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Comment by gcheong | Hacker News Reader

Why make an iPhone app to keep track of planets owned when you could just make a simple paper based scorecard? Or am I missing something about the complexity of the game? An app might be useful but you want the game to be playable by the largest number of peopl possible and there could be some opportunity for recurring revenue from selling the scorecards.

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I think the idea of an iOS app sounds great. Why waste paper when you can simply click "new game" on your phone?

Why waste plastic on dice when you can click, "new roll" on your phone? Some people might like games like this because they're not digital.

This is precisely it.

Also if the author wanted he could simply add in some cheap d10s that each player could use to keep track of their current planet values.

Because it's not as fun as physically rolling the dice. There's not much additional gain to writing down the score on a piece of paper versus keeping score on an app tailored towards the game.

Yeah, it's also possible that I considered that and disagree with you. I'm not saying that everyone will prefer keeping score on paper, but some people really do and some other people will appreciate not having an iPhone on the table when they play a dice game.

Not everyone has an iPhone. Young children do/should not have smartphones. Paper does not require constant updates, maintenance and bugfixes. Paper is cheaper. People want to play physical games without the distraction of devices. People don't want the hassle of downloading an app before they can play a game. If the complexity of scoring requires an app, it's too complicated.

I think there's scope for including the scoring as part of the packaging, no "waste paper". My first inclination is a two part sleeve - but I'm assuming then it's a two player game, more players requires some ingenuity - the sleeves start at zero score and cover the lower numbers, moving towards the highest possible score at the centre as the sleeves meet and cover the whole container.

Perhaps a graduated stick, like a long cocktail stick/drink stirrer, for each player, you pull the stick across a line (eg from under the box) to indicate the score. Another way would be to have a stack of counters, like tiddlywinks, you could upsell different counter sets then (half marbles, cut stones, metal, different designs). Counters might work for tie-ins - planets of the Starfleet federation, planets named for houses of GoT or such. Or yes d10's as a sibling comment mentions.

Doesn't mean you couldn't have an app too, but then why not simulate the dice, etc., if you're going to need an app to play the game?

Download zombie dice. It does pretty much that. Score tracking, die rolling, etc. And I'll tell you that it's hardly what you'd call fun (even though I'd say Zombie dice isn't that interesting).

You don't even need a paper score card. The Munchkin card game suggests using pennies to keep track of your hp. You could just suggest that, everyone should have something they can use as "counters" and you don't need to sink the costs into a score pad.

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