Just a quick update. I playtested a new, action-point-based version of this with the Tigris and Euphrates components, featuring a much smaller-scale city, and it seemed to go well. There are some interesting, emergent things that I'm liking. It still needs something, but its the best I've felt about it so far. Something special is happening with it, I just need to hone that into a proper game without losing that.
Don't have the time to do a proper update now, but will soon.
Showing posts with label Update. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Update. Show all posts
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Malleable Monster and Branches of Power
I talked with Chad a bit about the Monster City design, one thing we batted around was having changable sides. On the city side, there would be six possible factions, each with their own unit and set of cards, and you would choose three of them to use during a game. This would give each game a different feel. Similarly, the monster would choose a number of parts to its body, each of which provided specific move cards. The overall balance of attacks and movement would be preserved by associating them with "leg", "arm" "head" etc, card types, which would tend towards certain types of moves, and each monster wounld choose on of several options from each category.
There's a part of me that likes this for the replay value. The balance would be wonky at times, but this isn't an abstract asymetrical strategy game, its just meant to be fun. More Memoir '44 than Fox and Geese. Players would have more ownership over their abilities, and would be able to try drastically different approaches.
There's a part of me that is aesthetically repulsed by it though, it seems so messy. I'd want to really clean up the basic mechanics down to nearly nothign, and keep the cards themselves very elegant.
Also, because I would no longer be trying to perfectly balance the game, some games would be a little lopsided. So I would design it more as a "one more game" game, with a quick play time.
The end result being, I need to really streamline this down. I think shrinking the board *way* down might also be in order. The district idea might go away.
----
Also, I realized I need some kind of drama that rises and falls over the course of the game. Something that makes each turn different than the last, and provides a secondary concern. I know this is at odds with what I just said, and if I streamline the game down enough, maybe I can avoid this. But everything seems very linear these days. A "rage" value that rises and falls might be a step i the right direction, where more powerful moves are enabled by a higher value. Conversely, there might be a "morale" value for the city troops. Some secondary concern to strategically balance against, to carefully judge the importance of at a given moment.
-----
I wonder if cards are even still the way to go for the monster. Dice, in a particular way, are starting to become appealing again. Its a long story.
There's a part of me that likes this for the replay value. The balance would be wonky at times, but this isn't an abstract asymetrical strategy game, its just meant to be fun. More Memoir '44 than Fox and Geese. Players would have more ownership over their abilities, and would be able to try drastically different approaches.
There's a part of me that is aesthetically repulsed by it though, it seems so messy. I'd want to really clean up the basic mechanics down to nearly nothign, and keep the cards themselves very elegant.
Also, because I would no longer be trying to perfectly balance the game, some games would be a little lopsided. So I would design it more as a "one more game" game, with a quick play time.
The end result being, I need to really streamline this down. I think shrinking the board *way* down might also be in order. The district idea might go away.
----
Also, I realized I need some kind of drama that rises and falls over the course of the game. Something that makes each turn different than the last, and provides a secondary concern. I know this is at odds with what I just said, and if I streamline the game down enough, maybe I can avoid this. But everything seems very linear these days. A "rage" value that rises and falls might be a step i the right direction, where more powerful moves are enabled by a higher value. Conversely, there might be a "morale" value for the city troops. Some secondary concern to strategically balance against, to carefully judge the importance of at a given moment.
-----
I wonder if cards are even still the way to go for the monster. Dice, in a particular way, are starting to become appealing again. Its a long story.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Monster City update
Still working on this design. I've got some stuff in place that I think is generally working, but I think I need some outside input. I am just too damn involved in the design to be able to think about it rationally any more, too invested in particular avenues and concerns, and I need a fresh set of eyes to say "well, obviously this part is the problem."
The basic innovations of this version are:
- A more interesting city map. No more straight grid, but a series of city blocks and alleys with some character. I should have done this in the first place, it is already much more interesting.
- An unconventional movement model. The city is broken up into 6 districts. Each unit can undertake "normal movement", moving X spaces on the board. But they can also use "strategic movement": if they are outside the district the monster is in, they can move directly to any other space outside the monster's district. What this means is, your units are never completely out of the fight, they're always a move away from the border of the area where the action is. So far this looks to have some very nice emergent strategy as the monster considers when to change districts, and the city player tries to prevent or anticipate these changes. Credit Europe Engulfed for inspiration on this matter: thematically it means that its easy to move through uncontested areas, but a lot tougher when you're implicitly being careful, being attacked, or otherwise moving through a warzone.
- Finally! The "damage" model. As I mentioned previously, the monster can't destroy buildings when its within range of a unit's attack. This feels really right, giving the city player just the right amount of control over the monster mechanically and thematically.
- Card-based movement. This is giving me the kind of semi-predictability I wanted, I think, though this is the part of the game I am least certain of.
The game feels a little slow right now. but I need to playtest a bit because:
- Games always seem slower and more boring when you're self-playtesting, need to see how much that carries over.
- I think the basics are in place, and I think it could just be missing some changes to the board and cards, rather than fundamental rule changes. This is something I definitely need another head for.
Things I'm looking for:
- Keeping the pace brisk
- Balancing the sides
- Avoiding a runaway winner
- That pop. Right now, each turn is a bit like the last, needs some ramping tension, som buildup of power, some unexpected turns. This is probably my biggest issue, but one that should be fun to try to fix.
Maybe I'll employ Robin for this, though I will certainly bring the prototype to Seattle for some poking on my visit.
The basic innovations of this version are:
- A more interesting city map. No more straight grid, but a series of city blocks and alleys with some character. I should have done this in the first place, it is already much more interesting.
- An unconventional movement model. The city is broken up into 6 districts. Each unit can undertake "normal movement", moving X spaces on the board. But they can also use "strategic movement": if they are outside the district the monster is in, they can move directly to any other space outside the monster's district. What this means is, your units are never completely out of the fight, they're always a move away from the border of the area where the action is. So far this looks to have some very nice emergent strategy as the monster considers when to change districts, and the city player tries to prevent or anticipate these changes. Credit Europe Engulfed for inspiration on this matter: thematically it means that its easy to move through uncontested areas, but a lot tougher when you're implicitly being careful, being attacked, or otherwise moving through a warzone.
- Finally! The "damage" model. As I mentioned previously, the monster can't destroy buildings when its within range of a unit's attack. This feels really right, giving the city player just the right amount of control over the monster mechanically and thematically.
- Card-based movement. This is giving me the kind of semi-predictability I wanted, I think, though this is the part of the game I am least certain of.
The game feels a little slow right now. but I need to playtest a bit because:
- Games always seem slower and more boring when you're self-playtesting, need to see how much that carries over.
- I think the basics are in place, and I think it could just be missing some changes to the board and cards, rather than fundamental rule changes. This is something I definitely need another head for.
Things I'm looking for:
- Keeping the pace brisk
- Balancing the sides
- Avoiding a runaway winner
- That pop. Right now, each turn is a bit like the last, needs some ramping tension, som buildup of power, some unexpected turns. This is probably my biggest issue, but one that should be fun to try to fix.
Maybe I'll employ Robin for this, though I will certainly bring the prototype to Seattle for some poking on my visit.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
More Monster City
This game continues to plague me. There are just a very large number of ways you can take the game, so many ways to do the monster actions, so many ways to do city actions, so many city layouts, so many extra twists, all exploding combinatorially. This is the nature of game design, but its especially tricky this time.
I've tried to focus on my actual goals, to back out of assumptions about how things should be done. What I've come up with is:
1) City units should be able to hinder the monster, getting in his way.
2) The city players should not be able to damage the monster. This emerged over time, that it just felt wrong for the city to slowly damage and kill the monser. The city is in a desperate fight to avoid getting obliterated, but they are not an actual threat to the monster's supremacy.
3) The way the city player wins is to survive until a point where they get an ultimate weapon done, which is the one way they can kill the monster and win.
4) The way the monster player wins is to do a boatload of damage to the city, and return to the sea before the ultimate weapon destroys him.
So, the monster is trying to screw stuff up as fast as possible, and the city player is trying to keep the monster from screwing too much stuff up until they can get the weapon online, and either kill the monster with it, or use the threat of it to drive the monster back to the sea.
So how do the city units do anything useful? Well, for one, they can contain the monster, who can't use his big long-distance moves if there are units in the way. So we get a bit of fox-and-geese, where the city units try to slow the monster down and cut off his options. Second, and this is a fairly recent idea that I'm not completely cemented on: the units have an attack range, and they don't do damage or anything, but the monster can't attack a building while he's in the attack range of a unit.
So this leads to an interesting interaction. A city player piles up a bunch of units near the monster. The monster might try to kill all those units, and then will be able to wreck the nearby buildings, but this might take a while, especially if the city player keeps bringing in reinforcements. So the monster is liable to just head off to some other part of the city, where the resistance is less stiff, and wreck that freely. But the city player can use units to try to slow the monster's avenues of movement, to keep it in the areas where the city is well defended. But if the monster breaks free, its going to rip stuff up for a while, until the city player can stop it.
If this happens, does the city player desperately send in a single unit to buy himself some time while the monster kills it and goes back to wrecking? Does he send in a big force, which the monster might just avoid? Does he start cordoning off the main routes out of that area, and then send in a big force, to reestablish control? Or some combination of these effects? I think the strategic depth has a lot of potential.
In addition, I like the thematic feel better than some other versions I've come up with. The monster shouldn't actively seek out tanks, he should just wail on the ones in his face and then go back to beating up the city. And the city player shouldn't be able to control the monster, but can still limit its options, make stands, block certain streets. They will never be in control, but they just might buy themselves enough time...
Some questions remain as far as making this work:
1) How can I balance the monster and unit mobility so that these sort of questions are interesting?
2) How can I keep things unpredictable within the game? I don't want it to be complete information, where the monster can say "well, if I go here, there is no way he can stop me". I feel like in a game like this, it could get frustrating, and I'm not interested in crafting a perfectly balanced, open information, asymetrical, thematically sound game, its plenty challanging as it is. It'd be nice if he could instead make a reasonable guess about how likely the city player was to be able to stop him, based on some secret or unpredictable element, and had to weigh that. Think Memoir '44, but with more reasonable mission balance.
3) Can I keep the tension high throughout the game, or will one side clearly be doomed 2 turns in. This relates to the win condition, how many points does the monster need to win? Does he know, hits it, and escapes? Or should it be a press your luck affair, where he wants as many as he can get without dying. Could it be secret somehow?
4) I want to encourage the monster to get to the heart of the city, and the city player to want to stop that. But I also want it to be a bad idea for the city player to just hole up downtown, letting the monster bulldoze the shoreline. Its a tricky business, and might involve the scoring system somehow.
5) How do I give the game some pop? I still need that OMG turn, that memorable sequence that turns the game around.
Lots of open questions, but I think I'm on an interesting track. I have a new city design that I think will be more compelling, and a card-based approach to actions that just might work. I think this is maybe where the pop will come in, through narrowly applicable but powerful cards that can have a splashy effect if used just right.
In any case, I need to mock it up and playtest it again; there's too much theory swirling that needs to be confirmed or refuted.
-
Also, I went back and added lables to all the old posts. Might be useful?
-
Note to myself: I should do a post on "pop" and how it relates to "the bomb" from that Games Journal article. It's been coming up a lot.
I've tried to focus on my actual goals, to back out of assumptions about how things should be done. What I've come up with is:
1) City units should be able to hinder the monster, getting in his way.
2) The city players should not be able to damage the monster. This emerged over time, that it just felt wrong for the city to slowly damage and kill the monser. The city is in a desperate fight to avoid getting obliterated, but they are not an actual threat to the monster's supremacy.
3) The way the city player wins is to survive until a point where they get an ultimate weapon done, which is the one way they can kill the monster and win.
4) The way the monster player wins is to do a boatload of damage to the city, and return to the sea before the ultimate weapon destroys him.
So, the monster is trying to screw stuff up as fast as possible, and the city player is trying to keep the monster from screwing too much stuff up until they can get the weapon online, and either kill the monster with it, or use the threat of it to drive the monster back to the sea.
So how do the city units do anything useful? Well, for one, they can contain the monster, who can't use his big long-distance moves if there are units in the way. So we get a bit of fox-and-geese, where the city units try to slow the monster down and cut off his options. Second, and this is a fairly recent idea that I'm not completely cemented on: the units have an attack range, and they don't do damage or anything, but the monster can't attack a building while he's in the attack range of a unit.
So this leads to an interesting interaction. A city player piles up a bunch of units near the monster. The monster might try to kill all those units, and then will be able to wreck the nearby buildings, but this might take a while, especially if the city player keeps bringing in reinforcements. So the monster is liable to just head off to some other part of the city, where the resistance is less stiff, and wreck that freely. But the city player can use units to try to slow the monster's avenues of movement, to keep it in the areas where the city is well defended. But if the monster breaks free, its going to rip stuff up for a while, until the city player can stop it.
If this happens, does the city player desperately send in a single unit to buy himself some time while the monster kills it and goes back to wrecking? Does he send in a big force, which the monster might just avoid? Does he start cordoning off the main routes out of that area, and then send in a big force, to reestablish control? Or some combination of these effects? I think the strategic depth has a lot of potential.
In addition, I like the thematic feel better than some other versions I've come up with. The monster shouldn't actively seek out tanks, he should just wail on the ones in his face and then go back to beating up the city. And the city player shouldn't be able to control the monster, but can still limit its options, make stands, block certain streets. They will never be in control, but they just might buy themselves enough time...
Some questions remain as far as making this work:
1) How can I balance the monster and unit mobility so that these sort of questions are interesting?
2) How can I keep things unpredictable within the game? I don't want it to be complete information, where the monster can say "well, if I go here, there is no way he can stop me". I feel like in a game like this, it could get frustrating, and I'm not interested in crafting a perfectly balanced, open information, asymetrical, thematically sound game, its plenty challanging as it is. It'd be nice if he could instead make a reasonable guess about how likely the city player was to be able to stop him, based on some secret or unpredictable element, and had to weigh that. Think Memoir '44, but with more reasonable mission balance.
3) Can I keep the tension high throughout the game, or will one side clearly be doomed 2 turns in. This relates to the win condition, how many points does the monster need to win? Does he know, hits it, and escapes? Or should it be a press your luck affair, where he wants as many as he can get without dying. Could it be secret somehow?
4) I want to encourage the monster to get to the heart of the city, and the city player to want to stop that. But I also want it to be a bad idea for the city player to just hole up downtown, letting the monster bulldoze the shoreline. Its a tricky business, and might involve the scoring system somehow.
5) How do I give the game some pop? I still need that OMG turn, that memorable sequence that turns the game around.
Lots of open questions, but I think I'm on an interesting track. I have a new city design that I think will be more compelling, and a card-based approach to actions that just might work. I think this is maybe where the pop will come in, through narrowly applicable but powerful cards that can have a splashy effect if used just right.
In any case, I need to mock it up and playtest it again; there's too much theory swirling that needs to be confirmed or refuted.
-
Also, I went back and added lables to all the old posts. Might be useful?
-
Note to myself: I should do a post on "pop" and how it relates to "the bomb" from that Games Journal article. It's been coming up a lot.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Co-op Pirates
Last weekend, Robin and I spent a goodly number of hours working on a cooperative pirate-themed game. I'll not get into too much detail here, but important details are:
1) The big insight was that if you want to do a pirate game right, it really should be cooperative. Everyone wants to be a pirate, but pirates aren't really in the business of directly competing with eachother. Pirate's Cove was illustrative of this, usually the last thing you want to do in that game is spending the time and resources to fight another pirate, and you spend most of the game trying to stay out of eachothers' way. Pirates are mostly in the business of preying on the weak, so why not let the game itself represent the players' targets, and let the players work together to conquer them. Robin came up with a really nice theme for the cooperation, but I'll tease it away for now.
2) There's more to pirating than pirating. We tried to make multiple strategies that a player could undertake, and make sure that each is interesting. Specifically, players can a) attack merchant ships, while avoiding navy defenders b) smuggle contraband between islands c) explore far-off islands in pursuit of epic treasure. There are skills and items that support each of these angles, and no one player can fully adopt one strategy without weakening themselves in terms of the others, so players can informally establish roles for themselves, and work together in disparate ways towards a common goal. I see it almost in terms of a WoW clan, where players have different classes, and might find an item that they can't use, but that is useful to someone else. That's good, fun camraderie.
We have pretty nice systems in place for all of those details; mostly we need to refine out how exactly the actual ship movement hangs together so that the pacing of the actual pirating-smuggling-exploring subgame occurences feels right. Then its actual card design and balance, which will just be fun.
The biggest threats right now are component overload and rules complexity, but we've been pretty mindful of both, and it certainly won't be worse than Arkham Horror, or your average Fantasy Flight big-box game on either count.
-
In other news, I suffered through the old ticketmaster price double-up to ensure I had my ticket to Ultimate Reality Live / Dan Deacon Set Jan 15th. Because, lets face it, Dan Deacon is the man that makes me most want to quit grad school, blow off my life, and become him somehow.
1) The big insight was that if you want to do a pirate game right, it really should be cooperative. Everyone wants to be a pirate, but pirates aren't really in the business of directly competing with eachother. Pirate's Cove was illustrative of this, usually the last thing you want to do in that game is spending the time and resources to fight another pirate, and you spend most of the game trying to stay out of eachothers' way. Pirates are mostly in the business of preying on the weak, so why not let the game itself represent the players' targets, and let the players work together to conquer them. Robin came up with a really nice theme for the cooperation, but I'll tease it away for now.
2) There's more to pirating than pirating. We tried to make multiple strategies that a player could undertake, and make sure that each is interesting. Specifically, players can a) attack merchant ships, while avoiding navy defenders b) smuggle contraband between islands c) explore far-off islands in pursuit of epic treasure. There are skills and items that support each of these angles, and no one player can fully adopt one strategy without weakening themselves in terms of the others, so players can informally establish roles for themselves, and work together in disparate ways towards a common goal. I see it almost in terms of a WoW clan, where players have different classes, and might find an item that they can't use, but that is useful to someone else. That's good, fun camraderie.
We have pretty nice systems in place for all of those details; mostly we need to refine out how exactly the actual ship movement hangs together so that the pacing of the actual pirating-smuggling-exploring subgame occurences feels right. Then its actual card design and balance, which will just be fun.
The biggest threats right now are component overload and rules complexity, but we've been pretty mindful of both, and it certainly won't be worse than Arkham Horror, or your average Fantasy Flight big-box game on either count.
-
In other news, I suffered through the old ticketmaster price double-up to ensure I had my ticket to Ultimate Reality Live / Dan Deacon Set Jan 15th. Because, lets face it, Dan Deacon is the man that makes me most want to quit grad school, blow off my life, and become him somehow.
Friday, October 5, 2007
2-Player Monster-City Game Playtests
I spent a few solid hours creating and solo playtesting a prototype of my 2-player monster-city game today. I think its coming together fairly well, I made some early changes, but it seems like the game plays quickly, and with a lot of variety between runthroughs, which is a good recipe for one-more-time gameplay.
I'm a little concerned about:
A) strategy vs. luck - seems like sometimes one player just gets hosed.
B) ensuring that the game doesn't get stale over time - it needs a little more pop, that rare game-event that is exciting to hope for - the equivalent of shooting the moon, or a well-executed chess maneuver.
Also, right now, the Monster player is losing nearly every time, but I think I have enough knobs to turn to fix that eventually.
One thing I've started doing is taking a picture of the board state at the end of the game, along with a card with the result and game version (sort of like a little clapboard). For example:
I don't know if they will be useful artifacts in the long term, but it makes me feel more like I'm accomplishing something as I clear the board, change the rules, and start over.
I'm a little concerned about:
A) strategy vs. luck - seems like sometimes one player just gets hosed.
B) ensuring that the game doesn't get stale over time - it needs a little more pop, that rare game-event that is exciting to hope for - the equivalent of shooting the moon, or a well-executed chess maneuver.
Also, right now, the Monster player is losing nearly every time, but I think I have enough knobs to turn to fix that eventually.
One thing I've started doing is taking a picture of the board state at the end of the game, along with a card with the result and game version (sort of like a little clapboard). For example:
I don't know if they will be useful artifacts in the long term, but it makes me feel more like I'm accomplishing something as I clear the board, change the rules, and start over.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Drawing game prototype
I had an interesting experience with this prototype. In the back of my mind, I sensed that the game was a little bit too complicated, but I made the conscious decision to stick with it. But when it came time to make a prototype, I wanted to do a little proof of concept, something simpler that would be easier to teach, just to test the basic mechanics of drawing, moving, escaping monsters. The resulting, as-streamlined-as-possible design might actually be a better design.
This might be a good principle: try to create the simplest possible version of your game, and ask yourself if its really any worse than your original design.
Here's a pic with a sampling of the prototype materials. These cards and their illustrations don't really capture the tone I wanted for the final game, though the Madness injury, Grand Parade event, and Sphinxling monster are getting close in their crude way. In particular, I see the injuries as more mental/emotional, but for now I went with physical injuries, which I think will more easily win over my audience for this early prototype. I'll try to get a game in soon.
This might be a good principle: try to create the simplest possible version of your game, and ask yourself if its really any worse than your original design.
Here's a pic with a sampling of the prototype materials. These cards and their illustrations don't really capture the tone I wanted for the final game, though the Madness injury, Grand Parade event, and Sphinxling monster are getting close in their crude way. In particular, I see the injuries as more mental/emotional, but for now I went with physical injuries, which I think will more easily win over my audience for this early prototype. I'll try to get a game in soon.
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Cooperative Drawing Adventure Game
I'm nearly finished with a preliminary verion of my cooperative drawing adventure game. I've got a basic framework in place that I think I like, that captures much of the coolness I had in mind when I first hatched the idea. The basic steps in front of me now are:
- Nail down a board design and final version of the rules
- Playtest the basic drawing mechanic, which can be done independently of an actual prototype by just using pictionary cards.
- Produce an actual prototype and playetest it
I'm not quite ready to publish the details yet, but assuming the game's not as good in practice as I'm envisioning (they rarely are), I'll likely lay out the problems as a retrospective look at the design process. My process has grown a lot since the designs described in my previous Mistake articles, but I still sense that I'm stumbling down a flawed path. I'll see if that's true soon.
In the meantime, I still like the setting, which is an embodiment of mental states to be explored and escaped, in the form of gloopy forests, shadowy forms, sniggering imps and flashes of clarity. That's a vague description, but I've started to see the world as being several things at once, resisting the urge to lock it into a wholly consistent metaphor. Such an approach won't hinder the game, and is perfectly in line with the feel that the game is likely to evoke.
I've been mulling names while I write this, just as a way to refer to the project. I may well just call it Vague.
- Nail down a board design and final version of the rules
- Playtest the basic drawing mechanic, which can be done independently of an actual prototype by just using pictionary cards.
- Produce an actual prototype and playetest it
I'm not quite ready to publish the details yet, but assuming the game's not as good in practice as I'm envisioning (they rarely are), I'll likely lay out the problems as a retrospective look at the design process. My process has grown a lot since the designs described in my previous Mistake articles, but I still sense that I'm stumbling down a flawed path. I'll see if that's true soon.
In the meantime, I still like the setting, which is an embodiment of mental states to be explored and escaped, in the form of gloopy forests, shadowy forms, sniggering imps and flashes of clarity. That's a vague description, but I've started to see the world as being several things at once, resisting the urge to lock it into a wholly consistent metaphor. Such an approach won't hinder the game, and is perfectly in line with the feel that the game is likely to evoke.
I've been mulling names while I write this, just as a way to refer to the project. I may well just call it Vague.
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