Board Game Design Laboratory: Igor, get the meeples

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Crackbone: May 23, 2003; Vlaada is my co-pilot.

I'd love to see the rules, but there's no way I can playtest anytime soon. If there's a useful skill I can offer feel free to ask.

# ¿ Dec 17, 2013 00:30

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 17:44

Crackbone: May 23, 2003; Vlaada is my co-pilot.

Just gave them a once-over.

First impression is while I get what you're trying to do with the keywords/jargon, it makes the rulebook pretty hard to digest. Given it's not anywhere near finished rulebook, more "finalized" drafts may fix that issue.

So this is what your bank robbery game morphed into, I take it?

# ¿ Dec 17, 2013 02:11

Crackbone: May 23, 2003; Vlaada is my co-pilot.

On second readthrough everything makes more sense. The hurdle, I think, is that you're using a lot of names that are just wierd and/or unweildy - Kaiser Limb Hands, Impact Rounds, Generic Systems, Evolution Analysis. I get that you're trying to evoke a bit of the bad translation/Engrish of the genre but it makes things a bit harder to follow. Not horrible, and like I said, more passes on the book may help greatly. And given there's no examples or pictures and I groked it that's a good sign.

One thing that I'd say is I'd change "hands" to "decks" in the terms, or very specifically explain that all card a player has can be looked at/played. It threw me off as "hands" almost never refers to something that's not in a player's hand - then add in the body part cards and "Kaiser Limbs' Hands" gets a little loopy.

My biggest beef is the "collective phrase" requirements. Again, I know you're going for theme, but making people shout the phrase altogether as a requirement to win strikes me as a bad rule - mainly because of how subjective it is. What qualifies as simultaneous? What counts as the full correct phrase? Who wants to be the rear end in a top hat that points out you lost because one person didn't shout the final attack name?

If you really want to include something like that, I would build it so that each player must say something individually in turn, "for great justice!", "the power of love!", etc, and if they do they get a bonus. That way you don't get into subjective timing issues, and it's a bonus rather than a penalty. It also means everybody has to be embarrassed individually. There's room for game content there as well - you could have a lot of different phrases that each offer unique bonuses, perhaps getting stronger the sillier the statement?

# ¿ Dec 17, 2013 04:27

Crackbone: May 23, 2003; Vlaada is my co-pilot.

Broken Loose posted:

Somewhat related, the current title is looking to be either The Mystery of Chocolate Isle or Whispers from Where-Under.

Conversely, if at all possible, I could just go for the record longest game name. Whispers from Where-Under: The Mystery of Chocolate Isle: Poop in the Jacuzzi

You are way too in love with these goofy game names.

Just call it Jacuzzi Shitters.

# ¿ Jan 3, 2014 18:32

Crackbone: May 23, 2003; Vlaada is my co-pilot.

xopods posted:

It's hilarious conceptually but I don't know how you'd make it work as a game, since the players know the rules to the game they're playing. If it's one guy against everyone else it can work in a traitor type game - informed minority vs. uninformed majority - but you can't really do the reverse, since if you're the only dude who doesn't know who the gorilla is, it's obviously you, and therefore everyone else is human.

You couldn't as a real traitor game but you could in gameplay terms - humans earn points for playing cards out of their hand, but a certain number of those cards trigger the gorilla player winning (ie killing all humans). Things like take photo with gorilla, collect hair samples, etc. Too much of that and the gorilla gets wise.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2014 01:41

Crackbone: May 23, 2003; Vlaada is my co-pilot.

You're navel gazing at this point. Make a set of simple cards and start play testing.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2014 23:56

Crackbone: May 23, 2003; Vlaada is my co-pilot.

CodfishCartographer posted:

So I got a random board game idea earlier today, and figure I may as well throw ideas at the wall that is this thread in case someone knows of a similar game, or to just get input on the idea in general.

The basic concept is a gold rush board game, where (at least part of) the board is divided into multiple plots of land. Each plot would have stacks of cards / tokens face-down, that hide what is buried on that land. Most of the cards could be nothing, BUT SOME OF THEM MIGHT BE GOLD!!!! Players would buy plots of land, and then over time (or as some sort of action) reveal the cards in secret. Players could then develop on the land they own to build shops, mines, etc. Essentially, a game of risk management and pushing your luck. Developing everything into one plot of land would be risky if that land turns out to be worthless, but spreading out can be just as risky as well because you won't be able to mine / develop all of them. Or you could buy up lots of land and try to sell it to other players for a high price - or convince them it's PACKED with gold, no really, you just don't have the funds to develop or mine it so you can't take advantage of the golden opportunity! Seriously you should buy it now before Other Player buys it and gets a shitton of gold!

The winner would, of course, be the person with the most money at the end of the game. I'd imagine there'd be a bank players would need to pay rent to for the land, and could even borrow money. One idea I think could work well would be to allow players to spend more money than they have, so they'd work themselves into mountains of debt - classic gold rush But hey! You COULD strike it rich!

Really the main design speed-bump with the idea is that it's pretty prone to randomness. Trying to think of a way to make it so that you'd want to buy a plot of land even knowing it could easily bankrupt you. Having chains of plots that are connected provide bonuses could certainly work, along with different kinda of plots that could provide different bonuses (one is good for farming, one has a well, one is a good location for a store, etc)

I know it's a really rough layout but I'm more just getting ideas down for feedback.

Your entire game premise is predicated on extremely high randomness. You either need to embrace it (ala poker) or throw out the idea completely.

# ¿ Apr 10, 2014 00:07

Crackbone: May 23, 2003; Vlaada is my co-pilot.

Move the title to the top of the card. I'd recommend moving all the symbols to a vertical stripe down the left hand side and color code them along with symbols. Also, is there a reason you have the weapon type written on the card? It's been a while since I read your summary, but it seems like you could just turn that into a symbol, maybe even just put that symbol on the back of the respective decks.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2014 01:26

Crackbone: May 23, 2003; Vlaada is my co-pilot.

Definitely getting better. More thoughts:

- If the blocking is unique to the weapon and not the card, I would move those numbers off the left hand scroll. Maybe even to the back of the card, oriented upside down from the rest of the iconography. It would also make it very clear if somebody was blocking (dunno if that's an issue).

- Personally, I would do the side panel as a set of colored squares, with iconography in the color block behind the number. That would reduce space usage and still be legible.

- How many combo symbols are there?

- Is the number next to the combo symbol strictly the delay modification? If so I think you could probably lose the clock icon and just do "Combo Symbol: 2".

Here's my quick mockup of what I'm talking about for the colored squares with iconography:

# ¿ Jun 15, 2014 03:49

Crackbone: May 23, 2003; Vlaada is my co-pilot.

CodfishCartographer posted:

Whether someone's blocking or not isn't a big issue - it's a decision that's made when you're getting hit, not when you're readying an attack. As for moving the numbers, if I ere to move them to the back of the card I'd likely just remove them completely and just keep them on the primary weapon card. Each weapon 'deck' has 6 attack cards and one primary weapon card that shows the weapon's passive ability and blocking ability. If I put the blocking stuff on the back of each card, that's inconvenient enough that the player may as well just look at the primary weapon card. Cards aren't really placed face-down ever, as players don't need to hide nay information from one another (at least not until I implement the 5-player variant where someone controls the behemoth)

My only possible problem with using the squares is that the combo icon is important, and that could make it difficult to distinguish. There are two combo symbols: the diamond and the triangle. When a card combos into other cards, there's also a third symbol, a star, that signifies that the attack can combo into either the diamond or triangle. The number next to the combo symbol is purely for delay and nothing else - the clock icon could probably be lost, but I do like that it helps reinforce that the symbols are used as a delay.

I'd move the block values to the main weapon card - it's a static value that doesn't change, so adding it eats up valuable real estate that could be used for something else on a card.

I get your concern about the combo icon. Removing the weapon block stats makes more room for a separate combo/time icon if you wanted.

# ¿ Jun 15, 2014 16:40

Crackbone: May 23, 2003; Vlaada is my co-pilot.

Everything I've read is your experience is pretty common. Most publishers are going to want to tweak/retheme a game that's presented to them. If you're in love with it as-is, you better kickstarter it.

# ¿ Jul 21, 2014 01:16

Crackbone: May 23, 2003; Vlaada is my co-pilot.

Foolster41 posted:

Having a lot of competition is what I was afraid of. I don't want to just make a game that exists already.

You'll never make anything then.
Hundreds of games come out a year now, not to mention everything in the past. Make something you'd like to see, if you find something that's done it already check it out, steal what's good, and trash what's bad.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2016 18:38

Crackbone: May 23, 2003; Vlaada is my co-pilot.

Kashuno posted:

So the reason that 2 players hasn't been working has mostly been that if player one places his workers to create weapons, player two can go all in on creating armor. If built properly, the two can effectively cancel each other out if the two players attack each other exclusively. Throw even one more player into the mix and a lot of those possible plays are gone. Those kinds of ties are not only less likely to occur, but even if they do there is now a third person involved who can take advantage of the fact they are both extremely weakened.

Lots of games with this issue use a ghost player that randomly takes spots to create a psuedo 3rd player.
Alternatively what if the available actions were altered every turn to prevent symmetrical attack/defense?

Crackbone fucked around with this message at 01:13 on Feb 3, 2017

# ¿ Feb 3, 2017 01:06

Crackbone: May 23, 2003; Vlaada is my co-pilot.

al-azad posted:

Ugh I've hit a snag in my design for not-Merchant of Venus. I'll post the first page just to give an idea of where I'm headed.

I've got an idea for how I want to tackle every bullet point except movement and map design.

What about tying resources to travel? You could make movement cost good and set prices per lane (or say color code routes and randomize each game with a deck of cards). Or lanes where certain good are prohibited while you carry them?

# ¿ Feb 3, 2017 01:16

Crackbone: May 23, 2003; Vlaada is my co-pilot.

Triskelli posted:

I�ve been lazily batting at an idea for a game idea for a while, wanted to workshop it before prototyping while I�m drunk and don�t know better.

So take a typical �I�ll trade you three wheat for one wool� euro yeah? Something along the lines of Sidereal Confluence where cubes become cubes become victory points. But instead of colored cubes the trade goods are represented by weighted tokens. So Wheat tokens would be 13 grams, Wool tokens would be 2 grams, etc. probably five or six cause those are the magic numbers apparently. And rather than everyone going around the table demanding �wood for sheep?!� there�s a literal balance scale included that you put the goods you want to give on one end and the other player puts goods they�ll give on the other end. If the scale balances then the trade is �fair�. Otherwise the player with the lighter side can throw coins on the scale until the offering player accepts

This sounds like an overly complicated gimmick that doesn�t add anything interesting to gameplay.
It�s just a fiddly method of assigning a value to something.

# ¿ Apr 19, 2018 02:50

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 17:44

Crackbone: May 23, 2003; Vlaada is my co-pilot.

Or just print the assigned value of the good on the cardboard marker? I mean in all seriousness I can�t fathom what this would offer in gameplay other than skill at guessing the weight of things.

I kind of mean to be harsh here because recognizing gimmicks vs. gameplay is a big part of good design.

# ¿ Apr 20, 2018 01:51

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

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