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Frozen Peach posted:So I'm at Geekway, and walk into the Play and Win room to find that almost all of my copies of Walking Doggos are checked out. I decide to go on a mission to find a copy being played and to introduce myself to the players and ask how they liked it and what their thoughts were. I'm walking through the main hall and find a copy sitting on a table with a filled out play and win card next to it. Awesome! I hype myself up to not be terrible stupid and awkward. Congrats.
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May 21, 2019 07:09
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That is really awesome! I'm a bit jealous, I really love the games he makes.
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May 21, 2019 07:59
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I'm currently working on a card game based on the dog sport Earth Dog and am gathering a little info for it on specific dog breeds. I put a thread up in PI to gather some info. If you know terriers at all and are interested in taking a couple minutes to help I would appreciate it. Link to the PI thread below instead of reposting the same request here: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3890483
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May 26, 2019 15:48
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Are we allowed to have two goon dog themed games??
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May 26, 2019 18:12
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I mean, they both have dogs but the dogs are doing totally different things in them. If anyone makes another bee game however...
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May 26, 2019 18:33
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You can never have too many doggo themed games 
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May 26, 2019 19:26
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What are some good exploration mechanics? I've sort of hit a wall on my latest project and I think I need exposure to some approaches that aren't "flip rules and maybe win/lose the game through luck" and "advance along a track" I'm wondering about some kind of drafting layer that makes it semi predicable. So you explore by playing a tile from your exploration hand and then you all swap hands.
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May 27, 2019 14:58
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Dominant species gives you a market row of tiles to draft, which might be better but might not too.
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May 27, 2019 15:14
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Mojo Jojo posted:What are some good exploration mechanics? That's pretty neat. So if you have a garbage hand of tiles, you hope someone else explores, forcing a swap so you can explore somewhere better.
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May 28, 2019 03:12
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Going to GenCon tomorrow morning. Most of the time I'll be working the Indie Game Alliance's vendor booth, which will be really fun, but during breaks I'll be attempting to pitch Walking Doggos as well as my newest prototype, Black Hat Capture the Flag, to publishers. Black Hat Capture the Flag is a hacking simulator turned into a worker placement/action selection style board game. Each player starts with a bare bones computer and 4 hackers, and must find and patch the computer's vulnerabilities before their opponents. Meanwhile, each player is also using the vulnerabiltiies they find to send exploits to other players. Here's an early prototype being played at a local game design meetup: 
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Jul 30, 2019 21:50
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GenCon was amazing. I did publisher speed dating as well as pitched to some publishers on the show floor. Lots of great responses and feedback. The most important of which was to rename my game to White Hat, remove some of the take-that mechanics, and replace it with a trading mechanic. This speeds the game up, encourages more social player interaction, and the new name fits more thematically. I spent last night getting most of the game added to Tabletop Simulator. I still have some work to do, but it's getting there. 
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Aug 7, 2019 13:55
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Frozen Peach posted:[Black Hat Capture the Flag] Frozen Peach posted:[now it's called White Hat] This is so cool, congrats and good luck too!!
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Aug 7, 2019 14:17
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I had a mechanic idea last night that I'm just going to post for the sake of posting it, because that helps me to remember things and whatever. I don't know how original it is but I got the idea while listening to the History of Byzantium podcasts and all of the narratives about Belisarius's battles during the reign of Justinian. As it came to mind it's pretty much a wargame mechanic but it could possibly apply to other conflict resolution. Again this is a  post.Instead of straight roll-to-resolve, resolution depends on hidden information which is simultaneously or procedurally revealed as the exercise of deploying or engaging (perhaps like Sekigahara or Kemet). Within any given conflict each player would have a given capacity which would work out to a fixed number in a "greater number wins" resolution. Each player would have the option of a gambit, which would provide a 1dx-n (where n>=2) bonus, which obviously could be a penalty with a bad roll. Combat resolution would scale somehow to have greater or lesser defeats based on the differential. Here's a really rough example, more to show how it affects decision making: suppose we have Belisarius's Byzantine army with a strength of 5 marching on Alaric's which has a strength of 4. Alaric knows he can't beat them straight up in a fight, but he may select a gambit option, in this case probably 1d6-3, so a swing in values of -2 to +3. The risk is that a poor roll will turn a marginal loss (5 to 4) into a major defeat (5 to 2), but it also means that a good roll could turn a defeat into a major win (5 to 7). Alaric also knows that Belisarius could choose a gambit, which factors into the calculus. The gambit option is always available to any commander, so it becomes an exercise in bluffing, playing it safe, and taking risks. Individual commanders could have abilities which affect the resolution of gambits. Dunno. I think there's some meat there.
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Aug 7, 2019 15:34
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White Hat: Capture the Flag is now on Tabletop Simulator. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1827367585 It turned out gorgeous, but I'm awful at organizing the tabletop to look pretty. Not sure how well it plays on TTS yet, but it should be playable at the very least.  Rules are available at https://whitehatctf.com/downloads/WhiteHatCTF.pdf
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Aug 9, 2019 17:04
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That's really cool. Edit: It makes me wonder If could work out my game idea in Tabletop Simulator. Never knew it existed. Darth Brooks fucked around with this message at 05:41 on Aug 11, 2019 |
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Aug 11, 2019 05:26
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Darth Brooks posted:
TTS is surprisingly easy to learn. Its definitely a tool that can be used for prototyping, but I'm much more of a physical designer. Its hard for me to play and get a sense of how the game feels with clunky fake physics. In other news I got an email from a publisher in St. Louis that wants to meet me and try out White Hat. They're going to be at Pixelpop Festival, which I'm conveniently exhibiting at! This is huge for me. I have no idea how to prepare for a meeting like that though. I can't just write it off as another interview like I do with pitching. I'm late night anxietying over it and I still have a whole month to figure things out.
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Aug 14, 2019 04:49
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Adding a dynamic element to rock-paper-scissors? I'm working on an accessible/simple monster battling game where players choose one of the monster's three attacks. The attacks have a rock-paper-scissors relationship; if there's a tie, some elements beat other elements. The attacks are already asymmetrical, in the sense that a monster might be Rock attack Damage 2, Scissors attack Damage 1, Paper attack Damage 3. I thought this would be enough to create meaningful strategic choices, but what I've found is that players figure out which attack is best at the start, and they don't change their strategy throughout (except as you would normally expect in a rock-paper-scissors game, i.e. the psychological side). Now, I do have in mind some attack riders that would change things for individual attacks belonging to individual monsters (e.g. poisoned: lose 1 Damage per round until you choose a Rock attack). But I've been wondering if there are game-wide ways of making people have to re-evaluate each turn. For example: Each time you use a Rock attack, its Damage increases by 1 Each time you use a Scissors attack, its Damage decreases by 1 If you use a Papers attack 10 times over the combat, you win automatically Or having a playing field that you can move around by making different attacks, with different positions on that field giving different bonuses or penalties. Does anyone have any suggestions for making a rock-paper-scissors style game dynamic? Thank you for your thoughts!
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Aug 19, 2019 08:24
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Frozen Peach posted:TTS is surprisingly easy to learn. Its definitely a tool that can be used for prototyping, but I'm much more of a physical designer. Its hard for me to play and get a sense of how the game feels with clunky fake physics. wouldn't it be an elobrated pitch where you are also presumably going to play the game?
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Sep 6, 2019 02:45
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Cthulhu Dreams posted:wouldn't it be an elobrated pitch where you are also presumably going to play the game? It more comes down to how much polish and how many changes I should make to the game before they play it. They've seen the pitch and a how to play video from a point before GenCon. Between those points I made several changes to the game, so my panic comes down to do they want to see the game exactly as it was at the time of pitch, or does making improvements and further polishing to make the game better mean they'll want to see a better version. At this point I'm assuming they'll want to see the best version possible, and from talking with other designers there's no bad that can come from making changes between pitching and meeting. There's also the fact that I'm just nervous about a new kind of meeting. It's one thing to play a game with randoms at my local stores, or with coworkers or friends, but taking it to actual publishers is a different level of pressure that I'm not sure how to deal with and prepare myself for. I'm not sure what kind of questions to expect, what kind of experience to cater the game they play towards if at all, what kind of polish and perfection they'd be expecting. There's just a lot of unknowns that are burning through my head making things more complicated. I realize a lot of this is just anxiety in general, and nothing I can really prepare for, but anxiety just be that way.
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Sep 6, 2019 16:58
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PixelPop day 1 complete. Shout out to the goon who got to play White Hat with me and the publisher that I'm courting. My humble table:  I don't want to talk too much about how the meeting with the publisher went, but I'm feeling pretty good. I don't have any definitive news but we'll see what happens. PixelPop is a blast.
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Sep 15, 2019 06:53
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Hey all, I want to run an idea I had with the thread. The concept of the game is middle eastern caravans transporting goods from Baghdad to the port cities of Beirut and Acre, with players accruing points for every successful trip. Here is a mock of what an empty board can look like:  Player caravans start from the city at the bottom of the map, and travel through the nodes to one of the two cities at the top. Here is a mock of what a game in progress can look like:  Here are some explanations of the elements on the map: Camel tokens: These represent the caravans the players control. They always start from the bottom (Baghdad) and travel towards either Acre or Beirut. Each player can have up to three caravans on the board at any time Goods tokens: These are what the players score points with. On the map you can see those available for trade in the nodes along the way. You can’t see it here, but each camel token has 5 goods tokens piled upside-down below it (it’s the goods it is currently carrying). Also, each player has a number of (hidden) goods tokens in their hands Trade Towns: These provide opportunities to alter the cargo of a caravan to make it more valuable before it reaches a port Port Cities: Two of them, that let a player score points using different mechanics Ship token and sea lane: This represents european traders. Trade can only happen in a port city when the ship is there. The ship moves one space clockwise after each player has taken a turn. The game starts with each player drawing 7 goods tokens, and they have three caravan tokens each. They construct a caravan by selecting 5 goods tokens in their hand, putting them in an upside-down pile at the starting city, and placing one of their caravan tokens on top. Then they can move that caravan along the board. Along the way they may choose to trade with the villages they pass. They can trade one item in the caravan for one in the village stockpile. This can help the players make better sets of goods before the caravan reaches the port. Every turn a player draws a random goods token, moves their caravans, and decides whether to create a new one if they have 5 goods and a free caravan token. The game ends when there are no more goods to draw and the last caravan reaches the port. Now, how points are scored. Beirut is the safe, non-competitive port. Each time a caravan reaches it (and the ship is in port), the owner of the caravan scores points in a similar way that hands in poker are ranked: 2 fabric and 3 jewels will net you less points than 5 foodstuff. For the sake of making sense lets say that the worst had gives you 1 point, while the best (5 of a kind of the best quality) gives you 10. This is a safe way for players to accrue points. Acre is the competitive port. Scoring works differently here: - If a single player is in Acre when the ship arrives, they get 6 points regardless of their cargo composition. They DO NOT reveal their cargo. - If two or more players are there when the ship arrives, then a contest happens: All players there reveal their cargo. The cargo is ranked with the same algorithm used in Beirut. Players compare the rankings, and the one with the biggest one gets 12 points, while the rest get nothing. If you haven’t noticed it yet, I am trying to emulate the dynamics of poker here. You can use Acre to turn a lovely hand into 6 points, but only if no one challenges you. Or take a good one there and hope that somebody does decide to challenge so you can take 12 points. Beirut in this case is the “pass” option, although it does net you points. In the example map above (which is definitely not final, just a rough idea), you can see that if a player takes the left route, their only option becomes visiting Acre, thereby declaring that they have a lot of faith in their cargo. Players on the rightmost route still have the option to challenge them before they end up in Beirut. Also, this is where the ship comes into play: I needed a mechanic that would force people to resolve their trade at the same time, otherwise having two people at port would be a rare occurrence. It’s not really needed for Beirut, but I decided to have them work the same way for now. Some other elements that I want to add and/or change: - Trade towns will probably have their stockpiles hidden, so that there is an element of randomness when players trade there. Though I still want them to somehow hint at what the player might get there, to help them plan their routes - I am thinking about having four categories of goods (jewels, fabrics, foodstuff, drinks) with three quality levels (staple, luxury, precious). Quality levels will net you more points, and maaaaybe affect how you can trade at towns. - I want players to change the map as the game progresses. I am thinking of letting them build caravanserais along the way, but unsure how they could be built (deliver a specific combination of cargo at a node?) or what bonuses they confer (more trading options? Unlock new routes? Give you points when other players pass through?) - Finally I really think that the game needs a “hidden points” mechanic, like missions in Ticket to Ride or development cards in Catan. Otherwise the end game becomes very boring as the winner will be obvious a few turns before it ends. e: Clarified a rule about Acre Rexides fucked around with this message at 18:06 on Sep 23, 2019 |
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Sep 23, 2019 09:36
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The publisher I met with at PixelPop decided they wanted to play my prototype some more, so they're having me ship my only copy for more playtesting. This is huge and I'm freaking out. I'm so close to being published.Rexides posted:Hey all, I want to run an idea I had with the thread. The concept of the game is middle eastern caravans transporting goods from Baghdad to the port cities of Beirut and Acre, with players accruing points for every successful trip. This sounds like a really interesting take on a pick up and deliver game. I like a lot of the ideas here. Maybe to add some more player interaction have players be able to "steal" goods from other players? IDK. Might make it a bit too mean, but if i you had a way to mitigate being chased down it'd be kinda fun.
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Sep 23, 2019 14:48
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Frozen Peach posted:The publisher I met with at PixelPop decided they wanted to play my prototype some more, so they're having me ship my only copy for more playtesting. This is huge and I'm freaking out. I'm so close to being published. Rexides posted:Hey all, I want to run an idea I had with the thread. The concept of the game is middle eastern caravans transporting goods from Baghdad to the port cities of Beirut and Acre, with players accruing points for every successful trip. I'd actually shift the main scoring mechanics to the (multiple) ships themselves, not the ports, and come up with some bonus scoring opportunities for the ports and add at least one more port. Stealing from the shipping scoring in Trajan, I'd have at least 3 ships, each scoring based on different set collections (all different goods, all same goods, pairs of goods, total value of goods [the tweaked Acre scoring]). Then the first time they actually score at a port, they flip to their "lower points" opposite side, where if they score again in the next two ports, the point values are lowered. When the ship goes "out to sea" and passes a certain node on the water, it flips back to its "full value" side. With 3+ ships you might also want at least one going the opposite direction of the others, so that Beirut doesn't always have the best ship scoring opportunity every round. With more ships, you can introduce an extra movement puzzle. After each player's turn, they move 1 ship that does not have a cube of their color on it forward by 1 space, then they place a cube of their color on it. Once a player has a cube on every ship, they remove all their cubes. This would keep the ship movement from being so rote and programmed, and give the players another lever to use to mess with the ship-to-port arrival timing. It definitely works better with at least 3 ships, though. For the timing of scoring, all players have 2 or 3 caravan tokens, and after a player has moved a ship at the end of their turn, check if any ships are in a port where a player's caravan is. Ask each player with a caravan there, in turn order, whether they want to deliver their goods to that ship. If so, they do so and score, but the ship doesn't flip until everyone at the port on that turn has had a chance to deliver or not, and it only flips if at least one player delivered. The only exception is the ship that has the now tweaked Acre scoring. If a player says they will deliver to it, but other players have caravans in the port as well, they don't reveal their goods yet, until all players with a caravan there have had a chance to say whether they deliver. Then all delivering players reveal to see who gets 1st/2nd/3rd. This scoring allows players to hold their caravan at port, waiting for the better scoring ship for their specific load of goods to come in, but the longer they wait, the more time they're wasting not getting another caravan moving, because they only have so many caravans. Then each port could provide bonus scoring, which could also rotate throughout the game with a stack of objective tokens/cards next to the port, such as requests for specific goods (as the ship scoring doesn't exactly care about which specific goods), an extra point for every good of certain type or certain quality, etc. You might want to be careful with the poker-inspired scoring, as that might not be too obvious to most new players unless your good tokens are just like cards (with a number/face value and a suit). You might run into issues figuring out the scoring for good qualities as well, unless maybe you tweak them to not be hierarchical. Like "quality" isn't quality level, but a certain trait of the good. Maybe make them "origins", and ports give extra points for goods from certain origins. (And any good could be from any of the available origins, just depends which good tokens you draw). You could MAYBE have each good token from the same origin be the same color, which would let players have some knowledge of the goods hidden in each town along the way. But unless you have colored wood tokens, they'd need to be laid out and not in a stack for players to see. For more hidden scoring, you can have all players keep the good tokens they've delivered so far in the game in face-up stacks in front of them. At the start of the game, they draw or draft a secret objective card or two that will score them points for having delivered either X amount of good types or goods from certain origins, or having delivered the most of a good type or good from a certain origin. This could also set the game timer, as delivered goods don't go back into the supply to be re-drawn (I'm imagining a draw bag supply), when the supply of goods runs out, there's only X amount of turns/rounds left in the game. Don't know how far those ideas pull away from the experience you're envisioning, but some things to chew on.
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Sep 23, 2019 18:30
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Frozen Peach posted:The publisher I met with at PixelPop decided they wanted to play my prototype some more, so they're having me ship my only copy for more playtesting. This is huge and I'm freaking out. I'm so close to being published. Congrats! Good luck with the rest of the process. Frozen Peach posted:Maybe to add some more player interaction have players be able to "steal" goods from other players? IDK. Might make it a bit too mean, but if i you had a way to mitigate being chased down it'd be kinda fun. Yeah, I had that idea too at first (it started out with players mixing guard tokens along with the goods), but I think that for the current iteration I want to focus more on the Acre mechanics, the lost opportunities when players nab goods from trade towns that other players were eyeing, and placement of Caravanserais (which I intent to be the title of the game, by the way) JMBosch posted:Ships The idea of moving the different scoring mechanics to ships instead sounds intriguing, but for the time being I want to focus on having just one ship because I want the complexity of the game to be on the caravan side. The ship can serve as a counter for events that can happen every few rounds, like trading in ports, and also maybe when towns increase their stockpiles etc. I definitely don't want to give players tactical options on the sea lane as well, because my aim is to keep this game on the complexity level of Ticket to Ride. But I will definitely shorten the trip time for the ship (5 spaces feels better), and maybe even give Beirut a wider marina so that players can trade for two turns there instead of just one. JMBosch posted:Like "quality" isn't quality level, but a certain trait of the good. Maybe make them "origins" Yes! That's a great idea! I was never that much into the "quality levels" thing in the first place, I just wanted to have another category that differentiated cargo. I will definitely go with this, thanks. The goods tokens will most definitely be square cardboard tokens, so that can be flipped, stacked, and held in a hand for private perusing. I want to avoid having any strong indicator of the contents on the back. I think I will use the back to indicate which trade town that single instance of that token can appear in at the start of the game. For example - Trade Town A: 10x Fabric, 4x Foodstuff, 2x Jewels - Trade Town B: 12x Foodstuff, 2x Fabric, 2x Jewels - Trade Town C: 6x Jewels, 5x Fabric, 5x Foodstuff This way I can "program" different distribution of goods in different towns which can be set at the start of the game. This will allow the players to make some educated decisions about what kind of thing they might get if they trade there instead of being either completely random at draw (if they are all hidden), or arbitrary at the start of the game (if they are set up face up and the players choose, like how I show in the mocks right now). In this model, I was thinking that as the players trade there, they have to leave behind an item they are carrying face up. Then the next player has the option to either draw from the pile, or pick an item that a previous player (or themselves) has left there before. This way as the game progresses, trade towns slowly change from distributed probability generators to draft lanes. The main downside is that it adds a slightly more complex setup step to the start of the game, which is not that great for what I aim to be a game for newcomers.
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Sep 24, 2019 09:44
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I got some amazing feedback from the publisher I've been talking to. The fact that they haven't given me a no yet is huge. I really want this to end up working out. quote:Is it possible to represent vulnerability discovering/patching in game mechanics? So I spent this afternoon and this evening putting together new rules for discovery and patching, centered around having hackers doing qa testing. Though I might rename it to pen testing. IDK. I'm going to be at miniature market tomorrow for geekway micro, so if I'm lucky I'll get a good playtest in.
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Oct 26, 2019 05:17
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It's been far too long but I finally got a solid play test in. It went awesomely. The new QA Test action felt great for discovery of vulnerabilities. Unfortunately I found players were not taking risks and immediately dropping all their QA testing before any patching happened. This resulted in a fix for discovering but ultimately patching was left alone. This resulted in a mid game tweak to the rules for patching that required more QA testing to be done after patching to verify the patch. Effectively the final solution to the problem posed by the publisher was adding two actions too the game: Pen test, for discovery, and QA test for patching. Other considerations that I need to didn't some time thinking about: Alternate ways to end the game. For example should Bitcoin be a limited resource that ends the game when it runs out? If so I need to do a lot of math to figure out how many Bitcoin should be available per player. Changing how cycling cards out of the application offer works. I'm thinking of removing the end of round cycle and giving players the ability to flush the entire offer as an action. Will need to play test this. Regardless I'm extremely close to having the design finished. It felt great today and I think I even won over my strongest critic. Frozen Peach fucked around with this message at 09:55 on Nov 11, 2019 |
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Nov 11, 2019 09:48
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Yourself, right?
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Nov 11, 2019 12:57
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silvergoose posted:Yourself, right? Hahaha no. I tend to get really excited and overly love the games I'm designing. Even when they're failing miserably. There's one guy at the board game designers meetup that's just never had the game click because he's not techy and hears all the tech lingo and just can't grok the game because of it. 3rd play for him was a charm. I think I've gotten better at teaching it to non techy people.
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Nov 11, 2019 13:44
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Does anyone know of a resource breaking down the basic structure of several miniatures games? I was thinking it would be useful to have a record for each miniatures game, with the rules for a "basic human soldier" in that system, and a summary of how activation, movement, morale and combat work. It would be interesting to see if there are patterns in how accuracy and damage are treated, if there's a default for how quickly a miniature can cross the game board, how quickly one soldier dies in head-to-head combat with an identical soldier, etc.
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Jan 29, 2020 23:12
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Just found this thread, and as a hobby Ive been toying (pun) with a couple of game ideas for a little while. As I look through from the beginning of the thread, there seems to be a wealth of SA knowledge here. Any goons in Toronto up for a playtest session at some point?
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Jan 30, 2020 17:27
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And I see now this thread no longer has much traffic. Oh well...
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Jan 30, 2020 22:53
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Most of us have let a thick layer of dust build up on our shelved game ideas.
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Jan 30, 2020 22:54
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2 penny bottle imp posted:And I see now this thread no longer has much traffic. Oh well... it comes and goes in waves
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Jan 31, 2020 01:59
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We have only so many workers to place, after all.
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Jan 31, 2020 13:27
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I didn't get a no from the publisher I've been talking to, but I did get an email that they're putting a hold on submissions. I'm going back to pitching. Sent in a few submissions but I'm trying to come up with other companies that it'd be a good fit for.
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Feb 5, 2020 01:20
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So I was watching Sealab 2021 and fuckin' around with dice and had an idea. You know, Pods going critical and poo poo. At the core of it, every player has a pool of 7 dice that they allocate toward 3 target numbers using 3 of the dice from their pool. But every die in the pool is differently colored and differently numbered, the colors corresponding to spots/Pods on the board. Pods on the board can be Safe (no marker), Critical (yellow marker), or destroyed (red marker), and all start off as Critical. Beating a Pod's target number lessens the danger, where failing to beat the target number increases danger/destroys it. When a Pod on the board is destroyed, the corresponding die is removed from every player's dice pool. The 3 target numbers you are trying to beat is Nd6 where N is the number of players. Figure it's a nice distribution to start with. Win State All remaining Pods on the board are safe. Lose State All Pods are destroyed OR center Pod is destroyed  My imagined steps for the game rounds 1) Roll 1d6 that has each side colored corresponding to the colors of the Pods. Let's say Purple 2) Roll Nd6 for the color that comes up, and Nd6 for each 2 adjacent color Pods. So you defend Purple [13], Yellow[7], and Green[8] 2a) if the color die rolls the color of a destroyed Pod, the center Pod is targeted, and the Pods that are adjacent to the would-be target are targeted. 3) Players go around allocating 1 die to one of the targeted Pods 4) Roll the allocated dice 5) All players allocate another single die to one of the Pods and then roll 7) Allocate last die and roll. 8) Add up the allocated dice, compare to target numbers, change Pod states if applicable, and remove any affected dice. Why I think it's fun? Well, all those dice have the same number of pips and should average out to a roll of 3.5 in the long run. But..... you're not gonna select them all willy nilly because of that, right? Like that yellow die can roll a result that literally none of the other dice can. Sure, it's a Hail Mary, but if you're in a pinch, it's all you got. Obviously the game is a lot of luck, but I think that the players can make meaningful decisions in what dice they choose to put forward. Do they want the ultra safe 333444? Swing big? Swing medium? And the idea of having to save certain dice. Why would it not be fun? -Too much rolling dice -Relying too much on luck and not feeling like your decisions matter. -XCom probability-hatin' Possible Tweaks? -Instead of having to beat the number, it could be meet or beat? -At higher player numbers it might get annoying to roll all those dice and total them so many times. I dunno what alternative there is for generating target numbers that's as easy as Nd6 -Obv different numbers on the dice. Like sub in one for 1,1,1,6,6,6 -You send all your allocated dice out at once instead of allocate, roll, allocate, roll, but I like the idea of rising tension, desperation, and pressure to get the dice to perform Sorry for the disorganized thoughts, but I just thought I'd throw this out here and ask if there's anything glaring that makes this Not Fun. Haven't playtested anything yet, but may get to next week or so.
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Feb 26, 2020 17:22
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Rotten Cookies posted:So I was watching Sealab 2021 and fuckin' around with dice and had an idea. You know, Pods going critical and poo poo. Its sounds like from this description like a co-op snakes and ladders? We roll a dice to decide which dice to roll. Stick the dice we get on the pods then roll those to see if we succeed or fail? What's the decision point for players in the game? In a 4 players game for example you roll purple in your case so you roll 4 Purple, 4 Green and 4 Yellow dice. You then roll those dice and say average rolls you'll have 14 as the TN on each pod. You then allocate 4 of the dice, obviously none of these rolls can save a pod at tn 14 individually, if you allocate all 4 dice to a single pod you have a 50/50 chance of saving it. Second round of allocating you have another 50/50 chance of saving the pod. Because you allocate the dice before you roll you've no idea if you're over allocating or not. It's just going to be a total crap shoot isn't it? Yeah some round the TN's will be 4 but an equal number of rounds they will be 52. I'm assuming the tweak to make it meet or beat the target because otherwise the green pod is extremely difficult to save, if you do not roll a 1 on the TN roll then it cannot be saved. Aramoro fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Feb 26, 2020 |
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Feb 26, 2020 17:43
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Sorry I wasn't clear. The target dice you roll are always all normal d6. 1,2,3,4,5,6. You will know the target number before you start allocating dice. For your 4 player game somewhere between 4-24 Each player has one of each of white, purple, yellow, orange, pink, blue, and green as their dice pool. Every round you choose three of those (no repeating) to allocate. You might put your orange die toward a certain pod because you like the safe 3 or 4. Someone else sees a high target number and puts the Green die toward that Pod. Say the green die happens to roll a 1. Now on the next turn to allocate dice, you might feel pressured to put the yellow (1,1,2,2,2,13) or blue (1,1,2,2,7,8) toward the high target Pod. I guess there's nothing stopping players from dogpiling one pod, and/or abandoning others.
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Feb 26, 2020 18:18
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Aramoro posted:I'm assuming the tweak to make it meet or beat the target because otherwise the green pod is extremely difficult to save, if you do not roll a 1 on the TN roll then it cannot be saved. As I understand it you get to allocate dice of any color (as long as that pod is still alive), so you can use other colors that have faces with 5+ to try to beat the green TN. I also don't see anything in there saying that you have to allocate your dice equally among the pods under attack, so you can throw 5+ dice at the 16 TN green pod. The luck management aspect is a start, but when you started describing your inspiration I thought you were actually going to go full Sealab and have it be a hybrid coop-competitive or traitor coop. I think it would get a lot more interesting if players had reasons to be selfish. Make pods worth differing amounts to different players--give them skewed distributions of die colors, or hidden objectives to blow up a specific pod, something. EDIT: also I think that allocating everything all at once might be the way to go as long as pods have multiple "HP." you get your rising tension from pods taking damage, you don't need to string things out even more. this also heightens player-to-player tension even if there is no explicit competitive/traitor mechanic because there's less room to adjust to misplays/disagreements, especially if you also make allocation simultaneous and hidden. the holy poopacy fucked around with this message at 18:31 on Feb 26, 2020 |
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Feb 26, 2020 18:27
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| # ? May 15, 2024 10:21 |
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Ah ok, I thought the dice got allocated to the pods of the same colour and you rolled those colour of dice to set the tn's for some reason.
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Feb 26, 2020 18:28
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