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Came up with a cool idea, who wants to collaborate? I'm all about ideas yo, and just need someone to put on the finishing touches. I think just like 80 pieces of original art, a set of rules, and find a publisher. Shouldn't be much more to it than that. Split the profits 80/20. kidding On a slightly more serious note, I have been avoiding Space Alert because I don't like the resolution phase, it just takes too long for my preferences without me doing anything. It seems like if the board were arranged in a fairly rigid way, you could take a picture of it, do some image processing, and have the state of the game. So your phone or iPad or whatever could do the resolution phase for you. If a game were designed with this in mind, I think adding QR codes to all the relevant pieces would make the image processing much easier. I think you would lose something, because its to really understand exactly why a given move was a mistake if you don't take the time to do everything step by step. But it would make it faster. Just thought I'd throw it out there since it seems like it might be a viable path to an augmented board game. Has anybody seen or thought about designing an augmented board game?
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Feb 7, 2013 07:27
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modig posted:On a slightly more serious note, I have been avoiding Space Alert because I don't like the resolution phase, it just takes too long for my preferences without me doing anything. It seems like if the board were arranged in a fairly rigid way, you could take a picture of it, do some image processing, and have the state of the game. So your phone or iPad or whatever could do the resolution phase for you. If a game were designed with this in mind, I think adding QR codes to all the relevant pieces would make the image processing much easier. I think you would lose something, because its to really understand exactly why a given move was a mistake if you don't take the time to do everything step by step. But it would make it faster. Just thought I'd throw it out there since it seems like it might be a viable path to an augmented board game. Has anybody seen or thought about designing an augmented board game? One could potentially also start with damage tokens or disabled Battlebots in a campaign. Image processing is not a very good way to deal with this problem. What? The resolution phase takes less than twenty minutes when you do it manually. It'd be even less with one of those Flash programs. I don't understand how you could possibly have an attention span so short that the minute or so between calling out your next move to the resolver is problematic. If you can't manage to pay attention for 20 minutes during the resolution phase, I don't know how you can have fun with board games in general. If it's just an issue of your group being super slow at resolution, just get better at it. It doesn't take many run-throughs to learn. To address your suggestion, the variables are: 1. Action cards played 2. Which threats occur 3. When each threat in (2) occurs 4. Threat tracks You'd need to have everything in such a rigid layout that it'd be a pain in the rear end to actually adhere to it. These things are small - probably too small for recognizable QR codes at the relevant distances. You could also take a ton of pictures, but that makes the option considerably more complex. Image processing is not a very good solution to this problem. The solution already exists: plug your moves, threats, times, and tracks into a program and hit "GO." Even that solution is unnecessary, though, because the actual solution is "Do the resolution phase, it takes like no time and is super fun and you get to yell at your friends when they use your lift and laugh at yourself when you spend four turns using the C button instead of the Battlebots action or whatever." Achmed Jones fucked around with this message at 09:56 on Feb 7, 2013 |
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Feb 7, 2013 09:54
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quote:You'd need to have everything in such a rigid layout that it'd be a pain in the rear end to actually adhere to it. I actually don't think it'd be too bad (I've done a little optical recognition work). QR codes are much more information than you need (you don't exactly have trillions of pieces you need to distinguish) and that kind of presentation (tiny black and white squares) would probably require too good of a picture when you have a lot of pieces to capture at once. But since you're designing the pieces, you can give them a few shapes and a few colors and they'd be pretty easy to distinguish and place. In terms of the board, you'd just need to do some fairly basic stuff - don't get stuff too close to boundaries or overlap, everything has to be visible to the camera, etc. Space Alert would actually be a pretty easy one to do, though you'd probably want to centralize the action boards a little more, and give them a set orientation. All you need to capture is what threat cards came out (and at what times) and what action cards were played - and cards are big flat spaces with lots of room to encode information. I think there's probably a lot of opportunities for mixed electronic/board games (and there's been a few). Involving a camera is really a good idea - could even do silly stuff like little AR animations for battle resolutions or something. But yeah, I find Space Alert resolution fun and easy, and I've never felt any temptation to automate it. Might be different if it had little custom animations for dying to a space octopus though.
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Feb 7, 2013 17:38
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I disagree about the technical feasibility. A 21x21 (smallest on wikipedia) QR code with the highest level or errror correction can store at least a 4 digit number, which can identify 10000 different cards and orientations. Assuming you need 3 linear camera pixels per QR pixel, that means you need abou 4000 pixels per QR code, so in a 5MP camera you could have 100 QR codes in 10% of the field of view. Space Alert already has rigidly placed tracks for player actions per player, and threats displayed with timing information nearby. Simply add QR codes to the existing Space Alert layout, without significantly changing the layout, and it should work fine. You don't need to insult me just because I have differing opinions on a game you like. I feel like there is room to find a fun use for something like this, but I don't think I've come up with the killer app. Here are a few more ideas. - AI -- Replace dropped player to allow finishing of a game if one player needs to leave in the middle -- Allow more complicated AI, something like "the Director" for L4D2 that tries to design the enemy to create dramatic experiences - Sharing game states online -- Enable play by post with actual game pieces -- Convert game to iPad version to continue playing on iPad -- Post game state to forum for strategy or other discussion - Archive game states -- Time travel mechanic? - Saving time inputting stuff into a computer program to manage a long resolution phase Most of these don't really seem worth it to me, but there are probably better ideas. I'd say the director like AI is probably the most fun idea I've come up with.
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Feb 7, 2013 17:42
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The game that would actually benefit the most from something like this would be RoboRally.
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Feb 7, 2013 18:58
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jmzero posted:But since you're designing the pieces, you can give them a few shapes and a few colors and they'd be pretty easy to distinguish and place. Oh, I agree there. If you're designing (or redesigning) the game from the ground up, then it's much less of an issue. I was more thinking of it from the perspective of writing a program to automate the resolution of an existing Space Alert board, which wouldn't be helped too much with a bunch of QR stickers (as you said). In any case, it's not so much that it looks to me that you can't do this as much as it's a solution without a problem. But I guess resolution is a problem for some people, so maybe I'm just not the target market. quote:Might be different if it had little custom animations for dying to a space octopus though. Good point. Very good point.
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Feb 7, 2013 22:31
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I've been playing Can't Stop on my iPad a lot lately, and it got me thinking about the mathematics of endgame situations in press-your-luck games. I.e. when do you press on for the immediate win, and when do you stop with what you have, leaving yourself better odds of winning on subsequent turns but potentially allowing your opponent to try a hail mary of his own before it gets back to you. Here are the results: http://www.benefactum.ca/?p=285
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Feb 8, 2013 21:14
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I've been constantly postponing posting in this thread because I've been slowly going through each post, furiously scribbling ideas down. So here's some Cyberpunk game that came to me. I will amend this post with helpful images over the course of today. Silicon Diver ideadump (2-5? 7? players) I initially had it where at the beginning of the game, each player gets a hidden role. Unlike normal hidden role games, this is more like Paranoia's secret societies-- each role dictates how you score and win. Every character has their own motivation and must manipulate the other players to come out on top. I may just save this for another game. Every round, each player chooses where to go. They can go to [Town] (hilarious name tbd) or they can go online (Dive). Players that go to Town can interact with people and purchase physical things like drugs and computer parts. Players that Dive will go through the internet, hunting through the cyberflow for datacores and links.  Your technorig is your cybernetic man-machine interface. It is represented by 2 types of tiles: hardware tiles and software tiles. Hardware tiles have a power signature, which is how far away from a power supply they can be. They also have memory limits, which is how many software tiles can attach to them. Just the same, software tiles have a memory size, meaning they may count as more than 1 tile for memory limits' sake.  Whenever you Dive, you physically select a number of hardware tiles and place them under the fingers of one hand. This game discriminates against people with less than 9 fingers. Those devices and their attached programs affect what you do during the Dive, and there are specific devices that allow other attached devices to function. This hand has to stay in contact with the hardware while the other hand Dives.  You may optionally Inject. Drugs with hilariously bad names (thanks Riidi) are represented by cards, and if you take a hit of a drug, you hold that card in the palm of your other hand, using the middle/ring/pinky fingers to hold it in place. You'll need your thumb and index finger. Drugs give you a buff but the round afterward, you flip the card over in that palm to represent the negative effects of it wearing off. Coming off a drug isn't negative by itself, but you can't immediately Inject again and certain events will cause you to get arrested or negatively impacted otherwise by a hangover. (img-diving) The CyberFlow is a facedown pile of tiles/stack of tiles/bag of tiles. The amount of tiles (Packets) you may take is determined by your hardware/software, but there are Noise Packets that force you to draw again. If you go over your limit, you Crash and are booted offline. It's basically like the building phase of Galaxy Trucker but you have something to do with your off hand. Some packets give you Links. Some give you Software. Anything you get is automatically saved except for Ice. Yes, Noise can fill up your Memory and cause you to be unable to save votal things you find later. Even worse, if your memory goes over its limit, you crash. You can clear your memory later on, though, so it's cool. Even better, cleared memory goes faceup into the CyberFlow. (img-link) Spend a Link program (deleting it in the process, putting it facedown into the CyberFlow) to get a facedown card from an appropriate Server deck. Each deck's cards have unique backs so you remember which places you have links to. You may use one of those cards to access a server. If you do so, flip the card. The Ice number is the amount of Packets you IMMEDIATELY draw. If the Packets are Software, count the memory. If it's a link, it's -1. If it's Noise, it's 1. Add it up and that's how big an Icebreaker you'll need to get in. If it's too tough, save the Link for later, but you logout. If you get in, take the reward listed on the card and throw the Packets facedown back into the CyberFlow. Diving probably sounds complicated, but it's pretty simple. Turn on your rig, login, take some tiles, logout. If you're hitting a server, turn on your rig, link up, take some tiles, break the ice, logout. Easy peasy. (img-town) Going to town lets you buy from the marketplace (Hardware and Software tiles for sale). You can also find Links in the available Software. The selection is mostly random, but totally reshuffled every round and about 1/3rd the total supply is available. Also, players can buy and sell to each other. If you try to buy something in the marketplace, another player can pay more (possibly a minimum amount more? because open auctions for EVERYTHING followed by open P2P sales could get REALLY DUMB) to buy it from under you. Every round, something is Contraband. If you buy Contraband, trigger law effects*. Contraband is noted by a visible Event card for each round (Events can also affect Dives). You can see upcoming Events. (There will also be a go to town action where you can peek at/alter future events) *Law Effects There is a law deck. If the law is tipped, flip the top card. Effects can range from "You get away with it" to "Goddamn shootout in the Marketplace." Guns aren't really allowed in this Police State, but certain drugs might help you in a pinch! TODO
I want to know dream scenarios. I want to hear what you imagine would be awesome to do. "I want to loving take a hit of NinjaCore and win a fistfight at a bar using a combination of cybernetic implants and stim-enhanced reflexes." "I see myself putting together a supercomputer for the sole purpose of downloading and hosting a holographic replica of my favorite pornstar." "I want sweat to drip off my brow as I basically play Uplink but instead of a keyboard, it's my muscles controlling my rig." Broken Loose fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Feb 11, 2013 |
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Feb 11, 2013 22:25
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quote:I want to know dream scenarios. I think it'd be fun to do a game involving more realistic interactions with computers. There's a whole bunch of established cyberpunk ideas - stuff like "ice-breakers" and what not, realized most clearly in Netrunner - that only exist as part of this kind of fiction, and don't map well onto any realistic computer concepts (now or in the foreseeable future). None of it was ever terribly realistic, but at least in the 1990s it didn't feel silly. Now it feels silly. Building a realistic game would require a lot of reinvention and much less reliance on established "objects", but would be a lot more satisfying and fresh I think. Computer security isn't overly dry in the here-and-now real world - and we can extrapolate at least semi-realistically into a future where it's more tactical, creative, and generally interesting. I guess I just think it's kind of sad that the cyberpunk genre is stuck in a paradigm that's less realistic than, say, the last Bond movie (which was obviously crazy goofy plot-wise, but at least had a reasonable basic paradigm for lots of its technical stuff).
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Feb 11, 2013 23:17
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I think a lot of my designs go out of their way to take the silliest and most endearing parts of their themes. A serious hacking game might be on the books, but it would lack the cyborg police shootouts and really stupid names of what I'm doing.
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Feb 12, 2013 03:47
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quote:I think a lot of my designs go out of their way to take the silliest and most endearing parts of their themes. I think there's something like Poe's law operating here. I mean, your game idea is clearly a parody when presented like above... but what about every other game in the genre? I mean, is Android: Infiltration supposed to be making fun of the setting, or is it earnestly, uh, cyberdark? What was the last thing in this kind of setting that was reasonably serious? Bladerunner? Edit: to be clear, I fully support you doing whatever - go for it - I'm just saying my dream scenario is someone doing a serious take on this kind of world. I think it'd be cool.
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Feb 12, 2013 04:01
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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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I'm not clear on what the seeming dexterity element has to do with anything... I didn't go back and read super-carefully, but for activating your hardware, is it just a matter of building your computer so that you can physically reach the things you want with the fingers of one hand, or is there going to be an element like Climb! where you can reposition your fingers as you go? What's the difference between having five fingers available on your diving hand vs. only thumb and index when you're on drugs? Is there a time limit? I like the tile placement subgame for rig construction, and push-your-luck elements are always up my alley. What if the internet itself was also a tile-laying thing, similar to Steve Jackson's Hacker?
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Feb 12, 2013 16:04
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I agree. The dexterity portion is highly problematic IMO. I don't see it adding anything of real value while excluding a large swath of potential players, not to mention the problems with different hand sizes and finger reach. A piano player would have a measured advantage vs. somebody with carpal tunnel or a disability. I doubt that's the intent.
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Feb 12, 2013 16:37
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On further thought, I realized some problems with my previous idea, so that's going on the mental shelf until the day some flash of inspiration happens to fix it... but I had another one on the bus today. I feel like commitment and fulfillment is an underexplored mechanic (in fact, I'm not sure I can think of a single example outside of Bridge and similar trick-taking games, though I'm sure some must exist). What I mean by this is players making a "contract" with the game, to provide a certain amount of something within a certain number of turns, being rewarded for fulfilling the contract and penalized for missing it. I want to pair this with a push-your-luck mechanic, possibly dice-based, so players will end up having to push their luck in order to meet their contracts (or else compromise by reneging on one in order to safeguard the gains needed to meet another). I'm thinking I'll use some sort of fantasy or sci-fi theme, with different races who offer the contracts, and offer different rewards and penalties for meeting or failing the contracts. For instance, the ultimate goal of the game may be to achieve a certain degree of favor with the gods, which is done by fulfilling contracts with the Holy Ones (or whatever), who of course penalize you on the divine favor track when you fail in their contracts. But meanwhile, you might also take contracts with the Dwarves who, if you fail, just take as much as you have of whatever they'd asked for and give you nothing in return, but if you meet the quantity agreed on, reward you with gold tokens which act as wildcard resources for meeting other contracts. Maybe the Elves give you lucky charms which let you keep what you'd gained when you fail in a push-your-luck roll instead of losing it all, etc. The actual mechanics for bidding on contracts and for gaining resources and pushing your luck is T.B.D., but I have some ideas. Anyone know of existing games like this, or have any feedback on the general concept?
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Feb 13, 2013 15:05
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Sorry for the minor derail from the pretty interesting talk going on, but theres a sale on for a game called Arcane Legions. I can't vouch for the game itself but its $6 and comes with like 120 minis. Might be a great addition to any designers Spares pile - http://www.miniaturemarket.com/wls000.html
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Feb 13, 2013 17:28
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quote:Anyone know of existing games like this, or have any feedback on the general concept? In a general sense, Ticket To Ride is somewhat about taking contracts (deciding how many you take and how ambitious). I'd be a bit concerned that having both failure penalties and fulfilment values on a contract; could make the game very swingy. Adding "insurance"/hedging could work, but also gets complicated fast. (Edit: I guess in a strict sense it probably doesn't matter whether there's penalties and rewards or just rewards, and it does allow you to manipulate your exposure to risk to have it broken out - I just think there might be "game player psychology" type consequences to having both). In general, I really like this kind of mechanic - it mixes two really satisfying mechanisms: push your luck and "general prediction", both of which I really like. Overall I think this is a super cool idea. jmzero fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Feb 13, 2013 |
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Feb 13, 2013 17:40
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Hey xopods, I just wanted to drop in and thank you again for your help on the racing game I was working on. We've been using the single die roll and boost maneuver, and it's been a really fun time. It scales pretty well up to six players once you get the cadence down, and I've been thinking about it in terms of team racing which has had the added benefit of making it fun for just two players with racers helping their teammates, and making for more interesting characters within the teams. We're going through the process of vetting all the character abilities at the moment. Anyhow, thanks again.
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Feb 13, 2013 17:47
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jmzero posted:In a general sense, Ticket To Ride is somewhat about taking contracts (deciding how many you take and how ambitious). Good point! Not sure how I didn't think of that myself, except that I guess I was fixating on the specific idea of "provide X amount of commodity Y by turn Z" as opposed to thinking about it in more general terms. But yes, Ticket to Ride's mechanic is very, very close. And of course, its success is a strong indicator that the idea has merit! quote:I'd be a bit concerned that having both failure penalties and fulfilment values on a contract; could make the game very swingy. Adding "insurance"/hedging could work, but also gets complicated fast. (Edit: I guess in a strict sense it probably doesn't matter whether there's penalties and rewards or just rewards, and it does allow you to manipulate your exposure to risk to have it broken out - I just think there might be "game player psychology" type consequences to having both). There has to be some sort of cost associated with taking a contract, though. It could be an up-front commitment of resources though, rather than a penalty upon failure. Or even just an opportunity cost in that you can only have a certain number of contracts open at a time. The only reason I'm leaning towards penalties for failure is that it allows the different "races" or "clients" to have different penalties as well as different rewards, which would serve to increase variety in the game. In the end, though, the specifics are going to depend on exactly how players acquire contracts, which is something I have to think more about. One possibility is that there are a number of Demand Cards available at any given time... players can fulfill open Demands for the reward, at no direct risk to themselves, except for the danger that someone else will complete it (or claim it first). But players could, on their turn, place a Contract marker on a card, after which they're the only one who can fulfill it, but suffer a penalty if they don't. quote:In general, I really like this kind of mechanic - it mixes two really satisfying mechanisms: push your luck and "general prediction", both of which I really like. Overall I think this is a super cool idea. Thanks, I'll let you know how it progresses. ----------- Fix posted:Hey xopods, I just wanted to drop in and thank you again for your help on the racing game I was working on. We've been using the single die roll and boost maneuver, and it's been a really fun time. It scales pretty well up to six players once you get the cadence down, and I've been thinking about it in terms of team racing which has had the added benefit of making it fun for just two players with racers helping their teammates, and making for more interesting characters within the teams. We're going through the process of vetting all the character abilities at the moment. You're welcome! I'm really glad to hear the idea worked out for you. The first big success for the Game Design Workshop! You should take a photo of a game in progress next time you're testing and post it for us to see.
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Feb 13, 2013 19:06
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So I've been ironing out the last details in Ghosts Of Whixlys first draft, and I'd like to get some feedback from you cool chaps. So the game is basically a resource management mechanic. You each play one of 4 exorcists who are competing (in a semi-co-op way) to deal with as many ghosts as possible. The gameplay works through actions, you have 3 actions per round and may move, search, dispell a ghost, use a special ability or trade. The game takes place in a Mansions of Madness style board, so modular tiles based on a map. Ghosts are summoned every round and placed in the house. You then roll a D4 and move that many Ghosts closer to the exorcists. The ghosts do damage when they reach the exorcists. You deal with ghosts by spending one of four resources. Each exorcist will generate one of these resources every round, they can also be found by spending a search action. Each resource also has a special power that you can spend it for instead; Create an impassable Ghost Barrier, Shield from an attack, Slow a ghosts movement. In addition to this, the House itself has a 'damage' track. As more ghosts pile into the house, the House starts to break down, when the track reaches the bottom, the house falls apart and everyone still inside dies. Object of the game is to exorcise as many ghosts as possible then escape before the house kills you. Winner is the person with the most ghosts slain. This is still early days, first draft stuff, so I'm not 100% set on any part of this. Thoughts? Ideas?
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Feb 13, 2013 19:19
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xopods posted:You're welcome! I'm really glad to hear the idea worked out for you. The first big success for the Game Design Workshop! Will do!
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Feb 13, 2013 20:02
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Alright, think I've got an idea for how the press-your-luck might work in my contracts game... I'm going to have a "map" of the kingdom consisting of a 6x6 grid, with different types of terrain. The rows and columns are each numbered 1-6. There's a "collector" pawn (I don't know what the thematic excuse for this will be exactly) that's shared by the players and starts in the city, which is at (6,6). The remainder of the map is divided up into the five types of terrain, 7 squares each. On a player's turn, they first draw a certain number (maybe 4) of tokens from the bag, and place them into the grid in spaces matching their type; e.g. wood tokens in a forest space of the player's choice, etc. They then roll two dice; they can then either move the pawn horizontally or vertically the number of spaces shown on one of the dice, or jump to the a space whose coordinates match the two dice. In either case, the move must take them to a space with a token. If they can't, they get nothing. Assuming they have a legal move and collect a token, they can roll again if they wish, but if ever they get a roll that can't be used to collect a token, they lose everything they've gathered that turn. E.g. if you're at (5,4) and roll 3+1, you could move 1 and collect a token at (4,4), (6,4), (5,3) or (5,5), you could move 3 and collect a token at (2,4) or (5,1), or you could jump to (1,3) or (3,1) if there was a token on one of those. If none of those 8 spaces had a token, your turn would be over. When the player stops or busts, whatever tokens they didn't collect remain on the board and the next player adds four more, and so on. This is a weird and asymmetrical system, in that pairs are bad (giving you much fewer options) and high numbers are bad (harder to use for movement - 6s in particular can never be used to move, only to jump). That's why the city is at (6,6); I think I'll do something special with it. E.g. if the collector pawn doesn't start on the city, as well as adding the usual tokens, you add a special Crown token to the city. If you manage to collect that, you get some special reward at the end of the turn. Also, one of the terrain types (a river) lies largely along the diagonal, so any Fish tokens you draw you can place along there to help insure yourself against unfortunate pairs. I think the ability of the player to place the tokens (within restrictions) at the beginning of his turn will make for some interesting strategy, either trying to guarantee yourself a safe second roll, or setting up the possibility of a long lucky chain if you're desperate.
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Feb 14, 2013 18:42
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xopods posted:Alright, think I've got an idea for how the press-your-luck might work in my contracts game... On the other hand, I can definitely see the game running headlong into the Catan problem. Specifically, that a string of good or bad 'luck' can completely invalidate player skill. (Hell, even more specifically, you might hear someone shout "why do I never roll a loving four?!".) And the player on the receiving end of that is going to feel very cheated. Even if your game is perfectly mathematically sound, if it feels unfair, then people really aren't going to enjoy it. Edit Also, there's something really ironic about adding variety and depth to a genre via a roll-and-move system. Edit 2 Another problem I'm seeing is that there's no 'jackpot', no 'Hail Mary pass'. Take Yahtzee, for example, which is kind of the quintessential press-your-luck game. (Technically, I prefer Zilch, but the point is the same.) In Yahtzee, you know that, no matter how unlikely it may be, there's a chance of that magical 50-point Yahtzee. Or of throwing your whole hand away in Poker and ending up with a I think you might want to look into why people gamble, so you can flesh out that part of the game more. girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Feb 14, 2013 |
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Feb 14, 2013 23:13
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It's not really roll-and-move in the traditional sense of advancing along a path. It's just a second way of hitting a particular square other than just rolling its coordinates, so as to allow a player to plan ahead, e.g. placing his tiles so that they're on spots that have other tiles 1 and 2 and 3 spaces away, so his next roll is very likely to hit. If rolling the coordinates for a tile were the only way to get it, then it really would just be luck. There's also a bit of strategy in terms of trying to end your move with the pawn in a spot that's going to make it hard for the next player to get to the stuff he wants. Regarding jackpots, I didn't mention this, but I do plan on marking the tiles with one, two or three pips along with their resource type. Tiles must be placed on top of a tile of the same type with fewer pips if possible, into a vacant space of the appropriate terrain otherwise. Thus, you can end up with stacks of up to three tiles in a single space, which provides said "jackpots." In terms of "the roll you always want to get," the Crown token will always be good, so 6-6 will always be a good roll unless you started in the City or have already collected it. Maybe I'll also rule that if you manage to roll the coordinates of your current position you can jump to any space you want. That's a decent "bullseye," though it's not as improbable as rolling a Yahtzee. Regarding the motivation for gambling... in this game the point is that you have to make your contracts, so unless you just want to give up on one, you're going to be forced to gamble at some point. (Though not necessarily, because... well, I don't want to give everything away before I've even had a chance to test the game myself, but essentially some of the contract rewards help you mitigate luck or fulfill subsequent contracts in other ways, so you have a choice between gambling or expending your precious rewards.) xopods fucked around with this message at 02:43 on Feb 15, 2013 |
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Feb 15, 2013 02:35
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I like that idea a lot. I would play that game. One dimension I might add to it is movement over tiles differing between resource type. For example, forests with 3 or more tokens are not traversable, mountain "mines" with no resources also could not be passed over, lakes with 2 or more fish can improve a movement by an additional space, etc.
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Feb 15, 2013 03:03
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Admin Understudy posted:I like that idea a lot. I would play that game. It's an intersting idea, but I'm nervous about adding too many rules to that part of the game... Too much explicit complexity hinders planning, and if anything is too rudimentary at the moment and need spicing up, it's going to be the contract system. I'm going to try to throw together a proto today and play it with my wife tonight and a 4-player game with her and my parents over the weekend. So I should have a test report soon and then we'll know which bits need adjustment or embellishment. It does have the advantage of potentially making sixes useful for movement, so I'll keep it in mind for that, if that turns out to be an issue. xopods fucked around with this message at 14:52 on Feb 15, 2013 |
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Feb 15, 2013 14:49
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Anyone up for some playtesting? Its a bit early days, but my playtest group has been nonexistent and I need to get some time on it. It's for Super Robot Fighter, the game I was posting about last month where you assemble a robot out of random parts. Supposed to be kinda wacky and fast. Let me know, anyway. Edit; I'd like to ask for some advice on a resource mechanic too. The game I've been rambling about this month, Ghosts Of Whixly Manor, has 4 resources. These are how you 'defeat' ghosts and gain points. I have 4 mechanics for resource collection that I'm working over. To start with, when I began, I had the mechanic just rolling a D4 and drawing a resource related to the number you roll. So, roll a 4, gain 1 Incense, Roll a 2, Gain 1 Holy Symbol, etc. Then, as I worked, I kinda moved away from Randomness and started rethinking the resource mechanic. In addition to the original idea, I now have the following; Each character is good at one resource. When they spend an action Searching, they find any 2 Resources, or 2 of the one they're proficient at. Roll a D4, you get that many resources to assign as you wish. Probably include the rule about only getting 1 of each, 2 of the one you're good at. Draw Points, areas of the map where you can search and draw 1 of a resource. One area would be a Holy Symbol draw point, one would be a Prayer Bead draw point, etc. Thoughts? I want to try and keep random rolls and stuff to a minimum, but this kind of game kinda invites them pretty readily. Nemesis Of Moles fucked around with this message at 17:11 on Feb 16, 2013 |
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Feb 16, 2013 16:59
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There is always a better way to do things than a straight die roll. Dice can be good, but "roll a die, take as many resources as the number you rolled" is kind of unimaginative and doesn't leave any room for strategy or player choice. A good game involves interesting decisions... the impression I get from your designs is that you're thinking in terms of narrative rather than player agency. It's okay to put theme first if that's your bag... but you should still be focusing on the thematic decisions being made by the players. Think more about what the players are doing and less about what the game is doing, if that makes any sense. The game isn't about a house and ghosts and things found in rooms; it's about paranormal investigators having an adventure. xopods fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Feb 16, 2013 |
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Feb 16, 2013 18:03
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xopods posted:There is always a better way to do things than a straight die roll. Dice can be good, but "roll a die, take as many resources as the number you rolled" is kind of unimaginative and doesn't leave any room for strategy. It's funny, almost any other aspect of literally every game I've worked on, I'd agree but resources in this are crazy abstracted, all of those mechanics are just ideas I'm ripping off of other games, not really narrative focused ones. What I'm trying to find here is a middleground between what I feel is too much agency afforded by 'When you recover resources, recover them however you want' and the too little agency given by the dice rolls. I think my fave right now is the 'Search, Recover 2 Resources to assign as you want'. It should give the kind of tactical gameplay I'm looking for in this game, but it still feels a little 'loose'. It's lifted basically wholesale from Battlestar Galactica. The overall idea for this game came about when I played Ghost Story and some of the players were getting stressed out that the dice rolls weren't going their way. I wanted to make a game with a similar idea (use of resources and abilities to deal with a problem) while minimizing the problems that some players felt.
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Feb 16, 2013 18:11
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What if each room has a resource type, as does each character, and you get one of each. E.g. if you've got a "green" character and you're searching in a "red" room, you get one green and one red? EDIT: I see you added the idea of "draw points" to your previous post. So I'm really just suggesting a combination of two of your ideas. You could even combine all three, i.e. searching gives the player two resources which can be chosen from his color, the room's color, or a random die roll if he wants to try for something not provided by either his character or the room. xopods fucked around with this message at 18:16 on Feb 16, 2013 |
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Feb 16, 2013 18:14
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Oh I like that, I think that'll fit really well. I'll give it a whirl.
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Feb 16, 2013 18:19
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First solo playtest of "The Unnamed Game with Contracts and Push-Your-Luck" complete. Worked pretty well... I think it might run a little long for the kind of game it is, so I'll have to think about how to fix that. Also thought of a few tweaks to make while playing. Gonna go home now and play two-players with my wife. God drat the proto is ugly though. My computer is at my parents' because I'm having a kid soon so moved my home office over here to make room for the little guy, but I didn't come in to "work" yesterday, so ended up making the proto on my wife's laptop, using Photoshop Elements and the trackpad. DESIGN HELL.
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Feb 16, 2013 23:18
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Got several playtests done for "The Unnamed Game with Contracts and Push-Your-Luck." It works very well, and the luck factor is deceptive... it seems on the surface that there's a lot of it, but I think that in reality, it's possible to have enough of a skill edge to win just about every time. There are definitely a lot of good heuristics for players to improve rapidly over the first few plays, which is always good. I think the map needs a little tweaking, but once that's done, I think all that's left to do is playtest a bunch more to make sure I'm not missing anything, then make a prettier prototype and show it to my publisher.
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Feb 18, 2013 19:44
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xopods posted:Got several playtests done for "The Unnamed Game with Contracts and Push-Your-Luck." It works very well, and the luck factor is deceptive... it seems on the surface that there's a lot of it, but I think that in reality, it's possible to have enough of a skill edge to win just about every time. There are definitely a lot of good heuristics for players to improve rapidly over the first few plays, which is always good. drat, your turnaround is insane dude. How 'Pretty' should a prototype be? I know we've discussed this a lil before, but every time I make a game, I get the urge to make it less rear end or barebones (the artwork for Super Robot Fighter is literally Squares and Filltool for the version I have now).
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Feb 18, 2013 19:47
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:drat, your turnaround is insane dude. It's experience, I think. When I was starting out, I had to try things out to see how they'd work, but I've been doing this long enough now that 90% of the work takes place in my head before I get to the prototype stage... also, my designs these days are so minimalist and the mechanics so interconnected that most things either just work or they don't, and if they don't, there's no fixing them because everything depends on everything else. So once I get to the prototype stage it's either "yep, just a bit of polish and we're done," or "nope, this is awful, back to the drawing board." So, although this game came together very quickly from the time I started talking about it until the point I'm ready to say "this is pretty good," there was a lot of time spent staring at a blank page in my notebook and just thinking before any of that happened. quote:How 'Pretty' should a prototype be? I know we've discussed this a lil before, but every time I make a game, I get the urge to make it less rear end or barebones (the artwork for Super Robot Fighter is literally Squares and Filltool for the version I have now). Not very pretty. But my current one is so ugly that even I can't bear it, due to having been done on a laptop with a trackpad. Since I'm going to change the map anyway, I figure I might as well take the opportunity to make it less horrendous. The main thing is to be functional. You don't need the artwork (such as it is) to enhance the experience, but you need it not to detract or distract from it. If it's so sloppy that you can't tell what something is supposed to be, that's a problem.
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Feb 18, 2013 23:07
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I hate to tangent again from the awesome news xopods, but I had a new idea for a game I want to run past the thread, see what you guys think. My games club recently got Wiz-War, the new FF version. I started playing with a group and it was a hell of a lot of fun and comparisons to things like Quake and Unreal started arising. It got me thinking, a FPS deathmatch arena style game may be some fantastic fun. The madcap run-grab-shoot mechanics of Wiz-war already were fantastic, and I'm wondering what speeding the game up, adding powerups and maybe random weapon pickups would do. I'm gonna finish up the two games I have right now, and then maybe mess with Wiz-War itself first, but I was wondering if this is already a game, or if anyone had any ideas/thoughts on it.
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Feb 19, 2013 00:25
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:I hate to tangent again from the awesome news xopods, but I had a new idea for a game I want to run past the thread, see what you guys think. Frag by Steve Jackson games tries to do this, but it's not very good. Might be worth looking at for some pointers on what not to do.
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Feb 19, 2013 01:56
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Crackbone posted:Frag by Steve Jackson games tries to do this, but it's not very good. Might be worth looking at for some pointers on what not to do. What is Frags main mechanic, just out of curiosity? Thanks for the tip, fella.
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Feb 19, 2013 02:06
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It's been quite a few years since I've played Frag (Deadlands), but as I recall the biggest problem with Frag was it's stupidly discrete damage system. So often you would do exactly one damage, so a lot of it was ordained well in advance, and the luck that did mix it up was not really controllable. I think an FPS game would probably do best by trying to take Tannhauser and making it more freeform and less bad.
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Feb 19, 2013 02:09
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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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