, inventory management requires physically fitting your supplies and craftable materials into the bag outline printed on your character board. Each minigame is intended to engage different types of players, so that everyone can find some area they really enjoy!

Q: Why have a generational gap between each game?

A: This game is about societies, environments, and their relationship over a long period of time. As such, I feel it’s important that no single character play too big a role within the story that unfolds over numerous games. A character who is “young” in one game might be “old” in the next, but after that, they’ll cease to be playable. However, they based on their actions, they might continue to exist as a saga, becoming a story that inspires new generations.

Q: How many play sessions will it take to complete a campaign?

A: To play through a single campaign, players should expect somewhere in the neighborhood of twelve to sixteen game sessions. These game sessions are divided into several epochs, each of which consists of 3-4 games.

Q: Why divide a campaign into epochs?

A: First of all, it’s a way to add gulfs of time, creating an even more substantial scope to the story. While there might be 20-50 years of in-game time between each game session, epochs could be separated by centuries or even millennia. This allows the glacial valley – and the people within – to undergo radical shifts, adding further variety to gameplay and storytelling.

Second, it creates a set of neat “break points” at which a group can shuffle its members or even just take a week off to play something else. Each epoch can serve as an “onboarding point” for new players, and each one serves as a soft reset during which the consequences of players’ past decisions play out to shape the new epoch.

Q: How does the game evolve across multiple gameplay sessions and epochs?

A: In the first game, your goals are simple: find sources of food and water in your new home, create a stable encampment, and survive your harrowing first encounter with a primordial creature that has made its way into the valley at the same time you did. However, as the game goes on, your society will be presented with choices based on the results of past games. These choices will affect future goals. For instance, if you are given the chance to choose between reinforcing a settlement or fleeing from a threat, the former might lead to a game where you need to batten down the hatches and survive a siege by a primordial beast while the latter might require creating tools you can use to move your encampment somewhere safer.

Across epochs, these choices will unlock larger divergences in your society, such as giving you access to different technologies, ways of organizing your society, and means of subsisting.

Q: Is this a legacy game or not?

A: It has many similarities with Legacy games, but there are several key features that differ from the way the model usually works. We’re calling this model “persistent gameplay.” While players do permanently mark a few components such as a character cards and their journal, most components can be rest to their original game state. For instance, the board uses interlocking tiles held in trays to create a persistent map – but if players wish to fully reset the map, they can do so by popping out all of the tiles. The components that are permanently altered are those that can most easily be replaced – character cards and the journal.

Q: Where can I get it?

A: The game is still a ways off from being available. OOMM Games will be running a crowdfunding program for it sometime in the future, But don’t worry, I will be absolutely, intolerably vocal about it once the campaign begins!

Q: Will it have miniatures and/or a hobby component?

A: The game will have some miniatures, which likely will be unpainted. Additionally, some of its components will be plastic rocks with a texture for players to feel (this is a necessary gameplay element), and could be visually spruced up with a base coat and drybrush.

Q: What is the world of the game like?

A: The game takes place in a fantasy world that bears some similarities to our world during the Mesolithic era, but with a decidedly fantastical bent. There are unfamiliar creatures that populate the world, strange materials with properties like nothing on Earth, and giant, immortal beasts that roam the land, sea, and skies. We wanted players to feel like explorers in this valley just like their characters, delving into a wholly unfamiliar ecosystem and finding their own place within it.

Q: What is your favorite mechanic so far?

A: It’s not one mechanic, but the flow from one game into the next is the set of mechanics that are most important to the game in my eyes. With that said, I am also very happy with how the crafting system has come together, especially with Luke Eddy’s contributions.

Q: Can I playtest it?

A: If you’re interested in playtesting, details will become available with the Kickstarter in Q3 of this year. However, if you’re really gung-ho to play, you can send an email my way!

Bonus Questions about Other Things:

Q: What is your favorite piece of design from the Razor Crest for X-Wing?

A: The Child. That card took a shocking amount of work to get right, but I think people will have a lot of fun building various baby carriers.

Q: What other projects are you working on?

A: Oh, that’s such an interesting topic! I just [the rest of this entry has been redacted]

Q: Where's that Journeys RPG adventure you promised on Twitter?

A: I’m working on it, along with an updated version of the Journeys rules (the current version is available here). I promise! I’m in the midst of spinning up the playtest for both.

Q: What games are you most excited about right now?

A: I recently picked up a Kill Team set, and am looking forward to getting more games in. I also have been getting into Saga: Age of Magic with my old WHFB Tomb Kings. I played a bit of X-Wing with some custom ships earlier this week, too! Brooks Fluguar-Leavitt has also gotten me quite hyped to try Osprey’s The Silver Bayonet.