The first public playtest of Ratsail (formerly Turtchester)
Reviewing how Turtchester changed from a multiplayer TTRPG about city building into a board game about rats sailing ships and fighting for control of islands. And you can try it at Unpub this week.
I will be at Unpub Festival 2026 this week, so Exeunt Press Shop shipping will be paused from March 12 through March 16, 2026.1 Any orders placed during that time will ship when I return.
In addition to being on a Small Publisher Diaries Q&A panel and running “speed dating” playtests of Exclusion Zone Botanist: Epsilon, I’ll be running playtests of Ratsail (formerly known as Turtchester).2
The game has been through a lot of changes, both mechanically and visually, over the last year. I thought it might be fun to take a look at it as I do final preparations for testing it next week.3
The original Turtchester
I’ve been intermittently working on a game called Turtchester for well over a year now. It started as a competitive worldbuilding game that was sort of a hack of Beak, Feather, & Bone by Possible World Games. Players would draw cards and create buildings on a map, but at the same time each would be a member of a faction vying for control. There would be mechanisms to support this, making it like a competitive board game but with the narrative arc of a roleplaying game.
As I worked on the mechanisms, I fell in love with the idea of the strength of a card restricting its use to certain areas within the city. Even using a standard poker deck, when combined with open drafting, it created some tough decisions. Do I take a strong card for a region I don’t want or a weak card for a region that I do want? Do I go all in on one region or try to spread my influence across multiple regions?
After a few playtests with friends, I realized this was actually a fun game. It had some problems, but all of which were solvable. I dropped the narrative components and decided to make it a board game.
With a little more work, I released it on BEEP BEEP DANGER for public playtesting. If you were one of the testers who submitted feedback, thank you!
Clogged markets and Dutch auctions
Playtesting revealed a few issues with the game. One issue was that the cards would get clogged up — both player hands and the market.
If you were dealt a bad card at the start of the game, you were sort of stuck with it. With just three rounds and five cards played per round, there was no time for a “wasted turn” just to ditch that card. With the original hand size of 2, you were basically just stuck for the rest of the game.
Similarly, the original market size was too small and prone to clogging. With a market size of 2-3 cards, if 1 or 2 of the cards were undesirable, it just meant there were less choices. Players often ran into false choice of three cards when only one card made sense to choose.
The solution was to increase the market size to 4 cards and implement a Dutch auction system to provide incentives to take less desirable cards.4 This meant adding a currency (i.e. coins) to the game, but it loosened up the market and effectively eliminated the clogging.5
Making adjacency matter with islands
The other issue noted in playtesting was that adjacency should matter. Although the city showed various districts (e.g. Pigbank and Ratchurch), their position didn’t matter. Nobles (face cards in the original) could move anywhere regardless if a district was next door or not. This had always bothered me about the design.
With a theme switch to rats competing for control of islands, now it mattered if an island was adjacent or not. Ships (formerly Nobles) could move between islands and some islands had more connections than others.
Also, with the newly added coins, a cost to sail between islands could be implemented. And now that I had ships in the game, I could split them into two different types: large and small. Each with its own strength and movement abilities.
An entirely different game (sort of)
It’s really interesting to look at the first Turtchester version and compare it to the latest Ratsail iteration.
The mechanical bones are still there and largely the same — play cards with strength to areas to win control each round. Some important changes have been made: a more dynamic market, custom cards, new currency, more hidden information, more flexibility in playing cards, and travel between areas. Most of those are just iterative changes on existing mechanisms.
Visually, however, the change is dramatic. They certainly don’t look like the same game anymore and the obvious connections to Beak, Feather, & Bone are effectively gone.
It’s a different game now, but it got there by small, incremental steps over time.
Upcoming playtesting at Unpub
This week, I’ll be at Unpub Festival 2026. I signed up for a public playtesting table on Friday night so people can give Ratsail a try. I’m excited and nervous to watch others play the game. This will be the first time I’m not one of the players, and instead will simply be an observer.6
If you’ll be there, please stop by and give it a try! I’ll try hard to follow my own advice on how to keep you and the other playtesters happy.
Ratsail isn’t done — far from it. In fact, I’m not even tied to this theme and it might change again. The core concept of cards, influence, victory points, and area control will remain. There’s a solid game in there, and I can’t wait to figure out what the final version looks like.
- E.P. 💀
P.S. If you love tabletop games, you should check out Tumulus. It’s a print-only, quarterly zine packed with Skeleton Code Machine game design content.
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For more about Unpub 2026, check out my previous post.
Ratsail started as a solo TTRPG. I still have that game in the queue. No reason I couldn’t have both a board game and a TTRPG with the same setting, right? Also, there’s a good chance Turtchester/Ratsail gets another thematic overhaul in the future.
Note that this is not a full rules explanation. I’m skipping a lot and just covering the most notable changes.
Our more pedantic readers will note that this isn’t a true Dutch auction and is rather a “Dutch auction style system” applied to an open draft. They would also note that the system effectively discounts items to a negative price which means the player gains coins when taking the card. Those readers would be correct.
I also added a way to trash a card out of your hand at the end of each round as yet another way to ensure players aren’t stuck with junk cards.
This will be a guided playtest. I’ll be there teaching the game and ensuring that everyone understands the rules. I’m pretty far off from unguided playtesting.
Making a note to find your table Friday night.
Thanks for posting this! It's so cool to see someone's process playing out.