|
al-azad posted:It's a Star Wars insurgency, the Rebellion is defeated by blowing up their base and scattering them. The Empire thematically does not care about support. Well a Rebellion is literally "opposition". I still like my suggestion in which the Empire could be given an ability to score neutrality or passive opposition where it has control. poo poo, that could be what the Death Star card does: Alderaan Destroyed IMPERIAL MOMENTUM Until the end of the next Propaganda round, score all Empire-controlled spaces in neutral or passive opposition as if passive support. Could probably throw some kind of sweep/assult limop bonus on that, too.
|
#
¿
May 25, 2017 17:34
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 17, 2024 20:29 |
|
|
Kashuno posted:I think part of my problem had been I set out with this "let's make VP in a worker placement game feel more organic" and the whole 'give buildings different victory point values which could double as gold costs to remove them from the market row' solution is staring me in the face and I've been too stubborn to just accept that the reason a lot of worker placement games use VP like they do is because it works. Also think about what AFfO does with VP:Silver:Ships, too, if you're going to have some kind of way of using resources to purchase things which are worth points. Ships in AFfO are really only worth net points if you build them. Another way to make VP feel more "organic" is to make it a resource collection/generation thing, the way that money works in games like 18xx or FCM - you spend that money to develop your tableau, and then that tableau generates more money. Whatever you call it, play money in games is just VP. This is also kinda visible in Terra Mystica in how the Alchemists function. From what you describe in your subsequent posts, turning VP into money and treating it as a flexible resource (don't have the lumber required to make a building? convert money to lumber.) might be the answer.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 6, 2017 18:13
|
|
|
So I have two game ideas that I've been dwelling on for a while and I think I want to make a stab at developing both of them, somehow. I need some "how to get started" tips and feedback on my basic concepts. 1) Originating in a conversation with a friend, I have an idea for a Judo-themed two-player strategic card game. The core mechanical concept is a hand management game about pushing toward a victory threshold via combinations of cards, with an opponent able to expend cards to defend, but that the game is two-phase - standing and ground. Failure to achieve that threshold on an attempt will switch the game to the other phase, potentially leaving a player with exhausted resources and an opponent who is now in position to counter-attack. My idea (which I haven't seen implemented elsewhere) is to achieve this by giving each card two functions, one for each phase, and when the phase switches, players physically invert the cards in their hands, to work from the other end (i.e. the text is upside down in relation to the other). I want the game to create are where a player is hypothetically able to play the last card in his/her hand to attempt to win in a standing fight, but recognizes that if the attempt fails due to an opponent's defensive play, which may or may not be available, that he/she could find him/herself on the ground facing an opponent with powerful cards. I want this game to be medium-light and easily portable. 2) I have a sweet idea for a COIN game based on the Canadian North-West Rebellions, and I've gotten some feedback from people on the very basic concept, and it makes me want to fiddle with it a bit more to see if I can make something of it. I'm not really sure what the next step should be in attempting this beyond fantasizing "man we need a Gabriel Dumont card and one for Cut-Knife and maybe something with a railroad and pew pew yeeeaaaah" e. just reading my own post made me realize that this could be COIN+18xx 
CommonShore fucked around with this message at 22:23 on Nov 7, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Nov 7, 2017 22:19
|
|
|
Kashuno posted:The first idea sounds really interesting to me. I would probably begin with deciding if you want to have the game be symmetrical or asymmetrical to start with, and the advantages and disadvantages to both. It's hand management, are you able to get new techniques in some way or recover spent cards? Yep, I've been thinking about that. I want it to operate from one total deck, so that puts me in a total zero-sum position as far as design goes. Is there any way to introduce asymmetry to an environment like that? My "draft" approach to card draw is that at the end of the turn you draw one card up to a hand limit, no matter how many you spent. This has a thematic inspiration in the first place - if you fight hard you might get the finish, but you exhaust yourself; if you do less, you don't progress, but you get to rest. sector_corrector posted:When trying to make a game the size of the first one, I've found that one of my biggest pitfalls is making the game too complex (and therefore too hard to balance), and also requiring too many components. A good way around this is to intentionally limit yourself to a 52 card deck. It has a few benefits: it limits your possibilities (and forces you to try to get into that 'super compact' headspace), it's easy to prototype, and it guarantees that your game physically fits the dimensions you've considered for it. I've also found that having an easy to prototype game makes iteration and testing less painful. Oh yeah. My initial plan is 52 cards for that reason and more. This game is essentially a filler game, or something that people play at dinner or in the back seat of a car. To handle complexity, I'm thinking of keywording cards - technique A might be a "FOOT" technique, and technique B might have the function counters "FOOT" technique. Every keyword would just be a matching thing with no deeper rules. e. to expand (I had to switch locations mid post) the problem I'm having is determining good ways to measure my victory threshholds, and what a reasonable population of keywords would be. Is something like "maintaining a particular game state for two turns" a reasonable threshhold, for example? What should I do now in this? Worry about keywords and rules? Start designing cards? CommonShore fucked around with this message at 00:02 on Nov 8, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Nov 7, 2017 23:41
|
|
|
I've designed the "Standing" half of 52 cards, and now I'm working on the concepts for the "Ground" half. I've been amazed how much the rules have been changing as I've just been coming up with card concepts. Chill la Chill posted:
That's why the North-West Rebellions are the perfect historical setting for the concept - it's a mixed conventional and guerilla insurgency with four distinct factions, and the government's end goal is to stabilize the region via a railroad which will allow white colonization.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 10, 2017 19:16
|
|
I actually want to see a COIN+investment game too. Either 18xx for route building and investments or just pure imperial-style investments. So like Imperial with Here I Stand. 
|
e. wrong thread
CommonShore fucked around with this message at 05:01 on Jun 17, 2018 |
|
#
¿
Jun 17, 2018 02:07
|
|
|
Looking at my new copies of Mint Works and Mint Delivery got me thinking about a possible mechanic that might fit into one of the designs I've been slowly chipping at.... Has anyone ever seen a game with a WP-style mechanic (put a resource on a space to take an action) where players build the board as they go - a la The Colonists - but that board is built out of cards from their hands?
|
|
#
¿
Aug 8, 2018 17:02
|
|
|
Honestly, I'm thinking of it for the 2p judo card game I've been contemplating and poking at for the last 18 months. The very short version of this is that it's a hand management game with tete-a-biche cards, and each card half of the card corresponds to a particular game phase, which players move between. The game isn't about scoring points as much as pushing for a victory threshold (and these are the details that have stalled me - but when I get a new idea and get talking about it stuff develops). Cards in-hand are the primary resource, and they can be played at variable rates, but recover at a slower fixed rate, to model exhaustion. Now what I'm imagining with the tableau cards is that forming the tableau would be a side effect of all or some cards - to get this card's effect when you play it you must add it to the tableau, which then makes it accessible to your opponent, but perhaps less strategically viable as it is now open information and players can reserve counter-move cards for plays that are open on the table. This in turn opens up a whole bluffing, trapping, and counter-play game that goes well beyond "I was lucky enough to draw the right card," which was one of the two things that stalled me out on development last time I tinkered with it. Or something. That you guys go "hmm that's a bit new" means there's something for me to play with.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 10, 2018 15:15
|
|
|
Still working on my hypothetical 18xx+COIN game here and there. i have a buddy involved now and we're trying to flesh out the factions and a few other things and I have two questions to crowdsourc 1) How would you feel if, playing an 18xx with stripped-down rules, that track was represented by a set of sticks instead of hex tiles (as hex tiles cover up useful board info). There'd be one longer stick (centre of one edge, skipping two edges, centre of far edge) for straightaways, one medium length stick (centre of one edge, skipping an edge, centre of the other edge) for gentle curves, and one small one (centre of adjacent edges) for sharp curves. There would be room for all three in a tile (theoretically), but you'd never be allowed to let them cross. Make sense? Seem workable? 2) Do you think it's possible to run a player-faction in a COIN model which is geographically distinct rather than histo-factionally distinct? I have to elaborate on #2 a bit. We have three clear factions - the Metis Nation, the Government of Canada (CPR), and the Hudson Bay Company. We have goals at least thematically for the first three - autonomy, settlement, and wealth. We are looking at Indigenous peoples as a 4th faction, but the problem is that the three major indigenous groups in the event - the Blackfoot/Siksika nation, The Assiniboine/Nakota, and the Cree nations - all had their seperate approaches to a unified goal of survival in the face of scarcity. The problem is modelling a set of seperate (and sometimes mutually hostile) groups as a single player faction. So, my idea is to try to develop the "First Nations" player's experience and strategy around "places" rather than "pieces," as each of these groups have traditional territories which would play out on the map, with territorial ongoing effects kind of like faction abilities, but aimed at spaces, which could be a special activity in some cases (like the Government's "Resettle" in CT). These could, for example, make it so that First Nations pieces give up violence abilities in a certain space, but they retain those abilities elsewhere. The "pieces" really represent the activities in those areas, not the decisions of any political faction a la marching guerillas. Further militarized action could be modelled through allowing the First Nations player to produce resources for other players (modelling individual warrior groups joining Riel's rebellion, e.g.). Does it sound like ther'es something coherent there? I feel like once I break this faction function/goals stage we'll be able to move forward quite a bit more.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 20, 2018 23:20
|
|
|
al-azad posted:I need time to take in #2, but #1 how would you model the limitations that 18xx games normally present in the tile selection? I guess I could also see a components issue with someone bumping the table and all those sticks flying everywhere. Well the limitations would be the number of sticks that the Government player would have available indicates the max resources available for route building (a stick = a yellow tile, essentially), and the rule that the sticks can't possibly cross other (and they can't possibly, anyways, right?) would basically cap out route construction at the options available for green (mostly tiles 23 24 and 25 would be available with these options). The map I have in mind is about 12 hexes E-W and 6 hexes N-S at its widest points - it's a linear route historically, anyway, and the decisions are mostly "Does it go through town to south or town to north". Small cities would be modelled by having track in a hex with a city, and major centres (which will double as ECs) will connect like off-board spaces. Every rule beyond that isn't complicated by the sticks - routes must connect, must have access &c. Players bumping the table would be a problem, but that's not intrinsic to sticks. The specific pieces i have in mind are essentially the fence pieces from Agricola, and i think they're stable enough.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 21, 2018 00:19
|
|
|
 (I may have to cut this off and take it up later) I've based the regions on 3 different geographies: historical territories (Saskatchewan, Assiniboia, Mantitoba, Alberta, and Keewaitin), treaty territories (1 2 4 6 7 - the different coloured sections) and then topography - the Saskatchewan River, mostly. I then made one vertical line because treaty 4 Assiniboia (pink central south) was just way too frickin' big. I intend that every distinct area there is a COIN-style territory (12 + 3 "cities"). Each treaty area will work on a keyword function a la the provinces in Colonial Twilight - "target one treaty territory" etc. The "Cities" (scare quotes because some of them are like pop 300 at this time, but they're economic centres) Fort Gary (bottom right) - essentially staging for the railroad, now Winnipeg; Opaskwayak (top right) - basically the gateway to the northern fur trade - and Battleford (left), the major trade centre in the prairies at the time. I can't find the version where I was overlaying hexes on it, unfortunately, but for rough hex scale, the south-western blue section (Treaty 7 Alberta) was three hexes big (2 across, one below), making the whole map from BC to Winnipeg something like 14 wide. There will be three 18xx-style offboard areas - two passes in the west and one in the east. There will also be some similar offboard areas to the north and to the south, but more on those briefly in a second. Using sticks instead of tiles will make map creation easier. Now there are reasons that I want on-board rail construction 1) I want an Eastern Canada attitude track, and too many tracks is too many tracks (Pendragon's problem imo). 2) I want the government to have to control territory to be able to put track down, and I want the trains to affect the movement of government pieces, which was a major historical factor, as it essentially allowed the government forces to start deploying troops with heavy weapons historically, instead of just RCMP. I want the track construction to be a victory condition. 3) I want the major resource generation activity for the Government, First Nations, and Metis factions to be "running routes" - the FN and M will run fur trade routes on rivers as special activities, and the Government rail construction essentially creates a network of ECs (which other factions can sabotage or leech via investment) for the propaganda rounds. The HBC faction can create trading posts which increase the value of these routes, but which allows the HBC to leech. So early game a powerful trading route will be something like Battleford-Opaskwayak, but after the construction of a few HBC posts a route like Regina-Winnipeg will be more lucrative. 4) I want the government to have to decide between different routes to negotiate #2 and #3 based on board state and revenue.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 27, 2018 13:43
|
|
|
I had a mechanic idea last night that I'm just going to post for the sake of posting it, because that helps me to remember things and whatever. I don't know how original it is but I got the idea while listening to the History of Byzantium podcasts and all of the narratives about Belisarius's battles during the reign of Justinian. As it came to mind it's pretty much a wargame mechanic but it could possibly apply to other conflict resolution. Again this is a  post.Instead of straight roll-to-resolve, resolution depends on hidden information which is simultaneously or procedurally revealed as the exercise of deploying or engaging (perhaps like Sekigahara or Kemet). Within any given conflict each player would have a given capacity which would work out to a fixed number in a "greater number wins" resolution. Each player would have the option of a gambit, which would provide a 1dx-n (where n>=2) bonus, which obviously could be a penalty with a bad roll. Combat resolution would scale somehow to have greater or lesser defeats based on the differential. Here's a really rough example, more to show how it affects decision making: suppose we have Belisarius's Byzantine army with a strength of 5 marching on Alaric's which has a strength of 4. Alaric knows he can't beat them straight up in a fight, but he may select a gambit option, in this case probably 1d6-3, so a swing in values of -2 to +3. The risk is that a poor roll will turn a marginal loss (5 to 4) into a major defeat (5 to 2), but it also means that a good roll could turn a defeat into a major win (5 to 7). Alaric also knows that Belisarius could choose a gambit, which factors into the calculus. The gambit option is always available to any commander, so it becomes an exercise in bluffing, playing it safe, and taking risks. Individual commanders could have abilities which affect the resolution of gambits. Dunno. I think there's some meat there.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 7, 2019 15:34
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 17, 2024 20:29 |
|
|
That's a lot to take in - what parts of the game are you working on right now?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 22, 2022 06:37
|
|