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eth0.n posted:Would providing a character sheet count towards the page limit, assuming it does not express any information not already expressed in the rules?  Someone asked that on the first page Ulta posted:Character sheets And given the discussion that prompted Ulta's response -- space limit = page limit as far as your question goes.
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Jan 31, 2013 21:13
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 20:00 |
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“The worthy GM never purposely kills players' PCs, He presents opportunities for the rash and unthinking players to do that all on their own.” ― Gary Gygax  Blurb: Dungeons, Inc. Employee Handbook Hello <employeeID Dwarfo, Iteration: 53> condolences on your recent demise at the hands of <"Hey...why is that kobold ticking?>. Welcome back to the exciting world of dungeon delving for profit! Tip: Please ignore any sensation of Deja-Vu while reading this manual. Memory loss is a normal symptom of excessive resurrection magic. Make sure that before returning to the IDungeon, you pick up your class assigned weaponry. Nothing is more embarrassing than realizing you don't know how to shoot a crossbow until after you have shot your fellow delver in the back! Class-bashing is never OK! See HR for immediate mediation! We regret to inform you that we will no longer be issuing armor to delvers. On the plus side, this means – casual Fridays! Please ensure that all clothes remain work appropriate -- chainmail bikinis and loincloths are NEVER acceptable. Tip: Gelatinous Cubes are not edible! We wish you the best as you descend into <The Temple of Traps and Flaming Adventurer Death> -- Remember -- Stay alive, Stay productive, and Stay profitable! All gold and "loot" are property of Dungeons Corp. Failure to turn them over is grounds for immediate termination. Welcome to the working man's fantasy game... welcome to Dungeons, INC. Inside this manual you will find...
Outline... and by that I mean a pretty complete (if overlong) draft Oh lord, I have no idea how I am going to strip this down while still maintaining coherence (although taking out all flavor text takes me under the two page limit). I am doomed... DOOOMED!!!
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Feb 3, 2013 18:57
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I'd be happy to take a look at your draft but I can't seem to access it -- did you set the share button to 'Everyone with the Link'? or is this just a problem on my end?
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Feb 6, 2013 22:24
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Captain_Indigo posted:What's the best way of laying something out like this? I've rigged something up in GIMP, but that'll mean the end result is a 'picture' rather than a 'document'. Any free programs that might be better for this kind of thing? If you feel like getting into some serious textual editing... I use Scribus for layouts. It is pretty much a cantankerous cousin of InDesign, but it does the job -- although even there you are printing out as a PDF (which GIMP can do, I think). If it has to be a document, you would also be surprised how much you can get done using text and image frames in Open Office.
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Feb 7, 2013 16:57
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In case I forget to post and update tomorrow... The 'Revised' (mostly typeset) version of Dungeons, Inc. <Click on the image for the pdf...>  <Edit: Now with proof of length> It ended up being quite hard to fit everything into 4 pages... I fear that the flavor suffered as a result. <Edit 2: Now with Bonus> 
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Feb 8, 2013 09:00
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Gau posted:
Google docs may be screwing up for me (if so, disregard this), but your proof of length comes out as a couple of lines over the 2 page limit and your full draft us waaaay over the 4 page limit (unless you are planning on each page fitting on something smaller than a notecard). In both cases, I don't think that it would be too difficult to trim them down (only a few lines for the proof of length and mostly a font/formatting change for the full document). Your game looks pretty awesome -- I just wanted to make sure that you don't run afoul of the rules! Ulta posted:Officially, all of the text of your final product must fit on two pages, single spaced, times new roman, 12 point font. I will be using Google Drive to judge this, so if you are unsure, put your stuff in there.
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Feb 9, 2013 21:58
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Jon Joe posted:I'm way under budget on my allotted space: my game only takes up a page before formatting, not including the picture of the arena. Any suggestions? Its hard to say without looking at your current draft but, rules wise, it is always great if you can have a detailed example of play (that will take up a page easily) along with a number sample time gladiators. Normally, I would also suggest an example scenario or two but based on your blurb, it doesn't sound like that will work. Given that, I would say that you should cram your game full of flavor -- either time travel related pictures or funny stories about famous time gladiator battles. Depending on the mood that you are going for, it might be funny to set up a running sports-pundit style commentary on the history of the competition and famous competitors.
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Feb 9, 2013 23:42
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Dungeons, Inc official submission for Feb. 17th <Click Picture for Document> <Proof of Length> Changelog: (1)As suggested, I completely rethought the special Abilities and Types section -- hopefully it is much more clear. In addition, I was able to insert some class specific example abilities that give a better feel for what can be accomplished with the system. (2)On preliminary testing, I had to heavily revise the DM section, specifically way that the DM holds and draws cards -- the original was both too resilient against attacks and too deadly for the players. The new version seems to work much better (and hopefully is a little more strategic). (3)A few of the lesser used maneuvers got buffed a bit -- hopefully making them more attractive to use. (4)I have crammed in 4 or 5 more flavor images into the document (as many as I could fit without some severe text formatting gymnastics). (5)In order to accommodate the new images, I switched to a landscape, 3 columns format (6)Created and inserted a new page background (I am not sure that I like it and it ended up a bit misaligned) The length restrictions of the contest meant that I had to cut a planned sample adventure, some example enemies, and a lot of the explanatory text that would make the system more clear. Oh well! The proof will be in my formal playtest. ....And my 'Little Hemingway' Bonus: Clock In... Die 1: Poisoned, opening the entrance door. 2: “Guys, does this part of the ceiling look different to y...” 3: One kobold is a punchline – 20 kobolds are a problem. 4: Impaled by an improbably large ballista arrow 5: Fried by a misplaced fireball. 6: Intestinal explosion. Note to self – never eat kobold stew. 7: “There is no way that the kobolds could ambush us again.” 8: Fried by a misplaced lightning bolt. Stupid wizard. 9: “I'll sneak past – besides, dragons hibernate in the winter!” Clock out...All in a day's work.
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Feb 17, 2013 21:08
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That is an awesome compilation (certainly beats my patented *search slowly through each page until I get frustrated and stop* method) -- thanks UnCO3. Sad to see how many dropped off this round though.
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Feb 18, 2013 03:08
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So, my playtesters fell through for this weekend -- anyone have any interest in joining the fast paced world of Dungeon Delving and testing Dungeons, INC tomorrow night on Roll20? If so, drop me an email at adamrappold at the address of gmail.com. I was thinking around 7 pm EST but I am pretty flexible. Even with rules explanations I hope that it won't take more than 2 hours -- probably less. Also, does anyone have any better ideas for a way to run game via the internet(it has to support playing cards) or for a way to scare up 4 players or so pretty quickly?
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Feb 24, 2013 20:06
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Final Playtest Summary for Dungeons, INC Unfortunately, I recorded all of this on my iDevice... thinking that it would be stored no problem. Unfortunately, somewhere around the 15 minute mark, the file becomes corrupted (and was too large to email out anyway). So, I am going to type a (sorry in advance for the long post) I had 4 players who created the following characters -- Nanco the barbarian (who had the power 'Berzerker Rage' which allowed him to attack twice in a round at increased damage... but his targets are chosen randomly) Pallinor the Priest... renamed 'Clumsor the Clumsy' (who had the powers 'Cure light wounds' which allowed a player to draw a card (HP) and 'Turn Undead' which stopped all the undead in a zone from attacking) Axestab the Ranger (who had the powers 'Longshot' which allowed him to shoot at a target in any zone at increased damage... but forces him to discard a card to use which he conveniently 'forgot' to do and 'Detect Traps' which gave him 'Advantage' (+5 to roll and +1 'damage') against any trap challenges) and Olivero the Magnificent (who had the powers 'Lightning Bolt' which hits 2 targets at increased damage and 'Teleport' which moves the whole zone to another target zone... but both powers had the disadvantage that they could only be used once per encounter) Character creation was super quick and really fun... although it really required my guidance. After reading the rules as written, only one of the players was able to create their own ability. This is mostly because until you have played a few rounds of conflict, it is pretty hard to get your head around the system (although after that things seemed to flow really easily). Aside from the length required by the contest, my game really screams out for an Example of Play. The experienced players basically said 'I want to do X thing that my D&D class does' and we were able to easily work from there -- which may have actually created some less than useful abilities. At any rate, I got lots of comments on how fun it was to come up with powers. The big complaint was that they wanted more than 2 per character! The two players who were not experienced RP'ers did have quite a bit of difficulty coming up with the specifics of what they wanted their characters to do (the priest and the ranger) and so basically chose the starting abilities with a few tweaks, which might indicate that I am presuming too much familiarity with the D&D rules. After running a short tutorial combat to show them how things worked, a couple of things became apparent and required quick rules patches: 1. 'Return' is the heart of the game system and didn't make much sense at first... so we had to go over why you would only want to play the favored actions of a suite or try to collect your classes' signature suite (which 'Returns' with any action). Because if you didn't then you would run out of cards from your deck very quickly. 2. It really sucked if you didn't have decent cards... so I made the Regroup action automatic to make it easier to draw(with a bonus if you played it as a favored action). 3. As another poster mentioned above, the d20 is REALLY swingy... I chose it because it seemed linked to D&D but bad luck resulted in some players failing time and time again. This was compounded by the critical failure rule (1-5 is a critical failure and leads to accidentally hitting a teamate) which happened so often and so frustratingly that I changed it to only occur on a 1-2 on non attack actions (keeping it the same for attacks) 4. Ranged heroes (Axestab and Olivero) wanted to be able to attack every round at range... and the current system really didn't allow that. This compounded with... 5. For 'non-combat' challenges using clubs as the basis of the Attack action seemed counter intuitive and hampered their narrative descriptions (why does everything default to being solved by direct, aggressive force?). So, I ruled that Attacks could only be 'Returned' by playing your classes' signature suite. This required creating a new maneuver for Clubs though... which I named 'Power up/Hindrance': on success it allows the next person to play named [suite] to increase damage or range by one/Target can no longer play named [suite] unless he spends a round taking no action other than Regrouping. This worked pretty well and 'Returns' seemed a bit more natural after this, although the newly created maneuver was not widely utilized, so I may need to reconfigure it. 6. For the non-experienced players, it was very hard to come up with descriptions of their actions -- especially for the Priest (who was trying to 'Create Advantage' a lot to gain power). Unless I really encouraged (mandated) him to do so, he tended to just play the card, declare the action, and not elaborate. This is completely expected but I really wish there was a way that I could encourage new players to be a bit more involved in the 'narrative' reality of the game -- something like Exalted's stunt mechanic. 7. Related to that, the 'suites' suggesting the descriptions for your actions didn't really have much weight. This wasn't a large problem. In practice, it sort of fell by the wayside (for reasons that I will discuss later) because, at heart, there were very few chances or reasons to describe use a suite in a creative way. Sticking to favored actions was always the way to go. I had the players wake up in gooey resurrection pods, completely stripped of their memories. As they cleaned themselves of gunk, they were met by a pink suited functionary who described the ressurection process and explained the Dungeons Corporation to them, their job (to get treasure) and dropped some cryptic 1984 style hints about the war 'with the Elves'. I had a lot of fun introducing conspiracy-esque elements here (journals written in the player's handwriting but in a language none of them spoke, a training room covered in blood with 'Trust no one' scratched into the wall, all of the windows being completely sealed off, no doors in their 'apartment', etc) while throwing in bits of dark humor (no one got any armor, their weapons were all substandard, but they all got Dungeons Corporation hats!). Everyone seemed to really enjoy the actions here and the general mood... but expressed that they felt slightly let down that the rest of the 'mission' didn't really follow through with the premise. I am not sure whether or not that is a fault of a disconnect between the rules and the fiction or if I am just bad at writing dungeons. Their first mission was to go to Kobold Hollow ("Don't be silly, there is no such thing as a kobold... it is just a name"), get the current tenants to sign their eviction notices, collect any treasure, and bring back any evidence of Elf Sympathizers -- all within two hours. So, the players suited up and were teleported to their location. Here is a map of the hollow which I appropriated from the really awesome mini-dungeon site Microdungeons Site created by Tony Dowler. I hope that he doesn't mind.  Outside of what looked like a massive mound of dirt (Kobold Hollow) was a mass of protesters. A small group, led by a long haired pungent hippy, had chained themselves to the front door, while the rest carried various signs ('Hell no, ko-bolds won't go!' and 'Kobolds are people too'). Immediately upon seeing the heroes, they mobbed them -- at first wanting them to join their protest but then becaming convinced (because of the Dungeons Corporation hats!) that they were the enemy. The ranger tried to talk his way out of the situation but things quickly came to blows... The barbarian quickly became mobbed by protesters (despite being a whirling blur of death) and was pushed very close to death -- until he gained enough power to activate his Berzerker Rage and finish off the sign-carrying protesters. The wizard was the real MVP, starting the battle by sending a lighting bolt against the mobile protesters and destroying one token right off the bat. The ranger mostly suppressed the DM, using move actions to place bad cards in the DM's hand and to gain power to use his 'Longshot' ability. The priest... well... he mostly critically failed and drew bad cards. 1. The system doesn't handle social conflict very well. We tried to put everything in combat zones while the ranger tried to sweet talk the head hippy and do it as a conflict... but the descriptions became awkward very quickly (what does 'Move' mean in a social conversation? Can the other protesters partipate and attack the party on the side?). In the end, I decided that it was better to do it is a simple challenge where the ranger simply had to perform a successful attack action at a disadvantage (which the Ranger failed). 2.One player asked whether they would have gotten full xp and card rewards for beating the protesters without going to combat grid (whether in social or physical combat). I decided that they would get the card rewards and the xp -- but the tokens spent on the encounter are saved and used as reserve tokens for another conflict. So, avoiding conflict saves resources but makes things harder later on. 3. The combat went on for much longer than I anticipated -- but it is probably due mostly to unfamiliarity with the system, given that we breezed through the next combat in half the time. It was also not quite as deadly as I had anticipated... in early tests one party member pretty much always died per combat but in this session it never happened (although the barbarian only survived through some very lucky rolls). Possibly if we had played longer then it would have. 4. Failing is just no fun. In addition to having difficulty describing his actions, the priest really just seemed to have a miserable time. His turn was over quickly, he had difficulty choosing what to do with his cards, and he seemed to critically fail at whatever he did. I realize that it is just luck... but I wonder whether there is something that can be used to rectify bad streaks. His healing ability was quite useful though. 5. Given the amount of 'stuff' that is going on every round, the temptation to play mostly as a board game and cut descriptions short and not engage the narrative was very strong. Even I succumbed to it quite frequently so that things would move along. 6... With that being said, everyone was really excited about how tactical and crunchy the combat felt without requiring very many rules. The general consensus was that it felt like a board game... but a good board game (the barbarian's player said 'way more like a better version of Descent than like D&D... in a good way?) 7. Some maneuvers (I am looking at you 'Create Disadvantage' and 'Analyze') don't get much use... after interviewing the players they mostly seemed to have forgotten that they existed and thought that they would probably get more use in a future game once they are more used to the system. With that being said... I am pretty sure that Block needs a bit of a buff too. 8. Defense is absolutely worthless against non 'boss' attacks under the current rules (because, even if successful the Defense card was frequently discarded... meaning that it worked almost exactly like getting hit). I ended up creating a hotfix that allowed a defense card to be placed in front of each player as an action. This card only goes away after a successful defense and does not count against the hand limit. In addition, if a player would have 'returned' their defense card they get to draw a new card instead. 9. There was a lot of confusion with how the +1 damage (discard one extra card) interacted with the multiple target rule. The consensus was that the rules are not clear on this at all. I eventually clarified that the +1 damage and the +1 target are completely separate but their interaction is still a bit murky and it shows one of the many places where it might be problematic for someone to try and run the rules as written without access to my intentions and clarifications (much of this is a symptom of the length limitations, especially given how much I tried to cram in). After defeating the protesters, the players hacked the chains from the doors, not noticing that, in the process, they had set off a poison gas trap. No one had successfully searched for the trap (they certainly learned this lesson quickly) or was able to defend against the damage, so they all took a hit. As they advanced into the dark, earthen tunnels of Kobold Hollow, they noticed a series of medium sized holes in the wall which increased in frequency until reaching a massive steel plate at the end of the tunnel. As they were searching for traps (having learned to do so), a small group of kobolds sprang out in ambush. The kobolds would dart out of the holes, attack, sometimes stealing weapons or loose gold and then retreat, before the players could respond (although this required the DM to spend a lot of his cards). Eventually, the barbarian was able to Block the movement of one of the kobold groups... tipping the balance enough so that the group was able to scatter the rest. As the ranger, remembering his actual objective, began forging signatures on eviction notices... The door at the end of the hallway swung open, revealing a massive ballista crewed by kobold engineers! Before anyone could react, it sent a massive bolt straight into the heart of the party, setting the whole zone on fire and knocking the wizard and ranger to dangerously low levels. As the barbarian, on the verge of death again, joined battle with a group of kobold warriors defending the ballista. The other players, flailing and on fire, critically failed everything that they did (seriously, like 5 times in a row). It looked like it was over for the party as the kobold engineers finally managed to reload the ballista (they needed a specific suite to activate that power) but the wizard remembered his teleport ability and teleported everyone into the same zone as the ballista (its attack ability hit the entire zone that it targets, including itself). Meanwhile, the barbarian was cornered by the group of kobold warriors... with no cards to defend himself, any attack was death. As the priest and the wizard locked weapons with the crew, the ranger managed to use his longshot to kill the kobold warriors (a mere turn before they would have killed the barbarian). Sensing their imment doom, the kobolds fired on everyone in their zone with one explosive attack.... killing themselves but knocking everyone in the party into critically low levels (all but one party member had drawn all of their cards and most only had one card left in their hand). Searching the ballista room, the wizard came out with a potion of Gigantism and the ranger round the mysterious Crown of Attacking Bees... and the priest found a hidden door that led deeper into the Hollow. Due to time, that is where we stopped for the night... 1. In the course of this battle, it became apparent that most of the party was going to have run through their allotted 10 card draw deck (which is supposed to be the measure of dwindling resources). This had happened a little earlier than expected... so I had to create some quick rules for what happened when you ran out of cards (max hand of one, draw one a round). In addition, I decided to up the XP rewards for most encounters and allow the players to spend XP to refresh their decks. 2. This led to the idea that finishing with the most XP at the end of a mission made one player the 'winner' (he even gets a reward for this)... and we all had a good laugh about how I had created an RPG that specifically refuted all of those RPG introduction chapters that say 'although this is a game, there are no winners and losers..." 3. Also, in a fuller version of the rules, I really need to clarify the process of searching for traps and treasure and possibly give some classes an advantage in this. Essentially traps are meant to be a constant drain on card resources (either checking for them or because the check was failed). Further, searching for treasure is a way to exchange excess hand resources for more xp (or possibly one use abilities). 4. I had a lot of fun using random charts to generate magical items (potion of gigantism and the crown of attacking bees) when the players searched and was really dissappointed that we didn't actually get to use the item. 5. I really had fun creating interesting effects for the zones. Specifically, the ambushing kobolds ability to hide at the end of their turn (in exchange for a DM card) worked out really well, as did the ability of the ballista to hit an entire zone and set it on fire. To make combat enjoyable Dungeons INC really needs zany zone effects and special powers (because the straight up brawl combat of the previous encounter didn't seem to be as engaging). I am not sure that the DM 'chapter' as written stresses this enough... because it really did make all the difference in the world. 5. The initiative system really did its job here since the kobold's constant disappearing act meant that the players had to carefully consider how best to deal with them and played around with a lot of turn orders. It also became apparent that they really needed a way to interrupt turn order (either as a delayed action or as a special power). In the end, everyone including me (with the possible exception of the Priest's player) had a huge amount of fun and hoped to for us to play more in the future. With that being said, there were a lot of rough spots in the rules and the general consensus was that it felt more like a dungeon board game than it did like a full RPG. Although I intended the game to be fast and deadly, it was a bit slower and less deadly than intended although not in a way that impacted the fun of it ( I think if we had played any longer, we would have had our first casualty). Finally, everyone raved about the tactical crunch of the rules and really liked all of the options and how different and exciting combat was -- one player did express (and I agree with this) how dissapointed he was that the rules and missions didn't really seem to take enough advantage of the Paraonia/Portal vibe that he got in the beginning. Anyway, I am super pleased at how well this went and I am very thankful to have had the chance to participate in this awesome idea for a competitions.
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Feb 28, 2013 21:54
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Spacedad posted:^^^ By the way, I really love your cover art (I think that it communicates perfectly what neongrey was going for in his rules)! Now I wish I had commissioned you to do some of the art for my game rather than doing it all myself.
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Feb 28, 2013 21:56
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 20:00 |
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Woo and other various celebration sounds. Thanks for running such an awesome contest Ulta and a huge congrats to Captain_Indigo (you totally deserved your win).
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Mar 12, 2013 18:55
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