Card-based action mechanic

That's certainly an interesting idea. I will certainly keep that in mind. It's a slightly different model than what I was working on, but it could work well.

It's sort of like this, but the idea currently is that your followers can act indepentently of you. (ie, can act in different places simultaneously)

Exactly. The exact formula is TBD, as I want to encourage players to have to balance starting several churches with strengthening those churches. One way I'm planning to do this is to have the number of cards you draw related to the number of churches you've founded (sort of), which I *think* incentivizes founding churches enough.

Pretty much; the idea is that when you add "members" to other players' churches, you get VPs for that immediately. (You also get VPs for the members in your own churches, but at the *end of the game*, and keeping the members in your church for the whole game will require some effort!)

A primary ingredient of the game is accumulating *members* of churches, but these have no functionality in the action system. The "followers" are called "Helpers" in my rulebook; they're, in some sense, extensions of yourself, making it easier for you to act or, alternatively, giving you the ability to act in several places at once. The board is bigger than Disciples (14 cities instead of 6), but it would still get pretty cluttered if more followers than that were available. I think that there will be about 10 available to all players, so in a 4 player game, most players could (if they wish) take on 2 or 3 of those helpers.

Hope this clears things up a bit, at least in terms of what I'm envisioning. Obviously, it's such an early stage that it's all in flux anyway, but it does seem to be crystallizing pretty well, in my mind, at least!

Thanks again,

Jeff

That's exactly right. It's possible that the "difference" may just be semantics caused by confusion on my part.

Maybe the latter, but to start, you will have a card indicating your "supervision", as it were, of each of your helpers, and either a helper-specific pawn, or perhaps you have 3 sets of 2 pawns, all in your color but each set has a special marking; and when you pick up a helper, you choose one of those sets, one pawn goes on the board and one goes on the helper card. It's a representation problem more than a fundamental problem, I think.

Me too. To clarify, my understanding was that what David was advocating was a model where you have a pool of "followers" who can either be "apprentices" (in which case they can travel) or "masters" (who stay put). To clarify, in my game, you have up to 4 "moving pieces" -- one is your Apostle, up to 3 are "Helpers". In addition, one of the things you're doing is creating churches, and these have "members", but those members are non player-specific.

epending on how the cards work (as we have only started to discuss them here) it certainly could incentivize founding churches. Be careful not to make it TOO good or people might just found churches and never strengthen them!

Agreed; with my current scoring model, (which I haven't gone into) I'm afraid simply controlling one church and boosting it up could be a valid strategy. Another aspect is that events happen which will weaken churches, and if a church gets weakened out of existence, you lose points; that should dis-incentivize haphazard church founding.

Yes, it's one church per town. Additionally, some of them are pretty far flung, so managing several churches can be challenging simply because of the travel required. I think there are enough variables that I'll be able to balance wanting to found a few churches with an appropriate level of difficulty associated with doing so.

I don't really think so. The nice thing about keeping track of mid-game VPs is that I plan to use it as a turn order determiner. The player with the most VPs gets to act first. May lead to a "rich get richer" problem, but since mid-game VPs come *only* from helping other players, concentrating on this too much wouldn't set you up as well to win.

I think that's about right; the only minor wrinkle being the additional idea that other players can act in towns with "your" churches. In a sense, I originally wanted a mechanic in which there was no church ownership whatsoever, but I couldn't really think of any good ways of getting VPs in such a model that had any amount of strategy; it would have just been things like "get a VP for strengthening a church", etc. I think having players "supervise" churches gives them an extra stake in those churches and gives the game plenty of strategic scope. It may give other players too little of a stake in those churches, but since that's the route to mid-game VPs, I bet it will be balanceable.

Thanks again.

-J

Please do! I really ought to workshop the thing so you guys can see it all together. If you want to see the rules now, just IM me...

I agree, I think this could work quite well. I think that for this game, I am going to start with what I currently have -- that helpers give you the possibility of playing more "supplemental" cards. I like this mostly because it gives the idea of the helpers and apostles "collaborating", rather than each taking a separate action. But I suppose going to a model where they simply let you take extra actions would work fine too.

Good ideas! I'll take them into consideration...

Yes, I'm thinking along similar lines...

This sounds like it make sense, but ironically, I am trying to avoid a scenario where a church pays out an intrinsic VP reward. As a general design principle, I try to separate the resources that help you "play" the game from those that help you "win" the game. In this case, I already have an in-game benefit of churches, and additionally, they provide VP potentiality; but you have to actualize that potential.

Again, sounds good, but I don't think I'll have this, at least not to start; I think strengthening your church is a long-range way of scoring; you don't get points simply for putting together a gee-whiz church; you've got to shepherd it as well.

Definite yes.

Sounds good, but a nuisance to keep track of.

Yes, for sure.

Yes, I want to force players to strike a balance between founding many churches and making those churches very strong. I think that this will work by the end-game (or scoring-round) reward paying out relative to the total strength of your churches, but the in-game function of churches makes it such that you must have more than one to be able to have enough resources to perform actions.

... just some thoughts anyway ...

Much appreciated!

-Jeff

No, each "helper" will have (probably) a unique special ability. But I won't be developing that aspect for a while.

TBD, but I don't think it will be a "wrest control" effect, so much as a "here, use my helper" effect.

Yes, that's the problem exactly! Of course, I'm the cause of the problem in this case... The round structure exists in part because of an "Event" structure where Events last for a whole round, then new Events are revealed.

No, I don't think there will be a runaway leader problem because the only way to get mid-game VPs is to help other players, and that is done by building up others' churches (which will give them end-game points); there's no end-game benefit to doing this, so to stay as the "first player", you have to keep taking actions that throw points to other players. There's no limit to how many people can strengthen a church in a turn, so going first shouldn't in principle keep you in the lead for continuing to go first.

Then you wouldn't be designing games like I do! Seriously, I look at design holistically; I'm leaving out special powers for now, but I want to get as much else ironed out as soon as possible. If this doesn't do what I want, I'll know pretty quickly in playtesting, and I'll do something else. No need to worry about it on my behalf!

VPs determine turn order all the way down. This game, and Disciples, are build more on a model of thematic consonance than on thematic exactitude. (ie, the mechanic has the right "feel" or "spirit" even if it doesn't literally translate into a specific concrete justification). The idea that helping others gives you a little "boost" fits very well with what Jesus said -- "The greatest among you shall be your servant."

Right, a Helper can do the same kinds of actions you can do, including moving around. It's a "little you". I say "leave behind" simply because that's sort of what's happening strategically; but mechanically, it may be unnecessarily loaded.

Yes.

I agree.

Unfortunately, I'm not going to tip my hand publically on this one yet, though I can fill you in off-line, if you would like. It's not super earth-shattering or anything, just not ready to spell it all out yet. Sorry...

This all sounds fine, and indeed, might actually work ok as a game "in between" Disciples and Apostles, in which you focus more on starting churches and then in Apostles you focus more on building them up. The only thing I worry about, and this goes for the scoring example you presented, is that it sort of reduces to "every other area majority game" with the differences being more chrome than anything else. That's not a bad thing at all, but I'm trying for this game (and with all my games) to do something unique, if only for the sake of uniqueness. Granted, on some level, my game will reduce to abstractions that can then be broadly classified with a lot of other games, but for me, I want the theme to motivate new mechanics. I feel like having a "pool of followers" that you add to churches and then score for having the "most followers" or "best followers" would lose some of the theme-specificity; it could equally well be having the "most politicians in city councils across the region" or "the most of your lionesses in the various regions of the savannah". Granted, scoring points for the "strongest churches" doesn't sound particularly original either, but I assure you, there are a couple of thematically motivated twists that I think connect the scoring concept with the theme pretty well. But scoring is definitely still up in the air, just from a philosophical standpoint; "what should be rewarded with points?" So your suggestions are very much appreciated, whether or not they're appropriated!

-Jeff

Remember for a minute the scenario I talked about previously where players 'accumulate' followers, then drop them off in a location to found a church there (so the Churches would be like you 'helpers' in that you could take an action at your church locations in addition to your own current location).

I think you come up with some fine ideas here (helping others gets you more "followers"), but I don't think it would work well in this context because, again, "followers" are in some sense generic; the point isn't to accumulate followers for yourself, it's to win believers to the Gospel. So in that sense, I've adopted a model of giving players access to two or three "helpers", which has good precedent in the book of Acts, but as for the model of accumulating a pool of followers, which you then play to the board, it probably won't work for me, though it would work just fine in a game like the "karate dojos" model I suggested, or perhaps the "election" model.

Yes, I have something pretty similar to this in development. My system has a little more complexity, but it's the same basic idea -- you're trying to improve "your" churches, but there's also an element of "maintenance" and making sure they don't slide into "disrepair", as it were. My one concern about the system I have is, indeed, that it may have accounting issues. It remains to be seen.

Wait and see how the final system works, I think you'll like it!

Thanks again for the input,

Jeff