Time for an update on Gotlandia, my boardgame about sheep, pirates and churches on medieval Gotland. Lots of good stuff has happened since returning from Medeltidsveckan a few weeks ago: The Gotlandia prototype now has 3d printed churches, I came up with a further simplification that I playtested intensively, and it’s now possible to play Gotlandia online in a digital version. All of these are exciting! Also in this post, dates and places for where you can play Gotlandia IRL in the Autumn.
3d printed churches
Folk Lab Hallunda is starting up after the summer which was an excellent opportunity to act on another idea: To replace the standard playing pieces with 3d printed ones. Most notably churches that look like the churches you see today on Gotland. The churches tell the story that Gotlandia also tells: That you have a period of prosperity where wealth is pumped into magnificent churches. Which then ends with one calamity after another hitting Gotland: Plague, invasion, piracy.
My oldest has taken classes in Blender so I asked him to create a model we could print. From a previous visit to Gotland, we have a cardboard model of a Gotland church. I also have… quite a few… pictures of churches on Gotland to use as reference. In less than 24 hours we had a file for the printer. Mats at Folk Lab used his expertise to scale and print the model and after a few iterations, I was happy with the size and shape and how it worked as a game piece.
Now it feels extra special to put that church on the board. Cool!
We could continue with modelling ships, towers, farmsteads and workers, but just having the churches 3d printed will do for now. Ok, ships that look like medieval cogs would be awesome...
Simplified rule for buying workers
One player at Medeltidsveckan exclaimed: “This is better than Settlers!” Nice to hear of course and I completely agree, but it also set my mind thinking. How I can make Gotlandia even easier to learn for people who has Settlers of Catan as reference? Looking back at the three games of Gotlandia that I hosted in Visby, it was buying workers with food that was most tricky for players to remember. The rule was to pay an amount of food from cards left on your hand at the end of a generation equal to how many settlements you have on the board. The nice thing about this was that it constrained players from settling many districts before they had their five workers. You had to balance your growth rate. But players new to the game often didn’t get it, counting workers instead of settlements or just being confused and asking me to help. So what if workers instead cost a fixed price? Say 3 food for the 3rd worker, 4 food for the 4th worker and 5 food for the 5th worker? Much easier to understand. Plus you could potentially buy two workers in one generation, and either catch up or speed ahead in a turn where you have many cards on your hand.
It was not clear that it would work and for sure it would impact how you play the game. So I tested it intensively both alone playing all sides, with my son/co-designer, and at Papas Papbar in Odense. I quickly decided that I like the change. I also found one reputation that needed to be updated as a consequence (Hillfolk).
While I was at it, I also tested tweaks to craft cards. The two core strategies are to go for either many forests and Tar Pit or many pastures and Stud. But making the other 12 craft cards a notch better might open for more ways to win. Especially when you play Rute, Bro and Hoburg you can get stuck and have a hard time expanding into the fourth Setting. So now Smithy, Mill, Tannery and Shipyard all have a settle action where you can jump to the other end of Gotland and expand into fields and hills.
Latest version of the rules are available online as always. Gotlandia has a print-and-play edition that is free to play.
Play Gotlandia Online
I met up with a former colleague that is also super into Gotland and games. We didn’t manage to meet in Visby this year, but as he lives close by, we set up a walk and talk instead. He had a little surprise for me: He had set up a framework/environment for creating and publishing games — of the kind you play on a screen. Powered by an LLM. The evening before we met he tasked it with creating a digital version of Gotlandia based on the rules that are online. He shared the link a few days later so I could play and validate the solution.
It didn’t get everything right of course, but it got enough correct that I could definitely feel that I was playing Gotlandia. Plus, as I went back to the rule booklet, I could see there were changes that I hadn’t updated in the rule book. So I updated the rules and my friend got the LLM to update the implementation correspondingly. We did this a couple of times, I gave detailed feedback to the implementation and would have a new version to test an hour or two later.
As a trained software engineer, this was weird: The implementation is completely black box. I can’t read the code to check the implementation. I have no automated tests to validate the implementation of the domain model. And I didn’t do any up front design about how I wanted the implementation to be.
I could get access to the source code if I wanted, but it was a nice challenge to stay in the role of the product owner: Communicate the requirements and give feedback to the implementation using natural language. Not to worry about any part of the implementation except for that is visible in the user interface. Boardgame rules are very much like a detailed specification and even if Gotlandia is complex for a boardgame, it is not at all complex for an it solution. Furthermore the game state is fully transparent, except for the cards in the hands of your opponent and in the shuffled decks.
The process was like throwing a spec to an offshore team and then have an iteration to validate in hours, not days or weeks. Now after several iterations, I’m happy for the implementation to go live. It’s not perfect in every detail but you will clearly learn how to play Gotlandia. You get to try different strategies against computer opponents that gives you a good race for first place.
Play Gotlandia IRL
Finally, if you are like me and prefer to play your games with physical components and with other people in the same room, there are now two chances to play Gotlandia IRL. I’m setting up two sessions of Gotlandia, both are free to play, with up to 8 players. One in Folk Lab Hallunda in October and one at Smash Con in Huddinge in November. PM me to reserve a seat of show up and chance for an open seat on the day.
Gotlandia at Folk Lab Hallunda. Saturday October 3rd between 13-17. If you show up early you can enjoy lunch at Freja. This will also be an opportunity to check out our premises, see our gear, and talk about your project.
Gotlandia at Smash Con in Huddinge. Sunday November 15th between 13-17. Smash Con is a free and super friendly boardgame convention in Folkes Bistro in Huddinge taking place each year in November.
Reach out if you want to play Gotlandia but can’t make it any of these dates. Maybe we can set up another opportunity?
That’s it from me for now. I wish you as much fun with your projects as I have with mine.
