An update on recent technical problems and more from the admin: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/250292/on-technical-difficulties-mod-coverage-and-other-things/p1?new=1
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The [Board Game Design]atorium: where new games get rolling
Astaereth
In the belly of the beastRegistered User regular
In the belly of the beastRegistered User regular
I'm not sure how much interest there is in a thread like this, but I do know that at least a few of us on PA are or have tried our hand at designing board or card games. For them, hopefully this is a place to pitch ideas, discuss problems, and find not only advice but hopefully even playtesters, artists, or simply supporters whose comments will help see them through to the end of a project. For everyone else, it's always interesting to see someone's creative process and to give them advice and feedback, and who knows--you might find your new favorite game here!
This is also a place for any DIY resources, self-publishing opportunities, etc, and I'll update the OP with any links of that nature.
Note: I don't anticipate anybody being a goose here, but just in case, make sure any criticisms you have are constructive. We're here to help. Also, and this should completely go without saying, but anybody's ideas posted here belong to them. Like I said, don't be a goose and everything will be fine.
I'll get us started with a design I'm working on in a second post. But I'm also happy to offer my advice or playtesting time for anyone who needs it for their own designs.
This is also a place for any DIY resources, self-publishing opportunities, etc, and I'll update the OP with any links of that nature.
Note: I don't anticipate anybody being a goose here, but just in case, make sure any criticisms you have are constructive. We're here to help. Also, and this should completely go without saying, but anybody's ideas posted here belong to them. Like I said, don't be a goose and everything will be fine.
I'll get us started with a design I'm working on in a second post. But I'm also happy to offer my advice or playtesting time for anyone who needs it for their own designs.
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This cynical superhero team management game is called We Can't Afford to Save the World.
The game is essentially an economic engine/worker placement type Euro game, minus the actual worker placement and with American combat added in.
Each player is an accountant or business manager for a nascent team of superheroes bankrolled by a large corporation. Every round, players go through the following phases together:
-Collect Income from their sponsor's Corporate Coffer.
-Manage their team by tasking Heroes to one of four options (Training gives you free Hero upgrades, Operations gives you cards that fuck with your opponents, Patrol lets you fight more villains, and Publicity lets you get more income).
-Purchase upgrades ranging from team Vehicles and Sidekicks to Headquarters (HQ) improvements, and collect Endorsements (players' main source of income) based on their current level of Fame.
-Hire new Heroes (using the auctioning mechanic the BG thread helped me work out a couple weeks ago).
-Fight Villains using any untasked Heroes together (the combat system is essentially the one in Galaxy Defenders, rolling dice for symbols that are either damage, special power activations, or detrimental) to earn money and Fame.
-Finally, Settle the inevitable lawsuits by paying for any collateral damage earned during the fighting.
The game continues until someone draws the Supervillain from the Villain deck. He arrives and starts stealing money from everyone's Corporations. If everyone's Coffer is fully depleted, everyone loses the game (so there's a slight cooperative element). Whoever defeats him gets a big cash bonus (but probably also has a lot of collateral damage to pay for). The winner is the remaining player with the most money when the Supervillain is defeated.
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As I said, this is basically complete, very detailed, with all apparent problems solved in the rules. I'm just about ready to start brainstorming the actual cards, but I can't seem to nail down this one last mechanic, which is how the HQ upgrade system works.
It's meant to be part Kemet-style tech tree (by which I mean upgrades that allow you to "break" the rules in a way that feels really good), part guide through the game. There are four upgrade paths of four levels each, corresponding to the four tasks and thus the four main strategies throughout the game--using Hero upgrades to have a really strong team, working directly against your opponents, building a bigger economic engine [fighting more Villains to get more Fame to get more Endorsements which provide Income], or getting more out of your current economic engine [double-tapping existing Endorsements]).
What's really bothering me is the question of physical representation. Right now the game can get by with no board, just cards. But I'm not sure how best to indicate tasking or HQ upgrades.
I've tried to work out a grid system where you place buildings to create spaces a Hero can be tasked to (ie., three players have built level 1 on the Patrol track, so there is space for 3 Heroes to be on Patrol at a time) with the possible addition of Villains and Villain fights have a geographic location that maybe destroys or damages nearby player buildings. But I'm not sure tasking should be limited in that way (since it's a big part of the game and the one place where players aren't directly competing--ie., a screwed player can hopefully task their way back into the game) and the system seems both expensive to produce and possibly far too complicated to add to my existing game structure.
I've also considered a personal skyline--you place buildings in a row to show that you've upgraded to that level, and then place Heroes in front of the appropriate buildings to show that they're tasked. This is at least better than the other idea (simpler, and while you still need to build your own tasking stations players are no longer competing or destroying them), but it runs into other problems. Literally a vertical row of buildings in front of each player might obstruct other players' ability to see your cards. Also, each upgrade comes with several new stats, abilities and perks (which allow you to hire certain Heroes); I'm not sure how to visually represent those on a building, and if they're just written on a card, why not just use cards?
And I could just use cards, but then I'm back to the game just not being very visually interesting. I'd like some way to enforce the idea of the city setting, and ideally a nice, visual way to show which Heroes are tasked to what and which are available for fighting.
If anyone has any suggestions, questions, or comments, they would be greatly appreciated.
The core of the game is a fairly standard hex&counter wargame, probably an eastern front derivative game (but maybe with a sci-fi or fantasy theme pasted on top) but at the start of the game you roll up a series of rules changes from a collection of rules changes, so this game there are no supply rules but you play with hero leaders, next game marsh hexes are impassable and you use the elite Dragon tokens etc.
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
What I'm curious about, though, is how you guys would go about starting a design? Do you start with a mechanic and build a theme around it, or the other way around? My design is the latter, but I have found that it can be hard to come up with interesting mechanics that naturally fit with my theme. Right now, it is basically a cat simulator, which is fine and all, but not really all that fun to play.
My board games -->http://www.boardgamegeek.com/collection/user/cpugeek13
My BGG wishlist --> http://www.boardgamegeek.com/wishlist/cpugeek13
I've never designed a thing, but I expect I'd start with theme since that's very important to me. Also, while I have huge respect for designers that invent new mechanics out of whole cloth, I don't believe I'm original or clever enough to do that myself.
Re: cat game: maybe players can use their individual player boards or whatever constitutes the cat simulator to pilot one or more cat pieces each around a central board representing a house/apartment/garden/other arena.
And then there will be different goals to accomplish (for points?) in this arena in competition with the other players. Marking territory (can't spell VP without pee), hunting, mating, play-fighting (combat training for kitty), maybe real fighting with other players' cats depending on how confrontational you want the game to get (definitely fits the theme though I think). Last but not least I'm thinking there could be competition for the resources of kibble and cuddles from one or more humans. Maybe these humans are just spaces on the board but I think it could be interesting if they were active presences to interact with, either in the form of cardboard AI, or maybe they're a different type of player (because I love asymmetry).
This is all getting a bit complex and Vlaada Chvatil-y which is how I like it, but I just noticed you said simple. Oh well.
Sounds awesome. I'd play(test) it.
Sounds awesome. I'd play(test) it.
@cpugeek13 Each person really operates in their own fashion when it comes to that decision. You'll hear advocates for each swearing that theirs is the one true path, because each person does some things better than everyone else and some things worse. Personally, I start with the very vaguest of themes, and then build all the mechanics with that one theme in mind, and then go back and tie the rest of the theme/window dressing to all the rules. I do this because I have a harder time coming up with rules that are actually balanced, but tying rules to fluff/theme is easy as pie for me.
For example, the design that I've been working on for the last few months and am playtesting now is a mini-deckbuilder. Each player is an animation studio, and everyone is competing to have the highest rated Saturday morning cartoon. This was the only theme thing I had in my head when I wrote the rules. Each player starts with a deck of cards representing money and production work. Each round, players bid over a number of visible cards to add to their deck, and then have a number of turns to utilize the rest of their hand. They can either play production to actually work on their cartoon, they can play a certain amount of money to have that count as production(Pay some sweatshop laborers to finish it), or spend money on advertising for their cartoon. There are 4 regions in the U.S. that can be advertised in, and the player that spends the most amount of money in a region, without going over the limit printed on the board for that region, gets the benefit from it. Of course all the money cards are placed face down, so nobody knows how much you've spent.
After all players have taken their number of rounds, players gain ratings tokens from three demographic groups: Boys, Girls, and Parents(someone has to watch this to make sure their kids aren't getting brainwashed). The kicker is that there's a finite number of each token. So if you get, for example, 5 boys tokens, but there's only 2 left on the board, you take the rest from the other players, and they can take tokens from you if you're the leader in a category.
I call it a mini-deckbuilder because there's only 8 turns, so you're only adding an absolute maximum of 16 cards to your starting deck. Decks cycle very quickly, and there are a couple of ways to exile cards, so it's less about having your deck bloat and fixing it, and more about being super ultra precise about what you choose to spend money on in the first place. So all I had in my head when I started was "Cartoon shows" and "deck-building, but smaller scale". I fully fleshed out the rules as much as I could, then went back and painted theme over everything.
(Sidenote: If physical playtesting continues to show promise I might ask Echo if it's possible to run some test games on here, as my current group of testers are very much on the...lighter side of the board gaming experience/ferocity scale.)
Chicago Megagame group
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@MNC Dover
Chicago Megagame group
Watch me struggle to learn streaming! Point and laugh!
@MNC Dover
Chicago Megagame group
Watch me struggle to learn streaming! Point and laugh!
My board games -->http://www.boardgamegeek.com/collection/user/cpugeek13
My BGG wishlist --> http://www.boardgamegeek.com/wishlist/cpugeek13
So, progression. Also, being able to fight the other players gives an avenue for messing up their movement optimization.
I just had the craziest thought, and you certainly don't have to do anything with it, but if you run with it I will love you FOREVER
Have you ever read the Sandman graphic novels? They're really quite excellent, and well worth your time for any other reason, but there's one particular story he tells in there that might be pertinent. It's about a well-kept housecat, who sneaks out of the house one night to hear a story told by a wandering sage of a cat. She had spoken of a trip to understand why cats were kept in the way they are, and saw, in a dream, that long ago all cats were the size of sabretooth tigers, and humans as small as guinea pigs. Humans had existed as servants and prey. But one day, a human told them that dreams shaped the world, and if enough of them dreamed the same thing, the world would change. And then, the next day, it did change, from the primal cat society to what we have now. The cat understood that, to take things back to the way they were, she had to get enough cats to dream the same thing. So she goes, from town to town, speaking to gatherings of cats and preaching her message.
I honestly don't know if this is worth including in your game, or if it complicates things too much. It was just a random-ass thought that I had, and thought it could possibly give your game some narrative.
Chicago Megagame group
Watch me struggle to learn streaming! Point and laugh!
A war game where your goals keep changing due to the whims of a mad dictator sounds really cool (and hey, if there's one thing games are good at modeling, it's true randomness). I'm imagining a game in which the war is meaningless or nonexistent, but you're the guy who has to keep "fighting" Eastasia Eurasia Eastasia in order to keep the population in line until you can knock off the dictator yourself and replace him as a benevolent (or "benevolent") leader.
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I almost always start with theme, partly because that's what interests me in a game and partly because I find it difficult to build games around mechanics, at least to start with. The superhero game began as an attempt to come up with a game where every player is the "banker," but quickly evolved away from that concept and towards the theme of a satirical, financial-based superhero game.
If you're looking for mechanics that fit your theme, remember that simulators are not the only way to go, you can get more abstract. Mice & Mystics isn't a mouse simulator in the strictest sense--it's really a dungeon-crawler, mechanically--yet it's still a game about running from cats, fighting bugs, and hungering for cheese. You still feel like a mouse even though you play like a wizard or a thief or a warrior. Exaggeration, adaptation, and absurdity are your friends. You could make a cat-themed deckbuilder about overeating, a cat-themed racing game where players compete to catch mice, a cat-themed set-building game where players match cards to build songs and dances in order to attract the best toms... and so on and so on. That's often where the fun comes in.
The only rule of thumb I can think of is that it's best to start with theme when your theme is about systems, because that's what games are best at modeling. For instance, my superhero game's economic engine mirrors the economics of celebrity, where the actual work is secondary to public exposure and advertising. With something more vague or less complex, like cats or painting, you're often better off skinning that theme onto a mechanical system that you like. It's very difficult to come up with a new mechanic at this point, after all the many games out there, but you really don't have to; pick a genre you find fun or a mechanic you like in an existing game and start combining or tweaking to get to an original place, then lay your theme in on top of that. Mice & Mystics works as it is, but it could have been, say, Snakes and Sorcerers and with a reskin you'd feel like you were playing a snake (hunting mice instead of cheese, running from people instead of cats, etc).
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Hm. This might work, let me think about it.
Thanks! Your mini-deckbuilder also sounds really cool. (If there's any genre that could use a reduction in bloat...) I'd test it. Speaking of which:
I think this is definitely something we should try and get going, with whichever games translate to the forums (or via print and play, if that's not an option, and then discussion here).
Actually, there is a mechanic where cats can poop in a room (instead of the litterbox) to block it off temporarily, at the cost of some negative points.
Also, @Farangu , H.P. Lovecraft had cats in his dreamworlds being sentient and powerful too, as I recall. Cat stories are interesting, but you need to be careful, otherwise they can turn into this.
My board games -->http://www.boardgamegeek.com/collection/user/cpugeek13
My BGG wishlist --> http://www.boardgamegeek.com/wishlist/cpugeek13
Yeah, the other approach I've been mulling over to roughly the same idea is that you as the general win my maxing your personal glory and gaining promotion to Field Marshal but the activities that get you personal glory will, in the main, be bad for the overall war effort.
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
You might try adding dynamic elements within the house that change what things are worth, give player upgrades or bonuses, and/or add additional player actions to the game. If you draw the right card, you can knock over the end-table to get at the fish in the bowl on the table, or open up the pantry to get to the extra cat food, or open up the window to get to the backyard and cuddle with the human out there. Even something as simple as an upgrade card that says "Draw two cards each turn" or "Cuddle twice in one turn from now on" adds a sense of player progression and identity--the former person is now the Energetic Cat and the latter is now the Affectionate Cat. The differentiation gives you replayability, gives you narrative, gives you all kinds of good things. Once you make a system it's worth looking to see the ways in which it would be fun for players to break some of their restrictions.
As to design strategy: when a promising mechanic or theme occurs to me, I add it to a list I keep of each. I usually only start really working on a design once I see a potential fit between an item on each list. At that point, I think about the "story beats" that are implied with the theme, and try to come up with a mechanic that serves each one. That way, hopefully I'm left with a game that feels like the theme. This, to me, has the greatest correlation to "fun."
It's set in a steampunk/clockwork era, something something 1780's with clockwork technology and alchemy.
Players play cooperatively against the monster. They have to track it down via hex exploration (a la Relic Hunter), then move onto a "Den" board where the monster moves around and hits stuff, and the players have to dodge and kill it.
It uses a token based resource system, where you get a number and type of tokens dependant on your class and equipment, then spend them during your turn to do stuff.
This is a pretty half-assed explanation, early play tests have been really promising though.
Designing board games is really hard, though. Especially if you want it to try and strike a balance between a skirmish miniature game, and a more traditional board game.
I could probably ramble about this for hours, so I'll just limit myself to one aspect: the sector map. In the original, there are 8 sectors, and each is a map with a cloud of beacons. The player starts on the left side of the map, with the sector exit on the right side, and jumps from point to point in turn as they make their way to the exit, each beacon offering some new event or hostile encounter. Because each sector gets more difficult, it's in the player's best interest to spend as much time exploring as possible, to maximize their chances to earn money and improve their ship. But behind them is the steadily approaching enemy fleet, and if the fleet catches up to the player before he/she reaches the exit, they're forced into a painful fight with no reward.
To represent that as a board game, I first decided to cut the number of sectors down from 8 to 3, and color code them green/yellow/red, with the final boss fight happening automatically after the red sector. Sectors are created by shuffling together some ten or fifteen Event cards from a large deck. The Events aren't unique to each sector, but their outcomes are. For example, the players are in the yellow sector when they draw an event that forces a hostile encounter with a pirate. The players would then draw from the yellow enemy ship deck until they reach a ship with a type of Pirate. Or they might reach an event where a research vessel asks for their assistance, offering them each 5 scrap/10 scrap/10 scrap and an engine upgrade.
There are a number of features about exploring sectors that I want to carry over from the original. One of the big ones is how to handle the exit. In the game, the player has to decide how soon they want to get there, balancing their need to explore against the oncoming fleet. So I didn't want exiting the sector in the board game to just mean going through the whole sector deck. The exit needs to be readily accessible, but not guaranteed, otherwise it becomes a simple matter of just exploring until the fleet is at your heels. I wanted to add an element of pushing your luck, of deciding whether you can squeeze out one or two more encounters before the enemy catches up.
My solution is to have an Exit card that gets shuffled into the deck. Every time the players encounter it, they're given a choice: move on to the next sector, or immediately draw another card and shuffle the Exit back into the deck. To prevent situations where the Exit starts on the bottom and the players run out of time trying to reach it through no fault of their own, I amended this by adding the rule that the Exit is always shuffled into the top half of the deck. That means players know it can be reached again soon, but not exactly how soon.
The fleet itself is handled by a fleet track, that resets to 0 at every sector, but goes up by one every time the players explore. When it gets up too high, bad stuff happens. There would also be plenty of events that can potentially manipulate the track, like the players having the choice to spend extra time mining an asteroid field so they can get more money, or another ship that threatens to give the fleet the players' location if they're not offered a bribe.
The next thing to handle was stores. In the computer game, these are a bit of a double edged sword. You get the chance to repair your ship, buy new stuff, and sell off what you don't need, but it comes at the cost of an encounter. The result is that the wise player often avoids visible stores until they're ready to shop.
How to implement this in deck form was not immediately apparent. At first glance, stores could just be another kind of event, but this can lead to poor situations with card shuffling. If the players end up with a sector deck that doesn't contain any store events, forcing them to make it the whole way without repairs, they're probably screwed. And a sector deck that's filled with stores might seem kinder in the short term, but in the long run they're just as screwed because they lost several chances to make money from normal events. You could have a guaranteed number of stores per sector deck, but then you still wind up with potential randomness problems thanks to stores getting clumped together or put on the top/bottom.
What I eventually decided was to have stores be separate from the sector deck. Players can visit one anytime they want, but at the cost of moving the rebel track up by one, essentially paying a turn. That makes stores a bit more convenient to reach than in the original, but it also means making zero progress towards reaching the exit. While it's not quite the same, I think it has a similar feel to the computer game.
Last but not least, quests. In the original game, there were events like "help escort this ship" or "someone tells you about a hidden base" that would create a Quest beacon on your map. Once you reach it, the event continues. Quests are interesting for a couple reasons. First, they present an alternate goal to the Exit beacon. There are times when it's easy to reach both, and times when it's obvious that you only have time for the exit, but the best times are when you find yourself weighing your options, debating whether that potential reward justifies a run-in with the fleet. They were also interesting because the outcome was unknown. Maybe the ship you're escorting gives you its thanks and a ton of stuff, or maybe it was just leading you into an ambush. No way to know until you're there.
There were a few different ways to handle this, but I decided what I liked was to do something similar to stores. When the players have an event that generates a quest, it will tell them to "draw a Ship Escort quest" or a "Hidden base quest" or whatever. They then go through the quest deck until they find one with the right back and put it next to the sector deck. Just like a store, they can then choose at any time to continue the quest instead of drawing a sector card. What makes this really fun is that there are multiple quest cards of the same type. The players only look at the back of the card when they're drawing from the quest deck, so like the computer game, they don't actually know what's going to happen unless they choose to encounter the quest and flip the card over.
Wow, this post went on a lot longer than I thought it would, and is probably not very interesting to anyone else. I'm glad I didn't try talking about ships and crew and systems and combat and everything else too. Well, at least it hopefully gets the idea across that I have spent way too much time thinking about this. There would be licensing issues to deal with if I ever actually made this game, of course, but there's a long way to go before I could ever reach that point.
There are very, very good games out that have a number of components equal or lesser than your sector map. Don't get me wrong, if this is the real firecracker under your ass then go right ahead, I'm just saying that I wouldn't be surprised to check in on your progress 6 months later and find such an intimidating tangle of rules and components that you'd scare away all but the groggiest of grognards.
Chicago Megagame group
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As is you've got Event decks with separate outcomes depending on the sector, separate sector Enemy decks, Quests, Exits, and Stores; plus a Fleet tracker.
First off, I really like the economy of the color coding system, you just didn't take it far enough. Why have a green and a red and a yellow enemy deck when you can have one enemy with three sets of stats/rewards? Toss that into the Event deck and now you've got one deck where there used to be four.
Second, if the Fleet tracker advances every time players explore--ie., every time they draw an Event--then why use a tracker at all? When the number of Events in the discard pile reaches X, a fleet battle begins. This allows you to play with a little randomization if you want--do really well on an Event and you can remove a card from the discard pile, which represents players pulling ahead, or do poorly and you have to discard an extra Event as players lose some speed/time.
Third, the main function of your game really isn't the randomness, it's the "Can't Stop" player choice of, "Do I go for the store at the expense of an encounter? Do I head for the exit now or press my luck?" Rather than cards shuffled in or drawn or there forever, I'd simply have no extra component associated with Exits or Stores. Instead, players can choose at any time to visit the Store (paying for it by discarding the top Event card of their sector, so that players risk the fleet catching up and lose out on the Event) or to Exit the map (maybe once they've cleared a certain Exit resource threshold, if you want to force them to do at least some exploration).
I like the Quests system and it works fine now that it's the only other mechanic involved with the Events.
Now instead of 4 decks, three sets of special cards and a tracker (and counter), you have one deck and one special type of card (which requires no special set-up). That's the kind of design that turns a Twilight Imperium into Space Alert.
I have a couple ideas floating around in my head, but nowhere near to the point where I'd call them designs, really.
I think it would be fun to do a deckbuilding/drafting game where the cards are associated with morality- so as you draft evil cards, you become more evil, and it becomes easier to do evil actions. I think this might work nicely in a storytelling game.
I also really want to make a boardgame of Roger Zelazny's "A Lonesome Night in October", which basically designs itself if you read the story.
That's all the rules I explained previously, plus how stores might work, at less than a quarter word count. Don't get me wrong, FTL is a complicated game, and I'm sure there'd be a lot to a board game version too, but don't let my earlier lack of brevity give you a false impression.
There's Gold, and there's Influence. Gold can be acquired, but Influence is derived from how much Gold you have. Gold is used to recruit crew, buy stuff, and such. Influence is fuel for your Pirate ship "Shenanigans", various tricks that a pirate captain would have at his disposal (special ship maneuvers, poisoning an enemy crew member while they're docked, etc).
To use Magic: the Gathering terms, Gold cards = Land, although your lands are not part of your deck, and you get it via other means. You sacrifice your lands to cast permanents (Crew/Equipment/Gear), but you tap them to cast instants/sorceries (Shenanigans). This may be a bastard and a half to balance properly, I feel.
Are there existing game mechanics similar to this?
It's been long enough that i should either start something new, or revisit what i had and try to put something together. I'm glad this thread was started.
Edit: hmm, maybe ill post up my ideas here later on so willing folks can help me with a post mortem
Nintendo ID: Pastalonius
Smite\LoL:Gremlidin \ WoW & Overwatch & Hots: Gremlidin#1734
3ds: 3282-2248-0453
Grips and Gaffers is a family strategy game in which players take on the role of production units for a movie. Each player attempts to get the most points by filming movie scenes which have a variety of camera and lighting requirements. It has a puzzly feel, and I'm aiming for a game weight of approximately Ticket to Ride.
Core Mechanisms
The game revolves around the use of a time track. Time is the primary resource in the game, and most player actions will use some amount of time, which advances their pawn on the time track. Whichever player is at the rear of the time track goes next, so taking actions which require lots of time means that you will need to wait longer until it is your turn again. You'll have seen this idea in other games such as Tokaido.
The wrinkle here is that each player has two pawns on the track, one of which represents their key grip and the other their gaffer. The grip is responsible for moving cameras around the stage, and the gaffer is responsible for the lighting. Balancing the use of the two kinds of actions is the key to being most efficient with your time.
This time mechanism interacts with the individual player boards. To film scenes, players need to get their equipment tokens into an arrangement on their boards matching one of the cards in the central display. The farther you move something, the more time it takes, so it forms something of a puzzle to move things out of the way to make room.
Player Interaction
Just fighting over the scene cards wasn't providing enough interaction, I found, so I added a limited resource in the form of the actors filming each scene. The idea is that if an actor is working on someone's stage, they can't also be in another place, so it's possible to slow other people down by snapping up the actors they need (forcing them to wait until your filming is done before they can use them).
Providing Options
To allow players to have more than one way to succeed, I added a variety of bonuses for specific conditions. Most of these I've stripped out in the name of simplicity, but one important remaining one is a reward for completing a scene exactly, rather than approximately. In exchange for spending the time to get your set just right, you receive a token that can be redeemed for a "best boy favor," which is currency that can be spent to take certain special actions without spending any time. This lets players get out of sticky spots or get things done just before another player who is about to use the actor or scene they need.
I've also kept a variety bonus, rewarding players who go for several kinds of scenes rather than ones that require the same equipment all the time.
Currently Experimenting With...
...giving players some personal goals to work on, in addition to the shared central goals. I'm incentivizing the shared goals with additional best boy tokens, but the private goals provide something to work for that won't be snatched out from under you. Not sure how that feels yet.
Thoughts? What here have you seen other places?
The time track and the idea of whomever is last currently goes was also in Horus Heresy, but I loved that mechanic as well. Are there any possible events you could tie to certain spaces on the track?
I also concur that you need some kind of personal goal for each player, and I would suggest to keep those hidden from other players. Gives a bit more to the game than just racing to get each scene done the fastest, and adds a bit more tension,like the tickets from TtR.
Chicago Megagame group
Watch me struggle to learn streaming! Point and laugh!
I first encountered "last on the track moves first" in Red November; there the track is also time and the more you spend, the farther ahead you jump (but the more challenges arise).
The "get a thing for accomplishing this task perfectly rather than approximating" mechanic is one I'm familiar with from Ala Carte. The game is about making recipes, and if you season correctly you get a red star. The red stars are worthless, except that if you get three of them (which is quite difficult), you auto-win the game.
I'm not sure I've seen the puzzle mechanic you have there, it's really nifty.
One thing you might consider is having either the public or private goals take the form of Oscar-like Awards. Players might get them from having the highest-scoring film in a particular genre, or giving all players bonus points for using the most popular actor, etc.
The private goals might be along the lines of a target release slate ("Three romances" or "One romance and two action movies" or "Three movies with two actors", etc), perhaps with a bonus for achieving the slate with X time remaining on the board unused.
So sometimes something looks like a mechanical problem when it's really a theme problem. Who knew?
Anyway, now onto making cards. So, so many cards.
Some of the items are handmade, as well. The small discs are just normal wooden disc game pieces, but the stickers on them I printed onto full-sheet label paper and then used a craft punch to cut out the circles.
That has definitely bit me in the past. Theme is important to me, to the point that I'm really hesitant to throw in mechanisms that I can't correlate directly to thematic ideas. Sometimes that kind of reframing is crucial to making progress.
I haven't used it yet myself so this is all hearsay.
Without going into too much detail, the issue I'm having is that I don't have a good way to iterate the finite resources in the game. Ideally, it was supposed to be that players would take resources from each other, but what's come out in playtesting is that the way it is handled is waaaaaay too clunky, and there is a massive last player advantage in how it handles - I was planning on some, but not that degree.
If anyone might want to offer help, I can certainly PM over the rules doc and some more comprehensive notes.
Chicago Megagame group
Watch me struggle to learn streaming! Point and laugh!
I can give it a read over and see if anything jumps out, but, yeah, just from what you offered in the thread information wise it is a little vague to say anything.
Off the top of my head say that players can take less resources the later in the turn order they are, which works because yeah the first player can steal 5 and the third player can only steal 3, or whatever, but he can steal from the first player, or whatever.
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
Chicago Megagame group
Watch me struggle to learn streaming! Point and laugh!
Willin' to help, cause I'll probably ask for it later.
After reading your rules, I'm not sure the game wouldn't be improved dramatically by putting these tokens face-up. That way if one particular turn number is more valuable, it's balanced out because the player who wins it will have to spend more money on it. Meanwhile I think it makes the game more strategic if players know for sure when they'll be going.
Anyone else go to playtesting events? What are your favorites?
I am currently working pretty hard on testing a card game i developped based on @Winky's original idea. I'm needing some more playtesters, however. While i'm at it, i'll talk a bit about the program i'm using to playtest my card game online.
so, without further ado, my card game, Shōnen
Shōnen: A game of Heart and Wit
Shōnen is a card game with no random elements. In Shōnen, two players duel as characters from a Shōnen manga or anime using a "kit" of 13 cards. The game is meant to be easy to learn, quick to play without sacrificing depth of choice or strategy.
How to Play Shōnen
It's simple, in Shōnen, the two players begin by making a 13-card "kit" that acts as their decks and hand simultaneously. There is no drawing in Shōnen.
The game begins with the set-up phase in which players place 3 cards, including the one "Ultimate" card from their kit on the table. Those are known as Crisis Cards. When a player loses a turn, they must draw a Crisis Card. if a player is made to draw a Crisis Card but cannot, they lose.
The game is played by playing two cards face down. Then you pick one card, and "clash" it with the opponent's chosen card. Afterwards, the players choose to play or keep their other card(s).
To find who wins a turn, simply compare the Power of the techniques used in the turn. Higher total power wins.
What's special about Shōnen
As mentioned earlier, Shōnen is a card game with no random elements. Players have access to their entire Kit of cards at the beginning of the game (and at the end)
Additionally, there is a lot of interaction between cards. For instance, basic techniques react to which type of card they're clashing against, several cards can be used to buff techniques.
And, well, it uses anime and manga elements and tropes as the basis for the flavor. So far, cards have placeholder art, but as the development cycle will near the end, the cards will have original art based on especially-imagined series.
What's the word on the street so far about Shōnen
I started playtesting the game with a few people and the response is overwhelmingly positive. I'm not so sure it's that great yet, but people seem to enjoy it. it plays quickly, it's easy to learn and isn't too shallow.
LackeyCCG, a CCG platform
LackeyCCG is the program i use currently to playtest Shōnen. It's not very pretty, but it's mostly stable and it is easy enough to use.
you can find it here: http://lackeyccg.com/
How to use LackeyCCG
LackeyCCG is simple to use, you download it, download plugins you can find and load them and voila, you can play the card game of your choice.
It doesn't have the best interface, but it lets you move cards from various zones (like deck, hand, discard) and on a table. you can move the cards' orientation, turn them face down, put counters of various colors on them, use tokens... it's versatile. You can also build, save, edit, import, export and look at decks for your plugins.
How to make a LackeyCCG plugin
The nicest thing about LackeyCCG is how easy it's to make a plugin. You just have to follow a few instructions found on the site and you're set.
You just need to make image files of your cards, set up a card list and the basics of the plugin's functions in an xml file.
since there is basically no automation in LackeyCCG, it's all very simple. The proof is that I managed to make a plugin in a day without too much trouble.
What I need
Right now, i need more playtesters. Bonus points if you've got a Steam account for me to im you with.
If you're interested in playtesting Shōnen with me, please send me a PM or some sort with a way to contact you easily like your google account or steam profile...
Check out my site, the Bismuth Heart | My Twitter
I am inferring that your game is a CCG. If so, I have a couple concerns. One is that there isn't really a market for CCGs other than Magic anymore; you should strongly consider either the LCG model or just a standalone game. The other is that for CCGs and LCGs, one of the draws is the different strategies possible in composing a deck. Since you have eliminated the random draw element, this is likely to mean that one particular kit makeup will be dominant over all others (unless there is some rock-paper-scissors element involved). This is usually less interesting than if the element of randomness means that odd setups can sometimes surprisingly win.