Harvey Mantaco posted:

Looked at the new Dark Souls boardgame video, and I'm a little unsure about the way it's looking:

Mister Sinewave posted:

Looking forward to trying this out once I locate some pieces

quote:

Quick questions for Starvation / unit limits:

0. Can you confirm whether supply depots are considered units for purposes of hex unit limits / determining Starvation? The rules imply they are since they refer to removing supply depots during the resettling phase (they can't move/flee as a result of starvation so if they must move they are removed instead.)

quote:

1. Hex unit limits / determining Starvation status in the starvation phase: Rules say "A dirty snow hex (white) can normally support ONE piece" (or TWO for x, THREE for y, etc) but the sidebar implies the scope of this phase does not include the enemy. Does this mean a dirty snow hex supports one friendly or one neutral unit (and all enemy units are ignored)? Or up to one friendly and up to one neutral (and all enemy units are ignored)?

quote:

2. The rules say that if there are too many units in a hex, those units are Starving. Do they cease Starving as soon as the hex is at or under its "capacity"? (Or is the Starvation attribute 'sticky' and only goes away once they move i.e. all Starving units must vacate the hex if possible?)

quote:

Clarifications:

THREATEN, PRESSGANG, and RAID: the acting unit cannot be adjacent to a hex with enemies. So no restrictions on the target hex? (i.e. the target hex can be adjacent to enemies so long as YOUR acting hex is not adjacent to enemies. Being next to enemies "pins" you in other words but otherwise does not affect you or who you target.)

MILITARIZE / TAKE UP ARMS: Can the "up to two" friendly civilians be in any hex? Can the two be in two different hexes (one in each)?

PRESSGANG action: rules say "if you have an armament in your hex [...]" I assume this wording should be same as THREATEN, i.e. "if you have a soldier in your hex [...]"

SynthOrange posted:

Nice! Maybe theme it up a bit more though? A spaceship in space can be a little bit generic. If it's a space parcel delivery game, why not make the box look like a space parcel with weird alien customs stamps, declarations etc?

SynthOrange posted:

If anyone was looking for fuckloads of resource tokens for cheap, I came across something almost perfect:


Cube beads! Come in a bunch of colors, fairly attractive, available in 6mm cube sizes which is pretty much resource cube sized, and priced at a few dollars for about a hundred or so on ebay or whatever. Yeah sure they're drilled but they're easily available and ridiculously cheap.

Foolster41 posted:

So basically I need to plan for an initial run of 10,000 copies, instead of 1,500 meaning my KS goal's going to be about 666x ( ) the cost I planned?

E: That's about $24,000,000+ for a first time Kickstarter. That's really not going to happen. Even if it costs more per unit, a smaller run would be better, since I'll be much more likely to raise that with a kickstarter.


Yes, this is what I'm trying to find out. I googled, but can't find anything on companies that would do this. It's starting to look like I'd have to do two companies, one to make the figures and then someone like Panda games to make the cardboard components and then somehow put them together.

Form labs looks like their just selling the printer, and I thought shapways just sold models for you to print yourself. I have a 3D printer coming (I got for $100, relatively cheap), but that's not at all going to be practical for producing a game.

SynthOrange posted:

If anyone was looking for fuckloads of resource tokens for cheap, I came across something almost perfect:


Cube beads! Come in a bunch of colors, fairly attractive, available in 6mm cube sizes which is pretty much resource cube sized, and priced at a few dollars for about a hundred or so on ebay or whatever. Yeah sure they're drilled but they're easily available and ridiculously cheap.

Essentia Tactics posted:

Each player chooses a class in secret. Players simultaneously reveal their choice. If the same class is selected, that class is banned and players select a new, non-banned, class. Repeat this process until player's choose distinct classes or all classes are banned. If all classes become banned, un-ban all classes and start from the beginning.

Once players have chosen distinct classes, players set their health to their class maximum, gain energy equal to their classes starting energy, and then resolve any "At start of game..." abilities. Then begin the first round of the game.

At the start of each round, each player chooses a tactic in secret. Then chosen tactics are revealed simultaneously. The player with the higher speed tactic has the first turn (if there is a tie, the player with the higher initiative goes first.)

On a players turn they resolve their tactic ability, if any. Then they take an action. To take an action: choose an un-blocked action, pay its energy cost, mark it as blocked, and then resolve it from left to right. This process is repeated until the active player has no actions remaining. Then the player with the highest speed who hasn't yet taken a turn takes a turn.

Once all players have taken a turn the round ends and a new round begins. Repeat this process until a player's character's health is reduced to zero or less. That player immediately loses.

Gutter Owl posted:

Gutter Owl posted:

Yo, design thread! Meltwater has reached a stability point I'm comfortable with, and I think it's time for some larger guided tests.

quote:

A board -- a board with row of 8 spaces for each player, and a pile of 3 "structural stability" tokens on the walls between players.
A spawn deck (currently just a 50/50 split of Zombie/empty square).
A deck of equipment (currently just all kill-one-zombie).

To represent dwindling resources, the turns are played out in 4 rounds:

Round 1: Scavenge, Action, Move, Spawn x3, then Action, Move, Spawn x2.
Round 2: Scavenge, Action, Move, Spawn, x2 then Action, Move, Spawn x3
Round 3: Scavenge, Action, Move, Spawn, then Action, Move, Spawn x2, Action, Move x2
Round 4: Action, Move x5

Scavenge: Everyone draws a card (currently -- this will eventually be a draft, but since all equipment is the same for now, that's a bit pointless).
Action: Play the action from one piece of equipment (currently all just kill-one-zombie), or character ability (currently none).
Move: All zombies move up 1, any zombies in space 1 of the outside board are considered to have reached the city, and do 1 damage to the player(s).
Spawn: Deal a card from the spawn deck for each player. If zombie, then put a zombie into space 8 for that player.

Players may only affect their own row, or those of their immediate neighbours (first and last are considered neighbouring). Any damage done by a zombie is done to the life tokens on EACH side of the row that zombie is in.

Setup: randomly spawn Zombies in Rows 3-8, and each player receives two cards from the equipment deck.

Board MS-Paint mockup:

Death of Rats posted:

Anniversary posted:

So here are some rules. Hopefully they make sense and give an idea of game flow. I'd appreciate any feedback.

Essentia Tactics posted:

Each player chooses a class in secret. Players simultaneously reveal their choice. If the same class is selected, that class is banned and players select a new, non-banned, class. Repeat this process until player's choose distinct classes or all classes are banned. If all classes become banned, un-ban all classes and start from the beginning.

Once players have chosen distinct classes, players set their health to their class maximum, gain energy equal to their classes starting energy, and then resolve any "At start of game..." abilities. Then begin the first round of the game.

At the start of each round, each player chooses a tactic in secret. Then chosen tactics are revealed simultaneously. The player with the higher speed tactic has the first turn (if there is a tie, the player with the higher initiative goes first.)

On a players turn they resolve their tactic ability, if any. Then they take an action. To take an action: choose an un-blocked action, pay its energy cost, mark it as blocked, and then resolve it from left to right. This process is repeated until the active player has no actions remaining. Then the player with the highest speed who hasn't yet taken a turn takes a turn.

Once all players have taken a turn the round ends and a new round begins. Repeat this process until a player's character's health is reduced to zero or less. That player immediately loses.

The game is themed as a fantasy arena combat game. To survive, and win, you'll need to mix bluffing and resource management. However your opponent can deny, or even outright steal, your resources if you don't stop them.

If that sounds interesting to anyone I can post (some of) the classes to give more of an idea of how the game plays.

CellBlock posted:

I'm intrigued, but I'm worried about the class selection/banning piece. Unless there are a lot of options, I see "collisions" like that happening a lot.

EDIT: Oh, that's only once at the start of the game. In that case, it's probably fine (unless there are a really small number to pick from, like 4-5).

Essentia Tactics posted:

Then they take an action. To take an action: choose an unblocked ability, pay its energy cost, mark it as blocked, and resolve it from left to right.

Anniversary posted:

That's exactly right.

I've got 10 classes in my current playtest documents, most of which are at a point where their design is relatively stable. There are a few other classes that are still too rough around the edges that aren't yet in there, but that I occasionally test with experienced playtesters.

My current debate with the rules is with the term 'Action'. In the draft posted here it is used to describe a character's abilities as well as the unit used to perform one of those abilities. I had a recent playtester have a lot of trouble with that, as they couldn't easily distinguish between the act of taking an action and the idea of an action as an ability. At the time, that feedback made a lot of sense to me, but they're also not really familiar with board games, where I feel this duality occurs somewhat frequently (such as action cards in Dominion and the actions you use to take them.) The new wording is:
But another playtester mentioned that they think the distinction is unnecessary and, as written, only confuses things. So I'm not entirely sure what way I want to go.

CodfishCartographer posted:

So I’m nearing another version of Behemoth, it’s been a while but I’ve been putting in a lot of work on revamping things.

One possible problem I can already forsee, though, is that there are a lot more cards now. Which is really saying something, since there were a lot of cards before! I’m worried it might be TOO many cards, but there are games that are nothing but cards so maybe it’s not that big of a deal? Basically there are:

80 Weapon Attack Cards (4 weapon decks with 20 cards each)
60 Behemoth Cards
16 Item Cards (8 item cards with 2 copies of each)
32-96 environment cards (1-3 decks of 32 cards each, each deck has 10-15 different cards)

So yeah, a lot of cards. I decided to split off items from the main deck of cards, as I realized that most players were using items as situational boosts - which means they would sit in players’ hands doing nothing for long periods of time. A big goal of mine with the game is to have interesting card combinations and interactions, and having to hold onto items limited the amount of interesting tools (specific attack cards) available to the player. To make up for this, I increased the number of cards in each weapon deck

To also increase some of the strategic choices the players can make, and add some replayability (which is something I was worried about) I added environments. How environments work is that during setup, an environment deck is chosen, and 6-7 cards are then placed facedown around the timer track. As the game goes on, these cards are flipped and then, a little bit later, encountered. These cards can either effect the Hunters that are encountering them, or can be smaller monsters that can alter gameplay and can be killed for additional VPs. Each environment has a different theme, both thematically and gameplay-wise. right now I have three designed: Forest, which provides bonuses to players and the behemoth, and has many smaller monsters; Desert, which puts a bigger focus on item card management and can cause lots of damage over time to careless hunters; and Jungle, which has more of a focus on limiting hunters’ control and putting more of a focus on careful planning.

Basically the main thing I’m worried about is loading up with way too many cards. Having typed all this out though, I’m thinking maybe I could cut down the environment decks into environment stacks - instead of having 10-15 different cards, each with up to 4 copies, I could maybe just go for 1 copy of each. This would greatly reduce the number of cards, but would also remove replayability some. After all, with 6-7 cards placed, you’ll see at least half (if not more) of what an environment has to offer on a single play session - whereas with 32 cards there’ll be more variety between play sessions, along with the occasional surprise for rare one-ofs. Of course, there’d probably be 1-2 duplicates on the board, which means there’d be a little less variety in a single play session.

Any thoughts? It’s also a concern because playtesting will be a real pain in the rear end with having to make so many cards. I’d use tabletop simulator, but none of my playtest friends have it.

The worst submarine posted:

Why are you worried about variety? You already have a stack of Behemoths; do you run through that quickly or are there a lot of duplicates? Based on how you describe the game as a lot of unique interactions it sounds like it should make many Cool Fun rounds without environments.

CodfishCartographer posted:

Oh, sorry, I should have elaborated better. The behemoth cards are actually all just different attacks for one specific Behemoth. I designed it so that, in theory, more Behemoths could be made later - which would probably have their own associated decks. It represents not only the Behemoth’s attacks, but also its health - so over the course of a game, players will see almost all of the Behemoth’s cards. Without environments, the only other variety currently comes from the four different weapon types, and trying to master the game’s mechanics.

CodfishCartographer posted:

Kerro posted:

Anniversary posted:

CodfishCartographer posted:

So I’m nearing another version of Behemoth, it’s been a while but I’ve been putting in a lot of work on revamping things.

One possible problem I can already forsee, though, is that there are a lot more cards now. Which is really saying something, since there were a lot of cards before! I’m worried it might be TOO many cards, but there are games that are nothing but cards so maybe it’s not that big of a deal? Basically there are:

80 Weapon Attack Cards (4 weapon decks with 20 cards each)
60 Behemoth Cards
16 Item Cards (8 item cards with 2 copies of each)
32-96 environment cards (1-3 decks of 32 cards each, each deck has 10-15 different cards)

So yeah, a lot of cards. I decided to split off items from the main deck of cards, as I realized that most players were using items as situational boosts - which means they would sit in players’ hands doing nothing for long periods of time. A big goal of mine with the game is to have interesting card combinations and interactions, and having to hold onto items limited the amount of interesting tools (specific attack cards) available to the player. To make up for this, I increased the number of cards in each weapon deck

To also increase some of the strategic choices the players can make, and add some replayability (which is something I was worried about) I added environments. How environments work is that during setup, an environment deck is chosen, and 6-7 cards are then placed facedown around the timer track. As the game goes on, these cards are flipped and then, a little bit later, encountered. These cards can either effect the Hunters that are encountering them, or can be smaller monsters that can alter gameplay and can be killed for additional VPs. Each environment has a different theme, both thematically and gameplay-wise. right now I have three designed: Forest, which provides bonuses to players and the behemoth, and has many smaller monsters; Desert, which puts a bigger focus on item card management and can cause lots of damage over time to careless hunters; and Jungle, which has more of a focus on limiting hunters’ control and putting more of a focus on careful planning.

Basically the main thing I’m worried about is loading up with way too many cards. Having typed all this out though, I’m thinking maybe I could cut down the environment decks into environment stacks - instead of having 10-15 different cards, each with up to 4 copies, I could maybe just go for 1 copy of each. This would greatly reduce the number of cards, but would also remove replayability some. After all, with 6-7 cards placed, you’ll see at least half (if not more) of what an environment has to offer on a single play session - whereas with 32 cards there’ll be more variety between play sessions, along with the occasional surprise for rare one-ofs. Of course, there’d probably be 1-2 duplicates on the board, which means there’d be a little less variety in a single play session.

Any thoughts? It’s also a concern because playtesting will be a real pain in the rear end with having to make so many cards. I’d use tabletop simulator, but none of my playtest friends have it.

CodfishCartographer posted:

Thanks for the input, guys! Guess I've been working on this project to the point that it's getting a little hard to fully step back haha. I'll leave environments on the back burner for now, and test the other stuff first.

I haven't actually used tabletop sim before, is it (somewhat) easy to bring custom games into it and share them with friends?

Also, suggestions for doing print n plays for games with lots of cards? cutting them out and then sleeving them all is kind of a pain in the rear end

CodfishCartographer posted:

80 Weapon Attack Cards (4 weapon decks with 20 cards each)
60 Behemoth Cards
16 Item Cards (8 item cards with 2 copies of each)
32-96 environment cards (1-3 decks of 32 cards each, each deck has 10-15 different cards)

...

instead of having 10-15 different cards, each with up to 4 copies, I could maybe just go for 1 copy of each. This would greatly reduce the number of cards, but would also remove replayability some. After all, with 6-7 cards placed, you’ll see at least half (if not more) of what an environment has to offer on a single play session - whereas with 32 cards there’ll be more variety between play sessions, along with the occasional surprise for rare one-ofs. Of course, there’d probably be 1-2 duplicates on the board, which means there’d be a little less variety in a single play session.

al-azad posted:

Mechanically I'm interested in the politics of the era. You'd have the Oda clan who are dedicated to unifying Japan through force or diplomacy. Another player is the disparate major clans desperately clinging onto power (Otomo, Mori, Takeda, Hojo, Uesugi) who vastly outnumber Oda but their lack of unity means they're slow to respond to threats (once a single clan activates they're done for the round). And the third player represents the Society of Jesus/Europe who are trying to undermine Japanese powerbase. They can't build their own military, instead they're influencing the board indirectly by converting provinces to Christianity. Christian controlled provinces let the Japanese players build arquebusers, the strongest unit. More importantly the Society player can "loan" Christian daimyo to the Japanese players. In this way the Japanese players get extra actions by making deals with the Society player at the expense of setting themselves up for potential backstabs.

Gutter Owl posted:

You can massively reduce all of these numbers (except maybe the Behemoth deck, if you're using it for hit points), and I absolutely think you should. Not only will this reduce your print demands, it will give you MUCH better testing numbers, because you'll be reducing variables.

Like, the environment decks? Seven cards, all one ofs. Maybe eight cards if you wanna be squirrely. Because even if you see all seven Jungle cards in a single game, you'll theoretically see them in a different order each game, and that can produce wildly different experiences (Vlaada does this a lot in games like Dungeon Lords/Petz. You'll basically see every monster and room in each game, but the order of availability produces entirely different experiences.)

CodfishCartographer posted:

Actually typing this out, I suppose that each newly shuffled deck would result in the cards coming in new orders, which would alter gameplay decisions a decent amount even with small deck sizes. I'd just be worried about players sticking to 1 or 2 "best" card combinations and getting to those as quickly as possible.