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quote:What advice do people have for blind testing? Also, post your rules here. It's easy to miss problems in your own rules, and I like reading rules.
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Nov 13, 2013 17:52
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quote:Basically, I feel like I need to add more resources or objectives to the game, but I'm not entirely sure how to go about doing it with the base system. It does feel like this will be a core problem in the game - how to promote long-term strategy when your connections to the board state are so fleeting? Especially as you add more people, it feels like the best strategy will often be "score as much as I can, right now", ignoring how you leave the board (the "greedy" algorithm, in algorithm speak). This makes the game into a series of solitaire puzzles that doesn't sound overly interesting. There's a few games you might want to consider that sort of border on this space: Tigris & Euphrates: the game features kingdoms (contiguous populated regions on a grid-of-squares board), but the kingdoms aren't permanently owned by players. Rather, a player might control the farms of one kingdom and the temples of another, while another player controls trading and ruling in the first. Over time, this control of different parts of kingdoms will shuffle around a lot - but having control of various facets of a kingdom will let you harvest various kinds of VP in different ways. T&E is really a beautiful game, and is one spectacular answer to "What if there was a strategy game where all players can control the same units?". I guess it represents kind of a middle ground between a normal war game (with permanent control) and your game idea (where control is, if I understand right, very fleeting). Normally in T&E there will be some ownership that's hotly contested and changing hands continuously, while some regions only change hands (for a given color) a few times in a game. It feels like "possession", thematically, could work really well with this kind of temporary ownership (and there could be fun balancing risks in terms of "what if I build up a super-warrior, but then I get kicked out of his body before next turn?"). Smallworld: I don't like Smallworld, but it does have some interesting ideas. You use a set of units (with varying combinations of characteristics, which is the game's main draw and source of variety) to smash stuff belonging to other players, then you let them "decline" when they're no longer having success. This creates a dynamic board that separates out board state from VP state (ie. you can have the most units on the board, but you're rewarded more for your past violence, not your current dominance). Kemet: Kemet may seem like more of a standard army game, but, again, it rewards violence over dominance. Your units are normally going to be short lived - you send them out to get points and then they'll (almost always) die and you'll make new ones. And you can never have more than 10 or so out at a time. What this ends up meaning is that the "real" board state that you strategize with is mostly how many VP you have, and what upgrades you have (ie. how much beating can you do with your next waves of stuff). I think your game might work best with a kind of similar model: relatively simple tactics, but interesting play in the back in terms of designing your abilities/etc.. jmzero fucked around with this message at 00:54 on Nov 26, 2013 |
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Nov 26, 2013 00:51
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quote:Can anyone post some stuff on print and play games? Here's a good sample: http://tuesdayknightgames.com/tworoomsandaboom/
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Dec 12, 2013 20:00
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My group is going to be too inconsistent over the holidays for me to offer testing, but if you PM me a manual I'll read it over (for places that may need rules clarification, etc..)
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Dec 16, 2013 23:53
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quote:Can anyone think of some super-sweet theme for this other than just running a country How about animals choosing the king of the jungle? It makes for some flavorful roles: it'd be fun to be a snake or a badger or a rhino or whatever. And there's a lot of fun design space for relationships between animals and maybe general alignments or something (predators and prey, or Lion Party vs. Hyena Party - each of which having some support animals or something).
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Jan 7, 2014 00:16
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quote:This is neat, but the problem is thematically I'm not sure how visibly different animals meshes with secret objectives. Yeah, kind of awkward. I think if you had public animal identities, you'd want to simplify the objectives. I'd think maybe 2 general alignments, but then a couple floater objectives - like: guys with hidden red cards want to exterminate the humans, green cards want to make peace - but then this other guy wins as long as it makes it to the last round or something. And the various animal powers/rules/whatever mean that you have good reason to (at least often) profess a different alignment than you have. If nothing else, having general alignments makes balancing less brutal; getting a lot of different objectives generally balanced could be brutal. In a game like Resistance everyone is normally going to claim they're Blue all the time. I think it'd be awesome if people were constantly claiming different alignments at different times (or, at very least, there wasn't a default "good" alignment - making it a hidden team game instead of a "traitor" game). But that means you need more complexity in the public part of the game, so that different public roles perform different functions over time, so that there's good reason to lie but not always, and so that there's enough swings to shake people out of ruts. Maybe you could have themed decision cards - like "should we steal their food while they're gone" or something; and maybe Snake is extra good at that or something. Another idea: maybe instead of alignments, each character gets a secret ally (ie. I'm badger, and my secret ally is crocodile - I win if either I win or crocodile wins; but he doesn't necessarily win when I do, because he has his own secret ally). There's some awkwardness here.. like if you get your own card, maybe that just triggers a redeal - but maybe it could work? This way you have a public objective (your own), but also another secret objective to keep things spicy and reward you for deception. Or, skip all that, and you make your animal identities the secret, tied to your objective (ie. snake's goal is to do x snakey kind of thing, people might guess you're the snake but you want to keep that hidden). But then you lose out on public animal identities, which I think are super fun, and could drive other fun design stuff (eg. Owl sucks at getting stuff done, but can look at a card one round or something). Also, you should make the game take 20 minutes, play with 5 to 12, and be super easy to teach to new groups. Also: maybe some people get public objectives? Like Monkey is always "peace" and Tiger is always "fight", but everyone else gets hidden alignments/objectives? And somebody's objective is just chaos - like when people don't agree on things, something goes on the bone pile, and Hyena wins if the bone pile is big enough by the end. jmzero fucked around with this message at 01:59 on Jan 7, 2014 |
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Jan 7, 2014 01:51
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I really like the idea of a real time traitor game, particularly one that creates tension between "getting my own crap done efficiently" and "spending attention watching to see who's screwing up". But I have no idea how to implement it. Like, imagine you have a traitor in Space Alert. From a distance this seems like a super compelling idea - even once you reveal your actions, it's a fun puzzle to tell whether someone just screwed up or was malicious (you'd have to have multiple "rounds" of plan/resolve I think for this to work). In a normal game of Space Alert, if you just wanted your team to lose you have a multitude of fun options. However, if you actually were playing a traitor game, it'd be too powerful to double-confirm/nail down stuff. "So, to confirm, you're playing 'B' on turn 8, right?" - and then it's too clear who's lying. In a normal game you often don't waste attention memorizing that stuff, but it'd be too valuable not to if you could use it to suppress/catch a traitor.
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Feb 3, 2014 18:53
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quote:At first I really liked how there was no player elimination in The Resistance, but in practice I feel like you end up with even more players with no inputs in The Resistance than in Mafia Get Resistance: Avalon, and play with Lancelots (who switch teams depending on random card flips, and one starts on each team). No matter how burnt/established you are, you can always claim/be-fingered-as a Lancelot once the flip comes. And, in a reasonable game, it should never be clear who Merlin/Guinevere are, so even if you're otherwise "sitting out"/"on every mission", you are still rewarded heavily for either figuring out who's who, or pretending you're a specific character you're not. We were so/so on Resistance after a while - but I can't think of anything to complain about with full package Avalon (after hundreds of games). It's very rare you get bad/deductive games, the player communication is both "required in order to win often" and "horribly dangerous", and the range of potential gambits and situations is breathtaking for such a small game. Also: playing as a Lancelot may initially seem random/subject to whims of card draws. In practice, a good Lancelot can often really dictate their own fate. They also have the wackiest options in terms of oddball plays.. for me Red Lancelot is the most fun role in a game full of fun roles. Edit: didn't mean to write an Avalon ad here... but they did find an excellent solution to pseudo-elimination in a hidden role game. jmzero fucked around with this message at 19:51 on Feb 3, 2014 |
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Feb 3, 2014 19:48
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quote:That sounds like an excellent game - To play with people you never play games with (and don't play multiple times). Yeah - being a traitor in Space Alert sounds like a ton of fun, until people are looking for a traitor in Space Alert. At very least, I think you'd need more ways to hamper communications or introduce uncertainty, so that the game didn't devolve into continuous "What are you going to do on turn 6?" consistency checks. (That said, communication restriction is really hard to do right/consistently. You watch different groups play Hanabi, and they might as well be playing completely different games.). It feels like kind of a variant of the normal co-op quarterbacking problem here; normally a real-time game is going to squeeze out problematic quarterbacking, but a potential traitor feels like it'll suck it back in. A real time traitor game might work better as a computer game (or a computer moderated board game even), where you have lots more mechanics available to manage communications, timing, rules enforcement, etc..
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Feb 5, 2014 01:10
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OK, I think I've got a thought with some potential: You have a traitor game that also has a publicly known enemy who the players attempt to beat at a bluffing game. So, for example, players may have cards they use to attempt to complete a task. They can claim their cards meet the task requirements (probably with some "Liar's Dice" back and forth), but only have to reveal them if the public bad guy challenges. Why is this important? Because it gives the traitor valid reasons to lie - ie. I thought I could fool the bad guy even though my cards were weak, and nobody else was stepping up - and places interesting incentives on communication between team members about, say, the strength of their hands. So in a Communist building game, the known bad guy could be the Americans. He says he can get a monkey to the moon. Can any of us beat that (eg. send a human to the moon)? Vlad says he has a pretty strong hand. He's lying, but he's not the traitor, he just wants to bluff out the American. The team chats, and eventually the Russians pick one of the team players to do the conflict (maybe the traitor). That player might win or lose against the American, while the other players get to discard/draw cards to improve their hands (meaning there's incentive to let many different people participate in conflicts, because their hands will be getting better and better). You assign VP based on the challenges (perhaps with some variance based on the nature of the challenge), and the traitor wins with the American. Maybe the American picks the challenge type for each round, with some variation in the card resources that will be important for that challenge. You'd naturally need 4 or more players. There's a bit more explicit randomness than a normal hidden role game... but I think there's some good potential there. I think there'd be enough information to have some good suspicion about the traitor, but also enough cover that you could get away with some horrible moves (eg. I thought I could get rid of all my weak cards and still maybe win.)
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Feb 5, 2014 18:53
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quote:Let's say you have an attack, we'll call it Overhead Smash. It could cost 3I to perform, so you won't be able to act again for 3 ticks, but deals it's damage immediately. Time as a resource is crazy underused - I really like Glen More style timing, where there's essentially a circle of time and a "hand" that rotates around and determines who moves next. Big moves push you forward further chronologically, meaning you won't move for longer. In an interactive combat game it's even better, as you can plan moves to complete moves based on what you see coming up. quote:Also, I'm debating with myself how I want to implement being within range of skills. Right now there isn't a board, instead focusing on just the hunters and the monster. I've got a few ideas on how it could work with a square/hex grid, but none that I'm really crazy about since there'd need to be a way to streamline the monster's AI I'd think you could limit it to just "range" in a single line. This gives you freedom to put location based "stuff", while leaving the AI very approachable (I really like the stack of cards AI style, a'la Sentinels - but in a game with better mechanics).
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Feb 18, 2014 05:22
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quote:A circular loop would also work, but then it kinda stops making sense when someone has delayed themselves SO MUCH that they pass the starting point and would go first. If you have, say, 12 segments on your time track, you just don't let anyone spend more than 12 time at once (and prevent any "time-bump" effects, if you have any, from pushing you any further out). Speaking of which, being able to move others on the time track (either to hasten or delay their actions) makes for a very interesting support sort of role. Anyway, the game is sounding good to me - I think it'll end up with some good tension and interesting decisions.
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Feb 18, 2014 19:14
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quote:For example this would condense your example Eldritch Powers into a single "Eldritch" Power card that features, Eldritch Bolt, Eldritch Blast, and Eldritch Eruption with associated scaling cell costs. I feel like you want to push more power rotation somehow. Swapping out powers feels like it'll be a fun part of the game, and the days could get pretty repetitive if people like their first skills and keep farming the same cells or whatever. I'm thinking maybe you have a number of power slots of different levels. You can get new slots, or "level up" old slots, meaning they can old higher level powers. It'd be good to have some high level powers, but you'd also want a variety so you can effectively use all your cells, and can respond better to what the other team does. In general, it seems like it might also help to have some "build-up" spots (as alternatives to the aptitude based roll spots) where you, say, add a green each round until the pile is taken. Or possibly, you distribute cells from a pool to random spot, like the shipping in Castles of Burgundy. This creates sort of a natural auction mechanic, and might push people to do more adapting over time to take advantage of big (but random) piles. As to initiative, I don't terribly like bouncing turn order. I also think you need more spaces. I'd just have play proceed clockwise, with separate starting players for the worker placement and fight phases - and new spots where you can take the "first player" marker for either part. (I don't have a very full grasp of your current rules in my head, so excuse me if I'm misreading some of your intentions/ideas). Also, this game is a very natural home for variable player powers. They're work to balance, but thematically there's so much potential. I'm Batman-y, so I gain money quick. Mutant guy starts with a higher power slot unlocked. Magic guy can swap power cells 2 for 1 at any time. I think that sounds fun, anyway. jmzero fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Mar 7, 2014 |
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Mar 7, 2014 22:29
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quote:but you could use the Justice Bucks as the currency you need to 'upgrade' your power slots Yep. I also like the idea of more than one lab slot - like maybe one slot that's "trade a power and take a buck", and another that's like "discard the powers on offer and refill them, then take a power".
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Mar 7, 2014 23:41
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quote:One where your player card acts as your cockpit and starts out really simple, but you add onto it making it more and more complex in various ways as you upgrade your ship The player boards in Eclipse are super satisfying (perhaps the best part of the game) - you have technology, ships, upgrades, materials, special powers, and it's all easy to manage and see. Super great design.
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Mar 10, 2014 17:41
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I remember, when Magic was first being introduced, how confusing people found the damage system. Now it seems pretty normal. One beauty of the Magic system is the way it creates thresholds, which in turn make the design space more interesting. Sometimes a 2/3 and a 2/2 are about equivalent, while other times the former is useless while the latter is pretty good. In a persistent damage system, the effective differences often become much more linear. The Magic system allows interesting swings in game play, and makes the design space more rich and varied. Tactical card games are absurdly common right now among designers (though very few have been successful). I've played probably 20 in the last few years, and I see 5 or 6 more in the pipe on Kickstarter at any given time. Almost all have: persistent damage, fewer card types than Magic, deterministic costs (via, for example, predictable mana), and no "instant" effects (making the rules much simpler). There's been some OK ones, but they're mostly pretty mediocre; often they just don't have the design space to be interesting. I'm not saying don't make a game like this, but, er, yeah, that's kind of what I'm saying I guess. I think you'll need a really crazy new idea to make something at all interesting in this space.
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Mar 31, 2014 04:35
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Over the weekend I pooped out a very simple Plants vs Zombies board game with my kids (they did cutting and coloring). They're just messing with the pieces in the picture, but they took to the actual game pretty well. It's a simple tower defense game, with very limited options each turn, but rewarding some co-operation (the Sunflower is good at making sun, the Peashooter is good at spending it to shoot zombies, the Cattail makes Walnuts to stall, etc..). Being 3 (and, uh, active) I was kind of surprised how well they picked it up - though I suppose some people teach their 3 year olds Chess (and this isn't exactly Chess).
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Apr 3, 2014 23:04
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quote:but how do you go easy on people when playing games? Purposefully sucking as a player is no fun - but picking the right game can help a lot. It's often more a game design thing than a player thing. (Edit: So I'm apparently going to write a big wall of text to nobody - feel free to ignore all this longwinded crap, everyone). Games with luck involved can make games more competitive between players of different skill; and even if they don't, they make losing less painful. The loser can happily think "I would have won if I would have rolled a 6 there, or draw my X card". Ideally, luck also keeps players "in the running", perhaps with Hail Mary type plays that are low odds but can turn the game around even if a player is way behind. It can also help when a game is less directly competitive. In some games, like say Chess, your good moves are very much in your opponent's face. You are winning because you have lots of pieces left and they have none. In a more indirectly competitive game, this can be much less stark. Like, nobody feels too bad losing Castles of Burgundy (unless they deserve to feel bad  ). Yeah, maybe you score 230 and I only scored 190 (which is actually a very big spread for that game), but we both scored lots of points. It feels like you got Gold and I got Silver, rather than you won and I lost.The other important property here is the way "options on the board" is tied to "winning". Again, in Chess, the player who is winning has all sorts of fun things they can do, while the loser has fewer options and feels more hemmed in. Contrast that with Tash Kalar. In Tash Kalar, the winner is the person who scores the most VP through meeting objectives - not the person who has more pieces on the board. Because of that, the game is free to give a player who's behind on the board "flares", which are a catch up mechanic that lets a player with less pieces place pieces or do other stuff. One player may still be way behind and have little chance of winning (because the other player has more VP), but both players will almost always have fun stuff they can do on the board. Lastly, some games will have ways of balancing or handicapping. You can play Go across a reasonable range of skills by giving a player extra pieces to start. In other games, handicapping your strategy somehow (as you mentioned) might help - but in other games there won't be a way to do it without seeming kind of patronizing. Anyway, yeah, this is an interesting problem for designers and for players - but there are games out there that work out a lot better for this stuff. jmzero fucked around with this message at 23:50 on Apr 9, 2014 |
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Apr 9, 2014 23:46
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quote:I know it's a really rough layout but I'm more just getting ideas down for feedback. To me, the core fun of the idea is tricking other players about the gold you've seen. Like, maybe you're out looking at a few plots, but then you have to go back to town to register your claim. If you start rushing back to town after checking a plot, someone else might just buy it blind out from under you. So sometimes you'll stay out and look at some more plots before you casually meander back. Or you just tell the truth, then try to profit in other ways off their claim or something. Anyway, I think there's something fun in there...
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Apr 10, 2014 00:16
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quote:mine was on a 7x7 grid (I didn't factor in height, however) with 3 units to a team My current favorite game in this vein is Krosmaster Arena. Losing a unit is a big problem in Krosmaster (in terms of trying to win), but it also doesn't normally happen often until close to the end (ie. if characters are dying, then both sides have gone all-in on the fight anyway - and often in this kind of scenario the first kill is quickly revenged and the bloodbath continues). If a unit is just getting low from pot shots or whatever, normally they can hang back, hoover up some gold off the board, and spend time buying. Or heal (if you have options on your team for that). Having other stuff to do helps. And generally I don't think it's a problem if a game like this snowballs as long as it snowballs quickly. If the first kill normally means a win, then make sure the winner can keep pressing the fight and it doesn't limp on too long. All that said, tactical games (and, even moreso, "Magic"-like games) are going to be really hard places to create something interesting in right now. There's surely enough people trying (there's a ton of these on Kickstarter at any given moment), and without a really clever hook most of them are going to be very samey. It'd be like making a themeless, one-resource deckbuilder with a shared purchase row. Yes it's doable, but mostly you'll just discover why Dominion has the rules it does. With the same amount of work, in a different genre space, you might make something really interesting. I like the idea of personality type based characters (and even fitting them to RPG norms)... but it feels like a waste to use it on moving around a grid and hitting for 3 and action points and weapon upgrades or whatever. By which I mean, of course, live your dream and design what you want and have fun. Just something to consider.
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May 21, 2014 17:00
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quote:Since I'm new, I'm not sure what the proper etiquette if for asking for help on playtesting and such. Would anyone be interested in a game like this, and provide feedback? I print and play games now and again. I can't guarantee anything (there's lots of perfectly reasonable games that I know my group wouldn't play - in particular, we seldom play long games), but if you posted enough material to play (and if it doesn't have too many fiddly bits to print) there's a reasonable chance we'd give it a go. Barring that, I promise I'd at least give feedback as to why I didn't give it a proper try.
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Sep 10, 2014 21:33
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quote:TL;DR: A good traitor game should let the villain player(s) invoke intrigue and paranoia before the flip, and after the flip, dread and awe. Lots of the problem is just balance. A game that was "just a bit too easy" with everyone contributing, and "quite a bit too hard" with someone fully defecting... I think that works and provides fun space for a traitor to play in. But lots of these games start with a "random co-op game" shell, and most of those have horrible balance problems well before any of the traitor stuff enters in. Without some very clever design, these games tend towards powerful feedback loops and very few close games. And the ones that come closest to working deal with feedback by just having very uninteresting game states (eg. Forbidden Island). The "standard random co-op" is a fragile turd of a card house, and trying to mix in a traitor just shakes the table way too hard. Whatever you do in a traitor game, the traitor needs to be central to the design I think.
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Oct 9, 2014 05:50
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quote:A couple questions: Firstly, sanity check. Does my layout make any sense? Any big obvious practicality issues? Have I missed some way to do it better? I don't know all the rules or how your scenarios work, but I'd be worried that the game would spawn fairly repetitive tactics. Without landscape or tremendous variety in ship abilities, it feels like you're going to often just have two globs of ships move towards each other and spam - or, depending on ship loadout and how sides are picked, one side that wants to engage and one that wants to kite (which also gets weird on map edges). In either case, it feels like you're too often going to want to stay in a group to maximize your "focus down a target" potential. I haven't played this game - but I've played a lot of similar-looking computer games where the tactics just kind of blurred into a ball of "smash into each other". Maybe this game doesn't play out that way, that's just what would concern me here. I think you have too many numbers on your cards - especially for the lasers. And each ship, I feel, has too many weapons. It's fiddly, and your game loses clarity. You want to be able to quickly get a sense for what the capabilities of the ships on the board are - and that's harder if everyone can do a little of everything and this guy's a little less efficient at A or a little more efficient at B and ooh let me look at the 5th laser line on your card. Have a ship that shoots missiles. Have another ship with guns. This one only gets lasers. And have those weapons work vastly differently from each other, but consistently from ship to ship. Maybe have a capital ship with more than one kind, and some ships would have 2 "standard lasers" or whatever, but generally I think you make missile ships all look similar so they stand out clearly in your overall tactical view. Satisfying tactics always starts with clarity. Naturally the ships can still vary in other ways (movement, HP, special abilities, whatever) but the "shoots missiles" part of them should behave predictably and consistently. You get more clarity on the board, and having more specialized ships means more opportunities to create stark tactical advantages. Also, I think you want even more specialized "ability" type ships. AoE, increasing damage over time type abilities, stasis fields, "tacklers" that slow movement... I think you want tons of this stuff, and designed in as early as possible, because I think it'll inform the work you do on general ship design/balance. Consolidate dice rolls as much as you can, and limit counter-rolls/evasion type stuff. Randomness is fun, but you don't need multiple layers. Focus on gameplay modes other than deathmatch to motivate interesting decisions and situations. Objectives, turn counts, maps, set forces for one side, bidding points for which side to play, special rules. You might think of all that stuff as add-ons once you've got base combat down, but I think you should be planning for that kind of stuff now - because I think it'll impact this stage of your design. Have more meat to scenarios, and you can get away with less complexity in your base ship design/combat rules. You get more clarity, and more interesting narratives in your game. You're more likely to get interesting tactics come out of a simple design than a more complex one. Physically: for a prototype I'd just have a sheet of clear, semi-rigid plastic over a printed paper map. Super cheap, and it means you can evolve your map design without having to re-print on something strange. jmzero fucked around with this message at 05:14 on Oct 17, 2014 |
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Oct 17, 2014 05:07
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quote:The vector patterns produced are an interesting way to look at that. Those battles are using a lot of space. This is going to either be really big on the table, or need really small hexes (which makes drawing hard). What do you do when a battle naturally wants to head towards the edge of the table (especially if two sets of ships are diverging)? I like the momentum stuff, but it seems it's going to need some sort of clever trick to make it translate to a limited space. How long are these games taking to play? From the lines it seems like the game is extraordinarily fast and brutal - like, the teams fly by each other once and everything's dead. If you did a similar map for a generic tactical game (eg. Krosmaster Arena), you'd see a lot of direction changes and maneuvering and chasing and surrounding and what not. It doesn't seem like the patterns being generated here are as varied/interesting as you might want. quote:Lasers have a finite range and their damage and accuracy falls off with range. That's simpler than I'd thought it was (I had assumed each line could actually vary per ship) - but to be clear, my personal preference would be even simpler - like "lasers have a range of 5, if your ship is within 5 hexes, a laser does 1 damage". Then if some faction has super lasers, their lasers are all range 7 (or whatever). I'm not entirely opposed to dice here, but I don't like this much fuzziness, and I do like being able to figure out quickly how much damage I might take in a given position (even if there's some +/- possibility for randomness). It's easy to count how many laser ships are within 5 hexes of a spot. It's less easy to count out, for each ship, a distance, check their lasers, and multiply out your expected damage. But again, all that's just personal preference, and it sounds like what you have is working for you - and I know lots of people who would prefer your style of combat to mine. quote:The gun mechanic is a recent change and requires a bunch of testing. Guns additionally can damage ships when they pass through the same hex as a target but that's very secondary. I'd take it even further and add ships built for ramming. But in general, I just love specialized stuff and big thresholds (which makes me like mechanics like your missiles, where it sounds like you have an all-or-nothing "can I shoot it down" threshold). quote:Mostly I'm just scared about balancing asymmetric situations. Just cheat, and make the players bid points to choose their side. Balancing is boring and auctioning is fun. jmzero fucked around with this message at 07:49 on Oct 17, 2014 |
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Oct 17, 2014 07:46
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I'm not a huge fan of this particular implementation, but there's a good idea hiding somewhere in here. It's a betting game you play while watching live football. Having it be an activity you do during another activity places some constraints on how complicated you want it to be, but I could see this being a lot of fun for the right crowd. It'd be easy to drive a game with baseball (though I personally wouldn't watch baseball), as baseball produces lots of well-defined results quickly - and predicting, say, batting outcomes would be a fun mix of luck and skill for someone who knew the players. Baseball's also good because there's sufficient, predictable dead time to resolve stuff if required. A straight betting game seems like the simplest choice, but with some creativity I imagine you could drive different mechanics. You could even do a "parallel game" sort of thing, where you draft players and then get actions on the board when your players do stuff. Anyway, just a thought.
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Oct 22, 2014 20:34
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You could have there be some hidden-bid competition - like, you only get the effect if you're the one who bribed Dude X the most this round (with some kind of tiebreaker based on card indexes or something, so that it'd usually be difficult to have any kind of "sure thing"). Make it so that the "max bribe" is more than you could get in return - so it's possible to overcommit and screw yourself (but you still might want to overcommit, if it means REALLY screwing the guy who bid just a little less). Maybe make it partially hidden, like you commit a number of cards of your choosing, but they have different point values, or might be blank. Anyway, it depends how much you like hidden bidding as these mechanics could potentially overshadow a lot of other stuff.. but it would make all sorts of actions potentially viable and completely obscure any potential dominant strategy.
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Oct 24, 2014 20:47
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Sentinels has some real problems, but our group had some fun with it, and you see occasional glimpses of a much better game shining through. Mostly, the designers just didn't give themselves enough design space to work in, and that means that they torture the hell out of the few mechanics they have (draw cards, look at cards, heal, +1 Damage given, -1 Damage taken, draw -1 damage look heal?). The resulting game too often ends up feeling fiddly (because they pile on more cards generating these effects) and bland (because too much of it is the same/irrelevant, and too few interesting decisions come up for the players). Some kind of time mechanic (eg. Glen More time wheel) would have been great, or even just some "energy" type currency. A market/upgrade system would probably have worked. Boss specific "decision points" would have been cool. Better card design/streamlining would have helped. Pretty much anything else they could have added would have helped. Hell, combat dice would probably have made the game work better. But anyway, yeah, I'm not making a point of ragging on Sentinels (or trying to sell it); all I'd say is it's worth checking out if you're interested in exploring this space.
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Dec 15, 2014 07:24
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quote:Wrestling Some random ideas: 1. Strong definition to your wrestler's personality - at least stuff like "I'm good so I don't do cheap shots and foreign objects", but maybe further like "I'm an acrobatic type guy, so I do X kind of move better". Maybe go all the way and do specific named personas with their own deckbuilding tech trees/markets. I don't think you can lose by making this more thematic, and asymmetry is a core wrestling thing. 2. Maybe combine your decks by having cards be double purpose? Like, maybe your deck is full of "match moves", but each also has a simple "kayfabe" value/ability that you use during the buying round. You might be faced with choices of getting cards that are good for "kayfabe"/buying, or ones that are better in a match. Or you might have tough choices about holding back cards that have good "kayfabe" abilities because you want to use them in the match. 3. For buying/out-of-match interaction, maybe some kind of a liar's dice mechanic, to represent the challenges/call-outs/bravado leading into a match? Like, you take turns placing cards face down and announcing a total (threat/whatever) score. Others (or maybe just one opponent?) can call your bluff (in which case you flip the cards and see) or announce a bigger number back and forth. I think something to capture the interplay/boasting/threatening between wrestlers would be good. Then, based on how that plays out, you get to upgrade your deck/choose first from a common market/whatever. What you don't want to hear is something Dominion-esque, like "8 wrestlebucks, buying powerslam". That would suck I think. 3. For 4 players, do the matches as tag teams, or do simultaneous matches (with rotating partners in either case). Whatever you do here, make the actual matches short and interesting. 4. Or, maybe something like this for 4 players: 1 guy has the belt. He fights the challenger for the belt. At the same time, the other 2 fight to see who will be the next challenger. You pile up victory points/money/whatever for winning, for being the champ, or maybe directly for certain kayfabe cards (ie. maybe you have cards shilling for the man or selling action figures to directly get VP or whatever?). Anyway, just some random ideas. I think it's an underserved niche actually, and a good theme to make a deckbuilder out of.
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Feb 9, 2015 21:48
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No matter how you balance the payoff matrix, I can't imagine that being a game I'd want to play without some more layers of stuff going on. I mean, we also didn't like BattleCON - even though it does have more game state and more layers of stuff over the payoff matrix, it didn't feel like enough. Predicting my opponent's moves can be part of a game I like, but when used as a central mechanic it feels kind of random/hollow.
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Feb 18, 2015 18:41
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quote:I had this idea last night to make a game based on video game RTS stuff. Basically the idea is this- This sounds promising. I'd be a bit concerned that the worker placement part comes out interesting. If it's just "I take Vespene", "you take Minerals", "I take Wheels", repeat for a while, I don't think that'll be interesting enough to warrant the time - though I do like the idea of "accumulating spaces" vs. "RTS unit balance/progression". Like, stuff X makes "early game units" and they suck now... but what if I can get 4 of them for one action? You'd end up with a lot of little "auctions", and the interplay could end up really interesting. Also, if you could, say, come up with an interesting way to handle a tech tree in a satisfying way within the worker placement, I think that could make the whole thing come to life. quote:Combat resolves as is indicated on the cards, and if you win a fight, you take the strategic location, which gives you an extra worker placement location and also victory points. I'm always nervous about doubling up on victory. Like, if you win this round and that means you have more production options, how does that work for loser-guy? I'd be tempted to just make the fights for victory points, and then have good ways for trailing players to "up the ante"/"go high risk" in order to potentially get back in (or quickly end the game by losing their desperate plan). Also, you might want to peek at Ares Project. It wasn't a huge success, but it's very much an RTS game, and had some mechanics for building stuff secretly (while still preventing cheating) that might be some inspiration. VVV: Sure? It sounds good to me as long as it's not the "you won battle one, so here's your upgrades"/"you lost so screw you" pattern. jmzero fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Feb 18, 2015 |
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Feb 18, 2015 19:26
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There's lots of cooking themed games - even an official Iron Chef board game (which I assume is terrible). I've heard people say Wok Star is really good, I think people like Sushi Go. Scoville, a recent release, is about growing and making recipes out of peppers (I think?). There's lots of board games about everything. Anyway, I wouldn't worry about it. If your game works well, it needn't matter much if there's games out there with similar themes.
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Feb 19, 2015 21:36
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quote:Once you've successfully set up the situation necessary for the sleeper agent to complete their task, you wake them up, have them perform their task, and get them out before the opponent captures them I think this is a strong idea - a little bit of Spy Party, little bit of "general traitor game", perhaps a strong hint of Tragedy Looper. My first concern would be managing the tug-of-war between "setting up the crime requires multiple steps", "you want to do some extra stuff to throw off the watcher", and "you don't want the game to go on forever". You also want ways of stopping the crime before it happens that require some "I figured this out", but that are also interactive and not anti-climactic. Tragedy Looper handles the first part by having multiple potential threats at once, each with a fairly short setup, and all governed by an interlocking set of plot/character rules (that are public, and serve to frame the potential deduction, and give a consistent set of knobs that both players can turn). It handles the second part by, well, not handling it. The players can't really stop all the threats before they happen. Instead, they do happen - but players then loop back in time after the crime has occurred to try to prevent it (and usually there's more than one possible "it") from happening again (obviously they tend to know more about the potential plots each cycle, and have a limited number of cycles in which to win). Anyway, I really like this kind of setting if you can figure out the mechanics to support it. Edit: maybe have more than 2 players, and have the "bad guy" player be secret? Have some sort of benefit to "getting checked" when you're not guilty, so everyone is motivated to look a bit suspicious. jmzero fucked around with this message at 00:08 on Feb 20, 2015 |
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Feb 20, 2015 00:02
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quote:Each player then plays cards from their hand face down onto the various locations until all players have passed I like hidden action selection, but it seems like you might be coming in a bit heavy on the hidden? Is there any way you can work more information leaking into the card placing? Like, maybe some units come in hidden (face down), but other large units like battleships or whatever come in face up. And there's some tension between more efficient (but visible) units, and perhaps less efficient units that give you more flexibility or bluffing power. And some could potentially give a choice to shake things up - like, this is a 4 power unit if it's face up, or 3 if it was brought in face down. This also gives some good thematic design space for different kinds of player powers. I'm also interested to see how you balance out control and harvesting. It feels like you could easily end up making it so going "all harvesters" is too viable or, on the flip side, making it so the threshold of a loss on control could be really swingy and the overall game could snowball too hard. You don't want a bunch of stuff come down to whether you opened 5/2, and thus could control but couldn't harvest on your first turn, and could harvest but not control on your second. (Or something... anyway, it just feels like this is going to be hard to set up mechanically in a way that works). Mostly, though, you just want to avoid making Smash Up (which had some similar mechanical ideas, and is really terrible, though largely for unrelated reasons). VVV: "Thanks so much for that idea, if you don't mind my using it?" Of course not! I would love to think that some of the endless crap I spout here actually makes its way into a playable game. God knows it never goes anywhere in my own designs. jmzero fucked around with this message at 23:13 on Feb 20, 2015 |
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Feb 20, 2015 22:40
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quote:You have upgrades and fly around doing missions, but sadly the game doesn't have very much interaction between players, and the people I playtested it with seemed to find it boring. How about bidding for mission contracts (I don't know if they're actually contracts in the game, but whatever)? Like, I can get it done in 4 turns. I'll do it in 3. Or I'll do that one for $3 or whatever (Edit: whoops, had this open while doing something else - and was slower than both a similar suggestion and a reply). If you do have "screw with other player stuff", I wouldn't make it as direct as "ha your roll sucks now".. maybe more like "I'll play a weather card that makes it foggy, and I'm good in the fog" (or just, "this bad things affects all other players" instead of "this bad thing affects this one guy). Or tricks to steal contracts by tying instead of beating their bid... If you can get by without targeted interaction, I think that makes good sense for a game with this kind of theme.
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Feb 20, 2015 23:56
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quote:Also I fear that when the holes are punched there's a chance of the icons being punched if something went awry. I don't know how the holes function mechanically, but can you put them (and probably the card name) towards the bottom instead? That would free up space to put the icon in the top left. (Of the two designs you show, the one with the icons at the bottom clearly looks a lot nicer, but I also wouldn't think of this as too important of a battle).
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Feb 21, 2015 08:00
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quote:So I was thinking a mechanic where you spend "fate" (the tokens are used to boost your rolls, or reduce your opponent's rolls) on the cards that allow you to move the token. Sounds good. I'd go even further and make it so you can't spend them on opponent rolls - but that's a taste thing. quote:There's a deck and one of the types is turned face up after each cycle of turns and then it's bid on. But this mechanic kind of feels lame. Thoughts? You could have it be kind of a reverse-pseudo-auction. Like, instead of directly bidding, you can just pick one. Then, each round (or whatever) a card isn't picked, there's a coin put on it to make it more attractive (as in a number of other games). So you can pick the new hot easy mission, or get an old dangerous one (that goes through the storms or whatever, and it's currently stormy) that pays out 3 extra coins. Also, I'd be tempted to make some of the weather/whatever conditions more general/by-area-type. Like, it's foggy so Mountains are dangerous, or it's clear so pirate areas are more dangerous because they can see you better (or, uh, hell I don't know what works with the theme, just spitballing). Then make the fate tokens able to change weather globally; that way you can kind of plan around how your opponents might want to/be able to change conditions, and it's not just "the storms follow you", "ha, no they follow you now". Maybe have the changes be on some kind of continuum Stormy-Rough-Fair-Clear or something so that there's some continuity to conditions, but you can still affect them if you dedicate to it. (Obviously I have only a vague idea of how your game works, I'm just throwing out a bunch of dumb ideas that might spark something). quote:For storms, how about theming the action as getting hold of a weather report? I like this too.. How about there's like, a weather deck (so that you can see what's coming up) that you can peek at for some cost? And maybe you can spend X to discard the top card or get a new weather card or whatever?
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Feb 25, 2015 22:44
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quote:So yeah, thoughts on these conditions? Suggestions for other conditions? Here's some random ideas vaguely related to your game: First off, I think you're worrying about exactly the right stuff. Too many people make these games and get bogged down in combat mechanics (and specific combat instances/balance) without having an underlying, basic game structure that works well. I think the most obvious comparison game you might consider (in terms of doing a "pretty good" job with this) is Kemet. In Kemet, you get points for attacking, you also can get points for maintaining control on the board. The third leg on the beast is that when you die you can respawn quickly and get back out there murdering. The result is a game that's very aggressive without feeling spiteful. Of course Bob is attacking me; that's how you get points. I don't mind that much, as I'll just recall my remaining dudes and attack Joe and get points. I think this basic structure potentially makes sense for your game. I think getting blown up is cool, as long as respawning isn't overly painful (it should be a little painful, obviously). The parts I don't like about Kemet's model: 1. Given the point structure, turn order becomes hyper important - you want to move last so you can kill and hold without anyone having a chance to respond. It'd be nice if this was somehow more dramatic/varied. 2. Lots of fights aren't close: there's lots of stomps (where you clean up whatever was left on the board overnight for control points) and also many times you're just running in one guy to die but take people with him. Close fights are funner, but you're rewarded for avoiding them most of the time. 3. Despite lots of mechanisms that tamp down politics, the end of the game comes down to politics too often (ie. player #3 decides to attack #2, so #1 holds the temple and wins). It'd be funner if the end of the game came down to some kind of direct combat between #1 and #2 (or something) more often. Some thoughts on potential solutions: 1. Have "control" points granted more often (or even unpredictably), so that you always want to be on top of the hill, not just at the end of the round. Maybe have some sort of bidding/initiative system that makes you balance between attack strength and "when you get to attack" - so that this is gamified during the run-up to combat instead of at the beginning of the round/game. 2. Focus on mechanisms that allow you to outplay/outluck/outsomething opponents, so that combat is unpredictable, and taking risks on combat when you need to can still make sense. 3. Maybe consider something like Tash Kalar scoring, wherein you get a Blue point for hitting Blue and a Red point for hitting Red - and your overall score is the lowest of your scores. This makes you want to spread the aggression around, and makes you feel less "picked on". Ie. he's not attacking you for spite, he just needs Blue points and when he's got a bunch of those he won't attack me any more. Or just force the end to come down to direct combat (maybe like a tournament somehow?) quote:VVV: I'm definitely thinking that players could take an action to gain a point from them in the middle of a round I don't have anything particular to add, other than I think you're on a good track and it sounds real promising. Let us know how it goes. jmzero fucked around with this message at 17:48 on Mar 4, 2015 |
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Mar 4, 2015 00:58
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quote:I'm not a huge board gamer - I basically only play Carcassonne regularly - but I'm interested in designing educational games that don't suck to play. Is there a quick and easy way to learn about (simpler) game mechanics that work? I am going to start playing on Board Game Arena in earnest this summer, but I feel like playing for fun and playing to learn about design may be a bit different. Most "explicitly for learning" type games are pretty terrible as games (eg. there's 2 or 3 "and on this space we pick up a Bible Trivia card" type games on Kickstarter at any given time) - but they probably work for pushing facts, to an extent anyway. My favorite educational games either teach about how a system works by simulating that system - for example, games where you buy and sell things teach you something about buying and selling things - or games that have a rich enough connection to their setting that you gain knowledge/understanding of that setting (eg. Twilight Struggle or Fire in the Lake immerse you in a historical period, and you end up getting much more familiar with those periods and relevant events). Or how Tales of the Arabian Nights teaches you not to sass Djinns if you're satisfied with your current gender. You're teaching about "design"? Maybe just have your people do some design in the game? There's lots of solid games where people make/choose things (drawings, product ideas, whatever) and the game has ways for the other players to evaluate what they made or picked or whatever (look at, say, Snake Oil, where you have to pitch a random product in some random setting). If you have mechanisms that reward the kind of design you're looking for (and/or basic design principles you're trying to teach) it might be some effective, creative fun without the need for too much gamey stuff around it. Many of these games are pretty much just a bag of settings/ideas, with very little game design around them. Fake edit: Or maybe I misparsed that last sentence, and it's you trying to learn about design, not your intended players you want to teach about design. Anyway, that last bit might possibly be helpful so I'll leave it there. jmzero fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Apr 17, 2015 |
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Apr 17, 2015 20:56
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quote:That said I'm definitely looking into more ways to punish incorrect guesses. I have a few composed but they're definitely on the fiddly side right now, so they'll likely be cut/refined after my next round of playtesting. Just some food for thought that you might find interesting, from a game I was working on a while back (it had a lot of other stuff going on, but this is the relevant stuff): In each battle there's two sides, an attacker and defender. You play units from your hand into your pile, normally face down. The attacker starts by playing 1 unit and naming an attack value (he can lie). The opponent then plays two units (again, normally face down) and must claim an attack value higher than the other player. Then the attacker plays two units, and then the defender plays a final unit (so each person has 3 cards total). Then you flip over cards and compare strength to decide who wins. However, at each stage, you can also call a bluff to have your opponent reveal their cards. If they meet their stated attack value they win, otherwise they lose. The other twist is that some units have different values for how strong they are during buildup vs. how strong they are in a revealed conflict. Thematically, I tried to have this be like "effective sneaky raid units" vs. "open battle units". I also had some cards that were played face up (or, at least, had 0 strength if not played face up). Then there were other units that had particular powers when revealed, or that had an additional effect if they won via bluff, or an additional affect when played face up (ie. they would challenge another unit, meaning the opponent had to reveal their top card or whatever). Essentially it's Liar's Dice - but with some card based variety that made it feel more thematic. Worked out OK.
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Jun 10, 2015 20:39
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quote:This is a really cool idea! Why did you stop working on it? A large part of the problem was that it was a design that needed a lot of playtesting, and was difficult to playtest because it absolutely required 4 people. A little more info, since I guess this is the game design thread: it was an "early Game of Thrones" themed game (never intended for any sort of distribution) where each player played one of four houses. Each player got a deck of house specific cards (Rob Stark, Khal Drogo or whatever) as well as taking some generic units (some gained during the game) to round out their decks (and replace units lost, since losing a battle was permadeath). The game is played 2v2 as Lannister+ally house (chosen secretly and randomly from the other 3, with Lannister not knowing who their ally is to start) vs. the other two remaining houses. The gameplay involved a series of 1v1 battles, each over a location card (which contributed resources and/or VP) culminating in the Iron Throne. The Lannister player has a better deck than the other houses, but has to fight every round against 1 house that is decided upon by the other 3 players (eg. Stark says they have a good hand ready, so the other players vote to let them fight the Lannisters this round). When a house doesn't fight, they use the turn to improve their deck and tune their hand; this means that normally the players will alternate, so that they have their best cards ready. However, it also means that sometimes they'll end up letting the traitor house fight. Fights use the Liar's Dice fight mechanic from above. Lastly, before a battle the players must send a raven to and get a raven from the Lannisters (chosen from a set list of messages, and kept secret by the receiving player) - houses might say things like, "my forces will be weak" or something, but the messages are vague enough to leave some room for misunderstandings (ie. they're not amenable to specific performances, like "call my bluff on turn 1").
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Jun 11, 2015 21:15
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