Okay, so, sorry for the double post, but this is totally unrelated to my last post. Well.. mostly.
So, while looking around on BGG before it went down, I found a Geeklist that was a bunch of re-themed Wings of War things. One of them was Quidditch, which immediately peaked my wife's interest. Now, she's not in to tactical games, like,
at all, so her showing interest definitely got me interested.
Unfortunately..the rules don't seem to be posted
anywhere. It was apparently done by some Italian HP fan club for their wait for one of the books to come out, and all there seems to be is a single picture.
However, given my current boredom, I decided to try coming up with a working ruleset. I'd like to see if you guys think this might actually be playable.
Wings of Snitch
Just so we've got the basics down:
3 different types of ball are used in Quidditch.
1 Snitch -- The Snitch is incredibly fast and equally chaotic. It appears randomly during the match, at which point it triggers a mad dash by the Seekers to catch it. Its worth 150pts and immediately ends the match.
1 Quaffle -- The Quaffle is carried and passed by Chasers, who attempt to throw it through one of the 3 rings within their opponent's scoring area. Each goal is worth 10pts.
2 Bludgers -- Bludgers are heavy iron balls that are enchanted to seek out players and knock them off their brooms. They are redirected by Beaters.
Each side is made up of a team of 7 players.
1 Seeker -- It is the Seeker's job to catch the Snitch.
3 Chasers -- The Chasers catch, carry, and pass the Quaffle.
1 Keeper -- The Keeper's job is to keep the Chaser from scoring.
2 Beaters -- The Beaters jobs are to protect their team from the Bludgers, while also directing said Bludgers at the other team.
Even though the team who catches the Snitch usually wins the match, Quidditch Championships are actually decided by point total, and not win total. That's why scoring with the Quaffle still matters--losing one match by even 20 less points than you might have otherwise leaves you with that many less points to make up later in the season. So, yay for campaign play? :P
Alright, so, the game of the game.
Movement
Each class of player (Seeker, Chaser, etc.) has their own Maneuver Deck. Each card has a Standard Move, a Slow Move, and a Quick Move on it.
Standard Moves are used when flying at full speed. The Slow Move portion is used when the player wants to move more slowly. The Quick Move is used during what I'm going to call Dilation. Basically, in certain circumstances, you want to focus on a particular bit of action. At that point, the players in question get a series of shorter moves in place of one bigger one.
Examples of this would be when a Chaser is attempting to score a goal, a Beater is attempting to maneuver to hit a Bludger, or the Seeker is within grabbing distance of the Snitch. It basically allows you to zoom in and get a good, action-y moment, to make your Chaser fake out the opposing Keeper and score an awesome goal.
Standard/Slow Moves are all played face-down at the same time and then revealed. In Dilation, three (3) Quick Move cards are played face-down/revealed, one set at a time, in place of the single Standard/Slow moves.
At the moment, there's no Altitude.
The Balls
The Snitch has its own Maneuver Deck that is drawn from randomly each turn. The deck is shuffled before each draw. It has incredibly erratic movement, able to easily shift direction in an instant. The Snitch is caught when a Seeker overlaps it and succeeds in a check to grab it. The Snitch's Maneuver Deck also has Quick Move options on it, for when the Seekers close in.
The Quaffles are passed pretty simply. The team in possession of the Quaffle moves their Chaser's first. The controlling player then declares whether or not they are going to pass. The defending team then reveals their moves. If a defending Chaser ends up in between the passer and receiver, the Quaffle is intercepted.
Similarly, when attempting to score, the Chaser and Keeper go into Dilation. The Chaser gains access to a Shoot maneuver, and the Keeper gains access to a Block. The Chaser has an option to play a Shoot card early on in the Dilation, or take a shot at the end of the turn. If a Keeper is between the Chaser and the goal and uses their Block maneuver, the attempt is very unlikely to make it past. On the flip side, if a Chaser manages to fake a Keeper out and Shoot when the Keeper moves, its usually a sure thing.
The Quaffle can also be stolen by Keepers or opposing Chasers. When two players come into contact with each other, the defending player can attempt to steal the ball from the Offense. Both sides draw chits, and the higher number wins. Ties go to the player originally possessing the ball.
The Bludger is slow and heavy, so it can only go straight, or make very shallow, sweeping turns. Each Bludger token has two sides, each representing alignment with one of the teams. When hit by a Beater, the Bludger is flipped to alignment with his team. If the Bludger hits or just barely misses a player, it flips alignment to that player's team. The team aligned with the Bludger plays its moves at the end of the turn, following the rules that it must always aim towards the nearest (and most accessible, given movement restructions) oppositely aligned player.
Being hit by the Bludger causes the player to draw a chit. This can result in either a near-miss, being dazed and knocked about, or completely knocked unconscious for a number of turns.
Those are obviously rough, but I'm mostly concerned about the "zooming" aspect. It seems like it would make certain points in the game more interesting and tense, but I also don't want it to be so clunky that it doesn't feel good, either.
What do you guys think?
Posts
Assuming 7 players, that means classes will have a move of at least 7, the size of the pitch would have to be enormous in order for that to work without making it seem too quick in terms of movement. (Under the assumption bids of 1-7)
Maybe have one 4, 2 3's, 2 2's, and 3 1;s in the bid deck?
Halving it to 50x18 might still be a bit big, as that'd be 7 turns to go from goal to goal. (Though, you wouldn't usually have to go that far, so you'd be looking closer to 4-5.
33x12 might work though, but then you're dealing with each hex representing 15 feet. Though maybe if you allow two brooms in a hex it'd work out alright?
But the idea of only having bids 1-7 would definitely be interesting. And then each class could just have its own associated movement rate with that bid.
I mean, it makes sense in a sort of "fake out", going left instead of right, pivoting back around, all that. Since it is attempting to show simultaneous movement, you just sort of have to accept that their long move and my short move are happening at the same time.
But with flight involved, it makes a lot more sense to suddenly zoom past and have to scramble to stay on them.
Thinking about how it would play out a bit more, it seems like it would usually be in the defender's interest to bid low most of the time, to be able to effectively stay on someone's tail. But at the same time, the occasional high-bid would be important to herd your opponent's brooms into a bludger shot, or to cut off a Seeker from the Snitch.
I definitely do like that it forces decisions that are more than "is he going to go left or right?" and then guessing. This feels much more like skilled opponents matching wits.
That is one thing, in Wings of Glory, with playing 2 actions out, it definitely makes some of the pilots seem like idiots. "Why didn't you stop turning left when you saw he was going right!?"
This mechanic seems like it'd at least simulate the false start to the left turn, but then allow the pursuer to compensate somewhat.
There would be offensive and defensive plays/maneuvers. You could then keep the simultaneous turn system, which I like, but solve the problem of giving orders to many players at a time by the way of plays, like a football team.
Problem is that since there are no plays, how would they work? Quidsitch is essentially 3 games going on at once, with them never really going back to center field and facing off.
So what would the plays actually do? It couldn't give commands to each broom, since they could each be anywhere.
Unless I'm misunderstanding your suggestion.
Maybe it doesn't necessarily have to be specific moves - something like 'chaser 1 moves towards goal' and 'beater moves towards bludger' and 'chaser 2 flanks chaser 1' and 'seeker moves four spaces' . Some plays can be more specific while others are vague. You can have, say, five 'playbook' cards at a time.
Why not have a certain number of bidding points (say 28) with certain players being allowed differing maximum amounts (i.e seeker is allowed 5 where as a beater would be allowed 4). You could then not bid some points during a biding phase, saving them to be used to "react" the opponents move later at a handicap, say everything is doubled or something.
Again, if this is dumb call me a silly goose, and I will go back to watching from afar.
@ObiFett What about if you placed your Bid for the next turn during Round 2, before everyone's moved?
So, an example would be:
HT (Home Team) Seeker: 7
AT (Away Team) Seeker: 7
HT Chaser: 6
AT Chaser: 5
HT Seeker moves for round 1. Then AT Seeker, then HT Chaser, then AT Chaser. That's the end of Round 1. In Round 2, AT Chaser moves, then Bids for the next turn. Then HT Chaser moves and bids, then AT Seeker, then HT Seeker.
So, bidding low lets you react during the turn you're in, but bidding high would let you prepare a little better for the next turn, as you'd be the last to bid and have the most current board layout.
That would add in a little more simultaneous-ness, as the bids are placed a bit ahead of time. And, it creates more decisions out of the same mechanic, which seems like a good thing.
Also thinking of adding a zone of control. Each broom would exert some control over the 3 hexes in front of it. Trying to decide on whether it should be a die roll to determine collision, or basically just cost an extra movement point. Extra movement cost is probably the simplest, and seems like it'd be effective at area control.
Also, some basic ability to purposefully foul other players, with a chance of being caught.
Blagging- Grabbing the opponent's broom to slow or hinder them. (Using your Movement points to cancel out another broom's)
Blatching- Purposefully crashing into other brooms, pushing them a hex or more.
Blurting- Locking brooms to steer your opponent. (Essentially allows you to move your broom and your opponent's)
Bumphing- Purposefully directing the Bludger towards Keeper, unless the Quaffle is within the scoring area.
Cobbing- Elbowing opponents. (Causes effects similar to being hit by a Bludger)
So a team can choose to play dirty, at the potential cost of giving their opponent's penalty shots. There'd be a die roll to determine whether or not a ref saw the foul, and certain "ace" traits would make certain brooms better at them.
My one concern now is Chaser vs Keeper, since the dilation idea is pretty much gone.
First option would be comparing bids. As the Keeper wouldn't move much, their bidding strategy could revolve around balancing their bids for the sake of blocking. If you bid so that both turns are even, you leave yourself vulnerable to a high-bidding Chaser. Bidding high, of course, leaves you vulnerable to a Round 2 shot.
But in that case, it seems like the Keeper would never really have a chance--Chaser just doesn't shoot unless they know they've got the advantage.
One way might be that the Keeper's bid stays hidden if the opposing team has the Quaffle. That way the Chaser doesn't actually know what the Keeper is packing. And the Keeper's bid is then modified by the amount of movement it takes for them to reach the ring being aimed for by the Chaser.
Each play would be pretty general and move some or all of your team. Each play can have orders for your entire team, or orders for only a few players, but you can choose to not to specific ones if it would put your players out of position. This would offer up interesting choices to the player. Do I use Play A which will put my beaters closer to where they need to be but possibly put my seeker out of position OR do I use Play B where my beaters wont get to where they need to be right now but my Seeker has a really good chance of grabbing the Snitch? Defenses would have the same interesting choices in card play. The only hard part in this would be coming up with all the cards for a playbook.
I think Dilation stuff should be handled with dice. Rules can be determined for scoring: Like you get less dice the farther you are from the goals. Some goalies are better at defending at better distances. Maybe even the dice could have rules for the pips that determine the shot type. 1-2 power shot, 3-4 curve shot, 5 twister, 6 nightmare shot. Goalies would get more dice and they would need to roll the right amount of numbers to block the potential shots the player is using. This is pure spitballing as I am typing but I think it could work.
As for the playbook idea.. I like the idea of it, but I'm just not sure how well it would actually work.
Like, what would they even look like? Are we talking just particular move allotments to particular brooms, or full-on pre-determined maneuvers? Pre-determined maneuvers would be a pain, just to fit all the necessary information on a card. Not to mention the amount of times half the play would likely be detrimental--and I'm not sure if that sort of decision is one I'm a fan of.
If its just move points and guidelines, that could potentially work. Like all brooms effected have to move towards one side of the field or the other, or all brooms have to end up closer to the Quaffle-carrier, or one that allows a chaser to steal the Quaffle at the cost of very few other teammates being able to move, or something like that.
But that would require a whole lot of brainstorming and balancing to figure out a decent assortment of plays.
It also definitely changes the game from a unit-level tactical game, to more of a commander-level. Not that that's a bad thing, just something to consider.
I think a playbook works in football because the team resets to a certain position after a given event. Quidditch is much more fluid than that and is more like soccer or basketball where there are some plays, that require the players move themselves into key positions to perform their actions and would not fit well with this type of concept.
I was thinking just move points and guidelines. Mainly the plays are determining movement amount and then can also place restrictions or bonuses on certain player types or the whole team.
Possible Offensive Play card:
Take the shot!
Position - movement - condition
Seeker - 4 - none
Chaser - 5/3/3 - If a Chaser shoots this turn, they get an extra dice
Beater - 2/2 - none
Keeper - none
*Global Bonuses could go here like "All players get an extra dice to dodge Bludgers this turn" or something*
So both players place their "plays" face down and then reveal simultaneously. You then move your players based on initiative.
The unit level play would come into effect when looking at player's stats and planning your plays based around player's strengths and weaknesses. Players could have initiative and other stats that determine dice amount and success requirements while dealing with dilation effects.
Just my two cents.
Something like that could definitely be interesting though. You could add initiatives to the cards easily enough, so in your example card, since its Chaser focused, the Chasers would get high initiative, while Beaters and Seekers less so. Modified by the customization options open to each team.
Really, its just the amount of extra work that would entail that puts me off to it. If it was an already made game, I'd think it was fantastic. But putting in the work when there's an option that requires none, makes the decision a bit tougher, ha.
Definitely something to think about though. I'll have to play around with it.
Yeah, the extra work involved makes it seem daunting.
But now I want to make and play that game. :P
I just really do not like bidding. It adds another step to the game and slows down the action. And with 7 players on the field per team, that will be alot of bidding. There has to be a way to do simultaneous turn in this game and not slow down the action to a crawl.
Well, if I decide to go that route, I'll be sure to make you my play-bitch. :P
Its definitely tempting the more I think about it, as its definitely quicker in terms of execution. Though, you'd likely need quite a few cards needed, so you'd have to have a pretty big stack of cards to sort through every turn. That's the one big drawback to actual play.
With bidding, its just setting a token next to each broom. With this, you've got to sort through a deck of 20+ cards every turn.
Hrm.
Once played it goes into the discard? Again, interesting choices.
So, even more work, ha.
Maybe an option to shuffle and re-draw, at the cost of 2 cards for that turn. So, if you've got 7 cards in your hand, 5 cards in discard, and nothing you think is useful, you can shuffle your hand and discard pile back into your deck and draw 5 cards. And then you could conceivably do it again and just draw a hand of 3. Then next turn draw back up to 7.
That might work to help mitigate the luck factor a bit.
20 Chaser cards (15 Offensive, 5 Defensive)
20 Beater cards (10 Offensive, 10 Defensive)
10 Keeper cards (10 Defensive)
10 Seeker cards (10 Offensive)
This gives you a bit of a lean towards Offensive cards, 35 to 25, but it still seems like the best breakdown, as it seems like Chaser's would benefit from being offensive most of the time, even when on defense.
60 does feel a little big though. 50 feels like it'd be better, but I'm not sure where to cut 10 cards. Maybe 5 from Chaser Offense and 5 from Beater Defense? Leaving it a 30/20 split? Or make Beaters 5 Offense/10 Defense? Maybe do that even if I keep 60 cards, as Beater defense is still an offense, given that they've got to hit the Bludger somewhere.
So how would the card mechanic work?
You've got your deck of cards and draw a hand of 7 (conveniently, one for each broom, so that's nice thematically :P). You'd have the option to scrap your hand and reshuffle your deck at the cost of 2 cards for the current turn, like I mentioned in my post above.
Each turn, you'd choose a Play from your hand and play it face-down. Both cards would be flipped, and then resolved.
One example would be ObiFett's "Take the Shot!"
Take the Shot! (Chaser, Offensive)
(Initiative) Class -- Movement -- Effect
(4) Chaser -- 5/3/3 -- Must shoot. +1 Shot die.
(3) Seeker -- 4
(2) Beater -- 2/2
(1) Keeper -- 0
Another:
Covering Fire (Beater, Offensive)
(4) Beater -- 4/4 -- +1 Bludger distance vs target adjacent to Quaffle-carrier.
(3) Chaser -- 4/2/2
(2) Seeker -- 4
(1) Keeper -- 0
So, let's say in the second scenario, the player who uses Covering Fire has his Chaser adjacent to the Keeper, inside the scoring area. A Beater can take an extra-long shot to try and take the Keeper out and give his Chaser a free shot.
Or, say that his Chaser is pinned down by two opponent Chasers. The Beater can try and nail one of them to make an opening.
I think it could definitely be interesting, but like I said, it'd take a bunch of work to create and balance all the cards. But the potential flexibility of the system would be cool, as you could introduce a deck-building aspect if you wanted, having a team be very Beater-focused like Slytherin, or very Seeker-focused, ala Gryffindor.
Cards can also have different traits, so, like, Seeker cards would generally have more movement available to the entire team, whereas Keeper cards would have less but maybe boost zones of control.
I think that may add a little too much to the game, and you would lose the battle of wits aspect of the game that it would have initially had.
Synchronous movement would be very difficult to do without a Wings of War mechanic.
Maybe general orders like command and colors? Or return to the bid mechanic with some tweaks (Heroscape, Dungeon Twister.) Or something like Race for the Galaxy where 7 actions are available all players take all selected action with a bonus for the ones you specifically pick.
Or, a reaction trait to characters who could interrupt an opponents turn in order to take theirs as long as that player has not exhausted all of their AP/Movement/Actions for the turn. Coupled with a ZOC it could work.
Also the bludger needs to be taken into account as well in whatever movement scheme you decide on.
Its pretty much the bidding system I had, just with bonuses added, and a bit of a restriction on the bids, as you're bidding for the team as a whole, rather than individual brooms.
The Bludger's movement shouldn't be too bad, as that can be fairly consistent in terms of distance. Bludger can have a standard initiative that can be shifted using Beater cards, potentially. So an offensive Beater card will make it move earlier, while a defensive one will cause it to fire later.
I definitely agree that you don't lose any of the feel of it being a battle of wits. You still need to play based on what you think your opponent is gonna play and even plan your individual unit's moves each turn in preparation for what they or you can play.
I think it also opens up a ton of design space. Cards could have all types of bonuses and restrictions.
@inksplat, I noticed you put the type of units in an order like the card itself determines the initiative. I was thinking of keeping it more of the Wings of Glory type setup where the initiative (and other stats) is determined by the Rider's stats. Cards could give initiative bonus for types of Riders (like you were doing above) to make sure focused Riders get to take their moves earlier.
I really think this idea has legs. Especially if you keep some stats on the Riders themselves.
Drop the Seeker, and everything else can stay pretty much as is.
Huh. I swore I had read somewhere that you couldn't do that on BGG, but now I can't seem to find it. It was something about Fan Expansions, but maybe that doesn't apply to free PnP games, as there's a TaleSpin card game that clearly states that its fan created.
Though, going away from Quidditch would definitely broaden what you could do with abilities. It would definitely defeat the point of making something my wife will play with me. :P
A thought I had (when I was thinking of what you could do with different themes, but it'd still work in Quidditch) was dealing with Superstars. Basically, you could have your team of Generic Players, or you could up it to Rising Stars, names that are known but they don't quite have the ego yet, and then, Superstars, who are essentially the name that makes your team, and who everyone comes to see.
The mechanic to balance the more powerful riders, would be that each player "demands" a certain amount of deck space for their personalized cards, and those cards are much more specific to them. So, you gain power, but lose flexibility.
An example would be if you had some hotshot Chaser. His cards would be better than average, but only when he's the one taking advantage of it. As a standard Chaser card, they'd be sub-par. So, if the other team focuses on keeping him locked down, most of his cards are more of a hindrance to you than anything.
Having too many superstars on one team wouldn't really work, because eventually the amount of deck space they'd require would eliminate the option to add any more. And at that point, all your non-celebrity riders would be a whole lot less effective.