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Traveling Minstrel Game - Player interaction and dice roll system

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Greggatron
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My wife and I have been working on a game of her theme idea.
We are looking for advice/feedback on:
1) More player interaction between each other
2) More robust dice rolling system

Each player starts out as a traveling minstrel looking to gain enough reputation to be invited by the royal court and impress them. You gain reputation by playing (rolling special dice) at towns and villages and successfully completing songs of romantic/heroic/adventurous tales.

Your minstrel starts the game with 7 village/town location cards, 5 red/blue d6 dice (lute dice explained later), the lute "instrument" card, and an "experience" card with 5 counters on it.

The dice work as music notes. The "lute" dice you start with have 3 sides of red, 3 sides of blue.
With coins you can purchase more instruments that unlock other colored dice.
Harp: 4 sides of yellow with harp symbols, 1 blue 1 red
Viol: 4 sides of green with viol symbols, 1 blue 1 red
Drums: 4 sides of grey with drum symbols, 1 blue 1 red
Flute: 4 sides of white with flute symbols, 1 blue 1 red

You start with 5 experience counters that represent the ability to use any combo of five dice (of only the instrument dice you own). So if you owned a harp and lute you could have 5 harp dice, 2 harp/3 lute, all 5 lute etc. You are able to change the combo of dice before performing your songs which will depend on what the town requests (explained below).

Purchasing lessons with coins gains more experience counters and thus more dice. So 6 counters would allow you to roll 6 dice instead of 5, 7 counters would allow 7 dice and so on.

Getting to a turn:
All players choose one of the village/town cards from their hand but do not reveal it yet. Once all players have chosen their card they reveal it to each other. If any player chose the same village as another they have a friendly minstrel duel to determine the better story teller. The winner of the duel takes a few rep from the other player and proceeds to their chosen village/town and the loser has to rechoose an unchosen village/town.

I will first explain how playing songs for a village/town work and then explain the duel system.

Once each player has chosen their village/town they draw from the song request pile. Song request cards will all have different combinations of songs on them. The card will have 4 difficulties of the same song ranging from Simple, Fair, Grand to Epic.
Simple involves 5 notes.
Fair involves 7 notes.
Grand involves 9 notes.
Epic involves 11 notes.

Since each song is different from the next card, so too will the colors of the notes. For example this song request contains;
Simple: RRBBY
Fair: RRBBYYG
Grand: RRBBYYGBY
Epic: RRBBYYGBYGG

In order to gain reputation with that village/town you need to roll (sing) all but 2 notes of that level of tale, anything better gives bonus reputation.
So if you choose to sing a simple tale you would need to roll 3/5 matching dice to receive 1 rep, 4/5 rep would give 2 reputation and a perfect simple tale of 5/5 would give 4 rep.
Each tier of difficulty gives more rep.
Another example, with a Grand Tale, getting 7/9 would give 3 reputation, 8/9 would give 4 and a perfect 9/9 would give 6.

After your first roll, there is an option to reroll any number of your dice but "fatigue" sets in and a penalty of removing 1 die from the remaining dice you wanted to reroll will apply. You may choose to reroll as many times you like but fatigue sets in each time lowering your chances of completing your difficulty.

We have yet to decide what the penalty for failure to perform or roll enough of the matching dice for the difficulty you chose but something along the lines of lost rep or not being able to play at the village anymore.

Duels work the similar to the village songs except both players play songs from the same song request card that one of them draws. Both players roll (sing) for the simple difficulty tale. If they tie, they sing the (next difficulty) fair tale and so on until a winner is determined.

Each minstrel also earns 1 coin for each difficulty each time they play at a village/town, therefore you get 1 coin for simple and upto 4 coins for epic, these coins can purchase different instruments and music/tale telling lessons. Lessons get more expensive as you gain more experience.

Once you have hit a certain rep (decided later on exact number) you can play for the royal court and draw from their song request pile. You must play all 4 difficulties flawlessly to win the game, so make sure you are prepared!

This is just a start to our idea so if you are confused about any rules or gameplay let me know.

I like the dice idea for the song requests but not sure if there is enough risk/reward mechanic or if the different instruments = different colors idea is good or not. I can see a player getting frustrated if they own drums and draw 4 requests in a row that ask for harp or flute in the grand or higher difficulties so they have no chance until that is bought but they hopefully are able to complete most simple/fair tales.

Let us know! Thanks!

MarkKreitler
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Interesting stuff!

Greggatron, you and your wife have a very neat theme on your hands, and some great design elements. Overall, it feels strong.

It also feels complex, particularly the probabilities involved in the dicing system. I'm decent at math, but when I try to figure out the best combination of dice to hit even the simplest songs, like:

RRBBY

my head explodes.

I know I'll need at least 1 harp, but would it be better to have 2 harp dice? And that's not including fatigue effects, and the fact that I need hit only 3 of the five notes (so, do I *really* need a harp at all to play this song if the yellow note is optional?). The system seems simple on the surface, but the math quickly gets impenetrable, which makes strategizing difficult. Never mind the fact that all the systems are interconnected, so my success with the dice affects my ability to play more notes and buy more instruments.

Don't get me wrong -- I like the coupling between systems, but as a player, I would feel like there *is* an optimal combination of dice, but I wouldn't be able to figure it out, and that would be frustrating.

Here's an alternative meant to suggest other ways to think about the problem. Suppose you represent each song by a collection of symbols representing the following notes:

H: high note
L: low note
B: "beat" (percussive note)
V: vocal (voice note)

Most instrument dice have at least one of these symbols, but each instrument skews to favor a different subset. For example:

Basic Instruments (have at least one of every symbol):
Lute: H L L B V V
Harp: H H L B V V

Advanced Instruments (skew heavily toward a particular subset of symbols):
Drum: B B B B V V
Flute: H H H H L L

etc.

Songs continue to be collections of notes:

"Ode to Grog the Ogre" : B B L V V

But, theoretically, any basic instrument could play it -- though it would be quite hard in some cases.

This system feels a little easier to understand. Trying to play a song with lots of "beats" -- bring your drum. High notes? Pack a flute.

I'm unsure how the playing of too few notes affects the math, but it does complicate it. It makes trying to calculate fair scoring difficult.

Fatigue also complicates things, and I'm not sure what it adds to the game outside of a simulation feel. I'd start without it, sticking with a simple, yahtzee-style "two re-rolls per song" rule. It's familiar to people and easier to explain. From there, it should be easier to see if you need the more complex system.

I wish you luck with the game. It was refreshing to read the rules. The genre and mechanics both feel new, and that's hard to say about most games these days.

Looking forward to hearing more about it!

Greggatron
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Thanks!

Thank you for all your suggestions! We will test and tweak your ideas in our systems and keep working on it.

Another thing I forgot to mention is implementing "Guilds" which were popular amongst traveling minstrels back then. This would basically be a way to help other players or co-op but we are still working on the details.

MarkKreitler
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Guilds +1

I like the sound of the guilds. I'm a huge fan of co-op play.

I had one other thought related to player interaction and the dicing system. In your original design, it feels like the dice are the focal point of play, and that player interaction is limited to chance duels.

If you do simplify the dicing system, you may lose come depth, but you might regain it, and increase player interaction, if you allow players to have more knowledge of about available villages. As an example, consider a system where each player places a village face-up on the table at the start of the round. Then, players announce the village to which they will travel. Players can then more carefully control when they want to duel, and use this as a strategy to block each others' progress.

Just a random thought. Probably not a good fit for your game.

Hope you'll post some notes after you playtest.

Mark

Greggatron
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Snag - Seeking Song Card Mechanic

My wife and I are trying to also test a card mechanic versus the dice mechanic for the songs so it would be easy to take in the car as a pack of cards but we can't seem to find the right way to make the song system fun and complex. This game theme may not allow it but it is her favorite theme so I am trying to make it work...

I keep trying, hopefully it comes to me someday

MarkKreitler
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Do you mean...

Greggatron wrote:
...so it would be easy to take in the car as a pack of cards but we can't seem to find the right way to make the song system fun and complex...

Do you mean as something that can be played in the car?

What card systems have you tried so far?

EDIT:

So, had a thought about this...

Building on the idea that songs consist of notes like:

High High Beat Voice Low

(abbreviated H H B V L)

you could give cards 1, 2 or 3 notes and let players assemble the songs from a collection of cards. For example, suppose I hold 5 cards:

1) H H
2) L B L
3) B V
4) B
5) H L

I could build the song listed above by laying down cards:

1 + 3 + 2 -> H H + B V + L B L -> H H B V L B L -> H H B V L B L

It's OK if I have leading or trailing notes, as long as I construct the desired sequence somewhere in the song.

To make things more interesting, you could give each card a second sequence the requires the player to have a certain instrument. For example, a card might look like this:

H H
H V (harp)

where you can always play it as "H H," but if you have a harp, you can also play it as "H V."

Finally, you could allow players to skip notes or switch from "normal" to "instrumental" sequences as many times as they have "skill levels". Imagine a level 3 player holds the following cards, where the top row are the "normal" notes and the bottom row are "harp" notes (shown in lower case to help clarity):

H H
h v

L L L
v b v

B
h

H V
v h

L V L
h v h

and say she wants to perform the following song:

H H L B V V

She could do this by placing the following cards:

HH + LLL + HV
hv + vbv + vh

She start with the normal notes "HH" on the first card, then plays the first normal note on the second card, "L", then uses a skill point to switch to the harp line for the last two notes on that card, "bv". She stays on the hard for the first note of the last card, "v", and has one extra trailing note.

HH + LLL + HV
hv + vbv + vh

Her sequence: HHLbvv

Finally, to add some extra player interaction, you could allow players to "overhear" each others' performances -- that is, before the performing player discards the cards for her song, each other player, in turn, can choose to take one card from that sequence (provided they have room in their hands). Extra cards are discarded.

Hope you haven't already tried something like this -- would've hated to waste your time.

Greggatron
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Missing direct interaction

We have a very similar 1,2,3 note card system that had note sequence based on skill but I like your system more. I wasn't sure how many cards would be in player's hand. We settled on the 5 default cards but I was stuck on how cards would be drawn or discarded if at all.
Handbuilding before each song could become tedious so I thought about the player drawing a new card or whole hand.

Basically, I like the card dual note sequence system based on instrument and skill levels you suggested but still feel that card control is unsolved.

Having opposing players help a fellow player to gain some of their rep is a nice touch but we want a little more friendly competitive player interaction too.

MarkKreitler
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I see

I agree that card control is critical, because it's hard to build a specific sequence from randomized sub-sequences. I tried to get around that with the dual-sequence system and skill-based sequence switching. The "overhear" system plays into that, too, as a limited form of hand-building: players can choose from the visible cards about to be discarded. My hope was that, given these systems, you could use a traditional system like, "replenish to 5 cards at the start of your turn, discard used cards at the end." To allow players to complete multiple songs per turn, they could use the same cards in multiple songs during the same turn, discarding any card used in any song.

If that's not enough card control, you could add another level by giving each instrument its own draw pile. This would be similar to your original idea of using different dice. Knowing that the Harp skews to high notes and vocals, players would draw from that pile when appropriate, assuming they own a harp. This splits the difference between hand-building and a purely random draw. In my head, these "instrument decks" are in addition to the "overhear" and sequence control mechanisms described earlier.

As for the number of cards held and such, I think too much depends on the number of note categories and the lengths of your songs to lay out concrete values. The number of notes, the lengths of the songs, and the distribution of sequences all impact the numbers. I'd have to sit and crunch numbers for a long time to wrap my head around the math.

I'm really liking your ideas, though, and hope you can continue to solve the rough spots so the game can become a reality.

EDIT:

Another way to increase players' effectiveness with fewer cards would be to allow them to use the same card more than once in a song (think of it as a "chorus"). This way, a skilled musician with one or two instruments could play much longer song with the same set of cards as a novice.

As an example, I'll playing your epic song

RRBBYYGBYGG

using the hand I described earlier

H H
h v

L L L
v b v

B
h

H V
v h

L V L
h v h

Assuming I'm a level 3 musician with a harp.

First, I'll re-cast the epic song in terms of the alternate note system:

RRBBYYGBYGG = H H B B L L V B L V V

Card 1, normal: H H
Card 3, normal: B
Card 3, re-used: B
Card 2, normal: L L v (switched to harp on last note, costs 1 skill)
Card 3, re-used: B (switched back up to normal, costs 1 skill)
Card 5 normal: L V (L) (skipped the last note, costs 1 skill)
Card 4, harp: v [h] (last note unused in the sequence)

This example shows a couple of things. First, re-using a card is powerful, and should probably cost a skill point. Second, the systems that allow sequence switching provide a lot of power -- maybe enough to override the need for precise card control.

MarkKreitler
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A more musical version

Had another thought about card control / card re-use.

Rather than letting players re-use a card, you could let them jump back to an earlier point in the sequence and continue from there. This would be like a D.S. or D.C. al coda -- just like real music.

Players would announce their song and place all cards in order -- like opening sheet music. They would then begin "counting" notes from left to right, as if playing. When they complete a card, they can jump to the sequence for a different instrument for free (assuming they have that instrument). In this way, it's just like reading a score.

Skilled musicians can spend a point to skip a note, jump to a different instrument mid-card, or jump back to an earlier point in the sequence (including an earlier card).

Revisiting the earlier example:

Song: H H B B L L V B L V V

Cards:
H H | B | L L L | L V L |
h v | h | v b v | h v h |

The player uses her lute to play

H H B

She spends a point to jump back one note and play

B L L

spends a point to jump down to the harp line:

v

and another to jump back to the B once more:

B L

She misses the last two notes, which gets her a partial score.

This and similar systems lets skilled players player long songs without requiring larger hands. Hopefully, that reduces the complexity of the card control problem.

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