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You already have a lot of awesome suggestions here (I think that xopods 'single check' system is probably the closest to what you are looking for) -- but I am wondering whether or not you have considered setting static speeds for each 'class' (so no rolling) and keeping your random piloting checks. Without seeing your game in action, I am not sure whether or not anything important would be lost by eliminating the randomness... but it seems to me that static speed presents the players a more clear, consistent strategic choice. This is presuming that there are obstacles and item use to help vary up the playing field though and to make more moderate speeds a better choice for the leader. It should be easy enough to bang out a playtest and see how it goes (each class would presumably just be the average of the dice you originally had them rolling...although you might want to tone down the d20 -- so 2,3,4,5,6,10).
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Dec 7, 2012 16:24
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So, I've been toying with a card game based on recreating the final fight of a Kung Fu movie. Specifically, several heroes fighting a single big baddie and his minions. Based on the way fights normally flow in the movies, I am envisioning a sort of push your luck mechanic where the aggressor plays a series of attack cards with ever increasing the odds that the defender is able to play a block that forces him out of position (making him more vulnerable to counterattack). Once he stops playing cards, the defender then becomes the aggressor and the pattern repeats. The defender has to decide on how much of their hand to fill with blocks... running the risk of having nothing to attack with. My earliest drafts of this have been a deck drafting game where 20 cards are drawn and displayed each turn and the players, one by one, chooses a hand of five from these cards. There are basically high/medium/low stances and some attacks can be made from all stances, some only from one stance. Blocks work the same way except that some have the ability to modify the stance of the attacker. The idea is that a block played correctly might leave the attacker in a high stance, vulnerable to a low attack by the defender. This works... sort of... but it is way overcomplicated at the moment and it just doesn't have the jazz that I am looking for. Any thoughts on improving this mechanic? I am also interested in any suggestions for any alternate mechanics that might capture the feel. DirkGently fucked around with this message at 05:48 on Dec 11, 2012 |
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Dec 11, 2012 05:41
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xopods posted:
That is very clever -- for some reason I am picturing the Space Alert action queue except with martial arts. Thanks for the idea. I will play around with an action queue to see whether or not anything cool develops from it (while trying to avoid just "borrowing" your description wholesale *grin*).
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Dec 11, 2012 18:26
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TheSoundNinja posted:I'm currently working on my submission for the January TGD contest, Panty Raid. I'm a little stuck, mechanics-wise, and I could use some help. The token underneath the card idea is pretty good -- but the problem is that, as written, I think that the 'd4' option is markedly better than the 'Level Up' and still doesn't really encourage the gameplay that I think you want. With the d4 option, as an opposing player, I have a 25% chance of both gaining TWO points AND setting back a potential opponent at no real cost to myself. The 'Level Up' option gives me a variable chance (->d6 25%, ->d8 50%, ->d10 60%) of getting one point while also helping my opponent. At worst, everyone always picks the 'd4' option -- at best, the decision process becomes = will the 'level up' option give me a 50% chance of a point (if yes, then) is player behind me in points (if yes) then play 'level up'. This holds unless each player has a finite number of tokens, which results in the type of gameplay xopods outlines (ie. on whom can I safely ditch my positive tokens). Partially, it depends on what the 'Trope Cards' do. If the trope cards either aid or hinder the player (possibly going into the player's hand for the future) in some way and are limited, then that also makes the guessing game slightly more interesting -- especially with limited tokens. For instance, do I think that my opponent would waste a positive trope card so that they could hide one of their last remaining negative tokens underneath, etc. Regardless, I think you need some mechanism to actually encourage cooperation though (right now, the game outline seems directly competitive to me) -- if you want to allow backstabbing. Maybe if there are too many failed rooms then the game ends in failure FOR EVERYBODY (maybe each time a room is failed roll a d10, if the dice is lower than the number of failed rooms, then game over for everyone). Or, possibly (again with some sort of shared failure state, like a time limit) everyone is trapped in the same room and there is a modicum of cooperation necessary to get the whole group out... but the active player gets the most panties for success. The strategy then is when is it worth the risk of screwing over everyone to hold back the leader... Another alternative is to do something like what Cosmic Encounter does and have each room be a direct competition between two random players (one is the aggressor, the other the defender) and each player is able to call in aid (the actual result of this aid could be resolved using the token system you describe). Helping the aggressor means gaining panties yourself... helping the defender means keeping the aggressor from progressing. This works best with a resolution mechanic that is not pure luck though.
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Jan 10, 2013 23:00
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Admin Understudy posted:Im leaning towards requiring multiple cards being played by a player for a combined effect. I toyed around with a system akin to Epic Spell Wars where players would play a Topic, a Tone, and a Level of Knowledge card together to various effects. But I just can't shake the fact that a similar cars interplay in my game would be scaled down a bit from Epic Spell Wars so why make an inferior version of an existing game. I'm more liking each card being two things, the topic of conversation and then on the edge it has some sort of modifier or effect. Basically you'd play a category topic card and the other card partially underneath that would have a various effect on the main card played. I think that it is pretty tough to determine a system for this because abstractly representing conversations is rarely done (as opposed to combat or trading) so there are no default answers. I do have a couple of quick thoughts though. First, how are you going to represent 'the boss'? Are you planning on having a player in the position or is this going to be an AI thing? -- because both could change the strategies available and the required components quite dramatically. Option 1 Assuming that the 'boss' is not player controlled, one suggestion is that you could just 'adapt' the standard fantasy fighting system (like Epic Spell Wars) into a conversational format -- so every player and the boss has a set of HP and conversations are all about doing 'damage'. The advantage of this system is that it is pretty well trodden ground and intuitively anyone who has played D&D or any RPG video game is going to have a pretty intuitive view of how this works. Once you have made this decision, it is pretty easy to see how your mechanics would develop... You could start spicing this up a little bit -- instead of counting down HP, each player has an 'interest level' for the boss that counts up. Each different 'boss' has a different interest in one of the four projects making him 'weak' to playing cards of this sort (adding extra 'interest' (ie. damage) and an area that he is uninterested in making him 'strong' against topics of this sort. Possibly an attempt to find out the bosses weakness would be an action during the work week which would take away from drawing cards. In addition, rather than focusing on increasing the bosses interest rate in you, workers could spend the week gathering 'modifiers' that hamper or 'attack' the other players. Maybe everyone has a 'Apparent competence level' (ie. HP) and the modifiers might allow you to damage that. If they fall below 0 they are out of the conversation. Other potential modifiers would be slowing others players ('long anecdote'), stealing their cards('taking credit'), weakening the card they played('underhanded insult'), modifying the 'topic' of your card ('really selling it'), possibly even changing the boss' weakness 'refocusing our efforts', etc. The boss could even 'attack' periodically, asking a demanding question of the players and decreasing the player's competence levels (and potentially eliminating them) unless they play an appropriate topic in defense. So, do you seek information on the boss... seek to build a specialized hand... seek to diversify... or work on gimmicky abilities that help you and hamper your opponents. It basically writes itself! The problem being that this, perhaps because of its ease of use and familiarity, isn't the most exciting thing in the world and you have to do some work before its strategy becomes interesting. Just because it uses similar mechanics to other games though doesn't mean that it has to be the same game. The devil is really in the details. I would aim for quick with a press your luck feel -- something like a slightly more complicated, card based King of Tokyo rather than the very random Epic Spell Wars. Option 2 You could pattern it after a trick taking game... say 'Hearts' (except that you are trying to win tricks rather than lose). So, say, each round against the 'boss' there is a different random project (out of the four) that is his or her trump card. This could be peeked at instead of drawing new cards or discarding old cards. The player who is losing lays down a card, based on the project of his choice... players must follow and play topics of that 'suite', play a card of the same value but differing topic (which changes the conversation and other players have to follow them) -- if they can do neither of those then they can either play a trump card (which changes the conversation and everyone has to follow) or discard a card. If everyone is forced to discard a card, the last player to play gets a victory point. This works best with ways to increase your knowledge of other people's hands (and a set number of basic cards). The modifier cards are a little trickier here but could include things like looking at other player's cards, stealing random cards from them, forcing them to display a card of X value or pass the hand, looking at the next trump card, inflating your card value (up or down), changing the suite of a card played, etc. If you do this, I suspect that you will want to get rid of the four piles and have a draft mechanic (everyone gets a card of 6 cards at the start of the work week, picks two and passes the remainder to his or her right). You could also 'work overtime' (discard one card and draw a random card from the deck) or 'rest' (discard a card and take one from the discard). Both of those are pretty rough though and I am sure you can do better!
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Jan 21, 2013 03:54
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So, I am continuing to work on polishing my September contest entry, Dictator, and I have hit a bit of snag (I can provide the full rules if anyone is so interested or if this is not clear). The basic rundown is that players are attempting to compete against each other for Victory points... while simultaneously trying to fend off a number of threats. If the threats win, then everybody loses, but if not then the player with the highest total of VP wins at the end of the game. Each player has a hand of 6 numbered cards from four suites (refilled each turn). Each turn a player is also assigned one threat. Threats are defeated by playing cards of the same suite up to a certain value (so, if it is a 'Wealth' threat then you have to play 'Wealth' card totaling 7 or more). If the player is successful, they gain a VP. Each player normally doesn't have enough cards to deal with the threat themselves, so they have to make deals with other players -- everyone who is interested in contributing places cards face down in front of the player. These are shuffled and then revealed. If the others have played the correct suite then the contributing cards add to the original player's total... if they placed an opposed suite (say 'Honor' is opposed to wealth), then it subtracts. The idea was that, since it is anonymous, people would backstab and cause people to fail (so that they don't get victory points). Here's the problem though: none of my playtesters ever used this mechanic and I am no 100% sure why. One possibility is that my group is just too cooperative (but this seemed to be an issue in the contest as well). The other difficulty that I see is this -- since the same resources which could be used to screw people over are also used for a myriad of positive reasons -- to defeat your own threat and gain VP or to help someone that helped you -- the optimal strategy seems to suggest never screwing anyone over. This is compounded by the fact that if too many threats are failed then the game is over for everyone. Can anyone think of ways to fix this and encourage a little more backstabbing? Some quick solutions that I have thought of are 'goal cards' (either hidden or revealed) that encourage and reward offensive card use (something like first player to cause another player to fail gets +1 VP) but the anonymous nature of the card reveal makes this complicated. I also have, more generally considered rewarding everyone who contributes to another player's threat (backstabbing or not) gets to draw one new card -- but this makes the wheeling and dealing much less interesting since the hand is no longer a dwindling resource. So... I am stumped!
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Jan 21, 2013 04:27
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Broken Loose posted:
I am not sure if you are fishing for suggestions on the rules but I am having trouble visualizing exactly what the strategy is within in the diving phase -- you mention building ala Galaxy Truckers but in the description it sounds more like a simple push your luck mechanism -- in which case you probably want to pare down the complexity and focus on that. As far as I can see, you are getting software that is added to your technorig but without the time pressure or the awkward connections of GT ultimately it seems to come down to 'how many tiles do I want to draw before I think that I will crash/get too much ICE, etc.' Not that this is bad but the idea of time ticking down as I attempt to one-handedly building an awkward, jury-rigged technorig that could explode at any moment (ala Galaxy Trucker's ships) then watching it fall apart as it comes into contact with ICE and the law would meet my dream scenario criteria(and meets your parody theme quite well. Thinking along these lines, when I read your description of the deck, I think that you could push the physicality of this mechanic into something awesome (right now it seems cool but, unless I missed something, ultimately no more complicated than twister for your fingers). Now, I am just spitballing, but here is how I would do it -- tldr: flip the tiles over, have 'Security' manipulate their order during the round, and make it a memory/push your luck game First of all, build the deck on a grid... say 10x10. Everyone has the same basic pieces but has to decide what to include (under a time limit). All of the tiles must be connected like you outline but the types are more general and without specific bonuses (power supply, red ice breaker, black ice breaker, data mining program, password cracker, storage drives, basic firewall, etc). Alternatively, if that becomes too confusing, each piece of software simply requires you to place a number of 'memory/hard drive' tiles that are connected anywhere on the grid. The important part is that once you are done constructing, all tiles are flipped over. Second, make it so that all players dive at the same time to cut down on the wait between turns. On a dive, draw a single card from CyberFlow face down and then reveal a 'Security Card'. The Security Card physically manipulates each player's technorig in some way -- for instance, it might shift column five down one (possibly pushing one piece off the board) or it might shift row 3 to to the left. Or it might do both at the same time. Once all the players have manipulated their rig, reveal the CyberFlow card (the back indicates the difficulty). In order to bypass/claim the card, each CyberFlow card requires you to place your fingers on a specific set of tiles. Which, remember, are face down and slightly rearranged. Every player places their fingers on the tiles and then reveals. For extra difficulty, the tiles have to be selected in order (Thumb first, then second finger, etc). If they have selected the correct tiles, they put the reward of the card in front of them, if not they suffer the failure penalty AND, if they have failed the dive, lose all of the rewards that they have accumulated on this dive. After sorting this out, each player that has not been eliminated can decide whether to keep diving or jack-out and keep their rewards. So long as at least 2 players continue, repeat as above. Presumably, each level further down, you draw an increasing number of security cards so that it becomes more and more difficult to tell what is on your board. An instance of some typical CyberFlow cards: a data node might require '<power source><hard drive><password cracker> -- if successful give 2 currency, can continue dive if failed', a firewall might require '<power source><password cracker ><route masker> -- if successful, continue dive, if failed end dive and gain 1 'Heat' point' and a particular piece of Black ICE might require '<power source><software Booster><Black ICE Breaker><bounced signal> -- if successful, draw one awesome contraband reward card, if failed, end dive, gain 2 'Heat' points and take 1 meat damage'. Every player also has a deck of cards in their left hand which they buy during the 'TOWN' phase (or get by beating difficult challenges). These include drugs (which might let you play with some tiles face up for a turn but force you to Jack-Out on the next turn) and Trojan Horse/Virus software which screws with other players (possibly 'you cannot use your middle finger this round' or 'shift all your tiles one down', etc) and one time use stuff that helps you in the short term ('functions like a one-use codebreaker', 'lets you avoid the fail penalty of one CyberFlow card' etc). After every Dive, there could be a TOWN phase where cards are auctioned off and players with too much heat suffer negative consequences (although nothing severe because you don't want to handicap players who are already behind). If you want to keep your outlined secret agendas, possibly there is an 'Information' Deck that serves as rewards for successful dives. Perhaps each player is looking for specific sets of information (say 4 'Corporate Secrets' cards or 3 'Hacked Servers' or some combination of the two). In addition, each player can only hold a certain number of Info cards, so there is an incentive to dump them for more useable cards. These cards could either be traded during the TOWN phase for 'action' cards, other bits from the Information Deck, or cold, hard currency. Or, they could be sold face up for a set amount of currency (listed on the card) and then auctioned off to the other players. To make things more complicated, your hand of special cards might also hold the Info Cards required for victory -- but with a set hand limit. This means that as you get closer to victory, you can hold fewer and fewer nifty tricks in your hand. Anyway, hopefully that was helpful. This may ultimately not be the sort of game that you want to design, but I am now excited enough that I now sort of want to knock out a prototype of the above game 
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Feb 12, 2013 07:11
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Fake Edit: beaten by a mile with my games list (man it takes me forever to type a post) It is definitely a good idea. I know of a couple of published games that attempt to do the FPS theme -- but I think that the general consensus is that they fall short in some area (although I haven't played any of them). 'Frag' definitely meets your criteria I have never heard of 'FPS Arena'... but it meets the theme and, just to be complete, there is always the Doom Boardgame... although your sketch sounds pretty different. Particularly, I think that it is hard to import that sense of frentic movement and twitch shooting using most 'old school' design elements. Wiz War works because there are so many varied things that a wizard can do (set up walls, summon monsters, teleport) whereas the FPS verb list is pretty much [Move]and[Shoot]... although you could get creative with the weapon types. The easiest way to tell is knock up a prototype of what you are thinking and see whether replacing Wizards with Quake Guys remains fun. If so, work with that! Anyway, if I were giving it a stab, I would try to work away from tactical grid-based play (which seems to be the standard approach) and try to incorporate some real time elements... like a competitive Space Alert (however the hell that would work) or Escape. A second possibility is to incorporate some actual dexterity into it and steal the mechanics of Catacombs -- it seems like it would be pretty fun to dodge around flicking disks at each other. If you really want to do the grid though, maybe consider bringing in some sort of momentum... (think Formula D or the racing game that we were discussing here earlier). So, you set your direction at the beginning of every turn and your movement is determined by the roll of a momentum dice (d4/d6/d8/d10/d20). You MUST move that many spaces forwards (particularly dangerous if you litter the arena with holes and traps) and you can move up or down one momentum level each round. The complication is that movement makes you harder to hit but worse at shooting. When someone shoots at you, you each roll a d10. The defender adds their momentum dice, the attacker subtracts it. Weapons could have various accuracies (machine guns = -2 accuracy but allow rerolls, sniper rifle = +5 but double your momentum penalty). Anyway, it is a thought.
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Feb 19, 2013 02:19
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Also, on an unrelated note, since discussion of the Firefly board game has been tossed about in the main Board Game thread (concerning how it seems to miss the point of the show) it got me to thinking -- how would you make a GOOD game based on Firefly?
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Feb 19, 2013 02:26
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xopods posted:I'm not sure how you could capture "twitch" gameplay in a board game though. To really do it, I think you would need to add some physicality to the game (which I realize, moves it away from an 'ideal' board game type). I am not sure this is a good idea but, what if, at the start of play one player grabbed a number of tokens (say, 4 per player) from a bag and dumped them in the middle of the playing space. These would be marked with various sorts of actions -- lets say: [sprint straight], [curve left], [curve right], [change direction], [spray and pray], [aimed shot], and [dodge]. Then, every 'round', someone counts to three and everyone grabs a token at the same time. If you don't have a token by the time that everyone else grabs, your character doesn't move and is an easy target (however that is defined). Without really thinking the mechanics of this through, this seems to me that it would feel pretty 'twitch' based (without being completely random). For me, I think that Merauder's idea of ripping off the X-Wing/Wings of War movement system seems to fit FPSs better than the action queue (which would nevertheless make an awesome game). Each player has a hand of possible moves with the more 'awesome' [like the full sprint or flip around] moves causing the player to become 'stressed' (which impairs shooting and cannot be removed until you perform some 'simple' maneuvers). At the end of every round, you can take a set number of shots at anything that is in your cone of fire -- although unlike X-Wing you would need to bring in some stationary cover and some pickup objectives. You could even make it so that different weapons allow different movement profiles, so that the heavier 'rocket launcher' type weapons restrict your movement more heavily.
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Feb 19, 2013 19:24
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Depending on what you need (and how much and how soon), I could generate some solid karma and do some quick vector drawings for you. Alternatively, you might want to experiment with Inkscape yourself... for me at least Photoshop always seemed like a slog to create absolutely anything, whereas with even a little bit of practice in Inkscape you can make things that would be perfectly serviceable for a prototype.
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Feb 20, 2013 23:56
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Just as an example I took a half hour and whipped up something that looks like this --not stunning but perfectly serviceable (and if I can do it, I guarantee that you can). On the plus side, with another hour's worth of investment, you could make it as pretty as you feel is necessary -- adding in simple textures for individual tiles or sprucing up the laser walls. Also, because I am avoiding studying for my doctoral exams, I made a little Doom guy to go with the map.  <And a link to the Inkscape file, if you want to use these as a template> Of course, I really enjoy playing with the art part of prototypes, so you may not find Inkscape as fun as I do!
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Feb 21, 2013 03:30
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Morholt posted:What I've been thinking about is, how can the game reasonably be extended further? That is, the losing player trying to arrange an orderly retreat, last stand to defend the camp etc. Of course, for this to be meaningful the "losing" player must still be playing to "win" in some sense of the word. Part of your problem is that it is difficult to conceptualize a 'real' situation where an army was forced to retreat but yet someone still 'won' the battle -- without taking things to the grand strategic level. I have a few ideas to contribute but I wonder whether or not it would be more profitable to consider 'organized retreat' and 'defend the base camp' as potential scenarios for a single game rather than an enforced part of every scenario. That way you can set specific objectives that don't change. My experience with Command and Colors is pretty limited, but here are my thoughts... quote:- At the point where one of the players thinks he cannot win, he will declare so and from then on play by different rules. For example he might now get points by evacuating units rather than killing enemy units but have a lower hand limit. Problem: I'm having trouble coming up with a set of rules where it advantageous for a losing player to "switch" but not have the game be breakable by one player "switching" at the first turn and running all his guys off the board for maximum points. So, it depends on what the players 'goals' are. If the sole goal is the destruction of the enemy army, then there is pretty much no situation where retreat is ever advantageous (which is why there is a morale mechanic in so many wargames -- otherwise no one would ever flee). On the other hand, you could introduce a couple of different goals which change this. For instance, if you get points for every surviving unit (whether it has retreated or not) AND you introduce a 'capture and hold location for x turns' goal... then you now have the impetus to get to the location, win it, and, if things are going poorly for you, retreat and end the game before you lose too many units. To make things simpler though, if you want 'defend the camps' to be an important part of the game, why not make that the entire objective (or at least the heaviest weight in the scoring -- maybe 'if one player destroys the other's camp then they win the game, otherwise it is a question of how many units survived)? In addition, make the bases grant a bonus to the defender -- but only when a certain number of units have been destroyed. That way, if things are going badly for you, it is in your best interest to tactically retreat to the advantageous defensive position at your camp. The enemy, on the other hand, would want to make sure to cut off your retreat or hit your camp before you have lost enough units to take advantage of the bonus (of course splitting his forces to do). It is possible that this would require a round limit for the game though and possibly some secondary location-based objectives as well(to keep people from turtling in their camp at the very beginning). A final option is to try and create some emergent behavior -- introduce a card that makes 'falling back' an emergency tactic that saves a unit that would otherwise die... but possibly it affects all units on a wing (right, left, or middle) not just the ones that you pick. This means that you are encouraged to retreat in some die circumstances rather than to die... but now your front line units who did not retreat are vulnerable to being surrounded. My apologies is C&C already has this mechanic. Further, make the camp an important part of how many cards you can draw (if you lose it, you draw 2 fewer cards or whatever) while providing the defensive bonus outlined above... that way, in dire circumstances, it is in your best interests to abandon the offensive and make sure that you still have a chance. quote:- Both players "move the goalposts" for the battle as it takes place, betting on their own success. Both players might start on "winning the battle, I guess", and after a while a confident player might move up to "capture enemy general" or "annihilate enemy army". A player that "loses" the battle but manages to do so in a manner he predicted might earn more points (and thus win the game) than the player that "wins" the battle but misses the goals he set for himself. Problem: I like the idea of this but only have the vaguest idea of how it would work. I think that if you developed this a bit more, it might work -- although it seems pretty close to just assigning a separate goal to each player at the beginning of the game. As it stands, I am not sure why it would ever be in the best interests of a winning player to move away from 'winning the battle, I guess'. What if, at the beginning of the game, you revealed a set of goal cards. Every three rounds (or whatever) the player with the fewest units picks which card they want as a new goal and discards the old one, then the aggressor grabs one of the remaining cards. If you succeed in the goal you get victory points, if you fail, you lose victory points from your total. That way, the player who is losing could grab something like the final 'keep X units alive for 3 turns' goal, to encourage retreat, while the agressor has to take the harder 'take out the enemy general in 3 turns' goal. This might give things more of a back and forth feel while not penalizing the person who is winning too much. DirkGently fucked around with this message at 02:08 on Feb 22, 2013 |
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Feb 22, 2013 02:05
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Admin Understudy posted:
Could definitely be fun, depending on the setup. You might want to look at the game Space Cadets as a comparanda -- since one of the minigames is vaguely similar and it is the only game I can think of that uses this mechanic (Not too similar that it should worry you though, I think in SC you are fishing out tetris pieces to fill out a specific board). In answer to your second question, what if you made the ship building part simultaneous for everyone (everyone has a individual bag and is rooting out pieces at the same time or possibly drawing from a big central box or something)? When one player finishes a set, he yells it out to everyone, gets a point (or whatever) and everyone can look at the second stage of their blueprint. If you really want to make it hectic, maybe there is only one deck of cards and each round someone draws and everyone has to pass one to the right while looking for their matches (like Spoons!).
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Feb 22, 2013 02:25
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Colon V posted:The idea is a stealth-based board game, probably played on some kind of grid. On one side would be the ninja, spy, or whoever, trying to accomplish some objective, like stealing something and getting out, or getting from A to B, or what have you. They would be opposed by guards, looking for the first player(s). Now, you pretty clearly can't have a game of hide-and-seek when you know where the other side is, and trying to keep that from happening would result in a very obtuse board game indeed. This is not an indictment of your idea (which I think is good) but there are a number of stealth based board games that have a sense of hide and seek without full information for both sides. See for instance the old Scotland Yard or the recent Mark of Dracula (where the stealth player sees everything but the searching players cannot see the board of the stealthed player). For that matter, even Battleship is essentially hide and seek played when you can't see the board. For the most relevant example, look at 'Escape from the Aliens from Outer Space' (dumb name but cool mechanics). I can imagine a version of this game (not so distinct from the one you outlined) where the board of the 'Guard' player is visible to both sides but his tokens have limited movement (to mimic patrols). The stealth player would have a wholly separate board (which only he can see). To make this work, certain actions of the stealth player (crossing 'noisy flooring', 'running', 'shooting', etc) would cause a 'sound' at the end of his turn -- marking the location where the sound was made (not where he currently is). Possibly, you would also want to mark his starting location as of 1 turn ago. Toss in some ways that the stealth player can deliberately create sound at false locations, a pretty fast movement rate for the player (versus slow for the guards) and a simple line of sight system for the guards... and I think that you have a game. To keep the stealth player from having full information, you can make it so that the guard player only sets up sections of the board after the stealther goes through checkpoints. With that being said, it may not be the game that you want to make! quote:Instead, the guards follow specific patterns, either assigned to them, or given at the start of a certain period by the player(s) controlling them. For example, the Guard player might have a handful of action cards that he plays face-down before the intruder's first turn, essentially preprogramming the guards. Then, on his turn, he goes through them in order, choosing a certain number of guards who perform the chosen action. They might be things like "patrol", "check corners", "check upward", "laze about", plus condition-specific actions like "raise alarm" or "open fire/melee combat". Something in the middle might be cool. What if you place different types of guards and cameras with defaults behavior (walk three spaces, turn to the left) and the cards allow you to mix that up a little (surprise turn around, delay one turn, etc). It would probably be best, in this scenario, if the stealth player knew what the potential cards were. quote:The biggest problems I can see with the game are as follows: quote:2. Hide-and-wait gameplay. The problem with most stealth games is that you can end up spending a lot of time just kind of picking your nose and waiting for the right opportunity. While having a player on the other end who actively knows what's going on can help, I wanna make sure it doesn't just become "intruder player waits forever". The best solution I've got is some kind of forgiving-but-certainly-there time limit. quote:Check out Hour of Glory: Stronghold Kit. It's basically Metal Gear Solid: The Boardgame and it has some rather clever ideas about how to go about it.
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Mar 2, 2013 23:57
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hito posted:I'm working on a board game. It's a traitor game where you don't know if you're the traitor at the start - imagine Clue, but it matters if you're the murderer or not. It's kind of hard to explain. [edit: I realize that this comes off very critical -- but I really do think you have the core of something cool here with your traitor mechanic and I really like much of the fluff and world building. I just think that you need to start cutting and condensing! This is not a problem -- I have never seen a project, be it a novel or a board game, that did not benefit from starting grandiose and then being polished into a tight core!] I'm going to second Crackbone here (albeit in gentler terms) -- one thing that would really help is some redundant definitions. You are doing something that happened to me when I tried to write my first RPG, inspired by oWoD, where you invent a term for something, define it only once and then use it throughout your manual. At first that is not so bad, but by the middle you have sentences that are almost completely jargon terms and very difficult to parse: something like 'crystallizing an leyline with more Robust cards than..(and that is an example I understood -- there are definitely more confusing sentences). First, I would say get rid of as much jargon as possible. Second, it would help if you just reminded us what some of those terms meant in plain English. Let me give you an example, randomly selected: quote:Boon of Aether: Cleansing never costs you Power. Instead, how about this (consider how much flipping back and forth I had to do in the rulebook to find all of this information): quote:Boon of Aether: Cleansing(removing face down cards from a Leyline) never costs you Power. Of course, once you have done that, I would suggest just removing all the jargon words in general (so that the ones that need to be there: power, leyline, anomaly are more clear) -- I mean, seriously, you have like 8 different words that essentially mean 'spend your turn doing the action of this space'. I realize that it makes things more atmospheric but it also makes rules a pain to read. You also need to think more heavily about the organization. I realize that writing rulebooks is insanely difficult but one approach that I have found useful is to start by guiding players through their goals and usual turn before loading them down with complexities. Here, I would really suggest laying out the key options available to players and show them how to win (this is complicated here immensely by the multiple victory states). So, say -- quote:On your turn you can do the following: Second, I realize that you are going for an Arkham Horror vibe and there is a lot of 'stuff' going on -- but the danger of that is that it is very difficult to see how all of your elements fit together and conversely to balance everything. Even AH itself (which I think is a flawed game but many people find it enjoyable) is definitely weighed down by all of its stuff. I would suggest cutting what you have here by half, you just have too much going on... For instance, I don't really see the point of having 8 leylines separated by multiple spaces (or for that matter having such a huge number of spaces on the board). All this seems to do, in my mind, is let the players work far apart from each other... and in a game where you really want players working together (or at least close together so that the murderer can strike) I don't think this is an advantage. Thus, I would greatly condense your board. Similarly, there are way too many special abilities -- between the boons and the spirits. I would probably get rid of spirits entirely (but if you must leave them in, there should only be four of them). Also, a number of options on each space could be fruitfully eliminated. Basically, condense and cut as much as possible. Some specific problems I see -- isn't it in the good guys best interest to start every game by saying 'show all of your cards -- if you don't then we will assume you are either the murderer or a traitor.' I really don't see a downside to this -- so it should be prohibited in the rules rather than discouraged (as it is now). Also, in terms of condensing, I find the murderer reveal incredibly confusing... as I see it now, there is no way to tell if you are the murderer...until you kill someone. Is that correct (if not, the reveal information needs to be centralized)? It certainly doesn't seem like it should be. If so, probably the murderer card should be revealed after turn 1 or 2. Next, a key component of scoring in a number of victory conditions seems to be how many positive cards/negative cards are placed by individual players on a leyline -- how do you keep track of that? As I understand the rules, these cards are drawn whenever you attempt to influence a leyline (and presumably are not individual to each player)... so how I am supposed to remember that I played a +3 on leyline one and +2 on leyline two and a +3 on leyline four? What if players forget or if there are arguments? On that note, I am really not a fan of these cards being as random as they are. As I read the rules, it is entirely possible for a player who want to do 'good' but only draw negative cards (or vice versa)-- correct? For that matter, the randomized values seem redundant as well and way too swingy. I could be the most stealthy traitor in the world but if my card draw sucks, what am I supposed to do (without overtly revealing myself). If everyone had a hand of these cards at the beginning and slowly drew more (possibly with some way to manipulate your hand or to look at the hand of other players) this would at least present some strategic options... now it seems entirely too luck based for me. Finally, player elimination sucks. I get the feeling that this will be a long game -- and even granting that a murder begins the endgame, it sucks to be left sitting around an hour while everyone does their thing. At the very least it shouldn't be as easy as it is right now. But these are bandaid solutions -- I think you really need to focus on getting a core mechanic down before focusing on putting in more stuff. The more stuff that is in the game, the harder it is to see whether or not it is actually working. The big problem right now is that, as I read the rules, there is no real reason to work together and conversely, it is very difficult to see what you should be doing if you are a bad guy. The anomalies seems like the only possible threat... and, at present, it seems like (given the random nature of the card draws) you would be better off going it alone on each anomaly (even players who WANT to help may not be able to). With all that being said, I think that you are onto something with your implementation of the traitor mechanic -- it is just really hard to see under so much cruft. So, let me sketch for you a simpler version of your game to test before you start adding stuff in (this is just a really rough attempt to distill the feel you are going for into the smallest number of components). If the simple version is fun, then you can start adding in different stuff. So, keep your zodiac cards (although see my confused note on the murderer reveal above). Players can move one space and then perform one action. Each player starts with three cards (these are either positive or negative and have either a 1,2,or 3 value) and one special ability (taken from all of your spirits and boons above). Players cannot ever discuss the cards in their hand. They can make requests for specific cards. Have four well sites -- but being on a well lets you draw 3 cards (otherwise you don't get any). Have four leylines -- you can only play positive or negative cards on a leyline if you have not moved this round. If players end on the same space, they can give 2 cards (these must always be one positive and one negative card). --if they exchange, both players get to look randomly at one of the other player's alignment cards At the start of every round, if a leyline has been crystalized (four cards have been played on it) then reveal and discard those cards. If it is positive, give 1 victory point to the human side. If it is negative, 1 victory point to the traitors. A player is murdered if they are on a leyline space and, when the fourth card is placed on a leyline, the negatives are twice the positives. Murdered players lose all cards, cannot use their special ability, forfeit this turn, and return to the center space -- this give 1 point to the traitors. Every four turns is a round. Every round, the doom track advances 1 unless a leyline has been crystalized and is positive overall. Every even round, an anomaly is summoned (as described in your rules) and moved to a random location. If this is not dealt with, then the written effect occurs. Every odd round, reveal one of the zodiac alignment cards that has not been dealt with. When the doom track reaches 3, each player selects on of their cards (good, bad, or murderer) and writes it down. This is their permanent alignment for the rest of the game. When the doom track reaches 5 the enemy gains 3 points, if the enemy has more points then they win. Before revealing alignment,eEach player writes down the name of one player who he thinks is a traitor (if the player is already a traitor, he should just write an insult or something). For each correct guess, the humans get +1 point, for each wrong guess -2 points. DirkGently fucked around with this message at 00:07 on May 9, 2013 |
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May 8, 2013 23:40
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hito posted:
I feel you -- in the game I am currently working on, to keep the theme all of my key terms were originally in Latin (and that was tough to understand). But I stand strongly by the fact that, if you change nothing else, you should make all of the 'activate this space/cards power' terms the same. I think that would be a big help to the readability of the document and would not really impact your theme all that much. quote:The idea behind having the map is essentially to put a time lag for what you want to do - by making you commit to options you want in stages, it gives observant players a chance to react. That being said, I literally had not considered action drafting/"worker placement" as an option for this game until it was said here, so maybe there's a way those mechanics can facilitate this. That sounds like fair logic but I think the map is an unnecessary distraction -- there have got to be more elegant ways of getting this effect -- worker placement is an excellent one (and pretty simple at that), as is jmzero's idea of making the spirit powers a revolving purchase thing (although given how critical some of those powers are, you are going to have to plan for the eventuality that they may only show up at the wrong time). Any game that has too complex of a map when it is not actually all that essential to gameplay is a big warning sign for me as a purchaser... see Arkham and Android. quote:Huh, I must have miswrote something somewhere. It's explicitly forbidden to show cards without an effect making you, because if you could instantly confirm you were telling the truth the game would be bad. It's not at all forbidden to say what your cards are (since you can lie) - the Traitor's Strike phase of the Reckoning is what punishes players all claiming at the start. I really don't like soft-line enforcement rules, so if mass claiming signs and visions at the start of the game even without being able to reveal your cards was ever useful, I wouldn't make that forbidden, I'd just nerf it more by making Traitor's Strike stronger or make some other weird thing happen. quote:Various effects reveal the Sign in the House of Blood, the Undertaker lets you see the alignment card to know which of the 3 signs is the murderer. It's designed to gate it so the Murderer doesn't know right away but can take steps. It is sort of tucked away in that list of spirits. quote:Don't blame you for missing it, it's just one sentence: "Place a personal token on the Barrier card denoting it as being altered by you." quote:This is kind of a really interesting design thing so I'm gonna get maybe more in to detail than you want. If I am reading you correctly, what you are trying to do is implement a way for someone to give some information (discarding the one card) while still actually performing a hidden action (putting the card on the leyline). The chance to 'fail' (get all bad cards when they wanted a good card) or succeed wildly(+4,+4,+5) is only important so long as it makes the appearance of discarding X card viable (I can discard a negative card to look good while still secretly playing a negative card). I submit to you this though -- this actually makes any sort of deduction (presumably a goal of your game) much harder because you have to account for too many variables, what cards could have been drawn (unless you are really good at counting cards), why did he discard that card, what card did he actually play, etc. As a counter example, following the Resistance -- whenever you influence a leyline, you are given two cards: a +1 and a -1. You place one on the leyline face down. The other you discard face down (in this scenario, you can't mark which cards you played -- but I think that is a good thing). If someone reveals the cards on the leyline, they are forced to shuffle them first. When they reveal them they will only know that, of the people to visit the leyline, someone played X card. This is actually a valuable piece of information that can be followed up on by investigating other leylines that you influenced. The way you have it now makes it a little bit easier to lie and it is certainly more complex but, I think, in a way that works against the game. But again, it may be a thing that works better on the table than it reads -- and in a game with this many moving parts it is really difficult to see how everything comes together. I also understand your point about the maths too but I still think that it is swingy. I realize that +5 is rare but even one +5 suddenly means that even my two -3's are not looking so hot -- and the fact that I get them entirely randomly is a bit of a bummer. Randomness is good but not when it works against player skill and there is no real way to mitigate it. I can tell you that my group would absolutely hate this level of randomness (I know because in earlier drafts of my game, the card draw was on the same curve as yours) -- but then again, people (not us) love Arkham and it is randomness incarnate! To keep some of what you are going for -- does it really hurt things to keep the draw exactly as you have it now but just make everything +1 or -1? That was you can still legitimately fail when you want to succeed (or vice versa) and still discard a positive because you "got a hand of nothing but positives" while keeping you from undermining someones work when you get a lucky break. Just a thought. quote:This is just a me-writing-rules-poorly problem then, the Reckoning isn't going to be an hour, not even close. Ten minutes maybe, and that's only if there are undecided players table-talking what faction to throw in with. I agree, player elimination sucks, which is why one murder ends the game (and murderering is against your interests unless you've either learned you're the murderer OR you're absolutely sure the guy you're killing is the murderer.) quote:The idea is that players working together are more efficient at spending resources (they're not Coercing each other) and can find the murderer easier (the power they save is being spent on Spirits to investigate and generally keeping things nice.) Who knows if I actually pulled that off though. quote:While I like simplicity, I think there needs to be a minimum amount of complexity (enough that players can analyze the signals being given off by other players, BUT players have some ability to somewhat bluff their signals while still achieving their goals) or it's just not the same game about finding out who others are, finding out who YOU are, and advancing your goals when you've figured out who you are. It's always a danger that the game will end up bloated and unwieldy as a result, but I really do think this game could end up too simple as well, if that makes sense? I totally agree -- but I also caution against equating 'stuff' with 'complexity'. Again, as something that I am guilty of, it is very hard to tell what is and isn't working/necessary when it is concealed with so many moving parts. For instance, you wanted people to be balanced between finding out about themselves, finding out about others, and personal interests. That is great... but as I read the rules (as stated before, not always understanding them) I really don't see much motivation towards finding out about others... certainly not to the extent that I would waste resources on it. In addition, if I know from the get go that I am a good guy (with no possibility of being a turn coat), I think that optimal play suggests just staying away from everyone and influencing as many leylines as possible on every turn... basically ignoring all of the options. I might be wrong but it is hard to see. So, I wasn't at all suggesting that you actually stay with the barebones version that I put forth (which I am not sure even holds together)... more that, as a mental excercise, you should try making the absolutely simplest version of your game that you can that still accomplishes your design goal. If that is still fun, then you know you have a winner, and can and should start adding stuff back in. Not to mention that adequately playtesting a game of this level of complexity is a nightmare. So, I would take this statement to try to design a barebones version: quote:So, at minimum, there needs to be those three options that players must continually choose between, because otherwise analysis is impossible. In other words, I would ask myself -- if there need to be three possible options on a turn can I make a game that ONLY has those three options (and not subdivided into a million choices). Dodging your point about the map for a second -- why is there not a single get points option (affect the one leyline), a single spend wasteful resources to find out about someone/yourself, and a single 'get resources' node? Starting with something like this means you only add stuff when it is absolutely necessary. Still caveat emptor! Make the game that your group wants to play! Also, boiling it down to this level brings up one further question -- why is everything tied up with power except the way that you get Victory Points (influencing a leyline)? It seems disconnected -- is there a reason it needs to be disconnected? Seems to me that if you had to spend power to draw cards, that would eliminate some of my concerns regarding the randomness (it would at least give some control of it).
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May 9, 2013 04:17
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:I just wanted to pop in and say that the last game I designed is being tested by a publisher! This thread gave me some awesome ideas and I doubt I'd have taken this so far without you guys. I'll keep you all posted on how this goes. That is super awesome -- congrats! Which game was it (as long as you won't get in trouble for saying it)?
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May 25, 2013 18:38
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Retardog posted:I've hit a brick wall with my board game. The issue is how to elegantly display and track the stats for each player's ship. The general layout I've been using has the card with the stats and special abilities in the center of a slightly larger mat that has areas to put their crew tokens and money. As a reward for some of the obstacles you defeat in the game, you can earn upgrades to your ship stats. I've looked at different ways to handle this, so far focusing on dials akin to King of Tokyo. The main issue is that right now a player would be looking at three different numbers for each stat: the base stat on the ship card, the max for that stat (one dial), and the current stat (another dial). I'd be looking at a total of eight dials on each player mat. I've thought about using a slider system with two markers to represent the current and max, but I'm open to ideas or other games I could look at to see how they handle it. The game has a medium level of complexity, but I'm doing my best to streamline where I can. Ideally a clix-style base would be fantastic, but it's too bad they're patented. I really like dials in general but for what you are asking, I think that the the slider system is the way to go. Two wheels and a number listing 'base' stat will take up a HUGE amount of real estate on a player board and, in addition to limiting the number of stats you can display, will also drive the cost of your game up a ton (although if you are using a series of interlocking wheels it might work). I have knocked up a prototype of what a standard slider might look like here (because I worked up something similar in the past) -- the Eclipse trick is to use cubes to cover the values that you are not using (Eclipse really makes this awesome because it has indentations around each number so that the cubes don't move). (Click for large)  So, you read the board in the following way: it has marked on it the 'base' stat (a red square on the game board). You then cover all the 'upgrade' squares with tiny cubes (available very cheaply). When you upgrade, you remove one of the cubes -- you will note that the cost to upgrade is included as a smaller number and an arrow under the currently revealed space. Your current rating is marked by a tiny transparent circular chit (also available very cheaply). I really like this approach because I think it communicates a lot of information very quickly even to other players. Its big downside is that it is really easy for a player to hit the table and make little blocks go everywhere (which again, Eclipse solves by custom boards). Alternatives: For a similar system you could create a series of two sided circular cardboard chits with a red side and a green side. Every time that you upgrade, you get a new chit -- so the number of chits equals the max power. When systems are damaged, flip chits to red (or even stack them together in a designated area), so the current value of the stat is the number of green chits. Finally, you could also use different sided dice. So, on an upgrade you go from d4 to d6 to d8, etc. The number of sides of the dice indicate the maximum stat and the currently showing number is the value of the system. I have no idea what the cost of this would be for your game (although for prototyping you can get dice pretty cheaply) -- the only big problem with this approach is that I find it takes me a little too long to find the side that I need of a dice. But yeah, looking at Eclipse in general is a good idea because the system of upgrades and they way they display everything is incredibly elegant. DirkGently fucked around with this message at 00:08 on Aug 8, 2013 |
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Aug 7, 2013 23:57
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Paper Mac posted:Which Eclipse are you talking about? This definitely isn't the 2011 Eclipse. Oh yeah, the drawing is something that I personally banged out -- definitely not from Eclipse. I was trying to adapt the general principles I remembered from the Eclipse board (how they deal with resources/citizens) to illustrate a slightly more sophisticated slider system (like he mentioned). Although on further reflection, Eclipse actually uses the removed cubes to mark things elsewhere which makes it much more elegant. Retardog posted:I like the way that looks and it could be fairly easily implemented into my game. I'd have to pick up some cubes at GenCon for testing, but I doubt they'd be expensive. The chits I could also see working, but I'd need to decide which size tokens to use (I have plenty to choose from), and I think they'd work better if they were thick enough that a person could tell at a glance how many were on the stack. I'm not crazy about the dice, if only because there're enough being used for combat already and I want to take another pass at that system to reduce the number of dice. The cubes might actually be expensive at GenCon... but on Amazon they are around 13 dollars for a pack of 500 -- but you could probably find them for cheaper. Centimeter cubes link They also have 250 the translucent chit/markers that I was talking about for like $5. Transparent counters I have used both of these frequently in various games prototypes. DirkGently fucked around with this message at 02:30 on Aug 8, 2013 |
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Aug 8, 2013 02:20
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Solkanar512 posted:
Since I don't know anything about manufacturing, some Googling revealed a thread on boardgamegeek, here, where they discuss it... Highlights:
But... if you really cared, you should definitely talk to some of the people that produce those 3d jigsaw puzzle figures on AliBaba. It is possible that there are some overseas manufacturers who could adapt their process without as much of an overhead (especially if cardboard is okay)... but they will probably not be interested in smallish print runs (like I assume you want to d0). DirkGently fucked around with this message at 03:09 on Aug 8, 2013 |
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Aug 8, 2013 03:05
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Alright, so I am working on a game about Republican Rome and I have an idea for a basic mechanic that I wanted to sound out with you guys. The game is competitive but there is also some call to cooperatively work together (think Archipelago). Apologies for the long post... So, the basic idea is that in your hand are a number of legislation cards. Passing these are the main way to get victory points (they also affect the game state increasing the food available, allocating military, making trade agreements, etc). Each legislation card is associated with one of the three factions in the game -- the optimates (aristocrats), the populares (demogogues), or equestrian (mercantile). In order for the card to be passed and to get points, you need to persuade senators of the same faction to vote for them. In the center of the board there are a number of senator cards. Underneath each senator card, with the top showing, is a two sided loyalty card. The front side identifies the apparent faction (optimate, popular, equestrian) and the back identifies the true faction as well as the senator's voting power (a number, say 1-5). The front and back of the loyalty cards normally match (say 70% of the time) but they can also be 'trap' cards or cards of differing allegiance. So, when a player proposes a piece of legislation (that is the basic action in a turn) he picks a senator from the center to introduce the legislation and another player picks a senator to run in opposition. Both loyalty cards are flipped over and their strengths are compared -- any loyalty card revealed (hidden under either senator) that matches the association of the piece of legislation (so 'popular' loyalty card matching a piece of 'popular' legislation) adds its strength to the total. Any loyalty cards of a differing allegiance (again, hidden under either senator) subtract from the total. If the total strength is positive, then the legislation is passed. If either player reveals a 'trap' card, then they suffer the effects of that trap. Instead of proposing a piece of legislation, a player can discard a card (so long as it is not a trap card) to look at the loyalty card of a senator. Once all cards are used up, the round is over -- if any trap cards remain, they take effect against the player holding them. Now, here is where it gets a bit tricky. Loyalty cards and the legislation cards are the same (the legislation and result are listed in the center of loyalty cards), so the player's hand of legislation cards is simultaneously a hand of loyalty cards -- that may mean that they also have 'trap' cards in their hand (which cause negative points if you cannot get rid of them before the end of a round). That further means each player can see see what 'allegiance' all of the cards in another player's hands are. Those loyalty cards which have strong voting power if placed under a senator are also worth the most victory points if passed. Once the senator's loyalty is exposed, both players must pick another player at the table (this can be the same person). This person takes the revealed loyalty card and places it face down in front of them (so that the apparent allegiance is showing, regardless of the actual allegiance of the card). If they have a card in their hand that matches the apparent allegiance they take that card out of their hand and place it on top of the loyalty card. Both cards are then taken under the table (face down). The player then discards one of the cards (without looking) and returns the other, face down, under the senator. He then draws a new card. Alternately, if the player does not want to discard the card from his hand, he can take the first card from the draw deck which matches the apparent faction allegiance (again, remember that these are printed on the back of the card) and, without looking at it, follows the above procedure (deciding whether or not to slip the card he knows about back under or a random one). If the player does not have a card which matches the apparent allegiance of the loyalty card, he can place any card from his hand under the senator (which will be a different apparent allegiance) OR substitute the top card of the draw deck. Of course, the card substitution phase is the best place to sneak traps under a senator. Once a senator has been used once for voting, they cannot be used again that round. Now, I am picturing this game as requiring cooperation and deal making outside of this mechanic (so a person's desire to help/screw someone else is not totally tied to this) but what are your thoughts on how it would run? Any games that share the mechanic? Too complicated?
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Sep 14, 2013 20:14
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modig posted:I'm working on some rule changes to deal with some problems in [a]Archipelago[/b]. If anybody has played it, I'd like to hear some feedback. After a few fairly comprehensive plays, I agree with most of your problems and am quite interested to hear how your solutions work out. Losing an action after exploration is devastating, especially in the early game. At the same time, I wonder whether or not your proposed variant makes exploration too good by removing the only significant risk. Since exploration gives an almost a guaranteed 2 resources (1 exploration token and 1 from the tile) for the cost of one worker's action and a single action disk, by removing the risk, I fear (without any real data to back it up) that you have made the option too attractive -- to the extent that it might outweigh the potential gains of the other spaces. This problem is compounded by cards that allow double explorations, etc. As you suggest, I think limiting the 'automatic success' to once per game would be a good compromise (although I am not sure that it fixes the bigger problem -- because some positions are just not setup to explore easily). Still, if you try it out, I would love to hear how it goes. As a simpler option, it would perhaps be enough of a band aid to give players an exploration token regardless of the success or failure of their exploration. That limits the devastation while still making a failed exploration sting. The only potential balance problem that I see with this is potentially negative interaction with end game conditions that rely on the amount of exploration tokens (although, at a glance, I don't think that it would change that too much -- although it would probably stop the strategy of 'boxing in' a player who is trying to end the game by exploring). The secret objectives problem is a big one -- for us the problem is compounded by that fact that since the game length is also controlled by the secret objectives, it can be very difficult to get even a general sense of how far away you are from the end of the game (which makes game endings terribly abrupt). I like your outlined method of trying to fix the problem and am interested to see how it turns out (be sure and report back) but, as above, I wonder if you aren't trying to change the base game too much -- and it is always difficult to predict how changing the method of scoring (especially making the private objectives score only for the player who possesses it) will affect the balance of a fairly closely scored game. As a simpler option, I have been toying around with the idea of just revealing all of the secret objectives at the beginning of the game (so, deal out one per player to the center plus one/two extra). Once everyone has had a chance to look at them, shuffle the cards and distribute one to each player -- with one/two left over. This way, players can be pretty sure what MOST of the conditions for victory or game end are without being absolutely certain. My hope is that this would also allow players to score off of those objectives that you wouldn't score on just by playing normally. The biggest potential problem is that this would make the role of the pacifist or separatist much more obvious, although I find that in practice their actions are already pretty obvious (since there is no accusation mechanic, it isn't even that detrimental for the separatist to immediately start trying to openly tank the rebellion meter). Regarding the bidding, I have noticed pretty much the same pattern BUT it hasn't ever bothered us. Given that there tends to be a heated secondary (and open) market of people trying to bribe the first place player to make them second place, it mitigates the sting of losing a large bid. It also makes rounds where everyone bids heavily (thinking that everyone else is going to bet 0) but loses their money, pretty hilarious. With that being said, I can only see one problem with your prospective change -- that is, it might encourage (even more than before) betting basically all your money -- because now there is a safety net if you lose. In any system where there is no room for second place, I think that it is always going to be 'bet big or bet nothing' but this might at least encourage a little more variability in the betting. The only way to tell whether or not my gut is right on this one would be to playtest it a couple of times though.
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Oct 14, 2013 04:38
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CirclMastr posted:This may not be the best thread for it, but I posted earlier how I want to fund a game via Kickstarter. My business partner and I have a smaller card game that we're going to do first, about the middle of November. What would be the best way to go about marketing the Kickstarter to make sure it succeeds? You probably have already seen this (and it is focused more on the actual 'Kickstarter' phase rather than the pre-marketing) but the guys who did Viticulture and Euphoria have put together an exhaustive step-by-step examination of their experiences with Kickstarter. I have no idea how applicable the advice is, given that funding a small card game is different than a large designer boardgame, but it is probably worth a read at StoneMaier Games.
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Oct 25, 2013 04:55
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