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Good call. Updated the rules to hopefully clarify on things a bit. Did this on my phone so hopefully I didn't gently caress up the formatting. I realized I forgot to mention your potion question earlier. The benefit of a potion is that it lets you draw cards before your hand runs out. Your hand is your buffer for taking damage before losing Reward Cards, so having more cards in hand gives you better protection. CodfishCartographer fucked around with this message at 22:02 on Jun 13, 2015 |
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Jun 13, 2015 22:00
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Another quick question: If you use a block card, does that also stop "you must discard X Reward Cards" effects? Edit This is just a cold read, I haven't played it yet, but you might consider giving caveats before attacks can break parts? Especially if each weapon has different requirements. Greatsword requires an attack that would do so much damage, Lance + Greatshield can only break if they successfully blocked on the last Behemoth turn, etc? It'd add a bit more texture to the "will they break now, or try to get more damage first" dance. girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 22:33 on Jun 13, 2015 |
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Jun 13, 2015 22:24
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Yes, blocking stops all effects of a Behemoth Card on the Hunter that is blocking. Updated the rules to clarify - thanks for the feedback so far!
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Jun 13, 2015 22:31
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Initially play test with four players: the game is way harder than I intended it to be, but it's definitely fun and enjoyable. I definitely need to work on wording on some cards, too. Hopefully things aren't too terribly confusing for anyone playing it. One of the players was more casual and doesn't play heavier stuff and didn't get invested in it at all - which may have contributed to us not coming close to winning. I'll need to playtest more to see how difficult it is with a full group that knows what they're doing, but even then I'll likely be increasing the number of spaces on the Timer Track.
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Jun 14, 2015 00:59
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CodfishCartographer posted:Initially play test with four players: the game is way harder than I intended it to be, but it's definitely fun and enjoyable. I definitely need to work on wording on some cards, too. Hopefully things aren't too terribly confusing for anyone playing it. Well you have the three decks, why not make it so that each go around the board adds adds them into the deck? So instead of ~38 spaces total then the game ends the board is ~20 spaces total and when the Behemoth hits the starting marker you add it's next deck to the current. If you exhaust a deck before you get around the track then the Behemoth Roars, setting everyone back to the start. I haven't actually gotten a chance to try it out yet though! Just thought of that. When I DO get a chance to play test I'll try it out. EDIT: Holy poo poo the way the Greatsword works is inspired. Misandu fucked around with this message at 01:51 on Jun 14, 2015 |
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Jun 14, 2015 01:49
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So I tried out Behemoth three times. Twice Solo just to see where about I ended up, and once with my girlfriend. In the first Solo game I played it that when you sacrificed Reward Cards they all went on top of the Behemoth Deck. After triggering something like 2 Feasts and a Pounce at once I figured there was no way that this was the right way to read that rule, so I played the next two times placing one of the sacrificed Reward Cards on top of the deck. That made taking a hit feel less absurdly punishing, and even let me have a little control over what was coming up next. Both games I tried Solo were as the Greatsword which proved to be a good choice during the two player game. The Greatsword's cards are all about manipulating turn order in order to stack as much damage as possible onto one attack, which makes it hands down the best weapon in this version of the game. Even solo Sharpening Stone > Careless Smash is 7 Damage for 10 Delay, which will typically mean the Behemoth gets to take 2-4 turns stacking you around 3 damage if you time it right. Most other decks are looking at a 1:3 ratio of Damage to Delay, where with four players you can game the Greatsword's charge to get close to/beyond 1:1 pretty easily. This was actually the best part of the game! It was really fun to find openings to build up counters and slam big hits into the monster, and even when I switched off to Lance+Greatshield I spent most of the game manipulating turn order to build up the Greatsword's damage, trying to play my lowest delay cards in order to build up the big hits. I also tried out the Lance and Greatshield, and honestly it felt awful. You have very little control over drawing Blocks but all of the attacks seem to be balanced around having 1 or 2 Power Counters. Concentrated Assault might as well just be a Block, why would I want to spend 9 Delay for 3 damage? In the best case scenario where the monster takes 4 turns (4 bites in a row) then I get an extra 4 damage out of Phalanx, for 4 cards. It feels like maybe Concentrated Assault is left over from an early version where attacks tiggered immediately and it was a way to dump attacks quickly before you lost your Power Counters. I think I would actually make this deck into two Weapon cards, Lance and Great Shield. Lance's text would be something like "When you deal damage with an Attack Card you may remove up to 2 Power Counters from one of your Weapons. If you do, increase the Damage of the Attack by the amount of Power Counters you removed." Great Shield would say something like "You treat all Item Cards as Blocks. Whenever you Block a Behemoth's Attack, add a Power Counter to Great Shield. Whenever you would take damage, you may remove Power Counters to reduce the Damage by 1 each." I dunno, that's a lot of text. Maybe just make it so that all of the Lance's Attacks can be used to Block? Next lets talk about Items, they feel awful. Sharpening Stone is the only one I would keep in it's current incarnation, and even then it really only feels worth using as the Greatsword player. Well Done Steak: My deck is only 12 cards, why would I want to pay 4 Delay to reshuffle it? That's potentially 1/10th of the entire game clock,. Potion: 3 Delay for 1-5 cards never felt like a good trade, I either had something else I could play instead or I was so low on cards I was probably going to step into an Attack to get rid of all these Items. The only time I ever wanted to use a Potion was when I knew I was going to eat 2+ Attacks AND had the time to actually trigger the potion AND knew that my deck was mostly full of Items and Attacks I wasn't going to use. Pitfall Trap: I can actually sort of see when this would be useful in a multiplayer game if you got a bad string of enrages, but at 4 Delay it doesn't even seem likely that you'll be able to bring it out fast enough to matter. Flash Bomb: This was the item I used the most but not for it's intended purpose. Flash Bomb is great for feeding an extra Turn to your Greatsword player's weapon effect. I used it once when I wasn't sure what the next attack was going to be, but I don't think I would ever pay 4 Delay for it's secondary effect. I think a much better secondary would be to let me use it to cancel an Enrage card being revealed. Barrel Bomb: This is good because it lets non-Greatsword players get somewhat close to the Greatsword's Damage:Delay ratio. It's also good because the wording on the card says that the token gets a turn, which means +1 Greatsword damage! I know the game is designed for 4 Players but outside of Threatening Banner being down I just feel like everyone's role is going to be taking as many actions as possible in order to allow the Great Sword to deal huge hits. I think that the other weapons need to be tuned upwards a little while the GS's power needs to come down a bit in order for everyone at the table to really feel like they're contributing. I have been toying around with something similar to this on my own and I ran into the same sort of issue with balancing Damage:Delay. Anyway here's my general suggestions in tl;dr format. Card Draw - Just let me draw up to 6 cards every turn. Having to run out just makes me want to take a hit to draw sooner. Item Cards - Need to be redone. I think they should be more about managing readied Behemoth cards, or maybe they stick around and let me toss them for an effect? Damage - GS deals way too much, everyone else doesn't deal enough. Time Limit - This actually felt alright? In our 2 Player game we actually only needed ~1.5 GS turns extra to win (we were short around 10 damage for the kill). Maybe a little longer to account for 4 player leapfrogging making the game shorter. It's worth noting that GS solo can get to the Red Behemoth Cards pretty easily. Part Breaking - This needs to contribute to winning. Maybe once damage gets tuned this won't feel like as much of a trap option. This is a lot of words but I really liked the core gameplay! Let me know if you want any more feedback (and I might try designing a Hammer on my own).
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Jun 14, 2015 22:26
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That's all fantastic feedback, thank you! Placing Reward Cards on top of the deck was done as a means to try and manipulate the Behemoth's actions, yeah. Both as a means of making the next hit less threatening, but also as a means of possibly making the Behemoth attack another player in order to remove a lead that they may have. I like the suggestion of only placing one on top of the deck, as that accomplishes the same thing functionally without constantly feeding the Behemoth more cards - I underestimated just quite how often players are taking damage. Much of the balancing was more or less just eyeballing with some basic math to try and get stuff down, but that obviously didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped. GS definitely seemed the best during my playtests as well, so I'll need to fiddle with things. Most of the delay costs I scaled based on the last iteration of the game, where 3-4 delay wasn't a very big deal. After playtesting the new one, it's obviously way more of a hindrance, so I'll scale some of the delays more properly on basically all the cards. Lance and Greatshield was balanced around having a few power counters at any given time, yeah - the idea was you can risk building up huge damage with the possibility of losing large amounts of reward cards. I tried to keep it from having toooo many blocking options, as that would just make the user almost invincible, but it's obviously not working. My intention with Concentrated Assault was to provide interesting ways to combine Feint, Charging Thrust, Phalanx, and Defensive Stance together (boosting all of them through power counters) but the payoff obviously isn't worth it so I'll fiddle with it some. It's interesting that you felt the best play was just to beef up the GS user. Obviously it helps keep the players from losing via killing the Behemoth, but isn't helping anyone except the GS user win since you're shoveling points into the GS user's mouth. Originally I decided on changing to semi-coop since the last iteration of the game suffered heavily from quarterbacking, but it seems like you guys were just playing basically regular coop. I'm thinking that giving the hunters a less pressured game clock would give them more time to try and mess with one another, and would help players feel less pressured to just stack GS's damage in order to not lose. Card Draw - my initial intention with having to wait before drawing more was to make it so that players would have to use all of their cards rather than just letting cards they don't immediately need sit in their hand for half the game while they cycle through the ones they want. Having written that out, I think the better solution would be to draw up to 6 every turn, and then just try to rebalance it so every card is an attractive choice rather than an obvious this-is-the-best-play. I'm a little bit worried that the players would generally have a better card buffer, but that'd probably help with the difficulty as well. For items, the card draw from Well-Done Steak and Potion were there so if the player feels vulnerable from being at low hand size and worry they'll take a hit they can draw up for a more safe buffer. I'm thinking I'll change Potion to just straight-up draw some discarded Behemoth Cards, then make Well-Done Steak the only pure card draw (along with less delay than it currently has). Pitfall Trap I'll probably just reduce the delay on it, but I like your suggestion (for flash bomb) of removing Enraged cards, and think I'll put it on this instead. As for Flash Bomb itself, I think I'll just remove the need for an extra 4 delay for the instant-speed version of it. I'll also up the damage to 2 I think, so there's an actual net gain for the player using it. Sharpening Stone I think I'll just remove the delay penalty, so it's a bit of a GS nerf while buffing it up for everyone else. Part breaking was originally intended as a bit of a push-your-luck minigame, trying to see how much you could add before someone swoops in to take all the points. It turned out to not be nearly as big of a thing as I'd planned, as most people just sniped them as soon as they could when we were playing. I might make it so that counters get added equal to the damage (IE, 3 damage = 3 counters), but that might make things too swingy. It was never meant to contribute directly towards killing the Behemoth, but rather towards getting you more points so you'd win. Anyways, I greatly appreciate your feedback, and would love to hear any more if you have more to contribute.
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Jun 15, 2015 02:26
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Well I approached my play testing a bit weirdly because you mentioned the game being a bit too hard. I figured "lets focus on making sure we don't lose" would be the best way to approach the game. As for damage numbers... Let's look at how much damage the Great Sword puts out solo. You can ignore Great Cleave because there's just no reason to use it over the other two, so you have Careless Slash and Sweep. Careless Slash deals around 0.86 Damage per point of Delay I spend, while Sweep is almost exactly 0.8. This is assuming that the Behemoth gets a single turn between the GS turns, if it gets two turns then both of those go to 1:1. 1:1 is a pretty good ratio! For comparison, if all you do is drop Barrel Bombs you'll be doing 0.75 Damage/Delay. Anyway let's call GS 1Damage/Delay. pre:Weapon................................Damage/Delay GS..................................... 0.80 S&S.................................... 1.00 Spear and Banner....................... 0.50 Lance and Great Shield................. 0.67 Barrel Bombs........................... 0.75 Special................................ 1.40 First thing I'll say is that if it's my first time playing this game and someone is routinely doing three times my damage I'm not going to have a great time no matter how good my buffs are. Right now the only weapon that gets close to GS is the S&S, so let's try to bring everything up to their level. Let's start by redesigning the Lance and Great Shield. Okay first I think that if I have two things equipped to beat up Behemoths I should get more cards. So I'm going to have that set come with a Lance and Great Shield card. Mostly so that the set can have a wordy mechanic without the text being too small. Also I'm going to say you gain Power Counters personally, as it saves space on cards. Probably just make a rule that Attacks get +1 Damage per Power Counter too, but I didn't do that here. pre:Lance - Weapon Whenever you Ready an Attack, you may place up to 2 Power Counters on your Attack. Your Attacks deal +1 Damage per Power Counter on them. Great Shield - Shield Whenever you Block a Behemoth's Attack gain a Power Counter for each point of Damage you would have taken, up to 4. pre:New L&GS Damage Amount Delay Regular 1 Power 2 Power Defensive Stance +1 2.00 5.00 0.40 0.60 0.80 Feint +1 2.00 3.00 0.67 1.00 1.33 Phalanx +1 2.00 4.00 0.50 0.75 1.00 Precision Strike +1 1.00 3.00 0.33 0.67 1.00 Charging Thrust +1 2.00 2.00 01.00 1.50 2.00 Total 0.58 0.90 1.23 pre:Short Sword - Weapon When you Damage the Behemoth, gain 2 Power Counters up to 4. Your Attacks deal +1 Damage per Power Counter on them. Round Shield - Shield When you Ready an Attack you may place up to 2 Power Counters on it or Round Shield. You may discard Power Counters on Round Shield as if they were Cards, and to pay for Delay on Items. pre:Hunting Horn - Weapon Whenever you Ready an Attack, you may place a Power Counter on another Hunter's Readied Attack. If you do, gain 2 Power Counters up to 4. pre:Slam Dance 2/4 Place up to 3 Power Counters on Slam Dance when you Ready it. All Hunters deal +1 Damage as long as there are any Power Counters on Slam Dance. Lifting Lullaby 1/4 You may place a Power Counter on Uplifting Melody when you Ready it. If you do, all Hunters draw a Card. Moderato Melody 2/4 You may place up to 2 Power Counters on Moderato Melody when you Ready it. For each Power Counter on Moderato Melody, Move any Hunter once. Distracting Dissonance 1/5 You may place up to 4 Power Counters on Grave Ballad when you Ready it. If you do, remove a Readied Behemoth Attack with a Delay cost equal to the placed Power Counters. Off Note 2/2 Block You must discard 2 Power Counters to Ready Off Note. Part Breaker. Deep Breath -/3 Block You gain up to 4 Power Counters total. Shuffle your discard pile into your deck, and then draw 3 cards. With these changes I think that every weapon would be fun to play. I also think that the buffed damage would make it a fairly certain bet that they were going to down the Behemoth. Really I think the flavor of the game should be that you're a group of capable hunters who're sort of showing off a little. As long as you don't mess around too much the focus should be on who looks the best at the end of the day, and the Behemoth should only be tough enough to survive if everyone spends the entire time showboating. Anyway before I go to bed I'm designing a Hammer set and it's my post so you can't stop me. pre:Hammer - Weapon Whenever you deal Damage to the Behemoth, gain a Power Counter up to 6. If you apply Damage to the Head, gain 2 Power Counters up to 6 instead. Love Tap 1/3 If this Damages the Head, gain 1 Power Counter up to 6. Golf Swing 3/6 You may place up to 3 Power Counters on Golf Swing when you Ready it. If Golf Swing deals 6 or more damage it gains Part Breaker. Evade Roll You may discard Evade Roll from your hand at any time to immediately move. If you do, discard all your Power Counters (including those on Readied Cards). Super Swing 1/2 When you resolve Super Swing you may place a Power Counter on it if it has less then 4. If you do, Ready it instead of discarding it but gain no Power Counters. You cannot Move while Super Swing is readied. Charge Pound 0/6 When you Ready Charge Pound, place up to 6 Power Counters on it. Power Counters count double on Charge Pound. You do not gain any Power Counters from Charge Pound resolving. Part Breaker Stiff Uppercut 2/4 +2 Power if Stiff Uppercut Damages a Broken Part. Also getting hit should Delay Hunters, maybe like Delay 2. I couldn't really find a good place to fit that in so it goes down here nestled at the bottom. SORRY FOR ALL THEM WORDS. Misandu fucked around with this message at 05:47 on Jun 15, 2015 |
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Jun 15, 2015 05:44
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Misandu posted:Woops sorry got distracted while I was reworking it. It's supposed to get more powerful if it reveals early, the idea being that you buy say two of them with another card and then place two of them causing opponents a headache trying to figure out what you've got in play. So I've been putting off making a big effort post because I was hoping to get some play testing in and be able to answer from a position of greater experience, but it's been several days and I'd rather roll with what I've got than let the question linger for longer. That said I'll try to make this a comprehensive post for how the game works currently. At the start of the game you place 3 locations: one worth 3, one worth 4, and one worth 5 Victory Points. You gain these Victory Points by having the most Power of all players on the corresponding location at the end of the round. You start the game with 10$ and no Assets. At the start of each game you gain 4$. So during the first buy phase you have 14$. Turn Breakdown +Gain Income As mentioned above, at this time you gain 4$. +Assign Reckless Assetss from HQ Active Player assigns a Reckless Asset from HQ face up onto a location of their choice, then the next player can assign a Reckless Asset from their HQ face up, repeat this process until all players have chosen to Pass. +Hide HQs All players flip their remaining non-Reckless Assets in their HQ face down. +Assign Assets from HQ Active Player assigns a non-Reckless Asset from their HQ onto a location face down, then the next player can do the same, repeat this process until all players have Passed. +Reveal Phase Players reveal all non-Discreet Assets. After Assets are revealed all Deploy Effects Trigger. Active player chooses one of their Deploy Effects, if any, and resolves it. Then the next player with a Deploy effect does the same. Repeat this process until all Deploy effects are resolved. +Action Phase Players each have 4 actions. Active Player takes an Action: either gaining 3$ or buying an Asset. Then the next player can do the same. Repeat until all players have taken all of their actions. +Final Reveal Reveal all Assets. After all Assets are revealed all Deploy Effects Trigger of newly revealed assets trigger (ie. non-Discreet deploy effects don't trigger again). Active player chooses one of their Deploy Effects, if any, and resolves it. Then the next player with a Deploy effect does the same. Repeat this process until all Deploy effects are resolved. +Determine Control Each player adds up the Power of their Assets at each location. The player with the highest Power at each location gains Victory Points equal to its Victory Point value. In the case of a tie for most power no one gains any Victory Points. Return all assigned Assets to their owners HQ. +Determine Winner If any player has over 20 Victory Points, they win. If no one does, begin a new turn. Keywords Acquire - EFFECT (When you buy this asset, EFFECT.) Deploy - EFFECT (When you reveal this asset, EFFECT.) Rapid Response (When you buy this unit you may assign it to a location.) Discreet (You may leave this asset face down until determining control.) =Assets= Bad Intel 0$ P0 Discreet Deploy - Return this Asset to your HQ. Disposable Assets 2$ P2 Discreet Mercenaries 4$ P2 Acquire - Gain an Action. Thugs 3$ P1 Deploy - Gain 1$. Grunt 4$ P4 Discreet Brute 3$ P5 Invest 3$ - This Asset gains Rapid Response this turn. Reckless Droptroopers 4$ P3 Rapid Response Acquire - This Asset has Power +1 this turn. Fixer 6$ P5 Acquire - Return target Asset to its owners HQ. Deniable Asset 3$ P2 Deploy - You may move this Asset to another location. Special Encounters Unit 6$ P6 Discreet Elite Forces 8$ P9 Discreet Opportunistic Assassin 6$ P3 Deploy - You may choose a faceup unit at the same location as this unit and return it to its owners HQ. Bounty Hunter 5$ P2 Discreet Deploy - You may choose a faceup unit at the same location as this unit with Power 3 or less and return it to its owners HQ. Mole 2$ P2 Deploy - Pick a facedown unit. It loses Discreet this turn. Tactician 3$ P0 Deploy - Choose an opponent. This unit gains +3 Power for each non-Discreet unit that opponent controls at this location.
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Jun 16, 2015 00:23
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Real quick initial impressions: I really don't see why you insist on having 3 different types of Units when you designed a card that just straight hard counters a Reckless Unit strategy. Thugs is either a trap option or the best thing in the game to stack turn 1 depending on how many turns it takes to win. Doing some math it looks like it's always a trap option because you just lose the game before it would matter. Mercenaries is in a weird place because they also get hard countered by Tactician like Brutes do, which means you'd only ever buy them because they don't take up an Action, but they're too expensive to spend left over money on? Mole hard counters bluffing and isn't inefficient to buy. Fixer is way too efficient for how strong bounce is, while Bounty Hunter is pretty awful. In it's best case scenario its a 5 for 5 against a single opponent. There effects should be swapped. Opportunistic Assassin is basically crappy Fixer that you have to guess to use correctly. Deniable Asset feels over costed. Right now it feels like all the interesting stuff to do is really simply beat by individual cards. Misandu fucked around with this message at 05:00 on Jun 16, 2015 |
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Jun 16, 2015 04:56
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I love this thread a lot. So many cool games get made here. Now I just need to actually finish one of mine. Edit Still haven't given up on the idea of "make a decent game from Boss Monster's components". I think a drafting mechanic of some kind is basically mandatory. Edit 2 Real napkin-note idea that I'll need to play with: Draft rooms, draft heroes, draft rooms again, draft spells, build dungeons. girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 15:26 on Jun 16, 2015 |
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Jun 16, 2015 15:17
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Poison Mushroom posted:I love this thread a lot. So many cool games get made here. Please come up with a way for me to be excited about Boss Monster! We have it in my store because it fits the theme (we do video games as well) but people keep asking what I think of it and then I have to be honest with them.
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Jun 16, 2015 16:50
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Misandu posted:Behemoth This is all fantastic, thank you! I like your suggestion of making Power Counters a more global resource, but I think for now I’m going to shy away from having every weapon use them, if only to try and help form each one as a unique thing, rather than each one being boosted by Power Counters in different ways. I did take a much closer look at the weapon balancing though, since now I have a bit more time to do so since I’m not purely worried on rebuilding the whole game from the ground up like I was last week. Here is the changeling of planned balance changes, with bolded parts being things that are changed. I also have a spreadsheet of weapon comparisons, you can find the whole thing here but the short version is: pre:Weapon: Average Damage / Delay ratio: SnS: 0.9907407407 GS 1.035714286 Standard and Spear 1.025252525 Lance 1.005394525 As for Standard and Spear vs Hunting Horn - I decided against HH, as that’s pretty definitely Monster Hunter, and I would like to maybe attempt to get Behemoth published at some point - or at the very least show it off to the public. Gun lance, Switch Axe, Insect Glaive, etc are all super loving cool weapons (and are probably my favorite ones), but are also all very iconic of Monster Hunter. Also I love your Hammer design! I just stuck to working with 4 weapons so I could focus on those and get them just right before moving on to other weapons.
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Jun 16, 2015 22:31
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I was getting ready to print out behemoth and then... I realized I was all out of Ink. I might wait until the next version since it looks like quite a lot of feedback is pouring in.. OR if you're play-testing it on Sunday(I'm not sure if I can make it Saturday yet) at ETX, i'd love to try it there.
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Jun 17, 2015 00:22
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Definitely wait, it's going through a decent amount of balance changes right now. I'll have it at ETX on Saturday, and I'll probably make it on Sunday (still up in the air) if there's free testing tables you can try it out there. At the very least, I'll be posting the next version here before Saturday.
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Jun 17, 2015 00:37
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I'll hold off on my work on the TS version until then. Thankfully, what I have gotten done so far (all the blue cards and some of the yellow ones, as well as a really ghetto cardback for the player decks) probably won't change much.
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Jun 17, 2015 01:40
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I'll have to try it again after using a Sharpie to patch my version! All the changes look good. S&S and S&Std's Weapon Effects still look boring but the actual card effects are more complicated then the other two weapons so in play it's probably fine and would help direct newer players to the simpler weapons. I actually think that S&S is probably the best weapon now, especially with free Flash Bombs on Quick Strike letting you have a lot of control over the Behemoth's actions. I can totally understand not wanting to do a straight up Hunting Horn.
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Jun 17, 2015 01:53
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I'd say wait before you sharpie your cards, as I'm still twiddling and tweaking effects. I agree SnS and StnSpr are kinda boring abilities, so I'm probably going to fiddle with them a bit more before settling on them.
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Jun 17, 2015 03:36
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Well, here's my really rough first draft, including a lot of optional/alternate rules because this is basically just theory-crafting at this point. Boss Monster 2.0, First Draft (  )Mission Statement: This is an attempt to create a decent game out of Boss Monster, without changing too many of the components. Both as an intellectual exercise in designing under constraints, and because for how drat prolific it is (it's basically Kickstartered 8-Bit Munchkin), if I can make even a slightly bearable game, then it might keep a couple people from having to play a terrible game. A secondary goal was to shorten and calcify the length of the game, and remove player elimination rules. This rough draft assumes at least basic familiarity with Boss Monster rules. Preparing: Remove the following cards from the game and hide them where no one can find them. Liger's Den (Holy card advantage, Batman!), Construction Zone (throws off the pace of the draft), any card that references Items (Optional, I haven't figured out how to make those work yet.). Alternatively, if you're not above errata-ing, replace Liger Den's text with "Destroy this Room: Draw two Spell Cards.", and Construction Zone's with "When you build this room, draw a card from the Room Deck, then discard a Room from your hand." Then, shuffle the Ordinary Heroes (herein, OH) and Legendary Heroes (likewise, LH) decks, and create 'hero packs'. For each player, create two five-card packs, each with four OHs and one LH. Randomly distribute the packs evenly among all players, then set the remaining cards aside as OH and LH decks. Optional: Sleeve all cards to make OHs and LHs indistinguishable from the back. Create a number of five-card Dungeon Room 'room packs' equal to twice the number of players. Randomly distribute them evenly among all players. Like the OH and LH decks, these should not be looked at yet, and the remaining cards should be made into a Room deck. Optional: First separate the Dungeon rooms into standard and advanced, and ensure each pack has four standard rooms and one advanced room. This reduces variance and may hinder certain strategies, but also ensures that no player can Level Up during the first round, or is left with rooms they can't play. Repeat this process with three-card Spell Card 'spell packs', also equal to twice the number of players. Optional 2-Player Rule: Create an additional third round by creating a third pack of each type for each player. The third hero packs should include three OHs and two LHs, and the room packs should do the same with standard/advanced rooms, but the rules are otherwise the same. Make sure you remember which hero pack is the round-three one. Beginning The Game: Shuffle the Boss Monster deck and randomly deal each player two. Each player chooses one of the two to be their Boss Monster, and places it face-down in front of them. The other cards are not used for this game. Draft Round: Once all Bosses have been selected, turn all Boss Monsters face-up. Each player then picks up and 'opens' one of their Room packs. This pack is drafted clockwise, each player taking one card from the pack and placing it face-down in front of them, into what will be their hand. Once the pack has been completed, draft a hero pack the same way, passing clockwise. Then, in the same fashion, a spell pack. When this has been completed, each player should have five Room cards, five Hero cards, and three Spell cards. Build Round: Each player chooses one of their rooms and places it face-down either leftmost from their Boss Monster and existing Dungeon Rooms or on top of one of their existing room cards. Standard Boss Monster dungeon construction rules apply (maximum 5 total rooms, advanced rooms must be built over basic rooms with at least one matching treasure type). Once everyone has placed a room, do not turn them face-up yet. Instead, each player takes one of their Hero cards, and places it face-down in 'Town', in the middle of all players. Once all Heroes are placed, turn over all face-down Heroes and Rooms. At this point, any "when you build this room" effects take place, as well as the once-per-game Level Up effect for any player that has five rooms for the first time. Note: As in the base game, if there is a conflict of speed, and building order is important, the player with the highest XP builds first. Note 2: A player may pass on building a room (and is forced to if they have no Room cards left), but may not pass on playing a Hero. Adventurer Round: Heroes are assigned to dungeons based on Treasure Types, going to the dungeon that has the most symbols that match them. If there is a tie, that hero does not go anywhere this round. The Adventurer Round proceeds identically to the base game, including in the order (Highest XP -> Lowest XP, with the player currently being invaded always counting as having the highest XP for card conflicts). Heroes that die become Souls, heroes that succeed are simply discarded. Alternate Rule: Heroes that succeed instead return to Town. Clean-Up Round: All deactivated Room become reactivated, any effects that end when the turn is over end now. Effects that can be used once-per-turn can be used again. If a Hero was sent back to Town or for some reason went part-way through a Dungeon without completing all of there HP is restored at this point. The game repeats from the Build Round, until all players have no more Heroes in their hand (regardless of how many are in Town). Empty Hand Round If there are still unopened packs left, the game repeats from the Draft Round, this time drafting the opposite direction. (Clockwise -> Counterclockwise, and vice-versa for a three-round 2P game [not that it exactly matters].) Any cards remaining in a player's hand remain, as do any heroes still in Town. If there are no unopen packs left, the game is over. Ending the Game: After the last round of drafting and clean-up is complete, count up the number of Souls each player has. An OH is worth 1 soul, while a LH is worth 2. The player with the most souls is the winner. In the case of a tie, the player with the most souls and the lowest XP is the winner. ...so, that's that. Anyone wanna give it a whirl, tell me how it works in practice? Edit Even just a bit of toying around shows one thing for certain: That 7 Wonders feeling of "gently caress this lovely pack" is pretty much a constant. It almost turns the game into a sort of "make the best of a bad situation" thing. girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 04:16 on Jun 17, 2015 |
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Jun 17, 2015 03:37
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Quick update to planned Behemoth changes to try and make Sword & Shield and Standard & Spear a bit more interesting. I think I accomplished that without loving up balance or making them ridiculously complicated (Standard and Spear is kinda pushing it maybe). Thoughts?
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Jun 17, 2015 08:17
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I really like the new S&S mechanic but it doesn't really say S&S to me at all. What if you just took Quick Strike's effect and gave it to the Weapon, so it would be something like "Whenever you Ready an Attack you may Discard a Card. If you do, Ready an Item without paying it's Delay." You already did the next part to help out with the theme, which is to have all the "Discard this to gain [BONUS]" cards be Blocks. Basically I think the S&S theme should be sacrificing your defensive options when it's safe for a bonus. Why not use the S&S mechanic on a new, way different weapon type? Something like "Bow and Beast" flavored as a sort of semi-pet class? Carry Momentum looks fun for GS. Oh I keep forgetting to ask this but what is Charging Thrust supposed to be for? Defensive Stance letting you just instantly fill your Power Counters is definitely a good change. Do all Power Counters have the +1 Damage effect now? I see them on Phalanx without the rules text for that. Encouraging Banner is probably too good right now. Maybe make it so that it only affects a single Hunter, or just only effects you? Giving out free Delay is/should be better then giving out free Damage (Encouraging vs Threatening), plus Decisive Strike is definitely going to cause shenanigans with it on your Weapon. I think at this point the theme and play style of all the weapons is really shaping up (other then S&S's current mechanic being a bit off). GS is all about making sure it ends up last on the turn tracker, Lance just plants it self in one spot and shrugs off attacks, Standard slams giant banners into the Behemoth to buff the whole team, and S&S sacrifices defensive choices to deal more damage. I also think that 2 and 3 player are going to be viable now that damage has been tuned up across the board.
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Jun 17, 2015 16:11
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Misandu posted:I really like the new S&S mechanic but it doesn't really say S&S to me at all. What if you just took Quick Strike's effect and gave it to the Weapon, so it would be something like "Whenever you Ready an Attack you may Discard a Card. If you do, Ready an Item without paying it's Delay." You already did the next part to help out with the theme, which is to have all the "Discard this to gain [BONUS]" cards be Blocks. Basically I think the S&S theme should be sacrificing your defensive options when it's safe for a bonus. My original thinking for SnS’s new ability was to fit in more with the inherent flexibility of the weapon, which is something I was trying to aim for a bit - you have lots of options for defense, offense, utility, and flexible delay times. I thought up the skill as a way to fit in with flexibility of the weapon, but yeah it doesn’t fit the rest of it really - but would work well with another, new weapon. I want the overall ability to involve discarding cards, as that’s one of the unique things about SnS in Behemoth, or make it more in the light of “trade one benefit for another” theme the weapon also has. I’m thinking "When you discard a card for an attack card’s effect, you may instead discard your entire hand to trigger that card’s effect twice. This will trigger any “If you discard this card” effects.” Charging Thrust was mostly designed as a way for players manipulate both their position and that of other players as well. The idea was you can ready it with Concentrated Assault along with Feint in order to manipulate other hunter positions more directly, or alongside Aimed Strike in order to surprise snipe a Behemoth Part. I think I’ll change it to be “You can move at the start of each Behemoth turn while this card is readied” to make it a bit more useful and flexible, and will help the player dive in front of (or away from) Behemoth attacks to help build up and keep ahold of counters. Yeah, Power Counters are just global +1 damage now. If they’re placed on a weapon, they buff all of that weapon’s attacks and are only removed when specified. If they’re placed on an attack, it buffs that specific attack and then go away with that attack after it resolves. My thinking for Encouraging vs Threatening is that while Delay is a bit more valuable than Damage, Encouraging is only providing at most 3 less delay across all hunters, Threatening is providing at least 4 damage, more if hunters ready multiple attacks at once (which Standard can do, same with Lance). One or both of these might wind up being ridiculously powerful, but I can fiddle with the balance as needed. Also, since Encouraging is more efficient for using as an actual attack, players won’t be as encouraged to leave it out each turn as much as Threatening.
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Jun 17, 2015 22:58
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Maybe change S&S to "Discard all Attack Cards" so that it still works for Quick Stab? I totally missed that Encouraging Banner didn't affect you which should keep it from being too big of an issue, I was reading it as affecting you as well. It's still probably strictly better then Threatening Banner as far as damage output goes but that shouldn't matter as long as you're trying to actually win via reward cards. I think that Charging Thrust paired with Concentrated Assault could be good with the larger amount of card draw, I didn't really like Concentrated Assault when card draw was so limited.
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Jun 18, 2015 00:53
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I did a edit on the Feint Wars rules. . I'm trying to get serious about actually putting together a playtest for this, soon. Edit: And here's the sheet of maneuver and unit cards. Edit 2: Sign up/info thread up. Anyone interested in playing? I think it's about time I actually see this game in action and see how it works (or rather, how it doesn't work, so I can fix it.) Foolster41 fucked around with this message at 01:26 on Jun 20, 2015 |
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Jun 18, 2015 23:51
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So, trip report from ETX. Behemoth playlists went fantastic on Saturday - and shoutouts to Foolster41 for showing up to try it out! (sorry I couldn’t make it sunday to try out your game) The recent balance changes have made a world of difference, and the game is in a really good spot right now. Here's the print and play for the version I play tested over the weekend. I’ll probably be making some number tweaks to it soon, but figure I may as well post that here anyways. Overall rule changes: -Draw until you have 6 cards in hand at the start of your turn -When you take damage, only sacrifice 1 Reward Card, the rest are Discarded. Right now, the game is significantly more balanced. The biggest issue right now is that it can be easy to get chain delayed by Behemoth attacks from certain locations around the Behemoth, but changing which cards are Enrage cards will alleviate that by a lot. Right now, Lance and Greatshield and Sword and Shield seem to be slightly more powerful than the other two weapons, but that may be due to the other two being more vulnerable to getting chain delayed. I’m super happy at the direction the game is taking, and was pleased to find the playtime clocking in at almost exactly 60 minutes (including instruction time) regardless of the number of players. The game also came super close to the wire every time, with each group coming only 1-2 turns away from losing before managing to pull out a win.
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Jun 22, 2015 19:00
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CodfishCartographer posted:So, trip report from ETX. Behemoth playlists went fantastic on Saturday - and shoutouts to Foolster41 for showing up to try it out! (sorry I couldn’t make it sunday to try out your game) It was fun playing your game, I like what you have so far! For my games, my test play of Feint Wars went really well. I was nervous because this was the first time it'd been played by anyone, and... it didn't fall apart! (That is, we were able to play a full game without realizing some aspect was unplayable.). I think the feinting mechanics works really well (though maybe 24 cards is a bit hard to keep track of.). There are balance issues of course (Vasilisa the Beautiful is probably under-pointed with 5 damage, she was kicking serious butt), but it's nice to know the main part of the game works and, I think, is fun. For Daring Skies I tried different tweaks throughout the day, including one where I decreased all of the hull and maneuver attributes by 1. I feel bad for one guy who had 1 hull and kept crashing over and over. (And in maybe nine play tests, this was the first, maybe second time a crash happened ever!). I got some good suggestions like an escalation as the game goes on and more of the "Wanted" missions where you have to avoid being hit every turn. I might increase all the dice to d12s, which would give me more room to tweak things, but I'd rather see if I can fix things without something so drastic.
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Jun 22, 2015 20:38
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Sounds like you know exactly what you need to be working on, which is a most enviable place to be. I skimmed Feint Wars, and while I love the fluff had a little trouble getting a feel for how the game proper is supposed to play based on those files. But I'm probably just being dense. Have you talked about Daring Skies before? It sounds somewhat familiar but I can't, offhand, remember any details. Misandu posted:Real quick initial impressions: That said, I'm debating abandoning this design. At least for a while. While it seems to work and achieve what I set out to do, it just doesn't seem to be the game I want to be working on right now. Though I'm having trouble figuring out what that game might be. Any advice out there for what to do once you've hit that point where you feel like additional playtesting will only provide relatively minor balancing feedback? As I've hit this roadblock twice within the past couple of months. I feel like one option would be, mock it up so that you can distribute it. But I lack any meaningful graphic design skills so that's a bit of a dead end currently. For now I'm just trying to come up with something new...
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Jun 24, 2015 02:30
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Anniversary posted:Sounds like you know exactly what you need to be working on, which is a most enviable place to be. Nah, it's probibly my manual writing skills. I'm pretty good at picturing in my head how a game flows, but terrible at explaining it on paper. I think I'm a little better at explaining it live, mainly because people ask questions about things I missed. The very basics is for combat instead of rolling dice, players play cards numbered 1-12 in both red and black. Certain units can only attack with certain cards (though most can use either). The players are trying to play a higher card, but not too high (6 or more higher). If the attacker is too high, they get counter attack (unless they are doing a ranged attack, which just misses. If the defender is too high, they get critical hit (getting +2 damage). Not sure if that's a helpful clarification, but if there's some specific part you're still having trouble with, feel free to ask. I'm pretty sure I mentioned it here before (might have been the other game design thread). It's a race to deliver push your luck game with airplanes over a sea that has a war, storms and pirates. Anniversary posted:I wanted to wait until I actually got another round of testing in and I finally managed to with two new players. A fair number of your impressions have shown to be accurate and I've made a number of quick fixes to my playtest documents. That said, in general, the flow of the game seems to work. The bluffing aspects have been compared to poker quite a bit, which, while unintentional, I'm going to go with. Sometimes setting something aside is a good idea to let it stew. But I've found setting aside projects (both writing and game design) also increases the odds I'll never finish it, and increases the longer I let it sit. I've picked up projects and felt overwhelmed with not knowing where to contenue or even what problems I had. I recommend writing this all down before you set it aside!. I'm not sure what you mean about graphic deisgn, but if you mean for prototypes, don't worry about it. My design on cards is poo poo. I used magic Set Editor (Well, with Feint Wars I used MS Access using MSE assets) to rip off MTG card formats and use GIS to get images (for the few cards that have images). The closest thing you could call "original art" (for example the "Comedy Masque" was Frankensteined from various GIS sources and is very simple, or I used hero machine.
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Jun 24, 2015 04:21
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There's nothing wrong with putting a project to the side for awhile, but like Foolster41 said make sure you leave it to the side with some notes on the issues you're having. I have a bad habit of churning out mechanical frameworks for games, running into design problems, and just leaving them to sit without any sort of explanation why. It can be frustrating to go back to an old project that you don't remember a ton about, hell there have been a few times I've had to check someone's post history in this thread to remember how we got to where we are feedback wise.
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Jun 24, 2015 18:43
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Yeah definitely, leaving stuff on the back burner can be great. I let Behemoth sit for basically an entire year before picking it back up again, and when I did all the solutions to problems it had came really easy and naturally. You probably don’t need to let a project sit THAT long, but doing so can absolutely help. And yeah, like Misandu said, make sure you’ve got some notes about problems and maybe some possible ideas for solutions and then just let it be. Work on some other game ideas or projects for a while then watch as magically you get a bunch of ideas for how to fix the game you set aside.
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Jun 24, 2015 19:14
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Somewhere between dissatisfaction with unavailability and reported poor quality of Fury of Dracula, and my having played far too much Ironcast recently, I have an idea for a game. A hidden movement game with a combat mechanic, but with a very important twist. The main conceit is this: As the hidden movement player ("rebel') starts, if they get caught, they're gonna get fried in short order. However, the objectives slowly increase that player's power, until they get to the point where they can stand up to, and then even beat, one investigator player alone. The idea is that the power dynamic slowly shifts from "weak guy who could be anywhere, and has to rely on ambush tactics if forced into combat" to "powerful foe who must be taken seriously, and ganged up on". Still working out the mechanics, but I really like the idea of a hidden movement game where as the hunters get more information on where the hidden player is or isn't, they also have to stick closer together.
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Jun 29, 2015 16:39
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Have you seen any of the game Evolve? It's a 1v4 game where the 4 are Hunters who are trying to track down a Monster. The Monster has three stages and has to stealthily move around the map trying to gather enough food or whatever in order to become more powerful by Evolving which reveals them to the Hunters. From what I've seen the execution of the game is pretty so-so but it has a lot of ideas that could be good to check out.
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Jun 29, 2015 16:54
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Poison Mushroom posted:Somewhere between dissatisfaction with unavailability and reported poor quality of Fury of Dracula, and my having played far too much Ironcast recently, I have an idea for a game. A hidden movement game with a combat mechanic, but with a very important twist. No idea if this is what you have in mind for the lategame, but that makes me think of a horror movie where some terrible creature is hunting down a group of people. Hunters start off trying to find the hidden player, but then as time goes on it turns more into them trying to AVOID that player more than anything, which I think could definitely be interesting and unusual for a hidden movement game.
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Jun 29, 2015 16:55
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Okay now you have me thinking about some sort of Blair Witch Project style game. Leave weird omens and portents for the group of college freshmen to find, become more powerful as you prey on their increasing fear. The students goal is to prove you're just some person in a rubber mask, but the more terrified they get the worse their available options become. I figure you'd have a global resource called Fear. The Students each have a maximum amount of Fear they can absorb before they break down and run screaming into the woods, never to be seen again. Each Student starts the game with a little Fear, which they spend to choose actions. Low Fear actions are more powerful then high Fear actions, but high Fear actions let you get rid of more fear at a time in exchange for being less effective. The Hunted player collects spent fear to prepare more horrifying traps and omens. The basic idea of the game is that Fear is constantly increasing making Students more desperate and the Hunted more powerful.
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Jun 29, 2015 17:13
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Hmmm. I like that. I was kinda stuck on the theme, but I agree that the late-game, especially, sounds like it's going to feel very much like a monster movie. I don't think students-in-the-woods works, though, just because that doesn't really give a flavor reason for the monster to avoid individual players at the start. The monster is just weaker than the humans... because it is. My mind actually keeps going back to Alien. Big macho dudes in power armor stomping around, until they get to the point where they are getting loving owned by this monster.
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Jun 29, 2015 17:30
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Could do something like resource degradation? Maybe the Hunted player is going around trying to sabotage things that make the Hunters more powerful. For the Alien example maybe they lose the Power Armor when the Main Generator goes offline. I think that would cause the game to sort of cycle through phases of pure stealth against spread out Hunters and avoidance against them once you did make a strike. You could even let the Hunters restore their effectiveness, it would be naturally balanced out by pulling them out of the search and exposing them to an ambush if they go off on their own to fix something.
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Jun 29, 2015 17:45
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A virus in a human body, the hunter players are clumps white blood cells.
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Jun 29, 2015 17:50
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CodfishCartographer posted:No idea if this is what you have in mind for the lategame, but that makes me think of a horror movie where some terrible creature is hunting down a group of people. Hunters start off trying to find the hidden player, but then as time goes on it turns more into them trying to AVOID that player more than anything, which I think could definitely be interesting and unusual for a hidden movement game. Or could do the opposite, and it be Scooby-Do. :P
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Jun 29, 2015 19:52
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Misandu posted:Could do something like resource degradation? Maybe the Hunted player is going around trying to sabotage things that make the Hunters more powerful. For the Alien example maybe they lose the Power Armor when the Main Generator goes offline. I think that would cause the game to sort of cycle through phases of pure stealth against spread out Hunters and avoidance against them once you did make a strike. You could even let the Hunters restore their effectiveness, it would be naturally balanced out by pulling them out of the search and exposing them to an ambush if they go off on their own to fix something. I like this idea a lot. Keeping with the Alien theme, maybe have it so that round 1, everything on the ship is fine, but then the Alien takes one action, and now there's a power failure in the engine room / there's a breach in the oxygen tank / the lights went out on level 4 / the comm system in med bay doesn't seem to be working. Any one issue isn't catastrophic, but it's something that should be dealt with, and they all have their own deadlines and repercussions for fixing (not fixing the oxygen tank within 10 turns loses the game, not fixing the lights on level 4 means decreased vision or weapon accuracy when on level 4, not hearing from med bay means you have no idea what state it's in / what kind of traps might be there until the player commits to the action of entering med bay). If the players aren't actually locked in combat, maybe turns should happen simultaneously. So after the Alien damaged _____, the team needs to decide what to do about it. If you send just one person, maybe the Alien (if he stayed) can fight them and win easily; so maybe you should send two or more. But if the Alien left and went to some other system to destroy it, then you have 2 (or maybe just one) person on their own in the break room. It becomes a bit of rock-paper-scissors, where the Alien needs to commit to where to go next, and the players need to decide whether to stick together or spread out, to deal with the systems that are failing one by one -- but they decide at the same time, and maybe cross paths along the way.
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Jun 29, 2015 20:37
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I really like the idea of the non-urgent threats all piling on top of each other to create one gigantic clusterfuck of panic. Each one being kind of an inconvenience at best makes it all the more hilarious when it all piles up to create a massive catastrophe.
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Jun 29, 2015 21:04
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