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I wanted to apologize in advance, my group (being a campus-based one) is having a significantly shorter meeting than usual tonight since the building we meet at is closing several hours earlier, so we won't get to playtest. Next week for sure though, I mentioned it to people and there's a lot of brewing interest.
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May 23, 2014 18:47
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No problem man! I'm just happy to see people so excited and actually interested in playing the drat thing.Anniversary posted: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. Nope, you understand everything correctly - and yeah, it's a bit of a design hiccup on my end. That card originally had some other stuff to it that wound up being Dumb and Not Fun so I scrapped it and made a mental note to redesign the card. Obviously, it slipped my mind! I knew I'd forget something in this huge project  At any rate, here's a pdf of just the redesigned Roar card, e: New version of the print n play pdf is up! I also updated the original link to be the new version. e2: apparently that link was 403ing, so updated it and it should work now CodfishCartographer fucked around with this message at 00:34 on May 24, 2014 |
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May 23, 2014 22:17
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I'v got a map of Slobbovia, and I've mostly got the rules hashed out, but I am terrible at art. Are there any more artistic goons that would be willing to lend me a hand with making this map suitable for PbP? I'm still working on the rules for player interaction, but the rules that effect the map are going to start nearly identical to standard Diplomacy, and the map symbols are mostly intuitive. It's just the quality of the scan I received from some random pop-culture library in Ohio is absolutely atrocious, and the original map was likely drawn on a napkin in pencil in the first place. I know there's a later, larger, and better quality version of the map out there, but the only person I was able to track down for rules verification said his collection had been damaged by a roof leak years ago. Can I get some goon help with this? First "cartographer" I contacted said he'd do it for $350 (which is the same as my loving rent), and another guy for $75 (two weeks of groceries), and the one guy that said he'd do it for free was basically a skrub that wouldn't be able to start on it until two/three weeks from now. I have PMs if you want to contact me there. If nothing else, I could use a few tips on making this map at least more legible and professional looking. E: Yes, I know that even for standard Diplomacy there's a lot of stupid crap on here, but for the purposes of just updating the map and to create an impetus for players to gradually change/add rules to the game I'm inclined to let it slide for now. For example, if an army sets up in (AW) towards the center of the map there is literally no way for another player to dislodge it, and there's no way for the player there to escape. I managed to get in contact with a guy that played the game when it was originally running from '72 to '86, and he told me it was added specifically to gently caress with people that were concerned with "Strumph": which is basically all the players more concerned with "winning" the game than the stories being told. Even told me that in the final map there was a supply center completely surrounded by mountains and totally unaccessible, added just to make people mad that they couldn't have it. Triskelli fucked around with this message at 16:44 on May 30, 2014 |
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May 30, 2014 12:30
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I'm working more on Feint wars (formerly called "foam wars" here, I can't remember if I mentioned that name change). I updated the rules a little. As cool and unique I thought the action points system was, it was just simply too cumbersome, so I went back to more of a move/attack action system. Instead each player gets a number of actions on their turns based on the agreed point allowance, at a rate of 2 actions per 10 pts. So a standard 100 pt. game would give each player 20 actions, and each unit may only use a 2 actions per turn, In play testing one concern is that missing is pretty common, though I balanced it so attack is default 1-2 higher than defense. Might be just a batch of bad rolls. Another is that counting up the totals of dice is a bit cumbersome maybe, since the numbers are the number of dice to roll, and especially often both sides roll 4-6 dice. Perhaps matching highest dice together would fix that. I'm wondering if I really should switch to fail/success dice instead. As I said before, I want to draw from slavic mythology, and part of the reason I'm getting back into working on this is I got 2 books form the library about slavic myths, and have new ideas for units, though I'm not sure yet how interesting they are. I'll write more about that later, since I have to run to work. Edit: Back. Also, remembered to add link to rule book. Here are some examples of what I have so far for the world and units. the world so far is divided into two areas: "The town" which is where the "heros" of the tales come from, brave warriors, knights and saints. and "Coven bog", where there are villages of wielders of magic and magical beings. They are not evil perse, and mostly want to be left alone, or have varying stances towards "the town" and other villages, but bad feelings can easily rise to outright wars. There are also various beings who range from wanting to protect their bog home to out right malevolent. I tried to pull as much as could out the mythology, according to my research (and I'm definitely not done yet!) Note for these cards: These are only very basic prototypes, to give a basic idea of what they do. "AP" should be read as "speed" (I forgot to update them). The number in the left is number of dice for attacking and defending respectively. As I said, I tried to form the mechanics from my experience with the mock combat of foam sword fighting, and wanted to make each weapon unique and interesting, and have different conflicting ideal ranges. The album with cards so far are here. http://imgur.com/a/XemCW I'm going to try to orginize some test games pretty soonish. Foolster41 fucked around with this message at 08:31 on Jun 6, 2014 |
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Jun 6, 2014 01:01
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Countblanc posted:I wanted to apologize in advance, my group (being a campus-based one) is having a significantly shorter meeting than usual tonight since the building we meet at is closing several hours earlier, so we won't get to playtest. Next week for sure though, I mentioned it to people and there's a lot of brewing interest. if you got time to playtest his game you got time to play the latest version of my game nigga
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Jun 10, 2014 22:57
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Broken Loose posted:if you got time to playtest his game you got time to play the latest version of my game nigga Oh dang, I'm super pumped to try this out, I loved the idea. Not sure when I'll get a chance, but I'll do my best to give it a shot and get back to you. Anybody actually play test Behemoth? I haven't heard back from anyone on it yet.
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Jun 11, 2014 04:39
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CodfishCartographer posted:Oh dang, I'm super pumped to try this out, I loved the idea. Not sure when I'll get a chance, but I'll do my best to give it a shot and get back to you. I printed it out and brought it last week only to realize I forgot to bring my card sleeves for proxying stuff. I'll put it through its paces on Friday if people show up! As for Final Attack, I tried playing Space Alert with my new group last week and they absolutely crumbled under pressure, I'm not sure I could get much interest (or useful feedback) about making them playtest FA. 
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Jun 11, 2014 04:45
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Countblanc posted:I printed it out and brought it last week only to realize I forgot to bring my card sleeves for proxying stuff. I'll put it through its paces on Friday if people show up! As for Final Attack, I tried playing Space Alert with my new group last week and they absolutely crumbled under pressure, I'm not sure I could get much interest (or useful feedback) about making them playtest FA. Hope you wanna print it out again because I redid all the cards! (also the audio tracks were redone)
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Jun 11, 2014 05:13
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CodfishCartographer posted:Oh dang, I'm super pumped to try this out, I loved the idea. Not sure when I'll get a chance, but I'll do my best to give it a shot and get back to you. I've got all the resources, just trying to find time to give it a shot!
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Jun 12, 2014 23:55
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CodfishCartographer posted:Oh dang, I'm super pumped to try this out, I loved the idea. Not sure when I'll get a chance, but I'll do my best to give it a shot and get back to you. Sorry! Your PNP version just happened to arrive at a bad time. I'll try to get in a game this week or next.
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Jun 13, 2014 01:22
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No problem guys, I know that life is usually pretty obtrusive and can mess stuff up - just was curious if anyone had tried it out or not! I'm happy to hear there's still interest. Also, I'm currently working on redesigning the cards as talked about on the last page. This is the current mock-up:  I'm not sure how I like having the attack name below the description box, but that's so that i can remove the description box completely on attacks that don't need it to clear up space - otherwise there'd be a big empty box, or a big empty space between the attack name and the weapon name. Also again, the weapon icon in the top-center would be replaced with pretty art in the final version. I'm using geomatric shapes for the combo icons, with a star representing that an attack can combo into any other. I used this four-square-diamond one shown here, and then the other combo icon is an upside-down triangle. Thoughts? (For those that've printed out the PnP version, none of the attack values or anything are changing, so you won't need to reprint everything. this is purely visual)
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Jun 13, 2014 23:22
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Having the name below the text box feels extremely weird. Why not at the very top of the card, either above or between the attack and time symbols?
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Jun 14, 2014 00:49
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Move the title to the top of the card. I'd recommend moving all the symbols to a vertical stripe down the left hand side and color code them along with symbols. Also, is there a reason you have the weapon type written on the card? It's been a while since I read your summary, but it seems like you could just turn that into a symbol, maybe even just put that symbol on the back of the respective decks.
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Jun 14, 2014 01:26
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Crackbone posted:Move the title to the top of the card. I'd recommend moving all the symbols to a vertical stripe down the left hand side and color code them along with symbols. Also, is there a reason you have the weapon type written on the card? It's been a while since I read your summary, but it seems like you could just turn that into a symbol, maybe even just put that symbol on the back of the respective decks. Huh, hadn't thought of color-coding them - good idea! The weapon type is just there as a reminder - it's not vital, and I was planning on putting it on the back of each card deck. It's mostly there on the front as an easy way to recognize which attack belongs to which stack, as I noticed myself sometimes mixing up similar ones between different weapons when dealing with my proxies. A symbol could easily work as well. e: Here's another mockup. The icon for the weapon IS on the back of the cards, so it's not really vital, but like I said I think it's useful having it in front. I moved the combo info down to the bottom box, but not sure I really like it there. I suppose the "Combo:" text isn't really necessary either as the symbol is all that matters, but I think it's nice having it there as a reminder to the players? It'd be easy to move it to the bottom-left corner, then just get rid of the weapon icon and then increase the size of the description box.  Also, reminder that many cards won't have all of those symbols - lots don't have the guard, and many don't have the second delay. There are only a rare handful that actually would have all four symbols. CodfishCartographer fucked around with this message at 03:17 on Jun 14, 2014 |
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Jun 14, 2014 02:59
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Are any of you with games submitting to this year's Tabletop Deathmatch? I think this year the competition is going to be much better than last as the CAH guys learned a lot from it. But its essentially free money and art/design towards your game, plus the networking opportunity is hard to beat.
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Jun 14, 2014 12:31
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I'm liking the new attack card layout, though I'm not sure if the colour coding helps or just makes it a little messy - possibly it would work better if the icons were on a solid strip instead of over a texture? I'd just make the Combo ability part of the text box, unless you envisage having a lot of cards with lengthy rules text and combo ability. Something along the lines of 'Combos into: X Y Z'. One thing that might help to try is to just grab some pics from the Hot Modrons thread to use as placeholder pictures, you may find that using pictures instead of the big icons changes the overall look. Another thing I thought of - in this game the name of the attack isn't generally that important versus the stats - maybe it could be shrunk and rotated? UFS does this to reasonable effect (though there are other elements of their design which are awful so don't copy the whole layout!)  If I get chance this weekend I'll try throwing together another mockup.
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Jun 14, 2014 14:52
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The sideways name is interesting, but I dunno if it's really necessary? Putting the icons along a strip on the left makes more than enough room for the title along the top. Here's the most recent mockup, with some art thrown in there to help hopefully make things a bit more realistic looking for planning. I know it's not super nicely included, but poo poo I am not very good at art design. I also slapped together a background to the icons to see how the colors worked there. I'm also gunna submit this to the Tabletop Deathmatch after this weekend, cus no real reason not to!
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Jun 14, 2014 22:11
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This is really starting to actually look like good mock-up art. I'm not sure if I like how de-emphasized the name is compared to the other two boxes, though.
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Jun 14, 2014 22:54
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Poison Mushroom posted:This is really starting to actually look like good mock-up art. I'm not sure if I like how de-emphasized the name is compared to the other two boxes, though. I think it'd help to make everything not a shade of brown. The only way to really separate things right now is with a thick black outline, which looks kinda bleh - Try using different blocks of color, or make the background of the card something else. Monster Hunter is a very vibrant series, full of greens, oranges, and blues, so don't feel limited to a more "gritty" color palate. Also maybe change "Gun lance" and "Switch Axe" to something more markedly different. I know you gave them different names, but if you're going to be offering it up for a competition you probably want to separate yourself from the source material a bit more, and the mechanics are abstract enough that I don't think it should be TOO difficult.
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Jun 14, 2014 23:02
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Yeah, I've wanted to distinguish those names more than they are now - I sat down to re-theme them, along with Hunting Horn - my idea for now is to turn Gunlance into Towershield and Spear (or Pike?), Switch Axe into Charge Halberd, and Hunting Horn into Banner and Sword. Mechanically they'll stay the same, but I might fiddle around with I'm not honestly a huge fan of my brownish color theme so far, I just used it as a quick way to make things look oldish. Any suggestions on color layouts? Like I've said I'm not very good when it comes to artistic design so I'm never sure what looks good or doesn't  And yeah, I'll re-emphasize the title of each attack, as I've gotten some other friend feedback saying it should fit in with the others. Alternatively, I may wind up using the faded-paint-stroke sort of thing I did with the title but in more vibrant colors behind the left-icons and maybe the description to help give it some more color overall.
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Jun 15, 2014 00:36
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How many cards have Combo?
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Jun 15, 2014 00:51
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21/54 cards combo into other cards, and there are 28 cards that can be comboed into - so around half. 7/9 weapons use it, with those that do use it have an average of 4 cards out of 6 per weapon. Why do you ask?
CodfishCartographer fucked around with this message at 01:20 on Jun 15, 2014 |
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Jun 15, 2014 01:16
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CodfishCartographer posted:21/54 cards combo into other cards, and there are 28 cards that can be comboed into - so around half. 7/9 weapons use it, with those that do use it have an average of 4 cards out of 6 per weapon. Why do you ask? I know somebody a few posts up recommended putting combo into the text box, but I was trying to see if it deserved its own bit. I think you could actually shrink the font in the box down somewhat, shrink the box as a result, and make the icons on the left read a little better with the extra room. The block (damage/time) icon is pretty cluttered as a whole and could use some cleaning up. What does everything mean and what parts of the design are you attached to? Let's take this bit by bit.
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Jun 15, 2014 01:48
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Broken Loose posted:I know somebody a few posts up recommended putting combo into the text box, but I was trying to see if it deserved its own bit. I think you could actually shrink the font in the box down somewhat, shrink the box as a result, and make the icons on the left read a little better with the extra room. The block (damage/time) icon is pretty cluttered as a whole and could use some cleaning up. What does everything mean and what parts of the design are you attached to? Let's take this bit by bit. The first symbol is damage dealt to the behemoth. Second symbol is delay, how many spaces using that attack will set you back on a timer track. Both of those are used on almost every single card, and are the primary things players will be considering. Below that is the combo delay - if a card with "Combo" on it successfully activates, then you can play a card with the same combo symbol for the reduced combo delay. Finally, the shield icon shows that the user can use the attack to block while it's readied, before the attack is used - when an attack is used to block, the incoming damage is reduced by the shown amount and the player is delayed by the shown amount. The details on the shield icon itself are not unique to each card, but rather to each weapon. Originally I had it so that only the primary weapon card showed the block details, and the individual attack cards merely had a shield icon to show they could be used to defend. I figured adding the details to each card would just help make things clear so players wouldn't have to reference their weapon card over and over, each relevant card would provide the info. CodfishCartographer fucked around with this message at 02:11 on Jun 15, 2014 |
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Jun 15, 2014 02:01
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CodfishCartographer posted:The first symbol is damage dealt to the behemoth. Second symbol is delay, how many spaces using that attack will set you back on a timer track. Both of those are used on almost every single card, and are the primary things players will be considering. Below that is the combo delay - if a card with "Combo" on it successfully activates, then you can play a card with the same combo symbol for the reduced combo delay. Finally, the shield icon shows that the user can use the attack to block while it's readied, before the attack is used - when an attack is used to block, the incoming damage is reduced by the shown amount and the player is delayed by the shown amount. The details on the shield icon itself are not unique to each card, but rather to each weapon. Originally I had it so that only the primary weapon card showed the block details, and the individual attack cards merely had a shield icon to show they could be used to defend. I figured adding the details to each card would just help make things clear so players wouldn't have to reference their weapon card over and over, each relevant card would provide the info. Here's a thought: Keep damage and delay as they are, but consolidate the combo icon and make the shield stats into a row so the numbers read easier. Also, reduce text size overall, increase the contrast in general, and block out the text boxes if you want to include backgrounds. Here's a lovely 5-minute mockup:  See how much easier that is to read? I could and should make the big damage and timer icons larger because they're supposed to dominate, but you get the idea.
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Jun 15, 2014 03:09
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Definitely getting better. More thoughts: - If the blocking is unique to the weapon and not the card, I would move those numbers off the left hand scroll. Maybe even to the back of the card, oriented upside down from the rest of the iconography. It would also make it very clear if somebody was blocking (dunno if that's an issue). - Personally, I would do the side panel as a set of colored squares, with iconography in the color block behind the number. That would reduce space usage and still be legible. - How many combo symbols are there? - Is the number next to the combo symbol strictly the delay modification? If so I think you could probably lose the clock icon and just do "Combo Symbol: 2". Here's my quick mockup of what I'm talking about for the colored squares with iconography: 
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Jun 15, 2014 03:49
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Crackbone posted:Definitely getting better. More thoughts: Whether someone's blocking or not isn't a big issue - it's a decision that's made when you're getting hit, not when you're readying an attack. As for moving the numbers, if I ere to move them to the back of the card I'd likely just remove them completely and just keep them on the primary weapon card. Each weapon 'deck' has 6 attack cards and one primary weapon card that shows the weapon's passive ability and blocking ability. If I put the blocking stuff on the back of each card, that's inconvenient enough that the player may as well just look at the primary weapon card. Cards aren't really placed face-down ever, as players don't need to hide nay information from one another (at least not until I implement the 5-player variant where someone controls the behemoth) My only possible problem with using the squares is that the combo icon is important, and that could make it difficult to distinguish. There are two combo symbols: the diamond and the triangle. When a card combos into other cards, there's also a third symbol, a star, that signifies that the attack can combo into either the diamond or triangle. The number next to the combo symbol is purely for delay and nothing else - the clock icon could probably be lost, but I do like that it helps reinforce that the symbols are used as a delay.
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Jun 15, 2014 06:24
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CodfishCartographer posted:The number next to the combo symbol is purely for delay and nothing else - the clock icon could probably be lost, but I do like that it helps reinforce that the symbols are used as a delay.
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Jun 15, 2014 09:08
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CodfishCartographer posted:Whether someone's blocking or not isn't a big issue - it's a decision that's made when you're getting hit, not when you're readying an attack. As for moving the numbers, if I ere to move them to the back of the card I'd likely just remove them completely and just keep them on the primary weapon card. Each weapon 'deck' has 6 attack cards and one primary weapon card that shows the weapon's passive ability and blocking ability. If I put the blocking stuff on the back of each card, that's inconvenient enough that the player may as well just look at the primary weapon card. Cards aren't really placed face-down ever, as players don't need to hide nay information from one another (at least not until I implement the 5-player variant where someone controls the behemoth) I'd move the block values to the main weapon card - it's a static value that doesn't change, so adding it eats up valuable real estate that could be used for something else on a card. I get your concern about the combo icon. Removing the weapon block stats makes more room for a separate combo/time icon if you wanted.
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Jun 15, 2014 16:40
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I made a post in the board games thread that fits here, too. Pandante has a very clean, almost minimalist color scheme and graphical design. I like it very much. But the backs of the cards are pure red with some minimal white text. This clean and even design means that even minor printing glitches stand out like a sore thumb. On cards with patterned backs these minor printing issues might not even be noticeable. If your game (like Pandante) relies on the backs of the cards being identical to each other and indistinguishable, this is a problem. Minor printing issues means you can have a (partially) marked deck right out of the box. The card with the white blob is a "1", the one with the "birthmark" is a 6, etc. It's an example of how graphical design can have practical impacts beyond what you might expect.
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Jun 20, 2014 17:55
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Had a couple of ideas re the cards. First, could the combos be expressed as a modifier? e.g. Delay 5, -2 if played after a Red Star attack. Would this help or hinder simple understanding of the card? Second, how often will cards that can be used to block also have their own complex rules text? If the answer is 'never' then I'd suggest moving the Block rules into the text box. Another idea I had for cards which can block is watermarking - put a big shield icon in the background of the text box for cards which can block.
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Jun 21, 2014 12:15
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Hi guys I don't normally read/post here because design isn't my thing, but I really think this article is worth reading if you are trying to write rules: http://hyperbolegames.com/2014/06/1...campaign=buffer
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Jun 21, 2014 17:30
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So I'm making a game. It's about space. I wanted to post here for a while and got stuck making some sort of all-encompassing effortpost but I'll never end up posting that way so, uh, sup. It started with me having a scifi setting and wanting to run an RPG for some friends. That naturally required a system for space battles, and there being no existing one to my liking I had to roll my own. It's a fairly hard scifi setting, and my interest was in playing realistic (by my assumptions anyway) space combat, something which makes use of the space environment rather than throwing it out in favor of WW2 dogfights or whatever. However, my biggest annoyance with both boardgames and RPGs is when there are too many mechanics, too much bookkeeping, so that the meaningful decisions become few and far between while most of the time is spent on the job of running the game. Computer games can get away with that but having the players be a CPU is no fun for anyone. It's what mostly keeps me away from wargames. The RPG idea fell by the wayside as it grew into a coherent thing on its own I focused on developing it as a standalone experience. It now has a life of its own as a hex-based wargame/boardgame. Any notion of actually simulating realistic space combat got immediately thrown out of the window. It's 2D, speeds and distances are abstract. Movement is vectors, unmathified by the magical method of 'just draw a line'. The aim is not to simulate physics or technical detail in any accuracy, but rather to create a ruleset that creates similar tactical situations and choices that this brand of realism does. I've been writing in this setting, and it seemed to me there were interesting choices there that might make for a fun game. It's not plain and raw realism, it's a simplified and abstracted set of rules that takes the aspects of it that are relevant to a gameable experience and keeps them as intact as possible.  Zero graphical design effort went into this. There's a good example of the philosophy there. The lasers on these ships can fire out to ranges of 10-20 light seconds. At those sort of ranges a ship can avoid laser fire by accelerating in random, unpredictable directions; the enemy will be working on sensor data several seconds old and the laser will take several more seconds to hit. More agile ships can get in closer in relative safety. None of that is explicit mechanics but it informs how they work. Lasers hit every time at short range, and lose accuracy at longer ranges as ships are assumed to evade when necessary. More agile ships get an evasion bonus to hit rolls, yet as you get close enough that advantage is negated. The end result is that different ships are good at different ranges, and maneuvering to manage range is a big part of it. To my surprise, the game works. It's fun, even to some people who are not me. So far it's been played by hand on Roll20, far from ideal but serviceable. It's sleek enough to keep up a good pace of interesting decisions. I want to make a physical prototype at some point to see if it's an immense pain to play with crap like physical fuel tokens. I do try to make it workable for the tabletop but it's kind of secondary to me now. It's going to be digital for now, created by me and a bunch of other interested people. There are some edge cases in the rules to resolve and I'm perpetually worried there's some immensely gamebreaking tactic that'll ruin the whole game that I've missed in playtesting so far. I don't really have any questions right now because I'm half-awake 1 am posting and can't think. This is just me introducing my thing I guess. There's definitely things to unfuck yet.
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Jun 21, 2014 23:07
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Zark the Damned posted:Had a couple of ideas re the cards. Dang, I never thought about watermarking the shield icon, that could work really well. Blocking cards do occasionally have some extra rules attached, but very few cards have complex rules at all in general. I've played with the idea of having combos be modifiers, but wasn't sure which method was more clear / easier to understand. Does anyone have any say on which would be better? Also I'm traveling a lot over the next couple weeks so I won't be able to post any new mockups, but I'm certainly keeping up with the thread and writing down ideas. Fake edit: thanks for the rule book link! I'll definitely be adding/rewriting parts of my rule book once I can.
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Jun 23, 2014 05:17
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Can anyone recommend (a preferably free) program for mocking up card designs? I've got something prototyped by hand but want to try making a print and play document of it if I can.
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Jun 27, 2014 05:42
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Well I finally got to playtest Behemoth as I promised like two months ago. I won't unload all my initial thoughts since Codfish is pretty tied up right now apparently, but here's some general thoughts. Some of these are balance, and others are just ambiguous GamerFeels. 1) There's no anti-quarterbacking mechanic. None. Even in my first game it started to come out, telling someone "no, don't play that card, play one with this other delay instead so we can set up an attack easier/so you can evade/whatever" was common halfway through. Maybe this is acceptable or even desirable in your game, but at least in other games it doesn't feel great for either side - no one likes getting bossed around, and no one likes having to be the guy telling their friends they're playing wrong over and over. We tossed around the idea of an audio track that lasts [minutes] and changes every [1/4 of those minutes] to signify to the players that time is passing, and if the Hunt lasts too long they lose. 2) The Behemoth's deck seems kinda random. Thunderstone has this problem, where you might start off by encountering all the worst poo poo right off the bat or at the worst times, and it makes me hate that game. There's a couple things you could do here, and I'm sure plenty more that I haven't thought of. [1] Have a separate deck for Enrage cards, and have little/no overlap between which cards are in each deck. [2] Have the player put a few of the real poo poo-kicker cards in each quarter of the deck and shuffle those separately and then stack them up ala Pandemic. [3] Just have like three separate decks depending on how far into the hunt you are. 3) It kinda sucks getting down to red sharpness, because then you literally can't do anything other than use items. Considering some weapons burn through sharpness real quick (Sword and Shield, Dual Swords in particular) it isn't too improbable that a player will run their weapon down and just be worthless with certain team compositions. Maybe consider making it so you do -1 damage for every sharpness level below the requirement you are, and make it so you don't inflict durability damage when attacking this way. I dunno what you'd have to adjust numberwise to make this work though, but players generally won't want to swing for suboptimal damage anyway, it's more there to soften the blow if your teammate burns all the sharpening stones. 4) The weapons themselves seem a bit unbalanced, particularly Gun Lance (OP). Sword and Board seems a bit on the weak end, but maybe I just played wrong, but Gun Lance definitely seems kinda silly. The problem is, it's also incredibly cool and you feel good using it, so maybe the other weapons should be brought up to par instead of nerfing that if possible. Switch Axe and Dual Swords also fit into sort of an awkward "useful but maybe not super satisfying" category, where the numbers aren't bad (though maybe I'm wrong!), but the mechanics around them aren't the best. I think Switch Axe should encourage switching more often instead of just saving up for a nova turn (which isn't even that much of a nova, so even that isn't terribly satisfying to do), and Dual Blades' weapon power is an awkward blend of powerful and boring. 5) It's hard to plan for anything in any meaningful way, especially at the beginning of the game before anything is broken, mostly due to how the Behemoth deck currently functions in its randomness. Maybe you're just counting on people memorizing the card ratios in the deck and their respective delays, I don't know, but it feels really random. "Ok, Player 1 is really hurt, so have them move towards the Wing in relation to where it'll turn to face next turn. Oh it did an attack with both claws and the head, which still does 65 damage post-head break," or "The head is broken so it should be fairy safe oh whoops it Inferno'd for 60 damage anyway," or worst of all, "Player 3 is at full health, and the next attack and the one that'd trigger on Enrage will both target them, so we should position accordingly *neither card targets that person*". I'm really not sure how to handle this in the current game state, since telling players what is going to attack just makes it incredibly easy to avoid stuff, but it feels too random right now and moving feels like a waste of time more often than not (and sometimes you just get smacked despite moving in a way you assumed would avoid it). If you implemented a timer or some other sort of mechanic that rushed players then you could get away with providing a hint on the back of the card. e: Remembered two other things. 6) Revisit the instructions. There's a few things we struggled to find, specifically where the Behemoth begins at the start of the game (we ruled that it starts on the same space as the players and goes first, readying a card). I can't remember any more but I knew there were a few things. 7) Movement seems kinda dumb. This relates to #5, but I also think Movement should be more interesting in general. Nothing references it other than the Behemoth itself. Maybe one or more weapons should interact with positioning? That might be frustrating with the current unpredictability, but maybe not. I think it's worth looking at though! Countblanc fucked around with this message at 04:39 on Jun 29, 2014 |
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Jun 29, 2014 03:16
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Anniversary posted:Can anyone recommend (a preferably free) program for mocking up card designs? I've got something prototyped by hand but want to try making a print and play document of it if I can. Magic Set Editor is what I usually go to because it's so simple to use: http://magicseteditor.sourceforge.net/
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Jun 29, 2014 04:21
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Holy dang, thanks for all that feedback. I'm on vacation and only have access to my phone so hopefully this write-up isn't awful! 1&2) I had wanted to put in a time-limit, but wasn't entirely sure how to implement it - my initial idea was to make the timer board X spaces long, and when the last player crosses the start then they lose as they have ran out of time. A physical timer in the form of a soundtrack hadn't occurred to me, but it's a brilliant idea. Then I could have it where each section of the soundtrack uses a different behemoth deck, each one getting progressively more difficult. As a further anti-quarterback mechanic, I was intending to take notes from pandemic and add a game variant where one player controls the behemoth, but haven't had any time to play test that system yet, and wanted to further solidify and refine the current system before doing so. 3) I'm not sure if you guys were playing the sharpness correctly, most likely I didn't explain it correctly in the rules: if you're at low sharpness you still deal normal damage, you just don't deal durability damage. So you still hurt the behemoth, you just can't break any components. 4) Yeah, I haven't done a whole ton of weapon balancing unfortunately. This was definitely something I was worried about, so it's good to know that it is something that needs addressing. I'll look into reworking some of the weapon cards / powers for the ones you listed, are there any other weapons you guys found not very fun? Any you found to be particularly enjoyable aside from gun lance? 5) I think adding a bit of a flavor-text hint on the back of a card ("Flame begins dripping from the Ashral's mouth" "The Ashral spreads its wings and looks ready to leap to the sky") when coupled with a timer would certainly help this. My primary concern, like you pointed out, is that this could make avoiding things very easy. 6) Yeah I figured the instructions were crap, since it was my first time writing them. Any other things you struggled to find? What were some things with the game you could find, but had to recheck the rule book for while playing? 7) Thanks for the feedback on this, movement hasn't really been a huge part of the game, but it definitely is something I could work on making more interesting. Since talk of a timer is happening a lot, how long were the games you played, and how many players did you have? Did you win or lose them? If you won, how close did you ever come to losing? If you lost, how close were you to winning?
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Jun 30, 2014 11:29
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Anniversary posted:Can anyone recommend (a preferably free) program for mocking up card designs? I've got something prototyped by hand but want to try making a print and play document of it if I can. Magic Set Editor is the big one, like Rutibex mentioned. If you like messing around with scripting, nandeck can be really powerful once you learn how to use it.
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Jul 2, 2014 10:56
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I'm working on a little project, sort of a challenge that I've set for myself. I wanted to see how well I could divorce game mechanics from theme, and let the mechanics of the result evoke a theme. To that end, I wanted to see what the folks of this thread thought what themes, if any, are suggested by what mechanics. I'm working under the assumption that some mechanics lend themselves naturally to certain themes. The unknown betrayer makes sense for a suspense environment, and drawing rewards out of a deck can suggest treasure hunting (finding!) in all its themed variations. Of course the themes we're working with here will be very broad given how abstract a game mechanic tends to be. So far it's just a fun thought puzzle but I'd love to see what comes out.
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Jul 3, 2014 01:43
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