Skip to Content
 

Game combat mechanics dungeon crawling co-op board game.

8 replies [Last post]
czman
Offline
Joined: 03/26/2013

I have been working on 3 separate games on and off. I am furthest ahead on a dungeon crawling game. The game is co-op from 1-8 players all on the same “team”. I game is designed to have multiple different levels of difficulty. I am going to go into a brief explanation of the game.

There are 12 different classes to choose from. Each class has 2 different weapon/gear choices. Right now one of the classes has 3 choices, but that may get cut. A player picks a class and gear choice. Each gear choice has a group of skills/spells/attacks/ect.

The classes are broken down into 5 different concepts: Damage, healing, status affects on enemies, buffing your party members, and damage mitigation and absorption. All of the classes each fall into multiple sections of these 5 overarching concepts.

The difficulty levels goes as follows. There are 3 different levels of rooms. There are 3 different levels of enemies. I have 7 rooms for each level. The players will select a series of rooms and then determine what level of monster they want in those rooms. Example: Medium (level 2) room and medium (level 2) monster. This would be the default difficulty. The hardest would be level 3 room and level 3 monsters. The easiest would be level 1 and level 1. I have also created 4 “Boss” rooms. They are stand alone rooms with a different rule set.

Game play goes as follows. You have the map/room you are going to play. Right now the maps are all square graphs. I was going to use hex but ran into a problem (we will get to that soon). The map will have a few parts. It will have numbers 1-8 at the entrance. The numbers are where players place their characters. The person on spot one takes first action and the numbers determine the order of actions for the players.

One border of the map has 8 rectangles. The rectangles list the monsters for the amount of players. Example: if there are 5 players you look at the rectangle for 5 players and pull the monsters out. The monsters are broken down into 2 basic subsets. Ranged and Melee. The Rectangle also gives the monsters damage type. There are two types of damage Magic and Physical.
Monster cards are assigned to the monsters in play. The monster cards are broken down into melee or ranged. If you have 3 melee monsters and you are playing against med monsters you will pull 3 melee monster cards out. Each card will have data for all levels of monster. The card will also have squares on it to account for health. You start a counter at the max health and move it as the monster takes damage. One side of the card is for magical monsters the other is for Physical monsters.

Example: 5 players are playing. They set their tokens up on spots 1-5 determining their play order. They look at the monster sheet and see there are 4 melee monsters and 4 ranged monsters. The players take 4 ranged and 4 melee monster tokens out and find the corresponding spots on the map for those monsters. They select the monster cards from the list. They place the cards face up showing the correct damage type. They place damage marker on the max health for each monster. At this point room setup is complete. I suspect set will take about 2-3 minutes per room. Players only set one room at a time.

The players always go first. Players have to have line of sight for ranged attacks. Monsters do not need line of site. My thought is to have melee monsters attack the closets enemy and ranged monsters attack the furthest enemy. Ranged monsters are not going to move. If more than one player is at the same distance they will roll a dice to determine who is attacked.

Each player gets two actions a turn. An action is anything and everything. You can move/attack/cast a spell. If you can don’t need to move and want to attack twice you can.
Here is where I run into the problem. For melee monsters to attack they will have to move from time to time. Since this game is purely co-op there is no one playing the monsters. It is up to the players to move the monsters. I am trying to make this as simple as possible for the players to play. I started with a hex map but found my system more difficult on a hex map. That is why I am using squares. I am not tied to any type of graph paper.

Example of the problem: There are two played that are separated by 1 square. There is a monster that is between the two players and one square away. The monster can move two squares forward and be between the two players. The monster can move on square and forward and be cattycorner to both players. The monster can move right in front of the player it is going to attack.

Obviously moving right in front of either player is better. They can only be attacked by one played from that position unless one of the players move, assuming melee.
Inherently the problem I have is with the amount of different options there can be on the board it is difficult to create a rule set that easily explains how to move the monsters. I thought about creating a bunch of images for people to reference. I am not sure I will easily be able to come up with all of the different combinations. That also slows down game play. I want the game to be able to be played where no one ever has to reference anything. I want all players need to be right in front of them.

Anyone have any thoughts on how I can work this out. If more information is needed please just ask.
PS I typed this at work and it was not typed without interruption. There may be some errors or something may not be clear. Sorry if something is hard to understand.

Stormyknight1976
Offline
Joined: 04/08/2012
Attack and move.

Suggestion: attack and actually move character player or enemy monster from being hit or defending after every action. Just like in a real life situation. Forget rolling dice to see how many spaces to move. Players can only move one to two spaces left, right, forward or backward. This should help you not having players referencing pictures?

czman
Offline
Joined: 03/26/2013
More info

Character movement for both players and non players is a static 2 squares. Damage is static. The only things that are rolled for are if something hits and who a monster will attack if more than one player is at the same distance.

The reason I do not want to combine attack and move, or force combine them, is it takes out some of the aspects of the game that I did not delve into.

There is a risk reward with being able to attack twice and not move. There is also a risk reward with being able to move twice and not attack. Additionally, some classes have movement with their skills so they can attack and move or move and attack as one action.

I like the depth of game play that comes with two actions and being able to spend them how you want. It allows me to create more interesting abilities. It allows players to come up with more interesting strategies. At the more difficult levels players will need some ability to "game" the game. Player positioning will extremely important.

My goal is to have a very simple set of rules that allow for a great deal of depth in game play. Player positioning becomes huge when you play on the harder levels. I just need as simple rule as possible for the Melee characters movement.

I guess you can say I am looking to a game like chess. Chess has a very simple set of rules. Board positioning is everything. The depth of the game play is tied to the board positioning.

Extra explanation. The reason players always go first is it allows them to move their characters to a spot on the board and dictate where the monsters will go and who they will attack. The idea is that it will be almost impossible to beat some rooms if you do not think ahead. You will have to work as a group to position your characters so the monsters will do X and doing X is not beneficial to the monsters as the game moves further along. On the easiest level it won't matter. This is also why I have some many different levels of play.

Corsaire
Corsaire's picture
Offline
Joined: 06/27/2013
Why not give "rational"

Why not give "rational" monster thinking decisions. Like: a ranged monster will attack the character with the lightest armor it can reach. A melee monster will take the least number of moves to engage a character and will attack the character with the lowest current hit points, in a tie it attacks to the right. If the movement is the same, it will choose to move in the direction it is facing.

czman
Offline
Joined: 03/26/2013
I do want to thank both of

I do want to thank both of you for your input.

The problem with giving the monsters "rational" thought is it will take away the complexity. If the monsters act in their own best interest the game will simply come down to %. The game no longer has any real depth. Depth is added with the ability to manipulate the situation.

With my current system I can have challenges where the monsters have all of the odds in their favor. Better to hit. Better damage. Better defense. Better health. More of them. They can still lose though because players can play the game better.

The other problem is the rules become more complex. I am shooting for less complex and more depth. What you are suggesting is more complex/less depth/more realistic. Realism is what I am throwing out the window.

I don't need an intelligent system. I need an easy to understand and quick to implement (by the players) system.

I don't want this game to be D&D4E. That game breaks down to simple math almost every time. You can just calculate monster and charter DPR (damage per round) and determine the winner a head of time.

Let's look at checkers. Checkers works because you can force your opponent to do something they don't want to do. Forced jumping is what gives checkers all of its depth. Without forced jumping the game loses all most all of its depth. I guess you can say I am trying to make a forced jump mechanic in the game so that players can win battles that would other wise be mathematically improbable to win.

Corsaire
Corsaire's picture
Offline
Joined: 06/27/2013
Somewhere communication has

Somewhere communication has been unsuccessful. Good luck.

czman
Offline
Joined: 03/26/2013
I am a putz, sorry. I think

I am a putz, sorry.

I think what you typed is can be modified. Thanks.

What I am thinking now is to add numbers to the pieces. The monsters would have "1" facing forward. The numbers would go clockwise on some monsters and counter clockwise on others. Monsters would attack the closest enemy and in a tie user the lower number to determine.

It is easy. It is all present on the board. By having some monsters that go one way and others that go another it will allow me more depth when building the encounters.

I think I am going to add that the monsters will choose to attack directly across before catty corner too. I think that will cover everything. I have to run some scenarios.

Thanks for the input. I apologize for miss reading what you typed. The health/armor bit threw me off.

Corsaire
Corsaire's picture
Offline
Joined: 06/27/2013
No worries. I think you've

No worries. I think you've got it; the numbering solution sounds elegant.

StagCutlery
StagCutlery's picture
Offline
Joined: 06/02/2013
Corsaire wrote:Why not give

Corsaire wrote:
Why not give "rational" monster thinking decisions. Like: a ranged monster will attack the character with the lightest armor it can reach. A melee monster will take the least number of moves to engage a character and will attack the character with the lowest current hit points, in a tie it attacks to the right. If the movement is the same, it will choose to move in the direction it is facing.

I was actually going to say give your monsters behaviors, like an AI script. Vary it up, so that not all ranged characters have the same behaviors; one goblin archer likes to target priests, while another likes to shoot at lightly armored heroes. If the behavior cannot be resolved, it moves and attacks like a normal character.

Hates Magic - targets wizards first
Brute - Targets lowest HP
Defender - Defends lowest Defense monster from attacks.

You could even color code the life bar to give them more behaviors at varying levels of health, like a monster is aggressive until it has 3 Life left, then it plays defensively. This would force the players to move around the board until they're in the most advantageous position to maximize damage and minimize loss.

Just thought I'd throw that out there despite shooting down the quote above.

Syndicate content


forum | by Dr. Radut