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I'm working on a card-based game that's basically me trying to see if I can make a Talisman-like game not terrible. The first big change is that everyone runs a party, instead of a single adventurer. You can tailor your group to the kinds of challenges you expect to have issues with, and what fits your playstyle. You want four clerics, make an entire party that's just loving impossible to kill? Sure. Etc, etc. The second big change is that it's a deckbuilder. I realize that's like saying "The second big change I made to this car is that it's a motorcycle", but I was inspired by Mage Knight (quite obviously, in some places), and Puzzle Strike. It's a system that I'm hoping will let me divorce dice from the situation entirely. It won't completely remove the randomness factor, but it should help mitigate it. There's a card pool of abilities that all players have access to, which are purchased with treasure you find in the dungeon. Those two together make the big third thing: Depending on your adventurers, you can discard your cards for different effects besides the printed ones. If you want an all-offense party, bring Fighters and Wizards who let you discard cards for Fight and Ranged, respectively. Better adventurers can be recruited to replace your starting ones, as well. It's still in the early testing stages, and at the moment it's feeling by turns a little shallow and a little over-complicated, but it also feels like you have at least some hand in your own fate, so I'm feeling pretty encouraged by the potential of the design.
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Aug 1, 2014 04:57
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Poison Mushroom posted:I'm working on a card-based game that's basically me trying to see if I can make a Talisman-like game not terrible.
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Aug 1, 2014 05:02
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Casnorf posted:Have you played the PC game Card Hunter? Means I'll have to figure out something else to do with equipment, though. Maybe small static effects, limited to one Equipment per adventurer, or something. girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Aug 1, 2014 |
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Aug 1, 2014 05:05
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Poison Mushroom posted:The second big change is that it's a deckbuilder. I realize that's like saying "The second big change I made to this car is that it's a motorcycle", but I was inspired by Mage Knight (quite obviously, in some places), and Puzzle Strike. It's a system that I'm hoping will let me divorce dice from the situation entirely. It won't completely remove the randomness factor, but it should help mitigate it. There's a card pool of abilities that all players have access to, which are purchased with treasure you find in the dungeon. I don't know if this is exactly what you are going for but I already kind of did that; twice  I didn't go through all the hard part of making my own cards just turned Pathfinder Adventure Cards into a couple deckbuilder variants. I have since refined the Pathfinder-Talisman rules from a lot of play with my nephews but I haven't put the new rules to paper yet. I can if you are interested (I was going to anyway for BGG):Rutibex posted:Basically it works like this: play it like Thunderstone. I set up a Thunderstone board with stacks of 10 random face up Pathfinder cards by category (with blessings and armor in the Longspears and Torches slots). The Dungeon deck consists of 20 Monster cards and 10 Barriers; with a Villain and some minions shuffled to the bottom. Rutibex posted:So a few of us got together last night and decided to try something new. I brought my Pathfinder Adventure Cards and another guy brought his Talisman: 4th edition and we mashed them together. It actually worked out fairly well, the game lasted about as long as a normal game of Talisman: Rutibex fucked around with this message at 05:22 on Aug 1, 2014 |
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Aug 1, 2014 05:13
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That is actually really cool. If I can get a hold of both games, I might tr that as an idea mine.
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Aug 1, 2014 05:15
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Poison Mushroom posted:That is actually really cool. If I can get a hold of both games, I might tr that as an idea mine. I wouldn't bother with the Pathfinder cards it's even more dicey than Talisman (uses everything from d4-d12s quite a bit) and that doesn't seem to be what you're going for. But Thunderstone proper is exactly what you are describing minus a board.
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Aug 1, 2014 06:09
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I remember my friend once swearing to do a (not ironic) mash-up of Talisman and Monopoly. Yeah.
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Aug 1, 2014 08:55
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I've been doodling away on a space feudalism deckbuilder (think A Few Acres of Snow rather than Dominion). One of the ideas that sparked it is that the cards would be split into 4-5 factions and a certain amount of Influence (probably 2 per faction) would be split among the factions. Each round, a faction would grant as many cards as it has influence in the court. So, for example, if you expect to engage in a war you may shine a bit of imperial favour on the Harkonnen to get more of their generally agressive cards, but it'll piss off Fremen who'll give you less of theirs (total number of offered cards stays the same). Admittedly, this was conceived from a solo-esque perspective and now I'm wondering if there's a way to stretch it into more "multiplayer solitaire" territory while not being some sort of obnoxious table-space hoarder. PS. Also, I think framing removing location cards out of the deck as granting fiefs to particular vassals is a nice way of doing things.
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Aug 11, 2014 15:25
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I have a game in my head that's been stewing for over 6 months, and I've gotten inspired to work on it again. It's tentatively named Junkyard Superscience. The idea is that you are a down-on-your-luck mad/super-scientist (think an even less successful Rusty Venture) rooting through a junkyard for parts to make a loving Awesome Robot. Most cards will be parts, arms, legs heads and torsos. Most parts will have an alternative effect, but all will have an amount of Awesome points. There will be a few modifiers like Bitchin' Flame Decals, Stupid Antenna (with Fuzzy Ball), etc which will increase/decrease how Awesome your robot is. A robot is made of a torso, each of which had a certain number of arms/legs/heads it can accept, and is only complete when all the torso slots are filled. The gameplay is super simple. There is one draw pile, (3) open discard piles, and a blind discard pile, where you can discard a card without revealing it. You start with a hand of (tentatively 5) cards, and each turn you can either play a card for the effect after which the card is placed in an open discard, or you can discard a card into any discard pile. You then draw up to your maximum from any discard pile, or from the deck. When someone thinks they have the most Awesome functioning robot (or when the deck runs out), instead of playing for the turn, they can host a Mad Scientist Gala. Every other player has one more turn to get ready, and then everyone compares their hands. The winner is the one with the most Awesome robot. Everyone must have a name and function for their robot, and must try and actually construct it with the cards. In the event of a tie, the other scientists vote between the tied robots. Ex: A gala is called and I reveal my robot: humanoid torso (1 awesome, 1 leg, 2 arm slots), spider legs (3 awesome), buzzsaw arm (4 awesome) and clamp arm (2 awesome). Unfortunately, I also have the Broken Speaker-mouth (-3), totaling 8. I call it the Spiderjack. Its a lumberbot that scurries up trees and slices them down, and is totally not a killbot. It's nothing particularly complicated, and definitely a light and goofy time. I can't imagine it running more than 10 minutes or so. So you can just gently caress around, or play to x wins, or what have you. I was thinking of throwing together some proxies and wrangling roommates to test it out, but I since this is my first actual time getting this down on paper, so to speak, I wanted to get some opinions. I'm worried it may be too traditional a format to be really fun or replayable, but I think there's something there. Go RV! fucked around with this message at 20:18 on Aug 11, 2014 |
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Aug 11, 2014 20:02
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I don't know if there's design space for it, but my first thought is that you really need to be able to choose an old car engine to power your super-awesome robot.
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Aug 11, 2014 20:10
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Go RV! posted:Junkyard Superscience. Have you considered a rotating judge scoring mechanic like Apples to Apples and Cards Against Humanity? One player each round takes on the role of the Unscrupulous Industrialist and is looking to purchase the robot that best suits the needs of a deck of, let's call them, Contracts. Maybe one round they're looking to buy a Lumberjack robot, the next round, a Sexbot, or a Child's Plaything. Other ways you may take that would be to remove the judge and have categories to fulfill on each contract, like "Destruction," or "Entertainment" and coresponding values in place of a blanket "Awesome" score (although I think I like a more creative process of trying to sell someone a robot only questionably designed to spec rather than comparing numbers.) Maybe also remove a strict turn structure? The players can change cards in and out of the hand as fast as they can and have an incentive to finish and present their robot to their buyer. This could open design space for theft and sabotages too.
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Aug 11, 2014 21:10
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Poison Mushroom posted:I don't know if there's design space for it, but my first thought is that you really need to be able to choose an old car engine to power your super-awesome robot. There is definitely room for a Hemi-torso, or maybe using it for an add-on type thing. Definitely going to be making a lot of stupid nerd references. ZorajitZorajit posted:Have you considered a rotating judge scoring mechanic like Apples to Apples and Cards Against Humanity? One player each round takes on the role of the Unscrupulous Industrialist and is looking to purchase the robot that best suits the needs of a deck of, let's call them, Contracts. Maybe one round they're looking to buy a Lumberjack robot, the next round, a Sexbot, or a Child's Plaything. The rotating judge is a really neat idea. Expanding on the party game idea here: Instead of having a draw deck, you scatter out the cards so it's actually you rooting around in the pile like you would in a junkyard. Kind of like Galaxy Trucker, where you're scrambling for tiles, except with a big messy pile of cards. If I would go this route, it would definitely be dropping the numbers and trying to make something hilarious for the Questionably Moral Patron. Some of my first drafts before simplifying it down had different types of machines you could build, Vehicle, Giant Robot, Cyborg, etc. You'd take the core of the machine, then try and build something, but each part had a modifier that it couldn't handle. Everything had a weight attached to it, and each frame could only hold so much. The more specific Entertainment/etc values seem like a better way to do that. Buzzsaw Arm: Destruction 4, Entertainment 3, Sexiness 0 (stats subject to change) Though, there's no reason you couldn't have both the values for a hand-building game and have a big dumb scramble as a side option as well. Besides the possibility of cards getting damaged. Definitely going to have to think about this a bit more.
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Aug 11, 2014 22:11
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Go RV! posted:Though, there's no reason you couldn't have both the values for a hand-building game and have a big dumb scramble as a side option as well. Besides the possibility of cards getting damaged. Definitely going to have to think about this a bit more. girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 22:18 on Aug 11, 2014 |
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Aug 11, 2014 22:14
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Poison Mushroom posted:If you do go real-time, you need to make sure everything is simple enough to do on the fly. The game will crash and burn if people have to try to do more than very simple addition/subtraction or any more than basic planning ahead while they're building. Of course. I was just saying it seems like there's two different games that you could use the deck for. At the start of the night, you play the trick-taking, addition-y version, and as people get drunker, you say gently caress it, all in for the purely judged no-numbers robot party buildfight. I feel like there should be numbers on it either way, because what game about mad/superscience would be complete without extraneous statistics?  fake edit: Though, it would really feel kind of lovely to have your Legit Card Game Deck messed up in a drunken scramble. It probably should be two completely separate things.
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Aug 11, 2014 22:30
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I just found out about this thread so there's not much context on my journey but I got a contract with Mayday Games!  Here's a copy of my sell sheet I used at Gen Con 
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Aug 28, 2014 18:11
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Hey Design thread. I just found out about you guys, and I wanted to see if you may be able to help me. I'm working on a competitive game for 2-4 players, where the theme is rummaging through a junkyard to find parts to build a robot, then use said robots to fight in arena combat! There are two parts to the game. First, there is a building phase where players are drafting cards, followed by a combat phase where the robots are moved around the arena and fight other robots by playing cards. Since I'm new, I'm not sure what the proper etiquette if for asking for help on playtesting and such. Would anyone be interested in a game like this, and provide feedback?
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Sep 10, 2014 20:32
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quote:Since I'm new, I'm not sure what the proper etiquette if for asking for help on playtesting and such. Would anyone be interested in a game like this, and provide feedback? I print and play games now and again. I can't guarantee anything (there's lots of perfectly reasonable games that I know my group wouldn't play - in particular, we seldom play long games), but if you posted enough material to play (and if it doesn't have too many fiddly bits to print) there's a reasonable chance we'd give it a go. Barring that, I promise I'd at least give feedback as to why I didn't give it a proper try.
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Sep 10, 2014 21:33
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I mentioned this in the main board game thread and was told to ask in here: I'm super interested in play testing some games for people. If you pm me a gdoc or something outlining your game's rules and mechanic I will make a prototype of it and playtest it. I'm willing to take unfinished things as long as they're basically playable and I can sort of fill in the holes.
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Sep 15, 2014 01:24
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MildManeredManikin posted:I mentioned this in the main board game thread and was told to ask in here: I'm super interested in play testing some games for people. If you pm me a gdoc or something outlining your game's rules and mechanic I will make a prototype of it and playtest it. I'm willing to take unfinished things as long as they're basically playable and I can sort of fill in the holes. What kind of group would be playtesting? What are their ages, gaming experience ranges, and preferred game types?
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Sep 15, 2014 03:14
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ThaShaneTrain posted:What kind of group would be playtesting? Excellent questions! I know enough people who are willing to play games with me that I can put different groups together. The age of any group I can muster is roughly 20. I can go with either inexperienced players who know they like board games but haven't really played more than entry level things like catan, to moderately experienced players who have delved deeper but are still refining their tastes. Preferred game types is a mix, but if you describe your game to me first I'll tell I can say whether or not it'll work. Games that are very long, like minimum play being 2 hours are pretty much right out. I'm not particularly interested in war games either. I am generally a fan of Euros, but really I'm not super picky. I know this is pretty vague but generally we're fairly open, especially for games that require less time investment.
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Sep 15, 2014 03:44
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ThaShaneTrain posted:I just found out about this thread so there's not much context on my journey but I got a contract with Mayday Games! I think this is clever and looks like fun. (I also love the concise sell sheet) Congratulations on your contract!
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Sep 15, 2014 13:05
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ThaShaneTrain posted:I just found out about this thread so there's not much context on my journey but I got a contract with Mayday Games! Congratulations! It's a real rush getting your first publication deal. Keep us posted on how things go from here. Mayday doesn't have the best reputation with fans (numerous complaints on BGG about their customer service and product quality) but that likely just means they're understaffed and on a tight budget, like a lot of small publishers. For others who are looking to get published it'll be useful to hear whether you have a good experience publishing with them.
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Oct 4, 2014 20:01
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xopods posted:Congratulations! It's a real rush getting your first publication deal. Thanks! So far it has been great. The contract is pretty generous compared to the average contracts I've read/heard about. They are keeping me very involved in the process. It has now moved on to the lead developer and he has been keeping contact with me asking questions about my design and both of us coming up changes to the rules and play as needed. I am still playtesting with my own groups as he does with his and we compare notes on how changes have worked. I feel like all of my ideas and opinions have been strongly considered. I'll keep this thread up to date if anything changes or new things come up.
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Oct 4, 2014 22:07
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I didn't see this listed in the OP... Any recommendations for buying game pieces but not in bulk?
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Oct 4, 2014 23:12
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If you're in the UK/Europe then http://www.boardgameextras.co.uk/accessories.php may do the trick. Bit of a pain to navigate but you can get single meeples, cubes, card holders, etc. Not sure how they are for outside EU though.
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Oct 4, 2014 23:24
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Jackard posted:I didn't see this listed in the OP... Any recommendations for buying game pieces but not in bulk? I have a dice and component thread where I list some game piece sites in the OP. You may try these: http://www.spielematerial.de/en/ http://www.meeplesource.com/products.php?cat=16
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Oct 5, 2014 00:37
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Jackard posted:I didn't see this listed in the OP... Any recommendations for buying game pieces but not in bulk? Check thrift stores, junk shops, and flea markets. They are full of old board games you can scavenge for components and are often dirt cheap.
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Oct 5, 2014 00:49
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ThaShaneTrain posted:Thanks! So far it has been great. The contract is pretty generous compared to the average contracts I've read/heard about. Yeah, this doesn't surprise me at all. Small operations by their nature tend to be more human in dealing with freelancers but by the same token tend to have to cut corners elsewhere, whereas big companies can afford big production budgets and better customer service, but are more likely to play hardball when it comes to contracts.
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Oct 5, 2014 15:06
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Blank playing cards seem to be a common purchase... do they work with inkjet or laser printers?
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Oct 8, 2014 02:47
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I don't know if this will help you, but when it comes to cards I prototype using something like Avery address labels - the ones you can print through a printer - then stick them on regular playing cards from the dollar store. It's a bit ugly but works fine. You have to stick each sticker on manually but at least you can easily pencil in changes, and you're spared from the drudgery of having to cut out your own cards or hand-draw onto blank ones or whatever. When ready for more serious testing, one of the online print shop links lets you upload custom artwork which they will happily print onto (blank) playing cards. I personally never got any of my prototypes this far, but from past posts people have been happy with the results.
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Oct 8, 2014 18:12
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Ah well, my penmanship is good enough to prototype with half-sized index cards... enough to have people bugging me to write their notes. If I were to buy playing cards it would be for printed material.
Jackard fucked around with this message at 19:46 on Oct 8, 2014 |
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Oct 8, 2014 19:44
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Crossposting this from the main Board Game thread, because I think it might generate more discussion here. I was discussing traitor games with... someone, maybe Wol, and I realized why most of them fail. Too many traitor games, including Dead of Winter, treat the board as the primary adversary, with the traitor being a hazard you need to watch out for. That's the wrong way to go about it. The appeal of a traitor game, for the traitor, is getting to be an evil git and a jerk to your friends within a safe and forgivable context. You are their adversary, their primary foe, all their attention is set on beating you. Even if you lose, that's fun. By one round into the Dead of Winter PBP, I could already tell that the traitor was mostly going to be acting as the board's sidekick. And that's not fun. Look at BSG, the gold standard for traitor games not named Resistance/Mafia/Werewolf. The board is your enemy, yes, but once the Cylons flip, the board isn't just your enemy any more, it's the weapon the traitors use. You really feel like it's the Cylons' choices that are causing things to happen, that those ships are shooting at you because that rear end in a top hat won't stop spamming the Cylon Fleet space every turn. And for the Cylons, you feel like the boss. You feel like the big bad, one of the main villains dictating the movements of an army of death-toasters to kill the meatsacks. In Dead of Winter, the traitor is just a couple dudes who happen to want to kill other people. Honestly, even Betrayal At The House On The Hill does the traitor mechanic better than DoW, because at least in BatHotH, you actually feel like The Bad Guy (for a short period between "when is the haunt going to start" and "well, that was an anti-climax"). I don't think any traitor game that doesn't make the traitors the center of the 'loyal' players' attention both before and after the reveal is going to fail. The opposite problem is the one in Shadows Over Camelot, where there's nothing to do before you prove you're evil. And that's at least as bad, because it defeats the whole point of it being hidden in the first place. TL;DR: A good traitor game should let the villain player(s) invoke intrigue and paranoia before the flip, and after the flip, dread and awe.
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Oct 9, 2014 04:56
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quote:TL;DR: A good traitor game should let the villain player(s) invoke intrigue and paranoia before the flip, and after the flip, dread and awe. Lots of the problem is just balance. A game that was "just a bit too easy" with everyone contributing, and "quite a bit too hard" with someone fully defecting... I think that works and provides fun space for a traitor to play in. But lots of these games start with a "random co-op game" shell, and most of those have horrible balance problems well before any of the traitor stuff enters in. Without some very clever design, these games tend towards powerful feedback loops and very few close games. And the ones that come closest to working deal with feedback by just having very uninteresting game states (eg. Forbidden Island). The "standard random co-op" is a fragile turd of a card house, and trying to mix in a traitor just shakes the table way too hard. Whatever you do in a traitor game, the traitor needs to be central to the design I think.
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Oct 9, 2014 05:50
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I love those moments when you get stuck on a problem and a solution comes to you as you're typing out a post in this thread.
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Oct 12, 2014 16:43
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I get that from the weirdest places. I was watching a video podcast where they were detailing a game design competition. I planned on trying it as a creative break since I was stuck on one of my current designs. As I watched the video I got progressively annoyed at the host and then had a realization on how to fix my game. Let the hate flow over you. Also the competition was to make a zombie game so I did the world a favor by not adding more of those to the world unnecessarily.
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Oct 12, 2014 17:46
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I'm working on a pirate game. I've tried to play whatever ones are out there to make sure that I'm not hewing too close to them and to see what works and doesn't. It's slow going between working two other jobs, and I have no idea if it'll ever see the light of day, but it's a fantastic mental exercise. I seem to build and build for about a year, then scrape it down to the core and start fresh. It only vaguely resembles the game I started with three years ago.
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Oct 12, 2014 18:15
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The lead developer of Mayday asked me what things I had tried with my game before they got this version. My first thought was that not much was different but then I looked over my notes and holy poo poo has it changed. Every time I contemplate a change I ask myself "Does this preserve or enhance the vision I have for the game.". I know how I want my players to feel while playing it and every time I made a change it was to make that effect more immediate and concise. I didn't realize I had gone through so many revisions of the rules, probably about 20 different rulebooks are in my emails, notebooks, and hard drives with wildly different mechanisms or slight rules rewording.
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Oct 12, 2014 19:26
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From discussion Alien: Isolation I got struck by the idea of a game, possibly single-player/coop/traitor-like and not necessarily a Alien game (maybe more suitable for a The Thing game, if it's supposed to be board game/multiple player friendly) were you got a bunch of characters at the start that may or may not become aliens later on depending on the choices made in the first phase. It takes place on a colony that's somewhat randomized, a bunch of "vital" location-boards that are always in play, and some optional ones for flavor and variety, each play. Maybe a Vlaada style "build up the colony" pre-Breakout phase? Each game spawns a slightly random number of Infestators. These are played to locations were those characters are randomly(?) distributed at the start, and with your limited actions you can visit these locations to gain advantages for later phases, interact with the characters and stop them from becoming infested. Those characters may also be shared with the playable characters, so you just switch them out depending on the players picks, with those not picked becoming NPCs and infestation targets. Like Flashpoint or Pandemic, the characters can have slight differences to them and inherent bonuses (and/or negatives). There's a limited amount of actions during each phase, and you can't save everyone (minimum of 1 infested) and each you save loses you out on gaining another advantage later on. Which might be fine, less Aliens to mess with you and another buddy to cover your back might be just as good, depending. Infestations aren't revealed in this phase however, (thinking cards played upside down, some with nothing on them/or combined with secret individual objectives, others with a "infested" message) and only the individual player learns of the result. Each "Character" comes with a Human-side and a Alien-side (or card), with special unique abilities for both. For even more variety. Depending on Alien flavoring or Thing flavoring it could either be a Traitor game (the Thing) were those infested aren't noticed until later phases and they get to try to gently caress the other players up, or leaning more towards that Aliens board game with more straight up combat (possibly also directed by whatever player(s) ended up dying to a Infestator - maybe a little BSG style) with possible "simple" AI rules for single play. Toss in some Terror City rules were each player tries to save as many characters for themselves as possible, while "sacrificing" others (to make it easier for the traitor(s) to hide) and there might be something of a worthy game idea here. Goal: Save as many people as possible (for Victory Points, but also from a pure utility perspective) and escape the colony at the end, or be a hero and go for the Hive (bunch of extra VP if successful, surviving not guaranteed). Maybe toss in the need to gather certain items to be able to escape (plays along with the optional secret objectives) in the middle phase to have a reason to stay around while the humans start getting picked off. 3 stages: The Breakout, beginning phase - Mill about, choose your own adventure style set up as described above. The Breakdown, middle-phase - Hidden infestations revealed, Alien(s) pop out, people die, things go to poo poo in your little colony. Aliens can't reall be killed, but go into some sort of reserve box so in the end they always grow in number. The Infestation, final phase - Full on Hive, poo poo is real bad, few survivors make a final gun for it to get to the escape zone/blow up the hive. Optional 4+ stage: To take a note from Risk Legacy, have a possibility for return play on the same Colony "board" if the Humans get wiped out. With very likely to happen events like sending a distress signal, ending up with "Aliens"-like scenario playing out  Not strictly necessary for the core gameplay though. Or something like that, only given it about half an hour of thought. Maybe there's already something like this out there? Pimpmust fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Oct 12, 2014 |
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Oct 12, 2014 21:28
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Pimpmust posted:3 stages:
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Oct 12, 2014 21:52
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Yeah, there'd need to be some way to secure supplies, items or VPs, at the risk of infecting more characters or maybe triggering security systems during this phase. Ties into the limited possible actions too, want to save people (useful later on for VPs, extra dudes to sacrifice) or secure stuff you think you might need to "win" (+extra variability there with secret objectives, "corporate man" and what not). I was thinking it could be tied into the Colony construction phase somehow too, like for each "good" piece you draw (Armory!) you get to pull a random "the Corporation added some extra security features" / bad hazards pile. The humans get some possible goodies, but man Space-Future-OSHA is realy slacking off. Everyone gets to place some of the possible (known/unknown) "stuff" tokens around the colony, were they think they could get at it easiest or to prevent others from getting it. Depending on how the Colony ends up looking, the Breakout phase might end up playing very differently (are goodies rare or plentiful, were are they located? What tools do you need to get around security etc). Add some variations in a big super AI (SHODAN/XERXES/APOLLO etc) with their own quirks that play into any security "features" the players put into play and every action could have both up and downsides (mainly to prevent too optimal/one-track play). This is more of a third-"faction" (not actually playable)/hazard part of the game, which could both help and hinder either side. Stuff liked locked doors, sentry guns (that lock down set corridors or rooms- disable it and they end up disabled for *everyone*). Revealed Aliens could have a mobility advantage, so most security features would hinder the Humans more than them. Haven't played the games with the "Wander around while random poo poo happens until the game starts" problem but I figure an active risk/reward, upside/downside system like this should get around it? Every player is doing something in the early phase, and everything got chain-on effects for the later phases. Of course, actually balancing it all is another matter entirely e: Gave this some more thought: 1. There's really two types of traitors, Corporate and "Hidden" Alien. The more selfish survivor objectives are more there to throw off the scent. That said, the main two are quite different objective wise and the Corporate may not need to gently caress over the others too much to accomplish their hidden objective(s). As for threats, there's 3: Revealed Aliens, Security (Synthetics) and Hazards. These points do tie into the possible issue with the Early Phase, and how to build up the colony. I was thinking of a way to mechanically help avoid the issue, and my mind wandered over to some form of "deck building" to combine with the more board focused aspects. Closest inspirations: Flashpoint, the DnD Board games (Ravenloft) and Artic Survivor. You can't really track all the open or hidden crap that may appear, so some level of abstraction is necessary. Cards fulfill this criteria nicely. So something like this: Everyone go through their actions in the Early Phase, strategically trying to plan ahead for their secret objectives which may or may not include Already Infested Players, depending on when in the Phase order that is placed. Some Items are always around and necessary for the main goals of the game (be it for survivors, corporate or aliens), but may be hidden (marker face down, question mark on the backside). These are put were they belong once the colony is constructed. Build-up phase: Now as everyone do their actions and build the colony they draw from a deck of "good things" which may be offset by "bad things". Like say they want that armory to be guaranteed to be on the board, or even the possibility of several to guarantee it's easy to get to. This means they have to pay a price in "bad things" (security, hazards) and draw a bunch of cards for this. Everyone also gets to draw all the cards they need to fulfill their hidden objectives. Anything not vital or forced (bad things as cost for the goodies) they can discard. They can take actions to draw more "Good thing" cards and on those cards there's a cost in "bad thing" cards (separate decks for these at this stage). They may or may not choose to keep the good thing or discard it if they deem the cost too high. Each "Item" card also net a number of "?" tokens, which have to be placed on the board according to some rules (maybe included on the item card, like "2 tiles away from your starting position"). What ends up happening is everyone builds a "hand", and discard things they don't like. All this is secret. What they draw (unless there's a sort of "market" of things were a couple of cards are laid out face-up, sorta like in Ticket to Ride) and what they discard. Which elegantly ties into the traitor mechanics, as the traitors/infested can load up their "hand" with *rubbish* or *bad things*. Once a set amount of turns around the table have been done, this build-up phase is done. *Everyone* shuffles their "Hand" into what becomes the gameplay deck. No one can learn who any traitor(s) are at this stage, but depending on the luck of the draw you can get hints. If a bunch of lovely cards pop up odds are pretty good that there's at least one traitor of some kind, and depending on what the bad things are maybe hint at what sort of traitor. Breakout-phase Now for the rest of the game, as people move about and "reveal" those "?" markers on the board, they draw from the "game deck", hoping to get the stuff they need. What this big combined deck means though is that you aren't guaranteed to get the item you are looking for in that items "tile" (re: guns can be found anywhere, not just the armory). Not sure if this is a downside... the "?" tokens are designed to be more common in the big tiles, like the armory which could tie into tile design, big tiles got lots of connections and are hard to defend, but is were the goodies can be found and so on. The "Vital" items are can always be fond in "logical" places (but maybe some sort of slight randomization mechanic here), everything else isn't so important exactly were you find it, as long as you can bring it to were you need to be. This calls for some sort of trading/looting mechanic as well. If people are controlling several characters, items are distributed to individual character cards inventories. Moving in a group is obviously a good idea versus the (revealed) Aliens, but maybe balanced by hazards and events that can cause injuries for the whole group on a tile. In addition to this, why not steal those Dead of Winter Crossroad cards (except always with two options that do *something*). Every turn there's one of these drawn, which trigger events around the colony (for good and/or ill). Toss in some BSG "rooms" mechanics, were certain (good/vital) actions can only be carried out in certain rooms, by either characters with special abilities (ex: Corporate CEO with security override) or items that get around those limitations (ex: security keycards). Breakdown-Phase Basically what this design boils down to is to make it necessary to move around during the mid-phase, and deal with crisises that may pop up, in addition to making it harder to bunch up just to hold off the alien(s). There need to be too much poo poo that needs doing/gathering (for vital or hidden objectives), so the Alien(s) can get a chance to pick them off - all cascading towards the end-phase. Imagine Flashpoint fires and smoke spreading everywhere, except add aliens and traitors that are trying to gently caress you up and you've misplaced(or someone has done it on purpose?!) the fire-truck and the survivors you are trying to rescue may in fact be pyromaniacs and  Player elimination issues can be offset by Infestation mechanics, and having several characters per player (like in City of Horror). Of course, there need to be some sort of mechanic that doesn't make it too tempting to just go over to the Alien Side once it starts becoming obvious that the Survivors are up poo poo creek (aren't they always?), the later you "join" the lesser chance at getting Alien Victory Points? -> Either you join "early" or not at all, if you want to be #1? "Effectively" eliminating those infested later, yet they can still contribute and play (if for nothing else but to gently caress over those who hosed them over  ).The Aliens are never permanently killed, just put back in the reserve box. Hazards and Security doesn't "kill" player characters, but stuns them, allowing the Aliens to capture them or traitors/assholes to loot them. In true Infestation (AvP2) style every human that goes down to an Alien joins team Alien. Game may start out somewhat in favour of the humans (they'll have motivation to use that time to gather things for their secret objectives) but it won't stay that way. Once a player loses their last survivor character, that player gets to join the Alien side and command around their little alien dudes (which equals more possible actions/activations for the alien side). 
Pimpmust fucked around with this message at 16:46 on Oct 13, 2014 |
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Oct 12, 2014 22:17
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