My question is pretty simple: How many choices should a player? The rest of the post will be background to the question, and quite slow about getting to the main point.
I’ve been messing around with a 2-player competitive game focusing on tactical gladiator-themed combat. Probably a tired genre, but I’m having fun thinking about it, and that is the true reason to create games.
Each player is represented by a 6x6 of a gladiator. His head, torso, left arm, right arm, and legs all occupy different areas of the grid, along with about 16 empty spaces. Players share a set of “location” dice (D6) that determine where their blows land on their opponent (a la Flash Point: Fire Rescue). Statistically, 16/36 spaces are misses, 2/36 are head blows, 6/36 are torso, 6/36 are one arm or the other, and 6/36 are legs.
Players’ location is tracked relatively in one-dimension, Range. Range of 0 implies the players are grappling, 1 is normal hand-to-hand distance, 2 is just out of sword reach, 3 is around 10 feet, and 4 is anything greater than 20 feet. Players start at a Range of 4 to each other.
Each player also has a set of 4 “Strength” dice, each of which is a unique D6. They represent a type of blow. For example, the “focused” die has generally higher rolls (2,2,2,3,3,4), while the “weak” die has generally lower rolls (1,1,1,2,2,3). The “wild” die is on both ends (1,1,1,1,4,4), and the “normal” die is in the middle (1,1,2,2,3,3). When attacking, a player may roll one of the 4 strength dice to determine how hard their blow lands. Location and strength dice are rolled simultaneously. A player may only roll a particular strength die one time; to bring any and all strength dice back into play, that player must rest for a turn.
Players start out with a random weapon and piece of armor (or perhaps they will select certain famous warriors, each of which has a particular combination). Armors come in 4 flavors: no armor, cloth, leather, or bronze. Armor can cover up 5 areas: head, torso, legs, arms, and a shield. The first four cover up their specific areas, while the shield is a ‘special’ form of armor that can be used in other ways, in addition to protecting one’s arm.
The two players simultaneously hack away at each other (or perform other actions) until one reaches 10 damage points. Damage points are accumulated by taking the difference from the strength of a landed blow and the armor at the location of the blow. Armor simply serves to decrease the damage received at an area. Regions like head and arms start to incur penalties when damaged too much.
Finally, each player starts out with an identical set of cards, each of which displays a certain action. They each secretly select a card and then simultaneously reveal it. Order of resolution goes : Utility, Moves, and then Attacks.
Here are a few ideas:
---Attack-type Cards---
-Thrust (roll location and strength dice; add +1 to strength)
-Slash (roll location and strength dice; blow affects hit location and adjacent location to the left.
-Throw (roll location and strength dice; you must have a Range >2 to play; you must have wield a Throwable weapon)
-
---Move-type Cards---
-Charge (roll no dice; decrease range by 1; if Range results in 0, roll a strength die; if strength die is 4, opponent’s attack is canceled and he may not play any Attack-type cards next turn; if strength die is 3 or 2, opponent’s attack is canceled; if strength die is 1, no effect.
-Retreat (roll no dice; increase range by 1; return all played strength dice into play)
-Dodge (roll no dice; you may force your opponent to reroll either Location die one time; the second result must be kept)
---Utility-type Cards---
-Trip (roll no dice; if an opponent plays a Move-type Card, his movement is canceled and he may not play a Move-type Card next turn)
-Blind (roll no dice; Range must be 1; Opponent must roll a wild strength die if his action requires a strength die, even if his wild strength die has already been played)
Any many more…
So here is the meat of my post: I could come up with a bunch more actions, but I can tell that I may be getting into a problem area if I’m forcing the player to choose among 20 different possible options. The goal ultimately is to have player mostly trying to inflict the most damage to each other, but still have enough leeway/options to try other tactics as well. Given what you have read so far, how many different actions cards/options do you really think I need to keep the game simple yet deep enough to retain interest over several playings? At one level, the decision is as simple as “do I attack this round or not”, while at the other level, it becomes “which of these 20 moves should I try to play”.
Any thoughts about my question? Also, what do you think about the game itself?
