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Frozen Synapse PnP

7 replies [Last post]
Sat, 03/08/2014 - 10:55
Jayce
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Joined: 02/16/2014

Hello all! Yesterday I had a brilliant little idea. It's essentially Frozen Synapse in a pen and paper game. Take a piece of paper, and draw some terrain and cover on it. Then fold it in half. On your side, you get X amount of troops, so does your enemy. Then you take your turn. On your turn, you give orders to your squad, just like in Frozen Synapse. Orders are drawn lightly on your side, so there's no way to cheat. An order might be to move X amount of spaces, and aim NW. Anyways, after doing all your orders, flip the paper to the other half of the folded sheet and give it to your opponent. He/she does the same. You then unfold the paper and simultaneously complete your actions. Then you repeat the process until you complete the objective.
Restrictions:
-X amount of orders per squad member (think AP)
-Shooting is 1 hit 1 kill. The different weapons have different ways of attacking.
-Allows for HUGE customization.

So far, I've been pretty excited about this little idea of mine, but I have one problem. When unfolding the paper to reveal orders, you see where all your enemies are. The only problem with that is that it's going to be really hard to set up an ambush then... ALSO, how do I handle it if you move your squad onto the enemy side?!?!

Thoughts, ideas, reactions, etc.???
Sorry for the wall of text :P

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Sat, 03/08/2014 - 14:12
#1
let-off studios
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Joined: 02/07/2011
Hrm...This is intriguing. It

Hrm...This is intriguing. It may work out some of the kinks if you use two different pads of tracing paper, and one "master" board that's shared by both players. Set up the master board, have miniature drawings of the terrain for each pad of tracing paper. If you can have a grid for each of the representations of the terrain, then so much the better.

If you put it into a role-playing framework, it could be a persistent-world or even tournament-style competition.

It definitely seems like a cool way to spend the afternoon.

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Sat, 03/08/2014 - 15:15
#2
Jayce
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Joined: 02/16/2014
Thanks

That's a great idea. Mostly, I'm just stuck on fog of war. Having a master board would solve me being able to go into enemy territory, but how would I simulate not seeing the enemy squad until LOS? Currently, when actions are simultaneously revealed, you see all the enemy troops taking their turn. The tactics are when you don't actually know what they're going to do. I'd love to simulate fog of war/LOS, but if not, I'm okay with the current system.

Thanks for the feedback! The master board does solve the issue of squad movement :)

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Sat, 03/08/2014 - 23:28
#3
Jayce
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Joined: 02/16/2014
Still stuck...

Overall, I think I've solved a lot of the bugs, and I'm really looking forward to this. I'm deciding whether to do a pnp or more board game based format. Anyways, I'm STILL stuck on fog of war. Essentially, there'll be a main map/board, and player sheets/cards that you give your units on. Once both players are done, you then simultaneously reveal your actions on the big map/board. My problem with this is that you'll always be able to see the enemy. Currently, the tactics and fun is that you don't know what your enemy is actually going to do. If possible, I want to somehow replicate fog of war so that you don't always see what your enemy is doing.

If you guys have ideas, they'd be much appreciated. If there isn't a good system, the current one will have to do.

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Sun, 03/09/2014 - 19:57
#4
McTeddy
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Joined: 11/19/2012
For fog of war... the best I

For fog of war... the best I could come up with is each "Ship" being labeled with a number. Each team will have a certain number of "Decoys" which can't actually attack.

While this isn't "Fog of War" it'll draw attention away from real ships and create that deception you are looking for.

- - -
And on a side note, I think this might be one of those "It's better on a computer" thing. Between the need for paper, erasing old orders, Fog of war, applying different weapons, etc... I'd hesitate.

I'd recommend deviating from the original game in order to make it a better fit for board play. I'd probably do a simultaneous twist on the X-Wing miniature game.

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Sun, 03/09/2014 - 21:57
#5
Jayce
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Joined: 02/16/2014
It still could work...

Honestly, I was intending for the game to be easy to learn, hard to master, and have a minute long setup. Damage is calculated by initiative, and shots are 1 hit 1 kill. The different classes/weapons are used diferrentely/tactically. I think I'm going to stick with pnp, as it's very simple. The orders are also very simple. You can give each of your squad members (around 4) up to 5 (or so, maybe 3-4) orders. One order is move one space, duck, aim/fire, interact, etc. So far, the best fog of war idea I have is to actually go back to my original idea, and have the map folded in half until you reveal orders.

Thanks for all the input so far! I'm welcome and willing for more ideas and suggestions!!!

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Tue, 03/11/2014 - 07:12
#6
pelle
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Joined: 08/11/2008
Brilliant little idea

Brilliant little idea indeed!

You might want to asap think of a better name though, because Frozen Synapse implies some kind of relation to that trademark. BTW there are several tactical simultaneous pre-plotted movement boardgames you could have a look at (bgg advanced search is probably the best place to start) rather than being too focused on mimicking one particular game, especially since that one is a computer game and has mechanics that will be difficult to use on paper.

Having a game that is just printed and can then be played using pencils is an excellent idea. You should of course (as for all other games) work on what features you really need to make the game fun, and what details are just more work without adding too much. My first experiment would be to reduce the number of areas, skip the different stances, and skip rotation. Just move from area to area and have weapons with either in-area or adjacent-area range. Is that less fun to play than to track small exact movements? Probably not, is my guess. It is so easy to include too much in a game. You can probably think of better combinations of classes/weapons to use as well.

If you want complete fog-of-war that will make things a bit more tricky, but if you look at the existing two-player games with fog-of-war you can get many ideas to start from. Dummy units usually is good enough, but with few enough areas there are more interesting options that could be considered.

Good luck! Frozen Synapse is btw a fantastic game.

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Tue, 03/11/2014 - 07:13
#7
pelle
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BTW with your original idea

BTW with your original idea of just folding the paper, that sounds very much like playing FS in Light Mode. Not that I would ever do that again because it is a lot less fun than Dark Mode, but still.

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