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A game set in a civil war might work pretty well if we tweak the premise a bit to where the linked games are competing with each other. You could have regime loyalists who are trying to sock away resources in case they lose or political positioning if they win (which are of course mostly mutually exclusive actions) and rebels who are trying to position for the most amount of government power if they win or international fame (think Che or Trotsky) if they lose.
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Nov 27, 2012 03:18
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wins32767 posted:A game set in a civil war might work pretty well if we tweak the premise a bit to where the linked games are competing with each other. Interesting idea. Two teams fighting against each other, but also against themselves internally... the overall winner is the winning player on the winning team, but second place goes to the winning player on the losing team. So if you're ahead on your team, but it looks like someone else is going to overtake you, you can try to sell your side out and bring the game to an early end while you're still ahead in order to take second.
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Nov 27, 2012 03:35
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xopods posted:Interesting idea. Two teams fighting against each other, but also against themselves internally... the overall winner is the winning player on the winning team, but second place goes to the winning player on the losing team. So if you're ahead on your team, but it looks like someone else is going to overtake you, you can try to sell your side out and bring the game to an early end while you're still ahead in order to take second. Politics might also be a good setting, especially a parliamentary system where the players are back benchers. You want to win the election overall, but you also want to get a cushy ministerial position or rank within the party itself. If your team loses but you end up moving up the ranks within your party while no one on the winning team does so, that's probably a bigger win then just the election from the point of view of a politician.
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Nov 27, 2012 03:51
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Hmmmm, the problem is if you go with a scoring system and assign the win to whoever has the highest score at the end, that's not really linked games, that's just a single game with an asymmetric setup. The neat thing about the prototype I played on the weekend was that, although the landlords and merchants are in conflict because the landlords want to charge as much as possible and the merchants want to pay as little as possible, the landlords don't care at all which merchant is winning, and vice versa. Whereas if there's one overall winner determined by the highest score between the two teams, you do care what's going on in the other team...
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Nov 27, 2012 04:13
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xopods posted:Hmmmm, the problem is if you go with a scoring system and assign the win to whoever has the highest score at the end, that's not really linked games, that's just a single game with an asymmetric setup. The neat thing about the prototype I played on the weekend was that, although the landlords and merchants are in conflict because the landlords want to charge as much as possible and the merchants want to pay as little as possible, the landlords don't care at all which merchant is winning, and vice versa. Whereas if there's one overall winner determined by the highest score between the two teams, you do care what's going on in the other team... True enough.
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Nov 27, 2012 15:04
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If web resources get posted eventually, the board game designers forum (bgdf.com) really should be on that list. It might seem odd linking to another online community, but I don't know of a more comprehensive resource for amateur -> professional design. Their design contests have been the starting point of several now published games, and their forums cover all aspects of the industry, design, and self publishing.
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Nov 27, 2012 15:43
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fosborb posted:If web resources get posted eventually, the board game designers forum (bgdf.com) really should be on that list. Yep, I'm planning on including it. Definitely better and more professional than the BGG Game Design forum, though there's still a lot of chaff to be sorted through to find the wheat.
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Nov 27, 2012 16:38
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wins32767 posted:A game set in a civil war might work pretty well if we tweak the premise a bit to where the linked games are competing with each other. This hits on two ideas I've been thinking about for a while, linked games (I always push to try Bannanagrams Dominion, nobody takes me up on it) and motivation to compete for a place other than 1st. Many games with scoring have a natural ranking of players beyond first, but I've never seem it actually motivate a player to be happier with 2nd place than 4th place particularly well. Risk Legacy has a system of repeated players that could be used to motivate 2nd place finishes, but isn't. The winner receives a big permanent win bonus and writes their name on the board, all other players receive an equal but lesser bonus. If instead bonuses were gradually stepped down, it seems like that could motivate for 2nd and 3rd fairly well. Motivation to compete for places other than 1st seems like a good way to deal minimize King Breaking, where one player has no real options left to win, but can hurt other players enough to decide which wins. Could the linked game idea work in some other format more like Chaos in the Old World or Twilight Imperium? Twilight already has the idea of secret objectives, but what if instead you one of two secret win conditions? That would determine which of the two games you are in... Something like get 10 points to win, or get 6 points and control two enemy home systems? Or maybe it's like two parallel universes... so I'm either from universe A or B (probably need cool thematic names) and I can only fight people from my same universe. So I can happily share a space or a planet or whatever from someone from the other universe. And there is some sort of interaction, maybe trading, or a resource or something that I can do when I share a space with someone from another universe? We're on the same map, but mostly we're playing different games. Seems like it would limit you to 4 or 6 players without serious asymmetry.
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Nov 27, 2012 16:56
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Separate question... how finished should a game be before you submit it to a publisher? I assume they want input on component size/shape/quality for manufacturing reasons at the least. I would guess they'd help layout the rulebook, will some/all have artists to touch up your art, or do art from scratch? Rules finalized 100%? Rulebook written, typeset with art, available as pdf ready to print? Art finalized 100%? Art basically not started? Component size/shape/feel?
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Nov 27, 2012 17:00
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modig posted:Separate question... how finished should a game be before you submit it to a publisher? I assume they want input on component size/shape/quality for manufacturing reasons at the least. I would guess they'd help layout the rulebook, will some/all have artists to touch up your art, or do art from scratch? It depends on the publisher, but unlike with submission processes, where everyone is different, here there is a norm, and just some minority of publishers that differ from it. The majority of publishers want:
That's about it. You're responsible for the game itself and nothing else... all the branding, art, writing, etc. will usually be taken care of by the publisher. In fact, they may be turned off if you seem to have put a lot of work into those things, as it may be a sign that you're too committed to your own vision of the game and won't be willing to surrender creative control to them. The exception is the rules text, which as I said, you want to be as clear as possible... but don't put a bunch of work into thematic text, backstory and the like, as the publisher will probably want to have a big hand in that. xopods fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Nov 27, 2012 |
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Nov 27, 2012 17:22
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I've been kicking around a couple of ideas in my head recently and wondered if anybody had thoughts on what I should try to tackle first, or if I should try either - Idea 1: A Godzilla-type game inspired by BSG. You have a nation built out of board pieces, each of which is a city. Each turn a crisis comes up in BSG style (point total needed to beat, each player plays in). Failure would results in damage to various cities. The twist would be it's a competitive game - each player would be assigned two cities to protect in secret. So failing crisis would be strategic and part of the game would be figuring out who's protecting what. Idea 2: From the general board game thread, inspired by The Wire: Card game. Each player has a hand that represents influence in various spheres of power (Police, City Hall, DA, Unions, Drug Cartels, etc). Each sphere has different effects that can be played face up on the table. Police might make an opponent discard, Drug Cartels might force other players to pay him, Unions would have defensive effects, City Hall could peek at upcoming cards, etc. Then there are "plot cards", which basically create a narrative. They're split into three types: People, scandal, resolution. They're revealed one at a time, come from randomized decks, and everybody gets to play/trade/negotiate inbetween them being revealed. Power cards change the power levels of cards: Carcetti would give City Hall cards +1 power, for example, while Avon would increase drugs. Scandal cards would create alterations to power cards - say Carcetti is bribing the police - now city hall cards can be substituted as police cards, for example. Finally, the resolution card would determine what happens - he gets away with it, or gets caught, or deflects blame onto the Drug Cartels. This is a modifier for end of round scoring - if he gets away with it all City Hall and Police cards score extra, etc. All of the narrative cards could be examined, buried, or maybe even modified by paying certain costs from whatever influence deck. You get to build a power base as you choose, and then use those resources to manipulate the narrative and gently caress over other people.
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Nov 27, 2012 18:39
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I think the first of those ideas has more legs. The mechanics of the other sound a lot like many people's first game ideas: "decks of cards that are divided into categories that do different things and then some other cards that give modifiers to the various categories." I find that most of the games that are built around those kind of mechanics end up feeling very samey and uninspired. By contrast, I like the idea of a game where everyone is ostensibly trying to protect a country, but different people have more motivation to save specific regions... Instead of making it entirely competitive, though, what if you made it traitor-based like BSG, but with the added factor that not all the good guys win, only those who successfully protected their "pet" cities. So, for instance, you have the Mad Scientist who is the traitor. He wins if sufficient devastation is caused, e.g. if three cities are destroyed. Everyone else wins only if the Mad Scientist is stopped and their own city (which is a secret) has survived. For it to work, players would have to have some control over where the monsters attack, so everyone's trying to keep them out of their own cities. The Mad Scientist, meanwhile, wants to know what city each player is trying to protect, so he can send the monsters to some city no player really cares about, putting them in a Prisoner's Dilemma/Tragedy-of-the-Commons kind of situation, where the good guys would like the city to survive, but everyone hopes someone else will take care of it so they can save their cards to protect their own city. I guess there's still a question there of what happens to a player after his home city is destroyed. Player elimination is something a lot of people don't like, but if you e.g. make people flip sides and become traitors after losing their home city, then you get the BSG sleeper agent / Panic Station problem of people being reluctant to work too hard towards their current win condition if they think it's likely they're going to end up on the other team. xopods fucked around with this message at 19:46 on Nov 27, 2012 |
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Nov 27, 2012 19:40
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I think this is the right thread for this. A friend of mine and I have come up with a tabletop game that is based on Warhammer 40k, and to play it, you use warhammer 40k models on a tabletop with terrain similar to what you would have for warhammer. The working title right now is Apocalypse Racers, which will likely change once we find out someone else has that name. Basically, it's a warhammer based racing game that uses Marine Bikers and Jetbikes to have a combat race. You pick a bike type (regular bike, super bike or jetbike), you pick a rider (human, marine, ork, eldar), then you pick bike upgrades and weapons. Each bike, rider, upgrade and weapon has a different point cost, which each player has a total amount of points to spend. This gives you the option to have many weaker vehicles, or a few strong ones. Rules are set up for making laps around a track, moving, attacking and taking damage. It's set up so a rider cannot be killed, but taking a lot of wounds is going to slow him down immensely. We don't really intend to ever publish or make money off of this. It's just a fun game that we've devised and we'd like to spread it around the warhammer community once we have all the rules and point costs ironed out. We'd just make a small website and offer the PDF of the rules for free to anyone who is interested. We've also changed the names of the riders and weapons so they're clear analogs to warhammer fluff, but not called the same. Right now we are doing a lot of testing with friends and such. If anyone here is interested in helping us beta test, send me a PM and I can email you the rules we have so far.
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Nov 27, 2012 19:55
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xopods posted:Instead of making it entirely competitive, though, what if you made it traitor-based like BSG, but with the added factor that not all the good guys win, only those who successfully protected their "pet" cities. I could see that working, but I felt like there were two big negatives - BSG Sleeper/Panic Station issues as you described - Adding in another "role" to the game would complicate balancing significantly My thought was is you don't have an "everybody loses" endgame it's one less thing to balance. I figured not having a cap on damage would mean nobody was every truly out of the running, and by each player having two cities to protect would mitigate runaway victory scenarios. Hell, I even thought of giving everybody 2 personal cities PLUS one of their opponent's cities to protect, as a tiebreaker/bonus points sort of thing, but that's probably too much.
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Nov 27, 2012 19:55
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How do you plan on avoiding it being a multiplayer solitaire game if everyone is only interested in defending their own cities, and the threat comes from the game itself and not the other players?
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Nov 27, 2012 19:58
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xopods posted:How do you plan on avoiding it being a multiplayer solitaire game if everyone is only interested in defending their own cities, and the threat comes from the game itself and not the other players? The thought would be threats would generally effect multiple people at once - for example: Points needed: 10 Pass: No effect Fail: Damage the city the monster is in for 10 points. Damage each city adjacent to the monster for 5 points. And each person would contribute points to the check (hence the BSG comparison). Another idea would the monster would "rampage" across the board. It has a set # of points to stop its rampage. 1st player would move the monster, damage the city it moves to. Then each player could throw in points to stop it. If the total isn't reached, the next player gets to move it, damage, and players can throw in points again (cumulative with the first round). Was also thinking of maybe adding in some hand management - say you have a hand of 0-6, and you HAVE to contribute at least one card each turn, and don't get it back until all of your cards are played.
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Nov 27, 2012 20:07
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Could work. I think it'd be more interesting if you could find a way to work in options to either defeat the monster or just send it somewhere else so it's not your problem. E.g. instead of cards, players commit defense tokens, either to the city the monster is in, or adjacent cities. Like the cards, they're committed face down and mixed up before being revealed, so you don't necessarily know who put in what. If the defense tokens in the city itself exceed the monster's rating, it's defeated. Otherwise it damages the city and then moves to the adjacent city with the weakest defenses. But then you've also got some kind of "bait" tokens (damsels in distress or, I don't know, nuclear fuel, or whatever the monster likes/needs)... which, if you put them in an adjacent city, act like negative defenses, and if it brings the total below 0, the monster will immediately move there rather than damaging its current city. Something like that.
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Nov 27, 2012 20:14
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I was thinking about this mechanic as well, which would mesh with the whole hand management idea: A "technology funding" track. The track would have "discovery points" at different point values - say 10, 15, 18, etc. The player whose points contribution crosses over a discovery point would get a special ability card - like perhaps a bait token like you described. Players could play their 0 cards on it, but then they would have to contribute towards stopping the monster for that turn.
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Nov 27, 2012 20:32
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Oh man... just had a sick idea. It'd be a considerably more complicated game than what you have in mind, but I could see it being so much fun. The players are all mad scientists, who have (initially secret) labs in several cities. They're competing for prestige by genetically engineering bigger and more impressive monsters. As you say, there's a scientific discovery track, and the player who passes certain thresholds reaps the benefits... either an advancement in the monsters themselves (granting a VP bonus, but making the guy's monsters more deadly if they get loose) or technology to contain the monsters or fight them if they do get loose. Periodically, monsters get loose and start causing havoc. It's semi-random whose monster gets loose, but you can do things to sabotage your opponents and make it more likely that it's one of theirs. When a monster gets loose, the owner has to reveal one of their labs and place the monster in that city. Thereafter, everyone can either try to stop it or lure it in a specific direction as we discussed. The owner has the most incentive to stop it, because for each turn it remains free, he loses prestige... however, other players may also want to stop it, as they lose VP at the end of the game for damage done to cities where they have labs. So at the end of the game, you get total VP equal to the awesomeness of the monsters you've bred, minus points for damage caused by your monsters when they've broken free, minus points for damage to cities where you have labs.
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Nov 27, 2012 20:50
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Hmmm.. Replace the monster crisis cards with "mishap" cards. Security breaches, lab accidents, stupid research assistants... failures would add breakout tokens to a player. Make the fail results primarily effect the current player but with some pain for others - basically make the current player bear the brunt of contribution to pass. At certain points in the game breakouts would happen (maybe randomized in the mishap deck, or some other criteria) and the player with the most breakout tokens loses control. So now, if every turn you have to contribute to the research track, you have to choose between gaining new technologies or defending against mishaps which could wreck your lab.
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Nov 27, 2012 21:04
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Maybe everyone plays a research card and depending on the total of all cards played, one of three outcomes happens: Low total: The players with the two lowest cards suffer mishaps. Medium total: The player with the lowest card suffers a mishap, while the player with the highest card achieves a breakthrough. High total: The players with the two highest cards achieve breakthroughs. Thus, when you think everyone else is going to be fighting over breakthroughs, you've got a safe moment to dump a low card. On the the other hand, if you think most other people are going low-to-medium, you can try to pick a card that's going to give you the highest value without going into "two breakthrough" territory (as you'd prefer to leave the low card stuck with a mishap rather than giving the second-place card a free breakthrough by riding on your coattails). Regarding breakouts, I like the idea of breakout tokens. Then when a breakout happens, whoever has the most is the one whose monster gets free as you say... but he gets to discard his breakout tokens. So it's basically going to happen to everyone eventually, but you can postpone it and/or have it happen less frequently to you over the course of the game by avoiding taking any more breakout tokens than necessary. (And of course postponing the inevitable has value because it lets you keep the location of your bases secret as long as possible, since you have to reveal one when there's a breakout.) xopods fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Nov 27, 2012 |
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Nov 27, 2012 21:10
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For the mishap stuff, I think there could (and probably should) be lots of variations on what happens to help keep each turn fresh. Your proposed scenario could be one. Another could be the play who plays the highest total gets a breakthrough AND a mishap. There's plenty of game theory scenarios you could use. EDIT: Thinking about it, your proposal is probably better. Maybe introduce some randomness by making the breakthrough you get random each turn, but known to the players. Then, once monsters hit the table, you have to use your cards to control them as well. If you combine all that with a hand management (wherein you have to use each card once before you get them back) mechanic, I could see the game getting progressively harder as it goes on. You could even have breakthroughs that manipulate your hand or the mishap deck. I like the idea of using a breakout as an offensive mechanic as well - say somebody purposefully tanks checks so their monster gets out first, then uses their points to rampage it across the board. Crackbone fucked around with this message at 21:28 on Nov 27, 2012 |
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Nov 27, 2012 21:24
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Crackbone posted:For the mishap stuff, I think there could (and probably should) be lots of variations on what happens to help keep each turn fresh. Your proposed scenario could be one. Another could be the play who plays the highest total gets a breakthrough AND a mishap. There's plenty of game theory scenarios you could use. Sounds good to me. For the randomness you want, maybe there's a research deck, each card in which shows a breakthrough, a mishap, a green number and a red number. The numbers indicate the thresholds for "High" and "Low" results (i.e. less than or equal to the red number = two mishaps, greater than or equal to the green number = two breakthroughs, in between = one and one), while the breakthrough and mishap tell you what you're going to get/suffer for winning/losing the minigame.
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Nov 27, 2012 21:39
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This all sounds awesome and I should expect any attempt at a first draft will probably be horrible, right? 
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Nov 27, 2012 22:07
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Of course!
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Nov 27, 2012 22:08
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Crackbone posted:This all sounds awesome and I should expect any attempt at a first draft will probably be horrible, right? It's pretty complicated for a first game, so yeah. The odds that everything's going to come together nicely are pretty small. A reasonable result to hope for, though, is that even if the game as a whole doesn't quite work, one aspect or another turns out to be pretty cool. Then you can try to think of a simpler game that reimplements that mechanic, but without all the stuff that didn't work so well. Definitely, in putting it together, try to avoid adding further complexity... if two parts don't seem to fit neatly, see if you can adjust one or the other, rather than sticking in an intermediate part. Come back and tell us whatever problems you run into and we can brainstorm some more. Also make sure to ask yourself for each thing if it's really necessary or adds enough to the game to be worth it - for instance, now that we've put in all this other stuff, having a tile-based map may be overkill... the game may be plenty deep and replayable even with a fixed map. xopods fucked around with this message at 22:19 on Nov 27, 2012 |
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Nov 27, 2012 22:16
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I was inspired to go back through some of the games I've conceived and spent the last day or so ruminating over them. I thought I'd pick one to share, maybe get some inspiration on the couple points that are mental blocks for me. I've never really bounced ideas off anyone at this stage where I've got something mainly put together but it's still a ways off from prototype. Summary Each player captains a ship, employing a group of seasoned pirates. To take any action they must send a pirate off on the task and similarly they must choose which pirates to risk in combat. Each pirate plays a specific role on the ship so as a captain you must make choices as to which pirates to give up...do you send a worker that's manning the sails off on a mission, thus reducing how fast you now move each turn? Or do you send one of your cannoneers away reducing your attack strength? Or maybe you can do without a cook and not use food as efficiently. You might even be stuck with a skeleton crew until you make it back to port to hire new crew members. Through it all you aim to collect what every pirate desires; gold and infamy. Gameplay and Components I think these are shared on google docs. Player Board Each player would have one and would start with a few pirates employed. You receive the bonus by having a worker placed on the space next to it. There are spaces for deck hands (owned but unemployed pirates), gold, infamy points, and a track for food. Main Board This would house Sea Cards, Merchant and Naval ship tokens, and Infamy tokens. The edge of the board is also where the location Sea Cards are placed. You can see the initial card placed off the edge, each player may place one of the 3 available cards at any place around the board. The edges of the board are continuous, and moving over an empty space counts as 1. Sea Cards either have a basic effect when simply moved over or are destination ports. Example Sea Cards here On your turn you simply place one of the 3 cards around the edge of the board, then move your ship token and then take an action. You can move a number of spaces equal to the number of sails men (+1 movement) you have employed. Travelling over an open sea card allows you to just take either food or gold if you have the fishing or looting pirates placed on your ship. The combat stations affect combat between players and between players and non-player merchant shipts. Those open Sea cards also have a symbol at the bottom that indicates how the non-player merchant ships move across the cards or when to spawn one. Ports allow you to hire men and to trade in non-player merchant ships you have attacked for points. edit I didn't really touch on this. When you use men the pieces are physically moved to the closest port to your ship. Each port can only hold up to 5 men and have 2 or 3 initially when placed down. Attacking, trading at ports (both goods and trading in merchant ships) and taking bonus looting or fishing actions requires you to remove pirate workers from your ship. You can re-employ them at ports as an action, and it also requires gold to hire pirates at a port as deck hands, and then requires food to move a deck hand to a station. When players enter a space occupied by another players ship or a non-player ship they attack that ship. Combat merely has the attacker wagering a certain value of strength from pirates and the defender must beat that number. If the attacker wins he takes gold/deckhands/merchant ship tokens equal to his the margin of strength he had over the defender. Both players lose the pirate workers spent. Any battle also gains both participants infamy points, with the victor taking 3 and the loser 1. When a player defeats a non-player merchant ship he holds onto that token and may trade it into any port that matches the color of that merchant type. The attack strength of merchant ships and also value traded in is related to the number of their ports on the board. There are 2 or 3 of each merchant type available to enter play. He may also then immediately choose to purchase an infamy token with infamy points he has collected. Infamy tokens are more of a fun element, not as involved in gameplay. They are both constant and end of game VP bonuses and take the form of 3 different types of tokens; *DESCRIPTOR* *AFFLICTION* *ROLE* . There would be a spread to choose from, and each player can only have one descriptor, one affliction and one role. My idea is that descriptors would have some VP triggering condition, afflictions are straight up VPs, and roles are end-of-game VPs calculated from something. So for example a player, Tom, buys all 3 slots over the course of the game and they are now SAVAGE Tom the ONE-EYED DRUNK. SAVAGE gave Tom 1 VP every time he won a battle, ONE-EYED is worth simply 5 VP, and DRUNK is worth 2 VP for every port. Another player, Mary only bought two and became QUICK Mary the PEG LEG. QUICK gave Mary 1 VP every time she moved 5 spaces on a turn and PEG LEG was only worth 3 VP compared to Tom's 5 VP ONE EYE. The only other way to get VP is to bury your gold on a treasure island (trade gold for VP at the start location) -------------- That's the core game I put together. I experimented with more types of resources (rum, weapons, treasure maps, generic goods) but I think that makes it too fiddly when I'm looking for a core experience of balancing your workers. I want players deciding what bonuses/abilities they need and how they plan on attacking those merchant ships while still remaining strong enough to fend off other players before getting back to port. I'm not a fan of my combat system at the moment but I don't really know which route I want to take. Dice is an option, with outcomes weighted by the pirates on the ship. I was considering maybe some sort of hand of action cards, too. Like ATTACK, LOOT, DEFEND, FLEE. And you can only use each one once until you return to port and that lets you restock your hand. I definitely need to simulate it a few times to work out how many men are expended during battle as well. It might not make sense to have it be all that are wagered because ships may never truly be able to have any large size of workers if they're losing them quickly when attacking those merchant ships. I'm also thinking that ports have a few different symbols on them (rum bottle, fish, wool, etc) as opposed to simply a color and the backs of merchant ships have these symbols and you need to trade in at matching symbols. This would allow the destination port for a player to be kept secret. I would love any feedback and suggestions. I think I'm going to keep focusing on this one for a bit. Admin Understudy fucked around with this message at 23:31 on Nov 27, 2012 |
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Nov 27, 2012 23:27
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xopods, thank you for making this thread. I really like the ideas and discussion so far.Admin Understudy posted:Pirate game I looked at the Deck Hand area and I couldn't understand why players put their deck and hands in the same spot 
The Sean fucked around with this message at 02:06 on Nov 28, 2012 |
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Nov 28, 2012 01:59
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Apologies if I'm in the wrong thread: I'm doing a reskin of Catan for a friend as a present, and am trying to figure out the best way to print (sturdy) hexes and cards. Does anyone have recommendations?
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Nov 28, 2012 02:02
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Admin, I've never been a fan of wasting rules space on non mechanical parts of games. You should make the infamy points useful for something. Perhaps if your infamy is high enough crew of a vessel you defeat will join yours and if it's even higher NPC ships will surrender their cargo without a fight. As for your fighting mechanic, wagering crew (which is the core resource of your game) means that there may well not be a general progression in power over the course of the game. A player may have much better capability halfway through than they do at the end (say, after a brutal fight with another player). That's not a bad thing per se, but I'm not sure how it feels with the rest of the design. If there were things like Navy ships that you couldn't outgun and were living a bit more on the ragged edge the whole game it'd fit better.
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Nov 28, 2012 03:04
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Has anything Kevin Wilson done been good?
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Nov 28, 2012 16:34
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After several game tests last night and few tweaks, I have the first beta version of my warhammer bike racing game complete. We're still looking for a lot of feedback. I have made a pdf of the rules and uploaded it here. http://www.mediafire.com/view/?xpk870skbyksbjr
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Nov 28, 2012 17:06
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Evil Badman posted:Apologies if I'm in the wrong thread: I'm doing a reskin of Catan for a friend as a present, and am trying to figure out the best way to print (sturdy) hexes and cards. Does anyone have recommendations? (1) Choose something to mount them on, like foamcore, mat board or even just bristol board. Depends on how sturdy you want them, but keep in mind the final thing will be made sturdier by the attachment of an extra layer. Even just bristol board with light cardstock attached ends up pretty rigid, but for Catan tiles you probably want something a bit thicker. Foamcore is nice and thick, yet lightweight, but keep in mind it's basically impossible to cut without crimping the edges a bit. (2) Laser print your artwork on light cardstock. (3) Spray it with an aerosol fixative of some sort (available at art supply stores, usually used to stop drawings from smudging). This will stop the toner from wearing off during play. (4) Coat both the back of the artwork and your substrate with two-coat rubber cement. Allow to dry. After they're dry, press them together. This creates the strongest bond. (5) Cut out your tiles with a ruler and utility knife, or with a guillotine. If you're going to use a guillotine, of course you have to print the tiles out so each one lies on its own in a square region, rather than tessellating them, since it's hard to end a cut precisely with a guillotine. If you're using a knife, then tessellate them because you can fit more on a page. (6) If you want to avoid injuring your friend, rub down the edges with a hard object like the side of your knife. Otherwise, if your knife was very sharp and you cut cleanly, the edges of your tiles will be razor sharp and perfect for giving paper cuts. xopods fucked around with this message at 17:58 on Nov 28, 2012 |
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Nov 28, 2012 17:55
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So I'm working on a new game now, I think it's got some legs to it. The concept is kind of a cross between Cosmic Encounter and Munchkin. The theme is that you're building a robot out of random parts that you draw from a deck in the middle, then trying to destroy every other persons robot and be the last one standing. Turnwise, you draw a card from a rumble deck (think Encounter Deck) and pick which of your arms to attack with. Defender rolls a die and, normally, a 4-5-6 hits and destroys whatever part of the robot that arm targets (Left Arm targets Body, Right Arm Targets Legs, by default). The robots are all split into Left and Right Arms, Body, Legs and Head. These all have various powers that effect the dice or change the encounter or something similar. I have a Set Bonus thing in there right now because I'm designing with 'Sets' of robots in mind, but that may change. The way I have it set up now is that the Head is the part that needs to be destroyed, but to get there you have to destroy the Body and Legs. Any thoughts? Right now its pretty Theme-y, I've not got any playtesting in yet and the rules aren't quite done, but its a pretty simple game and I think it'd be a good one to sell to publishers if I get it done.
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Nov 28, 2012 18:11
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I had a game concept like this where the layout and postitioning of the cards determined whether you could add more modules. You had to chosoe between racing to build a small but complete robot, or leaving space for more stuff but maybe not finishing it, resulting in a flawed beast. Choices like wheels vs. legs would give different stats for the fighting section, but if you ended up with a one-legged robot then it would be somewhat crippled. I never got very far with it, it's brewing somewhere in the back of my head for future use. My thought behind it was that I'd like to see a game where the physical aspect of placing cards is significant, as that's not a very common mechanic. Sort of like a complex version of dominoes.
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Nov 28, 2012 18:15
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quote:The concept is kind of a cross between Cosmic Encounter and Munchkin. Why not add in Galaxy Trucker there? Have the construction be a free-for-all of grabbing parts. Maybe you'll build a cruddy, partially functional robot that's wobbly and underpowered - but you did it fast so you get to attack first! Also, maybe instead of one attacker and one defender, you choose a type of attack and it affects everyone else at the table (or specific people, but not entirely in your control - like the spells in Epic Spell Battle Wizarduelz).
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Nov 28, 2012 18:32
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jmzero posted:Why not add in Galaxy Trucker there? Have the construction be a free-for-all of grabbing parts. Maybe you'll build a cruddy, partially functional robot that's wobbly and underpowered - but you did it fast so you get to attack first! The first part is already SORTA in there. You assemble your robot infront of you and the card designs are set up so you can put it together and make it look like a robot. The free-for-all is kinda rad though. I'd want to try out GT first. Some robots already have that power, but maybe! I mean, already throwing a pile of games together, might as well add King Of Tokyo in as well.
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Nov 28, 2012 18:47
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Hmmm. What if people built their robots in layers? So, like, the back layer is vital systems, like the computer brain you have to destroy to "kill" someone, and power supplies and stuff... and the middle layer is offensive systems, and then the outer layer is defensive systems. People attacking you have to destroy the outer layers to get at the stuff behind it. Maybe it's built pyramid style, so you need more of the inner layers to support the outer ones (but a single card in an outer layer can protect two cards underneath it): code:
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Nov 28, 2012 19:07
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xopods posted:Hmmm. What if people built their robots in layers? So, like, the back layer is vital systems, like the computer brain you have to destroy to "kill" someone, and power supplies and stuff... and the middle layer is offensive systems, and then the outer layer is defensive systems. People attacking you have to destroy the outer layers to get at the stuff behind it. I like this idea a lot. RoboRally is a great game because of the funny things that can happen as your badly damaged robots flounder around. I have fond memories of completely immobilizing my friend's robots and then pushing them into inevitable deathtraps.
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Nov 28, 2012 19:31
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Chamale posted:I like this idea a lot. RoboRally is a great game because of the funny things that can happen as your badly damaged robots flounder around. I have fond memories of completely immobilizing my friend's robots and then pushing them into inevitable deathtraps. The game definitely needs malfunctions included somehow, be it permanent effects that can happen when certain components get damaged, or one-shot effects opponents can play on you with a success rate that depends on your level of damage. E.g. "Oops, you meant to attack me, but it looks like your navigation computer is on the fritz and you're going after Tim instead!" or "Oh, you just installed high explosive ammunition did you? I sure hope that engine of yours doesn't overheat, heh heh."
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Nov 28, 2012 19:42
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