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Whew, it's been an inspiring and educational week since I stumbled across this thread. I've been putting together a prototype for something that's been bouncing around in my head, and since things have come together (then been discarded, then come together again) so quickly the current components are whatever I've had lying around. But I have a question about the practical allocation of resources. I intend to support 4 different resource types and up to 6 players. I haven't balanced the numbers very well yet, but I'd like to allow each player to have the ability to have at least 10, if not 20, of each type of resource. Three main ways of maintaining resource counts come to mind, each with their own sets of pros and cons: Dice: Each player gets 4 D20s to place on their player mat, tracking their four different resource totals. In my case I'd want (4 resources x 6 players) 24 D20s to accomplish this. Pros: easy to produce (I assume vanilla D20s are cheap), easy to package (small), little set-up required. Cons: Using dice as counters has never felt right to me. It's always hard to find the next number I'm looking for (on both D20s proper and and spindown counters), and if the table gets bumped, you're sometimes screwed. Chits (tokens or cards or paper dollars): Each player has 4 separate piles of money, adding or subtracting to/from the appropriate pile. If I went with denominations of 1, 3, and 6, one could represent all values 0-20 using 6 chits (2 1s, 2 3s, 2 6s), which means I'd want (6 chits x 4 resources x 6 players) 144 resource chits to be thorough. Pros: I've found that this works reasonably well. Piles are usually physically robust, and there's something slightly satisfying about making change. Cons: I assume any cost-effective production of chits would require the purchaser to punch them out. Punching out 144 chits sounds like a tedious first-time experience, and that doesn't even factor in my potential 90 damage-counting chits. Plus this would be a huge mess to clean up if the box got knocked over. I'm leaning away from cards, as my idea necessitates plenty of cards already. Monopoly money might be a decent alternative. Paper: Each player writes down their resource values. Pros: Quick, reliable, accurate. Cons: Feels dry, not gamey; likely it would remove people from the thematic aspect of the game. Also, the pencils that come with games are lousy, but remembering to bring equipment outside of the box is a hassle as well. So my questions are, and I'm looking for both general game design as well as specific to my situation feedback: * What do you folk find the best way to maintain independent sets of resources is, and why? Is there anything I haven't thought of, or should some combination be employed? * Would having 24 D20s and 18 D10s come in a box be off-putting? Would it be expensive to manufacture? * Would having 144 + 90 = 234 chits be too many to punch out? Too many to have in a box? Too expensive to manufacture? What if they were cards/dollars, which you'd have to frequently add to/subtract from, instead?
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May 22, 2014 19:04
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Zark the Damned posted:How about dials? I considered that idea, but they're probably rather expensive to produce (especially well), and are still subject to sliding about. Zark the Damned posted:Another alternative is how Tiny Epic Kingdoms and Eclipse do it, each player has a base board with numbers 1-10 on it, and has a marker for each resource type they just put on the appropriate number. This has the same problem as dice in that a clumsy bastard knocking the table may scramble your counts, but you could invest in sturdier base boards which have 'slots' for the markers. Aha! I've played a game or two like that, and they've worked out to my satisfaction. I feel like the bump factor is less bad than with dice, and the addition/subtraction becomes much more intuitive when you're entirely braindead and can't do basic math (the most common time I find myself playing board games). I'll give that a mock-up next playtest; I suspect it will meet my needs most elegantly. Thanks.
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May 22, 2014 23:01
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It sounds to me like you're looking for some of the mechanics from Mage Wars. The game had a deck-building aspect which was decent. First you'd select your mage, then you could compile up to 120 points worth of cards, where each card had multiple affinity costs (2 Nature, 1 Fire), and you had to apply a modifier based on your mage's affinity (the Ranger had to pay double for Fire points, the Demon Guy got both Death and Fire at 1x cost, etc...). But the clever part was actually playing it. Each deck represented your spellbook -- your potential pool of actions. Each round you picked two cards from your deck to be in your hand. You could play them face-up for their energy costs, or you could play them face-down for exactly two energy, regardless of what the card was. Cards could have separate costs for flipping face-up depending on their effect (this tile explodes, or that dude has a bad enchantment). Sometimes they were trickier: Decoy gives you back more energy than it cost to play if your opponent causes it to flip face-up (because they Dispel it or something). Any card you didn't play this round goes to a separate pile which goes back into your deck at the end of the next round (meaning you can't have it in your hand every consecutive turn). In practice it's a beautiful system of bluffing and mind-games. How is that face-down card going to affect me? Is it going to be a damage reversal? I think on this round he's going to cast a huge fireball spell, so one of my two cards should be a counterspell. Shoot! He didn't do anything that round, now I don't have counterspell next round. Mage Wars as a whole was a little more time consuming than it was worth (it'd take multiple hours for a two player game if you built your decks right before using them and took time to think about your moves and countermoves), but the deck-picking system and the enchantment revealing system were brilliant. You're forced to think a few moves ahead and include what you think your opponent might do during those turns. Bonus points if you don't quite know what's in their deck (they've used two disenchants, how many did they bring?).
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Jun 4, 2015 21:02
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CodfishCartographer posted:Behemoth Got any fresh links to the Print 'n' Play version of this? I've been playing a couple of semi-cooperative boardgames recently and hankering for more. I remembered reading about this one a while back and still have a copy of the rule set, but I think the links to the cards themselves have expired. I'd be interested in giving it a try next time folks are over.
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Dec 16, 2015 20:59
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Time to get mighty acquainted with my old friend, Scissors. I'll report back once I've had a chance to play it, although lately leisure activities have proceeded on a geologic time scale. Then one of these days maybe I'll get back to my own design aspirations. Edit: After printing up and cutting out the cards, it was not obvious which cards belonged to which weapon deck. I wrote some letters on 'em (with corresponding letters on item cards), but you may wish to include an icon or text on the cards somewhere. Or even different backings in the final version, if they're not designed to intermingle. Hammer Bro. fucked around with this message at 02:21 on Dec 19, 2015 |
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Dec 18, 2015 18:18
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Behemoth trip report! I got together with two friends and one sister (we didn't even know he had a sister) for a bit of impromptu Behemoth. I'd read the rules once a few days prior, but for the most part it was reading aloud as we went along. The first issue we ran into: what do Power Counters do? Especially as the Bowgun user, I was uncertain if they were purely mechanics-oriented or if they served some additional purpose. We didn't find any mention of them in the rules but eventually decided (primarily due to Sharpening Stone) that they must by default increase the power of the attack by however many counters are placed on it. The guy with the Sword and Shield used the special ability, so he had no cards at the end of his turn. The Behemoth missed two wing attacks (wrong side), then hit this guy with one. But since it was before any attacks had gone off, he had no cards in hand and also no reward points. We couldn't quite figure out what to do in that situation -- it seemed like our options were Nothing At All or Eliminate Him. Naturally, having just started the game, we chose the former. But the rules weren't explicit on that front. Also it took us a moment to figure out how Sword and Shield worked. He readied Quick Stab, so as it says on that card he was allowed to discard a card to ready one item card. Using the Sword and Shield ability, he got to ready two item cards instead (at the cost of discarding his hand at the end of the turn). So he ended the turn with nothing in hand, but a Quick Stab, a Flash Bomb, and a Potion readied. We were eventually comfortable that that was how things should play out, but again, it took us a minute to figure out that that's how things (hopefully) should have happened. I should mention that we didn't read any of the cards in advance. The Bowgun was a little odd, but I think I got the feel for it, and I like what it was theoretically intended for. It seemed like my attacks would stay out, and I'd pick one, but if it didn't have any Power Counters on it when I picked it, then it would be removed forever. The first thing that came under question was when the removed Power Counter took effect. I first readied Explosive Shot, which came in with one Power Counter. Next turn, was I supposed to remove the Power Counter before doing my damage (effectively 3), or do 4 damage then remove the counter? We ended up going the less-damage route, but not due to any confident insight. Also, Explosive Shot's text says that "You may remove an Item Card in your hand from the game to place 1 Power Counter on this card." It wasn't clear to me when I was supposed to use that ability, or how often I could use it. Since other cards restricted themselves to certain phases or had other limitations, I assumed it could be done whenever and as many times per turn as I wanted. I quickly started dumping items so I could max out Shrapnel Blast. Pitfall Trap seemed overpowered. When the game ended, the Behemoth had 9 attacks readied; we took it from Yellow to dead before it had a chance to act. Sword and Shield seemed the strongest. Every turn you could do something, double-up on the effect, then dump your hand so you'd get a fresh hand next turn. I know the theory is that it leaves you vulnerable to damage, but we wrecked the Behemoth far too quickly. I think the furthest person along the turn track was at the top-right corner; just over halfway through. Lance and Greatshield guy felt a little disappointed with his deck. I (Bowgun) and Sword and Shield guy were going through our hands rather quickly (Sword and Shield because of the ability, me because I dumped all my items to Explosive Shot), whereas he didn't have a good way of drawing multiple cards. His abilities were based on blocking, but on two out of the three or so attacks the Behemoth got to make, it went for the wrong wing. Not only that but his only defensive cards were also his attack cards, so he quickly had a hand full of items and no defenses / attacks to charge up. Maybe the card-drawing items could have helped him out some but it still wouldn't've had the turnaround that the other two of us had (thanks to drawing up to 6 each turn) and the game was too short (turn-wise) for that to really matter. Standard and Spear girl was generally confused, but that might not be an aspect of the game so much as the crowd and her history with table gaming (I don't know what it is). The point spread was surprisingly close: 10 / 11 / 12 / 13. Thematically I liked that the cards telegraph some amount of what is going to happen, and I haven't looked at all of them (or really most of them, given how few attacks the Behemoth got off), but I imagine that will lose its fun factor quickly as one simply memorizes what the distributions are. I definitely liked the surprise urgency created by enraged cards. That's a keen mechanic that scales nicely; when we hit the Behemoth for 9 (Sword and Shield guy. I forget how the turn worked but he discarded a card which added a Power Counter to an effect which added two Power Counters, which he then doubled using the Sword and Shield ability. And I think something else had gotten another counter or two on it), the Behemoth got good and ready to hit back hard. It just never got the chance. It was engaging while we played it, though half our energies went toward figuring out how things were supposed to work, and only a portion of that can be blamed by my lack of preparedness and their unfamiliarity. But it felt way too easy. I don't think we were misusing the rules and I don't feel like we got terribly lucky, either. I don't have a feel for how well the game would hold up to repeated plays. The card pool is certainly limited, but it's designed to be a quick game (I imagine, which I also think is a good thing). I think it would've been more exciting had the Behemoth gotten more hits off and damaged people -- we were perfectly willing to sacrifice Reward Points instead of cards-in-hand just to delay the Behemoth's death so we could damage a few more body parts, but we didn't get the opportunity. Returning sacrificed Reward Points to the Behemoth's action pile is cool in theory, but it never happened in practice. If it had, I would've been unclear if it was in-spirit to look at the specific attack pattern of the card before returning it to the pile, but the one card we put back (from a Flash Bomb) was picked solely based on a convenient delay number. I imagine the game would be more difficult with fewer players (we'll possibly try it again with three although I don't know how long into the future it'll be before I have three table-gamers in the same room). It would certainly be easier to make more difficult with either additional regular (Blue/Yellow/Red) Behemoth cards or maybe optional Purple (post-Red) cards. And I have a hunch that the draw-up-to-six mechanic also contributes to the ease of victory. Theoretically one could just play one attack then absorb five damage every turn without returning cards back to the Behemoth. Conceptually, I also like that each player picked their weapon which also determined their play style. I had no complaints with Bowgun, other than that I'd set up Shrapnel Blast to have 8 counters, which I assumed meant that next turn I'd do 8 damage, then I'd ready the quickest card I had (some item), and the turn after that I'd do 7, et cetera. I never got that big damage turn in, though, and I'm not sure I could've worked toward it much quicker.
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Dec 20, 2015 06:17
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I think we only chained Pitfalls once, but it was crucial since we really didn't want the Behemoth attacking by that point (it already had 4 or 5 cards readied). Deck-spanning is a little trickier of a problem to tackle. Going through effectively one card a turn, as Greatshield was forced to do, seems like it would be boring. I realize there are items for that but when other people have other means (Sword and Shield can effectively draw 6 every turn) of doing it better, using the items feels like a waste. I still think the drawing-back-up-to-six mechanic is the problem point. The only discouragement from going full-wombo, besides whatever associated delay costs there are, is that the Behemoth maybe might attack you and force you to give up some Reward cards you may not even have. But it's easy to determine when that's impossible (due to the timer track) or unlikely (based on the card descriptions). If you only got to draw one or two cards per turn (still up to six), you'd have to be a little more cautious when going ham. It would also make the draw-cards items a little more savory. Another thought that would be interesting: what if each Enraged card added to the Behemoth's readied pile also Sped it Up by 1? I already like how dangerous they feel, but having to react to a change in timing would be brutal, but I don't think unfair. You can still essentially control when you're willing to risk hitting it hard (something we were initially nervous about but then realized that the consequences were pretty avoidable), and by moving it backward on the track the game should get an extra turn or two while the players deal with this increased difficulty.
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Dec 22, 2015 18:46
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This is kind of meta-feedback, but I've been skimming through the last year's worth of posts (yours included) and I gave your rules a quick look-see and while they seem mechanical and comprehensive, they would not serve well as an outsider's (player's) guide. I caught that there were certain actions available and restrictions present but the actual game was abstracted enough that the big picture as a whole didn't click. There were also no concrete examples of monsters or gameplay snippets such that I didn't have adequate foundation to place the rules listed atop, so they slipped out of memory rather quickly. I know it's intended as a personal reference to the fellow with the vision, but it might receive better reactions if it were presented as a rulebook to new players. Even if that is a lot of extra effort for something that changes frequently.
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Jan 12, 2017 22:43
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I'm prototyping a Deckbuilder + Minis game, and the last physical attempt was fairly encouraging. I'd like a digital assistant, but I'm a whiny babby and don't want anything that costs money, requires an account, or goes online. Anybody know of anything that makes it very easy to shuffle, draw, discard, and occasionally add or remove cards from a deck? There ought to be a pretty simple utility but everything I'm coming across is way overblown and violates the above requirements. Ideally it should handle multiple decks simultaneously, but presumably I could also just run extra copies of it. Kudos to whoever recommended nanDECK. After an hour or two of experimentation I'm now in a position to create new monster decks (everybody's doin' it) by trivially copying a few lines from a master spreadsheet.
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Jan 14, 2017 19:42
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I got fed up with the existing deck simulators so I made my own: http://www.gastronok.com/CardBoard.7z Its main strengths are adding decks and cards on the fly. That and it's offline. Now back to playtesting the game I was working on -- this time without printing, cutting, and shuffling flimsy bits of paper.
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Jan 16, 2017 03:44
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It's hard to say precisely how things would play out just by reading that, and I realize things are still early in the design phase, but here's what comes to mind:
Recommended Reading Two games come to mind based on your synopsis. The first is Love Letter. A game for two to four players; there are only 15 cards in the entire deck and everyone shares them. On your turn you'll have exactly two cards in your hand, and you have to play one of them. This only gives you two options. Additionally, about half the cards have the opportunity to eliminate an opponent, so the stakes are high. At its core it's a game about reading your opponents and inferring which of the 15 cards they have. Everyone has the reference list telling them exactly how many cards are in the deck and what they do. The first clever part, though, is that before each game a single random card is removed from the deck. This creates an element of uncertainty -- you can't know exactly what they'll have, or if their actions (they only have two choices) were deliberate or circumstantial. The second clever part is that a round will take maybe five minutes once people know how to play. This allows there to be a sense of tension from the onset; every other card has the possibility to eliminate someone. But there's no opportunities to snowball (nothing's worse than knowing you'll lose but being forced to stick it out), and even if you are eliminated you won't be excluded for long. The other game that your game evokes is Mage Wars. This game had a lot of things going on but a few aspects seemed particularly relevant.
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Jan 23, 2017 22:57
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Anniversary posted:The deck is an abstract representation of the player's character's endurance. When the deck runs out, and there's no cards to reshuffle, the players lose. So there would be three zones - the deck, the discard (which will be shuffled into a new deck when the current one runs out), and the trash. Enemy attacks primarily move cards from the discard to the trash, player actions can move cards from the trash to the discard, and this management is one of the gimmicks for the game. Fake Edit: After seeing other replies I notice you're trying to use a standard deck of cards. The below might not apply as much since I'm going the full made-up-card route, but I spent enough time typing it that I'll hope it's still inspirational, at least. I'm prototyping something vaguely similar and have been having a lot of fun with it, so first I'll explain part of my setup (it's a little different) then what has and hasn't worked. My game:
What's worked:
What's helped it work:
What I'm concerned about :
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Feb 7, 2017 22:20
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Anniversary posted:Now this is curious. I'd be interested in hearing more if you're inclined to share. Well, this took way too long to produce, but I think it captures the spirit of the game. Beware o' table-breakage; you may have to right-click and go to "View Image" if the expanded version isn't wide enough.  Dancer posted:Potential solution: sheets of large-ish blank stickers (maybe some which are meant for envelopes? Cheap to get from any stationery store) combined with Magic commons (I got 100 for free from my local store when I wanted them). If the stickers make it hard to shuffle then sleeve I guess. It was actually pretty cheap to get a bunch of blank cards off Amazon. Then I just write something very generic on them for early playtests (A, B, etc) and slightly more specific for later playtests (Move, Dodge, etc). But digital makes it so dang easy.
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Feb 10, 2017 01:49
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Anniversary posted:Interesting. My first thought is it seems like some sort of fusion of Mage Knight and KD:M inspirations wise? I've played the old Mage Knight but not the recent one. I had a prototype from a few years back which was based on the idea of Dominion + Catan; it was a bit bland. KD:M came out and I read enough reviews to think: I can do better. And in my estimation, I have. There's a pretty simple default AI for all monsters that I as a player have had no problem operating. I have yet to hands-off playtest it, but I know a good analysis paralysis guy I can throw it at -- if he can handle it, then there won't be a problem. Azran posted:Any thoughts? I'm assuming you had a lookup sheet explaining the action of each card? Though it's a large hassle especially early on, some people are helped immensely by having the proper words printed on the card. If you haven't seen it from earlier in the thread, nanDECK is pretty good for printing up custom cards.
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Feb 12, 2017 18:12
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Azran posted:Yeah, I had a lookup sheet. I think using a card for every ability you have made it easier to parse. I actually have NanDeck, I'm just absolutely awful at any kind of coding so I never really toyed around with it. If you want a template that produces cards featured in my really-tall-image a few posts back, I'm using the following baseline: code:code:
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Feb 14, 2017 02:04
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Prototyping on physical paper was getting cumbersome (and I was running out of coins to use as tokens) so if anyone needs a super bare-bones hexagonal token simulator I made my own: HexBoard You can change the background image, make hexes, move them, rotate their arrow, and change their colors. That's about all it does, but that's all I need it to do. Now I can focus on mocking up some more interesting scenarios.
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Feb 16, 2017 00:20
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Aaah! I haven't read this thread in years because I mostly do digital game (jams) but I'm participating in a goon game jam that ends this evening and I just remembered that the thing I made is a card game that uses standard cards! Apologies for the drive-by posting but if anyone has time today to check out Ace Pilot and provide feedback I'd appreciate it. Especially with regard to the comprehensibility of the rules. I spent ALL DAY yesterday redoing them based on the (single point of) feedback I'd received. I'll be at a function for most of the day but there should be just enough time for me to panic when I get back before the game is due. (I'm aware that one pilot still needs art.) Sorry/ thanks!
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Mar 26, 2023 17:14
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In proper last-minute panic fashion, I deleted my more detailed reply. But thanks a bunch for the feedback! I rewrote the Between Aces section to hopefully be more clear (and surely nothing can go wrong with a last-minute rewrite), and I reworded the "This is the rare case" example. Also (as per usual) I hit the Submit button (after 35 minutes of wrestling with itch.io) and immediately noticed a problem. I'll try to be more active in this thread both going forward and a little bit retroactively, but I really do appreciate the drive by panic support.
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Mar 27, 2023 05:35
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