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.
oh, yeah, i didn't mention it, but this is totally going to be an LCG. i hate the booster pack model.
As for the fact that some kits are going to be dominant, well... that's one of the challenges in the thing. i am already aware of it.
And yes, there is a 5-pronged RPS mechanic and, like I said, a lot of different interactions between cards. Hopefully i'll manage to make it balanced enough quickly.
AEG is calling Doomtown an "expandable card game," which isn't bad.
That is also a good term, i think i heard it before, too.
Also, in other news, i am about 4 games away from being ready to start working on the new revision of Shonen... But every one of my playtesters is busy these days... Sorry if i'm a bit insistey but i wanna move on to the new version.
So any takers? i won't reveal your identity if you don't want people to think you like anime. :P
So somehow this thread had gotten un-bookmarked and I thought it had died.
It hasn't.
I'm working on a game. It's like...
Working title is "Sellsword" (don't care if this is taken, it's just a title, I'll come up with something else if I need to if this gets off the ground). The game board is comprised of several 8x8 hex boards, which you fit together to create the game space. They can be rotated, arranged in strange ways, whatever. Then you place the "terrain" pieces on that game space, each of those pieces can be buildings, walls, boops and bobs.
Then, the player(s) take turns sending "gold" to hire "mercenaries" for their team. You can hire one bad ass guy, or a bunch of small guys, or anything in between. Each merc' is represented by an info card, depicting his abilities, equipment, and how many action points he gets, as well as his cost. Once everyone has hired the team they want, they search the "equipment and ability" tokens to spend their remaining gold outfitting their dudes. Each merc can have an array of 4 items, ranging from weapons, to armor, to spells, to consumables.
Once that's all done, everyone places their merc on the gamespace, and you take turns moving them around and fighting.
All of that is pretty simplified, each merc has a number of action points available. You activate a merc, spend his points, and activate another merc, until you've activated all the ones you want to on your team. Points can be spent to move, attack, or use an ability. Some guys will have 3, some will have 1, some will have zero and require a specific merc on the team and in range to lend them points. When fighting, you simply roll a D6, and consult the weapon/ability you were using... Which will tell you what minimum result is needed. Then the target rolls a die and needs to consult their armor/defensive abilities to negate the hit. If the save fails, the merc loses a heart, at zero hearts they are removed from the gamespace.
It's like a miniature game, but a board game, and smaller scale.
I've got a system of "Treasure", "Event", and "Stratagem" cards which get drawn throughout the game, which can change things up. Events happen every two rounds, which shake things up. Stratagem cards give each player alternate objectives or once per game actions to screw with everyone else.
I want to complicate things further by offering up alternate play modes. "Contract" cards which let the player(s) play solo or cooperatively. "Scenario" cards which can be selected before the game, which tell you how to set up the board for a specific game mode, like a siege or something. I also want to have rules for a "living game mode", where groups of players can maintain their teams from game to game, allowing them to earn gold each game to resupply their dudes and hire new dudes.
I don't know. It's pretty alpha right now.
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21stCenturyCall me Pixel, or Pix for short![They/Them]Registered Userregular
So somehow this thread had gotten un-bookmarked and I thought it had died.
It hasn't.
I'm working on a game. It's like...
Working title is "Sellsword" (don't care if this is taken, it's just a title, I'll come up with something else if I need to if this gets off the ground). The game board is comprised of several 8x8 hex boards, which you fit together to create the game space. They can be rotated, arranged in strange ways, whatever. Then you place the "terrain" pieces on that game space, each of those pieces can be buildings, walls, boops and bobs.
Then, the player(s) take turns sending "gold" to hire "mercenaries" for their team. You can hire one bad ass guy, or a bunch of small guys, or anything in between. Each merc' is represented by an info card, depicting his abilities, equipment, and how many action points he gets, as well as his cost. Once everyone has hired the team they want, they search the "equipment and ability" tokens to spend their remaining gold outfitting their dudes. Each merc can have an array of 4 items, ranging from weapons, to armor, to spells, to consumables.
Once that's all done, everyone places their merc on the gamespace, and you take turns moving them around and fighting.
All of that is pretty simplified, each merc has a number of action points available. You activate a merc, spend his points, and activate another merc, until you've activated all the ones you want to on your team. Points can be spent to move, attack, or use an ability. Some guys will have 3, some will have 1, some will have zero and require a specific merc on the team and in range to lend them points. When fighting, you simply roll a D6, and consult the weapon/ability you were using... Which will tell you what minimum result is needed. Then the target rolls a die and needs to consult their armor/defensive abilities to negate the hit. If the save fails, the merc loses a heart, at zero hearts they are removed from the gamespace.
It's like a miniature game, but a board game, and smaller scale.
I've got a system of "Treasure", "Event", and "Stratagem" cards which get drawn throughout the game, which can change things up. Events happen every two rounds, which shake things up. Stratagem cards give each player alternate objectives or once per game actions to screw with everyone else.
I want to complicate things further by offering up alternate play modes. "Contract" cards which let the player(s) play solo or cooperatively. "Scenario" cards which can be selected before the game, which tell you how to set up the board for a specific game mode, like a siege or something. I also want to have rules for a "living game mode", where groups of players can maintain their teams from game to game, allowing them to earn gold each game to resupply their dudes and hire new dudes.
I don't know. It's pretty alpha right now.
That sounds pretty cool to me, do you have any concept art or example cards yet?
And is it supposed to be some sort of merc war competitive game without the contract cards? That's not clear to me.
Yeah, if you're not running one of the contract or scenario cards, it's just a competitive tactical game. With the stratagem cards each player gets (and is modified by the team you hire) offering up alternate/additive victory point conditions.
It's like... Each kill you make is 1 point, if you are the one who kills the last man on a team it's 2 points, and stratagem cards can offer up 1-3 points ("Survive with all team members with at least 2 hearts", "never leave your deployment board", "use only melee weapons/attacks").
I'm thinking 1-4 players initially.
I do have some drafts of the merc cards, still working on the scale of the assets right now. I kind of want the entire thing to fit in a small to medium sized box (if it's a bit tall I'm ok with that), with a heavy focus on expansion sets. You buy the core set with 6 gamespace boards and a dozen terrain tokens, ~20 equipment/ability tokens, and ~20 mercs. Then you can buy the "Desert" set for markedly less money, which will just have 4 new gamespace boards with new graphics, and more terrain. Then you buy the "High Sea Pirate" pack, which has 10+ new mercs to add to the game... Etc.
I'm also designing with the intent to make the game PbP compatible.
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21stCenturyCall me Pixel, or Pix for short![They/Them]Registered Userregular
Yeah, if you're not running one of the contract or scenario cards, it's just a competitive tactical game. With the stratagem cards each player gets (and is modified by the team you hire) offering up alternate/additive victory point conditions.
It's like... Each kill you make is 1 point, if you are the one who kills the last man on a team it's 2 points, and stratagem cards can offer up 1-3 points ("Survive with all team members with at least 2 hearts", "never leave your deployment board", "use only melee weapons/attacks").
I'm thinking 1-4 players initially.
I do have some drafts of the merc cards, still working on the scale of the assets right now. I kind of want the entire thing to fit in a small to medium sized box (if it's a bit tall I'm ok with that), with a heavy focus on expansion sets. You buy the core set with 6 gamespace boards and a dozen terrain tokens, ~20 equipment/ability tokens, and ~20 mercs. Then you can buy the "Desert" set for markedly less money, which will just have 4 new gamespace boards with new graphics, and more terrain. Then you buy the "High Sea Pirate" pack, which has 10+ new mercs to add to the game... Etc.
I'm also designing with the intent to make the game PbP compatible.
Sounds interesting.
Here's a thing you might like, dunno if you know about it.
I've used Vassal a lot to play 40k, but that was a while ago.
I hadn't even thought about using it as a playtest tool, so thank you for that idea!
Once I get the rules ironed out a little, and have a bevy of assets to play around with and start balancing, I'll probably start up a PbP thread or annoying folks here to help me playtest. My wife is usually happy to humor my projects, but I actually feel like this idea is a closer representation of what I actually want from a game, so I'm going to try to make it real.
Already thinking about kickstarters, once I have a 1.0 version made up by whatever company does that sort of one off productions.
My biggest hold up will be the art assets. I can easily create the templates and such, but my lack of graphical artistry means I'm going to have to farm out makin' it all fancy.
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21stCenturyCall me Pixel, or Pix for short![They/Them]Registered Userregular
I've used Vassal a lot to play 40k, but that was a while ago.
I hadn't even thought about using it as a playtest tool, so thank you for that idea!
Once I get the rules ironed out a little, and have a bevy of assets to play around with and start balancing, I'll probably start up a PbP thread or annoying folks here to help me playtest. My wife is usually happy to humor my projects, but I actually feel like this idea is a closer representation of what I actually want from a game, so I'm going to try to make it real.
Already thinking about kickstarters, once I have a 1.0 version made up by whatever company does that sort of one off productions.
My biggest hold up will be the art assets. I can easily create the templates and such, but my lack of graphical artistry means I'm going to have to farm out makin' it all fancy.
Well, for the "art" part, you can find a lot of neat art by googling . it works well enough for placeholder art while you're looking for an artist.
Good news is that there's a lot of good artists in here, so you might find someone willing to work with you.
As for when you're ready to test it out, gimme a holler, either @ me here or shoot me an IM over Steam (we're steam pals, IIRC). i'd be glad to try your game out.
Solo playtesting has been really positive. I've done a lot of revision, and might have something to talk about and show next week.
Exciting!
It's a small scale (1-4~6 characters) miniature game, which you don't need miniatures for, and can play with your friends!
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21stCenturyCall me Pixel, or Pix for short![They/Them]Registered Userregular
In Shōnen news, i completed the work on version 0.04.
So now there are a few important changes to the game, one of which was to reduce the amount of math (Now there's a lot less adding up numbers), replaced with simple >/< comparisons.
Also, i added about 30 cards to the pool.
I think i managed to make some pretty interesting changes, making the game a lot more playable.
I'm still looking for testers, of course. Like i said before, we can use a program, LackeyCCG, to play the game.
@Anon the Felon Just a heads up, Level99 Games (BattleCON) has a game called Sellswords coming out soon, so don't get attached to the title if you want to try and do anything with it.
Origin for Dragon Age: Inquisition Shenanigans: Inksplat776
21stCenturyCall me Pixel, or Pix for short![They/Them]Registered Userregular
edited August 2014
I ended up running with an idea and now i am making a deckbuilding game.
i have played two games of Ascension at PAX East last year and that's the extent of my expertise with the genre.
The hook to this game (Working title: Ninjutsu) is that every card is actually 3 cards: it can be played as an active card, a passive card or as a trap trigger alongside another card.
Now i just need to think of a good way to make the card types (there's 4 card types) look distinctive. One of the card types will have a different back, but the rest need to have a detail on the front of the card... It can't be a color since i don't have color printer... Not sure what to do...
Does anyone have a good idea for printing totally custom playing cards? I've got to a point where I need to be designing for actual printing, so I want to know what format/size and stuff.
@21stCentury - Clear iconography is definitely the way to go. You could reinforce this with a pattern on the card border or on the title background.
You definitely need to seek out and play a few more deck builders, though. You will learn a lot. Dominion, Trains, and Eminent Domain might be good places to start. Play them (as well as Ascension) and think about what they have in common, and why that is.
Dominion in particular is the result of extensive testing, and will show you how a meticulously-crafted cost curve works in this genre. Ascension is good for exploring how multiple currencies affect the system. Trains is an example of how the deck-building system can be used to interact with a separate mechanism (the rail-laying part of the game, in this case). Eminent Domain I like as an example since it largely ditches the "buy cards" part of a deck-builder, yet it still is one.
@Anon the Felon - I use The Game Crafter for printing, which is a nice way to go for polished prototypes. I've also had stuff printed at ArtsCow, which can be dirt cheap with coupons. In either case they accept simple RGB bitmap files, which is easy to produce, but is different than the preproduction method you'd use if you were working with a professional offset printer.
What size do you make your prototype cards? Just like the same inch dimensions of the card? or do you have to make them all blown up for 300dpi or someshit?
I'm a game designer (haha), not a graphic artist.
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21stCenturyCall me Pixel, or Pix for short![They/Them]Registered Userregular
What size do you make your prototype cards? Just like the same inch dimensions of the card? or do you have to make them all blown up for 300dpi or someshit?
I'm a game designer (haha), not a graphic artist.
Yeah, i have them blown up DPI-wise, but print 'em as 2.5 x 3.5 inches cards
Then I grab MTG cards, sleeve 'em up and put my own card's front an back in the sleeve. Simplest way to make 'em.
Of course, you need to have MTG cards and plastic sleeves.
i also have one of those paper cutter things with a ruler and a movable blade. It's handy to cut the 9 cards per page.
I used to print on heftier paper, but the cards were still too flimsy, the pages would be warped by the printer and it was a bit harder to cut. So now i just use regular printer paper.
21stCentury - Clear iconography is definitely the way to go. You could reinforce this with a pattern on the card border or on the title background.
You definitely need to seek out and play a few more deck builders, though. You will learn a lot. Dominion, Trains, and Eminent Domain might be good places to start. Play them (as well as Ascension) and think about what they have in common, and why that is.
Dominion in particular is the result of extensive testing, and will show you how a meticulously-crafted cost curve works in this genre. Ascension is good for exploring how multiple currencies affect the system. Trains is an example of how the deck-building system can be used to interact with a separate mechanism (the rail-laying part of the game, in this case). Eminent Domain I like as an example since it largely ditches the "buy cards" part of a deck-builder, yet it still is one.
"Anon the Felon" - I use The Game Crafter for printing, which is a nice way to go for polished prototypes. I've also had stuff printed at ArtsCow, which can be dirt cheap with coupons. In either case they accept simple RGB bitmap files, which is easy to produce, but is different than the preproduction method you'd use if you were working with a professional offset printer.
Yeah, i know i should be playing more deckbuilders, but i don't have a board game group...
It's silly, but I like playing and making board games without really having the occasion of playing and testing boardgames...
Amusingly, i went to buy card sleeves the other day and almost bought Dominion but didn't because my finances are to lean.
What size do you make your prototype cards? Just like the same inch dimensions of the card? or do you have to make them all blown up for 300dpi or someshit?
I'm a game designer (haha), not a graphic artist.
Yeah, i have them blown up DPI-wise, but print 'em as 2.5 x 3.5 inches cards
Then I grab MTG cards, sleeve 'em up and put my own card's front an back in the sleeve. Simplest way to make 'em.
Of course, you need to have MTG cards and plastic sleeves.
i also have one of those paper cutter things with a ruler and a movable blade. It's handy to cut the 9 cards per page.
I used to print on heftier paper, but the cards were still too flimsy, the pages would be warped by the printer and it was a bit harder to cut. So now i just use regular printer paper.
Ok, here's the next question: Do you design at 2.5x3.5, resize to a 300 dpi ratio, and then print? or do you design at ~825x1125? Because I feel nonplussed about having to design at 825. It throws some of my skills off, and I just don't like it. Please tell me I can upscale the image and that'll be fine, as long as my initial designs were nice and tight at the "this is the size it will print at" level.
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21stCenturyCall me Pixel, or Pix for short![They/Them]Registered Userregular
What size do you make your prototype cards? Just like the same inch dimensions of the card? or do you have to make them all blown up for 300dpi or someshit?
I'm a game designer (haha), not a graphic artist.
Yeah, i have them blown up DPI-wise, but print 'em as 2.5 x 3.5 inches cards
Then I grab MTG cards, sleeve 'em up and put my own card's front an back in the sleeve. Simplest way to make 'em.
Of course, you need to have MTG cards and plastic sleeves.
i also have one of those paper cutter things with a ruler and a movable blade. It's handy to cut the 9 cards per page.
I used to print on heftier paper, but the cards were still too flimsy, the pages would be warped by the printer and it was a bit harder to cut. So now i just use regular printer paper.
Ok, here's the next question: Do you design at 2.5x3.5, resize to a 300 dpi ratio, and then print? or do you design at ~825x1125? Because I feel nonplussed about having to design at 825. It throws some of my skills off, and I just don't like it. Please tell me I can upscale the image and that'll be fine, as long as my initial designs were nice and tight at the "this is the size it will print at" level.
I'm not a graphic designer. What I do is set the DPI and size in inches when I make the first card template.
Dunno if you can upscale it later, but I'd assume if what you mean is blow up the picture later, unless you're working with vector graphics, stretching the picture will make everything blurry, I think.
I'm working on an entry for The Game Crafter's Time Challenge. For this contest, you have to design a game in which time is a resource to be managed. I've done time track games before, so I decided to take a different tack this go-round. Instead, I came up with a system for players to decide how much "time" to spend on an activity, and then translate that into literal seconds for the opponent to use on another activity.
The result is something I'm calling Timely Manor, which is themed as a hunt for the components of a time machine that a mad scientist has stashed in his house.
The components are on cards, and can be claimed by rolling dice:
You can roll each die as many times as you want, but for each roll, a second is added to the timer.
Then, your opponent gets to use that time to get points. The activity I settled on is placing things in chronological order (to fit the theme). The cards used here look like this:
So in this example, the cards are being sequenced in the order of the times on the wall clock.
It's going pretty well so far. If anyone wants to give it a try, I can send P&P files. Other than the cards, all you need is 5 dice and some kind of electronic timer.
I'd really appreciate any feedback on the clarity, layout, etc.
Three notes:
-You should clarify that, when rolling the dice, you can "save" some and reroll the rest--ie, I'm trying to get 1-2-3-4, I roll 1-2-5-6, I save 1-2 and reroll the other two, I get 5-4, I save the 4 and reroll the 5, I get 3, so now I have 1-2-3-4 and collect the card but (4 + 2 + 1 7 seconds are added to the timer for my opponents to use. (Assuming this is what you meant.)
-It really seems as though, in terms of game flow, everybody besides the dice roller should do their time challenges simultaneously. This may not work because of the requirement that the challenger be searching the deck, but I also think that bit is kind of wonky (searching a deck = not fun, ordering cards based on their pictures = fun). Perhaps the dice roller is chosen to draw cards off the top of the deck and play them face up, with the challengers grabbing for the cards they need for their challenges.
-The set-up/fluff is so good that I was a little disappointed to find that the component effects are not terribly interesting. Those could definitely use more outside-the-box effects that actually relate to playing with time.
Otherwise this seems super excellent and once I have some time (no pun intended) I'd love to print and try it out with my friends.
As to your second point, reading the rules without having the components in hand is probably a bit misleading. The "deck" is only 10 cards, 5 of which have the item you're looking for, so it isn't really "searching a deck" like you might intuitively think. Since each card has a bunch of different objects in it, identifying which cards are even relevant is a significant portion of the puzzle.
I think you're right that it would be best to have it be a simultaneous activity, but I don't think I can pull that off within the scope of this contest (both due to development time and component cost constraints). To make it work, I'd need a separate 10-card search deck for each challenger, and matching sets of challenge cards. This is actually the likeliest expansion vector for the game, should I do that; I have played with the idea of themed search decks, such as decorating a Christmas tree for a holiday edition. Then the challenge decks could be all mixed together, and the appropriate search deck would be used for each challenge.
I am chiefly designing this game for two players, and will be advertising it as such, but I want the rules to flex to accommodate a couple more if needed. If I do further development on the concept after the contest is over, it will probably center around a better multiplayer experience. I actually had a couple of the component effects that manipulated the time on the timer directly, but removed them because even though they worked great for two players, the bookkeeping became untenable for larger player counts.
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21stCenturyCall me Pixel, or Pix for short![They/Them]Registered Userregular
God damn it.
God.
Fucking.
Damn.
it.
I had a game idea.
i'm starting on yet another game i probably won't ever finish.
And to add insult to injury, it's a homestuck card game.
Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
edited March 2015
So what started as a joke about bønner, bønner, bønder (farmers, beans, prayers) sounding like a eurogame led me to jotting down some rules.
It's not bad. There's a couple of issues around the grow->harvest sequence and priests just lacking actions most of the time
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Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
edited March 2015
So, to elaborate.
Here's the story, coming soon to a sixty-part fantasy epic novel series, TV series and to a range of disappointing platform games on Nintendo handhelds The world is ending. This is the last city, and the priests are at war over how to interpret God's word. Factions and sects have emerged, but only one of these will win God's affection and be spared when the end finally comes. God demands holy beans, and so the priests turn to manipulating the peasants into growing the sacred crops
Here is the game sequence:
Farmers
Priests
Event
In the farmer round, you all roll your farmers (start with 2 each) and then on one of the three (or two in a two player game) farms you place them. Each player places one at once and there are three options:
Grow: adds R/G/B to the farm depending on the dice value (base 2 + 1 per matching farmer). This reduces fertility by one. If you can't reduce fertility by one, then it's a flat 1 bean
Harvest: Takes 3 beans of any colour from the farm. Relies on having a greater (or greater or equal than on the outer farm) than other dice on that farm region
Improve: Needs doubles, and restores 2 fertility to the farm
The outer farm has more slots and more starting fertility, the middle fewer and the inner fewest. The inner farm is safe, the middle and inner increasingly dangerous (from events).
Then you roll your priests (start with 2 each) and place them in the city. They have four options
Prophecy: Takes a run of three and lets you look at the top two events, put one on the top of the deck and one on the bottom
Evangelise: Takes any value. Lets you buy more farmers (they cost RGB, and the value determines how many you have to buy at once, e.g. 1-2 is RGB +1 farmer).
Convert: Takes doubles, to let you take another priest dice (these have a hard cap so there's a total of 3/player + 1)
Pray: This is how you get points. There are three slots. Prayers are drawn as events, and the fourth will push the first out of play. These are 1-3/4-6 priest, costs RGB, +1 point. Or RRRR, and even/odd priest for +1point. Or RRRRRR, and even/odd priest for +2 points. Or sacrifice a farmer for +1 points (plus move a step closer to the end of the world)
Then you draw an event and play it. These are mostly bad things (like wolves eating all the even farmers in the outer farm) which also move the world closer to its end. The black pawn moves along the scoring track to represent this and when he hits five the game ends (players get +1 point per priest they held). There are also lots of prayers to change the objectives and more rarely positive things like adding crops to a farm. There are also two special positive events, one that adds a fortune teller dice to the prophecy space that anybody can use, so it can be activated with just two of your own priests. And another that lets you trade 2 beans for 1 of another type
Then you pass the first player pawn to the left, and roll your farmers again.
Problems:
The grow->harvest sequence doesn't work. Player 1 grows, Player 2 harvests everything he grew. Possible solutions are to try and very slightly make growing produce more crops than harvesting consumes, have crops take a turn to be harvestable, or maybe make farmer placement into a bluffing game (secretly send farmers to a space, and then resolve each farm in sequence).
Insufficient priest actions. So I need to add a few here that activate without needing beans. I was thinking of one that lets you place a token on top of a matching farmer which prevents him from being rolled on his turn. And another that lets you "trade" (i.e. swap one of your beans for another players, with the value deciding which colour you can take).
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jakobaggerLO THY DREAD EMPIRE CHAOS IS RESTOREDRegistered Userregular
edited March 2015
bønner, bønner, bønder (farmers, beans, prayers)
Actually, farmers is the one with a (silent) d. Also, although the d is silent, it's not actually pronounced like the others because it has the super special Danish feature stød (which is possibly a sort of glottal stop, but not fully phonetically understood yet, I think.)
But also, how the hell did you end up basing a game on Danish homonyms?
Edit:
If you want more, skær can be several different words, all spelled and pronounced identically
(plow)shares or sometimes blades more generally
Cut! [imperative verbal form]
Pure [archaic, mostly used in certain phrases. Skærtorsdag is Maundy Thursday]
Glow [noun]
Skerry [I wonder where English stole that word huh]
KupotheAvengerDestroyer of Cakeand other deserts.Registered Userregular
So I have a premise that's primarily designed around the Zombicide cooperative play model. The working title for the game is Resist. The idea being that instead of a zombie horde mode, it'd be an enemy horde mode with various mission objectives (steal object x, free your comrades and escape, kill x guard). I'm thinking of modifying the target priority list as the zombies from
Sight > Sound > Loudest Sound
to
Sight of Enemy Faction > Sight of Player with highest faction count > Sight of Player > Sound > Loudest Sound
and adding in a faction level meter, that changes according to actions carried out against which faction. Like if players start murdering faction 1, their wanted level with faction 1 increases. Thoughts?
I've been working on a card game/board game fusion for the last year or so, and I'm looking at moving to Kickstarted this summer, but it's dawned on me that I should prooobably apply for a copyright soon. Has anyone had any experience with this?
I wouldn't worry about it, as a rule. Copyright is automatic in the US, and you don't need to register unless legal action is likely. I imagine big companies do it, and most small ones do not. http://copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#register
It is unlikely that you will suffer from someone ripping you off in such a way that copyright would help you. Note that copyright only covers the expression of the work (artwork, card layout, rules text) and not the underlying mechanics. Someone can legally "clone" your game by rewording the rules and using new art, and not run afoul of copyright even if it is registered. A patent could protect against that, but patents in the board game industry are quite rare.
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KupotheAvengerDestroyer of Cakeand other deserts.Registered Userregular
So I'm guessing no input on the idea? I've heard of some criticism of Zombicide not being a deep enough game, but I'm struggling to find another cooperative model to go off of, as board games seem to be adversarial in nature.
Having no prior experience with Zombicide, the only thing I can really contribute is that your priority list expanded a 3-step ladder into a 5-step ladder. The faction meter sounds like a cool idea that could easily turn into a complicated mess.
I guess that's really my only warning - try not to let it get too complicated.
Having no prior experience with Zombicide, the only thing I can really contribute is that your priority list expanded a 3-step ladder into a 5-step ladder. The faction meter sounds like a cool idea that could easily turn into a complicated mess.
I guess that's really my only warning - try not to let it get too complicated.
That was actually my concern, but I've not seen a lot of examples of board game AI. That seemed the most robust, as most require a player to make the decisions for the monster/enemy pieces. But I could see how that could get out of hand.
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oh, yeah, i didn't mention it, but this is totally going to be an LCG. i hate the booster pack model.
As for the fact that some kits are going to be dominant, well... that's one of the challenges in the thing. i am already aware of it.
And yes, there is a 5-pronged RPS mechanic and, like I said, a lot of different interactions between cards. Hopefully i'll manage to make it balanced enough quickly.
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"Standalone Card Game"?
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That is also a good term, i think i heard it before, too.
Also, in other news, i am about 4 games away from being ready to start working on the new revision of Shonen... But every one of my playtesters is busy these days... Sorry if i'm a bit insistey but i wanna move on to the new version.
So any takers? i won't reveal your identity if you don't want people to think you like anime. :P
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It hasn't.
I'm working on a game. It's like...
Working title is "Sellsword" (don't care if this is taken, it's just a title, I'll come up with something else if I need to if this gets off the ground). The game board is comprised of several 8x8 hex boards, which you fit together to create the game space. They can be rotated, arranged in strange ways, whatever. Then you place the "terrain" pieces on that game space, each of those pieces can be buildings, walls, boops and bobs.
Then, the player(s) take turns sending "gold" to hire "mercenaries" for their team. You can hire one bad ass guy, or a bunch of small guys, or anything in between. Each merc' is represented by an info card, depicting his abilities, equipment, and how many action points he gets, as well as his cost. Once everyone has hired the team they want, they search the "equipment and ability" tokens to spend their remaining gold outfitting their dudes. Each merc can have an array of 4 items, ranging from weapons, to armor, to spells, to consumables.
Once that's all done, everyone places their merc on the gamespace, and you take turns moving them around and fighting.
All of that is pretty simplified, each merc has a number of action points available. You activate a merc, spend his points, and activate another merc, until you've activated all the ones you want to on your team. Points can be spent to move, attack, or use an ability. Some guys will have 3, some will have 1, some will have zero and require a specific merc on the team and in range to lend them points. When fighting, you simply roll a D6, and consult the weapon/ability you were using... Which will tell you what minimum result is needed. Then the target rolls a die and needs to consult their armor/defensive abilities to negate the hit. If the save fails, the merc loses a heart, at zero hearts they are removed from the gamespace.
It's like a miniature game, but a board game, and smaller scale.
I've got a system of "Treasure", "Event", and "Stratagem" cards which get drawn throughout the game, which can change things up. Events happen every two rounds, which shake things up. Stratagem cards give each player alternate objectives or once per game actions to screw with everyone else.
I want to complicate things further by offering up alternate play modes. "Contract" cards which let the player(s) play solo or cooperatively. "Scenario" cards which can be selected before the game, which tell you how to set up the board for a specific game mode, like a siege or something. I also want to have rules for a "living game mode", where groups of players can maintain their teams from game to game, allowing them to earn gold each game to resupply their dudes and hire new dudes.
I don't know. It's pretty alpha right now.
That sounds pretty cool to me, do you have any concept art or example cards yet?
And is it supposed to be some sort of merc war competitive game without the contract cards? That's not clear to me.
how many players is this for, optimally?
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It's like... Each kill you make is 1 point, if you are the one who kills the last man on a team it's 2 points, and stratagem cards can offer up 1-3 points ("Survive with all team members with at least 2 hearts", "never leave your deployment board", "use only melee weapons/attacks").
I'm thinking 1-4 players initially.
I do have some drafts of the merc cards, still working on the scale of the assets right now. I kind of want the entire thing to fit in a small to medium sized box (if it's a bit tall I'm ok with that), with a heavy focus on expansion sets. You buy the core set with 6 gamespace boards and a dozen terrain tokens, ~20 equipment/ability tokens, and ~20 mercs. Then you can buy the "Desert" set for markedly less money, which will just have 4 new gamespace boards with new graphics, and more terrain. Then you buy the "High Sea Pirate" pack, which has 10+ new mercs to add to the game... Etc.
I'm also designing with the intent to make the game PbP compatible.
Sounds interesting.
Here's a thing you might like, dunno if you know about it.
http://www.vassalengine.org/
It's a program you can use to play board games online. I believe you could adapt your game for it.
I'd be glad to try it out using Vassal if it interests you.
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I hadn't even thought about using it as a playtest tool, so thank you for that idea!
Once I get the rules ironed out a little, and have a bevy of assets to play around with and start balancing, I'll probably start up a PbP thread or annoying folks here to help me playtest. My wife is usually happy to humor my projects, but I actually feel like this idea is a closer representation of what I actually want from a game, so I'm going to try to make it real.
Already thinking about kickstarters, once I have a 1.0 version made up by whatever company does that sort of one off productions.
My biggest hold up will be the art assets. I can easily create the templates and such, but my lack of graphical artistry means I'm going to have to farm out makin' it all fancy.
Well, for the "art" part, you can find a lot of neat art by googling . it works well enough for placeholder art while you're looking for an artist.
Good news is that there's a lot of good artists in here, so you might find someone willing to work with you.
As for when you're ready to test it out, gimme a holler, either @ me here or shoot me an IM over Steam (we're steam pals, IIRC). i'd be glad to try your game out.
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Exciting!
It's a small scale (1-4~6 characters) miniature game, which you don't need miniatures for, and can play with your friends!
So now there are a few important changes to the game, one of which was to reduce the amount of math (Now there's a lot less adding up numbers), replaced with simple >/< comparisons.
Also, i added about 30 cards to the pool.
I think i managed to make some pretty interesting changes, making the game a lot more playable.
I'm still looking for testers, of course. Like i said before, we can use a program, LackeyCCG, to play the game.
Simply PM me if you want more info!
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Then I came up with another, far simpler, game I am going to make first while the current project simmers and stews.
Yay game design!
They can have it.
I didn't want that name anyway.
i have played two games of Ascension at PAX East last year and that's the extent of my expertise with the genre.
The hook to this game (Working title: Ninjutsu) is that every card is actually 3 cards: it can be played as an active card, a passive card or as a trap trigger alongside another card.
Now i just need to think of a good way to make the card types (there's 4 card types) look distinctive. One of the card types will have a different back, but the rest need to have a detail on the front of the card... It can't be a color since i don't have color printer... Not sure what to do...
Here's a sample card:
Thanks in advance.
Edit: Please do not notice the typo...
I whipped this up really quickly >_<
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The Black Hole of Cygnus X-1
Also I made the card back design... Which i think looks nifty.
I'm going for a monochromatic minimalist style because A) I like it,
Edit: New version of the card i posted.
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You definitely need to seek out and play a few more deck builders, though. You will learn a lot. Dominion, Trains, and Eminent Domain might be good places to start. Play them (as well as Ascension) and think about what they have in common, and why that is.
Dominion in particular is the result of extensive testing, and will show you how a meticulously-crafted cost curve works in this genre. Ascension is good for exploring how multiple currencies affect the system. Trains is an example of how the deck-building system can be used to interact with a separate mechanism (the rail-laying part of the game, in this case). Eminent Domain I like as an example since it largely ditches the "buy cards" part of a deck-builder, yet it still is one.
@Anon the Felon - I use The Game Crafter for printing, which is a nice way to go for polished prototypes. I've also had stuff printed at ArtsCow, which can be dirt cheap with coupons. In either case they accept simple RGB bitmap files, which is easy to produce, but is different than the preproduction method you'd use if you were working with a professional offset printer.
I'm a game designer (haha), not a graphic artist.
Yeah, i have them blown up DPI-wise, but print 'em as 2.5 x 3.5 inches cards
Then I grab MTG cards, sleeve 'em up and put my own card's front an back in the sleeve. Simplest way to make 'em.
Of course, you need to have MTG cards and plastic sleeves.
i also have one of those paper cutter things with a ruler and a movable blade. It's handy to cut the 9 cards per page.
I used to print on heftier paper, but the cards were still too flimsy, the pages would be warped by the printer and it was a bit harder to cut. So now i just use regular printer paper.
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Yeah, i know i should be playing more deckbuilders, but i don't have a board game group...
It's silly, but I like playing and making board games without really having the occasion of playing and testing boardgames...
Amusingly, i went to buy card sleeves the other day and almost bought Dominion but didn't because my finances are to lean.
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Ok, here's the next question: Do you design at 2.5x3.5, resize to a 300 dpi ratio, and then print? or do you design at ~825x1125? Because I feel nonplussed about having to design at 825. It throws some of my skills off, and I just don't like it. Please tell me I can upscale the image and that'll be fine, as long as my initial designs were nice and tight at the "this is the size it will print at" level.
I'm not a graphic designer. What I do is set the DPI and size in inches when I make the first card template.
Dunno if you can upscale it later, but I'd assume if what you mean is blow up the picture later, unless you're working with vector graphics, stretching the picture will make everything blurry, I think.
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I'm working on an entry for The Game Crafter's Time Challenge. For this contest, you have to design a game in which time is a resource to be managed. I've done time track games before, so I decided to take a different tack this go-round. Instead, I came up with a system for players to decide how much "time" to spend on an activity, and then translate that into literal seconds for the opponent to use on another activity.
The result is something I'm calling Timely Manor, which is themed as a hunt for the components of a time machine that a mad scientist has stashed in his house.
The components are on cards, and can be claimed by rolling dice:
You can roll each die as many times as you want, but for each roll, a second is added to the timer.
Then, your opponent gets to use that time to get points. The activity I settled on is placing things in chronological order (to fit the theme). The cards used here look like this:
So in this example, the cards are being sequenced in the order of the times on the wall clock.
It's going pretty well so far. If anyone wants to give it a try, I can send P&P files. Other than the cards, all you need is 5 dice and some kind of electronic timer.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/qfrxs4pz1g3ma43/Rules.pdf?dl=0
I'd really appreciate any feedback on the clarity, layout, etc.
Three notes:
-You should clarify that, when rolling the dice, you can "save" some and reroll the rest--ie, I'm trying to get 1-2-3-4, I roll 1-2-5-6, I save 1-2 and reroll the other two, I get 5-4, I save the 4 and reroll the 5, I get 3, so now I have 1-2-3-4 and collect the card but (4 + 2 + 1
-It really seems as though, in terms of game flow, everybody besides the dice roller should do their time challenges simultaneously. This may not work because of the requirement that the challenger be searching the deck, but I also think that bit is kind of wonky (searching a deck = not fun, ordering cards based on their pictures = fun). Perhaps the dice roller is chosen to draw cards off the top of the deck and play them face up, with the challengers grabbing for the cards they need for their challenges.
-The set-up/fluff is so good that I was a little disappointed to find that the component effects are not terribly interesting. Those could definitely use more outside-the-box effects that actually relate to playing with time.
Otherwise this seems super excellent and once I have some time (no pun intended) I'd love to print and try it out with my friends.
As to your second point, reading the rules without having the components in hand is probably a bit misleading. The "deck" is only 10 cards, 5 of which have the item you're looking for, so it isn't really "searching a deck" like you might intuitively think. Since each card has a bunch of different objects in it, identifying which cards are even relevant is a significant portion of the puzzle.
I think you're right that it would be best to have it be a simultaneous activity, but I don't think I can pull that off within the scope of this contest (both due to development time and component cost constraints). To make it work, I'd need a separate 10-card search deck for each challenger, and matching sets of challenge cards. This is actually the likeliest expansion vector for the game, should I do that; I have played with the idea of themed search decks, such as decorating a Christmas tree for a holiday edition. Then the challenge decks could be all mixed together, and the appropriate search deck would be used for each challenge.
I am chiefly designing this game for two players, and will be advertising it as such, but I want the rules to flex to accommodate a couple more if needed. If I do further development on the concept after the contest is over, it will probably center around a better multiplayer experience. I actually had a couple of the component effects that manipulated the time on the timer directly, but removed them because even though they worked great for two players, the bookkeeping became untenable for larger player counts.
God.
Fucking.
Damn.
it.
I had a game idea.
i'm starting on yet another game i probably won't ever finish.
And to add insult to injury, it's a homestuck card game.
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It's not bad. There's a couple of issues around the grow->harvest sequence and priests just lacking actions most of the time
Here's the story, coming soon to a sixty-part fantasy epic novel series, TV series and to a range of disappointing platform games on Nintendo handhelds
The world is ending. This is the last city, and the priests are at war over how to interpret God's word. Factions and sects have emerged, but only one of these will win God's affection and be spared when the end finally comes. God demands holy beans, and so the priests turn to manipulating the peasants into growing the sacred crops
Here is the game sequence:
Farmers
Priests
Event
In the farmer round, you all roll your farmers (start with 2 each) and then on one of the three (or two in a two player game) farms you place them. Each player places one at once and there are three options:
Grow: adds R/G/B to the farm depending on the dice value (base 2 + 1 per matching farmer). This reduces fertility by one. If you can't reduce fertility by one, then it's a flat 1 bean
Harvest: Takes 3 beans of any colour from the farm. Relies on having a greater (or greater or equal than on the outer farm) than other dice on that farm region
Improve: Needs doubles, and restores 2 fertility to the farm
The outer farm has more slots and more starting fertility, the middle fewer and the inner fewest. The inner farm is safe, the middle and inner increasingly dangerous (from events).
Then you roll your priests (start with 2 each) and place them in the city. They have four options
Prophecy: Takes a run of three and lets you look at the top two events, put one on the top of the deck and one on the bottom
Evangelise: Takes any value. Lets you buy more farmers (they cost RGB, and the value determines how many you have to buy at once, e.g. 1-2 is RGB +1 farmer).
Convert: Takes doubles, to let you take another priest dice (these have a hard cap so there's a total of 3/player + 1)
Pray: This is how you get points. There are three slots. Prayers are drawn as events, and the fourth will push the first out of play. These are 1-3/4-6 priest, costs RGB, +1 point. Or RRRR, and even/odd priest for +1point. Or RRRRRR, and even/odd priest for +2 points. Or sacrifice a farmer for +1 points (plus move a step closer to the end of the world)
Then you draw an event and play it. These are mostly bad things (like wolves eating all the even farmers in the outer farm) which also move the world closer to its end. The black pawn moves along the scoring track to represent this and when he hits five the game ends (players get +1 point per priest they held). There are also lots of prayers to change the objectives and more rarely positive things like adding crops to a farm. There are also two special positive events, one that adds a fortune teller dice to the prophecy space that anybody can use, so it can be activated with just two of your own priests. And another that lets you trade 2 beans for 1 of another type
Then you pass the first player pawn to the left, and roll your farmers again.
Problems:
The grow->harvest sequence doesn't work. Player 1 grows, Player 2 harvests everything he grew. Possible solutions are to try and very slightly make growing produce more crops than harvesting consumes, have crops take a turn to be harvestable, or maybe make farmer placement into a bluffing game (secretly send farmers to a space, and then resolve each farm in sequence).
Insufficient priest actions. So I need to add a few here that activate without needing beans. I was thinking of one that lets you place a token on top of a matching farmer which prevents him from being rolled on his turn. And another that lets you "trade" (i.e. swap one of your beans for another players, with the value deciding which colour you can take).
Actually, farmers is the one with a (silent) d. Also, although the d is silent, it's not actually pronounced like the others because it has the super special Danish feature stød (which is possibly a sort of glottal stop, but not fully phonetically understood yet, I think.)
But also, how the hell did you end up basing a game on Danish homonyms?
Edit:
If you want more, skær can be several different words, all spelled and pronounced identically
(plow)shares or sometimes blades more generally
Cut! [imperative verbal form]
Pure [archaic, mostly used in certain phrases. Skærtorsdag is Maundy Thursday]
Glow [noun]
Skerry [I wonder where English stole that word huh]
Sight > Sound > Loudest Sound
to
Sight of Enemy Faction > Sight of Player with highest faction count > Sight of Player > Sound > Loudest Sound
and adding in a faction level meter, that changes according to actions carried out against which faction. Like if players start murdering faction 1, their wanted level with faction 1 increases. Thoughts?
Battlenet: Judgement#1243
psn: KupoZero
Because that's me, all the time.
It is unlikely that you will suffer from someone ripping you off in such a way that copyright would help you. Note that copyright only covers the expression of the work (artwork, card layout, rules text) and not the underlying mechanics. Someone can legally "clone" your game by rewording the rules and using new art, and not run afoul of copyright even if it is registered. A patent could protect against that, but patents in the board game industry are quite rare.
Battlenet: Judgement#1243
psn: KupoZero
I guess that's really my only warning - try not to let it get too complicated.
That was actually my concern, but I've not seen a lot of examples of board game AI. That seemed the most robust, as most require a player to make the decisions for the monster/enemy pieces. But I could see how that could get out of hand.
Battlenet: Judgement#1243
psn: KupoZero