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4 Goddesses

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Mon, 01/27/2014 - 01:54
RGaffney
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I'm designing a game with heavy RP elements for inexperienced RPG players. I want to help "enforce" some of the role play so that optimal strategy will depend on which player character you are playing as. The game is in it's infancy, so most elements can be altered in order to suit this particular RP need.

There are 4 Characters, or Races

The Lovers of Aphrodite
The Scholars of Athena
The Hunters of Diana
The Ancients of Demeter

They are each after a different goal, they may fight one another, or work together to accomplish it. Any number of players (or none) should be able to win.

How can I design goals and rules such that Hunters will be be aggressive, and Scholars will be indirect even if the Scholar is being played by a munchkin powergamer and the Hunter is being played by a coy girlfriend?

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Mon, 01/27/2014 - 09:48
#1
Squinshee
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When games have multiple

When games have multiple avenues of victory, it's important to make sure that the goals overlap with each other. If they don't overlap, then there's little to no interaction between players, which defeats the purpose of playing games with people.

A deeper explanation of how you envision your game to play would help generate specific answers.

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Mon, 01/27/2014 - 09:49
#2
gabrielcohn
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Illuminati

One of my favorite games growing up was Illuminati. It has VERY different win conditions for the different players. There are some things that everyone wants (to get higher income, or more powerful cards in their empire), so there's some basic competition there, but in the end, everyone has a different goal, so they will have different actions they emphasize.

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Mon, 01/27/2014 - 19:31
#3
RGaffney
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I hear you Squinshee, What

I hear you Squinshee,

What would you advise if this were a old fashioned style abstract battle game? Like Chesswith 4 players, or Chinese checkers.

What if each player just had one token, how could it work then?

What about an empire building game like illuminati? Players have resources and territories and such? Is there a ruleslight way to accomplish that in order to leave more headspace for the RP elements?

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Mon, 01/27/2014 - 20:53
#4
Squinshee
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Personally, I dislike

Personally, I dislike multiple victory conditions in games. I can't think of many games that incorporate the concept, but for the one I do know - Magic: the Gathering - it's really boring. If you're unfamiliar with the game, it's a TCG where you win by reducing your opponent's HP form 20 to 0. However, there's a rule that states if you can't draw more cards from your deck, you lose. Many cards are designed around this - like remove the top X cards from your opponent's deck and put them into their discard pile. Problem is, this is incredibly uninteractive. You can't defend against the strategy because of how fringe it is, and it generally avoids most of the game's fun mechanics.

What I think is better (or really the only answer) is to design a game with varying strategies that tackle achieving the victory condition differently.

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Mon, 01/27/2014 - 21:02
#5
questccg
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What do you think???

Squinshee wrote:
Personally, I dislike multiple victory conditions in games.

What would you think about "Scenario-oriented" victory conditions (like an Objective)?

In my current WIP, "Tradewars - Homeworld", players can win by either accomplishing the *objective* or by destroying their opponents Homeworld (Base - has 18 health points).

Obviously you can *defend* against attacks and make it difficult for your opponent to destroy you - while you rack up the points and win by *objective*! Objectives vary per scenario, but are designed around the accumulation of quickSilver (credits)...

Would you *dislike* this dual form of victory???

Either you win by scenario objective or you destroy ALL your opponents. So it's probably easier to win by the objective if you are playing a four (4) person "versus" game. However in a "dual" (two players) it might be easy to destroy your opponent.

I think the strategy for optimal play is blending both - because starships are tied to the amount of quickSilver (Credits) you have accumulated.

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Tue, 01/28/2014 - 02:14
#6
RGaffney
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Squinshee wrote:What I think

Squinshee wrote:
What I think is better (or really the only answer) is to design a game with varying strategies that tackle achieving the victory condition differently.

Ok. But in this instance I want to limit strategy so that the player completes their objective using a particular strategy or set of strategy to type of strategy. How could that be accomplished?

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Sun, 02/02/2014 - 10:56
#7
RGaffney
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I'm still looking for

I'm still looking for thoughts on how to coral players into accomplishing their goal using particular strategies.

Ideally there would be a set of strategies all of a particular type or flavor that would work for player one. and a different set for player two etc.

Any ideas on how to guide that?

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