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Misandu posted:Would this be with the normal Argent rules and a modified board or are you just evoking Argent as the inspiration? Inspiration. I like the hidden supporters, but I would do something entirely different from the worker placement, making it more of a party game.
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Mar 16, 2016 18:24
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This is pretty much a math question, but it's for a board game, so I figured it's the best place for help. Looking up the white-ball black-ball questions on google got a lot of the answers with some sort of weird syntax I couldn't decipher. I'm trying to determine the general likelihood of a player getting at least one of a given resource card if drawn randomly. I haven't determined the size of the overall pool, but I know the relative frequency that I am considering. A appears once for every 6. B appears twice for every 6. C appears thrice for every 6. So, let's say you get 4 resource cards, and we want to know the likelihood of getting at least one A. I believe you can find it by considering the odds of not getting any. So, for the first draw, it's 5 of 6 to not get it. Now, normally the pool would be reduced by the removed card and that would change the odds. For instance, if it were just those 6 cards, the odds would now be 4 of 5. However, since I don't yet know how big the pool will be, for these illustrative purposes, I'm going to assume the pool is large enough that the change to the odds won't be that great. I suppose I can always go back and check the math once I have an idea of the pool size. So, this means that over the four cards, the odds of not getting any As is about 5/6 * 5/6 * 5/6 * 5/6 or 5/6 to the 4th power. That's about 48%. So, the odds of getting at least one A is 1 minus that, or 52%. Is that right?
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Mar 22, 2016 00:37
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quote:Is that right? Yes. quote:Probably the sensible way to do that is have 1-2 of each resource as a cube in a draw bag, you draw one and replace what you drew from the supply/bank VVV: If resources are public information, and have x-in-6 odds with effective replacement, you could instead just roll dice with resources on the faces. If they're not public, it'll be awkward to do anything but a card draw. jmzero fucked around with this message at 04:18 on Mar 22, 2016 |
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Mar 22, 2016 00:50
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jmzero posted:Yes. Thank you kindly.
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Mar 22, 2016 00:51
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And you can implement that infinitely-large stack by putting the resource cards back and reshuffling. Probably the sensible way to do that is have 1-2 of each resource as a cube in a draw bag, you draw one and replace what you drew from the supply/bank.
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Mar 22, 2016 02:44
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(x-post from the game writing thread) I programmed a list builder for Feint Wars. I think I've fixed all the bugs, so it should be functional. Feel free to mess around with it and break it (as long as you tell me what went wrong). Right now the available units are pretty generic (knights and rat-men). A lot of the units I made up stats for are based on what units I have on hand. I'm hoping to add more interesting characters I have ideas for once I get some play-tests with this version of the game and figure out the main physics. I have a sort of idea of the tone I want to go with. Come to think of it, the things I keep thinking of the mood I want are all 80s fantasy movies (Neverending Story, Return to Oz, Dark Crystal, Labyrinth). For tone I'm thinking weird and dangerous, but not super grim-dark. I'm hoping to do a test-play with someone in the next week or so.
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Mar 29, 2016 08:43
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Having previously created an expansion for Eldritch Horror that seemed generally well received my wife and I thought we'd have a go at creating a full game to try and fill a niche that we were looking for ourselves. We mostly play co-op games when it's just the two of us and have enjoyed the LotR LCG, Mage Knight and other more complex co-op games but can get put off by the setup time when we only have a few hours to spend. On the flipside, the co-op games we have with shorter setup times are often disappointing to us in the simplicity of the decision-making. So, our goal was to create a game with complex decision making/puzzle solving as per something like Mage Knight but with a much shorter setup and play time. Additional goals were to reduce quarterbacking (I don't think we hit this one particularly), give players something to do on other player's turns so that they stay engaged in the game, and provide up-front luck that leads to deterministic solutions (again, like the randomness of your card draw in Mage Knight or LotR then giving you a set of fixed options for your turn). We also wanted to give players the sense of character progression over the course of the game, and make it possible to create quite different 'builds' for the same character from one game to the next. We settled on a dice and card-based game that draws on a lot of mechanics from games like LotR, Legendary Encounters and others. Players engage monsters and use dice to activate abilities, introducing an element of 'push-your-luck' gameplay since more powerful abilities cost more dice to use and therefore require more specific combinations, whereas less powerful abilities are easier to trigger. Over the course of the game, players can use experience gained from killing monsters to buy more dice or new abilities. Players also have to balance using dice to buy new items and make their characters more powerful, or dealing with the immediate threat in front of them. Players are also able to set aside dice to use for 'react' abilities which can be used during other players' turns, or as 'assist' dice which other players can use to trigger their own abilities, introducing ways that players can remain engaged and active even when it's not their turn. We've now got a full set of components created which we have playtested and tweaked about ten times so far - and so far it's been pretty satisfying experience! I'm thinking about running a PBP game on the forums, but wanted to gauge interest - I've previously run forum games of Dungeon Lords, Dead of Winter and possibly one or two others, so if you might be interested in giving it a go post in the thread and if we get enough players (2-4) I'll create a game thread for it. Here's the current rulebook (still needs a bit of work but is perfectly serviceable) Here's a few pictures of what some of the characters, skills and enemies look like:      
Kerro fucked around with this message at 04:52 on Mar 31, 2016 |
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Mar 31, 2016 00:48
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I'd be up for helping you playtest over PBP, always on the lookout for good co-op games.
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Mar 31, 2016 01:43
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Thanks, that would be awesome - will let you know if we get some more takers! In the meantime, for anyone who wants to try out the hardcopy here are the game files: Game Files And the latest, much more useful rulebook: Rulebook
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Mar 31, 2016 04:51
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Kerro posted:Thanks, that would be awesome - will let you know if we get some more takers!  Wow that was fast! I am going to print this tomorrow and give it a few plays. You have no idea how ideal this is. I have actually been looking around for a game specifically like this for a few weeks now, to the point where I was going to just design it myself. I wanted to basically replicated the dice combat in The Curious Expedition, except with normal dice and cards. It seems like you have already done that for me, so thanks! http://curious-expedition.wikia.com/wiki/Combat
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Mar 31, 2016 05:07
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Glad to hear it - I hadn't heard of that, but I figured there must be games that had done something similar, I just hadn't come across any of them hence figuring we'd just make it ourselves. We have made quite a lot of progress fairly quickly - once I get on to a project I tend to get a bit obsessive and throw every spare moment into it 
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Mar 31, 2016 05:10
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I read your rulebook and I am really interested, count me in for playtesting.
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Apr 5, 2016 06:43
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Awesome, thanks for the offer. At the moment the current pbp game is full, but if there's enough interest because of/in spite of that one, I'd be very happy to run another one in parallel so if anyone else is keen let me know here or in the game thread and I'll get another game setup.
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Apr 5, 2016 10:41
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What are the best online programs for testing a card game? I've got something in the works that's similar in mechanics to Dominion.
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Apr 10, 2016 21:39
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The worst submarine posted:What are the best online programs for testing a card game? I've got something in the works that's similar in mechanics to Dominion. That's putting the cart before the horse. You don't need an online program, in fact it would make testing a lot harder. Just write on some index cards or something.
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Apr 10, 2016 23:54
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Well, if they are past the self-test level and want to test play with other people, and can't find people IRL, I could see how an online platform could be useful.. I use Roll20 for my games, and I find it works pretty well.
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Apr 11, 2016 01:34
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I'd recommend Roll20 unless you have some sort of programming knowledge, in which case VASSAL might work for you. I don't know about programs like OCTGN but they might be worth looking into.
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Apr 11, 2016 01:42
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I'm actually gonna break rank and say Tabletop Simulator. It's stupidly simple to set up a large set of cards, and the faux-tactility helps with figuring out how the game will actually play with people who don't know the rules as well as you do. The big downsides to TTS are the cost (everyone playing has to buy it) and that it can be kind of finicky to get everyone acquainted with both the program and the game at the same time.
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Apr 11, 2016 09:50
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Poison Mushroom posted:I'm actually gonna break rank and say Tabletop Simulator. It's stupidly simple to set up a large set of cards, and the faux-tactility helps with figuring out how the game will actually play with people who don't know the rules as well as you do. Tabletop Simulator has a button where if you get super mad at the game you can flip the table over and send poo poo flying everywhere. It's actually a great thing.
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Apr 11, 2016 17:27
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 Here's a screenshot from back when I used TTS to play the Final Attack PnP, and it worked pretty well.
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Apr 11, 2016 19:31
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Rutibex posted:That's putting the cart before the horse. You don't need an online program, in fact it would make testing a lot harder. Just write on some index cards or something. Thanks everyone else for the suggestions! I've tried Vassal and I haven't been successful in connecting to others, plus its GUI is terrifying and most people I've had download it to test have been horrified by the interface. Tabletop Simulator looks sweet but it's $20. I don't want to make my friends/testers pay any money to try out my game and I much less want them to pay 20 dollars. OCTGN is Windows only which is also a problem. I've used it to play Netrunner before and it's worked very well, I don't doubt its good but most of my testers are Linux nerds. I haven't seen Roll20 before, it looks fancy but it's advertised for pen-and-paper games. Would it work well for a card game? Currently I'm trying out Cockatrice based on other suggestions. It's an MtG program that supports custom cards and it works surprisingly well. Maybe my card game has a lot of rules that intersect with Magic's, but the amount of options you can do with the cards is staggering (and it has public servers!) The only downside, which is fairly major, is that it doesn't support extra decks. If you want a neutral extra deck such as Ruins in Dominion, you need to add a dummy player to the game.
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Apr 11, 2016 22:58
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The worst submarine posted:I haven't seen Roll20 before, it looks fancy but it's advertised for pen-and-paper games. Would it work well for a card game?
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Apr 12, 2016 04:58
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Roll20 is the most straightforward way to test board games (and I suppose card games) that I know of. It's hardly ideal, but short of figuring out how to make a Vassal implementation or coding your own game, it's probably the best you can do.
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Apr 13, 2016 13:28
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signalnoise posted:Inspiration. I like the hidden supporters, but I would do something entirely different from the worker placement, making it more of a party game. OK. I have thought about this. You have a group of hidden supporters like Argent, but instead of having a set of static locations, each turn you flip over a location card and that's where your ship has docked. Each location (all real locations in the Caribbean) will have various poo poo to do that you act on and get rewarded for. Each turn, you flip a location card, look at one supporter, and do whatever you're going to do at that location. These things can range from buying and selling goods to carousing and stirring up poo poo for other players (actual mechanics of this to be determined but largely the functions of the locations will be reflections of the crew cards). At any time, a player may call mutiny. If that player does not win, he is out of the game, the crew deck is reshuffled, and new crew are placed. At a meta level what you are trying to do is be the best at more things than anyone else, without being so good at one thing that your efforts are wasted.
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Apr 15, 2016 05:32
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That gives me a cool idea for a game! Play as Pirate Captains trying to impress Nations with randomly determined rulers Argent style. Workers get replaced by ships in your fleet. Don't have a lot thought up yet but it seems like it could be cool.
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Apr 15, 2016 21:10
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Misandu posted:That gives me a cool idea for a game! Play as Pirate Captains trying to impress Nations with randomly determined rulers Argent style. Workers get replaced by ships in your fleet. Don't have a lot thought up yet but it seems like it could be cool. That might actually be a better theme than mine because buying and selling goods sounds perfectly fine for individual ships but not so for different officers in the crew
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Apr 16, 2016 00:19
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I made a box for my prototype! 
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Apr 16, 2016 04:17
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Looks great - where did you get it made? I've looked around for places that make custom boxes but most of the ones I've found don't do small print runs. Or did you print and assemble it yourself?
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Apr 18, 2016 05:36
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Did it myself. Scored a lovely game box about skateboarding dogs from a thrift store and had a new wrap a friend painted printed for it at a local shop, then cut and folded some posterboard around some daveyboard for an insert and voila. It's not perfect, but I learned a lot making it, and it'll certainly do.
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Apr 18, 2016 08:34
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Yeah, the outside box looks pretty professional at first glance! Nice job.
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Apr 18, 2016 08:56
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Cheers, thanks.
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Apr 18, 2016 09:20
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Yo, design thread. Been a while, but I've got something new. I've been working on a couple concepts the past few weeks, and I've got one that I think is ready for alpha testing:  “Restraint? Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea is to kill the bastards. At the end of the war, if there are two Americans and one Russian left alive, we win.” ~Gen. Thomas Power, U.S. Strategic Air Command 1957-1964 19XX. The unthinkable finally happens. The world is scoured clean in nuclear fire. The oceans are poisoned for generations to come. Only one last patch of habitable land remains: Antarctica. The remnants of humanity huddle together in a fragile patchwork of research stations and refugee ships. But even here, the Cold War survives. And your civilization may not. MELTWATER is a post-nuclear abstractish wargamish thing for two players. The game is vaguely inspired by a mix of Volko Ruhnke's COIN system and Brenda Romero's art-game Síochán Leat. It's about struggling over an ever-shrinking board and slowly starving to death. Each turn that the fighting continues, the radioactive ocean eats a few hexes away from the board, while more refugees wash ashore and stretch the limited space even thinner. The game is in a very early state, and is probably broken in half in some way I can't see yet. I'm putting it here because I'm hoping one or two goons might give it the brutal beating it needs, and I can suss out what needs fixed. Anyone interested? Current rulebook is here,, map sections and card sheet files are here. If you wanna read what the hell I was thinking when I slapped this abomination together, my design blog is here. (Warning: full of my half-assed rambling on design principles. If you just want the Meltwater stuff, that's here.) Sailor Mercury not needed for gameplay, but recommended.
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Apr 20, 2016 10:06
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Sorry if this was already asked, but there are a lot of board game self-publishing companies such as panda games, but they don't seem to do miniatures games components (plastic figures) does anyone know of a company, or companies that do can be hired to produce miniatures games, the way those companies do cardboard-based games? E: Well, I guess the companies in the OP are more companies that will publish the game, rather than a kick-starter funded route of publishing it myself, so I guess the question isn't answered in the OP after all. Foolster41 fucked around with this message at 23:37 on Apr 23, 2016 |
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Apr 23, 2016 23:29
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Goddamn, I knew it was a loving mistake to read this thread when I have a busy weekend and a busy week looming  Gutter Owl posted:Yo, design thread. Been a while, but I've got something new. I like the concept behind MELTWATER, maybe it's because I'm all in love with Antiquity right now but I really dig the dwindling resources/mounting pressure concept. I can't wait to look into this more. e: Did a once-over of the rules - I think I'm going to have trouble keeping track of what hexes are and aren't in what state and what the unit limits are as a result. I like the gameplay as described, though. Fix posted:I made a box for my prototype! That's beautiful. It really does look super pro. Nice work. Kerro posted:Having previously created an expansion for Eldritch Horror that seemed generally well received my wife and I thought we'd have a go at creating a full game to try and fill a niche that we were looking for ourselves. Sounds interesting, I'm putting reading it onto my to-do list. Side note since you mentioned quarterbacking: I don't really have a point to this, just saying that for my wife and I quarterbacking isn't a factor whatsoever, we play co-ops as co-operative puzzle solving. And for games where it's basically a puzzle to solve that's a-ok. But I learned that by "quarterbacking" as a problem people sometimes mean "a game where a less experienced player hasn't got anything to do [because the more experienced players can't in good conscience let them make a suboptimal choice]" Anyway, my to-check-out list just grew a fair bit 
The Eyes Have It fucked around with this message at 07:58 on Apr 24, 2016 |
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Apr 24, 2016 07:16
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Fix posted:I made a box for my prototype! Nice! Maybe theme it up a bit more though? A spaceship in space can be a little bit generic. If it's a space parcel delivery game, why not make the box look like a space parcel with weird alien customs stamps, declarations etc?
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Apr 24, 2016 07:35
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Foolster41 posted:Sorry if this was already asked, but there are a lot of board game self-publishing companies such as panda games, but they don't seem to do miniatures games components (plastic figures) does anyone know of a company, or companies that do can be hired to produce miniatures games, the way those companies do cardboard-based games? I originally had this as an edit into the previous post but I'm making a post all about it here since I know something about this. Miniatures suffer from the fact that there is no real production solution for small quantities. In commercial terms "small" means less than thousands or tens of thousands... sometimes that amount per month The usual way minis are made is someone takes the 3D design of the mini and turns it into a mold. Then the mold is used to produce the figure. This is injection molding, and it's a mass production thing. Sadly it's really only suited to mass production because the startup costs are large. A mold is a complex thing, people's entire jobs are to make molds for injection molding - it's a specific skillset. It's much more than a hole in a couple halves of metal, too - I won't get into the details (they aren't important) but getting a mold for a SINGLE widget made easily has a price tag in the tens of thousands of dollars, and that's for geometrically simple stuff. That's not even touching the added complexity involved in turning the artist's ~vision~ into a realistic mold that can actually reliably loving work reliably. (The reason Games Workshop WH40K stuff comes in multiple pieces is because that's the only way to mold the shapes - by breaking it down into manageable chunks. They turned the customer doing the assembly work into a hobby niche which was pretty smart honestly.) Once the mold exists, you have an injection molding company run your mold(s) over and over to make your mini(s). If you look into this you will discover that the company that does the injection molding aren't the same people who make molds. They just take your molds and material and run the machines for you. Anyway, at that point (after paying big bucks for a mold and any revisions) you are basically paying for the labor and machine time and plastic. Your mold and minis might require a specific type or blend of plastic. For example, you want the mini to be a little bendy so it doesn't shatter if the box falls, etc. There are infinite different kinds of plastic in the world, all good for different things and all costing different and needing different handling, etc. This whole process is only cost effective in large quantities. It's doable in smaller quantities (and some companies certainly will do it) but it'll cost you. If you must desktop fabricate your own minis because you simply ~must~ have them, then the only realistic option is 3D printing of some kind. Using a resin printer like Formlabs or getting them done by a company like Shapeways. It is doable but very costly, because the printing is slow, the resin costs money, and you still need someone operating the danged things. It's best suited to prototypes and small quantities. There's a gap between those small quantities and prototyping, and full fledged injection molding mass production. The only real alternative is something in between, like laser-cutting plastic tokens or standees or something. But if only actual minis will do, then get your 3D designs to Shapeways.com, find someone with a resin printer willing to print for $$$, or if you have bucks in your pocket to spend and want your new job to be 'running and maintaining a 3D printer' then look into buying one. The lack of middle ground might be frustrating, but hey - one end of that spectrum didn't even exist a few short years ago! The Eyes Have It fucked around with this message at 07:46 on Apr 24, 2016 |
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Apr 24, 2016 07:41
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Gutter Owl posted:
I have a question - the mini-map cards - what are they? I thought maybe they represented different "seed" setups but there aren't enough markings on them for that... I am sure I am missing something, can you spell it out for me?
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Apr 25, 2016 01:13
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Mister Sinewave posted:I have a question - the mini-map cards - what are they? I thought maybe they represented different "seed" setups but there aren't enough markings on them for that... I am sure I am missing something, can you spell it out for me? The mini map cards are the Doomsday Cards referenced in the "DOOMSDAY PHASE" section of the rules. Every turn you draw a card, then add a radiation counter to the black circles shown, then a refugee in any white circles shown. If any of the indicated hexes is already irradiated, you place the new radiation/refugee in an adjacent hex instead.
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Apr 25, 2016 01:36
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Ahhhh of course, thanks for spelling it out 
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Apr 25, 2016 01:42
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So basically I need to plan for an initial run of 10,000 copies, instead of 1,500 meaning my KS goal's going to be about 666x (  ) the cost I planned? E: That's about $24,000,000+ for a first time Kickstarter. That's really not going to happen. Even if it costs more per unit, a smaller run would be better, since I'll be much more likely to raise that with a kickstarter. Mister Sinewave posted:This whole process is only cost effective in large quantities. It's doable Yes, this is what I'm trying to find out. I googled, but can't find anything on companies that would do this. It's starting to look like I'd have to do two companies, one to make the figures and then someone like Panda games to make the cardboard components and then somehow put them together. Form labs looks like their just selling the printer, and I thought shapways just sold models for you to print yourself. I have a 3D printer coming (I got for $100, relatively cheap), but that's not at all going to be practical for producing a game. Foolster41 fucked around with this message at 02:03 on Apr 25, 2016 |
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Apr 25, 2016 02:00
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