Alright, with Cayucos coming up, and Rudy pestering me to work on TPK, I've been thinking of an alternative to possibly bring to Game Jam 2014 - TPK Dice!
Here's a list of idears, inspiration, and abstracts of how I think the game should play:
- Characters have a stat card, and dice pool. Dice determine resources you can spend on abilities and defense against attacking mobs and bosses.
- Attacking mobs and bosses move dice into the pools for whomever they are attacking and sort of actively work against them. So when the player rolls on their turn to generate resources they also have to roll the mob/boss dice and then deal with the outcomes. Maybe the bad die cancels good dice, maybe it does damage, maybe it clogs resources, etc.
- Trying to make threat a big deal again, so somehow need to have the tank pull dice from other players, and have the players pull dice when they attack. Maybe the different dice face will have a random range of threat and if another player does damage that exceeds the number, then the dice shift to the new player.
- Maybe baddies consist of multiple dice that are both their damage and their ability to mess with each player. So an orc has three dice that gets added to a pool, a dragon has 8, etc. Maybe some spells effects just clog the rolls but can be weeded out one per turn.
- Focus, charging, and cooldowns. To focus an ability, must allocate X dice per turn. To charge must allocate 1 die per turn, cumulative. And to cooldown, you spend X dice and then return one to the pool each turn and cant use the ability until all have been pulled off.
- Loot can be either kewl dice that just exist on their own, or maybe dice that have a card with them with details of what the dice can do. Maybe both. So a 'green' rarity would just be dice, and maybe an epic or legendary would be dice with a card that adds new abilities.
- Leveling and specing would could be flipping the character sheet and maybe adding cards to expand the sheet with new abilities.
- The dungeons can be on a large card with maybe different zones the players need to move through. Each phase of the dungeon will have any special rules on the card, and show what mobs await. Or it will be card based again, dunno. I think the predetermined dungeon will allow for more certainty with game components, ie you likely couldn't have more orcs spawn than you have orc components in the game. Also might help with game balancing. Maybe a general board with X number of locations, and then random tiles that fill the locations so there is some variance to the mobs, but the location itself has the same special rules. i.e. maybe the powder keg room is always there but sometimes flaming minions are there, maybe sometimes not - so the danger varies per dungeon run.
- Maybe there would be character cards from 1 - 5 players. 5 separate cards for 5 players and roles, and say 4 cards with 3 separate roles and 1 combo role card with two DPS, but the ability costs are reduced to match the same die pool that needs to power both roles.
- More to come...
Great post! I like the renewed look at the game with DICE playing a ROLL (ha) alongside cards. Will think on some ideas, but it sounds pretty awesome so far.
ReplyDeleteI wonder which would be more expensive to produce -- a dice game with lots o' dice or a card game? Dice have more significantly more complexity in manufacturing and more materials cost, but cards have more art budget.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, Monsterpocalypse had a couple of really interesting dice mechanics.
First of all, you spent dice for everything you did. IE, if your attack stat was 4, you could roll up to 4 dice when attacking. If you wanted to move 4 spaces, you had to discard those same dice. Various powers you'd use would cost you dice. So everything you did came out of the same resource pool.
Second, when you spent dice, it's not like you discarded them and replenished them next turn, they physically went somewhere else. There were two pools where dice could live: the unit pool and the monster pool. (You controlled one monster and then a bunch of wiener infantry guys.) The trick was that when you spent dice from one pool they moved to the other one. For example, if I had ten dice in my monster pool and then stomped him all around the board while attacking shit, all the dice I spent to do those things would move to the unit pool. You could take either a unit or monster action whenever your turn rolled around, but if there were no or few dice in a given pool, then it would be obvious to your opponent what sort of action you were going to take.
I imagine dice would be a lot more expensive, especially customized dice. On the other hand, I think a dice game might draw more people in BECAUSE of the cool dice. I know that worked with Quarriors.
ReplyDeleteAnother option is what Combar Commander does - "dice" on each card. I really love that about CC, but I wonder if that's too unique to that game to try and copy.
Another alternative to dice that I always imagine being cool in a game is DOMINOES! Or, "tiles". I can imagine a unique game that takes maybe the fundamental number matching of dominoes but used for something else. It can be symbols instead of numbers. I dunno. That would be even more expensive because who the hell mass produces dominoes?