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A re-roll is probably more exciting, but doesn't mean anything if the player isn't presented with new options at the end of it. The obvious choice here, which you've already outlined, is safe/expensive vs. risky/cheap. With the numbers you've mentioned so far there is no middle ground. Embrace that, then. If it were me, I'd have every class have a range of low powered moves with a wide range of dice combinations to activate them, and a couple higher-powered moves that require specific dice and are only situationally useful. I'd also throw out any focus ability that affects dice: you spend it on dice. That means I'd move all healing to a safe character ability so it's available but not assured, with maybe a harder set that has a potentially greater effect. Ha, maybe a two-die heal for two hit points and a three specific die heal for a roll. Also nudges would be one more expensive. It should hurt to go for a sure thing. Now you got me thinking about it. I certainly got enough dice laying around.
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Jan 13, 2016 05:22
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Casnorf posted:Now you got me thinking about it. I certainly got enough dice laying around. If you're interested in messing around with what I have so far you're more than welcome to the little document I've got written up. Though it sounds like you might have your own idea on the brain, in which case I'd love to hear what you come up with! I think my immediate reaction based on feedback here is to increase the number of actions available per character so that they have a lot more opportunities to act.
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Jan 13, 2016 06:50
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I'd love to see what you have so far. Hey here's some random ideas I have laying around! What if they dice you used were based on the characters you were using. Each character could bring two specific dice that you add to your pool. Maybe dice of different colors function differently, maybe a set of two Red dice is actually three dice and you discard the lowest. Maybe Blue dice are actually sets of three dice where you discard the highest. Characters could have synergy based on the types of dice they use, Red Dice users like to be together because the game only cares that you toss 1 Red for every two Red you keep. Blue Dice users work better when you only use one, because the game works the same way (so you'll end up getting rid of multiple high dice). Alternatively maybe Red Dice users like High numbers and Blue Dice users like Low numbers so using them together is hard because of their dice mechanics. What if the dice weren't all traditional D6s? You could change the faces on the dice, or even use a higher sided die to change the probability of certain numbers rolling. Maybe an inexperienced soldier only brings d4s, while veterans bring d8s that go [1,2,3,3,4,4,5,6]. What if Focus had special properties to it? Maybe everyone can spend 1 Focus to reroll, but certain characters can spend 1 Focus to nudge a die that's been assigned to them 1 in either direction. Maybe another character could spend 2 Focus and literally nudge the dice once face in either direction. You could have a unit that works like old school Charizard from the Pokemon TCG and just treats all dice assigned to them as X for 1 Focus. I would just do all of these though! You could have a General type units that brings their own personal d6 to the battle and base all their rolls on 2d6. Schools of magic could come with their own dice, the properties of which make them not get along super well when you mix schools in a group (the red/blue dice thing from above would be a good example). Actually on that note: Yellow dice can't be the same number. Whenever two or more Yellow dice roll the same you have to reroll all of them. There we go Fire, Ice, and Thunder. Anyway I have a lot of Ideas About Dice Tricks so let me know if you need help brain storming any!
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Jan 13, 2016 17:25
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Anniversary posted:Though it sounds like you might have your own idea on the brain, in which case I'd love to hear what you come up with! Unnamed 11-die Dungeon Crawler Contents: 5 Red Hero dice (d6) 5 Black Monster dice (d6) 1 White Reroll counter die (d6, 0-5) 1 Game board (two opposing 3x3 square grids, each numbered 1-9 in mirror image arranged vertically) Setup: Put the Reroll counter die beside the game board with the zero face showing. Objective: Defeat a dragon. Play: Roll the five black monster dice. Place all five dice on the upper (monster) 3x3 grid, preserving their face up side, wherever you like. Adjacent dice are added together and the total determines the type of monster those dice represent, as well as its attack. 1-7, Goblin -- Attacks the corresponding numbered space on the 3x3 Hero side of the board. 8-9, Shaman -- Prevents monster defeat in the rows or columns his dice occupy. 10-11, Ogre -- Attacks the spaces in the same position as the ones his dice occupy on the Hero side of the board. 12 or more, Dragon -- Nukes the board. Roll the five red Hero dice. Place all five dice in the lower (Hero) 3x3 grid, preserving their face-up side, wherever you like. Adjacent dice are added together and their total determines the type of hero those dice represent, as well as their attack. 1-7, Warrior -- Attacks the corresponding numbered space on the 3x3 Monster side of the board. 8-9, Cleric -- Prevents Hero defeat in the rows or columns his dice occupy -OR- Restores one previously lost die anywhere on the Hero board after Hero attacks resolve. 10-11, Rogue -- Attack one monster in the spaces in the same position as the ones his dice occupy on the monster side of the board. 12 or more, Wizard -- Attacks the rows or columns on the monster board corresponding to those his dice are placed in. Always attacks with a value of 12. Resolve Hero attacks first. The total value of attacks on a monster must be greater than (not equal to) the total of the dice that represent it in order to defeat it. Defeated monsters are removed from the board and increment the reroll counter die by one per defeated monster. Resolve remaining monster attacks (if any). Any Hero attacked by a monster is defeated. Defeated Heroes decrement the reroll counter die by one per defeated Hero. If the reroll die is at zero, the Heroes lose one die per defeated Hero. Repeat as necessary, always rolling all five monster dice each turn. Only roll available Hero dice. Rerolls: Decrement the Reroll Counter die to reroll any one die at any time. If a die was already placed it must be returned to the same spot it was on. Changes take effect immediately. (If a placed die is rerolled and changes a monster's type, for example, that monster is now the new type for all purposes.) Winning: Defeat a Dragon. Yaaaay!
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Jan 14, 2016 00:50
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Okay, after five more minutes of thought, I would change "adjacent" to "horizontally adjacent" which means you can only group dice on the same row, and wizards attack the entire column containing their highest die, friendly fire enabled. Because wizards are assholes. Clerics therefore prevent one defeat from any one source, now, and I suppose when they restore a die, the new die is immediately considered to be part of any unit to which it is horizontally adjacent, most especially for the purpose of the monster counterattack. Cleric restores and hero attacks are simultaneous so a Cleric cannot improve an already placed unit's attack/class.
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Jan 18, 2016 19:56
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I think that sounds interesting but it also sounds like there aren't a lot of choices to make. Given a monster board and a roll of hero dice results it sounds like game play is just straight choosing the most optimal layout of your results. Like how in games you can in theory choose whatever weapon you want but the correct answer is always "whatever does the most damage fastest". This is based on a quick read though so if I'm wrong or missing something let me know.
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Jan 18, 2016 21:07
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It seems like all you would ever do is assign Goblins until you filled up your reroll dice and then just reroll trying to roll a stronger Wizard then Dragon. Nothing stops me from just assigning:pre:X_X _X_ X_X Maybe you need to put some restrictions on the playing field? Something like: pre:Enemy Field: [B] [B] [R] [B] [R] [B] [R] [B] [R] Player Field [R] [R] [B] [R] [B] [R] [B] [R] [B]
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Jan 18, 2016 21:46
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Right you are! Maybe a sixth minute of thought would have shown that. I really like the idea of different boards, though I'd probably just block off between one and three tiles on each board to force dice placement. I was also thinking that clumping rules might be effective: even numbers might naturally gravitate to each other and must be placed first, adjacent. Or both! Boards with rules about number placement and potentially blocked off squares would force non-five-goblin setups, maybe allowing for interesting player decisions on the hero side. What I'll have to give some thought about, then, is interesting simple number placement rules.
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Jan 19, 2016 19:58
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Casnorf, looks like you've got a neat little idea developed there. I really like a lot of the ideas you're putting out here; though they may be a little more complex than what I initially had in mind. I initially came up with this idea as just a quick thought experiment and I'm still debating how I want to refine it from advice I've gotten here. I think my first move would be adding more actions for each character. From there I'd probably investigate dice tricks like Misandu suggested. Though right now my design white whale is probably my own take on a many vs ai game inspired by Bloodborne. I'm having so much trouble getting that off the ground I'm loath to even mention it. I did get a single player variant created, but I don't think I want to repeat those mechanics in a multiplayer game.
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Jan 21, 2016 04:17
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So I'm once again working on my feinting dark souls-esque miniature game, feint wars. (new rules). Co-incidentally (not really) it's right around the time I rejoin my old foam sword fighting group. (foam sword fighting is one of the things that inspired this game) My newest thought is the cards you play has an attack number and a movement (which is the attack number times 2). When you use it to move, you use the move number (obviously). Also, I think it just works better for card counting with players drawing from a single deck, instead of separate decks. When you attack, you choose a target and both players play a card and move that number of squares, the attacker foreword and defender backward. If the defender is within the attacker's range, the attack hits. The problem with this is, I'm not sure how this works with any sort of power bonus for having stronger, more elite units. I suppose I could have elite units have wider ranges, but I'm not sure how that works balance-wise yet. And I'm not sure if it's a bit too fiddly with terrain, other units and dealing with angles. So far I've only been able to do self-testing and I've been just testing 1 figure on each side to try to get a feel for it. I'm not sure if there's some obvious optimal strategy for either/both of low range or high range units when going against either other (for example, a 2 range unit vs. a 3 range unit). Also, this is maybe perhaps too close to Reiner Knizia's "En Garde". Basically, I need to maybe actually test-play this and brainstorm with people.
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Jan 21, 2016 07:26
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Anniversary posted:Casnorf, looks like you've got a neat little idea developed there. 12. That's close to unwinnable but I guess for a boss room that might not be so awful...You'd probably burn a few rerolls trying to bring it down to a dragon and something smaller. As far as board layouts go I probably only need a dozen or so, all but the boss board reversible, but I haven't got much other than even or odd numbers clump. Even that I'm not so in love with, as 5-3 is interesting but 4-2 is not. Maybe just have target numbers on the end of the rows? That's too drat close to just saying "you encounter a..." And then why dice at all? Hmmmm.
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Jan 21, 2016 15:40
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Anniversary posted:I really like a lot of the ideas you're putting out here; though they may be a little more complex than what I initially had in mind. Casnorf posted:D'ya think a reverse fibonacci (13, 8, 5, 3) for a boss board is too complicated for such a simple little game? As in, target those numbers or higher with whatever you rolled. Lowest possible would then be a three goblin and a two goblin, and the highest would be two dragons at 18 and I don't think anything is too complicated as long as you spell it out plainly in the rules. It might work a little better as a game if you made single dice more interesting though, right now any time you have a single die on the field it's always going to be a pretty nonthreatening Goblin. You're trying to design around that with forcing odd/even dice together, but why not just say subtract 4 from each monster value. Maybe a chart closer to: pre:Roll | Monster --------|--------------------- 1-3 | Goblin 4-6 | Orc 7-10 | Shaman 10-12 | Ogre 13+ | Dragon Foolster41 posted:Feint Wars
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Jan 21, 2016 17:23
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I kind of like the idea of making the choice between harder to prevent damage or enemy damage mitigation. Orcs could attack any squares they're in and the next numbered square up with a wrap around from 9 to 1. In that case by all means leave shamans on 7 just to force using an extra die to not have to deal with one. There's really no reason a second player couldn't play the monsters, now that I think about it.
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Jan 21, 2016 20:33
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I did a full write-up of the Betrayal rework, and it's 7 pages single spaced, so I'm not going to post it here (although I may start working on cards and maybe prototyping). The main ideas, in addition to deck-based characters are... > It's set in a haunted hotel, ala The Shining. Players are 1920s socialites who have been invited to the mysterious reopening masquerade of The Grand Coachman, which (they thought) had been destroyed by an explosion several years back. > Players randomly get a masque, which gives them their starting deck composition and special ability, as well as their archetype (based on Tarot trumps), which gives them their haunt conditions and rules. > When players fail a check they accumulate: delirium, fatigue, or dread (or have the option of trashing a card of a specific color). Any of these may trigger the condition of an archetype's haunt starting. Delirium and fatigue are roughly equivalent (though one represents mental duress, the other physical), but dread is a shared resource. > Accumulating 5 delirium or fatigue results in player death. However, unlike Betrayal, dead players enter 'spectre' mode instead of being out of the game. Spectres may draw 3 cards once per round, and contribute one of them to any check another player is attempting to make, giving them limited input into the game. Dread, being a shared resource, instead represents a shared loss for all players if it reaches 12. > Archetype haunts are less opaque in this version, meaning a whole lot less flipping between rule books and rule kabuki as players try to figure out what the gently caress is happening. In general, archetypes are a villain character that the other players must face off again, but a few of them alter the shared victory condition (which I haven't mentioned yet). > Instead of a totally random board, there are set play mats. The movement by square is also gone, and instead you just move 1 room space per movement card. You draw room cards from a top / main / basement deck. There are a few set rooms for each mat, and on the top floor is the manager's office. > The starting goal of the game, a shared win, is to collect three keys from the object deck (preseeded to go into each third), take them to the manager's office on the top floor, unlock the door, and then make a series of difficult checks to defeat the end boss type manager character. > Deck building is done through superlatives. Superlatives are earned in a few categories, largely through exploring rooms, or completing checks. The player with the most superlative tokens of a type is the winner of that category for the game (giving players a goal beyond the shared win). However any five superlatives can be traded for an opportunity to upgrade cards from your deck by a factor of 1 in the same color. That's the main idea. It's still random as poo poo, but I think at least some of the problems are resolved (or at least there are different problems in their place). I think I may prototype it at some point, but there're a lot of moving parts / tokens / stuff.
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Jan 22, 2016 22:53
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I've been slowly developing a game, and to do so, I've been trying to do a lot of research into mythology, fantasy, and folklore from around the world. Western European stuff is really easy to find (wizards and dragons and all things Tolkien), but anything else is quite scarce. It's either religious practices/beliefs, REALLY brief and vague information, or modern takes with heavy western influences. I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations for resources (sites or books) where I could find information on stuff that isn't just your more traditional D&D fodder and is rooted in actual culture.
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Jan 29, 2016 05:29
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sector_corrector posted:I did a full write-up of the Betrayal rework, and it's 7 pages single spaced, so I'm not going to post it here (although I may start working on cards and maybe prototyping).
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Jan 29, 2016 21:55
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If anyone's interested, I made a poorly organized and not very brief blog update on my unofficial Venture Bros boardgame design, in honor of the Season 6 premiere tonight.
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Feb 1, 2016 04:01
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Jamesman posted:I've been slowly developing a game, and to do so, I've been trying to do a lot of research into mythology, fantasy, and folklore from around the world. Western European stuff is really easy to find (wizards and dragons and all things Tolkien), but anything else is quite scarce. It's either religious practices/beliefs, REALLY brief and vague information, or modern takes with heavy western influences. Poison Mushroom posted:If you wanted to post it as a Google doc or something, that'd be pretty rad. I'd be up for running a PBP to playtest the game.
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Feb 1, 2016 16:59
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Jamesman posted:I've been slowly developing a game, and to do so, I've been trying to do a lot of research into mythology, fantasy, and folklore from around the world. Western European stuff is really easy to find (wizards and dragons and all things Tolkien), but anything else is quite scarce. It's either religious practices/beliefs, REALLY brief and vague information, or modern takes with heavy western influences. Not really a book resource, but a path - look into Armenian mythology, lots of weird gods, heroes, villains and monsters. Some of the strange creatures (from wikipedia): Al - The Al is a dwarfish evil spirit that attacks pregnant women and steals newborn babies. Described as half-animal and half-man, its teeth are of iron and nails of brass or copper. It usually wears a pointed hat covered in bells, and can become invisible. Aralez - Aralezner - The oldest gods in the Armenian pantheon, Aralez are dog-like creatures with powers to resuscitate fallen warriors and resurrect the dead by licking wounds clean. Devs - The Dev are air-composed spirit creatures originating from Zoroastrian mythology (the Daevas), and share many similarities to angels. They reside in stony places and ruins, and usually kept to themselves. Shahapet - The Shahapet were usually friendly guardian spirits who typically appeared in the form of serpents. They inhabited houses, orchards, fields, forests and graveyards, among other places. The Shvaz type was more agriculturally oriented, while the Shvod was a guardian of the home. A Shvod who is well-treated may reward the home's inhabitants with gold, but if mistreated might cause strife and leave. Nhang - The Nhang (from the Persian word for "crocodile") was a river-dwelling serpent-monster with shape shifting powers, often connected to the more conventional Armenian dragons. The creature could change into a seal or lure a man by transforming into a woman, then drag in and drown the victim to drink its blood. The word "Nhang" is sometimes used as a generic term for a sea-monster in ancient Armenian literature. Piatek - The Piatek is a large mammalian creature similar to a wingless griffin. Pahapan Hreshtak - Guardian Angels.
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Feb 1, 2016 17:07
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Here's the write-up for The Grand Coachman, nee` Betrayal Remake, https://docs.google.com/document/d/18-Q0O6lAAUyE42gxymq6brPmskWGowl8qz7282IFFp4/edit?usp=sharing sector_corrector fucked around with this message at 17:33 on Feb 2, 2016 |
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Feb 2, 2016 17:27
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I'm having a hard time placing it but I'm getting a really distinct "Clue: The Movie: The Game" vibe from the rules. I think it's the Masque and Archetype style of characters? I like the idea of Event Checks having minor secondary requirements like how the Weeping Spirit requires 3 Purple and 1 Blue, it should help keep trashing cards from being too powerful. That's good because being allowed to trash cards directly from your deck is going to be incredibly powerful. Players probably shouldn't get to know their Archetype until some requirement is met though, maybe they don't get dealt out until a certain amount of Dread has been accumulated? If you want to keep the flavor portion, maybe separate out Archetypes from win conditions entirely. Then a player could just draw a win condition when their Archetype says to. You could still have them Unmasque and gain an ability from their Archetype to help them win. So The Hermit would keep everything about defeating players with Blue Cards and being able to swap cards into blue, but the actual win conditions would be random. You get to keep the fun part of "Sexy Socialite reveals they're a secret Sorcerer" but it would help keep from the game feeling too familiar when you get an Archetype you've gotten before.
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Feb 2, 2016 19:19
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quote:If you want to keep the flavor portion, maybe separate out Archetypes from win conditions entirely. Then a player could just draw a win condition when their Archetype says to. You could still have them Unmasque and gain an ability from their Archetype to help them win. So The Hermit would keep everything about defeating players with Blue Cards and being able to swap cards into blue, but the actual win conditions would be random. You get to keep the fun part of "Sexy Socialite reveals they're a secret Sorcerer" but it would help keep from the game feeling too familiar when you get an Archetype you've gotten before. I've been paying sort of 20% interest to this one (I'm not a Betrayal fan, to say it mildly)... but reading your post here (despite your concerns) has me kind of stoked on the game and am going to download now - this sounds really cool. I want cards and colors and archetypes and keys and I definitely want "revealing that I'm a sorceror" (that's pretty much my life story).
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Feb 2, 2016 19:25
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Misandu posted:I'm having a hard time placing it but I'm getting a really distinct "Clue: The Movie: The Game" vibe from the rules. I think it's the Masque and Archetype style of characters? Hmm, that's an interesting idea. The motivation behind the design in the Google doc with the archetype bein known at the start to the individual, but secret information to others, was that it gives two paths to victory, and lets a player make an informed choice as to whether or not they want to betray people. Like the Hermit could intentionally build up a really strong blue deck while choosing to intentionally fail delirium checks. I have no idea if that is a good idea or not. I do like the idea that Dread might just be the singular determining factor of triggering archetypes. One problem I ran into in designing the archetypes was that the trigger conditions seem super hard to balance. Having it just be Dread gives everyone something to keep an eye on. Edit: Come to think of it, you could work it like Shadow Hunters. Have 1/3rd of the archetypes be triggered at 5 fatigue, 1/3rd at 5 delirium, and 1/3rd by 6 dread. One thing I had fun with in designing archetypes is that some of them have weird conditions, like they get solo victory if they are able to get themselves killed, or if they blow up the hotel by activating the boiler room event, or even some that are benevolent and can only win if they kill the manager in addition to helping others. sector_corrector fucked around with this message at 19:51 on Feb 2, 2016 |
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Feb 2, 2016 19:45
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That's why I think divorcing win conditions, or maybe more accurately End Games, from Archetypes would be a good idea. The Hermit Archetype makes me think you see them as being these parts of the characters that they're trying to keep hidden, and once they come out they completely take over. So what if once there's X Dread on the board, anyone can Un-Masque and draw the End Game. Each End Game would be an US vs THEM scenario, where the Masqued characters have to try and work together for a team victory, but the Un-Masqued characters can only win by being the last one standing. So The Hermit's win condition becomes something like: pre:"The Ritual Must Be Completed!" An ancient evil lies dormant here, save for an incomplete ritual to banish it. If not completed, the power could be taken for nefarious ends... Masqued Win: All living Masqued Players must assemble in the Emerald Ball Room. Once they have, they must complete a collective check of P12. Un-Masqued Win: Defeat all living Players.
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Feb 2, 2016 20:31
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I did a board game jam last weekend and we successfully completed a prototype of a relatively awful game. Overall I'm actually happy with how things turned out - we had the smallest group size at 3 (most were 4 or 5), and had no dedicated artists, layout persons or technical writers among us, but we hammered out a theme, rules, a board and 2 decks and a few other crude components in the space of about 5 hours. The themes they gave us were Natural Disasters, Escape, and Movie Extras, and we had to use at least 2 of the 3. I insisted on not going with the first thing we thought of, and we eventually settled on "Casting agencies trying to get all of their extras out of a terrible disaster movie by having them all killed off on screen as quickly as possible," which was a little cumbersome but seemed fun. We almost subconsciously locked into a worker placement game - among the components the event gave us were a set of custom Lords of Waterdeep meeples, which would continue to haunt our design process as we tried to get away from accidentally copying that game by being too generic. Our central conceit was that you were trying to get rid of all your workers, which you would need resources to do - influence, which you get by schmoozing at the craft services table, contracts, which come from the production office and can also be used to draw special cards that would give you bonus objectives or personal worker placement spots, and costumes, which could also be spent to avoid losing points. There were 3 new scenes from a deck every round that you could put an extra in to kill them if you had the appropriate resourcees, and you would also keep the card, which could apply to your bonus objectives. As a worker placement game, it did end up being pretty generic. We were afraid if we made it too complicated, it would be easy to find an imbalanced strategy that we didn't have time to account for and the game would just get broken immediately. We also didn't leave enough time to actually playtest the game, but luckily it did not end up being broken, just boring. Your resources were just different colored cubes, and the spots you got them from were all the same - 2 people can put a worker there to get a cube of that color, and one person can put 2 workers there to get a permanent cost reduction of that resource type (our one attempt to allow some progression in your board state). There was a spot to take the start player marker (stand in front of the director and he notices you), a spot to look at the next round's scene cards (the cgi offices), a spot to draw a card (your trailer - not very thematic, but the cards weren't either), and an always-available but cost-inefficient spot where you can kill an extra - in front of the greenscreen. One of the judges really liked our game, but his one complaint (rightfully) was that there weren't enough spots for workers for a 4 player game - you would just end up not being able to play, and there was no overflow spot. The other judge did not care for our game at all and gave us bad marks all around, including for lack of theme and lack of strategy, which we thought was unfair (the strategy was overly simple, and probably favored the first player, but it was there). But since the first judge was probably too nice, I think it evened out. If I had to do it again, I would have just gone for putting more varied and potentially imbalanced stuff in, in the hopes that at least it would make the playtest fun, and then we could just balance by putting bonus points or negative points on the things that were too strong or weak. We also had a weird scoring method that felt unwieldy, where everybody starts with 100 points and you lose points every round for the number of workers you have left, which was way too mathy and unintuitive. Overall it was a fun experience and I'd happily do it again. The event, I mean, not our game.
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Feb 2, 2016 23:38
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Dr. Video Games 0069 posted:I did a board game jam last weekend and we successfully completed a prototype of a relatively awful game. Overall I'm actually happy with how things turned out - we had the smallest group size at 3 (most were 4 or 5), and had no dedicated artists, layout persons or technical writers among us, but we hammered out a theme, rules, a board and 2 decks and a few other crude components in the space of about 5 hours. That does sound like fun. Worker placement is something I'm nearly entirely unfamiliar with outside of Carcassonne, but I'd be interested to try it. Who was hosting the event? I'd like to try my hand at it if there was one nearby.
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Feb 3, 2016 00:32
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Dr. Video Games 0069 posted:Game Jam Experience! That sounds incredible, especially the theme for your game. Is that a regular thing in your area or was it more of a one off event?
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Feb 3, 2016 17:02
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sector_corrector posted:That does sound like fun. Worker placement is something I'm nearly entirely unfamiliar with outside of Carcassonne, but I'd be interested to try it. Stone Age and Lords of Waterdeep are kind of the barebones worker placement games, though there's better ones out there with more variation on the mechanic - Dungeon Lords, Argent, and Keyflower are all pretty great. sector_corrector posted:Who was hosting the event? I'd like to try my hand at it if there was one nearby. Misandu posted:That sounds incredible, especially the theme for your game. Is that a regular thing in your area or was it more of a one off event? The Board of Games in Los Angeles hosted it, they've done 2 before and are planning more, probably for June if not sooner.
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Feb 4, 2016 02:20
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I have Spyrium, but haven't gotten it to the table or learned it yet. Might have to make that a priority.
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Feb 4, 2016 02:34
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I've been toying with ideas for a space sorta-4X, probably card based, with an emphasis on trading and politicking, with the general goal of filling the hole between RftG, Cosmic Encounters, and Eclipse. So, it can't be too immediately complex, but it needs some depth to it. I like my ideas so far but a lot of it feels like I'm just reinventing Race for the Galaxy, so I'd like some input. Here's the basic round structure, as it goes in my head. At the start of the round, there are laid out a number of events, or exploration locations, or planets to colonize, or whatever, equal to the number of players plus one. Then, everyone begins bidding on turn order for that turn, representing the race to scout/colonize/plant a flag first. It's mostly financial, but certain cards or technologies give minor bonuses, and some politics stuff (see below) can affect this phase. Ties open a bid/negotiation for the rights, and a deadlock is decided by the player with the least resources who is not directly involved in the conflict. Once turn order is decided by this phase, the colonization phase begins, each player picking up a card from the row and playing it in front of them or using its effects. Planets create resources, Technologies require resources and give you persistent effects, Events let you do stuff once, and there might be a fourth card type. Maybe Espionage, which let you spend resources for harmful effects on other players. Once everyone has taken a card, the Negotiation phase begins. This is the real meat of the game. Negotiations for resources (given once or over time), technologies (copied, somehow), promises to assist during the Council phase, anything concrete or abstract within the game. However, only two types of deals are actually enforced by the rules: Immediate trades of physical goods/technologies/resources, and Treaties. Treaties come in two types: Military, and Economic. Each has a specific effect, and are represented by physical cards kept aside from the main deck. Military promise not to attack and in fact allow them to assist each other if attacked, Economic promise to give a resource. They also have specific, harsh monetary penalties if they're broken, paid to the 'plaintiff' by the offending party. The only ways to dissolve a treaty are to make a deal (also enforced, treaty is immediately discarded), or to make a Council vote to null it out. Smooth segue into part two of the real meat: Council Phase! In turn order, each player makes a proposal for the Council to vote on. I keep going back and forth on how much to allow or restrict in this regard (or even to use a list/deck of possible edicts), but two rules so far have stayed ironclad: 1) Edicts must either be "global" or directly affect the player putting them forth. ("No one can trade planets" is a valid edict. "Players X and Y cannot trade planets" is not.) 2) Edicts cannot be revoked or modified the same round that they're put into place. Edicts can be permanent-until-overturned or timed based on a number of rounds ("No one can trade planets for two rounds.") Violating an edict results in forfeiting your proposal and vote for the next Council. Once an edict is put forth, the proposing player can talk, explain, beg, bargain, threaten, etc, for two real time minutes, but no cards or resources can change hands. (In the fiction, this is due to an ironclad antilobbyist, antifillibuster clause in the Council founding. In game, it's to prevent the Council phase from drowning in the quagmire of becoming another Negotiation phase.) Then, a vote is called. The majority must approve for the edict to pass, a 50/50 split results in failure. If it passes, it's put into effect immediately. Instead of proposing an edict, a player may instead declare war on another player. If they do, all treaties between the two players are immediately violated, and any other player has the opportunity to reactively declare war on the declaring player or the declared player, without forfeiting their edict. (These secondary declarations cannot be reactively declared to, since it'd cause an infinite explosion of declarations.) Finally, the military phase. In REVERSE turn order, each player gets an opportunity to declare an invasion on any planet of another player. If the players are not At War, War is immediately declared like it would be in the Council phase, plus the invading player is penalized as if they'd just violated an edict, and will continue to be for every round that they invade that player. The sneak attack is against the very nature of the Council charter. (Reacting to an illegal war by declaring war is not an illegal war.) Invasion is fairly simple. Each player secretly bids an amount of money, then reveals it. The invader adds their military strength. The invaded player adds their military strength AND the Defensive strength of the planet. If either player has a military treaty, they can also beg for assistance. Anyone who assists a player adds half their military strength, rounded down, to that player's bid. If the final attack score is higher than the final defense score, the planet is taken. If it's lower or equal, it is not. The round then ends, and repeats. I still need to work on start up, how to incorporate races and edicts, and how the game ends (round limit with Victory Points?) but that's the core of my ideas.
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Feb 4, 2016 08:00
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Misandu posted:I think just getting right into a culture's myths will be the best place to start with something like this. From there you could look into critical interpretations of those myths to help you get an idea of what they're supposed to represent and how they're important to that culture in modern times. That's what I'm trying to do, more or less, except for the part about modern times. I'm just having a really hard time finding any online resources that deal in any useful detail with myth and fantasy for non-western cultures. Everything ties back to Wikipedia (or porn, because "fantasy" is not a word to use in searches), and all the information I get through there is largely about Western culture and/or tied into religion. I just assumed that there would be equivalents to medieval fantasy around the world and there would be information about how those ideas originated, and I would be able to apply that to the idea I have. quote:I feel like a local library might be a decent place to start? I'm not sure where you would find original stuff like that online. I'm planning on going to the library, but I wanted to see if anyone had any ideas on what I should be looking for since my online searches seemed to be failing me so far. I didn't want to spend all day there mindlessly thumbing through books that weren't what I needed, but maybe I need to do exactly that.
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Feb 4, 2016 11:44
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I'm looking for some ideas to change the core system of one of my game designs. I've gone through a few different iterations trying to avoid too much randomness, too much math, or not enough suspense and fun, but then I seem to come right back around to similar problems with each new system. Currently, there are 4 stats, and each stat has 5 skills. Basically the stats are really just categories or different action types and the skills, represented by icons, are what actually do things. Here's a sample character card (ignore the ugly prototype-ness and clipart):  Each player controls 4 Characters, each with a card like this face-up on their player board. Most actions require spending these skills, like entering new areas, searching and resolving effects, completing quests, combat with other players' characters, etc. To perform an action, a player places an action cube on one of the 4 stat rows on the character card (Explore, Sneak, Fight, or Think), which generates all the skills on that stat row that the character can then immediately spend on an action. (For example, Rusty here can use an action cube on his Think stat to generate 2 Investigate skills, 1 Plan skill, and 1 Fix skill to spend on an action.) Each player also has a small hand of unique skill cards specific to their characters, drawn from a small deck. When performing an action as above, a player can also play one or more of these skill cards from their hand to add more skill icons for the current action. (To continue the previous example, Rusty can play this skill card to add 2 more Plan skills to his current 2 Investigate, 1 Plan, and 1 Fix.)  And here's a reference card for the different ranks of skills in each stat.  They are ranked 1 through 5, and their relative power can be quickly grasped by looking at the number or corners in an icon. First and foremost, this is still too much math. I changed from a simple points system to an icon-based system to cut down on the math, but I had way too many icons. (I started with 10 skills in each stat, but even cut down to 5 in each, it's still too much to calculate for each potential action someone might want to do.) I wanted skills and ranks because I want some variation within a stat about what a character can or can't do, not just a linear scale of "this char's strength is 4 and this one's is 5, so they win." This gets messy in combat too, where I have been vacillating between things like "the highest ranked skill determines the winner and number of skills resolve ties" and the opposite. I think a desire to avoid randomness, as I want this to be a fairly strategic game, led me to over complicate the base stat system in order to compensate for lack of dice rolling or something. I added action cubes to limit a player's number of actions (with 4 characters each, giving 1 action per character on a turn seemed to add friction between what a player thinks they should be doing/able to do and what they are). Action cubes also created a risk/reward mechanic of having to decide how many cubes and cards to hold on to outside of players' turns, in order to counter against any potential combat or other effects from other players. But it's causing a lot of headaches for defining when you have to use action cubes and when you don't. If you have to use them whenever you want to generate skill icons, then players either need lots of action cubes or they can barely ever respond or counter when attacked by others. Too many action cubes is a big problem for analysis paralysis and long turns, and dilutes that risk/reward trade off at the end of turns. If some actions, say responding outside of your turn, don't need action cubes, then it can be tough to keep those rules in mind and remember where and when to use action cubes. Similarly, limiting skill cards being played from the hand for bonuses is becoming an issue, solely because of the number of skill icons it brings into the mix. Limiting one skill card played per action seems to be an okay temp fix, but some players may feel it limits the usefulness of having a hand of cards mechanic at all. So basically I'm looking for any and all ideas to break up my thinking on the core system for this game. I want something that's engaging and thrilling in a pulp/comic book adventure sort of way, but avoids the sheer randomness of something dice-heavy like Fortune and Glory or Betrayal at House on the Hill, which both rely almost entirely on their theme to keep players interested in a weak system. I'm fine with bringing other components in, like dice, I just don't want your average, boring "I got 3 points plus my card is 4 points, you got 1 point plus your card is 3 points, I win," sort of resolution. And I'm hoping to keep it somewhat quick and streamlined, as I would really like to fit up to 6 players, if possible, into what's already a pretty bloated game. Some early ideas: -Character cards have dice roll results on them, where low level skills or skills in stats the character is good at only require low dice rolls to "activate" (like 2+ or 3+) while hard skills and those not familiar to the character require really high rolls. Adds suspense of dice rolling, but can still curb randomness by playing to characters' strengths. A potential issue is how to determine how many dice a player/character gets to roll. And I also hate when a low dice roll can't be used for anything, so maybe even a 1+ can activate some super low skill that everyone has that can sometimes be useful. Still doesn't help with direct stat/skill-to-stat/skill contests, though. -Character cards have fewer skills on them (maybe they aren't even cards, but just rectangular tokens with some base skills on them), but each character has an "active skill card" face-up on the player board next to the character card/token. So there's always a character's small base stats, plus their current skill modifier card that add together to show what kind of skills they could generate right now. A player can change to a new active skill card for any of their characters at any time by playing a new one from their hand and discarding the old, basically to switch characters into different "modes" or "moods" for handling different types of situations. Problem is that it cuts down on hidden information, and hence strategy. Maybe combining with the dice roll "activations" above could help with that. -Instead of "generating" skills in the moment right before an action that spends them, maybe each skill is a token, and your characters generate or earn these tokens throughout the game, which can then more literally be "spent" by you discarding those skill tokens to the general supply. Problem is, again, one's token supply would probably have to be hidden information, but if they're behind a screen, how do you keep track of which tokens each character has, and ensure players aren't cheating by switching tokens between characters? (While teaming up for combo actions is a big part of the game, letting all your characters go off and do their own thing, and coordinate them around the map for multi-level quests, is also an important aspect that would be lost if all characters on a players' team get their skills kind of lumped together in one supply.) Additionally, I might need to address how long a character could hold on to a skill token? Could a character just spend the first half of the game "training" somewhere quiet and stocking up on a bunch of skill tokens and unleash them in a practiced fury over the second half of the game? None of these ideas particularly address the issue of direct contest resolutions with this stat/skill system. How would you resolve conflict between characters who have different numbers of skills in 4 stat categories, and each skill can have a rank of 1-5 or so?
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Feb 5, 2016 18:35
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You are the (almost) same loving game as me except better. Good job though, I don't have much decent advice to give but your project looks fun and I'd play it. One thing I've done to make it a bit more engaging than is the X + Y I have beat the Z I need? Is I have a thing where when the characters in my game use certain levels of skills, they gain certain vulnerabilities or disadvantages on following rounds. For example, If I use a card or static character ability that let's me "meditate" and gain a certain resource (Mind) it leaves me vulnerable to sneak attacks the following round for pretty much all but the most noisy enemies - however this can be mitigated by a few abilities in the game that let you "scout" (peak at the deck) to see what's coming to see if it's a good idea. The cards that mitigate the negative effects usually come from a different character so there needs to be some teamwork. It still ends up being X + Y > Z but the way you go about getting the numbers is a bit more interesting. I haven't playtested it too much though so you know, grain of salt. Maybe there's something similar you can look at. Having some abilities RNG though cards or whatever, but then having some static to each character (or on say, "items" they can equip) can help to mitigate the lack of control, and even cards can be controlled a bit with a bit of drafting if that works for your game.
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Feb 5, 2016 19:14
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Harvey Mantaco posted:You are the (almost) same loving game as me except better. I like the added strategy of certain skills opening you up to vulnerabilities, but I'm worried it might add too much bookkeeping, which my game already needs to cut down on. It also reminds me of one of my horror game designs, where the characters "stats" are really their resistances to different sources of terror, and they have to be "spent" to control monsters/spirits associated with those terror sources. Spending those resistances slides you down into weaknesses to those terror sources, and hence, maybe even fear of your own creatures. It might work well if I can find a way to get the skill-icons-as-actual-tokens mechanic to work, nice and streamlined. The skill tokens could have the skill on one side, and a random, but thematic, negative effect on the other, depending on what skill/how powerful of a skill it is. So when you play, say, 3 Skill tokens on an action, the effect requires you to flip one at random to its "vulnerable" side and that's what penalty you have until your next turn or something. I might toy with that. Right now, I'm sort of leaning towards that mix of ideas I mentioned at the end: static/base character skills on their character card, plus 1 dynamic modifier card always in play per character, and those set the capabilities of your character, which you then roll to try and activate. I don't think it's the general idea of a stat/skill icon system that's the problem, it's just finding that sweetspot of balance between "a variety of interesting and useful skills to consider" and "I'm looking at way too many icons per turn to really care about what's happening." EDIT - Oh, and I have Items, Vehicles, Allies, and Henches in my game to help add more variety of sources for bonus skill icons and special abilities. I just didn't mention them because it's unnecessary added detail. Plus, I was already struggling with having way too many cards in earlier iterations of the design, so I moved Items, Vehicles, and Allies to tokens on player boards, making them always available, but exhaustible. And they need different things to be "refreshed" and used again, like action cubes, money spent, certain skill icons, etc. JMBosch fucked around with this message at 19:57 on Feb 5, 2016 |
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Feb 5, 2016 19:54
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You could do Token Banks. Keep the colors, but instead of icons do simple 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Making a check lets you take a certain number of tokens from that character's corresponding bank. Players set up their specific character by making those banks of tokens, with some characters having better distributions than others (Rusty seems to be good at sneaking, so he might get 2 2's 2 3's and a 4, or something). Players then have draw cubes in different values: Draw N -1, Draw N -2, Draw N -3. The N is the total number of tokens in the bank. Each check requires them to spent a cube to draw the appropriate number of tokens from any bank they'd like. Add up the values. See if you make the check. If you wanted to keep skill icons and get rid of tokens altogether, you could do the same thing, and just have the draw cubes randomize what they can draw. So if Rusty needs 2 magnifying glasses and a Wrench to fix a teleporter, his yellow token bank has 2 magnifying glasses, 2 wrenches, and 3 hammers, then they'd want to use their N -1 cube to attempt that, since it nearly guarantees them success. Either way, I think you want to cut down the columns (so, either unique numbers, or unique skills) from 5 to 3 or 4, if that still works for your game. Maybe give players a way to upgrade their token banks, or get more high value draw cubes, and skill cards that let you redraw or something. Either way, you're getting the tension of a dice roll without the tedium of rolling dice.
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Feb 5, 2016 21:16
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I get that they don't appeal to most people, but I wish there were more small, solo games with TONS of book keeping. I love tons of stats and variables in my games. I love a bunch of cards on the table all doing crazy poo poo. I want a dungeon crawl that plays like an excel spreadsheet. I want a puzzle that I stare at softly mumbling to myself for minutes at a time between every move. That's all.
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Feb 5, 2016 21:38
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From a thematic perspective, it seems weird to have the core Venture Bros characters (other than Brock) be good at things, and be employing their legitimate skills to solve problems and defeat bad guys or pass tests or something. Having Rusty be good at science and Dean be good at sneaking (or whatever) makes it so you can impose "normal" game mechanics onto this setting, but the resulting game will be the opposite of how and why the show works. I like adventure-y games, and I love Venture Bros - but I think you need some much more serious wrinkles if you're going to bring them together like this. Like, you could take any fantasy game and make the wizard Rusty, the elf Hank, and the barbarian Brock (essentially) and it might kind of work - but it wouldn't feel like a Venture Bros game in any interesting way. Rusty can't just roll high and punch out Phantom Limb or, really, win honestly at much of anything. He shouldn't have points in science, he should have points in futility and maybe luck? If I imagine a Venture game, it'd be like: it's a co-op where the Venture family is doing stupid crap (blindly running towards whatever is shiny on the map) and you have to somehow keep them alive. Or they're sort of one faction (player or not) in a game with a bunch of villains/OSI/sphinx/whatever that keep each other balanced by having conflicting objectives. Your mechanics may be fine, but - to the extent I understand what you're aiming for - I don't know that they fit the setting you're working with. jmzero fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Feb 5, 2016 |
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Feb 5, 2016 21:49
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sector_corrector posted:You could do Token Banks. Keep the colors, but instead of icons do simple 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Making a check lets you take a certain number of tokens from that character's corresponding bank. Players set up their specific character by making those banks of tokens, with some characters having better distributions than others (Rusty seems to be good at sneaking, so he might get 2 2's 2 3's and a 4, or something). Players then have draw cubes in different values: Draw N -1, Draw N -2, Draw N -3. The N is the total number of tokens in the bank. Each check requires them to spent a cube to draw the appropriate number of tokens from any bank they'd like. Add up the values. See if you make the check. But quote:If you wanted to keep skill icons and get rid of tokens altogether, you could do the same thing, and just have the draw cubes randomize what they can draw. So if Rusty needs 2 magnifying glasses and a Wrench to fix a teleporter, his yellow token bank has 2 magnifying glasses, 2 wrenches, and 3 hammers, then they'd want to use their N -1 cube to attempt that, since it nearly guarantees them success. Each payer has 4 characters and each has 4 stats, so would I need separate token banks for each character and stat combination? It might be a bit too much setup for each player to make 16 little shuffled stacks of tokens, and not knock them over during play. (I really don't want tons of little cloth bags to draw from.) Or maybe each token drawn could have a number or skill icon for each stat, so the same supply can be used for checking any stat. How else would/could you visualize this on the table? quote:Either way, I think you want to cut down the columns (so, either unique numbers, or unique skills) from 5 to 3 or 4, if that still works for your game.
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Feb 5, 2016 22:05
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Harvey Mantaco posted:I get that they don't appeal to most people, but I wish there were more small, solo games with TONS of book keeping. I love tons of stats and variables in my games. I love a bunch of cards on the table all doing crazy poo poo. I want a dungeon crawl that plays like an excel spreadsheet. I want a puzzle that I stare at softly mumbling to myself for minutes at a time between every move. That's all.
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Feb 5, 2016 22:28
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JMBosch posted:
Does the theming have the characters working as a team? If so, then I can see a big pile of tokens for the entire team (separated by color). This represents the collective skills of the entire team being applied to various tasks. That cuts down on table space and fiddly accounting, but still gives you the same mechanic.
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Feb 5, 2016 23:22
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