Hello Peoples,
Ok, for my Main Big Game I have a lot of special effects type things. A big part of playing the game is staunching up your forces with stuff (Creatures, Artifacts, Abilities...) that basically give you bonuses or let you do certain things.
Each player will have their own unique range of Creatures, Artifacts and Abilities they will have access to as well as 'Neutrals' they will be able to gain in the game.
The tricky thing that I have at the moment is deciding where the information for all these special effects should be.
The best answer I have for this at the moment is to provide each player with a reference chart. Preferably a doubled sided A4 size card that lists every ability they will have access to during the game. The thing is, there will are nearly 200 Effects in the game, and each player will need to be able to reference over 100 of them (Each player has access to their own unique Effects).
My question then, is that considering this is a 'Big Game' and that a big part of the fun of the game will be customising your forces with a wide range of different 'Stuff', how cool would it be to have to reference this A4 sheet every time you wanted to check what something does?
Each Effect will be named and so be partly obvious what it does, and experienced players will be able to remember things etc, but especially when learning the game, there will be a lot of looking up to do.
Also consider that this is not a light game, and players going into it would know that.
Anybody have any thoughts? Or should I give more info?
Cheers Johan!
Thanks for your comments. The trickiest thing about Big Games is the playtesting factor - you really need to get the theoretics in a good state before investing in a prototype to start playtesting with...
With regards to your areas of interest -
Think big but start small: Yeah I have the whole rules down and theoretically tested. I have have kept them simplified and work outside the 'Effects' of the various Abilities and things that will give the flavour to the game. There is a strong structure that should be easy to follow.
Streamline: All the Effects will be tied to specific things, i.e. An Artifact will have a particular Effect, or a Creature will have a particular Effect relate to it. So in that organised in that way. All Effects also have a specific way they are used, which is either Combat, Useable or Passive. Combat Effects are used in combats, Useable Effects can only be used when a player uses an Action to play them, and Passive Effects always affects the particular Vampire Lieutenant (Vampre game y'see...) they are attributed to. As for presentation, thata part of the reason for having all the Effects listed together...
KISS: Definately, everything needs to be easily accesible and make logical sense. P.S. It should be - Keep It Simple Stupid.
Naming: Yeah thats a fun one. Most of the Effects will have interesting names to keep the flavour of the game, but do need to be recogniseable. This is an interesting topic...
Adds on: The Effects of things work off the rules in that the ruleset has to be interestig enough to be able to provide a variety of options for when designing Effects which add to or twist certain aspects of the rules. This is quite a fun balancing act - I want to keep the structure and basic rules as straight forward as possible, at the same time as providing a strong and flexible framework fromwhich I can extrude an interesting range of Effects (especially when I have 100+ Unique Effects!)
Flexibility: Expansion isn't too much of a worry for me in this one, as the whole game should be self contained. Its not a collectible game, and shouldn't need any types of expansions. But the way it has been designed easily lend itself to new map tiles and creatures/abilities etc.
Can you expand upon your comment that an inflexible game would not be fun in the long run?
Cheers!
Nestalawe'