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Foolster41 posted:"Mrs. Bennett" Be very careful with this theme. I was on the judging panel for Tabletop Deathmatch and one of the contestants had a game with this theme. He got a lot of criticism from the judges (which included prospective publishers) for making a game with women characters who's only path to victory was marrying a man.
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Apr 29, 2014 21:36
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Sarx posted:Be very careful with this theme. I was on the judging panel for Tabletop Deathmatch and one of the contestants had a game with this theme. He got a lot of criticism from the judges (which included prospective publishers) for making a game with women characters who's only path to victory was marrying a man. Edit: Now that I think about it, it'd be neat if I made the game so it's reversible: you have sons you're trying to marry off as a sort of alternate mode.
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Apr 29, 2014 22:36
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Sarx posted:Be very careful with this theme. I was on the judging panel for Tabletop Deathmatch and one of the contestants had a game with this theme. He got a lot of criticism from the judges (which included prospective publishers) for making a game with women characters who's only path to victory was marrying a man. On the one hand, they really should have considered the source material. On the other, they kind of have a point. The good new is it wouldn't be too difficult to subvert that. How about a version of the game where instead of the players being mothers trying to marry off their girls, they are girls trying to find their own way while their mother's are desperately trying to marry them off? EDIT: And this is why I should refresh before I post. Foolster41 posted:Well, I would want to make perfectly clear in-game that this is meant to be tounge firmly in cheek, in the vein of something like Ladies and Gentlemen. I dunno. Selling/marrying off a person is probably going to be seen as awful irregardless of gender.
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Apr 29, 2014 22:48
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Foolster41 posted:I'm working on too many games right now. Currently my two big projects are: Sounds like Marrying Mr. Darcy. A lot like it.
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Apr 29, 2014 23:50
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modig posted:Sounds like Marrying Mr. Darcy. A lot like it. Oh, I hadn't heard of this game.
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Apr 30, 2014 00:19
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RickVoid posted:On the one hand, they really should have considered the source material. He brought up that you could always subvert the theme and play that character who chose not to marry. I pointed out that the rules actively discouraged it so that subversion costs you the victory. My solution (and we'll see if this makes the video for that episode) was that he needed a "shoot the moon" mechanic, where it was more risky to avoid all suitors, but that if you could pull off the strategy you ended up better off than the person with the "best" suitor.
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May 6, 2014 08:55
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So I'm working on the Monster Hunter board game still, got some more playtests, and I'm getting a print and play version worked on. However, I figure this is as good a time as any to transition to a less copyright-infringing title than "Monster Hunter". Anyone have suggestions for alternate names that get the same point across? e: I like "A Sound of Thunder" but that may be just as copyright-infringing and quite misleading 
CodfishCartographer fucked around with this message at 01:21 on May 17, 2014 |
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May 17, 2014 01:06
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Something that at least references the theme. "Hunters of the Thunder"?
girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 01:47 on May 17, 2014 |
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May 17, 2014 01:43
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Don't really need to keep the thunder theme, I'm just a huge Bradbury nut. I like maybe something along the lines of "Hunters of the Wild" or "Hunters of the Savage" or something like that. e: Random ideas: "Hunter", "The Slayers", "Hunting Fire" / "Hunter's Fire" Joke suggestion: "Ravenous Ravenous Rathalos" CodfishCartographer fucked around with this message at 03:01 on May 17, 2014 |
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May 17, 2014 02:13
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"Behemoth," maybe? Pithy and evocative without being too generic.
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May 17, 2014 05:34
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Gutter Owl posted:"Behemoth," maybe? Pithy and evocative without being too generic. "Behemoth" definitely sounds cool. "Terrible Creatures", "Hunting Party", "Thunder Stalkers", "Eat, Hunt, Carve", "Destructive Tendencies", "Godslayers", "A Study of Large Creatures And How To Kill Them", "Lets Kill Dinosaurs". I'll post more if they come to me through the day.
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May 17, 2014 16:01
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Gutter Owl posted:"Behemoth," maybe? Pithy and evocative without being too generic.
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May 17, 2014 18:22
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++ for Behemoth. Possibly with subtitle, e.g. BEHEMOTH: Hunt the Hunter --- I also wanted to throw something out there, this is a game that's been bouncing around in my head for a few years but I never really found the time to hammer out any details until now. The game is Cardamari, it's essentially a card game version of Katamari based on the Dvorak engine, it's meant to be a short ish filler game that isn't too complicated. I put together a basic document with the rules here - https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B68sEOhNKsO7X0JmY1NGR2hvTEU/edit?usp=sharing - but the general idea is everyone starts with a Katamari, plays Things which make their Katamari bigger and gives them abilities, with the ultimate aim of meeting whatever Goal the King of all Cosmos has decreed. A couple of sample Goal cards would be: * As big as you can - Make the Largest Katamari you can before time runs out. Time runs out when the deck is empty. (alternately - a set number of turns, an actual time limit, or create a 'Royal Rainbow' card shuffled into the last fifth of the deck which ends the game to give a random time element). * As fast as you can - Decide on a target size (e.g. 40?) - the game ends as soon as one player hits that size or bigger, that player wins. * Mystery Goal - The King has hit his head and can't remember what he wanted you to do. Shuffle the Goal cards together, and put one of them about halfway into the deck without looking at any of them. When a player draws this card it becomes the goal for the game and they replace it with another card. A starting Katamari would be something like: Size 5 / Action : Draw the topmost Thing from the discard pile, then discard a card. I still need to play around with the size numbers and the actual cards to go in the deck. Vague future expansion ideas would be: * Variant Katamaris, i.e. they have different starting sizes and abilities. Players could pick one or be dealt one randomly. * Cousins - Each player would have a different cousin which pushes their Katamari. These would have varying minor rules (e.g. Your Katamari counts as being 1 size larger when adding Things). * Gifts - These are a special type of Thing card which don't increase your Size and only have an effect once they are absorbed into your Katamari. Obviously it wouldn't ever be something I'd want to sell, but if developed it would end up as a print & play freebie. Does this have potential, should I work on this further? Or is it a terrible idea that I should burn?
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May 18, 2014 17:52
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The easiest way to think of whether a game will be good is to write some narratives about times in the game where you'll have interesting decisions. E.g at this decision point, I could do plan A which has the benefit X and the tradeoff Y, or B with the benefit XX and the tradeoff YY, or C with the benefit XXX and the tradeoff YYY, and evaluating those benefits and tradeoffs is difficult and interesting because... If your rules aren't leading to those narratives, bin it.
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May 18, 2014 18:40
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Thanks for the suggestions everybody! Since it seems Behemoth is the most popular, I'll probably go with that. As for Cardamari - I really like the idea! I haven't read through the rules yet, but from the sound of it I would think that having multiple goals would be the best bet for the game. As mentioned before, decisions are important as they keep players engaged - having multiple goals with varying rewards / difficulties available might give the players more things to decide on and compete over. Maybe even Archipelago-style personal goals that are hidden. Aka The King has tasked Player A with collecting shiny things, and Player B with collecting fuzzy things. But both players would also be scored on the overall number of things. Players could then try to figure out what the other player is collecting to try and steal those items (and thus points) away. Also, be careful when designing "a casual time-filler game" as I've seen a lot of people use that as an excuse for lazy or poor design. "It's just a quick game, if there are one or two minor design problems it won't matter cus the game will be over soon!"
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May 18, 2014 21:19
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Cardamari sounds awesome! I'd probably go super casual though. I'd only give cards one stat - size. Everyone draws a hand of cards, and you can only play cards that are smaller than your cardamari. If you have no valid plays then you can discard to the center and draw. Anyone can play a card from the center. Just my quick thoughts. I have an idea I'm working on, too. It's a cross between Parcheesi and Tic-Tac-Toe. Basically it's a 2 or 4 player racing game with cross-genre elements. Each player is some sort of steppe nomad running around conscripting serfs into their armies. After returning home to drop off their loot and slaves they head off to sack a giant city in the center of the map. The city has 9 towers (each holding an heir to the city) arranged in a tic-tac-toe board, so whoever gets there gets to claim one of the towers. I figured that to prevent stalemates you could take towers from the other players as well. If you get three of the towers in a row, then the other nobles of the city accept defeat and subjugation. Regular old Parcheesi stuff like sending an opponent to his camp and blockades would apply I think. I've mocked up a board to play test with my brother later, but I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts just on that description.
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May 19, 2014 01:06
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So after way way waaaaaaay too long, the rulebook for Behemoth (the Monster Hunter board game) is finally complete! Feel free to look through it and give me any and all feedback on the rulebook or the game in general. This is my first time writing a rulebook, so beware that it might be total poo poo. Lemme know if any parts are confusing, if any rules aren't explained clearly enough, if anything seems mentioned but then not elaborated on, if the flow of the rules and instructions makes sense, etc. Assuming it's all clear enough, any comments, questions, or suggestions on the game design itself would be greatly appreciated. I'm currently working on getting a print-n-play version made as well, for people to actually play and provide more first-hand commentary on the game. CodfishCartographer fucked around with this message at 03:56 on May 21, 2014 |
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May 21, 2014 03:48
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So now I'm working on a yet another game project, that I'm tentatively calling "Keirsey's warriors" (but there's no way I csn keep that name). The idea is a very very simple miniatures game played on a 8x8 grid with tiles (I actually went and bought a upwards set from a thrift shop for prototyping) that are stacked to form the terrain. The plan is to build 16 different types of characters, all equaled out (so there's no team points managing), and very loosely based on the 16 Kelsey personality types. I was thinking there would be different ability cards in a deck that are based on your team's unit's temperament type (Guardian, Rational, Idealist and Artisen). One part of this design is dividing up the "switches" (e.g. Introvert vs. extrovert, Thinking vs. Feeling, etc.) of the types into mechanics. For example, Introvert would be more back-row types and Extrovert front row. Judging(J) would be more "settled" (abillities a series of checkboxes) and Perceiving(P) more flexible (abillities cost a number of energy points). (So, to use a D&D anallogy, J would be like wizards, P would be sorcerers). I'm kind of stuck though, I'm not sure if it's best to work from the frame of the four types and build down, or work from the individual classes and work up. One idea I have is having the engineer able to alter terrain. I'm also stuck on what to do with the healer, since I need something else for that character to do besides healing, since I want each class to have a few choices since I'm thinking this is going to have no more than 4 units on a team at a time.
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May 21, 2014 06:54
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CodfishCartographer posted:So after way way waaaaaaay too long, the rulebook for Behemoth (the Monster Hunter board game) is finally complete! Feel free to look through it and give me any and all feedback on the rulebook or the game in general. This is my first time writing a rulebook, so beware that it might be total poo poo. Lemme know if any parts are confusing, if any rules aren't explained clearly enough, if anything seems mentioned but then not elaborated on, if the flow of the rules and instructions makes sense, etc. Assuming it's all clear enough, any comments, questions, or suggestions on the game design itself would be greatly appreciated. If you can get a version up by Friday I'll bring it to my board game group and gather feedback. They've been my guinea pigs for my game for a few months now, I'm sure they'd appreciate seeing a game designed by someone not awful.
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May 21, 2014 07:03
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Countblanc posted:If you can get a version up by Friday I'll bring it to my board game group and gather feedback. They've been my guinea pigs for my game for a few months now, I'm sure they'd appreciate seeing a game designed by someone not awful. I'll do my best to have it ready in time! Although I cannot guarantee how Not Awful the game is. Also I updated the rules to hopefully not dump quite as much unneeded info right off the bat during setup. Foolster41 posted:So now I'm working on a yet another game project, that I'm tentatively calling "Keirsey's warriors" (but there's no way I csn keep that name). The idea is a very very simple miniatures game played on a 8x8 grid with tiles (I actually went and bought a upwards set from a thrift shop for prototyping) that are stacked to form the terrain. The plan is to build 16 different types of characters, all equaled out (so there's no team points managing), and very loosely based on the 16 Kelsey personality types. I was thinking there would be different ability cards in a deck that are based on your team's unit's temperament type (Guardian, Rational, Idealist and Artisen). I actually designed a game very similar to this a while back, but with a much less interesting theme than yours. Mine was on a 7x7 grid (I didn't factor in height, however) with 3 units to a team - each unit would have a physical attack and multiple abilities. I've shelved the idea for a while, and I'll explain why to hopefully give you some insight into what problems you may come across. The first major issue is that once a unit dies, that player is very likely to lose the game. When there are so few units, losing even a single one is devastating. The best solution that I could find (thanks to this thread) was to give each round 3 "activations" - so if a unit died, another could take two turns in one round. If two died, then the last remaining unit could take three turns. I didn't get to test this much, but it didn't fully solve the problem from what I could tell. Another solution I toyed around with was just having the objective of the game be 'kill one enemy unit' but that just turned every game into a  for the weakest enemy unit.The second major issue was keeping the game interesting while playing it. Tough decisions make for an engaging game, and when you only have 3 (in your case 4) units to work with, you don't have very many choices at any given time. Granted this can make the choices available HARDER, but that only happens sometimes. The rest of the time the best choice is pretty painfully obvious. There were tough an interesting decisions made in the pre-game when choosing what classes to build your team with, and that also provided a ton of variety to the game, but it just didn't hold up through the meat of the game itself. Was this a fault of my own personal design? I dunno, maybe! But it's an issue you should watch out for. My solution to this was to basically rework the game entirely - I changed it from a 7x7 grid to a similarly-sized hex board, and made all of the abilities and weapons extremely position-dependent. The idea behind this was to make moving and attacking in general very hard and require absurd amounts of planning: this creates a pretty huge web of tough chess-style choices of "do I move here, then here, then here? what if he moves there?" Unfortunately this huge amount of reworking required a shitload of time and I started working on other projects and the game got shunted to a folder in my dropbox that I may eventually one day decide to think about looking at maybe. I really love your theme for the game though, and fully encourage you to design it! Reading over this post it comes across as pretty negative which I really didn't intend, so sorry if it comes off that way, but I just figured I'd let you know some of the problems I ran across. CodfishCartographer fucked around with this message at 09:05 on May 21, 2014 |
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May 21, 2014 08:47
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CodfishCartographer posted:I really love your theme for the game though, and fully encourage you to design it! Reading over this post it comes across as pretty negative which I really didn't intend, so sorry if it comes off that way, but I just figured I'd let you know some of the problems I ran across.
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May 21, 2014 09:16
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quote:mine was on a 7x7 grid (I didn't factor in height, however) with 3 units to a team My current favorite game in this vein is Krosmaster Arena. Losing a unit is a big problem in Krosmaster (in terms of trying to win), but it also doesn't normally happen often until close to the end (ie. if characters are dying, then both sides have gone all-in on the fight anyway - and often in this kind of scenario the first kill is quickly revenged and the bloodbath continues). If a unit is just getting low from pot shots or whatever, normally they can hang back, hoover up some gold off the board, and spend time buying. Or heal (if you have options on your team for that). Having other stuff to do helps. And generally I don't think it's a problem if a game like this snowballs as long as it snowballs quickly. If the first kill normally means a win, then make sure the winner can keep pressing the fight and it doesn't limp on too long. All that said, tactical games (and, even moreso, "Magic"-like games) are going to be really hard places to create something interesting in right now. There's surely enough people trying (there's a ton of these on Kickstarter at any given moment), and without a really clever hook most of them are going to be very samey. It'd be like making a themeless, one-resource deckbuilder with a shared purchase row. Yes it's doable, but mostly you'll just discover why Dominion has the rules it does. With the same amount of work, in a different genre space, you might make something really interesting. I like the idea of personality type based characters (and even fitting them to RPG norms)... but it feels like a waste to use it on moving around a grid and hitting for 3 and action points and weapon upgrades or whatever. By which I mean, of course, live your dream and design what you want and have fun. Just something to consider.
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May 21, 2014 17:00
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Whew, it's been an inspiring and educational week since I stumbled across this thread. I've been putting together a prototype for something that's been bouncing around in my head, and since things have come together (then been discarded, then come together again) so quickly the current components are whatever I've had lying around. But I have a question about the practical allocation of resources. I intend to support 4 different resource types and up to 6 players. I haven't balanced the numbers very well yet, but I'd like to allow each player to have the ability to have at least 10, if not 20, of each type of resource. Three main ways of maintaining resource counts come to mind, each with their own sets of pros and cons: Dice: Each player gets 4 D20s to place on their player mat, tracking their four different resource totals. In my case I'd want (4 resources x 6 players) 24 D20s to accomplish this. Pros: easy to produce (I assume vanilla D20s are cheap), easy to package (small), little set-up required. Cons: Using dice as counters has never felt right to me. It's always hard to find the next number I'm looking for (on both D20s proper and and spindown counters), and if the table gets bumped, you're sometimes screwed. Chits (tokens or cards or paper dollars): Each player has 4 separate piles of money, adding or subtracting to/from the appropriate pile. If I went with denominations of 1, 3, and 6, one could represent all values 0-20 using 6 chits (2 1s, 2 3s, 2 6s), which means I'd want (6 chits x 4 resources x 6 players) 144 resource chits to be thorough. Pros: I've found that this works reasonably well. Piles are usually physically robust, and there's something slightly satisfying about making change. Cons: I assume any cost-effective production of chits would require the purchaser to punch them out. Punching out 144 chits sounds like a tedious first-time experience, and that doesn't even factor in my potential 90 damage-counting chits. Plus this would be a huge mess to clean up if the box got knocked over. I'm leaning away from cards, as my idea necessitates plenty of cards already. Monopoly money might be a decent alternative. Paper: Each player writes down their resource values. Pros: Quick, reliable, accurate. Cons: Feels dry, not gamey; likely it would remove people from the thematic aspect of the game. Also, the pencils that come with games are lousy, but remembering to bring equipment outside of the box is a hassle as well. So my questions are, and I'm looking for both general game design as well as specific to my situation feedback: * What do you folk find the best way to maintain independent sets of resources is, and why? Is there anything I haven't thought of, or should some combination be employed? * Would having 24 D20s and 18 D10s come in a box be off-putting? Would it be expensive to manufacture? * Would having 144 + 90 = 234 chits be too many to punch out? Too many to have in a box? Too expensive to manufacture? What if they were cards/dollars, which you'd have to frequently add to/subtract from, instead?
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May 22, 2014 19:04
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How about dials? i.e. you have 4 dials (possibly 4 pairs of dials with tens and units) - they're pretty hard to knock over and can be satisfying to use. The dials could be built into your play mats, alongside whatever those resources are used to build. Not sure what the cost would be if you're looking to get the game produced though, I would imagine it'd be more expensive than dice but possibly less than producing a ton of tokens? Another alternative is how Tiny Epic Kingdoms and Eclipse do it, each player has a base board with numbers 1-10 on it, and has a marker for each resource type they just put on the appropriate number. This has the same problem as dice in that a clumsy bastard knocking the table may scramble your counts, but you could invest in sturdier base boards which have 'slots' for the markers. If you go with dice, I would advise giving two D10s for each resource, tens and units. Makes it a bit quicker finding the numbers you need, and allows you to easily increase the resource cap if you need to. I'd make each die pair a different colour to synch up with the resource types. Not sure what the cost of a pair of D10s is compared to D20s when buying bulk though, and it would add a lot more dice to the game! --- Re: Behemoth, I have had a quick read through so far, I need to have a proper go through later. One thing that immediately stands out to me is how hard I found the action cards to read - I appreciate they are prototype cards bodged together using MSE but I think it would really benefit from having labels indicating what each number represents rather than relying on their position. e.g. instead of just a big '6' at the top, change this to 'Delay: 6' or similar. If I get chance I will throw together a couple of mockups of what I mean over the weekend.
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May 22, 2014 19:30
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Zark the Damned posted:Re: Behemoth, I have had a quick read through so far, I need to have a proper go through later. One thing that immediately stands out to me is how hard I found the action cards to read - I appreciate they are prototype cards bodged together using MSE but I think it would really benefit from having labels indicating what each number represents rather than relying on their position. e.g. instead of just a big '6' at the top, change this to 'Delay: 6' or similar. If I get chance I will throw together a couple of mockups of what I mean over the weekend. Thanks for the input! Yeah those were just really quickly done mockups for cards, since I just wanted to get poo poo online fast and hadn't nailed down the design of the cards yet. Since then I've gone and created a round of more thought-through card designs which I'll be using for the print-n-play version (and will eventually updated the rules document with)  It still doesn't directly say that the number is delay, but I figured players would pretty quickly get used to thinking of it as the delay, since it's really the only abstract number that's on the card. Any suggestions for how to improve the layout and design of the card?
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May 22, 2014 20:21
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Without having seen every single card, I feel you could put "damage" as its own unique box. This is less for readability and more for style, though (that said, I don't think it hurts clarity). Save the large, main text field for special effects. Maybe damage could be in the bottom corner of the box as just a big ol' number on top of a symbol that screams "THIS NUMBER MEANS DAMAGE", like a crossed spear and sword.
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May 22, 2014 20:33
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I like the delay/timing concept in Behemoth. I thought it was a bit weird to see the items for the hunt laid out on the monster sheet. I think I get that these are the necessary items the hunters are bringing to this particular hunt, but having them on the monster sheet feels weird, it looks like treasure rather than common party items for the players. Or do I misunderstand?
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May 22, 2014 20:48
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Countblanc posted:Without having seen every single card, I feel you could put "damage" as its own unique box. This is less for readability and more for style, though (that said, I don't think it hurts clarity). Save the large, main text field for special effects. Maybe damage could be in the bottom corner of the box as just a big ol' number on top of a symbol that screams "THIS NUMBER MEANS DAMAGE", like a crossed spear and sword. Yeah, I might do this. I thought about doing it, but I use the bottom-left corner for the combo symbols that can be used to reduce delay as you combo attacks together. I could probably reduce the text box and just slap the big damage number in the center of the card, or maybe just put the damage number off to the side of the combo symbol. For reference, here's another card with combo information:  I wanted to keep all the delay information along the right-side of he card, so it's easily readable when you're holding a hand of them to see what timing options you have available. Mister Sinewave posted:I like the delay/timing concept in Behemoth. You're correct, it is common party items for the players. Originally I had each player choose their own individual inventory of items, but that wound up being way less interesting than I thought it would in my playtests - new players would make mistakes that could lose them the game before even starting, and the tough decisions of creating your inventory only existed before the game even started. I found that going for a team inventory rather than a player inventory wound up being more interesting as players had to discuss who should get what item when. I didn't want to just have a separate board for team inventory as I figured there was plenty enough table clutter, so I figured I could put that information on either the behemoth info board or the timer board. I decided to go with the behemoth sheet so that I could more finely tune the balance of an individual behemoth. I made the first one pretty simple just so I could hammer out the gameplay, but in the future there could theoretically be behemoths that would require antidote potions or other behemoth-specific items like that. The idea behind it thematically was "We are contracting you guys to kill this behemoth, here are the supplies we are going to give your hunting party to take this beast down" CodfishCartographer fucked around with this message at 21:13 on May 22, 2014 |
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May 22, 2014 21:08
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That makes sense. Like that sheet is sort of the "contract" sheet. Take contract X to hunt Behemoth Y which will require $Z of necessary union-mandated supplies (and here they are).
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May 22, 2014 21:20
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Mister Sinewave posted:That makes sense. Like that sheet is sort of the "contract" sheet. That's the idea! This actually really makes me want to redo the monster sheet to look more like a contract poster on a WANTED board, which I'll probably get around to doing after I finish the print an play version.
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May 22, 2014 21:27
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After a bit more thought and some fiddling around, maybe something like: Delay and Damage are the two numbers at the top, using icons instead of text to save space. These are the most important numbers so need emphasis. Bottom left of the card art is the reduced delay for playing it as part of a combo, bottom right of card art is the damage reduction and delay for blocking. Obviously these wouldn't appear if inapplicable. Depending on how wordy your cards would be you may want to increase the card rules text area. The Card Name is pretty much purely flavour and not that important, and the weapon type is only used when setting up the action decks, so those could be shrunk more. Regarding combos, in this concept I changes the symbols to fire and lightning instead of generic arrows, with a keyword in the rules text. Allows you to potentially introduce more symbols, e.g. ice, earth, water, so on, as elements are a staple of most fantasy genres. Possibly you could have an infinity symbol for something that combos into anything. Symbols could be themed by weapon type, each deck could have it's own pair of symbols. You have a sample card in the rules with multiple delay and damage values - instead of this, I would use an X for the delay and damage, and include rules text along the lines of 'Power Blow - When setting this action, choose a value for X from the following: 1, 3 or 5.'
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May 22, 2014 21:32
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CodfishCartographer posted:I could probably reduce the text box and just slap the big damage number in the center of the card, I really like this idea, by the way. I think it'd be really satisfying to have a hand of huge numbers with big ol' weapons behind them.
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May 22, 2014 21:44
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Thanks for the mockup, I really like a lot of the info there and makes me feel silly for not designing something similar. The gigantic weapon icon on my mockups would be replaced with pretty art, so I just threw the weapon icon there as placeholder - the back of each card will have a large weapon icon, so I probably don't even need to mention the weapon on the front of the card for a theoretical final version. One or two cards get a bit wordy, but for the most part that design would be more than enough to fit everything. I really like the idea of changing combos to symbols, my initial reasoning behind the arrows was to 'lead' from one card to another, but symbols gets the point across just fine. I don't think I'd go for generic fantasy elements just cus I don't really think of the theme as quite high fantasy or anything like that, but I'll think it over. Not entirely sure how I feel about replacing the multiple delay/damage thing with X, primarily because some of the delay/damage values don't match up. The example I used in the rule book was the most simple 1/1 ratio, but there are some other ones that get a bit more complex, and I'd rather avoid lots of X Y and Z values all over the cards.  This is an example of a more complicated multiple value card, and honestly I'm not happy with the design and would like to think of something better, but this should at least function for a print and play version. Once I'm done getting that version done and in pdf form, I'll get to work redesigning the cards to be more efficient and readable.
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May 22, 2014 21:47
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Depending on how linearly the delay/damage scales are on individual cards, you could do something like: Spread Shot - Delay 3 / Damage 1 Power Shot - When readying this attack, you may increase the delay by 1 to increase damage by 3. You may do this twice. You don't need the italic bit, I'm just a fan of the ability words that were introduced in MTG a few sets ago.
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May 22, 2014 22:01
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There are some cards that scale non-linearly, but there's only one or two and I think it'd be worth giving up that small design flexibility in favor of the more elegant readability. Thanks for the suggestions! This has been my first time actually doing graphical design for cards and player boards and such and it's been a pretty big learning experience for me trying to make sure everything gets all the information needed across and is still pretty to look at (and also isn't spread across a million components) I should have the print and play version ready sometime tonight or tomorrow afternoon. It'll have the versions of the cards I've been posting, but hopefully that won't hinder people from trying it out and providing feedback!
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May 22, 2014 22:12
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My suggestion for the Delay circle would be to give it some ticks around the inner circle to make it more clock like. Long term you could also set it up so that each tick actually represented a number and then fill in an appropriate amount of the clock for each card. That would also give new players an easy, visual way to gauge if an attack is fast or slow. Anyway I'm super excited for the print and play version! EDIT: Also! For the non-linear delay increase you could format it something like: When playing *CARD* you may choose one of the following: Delay +3 = Damage +3 Delay +6 = Damage +7 EDIT 2: Or something like: When you play *CARD* put up to 8 Delay Counters on it. Delay Counters => 3 = Damage +3 Delay Counters => 6 = Damage +4 Delay Counters = 8 = Damage +X Misandu fucked around with this message at 22:26 on May 22, 2014 |
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May 22, 2014 22:21
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Zark the Damned posted:How about dials? I considered that idea, but they're probably rather expensive to produce (especially well), and are still subject to sliding about. Zark the Damned posted:Another alternative is how Tiny Epic Kingdoms and Eclipse do it, each player has a base board with numbers 1-10 on it, and has a marker for each resource type they just put on the appropriate number. This has the same problem as dice in that a clumsy bastard knocking the table may scramble your counts, but you could invest in sturdier base boards which have 'slots' for the markers. Aha! I've played a game or two like that, and they've worked out to my satisfaction. I feel like the bump factor is less bad than with dice, and the addition/subtraction becomes much more intuitive when you're entirely braindead and can't do basic math (the most common time I find myself playing board games). I'll give that a mock-up next playtest; I suspect it will meet my needs most elegantly. Thanks.
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May 22, 2014 23:01
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It's been a long time coming, but here it is: Behemoth: The Print and Play Edition! It's a pretty big pdf, 150mb and 26 pages, so I hope you like cutting out cards! All of the cards are sized to be a bit smaller than a magic card, so they should fit into most any sleeves nicely. The Behemoth Attack Cards actually do have important information on the backs of them ,so in the sections of the pdf with those I've used black lines to associate which backs go with which fronts. I've also included a lot of tokens with the download - if you don't have 3 d10s to use to keep track of the Behemoth's health, I put in some tokens with numbers 0-9 on them to help keep track (and also to track anything else you can think to use them for). I'd highly recommend using your own tokens / counters / wooden cubes / whatever as player markers and sharpness tokens, but if you don't have any spares I've included tokens for all those as well. I've also updated the rules document again. I replaced some of the card images with newer versions, and added some detail text about the weapons and their play styles near the end. I've also included a 'gameplay tips' section to provide some guidance - but if you'd rather figure things out for yourself, feel free to ignore it! If anyone does playtest this, I'd really love to hear any and all feedback! Along with how many players you had, and how long it took you to win/lose at the game. If you did win or lose, how close was the game? CodfishCartographer fucked around with this message at 00:34 on May 24, 2014 |
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May 23, 2014 10:31
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Downloading it now! I certainly hope to get my group to give it a try.
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May 23, 2014 12:00
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| # ? May 17, 2024 14:53 |
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CodfishCartographer posted:It's been a long time coming, but here it is: Behemoth: The Print and Play Edition! It's a pretty big pdf, 150mb and 26 pages, so I hope you like cutting out cards! All of the cards are sized to be a bit smaller than a magic card, so they should fit into most any sleeves nicely. The Behemoth Attack Cards actually do have important information on the backs of them ,so in the sections of the pdf with those I've used black lines to associate which backs go with which fronts. I've also included a lot of tokens with the download - if you don't have 3 d10s to use to keep track of the Behemoth's health, I put in some tokens with numbers 0-9 on them to help keep track (and also to track anything else you can think to use them for). I'd highly recommend using your own tokens / counters / wooden cubes / whatever as player markers and sharpness tokens, but if you don't have any spares I've included tokens for all those as well. I might be missing something but what's the point of Roar? If I'm reading it right its 4 delay (right? I might be misunderstanding how Behemoth cards read) to delay the players 4 and it hits every player (who doesn't evade it, I suppose?) which seems guaranteed to give the Behemoth another turn right away and not really change anything unless I misunderstand the way delay works.
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May 23, 2014 15:26
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