Skip to Content
 

Prysm Crystals v1.4

2 replies [Last post]
Anonymous

Thanks to feedback about my game I got from this site, I've made some changes to the rules based on this feedback. It plays much better now. Thanks for the design guidance folks!

The rules document looks great in MS Word and html format, but I can't figure out how to upload the Word document or the html to this site, so I'll copy-paste the plain text. Appologies that the resulting formatting makes it hard to read.

Here are the new rules.

The Prism Crystals

Ages 5 and up. 2 – 4 players.

© Ken Stevens 2003 v.1.4

GOAL

This is a cooperative game where players work together to collect six crystals. Each player moves their pawn around the board defeating monsters and collecting treasures.

CONTENTS

4 pawns

1 dice

23 red monster pieces (including 2 horses) ranging in strength from a skeleton (+0 attack bonus, [2] armour) to a dragon (+4 attack bonus, [7] armour). See below for the full list.

30 red scar pieces

23 orange treasure pieces:

2 helms

2 shields

2 breastplates

2 boots

3 +1 swords

1 +2 fire sword

1 +3 thunder sword

4 treasure chests

6 crystals: red, yellow, blue, orange, green, purple

61 hexagonal tiles:

27 yellow “field” tiles (6 marked with a red “X”, 1 marked with blue house)

20 green “forest” tiles (9 marked with a red “X”)

14 white “mountain” tiles (8 marked with a red “X”).

4 equipment cards with 9 treasure slots:

1. helm

2. sword

3. breastplate

4. shield

5. boots

four miscellaneous slots at bottom

PREPARATION

Build the board.
Place the yellow tile marked with the blue house in the middle of the table.
Shuffle the rest of the tiles and place 4 random tiles to the north of the house and 4 random tiles to the south. You should now have a line of 9 tiles with adjacent edges touching.
Fill in rows of eight random tiles to either side of this line. Then place rows of 7, 6, and 5 respectively. Your map should now look like a large hexagon with 5 tiles along each edge.
Place treasures and monsters.
Shuffle the orange treasure pieces and place one face down on each red “X”.
Shuffle the red monster pieces and place one face down on top of each orange treasure piece.
Place pawns on the blue house tile.
Each player takes an empty equipment card.

PLAYING THE GAME

Each turn consists of four phases.

Movement.
Each player can spend 3 movement points. If they have a horse they can spend 6 movement points. It costs 1 movement point to enter a field tile, 2 points to enter a forest tile, and 3 points to enter a mountain tile. To make it easy for the kids, you have three choices:
i. Three field.

ii. One mountain.

iii. One field and one forest.

If you enter a tile with a monster in it, your movement for the turn is over and you must encounter the monster.
You don’t have to spend all your movement points if you don’t want to.
Encounter.
When your pawn is in the same tile as a monster, you must encounter the monster. You have a choice: you can either flee or attack. If you opt to flee, roll the dice. If the value on the dice is greater than the attack bonus of the monster, you succeed in fleeing and your pawn is moved back to the hospital without penalty. If the value on the dice is lower than or equal to the attack bonus of the monster, then it catches you and attacks you first. If you choose to attack instead of fleeing, then you get to attack first.
Battle consists of alternating attacks between you and the monster. The battle is over when one of you is defeated.
To attack, roll the dice. If you have a magic sword on your equipment card, then add the attack bonus for that sword. If the total amount is equal to or greater than the armour of the monster, then you defeat the monster and the monster is eliminated from the game. If you roll a “1” you always miss, and if you roll a “6” you always win. (See combat table below.)
Your base armour is 3. For each piece of additional armour you are wearing, add 1. (Armour in your miscellaneous slots doesn’t count.) Thus your armour will range from 3 to 7.
When the monster attacks you, have another player roll the dice for the monster. Add the dice roll to the monster’s attack bonus. If that value is equal to or greater than your armour, it defeats you. If the monster rolls a “1” it always misses, and if it rolls a “6” it always wins. (See combat table below.)
If you are defeated, roll the dice to see if and where you get a scar:
i. head

ii. sword arm

iii. chest

iv. shield arm

v. legs

vi. no scar

Place a scar piece on the appropriate slot on your equipment board to indicate the where you got the scar. If you already had a scar there, you don’t get a new scar. If you had an orange treasure piece in that slot, you loose that treasure. Otherwise, pick any orange treasure piece from your equipment card to loose. Move your pawn back to the “hospital” (blue house) to heal. The treasure piece you lost is placed face up beneath the monster. If you have no orange treasure pieces on your equipment card, then you don’t need to give anything up. Note that swords, armour, crystals, and treasure chests are all considered treasure pieces. A horse is not considered to be a treasure piece. Leave the read monster piece that defeated you face up.

Collecting treasure.
If you defeat the monster, remove it from the board, and collect all treasure that was beneath the monster. (The monster may have collected other treasures from winning earlier battles.)
You can choose to either place the treasure on your equipment card or discard the treasure piece from the game (except for crystals – see below).
If you’re carrying something you don’t want, you can discard it to make room for the new treasure you just picked up.
Only a sword treasure piece may go in a sword slot, a helm in the helm slot, and the same is true for shields, breastplates, and boots. You may, however, carry spare swords and armour in your miscellaneous slots.
Sharing.
If you end a turn on the same tile as another player, you may optionally trade any items on your respective equipment cards between you. You can not continue moving after sharing.

SPECIAL RULES

Crystals

When a crystal is turned face-up for the first time, it magically heals one scar from one player. The player who turned the crystal face-up decides which scar gets healed. Crystals may only be placed in the miscellaneous slots. If you pick up a crystal, and there is no room for it, you must drop something else to make room for it. Treasure pieces dropped in this way are removed from the game. If you drop a horse, it stays there face up for someone else to find. If you are already carrying 4 crystals, then the crystal you found moves to the nearest face-up monster. If there are no face-up monsters, it moves to the nearest monster. If there are no monsters left on the board, it moves to the nearest. When calculating "nearest", ignore terrain (i.e. field, forest and mountain are all considered equivalent). Once all six crystals are found and being carried, the game is over.

Horses

If the monster you flip over is a horse, then you have the option of either leaving the horse face up on the tile or placing it onto one of your four miscellaneous slots on your equipment card. If you have no room, then you may optionally discard one item from the miscellaneous slots to make room for the horse. You may “carry” two horses if you want (e.g. to bring one to a friend). Horses give you 6 movement points per turn instead of 3. If you pick up an abandoned horse, your movement stops once you pick up the horse.

GAME END

The game ends when all six crystals are being carried by the equipment cards.

COMBAT TABLE

For your convenience, here is a table for resolving battles. Find the attack bonus along the left and the armour along the top. The attacker needs to roll the indicated number to win.

Pieces of armour:
none
1 pc.
2 pc.
3 pc.
4 pc.

[0]
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]

+0
2
2
2
3
4
5
6
6

+1
2
2
2
2
3
4
5
6

+2
2
2
2
2
2
3
4
5

+3
2
2
2
2
2
2
3
4

+4
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
3

LIST OF MONSTERS

Here is the current list of monsters we are playing with. Note that we picked the monsters from my old Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual and so if this game were ever made commercial, copyrighted monsters would need to be renamed.

Name
Attack bonus
Armour

Horse

Horse

Skeleton
+0
2

Skeleton
+0
2

Goblin
+0
3

Goblin
+0
3

Rat
+0
3

Troglodyte
+1
3

Troglodyte
+1
3

Lizard Man
+3
3

Gnoll
+0
4

Axe Beak
+1
4

Ogre
+1
4

Ghoul
+2
4

Scorpion
+2
4

Stirge
+4
4

Manticore
+1
5

Hill Giant
+2
5

Troll
+3
5

Purple Worm
+4
5

Ghost
+0
6

Storm Giant
+2
6

Dragon
+4
7

hpox
Offline
Joined: 12/31/1969
Prysm Crystals v1.4

Wow, looking great!

Here's the Word document : http://bgdf.com/files/user_games/The%20Prism%20Crystals.doc

FastLearner
Offline
Joined: 12/31/1969
Prysm Crystals v1.4

It's shaping up nicely, good work.

I'll just suggest again (as I did in the other post) the idea of creating something where the players can "compete" against their previous efforts, encouraging them to come up with better strategies from play to play.

Syndicate content


forum | by Dr. Radut