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Various Idea issues for a Character-Battle Game (like Chess)

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Apotheothena
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Joined: 01/23/2014

"WEFA" is a tile-based game (board is similar to a checkerboard, the pieces look like checkers, but are closer to chess pieces in function) that relies on a player-chosen "gambit", or objective to win. The tiles all have unique features, but we're having some trouble with the high skill floor that the game currently has, which is turning away new players because it just looks too complex! I was wondering what this forum would think of a few options that we came up with to ease this game into production/completion:

1) Cards with the tile picture and artwork with all the statistics and features of the tile outlined cleanly (in theory, something small and accessible, in practice probably something similar-looking to a Magic card) to give the players a better, quick-reference handle on their pieces as the game is in motion.

2) Special markers to set on the tiles as they interact with each other and the board (one of the tiles can create a wall, we were thinking of adding "wall pieces" that would look like Cataan or Ticket to Ride roads; some tiles can incapacitate others without killing/removing them from the board, so we were thinking of pieces that could be set on the tiles as a visual indication of immobilization/stunning, like a tile-sized "X", and a few others).

3) Special tile designs for varied Area of Effect features (one tile has a perpetual aura, so we thought about it being a normal-sized tile, with an extended square frame that aligned with the junctions on the board, to better keep track of the AOE); we worry about this one, because a fun part of the game is the ability to not know what pieces your opponent is using until they play them on the board, and this would take that anonymity away, as well as the ability to randomly choose tiles by turning them all upside-down and picking at random, but we figured we could have the cards play the role of grab-bag, and just shuffle them then pick your set from those shuffled cards, while the players just have to deal with having their tiles visible once they've picked their cards.

4) We have movement mechanics for in-game, but we're stuck on how to make the turns more energized because it's a large board and chess-like patience for opponents taking minutes to move one tile has resulted in 5-hour games before, which we certainly don't want. We considered having a "tiles per turn" table on the side of the board, or as a card to place in front of each player (see: Cataan build requirement cards) which could show a correspondence between tiles on the board and moves that you're allowed to make (1 tile=3 moves, 2-5 tiles=2 moves, 6+ tiles=1 move), or a sort of earlygame power trade-off (if you choose 5 moves per turn at the start, each turn you get less until you're at 1, then both players choose their moves again).
Another idea we had was to allow each player 3 actions per turn; some tile abilities count as an action, while moving a tile or attacking with a tile count as an action, and you can only use 2 total actions per tile, per turn. We thought about implementing this with point 5 (below), and reducing the amount of actions per turn at every round (round 1=3 actions/turn, round 2=2 apt, round 3-on=1 apt).

5) Finally, dice integration is something that we're very wary about; we don't want a dungeon-crawler, we don't want a chess-clone, but we need some method of deciding turn order; this is a 2-4 player game and we have been playing it by flipping a tile (similar to flipping a coin) for initiative, but we've never had more than 2 people playing at a time, so this would be problematic otherwise. We are considering, with the inclusion of point 4 that I've made here, adding a 6-sided die that has each player's color on 4 sides, then an option for players 1&3 to flip for it, and an option for players 2&4 to flip for it. This die would fit with the move table from point 4, because every time you would re-align your moves, you'd re-flip for turn order, and turns commence counter-clockwise from the player who won the die toss.

We're still ironing out the function of several tiles, so we're not within reach of the finish line yet, but your advice on these stalemate topics for us would be greatly helpful!

WEFA B&A

RGaffney
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What if you combined your

What if you combined your initiative concerns with turn limit concerns? Players move in the order of their last turn duration. Player who took the least time on the last turn moves first, player who took the most time moves last.

That would also keep all players involved when it's not their turns watching the time.

Apotheothena
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Joined: 01/23/2014
Elaboration

Interesting; how would you set up initial turns? Would it be you take one round of everyone taking one turn, then determine turn order at the end of every round in that manner?

RGaffney
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It sounds like there is a lot

It sounds like there is a lot of pieces to work with. Is there a need for initial set up? First to be ready?

Come to think of it, if your gaming circle is anything like mine, it doesn't even need pieces to be ready, people will have enough trouble sitting down and putting their phones down to be ready to play. First one at the table goes first!

Apotheothena
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Base Concept

There is a base set of pieces, then expansion sets; it could be likened to games like DotA or League of Legends in how each piece is unique, but there are unifying factors: they all move similarly, almost all can attack by walking into other pieces, and almost all have a special move or attack that adds strategy and variety to gameplay. It's more of figure out what your favorite playstyle is, then challenge a friend and see how you stack up. Friendly competition that's flexible and isn't one-sided easily.

So, the players choose their pieces and their style of play (their objective to win the game, which can be similar or different, depending on their choices), then the game starts. The setup is just setting the board down and picking pieces, then going to the gameplay. Each piece has to come to the board through a specific point for each player and so the first few turns are reserved for getting pieces on the board or playing a rush tactic to knock your opponent off their feet if they aren't expecting it, but then midgame objective attempts come into play and if it gets to endgame, it means everyone failed their objectives and the game turns into a bloodbath, so we're trying to balance it for that conquest and combat portion mostly, but balancing for that will balance for the rest of the game, as well.

RGaffney
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It sounds like play order is

It sounds like play order is very strategically important. I would not advise leaving it up to a coin flip

Apotheothena
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Precisely

Yeah, it's a point of contention in the creation of this game; we're having the most trouble figuring out how to solve that problem, as well as the actions per turn problem.

larienna
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I am not sure exactly how

I am not sure exactly how your game looks like, but I had some idea for a chess like game once where players can customize their armies.

Since piece were going to be very different from a player to another, it was impossible to remember all the pieces. So the solutions was to place the information directly on the pieces and limit the amount of information on each piece to reduce analysis time.

The information on the piece was:

Movement pattern: Indicated using arrows for unlimited movement and squares for limited range in blue or green

Capture Pattern: Same as movement but in red.

Ability keyword: 1 special ability keyword that makes the unit behave differently. For example: "Fly: Jump over units are possible"

If you place the information on cards, then you have cross-referencing issues making it hard to search information. While if directly on the pieces, players can easily see the movement and attack pattern of the units without memorizing them.

Another solution if you want to combine cards and units, is that special powers or abilities could be placed on cards you draw in hand, while simply keeping the move capture information on the piece.

Each turn you could for example play a card to temporarily power up the unit you are going to move with the card you have played. This is less problematic as your opponent cannot see your cards, and you only have X cards in hand to analyze which are already linked to your units.

The drawback is that is could be frustrating to the opponent if they are new to the game because they do not know the power up possibilities of opposing pieces compared to expert players. So now you end up in the previous situation where you need reference sheets to show your opponent what your units could do.

The other solution could be to have generic power up cards not linked to any piece that are available for both players. So it becomes easier to plan what cards your opponent could use.

Sidekick
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WEFA comments

Since it isn't stated, I'm going to assume that the spaces on the board are all the same, meaning that they do not have any specifics to them (ie. different colours or terrain that affect movement, tile actions etc)

1. "Cards with the tile picture and artwork with all the statistics and features of the tile outlined cleanly"

In my opinion, not a good idea. Stratego Legends has a reference card detailing each piece's features. This can become an instant turn off to today's impatient gamers, who have a hundred other games to play instead. All relevant information should be on the piece itself in the form of arrows for movement/attack and icons for powers/functions. In this case, you can't get away from a reference card for the icons. The problem might be if you have too many icons. Keep this number to a minimum if possible.

2. "Special markers to set on the tiles as they interact with each other and the board"

This is an excellent idea, but keep in mind that the more Special Markers you have in the game, the more expensive it will be to produce, and the more expensive it will be for boardgamers to purchase.

Not sure how big your tiles are, but instead of using a "tile sized X", you might consider using a cardboard chit.

3. In order to show "Area of Effect". you might consider placing an Area of Effect hex piece under the tile once it is revealed. This hex piece would move with the tile and would be a visual representation of the effect. This would keep the anonimity of the piece.

4. Is the game so chess-like that everyone is going to have analysis paralysis? I can assume that you would like players to be able to move more than 1 tile per turn. I like this idea because it allows players to plan and execute their turns more than if they could only move 1 tile or take 1 action. The downside is that it could also be too powerful if a player has too many moves/actions and could wipe out or severely cripple an opponent in one turn.

Out of the choices you've given, I like the "1 tile=3 moves, 2-5 tiles=2 moves, 6+ tiles=1 move" idea the best, although I would change it to "1 tile=3 moves/actions, etc" instead. This would allow 1 tile to "move, action, move" or "action, move, move" etc.

5. Why do you need to have random turn order? Is this a hard requirement to the game? Why not have consecutive turn order? Air Baron has random turn order every round, where at the beginning of the round, each player places their chit into a cup/bag and someone draws them one at a time, placing them onto the gameboard in drawn order.

Apotheothena
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Joined: 01/23/2014
Feedback

This is a lot of great feedback, thank you very much! I agree with you on all of your points, and had thought about reducing the "Tile Cards" to just references for the symbols on the Tiles, but need to do some re-thinking to make it viable.

As for the hex AoE piece, that's a fantastic idea that I hadn't thought of yet! I'll look into prototyping it to see how it works for us, but I would much prefer it to a confusing Index of the Tiles or Tile face.

What do you think about the objective idea we had:

You can always go full bloodthirst and try to wipe everyone out through combat and conquest, but every player has a game objective that they're trying to accomplish, like:
1. Circumnavigate the board 2 times with one tile, moving only in the outside (visible easily on the board) boundaries of the board (thematically based around a Nomad/Wanderer).

Every player would have Objective cards that they have to pick from at the start of the game which would outline their objective for the game (only one objective per player, per game), and some are quicker strategies based around winning quickly, while others (like the Nomad from above) are based around dragging the game out so the other players have fewer resources to be able to stop you with. These cards would have blank back sides so you can still have a randomization factor to the game, and multiple players can choose the same strategy. The underlying strategic difference is that, although you may choose the same objective, you may not choose the same specialized tile as another player, making the game more tense depending on the situation!

We'd be very receptive of your opinion, and anyone who has ideas regarding these mechanics that we're chewing about!

WEFA B&A

**And yes, there are not specialized spaces on the board, but there are specialized boundaries based off of the objectives the players choose.

Sidekick
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More feedback

So, it sounds like there are multiple ways to win. Kind of like Risk w/mission cards. Mind you, the mission cards in Risk are all based around combat ("Conquer Continent X and Continent Y" or "Capture 18 territories and occupy each with two troops"). It sounds like your missions/objectives will be more varied and offer other ways to win, which is a good idea in my opinion.

Will it be obvious to other players what my objective will be? ie. if I start circumnavigating the board with my man, will it be obvious to the others? If they know my objective, then they would have an advantage and could adjust their play style.

It might be good to have some objectives very similar to one another, so that a player may have an 'idea' of what someone else's objective might be, but can't be completely sure.

Are the objectives picked only at the beginning of the game? From what you've written in your various posts above, it sounds like players may be picking objectives during mid and endgame too. If that is not the case, you might want to consider it.

Re: "playing a rush tactic to knock your opponent off their feet" - would this be an "all or nothing" tactic? If the player fails to win with this tactic, will he be too far gone to recover for the midgame/endgame?

Re: "you may not choose the same specialized tile as another player" - this is the first time that you've mentioned a specialized tile. Is this some kind of Race tile that gives the player certain advantages/disadvantages?

Re: "specialized boundaries" - this is an interesting idea. Are they related to the Objectives only, or do they also fit in with the Specialized Tiles that you mentioned? ie. Tile X allows the player to move his pieces through Specialized Boundary Y.

Re: "There is a base set of pieces, then expansion sets" - you need to be very, very careful with this. There are many gamers who will not even look at a game if they feel that they need to buy an expansion or multiple expansions to get the "real" game, and by "real" game, I mean the game that the designers originally designed, then decided to "make some expansions" so that they could get some more money out of the customer. The base game must be designed so that it is completely playable and fulfilling without ever having to buy an expansion.

Apotheothena
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Clarity

There are, indeed, multiple ways to win; defeating your enemies through brute combat is the underlying constant that every player can always resort to, but it will typically be easier (and more ally-forming) to fulfill your objective card instead. The cards have multiple steps on them, for each round, and we've talked about scoring for rounds like how many tiles did you kill/have left? Did you finish your objective? How many rounds have you won? To play into the final score of the game, but that's still just in the brainsto phase (scoring would look like 7 Wonders scoring, with a bunch of categories through the "Ages" of our game.

The idea of having multiple objectives similar at first, but then divergent is a new one to us, and we'll look into it, as well!

The "rush tactic" would be something like starting with more units than your enemies have and attempting to completely wipe out an enemy in the first round, which would have to be played quickly so they can't get away/forge an alliance.

By specialized tiles, I meant the standard units in the game. Every "tile" has a unique quirk, while all have a selection of global mechanics (can fly/swim, can't kill, etc.). We're wondering about the idea of each unit being completely unique, in that there are no two identical units (though some are similar, like have the same mechanics, art style, but with slightly modified, similar quirks) that we're pretty attached to, but the use of such may over complicate things.

The boundaries are objective-specific, so the nomad that I spoke of earlier would have to stay outside the outermost boundary on the board unless someone exists out there with him (counter play to an assassin strategy).

Finally, by room for expansion, I only mean more diverse tile sets, but not stronger. We believe most players will play with only the base set and find plenty of enjoyment with it, as the game is designed to be played with the amount of tiles in the base set anyways, but we want to offer other sets of tiles so players can draft their own "piles" to be unique to them, much like modern card games (Magic, Yu-gi-oh!) if they desire. A player who is confident and comfortable with their base set can still handedly beat a player who diversified their pile with expansion tiles, so there's no instance of buying power!

This all means that we've got a lot of work to do with theorizing fights and combos and balance, but we're hoping for an immersive, addicting experience!

WEFA A

Zag24
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Joined: 03/02/2014
2 birds, 1 stone

You said that the game was fairly complex. Is it possible that giving each person a reference card / cheat sheet would help with that?

If so, then make the reference cards identical except that one has a "first player" marker on it. The game starts with these being shuffled and handed out, with the side that includes the marker not showing.

If turn order is not going to be clockwise, the cards can each have a number.

BTW, have you seen the game "The Duke" by Catalyst Game Labs? Your game description reminded me of it.

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