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Romance of the Three Kingdoms Game

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Pastor_Mora
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ROTK Board Game

Full game structure design of the chinese classical novel "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" based on Koei's succesful digital saga. In a marketing dead-end now. Please advise.

Hi everyone, I'm new in town and from abroad, so bare with me now

I have a complete game design of the chinese classical novel "Romance of the Three Kindoms". Some of you may have heard of it as Koei has developed eleven releases of the homonimous series for PC and all major consoles.

The game is kind of a RISK with cards. These cards give bonuses to combat rolls and special actions for the players to surprise their opponents. The four card decks are Officers, Tactics, Weaponry and Special. There is a fifth card deck of Regents from which the players draw their characters.

Anyway, the reception in Koei Singapore was kinda cold, even though I had the local Mensa chapter boardgames club playtesting it. They are a big corporation and not actually into boardgames, so... I'm stuck in a dead-end now and half the world away (Argentina). As you may see, the game was developed entirely with Koei related material so I cannot figure wherelse to go.

Take a look around the images I'll try to attach or hotmail me at jpc_hexis for the full *.pdf's. I have a trade mark on the game mechanics I'll use to publish another game for the 200th aniversary of our national revolution of 1810 so be discreet. Want to play it? just need an A4 printer, 400 troop chips and a plotter for the game board. Not a big deal.

If anyone can point me somewhere specific, it would be most welcome. For general advise, I've read the posts and they are frustating in my situation.

Keep thinking !

Pastor Mora
from Buenos Aires, Argentina

larienna
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Awesome. I had the idea to do

Awesome.

I had the idea to do an R3K game myself. In my game, I wanted the whole game to be focused on officers since in the original story, most of the stuff are done by these heroes. So I was thinking that everybody had a set of officers cards and could play them to perform actions. They would recover their cards at the end of the turn.

I did not look at the rules of your game, but at quick glance, there seems to be too much territories on the map. Second, since territories are connected by roads, why define territories when you could just have created a series of cities connected by roads. Maybe placement was easier with territories than city circles or squares.

By the way, you probably got the pictures from the r3k video games, right?

Pastor_Mora
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Everything is Koei material

Hi lalee

Yep, everything is Koei material, from ROTK XI (PC) that's exactly why I'm f... ejem, troubled. As a policy, I always design what the customer may like. Designing about things only you know and care about won't get you to sell anything to anyone. The paradox I'm facing is: what if the customer doesn't want it? Well, that's the question... (and the reason of this thread).

There are two reasons for the number of territories in the game. First, it's an up-to-six players game, so you need a lot of board. Plus, you get 1 army per turn per city under your control, so you can amass large armies faster, and larger armies tend to de-randomize dice battle results. I choose areas instead of lines and dots because its easier for army chips placing.

Finally, there is a speed consideration. This is an aspect many designers don't account for. Speed is one of the mayor aspects in actual wargames. I've seen your maze models and while distance to target varies, speed is static. Speed can be a strategic variable you should keep in mind, because it makes distance and current position relative. There is nothing more frustating in a game than knowing three turns ahead who's gonna win. The more variables you have to assess, the more unpredictable the outcome, so the tension remains to the last moment. Remember simple old game cards, like open poker or canasta. Even while a total surprise is unadvisable, winning with a last minute devastating show of cards is astonishing, and is easier for everyone to aknowledge the gaming qualities of the winner.

You get that R3K card game up, you let me know, ok?

Keep thinking !

larienna
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I think there are open r3k

I think there are open r3k artwork. There are also ancient artwork which most of them are black and white. Still, not sure you'll get pictures of every officers.

There is also a TV show of 3 kingdom, but this is copyrighted.

Pastor_Mora
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Thanks

Thank you lalee. I'll look around

Keep thinking!

larienna
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I have been thinking about

I have been thinking about it. I thought lately of a small design that took place in japan where most of the games were bingo chips on the map and units and building cards in player's hand.

I thought that I could reuse the same system for an r3k games. Instead of units, you would have heroes.

Pastor_Mora
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All right

Heard enough. Show me what you've got.

larienna
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It's really a rough design, I

It's really a rough design, I just placed a few hours to gather some ideas.

For the map, I took a map of japan and split it up if 15 areas based on the actual province layout. I split up the sea around the map in 6 areas which would restrict navigation length when moving by sea.

You will have a series of unit tokens represented as bingo chips which are placed on the map. These are your units.

You will have a series of cards which are first the special units: ex: samurai, ninja, shugenja and riffle mens. I don't really have a combat system right now but each time you attack, you need to use some of these cards usable once per round. You cannot use more cards than the number of units you attack with.

You also have buildings cards which have special abilities. When you build you make a like of cards in front of you. If you get attacked and lose a province, players can capture one of the cards on the side of the line. So the buildings in the middle are more protected.

There will also be naval support cards which will allow you to perform sea attack.

Production is easy, each territory produce 1 koku. You need

1 koku = 2 unit token
1 koku = 1 unit card
2 koku = 1 building.

The number of buildings and unit cards you can have is limited by the amount of territories you have. So it's some kind of maintenance system.

This is what I have so far, and it gives you an idea of how the game could work.

So As I thought later, this could be adapted for an r3k Game. For example, unit cards could be replaced by officer cards. So it is possible that if I continue to design my game, I will keep in mind to design a system that could work for both games.

Pastor_Mora
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Map clustering

How do you keep track of which buildings are in which province? You can't place cards in the game board with 21 territories. Better make them important buildings in the capital that give modifiers to your attacks, production or whatever. You can also use Officers (unit cards) to perform actions without Units (say Assassination, Sabotage, Stealing, Duel in Battle). That would widen the strategic options and make officers more heroic and as important as armies. This brings to another matter: will you have a 12 cards deck of buildings and a 60 cards deck of officers?

Sound good so far.

Keep thinking!

pelle
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lesson

I think somewhere in here there is a lesson about not relying too much on copyrighted material without asking for permission before you spend too much time on a project. Also IANAL, but now that you have contacted them their lawyers might be interested (in a bad way) in your game even if you change the graphics, in case they can find anything that looks as if it is a bit too close to what they have copyrighted. Quite possibly they also have a trademark on using that title for games? Sounds like a dangerous project to spend too much time on without first spending some money on a lawyer and/or retheme the game.

larienna
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Quote:How do you keep track

Quote:
How do you keep track of which buildings are in which province?

They are not. It some for of abstraction. There is just a line of cards in front of you and ennemy players eats buildings from each side. Building effect affect your whole empire as your unit/officer cards are also not located on the map. So buildings in the certer represent those closer to your capital while those on the side on the side of your kingodm. It's not an exact reproduction of where the buildings would be be it is an abstract representation of core and edge territories.

As for copy right issues, 3 kingdom itself is not copyrighted, it's an ancient chinese story. The material made by koei to make their 3 kingdom game is copyrighted.

Also "Romance of the 3 kingdoms" title might be copyrighted but not the "3 kingdoms" title which is the original story title.

scifiantihero
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Ew :/

Pastor_Mora wrote:
I always design what the customer may like. Designing about things only you know and care about won't get you to sell anything to anyone.

Completely opposite philosophy to my own, but I hope you are having success!

SenorOcho
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No.

larienna wrote:
Also "Romance of the 3 kingdoms" title might be copyrighted but not the "3 kingdoms" title which is the original story title.

The novel's title is 三国演义 (Romance of Three Kingdoms).

larienna
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Unless it was a bad

Unless it was a bad traduction, the copy I read was titled "three kingdoms". Unless there is a different title for each edition of the story. I read the remixed edition in the 15th century I think, can't remember the author's name I think there is a "luo" in it.

Pastor_Mora
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Luo Guangzhong

That's the "englishation" of ancient chinese character's pronunciation, so you can write it however you want.

The problem with copyright is not the name, its that all the card portraits are Koei material. And i'm talking of 184 faces! one for each card in the game. Plus, I've used some exactly the same tactics names they used in their game, so as to be more user friendly to the PC release fans. It is MENT to be a hard copy of their digital game.

Well, never mind. I'm using new faces of latinamerican national heroes and publishing it as "Heroes of the Revolution" with an independence wars theme all over south america. This year is the 200th aniversary of my country's national revolution, so... I'll show it to you (in spanish) when it gets out.

Thank you all for your posts.

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