Skip to Content
 

Designing a semi hard core strategy rpg sort of a board game... (a gamers game)

13 replies [Last post]
JumpingJupiter
JumpingJupiter's picture
Offline
Joined: 08/24/2008

This my first experience designing a game. The idea came from playing TCGs and other games revolving around the "collectible" premise (heroclix for instance). My goal with the game is to offer an experience that is involved like TCGs but ultimately self-contained (all in one box but with enough variables and game variations to satisfy gamers). My hop is to create a game that can be enjoyed reasonably instantly yet reward the studious player. Semi-immediate appeal but with considerable depth. I'd say it's about on par with the more advanced versions of risk as far as mechanics go but the 20 or so customizable characters create more variables. If I had to put in in one sentence: "This game will give gamers a thrill but it will give geeks an orgasm!"

I have a few questions as to what I can expect as a designer of this game and am open to any input you feel might be helpful.

#1: I've put 100+ hours into it so far and I'm beginning to see the light at the end of the gaming tunnel. I can tell I'm far from finished but I feel I have solid core mechanics and rules (having had it play tested a dozen or so times by a revolving door of players). How many hours should I expect to put into this until I get to the "polishing off" and prototype building/branding phase? I do have a very rough prototype built but I'm talking about a close to finished product prototype.

#2: What other games you know might be in a similar vein as this one I'm working on (ie. rewards aggression, customizable characters, fairly advanced strategy, not collectible)?

#3: Coming from a design background (print and identity design) I know that staying focused on the original objectives is important. My objectives are, reward aggression, provide a relatively simple core game mechanic, encourage creative use of game mechanics. How many goals are too many goals?

#4: What do you feel should be the designers top priority? Do you designing the mechanics around the theme (bottom up design)? Or do you write a theme to fit the mechanics (top down design, which is what I'm favoring thus far)? Would you consider adding a game element that might complicate the rules but create an exciting payoff? Would you risk alienating a certain demographic in order to appeal more effectively to another (accessible vs. involved)?

#5: I have found that play testers' comments fit in one of three categories, "I like it but something is off about this specific thing(s)", "I love it!", "I think it would be nice if". How do you differentiate from a play tester who does not enjoy the game because he/she may not be part of your target demographic from a gamer with a concern that might be representative of your target market? And how do you decide if a certain piece of feedback should ultimately be ignored? (you can't please everyone).

#6: Do you participate in play testing sessions or supervise?

#7: the game utilizes properties from other entertainment media (movies, TV, comics). What's involved in pitching a game with these sorts of licensing issues? Should it be pitched to publishers in the same way one would pitch a game with completely original properties?

I know it's a lot of questions! I'm very excited to have found this arena to learn from you and hopefully contribute in some useful way also.

Thank you in advance for discussing my questions! :D

Dralius
Dralius's picture
Offline
Joined: 07/26/2008
2C

I can’t answer all of your questions; here is my 2 cents on the others.

#1: That light is a Will o Wisp. I can’t tell you how long this game will take but I know that often simpler ideas take years to develop and polish.

#3: As long as the goals don’t conflict go ahead and have several. Keep in mind that often your base concept and the way you try to implement it creates something unexpected. If it works keep it even if it doesn’t match what you had envisioned. Remember that the primary goal should be to produce a good game.

#4: Everybody goes about it differently. For me I let the theme drive the rules keeping in mind what my intended audience is. Not every game is for everyone and I never try to create the universal pastime.

#5: For me it’s just gut feeling, I include what I think will work after evaluating the testers comments.

#6: In the early stages of development I participate then after that I prefer to watch the game so I can get a read on the player’s emotional state. Of course there is blind testing that happen on occasion but I find this less useful as comments can’t be put in context with what happened in the test.

JumpingJupiter
JumpingJupiter's picture
Offline
Joined: 08/24/2008
.

Thank you for the input Dralius. You've substantiated a lot of what I could intuitively sense. Nice to know that I'm not completely lost here :D

Meddler
Meddler's picture
Offline
Joined: 08/05/2008
I'll take a stab at my

I'll take a stab at my thoughts on some of those points:

1. As already said time to finish is extremely difficult to predict I've found particularly if it's your first time designing with certain mechanics. While in theory it's nice to get the major mechanics sorted, then tweak the minor ones I've had cases where it's only after tweaking various minor elements to perfection that a flaw finally emerges with a base rule requiring a substantial overhaul of the whole game to at least some degree.

4. Theme or Mechanics is very much personal taste to my eyes, my own approach has simply been to focus on whatever it is that attracts me to want to make/play the game in the first place - am I trying to capture a particular feel, play around with the interaction of various elements, tell a tale of some form or something else again? Ultimately whichever approach you're tending towards (spectrum rather than two distinct points after all) the base question is simply going to be 'is this fun?'. Identifying the path to fun's never that simple admittedly but it sounds like you've got a fairly clear vision of what your end product should capture so I'd just focus on whatever delivers that result.

I'm also a big fan of a 'play to your strengths' approach - no game is ever going to suit everyone so far better I feel to have something that 20% of gamers are really grabbed and enthused by than something that 100% feel's ok but nothing to get excited about.

5. Haven't got a good answer here really, some advice that's been given on these boards before though is simply not to rush and make changes based off every piece of feedback. If a comment crops up you're uncertain about no need to immediately act on or discard it, simply make a point of watching out for the same thing in future.

6. I've found a roughly 50/50 blend of play/watch is my ideal choice. The actual playing choice allows you to work through the decisions to be made yourself which is invaluable I feel. Watching however allows you to get a wider perspective some of the time and avoids distorting the game when playing with a bunch of inexperienced players. Given how important people's introduction to any new game is in terms of rules learning/fun had a clean start's something I'd argue's very important to give substantial testing without yourself involved to explain every rule/prevent people from making basic mistakes of play/leading the field.

7. No personal experience with licensed materials, as I understand it though a very large number of publishers simply won't touch anything that involves acquiring license rights from other media forms simply due to the hassle and cost for a small business like themselves. Larger companies are therefore the obvious choice, particularly if they already produce games based off other media/might already hold the rights. Using licensed materials does substantially narrow down your options (though obviously represents a substantial drawcard for players depending on the intelectual property chosen).

Zzzzz
Zzzzz's picture
Offline
Joined: 06/20/2008
JumpingJupiter wrote: #1:

JumpingJupiter wrote:

#1: I've put 100+ hours into it so far and I'm beginning to see the light at the end of the gaming tunnel. I can tell I'm far from finished but I feel I have solid core mechanics and rules (having had it play tested a dozen or so times by a revolving door of players). How many hours should I expect to put into this until I get to the "polishing off" and prototype building/branding phase? I do have a very rough prototype built but I'm talking about a close to finished product prototype.

The normal thought is that a game is never truly *finished*. Chances are your will continually find something to tweak or change over time. So you need to figure out a way to determine when the game represents what you originally set out to accomplish. If the game plays well and you have few concerns, you can deem yourself *done enough* to continue on to another point in the design process. That might be a better prototype, that might be a few submission to publishers, or it might just be more playtesting to solidify your stance that it is indeed *done*.

JumpingJupiter wrote:

#2: What other games you know might be in a similar vein as this one I'm working on (ie. rewards aggression, customizable characters, fairly advanced strategy, not collectible)?

Well depending on how you define *customizable characters* there are various games out that do used a *role* or *characteristics* that define a player (or the players abilities etc). Off hand I would suggest you look at games like BattleLore or other games deemed to contain Variable Player Powers (over at www.boardgamegeek.com). Many of these games might not allow *true* customization, but might be the closest area to consider outside of the normal rpg.

JumpingJupiter wrote:

#3: Coming from a design background (print and identity design) I know that staying focused on the original objectives is important. My objectives are, reward aggression, provide a relatively simple core game mechanic, encourage creative use of game mechanics. How many goals are too many goals?

Had to read this one twice since the word goals seems to send me directly to actual *game goals*, not design goals. To put it simply, the goals you include should be bounded by what you are attempting to simulate (at least in my opinion). If the overall game is to resemble an epic adventure with many deadly battles. I would make sure that anything I designed help to simulate the feeling or environment. So for me I might define my goals differently, so this is just something for you to think about.

JumpingJupiter wrote:

#4: What do you feel should be the designers top priority? Do you designing the mechanics around the theme (bottom up design)? Or do you write a theme to fit the mechanics (top down design, which is what I'm favoring thus far)? Would you consider adding a game element that might complicate the rules but create an exciting payoff? Would you risk alienating a certain demographic in order to appeal more effectively to another (accessible vs. involved)?

This is hard, the priority for a designer might change from game to game, day to day. Initially most designers start out with the idea of creating a game that THEY (and maybe friends/family) will enjoy. So your top priority might be to create games that are in some way interesting to you. For example I tend to think about designs that involve geography or ancient history because I like to make part of my game design process a learning process for myself. So in the end even if my game sucks, I hopefully learned something new about some worldly history. As an example I recently posted an open topic about games and the Dead Sea. Because I was interested in researching that part of the world and the history surrounding it.

I tend to design games from both theme and mechanic directions. For example I had an idea about a community resource depletion mechanic. So I decided to figure a theme that would fit that idea. Though again in the case of the Dead Sea post, I thought about a theme and looked into ideas that I could turn into mechanics.

For me I tend to remove mechanics more often than add. In general I tend to toss *everything* in and scale back to just the things that are needed to simulate the environment/theme I attempt to portrait in the game.

As for risk of alienating a demographic, you should not even worry about this. No matter what subject/theme/mechanics you use some group of players will avoid your game.

JumpingJupiter wrote:

#5: I have found that play testers' comments fit in one of three categories, "I like it but something is off about this specific thing(s)", "I love it!", "I think it would be nice if". How do you differentiate from a play tester who does not enjoy the game because he/she may not be part of your target demographic from a gamer with a concern that might be representative of your target market? And how do you decide if a certain piece of feedback should ultimately be ignored? (you can't please everyone).

I think you answered your own question here, you can't please everyone. So again you have to assess the *issue* with respect to what you had originally attempted to accomplish. If for instance a player disliked a specific customizable option on a character, you would have to determine if that option is valid or not for you game. Did the player dislike it because they did not understand it, did the player dislike it because it was broken, did the player dislike it because they used it at an sub-optimal time? These are all things you need to ask yourself on each *issue*.

JumpingJupiter wrote:

#6: Do you participate in play testing sessions or supervise?

The basic idea is participate until you reach a point in your design that you feel that it is ready for *blind* testing. This is the point that you have a group of people that can read the rules and attempt to play it without any of your help. Obviously you might initial *be around* and watch the game play to see what happens, if the players get confused about rules or mechanics, etc. And usually I try to just take notes and address them at another time. Of course if there is a *big* issue I help resolve it, take a note and let the players continue on.

JumpingJupiter wrote:

#7: the game utilizes properties from other entertainment media (movies, TV, comics). What's involved in pitching a game with these sorts of licensing issues? Should it be pitched to publishers in the same way one would pitch a game with completely original properties?

This is a tough area, chances are you can pitch it with any theme, since most publishers will consider changing a theme 90% of the time. In the rare cases that the game really benefits from a licensed product, the publisher will most likely consider that benefit and resolve that issue if they desire to move forward with the licensing. Of course costs for something like LOTR might be too costly, but again it is easy to swap out a fantasy theme.

kodarr
Offline
Joined: 08/04/2008
Customizing characters

Check Fantasyflightgames.com for their game Descent. It has an online character builder that deals with race, class, abilities, and powers. Might give you some ideas.

apeloverage
Offline
Joined: 08/01/2008
#7.

I'd change your characters to non-copyrighted versions - maybe even change the theme altogether if you're worried about copyright issues. For example the Thing or the Hulk could easily become an ogre.

larienna
larienna's picture
Offline
Joined: 07/28/2008
Customizable stuff

The customizability is sometimes a problem. The problem is that when a game is customizable, it seems that the game cannot be played out of the box even if it can. it seems that the game is less atractive and when you get this situation, it limit you target audiance.

I have many game design where I could add customizability to add more depth to the game. But If I want to allow people to play "out of the box" I need to make sure that players can play without customizing anything. You give them the stuff and they play.

In A CCG, you can always creates deck in advance, or supply a default list of deck cards for playing without customization. Or according to your components, if you do not play with customization, you use another component.

For example, there was one of my game where the stats were placed on cards. Card would be used for customizing your stuff, but if you play out of the box, you just use a sheet with the stats.

This way, it does not feel like a customizable game if you play the basic version.

JumpingJupiter
JumpingJupiter's picture
Offline
Joined: 08/24/2008
thank you to everyone for your great input!

A few things.

The characters are playable right off the bat. All the characters have preset stats and abilities but the abilities and stats can be upgraded and new ones can be added after having been awarded points for successfully attacking. The customization happens on the fly. Also, players put together a team of several characters and right away put the smack down on opponents, it's one of the first things player's learn to do because points are awarded for aggression. The tone and general impetus of the game is invariably understood by testers within a few minutes of play. Each and every person who tested the game had an "ah! I see. Hurting my opponents is a good thing!" moment about 3-5 minutes in. As soon as one of them "gets it", the action clicks and players get lost in the game and are no longer concerned about the mechanics being more advanced. When it gets going players become voracious about learning the mechanics and their mental state goes from "gee, I don't remember what's allowed and not" to "ok how can I best exploit the rules to my advantage". The pay off is virtually immediate and the learning curve gradual and natural once basic idea is understood.

The only place I find player's get hung up is when they have to put their team of characters together. When it's time to do this they understand the rules well but they do not understand the game enough to wrap their minds around how to choose characters. But once they've played a few minutes (10-15) everyone says something like "crap, I should've taken that green guy there!" and "This character is cool but expensive to upgrade, if I had that red chick there, it would be a deadly combo". I'm not sure how to workaround that particular issue but I'm not overly concerned about it because every tester's first game results in them grabbing the character profiles to study them for the next game which more than once has been immediately following the first game.

Another question: When do you start thinking expansion pack? I already have several ideas for that. Also, do you sometimes reserve early ideas for expansions in order to keep the foundation game more bare bones and user friendly? I'm asking because some game elements with more cumbersome rules are now part of the game proper and I'm wondering if perhaps it might be better if they were left out of testing for now.

Thanks again for everyone's feedback!

JumpingJupiter
JumpingJupiter's picture
Offline
Joined: 08/24/2008
Well, another 400 hours later

Well, another 400 hours later and I'm done.

Except I'm not. I wanna improve the board itself. You guys know of various ways to apply a world map to a hexagonal board design?

Nix_
Nix_'s picture
Offline
Joined: 09/23/2009
Have you looked at the game

Have you looked at the game Heroscape at all? It seem sto have a number of things in common with your game.
As for customizable characters Fantasy Flights WoW board game is at the top of my list.

Is your world map, a map of the world with continents, or is it all land? Randomized, or prebuilt?

JumpingJupiter
JumpingJupiter's picture
Offline
Joined: 08/24/2008
I'll look at those for sure.

I'll look at those for sure. I might do an outer space theme with panets for fitting in a hexagon.

Another question though. Has anyone ever translated their game to software? Making a computer game? How does one go about doing that?

JackWriter
Offline
Joined: 11/07/2009
JumpingJupiter wrote:I'll

JumpingJupiter wrote:
I'll look at those for sure. I might do an outer space theme with panets for fitting in a hexagon.

Another question though. Has anyone ever translated their game to software? Making a computer game? How does one go about doing that?


Hi I am gonna become a game designer and I just got this rpg board game idea.I hope it sounds good.And criticize it if you can.Okay here goes.
Role Rampage rulebook

Contents
1.requirements
2.Getting started
3.Rules
The game must have the following requirements.
1.Warrior list
2.Demon list
3.Dragon list
4.Beast list
5.Wizard list
6.An hourglass
7.A monster dice
8.A Barrel dice
9.The item/weapon list
10. Monster cards
11.Curse cards
12.Question cards
13.Exp cards
14.Warriors/Beasts/Wizards/Demons and Dragon cards and
13.The game board

1.Getting started.
Players must have each of the following.
1.One assists and a King.
2.100 gold.
3.A barrel dice and
4.A guardian
3.Rules-.The players first roll the highest number of who plays first till last.The rules are simple.Kill the king by getting his/her weakness from his/her guardian who guards it.To do this you must increase your exp points by battling monsters at the monster blocks or defeat the opponents whether they have their king’s weaknesses or not.Each king has a different weakness.Players can get upto four assists.The assists must be atleast be two steps away from the King otherwise when in battle,the assist will not participate in the battle.If the barrel dice show the same numbers,the player can play again even though his turn is over.However if the player gets the same numbers again(for that round alone),he/she will be cursed and for every turn he/she picks a curse card and must obey it.
When buying weapons,assists can hold two weapons,items while the King can hold upto 10 items.If an assist is dead,the player must pay gold to the soul gate inorder to revive that assist.But if the King is killed without his weakness the soulgate can revive him free of charge.Some assists have magic that can be used to alter the entire board game.But doing that requires certain Aura that can be found in the stone of Aura and it will restore Aura by 5 for each turn the assist stays in the Stone of Aura.When the Hourglass time is up players will pick a question card for each and must obey it.Then the hourglass must be placed upside down to start for another round.To get gold players must either defeat monsters form the monster block.Monster cards must be shuffled and picked to fight a monster.To make a monster fight roll the monster dice to use the monsters attack for that number alone.Another way to get gold is by defeating other opponents whether you have their kings weaknesses or not.and take the amount of gold they received.During a battle no one can start their turn unless the battle ends.If the opponents are two steps away from themselves they have a choice if one of the players want to battle or not.Suppose a player finishes his turn and he is almost close to his/her opponent,he has a choice of starting a battle or not while the other one remains helpless!Players can get upto 4 assists and cannot get more than that.However if the player wishes to get a better assist he/she can head to the Slay mansion and put any one of his/her assists to be sacrificed in return of some gold.To level up pick the Exp cards and use math to add it for the whole group(except for other opponents!).The Exp required will be there next to the assist’s and king’s attacks.The king can perform a special move for each level he upgrades.The player who kills all the opponents with their kings weaknesses is the WINNER! Good luck and may the Gods help you.

jilocasin
Offline
Joined: 10/07/2009
start your own thread!

hey paarth alias jackwriter!

why don't you just start your own thread about your boardgame idea instead of spamming in another person's thread. it is really easy and you will find many people who will gladly help you in developing your idea.

cheers,

your austrian friend andi

Syndicate content


forum | by Dr. Radut