|
So about two years ago I was talking out a game design in here that I ended up shelving. It mixed Dominion's kingdoms with a more bluff oriented Smash Up area control element tied together with a cyberpunk theme. The basic system was you would assign your assets facedown to contracts. Then you would reveal the less stealthy assets. Then you wold buy new assets. Then you would reveal all assets, determine who had the most power on each contract and those players would score the corresponding contracts. I decided to play it again this past weekend and completely forgot some of the rules, and the rules I threw together to make it playable seem to have made it a much better game. It probably didn't help that in rebalancing some of the content I took a lot of advice from this thread and made a lot more of the units stay hidden throughout the game. Just wanted to share my excitement about managing to revitalize a game idea. Anniversary fucked around with this message at 01:32 on Jun 10, 2017 |
#
?
Jun 2, 2017 17:21
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 7, 2024 23:32 |
|
|
I have a 2' by 3' board that needs printing. Is there a recommended way to get a nice color printout on the cheap? The print shop down the street wants $6 per square foot, which is kind of a lot in my view. It doesn't need to be mounted or anything, just durable enough for a few plays.
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2017 04:53
|
|
|
Chill la Chill posted:Mind if I share this with some people who also play COIN and are really into star wars? I wish I could help more but I haven't even gotten this played yet. Please do! I would love to get some more in-depth feedback. I spent my writing and playtesting time this week on Strike! stuff, but I'll be trying out a solo game of this, playing all 4 factions after knee surgery next week to try find the big problems. I'll probably be high on painkillers, so I'm sure it'll be a glorious mess.
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2017 05:03
|
|
|
Vivian Darkbloom posted:I have a 2' by 3' board that needs printing. Is there a recommended way to get a nice color printout on the cheap? The print shop down the street wants $6 per square foot, which is kind of a lot in my view. It doesn't need to be mounted or anything, just durable enough for a few plays. Incidentally, the answer to this is engineering prints at Staples. For about $6 I got a nice color printout at full size.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2017 14:13
|
|
|
Just got back from Göttingen, pitched two of my games and got some nibbles. I just want to thank this thread for helping to push me towards getting some poo poo out there. It's been inspirational, especially the monster hunter board game was very helpful to make some of my own ideas gel. So thanks!
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2017 20:25
|
|
|
Osmosisch posted:Just got back from Göttingen, pitched two of my games and got some nibbles. I just want to thank this thread for helping to push me towards getting some poo poo out there. It's been inspirational, especially the monster hunter board game was very helpful to make some of my own ideas gel. Congrats on those nibbles! Have you talked about what you're working on on here before? Vivian Darkbloom posted:Incidentally, the answer to this is engineering prints at Staples. For about $6 I got a nice color printout at full size. This is good to know, I finally sat down and taught myself how to automate card creation using Cardmaker and I'm strongly considering printing up a copy somewhere so I have something that looks nicer than loose paper in card sleeves. For my zero graphic design ability I'm decently happy with how it looks, but can't for the life of me get a [timg] to work, so I've refrained from posting them. Jimbozig posted:Please do! I would love to get some more in-depth feedback. I've never played COIN and have no clue how it really works but this does seem pretty interesting. Looking forward to hearing more. Kashuno posted:I think the first lesson is huge. I've been working on a player combat game for a bit now and I had been constantly trying to remove the whole setting yourself up/proper positioning aspect of it (the downtime) to make it more and more combat focused, but then it just became a mess. Having some breathing time and pacing in a game really adds to the overall experience. I remember I looked at this when you first posted it, I didn't totally grok it but it seems interesting and the Bonus Die mechanic seems like a good way to encourage objective play. Do you have any more content for it? I'm interested in what a Hero might look like. First off, I always appreciate your insights. Thank you for sharing with the thread! I think I've messed around a fair bit with a system similar to yours, but I must have a major difference as I've never had an issue with wombo-combo. Are you making it so players can automatically chain actions? I've intentionally avoided this by doing something like the following: 1) A player takes an action. Actions take Time to do. 2) Your turn ends after taking an Action. 3) The Monster gets to act. It takes the most expensive action it has that has a cost equal to or less than the lowest Time held by any player, after which all players discard time equal to the monsters action cost. (Or it passes.) 4) The player with the least Time takes an Action. 5) Go to 2. Hopefully that makes sense. It might work something like this in practice. John is playing a solo game of Monster Harvester. John spends 2 time to attack the monster. The monster then acts, but its cheapest action requires 3 time, so it passes. John takes an attack that costs 4 Time, he now has a total of 6 time. The monster has an action that costs 5 Time as well as the one that costs 3, since 5 is the more expensive action, and it can afford it, it takes the 5 time action. John goes to 1 Time, the monster makes its attack, and, if John survives, he begins his turn. If he were to take the 2 Time attack again he would have 3 time, just enough for the monster to make its 3 time attack, leaving John with zero time. Repeat until someone dies. I know this wouldn't perfectly line up with how Behemoth worked in its last incarnation, but maybe it can help provide some insight from a different perspective? As if I recall correctly Behemoth hid the monsters future actions, with players just having a rough idea of what was coming. I had it so players knew the monsters exact actions and the tempo of the game was spent around strategically spending resources to mitigate monster attacks.
|
|
#
?
Jun 12, 2017 18:06
|
|
|
Anniversary posted:I remember I looked at this when you first posted it, I didn't totally grok it but it seems interesting and the Bonus Die mechanic seems like a good way to encourage objective play. Do you have any more content for it? I'm interested in what a Hero might look like. I've been working on it in bits and pieces, but this game particularly has a lot of physical components that when I look at it objectively I do not have the clout or experience to kickstart or market to a publisher. It's always in the back of my mind and I work on it when I can, but I've take the action dice style mechanism, which has gotten huge positive feedback as an interesting way to add randomness you can control to action selection games, and have been working on a small card & dice based competitive co-op game.
|
|
#
?
Jun 12, 2017 18:12
|
|
|
Kashuno posted:I've been working on it in bits and pieces, but this game particularly has a lot of physical components that when I look at it objectively I do not have the clout or experience to kickstart or market to a publisher. It's always in the back of my mind and I work on it when I can, but I've take the action dice style mechanism, which has gotten huge positive feedback as an interesting way to add randomness you can control to action selection games, and have been working on a small card & dice based competitive co-op game. Interesting. I actually have been wanting to explore that mechanism (if I understand correctly, it would work somewhat like Castles of Burgundy's dice system?) but haven't really figured out a way to make it work for my purposes. But that's partially because I'm constantly trying to work my way out of my deterministic, competitive inclined shell. And for better or worse I've pretty much decided not to think about marketability and focus on things as a creative exercise. It's... liberating. It doesn't hurt that my design sensibilities are so niche as to probably not be marketable.
|
|
#
?
Jun 12, 2017 18:22
|
|
|
Anniversary posted:First off, I always appreciate your insights. Thank you for sharing with the thread! Thanks for the appreciation on my rants! Anyways, I’m fairly certain I understand how your system works, and it’s a little similar to how Behemoth worked. But yeah, there was a decent amount of wombo-comboing in Behemoth, and the main problem was that the more wombo-combo you did, the more delay you’d get - so the longer it’d take before you get your next turn. So players wanted to do big cool combos, but then get “punished” for it. I feel like there’s two ways to avoid this: design the cards to not wombo combo so much, or cut out the timer mechanic for a more streamlined turn system. While the timer mechanic was really cool and I think has a lot of potential, I wanted the focus to be more on big combos that you feel like you’ve created. So I decided to keep that in and cut out the timer. At the end of the day neither are bad mechanics, I’m just not super sure they belong together in the same game. You could probably design a game with both of them from the ground-up, maybe make how much wombo combo you want to do be a real major decision point, but I feel the game would need to be designed around that entirely, and at that point I'd be designing and entirely new game, soooo...
|
|
#
?
Jun 12, 2017 18:56
|
|
|
Anniversary posted:Interesting. I actually have been wanting to explore that mechanism (if I understand correctly, it would work somewhat like Castles of Burgundy's dice system?) but haven't really figured out a way to make it work for my purposes. Similar to Burgundy's dice system, yes! I like somewhat deterministic systems, where it's not random but you don't have full control of situations. When I started designing I didn't think about the publishing possibilities or marketability, but as I've grown a bit and playtest every other week or so I've really wanted to look at getting something relatively small out on the market so I can work on the bigger passion projects and have the ability to actually get those out
|
|
#
?
Jun 12, 2017 19:32
|
|
|
This is the design I'm working with for a bluffing based area control game, art is in no way mine.CodfishCartographer posted:Thanks for the appreciation on my rants! Anyways, I’m fairly certain I understand how your system works, and it’s a little similar to how Behemoth worked. But yeah, there was a decent amount of wombo-comboing in Behemoth, and the main problem was that the more wombo-combo you did, the more delay you’d get - so the longer it’d take before you get your next turn. So players wanted to do big cool combos, but then get “punished” for it. I feel like there’s two ways to avoid this: design the cards to not wombo combo so much, or cut out the timer mechanic for a more streamlined turn system. While the timer mechanic was really cool and I think has a lot of potential, I wanted the focus to be more on big combos that you feel like you’ve created. So I decided to keep that in and cut out the timer. Ahh, so you're going a more traditional turn system now? Any chance we'll be seeing another draft anytime soon? Kashuno posted:Similar to Burgundy's dice system, yes! I like somewhat deterministic systems, where it's not random but you don't have full control of situations. I totally get that drive, and wish you the best of luck.  Now I'm trying to figure out how to staple a Burgundy style pre-decision randomness dice system onto a card game framework because I must embrace my basest instincts. I know Dice Masters / SW:Destiny / Quarriors did dice in a ccg sort of manner, but I don't think that's quite what this idea is. The biggest issue is I want to figure out how to make all rolls useful. Any suggestions on what to look into? e: Almost immediately dropped the card game aspect. Anniversary fucked around with this message at 00:19 on Jun 13, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jun 12, 2017 21:36
|
|
|
Anniversary posted:Ahh, so you're going a more traditional turn system now? Any chance we'll be seeing another draft anytime soon? Yes and yes! I decided to just go with a traditional turn system for simplicity's sake. While the time track was interesting, it wasn't adding a ton to the game and was actively detracting from what I thought made the game great (fun combos). I'm finishing up the new design now, and after doing some initial playtesting I'll get a print n play ready to go. So far all of my very early mid-design tests I've done are looking promising, the pacing is much more on track and a lot of the other problems are looking smoothed out too. I have a few hangups still, I'm phone posting now or I'd detail them for advice - I'll probably make another post soon about it. As for when you guys can expect a new version, maybe within a month? Probably a decent amount sooner, but that's a rough guess.
|
|
#
?
Jun 13, 2017 00:42
|
|
|
CodfishCartographer posted:Yes and yes! I decided to just go with a traditional turn system for simplicity's sake. While the time track was interesting, it wasn't adding a ton to the game and was actively detracting from what I thought made the game great (fun combos). I'm finishing up the new design now, and after doing some initial playtesting I'll get a print n play ready to go. So far all of my very early mid-design tests I've done are looking promising, the pacing is much more on track and a lot of the other problems are looking smoothed out too. I have a few hangups still, I'm phone posting now or I'd detail them for advice - I'll probably make another post soon about it. As for when you guys can expect a new version, maybe within a month? Probably a decent amount sooner, but that's a rough guess. Sounds great! That makes sense given your stated goals. I just really liked the time system; but I can see how it doesn't suit the intended experience so it makes sense too lose it.
|
|
#
?
Jun 13, 2017 01:04
|
|
|
Anniversary posted:Congrats on those nibbles! Have you talked about what you're working on on here before? Thanks! Not the current designs, no. I'm going to do a more thorough write-up once I cool down a bit and see what people here think 
|
|
#
?
Jun 13, 2017 10:41
|
|
|
Anniversary posted:I totally get that drive, and wish you the best of luck. Not quite sure what to look into for the idea sadly  but the game I am working on, you are essentially exploring a dungeon by drawing cards. You have a limited number of dice a turn, so you can choose how much you want to go for by spending more dice to roll but if you were to come across a monster to fight in combat, you'd have less dice to roll to fight the monsters with. A kind of risk/reward system
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2017 19:34
|
|
|
Osmosisch posted:Thanks! Sounds good! Kashuno posted:Not quite sure what to look into for the idea sadly Interesting. So you have one dice pool that you split between movement and other actions? Do you have to decide the split at the start of your turn, or can you spend some on movement, see there's no combat, and then spend some more?
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2017 21:40
|
|
|
Anniversary posted:Sounds good! To the first question, yup! Moving, fighting, drinking potions, and equipping weapons are the four actions available. Right now, equipping weapons and drinking potions cost one die to do, with fighting and exploring having more freedom. You can only perform an action once a turn, so if you decide to spend one die to move, roll a 1, and don't fight a monster you can't explore again
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2017 22:40
|
|
|
Anniversary posted:Sounds great! That makes sense given your stated goals. I just really liked the time system; but I can see how it doesn't suit the intended experience so it makes sense too lose it. Okay I'm sitting in an airport so I may as well spew out words to pass the time. Phone posting again so apologies for any weirdness. My big problem that I'm dealing with in the design now is actually... Kind of just a fun flavor thing. In an earlier version of the game, you could wound the limbs of the behemoth - you'd then swap out the physical component on the play board to a broken version. Remove the pristine wing, place down a battered and ripped one. This was really cool and flavorful, and players loved it. The problem was the implementation: it was kind of janky and didn't really mesh well with the rest of the game. It felt really tacked-on, because it was. I wound up removing the system completely, and the game was improved dramatically. Unfortunately, it did hurt losing something that players enjoyed. Since I'm doing some big redesigns, I'm trying to think of a more elegant way to implement the limb-wounding mechanic. Wounding a limb would reduce the damage dealt from that limb, but could only be broken once. As for how players would actually go about breaking the limbs, here are my ideas so far: 1) Whenever players deal a total of X damage (based on number of players) in a single turn (players all kind of attack together at the same time each turn), then one of the limbs breaks. X would be high enough that ALL players would need to plan around it and build up a very strong combo in order to deal enough damage - it couldn't easily be done every round. Pros: +gives some tactical+cooperative elements. Players would need to plan as a group to try and successfully wound a limb. +gives a nice sense of build-up and payoff. Players need to each prepare a big attack, then get a big immediate reward for doing so. +doesn't require any additional components Cons: -still feels a bit "tacked on" as its just an arbitrary number players would need to remember (or be reminded of on a reference card) -no surprise factor or anything. It's just pure number calculation: can we break it yet? No? Okay whatever. Players wouldn't need to plan their positioning that much, as if they weren't in a position to break the desired limb, they could just wait until they all move into the correct positions to do so. 2) Wound cards would be randomly distributed throughout the behemoth cards, which are discardes to track behemoth health. If the players deal damage and a wound card is revealed / discarded, then one of the behemoths limbs is wounded. Pros: +element of surprise. Players could plan for it by knowing that it's been a while since a wound card last appeared, but couldn't know for certain. They would need to risk standing in potentially dangerous areas, on the off chance that a wound card is revealed. +no extra components needed +fits elegantly with how damage is dealt, requires no remembering / reminders. Cons: -doesn't fit elegantly with the current balance of the behemoth deck. Right now there are three phases that the deck goes through as damage is dealt - but there are four limbs to wound, so one phase would have an imbalance. -could be too random. Even ensuring an even distribution between the three phases, it's possible for the wound cards to clump up -not much strategy would be involved. The only strategy is really "do I stand near a wound that isn't wounded yet?" which CAN be an interesting decision, but won't always be and could easily just be a non-choice. 3) Add in an event deck that tracks the current round of play. Each round players would reveal a card, and then an event would trigger with various effects. Some of these events would provide a "moment of weakness" to the behemoth, where if players could collectively deal X damage that round (again, dependant on the number of players), then a limb gets wounded. Pros: +adds extra surprise to the game. Each round could bring a new boon / blessing, spicing up the game and forcing players to react to shifting situations. +players could strategize around knowing that a moment of weakness could appear soon - since they would need to ensure they could deal enough damage to take advantage of it. +makes tracking round numbers super easy, as it'd just be the number of cards in the event deck instead of a track or counter or something. This would pretty elegantly fit in with the rest of the design as well, since the round tracking would be tied to the ability to wound limbs +could add extra flavor by theming multiple event decks around environments: a swamp event deck, a desert event deck, etc. Cons: -randomness. Again, moments of weakness could be clumped up. -extra components. There's already 60 behemoth cards and 48~52 player cards. Another 8-12 event cards wouldn't be insignificant, and if I include multiple environments then that number would be more like 24-36 extra cards. -extra complexity - players need to not only worry about the behemoth, but also about the events. They could potentially randomly screw over the players (though this may not necessarily be a bad thing) I'm leaning a bit towards 3, but am admittedly worried that the extra components / rules may bog things down and dampen the game overall. Thoughts? CodfishCartographer fucked around with this message at 02:15 on Jun 18, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jun 18, 2017 02:12
|
|
|
Kashuno posted:To the first question, yup! Moving, fighting, drinking potions, and equipping weapons are the four actions available. Right now, equipping weapons and drinking potions cost one die to do, with fighting and exploring having more freedom. You can only perform an action once a turn, so if you decide to spend one die to move, roll a 1, and don't fight a monster you can't explore again So the big divide is between fighting and exploring? How many dice are typically in the dice pool at the start of the turn? From the descriptions 1) sounds like my personal preference as it gives players an incentive to build into a heavy hitting turn. But I can see how it could possibly make the game too formulaic.
|
|
#
?
Jun 18, 2017 20:15
|
|
|
Anniversary posted:So the big divide is between fighting and exploring? How many dice are typically in the dice pool at the start of the turn? It was with 4 dice at start, and yes that was the theory originally but I'm going back and reworking it a bit. It has some of what I want but it's missing something and I can't figure out what in the current iteration so I'm gonna start from the ground up again and see what I come up with.
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2017 16:53
|
|
|
Game design thought experiment for everybody: what are some of your favorite ways of handling damage taken by the players? I'm trying to brainstorm various ways for players to take damage that isn't just "lose an arbitrary amount of health, when health is at 0 you die". I always find it interesting when damage taken by players changes their options or something like that; such as when you take a wound in Zombicide, you lose an inventory slot, then die when you've ran out of them. What is your favorite way of handling player damage? Or if not your favorite, what're some interesting ways you've seen it handled?
|
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2017 21:54
|
|
|
CodfishCartographer posted:Game design thought experiment for everybody: what are some of your favorite ways of handling damage taken by the players? I'm trying to brainstorm various ways for players to take damage that isn't just "lose an arbitrary amount of health, when health is at 0 you die". I always find it interesting when damage taken by players changes their options or something like that; such as when you take a wound in Zombicide, you lose an inventory slot, then die when you've ran out of them. What is your favorite way of handling player damage? Or if not your favorite, what're some interesting ways you've seen it handled? I like Mage Knight's wounds as a card that gums up your deck, as frustrating as it can be. ..that's really the most novel way I've actually enjoyed. Lots of ways of doing wounds tend to be frustratingly death spiral-y. As far as systems I've been toying with for my own stuff, I've messed with a system where you have Flesh and Critical Wounds. I might've talked about this before, but when you take damage it's usually as Flesh Wounds, but whenever you take damage your old Flesh Wounds become Critical Wounds. Why this matters is I've been wanting to tie it into a game with Bloodborne inspired regain mechanic, where some attacks heal Flesh Wounds, but Critical Wounds require dedicated healing powers to remove. Kashuno posted:It was with 4 dice at start, and yes that was the theory originally but I'm going back and reworking it a bit. It has some of what I want but it's missing something and I can't figure out what in the current iteration so I'm gonna start from the ground up again and see what I come up with. Huh, four seems like a lot to me, what did you like about the system?
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2017 00:20
|
|
|
CodfishCartographer posted:Game design thought experiment for everybody: what are some of your favorite ways of handling damage taken by the players? I'm trying to brainstorm various ways for players to take damage that isn't just "lose an arbitrary amount of health, when health is at 0 you die". I always find it interesting when damage taken by players changes their options or something like that; such as when you take a wound in Zombicide, you lose an inventory slot, then die when you've ran out of them. What is your favorite way of handling player damage? Or if not your favorite, what're some interesting ways you've seen it handled? In general I dislike systems where you lose options by taking damage; can't think of any boardgames that do it much, but I like fighting games where you get last ditch special moves at low health (more damage= more options) I mean, it's thematic that you should be less effective after taking damage, but I think that often leads to gameplay problems (though obviously not always, eg. Gloomhaven makes this work well.. Though even there it sometimes hurts pacing/narrative)
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2017 02:41
|
|
|
jmzero posted:In general I dislike systems where you lose options by taking damage; can't think of any boardgames that do it much, but I like fighting games where you get last ditch special moves at low health (more damage= more options) What if you do both though? Lose some options (ie, slower movement speed) but gain others (special attacks)? Any games that do that? All I know is that some characters in Mage Knight use wounds to power some abilities, but it's more about trying to make wounds hurt less rather than opening new options.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2017 10:35
|
|
|
Rexides posted:What if you do both though? Lose some options (ie, slower movement speed) but gain others (special attacks)? Any games that do that? All I know is that some characters in Mage Knight use wounds to power some abilities, but it's more about trying to make wounds hurt less rather than opening new options. Dragon Punch improves your attacks (by slightly changing them but overall making them better) every time you take damage, but as soon as your last card gets upgraded this way, you lose. It's mean to represent desperation techniques in Street Fighter-style fighting games.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2017 12:16
|
|
|
So I was thinking about Snake Oil and how the scoring system is poo poo because it's so easily broken by anyone playing to win and dependent on turn order. It takes the scoring from a game like Apples 2 Apples or CAH but doesn't account for the fact that anonymity is the only thing that makes those games' scoring systems "fair," though even in those games nobody plays to win. Then I thought of the countless hours in high school my friends and I spent playing Big 2/President/rear end in a top hat. In those games, we never kept score or counted wins, but there was always a competitive desire to win each round or to place as highly as possible because it gave benefits in the next round. So I was thinking of adapting that idea to a game that is otherwise quite similar to Snake Oil - you want to win because it gives you a benefit next round, but there is no keeping score through multiple rounds. I've got a rough draft written up of such a game, which is basically like snake oil but with this new "scoring" system that doesn't keep score. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ous-dUA2romiNA7E-cWxF10GIILV_cdqy7KN8URW0jg/edit?usp=drivesdk Thoughts? Maybe the answer is simply "Nobody cares about the scoring, dummy. Don't play to win." But I thought there was room for improvement, and I hope some people agree.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2017 14:38
|
|
|
Anniversary posted:Huh, four seems like a lot to me, what did you like about the system? 4 dice was actually not enough in that iteration. It made your decisions extremely obvious and there it was predictable. I've reworked things a bit to remove the idea of a hand from the game entirely and use dice rolls more freely. What I like about the system is that it is controlled randomness. for example, potions now have 3 separate abilities on a 1-3, 4-5, and 6+ scale. You can roll a single die and still get the maximum impact from the potion, but if you want to have better odds you can roll 1 or even 2 additional dice. I like the controlled randomness aspect; you have a chance of success that goes up the more you dice you decide to roll, but you are not guaranteed to get that success. CodfishCartographer posted:Game design thought experiment for everybody: what are some of your favorite ways of handling damage taken by the players? I'm trying to brainstorm various ways for players to take damage that isn't just "lose an arbitrary amount of health, when health is at 0 you die". I always find it interesting when damage taken by players changes their options or something like that; such as when you take a wound in Zombicide, you lose an inventory slot, then die when you've ran out of them. What is your favorite way of handling player damage? Or if not your favorite, what're some interesting ways you've seen it handled? As a rule, damaging a player tends to suck in my experience without it being a major aspect of the game. One that I've been toying with is a loss of victory points. In the game I'm working on right now, when a player loses combat they are forced to hand over treasure, the game's form of victory points. The losing player isn't actively held back from fighting more in the future, and it does a good job at preventing players from ganging up on another player due to the redistribution of wealth, and keeps things interesting
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2017 14:58
|
|
|
Jimbozig posted:So I was thinking about Snake Oil and how the scoring system is poo poo because it's so easily broken by anyone playing to win and dependent on turn order. It takes the scoring from a game like Apples 2 Apples or CAH but doesn't account for the fact that anonymity is the only thing that makes those games' scoring systems "fair," though even in those games nobody plays to win. Are you chinese? No one I know has ever heard of Big 2 except chinese people.  (it's actually fabulous with scoring, makes you really decide on that tipping point where you go for "getting rid of some of your hand" vs "trying to go out")
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2017 15:02
|
|
|
silvergoose posted:Are you chinese? No one I know has ever heard of Big 2 except chinese people. I'm not, but the guys I played with were from Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, China, and Romania. I'm not sure which one of my friends it was who introduced us to the game. And yeah, I know that you can play it with scoring, but since we would play in odd time periods like when we had a few minutes between classes, we always just played without. Playing Big 2 with both scoring and the president/rear end in a top hat rules seems like it'd be kind of bad, though? Luck into one good hand to become president, and it's not uncommon to use your card advantage to be able to keep that title for 4 or 5 more rounds before you get dealt a real bad hand that even the bonus cards can't save. Am I wrong about that?
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2017 15:48
|
|
|
I think my wife learned it without those rules, so it's just each round winner gets points and losers lose points, first to some score wins.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2017 15:51
|
|
|
@Anniversary (and anyone else who likes to see games), if you want to see what I'm doing with the card/action dice system now (or trying to), here's a link to some rules https://docs.google.com/document/d/19EB-Qeg3Tqxvro__GRR-UNY1TiYKIV6NKJZFhfb7UUc/edit?usp=sharing
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2017 18:49
|
|
|
Kashuno posted:@Anniversary (and anyone else who likes to see games), if you want to see what I'm doing with the card/action dice system now (or trying to), here's a link to some rules https://docs.google.com/document/d/19EB-Qeg3Tqxvro__GRR-UNY1TiYKIV6NKJZFhfb7UUc/edit?usp=sharing Interesting. Not sure if you're looking for them, but here's some totally unfounded thoughts: My worry would be that Mining is your games equivalent to Dominion's Big Money - and I don't think that would be a good thing unless you're very, very careful to design around it. Honestly it seems to run counter to the feel of the game that I'm getting in that it seems too safe for a dice based game and doesn't lead to interesting gameplay unless I'm missing something? I actually wasn't that down on mining until I thought about it and it just seems out of place to me? Is it ever okay to explore more than you have dice remaining after paying for the explore? It seems every encounter costs a die to interact with it or a treasure not too? So I guess there's probably a meta strategy where you gamble too many dice on exploring hoping for a decisive combat - seems like a cool strategy for someone to come from behind with. Seems like the games ending would be rather sudden if it's the instant the exit is drawn - but maybe that works if you're expecting it in the second half of the deck - every turn is a surprise. And you could spam explore to try to get to the exit if in the lead. A thought from your example play scenario - a monster that gives two treasure is probably a bad idea as it takes at least two dice to get through it (one on the explore, one on the combat) which means you could've done just as well by mining, right? But I guess it's balanced as long as that payout is on the low end. Overall I'm intrigued! Have you designed the encounter deck yet? I'd be curious to see some examples.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2017 21:04
|
|
|
Anniversary posted:Interesting. I love all feedback, and yours is always great Mining is actually new as of today! I haven't had a chance to playtest any of it yet, but I was somewhat worried that the weapon/potion/monster setup might need something..safer? Less random? I will probably go back to setting it up without mining and if playtests like that feel lacking revisit the mining idea. yeah my thought was if you're running hard in front with a few extra treasure over the other players, you could burn some of that by skipping the encounters in a rush to find the exit and hoping you wouldn't run into monsters. I'm debating giving everyone one final turn once the exit is drawn, but I don't know that I like that idea and I'll have to see how it works out with the immediate end in practice (thematically, once players have found the way out why would they stick around any longer in a dungeon with monsters in it?). I hadn't considered doing cost/benefit analysis on the monster in that sample, it was just a quick random number thing . That said, you mentioning it is a big red flag to me to make sure that I keep an eye on that during design. The encounter deck is slowly coming along, only a couple weapons designed so far but I want to have something soon so I'll definitely keep you updated!
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2017 21:16
|
|
|
Ahh, yeah that makes sense. (And I kinda suspected that the example monster was just that, but was curious if not.) Have you considered making it so you roll dice before assigning them? So at the start of your turn you roll all dice you have (so 2+saved) and then go through the turn assigning them as you want as you outlined - though this system would likely need some use for low rolls - maybe potions probabilities are inverted? It would potentially make the game a little more brain burny which might be against your goals. I could see either way being an alternate rule to either increase or decrease the impact of luck. Overall seems like a nice light game that shouldn't overstay it's welcome. Also it's flow reminds me of Munchkin, not in a bad way as it lacks the take that elements that make Munchkin miserable, but just wondered if that was intentional?
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2017 22:21
|
|
|
Kashuno posted:is a competitive co-op game where players will have to work together to explore a dungeon, kill monsters for treasure, and escape with their prize. In the end, only one player can escape with the most treasure! I get that players will co-operate at times, but I think if you describe it as you have here then people will expect a semi-co-op (which this doesn't appear to be). The monster invite/gold rules are very political, perhaps more political than I think a light game will want to be. They also make a 2 player version (assuming you're supporting that) seem really awkward. If monster parties are going to be important, how many dice you contribute is going to be a big decision. Is this "simultaneous decide then all roll", "pick count in order then all roll", or "in order, each player picks then rolls their dice"? Simultaneous will require rules/mechanisms to support... but I think you probably want simultaneous, in order to allow for shenanigans. I think this game needs those shenanigans - you just need to be careful about how you set up the rules to support these well. I think in the end you'll have to tweak the share rules too. It seems like you'll almost always pass if you don't start with 4 or 5 action dice. As an extension of that, if you try to "push your luck" by taking 3 dungeon cards or something, I think you're mostly just going in turn-debt for no reason. Flipping a card when you have lots of dice is just a better thing for the same cost compared to flipping with low dice - and having a stash makes you better on other people's turns too. Combined with the "flat" dungeon deck (flat other than, I guess, knowing that certain cards are gone), I think players will end up in a rut in terms of how they approach dice and turns. I think the "dice economy" currently isn't going to support much "doing stuff on other people's turns" in general, and that detracts from where I think you're going. Each player in a 4 player game can expect to see 10 cards. More than half aren't monsters. Players who flip 8 monsters in a game are going to have a different experience than those who flip 2, and there's nothing (so far anyway... though the manual does hint at "taking damage"?) that says "invites" won't amplify rather than fix such discrepancies. Say you're behind and the deck's getting small. You keep drawing potions nobody wants and thus getting nothing for your dice (or even paying treasure to not drink them). That's balls. I'm not sure what the right answer is, but I think you may want to give people some more agency here somehow.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2017 23:44
|
|
|
This is all awesome feedback! Phone posting but will respond best I can! I had originally had an entirely separate mechanic related to taking damage from monsters, player death, and hurting other players from beyond the grave (which, in the one play test of that iteration that occurred, had players interacting and helping each other a bit because someone dying could be dangerous) but I had scrapped it entirely because I felt like I was having a lot of issues on the dice economy side of the game. This version definitely is not where I want it to be, and your feedback addresses a lot of the flaws in the design I hadn't even considered! The rut and lack of player agency hadn't come across to me yet, but I can definitely see it now. I don't mind some lack of player agency, but I do mind so little that it feels poor and negatively impacts the experience. I'll toy around with the numbers a bit and possibly consider a way to gain treasure from weapons and potions you don't want. Thank you so much!
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2017 02:18
|
|
|
Kashuno posted:This is all awesome feedback! Phone posting but will respond best I can! I had originally had an entirely separate mechanic related to taking damage from monsters, player death, and hurting other players from beyond the grave (which, in the one play test of that iteration that occurred, had players interacting and helping each other a bit because someone dying could be dangerous) but I had scrapped it entirely because I felt like I was having a lot of issues on the dice economy side of the game. This version definitely is not where I want it to be, and your feedback addresses a lot of the flaws in the design I hadn't even considered! The rut and lack of player agency hadn't come across to me yet, but I can definitely see it now. I don't mind some lack of player agency, but I do mind so little that it feels poor and negatively impacts the experience. I'll toy around with the numbers a bit and possibly consider a way to gain treasure from weapons and potions you don't want. Thank you so much! I'm glad you take things so positively - my post came across as more negative than I meant it to. I just kind of stream-of-conciousness post sometimes; I figure if something twigs someone on to an idea, great, and if something isn't helpful then everyone can very safely ignore me.
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2017 03:07
|
|
|
Azran posted:Dragon Punch improves your attacks (by slightly changing them but overall making them better) every time you take damage, but as soon as your last card gets upgraded this way, you lose. It's mean to represent desperation techniques in Street Fighter-style fighting games. I really liked this part when I was looking into it - wounds that give you a buff and/or more options seem like such a simple / cool concept, but it seems to be relatively underused for some reason? I could see it leading to some weird reverse rocket tag? Otherwise I'm blanking on the drawbacks other than needing to design for it? Yeah, I didn't get the co-op feel from it as is - it feels more political than co-op from what I know of it. I feel like I should be working on my own things more, but have been somewhat stalled this week. I think the biggest problem is I can't quite settle on the direction I want to take this card based dice game quite yet. The conflicting ideas look something like the following: 1) Retroclone Star Wars Destiny without ever having played it. Right now the idea looks nothing like Destiny, that said you would have a Champion with a variety of abilities. You start with 2 dice, but throughout the game you can gain additional dice (making it more of a resource based card game than Destiny looks to be) by playing cards into your power pool. This idea is giving me the most trouble as I can't quite conceive of what I want and its causing me to go in circles. But its what I'm more intersted in. 2) Design an arena fighter with Castles of Burgundy type resolution. I think the way to do this would be to give players several 'slots' that give them different ways to spend dice. So for example Armor might give you your movement - light armor might let you discard a 1+, Medium Armor a 2+, and heavy armor a 3+ in order to move one space. While weapons might have [2]: Deal 3 Damage. [Even]: Deal 2 Damage. And then there are the cards, single shot skills that let you use your dice in novel ways. I've worked on something like this before and I always end up shelving it as I just think of a way to do it without dice. 3) Admit defeat and go back to avoiding dice indefinitely. Thoughts? I know these are barely ideas, but I really want to try to stretch my comfort zone and make something dice based.
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2017 04:41
|
|
|
Anniversary posted:2) Design an arena fighter with Castles of Burgundy type resolution. Maybe extend this with combos - like, this weapon takes a pair to activate (maybe it's thematic, like double hammers) or this one needs a run (and you get one attack per die in the run or something).... and then maybe add selective rerolling. I think this could be super cool with your slot plan; you could end up with really fun decisions both in gear selection/placement and in "play", and interesting communication between those two as you try to make an efficient character that can use different rolls effectively.
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2017 05:21
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 7, 2024 23:32 |
|
|
Osmosisch posted:Thanks! So of course I ended up putting this off longer than intended, shocker. Trip report and game info: We went to the Spielautorentreffen (game designers' meetup) in Göttingen as a group of three Dutch game designers; I and a friend headed down and picked up the third party on the way. My friend and I each brought one of our own designs, and one game we co-designed, while the third guy had three games of his own. Going as a group was a really good idea as it turned out. It meant we never left all our tables unmanned, and because we each (as it turns out) made good enough impressions that if one of us had a scout at their table and said 'these other two also take testing etc. seriously maybe check their stuff out' it would lead to all three of us getting eyes on our games. This was the first time I'd been to such an event, or even had shown my games off to any publisher, so it was all rather exciting. After a slightly demoralising slow start to the morning, things got up to speed and near the end of the afternoon I realised we'd been talking to people almost continually for quite some time. I found it especially gratifying that the scouts were able to clearly see what we were going for in our games in most cases, and tended to like our core ideas. It's nice to know you're not crazy when you think 'there's something here.' The game I co-designed with my friend has the working title All You Can Eat - it's intended to be a random, light game card game that you play in quick bursts between heavier games, or with younger players. The theme is that all the players are gourmets at a buffet. Of course you'd like all the other gourmets to be gone so you can eat everything yourself, and it just so happens that all players are allergic to something (lactose, gluten, etc). The thing here is that both sides of each cards are important: the backs of cards each have one of the allergy symbols on them, while the front is one of about ten actions that mostly involve manipulating the deck, allergies and players' hands. At the beginning of the game each player is dealt a hand of four cards, and one face-down card which is their starting allergy. Every turn, a player must first play one of the cards from their hand, and then draw(eat) the top card from the draw pile (menu). If you eat something that matches one of your allergies, you're out for the round. So it's got player elimination but because there's a constant acceleration due to people getting more allergies, and quite some random effects, rounds never last long and there's a significant amount of fun just watching how the chips fall. The genesis of the game lies in the challenge we set each other to see what ideas/games we could come up with two central constraints: 1) the backs of cards also matter and 2) a shared draw pile. I came up with this as one of the simplest designs I could think of, and it had enough of a fun factor that we kept developing it. Quite a few scouts liked it, the main problem they tended to have was that the theme is a bit taboo for the German market apparently. But weakening it to 'food you dislike' instead of 'allergy' could be enough. On the other hand, the people I've played it with who actually are allergic to stuff tended to be quite pleased to have their thing in a game, it's not that common. If anyone wants to take this for a spin, we have some print 'n plays available for testing on the condition that you send us feedback My solo game is called Beast Tamers.  First off, I should again credit Behemoth for being one of the main triggers for me starting to think about this game. The other triggers are King of Tokyo's art style, and me wanting to get started on something I'd hopefully be able to play with my eldest kid once it was done. The last part meant nothing too violent especially. The theme is that the player(s) are a team of super-powered zookeepers in a monster zoo. One of the monsters has escaped, and you as a group are trying to knock it out before the backup power to the containment shields goes down. However, the more you attack the monster, the bigger its revenge will be. In practice this means you have a limited amount of rounds to inflict X amount of tranquilisation on the monster without getting yourselves KO-ed. Each player controls one or more characters, each of which has somewhat unique stats/abilities. The board is a hex grid (which can be reconfigured into different shapes with some judicious cuts) and the currently-designed monsters sit on the edge of the board. Each character has several actions, which players can take in any order they decide as a team. Actions can be move, attack or <special> depending on the character. After all the players have used their actions, the monster gets to go. Each monster has its own deck of attack cards. Attacks can be global, meaning they have a picture of the board on it, with some hexes indicated as going to be hit, or can be targeted, meaning the attack's center will land on the attacking character's current location. At the start of each round, and whenever the monster gets hit, a new card is drawn from the attack deck and added to the monster's plan queue. Attacks are executed and discarded in order. Any players standing in a hex that gets hit take a point of damage - too many hits (depends on character) and they're knocked out. The tension between gotta go fast and leaving enough safe spaces on the board for your team to be safe is most of what currently makes the game interesting, besides the theme/mechanics coupling which I'm pretty proud of. The biggest problem is that with a lot of characters and attacks it can get a bit overwhelming to figure out who is safe and who isn't. The fact that it's a cooperative game does make up for it somewhat but there's definitely room for improvment there. Anyway thanks again thread for being an inspiration. Going to keep you posted if anything develops.
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2017 13:33
|
|