Stepping Stones & Speed Run

What the heck is a "compendium" game?

Thanks for asking, and for viewing this project! A compendium game has multiple scoring objectives that players compete against. Each player is required to complete every objective once, and only once, before the game ends. Imagine the game Yahtzee, but replace dice rolling with playing cards. That's the general idea of compendium trick takers!

Know the saying, "You don't have to outrun the bear, you just have to outrun your friends?" That's what compendiums are all about. You're not looking for the perfect hand, just the better hand! You'll need to judge your hand's potential, execute your tricks with the right timing, and know when to bet on yourself.

What makes Stepping Stones and Speed Run different?
Most traditional compendium games are long (16-30+ hands, taking 1.5-3+ hours to play) and can include very old "traditional" card play/ranking systems. It's a big ask to get new players to try them.

Stepping Stones and Speed Run are (3-player only) introductory compendium games, with shorter play times, a blend of modern and traditional card play/ranking, and an accessibly fun style of compendium scoring.

We hope these two modern creations will inspire you to seek out the traditional games they are based on, and Ryan will have more people to play with. (They aren't as scary as you think!)

By supporting this campaign, you get:

• To be FIRST to get your hands on these games and extras, before retailers or any other sales
• Access to these major discounts (including a free pin credit for returning backers)
• Super discounted extra stretch goal goodies (scroll down for more info)

The main funding goal of $1500 covers BOTH games plus the "How You Play It" pin, which fits in the color schemes of all our previous board gamer pin sets. Each additional $1000 raised after that funds and unlocks stretch goals, which are included in the "Everything" reward tier! The stretch goal items will also be available as add-ons and in the pledge manager after the campaign.

We so appreciate you sharing this campaign with your gaming group! We're a company of two, and every little show of support makes us smile and celebratory-hug. You can find posts to share on my instagram @polliadesign, or share Ryan's rules videos from his Cards Unbarred Youtube channel.

Stepping Stones - 3 players / 60-90 minutes

If you've never played a compendium game before, this is the perfect starting point! Stepping Stones introduces traditional concepts and terms, like compendium, forehand, declarer, defenders, contracts, must beat, slalom, etc.

How does it play?

All three players must complete every contract before the game can end. Once a player completes a specific contract, they cannot attempt to complete that contract again. Contracts will slightly change the rules of play for all players.

To determine which contract to play in a given hand, there is a bidding phase where players go around the table picking a contract to play or passing. The bidding phase ends when a player picks a contract, making that player the "declarer." If all three players pass, the starting player is forced into being the declarer and must pick a contract!

The declarer's score is the only score that matters for the hand. The other two players, referred to as "defenders," try to stop the declarer from doing well at their contract.

Once all players have been the declarer for a specific contract, we compare their scores. The player who scored the best in that contract gains game points while the player who scored the worst will lose game points.

After playing all contracts (over 9 or 12 hands), the player with the most game points wins!

Read the Rulebook on BGG here.

How To Play Video

Playthrough Videos 

Watch my guided playthrough in these videos, and if you want to play your own demo game online, visit https://deckades.net/SteppingStones/ or use the Trickster's Table Android app, iOS app, or web browser.

Speed Run - 3 players / 30-45 minutes

Where Stepping Stones leans toward traditional compendium games, Speed Run takes a more modern approach.

The card game encapsulates "speedrunning" a video game: playing through a game as quickly as possible while looking for loopholes, bugs, and glitches to help advance through the game even faster.

We've applied that to a compendium game.

How does it play?

All three players must complete (almost) every contract before the game can end, exactly once, excepting for one redo.

Before selecting contracts, the players get to decide (on a rotating basis) what the trump suit is and what the card ranking is for that round.

Then, each player simultaneously selects a contract which will be their objective for the hand, and keep it a secret until the end of the hand. Contracts command a player to win a specific number of tricks.

At the end of the hand, each player reveals their contract and scores accordingly. Low scores are good; you don't want points. If they didn't meet their trick requirement, they score 1 point for each trick they missed by. If they met their requirement, they get a -2 point bonus instead.

After playing 6, 9, or 12 hands (short, medium, long), the player with the lowest score wins!

Read the Rulebook on BGG here.

How To Play Video

Playthrough Video

Play your own demo online at https://deckades.net/SpeedRun/

Scorecards

Both games will include card-sized dry-erase scoresheets and a dry erase marker. We will also make available free downloadable PDFs of full-page scoresheets on our website for your printing and regular-pen-and-pencil-ing pleasure, should you prefer to use those. If you like digital scorekeeping, use the pre-made score tracker on https://boardgame-tally.web.app: Stepping Stones and Speed Run.

Game Art - Painstakingly Human

I (Michelle) drew these faux-mosaic style illustrations (as with every design I've made) WITHOUT using AI. I went physically to Phipps Conservatory here in Pittsburgh and sat in their beautiful Japanese garden with paper and pencil and sketched the box cover scene. I stood before lanterns and squatted under trees and beside the koi pond. It was lovely. And then I came home and began the digital mosaic, which meant drawing all those meticulously imperfect polygons BY HAND one by one for weeks. WEEKS. I absolutely regretted it somewhere in the middle, but it was too late to turn back, so I had to just keep drawing shapes. The more you zoom in, the more you can actually feel the tendons in my hand flexing against my wacom pen and the nib scraping on the tablet. 

I hope you enjoy shuffling these cards with the knowledge that real sunlight and trees and real happy Pittsburgh fish and a real human's hand went into the art.

The Speed Run art wasn't quite as punishing. Here, the challenge was determining how to pay homage to Ryan's favorite video game animals while making them our own, and coming up with 10 unique scenes for each of them. The logo did give me some trouble for a while, until I decided to commit wholly to 8-bit letters, which I created from scratch, not a font. All those squares exist as individual objects in my mega illustrator file.

The Pin

Unlocking at our main campaign funding goal, this pin is for the trick-takers and card-gamers alike. Big board games hog the shelf space and spotlight, but small-box powerhouse card games pack hours of playtime and niche mechanics in a miniscule footprint and deserve to be celebrated! They're here for you when you travel, when you're assembling a comprehensive broad-vibe collection, and when you absolutely cannot fit another kallax in your home. Phenomenal gaming power, itty bitty shelf space.

Stretch Goals

"Everything" tier backers will get ALL of the following unlocked items. They'll also be available as add-ons and in the pledge manager after the campaign.

Find a new weird friend in any environment :) This scene of the astronaut earthworm meeting a pink moon-worm is our favorite across all the card art, so these wriggly buddies will be an embroidered patch, complete with iron-on backing, three inches in diameter. List price later: $5.

This garden mosaic art, inspired by Pittsburgh's Phipps Conservatory Japanese garden, will be a hard enamel coin (with NO pinbacks). This shiny boy will make a perfect first player (forehand) token while playing Stepping Stones or any other game! The back side will be flat silver-nickel plated metal, stamped with the Pollia logo. List price later: $10

Finally, at $4500, we'll unlock some bookmarks, because we know a fair amount of you either are readers yourself, or you're in love with one. This way, when you get your games in the mail and your partner asks, "Did you buy another game?" you can say, "Look, I got you bookmarks!" and they'll be distracted by your thoughtfulness. Plus... we really want them :) List price later: $1 ea.

How It'll Get Made

We have all the little pieces planned and ready to go with various manufacturers. Ryan has worked with our game manufacturer in the past to publish Portland Game Collective projects, and we've already gotten quotes and decided on materials and sizes for the games and their components. Michelle's trusted enamel pin factory has quoted the pin and coin, and patches and bookmarks are a much simpler affair. Everything is ready to move forward and become real, just as soon as we pay for it!

All the images on this page are prototypes or mockups, and the final versions may look slightly different, but we've taken pains to show you as close to the final result as possible. There will probably be a couple of clarifying changes to the rulebook between now and printing. 

Shipping

Shipping within the U.S. is $5.
Shipping outside the U.S. is $25, and will likely be via DHL.
(If you're backing for the pin only, shipping outside the U.S. is $19.)

Thank you to those who have reached out to your local game stores and suggested our games. (If you're located outside the US, this is an alternate route to avoid high shipping costs. Contact your favorite game store in your country and see if they'll import for you. They should email michelle@polliadesign.com)

About Us

We're Michelle and Ryan Campbell! If you've backed previous pin campaigns, you've only heard from Michelle, maker of nerdy art things. Now you're meeting Ryan, the muse for the gamer-isms and game genre pin sets, podcaster, and game designer! We live in Pittsburgh, PA with our two dogs and our packed game and book shelves. Ryan loves games and Michelle loves Ryan (and wanted to see his games become real and pretty) and that's how all this happened. Hot tip to you game designers out there: marry an artist.

My (Ryan's) obsession over compendium games started back in 2021, when I discovered Coiffeur Jass. Since then I have played almost every traditional compendium available and designed 8 different compendium or compendium-adjacent games myself, ranging from introductory to experienced play.

On my podcast, Trick Talkers, we discuss trick taking, climbing/shedding, and other card games. I also make rules & playthrough videos for cards games on my YouTube channel, Cards Unbarred, and occasionally make tutorials for online gaming programs like PCIO.

Thank you for reading and for supporting our artsy-gamey duo! And as a reminder, if you're a returning backer from previous campaigns, if you back this campaign (at any pin or game tier) you will get an $11 credit in the backerkit pledge manager, which is enough for a free pin (or two patches, or a bunch of bookmarks... however you want to spend it) because we love you.