Defeat the Guardian and capture the flag - Ideas test

It sounds like a neat idea. Do you have any specific questions, or just wanted to see if people liked it?

Simon

Neat ideas. I like the idea of random defenses (although those could be hard to implement). Having different kinds of runners could be cool. Let's see...

One thought that crossed my mind from earlier: you talked about letting your basic characters respawn when they die. The one potential hazard with that is that the game could go on forever. There was a piece of advice I heard once about every turn in a game should bring you closer to the end. The game could get frustratingly long if it becomes a cycle of my soldiers appear and kill yours, then your soldiers reappear and kill mine. I’m not sure what to suggest to keep that from happening, at least not without knowing more details of your system.

Well, in my two cents, I'd say that depends what you want to do with the game. If this is from you and your friends, I say a minis game (since you've said you like them). You could customize things a lot better than if everything was a static card (not to mention it would be easier to make). If you want to market this, it might be easier to sell as a card game though. If people would only need to spend $5-10 on a deck instead of $100 or so on minis, it might draw a bigger audience.

That said, maybe the better question is would it work better as a card game or a minis game? What mechanisms could you use with one type of game that you couldn't use with the other? And also, why not a non-collectable board game (like, you buy a box with all the pieces and your done), or something else?

Again, I'd ask what would be the most interesting to play? I would warn that if the mission is just assassinate the guardian, the game might feel a little too much like Summoner Wars, Warmachines, and probably several other games. If it is something like capture the flag or sneak by the guardian, that is an interesting twist, that I don't think has been overdone. That said, I'm not sure how well it would work.

To make sure, when you say “tactics,” you mean within-game strategy (like, trying to out-maneuver your opponent, surround their troops, etc)? Or do you mean something else (like between game managing of resources)?

My bias is that more tactics always make for a better game, but it depends what you want.

I’ve been working on a minis wargame for quite some time now, and I guess I’d say if you ever find a good answer to this question, please let me know. As far as I can tell, tactics are, as you said, an emergent property that just comes out of the game. I’m not exactly sure how to make a game more tactical. That said, from what I’ve observed playing a variety of wargames, it seems like the most tactical games are the ones that require lots of movement, and maybe ones that limit the number of actions you can make.

Hope that helps.

Simon

So, I don't like posting more than the original author does, but I had one other idea for a way to make a non-infinite respawn (although, having characters in reserve is a really good idea too):

What if your characters can respawn, but it requires a "life token," or some such thing (or, maybe it requires more or fewer tokens, depending on how strong the character is). Maybe there are several of them scattered around the board at the start of the game, which can be captured by whoever is the more aggressive/mobile player. Maybe you could also have it that dealing X damage to an enemy's guardian gives you life tokens. You could also make it that players can damage their own guardian to get tokens (a strategy for players on hard times). Alternatively, if you wanted more of a negative-feedback, you could say that when a player's guardian is damaged, that player gets more tokens (that way when they're losing, they start getting more guys).

The benefit to this is now there is a built-in timer to the game. At some point the life tokens will run out, and then when all of your runners die, game over. It also introduces the possibility of new tactics: Do I run out and grab life tokens, or sit back in cover and shoot my opponent as he tries to grab them? (Although for the game to be interesting, you might need a slight bias for the first strategy, so that everyone doesn't turtle-shell the whole game)

Simon

Fair enough about the team sport analogy. I understand where you are coming from.

I really like the idea that Guardians have abilities that can change the attributes of the rest of your force. You could even consider giving the guardians a set of abilities that you can change up maybe a set of cards that give 3 abilities, but I think so kind of timer should be introduced to stop players spamming the ability and using it tactically.

As for gameplay, I really think that differing units is the way to go - if nothing else, but to give players a variation on what they can do. Your other option is for the Guardians to play that role with their abilities, and the big difference is how those abilities affect your units. Balancing it all is the tough part though

Cool stuff. I had one question and a couple thoughts about this:

First, in your earlier entry, you said this:

I'm a little intrigued. What about your game felt like a race? And how did achieving more turn it into a skirmish? I've at times struggled with not wanting my game to feel like just another skirmish, so I'd be curious what made it different.

Second, you said:

That's one way to handle this. Although, it is a little less intuitive as to why there would be an artificial limit as to how many characters you could have on the battlefield (which is not to say that you couldn't explain it, just that you would have to). One slightly more traditional way that this is handled is by giving each player a limited number of actions. That way, even though you have 8 guys, only 5 of them can act, which somewhat takes away the reason to have those last 3.

Last, you mentioned trying to brainstorm ideas for different units and different armies. Why did you think it would be uncreative to have each army have a different theme? I mean, I guess I see where you're coming from, but the other option would seem to be every army is basically the same. As an alternative, you could make up a neat new ability for each team (i.e. the undead, that respawn easily; the elves, who get magic; the dwarves, who get unusual war machines; etc), although that could get complicated fast.

If you're starting to think about brainstorming lots of unit types, my advice would be don't. When I was starting on Escape From Illeria, my first game included just a few unit types, and my main focus was just on getting the game mechanics to work. Once you have a solid game, then you can start brainstorming units. If anything, you'll have lots of new ideas as to what would be useful. And if you come up with new unit-based actions, then those could be tacked on later (like, once you have developed a solid game without flying units, you can add in rules for flying units and adjust from there).

Simon

I think that one way to stop the game from going on forever is to introduce a runaway winner effect. While I think these are normally to be avoided I think in the case of unlimited respawns it might be a good idea. The disadvantage of dying with respawns is being out of the action for however long it takes you to move up again, with multiple respawn points things could be more interesting than a strait skirmish. The goal would be to get respawn points closer and closer to the enemy guardian and to avoid the enemy from spawning near yours. If the Guardian has some ability to regain headpoints than the only way to defeat it would be a steady stream of units. In addition the number of units that can be deployed at once would matter. Possibly for each spawn point you control you can deploy x troops at once, you might even vary types of spawn points to make different units.
That's one way to do runaway winner. Another way would be attrition defense, having set defenses that are destroyed over time and leave your troops more and more vurnable and makes your flag easier to take. A good example of this general concept is League of Legends with the Tower Lanes. I don't think you should have a turn timer if it can be avoided and I think the idea of unlimited respawns is too interesting to pass up.
As to troop types, you should definitely need more than one. However I would limit yourself to less than five including the guardian. Runners would be fast and deal significant damage but have low headpoints, Hackers would be required to take over spawn points but would be slow and unable to attack. Smashers would destroy obstacles and be used to deal heavy damage to the Guardian but would need to be accompanied by Runners in order to survive. This would probably involve Runners either intercepting fire or forcing your opponent to shoot your Runners.
If Hackers are used like this you could make everything on the map hackable. That way the two ways to win would be slow and steady area control and quick dash flag win and players would probably have to balance between the two to a certain extent.
For the random elements on the map you could have a deck of cards detailing obstacles and their locations, one deck for each side of the map would be better. Each player would draw a certain number of cards and then discard some of them deploying the rest. That way randomness is mostly retained while allowing players some input into the organization of the battlefield.
I've run away a bit from any original point I may have had but I hope there's something useful for you in here.