Home

Lost Adventures

Wed, 10/01/2008 - 19:47 — jwarrend

"Lost Adventures" is an Indiana Jones themed game that I am designing in collaboration with SiskNY.

I'm attaching the rulebook to the game here for potential playtesters to be able to access easily.

Comments

Tue, 01/06/2009 - 03:47 — apeloverage

is it really

trademarked to you?

Mon, 01/05/2009 - 17:59 — jwarrend

Ambiguity

I mentioned in my last post that one of the big changes that I'm most unsure about is the removal of the system whereby you get "check marks" from visiting "theme cards", and the total number of check marks in a category equals the level of your clue; the replacement system, where you actually acquire theme cards and must have them in your possession to get a clue seems to hold some thematic promise -- for some of the cards. And I think it's simpler, which is a good thing. But for some cards, it wouldn't really make sense thematically; would you really be able to drag Toht (bad guy from Raiders) with you all the way from Istanbul to Bangkok just so you can check a clue using his knowledge? And you certainly can't carry a library around with you...

What I like about removal of the check mark system is that cards can have other effects -- eg maybe they give you powerups or let you move for free or whatever. And generally speaking, these cards will be the ones that get those special effects instead of clue symbols. But if the game had BOTH some cards that gave you check marks, and some that you had to carry around for the symbols, that might be the best of both worlds thematically. But it's more clunky mechanically.

So there are at least 2 different ways we can do things just in this system and several possible hybrids between them. And this on top of the other changes we're contemplating in other areas. This, I find, is one of the biggest challenges of designing a game with limited playtesting throughput -- there's an ambiguity as to which will ultimately be the best system and it's hard to iterate over all the possibilities. You have to trust your gut to a certain extent and just keep the paths you didn't follow in your back pocket should the system you chose not pan out. With this system, I feel like they're all close enough mechanically and conceptually, and different enough gameplay-wise, that hopefully a few permutations will be sufficient to pick a best approach.

Tue, 01/06/2009 - 02:11 — sedjtroll

Tokens

Instead of check marks, you could give players tokens (effectively the same thing) symbolizing info... the up side of that could be that you could make them a kind of currency - maybe for certain things you have to know something about certain other things, and to get the big clue you need to 'spend' the tokens you got learning about it.

On the other hand, maybe it makes more thematic sense that you don't actually give up anything - as you don't lose knowledge once you gain it.

Fri, 01/02/2009 - 09:37 — jwarrend

The big changes

I mentioned previously some potentially big changes we're contemplating for the next version of the game.

The game is all about discovering a lost temple and traversing it to recover a lost artifact that is hidden inside it. Presently, the game is built around an information system whereby the game "knows" the solution and players try to discover it as the game progresses. There are several "solution cards" revealing aspects of the solution (eg where is the lost temple, what challenges will be faced in the temple) and there are 3 levels of clues on each. As you visit "theme cards" (eg Marion Ravenwood, Henry Jones Sr, etc) you get to check off boxes on your notepad indicating that you have been given information about a particular category. When you go to read a clue, the level of clue you get to look at is given by the number of boxes you've checked off in that category. This works pretty well and will more or less be preserved.

Presently, the theme cards are all laid out around the board at the start of the game, and by traveling to the various cities you get to visit the various cards. There are "enemy cubes" placed in the various cities, and when you arrive in a city, you must face a challenge whose difficulty is equal to the number of cubes in that city. So the information gathering phase ultimately becomes a route-planning game where the topography of the board changes as cubes are added and removed, and where race elements (overall, first one to get the artifact "wins") influence the way you plan your route so as to be maximally efficient.

There isn't a strong element of "clue following". It's more that you know roughly what quantity of information each level of clue will provide (once you've played a few times, anyway) and it's just a matter of how much information you can/will get before you make a run at the temple. So it's a sort of risk assumption game in that sense.

In the new version, I'm envisioning adding a layer to the information game to add some light clue-following. Most of the theme cards do not start on the board; instead, several are associated with their own location solution card (the same as the cards we use for the location of the temple), and to find a theme card, you have to first get a lead to that card's whereabouts (by looking at a clue on the front of the card). What I potentially like about this is that it shakes up the route-planning and makes it harder for players to all follow essentially the same strategy.

Another change is to replace the challenge system with a deck of challenge cards. The front of the card will have a scenario-appropriate scene on it (eg in a "major city" you'll see a university or library, in a Nazi stronghold you'll see the Nazi sub base or Brunwald Castle, etc) and several possible challenges the player can face, and the outcome of each. The outcomes can be things like taking enemy cubes (as "captives"), getting a lead to a theme card, etc. The visual element hopefully sells the idea that you're visiting an actual location and facing an actual assemblage of enemies. What I like from a design standpoint is that the cards act as a sort of "hub" from which several actions are enabled without needing a separate turn mechanic for each one; it keeps the turn options minimal, which helps with learning and decisions, but still permits a diversity of things to actually happen (albeit with some randomness tossed in).

The other subtle but big change comes in the temple. Presently, the temple is composed of a 3x3 grid of "temple cards", which each show several rooms and which each contain 3 numbered spaces representing the challenges and traps in the temple. There's a complicated system whereby the solution card tells you what type of challenge to place on each numbered space, but I've never been happy with explaining it. The simpler approach is just to have several stacks of tiles, and each stack has a distribution of challenge types. The solution card then simply tells you which STACK to place on challenge spaces (they're all the same now). What I like is that it simplifies gameplay AND adds some uncertainty to the temple -- you can't know that you'll face a Fight challenge on that #1 space over there; you know there are some Fight challenges in the temple but not where they are. As a designer, I really like changes like this that both reduce complexity AND make gameplay more interesting.

The one change I'm really not yet sure about is to revamp how clue gathering works. Instead of getting check marks, you can take theme cards as "allies" and when you go to read a clue, the level you get to look at is given by the number of symbols in that category you have among cards you hold as allies. What I like is that it makes route planning even more important -- you have to find the cards you want to acquire as allies -- and also gives a context for players to try to steal things from each other OR to help each other. I like that it removes the (minor) complexity of the check marks and replaces them with something more thematically concrete. It also means that theme cards can have a broader range of effects; right now they all contribute information but with the "allies" system some could instead contribute powerups and stuff, which promotes theming and player diversification. So there are some potential upsides but I don't know if it will ultimately be very interesting or not. It would be easy enough to revert to the check mark system while preserving some of the other changes.

I hope to run some of these ideas through a solo test soon and a live test if they seem to pan out.

Fri, 01/02/2009 - 09:09 — jwarrend

Contemplating some big changes

I haven't really posted very much about this project since the site move, but I'll comment on a couple of things we've been discussing if it's of interest to anyone.

In its present form (rulebook linked above), the game seems a be a Euro game that takes about 2 hours to play and is more or less successful at capturing some of the excitement of the films while still presenting the players with some interesting decisions. As a designer, I'm happy with the game's mechanics because they provide a solid infrastructure on which we can build different scenarios that feel different and therefore further extend the replay of the game. But I think the game is at an interesting crossroads. On the one hand, some of our feedback on the game has been that it's too long for what it is (a relatively light, simple Euro game). The response is that it's an "experience" game (like Fury of Dracula) that justifies its length not from the depth of its gameplay so much as from the enjoyment of the experience of playing. But then on the other hand, there are concerns that it doesn't go far enough in this direction -- that some of its systems are too dry and abstract. As an example, during the game you face "challenges" in several categories -- luck, wits, fight, escape -- and you must pay "adventure cards" to surmount these challenges. These work well mechanically but the idea of paying cards to exceed some threshold doesn't exactly fire the imagination -- the player is left to fill in most of the gaps for himself. And that's ok, but it's an open question whether the game is pitched to the right audience.

It seems that there are two options. The first is to streamline the game considerably, to get the game length down to something like 75 minutes. I think there's broad agreement that cutting too much out of the game would only make it more dry and probably suck most of the life out of the game. I do think it can be made shorter and punchier but maybe it doesn't get all the way there. An alternative is to go in the opposite direction and make the game an even more full-blown, "Fantasy Flight" style game with lots of chrome, lots of components, lots of rules. This has to be done judiciously; it's important that additions of complexity serve the overall goal of making a fun, playable game, and don't force the player to jump through mechanical hoops simply in service to some vague goal of making the experience immersive. And the game also has a fair number of slightly fiddly rules at the moment, so any additions have to be compensated with reductions in complexity elsewhere, if possible.

I thought it was at least worth a try to do the latter, and so we're contemplating some changes to the game that seek to bring out the theming more convincingly. I'm not yet sure whether it makes the game more thematic or whether it's just complex in a different way. I'll talk about some of the details in a separate post.

I'm nervous about making big changes to something that is working pretty well, but it's easy enough to revert if necessary. And sometimes, you get stuck in a region of local stability, where things work pretty well but there's little potential for improvement -- to find that global maximum, you need to do something more sweeping.

Fri, 01/02/2009 - 12:40 — sedjtroll

Nice to hear about the progress!

I always love to hear how games I've been interested in over the years are progressing - and Lost Adventures in particular.

I've been playing a LOT of Battlestar Galactica lately, which is a very immersive Fantasy Flight game which I think is very successful thematically. One down side is that it takes 2.5-3.5 hours to play. But most of the time it's fun that hole time. I'm inclined to believe that Lost Adventures fits that style and category of game. I'm interested to see how it plays out that way.

I'd recommend picking up a copy of BSG, especially if you've watched the show. Play that a bit and see how many bit's it's got, and how fiddley it is, while still being "acceptable".

- Seth

Fri, 01/02/2009 - 13:01 — jwarrend

Thanks Seth! It's premature

Thanks Seth! It's premature to call it "progress" but hopefully it will lead in that direction. As you know, I actually like the Euro feel of the current game but I think all of us who have a stake in the game (you included, of course) realize that nudging it in a more strongly themed direction could be a good thing. I haven't played BSG but it sounds interesting. I do think there's a line we'll have to draw; for example, I tried reading the Android rulebook and got about halfway through before I was overwhelmed. There is just too much going on in that one for my tastes. So I think we'll have to strike a balance between creating atmosphere and playability. Happily, with IJ, the action IS the atmosphere, so as long as the gameplay is lively and the momentum builds as the game progresses, it should have the right feel.

I will say that the only thing I haven't figured out how to capture in the gameplay is the sense of humor from the films; I don't entirely know how to build humor or irony into game mechanics yet. So, you can't have everything. But I think/hope we can get close!

-Jeff

Syndicate content