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I tried a solo playtest of Captains of Karaya yesterday, though it's hard to really gauge the fun factor of the experience in a hidden information and memory-based game when you're simultaneously trying to remember what four different players are each supposed to remember, while remembering to not remember what they don't remember when you're moving for them.  It seemed to work out pretty well and the endgame was kind of interesting. The first few islands went Rebel-aligned, so everyone ended up with some Rebel alignment points. Three of them more than the fourth, since they'd been cooperating on those islands while the fourth had been playing Loyalists*. But that fourth player had also been playing a whole lot of high-value loyalists together on the largest (six-character) island. At the end of the game, it was him racing to fill it up, while the others dashed over with spies to reverse their alignment and poach Loyalist points off his efforts. In the end, it was worth 14 points (a lot) and the originally-Loyalist player had 3 characters there for 42 points, one of the turncoat Rebels got a Spy and a Loyalist down for 28 points, and the third only got a Spy down for 14. The fourth player didn't get there. The originally-Loyalist player ended up with 40 Loyalist alignment because he'd started with 2 Rebel points. But the Rebel player who'd managed to get a Spy and a Loyalist had started with 13 Rebel alignment, so after the Spy flipped that to 13 Loyalist, his 28 put him at 41 for the win. (The game ends when one or more players go over 30 - though based on this result I may make that 40, or when there are fewer unclaimed characters than players at the beginning of a turn.) The game ending on a dramatic rush for a high-value island and a 1-point turncoat win seems like exactly what I want from the game, but my concern is that too many games will end up following the same pattern; grab a bit of Rebel alignment early on low value islands, then pile high value Loyalists onto one big island along with a Spy in order to convert your Rebel alignment to Loyalist. There are some strategic concerns that might make this not the case - for instance, one of the abilities you can choose from to draft each turn lets you exchange passengers with someone, so sailing around the whole game with a Spy and a Sultan on board is risky. I'm visiting my parents today and I'll rope them into a game, see how it plays with real people who don't know what the others are doing. --- *: You get the island's value in alignment for each neutral or winning-team character you played, and just 1 point for each losing-team character. This tends to be a penalty, because presumably if you were playing Loyalists, for instance, it's because you wanted Loyalist alignment. Giving you full-value Rebel alignment would be too big a hit, so you effectively just get penalized one point for each character you played if your side lost.
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Sep 8, 2013 16:00
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xopods posted:I tried a solo playtest of Captains of Karaya yesterday, though it's hard to really gauge the fun factor of the experience in a hidden information and memory-based game when you're simultaneously trying to remember what four different players are each supposed to remember, while remembering to not remember what they don't remember when you're moving for them. This game seems very neat and has some similarities to one of my favorite games I judged as part of Cards Against Humanity's Tabletop Deathmatch at Gen Con. Hidden Information/Deduction games are some of my favorites. My question would be is there a possibility that all players decide to go with the same faction, and does it become a simple racing game at that point? On a separate note, I figured I would describe the game I am working on. Its similar to a Vlaada game in that it blends Euro mechanics with some Ameritrash elements and a high fantasy theme. The idea of the game is that it takes place in a city where the main force driving the economy is adventuring because the surrounding lands are simply riddled with forgotten tombs, dragon's lairs, orc fortresses, etc. The players are enterprising gentlemen in the city who decide to start up rival guilds to see who can gain the most Renown. The game is split into two rotating phases. The first phase is a simple worker placement game. Players use their workers (henchmen in this game) to recruit heroes, purchase items for them, build new rooms onto their headquarters, or activate the abilities of the rooms they have already purchased. After each of those phases, there is an adventuring phase. There will be four decks out to represent "Dens of Evil" surrounding the city, each with its own theme and boss at the bottom. The players decide which den to explore and then flip over the top threat card and expend their heroes resources (cubes representing battle, cunning, lore, and will) to conquer the threat. Conquered threats are worth Renown (VP) and most are also worth at least some gold. Each time they defeat a threat they can choose to continue, or to retreat back to town. Once all players have done this, there is a quick maintenance phase and the game returns back to the building/purchasing phase. When all the Den of Evil decks are emptied, the player with the most renown wins.
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Sep 8, 2013 18:42
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I'm going to give the BGG 24 hour contest another go, theme this month is dice. I had some errands to run today so I spent the last 6 hours just brain storming and drew this up when I got home. I'm off to Kinkos now to print it up for some brief play testing but then this evening I'll probably write up a PDF of rules and pages to print out. Space Dice Game 2-5 players ??? Minutes Components needed: 1 Ship sheet & pen for each player, 1 more than 1 die per player Players are space pirates attempting to build up their ship and deliver cargo without sustaining too much damage. On a turn, the active player will roll all the dice, select 1 or 2 for himself, and then in player order each player must select another die if able. When selecting dice, each player will indicate what aspect of their ship that die is being applied to. There are 2 slots each for the ship's Computers, Weapons, Cargo, Crew, Engines, and Shields. A player simply writes the number of the selected die into the corresponding component slot. After all dice are selected, there may be 1 or more remaining, the active player may then select one of these to fill the crew component or as an attack on other players. Then pass the dice to the next player clockwise and repeat. Play continues until all players have filled all components on their ships and then 1 final round takes place. Here's the basic layout of the ship sheet (It will be labeled a bit differently, left a little vague at the moment so I can alter it while play testing more easily)  What the ship components do: A.) "Computers" determines player order for selecting dice after the active player has made their selection, higher totals pick first, any ties just continue in clockwise order B.) "Weapons" determine when dice can be used as attacks after the primary selection phase, reverse correlation, div/2 rounded up. So higher = better, a total of max value 12 allows you to pick any die to attack with. a minimum of 2 means only a 6 could be selected as an attack. C.) "Cargo" is not entered as a value on the ship but marked off on the side & is the primary way to score VPs. When you make a selection, you scratch off that value and at the end of game you score that many points. Obviously only the active player could select values 7 through 12 as they require 2 dice. D.) "Crew" is not selected during the primary phase, but similar to attack is only selected by the active player from any excess dice. There is a total component value (ship cost) limit of 40 for the components outside of Crew, and the value of Crew raises that number. E.) "Engines" determine rerolls. div/3 rounded up rerolls as either active or non-active player. Active player gets to make this number of total extra rolls, meaning TWO rerolls could be used as re-rolling 2 dice one time, or one die twice. F. "Shields" are extra slots that can take damage from attacks. When selecting dice values, you first place a value in the left side of the ship. Once the left component has a value, you never have to choose a lower value for the right component when you're not the active player. So for example, if you have the left side filled in with 4 Weapons, 4 shields, and 3 engines and only a 2 or 1 was remaining for selection, you are not required to pick that. Computers are not affected by this rule and are not required to be filled in ever. More on attacks: selected from a potential remaining die, your "Weapons" total must be high enough to use that selected die. Each other player takes damage equal to the number of pips. This damage is tabulated under "Structural Integrity" on the right, the top row of 12 slots represents your ship, the bottom row is potential slots from shields. I'm thinking every 2 slots filled in, you must X out a component of your ship that can never be filled in with a number but counts towards ship completion. You lose 1 point for each non-shield slot checked off. This is a little stream of consciousness, I apologize, I'll get a nicer looking rulebook up for review after some playtesting. I'd definitely appreciate any insight in the mean time though.
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Sep 8, 2013 21:02
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Sarx posted:My question would be is there a possibility that all players decide to go with the same faction, and does it become a simple racing game at that point? What stops that from happening is the limited number of characters in play and the fact that the Loyalists have all the points and the Rebel have most of the power... so if a few islands go Rebel early, that means you're guaranteed that others will go Loyalist later and vice versa. But the Spies give people a chance to switch teams, which is the whole point. So it's not really a long-term thing as a short-term thing... Having played once with live opponents, it's not so much a danger that everyone goes the same way long run as that if either several people or one person on multiple visits place Loyalists on a single island, it can produce a high-value island which, unless a Rebel snatches it away, is going to put some people out of reach of the others. Now, it should be hard to do this deliberately, as you have limited ability to know what the others are actually doing, and one or two Rebels placed on the island should thwart your plan and produce the opposite effect... but what happened in my game is that my parents didn't understand this about the game and while they were sailing orbits seeding lots of islands on their own, they were letting me constantly take the Navigator action (to reverse my direction) and keep playing Loyalists on the same island, leading to one super-valuable island that was basically all mine and put me within a few points of the win in one fell swoop. Now, that was mostly their fault, as I could have easily been interfered with and prevented from visiting the same island over and over, but it does mean that the game is vulnerable to early runaway wins if the players aren't equally skilled. I have a few small fixes that should at least make what I was doing harder to do, even when the opponents aren't paying attention, but as I feared, there's still the danger of the game being decided by a single, heavily loyalist island. I'll have to think about whether to introduce some mechanic to discourage players from investing too many moves on a single island (or make it harder for them to do so) or whether that's just the strategy of the game and find ways to make it easier or just encourage players to sabotage spots where one guy seems to be keeping all his eggs. xopods fucked around with this message at 01:48 on Sep 9, 2013 |
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Sep 9, 2013 01:41
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Maybe the biggest issue is that you score for every character you place on the island, so if e.g. you're left to yourself to fill in the biggest (6-space) island by yourself, and you put all the highest-scoring Loyalist and Neutral tiles there, you could hypothetically score (4 + 4 + 3 + 3 + 3 +3) = 20 for the island, but because you have all 6 influence markers there, 6 x 20 = 120 Loyalist points for a single island, when 40 is what you need for a win. But again, your opponents should not be letting you do that. The way the numbers work, if any one of those six characters were replaced by someone else's Assassin, that'd be enough for them to take the whole island for Rebel alignment, since you went balls out for value and didn't bother defending it.
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Sep 9, 2013 01:58
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Ugh, I had the worst playtest ever over the weekend. So I'm testing my latest game, Arena Shooter. Alls going well till one player notices how, if you wanted to, you could sit on your spawn point, drop traps everywhere, then wait till everyone else died. He also pointed out that with how the hand refresh mechanics work, you could amass basically all the cards if you spent the whole game trying to do so. I thanked him for noticing that, shot some ideas back and forth about how to fix it, then watched as he made the playtest take 4 hours by doing exactly the above. I wouldn't mind so much, but as he told me the issue, I pointed out that both of these would take hours, and you'd not likely win anyway due to the way points worked. It was really frustrating, it meant the other players just got really annoyed and their feedback wasn't as good because by the time we finished, we'd been playing for 3 and a half hours. Not to mention how many times I made it clear that, yes, ok I see the issue, thank you. At the hour and a half mark, he was just making the evening lovely for everyone and bogging down the whole process of playtesting. Silver lining is I patched that up and got SOME feedback from people, and I know not to invite that dude over again. He didn't even win.
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Sep 9, 2013 15:24
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Honestly I think that's EXACTLY the type of feedback you need. You really should seek out the types of people who will play outside your expectations, especially those who will make the game less fun, so you can fix it before it's finished. And even though he noted it before doing it, the act of playing through it offered some practical experience with the issue, and allowed any other emergent issues a chance to be seen while within that particular playtest. You never know when someone who is too smart to have fun with something will find another way to break the game for you.
alchahest fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Sep 9, 2013 |
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Sep 9, 2013 17:55
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My issue is that after finding a problem, identifying it, then demonstrating it, the dude spent the next 2 hours proving that it was infact an issue. An issue that we all agreed existed and needed fixing before he basically wasted an entire playtesting session. I'm not annoyed that he found a way to break the game. Thats exactly what playtesting is for. Its that he spent the entire session making everyone miserable to prove that, yes, if you spent the entire game sitting in one corner of the map, you may very well survive till the end. If through the act of demonstrating it, he showed something unexpected or a unique way the game broke outside of what was plainly obvious, then fair enough, that didn't happen. I know sometimes breaking one thing can show how other things are broken, or offer ideas on smarter fixes for the game, but 4 hours spent on one issue thats fix is exactly the same as when we identified it? That's not really a productive use of anyones time.
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Sep 9, 2013 18:34
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quote:I know sometimes breaking one thing can show how other things are broken, or offer ideas on smarter fixes for the game, but 4 hours spent on one issue thats fix is exactly the same as when we identified it? That's not really a productive use of anyones time. In these kind of initial playtest sessions I think it makes sense to introduce new rules if you need to fix a problem. Obviously that requires the right attitude from the testers to not balk at that (and it sounds like maybe that would have been a problem here), but it's better than a wasted session.
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Sep 9, 2013 18:48
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Yeah, in our playtest group the convention is that the maker can force a mulligan with new rules at any time.
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Sep 9, 2013 19:01
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Yeah, if you think you can see how to fix something, you should apply a "hot fix" immediately, possibly even mid-game. It's hard to look for other problems when there's a glaring one you're already aware of.
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Sep 9, 2013 20:47
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What's funny is I don't know the rules of your game but the obvious fix is "you must move off your spawn point the turn you spawn". Boom, 5 seconds.
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Sep 10, 2013 00:42
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I'm emulating arena FPSs, so the solution was to allow people to spawn on spawn points that people are standing on, the person standing on it gets instantly killed. Telefragging is a mechanic in my game.
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Sep 10, 2013 02:16
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:I'm emulating arena FPSs, so the solution was to allow people to spawn on spawn points that people are standing on, the person standing on it gets instantly killed. In actual online shooters there are always campers. Mechanically, most common way they deal with it are time & score limits. I would think a turn limit would be a great solution for your issue. Sure, he might be an unkillible fortress, but his turn is also "I'll stay here and wait for someone to get close", so campers would actually speed up the game instead of drawing it out. This got me thinking about a weird idea of combining doom & formula de where to "brake" you have to lose points or cards or whatever is keeping this guy alive in the corner. That's probably a whole other, game, though.
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Sep 10, 2013 03:31
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My friend and I have been wasting our time thinking up a game. I saw this thread and though I might get some opinion on it? Lame-rear end flavor:Escape from the Temple of Yeuh-Gagh! You are an explorer in the 1930s! You've heard rumors about an ancient temple in a far-off, non-specific, exotic land. It is said to be untouched and still full of treasure and artifacts, but also home to dreadful creatures and horrible traps. Word of the temple is spreading quick, so hurry and get to the treasure before someone else does!  Objective -Get to the treasure in the middle of the board (yellow square, obv), and find your way to any of the four exits (gray squares.) The Player's Area and Hand -You start the game with three trinket cards in your hand. You can hold a maximum of 5 cards. -You have 5 slots on the board. These hold the 4 pieces of equipment (motorcycle, talisman, whip, gun) and one trinket. -Trinkets can be permanent or single-use. Single-use trinkets can be played right from your hand. Permanent ones must be out on the board. You can only have one permanent trinket out at a time. Movement -Each player starts on a gray square to start and rolls to move. -You roll an 8-sided die for movement. Forward, Backward, Left, Right, and four sides that let you choose on your own. If an invalid roll comes up (you're on the right wall and you get an R) you re-roll. -Aside from the first turn, you must first overcome a creature or hazard to move. In addition you might find a trinket that could help you. -The four diagonals are special. If you move to one of these (black, blue, red, green) you'll get a piece of equipment (motorcycle, talisman, whip, gun). -Unless a player is carrying a treasure, you can not directly move into a player or fight them. -[The Maroon squares are undecided.] Combat -Before you turn over a monster card, you can change your trinket card, if you want. -On each creature/hazard card is a power number that you must overcome (ranging 1-20, in a somewhat bottom-skewed bell curve). You can do this by using your equipment (motorcycle, talisman, whip, gun), your permanent trinket on the board, or single-use trinkets in your hand. -Some creatures are more vulnerable to certain equipment. -Using your equipment gives you +5, but cannot be used the next turn. There is a cooldown on equipment, essentially. (Ex. Turn 1 you use a gun. Turn 2 the gun cannot be used. On turn 3 the gun may be used again.) -Other players may interfere with your combat, either to your benefit, or more likely, to your detriment. However, cards that can do this are rare. -If you fail to overcome the creature or hazard, you get no trinket and you do not get to move. You basically lose your turn. Any equipment you use does still count as being used, so you may not use it again next turn. -Unless a player is carrying a treasure, you can not directly move into a player or fight them. -[We've been fiddling with the idea that when you land on the maroon squares, you draw two creature/hazard cards instead of one, as a sort of milestone.) The Treasure -Once you reach the center, you are now carrying the treasure. -A player carrying the treasure may be confronted directly. Both players may use equipment and trinkets as if they were fighting a normal creature. -A player who is carrying the treasure and is defeated returns to the closest entrance square. Very obviously, there are some (read: a lot) of similarities to Munchkin. Unsurprising, since this game is sort of based on that. However, I'm hoping that a few differences might help put this game far enough away that it can be a different experience. 1)A different board. Or, that there IS a board. Movement, or denial of movement, can help turn the game around. 2)A different win objective. Your level or power doesn't factor directly into the win condition. 3)Interference with other players is hopefully less common than it is in Munchkin. This should stop the game from becoming a slogfest at the end, and any interference would be considered a Big Move. Direct combat (moving on top of the player with the treasure) is made more difficult by somewhat random movement. 4)Equipment cooldowns would make players think about how to effectively use their equipment and often force them to use single-use trinkets. This may decrease the amount of single-use trinkets used on other players. 5)Unlike Munchkin, if you fail a combat, you don't lose all your poo poo. Other thoughts: -My friend and I had in mind when we were thinking of this that it would be a long game. -I know mechanics comes before flavor, but I like the idea of this spoofing on Indiana Jones and Jonny Quest (and by extension, I guess, Venture Bros.) and such. Creatures we had in mind were some cryptids, jungle animals, Nazis, snake-men, undead, mystic/occult stuff. -I know this might be complex for Babby's First Game. Is it too complex to work with? I tried to concisely and exactly explain what the idea is for this game, but I'm sure there's lots of criticism to be had, and I'm ready to hear how awful of an idea this is.
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Sep 10, 2013 06:28
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I'm sorry but that might be the worst idea for a roll & move mechanic that I've ever heard. It's one thing in a game when your progress is stalled by some ability or random occurrence that moves you away from your goal... but for that to be the case HALF of the time? That's going to get really frustrating really fast. It also doesn't seem like there's much of any decision-making at all. Players will use whatever they need to in order to defeat the monster they're facing. Sure they can choose the trinket before-hand, but that's just a bit of randomness, not any sort of real strategy. EDIT: Sorry, that just plain wasn't constructive at all. Here's some ideas: I'd suggest thinking about what movement is really going to represent. If movement is random then is it just going to be a way to set a sort of time for the game? If that's the case then maybe you could just get rid of the board and shuffle the Idol into a treasure deck of some sort. And then think about what sort of decisions you want players to be able to make. If it's about looking for a particular bonus then you could maybe separate the decks into different types of adventures or scenarios that give the players these bonuses. Penguin Patrol fucked around with this message at 07:07 on Sep 10, 2013 |
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Sep 10, 2013 06:58
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Penguin Patrol posted:I'm sorry but that might be the worst idea for a roll & move mechanic that I've ever heard. It's one thing in a game when your progress is stalled by some ability or random occurrence that moves you away from your goal... but for that to be the case HALF of the time? That's going to get really frustrating really fast. It also doesn't seem like there's much of any decision-making at all. Players will use whatever they need to in order to defeat the monster they're facing. Sure they can choose the trinket before-hand, but that's just a bit of randomness, not any sort of real strategy. E: I'm tired and it's late, so I'm rambling a bit. Nah, don't be sorry. I guess since we first thought of it, that movement mechanic was just stuck in my head and we never thought twice about it. The idea was to occasionally not get what you want on your roll. To have 3 out of 8 sides of the die working against you is kind of poo poo. Maybe instead of a d8, it was a d20 that had 4 sides with specific directions on it. Then 3 times out of 20 you're not going the way you want. I want the player to want to spiral around, close to the center, to try and get the equipment pieces. The downside to that is that they're closer to those maroon squares, which being two monsters, could be nearly unbeatable. We had those maroon squares in mind to try and keep players away from the treasure by scaring them off with the threat of double monsters. So you don't want to approach the treasure prematurely. This probably also ties into death, or lack of it. Perhaps you SHOULD get sent back to start if you die. If you skirt too close to the treasure when you're underprepared, you get sent back. One the other hand, you could get very lucky and just score two lvl 1 creatures. Using equipment and trinkets does seem to be more of an illusion of choice rather than actual tactics. Going off what you said with separate decks: What if there were 4 different decks, one for each quadrant, and they were skewed so that two equipment per quadrant was especially effective there (the ones on the border, or the ones on the opposite border)? Or maybe the risk for each equipment is different. The gun has to reload, the motorcycle yields you no treasure, the talisman only has three uses total, or something like that. Yeah, you could just motorbike away, but you're leaving behind all that sweet treasure. Or that talisman is reserved only for emergencies. I dunno. You're really making me realize how not well thought out this game is. Not that that's... completely bad. So that's the two biggest (in my mind, at least) mechanics of the game shot down. This is going to need a long, hard think or a good ol' scrapping. In Summary? 1)Make death sorta suck. Get sent back to start on death. 2)Different risks for different equipment. This should make combat choices actually matter. 3)Less random movement. Shouldn't occur often, but is still a minor threat. Thanks, Penguin Patrol. Rotten Cookies fucked around with this message at 08:08 on Sep 10, 2013 |
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Sep 10, 2013 07:56
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:I'm emulating arena FPSs, so the solution was to allow people to spawn on spawn points that people are standing on, the person standing on it gets instantly killed. This is better than Crackbone's solution for sure. It's always better to create a strategic reason why players shouldn't do the boring, simplistic thing, rather than simply creating a rule that they can't.
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Sep 10, 2013 13:31
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Rotten cookies: What I like: - the board layout (it's an attractive pattern) - the theme (exploring a temple is always fun) Criticisms: - the board does not say entering a temple - it says you are running around on the surface of a ziggurat. This could be a very fun direction! But if your conceit is players spiralling into the centre of an underground complex largely independently, consider working that into the board layout by having actual spiralling tracks, and instead of having left/right etc. just hav inward, outward and 'hop to next track over' - forced movement in disadvantageous directions: this type of thing needs extreme care because it can lead to unnecessary frustration and feelings of powerlessness. Most people I play with at least want to be able to direct their strategy, and your movement system largely prevents this. I hope to come back to this.
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Sep 10, 2013 13:53
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Rotten Cookies posted:So that's the two biggest (in my mind, at least) mechanics of the game shot down. This is going to need a long, hard think or a good ol' scrapping. Throw it out, start over. If, in order to work, a design requires major changes to its central mechanics, you're effectively designing a new game anyway; insisting on keeping some of the peripheral stuff from the original design only limits your options. Better to take whatever aspects you liked, file them away in mental storage, and pull them out at some later date when you happen to come up with an idea that works well with them. Also, seriously reconsider drawing your inspiration from Munchkin. There are certainly lots of people who like it, but most of the time, that's because of a lack of experience with other, better games. It's got some serious design flaws which shouldn't be emulated. Some other general advice: (1) As Sid Meier says, a game is "a series of interesting decisions." When designing, try to focus on decisions rather than procedures. Your game has procedures for moving around and fighting monsters and so forth, but your description doesn't include anything about strategic considerations. (2) Although there's nothing inherently wrong with die rolls and draws from decks of cards as mechanics, a common newbie designer mistake is to treat them as one-size-fits-all solutions for everything you want to happen in the game. If you do that, you're just reinventing Talisman over and over. (Also, since these mechanics are out of player control, they tie in with the above problem with a lack of decisions). Play lots of games for research and pay attention to the mechanics used... most games end up being combinations of mechanics from other games, with one or two unique twists if that. Off the top of my head, some things you might consider for a temple exploration game would be an action point system for movement and exploration, card drafting or even an auction (using "Fate" points or some such) for determining encounters, and/or some kind of press-your-luck mechanic for grabbing treasures in the face of increasing danger from traps/monsters/etc. xopods fucked around with this message at 14:19 on Sep 10, 2013 |
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Sep 10, 2013 14:01
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Points taken, xopods and Osmosisch. Thank you guys for the critiques, even if it's not what I wanna hear. Well, especially since it's not what I wanna hear. Random monsters, random movement, and little to no difference in what you play affecting the game. I can see how this game would not be fun if you're essentially just along for the ride. The player needs decisions. Meaningful decisions. What are the design flaws of Munchkin I should be avoiding? Random monsters, treasure-hording for later use against would-be-winners, enjoyment from humor rather than gameplay? I have a more different idea to type out. We'll see about this one. Thanks again for the opinions.
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Sep 10, 2013 18:22
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The object of the game is to get to , say, 25. Every time you beat an encounter, you advance, and "speed up." I don't know how to word it elegantly, but it's sort of like geometric growth? That is, when you're on a roll, you advance more. If you win all encounters up to your fourth turn, you would move advance one on your 1st turn, advance two on your 2nd turn, three on the 3rd, and four on the 4th. On the 5th turn, if you lose, you don't advance, but you slow down. So if you beat the encounter on your 6th turn, you would advance three. Maybe this would be capped at, say, 5? -There are 4 types of permanent equipment cards that are reusable, encounter cards, and treasure cards. -Equipment can be used more than once and is used to overcome encounters, but each one has a downside. -Treasures are only usable once, but has no downside. You get these from overcoming encounters. They may have very specific -Encounter cards vary in difficulty and may be more susceptible or robust against certain equipment. At the beginning of the game, there are equipment, encounter, and treasure cards out, all face up. You take turns choosing one of these cards to try and build a good hand. The only thing is you must have at least one of each of Equipment, Encounter, and Treasure. Equipment cards are laid out in front of you. On your turn you may either face an encounter from your own hand, face an encounter from the shuffled, face-down encounter deck, or choose to play an encounter on somebody else. If you face an encounter on your turn, you gain treasure and advance. If you fail against an encounter, you still advance, but you slow down, if possible. The equipment cards would have downsides of say, [Gain no treasure if you use this] [Has a cooldown of one turn] [Three uses only] or [If you overcome the encounter, advance, but slow down instead of speed up] I'm hoping that the sort of draft thing at the beginning is a lot of the fun. You could see what sort of hand everybody is building. Maybe somebody is trying to make a hand where their encounters are all weak to their own equipment, setting themselves up for victory. Or somebody is drafting all the strongest encounters to try and impede everybody else. You could set the goal to be whatever you want, not just 25, to adjust the game length. I would guess there would be a board in the middle where you mark how "fast" you are, and keep a tally of what everyone's score is.
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Sep 10, 2013 18:58
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Rotten Cookies posted:What are the design flaws of Munchkin I should be avoiding? For me it's the double whammy of the lack of meaningful decisions combined with being extremely susceptible to kingmaking/having to try to be in second place until the last turn.
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Sep 10, 2013 19:23
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Hey guys. So I have a thing -- I love dice. I love they way they look, I love the way they feel, I love rolling them. I bought a Chessex Pound-o-dice just because it was on sale. The only problem is that I hate, hate games in which outcomes are determined by randomness. So I'm trying to come up with a concept that involves dice, but where the game isn't dictated by chaos. I have a couple of ideas I've been rolling around in my head: 1. Auctions (I love a good auction game). Maybe you would auction off sets of dice? Or sets of dice that had already been rolled (kind of like a Ra type thing, where you have to weigh the benefit of acquiring a group against its harmful effects)? 2. Hidden information - like you would roll the dice in public, and then secretly group them into sets that you use to resolve conflicts? Does anyone have any other ideas for how to involve dice in a game without it devolving into a chaos-fest? I don't even have a theme in mind at this point -- I just really like dice. Also, what games are out there that utilize dice well while maintaining a strong strategy component?
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Sep 10, 2013 20:01
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All of the dice are rolled in public, and every player in secret claims a number, or maybe two, that they want to recruit. [Number of dice displaying that number] x [That number] = Your influence. You want to have a greater influence than your opponents. If two or more players pick the same number, then you divide the influence up equally among the players, rounded down, I guess. There would have to be a time limit, I'd think, to stop people from reallly calculating it out too much. At the end of say, 30 seconds, everybody reveals their numbers, and you calculate out everyone's influence. With the pound of dice, you have some dice that can roll high numbers, but ANY of the dice can roll small numbers. d4s all the way to d20s can roll from 1-4. So picking a small number will guarantee you a lot of influence. But maybe you want all the 19s. Or 12s. This by itself as a game probably isn't that great, but it could be a neat basis for some larger game. Or maybe you take turns claiming numbers or dice. "I want all 6s." or "I want all d12s" I dunno. Rotten Cookies fucked around with this message at 20:25 on Sep 10, 2013 |
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Sep 10, 2013 20:19
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quote:Also, what games are out there that utilize dice well while maintaining a strong strategy component? Not sure if you've tried these, but Alien Frontiers uses dice for worker placement (you roll, and depending on your rolls/combinations, you can then place the dice in different spots). Kingsburg is similar. Castles of Burgundy uses dice to control available actions in a pseudo-worker-placement/tile-draft game. Escape: Curse of the Temple uses dice rolls as sort of a dexterity/concentration mechanic, where your targets are fairly clear but you have to be rolling fast and communicating with your team-mates to get results before a real-time clock expires. Many games have a re-roll/dice-draft system, like King of Tokyo (or, well, Yahtzee). Quarriors is a "dice-building" (deck building where you buy dice instead of cards) game where players are sad and I hate Quarriors.
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Sep 10, 2013 20:43
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Also, for whatever it's worth, the more dice you roll at once, the less it's luck, and the more it's probability and the bell curve. I'm working on my Dwarfgame, and the way I'm overcoming the dissatisfying randomness of dice is with frequency of rolls. It also makes the times when the dice do screw you that much more memorable. "I rolled a 1 and missed" just doesn't have the same levity as "And then I rolled a 6. On four dice."
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Sep 10, 2013 21:11
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jmzero posted:Not sure if you've tried these, but Alien Frontiers uses dice for worker placement (you roll, and depending on your rolls/combinations, you can then place the dice in different spots). Kingsburg is similar. Castles of Burgundy uses dice to control available actions in a pseudo-worker-placement/tile-draft game. Escape: Curse of the Temple uses dice rolls as sort of a dexterity/concentration mechanic, where your targets are fairly clear but you have to be rolling fast and communicating with your team-mates to get results before a real-time clock expires. Many games have a re-roll/dice-draft system, like King of Tokyo (or, well, Yahtzee). Quarriors is a "dice-building" (deck building where you buy dice instead of cards) game where players are sad and I hate Quarriors. Agree on Quarriors -- I liked it the first time I played it, but after purchasing it and playing it several times its unsatisfying and random nature revealed itself. I own Castles of Burgundy, but have never played it; I will have to move it higher on the list (of games I need to play but don't know the rules). Rotten Cookies posted:All of the dice are rolled in public, and every player in secret claims a number, or maybe two, that they want to recruit. [Number of dice displaying that number] x [That number] = Your influence. You want to have a greater influence than your opponents. If two or more players pick the same number, then you divide the influence up equally among the players, rounded down, I guess. There would have to be a time limit, I'd think, to stop people from reallly calculating it out too much. At the end of say, 30 seconds, everybody reveals their numbers, and you calculate out everyone's influence. Interesting ideas, thanks! Maybe some sort of rummyesque collection mechanic, where you can either collect sets of the same number or runs? So you could block someone from getting a massive run by taking the d20s that got rolled with low numbers. I dunno, I'll have to think about this.
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Sep 10, 2013 21:47
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Rotten Cookies posted:What are the design flaws of Munchkin I should be avoiding? Random monsters, treasure-hording for later use against would-be-winners, enjoyment from humor rather than gameplay? The game is highly random with no mitigating factors. You have little to no control over draws, so right off the bat there's a lack of meaningful decisions. This also leads to highly random outcomes between players - player 1 may have a fantastic turn from a random draw while you may get bent over the table. In broad strokes, each player should have similar outcomes between them assuming they have no decision making involved. This also snowballs where one player can clearly be in the lead with the other players have no plausible chance to win. Not fun when you know you're hosed but have to spend another 30 minutes going through the motions. From there, the next issue is kingmaking - people who have no chance to win can instead decided which other player wins the game. In essence, it turns the game into political BS. Finally, it also suffers from gently caress-the-leader syndrome. Whoever's close to winning is dogpiled by other players, and this typically repeats on and on and on and on. Note that it's not so much that any one of these alone is a mortal sin. It's when you starting adding in multiple problematic design choices, a game quickly turns bad.
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Sep 10, 2013 22:34
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Mr. Glass posted:Does anyone have any other ideas for how to involve dice in a game without it devolving into a chaos-fest? Generally speaking, there are three things you can do - separately or in combination - to have randomness in a game without the outcome hinging primarily on luck. (1) Have the random factors influence the game environment (as it applies to everyone) instead of individual players. Obviously, once the game is underway, a global effect may benefit one player more than another (e.g. even though events in Ascension affect both players the same way, many of them strongly favor particular deck compositions, so a given event may be great for one player and terrible for the other). But this can be mitigated by making it easy to switch strategies mid-game and/or having the random elements on a bit of a delay so that players have a chance to prepare. (2) Have the random factors affect what you can do, rather than whether you succeed in doing something. The form of chance I despise most in games is the wargame/Ameritrash "to hit" roll or ability check, where your entire turn can be wasted or in fact cause you to be worse off than you started if you get a bad roll. Castles of Burgundy is a good example of a game where you can pretty much always do something useful, maybe not exactly what you wanted, but something, so you never want to throw the dice across the room and kick the table over. Or you can imagine some kind of conflict game where you roll dice before your turn and then assign them to units, with high numbers being good for some things (attacking and movement, let's say) and low numbers being good for others (defence and production, perhaps)... so maybe you were planning on going on the offensive this turn, but you roll a bunch of low numbers. Rather than charging out and getting slaughtered, you have to make the best of what you've got by hunkering down for a turn and brining in reinforcements. (3) Compensate for bad luck in some way. For instance, maybe your game has a mythological theme and the gods favor those who persevere in the face of adveristy. Crappy rolls therefore advance you on the divine favor track and great rolls move you back... maybe during the game divine favor can be traded in for various advantages, or perhaps it's simply that those who've had the consistently shittiest luck during the game are rewarded with extra VPs at the game end, so your overall score reflects how well you made do with the rolls you had. Or, although it's not dice, look at 1960: Making of the President. There, random checks are done by pulling cubes from a bag, but the cubes don't get put back, so each time you succeed, you're more likely to fail the next time and vice versa; moreover, the weaker cards in the deck allow you to add cubes of your color to the bag in addition to their other effects, so getting a hand of weak cards one turn means you'll enjoy having the odds on random checks skewed in your favor on subsequent turns. xopods fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Sep 10, 2013 |
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Sep 10, 2013 23:21
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I've been working on a situation like this in my game. The dangers on your turn do have a target number to beat which can be anywhere from 4-11 depending on the level of the danger. You get two six-siders to roll with, but to mitigate the difficulty you can plan ahead by bringing extra crewmen (each adds a +1 bonus to your roll). Players also have a hand of three fortune cards that have different abilities. I've toyed with the idea of letting you discard one or more of those cards for a bonus as well, with the caveat that you only draw one per turn. So even though a player that takes plenty of extra crewmen could still get a horrible roll, they could mitigate that by ditching part or all of their hand, and taking a few turns to build it back up. It seems like it would balance well in my head, but I need to playtest it to see how it goes. Edit: Also, I know some people aren't fond of rolling, and I have a good buddy of mine that cannot for the life of him roll well in any game. Ever. I don't know how, but he does. He's probably not the only one like that out there, either. Retrowave Joe fucked around with this message at 02:57 on Sep 11, 2013 |
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Sep 11, 2013 02:55
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Biggest problem I see with that: if the cards also do something else, then you're still getting punished for bad luck. And if they don't, why not use just the cards, and cut out dice entirely (a la Mage Knight).
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Sep 11, 2013 05:18
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It is amazing to think of all the games I played with dice, and looking back and remembering how many of those games were won or lost on a single die roll. Thinking of ways to use conflict resolution in game design (without dice) has made me much more aware of how I could get different mechanics to work together in a game to create a coherent flow, and has also let me shelve game ideas that were going to be limited to being "completely mediocre" at best due to the dice I had planned to use in them.
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Sep 11, 2013 05:40
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The Leper Colon V posted:Biggest problem I see with that: if the cards also do something else, then you're still getting punished for bad luck. And if they don't, why not use just the cards, and cut out dice entirely (a la Mage Knight). You know those dice Mage Knight uses to determine mana availability...?
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Sep 11, 2013 19:01
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thespaceinvader posted:You know those dice Mage Knight uses to determine mana availability...? Those dice do one of the things that Xopods pointed out as a kind of satisfying randomness. They change how the environment of the game works for everyone, not just one player and the player has access to many different methods of gaining mana outside of those dice.
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Sep 11, 2013 19:04
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Hrm...I like that. What I'm thinking is that instead of each player rolling to beat their danger, I could instead have a global effect that takes place at the beginning of the first player's turn that would last through the entire round. It would be determined by a die roll, but then everyone would have the same extra difficulty to deal with. Like a heatwave, drought, storm, etc. I could easily make a list of ten or so different effects, and there's plenty of space in the corners of the board right now that the chart would fit in for easy reference. Plus I think it'll speed up each players' turn because that's at least one less roll they'll have to make. Gah, it's times like these I hate being busy. I won't get to a chance to tinker with it until Friday at the earliest...
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Sep 11, 2013 19:19
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Ok so this is a bit weird, but here me out. Two nights ago I had a dream about a board game which I had apparently designed. It was a worker placement, resource gathering game akin to Stone Age, except it also had rotating role cards like in Citadels. The trick was that the roles functioned both as a boon to the player taking them ("take the Banker to gain an extra two money this turn," or whatever), but also as a sort of meta-guessing game. Every/most space(s) on the board would correspond to a different role - the Bank and the Banker, the Smith and the Blacksmith, etc - and taking a specific role would give you ownership of that particular space for the turn. Now, ownership could mean a lot of things, and it doesn't have to be a universal mechanic. Maybe owning the Bank means every player who took that action this turn must give you one money, or owning the Smith means you get to choose what items are available for sale that turn (like a "draw 5 cards, pick 3" thing). Additionally, not every structure would be owned every turn, so there'd be times where you'd want to risk taking a spot which would pay off in spades if no one took it, but might be much riskier/not worth it if someone did. Mostly what I'm asking is, does this game exist anywhere? I'd hate to reinvent the wheel, and before I really sink my development teeth into the game past the general mechanics I want to make sure that isn't what I'd be doing.
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Sep 11, 2013 19:35
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Countblanc posted:Ok so this is a bit weird, but here me out. Two nights ago I had a dream about a board game which I had apparently designed. It was a worker placement, resource gathering game akin to Stone Age, except it also had rotating role cards like in Citadels. The trick was that the roles functioned both as a boon to the player taking them ("take the Banker to gain an extra two money this turn," or whatever), but also as a sort of meta-guessing game. I didn't quite understand what you meant on first reading, but now I think I see. You mean it goes something like: (1) Draft roles secretly (2) Place workers (3) Reveal roles - gain immediate benefit, plus take ownership of a certain space or spaces (4) Resolve worker actions, with space "owner" receiving added benefit and/or control over the space's effects Is that right? It sounds like a reasonable combination of mechanics to me and I don't know offhand of anything exactly like that. I think the key will be in making sure that the players have sufficient interest in determining whether a given space is owned, or who owns it... that way, the guessing works in two directions - predicting where other people are going to place their workers, but also thinking about who might have drafted what. Some first thoughts: (1) It should probably always be better to play somewhere unowned than somewhere owned... perhaps all the ownership effects diminish the value of playing there for others as well as benefiting yourself. Or perhaps ownership of unclaimed spaces is assigned based on who played there first (or last?) (2) What happens when someone plays on a space they own themselves? (3) Are there other mechanics you can work in? A Coup/Mascarade-like mechanic where you can claim to own something that you don't and others can call your bluff? Or perhaps an area control game where ownership of a space persists from round to round until someone else takes it over from you, and players are rewarded for dominating most or all of a certain type of space (e.g. commerce, politics, etc.)
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Sep 11, 2013 20:29
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Your dream stole my illuminati game idea Count Blanc 
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Sep 11, 2013 20:39
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xopods posted:stuff Yep, that's more or less the way turns would go down. Sorry for not being clear there; I need to stress the whole "from a literal dream" thing, haha. As for the rest, some of it I've thought about and others I haven't. I agree that playing on a space that isn't owned should be A Good Play, or at least, always better than if it is owned. I could imagine a scenario where this isn't the case - like a Castle structure where taking the King/Queen role means you get a HUGE boon but that it's reduced by some amount for every other player who takes the action, because those greedy peasants keep demanding your attention - but even then it'd be a good move to play there mostly to diminish the King's power, your reward might be exactly the same. Playing on a tile that you own, in my current mental version of the game, means it's treated as unowned to you (or in the case of the hypothetical Castle, that your bonus isn't reduced). This serves as both a way to make your strategy more coherent (the Roles and Structures will likely be heavily related in their purpose), and a secondary deduction/bluffing mechanic. If you see someone piling their workers into the Smithy, you might assume they think it'll be safe, potentially because they have it, or maybe if the drafting works identical to Citadels, because they know it got burned at the end/start. I'll have to see how this works in practice. I considered a Mascarade style bluff mechanic, but, truth be told, I just personally don't like playing them that much. I think it's cool, but I figure if I'm not big into a genre then I won't do my best work designing a game for it. The area control idea is interesting though, I'll have to think on that. Thanks! Nemesis Of Moles posted:Your dream stole my illuminati game idea Count Blanc I take no responsibility for my subconscious.
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Sep 11, 2013 20:52
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