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Your opinion my Strategy Adventure Game

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Anonymous

Hi. Here's a quick description of my game.

1 to 3 players fight their way through a series of maps to complete the game.

There is no player who plays the bad guy - all players play cooperatively against the game system which consists of enemies scattered throughout the maps. If all players die in the game, the map must be started over (maps take about 15 minutes to beat apiece).

Player 1 is the player who decides the legality of all moves in the game. How Player 1 is chosen is currently unknown - perhaps by die roll at the start of the game, or by vote (and dice roll among all top vote winners if there's a tie).

This is the main strtucture of the game. Does anyone see any problems thus far? Are there any game that might seem comparable to this that I might take a look at?

Thank you for listening, y'all!

zaiga
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Re: Your opinion my Strategy Adventure Game

Hello Bryan,

I think you might have a nice basis for a game. There are not that many real cooperative games on the market, so if yours is a good one, it might find a niche.

bryanedds wrote:
1 to 3 players fight their way through a series of maps to complete the game.

If you ever want to try and sell this game I think it would be wise to try and fit in a fourth player. Most games on the market today allow at least up to four players.

Quote:
There is no player who plays the bad guy - all players play cooperatively against the game system which consists of enemies scattered throughout the maps. If all players die in the game, the map must be started over (maps take about 15 minutes to beat apiece).

You might want to watch out for player elimination. If a player dies, how long does it take for him to get back in the game? If all players start anew at the beginning of each map, and each map takes 15 minutes max, then that's not too big of a problem, I guess.

Quote:
Player 1 is the player who decides the legality of all moves in the game. How Player 1 is chosen is currently unknown - perhaps by die roll at the start of the game, or by vote (and dice roll among all top vote winners if there's a tie).

Now here you might have a serious problem. I think the legality of the moves should be determined by the rules of the game, not at a player's discretion. I suspect you might have trouble dealing with something that has to do with the cooperative aspect of the game (perhaps a thing that usually a "DM" would handle), but without knowing what it is exactly, I can't help you out here.

Quote:
This is the main strtucture of the game. Does anyone see any problems thus far? Are there any game that might seem comparable to this that I might take a look at?

You are probably aware of game like HeroQuest and the D&D boardgame. Those aren't truly cooperative games, since the need a moderator to make the game work. A truly cooperative game is Reiner Knizia's Lord of the Rings game. If you have never heard of it I suggest you take a peek at BoardGameGeek.

Good luck!

- René Wiersma

sedjtroll
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Joined: 07/21/2008
Re: Your opinion my Strategy Adventure Game

I agree with all of Zaiga's comments. This part simply doesn't make sense:

bryanedds wrote:

Player 1 is the player who decides the legality of all moves in the game.

You really can't have a player in the game making decisions as to the legality of the moves- it's a conflict of interest- it just doesn't make sense. Maybe you mean something else here and I'm misunderstanding, could you be more specific?

- Seth

Anonymous
Re: Your opinion my Strategy Adventure Game

zaiga wrote:
Hello Bryan,

Quote:
Player 1 is the player who decides the legality of all moves in the game. How Player 1 is chosen is currently unknown - perhaps by die roll at the start of the game, or by vote (and dice roll among all top vote winners if there's a tie).

Now here you might have a serious problem. I think the legality of the moves should be determined by the rules of the game, not at a player's discretion. I suspect you might have trouble dealing with something that has to do with the cooperative aspect of the game (perhaps a thing that usually a "DM" would handle), but without knowing what it is exactly, I can't help you out here.

Don't worry, the rules are all determined by the game's concise instructions. It's just that there needs to be someone who can stop a player from cheating if they, say, move one space to far or not mark their remaining HP correctly or if there is a conflict over a rule whose ambiguity could not be foreseen by the designer. The rules SHOULD be %100 clear. Following the rules require an interpretation of them regardless of their clarity, so that's why there is a moderator type person. And there also needs to be someone to stop cheating as well with final authority.

zaiga
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Re: Your opinion my Strategy Adventure Game

bryanedds wrote:
Following the rules require an interpretation of them regardless of their clarity, so that's why there is a moderator type person. And there also needs to be someone to stop cheating as well with final authority.

Ah, but who will then stop the moderator from cheating? ;)

I see your point though. I'm in the process of developing a cooperative game myself as well and it is very easy for the players to break the game by cheating collectively. However, is this something you, as a designer, should worry about? I think not. If a group of players decides to bend or break the rules, well let them. It's their little party, after all.

If a single person in the group wants to cheat, then another player in the group will probably step up and correct the situation. This is not really a different situation than in a non-cooperative multiplayer game, is it? And you don't usually appoint a "referee" in a normal game.

If I were you I wouldn't worry too much about players trying to cheat. That is a player problem, not a design problem, not even in a cooperative game.

- René Wiersma

jwarrend
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Joined: 08/03/2008
Your opinion my Strategy Adventure Game

Bryan,

I don't know if you've really given enough information for us to give any impressions of the game. As far as I can tell, you've told us that the game involves 1-3 players traversing maps and fighting bad guys. That's a fine start, but the devil is very much in the details here. What are they doing? How do they travel on the maps? How do they find enemies? How do they fight them when they find them? As it stands, from what you've told us, your game could be great and it could be abysmal, and there's no way to know without more info. Could you elaborate a bit further?

One thing I would say about "the game system is the bad guy" is to definitely look at Lord of the Rings by Knizia. Having a random, yet malevolent, force in the game is quite a challenge, but that game pulls it off quite well.

Thanks,

Jeff

Anonymous
Your opinion my Strategy Adventure Game

Actually, you guys pretty much gave me all I need to know :) If it has worked before (Knizia: LOTR), then it can work in my game.

I would give more details, but right now I don't divulge more than is absolutely necessary - trade secrets and all that :)

Anonymous
Your opinion my Strategy Adventure Game

Two quick thoughts:

1) I agree with the comments of some others. As a designer, you should approach a game with the belief that all players will follow the rules. After all, a game is a set of rules describing acceptable ways of manipulating the game state. If some/all players don't want to follow the rules of your game, then they are not your target audience and you can safely ignore them.

Nevertheless, as a designer, it is always worthwhile to build in ways to help other players double-check or confirm the integrity of an opponent's moves. Consider for example in Magic the Gathering CCG. Whenever you are permitted to search your deck for a specific kind of card, you must reveal it to all players. This functions as a public check on a player's actions.

2) Seth and Rene raised a good point about having one player decide the legality of another player's moves. However, I wonder whether you could provide an adequate set of checks and balances in a game that would actually allow that and make it work. Maybe think about the three branches of American government and their checks and balances. Each branch has its own jurisdiction and set of things for which it is responsible, but the other branches have ways to keep the third in line. Can something similar be done in a 3-player game? Perhaps one player decides which moves are legal (but must be consistent about it), while another player decides which locations on the board have which abilities, while a third controls how a player's actions score. Each player relies on the other two to do anything, but would separately (though perhaps not independently) control 1/3 of the rules of the game. Unfortunately, I don't have any specific ideas about how to make this work, but it seems like an awfully interesting situation to ponder.

Come to think of it, if it works in real life, why can't it work in a game? After all, our Legislative branch makes *all* the rules ...

Enjoy!
Captain Sky

comport9
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Your opinion my Strategy Adventure Game

Didn't read everything. But what about having the 4th player be the "system" trying to "kill off" one of the players. When that player dies they switch roles.

Basicly the player is trying to stay in the game for as long as possible. Kinda sounds like Tron. lol.

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