One thing I have been unsure of about the Wizard's Dungeon design was determining how many actions a player gets on their turn: should every just have a set number of actions or should the number be variable? I'm not sure how committed I am to it but I did think think of a unique way (at least in application) to determine the number of actions a player gets on their turn. Basically it is determined by playing a quick solitaire dice game where you try to get the most runs and straights in a cluster.
To play this mini game the player gets nine numbered dice at the beginning of their turn and rolls them. An action point is gained for every run or straight of three dice the player can put together but they must branch off each other. In the example I have pictured (ignore the colors) the cluster is worth three actions with the 2-3-4, 2-2-2, and 1-2-3. The two 6's were left over. If one of the 6's had been a 5 then the 5 and 6 could have branched off the 4. In Yatzee fashion the dice can be rolled a total of three times. In order for a die to be used in the cluster it must be part of a straight or run with every die that it touches. The most actions that could be gain are 6 if the nine dice can be arranged in a 3x3 grid.
Thematically these could be *enchanted* dice the Wizard gave his apprentices as part of the dungeon challenge and allow them to shift the dungeon blocks, get charges of the different color magics, cast spells, etc.
I like this idea but I wonder if it would feel just sort of tacked on.
Thoughts?
Comments
A few questions please Is
A few questions please
Is this mini game played every turn?
How long does the mini game take to play?
How many turns are there?
Dralius wrote:A few questions
Is this mini game played every turn?
How long does the mini game take to play?
How many turns are there?
Yep the mini game is played at the beginning or every turn and it should take only a couple of minutes-like a turn in Yatzee.
As far as how many turns there are per game I don't know yet since I haven't been able to do an actual playtest yet.
I have a concern about how
I have a concern about how much longer this process will make the game take, and that player might get tired of the mini game if it is to prevalent of an element. Although the mini game sounds clever it may not be the best thing for the game.
I suggest running test games with it, with a fixed number of actions and with a random number of actions tracking game lengths and player’s perceptions of whether it was overly long or not.
Dralius wrote:I have a
I suggest running test games with it, with a fixed number of actions and with a random number of actions tracking game lengths and player’s perceptions of whether it was overly long or not.
I agree with your concern and will have to test. I could always scale it down to a single die roll on a die that has two 2s, three 3s and one 4 to get that variability.