So, to make damage simple as checking boxes on a stat card or making it a bit more elegant and tied to a cool system. Thought storm:
Damage Via Statboxes
- Lame and kind of derivative (Warmahordes, GB, etc.)
- Likely need unique combatants, or units with shared stats and hit points. Not a bad thing.
- Easy to start playing with. Likely will spawn other idears, so SHOULD just go ahead and try it.
Cool System/Elegant
- Cool and elegant!
- Challenge to come up with baseline and standard statuses. Healthy/Wounded/Critical/Dead, etc. And what do they mean, and how to track them without getting too many counters on the board.
- Keeping me from progressing because I want something cool and elegant but can't figure out what it is, therefore I'm doing nothing.
- Ex. Blood Bowl, where damage is status (up/down/face-down/injured). This works better for a non-lethal game or sport, but a combat game seems like it might not be very well suited.
- Might lend itself to a more Chess-y sort of game and less of a tactical skirmish game. Not a bad thing, but right now I'm thinking tactical and fighty.
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
Thursday, April 21, 2016
Brain. Different Direction. Moar Notes.
Hex-based combat game with action resolution based on Apocalypse Engine RPG mechanic.
2D6 is THE roll.
10+ = total success, do what you want, with perfect success results. Your turn continues.
7-9 = partial success. You do what you want, but only halfway AND your opponent chooses a model to perform a partial success action with (MAYBE there are a few 'reaction' abilities to choose from vs. a partial action). Your turn continues.
6 or less = Fail. You perform no action, AND your opponent gets to perform a full action with a model. Your turn ENDS.
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Command dice pool: Dice that are rolled on your turn and are assigned to players or used to influence rolls. If assigned to players, can be saved until used or removed, if used to influence rolls, spent immediately and returned to the pool for next turn.
- Perhaps different dice for different types? Combat, defense, movement, etc. that are determined by the team or 'Warcaster', then you choose X many to help directedly influence what you are trying to do in a particular turn. So a capture the flag scenario would have more movement dice at the beginning, more attack in the middle, and potentially more defense at the end as the game dictates.
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Free facing changes, unless adjacent to an enemy. Front and rear arcs matter. Adjacent models matter both in attacking and defense.
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Each model you activate causes a cumulative (-1) to the all subsequent activation rolls. So, first model activated = (-0), second model activated = (-1), third model activated = (-2), etc. This hopefully forces some focus on important parts of the board as well as adds some push your luck and stress to 'set-up' actions and sweeping play/power shifts on the board.
Oooo.... Maybe each time your opponent rolls, you gain a token. You can spend these tokens at any time, to either boost your stuff, proc skills, or add (+/-1) to rolls....
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Base stats for models are 3 points distributed across 3 stats: Move, Attack, Defense. Each point is a +1 to any roll for that stat. 0/3/0 would be like a barbarian, 0/0/3 would be like a heavily armored pikeman, 1/1/1 would be a footman, 3/0/0 would be a scout, etc.
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Thinking Guild Ball for model count. Small engagements to keep overall rules grind low. 5 - 10 models per side, 10 models use more rank and file, 5 models could have more special types. Want the game to be simple to learn, not hard to reference, but rich in actions, events, flow, and experience.
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2D6 is THE roll.
10+ = total success, do what you want, with perfect success results. Your turn continues.
7-9 = partial success. You do what you want, but only halfway AND your opponent chooses a model to perform a partial success action with (MAYBE there are a few 'reaction' abilities to choose from vs. a partial action). Your turn continues.
6 or less = Fail. You perform no action, AND your opponent gets to perform a full action with a model. Your turn ENDS.
------
Command dice pool: Dice that are rolled on your turn and are assigned to players or used to influence rolls. If assigned to players, can be saved until used or removed, if used to influence rolls, spent immediately and returned to the pool for next turn.
- Perhaps different dice for different types? Combat, defense, movement, etc. that are determined by the team or 'Warcaster', then you choose X many to help directedly influence what you are trying to do in a particular turn. So a capture the flag scenario would have more movement dice at the beginning, more attack in the middle, and potentially more defense at the end as the game dictates.
------
Free facing changes, unless adjacent to an enemy. Front and rear arcs matter. Adjacent models matter both in attacking and defense.
-------
Each model you activate causes a cumulative (-1) to the all subsequent activation rolls. So, first model activated = (-0), second model activated = (-1), third model activated = (-2), etc. This hopefully forces some focus on important parts of the board as well as adds some push your luck and stress to 'set-up' actions and sweeping play/power shifts on the board.
Oooo.... Maybe each time your opponent rolls, you gain a token. You can spend these tokens at any time, to either boost your stuff, proc skills, or add (+/-1) to rolls....
-----
Base stats for models are 3 points distributed across 3 stats: Move, Attack, Defense. Each point is a +1 to any roll for that stat. 0/3/0 would be like a barbarian, 0/0/3 would be like a heavily armored pikeman, 1/1/1 would be a footman, 3/0/0 would be a scout, etc.
-------
Thinking Guild Ball for model count. Small engagements to keep overall rules grind low. 5 - 10 models per side, 10 models use more rank and file, 5 models could have more special types. Want the game to be simple to learn, not hard to reference, but rich in actions, events, flow, and experience.
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Friday, October 10, 2014
Damage
Got it.
Stealing a mechanic from Dreadfleet and I think X-Wing, there will be a damage deck where one side of the card will be 'wound' and the other side with have some sort of critical or lasting affect.
- Character wounds will be dealt in cards and tracked next to the character card.
- Mob wounds will be tracked next to the mob card and each mob will have a certain threshold of wounds before they are 'actually wounded', in which case the flipped card will have a border so when the card is placed under the mob you can see how many REAL wounds it has. If the characters fail to beat the threshold in a given turn, then all the wounds are removed for the next round and they need to start again, but REAL wounds persist between turns.
- Maybe threat can be handled similarly. Maybe threat is printed on the card in such a way that it can be slid under the mob when it has been pulled. If another attack is played on that mob that beats the threat, the character owning the current threat gets the card back and the new player pulls the mob and places the new threat beneath it. Interesting.
Stealing a mechanic from Dreadfleet and I think X-Wing, there will be a damage deck where one side of the card will be 'wound' and the other side with have some sort of critical or lasting affect.
- Character wounds will be dealt in cards and tracked next to the character card.
- Mob wounds will be tracked next to the mob card and each mob will have a certain threshold of wounds before they are 'actually wounded', in which case the flipped card will have a border so when the card is placed under the mob you can see how many REAL wounds it has. If the characters fail to beat the threshold in a given turn, then all the wounds are removed for the next round and they need to start again, but REAL wounds persist between turns.
- Maybe threat can be handled similarly. Maybe threat is printed on the card in such a way that it can be slid under the mob when it has been pulled. If another attack is played on that mob that beats the threat, the character owning the current threat gets the card back and the new player pulls the mob and places the new threat beneath it. Interesting.
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
Reboot
Okay, there are only so many things that can keep my attention for so long. Right now I have: work training, electric cardboard mayhem, landscaping and prepping our car for sale, and TPK again. I find that I am enthused about one at a time and then my interest wanes and I need to move around to keep them all fresh.
Right now, I'm back to TPK (for awhile)!
I haven't read through any of the past posts to re-familiarize myself with just what the hell TPK was about before, particularly the dice incarnation (which went no where...), so I'll again post some new barebones idears about how I'm thinking the new version will play.
TPK: The Deckbuilder!
Much like I was enamored by the preconstructed decks from SotM, I'm now enamored by the deckbuilding and 'combo' mechanics of Star Realms and Legendary combined with the shared deck of cards to build your deck a la Ascension and Shadowrun, topped off with some role based cards, also from Shadowrun, my brain has sort of taken this in a new direction. Let me braindump:
- Standard deck building mechanic: draw your hand, play your hand, discard your hand, buy cards, put them in discard pile.
- Each role (tank, healz, dps, ranged dps, magic dps) will have their own deck. The deck will have cards that are themed for that role but also have 'combo' icons on some of them (most of them?). These combos will proc when you play them in the same hand. ex. each card will have a base ability: +1 damage. Then it will have a proc: (tank icon) +1 damage, pull damaged target.
- All the character decks are shuffled together to make a single Party Draw Deck. The PDD is used to fill out the line of cards that players can purchase with XP (the gold/resources of this game).
- Each character card will have some combo icon(s) on it, along with other abilities, that will essentially mean that character auto combos a level one combo when that character plays that card. So when players have the option to buy cards from the PDD, they can of course buy cards that are not their combo icons, but they will be BETTER suited to purchase those cards since they will proc more often. This should allow for some interesting dual-classing sorts of situations and not everyone should feel like they can only do one thing (healing kind of healer, etc.)
- There will be a dungeon deck that contains all the baddies and crap the players need to defeat to win the game. I'm thinking along the lines of LotR where there are certain themes of cards that interact well together and are bundled together, so for example "Greenskins" or "Undead". Each dungeon will have a collection of these mini-decks shuffled together along with some specific cards to make the bad guy deck.
- Bad guys might also have XP tied to it that if you defeat it you can add it to your deck as XP.
- Each turn you flip X cards depending on scenario or player count. The cards could have flip abilities that take effect immediately or they just sit there for the round. Then the players each take a turn to try and defeat them before the next round where more cards are flipped from the baddie deck.
- When it's the baddies turn, whoever they attack whomever they have been pulled to. If they are still unengaged, they go to the person with the preference listed on the baddies card. Attack abilities will be listed on the card or maybe the Dungeon Deck rules... or something.
- On a player turn, they play the cards from their hand to build pools of resources. Likely only XP and Fight, where XP is used to purchase PDD cards, and Fight is used to fight, maybe purchase additional abilities listed on cards, etc.
- When a mob takes damage, the player that does the damage puts a threat counter on the mob= to the highest threat listed on the cards that are doing damage, or abilities proc'd, etc. Then, pull that mob infront of the character card. If another player damages the mob and the threat is higher, then the card moves to the character damaging it, etc.
- Maybe a damage threshold needs to be met before any wounds are suffered.
- Character Damage Idear: When a character takes damage, they take x damage cards into their discard pile. Maybe each character will have a level where if they get x damage cards in their hand at once, they either lose a turn from fatigue, or outright die. So maybe a wiznard has a threshold of 2 and a tank has 4 or something. No idea how that will playout in the long run and maybe there will be so many wound cards in teh deck, but not enough to die, that the game will just degenerate into a slow march to death. Dunno.
That's all for now, folks!
Right now, I'm back to TPK (for awhile)!
I haven't read through any of the past posts to re-familiarize myself with just what the hell TPK was about before, particularly the dice incarnation (which went no where...), so I'll again post some new barebones idears about how I'm thinking the new version will play.
TPK: The Deckbuilder!
Much like I was enamored by the preconstructed decks from SotM, I'm now enamored by the deckbuilding and 'combo' mechanics of Star Realms and Legendary combined with the shared deck of cards to build your deck a la Ascension and Shadowrun, topped off with some role based cards, also from Shadowrun, my brain has sort of taken this in a new direction. Let me braindump:
- Standard deck building mechanic: draw your hand, play your hand, discard your hand, buy cards, put them in discard pile.
- Each role (tank, healz, dps, ranged dps, magic dps) will have their own deck. The deck will have cards that are themed for that role but also have 'combo' icons on some of them (most of them?). These combos will proc when you play them in the same hand. ex. each card will have a base ability: +1 damage. Then it will have a proc: (tank icon) +1 damage, pull damaged target.
- All the character decks are shuffled together to make a single Party Draw Deck. The PDD is used to fill out the line of cards that players can purchase with XP (the gold/resources of this game).
- Each character card will have some combo icon(s) on it, along with other abilities, that will essentially mean that character auto combos a level one combo when that character plays that card. So when players have the option to buy cards from the PDD, they can of course buy cards that are not their combo icons, but they will be BETTER suited to purchase those cards since they will proc more often. This should allow for some interesting dual-classing sorts of situations and not everyone should feel like they can only do one thing (healing kind of healer, etc.)
- There will be a dungeon deck that contains all the baddies and crap the players need to defeat to win the game. I'm thinking along the lines of LotR where there are certain themes of cards that interact well together and are bundled together, so for example "Greenskins" or "Undead". Each dungeon will have a collection of these mini-decks shuffled together along with some specific cards to make the bad guy deck.
- Bad guys might also have XP tied to it that if you defeat it you can add it to your deck as XP.
- Each turn you flip X cards depending on scenario or player count. The cards could have flip abilities that take effect immediately or they just sit there for the round. Then the players each take a turn to try and defeat them before the next round where more cards are flipped from the baddie deck.
- When it's the baddies turn, whoever they attack whomever they have been pulled to. If they are still unengaged, they go to the person with the preference listed on the baddies card. Attack abilities will be listed on the card or maybe the Dungeon Deck rules... or something.
- On a player turn, they play the cards from their hand to build pools of resources. Likely only XP and Fight, where XP is used to purchase PDD cards, and Fight is used to fight, maybe purchase additional abilities listed on cards, etc.
- When a mob takes damage, the player that does the damage puts a threat counter on the mob= to the highest threat listed on the cards that are doing damage, or abilities proc'd, etc. Then, pull that mob infront of the character card. If another player damages the mob and the threat is higher, then the card moves to the character damaging it, etc.
- Maybe a damage threshold needs to be met before any wounds are suffered.
- Character Damage Idear: When a character takes damage, they take x damage cards into their discard pile. Maybe each character will have a level where if they get x damage cards in their hand at once, they either lose a turn from fatigue, or outright die. So maybe a wiznard has a threshold of 2 and a tank has 4 or something. No idea how that will playout in the long run and maybe there will be so many wound cards in teh deck, but not enough to die, that the game will just degenerate into a slow march to death. Dunno.
That's all for now, folks!
Sunday, February 9, 2014
Post-Cayucos
While we didn't have the formal "game jam" I had hoped for this weekend, there were some fantastic brainstorming sessions with Eric, Mike, and myself. We got very close to an awesome game, and I can't wait for Eric to present some of the results.
Sunday, January 26, 2014
TPK: THe DICE Game
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...
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...
Sunday, September 8, 2013
The Lull
Work has been filling my head with all sorts of stuff and zapping my will to use my brain after hours. I'm in a creative lull, but in the meantime I did find my unused Black Leaf Games business cards that I plan to use for my demo decks!
I'll get back on the wagon soon, right now I'm just workin' and playing other people's games when I have a chance. Even writing this admission of guilt is sort of inspiring me to return!
I'll get back on the wagon soon, right now I'm just workin' and playing other people's games when I have a chance. Even writing this admission of guilt is sort of inspiring me to return!
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