Board Game Design Laboratory: Igor, get the meeples

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Board Game Design Laboratory: Igor, get the meeples

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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MJP posted:

you might have a tourist in disguise as a Cuban spy

Is this a typo? Tell me it's not a typo.

# ¿ May 17, 2020 18:02

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 09:43

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

The drought card symbol looks like Link is flipping me the bird. I approve.

burexas.irom posted:

The core mechanic of the game is the bidding system. After the courtier's cards are revealed, 3d6 is rolled and each player gets the same amount of influence tokens (not pictured) which they use to secretly bid on each of the three courtier's cards using the bidding trays (pictured in the photo at the top, white cardboard things with 3 compartments). Beside the tokens the player may also include relevant special effect cards into their bid. When the bidding phase is over, the players tip over their bidding trays and resolve the bids. Tied bids cancel each other out.

Could you break this down a bit more?
1) Three courtier cards come out.
2) Each player gets (the same) random amount of tokens.
3) They bid on the cards secretly.
4) Bids are revealed, the highest untied result for each card gets the card.
5) Remaining tokens and failed bids are then ???

Splicer fucked around with this message at 15:50 on Sep 6, 2020

# ¿ Sep 6, 2020 15:38

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

burexas.irom posted:

The idea is to add variety to every bid and not let the players calculate too much beforehand, i.e. present them with a new conundrum each turn. It's 3d6 because i wanted a minimum of 3 tokens, and a maximum of 18 was just a guess. Maybe 3d4 is better, but I wanted to keep the dice simple.

You don't get to keep unused currency, future bids can only be augmented with won card effects.

EDIT: You've given me an idea. I was tinkering around with carry-over bidding tokens early in the development, but couldn't find an elegant solution. It has to be an exorbitant rate, so I'm thinking maybe the value of the highest die rolled of tokens to carry over one to the next round. With just the one being the max allowed? Also I feel the game is complex enough as-is so I'm wary of adding new rules.

~~Assuming~~ GIven that the ??? is just "discarded", a possible carryover mechanic could be:
1) Three courtier cards come out.
2) Each player gets X tokens.
3) They bid on the cards secretly. They must use ALL their currently available tokens.
3) Bids are revealed, the highest untied result for each card gets the card.
4) Tokens from successful bids are discarded, and each player retains all/half/whatever of their failed bid tokens.
5) (rest of the turn happens)
6) Three new courtier cards come out
7) Each player gets topped up by Y tokens. They must use ALL their currently available tokens.
8) Goto 3

So someone who fails to get any cards on one turn is likely to sweep the board on the second turn, but if they do they're going to be at a disadvantage the following turn etc, and the carryover means a lot of variety between bids.

# ¿ Sep 6, 2020 15:51

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

burexas.irom posted:

That's interesting. I'm wary of rewarding failed bids, although it may work into the narrative, as in "you've tried to influence the character, but someone else succeeded, therefore character feels he owes you one next time". It may be a good balancing tool, but it still leaves the problem of punishing the player that outsmarted the others, especially if they cancel each other out with high bids.

An early playtest showed people will tend to "all-in" on a single card, and the idea between players always starting the bidding with the same amount of tokens is that a safe advantage is only attained by skill, i.e. having an extra influence (that safely puts you over the top without risking a tie) on a card you won previously (+1 influence on a specific courtier being a fairly common card effect). So, at most I would allow one token to carry over, but I'm thinking is there a more elegant solution than rewarding a failed bid?

You're not really rewarding failed bids; only successful bids actually get a reward, failed bids just increase your odds of ultimately obtaining a successful bid. Especially if you only get to carry over half. A smart bidder would still have a significant advantage and get more cards per turn, it just changes what smart bidding is a bit. For example, going all in on a guy that nobody else was courting that turn is actually a waste of coins you could have splashed elsewhere and partially carried over.

If you're worried about it from a narrative standpoint there's a bunch of ways that a failed bid could return all or some of your influence. e.g. if the blacksmith isn't interested in his nephew getting a cushy position as steward of your estate, well, maybe the treasurer has an unemployed cousin?

Splicer fucked around with this message at 16:48 on Sep 6, 2020

# ¿ Sep 6, 2020 16:46

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

CodfishCartographer posted:

What are some solutions for tracking health for combat that requires fairly large health pools for PvE enemies?

I have an idea for a combat system that I think is interesting, but it would result in players playing 3-5 cards per turn, each card dealing 1-3 damage. That's like 10 damage a turn per player! Ideally I'd like there to be boss characters that take multiple turns to kill that players need to team up to kill, but that requires tracking 100+ hit points. Some d10s or a poo poo load of counters would technically work, but would be sloppy design and fiddly to handle. Giving the enemy armor / defense to reduce damage might work, but if players can't get enough damage to overcome that value, they may as well not attack at all.

I guess writing this out, maybe the answer is to have armor that reduces damage by 1-2 per card? So most cards would do no damage unless you could beef them up. Though that might feel kinda lovely.

Multi stage bosses keep the amount of damage to be tracked at one time pretty low and also lets you do some fun tricks.

# ¿ Dec 18, 2021 14:40

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